A Knight of the Nets

by Amelia E. Barr

“She ought to be brought to Braelands.”

“She shall never enter Braelands again. It was a black door to her. Would you wish hatred and scorn to mock her in her coffin? She bid my mother see that she was buried in peace and good will and laid with her own people.”

Archie covered his face with his hands and tried to think. Not even when dead could he force her into the presence of his mother—and it was true he had begun to cast her off; a funeral from Braelands would be a wrong and an insult. But all was in confusion in his mind and he said: “I cannot think. I cannot decide. I am not able for anything more. Let me go. To-morrow—I will send word—I will come.”

“Let it be so then. I am sorry for you, Braelands—but if I hear nothing further, I will follow out Sophy’s wishes.”

“You shall hear—but I must have time to think. I am at the last point. I can bear no more.”

Then Andrew went with him down the cliff, and helped him to his saddle; and afterwards he walked along the beach till he came to a lonely spot hid in the rocks, and there he threw himself face downward on the sands, and “communed with his own heart and was still.” At this supreme hour, all that was human flitted and faded away, and the primal essence of self was overshadowed by the presence of the Infinite. When the midnight tide flowed, the bitterness of the sorrow was over, and he had reached that serene depth of the soul which enabled him to rise to his feet and say “Thy Will be done!”

The next day they looked for some communication from Braelands; yet they did not suffer this expectation to interfere with Sophy’s explicit wish, and the preparations for her funeral went on without regard to Archie’s promise. It was well so, for there was no redemption of it. He did not come again to Pittendurie, and if he sent any message, it was not permitted to reach them. He was notified, however, of the funeral ceremony, which was set for the Sabbath following her death, and Andrew was sure he would at least come for one last look at the wife whom he had loved so much and wronged so deeply. He did not do so.

Shrouded in white, her hands full of white asters, Sophy was laid to rest in the little wind blown kirkyard of Pittendurie. It was said by some that Braelands watched the funeral from afar off, others declared that he lay in his bed raving and tossing with fever, but this or that, he was not present at her burial. Her own kin—who were fishers—laid the light coffin on a bier made of oars, and carried it with psalm singing to the grave. It was Andrew who threw on the coffin the first earth. It was Andrew who pressed the cover of green turf over the small mound, and did the last tender offices that love could offer. Oh, so small a mound! A little child could have stepped over it, and yet, to Andrew, it was wider than all the starry spaces.

The day was a lovely one, and the kirkyard was crowded to see little Sophy join the congregation of the dead. After the ceremony was over the minister had a good thought, he said: “We will not go back to the kirk, but we will stay here, and around the graves of our friends and kindred praise God for the ‘sweet enlargement’ of their death.” Then he sang the first line of the paraphrase, “O God of Bethel by whose hand,” and the people took it from his lips, and made holy songs and words of prayer fill the fresh keen atmosphere and mingle with the cries of the sea-birds and the hushed complaining of the rising waters. And that afternoon many heard for the first time those noble words from the Book of Wisdom that, during the more religious days of the middle ages, were read not only at the grave-side of the beloved, but also at every anniversary of their death.

“But if the righteous be cut off early by death; she shall be at rest.