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

CHAPTER VIII

Admired and courted though she was, Marie Grubbe soon found that

while she had escaped from the nursery, she was not fully admitted to

the circles of the grown up. For all the flatteries lavished on them,

such young maidens were kept in their own place in society. They were

made to feel it by a hundred trifles that in themselves meant nothing

but when taken together meant a great deal. First of all, the children

were insufferably familiar, quite like their equals. And then the

servants—there was a well-defined difference in the manner of the old

footman when he took the cloak of a maid or a matron, and the faintest

shade in the obliging smile of the chambermaid showed her sense of

whether she was waiting on a married or an unmarried woman. The

free-and-easy tone which the half-grown younkers permitted themselves

was most unpleasant, and the way in which snubbings and icy looks

simply slid off from them was enough to make one despair.

 

She liked best the society of the younger men, for even when they were

not in love with her, they would show her the most delicate attention

and say the prettiest things with a courtly deference that quite

raised her in her own estimation—though to be sure it was tiresome

when she found that they did it chiefly to keep in practice. Some of

the older gentlemen were simply intolerable with their fulsome

compliments and their mock gallantry, but the married women were worst

of all, especially the brides. The encouraging, though a bit

preoccupied, glance, the slight condescending nod with head to one

side, and the smile—half pitying, half jeering—with which they would

listen to her—it was insulting! Moreover, the conduct of the girls

themselves was not of a kind to raise their position. They would never

stand together, but if one could humiliate another, she was only too

glad to do so. They had no idea of surrounding themselves with an air

of dignity by attending to the forms of polite society the way the

young married women did.

 

Her position was not enviable, and when Mistress Rigitze let fall a

few words to the effect that she and other members of the family had

been considering a match between Marie and Ulrik Frederik, she

received the news with joy. Though Ulrik Frederik had not taken her

fancy captive, a marriage with him opened a wide vista of pleasant

possibilities. When all the honors and advantages had been described

to her—how she would be admitted into the inner court circle, the

splendor in which she would live, the beaten track to fame and high

position that lay before Ulrik Frederik as the natural son and even

more as the especial favorite of the King—while she made a mental

note of how handsome he was, how courtly, and how much in love—it

seemed that such happiness was almost too great to be possible, and

her heart sank at the thought that after all, it was nothing but loose

talk, schemes, and hopes.

 

Yet Mistress Rigitze was building on firm ground, for not only had

Ulrik Frederik confided in her and begged her to be his spokesman with

Marie, but he had induced her to sound the gracious pleasure of the

King and Queen, and they had both received the idea very kindly and

had given their consent, although the King had felt some hesitation to

begin with. The match had, in fact, been settled long since by the

Queen and her trusted friend and chief gentlewoman, Mistress Rigitze,

but the King was not moved only by the persuasions of his consort. He

knew that Marie Grubbe would bring her husband a considerable fortune,

and although Ulrik Frederik held Vordingborg in fief, his love of

pomp and luxury made constant demands upon the King, who was always

hard pressed for money. Upon her marriage Marie would come into

possession of her inheritance from her dead mother, Mistress Marie

Juul, while her father, Erik Grubbe, was at that time owner of the

manors of Tjele, Vinge, Gammelgaard, Bigum, Trinderup, and Norbaek,

besides various scattered holdings. He was known as a shrewd manager

who wasted nothing and would no doubt leave his daughter a large

fortune. So all was well. Ulrik Frederik could go courting without

more ado, and a week after midsummer their betrothal was solemnized.

 

Ulrik Frederik was very much in love, but not with the stormy

infatuation he had felt when Sofie Urne ruled his heart. It was a

pensive, amorous, almost wistful sentiment, rather than a fresh, ruddy

passion. Marie had told him the story of her dreary childhood, and he

liked to picture to himself her sufferings with something of the

voluptuous pity that thrills a young monk when he fancies the

beautiful white body of the female martyr bleeding on the sharp spikes

of the torture wheel. Sometimes he would be troubled with dark

forebodings that an early death might tear her from his arms. Then he

would vow to himself with great oaths that he would bear her in his

hands and keep every poisonous breath from her, that he would lead the

light of every gold-shining mood into her young heart and never, never

grieve her.

 

Yet there were other times when he exulted at the thought that all

this rich beauty, this strange, wonderful soul were given into his

power as the soul of a dead man into the hands of God to grind in the

dust if he liked, to raise up when he pleased, to crush down, to bend.

 

It was partly Marie’s own fault that such thoughts could rise in him,

for her love, if she did love, was of a strangely proud, almost

insolent nature. It would be but a halting image to say that her love

for the late Ulrik Christian had been like a lake whipped and tumbled

by a storm while her love for Ulrik Frederik was the same water in the

evening, becalmed, cold, and glassy, stirred but by the breaking of

frothy bubbles among the dark reeds of the shore. Yet the simile would

have some truth, for not only was she cold and calm toward her lover,

but the bright myriad dreams of life that thronged in the wake of her

first passion had paled and dissolved in the drowsy calm of her

present feeling.

 

She loved Ulrik Frederik after a fashion, but might it not be chiefly

as the magic wand opening the portals to the magnificent pageant of

life, and might it not be the pageant that she really loved? Sometimes

it would seem otherwise. When she sat on his knee in the twilight and

sang little airs about Daphne and Amaryllis to her own accompaniment,

the song would die away, and while her fingers played with the strings

of the cithern, she would whisper in his waiting ear words so sweet

and warm that no true love owns them sweeter, and there were tender

tears in her eyes that could be only the dew of love’s timid unrest.

And yet—might it not be that her longing was conjuring up a mere mood

rooted in the memories of her past feeling, sheltered by the brooding

darkness, fed by hot blood and soft music,—a mood that deceived

herself and made him happy? Or was it nothing but maidenly shyness

that made her chary of endearments by the light of day, and was it

nothing but girlish fear of showing a girl’s weakness that made her

eyes mock and her lips jeer many a time when he asked for a kiss or,

vowing love, would draw from her the words all lovers long to hear?

Why was it, then, that when she was alone and her imagination had

wearied of picturing for the thousandth time the glories of the

future, she would often sit gazing straight before her hopelessly and

feel unutterably lonely and forsaken?

 

In the early afternoon of an August day Marie and Ulrik Frederik were

riding, as often before, along the sandy road that skirted the Sound

beyond East Gate. The air was fresh after a morning shower, the sun

stood mirrored in the water, and blue thunder clouds were rolling away

in the distance.

 

They cantered as quickly as the road would allow them, a lackey in a

long crimson coat following closely. They rode past the gardens where

green apples shone under dark leaves, past fish nets hung to dry with

the raindrops still glistening in their meshes, past the King’s

fisheries with red-tiled roof, and past the glue-boiler’s house, where

the smoke rose straight as a column out of a chimney. They jested and

laughed, smiled and laughed, and galloped