Chapter 19

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XIX

'Hilda, I will die for you, but I cannot marry you.' Greif spoke quietly, but with the utmost decision.

'I have said that I will not let you go,' she answered, 'and I will not. You are my life, and I will not die--I should if you left me.'

'You will forget me,' he said.

'Forget you!' Her voice rang through the room. She dropped his hands with a passionate gesture and turned away from him, making one or two steps towards the window. Then she came back and stood before him.

'Forget you!' she exclaimed again. 'You do not know what you are saying. You do not know me, if you can say it. Do you think, because I am a girl, that I am weak? I tell you I am stronger than you, and I tell you that you are mad. Do you think that if I would have shed the last drop of my blood to save you from pain yesterday, I love you less to-day? I love you a thousand times more for what you would do, but you shall not do it. I love you as no woman can love, who has not lived long life. And you say that you can go away, and that I shall forget you! As I am a Christian woman, if I forget you, may God forget me, now and in the hour of death! I could not if I would. And you say that you will leave me--for what? Because your father has done a terrible deed, and has taken his own life. For a name--for nothing else! What is a name to me, compared with you yourself? I love you so, that if you had yourself done the most monstrous crime, I would not leave you, not if we were to die a shameful death together. And you would leave me, for my own good! For my advantage--oh, I would not have heaven itself without you. Forget! What would there be left to remember, if you were taken? The emptiness of the place where you were, the wide emptiness that all heaven could never fill! Your name--do you love it better than me? But I know that you love me, though you are mad. Then put your name away, cast it from you to whomsoever will have it. Do you think that Hilda von Sigmundskron cares for names, or wants new ones? Am I a peasant's child, to sigh for a coronet and to give you up because you have put it off? Be what you will, you are only Greif to me, and Greif, only, means more to me than heaven or earth and all that are in them. You shake your head--what would you say? That it is not true? My love needs no oaths to bind it, nor to prove it. You can see it in my face, for I know that it is there. Yes--you cannot meet my eyes--honest as you are, and good, and noble, and true-hearted as any man that ever drew breath. Do you know why? You dare not--you who dare anything else. I love you the more for having dared this--but you shall not do it. I will not let you go, I will not, never, never!'

Greif had turned his head away and stood leaning against the chimney almost in the same attitude he had taken from the first. She had spoken quickly and passionately and he had not been able to answer anything she said, for she did not pause, replying herself to the questions she asked and giving him no time to oppose her.

'I was wrong,' he said, half bitterly, half tenderly. 'You will not forget me any more than I can forget you. It will make it harder to say good-bye.'

'It shall never be said, until one of us two is dying, Greif.'

'We cannot change our fate, though we love ever so dearly,' he answered. 'Think, Hilda, if you took me as I am, what you might suffer in after years, what our children would surely suffer when they went out into the world, and the world began to whisper that they were the grandsons of that Greifenstein--'

'What is the world to us, dear? And as for our sons, if God sends us any, I know that if they grow up to be brave gentlemen, loyal and true, the world will leave them in peace.'

'The world is a hard place--'

'Then why have anything to do with it? I have been happy, here in the forest, for so many years--could you not be happy here with me?'

'I should still be my father's son--I should still be Greifenstein.'

'Would I have you anything else?'

'Hilda, it is impossible!' cried Greif with suddenly renewed energy. 'I have said all. Must I say it again?' 'If you were to say it a thousand times, it would not make it more true. But I will listen to all you tell me, if you like,'

With a calmness that showed how certain she felt of her victory, Hilda resumed her seat at the opposite side of the fireplace, folded her hands together, and leaning her head against the back of the easy- chair, watched him with half-closed eyes. She was not tired, and would very probably be able to sustain the contest longer than he. After the first shock of the announcement was over, under which she had suffered more in one moment than would have sufficed to fill a week with agonising pain, the strong impulse to hold him had come upon her and her elastic strength had been roused to its fullest energy. But the memory of that one moment of agony was enough to make her guess what she would feel if he left her.

Arguments repeated a second time rarely seem so forcible as when they are first heard. Painfully and conscientiously Greif recapitulated his reasons, trying to speak coldly and concisely, exerting himself to the utmost and summoning all the skill he could command in order to state his case convincingly. Hilda could not have put the idea that possessed him to a more cruel test than this. It began to dawn even upon himself that he was in pursuit of a chimera, and the necessity for the enormous self-sacrifice, upon which he insisted, was breaking down in the face of such a determined opposition on the part of those who were more interested than himself. Doggedly and persistently he continued, nevertheless, fighting his love as though it had been a devil, thrusting Hilda's from his thoughts as though it had been an evil temptation, savagely determined not to part with his belief in what he took for his duty. It was a strange sight, and would have afforded material for reflexion to an older and wiser person than Hilda.

'That is all I have to say,' he concluded. 'It seems to me that I cannot say it more clearly. You know what it costs me to repeat it all.'

An expression of intense pain passed over his face, and he turned away in order to hide it from Hilda. He was hardly able to make his strained lips pronounce the last words.

'I am not convinced,' said Hilda after a moment's pause. 'No eloquence in the world would convince me that you and I should sacrifice our lives for an idea, merely to save ourselves from the possibility of a few ill-natured remarks hereafter. That is all it comes to in the end. I will tell you the history of this idea.'

She seemed calmer than ever, but the light had not faded from her eyes, and Greif felt that she was ready to spring upon him in an instant, to grasp his hands in hers and to say again that she would not let him go. He glanced nervously towards her, and the look of suffering returned to his face.

'The history is this,' she said. 'When the dreadful thing happened, you thought of me. Then it seemed to you that you should free me from our engagement. That seemed hard to you, because you love me so much--it was so hard that it took all your strength to make the resolution. You have spoken to my mother and to me. Now, I ask you whether my mother, at least, is not old enough to judge what is right? Did she agree with you, and tell you that you should give me up?'

'No--she did all she could to persuade me--'

'Of course,' interrupted Hilda. 'Of course she did. Now shall I tell you why you will not allow yourself to be persuaded, and why you insist on ruining your life as well as mine?'

She rose again, gently this time, and came and stood beside him. He turned his head away as though it hurt him, and as she spoke she could see only his short, bright curling hair.

'You will not be persuaded, because it was so hard for you to make the resolution at first, that you believe it must be right in spite of every other right, and you would sacrifice yourself and me for an idea which is strong only because it hurt you to accept it at first. Everything you have done and said is brave, noble, generous--but you have gone too far--you have lost sight of the true truth in pursuing a truth that was true yesterday. It never was your duty to do more than offer to set me free. And as for the name, Greif dear,--I have heard that such things are done--would you, if it pleases you--that is, if it would help you to forget--would you take mine, darling, instead of letting me take yours? Perhaps it would make it easier--you are only Greif to me, but perhaps if you could be Greif Sigmundskron to yourself, and live here, and never go to Greifenstein nor think of it again--perhaps, my beloved, I could help you to forget it all, to the very name that pains you so.'

She laid her hand upon his shoulder and pressed her cheek softly against his curls as she spoke the last words, though she could not see his face. The accents were so low and tender that her voice sounded like soft music breathed into his ear.

'No--no! I must never do it!' he tried to say, but the words were very indistinct.

Hilda felt him move nervously, and she saw that he was grasping the chimney-piece with both hands as though to support himself by it. In another moment his broad shoulders seemed to heave and then shrink together. He staggered and almost fell to the ground, though Hilda did her best to hold him. With a great effort he gained the chair in which she had sat and fell back in it. His eyes were closed and the lids were blue, while his tightly compressed lips moved as though he were biting them.

Hilda knelt beside him and took his cold hands. The colour was all gone from her face, for she was terribly frightened.

'Greif, Greif!' she cried in anguish. 'What is it, my beloved? Speak, darling--do not look like that!'

'I am in great pain,' he answered, not opening his eyes, but faintly trying to press her fingers.

She saw that he was ill, and that his suffering had nothing to do with his previous emotion. She opened the door quickly and called for help. Her mother's room was very near and Frau von Sigmundskron appeared immediately.

'Greif is ill--dying perhaps!' exclaimed Hilda dragging her into the little sitting-room to the young man's side.

The baroness leaned over him anxiously, and at the touch of a strange hand his purple lids opened slowly and he looked up into her face.

'It is in my head--in the back,' he succeeded in saying.

Greif had fallen in harness, fighting his battle with the morbid energy of a man already ill. To the very end he had held his position, resisting even that last tender appeal Hilda had made to him, but the strain upon his nerves had been too great. He was strong, indeed, but he was young and not yet toughened into that strange material of which men of the world are made. The loss of sleep, the deadly impression made upon him by the death of his father and mother, the terrible struggle he had sustained with himself, all had combined together to bring about the crisis. At first it was but a shooting pain in the head, so sharp as to make his features contract. Then it came again and again, till it left him no breathing space, and he sank down overcome by physical torture, but firm in his intention as he had been in the beginning. It was all over, and he would not argue his case again for many a long day.

'Take me home--I am very ill,' he gasped, as the baroness tried to feel his pulse.

But she shook her head, for it seemed to her that it was too late.

'You must stay here until you are better,' she answered softly. 'The jolting of the carriage would hurt you.'

He closed his eyes again, unable to speak, far less to discuss the matter. The mother and daughter whispered together and then both left the room, casting a last anxious glance at Greif as he lay almost unconscious with pain.

Great was the consternation of Berbel when she heard that the young lord of Greifenstein had suddenly fallen ill in the house, but she was not a woman to waste words when time pressed. There was but one thing to be done. Greif must have Hilda's room and Hilda must take up her quarters with her mother. His carriage must fetch the physician from the nearest town, and bring such things as might be necessary. To Berbel's mind everything seemed already organised, and before any one had time to make a remark she had set about arranging matters to her own satisfaction. There was only one difficulty in the way, and that was Greif himself, who, in spite of his acute suffering had not the slightest intention of submitting to an illness at Sigmundskron.

In the first moment the pain had altogether overcome him, but he gradually became so much accustomed to it as to be able to think more connectedly. The idea of remaining where he was seemed intolerable. To be taken care of by Frau von Sigmundskron, to be under the same roof with Hilda, would be to give up the contest for which he had sacrificed so much. He did not understand that his mind would act very differently when he had recovered, and that much which seemed disagreeable at present, might be attractive then.

He rose to his feet without assistance, and he saw that he was alone. Hilda had gone in one direction and her mother in another in search of something to alleviate his suffering. To get out of the house was the work of a moment. In the court there was the groom who had driven him, still rubbing down his horses and setting things to rights before going inside to warm himself. The man was the same who had brought Greif the news at Schwarzburg, a devoted fellow, born and bred on the estate, unlike the house servants who had been changed so often.

'Karl,' said Greif, going up to him, 'you must harness and drive me back to Greifenstein at once. I am sorry for you, but I am too ill to stay here. I will walk down the road--come after me as soon as you can.'

There was nothing to be done but to obey the simple order. Karl looked surprised but lost no time, especially as Greif was already going out of the gate. In a trice the collars were on the horses again, the traces hitched, the reins unwound, and Karl was seated upon the box. He was glad for himself, though he thought it a very long pull for the horses. The road went downhill over most of the way, however, and Karl reflected that when his master was once in the carriage behind him, he could drive as slowly as he pleased. Just as he was ready, Frau von Sigmundskron and Hilda appeared upon the threshold of the hall, both looking pale and anxious. They had found Greif gone from the sitting-room and had at first imagined that he had lost his way in the house; but Hilda's quick ears caught the sounds that came from the court and she knew that the groom was putting the horses in.

'What is that?' asked Hilda, addressing the groom. 'Why have you harnessed again?'

'The merciful lord has ordered it,' returned Karl, lifting his military cap with one hand while he held the reins with the other. 'The merciful lord has walked down the road, and I am to overtake him.'

Therewith Karl turned his pair neatly and the horses trotted slowly towards the gate.

'Stop, stop!' cried Hilda, running down the steps and following him, while her mother came after her more slowly.

Karl drew up and looked back.

'Herr von Greifenstein is very ill,' the girl said. 'He will never be able to drive alone so far--indeed he ought to stay here and you should go for the doctor.'

She was so much confused that she hardly knew what to say, when her mother joined her, calmer and more sensible.

'You say that he went out of the gate. How long ago?' inquired the elder lady.

'It may be five minutes.'

'Did he say anything besides ordering the carriage?'

'He said he was ill and must go home at once, and that he was sorry for me.'

Frau von Sigmundskron hesitated. It was clear that Greif had not been so ill as she had at first supposed, or he could not have walked out alone, ordered the carriage and gone on without support. Karl interrupted her meditations.

'Merciful ladyships forgive me,' he observed, 'but if he walks farther he will be more ill.' He gathered the reins and prepared to move on.

'Go, Karl,' said the baroness, and in a moment he was gone.

'Mother--you ought to have gone, too--' Hilda began, looking into her face with an expression of mingled anxiety and disappointment.

'I do not see how I could, my child,' answered the baroness. 'If Greif was strong enough to go it was best that he should do so. It would be hard for us to take care of him. He has his cousin at Greifenstein, and they can send for me if he is worse. Besides--' She hesitated and stopped.

'What?' asked Hilda anxiously.

'He showed good sense, since he was able to go. It is not the custom in the world for young men to make long visits in such cases.'

'The world, the world!' exclaimed Hilda wearily. 'I have heard so much of the world this morning. Mother--He will not send for you. We shall not know how he is--'

'I will take care that we may know,' answered the baroness quietly. 'He is young and very strong. Perhaps it is only fatigue after all, and we shall hear that he is well to-morrow.'

Hilda's instinct told her to slip from her mother's side, to pass the gate and run down by the short and steep descent to the foot of the hill. The road made a wide sweep before passing this point and she would have been certain to reach it long before the carriage. But she knew that such wildness could produce no good result. She would stand there waiting for the carriage, it would come, Greif would tell Karl to stop, and then--what could happen? There would be a sort of momentary renewal of the scene which had ended a quarter of an hour ago, with the unpleasant addition of the driver as a witness. She could not get in and drive with him, and so the situation would have to end abruptly, perhaps in another attack of that pain which had so suddenly prostrated Greif. It was very hard that he should have escaped in this way, and nothing but his suffering could excuse his conduct; but to have him return now would be almost worse. After all, Hilda was woman enough to know that she had got the best of the argument at the last, and that Greif's abrupt departure looked very much like a precipitate flight. She knew also that he loved her, and that it would be impossible for him to leave the country without seeing her again. No woman would believe the man she loves capable of that. It was therefore madness to think of intercepting him upon the road, in order to exchange another word. With hands loosely joined together and hanging down, Hilda stood gazing at the vacant gateway. The happiness she had anticipated an hour earlier, when she had descried the distant carriage that brought Greif to her, had been strangely interrupted, and yet she was not altogether unhappy now, though she was very sad and silent. For all the world she would not have unlived that hour, nor unsaid the words that had passed her lips. The time had been very short, and yet it had sufficed to show her what Greif's love for her really was, and what he was willing to suffer for her sake. She had, too, the satisfaction of feeling that this suffering had not been brought upon him by herself, and that she had used all her strength to relieve him of it. He had indeed refused to give up the burden to the very end, but Hilda did not believe that he would bear it many days longer after what she had said. Her youth and strength refused to accept such an evil destiny, and her keen feminine perception told her that more than half of his obstinacy had been morbid and unnatural, and would disappear with the change wrought in him by rest and quiet. Her anxiety now was for him, and did not concern herself any longer. She knew nothing of illness save as a sort of vague misfortune, a state of undefined pain during which people stayed in bed and were visited by physicians. Never during her lifetime had any one of the three women who composed the little household been ailing even for a day, and though Hilda had sometimes been told, when she was visiting at Greifenstein, that Clara was not well enough to appear, she had only fancied how the poor lady would look when she was not painted and her hair was all out of curl. That did not help her to realise what an illness meant. She could only recall the look on Greif's face when he had reeled to the chair and then thrown his head back, while his closed lids turned purple. For a long time that was the only picture evoked in her mind when sickness was spoken of.

Frau von Sigmundskron looked at her daughter, without understanding her thoughts. She guessed what the nature of the interview had probably been, but she had no means of knowing how it had ended. Nevertheless she was willing to wait until Hilda chose to speak, and she knew that she would not wait long. Presently she passed her arm through her daughter's and led her gently back towards the house. The latter made no resistance, but walked quietly beside her across the sunny court. When they reached the door of the hall Hilda turned and looked again towards the gate.

'I wonder how it will be when he comes in by that way again!' she said.

Then she went in with her mother and entered the sitting-room, and sat down in her old place, in the chair into which Greif had fallen. She was left alone for a few minutes, while Frau von Sigmundskron went to tell Berbel that Greif was gone after all, and that there was no need to upset all the household arrangements.

The fire was still burning brightly, though one of the logs had fallen into two pieces, making a great cave of coals and flames in the midst. The slow sun had not crept as far as the next threadbare seam upon the faded carpet. The room was the same as it had been a quarter of an hour earlier. Hilda thought of all that had happened while that log was being burned through, and while the bright sunlight had moved across that narrow space. She spread her white hands to the blaze, and looked at the red glare between her fingers.

She was not altogether as calm as she looked, but she was certainly far less moved than might have been expected. There was a solidity about her nerves that would have driven to despair the morbid worshippers of the decadent school of romance, a natural force which made it very hard to understand her. Womanly she undoubtedly was, but of that type in woman which is rarely seen in cities and not often in the country. There is a hopefulness inherent in perfect physical organisations that have never been strained by unnatural means, which makes them seem hard and unfeeling to weaker natures. They have a way of sitting still without betraying their thoughts, when they are not called upon to act, which produces the impression that they feel nothing, and care for nothing but themselves. It is only in great moments that they are seen at their best, and that their overpowering strength in action excites wonder. They show none of those constant changes that belong to very nervous people, and make them interesting as studies of sensibility. Their faces do not reflect the light and shade of every passing circumstance, their voices are not full of quickly contrasted intonations which tell more than words themselves, they do not blush and turn pale at every suggestion of happiness or unhappiness to themselves, everyday speeches do not raise in their minds quick trains of association, linked and running on like an ascending scale in music, to culminate in a little moment of emotion, in a little flutter of the heart, half pleasant, half painful. Their strong pulses beat quietly, in an unvarying rhythm, the full and even flow of blood maintains a soft colour in their fresh faces; when they are tired they sleep, when they are awake they are rarely tired; what they could do yesterday, they can do as well to-day, and they feel that they will be able to do the same to-morrow. They never feel those sharp thrusts close to the heart that tell us how quickly one thrust a little sharper than the others would end all. They do not lie awake in the hours of the night counting the blows of the cruel little hammer that beats its prison to pieces at last and is broken in the ruin of the breast that confined it. And the world counts it all to them for dulness and lack of delicate feeling, with little discernment and less justice, until the day when it sees them roused by such passions as alone can rouse them, or suffering such deadly pain as only the strongest can live to suffer.

The baroness came back in a few minutes and stood beside Hilda, laying her hand upon her daughter's forehead, and bending down.

'What did he say to you, child?' she asked.

'He said that he would not marry me because it would be a shame that I should be called Greifenstein after what has happened.'

'That was what he told me,' replied her mother, leaving her and taking up a piece of needlework that lay on the table. She could not be idle. 'That was what he told me,' she repeated thoughtfully. 'And I answered that he was mistaken.'

'He said you had done your best to persuade him,' said Hilda, and then relapsed into silence.

'Do you know what I did?' she asked presently.

'I suppose you told him that you did not care for such things as names.'

'Yes--I said that. But I took his hands, and I told him that I would not let him go. I think I was very angry at something, but not at him.'

Frau von Sigmundskron laid her work upon her knees and looked at the young girl attentively for some seconds.

'Was I wrong?' Hilda asked, turning round as she felt her mother's gaze upon her.

'No. I do not see that it was wrong, but I think I should have acted differently. I think I would have tried to make him see--well, I never was like you.'

'I am sorry--I would do anything to be like you, mother dear.'

'You need not be sorry, child. You are like some one I loved better than myself--you remind me of your father. And what did Greif say to that?'

'He refused to the very last--then he had that pain in his head and I thought he was going to die. You know the rest. O mother, what will become of him, and when shall we see him again?'

'I do not know when we shall see him, dear, but I do not think he will be very ill. When a man has the strength to do what he has just done, and go away on foot, as he went, he is not in a dangerous state.'

Frau von Sigmundskron resumed her needlework and did not speak again for a long time. She had found time to think, and Greif's conduct was strange in her eyes. _

Read next: Chapter 20

Read previous: Chapter 18

Table of content of Greifenstein


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book