Prisoners of Conscience by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (mini ebook reader txt) 📕

when he stood on the brink of Tophet?"

"God did not suffer his soul to be led near the awful place. When he gave up his ghost he gave it up to the merciful Father of spirits. It is wicked to speak lies of the living; it is abominable and dangerous to speak ill of the dead."

"I fear neither the living nor the dead. I will say to my last breath that Liot Borson murdered Bele Trenby. He was long minded to do the deed; at last he did it."

"How can you alone, of all the men and women in Lerwick, know this?"

"That night I dreamed a dream. I saw the moss and the black water, and Bele's white, handsome face go down into it. And I saw your father there. What for? That he might do the murder in his heart."

"The dream came from your own thoughts."

"It came from Bele's angel. The next day--yes, and many times afterward--I took to the spot the dog that loved Bele, and the creature whined and crouched to his specter. Men are poor, sightless creatures; animals see spirits where we are blind as bats."

"Are these your proofs? Why do people suffer you to say such things?"

"Because in their hearts they believe me. Murders tell tales; secretly, in the night, crossing the moss, when men are not thinking, they breathe suspicion; they speak after being long dumb. Fifty years is not the date of their bond. They haunt the place of their tragedy, and men dream of the deed. So it is. The report sticks to Liot, and more will come of it yet. Oh, that he were in your shoes to-day! I would find the strength to slay him, if I died and went to hell for it."

"Woman, why dost thou damn thyself while yet there is a hope of mercy?"

"Mercy! What have you to do with mercy? One thing rejoices me: it will not be long ere I meet that blessed thrall that cursed all the generations of the Borsons. He and I will strike hands in that quarrel; and it shall go ill with you and your children till the last Borson be cursed off the face of the earth."

"I will flee unto the Omnipotent. He will keep even my shadow from the evil ones that follow after. Now I will go, for I see there is no hope of good-will between us two."

"And it is my advice that you go away from Shetland."

"That I will _not_ do. There are my cousins Nanna and Vala here; and it is freely said that you have done them much ill. I will stay here and do them all the good I can."

"Then you will have Nicol Sinclair to settle with. That is the best of my wish. Nicol Sinclair is my third cousin, and I have given him five hundred pounds because he hates the Borsons and is ready to cross their happiness in all things possible. Pack, now, from my presence! I have no more to say to you. I am no kin to you, and I have taken good care to prevent the law making you kin. My will is made. All that I have not given to Nicol Sinclair goes to make free the slaves in Africa. Freedom! freedom! freedom!" she shrieked. "Nothing is cruel but slavery."

It was the old Norse passion for liberty, strong and vital when every other love was ashes. It was a passion also to which David instantly responded. The slumbering sentiment awoke like a giant in his heart, and he comprehended it by a racial instinct as passionate as her own.

"You have done well," he said. "Hunger and cold, pain and poverty, are nothing if one has freedom. It is a grand thing to set a man or a woman _free_."

"And yet you catch haddock and herring! Bah! we have nothing to do with each other."

"Then farewell, aunt, and God give you mercy in the day you will need mercy."

She was suddenly and stolidly silent. She fixed her eyes on the dull glow of the burning peats, and relapsed into the torpor that was her habitual mood. Its force was insurmountable. David went slowly out of her presence, and was unable for some time to cast off the depression of her icy influence. Yet the meeting had not been without result. During it he had felt the first conscious throb of that new passion for freedom which had sprung into existence at the impetuous, glowing iteration of the mere word from his aunt's lips. He felt its charm in the unaccustomed liberty of his own actions. He was now entirely without claims but those his love or liking voluntarily assumed. No one older than himself had the right to reprove or direct him. He had at last come to his majority. He was master of himself and his fate.

The first evidence of this new condition was a dignified reticence with Barbara Traill. She was conscious of the change in her lodger. She felt instinctively that he was no longer a child to be questioned, and there was a tone of authority in his refusal to discuss his aunt Sabiston with her which she could not but respect. Indeed, it was no longer possible to speak to him of Mistress Sabiston as Mistress Sabiston deserved to be spoken of. Her first censure was checked by David's air of disapproval and his few words of apology:

"She is, however, my aunt; and when one is ninety years old it is a good excuse for many faults."

Matilda's utter refusal of his kin or kindness threw him more exclusively upon Nanna and her child. And as all his efforts to discover any other family connections were quite futile, he finally came to believe that they three were the last of a family that had once filled the lands of the Norsemen with the fame of their great deeds. Insensibly this thought drew the bond tighter and closer, though an instinct as pure as it was conventional taught him a scrupulous delicacy with regard to this friendship. Fortunately, in Shetland the blood-tie was regarded as a strong enough motive for all David's attentions to a woman and child so desolate and helpless. People said simply, "It is a good thing for Nanna Sinclair that her cousin has come to Shetland." And it did not enter their hearts to imagine an evil motive for kind deeds when there was one so natural and obligatory.

So Shetland became dear and pleasant to David, and he gradually grew into great favor. The minister made much of the young man, for he respected his integrity and earnest piety, and loved him for that tenderness and clearness of conscience which was sensitive to the first approaches of wrong. The fishers and sailors of the town gave him a warm admiration for his seamanship, and the praise David had looked for at the beginning, and felt disappointed in not receiving, was now given him by a kind of acclamation. Old sailors, telling yarns of their ships and the queer, bold things their ships had done, generally in some way climaxed their narratives by an allusion to David Borson. Thus, Peter Redlands, talking to a group of fishers one day, said:

"Where that lad learned the sea, and who taught him all the ways of it, is beyond me; but say as you will, he can make harbor when none of us could look at it. It is my belief David Borson can stick to anything that can float."

"And to see how he humors a boat," continued Jan Wyck, "you would think she was made out of flesh instead of out of three-inch planks. I was out with him near the Old Man's Rocks last week, and he was watching the water; and I said, 'What is it, David?' 'The sea,' he said. 'It will be at its old tricks again in an hour or less.' And the 'less' was right, for in fifteen minutes the word was, 'Reef, and quick about it!' and then you know what--the rip and the roar, and the boat leaping her full length. But David did not worry a jot. He coaxed her beautifully, and kept her well in hand; and she shook herself a little, and then away like a gull before the wind."

He was just as popular among the children and women of Lerwick. The boys made an idol of him, for David was always ready to give them a sail, or lend them his fowling-piece, or help them to rig their toy boats. As for the maidens, the prettiest ones in Lerwick had a shy smile for David Borson, and many wondered that such a beauty as Asta Fae should smile on him in vain; but David had taken Nanna and Vala into his heart, and his care and thought for them were so constant that there was no room for any other interest. Yet Barbara often talked to him about taking a wife; and even the minister, doubtless led to such advice by female gossip and speculation, thought it well to speak a word on the subject to him.

"You know, David," he said, "there are good girls and beautiful girls that look kindly on you, and who wonder that your smiles are so cold and your words so few; and it is my duty to say to you that evil may come of your taking so much thought for your cousin and her child, and the way to help her best is to help her through your own wife."

"I am not in the mind to marry, minister," he answered. "There is no one girl dearer or fairer to me than another. And as for what I do for my cousins, I think that God sent me to do it, and I shall not be feared to make accounting to him for it."

"That is my belief also, David. Yet we are told to avoid the very appearance of evil; and what is more, if it is not your pleasure to marry, it is your duty; and how will you win past that?"

"I have not seen it to be my duty, minister."

"The promise is in the line of the righteous; the blessing is for you and for your children; but if you have no wife or children, then is the promise shortened and the blessing cut off. I think that you should choose some good woman's daughter, and build yourself a home, and then marry a wife."

The young man went out of the manse with this thought in his heart. And not far off he met pretty Asta Fae, and he spoke to her and walked with her as far as she was going; and he saw that she had the sweetest of blue eyes, and that her smile was tender and her ways gentle. And when he left her at her father's door, he held her hand a moment and said, "It has been a pleasant walk to me, Asta." And she looked frankly into his face and answered with rosy blushes, "And to me also, David."

There was a warm glow at his heart as he went across the moor to Nanna's; and he resolved to tell his cousin what the minister had said, and ask her advice about Asta Fae; but when he reached Nanna's cot she was sitting on the hearth with Vala upon her knees, and telling her such a strange story that David would not for anything lose a word of it. And as Nanna's back was to the open door she