ONE fine day, Erik Grubbe was surprised to see Madam Gyldenlöve driving in to Tjele. He knew at once that something was wrong, since she came thus without servants or anything, and when he learned the facts, it was no warm welcome he gave her. In truth, he was so angry that he went away, slamming the door after him, and did not appear again that day. When he had slept on the matter, however, he grew more civil, and even treated his daughter with an almost respectful affection, while his manner took on some of the formal graces of the old courtier. It had occurred to him that, after all, there was no great harm done, for even though there had been some little disagreement between the young people, Marie was still Madam Gyldenlöve, and no doubt matters could easily be brought back into the old rut again.
To be sure, Marie was clamoring for a divorce and would not hear of a reconciliation, but it would have been unreasonable to expect anything else from her, in the first heat of her anger, with all her memories like sore bruises and gaping wounds, so he did not lay much stress upon that. Time would cure it, he felt sure.
There was another circumstance from which he hoped much. Marie had come from Aggershus almost naked, without clothes or jewels, and she would soon miss the luxury which she had learned to look upon as a matter of course. Even the plain food and poor service, the whole simple mode of living at Tjele, would have its effect on her by making her long for what she had left. On the other hand, Ulrik Frederik, however angry he might be, could not well think of a divorce. His financial affairs were hardlyin such a state that he could give up Marie’s fortune; for twelve thousand rix-dollars was a large sum in ready money, and gold, landed estates, and manorial rights were hard to part with when once acquired.
For upward of six months all went well at Tjele. Marie felt a sense of comfort in the quiet country place, where day after day passed all empty of events. The monotony was something new to her, and she drank in the deep peace with dreamy, passive enjoyment. When she thought of the past, it seemed to her like a weary struggle, a restless pressing onward without a goal, in the glare of smarting, stinging light, deafened by intolerable noise and hubbub. A delicious feeling of shelter and calm stole over her, a sense of undisturbed rest in a grateful shadow, in a sweet and friendly silence, and she liked to deepen the peace of her refuge by picturing to herself the world outside, where people were still striving and struggling, while she had, as it were, slipped behind life and found a safe little haven, where none could discover her or bring unrest into her sweet twilight solitude.
As time went on, however, the silence became oppressive, the peace dull, and the shadow dark. She began to listen for sounds of living life from without. So it was not unwelcome to her when Erik Grubbe proposed a change. He wished her to reside at Kalö manor, the property of her husband, and he pointed out to her that as Ulrik Frederik had her entire fortune in his possession and yet did not send anything for her maintenance, it was but fair she should be supported from his estate. There she would be in clover; she might have a houseful of servants and live in the elegant and costly fashion to which she was accustomed, far better than at Tjele, which was quite too poor for her. Moreover,the King, as a part of his wedding gift, had settled upon her, in case of Ulrik Frederik’s death, an income equal to that at which Kalö was rated, and in doing so he had clearly had Kalö in mind, since it was conveyed to Ulrik Frederik six months after their marriage. If they should not patch up their difference, Ulrik Frederik would very likely have to give up to her the estate intended for her dowager seat, and she might as well become familiar with it. It would be well, too, that Ulrik Frederik should get used to knowing her in possession of it; he would then the more readily resign it to her.
What Erik Grubbe really had in mind was to rid himself of the expense of keeping Marie at Tjele and to make the breach between Ulrik Frederik and his wife less evident in the eyes of the world. It was at least a step toward reconciliation, and there was no knowing what it might lead to.
So Marie went to Kalö, but she did not live in the style she had pictured to herself, for Ulrik Frederik had given his bailiff, Johan Utrecht, orders to receive and entertain Madam Gyldenlöve, but not to give her a stiver in ready money. Besides Kalö was, if possible, even more tiresome than Tjele, and Marie would probably not have remained there long, if she had not had a visitor who was soon to become more than a visitor to her.
His name was Sti Högh.
Since the night of the ballet in Frederiksborg Park, Marie had often thought of her brother-in-law, and always with a warm sense of gratitude. Many a time at Aggershus, when she had been wounded in some particularly galling manner, the thought of Sti’s reverent, silently adoring homage had comforted her, and he treated her in precisely the same way now that she was forgotten and forsaken asin the days of her glory. There was the same flattering hopelessness in his mien and the same humble adoration in his eyes.
He would never remain at Kalö for more than two or three days at a time; then he would leave for a week’s visit in the neighborhood, and Marie learned to long for his coming and to sigh when he went away; for he was practically the only company she had. They became very intimate, and there was but little they did not confide to each other.
“Madam,” said Sti one day, “is it your purpose to return to his Excellency, if he make you full and proper apologies?”
“Even though he were to come here crawling on his knees,” she replied, “I would thrust him away. I have naught but contempt and loathing for him in my heart; for there’s not a faithful sentiment in his mind, not one honest drop of warm blood in his body. He is a slimy, cursed harlot and no man. He has the empty, faithless eyes of a harlot and the soulless, clammy desire of a harlot. There has never a warm-blooded passion carried him out of himself; never a heartfelt word cried from his lips. I hate him, Sti, for I feel myself besmirched by his stealthy hands and bawdy words.”
“Then, madam, you will sue for a separation?”
Marie replied that she would, and if her father had only stood by her, the case would have been far advanced, but he was in no hurry, for he still thought the quarrel could be patched up, though it never would be.
They talked of what maintenance she might look for after the divorce, and Marie said that Erik Grubbe meant to demand Kalö on her behalf. Sti thought this was ill-considered. He forecast a very different lot for her than sittingas a dowager in an obscure corner of Jutland and at last, perhaps, marrying a country squire, which was the utmost she could aspire to if she stayed. Her rôle at court was played out, for Ulrik Frederik was in such high favor that he would have no trouble in keeping her away from it and it from her. No, Sti’s advice was that she should demand her fortune in ready money and, as soon as it was paid her, leave the country, never to set foot in it again. With her beauty and grace, she could win a fairer fate in France than here in this miserable land with its boorish nobility and poor little imitation of a court.
He told her so, and the frugal life at Kalö made a good background for the alluring pictures he sketched of the splendid and brilliant court of Louis the Fourteenth. Marie was fascinated, and came to regard France as the theatre of all her dreams.
Sti Högh was as much under the spell of his love for Marie as ever, and he often spoke to her of his passion, never asking or demanding anything, never even expressing hope or regret, but taking for granted that she did not return his love and never would. At first Marie heard him with a certain uneasy surprise, but after a while she became absorbed in listening to these hopeless musings on a love of which she was the source, and it was not without a certain intoxicating sense of power that she heard herself called the lord of life and death to so strange a person as Sti Högh. Before long, however, Sti’s lack of spirit began to irritate her. He seemed to give up the fight merely because the object of it was unattainable, and to accept tamely the fact that too high was too high. She did not exactly doubt that there was real passion underneath his strange words or grief behind his melancholy looks, but she wonderedwhether he did not speak more strongly than he felt. A hopeless passion that did not defiantly close its eyes to its own hopelessness and storm ahead—she could not understand it and did not believe in it. She formed a mental picture of Sti Högh as a morbid nature, everlastingly fingering himself and hugging the illusion of being richer and bigger and finer than he really was. Since no reality bore out this conception of himself, he seemed to feed his imagination with great feelings and strong passions that were, in truth, born only in the fantastic pregnancy of his over-busy brain. His last words to her—for, at her father’s request, she was returning to Tjele, where he could not follow her—served to confirm her in the opinion that this mental portrait resembled him in every feature.
He had bid her good-by and was standing with his hand on the latch, when he turned back to her, saying: “A black leaf of my book of life is being turned, now that your Kalö days are over, madam. I shall think of this time with longing and anguish, as one who has lost all earthly happiness and all that was his hope and desire, and yet, madam, if such a thing should come to pass as that there were reason to think you loved me, and if I were to believe it, then God only knows what it might make of me. Perhaps it might rouse in me those powers which have hitherto failed to unfold their mighty wings. Then perhaps the part of my nature that is thirsting after great deeds and burning with hope might be in the ascendant, and make my name famous and great. Yet it might as well be that such unutterable happiness would slacken every high-strung fibre, silence every crying demand, and dull every hope. Thus the land of my happiness might be to my gifts and powers a lazy Capua....”
No wonder Marie thought of him as she did, and she realized that it was best so. Yet she sighed.
She returned to Tjele by Erik Grubbe’s desire, for he was afraid that Sti might persuade her to some step that did not fit into his plans, and besides he was bound to try whether he could not talk her into some compromise, by which the marriage might remain in force. This proved fruitless, but still Erik Grubbe continued to write Ulrik Frederik letters begging him to take back Marie. Ulrik Frederik never replied. He preferred to let the matter hang fire as long as possible, for the sacrifice of property that would have to follow a divorce was extremely inconvenient for him. As for his father-in-law’s assurances of Marie’s conciliatory state of mind, he did not put any faith in them. Squire Erik Grubbe’s untruthfulness was too well known.
Meanwhile Erik Grubbe’s letters grew more and more threatening, and there were hints of a personal appeal to the King. Ulrik Frederik realized that matters could not go on this way much longer, and while in Copenhagen, he wrote his bailiff at Kalö, Johan Utrecht, ordering him to find out secretly whether Madam Gyldenlöve would meet him there unknown to Erik Grubbe. This letter was written in March of sixty-nine. Ulrik Frederik hoped, by this meeting, to learn how Marie really felt, and in case he found her compliant, he meant to take her back with him to Aggershus. If not, he would make promises of steps leading to an immediate divorce, and so secure for himself as favorable terms as possible. But Marie Grubbe refused to meet him, and Ulrik Frederik was obliged to go back to Norway with nothing accomplished.
Still Erik Grubbe went on with his futile letter-writing, but in February of sixteen hundred and seventy, they hadtidings of the death of Frederik the Third, and then Erik Grubbe felt the time had come to act. King Frederik had always held his son Ulrik Frederik in such high regard and had such a blind fondness for him that in a case like this he would no doubt have laid all the blame on the other party. King Christian might be expected to take a different attitude, for though he and Ulrik Frederik were bosom friends and boon companions, a tiny shadow of jealousy might lurk in the mind of the King, who had often, in his father’s time, been pushed aside for his more gifted and brilliant half-brother. Besides, young rulers liked to show their impartiality and would often, in their zeal for justice, be unfair to the very persons whom they might be supposed to favor. So it was decided that in the spring they should both go to Copenhagen. In the meantime, Marie was to try to get from Johan Utrecht two hundred rix-dollars to buy mourning, so that she could appear properly before the new king, but as the bailiff did not dare to pay out anything without orders from Ulrik Frederik, Marie had to go without the mourning, for her father would not pay for it, and thought the lack of it would make her pitiful condition the more apparent.
They arrived in Copenhagen toward the end of May, and when a meeting between father and son-in-law had proved fruitless, Erik Grubbe wrote to the King that he had no words to describe, in due submission, the shame, disgrace, and dishonor with which his Excellency Gyldenlöve had, some years ago, driven his wife, Marie Grubbe, out of Aggershus, and had given her over to the mercies of wind and weather and freebooters, who at that time infested the sea, there being a burning feud between Holland and England. God in his mercy had preserved her from theabove-mentioned mortal dangers, and she had returned to his home in possession of life and health. Nevertheless, it was an unheard-of outrage that had been inflicted upon her, and he had time and again with letters, supplications, and tears of weeping, besought his noble and right honorable son, my lord his Excellency, that he would consider of this matter, and either bring proofs against Marie why the marriage should be annulled, or else take her back, but all in vain. Marie had brought him a fortune of many thousand rix-dollars, and she had not even been able to get two hundred rix-dollars with which to buy mourning dress. In brief, her misery was too manifold to be described; wherefore they now addressed themselves to his Majesty the King, appealing to the natural kindness and condescension of their most gracious sovereign, with the prayer that he would for God’s sake have mercy upon him, Erik Grubbe, for his great age, which was seven and sixty years, and upon her for her piteous condition, and be graciously pleased to command his Excellency Gyldenlöve that he should either bring proof against Marie of that for which Christ said married persons should be parted, which, however, he would never be able to do, or else take her back, whereby the glory of God would be furthered, the state of marriage held in honor as God had Himself ordained, great cause of offence removed, and a soul be saved from perdition.
Marie at first refused to put her name to this document, since she was determined not to live with Ulrik Frederik, whatever happened, but her father assured her that the appeal to her husband to take her back was merely a matter of form. The fact was that Ulrik Frederik now wanted a divorce at any price, and the wording of the petition would put the onus of demanding it upon him, thus securing forher better terms. Marie finally yielded and even added a postscript, written according to her father’s dictation, as follows:
I would fain have spoken with your Royal Majesty, but, miserable woman that I am, I have no dress proper to appear among people. Have pity on my wretchedness, most gracious Monarch and King, and help me! God will reward you.
MARIE GRUBBE.
As she did not put much faith in Erik Grubbe’s assurances, she managed to get a private letter into the hands of the King through one of her old friends at court. In this she told him plainly how she loathed Ulrik Frederik, how eagerly she longed to be legally parted from him, and how she shrank from having even the slightest communication with him in regard to the settlement of money matters.
Yet Erik Grubbe had, for once, spoken the truth. Ulrik Frederik really wanted a divorce. His position at court as the King’s half-brother was very different from that of the King’s favorite son. He could no longer trust to fatherly partiality, but simply had to compete with the men about him for honor and emoluments. To have such a case as this pending did not help to strengthen his position. It would be much better to make an end of it as quickly as possible and seek compensation in a new and wiser marriage for whatever the divorce might cost him in fortune or reputation. So he brought all his influence to bear to reach this end.
The King laid the case before the Consistory, and this body delivered a report, following which the marriage was dissolved by judgment of the Supreme Court, October fourteenth,sixteen hundred and seventy. Both parties were to have the right to marry again, and Marie Grubbe’s twelve thousand rix-dollars were to be refunded to her with all her other dowry of jewels and estates. As soon as the money had been paid over to her, she began preparations to leave the country, without listening to her father’s remonstrances. As for Ulrik Frederik, he wrote his half-sister, wife of Johan Georg, Elector of Saxony, telling her of his divorce, and asking if she would show him so much sisterly kindness that he might flatter himself with the hope of receiving a bride from her royal hands.
MARIE GRUBBEhad never had money of her own, and the possession of a large sum gave her a sense of powers and possibilities without limit. Indeed, it seemed to her that a veritable magic wand had been placed in her hands, and she longed like a child to wave it round and round and bring all the treasures of the earth to her feet.
Her most immediate wish was to be far away from the towers of Copenhagen and the meadows of Tjele, from Erik Grubbe and Aunt Rigitze. She waved the wand once, and lo! she was carried by wheel and keel, over water and way, from the land of Sjæland to Lübeck town. Her whole retinue consisted of the maid Lucie, whom she had persuaded her aunt to let her have, and a trader’s coachman from Aarhus, for the real outfitting for her trip was to be done at Lübeck.
It was Sti Högh who had put into her head the idea of travelling, and in doing so, he had hinted that he might himself leave the country to seek his fortune abroad, and had offered his services as courier. Summoned by a letter from Copenhagen, he arrived in Lübeck a fortnight after Marie, and at once began to make himself useful by attending to the preparations necessary for so long a journey.
In her secret heart, Marie had hoped to be a benefactor to poor Sti Högh. She meant to use some of her wealth to lighten his expenses on the trip and in France, until it should appear whether some other fountain would well in his behalf. But when poor Sti Högh came, he surprised her by being splendidly attired, excellently mounted, attended by two magnificent grooms, and altogether looking as if his purse by no means needed to be swelled by her gold.More astonishing yet was the change in his state of mind. He seemed lively, even merry. In the past, he had always looked as if he were marching with stately step in his own funeral procession, but now he trod the floor with the air of a man who owned half the world and had the other half coming to him. In the old days, there had always been something of the plucked fowl about him, but now he seemed like an eagle, with spreading plumage and sharp eyes hinting of still sharper claws.
Marie at first thought the change was due to his relief in casting behind him past worries and his hope of winning a future worth while, but when he had been with her several days, and had not opened his lips to one of the love-sick, dispirited words she knew so well, she began to believe he had conquered his passion and now, in the sense of proudly setting his heel on the head of the dragon love, felt free and strong and master of his own fate. She grew quite curious to know whether she had guessed aright, and thought, with a slight feeling of pique, that the more she saw of Sti Högh, the less she knew him.
This impression was confirmed by a talk she had with Lucie. The two were walking in the large hall which formed a part of every Lübeck house, serving as entry and living-room, as playground for the children and the scene of the chief household labors, besides being used sometimes for dining-room and storehouse. This particular hall was intended chiefly for warm weather, and was furnished only with a long white-scoured deal table, some heavy wooden chairs, and an old cupboard. At the farther end, some boards had been put up for shelves, and there cabbages lay in long rows over red mounds of carrots and bristling bunches of horse-radish. The outer door was wide open and showedthe wet, glistening street, where the rain splashed in shining rivulets.
Marie Grubbe and Lucie were both dressed to go out, the former in a fur-bordered cloak of broadcloth, the latter in a cape of gray russet. They were pacing the red brick floor with quick, firm little steps as though trying to keep their feet warm while waiting for the rain to stop.
“Pray, d’you think it’s a safe travelling companion you’ve got?” asked Lucie.
“Sti Högh? Safe enough, I suppose. Why not?”
“Faith, I hope he won’t lose himself on the way, that’s all.”
“Lose himself?”
“Ay, among the German maidens—or the Dutch, for the matter of that. You know ’tis said of him his heart is made of such fiery stuff, it bursts into flame at the least flutter of a petticoat.”
“Who’s taken you to fools’ market with such fables?”
“Merciful! Did you never hear that? Your own brother-in-law? Who’d have thought that could be news to you! Why, I’d as lief have thought to tell you the week had seven days.”
“Come, come, what ails you to-day? You run on as if you’d had Spanish wine for breakfast.”
“One of us has, that’s plain. Pray have you never heard tell of Ermegaard Lynow?”
“Never.”
“Then ask Sti Högh if he should chance to know her. And name to him Jydte Krag and Christence Rud and Edele Hansdaughter and Lene Poppings if you like. He might happen to know some fables, as you call it, about them all.”
Marie stopped and looked long and fixedly through the open door at the rain. “Perhaps you know,” she said, as she resumed her walk, “perhaps you know some of these fables, so that you can tell them.”
“Belike I do.”
“Concerning Ermegaard Lynow?”
“Concerning her in particular.”
“Well, let’s have it.”
“Why, it had to do with one of the Höghs—Sti, I think his name was—tall, red-haired, pale—”
“Thanks, but all that I know already.”
“And do you know about the poison, too?”
“Nay, nothing.”
“Nor the letter?”
“What letter?”
“Faugh, ’tis such an ugly story!”
“Out with it!”
“Why, this Högh was a very good friend,—this happened before he was married,—and he was the very best of friends with Ermegaard Lynow. She had the longest hair of any lady—she could well-nigh walk on it, and she was red and white and pretty as a doll, but he was harsh and barbarous to her, they said, as if she’d been an unruly staghound and not the gentle creature she was, and the more inhumanly he used her, 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 some one 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 Högh 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 Högh 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 Högh 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 Högh 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 fromher 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 Högh 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 Högh 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 repeatedhis 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 some one 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, eachwith 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 thatshe 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 Högh 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 Högh 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 Högh 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 Högh who proposed it. They had not seen each other for several days, when Sticame into the drawing-room of the magnificent apartment they had rented from Isabel Gilles, the landlady ofLa Croix de Fer. Marie was sitting there, in tears. Sti shook his head drearily and took a chair at the other end of the room. It was hard to see her weep and to know that every word of comfort from his lips, every sympathetic sigh or compassionate look, merely added bitterness to her grief and made her tears flow faster.
He went up to her.
“Marie,” he said in a low, husky voice, “let us have one more talk and then part.”
“What is the good of that?”
“Nay, Marie, there are yet happy days awaiting you, even now they are coming thick and fast.”
“Ay, days of mourning and nights of weeping in an endless, unbreakable chain.”
“Marie, Marie, have a care what you say, for I understand the meaning of your words as you never think to have me, and they wound me cruelly.”
“I reck but little of wounds that are stung with words for daggers. It was never in my mind to spare you them.”
“Then drive the weapon home, and do not pity me—not for one instant. Tell me that my love has besmirched you and humbled you in the dust! Tell me that you would give years of your life to tear from your heart every memory of me! And make a dog of me and call me cur. Call me by every shameful name you know, and I will answer to every one and say you are right; for I know you are right, you are, though it’s torture to say so! Hear me, Marie, hear me and believe if you can: though I know you loathe yourself because you have been mine, and sicken in your soul when you think of it, and frown with disgust andremorse, yet do I love you still—I do indeed. I love you with all my might and soul, Marie.”
“Fie, shame on you, Sti Högh! Shame on you! You know not what you are saying. And yet—God forgive me—but ’tis true, fearful as it seems! Oh, Sti, Sti, why are you such a varlet soul? Why are you such a miserable, cringing worm that doesn’t bite when it’s trodden underfoot? If you knew how great and proud and strong I believed you—you who are so weak! It was your sounding phrases that lied to me of a power you never owned; they spoke loud of everything your soul never was and never could be. Sti, Sti, was it right that I should find weakness instead of strength, abject doubt instead of brave faith, and pride—Sti, where was your pride?”
“Justice and right are but little mercy, but I deserve naught else, for I have been no better than a counterfeiter with you, Marie. I never believed in your love, no, even in the hour when you first vowed it to me, there was no faith in my soul. Oh! how I wanted to believe, but could not! I could not down the fear that lifted its dark head from the ground, staring at me with cold eyes, blowing away my rich, proud dreams with the breath from its bitterly smiling mouth. I could not believe in your love, and yet I grasped the treasure of it with both hands and with all my soul. I rejoiced in it with a timid, anxious happiness, as a thief might feel joy in his golden booty, though he knew the rightful owner would step in, the next moment, and tear the precious thing from his hands. For I know the man will come who will be worthy of you, or whom you will think worthy, and he will not doubt, not tremble and entreat. He will mould you like pure gold in his hands and set his foot on your will, and you will obey him, humbly andgladly. Not that he will love you more than I, for that no one could, but that he will have more faith in himself and less sense of your priceless worth, Marie.”
“Why, this is a regular fortune-teller’s tale you’re giving me, Sti Högh. You are ever the same, your thoughts roam far afield. You are like children with a new toy; instead of playing with it, they must needs pull it to pieces and find out how it was made, and so spoil it. You never have time to hold and enjoy, because you are ever reaching and seeking. You cut the timber of life all up into thought-shavings.”
“Farewell, Marie.”
“Farewell, Sti Högh,—as well as may be.”
“Thanks—thanks—it must be so. Yet I would ask of you one thing.”
“Well?”
“When you depart from here, let none know the way you go, lest I should hear it, for if I do, I cannot answer for myself that I shall have strength to keep from following you.”
Marie shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
“God bless you, Marie, now and forever.”
With that he left her.
In a fair November gloaming, the bronze-brown light of the sun is slowly receding from the windows still gleaming singly in high gables; an instant it rests on the slender twin spires of the church, is caught up there by cross and golden wreath, then freed in luminous air, and fades, while the moon lifts a shining disc over the distant, long-flowing lines of the rounded hills.
Yellow, bluish, and purple, the fading tints of the sky are mirrored in the bright, silently running river. Leavesof willow and maple and elder and rose drop from golden crowns and flutter down to the water in tremulous flight, rest on the glittering surface and glide along, under leaning walls and stone steps, into the darkness, beneath low, massive bridges, around palings black with moisture. They catch the glow from the red coal fire in the lighted smithy, are whirled round in the rust-brown eddies by the grinder’s house, then drift away among rushes and leaky boats, lost among sunken barrels and muddy, water-soaked fences.
Blue twilight is spreading a transparent dusk over squares and open markets. In the fountains the water gleams as through a delicate veil, as it runs from wet snake-snouts and drips from bearded dragon-mouths, among fantastic broken curves and slender, serrated vessels. It murmurs gently and trickles coldly; it bubbles softly and drips sharply, making rapidly widening rings on the dark surface of the brimming basin. A breath of wind soughs through the square, while round about the dusky space, a deeper darkness stares from shadowy portals, black window-panes, and dim alleys.
Now the moon is rising and throwing a silvery sheen over roofs and pinnacles, dividing light and shadow into sharp-cut planes. Every carved beam, every flaunting sign, every baluster in the low railing of the porches is etched on houses and walls. The stone lattice-work over the church-doors, St. George with his lance there at the corner, the plant with its leaves here in the window, all stand out like black figures. What a flood of light the moon pours through the wide street, and how it glitters on the water in the river! There are no clouds in the heavens, only a ring like a halo around the moon, and nothing else except myriads of stars.
It was such a night as this at Nürnberg, and in the steepstreet leading up to the castle, in the house known as von Karndorf’s, a feast was held that same evening. The guests were sitting around the table, merry, and full of food and drink. All but one were men who had left youth behind, and this one was but eighteen years. He wore no periwig, but his own hair was luxuriant enough, long, golden, and curly. His face was fair as a girl’s, white and red, and his eyes were large, blue, and serene. They called him the golden Remigius, golden not only because of his hair, but because of his great wealth. For all his youth, he was the richest nobleman in the Bavarian forest—for he hailed from the Bavarian forest.
They were speaking of female loveliness, these gay gentlemen around the groaning board, and they all agreed that when they were young the world was swarming with beauties, beside whom those who laid claim to the name in these days were as nothing at all.
“But who knew the pearl among them all?” asked a chubby, red-faced man with tiny, sparkling eyes. “Who ever saw Dorothea von Falkenstein of the Falkensteiners of Harzen? She was red as a rose and white as a lamb. She could clasp her waist round with her two hands and have an inch to spare, and she could walk on larks’ eggs without crushing them, so light of foot was she. But she was none of your scrawny chicks for all that; she was as plump as a swan swimming in a lake, and firm as a roe-deer running in the forest.”
They drank to her.
“God bless you all, gray though you be!” cried a tall, crabbed old fellow at the end of the table. “The world is getting uglier every day. We have but to look at ourselves”—his glance went round the table—“and think whatdashing blades we once were. Well, no matter for that! But where in the name of everything drinkable—can any one say? huh? can you?—who can?—can any one tell me what’s become of the plump landladies with laughing mouths and bright eyes and dainty feet, and the landladies’ daughters with yellow, yellow hair and eyes so blue—what’s become of them? huh? Or is’t a lie that one could go to any tavern or wayside inn or ordinary and find them there? Oh, misery of miseries and wretchedness! Look at the hunchbacked jades the tavern people keep in these days—with pig’s eyes and broad in the beam! Look at the toothless, bald-pated hags that get the king’s license to scare the life out of hungry and thirsty folks with their sore eyes and grubby hands! Faugh, I’m as scared of an inn as of the devil himself, for I know full well the tapster is married to the living image of the plague from Lübeck, and when a man’s as old as I am, there’s something aboutmemento morithat he’d rather forget than remember.”
Near the centre of the long table sat a man of strong build with a face rather full and yellow as wax, bushy eyebrows, and clear, searching eyes. He looked not exactly ill, but as if he had suffered great bodily pain, and when he smiled there was an expression about his mouth as though he were swallowing something bitter. He spoke in a soft, low, rather husky voice. “The brown Euphemia of the Burtenbacher stock was statelier than any queen I ever saw. She could wear the stiffest cloth of gold as if it were the easiest house-dress. Golden chains and precious stones hung round her neck and waist and rested on her bosom and hair as lightly as berries the children deck themselves with when they play in the forest. There was none like her. The other young maidens would look like reliquaries weighed downby necklaces of gold and clasps of gold and jewelled roses, but she was fair and fresh and festive and light as a banner that flies in the wind. There was none like her, nor is there now.”
“Ay, and a better one,” cried young Remigius, jumping up. He bent forward across the table, supporting himself with one hand, while the other swung a bright goblet, from which the golden grape brimmed over, wetting his fingers and wrist and falling in clear drops from his full white lace ruffles. His cheeks were flushed with wine, his eyes shone, and he spoke in an unsteady voice.
“Beauty! Are you blind, one and all, or have you never even seen the Lady from Denmark—not so much as seen Mistress Marie! Her hair is like the sunlight on a field when the grain is ripe. Her eyes are bluer than a steel blade, and her lips are like the bleeding grape. She walks like a star in the heavens, and she is straight as a sceptre and stately as a throne, and all, all charms and beauties of person are hers like rose upon rose in flowering splendor. But there is that about her loveliness which makes you feel, when you see her, as on a holy morn when they blow the trumpets from the tower of the cathedral. A stillness comes over you, for she is like the sacred Mother of Sorrows on the beauteous painting; there is the same noble grief in her clear eyes, and the same hopeless, patient smile around her lips.”
He was quite moved. Tears came to his eyes, and he tried to speak, but could not, and remained standing, struggling with his voice to utter the words. A man sitting near him laid a friendly hand on his shoulder and made him sit down. They drank together goblet after goblet, until all was well. The mirth of the old fellows rose high as before, and nothing was heard but laughter and song and revelry.
Marie Grubbe was at Nürnberg. After the parting from Sti Högh, she had roamed about from place to place for almost a year, and had finally settled there. She was very much changed since the night she danced in the ballet at Frederiksborg park. Not only had she entered upon her thirtieth year, but the affair with Sti Högh had made a strangely deep impression upon her. She had left Ulrik Frederik, urged on partly by accidental events, but chiefly because she had kept certain dreams of her early girlhood of the man a woman should pay homage to, one who should be to her like a god upon earth, from whose hands she could accept, lovingly and humbly, good and evil according to his pleasure. And now, in a moment of blindness, she had taken Sti for that god, him who was not even a man. These were her thoughts. Every weakness and every unmanly doubt in Sti she felt as a stain upon herself that could never be wiped out. She loathed herself for that short-lived love and called it base and shameful names. The lips that had kissed him, would that they might wither! The eyes that had smiled on him, would that they might be dimmed! The heart that had loved him, would that it might break! Every virtue of her soul—she had smirched it by this love; every feeling—she had desecrated it. She lost all faith in herself, all confidence in her own worth, and as for the future, it kindled no beacon of hope.
Her life was finished, her course ended. A quiet nook where she could lay down her head, never to lift it again, was the goal of all her desires.
Such was her state of mind when she came to Nürnberg. By chance, she met the golden Remigius, and his fervent though diffident adoration,—the idolatrous worship of fresh youth,—his exultant faith in her and his happiness in thisfaith,—were to her as the cool dew to a flower that has been trodden under foot. Though it cannot rise again, neither does it wither; it still spreads delicate, brightly tinted petals to the sun, and is still fair and fragrant in lingering freshness. So with her. There was balm in seeing herself pure and holy and unsullied in the thoughts of another person. It well-nigh made her whole again to know that she could rouse that clear-eyed trust, that fair hope and noble longing which enriched the soul of him in whom they awoke. There was comfort and healing in hinting of her sorrows in shadowy images and veiled words to one who, himself untried by grief, would enter into her suffering with a serene joy, grateful to share the trouble he guessed but did not understand and yet sympathized with. Ay, it was a comfort to pour out her grief where it met reverence and not pity, where it became a splendid queenly robe around her shoulders and a tear-sparkling diadem around her brow.
Thus Marie little by little grew reconciled to herself, but then it happened one day, when Remigius was out riding, that his horse shied, threw him from the saddle, and dragged him to death by the stirrups.
When the news was brought to Marie, she sank into a dull, heavy, tearless misery. She would sit for hours, staring straight before her with a weary, empty look, silent as if she had been bereft of the power of speech, and refusing to exert herself in any way. She could not even bear to be spoken to; if any one tried it, she would make a feeble gesture of protest and shake her head as if the sound pained her.
Time passed, and her money dwindled, until there was barely enough left to take them home. Lucie never tired of urging this fact upon her, but it was long before she could make Marie listen.
At last they started. On the way, Marie fell ill, and the journey dragged out much longer than they had expected. Lucie was forced to sell one rich gown and precious trinket after the other, to pay their way. When they reached Aarhus, Marie had hardly anything left but the clothes she wore. There they parted; Lucie returned to Mistress Rigitze, and Marie went back to Tjele.
This was in the spring of seventy-three.
AFTER she came back to Tjele, Mistress Marie Grubbe remained in her father’s household until sixteen hundred and seventy-nine, when she was wedded to Palle Dyre, counsellor of justice to his Majesty the King, and with him she lived in a marriage that offered no shadow of an event until sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. This period of her life lasted from the time she was thirty till she was forty-six—full sixteen years.
Full sixteen years of petty worries, commonplace duties, and dull monotony, with no sense of intimacy or affection to give warmth, no homelike comfort to throw a ray of light. Endless brawling about nothing, noisy hectoring for the slightest neglect, peevish fault-finding, and coarse jibes were all that met her ears. Every sunlit day of life was coined into dollars and shillings and pennies; every sigh uttered was a sigh for loss; every wish, a wish for gain; every hope, a hope of more. All around her was shabby parsimony; in every nook and corner, busyness that chased away all pleasure; from every hour stared the wakeful eye of greed. Such was the existence Marie Grubbe led.
In the early days, she would sometimes forget the hubbub and bustle all around her and sink into waking dreams of beauty, changing as clouds, teeming as light. There was one that came oftener than others. It was a dream of a sleeping castle hidden behind roses. Oh, the quiet garden of that castle, with stillness in the air and in the leaves, with silence brooding over all like a night without darkness! There the odors slept in the flower-cups and the dewdrops on the bending blades of grass. There the violet drowsed with mouth half open under the curling leaves of the fern, while a thousandbursting buds had been lulled to sleep, in the fullness of spring, at the very moment when they quickened on the branches of the moss-green trees. She came up to the palace. From the thorny vines of the rose-bushes, a flood of green billowed noiselessly down over walls and roofs, and the flowers fell like silent froth, sometimes in masses of bloom, sometimes flecking the green like pale-pink foam. From the mouth of the marble lion, a fountain jet shot up like a tree of crystal with boughs of cobweb, and shining horses mirrored breathless mouths and closed eyes in the dormant waters of the porphyry basin, while the page rubbed his eyes in sleep.
She feasted her eyes on the tranquil beauty of the old garden, where fallen petals lay like a rose-flushed snowdrift high against walls and doors, hiding the marble steps. Oh, to rest! To let the days glide over her in blissful peace, hour after hour, and to feel all memories, longings, and dreams flowing away, out of her mind, in softly lapping waves—that was the most beautiful of all the dreams she knew.
This was true at first, but her imagination tired of flying unceasingly toward the same goal like an imprisoned bee buzzing against the window-pane, and all other faculties of her soul wearied too. As a fair and noble edifice in the hands of barbarians is laid waste and spoiled, the bold spires made into squat cupolas, the delicate, lace-like ornaments broken bit by bit, and the wealth of pictures hidden under layer upon layer of deadening whitewash, so was Marie Grubbe laid waste and spoiled in those sixteen years.
Erik Grubbe, her father, was old and decrepit, and age seemed to intensify all his worst traits, just as it sharpened his features and made them more repulsive. He was grouchy and perverse, childishly obstinate, quick to anger, extremelysuspicious, sly, dishonest, and stingy. In his later days he always had the name of God on his lips, especially when the harvest was poor or the cattle were sick, and he would address the Lord with a host of cringing, fawning names of his own invention. It was impossible that Marie should either love or respect him, and besides she had a particular grudge against him, because he had persuaded her to marry Palle Dyre by dint of promises that were never fulfilled and by threats of disinheriting her, turning her out of Tjele, and withdrawing all support from her. In fact, her chief motive for the change had been her hope of making herself independent of the paternal authority, though this hope was frustrated; for Palle Dyre and Erik Grubbe had agreed to work the farms of Tjele and Nörbæk—which latter was given Marie as a dower on certain conditions—together, and as Tjele was the larger of the two, and Erik Grubbe no longer had the strength to look after it, Marie and her husband spent more time under her father’s roof than under their own.
Palle Dyre was the son of Colonel Clavs Dyre of Sandvig and Krogsdal, later of Vinge, and his wife Edele Pallesdaughter Rodtsteen. He was a thickset, shortnecked little man, brisk in all his motions and with a rather forceful face, which, however, was somewhat marred by a hemorrhage in the lungs that had affected his right cheek.
Marie despised him. He was as stingy and greedy as Erik Grubbe himself. Yet he was really a man of some ability, sensible, energetic, and courageous, but he simply lacked any sense of honor whatever. He would cheat and lie whenever he had a chance, and was never in the least abashed when found out. He would allow himself to be abused like a dog and never answer back, if silence could bring hima penny’s profit. Whenever a relative or friend commissioned him to buy or sell anything or entrusted any other business to him, he would turn the matter to his own advantage without the slightest scruple. Though his marriage had been in the main a bargain, he was not without a sense of pride in winning the divorced wife of the Viceroy; but this did not prevent him from treating her and speaking to her in a manner that might have seemed incompatible with such a feeling. Not that he was grossly rude or violent—by no means. He simply belonged to the class of people who are so secure in their own sense of normal and irreproachable mediocrity that they cannot refrain from asserting their superiority over the less fortunate and naïvely setting themselves up as models. As for Marie, she was, of course, far from unassailable; her divorce from Ulrik Frederik and her squandering of her mother’s fortune were but too patent irregularities.
This was the man who became the third person in their life at Tjele. Not one trait in him gave grounds for hope that he would add to it any bit of brightness or comfort. Nor did he. Endless quarrelling and bickering, mutual sullenness and fault-finding, were all that the passing days brought in their train.
Marie was blunted by it. Whatever had been delicate and flowerlike in her nature, all the fair and fragrant growth which heretofore had entwined her life as with luxurious though fantastic and even bizarre arabesques, withered and died the death. Coarseness in thought as in speech, a low and slavish doubt of everything great and noble, and a shameless self-scorn were the effect of these sixteen years at Tjele. And yet another thing: she developed a thick-blooded sensuousness, a hankering for the good things of life, a lustyappetite for food and drink, for soft chairs and soft beds, a voluptuous pleasure in spicy, narcotic scents, and a craving for luxury which was neither ruled by good taste nor refined by love of the beautiful. True, she had scant means of gratifying these desires, but that did not lessen their force.
She had grown fuller of form and paler, and there was a slow languor in all her movements. Her eyes were generally quite empty of expression, but sometimes they would grow strangely bright, and she had fallen into the habit of setting her lips in a meaningless smile.
There came a time when they wrote sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. It was night, and the horse-stable at Tjele was on fire. The flickering flames burst through the heavy clouds of brown smoke; they lit up the grassy courtyard, shone on the low outhouses and the white walls of the manor-house, and even touched with light the black crowns of the trees in the garden where they rose high above the roof. Servants and neighbors ran from the well to the fire with pails and buckets full of water glittering red in the light of the flames. Palle Dyre was here, there, and everywhere, tearing wildly about, his hair flying, a red wooden rake in his hand. Erik Grubbe lay praying over an old chaff-bin, which had been carried out. He watched the progress of the fire from beam to beam, his agony growing more intense every moment, and he groaned audibly whenever the flames leaped out triumphantly and swung their spirals high above the house in a shower of sparks.
Marie, too, was there, but her eyes sought something besides the fire. They were fixed on the new coachman, who was taking the frightened horses out from the smoke-filled stable. The doorway had been widened to more than doubleits usual size by lifting off the frame and tearing down a bit of the frail wall on either side, and through this opening he was leading the animals, one by either hand. They were crazed with the smoke, and when the stinging, flickering light of the flames met their eyes, they reared wildly and threw themselves to one side, until it seemed the man must be torn to pieces or be trampled down between the powerful brutes. Yet he neither fell nor lost his hold; he forced their noses down on the ground and ran with them, half driving, half dragging them, across the courtyard to the gate of the garden, where he let them go.
There were many horses at Tjele, and Marie had plenty of time to admire that beautiful, gigantic form in changing postures, as he struggled with the spirited animals, one moment hanging from a straight arm, almost lifted from the ground by a rearing stallion, the next instant thrown violently down and gripping the earth with his feet, then again urging them on by leaps and bounds, always with the same peculiarly quiet, firm, elastic movements seen only in very strong men. His short cotton breeches and blue-gray shirt looked yellow where the light fell on them but black in the shadows, and outlined sharply the vigorous frame making a fine, simple background for the ruddy face with its soft, fair down on lip and chin, and the great shock of blonde hair.
This giant of two-and-twenty was known as Sören Overseer. His real name was Sören Sörensen Möller, but the title had come down to him from his father, who had been overseer on a manor in Hvornum.
The horses were all brought out at last. The stable burned to the ground, and when the fire still smouldering on the site had been put out, the servants went to get a little morning nap after a wakeful night.
Marie Grubbe, too, went to bed, but she could not sleep. She lay thinking, sometimes blushing at her own fancies, then tossing about as if she feared them. It was late when she rose. She smiled contemptuously at herself as she dressed. Her every-day attire was usually careless, even slovenly, though on special occasions she would adorn herself in a manner more showy than tasteful, but this morning she put on an old though clean gown of blue homespun, tied a little scarlet silk kerchief round her neck, and took out a neat, simple little cap; then she suddenly changed her mind again and chose instead one with a turned-up rim of yellow and brown flowered stuff and a flounce of imitation silver brocade in the back, which went but poorly with the rest. Palle Dyre supposed she wanted to go to town and gossip about the fire, and he thought to himself there were no horses to drive her there. She stayed home, however, but somehow she could not work. She would take up one thing after another, only to drop it as quickly. At last she went out into the garden, saying that she meant to set to rights what the horses had trampled in the night, but she did not accomplish much; for she sat most of the time in an arbor with her hands in her lap, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.
The unrest that had come over her did not leave her, but grew worse day by day. She was suddenly seized with a desire for lonely walks in the direction of Fastrup Grove, or in the more distant parts of the outer garden. Her father and husband both scolded her, but when she turned a deaf ear and did not even answer them, they finally made up their minds that it was best to let her go her own way for a short time, all the more as it was not the busy season.
About a week after the fire, she was taking her usual walkout Fastrup way, and was skirting the edge of a long copse of stunted oaks and dogrose that reached almost to her shoulder, when suddenly she caught sight of Sören Overseer, stretched at full length in the edge of the copse, his eyes closed as if he were asleep. A scythe was lying at his side, and the grass had been cut for some distance around.
Marie stood for a long time gazing at his large, regular features, his broad, vigorously breathing chest, and his dark, full-veined hands, which were clasped above his head. But Sören was drowsing rather than sleeping, and suddenly he opened his eyes, wide awake, and looked up at her. He was startled at being found by one of the family sleeping when he should have been cutting hay, but the expression in Marie’s eyes amazed him so much that he did not come to his senses until she blushed, said something about the heat, and turned to go. He jumped up, seized his scythe and whetstone, and began to rub the steel until it sang through the warm, tremulous air. Then he went at the grass, slashing as if his life were at stake.
After a while, he saw Marie crossing the stile into the grove, and at that he paused. He stood a moment staring after her, his arms resting on his scythe, then suddenly flung it away with all his strength, sat down with legs sprawling, mouth open, palms flat out on the grass, and thus he sat in silent amazement at himself and his own strange thoughts.
He looked like a man who had just dropped down from a tree.
His head seemed to be teeming with dreams. What if any one had cast a spell over him? He had never known anything like the way things swarmed and swarmed inside of his head, as if he could think of seven things at once, andhe couldn’t get the hang of them—they came and went as if he’d nothing to say about it. It surely was queer the way she’d looked at him, and she hadn’t said anything about his sleeping this way in the middle of the day. She had looked at him so kindly, straight out of her clear eyes, and—just like Jens Pedersen’s Trine she had looked at him. Her ladyship! Her ladyship! There was a story about a lady at Nörbæk manor who had run away with her gamekeeper. Had he got such a look when he was asleep? Her ladyship! Maybe he might get to be good friends with her ladyship, just as the gamekeeper did. He couldn’t understand it—was he sick? There was a burning spot on each of his cheeks, and his heart beat, and he felt so queer, it was hard to breathe. He began to tug at a stunted oak, but he could not get a grip on it where he was sitting; he jumped up, tore it loose, and threw it away, caught his scythe, and cut till the grass flew in the swath.
In the days that followed, Marie often came near Sören, who happened to have work around the house, and he always stared at her with an unhappy, puzzled, questioning expression, as if imploring her to give him the answer to the riddle she had thrown in his way, but Marie only glanced furtively in his direction and turned her head away.
Sören was ashamed of himself and lived in constant fear that his fellow-servants would notice there was something the matter with him. He had never in all his life before been beset by any feeling or longing that was in the least fantastic, and it made him timid and uneasy. Maybe he was getting addled or losing his wits. There was no knowing how such things came over people, and he vowed to himself that he would think no more about it, but the next moment his thoughts were again taking the road he would have barredthem from. The very fact that he could not get away from these notions was what troubled him most, for he remembered that he had heard tales of Cyprianus, whom you could burn and drown, yet he always came back. In his heart of hearts he really hoped that the fancies would not leave him, for life would seem very dreary and empty without them, but this he did not admit to himself. In fact, his cheeks flushed with shame whenever he soberly considered what he really had in mind.
About a week after the day when she had found Sören asleep, Marie Grubbe was sitting under the great beech on the heathery hill in Fastrup Grove. She sat leaning her back against the trunk, and held an open book in her hand, but she was not reading. With dreamy eyes, she followed intently a large, dark bird of prey, which hung, in slowly gliding, watchful flight, over the unending, billowing surface of the thick, leafy treetops.
The air was drenched with light and sun, vibrant with the drowsy, monotonous hum of myriad invisible insects. The sweet—too sweet—odor of yellow-flowered broom and the spicy fragrance of sun-warmed birch-leaves mingled with the earthy smell of the forest and the almond scent of white meadowsweet in the hollows.
Marie sighed.