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.