by Jonas Lie
Salvé’s interest was awakened at once. He listened with strained attention for what might come next.
“And why not?” asked the other, a little on his dignity.
“Well, in the first place, they don’t dance there; and in the next, you would want to be a skipper at least to pay court in that quarter, mind you. I saw her in the spring of last year, when we were lying there with the Galatea; she was talking to the captain, for she’s Norwegian—and a proud one she is, too; with hair like a crown of gold on her head, and so straight rigged that it makes a man nervous to come alongside her.”
Salvé sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck. His mind was in a ferment, and a wild longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for certain how matters actually stood.
When the time came for breaking up, Federigo was drunk, and Salvé was obliged to accompany his inconsolable friend in the darkness over the long narrow dam down by the dock, where there was water on both sides, Federigo clinging to his arm the whole way, and leaning heavily upon it.
When they had reached the middle of the dam, Salvé saw him make a sudden movement, and almost at the same moment he received a thrust in the region of the heart, of such force that he staggered two or three steps backwards. At the same time he heard Federigo say, in a voice trembling with vindictive passion—
“Take that for Paolina, you hound!”
The object of his cupidity, the belt of money, had saved Salvé, who now felled him to the ground with a blow that sent him rolling over the embankment into the sea.
“Help! help!” came up to him from the water.
“You shall have it,” replied Salvé, derisively, “for our fine friendship’s sake. Throw up your knife, though, first;” and he made a noose in his handkerchief then to reach down to him. “You and your owl of a sister,” he muttered as he did so, “have taught me a thing or two. I should only have had exactly what I deserved if I had been both stuck and plundered, after being fool enough to put faith for one moment in you or any one else.”
“Now, up with you!”
When he saw Federigo’s form scrambling up over the edge, he said, scornfully, “Now then, at last we part. Good-bye, my old and faithful friend!”
With that he went his way, and heard the Brazilian screaming and stamping with rage down on the dam behind him in the dark.
CHAPTER XVIII
An opportunity offered almost immediately for taking a passage home with the Tonsberger before alluded to, and Salvé gladly availed himself of it, calculating upon being taken off by one of the pilot boats off the coast of Arendal.
It was with a strange deep feeling that he once more trod the deck of a home vessel, and as he went about and listened to the people’s talk, felt himself an object for their curiosity. The southern brown of his face, the foreign cut of his clothes, and his whole exterior, marked him as coming from a much higher condition of sailor life than any with which they were acquainted, and he passed for an Englishman or an American; for he purposely avoided being recognised by them as a countryman, and had made his agreement with the skipper in English.
It was certainly a long time since he had been on board a craft so miserably found in every way as this leaky old galliot was. She had been bought by auction for a small sum at Færder; and in shape resembled an old wooden shoe, in which her skipper venturesomely trudged across to Holland through the spring and winter storms, calculating that he and his crew could always lash themselves to something to avoid being washed overboard; that their timber cargo would keep them afloat; and that as long as the rigging held they could sail. He carried no top-gallant-mast, so as not to strain her; her sails were all in holes, as if they had been riddled with bullets; and where ropes had broken in the rigging, they had been tied in clumsy knots, instead of being spliced in proper sailor-like fashion. There was not much to boast of in the way of navigation either; the captain keeping his log by the simple method of spitting over the side, or throwing a chip of wood overboard, and making his calculations according to the pace it drifted past. The food, too, was on a par with all the rest, and the cook could be heard beating the dried fish with the back of an axe to make it tender. Salvé seemed to have dropped all at once into home life and ways again.
The crew were dressed in thick winter clothing, and had the appearance of navvies rather than of sailors, but they were all fearless, hardy-looking fellows, as most of the men who risk their lives on these timber vessels are; and what immediately struck him with a feeling of pleasure, was the honest expression which every countenance, without exception, wore. It was long since he had seen a sight of the kind, and he felt ashamed of himself for going about with his knife ready to hand, as had been his custom for so many years, and put it away in his chest the very first day. He took a pleasure in leaving his watch and money out on the top where they might easily have been taken, and was filled with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.
He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had that she had been long ago married to young Beck. His thoughts kept returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to post himself up generally in all particulars. Their conversation was carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which seemed likely to suit him in every way. It was adventurous, and that was a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under nobody’s orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature. He had more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and—in fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to Holland.
He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon, as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see. He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion—they seemed to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman must have a screw loose somewhere. When the dim outline of Lindesnaes became discernible at last in the far distance, there was not a palm-clad promontory in all the southern seas that could compare with it, he thought; and the pleasure he experienced was only dashed by the apprehension of what he might have to learn about Elizabeth on landing.
They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers’s unpretending lodging-house until the morning.
The following day was Sunday. And as he listened to the bells ringing, and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church—most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth’s old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand—an indescribable feeling came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see. Here passing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could not resist the temptation of joining the stream, trusting to the alteration in his appearance to save him from recognition.
Beside him, almost, there walked a respectable family—he knew well who they were—with a couple of handsome daughters, in light dresses, who had grown up since he last saw them, and a younger brother whom he did not remem
ber. The foreign, black-bearded sailor, with his fine cloth clothes, and his patent gold watch-chain, seemed to excite their curiosity; while he on his side was thinking how they would fly from him, as if a wolf had suddenly appeared in their midst, if they had any conception of the life that he had been leading for years, half-a-day of which would have filled them with more horror than they had ever imagined. They would not understand it if it was described to them, and the description would be too foul for their ears. As he quietly followed the stream up the hill, it seemed as if all the sunny houses in his beautiful native town were crying out against him, and asking whether it was possible that a man from the Stars and Stripes could be permitted to go to church as well as other people; and on entering the building he had to summon up all his self-command—he had a feeling that he was violating the sanctity of the place.
He took his seat in the last pew close to the door, and watched the people passing up the aisle. It was like a dream; they all seemed creatures of a purer world than his. The organ commenced to play, the singing was begun, and he leaned his head forward on his hands, completely overcome, and trying to conceal his sobs. In this position he remained during the greater part of the service, his past life coming up, scene by scene, before him. What a gulf he felt there was between the present condition of his mind and what it had been in the days when as a boy or lad he had gone to church like the rest. He had been familiar with more murder and blasphemy than the whole congregation together could conceive; and the simple faith he had once possessed he had been robbed of, he feared irrecoverably. His eyes flashed then with a sudden wildness as he thought who it was that had brought him to this; and it was with a deep hatred in his heart to one of the two at least, that he left the church. In a couple who were coming out at the same time, he recognised Captain Beck and his wife, and the sight added fuel to the flames. He hastened on; and was hardly to be recognised as the same man who had gone up the same way so quietly two hours before.
He had meant to go over at once to Sandvigen to see his father, but he thought that before going it would be as well to find out for certain all about Elizabeth; and his landlady seemed as likely a person to be able to satisfy him as any one. He remembered well that sharp, bright-eyed little woman, and knew that she was a regular magpie for chatter, and for repeating the gossip of the town.
At that time of the day on Sunday there were no other customers in the house, and while she was busying herself with preparations for his dinner, he asked casually if Captain Beck’s son, the one in the navy, was married?
“To be sure he is,” she replied, surprised to hear him speak Norwegian. “He has been married for—let me see—about three years.”
She looked fixedly at him.
“But who are you?” she asked; and then, as if the thought had suddenly flashed upon her, she said, “It’s never Salvé Kristiansen, who—” She stopped here, and Salvé dryly finished the sentence for her—
“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.
Salvé assured 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 Frederiksværn.”
“Elizabeth had no parents,” said Salvé, 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 passing 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 Salvé, 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 Salvé, catching her up, angrily. “Did you see her, Madam Gjers?”
“Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at Tromö 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 Salvé, 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 Salvé 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, Salvé?” 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 Salvé, 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, God 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 Salvé’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 r
ejoined 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. God 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, Salvé,” 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 brass knockers, after the usual Dutch fashion, in the lively street leading down to the dock in Amsterdam, with the canal 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.