Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen
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and the white bloom of the spirea rose and fell froth-like upon the
light green, shifting waves of the foliage.
There was a moment of stillness. Everything seemed to straighten and
hang breathlessly poised, still quivering in suspense, but the next
instant the wind came shrieking again and caught the garden in a wild
wave of rustling and glittering and mad rocking and endless shifting
as before.
“In a boat sat Phyllis fair;
Corydon beheld her there,
Seized his flute, and loudly blew it.
Many a day did Phyllis rue it;
For the oars dropped from her hands,
And aground upon the sands, And aground—”
Ulrik Frederik was approaching from the other end of the garden. Sofie
looked up for a moment in surprise, then bent her head over her work
and went on humming. He strolled slowly up the walk, sometimes
stopping to look at a flower, as though he had not noticed that there
was anyone else in the garden. Presently he turned down a side-path,
paused a moment behind a large white syringa to smooth his uniform and
pull down his belt, took off his hat and ran his fingers through his
hair, then walked on. The path made a turn and led straight to Sofie’s
seat.
“Ah, Mistress Sofie! Good-day!” he exclaimed as though in surprise.
“Good-day!” she replied with calm friendliness. She carefully disposed
of her needle, smoothed her embroidery with her hands, looked up with
a smile, and nodded. “Welcome, Lord Gyldenlove!”
“I call this blind luck,” he said, bowing. “I expected to find none
here but your uncle, madam.”
Sofie threw him a quick glance and smiled. “He’s not here,” she said,
shaking her head.
“I see,” said Ulrik Frederik, looking down.
There was a moment’s pause. Then Sofie spoke, “How sultry it is
today!”
“Ay, we may get a thunderstorm, if the wind goes down.”
“It may be,” said Sofie, looking thoughtfully toward the house.
“Did you hear the shot this morning?” asked Ulrik Frederik, drawing
himself up as though to imply that he was about to leave.
“Ay, and we may look for heart-rending times this summer. One may
well-nigh turn light-headed with the thought of the danger to life and
goods, and for me, with so many kinsmen and good friends in this
miserable affair, who are like to lose both life and limb and all they
possess, there’s reason enough for falling into strange and gloomy
thoughts.”
“Nay, sweet Mistress Sofie! By the living God, you must not shed
tears!? You paint all in too dark colors—
Tousiours Mars ne met pas au jour
Des objects de sang et de larmes,
Mais”—
and he seized her hand and lifted it to his lips—
“… tousiours l’Empire d’amour
Est plein de troubles et d’alarmes.”
Sofie looked at him innocently. How lovely she was! The intense,
irresistible night of her eyes, where day welled out in myriad light
points like a black diamond flashing in the sun, the poignantly
beautiful arch of her lips, the proud lily paleness of her cheeks
melting slowly into a rose-golden flush like a white cloud kindled by
the morning glow, the delicate temples, blue veined like
flower-petals, shaded by the mysterious darkness of her hair …
Her hand trembled in his, cold as marble. Gently she drew it away, and
her eyelids dropped. The embroidery slipped from her lap. Ulrik
Frederik stooped to pick it up, bent one knee to the ground, and
remained kneeling before her.
“Mistress Sofie!” he said.
She laid her hand over his mouth and looked at him with gentle
seriousness, almost with pain.
“Dear Ulrik Frederik,” she begged, “do not take it ill that I beseech
you not to be led by a momentary sentiment to attempt a change in the
pleasant relations that have hitherto existed between us. It serves no
purpose but to bring trouble and vexation to us both. Rise from this
foolish position and take a seat in mannerly fashion here on this
bench so that we may converse in all calmness.”
“No, I want the book of my fate to be sealed in this hour,” said Ulrik
Frederik without rising.” You little know the great and burning
passion I feel for you, if you imagine I can be content to be naught
but your good friend. For the bloody sweat of Christ, put not your
faith in anything so utterly impossible! My love is no smouldering
spark that will flame up or be extinguished according as you blow hot
or cold on it. Par dleu! ‘Tis a raging and devouring fire, but it’s
for you to say whether it is to run out and be lost in a thousand
flickering flames and will-o’-the-wisps, or burn forever, warm and
steady, high and shining toward heaven.”
“But, dear Ulrik Frederik, have pity on me! Don’t draw me into a
temptation that I have no strength to withstand! You must believe that
you are dear to my heart and most precious, but for that very reason I
would to the uttermost guard myself against bringing you into a false
and foolish position that you cannot maintain with honor. You are
nearly six years younger than I, and that which is now pleasing to you
in my person, age may easily mar or distort to ugliness. You smile,
but suppose that when you are thirty, you find yourself saddled with
an old wrinkled hag of a wife who has brought you but little fortune,
and not otherwise aided in your preferment! Would you not then wish
that at twenty you had married a young royal lady, your equal in age
and birth, who could halve advanced you better than a common
gentlewoman? Dear Ulrik Frederik, go speak to your noble kinsmen;
they will tell you the same. But what they cannot tell you is this: if
you brought to your home such a gentlewoman, older than yourself, she
would strangle you with her jealousy. She would suspect your every
look, nay, the innermost thoughts of your heart. She would know how
much you had given up for her sake, and therefore she would strive the
more to have her love be all in all to you. Trust me, she would
encompass you with her idolatrous love as with a cage of iron, and if
she perceived that you longed to quit it for a single instant, she
would grieve day and night and embitter your life with her despondent
sorrow.”
She rose and held out her hand. “Farewell, Ulrik Frederik! Our
parting is bitter as death, but after many years, when I am a faded
old maid or the middle-aged wife of an aged man, you will know that
Sofie Urne was right. May God the Father keep thee! Do you remember
the Spanish romance book where it tells of a certain vine of India
which winds itself about a tree for support, and goes on encircling
it, long after the tree is dead and withered, until at last it holds
the tree that else would fall? Trust me, Ulrik Frederik; in the same
manner my soul will be sustained and held up by your love long after
your sentiment shall be withered and vanished.”
She looked straight into his eyes and turned to go, but he held her
hand fast.
“Would you make me raving mad? Then hear me! Now I know that thou
lovest me, no power on earth can part us! Does nothing tell thee that
‘tis folly to speak of what thou wouldst or what I would when my blood
is drunk with thee and I am bereft of all power over myself! I am
possessed with thee, and if thou turnest a way thy heart from me in
this very hour, thou shouldst yet be mine in spite of thee, in spite
of me! I love thee with a love like hatred—I think nothing of thy
happiness. Thy weal or woe is nothing to me—only that I be in thy
joy, I be in thy sorrow, that I—”
He caught her to him violently and pressed her against his breast.
Slowly she lifted her face and looked long at him with eyes full of
tears. Then she smiled. “Have it as thou wilt, Ulrik Frederik,” and
she kissed him passionately.
Three weeks later their betrothal was celebrated with much pomp. The
King had readily given his consent, feeling that it was time to make
an end of Ulrik Frederik’s rather too convivial bachelorhood.
After the main sallies against the enemy on the second of September
and the twentieth of October, the town rang with the fame of Ulrik
Christian Gyldenlove. Colonel Satan, the people called him. His name
was on every lip. Every child in Copenhagen knew his sorrel,
Bellarina, with the white socks, and when he rode past—a slim, tall
figure in the wide-skirted blue uniform of the guard with its enormous
white collar and cuffs, red scarf, and broad sword-belt—the maidens
of the city peeped admiringly after him, proud when their pretty faces
won them a bow or a bold glance from the audacious soldier. Even the
sober fathers of families and their matrons in beruffled caps, who
well knew how naughty he was and had heard the tales of all his
peccadillos, would nod to each other with pleasure in meeting him, and
would fall to discussing the difficult question of what would have
happened to the city if it had not been for Gyldenlove.
The soldiers and men on the ramparts idolized him, and no wonder, for
he had the same power of winning the common people that distinguished
his father, King Christian the Fourth. Nor was this the only point of
resemblance. He had inherited his father’s hot-headedness and
intemperance, but also much of his ability, his gift of thinking
quickly and taking in a situation at a glance. He was extremely blunt.
Several years at European courts had not made him a courtier, nor even
passably well mannered. In daily intercourse he was taciturn to the
point of rudeness, and in the service he never opened his mouth
without cursing and swearing like a common sailor.
With all this, he was a genuine soldier. In spite of his youth—for he
was but eight-and-twenty—he conducted the defence of the city, and
led the dangerous but important sallies, with such masterful insight
and such mature perfection of plan that the cause could hardly have
been in better hands with anyone else among the men who surrounded
Frederik the Third.
No wonder, therefore, that his name outshone all others, and that the
poetasters, in their versified accounts of the fighting, addressed him
as “thou vict’ry-crowned Gyldenlov, thou Denmark’s saviour brave!”
or greeted him, “Hail, hail, thou Northern Mars, thou Danish David
bold!” and wished that his life might be as a cornucopia, yea, even as
a horn of plenty, full and running over with praise and glory, with
health, fortune, and happiness. No wonder that many a quiet family
vespers ended with the prayer that God would preserve Mr. Ulrik
Christian, and some pious souls added a petition that his foot might
be led from the slippery highways of sin, and his heart be turned from
all that was evil, to seek the shining diadem of virtue and truth, and
that he, who had in such full measure won the honor of this world,
might also participate in the only true and everlasting glory.
Marie Grubbe’s thoughts were much engrossed by this kinsman of her
aunt. As it happened, she had never met him either at Mistress
Rigitze’s or in society, and all she had seen of him was a glimpse in
the dusk when
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