Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

In the same second, Sti’s goblet hit him in the forehead with such force and such sureness of aim that he sank down on the floor with a deep grunt.

The next moment, Sti and the dark man were grappling in the middle of the floor, while Marie and her maid fled to a corner.

The drawer jumped up from the goose-bench, bellowed something out at one door, ran to the other and bolted it with a two-foot iron bar, just as some one else could be heard putting the latch on the postern. It was a custom in the inn to lock all doors as soon as a fight began, so no one could come from outside and join in the fracas, but this was the only step for the preservation of peace that the inn-people took. As soon as the doors were closed, they would sneak off to bed; for he who has seen nothing can testify to nothing.

Since neither party to the fight was armed, the affair had to be settled with bare fists, and Sti and the dark man stood locked together, wrestling and cursing. They dragged each other back and forth, turned in slow, tortuous circles, stood each other up against walls and doors, caught each other’s arms, wrenched themselves loose, bent and writhed, each with his chin in the other’s shoulder. At last they tumbled down on the floor, Sti on top. He had knocked his adversary’s head heavily two or three times against the cold clay floor, when suddenly he felt his own neck in the grip of two powerful hands. It was the fair man, who had picked himself up.

Sti choked, his throat rattled, he turned giddy, and his limbs relaxed. The dark man wound his legs around him and pulled him down by the shoulders, the other still clutched his throat and dug his knees into his sides.

Marie shrieked and would have rushed to his aid, but Lucie had thrown her arms around her mistress and held her in such a convulsive grip that she could not stir.

Sti was on the point of fainting, when suddenly, with one last effort of his strength, he threw himself forward, knocking the head of the dark man against the floor. The fingers of the fair man slipped from his throat, opening the way for a bit of air. Sti bounded up with all his force, hurled himself at the fair man, threw him down, bent over the fallen man in a fury, but in the same instant got a kick in the pit of the stomach that almost felled him. He caught the ankle of the foot that kicked him; with the other hand he grasped the boot-top, lifted the leg, and broke it over his outstretched thigh, until the bones cracked in the boot, and the fair man sank down in a swoon. The dark man, who lay staring at the scene, still dizzy from the blows in his head, gave vent to a yell of agony as if he had himself been the maltreated one, and crawled under the shelter of the bench beneath the windows. With that the fight was ended.

The latent savagery which this encounter had called out in Sti had a strange and potent effect on Marie. That night, when she laid her head on the pillow, she told herself that she loved him, and when Sti, perceiving a change in her eyes and manner that boded good for him, begged for her love, a few days later, he got the answer he longed for.

[CHAPTER XV]

THEY were in Paris. A half year had passed, and the bond of love so suddenly tied had loosened, and at last been broken. Marie and Sti Högh were slowly slipping apart. Both knew it, though they had not put the fact into words. The confession hid so much pain and bitterness, so much abasement and self-scorn, that they shrank from uttering it.