“Well, then,” he cried, “if these things be so, let God speak to me. Bring me a Bible with large letters. I want to see these words with my eyes, and touch them with my fingers.”
The conversation thus begun was constantly continued, and David searched the Scriptures from morning to night. Often, as the spring grew fairer and warmer, the two young men sat in the garden with the Bible between them; and while the sunshine fell brightly on its pages they reasoned together of fate and free will, and of that divine mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting. For where young men have leisure spiritual things employ them much more frequently than is supposed. Indeed, it is the young who are most earnestly troubled about the next life; the middle-aged are too busy with this one, and the aged do not speculate, because they will soon know.
Thus, daily, little by little, through inlets and broader ways known only to God and himself, the light grew and grew unto perfect day, and flooded not only the great hills and promontories of his soul, but also shone into all its secret caves and gloomy valleys and lonely places. Then David knew how blind and ignorant he had been; then he was penetrated with loving amazement, and humbled to the dust with a sense of the wrong he had done the Father of his spirit; and he locked himself in his room, and fell down on his face before his God. But into that awful communion, in which so much was confessed and so much forgiven, it is not lawful to inquire.
XI
THE LOWEST HELL
After this the thought of Nanna became an irresistible longing. He could not be happy until she sat in the sunshine of God’s love with him. He went into the garden and tested his strength, and as soon as he was in the open air he was smitten with a homesickness not to be controlled. He wanted the sea; he wanted the great North Sea; he longed to feel the cradling of its salt waves under him; and the idea of a schooner reefed down closely, and charging along over the stormy waters, took possession of him. Then he remembered the fishermen he used to know–the fishermen who peopled the desolate places of the Shetland seas.
“I must go home!” he said with a soft, eager passion. “I must go home to Shetland.” And there was in his voice and accent that pride and tenderness with which one’s home should be mentioned in a strange land.
When he saw John next he told him so, and they began to talk of his life there. John had never asked him of his past. He knew him to be a child of God, however far away from his Father, and he had accepted his spiritual brotherhood with trustfulness. He understood that it was David’s modesty that had made him reticent. But when David was ready to leave he also felt that John had a right to know what manner of man he had befriended. So, as they sat together that night, David began his history.
“I was in the boats at six years old,” he said; “for there was always something I could do. During the night-fishing, unless I went with father, I was alone; and I had hours of such awful terrors that I am sad only to remember them; it was better to freeze out on the sea, if father would let me go with him. I was often hungry and often weary; I had toothaches and earaches that I never spoke of; I was frequently so sleepy that I fell down in the boat. And I had no mother to kiss me or pity me, and the neighbors were shy and far off. Father was not cross or unkind; he just did not understand. Even in those days I wondered why God made little lads to be so miserable and to suffer so much.”
He spoke then in a very guarded way about that revelation in the boat, for he felt rebuked for his want of faith in it; and he said sorrowfully, as he left the subject, “Why, then, should God send angels to men? They are feared of them while they are present, and they doubt them when they are gone away. He sent one to comfort me, and I denied it to my own heart; yes, even though I sorely needed the comfort.”