"I happen to know the rights of the case," he said, with a short laugh, looking her coldly and sharply in the face, "and—" he sprang up suddenly here, and striking the table violently with his fist—"and I don't taste another morsel in such a scandal-mongering house," he cried. "Do you understand, madam? Be good enough to take what is owing to you out of that," and flinging down a handful of silver on to the table, he sprang over it, and proceeded to drag his chest down-stairs himself.
Madam Gjers exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from every creature in the town; but Salvé was unappeasable, and slinging his chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. For the present, however, he remained sitting upon the chest, gazing out abstractedly over the harbour.
The result of his reflections was that he gave up his idea of plying to
Holland.
He took a boat to Sandvigen, but while they were on the way, he suddenly made the boatman change his course, and put in to the slip on the other side of the harbour. He must talk to Elizabeth's aunt. There was something in his mind all the time that wouldn't let him altogether believe the worst.
When he went in to the old woman, she recognised him at once.
"How do you do, Salvé?" she said, quite calmly. "You have been a long while away—half a century almost."
She offered him a chair, but he remained standing, and asked abruptly—
"Is it true that Elizabeth—left Beck's like that—and went to Holland?"
"How do you mean like that?" she asked, sharply, while her face flushed slightly.
"As people say," replied Salvé, with bitter emphasis.