Marie Grubbe by Jens Peter Jacobsen (parable of the sower read online txt) đź“•
He was a large-boned, long-limbed man with a stoop in his broad shoulders. His hair was rough as a crow's nest, grayish and tangled, but his face was of a deep yet clear pink, seemingly out of keeping with his coarse, rugged features and bushy eyebrows.
Erik Grubbe invited him to a seat and asked about his haymaking. The conversation dwelt on the chief labors of the farm at that season and died away in a sigh over the poor harvest of last year. Meanwhile the pastor was casting sidelong glances at the mug and finally said: "Your honor is always temperate--keeping to the natural drinks. No doubt they are the healthiest. New milk is a blessed gift of heaven, good both for a weak stomach and a sore chest."
"Indeed the gifts of God are all good, whether they come from the udder or the tap. But you must taste a keg of genuine mum that we brought home from Viborg the other day. She's both good and German, though I can't see that the customs have put their mark on her."
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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.
They were in Paris. A half year had passed, and the bond of love so
suddenly tied had loosened, and at last been broken. Marie and Sti
Hogh were slowly slipping apart. Both knew it, though they had not put
the fact into words. The confession hid so much pain and bitterness,
so much abasement and self-scorn, that they shrank from uttering it.
In this they were one, but in their manner of bearing their distress
they were widely different. Sti Hogh grieved ceaselessly in impotent
misery, dulled by his very pain against the sharpest stings of that
pain, despairing like a captured animal that paces back and forth,
back and forth, in its narrow cage. Marie was more like a wild
creature escaped from captivity, fleeing madly without rest or pause,
driven on and ever on by frantic fear of the chain that drags clanking
in its track.
She wanted to forget, but forgetfulness is like the heather: it grows
of its own free will, and not all the care and labor in the world can
add an inch to its height. She poured out gold from overflowing hands
and purchased luxury. She caught at every cup of pleasure that wealth
could buy or wit and beauty and rank could procure, but all in vain.
There was no end to her wretchedness, and nothing, nothing could take
it from her. If the mere parting from Sti Hogh could have eased her
pain or even shifted the burden, she would have left him long ago, but
no, it was all the same, no spark of hope anywhere. As well be
together as apart since there was no relief either way.
Yet the parting came, and it was Sti Hogh who proposed it.
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