Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗

her side while they

looked long into each other’s eyes, and how she would run her hand

through his soft, wavy brown hair? What did it matter that none of

these things happened? She blushed at the very thought that they might

happen.

 

They were fair and happy days, but toward the end of November Ulrik

Christian fell dangerously ill. His health, long undermined by

debauchery of every conceivable kind, had perhaps been unable to

endure the continued strain of night watches and hard work in

connection with his post. Or possibly fresh dissipations had strung

the bow too tightly. A wasting disease marked by intense pain, wild

fever dreams, and constant restlessness, attacked him, and soon took

such a turn that none could doubt the name of the sickness was death.

 

On the eleventh of December Pastor Hans Didrichsen Bartskjaer,

chaplain to the royal family, was walking uneasily up and down over the

fine straw mattings that covered the floor in the large leather-brown

room outside of Ulrik Christian’s sick chamber. He stopped

absentmindedly before the paintings on the walls and seemed to examine

with intense interest the fat, naked nymphs outstretched under the

trees, the bathing Susannas, and the simpering Judith with bare,

muscular arms. They could not hold his attention long, however, and he

went to the window, letting his gaze roam from the gray-white sky to

the wet, glistening copper roofs and the long mounds of dirty, melting

snow in the castle park below. Then he resumed his nervous pacing,

murmuring, and gesticulating.

 

Was that the door opening? He stopped short to listen.

 

No! He drew a deep breath and sank down into a chair, where he sat

sighing and rubbing the palms of his hands together until the door

really opened. A middle-aged woman wearing a huge flounced cap of

red-dotted stuff appeared and beckoned cautiously to him. The pastor

pulled himself together, stuck his prayer book under his arm, smoothed

his cassock, and entered the sick chamber.

 

The large oval room was wainscoted in dark wood from floor to ceiling.

From the central panel, depressed below the surface of the wall,

grinned a row of hideous, white-toothed heads of blackamoors and Turks

painted in gaudy colors. The deep, narrow lattice window was partially

veiled by a sash curtain of thin, blue-gray stuff, leaving the lower

part of the room in deep twilight, while the sunbeams played freely on

the painted ceiling, where horses, weapons, and naked limbs mingled in

an inextricable tangle, and on the canopy of the four-poster bed, from

which hung draperies of yellow damask fringed with silver.

 

The air that met the pastor as he entered was warm, and so heavy with

the scent of salves and nostrums that for a moment he could hardly

breathe. He clutched a chair for support, his head swam, and

everything seemed to be whirling around him—the table covered with

flasks and phials, the window, the nurse with her cap, the sick man on

the bed, the sword rack, and the door opening into the adjoining room

where a fire was blazing in the grate.

 

“The peace of God be with you, my lord!” he greeted in a trembling

voice as soon as he recovered from his momentary dizziness.

 

“What the devil d’ ye want here?” roared the sick man, trying to lift

himself in bed.

 

“Gemach, gnadigster Herr, gemach!” Shoemaker’s Anne, the nurse,

hushed him and, coming close to the bed, gently stroked the coverlet.

“‘Tis the venerable Confessionarius of his Majesty, who has been sent

hither to give you the sacrament.”

 

“Gracious Sir, noble Lord Gyldenlove!” began the pastor as he

approached the bed. “Though ‘tis known to me that you have not been

among the simple wise or the wisely simple who use the Word of the

Lord as their rod and staff and who dwell in His courts and although

that God whose cannon is the crashing thunderbolt likewise holds in

His hand the golden palm of victory and the blood dripping cypresses

of defeat, yet men may understand, though not justify, the

circumstance that you, whose duty it has been to command and set a

valiant example to your people, may for a moment have forgotten that

we are but as nothing, as a reed in the wind, nay, as the puny grafted

shoot in the hands of the mighty Creator. You may have thought

foolishly, This I have done; this is a fruit that I have brought to

maturity and perfection. Yet now, beloved lord, when you lie here on

your bed of pain, now God who is the merciful God of love hath surely

enlightened your understanding and turned your heart to Him in longing

with fear and trembling to confess your uncleansed sins, that you may

trustfully accept the grace and forgiveness which His loving hands are

holding out to you. The sharp-toothed worm of remorse—”

 

“Cross me fore and cross me aft! Penitence, forgiveness of sins, and

life eternal!” jeered Ulrik Christian and sat up in bed. “Do you

suppose, you sour-faced baldpate, do you suppose because my bones are

rotting out of my body in stumps and slivers that gives me more

stomach for your parson-palaver?”

 

“Most gracious lord, you sadly misuse the privilege which your high

rank and yet more your pitiable condition give you to berate a poor

servant of the Church, who is but doing his duty in seeking to turn

your thoughts toward that which is assuredly to you the one thing

needful. Oh, honored lord, it avails but little to kick against the

pricks! Has not the wasting disease that has struck your body taught

you that none can escape the chastisements of the Lord God, and that

the scourgings of heaven fall alike on high and low?”

 

Ulrik Christian interrupted him, laughing, “Hell consume me, but you

talk like a witless school-boy! This sickness that’s eating my marrow

I’ve rightfully brought on myself, and if you suppose that heaven or

hell sends it, I can tell you that a man gets it by drinking and

wenching and revelling at night. You may depend on ‘t. And now take

your scholastic legs out of this chamber with all speed, or else

I’ll—”

 

Another attack seized him, and as he writhed and moaned with the

intense pain, his oaths and curses were so blasphemous and so

appalling in their inventiveness that the scandalized pastor stood

pale and aghast. He prayed God for strength and power of persuasion,

if mayhap he might be vouchsafed the privilege of opening this

hardened soul to the truth and glorious consolation of religion. When

the patient was quiet again, he began, “My lord, my lord, with tears

and weeping I beg and beseech you to cease from such abominable

cursing and swearing! Remember, the axe is laid unto the root of the

tree, and it shall be hewn down and cast into the fire if it continues

to be unfruitful and does not in the eleventh hour bring forth flowers

and good fruit! Cease your baleful resistance, and throw yourself with

penitent prayers at the feet of our Saviour—”

 

When the pastor began his speech, Ulrik Christian sat up at the

headboard of the bed. He pointed threateningly to the door and cried

again and again, “Begone, parson! Begone, march! I can’t abide you any

longer!”

 

“Oh, my dear lord,” continued the clergyman, “if mayhap you are

hardening yourself because you misdoubt the possibility of finding

grace, since the mountain of your sins is overwhelming, then hear with

rejoicing that the fountain of God’s grace is inexhaustible—”

 

“Mad dog of a parson, will you go!” hissed Ulrik Christian between

clenched teeth; “one—two!”

 

“And if your sins were red as blood, ay, as Tyrian purple—”

 

“Right about face!”

 

“He shall make them white as Lebanon’s—”

 

“Now by St. Satan and all his angels!” roared Ulrik Christian as he

jumped out of bed, caught a rapier from the sword rack, and made a

furious lunge after the pastor, who, however, escaped into the

adjoining room, slamming the door after him. In his rage Ulrik

Christian flung himself at the door, but sank exhausted to the floor

and had to be lifted into bed, though he still held the sword.

 

The forenoon passed in a drowsy calm. He suffered no pain, and the

weakness that came over him seemed a pleasant relief. He lay staring

at the points of light penetrating the curtain and counted the black

rings in the iron lattice. A pleased smile flitted over his face when

he thought of his onslaught on the pastor, and he grew irritable only

when Shoemaker’s Anne would coax him to close his eyes and try to

sleep.

 

In the early afternoon a loud knock at the door announced the entrance

of the pastor of Trinity Church, Dr. Jens Justesen. He was a

tall, rather stout man with coarse, strong features, short black hair,

and large, deep-set eyes. Stepping briskly up to the bed, he said

simply, “Good-day!”

 

As soon as Ulrik Christian became aware that another clergyman was

standing before him, he began to shake with rage, and let loose a

broadside of oaths and railing against the pastor, against Shoemaker’s

Anne, who had not guarded his peace better, against God in heaven and

all holy things.

 

“Silence, child of man!” thundered Pastor Jens. “Is this language meet

for one who has even now one foot in the grave? ‘Twere better you

employed the nickering spark of life that still remains to you in

making your peace with the Lord, instead of picking quarrels with men.

You are like those criminals and disturbers of peace who, when their

judgment is fallen and they can no longer escape the red-hot pincers

and the axe, then in their miserable impotence curse and revile the

Lord our God with filthy and wild words. They seek thereby courage to

drag themselves out of that almost brutish despair, that craven fear

and slavish remorse without hope, into which such fellows generally

sink toward the last and which they fear more than death and the

tortures of death.”

 

Ulrik Christian listened quietly until he had managed to get his sword

out from under the coverlet. Then he cried, “Guard yourself,

priest-belly!” and made a sudden lunge after Pastor Jens, who coolly

turned the weapon aside with his broad prayer book.

 

“Leave such tricks to pages!” he said contemptuously. “They’re scarce

fitting for you or me. And now this woman”—turning to Shoemaker’s

Anne—“had best leave us private.”

 

Anne quitted the room, and the pastor drew his chair up to the bed

while Ulrik Christian laid his sword on the coverlet.

 

Pastor Jens spoke fair words about sin and the wages of sin, about

God’s love for the children of men, and about the death on the cross.

 

Ulrik Christian lay turning his sword in his hand, letting the light

play on the bright steel. He swore, hummed bits of ribald songs, and

tried to interrupt with blasphemous questions, but the pastor went on

speaking about the seven words of the cross, about the holy sacrament

of the altar, and the bliss of heaven.

 

Then Ulrik Christian sat up in bed and looked the pastor straight in

the face.

 

“‘Tis naught but lies and old wives’ tales,” he said.

 

“May the devil take me where I stand, if it isn’t true!” cried the

pastor, “every blessed word!” He hit the table with his fist till the

jars and glasses slid and rattled against one another while he rose to

his feet and spoke in a stern voice, “‘Twere meet that I should shake

the dust from my feet in righteous anger and leave you here alone, a

sure prey to the devil and