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

inhumanly he used her,

the more she loved him. He might have beaten her black and blue—and

belike he did—she would have kissed him for it. To think that one

person can be so bewitched by another, it’s horrible! But then he got

tired of her and never even looked at her, for he was in love with

someone else, and Mistress Ermegaard wept and came nigh breaking her

heart and dying of grief, but still she lived, though forsooth it

wasn’t much of a life.”

 

At last she couldn’t bear it any longer, and when she saw Sti Hogh

riding past, so they said, she ran out after him and followed

alongside of his horse for a mile, and he never so much as drew rein

nor listened to her crying and pleading but rode on all the faster and

left her. That was too much for her, and so she took deadly poison and

wrote Sti Hogh that she did it for him, and she would never stand in

his way; all that she asked was that he would come and see her before

she died.”

 

“And then?”

 

“Why, God knows if it’s true what people say, for if it is, he’s the

wickedest body and soul hell is waiting for. They say he wrote back

that his love would have been the best physic for her, but as he had

none to give her, he’d heard that milk and white onions were likewise

good and he’d advise her to take some. That’s what he said. Now, what

do you think of that? Could anything be more inhuman?”

 

“And Mistress Ermegaard?”

 

“Mistress Ermegaard?”

 

“Ay, what of her?”

 

“Well, no thanks to him, but she hadn’t taken enough poison to kill

her, though she was so sick and wretched they thought she’d never be

well again.”

 

“Poor little lamb!” said Marie laughing.

 

Almost every day in the time that followed brought some change in

Marie’s conception of Sti Hogh and her relation to him. Sti was no

dreamer; that was plain from the forethought and resourcefulness he

displayed in coping with the innumerable difficulties of the journey.

It was evident too, that in manners and mind he was far above even the

most distinguished of the noblemen they met on their way.

 

What he said was always new and interesting and different; he seemed

to have a shortcut, known only to himself, to an understanding of men

and affairs, and Marie was impressed by the audacious scorn with which

he owned his belief in the power of the beast in man and the scarcity

of gold amid the dross of human nature. With cold, passionless

eloquence he tried to show her how little consistency there was in

man, how incomprehensible and uncomprehended, how weak-kneed and

fumbling and altogether the sport of circumstance that which was noble

and that which was base fought for ascendancy in his soul. The fervor

with which he expounded this seemed to her great and fascinating, and

she began to believe that rarer gifts and greater powers had been

given him than usually fell to the lot of mortals. She bowed down in

admiration, almost in worship, before the tremendous force she

imagined him possessed of. Yet withal there lurked in her soul a still

small doubt which was never shaped into a definite thought but hovered

as an instinctive feeling, whispering that perhaps his power was a

power that threatened and raged, that coveted and desired, but never

swooped down, never took hold.

 

In Lohendorf, about three miles from Vechta, there was an old inn near

the highway, and there Marie and her travelling companions sought

shelter an hour or two after sundown.

 

In the evening when the coachmen and grooms had gone to bed in the

outhouses, Marie and Sti Hogh were sitting at the little red-painted

table before the great stove in a corner of the tap-room chatting with

two rather oafish Oldenborg noblemen. Lucie was knitting and looking

on from her place at the end of a bench where she sat leaning against

the edge of the long table running underneath the windows. A tallow

dip in a yellow earthenware candlestick on the gentlefolk’s table cast

a sleepy light over their faces and woke greasy reflections in a row

of pewter plates ranged above the stove. Marie had a small cup of warm

wine before her, Sti Hogh a larger one, while the two Oldenborgers

were sharing a huge pot of ale, which they emptied again and again and

which was as often filled by the slovenly drawer who lounged on the

goose-bench at the farther end of the room.

 

Marie and Sti Hogh would both have preferred to go to bed, for the two

rustic noblemen were not very stimulating company, and no doubt they

would have gone had not the bedrooms been icy cold and the

disadvantages of heating them even worse than the cold, as they found

when the innkeeper brought in the braziers, for the peat in that part

of the country was so saturated with sulphur that no one who was not

accustomed to it could breathe where it was burning.

 

The Oldenborgers were not merry, for they saw that they were in very

fine company and tried hard to make their conversation as elegant as

possible; but as the ale gained power over them, the rein they had

kept on themselves grew slacker and slacker and was at last quite

loose. Their language took on a deeper local color, their playfulness

grew massive, and their questions impudent.

 

As the jokes became coarser and more insistent, Marie stirred

uneasily, and Sti’s eyes asked across the table whether they should

not retire. Just then the fairer of the two strangers made a gross

insinuation. Sti gave him a frown and a threatening look, but this

only egged him on, and he repeated his foul jest in even plainer terms

whereupon Sti promised that at one more word of the same kind he would

get the pewter cup in his head.

 

At that moment Lucie brought her knitting up to the table to look for

a dropped stitch, and the other Oldenborger availed himself of the

chance to catch her round the waist, force her down on his knee, and

imprint a sounding kiss on her lips.

 

This bold action fired the fair man, and he put his arm around Marie

Grubbe’s neck.

 

In the same second Sti’s goblet hit him in the forehead with such

force and such sureness of aim that he sank down on the floor with a

deep grunt.

 

The next moment Sti and the dark man were grappling in the middle of

the floor while Marie and her maid fled to a corner.

 

The drawer jumped up from the goose-bench, bellowed something out at

one door, ran to the other and bolted it with a two-foot iron bar just

as someone else could be heard putting the latch on the postern. It

was a custom in the inn to lock all doors as soon as a fight began so

no one could come from outside and join in the fracas, but this was

the only step for the preservation of peace that the inn-people took.

As soon as the doors were closed, they would sneak off to bed; for he

who has seen nothing can testify to nothing.

 

Since neither party to the fight was armed, the affair had to be

settled with bare fists, and Sti and the dark man stood locked

together wrestling and cursing. They dragged each other back and

forth, turned in slow, tortuous circles, stood each other up against

walls and doors, caught each other’s arms, wrenched themselves loose,

bent and writhed, each with his chin in the other’s shoulder. At last

they tumbled down on the floor, Sti on top. He had knocked his

adversary’s head heavily two or three times against the cold clay

floor when suddenly he felt his own neck in the grip of two powerful

hands. It was the fair man, who had picked himself up.

 

Sti choked, his throat rattled, he turned giddy, and his limbs

relaxed. The dark man wound his legs around him and pulled him down by

the shoulders; the other still clutched his throat and dug his knees

into his sides.

 

Marie shrieked and would have rushed to his aid, but Lucie had thrown

her arms around her mistress and held her in such a convulsive grip

that she could not stir.

 

Sti was on the point of fainting when suddenly, with one last effort

of his strength, he threw himself forward, knocking the head of the

dark man against the floor. The fingers of the fair man slipped from

his throat, opening the way for a bit of air. Sti bounded up with all

his force, hurled himself at the fair man, threw him down, bent over

the fallen man in a fury, but in the same instant got a kick in the

pit of the stomach that almost felled him. He caught the ankle of the

foot that kicked him; with the other hand he grasped the boot-top,

lifted the leg, and broke it over his outstretched thigh until the

bones cracked in the boot and the fair man sank down in a swoon. The

dark man, who lay staring at the scene still dizzy from the blows in

his head, gave vent to a yell of agony as if he had himself been the

maltreated one and crawled under the shelter of the bench beneath the

windows. With that the fight was ended.

 

The latent savagery which this encounter had called out in Sti had a

strange and potent effect on Marie. That night when she laid her head

on the pillow, she told herself that she loved him, and when Sti,

perceiving a change in her eyes and manner that boded good for him,

begged for her love, a few days later, he got the answer he longed

for.