“Such a fine young man!” she thought. “So tall, and such a beautiful, rich overcoat! I only hope he’ll take that room![Pg 507]”
Now there came a great bellowing from downstairs. She could understand those words. Oscar was angry, and shouting at little Ingeborg.
“Excoos!” she cried. “Yoost a minoot!”
“No!” he said with a frown. “Never mind, anyhow—I’ll take the room, without breakfast. I’ll be back later.”
He opened the door and let himself out. Mrs. Anders stood in the hall, with tears in her eyes. She had not understood what he said. She thought he had gone away, as so many others went away, angry because she was so dumb.
As a matter of fact, if the young man was angry with any one, it was with himself, for his own folly. He ran down the steps and set off along the street as if he were in a hurry to get away from that house.
He had to wait at a crossing for the traffic to pass. On the opposite corner he could see the snow swirling about the street lamp in a little tumult; and it reminded him of something he had loved when he was a child. His mother had had a glass ball with a paper landscape in it, and when the ball was shaken a fierce snowstorm would fill the tiny world inside it. He remembered it so well, and somehow the thought of it made him recall other memories of his boyhood days, faint and sad and beautiful—the jingle of sleigh bells, a glimpse of the lighted window of a little house among the snow-covered hills, the long hoot of a train speeding swiftly through the dark.
He did not want to think of the past. He walked faster, but those thoughts went along with him, and in them, all the time, was the face of little Ingeborg. He had never seen her before, yet she seemed familiar to him, like a figure from his own past, or from a dream.
That pale face of hers, with its steadfast eyes—it was like a picture in his old fairy tales of a snow queen, dressed in fur, driving off in a sleigh shaped like a swan, and looking back sorrowfully over her shoulder. It was like a face he had seen long, long ago, at some window. It was the face of the beloved maiden who is always waiting, in every tale, in every dream—waiting her deliverance.
Not for him! He would not have it so. He had chosen another road, and nothing should stop him. What did he care for that girl—a little, shadowy, humble thing like that?