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—’
‘And I am glad. I would do it again, if need were.’
‘It cannot be undone,’ Greif answered gloomily. He dropped her wrist and began to walk slowly backwards and forwards in the shadow of the tower.
‘How could you do it! How could you do it!’ he repeated in a low voice, as though speaking to himself and without looking at her.
‘It was the only thing to be done,’ she answered firmly.
‘But the injustice of it — the illegality — what shall I call it?’ he stopped in his walk.
‘Call it what you please,’ replied Hilda scornfully. ‘It does not exist any more. It may not have been a legal act, but it was an act of justice, whatever you may say; of the truest justice, and I would do it again.’
‘Justice!’ exclaimed Greif bitterly. ‘If justice were done, I should be—’
‘Stop,’ said Hilda in a determined tone. ‘Justice is done and you are here, and you are what you were yesterday and shall be to-morrow, not for me only, but for the whole world. That is the only justice I can understand.’
‘Hilda, it is wrong,’ cried Greif. ‘I know it is. I have no right to throw off what has been brought upon me, what is proved so clearly — it is a wrong and a great wrong, and it must be repaired.’
‘A wrong to whom?’ Hilda asked, with flashing eyes. ‘Whose would your fortune be if you renounced it for the sake of that thing I have destroyed? It would be my mother’s — mine, would it not? The letter said so. And the name of Greifenstein, to whom would it go, if you proclaimed through the whole land that you had no right to it? To no one. It would end. No one would ever bear it, for no one has a right to dispose of it except, perhaps, my mother—’
‘Yes — your mother—’
‘My mother! Would you break her heart by telling her that she has given my father’s name to—’
Hilda stopped short in her speech.
‘To me!’ exclaimed Greif in the bitterest self-reproach. ‘Oh, the shame of it, Hilda, the shame of it all! You are right in that — to think that she has given the name she loves to one who has no right to any name — it would break her heart—’
‘Then let her never know it, nor guess it, nor dream that it is possible, never, never, so long as she lives!’
‘It is not for her only — it is for you, Hilda! That is the worst to bear — the shame, the shame!’
‘For me?’ The two words came slowly and distinctly from her lips, as though she were trying to make clear to him the enormity of his speech. Then she drew herself up proudly to her full height, and a wonderful smile illuminated her face.
‘Not for me, Greif,’ she said. ‘There is no shame for me. In your love, I am above all earthly shame.’
There was something in her manner and in the accent of her speech that affected Greif very suddenly. He was gradually growing more calm and better able to reason, as well as to realise the splendid depth of his wife’s love. There was a ring in her voice that told him more than her words could tell. He came to her, and took her hand, and kissed it, almost devotionally.
‘You are above all earthly women,’ he said simply.
‘I? No. Any woman would do as much, and it is so little. If you would only think, dear, it is so very little — and it is for myself, too. Could I do anything else? Could any woman do less, even the most selfish?’
‘I know none who would do as much,’ Greif answered.
‘Did I not tell you, that it was for my own sake that I destroyed the letter, that I would not be dishonoured, that I would not have the world say — what it might say?’
‘That is not all, Hilda.’
‘It is all — except my love, and that is all indeed, all there is for me.’
‘Ay, that is it, that is it! And if these hideous crimes are never known to any one but you and me, can you live beside me, day by day, year by year, and never feel one pang, one regret, one little thrust of shame? I know you love me, but that is too much to ask of any love. I know that you mean what you say, but it is too much for man or woman to say and mean. Think of it, Hilda, think of it all — there are such things here as angels could not forget!’
‘I love you very, very much — my memory has no place for any other things.’
She twined her arm about his neck as they stood together, and she laid her golden head upon his shoulder, while her bright eyes looked upwards with a sidelong glance into his face. But his cheek was pale and cold, and he gazed sternly out at the distant crags, as though he would not see her. The unbearable conviction of disgrace was upon him, hopeless, endless, embracing all his existence and already extending back in his imagination to all his earlier youth. Her hands burned him, her touch was like the shock of death, as the old mystics used to say the draught of life would be to the lips of the unprepared and the impure.
‘Let me go,’ he said gently. ‘I cannot bear it.’
But she would not. Instead of one arm, both went round him. He felt as if her strong embrace would lift him from his feet, out of himself, to bear him away from all trouble and woe to endless peace.
‘I will not let you go — neither now nor ever, neither in this world nor the next.’
He knew that tone of hers, deep, ringing and clear, and he knew that she was desperate. Then the conflict began in his own soul, the struggle between that deep conviction of law and right, which was the foundation of his character, and that honest and all-sacrificing love that filled his heart.
‘Give me time to think what I am doing,’ he said.
He sat down upon the seat in his old place and bent down, pressing his temples with his hands. He had spoken very simply out of his great distress, for he needed time to think of what he was doing, and of what he must yet do. All was vague and moving in the vision of his mind, like a distant landscape seen through the trembling, heated air at noontide on a summer’s day. Nothing was distinct, save his love for Hilda on the one side, and upon the other, the black shadow of his awful disgrace.
‘Think, my beloved, if you will,’ said Hilda softly. ‘You will but think what I have thought already.’
Perhaps he felt, even then, that she was right, but he could not so soon be comforted, nor put aside in a moment what had presented itself so strongly as an inexorable duty. At that juncture a cunning man of law could have persuaded him more easily than the woman he loved more than all the world besides. As had happened before, in the old days, that love appeared to him in the light of a temptation, beautiful as the broad sun, eloquent as sweetest music. But there was this difference, now, that the opposite course was not as plain as it had been then. Instead of a straight path, he saw but a confused medley of conflicting ideas, of which the whole sum represented to his mind a mysterious notion of a necessary sacrifice, but in which it was impossible to distinguish the discriminating point, the centre of action, the goal of duty. In the first place, he recognised out of this chaos, his father’s injunction to act like a Christian man, to give up all that was not his, to lay aside the name he had borne and to go forth into the world with nothing but his own courage and perseverance as his weapons. That was clear enough. If the letter had come into his hands immediately, as it had been intended that it should, he would have fulfilled his father’s last commands bravely in every detail of their spirit. Even if he had received the message on the eve of his marriage, after he had begun to call himself Sigmundskron, even then he would have done the same; and though it would have been mortal agony, it would have been easy to do, so far as the mere execution of it was concerned. He would have gone to Frau von Sigmundskron, and would have told her the truth, showing her the letter, and taking the consequences. No woman alive, in such
a case, would have hesitated a moment, he thought. Hilda’s mother would certainly not have had the least doubt how to act, for she would have died rather than give her daughter to a man of illegitimate birth. She would have offered him his fortune, no doubt, for she was a noble and generous woman, but he would have refused to take anything. That at least would not have cost him a pang. As for the rest, his course would have been clear enough.
But now, it was a very different matter. His conscience still told him to go to Frau von Sigmundskron and tell all, but the consideration of the consequences appalled him. He knew better even than Hilda herself, what a sacrifice the good lady had made in regard to the name, and what importance she attached to it. She was perfectly happy in the existing condition of things; to tell her would be to destroy her happiness for ever, to the last day of her life. Greif felt that if he were in her place he should not want to know the truth, since all reparation was now utterly impossible. And yet, to conceal it looked like a crime, or at least like an action of bad faith. Could he meet the white-haired lady who loved him so well and who had built such hopes upon him, could he meet her daily, and call her mother, as she loved to be called, and yet feel that he was deceiving her, that he had defiled the name she had given him, and that he was living in possession of all that the law made hers? It might be true that all would be Hilda’s some day, and that in the end no harm would be effected because it would go to Hilda’s son. But the fortune was not Hilda’s yet, and she to whom it really belonged, who had really the power to control all, and to turn Greif and her own daughter from home and hearth if she pleased, was to all intents dependent upon the generosity of both. Though she might be made to accept much, yet it seemed a positive wrong that she should be allowed to feel that she was receiving favours when she was in reality conferring them.
Greif therefore should go to her, and tell his story, and acknowledge that everything was hers and that he was beholden to her charity for the bread he ate at her table. He had the courage to do so, and he would do it, if it seemed wholly right. But if he thus satisfied his love of justice, he must also do her an injury of a very different kind. It would be cruel to disclose the truth. Even Hilda had said that it would break her mother’s heart if she were told that she had given what she most prized to a nameless bastard. Hilda had not said the word, but it had been in her mind, nevertheless. And Frau von Sigmundskron had given more than that, for she had bestowed upon him her only daughter. Should he make her declining years miserable with the shame that was upon him, in order to give her money, or should he keep what was hers in order that she might end her life in happiness and peace? It was a case of doing evil that good might come.
When such a question arises there can be but one answer. The good to be obtained must be immense and the evil must be relatively very small. If such a position could be imagined, a man would be justified in lying, stealing, or doing almost anything which could only hurt himself, for the sake of saving a nation, of preserving his country from destruction. Perhaps he would not be wrong, if it were to save a thousand innocent lives, a hundred, ten, even one, if he wronged only himself in the evil he did to attain his end. But as the ratio diminishes, the case becomes manifestly more difficult to judge, and the absolute nature of right asserts itself more strongly when it is not confronted by overwhelming odds in most exceptional circumstances. Stealing is bad, but there is a difference between the case of the starving mother who steals a crust for her dying child, and the professional thief who lives riotously upon the proceeds of his crimes; there is a difference of degree in evil between stealing money in order to render possible the escape of a beloved sovereign from the hands of a bloodthirsty and revolutionary mob, and stealing it, under the apparent protection of the law, by deceiving thousands in the game of finance.
Nothing can be more repugnant to a man of honour than to do evil of any sort in order that good may come. To such a man as Greif, lying is but a shade less bad than murder, and stealing is many shades worse. In his judgment of the situation he was called upon both to steal and to lie, in order to secure Frau von Sigmundskron’s happiness. It was true that the deception was to be practised by merely holding his tongue, and the theft by keeping what did not belong to him, but Greif made no such subtle distinctions of degree. It was lying and stealing. It was adding a disgrace by his own conduct to the shame he had inherited. It was to give up all that remained to him, which was his spotless honesty in thought and deed. The case seemed terribly strong.
There was Hilda, by his side, and she had said that she would not let him go. Suppose then that he went and told her mother the story. There would be one more person in the secret, for though she might die of grief, she would never tell a human being; she could not ever be called upon to do so, by the maddest exaggeration of the principles of honour. She would suffer horribly, but she would not take what was hers. She could have no use for the fortune, except to give it to her daughter, who had the use of it already. Her peace would be destroyed for ever, and there would be no change in the conditions under which the three were living, except that Greif would have satisfied his desire to be strictly honest. A moral satisfaction on the one hand, and the destruction of all happiness to one he loved on the other. His brain reeled, for his desire to be truthful suddenly appeared to him in the light of a selfish passion which would cause endless pain to those whom he most desired to shield from all suffering. This was another view, and a strangely unexpected one.
The chaos of his thoughts became wilder and more unsettled than ever, he dropped his hands upon his knees and leaned back against the rough stones of the tower, pale and exhausted with the struggle, but uncertain yet how he should act. Hilda sat motionless beside him, watching his movements, and to some extent understanding his thoughts, ready to give him her sympathy or her counsel, if he needed it, ready, too, to throw all the force of her undaunted nature into the contest if he should endeavour to maintain his first position. She was, indeed, terribly anxious, lest in a moment of excitement he should break away from her and go to her mother in his present frame of mind. A long time had passed in silence, far longer than it has taken to describe the thoughts that succeeded each other in Greif’s brain, but Hilda would not speak, nor interrupt the course of his reflexions. She knew that this was the decisive moment of their lives, and she understood her husband’s stubbornly honourable nature well enough to give him leisure to consider all the points of his position.
At last he spoke, not looking at her and still leaning his head against the stones.
‘It is hard to talk of it,’ he said. ‘And yet I must, for I cannot think without words. I must decide, and quickly. In another hour I may meet your mother. I must either tell her, or not tell her, and this must be final. If I do—’
‘She will die,’ interrupted Hilda. ‘Not to-day, not to-morrow, perhaps not this year. But it will eat up her heart. I know her. She will spend hours in her room, alone, looking at my father’s picture, and crying over his sword. All her dreams will go out, like a light extinguished in the dark, All her hopes will be broken to pieces. She will never feel again that you are a son to her, and that through you the Sigmundskrons have begun again. She will grow more silent, more thin and wan until the end; and then she will die. That is what will happen if you tell her.’
‘And why should not all that happen to you, who know?’ asked Greif.
‘Because I love you yourself, and not an idea,’ answered Hilda. ‘If you were taken from me, I should die, as my mother will if you kill the idea she loves.’
‘And is it better that my whole life should be a lie from this day forth, than that she should know the truth, and do what she can to meet it?’
‘To whom do you owe the truth, Greif? To the woman you have married, to the mother of your child, or to some one else? What good would she get by it? Your money? She does not want money. What is money to her, compared with the memory of him she loved, as I love you, or in comparison with the honour of his name, for which she
would give her blood?’
‘And if you had left me alone to read that letter — would you have had me keep the truth from you too?’
‘Would I have you bear alone anything that we can bear together? If you understand my love so little as to think that such a thing could change it, or weaken it, or make me what I am not — why then, I would not care what you did, nor what became of me!’
‘And my shame is nothing to you?’
‘Nothing, being what it is, not yours, but of others, thrust upon your innocence.’
‘You would not, for your own sake, wish that we had never known of it?’
‘For my sake? No. For yours — I would die to wash it out. For my sake, do you say? Oh, Greif, is one hair of your head, one look of your dear eyes less wholly mine, because your mother sinned? Are you not Greif to me, always, and nothing else?’
‘And so you love me still — just as you did before?’
‘Can I say more than I have said? Can I do more than I have done? Ah — then love must be too cold a word for what I mean!’
‘You would not love me if I lied, and were a coward.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 363