“Ulrik Frederik!” she said in a low voice, “I am your wife before God and men. Why do you not love me any more? Come with me! Leave the woman in there for what she is, and come with me! Come, Ulrik Frederik, you little know what a burning love I feel for you, and how bitterly I have longed and grieved! Come, pray come!”
Ulrik Frederik made no reply. He offered her his arm and conducted her out of the garden to her coach, which was waiting not far away. He handed her in, went to the horses’ heads and examined the harness, changed a buckle, and called the coachman down, under pretence of getting him to fix the couplings. While they stood there he whispered: “The moment you get into your seat, you are to drive on as hard as your horses can go, and never stop till you get home. Those are my orders, and I believe you know me.”
The man had climbed into his seat, Ulrik Frederik caught the side of the coach as though to jump in, the whip cracked and fell over the horses, he sprang back, and the coach rattled on.
Marie’s first impulse was to order the coachman to stop, to take the reins herself, or to jump out, but then a strange lassitude came over her, a deep unspeakable loathing, a nauseating weariness, and she sat quite still, gazing ahead, never heeding the reckless speed of the coach.
Ulrik Frederik was again with Karen Fiol.
When Ulrik Frederik returned to the castle that evening, he was, in truth, a bit uneasy—not exactly worried, but with the sense of apprehension people feel when they know there are vexations and annoyances ahead of them that cannot be dodged, but must somehow be gone through with. Marie had, of course, complained to the King. The King would give him a lecture, and he would have to listen to it all. Marie would wrap herself in the majestic silence of offended virtue, which he would be at pains to ignore. The whole atmosphere would be oppressive. The Queen would look fatigued and afflicted—genteelly afflicted—and the ladies of the court, who knew nothing and suspected everything, would sit silently, now and then lifting their heads to sigh meekly and look at him with gentle upbraiding in large, condoning eyes. Oh, he knew it all, even to the halo of noble-hearted devotion with which the Queen’s poor groom of the chambers would try to deck his narrow head! The fellow would place himself at Ulrik Frederik’s side with ludicrous bravado, overwhelming him with polite attentions and respectfully consoling stupidities, while his small pale-blue eyes and every line of his thin figure would cry out as plainly as words: “See, all are turning from him, but I, never! Braving the King’s anger and the Queen’s displeasure, I comfort the forsaken! I put my true heart against—” Oh, how well he knew it all—everything—the whole story!
Nothing of all this happened. The King received him with a Latin proverb, a sure sign that he was in a good humor. Marie rose and held out her hand to him as usual, perhaps a little colder, a shade more reserved, but still in a manner very different from what he had expected. Not even when they were left alone together did she refer with so much as a word to their encounter at Lynge, and Ulrik Frederik wondered suspiciously. He did not know what to make of this curious silence; he would almost rather she had spoken.
Should he draw her out, thank her for not saying anything, give himself up to remorse and repentance, and play the game that they were reconciled again?
Somehow he did not quite dare to try it; for he had noticed that, now and then, she would gaze furtively at him with an inscrutable expression in her eyes, as if she were looking through him and taking his measure, with a calm wonder, a cool, almost contemptuous curiosity. Not a gleam of hatred or resentment, not a shadow of grief or reproach, not one tremulous glance of repressed sadness! Nothing of that kind, nothing at all!
Therefore he did not venture, and nothing was said. Once in a while, as the days went by, his thoughts would dwell on the matter uneasily, and he would feel a feverish desire to have it cleared up. Still it was not done, and he could not rid himself of a sense that these unspoken accusations lay like serpents in a dark cave, brooding over sinister treasures, which grew as the reptiles grew, blood-red carbuncles rising on stalks of cadmium, and pale opal in bulb upon bulb slowly spreading, swelling, and breeding, while the serpents lay still but ceaselessly expanding, gliding forth in sinuous bend upon bend, lifting ring upon ring over the rank growth of the treasure.