When he announced his decision to Elizabeth, she entered with animation into the project; and when he went on to add, that she would have to be content now with being only a common man's wife, she replied, intrepidly—

"If he is only called Salve Kristiansen, I require nothing more."



CHAPTER XXIV.

It was so arranged then; and though Elizabeth was rather disappointed to hear that she was not to see her tidy house at Tonsberg again, she allowed no indication of the feeling to escape her, and Salve went by himself to arrange their affairs there.

When he had sold what property they had, and bought his pilot-boat, they had still a small sum left with which to begin housekeeping afresh, and Merdoe was chosen for their future residence.

From the outside this island looks only like one of the desolate series which form the outworks of the coast for miles here in either direction, with many a spot of angry white marking the sunken rocks between. But the inner side forms the well-known Merdoe harbour of refuge, with its little hamlet of fishermen's and pilots' houses on the strand; and it was in one of these, a little red painted house with a small porch in front and a flagged yard and garden behind, and which presently became their own, that they eventually settled.

The coast outside Merdoe is exceptionally dangerous, but the Merdoe pilots have also the reputation of being exceptionally brave and skilful. They are also perhaps the widest known. For having no defined district they take a wide range, and may to-day be lying off Lindesnaes, to-morrow under the Skaw or the Holmen, and the day after board a ship from Hamburg right away down at Horn's Reef. It is a common thing to meet one of them with his Arendal mark, his red stripe and number on the mainsail, trawling for mackerel far out over the North Sea, and even down as far as the Dogger Bank, where they get information from foreign fishing smacks of vessels from the Channel or from English or Dutch ports. If a skipper wants news from the North Sea or Skager Rack, he generally keeps a look-out for one of these pilot-boats, and finds a living shipping list, and the newest too, on board, which costs him, at the most, supposing he has nothing of interest to impart in return, a roll of tobacco, a bottle of spirits, or a strand of rope. But it is to the captain who, on some pitch-dark winter night, when the sea is running mountains high, has come in beneath bare poles under the Torungens, and who knows that he is doomed if he cannot get a pilot, that these Merdoe men are most familiar. When, perhaps, he has given up all hope, he suddenly hears himself hailed from the darkness; a line is thrown; and a dripping pilot stands upon the deck. When the sea is too rough to board a vessel in any other way, they do not think twice about taking a line round their waist and jumping overboard; and when it is a point of honour with them to bring in a ship, boat and home and life weigh but very little in the opposite scale.

The black-bearded Salve Kristiansen soon came to be the best known in Arendal of them all. The dauntless look in his keen brown eyes, his sharp features, and his short, sudden manner and way of speaking, gave the impression of a character of uncommon energy; and it was said that not the very wildest weather would deter him from going to sea. He was known to have more than once stayed alone on board a water-logged vessel while he sent his comrade on shore for help; and in his little room at home, with its white-painted windows, and geraniums, and Dutch cuckoo-clock, there stood above the roll of charts and telescope on the wall a bracket with more than one silver goblet upon it, which, like the telescope, were presents in acknowledgment of his services in piloting vessels into port under circumstances of unusual difficulty and danger. But, notwithstanding the repute in which he was held, he had never yet received the medal for saving life, nor had he yet been made a certificated pilot of the district.

He was not a man who gathered comrades round him; and as the years passed, his unapproachability of demeanour, which seemed intended to convey to people with a certain bitterness that he could do very well without them, increased. It was said up in the town that he had taken to drink. For after selling off his mackerel down on the quay, he would often now sit the whole day in Mother Andersen's parlour with his brandy-glass before him; and when evening approached, and his head had had as much as it could carry, it was just as well to keep out of his way. He did not talk much; and what attraction he found in Mother Andersen's parlour it was not easy to say. But they knew, at all events, how to treat him there; and he felt, from the casual questions that would be addressed to him after he had returned from sea, or from the way in which a newcomer would salute him, that he was in a sympathetic atmosphere, and that his name was in repute. It was even something more than respect, perhaps, which he inspired, for a sailor would think twice before sitting down beside him, unless it came natural to him to do so from the way in which they had greeted or spoken to one other.

It was not, however, any attraction which he found in Mother Andersen's parlour which made him spend so much of his time there; it was that he was afraid of his own temper at home.

When he had first set up on his own account, and had had his appointment as a duly certificated pilot for the object of his ambition, he had never made it his habit to stay in Arendal when he returned from sea instead of going home. But some two or three years after he had settled out at Merdoe, a couple of incidents had occurred which made a new starting-point, as it were, in his domestic life. They were the nomination of Captain Beck, who was now a wealthy man, to the post of master of the pilots of the district, and who, as such, became his superior; and the arrival of Carl Beck to live in Arendal and superintend his father's shipbuilding yard, for which purpose he had retired from the navy. Since the arrival of the Becks he had become more and more difficult to get on with; and Elizabeth's secret, self-denying struggle grew proportionately harder. Whenever she returned from a shopping expedition to Arendal, or from seeing her aunt, she would be sure to find him in an irritable humour, which would generally vent itself in contemptuous remarks upon old Beck's incapacity for the post he held; and at last, much as she longed to get a glimpse now and then of something different from the monotony of her daily life out on Merdoe, she gave up going altogether.

Her patience and self-suppression had had the effect, as years went on, of making a tyrant of her husband. When in one of his dark moods now, he would not tolerate the slightest contradiction from her or from any one in the house, and all she could do was to be quietly cheerful and affectionate, and to try her best to avoid falling into any of the traps which he would lay to catch her, and to make her, by some chance word or other, or even by a slightly displeased or resigned expression, give his bad humour an excuse for breaking out. She had to weigh every word she uttered, and to take the most roundabout methods of avoiding his sensitiveness, and after all, she would perhaps commit herself when she least expected it; upon which a scene would immediately ensue, that would be all the more unpleasant from his never expressing himself directly. Sometimes Salve was really desperate, and would terrify her with all kinds of threats, not against her, but against himself—and she knew he was just the man to carry them out. It had often happened that for some unlucky word of hers he had gone to sea again an hour after coming home; and once in such weather that she had not the faintest hope of ever seeing him return.

She would sit at home and weep for hours together, striving to repress the angry feelings of resentment which would rise from time to time when she thought how little return she received for all she gave; how less than little her happiness was considered; and how meagre a reward for all she had to endure were the two or three days perhaps of occasional happy calm and sunshine in her home, when she seemed to have him with her as he had been in the first early days of their married life, and when he would find it as hard to tear himself away from his home again as she knew he had often found it to return. What a heart he had in reality! She alone knew that—the others judged him only by his hard and harsh exterior. And how proud she was of him when she heard the others talking of the daring things he had done, and saw how they all looked up to him! But it was not enough. And in the dulness and loneliness of her life out there on Merdoe, she enjoyed to the full, during these many weary years, her woman's privilege of suffering for the man she loved. But it was not to be so always. Brighter days—little as she now expected them—were still in store for her.



CHAPTER XXV.

We may leave for a moment the contemplation of a domestic history lighted up at present by such few and fitful gleams of sunshine, and glance at the married life of another pair who have figured in this story, and who have not been without their influence upon whatever there may have been of tragic in its development.

The young Becks, as they were called in contradistinction to the master's family, were now among the first people in Arendal, and kept one of the best houses in the town, which they had ample means to do, for the shipbuilding business brought them in a considerable annual income. Carl Beck had lost none of his attractiveness as he grew older. His curling black hair had now an early sprinkling of grey in it, but was always arranged to the very best effect; and there was, people said, such a nobleness about him (his cleverness was undisputed) that when he rose to propose or reply to a toast, there was not a lady at the table who was not in a flutter of inward admiration. With his social advantages he could not, of course, fail to be in a position of considerable influence in the town, which again heightened his welcome in society.

But if he was thus made much of, it was not altogether the same with his wife. The estimate of her which generally prevailed, that she was so perfectly "correct," was not intended perhaps to be complimentary, but implied at the same time a recognition of her social power. She was, in fact, her husband's timepiece, and without her tact he would not have kept himself as straight as he did in the midst of the gushing welcomes which he found on all sides.

In his relations with his wife he was a pink of chivalry, never omitted the most trifling attention, and was always being complimented on being a pattern husband. Some few of the intimates of the house seemed to think, though, that there was something strange in their attitude to one another—a sort of coolness and reserve about both—and it was whispered that his wife did not appreciate him as she ought; it seemed as if the two talked together best when strangers were present. Fru Beck, too, always looked so uncommonly pale, and was so frigidly calm, that it might have been supposed she had no feelings at all; and in comparison with his overflowing warmth of nature she certainly did seem dreadfully precise and cold.

When they first came to Frederiksvaern as a young newly-married couple, her colour had been fresh, and her expression showed that she was still in love; she was then completely under the spell of his attractive warmth of manner, and felt safe in the possession of his love. It was true, a couple of failings, which contrasted strangely with the idea she had formed of him from his manly bearing, had gradually disclosed themselves—namely, an extraordinary vanity, and an almost ridiculous dependence upon the opinion of the world. But so long as his heart was in the right place, and she could feel that he loved her, these disappointments were matters of but secondary consideration to her. She felt that she even loved him all the more for these weaknesses; and she trusted to the power which she was gaining over him more and more every day to get them presently corrected.

The charming Lieutenant Beck became sought after everywhere, and his success with the ladies resulted in his having very soon established sentimental relations with nearly every member of the fair circle around him. He nearly always had a flower in his buttonhole when he came home, which had been jokingly given to him as a gage d'amour by some one or other of his admirers; he received presents from all sides; and they, in fact, laid a sort of embargo upon him as an object of general admiration.

There was nothing to say against all this—far from it; but the only person who felt left out in the cold was his own wife, who seemed to see this enthusiastic crowd gradually establishing, as it were, a prescriptive right of way between herself and her husband, and treading under foot the very flowers that should have grown only for their own two selves in the intimacy of their home. She became gradually a less animated, but was still, he thought, an interested listener, when he came home after being in the society of his lady friends, and recounted his triumphs. If this was so, she at all events began to be more particular about her own dress and appearance, and set to work now to systematically cultivate the social talent which she naturally possessed. She determined to conquer her rivals, who had the advantage of her in appearance, but were inferior to her in talent; and she succeeded. But she became naturally an object for their criticism in consequence.

The only one with whom she did not succeed was her husband. His self-love was far too much taken up with the small flatteries of all kinds, and the homage of which he was the object, to have any eyes for the very great compliment indeed which was being paid to him by his wife in the line which she had adopted. To her he was married, and therefore of her he was always sure enough.

It was from that time that she dated the influence which she usually acquired in the social circles she frequented, and which her husband's position and circumstances made it easy for her to maintain when they changed their residence to Arendal.

But those first years of their married life had not passed without a serious, and to her completely decisive, eclaircissement. It was occasioned by his relations with the wife of an officer of rank, which had become really more intimate than her pride could stand, although she knew very well that on her husband's side it was only a sort of mixture of vanity and policy that prompted his affectation of devotion. She had treated the lady with marked coldness at a party where they had met, and her husband had taken her to task for it when they got home.

Entirely wrapped up in himself as he was, it had never occurred to him that his wife could have any cause of complaint against him, and what she had been going through had been altogether lost upon him. She did not say much now in reply to his reproaches—she merely stood and looked at him in a way that made him feel rather uncomfortable, and then quietly left the room. He could hear her going with slow steps up the stairs.

An hour or so after, she came down again into the room with a light in her hand. Her expression was cold, and she did not look at him as she set about putting the room to rights for the night as usual. He tried to pacify her, begged her not to take what he had said so much to heart, and was going to put his arm affectionately round her waist, but was stopped on finding himself suddenly confronted by the deadly pale face and flashing eyes of an infuriated woman.

The time had come to speak out, and she did speak out; and Lieutenant Beck heard what he would have been very sorry to repeat to his best friend. For he felt in his heart that it was nothing but the truth, however soon he might forget it again.

She called him a pitiful wretch, who would sell her and everything they jointly prized to the first comer for a little miserable flattery. He had distributed himself to that extent among his giddy acquaintance, she went on, with a movement as if she thrust from her something she utterly despised, that there was nothing left of him for a woman with a vestige of truth or honour to pick up.

When her husband threw himself upon the sofa, and exclaimed in a sentimental tone that he was a miserable man, she repeated the last word twice in an inexpressibly contemptuous tone—

"A man!—a man!—if you had been a man, you would still have had my love—at all events a remnant of it; but now, like this light here,"—and she puffed it out,—"all is extinguished between us."

With that she left the room.

Beck sat where he was, overwhelmed and stupefied at this sudden blow which had fallen upon his domestic happiness, and with a horrible apprehension that she might have meant what she said in real earnest.

She sat in the room with her child the whole night, and he knew that he dared not disturb her.

Notwithstanding the struggle which it cost his pride, he was almost humble in his manner towards her for some days after, and warmly and cordially acknowledged that he had been in the wrong. He even tried to show her that he was in earnest by assuming for a while an altered attitude towards the ladies, and actually succeeded so far that she appeared to have forgotten that anything had occurred between them, and was just the same in her intercourse with him as before—quietly friendly that is to say, as she had been of recent years.

It never came to any real reconciliation on her side. She had seen too clearly that his nature was only that of a drifting cloud, glowing for the moment just as it was played upon by popular applause; and he was too profoundly selfish for any real earnest love to find a root in his composition, much less to give promise of a common life-growth. With his feeling and good-nature he would have treated any wife well, even if she had not made herself so necessary to him as she was; her social talent, she felt, was her great safety—it made him look up to her; and his vain nature required that she should be something to be proud of: but she was forced to acknowledge in her own heart with despair that she had been blinded by her love for him, that his nature was absolutely deficient in constancy and truth, and in every quality which she had once persuaded herself to see in him. She knew the secret about this man, so brilliant before the eyes of the world—that he was not a man. He lived and moved before her now like a defaced ideal, to which she was tied—to the end of her life. The bitterness of disappointment rankled in her mind, and was all the more poignant that she had to keep it shut up within herself and had no one to confide in. Her life had become a desert, and at the very moment when her husband would be making a brilliant little speech that called forth applause all round the table, she would seem to hear nothing but a rattle of emptiness. She always protested to her parents, when they could not understand why she looked so pale, that she was perfectly happy; and they had no reason to think otherwise, for she seemed to be well cared for in every respect. The only real interest which she possessed now in life was her son Frederick; but she brought him up with the utmost possible strictness, for she fancied she detected his father's nature over again in him.

She had always retained her warm interest in Elizabeth, and the messages which she had received from her from time to time had always given her pleasure. She had never felt so attracted towards any one since as she had been to that girl; and now after her great disappointment, Elizabeth's features, so full of character and expression, were constantly before her. She had seen her sometimes in Arendal, and thought she knew the reason why Elizabeth always seemed to avoid meeting her; for she had found once, by chance, among some old letters in one of her husband's drawers, the note which Elizabeth had written to him.

It had been no shock to her. By that time she had come to know his volatile nature, and had given up all hope of ever being more to him than another would be.

On the occasions when she had caught a glimpse of the pilot's wife in the street, she had looked searchingly into her face to try and satisfy herself whether she looked happy. But she had not been able to do so; there seemed to be something on Elizabeth's mind. And taking this impression in connection with what she heard of the pilot, of his hardness and uncompanionable temper, she thought that it was clear enough that Elizabeth too, was unhappy in her married life, and longed to have a talk with her, to know whether she herself was not the more unhappy of the two.

Nor had Fru Beck's uncommon pallor escaped Elizabeth's notice, and she also longed to have a talk again with her friend of former days; but Beck's house was for many reasons impossible ground for her. As she was standing one day with Gjert on the quay, about to start for home, Fru Beck passed a little way off, leaning on her husband's arm, and looked back with an expression so sad, and with eyes that seemed to linger so longingly, as if she had something she wanted to say, or to confide, that they nodded involuntarily to one another.

Since then they had never met, for from that time Elizabeth had scarcely ever been in Arendal.



CHAPTER XXVI.

Gjert was now ten years old; and whilst his father was sitting over his glass in Mother Andersen's parlour, he used generally to amuse himself out in the harbour with a number of the Arendal boys with whom he had struck up an acquaintanceship, and who understood very little about differences of social position.

The brown-haired, brown-eyed little lad, with his sharp, intelligent face, was the wildest of them all, and enjoyed a certain consideration among them at the same time as his father's son—an honour which he evidently thought it incumbent upon him to maintain by every kind of break-neck exploit. His proper business, of course, was to look after his father's boat in his absence; but as it was safely moored, and could be seen just as well from any of the yards in the harbour, he used generally to wait in some such conspicuous position till his friends came streaming down to the quay from school, and throwing their books down, sailed out in some punt or other to join him. Most of the boys had been expressly warned by their mothers against the reckless Kristiansen's son, but cross-trees and mast-heads became thereby only the more attractive.

Old Beck's grandson, Frederick, who was going to be a naval cadet, had fancied one day that he would escape observation from the windows at home by climbing up to join his friend at the mast-head, on the other side of the mast; but the slender spar was not sufficient to protect him from the master-pilot's keen eye, and the latter came himself on board in full grandfatherly indignation against the skipper for allowing such pranks to be played on board his craft, thrashed Gjert for being the cause of his grandson's disobedience, and told him that it was very clear what he would come to some day—that he came of a bad stock, and took after it. His own little scion, although a couple of years older than Gjert, escaped punishment altogether—the other lads, however, determining among themselves that he should have it the next time they met. And he would have had it, if Gjert, who should have been the one more particularly to desire revenge, had not unexpectedly taken his part.

It was only as they were sailing the cutter home that the pilot heard how Beck had thrashed his son, and cast his horoscope. His smurched face grew white as a sheet. But when Gjert went in to tell him how, all the same, he had taken Frederick Beck's part, his father looked at him in surprise, and then muttered something about "telling this to his mother."

Elizabeth had seen the boat pass Merdoe for Arendal the day before, and she was sitting indoors now expecting her husband, having commissioned their youngest and only other son, Henrik, to keep a look-out, and come and tell her when he saw his father coming. Henrik, however, had entirely forgotten her injunctions in the more interesting occupation of catching shrimps in one of the salt-water pools which a recent high tide had left among the rocks; and there, in the bright afternoon, over the blue and gold sea, dotted with sails, was the boat with its stripe and number already close by, standing straight in for the harbour with a flowing sheet.

With all her deep love for her husband, Elizabeth always awaited his return now with a certain dread; and as she sat there by the window with her work, in her rather foreign, Dutch style of dress, with the rays of the evening sun streaming in upon her through the geraniums, she did not look a happy woman. She was pale, and from time to time leaned her cheek for a moment on her hand, and closed her eyes with a wearied look, and then went on again determinedly with her sewing. When she heard his voice unexpectedly outside the door, she jumped up hurriedly, but stopped then with a half-frightened look, hesitating whether to go out and meet him or not.

While she hesitated the door opened, and her expression changed at once to one of cheerfulness, and apparently glad surprise.

"Well, mother, how goes it?" he cried, as he entered, in a light and cheery tone, which took in a moment a weight off her heart; "and where is the 'bagman'?"—a pet name he had for his youngest son, when he was in good humour.

Gjert's adventure with Beck's grandson had made him a different man to-day, and had immeasurably lightened for the time his wife's task; but she was very careful not to let him see that she found him any different from usual. Still, as she helped him off with his pilot-coat he noticed that her hand trembled. His attention was diverted, however, at the moment by the appearance of Henrik in the doorway, looking very frightened and conscious, and with his trousers still tucked up over his bare legs, and with the tin cup, in which he had his shrimps, in his hand.

Gjert came in now with some of the things for the house which his father had bought in Arendal, and impressing the doleful-looking "bagman" into the service, took him down with him to the boat to help him to bring up the rest. He had only given his mother a hurried kiss, as he had seen at a glance that all was right this time. When it was otherwise, he always kept by her, and, in look and manner, gave her all the help he could. He had seen from his childhood, and comprehended so much of the unhappiness of her relations with his father, that he had constituted himself her friend and support, although, at the same time, he was devoted to his father. When Gjert was in the boat, Elizabeth had a sort of security that Salve would at all events not be absolutely reckless; and Gjert always took care that she should have news of them by other pilots or fishermen from Merdoe, from the different places they put in to. If the boy was not with his father she would sometimes send him in to Arendal to look for him.

This time the pilot made a long stay at home, and during the whole time not a single domestic jar occurred. For a couple, indeed, who had been married as long as they had, such unbroken harmony would, under any circumstances, have been remarkable. Little Henrik had even had his father as a companion on one of his shrimping expeditions; and much of Salve's time had since been taken up in rigging a little brig for his delighted son.

The only point upon which a harmless little difference occurred was the question of Gjert's schooling. They were very fairly well-to-do people for their position, and his mother had one day, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to her, asked why they should not send him to school in Arendal; he would be able to lodge with her aunt there, she said. His father, however, would not hear of it, and dismissed the subject very shortly by saying that when Gjert was old enough, he intended him to go to Tergesen's rigging-loft in Vraangen and learn to rig.

His mother could not, however, so easily dismiss the ambitious scheme from her mind, and it became, a few days after, the occasion of the most violent scene which had ever yet put her strength of purpose to the test, but from which there ensued eventually the very happiest results.

A man-of-war had lately come up to Arendal from a cadet cruise to the Mediterranean, and Gjert had been allowed to go over with one of the other pilots to see her.

Apart from the sensation which her lofty rig, the shining brass stoppers protruding from her gunports, her swarm of sailors, and the sound of the shrill whistle and occasional beat of drum on board, suggestive of man-of-war discipline, created, curiosity had been further excited by some rumours which were in circulation about her cruise having been a flogging cruise; and among Gjert's friends, and indeed among the harbour people generally, she was so much the object of awe, that whenever the whistle sounded, it would darkly suggest the thought that another flogging was going to take place, and any boats that were near at the moment would sheer off to a more comfortable distance. There was just so much truth in all this that there was one very hot-tempered officer on board who was very much hated by the crew, and who had been unfortunate enough to single out for flogging just the man whom, if he had been better advised, he would have left alone—the song-maker, namely, of the ship. The result had been that ever since a mystic refrain, sufficiently significant, however, had been sung at the capstan, and had found its way on shore, where it was in the mouth now of every boy about the harbour.

Gjert's curiosity about everything connected with the vessel was unbounded, and Frederick Beck, with whom he had established a close friendship since that little affair with the other's grandfather, when Gjert had saved him from punishment, could not tell him half enough. "Fancy," he thought, "to be able to go about in a uniform all covered with gold like the officers there on board!" He could think and talk of nothing else all the time they were sailing home next day.

The wind had risen to half a gale, and they had three reefs in the mainsail. His father, who for some days past had been wandering with increasing frequency up to the flag-staff, or down to the quay, where he would stand with his hand behind his back alone, and look about him in an eager, restless way—sure signs that he was getting tired of being on land—had been up several times to look out for the boy, and was now sitting in the house, pasting together an old chart, as his son came up from the quay shouting out the new song at the top of his voice against the wind. He stopped in the porch to collect his breath to give the last stanza with effect, and husband and wife as they listened exchanged glances.

It was easy to see when he came in that he was bursting with the consciousness of having all sorts of wonderful things to relate. His mother had just laid the table for their evening meal, and as he greeted them in an off-hand sort of way, he drew a chair over to the table at the same time, that he might be ready to fall to the moment the food was set down.

"Well, Gjert," said his mother, after he had sat and looked round him for a moment or two, evidently expecting to be invited to gratify their curiosity, "were you on board?"

"Not myself; but I talked to others who had been. For that matter I saw everything that was to be seen," he assured them with a self-conscious nod, reaching over at the same time for a crust of bread—"from the topmast of the Antonia, a schooner that was lying close alongside. She barely reached up to the Eagle's bulwarks; she would just about make a long-boat for her—"

"If she was a good deal smaller," said his father, drily, completing the sentence for him, as he went over and placed the chart upon the top of the small cupboard in the corner.

Gjert began then, addressing himself to his mother, to support his assertion by a comparison of the height out of the water of the schooner's hull and of the corvette's, by assuring her that the vane at her mast-head had not reached higher than the man-of-war's mainyard, &c., but he was interrupted by his father—

"What song was that you were singing out there?"

"Oh, it was the one about the flogging cruise."

"It really was one then?" said the pilot, with a searching look at his son. He did not easily give credence to gossip of the kind.

To be addressed by his father in this interested tone was highly flattering to Gjert's self-love. It was this, in fact, that he had been eager all the time to tell them about; and he burst out now with the deepest conviction in his manner—

"That it was, father! Some say six, others nine; but that they were all flogged within an inch of their lives and put in irons down in the Mediterranean is as certain as—as," he looked about him eagerly here for something that should be duly emphatic, and when no other more striking illustration suggested itself, had to wind up finally with this rather lame one—"as that the cuckoo is standing up there on the clock."

The intelligence had the effect of bringing his mother to a seat, with the plate on her lap, while she looked apprehensively from her son to her husband. There was nothing, however, in the aspect of the latter to justify her apprehension.

"Who did you hear this from, Gjert?" she asked.

"Who did I hear it from? From everybody."

But bethinking him then that in his incredulous home "everybody" would be reckoned about as valuable an authority as "nobody," he continued—

"From Frederick Beck. He had talked himself with one of the sailors who was in charge of the officers' gig down by the landing-stairs while his chief was on shore; and that wasn't all he heard, but a lot of other queer things besides." Here he looked round him evidently with a satisfied feeling that he must have convinced them this time at any rate.

"He seems to have been a credible kind of a chap, that sailor," observed his father with a mild irony, which escaped his son, however; while his mother looked at him in some anxiety lest he should be going to sit there and make a fool of himself. "Well, and what further did he tell him?"

"Oh, lots of things."

"Let us have them."

"He said they had had such a hurricane down there, that they came across a whole town that had been blown away drifting out in the middle of the sea, with a minister praying in the midst of it;—then, that they had run so close in to the land in beating up the Straits of Gibraltar, that they had taken a palm-tree on board on the end of the bowsprit with a whole family of negroes sitting in it, whom they had afterwards to put ashore."

Gjert would have delivered himself of still another curious incident if he had not been brought up by the laughter of his parents. The "bagman" too, was laughing, because he saw the others doing so, and received a crushing look accordingly from Gjert, who drew in his horns at once.

"Perhaps you don't think it's true?"

"Do you know what it is to spin a yarn, my boy? That lad down in the gig has been spinning you a fine one," said his father, as he sat down to the table.

Gjert continued to talk all through the meal, and when it was over, while his mother came in and out of the room, and his father sat over at the window, partly listening and partly looking out at the weather. He described everything he had seen with such life and vividness, particularly all that concerned the officers and the cadets, that his mother sat down to listen, and his father, when there was a moment's pause, observed with a quiet laugh—

"I daresay you would have liked to have been one of the cadets yourself, Gjert?"

"Yes," said his mother, beguiled for a moment by the dazzling thought. "If he were only to go to school in Arendal no one knows what might happen. The clerk says that nothing is any trouble to Gjert."

Something in this observation must have struck discordantly upon her husband's ear, for he changed colour and replied shortly after, somewhat sarcastically—

"It's my opinion that Gjert is not too good for his father's station, and that we are not going to make interest with anybody to hoist him up into the company of his betters, as they call themselves."

Gjert's previous animation had been very much heightened by the picture which such a glittering prospect presented to his fancy, and he cried now, without taking warning by his father's changed tone—

"Mother was saying, though, the other day, that if I were to be a cadet I should cut a better figure in the world than as an ordinary common sailor."

It was as if a match had been thrown into a gunpowder-magazine. His father's hard face flushed up wildly, and he threw over at his wife a look of inexpressible, cold scorn. Turning savagely away, he said in a cutting tone, that seemed to go through her—

"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.

Salve 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 Tromoe 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 Salve 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 Salve 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 without waiting 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—

"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 Salve 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 Salve 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! Salve 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.

Salve 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, Salve," 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."

Salve 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, Salve," 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 Salve, and now came forward. "But you must not talk so much."

Salve'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 Salve; 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."

He left the room rather brusquely, and his face was black as thunder.

Elizabeth read his thoughts, and when they came out into the kitchen she forestalled him.

"Listen, Salve," she said; "I must, of course, stay here as long as aunt is ill."

"Of course," he replied; "and you have acquaintances here."

"You mean Fru Beck? Yes, she has been so kind to me, and I am attached to her—she is unhappily married, poor thing!"

Salve was astounded. Elizabeth seemed all in a moment to have forgotten a great deal—to have forgotten that there existed certain stumbling-blocks between them—was it perhaps because she was in her aunt's house? He looked coldly at her as if he could not quite comprehend what had come over her.

"You will remain, of course, as long as you please," he said, and prepared to go; but could not help adding with bitterness—

"I daresay you find it lonely and dull at home."

"You are not so far wrong there, Salve," she replied. "I have indeed found it lonely enough out there for many years now. You are so often away from home, and then I am left quite alone. It is two years now since I have been in here to see my aunt."

"Elizabeth," he burst out, trying hard to restrain himself, "have you taken leave of your senses?"

"That is just what I want to avoid, Salve," she said, with freezing deliberation.

He stared at her. She could stand and tell him this to his face!

"So these are your sentiments, then," he observed, scornfully. "I always suspected it; and now, for what I care, you may please yourself about coming home, Elizabeth," he continued in a cold, indifferent tone.

"You ought always to have known what my sentiments were, Salve; that I was, perhaps, too much attached to you."

"I shall send you money. You shall not have that as an excuse. So far as I am concerned, you may enjoy the society of Fru Beck and your fine friends as long as ever you please."

"And why should I not be allowed to speak to Fru Beck?" she cried, with her head thrown back, and with an expression of rising anger. "You don't mean, I suppose, that there is anything against me that should prevent my entering her house? But there must be an end to this, Salve—and it is for the sake of our love I say it; for if matters go on as they have been going on so long between us," she concluded slowly, and with a tremor in her voice, "you might live to see the day when it had ceased to exist. These things are not in our own power, Salve."

He stood for a moment still, and gazed at her in speechless amazement, while the flash of his dark keen eyes showed that a devil had been roused within him, which he had the utmost difficulty in restraining.

"I will suppose that you have said this in a moment of excitement," he said, with terrible calmness; "I shall not be angry with you—I shall forget it; I promise you that. And I think that you have not been quite yourself to-day—ill—"

"Don't deceive yourself, Salve. I mean every word—as surely as I love you."

"Farewell, Elizabeth; I shall be here again on Wednesday," he said, as if he only held to his purpose, and did not care to hear any more of this. He left her then, and shut the door quietly behind him.

When he had gone, Elizabeth sank rather than sat down upon the bench. She was frightened at what she had said. A profound dread took possession of her. She knew his nature so well, and knew that she was risking everything, that the result might be that he would leave her altogether, and take to some misguided life far away from home. And yet it must—it must be dared. And with God's help she would conquer, and bind him to her closer than ever he had been before.



CHAPTER XXIX.

As Salve stood and steered for home, he had as yet only a dull consciousness of what had occurred; but there was anger in his eye, and a hard determined look in his face. His pride had received a terrible shock. She had suddenly fallen upon him with all this on neutral ground; she had told him plainly that she had been unhappy, and that she felt she had been living under a tyranny the whole time of their married life. He smiled bitterly—well, he had been right, it seemed, all along in feeling that she was not open with him.

Yes, it was true that they had lived unhappily; but whose fault had it been? Had she not deceived him when he was young and confiding, and did not know what doubt was? And since?—he knew but too well what it had cost her to adapt herself to his humble circumstances.

He felt that the power which he had had over her for so many years was gone. It was as if she had all of a sudden set down a barrel of gunpowder on the floor of his house and threatened to blow it up. Such threats, however, would have no weight with him.

When he came to Merdoe he moored the cutter in silence—scarcely looking at Gjert, who came down to help him—and went in, without speaking, to the house, where he stood by the window for a while writing on the window-pane. It was soon quite dark outside; Gjert had lit a candle, and had sat down by the table. He understood that there was something wrong again with his mother, but did not dare to ask after her, as he was longing to do. His father, during the rest of the evening, never stirred from the corner of the bench which was his son's sleeping-place; it was made to serve the double purpose of bench and bed.

When supper-time arrived, Gjert put some food on the table. He felt that the situation somehow was dangerous, and went on his tiptoes to make as little noise as possible; but he was the more awkward in consequence, and made a clatter with the plates.

This, and the dread of him which his son showed, irritated Salve. He flared up suddenly, and burst out in a thundering voice—

"Don't you ask after your mother, boy?"

Gjert would have been frightened under ordinary circumstances, but his anxiety for his mother, for whom his heart bled, gave him courage to answer boldly—

"Yes, father; I have been wanting all the time to ask how mother was. Is she not coming? Poor mother!" and the boy burst into tears, laid his head upon his arm, and sobbed.

"Mother will come back when her aunt over in Arendal is well again," said the pilot, soothingly. But he soon broke out again.

"You have nothing to blubber for," he said; "you can go in and see her if you like t-omorrow morning the first thing. You may go now and sleep in our bed."

Gjert obeyed; and his father paced to and fro on the floor afterwards for a long while in great agitation.

"That is her game, then, is it?" he exclaimed. "She knew what she was about, and she knew who it was she was threatening."

He sat down again on the bench-bed with clasped hands, and eyes fixed on the ground. Passion was working strongly within him.

"But she does not put compulsion upon me."

The candle was expiring in the socket, and he lit another and put it in its place. It was past midnight. He remained for a little with the candlestick in his hand, and then took the light in to Gjert. The boy was lying in his mother's place, and had evidently cried himself to sleep.

His father stood for a long while over him. His lips quivered, and his face became ashy pale. He controlled himself with an effort and went back to the other room, where he sat down in the same attitude as before.

When Gjert came in in the morning, he found his father lying down on the bench with all his clothes on. He was asleep. It was evident that he had sat up the whole night. It went to the boy's heart; and he felt sorry for his father now.

The latter woke shortly after and looked at him rather confusedly at first. Then he said, gently—

"I promised you yesterday, my boy, that you should go to your mother in Arendal. I daresay she is wanting to see you."

"If mother is not ill I had rather stay here with you, father, until you go in to see her yourself. She has Henrik with her."

"You would?" said his father, in a rather toneless voice, and looking at him as if some new idea had been suggested to him by the boy's reply.

"But I wish you to go, Gjert," he said then, suddenly, in a changed tone, that admitted of no further question. "Mother took no things with her. You must take her Sunday gown, and what else you know she will want, in with you in the trunk there. It may be a long while before—before aunt is well," he said, and left the house.

While Gjert packed up the things, his father went down to the strand and got the row-boat ready himself for him.

When the boy started he stroked the child's cheek, but said a little bitterly, "Remember me to your mother now, and say that father is coming, as he promised, on Wednesday. Be careful, now, how you go. I have only given you the oars; I don't like to trust you with a sail in the boat."

He stood for some time looking after his son as he rowed sturdily away, and then went up to the look-out, where he began to walk up and down with his hands behind his back in his usual manner. His restlessness of mind, however, soon drove him back again to the house, where he remained alone nearly the whole day.

The first intensity of his anger had so far worked itself off now, that he could think clearly; and the chief feeling which possessed him was one of wonder as to what could have come over her all of a sudden like this. It could hardly be that scene which they had had when he last went to sea—it had not been the first of its kind. No—it must be something else; it must have been something which had occurred in Arendal. She had spoken of Fru Beck's unhappy married life with a certain significance, as if it bore upon their own. That was evidently it—she had been talking to Fru Beck; she must have been put up to it by her old friend.

"What gratitude I do owe these Becks!" he exclaimed; "it seems as if every trouble must come from that owl's nest."

"She has gone and thought all this at home here, concealing it from me the whole time, submitting, and saying nothing. Now she has found her opportunity. And over there, in Arendal, she could, of course, count upon being able to make her own terms against her husband, the unpopular pilot—could be sure of having every one on her side, from her aunt to these same Becks."

Yes; and what was the real history of her connection with the Becks? He had never had that matter satisfactorily cleared up.

"She stipulated that I should trust her—wouldn't hear mention of a doubt. But I have never felt satisfied about that business."

"I'll not be fooled by you any longer," he cried then, flying into a sudden passion, and striding up and down the room. "It is she who must give me an explanation; it is she who has trampled me under foot!"

He sat down at the table and pursued this train of thought.

"Elizabeth! Elizabeth! what have you done?" he whispered, presently, with emotion, and hid his forehead in his hands.

"Yes, what has she done? Nothing, I firmly believe; and that it is just you, Salve, who are mad! Ah! if I could only really believe that there was nothing to quarrel about, after all! And I can believe it, if I have only been with her for a while," he sighed; and then added with a touch of self-contempt, "the fact is, I ought never to go away from home. I am like an anchovy; I don't bear taking out of the jar!

"She was so like the old Elizabeth as she stood there and told me all this; it is years since I have seen her like that. There's not her match to be found the whole world through.

"She has told me so often that she cares for me, has always cared for me, ever since the time she was living with her grandfather out on the rock; and an untruth never came from her lips. I'd stake my life upon that.

"For truth—I believe you, Elizabeth, when you stand like that and tell me so," and he struck the table as if he was making the declaration to her face.

"But why should she care for me?" he went on. "Have her thoughts not been running always on things much beyond what I, a poor pilot, and my humble cottage can give her? Has she not always been hankering after something grand?"

During these days, while this conflict of thought was surging to and fro within him, he had the appearance of a man distraught; and if he ever left the house, he could not rest until he had returned to it again. The prolonged agitation of mind had told upon him, and he was sitting now—the day before the one when he was to go in to Arendal again—alone in his house, feeling very low and depressed; it looked so dreary and empty.

Over in the window, by the leaf-table, where she generally sat to sew, stood the polished buffalo-hoof which he had brought long ago as a curiosity from Monte Video, and had since had made into a weight for her; and by the wall, under the old print of the Naiad, was the elephant, carved out of bone, which he had also had from the time when he was roaming through the world as a sailor before the mast.

He gazed at these things for a while absently, and then went in to their bedroom.

There was the chest of drawers by the wall, on which she always placed the lacquered glass which hung in the other room, when she arranged her beautiful hair. How many a conversation they had had together as she stood there with her back to him; and what a figure she had! often answering him with merely a change of expression as she looked back at him over her shoulder. Everything in the room had some such vivid memory to suggest; and as he sat dismally on the side of their bed, adjoining which was little Henrik's, his thoughts were occupied with many a trivial recollection of the kind, which might seem almost childish in a man of his age and character, and of such a stern, black-bearded exterior; but he was anything but stern now.

Presently his eyes ceased to wander. He sat perfectly still. The conviction had seized him that he could not possibly do without her; and as he looked slowly about him a great terror seemed to be taking possession of him. He imagined that she was really gone—that in some way or another he had really lost her, and that everything in the room was standing just as she had left it, and as it would stand unmoved, undusted for ever.

"I have deserved it," he muttered; and a cold perspiration came out upon his forehead. "Have I treated her in such a way that I have any right to expect her to care for me? Is it not just my own folly that is to blame? She was right—more than right. I have behaved shamefully to her, suspiciously, and tyrannically—invariably, unceasingly; and now I may sit here long enough and repent it, to no purpose. She would not be what she is if she tamely submitted to such treatment."

He dwelt upon this last thought until the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and, acknowledging the truth at last, he broke out with bitter scorn against himself—

"The fact is, in my cursed pride I have never been able to bear the thought that she might have been better off—that I was not good enough for her, not fit for her; that is what has been at the bottom of it all: and as I would not acknowledge that, I have insisted always to myself that I could not trust her.

"Do I really believe this?" he asked himself then slowly, and fell into thought again, his face growing darker and darker every minute.

"What a good-natured booby, fool, idiot, I am!" he cried, with a scornful laugh. "No, it is she who has been false and untruthful, she who must acknowledge it, she who is bound to give me, once for all, full explanation. Yes, it is she who must bend, and then she may have some claim to hear from me what I too may have to reproach myself for in my acts or bearing towards her. That is how it is, and that is how it shall be!"

A hard, inexorable look overspread his face as he said this; but for a moment he appeared almost moved again—

"I shall speak kindly to her—be so gentle—forget everything.

"But bend she shall," he added; and that decision was evidently final.



CHAPTER XXX.

That evening was passed by Elizabeth in a terrible struggle with herself. When Gjert had brought her clothes she had turned very pale, and had felt as if she had undertaken what she would not have strength to carry through. And now that the decisive moment had nearly come, this feeling increased almost to despair.

They had all gone to bed in the house. It was so quiet about her; and a feeling came over her such as she had experienced that time on the Apollo, as she sat and waited whilst they approached the sandbanks. Early next morning the crisis would inevitably come; and it was a question now of losing more than the brig—of losing all they jointly possessed on earth! She saw a long, dreary life-strand stretching away beyond.

This time it was she who was at the helm, and steering a desperate course—to save her love. A solemn look came over her face. The prayer for seamen in danger, which she had so often used when the gusts were shaking the house out there on Merdoe, and she sat waiting for him in her solitary home, came into her head now—the prayer that God might save him from a sudden death.

A sudden death!

If he really had been lost on one of those many occasions when he had parted from her with bitterness and anger in his heart! Would her love then have been a blessing to him?

"No, Salve!" she cried; "you shall not have me to thank for such a life in your last hour!"

In the night she awoke with a scream. She had dreamt that Salve was going to leave her for ever, and she cried frantically after him, "Salve! Salve!"



CHAPTER XXXI.

His two sons were waiting for him when the pilot came up to the jetty next morning. Little Henrik had begun to shout to him gleefully while he was still some way off; but Gjert was quiet. He had seen enough to feel that there must be something serious the matter between his parents, and he was depressed.

"Good morning, boys!" said their father, kindly; "how is your—aunt?"

"Better," replied Gjert.

"She sleeps in the daytime, too," added the "bagman," triumphantly—he had discovered that this was what was required to make her well again. He then threw his cap down on the stones with a great sailor air, and with an eager "hale-hoi—o—ohoi!" began to haul in the shore-rope which his father had thrown, while Gjert, paying no attention whatever to his brother's efforts, made it fast to the mooring-ring.

"That's good lads! Stay here now, both of you, by the boat, and look after her till I come back," said their father. "See, Gjert, that Henrik doesn't leave the quay."

He left them then, and went rapidly up the street.

Elizabeth was standing by the hearth expecting him; and something of a Sunday calm seemed to have come over her as she stood there. She heard him out in the passage; and when he entered, a rapid flush passed over her fine features, but it disappeared again immediately, and she stared at him with half-open lips, forgetting to greet him. At the same time, there was a conscious self-possession in her bearing which did not escape him. That was the Elizabeth he loved.

He came to the point at once; and looking her full in the face, began with great earnestness—"Elizabeth, I have a serious accusation to make against you. You have not been frank towards me—you have disguised your real feelings from me for many years, I am afraid during the whole time we have lived together."

He spoke gently, and as though he had no desire to press the charge, but merely waited to hear her make a full acknowledgment before he forgave her. She stood, however, without raising her eyes from the ground, her face pale, and her bosom heaving.

"And yet how I have loved you, Elizabeth!—more dearly than my life," he added.

She still remained for a moment silent, and had to summon all her courage now to speak. At last she said, in a rather strained voice, and without lifting her eyes—

"I hear you say it, Salve. But I have been thinking a good deal lately."

"You have been thinking, Elizabeth?" he repeated, "what have you been thinking?" and his expression changed in a moment to the dark, stern one she knew so well. He had made his advance; further he would not go.

"Am I right, or am I not?" he asked, sharply.

"No, Salve, you are not right," she replied, turning to him now with a look that seemed fired by all she had endured; "you are not right. It is yourself, and yourself only, you have loved all along; and when you took me as your wife, you merely took another to help you. There were two about it then, and even so it was not enough. No! no!" she cried, striking out her hand with an emphatic gesture in the bitterness of her feeling—"if you had loved me as I have loved you, we would not be standing before one another as we are this day!"

He was taken aback for a moment by this unexpected outburst, but replied in a cold hard voice, while his eyes never moved from her face, "I thank you, Elizabeth, for having at last told me your thoughts, though it comes a little late. You see I was right when I said that you had not been frank towards me."

"I have not been frank with you, you say? Yes, that is true," she rejoined, while her eye met his unflinchingly. "And it is to my honour. I have submitted to be an object of suspicion in my own house. I have shut my eyes and persisted in believing that you cared for me, in spite of the heavier burden which you were every day imposing upon me—in spite of all that I have had to endure—and it has been much, very much, Salve,—and I have done all this because I believed it was my duty, and because I thought you could not bear to hear the truth, and because I hoped that I might conquer in the end, and make you really love me as I have all along, and but too well, loved you, Salve. It is true that I have not been frank with you. And, I repeat, it is to my honour."

This interpretation of their relations together was not one which he chose to accept, and he rejoined in the same hard tone as before—

"However cleverly you may have tried to conceal it, Elizabeth, it has always been but too evident to me what you have endured in trying to accommodate yourself to the humble circumstances of a man like me. I know as well as you that a common seaman was little suited to be your husband—I have always known it from the time we were first engaged, when we stood before Van Spyck's portrait in Amsterdam. That was the sort of man, I knew very well, whom you ought to have had for a husband. I saw it again, as I have seen it always, when you made comparisons between the North Star and my poor brig—"

"Salve!" she exclaimed, passionately, unable to control herself any longer—"what rubbish are you talking? Do you not know perfectly well that if you had been an admiral itself you never would have been greater in my eyes than you are now, and always have been as a simple pilot? And pray, whom was I thinking of when I was looking at Van Spyck? why, of whom but of you?—thinking that the man called Salve Kristiansen, who stood behind me, was just the one to have done what Van Spyck did. Or when I was admiring the North Star was I not thinking then too: If you, Salve, were in command of her, they would see what she could really do with a proper man on board? What possible interest do you suppose I could have in the North Star, except in connection with you? Were not you, poor skipper of the Apollo, worth more, a thousand times more to me, than a hundred North Stars with all their bravery?"

When she spoke like this it was impossible not to believe every single word of what she said, and Salve's expression while she had been speaking had gradually changed to one of inexpressible happiness. So it was really he, and he alone, who had been the hero of her life! and he stretched out his arms to her, as though, like Alcibiades of old, he would end the discussion by clasping her to his heart and carrying her straight off with him to his home. But he was arrested by the deep repelling seriousness with which she continued—

"No, Salve!—it is not which that stands between us, however ingeniously you may have discovered it—it is not that,—it is something else. It is that you don't trust me in your heart; that is the truth—and that has been the real source of all these morbid ideas you have formed.

"And look you," she went on, with wild anguish in her voice, "we shall never get on together as long as you encourage the faintest suspicion of such thoughts; we shall never have peace beside our hearth—that peace that I have been striving for all these years, when I have been submitting, as I did, to everything—in a way that you know well, Salve, was very far from natural to me," and as she said this she looked with a magnificent air at him; "and if you cannot yet understand that—may God help you—and us!" she ended in despair, and turning half away again to the fire, stared dejectedly into it.

He stood before her half-averted form as if he had been paralysed, and scarcely dared to look up at her, with such truth had all that she had said come home to him. She had held a mirror up to their life together, and he saw himself in it so utterly selfish and so small by the side of all this love. He was profoundly pained and humbled, and was too naturally truthful to wish not to acknowledge it.

He went absently to the window and stood there for a moment.

"Elizabeth," he said then, despondently, turning round, "you still must know in your heart that you have been everything in this world to me. But I know where my great fault to you has been, and I'll tell it you now, fully and freely, even if you must despise me for it. Yes, Elizabeth, it is true I have never been able to feel absolutely certain that I had full possession of your heart—though, God be praised, you have taught me differently to-day—since that time,"—it evidently cost him a struggle to go on with the humiliating confession—"since that business between you and the lieutenant. That has been the thorn in my flesh," he said, gently, as if opening his inmost heart to her, "which I have not been able to get rid of, in spite of my better reason. And I don't know but what it may still be there. There lies my weakness—I tell it you plainly and honestly; but at the same time I can't give you up, Elizabeth.

"I have always seen," he continued, "that the proper husband for you would have been a man who was something in the world—such a one as he, and not a man of no position like me. In my pride I never could bear the thought—and it is that that has made me so full of rancour against all the world, and so suspicious and bad towards you. I have not been strong enough—not like you—but I can truly say I have struggled with my weakness, Elizabeth," he said, pale with intensity of feeling, and laying both his hands on her shoulders, and looking into her face.

She felt that his arms were trembling, and her eyes filled with tears—it went to her heart to see him like this. All at once on a sudden thought she withdrew herself from his hands and went into the little room adjoining the one they were in, and opened a drawer there. She came out with the old note in her hand and held it out to him—

"That is the letter I wrote to the lieutenant the night I left the Becks'."

He looked at her a little wonderingly.

"Fru Beck gave it to me," she said. "Read it, Salve."

He looked at the large clumsy writing and spelt out—

"Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to another.—Elizabeth Raklev."

He sat down on the bench and read it over again, while she bent over him, looking now at the writing, and now at his face.

"What do you find there, Salve?" she asked. "Why could I not be Beck's wife?"

"'Because my heart is given to another,'" he answered, slowly, and looking up at her with moistened eyes.

"Not yours; it is I who loved another. And who was that other?"

"God bless you—it was me!" he said, and drew her down upon his knee into a long, long embrace.

* * * * *

The boys had become tired of waiting down at the boat, the "bagman" especially, since it was clearly past dinner-time; the bell had rung over at the dry-dock, and the town boys had already passed from school. His white head and heated face appeared now at the kitchen-door, and with scarcely a glance over to where his father and mother were sitting on the bench together looking very happy, he turned at once to the hearth and became aware of the sad fact that there was positively no porridge to be seen; there was not even a fire. Coming bodily into the room, he asked, with tears in his voice—

"Have you had dinner? Are Gjert and I not to have any, then?"

His mother sprang up. "And aunt!" she exclaimed. "I declare it is half-past one, and no dinner put down!" Henrik was glad to find that the worst danger was over.

Mother Kirstine had conjectured that there must be something particular going on between the pair in the kitchen, and that was the reason she had not called Elizabeth. When the latter now came in, she looked at her inquiringly, and asked if anything had happened.

"The happiest thing of my whole life, aunt," said Elizabeth, coming over to the bed and embracing her impetuously. She hurried back then to her business in the kitchen.

The old woman looked after her, and nodded her head a couple of times slowly, thoughtfully. "No—so?"

"He is joking with little Henrik," she said then to herself. "That is wonderful: I have never heard him laugh before."

When they went to dinner in the kitchen Salve left them—he was not hungry—and came in to her. He had a great deal to say, and was a long while away.



CHAPTER XXXII.

It was an afternoon in the following winter in the pilot's home. His wife was expecting him, and kept looking uneasily out of the window. He was to have been home by noon, and it was now beginning to get dark; and the weather had been stormy the whole of the previous day.

She gave up sewing, and sat thinking in the twilight, with the light playing over the floor from the door of the stove, where a little kettle was boiling, that she might have something warm ready for him at once when he came. It was too early to light a candle.

Gjert was at school in Arendal, living at his aunt's; and Henrik was sitting by the light from the stove, cutting up a piece of wood into shavings.

"It is beginning to blow again, Henrik," she said, and put a handkerchief round her head to look out.

"It is no use, mother," he pronounced, without stirring, and splitting a long peg into two against his chest; "it's pitch-dark, isn't it?" So she gave it up again before she got to the door, but stood and listened; she thought she had heard a shout outside.

"He is coming!" she cried, suddenly, and darted out; and when Salve entered the porch from the sleet squall that had just come up, with his sou'wester and oilskin coat all dripping, he found himself, all wet as he was, suddenly encircled in the dark by a pair of loving arms.

"How long you have been!" she cried, taking from him what he had in his hands, and preceding him into the house, where she lit a candle. "What has kept you? I heard that you had taken a galliot up to Arendal yesterday, and thought you would have been here this morning. It was dreadful weather yesterday, Salve; so I was a little anxious," she continued, as she helped him off with his wet oilskin coverings.

"I have done well, Elizabeth," he said, looking pleased.

"On the galliot?"

"Yes, and I had a little matter to arrange in Arendal, which kept me there till after midday."

"You saw Gjert, then?"

"I did." He looked a little impatiently towards the door.

"And he is well?"

"He can tell you now, himself," was the reply, as the door at the moment opened and Gjert entered with a loud "Good evening, mother!"

She sprang towards him in astonishment, and threw her arms round him. "And not a dry stitch on the whole boy!" she cried, with motherly concern.

"But, Salve dear, what is the meaning of this? How can the boy come away from school?"

"When we have changed our clothes and warmed ourselves a little, I'll tell you, mother," answered the pilot, slily. "He will be at home with you the whole week."

Gjert was evidently ready to burst with some news or other, but he had to restrain himself until his father had taken his seat by the fire that was crackling brightly on the hearth in the kitchen, and had leisurely filled his pipe, and taken two or three pulls at it.

"Now then, Gjert," he said, "you may tell it. I see you can't keep it in any longer."

"Well, mother!" he exclaimed, "father says that I shall be an officer in the navy; and so he has taken me from school and is going with me to Frederiksvoern next week."

Henrik's mouth opened slowly, while Elizabeth, who was stirring the porridge, suspended that operation, and looked in something like alarm at her husband.

"What do you mean, Salve?"

"Wouldn't it be a fine thing, don't you think, to see the boy come home to you some day in a smart uniform, Elizabeth? You have always had a turn for that sort of thing," he added, jokingly. "And since you couldn't go in for it yourself,—as they don't take womenfolk in the navy—and it was not much in my line either,—why, I thought we could make the experiment with Gjert."

"Are you really in earnest, Salve?" she asked, looking at him still in suspense.

He nodded in confirmation.

"Well, if it is your father's wish, may—may God prosper you in it, my boy!" she said, going over to Gjert and stroking his forehead.

"So—now you may take your joiner's bench into the room again, Henrik; you can talk with Gjert in there—that is to say, if he will condescend now to answer a common man like you—tell him you will be a merchant captain, and earn as much as two such fellows in uniform. Mother and I can then enjoy a little peace from you here in the kitchen."

When they were alone, Elizabeth asked—

"But how has it all happened, Salve?"

"Well, you see, I had taken the idea into my head about Gjert that he should become something a little better than his father had been, and so I went up to the Master, to Beck, and asked what I must do to push the thing. Yes; and I spoke to young Fru Beck too."

"Salve! did you go to Beck?"

"Yes, I did—the boy must be pushed; and into the bargain, I half begged his pardon for the way I used to turn the rough edge of my tongue on him—and so we were reconciled. He is a fine old fellow in reality, and I have wronged him. He said he had never forgotten that I had saved the Juno for him, and that he had intended to put me one day in command of her. While we were talking, young Fru Beck came in, and when she heard what we were speaking about, she showed the greatest interest at once. You were an old friend of hers, she said; and she thought we might get Gjert into the Institute there free, when he had been up for an examination in the summer. She knew some of the officials who would be able to get it done; and if the Master wrote," he continued, a little consciously, "that I was neither more nor less than a remarkable pilot who ought to be salaried by the State, the thing would be as good as done. So the Master wrote the application for me there and then."

"See that!" cried Elizabeth.

"Ay, and he wrote a testimonial from himself underneath. I hadn't an idea that I was such a fine fellow," he laughed.

"You see," she cried, looking at him proudly, "it comes at last. He acknowledges it now."

"Well, if we don't manage the thing that way, Salve Kristiansen will be able nevertheless to work it out of his own pocket—for worked it shall be, mind you. It won't be done for nothing; but we have something in the savings bank, and the rest will come right enough.

"It will be just as well that I should have something to drive me out of the house occasionally, for otherwise I should get too fond both of it and of you, Elizabeth," he said, and drew her towards him. "I must have a little rain and storm now and again—it's my nature, you know. And the Master must not be made to have written lies about me."

His wife looked at him. A glow of deep feeling overspread her handsome features.

"How happy we have become, Salve!" she exclaimed. "If it could only have been like this from the very beginning!"

"I have thought over that, Elizabeth," he said, seriously. "There has been One at the helm who is cleverer than I, for there was a deal of bad stuff to be knocked out of me after I returned from that foreign life. You, poor woman, were the chief sufferer by it, I am afraid."

"And it was I, Salve, who was the chief cause of it all," she replied.

THE END