Part 18 (2/2)

”O Nanna! Nanna!”

”Yes, it was so. After the storm the doctor came again, and Vala was dying. And then he rode like a man riding for his life, and spoke very angrily to the minister, who was not to blame at all, and the minister was hurt at his words; but he came that afternoon, and it was _too late_.”

”O Nanna! O Vala! Vala! Vala!”

”So the minister was angry with me for my delays, and he spoke the hard truth to me, and every word went to my soul like a sword. I thought I should die that night, and I longed to die. There was no friend to say to me one word of comfort, and I did not dare to pray.

I was feared G.o.d would ask me, 'Where is your child?' O David, what for at all did G.o.d make us? For this life is full of sorrow, and it is little comfort to be told that there is a worse one after it.”

David took her hand, and a tear dropped upon her slender brown fingers; but he did not answer her question. Indeed, he could not. The same bewildering inquiry had haunted his own sad life.

So much sorrow and pain, and at the end perhaps to be ”hardly saved,” while all around innumerable souls were going down, without hope or helper, to eternal wrath! What for at all had G.o.d made man for such a fate?

For that he had _not_ made man for such ends was a fact outside their understandings, even as a possibility; and its very suggestion at this hour would have appeared to both an impiety of the worst kind.

So they consoled each other in the only way possible to souls at once so miserable and so submissive. With clasped hands they wept together over the inscrutable fate which had set them so hard a lesson to learn as life, with so little light to learn it by.

Natural events deepened the gloom of this spiritual thraldom. Storms of unusual severity swept over the bare, brown land, and the fis.h.i.+ng was not only dangerous, but often impossible. But David regarded frost and snow, stormy winds and raging seas, poverty, pestilence, and death, as part of the eternal necessity pursuing its never-ending work through discord and imperfection. When there was a possibility of casting the fifty fathoms of ling-lines, David and his helpers were sure to venture out; when it was clearly impossible, he went to Nanna's and sat with her.

To the ordinary observer there did not seem to be pleasure enough in these visits to reward him for the stormy walk over the moor.

His clothing was often wet or stiff with frost, or he was breathless with fighting the strong wind, and not infrequently he lost himself in the bewildering snow; but with some trifle in his pocket for Nanna, he always managed to reach her. It might be only a fish, or a loaf of bread which Barbara had baked for her, or a little fresh milk in a bottle; but it was an offering made rich by that true affection which counted weariness rest for her sake.

He generally found her sitting brooding by her peat fire. Now, peat is cheap in Shetland, and Nanna had no stint of the fuel, but it does not make a cheerful fire. Its want of flame and its dull-red glow stimulate sorrowful musing; and as there is little radiation of heat from it, those whom it warms must sit close to its embers.

Thus David and Nanna pa.s.sed many hours of that sad winter. The snow often veiled what light of day there was, and the great sea-winds shrieked around the hut and blew the peat smoke down the chimney into their faces; and there was little warmth or comfort, and none of the pretty accessories that love generally delights in.

But David's love was not dependent upon accidentals. He had seen Nanna when he thought her very finely dressed; he had watched her when she was happy with her child and contented with his friends.h.i.+p; but she was not then more beautiful than she was now, when her eyes were haunted by despairing thoughts, and her face white and sad, and her n.o.ble form was shrouded rather than dressed in the black gown of her loss and woe.

To David she was ever Nanna. It was the woman beneath the outward form he desired--the woman whose tears and fears and wounded love were part of his own sufferings, whose despair was his despair, whose personality, even, affected something far deeper and chaster than that physical emotion too often misnamed love. He knew that he could live for her, however sorrowful life might be; he knew that he could gladly die for her, if his death could bring her spiritual peace or hope.

Thus, in the red light of the glowing peats, with the stormy world around them, to David and Nanna the winter months wore away. When Nanna was able to weep she was then at her best--the most companionable, the most grateful, and the most affectionate.

And few would think such circ.u.mstances favorable to the growth of love; but that is a great mistake. Love is not perfect love until it has been watered again and again with tears.

Of the growth of this affection it is not likely either was quite unaware; but there is an instinctive dislike in a pure heart to investigate the beginnings of love. It is like laying bare the roots of a flower to see how it grows. And in Nanna's case there was even a fear of such a condition. Love had brought her only heartbreak and despair. Without deliberate intention, she yet grew a little more shy of David; she began to restrain spiritual confidence and to weep alone. He was not slow to feel the change, and it depressed him, and made Barbara wonder at Nanna's ingrat.i.tude and womanish unreason.

”A good man fretting for her love, when there are hearts and hearts full waiting for his asking,” she said to her neighbor Sally Groat.

And Sally answered: ”Well, well, there is a fool in every one's sleeve sometimes; and David Borson is that daft about blood-kin, there is no talking to him. But this is what I say: for all your kindred, make much of your friends--and a friend you have been to him, Barbara.”

”Well, then, I have done my best; and friends are to be taken with their faults. To-day I shall talk to David; for the spring comes on so quickly, and I heard that my son's s.h.i.+p had been spoke in the Iceland seas.”

”It is long now since Nanna's baby died, and she still weeps without end for her. She ought to try and forget. It was but a sickly child, and never like to be world-wise or world-useful.”

”I wouldn't say such words, Sally,” answered Barbara, with some warmth. ”No one can tell a mother, 'Thy heart shall not remember.' I have laid in earth five children, and do you think I ever slunk away from heartache by forgetting them? No, indeed! I would have counted _that_ treason against my own soul.”

”G.o.d's blessing! there is none wants to contradict you, Barbara.

Don't be so hasty, woman. But you know there has been death and weeping in many houses besides Nanna's this winter.”

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