Amelia Barr - Prisoners of Conscience

“My dear one, I have known it. Now we will pray together–I in heaven, thou on earth. Fear not, dear, dear Liot; he spareth all; they are his. The Lord is the lover of souls.”

These were her last words. With clasped hands and wide-open eyes she lay still, watching and listening, ready to follow when beckoned, and looking with fixed vision, as if seeing things invisible, into the darkness she was about to penetrate. Steeped to his lips in anguish, Liot stood motionless until a dying breath fluttered through the room; and he knew by his sudden sense of loss and loneliness that she was gone, and that for this life he was alone forevermore.

All Lerwick had been anticipating the death of Karen, but when it came there was a shock. She was so young and so well loved, besides which her affectionate heart hid a great spirit; and there was a general hope that for her husband’s and child’s sake she would hold on to life. For, in spite of all reasoning, there remains deep in the heart of man a sense of mastery over his own destiny–a conviction that we do not die until we are willing to die. We “resign” our spirits; we “commit” them to our Creator; we “ give up the ghost”; and it did not seem possible to the wives and mothers of Lerwick that Karen would “give up” living. Her mortality was so finely blended with her immortality, it was hard to believe in such early dissolution. Alas! the finer the nature, the more readily it is fretted to decay by underlying wrong or doubt. When Matilda Sabiston drove Karen down to the sea-shore on the day before her bridal she really gave her the death-blow.

For Karen needed more than the bread and love of mortal life to sustain her. She belonged to that high order of human beings who require a sure approval of conscience even for their physical health, and whose house of life, wanting this fine cement, easily falls to dissolution. Did she, then, doubt her husband? Did she believe Matilda’s accusations to be true? Karen asked herself these questions very often, and always answered them with strong assurances of Liot’s innocence; but nevertheless they became part of her existence. No mental decisions, nor even actual words, could drive them from the citadel they had entered. Though she never mentioned the subject to Liot, though she watched herself continually lest any such doubts should darken her smiles or chill her love, yet they insensibly impregnated the house in which they dwelt with her. Liot could not say he felt them here or there, but they were all-pervading.

Karen withered in their presence, and Liot’s denser soul would eventually have become sick with the same influence. It was, therefore, no calamity that spared their love such a tragic trial, and if Liot had been a man of clearer perceptions he would have understood that it was not in anger, but in mercy to both of them, that Karen had been removed to paradise. Her last words, however, had partially opened his spiritual vision. He saw what poison had defiled the springs of her life, and he knew instinctively that Matilda Sabiston was the enemy that had done the deed.

It was, therefore, little wonder that he sent her no notice of her niece’s death. And, indeed, Matilda heard of it first through the bellman calling the funeral hour through the town. The day was of the stormiest, and many remembered how steadily storm and gust had attended all the great events of Karen’s short life. She had been born in the tempest which sent her father to the bottom of the sea, and she herself, in coming from Yell to Lerwick, had barely escaped shipwreck. Her bridal garments had been drenched with rain, and on the day set for her baby’s christening there was one of the worst of snow-storms. Indeed, many said that it was the wetting she received on that occasion which had developed the “wasting” that killed her. The same turmoil of the elements marked her burial day. A cold northeast wind drove through the wet streets, and the dreary monotony of the outside world was unspeakable.

But Matilda Sabiston looked through her dim windows without any sense of the weather’s depressing influence–the storm of anger in her heart was so much more imperative. She waited impatiently for the hour appointed for the funeral, and then threw over her head and shoulders a large hood and cloak of blue flannel. She did not realize that the wind blew them backward, that her gray hairs were dripping and disarranged, and her clothing storm-draggled and unsuitable for the occasion; her one thought was to reach Liot’s house about the time when the funeral guests were all assembled. She lifted the latch and entered the crowded room like a bad fate. Every one ceased whispering and looked at her.

She stepped swiftly to the side of the coffin, which was resting on two chairs in the middle of the room. Liot leaned on the one at the head; the minister stood by the one at the foot, and he was just opening the book in his hands. He looked steadily at Matilda, and there was a warning in the look, which the angry woman totally disdained. Liot never lifted his eyes; they were fixed on Karen’s dead face; but his hands held mechanically a Bible, open at its proper place. But though he did not see Matilda, he knew when she entered; he felt the horror of her approach, and when she laid her hand on his arm he shook it violently off and forced himself to look into her evilly gleaming eyes.

She laughed outright. “So the curse begins,” she said, “and this is but the first of it.”

“This is no hour to talk of curses, Mistress Sabiston,” said the minister, sternly. “If you cannot bring pity and pardon to the dead, then fear to come into their presence.”

“I have nothing to fear from the dead. It is Liot Borson who is ‘followed,’ not me; I did not murder Bele Trenby.”

“Now, then,” answered the minister, “it is time there was a stop put to this talk. Speak here, before the living and the dead, the evil words you have said in the ears of so many. What have you to say against Liot Borson?”

“Look at him!” she cried. “He dares to hold in his hands the Holy Word, and I vow those hands of his are red with the blood of the man he murdered–I mean of Bele Trenby.”

Liot kept his eyes fixed on her until she ceased speaking; then he turned them on the minister and said, “Speak for me.”

“Speak for thyself once and for all, Liot. Speak here before God and thy dead wife and thy mates and thy townsmen. Did thy hands slay Bele Trenby? Are they indeed red with his blood?”

“I never lifted one finger against Bele Trenby. My hands are clear and clean from all blood-guiltiness.” And he dropped the Word upon Karen’s breast, and held up his hands in the sight of heaven and men.

“You lie!” screamed Matilda.

“God is my judge, not you,” answered Liot.

“It is the word of Liot Borson. Who believes it?” asked the minister. “Let those who do so take the hands he declares guiltless of blood.” And the minister clasped Liot’s hands as he spoke the words, and then stepped aside to allow others to follow him. And there was not one man or woman present who did not thus openly testify to their belief in Liot’s innocence. Matilda mocked them as they did so with output tongue and scornful laughs; but no one interfered until the minister said:

“Mistress Sabiston, you must now hold your peace forever.”

“I will not. I will–”

“It is your word against Liot’s, and your word is not believed.”

Then the angry woman fell into a great rage, and railed on every one so passionately that for a few moments she carried all before her. Some of the company stood up round the coffin, as if to defend the dead; and the minister looked at Grimm and Twatt, two big fishermen, and said, “Mistress Sabiston is beside herself; take her civilly to her home.” And they drew her arms within their own, and so led her storming out into the storm.