Prisoners of Conscience Part 12

"And Kol said: 'Then this thing will happen: thou wilt never wish to give it up. And yet I tell thee, this sword will bite whatever it falls on, nor can its edge be deadened by spells, for it was forged by the dwarfs, and its name is Graysteel. And make up thy mind,' he said, 'that I will take it very ill indeed if I get not my sword back when I ask for it.'

"So Gisli took the sword and slew Bjorn with it, and got good fame for this feat. And time rolled on, and he gave not back the sword; and one day Kol met him, and Gisli had Graysteel in his hand, and Kol had an ax.

"And Kol asked if the sword had done him good service at his great need, and Gisli was full of its praises.

"'Well, now,' said Kol, 'I should like it back.'

"'Sell it to me,' said Gisli.

"'No,' said Kol.

"'I will give thee thy freedom for it,' said Gisli.

"'I will not sell it,' said Kol.

"'I will also give thee land and sheep and cattle and goods as much as thou wantest,' said Gisli.

"'I will not sell it a whit more for that,' said Kol.

"'Put thy own price on it in money, and I will get thee a fair wife also,' said Gisli.

"'There is no use talking about it,' said Kol. 'I will not sell it, whatsoever thou offerest. It has come to what I said would happen: that thou wouldst not give me back my weapon when thou knewest what virtue was in it.'

"'And I too will say what will happen,' said Gisli. 'Good will befall neither of us; for I will _not_ give up the sword, and it shall never come into any man's hand but mine, if I have my will.'

"Then Kol lifted his ax, and Gisli drew Graysteel, and they smote at each other. Kol's blow fell on Gisli's head, so that it sank into the brain; and Graysteel fell on Kol's head, and his skull was shattered, and Graysteel broke asunder. Then, as Kol gave up the ghost, he said:

"'It had been better that thou hadst given me my sword when I asked for it, for this is only the beginning of the ill fortune I will bring on thy kith and kin forever.'

"And so it has been. For a thousand years the tellings-up of our family are full of troubles that this thrall's curse has brought upon us. Few of our men have grown gray-headed; in the sea and on the battlefield they have found their graves; and the women have had sorrow in marriage and death in child-bearing."

"It was an evil deed," said David.

"It was a great curse for it also; one thousand years it has followed Gisli's children."

"Not so! I believe it not! Neither the dead nor the living can curse those whom G.o.d blesses."

"Yet always the Borsons have had the worst of ill fortune. We three only are now left of the great earls who ruled in Surnadale and in Fjardarfolk, and see how poor and sorrowful we are. My life has been woven out of grief and disappointment; Vala will never walk; and as for your own youth, was it not labor and sorrow only?"

"I believe not in any such spaedom. I believe in G.o.d the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. And as for the cursing of man, dead or alive, I will not fear what it can do to me. Gisli was indeed well served for his mean, ungrateful deed, and it would have been better if the berserker Bjorn had cut his false heart out of him."

"Such talk is not like you, David. I can see now that your father did right to keep these b.l.o.o.d.y stories from your hearing. There is no help in them."

"Well, I know not that. This night the minister was talking to me about taking a wife. If there be truth or power in Kol's curse, why should any Borson be born, that he or she may bear his spite? No; I will not marry, and--"

"In saying that you mock your own words. Where, then, is your trust in G.o.d? And the minister is right; you ought to take a wife. People think wrong of a young man who cannot fix his heart on one good woman. There is Christina Hey. Speak to her. Christina is sweet and wise, and will make a good wife."

"I met Asta Fae as I came here. Very pretty indeed is her face, and she has a way to win any heart."

"For all that, I do not think well of Asta. She is at the dance whenever there is one, and she has more lovers than a girl should have."

"Christina has land and money. I care not for a wife who is richer than myself."

"Her money is nothing against her; it will be a help."

"I know not," he answered, but without interest. "You have given me something to think of that is better than wooing and wedding, Nanna.

My heart is quite full. I am more of a man than I have ever been. I can feel this hour that there is life behind me as well as before me.

But I will go now, for to-morrow is the Sabbath and we shall meet at the kirk; and I will carry Vala home for you if you say so, Nanna."

"Well, then," she answered, "to-morrow is not here, David; but it will come, by G.o.d's leave. I dreamed a dream last night, and I look for a change, cousin. But this or that, my desire is that G.o.d would choose for me."

"That also is my desire," said David, solemnly.

"As for me, I have fallen into a great strait; only G.o.d can help me."

She was standing on the hearth, looking down at Vala. Tears were in her eyes, and a divine pity and sorrow made tender and gentle her majestic beauty. David looked steadily at her, and something, he knew not what, seemed to pierce his very soul--a sweet, aching pain, never felt before, inexplicable, ineffable, and as innocent as the first holy adoration of a little child. Then he went out into the still, starry night, and tried to think of Christina Hey; but she constantly slipped from his consciousness, like a dream that has no message.

VII

SO FAR AND NO FARTHER

David Borson was stirred to the very seat of life by the things Nanna had told him. It did not enter his heart to doubt their truth. The shameful deed of the first Gisli, and the still strong order of its consequences, which neither the guilt of his children hastened, nor their innocence delayed, nor their expiation arrested, was the dominant feeling aroused by her narrative. The whole story, with its terrible Nemesis, fitted admirably into the system of Calvinistic theology, and David had not yet come to the hour in which faith would crush down fatalism. The words of these ancient sagas went singing and swinging through his brain and heart, and life seemed so wonderful and bewildering, its sorrows so great and certain, its needs so urgent and present, and heaven, alas! so far off.

There came to him also, as he slowly trod the lonely moor, the most awful of all conceptions of eternity--the revelation of _a repentance that could undo nothing_. He was righteously angry at Gisli's base ingrat.i.tude; he was sorry for his sin; but others had doubtless felt the same anger and sorrow, and it had been ineffectual. Helpless and pa.s.sive in the hands of destiny, a nameless dread, an urgent want of help and comfort, forced him to feel out into the abyss for something more than flesh and blood to lean on; and then he found that G.o.d is best of all approached in indefinite awe and wors.h.i.+p, and that moments of tender, vague mystery, haunted by uncertain presentiments, bring him near.

"Well, then," he said as he came to the door of his house, "the wicked may be a rod, and smite for generations; but the rod is in the hand of G.o.d, and I will remind myself that my G.o.d is the Everlasting, Almighty, Infinite One; and I will ask him to give sentence with me, and to deliver me from the wicked, whether they be in the body or out of the body." And he walked through the house-place where Barbara was sitting, and saw her not; for he was saying to himself, "'Why art thou so vexed, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? O put thy trust in G.o.d: for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance, and my G.o.d.'"

Nanna sat motionless for long after David left her. She had many causes for anxiety. She was fearful of losing her work, and absolute poverty would then be her lot. It was a fear, however, and not a certainty; and after a little reflection she also threw her care upon the Preserver of men. "Be at peace," she said to her heart.

"G.o.d feeds the gulls and the ravens, and he will not starve Nanna and Vala."

It was harder to combat her spiritual anxieties. She was sorry she had told David about the thrall's curse. Her first instinct was to ask his father and mother to forgive her; then she suddenly remembered that praying to or for the dead was a sin for a kirk session to meet on. And this thought led her easily to the dream that had troubled her last night's sleep and made her day dark with sorrowful fears. All her life she had possessed something of that sixth sense by which we see and antic.i.p.ate things invisible.

And it is noticeable that many cripples have often a seraphic intelligence, a far-reaching vision, and very sensitive spiritual apt.i.tudes. Vala was of this order. She too had been singularly depressed; she had seen more than she could tell; she was as restless and melancholy as birds just before their migrations, and she looked at her mother with eyes so wistful, so full of inquiry, so "far off,"

that Nanna trembled under their fearfully prescient intimations.

Alas for the dangerous happiness of maternity! How prodigious are its inquietudes! How uncertain its consolations!

She told David that she had dreamed a dream, and that she looked for a change; and she had made this statement as simply and as confidently as if she had said, "The wind is from the north, and I look for a storm." Repeated experiences had taught her, as they teach constantly, that certain signs precede certain events, and that certain dreams are dictated by that delicate antenna of spiritual instinct which feels danger to be near and warns of it.

Nanna had had _the dream_ that ever forecast her misfortunes, and she sat thinking of its vague intimations, and tightening her heart for any sorrow. She had been forewarned that she might be forearmed, and she regarded this warning as a mark of interest and favor from beyond the veil. G.o.d had always spoken to his children in dreams and by the oracles that abide in darkness, and Nanna knew that in many ways "dreams are large possessions." She fell asleep pondering what her vision of the preceding night might mean, and awoke next morning, while it was still dark, with a dim sense of fear and sorrow encompa.s.sing her.

"But everything frightens one when night, the unknown, takes the light away," she thought. And she rose and lighted a lamp, and looked at Vala. The child was in a deep and healthy slumber, and the sight of its face calmed and satisfied her. Yet she was strangely apprehensive, and there was a weight on her heart that made her faint and trembling. She knew right well that some hitherto unknown sorrow was creeping like a mist over her life, and she had not yet the strength and the pang of conflict.

Have we not too? Yes, we have Answers, and we know not whence; Echoes from beyond the grave, Recognized intelligence.

Yet the secret silence of the night, the vague terror and darkness of that occult world which we all carry with us, created in her, at first, fear, and then a kind of angry, desperate resentment.