The Pilot and his Wife Part 23

Fru Beck looked after her with a rather surprised, but an unsatisfied, expression; she must have been mistaken: but still, happy in her home Elizabeth could scarcely be. And yet, she thought bitterly, what a gulf there was between them! She, at all events, loved her husband.

When Elizabeth returned, Fru Beck, with the idea of effacing the impression she had already produced, and to satisfy, at the same time, her own longing to open her heart to somebody, said--

"You must not be offended at what I said, Elizabeth. I thought that others might have sorrow too."

"We all have our burden, and often it is very hard to bear," rejoined Elizabeth. She understood very well what Fru Beck's words had meant, and looked at her compa.s.sionately; but she avoided answering directly to what she thought had been blurted out unintentionally, and said--

"You have a son. That should be a great happiness, Fru Beck, and much to live for."

"To live for!" she exclaimed--"to live for! I will confide to you something that no one but you now knows. I am dying--dying every day. No one knows as well as I do myself how much is left of me. It is little, and it will soon be less." She spoke in a cold, pale kind of ecstasy.

"You are the only creature I have told this to--the only one on this earth I really care about; hear it and forget it. And now, adieu," she said; "if we ever meet again in this world, don't let the subject be mentioned between us." She felt blindly for the door, and opened it.

"Every cross comes from above, and the worst of all sins is to despair,"

said Elizabeth, with an attempt at consolation; she said what most readily occurred to her at the moment.

Fru Beck turned at the door, and looked back at her with a white, calm, joyless face.

"Elizabeth," she said, "I found this in one of my husband's drawers. I tell it you, that you may not think that that has been in any way the cause of my spoilt life."

She took from her pocket a sc.r.a.p of paper, yellow with age, and handed it to her. The door closed behind her then, and she was gone.

Elizabeth sat still for a long while in sad distress, thinking of her.

Now she understood why Fru Beck was so pale. She had not a wrinkle in her face--it looked so n.o.ble; but oh how cold, how pinched it had become! Poor, poor woman! her burden was indeed a heavy one. It would have been difficult to recognise Marie Forstberg again in her.

"That, then, it is to have married unhappily," she said to herself. She seemed to have gazed into some terrible abyss.

Her friend's sorrows continued to occupy her thoughts as she sat by her aunt's bedside; and when at last her feelings of compa.s.sion had calmed down, another point in their conversation that had been hitherto thrown into the background came into increasing prominence. It lay in the words that had so suddenly and grievously wounded her.

"So, that is what the world says of us," she thought: "that our marriage has been unhappy."

She had time and solitude enough, while tending her patient and sitting up with her, to ponder the matter; and as she thought over her married life, and contemplated unflinchingly the constant, weary, fruitless struggle in which it had pa.s.sed, and in which she had not advanced one single step, but rather had been going always, always back, more and more, she asked herself, could she say that there was happiness in a life like that? And was Salve himself happy? She saw him before her as he was in his early youth, and as he was now--gloomy, savage, and suspicious in his home; she thought how she welcomed him always with disguised dread instead of with a wife's joy, how they had last parted, and what feelings she had since entertained; and she dwelt long and bitterly upon the contrast. To think that it should have come to this between them! She began with dread to reflect, "Perhaps this is what they mean by an unhappy marriage." It had never occurred to her before that such a thing could be said of her--of her, who had married the man whom of all others in the whole world she wished to marry.

She sat on far into the night with her hands folded on her knee, and gazing straight before her, the night-light from the gla.s.s behind the bed throwing its faint light over the room. Fru Beck's words, as she stood there so pale, and told her of her unhappiness, recurred to her again and again, more distinctly, it seemed, each time. "I am dying every day. I know best myself how much is left of me. It is very little, and will soon be less."

It seemed then all in a moment to flash upon her--

"That is just how Salve and I are living. We are wasting away--we are dying every day beside each other. That is what people do who are unhappily married."

She sat for a long while, with her head bent forward, sorrowfully engrossed with this thought. In all the self-sacrifice she had practised, because she thought he could not bear to hear the truth, she saw now nothing but one long corroding lie. It was owing to the want of confidence in each other, of mutual candour--to their both having shunned the truth, the only sure ground of happiness, that their life together had been thus spoilt. She threw back her head with a look of wild energy in her face, and never had she looked more handsome than now, as she exclaimed decisively--

"But there shall be an end of this! Salve and I shall no longer make a desert of each other's life!" and she rose from her chair in great agitation.

"What are you saying, Elizabeth?" asked her aunt, whom she had unconsciously awakened.

"Nothing, dear aunt," she answered, and bent over the invalid with a cup of broth, which she had been keeping warm over the night-light.

"You look so--so happy, Elizabeth."

"It is because you have slept so well, aunt; and if you drink this you will go to sleep again."

There was a quiet smile on her lips now, and her whole bearing was changed. The burden of years was taken off her heart. At last the chilling, heavy, bewildering fog which had enclosed her whole life, making every footstep, every thought, every joy uncertain, had lifted, and she could clearly see her way.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Salve had been lucky; he had piloted an English bark into Hesnaes, and his services had been liberally acknowledged. He had, as usual, looked forward with dread to coming home again; but when he found his wife not there, and heard the reason, he had set off at once for Arendal to see after her.

She received him out in the pa.s.sage.

"Good morning, Salve," she said, shaking hands with him. "I have been anxious about you, as you may suppose, and have been expecting you. You mustn't make a noise--come this way," and she showed him into the room at the side. "Where is Gjert?"

He looked at her in surprise; this was not her usual way of receiving him. There was a confidence in her tone, as if she had taken upon herself to call him to account for his absence. It had hitherto been he always who had taken the initiative and been in a gracious humour or not, according as it pleased him.

"Gjert," he answered, rather shortly, "is at home in the house. So you have been anxious about me--expected me?" he added, in a peculiar tone, as if he found something to remark upon in this way of addressing him, but deferred comment for the present.

"Why, you know, goodman, that it can't be the same to me if you are lost out there at sea."

"How is your aunt?" he asked, abruptly. "Is she seriously ill?"

"She can see you. Come in with me, but step gently."

Salve felt that he could not very well refuse, and followed her. He had always, as far as possible, avoided seeing Mother Kirstine, and had left his wife to represent him in that quarter. He was afraid of the penetrating eyes which the old woman turned upon him, and had never forgotten the warning she had given him not to go near Elizabeth as long as he harboured a doubt against her in his heart.

It was with great deference that he now approached her bedside.

"Oh, it's you, Salve," she said, in a weak voice. "It's not often I have a sight of you. Elizabeth has been such a blessing to me; and Henrik is so quiet and good. Where is Gjert? Have you not brought him with you?"

And her eyes wandered in search of the boy.

"He is at home taking care of the house, aunt. How are you?"

"Oh, thanks--as you see. I think so often what will become of that boy; he is so wild, but with such a good nature, poor fellow!"

"Oh, we shall make something of him, you'll see," said Elizabeth, who had been standing behind Salve, and now came forward. "But you must not talk so much."

Salve's face grew stern; this was the most unfortunate topic which could have been suggested. And matters were presently made worse by Mother Kirstine saying, when there was a pause--

"You looked so glad last night, Elizabeth! Who was it that was sitting with you talking yesterday?"

"It was Fru Beck."

"The young one?"

"Yes. But you talk too much, aunt."

"I am afraid so too," thought Salve; and as he saw Elizabeth, as if nothing had happened, motioning to him now to come away, he controlled himself for the moment, and said a little constrainedly--