Part 4 (1/2)

”Anders of the Crag? So it was from him you heard it?--the pitiful, wheedling rascal! That is his grat.i.tude, I suppose, for my being with his wife last week!--I shall know where to find him. But the receiver in the like is no better than the stealer,” she resumed, indignantly; ”and I'd have you know, it was just Beck's own daughter who came here and offered Elizabeth a respectable place in a respectable house, and it was to me she talked, my lad,” pointing self-consciously with quivering forefinger at her own bosom; ”so Elizabeth has not begged herself in there at all. You didn't need to desert your watch to bring such tales here; and Elizabeth shall hear of it--that she shall,” she repeated, excitedly, striking one hand into the other with a loud smack--”she shall hear what fine faith you have in her.”

”Dear mother Kirstine! I didn't mean any harm,” he said, entreatingly, feeling as if a weight had been taken off his heart--”only please don't tell Elizabeth.”

”You may depend upon it I will.”

”Mother Kirstine!” he said, in a low voice, and looking down, ”I brought a dress with me for her that I had bought in Boston. And then I heard all this, and I couldn't contain myself.” He said nothing about the rings.

”So!” rejoined the old woman after a pause, during which she had examined him through her half-closed eyes, and in a somewhat milder tone; ”so you brought a dress for her! and at the same time you come running up here in the middle of the night to tell me that she has become a common baggage for the lieutenant,”--and her anger rose again.

”But, Mother Kirstine, I don't believe a word of it.”

”It wasn't to tell me that, I suppose, you came up here in such haste, my lad.”

”I was only mad to think such a thing could be said of her.”

”Well, be off with you now! Anders of the Crag shall go farther with his lie--if I go with him before the Foged and the Maritime Court.”

For the matter of that, she might as well have threatened to go with him to the moon; but Salve understood her to mean by the Maritime Court the bloodiest course she knew.

As she opened the door to let him out, she said with a certain confidential seriousness--”Tell me, Salve! has anything pa.s.sed between you and Elizabeth?”

He seemed uncertain for a moment what reply he should make to this unexpected invitation of confidence. At length he said--

”I don't know, Mother Kirstine, for certain; two years ago, I made her a present of a pair of shoes.”

”You did!--well, see now and get on board again without any one noticing you--that's my advice,” she replied, without allowing herself to be brought any further into the matter, and pushed him then rather unceremoniously out of the door.

After he had gone she sat for a while with the light in her lap, staring at it and nodding her head reflectively.

”He's a good and a handsome lad that Salve,” she said at last, aloud.

”But on the whole it will be better to tell Elizabeth, and then she can be on her guard there in the house;” and having come to this decision she rose from her seat and prepared to go to bed again.

Salve, notwithstanding this interview, was far from being at ease next day, and he felt the courage he had mustered up, to go straight to Elizabeth with the dress and ring, altogether gone.

In the evening, when all the crew were given leave from the s.h.i.+p for three weeks, he went off to his father instead, to see if he could learn more of the situation through inquiries from him; and on the following Monday both were present at old Jacob's interment in Tromo churchyard.

CHAPTER IX.

All these events had come upon Elizabeth with overwhelming suddenness.

It seemed to her like a confused dream. Yet the fact remained that there she was, dressed in black, an inmate of one of those handsome houses, the interiors of which she had so often pictured to herself out on Torungen.

Captain Beck was married to a second wife, a woman of stern principles, full of decision and respectability, who had brought him a considerable fortune, and, under her lynx-eyed rule, had restored that order in household matters which, during the period her husband was a widower, had been far too much neglected; and though his power might still be absolute on board the Juno, it had long since ceased to be so in his own house. By her grown-up step-children Madam Beck was in the highest degree respected, though not exactly loved, owing to the various unaccustomed restraints to which they now found themselves subjected; and as to Carl, his easy tact, notwithstanding the independent position which he enjoyed in his home as salaried member of a coast commission, enabled him to keep on the best of terms with his imperious stepmother.

His duties would detain him about home for another year, to be still feted by the town, and idolised by his sisters, who were never tired of speculating upon eligible matches for him.

From the very first, Elizabeth, who, in her utter ignorance how to behave, committed one egregious blunder after another, had perceived with her strong sense that it would require all the cleverness and patience she possessed to enable her to maintain the situation; and she began by following Madam Beck about untiringly like a lamb. Many a painful scene had she to go through during the earlier period of their connection, and she bore them with a quiet gentleness which Madam Beck took for modest docility, but which had its real origin in a fixed determination to succeed. Every now and then, however, she would give it up as hopeless, and would seat herself disconsolately by the window with her cheek upon her hand, and gaze wistfully out over the harbour. She longed so for cold fresh air, and would end by throwing up the window and stretching herself with her heated face as far out of it as she possibly could, till Madam Beck would come in, and in a stern voice call her back. Madam Beck, in her irritation, used to say that it was almost as if they had taken a wild thing into the house.

Carl Beck understood very well what she was going through, and would occasionally throw her an encouraging look; but Elizabeth affected always not to understand it. On one occasion, however, when she was corrected in his presence, she hurriedly left the room, and throwing herself on her bed, lay there and sobbed as if her heart would break.