Marie Grubbe

“ The Honorable Mistress Anne Marie Grubbe, Sti Högh’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. ”

“ A merry dance-tune sounded faintly from a lute in the distance.
“What a fool!” murmured Daniel. “Should you think, Magnille, that one who owned the most precious pearl of all the Indies would hold it as naught and run after bits of painted glass? Marie Grubbe and—Karen Fiol! Is he in his right mind? And now they think he’s hunting, because forsooth he lets the gamekeeper shoot for him, and comes back with godwits and woodcocks by the brace and bagful, and all the while he’s fooling and brawling down at Lynge with a town-woman, a strumpet. ”

“ Another means in his favorite method of indirect approach to a personality is through woman’s dress. Marie Grubbe’s attire—from the lavender homespun and billowing linen ruffles of the young maiden to the more sophisticated daintiness of Ulrik Frederik’s bride in madder red robe and clocked stockings, the slovenly garb of Palle Dyre’s wife, and finally the neat simple gown marred by a tawdry brocaded cap which she dons when she falls in love with Sören—is a complete index to her moral fall and rise. ”

“ Sören, Sören, who’ll have the law on you? But devil split me, you’re a fool,” he went on in a voice from which the solemnity had flown, “an’ it’s fool’s play to be runnin’ after an old woman, when there’s such a risk to it. If she’d been young! An’ such an ill-tempered satan, too—let Blue-face keep her in peace, there’s other women in the world besides her, Heaven be praised.”
Sören had neither courage nor inclination to explain to them that he could no longer live without Marie 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. ”

“ Sometimes his descriptions seem overloaded with details, as when he uses two pages to tell about the play of the firelight in the little parlor at Aggershus, where Marie Grubbe sits singing to the tones of her lute. Yet the images never blur nor overlap one another. Every word deepens the central idea: the sport of the storm with the fire and the consequent struggle between light and - xiii - darkness in the room. ”

“ Marie wept. “Art thou so ill?” she murmured. She knelt, supporting her elbows on the edge of the bed, and gazed at his face.
“Ulrik Christian,” she called, and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Is any one else here?” he moaned weakly.
She shook her head. “Art thou very ill?” she asked.
“Yes, ’tis all over with me.”
“No, no, it must not be! Whom have I if you go? No, no, how can I bear it!”
“To live?—’tis easy to live, but I have had the bread of death and the wine of death, I must die—yes, yes,—bread and wine—body and blood—d’you believe they help? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The streets were bright with throngs of noblemen and their ladies, bedizened lackeys, and richly caparisoned horses in silver-mounted harness. There was feasting and open house in the homes of the nobility. Far into the night the violin sounded from well-lit halls, telling the sleepy citizens that the best blood of the realm was warming to a stately dance over parquet floors, while the wine sparkled in ancestral goblets.
All these festivities passed Marie Grubbe by; none invited her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Marie hammered at the door with all her might.
“Merciful God!” she cried. “Why don’t you come out! I love you as much as it’s possible for one human being to love another! I love you, love you, love you—oh, he doesn’t believe me! What shall I do—miserable wretch that I am!”
Sören did not hear her, for he had passed through the large common room into the little chamber in the rear, where he and the gamekeeper usually slept. This was where he meant to carry out his purpose, but then it occurred to him that it would be a pity for the gamekeeper ”

“ How should I have such mad fancies!”
“Then, my dear kinswoman, you are perfectly happy? Your cup of life is clear and fresh, it is sweet to your tongue, warms your blood, and quickens your thoughts? Is it, in truth, never bitter as lees, flat and stale? Never fouled by adders and serpents that crawl and mumble? If so, your eyes have deceived me.”
“Ah, you would fain bring me to confession!” laughed Marie in his face.
Sti Högh smiled and led her to a little grass mound, where they sat down. He looked searchingly at her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She learned to play on the lute, and was perfected in French; for Mistress Rigitze had her own plans.
Marie was happy. As a young prince who has been held captive is taken straight from the gloomy prison and harsh jailer to be lifted to the throne by an exultant people, to feel the golden emblem of power and glory pressed firmly upon his curls, and see all bowing before him in smiling homage, so she had stepped from her quiet chamber into the world, and all had hailed her as a queen indeed, all had bowed, smiling, before the might of her beauty. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without the slightest provocation, he went on to impress upon Marie that he meant to be master of his own house, and she must obey his lightest nod, he would brook no gainsaying, no, not a word, not one. However high he might raise her, she would always be his slave, his little slave, his sweet little slave, and at that he became as gentle as a sportive lynx, wept and wheedled. With all the importunity of a drunken man he forced upon her gross caresses and vulgar endearments, unavoidable, inescapable.
The next morning Marie awoke long before Ulrik Frederik. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ On the whole, they were very happy, for Marie still loved her husband above everything else in the world, and though he would sometimes get drunk and beat her, she did not take it much to heart. She realized that she had enrolled in a class where such things were an every-day matter, and though she would sometimes feel irritated, she would soon get over it by telling herself that this man who could be so rough and hard was the same Sören who had once shot a human being for her sake. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Palle Dyre at once asked where Sören was going.
“There is some one lying out in the garden, moaning,” said Marie. She trembled in every limb and could hardly stand on her feet.
Palle and one of the men carried Anne in. Her screams could be heard far and wide, but the hurt was not really serious. The gun had only been loaded with grapeshot, of which a few had gone through her cheek and a few more had settled in her shoulder, but as she bled freely and cried piteously, a coach was sent to Viborg for the barber-surgeon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What if they’ve shot him dead or crippled! God pity me, poor maid, I’d never get - 20 - 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. ”

“ Sören looked at her sideways and moved a little farther away on the bench. Now he s’posed he’d better say good-by and thank her ladyship for all her kindness in the time they’d known each other, and maybe she’d say good-by from him to his cousin Anne—the kitchen-maid at the manor.
Marie held his hand fast.
Well, now he was going.
No, he must stay; there was no one in all the world she loved like him. ”

“ Ulrik Frederik was very much in love, but not with the stormy infatuation he had felt when Sofie Urne ruled his heart. It was a pensive, amorous, almost wistful sentiment, rather than a fresh, ruddy passion. Marie had told him the story of her dreary childhood, and he liked to picture to himself her sufferings with something of the voluptuous pity that thrills a young monk when he fancies the beautiful white body of the female martyr bleeding on the sharp spikes of the torture-wheel. Sometimes he would be troubled with dark forebodings that an early death might tear her from his arms. ”