Marie Grubbe - Jens Peter Jacobsen (best english novels for beginners .txt) 📗

CHAPTER VII

Marie Grubbe was now seventeen. On the afternoon when she fled in

terror from the deathbed of Ulrik Christian Gyldenlove, she had

rushed up to her own chamber and paced the floor, wringing her hands

and moaning as with intense bodily pain until Lucie had run to

Mistress Rigitze and breathlessly begged her for God’s sake to come to

Miss Marie, for she thought something had gone to pieces inside of

her. Mistress Rigitze came but could not get a word out of the child.

She had thrown herself before a chair with face hidden in the

cushions, and to all Mistress Rigitze’s questions answered only that

she wanted to go home, she wanted to go home, she wouldn’t stay a

moment longer, and she had wept and sobbed, rocking her head from side

to side. Mistress Rigitze had finally given her a good beating and

scolded Lucie, saying that between them they had nearly worried the

life out of her with their nonsense, and therewith she left the two to

themselves.

 

Marie took the beating with perfect indifference. Had anyone offered

her blows in the happy days of her love, it would have seemed the

blackest calamity, the deepest degradation, but now it no longer

mattered. In one short hour her longings, her faith, and her hopes had

all been withered, shrivelled up, and blown away. She remembered once

at Tjele when she had seen the men stone to death a dog that had

ventured within the high railing of the duck-park. The wretched animal

swam back and forth, unable to get out, the blood running from many

wounds, and she remembered how she had prayed to God at every stone

that it might strike deep, since the dog was so miserable that to

spare it would have been the greatest cruelty. She felt like poor

Diana and welcomed every sorrow, only wishing that it would strike

deep, for she was so unhappy that the deathblow was her only hope.

 

Oh, if that was the end of all greatness—slavish whimpering,

lecherous raving, and craven terror!—then there was no such thing as

greatness. The hero she had dreamed of, he rode through the portals of

death with ringing spurs and shining mail, with head bared and lance

at rest, not with fear in witless eyes and whining prayers on

trembling lips. Then there was no shining figure that she could dream

of in worshipping love, no sun that she could gaze on till the world

swam in light and rays and color before her blinded eyes. It was all

dull and flat and leaden, bottomless triviality, lukewarm commonplace,

and nothing else.

 

Such were her first thoughts. She seemed to have been transported for

a short time to a fairy-land where the warm, life-laden air had made

her whole being unfold like an exotic flower, flashing sunlight from

every petal, breathing fragrance in every vein, blissful in its own

light and scent, growing and growing, leaf upon leaf and petal upon

petal, in irresistible strength and fullness. But this was all past.

Her life was barren and void again; she was poor and numb with cold.

No doubt the whole world was like that and all the people likewise.

And yet they went on living in their futile bustle. Oh, her heart was

sick with disgust at seeing them flaunt their miserable rags and

proudly listen for golden music in their empty clatter.

 

Eagerly she reached for those treasured old books of devotion that had

so often been proffered her and as often rejected. There was dreary

solace in their stern words on the misery of the world and the vanity

of all earthly things, but the one book that she pored over and came

back to again and again was the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

She never tired of contemplating the glories of the heavenly

Jerusalem; she pictured it to herself down to the smallest detail,

walked through every by-way, peeped in at every door. She was blinded

by the rays of sardonyx and chrysolyte, chrysoprasus and jacinth; she

rested in the shadow of the gates of pearl and saw her own face

mirrored in the streets of gold like transparent glass. Often she

wondered what she and Lucie and Aunt Rigitze and all the other people

of Copenhagen would do when the first angel poured out the vial of the

wrath of God upon earth, and the second poured out his vial, and the

third poured out his—she never got any farther, for she always had to

begin over again.

 

When she sat at her work, she would sing one long passion hymn after

another, in a loud, plaintive voice, and in her spare moments she

would recite whole pages from “The Chain of Prayerful Souls” or “A

Godly Voice for Each of the Twelve Months,” for these two she knew

almost by heart.

 

Underneath all this piety there lurked a veiled ambition. Though she

really felt the fetters of sin and longed for communion with God,

there mingled in her religious exercises a dim desire for power, a

half-realized hope that she might become one of the first in the

kingdom of heaven. This brooding worked a transformation in her whole

being. She shunned people and withdrew within herself. Even her

appearance was changed, the face pale and thin, the eyes burning with

a hard flame—and no wonder; for the terrible visions of the

Apocalypse rode life-size through her dreams at night, and all day

long her thoughts dwelt on what was dark and dreary in life. When

Lucie had gone to sleep in the evening, she would steal out of bed and

find a mystic ascetic pleasure in falling on her knees and praying,

till her bones ached and her feet were numb with cold.

 

Then came the time when the Swedes raised the siege, and all

Copenhagen divided its time between filling glasses as host and

draining them as guest. Marie’s nature, too, rebounded from the

strain, and a new life began for her, on a certain day when Mistress

Rigitze, followed by a seamstress, came up to her room and piled the

tables and chairs high with the wealth of sacks, gowns, and

pearl-embroidered caps that Marie had inherited from her mother. It

was considered time that she should wear grown-up clothes

 

She was in raptures at being the centre of all the bustle that broke

in on her quiet chamber, all this ripping and measuring, cutting and

basting. How perfectly dear that pounce-red satin glowing richly where

it fell in long, heavy folds or shining brightly where it fitted

smoothly over her form! How fascinating the eager parley about whether

this silk chamelot was too thick to show the lines of her figure or

that Turkish green too crude for her complexion! No scruples, no

dismal broodings could stand before this joyous, bright reality. Ah,

if she could but once sit at the festive board—for she had begun to

go to assemblies—wearing this snow-white, crisp ruff among other

young maidens in just as crisp ruffs, all the past would become as

strange to her as the dreams of yesternight; and if she could but once

tread the saraband and pavan in sweeping cloth of gold and lace mitts

and broidered linen, those spiritual excesses would make her cheeks

burn with shame.

 

It all came about: she was ashamed, and she did tread the saraband and

pavan; for she was sent twice a week with other young persons of

quality to dancing school in Christen Skeel’s great parlor, where an

old Mecklenburger taught them steps and figures and a gracious

carriage according to the latest Spanish mode. She learned to play on

the lute and was perfected in French; for Mistress Rigitze had her own

plans.

 

Marie was happy. As a young prince who has been held captive is taken

straight from the gloomy prison and harsh jailer to be lifted to the

throne by an exultant people, to feel the golden emblem of power and

glory pressed firmly upon his curls, and see all bowing before him in

smiling homage, so she had stepped from her quiet chamber into the

world, and all had hailed her as a queen indeed; all had bowed,

smiling, before the might of her beauty.

 

There is a flower called the pearl hyacinth; as that is blue, so were

her eyes in color, but their lustre was that of the falling dewdrop,

and they were deep as a sapphire resting in shadow. They could fall as

softly as sweet music that dies, and glance up exultant as a fanfare.

Wistful—ay, as the stars pale at daybreak with a veiled, tremulous

light, so was her look when it was wistful. It could rest with such

smiling intimacy that many a man felt it like a voice in a dream, far

away but insistent, calling his name; but when it darkened with grief,

it was full of such hopeless woe that one could almost hear the heavy

dripping of blood.

 

Such was the impression she made, and she knew it, but not wholly. Had

she been older and fully conscious of her beauty, it might have turned

her to stone. She might have come to look upon it as a jewel to be

kept burnished and in a rich setting that it might be the desire of

all; she might have suffered admiration coldly and quietly. Yet it was

not so. Her beauty was so much older than herself and she had so

suddenly come into the knowledge of its power, that she had not

learned to rest upon it and let herself be borne along by it serene

and self-possessed. Rather, she made efforts to please, grew

coquettish and very fond of dress, while her ears drank in every word

of praise, her eyes absorbed every admiring look, and her heart

treasured it all.

 

She was seventeen, and it was Sunday, the first Sunday after peace had

been declared. In the morning she had attended the thanksgiving

service, and in the afternoon she was dressing for a walk with

Mistress Rigitze.

 

The whole town was astir with excitement, for peace had opened the

city gates, which had been closed for twenty-two long months. All were

rushing to see where the suburb had stood, where the enemy had been

encamped, and where “ours” had fought.