Marie Grubbe Read online

  In fact, Ulrik Frederik was just as exasperated with the situation at the castle as Marie Grubbe. He was used to a much better class of debauchery. They made sorry drinking companions, these poor, simple Norwegian officers, and he could not put up with their camp followers for long either. Karen Fiol was the only one who was not totally coarse and boorish, but he would gladly have said goodbye to her too.

  Provoked by Marie Grubbe’s rejection, he had chosen the company of these people; yes, he had been entertained for a while, but not for long, and now that it was all beginning to seem flat and almost unpleasant, and a vague feeling of regret was coming over him, he felt the need to convince himself that it had been necessary, and he actually began to believe it, and that he had some plan, a plan to make Marie Grubbe regret her behaviour and bring her back to him, full of repentance.

  But when it became apparent that there would be no regrets, he began to behave more harshly in the hope that, by making her life as unpleasant as possible, he would defeat her stubbornness. That she did not love him any more he could not believe. He was convinced that in her heart she longed to throw herself into his arms, but that when she perceived that his love had been rekindled, she had seen the opportunity to take revenge for his faithlessness. He did not begrudge her this revenge, he liked that she wanted it, but she was dragging it out too long, for time passed much too slowly here in the wilds of Norway.

  Still, he was not really sure whether it would have been better to let Karen Fiol stay in Copenhagen, but he could not stand the company of the others here, and there was the fact that jealousy was a strong ally, and Marie Grubbe had been jealous of Karen, of that he was certain.

  But Marie Grubbe was still not coming round, and he was beginning to doubt she ever would, and with this doubt his love grew.

  The suspense found in a game or a chase was now hovering over their relationship. It was with an anxious mind and a calculating fear that he did Marie Grubbe one wrong after another while he waited anxiously for a sign, just a small one, that he was driving his prey the right way, but that did not happen. Then at last – yes.

  Something finally did happen, and he was certain that this was the sign that he had been waiting for. One day, when Karen had insulted her in an unusually intimate way, Marie Grubbe took some good strong leather reins in her hand, went through the house to the chamber where Karen was taking her afternoon nap, bolted the door from the inside and gave the terrified whore a good beating, before calmly making her way back to the west parlour through the crowds of speechless servants, who just stood there having been summoned by Karen’s screams.

  Ulrik Frederik was down in the town when it happened. Karen sent him a message immediately, but he was in no hurry to return, and it was not till late in the afternoon that the expectant Karen heard his horse in the yard. She ran down towards him, and he pushed her gently but firmly aside and made straight for Marie Grubbe.

  The door was ajar, so she was probably not there. He put his head round the door, certain that he would find the parlour empty, but she was there, sitting by the window asleep. Then he stepped in carefully, as carefully as he could, for he was not entirely sober.

  In a yellow and golden stream of light, the September sun entered the room, lending the paltry colours something fine and glorious. The chalked walls gained the whiteness of swans, the wooden ceiling turning brown was touched with a glow of bronze, and the fading curtains of the four-poster bed fell in wine-red folds and pleats. The light was dazzling; even among the shadows there was a brightness sifting through a fog of leaf-yellow light, and around Marie Grubbe’s head it spun a halo’s gold, kissing her white forehead while her eyes and mouth were in a deep shadow cast by a yellowing apple tree that tantalisingly stretched its branches, blushing with fruit, against the window.

  Her hands were folded in her lap as she slept. Ulrik Fredrik crept up to Marie on tiptoe, and the halo disappeared when he placed himself between her and the window. He looked at her carefully.

  She was paler than before. She looked so kind and gentle as she sat there, her head bent back, her lips just open, her white throat uncovered and bare. He could see her pulse throbbing at the side of her neck, just below that small brown birth mark. He traced the firm curve of her shoulders under the tight silk, and observed the slender arm and the pale, passive hand that belonged to him. He saw how she closed her chubby fingers into a fist round the brown reins, how her arm tightened till its white, blue-veined shape became firm and shiny, and how it relaxed, its glow dulled, into the blow it dealt Karen’s poor body. He saw how her jealous eyes shone with satisfaction and how her angry lips smiled cruelly at the thought that with the lash of her strap she was wiping away one kiss after another… and she was his. He had been hard, stern and cruel; he had let these precious hands wring themselves in anguish and allowed these red lips to moan.

  And at such thoughts his eyes grew moist and shiny, and he felt himself suffused with a drunken man’s easily aroused sympathy, and he continued to stand there staring, with a lazy drunken sensitivity, till the sun’s rich stream of light had shrunk to a thin, shimmering thread, high up among the dark rafters of the ceiling.

  At that moment Marie Grubbe woke up.

  “You,” she almost screamed as she jumped up, throwing herself back and making the chair fly across the floor.

  “Marie!” said Ulrik Frederik as gently as he could, stretching out his hands in supplication towards her.

  “What do you want? Do you want to complain about the blows your whore received?”

  “No, no, Marie. Let us be friends, dear friends.”

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

  “Yes, Marie, I’m drunk with love for you, I am dizzy and intoxicated by your loveliness, my pretty doll.”

  “Yes, you are so drunk that your eyes have deceived you, and you have mistaken others for me.”

  “Marie, Marie, don’t be so jealous.”

  She made a contemptuous gesture of denial.

  “Yes, Marie, you were jealous, you betrayed yourself just now when you lifted that bridle rein, you know… but may all that filthy crowd now be dead and forgotten and go to the devil. Come, come! Cease acting the fiend, just as I have acted the faithless rogue to you with a show of drinking and whoring. We only make the depths of Hell out of what could have been fit for Paradise. You shall have your will in all you desire. If you want to float in silks as thick as wool, if you wish for strings of pearls as long as your hair, you shall have them; and rings and cloth of pure gold, feathers and jewels, whatever you wish, there is nothing so precious that you should not be allowed to just wear it out.”

  He wanted to put his arm around her waist, but she grabbed him by the wrist and held him at arm’s length.

  “Ulrik Frederik,” she said. “Shall I tell you something? If you could wrap your love in sendal silk and ermine, if you could dress it in sable and crown it with gold, yes, if you could give it shoes of bright diamond, I would hurl it away from me like dirt or muck, because I consider it worth less than the earth beneath my foot. There is not a drop of my blood that wills you well, not a fibre of my flesh that does not spurn you! Mark my words! There is no corner of my soul where you’re not damned. Listen to what I am saying. If I could free your body from the torture of a mortal disease or your soul from the anguish of Hell by choosing to be yours, I would not do it.”

  “Yes you would, woman, and do not speak so!”

  “No, no, a thousand times no!”

  “Then away, away, out of my sight in the name of Hell and damnation.”

  He was white as a sheet and shaking all over. His voice was hoarse and unrecognisable, and his arms were flaying about in the air as if he were someone who had lost his mind.

  “Get out of my way, take your… your… yourself out of my way or I shall break your skull, for my blood is murderous, and there’s red before my eyes. Out, out of the Kingdom of Norway, and may the fires of Hell journey with you. Out…
”

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

  As she banged the door shut, Ulrik Frederik grabbed the chair on which she had been sitting when he arrived and threw it out of the window, and drifting round the room, he ripped the decaying curtains of the four-poster bed into shreds and tatters. Then he sank down on the floor and began to crawl about on his knees, snarling like a wild beast and drumming his clenched fists on the floor till the knuckles bled. Finally exhausted, he crept over to the bed, threw himself face down on the pillows, shouted for Marie with gentle words of love, sobbed and cried and cursed her, before starting again to speak in a gentle and soft voice, as if he were caressing her.

  That same night Marie Grubbe, with good promises of a handsome payment, got a skipper to ferry her to Denmark.

  The next day Ulrik Frederik banished Karen Fiol from the castle, and a few days later he left for Copenhagen.

  XIII

  One fine day Erik Grubbe was surprised to see Lady Gyldenløve driving into Tjele.

  He sensed at once that there was something wrong. She had arrived without servants or luggage, and when he was told the situation, he did not give her a warm welcome but became so angry that he left, slamming the door, and did not appear for the rest of the day.

  But when he had slept on the matter, he became more sociable. Yes, he even treated his daughter with an affection that was almost respectful, and something of an old courtier’s wooden ostentatiousness entered his speech. For it had occurred to him that nothing terrible had really happened; there was perhaps a small disagreement between the young married couple, but Marie was still Lady Gyldenløve, and the relationship could be brought back on an even keel without too much trouble.

  True, Marie was shouting for a divorce and would not hear a word about reconciliation, but it would be quite unreasonable to expect anything else in the first heat of her anger and indignation when all her memories were sore bruises and gaping wounds, so he did not give what she said much weight; time would lend its help, of that he was certain.

  There was a further circumstance, which he felt would assist him in no small way. It was a fact that Marie had come from Aggerhus without clothes or jewels, and she would soon be missing all that splendour which she had learnt to regard as the stuff of daily life. The common fare at Tjele, the lack of servants, the whole meanness of everyday life would make her long for what she had left behind. As for Ulrik Frederik, well he might be as angry as he liked, but it was unlikely that he would be thinking of divorce. His finances were not in such good order that he could afford to lose Marie’s dowry; twelve thousand rigsdaler was a lot of money, and gold, estates and other splendour were also hard to say goodbye to once they had become yours.

  All was well at Tjele for about six months. Life on the quiet farm agreed with Marie. The deep peace that reigned there, the monotony of each day and the lack of anything happening was something new, and she found in it a dreamy, passive delight.

  Whenever she contemplated the past, it seemed to her one exhausting fight and struggle, a restless forcing of oneself on aimlessly under a glaring and stabbing light, all to the roar of an intolerable and deafening turmoil. There came over her a delightful sense of shelter and calm, of undisturbed rest in a healing shade, in a sweet and friendly silence. She liked to enhance the feeling of peace in her harbour by contemplating how there, in the world outside, they would still be roaring, fighting and struggling, while she had slipped away, behind life’s back, so to speak, discovering a small sanctuary where no one could find her or bring disturbance to her graceful, dark solitude.

  But as time passed, the silence became heavy, the peace dead, and the shadow dark, and she began to half listen for a living sound from the life out there. She was therefore pleased when Erik Grubbe suggested a change. He wanted her to go and live at her husband’s castle, Kalø, and he suggested to her that since her husband was in possession of her whole dowry – and was still not sending her anything for her maintenance – it would be only reasonable that she let herself be entertained at Kalø estate, where she could live in clover, keep a large retinue of servants, and lead a life of grandeur and expense, quite different from her life at Tjele, where everything was too humble for someone who was used to so much better.

  There was also the king’s letter on her marriage, according to which she was to receive the value of thirteen hundred acres of wheat, should Ulrik Frederik die before her. This was clearly a reference to the Kalø estate, which amounted to thirteen hundred acres and which had been given to Ulrik Frederik about six months after the wedding. It would not be surprising, should there be no reconciliation, that Ulrik Frederik would have to part with the estate intended for her widowhood, and so it was a sensible course of action: she would get to know the place, and Ulrik Frederik would become used to the idea of her being in possession of it and therefore more likely to let it go.

  Erik Grubbe’s intention in suggesting this was to rid himself of the expenses he had in keeping Marie at Tjele and to make the rupture between Ulrik Frederik and his wife appear less conspicuous than it was. It was also an overture, and one never knew where it might lead.

  So Marie left for Kalø, but she did not lead the life she had envisaged there, because Ulrik Frederik had given his overseer, Johan Utrecht, orders to receive and entertain Lady Gyldenløve, but not to allow her as much as a penny to spend. Life at Kalø was also – if that were possible – even more dull than at Tjele, and so Marie would hardly have stayed long if she had not received someone who would soon become something more than just a visitor.

  The visitor was Sti Høg.

  Since the celebrations in the park at Frederiksborg Castle, Marie Grubbe had often thought about her brother-in-law and always with a feeling of deep gratitude, and many a time, when she had been insulted or hurt to the quick at Aggerhus, she had found consolation in recalling Sti’s reverential, dumb devotion. And his attitude now that she was forlorn and forgotten was the same as it had been in her days of splendour; there was the same flattering hopelessness in his demeanour, the same wistful worship in his eyes.

  He never stayed more than two or three days at Kalø. He would then spend around eight days going on visits in the area, and Marie learned to long for his arrival and to sigh when he was leaving, because he was almost all of her social life, and so they confided much in one another and concealed little.

  “Madame,” Sti Høg asked one day, “do you intend to return to his excellency, should he apologise to you properly?”

  “If he came here crawling to me on his knees,” she replied, “I would push him away. I feel only disgust and contempt in my heart for him, because there isn’t a true feeling in his soul, not an honest, warm drop of blood in his body. He’s a whore, yes, a cursed and corroded whore, not a man; he’s got the empty faithless eyes of a whore and a whore’s soulless, dank desire. Never has a true burning passion seized him, or a word from the heart fallen from his lips. I hate him, Sti, and I feel myself contaminated by his stealthy hands and his whorish words.”

  “Would you then, madame, be asking for a separation?”

  Marie replied that she did want it, and, if only her father had supported her, the case would certainly have been much more advanced, yet he was in no hurry because he believed that everything would be resolved, but that could never happen.

  They then discussed what she might expect to get for her maintenance after the divorce, and Marie was of the opinion that Erik Grubbe would demand Kalø on her behalf.

  Sti thought that this was a foolish idea. In his imagination, he had shown her a different life to that of a widow stuck in some remote part of Jutland, to be finally married perhaps to an unexceptional nobleman because she could not aim higher; her role at court had been played out, and Ulrik Frederik had such standing there that he would make sure that all doors were closed to her. He was of the opinion that she should have her dowry paid back and the
n leave the country, and never set foot there again. For with her poise and beauty, a much more distinguished fate would await her in France than in this miserable country with its peasant aristocracy and crude imitation of a royal court.

  That is what he said, and her shabby life in the loneliness of Kalø was such a good backdrop for the beguiling images which he created of the rich and glorious court of Louis XIV that Marie was completely tantalised, and in the days that immediately followed she made France the theatre of all her dreams.

  Sti Høg was just as obsessed with love for Marie Grubbe as before. He often spoke to her about his passion, not begging or pleading, no, not even with hopeful sighs. On the contrary, he was completely without any hope, always anticipating that she could not and never would return his love. At first, Marie listened to his talk in anxious astonishment, but gradually her attention was caught by these reflections without hope, on a love whose source was herself, and it was not without a certain intoxicating feeling of power that she heard herself made lord of life and death for such a strange creature as Sti Høg.

  Still, it was not long before the lack of courage in Sti’s words awoke a certain feeling of annoyance in her. The way he relinquished the battle because its prize was apparently unobtainable, and his spiritless and calm acceptance that he aimed too high made her doubt. She did not doubt that there was passion behind Sti’s strange words or grief behind his melancholy looks, but she suspected that his words might be speaking louder than his feelings. For a hopeless passion that did not resolutely close its eyes to any lack of hope and advance blindly was beyond her comprehension, and she did not think it credible. She began to think of Sti Høg as someone of a highly-strung disposition who through excessive self-consciousness had come to believe himself finer, greater, altogether more exceptional than he really was, and who, as nothing lent this impression any reality, deceived himself into moods and strong passions that were only the product of the fantastic fertility of a quick and diseased mind. His parting words to her, spoken some time earlier – she had returned to Tjele, where Sti did not dare come on account of her father – only served to confirm her belief that this impression of him was in every way true.