The Pilot and his Wife. Jonas Lie
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setting down the candlestick hard upon the table, she dropped into the chair by the side herself.
"So—that is what they are saying, is it?" she cried at last. Her first fear was over; but anger had succeeded to it, and she rose now from her seat with arms akimbo and flashing eyes. She was not a woman to offend lightly.
"So they have fastened that lie upon Elizabeth, have they!—it's a shame for them, so it is! And you, Salvé, can soil your lips with it? Let me just tell you, then, for your pains, that the Becks' house is as respectable a one as any in Arendal; and it isn't you, and such as you, that can take its character away. Never fear but Elizabeth shall hear every word of your precious story—ay, and the captain, and the lieutenant, and Madam Beck, too; and you'll be hunted from the Juno like a dripping cur. So you thought that Elizabeth was to be beholden to the lieutenant for a character—?"
"Dear mother Kirstine!" Salvé cried, interrupting her in the full torrent of her indignation, "I didn't think about it—I couldn't think. Only, I heard Anders of the Crag down on the slip this morning say it all so confidently.
"Anders of the Crag? So it was from him you heard it?—the pitiful, wheedling rascal! That is his gratitude, 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 Salvé 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, Salvé! has anything passed 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 Salvé," 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.
Salvé, 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 ship 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 Tromö churchyard.
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