Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗

skin. She wanted to set her teeth in that white

roundness, and she actually followed her impulse, biting like a fierce

little animal mark upon mark till she felt the pain and would stop and

begin to fondle the poor maltreated arm.

 

At other times when she was sitting quietly, she would be suddenly

moved to go in and undress, only that she might wrap herself in a

thick quilt of red silk and feel the smooth, cool surface against her

skin, or put an ice-cold steel blade down her naked back. She had many

such whims.

 

Finally, after an absence of fourteen months, Ulrik Frederik returned.

It was a July night, and Marie lay sleepless, listening to the slow

soughing of the wind, restless with anxious thoughts. For the last

week she had been expecting Ulrik Frederik every hour of the day and

night, longing for his arrival and fearing it. Would everything be as

in olden times—fourteen months ago? Sometimes she thought no, then

again yes. The truth was, she could not quite forgive him for that

trip to Spain. She felt that she had aged in this long time, had grown

timid and listless, while he would come fresh from the glamor and

stir, full of youth and high spirits, finding her pale and faded,

heavy of step and of mind, nothing like her old self. At first he

would be strange and cold to her; she would feel all the more cast

down, and he would turn from her, but she would never forsake him. No,

no, she would watch over him like a mother, and when the world went

against him, he would come back to her, and she would comfort him and

be kind to him, bear want for his sake, suffer and weep, do everything

for him. At other times she thought that as soon as she saw him all

must be as before; yes, they romped through the rooms like madcap

pages; the walls echoed their laughter and revelry, the corners

whispered of their kisses—

 

With this fancy in her mind she fell into a light sleep. Her dreams

were of noisy frolic, and when she awoke, the noise was still there.

Quick steps sounded on the stairs, the street door was thrown open,

doors slammed, coaches rumbled, and horses’ hoofs scraped the

cobblestones.

 

There he is! she thought, sprang up, caught the large quilt, and

wrapping it round her, ran through the rooms. In the large parlor she

stopped. A tallow dip was burning in a wooden candlestick on the

floor, and a few of the tapers had been lit in the sconces, but the

servant in his flurry had run away in the midst of his preparations.

Someone was speaking outside. It was Ulrik Frederik’s voice, and she

trembled with emotion.

 

The door was opened, and he rushed in still wearing his hat and cloak.

He would have caught her in his arms but got only her hand, as she

darted back. He looked so strange in his unfamiliar garb. He was

tanned and stouter than of old, and under his cloak he wore a queer

dress, the like of which she had never seen. It was the new fashion

of long waistcoat and fur-bordered coat, which quite changed his

figure and made him still more unlike his old self.

 

“Marie!” he cried, “dear girl!” and he drew her to him, wrenching her

wrist till she moaned with pain. He heard nothing. He was flustered

with drink, for the night was not warm and they had baited well in the

last tavern. Marie’s struggles were of no avail; he kissed and fondled

her wildly, immoderately. At last she tore herself away and ran into

the next room, her cheeks flushed, her bosom heaving, but thinking

that perhaps this was rather a queer welcome, she came back to him.

 

Ulrik Frederik was standing in the same spot, quite bewildered between

his efforts to make his fuddled brain comprehend what was happening

and his struggles to unhook the clasps of his cloak. His thoughts and

his hands were equally helpless. When Marie went to him and unfastened

his cloak, it occurred to him that perhaps it was all a joke, and he

burst into a loud laugh, slapped his thigh, writhed and staggered,

threatened Marie archly, and laughed with maudlin good nature. He was

plainly trying to express something funny that had caught his fancy,

started but could not find the words, and at last sank down on a

chair, groaning and gasping, while a broad, fatuous smile spread over

his face.

 

Gradually the smile gave place to a sottish gravity. He rose and

stalked up and down in silent, displeased majesty, planted himself by

the grate in front of Marie, one arm akimbo, the other resting on the

mantel, and—still in his cups—looked down at her condescendingly. He

made a long, potvaliant speech about his own greatness and the honor

that had been shown him abroad, about the good fortune that had

befallen Marie when she, a common nobleman’s daughter, had become the

bride of a man who might have brought home a princess of the blood.

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. She looked

almost with hatred on the sleeping figure at her side. Her wrist was

swollen and ached from his violent greeting of the night before. He

lay with muscular arms thrown back under his powerful, hairy neck. His

broad chest rose and fell, breathing, it seemed to her, a careless

defiance, and there was a vacant smile of satiety on his dull, moist

lips.

 

She paled with anger and reddened with shame as she looked at him.

Almost a stranger to her after their long parting, he had forced

himself upon her, demanding her love as his right, cocksure that all

the devotion and passion of her soul were his, just as he would be

sure of finding his furniture standing where he left it when he went

out. Confident of being missed, he had supposed that all her longings

had taken wing from her trembling lips to him in the distance and that

the goal of all her desire was his own broad breast.

 

When Ulrik Frederik came out, he found her half sitting, half

reclining on a couch in the blue room. She was pale, her features

relaxed, her eyes downcast, and the injured hand lay listlessly in her

lap wrapped in a lace handkerchief. He would have taken it, but she

languidly held out her left hand to him and leaned her head back with

a pained smile.

 

Ulrik Frederik kissed the hand she gave him and made a joking excuse

for his condition the night before, saying that he had never been

decently drunk all the time he had been in Spain, for the Spaniards

knew nothing about drinking. Besides, if the truth were told, he liked

the homemade alicant and malaga wine from Johan Lehn’s dram-shop and

Bryhans’ cellar better than the genuine sweet devilry they served down

there.

 

Marie made no reply.

 

The breakfast table was set, and Ulrik Frederik asked if they should

not fall to, but she begged him to pardon her letting him eat alone.

She wanted nothing, and her hand hurt; he had quite bruised it. When

his guilt was thus brought home to him, he was bound to look at the

injured hand and kiss it, but Marie quickly hid it in a fold of her

dress with a glance—he said—like a tigress defending her helpless

cub. He begged long, but it was of no use, and at last he sat down to

the table laughing and ate with an appetite that roused a lively

displeasure in Marie. Yet he could not sit still. Every few minutes he

would jump up and run to the window to look out, for the familiar

street scenes seemed to him new and curious. With all this running his

breakfast was soon scattered about the room, his beer in one window,

the bread knife in another, his napkin slung over the vase of the

gilded Gueridon, and a bun on the little table in the corner.

 

At last he had done eating and settled down at the window. As he

looked out, he kept talking to Marie, who from her couch made brief

answers or none at all. This went on for a little while until she came

over to the window where he sat, sighed, and gazed out drearily.

 

Ulrik Frederik smiled and assiduously turned his signet ring round on

his finger. “Shall I breathe on the sick hand?” he asked in a

plaintive, pitying tone.

 

Marie tore the handkerchief from her hand and continued to look out

without a word.

 

“‘Twill take cold, the poor darling,” he said glancing up.

 

Marie stood resting the injured hand carelessly on the windowsill.

Presently she began drumming with her fingers as on a keyboard, back

and forth, from the sunshine into the shadow of the casement, then

from the shadow to the sunlight again.

 

Ulrik Frederik looked on with a smile of pleasure at the beautiful

pale hand as it toyed on the casement, gamboled like a frisky kitten,

crouched as for a spring, set its back, darted toward the bread knife,

turned the handle round and round, crawled back, lay flat on the

windowsill, then stole softly toward the knife again, wound itself

round the hilt, lifted the blade to let it play in the sunlight, flew

up with the knife—

 

In a flash the knife descended on his breast, but he warded it off,

and it simply cut through his long lace cufF into his sleeve as he

hurled it to the floor and sprang up with a cry of horror, upsetting

his chair, all in a second as with a single motion.

 

Marie was pale as death. She pressed her hands against her breast, and

her eyes were fixed in terror on the spot where Ulrik Frederik had

been sitting. A harsh, lifeless laughter forced itself between her

lips, and she sank down on the floor noiselessly and slowly, as if

supported by invisible hands. While she stood playing with the knife,

she had suddenly noticed that the lace of Ulrik Frederik’s shirt had

slipped aside revealing his chest, and a senseless impulse had come

over her to plunge the bright blade into that white breast, not from

any desire to kill or wound but only because the knife was cold and

the breast warm, or perhaps because her hand was weak and aching while

the breast was strong and sound, but first and last because she could

not help it, because her will had no power over her brain and her

brain no power over her will.

 

Ulrik Frederik stood pale, supporting his palms on the table which

shook under his trembling till the dishes slid and rattled. As a rule

he was not given to fear nor wanting in courage, but this thing had

come like a bolt out of the blue, so utterly senseless and

incomprehensible that he could only look on the unconscious form

stretched on the floor by the window with the same terror that he

would have felt for a ghost. Burrhi’s words about the