Marie Grubbe Read online

  “Yes, the blood,” admitted Oluf Daa. “The blood, certainly. It has, I believe… well it is a subtle substance… that is true.”

  “Yes, that is true,” nodded Madame Rigitze. “Everything affects the blood, the sun and the moon and even bad weather. It’s as true as if it were printed in a book.”

  “It’s the same with thoughts, other people’s thoughts,” added Mrs Ide. “I know this from my older sister. We used to sleep in the same bed together, and every night, as soon as her eyes had closed, she would begin to sigh and flail about with her arms and legs, as if she wanted to get up and go somewhere because someone was calling her. This was because her fiancé in Holland was so terribly full of longing for her, and would lie and think about her day and night so that she never had a quiet moment or peace of mind all the time he was away. Don’t you remember, dear Mrs Sidsel Grubbe, how sick and poorly her eyesight was until Jørgen Bilde came back?”

  “Don’t I! That poor soul. But then she bloomed and was just like a rosebud to look at. God, I remember her first birth…” and she whispered away on that subject.

  Rosenkrands turned now towards Axel Urup. “Do you think,” he asked, “that an e-elixir d’a-amour is just like a bit of f-fermenting yeast that enters the blood and then makes it boil? That certainly explains an adventure the late Christian Gyldenløve told me about once when we were walking together on the embankment. It happened in A-antwerp, at the Hotellerie Des trois Bro-chets where he was st-staying. In the morning at mass he caught sight of a l-lovely, l-lovely maiden, and she exchanged very friendly glances with him. But the whole day he didn’t give her a single thought. Then, some time that evening, he re-turns to his lodgings, and he finds a rose on the p-pillow of his bed, and he picks up the rose and smells it. Im-mediately the lovely maiden’s image is there in front of him, large as life, as if it were painted on the wall. He is full of the most pas-sionate longing for this maiden, a passion so sud-den and so strong that he could have screamed to high Heaven, he said, out of sheer ph-physical pain. Yes, he became completely wild and deranged, and dashed out of the house and ran up one street and down another wailing, as if he had been bewitched and had lost all control of himself. It was as if something was drawing him and drawing him, and there was a burning fire inside him and he c-continued running till dawn broke.”

  In this way they talked on and on for a long time, and the sun had gone down before they parted to return home through dusk-filled streets.

  Throughout the conversation, Ulrik Frederik had been very silent and had hardly joined in at all, as he was afraid that any comment he might make on the subject of love would be seen as something personal, some private memory or impression from his affair with Sofie Urne. Moreover, he was not in the mood for talking, and when he was alone with Rosenkrands, he gave such short and absent-minded answers that the latter soon tired of his company and went away.

  Ulrik Frederik made his way home. He had been assigned apartments at Rosenborg Castle, and as his servant was out, no lights had been lit. So he sat there in the large reception room, alone in the darkness, till close to midnight.

  He felt in such a strange state of mind, full of melancholy and anxiety, that state of being not quite awake, in which the soul seems to be drifting aimlessly down a slowly gliding stream; images, fleeting as fog, pass by the sombre trees standing on the banks; half-conscious thoughts appear like big dimly-lit bubbles rising slowly to the surface of that dark river and glide along till they burst. Echoes of the conversation were coming back to him, the colourful crowd at the churchyard, Marie Grubbe’s smile, Madame Rigitze, the queen, the king’s graciousness, his past anger… Marie’s way of moving her hands, Sofie Urne, pale and distant, now even more pale and more distant, the rose on the pillow and Marie Grubbe’s voice, the sound of some word, how she had let it fall – he sat there straining to hear it, hearing it again and again wing its way through the silence.

  He rose and went to the window, opened it and leaned his elbows on the wide windowsill: how fresh the air felt, so cool and quiet. The sweet sour smell of dew-cold roses, the fresh pungency of new leaves and the spicy-wine scent of flowering sycamore were rising from below. A fine drizzle was falling like a mist from the sky above and spread a bluish trembling darkness over the garden. The black branches of larch, the blurred foliage of birch, and the domed crown of the beech tree stood like shadows breathed onto a background of shifting mists while the trimmed yew reached high into the sky like the dark columns of a temple whose roof has collapsed.

  The silence was like that of a grave. Only the flat sound of the fall of dust-light raindrops could be heard as an almost imperceptible whisper, always dying and beginning afresh from just behind the glistening wet tree trunks. Such a strange whisper it was to be listening to – such a sad sound! Was it like that soft beat of the wings of old memories, a flock of them passing by in distant flight? A gentle rustling in the faded leaves of lost illusions, perhaps?

  Oh how alone, how pitifully alone and abandoned he was! Among all those thousands of hearts beating everywhere in the silence of the night there was not one that longed for him… a net of invisible threads had been drawn wide across the world, tying soul to soul, threads stronger than life could offer, stronger than death, but not one in that whole net reached far enough for him. Homeless, abandoned! Abandoned? Was there not the sound of cups and kisses somewhere out there? Flashes of white shoulders and dark glances? Someone’s laughter ringing loud through the night? He did not care. Better the slow, bitter drip of loneliness than that toxic and nauseous sweetness. Oh, damned! I shall shake your dust off my thoughts, you life of lies, fit only for a dog… God keep and protect her in the deep night… to shield her from every wind… so beautiful… listening like a child… like a rose.

  * * *

  12 Some of the twelve stones that make up the foundations of Jerusalem according to the Book of Revelation 21. 19-20.

  13 Garrison town established by Charles X Gustav for the siege of Copenhagen.

  VIII

  Marie Grubbe was much admired, but she was soon made to feel that, despite having left the nursery behind, she was not yet really included in the adult world. For all the compliments and flattery, young girls like her were very much kept in their place. They were made aware of it in any number of different ways, each one perhaps trivial in itself, but taken together they meant a great deal. First of all, children would adopt airs of teasing familiarity and behave in their company as if they were their equals. And then the servants: there was such a difference in the manner in which an experienced servant took the cloak of a matron or a young maid, and a subtle distinction in the servile smile of a chambermaid if she were helping a married or an unmarried young lady. The familiarity which young officers allowed themselves was very offensive, and their way of ignoring hurt looks or ice-cold rejections was enough to make one despair.

  The young men at court were the best company – even when they were not in love, they would behave with delicate consideration, and say the most beautiful things they could think of with such gallant deference in tone and manner that it could not but affect one’s self-esteem, though there were certainly too many who clearly did it simply because they were practising their part. Among the older gentlemen there were a number who could be quite obnoxious with their exaggerated compliments and mock gallantry.

  The married women were the worst, particularly recent brides; those half-encouraging half-absent-minded looks, the condescending way they would bend their heads very slightly and when they listened, that smile of mingled contempt and pity – no, that was infuriating.

  Then there was the way the young girls behaved towards one another – hardly elevating. There was no loyalty among them. If one of them could do something to humiliate another she would. Really, they regarded each other just like children and they did not know how to treat one another with respect like the young married women or how to lend themselves an air of dignity by all sorts of superficial tokens of
esteem.

  It was not an enviable position at all, and so when Madame Rigitze happened to say to Marie that she and some other relatives had been thinking about a match between her and Ulrik Frederik, it was not surprising that Marie – whose mind it had not once crossed to fall in love with Ulrik Frederik – should receive this as good news, something opening new vistas full of pleasure. And when they began to describe to her just how honourable and advantageous such a marriage would be, how she would be accepted within the closed circle of the court, in what splendour she would be kept, what paths to honour and glory lay open for Ulrik Frederik as the king’s natural son and his openly professed favourite – all the while her thoughts secretly whispered to her how handsome he was, how polite, courteous and in love – why then she felt almost sure that her luck was just too great, and she became quite agitated at the thought that all this was as yet only a scheme, with wild talk and wild hopes.

  But Madame Rigitze’s schemes were not without foundation. Not only had Ulrik Frederik confided in her and asked her to plead his cause with Marie, he had also suggested that she try to find out whether the king and queen would give their gracious blessing, and they had both received the news kindly and given their approval, though the king had hesitated.

  Between the queen and Madame Rigitze – her faithful friend and confidant among the ladies at court – this marriage had probably already been both discussed and decided, while the king let himself be persuaded perhaps not so much by the arguments of the queen as by the fact that Marie Grubbe was so wealthy a match. The king was really short of money, and whilst Ulrik Frederik might be the feudal lord of Vordingborg, his love of luxury and splendour always left him short, and then the king was the person to whom he would first turn for help. And since Marie’s mother, Lady Marie Juul, was dead, she would get her inheritance from her mother as soon as she married, and her father, Erik Grubbe, was at that time the owner of Tjele, Vinge, Gammelgaard, Bigum, Trinderup and the Estate of Nørbek, not to mention bits and pieces here and there, so a fine inheritance was waiting for her, and furthermore Erik Grubbe was reputed to be a mean housekeeper who wasted nothing.

  So there were no obstacles, Ulrik Frederik could confidently go wooing, and the day after Midsummer they were formally engaged.

  Ulrik Frederik was very much in love, but not in a tempestuous and troubled way as when Sofie Urne was close to his heart. His was a dreamy love, only lightly stirred, bordering on melancholy, for it was without vigour, vitality or freshness.

  Marie had told him the not-so-cheerful story of her childhood, and he loved to picture her youthful suffering with those delicious feelings of pity and lust which a young monk experiences when he imagines a beautiful, pale and white female martyr bleeding between the sharp spikes of the wheel. There were also moments when he was haunted by dark forebodings that she would not long be his, but that a sudden death would snatch her from his warm embrace. Then, overcome by despair, he would swear to himself with strong oaths that he would carry her in his arms, shield her from every gust of ill wind and fill her young breast with the golden glow of every passing mood, and never, never, cause her grief.

  But at other times he would gloat triumphantly at the thought that all of this rich beauty, this singular soul, belonged to him like the soul of a dead man belongs to the Lord; to step into the dust if he so willed, to raise on high should that be his will, to humiliate, to crush.

  The fault lay somewhat with Marie that he should have such thoughts, for her love, if love it was at all, was of a curiously proud and overbearing kind. The nature of her love for the dead Christian Gyldenløve could be glimpsed, if only darkly, if one were to imagine a lake, whipped, harassed and storm-chased. Her love for Ulrik Frederik would be the same lake as evening falls and the air has cleared, and it lies there like a mirror, cold, calm and motionless save for bursting bubbles of froth among the dark rushes along the shore. Yet the image does in a way convey a truth, not only because she was cold and relaxed in the way she behaved towards him, but more because all those swarming thoughts and dreams full of colour that this first passion had aroused had paled now, dispersed by the fair, yet frail, winds of her present love.

  Yes, she did love Ulrik Frederik, but did she not love him as a magic wand that could open the doors for her to all the splendour and wonders of the world, and was not this splendour perhaps the true object of her love?

  Yet sometimes it did not seem so. Not when at dusk, sitting on his lap, and accompanying herself, she would sing short French ballads about Daphnis and Amaryllis for his ear only. She would occasionally pause, her fingers playing aimlessly with the strings of the cithara, and lean her head on his shoulder, whispering words full of love for his waiting ear that no love has sweeter. There would be tears of affection in her eyes, the dew of love’s mild unrest… and yet might it not be that she, full of longing, out of the memories of vanished feelings, conjured up a mood there in the shadows of a gentle darkness, a mood nourished by wild blood and soft notes, deceiving herself and making him feel happy? For it was only a maiden’s shyness that made her short of words of love by day, and impatient with signs of affection; or perhaps it was a young girl’s fear of appearing weak and girlish that put contempt in her eye and scorn on her lips so often when he was asking for a kiss, or with oaths of love was trying to lure her to speak those words all lovers so want to hear. How was it that so frequently, so very frequently, when alone and with her imagination having tired of painting for the thousandth time the splendour of her future, she would sit and stare, lost and without hope, feeling so utterly lonely and abandoned?

  *

  A little past noon one day towards the end of August Ulrik Frederik and Marie were riding along the sandy road that runs along the sea beyond the Eastern Gate, as they had often done before.

  The air was fresh from a morning shower, the sun was reflected in the sea, and thunder-blue clouds were rolling away into the distance.

  They were riding along as fast as the road permitted accompanied by a footman dressed in a long jacket of carmine crimson. They rode past gardens where green apples shone among dark leaves, past the deep nets hung out to dry and still covered in shining drops of rain, past the king’s fishing house with its red tiled roof and through the farm of the lime burners with the columns of smoke rising from the chimney. They joked and laughed, smiled and galloped away.

  They turned off the road by the inn at Gyldenlund and rode through the wood at Overdrup, from where they went in a slow trot through the thicket down towards the shiny surface of Overdrup Lake.

  The green canopies of huge, stooping beeches lay reflected in the clear lake, and juicy sedge grass and pale red-water violets made a broad and colourful edge, where the slope, brown with dead leaves, fell away towards the water. High in the air, below the screen of hanging leaves, where a column of light shot through the cool dusk, mosquitoes were swirling in a silent dance; for a moment they caught the gleam of a red butterfly, before it flew out into the sunlight and over the lake, where steel-blue dragonflies shone and shimmered in the air, and dashing pike drew quick lines across the surface. From one of the farms behind the thicket they could hear the cackling of chickens, while on the other side of the lake wood doves cooed below the domed beeches of Dyrhaven.

  They pulled up their horses and let them splash slowly out into the water to allow them to get the dust off their hooves and quench their thirst. Marie was a bit further out in the water than Ulrik Frederik, with reins loose so that the mare could bend her neck freely. In her hand she held a long branch of beech, and she was tearing the leaves off one by one, letting them fall into the ripples now all around them.

  “I think we’re going to get thunder,” she said, following with her eye a weak gust of wind that by its whirling motion made dark, round rippled spots on the lake.

  “Let’s turn round,” suggested Ulrik Frederik.

  “Not for gold,” she replied, driving her horse suddenly towards land.

 
They then rode around the lake at a trot, onto the road and into the middle of the wood.

  “I wonder,” said Marie, as she felt the freshness of the wood against her cheek and drew in its coolness in long, deep breaths. “I wonder…” She did not continue but looked up into the greenness of the leaves with shining eyes.

  “What are you thinking, dear heart?”

  “Oh, I was wondering whether the air in the woods doesn’t send clever people mad – so many times I’ve run through Lindum Wood and kept running, on and on, to where it is thickest and densest. I would get so wild with joy, singing away, I would walk on and on, tearing up flowers, throwing them away, yelling at birds darting into the air, till suddenly a strange terror and timidity would come over me. Oh, I would become so uneasy and miserable. At every branch that creaked, I would jump, and I’d be almost more scared of my own voice than anything else. Has that ever happened to you?”

  But before Ulrik Frederik had time to reply, she began to sing madly.

  “So merrily through the woods I go

  Where elm and crab apple grow.

  And for my dainty silken shoe

  Shall I pick a rose or two?

  And turn upon my toe

  And sing hey nonny no?

  But mine shall be the red hip of a wild rose!”

  And all the while her whip was raining down on the horse and she was laughing and shouting and the horse was galloping along as fast as it could run down a narrow forest path; the branches swept across her shining eyes and burning cheeks. She took no notice of Ulrik Frederik’s shouts, the whip whistled through the air and off she galloped – reins loose, her billowing skirt covered in flakes of foam, a hail of soft wood earth falling round the horse’s flanks, laughing and cutting into the tall fern with her whip.