"About my husband?"

"Yes."

"Say it out at once, then."

"Last night he was carried to his own ship." And David's face was grave almost to sternness.

"Carried! Have you then hurt him, David?"

"No; he is a self-hurter. But this is what I know. He went from here to Matilda Sabiston's house. She had gone to kirk with two of her servants, and when she came back she found him delirious on the sofa. Then the doctor was sent for, and when he said the word 'typhus,' Matilda shrieked with pa.s.sion, and demanded that he should be instantly taken away."

"But no! Surely not!"

"Yes; it was so. Both the minister and the doctor said it was right and best for him to be taken to his own ship. The town--yes, indeed, and the whole islands were in danger. And when they took him on board the _Sea Rover_, they found that two of the sailors were also very ill with the fever. They had been ill for a week, and Sinclair knew it; yet he came among the boats, and went through the town, speaking to many people. It was a wicked thing for him to do."

"It was just like him. Where is the _Sea Rover_ now lying?"

"She has been taken to the South Voe. The fishing-boats will watch lest the men are landed, and the doctor will go to the ship every day the sea will let him go."

"David, is it my duty--"

"No, it is not; there are five men with Sinclair. Three of them are, I believe, yet well men, and three can care for the sick and the ship. On the deck of the _Sea Rover_ a woman should not put her foot."

"But a ship with typhus on board?"

"Is a h.e.l.l indeed! In this case, Nanna, it is a h.e.l.l of their own making. They got the fever in a dance-house at Rotterdam. Sinclair knew of its presence, and laughed it to scorn. It was his mate who told the doctor so. Also, Nanna, there is Vala."

She went swiftly to the side of the sleeping child, and she was sure there was a change in her. David would not acknowledge it, but in forty-eight hours the signs of the fatal scourge were unmistakable.

Then Nanna's house was marked and isolated, and she sat down to watch her dying child.

VIII

THE JUSTIFICATION OF DEATH

During the awful days of Vala's dying no one came near Nanna.

She watched her child night and day, and saw it go out into the darkness that girds our life around, in unutterable desolation of soul. From the first Vala was unconscious, and she went away without a word or token of comfort to the despairing mother. There was unspeakable suffering and decay, and then the little breathing-house in which Vala had sojourned a short s.p.a.ce was suddenly vacant. For a moment Nanna stood on the border-lands of being, where life hardly draws breath. _A little more_, and she would have pushed apart the curtains that divide us from that spiritual world which lies so close and which may claim us at any moment. _A little more_, and she would, in her loving agony, have pressed beyond manifestations to that which is ineffable and nameless.

But at the last moment the flesh-and-blood conductor of spirit failed; a great weakness and weariness made her pa.s.sive under the storm of sorrow that drove like rain to the roots of her life.

When she was able to move, Vala lay sad and still. All was over, and Nanna stood astonished, smitten, dismayed, on a threshold she could not pa.s.s. The Eternal had given, and it was a gift; he had taken away, and it was an immeasurable loss, and she could not say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." She was utterly desolate; and when she washed for the last time the little feet that had never trod the moor or street or house, she thought her heart would break. _Who_ had led them through the vast s.p.a.ces of the constellations? _Whither_ had they been led? There was no answer to her moaning question. She looked from her dead Vala to G.o.d, and all was darkness. She could not see him.

It was a hurried burial in a driving storm. The sea rolled in fateful billows, the winds whistled loud and shrill, the rain soaked Nanna through and through. Two or three of her neighbors followed afar off; they wished her to see they were not oblivious of her grief and loss, but they dared not break the ordinance of town and kirk and voluntarily and without urgent reason come in contact with the contagion; for the island not many years previously had been almost decimated by the same scourge, and every man and woman was the guardian, not only of his or her own life, but of the lives of the community.

Nanna understood this. She saw the dark, cloaked figures of her friends standing in the storm at a distance, and she knew the meaning of their upraised hands; but she had no heart to answer the signal of sympathy. Alone, she stood by the small open grave and saw it filled. The rain beat on it, and she was glad that it beat on her.

It was with difficulty, and only with some affected anger, the two men who had buried the child got her to return to her home.

How vacant it was! How unspeakably lonely! The stormy dreariness outside the cot, the atmosphere of sorrow and loss within it, were depressing beyond words. And what can be said of the loneliness and sorrow within the soul? But in every bitter cup there is one drop bitterest of all; and in Nanna's case this was David's neglect and apparent desertion. She had received no message from him, nor had he come near her in all her trouble. Truly, he must have broken the law to do so; but Nanna was sure no town ordinance would have kept her from David's side in such an hour, and she despised that obedience to law which could teach him such cowardly neglect.

Day after day pa.s.sed, and he came not. The fever was by this time in all the cottages around her, and the little hamlet was a plague-spot that every one avoided. But, for all that, Nanna's heart condemned her cousin. She tried him by her own feelings, and found him guilty of unpardonable selfishness and neglect. And oh, how dreary are those waste places left by the loved who have deserted us! With what bitter tears we water them! Vala and David had been her last tie to love and happiness. "Thank G.o.d," she cried out in her misery, "it can only be broken once!"

Vala had been in her grave a week--a week of days that turned the mother's heart gray--before Nanna heard a word of comfort. Then once more David lifted the latch of the cot and entered her presence.

She was sitting still and empty-handed, and her white face and the quivering of her lips pierced him to the heart.

"Nanna! Nanna!" he said.

Then she rose, and looked round the lonely room, and David understood what she meant.

"Nanna! Nanna!" was still all that he could say. He could find no words fit for such sorrow; but there was the truth to speak, and that might have some comfort in it. So he took her hands in his, and said gently:

"Nanna! dear Nanna! your husband is dead."

"I am glad of it!" she answered. "He killed Vala twice over." Her voice was low and weary, and she asked no question about the matter.

"Did you think I had forgotten you, Nanna?"

"Well, then, yes."

"Forgotten you and Vala?"

"It looked most like it. I thought you were either feared for yourself or the law."

"No wonder men think ill of G.o.d, whom they do not know, when they are so ready to think ill of men, whom they do know."

"O David! how could you desert me? Can you think of all that I have suffered alone? G.o.d nor man has helped me."

"Poor, poor Nanna!"

"If you had been ill to death, neither the words of men nor the power of the law could have kept me from your sick-bed. No, indeed! I would have risked everything to help you. Where were you at all, David?"

"I was on the _Sea Rover_."

"The _Sea Rover_! That is Nicol's ship. What did he do to you? What were you there for?"

"I was on the _Sea Rover_ nursing your husband."

"My G.o.d!"

"That is the truth, Nanna. I have just finished my task."

"Who sent you?"

"The minister came to me with the order, and I could not win by it and face G.o.d and man again."

"What said he? O David! David!"

"He said, 'David Borson, there are four men ill with typhus this morning on the _Sea Rover_. The one man yet unstricken is quite broken down with fright and fatigue. The doctor says some one ought to go there. What do you think?' And I said, 'Minister, do you mean me?' And he smiled a bit and answered, 'I thought you would know your duty, David.'"