The Pilot and his Wife: Chapter 18

Chapter 18

An opportunity offered almost immediately for taking a passage home with
the Tonsberger before alluded to, and Salv� gladly availed himself of
it, calculating upon being taken off by one of the pilot boats off the
coast of Arendal.

It was with a strange deep feeling that he once more trod the deck of a
home vessel, and as he went about and listened to the people's talk,
felt himself an object for their curiosity. The southern brown of his
face, the foreign cut of his clothes, and his whole exterior, marked him
as coming from a much higher condition of sailor life than any with
which they were acquainted, and he passed for an Englishman or an
American; for he purposely avoided being recognised by them as a
countryman, and had made his agreement with the skipper in English.

It was certainly a long time since he had been on board a craft so
miserably found in every way as this leaky old galliot was. She had been
bought by auction for a small sum at F�rder; and in shape resembled an
old wooden shoe, in which her skipper venturesomely trudged across to
Holland through the spring and winter storms, calculating that he and
his crew could always lash themselves to something to avoid being washed
overboard; that their timber cargo would keep them afloat; and that as
long as the rigging held they could sail. He carried no
top-gallant-mast, so as not to strain her; her sails were all in holes,
as if they had been riddled with bullets; and where ropes had broken in
the rigging, they had been tied in clumsy knots, instead of being
spliced in proper sailor-like fashion. There was not much to boast of in
the way of navigation either; the captain keeping his log by the simple
method of spitting over the side, or throwing a chip of wood overboard,
and making his calculations according to the pace it drifted past. The
food, too, was on a par with all the rest, and the cook could be heard
beating the dried fish with the back of an axe to make it tender. Salv�
seemed to have dropped all at once into home life and ways again.

The crew were dressed in thick winter clothing, and had the appearance
of navvies rather than of sailors, but they were all fearless,
hardy-looking fellows, as most of the men who risk their lives on these
timber vessels are; and what immediately struck him with a feeling of
pleasure, was the honest expression which every countenance, without
exception, wore. It was long since he had seen a sight of the kind, and
he felt ashamed of himself for going about with his knife ready to hand,
as had been his custom for so many years, and put it away in his chest
the very first day. He took a pleasure in leaving his watch and money
out on the top where they might easily have been taken, and was filled
with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.

He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was
now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had
that she had been long ago married to young Beck. His thoughts kept
returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the
skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to
post himself up generally in all particulars. Their conversation was
carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at
all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which
seemed likely to suit him in every way. It was adventurous, and that was
a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under
nobody's orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature. He had
more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and--in
fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to
Holland.

He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed
so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon,
as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see.
He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his
teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion--they seemed
to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he
exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman
must have a screw loose somewhere. When the dim outline of Lindesnaes
became discernible at last in the far distance, there was not a
palm-clad promontory in all the southern seas that could compare with
it, he thought; and the pleasure he experienced was only dashed by the
apprehension of what he might have to learn about Elizabeth on landing.

They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he
arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers's
unpretending lodging-house until the morning.

The following day was Sunday. And as he listened to the bells ringing,
and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the
street in their best clothes to church--most of them he recognised, and
among them Elizabeth's old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book
and her white folded handkerchief in her hand--an indescribable feeling
came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see. Here
passing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had
once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and
when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could not resist
the temptation of joining the stream, trusting to the alteration in his
appearance to save him from recognition.

Beside him, almost, there walked a respectable family--he knew well who
they were--with a couple of handsome daughters, in light dresses, who
had grown up since he last saw them, and a younger brother whom he did
not remember. The foreign, black-bearded sailor, with his fine cloth
clothes, and his patent gold watch-chain, seemed to excite their
curiosity; while he on his side was thinking how they would fly from
him, as if a wolf had suddenly appeared in their midst, if they had any
conception of the life that he had been leading for years, half-a-day of
which would have filled them with more horror than they had ever
imagined. They would not understand it if it was described to them, and
the description would be too foul for their ears. As he quietly followed
the stream up the hill, it seemed as if all the sunny houses in his
beautiful native town were crying out against him, and asking whether it
was possible that a man from the Stars and Stripes could be permitted to
go to church as well as other people; and on entering the building he
had to summon up all his self-command--he had a feeling that he was
violating the sanctity of the place.

He took his seat in the last pew close to the door, and watched the
people passing up the aisle. It was like a dream; they all seemed
creatures of a purer world than his. The organ commenced to play, the
singing was begun, and he leaned his head forward on his hands,
completely overcome, and trying to conceal his sobs. In this position he
remained during the greater part of the service, his past life coming
up, scene by scene, before him. What a gulf he felt there was between
the present condition of his mind and what it had been in the days when
as a boy or lad he had gone to church like the rest. He had been
familiar with more murder and blasphemy than the whole congregation
together could conceive; and the simple faith he had once possessed he
had been robbed of, he feared irrecoverably. His eyes flashed then with
a sudden wildness as he thought who it was that had brought him to this;
and it was with a deep hatred in his heart to one of the two at least,
that he left the church. In a couple who were coming out at the same
time, he recognised Captain Beck and his wife, and the sight added fuel
to the flames. He hastened on; and was hardly to be recognised as the
same man who had gone up the same way so quietly two hours before.

He had meant to go over at once to Sandvigen to see his father, but he
thought that before going it would be as well to find out for certain
all about Elizabeth; and his landlady seemed as likely a person to be
able to satisfy him as any one. He remembered well that sharp,
bright-eyed little woman, and knew that she was a regular magpie for
chatter, and for repeating the gossip of the town.

At that time of the day on Sunday there were no other customers in the
house, and while she was busying herself with preparations for his
dinner, he asked casually if Captain Beck's son, the one in the navy,
was married?

"To be sure he is," she replied, surprised to hear him speak Norwegian.
"He has been married for--let me see--about three years."

She looked fixedly at him.

"But who are you?" she asked; and then, as if the thought had suddenly
flashed upon her, she said, "It's never Salv� Kristiansen, who--" She
stopped here, and Salv� dryly finished the sentence for her--

"Who deserted from Beck at Rio?--the same."

Madam Gjers was agog with curiosity, and whispered, "I'll say
nothing--you may trust me;" and waited eagerly then for further
particulars which she might take the first opportunity of retailing.

Salv� assured her that he knew of old that a secret was always safe with
her, and resumed then absently--

"So the lieutenant is married?"

"This long while," she replied. "The wedding was at the house of the
bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksv�rn."

"Elizabeth had no parents," said Salv�, rather impatiently.

"Elizabeth?--oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them.
That is quite another story," she said, significantly. "No, the
lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter. The other was
just a passing fancy--the end of it was that she had to go to Holland,
poor thing! It was said she had got a place there."

"Do you know anything for certain of this?" asked Salv�, severely, and
with an earnestness that put the little madam out of countenance, and
made her be careful of her words.

"It was all done very secretly, that's true," she replied. "But she went
away in the greatest possible hurry, and the affair was well enough
known, more's the pity--known and forgotten now, one may say."

"What was known?" asked Salv�, catching her up, angrily. "Did you see
her, Madam Gjers?"

"Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at
Trom� at the time; and there was just very good reason for--"

"Then neither you nor any one else who wants to take away her character
know a jot more about the business than what you have chosen to invent,"
said Salv�, fiercely and contemptuously; for although he had slain
Elizabeth himself in his heart, he must still defend her against the
attacks of others. He felt quite sick and faint.

"I happen to know the rights of the case," he said, with a short laugh,
looking her coldly and sharply in the face, "and--" he sprang up
suddenly here, and striking the table violently with his fist--"and I
don't taste another morsel in such a scandal-mongering house," he cried.
"Do you understand, madam? Be good enough to take what is owing to you
out of that," and flinging down a handful of silver on to the table, he
sprang over it, and proceeded to drag his chest down-stairs himself.

Madam Gjers exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of
which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from
every creature in the town; but Salv� was unappeasable, and slinging his
chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with
the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. For
the present, however, he remained sitting upon the chest, gazing out
abstractedly over the harbour.

The result of his reflections was that he gave up his idea of plying to
Holland.

He took a boat to Sandvigen, but while they were on the way, he suddenly
made the boatman change his course, and put in to the slip on the other
side of the harbour. He must talk to Elizabeth's aunt. There was
something in his mind all the time that wouldn't let him altogether
believe the worst.

When he went in to the old woman, she recognised him at once.

"How do you do, Salv�?" she said, quite calmly. "You have been a long
while away--half a century almost."

She offered him a chair, but he remained standing, and asked abruptly--

"Is it true that Elizabeth--left Beck's like that--and went to Holland?"

"How do you mean like that?" she asked, sharply, while her face flushed
slightly.

"As people say," replied Salv�, with bitter emphasis.

"When people say it, a fool like you of course must believe it," she
rejoined, derisively. "I don't understand why you want to come here to
her old aunt for information when it seems you have so many other
confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something
different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that
she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have
been away, gadding about, God knows where, in the world. It's true
enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it
was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of
the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in
Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law."

A wild gleam of joy broke over Salv�'s features for a moment, but they
relapsed almost immediately into gloom.

"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then?" he asked.

"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a
hair's-breadth from the truth. "She allowed herself to be betrayed into
saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have
him. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said
'no' to you."

"So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically. "The 'yes' and
'no' meant that the Becks wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, and
bundled her out of the house over to Holland; and you want me to believe
it was for my sake she went. God knows," he added, sadly, and shaking
his head slowly, "I would willingly believe it--more willingly than I
can say; but I can't, Mother Kirstine. You are her aunt, and want of
course to--"

"I'm afraid it is your misfortune, Salv�," she broke in severely, "not
to have it in your power to believe thoroughly in any one creature upon
this earth; you'll be always doubting, always listening to folks' talk.
With the thoughts you have now in your mind, you have at any rate no
business any longer inside my door. But there is one thing I'll ask of
you," she said, with a look of mildly impressive earnestness in her
strong, clever face. "I know Elizabeth's nature well, and don't you
attempt to approach her or try to win her as long as you have a trace of
those doubts about her in your heart--it would only bring unhappiness to
both of you."

He looked dejected; and as he said good-bye to her, offered to take her
hand. But she would not give it to him, and merely added instead--

"Remember that it is an old woman who has seen a good deal in the world
who tells you this."

He went away then; and while he was being rowed across to Sandvigen he
changed his mind again, and determined that his plan of plying to
Holland should be carried out.

Back to chapter list of: The Pilot and his Wife