Jan Vedder's Wife Part 9

"My husband hath no home for me."

"For thou pulled it to pieces."

"Go away, Snorro, lest worse words come. I will not sacrifice that little innocent babe for Jan."

"It is Jan's son--thou art ruining Jan--"

"Now, wilt thou go, Michael Snorro, and tell Jan that I say what my father says: when he is worthy of me I will come to him."

"I will go, but I will tell thee first, that Jan will be worthy of thee long before thou art worthy of him." Then, ere Margaret could prevent him, he walked to the cradle, lifted the child, and kissed it again and again, saying between each kiss, "That is for thy father, little one."

The child was crying when he laid it down, and Margaret again angrily ordered him to leave the house. Before she had soothed it to peace, Snorro was nearly out of sight. Then Thora, who had heard the dispute, rose from her bed and came into the room. She looked ill and sad, and asked faintly, "What is this message sent to Jan Vedder? He will not believe it. Look for him here very soon, and be sure what thou doest is right."

"My father told me what to do."

"Yet ask thy heart and thy conscience also. It is so easy for a woman to go wrong, Margaret; it is almost impossible for her to put wrong right. Many a tear shall she wash it out with."

"I have done no wrong to Jan. Dost thou think so?"

"When one gets near the grave, Margaret, there is a little light from beyond, and many things are seen not seen before. Oh, be sure thou art right about Jan! No one can judge for thee. Fear not to do what thy heart says, for at the end right will come right, and wrong will come wrong."

There was a solemn stillness after this conversation. Thora sat bent over beside the fire musing. Margaret, wearied with the feelings which her interview with Snorro had called forth, rested upon the sofa; she was suffering, and the silence and melancholy of her mother seemed almost a wrong to her. It was almost as if she had taken Jan's part.

A knock at the door startled both women. Thora rose and opened it. It was Jan. "Mother," he said, "I want to see my wife and child."

"Margaret, speak for thyself."

"I dare not see Jan. Tell him so."

Thora repeated the message.

"Ask Margaret if that is her last word to me?"

Mechanically Thora asked the question, and after an agonizing pause Margaret gasped out, "Yes, yes--until--"

"Ask her to stand a moment at the window with the child. I long to see them." Then he turned to go to the window, and Thora shut the door.

But it was little use repeating Jan's request, Margaret had fainted, and lay like one dead, and Thora forgot every thing till life returned to her daughter. Then as the apparent unkindness was irrevocable and unexplainable, she said nothing of it. Why should she add to the sorrow Margaret was suffering?

And as for Jan, the universal opinion was that he ought to suffer. He had forfeited his wife, and his home, and his good name, and he had lost his boat. When a man has calamity upon calamity the world generally concludes that he must be a very wicked man to deserve them.

Perhaps the world is right; but it is also just possible that the world, even with its six thousand years of gathered wisdom, may be wrong.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MAN AT DEATH'S DOOR.

"Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped, All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to G.o.d, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."

It must be remembered, however, that Margaret was bound by ties whose strength this generation can hardly conceive. The authority of a father over a child in England and Scotland is still a very decided one. Fifty years ago in Shetland it was almost absolute. Margaret believed the fifth commandment to be as binding upon her as the first.

From her childhood it had been pointed out to her as leading all the six defining our duty to our fellow-creatures. Therefore if she thought her father's orders regarding Jan unkind, the possibility of disobeying them never presented itself.

Jan's troubles were pointed out to her as the obvious results of Jan's sins. How could he expect a blessing on a boat bought as he had bought The Solan? And what was the use of helping a man who was always so unfortunate? If Peter did not regard misfortune as a sin, he drew away from it as if it were something even worse. Sometimes G.o.d blesses a man through poverty, sometimes through riches, but until the rod blossoms even good Christians call it a chastening rod. Margaret had a dread of making her child share Jan's evil destiny: perhaps she was afraid of it for herself. Self is such an omnipresent G.o.d, that it is easy to wors.h.i.+p him in the dark, and to obey him almost unconsciously.

When Margaret recovered from her faint, she was inclined to think she deserved praise for what she called her self-denial. She knew also that her father would be satisfied with her conduct, and Peter's satisfaction took tangible forms. He had given her 100 when she broke up her home and left Jan; she certainly looked for some money equivalent for her present obedience. And yet she was quite positive this latter consideration had in no way at all influenced her decision; she was sure of that; only, there could be no harm in reflecting that a duty done would have its reward.

As for Jan, he let people say whatever they chose to say about him. To Tulloch and to Michael Snorro he described the tempest, and the desperation with which he had fought for his boat and his life; but defended himself to no one else. Day after day he pa.s.sed in the retreat which Snorro had made him, and lying there he could plainly hear the men in Peter's store talk about him. Often he met the same men in Torr's at night, and he laughed bitterly to himself at their double tongues. There are few natures that would have been improved by such a discipline; to a man who had lost all faith in himself, it was a moral suicide.

Down, down, down, with the rapidity with which fine men go to ruin, went Jan. Every little thing seemed to help him to the bottom; yes, even such a trifle as his shabby clothes. But shabby clothes were not a trifle to Jan. There are men as well as women who put on respectability with respectable raiment; Jan was of that cla.s.s. He was meanly dressed and he felt mean, and he had no money to buy a new suit. All Snorro's small savings he had used long before for one purpose or another, and his wages were barely sufficient to buy food, and to pay Jan's bill at Torr's; for, alas! Jan would go to Torr's. Snorro was in a sore strait about it, but if Torr's bill were not paid, then Jan would go to Inkster's, a resort of the lowest and most suspicious characters. Between the two evils he chose the lesser.

And Jan said in the freedom of Torr's many things which he ought not to have said: many hard and foolish things, which were repeated and lost nothing by the process. Some of them referred to his wife's cruelty, and to Peter Fae's interference in his domestic concerns.

That he should talk of Margaret at all in such a place was a great wrong. Peter took care that she knew it in its full enormity; and it is needless to say, she felt keenly the insult of being made the subject of discussion among the sailor husbands who gathered in Ragon Torr's kitchen. Put a loving, emotional man like Jan Vedder in such domestic circ.u.mstances, add to them almost hopeless poverty and social disgrace, and any one could predict with apparent certainty his final ruin.

Of course Jan, in spite of his bravado of indifference, suffered very much. He had fits of remorse which frightened Snorro. Under their influence he often wandered off for two or three days, and Snorro endured during them all the agonies of a woman who has lost her child.

One night, after a long tramp in the wind and snow, he found himself near Peter Fae's house, and a great longing came over him to see his wife and child. He knew that Peter was likely to be at home and that all the doors were shut. There was a bright light in the sitting-room, and the curtains were undrawn. He climbed the inclosure and stood beside the window. He could see the whole room plainly. Peter was asleep in his chair on the hearth. Thora sitting opposite him, was, in her slow quiet way, crimping with her fingers the lawn ruffles on the newly ironed clothes. Margaret, with his son in her arms, walked about the room, softly singing the child to sleep. He knew the words of the lullaby--an old Finnish song that he had heard many a mother sing. He could follow every word of it in Margaret's soft, clear voice; and, oh, how n.o.bly fair, how calmly good and far apart from him she seemed!

"Sleep on, sleep on, sweet bird of the meadow!

Take thy rest, little Redbreast.

Sleep stands at the door and says, The son of sleep stands at the door and says, Is there not a little child here?

Lying asleep in the cradle?

A little child wrapped up in swaddling clothes, A child reposing under a coverlet of wool?"

Jan watched the scene until he could endure the heart-torture no longer. Had he not been so shabby, so ragged, so weather-stained, he would have forced his way to his wife's presence. But on such apparently insignificant trifles hang generally the great events of life. He could not bear the thought of this fair, calm, spotless woman seeing him in such a plight. He went back to Snorro, and was very cross and unreasonable with him, as he had been many times before. But Snorro was one of those rare, n.o.ble souls, who can do great and hopeless things, and continue to love what they have seen fall.

He not only pitied and excused Jan, he would not suffer any one to wrong, or insult him. All Torr's regular visitors feared the big man with the white, stern face, who so often called for Jan Vedder, and who generally took his friend away with him. Any thing that is genuine commands respect, and Snorro's love for Jan was so true, so tender, and unselfish, that the rudest soul recognized his purity. Even in Peter's store, and among the better cla.s.s who frequented it, his honest affection was not without its result.

Jan usually avoided the neighborhood when Peter was there, but one afternoon, being half intoxicated, he went rolling past, singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of "The Foula Reel." He was ragged and reckless, but through every disadvantage, still strikingly handsome. Michael Snorro lifted himself from the barrel which he was packing, and stood watching Jan with a face full of an inexpressible sorrow. Some one made a remark, which he did not hear, but he heard the low scornful laugh which followed it, and he saw Peter Fae, with a smile of contempt, walk to the door, and glance up the street after Jan.

"One thing I know," said Snorro, looking angrily at the group, "all of you have laughed in a very great company, for when a good man takes the road to h.e.l.l, there also laughs the devil and all his angels. Yes, indeed."

It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen among them. Peter turned to his books, and one by one the men left the store, and Jan Vedder's name was not spoken again before Snorro by any one.

During the fis.h.i.+ng season Jan went now and then to sea, but he had no regular engagement. Some said he was too unreliable; others, more honest, acknowledged they were superst.i.tious about him. "Sooner or later ill luck comes with him," said Neil Scarpa. "I would as lief tread on the tongs, or meet a cat when going fis.h.i.+ng as have Jan Vedder in my boat," said John Halcro. This feeling against him was worse than s.h.i.+pwreck. It drove Jan to despair. After a night of hard drinking, the idea of suicide began to present itself, with a frightful persistence. What was there for him but a life of dislike and contempt, or a swift unregretted death.

For it must be considered that in those days the ends of the earth had not been brought together. Emigration is an idea that hardly enters a Shetlander's mind at the present time; then it was a thing unknown.

There were no societies for information, or for a.s.sistance. Every man relied upon his own resources, and Jan had none. He was in reality, a soul made for great adventures, condemned to fight life in the very narrowest lists.

When the warm weather came, he watched for Margaret, and made many attempts to see her. But she had all the persistence of narrow minds.

She had satisfied herself that her duty to her father and to her son was before all other duties, and no cruelty is so cruel as that which attacks its victims from behind the ramparts of Duty and Conscience.

Thora frequently saw Jan, and he pleaded his cause eloquently to her.

She was very sorry for him, and at times also very angry with him. She could not understand how Margaret's treatment should have taken all the heart and purpose out of his life. She would not let him say so; it was like casting the blame of all his idleness and dissipation upon her daughter. She would make no effort towards a reconciliation; while Margaret held him in such small estimation, she was sure that there could be no permanence in one, even if it could be effected.

Yet once or twice she spoke to Margaret in Jan's favor. If Margaret had desired to disobey her father, and see her husband, Thora's sympathies would have been with her; but no mother likes to put herself in a position which will give her child an opportunity of answering her with a look of reproachful astonishment. Something very like this had met her suggestion that "Jan must love his child, and long to see him."

Margaret was almost angry at such a supposition. "Jan love his child! It was impossible! No man who did so, would behave as Jan had done, and was still doing. To encourage Jan in any way was to disobey her father, and throw herself and her child upon Jan's mercies. She knew what they were. Even if she could see it to be her duty to sacrifice herself, on no account would she sacrifice the babe who had only her to think and care for him. She would do nothing in any way to prejudice its future." This was the tenor of her constant conversation. It was stated anew every morning, it was reiterated every hour of the day; and with every day's reiteration, she became more certain of her own wisdom and justice.