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

Lucie had pointed him out in the street.

 

All were speaking of him. Nearly every day some fresh story of his

valor was noised abroad. She had heard and read that he was a hero,

and the murmur of enthusiasm that went through the crowds in the

streets as he rode past, had given her an unforgettable thrill.

 

The hero-name lifted him high above the ranks of ordinary human

beings. She had never supposed that a hero could be like other people.

King Alexander of Macedonia, Holger the Dane, and Chevalier Bayard

were tall, distant, radiant figures—ideals rather than men. Just as

she had never believed, in her childhood, that anyone could form

letters with the elegance of the copy-book, so it had never occurred

to her that one could become a hero. Heroes belonged to the past. To

think that one might meet a flesh-and-blood hero riding in Store

Faergestraede was beyond anything she had dreamed of. Life suddenly

took on a different aspect. So it was not all dull routine! The great

and beautiful and richly colored world she had read of in her romances

and ballads was something she might actually see with her own eyes.

There was really something that one could long for with all one’s

heart and soul; all these words that people and books were full of had

a meaning. They stood for something. Her confused dreams and longings

took form, since she knew that they were not hers alone, but that

grown people believed in such things. Life was rich, wonderfully rich

and radiant.

 

It was nothing but an intuition, which she knew to be true, but could

not yet see or feel. He was her only pledge that it was so, the only

thing tangible. Hence her thoughts and dreams circled about him

unceasingly. She would often fly to the window at the sound of horses’

hoofs, and, when out walking, she would persuade the willing Lucie to

go round by the castle, but they never saw him.

 

Then came a day toward the end of October, when she was plying her

bobbins by the afternoon light, at a window in the long drawing room

where the fireplace was. Mistress Rigitze sat before the fire, now and

then taking a pinch of dried flowers or a bit of cinnamon bark from a

box on her lap and throwing it on a brazier full of live coals that

stood near her. The air in the low-ceilinged room was hot and close

and sweet. But little light penetrated between the full curtains of

motley, dark-flowered stuff. From the adjoining room came the whirr

of a spinning wheel, and Miss Rigitze was nodding drowsily in her

cushioned chair.

 

Marie Grubbe felt faint with the heat. She tried to cool her burning

cheeks against the small, dewey windowpane and peeped out into the

street, where a thin layer of new-fallen snow made the air dazzlingly

bright. As she turned to the room again, it seemed doubly dark and

oppressive. Suddenly Ulrik Christian came in through the door, so

quickly that Mistress Rigitze started. He did not notice Marie, but

took a seat before the fire. After a few words of apology for his long

absence, he remarked that he was tired, leaned forward in his

chair, his face resting on his hand, and sat silent, scarcely hearing

Mistress Rigitze’s lively chatter.

 

Marie Grubbe had turned pale with excitement, when she saw him enter.

She closed her eyes for an instant with a sense of giddiness, then

blushed furiously and could hardly breathe. The floor seemed to be

sinking under her, and the chairs, tables, and people in the room

falling through space. All objects appeared strangely definite and yet

flickering, for she could hold nothing fast with her eyes, and

moreover, everything seemed new and strange.

 

So this was he. She wished herself far away or at least in her own

room, her peaceful little chamber. She was frightened and could feel

her hands tremble. If he would only not see her! She shrank deeper

into the window recess and tried to fix her eyes on her aunt’s guest.

 

Was this the way he looked?—not very, very much taller? And his eyes

were not fiery black; they were blue—such dear blue eyes, but

sad—that was something she could not have imagined. He was pale and

looked as if he were sorry about something. Ah, he smiled, but not in

a really happy way. How white his teeth were, and what a nice mouth

he had, so small and finely formed!

 

As she looked, he grew more and more handsome in her eyes, and she

wondered how she could ever have fancied him larger or in any way

different from what he was. She forgot her shyness and thought only of

the eulogies of him she had heard. She saw him storming at the head of

his troops amid the exultant cries of the people. All fell back before

him, as the waves are thrown off when they rise frothing around the

broad breast of a galleon. Cannon thundered, swords flashed, bullets

whistled through dark clouds of smoke, but he pressed onward, brave

and erect, and on his stirrup Victory hung—in the words of a

chronicle she had read.

 

Her eyes shone upon him full of admiration and enthusiasm.

 

He made a sudden movement and met her gaze, but turned his head away,

with difficulty repressing a triumphant smile. The next moment he rose

as though he had just caught sight of Marie Grubbe.

 

Mistress Rigitze said this was her little niece, and Marie made her

courtesy.

 

Ulrik Christian was astonished and perhaps a trifle disappointed to

find that the eyes that had given him such a look were those of a

child.

 

“Ma chere,” he said with a touch of mockery, as he looked down at

her lace, “you’re a past mistress in the art of working quietly and

secretly; not a sound have I heard from your bobbins in all the time

I’ve been here.”

 

“No,” replied Marie, who understood him perfectly; uwhen I saw you,

Lord Gyldenlove,”—she shoved the heavy lacemaker’s cushion along the

windowsill—“it came to my mind that in times like these ‘twere more

fitting to think of lint and bandages than of laced caps.”

 

“Faith, I know that caps are as becoming in wartimes as any other

day,” he said, looking at her.

 

“But who would give them a thought in seasons like the present!”

 

“Many,” answered Ulrik Christian, who began to be amused at her

seriousness, “and I for one.”

 

“I understand,” said Marie, looking up at him gravely; “‘tis but a

child you are addressing.” She courtesied ceremoniously and reached

for her work.

 

“Stay, my little maid!”

 

“I pray you, let me no longer incommode you!”

 

“Hark’ee!” He seized her wrists in a hard grip and drew her to him

across the little table. “By God, you’re a thorny person, but,” he

whispered, “if one has greeted me with a look such as yours a moment

ago, I will not have her bid me so poor a farewell—I will not have

it! There—now kiss me!”

 

Her eyes full of tears, Marie pressed her trembling lips against his.

He dropped her hands, and she sank down over the table, her head in

her arms. She felt quite dazed. All that day and the next she had a

dull sense of bondage, of being no longer free. A foot seemed to press

on her neck and grind her helplessly in the dust. Yet there was no

bitterness in her heart, no defiance in her thoughts, no desire for

revenge. A strange peace had come over her soul and had chased away

the flitting throng of dreams and longings. She could not define her

feeling for Ulrik Christian; she only knew that if he said Come, she

must go to him, and if he said Go, she must quit him. She did not

understand it, but it was so and had always been so, thus and not

otherwise.

 

With unwonted patience she worked all day long at her sewing and her

lacemaking, meanwhile humming all the mournful ballads she had ever

known, about the roses of love which paled and never bloomed again,

about the swain who must leave his truelove and go to foreign lands,

and who never, never came back anymore, and about the prisoner who sat

in the dark tower such a long dreary time, and first his noble falcon

died, and then his faithful dog died, and last his good steed died,

but his faithless wife Malvina lived merrily and well and grieved not

for him. These songs and many others she would sing, and sometimes she

would sigh and seem on the point of bursting into tears, until Lucie

thought her ill and urged her to put way-bread leaves in her

stockings.

 

When Ulrik Christian came in, a few days later, and spoke gently and

kindly to her, she too behaved as though nothing had been between

them, but she looked with childlike curiosity at the large white hands

that had held her in such a hard grip, and she wondered what there

could be in his eyes or his voice that had so cowed her. She glanced

at the mouth too under its narrow, drooping moustache, but furtively

and with a secret thrill of fear.

 

In the weeks that followed, he came almost every day, and Marie’s

thoughts became more and more absorbed in him. When he was not there,

the old house seemed dull and desolate, and she longed for him as the

sleepless long for daylight, but when he came, her joy was never full

and free, always timid and doubting.

 

One night she dreamed that she saw him riding through the crowded

streets as on that first evening, but there were no cheers, and all

the faces seemed cold and indifferent. The silence frightened her.

She dared not smile at him, but hid behind the others. Then he glanced

around with a strange, questioning, wistful look, and this look

fastened on her. She forced her way through the mass of people and

threw herself down before him, and his horse set its cold, iron-shod

hoof on her neck.

 

She awoke and looked about her, bewildered, at the cold, moonlit

chamber. Alas, it was but a dream! She sighed; she did want so much to

show him how she loved him. Yes, that was it. She had not understood

it before, but she loved him. At the thought, she seemed to be lying

in a stream of fire, and flames flickered before her eyes, while every

pulse in her heart throbbed and throbbed and throbbed. She loved him.

How wonderful it was to say it to herself! She loved him! How glorious

the words were, how tremendously real, and yet how unreal! Good God,

what was the use, even if she did love him? Tears of self-pity came

into her eyes—and yet! She huddled comfortably under the soft, warm

coverlet of down—after all it was delicious to lie quite still and

think of him and of her great, great love.

 

When Marie met Ulrik Christian again, she no longer felt timid. Her

secret buoyed her up with a sense of her own importance, and the fear

of revealing it gave her manner a poise that made her seem almost a

woman. They were happy days that followed, fantastic, wonderful days!

Was it not joy enough when Ulrik Christian went, to throw a hundred

kisses after him, unseen by him and all others, or when he came, to

fancy how her beloved would take her in his arms and call her by every

sweet name she could think of, how he would sit by