Marie Grubbe - Jens Peter Jacobsen (best english novels for beginners .txt) 📗

seemed to her like a weary struggle, a restless pressing

onward without a goal in the glare of smarting, stinging light,

deafened by intolerable noise and hubbub. A delicious feeling of

shelter and calm stole over her, a sense of undisturbed rest in a

grateful shadow, in a sweet and friendly silence, and she liked to

deepen the peace of her refuge by picturing to herself the world

outside where people were still striving and struggling while she had,

as it were, slipped behind life and found a safe little haven where

none could discover her or bring unrest into her sweet twilight

solitude.

 

As time went on, however, the silence became oppressive, the peace

dull, and the shadow dark. She began to listen for sounds of living

life from without. So it was not unwelcome to her when Erik Grubbe

proposed a change. He wished her to reside at Kalo manor, the property

of her husband, and he pointed out to her that as Ulrik Frederik had

her entire fortune in his possession and yet did not send anything for

her maintenance, it was but fair she should be supported from his

estate. There she would be in clover; she might have a houseful of

servants and live in the elegant and costly fashion to which she was

accustomed far better than at Tjele, which was quite too poor for her.

Moreover, the King, as a part of his wedding gift, had settled upon

her in case of Ulrik Frederik’s death an income equal to that at which

Kalo was rated and in doing so he had clearly had Kalo in mind, since

it was conveyed to Ulrik Frederik six months after their marriage. If

they should not patch up their difference, Ulrik Frederik would very

likely have to give up to her the estate intended for her dowager

seat, and she might as well become familiar with it. It would be well

too that Ulrik Frederik should get used to knowing her in possession

of it; he would then the more readily resign it to her.

 

What Erik Grubbe really had in mind was to rid himself of the expense

of keeping Marie at Tjele and to make the breach between Ulrik

Frederik and his wife less evident in the eyes of the world. It was

at least a step toward reconciliation, and there was no knowing what

it might lead to.

 

So Marie went to Kalo, but she did not live in the style she had

pictured to herself, for Ulrik Frederik had given his bailiff, Johan

Utrecht, orders to receive and entertain Madam Gyldenlove but not to

give her a stiver in ready money. Besides Kalo was, if possible, even

more tiresome than Tjele, and Marie would probably not have remained

there long if she had not had a visitor who was soon to become more

than a visitor to her.

 

His name was Sti Hogh.

 

Since the night of the ballet in Frederiksborg Park, Marie had often

thought of her brother-in-law and always with a warm sense of

gratitude. Many a time at Aggershus, when she had been wounded in some

particularly galling manner, the thought of Sti’s reverent, silently

adoring homage had comforted her, and he treated her in precisely the

same way now that she was forgotten and forsaken as in the days of her

glory. There was the same flattering hopelessness in his mien and the

same humble adoration in his eyes.

 

He would never remain at Kalo for more than two or three days at a

time; then he would leave for a week’s visit in the neighborhood, and

Marie learned to long for his coming and to sigh when he went away,

for he was practically the only company she had. They became very

intimate, and there was but little they did not confide to each other.

 

“Madam,” said Sti one day, “is it your purpose to return to his

Excellency if he make you full and proper apologies?”

 

“Even though he were to come here crawling on his knees,” she replied,

“I would thrust him away. I have naught but contempt and loathing for

him in my heart, for there’s not a faithful sentiment in his mind,

not one honest drop of warm blood in his body. He is a slimy, cursed

harlot and no man. He has the empty, faithless eyes of a harlot and

the soulless, clammy desire of a harlot. There has never a

warm-blooded passion carried him out of himself, never a heartfelt

word cried from his lips. I hate him, Sti, for I feel myself

besmirched by his stealthy hands and bawdy words.”

 

“Then, madam, you will sue for a separation?”

 

Marie replied that she would, and if her father had only stood by her,

the case would have been far advanced, but he was in no hurry, for he

still thought the quarrel could be patched up, though it never would

be.

 

They talked of what maintenance she might look for after the divorce,

and Marie said that Erik Grubbe meant to demand Kalo on her behalf.

Sti thought this was ill-considered. He forecast a very different lot

for her than sitting as a dowager in an obscure corner of Jutland and

at last, perhaps, marrying a country squire, which was the utmost she

could aspire to if she stayed. Her role at court was played out, for

Ulrik Frederik was in such high favor that he would have no trouble in

keeping her away from it and it from her. No, Sti’s advice was that

she should demand her fortune in ready money and, as soon as it was

paid her, leave the country, never to set foot in it again. With her

beauty and grace she could win a fairer fate in France than here in

this miserable land with its boorish nobility and poor little

imitation of a court.

 

He told her so, and the frugal life at Kalo made a good background for

the alluring pictures he sketched of the splendid and brilliant court

of Louis the Fourteenth. Marie was fascinated and came to regard

France as the theatre of all her dreams.

 

Sti Hogh 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 Hogh. Before long, however, Sti’s lack of

spirit began to irritate her. He seemed to give up the fight merely

because the object of it was unattainable and to accept tamely the

fact that too high was too high. She did not exactly doubt that there

was real passion underneath his strange words or grief behind his

melancholy looks, but she wondered whether he did not speak more

strongly than he felt. A hopeless passion that did not defiantly close

its eyes to its own hopelessness and storm ahead—she could not

understand it and did not believe in it. She formed a mental picture

of Sti Hogh as a morbid nature, everlastingly fingering himself and

hugging the illusion of being richer and bigger and finer than he

really was. Since no reality bore out this conception of himself, he

seemed to feed his imagination with great feelings and strong passions

that were, in truth, born only in the fantastic pregnancy of his

over-busy brain. His last words to her—for at her father’s request

she was returning to Tjele, where he could not follow her—served to

confirm her in the opinion that this mental portrait resembled him in

every feature.

 

He had bid her good-by and was standing with his hand on the latch,

when he turned back to her, saying, “A black leaf of my book of life

is being turned now that your Kalo days are over, madam. I shall

think of this time with longing and anguish, as one who has lost all

earthly happiness and all that was his hope and desire, and yet,

madam, if such a thing should come to pass as that there were reason

to think you loved me and if I were to believe it, then God only knows

what it might make of me. Perhaps it might rouse in me those powers

which have hitherto failed to unfold their mighty wings. Then perhaps

the part of my nature that is thirsting after great deeds and burning

with hope might be in the ascendant and make my name famous and great.

Yet it might as well be that such unutterable happiness would slacken

every high-strung fibre, silence every crying demand, and dull every

hope. Thus the land of my happiness might be to my gifts and powers a

lazy Capua… .”

 

No wonder Marie thought of him as she did, and she realized that it

was best so. Yet she sighed.

 

She returned to Tjele by Erik Grubbe’s desire, for he was afraid that

Sti might persuade her to some step that did not fit into his plans,

and besides he was bound to try whether he could not talk her into

some compromise by which the marriage might remain in force. This

proved fruitless, but still Erik Grubbe continued to write Ulrik

Frederik letters begging him to take back Marie. Ulrik Frederik never

replied. He preferred to let the matter hang fire as long as possible,

for the sacrifice of property that would have to follow a divorce was

extremely inconvenient for him. As for his father-in-law’s assurances

of Marie’s conciliatory state of mind, he did not put any faith in

them. Squire Erik Grubbe’s untruthfulness was too well known.

 

Meanwhile Erik Grubbe’s letters grew more and more threatening, and

there were hints of a personal appeal to the King. Ulrik Frederik

realized that matters could not go on this way much longer, and while

in Copenhagen, he wrote his bailiff at Kalo, Johan Utrecht, ordering

him to find out secretly whether Madam Gyldenlove would meet him there

unknown to Erik Grubbe. This letter was written in March of

sixty-nine. Ulrik Frederik hoped by this meeting to learn how Marie

really felt, and in case he found her compliant, he meant to take her

back with him to Aggershus. If not, he would make promises of steps

leading to an immediate divorce and so secure for himself as favorable

terms as possible. But Marie Grubbe refused to meet him, and Ulrik

Frederik was obliged to go back to Norway with nothing accomplished.

 

Still Erik Grubbe went on with his futile letter writing, but in

February of sixteen hundred and seventy, they had tidings of the death

of Frederik the Third, and then Erik Grubbe felt the time had come to

act. King Frederik had always held his son Ulrik Frederik in such high

regard and had such a blind fondness for him that in a case like this

he would no doubt have laid all the blame on the other party. King

Christian might be expected to take a different attitude, for though

he and Ulrik Frederik were bosom friends and boon-companions, a tiny

shadow of jealousy might lurk in the mind of the King, who had often

in his father’s time been pushed aside for his more gifted and

brilliant half-brother. Besides, young rulers liked to show their

impartiality and would often in their zeal for justice be unfair to

the very persons whom they might be supposed