THE house seemed very quiet that spring day when the sound of horses’ hoofs had died away in the distance. In the flurry of leave-taking, the doors had been left open; the table was still set after Ulrik Frederik’s breakfast, with his napkin just as he had crumpled it at his plate, and the tracks of his great riding-boots were still wet on the floor. Over there by the tall pier-glass he had pressed her to his heart and kissed and kissed her in farewell, trying to comfort her with oaths and vows of a speedy return. Involuntarily she moved to the mirror as though to see whether it did not hold something of his image, as she had glimpsed it a moment ago, while locked in his arms. Her own lonely, drooping figure and pale, tear-stained face met her searching glance from behind the smooth, glittering surface.
She heard the street door close, and the lackey cleared the table. Ulrik Frederik’s favorite dogs, Nero, Passando, Rumor, and Delphine, had been locked in, and ran about the room, whimpering and sniffing his tracks. She tried to call them, but could not for weeping. Passando, the tall red fox-hound, came to her; she knelt down to stroke and caress the dog, but he wagged his tail in an absent-minded way, looked up into her face, and went on howling.
Those first days—how empty every thing was and dreary! The time dragged slowly, and the solitude seemed to hang over her, heavy and oppressive, while her longing would sometimes burn like salt in an open wound. Ay, it was so at first, but presently all this was no longer new, and the darkness and emptiness, the longing and grief, came again and again like snow that falls flake upon flake, until it seemed to wrap her in a strange, dull hopelessness, - 121 - almost a numbness that made a comfortable shelter of her sorrow.
Suddenly all was changed. Every nerve was strung to the most acute sensitiveness, every vein throbbing with blood athirst for life, and her fancy teemed like the desert air with colorful images and luring forms. On such days she was like a prisoner who sees youth slip by, spring after spring, barren, without bloom, dull and empty, always passing, never coming. The sum of time seemed to be counted out with hours for pennies; at every stroke of the clock one fell rattling at her feet, crumbled, and was dust, while she would wring her hands in agonized life-hunger and scream with pain.
She appeared but seldom at court or in the homes of her family, for etiquette demanded that she should keep to the house. Nor was she in the mood to welcome visitors, and as they soon ceased coming, she was left entirely to herself. This lonely brooding and fretting soon brought on an indolent torpor, and she would sometimes lie in bed for days and nights at a stretch, trying to keep in a state betwixt waking and sleeping, which gave rise to fantastic visions. Far clearer than the misty dream pictures of healthy sleep, these images filled the place of the life she was missing.
Her irritability grew with every day, and the slightest noise was torture. Sometimes she would be seized with the strangest notions and with sudden mad impulses that might almost raise a doubt of her sanity. Indeed, there was perhaps but the width of a straw between madness and that curious longing to do some desperate deed, merely for the sake of doing it, without the least reason or even real desire for it.
Sometimes, when she stood at the open window, leaning - 122 - against the casement and looking down into the paved court below, she would feel an overmastering impulse to throw herself down, merely to do it. But in that very second she seemed to have actually made the leap in her imagination and to have felt the cool, incisive tingling that accompanies a jump from a height. She darted back from the window to the inmost corner of the room, shaking with horror, the image of herself lying in her own blood on the hard stones so vivid in her mind that she had to go back to the window again and look down in order to drive it away.
Less dangerous and of a somewhat different nature was the fancy that would seize her when she looked at her own bare arm and traced, in a kind of fascination, the course of the blue and deep-violet veins under the white 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. Of such whims she had many.
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 - 123 - 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. Some one 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 - 124 - 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 - 125 - 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, - 126 - 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. - 127 - 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 window-sill. 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 window-sill, 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 - 128 - 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 danger that gleamed in the hand of a woman rang in his ears, and he sank to his knees praying; for all reasonable security, all common-sense safeguards seemed gone from this earthly life together with all human foresight. Clearly the heavens themselves were taking sides; unknown spirits ruled, and fate was determined by supernatural powers and signs. Why else should she have tried to kill him? Why? Almighty God, why, why? Because it must be—must be.
He picked up the knife almost furtively, broke the blade, and threw the pieces into the empty grate. Still Marie did not stir. Surely she was not wounded? No, the knife was bright, and there was no blood on his cuffs, but she lay - 129 - there as quiet as death itself. He hurried to her and lifted her in his arms.
Marie sighed, opened her eyes, and gazed straight out before her with a lifeless expression, then, seeing Ulrik Frederik, threw her arms around him, kissed and fondled him, still without a word. Her smile was pleased and happy, but a questioning fear lurked in her eyes. Her glance seemed to seek something on the floor. She caught Ulrik Frederik’s wrist, passed her hand over his sleeve, and when she saw that it was torn and the cuff slashed, she shrieked with horror.
“Then I really did it!” she cried in despair. “O God in highest heaven, preserve my mind, I humbly beseech Thee! But why don’t you ask questions? Why don’t you fling me away from you like a venomous serpent? And yet, God knows, I have no part nor fault............