CHAPTER XXIX.
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.