IV
TOBIESEN’S GRAND PARLOR
So many strange things are always happening to me. Can you understand why? Some persons (like my aunt who went to Paris) never have anything the least bit interesting happen to them. Why, when she came home, she said (I heard her with my own ears):
“I suppose I ought to have a great deal to tell about my trip, but really nothing especial happened and I haven’t seen or done anything worth telling of.”
“If that’s so,” said Father, “your trip wasn’t worth the money it cost,” and I agreed with him entirely. If I had gone to Paris, I should have had enough to talk about continually for a month or more. At home they say that if I just go out on the front doorstep, look up and down the street, and come right in again, I have immediately a great deal to tell. It may well be, however, that I talk a little bit too much—but when so many exciting things are happening all the time, am I to keep still and not talk about them? No, indeed, I’m not that kind of person. Talk I must.
Now you shall hear how I came to be in Tobiesen’s grand parlor where none of the town folk have ever been; for it was in a curious way, as you will agree.
Tobiesen is an assistant at the Custom House—but he doesn’t look like the other officers. They are all short and stout and red-faced—at least they are in our town. But it is not so long ago that Tobiesen came here, so probably that is why he is so unlike the other officers. He is very tall and cross-looking; won’t talk to people and doesn’t associate with any one. Would you like to know what he does when he sits alone at home in the evenings? He embroiders,—works on canvas! Ingeborg, our maid, says that all men who do needlework are cross; so it isn’t strange that Tobiesen looks so glum and disagreeable, since he sits and sews on canvas every evening. He is not married, and he lives alone, a little way out of town over the new road, in a house that he has bought and made all pretty and bright with new paint. Tobiesen, as I have said, never goes anywhere and nobody ever goes to his house; yet both Mina and I have sat for a whole hour in his best parlor! and that without having any idea of doing it! I was afraid enough that time, I can tell you.
I don’t know whether it is so where you live,—that a great many wandering Gypsy tribes come to the town,—but they certainly come to ours. There are Flintian’s tribe and Griffenfeldt’s tribe and Long Sarah’s tribe, and many others.
Most of them come by land with packs on their backs full of tinware and woven baskets that they wish to sell; and they always have a crowd of dirty dark-skinned children and cross women and cross dogs with them. Some Gypsies, though, come by boat—but I don’t know any of those except Lars and Guro, who belong to Flintian’s tribe. They own a big boat exactly like a pilot-boat and travel from town to town and deal in pottery and rags. They always bring their boat to the wharf near the market-place.
My, but you should see Lars and Guro! Both are dark, lively little persons. There is only this difference between them: Guro wears as little as she can, while Lars has as much as possible on him—he is all stuffed out with clothes and rags.
Guro says that Lars is weak in the head, and that anything weak must be kept warm, so Lars wears a heavy fur cap all summer, no matter how hot the sun is there on the wharf.
Guro attends to the rag business and Lars to the pottery. He has some savings-banks of red clay in the form of a bird with a slit in the back which all the children in town are crazy to buy. Guro with bare brown legs fairly wades in the heaps of rags on the deck, and scolds at the children who stand on the wharf and watch her.
Perhaps you are wondering what Lars and Guro have to do with Tobiesen’s grand parlor. Well, just wait.
The longer Lars and Guro are in town, the crosser they get at all of us children. At first they are quite pleasant and let us go down on the deck where they are and peep into their cabin—my! but it looks disgusting—but later no such favors are to be thought of. Whether this is because Lars and Guro, when their business has brought them in some money, are always drunk, or because all the children are so horrid about teasing them, I don’t know; but the fact is that when the rag-boat has been at the wharf about a week, Lars and Guro are so angry and behave so abominably that a policeman has to stand on the wharf all day to stop Guro when she gets too outrageous. Their visit usually ends with their being told by the police to get away from our town with their boat the quickest they can.
The rag-boat had been at the wharf about four days and Lars and Guro were, even for them, in an unusually bad humor. Guro had promised me and the other children a mighty warm welcome if she once got hold of us. And on top of that she promised that she would surely get us in her clutches before she left the town, for worse children, she said, were not to be found along the whole coast. That long-legged one, the Judge’s girl, (that was I) was the worst of the whole lot. For that matter, said Guro, she didn’t care whether we were the children of priest or prophet or magistrate, she would catch us just the same.
One afternoon Mina and I went for a walk up on the new road. Not a person was in sight. Oh, yes, there was; Lars and Guro were coming down the road towards us. They walked hand in hand, staggering a little, and quarreling loudly as they came. Mina and I did not dare to pass them on that lonely road with no one else near, so we ran up the hill and hid while they passed us.
But when they were just below us, Mina called out, “Raggedy Guro—raggedy Lars!” From that came all the trouble. I was awfully provoked with Mina. Really, she might rather have let them go in peace that time.
But you should have seen and heard the commotion, then!
Guro and Lars dashed back to where they could scramble up the bank. They showed that they could both make good use of their legs, I can tell you. There was no time to be lost, for they had almost caught up with us.
Mina and I ran as we had never run in our lives before, hopped over stones, and ran and ran. Oh, how afraid I was!
Guro was after us swift as the wind; Lars had so many clothes on that he was clumsy and slow in his movements, and was very soon left behind.
For an instant, I thought it might be safest to run farther up the hill, but no, my next thought was that it was best to get to the road again, so I sprang down five or six feet at one leap—Mina after me. Guro dared not take such a leap as that. Luckily for us she had to run a roundabout way, so we had a little the start of her.
Not a sound came from Mina or me, but Guro scolded incessantly. We ran for dear life. Lars and Guro had both reached the road now, and the noise they made as they ran could be heard a long way. Oh! There stood Tobiesen’s house!
“Come, let us run into Tobiesen’s,” I exclaimed, panting. In a twinkling we were through the court and in the hall; we rushed to a door and found ourselves in a fine, well-furnished room with white shades pulled down over the windows. The key was on the inside of the parlor door and I turned it hastily. There we stood. But at that instant Lars and Guro came tramping into the hall; Guro shrieked and scolded and vowed that she would find us, sure as fate. I was horribly afraid, more so than I can describe; Mina sat herself flat on the floor with her eyes bulging with terror.
There were hasty steps in the room above us, and then from the top of the stairs came the thin, high voice that was surely Tobiesen’s, calling, “Now, in heaven’s name, what is all this rumpus?”
“We want to get hold of the girls who came home just now,” shrieked Guro with the voice she uses when she is in her most furious rages on the rag-boat.
“Came home? No one comes home here.” Tobiesen trudged down the stairs in his slippers.
“I don’t know what kind of man you are,” said Guro, “for I’ve never seen your face before; but it’s that young one of yours I want to get hold of—the one who came home here just now with that long-legged girl of the Judge’s.”
“Are you crazy, folk? I have no young one—I am not married.”
“When we find them, we’ll break every bone in their bodies,” Lars’ thick voice growled from under his fur cap and out of his muffled throat.
Mina and I looked at each other. What a frightful position we were in—only a little thin door between us and that furious Guro and Lars and with no one to protect us but Tobiesen, who might be angry with us, too!
Guro screamed louder and louder.
“If you think I am afraid of you, you make a big mistake,” she shouted. “I’m going to find them, be sure of that.” She rushed farther into the hall, and shook one of the doors. Tobiesen spoke again, his voice sounding perfectly desperate.
“See here, you two,—here—take this, but go—only go away.”
Guro’s manner and tone changed at once.
“Thanks and honor—thanks and honor—My, such a wonderful nice man! Now, truly, you can’t tell by the outside of folk how they are inside—such a wonderful nice man!”
Evidently he had given them money to make them go away.
“Now go,” Tobiesen repeated. “Go away at once.”
There! They were out of the door and he turned the key in its lock after them.
“Whew!” Tobiesen gave a long whistle of relief, but if he had known that we were in his grand parlor he’d have whistled louder yet! I had a little hope that he might go up-stairs again; but no, he went into a room just across the hall.
“Oh, Mina! How splendid that they have gone!”
“But I’m almost as afraid of Tobiesen as I am of Lars and Guro,” whispered Mina, looking up at me.
“Sh—just keep still. We must wait a little while.” We listened and listened; not a sound was to be heard in the whole house.
Perhaps we could steal away now; but, scared as we were, I simply had to see Tobiesen’s fancy work.
Everywhere in the room, on the chairs and on the sofa were placed small white covers that must surely have embroidered pieces under them. I went on tiptoe over the floor.
“Why, Mina! Really, his work isn’t so bad! Come and see.” There was an angel’s head worked on canvas in white beads on a sofa-pillow, and a harp among roses on the back of a chair.
But Mina dared not stir from the door.
“Sh-sh! Don’t talk. Come back again, Inger Johanne; he will hear you. Ugh! if he should come——”
I turned the key of the parlor door slowly, slowly round. It was great good luck for us that everything in Tobiesen’s house was so well taken care of, for the lock had just been oiled, and the key didn’t make a sound. We tiptoed out into the hall, in dead silence, only making motions to each other.
We reached the street door, turned that key as carefully as we had the other, opened the door quickly—and we were out!
When we had gone three or four steps from the house I turned and looked back. At the door stood Tobiesen staring after us. Such astonishment as his face showed I never saw on any other face. Mina and I ran down the street as fast as we could.
Well, that’s the way we escaped from Tobiesen as well as from Lars and Guro, but tell me, don’t you think it was a frightful situation for us?
Ever since that time, when I see Tobiesen in the distance, I turn and go into another street, I am so afraid he will recognize me.
In the evening of the same day that Lars and Guro had chased us, they were sent out of town for quarreling in the streets, and since then nothing has been seen of them.