CHAPTER IX.
All these events had come upon Elizabeth with overwhelming suddenness. It seemed to her like a confused dream. Yet the fact remained that there she was, dressed in black, an inmate of one of those handsome houses, the interiors of which she had so often pictured to herself out on Torungen.
Captain Beck was married to a second wife, a woman of stern principles, full of decision and respectability, who had brought him a considerable fortune, and, under her lynx-eyed rule, had restored that order in household matters which, during the period her husband was a widower, had been far too much neglected; and though his power might still be absolute on board the Juno, it had long since ceased to be so in his own house. By her grown-up step-children Madam Beck was in the highest degree respected, though not exactly loved, owing to the various unaccustomed restraints to which they now found themselves subjected; and as to Carl, his easy tact, notwithstanding the independent position which he enjoyed in his home as salaried member of a coast commission, enabled him to keep on the best of terms with his imperious stepmother. His duties would detain him about home for another year, to be still fêted by the town, and idolised by his sisters, who were never tired of speculating upon eligible matches for him.
From the very first, Elizabeth, who, in her utter ignorance how to behave, committed one egregious blunder after another, had perceived with her strong sense that it would require all the cleverness and patience she possessed to enable her to maintain the situation; and she began by following Madam Beck about untiringly like a lamb. Many a painful scene had she to go through during the earlier period of their connection, and she bore them with a quiet gentleness which Madam Beck took for modest docility, but which had its real origin in a fixed determination to succeed. Every now and then, however, she would give it up as hopeless, and would seat herself disconsolately by the window with her cheek upon her hand, and gaze wistfully out over the harbour. She longed so for cold fresh air, and would end by throwing up the window and stretching herself with her heated face as far out of it as she possibly could, till Madam Beck would come in, and in a stern voice call her back. Madam Beck, in her irritation, used to say that it was almost as if they had taken a wild thing into the house.
Carl Beck understood very well what she was going through, and would occasionally throw her an encouraging look; but Elizabeth affected always not to understand it. On one occasion, however, when she was corrected in his presence, she hurriedly left the room, and throwing herself on her bed, lay there and sobbed as if her heart would break.
She had been trusted one afternoon, shortly after, to bring in the tea-tray, on which, without thinking what she was doing, she had placed the chafing-dish with the boiling teakettle. It fell as she was carrying it in; but although its hot side and the boiling water burnt and scalded her arm and hand, she carried the tray quite quietly out again without allowing a muscle of her face to change—she was not going to be corrected before him again.
Madam Beck herself bound up her hand in the kitchen, where she stood white with pain; while Carl, who had been sitting on the sofa, and had seen how the whole thing happened, forgetting his self-command, had jumped up in great excitement, and had shown such uncommon sympathy that his sister Mina, afterwards, when they were alone in the room together, said, with a look that was more searching than the joking words seemed to require, "It is not possible you are fond of the girl, Carl?"
"No fear, Mina," he answered quickly, in the same tone, chucking her under the chin as he spoke. "There are as handsome girls as her in Arendal; but you can see as well as I can that she is a girl in a hundred. That business with the tea-tray is what very few others would have been capable of; and we mustn't forget that if it had not been for her—"
"Oh yes," rejoined Mina, with a toss of her head, a little tired of the eternal repetition of this stock observation. "She didn't know all the same that it was papa who was out there."
It was a game of hypocrisy, thought out with no inconsiderable subtlety, that the handsome lieutenant was carrying on in this matter: under his apparently so entirely frank sailor-bearing there was hidden a real diplomatist. By trumpeting about the town the service which Elizabeth had rendered them in saving the Juno, he had, one may say, forced his family to take her up, though to them he made it appear that public opinion left them no alternative. On the other hand, he was uncommonly cautious in his attitude towards Elizabeth herself; for he knew he must win her without attracting the attention of his stepmother and sisters. He believed he had made a sort of impression upon her; but at the same time he felt that he had a wild swan to deal with, that might at any moment spread its wings and fly away—there was such a strong, independent individuality about her.
In his home, however, she had become a different creature, scarcely to be recognised as the same Elizabeth,—so quietly did she go about, hardly conscious of his presence apparently—and so slavishly did she follow the directions of the mistress of the house. This new aspect of her had put him in doubt for a while, but it was not very long before he satisfied himself that he understood what it meant; and that little affair with the tea-tray, that was set down to awkwardness by the others, had quite a different significance for him. He flattered himself that she subjected herself to all this restraint for his sake; and whatever the dénouement might be, the situation was, at all events, an interesting one.
But there was, on the other hand, something in her manner that kept him at a certain distance, and left him in uncertainty as to what line exactly he should take. The same had been the case whenever they had been together out on the island, and had in fact been the principal cause of his becoming more deeply in love with her every day. He had once out there encountered a look in her steel-grey eyes which had given him the impression that the opinion she entertained of him could in a moment be reversed, and that least of all dare he allow her to feel that he was appearing in the character of a lover; and it was for this reason he had scarcely ever talked with her grandfather, and only casually with herself. The fact was, old Jacob had very well understood that the smart young navy-lieutenant did not come out there for his sake; and as he could not very well shut the door in his face, he had very sensibly warned his granddaughter against him. He explained to her that people of his class were not in the habit of marrying a common man's child, although it happened far too often that they might play at love with them. "Such a lad as Salvé Kristiansen, now," he remarked, in conclusion, "that is the sort of stuff that will not disappoint you;" and he thought he had played the diplomatist there with some skill.
"I didn't understand you to mean that exactly, grandfather, that time you were going to beat him," she said.
The old man was rather nonplussed for the moment, but he growled out something about youngsters requiring correction occasionally, and went on, "He's a god lad, I tell you; and if he came and made up to you, he should have you without a moment's hesitation; and then I should be easy in my mind as to what would become of you when I'm gone."
Elizabeth made no further observation, but a certain expression about her mouth seemed to denote that she reserved to herself the liberty to have an opinion of her own in this matter. Salvé Kristiansen had been very dear to her as the only friend and confidant she had ever had; but since she had seen the lieutenant, it had been he who had exclusively occupied her thoughts. All that had formed the ideal of her young enthusiasm had suddenly in his person appeared upon the rock; but whether it was his uniform, or the bravery of the fleet, or himself, that was the object of her admiration, she had never asked herself, until hurt and rendered thoughtful by that warning of her grandfather. Now, it was unmistakably himself, the handsome, brilliant embodiment of it all. But at the same time there sprang up in her nature an unconquerable feeling of pride, in obedience to the dictates of which she absolutely resigned him, though still retaining her enthusiastic admiration; and it was this double attitude of mind which her eyes expressed, and which puzzled her admirer. When she heard afterwards from her aunt in Arendal that people had been talking about them, she felt it deeply, and more than ever then had become sensible that there was an invisible barrier between them.
Carl's father meanwhile had been trudging daily over to the dry-dock to see after the Juno, which had had to have her bottom scraped, her gaping seams caulked, and to undergo a general repair: he was hardly at home to meals. It was a case of urgency, as the delivery of her cargo at its destination could not be delayed beyond a certain time.
About a month after Elizabeth had come into Captain Beck's house the Juno was ready for sea again; and Carl's sister came into the room smiling one day then, and said—
"Elizabeth, there is a young sailor out in the porch who wants to speak to you; he has a parcel under his arm. Perhaps it is a present."
Elizabeth, who was bringing in the tea-things at the time, turned red, and Carl Beck, who was standing by the window, a little pale. She knew very well that it was Salvé, and for a moment she was almost frightened at his audacity. She had seen him a couple of times before, and had allowed him to feel that she was not particularly anxious for his company, in consequence of what her aunt had told her, and as she went out to see him now she trembled.
He looked at her for a moment or two without saying a word.
"Will you take this dress, Elizabeth?" he said at last, almost harshly.
"No, that I won't, Salvé. Such things as you have been saying about me!"
"So you won't take it?" he said, slowly and dejectedly. "It is no use saying anything more, then, I suppose."
"No, Salvé, it is no use saying anything more."
The desolate expression of his face as he stood and looked at her, while he asked, "Am I to take it to sea with me, Elizabeth?" went to her heart, and the tears rushed into her eyes. She shook her head negatively, but with an almost despairing look, and disappeared into the house.
They could see in the sitting-room that she had been crying. But Carl Beck was a cold-blooded man, and merely lay at the window and looked out after his rival, to see if he had the parcel under his arm as he went out of the gate.
That night Elizabeth lay awake. She had cried in her sleep, and had dreamed that she had seen Salvé standing down at the quay so wretchedly clothed and so miserable, but too proud to ask assistance of any one, and that he had given her such a bitterly reproachful look; and she lay tossing about, unable to get the dream out of her head. Presently there came the noise of a riotous mob outside, and she got up and went to the window. The police were taking some one with them down the street. As they passed, she saw by the light of the street-lamp for a moment that it was Salvé. He was resisting with all his might, pale and infuriated, with his blue shirt all torn open in the front, and there was an expression in his face that—at any rate, she slept no more that night.
There had been a general mêlée, she heard next morning, among the sailors over in Mother Andersen's, on the other side of the harbour. It was said that knives had been used, and that Salvé Kristiansen had been the originator of the whole disturbance—without a shadow of protest, Carl Beck said; and proceeded then to put various interpretations of his own upon the affair. Elizabeth left the room, and for some days after was pale and worn-looking, and more than usually reserved, Carl thought, in her attitude towards himself.
Captain Beck had paid Salvé's fine and procured his release, and the afternoon before the Juno was to sail his father and younger brother came on board to say good-bye to him. There was something strange in his manner that struck them both; it was as if he thought he would never see them again. He offered his father his hundred-daler note, and when the latter would not take it, made him promise, at all events, to keep it for him. The father attributed his unusual manner to distress of mind and depression on account of his recent adventure with the police; but as he was going ashore he said, in rather a husky voice—
"Remember, Salvé, that you have an old father expecting you at home!"
That evening and a great part of the night Salvé passed in the Juno's maintop, gazing over at Beck's house as long as there was a light in the attic window. And when that went out it seemed as if something had been extinguished in himself with it.
CHAPTER X.
The outer side of Tromö, which lies off the entrance to Arendal, has only the ordinary barren stone-grey appearance of the rest of the islands along the coast; a wooden church, with a little belfry like a sentry-box and serving as a landmark, which lies drearily down by the sea, and under which on Sundays a pilot-boat or two may be seen lying-to while service is going on, is the only feature for the eye to rest upon. The land side of the island, on the contrary, presents a scene all the richer and livelier for the contrast. The narrow Tromö Sound, with its swarm of small coasters, lighters, pilot-boats, and vessels of larger build, suns itself there between fertile or wooded slopes and ridges, over which are scattered in every direction the red cottages of the sailor population, skippers' houses, and villas; and in every available spot, in every creek or bay where there is barely room for a vessel, the white timbers of ships in course of construction come into view. It is an idyllic dockyard, a very beautiful and very appropriate approach to Norway's principal seaport town; and whoever steams up it on a still summer's day must enjoy a surprise that will not easily be effaced from his recollection.
At the period of our story, indeed, the picture was far from being so complete or rich: but even then were becoming manifest the germs of the bustle and life which now pervade the place.
On one of the most beautiful points of the Sound peeped into view a small one-storeyed house with two small-paned attic windows projecting from its steep tiled roof, and with a pine-wood climbing the hillside behind, which was the property of Captain Beck; and here, until, as he proposed to do in a couple of years' time, he retired from the sea and invested his fortune in the shipbuilding yard which he had in view, his family generally took up their residence during the summer months. Hither in the early part of this summer, too, they had repaired.
It was no life of idleness, though, which they lived out there: Madam Beck always made work for everybody, and had her own spinning-wheel in the sitting-room. Her step-son had his occupation on land, and as much as he could do, as member of the coast commission. But he used generally to come over on Saturdays in his pretty sail-boat and remain over Sunday; and on that day, too, some one or other family of their acquaintance in the town would make them an object for a pleasure party, and would usually spend the afternoon with them.
Carl Beck was always in great force on these occasions. His brown face and frank sailor bearing and good looks would have been sufficient in themselves to make him a favourite with the ladies. But, in addition to these claims upon their interest, he had been known to most of the younger ones among them from his schoolboy days, when he used to come home on leave as a cadet, and he seemed to enjoy particular confidential relations with nearly every one of them, or, at all events, to be in possession of some secret or other which only they two knew. They had all kinds of jokes and expressions from their younger days which were unintelligible to the rest; and what is vulgarly called "chaff" formed, perhaps, the staple of his conversation with them, varied now and then by a touch of sentiment, which was intended, by chance as it were, to open up to them for a moment the real deeper nature which they might not have suspected him of possessing. They used to twit him about his inclination to stoutness, and he used to joke about it too, and say he had too good a time of it.
Among the Becks' most frequent visitors out there was postmaster Forstberg's family, which included, besides the parents, a hobbledehoy son and their daughter Marie, a fair-haired girl some eighteen years of age, of quiet manners, and with an uncommonly clever face. Nobody said that she was pretty, but nearly every one who knew her had the impression that she was; and there was a certain indefinable harmony and grace, not only about her perhaps rather small figure, but about everything she did. But if she was not considered pretty, it was agreed on all sides that she had great sense; and among her friends she was always the one they elected to confide in, whenever they had anything on their minds. That she never confided anything to them in return had, curiously enough, never struck them; and for that matter, she was too correct and proper, they imagined, to have any heart affairs herself. She was a confidential friend of Carl Beck's sisters, and especially of Mina, who declared that she put her before all the rest of her acquaintance, and thought in her own heart that she was exactly the match for her brother.
The only one of the young girls in the circle with whom Carl Beck had had no youthful acquaintance was Marie Forstberg; and it had been some time before he discovered that the quiet girl was worth talking to. He used to be secretly annoyed then that the conversation when she was present should lapse so easily into empty trifling; her mind was so clear and true, and she had such a beautiful smile for whatever she approved. Before her, therefore, he always displayed now the broad, manly side of his character—which he could do with so much grace—and the coquetry which was at the bottom of this was not without its effect. She had always made rather a hero of him in her own mind, and he had created the flattering impression now that the light and flirting manner which he adopted towards young ladies, and which had rather qualified her admiration of him, had been due to his not having before found among them any one that was worthy of a man's serious attention. He had begun consequently to occupy a much larger share of her thoughts than she would herself have been willing to acknowledge; and many of the confidences of which she was the recipient at this time would, if her friends had had a little more penetration, have been brought last of all to her.
Marie Forstberg's attention had very soon been attracted to Elizabeth; and knowing her history, she tried very often to help her, and put her in the right way of doing things. At first she found her rather short and unapproachable, and could get nothing but "yes" or "no" from her; and there was something almost offensive in the brusque way in which she would turn with an impatient flush from her mentor when she sometimes didn't understand what was meant, and would do the thing in her own way. She wouldn't see at first the various little good turns which the other did her in her quiet, considerate way; but they were acknowledged at last with a look that made amends for all her former obtuseness; and in spite of their different natures and unequal social position, these two women soon came to feel, if not exactly drawn to one another, mutually interested in each other. At the same time, as Elizabeth was not blind to the diplomacy of the house, she had soon perceived that of all the young ladies who came there, Marie Forstberg was the one who had the best chance, and who indeed best deserved to be the young lieutenant's bride; and although she tried to believe that she was merely a resigned looker-on herself, she seemed to feel every Sunday, when Marie Forstberg came, that a certain disagreeable impression had grown up in her mind about her during the week which it took some time to thaw. When it did thaw, however, which in time it always did, she would feel attracted to her with redoubled warmth; and though their conversation might be ostensibly occupied only with such subjects as laying the table or dishing the dinner, she would contrive to introduce into it anything and everything concerning the lieutenant which she thought might interest or recommend him to her friend. Marie Forstberg couldn't help sometimes fixing her clear blue eyes searchingly upon her, to ascertain if there was not some object underlying this communicativeness; but Elizabeth would look so unconscious, as she stood there with her sleeves tucked up, busy with her work, that she dismissed the idea from her mind.
In this country life, although without a moment to call her own, Elizabeth felt freer at all events than she had done in the town; and she had made such rapid progress under Madam Beck's tuition, that the latter's supervision was in many things no longer required. One part in particular, the one which she might have been expected to find the most difficult of all—that of parlour-maid—she filled to perfection; and her upright figure and expressive face attracted many an admiring glance on Sundays, when in her becoming striped chintz dress and white apron, and with her luxuriant hair turned up in the simplest manner, she carried the tea or coffee things out to the guests in the summer-house. She could feel that Carl Beck's eyes were never off her as long as she was in sight, and she seemed to know that it was she whom his eye wandered in search of first whenever he came home. In a hundred small ways he made her conscious of the interest which he felt in her; and whenever there was a commission to be particularly remembered, he never gave it to his sisters alone, but to her also.
His pretty pleasure-boat—a long, light, sharp-built yawl, with a red stripe along its black side, and two sloping masts—which he had lately had built, lay often the whole week through moored in the bay under the house. He was very particular about the boat, and during his absence it was to Elizabeth's sole care that she was intrusted. There was always something or other to be looked after; and when he came home he would generally subject her, in a jokingly harsh tone, to an examination, which he called holding a summary court-martial.
Sometimes on Saturdays he would come up the path waving in his hand a letter covered with post-marks. It would be from his father to his stepmother; and Madam Beck would generally read it by herself first, and then it would be read aloud, Elizabeth listening with strained attention—she was always so afraid that there might be something bad about Salvé.
One Sunday she remarked that Carl wore in the buttonhole of his uniform a wild flower which she had thrown away. It might have been the purest accident; but she knew that he had seen her with it in her hand. The same day they had wild strawberries at dinner, and there were no strangers, and he broke out all in a moment, "Yes, I'd sooner ten thousand times have wild strawberries than garden ones. They have quite another taste and smell."
It was a natural remark for any one to make. But she thought he had looked with peculiar earnestness at her as he made it, and afterwards he had fixed his eyes upon his plate for a long while without raising them. She felt that the remark had been meant for her, and altogether that day there was something about him that made her uneasy—he gazed at her so often.
Madame Beck happened to have just then a long list of household necessaries required from Arendal, and Carl said that if some one would go with him in the boat the next morning to help him with the parcels, he would execute her commissions himself. When Madame Beck suggested Elizabeth he eagerly assented; but the colour rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks, and with an angry toss of her head, which she didn't make any attempt to conceal, she left the room.
As he was standing alone outside some little time after, she came up to him, and said, looking him straight in the face—
"I don't go into Arendal with you, Herr Beck."
"No?—and why not, Elizabeth?" he asked, with affected indifference, and trying to meet her look.
"I don't go," she repeated, her voice trembling with pride and anger—"that is all I have to say;" and she turned from him, and left him gazing after her, partly in confusion, and partly in admiration of the magnificently proud way in which she crossed the turf to the house again.
The expedition was given up; and in spite of Carl's finesse, it came out inadvertently that it was on account of Elizabeth having refused to go alone in the boat with him, which Madam Beck found very commendable on her part. Indeed she ought to have known herself, she said, that it was scarcely proper; but at the same time, she was decidedly of opinion that the more becoming course for Elizabeth would have been to speak to her mistress first.
CHAPTER XI.
The house in the town was undergoing repairs this year, which kept the family out in the country until rather late in the autumn. But the glorious September days prolonged the summer, and they could still sit out on the steps in the evening and enjoy the beauty and the sentiment of the season, and the rich variety of the autumn tints reflected on the still waters of the Sound.
The members of Carl's commission, with their president, were invited out there one day, and it was made a great occasion, all the resources of the house being brought into requisition to do them honour.
Carl, although the youngest member of the Commission, and really only included in it to make up the required number, had been fortunate enough to distinguish himself upon it; and his sisters even thought that there might be a question of an order for him—that distinction so coveted in Norway—if they made love sufficiently to the president. Carl professed to be quite superior to a mere external decoration of the kind, though longing for it in his heart; and Marie Forstberg, whom he had not taken into his confidence in the matter, was highly indignant with his sisters for supposing that it should depend upon the president, and not upon Carl's own merit, whether he received it or not. Mina, however, had declared, with a great air of knowledge of the world, that people couldn't trust to merit alone, and that, besides (and here she had laid her hand flatteringly on her friend's shoulder), they were not all so strict and high-principled as Marie Forstberg; and so she paid her court to the president accordingly.
In the evening, when the gentlemen were sitting together out in the wood, and Elizabeth came out to them with a fresh supply of hot water for their toddy, the said president thought proper to make a joke that brought the colour to her cheeks. She made no reply, but the water-jug trembled in her hands as she put it down, and as she did so she gave the speaker such a look that for a moment he felt cowed.
"'Sdeath, Beck!" he broke out, "did you see the look she gave me?"
"She is a proud girl," said Carl, who was highly incensed, but who had his reasons for restraining himself before his superior.
"A proud girl indeed!" returned the other, in a tone which implied very clearly that in his opinion impudent hussy would have been the more correct description.
"A good-looking girl, I mean," said Carl, evasively, by way of correction, and laughed constrainedly.
Elizabeth had heard what he said. She was hurt, and for the first time instituted a comparison between him and Salvé. If Salvé had been in his place, he would not have got out of it in that way.
Later on in the evening Carl met her alone, as she was putting things to rights out on the steps after the departed guests, and he said half-anxiously—
"I hope you didn't mind what that blustering old brute said, Elizabeth. He is a very good fellow really, and doesn't mean anything by his nonsense."
Elizabeth was silent, and tried to avoid answering by going in with what she had in her hands.
"Come, I won't stand your being offended, Elizabeth," he broke out suddenly, firing up in a moment, and trying to catch her by the arm. "That hand you work with is dearer to me than the hands of all the fine ladies put together."
"Herr Beck!" she exclaimed wildly, and with tears in her eyes, "I leave this house—this very night—if you say a word more."
She disappeared into the hall, but he followed her.
"Elizabeth," he whispered, "I mean it in earnest." She tore herself hastily from him, and went into the kitchen, where his sisters were talking together over the fire.
Carl went out for a solitary walk over the island in the glorious starlight night, and didn't come in till past midnight.
He had not meant what he said quite so decidedly in earnest; but now after seeing her standing before him so wondrously beautiful, with tears in her eyes—now he meant it in real earnest. He was prepared to engage himself, if necessary, in spite of every consideration.
The next morning he left in his boat for Arendal, having whispered to her, however, in passing, before he left, "I mean it in earnest."
The repetition of these words threw Elizabeth into dire perplexity. She had lain and thought over them the night before, and had thrust them from her with indignation, for they could mean nothing else than that he had brought himself to dare to tell her that he had conceived a passion for her, and she had quite determined to execute her threat and leave the house.
But now, repeated in this tone!
Did he really mean to ask for her hand and heart—to ask her to be his—an officer's wife? There lay before her fancy a glittering expanse of earlier dreams that almost made her giddy; and the whole week she was absent and pale, thinking anxiously of Sunday, when he was to return. What would he say then?
And—what should she answer?
He didn't come, however, his duties having required him to make another journey that he had not reckoned upon.
On the other hand Marie Forstberg did appear, and felt at once that some change or other must have come over Elizabeth, as she pointedly declined all assistance from her; and in the look which Marie Forstberg intercepted by chance, there was something even hard and unfriendly. She laid her hand once gently upon Elizabeth's shoulder, but it produced, apparently, absolutely no impression—she might as well have caressed a piece of wood; and when she returned to the sitting-room again, she couldn't help asking, "What has happened to Elizabeth?" But the others had not observed anything unusual.
Carl Beck, contrary to his custom, came not on the following Saturday, but before it, in the middle of the week; and he strode with hasty steps through the rooms when he didn't see Elizabeth.
He found her at last up-stairs. She was standing gazing out of the window on the landing, out of which all that was to be seen was the wooded slope of the hill and the sky above it. She heard his step—she knew that he was coming up-stairs—and felt a sudden indefinable sense of apprehension—a sort of panic almost—as if she could have jumped out of the window. What should she answer?
When he came and put his arm round her waist, and asked in a low voice, "Elizabeth, will you be mine?" she felt, for the first time in her life, on the point of fainting. She hardly knew what she did, but pushed him involuntarily away from her.
He seized her hand afresh, and asked, "Elizabeth, will you be my wife?"
She was very pale, as she answered—"Yes!"
But when he wanted again to take her by the waist, she sprang suddenly back, and looked at him with an expression of terror.
"Elizabeth!" he said, tenderly, and tried again to approach her, "what is the matter with you? If you only knew how I have longed for this moment."
"Not now—no more now!" she pleaded, holding out her hand to him.
"Another time."
"But you say 'Yes,' Elizabeth—that you are my—?" But he felt that she wanted him to go now.
After he had gone, she sat there on a box for a long time in silence, gazing straight before her.
So it had actually come to pass! Her heart beat so that she could hear it herself, and she seemed to feel a dull pain there. Her face, little by little, acquired a fixed, cold expression: she was thinking that he was then telling his stepmother of their engagement, and fortifying himself for her reception of the announcement.
She expected to be called down. But no summons came; and at last she decided to go without being called.
In the sitting-room they were all quietly intent upon their several occupations. Carl was pretending to read a book; but he threw her a stolen, tenderly anxious look over the top of it when she entered.
Supper was brought in, and everything went on as quietly as usual, even to his customary banter. To Elizabeth it seemed as if there was a mist over them all; and when Mina once asked if there was anything the matter with her, she could only answer mechanically, 'No.' The question was repeated later on, and received the same answer. She brought the supper things in and took them out, as usual, and it seemed as if she could not feel the floor under her feet, or what she carried in her hand.
The evening passed, and they went to bed without anything happening. But in the partial darkness of the stair-landing, he seized her hand passionately, and said—"Good-night, my Elizabeth, my—my Elizabeth!"
She was not in a condition to return the pressure of his hand, and when he approached his lips to her forehead, she hastily drew herself away.
"I came out here alone to tell you this, dear, dearest Elizabeth," he whispered, with passion trembling in his voice, and making an effort to draw her to him. "I must be on land again to-morrow. Must I go without one sign that you care for me?"
She bent her forehead slowly towards him, and he kissed it, and she then immediately left him.
"Good-night, my beloved one!" he whispered after her.
Elizabeth lay for a long while awake. She would have given anything to have been able to cry, but the tears would not come; and she felt as if she was freezing internally. When at last she did fall asleep, it was not of him she dreamt, but of Salvé—the whole time of Salvé. She saw him gazing at her with that earnest face—it was so heavy with grief, and she stood like a criminal before him. He said something that she could not hear, but she understood that he condemned her, and that he had thrown the dress overboard.
She rose early, and tried to occupy her thoughts with other dreams—with her future as an officer's lady. But it was as if all that had before seemed to be pure gold was now changed to brass. She felt unhappy and restless; and it was a long time before she could make up her mind to go into the sitting-room.
Carl Beck did not leave that morning. He had perceived that there was something on Elizabeth's mind.
During the forenoon, when his sisters were out, and his stepmother was occupied, he found an opportunity to speak with her alone: she was in a fever, always waiting for him to have spoken to Madam Beck.
"Elizabeth," he said, gently smoothing her hair, for she looked dispirited, and stood with her eyes fixed upon the ground, "I couldn't leave without having spoken to you again."
She still kept her eyes upon the ground, but didn't withdraw herself from his hand.
"Do you really care for me?—will you be my wife?"
She was silent. At last she said, a shade paler, and as if with an effort—
"Yes—Herr Beck."
"Say 'du' to me—say Carl," he pleaded, with much feeling, "and—look at me."
She looked at him, but not as he had expected. It was with a fixed, cold look she said—
"Yes, if we are engaged."
"Are we not then?"
"When is your stepmother to know it?" she asked, rather dragging the words out one after the other.
"Dear Elizabeth! These people at home here must notice nothing for—for three months, when I shall be—" But he caught an expression now in her face, and something in the abrupt way in which she drew her hand from him, that made him keep back what he had originally intended to say, and he corrected it hastily.
"Next week, then, I'll write from Arendal and tell my father, and then let my stepmother know what I have written. Are you offended, Elizabeth—dear Elizabeth? or shall I do it at once?" he broke out resolutely, and seized her hand again.
"No, no—not now! next week—let it not be till next week," she cried, in sudden apprehension, returning the pressure of his hand at the same time almost entreatingly—it was the first he had had from her.
"And then you are mine, Elizabeth?"
"Yes, then"—she tried to avoid meeting his eye.
"Farewell, then, Elizabeth! But I shall come back on Saturday. I can't live for longer without seeing you."
"Farewell!" she said, in a rather toneless voice.
He sprang down to the boat that lay waiting for him below; but she didn't look after him, and went in with bowed head the opposite way.
Small things often weigh heavily in the world of impressions. Elizabeth had been overpowered by what seemed to her the magnanimity of his nature when he had declared that he would elevate her into the position of his wife; she felt that it was her worth in his eyes which had outweighed all other considerations. That he should shrink from the inevitable conflict with his family she had on the other hand never for a moment imagined. She had no doubt felt herself that it would be painful, but had stationed herself for the occasion behind his masculine shield. When he now so unexpectedly began to press for time, at first even proposing to be away himself when the matter came on in his home, a feeling took possession of her which in her inward dread she instinctively clutched at as a drowning wretch at a straw, as it seemed to suggest a possibility even now of reconsidering her promise.
She had a hard and heavy time of it during the two days until Carl returned; and the nights were passed in fever.
On Saturday evening he came, and the first he greeted was herself: he seemed almost, as she passed in and out of the room quiet and pale, as if he didn't wish any longer to conceal the relations now existing between them.
He had with him a letter from his father, which was read aloud when the meal was over. It was dated from a South American port, and mention was made in it of Salvé among others. Off Cape Hatteras they had had stormy weather, and had their topmast carried away. It remained attached by a couple of ropes, and with the heavy sea that was running, was swinging backwards and forwards, as it hung, against the lower rigging, threatening to destroy it. Salvé Kristiansen had come forward in the emergency and ventured aloft to cut it adrift; and as he sat there the whole had gone over the side. He fell with it, but had the luck to be caught in a top-lift as he fell, and so saved his life. "It was pluckily done," ended the account, "but nevertheless all is not exactly right about him, and he is not turning out as well as he promised."
"I never expected very much from him," remarked Carl, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders; "he's a bad lot."
He didn't see the resentful eyes which Elizabeth fixed upon him for these words, and she sat for a long while afterwards out in the kitchen with her hands in her lap, silent and angry, thinking over them. A resolution was forming in her mind.
Before they retired to rest, Carl whispered to her—
"I have written to my father to-day, and—to-morrow, Elizabeth, is our betrothal-day!"
Elizabeth was the last in the room, putting it to rights, and when she left she took a sheet of paper and writing materials with her. She lay down on her bed; but about midnight she was sitting up by a light and disfiguring a sheet of paper with writing. It was to this effect:—
"Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to another.—Elizabeth Raklev."
She folded the paper and fastened it with a pin for want of a wafer, and then quietly opening the door of the room where Madam Beck was sleeping, placed her lips close to her ear, and whispered her name. Madam Beck woke up in some alarm when she saw Elizabeth standing before her fully dressed, and apparently prepared for a journey.
"Madam Beck," Elizabeth said, quietly, "I am going to confide something to you, and ask for your advice and assistance. Your step-son has asked me to be his wife. It was last Sunday—and I said yes; but now I have changed my mind, and am going back to my aunt, or farther away still, if you can tell me how; for I am afraid he will follow me."
Madam Beck stared at her in mute amazement, and at first put on an incredulous and rather scornful expression; but as she came to feel that it might all be true, she raised herself involuntarily higher up in the bed.
"But—why do you come with this now, particularly in the middle of the night?" she said, with a suspicious and searching look.
"Because he has written to his father about it to-day, and means to tell you and the rest to-morrow."
"So—he has already written? That was his object, then, in bringing you into the house here," Madam Beck added, after a pause, with some bitterness.
It seemed to strike her then that there was something noble in
Elizabeth's conduct; and looking at her more kindly, she said—
"Yes, you are right. It is best for you to go away—to some place where he will not find it so easy to reach you."
She lapsed into thought again. Then a brilliant idea occurred to her, and she got up and put on her clothes. She had a man's clearheadedness, and her habits of management stood her in good stead on the present occasion. The Dutch skipper Garvloit, who had married her half-sister, happened just a day or two before to have been inquiring for a Norwegian girl, who would be able to help in the house; and here was just the place for Elizabeth. She had only to go on board his vessel, that lay over at Arendal ready to sail.
Madam Beck went into the sitting-room at once, and wrote a letter to Garvloit, which she gave to Elizabeth, together with a good round sum of money—wages due, she said; and half-an-hour afterwards Elizabeth was rowing over alone in the quiet moonlight night to Arendal.
The smooth sound lay full of shining stars between the deep shadows of the ridges on either side, with a light from a mast here and there denoting the presence of vessels under the land. A falling star would now and then leave a stream of light behind it; and she felt a sense of joyous exultation that she could only subdue by rowing hard for long spells. She was like one escaped—relieved from some oppressive burden. And how she looked forward to seeing Marie Forstberg now!
She arrived in the town before daybreak, and went straight up to her aunt's, to whom she announced that Madam Beck wished her to take a place in Holland with Garvloit, who was on the point of sailing. She showed her the letter—there was no time to lose.
The old woman listened to her for a while, and then said abruptly—
"There has been some difficulty with the lieutenant, Elizabeth?"
"Yes, aunt, there has," she replied; "he made love to me."
"He did—"
"And first I said as good as yes. But I don't mean to have him—and so I told Madam Beck."
"So you wouldn't have him?" was the rejoinder, after an astonished pause; "and the reason, I suppose, was that you would rather have Salvé?"
"Yes, aunt," in a low voice.
"And why in the world didn't you take him, then?"
The tears came into Elizabeth's eyes.
"Well—as people make their beds so they must lie," said the old woman, severely—and betook herself then, without any further observation, to the preparation of the morning coffee.
As Elizabeth went down to the quay, to get a boat to take her out to the merchantman, she looked in at the post-office, where she found Marie Forstberg already up, and busy in the sitting-room in her morning dress. She was greatly astonished when Elizabeth told her of her new destination.
It was such an advantageous offer, Elizabeth explained—an almost independent place in the house; and Madam Beck had herself advised her to take it.
But though she used all her wit to keep the other off the scent, Marie Forstberg found a want of connection somewhere, and Elizabeth could see it in her eyes. She asked no further questions, however; and when they took leave of each other they embraced, in tears.
Out at Tromö the surprise was great when it was found that Elizabeth had gone. Carl Beck had found her letter under the door, but had never imagined that she had left, and had gone out with it in violent agitation of mind and did not come home again till late in the afternoon. Madam Beck had in the meantime confided the matter to her daughters, and they would understand, she said, that not a word of it must be mentioned outside the house.
Although his eyes sought for her unceasingly, Carl made no express inquiry after her till the evening, and when he heard that she was gone, and was perhaps by that time already under sail for Holland, he sat for awhile as if petrified. Looking scornfully at them then, one after another, he said—
"If I thought that I had any of you to thank for this, I'd—" here he seized the chair he had been sitting on, dashed it down upon the floor so that it broke, and sprang up-stairs.
But her letter was unfortunately clear enough—she loved another, and he knew, too, who it was.
CHAPTER XII.
It was some months after. The Juno lay ready to sail in the roads of Monte Video, where she had taken in hides as part of her home cargo. The remainder, of coffee, she was to load at Rio, and in the meantime she had filled up with coals for that port. She was lying in tropical costume, with awnings over the fore and after deck as a protection against the fierce rays of the sun; and the crew were going about in correspondingly airy clothing, with open shirts and tucked-up canvas trousers, brown and shiny with perspiration, and gasping after every breath. It was the hottest season of the year. The pitch was melting in the chinks between the planking of the decks, and the tar running down her sides.
They had lain thus for a couple of days, hoping to receive before starting the post, which they had been disappointed in not finding on their arrival. And what a disappointment this can be, only those who have been in one of these ships that go on long voyages can understand. In foreign ports there may be many a wild pleasure to be enjoyed, but the longing to hear from home is the strongest feeling among sailors after all.
The mate had gone ashore to make one last inquiry before they sailed; and as the jolly-boat came alongside again, it was seen that he had the precious packet in his hand. He sprang up the accommodation-ladder and disappeared aft without a word to where the captain was sitting by a small table with a carafe and glass before him, mopping his bald head in the heat.
"You've got them at last, then," he said, as the mate laid the packet on the table before him, and retired a few paces while he opened it.
Almost the first letter that caught his eye was one to himself from his son, and his face brightened. He ran rapidly over the others, making a comment here and there according as he was acquainted with the circumstances of the men to whom they were addressed, and gathering them up in a bundle, handed them over then to the mate, with a cheery "Here you are, Mr. Johnson—letters for every one, from wives and sweethearts, and I don't know whom besides."
The news that the post had come had spread like wildfire over the ship, and by the time the mate began to call out the addresses by the main hatch, the whole crew were assembled, with the exception of a straggler or two who had happened to be aloft, and who were now to be seen hurrying down the ratlines.
The only one who neither expected news, nor cared apparently whether he received a letter or not, was Salvé Kristiansen. While the parcel was being distributed, he remained standing by the wheel, intent apparently upon watching the movements of the two men who were hoisting up and making fast the jolly-boat. His lips were compressed; and when he gave the men a hand now and then, it was not a very willing one, and was generally accompanied by some bitter or sarcastic remark. His nature since they last sailed from Arendal seemed to have turned to gall; and when the captain had casually mentioned in his letter home that he was not so well satisfied with him, he had had good reason for saying so. There had been all sorts of unpleasantness between them; and if any discontent or difference between himself and the crew prevailed, Salvé was sure to be at the bottom of it. He had found a rancid salt-herring, set up on four legs with a tail, as he was walking on the poop one evening in the moonlight; and as complaints had been recently made about the food, a good deal of which had become worse than bad from the effects of the hot climate, he had at once attributed to Salvé this pointed method of drawing his attention to the subject again. It seemed almost as if he had some cause for bitterness against himself personally; and as he had always treated him with marked favour, he was at a loss to comprehend the reason for it.
With the exception of the captain, who had retained his seat at the after-end of the poop, Salvé was soon the only human being to be seen on deck. The whole crew had disappeared, and might have been found poring over their letters two and two, or singly, in the most out-of-the-way places, from the main and fore top even to the bowsprit end, where one had erected a pavilion for himself out of a fold of the hauled-down jib.
Captain Beck's letter, to judge from his gestures and half-audible exclamations, was not giving him the pleasure which he had anticipated. His whole face, up to the top of his head, had become red as a lobster, and he sat now drumming with one hand on his knee, and casting an occasional fierce look over at Salvé, in the attitude of a man beside himself with anger. At last he brought the hand in which he held the letter down upon the table with a force that sent the decanter and glass flying, and thrusting the fragments aside with his foot, he strode up and down the deck for a couple of minutes and then came towards Salvé as if he meant to say something; and as the latter could very well perceive that it was not going to be anything pleasant, his countenance assumed an expression of defiance accordingly. He changed his mind, though, before he reached him, and turning short round shouted instead—
"Where is the second mate? Where is the whole watch?" and he looked furiously about him, as if surprised, although he knew very well how they were occupied, and that it had been decided not to weigh anchor until later in the day, when they would have the evening breeze.
"Ay, ay, sir!" was heard from the mate in the long-boat; and he raised himself and came forward with the letter he had been reading in his hand.
"Stand by to man the windlass! Pipe all hands!" ordered the captain, and roared the command again gratuitously through the trumpet.
The crew turned out from their several retreats with sour looks. They had expected to be left alone until after tea-time, when there would have been a general interchange of news on the forecastle; and now there came instead a hail of orders from the speaking-trumpet, as if the captain had all of a sudden become possessed.
There was already a good deal of discontent prevailing among the crew, both on account of the bad food which they had to put up with, and on account of their leave ashore at Monte Video having been, as they thought, capriciously refused; and it was therefore something more nearly approaching to a howl than a song that was now heard from the capstan and from the party who were hoisting the heavy mainsail. The customary English chorus—
"Haul the bowline,
The captain he is growling;
Haul the bowline,
The bowline haul"—
was sung with offensive significance; and though, at the last heavy heave with which the enormous anchor was catted up to the bows, the mate tried to create a diversion in the feeling by a cheery "Saat 'kjelimen—hal' paa," the concluding words of the song—
"Aa hal i—aa—iaa—
Cheerily, men!"—
were delivered in a scornful shout.
"You'll have a chance of cooling yourselves presently, my lads," said Salvé, coming up at the moment from his own heavy work with the cross-jack; "when we weather the point, all the lee-sails have to be set"—and the remark had the effect which he desired of intensifying the prevailing irritation.
In spite of the vertical heat, the hail of orders from the captain's trumpet continued, accompanied by reprimands and fault-finding all round, until the crew were nearly in a state of mutiny, and it was not until late in the evening that he showed any signs of exhaustion.
His temper had not improved next day. He looked as if he had a determination of blood to the head; and every time he came near Salvé, he glared at him as if it was all he could do to control himself from an outburst of some kind or another. He knew that Salvé had made love to Elizabeth, and had wished to make her presents since she had come into his house; and that the same girl was now to be his son's wife—the idea was absolutely intolerable!
At last he could contain himself no longer. Salvé had just deposited a coil of rope aft, and the captain, after watching his movements with evidently suppressed irritation, broke out suddenly, without preface of any kind—
"You, I believe, had some acquaintance with that—that Elizabeth Raklev
I took into my house."
Salvé felt the blood rush to his heart. He seemed to know what was coming.
"The post," the captain continued, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, "has brought me the delightful intelligence that my son has engaged himself to her."
"Congratulate you, captain," said Salvé. His voice almost failed him, and he was deadly pale, but his eyes flashed with a wild defiance.
He went forward, and the captain growled after him to himself, "He can have that to fret over now instead of the food;" and as the mate was coming up the cabin stairs at the moment polishing the sextant, he turned away with a look of grim satisfaction to take the altitude.
When the Juno last sailed from Arendal she had changed two of her crew. One of the new hands was a square-built, coarse-featured, uncouth-looking creature, from the fjord region north of Stavanger, who called himself Nils Buvaagen, but whose name had been changed by the others to Uvaagen (not-awake), on account of his evident predisposition to sleep. He was incredibly naïve and communicative, especially on the subject of his wife and children (of which latter he apparently had his nest full), and had soon become the butt of the ship. Salvé was the only one who ever took his part, and that only because he saw all the others against him; and having also been the means of saving his life when he had been washed overboard one dark night in the English Channel, he had inspired the simple fellow with a perfectly devoted attachment to him.
They were up on the mainyard together that evening, where they had been helping to carry out an order with the mainsail. The rest had gone down again, but Salvé, who felt a longing to be alone, had remained aloft, and was standing on the foot-rope, with his elbows resting on the yard. Nils's sympathetic eyes had perceived from his behaviour and whole appearance that day that there was something unusual the matter with him; and when he saw that Salvé remained behind, he remained too, observing that it would be pleasant to cool for a while before going to their hammocks in the close air between decks.
The sky above them blazed like a cupola "inlaid with patines of bright gold;" obliquely from the horizon the Southern Cross was rising, and the evening star shone in the warm night, before the moon had yet risen, with a silver gleam that threw clear light and shadow upon the deck below; while the vessel seemed to plough through a sea of phosphorescence, leaving in her wake a long trail of bluish glittering light.
From the forecastle below came wafted up a sentimental sailor's song, the burden of which was pretty well summed up in the two concluding lines:—
"But never more her name I'll utter till I die,
For rosy though her lips were, her heart it was a lie."
It sounded melancholy at that hour, and Nils, to judge from the occasional sighs with which he had accompanied it, was moved. When it came to an end, Salvé turned suddenly to him.
"You are distressing yourself for another's sweetheart now, Nils. What would you have done if it had been your own?"
"My wife!" He had evidently not for the moment taken in the idea, and looked with all his heavy countenance at Salvé.
"Yes. Wouldn't you have liked to see her sunk to the bottom of the sea?"
"My Karen to the bottom of the sea! I'd go there myself first."
"Yes; but if she had been unfaithful to you?" persisted Salvé, seeming to take a fiendish delight in bringing home the idea to the poor fellow.
"But she is not," was the rejoinder.
Nils had no genius for the abstract, and no more satisfaction was to be got out of him. But at the same time he had been shocked, and went down shortly after without saying a word.
Salvé still remained aloft, the dull consciousness of Elizabeth's engagement with the captain's son alternating with a more active desire for revenge upon the captain himself for the manner in which he had conveyed the information; and the result of his brooding up there upon the yard was a determination to desert as soon as the Juno arrived at Rio. He would never go back to Arendal; and he would no longer tread the same deck with the father of Carl Beck.
Later on in the night, when the moon had risen, Nils, who had not been able to sleep in his hammock, came up to Salvé again, and drew him aside behind the round-house, as if for a private conversation.
"What would I have done? you asked. I'll tell you," he said, after a short pause, and his honest face seemed to express a vivid realisation of the whole misery of the situation. "I would have died upon the doorstep!"
Salvé stood and looked at him for a moment. There came a strange pallor over his face in the moonlight.
"Look you," he said, ironically, laying his hand upon the other's shoulder, "I have never a wife; but all the same, I am dead upon the doorstep—" Then, in the next breath, and with a sudden change of tone, he said, "Of course I am only joking, you know," and left him, with a hard, forced laugh.
Nils remained where he was, and pondered, not knowing exactly how to take it. It was possible Salvé had only been making fun of him. But another feeling eventually predominated. It told him that he had had a glimpse into a despairing soul; and he was profoundly moved.