Prisoners of Conscience

This betrothal was, however, far from satisfactory to Karen’s aunt; she could bring up nothing against Liot, but she was ill pleased with Karen. “You have some beauty,” she said, “and you have one hundred pounds of your own; and it was to be expected that you would look to better yourself a little.”

“Have I not done so? Liot is the best of men.”

“And the best of men are but men at best. It is not of Liot I think, but of Liot’s money; he is but poor, and you know little of him. Those before us have said wisely, ‘Ere you run in double harness, look well to the other horse.’”

“My heart tells me that I have done right, aunt.”

“Your heart cannot foretell, but you might have sense enough to forethink; and it is sure that I little dreamed of this when I brought you here from the naked gloom of Yell.”

“It is true your word brought me here, but I think it was Liot who called me by you.”

“It was not. When my tongue speaks for any Borson, I wish that it may speak no more! I like none of them. Liot is good at need on a winter’s night; but even so, all his stories are of dool and wrong-doing and bloody vengeance. From his own words it is seen that the Borsons have ever been well-hated men. Now, I have forty years more of this life than you have, and I tell you plainly I think little of your choice; whatever sorrow comes of it, mind this: I didn’t give you leave to make it.”

“Nor did I ask your leave, aunt; each heart knows its own; but you have a way to throw cold water upon every hope.”

“There are hopes I wish at the bottom of the sea. To be sure, when ill is fated some one must speak the words that bring it about; but I wish it had been any other but myself who wrote, ‘Come to Lerwick’; for I little thought I was writing, ‘Come to Liot Borson.’ As every one knows, he is the son of unlucky folk; from father to son nothing goes well with them.”

“I will put my luck to his, and you will learn to think better of Liot for my sake, aunt.”

“Not while my life-days last! That is a naked say, and there’s no more to it.”

Matilda’s dislike, however, did not seriously interfere with Liot’s and Karen’s happiness. It was more passive than active; it was more virulent when he was absent than when he was present; and all winter she suffered him to visit at her house. These visits had various fortunes, but, good or bad, the season wore away with them; and as soon as April came Liot began to build his house. Matilda scoffed at his hurry. “Does he think,” she cried, “that he can marry Karen Sabiston when he lists to? Till you are twenty-one you are in my charge, and I will take care to prevent such folly as long as I can.”

“Well, then, aunt, I shall be of age and my own mistress next Christmas, and on Uphellya night[1 - The last day of Christmas-tide.] I will be married to Liot.”

“After that we shall have nothing to say to each other.”

“It will not be my fault.”

“It will be my will. However, if you are in love with ill luck and fated for Liot Borson, you must dree your destiny; and Liot does well to build his home, for he shall not wive himself out of my walls.”

“It will be more shame to you than to me, aunt, if I am not married from your house; also, people will speak evil of you.”

“That is to be expected; but I will not be so ill to myself as to make a feast for a man I hate. However, there are eight months before Uphellya, and many chances and changes may come in eight months.”

The words were a prophecy. As Matilda uttered them Thora Fay entered the room, all aglow with excitement. “There is a new ship in the harbor!” she cried. “She is called the Frigate Bird, and she has silk and linen and gold ornaments for sale, besides tea and coffee and the finest of spirits. As for the captain, he is as handsome as can be, and my brother thinks him a man of some account.”

“You bring good news, Thora,” said Matilda. “I would gladly see the best of whatever is for sale, and I wish your brother to let so much come to the man’s ears.”

“I will look to that,” answered Thora. “Every one knows there is to be a wedding in your house very soon.” And with these words she nodded at Karen, and went smiling away with her message.

A few hours afterward Captain Bele Trenby of the Frigate Bird stepped across Matilda Sabiston’s threshold. It was the first step toward his death-place, though he knew it not; he took it with a laugh and a saucy compliment to the pretty servant who opened the door for him, and with the air of one accustomed to being welcome went into Matilda Sabiston’s presence. He delighted the proud, wilful old woman as soon as she saw him; his black eyes and curling black hair, the dare-devil look on his face, and the fearless dash of his manner reminded her of Paul Sabiston, the husband of her youth. She opened her heart and her purse to the bold free-trader; she made him eat and drink, and with a singular imprudence told him of secret ways in and out of the voes, and of hiding-places in the coast caverns that had been known to her husband. And as she talked she grew handsome; so much so that Karen let her knitting fall to watch her aunt’s face as she described Paul Sabiston’s swift cutter–“a mass of snowy canvas, stealing in and out of the harbor like a cloud.”

The coming of this man was the beginning of sorrow. In a few days he understood the situation, and he resolved to marry Karen Sabiston. Her fair, stately beauty charmed him, and he had no doubt she would inherit her aunt’s wealth; that she was cold and shy only stimulated his love, and as for Liot, he held his pretensions in contempt. All summer he sailed between Holland and Shetland, and the Lerwick people gave him good trade and good welcome. With Matilda Sabiston he had his own way; she did whatever he wished her to do. Only at Karen her power stopped short; neither promises nor threats would induce the girl to accept Bele as her lover; and Matilda, accustomed to drive her will through the teeth of every one, was angry morning, noon, and night with her disobedient niece.

As the months wore on Liot’s position became more and more painful and humiliating, and he had hard work to keep his hands off Bele when they met on the pier or in the narrow streets of the town. His smile, his voice, his face, his showy dress and hectoring manner, all fed in Liot’s heart that bitter hatred which springs from a sense of being personally held in contempt; he felt, also, that even among his fellow-townsmen he was belittled and injured by this plausible, handsome stranger. For Bele said very much what it pleased him to say, covering his insolences with a laugh and with a jovial, jocular air, that made resentment seem ridiculous. Bele was also a gift-giver, and for every woman, old or young, he had a compliment or a ribbon.

If Liot had been less human, if he had come from a more mixed race, if his feelings had been educated down and toned to the level of modern culture, he could possibly have looked forward to Uphellya night, and found in the joy and triumph that Karen would then give him a sufficient set-off to all Bele’s injuries and impertinences. But he was not made thus; his very blood came to him through the hearts of vikings and berserkers, and as long as one drop of this fierce stream remained in his veins, moments were sure to come in the which it would render all the tide of life insurgent.

It is true Liot was a Christian and a good man; but it must be noted, in order to do him full justice, that the form of Christianity which was finally and passionately accepted by his race was that of ultra-Calvinism; it spoke to their inherited tendencies as no other creed could have done. This uncompromising theology, with its God of vengeance and inflexible justice, was understood by men who considered a blood-feud of centuries a duty never to be neglected; and as for the doctrine of a special election, with all its tremendous possibilities of damnation, they were not disposed to object to it. Indeed, they were such good haters that Tophet and everlasting enmity were the bane and doom they would have unhesitatingly chosen for their enemies. This grim theology Liot sucked in with his mother’s milk, and both by inheritance and by a strong personal faith he was a child of God after the order of John Calvin.

Therefore he constantly brought his enemy to the ultimate and immutable tribunal of his faith, and just as constantly condemned him there. Nothing was surer in Liot’s mind than that Bele Trenby was the child of the Evil One and an inheritor of the kingdom of wrath; for Bele did the works of his father every day, and every hour of the day, and Liot told himself that it was impossible there should be any fellowship between them. To Bele he said nothing of this spiritual superiority, and yet it was obvious in his constant air of disapproval and dissent, in his lofty silence, his way of not being conscious of Bele’s presence or of totally ignoring his remarks.

“Liot Borson mocks the very heart of me,” said Bele to Matilda one day, as he gloomily flung himself into the big chair she pushed toward him.

“What said he, Bele?”

“Not a word with his tongue, or I had struck him in the face; but as I was telling about my last cargo and the run for it, his eyes called me ‘Liar! liar! liar!’ like blow on blow. And when he turned and walked off the pier some were quiet, and some followed him; and I could have slain every man’s son of them, one on the heels of the other.”

“That is vain babble, Bele; and I would leave Liot alone. He has more shapes than one, and he is ill to anger in any of them.”

Bele was not averse to be so counseled. In spite of his bravado and risky ventures, he was no more a brave man than a dishonorable or dishonest man ever is. He knew that if it came to fighting he would be like a child in Liot’s big hands, and he had already seen Liot’s scornful silence strip his boasting naked. So he contented himself with the revenge of the coward–the shrug and the innuendo, the straight up-and-down lie, when Liot was absent; the sulky nod or bantering remark, according to his humor, when Liot was present.

However, as the weeks went on Liot became accustomed to the struggle, and more able to take possession of such aids to mastery of himself as were his own. First, there was Karen; her loyalty never wavered. If Liot knew anything surely, it was that at Christmas she would become his wife. She met him whenever she could, she sent him constantly tokens of her love, and she begged him at every opportunity for her sake to let Bele Trenby alone. Every day, also, his cousin Paul Borson spoke to him and praised him for his forbearance; and every Sabbath the minister asked, “How goes it, Liot? Is His grace yet sufficient?” And at these questions Liot’s countenance would glow as he answered gladly, “So far He has helped me.”

From this catechism, and the clasp and look that gave it living sympathy, Liot always turned homeward full of such strength that he longed to meet his enemy on the road, just that he might show him that “noble not caring,” which was gall and wormwood to Bele’s touchy self-conceit. It was a great spiritual weakness, and one which Liot was not likely to combat; for prayer was so vital a thing to him that it became imbued with all his personal characteristics. He made petition that God would keep him from hurting Bele Trenby, and yet in his heart he was afraid that God would hear and grant his prayer. The pagan in Liot was not dead; and the same fight between the old man and the new man that made Paul’s life a constant warfare found a fresh battle-ground in Liot’s soul.

He began his devotions in the spirit of Christ, but they ended always in a passionate arraignment of Bele Trenby through the psalms of David. These wondrously human measures got Liot’s heart in their grip; he wept them and prayed them and lived them until their words blended with all his thoughts and speech; through them he grew “familiar” with God, as Job and David and Jonah were familiar–a reverent familiarity. Liot ventured to tell Him all that he had to suffer from Bele–the lies that he could not refute, the insolences he could not return, his restricted intercourse with Karen, and the loss of that frank fellowship with such of his townsmen as had business reasons for not quarreling with Bele.

So matters went on, and the feeling grew no better, but worse, between the men. When the devil could not find a man to irritate Bele and Liot, then he found Matilda Sabiston always ready to speak for him. She twitted Bele with his prudences, and if she met Liot on the street she complimented him on his patience, and prophesied for Karen a “lowly mannered husband, whom she could put under her feet.”

One day in October affairs all round were at their utmost strain. The summer was over, and Bele was not likely to make the Shetland coast often till after March. His talk was of the French and Dutch ports and their many attractions. And Matilda was cross at the prospect of losing her favorite’s society, and unjustly inclined to blame Bele for his want of success with her niece.

“Talk if you want to, Bele,” she said snappishly, “of the pretty women in France and Holland. You are, after all, a great dreamer, and you don’t dream true; the fisherman Liot can win where you lose.”

Then Bele said some words about Liot, and Matilda laughed. Bele thought the laugh full of scorn; so he got up and left the house in a passion, and Matilda immediately turned on Karen.

“Ill luck came with you, girl,” she cried, “and I wish that Christmas was here and that you were out of my house.”

“No need to wait till Christmas, aunt; I will go away now and never come back.”

“I shall be glad of that.”

“Paul Borson will give me shelter until I move into my own house.”

“Then we shall be far apart. I shall not be sorry, for our chimneys may smoke the better for it.”

“That is an unkind thing to say.”

“It is as you take it.”

“I wonder what people will think of you, aunt?”

“I wonder that, too–but I care nothing.”

“I see that talk will come to little, and that we had better part.”

“If you will marry Bele we need not part; then I will be good to you.”