Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen
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All were speaking of him. Nearly every day some fresh story of his
valor was noised abroad. She had heard and read that he was a hero,
and the murmur of enthusiasm that went through the crowds in the
streets as he rode past, had given her an unforgettable thrill.
The hero-name lifted him high above the ranks of ordinary human
beings. She had never supposed that a hero could be like other people.
King Alexander of Macedonia, Holger the Dane, and Chevalier Bayard
were tall, distant, radiant figures—ideals rather than men. Just as
she had never believed, in her childhood, that anyone could form
letters with the elegance of the copy-book, so it had never occurred
to her that one could become a hero. Heroes belonged to the past. To
think that one might meet a flesh-and-blood hero riding in Store
Faergestraede was beyond anything she had dreamed of. Life suddenly
took on a different aspect. So it was not all dull routine! The great
and beautiful and richly colored world she had read of in her romances
and ballads was something she might actually see with her own eyes.
There was really something that one could long for with all one’s
heart and soul; all these words that people and books were full of had
a meaning. They stood for something. Her confused dreams and longings
took form, since she knew that they were not hers alone, but that
grown people believed in such things. Life was rich, wonderfully rich
and radiant.
It was nothing but an intuition, which she knew to be true, but could
not yet see or feel. He was her only pledge that it was so, the only
thing tangible. Hence her thoughts and dreams circled about him
unceasingly. She would often fly to the window at the sound of horses’
hoofs, and, when out walking, she would persuade the willing Lucie to
go round by the castle, but they never saw him.
Then came a day toward the end of October, when she was plying her
bobbins by the afternoon light, at a window in the long drawing room
where the fireplace was. Mistress Rigitze sat before the fire, now and
then taking a pinch of dried flowers or a bit of cinnamon bark from a
box on her lap and throwing it on a brazier full of live coals that
stood near her. The air in the low-ceilinged room was hot and close
and sweet. But little light penetrated between the full curtains of
motley, dark-flowered stuff. From the adjoining room came the whirr
of a spinning wheel, and Miss Rigitze was nodding drowsily in her
cushioned chair.
Marie Grubbe felt faint with the heat. She tried to cool her burning
cheeks against the small, dewey windowpane and peeped out into the
street, where a thin layer of new-fallen snow made the air dazzlingly
bright. As she turned to the room again, it seemed doubly dark and
oppressive. Suddenly Ulrik Christian came in through the door, so
quickly that Mistress Rigitze started. He did not notice Marie, but
took a seat before the fire. After a few words of apology for his long
absence, he remarked that he was tired, leaned forward in his
chair, his face resting on his hand, and sat silent, scarcely hearing
Mistress Rigitze’s lively chatter.
Marie Grubbe had turned pale with excitement, when she saw him enter.
She closed her eyes for an instant with a sense of giddiness, then
blushed furiously and could hardly breathe. The floor seemed to be
sinking under her, and the chairs, tables, and people in the room
falling through space. All objects appeared strangely definite and yet
flickering, for she could hold nothing fast with her eyes, and
moreover, everything seemed new and strange.
So this was he. She wished herself far away or at least in her own
room, her peaceful little chamber. She was frightened and could feel
her hands tremble. If he would only not see her! She shrank deeper
into the window recess and tried to fix her eyes on her aunt’s guest.
Was this the way he looked?—not very, very much taller? And his eyes
were not fiery black; they were blue—such dear blue eyes, but
sad—that was something she could not have imagined. He was pale and
looked as if he were sorry about something. Ah, he smiled, but not in
a really happy way. How white his teeth were, and what a nice mouth
he had, so small and finely formed!
As she looked, he grew more and more handsome in her eyes, and she
wondered how she could ever have fancied him larger or in any way
different from what he was. She forgot her shyness and thought only of
the eulogies of him she had heard. She saw him storming at the head of
his troops amid the exultant cries of the people. All fell back before
him, as the waves are thrown off when they rise frothing around the
broad breast of a galleon. Cannon thundered, swords flashed, bullets
whistled through dark clouds of smoke, but he pressed onward, brave
and erect, and on his stirrup Victory hung—in the words of a
chronicle she had read.
Her eyes shone upon him full of admiration and enthusiasm.
He made a sudden movement and met her gaze, but turned his head away,
with difficulty repressing a triumphant smile. The next moment he rose
as though he had just caught sight of Marie Grubbe.
Mistress Rigitze said this was her little niece, and Marie made her
courtesy.
Ulrik Christian was astonished and perhaps a trifle disappointed to
find that the eyes that had given him such a look were those of a
child.
“Ma chere,” he said with a touch of mockery, as he looked down at
her lace, “you’re a past mistress in the art of working quietly and
secretly; not a sound have I heard from your bobbins in all the time
I’ve been here.”
“No,” replied Marie, who understood him perfectly; uwhen I saw you,
Lord Gyldenlove,”—she shoved the heavy lacemaker’s cushion along the
windowsill—“it came to my mind that in times like these ‘twere more
fitting to think of lint and bandages than of laced caps.”
“Faith, I know that caps are as becoming in wartimes as any other
day,” he said, looking at her.
“But who would give them a thought in seasons like the present!”
“Many,” answered Ulrik Christian, who began to be amused at her
seriousness, “and I for one.”
“I understand,” said Marie, looking up at him gravely; “‘tis but a
child you are addressing.” She courtesied ceremoniously and reached
for her work.
“Stay, my little maid!”
“I pray you, let me no longer incommode you!”
“Hark’ee!” He seized her wrists in a hard grip and drew her to him
across the little table. “By God, you’re a thorny person, but,” he
whispered, “if one has greeted me with a look such as yours a moment
ago, I will not have her bid me so poor a farewell—I will not have
it! There—now kiss me!”
Her eyes full of tears, Marie pressed her trembling lips against his.
He dropped her hands, and she sank down over the table, her head in
her arms. She felt quite dazed. All that day and the next she had a
dull sense of bondage, of being no longer free. A foot seemed to press
on her neck and grind her helplessly in the dust. Yet there was no
bitterness in her heart, no defiance in her thoughts, no desire for
revenge. A strange peace had come over her soul and had chased away
the flitting throng of dreams and longings. She could not define her
feeling for Ulrik Christian; she only knew that if he said Come, she
must go to him, and if he said Go, she must quit him. She did not
understand it, but it was so and had always been so, thus and not
otherwise.
With unwonted patience she worked all day long at her sewing and her
lacemaking, meanwhile humming all the mournful ballads she had ever
known, about the roses of love which paled and never bloomed again,
about the swain who must leave his truelove and go to foreign lands,
and who never, never came back anymore, and about the prisoner who sat
in the dark tower such a long dreary time, and first his noble falcon
died, and then his faithful dog died, and last his good steed died,
but his faithless wife Malvina lived merrily and well and grieved not
for him. These songs and many others she would sing, and sometimes she
would sigh and seem on the point of bursting into tears, until Lucie
thought her ill and urged her to put way-bread leaves in her
stockings.
When Ulrik Christian came in, a few days later, and spoke gently and
kindly to her, she too behaved as though nothing had been between
them, but she looked with childlike curiosity at the large white hands
that had held her in such a hard grip, and she wondered what there
could be in his eyes or his voice that had so cowed her. She glanced
at the mouth too under its narrow, drooping moustache, but furtively
and with a secret thrill of fear.
In the weeks that followed, he came almost every day, and Marie’s
thoughts became more and more absorbed in him. When he was not there,
the old house seemed dull and desolate, and she longed for him as the
sleepless long for daylight, but when he came, her joy was never full
and free, always timid and doubting.
One night she dreamed that she saw him riding through the crowded
streets as on that first evening, but there were no cheers, and all
the faces seemed cold and indifferent. The silence frightened her.
She dared not smile at him, but hid behind the others. Then he glanced
around with a strange, questioning, wistful look, and this look
fastened on her. She forced her way through the mass of people and
threw herself down before him, and his horse set its cold, iron-shod
hoof on her neck.
She awoke and looked about her, bewildered, at the cold, moonlit
chamber. Alas, it was but a dream! She sighed; she did want so much to
show him how she loved him. Yes, that was it. She had not understood
it before, but she loved him. At the thought, she seemed to be lying
in a stream of fire, and flames flickered before her eyes, while every
pulse in her heart throbbed and throbbed and throbbed. She loved him.
How wonderful it was to say it to herself! She loved him! How glorious
the words were, how tremendously real, and yet how unreal! Good God,
what was the use, even if she did love him? Tears of self-pity came
into her eyes—and yet! She huddled comfortably under the soft, warm
coverlet of down—after all it was delicious to lie quite still and
think of him and of her great, great love.
When Marie met Ulrik Christian again, she no longer felt timid. Her
secret buoyed her up with a sense of her own importance, and the fear
of revealing it gave her manner a poise that made her seem almost a
woman. They were happy days that followed, fantastic, wonderful days!
Was it not joy enough when Ulrik Christian went, to throw a hundred
kisses after him, unseen by him and all others, or when he came, to
fancy how her beloved would take her in his arms and call her by every
sweet name she could think of, how he would sit by
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