As Salvé 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 Merdö 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 Salvé. 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, Salvé, 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.