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

They had

not seen each other for several days when Sti came into the drawing

room of the magnificent apartment they had rented from Isabel Gilles,

the landlady of La Croix de Per. Marie was sitting there in tears. Sti

shook his head drearily and took a chair at the other end of the room.

It was hard to see her weep and to know that every word of comfort

from his lips, every sympathetic sigh or compassionate look merely

added bitterness to her grief and made her tears flow faster.

 

He went up to her.

 

“Marie,” he said in a low, husky voice, “let us have one more talk and

then part.”

 

“What is the good of that?”

 

“Nay, Marie, there are yet happy days awaiting you; even now they are

coming thick and fast.”

 

“Ay, days of mourning and nights of weeping in an endless, unbreakable

chain.”

 

“Marie, Marie, have a care what you say, for I understand the meaning

of your words as you never think to have me, and they wound me

cruelly.”

 

“I reck but little of wounds that are stung with words for daggers. It

was never in my mind to spare you them.”

 

“Then drive the weapon home, and do not pity me—not for one instant.

Tell me that my love has besmirched you and humbled you in the dust!

Tell me that you would give years of your life to tear from your heart

every memory of me! And make a dog of me and call me cur. Call me by

every shameful name you know, and I will answer to every one and say

you are right; for I know you are right, you are, though it’s torture

to say so! Hear me, Marie, hear me and believe if you can: though I

know you loathe yourself because you have been mine and sicken in your

soul when you think of it and frown with disgust and remorse, yet do I

love you still—I do indeed. I love you with all my might and soul,

Marie.”

 

“Fie, shame on you, Sti Hogh! Shame on you! You know not what you are

saying. And yet—God forgive me—but ‘tis true, fearful as it seems!

Oh, Sti, Sti, why are you such a varlet soul? Why are you such a

miserable, cringing worm that doesn’t bite when it’s trodden underfoot?

If you knew how great and proud and strong I believed you—you who are

so weak! It was your sounding phrases that lied to me of a power you

never owned; they spoke loud of everything your soul never was and

never could be. Sti, Sti, was it right that I should find weakness

instead of strength, abject doubt instead of brave faith, and

pride—Sti, where was your pride?”

 

“Justice and right are but little mercy, but I deserve naught else,

for I have been no better than a counterfeiter with you, Marie. I

never believed in your love; no, even in the hour when you first vowed

it to me, there was no faith in my soul. Oh! how I wanted to believe

but could not! I could not down the fear that lifted its dark head

from the ground, staring at me with cold eyes, blowing away my rich,

proud dreams with the breath from its bitterly smiling mouth. I could

not believe in your love, and yet I grasped the treasure of it with

both hands and with all my soul. I rejoiced in it with a timid,

anxious happiness as a thief might feel joy in his golden booty,

though he knew the rightful owner would step in the next moment and

tear the precious thing from his hands. For I know the man will come

who will be worthy of you, or whom you will think worthy, and he will

not doubt, not tremble and entreat. He will mould you like pure gold

in his hands and set his foot on your will, and you will obey him,

humbly and gladly. Not that he will love you more than I, for that no

one could, but that he will have more faith in himself and less sense

of your priceless worth, Marie.”

 

“Why, this is a regular fortune-teller’s tale you’re giving me, Sti

Hogh. You are ever the seer: your thoughts roam far afield. You are

like children with a new toy; instead of playing with it, they must

needs pull it to pieces and find out how it was made and so spoil it.

You never have time to hold and enjoy because you are ever reaching

and seeking. You cut the timber of life all up into thought-shavings.”

 

“Farewell, Marie.”

 

“Farewell, Sti Hogh—as well as may be.”

 

“Thanks—thanks—it must be so. Yet I would ask of you one thing.”

 

“Well?”

 

“When you depart from here, let none know the way you go lest I should

hear it, for if I do, I cannot answer for myself that I shall have

strength to keep from following you.”

 

Marie shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

 

“God bless you, Marie, now and forever.”

 

With that he left her.

 

In a fair November gloaming the bronze-brown light of the sun is

slowly receding from the windows still gleaming singly in high gables;

an instant it rests on the slender twin spires of the church, is

caught up there by cross and golden wreath, then freed in luminous air

and fades while the moon lifts a shining disc over the distant,

long-flowing lines of the rounded hills.

 

Yellow, bluish, and purple, the fading tints of the sky are mirrored

in the bright, silently running river. Leaves of willow and maple and

elder and rose drop from golden crowns and flutter down to the water

in tremulous flight, rest on the glittering surface and glide along

under leaning walls and stone steps into the darkness beneath low,

massive bridges, around things black with moisture. They catch the glow

from the red coal fire in the lighted smithy, are whirled round in the

rust brown eddies by the grinder’s house, then drift away among rushes

and leaky boats, lost among sunken barrels and muddy, water-soaked

fences.

 

Blue twilight is spreading a transparent dusk over squares and open

markets. In the fountains the water gleams as through a delicate veil

as it runs from wet snake-snouts and drips from bearded dragon-mouths

among fantastic broken curves and slender, serrated vessels. It

murmurs gently and trickles coldly; it bubbles softly and drips

sharply, making rapidly widening rings on the dark surface of the

brimming basin. A breath of wind sighs through the square while round

about the dusky space a deeper darkness stares from shadowy portals,

black window panes, and dim alleys.

 

Now the moon is rising and throwing a silvery sheen over roofs and

pinnacles, dividing light and shadow into sharply etched planes. Every

carved beam, every flaunting sign, every baluster in the low railing

of the porches is etched on houses and walls. The stone lattice-work

over the church doors—St. George with his lance there at the corner,

the plant with its leaves here in the window—all stand out like black

figures. What a flood of light the moon pours through the wide street,

and how it glitters on the water in the river! There are no clouds in

the heavens, only a ring like a halo around the moon, and nothing else

except myriads of stars.

 

It was such a night as this at Nurnberg, and in the steep street

leading up to the castle in the house known as von Karndorf’s, a feast

was held that same evening. The guests were sitting around the table,

merry and full of food and drink. All but one were men who had left

youth behind, and this one was but eighteen years. He wore no periwig,

but his own hair was luxuriant enough, long, golden, and curly. His

face was fair as a girl’s, white and red, and his eyes were large,

blue, and serene. They called him the golden Remigius, golden not only

because of his hair but because of his great wealth. For all his

youth he was the richest nobleman in the Bavarian forest—for he

hailed from the Bavarian forest.

 

They were speaking of female loveliness, these gay gentlemen around

the groaning board, and they all agreed that when they were young, the

world was swarming with beauties beside whom those who laid claim to

the name in these days were as nothing at all.

 

“But who knew the pearl among them all?” asked a chubby, red-faced

man with tiny, sparkling eyes. “Who ever saw Dorothea von Falkenstein

of the Falkensteiners of Harzen? She was red as a rose and white as a

lamb. She could clasp her waist round with her two hands and have an

inch to spare, and she could walk on larks’ eggs without crushing them

so light of foot was she. But she was none of your scrawny chicks for

all that; she was as plump as a swan swimming in a lake and firm as a

roe deer running in the forest.”

 

They drank to her.

 

“God bless you all, gray though you be!” cried a tall, crabbed old

fellow at the end of the table. “The world is getting uglier every

day. We have but to look at ourselves”—his glance went round the

table—“and think what dashing blades we once were. Well, no matter

for that! But where in the name of everything drinkable—can anyone

say? huh? can you?—who can?—can anyone tell me what’s become of the

plump landladies with laughing mouths and bright eyes and dainty feet

and the landladies’ daughters with yellow, yellow hair and eyes so

blue—what’s become of them? huh? Or is ‘t a lie that one could go to

any tavern or wayside inn or ordinary and find them there? Oh, misery

of miseries and wretchedness! Look at the hunchbacked jades the tavern

people keep in these days—with pig’s eyes and broad in the beam! Look

at the toothless, baldpated hags that get the king’s license to scare

the life out of hungry and thirsty folks with their sore eyes and

grubby hands! Faugh, I’m as scared of an inn as of the devil himself,

for I know full well the tapster is married to the living image of the

plague from Lubeck, and when a man’s as old as I am, there’s something

about memento mori that he’d rather forget than remember.”

 

Near the centre of the long table sat a man of strong build with a

face rather full and yellow as wax, bushy eyebrows, and clear,

searching eyes. He looked not exactly ill, but as if he had suffered

great bodily pain, and when he smiled, there was an expression about

his mouth as though he were swallowing something bitter. He spoke in a

soft, low, rather husky voice. “The brown Euphemia of the Burtenbacher

stock was statelier than any queen I ever saw. She could wear the

stiffest cloth of gold as if it were the easiest house-dress. Golden

chains and precious stones hung round her neck and waist and rested on

her bosom and hair as lightly as berries the children deck themselves

with when they play in the forest. There was none like her. The other

young maidens would look like reliquaries weighed down by necklaces of

gold and clasps of gold and jewelled roses, but she was fair and fresh

and festive and light as a banner that flies in the wind. There was

none like her, nor is there now.

 

“Ay, and a better one,” cried young Remigius jumping up. He bent

forward across the table, supporting himself with one hand while the

other swung a bright goblet, from which the golden grape brimmed