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

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But at the last moment the flesh-and-blood conductor of spirit failed; a great weakness and weariness made her passive under the storm of sorrow that drove like rain to the roots of her life. When she was able to move, Vala lay sad and still. All was over, and Nanna stood astonished, smitten, dismayed, on a threshold she could not pass. The Eternal had given, and it was a gift; he had taken away, and it was an immeasurable loss, and she could not say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." She was utterly desolate; and when she washed for the last time the little feet that had never trod the moor or street or house, she thought her heart would break. _Who_ had led them through the vast spaces of the constellations? _Whither_ had they been led? There was no answer to her moaning question. She looked from her dead Vala to God, and all was darkness. She could not see him.

It was a hurried burial in a driving storm. The sea rolled in fateful billows, the winds whistled loud and shrill, the rain soaked Nanna through and through. Two or three of her neighbors followed afar off; they wished her to see they were not oblivious of her grief and loss, but they dared not break the ordinance of town and kirk and voluntarily and without urgent reason come in contact with the contagion; for the island not many years previously had been almost decimated by the same scourge, and every man and woman was the guardian, not only of his or her own life, but of the lives of the community.

Nanna understood this. She saw the dark, cloaked figures of her friends standing in the storm at a distance, and she knew the meaning of their upraised hands; but she had no heart to answer the signal of sympathy. Alone, she stood by the small open grave and saw it filled. The rain beat on it, and she was glad that it beat on her. It was with difficulty, and only with some affected anger, the two men who had buried the child got her to return to her home.

How vacant it was! How unspeakably lonely! The stormy dreariness outside the cot, the atmosphere of sorrow and loss within it, were depressing beyond words. And what can be said of the loneliness and sorrow within the soul? But in every bitter cup there is one drop bitterest of all; and in Nanna's case this was David's neglect and apparent desertion. She had received no message from him, nor had he come near her in all her trouble. Truly, he must have broken the law to do so; but Nanna was sure no town ordinance would have kept her from David's side in such an hour, and she despised that obedience to law which could teach him such cowardly neglect.

Day after day passed, and he came not. The fever was by this time in all the cottages around her, and the little hamlet was a plague-spot that every one avoided. But, for all that, Nanna's heart condemned her cousin. She tried him by her own feelings, and found him guilty of unpardonable selfishness and neglect. And oh, how dreary are those waste places left by the loved who have deserted us! With what bitter tears we water them! Vala and David had been her last tie to love and happiness. "Thank God," she cried out in her misery, "it can only be broken once!"

Vala had been in her grave a week--a week of days that turned the mother's heart gray--before Nanna heard a word of comfort. Then once more David lifted the latch of the cot and entered her presence. She was sitting still and empty-handed, and her white face and the quivering of her lips pierced him to the heart.

"Nanna! Nanna!" he said.

Then she rose, and looked round the lonely room, and David understood what she meant.

"Nanna! Nanna!" was still all that he could say. He could find no words fit for such sorrow; but there was the truth to speak, and that might have some comfort in it. So he took her hands in his, and said gently:

"Nanna! dear Nanna! your husband is dead."

"I am glad of it!" she answered. "He killed Vala twice over." Her voice was low and weary, and she asked no question about the matter.

"Did you think I had forgotten you, Nanna?"

"Well, then, yes."

"Forgotten you and Vala?"

"It looked most like it. I thought you were either feared for yourself or the law."

"No wonder men think ill of God, whom they do not know, when they are so ready to think ill of men, whom they do know."

"O David! how could you desert me? Can you think of all that I have suffered alone? God nor man has helped me."

"Poor, poor Nanna!"

"If you had been ill to death, neither the words of men nor the power of the law could have kept me from your sick-bed. No, indeed! I would have risked everything to help you. Where were you at all, David?"

"I was on the _Sea Rover_."

"The _Sea Rover_! That is Nicol's ship. What did he do to you? What were you there for?"

"I was on the _Sea Rover_ nursing your husband."

"My God!"

"That is the truth, Nanna. I have just finished my task."

"Who sent you?"

"The minister came to me with the order, and I could not win by it and face God and man again."

"What said he? O David! David!"

"He said, 'David Borson, there are four men ill with typhus this morning on the _Sea Rover_. The one man yet unstricken is quite broken down with fright and fatigue. The doctor says some one ought to go there. What do you think?' And I said, 'Minister, do you mean me?' And he smiled a bit and answered, 'I thought you would know your duty, David.'"

"But why _your_ duty, David? Surely Vala was dearer and nearer."

"The minister said, 'You are a lone man, David, and you fear God; so, then, you need not fear the fever.'"

"And he knew that you hated Sinclair! Knew that Sinclair had come to my house with the fever on him--knew that he had lifted my poor bairn, only that he might give her the death-kiss!"

"No, no! How could any father, any man, be as bad as that, Nanna?"

"You know not how bad the devil can make a man when he enters into him. And how could the minister send you such a hard road?"

"It was made easy to me; it was indeed, Nanna. The sensible presence of God, and the shining of his face on me, though only for a moment, made me willing to give up all my anger and all my revenge, and wait on my enemy, and do what I could for him to the last moment."

"And Vala? How could you forget her?"

"I did not forget her. I was feared for the child, though I would not say that to you. Barbara told me she had fret all night, and when I said it would be for her mother, the woman shook her head in a way that made me tremble. I was on my way to see her and you when I met the minister, and he sent me the other way."

"Why did you not tell him that you feared for Vala?"

"I said that, and he said, 'Nanna will be able to care for the little one; but there is a strong man needed to care for her husband; Nicol Sinclair will be hard to manage.' And then he minded me of the man's sinful life, and he said peradventure it might be the purpose of God even yet to give him another opportunity for repentance through me."

"If he had known Nicol Sinclair as I--"

"Yes, Nanna, but it is an awful thing to die eternally. If I could help to save any one from such a fate, even my worst enemy,--even your enemy and Vala's,--what should I have done? Tell me."

"Just what you did. You have done right. Yes; though the man killed Vala, you have done right! You have done right!"

"I knew that would be your last word."

"Did he have one good thought, one prayer, to meet death with?"

"He did not. It was a wild night when he was in the dead thraws--a wild night for the flitting; and he went out in storm and darkness, and the sea carried him away."

"God have mercy upon him! I have not a tear left for Nicol Sinclair."

"It was an awful death; but on the same night there was a very good death after a very good life. You have heard, Nanna?"

"I have heard nothing. For many days all has been still and tidingless. The fever is in every house, and no one comes near but the doctor, and he speaks only to the sick."

"Well, then, the good minister has gone home. He was taken with the fever while giving the sacrament to Elder Somerlid. And he knew that he would die, for he said, 'John Somerlid, we shall very soon drink this cup together in the house of our Father in heaven.' So when he got back to the manse he sent for Elder Peterson, and gave him his last words."

"And I know well that they would be good words."

"They were like himself, full of hope. He spoke about his books, and the money in his desk to pay all his debts, and then he said:

"'The days of my life are ended, but I have met the hand of God, Peter, and it is strong to lead and to comfort me. A word was brought to me even as I held the blessed cup in my hand. Read to me from the Book while I can listen to it.' And Peterson asked, 'What shall I read?' And the minister said, 'Take the Psalms. There is everything in the Psalms.' So Peterson read the ones he called for, and after a little the minister said:

"'That will do, Peter. I turn now from the sorrow and pain and darkness of earth to the celestial city, to infinite serenities, to love without limit, to perfect joy. And when I am dead, see you to my burying, Peter. Lay me in the grave with my face to the east, and put above me Jesus Christ's own watchword, "_Thy kingdom come._"' After that he asked only for water, and so he died."

"Blessed are such dead. There is no need to weep for them."

"That is one thing sure; but I have seen this, Nanna: that the wicked is unbefriended in his death-pang."

"And after it, David? O David, after it?"

"There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the worker of iniquity may hide," he answered with an awful solemnity.

"O David, we come into the world weeping, and we go out fearing. It is a hard travail, both for body and soul."

And David walked to the little table on which the Book lay, and he turned the leaves until he found the words he wanted. And Nanna watched him with eyes purified by that mysterious withdrawal into the life of the soul which comes through a great sorrow.

"It was not always so, Nanna," he said. "Listen!

"For their sakes I made