Prisoners of Conscience Part 11

"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 pa.s.sion for liberty, strong and vital when every other love was ashes. It was a pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumed. 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 Nors.e.m.e.n 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 seamans.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ps and the queer, bold things their s.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d 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 did not see David enter, but went on with her tale, in the high, monotonous tone of one telling a narrative whose every word is well known and not to be changed.

"You see, Vala," she said, touching the child's fingers and toes, "it was the old brown bull of Norraway, and he had a sore battle with the deil, and he carried off a great princess; and you may know how big he was, for he said to her, 'Eat out of my left ear, and drink out of my right ear, and put by the leavings.' And ay they rode, and on they rode, till they came to a dark and awesome glen, and there the bull stopped and the lady lighted down. And the bull said to her: 'Here you must stay while I go on and fight the deil.

And you must sit here on that stone, and move not hand or foot till I come back, or else I'll never find you again. And if everything round about you turns blue, I shall have beaten the deil; but if all things turn red, then the deil will have conquered me.'"

"And so he left her, mammy, to go and fight the deil?"

"Ay, he did, Vala; and she sat still, singing."

"Sing me the lady's song, mammy."

Then Nanna intoned softly the strangest, wildest little tune. It was like a Gregorian chant, and had but three notes, but to these she gave a marvelous variety. David listened spellbound to the entreating voice:

"'Seven long years I served for thee, The gla.s.sy hill I clamb for thee, The b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt I wrang for thee, And wilt thou not waken and come to me?'

But I'm thinking he never came back to the lady."

"Oh, yes, he did, mammy," said Vala, confidently. "Helga Storr told me he came back a fine prince with a gold crown on his head, and the deil went away empty and roaring mad."

"What is it you are telling about, Nanna?" said David, his face eager and alight with interest.

She rose up then, with Vala in her arms, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with her sweet, motherly story-telling. "It is only an old tale, David," she answered. "I know not who made it up. My mother told it to me, and her mother to her, and so back through years that none can count.

Yes, indeed; what little child does not know the story of the big brown bull of Norraway?"

"I never heard of it before," said David.

"To be sure; your mother did not live to talk to you--poor little lad!"

"Now, then, Nanna, tell it to me for my mother's sake." And he sat down on the cricket by her side, and took Vala on his knee; and Nanna laughed, and then, with the little formal importance of the reciter, said: "Well, so it shall be, then. Here beginneth the story of the big brown bull of Norraway and his fight with the deil." And the old tale fell from her lips full of charm, and David listened with all the delight of a child. And when it had been twice told, Nanna began to talk of the burnt Njal and the Icelandic sagas, and the more so as she saw David was full of strange wonder and delight, and that every word was fresh and enthralling to him.

"Yet it is a thing to be wondered at," she said finally, "that you, David, know not these old histories better than I do; for I have often heard that no one in all the islands could tell a story so well as Liot Borson. Yes, and the minister once said, and I heard him, that he would walk ten miles to hear from your father's lips once more the sad happenings of his ancestor, the brave, helpful Gisli."

"This is a great thing to me, Nanna," answered David, in a voice low and quiet, for he was feeling deeply. "And I look to you now for what has never been told me. Who, then, was my ancestor Gisli?"

"If your father held his peace about him, he surely thought it best to do so, and so ask me not to break a good resolve."

"Nay, but I must ask you. My heart burns; I feel that there is a life behind me into which I must look. Help me, Nanna. And, more, the name Gisli went to my head. It is not like other strange names. I love this man whom I have not seen and never heard of until this hour. What has he to do with me?"

"_He was one of us._ And because he was so good and great the thrall's curse fell the harder on him, and was the more regarded--hard enough it has been on all the Borsons; and perhaps your father thought it was well you heard not of it. Many a time and oft I have wished it had not entered my ears; for when one sorrow called to another sorrow, and one wrong trod on the heels of another wrong, I have been angry at the false, ungrateful man who brought such ill fortune upon his unborn generations."

"Now you make me so anxious and wilful that nothing but the story of the thrall's curse will do for me. I shall not eat or sleep till I hear it."

"'Tis a tale of dishonor and unthankfulness, and not so well known to me as to Jorn Thorkel. He can tell it all, and will gladly do so."

"But for all that, I will hear it from you, Nanna, and you only, for it concerns us only. Tell me what you know, and the rest can wait for Jorn."

"So, then, you will have it; but if ill comes of the knowledge do not blame me. It began in the days of Harold Fairhair, one thousand years ago. There was a Gisli then, and he had a quarrel with a berserker called Bjorn, and they agreed to fight until one was dead.

And the woman who loved Gisli told him that her foster-father, Kol, who was a thrall, had a sword that whoever wielded would win in any fight. And Gisli sent for Kol and asked him:

"'Hast thou ever a good sword?'

"And Kol answered: 'Many things are in the thrall's cot, not in the king's grange.'

"'Lend me thy sword for my duel with Bjorn,' said Gisli.