Greifenstein Part 49

'Together, dear,' he almost whispered.

Greif was stunned and shocked. It seemed as though the dead man had risen from his grave to deliver his message himself, to tell his own story and reveal his own secret. With trembling fingers Greif turned the envelope over and over, scarcely able to read the superscription at first, then glancing curiously at the impress on the seal, doubting, as Hilda had doubted, that it was perhaps not genuine. But his memory told him the truth. He knew the paper well, and as trivial details come before the mind in the most appalling moments of life, so he remembered instantly the whole appearance of the library at Greifenstein, the table with the huge old silver inkstand, the rack that had held that very writing paper, the heavy, clumsy seal that had sealed that envelope, and which always lay beside the blotter and next to the sealing wax. It all came back to him so vividly that, even if the letter had been a forgery, he would have believed it genuine, from the mere force of the a.s.sociations it evoked. He held it in his hands and hesitated.

Within that narrow bit of folded paper was contained the secret of his father's death, of his mother's sudden end, of Rieseneck's suicide. He had not a doubt of it, though he had not realised it at first. A sort of mist veiled his eyes and darkened the glorious day. It seemed so strange that such a poor sc.r.a.p of perishable rag should hold the key to so great a mystery, the solution to such a fearful question. Within that cover was a sheet of paper and on it he should see characters traced in a familiar hand. He closed his eyes and fancied that he already saw the writing, for he had often imagined how it would look, during his long search. Again and again in his dreams, he had laid his hand upon that envelope, and had broken the seal and had read those short words of tender farewell which he felt must have been in his father's heart at the supreme moment. And now he held the reality and yet he shut out the light of day in order to call up the fancy that had so often consoled his imagination. But the reality was not one with the dreamland shadow.

In the one there had been only words of love and sad regret, in this real letter was written the secret whose effects had so nearly ruined his life, a secret so terrible, that had Hilda guessed it she would have thrust the cruel message from the dead into the flames, rather than allow it to live and stab Greif to the heart.

Hilda did not understand his hesitation, though she knew as well as he himself that the yet unread words contained the solution of the great problem. But she sat patiently by his side, her white hand resting on his shoulder, her anxious face turned towards his, her lips already parted, as though but awaiting her breath to speak words of consolation for the suffering that had not yet begun.

Greif roused himself, as though ashamed of the emotion he had shown, though indeed he had seemed outwardly calm enough. He pressed his lips together and ran his finger through the upper side of the envelope, so as not to break the seal. His hands did not tremble any longer, and with the action all his dreams vanished in the broad light of the summer morning. Carefully he withdrew the sheet and spread it out.

'Shall I go, sweetheart? Would you rather be alone?' Hilda asked once more.

'No, darling. Read it with me--let us read it together,' he answered quietly, as though he were speaking in some sacred presence.

Hilda bent her golden head forward until it was close to his, and their cheeks touched as they read together the contents.

'My dear Greif, my beloved son--first of all, I remind you that you are a man and a brave one, and I solemnly enjoin upon you to act like one, and to put your trust in G.o.d. A great misfortune has befallen you, and at the moment of death I look to you to bear its burden in a manner worthy of a German gentleman. Heaven will certainly atone to you for the injustice of a cruel destiny. Your mother was the lawful wife of my brother Rieseneck. She has deceived me for five and twenty years, until his sudden coming revealed to me all her crimes within an hour. You are therefore illegitimate and nameless, and not one penny of my fortune is yours. I am utterly dishonoured by this enormous wickedness. My brother and I have done justice upon the woman Clara Kurtz, Freiherrin von Rieseneck, after receiving her full confession, and nothing remains for us but to die decently. As for you, I need not point out your course.

You will declare the truth to my cousin Therese von Sigmundskron, who is the sole heir to all my fortune and estates, being next of kin in the line of the Greifensteins. You will renounce your engagement to marry Hilda von Sigmundskron. You will enter the ranks and serve your king as a private soldier, which is the only course open to a penniless gentleman. I know you too well to think you will hesitate a moment. My brother leaves a son by his wife, who goes by the name of Rex, and to whom he is now writing. Perhaps it is the student of whom you have spoken often to me lately. He is your brother as Rieseneck is mine, and he is rich by his father's death. But you will accept nothing from him, nor from any one else except your sovereign, who, if he learns your story, may help you if he be graciously pleased to do so.

'My son, I am about to die. I have taken the law into my own hands and I must pay the penalty by the only hand to which I can submit. If I have been at fault towards you, if I have been deceived by this woman through any carelessness of mine, I, your father, implore your forgiveness at this final moment. And so I leave you. May the G.o.d of our fathers protect and bless you, and bring you to a n.o.bler end than mine. Though you are nameless and penniless, you can yet be a Christian man; you can be true, you can be brave, and you can give your life, which is all you have to give, to your king and your country. Farewell. Your father,

'HUGO VON GREIFENSTEIN.'

Strange as it may seem, both Hilda and Greif read this long letter to the end before they paused, almost before they understood what it meant.

Their two faces were livid, as they sat in the shadow of the tower, and gazed at each other with wild and staring eyes. The cold sweat of horror stood upon Greif's forehead, like the drops of moisture on a marble statue when the south wind blows.

But there was a vast difference between Greif's condition now and his state when he had broken down under the burden of his emotions eighteen months earlier. The calm and peaceful life had strengthened his character and fortified his nerves, and though Hilda expected every moment that he would sink down as he had done on that memorable day, almost unconscious with pain, he nevertheless sat upright in his seat, bracing himself, as it were, against the huge wave of his misfortunes, which had risen from the depths of the tomb to overtake him and annihilate his happiness in a single moment. His comprehension seemed to grow clearer, and he grasped the whole frightful hopelessness of his enormous calamity.

Hilda understood it too, in a measure, but she thought only of his suffering, and not of any possible consequences to herself. With womanly tenderness, she took her handkerchief, and pressed the cool linen to his wet brow, while she could see his broad chest heaving and hear the dull, short sound of his breath between his grinding teeth. Her arms went round him, and tried to draw him to her, but he sat upright like a figure of stone, unbending as a block of granite.

'Greif!' she cried at last. 'Speak to me, dear one--'

'How can I speak to you, whom I have dishonoured?' he asked, slowly turning his head towards her and yet trying to draw back from her embrace.

'Dishonoured me! Ah, Greif--'

'Yes--Hilda, I am no more your husband, than my wretched father was husband to the creature who bore me--who ruined him and me--'

'Greif--sweetheart, beloved, are you mad?'

'Mad? No! The merciful unhinging of that rack of torture which should be my mind, G.o.d has denied me. Mad? It were better, for your sake. Mad? I know not what I say. You are not my wife, nor Sigmund, Sigmund, nor I Sigmundskron, nor Greifenstein, nor Hilda's husband, nor anything that I wot of--save a nameless vagabond who has dishonoured Hilda--'

'Greif--for the love of Heaven--'

'Ay, I must speak, and quickly. It is better that you should know all the truth from these lips, foul from their birth--that have kissed yours, though they be not worthy to eat the dust in your path--these lips that kissed that vile thing they called my mother, and that spoke words of sorrow, and uttered cries of grief, at a death too decent for such a being--no, let me speak, take your pure hands from me--I am not your husband! By a name that was never mine, I took your name--thank G.o.d you have it still! Your marriage is no marriage, your child is nameless as I am--do you know how the law would call me? One Greif, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a certain Herr von Greifenstein and of a woman known as Clara Kurtz--that is the designation of all my honours, that is the description of your child's father, of the man you have called husband for twelve months and one day! The curse of G.o.d in Heaven on that wretch--she was not woman--may the furies of h.e.l.l not tire of tormenting her accursed soul throughout all ages--yes--I mean my mother, I mean every word I say--I would say more if I knew how! She has done all this--she brought my father to his death, my brave old father, whom I loved, and she has brought me to shame worse than death; and worse than shame or death to me, she has brought dishonour upon the only creature left me to love--oh, death was made too easy for her by those merciful men, they were a thousand times too pitiful, too kind!'

He paused, trembling in every limb with the wrathful pa.s.sion for which words alone were no satisfaction. Hilda was startled at the violence of his language, and alarmed by the furious look in his eyes, but actual fear was too foreign to her nature to influence her. She understood, now, however, what had escaped her before, namely that he believed their marriage to have been no marriage at all in law. Then her love spoke out, softly at first and with a gentle accent.

'Greif, my beloved--let them rest in their graves! They cannot harm us.'

'Not harm us?' he cried. 'Do you know that every word I have told you is true--that the curse of that dead woman will pursue us to the end? Do you understand that we are not married man and wife?'

'That is not true,' answered Hilda. 'G.o.d made us man and wife--'

'Ay--but the law--'

'What is the law to us? Do we not love? Is not that law?'

'It may be in heaven--'

'And it is on earth. It is love that has made us what we are, by Heaven's help. It is neither man nor law, for my love is beyond all laws or men, save you! And this thing, what is it? A voice from the dead cries in our ears that we are not what we are, what I know we are, because a deed of shame was done long years ago of which we knew nothing, nor guessed anything until this moment. Is that justice; is that the law you fear and respect, the law you will allow to come between you and me? There is a better law than that, my beloved, the law that binds me to you with bands of steel, for good or ill, for shame or fame, for honour or dishonour--'

'Ah--the dishonour of it, Hilda, the dishonour!'

'The dishonour of what? Of a bit of paper, of a dead woman's sin and miserable death? Is that all? Or is it for name, or no name? And if it be that, what then? Do you think that if you were but a trooper in the ranks, calling yourself by any meaningless syllables that it crossed your mind to choose, if you were the poorest soldier that ever drew sword, do you think that I would not follow you, and work for you and slave for you, and live as I could, or starve, rather than leave you for one day, a thousand times rather than be Hilda von Sigmundskron and heir to all the wealth of the Greifensteins, as that thing says I am? Could all the laws you talk of prevent me from doing that? And you talk of my dishonour through you! I would beg for you, I would toil for you, I would wear out my body and my soul to get you bread--oh, I would almost sell the hope of heaven for your dear sake! And you say that because you have found this paper I am not your wife! A bit of paper, Greif, between you and me--a bit of paper on the one hand and my love on the other, with all it means, with all that harm or pain to you could make it mean, does make it mean, now and for ever! Oh, my beloved, my beloved, have you loved me so long without knowing what love means?'

She would have twined her arm about his neck, but he hid his face in his hands and would not move. To himself, he seemed the basest of mankind, absolutely innocent as he was of every thought or intention of evil. He cursed his weakness in having yielded long ago, in having broken down into unconsciousness, to wake again, weak and enfeebled by his illness, no longer able to break through the spell that drew him towards her.

He called himself, in his heart, a traitor, a coward, a weakling, a miserable wretch without strength, or faith, or honour. There were no bounds to his self-abas.e.m.e.nt, no depths to which he did not sink in his self-judgment. He recalled that morning eighteen months ago when he had come over to Sigmundskron to fight the battle of honour, he remembered the agony of that bitter struggle, the triumph of his heart when he had made the last desperate effort and had gone forth victorious, though the fever was already on him, and he could scarcely see the road under his feet. He reproached himself bitterly with having yielded after winning such a fight, with having stooped to do the bidding of love, after having trampled down every loving instinct and every tender thought within him, in the proud consciousness of doing right for right's sake only. If he had but been brave still when his body was so weak, all that now was could not have been. He would have cared for neither name nor fame, still less for fortune, without Hilda. But he had yielded, he had grafted the infamy of his birth upon the spotless line of her he loved, and fate had done the rest. The relentless destiny which had overtaken his father, his mother and his brother, had tracked him down and struck him within the boundaries of the false paradise his weakness had built up. He said to himself that he, too, must die, for he was the last and the lowest of living men.

'Will you not be persuaded, Greif?' asked Hilda, after a long pause.

'Do you not see that I am right, and that you are wrong--wrong only in this?'

'I see nothing,' he answered, 'unless it be that I have brought the most irretrievable dishonour upon all I love, as dishonour was brought upon me by him who loved me best.'

'And if I refuse to be dishonoured, what then?'

'What then? I do not know what then,' he answered half absently, not understanding her thoughts.

'Will you dishonour me in spite of yourself, in spite of my love?'

He did not answer this time, but buried his face in his hands once more, as though trying to shut out the sight of her from his aching eyes. The tones of Hilda's voice rose and fell faintly, as if they reached him through some thick substance that dulled their distinctness. At first he scarcely knew what she was saying, and he hardly cared.

'And if my love will not move you, then, I will tell you more,' she said, with a strong and rising intonation. 'I tell you that you have not dishonoured me, because I will not be dishonoured. You and I have done right before G.o.d, and before man until this day, and if there be wrong now it shall be right and I will make it right. I, Hilda von Sigmundskron, am your wife. I, Hilda von Sigmundskron, will not have it told to the world that I am a disgraced woman, that I am married to a nameless being, the mother of a nameless child. Your wife I am, and you are Sigmundskron and Greifenstein, and so you shall live and die, for I will make it law! There goes the law! Prove that you are a b.a.s.t.a.r.d if you can, and that I am a dishonoured woman!' With a movement like a falcon swooping to the earth and soaring again to heaven, she had s.n.a.t.c.hed the fallen letter from the ground. Before she had finished speaking, her desperate fingers had torn the paper to tiniest sc.r.a.ps and the light shreds were floating fast before the summer breeze, like snow-flakes in the sun, to the deep abyss below the castle wall.

CHAPTER XXIX

Greif sprang to his feet and seized Hilda by the wrist, his eyes and his whole expression full of horror and dismay.

'What have you done?' he cried. 'What you could not do,' answered Hilda boldly.

The colour had come back to her face, and the light to her eyes, and she met his gaze calmly and courageously. For some seconds neither moved, but stood looking at each other, he holding her tightly, she making no effort at resistance. Greif's first impression was that his wife had committed an act of sacrilege as well as a serious offence against the law. She had explained her meaning clearly enough when she tore up the letter, and he had understood all the consequences of the act at once.

It would be useless to attempt a search for the fragments of paper, which were already scattered on the breeze and floating down to the deep gorge. So far as the law was concerned, Hilda had spoken the truth. Not a shred of evidence remained to prove that he was not all to-day that he had been yesterday, in law as well as in fact. But there was gone with that evidence something precious to Greif, something which it had hurt him desperately to see torn to sc.r.a.ps and flung away. He had loved his father with all his heart, and the letter had contained his father's last solemn blessing, of which not a single word remained whole; not even if one of those bits of floating paper that whirled and floated down the precipice had preserved a syllable of the message, was it in the power of human skill or strength to save it from reaching the bottom of the abyss and being swept away to the distant river by the tumbling stream.

Nevertheless Hilda's quick and decisive action had produced the effect of a salutary shock upon her husband's mind and nerves. She, as usual, felt that absolute certainty of having done right which was a part of her strong character. 'You have destroyed it all,' said Greif at last in a reproachful tone. 'You have left no two words together--'