The weight of water - Anita Shreve [43]
“Maren,” he said, “there are things about which I must speak to you.”
“I am feeling quite tired, John. I think we should go back to the cottage.”
“You know,” said John, “that I have given some thought to emigrating to America. I have been much impressed with reports of the American customs and views, particularly the idea that there is no class distinction. That a man pays only a little tax on the land he actually owns, and is not filling the pockets of the idle, who do no work at all.”
“But would you leave all that you know behind and go to a country in which if you do not have money you must remain where you are on the coast?” I asked. “I have heard tales of the large sums that are necessary to travel to the interior, and even there the land is already being twice-sold so that the original owners reap enormous profits, and cheap land can no longer be had by newly arrived immigrants. I have also heard that commodities are very expensive there. A barrel of salt costs nearly fifty orts! And coffee is forty skillings a pound!”
“Since I would want to remain on the coast,” he answered, “I do not see the worry about having money to travel inland. But I do understand your point, Maren. One must have a stake with which to begin a new life, for a house and supplies and transportation and so on.”
“Would you truly settle there, on the coast of America?” I asked.
“I might if I had found a wife,” John answered.
At the word wife. John looked at me, and my eyes turned toward his, even before I had understood the suggestion in his declaration. It was the first time such a thought had clearly presented itself to me, and I confess I was at first quite shocked.
“I’m sorry, Maren,” he said. “You seem distressed, and this was not at all my intention. Indeed, my intention was quite the opposite. In all my days on earth, I have never met a sweeter woman than you, Maren.”
“Really, John, I am feeling quite faint.”
“Whether I should go to America or remain in Norway, I am of an age now, and happily of sufficient means, that I may think of taking a wife. I trust that I may be worthy enough in my character to ask…”
I have never appreciated women who resort to histrionics or who show themselves to be so delicate in their constitutions that they cannot withstand the intense images that words may sometimes conjure forth, but I must acknowledge that at that moment, standing on the headland, I was so sorely exercised in my futile attempts to convince my companion to cease his conversation and escort me back to the cottage that I was tempted to feign a swoon and collapse in the gorse at his feet. Instead, however, I spoke to John rather sharply. “I insist that we return or I shall be ill, John,” I said, and in this way I was able, for a time, to stave off what seemed to me to be an inevitable request.
It was only the next day that my father himself broached the subject. Evan had gone off to bed, and Karen was visiting the privy in the back, so that my father and I were alone. He wished, he said, to see me settled with a family. He did not want me to be dependent upon himself, as he did not think he had many years left. I cried out at this declaration, not only because I did not like to think upon my father’s death, but also because I was cross at having twice in one week the necessity to fend off the prospect of marrying John Hontvedt. My father, brushing aside my protests with his hand, spoke of John’s character, his healthy financial situation, and, finally, though I thought his priorities misplaced, of Hontvedt’s apparent affection for me, which might, in time, he said, develop