Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen
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down to the place where the elks and Esrom camels were kept and thence
back to a little arbor near the gate. There she had overheard what
Daniel said to Magnille, and now—
“Who are you?” she asked, “and were they true, the words you spoke?”
Daniel grasped the wicket and could hardly stand for trembling.
“Daniel Knopf, your ladyship, mad Daniel,” he replied. “Pay no heed
to his talk, it runs from his tongue, sense and nonsense, as it
happens, brain-chaff and tongue-threshing, tongue-threshing and naught
else.”
“You lie, Daniel.”
“Ay, ay, good Lord, I lie; I make no doubt I do, for in here, your
ladyship”—he pointed to his forehead—“‘tis like the destruction of
Jerusalem. Courtesy, Magnille, and tell her ladyship, Madam
Gyldenlove, how daft I am. Don’t let that put you out of countenance.
Speak up. Magnille! After all we’re no more cracked than the Lord
made us.”
“Is he truly mad?” Marie asked Magnille.
Magnille in her confusion bent down, caught a fold of Marie’s dress
through the bars of the wicket, kissed it, and looked quite
frightened. “Oh, no, no, indeed he is not, God be thanked.”
“She too,” said Daniel, waving his arm. “We take care of each other,
we two mad folks, as well as we can. ‘Tis not the best of luck, but
good Lord, though mad we be, still we see, we walk abroad and help
each other get under the sod. But no one rings over our graves, for
that’s not allowed. I thank you kindly for asking. Thank you, and God
be with you.”
“Stay,” said Marie Grubbe. “You are no more mad than you make
yourself. You must speak, Daniel. Would you have me think so ill of
you as to take you for a go-between of my lord and her you mentioned?
Would you?”
“A poor addle-pated fellow!” whimpered Daniel waving his arm
apologetically.
“God forgive you, Daniel! ‘Tis a shameful game you are playing; and I
believed so much better of you—so very much better.”
“Did you? Did you truly?” he cried eagerly, his eyes shining with joy.
“Then I’m in my right mind again. You’ve but to ask.”
“Was it the truth what you said?”
“As the gospel, but—”
“You are sure? There is no mistake?”
Daniel smiled.
“Is—he there today?”
“Is he gone hunting?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
“What manner”—Marie began after a short pause—“what manner of woman
is she, do you know?”
“Small, your ladyship, quite small, round and red as a pippin, merry
and prattling, laughing mouth and tongue loose at both ends.”
“But what kind of people does she come from?”
“‘Tis now two years ago or two and a half since she was the wife of a
French valet de chambre who fled the country and deserted her, but she
didn’t grieve long for him; she joined her fate with an out-at-elbows
harp player, went to Paris with him, and remained there and at
Brussels, until she returned here last Whitsun. In truth, she has a
natural good understanding and a pleasing manner, except at times when
she is tipsy. This is all the knowledge I have.”
“Daniel!” she said and stopped uncertainly.
“Daniel,” he replied with a subtle smile, “is as faithful to you now
and forever as your own right hand.”
“Then will you help me? Can you get me a—a coach and coachman who is
to be trusted the instant I give the word?”
“Indeed and indeed I can. In less than an hour from the moment you
give the word the coach shall hold in Herman Plumber’s meadow hard by
the old shed. You may depend on me, your ladyship.”
Marie stood still a moment and seemed to consider. “I will see you
again,” she said, nodded kindly to Magnille, and left them.
“Is she not the treasure house of all beauties, Magnille?” cried
Daniel gazing rapturously up the walk where she had vanished. “And so
peerless in her pride!” he went on triumphantly. “Ah, she would spurn
me with her foot, scornfully set her foot on my neck, and softly tread
me down in the deepest dust if she knew how boldly Daniel dares dream
of her person—so consuming beautiful and glorious! My heart burned in
me with pity to think that she had to confide in me, to bend the
majestic palm of her pride—But there’s ecstasy in that sentiment,
Magnille, heavenly bliss, Magnilchen!”
And they tottered off together.
The coming of Daniel and his sister to Frederiksborg had happened in
this wise. After the meeting in the Bide-a-Wee Tavern, poor
Hop-o’-my-Thumb had been seized with an insane passion for Marie. It
was a pathetic, fantastic love that hoped nothing, asked nothing, and
craved nothing but barren dreams. No more at all. The bit of reality
that he needed to give his dreams a faint color of life he found fully
in occasional glimpses of her near by or flitting past in the
distance. When Gyldenlove departed and Marie never went out his
longing grew apace, until it made him almost insane and at last threw
him on a sick-bed.
When he rose again, weak and wasted, Gyldenlove had returned. Through
one of Marie’s maids who was in his pay, he learned that the relation
between Marie and her husband was not the best, and this news fed his
infatuation and gave it new growth, the rank unnatural growth of
fantasy. Before he had recovered enough from his illness to stand
steadily on his feet, Marie left for Frederiksborg. He must follow
her; he could not wait. He made a pretence of consulting the wise
woman in Lynge in order to regain his strength and urged his sister
Magnille to accompany him and seek a cure for her weak eyes. Friends
and neighbors found this natural, and off they drove, Daniel and
Magnille, to Lynge. There he discovered Gyldenlove’s affair with Karen
Fiol, and there he confided all to Magnille, told her of his strange
love, declared that for him light and the breath of life existed only
where Marie Grubbe was, and begged her to go with him to the village
of Frederiksborg that he might be near her who filled his mind so
completely.
Magnille humored him. They took lodgings at Frederiksborg and had for
days been shadowing Marie Grubbe on her lonely morning walks. Thus the
meeting had come about.
A few days later Ulrik Frederik was spending the morning at Lynge. He
was crawling on all fours in the little garden outside of the house
where Karen Fiol lived. One hand was holding a rose wreath, while with
the other he was trying to coax or drag a little white lapdog from
under the hazel bushes in the corner.
“Boncoeur! Petit, petit Boncoeur! Come, you little rogue, oh, come,
you silly little fool! Oh, you brute, you—_Boncoeur_, little dog—you
confounded obstinate creature!”
Karen was standing at the window laughing. The dog would not come, and
Ulrik Frederik wheedled and swore.
“Amy des morceaux delicats,” sang Karen, swinging a goblet full of
wine:
“_Et de la debauche polie
Viens noyer dans nos Vins Muscats
Ta soif et ta melancolie_!”
She was in high spirits, rather heated, and the notes of her song rose
louder than she knew. At last Ulrik Frederik caught the dog. He
carried it to the window in triumph, pressed the rose chaplet down
over its ears, and kneeling, presented it to Karen.
“Adorable Venus, queen of hearts, I beg you to accept from your humble
slave this little innocent white lamb crowned with flowers—”
At that moment Marie Grubbe opened the wicket. When she saw Ulrik
Frederik on his knees, handing a rose garland, or whatever it was, to
that red laughing woman, she turned pale, bent down, picked up a
stone, and threw it with all her might at Karen. It struck the edge of
the window and shivered the glass in fragments, which fell rattling to
the ground.
Karen darted back shrieking. Ulrik Frederik looked anxiously in after
her. In his surprise he had dropped the dog, but he still held the
wreath and stood dumbfounded, angry and embarrassed, turning it round
in his fingers.
“Wait, wait!” cried Marie. “I missed you this time, but I’ll get you
yet! I’ll get you!” She pulled from her hair a long, heavy steel pin
set with rubies, and holding it before her like a dagger she ran
toward the house with a queer tripping, almost skipping gait. It
seemed as though she were blinded for she steered a strange meandering
course up to the door.
There Ulrik Frederik stopped her.
“Go away!” she cried almost whimpering, “you with your chaplet! Such a
creature”—she went on, trying to slip past him, first on one side,
then on the other, her eyes fixed on the door—“such a creature you
bind wreaths for—rose wreaths, ay, here you play the lovesick
shepherd! Have you not a flute too? Where’s your flute?” she
repeated, tore the wreath from his hand, hurled it to the ground, and
stamped on it. “And a shepherd’s crook—Amaryllis—with a silk bow?
Let me pass, I say!” She lifted the pin threateningly.
He caught both her wrists and held her fast. “Would you sting again?”
he said sharply.
Marie looked up at him.
“Ulrik Frederik!” she said in a low voice, “I am your wife before God
and men. Why do you not love me any more? Come with me! Leave the
woman in there for what she is, and come with me! Come, Ulrik
Frederik, you little know what a burning love I feel for you and how
bitterly I have longed and grieved! Come, pray come!”
Ulrik Frederik made no reply. He offered her his arm and conducted her
out of the garden to her coach, which was waiting not far away. He
handed her in, went to the horses’ heads and examined the harness,
changed a buckle, and called the coachman down under pretence of
getting him to fix the couplings. While they stood there he whispered,
“The moment you get into your seat, you are to drive on as hard as
your horses can go and never stop till you get home. Those are my
orders, and I believe you know me.”
The man had climbed into his seat, Ulrik Frederik caught the side of
the coach as though to jump in, the whip cracked and fell over the
horses, he sprang back, and the coach rattled on.
Marie’s first impulse was to order the coachman to stop, to take the
reins herself, or to jump out, but then a strange lassitude came over
her, a deep unspeakable loathing, a nauseating weariness, and she sat
quite still, gazing ahead, never heeding the reckless speed of the
coach.
Ulrik Frederik was again with Karen Fiol.
When Ulrik Frederik returned to the castle that evening he was in
truth a bit uneasy—not exactly worried, but with the sense of
apprehension people feel when they know there are vexations and
annoyances ahead of them that cannot be dodged but must somehow be
gone through with. Marie had of course complained to the King. The
King would give him a lecture, and he would have to listen to it all.
Marie would wrap herself in the majestic silence of offended virtue,
which he would be at pains to ignore. The whole atmosphere would be
oppressive. The Queen would look fatigued and afflicted—genteelly
afflicted—and the ladies of the court who knew nothing and suspected
everything would sit silently, now and then lifting their heads to
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