AFTER she came back to Tjele, Mistress Marie Grubbe remained in her father’s household until sixteen hundred and seventy-nine, when she was wedded to Palle Dyre, counsellor of justice to his Majesty the King, and with him she lived in a marriage that offered no shadow of an event until sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. This period of her life lasted from the time she was thirty till she was forty-six—full sixteen years.

Full sixteen years of petty worries, commonplace duties, and dull monotony, with no sense of intimacy or affection to give warmth, no homelike comfort to throw a ray of light. Endless brawling about nothing, noisy hectoring for the slightest neglect, peevish fault-finding, and coarse jibes were all that met her ears. Every sunlit day of life was coined into dollars and shillings and pennies; every sigh uttered was a sigh for loss; every wish, a wish for gain; every hope, a hope of more. All around her was shabby parsimony; in every nook and corner, busyness that chased away all pleasure; from every hour stared the wakeful eye of greed. Such was the existence Marie Grubbe led.

In the early days, she would sometimes forget the hubbub and bustle all around her and sink into waking dreams of beauty, changing as clouds, teeming as light. There was one that came oftener than others. It was a dream of a sleeping castle hidden behind roses. Oh, the quiet garden of that castle, with stillness in the air and in the leaves, with silence brooding over all like a night without darkness! There the odors slept in the flower-cups and the dewdrops on the bending blades of grass. There the violet drowsed with mouth half open under the curling leaves of the fern, while a thousand - 207 - bursting buds had been lulled to sleep, in the fullness of spring, at the very moment when they quickened on the branches of the moss-green trees. She came up to the palace. From the thorny vines of the rose-bushes, a flood of green billowed noiselessly down over walls and roofs, and the flowers fell like silent froth, sometimes in masses of bloom, sometimes flecking the green like pale-pink foam. From the mouth of the marble lion, a fountain jet shot up like a tree of crystal with boughs of cobweb, and shining horses mirrored breathless mouths and closed eyes in the dormant waters of the porphyry basin, while the page rubbed his eyes in sleep.

She feasted her eyes on the tranquil beauty of the old garden, where fallen petals lay like a rose-flushed snowdrift high against walls and doors, hiding the marble steps. Oh, to rest! To let the days glide over her in blissful peace, hour after hour, and to feel all memories, longings, and dreams flowing away, out of her mind, in softly lapping waves—that was the most beautiful of all the dreams she knew.

This was true at first, but her imagination tired of flying unceasingly toward the same goal like an imprisoned bee buzzing against the window-pane, and all other faculties of her soul wearied too. As a fair and noble edifice in the hands of barbarians is laid waste and spoiled, the bold spires made into squat cupolas, the delicate, lace-like ornaments broken bit by bit, and the wealth of pictures hidden under layer upon layer of deadening whitewash, so was Marie Grubbe laid waste and spoiled in those sixteen years.

Erik Grubbe, her father, was old and decrepit, and age seemed to intensify all his worst traits, just as it sharpened his features and made them more repulsive. He was grouchy and perverse, childishly obstinate, quick to anger, extremely - 208 - suspicious, sly, dishonest, and stingy. In his later days he always had the name of God on his lips, especially when the harvest was poor or the cattle were sick, and he would address the Lord with a host of cringing, fawning names of his own invention. It was impossible that Marie should either love or respect him, and besides she had a particular grudge against him, because he had persuaded her to marry Palle Dyre by dint of promises that were never fulfilled and by threats of disinheriting her, turning her out of Tjele, and withdrawing all support from her. In fact, her chief motive for the change had been her hope of making herself independent of the paternal authority, though this hope was frustrated; for Palle Dyre and Erik Grubbe had agreed to work the farms of Tjele and N?rb?k—which latter was given Marie as a dower on certain conditions—together, and as Tjele was the larger of the two, and Erik Grubbe no longer had the strength to look after it, Marie and her husband spent more time under her father’s roof than under their own.

Palle Dyre was the son of Colonel Clavs Dyre of Sandvig and Krogsdal, later of Vinge, and his wife Edele Pallesdaughter Rodtsteen. He was a thickset, shortnecked little man, brisk in all his motions and with a rather forceful face, which, however, was somewhat marred by a hemorrhage in the lungs that had affected his right cheek.

Marie despised him. He was as stingy and greedy as Erik Grubbe himself. Yet he was really a man of some ability, sensible, energetic, and courageous, but he simply lacked any sense of honor whatever. He would cheat and lie whenever he had a chance, and was never in the least abashed when found out. He would allow himself to be abused like a dog and never answer back, if silence could bring him - 209 - a penny’s profit. Whenever a relative or friend commissioned him to buy or sell anything or entrusted any other business to him, he would turn the matter to his own advantage without the slightest scruple. Though his marriage had been in the main a bargain, he was not without a sense of pride in winning the divorced wife of the Viceroy; but this did not prevent him from treating her and speaking to her in a manner that might have seemed incompatible with such a feeling. Not that he was grossly rude or violent—by no means. He simply belonged to the class of people who are so secure in their own sense of normal and irreproachable mediocrity that they cannot refrain from asserting their superiority over the less fortunate and na?vely setting themselves up as models. As for Marie, she was, of course, far from unassailable; her divorce from Ulrik Frederik and her squandering of her mother’s fortune were but too patent irregularities.

This was the man who became the third person in their life at Tjele. Not one trait in him gave grounds for hope that he would add to it any bit of brightness or comfort. Nor did he. Endless quarrelling and bickering, mutual sullenness and fault-finding, were all that the passing days brought in their train.

Marie was blunted by it. Whatever had been delicate and flowerlike in her nature, all the fair and fragrant growth which heretofore had entwined her life as with luxurious though fantastic and even bizarre arabesques, withered and died the death. Coarseness in thought as in speech, a low and slavish doubt of everything great and noble, and a shameless self-scorn were the effect of these sixteen years at Tjele. And yet another thing: she developed a thick-blooded sensuousness, a hankering for the good things of life, a lusty - 210 - appetite for food and drink, for soft chairs and soft beds, a voluptuous pleasure in spicy, narcotic scents, and a craving for luxury which was neither ruled by good taste nor refined by love of the beautiful. True, she had scant means of gratifying these desires, but that did not lessen their force.

She had grown fuller of form and paler, and there was a slow languor in all her movements. Her eyes were generally quite empty of expression, but sometimes they would grow strangely bright, and she had fallen into the habit of setting her lips in a meaningless smile.

There came a time when they wrote sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. It was night, and the horse-stable at Tjele was on fire. The flickering flames burst through the heavy clouds of brown smoke; they lit up the grassy courtyard, shone on the low outhouses and the white walls of the manor-house, and even touched with light the black crowns of the trees in the garden where they rose high above the roof. Servants and neighbors ran from the well to the fire with pails and buckets full of water glittering red in the light of the flames. Palle Dyre was here, there, and everywhere, tearing wildly about, his hair flying, a red wooden rake in his hand. Erik Grubbe lay praying over an old chaff-bin, which had been carried out. He watched the progress of the fire from beam to beam, his agony growing more intense every moment, and he groaned audibly whenever the flames leaped out triumphantly and swung their spirals high above the house in a shower of sparks.

Marie, too, was there, but her eyes sought something besides the fire. They were fixed on the new coachman, who was taking the frightened horses out from the smoke-filled stable. The doorway had been widened to more than double - 211 - its usual size by lifting off the frame and tearing down a bit of the frail wall on either side, and through this opening he was leading the animals, one by either hand. They were crazed with the smoke, and when the stinging, flickering light of the flames met their eyes, they reared wildly and threw themselves to one side, until it seemed the man must be torn to pieces or be trampled down between the powerful brutes. Yet he neither fell nor lost his hold; he forced their noses down on the ground and ran with them, half driving, half dragging them, across the courtyard to the gate of the garden, where he let them go.

There were many horses at Tjele, and Marie had plenty of time to admire that beautiful, gigantic form in changing postures, as he struggled with the spirited animals, one moment hanging from a straight arm, almost lifted from the ground by a rearing stallion, the next instant thrown violently down and gripping the earth with his feet, then again urging them on by leaps and bounds, always with the same peculiarly quiet, firm, elastic movements seen only in very strong men. His short cotton breeches and blue-gray shirt looked yellow where the light fell on them but black in the shadows, and outlined sharply the vigorous frame making a fine, simple background for the ruddy face with its soft, fair down on lip and chin, and the great shock of blonde hair.

This giant of two-and-twenty was known as S?ren Overseer. His real name was S?ren S?rensen M?ller, but the title had come down to him from his father, who had been overseer on a manor in Hvornum.

The horses were all brought out at last. The stable burned to the ground, and when the fire still smouldering on the site had been put out, the servants went to get a little morning nap after a wakeful night.

- 212 -

Marie Grubbe, too, went to bed, but she could not sleep. She lay thinking, sometimes blushing at her own fancies, then tossing about as if she feared them. It was late when she rose. She smiled contemptuously at herself as she dressed. Her every-day attire was usually careless, even slovenly, though on special occasions she would adorn herself in a manner more showy than tasteful, but this morning she put on an old though clean gown of blue homespun, tied a little scarlet silk kerchief round her neck, and took out a neat, simple little cap; then she suddenly changed her mind again and chose instead one with a turned-up rim of yellow and brown flowered stuff and a flounce of imitation silver brocade in the back, which went but poorly with the rest. Palle Dyre supposed she wanted to go to town and gossip about the fire, and he thought to himself there were no horses to drive her there. She stayed home, however, but somehow she could not work. She would take up one thing after another, only to drop it as quickly. At last she went out into the garden, saying that she meant to set to rights what the horses had trampled in the night, but she did not accomplish much; for she sat most of the time in an arbor with her hands in her lap, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.

The unrest that had come over her did not leave her, but grew worse day by day. She was suddenly seized with a desire for lonely walks in the direction of Fastrup Grove, or in the more distant parts of the outer garden. Her father and husband both scolded her, but when she turned a deaf ear and did not even answer them, they finally made up their minds that it was best to let her go her own way for a short time, all the more as it was not the busy season.

About a week after the fire, she was taking her usual walk - 213 - out Fastrup way, and was skirting the edge of a long copse of stunted oaks and dogrose that reached almost to her shoulder, when suddenly she caught sight of S?ren Overseer, stretched at full length in the edge of the copse, his eyes closed as if he were asleep. A scythe was lying at his side, and the grass had been cut for some distance around.

Marie stood for a long time gazing at his large, regular features, his broad, vigorously breathing chest, and his dark, full-veined hands, which were clasped above his head. But S?ren was drowsing rather than sleeping, and suddenly he opened his eyes, wide awake, and looked up at her. He was startled at being found by one of the family sleeping when he should have been cutting hay, but the expression in Marie’s eyes amazed him so much that he did not come to his senses until she blushed, said something about the heat, and turned to go. He jumped up, seized his scythe and whetstone, and began to rub the steel until it sang through the warm, tremulous air. Then he went at the grass, slashing as if his life were at stake.

After a while, he saw Marie crossing the stile into the grove, and at that he paused. He stood a moment staring after her, his arms resting on his scythe, then suddenly flung it away with all his strength, sat down with legs sprawling, mouth open, palms flat out on the grass, and thus he sat in silent amazement at himself and his own strange thoughts.

He looked like a man who had just dropped down from a tree.

His head seemed to be teeming with dreams. What if any one had cast a spell over him? He had never known anything like the way things swarmed and swarmed inside of his head, as if he could think of seven things at once, and - 214 - he couldn’t get the hang of them—they came and went as if he’d nothing to say about it. It surely was queer the way she’d looked at him, and she hadn’t said anything about his sleeping this way in the middle of the day. She had looked at him so kindly, straight out of her clear eyes, and—just like Jens Pedersen’s Trine she had looked at him. Her ladyship! Her ladyship! There was a story about a lady at N?rb?k manor who had run away with her gamekeeper. Had he got such a look when he was asleep? Her ladyship! Maybe he might get to be good friends with her ladyship, just as the gamekeeper did. He couldn’t understand it—was he sick? There was a burning spot on each of his cheeks, and his heart beat, and he felt so queer, it was hard to breathe. He began to tug at a stunted oak, but he could not get a grip on it where he was sitting; he jumped up, tore it loose, and threw it away, caught his scythe, and cut till the grass flew in the swath.

In the days that followed, Marie often came near S?ren, who happened to have work around the house, and he always stared at her with an unhappy, puzzled, questioning expression, as if imploring her to give him the answer to the riddle she had thrown in his way, but Marie only glanced furtively in his direction and turned her head away.

S?ren was ashamed of himself and lived in constant fear that his fellow-servants would notice there was something the matter with him. He had never in all his life before been beset by any feeling or longing that was in the least fantastic, and it made him timid and uneasy. Maybe he was getting addled or losing his wits. There was no knowing how such things came over people, and he vowed to himself that he would think no more about it, but the next moment his thoughts were again taking the road he would have barred - 215 - them from. The very fact that he could not get away from these notions was what troubled him most, for he remembered that he had heard tales of Cyprianus, whom you could burn and drown, yet he always came back. In his heart of hearts he really hoped that the fancies would not leave him, for life would seem very dreary and empty without them, but this he did not admit to himself. In fact, his cheeks flushed with shame whenever he soberly considered what he really had in mind.

About a week after the day when she had found S?ren asleep, Marie Grubbe was sitting under the great beech on the heathery hill in Fastrup Grove. She sat leaning her back against the trunk, and held an open book in her hand, but she was not reading. With dreamy eyes, she followed intently a large, dark bird of prey, which hung, in slowly gliding, watchful flight, over the unending, billowing surface of the thick, leafy treetops.

The air was drenched with light and sun, vibrant with the drowsy, monotonous hum of myriad invisible insects. The sweet—too sweet—odor of yellow-flowered broom and the spicy fragrance of sun-warmed birch-leaves mingled with the earthy smell of the forest and the almond scent of white meadowsweet in the hollows.

Marie sighed.
“Petits oiseaux des bois,”

she whispered plaintively,
“que vous estes heureux, De plaindre librement vos tourmens amoreux. Les valons, les rochers, les forests et les plaines S?auent également vos plaisirs et vos peines.”

- 216 -

She sat a moment trying to remember the rest, then took the book and read in a low, despondent tone:
“Vostre innocente amour ne fuit point la clarté, Tout le monde est pour vous un lieu de liberté, Mais ce cruel honneur, ce fléau de nostre vie, Sous de si dures loix la retient asservie. . . .”

She closed the book with a bang and almost shouted:
“Il est vray je ressens une secrète flame Qui malgré ma raison s’allume dans mon ame Depuis le jour fatal que je vis sous l’ormeau Alcidor, qui dan?oit au son du chalumeau.”

Her voice sank, and the last lines were breathed forth softly, almost automatically, as if her fancy were merely using the rhythm as an accompaniment to other images than those of the poem. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. It was so strange and disturbing, now that she was middle-aged, to feel herself again in the grip of the same breathless longing, the same ardent dreams and restless hopes that had thrilled her youth. But would they last? Would they not be like the short-lived bloom that is sometimes quickened by a sunny week in autumn, the after-bloom that sucks the very last strength of the flower, only to give it over, feeble and exhausted, to the mercy of winter? For they were dead, these longings, and had slept many years in silent graves. Why did they come again? What did they want of her? Was not their end fulfilled, so they could rest in peace and not rise again in deceitful shapes of life, to play the game of youth once more?

So ran her thoughts, but they were not real. They were - 217 - quite impersonal, as if she were making them up about some one else; for she had no doubt of the strength and lasting power of her passion. It had filled her so irresistibly and completely that there was no room left in her for reflective amazement. Yet for a moment she followed the train of theoretical reasoning, and she thought of the golden Remigius and his firm faith in her, but the memory drew from her only a bitter smile and a forced sigh, and the next moment her thoughts were caught up again by other things.

She wondered whether S?ren would have the courage to make love to her. She hardly believed he would. He was only a peasant, and she pictured to herself his slavish fear of the gentlefolks, his dog-like submission, his cringing servility. She thought of his coarse habits and his ignorance, his peasant speech and poor clothes, his toil-hardened body and his vulgar greediness. Was she to bend beneath all this, to accept good and evil from this black hand? In this self-abasement there was a strange, voluptuous pleasure, which was in part gross sensuality, but in part akin to whatever is counted noblest and best in woman’s nature. For such was the manner in which the clay had been mixed out of which she was fashioned....

A few days later, Marie Grubbe was in the brew-house at Tjele mixing mead; for many of the bee-hives had been injured on the night of the fire. She was standing in the corner by the hearth, looking at the open door, where hundreds of bees, drawn by the sweet smell of honey, were swarming, glittering like gold in the strip of sunlight that pierced the gloom.

Just then S?ren came driving in through the gate with an empty coach in which he had taken Palle Dyre to Viborg. He caught a glimpse of Marie and made haste to unharness - 218 - and stable the horses and put the coach in its place. Then he strutted about a little while, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his long livery coat, his eyes fixed on his great boots. Suddenly he turned abruptly toward the brew-house, swinging one arm resolutely, frowning and biting his lips like a man who is forcing himself to an unpleasant but unavoidable decision. He had, in fact, been swearing to himself all the way from Viborg to Foulum that this must end, and he had kept up his courage with a little flask, which his master had forgotten to take out of the coach.

He took off his hat when he came into the house, but said nothing, simply stood passing his fingers awkwardly along the edge of the brewing-vat.

Marie asked whether S?ren had any message to her from her husband.

No.

Would S?ren taste her brew, or would he like a piece of sugar-honey?

Yes, thank you—or that is, no, thanks—that wasn’t what he’d come for.

Marie blushed and felt quite uneasy.

Might he ask a question?

Ay, indeed he might.

Well, then, all he wanted to say was this, with her kind permission, that he wasn’t in his right mind, for waking or sleeping he thought of nothing but her ladyship, and he couldn’t help it.

Ah, but that was just what S?ren ought to do.

No, he wasn’t so sure of that, for ’twas not in the way of tending to his work that he thought of her ladyship. ’Twas quite different; he thought of her in the way of what folks called love.

- 219 -

He looked at her with a timid questioning expression and seemed quite crestfallen, as he shook his head, when Marie replied that it was quite right; that was what the pastor said they should all do.

No, ’twasn’t in that way either, ’twas kind of what you might call sweethearting. But of course there wasn’t any cause for it—he went on in an angry tone as if to pick a quarrel—he s’posed such a fine lady would be afraid to come near a poor common peasant like him, though to be sure peasants were kind of half way like people too, and didn’t have either water or sour gruel for blood any more than gentlefolks. He knew the gentry thought they were of a kind by themselves, but really they were made about the same way as others, and sure he knew they ate and drank and slept and all that sort of thing just like the lowest, commonest peasant lout. And so he didn’t think it would hurt her ladyship if he kissed her mouth any more than if a gentleman had kissed her. Well, there was no use her looking at him like that, even if he was kind of free in his talk, for he didn’t care what he said any more, and she was welcome to make trouble for him if she liked, for when he left her, he was going straight to drown himself in the miller’s pond or else put a rope around his neck.

He mustn’t do that; for she never meant to say a word against him to any living creature.

So she didn’t? Well, anybody could believe that who was simple enough, but no matter for that. She’d made trouble enough for him, and ’twas nobody’s fault but hers that he was going to kill himself, for he loved her beyond anything.

He had seated himself on a bench, and sat gazing at her with a mournful look in his good, faithful eyes, while his lips trembled as if he were struggling with tears.

- 220 -

She could not help going over to him and laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.

She’d best not do that. He knew very well that when she put her hand on him and said a few words quietly to herself she could read the courage out of him, and he wouldn’t let her. Anyhow, she might as well sit down by him, even if he was nothing but a low peasant, seeing that he’d be dead before nightfall.

Marie sat down.

S?ren looked at her sideways and moved a little farther away on the bench. Now he s’posed he’d better say good-by and thank her ladyship for all her kindness in the time they’d known each other, and maybe she’d say good-by from him to his cousin Anne—the kitchen-maid at the manor.

Marie held his hand fast.

Well, now he was going.

No, he must stay; there was no one in all the world she loved like him.

Oh, that was just something she said because she was afraid he’d come back and haunt her, but she might make herself easy on that score, for he didn’t bear any grudge against her and would never come near her after he was dead; that he’d ............