Without a word they entered the carriage that had been waiting for them, and the st.u.r.dy horses plunged into the forest, breasting the ascent as only strong animals can on a cold winter's morning. 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.

But when the towering wall of Greifenstein came into sight far off above the black tree-tops, Greif started and leaned forward, fixing his eyes upon his home; nor did he change his att.i.tude until the carriage drew up before the deep gateway, and he was aware of a crowd of men and women who stood there awaiting his arrival. Before all the rest, he saw the tall thin figure of Frau von Sigmundskron. Her white hands were clasped together and she was bareheaded. Standing out before the others, in her gown of sober grey, she looked like a mediaeval saint suddenly come down to earth in modern times. As Greif descended she held out her arms to greet him. He realised that she must have journeyed from Sigmundskron in the night in order to be before him.

'I thank you,' he said, kissing her hands.

With an effort of will that would have done credit to his dead father, he entered the castle, bending his head gravely in acknowledgment of the servants' tearful salutations. Though most of them were the merest hirelings in the house, who had lately succeeded others like themselves, yet almost all were in tears. Frau von Sigmundskron looked at Rex in some surprise.

'A friend?' she asked with some hesitation.

'More,' answered Greif. 'Let us go to some place where we can be alone.'

He shivered as he felt that he was under the very roof where those he loved best were lying cold and stark in death, but he set his lips and clenched his fingers, determined to bear all that was in store for him. Frau von Sigmundskron hesitated as they approached the door of the drawing-room, and she looked sideways at Greif.

'Better to my rooms,' he said. And so the three went on through corridors and staircases till they reached the young man's apartments.

He closed the door, and glanced at Rex.

'Madam,' said the latter at once, 'I am called Rex, but that is not my name. I am the son of Kuno von Rieseneck. I have Herr von Greifenstein's permission to pay my last duty to my dead father.'

Frau von Sigmundskron raised her gentle eyes in astonishment and looked from one to the other of the two men.

'Rex is my best friend,' said Greif. 'He needed no permission of mine to come here. I will explain all at another time. And now--' his voice broke, and he turned away, but recovered himself almost immediately.

'And now, I beg that you will tell us what you know.'

The good baroness detested weakness in herself and could not bear to see it in others, so that she told her story clearly and concisely, though with much caution and thoughtful tact. While she spoke she watched the two friends, who sat motionless beside her, their hands clasped upon their knees, their heads bent down, their faces white with emotion. The sun was already above the hills, and while she spoke the first rays fell through the ancient cas.e.m.e.nt upon the carpet of the room, casting soft reflexions upon the pallid features of the three persons.

'I will go to them,' said Greif when she had finished, and he rose to his feet. The baroness prepared to show him the way, and Rex would have followed, but she stopped him by a gesture.

'I will come back for you,' she said. 'They are not together.'

She let Greif enter the chamber alone and softly closed the door after him. Then she returned to Rex. He was standing where she had left him.

'I have something to say,' she began, 'and something to give you. This letter is yours. It was found in the room, sealed, directed and stamped, as though it were to be posted, as it would have been had you not come.

Nothing has been discovered for Greif, and this must have been written by Herr von Rieseneck. You are older than Greif, though he is brave enough, poor fellow. Here it is. Will you be alone to read it? I will go into the next room until you call me.

'Madam,' answered Rex, taking the letter, 'I will not trouble you by any exhibition of my feelings, if you will stay here.'

He looked at the superscription, and cut the envelope open neatly with his pocket-knife so as not to break the seal. Frau von Sigmundskron was too well-bred to watch his face while he read the contents. Had she looked, she would have been terrified.

The note was very short, but it contained enough to shake even Rex's calm nature.

'My son, when you receive this, I shall be dead. I arrived here this evening and I have discovered that Frau von Greifenstein is your mother, my wife. She made me believe that she was dead and married my brother under a false name. She has atoned for her crimes to her two husbands, who have done justice upon her, and now we also are about to pay the penalty of having executed that justice which is above all laws. At the point of death, I give this secret into your keeping. Your brother is a nameless b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Do not ruin him by betraying the shame of your father and of his. You are rich, but were you poor you would have no t.i.tle to my brother's inheritance. Do not come to this place. They will bury me as decently as I deserve. Farewell. G.o.d keep you, and make you happier than I have been.--Your father,

'VON RIESENECK.

'SCHLOSS GREIFENSTEIN, _December_ 20.'

As Rex read the words he instinctively turned away. His face was hideously distorted and his stony eyes seemed changed into coals of fire. Every fibre of his strong nature was strained and tortured by the iron grip of his suffering. Every pulse of his body beat with a frantic rage for which no outlet was possible. His eyeb.a.l.l.s burned with excruciating pain as he attempted to read again the letter he still held in his hands. He was one of those habitually calm men who become almost insane when they are angry, and in whose placid strength pa.s.sion of any sort, when roused, finds its most dangerous material. For a full minute he stood speechless, feeling as though his emotion must find some physical expression, lest it should kill him there and then.

He heard a footstep, and then the door opened and closed softly. Looking round, he saw that he was alone; Frau von Sigmundskron had understood from what she could see of his att.i.tude that the letter had brought him news even worse than that of his father's death, and she had felt that to stay any longer would have been to intrude upon a sorrow in which she could have no share. Seeing that she was gone, Rex abandoned all restraint over himself, and submitted for a time to the overwhelming influences that surrounded him on all sides. His face became livid as he threw himself upon the couch, and his fingers were twisted unnaturally, as though their nerves were irritated by a strong electric current.

Lying on his back, he rolled his head from side to side, like a man tortured on the rack, while his reddening eyes kept their sight fixed upon a blank point of the ceiling. The pain in his temples was as that of a red-hot screw boring its way through his brain, and while his white teeth ground audibly upon each other his quick-coming breath blew a scarcely perceptible foam from his strained and parted lips.

Father, mother, honour, were gone at one blow. Not the mother he had learned to dream of as a boy, when some faint memory of her fair face was still with him; not the tender and gentle mother who, if she had lived, would have been dearest on earth to him, and whose untimely death had lent her something heavenly and brightly mysterious; not the mother of whom his father had often told him, who from her place of peace looked down, perhaps, and smiled when he did well, or was pained when he did wrong; not the mother who, in his sleep, seemed to walk beside him when he was a child, robed in white, holding him by the hand and pointing heavenwards, like the picture of the Guardian Angel so common in his native country; not that mother who was to him the embodiment of all that was pure and lovely, and saintly and kind; not that sweet mother who for nearly forty years had held her secret place in the strange labyrinths of the lonely student's heart, to whose angelic figure he had often turned for consolation when weary with the aimlessness of deep study that led to nothing, or when satiated with all the useless, pleasureless pleasure which money could give and which there was no one to forbid. That dear image was gone, but she was not the mother he had lost. She who had borne him was lying near him now, under that very roof. She had cast him off, him and his father, to spend all those years when he had thought her dead, with another man, worst shame of all, with the brother of her husband. And she had borne another son, she had given a brother to her first-born, whom the world called n.o.ble and rich, who in truth was penniless and nameless as any beggar in the street. She had heaped dishonour upon father and son, and she had borne in dishonour a second son and shamed the spotless life of a second father. And this woman, this wretch, this creature for whom no speakable name could be found, was his own mother, and was henceforth to stand in the place of her whose mere memory had been half divine. Her vile life, forfeited for her crimes as shamefully as though she had died by the defaming hands of the common hangman, her hideous existence was thrust before him in all its abomination, as the source of his own, in the stead of all that had seemed most holy and chaste and worthy of his reverence. Was not her blood in his veins? Must not her evil nature of necessity show itself sooner or later in his own? Better the ounce weight of a finger upon that little bar of steel, to press which was to go beyond the risk of human infamy, beyond the possibility of reproducing in his own life the merest shadow of the sins that had darkened hers to the end. Better to cross at once that bridge whose pa.s.sage is never choked because all who go over move ever in the same way, and none pause whose path has led them to its. .h.i.ther side. Better to leap at once and take his secret out of human keeping.

He would not have believed the horror if he had learned it from living man. But the message came from those who had sealed its truth with the dark red seal; it came from two men who had not been mistaken, of whom either, suspecting a mistake, would have slain the other for the mere accusation; old men not carried away by a fleeting resemblance, by the breath of a word half understood, by suspicion of a glance only half seen; stern, bold men--too stern to relent, but far too brave to be moved suddenly to senseless wrath against an innocent woman; proud men, both, who would have denied to each other the possibility of their common shame, so long as denial was humanly possible.

There could be no doubt, no shadow of a hope. Greif von Greifenstein was brother to Rex, and both were fatherless and motherless on the same day.

Why live on, beneath the weight of memories which no time could efface and no future happiness soften? Had he any obligations to mankind, had he any pride of half-fulfilled hopes, of half-satisfied ambition? What had his life been? A nameless one, though of the two he alone could claim a name, if all were known. What had he done with it? He had attempted to explore the sources of life and the first origin of all those strange states which life brings with it. He had spent years in patient study, and again for months he had experimented upon his own incomprehensible sensations, by alternately procuring himself every pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt which money could command, and then seeking the contrast of solitary asceticism. His iron const.i.tution of body had survived all, but his bright intelligence had wearied of the struggle, bruising its keen edge against the rocky barriers of the eternal and the unknown. Wiser than his fellows, he knew that he was no wiser than before; stronger than they, he knew the weakness of all strength; brave as the bravest, bravery seemed to him but a clumsy exhibition of vanity at best, and altogether contemptible from the moment it began to seek occasions for showing itself. He could have understood playing the coward for sake of examining the sensation, and would have laughed at his own vanity, when it led him to redeem his character the next moment by some act of reckless daring. What was it all, but an amazing show of puppets, an astounding dance of lay-figures, animated by strings of which the ends opposite from men were lost in infinite distance? To dance, or not to dance, was all the choice men had, and rather than play a part in such a show as fell to his lot, it seemed better to break the strings and let the miserable marionette fall into the black hole behind the stage.

The possibility of adding a fourth link to the chain of death arrested Rex's frenzy. Since it was so easy to die, the escape from an earthly h.e.l.l was always at hand. If, then, he lived, it must be of his own free will, and it did not beseem a man to do with such an ill grace what he did from his choice. Either he must end the matter decently and quietly at once, or, choosing not to end it, he must gather his strength and resume the direction of his existence. No other conclusion was possible.

His secret was his own, and none need know it. All was over, and the disclosure of the truth could not help justice, any more than its concealment could injure any one. On the contrary, to tell what he knew would be to ruin Greif.

At the thought of Greif, Rex grew calm, and sat upright on the couch, supporting himself with his hands and gazing absently at the opposite wall. He had something left to live for, since Greif was his brother--Greif, who was at this very moment weeping over the body of her who was mother to both, looking for the last time upon that face which doubtless recalled to him the same tender memories Rex himself had cherished so long and so faithfully. A strong desire to see her took hold of him. The mistaken veneration of a lifetime was gone in a moment and Rex experienced the necessity of putting in its place the truth, however horrible it might be. But, unknown to him, a touch of tenderness remained in the bottom of his heart. Sinful, ruined, dead by the hands of the men she had foully wronged, she had nevertheless been his mother. He said to himself that he would see her, in order that the last impression might finally wipe out all those that had been sweet before it; but in spite of every circ.u.mstance of shame that had attended her death, and in spite of his own reasoning, what drew him to her was in reality the strength of what he believed to be wholly eradicated and torn from him, the unconscious longing to see once more the face of her who had borne him, and whose image had been with him since he was a little child.

To see her, and then--what then? The future was a blank, of which the monotony was broken only by the figure of Greif. The idea of devoting himself to his brother, and of expending all his strength and intelligence in the attempt to make him outlive the dreadful memory of this day, presented itself to Rex's mind. He smiled faintly, for the thought was unlike most of his thoughts. He did not remember to have ever before entertained a similar project. He had sacrificed his inclinations many times in the pursuit of knowledge, and even occasionally out of good nature, but he had never set himself the task of systematically benefiting another man. And yet, he knew well enough that Greif would need support and help and comfort, and that there would be none at hand to offer all these, save Rex himself.

He rose from his seat and paced the room, his hands behind him, his eyes bent down. His face still bore the marks of his sudden and terrible suffering, but the perfectly balanced powers of his mind were already beginning to a.s.sert themselves. The habit of scepticism, that is, of systematic inquiry into all that befell him, was too strong to remain long in abeyance, and the equilibrium of the mental forces, cultivated to excess by his method of study, was too stable in nature to be long disturbed, even by the greatest calamity. To-day he saw the necessity of applying his intelligence to the alleviation of Greif's sorrow and to the preservation of Greif's existence, endangered by such a blow. In a few weeks at the latest, his own sufferings would acquire an objective interest, and would become so many data for study in the great case of all humanity. Rex could never have been a hero. He could never have detached his own individuality from its place in his map of mankind, so as to believe himself different from all other men, as heroes must believe themselves. He felt that the balance lay between his own life and death, and that he could turn the scale at his own choice; he could never have made himself forget life in the hope of victory, nor death in the fear of failure. Incapable of any transcendental belief whatsoever, his intelligence had deified free-agency, while his unacknowledged suspicion of a directing power a.s.serted itself in his theories concerning nature's fatalism. He supposed that the machinery of the universe produced inevitable phases in the lives of individuals and of nations; he knew that in all that had happened to him he had been free to exercise his choice between two alternatives. Such a choice was now before him, and for the first time in his life he determined to devote himself to the welfare of another.

CHAPTER XV

An hour later Rex was supporting Greif as he returned from the state bedchamber to his own room. Strong and determined to be calm as the young man was, the sight had been too much for him, and it was clear that unless he could obtain sleep his nerves must break down under the strain they suffered. He reeled in his walk like a man half asleep, his bright eyes were gla.s.sy and fixed, his relaxed fingers were incapable of grasping Rex's arm, and the latter held him upright upon his feet and almost carried him along the dim corridors.

Rex also had seen, but when he had once been face to face with that which had irresistibly drawn him to the room, he had felt no desire to look again. The drawn, white features of the dead lady recalled nothing to his mind out of the sweetness of the past, while their fixed expression of pain intensified the horror of the present until it grew unbearable. He had stayed long in the other chamber, where his father lay, and as he gazed upon the stern dark face his wrath rose, swelling tumultuously in his breast, as the tide of the sea, ebbing away as he thought of what was beyond and as he realised that all vengeance had been accomplished, and all justice done, so that no one remained alive against whom he could feel anger, no one upon whom his hand could fall.

They had taken the law into their own hands and had executed its extreme sentence upon her who had wronged them, and they had expiated their deed in their own bodies. Never was tragedy so swift, so desperate and so complete.

And now the morning sun was high in the heavens, mocking the solemn darkness of men's hearts with his fierce brightness, shining upon the ancient walls of Greifenstein as coldly and clearly through the keen winter air as he had shone yesterday and as he would shine to-morrow.

From eave and stringcourse and dripstone of the old castle the melting patches of dazzling snow sent down mimic showers of diamond drops, and the moisture thawed from them made dark stains upon the grey masonry.

A redbreast skipped about the furrows made in the white carpet by the carriage wheels, paused, turned his tiny impertinent head, and glanced up at the ramparts with a squint, as though to tell the time of day by the sun and the shadows of the projecting eaves. From the paved court of the stables, where all had been hurry and confusion on the previous night, came the occasional noise of an impatient hoof stamping upon the stones, the even sound of brushes on smooth coats as the men leisurely groomed the horses, the tinkling of curb-chains polished and rubbed together by idle lads who were in no hurry, and occasionally the echo of a voice, instantly subdued to an undertone as the speaker remembered that this day was not to be like other days. At the door of the servants' hall the two comfortable policemen in their dark uniforms and shining b.u.t.tons sunned their fair beards as they smoked their morning pipes, exchanging a remark in a low voice about once in five minutes, and never without previously looking round to see whether any one was listening to them, but chiefly occupied in watching an underkeeper who was feeding the big hounds in a sunny corner of the inner court.

Nature, in her pitiless irony, seemed more than usually mirthful on that clear morning. It was such a day as old Greifenstein who lay upstairs, dead beside his dead wife, would have chosen to tramp far into the forest, with his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels. It was such a day as would have made poor Clara's lot seem easier, softening her tortured conscience in a thaw of pa.s.sing satisfaction, pleasant while it lasted, transitory as the gleam of light and warmth in the dismal winter of the Black Forest. The forest itself alone was unchanged. The trees looked blacker than ever against the blue sky and under the violent light. Around the vast amphitheatre of the hills they stood motionless in their even rows, like a great a.s.sembly of dark-robed judges, judging the dead who lay in their midst, inquisitors whom no brightness could brighten, and in whose sombre countenances no smile was reflected from the glorious sky and dazzling light. Silent, grand, funereal, they stood in their places as they had stood a hundred years ago, before those lives began which had now suddenly gone out, as they would stand when those other lives were extinguished which now were young.

Neither Greif nor Rex were seen again that day. In the course of time the representatives of the law arrived, did their office, and were regaled with a collation by the butler, during which they sat upon the chairs which last night had been occupied by those whose end they had come to ascertain. The case was very plain and their duties were simple. They went away and took the two policemen with them. Frau von Sigmundskron moved noiselessly about the house, giving the necessary directions when there were any to be given, occasionally sitting down in a quiet corner to read a few pages of a devotional book she had found.

More than once she went to the different rooms where Greif and Rex had withdrawn, to see whether she could be of any use. Greif was always in the same place, leaning back in a great easy-chair, pale and exhausted with grief, but evidently master of himself. At last she found him asleep, and she drew a long breath of relief, for she knew that the chief danger was past. When she went to Rex she found him reading, and he did not relinquish his occupation during the whole day, so far as she could ascertain. Whether he understood what he read, or not, was more than she could determine. The volume contained a part of Goethe's works, and when she glanced at the page she saw that the student had selected the second part of Wilhelm Meister for his reading. He always looked up quietly when she entered, thanked her, and said that he needed nothing.

Frau von Sigmundskron could not rest. The sense of responsibility which she felt might alone have sufficed to sustain her energy, but her mind was disturbed by a matter even weightier in her eyes. The tremendous difficulties of the future presented themselves very clearly to her mental view, and she knew that before long they would not be mere shadows of things to come, but actual problems with which she must grapple, and upon the solution of which she must concentrate all her strength. Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, the earth would close for ever over what remained of those poor beings whose departure from life had saddened her own and made it seem so hard to understand. But when the three were buried, she could no longer remain at Greifenstein.

There would be no reason for prolonging her stay, even had she wished to do so, and indeed her wishes would lead her homewards as soon as her duties were all fulfilled. She had never before been separated even for a day from her child, and though she was strong and sensible in mind and knew that Hilda was safe with old Berbel, she was conscious that it was painful to be away from her. She would therefore return to Sigmundskron.

From that moment her trouble would begin. It was not conceivable that Greif should go away without seeing Hilda, and yet there were many reasons why it would be better that the two should not meet.

She had foreseen the struggle during the hours of the night, but it had not then appeared so formidable as now. She had then thought more of Greif, and it had not seemed impossible to tell him frankly what she felt. As she reflected upon what must be done, she saw that Hilda was the princ.i.p.al figure in the situation, and she realised that Hilda's happiness was infinitely more dear to her than anything else in the world. She hesitated, and for some time she told herself that the marriage must take place, come what might.

To her, all that had happened since the previous evening was shrouded in an impenetrable mystery. Her imagination failed utterly to account for the desperate doings of which the horrible result was before her. She could have understood that the two brothers might have quarrelled on meeting after so many years, and that in a moment of reckless anger they should have shot each other. Clara might have perished in the struggle, while endeavouring to part them. But there was a dreadful appearance of deliberate intention in the whole tragedy which made such a hypothesis untenable. That Clara had been intentionally murdered, she could not doubt. Greifenstein might have slain her in a fit of pa.s.sion and might have taken his own life afterwards, but this could not account for Rieseneck's suicide. She could have believed that for some unknown reason Rieseneck had killed his brother and Clara, and after disposing their bodies as they were found, had shot himself. But the examination proved the contrary. It was plainly evident that both men had died in their chairs by the weapons found in their own hands. Rieseneck had written to his son, but Greifenstein had not, or, at least, if he had written anything it had not been discovered. Rex alone could know the secret, therefore, if it had been revealed at all. She was ignorant that in Germany, when a suicide has been committed, the law has a right to see whatever letters were last written by the deceased. The stamped letter, addressed to Rex, had attracted her attention, and she had taken it from the table with the intention of posting it the next day, not meaning to conceal it, but, on the contrary, to send it without delay to its destination. The legal gentlemen, courteous to the good lady, had not pressed her with any questions, taking it for granted that if she had found any letter or any clue to an explanation she would naturally offer it at once. And so it chanced that Rex alone could know the truth if any one knew it. That he had been terribly moved by what he had read, she had seen for herself, but whether the letter had contained a full explanation of the circ.u.mstances, it was not possible to judge. If so, it was more than probable, she thought, that Rex would show it to Greif in due time, and that when the first shock was over the contents would be communicated to herself. The question was whether this would happen before Greif saw Hilda. In spite of her natural repugnance to such a plan, she almost resolved to ask Rex directly whether what he had received threw any light upon the situation. If she could know why those three persons were dead she could better guide her course in the future.

If Greifenstein had been a murderer, as well as a suicide, his son could not have Hilda for his wife. It was Greif's misfortune, and the baroness gave him all the pity she could spare from her own child, but the point could not be yielded. She closed her eyes and tried to think it over.

She thought of Hilda, married and leaving Sigmundskron to live under the very roof where such deeds had been done, and the mere idea was painful and repugnant. Greif was wholly innocent of all that had happened, but the stain was upon his name, and the blood of his father was in his veins. Hilda's children would be the grandchildren of a murderer. Old Greifenstein had not ended his days in a shameful prison, merely because he had found courage to take his own life quickly. But if he had done the deed he was a common murderer, and the moral result was the same, whether he were alive or dead; the indelible disgrace rested upon his son, and would brand the lives of his son's sons after him. 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. Could Hilda's sorrow be like her own? Even if it were, Hilda must bear it rather than take such a name--unless, indeed, old Greifenstein had been innocent of his wife's death. No one could know that except Rex, and would he answer her question? In her horror of the whole situation she wished that she might go back to Sigmundskron and end her life in barely decent poverty with Hilda, and never again think of the marriage. But her rigid sense of duty reproached her for such a thought, which made her feel as though she were trying to lay down the responsibility that had fallen to her lot. Her untiring conscience took up the burden again, to bear it as it might.

Rex must answer her, and upon his answer would depend everything. It was not an easy matter to question him, however, and for the present it was wholly impossible. She must meet Hilda while she herself was yet undecided, so that it seemed simplest to be roughly frank with the girl, to tell her plainly what had happened, what was known and the extent of what no one knew, showing her clearly that if old Greifenstein should turn out to have been guilty, she must give up all thought of Greif and submit to her poor lot with the best grace she could. Greif would go away and travel, perhaps for several years. He would find interests at last, which might help him to forget his darkened youth. Hilda and her mother would live as they could, and when the mother died Sigmundskron must go to the hammer. At all events it was not enc.u.mbered with debts, and its sale would leave the child a pittance to save her from starvation; possibly she would have more than before, but Frau von Sigmundskron could not judge of that. Possibly, too, Hilda's sixty-four quarterings would help her to gain admittance as a lady-canoness in one of those semi-religious foundations, reserved exclusively for the old n.o.bility, of which several exist in Germany.