On Christmas day Karen had a son, a child of extraordinary beauty, that brought his soul into the world with him. The women said that his eyes instantly followed the light, and that his birth-cry passed into a smile. Liot was solemnly and silently happy. He sat for hours holding his wife’s hand and watching the little lad sleeping so sweetly after his first hard travail; for the birth of this child meant to Liot far more than any mortal comprehended. He knew himself to be of religiously royal ancestry, and the covenant of God to such ran distinctly, “To you and your children.” So, then, if God had refused him children, he would certainly have believed that for his sin in regard to Bele Trenby the covenant between God and the Borsons was broken. This fair babe was a renewal of it. He took him in his arms with a prayer of inexpressible thanksgiving. He kissed the child, and called him David with the kiss, and said to his soul, “The Lord hath accepted my contrition.”
For some weeks this still and perfect happiness continued. The days were dark and stormy, and the nights long; but in Liot’s home there was the sunlight of a woman’s face and the music of a baby’s voice. The early spring brought the first anxiety, for it brought with it no renewal of Karen’s health and strength. She had the look of a leaf that is just beginning to droop upon its stem, and Liot watched her from day to day with a sick anxiety. He made her go to sea with him, and laughed with joy when the keen winds brought back the bright color to her cheeks. But it was only a momentary flush, bought at far too great a price of vitality. In a few weeks she could not pay the price, and the heat of the summer prostrated her. She had drooped in the spring; in the autumn she faded away. When Christmas came again there was no longer any hope left in Liot’s broken heart; he knew she was dying. Night and day he was at her side, there was so much to say to each other; for only God knew how long they were to be parted, or in what place of his great universe they should meet again.
At the end of February it had come to this acknowledgment between them. Sometimes Liot sat with dry eyes, listening to Karen’s sweet hopes of their reunion; sometimes he laid his head upon her pillow and wept such tears as leave life ever afterward dry at its source. And the root of this bitterness was Bele Trenby. If it had not been for this man Liot could have shared his wife’s hopes and said farewell to her with the thought of heaven in his heart; but the very memory of Bele sank him below the tide of hope. God was even then “entering into judgment with him,” and what if he should not be able to endure unto the end, and so win, though hardly, a painful acceptance? In every phase and form such thoughts haunted the wretched man continually. And surely Karen divined it, for all her sweet efforts were to fill his heart with a loving “looking forward” to their meeting, and a confident trust in God’s everlasting mercy.
One stormy night in March she woke from a deep slumber and called Liot. Her voice had that penetrating intelligence of the dying which never deceives, and Liot knew instantly that the hour for parting had come. He took her hands and murmured in tones of anguish, “O Karen, Karen! wife of my soul!”
She drew him closer, and said with the eagerness of one in great haste, “Oh, my dear one, I shall soon be nearer to God than you. At his feet I will pray. Tell me–tell me quick, what shall I ask for you? Liot, dear one, tell me!”
“Ask that I may be forgiven all my sins.”
“Is there one great sin, dear one? Oh, tell me now–one about Bele Trenby? Speak quickly, Liot. Did you see him die?”
“I did, but I hurt him not.”
“He went into the moss?”
“Yes.”