The outer side of Tromö, which lies off the entrance to Arendal, has
only the ordinary barren stone-grey appearance of the rest of the
islands along the coast; a wooden church, with a little belfry like a
sentry-box and serving as a landmark, which lies drearily down by the
sea, and under which on Sundays a pilot-boat or two may be seen lying-to
while service is going on, is the only feature for the eye to rest upon.
The land side of the island, on the contrary, presents a scene all the
richer and livelier for the contrast. The narrow Tromö Sound, with its
swarm of small coasters, lighters, pilot-boats, and vessels of larger
build, suns itself there between fertile or wooded slopes and ridges,
over which are scattered in every direction the red cottages of the
sailor population, skippers' houses, and villas; and in every available
spot, in every creek or bay where there is barely room for a vessel, the
white timbers of ships in course of construction come into view. It is
an idyllic dockyard, a very beautiful and very appropriate approach to
Norway's principal seaport town; and whoever steams up it on a still
summer's day must enjoy a surprise that will not easily be effaced from
his recollection.
At the period of our story, indeed, the picture was far from being so
complete or rich: but even then were becoming manifest the germs of the
bustle and life which now pervade the place.
On one of the most beautiful points of the Sound peeped into view a
small one-storeyed house with two small-paned attic windows projecting
from its steep tiled roof, and with a pine-wood climbing the hillside
behind, which was the property of Captain Beck; and here, until, as he
proposed to do in a couple of years' time, he retired from the sea and
invested his fortune in the shipbuilding yard which he had in view, his
family generally took up their residence during the summer months.
Hither in the early part of this summer, too, they had repaired.
It was no life of idleness, though, which they lived out there: Madam
Beck always made work for everybody, and had her own spinning-wheel in
the sitting-room. Her step-son had his occupation on land, and as much
as he could do, as member of the coast commission. But he used generally
to come over on Saturdays in his pretty sail-boat and remain over
Sunday; and on that day, too, some one or other family of their
acquaintance in the town would make them an object for a pleasure party,
and would usually spend the afternoon with them.
Carl Beck was always in great force on these occasions. His brown face
and frank sailor bearing and good looks would have been sufficient in
themselves to make him a favourite with the ladies. But, in addition to
these claims upon their interest, he had been known to most of the
younger ones among them from his schoolboy days, when he used to come
home on leave as a cadet, and he seemed to enjoy particular confidential
relations with nearly every one of them, or, at all events, to be in
possession of some secret or other which only they two knew. They had
all kinds of jokes and expressions from their younger days which were
unintelligible to the rest; and what is vulgarly called "chaff" formed,
perhaps, the staple of his conversation with them, varied now and then
by a touch of sentiment, which was intended, by chance as it were, to
open up to them for a moment the real deeper nature which they might not
have suspected him of possessing. They used to twit him about his
inclination to stoutness, and he used to joke about it too, and say he
had too good a time of it.
Among the Becks' most frequent visitors out there was postmaster
Forstberg's family, which included, besides the parents, a hobbledehoy
son and their daughter Marie, a fair-haired girl some eighteen years of
age, of quiet manners, and with an uncommonly clever face. Nobody said
that she was pretty, but nearly every one who knew her had the
impression that she was; and there was a certain indefinable harmony and
grace, not only about her perhaps rather small figure, but about
everything she did. But if she was not considered pretty, it was agreed
on all sides that she had great sense; and among her friends she was
always the one they elected to confide in, whenever they had anything on
their minds. That she never confided anything to them in return had,
curiously enough, never struck them; and for that matter, she was too
correct and proper, they imagined, to have any heart affairs herself.
She was a confidential friend of Carl Beck's sisters, and especially of
Mina, who declared that she put her before all the rest of her
acquaintance, and thought in her own heart that she was exactly the
match for her brother.
The only one of the young girls in the circle with whom Carl Beck had
had no youthful acquaintance was Marie Forstberg; and it had been some
time before he discovered that the quiet girl was worth talking to. He
used to be secretly annoyed then that the conversation when she was
present should lapse so easily into empty trifling; her mind was so
clear and true, and she had such a beautiful smile for whatever she
approved. Before her, therefore, he always displayed now the broad,
manly side of his character--which he could do with so much grace--and
the coquetry which was at the bottom of this was not without its effect.
She had always made rather a hero of him in her own mind, and he had
created the flattering impression now that the light and flirting manner
which he adopted towards young ladies, and which had rather qualified
her admiration of him, had been due to his not having before found among
them any one that was worthy of a man's serious attention. He had begun
consequently to occupy a much larger share of her thoughts than she
would herself have been willing to acknowledge; and many of the
confidences of which she was the recipient at this time would, if her
friends had had a little more penetration, have been brought last of all
to her.
Marie Forstberg's attention had very soon been attracted to Elizabeth;
and knowing her history, she tried very often to help her, and put her
in the right way of doing things. At first she found her rather short
and unapproachable, and could get nothing but "yes" or "no" from her;
and there was something almost offensive in the brusque way in which she
would turn with an impatient flush from her mentor when she sometimes
didn't understand what was meant, and would do the thing in her own way.
She wouldn't see at first the various little good turns which the other
did her in her quiet, considerate way; but they were acknowledged at
last with a look that made amends for all her former obtuseness; and in
spite of their different natures and unequal social position, these two
women soon came to feel, if not exactly drawn to one another, mutually
interested in each other. At the same time, as Elizabeth was not blind
to the diplomacy of the house, she had soon perceived that of all the
young ladies who came there, Marie Forstberg was the one who had the
best chance, and who indeed best deserved to be the young lieutenant's
bride; and although she tried to believe that she was merely a resigned
looker-on herself, she seemed to feel every Sunday, when Marie Forstberg
came, that a certain disagreeable impression had grown up in her mind
about her during the week which it took some time to thaw. When it did
thaw, however, which in time it always did, she would feel attracted to
her with redoubled warmth; and though their conversation might be
ostensibly occupied only with such subjects as laying the table or
dishing the dinner, she would contrive to introduce into it anything and
everything concerning the lieutenant which she thought might interest or
recommend him to her friend. Marie Forstberg couldn't help sometimes
fixing her clear blue eyes searchingly upon her, to ascertain if there
was not some object underlying this communicativeness; but Elizabeth
would look so unconscious, as she stood there with her sleeves tucked
up, busy with her work, that she dismissed the idea from her mind.
In this country life, although without a moment to call her own,
Elizabeth felt freer at all events than she had done in the town; and
she had made such rapid progress under Madam Beck's tuition, that the
latter's supervision was in many things no longer required. One part in
particular, the one which she might have been expected to find the most
difficult of all--that of parlour-maid--she filled to perfection; and
her upright figure and expressive face attracted many an admiring glance
on Sundays, when in her becoming striped chintz dress and white apron,
and with her luxuriant hair turned up in the simplest manner, she
carried the tea or coffee things out to the guests in the summer-house.
She could feel that Carl Beck's eyes were never off her as long as she
was in sight, and she seemed to know that it was she whom his eye
wandered in search of first whenever he came home. In a hundred small
ways he made her conscious of the interest which he felt in her; and
whenever there was a commission to be particularly remembered, he never
gave it to his sisters alone, but to her also.
His pretty pleasure-boat--a long, light, sharp-built yawl, with a red
stripe along its black side, and two sloping masts--which he had lately
had built, lay often the whole week through moored in the bay under the
house. He was very particular about the boat, and during his absence it
was to Elizabeth's sole care that she was intrusted. There was always
something or other to be looked after; and when he came home he would
generally subject her, in a jokingly harsh tone, to an examination,
which he called holding a summary court-martial.
Sometimes on Saturdays he would come up the path waving in his hand a
letter covered with post-marks. It would be from his father to his
stepmother; and Madam Beck would generally read it by herself first, and
then it would be read aloud, Elizabeth listening with strained
attention--she was always so afraid that there might be something bad
about Salvé.
One Sunday she remarked that Carl wore in the buttonhole of his uniform
a wild flower which she had thrown away. It might have been the purest
accident; but she knew that he had seen her with it in her hand. The
same day they had wild strawberries at dinner, and there were no
strangers, and he broke out all in a moment, "Yes, I'd sooner ten
thousand times have wild strawberries than garden ones. They have quite
another taste and smell."
It was a natural remark for any one to make. But she thought he had
looked with peculiar earnestness at her as he made it, and afterwards he
had fixed his eyes upon his plate for a long while without raising them.
She felt that the remark had been meant for her, and altogether that day
there was something about him that made her uneasy--he gazed at her so
often.
Madame Beck happened to have just then a long list of household
necessaries required from Arendal, and Carl said that if some one would
go with him in the boat the next morning to help him with the parcels,
he would execute her commissions himself. When Madame Beck suggested
Elizabeth he eagerly assented; but the colour rushed into Elizabeth's
cheeks, and with an angry toss of her head, which she didn't make any
attempt to conceal, she left the room.
As he was standing alone outside some little time after, she came up to
him, and said, looking him straight in the face--
"I don't go into Arendal with you, Herr Beck."
"No?--and why not, Elizabeth?" he asked, with affected indifference, and
trying to meet her look.
"I don't go," she repeated, her voice trembling with pride and
anger--"that is all I have to say;" and she turned from him, and left
him gazing after her, partly in confusion, and partly in admiration of
the magnificently proud way in which she crossed the turf to the house
again.
The expedition was given up; and in spite of Carl's _finesse_, it came
out inadvertently that it was on account of Elizabeth having refused to
go alone in the boat with him, which Madam Beck found very commendable
on her part. Indeed she ought to have known herself, she said, that it
was scarcely proper; but at the same time, she was decidedly of opinion
that the more becoming course for Elizabeth would have been to speak to
her mistress first.