Mistress Rigitze Grubbe, relict of the late lamented Hans Ulrik Gyldenlöve, owned a house on the corner of Östergade and Pilestræde. At that time, Östergade was a fairly aristocratic residence section. Members of the Trolle, Sehested, Rosencrantz, and Krag families lived there; Joachim Gersdorf was Mistress Rigitze’s neighbor, and one or two foreign ministers usually had lodgings in Carl van Mandern’s new red mansion. Only one side of the street was the home of fashion, however; on the other side, Nikolaj Church was flanked by low houses, where dwelt artisans, shopkeepers, and shipmasters. There were also one or two taverns.
On a Sunday morning, early in September, Marie Grubbe stood looking out of the dormer window in Mistress Rigitze’s house. Not a vehicle in sight! Nothing but staid footsteps, and now and then the long-drawn cry of the oyster-monger. The sunlight, quivering over roofs and pavements, threw sharp, black, almost rectangular shadows. The distance swam in a faint bluish heat mist.
“At-tention!” called a woman’s voice behind her, cleverly mimicking the raucous tones of one accustomed to much shouting of military orders.
Marie turned. Her aunt’s maid, Lucie, had for some time been sitting on the table, appraising her own well-formed feet with critical eyes. Tired of this occupation, she had called out, and now sat swinging her legs and laughing merrily.
Marie shrugged her shoulders with a rather bored smile and would have returned to her window-gazing, but Lucie jumped down from the table, caught her by the waist, and forced her down on a small rush-bottomed chair.
“Look here, Miss,” she said, “shall I tell you something?”
“Well?”
“You’ve forgot to write your letter, and the company will be here at half-past one o’clock, so you’ve scarce four hours. D’you know what they’re going to have for dinner? Clear soup, flounder or some such broad fish, chicken pasty, Mansfeld tart, and sweet plum compote. Faith, it’s fine, but not fat! Your sweetheart’s coming, Miss?”
“Nonsense!” said Marie crossly.
“Lord help me! It’s neither banns nor betrothal because I say so! But, Miss, I can’t see why you don’t set more store by your cousin. He is the pret-tiest, most be-witching man I ever saw. Such feet he has! And there’s royal blood in him—you’ve only to look at his hands, so tiny and shaped like a mould, and his nails no larger than silver groats and so pink and round. Such a pair of legs he can muster! When he walks it’s like steel springs, and his eyes blow sparks—”
She threw her arms around Marie and kissed her neck so passionately and covetously that the child blushed and drew herself out of the embrace.
Lucie flung herself down on the bed, laughing wildly.
“How silly you are to-day,” cried Marie. “If you carry on like this, I’ll go downstairs.”
“Merciful! Let me be merry once in a while! Faith, there’s trouble enough, and I’ve more than I can do with. With my sweetheart in the war, suffering ill and worse—it’s enough to break one’s heart. What if they’ve shot him dead or crippled! God pity me, poor maid, I’d never get over it.” She hid her face in the bedclothes and sobbed: “Oh, no, no, no, my own dear Lorens—I’d be so true to you, if the Lord would only bring you back to me safe and sound! Oh, Miss, I can’t bear it!”
Marie tried to soothe her with words and caresses, and at last she succeeded in making Lucie sit up and wipe her eyes.
“Indeed, Miss,” she said, “no one knows how miserable I am. You see, I can’t possibly behave as I should all the time. ’Tis no use I resolve to set no store by the young men. When they begin jesting and passing compliments, my tongue’s got an itch to answer them back, and then ’tis true more foolery comes of it than I could answer for to Lorens. But when I think of the danger he’s in, oh, then I’m more sorry than any living soul can think. For I love him, Miss, and no one else, upon my soul I do. And when I’m in bed, with the moon shining straight in on the floor, I’m like another woman, and everything seems so sad, and I weep and weep, and something gets me by the throat till I’m like to choke—it’s terrible! Then I keep tossing in my bed and praying to God, though I scarce know what I’m praying for. Sometimes I sit up in bed and catch hold of my head and it seems as if I’d lose my wits with longing. Why, goodness me, Miss, you’re crying! Sure you’re not longing for any one in secret—and you so young?”
Marie blushed and smiled faintly. There was something flattering in the idea that she might be pining for a lover.
“No, no,” she said, “but what you say is so sad. You make it seem as if there’s naught but misery and trouble.”
“Bless me, no, there’s a little of other things too,” said Lucie, rising in answer to a summons from below, and nodding archly to Marie, as she went.
Marie sighed and returned to the window. She looked down into the cool, green graveyard of St. Nikolaj, at the red walls of the church, over the tarnished copper roof of the castle, past the royal dockyard and ropewalk around to the slender spire of East Gate, past the gardens and wooden cottages of Hallandsaas, to the bluish Sound melting into the blue sky, where softly moulded cloud-masses were drifting to the Skaane shore.
Three months had passed since she came to Copenhagen. When she left home she had supposed that life in the residential city must be something vastly different from what she had found. It had never occurred to her that she might be more lonely there than at Tjele Manor, where, in truth, she had been lonely enough. Her father had never been a companion to her, for he was too entirely himself to be anything to others. He never became young when he spoke to fourteen years nor feminine when he addressed a little maid. He was always on the shady side of fifty and always Erik Grubbe.
As for his concubine, who ruled as though she were indeed mistress of the house, the mere sight of her was enough to call out all there was of pride and bitterness in Marie. This coarse, domineering peasant woman had wounded and tortured her so often that the girl could hardly hear her step without instantly and half unconsciously hardening into obstinacy and hatred. Little Anne, her half-sister, was sickly and spoiled, which did not make it easier to get along with her, and to crown all, the mother made the child her excuse for abusing Marie to Erik Grubbe.
Who, then, were her companions?
She knew every path and road in Bigum woods, every cow that pastured in the meadows, every fowl in the hencoop. The kindly greeting of the servants and peasants when she met them seemed to say: Our young lady suffers wrong, and we know it. We are sorry, and we hate the woman up there as much as you do.
But in Copenhagen?
There was Lucie, and she was very fond of her, but after all she was a servant. Marie was in Lucie’s confidence and was pleased and grateful for it, but Lucie was not in her confidence. She could not tell her troubles to the maid. Nor could she bear to have the fact of her unfortunate position put into words or hear a servant discuss her unhappy family affairs. She would not even brook a word of criticism against her aunt, though she certainly did not love her father’s kinswoman and had no reason to love her.
Rigitze Grubbe held the theories of her time on the salutary effects of harsh discipline, and she set herself to bring up Marie accordingly. She had never had any children of her own, and she was not only a very impatient foster-mother, but also clumsy, for mother love had never taught her the useful little arts that smooth the way for teacher and pupil. Yet a severe training might have been very good for Marie. The lack of watchful care in her home had allowed one side of her nature to grow almost too luxuriantly, while the other had been maimed and stunted by capricious cruelty, and she might have felt it a relief to be guided in the way she should go by the hard and steady hand of one who in all common sense could wish her nothing but good.
Yet she was not so guided. Mistress Rigitze had so many irons in the fire of politics and court intrigue that she was often away for days, and when at home she would be so preoccupied that Marie did with herself and her time what she pleased. When Mistress Rigitze had a moment to spare for the child, the very consciousness of her own neglect made her doubly irritable. The whole relation therefore wore to Marie an utterly unreasonable aspect, and was fitted to give her the notion that she was an outcast whom all hated and none loved.
As she stood at the window looking out over the city, this sense of forlornness came over her again. She leaned her head against the casement and lost herself in contemplation of the slowly gliding clouds.
She understood what Lucie had said about the pain of longing. It was like something burning inside of you, and there was nothing to do but to let it burn and burn—how well she knew it! What would come of it all?—One day just like another—nothing, nothing—nothing to look forward to. Could it last? Yes, for a long time yet! Even when she had passed sixteen?—But things did happen to other people! At least she wouldn’t go on wearing a child’s cap after she was sixteen; sister Anne Marie hadn’t—she had been married. Marie remembered the noisy carousing at the wedding long after she had been sent to bed—and the music. Well, at least she could be married. But to whom? Perhaps to the brother of her sister’s husband. To be sure, he was frightfully ugly, but if there was nothing else for it—No, that certainly was nothing to look forward to. Was there anything? Not that she could see.
She left the window, sat down by the table thoughtfully, and began to write:
My loving greeting always in the name of Our Lord, dear Anne Marie, good sister and friend! God keep you always and be praised for His mercies. I have taken upon myself to write pour vous congratuler inasmuch as you have been fortunately delivered of child and are now restored to good health. Dear sister, I am well and hearty. Our Aunt, as you know, lives in much splendor, and we often have company, chiefly gentlemen of the court, and with the exception of a few old dames, none visit us but men folks. Many of them have known our blessed mother and praise her beauty and virtue. I always sit at table with the company, but no one speaks to me except Ulrik Frederik, whom I would prefer to do without, for he is ever given to bantering and raillerie rather than sensible conversation. He is yet young and is not in the best repute; ’tis said he frequents both taverns and ale-houses and the like. Now I have nothing new to tell except that to-day we have an assembly, and he is coming. Whenever I speak French he laughs very much and tells me that it is a hundred years old, which may well be, for Pastor Jens was a mere youth at the time of his travels. Yet he gives me praise because I put it together well, so that no lady of the court can do it better, he says, but this I believe to be but compliments, about which I care nothing. I have had no word from Tjele. Our Aunt cannot speak without cursing and lamenting of the enormity that our dear father should live as he does with a female of such lowly extraction. I grieve sorely, but that gives no boot for bane. You must not let Stycho see this letter, but give him greeting from my heart. September, 1657.
Your dear sister,
MARIE GRUBBE.
The honorable Mistress Anne Marie Grubbe, consort of Stycho Höegh of Gjordslev, my good friend and sister, written in all loving-kindness.
The guests had risen from the table and entered the drawing-room, where Lucie was passing the golden Dantzig brandy. Marie had taken refuge in a bay-window, half hidden by the full curtains. Ulrik Frederik went over to her, bowed with exaggerated deference, and with a very grave face expressed his disappointment at having been seated so far from mademoiselle at the table. As he spoke, he rested his small brown hand on the window-sill. Marie looked at it and blushed scarlet.
“Pardon, Mademoiselle, I see that you are flushing with anger. Permit me to present my most humble service! Might I make so bold as to ask how I have had the misfortune to offend you?”
“Indeed I am neither flushed nor angry.”
“Ah, so ’tis your pleasure to call that color white? Bien! But then I would fain know by what name you designate the rose commonly known as red!”
“Can you never say a sensible word?”
“Hm—let me see—ay, it has happened, I own, but rarely—
Doch Chloë, Chloë zürne nicht!
Toll brennet deiner Augen Licht
Mich wie das Hundsgestirn die Hunde,
Und Worte schäumen mir vom Munde
Dem Geifer gleich der Wasserscheu—”
“Forsooth, you may well say that!”
“Ach, Mademoiselle, ’tis but little you know of the power of Eros! Upon my word, there are nights when I have been so lovesick I have stolen down through the Silk Yard and leaped the balustrade into Christen Skeel’s garden, and there I’ve stood like a statue among fragrant roses and violets, till the languishing Aurora has run her fingers through my locks.”
“Ah, Monsieur, you were surely mistaken when you spoke of Eros; it must have been Evan—and you may well go astray when you’re brawling around at night-time. You’ve never stood in Skeel’s garden; you’ve been at the sign of Mogens in Cappadocia among bottles and Rhenish wineglasses, and if you’ve been still as a statue, it’s been something besides dreams of love that robbed you of the power to move your legs.”
“You wrong me greatly! Though I may go to the vintner’s house sometimes, ’tis not for pleasure nor revelry, but to forget the gnawing anguish that afflicts me.”
“Ah!”
“You have no faith in me; you do not trust to the constancy of my amour! Heavens! Do you see the eastern louver-window in St. Nikolaj? For three long days have I sat there gazing at your fair countenance, as you bent over your broidery frame.”
“How unlucky you are! You can scarce open your mouth, but I can catch you in loose talk. I never sit with my broidery frame toward St. Nikolaj. Do you know this rigmarole?—
’Twas black night,
Troll was in a plight;
For man held him tight.
To the troll said he:
‘If you would be free,
Then teach me quick,
Without guile or trick,
One word of perfect truth.’
Up spake the troll: ‘In sooth!’
Man let him go.
None on earth, I trow,
Could call troll liar for saying so.”
Ulrik Frederik bowed deferentially and left her without a word.
She looked after him, as he crossed the room. He did walk gracefully. His silk hose fitted him without fold or wrinkle. How pretty they were at the ankle, where they met the long, narrow shoe! She liked to look at him. She had never before noticed that he had a tiny pink scar in his forehead.
Furtively she glanced at her own hands and made a slight grimace—the fingers seemed to her too short.
Flakes of orange-colored light shot up from the sea-gray fog-bank in the horizon, and lit the sky overhead with a mild, rose-golden flame that widened and widened, grew fainter and fainter, until it met a long, slender cloud, caught its waving edge, and fired it with a glowing, burning radiance. Violet and pale pink, the reflection from the sunrise clouds fell over the beaches of Kallebodstrand. The dew sparkled in the tall grass of the western rampart; the air was alive and quivering with the twitter of sparrows in the gardens and on the roofs. Thin strips of delicate mist floated over the orchards, and the heavy, fruit-laden branches of the trees bent slowly under the breezes from the Sound.
A long-drawn, thrice-repeated blast of the horn was flung out from West Gate and echoed from the other corners of the city. The lonely watchmen on the ramparts began to pace more briskly on their beats, shook their mantles, and straightened their caps. The time of relief was near.
On the bastion north of West Gate, Ulrik Frederik Gyldenlöve stood looking at the gulls, sailing with white wings up and down along the bright strip of water in the moat. Light and fleeting, sometimes faint and misty, sometimes colored in strong pigments or clear and vivid as fire, the memories of his twenty years chased one another through his soul. They brought the fragrance of heavy roses and the scent of fresh green woods, the huntsman’s cry and the fiddler’s play and the rustling of stiff, billowy silks. Distant but sunlit, the life of his childhood in the red-roofed Holstein town passed before him. He saw the tall form of his mother, Mistress Margrethe Pappen, a black hymn-book in her white hands. He saw the freckled chamber-maid with her thin ankles and the fencing-master with his pimpled, purplish face and his bow-legs. The park of Gottorp castle passed in review, and the meadows with fresh hay-stacks by the fjord, and there stood the gamekeeper’s clumsy boy Heinrich, who knew how to crow like a cock and was marvellously clever at playing ducks and drakes. Last came the church with its strange twilight, its groaning organ, its mysterious iron-railed chapel, and its emaciated Christ holding a red banner in his hand.
Again came a blast of the horn from West Gate, and in the same moment the sun broke out, bright and warm, routing all mists and shadowy tones.
He remembered the chase when he had shot his first deer, and old von Dettmer had made a sign in his forehead with the blood of the animal, while the poor hunters’ boys blew their blaring fanfares. Then there was the nosegay to the castellan’s Malene and the serious interview with his tutor, then his first trip abroad. He remembered his first duel in the fresh, dewy morning, and Annette’s cascades of ringing laughter, and the ball at the Elector’s, and his lonely walk outside of the city gates with head aching, the first time he had been tipsy. The rest was a golden mist, filled with the tinkling of goblets and the scent of wine, and there were Lieschen and Lotte, and Martha’s white neck and Adelaide’s round arms. Finally came the journey to Copenhagen and the gracious reception by his royal father, the bustling futilities of court duties by day and the streams of wine and frenzied kisses at night, broken by the gorgeous revelry of the chase or by nightly trysts and tender whisperings in the shelter of Ibstrup park or the gilded halls of Hilleröd castle.
Yet clearer than all these he saw the black, burning eyes of Sofie Urne; more insistent than aught else her voice sounded in his spell-bound memory—beautiful and voluptuously soft, its low notes drawing like white arms, or rising like a flitting bird that soars and mocks with wanton trills, while it flees. …
A rustling among the bushes of the rampart below waked him from his dreams.
“Who goes there!” he cried.
“None but Daniel, Lord Gyldenlöve, Daniel Knopf,” was the answer, as a little crippled man came out from the bushes, bowing.
“Ha! Hop-o’-my-Thumb? A thousand plagues, what are you doing here?”
The man stood looking down at himself sadly.
“Daniel, Daniel!” said Ulrik Frederik, smiling. “You didn’t come unscathed from the ‘fiery furnace’ last night. The German brewer must have made too hot a fire for you.”
The cripple began to scramble up the edge of the rampart. Daniel Knopf, because of his stature called Hop-o’-my-Thumb, was a wealthy merchant of some and twenty years, known for his fortune as well as for his sharp tongue and his skill in fencing. He was boon companion with the younger nobility, or at least with a certain group of gallants, le cercle des mourants, consisting chiefly of younger men about the court. Ulrik Frederik was the life and soul of this crowd, which, though convivial rather than intellectual, and notorious rather than beloved, was in fact admired and envied for its very peccadillos.
Half tutor and half mountebank, Daniel moved among these men. He did not walk beside them on the public streets, or in houses of quality, but in the fencing-school, the wine-cellar, and the tavern he was indispensable. No one else could discourse so scientifically on bowling and dog-training or talk with such unction of feints and parrying. No one knew wine as he did. He had worked out profound theories about dicing and love-making, and could speak learnedly and at length on the folly of crossing the domestic stud with the Salzburger horses. To crown all, he knew anecdotes about everybody, and—most impressive of all to the young men—he had decided opinions about everything.
Moreover, he was always ready to humor and serve them, never forgot the line that divided him from the nobility, and was decidedly funny when, in a fit of drunken frolic, they would dress him up in some whimsical guise. He let himself be kicked about and bullied without resenting it, and would often good-naturedly throw himself into the breach to stop a conversation that threatened the peace of the company.
Thus he gained admittance to circles that were to him as the very breath of life. To him, the citizen and cripple, the nobles seemed like demigods. Their cant alone was human speech. Their existence swam in a shimmer of light and a sea of fragrance, while common folk dragged out their lives in drab-colored twilight and stuffy air. He cursed his citizen birth as a far greater calamity than his lameness, and grieved over it, in solitude, with a bitterness and passion that bordered on insanity.
“How now, Daniel,” said Ulrik Frederik, when the little man reached him. “ ’Twas surely no light mist that clouded your eyes last night, since you’ve run aground here on the rampart, or was the clary at flood tide, since I find you high and dry like Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat?”
“Prince of the Canaries, you rave if you suppose I was in your company last night!”
“A thousand devils, what’s the matter then?” cried Ulrik Frederik impatiently.
“Lord Gyldenlöve,” said Daniel, looking up at him with tears in his eyes, “I’m an unhappy wretch.”
“You’re a dog of a huckster! Is it a herring-boat you’re afraid the Swede will catch? Or are you groaning because trade has come to a standstill, or do you think the saffron will lose its strength and the mildew fall on your pepper and paradise grain? You’ve a ha’penny soul! As if good citizens had naught else to think about than their own trumpery going to the devil—now that we may look for the fall of both King and realm!”
“Lord Gyldenlöve—”
“Oh, go to the devil with your whining!”
“Not so, Lord Gyldenlöve,” said Daniel solemnly, stepping back a pace. “For I don’t fret about the stoppage of trade, nor the loss of money and what money can buy. I care not a doit nor a damn for herring and saffron, but to be turned away by officers and men like one sick with the leprosy or convicted of crime, that’s a sinful wrong against me, Lord Gyldenlöve. That’s why I’ve been lying in the grass all night like a scabby dog that’s been turned out, that’s why I’ve been writhing like a miserable crawling beast and have cried to God in heaven, asking Him why I alone should be utterly cast away, why my arm alone should be too withered and weak to wield a sword, though they’re arming lackeys and ’prentice boys—”
“But who the shining Satan has turned you away?”
“Faith, Lord Gyldenlöve, I ran to the ramparts like the others, but when I came to one party they told me they had room for no more, and they were only poor citizens anyway and not fit to be with the gentry and persons of quality. Some parties said they would have no crooked billets, for cripples drew the bullets and brought ill luck, and none would hazard life and limb unduly by having amongst them one whom the Lord had marked. Then I begged Major-General Ahlefeldt that he would order me to a position, but he shook his head and laughed: things hadn’t come to such a pass yet that they had to stuff the ranks with stunted stumps who’d give more trouble than aid.”
“But why didn’t you go to the officers whom you know?”
“I did so, Lord Gyldenlöve. I thought at once of the cercle and spoke to one or two of the mourants—King Petticoat and the Gilded Knight.”
“And did they give you no help?”
“Ay, Lord Gyldenlöve, they helped me—Lord Gyldenlöve, they helped me, may God find them for it! ‘Daniel,’ they said, ‘Daniel, go home and pick the maggots out of your damson prunes!’ They had believed I had too much tact to come here with my buffoonery. ’Twas all very well if they thought me fit to wear cap and bells at a merry bout, but when they were on duty I was to keep out of their sight. Now, was that well spoken, Lord Gyldenlöve? No, ’twas a sin, a sin! Even if they’d made free with me in the wine-cellars, they said, I needn’t think I was one of them, or that I could be with them when they were at their post. I was too presumptuous for them, Lord Gyldenlöve! I’d best not force myself into their company, for they needed no merry-andrew here. That’s what they told me, Lord Gyldenlöve! And yet I asked but to risk my life side by side with the other citizens.”
“Oh, ay,” said Ulrik Frederik, yawning, “I can well understand that it vexes you to have no part in it all. You might find it irksome to sweat over your desk while the fate of the realm is decided here on the ramparts. Look you, you shall be in it! For—” He broke off and looked at Daniel with suspicion. “There’s no foul play, sirrah?”
The little man stamped the ground in his rage and gritted his teeth, his face pale as a whitewashed wall.
“Come, come,” Ulrik Frederik went on, “I trust you, but you can scarce expect me to put faith in your word as if ’twere that of a gentleman. And remember, ’twas your own that scorned you first. Hush!”
From a bastion at East Gate boomed a shot, the first that had been fired in this war. Ulrik Frederik drew himself up, while the blood rushed to his face. He looked after the white smoke with eager, fascinated eyes, and when he spoke there was a strange tremor in his voice.
“Daniel,” he said, “toward noon you can report to me, and think no more of what I said.”
Daniel looked admiringly after him, then sighed deeply, sat down in the grass, and wept as an unhappy child weeps.
In the afternoon of the same day, a fitful wind blew through the streets of the city, whirling up clouds of dust, whittlings, and bits of straw, and carrying them hither and thither. It tore the tiles from the roofs, drove the smoke down the chimneys, and wrought sad havoc with the tradesmen’s signs. The long, dull-blue pennants of the dyers were flung out on the breeze and fell down again in spirals that tightened around their quivering staffs. The turners’ spinning-wheels rocked and swayed; hairy tails flapped over the doors of the furriers, and the resplendent glass suns of the glaziers swung in a restless glitter that vied with the polished basins of the barber-surgeons. Doors and shutters were slamming in the back-yards. The chickens hid their heads under barrels and sheds, and even the pigs grew uneasy in their pens, when the wind howled through sunlit cracks and gaping joints.
The storm brought an oppressive heat. Within the houses the people were gasping for breath, and only the flies were buzzing about cheerfully in the sultry atmosphere. The streets were unendurable, the porches were draughty, and hence people who possessed gardens preferred to seek shelter there.
In the large enclosure behind Christoffer Urne’s house in Vingaardsstræde, a young girl sat with her sewing under a Norway maple. Her tall, slender figure was almost frail, yet her breast was deep and full. Luxuriant waves of black hair and almost startlingly large dark eyes accented the pallor of her skin. The nose was sharp, but finely cut, the mouth wide though not full, and with a morbid sweetness in its smile. The lips were scarlet, the chin somewhat pointed, but firm and well rounded. Her dress was slovenly: an old black velvet robe embroidered in gold that had become tarnished, a new green felt hat from which fell a snowy plume, and leather shoes that were worn to redness on the pointed toes. There was lint in her hair, and neither her collar nor her long, white hands were immaculately clean.
The girl was Christoffer Urne’s niece, Sofie. Her father, Jörgen Urne of Alslev, Councillor of the Realm, Lord High Constable, and Knight of the Elephant, had died when she was yet a child, and a few years ago her mother, Mistress Margrethe Marsvin, had followed him. The elderly uncle, with whom she lived, was a widower, and she was therefore, at least nominally, the mistress of his household.
She hummed a song as she worked, and kept time by swinging one foot on the point of her toe.
The leafy crowns over her head rustled and swayed in the boisterous wind with a noise like the murmur of many waters. The tall hollyhocks, swinging their flower-topped stems back and forth in unsteady circles, seemed seized with a sudden tempestuous madness, while the raspberry bushes, timidly ducking their heads, turned the pale inner side of their leaves to the light and changed color at every breath. Dry leaves sailed down through the air, the grass lay flat on the ground, and the white bloom of the spirea rose and fell froth-like upon the light-green, shifting waves of the foliage.
There was a moment of stillness. Everything seemed to straighten and hang breathlessly poised, still quivering in suspense, but the next instant the wind came shrieking again and caught the garden in a wild wave of rustling and glittering and mad rocking and endless shifting as before.
“In a boat sat Phyllis fair;
Corydon beheld her there,
Seized his flute, and loudly blew it.
Many a day did Phyllis rue it;
For the oars dropped from her hands,
And aground upon the sands,
And aground—”
Ulrik Frederik was approaching from the other end of the garden. Sofie looked up for a moment in surprise, then bent her head over her work and went on humming. He strolled slowly up the walk, sometimes stopping to look at a flower, as though he had not noticed that there was any one else in the garden. Presently he turned down a side-path, paused a moment behind a large white syringa to smooth his uniform and pull down his belt, took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, then walked on. The path made a turn and led straight to Sofie’s seat.
“Ah, Mistress Sofie! Good-day!” he exclaimed as though in surprise.
“Good-day!” she replied with calm friendliness. She carefully disposed of her needle, smoothed her embroidery with her hands, looked up with a smile, and nodded. “Welcome, Lord Gyldenlöve!”
“I call this blind luck,” he said, bowing. “I expected to find none here but your uncle, madam.”
Sofie threw him a quick glance and smiled. “He’s not here,” she said, shaking her head.
“I see,” said Ulrik Frederik, looking down.
There was a moment’s pause. Then Sofie spoke: “How sultry it is to-day!”
“Ay, we may get a thunderstorm, if the wind goes down.”
“It may be,” said Sofie, looking thoughtfully toward the house.
“Did you hear the shot this morning?” asked Ulrik Frederik, drawing himself up as though to imply that he was about to leave.
“Ay, and we may look for heart-rending times this summer. One may well-nigh turn light-headed with the thought of the danger to life and goods, and for me with so many kinsmen and good friends in this miserable affair, who are like to lose both life and limb and all they possess, there’s reason enough for falling into strange and gloomy thoughts.”
“Nay, sweet Mistress Sofie! By the living God, you must not shed tears!? You paint all in too dark colors—
Tousiours Mars ne met pas au jour
Des objects de sang et de larmes,
Mais”—
and he seized her hand and lifted it to his lips—
“… tousiours l’Empire d’amour
Est plein de troubles et d’alarmes.”
Sofie looked at him innocently. How lovely she was! The intense, irresistible night of her eyes, where day welled out in myriad light-points like a black diamond flashing in the sun, the poignantly beautiful arch of her lips, the proud lily paleness of her cheeks melting slowly into a rose-golden flush like a white cloud kindled by the morning glow, the delicate temples, blue-veined like flower-petals, shaded by the mysterious darkness of her hair. …
Her hand trembled in his, cold as marble. Gently she drew it away, and her eyelids dropped. The embroidery slipped from her lap. Ulrik Frederik stooped to pick it up, bent one knee to the ground, and remained kneeling before her.
“Mistress Sofie!” he said.
She laid her hand over his mouth and looked at him with gentle seriousness, almost with pain.
“Dear Ulrik Frederik,” she begged, “do not take it ill that I beseech you not to be led by a momentary sentiment to attempt a change in the pleasant relations that have hitherto existed between us. It serves no purpose but to bring trouble and vexation to us both. Rise from this foolish position and take a seat in mannerly fashion here on this bench so that we may converse in all calmness.”
“No, I want the book of my fate to be sealed in this hour,” said Ulrik Frederik without rising. “You little know the great and burning passion I feel for you, if you imagine I can be content to be naught but your good friend. For the bloody sweat of Christ, put not your faith in anything so utterly impossible! My love is no smouldering spark that will flame up or be extinguished according as you blow hot or cold on it. Par dieu! ’Tis a raging and devouring fire, but it’s for you to say whether it is to run out and be lost in a thousand flickering flames and will-o’-the-wisps, or burn forever, warm and steady, high and shining toward heaven.”
“But, dear Ulrik Frederik, have pity on me! Don’t draw me into a temptation that I have no strength to withstand! You must believe that you are dear to my heart and most precious, but for that very reason I would to the uttermost guard myself against bringing you into a false and foolish position that you cannot maintain with honor. You are nearly six years younger than I, and that which is now pleasing to you in my person, age may easily mar or distort to ugliness. You smile, but suppose that when you are thirty you find yourself saddled with an old wrinkled hag of a wife, who has brought you but little fortune, and not otherwise aided in your preferment! Would you not then wish that at twenty you had married a young royal lady, your equal in age and birth, who could have advanced you better than a common gentlewoman? Dear Ulrik Frederik, go speak to your noble kinsmen, they will tell you the same. But what they cannot tell you is this: if you brought to your home such a gentlewoman, older than yourself, she would strangle you with her jealousy. She would suspect your every look, nay the innermost thoughts of your heart. She would know how much you had given up for her sake, and therefore she would strive the more to have her love be all in all to you. Trust me, she would encompass you with her idolatrous love as with a cage of iron, and if she perceived that you longed to quit it for a single instant, she would grieve day and night and embitter your life with her despondent sorrow.”
She rose and held out her hand. “Farewell, Ulrik Frederik! Our parting is bitter as death, but after many years, when I am a faded old maid, or the middle-aged wife of an aged man, you will know that Sofie Urne was right. May God the Father keep thee! Do you remember the Spanish romance book where it tells of a certain vine of India which winds itself about a tree for support, and goes on encircling it, long after the tree is dead and withered, until at last it holds the tree that else would fall? Trust me, Ulrik Frederik, in the same manner my soul will be sustained and held up by your love, long after your sentiment shall be withered and vanished.”
She looked straight into his eyes and turned to go, but he held her hand fast.
“Would you make me raving mad? Then hear me! Now I know that thou lovest me, no power on earth can part us! Does nothing tell thee that ’tis folly to speak of what thou wouldst or what I would?—when my blood is drunk with thee and I am bereft of all power over myself! I am possessed with thee, and if thou turnest away thy heart from me in this very hour, thou shouldst yet be mine, in spite of thee, in spite of me! I love thee with a love like hatred—I think nothing of thy happiness. Thy weal or woe is nothing to me—only that I be in thy joy, I be in thy sorrow, that I—”
He caught her to him violently and pressed her against his breast.
Slowly she lifted her face and looked long at him with eyes full of tears. Then she smiled. “Have it as thou wilt, Ulrik Frederik,” and she kissed him passionately.
Three weeks later their betrothal was celebrated with much pomp. The King had readily given his consent, feeling that it was time to make an end of Ulrik Frederik’s rather too convivial bachelorhood.
Marie Grubbe was now seventeen.
On the afternoon when she fled in terror from the death-bed of Ulrik Christian Gyldenlöve, she had rushed up to her own chamber and paced the floor, wringing her hands, and moaning as with intense bodily pain, until Lucie had run to Mistress Rigitze and breathlessly begged her for God’s sake to come to Miss Marie, for she thought something had gone to pieces inside of her. Mistress Rigitze came, but could not get a word out of the child. She had thrown herself before a chair with face hidden in the cushions, and to all Mistress Rigitze’s questions answered only that she wanted to go home, she wanted to go home, she wouldn’t stay a moment longer, and she had wept and sobbed, rocking her head from side to side. Mistress Rigitze had finally given her a good beating and scolded Lucie, saying that between them they had nearly worried the life out of her with their nonsense, and therewith she left the two to themselves.
Marie took the beating with perfect indifference. Had any one offered her blows in the happy days of her love, it would have seemed the blackest calamity, the deepest degradation, but now it no longer mattered. In one short hour, her longings, her faith, and her hopes had all been withered, shrivelled up, and blown away. She remembered once at Tjele when she had seen the men stone to death a dog that had ventured within the high railing of the duck-park. The wretched animal swam back and forth, unable to get out, the blood running from many wounds, and she remembered how she had prayed to God at every stone that it might strike deep, since the dog was so miserable that to spare it would have been the greatest cruelty. She felt like poor Diana, and welcomed every sorrow, only wishing that it would strike deep, for she was so unhappy that the deathblow was her only hope.
Oh, if that was the end of all greatness—slavish whimpering, lecherous raving, and craven terror!—then there was no such thing as greatness. The hero she had dreamed of, he rode through the portals of death with ringing spurs and shining mail, with head bared and lance at rest, not with fear in witless eyes and whining prayers on trembling lips. Then there was no shining figure that she could dream of in worshipping love, no sun that she could gaze on till the world swam in light and rays and color before her blinded eyes. It was all dull and flat and leaden, bottomless triviality, lukewarm commonplace, and nothing else.
Such were her first thoughts. She seemed to have been transported for a short time to a fairy-land, where the warm, life-pregnant air had made her whole being unfold like an exotic flower, flashing sunlight from every petal, breathing fragrance in every vein, blissful in its own light and scent, growing and growing, leaf upon leaf and petal upon petal, in irresistible strength and fullness. But this was all past. Her life was barren and void again; she was poor and numb with cold. No doubt the whole world was like that, and all the people likewise. And yet they went on living in their futile bustle. Oh, her heart was sick with disgust at seeing them flaunt their miserable rags and proudly listen for golden music in their empty clatter.
Eagerly she reached for those treasured old books of devotion that had so often been proffered her and as often rejected. There was dreary solace in their stern words on the misery of the world and the vanity of all earthly things, but the one book that she pored over and came back to again and again was the Revelation of St. John the Divine. She never tired of contemplating the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem; she pictured it to herself down to the smallest detail, walked through every by-way, peeped in at every door. She was blinded by the rays of sardonyx and chrysolyte, chrysoprasus and jacinth; she rested in the shadow of the gates of pearl and saw her own face mirrored in the streets of gold like transparent glass. Often she wondered what she and Lucie and Aunt Rigitze and all the other people of Copenhagen would do when the first angel poured out the vial of the wrath of God upon earth, and the second poured out his vial, and the third poured out his—she never got any farther, for she always had to begin over again.
When she sat at her work she would sing one long passion hymn after another, in a loud, plaintive voice, and in her spare moments she would recite whole pages from “The Chain of Prayerful Souls” or “A Godly Voice for Each of the Twelve Months;” for these two she knew almost by heart.
Underneath all this piety there lurked a veiled ambition. Though she really felt the fetters of sin and longed for communion with God, there mingled in her religious exercises a dim desire for power, a half-realized hope that she might become one of the first in the kingdom of heaven. This brooding worked a transformation in her whole being. She shunned people and withdrew within herself. Even her appearance was changed, the face pale and thin, the eyes burning with a hard flame—and no wonder; for the terrible visions of the Apocalypse rode life-size through her dreams at night, and all day long her thoughts dwelt on what was dark and dreary in life. When Lucie had gone to sleep in the evening, she would steal out of bed and find a mystic ascetic pleasure in falling on her knees and praying, till her bones ached and her feet were numb with cold.