Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

“Well, no thanks to him, but she hadn’t taken enough poison to kill her, though she was so sick and wretched, they thought she’d never be well again.”

“Poor little lamb!” said Marie, laughing.

Almost every day in the time that followed brought some change in Marie’s conception of Sti Högh and her relation to him. Sti was no dreamer, that was plain from the forethought and resourcefulness he displayed in coping with the innumerable difficulties of the journey. It was evident, too, that in manners and mind he was far above even the most distinguished of the noblemen they met on their way. What he said was always new and interesting and different; he seemed to have a shortcut, known only to himself, to an understanding of men and affairs, and Marie was impressed by the audacious scorn with which he owned his belief in the power of the beast in man and the scarcity of gold amid the dross of human nature. With cold, passionless eloquence he tried to show her how little consistency there was in man, how incomprehensible and uncomprehended, how weak-kneed and fumbling and altogether the sport of circumstance, that which was noble and that which was base fought for ascendancy in his soul. The fervor with which he expounded this seemed to her great and fascinating, and she began to believe that rarer gifts and greater powers had been given him than usually fell to the lot of mortals. She bowed down in admiration, almost in worship, before the tremendous force she imagined him possessed of. Yet withal there lurked in her soul a still small doubt, which was never shaped into a definite thought, but hovered as an instinctive feeling, whispering that perhaps his power was a power that threatened and raged, that coveted and desired, but never swooped down, never took hold.

In Lohendorf, about three miles from Vechta, there was an old inn near the highway, and there Marie and her travelling companions sought shelter an hour or two after sundown.

In the evening, when the coachmen and grooms had gone to bed in the outhouses, Marie and Sti Högh were sitting at the little red painted table before the great stove in a corner of the tap-room, chatting with two rather oafish Oldenborg noblemen. Lucie was knitting and looking on from her place at the end of a bench where she sat leaning against the edge of the long table running underneath the windows. A tallow dip, in a yellow earthenware candlestick on the gentlefolk’s table, cast a sleepy light over their faces, and woke greasy reflections in a row of pewter plates ranged above the stove. Marie had a small cup of warm wine before her, Sti Högh a larger one, while the two Oldenborgers were sharing a huge pot of ale, which they emptied again and again, and which was as often filled by the slovenly drawer, who lounged on the goose-bench at the farther end of the room.

Marie and Sti Högh would both have preferred to go to bed, for the two rustic noblemen were not very stimulating company, and no doubt they would have gone, had not the bedrooms been icy cold and the disadvantages of heating them even worse than the cold, as they found when the innkeeper brought in the braziers, for the peat in that part of the country was so saturated with sulphur that no one who was not accustomed to it could breathe where it was burning.

The Oldenborgers were not merry, for they saw that they were in very fine company, and tried hard to make their conversation as elegant as possible; but as the ale gained power over them, the rein they had kept on themselves grew slacker and slacker, and was at last quite loose. Their language took on a deeper local color, their playfulness grew massive, and their questions impudent.

As the jokes became coarser and more insistent, Marie stirred uneasily, and Sti’s eyes asked across the table whether they should not retire. Just then the fairer of the two strangers made a gross insinuation. Sti gave him a frown and a threatening look, but this only egged him on, and he repeated his foul jest in even plainer terms, whereupon Sti promised that at one more word of the same kind he would get the pewter cup in his head.

At that moment, Lucie brought her knitting up to the table to look for a dropped stitch, and the other Oldenborger availed himself of the chance to catch her round the waist, force her down on his knee, and imprint a sounding kiss on her lips.

This bold action fired the fair man, and he put his arm around Marie Grubbe’s neck.