Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen
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Ulrik Frederik turned homeward to his own apartments, which this time
were at Rosenborg. His valet being out, there was no light in the
large parlor, and he sat alone there in the dark till almost midnight.
He was in a strange mood, divided between regret and foreboding. It
was one of those moods when the soul seems to drift as in a light
sleep, without will or purpose, on a slowly gliding stream while
mist-like pictures pass on the background of dark trees, and
half-formed thoughts rise from the sombre stream like great dimly-lit
bubbles that glide—glide onward and burst. Bits of the conversation
that afternoon, the motley crowds in the churchyard, Marie Grubbe’s
smile, Mistress Rigitze, the Queen, the King’s favor, the King’s anger
that other time … the way Marie moved her hands, Sofie Urne, pale
and far away—yet paler and yet farther away—the rose at the head of
the bed and Marie Grubbe’s voice, the cadence of some word—he sat
listening and heard it again and again winging through the silence.
He rose and went to the window, opened it, and leaned his elbows on
the wide casement. How fresh it all was—so cool and quiet! The
bittersweet smell of roses cooled with dew, the fresh, pungent scent
of new-mown hay, and the spicy fragrance of the flowering maple were
wafted in. A mist-like rain spread a blue, tremulous dusk over the
garden. The black boughs of the larch, the drooping leafy veil of the
birch, and the rounded crowns of the beech stood like shadows breathed
on a background of gliding mist, while the clipped yew trees shot
upward like the black columns of a roofless temple. The stillness was
that of a deep grave, save for the raindrops falling light as
thistledown, with a faint, monotonous sound like a whisper that dies
and begins again and dies there behind the wet, glistening trunks.
What a strange whisper it was when one listened! How wistful!—like
the beating of soft wings when old memories flock. Or was it a low
rustle in the dry leaves of lost illusions? He felt lonely, drearily
alone and forsaken. Among all the thousands of hearts that beat round
about in the stillness of the night, not one turned in longing to him!
Over all the earth there was a net of invisible threads binding soul
to soul, threads stronger than life, stronger than death; but in all
that net not one tendril stretched out to him. Homeless, forsaken!
Forsaken? Was that a sound of goblets and kisses out there? Was there
a gleam of white shoulders and dark eyes? Was that a laugh ringing
through the stillness?—What then? Better the slow-dripping
bitterness of solitude than that poisonous, sickly sweetness.… Oh,
curses on it! I shake your dust from my thoughts, slothful life, life
for dogs, for blind men, for weaklings. … As a rose! O God, watch
over her and keep her through the dark night! Oh, that I might be her
guard and protector, smooth every path, shelter her against every
wind—so beautiful—listening like a child—as a rose!…
Admired and courted though she was, Marie Grubbe soon found that
while she had escaped from the nursery, she was not fully admitted to
the circles of the grown up. For all the flatteries lavished on them,
such young maidens were kept in their own place in society. They were
made to feel it by a hundred trifles that in themselves meant nothing
but when taken together meant a great deal. First of all, the children
were insufferably familiar, quite like their equals. And then the
servants—there was a well-defined difference in the manner of the old
footman when he took the cloak of a maid or a matron, and the faintest
shade in the obliging smile of the chambermaid showed her sense of
whether she was waiting on a married or an unmarried woman. The
free-and-easy tone which the half-grown younkers permitted themselves
was most unpleasant, and the way in which snubbings and icy looks
simply slid off from them was enough to make one despair.
She liked best the society of the younger men, for even when they were
not in love with her, they would show her the most delicate attention
and say the prettiest things with a courtly deference that quite
raised her in her own estimation—though to be sure it was tiresome
when she found that they did it chiefly to keep in practice. Some of
the older gentlemen were simply intolerable with their fulsome
compliments and their mock gallantry, but the married women were worst
of all, especially the brides. The encouraging, though a bit
preoccupied, glance, the slight condescending nod with head to one
side, and the smile—half pitying, half jeering—with which they would
listen to her—it was insulting! Moreover, the conduct of the girls
themselves was not of a kind to raise their position. They would never
stand together, but if one could humiliate another, she was only too
glad to do so. They had no idea of surrounding themselves with an air
of dignity by attending to the forms of polite society the way the
young married women did.
Her position was not enviable, and when Mistress Rigitze let fall a
few words to the effect that she and other members of the family had
been considering a match between Marie and Ulrik Frederik, she
received the news with joy. Though Ulrik Frederik had not taken her
fancy captive, a marriage with him opened a wide vista of pleasant
possibilities. When all the honors and advantages had been described
to her—how she would be admitted into the inner court circle, the
splendor in which she would live, the beaten track to fame and high
position that lay before Ulrik Frederik as the natural son and even
more as the especial favorite of the King—while she made a mental
note of how handsome he was, how courtly, and how much in love—it
seemed that such happiness was almost too great to be possible, and
her heart sank at the thought that after all, it was nothing but loose
talk, schemes, and hopes.
Yet Mistress Rigitze was building on firm ground, for not only had
Ulrik Frederik confided in her and begged her to be his spokesman with
Marie, but he had induced her to sound the gracious pleasure of the
King and Queen, and they had both received the idea very kindly and
had given their consent, although the King had felt some hesitation to
begin with. The match had, in fact, been settled long since by the
Queen and her trusted friend and chief gentlewoman, Mistress Rigitze,
but the King was not moved only by the persuasions of his consort. He
knew that Marie Grubbe would bring her husband a considerable fortune,
and although Ulrik Frederik held Vordingborg in fief, his love of
pomp and luxury made constant demands upon the King, who was always
hard pressed for money. Upon her marriage Marie would come into
possession of her inheritance from her dead mother, Mistress Marie
Juul, while her father, Erik Grubbe, was at that time owner of the
manors of Tjele, Vinge, Gammelgaard, Bigum, Trinderup, and Norbaek,
besides various scattered holdings. He was known as a shrewd manager
who wasted nothing and would no doubt leave his daughter a large
fortune. So all was well. Ulrik Frederik could go courting without
more ado, and a week after midsummer their betrothal was solemnized.
Ulrik Frederik was very much in love, but not with the stormy
infatuation he had felt when Sofie Urne ruled his heart. It was a
pensive, amorous, almost wistful sentiment, rather than a fresh, ruddy
passion. Marie had told him the story of her dreary childhood, and he
liked to picture to himself her sufferings with something of the
voluptuous pity that thrills a young monk when he fancies the
beautiful white body of the female martyr bleeding on the sharp spikes
of the torture wheel. Sometimes he would be troubled with dark
forebodings that an early death might tear her from his arms. Then he
would vow to himself with great oaths that he would bear her in his
hands and keep every poisonous breath from her, that he would lead the
light of every gold-shining mood into her young heart and never, never
grieve her.
Yet there were other times when he exulted at the thought that all
this rich beauty, this strange, wonderful soul were given into his
power as the soul of a dead man into the hands of God to grind in the
dust if he liked, to raise up when he pleased, to crush down, to bend.
It was partly Marie’s own fault that such thoughts could rise in him,
for her love, if she did love, was of a strangely proud, almost
insolent nature. It would be but a halting image to say that her love
for the late Ulrik Christian had been like a lake whipped and tumbled
by a storm while her love for Ulrik Frederik was the same water in the
evening, becalmed, cold, and glassy, stirred but by the breaking of
frothy bubbles among the dark reeds of the shore. Yet the simile would
have some truth, for not only was she cold and calm toward her lover,
but the bright myriad dreams of life that thronged in the wake of her
first passion had paled and dissolved in the drowsy calm of her
present feeling.
She loved Ulrik Frederik after a fashion, but might it not be chiefly
as the magic wand opening the portals to the magnificent pageant of
life, and might it not be the pageant that she really loved? Sometimes
it would seem otherwise. When she sat on his knee in the twilight and
sang little airs about Daphne and Amaryllis to her own accompaniment,
the song would die away, and while her fingers played with the strings
of the cithern, she would whisper in his waiting ear words so sweet
and warm that no true love owns them sweeter, and there were tender
tears in her eyes that could be only the dew of love’s timid unrest.
And yet—might it not be that her longing was conjuring up a mere mood
rooted in the memories of her past feeling, sheltered by the brooding
darkness, fed by hot blood and soft music,—a mood that deceived
herself and made him happy? Or was it nothing but maidenly shyness
that made her chary of endearments by the light of day, and was it
nothing but girlish fear of showing a girl’s weakness that made her
eyes mock and her lips jeer many a time when he asked for a kiss or,
vowing love, would draw from her the words all lovers long to hear?
Why was it, then, that when she was alone and her imagination had
wearied of picturing for the thousandth time the glories of the
future, she would often sit gazing straight before her hopelessly and
feel unutterably lonely and forsaken?
In the early afternoon of an August day Marie and Ulrik Frederik were
riding, as often before, along the sandy road that skirted the Sound
beyond East Gate. The air was fresh after a morning shower, the sun
stood mirrored in the water, and blue thunder clouds were rolling away
in the distance.
They cantered as quickly as the road would allow them, a lackey in a
long crimson coat following closely. They rode past the gardens where
green apples shone under dark leaves, past fish nets hung to dry with
the raindrops still glistening in their meshes, past the King’s
fisheries with red-tiled roof, and past the glue-boiler’s house, where
the smoke rose straight as a column out of a chimney. They jested and
laughed, smiled and laughed, and galloped
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