Again he changed his voice, leaned forward in his chair, winked with one eye, and crooked his fingers to comb an imaginary beard.
“Now stay here,” he said coaxingly, “stay here, fair Karen; I’ll never forsake you, and you must never forsake me,”—his voice grew weepy,—“we’ll never part, my dear, dear heart, never in the world! Silver and gold and honor and glory and precious noble blood—begone! I curse you! Begone! I say. You’re a hundred heavens high above them, the thing of beauty you are! Though they’ve scutcheons and emblems—would that make ’em any better? You’ve got an emblem, too—the red mark on your white shoulder that Master Anders burned with his hot iron, that’s your coat-of-arms! I spit on my scutcheon to kiss that mark—that’s all I think of scutcheons—that’s all! For there isn’t in all the land of Sjælland a high-born lady as lovely as you are—is there, huh? No, there isn’t—not a bit of one!”
“That’s—that’s a lie!” he cried in a new voice, jumped up, and shook his fist over the table. “My Mistress Ide, you blockhead, she’s got a shape—as a man may say—she’s got limbs—as a man may say—limbs, I tell you, you slubberdegulleon!”
At this point Daniel was about to let himself fall into the chair again, but at that moment Ulrik Frederik pulled it away, and he rolled on the floor. Ulrik Frederik laughed uproariously, but Marie ran to him with hands outstretched as though to help him up. The little man, half rising on his knees, caught her hand and gazed at her with an expression so full of gratitude and devotion that it haunted her for a long time. Presently they rode home, and none of them thought that this chance meeting in the Bide-a-Wee Tavern would lead to anything further.
[CHAPTER IX]
THE States-General that convened in Copenhagen in the late autumn brought to town many of the nobility, all anxious to guard their ancient rights against encroachment, but none the less eager for a little frolic after the busy summer. Nor were they averse to flaunting their wealth and magnificence in the faces of the townspeople, who had grown somewhat loud-voiced since the war, and to reminding them that the line between gentlemen of the realm and the unfree mob was still firm and immutable, in spite of the privileges conferred by royalty, in spite of citizen valor and the glamor of victory, in spite of the teeming ducats in the strong boxes of the hucksters.
The streets were bright with throngs of noblemen and their ladies, bedizened lackeys, and richly caparisoned horses in silver-mounted harness. There was feasting and open house in the homes of the nobility. Far into the night the violin sounded from well-lit halls, telling the sleepy citizens that the best blood of the realm was warming to a stately dance over parquet floors, while the wine sparkled in ancestral goblets.
All these festivities passed Marie Grubbe by; none invited her. Because of their ties to the royal family, some of the Grubbes were suspected of siding with the King against the Estate, and moreover the good old nobility cordially hated that rather numerous upper aristocracy formed by the natural children of the kings and their relatives. Marie was therefore slighted for a twofold reason, and as the court lived in retirement during the session of the States-General, it offered her no compensation.
It seemed hard at first, but soon it woke the latent defiance of her nature and made her draw closer to Ulrik Frederik. She loved him more tenderly for the very reason that she felt herself being wronged for his sake. So when the two were quietly married on the sixteenth of December, sixteen hundred and sixty, there was the best reason to believe that she would live happily with the Master of the King’s Hunt, which was the title and office Ulrik Frederik had won as his share of the favors distributed by triumphant royalty.
This private ceremony was not in accordance with the original plan, for it had long been the intention of the King to celebrate their wedding in the castle, as Christian the Fourth had done that of Hans Ulrik and Mistress Rigitze, but at the eleventh hour he had scruples and decided, in consideration of Ulrik Frederik’s former marriage and divorce, to refrain from public display.