CHAPTER XXV.
We may leave for a moment the contemplation of a domestic history lighted up at present by such few and fitful gleams of sunshine, and glance at the married life of another pair who have figured in this story, and who have not been without their influence upon whatever there may have been of tragic in its development.
The young Becks, as they were called in contradistinction to the master's family, were now among the first people in Arendal, and kept one of the best houses in the town, which they had ample means to do, for the shipbuilding business brought them in a considerable annual income. Carl Beck had lost none of his attractiveness as he grew older. His curling black hair had now an early sprinkling of grey in it, but was always arranged to the very best effect; and there was, people said, such a nobleness about him (his cleverness was undisputed) that when he rose to propose or reply to a toast, there was not a lady at the table who was not in a flutter of inward admiration. With his social advantages he could not, of course, fail to be in a position of considerable influence in the town, which again heightened his welcome in society.
But if he was thus made much of, it was not altogether the same with his wife. The estimate of her which generally prevailed, that she was so perfectly "correct," was not intended perhaps to be complimentary, but implied at the same time a recognition of her social power. She was, in fact, her husband's timepiece, and without her tact he would not have kept himself as straight as he did in the midst of the gushing welcomes which he found on all sides.
In his relations with his wife he was a pink of chivalry, never omitted the most trifling attention, and was always being complimented on being a pattern husband. Some few of the intimates of the house seemed to think, though, that there was something strange in their attitude to one another—a sort of coolness and reserve about both—and it was whispered that his wife did not appreciate him as she ought; it seemed as if the two talked together best when strangers were present. Fru Beck, too, always looked so uncommonly pale, and was so frigidly calm, that it might have been supposed she had no feelings at all; and in comparison with his overflowing warmth of nature she certainly did seem dreadfully precise and cold.
When they first came to Frederiksværn as a young newly-married couple, her colour had been fresh, and her expression showed that she was still in love; she was then completely under the spell of his attractive warmth of manner, and felt safe in the possession of his love. It was true, a couple of failings, which contrasted strangely with the idea she had formed of him from his manly bearing, had gradually disclosed themselves—namely, an extraordinary vanity, and an almost ridiculous dependence upon the opinion of the world. But so long as his heart was in the right place, and she could feel that he loved her, these disappointments were matters of but secondary consideration to her. She felt that she even loved him all the more for these weaknesses; and she trusted to the power which she was gaining over him more and more every day to get them presently corrected.
The charming Lieutenant Beck became sought after everywhere, and his success with the ladies resulted in his having very soon established sentimental relations with nearly every member of the fair circle around him. He nearly always had a flower in his buttonhole when he came home, which had been jokingly given to him as a gage d'amour by some one or other of his admirers; he received presents from all sides; and they, in fact, laid a sort of embargo upon him as an object of general admiration.
There was nothing to say against all this—far from it; but the only person who felt left out in the cold was his own wife, who seemed to see this enthusiastic crowd gradually establishing, as it were, a prescriptive right of way between herself and her husband, and treading under foot the very flowers that should have grown only for their own two selves in the intimacy of their home. She became gradually a less animated, but was still, he thought, an interested listener, when he came home after being in the society of his lady friends, and recounted his triumphs. If this was so, she at all events began to be more particular about her own dress and appearance, and set to work now to systematically cultivate the social talent which she naturally possessed. She determined to conquer her rivals, who had the advantage of her in appearance, but were inferior to her in talent; and she succeeded. But she became naturally an object for their criticism in consequence.
The only one with whom she did not succeed was her husband. His self-love was far too much taken up with the small flatteries of all kinds, and the homage of which he was the object, to have any eyes for the very great compliment indeed which was being paid to him by his wife in the line which she had adopted. To her he was married, and therefore of her he was always sure enough.
It was from that time that she dated the influence which she usually acquired in the social circles she frequented, and which her husband's position and circumstances made it easy for her to maintain when they changed their residence to Arendal.
But those first years of their married life had not passed without a serious, and to her completely decisive, éclaircissement. It was occasioned by his relations with the wife of an officer of rank, which had become really more intimate than her pride could stand, although she knew very well that on her husband's side it was only a sort of mixture of vanity and policy that prompted his affectation of devotion. She had treated the lady with marked coldness at a party where they had met, and her husband had taken her to task for it when they got home.
Entirely wrapped up in himself as he was, it had never occurred to him that his wife could have any cause of complaint against him, and what she had been going through had been altogether lost upon him. She did not say much now in reply to his reproaches—she merely stood and looked at him in a way that made him feel rather uncomfortable, and then quietly left the room. He could hear her going with slow steps up the stairs.
An hour or so after, she came down again into the room with a light in her hand. Her expression was cold, and she did not look at him as she set about putting the room to rights for the night as usual. He tried to pacify her, begged her not to take what he had said so much to heart, and was going to put his arm affectionately round her waist, but was stopped on finding himself suddenly confronted by the deadly pale face and flashing eyes of an infuriated woman.
The time had come to speak out, and she did speak out; and Lieutenant Beck heard what he would have been very sorry to repeat to his best friend. For he felt in his heart that it was nothing but the truth, however soon he might forget it again.
She called him a pitiful wretch, who would sell her and everything they jointly prized to the first comer for a little miserable flattery. He had distributed himself to that extent among his giddy acquaintance, she went on, with a movement as if she thrust from her something she utterly despised, that there was nothing left of him for a woman with a vestige of truth or honour to pick up.
When her husband threw himself upon the sofa, and exclaimed in a sentimental tone that he was a miserable man, she repeated the last word twice in an inexpressibly contemptuous tone—
"A man!—a man!—if you had been a man, you would still have had my love—at all events a remnant of it; but now, like this light here,"—and she puffed it out,—"all is extinguished between us."
With that she left the room.
Beck sat where he was, overwhelmed and stupefied at this sudden blow which had fallen upon his domestic happiness, and with a horrible apprehension that she might have meant what she said in real earnest.
She sat in the room with her child the whole night, and he knew that he dared not disturb her.
Notwithstanding the struggle which it cost his pride, he was almost humble in his manner towards her for some days after, and warmly and cordially acknowledged that he had been in the wrong. He even tried to show her that he was in earnest by assuming for a while an altered attitude towards the ladies, and actually succeeded so far that she appeared to have forgotten that anything had occurred between them, and was just the same in her intercourse with him as before—quietly friendly that is to say, as she had been of recent years.
It never came to any real reconciliation on her side. She had seen too clearly that his nature was only that of a drifting cloud, glowing for the moment just as it was played upon by popular applause; and he was too profoundly selfish for any real earnest love to find a root in his composition, much less to give promise of a common life-growth. With his feeling and good-nature he would have treated any wife well, even if she had not made herself so necessary to him as she was; her social talent, she felt, was her great safety—it made him look up to her; and his vain nature required that she should be something to be proud of: but she was forced to acknowledge in her own heart with despair that she had been blinded by her love for him, that his nature was absolutely deficient in constancy and truth, and in every quality which she had once persuaded herself to see in him. She knew the secret about this man, so brilliant before the eyes of the world—that he was not a man. He lived and moved before her now like a defaced ideal, to which she was tied—to the end of her life. The bitterness of disappointment rankled in her mind, and was all the more poignant that she had to keep it shut up within herself and had no one to confide in. Her life had become a desert, and at the very moment when her husband would be making a brilliant little speech that called forth applause all round the table, she would seem to hear nothing but a rattle of emptiness. She always protested to her parents, when they could not understand why she looked so pale, that she was perfectly happy; and they had no reason to think otherwise, for she seemed to be well cared for in every respect. The only real interest which she possessed now in life was her son Frederick; but she brought him up with the utmost possible strictness, for she fancied she detected his father's nature over again in him.
She had always retained her warm interest in Elizabeth, and the messages which she had received from her from time to time had always given her pleasure. She had never felt so attracted towards any one since as she had been to that girl; and now after her great disappointment, Elizabeth's features, so full of character and expression, were constantly before her. She had seen her sometimes in Arendal, and thought she knew the reason why Elizabeth always seemed to avoid meeting her; for she had found once, by chance, among some old letters in one of her husband's drawers, the note which Elizabeth had written to him.
It had been no shock to her. By that time she had come to know his volatile nature, and had given up all hope of ever being more to him than another would be.
On the occasions when she had caught a glimpse of the pilot's wife in the street, she had looked searchingly into her face to try and satisfy herself whether she looked happy. But she had not been able to do so; there seemed to be something on Elizabeth's mind. And taking this impression in connection with what she heard of the pilot, of his hardness and uncompanionable temper, she thought that it was clear enough that Elizabeth too, was unhappy in her married life, and longed to have a talk with her, to know whether she herself was not the more unhappy of the two.
Nor had Fru Beck's uncommon pallor escaped Elizabeth's notice, and she also longed to have a talk again with her friend of former days; but Beck's house was for many reasons impossible ground for her. As she was standing one day with Gjert on the quay, about to start for home, Fru Beck passed a little way off, leaning on her husband's arm, and looked back with an expression so sad, and with eyes that seemed to linger so longingly, as if she had something she wanted to say, or to confide, that they nodded involuntarily to one another.
Since then they had never met, for from that time Elizabeth had scarcely ever been in Arendal.