Ragnhild smiled and shook her head; then she went on:
“Heaven forgive me for smiling, but the Captain's face was so queer; he stood there like a sheep. 'Didn't you guess as much before?' asked Fruen. The Captain looked over at me and said: 'What's that you're doing there all this time?' 'I asked her to pick up those buttons for me,' said Fruen. 'I've finished now,' said I. 'Have you?' said Fruen, getting up. 'Let me see.' And she took the box and dropped them again all over the floor. Oh, they went rolling all over the place, under the table, under the bed and the stove! 'There, now, did you ever see such a mess?' said Fruen. But then she went off again at once talking about herself, and said again: 'But I can't understand you didn't you see I was—didn't see what was the matter with me.' Can't those buttons wait till tomorrow?' said the Captain. 'Why, yes, perhaps they can,' said Fruen. 'But then I'll be treading on them everywhere. I can't ... I'm rather afraid of stooping just now.... But, never mind, we'll leave them for now,' she said, and stroked his hand. 'Oh, my dear, my dear!' she says. But he drew his hand away. 'Oh, so you're angry with me!' she said. 'But then, why did you write and ask me to come back?' 'My dear Lovise, we're not alone here,' he says. 'But surely you must know what made you write?' 'I suppose it was because I hoped things would come right again.' 'And they didn't?' 'Well, no!' 'But what was in your mind when you wrote? Were you thinking of me? Did you want me again? I can't make out what was in your mind.' 'Ragnhild's finished, I see,' said the Captain. 'Good-night, Ragnhild!'”
“And then you came away?”
“Yes, but I dare not go far because of Fruen. You may be sure it wasn't nice for her when I was out of the room, so I had to be somewhere at hand. And if the Captain had come and found me and said anything, I'd have told him straight out I wasn't going farther away with Fruen in the state she was. As it happened, he didn't come at all, but they began again in there. 'I know what you're thinking of,' said Fruen—'that perhaps it's not ... it wouldn't be your child. Oh yes, indeed it might be so! But, God knows, I can't find words this moment to make you forgive me!' she said, all crying. 'Oh, my dear, forgive me, forgive me!' said Fruen, and went down on her knees on the floor. 'You've seen what I did with the books, and that handkerchief with the initials on—I burnt that before, and the books, you know....' 'Yes, and—here's another handkerchief with the same initials on—' says the Captain. 'Oh, heavens! yes, you're ever so considerate, Lovise.' Fruen was all upset at that. 'I'm sorry you should have seen it,' she said. 'It must be one I brought back with me when I came home. I haven't looked through my things properly since. But does it really matter so very much? Surely—' 'Oh no,' said he. 'And if you'd only listen to me,' she went on, I'm almost certain it's you that ... I mean, that the child is yours. Why should it not be? Oh, I don't know how to say it!' 'Sit down again,' said the Captain. But Fruen must have misunderstood; she got up and said: 'There you are! You won't listen to me. Really, I can't make out why you ever wrote to me at all. You might just as well have left me alone.' Then the Captain said something about being in prison; if a man grew up in a prison yard, he said, and you take him out, he'll long to be back in his prison yard again, he said. It was something like that, anyway. 'Yes, but I was with Papa and Mama, and they weren't hard like you; they said I had been married to him, and weren't unkind to me at all. It isn't every one that looks at things like you do,' 'You don't want that candle alight now Ragnhild's gone, do you?' said the Captain. 'It looks so out of place to have it burning there beside the lamp—as if it were ashamed.' 'Ashamed of me,' she says quickly. 'Oh yes, that was what you meant. But you've been to blame as well.' 'Don't misunderstand me,' he says. 'I know I've been to blame. But that doesn't make your part any better.' 'Oh, you think not? Well, of all the.... So yours doesn't count, then?' 'Yes, I say I've been to blame, not in the way you mean, but in other ways—in old things and new.' 'Oh, indeed!' 'Yes, but I don't come home bringing the fruits of it under my heart to you.' 'No,' says Fruen, 'but you know it was you all along that wouldn't ... that didn't want us to have children. And I didn't want it, either, but you ought to have known better. And they said the same thing at home. If only I'd had a daughter....' 'Oh, don't let's go over all that again,' says the Captain—he called it something or other—a romance, I think it was. 'But it's true,' says Fruen, 'and I can't think how you can deny it.' 'I'm not denying anything. Do sit down, now, Lovise, and listen to me. All this about having children, and a daughter to bring up and so on, it's something you've picked up lately. And, you snatched at the idea at once, to save yourself. But you never said a word about wanting children before—not that I ever heard.' 'Yes, but you ought to have known better.' 'There again, that's something you've heard, something new. But it doesn't matter: quite possibly things might have been different if we'd had children. I can see that myself now, but now it's too late, more's the pity. And here you are now—like that....' 'Oh, heavens, yes! But I tell you it may be yours after all—I don't know.... Oh!...' 'Mine? said the Captain, shaking his head. 'Well, the mother should be the one to know. But in this case, it seems, she doesn't. The woman I'm married to doesn't know—or do you?' But Fruen did not answer. 'Do you know? I ask you!' Oh, but again she could not answer, only slipped down to the floor again and cried. Really, I don't know—but perhaps I'm on her side after all; it was dreadful for her, poor thing. And then I was just going to knock at the door and go in, but then the Captain went on again. 'You can't say it,' he said. 'But that's an answer in itself, and plain enough.' 'I can't say more,' said Fruen. She was still crying. 'I'm fond of you for lots of things, Lovise,' says the Captain, 'and one of them's because you're truthful.' 'Thank you,' she says. 'They haven't taught you to lie as yet. Get up, now.' And he helped her up himself, and set her in the chair. But it was pitiful to see her crying so. 'Don't cry, now,' he says. 'I want to ask you something. Shall we wait and see what it's like when it comes—what sort of eyes it has, and so on?' 'Oh, heaven bless you, yes, if you would! Oh, my dear, God bless you, God bless you.' 'And I'll try to bear with things as they are. It's an aching misery all the time, but I'll try. And I've been to blame as well.' 'God bless you, God bless you!' she said again. 'And you,' he said. 'And now good-night until tomorrow.' Then Fruen leaned down over the table and cried and cried so dreadfully. 'What are you crying for now?' he asked. 'You're going,' she said. 'Oh, I was afraid of you before, but now I can't bear to be without you. Couldn't you stay a little?' 'Stay here, with you, now?' he asked. 'Oh no, I didn't mean ... it wasn't that ... only, it's so lonely. I didn't mean....' 'No,' said the Captain. 'You can understand I don't feel like staying any longer now. Ring for the maid!'”
“And then I had to run,” Ragnhild concluded.
Said Nils, after a while: “Have they gone to bed now?”
Ragnhild could not say. Yes. Perhaps. Anyhow, Cook was there in case. “But, only think of it, how dreadful! I don't suppose Fruen can sleep.”
“You'd better go and see if there's anything you can do.”
“Yes,” said Ragnhild, getting up. “But I side with the Captain after all, and no mistake, whatever you say. Yes, that I do.”
“It's none so easy to know what's right.”