I might perhaps get
work at the hotel where she was staying. Or I might write home for some
clothes, turn gentleman myself, and go and stay at that same hotel. This
last, of course, would at once have cut the ground from under my feet and
left me farther removed from her than ever, but it was the one that
appealed to me most of all, fool that I was. I had begun to make friends
with the hotel porter, already, merely because he lived nearer to her than
I. He was a big, strong fellow, who went up to the station every day to
meet the trains and pick up a commercial traveller once a fortnight. He
could give me no news; I did not ply him with questions, nor even lead him
on to tell me things of his own accord; and, besides, he was far from
intelligent. But he lived under the same roof with Fruen--ah yes, that he
did. And one day it came about that this acquaintance of mine with the
hotel porter brought me a piece of valuable information about Fru
Falkenberg, and that from her own lips.
So they were not all equally fruitless, those days in the little town.
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