“Indeed,” broke in Mistress Ide Daa, “that is plainly to be seen from the love of Mistress Dyre, which at least completed one of the labors of Hercules, inasmuch as it cleaned out chests and presses, even as he cleaned the stable of Uriah—or whatever his name was—you know.”
“I would rather say”—Ulrik Frederik turned to Marie Grubbe—“that love is like falling asleep in a desert and waking in a balmy pleasure-garden, for such is the virtue of love that it changes the soul of man, and that which was barren now seems a very wonder of delight. But what are your thoughts about love, fair Mistress Marie?”
“Mine?” she asked. “I think love is like a diamond; for as a diamond is beautiful to look upon, so is love fair, but as the diamond is poison to any one who swallows it, in the same manner love is a kind of poison and produces a baneful raging distemper in those who are infected by it—at least if one is to judge by the strange antics one may observe in amorous persons and by their curious conversation.”
“Ay,” whispered Ulrik Frederik gallantly, “the candle may well talk reason to the poor moth that is crazed by its light!”
“Forsooth, I think you are right, Marie,” began Axel Urup, pausing to smile and nod to her. “Yes, yes, we may well believe that love is but a poison, else how can we explain that coldblooded persons may be fired with the most burning passion merely by giving them miracle-philtres and love-potions?”
“Fie!” cried Mistress Sidsel; “don’t speak of such terrible godless business—and on a Sunday, too!”
“My dear Sidse,” he replied, “there’s no sin in that—none at all. Would you call it a sin, Colonel Gyldenlöve? No? Surely not. Does not even Holy Writ tell of witches and evil sorceries? Indeed and indeed it does. What I was about to say is that all our humors have their seat in the blood. If a man is fired with anger, can’t he feel the blood rushing up through his body and flooding his eyes and ears? And if he’s frightened o’ the sudden, does not the blood seem to sink down into his feet and grow cold all in a trice? Is it for nothing, do you think, that grief is pale and joy red as a rose? And as for love, it comes only after the blood has ripened in the summers and winters of seventeen or eighteen years; then it begins to ferment like good grape-wine; it seethes and bubbles. In later years it clears and settles as do other fermenting juices; it grows less hot and fierce. But as good wine begins to effervesce again when the grape-vine is in bloom, so the disposition of man, even of the old, is more than ordinarily inclined to love at certain seasons of the year, when the blood, as it were, remembers the springtime of life.”
“Ay, the blood,” added Oluf Daa, “as a man may say, the blood—’tis a subtle matter to understand—as a man may say.”
“Indeed,” nodded Mistress Rigitze, “everything acts on the blood, both sun and moon and approaching storm, that’s as sure as if ’twere printed.”
“And likewise the thoughts of other people,” said Mistress Ide. “I saw it in my eldest sister. We lay in one bed together, and every night, as soon as her eyes were closed, she would begin to sigh and stretch her arms and legs and try to get out of bed as some one were calling her. And ’twas but her betrothed, who was in Holland, and was sofull of longing for her that he would do nothing day and night but think of her, until she never knew an hour’s peace, and her health—don’t you remember, dear Mistress Sidsel, how weak her eyesight was all the time Jörgen Bille was from home?”
“Do I remember? Ah, the dear soul! But she bloomed again like a rosebud. Bless me, her first lying-in—” and she continued the subject in a whisper.
Rosenkrands turned to Axel Urup. “Then you believe,” he said, “that anelixir d’am-ouris a fermenting juice poured into the blood? That tallies well with a tale the late Mr. Ulrik Christian told me one day we were on the ramparts together. ’Twas in Antwerp it happened—in the Hotellerie des Trois Brochets, where he had lodgings. That morning at ma-ass he had seen a fair, fair maid-en, and she had looked quite kind-ly at him. All day long she was not in his thoughts, but at night when he entered his chamber, there was a rose at the head of the bed. He picked it up and smelled it, and in the same mo-ment the coun-ter-feit of the maiden stood before him as painted on the wall, and he was seized with such sudden and fu-rious longing for her that he could have cried aloud. He rushed out of the house and into the street, and there he ran up and down, wail-ing like one be-witched. Something seemed to draw and draw him and burn like fire, and he never stopped till day dawned.”
So they talked until the sun went down, and they parted to go home through the darkening streets. Ulrik Frederik joined but little in the general conversation; for he was afraid that if he said anything about love, it might be taken for reminiscences of his relation with Sofie Urne. Nor was he in the mood for talking, and when he and Rosenkrandswere alone he made such brief, absentminded replies that his companion soon wearied of him and left him to himself.
Ulrik Frederik turned homeward to his own apartments, which this time were at Rosenborg. His valet being out, there was no light in the large parlor, and he sat alone there in the dark till almost midnight.
He was in a strange mood, divided between regret and foreboding. It was one of those moods when the soul seems to drift as in a light sleep, without will or purpose, on a slowly gliding stream, while mist-like pictures pass on the background of dark trees, and half-formed thoughts rise from the sombre stream like great dimly-lit bubbles that glide—glide onward and burst. Bits of the conversation that afternoon, the motley crowds in the churchyard, Marie Grubbe’s smile, Mistress Rigitze, the Queen, the King’s favor, the King’s anger that other time,—the way Marie moved her hands, Sofie Urne, pale and far away,—yet paler and yet farther away,—the rose at the head of the bed and Marie Grubbe’s voice, the cadence of some word,—he sat listening and heard it again and again winging through the silence.
He rose and went to the window, opened it, and leaned his elbows on the wide casement. How fresh it all was—so cool and quiet! The bittersweet smell of roses cooled with dew, the fresh, pungent scent of new-mown hay, and the spicy fragrance of the flowering maple were wafted in. A mist-like rain spread a blue, tremulous dusk over the garden. The black boughs of the larch, the drooping leafy veil of the birch, and the rounded crowns of the beech stood like shadows breathed on a background of gliding mist, while the clipped yew-trees shot upward like the black columns of a roofless temple.
The stillness was that of a deep grave, save for the raindrops, falling light as thistledown, with a faint, monotonous sound like a whisper that dies and begins again and dies there behind the wet, glistening trunks.
What a strange whisper it was when one listened! How wistful!—like the beating of soft wings when old memories flock. Or was it a low rustle in the dry leaves of lost illusions? He felt lonely, drearily alone and forsaken. Among all the thousands of hearts that beat round about in the stillness of the night, not one turned in longing to him! Over all the earth there was a net of invisible threads binding soul to soul, threads stronger than life, stronger than death; but in all that net not one tendril stretched out to him. Homeless, forsaken! Forsaken? Was that a sound of goblets and kisses out there? Was there a gleam of white shoulders and dark eyes? Was that a laugh ringing through the stillness?—What then? Better the slow-dripping bitterness of solitude than that poisonous, sickly sweetness.... Oh, curses on it! I shake your dust from my thoughts, slothful life, life for dogs, for blind men, for weaklings.... As a rose! O God, watch over her and keep her through the dark night! Oh, that I might be her guard and protector, smooth every path, shelter her against every wind—so beautiful—listening like a child—as a rose!...
ADMIRED and courted though she was, Marie Grubbe soon found that, while she had escaped from the nursery, she was not fully admitted to the circles of the grown up. For all the flatteries lavished on them, such young maidens were kept in their own place in society. They were made to feel it by a hundred trifles that in themselves meant nothing, but when taken together meant a great deal. First of all, the children were insufferably familiar, quite like their equals. And then the servants—there was a well-defined difference in the manner of the old footman when he took the cloak of a maid or a matron, and the faintest shade in the obliging smile of the chambermaid showed her sense of whether she was waiting on a married or an unmarried woman. The free-and-easy tone which the half-grown younkers permitted themselves was most unpleasant, and the way in which snubbings and icy looks simply slid off from them was enough to make one despair.
She liked best the society of the younger men, for even when they were not in love with her, they would show her the most delicate attention and say the prettiest things with a courtly deference that quite raised her in her own estimation,—though to be sure it was tiresome when she found that they did it chiefly to keep in practice. Some of the older gentlemen were simply intolerable with their fulsome compliments and their mock gallantry, but the married women were worst of all, especially the brides. The encouraging, though a bit preoccupied glance, the slight condescending nod with head to one side, and the smile—half pitying, half jeering—with which they would listen to her—it was insulting! Moreover, the conduct of thegirls themselves was not of a kind to raise their position. They would never stand together, but if one could humiliate another, she was only too glad to do so. They had no idea of surrounding themselves with an air of dignity by attending to the forms of polite society the way the young married women did.
Her position was not enviable, and when Mistress Rigitze let fall a few words to the effect that she and other members of the family had been considering a match between Marie and Ulrik Frederik, she received the news with joy. Though Ulrik Frederik had not taken her fancy captive, a marriage with him opened a wide vista of pleasant possibilities. When all the honors and advantages had been described to her—how she would be admitted into the inner court circle, the splendor in which she would live, the beaten track to fame and high position that lay before Ulrik Frederik as the natural son and even more as the especial favorite of the King,—while she made a mental note of how handsome he was, how courtly, and how much in love,—it seemed that such happiness was almost too great to be possible, and her heart sank at the thought that, after all, it was nothing but loose talk, schemes, and hopes.
Yet Mistress Rigitze was building on firm ground, for not only had Ulrik Frederik confided in her and begged her to be his spokesman with Marie, but he had induced her to sound the gracious pleasure of the King and Queen, and they had both received the idea very kindly and had given their consent, although the King had felt some hesitation to begin with. The match had, in fact, been settled long since by the Queen and her trusted friend and chief gentlewoman, Mistress Rigitze, but the King was not moved only by the persuasions of his consort. He knewthat Marie Grubbe would bring her husband a considerable fortune, and although Ulrik Frederik held Vordingborg in fief, his love of pomp and luxury made constant demands upon the King, who was always hard pressed for money. Upon her marriage Marie would come into possession of her inheritance from her dead mother, Mistress Marie Juul, while her father, Erik Grubbe, was at that time owner of the manors of Tjele, Vinge, Gammelgaard, Bigum, Trinderup, and Nörbæk, besides various scattered holdings. He was known as a shrewd manager who wasted nothing, and would no doubt leave his daughter a large fortune. So all was well. Ulrik Frederik could go courting without more ado, and a week after midsummer their betrothal was solemnized.
Ulrik Frederik was very much in love, but not with the stormy infatuation he had felt when Sofie Urne ruled his heart. It was a pensive, amorous, almost wistful sentiment, rather than a fresh, ruddy passion. Marie had told him the story of her dreary childhood, and he liked to picture to himself her sufferings with something of the voluptuous pity that thrills a young monk when he fancies the beautiful white body of the female martyr bleeding on the sharp spikes of the torture-wheel. Sometimes he would be troubled with dark forebodings that an early death might tear her from his arms. Then he would vow to himself with great oaths that he would bear her in his hands and keep every poisonous breath from her, that he would lead the light of every gold-shining mood into her young heart and never, never grieve her.
Yet there were other times when he exulted at the thought that all this rich beauty, this strange, wonderful soul were given into his power as the soul of a dead maninto the hands of God, to grind in the dust if he liked, to raise up when he pleased, to crush down, to bend.
It was partly Marie’s own fault that such thoughts could rise in him, for her love, if she did love, was of a strangely proud, almost insolent nature. It would be but a halting image to say that her love for the late Ulrik Christian had been like a lake whipped and tumbled by a storm, while her love for Ulrik Frederik was the same water in the evening, becalmed, cold, and glassy, stirred but by the breaking of frothy bubbles among the dark reeds of the shore. Yet the simile would have some truth, for not only was she cold and calm toward her lover, but the bright myriad dreams of life that thronged in the wake of her first passion had paled and dissolved in the drowsy calm of her present feeling.
She loved Ulrik Frederik after a fashion, but might it not be chiefly as the magic wand opening the portals to the magnificent pageant of life, and might it not be the pageant that she really loved? Sometimes it would seem otherwise. When she sat on his knee in the twilight and sang little airs about Daphne and Amaryllis to her own accompaniment, the song would die away, and while her fingers played with the strings of the cithern, she would whisper in his waiting ear words so sweet and warm that no true love owns them sweeter, and there were tender tears in her eyes that could be only the dew of love’s timid unrest. And yet—might it not be that her longing was conjuring up a mere mood, rooted in the memories of her past feeling, sheltered by the brooding darkness, fed by hot blood and soft music,—a mood that deceived herself and made him happy? Or was it nothing but maidenly shyness that made her chary of endearments by the light of day, and was it nothing butgirlish fear of showing a girl’s weakness that made her eyes mock and her lips jeer many a time when he asked for a kiss or, vowing love, would draw from her the words all lovers long to hear? Why was it, then, that when she was alone, and her imagination had wearied of picturing for the thousandth time the glories of the future, she would often sit gazing straight before her hopelessly, and feel unutterably lonely and forsaken?
In the early afternoon of an August day Marie and Ulrik Frederik were riding, as often before, along the sandy road that skirted the Sound beyond East Gate. The air was fresh after a morning shower, the sun stood mirrored in the water, and blue thunder-clouds were rolling away in the distance.
They cantered as quickly as the road would allow them, a lackey in a long crimson coat following closely. They rode past the gardens where green apples shone under dark leaves, past fish-nets hung to dry with the raindrops still glistening in their meshes, past the King’s fisheries with red-tiled roof, and past the glue-boiler’s house, where the smoke rose straight as a column out of a chimney. They jested and laughed, smiled and laughed, and galloped on.
At the sign of the Golden Grove they turned and rode through the woods toward Overdrup, then walked their horses through the underbrush down to the bright surface of the lake. Tall beeches leaned to mirror their green vault in the clear water. Succulent marsh-grass and pale pink feather-foil made a wide motley border where the slope, brown with autumn leaves, met the water. High in the shelter of the foliage, in a ray of light that pierced the cool shadow, mosquitoes whirled in a noiseless swarm. A red butterfly gleamed there for a second, then flew out into thesunlight over the lake. Steel-blue dragon-flies made bright streaks through the air, and the darting pike drew swift wavy lines over the surface of the water. Hens were cackling in the farm-yard beyond the brushwood, and from the other side of the lake came a note of wood-doves cooing under the domes of the beech-trees in Dyrehaven.
They slackened their speed and rode out into the water to let their horses dabble their dusty hoofs and quench their thirst. Marie had stopped a little farther out than Ulrik Frederik, and sat with reins hanging in order to let her mare lower its head freely. She was tearing the leaves from a long branch in her hand, and sent them fluttering down over the water, which was beginning to stir in soft ripples.
“I think we may get a thunder-storm,” she said, her eyes following the course of a light wind that went whirling over the lake, raising round, dark, roughened spots on the surface.
“Perhaps we had better turn back,” suggested Ulrik Frederik.
“Not for gold!” she answered and suddenly drove her mare to the shore. They walked their horses round the lake to the road and entered the tall woods.
“I would I knew,” said Marie, when she felt the cool air of the forest fan her cheeks and drew in its freshness in long, deep breaths. “I would I knew—” She got no further, but stopped and looked up into the green vault with shining eyes.
“What wouldst thou know, dear heart?”
“I’m thinking there’s something in the forest air that makes sensible folks mad. Many’s the time I have been walking in Bigum woods, when I would keep on running and running, till I got into the very thickest of it. I’d bewild with glee and sing at the top of my voice and walk and pick flowers and throw them away again and call to the birds, when they flew up—and then, on the sudden, a strange fright would come over me, and I would feel, oh! so wretched and so small! Whenever a branch broke I’d start, and the sound of my own voice gave me more fright than anything else. Hast thou never felt it?”
Before Ulrik Frederik could answer her song rang out:
“Right merrily in the woods I goWhere elm and apple grow,And I pluck me there sweet roses twoAnd deck my silken shoe.Oh, the dance,Oh, the dance,Oh, tra-la-la!Oh, the red, red berries on the dogrose bush!”
“Right merrily in the woods I goWhere elm and apple grow,And I pluck me there sweet roses twoAnd deck my silken shoe.Oh, the dance,Oh, the dance,Oh, tra-la-la!Oh, the red, red berries on the dogrose bush!”
and as she sang, the whip flew down over her horse, she laughed, hallooed, and galloped at top speed along a narrow forest path, where the branches swept her shoulders. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks burned, she did not heed Ulrik Frederik calling after her. The whip whizzed through the air again, and off she went with reins slack! Her fluttering habit was flecked with foam. The soft earth flew up around her horse. She laughed and cut the tall ferns with her whip.
Suddenly the light seemed to be lifted from leaf and branch and to flee from the rain-heavy darkness. The rustling of the bushes had ceased, and the hoof-beats were silent, as she rode across a stretch of forest glade. On either side the trees stood like a dark encircling wall. Ragged gray clouds were scudding over the black, loweringheavens. Before her rolled the murky blue waters of the Sound, and beyond rose banks of fog. She drew rein, and her tired mount stopped willingly. Ulrik Frederik galloped past, swung back in a wide circle, and halted at her side.
At that moment a shower fell like a gray, heavy, wet curtain drawn slantwise over the Sound. An icy wind flattened the grass, whizzed in their ears, and made a noise like foaming waves in the distant tree-tops. Large flat hailstones rattled down over them in white sheets, settled like bead strings in the folds of her dress, fell in a spray from the horses’ manes, and skipped and rolled in the grass as though swarming out of the earth.
They sought shelter under the trees, rode down to the beach, and presently halted before the low door of the Bide-a-Wee Tavern. A stable-boy took the horses, and the tall, bareheaded inn-keeper showed them into his parlor, where, he said, there was another guest before them. It proved to be Hop-o’-my-Thumb, who rose at their entrance, offering to give up the room to their highnesses, but Ulrik Frederik graciously bade him remain.
“Stay here, my man,” he said, “and entertain us in this confounded weather. I must tell you, my dear,”—turning to Marie,—“that this insignificant mannikin is the renowned comedian and merry-andrew of ale-houses, Daniel Knopf, well learned in all the liberal arts such as dicing, fencing, drinking, shrovetide sports, and such matters, otherwise in fair repute as an honorable merchant in the good city of Copenhagen.”
Daniel scarcely heard this eulogy. He was absorbed in looking at Marie Grubbe and formulating some graceful words of felicitation, but when Ulrik Frederik roused himwith a sounding blow on his broad back, his face flushed with resentment and embarrassment. He turned to him angrily, but mastered himself, and said with his coldest smile: “We’re scarce tipsy enough, Colonel.”
Ulrik Frederik laughed and poked his side, crying: “Oh, you sacred knave! Would you put me to confusion, you plaguy devil, and make me out a wretched braggart who lacks parchments to prove his boasting? Fie, fie, out upon you! Is that just? Have I not a score of times praised your wit before this noble lady, till she has time and again expressed the greatest longing to see and hear your far-famed drolleries? You might at least give us the blind Cornelius Fowler and his whistling birds, or play the trick—you know—with the sick cock and the clucking hens!”
Marie now added her persuasions, saying that Colonel Gyldenlöve was quite right, she had often wondered what pastime, what fine and particular sport, could keep young gentlemen in filthy ale-houses for half days and whole nights together, and she begged that Daniel would oblige them without further urging.
Daniel bowed with perfect grace and replied that his poor pranks were rather of a kind to give fuddled young sparks added occasion for roaring and bawling than to amuse a dainty and highborn young maiden. Nevertheless, he would put on his best speed to do her pleasure, for none should ever say it of him that any command from her fair ladyship had failed of instant obedience and execution.
“Look ’ee!” he began, throwing himself down by the table and sticking out his elbows. “Now I’m a whole assembly of your betrothed’s honorable companions and especial good friends.”
He took a handful of silver dollars from his pocket andlaid them on the table, pulled his hair down over his eyes, and dropped his lower lip stupidly.
“Devil melt me!” he drawled, rattling the coins like dice. “I’m not the eldest son of the honorable Erik Kaase for nothing! What! you’d doubt my word, you muckworm? I flung ten, hell consume me, ten with a jingle! Can’t you see, you dog? I’m asking if you can’t see?—you blind lamprey, you! Or d’ye want me to rip your guts with my stinger and give your liver and lungs a chance to see too? Shall I—huh? You ass!”
Daniel jumped up and pulled a long face.
“You’d challenge me, would you?” he said hoarsely with a strong North Skaane accent, “you stinkard, you! D’you know whom you’re challenging? So take me king o’ hell, I’ll strike your—Nay, nay,” he dropped into his natural voice, “that’s perhaps too strong a jest to begin with. Try another!”
He sat down, folded his hands on the edge of his knees as though to make room for his stomach, puffed himself up, fat and heavy jowled, then whistled firmly and thoughtfully but in an altogether too slow tempo the ballad of Roselil and Sir Peter. Then he stopped, rolled his eyes amorously, and called in fond tones:
“Cockatoo—cockadoodle-doo!” He began to whistle again, but had some difficulty in combining it with an ingratiating smile. “Little sugar-top!” he called, “little honey-dew, come to me, little chuck! P’st! Will it lap wine, little kitty? Lap nice sweet wine from little cruse?”
Again he changed his voice, leaned forward in his chair, winked with one eye, and crooked his fingers to comb an imaginary beard.
“Now stay here,” he said coaxingly, “stay here, fairKaren; I’ll never forsake you, and you must never forsake me,”—his voice grew weepy,—“we’ll never part, my dear, dear heart, never in the world! Silver and gold and honor and glory and precious noble blood—begone! I curse you! Begone! I say. You’re a hundred heavens high above them, the thing of beauty you are! Though they’ve scutcheons and emblems—would that make ’em any better? You’ve got an emblem, too—the red mark on your white shoulder that Master Anders burned with his hot iron, that’s your coat-of-arms! I spit on my scutcheon to kiss that mark—that’s all I think of scutcheons—that’s all! For there isn’t in all the land of Sjælland a high-born lady as lovely as you are—is there, huh? No, there isn’t—not a bit of one!”
“That’s—that’s a lie!” he cried in a new voice, jumped up, and shook his fist over the table. “My Mistress Ide, you blockhead, she’s got a shape—as a man may say—she’s got limbs—as a man may say—limbs, I tell you, you slubberdegulleon!”
At this point Daniel was about to let himself fall into the chair again, but at that moment Ulrik Frederik pulled it away, and he rolled on the floor. Ulrik Frederik laughed uproariously, but Marie ran to him with hands outstretched as though to help him up. The little man, half rising on his knees, caught her hand and gazed at her with an expression so full of gratitude and devotion that it haunted her for a long time. Presently they rode home, and none of them thought that this chance meeting in the Bide-a-Wee Tavern would lead to anything further.
THE States-General that convened in Copenhagen in the late autumn brought to town many of the nobility, all anxious to guard their ancient rights against encroachment, but none the less eager for a little frolic after the busy summer. Nor were they averse to flaunting their wealth and magnificence in the faces of the townspeople, who had grown somewhat loud-voiced since the war, and to reminding them that the line between gentlemen of the realm and the unfree mob was still firm and immutable, in spite of the privileges conferred by royalty, in spite of citizen valor and the glamor of victory, in spite of the teeming ducats in the strong boxes of the hucksters.
The streets were bright with throngs of noblemen and their ladies, bedizened lackeys, and richly caparisoned horses in silver-mounted harness. There was feasting and open house in the homes of the nobility. Far into the night the violin sounded from well-lit halls, telling the sleepy citizens that the best blood of the realm was warming to a stately dance over parquet floors, while the wine sparkled in ancestral goblets.
All these festivities passed Marie Grubbe by; none invited her. Because of their ties to the royal family, some of the Grubbes were suspected of siding with the King against the Estate, and moreover the good old nobility cordially hated that rather numerous upper aristocracy formed by the natural children of the kings and their relatives. Marie was therefore slighted for a twofold reason, and as the court lived in retirement during the session of the States-General, it offered her no compensation.
It seemed hard at first, but soon it woke the latentdefiance of her nature and made her draw closer to Ulrik Frederik. She loved him more tenderly for the very reason that she felt herself being wronged for his sake. So when the two were quietly married on the sixteenth of December, sixteen hundred and sixty, there was the best reason to believe that she would live happily with the Master of the King’s Hunt, which was the title and office Ulrik Frederik had won as his share of the favors distributed by triumphant royalty.
This private ceremony was not in accordance with the original plan, for it had long been the intention of the King to celebrate their wedding in the castle, as Christian the Fourth had done that of Hans Ulrik and Mistress Rigitze, but at the eleventh hour he had scruples and decided, in consideration of Ulrik Frederik’s former marriage and divorce, to refrain from public display.
So now they are married and settled, and time passes, and time flies, and all is well—and time slackened its speed, and time crawled; for it is true, alas! that when Leander and Leonora have lived together for half a year, the glory is often departed from Leander’s love, though Leonora usually loves him much more tenderly than in the days of their betrothal. She is like the small children, who find the old story new, no matter how often it is told with the very same words, the same surprises, and the self-same “Snip, snap, snout, my tale’s out,” while Leander is more exacting and grows weary as soon as his feeling no longer makes him new to himself. When he ceases to be intoxicated, he suddenly becomes more than sober. The flush and glamor of his ecstasy, which for a while gave him the assurance of a demigod, suddenly departs; he hesitates, he thinks, and beginsto doubt. He looks back at the chequered course of his passion, heaves a sigh, and yawns. He is beset with longing, like one who has come home after a lengthy sojourn in foreign parts, and sees the altogether too familiar though long-forgotten spots before him; as he looks at them, he wonders idly whether he has really been gone from this well-known part of the world so long.
In such a mood, Ulrik Frederik sat at home one rainy day in September. He had called in his dogs and had frolicked with them for a while, had tried to read, and had played a game of backgammon with Marie. The rain was pouring. It was impossible to go walking or riding, and so he had sought his armory, as he called it, thinking he would polish and take stock of his treasures—this was just the day for it! It occurred to him that he had inherited a chest of weapons from Ulrik Christian; he had ordered it brought down from the attic, and sat lifting out one piece after another.
There were splendid rapiers of bluish steel inlaid with gold, or silvery bright with dull engraving. There were hunting-knives, some heavy and one-edged, some long and flexible like tongues of flame, some three-edged and sharp as needles. There were toledo blades, many toledos, light as reeds and flexible as willows, with hilts of silver and jasper agate, or of chased gold or gold and carbuncles. One had nothing but a hilt of etched steel, and for a sword-knot a little silk ribbon embroidered in roses and vines with red glass beads and green floss. It must be either a bracelet, a cheap bracelet, or—Ulrik Frederik thought—more likely a garter, and the rapier was stuck through it.
It comes from Spain, said Ulrik Frederik to himself, for the late owner had served in the Spanish army for nineyears. Alack-a-day! He too was to have entered foreign service with Carl Gustaf; but then came the war, and now he supposed he would never have a chance to get out and try his strength, and yet he was but three and twenty. To live forever here at this tiresome little court,—doubly tiresome since the nobility stayed at home,—to hunt a little, look to his estate once in a while, some time in the future by the grace of the King to be made Privy Councillor of the Realm and be knighted, keep on the right side of Prince Christian and retain his office, now and then be sent on a tedious embassy to Holland, grow old, get the rheumatism, die, and be buried in Vor Frue Church,—such was the brilliant career that stretched before him. And now they were fighting down in Spain! There was glory to be won, a life to be lived—that was where the rapier and the sword-knot came from. No, he must speak to the King. It was still raining, and it was a long way to Frederiksborg, but there was no help for it. He could not wait; the matter must be settled.
The King liked his scheme. Contrary to his custom, he assented at once, much to the surprise of Ulrik Frederik, who during his whole ride had debated with himself all the reasons that made his plan difficult, unreasonable, impossible. But the King said Yes, he might leave before Christmas. By that time the preparations could be completed and an answer received from the King of Spain.
The reply came in the beginning of December, but Ulrik Frederik did not start until the middle of April; for there was much to be done. Money had to be raised, retainers equipped, letters written. Finally he departed.
Marie Grubbe was ill pleased with this trip to Spain. It is true, she saw the justice of Mistress Rigitze’s argumentthat it was necessary for Ulrik Frederik to go abroad and win honor and glory, in order that the King might do something handsome for him; for although his Majesty had been made an absolute monarch, he was sensitive to what people said, and the noblemen had grown so captious and perverse that they would be sure to put the very worst construction on anything the King might do. Yet women have an inborn dread of all farewells, and in this case there was much to fear. Even if she could forget the chances of war and the long, dangerous journey, and tell herself that a king’s son would be well taken care of, yet she could not help her foreboding that their life together might suffer such a break by a separation of perhaps more than a year that it would never be the same again. Their love was yet so lightly rooted, and just as it had begun to grow, it was to be mercilessly exposed to ill winds and danger. Was it not almost like going out deliberately to lay it waste? And one thing she had learned in her brief married life: the kind of marriage she had thought so easy in the days of her betrothal, that in which man and wife go each their own way, could mean only misery with all darkness and no dawn. The wedge had entered their outward life; God forbid that it should pierce to their hearts! Yet it was surely tempting fate to open the door by such a parting.
Moreover, she was sadly jealous of all the light papistical feminine rabble in the land and dominions of Spain.
Frederik the Third, who, like many sovereigns of his time, was much interested in the art of transmuting baser metals into gold, had charged Ulrik Frederik when he came to Amsterdam to call on a renowned alchemist, the Italian Burrhi, and to drop a hint that if he should think of visitingDenmark, the King and the wealthy Christian Skeel of Sostrup would make it worth his while.
When Ulrik Frederik arrived in Amsterdam, he therefore asked Ole Borch, who was studying there and knew Burrhi well, to conduct him to the alchemist. They found him a man in the fifties, below middle height, and with a tendency to fat, but erect and springy in his movements. His hair and his narrow moustache were black, his nose was hooked and rather thick, his face full and yellow in color; from the corners of his small, glittering black eyes innumerable furrows and lines spread out like a fan, giving him an expression at once sly and goodhumored. He wore a black velvet coat with wide collar and cuffs and crape-covered silver buttons, black knee-breeches and silk stockings, and shoes with large black rosettes. His taste for fine lace appeared in the edging on his cravat and shirt bosom and in the ruffles that hung in thick folds around his wrists and knees. His hands were small, white, and chubby, and were loaded with rings of such strange, clumsy shapes that he could not bring the tips of his fingers together. Large brilliants glittered even on his thumbs. As soon as they were seated, he remarked that he was troubled with cold hands and stuck them in a large fur muff, although it was summer.
The room into which he conducted Ulrik Frederik was large and spacious, with a vaulted ceiling and narrow Gothic windows set high in the walls. Chairs were ranged around a large centre table, their wooden seats covered with soft cushions of red silk, from which hung long, heavy tassels. The top of the table was inlaid with a silver plate on which the twelve signs of the zodiac, the planets, and some of the more important constellations were done in niello. Above it, a string of ostrich eggs hung from the ceiling. The floorhad been painted in a chequered design of red and gray, and near the door a triangle was formed by old horseshoes that had been fitted into the boards. A large coral tree stood under one window, and a cupboard of dark carved wood with brass mountings was placed under the other. A life-size doll representing a Moor was set in one corner, and along the walls lay blocks of tin and copper ore. The blackamoor held a dried palm leaf in his hand.
When they were seated and the first interchange of amenities was over, Ulrik Frederik—they were speaking in French—asked whether Burrhi would not with his learning and experience come to the aid of the searchers after wisdom in the land of Denmark.
Burrhi shook his head.
“’Tis known to me,” he replied, “that the secret art has many great and powerful votaries in Denmark, but I have imparted instruction to so many royal gentlemen and church dignitaries, and while I will not say that ingratitude or meagre appreciation have always been my appointed portion, yet have I encountered so much captiousness and lack of understanding, that I am unwilling to assume again the duties of a master to such distinguished scholars. I do not know what rule or method the King of Denmark employs in his investigations, and my remarks can therefore contain no disparagement of him, but I can assure you in confidence that I have known gentlemen of the highest nobility in the land, nay, anointed rulers and hereditary kings, who have been so ignorant of theirhistoria naturalisandmateria magicathat the most lowborn quacksalver could not entertain such vulgar superstitions as they do. They even put their faith in that widely disseminated though shameful delusion that making gold is like concocting asleeping-potion or a healing-pillula, that if one has the correct ingredients, ’tis but to mix them together, set them over the fire, and lo! the gold is there. Such lies are circulated by catch-pennies and ignoramuses—whom may the devil take! Cannot the fools understand that if ’twere so simple a process, the world would be swimming in gold? For although learned authors have held, and surely with reason, that only a certain part of matter can be clarified in the form of gold, yet even so we should be flooded. Nay, the art of the gold-maker is costly and exacting. It requires a fortunate hand, and there must be certain constellations and conjunctions in the ascendant, if the gold is to flow properly. ’Tis not every year that matter is equally gold-yielding. You have but to remember that it is no mere distillation nor sublimation, but a very re-creating of nature that is to take place. Nay, I will dare to say that a tremor passes over the abodes of the spirits of nature whenever a portion of the pure, bright metal is freed from the thousand-year-old embrace ofmateria vilis.”
“Forgive my question,” said Ulrik Frederik, “but do not these occult arts imperil the soul of him who practises them?”
“Indeed no,” said Burrhi; “how can you harbor such a thought? What magician was greater than Solomon, whose seal, the great as well as the small, has been wondrously preserved to us unto this day? And who imparted to Moses the power of conjuring? Was it not Sabaoth, the spirit of the storm, the terrible one?” He pressed the stone in one of his rings to his lips. “’Tis true,” he continued, “that we know great names of darkness and awful words, yea, fearful mystic signs, which if they be used for evil, as many witches and warlocks and vulgar soothsayers usethem, instantly bind the soul of him who names them in the fetters of Gehenna, but we call upon them only to free the sacred primordial element from its admixture of and pollution by dust and earthly ashes; for that is the true nature of gold, it is the original matter that was in the beginning and gave light, before the sun and the moon had been set in their appointed places in the vault of heaven.”
They talked thus at length about alchemy and other occult arts, until Ulrik Frederik asked whether Burrhi had been able to cast his horoscope by the aid of the paper he had sent him through Ole Borch a few days earlier.
“In its larger aspects,” replied Burrhi, “I might prognosticate your fate, but when the nativity is not cast in the very hour a child is born, we fail to get all the more subtle phenomena, and the result is but little to be depended upon. Yet some things I know. Had you been of citizen birth and in the position of a humble physician, then I should have had but joyful tidings for you. As it is, your path through the world is not so clear. Indeed, the custom is in many ways to be deplored by which the son of an artisan becomes an artisan, the merchant’s son a merchant, the farmer’s son a farmer, and so on throughout all classes. The misfortune of many men is due to nothing else but their following another career than that which the stars in the ascendant at the time of their birth would indicate. Thus if a man born under the sign of the ram in the first section becomes a soldier, success will never attend him, but wounds, slow advancement, and early death will be his assured portion, whereas, if he had chosen a handicraft, such as working in stone or wrought metals, his course would have run smooth. One who is born under the sign of the fishes, if in the first section, should till the soil, or if he be a man of fortune,should acquire a landed estate, while he who is born in the latter part should follow the sea, whether it be as the skipper of a smack or as an admiral. The sign of the bull in the first part is for warriors, in the second part for lawyers. The twins, which were in the ascendant at the time of your birth, are, as I have said before, for physicians in the first part and for merchants in the second. But now let me see your palm.”
Ulrik Frederik held out his hand, and Burrhi went to the triangle of horseshoes, touching them with his shoes as a tight-rope dancer rubs his soles over the waxed board before venturing out on the line. Then he looked at the palm.
“Ay,” said he, “the honor-line is long and unbroken; it goes as far as it may go without reaching a crown. The luck-line is somewhat blurred for a time, but farther on it grows more distinct. There is the life-line; it seems but poor, I grieve to say. Take great care until you have passed the age of seven and twenty, for at that time your life is threatened in some sinister and secret fashion, but after that the line becomes clear and strong and reaches to a good old age. There is but one offshoot—ah, no, there is a smaller one hard by. You will have issue of two beds, but few in each.”
He dropped the hand.
“Hark,” he said gravely, “there is danger before you, but where it lurks is hidden from me. Yet it is in no wise the open danger of war. If it should be a fall or other accident of travel, I would have you take these triangular malachites, they are of a particular nature. See, I myself carry one of them in this ring; they guard against falling from horse or coach. Take them with you and carry themever on your breast, or if you have them set in a ring, cut away the gold behind them, for the stone must touch if it is to protect you. And here is a jasper. Do you see the design like a tree? It is very rare and most precious and good against stabbing in the dark and liquid poisons. Once more I pray you, my dear young gentleman, that you have a care, especially where women are concerned. Nothing definite is revealed to me, but there are signs of danger gleaming in the hand of a woman, yet I know nothing for a certainty, and it were well to guard also against false friends and traitorous servants, against cold waters and long nights.”
Ulrik Frederik accepted the gifts graciously, and did not neglect, the following day, to send the alchemist a costly necklace, as a token of his gratitude for his wise counsel and protecting stones. After that he proceeded directly to Spain without further interruption.
THE house seemed very quiet that spring day when the sound of horses’ hoofs had died away in the distance. In the flurry of leave-taking, the doors had been left open; the table was still set after Ulrik Frederik’s breakfast, with his napkin just as he had crumpled it at his plate, and the tracks of his great riding-boots were still wet on the floor. Over there by the tall pier-glass he had pressed her to his heart and kissed and kissed her in farewell, trying to comfort her with oaths and vows of a speedy return. Involuntarily she moved to the mirror as though to see whether it did not hold something of his image, as she had glimpsed it a moment ago, while locked in his arms. Her own lonely, drooping figure and pale, tear-stained face met her searching glance from behind the smooth, glittering surface.
She heard the street door close, and the lackey cleared the table. Ulrik Frederik’s favorite dogs, Nero, Passando, Rumor, and Delphine, had been locked in, and ran about the room, whimpering and sniffing his tracks. She tried to call them, but could not for weeping. Passando, the tall red fox-hound, came to her; she knelt down to stroke and caress the dog, but he wagged his tail in an absent-minded way, looked up into her face, and went on howling.
Those first days—how empty every thing was and dreary! The time dragged slowly, and the solitude seemed to hang over her, heavy and oppressive, while her longing would sometimes burn like salt in an open wound. Ay, it was so at first, but presently all this was no longer new, and the darkness and emptiness, the longing and grief, came again and again like snow that falls flake upon flake, until it seemed to wrap her in a strange, dull hopelessness,almost a numbness that made a comfortable shelter of her sorrow.
Suddenly all was changed. Every nerve was strung to the most acute sensitiveness, every vein throbbing with blood athirst for life, and her fancy teemed like the desert air with colorful images and luring forms. On such days she was like a prisoner who sees youth slip by, spring after spring, barren, without bloom, dull and empty, always passing, never coming. The sum of time seemed to be counted out with hours for pennies; at every stroke of the clock one fell rattling at her feet, crumbled, and was dust, while she would wring her hands in agonized life-hunger and scream with pain.
She appeared but seldom at court or in the homes of her family, for etiquette demanded that she should keep to the house. Nor was she in the mood to welcome visitors, and as they soon ceased coming, she was left entirely to herself. This lonely brooding and fretting soon brought on an indolent torpor, and she would sometimes lie in bed for days and nights at a stretch, trying to keep in a state betwixt waking and sleeping, which gave rise to fantastic visions. Far clearer than the misty dream pictures of healthy sleep, these images filled the place of the life she was missing.
Her irritability grew with every day, and the slightest noise was torture. Sometimes she would be seized with the strangest notions and with sudden mad impulses that might almost raise a doubt of her sanity. Indeed, there was perhaps but the width of a straw between madness and that curious longing to do some desperate deed, merely for the sake of doing it, without the least reason or even real desire for it.
Sometimes, when she stood at the open window, leaningagainst the casement and looking down into the paved court below, she would feel an overmastering impulse to throw herself down, merely to do it. But in that very second she seemed to have actually made the leap in her imagination and to have felt the cool, incisive tingling that accompanies a jump from a height. She darted back from the window to the inmost corner of the room, shaking with horror, the image of herself lying in her own blood on the hard stones so vivid in her mind that she had to go back to the window again and look down in order to drive it away.
Less dangerous and of a somewhat different nature was the fancy that would seize her when she looked at her own bare arm and traced, in a kind of fascination, the course of the blue and deep-violet veins under the white skin. She wanted to set her teeth in that white roundness, and she actually followed her impulse, biting like a fierce little animal mark upon mark, till she felt the pain and would stop and begin to fondle the poor maltreated arm.
At other times, when she was sitting quietly, she would be suddenly moved to go in and undress, only that she might wrap herself in a thick quilt of red silk and feel the smooth, cool surface against her skin, or put an ice-cold steel blade down her naked back. Of such whims she had many.
Finally, after an absence of fourteen months, Ulrik Frederik returned. It was a July night, and Marie lay sleepless, listening to the slow soughing of the wind, restless with anxious thoughts. For the last week she had been expecting Ulrik Frederik every hour of the day and night, longing for his arrival and fearing it. Would everything be as in olden times—fourteen months ago? Sometimes she thought no, then again yes. The truth was, she could notquite forgive him for that trip to Spain. She felt that she had aged in this long time, had grown timid and listless, while he would come fresh from the glamor and stir, full of youth and high spirits, finding her pale and faded, heavy of step and of mind, nothing like her old self. At first he would be strange and cold to her; she would feel all the more cast down, and he would turn from her, but she would never forsake him. No, no, she would watch over him like a mother, and when the world went against him he would come back to her, and she would comfort him and be kind to him, bear want for his sake, suffer and weep, do everything for him. At other times she thought that as soon as she saw him all must be as before; yes, they romped through the rooms like madcap pages; the walls echoed their laughter and revelry, the corners whispered of theirkisses—
With this fancy in her mind she fell into a light sleep. Her dreams were of noisy frolic, and when she awoke the noise was still there. Quick steps sounded on the stairs, the street door was thrown open, doors slammed, coaches rumbled, and horses’ hoofs scraped the cobblestones.
There he is! she thought, sprang up, caught the large quilt, and wrapping it round her, ran through the rooms. In the large parlor she stopped. A tallow dip was burning in a wooden candlestick on the floor, and a few of the tapers had been lit in the sconces, but the servant in his flurry had run away in the midst of his preparations. Some one was speaking outside. It was Ulrik Frederik’s voice, and she trembled with emotion.
The door was opened, and he rushed in, still wearing his hat and cloak. He would have caught her in his arms, but got only her hand, as she darted back. He looked so strange in his unfamiliar garb. He was tanned and stouter than ofold, and under his cloak he wore a queer dress, the like of which she had never seen. It was the new fashion of long waistcoat and fur-bordered coat, which quite changed his figure and made him still more unlike his old self.
“Marie!” he cried, “dear girl!” and he drew her to him, wrenching her wrist till she moaned with pain. He heard nothing. He was flustered with drink; for the night was not warm, and they had baited well in the last tavern. Marie’s struggles were of no avail, he kissed and fondled her wildly, immoderately. At last she tore herself away and ran into the next room, her cheeks flushed, her bosom heaving, but thinking that perhaps this was rather a queer welcome, she came back to him.
Ulrik Frederik was standing in the same spot, quite bewildered between his efforts to make his fuddled brain comprehend what was happening and his struggles to unhook the clasps of his cloak. His thoughts and his hands were equally helpless. When Marie went to him and unfastened his cloak, it occurred to him that perhaps it was all a joke, and he burst into a loud laugh, slapped his thigh, writhed and staggered, threatened Marie archly, and laughed with maudlin good nature. He was plainly trying to express something funny that had caught his fancy, started but could not find the words, and at last sank down on a chair, groaning and gasping, while a broad, fatuous smile spread over his face.
Gradually the smile gave place to a sottish gravity. He rose and stalked up and down in silent, displeased majesty, planted himself by the grate in front of Marie, one arm akimbo, the other resting on the mantel, and—still in his cups—looked down at her condescendingly. He made a long, potvaliant speech about his own greatness and the honor that had been shown him abroad, about the good fortunethat had befallen Marie when she, a common nobleman’s daughter, had become the bride of a man who might have brought home a princess of the blood. Without the slightest provocation, he went on to impress upon Marie that he meant to be master of his own house, and she must obey his lightest nod, he would brook no gainsaying, no, not a word, not one. However high he might raise her, she would always be his slave, his little slave, his sweet little slave, and at that he became as gentle as a sportive lynx, wept and wheedled. With all the importunity of a drunken man he forced upon her gross caresses and vulgar endearments, unavoidable, inescapable.
The next morning Marie awoke long before Ulrik Frederik. She looked almost with hatred on the sleeping figure at her side. Her wrist was swollen and ached from his violent greeting of the night before. He lay with muscular arms thrown back under his powerful, hairy neck. His broad chest rose and fell, breathing, it seemed to her, a careless defiance, and there was a vacant smile of satiety on his dull, moist lips.
She paled with anger and reddened with shame as she looked at him. Almost a stranger to her after their long parting, he had forced himself upon her, demanding her love as his right, cocksure that all the devotion and passion of her soul were his, just as he would be sure of finding his furniture standing where he left it when he went out. Confident of being missed, he had supposed that all her longings had taken wing from her trembling lips to him in the distance, and that the goal of all her desire was his own broad breast.
When Ulrik Frederik came out he found her half sitting, half reclining on a couch in the blue room. She was pale,her features relaxed, her eyes downcast, and the injured hand lay listlessly in her lap wrapped in a lace handkerchief. He would have taken it, but she languidly held out her left hand to him and leaned her head back with a pained smile.
Ulrik Frederik kissed the hand she gave him and made a joking excuse for his condition the night before, saying that he had never been decently drunk all the time he had been in Spain, for the Spaniards knew nothing about drinking. Besides, if the truth were told, he liked the homemade alicant and malaga wine from Johan Lehn’s dram-shop and Bryhans’ cellar better than the genuine sweet devilry they served down there.
Marie made no reply.
The breakfast table was set, and Ulrik Frederik asked if they should not fall to, but she begged him to pardon her letting him eat alone. She wanted nothing, and her hand hurt; he had quite bruised it. When his guilt was thus brought home to him he was bound to look at the injured hand and kiss it, but Marie quickly hid it in a fold of her dress, with a glance—he said—like a tigress defending her helpless cub. He begged long, but it was of no use, and at last he sat down to the table laughing, and ate with an appetite that roused a lively displeasure in Marie. Yet he could not sit still. Every few minutes he would jump up and run to the window to look out; for the familiar street scenes seemed to him new and curious. With all this running, his breakfast was soon scattered about the room, his beer in one window, the bread-knife in another, his napkin slung over the vase of the gilded Gueridon, and a bun on the little table in the corner.
At last he had done eating and settled down at the window.As he looked out, he kept talking to Marie, who from her couch made brief answers or none at all. This went on for a little while, until she came over to the window where he sat, sighed, and gazed out drearily.
Ulrik Frederik smiled and assiduously turned his signet ring round on his finger. “Shall I breathe on the sick hand?” he asked in a plaintive, pitying tone.
Marie tore the handkerchief from her hand and continued to look out without a word.
“’Twill take cold, the poor darling,” he said, glancing up.
Marie stood resting the injured hand carelessly on the window-sill. Presently she began drumming with her fingers as on a keyboard, back and forth, from the sunshine into the shadow of the casement, then from the shadow to the sunlight again.
Ulrik Frederik looked on with a smile of pleasure at the beautiful pale hand as it toyed on the casement, gamboled like a frisky kitten, crouched as for a spring, set its back, darted toward the bread-knife, turned the handle round and round, crawled back, lay flat on the window-sill, then stole softly toward the knife again, wound itself round the hilt, lifted the blade to let it play in the sunlight, flew up with theknife—
In a flash the knife descended on his breast, but he warded it off, and it simply cut through his long lace cuff into his sleeve, as he hurled it to the floor and sprang up with a cry of horror, upsetting his chair, all in a second as with a single motion.
Marie was pale as death. She pressed her hands against her breast, and her eyes were fixed in terror on the spot where Ulrik Frederik had been sitting. A harsh, lifelesslaughter forced itself between her lips, and she sank down on the floor, noiselessly and slowly, as if supported by invisible hands. While she stood playing with the knife, she had suddenly noticed that the lace of Ulrik Frederik’s shirt had slipped aside, revealing his chest, and a senseless impulse had come over her to plunge the bright blade into that white breast, not from any desire to kill or wound, but only because the knife was cold and the breast warm, or perhaps because her hand was weak and aching while the breast was strong and sound, but first and last because she could not help it, because her will had no power over her brain and her brain no power over her will.
Ulrik Frederik stood pale, supporting his palms on the table, which shook under his trembling till the dishes slid and rattled. As a rule, he was not given to fear nor wanting in courage, but this thing had come like a bolt out of the blue, so utterly senseless and incomprehensible that he could only look on the unconscious form stretched on the floor by the window with the same terror that he would have felt for a ghost. Burrhi’s words about the danger that gleamed in the hand of a woman rang in his ears, and he sank to his knees praying; for all reasonable security, all common-sense safeguards seemed gone from this earthly life together with all human foresight. Clearly the heavens themselves were taking sides; unknown spirits ruled, and fate was determined by supernatural powers and signs. Why else should she have tried to kill him? Why? Almighty God, why, why? Because it must be—must be.
He picked up the knife almost furtively, broke the blade, and threw the pieces into the empty grate. Still Marie did not stir. Surely she was not wounded? No, the knife was bright, and there was no blood on his cuffs, but she laythere as quiet as death itself. He hurried to her and lifted her in his arms.
Marie sighed, opened her eyes, and gazed straight out before her with a lifeless expression, then, seeing Ulrik Frederik, threw her arms around him, kissed and fondled him, still without a word. Her smile was pleased and happy, but a questioning fear lurked in her eyes. Her glance seemed to seek something on the floor. She caught Ulrik Frederik’s wrist, passed her hand over his sleeve, and when she saw that it was torn and the cuff slashed, she shrieked with horror.
“Then I really did it!” she cried in despair. “O God in highest heaven, preserve my mind, I humbly beseech Thee! But why don’t you ask questions? Why don’t you fling me away from you like a venomous serpent? And yet, God knows, I have no part nor fault in what I did. It simply came over me. There was something that forced me. I swear to you by my hope of eternal salvation, there was something that moved my hand. Ah, you don’t believe it! How can you?” And she wept and moaned.
But Ulrik Frederik believed her implicitly, for this fully bore out his own thoughts. He comforted her with tender words and caresses, though he felt a secret horror of her as a poor helpless tool under the baleful spell of evil powers. Nor could he get over this fear, though Marie, day after day, used every art of a clever woman to win back his confidence. She had indeed sworn, that first morning, that she would make Ulrik Frederik put forth all his charms and exercise all his patience in wooing her over again, but now her behavior said exactly the reverse. Every look implored; every word was a meek vow. In a thousand trifles of dress and manner, in crafty surprises and delicate attentions, sheconfessed her tender, clinging love every hour of the day, and if she had merely had the memory of that morning’s incident to overcome, she would certainly have won, but greater forces were arrayed against her.
Ulrik Frederik had gone away an impecunious prince from a land where the powerful nobility by no means looked upon the natural son of a king as more than their equal. Absolute monarchy was yet young, and the principle that a king was a man who bought his power by paying in kind was very old. The light of demi-godhead, which in later days cast a halo about the hereditary monarch, had barely been lit, and was yet too faint to dazzle any one who did not stand very near it.
From this land Ulrik Frederik had gone to the army and court of Philip the Fourth, and there he had been showered with gifts and honors, had been made Grand d’Espagne and put on the same footing as Don Juan of Austria. The king made it a point to do homage in his person to Frederik the Third, and in bestowing on him every possible favor he sought to express his satisfaction with the change of government in Denmark and his appreciation of King Frederik’s triumphant efforts to enter the ranks of absolute monarchs.
Intoxicated and elated with all this glory, which quite changed his conception of his own importance, Ulrik Frederik soon saw that he had acted with unpardonable folly in making the daughter of a common nobleman his wife. Thoughts of making her pay for his mistake, confused plans for raising her to his rank and for divorcing her chased one another through his brain during his trip homeward. On top of this came his superstitious fear that his life was in danger from her, and he made up his mind that until he could see his course more clearly, he would be cold andceremonious in his manner to her and repel every attempt to revive the old idyllic relation between them.
Frederik the Third, who was by no means lacking in power of shrewd observation, soon noticed that Ulrik Frederik was not pleased with his marriage, and he divined the reason. Thinking to raise Marie Grubbe in Ulrik Frederik’s eyes, he distinguished her whenever he could and showered upon her every mark of royal grace, but it was of no avail. It merely raised an army of suspicious and jealous enemies around the favorite.
The Royal Family spent the summer, as often before, at Frederiksborg. Ulrik Frederik and Marie moved out there to help plan the junketings and pageants that were to be held in September and October, when the Elector of Saxony was coming to celebrate his betrothal with the Princess Anne Sofie. The court was small as yet, but the circle was to be enlarged in the latter part of August, when the rehearsals of ballets and other diversions were to begin. It was very quiet, and they had to pass the time as best they could. Ulrik Frederik took long hunting and fishing trips almost every day. The King was busy at his turning-lathe or in the laboratory which he had fitted up in one of the small towers. The Queen and the princesses were embroidering for the coming festivities.
In the shady lane that led from the woods up to the wicket of the little park, Marie Grubbe was wont to take her morning walk. She was there to-day. Up in the lane, her dress of madder-red shone against the black earth of the walk and the green leaves. Slowly she came nearer. A jaunty black felt hat trimmed only with a narrow pearl braid rested lightly on her hair, which was piled up inheavy ringlets. A silver-mounted solitaire gleamed on the rim where it was turned up on the side. Her bodice fitted smoothly, and her sleeves were tight to the elbow, whence they hung, deeply slashed, held together by clasps of mother-of-pearl and lined with flesh-colored silk. Wide, close-meshed lace covered her bare arms. The robe trailed a little behind, but was caught up high on the sides, falling in rounded folds across the front, and revealing a black and white diagonally striped skirt, which was just long enough to give a glimpse of black-clocked stockings and pearl-buckled shoes. She carried a fan of swan’s feathers and raven’s quills.
Near the wicket she stopped, breathed in her hollow hand, held it first to one eye then to the other, tore off a branch and laid the cool leaves on her hot eyelids. Still the signs of weeping were plainly to be seen. She went in at the wicket and started up toward the castle, but turned back and struck into a side-path.
Her figure had scarcely vanished between the dark green box-hedges when a strange and sorry couple appeared in the lane: a man who walked slowly and unsteadily as though he had just risen from a severe illness, leaning on a woman in an old-fashioned cloth coat and with a wide green shade over her eyes. The man was trying to go faster than his strength would allow, and the woman was holding him back, while she tripped along, remonstrating querulously.
“Hold, hold!” she said. “Wait a bit and take your feet with you! You’re running on like a loose wheel going down hill. Weak limbs must be weakly borne. Gently now! Isn’t that what she told you, the wise woman in Lynge? What sense is there in limping along on legs that have no more starch nor strength than an old rotten thread!”
“Alack, good Lord, what legs they are!” whimpered the sick man and stopped; for his knees shook under him. “Now she’s all out of sight”—he looked longingly at the wicket—“all out of sight! And there will be no promenade to-day, the harbinger says, and it’s so long till to-morrow!”
“There, there, Daniel dear, the time will pass, and you can rest to-day and be stronger to-morrow, and then we shall follow her all through the woods way down to the wicket, indeed we shall. But now we must go home, and you shall rest on the soft couch and drink a good pot of ale, and then we shall play a game of reversis, and later on, when their highnesses have supped, Reinholdt Vintner will come, and then you shall ask him the news, and we’ll have a good honest lanterloo, till the sun sinks in the mountains, indeed we shall, Daniel dear, indeed we shall.”
“’Ndeed we shall, ’ndeed we shall!” jeered Daniel. “You with your lanterloo and games and reversis! When my brain is burning like molten lead, and my mind’s in a frenzy, and—Help me to the edge of the road and let me sit down a moment—there! Am I in my right mind, Magnille? Huh? I’m mad as a fly in a flask, that’s what I am. ’Tis sensible in a lowborn lout, a miserable, mangy, rickety wretch, to be eaten up with frantic love of a prince’s consort! Oh ay, it’s sensible, Magnille, to long for her till my eyes pop out of my head, and to gasp like a fish on dry land only to see a glimpse of her form and to touch with my mouth the dust she has trodden—’tis sensible, I’m saying. Oh, if it were not for the dreams, when she comes and bends over me and lays her white hand on my tortured breast—or lies there so still and breathes so softly and is so cold and forlorn and has none to guard her but only me—orshe flits by white as a naked lily!—but it’s empty dreams, vapor and moonshine only, and frothy air-bubbles.”
They walked on again. At the wicket they stopped, and Daniel supported his arms on it while his gaze followed the hedges.
“In there,” he said.
Fair and calm the park spread out under the sunlight that bathed air and leaves. The crystals in the gravel walk threw back the light in quivering rays. Hanging cobwebs gleamed through the air, and the dry sheaths of the beech-buds fluttered slowly to the ground, while high against the blue sky, the white doves of the castle circled with sungold on swift wings. A merry dance-tune sounded faintly from a lute in the distance.