The Pilot and his Wife Part 4

"Anders of the Crag? So it was from him you heard it?--the pitiful, wheedling rascal! That is his grat.i.tude, I suppose, for my being with his wife last week!--I shall know where to find him. But the receiver in the like is no better than the stealer," she resumed, indignantly; "and I'd have you know, it was just Beck's own daughter who came here and offered Elizabeth a respectable place in a respectable house, and it was to me she talked, my lad," pointing self-consciously with quivering forefinger at her own bosom; "so Elizabeth has not begged herself in there at all. You didn't need to desert your watch to bring such tales here; and Elizabeth shall hear of it--that she shall," she repeated, excitedly, striking one hand into the other with a loud smack--"she shall hear what fine faith you have in her."

"Dear mother Kirstine! I didn't mean any harm," he said, entreatingly, feeling as if a weight had been taken off his heart--"only please don't tell Elizabeth."

"You may depend upon it I will."

"Mother Kirstine!" he said, in a low voice, and looking down, "I brought a dress with me for her that I had bought in Boston. And then I heard all this, and I couldn't contain myself." He said nothing about the rings.

"So!" rejoined the old woman after a pause, during which she had examined him through her half-closed eyes, and in a somewhat milder tone; "so you brought a dress for her! and at the same time you come running up here in the middle of the night to tell me that she has become a common baggage for the lieutenant,"--and her anger rose again.

"But, Mother Kirstine, I don't believe a word of it."

"It wasn't to tell me that, I suppose, you came up here in such haste, my lad."

"I was only mad to think such a thing could be said of her."

"Well, be off with you now! Anders of the Crag shall go farther with his lie--if I go with him before the Foged and the Maritime Court."

For the matter of that, she might as well have threatened to go with him to the moon; but Salve understood her to mean by the Maritime Court the bloodiest course she knew.

As she opened the door to let him out, she said with a certain confidential seriousness--"Tell me, Salve! has anything pa.s.sed between you and Elizabeth?"

He seemed uncertain for a moment what reply he should make to this unexpected invitation of confidence. At length he said--

"I don't know, Mother Kirstine, for certain; two years ago, I made her a present of a pair of shoes."

"You did!--well, see now and get on board again without any one noticing you--that's my advice," she replied, without allowing herself to be brought any further into the matter, and pushed him then rather unceremoniously out of the door.

After he had gone she sat for a while with the light in her lap, staring at it and nodding her head reflectively.

"He's a good and a handsome lad that Salve," she said at last, aloud.

"But on the whole it will be better to tell Elizabeth, and then she can be on her guard there in the house;" and having come to this decision she rose from her seat and prepared to go to bed again.

Salve, notwithstanding this interview, was far from being at ease next day, and he felt the courage he had mustered up, to go straight to Elizabeth with the dress and ring, altogether gone.

In the evening, when all the crew were given leave from the ship for three weeks, he went off to his father instead, to see if he could learn more of the situation through inquiries from him; and on the following Monday both were present at old Jacob's interment in Tromo churchyard.

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 feted 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 repet.i.tion 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 att.i.tude 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 _denouement_ 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s 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 Salve 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 G.o.d 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. Salve 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 att.i.tude 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 sc.r.a.ped, 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 Salve, 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, Salve. 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, Salve, 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 Salve standing down at the quay so wretchedly clothed and so miserable, but too proud to ask a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sed, she saw by the light of the street-lamp for a moment that it was Salve. 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.