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'Twas Fruen herself was trying to be twice as bright and "Why, yes, Grindhusen, the Captain's wife is married twice as good as before." I knew that well enough. And she fancied she owed me these little marks of kindliness, for something or other. Well and good, but now it was enough. Best let it be.
On the following afternoon I came to the vicarage. I had reckoned out it would be best to speak with Fruen. "I'm on my way into town," I told her. "And I've this machine thing with me; if I might leave the heaviest of the woodwork here meanwhile?" "Are you going into town?" says Fruen. "But you'll stay here till tomorrow, surely?" "No, thanks all the same. I've got to be in town tomorrow."
But all his flow of talk did not avail to hide the fact that he had recognized Fruen at once, and was still convinced that he was right. All things in order now, the Captain and Fruen at home, bright days and a rich harvest. What more could any wish for? Fruen greets me with a kindly glance, and says: "The place looks different altogether after the way you've painted it so nicely.
One day he asked me to go up and tell Grindhusen to come in to town. Was it Grindhusen, I wondered, that was to be dismissed? But Fruen had never so much as set eyes on Grindhusen since she came; what could he have done to offend her? I fetched Grindhusen in accordingly. He went up to the hotel at once to report, and the engineer put on his things and went out with him.
And what if Fruen herself had seen me from the window! I resolved now to be cold and indifferent as ice henceforward all the days of my life. Ragnhild is properly in clover. The thick stair carpet muffles every step; she can run upstairs whenever she pleases and slip down again in a moment without a sound. "I can't make it out about Fruen," says Ragnhild.
I took my rug down covertly from the box, and hid it under the front seat inside the carriage; when that was done, I watered the horses and harnessed up. A little after, Fruen came down the hill. I went up for the basket, and met her on the way. "Where are you going?" "To fetch the basket." "You needn't trouble, thanks; there's nothing to take back."
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.
But there's some that never get over it." "Fruen seems to be taking it easy enough," said I, still trying him. "How can we tell? She's been unlike herself, to my mind, ever since she's been back," he answered. "She's got to live, of course, but she's lost all harmony, perhaps. I don't know much about it, but harmony, that's what I mean.
"So you didn't bring Fruen back with you again this last time?" "No. She went off by train." "Off to her husband, I suppose?" But Grindhusen has turned cautious with me; these two days past he has said never a word, and now he only answers vaguely: "Ay, that would be it, no doubt. Ay, surely, yes. Why, you might reckon that out yourself, she would. Her own husband and all...."
She must have thought I was trying to entice her into something, Heaven knows!... "Drive on, man, do!" she said. The horses moved on, and the carriage stopped just where the light was at its full. Emma came out to receive her mistress. Fruen handed her the rugs all in a bundle, as she had rolled them up before getting out of the carriage. "Thanks," she said to me, glancing round as she went in.
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