The Pilot and his Wife: Chapter 20

Chapter 20

When Madam Garvloit had made some excuse next morning to leave the two
alone together in her sitting-room, Salv� took out of his pocket a small
parcel, and opening it deliberately, said, with a certain solemnity--

"Five years ago, Elizabeth, when I was in Boston, I bought these rings."
He took them out of the paper, and laid them in her hand. "I have had a
good deal to bear since, but you see I have kept them all along
notwithstanding."

She threw her arms round his neck, hid her face upon his breast, and he
could feel that she was crying. She tried them on then, both on the same
finger, and holding up the hand to show him, said--

"That is the first ring I ever possessed."

A shadow passed across his face, and it flushed slightly; and she only
then perceived what connection of ideas her remark might have suggested.

He had three days to spare before he was obliged to be back at
P�rmurende on board the old brig of which he was now master, and with
which, patched and leaky though she was, after his sailor's pride had
been overcome, he had grown to be well satisfied enough--more
particularly, perhaps, because she was his own. The happiness of these
days was not marred by a single further incident to remind him of the
past; and it was only on the day that he was to leave that the foul
fiend Distrust was again awakened in his unlucky heart.

It was a Sunday, and after the morning service there was to be a sort of
popular _f�te_ in Amsterdam. At the famous town-hall, where, in
Holland's great days, when De Ruyter's and Van Tromp's guns were
thundering in the sea outside, the great merchant princes used to sit
round the republican council-board, was to be exhibited that day, for
the first time, the new picture of the young Dutch hero, Van Spyck, who
blew up his ship in the war of 1830 against Belgium.

Salv� and Elizabeth joined the stream, and even caught some of the
national enthusiasm prevailing in the crowd that was swaying backwards
and forwards in the courtyard, where a band was playing the stirring
national air, "Wien Neerlands bloed door de aders vloeit."

At last they found themselves before the canvas. It represented the
young cadet of seventeen years on the gunboat at the supreme moment.

Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed,
while Salv� kept her from being pressed upon behind.

"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes
off the picture,--"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender. He
has no choice--they are too many for him. But don't you see the thought
he has in his mind?--you can read it in his face. And what a fine
fellow he looks, with his handsome uniform, and his epaulets, and his
short sword!" she said, in a lower tone, with a revival of her old
childish enthusiasm for that kind of show.

Her last words were like a dagger's thrust to Salv�. She still had a
hankering, then, for all this, and he stood behind her pale with
suppressed feeling, while she continued to gaze at the picture and think
aloud to him.

"Poor, handsome lad! But he never will surrender--one can easily see
that; and so he must go down," she said, in a subdued voice,
involuntarily folding her hands, as if in fancy she went with him; "and
he blows up Belgian and all into the air, Salv�," she said, turning to
him with a fine spirited look in her face, and with moistened eyes.

He made no reply; and supposing that, like herself, he was lost in the
scene before them, she turned again to the picture. But while, after
giving vent to her feelings, she stood there with a smile on her face,
thinking that she knew one who would have been quite as capable as Van
Spyck of such an exploit--the man, namely, who was then standing behind
her--to him the picture had become a hateful thing; and he could have
shot Van Spyck through the heart for his uniform's sake.

The whole of the way home he was silent and serious, and it was not
until late in the afternoon that he at all recovered his spirits.

As this was to be his last trip for the year, the following spring was
fixed for their marriage; and when he took his leave, it was with the
gloomy presentiment that he had a dreary winter before him.

Certainly, for the development of a morbid state of mind, no conditions
could have been more favourable than the enforced inactivity to which,
with many another, he was condemned for the long dark months during
which the ice put a stop to navigation. To his restless, energetic
nature, such prolonged inaction was little suited under any
circumstances, and in his present condition of mind it was little less
than disastrous.

"If she was only here!" he would sometimes inwardly exclaim, as if
crying out for help against himself and the thoughts which he felt to be
unworthy, but which nevertheless he could not shake off.

He often thought of writing to her, but was so afraid of saying
something which he might afterwards regret, that he kept putting it off
from time to time, until at last he could restrain himself no longer.

His letter ran as follows:--

"To much esteemed Miss Elizabeth Raklev--

"As concerning the Apollo, she lies in a row of other ships up in Selvig
Sound, and the ice is about a foot thick, and will be late in breaking
up this year, they all prophesy: she is well looked after, and has a
watchman on board, and storage room has been taken for her rigging in
Pettersen's rigging-loft. But as touching her captain, to whom you said
in Amsterdam you had given your full and first heart so firmly that it
couldn't be moved by any might or power in the world whatsoever--he has
thought much and often about this, and would like to hold out and see
you again before all his shore cable is chafed away. It seems as if it
was holding by its last threads, and these half-scraped through. But if
I could see you, it would become so strong again that it could hold
against any stream; and you must forgive me for my weakness when you
think of those five years; but I won't say that it is your fault,
neither make myself out better than I am, for I have confidence in you,
Elizabeth, if I have not the same reliance upon myself, and I can't help
it if I haven't. When you read this letter, Elizabeth, you must remember
the poor sailor who is frozen up here, and not forget it afterwards till
we meet again, which I would give half my life-blood or more for, if it
was any use, as I am consuming away with impatience up here--I have such
a longing to see you again. And now, farewell from my heart, and God
bless you. I will trust you and hope in you till my last hour, come what
may. Farewell, my dearest girl, with fond love from

"SALV� KRISTIANSEN."

This letter cost Elizabeth many a tear. She sat over it in the evenings
before she went to bed, and felt so poignantly that it was she who had
brought him to this--that he could not trust her; for she understood but
too well what lay between the lines. "If I could only be with him," she
thought, and she longed to be able to send him an answer; but she had
never learnt properly how to write or to compose a letter.

With some difficulty, however, and after several ineffectual attempts,
she managed to put two lines together which she remembered from the
Catechism:--

"To my lover Salv� Kristiansen--

"You shall put your trust in God, and after Him, in me before all
others, who careth for you in all things, and have faith in me. That is
the truth from your ever-unforgetting
"ELIZABETH RAKLEV.
And in the spring,
"ELIZABETH KRISTIANSEN."

She folded the letter, and got one of Garvloit's sons to write the
address; but, that it might be certain to go, she went with it herself
to the post-office.

Salv� received it one day with great surprise. He guessed from whom it
came, and delayed opening it in the fear that it might contain a
breaking off of their engagement occasioned by his own letter: he
remembered that first morning in Amsterdam. What was his joy, then, when
he found what the contents actually were; he seemed to have the thing
now in black-and-white. He put the letter carefully back into his
pocket-book every time after reading it, and for a while was quite
another man. Still, it was high time that the ice should begin to break
up, and that he should find occupation for his thoughts in work; he had
begun to be afraid to be alone with them.

His first voyage was to P�rmurende, and thence to Amsterdam; and they
determined to be married there and then, although he had but four days
to stay while the brig was loading in P�rmurende. Out of consideration
for the Garvloits, whom they wished to spare the expense of the wedding
as much as possible, they insisted that they would be married on the day
they were to leave for P�rmurende.

The morning on which the wedding took place, Garvloit's house put forth
all its splendour. Dress suits from former days of better circumstances
were brought out from old boxes for the occasion; and Madam Garvloit
appeared in a green-silk dress of stiff brocade, with a massive brooch,
and a huge gilt comb that shone over her forehead like a piece of a
crown. Garvloit, too, did his best; but his utmost endeavour had only
availed to adapt one article of his grandfather's state dress to his
corpulent person--a gold-laced waistcoat namely, which was much too long
for him, and which appeared to occasion him extreme discomfort in the
region of the buttons.

A couple of old friends of the family and the children went with the
pair to church, and also the skipper's son from Vlieland, over whose
round soft cheeks there trickled a regretful tear or two as the bride,
with her myrtle wreath and long white veil, was led up to the altar by
Garvloit. Elizabeth wore that day a pair of particularly handsome shoes
with silver buckles, which Salv�, with glad surprise, recognised as the
ones he had presented to her many years before.

There was an entertainment provided by Madam Garvloit when they returned
from church, which was not a very lively affair, the Garvloits not being
in spirits at the prospect of losing Elizabeth, and she, notwithstanding
all her present happiness, being really sorry to go.

A couple of hours after, they were on their way to P�rmurende, and later
on in the mellow evening, were standing together on the deck of the
Apollo, as she was being towed up the wide canal. The bells were ringing
out from Alkmar as they passed--ringing a sweet old chime of other days;
and as they stood together by the ship's side, silently listening to the
changing tones from the tower as they mingled in the air above them,
they pleased themselves with the thought that it was their wedding
chime.

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