This was the woman he had come to renounce, this was she whose love he could put away at a moment"s notice for the sake of an idea--his heart beat violently and then stood still, so that he turned very pale. Her hand was already in his, and he scarcely dared to look at her.
"Greif--are you ill?" she asked anxiously.
He had not seen her smile. He had escaped that, he thought. But as he looked up he saw what was harder to bear than any look of joy at his coming. She, who never used to change colour, was pale to the lips, and in her eyes was a look of terror for him which betrayed all her love, and devotion and power of suffering for him, in the flash of an instant.
She had indeed been terrified, for he had turned ashy white as he closed his eyes, and his figure had swayed a little unsteadily as though he had been about to fall.
"Are you ill, Greif?" she repeated, unconsciously drawing him nearer to her.
"It is nothing. My head turned for a moment," he said.
Hilda was not satisfied, but she saw that whatever had been the matter, he had recovered himself for the present, at least, and she supposed that he was exhausted with the fatigue and grief which had filled the last days. She became silent and preoccupied, as they all entered the hall together and ascended the steps to the sunny sitting-room over the court. Then Frau von Sigmundskron left her alone with Greif, on pretence of taking off her mantle and smoothing her hair, but as she went away she gave him a look which signified that she would not disturb them for some time.
There was the great stone chimney-piece, just as Greif had seen it in his vision of the meeting, and Hilda sat down beside it, as he had fancied that she would. But the room was not cold, as he had antic.i.p.ated, for the fire was clear and big, and the sun streamed brightly in through the southern window. He had imagined the place chill and dreary, for he knew that he should need the impression of dreariness to help him. Instead, it was warm and sunny, and though Hilda was still a little pale, her pallor did not produce the effect he had expected. He tried to begin, for in spite of all, his resolution was still unbroken, but the words stuck in his throat.
"Greif," said Hilda, looking up suddenly into his face. "I do not know how to tell you--I am so sorry, so sorry for you, dear. I have not the words, but it is all in my heart. You understand, do you not?"
She had risen, seeing that he was still standing, and she came to him, and clasped both her hands upon his shoulder and looked up into his eyes. It would have been easier if she had begun in any other way than that. With her touch upon him, her eyes on his, her breath and soft voice so near, he could not play coldness. But he was strong still.
His arms went round her swiftly and pressed her to him, and he kissed her as he had never kissed her before, three times in quick succession.
Then he gently led her back to her chair and returned to his own place, standing as he had meant to do, to give himself more courage. She submitted wonderingly, without understanding why he made her sit down, and for a few seconds neither spoke. At last he turned away from her and began to talk, looking at the window to avoid her eyes.
"Hilda, a very terrible thing has happened, and I must explain it to you, in order that you may comprehend what I must do. Will you promise me to listen patiently and to forgive me beforehand for all I am going to say?"
"Yes," answered the young girl rather faintly. The strong presentiment of evil had come upon her again, as it had come that day when he was leaving Greifenstein. She bent her head and covered her eyes with her hand, as though not to see the blow that was to descend, though she must feel its weight. It was all instinctive, for not the faintest thought of what he was going to say could ever have suggested itself to her mind.
"Yes," said Greif, "it is very terrible. But I have come here to say it and I must say it all. You know what has happened. My poor mother is dead, and those who murdered her, have killed themselves--my father and his half-brother. You did not know that I had an uncle?"
Hilda shook her head, looking up for a moment.
"He was a bad man, too," continued Greif. "He had been an officer and had betrayed his trust in the times of revolution, was sentenced and imprisoned; he escaped from the fortress, made his way to South America, and lived there for forty years in exile, until the amnesty was proclaimed. He was not Greifenstein, he was Rieseneck, half-brother to my father by the mother"s side and younger than he. That was bad enough, however. It was the reason why my father lived here in the forest so quietly. He was afraid that people would remember he was Rieseneck"s brother. You see, the affair made a great noise at the time. Your mother knows all about it. Well, it was hard enough, as I say, to have such a disgrace in the family. We did not know that Rieseneck had a son--I found that my best friend--his name is Rex--is he."
"How strange!" exclaimed Hilda. "Why is his name Rex?"
"It is not, exactly. He and his father called themselves so in order not to be identified. It was almost necessary for them--as it may be for me now."
"For you?" asked Hilda in the utmost astonishment. "You would change your name--why?"
Greif stared at her. She seemed not to understand at all, and yet he had gone into Rieseneck"s story merely to make his own seem more terrible by comparison.
"You must know that, in the world, such calamities as have befallen me leave a mark, a stain even upon the innocent," said Greif. "The world looks askance at the sons of murderers."
"And are you afraid of the world, Greif?" asked Hilda. "That is not like you. For the Riesenecks, well, I understand--he was disgraced, condemned, imprisoned. But you! It is like a dreadful story of the dark ages, but there is no shame in it, nothing to be ashamed of. It is terrible, awful, appalling, but you can hold your head as high as any one. Do you suppose it is the first tragedy that ever occurred in your family or in mine? Did not old Sigmund strangle his own brother with his hands, here in this house, seven hundred years ago, and am I ashamed to call him my forefather?"
"That is very different from what has happened to me," answered Greif.
"You cannot understand, but the world judges according to its light. If I, the son of a man who murdered his wife and killed himself, were to present myself to any man of my own rank and ask him for his daughter in marriage I should receive a refusal, and perhaps an indignant one. I am not considered a fit person to marry an innocent girl of my cla.s.s, I am stamped with a stained name, branded with the sign of others" crimes, ruined before my life is begun, cut off from happiness, from ambition, from you--O Hilda! that is what I came to tell you--I have spoken very badly--it is best to say it clearly. My beloved, this has taken you from me, and me from you, and has cast me adrift from all that remained, from the greatest and best of all. If I could dare to marry you now, to give you my miserable name, to take you to the home that is darkened by so many deaths--I should be the last and lowest of men! It is of no use, for I feel it--the only honourable thing left for me to do, in so much dishonour, is to leave you for ever and at once. If I were willing still to make you my wife you ought to despise me, and trample the memory of my love under foot as a vile thing. O Hilda, Hilda! it is death to me, but it is best for you."
The blow had fallen, and Hilda sat quite still in her place, covering her eyes with one hand, as she had done at first. All through his long preamble, she had felt that there was something dreadful to come, and now it had come indeed, in the shape she least expected, in the shape which of all others she would most have feared. She did not move, but the soft, fresh colour faded from her face, till it was whiter than the white hand she held before it. Greif looked at her, and his head swam.
He thought neither of her suffering nor of his own, as the words came fast and incoherent from his pale lips. He went on, insisting, repeating, lamenting with the vehemence of a pa.s.sionate man who has overcome all that is gentlest in himself and takes a savage delight in rending his own wounds.
"It is done, and you know, now," he cried bitterly. "I have fought against myself, against every one, to do this thing--do you think it is easy to give up such a love as you have been to me? And yet, I would not take you, no, not if you pursued me across the world--what right have I to you? The right of loving better than anything G.o.d has made was ever loved before? It is gone, that right, gone with my name, gone with all I once was, buried with my father and my mother in the old place beyond Greifenstein. Right? I have no rights any longer--neither to love, nor to hate, nor to be happy in the thought of love, nor of Hilda. And yet, in all the years to come, you will be with me. I cannot give up the right to remember you, and to think of your dear eyes. Ah, if it were but my own fault, how easy it would be to bear! I wish I had wronged you--you would thrust me from you--it would help me--at least, if I had done you harm, I could die for it, and that would be so easy and simple, and would end all so well. I wish I had done some hideous, nameless deed with my own hands, that I might be driven out by men, and forced to leave you by others stronger than I! Anything, anything, anything but this!"
He bent his head against the cold stones of the high chimney-piece, and beat his brow against the hewn carvings of it, closing his eyelids over his dry and smarting eyes, wishing that every moment might be the last of his wretched existence, and at the same time miserably conscious that his strength would outlast all his sufferings. He had meant to be so calm and gentle, he had planned how he would gradually explain all to Hilda and break the shock for her, he had thought that when it was over, he could firmly say one solemn good-bye, and go back to his home alone.
He had not known what love could do, nor how he should be tortured and wounded and bruised in the conflict. But yet he was strong and victorious. His dignity and self-respect had been sorely shaken in the fight, and he had not found the calm and tactful speeches he had planned before; but in spite of every one, and chiefly in spite of his own heart, he had bravely done what he had come to do. The victory was more agonising than any defeat could have been, but it was victory, notwithstanding.
Manlike, in his utmost distress, he had forgotten Hilda"s self in the overwhelming thoughts of her that rushed through his confused brain. Her hands had fallen upon her knee and she sat like a statue in the deep old chair, whiter than any marble, her colourless lips parted, her wonderful eyes fixed upon him in a gla.s.sy stare. Even her hair seemed to have lost its golden sheen, as though it were suddenly dead or turning into stone.
And yet she was not unconscious. A very strong and perfect organisation rarely breaks down under the first shock it receives, no matter how violent. Hilda was not only conscious, she was even able to speak.
"Greif!" She spoke his name clearly, in a low voice.
He started, for he had almost forgotten her presence. He lifted his haggard face and turned towards her, supporting himself with one hand on the chimney-piece.
"Do you mean all you have said?" she asked very slowly, as though each word cost her an effort.
"I mean it all, Hilda," he answered, his tones still trembling with the violence of the storm that had pa.s.sed through him.
"You mean that because your father did this deed, you are ashamed to marry me?"
"More than ashamed--"
"And you will go away and leave me for ever, for the sake of this idea alone?"
"Ah, Hilda--you have not understood--"
"I have understood all, because I love you, and now I know that you love me with all your heart--"
"Oh, thank you, my beloved! G.o.d bless you for seeing the truth--"
"Do not thank me--"
She caught her breath, then with a swift movement she was on her feet, standing beside him. The gla.s.sy stare was gone from her eyes, and they shone with a blue light like fire. Her strong white hands suddenly laid hold of his wrists and held him firmly.
"Do not thank me, Greif--or thank me, if you will--as you please. I will not let you go."
There was a power in her tone which struck him with amazement, a concentrated, unrelenting, almost furious energy that startled him.
He had expected tears, protestations, laments; he had thought that she might faint away, that the sight of her sufferings would treble his own.
But he had not expected the short sharp outburst of a pa.s.sion as strong as his, or stronger, he had not foreseen or guessed that this simple girl, brought up so far from the world, would take him by the hands and hold him, and tell him that she would not let him go, with an accent of determination that might have staggered the strongest man.
"You will not?" he exclaimed, aghast at the prospect of a battle worse than the first.
"No," she answered, still grasping his wrists and gazing into his face with her fiery eyes. "I will not, and I know that I am strong. I feel it."
During nearly a minute neither spoke, but Hilda"s hold did not relax for a second, and her lids did not once veil the intensity of her look. Even if Greif had possessed a wider experience of women than he had, it would not have helped him much. He was utterly at a loss. His manly nature would have provided him with weapons to rid himself of a woman of coa.r.s.er instincts, even if he had loved her to distraction, provided he had felt that he must part from her. He would have felt that he could dominate a baser affection and force it down to his will, by sheer strength of purpose, no matter at what cost; but he was met here by something he had never understood, and he did not know what to do.
The childlike innocence of Hilda"s maiden love gave an extraordinary character to her pa.s.sion. The absence of anything like the common expressions of love made the transcendent power of what moved her stand out in magnificent grandeur. Never in his life had he dreamt that her quiet and undemonstrative affection was capable of anything but a calm and beautiful development. He had not guessed the existence of such resistless force as blazed from her eyes, he had believed her only capable of receiving, he had not imagined that she was strong enough to take boldly what was refused her. The radiance of a spotless soul, burning in the white-heat of a pa.s.sion as pure as itself, dazzled and awed him. As he looked, he felt as though he were held in the grasp of a splendid, wrathful angel, who disputed the possession of him, not with himself, but with the opposing powers of evil.
It is amazing that in such a case he should still have found strength and courage to resist this last great trial of his sincerity. Most men would have yielded and would have accepted their fate. But though Greif was young, and not very wise, he had stern and obstinate blood in his veins, and he was acting under the strongest conviction that had ever possessed him. Knowing her only as he had known her before, the fair and innocent idol of his boyish heart, he had felt that he could never allow her to take his darkened name. In the beginning his intention had been very honourable, in his struggle with himself it had grown high and chivalrous, but in the face of such opposition as he met from her mother and now from herself, it had a.s.sumed proportions that bordered upon the grotesque. And yet as he looked now upon her n.o.ble face, illuminated and radiant with a beauty almost too pure for him to understand, he felt even more than before that such a creature could never be allowed to ally herself with one whose name was a reproach among men. He did not know how to oppose her, but he knew that she must be opposed, at any cost, for her own sake.
His eyes fell before her gaze, and his hands trembled nervously in her grasp, so that she began to think that he was yielding, whereas he was in reality making a supreme effort to concentrate his courage and to keep the mastery of himself. While he seemed to be sinking to her will, he was gathering his strength, saying in his heart that if he lost this battle he should never hold up his head again.
The sun streamed broadly through the diamond panes of the cas.e.m.e.nt upon the patched and faded carpet, creeping slowly along his accustomed path in which the hours were marked, as on a dial, by threadbare seams and the leaves and flowers of a half-obliterated design. In the huge chimney the logs burned steadily with a low, roaring sound, and the shabby furniture of the place seemed to doze lazily in the warmth, as old men do whose strength is far spent. And in the midst of the commonplace scene a drama was being enacted, less horrible in outward appearance than the tragedy of Greifenstein, but scarcely less fearful to the two young hearts that beat so fiercely and full of life.