Fru Falkenberg had been playing with her husband now for some little time. She affected indifference to his indifference, and consoled herself with the casual attentions of men staying in the house. Now one and now another of them left, but stout Captain Bror and the lady with the shawl stayed on, and Lassen, the young engineer, stayed too. Captain Falkenberg looked on as if to say: “Well and good, stay on by all means, my dear fellow, as long as you please.” And it made no impression on him when his wife said “Du” to Lassen and called him Hugo. “Hugo!” she would call, standing on the steps, looking out. And the Captain would volunteer carelessly: “Hugo's just gone down the road.”
One day I heard him answer her with a bitter smile and a wave of his hand towards the lilacs: “Little King Hugo is waiting for you in his kingdom.” I saw her start; then she laughed awkwardly to cover her confusion, and went down in search of Lassen.
At last she had managed to wring some expression of feeling out of him. She would try it again.
This was on a Sunday.
Later in the day Fruen was strangely restless; she said a few kindly words to me, and mentioned that both Nils and I had managed our work very well.
“Lars has been to the post office today,” she said, “to fetch a letter for me. It's one I particularly want. Would you mind going up to his place and bringing it down for me?”
I said I would with pleasure.
“Lars won't be home again till about eleven. So you need not start for a long time yet.”
Very good.
“And when you get back, just give the letter to Ragnhild.”
It was the first time Fru Falkenberg had spoken to me during my present stay at Øvrebø; it was something so new, I went up afterwards to my bedroom and sat there by myself, feeling as if something had really happened. I thought over one or two things a little as well. It was simply foolishness, I told myself to go on playing the stranger here and pretending nobody knew. And a full beard was a nuisance in the hot weather; moreover, it was grey, and made me look ever so old. So I set to and shaved it off.
About ten o'clock I started out towards the clearing. Lars was not back. I stayed there a while with Emma, and presently he came in. I took the letter and went straight home. It was close on midnight.
Ragnhild was nowhere to be seen, and the other maids had gone to bed. I glanced in at the shrubbery. There sat Captain Falkenberg and Elisabet, talking together at the round stone table; they took no notice of me. There was a light in Fruen's bedroom upstairs. And suddenly it occurred to me that to-night I looked as I had done six years before, clean-shaven as then. I took the letter out of my pocket and went in the main entrance to give it to Fruen myself.
At the top of the stairs Ragnhild comes slipping noiselessly towards me and takes the letter. She is evidently excited. I can feel the heat of her breath as she points along the passage. There is a sound of voices from the far end.
It looked as if she had taken up her post here on guard, or had been set there by some one to watch; however, it was no business of mine. And when she whispered: “Don't say a word; go down again quietly!” I obeyed, and went to my room.
My window was open. I could hear the couple down among the bushes: they were drinking wine. And there was still light upstairs in Fruen's room.
Ten minutes passed; then the light went out.
A moment later I heard some one hurrying up the stairs in the house, and looked down involuntarily to see if it was the Captain. But the Captain was sitting as before.
Now came the same steps down the stairs again, and, a little after, others. I kept watch on the main entrance. First comes Ragnhild, flying as if for her life over towards the servants' quarters; then comes Fru Falkenberg with her hair down, and the letter in her hand showing white in the gloom. After her comes the engineer. The pair of them move down towards the high road.
Ragnhild comes rushing in to me and flings herself on a chair, all out of breath and bursting with news. Such things had happened this evening, she whispered. Shut the window! Fruen and that engineer fellow—never a thought of being careful—'twas as near as ever could be but they'd have done it. He was holding on to her when Ragnhild went in with the letter. Ugh! Up in Fruen's room, with the lamp blown out.
“You're mad,” said I to Ragnhild.
But the girl had both heard and seen well enough, it seemed. She was grown so used to playing the spy that she could not help spying on her mistress as well. An uncommon sort, was Ragnhild.
I put on a lofty air at first and would have none of her tale-bearing, thank you, listening at keyholes. Fie!
But how could she help it, she replied. Her orders were to bring up the letter as soon as her mistress put out the light, and not before. But Fruen's windows looked out to the shrubbery, where the Captain was sitting with Elisabet from the vicarage. No place for Ragnhild there. Better to wait upstairs in the passage, and just take a look at the keyhole now and again, to see if the light was out.
This sounded a little more reasonable.
“But only think of it,” said Ragnhild suddenly, shaking her head in admiration. “What a fellow he must be, that engineer, to get as near as that with Fruen.”
As near as what! Jealousy seized me; I gave up my lofty pose, and questioned Ragnhild searchingly about it all. What did she say they were doing? How did it all come about?
Ragnhild could not say how it began. Fruen had given her orders about a letter that was to be fetched from Lars Falkenberg's, and when it arrived, she was to wait till the light went out in Fruen's room, and then bring it up. “Very good,” said Ragnhild. “But not till I put out the light, you understand,” said Fruen again. And Ragnhild had set herself to wait for the letter. But the time seemed endless, and she fell to thinking and wondering about it all; there was something strange about it. She went up into the passage and listened. She could hear Fruen and the engineer talking easily and without restraint; stooping down to the keyhole, she saw her mistress loosening her hair, with the engineer looking on and saying how lovely she was. And then—ah, that engineer—he kissed her.
“On the lips, was it?...”
Ragnhild saw I was greatly excited, and tried to reassure me.
“Well, perhaps not quite. I won't be sure; but still ... and he's not a pretty mouth, anyway, to my mind.... I say, though, you've shaved all clean this evening. How nice! Let me see....”
“But what did Fruen say to that? Did she slip away?”
“Yes, I think so; yes, of course she did—and screamed.”
“Did she, though?”
“Yes; out loud. And he said 'Sh!' And every time she raised her voice he said 'Sh!' again. But Fruen said let them hear, it didn't matter; they were sitting down there making love in the shrubbery themselves. That's what she said, and it was the Captain and Elisabet from the vicarage she meant. 'There, you can see them,' she said, and went to the window. 'I know, I know,' says the engineer; 'but, for Heaven's sake, don't stand there with your hair down!' and he went over and got her away from the window. Then they said a whole heap of things, and every time he tried to whisper Fruen talked out loud again. 'If only you wouldn't shout,' he said. 'We could be ever so quiet up here.' Then she was quiet for a bit, and just sat there smiling at him without a word. She was ever so fond of him.”
“Was she?”
“Yes, indeed, I could see that much. Only fancy, a fellow like that! He leaned over towards her, and put his hand so—there.”
“And Fruen sat still and let him?”
“Well, yes, a little. But then she went over to the window again, and came back, and put out her tongue like that—and went straight up to him and kissed him. I can't think how she could. For his mouth's not a bit nice, really. Then he said, 'Now we're all alone, and we can hear if anybody comes.' 'What about Bror and his partner?' said she. 'Oh; they are out somewhere, at the other end of the earth,' said he. 'We're all alone; don't let me have to keep on asking you now!' And then he took hold of her and picked her up—oh, he was so strong, so strong! 'No, no; leave go!' she cried.”
“Go on!” I said breathlessly. “What next?”
“Why, it was just then you came up with the letter, and I didn't see what happened next. And when I went back, they'd turned the key in the lock, so I could hardly see at all. But I heard Fruen saying: 'Oh, what are you doing? No, no, we mustn't!' She must have been in his arms then. And then at last she said: 'Wait, then; let me get down a minute.' And he let her go. 'Blow out the lamp,' she said. And then it was all dark ... oh!...”
“But now I was at my wits' end what to do,” Ragnhild went on. “I stood a minute all in a flurry, and was just going to knock at the door all at once—”
“Yes, yes; why didn't you? What on earth made you wait at all?”
“Why, if I had, then Fruen'd have known in a moment I'd been listening outside,” answered the girl. “No, I slipped away from the door and down the stairs, then turned back and went up again, treading hard so Fruen could hear the way I came. The door was still fastened, but I knocked, and Fruen came and opened it. But the engineer was just behind; he'd got hold of her clothes, and was simply wild after her. 'Don't go! don't go!' he kept on saying, and never taking the slightest notice of me. But then, when I turned to go, Fruen came out with me. Oh, but only think. It was as near as could be!...”
A long, restless night.
At noon, when we men came home from the fields next day, the maids were whispering something about a scene between the Captain and his wife. Ragnhild knew all about it. The Captain had noticed his wife with her hair down the night before, and the lamp out upstairs, and laughed at her hair and said wasn't it pretty! And Fruen said nothing much at first, but waited her chance, and then she said: “Yes, I know. I like to let my hair down now and again, and why not? It isn't yours!” She was none so clever, poor thing, at answering back in a quarrel.
Then Elisabet had come up and put in her word. And she was smarter—prrr! Fruen did manage to say: “Well, anyhow we were in the house, but you two were sitting out among the bushes!” And Elisabet turned sharp at that, and snapped out: “We didn't put out the light!” “And if we did,” said Fruen, “it made no difference; we came down directly after.”
Heavens! I thought to myself, why ever didn't she say they put the light outbecausethey were going down?
That was the end of it for a while. But then, later on, the Captain said something about Fruen being so much older than Elisabet. “You ought always to wear your hair down,” he said. “On my word, it made you look quite a girl!” “Oh yes, I dare say I need it now,” answered Fruen. But seeing Elisabet turn away laughing, she flared up all of a sudden and told her to take herself off. And Elisabet put her hands on her hips, and asked the Captain to order her carriage. “Right!” says the Captain at that; “and I'll drive you myself!”
All this Ragnhild had heard for herself standing close by.
I thought to myself they were jealous, the pair of them—she, of this sitting out in the shrubbery, and he, of her letting her hair down and putting out the light.
As we came out of the kitchen, and were going across for a rest, there was the Captain busy with Elisabet's carriage. He called me up and said:
“I ought not to ask you now, when you're having your rest, but I wish you'd go down and mend the door of the summer-house for me.”
“Right!” I said.
Now that door had been wrong ever since the engineer burst it open several nights before. What made the Captain so anxious to have it put right just at this moment? He'd have no use for the summerhouse while he was driving Elisabet home. Was it because he wanted to shut the place up so no one else should use it while he was away? It was a significant move, if so.
I took some tools and things and went down to the shrubbery.
And now I had my first look at the summer-house from inside. It was comparatively new; it had not been there six years before. A roomy place, with pictures on the walls, and even an alarm clock—now run down—chairs with cushions, a table, and an upholstered settee covered with red plush. The blinds were down.
I set a couple of pieces in the roof first, where I'd smashed it with my empty bottle; then I took off the lock to see what was wrong there. While I was busy with this the Captain came up. He had evidently been drinking already that day, or was suffering from a heavy bout the night before.
“That's no burglary,” he said. “Either the door must have been left open, and slammed itself to bits, or some one must have stumbled up against it in the dark. One of the visitors, perhaps, that left the other day.”
But the door had been roughly handled, one could see: the lock was burst open, and the woodwork on the inside of the frame torn away.
“Let me see! Put a new bolt in here, and force the spring back in place,” said the Captain, examining the lock. He sat down in a chair.
Fru Falkenberg came down the stone steps to the shrubbery, and called:
“Is the Captain there?”
“Yes,” said I.
Then she came up. Her face was twitching with emotion.
“I'd like a word with you,” she said. “I won't keep you long.”
The Captain answered, without rising:
“Certainly. Will you sit down, or would you rather stand? No, don't run away, you! I've none too much time as it is,” he said sharply to me.
This I took to mean that he wanted the lock mended so he could take the key with him when he went.
“I dare say it wasn't—I oughtn't to have said what I did,” Fruen began.
The Captain made no answer.
But his silence, after she had come down on purpose to try and make it up, was more than she could bear. She ended by saying: “Oh, well, it's all the same; I don't care.”
And she turned to go.
“Did you want to speak to me?” asked the Captain.
“Oh no, it doesn't matter. Thanks, I shan't trouble.”
“Very well,” said the Captain. He smiled as he spoke. He was drunk, no doubt, and angry about something.
But Fruen turned as she passed by me in the doorway, and said:
“You ought not to drive down there today. There's gossip enough already.”
“You need not listen to it,” he answered.
“It can't go on like this, you know,” she said again. “And you don't seem to think of the disgrace....”
“We're both a little thoughtless in that respect,” he answered carelessly, looking round at the walls.
I took the lock and stepped outside.
“Here, don't go running away now!” cried the Captain. “I'm in a hurry!”
“Yes, you're in a hurry, of course,” repeated Fruen. “Going away again. But you'd do well to think it over just for once. I've been thinking things over myself lately; only you wouldn't see....”
“What do you mean?” he asked, haughty and stiff as ever. “Was it your fooling about at night with your hair down and lights out you thought I wouldn't see? Oh yes, no doubt!”
“I'll have to finish this on the anvil,” said I, and hurried off.
I stayed away longer than was needed, but when I came back Fruen was still there. They were talking louder than before.
“And do you know what I have done?” said Fruen “I've lowered myself so far as to show I was jealous. Yes, I've done that. Oh, only about the maid ... I mean....”
“Well, and what then?” said the Captain.
“Oh, won't you understand? Well, have it your own way, then. You'll have to take the consequences later; make no mistake about that!”
These were her last words, and they sounded like an arrow striking a shield. She stepped out and strode away.
“Manage it all right?” said the Captain as I came up. But I could see his thoughts were busy with other things; he was trying to appear unconcerned. A little after, he managed to yawn, and said lazily: “Ugh, it's a long drive. But if Nils can't spare a hand I must go myself.”
I had only to fix the lock in its place, and set a new strip down the inside of the door-frame; it was soon done. The Captain tried the door, put the key in his pocket, thanked me for the work, and went off.
A little later he drove away with Elisabet.
“See you again soon,” he called to Captain Bror and Engineer Lassen, waving his hand to them both. “Mind that you have a good time while I'm away!”
Evening came. And what would happen now? A great deal, as it turned out.
It started early; we men were at supper while they were having dinner up at the house, and we could hear them carrying on as gaily as could be. Ragnhild was taking in trays of food and bottles, and waiting at table; once when she came out, she laughed to herself and said to the other girls: “I believe Fruen's drunk herself tonight.”
I had not slept the night before, nor had my midday rest; I was troubled and nervous after all that had happened the last two days. So, as soon as I had finished my supper, I went out and up to the woods to be alone. I stayed there a long while.
I looked down towards the house. The Captain away, the servants gone to rest, the beasts in stable and shed fast asleep. Stout Captain Bror and his lady, too, had doubtless found a quiet corner all to themselves after dinner; he was simply wild about the woman, for all he was old and fat and she herself no longer young. That left only Fru Falkenberg and the young engineer. And where would they be now?
'Twas their affair.
I sauntered home again, yawning and shivering a little in the cool night, and went up to my room. After a while Ragnhild came up, and begged me to keep awake and be ready to help in case of need. It was horrible, she said; they were carrying on like mad things up at the house, walking about from one room to another, half undressed and drunk as well. Was Fruen drunk, too? Yes, she was. And was she walking about half undressed? No, but Captain Bror was, and Fruen clapped her hands and cried “Bravo!” And the engineer as well. It was one as bad as the other. And Ragnhild had just taken in two more bottles of wine, though they were drunk already.
“Come over with me and you can hear them yourself,” said Ragnhild. “They're up in Fruen's room now.”
“No,” I said. “I'm going to bed. And you'd better go, too.”
“But they'll ring in a minute and be wanting something if I do.”
“Let them ring!”
And then it was Ragnhild confessed that the Captain himself had asked her to stay up that night in case Fruen should want her.
This altered the whole aspect of affairs in a moment. Evidently the Captain had feared something might happen, and set Ragnhild on guard in case. I put on my blouse again and went across with her to the house.
We went upstairs and stood in the passage; we could hear them laughing and making a noise in Fruen's room. But Fruen herself spoke as clearly as ever, and was not drunk at all. “Yes, she is,” said Ragnhild, “anyhow, she's not like herself tonight.”
I wished I could have seen her for a moment.
We went back to the kitchen and sat down. But I was restless all the time; after a little I took down the lamp from the wall and told Ragnhild to follow me. We went upstairs again.
“No; go in and ask Fruen to come out here to me,” I said.
“Why, whatever for?”
“I've a message for her.”
And Ragnhild knocked at the door and went in.
It was only at the last moment I hit on any message to give. I could simply look her straight in the face and say: “The Captain sent his kind regards.” [Footnote:Kapteinen bad mig hilse Dem: literally, “The Captain bade me greet you.” Such a message would not seem quite so uncalled for in Norway, such greetings (Hilsen) being given and sent more frequently, and on slighter occasions, than with us.] Would that be enough? I might say more: “The Captain was obliged to drive himself, because Nils couldn't spare any one to go.”
But a moment can be long at times, and thought a lightning flash. I found time to reject both these plans and hatch out another before Fruen came. Though I doubt if my last plan was any better.
Fruen asked in surprise:
“Well, what do you want?”
Ragnhild came up, too, and looked at me wonderingly.
I turned the lamp towards Fruen's face and said:
“I beg pardon for coming up so late. I'll be going to the post first thing tomorrow; I thought if perhaps Fruen had any letters to go?”
“Letters? No,” she answered, shaking her head.
There was an absent look in her eyes, but she did not look in the least as if she had been drinking.
“No, I've no letters,” she said, and moved to go.
“Beg pardon, then,” I said.
“Was it the Captain told you to go to the post?” she asked.
“No, I was just going for myself.”
She turned and went back to her room. Before she was well through the door I heard her say to the others:
“A nice pretext, indeed.”
Ragnhild and I went down again. I had seen her.
Oh, but I was humbled now indeed! And it did not ease my mind at all when Ragnhild incautiously let out a further piece of news. It seemed she had been romancing before; it was not true about the Captain's having asked her to keep a look out. I grew more and more convinced in my own mind: Ragnhild was playing the spy on her own account, for sheer love of the game.
I left her, and, went up to my room. What had my clumsy intrusion gained for me, after all? A pretext, she had said; clearly she had seen through it all. Disgusted with myself, I vowed that for the future I would leave things and people to themselves.
I threw myself down fully dressed on the bed.
After a while I heard Fru Falkenberg's voice outside in front of the house; my window was open, and she spoke loudly enough. The engineer was with her, putting in a word now and again. Fruen was in raptures over the weather, so fine it was, and such a warm night. Oh, it was lovely out now—ever so much nicer than indoors!
But her voice seemed a trifle less clear now than before.
I ran to the window, and saw the pair of them standing by the steps that led down to the shrubbery. The engineer seemed to have something on his mind that he had not been able to get said before. “Do listen to me now,” he said. Then followed a brief and earnest pleading, which was answered—ay, and rewarded. He spoke as if to one hard of hearing, because she had been deaf to his words so long; they stood there by the stone steps, neither of them caring for any one else in the world. Let any listen or watch who pleased; the night was theirs, the world was theirs, and the spring-time was about them, drawing them together. He watched her like a cat; every movement of her body set his blood tingling; he was ready to spring upon her in a moment. And when it came near to action there was a power of will in his manner towards her. Ay, the young spark!
“I've begged and prayed you long enough,” he said breathlessly. “Yesterday you all but would; today you're deaf again. You think you and Bror and Tante [Footnote: “Auntie.” Evidently Captain Bror's lady is meant.] and the rest are to have a good time and no harm done, while I look on and play the nice young man? But, by Heaven, you're wrong! Here's you yourself, a garden of all good things right in front of me, and a fence ... do you know what I'm going to do now with that silly fence?”
“What are you going to do? No, Hugo, you've had too much to drink this evening. You're so young. We've both drunk more than we ought,” she said.
“And then you play me false into the bargain, with your tricks. You send a special messenger for a letter that simply can't wait, and at the same time you're cruel enough to let me think ... to promise me....”
“I'll never do it again, Hugo.”
“Never do it again? What do you mean by that? When you can go up to a man—yes, to me, and kiss me like you did.... What's the good of saying you'll never do it any more; it's done, and a kiss like that's not a thing to forget. I can feel it still, and it's a mad delight, and I thank you for it You've got that letter in your dress; let me see it.”
“You're so excited, Hugo. No, it's getting late now. We'd better say good-night.”
“Will you show me that letter?”
“Show you the letter? Certainly not!”
At that he made a half-spring, as if to take it by force, but checked himself, and snapped out:
“What? You won't? Well, on my word you are.... Mean's not the word for it. You're something worse....”
“Hugo!”
“Yes, you are!”
“If youwillsee the letter, here it is!” She thrust her hand into her blouse, took out the letter, opened it, and waved it at him, flourishing her innocence. “Here's the letter—from my mother; there's her signature—look. From mother—and now what have you to say?”
He quailed as if at a blow, and only said:
“From your mother. Why, then, it didn't matter at all?”
“No; there you are. Oh, but of course it did matter in a way, but still....”
He leaned up against the fence, and began to work it out:
“From your mother.... I see. A letter from your mother came and interrupted us. Do you know what I think? You've been cheating. You've been fooling me all along. I can see it all now.”
She tried again.
“It was an important letter. Mama is coming—she's coming here to stay very soon. And I was waiting to hear.”
“You were cheating all the time, weren't you?” he said again. “Let them bring in the letter just at the right moment, when we'd put out the light. Yes, that's it. You were just leading me on, to see how far I'd go, and kept your maid close at hand to protect you.”
“Oh, do be sensible! It's ever so late; we must go in.”
“Ugh! I had too much to drink up there, I think. Can't talk straight now.”
He could think of nothing but the letter, and went on about it again:
“For there was no need to have all that mystery about a letter from home. No; I see it all now. Want to go in, you say? Well then, go in, Fru, by all means.Godnat, Frue. My dutiful respects, as from a son.”
He bowed, and stood watching her with a sneering smile.
“A son? Oh yes,” she replied, with sudden emotion. “I am old, yes. And you are so young, Hugo, that's true. And that's why I kissed you. But I couldn't be your mother—no, it's only that I'm older, ever so much older than you. But I'm not quite an old woman yet, and that you should see if only . . . But I'm older than Elisabet and every one else. Oh, what am I talking about? Not a bit of it. I don't know what else the years may have done to me, but they haven't made me an old woman yet. Have they? What do you think yourself? Oh, but what do you know about it? . . .”
“No, no,” he said softly. “But is there any sense in going on like this? Here are you, young as you are, with nothing on earth to do all the time but keep guard over yourself and get others to do the same. And the Lord in heaven knows you promised me a thing, but it means so little to you; you take a pleasure in putting me off and beating me down with your great white wings.”
“Great white wings,” she murmured to herself.
“Yes, you might have great red wings. Look at yourself now, standing there all lovely as you are, and all for nothing.”
“Oh, I think the wine has gone to my head! All for nothing, indeed!”
Then suddenly she takes his hand and leads him down the steps. I can hear her voice: “Why should I care? Does he imagine Elisabet's so much better?”
They pass along the path to the summer-house. Here she hesitates, and stops.
“Oh, where are we going?” she asks. “Haha, we must be mad! You wouldn't have thought I was mad, would you? I'm not, either—that is to say, yes, I am, now and again. There, the door's locked; very well, we'll go away again. But what a mean trick to lock the door, when we want to go in.”
Full of bitterness and suspicion, he answered:
“Now, you're cheating again. You knew well enough the door was locked.”
“Oh, must you always think the worst of me? But why should he lock the door so carefully and have the place all to himself? Yes, Ididknow it was locked, and that's why I came with you. I dare not. No, Hugo, I won't, I mean it. Oh, are you mad? Come back!”
She took his hand again and tried to turn back; they stood struggling a little, for he would not follow. Then in his passion and strength he threw both arms round her and kissed her again and again. And she weakened ever more and more, speaking brokenly between the kisses:
“I've never kissed any other man before—never! It's true—I swear it. I've never kissed....”
“No, no, no,” he answers impatiently, drawing her step by step the way he will.
Outside the summer-house he looses his hold of her a moment, flings himself, one shoulder forward, heavily against the door, and breaks it open for the second time. Then in one stride he is beside her once more. Neither speaks.
But even at the door, she checks again—stands clinging to the door-post, and will not move.
“No, no, I've never been unfaithful to him yet. I won't; I've never—never....”
He draws her to him suddenly, kisses her a full minute, two minutes, a deep, unbroken kiss; she leans back from the waist, her hand slips where it holds, and she gives way....
A white mist gathers before my eyes. So ... they have come to it now. Now he takes her, has his will and joy of her....
A melancholy weariness and rest comes over me. I feel miserable and alone. It is late; my heart has had its day....
Through the white mist comes a leaping figure; it is Ragnhild coming up from among the bushes, running with her tongue thrust out.
The engineer came up to me, noddedGodmorgen, and asked me to mend the summer-house door.
“Is it broken again?”
“Yes, it got broken last night.”
It was early for him to be about—no more than halfpast four; we farm-hands had not yet started for the fields. His eyes showed small and glittering, as if they burned; likely enough he had not slept all night. But he said nothing as to how the door had got broken.
Not for any thought of him, but for Captain Falkenberg's sake, I went down at once to the summer-house and mended the door once again. No need for such haste, maybe; the Captain had a long drive there and back, but it was close on twenty-four hours now since he started.
The engineer came down with me. Without in the least perceiving how it came about, I found myself thinking well of him; he had broken open that door last night—quite so, but he was not the man to sneak out of it after. He and no one other it was who had it mended. Eh, well, perhaps after all 'twas only my vanity was pleased. I felt flattered at his trusting to my silence. That was it. That was how I came to think well of him.
“I'm in charge of some timber-rafting on the rivers,” he said. “How long are you staying here?”
“Not for long. Till the field-work's over for the season.”
“I could give you work if you'd care about it.”
Now this was work I knew nothing of, and, what was more, I liked to be among field and forest, not with lumbermen and proletariat. However, I thanked him for the offer.
“Very good of you to come and put this right. As a matter of fact, I broke it open looking for a gun. I wanted to shoot something, and I thought there might be a gun in there.”
I made no answer; it would have pleased me better if he had said nothing.
“So I thought I'd ask you before you started out to work,” he said, to finish off.
I put the lock right and set it in its place again, and began nailing up the woodwork, which was shattered as before. While I was busy with this, we heard Captain Falkenberg's voice; through the bushes we could see him unharnessing the horses and leading them in.
The engineer gave a start; he fumbled for his watch, and got it out, but his eyes had grown all big and empty—they could see nothing. Suddenly he said:
“Oh, I forgot, I must . . .”
And he hurried off far down the garden.
“So he's going to sneak out of it, after all,” I thought to myself.
A moment later the Captain himself came down. He was pale, and covered with dust, and plainly had not slept, but perfectly sober. He called to me from a distance:
“Hei! how did you get in there?”
I touched my cap, but said nothing.
“Somebody been breaking in again?”
“It was only . . . I just remembered I'd left out a couple of nails here yesterday. It's all right now. If Captain will lock up again . . .”
Fool that I was! If that was the best excuse I could find, he would see through it all at once.
He stood for a few seconds looking at the door with half-closed eyes; he had his suspicions, no doubt. Then he took out the key, locked up the place, and walked off. What else could he do?
All the guests are gone—stout Captain Bror, the lady with the shawl, Engineer Lassen as well. And Captain Falkenberg is getting ready to start for manoeuvres at last. It struck me that he must have applied for leave on very special grounds, or he would have been away on duty long before this.
We farm-hands have been hard at work in the fields the last few days—a heavy strain on man and beast. But Nils knew what he was doing; he wanted to gain time for something else.
One day he set me to work cleaning up all round outside the house and buildings. It took all the time gained and more, but it made the whole place look different altogether. And that was what Nils wanted—to cheer the Captain up a little before he left home. And I turned to of my own accord and fixed up a loose pale or so in the garden fence, straightened the door of a shed that was wry on its hinges, and such-like. And the barn bridge, too, needed mending. I thought of putting in new beams.
“Where will you be going when you leave here?” asked the Captain.
“I don't know. I'll be on the road for a bit.”
“I could do with you here for a while; there's a lot of things that want doing.”
“Captain was thinking of paintwork, maybe?”
“Painting, too—yes. I'm not sure about that, though; it would be a costly business, with the outbuildings and all. No, I was thinking of something else. Do you know anything about timber, now? Could you mark down for yourself?”
It pleased him, then, to pretend he did not recognize me from the time I had worked in his timber before. But was there anything left now to fell? I answered him:
“Ay, I'm used to timber. Where would it be this year?”
“Anywhere. Wherever you like. There must be something left, surely.”
“Ay, well.”
I laid the new beams in the barn bridge, and when that was done, I took down the flagstaff and put on a new knob and line. Øvrebø was looking quite nice already, and Nils said it made him feel better only to look at it. I got him to talk to the Captain and put in a word about the paintwork, but the Captain had looked at him with a troubled air and said: “Yes, yes, I know. But paint's not the only thing we've got to think about. Wait till the autumn and see how the crops turn out. We've sowed a lot this year.”
But when the flagstaff stood there with the old paint all scraped off, and a new knob and halliards, the Captain could not help noticing it, and ordered some paint by telegraph. Though, to be sure there was no such hurry as all that; a letter by the post had been enough.
Two days passed. The paint arrived, but was put aside for the time being; we had not done with the field-work yet by a long way, though we were using both the carriage horses for sowing and harrowing, and when it came to planting potatoes, Nils had to ask up at the house for the maids to come and help. The Captain gave him leave, said yes to all that was asked, and went off to manoeuvres. So we were left to ourselves.
But there was a big scene between husband and wife before he went.
Every one of us on the place knew there was trouble between them, and Ragnhild and the dairymaid were always talking about it. The fields were coming on nicely now, and you could see the change in the grassland from day to day; it was fine spring weather, and all things doing well that grew, but there was trouble and strife at Øvrebø. Fruen could be seen at times with a face that showed she had been crying; or other times with an air of exaggerated haughtiness, as if she cared nothing for any one. Her mother came—a pale, quiet lady with spectacles and a face like a mouse. She did not stay long—only a few days; then she went back to Kristianssand—that was where she lived. The air here did not agree with her, she said.
Ah, that great scene! A bitter final reckoning that lasted over an hour—Ragnhild told us all about it afterwards. Neither the Captain nor Fruen raised their voices, but the words came slow and strong. And in their bitterness the pair of them agreed to go each their own way from now on.
“Oh, you don't say so!” cried all in the kitchen, clasping their hands.
Ragnhild drew herself up and began mimicking:
“'You've been breaking into the summer-house again with some one?' said the Captain. 'Yes,' said Fruen. 'And what more?' he asked. 'Everything,' said she. The Captain smiled at that and said: 'There's something frank and open about an answer like that; you can see what is meant almost at once.' Fruen said nothing to that. 'What you can see in that young puppy, I don't know—though he did help me once out of a fix.' Fruen looked at him then, and said: 'Helped you?' 'Yes,' said the Captain; 'backed a bill for me once.' And Fruen asked: 'I didn't know that.' Then the Captain: 'Didn't he tell you that?' Fruen shook her head. 'Well, what then?' he said again. 'Would it have made any difference if he had?' 'Yes,' said Fruen at first, and then, 'No.' 'Are you fond of him?' he asked. And she turned on him at once. 'Are you fond of Elisabet?' 'Yes,' answered the Captain; but he sat smiling after that. 'Well and good,' said Fruen sharply. Then there was a long silence. The Captain was the first to speak, 'You were right when you said that about thinking over things. I've been doing so. I'm not a vicious man, really; queerly enough, I've never really cared about drinking and playing the fool. And yet I suppose I did, in a way. But there's an end of it now.' 'So much the better for you,' she answered sullenly. 'Quite so,' says he again. 'Though it would have been better if you'd been a bit glad to hear it.' 'You can get Elisabet to do that,' says she. 'Elisabet,' says he—just that one word—and shakes his head. Then they said nothing for quite a while. 'What are you going to do now?' asks the Captain. 'Oh, don't trouble yourself about me,' said Fruen very slowly. 'I can be a nurse, if you like, or cut my hair short and be a school teacher, if you like.' 'If I like,' says he; 'no, decide for yourself.' 'I want to know what you are going to do first,' she says, 'I'm going to stay here where I am,' he answered, 'but you've turned yourself out of doors.' And Fruen nodded and said: 'Very well.'”
“Oh,” from all in the kitchen. “Oh but,Herregud! it will come right again surely,” said Nils, looking round at the rest of us to see what we thought.
For a couple of days after the Captain had gone, Fruen sat playing the piano all the time. On the third day Nils drove her to the station; she was going to stay with her mother at Kristianssand. That left us more alone than ever. Fruen had not taken any of her things with her; perhaps she felt they were not really hers; perhaps they had all come from him originally, and she did not care to have them now. Oh, but it was all a misery.
Ragnhild was not to go away, her mistress had said. But it was cook that was left in charge of everything, and kept the keys, which was best for all concerned.
On Saturday the Captain came back home on leave. Nils said he never used to do that before. Fine and upright in his bearing he was, for all that his wife was gone away, and he was sober as could be. He gave me orders, very short and clear, about the timber; came out with me and showed me here and there. “Battens, down to smallest battens, a thousand dozen. I shall be away three weeks this time,” he said. On the Sunday afternoon he went off again. He was more determined in his manner now—more like himself.
We were through with the field-work at last, and the potato-planting was done; after that, Nils and the lad could manage the daily work by themselves, and I went up to my new work among the timber.
Good days these were for me, all through. Warm and rainy at first, making the woods all wet, but I went out all the same, and never stayed in on that account. Then a spell of hot weather set in, and in the light evenings, after I got home from work, it was a pleasure to go round mending and seeing to little things here and there—a gutter-pipe, a window, and the like. At last I got the escape ladder up and set to scraping the old paint from the north wall of the barn—it was flaking away there of itself. It would be a neat piece of work if I could get the barn done this summer after all, and the paint was there all ready.
But there was another thing that made me weary at times of the work and the whole place. It was not the same working there now as when the Captain and Fruen were home; I found here confirmation of the well-known truth that it is well for a man to have some one over him at his work, that is, if he is not himself in charge as leading man. Here were the maids now, going about the place with none to look after them. Ragnhild and the dairymaid were always laughing and joking noisily at meal-times and quarreling now and again between themselves; the cook's authority was not always enough to keep the peace, and this often made things uncomfortable. Also, it seemed that some one must have been talking to Lars Falkenberg, my good old comrade that had been, and made him suspicious of me now.
Lars came in one evening and took me aside; he had come to say he forbade me to show myself on his place again. His manner was comically threatening.
Now, I had not been there more than a few times with washing—maybe half a dozen times in all; he had been out, but Emma and I had talked a bit of old things and new. The last time I was there Lars came home suddenly and made a scene the moment he got inside the door, because Emma was sitting on a stool in her petticoat. “It's too hot for a skirt,” she said. “Ho, yes, and your hair all down your back—too hot to put it up, I suppose?” he retorted. Altogether he was in a rage with her. I said good-night to him as I left, but he did not answer.
I had not been there since. Then what made him come over like this all of a sudden? I set it down as more of Ragnhild's mischievous work.
When he had told me in so many words he forbade me to enter his house, Lars nodded and looked at me; to his mind, I ought now to be as one dead.
“And I've heard Emma's been down here,” he went on. “But she'll come no more, I fancy, after this.”
“She may have been here once or twice for the washing.”
“Ho, yes, the washing, of course. And you coming up yourself Heaven knows how many times a week—more washing! Bring up a shirt one day and a pair of drawers the next, that's what you do. But you can get Ragnhild to do your washing now.”
“Well and good.”
“Aha, my friend, I know you and your little ways. Going and visiting and making yourself sweet to folk when you find them all alone. But not for me, thank you!”
Nils comes up to us now, guessing, no doubt, what's the trouble, and ready to put in a word for me, like the good comrade he is. He catches the last words, and gives me a testimonial on the spot, to the effect that he's never seen anything wrong about me all the time I've been on the place.
But Lars Falkenberg bridles up at once and puts on airs, looking Nils up and down with contempt. He has a grudge against Nils already. For though Lars had managed well enough since he got his own little place up in the wood, he had never equalled Nils' work here on the Captain's land. And Lars Falkenberg feels himself aggrieved.
“What have you got to come cackling about?” he asks.
“I'm saying what is the truth, that's all,” answers Nils.
“Ho, are you, you goat? If you want me to wipe the floor with you, I'll do it on the spot!”
Nils and I walked away, but Lars still shouted after us. And there was Ragnhild, of course, sniffing at the lilacs as we passed.
That evening I began to think about moving on again as soon as I had finished my work in the timber. When the three weeks were up, the Captain came back as he had said. He noticed I had scraped the northern wall of the barn, and was pleased with me for that. “End of it'll be you'll have to paint that again, too,” he said. I told him how far I had got with the timber; there was not much left now. “Well, keep at it and do some more,” was all he said. Then he went back to his duty again for another three weeks.
But I did not care to stay another three weeks at Øvrebø as things were now. I marked down a few score dozen battens, and reckoned it all out on my paper—that would have to do. But it was still too early for a man to live in the forests and hills; the flowers were come, but there were no berries yet. Song and twitter of birds at their mating, flies and midges and moths, but no cloudberries, no angelica.
In town.
I came in to Engineer Lassen, Inspector of rafting sections, and he took me on as he had promised, though it was late in the season now. To begin with, I am to make a tour of the water and see where the logs have gathered thickest, noting down the places on a chart. He is quite a good fellow, the engineer, only still very young. He gives me over-careful instructions about things he fancies I don't know already. It makes him seem a trifle precocious.
And so this man has helped Captain Falkenberg out of a mess? The Captain was sorry for it now, no doubt, anxious to free himself from the debt—that was why he was cutting down his timber to the last lot of battens, I thought. And I wished him free of it myself. I was sorry now I had not stayed on marking down a few more days, that he might have enough and to spare. What if it should prove too little, after all?
Engineer Lassen was a wealthy man, apparently. He lived at an hotel, and had two rooms there. I never got farther than the office myself, but even there he had a lot of costly things, books and papers, silver things for the writing-table, gilt instruments and things; a light overcoat, silk-lined, hung on the wall. Evidently a rich man, and a person of importance in the place. The local photographer had a large-sized photograph of him in the show-case outside. I saw him, too, out walking in the afternoons with the young ladies of the town. Being in charge of all the timber traffic, he generally walked down to the long bridge—it was four hundred and sixty feet—across the foss, halted there, and stood looking up and down the river. Just by the bridge piers, and on the flat rocks below them, was where the logs were most inclined to jam, and he kept a gang of lumbermen regularly at hand for this work alone. Standing on the bridge there, watching the men at work among the logs, he looked like an admiral on board a ship, young and strong, with power to command. The ladies with him stopped willingly, and stood there on the bridge, though the rush of water was often enough to make one giddy. And the roar of it was such that they had to put their heads together when they spoke.
But just in this position, at his post on the bridge, standing there and turning this way and that, there was something smallish and unhandsome about his figure; his sports jacket, fitting tightly at the waist, seemed to pinch, and showed up over-heavy contours behind.
The very first evening, after he'd given me my orders to start off up the river next day, I met him out walking with two ladies. At sight of me he stopped, and kept his companions waiting there, too, while he gave me the same instructions all over again. “Just as well I happened to meet you,” he said. “You'll start off early, then, tomorrow morning, take a hooking pole with you, and clear all the logs you can manage. If you come across a big jam, mark it down on the chart—you've got a copy of the chart, haven't you? And keep on up river till you meet another man coming down. But remember to mark in red, not blue. And let me see how well you can manage.—A man I've got to work under me,” he explained to the ladies. “I really can't be bothered running up and down all the time.”
So serious he was about it all; he even took out a notebook and wrote something down. He was very young, and could not help showing off a little with two fair ladies to look on.
Next morning I got away early. It was light at four, and by that time I was a good way up the river. I carried food with me, and my hooking pole—which is like a boat-hook really.
No young, growing timber here, as on Captain Falkenberg's land; the ground was stony and barren, covered with heather and pine needles for miles round. They had felled too freely here; the sawmills had taken over much, leaving next to no young wood. It was a melancholy country to be in.
By noon I had cleared a few small jams, and marked down a big one. Then I had my meal, with a drink of water from the river. A bit of a rest, and I went on again, on till the evening. Then I came upon a big jam, where a man was already at work among the logs. This was the man I had been told to look out for. I did not go straight up to him at first, but stopped to look at him. He worked very cautiously, as if in terror of his life; he was even afraid of getting his feet wet. It amused me to watch him for a little. The least chance of being carried out into the stream on a loosened log was enough to make him shift at once. At last I went up close and looked at him—why ... yes, it was my old friend, Grindhusen.
Grindhusen, that I had worked with as a young man at Skreia—my partner in the digging of a certain well six years before.
And now to meet him here.
We gave each other greeting, and sat down on the logs to talk, asking and answering questions for an hour or more. Then it was too late to get any more done that day. We got up and went back a little way up the river, where Grindhusen had a bit of a log hut. We crept in, lit a fire, made some coffee, and had a meal. Then, going outside again, we lit our pipes and lay down in the heather.
Grindhusen had aged, and was in no better case than I myself; he did not care to think of the gay times in our youth, when we had danced the whole night through. He it was that had once been as a red-haired wolf among the girls, but now he was thoroughly cowed by age and toil, and had not even a smile. If I had only had a drop of spirits with me it might have livened him up a little, but I had none.
In the old days he had been a stiff-necked fellow, obstinate as could be; now he was easy-going and stupid. “Ay, maybe so,” was his answer to everything. “Ay, you're right,” he would say. Not that he meant it; only that life had taught him to seek the easiest way. So life does with all of us, as the years go by—but it was an ill thing to see, meeting him so.
Ay, he got along somehow, he said, but he was not the man he used to be. He'd been troubled with gout of late, and pains in the chest as well. His pains in the chest were cardialgic. But it was none so bad as long as he'd the work here for Engineer Lassen. He knew the river right up, and worked here all spring and early summer in his hut. And as for clothes, he'd nothing to wear out save breeches and blouse all the year round. Had a bit of luck, though, last year, he said suddenly. Found a sheep with nobody to own it. Sheep in the forest? Up that way, he said, pointing. He'd had meat on Sundays half through the winter off that sheep. Then he'd his folks in America as good as any one else: children married there and well-to-do. They sent him a little to help the first year or so, but now they'd stopped; it was close on two years now since he'd heard from them at all. Eyah! well, that's how things were now with him and his wife. And getting old....
Grindhusen lapsed into thought.
A dull, rushing sound from the forest and the river, like millions of nothings flowing and flowing on. No birds here, no creatures hopping about, but if I turn up a stone, I may find some insect under it.
“Wonder what these tiny things live on?” I say.
“What tiny things?” says Grindhusen. “Those? That's only ants and things.”
“It's a sort of beetle,” I tell him. “Put one on the grass and roll a stone on top of it, and it'll live.”
Grindhusen answers: “Ay, maybe so,” but thinking never a word of what I've said, and I think the rest to myself; but put an ant there under the stone as well, and very soon there'll be no beetle left.
And the rush of the forest and river goes on: 'tis one eternity that speaks with another, and agrees. But in the storms and in thunder they are at war.
“Ay, so it is,” says Grindhusen at last. “Two years come next fourteenth of August since the last letter came. There was a smart photograph in, from Olea, it was, that lives in Dakota, as they call it. A mighty fine photograph it was, but I never got it sold. Eyah, but we'll manage somehow, please the Lord,” says Grindhusen, with a yawn. “What was I going to say now?... What is he paying for the work?”
“I don't know.”
But Grindhusen looks at me suspiciously, thinking it is only that I will not say.
“Ay, well, 'tis all the same to me,” he says. “I was only asking.”
To please him, I try to guess a wage. “I dare say he'll give me a couple of Kroner a day, or perhaps three, d'you think?”
“Ay, dare say you may,” he answers enviously. “Two Kroner's all I get, and I'm an old hand at the work.”
Then fancying, perhaps, I may go telling of his grumbling, he starts off in praise of Engineer Lassen, saying what a splendid fellow he is in every way. “He'll do what's fair by me, that I know. Trust him for that! Why, he's been as good as a father to me, and that's the truth!”
It sounds quaint, indeed, to hear Grindhusen, half his teeth gone with age, talking of the young engineer as a father. I felt pretty sure I could find out a good deal about my new employer from this quarter, but I did not ask.
“He didn't say anything about me coming down into town?” asked Grindhusen.
“No.”
“He sends up for me now and again, and when I get there, it's not for anything particular—only wants to have a bit of a chat with me, that's all. Ay, a fine fellow is the engineer!”
It is getting late. Grindhusen yawns again, creeps into the hut and lies down.
Next morning we cleared the jam. “Come up with me my way a bit,” says Grindhusen. And I went. After an hour's walking, we sighted the fields and buildings of a hill farm up among the trees. And suddenly I recollect the sheep Grindhusen had found.
“Was it up this way you found that sheep?” I ask.
Grindhusen looks at me.
“Here? No, that was ever so far away—right over toward Trovatn.”
“But Trovatn's only in the next parish, isn't it?”
“Yes, that's what I say. It's ever so far away from here.”
But now Grindhusen does not care to have my company farther; he stops, and thanks me for coming up so far. I might just as well go up to the farm with him, and I say so; but Grindhusen, it seems, is not going up to the farm at all—he never did. And I'd just have an easy day back into town, starting now.
So I turned and went back the way I had come.