Part 6 (1/2)

Carl went out for a solitary walk over the island in the glorious starlight night, and didn't come in till past midnight.

He had not meant what he said quite so decidedly in earnest; but now after seeing her standing before him so wondrously beautiful, with tears in her eyes--now he meant it in real earnest. He was prepared to engage himself, if necessary, in spite of every consideration.

The next morning he left in his boat for Arendal, having whispered to her, however, in pa.s.sing, before he left, ”I mean it in earnest.”

The repet.i.tion of these words threw Elizabeth into dire perplexity. She had lain and thought over them the night before, and had thrust them from her with indignation, for they could mean nothing else than that he had brought himself to dare to tell her that he had conceived a pa.s.sion for her, and she had quite determined to execute her threat and leave the house.

But now, repeated in this tone!

Did he really mean to ask for her hand and heart--to ask her to be his--an officer's wife? There lay before her fancy a glittering expanse of earlier dreams that almost made her giddy; and the whole week she was absent and pale, thinking anxiously of Sunday, when he was to return.

What would he say then?

And--what should she answer?

He didn't come, however, his duties having required him to make another journey that he had not reckoned upon.

On the other hand Marie Forstberg did appear, and felt at once that some change or other must have come over Elizabeth, as she pointedly declined all a.s.sistance from her; and in the look which Marie Forstberg intercepted by chance, there was something even hard and unfriendly. She laid her hand once gently upon Elizabeth's shoulder, but it produced, apparently, absolutely no impression--she might as well have caressed a piece of wood; and when she returned to the sitting-room again, she couldn't help asking, ”What has happened to Elizabeth?” But the others had not observed anything unusual.

Carl Beck, contrary to his custom, came not on the following Sat.u.r.day, but before it, in the middle of the week; and he strode with hasty steps through the rooms when he didn't see Elizabeth.

He found her at last up-stairs. She was standing gazing out of the window on the landing, out of which all that was to be seen was the wooded slope of the hill and the sky above it. She heard his step--she knew that he was coming up-stairs--and felt a sudden indefinable sense of apprehension--a sort of panic almost--as if she could have jumped out of the window. What should she answer?

When he came and put his arm round her waist, and asked in a low voice, ”Elizabeth, will you be mine?” she felt, for the first time in her life, on the point of fainting. She hardly knew what she did, but pushed him involuntarily away from her.

He seized her hand afresh, and asked, ”Elizabeth, will you be my wife?”

She was very pale, as she answered--”Yes!”

But when he wanted again to take her by the waist, she sprang suddenly back, and looked at him with an expression of terror.

”Elizabeth!” he said, tenderly, and tried again to approach her, ”what is the matter with you? If you only knew how I have longed for this moment.”

”Not now--no more now!” she pleaded, holding out her hand to him.

”Another time.”

”But you say 'Yes,' Elizabeth--that you are my--?” But he felt that she wanted him to go now.

After he had gone, she sat there on a box for a long time in silence, gazing straight before her.

So it had actually come to pa.s.s! Her heart beat so that she could hear it herself, and she seemed to feel a dull pain there. Her face, little by little, acquired a fixed, cold expression: she was thinking that he was then telling his stepmother of their engagement, and fortifying himself for her reception of the announcement.

She expected to be called down. But no summons came; and at last she decided to go without being called.

In the sitting-room they were all quietly intent upon their several occupations. Carl was pretending to read a book; but he threw her a stolen, tenderly anxious look over the top of it when she entered.

Supper was brought in, and everything went on as quietly as usual, even to his customary banter. To Elizabeth it seemed as if there was a mist over them all; and when Mina once asked if there was anything the matter with her, she could only answer mechanically, 'No.' The question was repeated later on, and received the same answer. She brought the supper things in and took them out, as usual, and it seemed as if she could not feel the floor under her feet, or what she carried in her hand.

The evening pa.s.sed, and they went to bed without anything happening. But in the partial darkness of the stair-landing, he seized her hand pa.s.sionately, and said--”Good-night, my Elizabeth, _my--my_ Elizabeth!”