Short stories, Swedish -- Translations into English; Sweden -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
In the same room where the bed stood was an old curved chest of drawers
inlaid with olive-wood, and from it Ingrid might take as much
sweetly-scented linen as she liked. There was also a wardrobe containing
many gay and pretty silk and muslin gowns that only hung there and
waited until it pleased her to put them on.
When she awoke in the morning there stood by her bedside a tray with a
silver coffee-set and old Indian china. And every morning she set her
small white teeth in fine white bread and delicious almond-cakes; every
day she was dressed in a fine muslin gown with a lace fichu. Her hair
was dressed high at the back, but round her forehead there was a row of
little light curls.
On the wall between the windows hung a mirror, with a narrow glass in a
broad frame, where she could see herself, and nod to her picture, and
ask:
'Is it you? Is it really you? How have you come here?'
In the daytime, when Ingrid had left the chamber with the four-poster,
she sat in the drawing-room and embroidered or painted on silk, and when
she was tired of that, she played a little on the guitar and sang, or
talked with the old lady, who taught her French, and amused herself by
training her to be a fine lady.
But she had come to an enchanted castle--she could not get away from
that idea. She had had that feeling the first moment, and it was always
coming back again. No one arrived at the house, no one left it. In this
big house only two or three rooms were kept in order; in the others no
one ever went. No one walked in the garden, no one looked after it.
There was only one man-servant, and an old man who cut the firewood. And
Miss Stafva had only two servants, who helped her in the kitchen and in
the dairy.
But there was always dainty food on the table, and her ladyship and
Ingrid were always waited upon and dressed like fine ladies of rank.
If nothing thrived on the old estate, there was, at any rate, fertile
soil for dreams, and even if they did not nurse and cultivate flowers
there, Ingrid was not the one to neglect her dream-roses. They grew up
around her whenever she was alone. It seemed to her then as if red
dream-roses formed a canopy over her.
Round the island where the trees bent low over the water, and sent long
branches in between the reeds, and where shrubs and lofty trees grew
luxuriantly, was a pathway where Ingrid often walked. It looked so
strange to see so many letters carved on the trees, to see the old seats
and summer-houses; to see the old tumble-down pavilions, which were so
worm-eaten that she dared not go into them; to think that real people
had walked here, that here they had lived, and longed, and loved, and
that this had not always been an enchanted castle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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