“’Tis said the Lord High Constable did not desire war.”
“May the devil believe that! Perhaps not—but there’s little to be made of preaching quiet in an ant-hill. Well, the war’s here, and now it’s every man for himself. We shall have our hands full.”
The conversation turned to the journey of the morrow, passed on to the bad roads, lingered on fatted oxen and stall-feeding, and again reverted to the journey. Meanwhile they had not neglected the tankard. The beer had gone to their heads, and Erik Grubbe, who was just telling about his voyage to Ceylon and the East Indies in the “Pearl,” had difficulty in making headway through his own laughter, whenever a new joke came to his mind.
The pastor was getting serious. He had collapsed in his chair, but once in a while he would turn his head, look fiercely around, and move his lips as though to speak. He was gesticulating with one hand, growing more and more excited, until at last he happened to strike the table with his fist, and sank down again with a frightened look at Erik Grubbe. Finally, when the squire had got himself quite tangled up in a story of an excessively stupid scullery lad, the pastor rose and began to speak in a hollow, solemn voice.
“Verily,” he said, “verily, I will bear witness with my mouth—with my mouth—that you are an offence and one by whom offence cometh—that it were better for you that you were cast into the sea—verily, with a millstone and two barrels of malt—the two barrels of malt that you owe me, as I bear witness solemnly with my mouth—two heaping full barrels of malt in my own new sacks. For they were not my sacks, never kingdom without end, ’twas your own old sacks, and my new ones you kept,—and it was rotten malt—verily! See the abomination of desolation, and the sacks are mine, and I will repay—vengeance is mine, I say. Do you not tremble in your old bones—you old whoremonger? You should live like a Christian—but you live with Anne Jensdaughter and make her cheat a Christian pastor. You’re a—you’re a—Christian whoremonger—yes—”
During the first part of the pastor’s speech, Erik Grubbe sat smiling fatuously and holding out his hand to him across the table. He thrust out his elbow as though to poke an invisible auditor in the ribs and call his attention to how delightfully drunk the parson was. But at last some sense of what was being said appeared to pierce his mind. His face suddenly became chalky white; he seized the tankard and threw it at the pastor, who fell backward from his chair and slipped to the floor. It was nothing but fright that caused it, for the tankard failed to reach its mark. It merely rolled to the edge of the table and lay there, while the beer flowed in rivulets down on the floor and the pastor.
The candle had burned low and was flaring fitfully, sometimes lighting the room brightly for a moment, then leaving it almost in darkness, while the blue dawn peeped in through the windows.
The pastor was still talking, his voice first deep and threatening, then feeble, almost whining.
“There you sit in gold and purple, and I’m laid here, and the dogs lick my sores,—and what did you drop in Abraham’s bosom? What did you put on the contribution plate? You didn’t give so much as a silver eightpenny bit in Christian Abraham’s bosom. And now you are in torments—but no one shall dip the tip of his finger in water for you,”—and he struck out with his hand in the spilled beer,—“but I wash my hands—both hands—I have warned you—hi!—there you go—yes, there you go in sackcloth and ashes—my two new sacks—malt—”
He mumbled yet a while, then dropped asleep. Meanwhile Erik Grubbe tried to take revenge. He caught the arm of his chair firmly, stretched to his full length, and kicked the leg of the chair with all his might, in the hope that it was the pastor.