CHAPTER XIII.
The gloomy little lodging-house felt desolate enough to him as he unlocked the door with his latch-key and climbed the creaking stairs to his sparsely furnished room. Evidently the three Miss Turnours were having a very animated quarrel, for their voices were pitched in that high key which indicates a stormy atmosphere, and even their words reached him distinctly as he passed by the bedroom which was the arena of strife.
“But, my dear Caroline—”
“Don’t talk nonsense, my dear, you know perfectly well—”
“Do you mean to say, my dear—”
“I wonder,” thought Frithiof, “whether they ever allow each other to finish a sentence. It’s like the catch that they used to sing at Balholm, about ‘Celia’s Charms.’ If any one ever writes a catch called ‘The Quarrel,’ he must take care to stick in plenty of ‘my dears!’”
Strict economy in gas was practiced by the Miss Turnours, and Frithiof had to grope about for matches. “Attendance,” too, did not apparently include drawing down the blind, or turning down the bed. The room looked most bare and comfortless, and the dismal gray paper, with its oblong slabs, supposed by courtesy to represent granite, was as depressing as the dungeon of Giant Despair’s castle.
To stay here with nothing to do—to fag through weary days of disappointing search after work, and then to return to this night after night, was but a sorry prospect. Would it not indeed be well for him if he swallowed his pride and accepted this offer of perfectly honorable work which had been made to him? The idea was in many ways distasteful to him, and yet dared he reject it?
Looking honestly into his own mind he detected there something that urged him to snatch at this first chance of work, lest, with fresh failure and disappointment, the very desire for work should die within him, and he should sink into a state which his better nature abhorred. The clatter of tongues still ascended from below. He took off his boots, dropping first one and then the other with a resounding thud upon the floor, after the manner of men. Then wondering whether consciousness of his being within earshot would allay the storm, he threw down both boots at once with a portentous noise outside his room and shut and locked the door with emphasis. Still the female battle continued. He threw himself down on the bed, wondering what it was that made families so different. It was not money which gave the tone to the Bonifaces’ house. The Morgans were infinitely richer. It was not a great profession of religion. The Miss Turnours were all ardently and disputatiously religious. What was it?
He fell asleep before he had solved the problem, and had an odd, confused dream. He dreamed that he was climbing the Romsdalshorn, and that darkness had overtaken him. Below him was a sheer precipice, and he could hear the roar of wild beasts as they wandered to and fro thirsting for his blood.