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

CHAPTER XVII

About a month later, on an April evening, there was a crowd gathered

outside of Ribe cathedral. The Church Council was in session, and it

was customary, while that lasted, to light the tapers in church three

times a week at eight o’clock in the evening. The gentry and persons

of quality in town, as well as the respectable citizens, would

assemble and walk up and down in the nave while a skilful musician

would play for them on the organ. The poorer people had to be content

to listen from the outside.

 

Among the latter were Marie Grubbe and Soren.

 

Their clothing was coarse and ragged, and they looked as if they had

not had enough to eat every day; and no wonder, for it was not a

profitable trade they plied. In an inn between Aarhus and Randers,

Soren had met a poor, sick German who for twenty marks had sold him a

small, badly battered hurdy-gurdy, a motley fool’s suit, and an old

checked rug. With these he and Marie gained their livelihood, going

from market to market; she would turn the hurdy-gurdy, and he would

stand on the checked rug, dressed in the motley clothes lifting and

doing tricks with some huge iron weights and long iron bars which they

borrowed of the tradesmen.

 

It was the market that had brought them to Ribe.

 

They were standing near the door where a faint, faded strip of light

shone on their pale faces and the dark mass of heads behind them.

People were coming singly or in pairs or small groups, talking and

laughing in well-bred manner to the very threshold of the church, but

there they suddenly became silent, gazed gravely straight before them,

and changed their gait.

 

Soren was seized with a desire to see more of the show, and whispered

to Marie that they ought to go in; there was no harm in trying;

nothing worse could happen to them than to be turned out. Marie

shuddered inwardly at the thought that she should be turned out from a

place where common artisans could freely go, and she held back Soren,

who was trying to draw her on; but suddenly she changed her mind,

pressed eagerly forward pulling Soren after her, and walked in without

the slightest trace of shrinking timidity or stealthy caution; indeed,

she seemed determined to be noticed and turned out. At first no one

stopped them, but just as she was about to step into the well-lit,

crowded nave, a church warden who was stationed there, caught sight of

them. After casting one horrified glance up through the church, he

advanced quickly upon them with lifted and outstretched hands as if

pushing them before him to the very threshold and over it. He stood

there for a moment, looking reproachfully at the crowd as if he blamed

it for what had occurred, then returned with measured tread, and took

up his post, shuddering.

 

The crowd met the ejected ones with a burst of jeering laughter and a

shower of mocking questions, which made Soren growl and look around

savagely, but Marie was content; she had bent to receive the blow

which the respectable part of society always has ready for such as he,

and the blow had fallen.

 

On the night before St. Oluf’s market, four men were sitting in one of

the poorest inns at Aarhus playing cards.

 

One of the players was Soren. His partner, a handsome man with

coal-black hair and a dark skin, was known as Jens Bottom and was a

juggler. The other two members of the party were joint owners of a

mangy bear. Both were unusually hideous: one had a horrible harelip

while the other was one-eyed, heavy jowled, and pock-marked, and was

known as Rasmus Squint, plainly because the skin around the injured

eye was drawn together in such a manner as to give him the appearance

of being always ready to peer through a keyhole or some such small

aperture.

 

The players were sitting at one end of the long table which ran under

the window and held a candle and an earless cruse. Opposite them was a

folding table fastened up against the wall with an iron hook. A bar

ran across the other end of the room, and a thin, long-wicked candle,

stuck into an old inverted funnel threw a sleepy light over the shelf

above, where some large square flasks of brandy and bitters, some

quart and pint measures, and half a dozen glasses had plenty of room

beside a basket full ot mustard seed and a large lantern with panes of

broken glass. In one corner outside of the bar sat Marie Grubbe,

knitting and drowsing, and in the other sat a man with body bent

forward and elbows resting on his knees. He seemed intent on pulling

his black felt hat as far down over his head as possible, and when

that was accomplished, he would clutch the wide brim, slowly work the

hat up from his head again, his eyes pinched together and the corners

of his mouth twitching, probably with the pain of pulling his hair,

then presently begin all over again.

 

“Then this is the last game to play,” said Jens Bottom, whose lead it

was.

 

Rasmus Squint pounded the table with his knuckles as a sign to his

partner Salmand to cover.

 

Salmand played two of trumps.

 

“A two!” cried Rasmus; “have you nothing but twos and threes in your

hand?”

 

“Lord,” growled Salmand, “there’s always been poor folks and a few

beggars.”

 

Soren trumped with a six.

 

“Oh, oh,” Rasmus moaned, “are you goin’ to let him have it for a six?

What the devil are you so stingy with your old cards for, Salmand?”

 

He played, and Soren won the trick.

 

“Kerstie Meek,” said Soren, playing four of hearts.

 

“And her half-crazy sister,” continued Rasmus, putting on four of

diamonds.

 

“Maybe an ace is good enough,” said Soren, covering with ace of

trumps.

 

“Play, man, play if you never played before!” cried Rasmus.

 

“That’s too costly,” whimpered Salmand, taking his turn.

 

“Then I’ll put on my seven and another seven,” said Jens.

 

Soren turned the trick.

 

“And then nine of trumps,” Jens went on, leading.

 

“Then I’ll have to bring on my yellow nag,” cried Salmand, playing

two of hearts.

 

“You’ll never stable it,” laughed Soren, covering with four of

spades.

 

“Forfeit!” roared Rasmus Squint, throwing down his cards. “Forfeit

with two of hearts, that’s a good day’s work! Nay, nay, ‘tis a good

thing we’re not goin’ to play anymore. Now let them kiss the cards

that have won.”

 

They began to count the tricks, and while they were busy with this, a

stout, opulently dressed man came in. He went at once to the folding

table, let it down, and took a seat nearest the wall. As he passed the

players, he touched his hat with his silver-knobbed cane, and said,

“Good even to the house!”

 

“Thanks,” they replied, and all four spat.

 

The newcomer took out a paper full of tobacco and a long clay pipe,

filled it, and pounded the table with his cane.

 

A barefoot girl brought him a brazier full of hot coals and a large

earthenware cruse with a pewter cover. He took out from his

vest-pocket a pair of small copper pincers, which he used to pick up

bits of coal and put them in his pipe, drew the cruse to him, leaned

back, and made himself as comfortable as the small space would allow.

 

“How much do you have to pay for a paper o’ tobacco like the one

you’ve got there, master?” asked Salmand, as he began to fill his

little pipe from a sealskin pouch held together with a red string.

 

“Sixpence,” said the man, adding as if to apologize for such

extravagance, “it’s very good for the lungs, as you might say.”

 

“How’s business?” Salmand went on, striking fire to light his pipe.

 

“Well enough, and thank you kindly for asking, well enough, but I’m

getting old, as you might say.”

 

“Well,” said Rasmus Squint, “but then you’ve no need to run after

customers since they’re all brought to you.”

 

“Ay,” laughed the man, “in respect of that it’s a good business and,

moreover, you don’t have to talk yourself hoarse persuading folks to

buy your wares; they have to take ‘em as they come; they can’t pick

and choose.”

 

“And they don’t want anything thrown in,” Rasmus went on, “and don’t

ask for more than what’s rightly comin’ to ‘em.”

 

“Master, do they scream much?” asked Soren in a half whisper.

 

“Well, they don’t often laugh.”

 

“Faugh, what an ugly business!”

 

“Then there’s no use my counting on one of you for help, I suppose.”

 

“Are you countin’ on us to help you?” asked Rasmus and rose angrily.

 

“I’m not counting on anything, but I’m looking for a young man to

help me and to take the business after me; that’s what I’m looking

for, as you might say.”

 

“And what wages might a man get for that?” asked Jens Bottom

earnestly.

 

“Fifteen dollars per annum in ready money, one-third of the clothing,

and one mark out of every dollar earned according to the fixed rate.”

 

“And what might that be?”

 

“The rate is this, that I get five dollars for whipping at the post,

seven dollars for whipping from town, four dollars for turning out of

the county, and the same for branding with hot iron.”

 

“And for the bigger work?”

 

“Alack, that does not come so often, but it’s eight dollars for

cutting off a man’s head, that is with an axe—with a sword it’s ten,

but that may not occur once in seven years. Hanging is fourteen

rix-dollars, ten for the job itself and four for taking the body down

from the gallows. Breaking on the wheel is seven dollars, that is for

a whole body, but I must find the stake and put it up too. And now is

there anything more? Ay, crushing arms and legs according to the new

German fashion and breaking on the wheel, that’s fourteen—that’s

fourteen, and for quartering and breaking on the wheel I get twelve,

and then there’s pinching with red-hot pincers—that’s two dollars

for every pinch—and that’s all; there’s nothing more except such

extras as may come up.”

 

“It can’t be very hard to learn, is it?”

 

“The business? Well, anyone can do it, but how—that’s another matter.

There’s a certain knack about it that one gets with practice just like

any other handicraft. There’s whipping at the post; that’s not so easy

if ‘tis to be done right—three flicks with each whip, quick and light

like waving a bit of cloth and yet biting the flesh with due

chastisement, as the rigor of the law and the betterment of the sinner

require.”

 

“I think I might do it,” said Jens, sighing as he spoke.

 

“Here’s the earnest-penny,” tempted the man at the folding-table,

putting a few bright silver coins out before him.

 

“Think well!” begged Soren.

 

“Think and starve, wait and freeze—that’s two pair of birds that are

well mated,” answered Jens, rising. “Farewell as an honest and true

guild-man,” he went on, giving Soren his hand.

 

“Farewell, guild-mate, and godspeed,” replied Soren.

 

He went round the table with the same farewell and got the same

answer. Then he shook hands with Marie and with the man in the corner,

who had to let go his hat for the