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

room, and was practically the only

inhabited part of the house. It was a large room with two windows and

a high oak panelling. Glazed Dutch tiles covered the walls with a

design of blue nosegays on a white ground. The fireplace was set with

burned bricks, and a chest of drawers had been placed before it as a

screen against the draught that came in whenever the door was opened.

A polished oak table with two rounded leaves hanging almost to the

floor, a few high-backed chairs with seats of leather worn shiny, and

a small green cupboard set high on the wall—that was all there was in

the parlor.

 

As Erik Grubbe sat there in the dusk, his housekeeper, Anne

Jensdaughter, entered, carrying in one hand a lighted candle and in

the other a mug of milk warm from the udder. Placing the mug before

him, she seated herself at the table. One large red hand still held

the candlestick, and as she turned it round and round, numerous rings

and large brilliants glittered on her fingers.

 

“Alack-a-day!” she groaned.

 

“What now?” asked Erik Grubbe glancing up.

 

“Sure, I may well be tired after stewing ‘roun’ till I’ve neither

stren’th nor wit left.”

 

“Well, ‘tis busy times. Folks have to work up heat in summer to sit in

all winter.”

 

“Busy—ay, but there’s reason in everythin’. Wheels in ditch an’ coach

in splinters’s no king’s drivin’, say I. None but me to do a thing!

The indoor wenches’re nothin’ but draggle-tails—sweethearts an’ town

talk’s all they think of. Ef they do a bit o’ work, they boggle it,

an’ it’s fer me to do over. Walbor’s sick, an’ Stina an’ Bo’l—the

sluts—they pother an’ pother till the sweat comes, but naught else

comes o’t. I might ha’ some help from M’ree ef you’d speak to her,

but you won’t let her put a finger to anything.”

 

“Hold, hold! You run on so fast you lose your breath

and the King’s Danish too. Don’t blame me; blame yourself. If you’d

been patient with Marie last winter, if you’d taught her gently the

right knack of things, you might have had some help from her now, but

you were rough and cross-grained, she was sulky, and the two of you

came nigh to splitting each other alive. ‘Tis to be more than thankful

for there’s an end on ‘t.”

 

“Ay, stand up fer M’ree! You’re free to do it, but ef you stand up fer

yours, I stand up fer mine, and whether you take it bad or not, I tell

you M’ree’s more sperrit than she can carry through the world. Let

that be fer the fault it is, but she’s bad. You may say ‘No,’ but I

say she is. She can never let little Anne be—never. She’s a-pinchin’

and a-naggin’ her all day long and a-castin’ foul words after her till

the poor child might wish she’d never been born—and I wish she

hadn’t, though it breaks my heart. Alack-a-day, may God have mercy upon

us! Ye’re not the same father to the two children, but sure it’s right

that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children unto

the third and fourth generation—and the sins of the mother too, and

little Anne’s nothin’ but a whore’s brat—ay, I tell ye to yer face,

she’s nothin’ but a whore’s brat, a whore’s brat in the sight of God

and man. But you, her father!—shame on ye, shame!—yes, I tell ye,

even ‘f ye lay hands on me, as ye did two years ago come Michaelmas,

shame on ye! Fie on ye that ye let yer own child feel she’s conceived

in sin! Ye do let her feel it, you and M’ree both of ye let her feel

it—even ef ye hit me, I say ye let her feel it—”

 

Erik Grubbe sprang up and stamped the floor.

 

“Gallows and wheel! Are you spital-mad, woman? You’re drunk, that’s

what you are. Go and lie down on your bed and sleep off your booze and

your spleen too! ‘T would serve you right if I boxed your ears, you

shrew! No—not another word! Marie shall be gone from here before

tomorrow is over. I want peace—in times of peace.”

 

Anne sobbed aloud.

 

“O Lord, O Lord, that such a thing should come to pass—an everlastin’

shame! Tell me I’m tipsy! In all the time we’ve ben together or all

the time before, have ye seen me in the scullery with a fuddled head?

Have y’ ever heard me talkin’ drivel? Show me the spot where ye’ve

seen me o’ercome with drink! That’s the thanks I get. Sleep off my

booze! Would to God I might sleep! Would to God I might sink down dead

before you, since ye put shame upon me—”

 

The dogs began to bark outside, and the beat of horses’ hoofs sounded

beneath the windows.

 

Anne dried her eyes hastily, and Erik Grubbe opened the window to ask

who had come.

 

“A messenger riding from Fovsing,” answered one of the men about the

house.

 

“Then take his horse and send him in,” and with these words the window

was closed.

 

Anne straightened herself in her chair and held up one hand to shade

her eyes, red with weeping.

 

The messenger presented the compliments of Christian Skeel of Fovsing

and Odden, Governor of the Diocese, who sent to apprise Erik Grubbe of

the notice he had that day received by royal courier, saying that war

had been declared on June first. Since it became necessary that he

should travel to Aarhus and possibly even to Copenhagen, he made

inquiry of Erik Grubbe whether he would accompany him on the road so

far as served his convenience, for they might at least end the suit

they were bringing against certain citizens of Aarhus. With regard to

Copenhagen, the Governor well knew that Erik Grubbe had plenty of

reasons for going thither. At all events, Christian Skeel would arrive

at Tjele about four hours after high noon on the following day.

 

Erik Grubbe replied that he would be ready for the journey, and the

messenger departed with this answer.

 

Anne and Erik Grubbe then discussed at length all that must be done

while he was away and decided that Marie should go with him to

Copenhagen and remain for a year or two with her Aunt Rigitze.

 

The impending farewells had calmed them both, though the quarrel was on

the point of blazing out again when it came to the question of letting

Marie take with her sundry dresses and jewels that had belonged to her

dead mother. The matter was settled amicably at last and Anne went to

bed early, for the next day would be a long one.

 

Again the dogs announced visitors, but this time it was only the

pastor of Tjele and Vinge parish, Jens Jensen Paludan.

 

“Good even to the house!” he said as he stepped in.

 

He was a large-boned, long-limbed man with a stoop in his broad

shoulders. His hair was rough as a crow’s nest, grayish and tangled,

but his face was of a deep yet clear pink, seemingly out of keeping

with his coarse, rugged features and bushy eyebrows.

 

Erik Grubbe invited him to a seat and asked about his haymaking. The

conversation dwelt on the chief labors of the farm at that season and

died away in a sigh over the poor harvest of last year. Meanwhile the

pastor was casting sidelong glances at the mug and finally said: “Your

honor is always temperate—keeping to the natural drinks. No doubt

they are the healthiest. New milk is a blessed gift of heaven, good

both for a weak stomach and a sore chest.”

 

“Indeed the gifts of God are all good, whether they come from the

udder or the tap. But you must taste a keg of genuine mum that we

brought home from Viborg the other day. She’s both good and German,

though I can’t see that the customs have put their mark on her.”

 

Goblets and a large ebony tankard ornamented with silver rings were

brought in and set before them.

 

They drank to each other.

 

“Heydenkamper! Genuine, peerless Heydenkamper!” exclaimed the pastor

in a voice that trembled with emotion. He leaned back blissfully in

his chair and very nearly shed tears of enthusiasm.

 

“You are a connoisseur,” smirked Erik Grubbe.

 

“Ah, connoisseur! We are but of yesterday and know nothing,” murmured

the pastor absent mindedly, “though I’m wondering,” he went on in a

louder voice, “whether it be true what I have been told about the brew

house of the Heydenkampers. ‘T was a free-master who related it in

Hanover the time I travelled with young Master Jorgen. He said they

would always begin the brew on a Friday night, but before anyone was

allowed to put a finger to it, he had to go to the oldest journeyman

and lay his hand on the great scales and swear by fire and blood and

water that he harbored no spiteful or evil thoughts, for such might

harm the beer. The men also told me that on Sundays, when the church

bells sounded, they would open all the doors and windows to let the

ringing pass over the beer. But the most important of all was what

took place when they set the brew aside to ferment, for then the

master himself would bring a splendid chest from which he would take

heavy gold rings and chains and precious stones inscribed with strange

signs, and all these would be put into the beer. In truth, one may

well believe that these noble treasures would impart to it something

of their own secret potency given them by nature.”

 

“That is not for us to say,” declared Erik Grubbe. “I have more faith,

I own, in the Brunswick hops and the other herbs they mix.”

 

“Nay,” said the pastor, “it were wrong to think so, for there is much

that is hidden from us in the realm of nature—of that there can be no

doubt. Everything, living or dead, has its miraculum within it, and we

need but patience to seek and open eyes to find. Alas, in the old days

when it was not so long since the Lord had taken his hands from the

earth, then all things were still so engirded with his power that they

exhaled healing and all that was good for time and eternity. But now

the earth is no longer new nor fine: it is defiled with the sins of

many generations. Now it is only at particular times that these powers

manifest themselves, at certain places and certain seasons when

strange signs may be seen in the heavens—as I was saying to the

blacksmith when we spoke of the awful naming light that has been

visible in half the heavens for several nights recently… . That

reminds me, a mounted courier passed us just then; he was bound this

way, I think.”

 

“So he was, Pastor Jens.”

 

“I hope he rode with none but good tidings?”

 

“He rode with the tidings that war has been declared.”

 

“Lord Jesu! Alas the day! Yet it had to come some time.”

 

“Ay, but when they’d waited so long, they might as well have waited

till folks had their harvest in.”

 

“‘Tis the Skaanings who are back of it, I make no doubt. They still

feel the smart of the last war and would seek balm in this.”

 

“Oh, it’s not only the Skaanings. The Sjaelland people are ever

spoiling for war. They know it will pass them by as usual. Well, it’s

a good time for neats and fools when the Councillors