“That’s just what I thought!” she sighed, and left the room.
It was doubly painful to her to despise him now when she was obliged to cling to him against all the world. It was just now that she needed to respect him; but the worst of it was that while others were trying to ruin him he was doing them the service of ruining himself.
One day they received notice from the liquidators that the works and villa had been sold privately, and that they must quit them at once. And so the day came when Fru Wangen had to go and look for rooms. There was an empty cottage on a farm close by that had been occupied by a schoolmaster; but the owner, Lars Kringen, had once proposed to her and been refused; and to go to him now——! But after going round to a number of houses, she came home quite discouraged, and remained sitting with her hat and jacket on. She had received the answer “No” everywhere. But a house they must have; and she felt she could not ask Wangen again. “Well,” she thought, rising, “I may just as well throw the last overboard!” And she went to Lars Kringen.
A few days later a cart-load of furniture was driven from the door of the pretty villa. Upon it sat two children, and Fru Wangen carried the third in her arms. A little way behind, Wangen walked with bowed head, and hands buried in the pockets of his coat.
The little cottage stood upon a mound surrounded with fir trees, and had only two rooms and a kitchen; and when they entered, the difference between it and the home they had left brought them both to a standstill in the middle of the floor. The rooms were dark, the paint was worn off the doors and window-frames, the boards were splintered, and the timbers in the walls cracked.
Fru Wangen had to undertake a very thorough cleaning.
The greatest humiliation, however, had still to be gone through. They had to ask Lars Kringen for milk and provisions on credit; and on her way to and from his house Fru Wangen felt as if she could sink into the earth. But all this was Wangen’s fault, and strive as she would she could not help a growing bitterness from rising up in her heart against him; and in all this poverty and discomfort, it soon came to be that they never talked to one another except to scold. And Wangen came home drunk more and more frequently.
[CHAPTER II]
EINAR NORBY still kept his bed. He sat up among his pillows in the middle of the day, and each day a little longer than on the preceding one. As the days passed, he saw the last patch of snow melt away down in the yard, and heard the noise of wheels take the place of the sledge-bells’ jingle, and the starling making a noise in the gutter over his head. One day, too, he heard the sheep being let out with a great deal of bleating in deep and high tones, and little Knut shouting at them from the steps.