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

CHAPTER XII

In January of sixteen hundred and sixty-four, Ulrik Frederik was

appointed Viceroy of Norway, and in the beginning of April the same

year he departed for his post. Marie Grubbe went with him.

 

The relation between them had not improved, except in so far as the

lack of mutual understanding and mutual love had, as it were, been

accepted by both as an unalterable fact and found expression in the

extremely ceremonious manner they had adopted toward each other.

 

For a year or more after they had moved to Aggershus, things went on

much in the same way, and Marie for her part desired no change. Not so

Ulrik Frederik, for he had again become enamored of his wife.

 

On a winter afternoon in the gloaming, Marie Grubbe sat alone in the

little parlor known from olden time as the Nook. The day was cloudy

and dark with a raw, blustering wind. Heavy flakes of melting snow

were plastered into the corners of the tiny window panes, covering

almost half the surface of the greenish glass. Gusts of wet, chilly

wind went whirling down between the high walls where they seemed to

lose their senses and throw themselves blindly upon shutters and

doors, rattling them fiercely, then flying skyward again with a

hoarse, dog-like whimper. Powerful blasts came shrieking across the

roofs opposite and hurled themselve’s against windows and walls,

pounding like waves, then suddenly dying away. Now and again a squall

would come roaring down the chimney. The flames ducked their

frightened heads, and the white smoke, timidly curling toward the

chimney like the comb of a breaker, would shrink back, ready to throw

itself out into the room. Ah, in the next instant it is whirled, thin

and light and blue, up through the flue with the flames calling after

it, leaping and darting, and sending sputtering sparks by the handful

right in its heels. Then the fire began to burn in good earnest. With

grunts of pleasure it spread over glowing coals and embers, boiled and

seethed with delight in the innermost marrow of the white birch wood,

buzzed and purred like a tawny cat, and licked caressingly the noses

of blackening knots and smouldering chunks of wood.

 

Warm and pleasant and luminous the breath of the fire streamed through

the little room. Like a fluttering fan of light it played over the

parquet floor and chased the peaceful dusk which hid in tremulous

shadows to the right and the left behind twisted chair legs or shrank

into corners, lay thin and long in the shelter of mouldings or

flattened itself under the large clothes press.

 

Suddenly the chimney seemed to suck up the light and heat with a roar.

Darkness spread boldly across the floor on every board and square to

the very fire, but the next moment the light leaped back again and

sent the dusk flying to all sides with the light pursuing it up the

walls and doors, above the brass latch. Safety nowhere! The dusk sat

crouching against the wall, up under the ceiling, like a cat in a high

branch, with the light scampering below, back and forth like a dog,

leaping, running at the foot of the tree. Not even among the flagons

and tumblers on the top of the press could the darkness be

undisturbed, for red ruby glasses, blue goblets, and green Rhenish

wineglasses lit iridescent fires to help the light search them out.

 

The wind blew and the darkness fell outside, but within the fire

glowed, the light played, and Marie Grubbe was singing. Now and again

she would murmur snatches of the words as they came to her mind, then

again hum the melody alone. Her lute was in her hand, but she was not

playing it, only touching the strings sometimes and calling out a few

clear, long-sounding notes. It was one of those pleasant little

pensive songs that make the cushions softer and the room warmer; one

of those gently flowing airs that seem to sing themselves in their

indolent wistfulness while they give the voice a delicious roundness

and fullness of tone. Marie was sitting in the light from the fire,

and its beams played around her while she sang in careless enjoyment,

as if caressing herself with her own voice.

 

The little door opened, and Ulrik Frederik bent his tall form to

enter. Marie stopped singing instantly.

 

“Ah, madam!” exclaimed Ulrik Frederik in a tone of gentle

remonstrance, making a gesture of appeal as he came up to her. “Had I

known that you would allow my presence to incommode you—”

 

“No, truly, I was but singing to keep my dreams awake.”

 

“Pleasant dreams?” he asked, bending over the fire-dogs before the

grate and warming his hands on the bright copper balls.

 

“Dreams of youth,” replied Marie, passing her hand over the strings of

the lute.

 

“Ay, that was ever the way of old age,” and he smiled at her.

 

Marie was silent a moment, then suddenly spoke, “One may be full young

and yet have old dreams.”

 

“How sweet the odor of musk in here! But was my humble person along in

these ancient dreams, madam?—if I may make so bold as to ask.”

 

“Ah, no!”

 

“And yet there was a time—”

 

“Among all other times.”

 

“Ay, among all other times there was once awondrously fair time when I

was exceeding dear to you. Do you bring to mind a certain hour in the

twilight a sennight or so after our nuptials? ‘T was storming and

snowing—”

 

“Even as now.”

 

“And you were sitting before the fire—”

 

“Even as now.”

 

“Ay, and I was lying at your feet, and your dear hands were playing

with my hair.”

 

“Yes, then you loved me.”

 

“Oh, even as now! And you—you bent down over me and wept till the

tears streamed down your face, and you kissed me and looked at me with

such tender earnestness it seemed you were saying a prayer for me in

your heart, and then all of a sudden—do you remember?—you bit my

neck.”

 

“Ah, merciful God, what love I did bear to you, my lord! When I heard

the clanging of your spurs on the steps, the blood pounded in my ears,

and I trembled from head to foot and my hands were cold as ice. Then

when you came in and pressed me in your arms—”

 

“De grace, madam!”

 

“Why, it’s naught but dead memories of an amour that is long since

extinguished.”

 

“Alas, extinguished, madam? Nay, it smoulders hotter than ever.”

 

“Ah, no, ‘tis covered by the cold ashes of too many days.”

 

“But it shall rise again from the ashes as the bird Phenix, more

glorious and fiery than before—pray, shall it not?”

 

“No, love is like a tender plant; when the night frost touches its

heart, it dies from the blossom down to the root.”

 

“No, love is like the herb named the rose of Jericho. In the dry

months it withers and curls up, but when there is a soft and balmy

night with a heavy fall of dew, all its leaves will unfold again,

greener and fresher than ever before.”

 

“It may be so. There are many kinds of love in the world.”

 

“Truly there are, and ours was such a love.”

 

“That yours was such you tell me now, but mine—never, never!

 

“Then you have never loved.”

 

“Never loved? Now I shall tell you how I have loved. It was at

Frederiksborg—”

 

“Oh, madam, you have no mercy!”

 

“No, no, that is not it at all. It was at Frederiksborg. Alas, you

little know what I suffered there. I saw that your love was not as it

had been. Oh as a mother watches over her sick child and marks every

little change, so I kept watch over your love with fear and trembling,

and when I saw in your cold looks how it had paled and felt in your

kisses how feeble was its pulse it seemed