CHAPTER XV

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 H?gh 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 H?gh 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 H?gh 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 H?gh who proposed it. They had not seen each other for several days, when Sti - 196 - came into the drawing-room of the magnificent apartment they had rented from Isabel Gilles, the landlady of La 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 and - 197 - remorse, yet do I love you still—I do indeed. I love you with all my might and soul, Marie.”

“Fie, shame on you, Sti H?gh! 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 and - 198 - gladly. 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 H?gh. 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 H?gh,—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. Leaves - 199 - of 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 steep - 200 - street 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 what - 201 - dashing 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 about memento mori that 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 down - 202 - by 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.

- 203 -

Marie Grubbe was at Nürnberg. After the parting from Sti H?gh, 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 H?gh 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 this - 204 - faith,—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.

- 205 -

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.