The ceremony, naturally, was to be held in the little country church. A relative of Stine—Stine was the bride—had suggested that as Stine’s parents were both dead, and he himself was an innkeeper in Copenhagen, he should give the wedding feast in his house. Björn protested vigorously against this. He and his brother were to sail to the city, and lay up the boat at Kroyer’s Wharf. Niels would take care of the boat, and he himself would “play monkey just long enough for the splice”; then back to the city, and on board the boat to take his wife home.
Stine and her party protested against this arrangement with equal energy, if not with equal warmth of expression. A wedding without a feast was an impossibility, and there would always be time enough for the sail, thought Stine to herself. So she clung to her decision, supported by her cousin of the Gilded Tarpot, and for the first time in his life, even before the “splice,” Björn learned what unlooked-for obstacles can be put in our way by the so-called weaker sex. At least, so the old poets call it.
Björn grumbled, but was clever enough to hold his peace. In all secrecy he laid a counter-mine, telling his brother to take the “Flying Fish” out as far as the custom-house and lay her up in the ferry harbor, with all ropes clear for sailing, and when that was done to come himself to the Gilded Tarpot, which was a favorite place of refreshment for country people, soldiers, and petty officials.
In this way each party felt sure of the eventual victory, and the marriage could come off. The minister tied the knot in his little country church and gave them a glass of sherry and a silver soup-ladle in the rectory. Björn put both “inside his vest,” and then the innkeeper drove them into town. The village people gave them a hurrah, and finally the merry company sat down in the Gilded Tarpot’s basement rooms to a board laden with roasts of lamb and pork, ham and vegetables, and all manner of other good things. Sweet cordials were there for the ladies, and French wines, while for the men there was brandy and punch.
Through the basement window one could see a high brick wall, gleaming in the strong sunlight, and if one laid one’s self over the table, with one’s head in the neighbor’s lap, ’way high up one could see a tiny piece of blue sky as large as a handkerchief perhaps, with feathery clouds driving over it.
Some of Stine’s female relatives were there, and the innkeeper’s family and best friends. Among the family was a ship’s-joiner, who proved his sympathetic comprehension of the importance of the occasion by getting drunk at once and making pathetic speeches. And among the good friends was a “former officer of justice,” as he called himself, a man with a decoration in his buttonhole; also a drunken-looking jailer, who wore a stiff collar and his service medal to remind the world that he had once been a non-commissioned officer. He looked as if he had his serious doubts about the company, and expected the one or the other of them to make away with the spoons. Probably because of this doubt therefore he kept a distance between himself and the rest of the company, and poured out an endless series of small whiskies for himself, “on the top of the glass,” as he expressed it, without any appreciable effect. He laughed a sudden and ferocious-sounding laugh, drank half his glass, cleared his throat, poked his elbows in the host’s ribs, and said: “Old comrade, here’s to the good old times.” This for him was the height of sociability.
He called Björn “Captain,” but after a few repetitions of the word the bridegroom laid down his fork, with a large slice of beet on it, and remarked:
“Port your helm, friend, and let up on that 'Captain,’ if you don’t want to make me angry.”
After this admonition he compromised on “Boatsman.”
Björn was decidedly out of sorts. He had the impression of being left out in the cold, which was probably due to his deafness. He certainly filled his place in the literal sense, but Niels did not come, and Stine, the bride—well, Stine sat there at his side in a black merino gown, with wreath and veil, her red hands in her lap, as straight up and down in her chair as if she had swallowed a yardstick.