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Updated: June 3, 2025
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.
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 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.
Perhaps the good professor who brought us together had plotted to have both novel and novelist make their impression at once upon the youthful sub-editor; but at any rate they did not fail of an effect. I believe it was that chapter where Gunnar and Ragnhild dance and sing a 'stev' together, for I associate with that far happy time the rich mellow tones of the poet's voice in the poet's verse.
"You mean she drove with Nils to the station? Stupid of me not to have looked about while I was there!" "No," said Ragnhild; "it was Sunday Fruen went." At this the Captain pulled himself together. "Sunday?" he said. "Then she must have been going to meet me in Kristiania. H'm! We've managed to miss each other somehow.
Oh, she had found lots of things up in her room a bag with Engineer Lassen's initials worked on, a book with his full name in, some sweets in an envelope with his writing and she had burnt it all. A strange girl, Ragnhild yes! Was there ever such an instinct as hers? It was like the devil turned monk. Ragnhild, who made such use herself of the thick red stair-carpet and the keyholes everywhere!
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.
Ragnhild came up, too, and looked at me wonderingly. I turned the lamp towards Fruen's face and said: "I beg pardon for coming up so late. I'll be going to the post first thing tomorrow; I thought if perhaps Fruen had any letters to go?" "Letters? No," she answered, shaking her head. There was an absent look in her eyes, but she did not look in the least as if she had been drinking.
But I dissuaded him, saying it was not worth troubling about. A few days passed. Again the Captain found an opportunity of paying barefaced compliments to Ragnhild: "... with a figure like yours," he said. And the tone of everything about the house now badly changed from of old.
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.
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