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

gracious reception by his royal father, the

bustling futilities of court duties by day and the streams of wine and

frenzied kisses at night, broken by the gorgeous revelry of the chase

or by nightly trysts and tender whisperings in the shelter of Ibstrup

park or the gilded halls of Hillerod castle.

 

Yet clearer than all these he saw the black, burning eyes of Sofie

Urne; more insistent than aught else her voice sounded in his

spell-bound memory—beautiful and voluptuously soft, its low notes

drawing like white arms, or rising like a flitting bird that soars and

mocks with wanton trills while it flees… .

 

A rustling among the bushes of the rampart below waked him from his

dreams.

 

“Who goes there!” he cried.

 

“None but Daniel, Lord Gyldenlove, Daniel Knopf,” was the answer as a

little crippled man came out from the bushes, bowing.

 

“Ha! Hop-o’-my-Thumb? A thousand plagues, what are you doing here?”

 

The man stood looking down at himself sadly.

 

“Daniel, Daniel!” said Ulrik Frederik, smiling. “You didn’t come

unscathed from the ‘fiery furnace’ last night. The German brewer must

have made too hot a fire for you.”

 

The cripple began to scramble up the edge of the rampart. Daniel

Knopf, because of his stature called Hop-o’-my-Thumb, was a wealthy

merchant of some and twenty years, known for his fortune as well as

for his sharp tongue and his skill in fencing. He was boon companion

with the younger nobility, or at least with a certain group of

gallants, le cercle des mourants, consisting chiefly of younger men

about the court. Ulrik Frederik was the life and soul of this crowd,

which, though convivial rather than intellectual and notorious rather

than beloved, was in fact admired and envied for its very peccadillos.

 

Half tutor and half mountebank, Daniel moved among these men. He did

not walk beside them on the public streets or in houses of quality,

but in the fencing school, the wine cellar, and the tavern he was

indispensable. No one else could discourse so scientifically on

bowling and dog training or talk with such unction of feints and

parrying. No one knew wine as he did. He had worked out profound

theories about dicing and love making and could speak learnedly and at

length on the folly of crossing the domestic stud with the Salzburger

horses. To crown all, he knew anecdotes about everybody, and—most

impressive of all to the young men—he had decided opinions about

everything.

 

Moreover, he was always ready to humor and serve them, never forgot

the line that divided him from the nobility, and was decidedly funny

when, in a fit of drunken frolic they would dress him up in some

whimsical guise. He let himself be kicked about and bullied without

resenting it and would often good-naturedly throw himself into the

breach to stop a conversation that threatened the peace of the

company.

 

Thus he gained admittance to circles that were to him as the very

breath of life. To him, the citizen and cripple, the nobles seemed

like demigods. Their cant alone was human speech. Their existence swam

in a shimmer of light and a sea of fragrance while common folk dragged

out their lives in drab-colored twilight and stuffy air. He cursed his

citizen birth as a far greater calamity than his lameness, and grieved

over it in solitude with a bitterness and passion that bordered on

insanity.

 

“How now, Daniel,” said Ulrik Frederik when the little man reached

him. “‘Twas surely no light mist that clouded your eyes last night,

since you’ve run aground here on the rampart, or was the clary at

flood tide, since I find you high and dry like Noah’s Ark on Mount

Ararat?”

 

“Prince of the Canaries, you rave if you suppose I was in your company

last night!”

 

“A thousand devils, what’s the matter then?” cried Ulrik Frederik

impatiently.

 

“Lord Gyldenlove,” said Daniel, looking up at him with tears in his

eyes, “I’m an unhappy wretch.”

 

“You’re a dog of a huckster! Is it a herring boat you’re afraid the

Swede will catch? Or are you groaning because trade has come to a

standstill, or do you think the saffron will lose its strength and the

mildew fall on your pepper and paradise grain? You’ve a ha’penny

soul! As if good citizens had naught else to think about than their

own trumpery going to the devil—now that we may look for the fall of

both King and realm!”

 

“Lord Gyldenlove—”

 

“Oh, go to the devil with your whining!”

 

“Not so, Lord Gyldenlove,” said Daniel solemnly, stepping back a pace.

“For I don’t fret about the stoppage of trade, nor the loss of money

and what money can buy. I care not a doit nor a damn for herring and

saffron, but to be turned away by officers and men like one sick with

the leprosy or convicted of crime, that’s a sinful wrong against me,

Lord Gyldenlove. That’s why I’ve been lying in the grass all night

like a scabby dog that’s been turned out; that’s why I’ve been

writhing like a miserable crawling beast and have cried to God in

heaven asking Him why I alone should be utterly cast away, why my arm

alone should be too withered and weak to wield a sword, though they’re

arming lackeys and ‘prentice boys—”

 

“But who the shining Satan has turned you away?”

 

“Faith, Lord Gyldenlove, I ran to the ramparts like the others, but

when I came to one party, they told me they had room for no more, and

they were only poor citizens anyway and not fit to be with the gentry

and persons of quality. Some parties said they would have no crooked

billets, for cripples drew the bullets and brought ill luck, and none

would hazard life and limb unduly by having amongst them one whom the

Lord had marked. Then I begged Major-General Ahlefeldt that he would

order me to a position, but he shook his head and laughed: things

hadn’t come to such a pass yet that they had to stuff the ranks with

stunted stumps who’d give more trouble than aid.”

 

“But why didn’t you go to the officers whom you know?”

 

“I did so, Lord Gyldenlove. I thought at once of the cercle and spoke

to one or two of the mourants, King Petticoat and the Gilded Knight.”

 

“And did they give you no help?”

 

“Ay, Lord Gyldenlove, they helped me—Lord Gyldenlove, they helped me,

may God find them for it! ‘Daniel,’ they said, ‘Daniel, go home and

pick the maggots out of your damson prunes!’ They had believed I had

too much tact to come here with my buffoonery. ‘Twas all very well if

they thought me fit to wear cap and bells at a merry bout, but when

they were on duty, I was to keep out of their sight. Now, was that

well spoken, Lord Gyldenlove? No, ‘twas a sin, a sin! Even if they’d

made free with me in the wine-cellars, they said, I needn’t think I

was one of them, or that I could be with them when they were at their

post. I was too presumptuous for them, Lord Gyldenlove! I’d best not

force myself into their company, for they needed no merry-andrew here.

That’s what they told me, Lord Gyldenlove! And yet I asked but to risk

my life side by side with the other citizens.”

 

“Oh, ay,” said Ulrik Frederik, yawning, “I can well understand that it

vexes you to have no part in it all. You might find it irksome to

sweat over your desk while the fate of the realm is decided here on

the ramparts. Look you, you shall be in it! For—” He broke off and

looked at Daniel with suspicion. “There’s no foul play, sirrah?”

 

The little man stamped the ground in his rage and gritted his teeth,

his face pale as a whitewashed wall.

 

“Come, come,” Ulrik Frederik went on, “I trust you, but you can scarce

expect me to put faith in your word as if ‘twere that of a gentleman.

And remember, ‘twas your own that scorned you first. Hush!”

 

From a bastion at East Gate boomed a shot, the first that had been

fired in this war. Ulrik Frederik drew himself up, while the blood

rushed to his face. He looked after the white smoke with eager,

fascinated eyes, and when he spoke, there was a strange tremor in his

voice.

 

“Daniel,” he said, “toward noon you can report to me, and think no

more of what I said.”

 

Daniel looked admiringly after him, then sighed deeply, sat down in

the grass, and wept as an unhappy child weeps.

 

In the afternoon of the same day, a fitful wind blew through the

streets of the city whirling up clouds of dust, whittlings, and bits

of straw and carrying them hither and thither. It tore the tiles from

the roofs, drove the smoke down the chimneys, and wrought sad havoc

with the tradesmen’s signs. The long, dull blue pennants of the dyers

were flung out on the breeze and fell down again in spirals that

tightened around their quivering staffs. The turners’ spinning wheels

rocked and swayed; hairy tails flapped over the doors of the furriers,

and the resplendent glass suns of the glaziers swung in a restless

glitter that vied with the polished basins of the barber-surgeons.

Doors and shutters were slamming in the back-yards. The chickens hid

their heads under barrels and sheds, and even the pigs grew uneasy in

their pens when the wind howled through sunlit cracks and gaping

joints.

 

The storm brought an oppressive heat. Within the houses the people

were gasping for breath, and only the flies were buzzing about

cheerfully in the sultry atmosphere. The streets were unendurable, the

porches were draughty, and hence people who possessed gardens

preferred to seek shelter there.

 

In the large enclosure behind Christoffer Urne’s house in

Vingaardsstraede, a young girl sat with her sewing under a Norway

maple. Her tall, slender figure was almost frail, yet her breast was

deep and full. Luxuriant waves of black hair and almost startlingly

large dark eyes accented the pallor of her skin. The nose was sharp,

but finely cut, the mouth wide, though not full, and with a morbid

sweetness in its smile. The lips were scarlet, the chin somewhat

pointed, but firm and well rounded. Her dress was slovenly: an old

black velvet robe embroidered in gold that had become tarnished, a new

green felt hat from which fell a snowy plume, and leather shoes that

were worn to redness on the pointed toes. There was lint in her hair,

and neither her collar nor her long, white hands were immaculately

clean.

 

The girl was Christoffer Urne’s niece, Sofie. Her father, Jorgen Urne

of Alslev, Councillor of the Realm, Lord High Constable, and Knight of

the Elephant, had died when she was yet a child, and a few years ago

her mother, Mistress Margrethe Marsvin, had followed him. The elderly

uncle with whom she lived was a widower, and she was therefore, at

least nominally, the mistress of his household.

 

She hummed a song as she worked and kept time by swinging one foot on

the point of her toe.

 

The leafy crowns over her head rustled and swayed in the boisterous

wind with a noise like the murmur of many waters. The tall hollyhocks,

swinging their flower-topped stems back and forth in unsteady circles,

seemed seized with a sudden tempestuous madness, while the raspberry

bushes, timidly ducking their heads, turned the pale inner side of

their leaves to the light and changed color at every breath. Dry

leaves sailed down through the air, the