The Pilot and his Wife Part 14

"Who deserted from Beck at Rio?--the same."

Madam Gjers was agog with curiosity, and whispered, "I'll say nothing--you may trust me;" and waited eagerly then for further particulars which she might take the first opportunity of retailing.

Salve a.s.sured her that he knew of old that a secret was always safe with her, and resumed then absently--

"So the lieutenant is married?"

"This long while," she replied. "The wedding was at the house of the bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksvaern."

"Elizabeth had no parents," said Salve, rather impatiently.

"Elizabeth?--oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them.

That is quite another story," she said, significantly. "No, the lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter. The other was just a pa.s.sing fancy--the end of it was that she had to go to Holland, poor thing! It was said she had got a place there."

"Do you know anything for certain of this?" asked Salve, severely, and with an earnestness that put the little madam out of countenance, and made her be careful of her words.

"It was all done very secretly, that's true," she replied. "But she went away in the greatest possible hurry, and the affair was well enough known, more's the pity--known and forgotten now, one may say."

"What was known?" asked Salve, catching her up, angrily. "Did you see her, Madam Gjers?"

"Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at Tromo at the time; and there was just very good reason for--"

"Then neither you nor any one else who wants to take away her character know a jot more about the business than what you have chosen to invent,"

said Salve, fiercely and contemptuously; for although he had slain Elizabeth himself in his heart, he must still defend her against the attacks of others. He felt quite sick and faint.

"I happen to know the rights of the case," he said, with a short laugh, looking her coldly and sharply in the face, "and--" he sprang up suddenly here, and striking the table violently with his fist--"and I don't taste another morsel in such a scandal-mongering house," he cried.

"Do you understand, madam? Be good enough to take what is owing to you out of that," and flinging down a handful of silver on to the table, he sprang over it, and proceeded to drag his chest down-stairs himself.

Madam Gjers exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from every creature in the town; but Salve was unappeasable, and slinging his chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. For the present, however, he remained sitting upon the chest, gazing out abstractedly over the harbour.

The result of his reflections was that he gave up his idea of plying to Holland.

He took a boat to Sandvigen, but while they were on the way, he suddenly made the boatman change his course, and put in to the slip on the other side of the harbour. He must talk to Elizabeth's aunt. There was something in his mind all the time that wouldn't let him altogether believe the worst.

When he went in to the old woman, she recognised him at once.

"How do you do, Salve?" she said, quite calmly. "You have been a long while away--half a century almost."

She offered him a chair, but he remained standing, and asked abruptly--

"Is it true that Elizabeth--left Beck's like that--and went to Holland?"

"How do you mean like that?" she asked, sharply, while her face flushed slightly.

"As people say," replied Salve, with bitter emphasis.

"When people say it, a fool like you of course must believe it," she rejoined, derisively. "I don't understand why you want to come here to her old aunt for information when it seems you have so many other confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have been away, gadding about, G.o.d knows where, in the world. It's true enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law."

A wild gleam of joy broke over Salve's features for a moment, but they relapsed almost immediately into gloom.

"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then?" he asked.

"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a hair's-breadth from the truth. "She allowed herself to be betrayed into saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have him. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said 'no' to you."

"So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically. "The 'yes' and 'no' meant that the Becks wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, and bundled her out of the house over to Holland; and you want me to believe it was for my sake she went. G.o.d knows," he added, sadly, and shaking his head slowly, "I would willingly believe it--more willingly than I can say; but I can't, Mother Kirstine. You are her aunt, and want of course to--"

"I'm afraid it is your misfortune, Salve," she broke in severely, "not to have it in your power to believe thoroughly in any one creature upon this earth; you'll be always doubting, always listening to folks' talk.

With the thoughts you have now in your mind, you have at any rate no business any longer inside my door. But there is one thing I'll ask of you," she said, with a look of mildly impressive earnestness in her strong, clever face. "I know Elizabeth's nature well, and don't you attempt to approach her or try to win her as long as you have a trace of those doubts about her in your heart--it would only bring unhappiness to both of you."

He looked dejected; and as he said good-bye to her, offered to take her hand. But she would not give it to him, and merely added instead--

"Remember that it is an old woman who has seen a good deal in the world who tells you this."

He went away then; and while he was being rowed across to Sandvigen he changed his mind again, and determined that his plan of plying to Holland should be carried out.

CHAPTER XIX.

Skipper Garvloit, into whose family Elizabeth had come, occupied one of the many-storeyed houses, with green window-shutters, narrow entrance-doors, and polished bra.s.s knockers, after the usual Dutch fashion, in the lively street leading down to the dock in Amsterdam, with the ca.n.a.l on the other side, with its various bridges, and vessels and barges of all kinds unlading, running up from it into the heart of the town.

Madam Garvloit had four young children, and was not very strong, so that Elizabeth's robust, healthy nature had been a perfect G.o.dsend to her in the house, and she was content to overlook her occasional shortcomings of manner or temper in consideration of the a.s.sistance which she rendered in every department of the housekeeping.

Elizabeth had always had a pretty strong will of her own; and here, where she virtually had the control of everything, her tendency to self-a.s.sertion had been considerably developed. The force and decision with which she gave her opinion about everything seemed to Madam Garvloit sometimes (although she said nothing) rather like a reversing of their relative positions; and on days when she was in a captious humour--and those were her days of most feverish activity--she would even go so far as to set aside her mistress's orders altogether. In a general way her moods were very uncertain: one day she would be in tearing spirits, racing up and down the stairs with the children, as if she had been inhaling the wild air of Torungen again; and another she would be so pensive and taciturn that they thought she must be pining after home.

She had many admirers, both among young and old, her gay moods attracting the former, and her serious ones the latter. Among the former were two young gentlemen acquaintances of the house, relatives of Garvloit--one a smart young clerk from one of the larger counting-houses in the town, who rather affected the gentleman; and the other a light-haired, pink-complexioned, skipper's son from Vlieland. They both came regularly every Sunday, were frantically jealous of one another, tried to outbid each other whenever an opportunity offered, and were both fully convinced that they sighed in vain. She was so different, they felt, from the other specimens of femininity of their acquaintance to whom their weak attentions had sometimes proved acceptable. There was something almost imperious in Elizabeth's manner at times that made them feel quite small beside her; and however careless she might be of the _convenances_ in her way of speaking to them, they had very soon found that wherever she chose to draw the line, so far could they go and no farther.

Madame Garvloit would take her to task sometimes for the scant courtesy with which she treated the young clerk. Elizabeth would answer that he bored her; and Madame Garvloit would insist that a young girl ought to have tact enough not to make this evident. Elizabeth, however, was not deficient in tact, but disliked putting a restraint upon her feelings; and it seemed to her on the whole unreasonable that a person should pretend that a thing was pleasant when in reality it was wearisome.

During the second autumn of her service with the Garvloits, the skipper, on his return from a trip to Norway, brought the intelligence that Lieutenant Beck was engaged to Postmaster Forstberg's daughter in Arendal, and he had many messages for Elizabeth from the latter. They were to be married in the spring.

Elizabeth was overjoyed to hear it, for the thought had often weighed heavily on her mind that Carl Beck might be making himself miserable on her account. She judged so from her own feeling for Salve: and as she sat alone by her window at bedtime that night, gazing out over the ca.n.a.l and the shipping in the calm moonlight, the quiet afterglow of a holiday evening seemed to have shed itself over her thoughts. She knew from her friend's message that she was ignorant of what had pa.s.sed between herself and Carl Beck; and although it was a relief to think that he had not taken his disappointment more to heart, the smile that played about her lips for a moment showed at the same time that his love had been duly appraised. As the shadow, then, of the window-frame in the moonlight, crept slowly over the wall above her bed, her thoughts glided off in the direction they loved best to take--over the world and far away to Salve.

She sat with her heavy hair falling loose over her well-shaped shoulders, and her face grew more and more sorrowful in its absent expression, and would twitch occasionally with pain. The bitter thought would recur that it was she who was the cause of Salve's going out into the world and becoming a desperate man. The thought haunted her; and yet, much as she wished to free herself from it, she found a pleasure in dwelling on it. She saw him, in fancy, miserable and proud, with his pale face and keen, clever eyes fixed upon her in hatred, as the cause of his unhappiness, and then the idea occurred to her to put on sailor's clothes and go and seek him out in the world. But if she were to find him, she knew, on the other hand, that for very shame she dared not show herself before him, having as good as belonged to another; and she would not for all the world read her hard dismissal in his eye. She laid her head upon her arms on the window-sill and sobbed convulsively, until at length she dropped off to sleep where she sat.

She had been three years in the Garvloits' house when Garvloit had the misfortune to run his vessel aground out near Amland, where she became a wreck. He lost with her nearly all he had in the world, and what was worse, all prospect of livelihood for the future as skipper.

An uncomfortable feeling prevailed now in the house, and Elizabeth saw with regret that she would have to leave. Garvloit, who in figure resembled some thick, short-legged animal of the sea, a seal or walrus come on land, had become perceptibly reduced in flesh, and went about all day long in his shirtsleeves, fanning himself with a large silk pocket-handkerchief. On one particular afternoon it was observed that he indulged in this exercise with more than his usual vigour and restlessness; and it was not without cause. He had had an inspiration.

If he could no longer follow his old trade, he would try a new one; he would set up a house of entertainment for sailors. His house being so close to the dock, could not be more favourably situated for the purpose, and they had ample accommodation. On the ground floor they could have a room for common sailors, and on the floor above they had one where captains and mates could be served.

He said nothing about it, however, to any one until the scheme had been fully matured; and then all of a sudden one day he came into the room where his wife was, with a bundle of printed placards and a large board in his hand.

"Good gracious, Garvloit, what is that?" she cried.

He turned the board round with an important air, and without saying a word. Upon it there stood in large gilt letters, "The Star."

"This is our new means of earning our bread, wife," he said. "Next month this sign hangs over our door, and these bills are to post on the walls, and distribute among the ships down in the harbour. Garvloit is not on his beam-ends yet," he concluded, with self-conscious satisfaction; and proceeded then to explain how he intended to be landlord himself, and how Elizabeth was to help him in the management of the whole.