Marie Grubbe by Jens Peter Jacobsen (parable of the sower read online txt) 📕

In May of sixteen hundred and ninety-five Erik Grubbe died at the age

of eighty-seven. The inheritance was promptly divided among his three

daughters, but Marie did not get much as the old man before his death

had issued various letters of credit in favor of the other two, thus

withdrawing from the estate the greater part of his property to the

disadvantage of Marie.

Even so, her portion was sufficient to make her and her husband

respectable folk instead of beggars, and with a little common sense

they might have secured a fair income to the end of their days.

Unluckily Soren made up his mind to become a horse-dealer, and it was

not long before he had squandered most of the money. Still there was

enough left so they could buy the Burdock House at the Falster ferry.

In the early days they had a hard time, and Marie often had to lend a

hand at the oars, but later on her chief task was to mind the alehouse

which was a part of the ferry privileges. On the whole, they were very

happy, for Marie still loved her husband above everything else in the

world, and though he would sometimes get drunk and beat her, she did

not take it much to heart. She realized that she had enrolled in a

class where such things were an everyday matter, and though she would

sometimes feel irritated, she would soon get over it by telling

herself that this man who could be so rough and hard was the same

Soren who had once shot a human being for her sake.

The people they ferried over were generally peasants and cattlemen,

but occasionally there would come someone who was a little higher up

in the world. One day Sti Hogh passed that way. Marie and her husband

rowed him across, and he sat in the stern of the boat where he could

talk with Marie, who had the oar nearest him. He recognized her at

once but showed no signs of surprise; perhaps he had known that he

would find her there. Marie had to look twice before she knew him,

for he was very much changed. His face was red and bloated, his eyes

were watery; his lower jaw dropped as if the corners of his mouth were

paralyzed, his legs were thin and his stomach hung down—in short, he

bore every mark of a life spent in stupefying debauchery of every

kind, and this had, as a matter of fact, been his chief pursuit ever

since he left Marie. As far as the external events went, he had for a

time been gentilhomme and maitre d’ hotel in the house of a royal

cardinal in Rome, had gone over to the Catholic Church, had joined his

brother, Just Hogh, then ambassador to Nimeguen, had been converted

back to the Lutheran religion again and returned to Denmark, where he

was living on the bounty of his brother.

“Is this,” he asked nodding in the direction of Soren—“is this the

one I foretold was to come after me?”

“Ay, he is the one,” said Marie hesitating a little, for she would

have preferred not to reply.

“And he is greater than I—was?” he went on, straightening himself in

his seat.

“Nay, you can’t be likened to him, your lordship,” she answered,

affecting the speech of a peasant woman.

“Oh, ay, so it goes—you and I have indeed cheapened ourselves—we’ve

sold ourselves to life for less pay than we had thought to, you in one

manner, I in another.”

“But your lordship is surely well enough off?” asked Marie in the same

simple tone.

“Well enough,” he laughed, “well enough is more than half ill; I am

indeed well enough off. And you, Marie?”

“Thank you kindly for asking; we’ve got our health, and when we keep

tugging at the oars every day, we’ve got bread and brandy too.”

They had reached land, and Sti stepped out and said good-by.

“Lord,” said Marie looking after him pityingly, “he’s certainly been

shorn of crest and wings too.”

Peacefully and quietly the days passed at the Burdock House with daily

work and daily gain. Little by little the pair improved their

condition, hired boatmen to do the ferrying, carried on a little

trade, and built a wing on their old house. They lived to the end of

the old century and ten years into the new. Marie turned sixty, and

she turned sixty-five, and still she was as brisk and merry at her

work as if she had been on the sunny side of sixty. But then it

happened, on her sixty-eighth birthday in the spring of seventeen

hundred and eleven, that Soren accidentally shot and killed a skipper

from Dragor under very suspicious circumstances and in consequence was

arrested.

This was a hard blow to Marie. She had to endure a long suspense for

judgment was not pronounced until midsummer of the following year, and

this, together with her anxiety lest the old affair of his attempt on

the life of Anne Trinderup should be taken up again, aged her very

much.

One day in the beginning of this period of waiting, Marie went down to

meet the ferry just as it was landing. There were two passengers on

board, and one of these, a journeyman, absorbed her attention by

refusing to show his passport, declaring that he had shown it to the

boatmen when he went on board, which they, however, denied. When she

threatened to charge him full fare unless he would produce his

passport as proof of his right as a journeyman to travel for half

price, he had to give in. This matter being settled, Marie turned to

the other passenger, a little slender man who stood pale and shivering

after the seasickness he had just endured, wrapped in his mantle of

coarse, greenish-black stuff and leaning against the side of a boat

that had been dragged up on the beach. He asked in a peevish voice

whether he could get lodgings in the Burdock House, and Marie replied

that he might look at their spare room.

She showed him a little chamber which besides bed and chair, contained

a barrel of brandy with funnel and waste-cup, some large kegs of

molasses and vinegar, and a table with legs painted in pearl-color and

a top of square tiles on which scenes from the Old and New Testament

were drawn in purplish black. The stranger at once noticed that three

of the tiles represented Jonah being