two years and eight months, Evan and I did not have many opportunities to see each other, and almost never alone, and this was a sorrow to me. Because of Evan’s hard work and prosperity, however, our family’s fortunes did gradually increase, so that I was allowed to discontinue my work for Mr. Johannsen and re-enroll in school, where I stayed for one year and seven months, entering a course of preparation for further study, though sadly I was not ever to go on to university. It was my good fortune, while in school, however, to put my whole heart and mind into my studies and thus command the attention of Professor Neils Jessen, the headmaster, who then took upon himself the bettering of my language skills so that I subsequently found pleasure in the study of rhetoric and composition. I trust that while I was lacking in certain rudimentary prerequisites for this challenging task at hand, I acquitted myself passably well, as Professor Jessen spent many hours with me after school in hopes that I might be the first female student from the Laurvig School to attend the university in Kristiania.
As it happened, however, I was not able to go on to university, owing to a lack of sufficient funds, even though my brother regularly sent to us large portions of his wages, and so I applied for and was given a position as clerk at the Fritzoe ironworks, which I held for two years. And then, in the winter of 1865, John Hontvedt and his brother, Matthew, moved to Laurvig, and shortly after that, the direction of my life changed quite dramatically.
A house in the Jorgine Road had become vacant and was to be leased at a low price, and Evan had spoken highly of the area to John these several years. Because of his hard work and cleverness, John Hontvedt had done well for himself in the fishing trade, and with him Evan had earned enough money to put some by. The two men, with Matthew Hontvedt, thus entered into a partnership aboard a sloop which they purchased and which was called the Agnes C. Nedland.
John Hontvedt was not a particularly tall man, not when compared to our father and to Evan, both of whom were well over six feet, but John gave the impression of strength and of size nevertheless. He had brown hair of a cinnamon tint that he wore thick and long, combed across his brow, and he had as well eyes that hinted at a gentleness of spirit. They were hazel, I believe, or possibly gray, I cannot remember now. His face was not narrow, as was Evan’s, but rather square in shape, and he had a handsome jaw. I suspect he had been thin as a boy, but as a man, his body, like his face, had filled out. His chest was round and formed like a fish barrel. He had no fat on him at that time.
Hontvedt had a habit of standing with his hands hooked around his belt, and of hitching his trousers sometimes when he spoke. When he sat, he crossed his legs at the knees, as some women do, but he was never feminine in any other of his gestures. Occasionally, when he was tense or anxious, he would hold his elbow with one hand, and swing the free arm in an exaggerated manner, an odd gesture, I always thought, and one I came to think of as belonging exclusively to John. He had lost one finger of his left hand as a consequence of having severed it in a winch.
I believe our father was, at the time I met John Hontvedt, apprehensive for his two daughters. Certainly this was true as concerns his responsibilities toward Karen, who, at thirty-three, had lost her youth and seemed destined to remain a maid. It was a shame upon a father, then as now, if he could not marry off his daughters, and I shudder to think of all the young women who have been so unsuitably given away, only to live out lives of utter misery simply to assuage the public strain of their fathers.
I will not accuse our father of such base desires, however, for,
in truth, I do not think this was so, but I believe that he was, after having watched his eldest daughter turn herself into a spinster, anxious to see me well married. Also, I must add here that my father had not recently met a