Part 13 (1/2)
”Oh, how helpless I am!” she sighed. ”I can think and feel, I can fear and love, and I am not here by my own will; I did not place myself here; I cannot keep myself here. My life is in the grasp of a Power I cannot control. What am I to do? What can I do? Oh, how miserable I am! All my life long I have seen '_Not for you_' written on all I wished. Life is very hard,” she said with a little sob.
And then she made no further complaint, but her heart grew so still, she was sure something must have died there. Alas! was it hope?
”Life is very hard.” With these words she lay down again, and between sleeping and waking the hours wore on, and she rose at last from her s.h.i.+very sleep, even later than usual. Then she hurried breakfast a little, and as the light grew over land and sea she tidied her room and dressed Vala and herself for the kirk. As the sound of the first service bell traveled solemnly over the moor she was ready to leave the house. Her last duty was to put a peat or two upon the fire, and as she was doing this she heard some one lift the sneck and push open the door.
”It is David to carry Vala,” she thought. ”How good he is!”
But when she turned she saw that it was not David. It was her husband, Nicol Sinclair. He walked straight to the fireside, and sat down without a word. Nanna's heart sank to its lowest depths, and a cold despair made her feet and hands heavy as lead; but she slowly spread the cloth on the table, and bit by bit managed to recollect the cup and saucer, the barley-cake, the smoked goose, and the tea.
There was a terrible account between the man sitting on the hearth and herself, and words of pa.s.sionate reproach burned at her lips; but she held her peace. Long ago she had left her cause with G.o.d; he would plead it thoroughly. Even now, when her enemy was before her, she had no thought of any other advocate.
Her pallor, her slow movements, her absolute dumbness, roused in Sinclair an angry discomfort. And when Vala made a movement he lifted her roughly, and with a brutal laugh said, ”A nice plaything you will be on board the _Sea Rover_!”
Nanna s.h.i.+vered at the words. She comprehended in a moment the torture this man had probably come purposely to inflict upon her. Already his cruel hands had crippled her child; and what neglect, what terrors, what active barbarities, might he not impose on the little one in the h.e.l.l of his own s.h.i.+p! Who there could prevent him? Little did Nicol Sinclair care for public opinion on land; but out at sea, where Vala's tears and cries could bring her no help, what pitiless inhumanities might he not practise?
”_Fly with the child!_”
The words were struck upon her heart like blows. But how should she fly? and where to? Far or near, the law would find her out and would give Vala to her father's authority. And she had no friend strong enough to protect her. Only by death could she defy separation. Thus, while she was pouring the boiling water on the tea-leaves, she was revolving questions more agonizing than words have power to picture.
At length the food was on the table, and, save for those few threatening words, the silence was unbroken. Sinclair sat down to his meal with a bravado very near to cursing, and at that moment the kirk bells began to ring again. To Nanna they were like a voice from heaven. Quick as thought she lifted her child and fled from the house.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”BUT SHE HELD HER PEACE.”]
Oh, what stress of life and death was in her footsteps! Only to reach the kirk! If she could do that, she would cling to the altar and die there rather than surrender Vala to unknown miseries. Love and terror gave her wings. She did not turn her head; she did not feel the frozen earth or the cutting east wind; she saw nothing but Vala's small face on her breast, and she heard nothing but the echo in her heart of those terrible words threatening her with the loss of her child.
When she reached the kirk the service had begun. The minister was praying. She went into the nearest pew, and though all were standing, she laid Vala on the seat, and slipped to her knees beside her. She could not now cry out as she longed to do, and sob her fright and anguish away at G.o.d's feet. ”Folk would wonder at me. I would disturb the service.” These were her thoughts as soon as the pressure of her flight was over. For the solemn voice of the minister praying, the strength of numbers, the holy influence of the time and place, cooled her pa.s.sionate sense of wrong and danger, and she was even a little troubled at her abandonment of what was usual and Sabbath-like.
The altar now looked a long way off; only Sinclair at touch could have forced her down that guarded aisle to its shelter. Heaven itself was nearer, and G.o.d needed no explanations. He knew all. What was the law of man to him? And he feared not their disapproval. Thus in her great strait she overleaped her creed, and cast herself on him who is ”a G.o.d of the afflicted, an helper of the oppressed, an upholder of the weak, a protector of the forlorn, a savior of them that are without hope.”
When the preaching was over David and Barbara came to her; and David knit his brows when he saw her face, for it was the face of a woman who had seen something dreadful. Her eyes were full of fear and anguish, and she was yet white and trembling with the exertion of her hard flight.
”Nanna,” he said, ”what has happened?”
”My husband has come back.”
”I heard last night that his s.h.i.+p was in harbor.”
”He has come for Vala. He will take her from me. She will die of neglect and hard usage. He may give her to some stranger who will be cross to her. O David! David!”
”He shall not touch her.”
”O David!”
”Put her in my arms _now_.”
”Do you mean this?”
”I do.”
”Can I trust you, David?”
”You may put it to any proof.”
”Pa.s.s your word to me, cousin.”