"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?

V

All the guests are gone--stout Captain Bror, the lady with the shawl, Engineer La.s.sen 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 k.n.o.b and line. vreb 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 sc.r.a.ped off, and a new k.n.o.b 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 pa.s.sed. 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 gra.s.sland from day to day; it was fine spring weather, and all things doing well that grew, but there was trouble and strife at vreb. 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 sc.r.a.ping 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.