Wanderers Part 33

"Nice lot, aren't they?" said Nils. "Sit up playing and dancing all night, and stay in bed all day. I'm going to turn in."

I stayed behind, looking out of the window, and saw my mate Lars Falkenberg come walking across the courtyard and go up into the house.

He had been sent for to sing to the company. When he has sung for a while, Captain Bror and some of the others begin to chime in and help, making a fine merry noise between them. After about an hour in comes Lars Falkenberg to the servants' quarters with a half-bottle of spirit in his pocket for his trouble. Seeing no one but me, a stranger, in the room, he goes in to Nils in the bedroom next door, and they take a dram together; after a little they call to me to come in. I am careful not to say too much, hoping not to be recognized; but when Lars gets up to go home, he asks me to go part of the way with him. And then it appears that I am discovered already; Lars knows that I am his former mate of the woodcutting days.

The Captain had told him.

Well and good, I think to myself. Then I've no need to bother about being careful any more. To tell the truth, I was well pleased at the way things had turned out; it meant that the Captain was completely indifferent as to having me about the place; I could do as I pleased.

I walked all the way home with Lars, talking over old times, and of his new place, and of the people at vreb. It seemed that the Captain was not looked up to with the same respect as before; he was no longer the spokesman of the district, and neighbours had ceased to come and ask his help and advice. The last thing of any account he did was to have the carriage drive altered down to the high road, but that was five years ago. The buildings needed painting, but he had put it off and never had it done; the road across the estate was in disrepair, and he had felled too much timber by far. Drink? Oh, so folk said, no doubt, but it couldn't be fairly said he drank--not that way. Devil take the gossiping fools. He drank a little, and now and again he would drive off somewhere and stay away for a bit; but when he did come home again things never seemed to go well with him, and that was the pity of it! An evil spirit seemed to have got hold of him, said Lars.

And Fruen?

Fruen! She went about the house as before, and played on her piano, and was as pretty and neat as ever any one could wish. And they keep open house, with folk for ever coming and going; but taxes and charges on this and that mount up, and it costs a deal to keep up the place, with all the big buildings to be seen to. But it is a sin and a shame for the Captain, and Fruen as well, to be so dead-weary of each other, you'd never think. If they do say a word to each other, it's looking to the other side all the time, and hardly opening their lips. They barely speak at all, except to other people month after month the same. And all summer the Captain's out on manoeuvres, and never comes home to see how his wife and the place are getting on. "No, they've no children; that's the trouble," says Lars.

Emma comes out and joins us. She looks well and handsome still, and I tell her so.

"Emma?" says Lars. "Ay, well, she's none so bad. But she's for ever having children, the wretch!" and, pouring out a drink from his half-bottle, he forces her to drink it off. Now Emma presses us to come in; we might just as well be sitting down indoors as standing about out here.

"Oh, it's summer now!" says Lars, evidently none so anxious to have me in. Then, when I set off for home, he walks down again with me a bit of the way, showing me where he's dug and drained and fenced about his bit of land. Small as it is, he has made good and sensible use of it. I find a strange sense of pleasure coming over me as I look at this cosy homestead in the woods. There is a faint soughing of the wind in the forest behind; close up to the house are foliage trees, and the aspens rustle like silk.

I walk back home. Night is deepening; all the birds are silent; the air calm and warm, in a soft bluish gloom.

"Let us be young to-night!" It is a man's voice, loud and bright, from behind the lilacs. "Let's go and dance, or do something wild."

"Have you forgotten what you were like last year?" answers Fru Falkenberg. "You were nice and young then, and never said such things."

"No, I never said such things. To think you should remember that! But you scolded me one evening last year too. I said how beautiful you were that evening, and you said no, you weren't beautiful any more; and you called me a child, and told me not to drink so much."

"Yes, so I did," says Fru Falkenberg, with a laugh.

"So you did, yes. But as to your being beautiful or not, surely I ought to know when I was sitting looking at you all the time?"

"Oh, you child!"

"And this evening you're lovelier still."

"There's some one coming!"

Two figures rise up suddenly behind the lilacs. Fruen and the young engineer. Seeing it is only me, they breathe more easily again, and go on talking as if I did not exist. And mark how strange is human feeling; I had been wis.h.i.+ng all along to be ignored and left in peace, yet now it hurt me to see these two making so little account of me. My hair and beard are turning grey, I thought to myself; should they not respect me at least for that?

"Yes, you're lovelier still tonight," says the man again. I come up alongside them, touching my cap carelessly, and pa.s.s on.

"I'll tell you this much: you'll gain nothing by it," says Fruen. And then: "Here, you've dropped something," she calls to me.

Dropped something? My handkerchief lay on the path; I had dropped it on purpose. I turned round now and picked it up, said thank you, and walked on.

"You're very quick to notice things of no account," says the engineer. "A lout's red-spotted rag.... Come, let's go and sit in the summer-house."

"It's shut up at night," says Fruen. "I dare say there's somebody in there."

After that I heard no more.

My bedroom is up in the loft in the servants' quarters, and the one open window looks out to the shrubbery. When I come up I can still hear voices down there among the bushes, but cannot make out what is said. I thought to myself: why should the summer-house be shut up at night, and whose idea could it be? Possibly some very crafty soul, reckoning that, if the door were always kept locked, it would be less risky to slip inside one evening in good company, take out the key, and stay there.

Some way down along the way I had just come were two people walking up--Captain Bror and the old lady with the shawl. They had been sitting somewhere among the trees, no doubt, when I pa.s.sed by, and I fell to wondering now if, by any chance, I could have been talking to myself as I walked, and been overheard.

Suddenly I see the engineer get up from behind the bushes and walk swiftly over to the summer-house. Finding it locked, he sets his shoulder against the door and breaks it open with a crash.

"Come along, there's n.o.body here!" he cries.

Fru Falkenberg gets up and says: "Madman! Whatever are you doing?"

But she goes towards him all the same.

"Doing?" says he. "What else should I do? Love isn't glycerine--it's nitro-glycerine."

And he takes her by the arm and leads her in.

Well, 'tis their affair....

But the stout Captain and his lady are coming up; the pair in the summer-house will hardly be aware of their approach, and Fru Falkenberg would perhaps find it far from agreeable to be discovered sitting there with a man just now. I look about for some means of warning them; here is an empty bottle; I go to the window and fling it as hard as I can over towards the summer-house. There is a crash, bottle and tiles are broken, and the pieces go clattering down over the roof; a cry of dismay from within, and Fru Falkenberg rushes out, her companion behind her still grasping her dress. They stop for a moment and look about them.

"Bror!" cries Fru Falkenberg, and sets off at a run down the shrubbery.

"No, don't come," she calls back over her shoulder. "You _mustn't_, I tell you."

But the engineer ran after her, all the same. Wonderfully young he was, and all inflexible.

Now the stout Captain and his lady come up, and their talk is a marvel to hear. Love: there is nothing like it, so it seems. The stout cavalier must be sixty at the least, and the lady with him, say forty; their infatuation was a sight to see.

The Captain speaks:

"And up to this evening I've managed to hide it somehow, but now--well, it's more than any man can. You've bewitched me Frue, completely."

"I didn't think you cared so much, really," she answers gently, trying to help him along.

"Well, I do," he says. "And I can't stand it any longer, and that's the truth. When we were up in the woods just now, I still thought I could get through one more night, and didn't say anything much at the time.

But now; come back with me, say you will!"

She shook her head.

"No; oh, I'd love to give you ... do what you...."

"Ah!" he exclaims, and, throwing his arms about her, stands pressing his round paunch against hers. There they stood, looking like two recalcitrants that would not. Oh, that Captain!

"Let me go," she implored him.

He loosened his hold a trifle and pressed her to him again. Once more it looked as if both were resisting.