The Jonas Lie Megapack: 14 Classic Novels and Stories Page 31

  “Do you also despise your father’s station, my boy?”

  When Gjert blundered out then in his eagerness—

  “Frederick Beck is going to be a cadet,” it was followed simply by—

  “Come here, Gjert!”—and he received a blow that sent him staggering against the table. A second was about to follow, when his father happened to look up at his wife. She had sprung a couple of steps forward, as if to take Gjert from him, and was standing now before him with crimson face and flashing eyes, and with a bearing that made him, at all events, lower his hand. She then turned away at once, and went out into the kitchen.

  Salvé stood for a moment uncertain how to act. Then he went to the kitchen door, and announced, shortly and sharply, that he and Gjert were going to sea that evening—they would want provisions.

  The wind and rain beat wildly against the black window-panes while Elizabeth was carrying out his orders; but when she presently came in with the ale-jar and what else they were to take with them, not a trace of anxiety, or of her former emotion, was to be detected. Her face was pale, and stony-calm; and there was something almost humble in her bearing towards her husband. But when, for a moment, she and Gjert were left alone together in the house, drawing him hastily towards her, she whispered, in a voice choked with repressed emotion—

  “Never let your father see that you are afraid, my boy.”

  She bade her husband farewell at the door; and there was foul weather both within and without the pilot as he put to sea that evening.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Elizabeth was more agitated even than usual after a scene of this kind. When he had struck her son, her indignation had almost mastered her; and it frightened her now to think how near she had been to an explosion. This time the so-often-repeated excuses which she had accustomed herself to make for him would not suggest themselves; and as she lay awake in the stillness of the night, and looked back through the years that were gone, it seemed as if she was struggling and labouring on for ever without any prospect of getting nearer to the goal, and that her patience was wellnigh exhausted. Had she no claim at all to consideration? or must she be for ever silent like this, till one of them should at last be laid in Tromö churchyard?

  These thoughts, having been once roused, would not be repressed again. They held possession of her during the following day too; and she could settle down to no work of any kind. She dreaded that Salvé might unexpectedly return, and did not know how she should receive him,—she no longer felt sure of being able to control herself. Her own house had all of a sudden become confined and suffocating, as if it were a prison in which she had sat for years: it seemed as if she could bear this way of living no longer.

  On one of the following days a neighbour came in with a message from her aunt. She was ill, and wished Elizabeth to come and see her.

  Leaving word, accordingly, for Salvé when he returned, where she was gone, she took Henrik with her, and set out at once for Arendal. It was almost a relief to think that she would be away this time when he came home.

  That old Mother Kirstine should be laid up, was, in its way, an event in the place. Having been professed sick-nurse for so many years, she was connected by ties of grateful recollection with a number of families. Men who were now fathers themselves remembered well her face bending over them when as children they had tossed about in measles or fever; and when any more serious illness now occurred in any of their households, she appeared upon the scene as a matter of course withoutwaiting to be sent for. And it was a comfort in itself to see that strong, self-possessed old woman, with her quiet experienced tact and untiring faculty of keeping awake, moving about the sick-bed, and giving her directions with a confidence that brooked no contradiction. Her position, in fact, was such, that when a new doctor arrived he soon perceived that the first thing he had to do, if he was to have any reputation in the town, would be to win the confidence of old Mother Kirstine.

  Young Fru Beck, amongst others, had constantly sent to inquire after her; and when she heard that Elizabeth was there, she could not resist the opportunity of going to see her.

  It was one evening before dinner—Mother Kirstine had fallen into a quiet sleep, and Elizabeth was sitting by her bedside, when she saw Fru Beck pass the window. Elizabeth knew she would come in, and sat with beating heart waiting for her knock at the door.

  Fru Beck must have stood a long while in the porch, for some minutes passed before the latch was stirred. Elizabeth went softly out and opened the door.

  They stood face to face. Elizabeth’s eyes were full of tears, but Fru Beck’s feelings were not at that moment so easily expressed. She silently pressed Elizabeth’s hand, and her manner, and the expression of her pale face, showed that she was not the less moved of the two at their meeting again.

  Elizabeth showed her into Mother Kirstine’s comfortable little kitchen, where a saucepan of broth for her sick aunt was simmering over the fire. She invited her visitor to take a seat. It was so quiet that they could hear the watch ticking in the next room where her aunt was sleeping.

  Neither spoke for a moment or two. Then Fru Beck asked in a low voice—

  “How is your aunt, Elizabeth?”

  It was a natural question to ask under the circumstances, but it was felt by both to be only a preliminary breaking of the ice; she had, besides, sent a messenger that morning already to make inquiries.

  “Thank you, Fru Beck, she is improving,” Elizabeth replied. “She is asleep now, and that will do her good.”

  “It is a long time since we saw each other—nearly eighteen years,” said Fru Beck, and her eyes dwelt upon Elizabeth as if to find what traces time had left upon her. “But you have kept strong, I see—stronger than I have.”

  “It was that morning I left for Holland,” said Elizabeth, seeming to recall it with a certain pleasure.

  “I have often thought of that time,” whispered Fru Beck, more to herself almost than to the person she was talking to. Her lip trembled slightly, and Elizabeth read an expression of mute sorrow in her face. She was on the point of telling Elizabeth that she knew the reason of her going; but after debating for a moment within herself whether she should or not, finally let it pass.

  “Ah! if we could only see into the future, Elizabeth!” she exclaimed with a sigh, and looked sadly at her, as if she thought she had given expression to a feeling that must be common to them both.

  “It is better as it is, Fru Beck. Many things happen in life that would not be so easy to bear if we were cast down beforehand.”

  “Yes; but one could guard one’s self,” whispered Fru Beck, with a certain bitterness and hardness in her voice.

  Elizabeth made no reply, and there was a pause, which seemed to Fru Beck to have broken the thread of the conversation. She deliberated how she should take it up again so as to get at what she wanted to say, and taking Elizabeth’s hand with sudden warmth, she said—

  “If there is anything your aunt wants, you know, I hope, that she has only to send to me.” She would rather have made Elizabeth herself the object of her interest instead of her aunt, but felt that there was much in the relations in which they had stood to one another to make that impossible; but her meaning was just as clear.

  “And for yourself, Elizabeth?” she went on, looking searchingly into her eyes, with an expression of deep sympathy. “All is not right with you: I am afraid your marriage has not been a happy one.”

  These last words brought a sudden flush into Elizabeth’s face, and she involuntarily withdrew her hand.

  She looked at Fru Beck with an expression of wounded pride, as if it was a subject she declined to discuss.

  “That is not the case, Fru Beck,” she replied. “I am”—she was going to say “happily,” but preferred to say—“not unhappily married.” She felt that that sounded rather weak, and added—<
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  “I have never loved, never wished for, any one but him who is now my husband.”

  “I am overjoyed to hear it, Elizabeth, for I had heard otherwise,” said Fru Beck, with some embarrassment—and there was another pause. She felt from Elizabeth’s manner and bearing that she had wounded her self-esteem; and this last unlucky speech, she was afraid, had made matters worse.

  There was a movement in the adjoining room, and Elizabeth was glad of an occasion to break the rather painful silence, and went in to her aunt for a moment.

  Fru Beck looked after her with a rather surprised, but an unsatisfied, expression; she must have been mistaken: but still, happy in her home Elizabeth could scarcely be. And yet, she thought bitterly, what a gulf there was between them! She, at all events, loved her husband.

  When Elizabeth returned, Fru Beck, with the idea of effacing the impression she had already produced, and to satisfy, at the same time, her own longing to open her heart to somebody, said—

  “You must not be offended at what I said, Elizabeth. I thought that others might have sorrow too.”

  “We all have our burden, and often it is very hard to bear,” rejoined Elizabeth. She understood very well what Fru Beck’s words had meant, and looked at her compassionately; but she avoided answering directly to what she thought had been blurted out unintentionally, and said—

  “You have a son. That should be a great happiness, Fru Beck, and much to live for.”

  “To live for!” she exclaimed—“to live for! I will confide to you something that no one but you now knows. I am dying—dying every day. No one knows as well as I do myself how much is left of me. It is little, and it will soon be less.” She spoke in a cold, pale kind of ecstasy. “You are the only creature I have told this to—the only one on this earth I really care about; hear it and forget it. And now, adieu,” she said; “if we ever meet again in this world, don’t let the subject be mentioned between us.” She felt blindly for the door, and opened it.

  “Every cross comes from above, and the worst of all sins is to despair,” said Elizabeth, with an attempt at consolation; she said what most readily occurred to her at the moment.

  Fru Beck turned at the door, and looked back at her with a white, calm, joyless face.

  “Elizabeth,” she said, “I found this in one of my husband’s drawers. I tell it you, that you may not think that that has been in any way the cause of my spoilt life.”

  She took from her pocket a scrap of paper, yellow with age, and handed it to her. The door closed behind her then, and she was gone.

  Elizabeth sat still for a long while in sad distress, thinking of her. Now she understood why Fru Beck was so pale. She had not a wrinkle in her face—it looked so noble; but oh how cold, how pinched it had become! Poor, poor woman! her burden was indeed a heavy one. It would have been difficult to recognise Marie Forstberg again in her.

  “That, then, it is to have married unhappily,” she said to herself. She seemed to have gazed into some terrible abyss.

  Her friend’s sorrows continued to occupy her thoughts as she sat by her aunt’s bedside; and when at last her feelings of compassion had calmed down, another point in their conversation that had been hitherto thrown into the background came into increasing prominence. It lay in the words that had so suddenly and grievously wounded her.

  “So, that is what the world says of us,” she thought: “that our marriage has been unhappy.”

  She had time and solitude enough, while tending her patient and sitting up with her, to ponder the matter; and as she thought over her married life, and contemplated unflinchingly the constant, weary, fruitless struggle in which it had passed, and in which she had not advanced one single step, but rather had been going always, always back, more and more, she asked herself, could she say that there was happiness in a life like that? And was Salvé himself happy? She saw him before her as he was in his early youth, and as he was now—gloomy, savage, and suspicious in his home; she thought how she welcomed him always with disguised dread instead of with a wife’s joy, how they had last parted, and what feelings she had since entertained; and she dwelt long and bitterly upon the contrast. To think that it should have come to this between them! She began with dread to reflect, “Perhaps this is what they mean by an unhappy marriage.” It had never occurred to her before that such a thing could be said of her—of her, who had married the man whom of all others in the whole world she wished to marry.

  She sat on far into the night with her hands folded on her knee, and gazing straight before her, the night-light from the glass behind the bed throwing its faint light over the room. Fru Beck’s words, as she stood there so pale, and told her of her unhappiness, recurred to her again and again, more distinctly, it seemed, each time. “I am dying every day. I know best myself how much is left of me. It is very little, and will soon be less.”

  It seemed then all in a moment to flash upon her—

  “That is just how Salvé and I are living. We are wasting away—we are dying every day beside each other. That is what people do who are unhappily married.”

  She sat for a long while, with her head bent forward, sorrowfully engrossed with this thought. In all the self-sacrifice she had practised, because she thought he could not bear to hear the truth, she saw now nothing but one long corroding lie. It was owing to the want of confidence in each other, of mutual candour—to their both having shunned the truth, the only sure ground of happiness, that their life together had been thus spoilt. She threw back her head with a look of wild energy in her face, and never had she looked more handsome than now, as she exclaimed decisively—

  “But there shall be an end of this! Salvé and I shall no longer make a desert of each other’s life!” and she rose from her chair in great agitation.

  “What are you saying, Elizabeth?” asked her aunt, whom she had unconsciously awakened.

  “Nothing, dear aunt,” she answered, and bent over the invalid with a cup of broth, which she had been keeping warm over the night-light.

  “You look so—so happy, Elizabeth.”

  “It is because you have slept so well, aunt; and if you drink this you will go to sleep again.”

  There was a quiet smile on her lips now, and her whole bearing was changed. The burden of years was taken off her heart. At last the chilling, heavy, bewildering fog which had enclosed her whole life, making every footstep, every thought, every joy uncertain, had lifted, and she could clearly see her way.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  Salvé had been lucky; he had piloted an English bark into Hesnaes, and his services had been liberally acknowledged. He had, as usual, looked forward with dread to coming home again; but when he found his wife not there, and heard the reason, he had set off at once for Arendal to see after her.

  She received him out in the passage.

  “Good morning, Salvé,” she said, shaking hands with him. “I have been anxious about you, as you may suppose, and have been expecting you. You mustn’t make a noise—come this way,” and she showed him into the room at the side. “Where is Gjert?”

  He looked at her in surprise; this was not her usual way of receiving him. There was a confidence in her tone, as if she had taken upon herself to call him to account for his absence. It had hitherto been he always who had taken the initiative and been in a gracious humour or not, according as it pleased him.

  “Gjert,” he answered, rather shortly, “is at home in the house. So you have been anxious about me—expected me?” he added, in a peculiar tone, as if he found something to remark upon in this way of addressing him, but deferred comment for the present.

  “Why, you know, goodman, that it can’t be the same to me if you are lost out there at sea.”

  “How is your aunt?” he asked, abruptly. “Is she seriously ill?”

  “She can see you. Come in with me, but
step gently.”

  Salvé felt that he could not very well refuse, and followed her. He had always, as far as possible, avoided seeing Mother Kirstine, and had left his wife to represent him in that quarter. He was afraid of the penetrating eyes which the old woman turned upon him, and had never forgotten the warning she had given him not to go near Elizabeth as long as he harboured a doubt against her in his heart.

  It was with great deference that he now approached her bedside.

  “Oh, it’s you, Salvé,” she said, in a weak voice. “It’s not often I have a sight of you. Elizabeth has been such a blessing to me; and Henrik is so quiet and good. Where is Gjert? Have you not brought him with you?” And her eyes wandered in search of the boy.

  “He is at home taking care of the house, aunt. How are you?”

  “Oh, thanks—as you see. I think so often what will become of that boy; he is so wild, but with such a good nature, poor fellow!”

  “Oh, we shall make something of him, you’ll see,” said Elizabeth, who had been standing behind Salvé, and now came forward. “But you must not talk so much.”

  Salvé’s face grew stern; this was the most unfortunate topic which could have been suggested. And matters were presently made worse by Mother Kirstine saying, when there was a pause—

  “You looked so glad last night, Elizabeth! Who was it that was sitting with you talking yesterday?”

  “It was Fru Beck.”

  “The young one?”

  “Yes. But you talk too much, aunt.”

  “I am afraid so too,” thought Salvé; and as he saw Elizabeth, as if nothing had happened, motioning to him now to come away, he controlled himself for the moment, and said a little constrainedly—

  “You will be quite well, aunt, I hope, by the time I come again perhaps in a few days. Good-bye till then.”