Part 16 (2/2)

This letter cost Elizabeth many a tear. She sat over it in the evenings before she went to bed, and felt so poignantly that it was she who had brought him to this--that he could not trust her; for she understood but too well what lay between the lines. ”If I could only be with him,” she thought, and she longed to be able to send him an answer; but she had never learnt properly how to write or to compose a letter.

With some difficulty, however, and after several ineffectual attempts, she managed to put two lines together which she remembered from the Catechism:--

”To my lover Salve Kristiansen--

”You shall put your trust in G.o.d, and after Him, in me before all others, who careth for you in all things, and have faith in me. That is the truth from your ever-unforgetting ”ELIZABETH RAKLEV.

And in the spring, ”ELIZABETH KRISTIANSEN.”

She folded the letter, and got one of Garvloit's sons to write the address; but, that it might be certain to go, she went with it herself to the post-office.

Salve received it one day with great surprise. He guessed from whom it came, and delayed opening it in the fear that it might contain a breaking off of their engagement occasioned by his own letter: he remembered that first morning in Amsterdam. What was his joy, then, when he found what the contents actually were; he seemed to have the thing now in black-and-white. He put the letter carefully back into his pocket-book every time after reading it, and for a while was quite another man. Still, it was high time that the ice should begin to break up, and that he should find occupation for his thoughts in work; he had begun to be afraid to be alone with them.

His first voyage was to Purmurende, and thence to Amsterdam; and they determined to be married there and then, although he had but four days to stay while the brig was loading in Purmurende. Out of consideration for the Garvloits, whom they wished to spare the expense of the wedding as much as possible, they insisted that they would be married on the day they were to leave for Purmurende.

The morning on which the wedding took place, Garvloit's house put forth all its splendour. Dress suits from former days of better circ.u.mstances were brought out from old boxes for the occasion; and Madam Garvloit appeared in a green-silk dress of stiff brocade, with a ma.s.sive brooch, and a huge gilt comb that shone over her forehead like a piece of a crown. Garvloit, too, did his best; but his utmost endeavour had only availed to adapt one article of his grandfather's state dress to his corpulent person--a gold-laced waistcoat namely, which was much too long for him, and which appeared to occasion him extreme discomfort in the region of the b.u.t.tons.

A couple of old friends of the family and the children went with the pair to church, and also the skipper's son from Vlieland, over whose round soft cheeks there trickled a regretful tear or two as the bride, with her myrtle wreath and long white veil, was led up to the altar by Garvloit. Elizabeth wore that day a pair of particularly handsome shoes with silver buckles, which Salve, with glad surprise, recognised as the ones he had presented to her many years before.

There was an entertainment provided by Madam Garvloit when they returned from church, which was not a very lively affair, the Garvloits not being in spirits at the prospect of losing Elizabeth, and she, notwithstanding all her present happiness, being really sorry to go.

A couple of hours after, they were on their way to Purmurende, and later on in the mellow evening, were standing together on the deck of the Apollo, as she was being towed up the wide ca.n.a.l. The bells were ringing out from Alkmar as they pa.s.sed--ringing a sweet old chime of other days; and as they stood together by the s.h.i.+p's side, silently listening to the changing tones from the tower as they mingled in the air above them, they pleased themselves with the thought that it was their wedding chime.

CHAPTER XXI.

In a small house at Tonsberg, at the entrance to the beautiful Christiana fjord, the first summer of their married life pa.s.sed without a cloud upon its sky. The house and all about it, with its flowers in each window, were a model of neatness and Dutch polish; and with Elizabeth herself as a centre to it all, it was no wonder that Salve's crew found him indifferent to all weathers when it was a question of getting home.

The charming young skipper's wife, however, during her husband's frequent absences, had attracted the notice of some of the leading families of the town, and had come presently to be if not exactly on intimate terms, at all events on a footing of acquaintances.h.i.+p with many of them; and Salve's enjoyment of his home ceased then to be so perfectly unalloyed.

When Elizabeth recounted to him the flattering proofs of appreciation which she received, he listened in silence; and her social successes, instead of giving him pleasure, had a precisely opposite effect. He would not for the world have said a word to express his dislike of her making such acquaintances; and he even, when they went to church together on Sundays, liked her to be as well-dressed as any of these fine friends who now seemed to share his wife with him. But if he said nothing, and was even angry with himself for thinking about the subject, still he did think about it, and with increasing irritation. He could not get the idea out of his head that Elizabeth must now be always contrasting him unfavourably with these people; and as he paced the deck of his brig alone out at sea, he would picture them to himself as constantly in his house, and always talking on the subject which he could least endure--the sacrifice which Elizabeth must have made to become his wife.

When their son Gjert was born in the spring following their marriage, he had been sitting by Elizabeth's bedside unable to tear himself away from her and the cradle, until a small present arrived from one of her friends in the town, who with others had often sent to inquire after her, when he got up and went straight out of the house and paced backwards and forwards with his hands behind his back outside, as she could see through the window, thoroughly out of humour, though when he came in again he was even more affectionate and attentive to her than before.

As she never for a moment imagined that he could think her deep love for him could be in any way affected by the slight surface interest which her new acquaintances afforded her, she looked upon his jealousy of them, of which she had had indications often enough before, as a weakness merely to which he ought to have been superior; and as he said nothing himself on the subject, she also let it pa.s.s without comment on her side, but determined at the same time that she would see less of them in future, at all events while he was at home.

It happened however, unluckily, some weeks afterwards, that she had just been talking to some of them when he returned from an expedition to Nottero to hire a crew for his next voyage to Amsterdam, on which she was to accompany him. ”Herr Jurgensen and his wife,” she said, ”had just pa.s.sed, and she had been talking to them; they were to start for Frederiksvoern on the following day.”

”And fancy!” she went on with animation, ”Fru Jurgensen knows Marie Forstberg. So I asked her to remember me to her.”

”Marie Forstberg?--who is she?” asked Salve.

”She who was so kind to me,”--she stopped here, and the colour came and went in her face as she continued--”it was she who married--Beck's son--the lieutenant.”

”You ought to have asked Fru Jurgensen to remember me to Beck then at the same time,” he said, cuttingly, and went past her into the house without looking her in the face.

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