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

class="calibre1">sigh meekly and look at him with gentle upbraiding in large, condoning

eyes. Oh, he knew it all, even to the halo of noble-hearted devotion

with which the Queen’s poor groom of the chambers would try to deck

his narrow head! The fellow would place himself at Ulrik Frederik’s

side with ludicrous bravado, overwhelming him with polite attentions

and respectfully consoling stupidities while his small, pale-blue eyes

and every line of his thin figure would cry out as plainly as words,

“See, all are turning from him, but I, never! Braving the King’s anger

and the Queen’s displeasure, I comfort the forsaken! I put my true

heart against—” Oh, how well he knew it all—everything—the whole

story!

 

Nothing of all this happened. The King received him with a Latin

proverb, a sure sign that he was in a good humor. Marie rose and held

out her hand to him as usual, perhaps a little colder, a shade more

reserved, but still in a manner very different from what he had

expected. Not even when they were left alone together did she refer

with so much as a word to their encounter at Lynge, and Ulrik Frederik

wondered suspiciously. He did not know what to make of this curious

silence; he would almost rather she had spoken.

 

Should he draw her out, thank her for not saying anything, give

himself up to remorse and repentance, and play the game that they were

reconciled again?

 

Somehow he did not quite dare to try it, for he had noticed that now

and then she would gaze furtively at him with an inscrutable

expression in her eyes as if she were looking through him and taking

his measure with a calm wonder, a cool, almost contemptuous curiosity.

Not a gleam of hatred or resentment, not a shadow of grief or

reproach, not one tremulous glance of repressed sadness! Nothing of

that kind, nothing at all!

 

Therefore he did not venture, and nothing was said. Once in a while as

the days went by, his thoughts would dwell on the matter uneasily, and

he would feel a feverish desire to have it cleared up. Still it was

not done, and he could not rid himself of a sense that these unspoken

accusations lay like serpents in a dark cave brooding over sinister

treasures which grew as the reptiles grew, blood-red carbuncles rising

on stalks of cadmium, and pale opal in bulb upon bulb slowly

spreading, swelling, and breeding, while the serpents lay still but

ceaselessly expanding, gliding forth in sinuous bend upon bend,

lifting ring upon ring over the rank growth of the treasure.

 

She must hate him, must be harboring secret thoughts of revenge, for

an insult such as he had dealt her could not forgotten. He connected

this imagined lust for vengeance with the strange incident when she

had lifted her hand against him and with Burrhi’s warning. So he

avoided her more than ever and wished more and more ardently that

their ways might be parted.

 

But Marie was not thinking of revenge. She had forgotten both him and

Karen Fiol. In that moment of unutterable disgust her love had been

wiped out and left no traces, as a glittering bubble bursts and is no

more. The glory of it is no more, and the iridescent colors it lent to

every tiny picture mirrored in it are no more. They are gone, and the

eye which was held by their splendor and beauty is free to look about

and gaze far out over the world which was once reflected in the glassy

bubble.

 

The number of guests in the castle increased day by day. The

rehearsals of the ballet were under way, and the dancing masters and

play-actors, Pilloy and Kobbereau, had been summoned to give

instruction as well as to act the more difficult or less grateful

roles.

 

Marie Grubbe was to take part in the ballet and rehearsed eagerly.

Since that day at Slangerup she had been more animated and sociable

and, as it were, more awake. Her intercourse with those about her had

always before been rather perfunctory. When nothing special called her

attention or claimed her interest, she had a habit of slipping back

into her own little world, from which she looked out at her

surroundings with indifferent eyes; but now she entered into all that

was going on, and if the others had not been so absorbed by the new

and exciting events of those days, they would have been astonished at

her changed manner. Her movements had a quiet assurance, her speech an

almost hostile subtlety, and her eyes observed everything. As it was,

no one noticed her except Ulrik Frederik, who would sometimes catch

himself admiring her as if she were a stranger.

 

Among the guests who came in August was Sti Hogh, the husband of

Marie’s sister. One afternoon, not long after his arrival, she was

standing with him on a hillock in the woods from which they could look

out over the village and the flat, sun-scorched land beyond. Slow,

heavy clouds were forming in the sky, and from the earth rose a dry,

bitter smell like a sigh of drooping, withering plants for the

life-giving water. A faint wind, scarcely strong enough to move the

windmill at the crossroad below, was soughing forlornly in the

treetops like a timid wail of the forest burning under summer heat

and sun-glow. As a beggar bares his pitiful wound, so the parched,

yellow meadows spread their barren misery under the gaze of heaven.

 

The clouds gathered and lowered, and a few raindrops fell, one by one,

heavy as blows on the leaves and straws, which would bend to one side,

shake, and then be suddenly still again. The swallows flew low along

the ground, and the blue smoke of the evening meal drooped like a veil

over the black thatched roofs in the village near by.

 

A coach rumbled heavily over the road, and from the walks at the foot

of the hill came the sound of low laughter and merry talk, rustling of

fans and silk gowns, barking of tiny lapdogs, and snapping and

crunching of dry twigs. The court was taking its afternoon promenade.

 

Marie and Sti Hogh had left the others to climb the hill and were

standing quite breathless after their hurried ascent of the steep

path.

 

Sti Hogh was then a man in his early thirties, tall and lean, with

reddish hair and a long, narrow face. He was pale and freckled, and

his thin, yellow-white brows were arched high over bright, light gray

eyes which had a tired look as if they shunned the light, a look

caused partly by the pink color that spread all over the lids and

partly by his habit of winking more slowly, or rather of keeping his

eyes closed longer, than other people did. The forehead was high, the

temples, well rounded and smooth. The nose was thin, faintly arched,

and rather long, the chin too long and too pointed, but the mouth was

exquisite, the lips fresh in color and pure in line, the teeth small

and white. Yet it was not its beauty that drew attention to this

mouth; it was rather the strange, melancholy smile of the voluptuary,

a smile made up of passionate desire and weary disdain, at once tender

as sweet music and bloodthirsty as the low, satisfied growl in the

throat of the beast of prey when its teeth tear the quivering flesh of

its victim.

 

Such was Sti Hogh—then.

 

“Madam,” said he, “have you never wished that you were sitting safe in

the shelter of convent walls such as they have them in Italy and other

countries?”

 

“Mercy, no! How should I have such mad fancies!”

 

“Then, my dear kinswoman, you are perfectly happy? Your cup of life is

clear and fresh; it is sweet to your tongue, warms your blood, and

quickens your thoughts? Is it, in truth, never bitter as lees, flat,

and stale? Never fouled by adders and serpents that crawl and mumble?

If so, your eyes have deceived me.”

 

“Ah, you would fain bring me to confession!” laughed Marie in his

face.

 

Sti Hogh smiled and led her to a little grass mound where they sat

down. He looked searchingly at her.

 

“Know you not,” he began slowly and seeming to hesitate whether to

speak or be silent, “know you not, madam, that there is in the world a

secret society which I might call ‘the melancholy company’? It is

composed of people who at birth have been given a different nature and

constitution from others, who yearn more and covet more, whose

passions are stronger, and whose desires burn more wildly than those of

the vulgar mob. They are like Sunday children, with eyes wider open

and senses more subtle. They drink with the very roots of their hearts

that delight and joy of life which others can only grasp between

coarse hands.”

 

He paused a moment, took his hat in his hand, and sat idly running his

fingers through the thick plumes.

 

“But,” he went on in a lower voice as speaking to himself, “pleasure

in beauty, pleasure in pomp and all the things that can be named,

pleasure in secret impulses and in thoughts that pass the

understanding of man—all that which to the vulgar is but idle pastime

or vile revelry—is to these chosen ones like healing and precious

balsam. It is to them the one honey-filled blossom from which they

suck their daily food, and therefore they seek flowers on the tree of

life where others would never think to look, under dark leaves and on

dry branches. But the mob—what does it know of pleasure in grief or

despair?”

 

He smiled scornfully and was silent.

 

“But wherefore,” asked Marie carelessly, looking past him, “wherefore

name them ‘the melancholy company’ since they think but of pleasure

and the joy of life but never of what is sad and dreary?”

 

Sti Hogh shrugged his shoulders and seemed about to rise as though

weary of the theme and anxious to break off the discussion.

 

“But wherefore?” repeated Marie.

 

“Wherefore!” he cried impatiently, and there was a note of disdain in

his voice. “Because all the joys of this earth are hollow and pass

away as shadows. Because every pleasure, while it bursts into bloom

like a flowering rosebush, in the selfsame hour withers and drops its

leaves like a tree in autumn. Because every delight, though it glow in

beauty and the fullness of fruition, though it clasp you in sound

arms, is that moment poisoned by the cancer of death, and even while

it touches your mouth, you feel it quivering in the throes of

corruption. Is it joyful to feel thus? Must it not rather eat like

reddest rust into every shining hour, ay, like frost nip unto death

every fruitful sentiment of the soul and blight it down to its deepest

roots?”

 

He sprang up from his seat and gesticulated down at her as he spoke.

“And you ask why they are called ‘the melancholy company’ when every

delight, in the instant you grasp it sheds its slough in a trice and

becomes disgust, when all mirth is but the last woeful gasp of joy,

when all beauty is beauty that passes, and all happiness is happiness

that bursts like the bubble!”

 

He began to walk up and down in front of her.

 

“So it is this that leads your thoughts to the convent?” asked Marie,

and looked down with a smile.

 

“It is so indeed, madam. Many a time have I fancied myself confined in

a lonely cell or imprisoned in a high tower, sitting alone at my

window, watching the light