Wanderers Part 52

'I'm sorry, I won't do it any more,' says Fruen; and then she cried because she'd been unreasonable. But that about never doing it any more--she's said that now every day since she came back, but she's done it again, all the same. Poor dear, she'd a toothache today; she was simply crying out with the pain...."

"Go and get on with the potatoes, Ragnhild," said Nils quickly. "We've no time for gossiping now."

We'd all of us our field-work now; there was much to be done. Nils was afraid the corn would spoil if he left it too long at the poles; better to get it in as it was. Well and good; but that meant threshing the worst of it at once, and spreading the grain over the floor of every shed and outhouse. Even in our own big living-room there was a large layer of corn drying on the floor. Any more irons in the fire? Ay, indeed, and all the while hot and waiting. Bad weather has set in, and all the work ought to be done at once. When we've finished threshing, there's the fresh straw to be cut up and salted down in bins to keep it from rotting. That all? Not by a long way: irons enough still glowing hot. Grindhusen and the maids are pulling potatoes. Nils s.n.a.t.c.hes the precious time after a couple of dry days to sow a patch of rye and send the lad over it with the harrow. Lars Falkenberg is still ploughing; he has given way altogether and turned out a fine ploughman since the Captain and Fruen came back. When the corn-land's too soft he ploughs the meadows; then, when sun and wind have dried things a bit, he goes on to the corn-land again.

The work goes on steadily and well; in the afternoon the Captain himself comes out to lend a hand. The last load of corn in being brought in.

Captain Falkenberg is no child at the work, big and strong he is, and with the right knack of it. See him loading up oats from the drying-frames: his second load now.

Just then Fruen comes along down the road, and crosses over to where we are at work. Her eyes are bright. She seems pleased to watch her husband loading up corn.

"_Signe Arbejdet!_" [Footnote: "A blessing on the work."] she says.

"Thanks," says the Captain.

"That's what we used to say in Nordland."

"What?"

"That's what we used to say in Nordland."

"Oh yes."

The Captain is busy with his work, and in the rustle of the straw he does not always hear what she says, but has to look up and ask again, and this annoys them both.

"Are the oats ripe?" she asks.

"Yes, thank goodness!"

"But not dry, I suppose?"

"Eh? I can't hear what you say."

"Oh, I didn't say anything."

A long, uncomfortable silence after that. The Captain tries once or twice with a good-humoured word, but gets no answer.

"So you're out on a round of inspection," he says jestingly. "Have you seen how the potatoes are getting on?"

"No," she answers. "But I'll go over there, by all means, if you can't bear the sight of me here."

It was too dreadful to hear them going on like this. I must have frowned unconsciously--shown some such feeling. Then, suddenly remembering that for certain reasons I was to be cold as ice, I frowned the more.

Freun looked straight at me and said:

"What are you scowling at?"

"Scowling, eh?" says the Captain, joining in, with a forced laugh.

Fruen takes him up on the instant.

"Ah! you managed to hear that time!"

"Really, Lovise...."

Fruen's eyes dimmed suddenly; she stood a moment then ran, stooping forward, round behind the frames, and sobbed.

The Captain went over to her. "What is it, Lovise, tell me?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing! Go away."

She was sick; we could hear it. And moaning and saying: "Heaven help me!"

"My wife's not very well just now," says the Captain to me. "We can't make out what it is."

"There's sickness in the neighbourhood," I suggested, for something to say. "Sort of autumn fever. I heard about it up at the post office."

"Is there, though? Why, there you are, Lovise," he calls out. "There's some sort of fever about, it seems. That's all it is."

Fruen made no answer.

We went on loading up, and Fruen moved farther and farther away as we came up. At last the frames were cleared, and she stood there guiltily, very pale after her trouble.

"Shall I see you back to the house?" asked the Captain.

"No, thank you, I'd rather not," she answered, walking away.

The Captain stayed out and worked with us till evening.

So here was everything gone wrong again. Oh, but it was hard for them both!

And it was not just a little matter that could be got over by a little give and take on either side, as folk say; no, it was a thing insuperable, a trouble rooted deep. And now it had come to mutiny, no less: Fruen had taken to locking her door at night. Ragnhild had heard the Captain, highly offended, talking to her through the wall.

But that evening the Captain had demanded to speak with her in her room before she went to bed. Fruen agreed, and there was a further scene.

Each was willing and anxious, no doubt, to set matters right, but it was hopeless now; it was too late. We sat in the kitchen, Nils and I, listening to Ragnhild's story. I had never seen Nils look so miserable before.

"If things go wrong again now, it's all over," he said. "I thought to myself last summer that perhaps a good, sound thrashing would do her good. But that was just foolishness, I can see now. Did she talk about running away again?"

"She said something about it," answered Ragnhild. And then she went on something like this: "It began with the Captain asking if she didn't think it was this local sickness she had got. Fruen answered it could hardly be any local sickness that had turned her against him so. 'Turned you against me?' 'Yes. Oh, I could scream sometimes. At table, for instance, the way you eat and eat....' 'Do I?' says the Captain. 'Well, I can't see there's anything very wrong in that; it's just natural.

There's no rule for how much one ought to eat at a meal.' 'But to have to sit and look at you--it makes me sick. It's that that makes me ill.'

'Well, anyhow, you can't say I drink too much now,' said he. 'So it's better than it was.' 'No, indeed, it's worse!' Then says the Captain: 'Well, really, I do think you might make allowances for me a little, after I've--I mean, considering what you did yourself this summer.'

'Yes, you're right,' says Fruen, beginning to cry. 'If you knew how it hurts and plagues me night and day, thinking of that.... But I've never said a word.' 'No, I know,' says she, crying all the more. 'And I asked you myself to come back,' he said. But at that she seemed to think he was taking too much credit to himself; she stopped crying, and answered, with a toss of her head: 'Yes, and it would have been better if you'd never asked me back, if it was only to go on like this.' 'Like what?'

says he. 'You've your own way in everything now. The same as before, only you don't care for anything at all. You never touch the piano, even; only go about cross and irritable all the time; there's no pleasing you with anything. And you shut your door at night and lock me out. Well and good; lock me out if you like!' 'It's you that are hard to please, if you ask me,' she said. 'There's never a night and never a morning but I'm worried out of my life lest you shall be thinking of--this summer. You've never said a word about it, you say. Oh, don't you, though! I'm never left long in peace without you throwing it in my teeth. I happened to say "Hugo" one day, by a slip of the tongue, and what did you do? You might have been nice and comforted me to help me over it, but you only scowled and said you were not Hugo. No. I knew well enough, and I was ever so sorry to have said it.' 'That's just the point,' said the Captain. 'Were you really sorry?' 'Yes, indeed,' said Fruen; 'it hurt me ever so.' 'Well, I shouldn't have thought it; you don't seem very upset about it.' 'Ah, but what about you? Haven't you anything to be sorry for?' 'You've got photos of Hugo on your piano still; I haven't seen you move them away yet, though I've shown you not once but fifty times I wished you to--yes, and begged you to do it.'

'Oh, what a fuss you make about those photos!' said she. 'Oh, don't make any mistake! I'm not asking you now. If you went and shifted them now, it would make no difference. I've begged and prayed of you fifty times before. Only, I think it would have been a little more decent if you'd burned them the day you came home. But, instead of that, you've books here lying about in your room with his name in. And there's a handkerchief with his initials on, I see.' 'Oh, it's all your jealousy,'

answered Fruen. 'I can't see what difference it makes. I can't kill him, as you'd like me to, and Papa and Mama say the same. After all, I've lived with him and been married to him.' 'Married to him?' 'Yes, that's what I say. It isn't every one that looks at Hugo and me the way you do.' The Captain sat a while, shaking his head. 'And it's all your own fault, really,' Fruen went on, 'the way you drove off with Elisabet that time, though I came and asked you not to go. It was then it happened.

And we'd been drinking that evening. I didn't quite know what I was doing.' Still, the Captain said nothing for a while; then at last he said: 'Yes, I ought not to have gone off like that.' 'No, but you did,'

said Fruen, and started crying again. 'You wouldn't hear a word. And you're always throwing it in my teeth about Hugo, but you never think of what you've done yourself.' 'There's just this difference,' says the Captain, 'that I've never lived with the lady you mention, never been married to her, as you call it.' Fruen gave a little scornful laugh.