Prisoners of Conscience by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (books to read this summer .TXT) 📖

/> And Christine looked at David, and ceased speaking, for she was afraid that her words would both anger and trouble the young man. But David's eyes were full of happy tears, and there was a tender smile round his mouth. He was thinking of the glad surprises that Nanna must have had--she who belonged to the God of compassions. After all her shuddering questions and lamentable doubts and cruel pain, the everlasting arms under her; Vala and her beloved dead to comfort her; ineffable peace; unclouded joy; the night past; the last tear wiped away! At that moment he felt that it was too late to weep for Nanna; indeed, he smiled like one full of blessed thought. And Christine, a little irritated by the unexpected mood, did not further try to smooth over the hard facts of the lonely woman's death-bed.

"The minister was angry with her, and he said God was angry. And Nanna said, well, then, she knew that he did not care about her perishing; it was all one to him. A little happiness would have saved her, and he refused her the smallest joy; and she did not see how crushing the poor and broken-hearted in the dust increased his glory. The minister told her she was resisting God, and she said, no; that was not possible. God was her master, and he smote her, and perhaps had the right to do so; but she was not his child: no father would treat a child so hardly as he had treated her. She was a slave, and must submit, and weep and die at the corner of the highway. And, to be sure, the minister did not think of her pain and her woman's heart,--what men do?--and he thought it right to speak hard words to her. And then Nanna said she wished they would all leave her alone with her sorrow, and so they did."

Then, suddenly and swiftly as a flash of light, a word came to David. His heart burned, and his tongue was loosened, and then and there he preached to the old man and the three women the unsearchable riches of the cross of Christ. He glorified God because Nanna had learned Christ at the radiant feet of Christ, in the joy and love of the redeemed. He took his Bible from his pocket, and repeated all the blessed words he had marked and learned. Until the midnight moon climbed cold and bright to the zenith he spoke. And old Magnus Thorson stood up, leaning on his staff, full of holy wonder, and the women softly sobbed and prayed at his feet. And when they parted there was in every heart a confident acceptance of David's closing words:

"Whoever rests, however feebly, on the eternal mercy shall live forever."

After this "call" sleep was impossible to David. That insight which changes faith into knowledge had comforted him concerning his dead. He lay down on Vala's couch, and he felt sure that Nanna's smile filled the silence like a spell; for there are still moments when we have the transcendental faculties of the illuminated who, as the apostle says, "have tasted of the powers of the world to come"--still moments when we feel that Jacob's ladder yet stands between heaven and earth, and that we can see the angels ascending and descending upon it. He was so still that he could hear the beating of his own heart, but clear and vivid as light his duty spread out before him. He had found his vocation, and, oh, how rapidly men grow under the rays of that invisible sun!

The next morning he went to see the minister. He was seated, writing his sermon, precisely as David had found him on the occasion of his last visit. So much had happened to David since that morning that he found it difficult to believe nothing had happened to the minister. He looked up at the interruption with the same slight annoyance, but the moment he saw David his manner changed. He rose up quickly and went to meet him, and as he clasped his hand looked with curious intentness into his face.

"You are much changed, David," he said. "What has happened to you?"

"Everything, nearly, minister. The David Borson who left here two years ago is dead and buried. I have been born again."

"That is a great experience. Sit down and tell me about it."

"Yes, minister, but first I must speak of Nanna Sinclair."

"She is dead, David; that is true."

"She has gone home. She has gone to the God who loved her."

"I--hope so."

"I know it is so. Nanna loved God, and those who love God in life will find no difficulty in going to him after life is over."

"She had a hard life, and it was all in the dark to her."

"But at the death-hour it was light, though the light was not of this world." And David told the minister about the farewell message she had written him, and its final happy words, "_At last it is peace--peace!_" He could not bear that any eyes should see the paper, or any hand touch it, but his own; but he wished all to know that at the death-hour God had comforted her.

"She suffered a great deal, David."

"What ailed her, minister?"

"What ails the lamp, David, when it goes out? There is no oil, that is all. Nanna used up all her strength in weeping and feeling; the oil of life wastes quickly in that way."

"O minister, I am so sorry that I left her! It was selfish and cruel. I wish now that I could cover her hands with kisses, and ask her pardon on my knees; but I find nothing but a grave."

"Ah, David, it is death that forces us to see the selfishness that comes into our best affections. Self permitted you to give all you had to Nanna, but forbade you to give yourself. There was self even in your self-surrender to God. If you could have seen that long, long disappointed look in Nanna's eyes, and the pale lips that asked so little from you--"

"O minister, spare me! She asked only, 'Stay near me, David'; and I might have stayed and comforted her to the end. Oh, for one hour--one hour only! But neither to-day nor to-morrow, nor through all eternity, shall I have the opportunity to love and soothe which I threw away because it hurt me and made my heart ache." And David bowed his head in his hands and wept bitterly.

Alas! love, irreparably wronged, possesses these eternal memories; and the soul, forced to weep for opportunities gone forever, has these inconsolable refinements of tenderness. "One hour--one hour only!" was the cry of David's soul. And the answer was, "No, never! She has carried away her sorrow. You may, indeed, meet her where all tears are dried and forgotten; but while she did weep you were not there; you had left her alone, and your hour to comfort her has gone forever."

After a short silence the minister went to his desk, and brought from it David's purse, and he laid it, with the will that had been written, before him. "It is useless now," he said. "Nanna has need of nothing you can give her."

"Did it do any good, minister?"

"Yes, a great deal. When Nanna was no longer able to come to the kirk, I went to see her. She was miserably sick and poor, and it made my heart ache to watch her thin, trembling fingers trying to knit. I took her work gently out of her hands, and said, 'You are not able to hold the needles, Nanna, and you have no need to try to do so. There is provision made for all your wants.' And she flared up like whin-bushes set on fire, and said she had asked neither kirk nor town for help, and that she trusted in God to deliver her from this life before she had to starve or take a beggar's portion."

"O minister, if God had not comforted me concerning her, you would break my heart. What did you say to the dear woman?"

"I said, 'It is neither kirk nor town nor almsgivers that have provided for your necessity, Nanna; it is your cousin David Borson.' And when she heard your name she began to cry, '_O David! David!_' And after I had let her weep awhile I said, 'You will let your cousin do for you at this hour, Nanna?' And she answered, 'Oh, yes; I will take any favor from David. It was like him to think of me. Oh, that he would come back!' So I sent her every week ten shillings until she died, and then I saw that she was decently laid beside her mother and her little child; and I paid all expenses from the money you left. There is a reckoning of them in the papers. Count it, with the money."

"I will not count after you, minister."

"Well, David, God has counted between us. It is all right to the last bawbee. Now tell where you have been, and what you have seen and suffered; for it is written on your face that you have seen many hard days."

Then David told all about his wanderings and his shipwreck, and the mercy of God to him through his servant John Priestly. But when he tried to speak of the new revelation of the gospel that had come to him, he found his lips closed. The fire that had burned on them the night before, when he spoke under the midnight sky to the old fisherman and the fisherwives, was dead and cold, and he could not kindle it; so he said to himself, "It is not yet the hour." And he went out of the manse without telling one of all the glorious things he had resolved to tell. Neither was he troubled by the omission. He could wait God's time. God, who has made the heart, can always touch the heart, but he felt that just then his words would irritate rather than move; besides, it was not necessary for him to speak unless he got the message. He could not constrain another soul, but there was One who led by invisible cords.

As they stood a moment at the manse door the minister said, "Your aunt Sabiston has gone the way of all flesh."

"I heard tell," answered David. "How did she go?"

"Like herself--grim and steadfast to the last. She would not take to her bed; she met death in her chair. When the doctor told her Death was in the room, she stood up, and welcomed him to her house, and said, 'I have long been waiting for your release.' I tried to talk to her, but she told me to my face that I had nothing to do with her soul. 'If I am lost, I am lost,' she said; 'and if I am chosen, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' She said she believed herself to be the child of God, and that, though she had made some sore stumbles and been fractious and ill to guide, she had done no worse than many of his well-loved bairns, and she expected no worse welcome home. 'I have been long away, minister,' she sighed, 'getting on to a century away, and I'll be glad to win home again.' And those were her last words."

"God be merciful to her! In this world, I think, she was an unjust and cruel woman."

"She was so, then, without moral