Fruen has ordered the carriage to drive her to the station.
No sign of haste in her manner; she gives orders to the cook about
packing up some food for the journey, and when Nils asks which carriage
he is to take, she thinks for a moment, and decides to take the landau
and pair.
So she went away. Nils himself drove for her.
They came back the same evening; they had turned back when half-way out.
Had Fruen forgotten something? She ordered fresh horses, and another
hamper of food; she was going off again at once. Nils was uneasy, and
said so; it was almost night, they would be driving in the dark; but
Fruen repeated her order. Meantime, she sat indoors and waited; she had
not forgotten anything; she did nothing now but sit staring before her.
Ragnhild went in and asked if there was anything she could do. No, thank
you. Fruen sat bowed forward as if weighted down by some deadly grief.
The carriage was ready, and Fruen came out.
Seeing Nils himself ready to drive again, she took pity on him, and said
she would have Grindhusen to drive this time. And she sat on the steps
till he came.
Then they drove off. It was a fine evening, and nice and cool for the
horses.
“She's past making out now,” said Nils. “I can't think what's come to
her. I'd no idea of anything, when suddenly she taps at the window
and says turn back. We were about half-way there. But never a word of
starting out again at once.”
“But she must have forgotten something, surely?”
“Ragnhild says no. She was indoors, and I thought for a moment of those
photograph things, if she was going to burn them; but they're still
there. No, she didn't do a single thing while she was back.”
We walked across the courtyard together.
“No,” Nils went on, “Fruen's in a bad way; she's lost all harmony for
everything. Where's she going off to now, do you think? Heaven knows;
she doesn't seem to be altogether sure of it herself. When we stopped to
breathe the horses, she said something about being in such a hurry, and
having to be in different places at once--and then she ought not
really to be away from home at all. 'Best for Fruen not to hurry about
anything,' I said, 'but just keep quiet.' But you know how she is
nowadays; there's no saying a word to her. She just looked at her watch
and said go on again.”
“Was this on the way to the station?”
“No, on the way back. She was quite excited, I thought.”
“Perhaps the Captain sent for her?”
Nils shook his head. “No. But perhaps--Lord knows. What was I going to
say--it's--tomorrow's Sunday, isn't it?”
“Yes; what then?”
“Oh, nothing. I was only thinking I'd use the day off to mark out
firewood for the winter. I've been thinking of that a long while. And
it's easier now than when the snow's about.”
Always thinking of his work, was Nils. He took a pride in it, and was
anxious now, moreover, to show his gratitude for the Captain's having
raised his wages since the harvest.
It is Sunday.
I walked up to have a look at the trench and the reservoir; a few more
good days now, and we should have the pipes laid down. I was quite
excited about it myself, and could hardly wait for tomorrow's
working-day to begin again. The Captain had not interfered in the
arrangements, not with a single word, but left all to me, so that it was
no light matter to me if the frost came now and upset it all.
When I got back, there was the landau outside the house--the horses
had been taken out. Grindhusen would about have had time to get back, I
thought; but why had he pulled up in front of the steps to the house?
I went into the kitchen. The maids came towards me; Fruen was in the
carriage, they said; 'she had come back once again. She had just been
to the station, but now she was going there again. Could I make out what
was the matter with her, now?
“Nervous, I expect,” said I. “Where's Nils?”
“Up in the woods. Said he'd be away some time. There's only us here now,
and we can't say more to her than we have.”
“And where's Grindhusen?”
“Changing the horses again. And Fruen's sitting there in the carriage
and won't get out. You go and speak to her.”
“Oh, well, there's no great harm in her driving about a bit. Don't worry
about that.”
I went out to the carriage, my heart beating fast. How miserable
and desperate she must be! I opened the carriage door, and asked
respectfully if Fruen would let me drive this time.
She looked me calmly in the face. “No. What for?” she said.
“Grindhusen might be a little done up, perhaps--I don't know....”
“He promised to drive,” she said. “And he's not done up. Isn't he nearly
ready?”
“I can't see him,” I answered.
“Shut the door again, and tell him to come,” she commanded, wrapping
herself more closely as she spoke.
I went over to the stables. Grindhusen was harnessing a fresh pair of
horses.
“What's all this?” I asked. “Going off again, are you?”
“Yes--that is, I thought so,” said Grindhusen, stopping for a moment as
if in doubt.
“It looks queer. Where's Fruen going to, do you know?”
“No. She wanted to drive back again last night as soon as we got to the
station, but I told her that it was too much for either of us to drive
back then. So she slept at the hotel. But this morning it was home
again, if you please. And now she wants to go to the station again, she
says. I don't know, I'm sure....”
Grindhusen goes on harnessing up.
“Fruen said you were to make haste,” I said.
“All right, I'm coming. But these girths are the very devil.”
“Aren't you too tired to drive all that way again now?”
“No. You know well enough I can manage it all right. And she's given me
good money, too. Extra.”
“Did she, though?”
“Ay, that she did. But she's a queer sort, is Fruen.”
Then said I: “I don't think you ought to go off again now.”
Grindhusen stopped short. “You think so? Well, now, I dare say you're
right.”
Just then came Fruen's voice from outside--she had come right over to
the stable door.
“Aren't you ready yet? How much longer am I to sit waiting?”
“Ready this minute,” answered Grindhusen, and turned to again, busier
than ever. “It was only these girths.”
Fruen went back to the carriage. She ran, and the thick fur coat she
had on was too heavy for her, she had to balance with her arms. It was
pitiful to see; like a hen trying to escape across the barnyard, and
flapping its wings to help.
I went over to the carriage again, politely, even humbly. I took off my
cap, and begged Fruen to give up this new journey.
“You are not driving me!” she answered.
“No. But if Fruen would only give it up and stay at home....”
At this she was offended; she stared at me, looked me up and down, and
said:
“Excuse me, but this is no business of yours. Because I got you
dismissed once....”
“No, no, it's not that!” I cried desperately, and could say no more.
When she took it that way I was helpless.
Just for one moment a wave of fury came over me; I had only to put out
my arms and I could lift her out of the carriage altogether, this child,
this pitiful hen! My arms must have twitched at the thought, for she
gave a sudden frightened start, and shifted in her seat. Then all at
once the reaction took me; I turned foolish and soft, and tried once
more:
“It'll be so dismal for us all here if you go. Do let us try if we
can't hit on something between us to pass the time for you! I can read
a little, reading aloud, and there's Lars can sing. Perhaps I might tell
stories--tell of something or other. Here's Grindhusen coming; won't you
let me tell him you're not going after all?”
She softened at this, and sat thinking for a little. Then she said:
“You must be making a mistake altogether, I think. I am going to the
station to meet the Captain. He didn't come the first day, or yesterday
either, but he's sure to come some time. I'm driving over to meet him.”
“Oh!”
“There you are. Now go. Is Grindhusen there?”
It was like a slap in the face for me. She was right; it sounded so
natural--oh, I had made a fool of myself again!
“Yes, here he is,” I answered. There was no more to be said.
And I put on my cap again, and helped Grindhusen myself with the
harness. So confused and shamed was I that I did not even ask pardon,
but only fretted this way and that way seeing to buckles and straps.
“You are driving then, Grindhusen?” called Fruen from the carriage.
“Me? Yes, surely,” he answered.
Fruen pulled the door to with a bang, and the carriage drove off.
* * * * *
“Has she gone?” asked the maids, clasping their hands.
“Gone--yes, of course. She's going to meet her husband.”
I strolled up to the reservoir again. Grindhusen away meant one man
less; why, then, the rest of us must work so much the harder.
But I had already come to realize that Fru Falkenberg had only silenced
me with a false excuse when she declared she was going to meet her
husband. What matter? The horses were rested; they had done no work the
days Nils had been helping us with the trench. But I had been a fool. I
could have got up on the box myself without asking leave. Well, and what
then? Why, then at least any later follies would have had to pass by way
of me, more or less, and I might have stopped them. He, he! infatuated
old fool! Fruen knew what she was doing, no doubt; she wanted to pay
off old scores, and be away when her husband came home. She was all
indecision, would and would not, would and would not, all the time; but
the idea was there. And I, simple soul--I had not set out a-wandering on
purpose to attend to the particular interests of married folk in love or
out of it. 'Twas their affair! Fru Falkenberg had changed for the worse.
There was no denying it; she had suffered damage, and was thoroughly
spoiled now; it hardly mattered any longer what she did. Ay, and she had
taken to lying as well. First, music-hall tricks with her eyes, then on
till it got to lying. A white lie today, tomorrow a blacker one, each
leading to another. And what of it? Life could afford to waste her, to
throw her away.
We put in three days' work at the trench; only a few feet left now.
There might be three degrees of frost now at nights, but it did not
stop us; we went steadily on. Grindhusen had come back, and was set to
tunnelling under the kitchen where the pipes were to go; but the stable
and cowshed was more important, and I did the underground work for these
myself. Nils and Lars ran the last bit of trech up meanwhile, the last
bit of way to the reservoir.
Today, at last, I questioned Grindhusen about Fruen.
“So you didn't bring Fruen back with you again this last time?”
“No. She went off by train.”
“Off to her husband, I suppose?”
But Grindhusen has turned cautious with me; these two days past he has
said never a word, and now he only answers vaguely:
“Ay, that would be it, no doubt. Ay, surely, yes. Why, you might reckon
that out yourself, she would. Her own husband and all....”
“I thought perhaps she might have been going up to her own people at
Kristianssand.”
“Why, that might be,” says Grindhusen, thinking this a better way.
“Lord, yes, that would be it, of course Just for a visit, like. Well,
well, she'll be home again soon, for sure.”
“Did she tell you so?”
“Why, 'twas so I made out. And the Captain's not home himself yet,
anyway. Eh, but she's a rare openhanded one, she is. 'Here's something
for food and drink for yourself and the horses,' she says. 'And here's a
little extra,' she says again. Eh, but there's never her like!”
But to the maids, with whom he felt less fear, Grindhusen had said it
didn't look as if they'd be seeing Fruen back again at all. She had been
asking him all the way, he said, about Engineer Lassen; she must have
gone off to him after all. And, surely, she'd be well enough with him, a
man with any amount of money and grand style and all.
Then came another card for Fruen from the Captain, this time only to say
would she please send Nils to meet him at the station on Friday, and
be sure to bring his fur coat. The post card had been delayed--it was
Thursday already. And this time it was fortunate, really, that Ragnhild
happened to look at the post card and see what it said.
We stayed sitting in Nils's room, talking about the Captain--what he
would say when he got back, and what we should say, or if we ought
to say anything at all. All three of the maids were present at this
council. Fruen would have had plenty of time to get to Kristiania
herself by the day the Captain had written his card; she had not,
it seemed--she had gone somewhere else. It was more than pitiful
altogether.
Said Nils:
“Didn't she leave a note or anything when she went?”
But no, there was nothing. Ragnhild, however, had done a thing on her
own responsibility which perhaps she ought not to have done--she had
taken the photos from the piano and thrown them in the stove. “Was it
wrong, now?”
“No, no, Ragnhild! No!”
She told us, also, that she had been through Fruen's wardrobe and sorted
out all handkerchiefs that were not hers. Oh, she had found lots of
things up in her room--a bag with Engineer Lassen's initials worked
on, a book with his full name in, some sweets in an envelope with his
writing--and she had burnt it all.
A strange girl, Ragnhild--yes! Was there ever such an instinct as hers?
It was like the devil turned monk. Ragnhild, who made such use herself
of the thick red stair-carpet and the keyholes everywhere!
It suited me and my work well enough that the Captain had not ordered
the carriage before; we had got the trench finished now all the way up,
and I could manage without Nils for laying the pipes. I should want all
hands, though, when it came to filling in again. It was rain again now,
by the way; mild weather, many degrees of warmth.
It was well for me, no doubt, these days that I had this work of mine to
occupy my thoughts as keenly as it did; it kept away many a fancy that
would surely otherwise have plagued me. Now and again I would clench my
fists as a spasm of pain came over me; and when I was all alone up at
the reservoir I could sometimes cry aloud up at the woods. But there was
no possibility of my getting away. And where should I go if I did?
* * * * *
The Captain arrived.
He went all through the house at once--into the parlour, out into the
kitchen, then to the rooms upstairs--in his fur coat and overboots.
“Where's Fruen?” he asked.
“Fruen went to meet Captain,” answered Ragnhild. “We thought she'd be
coming back now as well.”
The Captain's head bowed forward a little. Then cautiously he began
questioning.
“You mean she drove with Nils to the station? Stupid of me not to have
looked about while I was there!”
“No,” said Ragnhild; “it was Sunday Fruen went.”
At this the Captain pulled himself together. “Sunday?” he said. “Then
she must have been going to meet me in Kristiania. H'm! We've managed to
miss each other somehow. I had to make another little journey yesterday,
out to Drammen--no, Frederikstad, I mean. Get me something to eat, will
you?”
_“Værsaagod,_ it's already laid.”
“It was the day before yesterday, by the way, I went out there. Well,
well, she'll have had a little outing, anyhow. And how's everything
going on? Are the men at work on the trench?”
“They've finished it, I think.”
The Captain went in, and Ragnhild came running at once to tell us what
he had said, that we might know what to go by now, and not make things
worse.
Later in the day he came out to where we were at work, greeted us
cheerily, in military fashion, and was surprised to find the pipes
already laid; we had begun filling in now.
“Splendid!” he said. “You fellows are quicker at your work than I am.”
He went off by himself up to the reservoir. When he came back his eyes
were not so keen; he looked a little weary. Maybe he had been sitting
there alone and thinking of many things. He stood watching us now with
one hand to his chin. After a little he said to Nils:
“I've sold the timber now.”
“Captain's got a good price for it, maybe?”
“Yes, a good price. But I've been all this time about it. You've been
quicker here.”
“There are more of us here,” I said. “Four of us some times.”
And at that he tried to jest. “Yes,” he said; “I know you're an
expensive man to have about the place!”
But there was no jest in his face; his smile was hardly a smile at all.
The weakness had gripped him now in earnest. After a little, he sat
down on a stone we had just got out, all over fresh clay as it was, and
watched us.