“I don’t know how it came about. But he laughed and said I ought to write an article about it or form a society for preserving the correct pace of hearses.”
Fru Adelheid smiled and laid her hands in her lap and looked at them.
“Then he suddenly became serious and came up to me and laid his hands on my shoulders: ‘Hearses ought to drive fast,’ he said, ‘gallop ... at a rousing pace. Away with the dead, Finn! Let life grow green and blossom!’”
“Father is so masterful,” said Fru Adelheid.
Finn nodded.
Then they began to talk about Cordt. They often did so. And they were always eager to find good words to praise him in. But under the words there lay the consciousness, like a secret understanding between them, that he was made of a coarser clay than they.
They never said this; but they felt a sort of patronizing pity for him, such as one feels for a person who runs and runs, when it is good to sit still.
But, when they talked together, Fru Adelheid knew that deep in Finn’s soul there lay a secret yearning towards just that masterful side in his father which frightened him.
It was so weak, only a pale reflection of her own young love, a distant echo of the voice which had stated Cordt’s case in her own heart when he was fighting to win her.
But it was enough to hurt her. She thought she only had her son for a time. She traced a certain disdain in the intimacy to which he admitted her. She thought there was something in him which was greater than what he gave her and which was Cordt’s or would become so.