“_Godmorgen_!” she answered again, and came striding towards me. Then
very quietly she asked: “I wanted to see how they put you up last night,
only I couldn't get away. That is, of course, I got away, but ... you
weren't in the barn, were you?”
The last words came to me as if in a dream, and I did not answer.
“Well, why don't you answer?”
“Yes ... in the barn? Yes.”
“Were you? And was it quite all right?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, then ... yes--yes. We shall be going back sometime to-day.”
She turned and walked away, her face all in one great flush....
* * * * *
Harald came and asked me to make a kite.
“A kite?” I answered all confusedly. “Ay, I'll make you a kite, a huge
one, that'll go right up to the clouds. That I will.”
We worked at it for a couple of hours, Harald and I. He was good and
quick, and so innocent in his eagerness; I, for my part, was thinking
of anything but kites. We made a tail several metres long, and busied
ourselves with paste and lashing and binding; twice Frøken Elisabeth
came out to look on. She may have been every bit as sweet and bright as
before, but I cared nothing for what she was, and gave no thought, to
her.
Then came the order to harness ready to start. I should have obeyed the
order at once, for we had a long drive before us, but, instead, I sent
Harald in to ask if we might wait just half an hour more. And we worked
on till the kite was finished. Next day, when the paste was dry, Harald
could send up his kite and watch it rise, and feel unknown emotion
within him, as I did now.
Ready to start.
Fruen comes out; all the family are there to see her off. The priest
and his wife both know me again, return my greeting, and say a few
words--but I heard nothing said of my taking service with them now. The
priest knew me again--yes; and his blue-eyed wife looked at me with that
sidelong glance of hers as she knew me again, for all she had known me
the night before as well.
Frøken Elisabeth brings out some food for the journey, and wraps her
friend up well.
“Sure you'll be warm enough, now?” she asks for the last time.
“Quite sure, thanks; it's more than warm enough with all these. _Farvel,
Farvel_.”
“See you drive as nicely as you did yesterday,” says Frøken, with a nod
to me as well.
And we drove off.
The day was raw and chilly, and I saw at once that Fruen was not warm
enough with her rug.
We drive on for hour after hour; the horses know they are on the way
home, and trot without asking. My bare hands stiffen about the reins.
As we neared a cottage a little way from the road, Fruen knocked on the
carriage window to say it was dinner-time. She gets out, and her face
was pale with the cold.
“We'll go up there and have dinner,” she says. “Come up as soon as
you're ready, and bring the basket.”
And she walked up the hill.
It must be because of the cold she chose to eat in a stranger's house,
I thought to myself; she could hardly be afraid of me.... I tied up the
horses and gave them their fodder. It looked like rain, so I put the
oilskins over them, patted them, and went up to the cottage with the
basket.
There is only an old woman at home. “Værsaagod!” she says, and “Come
in.” And she goes on tending her coffee-pot. Fruen unpacks the basket,
and says, without looking at me:
“I suppose I am to help you again to-day?”
“Thank you, if you will.”
We ate in silence, I sitting on a little bench by the door, with my
plate on the seat beside me, Fruen at the table, looking out of the
window all the time, and hardly eating anything at all. Now and again
she exchanges a word with the old woman, or glances at my plate to see
if it is empty. The little place is cramped enough, with but two steps
from the window to where I sit; so we are all sitting together, after
all.
When the coffee is ready, I have no room for my cup on the end of the
bench, but sit holding it in my hand. Then Fruen turns full-face towards
me calmly, and says with down-cast eyes:
“There is room here.”