The Pilot and his Wife Part 5

There had been a general _melee_, 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 Salve 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 att.i.tude towards himself.

Captain Beck had paid Salve'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 ash.o.r.e he said, in rather a husky voice--

"Remember, Salve, that you have an old father expecting you at home!"

That evening and a great part of the night Salve pa.s.sed 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 Tromo, 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 Tromo 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Sat.u.r.days 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. n.o.body 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 Sat.u.r.days 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 Salve.

One Sunday she remarked that Carl wore in the b.u.t.tonhole 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 a.s.sented; 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 inst.i.tuted a comparison between him and Salve. If Salve 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 bl.u.s.tering 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.