CHAPTER XII

IN January of sixteen hundred and sixty-four, Ulrik Frederik was appointed Viceroy of Norway, and in the beginning of April the same year, he departed for his post. Marie Grubbe went with him.

The relation between them had not improved, except in so far as the lack of mutual understanding and mutual love had, as it were, been accepted by both as an unalterable fact, and found expression in the extremely ceremonious manner they had adopted toward each other.

For a year or more after they had moved to Aggershus, things went on much in the same way, and Marie, for her part, desired no change. Not so Ulrik Frederik; for he had again become enamored of his wife.

On a winter afternoon, in the gloaming, Marie Grubbe sat alone in the little parlor known from olden time as the Nook. The day was cloudy and dark, with a raw, blustering wind. Heavy flakes of melting snow were plastered into the corners of the tiny window-panes, covering almost half the surface of the greenish glass. Gusts of wet, chilly wind went whirling down between the high walls, where they seemed to lose their senses and throw themselves blindly upon shutters and doors, rattling them fiercely, then flying skyward again with a hoarse, dog-like whimper. Powerful blasts came shrieking across the roofs opposite and hurled themselves against windows and walls, pounding like waves, then suddenly dying away. Now and again a squall would come roaring down the chimney. The flames ducked their frightened heads, and the white smoke, timidly curling toward the chimney like the comb of a breaker, would shrink back, ready to throw itself out into the room. Ah, - 159 - in the next instant it is whirled, thin and light and blue, up through the flue, with the flames calling after it, leaping and darting, and sending sputtering sparks by the handful right in its heels. Then the fire began to burn in good earnest. With grunts of pleasure it spread over glowing coals and embers, boiled and seethed with delight in the innermost marrow of the white birch wood, buzzed and purred like a tawny cat, and licked caressingly the noses of blackening knots and smouldering chunks of wood.

Warm and pleasant and luminous the breath of the fire streamed through the little room. Like a fluttering fan of light it played over the parquet floor and chased the peaceful dusk which hid in tremulous shadows to the right and the left behind twisted chair-legs, or shrank into corners, lay thin and long in the shelter of mouldings, or flattened itself under the large clothes-press.

Suddenly the chimney seemed to suck up the light and heat with a roar. Darkness spread boldly across the floor on every board and square, to the very fire, but the next moment the light leaped back again and sent the dusk flying to all sides, with the light pursuing it, up the walls and doors, above the brass latch. Safety nowhere! The dusk sat crouching against the wall, up under the ceiling, like a cat in a high branch, with the light scampering below, back and forth like a dog, leaping, running at the foot of the tree. Not even among the flagons and tumblers on the top of the press could the darkness be undisturbed, for red ruby-glasses, blue goblets, and green Rhenish wineglasses lit iridescent fires to help the light search them out.

The wind blew and the darkness fell outside, but within the fire glowed, the light played, and Marie Grubbe was singing. Now and again, she would murmur snatches of the - 160 - words as they came to her mind, then again hum the melody alone. Her lute was in her hand, but she was not playing it, only touching the strings sometimes and calling out a few clear, long-sounding notes. It was one of those pleasant little pensive songs that make the cushions softer and the room warmer; one of those gently flowing airs that seem to sing themselves in their indolent wistfulness, while they give the voice a delicious roundness and fullness of tone. Marie was sitting in the light from the fire, and its beams played around her, while she sang in careless enjoyment, as if caressing herself with her own voice.

The little door opened, and Ulrik Frederik bent his tall form to enter. Marie stopped singing instantly.

“Ah, madam!” exclaimed Ulrik Frederik in a tone of gentle remonstrance, making a gesture of appeal, as he came up to her. “Had I known that you would allow my presence to incommode you—”

“No, truly, I was but singing to keep my dreams awake.”

“Pleasant dreams?” he asked, bending over the firedogs before the grate and warming his hands on the bright copper balls.

“Dreams of youth,” replied Marie, passing her hand over the strings of the lute.

“Ay, that was ever the way of old age,” and he smiled at her.

Marie was silent a moment, then suddenly spoke: “One may be full young and yet have old dreams.”

“How sweet the odor of musk in here! But was my humble person along in these ancient dreams, madam?—if I may make so bold as to ask.”

“Ah, no!”

“And yet there was a time—”

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“Among all other times.”

“Ay, among all other times there was once a wondrously fair time when I was exceeding dear to you. Do you bring to mind a certain hour in the twilight, a sennight or so after our nuptials? ’Twas storming and snowing—”

“Even as now.”

“And you were sitting before the fire—”

“Even as now.”

“Ay, and I was lying at your feet, and your dear hands were playing with my hair.”

“Yes, then you loved me.”

“Oh, even as now! And you—you bent down over me and wept till the tears streamed down your face, and you kissed me and looked at me with such tender earnestness, it seemed you were saying a prayer for me in your heart, and then all of a sudden—do you remember?—you bit my neck.”

“Ah, merciful God, what love I did bear to you, my lord! When I heard the clanging of your spurs on the steps the blood pounded in my ears, and I trembled from head to foot, and my hands were cold as ice. Then when you came in and pressed me in your arms—”

“De grace, madam!”

“Why, it’s naught but dead memories of an amour that is long since extinguished.”

“Alas, extinguished, madam? Nay, it smoulders hotter than ever.”

“Ah, no, ’tis covered by the cold ashes of too many days.”

“But it shall rise again from the ashes as the bird Phenix, more glorious and fiery than before—pray, shall it not?”

“No, love is like a tender plant; when the night frost - 162 - touches its heart, it dies from the blossom down to the root.”

“No, love is like the herb named the rose of Jericho. In the dry months it withers and curls up, but when there is a soft and balmy night, with a heavy fall of dew, all its leaves will unfold again, greener and fresher than ever before.”

“It may be so. There are many kinds of love in the world.”

“Truly there are, and ours was such a love.”

“That yours was such you tell me now, but mine—never, never!”

“Then you have never loved.”

“Never loved? Now I shall tell you how I have loved. It was at Frederiksborg—”

“Oh, madam, you have no mercy!”

“No, no, that is not it at all. It was at Frederiksborg. Alas, you little know what I suffered there. I saw that your love was not as it had been. Oh, as a mother watches over her sick child and marks every little change, so I kept watch over your love with fear and trembling, and when I saw in your cold looks how it had paled, and felt in your kisses how feeble was its pulse, it seemed to me I must die with anguish. I wept for this love through long nights; I prayed for it, as if it had been the dearly loved child of my heart that was dying by inches. I cast about for aid and advice in my trouble and for physics to cure your sick love, and whatever secret potions I had heard of, such as love-philtres, I mixed them, betwixt hope and fear, in your morning draught and your supper wine. I laid out your breast-cloth under three waxing moons and read the marriage psalm over it, and on your bedstead I first painted with my own blood thirteen hearts in a cross, but all to no avail, - 163 - my lord, for your love was sick unto death. Faith, that is the way you were loved.”

“No, Marie, my love is not dead, it is risen again. Hear me, dear heart, hear me! for I have been stricken with blindness and with a mad distemper, but now, Marie, I kneel at your feet, and look, I woo you again with prayers and beseechings. Alack, my love has been like a wilful child, but now it is grown to man’s estate. Pray give yourself trustingly to its arms, and I swear to you by the cross and the honor of a gentleman that it will never let you go again.”

“Peace, peace, what help is in that!”

“Pray, pray believe me, Marie!”

“By the living God, I believe you. There is no shred nor thread of doubt in my soul. I believe you fully, I believe that your love is great and strong, but mine you have strangled with your own hands. It is a corpse, and however loudly your heart may call, you can never wake it again.”

“Say not so, Marie, for those of your sex—I know there are among you those who when they love a man, even though he spurn them with his foot, come back ever and ever again; for their love is proof against all wounds.”

“’Tis so indeed, my lord, and I—I am such a woman, I would have you know, but you—are not the right kind of man.”

May God in his mercy keep you, my dearly beloved sister, and be to you a good and generous giver of all those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as for the soul, that I wish you from my heart.

To you, my dearly beloved sister, my one faithful friend from the time of my childhood, will I now relate what fine fruits I have of my elevation, which may it be cursed - 164 - from the day it began; for it has, God knows, brought me naught but trouble and tribulation in brimming goblets.

Ay, it was an elevation for the worse, as you, my dearly beloved sister, shall now hear, and as is probably known to you in part. For it cannot fail that you must have learned from your dear husband how, even at the time of our dwelling in Sj?lland, there was a coolness between me and my noble lord and spouse. Now here at Aggershus, matters have in no way mended, and he has used me scurvily that it is past all belief, but is what I might have looked for in so dainty a junker. Not that I care a rush about his filthy gallantries; it is all one to me, and he may run amuck with the hangman’s wife, if so be his pleasure. All I ask is that he do not come too near me with his tricks, but that is precisely what he is now doing, and in such manner that one might fain wonder whether he were stricken with madness or possessed of the devil. The beginning of it was on a day when he came to me with fair words and fine promises and would have all be as before between us, whereas I feel for him naught but loathing and contempt, and told him in plain words that I held myself far too good for him. Then hell broke loose, for wenn’s de Düvel friert, as the saying is, macht er sein H?lle glühn, and he made it hot for me by dragging into the castle swarms of loose women and filthy jades and entertaining them with food and drink in abundance, ay, with costly sweetmeats and expensive stand-dishes as at any royal banquet. And for this my flowered damask tablecloths, which I have gotten after our blessed mother, and my silk bolsters with the fringes were to have been laid out, but that did not come to pass, inasmuch as I put them all under lock and key, and he had to go borrowing in the town for wherewithal to deck both board and bench.

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My own dearly beloved sister, I will no longer fatigue you with tales of this vile company, but is it not shameful that such trulls, who if they were rightly served should have the lash laid on their back at the public whipping-post, now are queening it in the halls of his Majesty the King’s Viceroy? I say, ’tis so unheard of and so infamous that if it were to come to the ears of his Majesty, as with all my heart and soul I wish that it may come, he would talk to mein guten Ulrik Friederich in such terms as would give him but little joy to hear. The finest of all his tricks I have yet told you nothing of, and it is quite new, for it happened only the other day that I sent for a tradesman to bring me some Brabantian silk lace that I thought to put around the hem of a sack, but the man made answer that when I sent the money he would bring the goods, for the Viceroy had forbidden him to sell me anything on credit. The same word came from the milliner, who had been sent for, so it would appear that he has stopped my credit in the entire city, although I have brought to his estate thousands and thousands of rix-dollars. No more to-day. May we commit all unto the Lord, and may He give me ever good tidings of you.

Ever your faithful sister,

MARIE GRUBBE.

    At Aggershus Castle, 12 December, 1665.

    The Honorable Mistress Anne Marie Grubbe, Styge H?gh’s, Magistrate of Laaland, my dearly beloved sister, graciously to hand.

God in his mercy keep you, my dearest sister, now and forever, is my wish from a true heart, and I pray for you that you may be of good cheer and not let yourself be utterly cast down, for we have all our allotted portion of sorrow, and we swim and bathe in naught but misery.

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Your letter, M. D. S., came to hand safe and unbroken in every way, and thence I have learned with a heavy heart what shame and dishonor your husband is heaping upon you, which it is a grievous wrong in his Majesty’s Viceroy to behave as he behaves. Nevertheless, it behooves you not to be hasty, my duck; for you have cause for patience in that high position in which you have been placed, which it were not well to wreck, but which it is fitting you should preserve with all diligence. Even though your husband consumes much wealth on his pleasures, yet is it of his own he wastes, while my rogue of a husband has made away with his and mine too. Truly it is a pity to see a man who should guard what God hath entrusted to us instead scattering and squandering it. If ’twere but the will of God to part me from him, by whatever means it might be, that would be the greatest boon to me, miserable woman, for which I could never be sufficiently thankful; and we might as well be parted, since we have not lived together for upward of a year, for which may God be praised, and would that it might last! So you see, M. D. S., that neither is my bed decked with silk. But you must have faith that your husband will come to his senses in time and cease to waste his goods on wanton hussies and filthy rabble, and inasmuch as his office gives him a large income, you must not let your heart be troubled with his wicked wastefulness nor by his unkindness. God will help, I firmly trust. Farewell, my duck! I bid you a thousand good-nights.

Your faithful sister while I live,

ANNE MARIE GRUBBE.

    At Vang, 6 February, 1666.

    Madam Gyldenl?ve, my good friend and sister, written in all loving kindness.

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May God in his mercy keep you, my dearly beloved sister, and be to you a good and generous giver of all those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as for the soul, that I wish you from my heart.

My dearly beloved sister, the old saying that none is so mad but he has a glimmer of sense between St. John and Paulinus, no longer holds good, for my mad lord and spouse is no more sensible than he was. In truth, he is tenfold, nay a thousandfold more frenzied than before, and that whereof I wrote you was but as child’s play to what has now come to pass, which is beyond all belief. Dearest sister, I would have you know that he has been to Copenhagen, and thence—oh, fie, most horrid shame and outrage!—he has brought one of his old canaille women named Karen, whom he forthwith lodged in the castle, and she is set over everything and rules everything, while I am let stand behind the door. But, my dear sister, you must now do me the favor to inquire of our dear father whether he will take my part, if so be it that I can make my escape from here, as he surely must, for none can behold my unhappy state without pitying me, and what I suffer is so past all endurance that I think I should but be doing right in freeing myself from it. It is no longer ago than the Day of the Assumption of Our Lady that I was walking in our orchard, and when I came in again, the door of my chamber was bolted from within. I asked the meaning of this and was told that Karen had taken for her own that chamber and the one next to it, and my bed was moved up into the western parlor, which is cold as a church when the wind is in that quarter, full of draughts, and the floor quite rough and has even great holes in it. But if I were to relate at length all the insults that are heaped upon me here, it would be as long as any Lenten sermon, - 168 - and if it is to go on much longer, my head is like to burst. May the Lord keep us and send me good tidings of you.

Ever your faithful sister,

MARIE GRUBBE.

    The Honorable Mistress Anne Marie Grubbe, Sti H?gh’s, Magistrate of Laaland, my dearly beloved sister, graciously to hand.

Ulrik Frederik, if the truth were told, was as tired of the state of affairs at the castle as Marie Grubbe was. He had been used to refining more on his dissipations. They were sorry boon companions, these poor, common officers in Norway, and their soldiers’ courtesans were not to be endured for long. Karen Fiol was the only one who was not made up of coarseness and vulgarity, and even her he would rather bid good-by to-day than to-morrow.

In his chagrin at being repulsed by Marie Grubbe, he had admitted these people into his company, and for a while they amused him, but when the whole thing began to pall and seem rather disgusting, and when furthermore he felt some faint stirrings of remorse, he had to justify himself by pretending that such means had been necessary. He actually made himself believe that he had been pursuing a plan in order to bring Marie Grubbe back repentant. Unfortunately, her penitence did not seem to be forthcoming, and so he had recourse to harsher measures in the hope that, by making her life as miserable as possible, he would beat down her resistance. That she had really ceased to love him he never believed for a moment. He was convinced that in her heart she longed to throw herself into his arms, though she used his returning love as a good chance to avenge herself for his faithlessness. Nor did he begrudge her this revenge; he was pleased that she wanted it, if she - 169 - had only not dragged it out so long. He was getting bored in this barbarous land of Norway!

He had a sneaking feeling that it might have been wiser to have let Karen Fiol stay in Copenhagen, but he simply could not endure the others any longer; moreover, jealousy was a powerful ally, and Marie Grubbe had once been jealous of Karen, that he knew.

Time passed, and still Marie Grubbe did not come. He began to doubt that she ever would, and his love grew with his doubt. Something of the excitement of a game or a chase had entered into their relation. It was with an anxious mind and with a calculating fear that he heaped upon her one mortification after another, and he waited in suspense for even the faintest sign that his quarry was being driven into the right track, but nothing happened.

Ah, at last! At last something came to pass, and he was certain that it was the sign, the very sign he had been waiting for. One day when Karen had been more than ordinarily impudent, Marie Grubbe took a good strong bridle rein in her hand, walked through the house to the room where Karen just then was taking her after-dinner nap, fastened the door from within, and gave the dumbfounded strumpet a good beating with the heavy strap, then went quietly back to the western parlor, past the speechless servants who had come running at the sound of Karen’s screams.

Ulrik Frederik was downtown when it happened. Karen sent a messenger to him at once, but he did not hurry, and it was late afternoon before Karen, anxiously waiting, heard his horse in the courtyard. She ran down to meet him, but he put her aside, quietly and firmly, and went straight up to Marie Grubbe.

The door was ajar—then she must be out. He stuck his - 170 - head in, sure of finding the room empty, but she was there, sitting at the window asleep. He stepped in as softly and carefully as he could; for he was not quite sober.

The low September sun was pouring a stream of yellow and golden light through the room, lending color and richness to its poor tints. The plastered walls took on the whiteness of swans, the brown timbered ceiling glowed as copper, and the faded curtains around the bed were changed to wine-red folds and purple draperies. The room was flooded with light; even in the shadows it gleamed as through a shimmering mist of autumn yellow leaves. It spun a halo of gold around Marie Grubbe’s head and kissed her white forehead, but her eyes and mouth were in deep shadow cast by the yellowing apple-tree which lifted to the window branches red with fruit.

She was asleep, sitting in a chair, her hands folded in her lap. Ulrik Frederik stole up to her on tiptoe, and the glory faded as he came between her and the window.

He scanned her closely. She was paler than before. How kind and gentle she looked, as she sat there, her head bent back, her lips slightly parted, her white throat uncovered and bare! He could see the pulse throbbing on both sides of her neck, right under the little brown birthmark. His eyes followed the line of the firm, rounded shoulder under the close-fitting silk, down the slender arm to the white, passive hand. And that hand was his! He saw the fingers closing over the brown strap, the white blue-veined arm growing tense and bright, then relaxing and softening after the blow it dealt Karen’s poor back. He saw her jealous eyes gleaming with pleasure, her angry lips curling in a cruel smile at the thought that she was blotting out kiss after kiss with the leather rein. And she was his! He had been - 171 - harsh and stern and ruthless; he had suffered these dear hands to be wrung with anguish and these dear lips to open in sighing.

His eyes took on a moist lustre at the thought, and he felt suffused with the easy, indolent pity of a drunken man. He stood there staring in sottish sentimentality, until the rich flood of sunlight had shrunk to a thin bright streak high among the dark rafters of the ceiling.

Then Marie Grubbe awoke.

“You!” she almost screamed, as she jumped up and darted back so quickly that the chair tumbled along the floor.

“Marie!” said Ulrik Frederik as tenderly as he could, and held out his hands pleadingly to her.

“What brings you here? Have you come to complain of the beating your harlot got?”

“No, no, Marie; let’s be friends—good friends!”

“You are drunk,” she said coldly, turning away from him.

“Ay, Marie, I’m drunk with love of you—I’m drunk and dizzy with your beauty, my heart’s darling.”

“Yes, truly, so dizzy that your eyesight has failed you, and you have taken others for me.”

“Marie, Marie, leave your jealousy!”

She made a contemptuous gesture as if to brush him aside.

“Indeed, Marie, you were jealous. You betrayed yourself when you took that bridle rein, you know. But now let the whole filthy rabble be forgotten as dead and given over to the devil. Come, come, cease playing unkind to me as I have played the faithless rogue to you with all these make-believe pleasures and gallantries. We do nothing but - 172 - prepare each other a pit of hell, whereas we might have an Eden of delight. Come, whatever you desire, it shall be yours. Would you dance in silks as thick as chamlet, would you have pearls in strings as long as your hair, you shall have them, and rings, and tissue of gold in whole webs, and plumes, and precious stones, whatever you will—nothing is too good to be worn by you.”

He tried to put his arm around her waist, but she caught his wrist and held him away from her.

“Ulrik Frederik,” she said, “let me tell you something. If you could wrap your love in ermine and marten, if you could clothe it in sable and crown it with gold, ay, give it shoes of purest diamond, I would cast it away from me like filth and dung, for I hold it less than the ground I tread with my feet. There’s no drop of my blood that’s fond of you, no fibre of my flesh that doesn’t cry out upon you. Do you hear? There’s no corner of my soul where you’re not called names. Understand me aright! If I could free your body from the pangs of mortal disease and your soul from the fires of hell by being as yours, I would not do it.”

“Yes, you would, woman, so don’t deny it!”

“No, and no, and more than no!”

“Then begone! Out of my sight in the accursed name of hell!”

He was white as the wall and shook in every limb. His voice sounded hoarse and strange, and he beat the air like a madman.

“Take your foot from my path! Take your—take your—take your foot from my path, or I’ll split your skull! My blood’s lusting to kill, and I’m seeing red. Begone—out of the land and dominion of Norway, and hell-fire go with you! Begone—”

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For a moment, Marie stood looking at him in horror, then ran as fast as she could out of the room and away from the castle.

When the door slammed after her, Ulrik Frederik seized the chair in which she had been sitting when he came in and hurled it out of the window, then caught the curtains from the bed and tore the worn stuff into shreds and tatters, storming round the room all the while. He threw himself on the floor and crawled around, snarling like a wild beast, and pounding with his fists till the knuckles were bloody. Exhausted at last, he crept over to the bed and flung himself face downward in the pillows, called Marie tender names, and wept and sobbed and cursed her, then again began to talk in low, wheedling tones, as if he were fondling her.

That same night Marie Grubbe, for fair words and good pay, got a skipper to sail with her to Denmark.

The following day Ulrik Frederik turned Karen Fiol out of the castle, and a few days later he himself left for Copenhagen.