Prisoners of Conscience Part 20

"Nanna! Nanna!"

"It is the truth, David. How the good G.o.d can treat his bairns so, I know not; but you and I may also deserve his wrath in like manner.

I am feared to hope different. O David, I am feared to be a mother again!"

"Nanna! Nanna! what can I say?"

"There is nothing to say. If I should meet Vala in that place where infants 'earnestly desire to see and love G.o.d, and yet are not able to do so,' I should cover my face before the child. If she blamed me, I should s.h.i.+ver in speechless agony; if she did not blame me, it would be still harder to bear. Were we only sure--but we are not sure."

"_We are not sure._" David repeated the words with a sad significance. Nanna's argument, evolved from her own misery and ill.u.s.trated by that misery, had been before David's eyes for months. He could not escape from such reasoning and from such proof, and his whole life, education, and experience went to enforce the pitiful dilemma in which their love had placed them.

"It is His will, and we must bear it to the uttermost," continued Nanna, with a sorrowful resignation.

"I am very wretched, Nanna."

"So am I, David, very wretched indeed. I used to think monks and nuns, and such as made a merit of not marrying, were all wrong; maybe they are nearer right than we think for. Doubtless they have a tender conscience toward G.o.d, and a tender conscience is what he loves."

Then David rose from Nanna's side and walked rapidly to and fro in the room. Motion helped him to no solution of the tremendous difficulty. And Nanna's patient face, her fixed outward gaze, the spiritual light of resolute decision in her eyes, gave to her appearance an austere beauty that made him feel as if this offering up of their love and all its earthly sweetness was a sacrifice already tied to the horns of the altar, and fully accepted.

Now, the law of duty lay very close to David's thoughts; it was an ever-present consciousness, haunting his very being; but the sensual nature always shrinks away from it. David sat down and covered his face with his hands, and began to weep--to sob as strong men sob when their sorrow is greater than they can bear; as they never sob until the last drop, the bitterest drop of all, is added--the belief that G.o.d has forsaken them. This was the agony which tore David's great, fond heart in two. It forced from him the first pitiful words of reproach against his G.o.d:

"I was sure at last that I was going to be happy, and G.o.d is not willing. From my youth up he has ay laid upon me the rod of correction. I wish that I had never been born!"

"My poor lad! but you are not meaning it." And Nanna put her arms around his neck and wept with him. For some minutes he let her do so, for he was comforted by her sympathy; but at last he stood up, pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, and said as bravely as he could:

"You are right, Nanna. If you feel in this way, I dare not force your conscience. But I must go away until I get over the sore disappointment."

"Where will you go to, David?"

"Who can tell? The countries in which I may have to earn and eat my bread I know not. But if I was seeing you every day, I might get to feel hard at G.o.d."

"No, no! He fas.h.i.+oned us, David, and he knows what falls and sore hurts we must get before we learn to step sure and safe."

"In the end it may all be right. I know not. But this I know: pain and cold and hunger and weariness and loneliness I have borne with a prayer and a tight mouth, and I have never said before that I thought him cruel hard."

"His ways are not cruel, my dear love; they are only past our finding out. The eternal which makes for righteousness cannot be cruel.

And if we could see G.o.d with our eyes, and hear him with our ears, and understand him with our reason, what grace would there be in believing in him? Did not the minister say last Sabbath that our life was hid with Christ in G.o.d, and that therefore G.o.d must first be pierced ere we could be hurt or prejudiced? Then let us take what comfort we can in each other's affection, David, and just try and believe that G.o.d's ways are the very best of all ways for us."

"Sometime--perhaps--"

"And don't leave me, David. I can bear all things if you are near to help and comfort me."

"Ay, ay; but women are different. I cannot fight the temptation when I am in it; I must run away from it. Farewell! Oh, dear, dear Nanna, farewell!"

He kissed the words upon her lips, and went hastily out of the house; but when he had walked about one hundred yards he returned. Nanna had thrown herself despairingly upon the rude couch made for Vala, and on which the child had spent most of her life. There Nanna lay like one dead. David knelt down by her; he took her within his arms, kissed her closed eyes, and murmured again upon her lips his last words of love and sorrow. Her patient acceptance of her hard lot made him quiver with pain, but he knew well that for a time, at least, they must each bear their grief alone.

Nanna's confession of her love for him had made everything different.

In her presence now he had not the power to control his longing for reciprocal affection. He felt already a blind resentment and rebellion against fate--a sense of wrong, which it was hard to submit to. But how could he fight circ.u.mstances whose foundations were in eternity? At this hour, at least, he had come to the limit of his reason and his endurance. Again and again he kissed Nanna farewell, and it was like tearing his life asunder when he put away her clinging arms and left her alone with the terrible problem that separated their lives.

There is something worse than the pang of keenest suffering--the pa.s.sive state of a subjugated heart. A dismal, sullen stillness succeeded to David's angry sorrow. He avoided Barbara and shut himself in his room. And his strong and awful prepossession in favor of the Bible led him, first of all, to go to the book. But he found no help there. His soul was tossed from top to bottom, and he was vanquished by the war in his own bosom. For in our wrestling alone angels do not always come. And David brought his dogmas over and over to the Scriptures, and was crushed spiritually between them, so that at last, worn out with the mental and heart struggle, he submitted to the fatality he could not alter.

"I will go the right road," he said, "however cruel that road may be. Then death may give me back to G.o.d a miserable man, but not a guilty one."

And he did not comprehend that, in thus preferring an unseen duty because it was right to a seen pleasure because it was pleasant, he was consummating that sublime act of faith whose cry of victory is, "Thy will be done."

Nanna did not suffer so much. In the first place, the pale, sad, almost despairing woman was glad and dared, in her despair, because the man she loved durst not sin, even for her. In the second, her battle was practically over. She had been in the van of it for months, and had come gradually to that state of submission which fears to resist, lest resistance might be found to be fighting against G.o.d. While David was yet in an agony of struggle with his love and his desires, his tender conscience and his dread of offending the Deity, Nanna had washed away her tears, and was strengthening her heart by saying continually, as the glancing needles glided to and fro:

My G.o.d and Father, while I stray Far from my home, on life's rough way, Oh, teach me from my heart to say, "Thy will be done!"

For some dauntless, primitive confidence in the love of the Maker of men is older than any creed. And there were yet hours when Nanna's soul outleaped its mortal shadow and had mystic flashes, native and sweet, beyond the reach of will and endeavor--intimations of serenities and compensations which would be neither small nor long delayed.

X

IN THE FOURTH WATCH

Holding despair at bay, David quickly made his preparations for an extended absence. He hired his boat and lines to Groat's sons, and on the morning of the second day, after bidding Nanna farewell, he went to Minister Campbell's to complete his arrangements. The minister was writing his sermon, and he was not pleased at the interruption; but when he saw David's face, the shadow of annoyance on his own pa.s.sed away like a thought. He dropped his pen, and turned in his chair so as to see the young man fairly, and then he asked:

"What is wrong, David?"

"I am all at sea, minister, drifting--drifting--"

"Where's your anchor, David? Can't you steady yourself on G.o.d? Can't you make harbor someway?"

David shook his head sadly.

"Then up sail and out to sea, and face the storm. What quarter is it from?"

"It comes from a woman."

"Ah, David, that is bad to buffet. I have been through it. It was that storm which brought me here. I know all about it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROAT.]

"Please, minister, I think not. It is Nanna Sinclair."

"I thought so. You love her, David?"

"Better than my life."

"And she does not love you?"

"She loves me as I love her."

"Then what is there to make you miserable? In a few months, David, you will marry her and be happy."