Part 14 (1/2)

”Who deserted from Beck at Rio?--the same.”

Madam Gjers was agog with curiosity, and whispered, ”I'll say nothing--you may trust me;” and waited eagerly then for further particulars which she might take the first opportunity of retailing.

Salve a.s.sured her that he knew of old that a secret was always safe with her, and resumed then absently--

”So the lieutenant is married?”

”This long while,” she replied. ”The wedding was at the house of the bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksvaern.”

”Elizabeth had no parents,” said Salve, rather impatiently.

”Elizabeth?--oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them.

That is quite another story,” she said, significantly. ”No, the lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter. The other was just a pa.s.sing fancy--the end of it was that she had to go to Holland, poor thing! It was said she had got a place there.”

”Do you know anything for certain of this?” asked Salve, severely, and with an earnestness that put the little madam out of countenance, and made her be careful of her words.

”It was all done very secretly, that's true,” she replied. ”But she went away in the greatest possible hurry, and the affair was well enough known, more's the pity--known and forgotten now, one may say.”

”What was known?” asked Salve, catching her up, angrily. ”Did you see her, Madam Gjers?”

”Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at Tromo at the time; and there was just very good reason for--”

”Then neither you nor any one else who wants to take away her character know a jot more about the business than what you have chosen to invent,”

said Salve, fiercely and contemptuously; for although he had slain Elizabeth himself in his heart, he must still defend her against the attacks of others. He felt quite sick and faint.

”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 Salve 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, Salve?” 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 Salve, with bitter emphasis.

”When people say it, a fool like you of course must believe it,” she rejoined, derisively. ”I don't understand why you want to come here to her old aunt for information when it seems you have so many other confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have been away, gadding about, G.o.d knows where, in the world. It's true enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law.”