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Updated: June 16, 2025
I took leave of the maids, with a jesting word to each in turn. "I'd have liked to say good-bye to Fruen, too, but...." "Fruen's indoors. I'll...." Emma goes in, and comes back a moment later. "Fruen's lying down with a headache. She sent her very good wishes." "Come again!" said all the girls as I set off. I walked away out of the place, with my sack under my arm.
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.
He took me over the place, upstairs and down, and showed me what was to be done. I noticed the pictures and sculpture in the rooms; there was a big marble lion, and paintings by Askevold and the famous Dahl. Heirlooms, I supposed they would be. Fruen's room upstairs looked just as if she were at home, with all sorts of little trifles neatly in their places, and clothes hanging still on the pegs.
He did not seem dejected, and as for looking thin, that was perhaps because he had got Nils to cut his hair. Then I was sent up to the post again, and this time there was a letter. Fruen's hand, and postmarked Kristianssand. I hurried back, laid the letter in among the rest of the post, and handed the whole bundle to the Captain outside the house.
"She's getting a little too friendly with the men out here." Silence. "So perhaps she'd better go," Fruen went on. It was incomparable audacity on Fruen's part, of course, to say such a thing to our face, but we could not protest; we saw she was only using us to serve her need. When we got outside, Nils said angrily: "I'm not sure but I'd better go back and say a word or two myself about that."
"No," Nils went on, "Fruen's in a bad way; she's lost all harmony for everything. Where's she going off to now, do you think? Heaven knows; she doesn't seem to be altogether sure of it herself. When we stopped to breathe the horses, she said something about being in such a hurry, and having to be in different places at once and then she ought not really to be away from home at all.
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've sided with him all along." "Oh, that's only because he's a man." "No, it's not." "You'd much better side with Fruen." "You only say that because she's a woman," answered Ragnhild in her turn. "But you don't know all I do. Fruen's so unreasonable. We didn't care a bit about her, she said, and left her all to herself, whatever might happen.
She noted things on Fruen's behalf, went last to bed, listened on the stairs, made a few swift, noiseless steps when she was outside and somebody called. She was a handsome girl, with very bright eyes, and fine and warm-blooded into the bargain.
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.
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