Part 21

“Yes,” said Ragnhild. “Oh, it's so dreadful--worse than ever it's been! Heaven knows what the Captain'll do! Perhaps he won't go to bed at all. Oh, she's fond of him and he's fond of her, too; only, everything's all wrong! When she went running off like that today, the Captain was standing outside the house, and said to me: 'Go and look after your mistress, Ragnhild,' and I went after her, and there she was, standing behind a tree down the road, and she just stood there, crying, and smiled at me. I tried to get her to come in again, but she said we didn't care about her; it didn't matter where she went. 'The Captain sent me after you,' said I. 'Did he, though?' she asked. 'Now? Was it just now?' 'Yes,' said I. 'Wait, then,' she said, and stood quite a while. 'Take those hateful books that are lying in my room and burn them,' she said; and then: 'Oh no, I'll do it myself, but I'll ring for you after supper, and then you must come up at once.' 'I will,' said I, and then I got her to come in.”

“And you know,” said Ragnhild suddenly, “she's going to have a child.”

We looked at one another. Nils' face grew, as it were, veiled beneath a film of something indistinct. All expression faded, the eyes asleep. But why should it affect him so? For the sake of saying something, I turned to Ragnhild and asked:

“Fruen was going to ring for you, you said?”

“Yes, and so she did. There was something she wanted to tell the Captain, but she was afraid, and wanted to have me there. 'Light a candle and pick up all this host of buttons I've upset,' she said. And then she called out to the Captain in his room. I lit the candle and began picking up buttons; dozens of them there were, all sorts. The Captain came in. 'I only wanted to tell you,' says Fruen at once, 'that it was kind of you to send Ragnhild after me to-day. Heaven bless you for that!' 'Never mind about that, my dear,' says he. 'You were nervous, you know.' 'Yes, I'm all nerves just now,' she answered, 'but I hope it'll get better in time. No, the trouble is that I haven't a daughter I could bring up to be really good. There's nothing I can do!' The Captain sat down on a chair. 'Oh yes, there is,' he said. 'Yes, you say? Oh, I know it says in that book there.... Oh, those hateful books!--Ragnhild take them away and burn them,' she says. 'No, wait, I'll tear them to bits now myself and put them in the stove here.' And then she started pulling them to pieces, taking ever so many pages at a time and throwing them in the stove. 'Don't be so excited, Lovise,' said the Captain. _'The Nunnery,'_ she said--that was one of the books. 'But I can't go into a nunnery. There's nothing I can do. When I laugh, you think I'm laughing,' she said to the Captain, 'but I'm miserable all the time and not laughing a bit.' 'Is your toothache any better?' he asked. 'Oh, that toothache won't be better for a long time to come!' she said; 'you know that well enough.' 'No, indeed, I don't.' 'You don't know?' 'No.' 'But, heavens! can't you see what's the matter with me?' said Fruen. The Captain only looked at her and did not answer. 'I'm--oh, you said today I might have a daughter after all, don't you remember?' I happened to look up at the Captain just then....”

Ragnhild smiled and shook her head; then she went on:

“Heaven forgive me for smiling, but the Captain's face was so queer; he stood there like a sheep. 'Didn't you guess as much before?' asked Fruen. The Captain looked over at me and said: 'What's that you're doing there all this time?' 'I asked her to pick up those buttons for me,' said Fruen. 'I've finished now,' said I. 'Have you?' said Fruen, getting up. 'Let me see.' And she took the box and dropped them again all over the floor. Oh, they went rolling all over the place, under the table, under the bed and the stove! 'There, now, did you ever see such a mess?' said Fruen. But then she went off again at once talking about herself, and said again: 'But I can't understand you didn't you see I was--didn't see what was the matter with me.' Can't those buttons wait till tomorrow?' said the Captain. 'Why, yes, perhaps they can,' said Fruen. 'But then I'll be treading on them everywhere. I can't ... I'm rather afraid of stooping just now.... But, never mind, we'll leave them for now,' she said, and stroked his hand. 'Oh, my dear, my dear!' she says. But he drew his hand away. 'Oh, so you're angry with me!' she said. 'But then, why did you write and ask me to come back?' 'My dear Lovise, we're not alone here,' he says. 'But surely you must know what made you write?' 'I suppose it was because I hoped things would come right again.' 'And they didn't?' 'Well, no!' 'But what was in your mind when you wrote? Were you thinking of me? Did you want me again? I can't make out what was in your mind.' 'Ragnhild's finished, I see,' said the Captain. 'Good-night, Ragnhild!'”

“And then you came away?”

“Yes, but I dare not go far because of Fruen. You may be sure it wasn't nice for her when I was out of the room, so I had to be somewhere at hand. And if the Captain had come and found me and said anything, I'd have told him straight out I wasn't going farther away with Fruen in the state she was. As it happened, he didn't come at all, but they began again in there. 'I know what you're thinking of,' said Fruen--'that perhaps it's not ... it wouldn't be your child. Oh yes, indeed it might be so! But, God knows, I can't find words this moment to make you forgive me!' she said, all crying. 'Oh, my dear, forgive me, forgive me!' said Fruen, and went down on her knees on the floor. 'You've seen what I did with the books, and that handkerchief with the initials on--I burnt that before, and the books, you know....' 'Yes, and--here's another handkerchief with the same initials on--' says the Captain. 'Oh, heavens! yes, you're ever so considerate, Lovise.' Fruen was all upset at that. 'I'm sorry you should have seen it,' she said. 'It must be one I brought back with me when I came home. I haven't looked through my things properly since. But does it really matter so very much? Surely--' 'Oh no,' said he. 'And if you'd only listen to me,' she went on, I'm almost certain it's you that ... I mean, that the child is yours. Why should it not be? Oh, I don't know how to say it!' 'Sit down again,' said the Captain. But Fruen must have misunderstood; she got up and said: 'There you are! You won't listen to me. Really, I can't make out why you ever wrote to me at all. You might just as well have left me alone.' Then the Captain said something about being in prison; if a man grew up in a prison yard, he said, and you take him out, he'll long to be back in his prison yard again, he said. It was something like that, anyway. 'Yes, but I was with Papa and Mama, and they weren't hard like you; they said I had been married to him, and weren't unkind to me at all. It isn't every one that looks at things like you do,' 'You don't want that candle alight now Ragnhild's gone, do you?' said the Captain. 'It looks so out of place to have it burning there beside the lamp--as if it were ashamed.' 'Ashamed of me,' she says quickly. 'Oh yes, that was what you meant. But you've been to blame as well.' 'Don't misunderstand me,' he says. 'I know I've been to blame. But that doesn't make your part any better.' 'Oh, you think not? Well, of all the.... So yours doesn't count, then?' 'Yes, I say I've been to blame, not in the way you mean, but in other ways--in old things and new.' 'Oh, indeed!' 'Yes, but I don't come home bringing the fruits of it under my heart to you.' 'No,' says Fruen, 'but you know it was you all along that wouldn't ... that didn't want us to have children. And I didn't want it, either, but you ought to have known better. And they said the same thing at home. If only I'd had a daughter....' 'Oh, don't let's go over all that again,' says the Captain--he called it something or other--a romance, I think it was. 'But it's true,' says Fruen, 'and I can't think how you can deny it.' 'I'm not denying anything. Do sit down, now, Lovise, and listen to me. All this about having children, and a daughter to bring up and so on, it's something you've picked up lately. And, you snatched at the idea at once, to save yourself. But you never said a word about wanting children before--not that I ever heard.' 'Yes, but you ought to have known better.' 'There again, that's something you've heard, something new. But it doesn't matter: quite possibly things might have been different if we'd had children. I can see that myself now, but now it's too late, more's the pity. And here you are now--like that....' 'Oh, heavens, yes! But I tell you it may be yours after all--I don't know.... Oh!...' 'Mine? said the Captain, shaking his head. 'Well, the mother should be the one to know. But in this case, it seems, she doesn't. The woman I'm married to doesn't know--or do you?' But Fruen did not answer. _'Do_ you know? I ask you!' Oh, but again she could not answer, only slipped down to the floor again and cried. Really, I don't know--but perhaps I'm on her side after all; it was dreadful for her, poor thing. And then I was just going to knock at the door and go in, but then the Captain went on again. 'You can't say it,' he said. 'But that's an answer in itself, and plain enough.' 'I can't say more,' said Fruen. She was still crying. 'I'm fond of you for lots of things, Lovise,' says the Captain, 'and one of them's because you're truthful.' 'Thank you,' she says. 'They haven't taught you to lie as yet. Get up, now.' And he helped her up himself, and set her in the chair. But it was pitiful to see her crying so. 'Don't cry, now,' he says. 'I want to ask you something. Shall we wait and see what it's like when it comes--what sort of eyes it has, and so on?' 'Oh, heaven bless you, yes, if you would! Oh, my dear, God bless you, God bless you.' 'And I'll try to bear with things as they are. It's an aching misery all the time, but I'll try. And I've been to blame as well.' 'God bless you, God bless you!' she said again. 'And you,' he said. 'And now good-night until tomorrow.' Then Fruen leaned down over the table and cried and cried so dreadfully. 'What are you crying for now?' he asked. 'You're going,' she said. 'Oh, I was afraid of you before, but now I can't bear to be without you. Couldn't you stay a little?' 'Stay here, with you, now?' he asked. 'Oh no, I didn't mean ... it wasn't that ... only, it's so lonely. I didn't mean....' 'No,' said the Captain. 'You can understand I don't feel like staying any longer now. Ring for the maid!'”

“And then I had to run,” Ragnhild concluded.

Said Nils, after a while: “Have they gone to bed now?”

Ragnhild could not say. Yes. Perhaps. Anyhow, Cook was there in case. “But, only think of it, how dreadful! I don't suppose Fruen can sleep.”

“You'd better go and see if there's anything you can do.”

“Yes,” said Ragnhild, getting up. “But I side with the Captain after all, and no mistake, whatever you say. Yes, that I do.”

“It's none so easy to know what's right.”

“Only think of letting that engineer creature.... How she ever could, I don't know! And then to go down and stay with him there, after, as she did; what a thing to do! And she's all those handkerchiefs of his, ever so many, and a lot of her own are gone; I suppose they used each other's anyhow. Lived with him, she said! And she with a husband of her own!”

XII

The Captain has done as he said about the timber; there's a cracking and crashing in the woods already. And a mild autumn, too, with no frost in the ground as yet to stop the ploughing; Nils grasps at the time like a miser, to save as much as possible next spring.

Now comes the question whether Grindhusen and I are to work on the timber. It crosses my mind that I had intended really to go off for a tramp up in the hills and over the moors while the berries were there; what about that journey now? And another thing, Grindhusen was no longer worth his keep as a wood-cutter; he could hold one end of a saw, but that was about all he was good for now.

No, for Grindhusen was changed somehow; devil knows how it had come about. He had not grown bald at all; his hair was there, and thick and red as ever. But he had picked up a deal at Øvrebø, and went about bursting with health and good feeding; well off here? He had sent good sums of money home to his family all that summer and autumn, and was full of praise for Captain and Freun, who paid such good wages and treated their folk so well. Not like the Inspector, that weighed and counted every miserable Skilling, and then, as true as God's in heaven, go and take off two Kroner that he'd given as clear as could be ... ugh! He, Grindhusen, was not the man to make a fuss about a wretched two Kroner, as long as it was a matter of any sense or reason, but to go and take it off like that--_fy Fan!_ Would you ever find the Captain doing such a thing?

But Grindhusen was grown so cautious now, and wouldn't even get properly angry with any one. Even yet, perhaps, he might go back and work for the Inspector on the river at two Kroner a day, and humbly agree with all his master said. Age, time, had overtaken him.

It overtakes us all.

Said the Captain:

“That water-supply you spoke about--is it too late to do anything with it this year?”

“Yes,” I answered.

The Captain nodded and walked away.

I ploughed one day more, then the Captain came to me again. He was out and about everywhere these days, working hard, keeping an eye on everything. He gave himself barely time for a proper meal, but was out again at once, in the fields, the barn, the cattle-sheds, or up in the woods where the men were at work.

“You'd better get to work on that water-supply,” he said. “The ground's workable still, and may stay so for a long time yet. What help will you want?”

“Grindhusen can help,” I said. “But....”

“Yes, and Lars. What were you going to say?”

“The frost may set in any day now.”

“Well, and then it may snow and soften the ground again. We're not frost-bound here every year,” said the Captain. “You'd better take a few extra hands, and set some of them to digging, the rest to the masonry work. You've done all this before, I think you said?”

“Yes.”

“And I've spoken to Nils myself,” he said, with a smile. “So you'll have no trouble in that way. You can put the horses in now.”

So bravely cheerful he was, I could not help feeling the same, and wanted to begin at once; I hurried back with the horses, almost at a run. The Captain seemed quite eager about this water-supply, now that the place looked so nice with its new paint, and after the fine harvest we'd had. And now he was cutting a thousand dozen battens in the woods, to pay off his debts and leave something over!

So I went off up the rising ground, and found the old place I had marked down long before for the reservoir, took the depth down to the house, pacing and measuring this way and that. There was a streamlet came down from the hillside far above, with such a depth and fall that it never froze in winter; the thing would be to build a small stone reservoir here, with openings at the sides for the overflow in autumn and spring. Oh, but they should have their water-supply at Øvrebø! As for the masonry work, we could break out our stone on the site itself; there was layer on layer of granite there.

By noon next day we were hard at work, Lars Falkenberg digging the trench for the pipe-line, Grindhusen and I getting stone. We were both well used to this work from the days when we had been road-making together at Skreia.

Well and good.

We worked four days; then it was Sunday. I remember that Sunday, the sky clear and far, the leaves all fallen in the woods, and the hillside showing only its calm winter green; smoke rose from the chimney up in the clearing. Lars had borrowed a horse and cart that afternoon to drive in to the station; he had killed a pig and was sending it in to town. He was to fetch letters for the Captain on the way back.

It occurred to me that this evening would be a good time to send the lad up to the clearing for my washing: Lars was away, and no one could take offence at that washing business now.

Oh yes, I said to myself, you're very careful to do what's right and proper, sending the lad up to fetch that washing. But you'll find it isn't that at all. Right and proper, indeed; you're getting old, that's what it is.

I bore with this reproach for an hour. Then--well, it was all nonsense, like as not, and here was a lovely evening, and Sunday into the bargain, nothing to do, no one to talk to down here.... Getting old, was I? Afraid of the walk uphill?

And I went up myself.

Early next morning Lars Falkenberg came over again. He drew me aside, as he had done once before, and with the same intent: I had been up to the clearing yesterday, it seemed; it was to be the last time, and would I please to make no mistake about that!

“It was the last of my washing, anyhow,” I said.

“Oh, you and your washing! As if I couldn't have brought along your miserable shirt a hundred times since you've been here!”

Now, by what sort of magic had he got to know of my little walk up there already? Ragnhild, of course, at her old tricks again--it could be no one else. There was no doing anything with that girl.

But now, as it happened, Nils was at hand this time, as he had been the time before. He came strolling over innocently from the kitchen, and in a moment Lars's anger was turned upon him instead.

“Here's the other scarecrow coming up, too,” says Lars, “and he's a long sight worse than you.”

“What's that you say?” said Nils.

“What's that you say!” retorted Lars. “You go home and rinse your mouth with a mixture or something, and see if you can talk plain,” said he.

Nils stopped short at this, and came up to see what it was all about.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said he.

“No, of course not. You don't know anything that's any sense. But you know all about ploughing in standing crops, don't you? There's not many can beat you at that.”

But here Nils grew angry for once, and his cheeks paled.

“What an utter fool you are, Lars! Can't you keep your mouth shut with that nonsense?”

“Fool, eh? Hark at the silly goat!” said Lars, turning to me. “Thinks himself mighty fine, doesn't he? 'Utter'” he says--and goes white about it. “I've been more years than you at Øvrebø, and asked in to sing up at the house of an evening more than once, let me tell you. But things have changed since then, and what have we got instead? You remember,” he said, turning to me, “what it was like in the old days. It was Lars here and Lars there, and I never heard but the work got done all right. And after me it was Albert, that was here for eighteen months. But then you, Nils, came along, and now it's toil and moil and ploughing and carting manure day and night, till a man's worn to a thread with it all.”

Nils and I could not help laughing at this. And Lars was in no way offended; he seemed quite pleased at having said something funny, and, forgetting his ill-will, joined in the laugh himself.

“Yes, I say it straight out,” said he. “And if it wasn't for you being a friendly sort between whiles--no, friendly I won't say, but someways decent and to get on with after a fashion ... if it wasn't for that....”

“Well, what then?”

Lars was getting more and more good humoured. “Oh,” he said, with a laugh, “I could just pick you up and stuff you down in your own long boots.”

“Like to feel my arm?” said Nils.

“What's going on here?” asked the Captain, coming up. It was only six o'clock, but he was out and about already.

“Nothing,” said Lars and Nils as well.

“How's the reservoir getting on?” asked the Captain. This was to me, but before I could answer he turned to Nils. “I shall want the boy to drive me to the station,” he said. “I'm going to Christiania.”

Grindhusen and I went off to our work on the reservoir, and Lars to his digging. But a shadow seemed to have fallen over us all.

Grindhusen himself said openly: “Pity the Captain's going away.”

I thought so, too. But he was obliged to go in on business, no doubt. There were the crops as well as the timber to be sold. But why should he start at that hour of the day? He couldn't catch the early train in any case. Had there been trouble again? Was he anxious to be out of the way before Fruen got up?

* * * * *

Trouble there was, often enough.

It had gone so far by this time that the Captain and Fruen hardly spoke to one another, and whenever they did exchange a word it was in a careless tone, and looking all the other way. Now and again the Captain would look his wife properly in the face, and say she ought to be out more in the lovely air; and once when she was outside he asked if she wouldn't come in and play a little. But this, perhaps, was only to keep up appearances, no more.

It was pitiful to see.