Greif

“ 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. ”

“ Greif was deeply attached to the University town. He had spent many happy hours within its walls, and had passed through many exciting moments of his young life amidst its high, narrow streets and ancient buildings. Such a place naturally exercised a greater influence over him than over most men of his age. Born and bred in the heart of the Black Forest, brought up in the house that had sheltered his race for centuries, he would have felt uneasy and out of his element if he had been all at once transported to a modern capital. But in Schwarzburg he felt that he was at home. ”

“ Perhaps not.’
‘I should be happy with you in a woodman’s hut,’ said Greif earnestly.
‘Perhaps,’ replied Hilda a little doubtfully.
‘There is no “perhaps.” I am quite sure of it.’
‘How can you be sure?’ asked the young girl turning suddenly and laying her hands upon his arm. ‘Did not your father say the same—no, forgive me! I will not speak of that. Oh Greif! What is love—really—the meaning of it, the true spirit of it? Why does it sometimes last and sometimes—not? Are all men so different one from another, and women too? ”

“ At three and twenty the student looked as much like his father as a young and fair man can look like an elderly dark one. Their features were the same, both had the same sinewy firmness of build and the same eyes; but Greif’s close-cut golden hair and delicate moustache gave him a brilliancy his father had never possessed. He seemed to bring the light with him into the deep shade of the glen where they met. One looking at him would have felt instinctively that he was made to wear the gleaming uniform of a Prussian Lifeguard, rather than the sober garments of a civilian. ”

“ But you can, Greif dear, I know you can. And it is not a small matter either, though it may seem so now. It is not a small matter to part with such a man as that, nor is it an insignificant evil, that I should have his dislike at the very beginning, before we are married. You must do your best, you must do all you can, and you will succeed—and by and by we will work together. Greif—’ she stopped suddenly and looked at him.
‘What is it, dear?’ he asked.
‘Greif, do you think I have any other reason for wanting Rex to like me? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even if that never came, would it not be enough, as it is?’
‘Love must grow, Greif. I feel that. A love that does not grow is already beginning to die.’
‘Who told you so many things of love, Hilda?’
‘Who told me?’ she repeated, as the quick fire flashed in her eyes. ‘Do I need to be told, to know? Ah, Greif, if you felt what I feel—here—’ she pressed her hand to her side, ‘you would understand that I need no telling, nor ever shall. You are there, dear, there in the midst of my heart, more really even than you are before my eyes.’
‘You are more eloquent than I, sweetheart,’ said Greif. ”

“ It was to rid my brother and the world of a wretch who had no claim to live.’
‘More right than I, or many a better man than I am,’ said Greif, laying his hand upon his brother’s shoulder.
‘Be wise, Greif,’ answered Rex. ‘Think well of what is to come. Think well whether you can trust me and trust yourself. For me—I care little. A touch of the finger, a little noise, and you would be rid of me for ever. There is a safety in death, which life cannot give.’
‘Do not talk any more of death, dear Horst,’ said Hilda. ”

“ The baroness laid her hand upon his folded arms.
‘It would not have been right, Greif,’ she said in a low voice that trembled a little. ‘It might have seemed so, for I did not know you as I know you now. You have done all that a man can do, more, perhaps, than almost any man would have done. I did not wrong you in what I felt, nor in what I meant to say, but I could never say it now. Take Hilda, and call yourself as you will, for you are worthy of her and neither you nor she will ever regret it.’
Greif looked at her for a moment, and then knelt beside her and kissed her hands. ”

“ It was the supreme moment, for Greif’s consciousness had returned. As often happens at the moment of death a violent physical struggle began. The light returned to his eyes, and the strength to his limbs. He raised himself upon his hands, and sat up, while the doctor supported him with one arm, and with a quick movement put brandy to his lips. It was the work of an instant, and it all happened while Rex was crossing the room. ”

“ The early light made the great trees look unspeakably gloomy and mournful. There was not a tinge of colour to relieve the dead black shadows, or the icy grey of the driven snow. The tall firs stood solemn and motionless like overgrown cypresses, planted in an endless graveyard, filled with myriads of snow-covered graves, and in the midst Greif and Rex were whirled along over the winding road, pale as dead men themselves as they sat side by side in their dark garments, with set lips and eyes half closed against the freezing wind. ”

“ Rex saw at a glance that he had made a deep impression upon his cousin, and wisely left the remedy he had administered to take its effect gradually. He knew human nature too well to fear that Greif could ever shut his eyes to the prospect unveiled to him. Time must pass, and in passing must heal the gaping wound that was yet fresh. Every month would take the ghastly tragedy further away and bring more clearly to Greif’s mind the hope of happiness. As for the rest, it was buried in Rex’s heart and no power would ever draw from him the secret of his brother’s birth. ”

“ It was to be Greif’s last appearance in public as a fellow. To-morrow there would be a meeting of the Korps and he would resign his functions, and some one else would be elected in his stead. Rex watched him curiously and hummed the first stanza of the ‘Gaudeamus’—
‘Give our hearts to gladness, then, While the young life flashes! When our joyous youth is gone, When old age’s aches are done, Earth shall have our ashes!’
‘I wish you would not sing that song!’ exclaimed Greif, a little impatiently. ”

“ Hilda loved Greif, and Greif loved Hilda, but that was no argument. Better that Hilda should drag out a solitary and childless existence than be happy under such a name; far better that Greif should submit to half a century of lonely and loveless years, than get children whose names should perpetuate the remembrance of a monstrous crime. Hilda would suffer, but suffering was the lot of mankind. The baroness wondered sadly whether her daughter’s disappointment could possibly equal what she herself had borne on that day when her gallant soldier-husband had been shot down in battle. ”

“ Hilda had no words left with which to persuade him of her unfaltering love, but perhaps at that moment the simple little phrase, with the accent she gave it, told Greif more than many protestations. It seemed to him that the course of his distress was checked suddenly, and that he felt the strain of the cable upon the firm anchor at last. It was the hour of destiny, when one word decides the future of many lives, for good or evil. ”

“ You know we always keep fencing things at home.’
‘And how did the soldier like it?’ asked Greif with a laugh.
‘Better than you would,’ replied the other laughing, too. ‘He is a clever churl and has discovered the answer to the attack. Give me some beer, little fox!’
The novice obeyed, and a Homeric draught interrupted the interview. Greif turned to Rex, upon whose face the iron eyepieces were being adjusted. All the Swabians present were collected around him, excepting the second, who sat in solitary glory by his beer, opposite the Rhine Korps, awaiting events with stolid indifference. ”

“ From that day the life at Greifenstein became even more drearily monotonous than it had been before, for all the party excepting Greif and Hilda. To any one not accustomed to the atmosphere the existence would have been unbearable, but humanity can grow used to anything by degrees. A stranger finding himself unexpectedly at the castle would have felt that the sweet air of the forest was poisoned at that one point by some subtle and undefinable element, that appealed to none of the senses in particular, but oppressed them all alike. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one could predict what day the Greifensteins would choose for one of their occasional visits, and in the time of the vacations no one could foresee when Greif might make his appearance, striding over the wooded hills with his gun and his dog to spend a quiet afternoon with Hilda in their favourite sunny corner at the foot of the dismantled tower. When poverty is to be concealed, his shadow must not be caught lurking at the door by chance visitors. ”

“ She had always loved Greif, ever since she could remember anything. Why should he not love her? And if they loved each other, they would of course be married in due time. It was but the fulfilment of her life, after all. There was surely nothing in the idea to cause her any emotion. Did not Heaven dispose everything in the best possible way, and was not this the best possible thing that could happen? Did the hawk mate with the wren, or the wild boar with the doe? But the baroness did not understand. She asked Hilda if she should be very unhappy if Greif died, or if he married some one else. ”

“ It is wrong in you to doubt it. Poor Hilda! She has not too many pleasures of any sort, and meeting you is one of the greatest.’
The blush in Greif’s cheek deepened. Again he set his feet firmly before him and braced himself in his seat as though to resist a shock. He hated himself for betraying his feeling in his face, and wished it were night. The baroness continued to speak in gentle tones, determined to obtain an answer from him, and if possible to make him engage in argument, for she believed that if he argued he was lost. ”

“ Good-bye.’ Greif held out his hand in evident anxiety to get away, for he did not want to hear any more of his cousin’s plausible reasoning, and dreaded lest Rex should broach the subject of his errand. But the latter detained him in spite of himself.
‘Do nothing rash or hasty, Greif,’ he said earnestly. ‘A life’s happiness is easily thrown away, and hardly found again when you have parted with it—and more than half of life’s happiness is the love of woman. ”

“ Greif was silent. He could not bring himself to believe in what he regarded as a sham science, and he could not reconcile any belief in such absurdities with the indubitable fact that Rex was a most enlightened man, learned in his own department, cultivated in mind, a scorner of old-fashioned prejudices and ideas, distrustful of all cheap theories and of all scientific men who talked eloquently about the progress of learning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”