We went on loading up, and Fruen moved farther and farther away as we came up. At last the frames were cleared, and she stood there guiltily, very pale after her trouble.
“Shall I see you back to the house?” asked the Captain.
“No, thank you, I'd rather not,” she answered, walking away.
The Captain stayed out and worked with us till evening.
So here was everything gone wrong again. Oh, but it was hard for them both!
And it was not just a little matter that could be got over by a little give and take on either side, as folk say; no, it was a thing insuperable, a trouble rooted deep. And now it had come to mutiny, no less: Fruen had taken to locking her door at night. 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 had never seen Nils look so miserable before.
“If things go wrong again now, it's all over,” he said. “I thought to myself last summer that perhaps a good, sound thrashing would do her good. But that was just foolishness, I can see now. Did she talk about running away again?”
“She said something about it,” answered Ragnhild. And then she went on something like this: “It began with the Captain asking if she didn't think it was this local sickness she had got. Fruen answered it could hardly be any local sickness that had turned her against him so. 'Turned you against me?' 'Yes. Oh, I could scream sometimes. At table, for instance, the way you eat and eat....' 'Do I?' says the Captain. 'Well, I can't see there's anything very wrong in that; it's just natural. There's no rule for how much one ought to eat at a meal.' 'But to have to sit and look at you—it makes me sick. It's that that makes me ill.' 'Well, anyhow, you can't say I drink too much now,' said he. 'So it's better than it was.' 'No, indeed, it's worse!' Then says the Captain: 'Well, really, I do think you might make allowances for me a little, after I've—I mean, considering what you did yourself this summer.' 'Yes, you're right,' says Fruen, beginning to cry. 'If you knew how it hurts and plagues me night and day, thinking of that.... But I've never said a word.' 'No, I know,' says she, crying all the more. 'And I asked you myself to come back,' he said. But at that she seemed to think he was taking too much credit to himself; she stopped crying, and answered, with a toss of her head: 'Yes, and it would have been better if you'd never asked me back, if it was only to go on like this.' 'Like what?' says he. 'You've your own way in everything now. The same as before, only you don't care for anything at all. You never touch the piano, even; only go about cross and irritable all the time; there's no pleasing you with anything. And you shut your door at night and lock me out. Well and good; lock me out if you like!' 'It's you that are hard to please, if you ask me,' she said. 'There's never a night and never a morning but I'm worried out of my life lest you shall be thinking of—this summer. You've never said a word about it, you say. Oh, don't you, though! I'm never left long in peace without you throwing it in my teeth. I happened to say “Hugo” one day, by a slip of the tongue, and what did you do? You might have been nice and comforted me to help me over it, but you only scowled and said you were not Hugo. No. I knew well enough, and I was ever so sorry to have said it.' 'That's just the point,' said the Captain. 'Were you really sorry?' 'Yes, indeed,' said Fruen; 'it hurt me ever so.' 'Well, I shouldn't have thought it; you don't seem very upset about it.' 'Ah, but what about you? Haven't you anything to be sorry for?' 'You've got photos of Hugo on your piano still; I haven't seen you move them away yet, though I've shown you not once but fifty times I wished you to—yes, and begged you to do it.' 'Oh, what a fuss you make about those photos!' said she. 'Oh, don't make any mistake! I'm not asking you now. If you went and shifted them now, it would make no difference. I've begged and prayed of you fifty times before. Only, I think it would have been a little more decent if you'd burned them the day you came home. But, instead of that, you've books here lying about in your room with his name in. And there's a handkerchief with his initials on, I see.' 'Oh, it's all your jealousy,' answered Fruen. 'I can't see what difference it makes. I can't kill him, as you'd like me to, and Papa and Mama say the same. After all, I've lived with him and been married to him.' 'Married to him?' 'Yes, that's what I say. It isn't every one that looks at Hugo and me the way you do.' The Captain sat a while, shaking his head. 'And it's all your own fault, really,' Fruen went on, 'the way you drove off with Elisabet that time, though I came and asked you not to go. It was then it happened. And we'd been drinking that evening. I didn't quite know what I was doing.' Still, the Captain said nothing for a while; then at last he said: 'Yes, I ought not to have gone off like that.' 'No, but you did,' said Fruen, and started crying again. 'You wouldn't hear a word. And you're always throwing it in my teeth about Hugo, but you never think of what you've done yourself.' 'There's just this difference,' says the Captain, 'that I've never lived with the lady you mention, never been married to her, as you call it.' Fruen gave a little scornful laugh. 'Never!' said the Captain, striking the table with his hand. Fruen gave a start, and sat staring at him. 'Then—I don't understand why you were always running after her and sitting out in the summer-house and lurking in corners,' said she. 'It was you that sat out in the summer-house,' he answered. 'Oh yes, it's always me,' said she. 'Never you by any chance!' 'As for my running after Elisabet,' said the Captain, 'it was solely and simply in the hopes of getting you back. You'd drifted away from me, and I wanted you.' Fruen sat thinking over that for a minute, then she sprang up and threw her arms around him and said: 'Oh, then you cared for me all the time! And I thought it was all over. You'd drifted away from me, too; it was years since. And it all seemed so hopeless. I never thought—I never knew.... And then it was me you cared for all the time! Oh, my dear, then it's all come right again.' 'Sit down,' said he. 'You seem to forget that something else has happened since.' 'Something else?' 'There you are, you've forgotten all about it. May I ask you, are you sorry enough for what's happened since?' At that Fruen turned hard again and said: 'Oh, you mean about Hugo? That's done and can't be altered.' 'That doesn't answer the question.' 'If I'm sorry enough? What about you; are you so innocent yourself?' At this the Captain got up and began walking up and down. 'The trouble is that we've no children,' said Fruen. 'I haven't a daughter that I could teach and bring up to be better than I am,' 'I've thought of that,' said the Captain, 'perhaps you're right.' Then he turned straight towards her and said: 'It's a nasty crash that's come over us, Lovise—like a landslide. But don't you think now we might set to work and shift away all the wreckage that's been burying us for years, and get clear and breathe again? You might have a daughter yet!' At that Fruen got up and made as if to say something, but couldn't. 'Yes,' was all she said, and 'Yes,' she said again. 'You're tired and nervous, I know,' he said. 'But think a little over what I've said. Another time.' 'Good-night,' said she.”