An Orkney Maid by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

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"Wrong! Thou wilt see the Bishop today. Ask him. He will tell thee that the English Church and the English women gave up very reluctantly their homage to Mary. Are not their grand churches called after Peter and Paul and other male saints? Dost thou think that Christ loved Peter and Paul more than his mother? I know better. Please God thou wilt know better some day."

"Churches are often called after Mary, as well as the saints."

"Not in Scotland."

"There is one in Glasgow. Vedder told me he used to hear Bishop Hedley preach there."

"It is an Episcopal Church. Ask him about thy dream. No, I mean thy soul's experience."

"Thou said _dream_, Mother. It was not a dream. I saw no one. I only heard a voice. It is what we see in dreams that is important."

"Now wilt thou come to thy breakfast?"

"Is _he_ downstairs yet?"

"I will go and call him."

Rahal, however, came to the table alone. She said, "Ian asked that he might lie still and sleep an hour or two. He has not slept all night long, I think," she added. "His voice sounded full of trouble."

So the two women ate their breakfast alone for Ragnor did not return in time to join them. And Rahal's hopefulness left her, and she was silent and her face had a grey, fearful expression that Thora could not help noticing. "You look ill, Mother!" she said, "and you were looking so well when we came downstairs. What is it?"

"I know not. I feel as if I was going into a black cloud. I wish that thy father would come home. He is in trouble. I wonder then what is the matter!"

In about an hour they saw Ragnor and the Bishop coming towards the house together.

"They are in trouble, Thora, both of them are in trouble."

"About Thora they need not to be in trouble. She will do what they advise her to do."

"It is not thee."

"What then?"

"I will not name my fear, lest I call it to me."

Then she rose and went to the door and Thora followed her, and by this time, Ragnor and the Bishop were at the garden gate. Very soon the Bishop was holding their hands, and Rahal found when he released her hand that he had left a letter in it. Yet for a moment she hardly noticed the fact, so shocked was she at the expression of her husband's face. He looked so much older, his eyes were two wells of sorrow, his distress had passed beyond words, and when she asked, "What is thy trouble, Coll?" he looked at her pitifully and pointed to the letter. Then she took Thora's hand and they went to her room together.

Sitting on the side of her bed, she broke the seal and looked at the superscription. "It is from Adam Vedder," she said, as she began to read it. No other word escaped her lips until she came to the end of the long epistle. Then she laid it down on the bed beside her and shivered out the words, "Boris is dying. Perhaps dead. Oh, Boris! My son Boris! Read for thyself."

So Thora read the letter. It contained a vivid description of the taking of a certain small battery, which was pouring death and destruction on the little British company, who had gone as a forlorn hope to silence its fire. They were picked volunteers and they were led by Boris Ragnor. He had made a breach in its defences and carried his men over the cannon to victory. At the last moment he was shot in the throat and received a deadly wound in the side, as he tore from the hands of the Ensign the flag of his regiment, wrote Vedder.

I saw the fight between the men. I was carrying water to the
wounded on the hillside. I, and several others, rushed to the side
of Boris. He held the flag so tightly that no hand could remove
it, and we carried it with him to the hospital. For two days he
remained there, then he was carefully removed to my house, not
very far away, and now he has not only one of Miss Nightingale's
nurses always with him but also myself. As for Sunna, she hardly
ever leaves him. He talks constantly of thee and his father and
sister. He sends all his undying love, and if indeed these wounds
mean his death, he is dying gloriously and happily, trusting God
implicitly, and loving even his enemies--a thing Adam Vedder
cannot understand. He found out before he was twenty years old
that loving his enemies was beyond his power and that nothing
could make him forgive them. Our dear Boris! Oh, Rahal! Rahal!
Poor stricken mother! God comfort thee, and tell thyself every
minute "My boy has won a glorious death and he is going the way of
all flesh, honoured and loved by all who ever knew him."

Thy true friend,
ADAM VEDDER.

This letter upset all other considerations, and when Ian came downstairs at the dinner hour, he found no one interested enough in his case to take it up with the proper sense of its importance. Ragnor was steeped in silent grief. Rahal had shut up her sorrow behind dry eyes and a closed mouth. The Bishop had taken the seat next to Thora. He felt as if no one had missed or even thought of him. And such conversation as there was related entirely to the war. Thora smiled at him across the table, but he was not pleased at Thora being able to smile; and he only returned the courtesy with a doleful shake of the head.

After dinner Ian said something about going to see McLeod, and then the Bishop interfered--"No, Ian," he replied, "I want you to walk as far as the cathedral with me. Will you do that?"

"With pleasure, sir."

"Then let us be going, while there is yet a little sunshine."

The cathedral doors stood open, but there was no one present except a very old woman, who at their approach rose from her knees and painfully walked away. The Bishop altered his course, so as to greet her--"Good afternoon, Sister Odd! Art thou suffering yet?"

"Only the pain that comes with many years, sir. God makes it easy for me. Wilt thou bless me?"

"Thou hast God's blessing. Who can add to it? God be with thee to the very end!"

"Enough is that. Thy hand a moment, sir."

For a moment they, stood silently hand clasped, then parted, and the Bishop walked straight to the vestry and taking a key from his pocket, opened the door. There was a fire laid ready for the match and he stooped and lit it, and Ian placed his chair near by.

"That is good!" he said. "Bring your own chair near to me, Ian, I have something to say to you."

"I am glad of that, Bishop. No one seemed to care for my sorrow. I was made to feel this day the difference between a son and a son-in-law."

"There is a difference, a natural one, but you have been treated as a son always. Ragnor has told me all about those charges. You may speak freely to me. It is better that you should do so."

"I explained the charges to the whole family. Do they not believe me?"

"The explanation was only partial and one-sided. I think the charge of gambling may be put aside, with your promise to abstain from the appearance of evil for the future. I understand your position about the Sabbath. You should have gone on singing in some church. Supposing you got no spiritual help from it, you were at least lifting the souls of others on the wings of holy song, and you need not have mocked at the devout feelings of others by music unfit for the day."

"It was a bit of boyish folly."

"It was something far more than that. I had a letter from Jean Hay more than two months ago and I investigated every charge she made against you."

"Well, Bishop?"

"I find that, examined separately, they do not indicate any settled sinfulness; but taken together they indicate a variable temper, a perfectly untrained nature, and a weak, unresisting will. Now, Ian, a weak, good man is a dangerous type of a bad man. They readily become the tools of wicked men of powerful intellect and determined character. I have met with many such cases. Your change of name----"

"Oh, sir, I could not endure Calvin tacked on to me! If you knew what I have suffered!"

"I know it all. Why did you not tell the Ragnors on your first acquaintance with them?"

"Mrs. Ragnor liked Ian because it is the Highland form for John, and Thora loved the name and I did not like, while they knew so little of me, to tell them I had only assumed it. I watched for a good opportunity to speak concerning it and none came. Then I thought I would consult you at this time, before the wedding day."

"I could not have married you under the name of Ian. Discard it at once. Take it as a pet name between Thora and yourself, if you choose. No doubt you thought Ian was prettier and more romantic and suitable for your really handsome person."

"Oh, Bishop, do not humiliate me! I----"

"I have no doubt I am correct. I have known young men wreck their lives for some equally foolish idea."

"I will cast it off today. I will tell Thora the truth tonight. Before we are married, I will advertise it in next week's _News_."

"Before you are married, I trust you will have made the name of John Macrae so famous that you will need no such advertising."

"What do you mean, Bishop?"

"I want you to go to the trenches at Redan or to fight your way into Sebastopol. You have been left too much to your own direction and your own way. Obedience is the first round of the ladder of Success. You must learn it. You can only be a subordinate till you manage this lesson. Your ideas of life are crude and provincial. You need to see men making their way upward, in some other places than in shops and offices. Above all, you must learn to conquer yourself and your indiscreet will. You are not a man, until you are master in your own house and fear no mutiny against your Will to act nobly. You have had no opportunities for such education. Now take one year to begin it."

"You mean that I must put off my marriage for a year."

"Exactly. Under present circumstances----"

"Oh, sir, that is not thinkable! It would be too mortifying! I could not go back to Edinburgh. I could not put off my marriage!"

"You will be obliged to do so. Do you imagine the Ragnors will hold wedding festivities, while their eldest son is dying, or his broken body on its way home for burial?"

"I thought the ceremony would be entirely religious and the festivities could be abandoned."

"Is that what you wish?"

"Yes, Bishop."