by Jonas Lie
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 fathe
r 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 amo
ng 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.