The sunlight moved but a very little, as far as would show the pa.s.sing of a minute, perhaps, and then Greif looked up once more and again met the gaze of Hilda's eyes.

CHAPTER XIX

'Hilda, I will die for you, but I cannot marry you.' Greif spoke quietly, but with the utmost decision.

'I have said that I will not let you go,' she answered, 'and I will not.

You are my life, and I will not die--I should if you left me.'

'You will forget me,' he said.

'Forget you!' Her voice rang through the room. She dropped his hands with a pa.s.sionate gesture and turned away from him, making one or two steps towards the window. Then she came back and stood before him.

'Forget you!' she exclaimed again. 'You do not know what you are saying.

You do not know me, if you can say it. Do you think, because I am a girl, that I am weak? I tell you I am stronger than you, and I tell you that you are mad. Do you think that if I would have shed the last drop of my blood to save you from pain yesterday, I love you less to-day? I love you a thousand times more for what you would do, but you shall not do it. I love you as no woman can love, who has not lived long life.

And you say that you can go away, and that I shall forget you! As I am a Christian woman, if I forget you, may G.o.d forget me, now and in the hour of death! I could not if I would. And you say that you will leave me--for what? Because your father has done a terrible deed, and has taken his own life. For a name--for nothing else! What is a name to me, compared with you yourself? I love you so, that if you had yourself done the most monstrous crime, I would not leave you, not if we were to die a shameful death together. And you would leave me, for my own good! For my advantage--oh, I would not have heaven itself without you. Forget! What would there be left to remember, if you were taken? The emptiness of the place where you were, the wide emptiness that all heaven could never fill! Your name--do you love it better than me? But I know that you love me, though you are mad. Then put your name away, cast it from you to whomsoever will have it. 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 n.o.ble, and true-hearted as any man that ever drew breath. Do you know why? You dare not--you who dare anything else. I love you the more for having dared this--but you shall not do it. I will not let you go, I will not, never, never!'

Greif had turned his head away and stood leaning against the chimney almost in the same att.i.tude he had taken from the first. She had spoken quickly and pa.s.sionately and he had not been able to answer anything she said, for she did not pause, replying herself to the questions she asked and giving him no time to oppose her.

'I was wrong,' he said, half bitterly, half tenderly. 'You will not forget me any more than I can forget you. It will make it harder to say good-bye.'

'It shall never be said, until one of us two is dying, Greif.'

'We cannot change our fate, though we love ever so dearly,' he answered.

'Think, Hilda, if you took me as I am, what you might suffer in after years, what our children would surely suffer when they went out into the world, and the world began to whisper that they were the grandsons of that Greifenstein--'

'What is the world to us, dear? And as for our sons, if G.o.d sends us any, I know that if they grow up to be brave gentlemen, loyal and true, the world will leave them in peace.'

'The world is a hard place--'

'Then why have anything to do with it? I have been happy, here in the forest, for so many years--could you not be happy here with me?'

'I should still be my father's son--I should still be Greifenstein.'

'Would I have you anything else?'

'Hilda, it is impossible!' cried Greif with suddenly renewed energy. 'I have said all. Must I say it again?' 'If you were to say it a thousand times, it would not make it more true. But I will listen to all you tell me, if you like.'

With a calmness that showed how certain she felt of her victory, Hilda resumed her seat at the opposite side of the fireplace, folded her hands together, and leaning her head against the back of the easy-chair, watched him with half-closed eyes. She was not tired, and would very probably be able to sustain the contest longer than he. After the first shock of the announcement was over, under which she had suffered more in one moment than would have sufficed to fill a week with agonising pain, the strong impulse to hold him had come upon her and her elastic strength had been roused to its fullest energy. But the memory of that one moment of agony was enough to make her guess what she would feel if he left her.

Arguments repeated a second time rarely seem so forcible as when they are first heard. Painfully and conscientiously Greif recapitulated his reasons, trying to speak coldly and concisely, exerting himself to the utmost and summoning all the skill he could command in order to state his case convincingly. Hilda could not have put the idea that possessed him to a more cruel test than this. It began to dawn even upon himself that he was in pursuit of a chimera, and the necessity for the enormous self-sacrifice, upon which he insisted, was breaking down in the face of such a determined opposition on the part of those who were more interested than himself. Doggedly and persistently he continued, nevertheless, fighting his love as though it had been a devil, thrusting Hilda's from his thoughts as though it had been an evil temptation, savagely determined not to part with his belief in what he took for his duty. It was a strange sight, and would have afforded material for reflexion to an older and wiser person than Hilda.

'That is all I have to say,' he concluded. 'It seems to me that I cannot say it more clearly. You know what it costs me to repeat it all.'

An expression of intense pain pa.s.sed over his face, and he turned away in order to hide it from Hilda. He was hardly able to make his strained lips p.r.o.nounce the last words.

'I am not convinced,' said Hilda after a moment's pause. 'No eloquence in the world would convince me that you and I should sacrifice our lives for an idea, merely to save ourselves from the possibility of a few ill-natured remarks hereafter. That is all it comes to in the end. I will tell you the history of this idea.'

She seemed calmer than ever, but the light had not faded from her eyes, and Greif felt that she was ready to spring upon him in an instant, to grasp his hands in hers and to say again that she would not let him go.

He glanced nervously towards her, and the look of suffering returned to his face.

'The history is this,' she said. 'When the dreadful thing happened, you thought of me. Then it seemed to you that you should free me from our engagement. That seemed hard to you, because you love me so much--it was so hard that it took all your strength to make the resolution. You have spoken to my mother and to me. Now, I ask you whether my mother, at least, is not old enough to judge what is right? Did she agree with you, and tell you that you should give me up?'

'No--she did all she could to persuade me--'

'Of course,' interrupted Hilda. 'Of course she did. Now shall I tell you why you will not allow yourself to be persuaded, and why you insist on ruining your life as well as mine?'

She rose again, gently this time, and came and stood beside him. He turned his head away as though it hurt him, and as she spoke she could see only his short, bright curling hair.

'You will not be persuaded, because it was so hard for you to make the resolution at first, that you believe it must be right in spite of every other right, and you would sacrifice yourself and me for an idea which is strong only because it hurt you to accept it at first. Everything you have done and said is brave, n.o.ble, generous--but you have gone too far--you have lost sight of the true truth in pursuing a truth that was true yesterday. It never was your duty to do more than offer to set me free. And as for the name, Greif dear,--I have heard that such things are done--would you, if it pleases you--that is, if it would help you to forget--would you take mine, darling, instead of letting me take yours?

Perhaps it would make it easier--you are only Greif to me, but perhaps if you could be Greif Sigmundskron to yourself, and live here, and never go to Greifenstein nor think of it again--perhaps, my beloved, I could help you to forget it all, to the very name that pains you so.'

She laid her hand upon his shoulder and pressed her cheek softly against his curls as she spoke the last words, though she could not see his face. The accents were so low and tender that her voice sounded like soft music breathed into his ear.

'No--no! I must never do it!' he tried to say, but the words were very indistinct.

Hilda felt him move nervously, and she saw that he was grasping the chimney-piece with both hands as though to support himself by it. In another moment his broad shoulders seemed to heave and then shrink together. He staggered and almost fell to the ground, though Hilda did her best to hold him. With a great effort he gained the chair in which she had sat and fell back in it. His eyes were closed and the lids were blue, while his tightly compressed lips moved as though he were biting them.

Hilda knelt beside him and took his cold hands. The colour was all gone from her face, for she was terribly frightened.

'Greif, Greif!' she cried in anguish. 'What is it, my beloved? Speak, darling--do not look like that!'

'I am in great pain,' he answered, not opening his eyes, but faintly trying to press her fingers.

She saw that he was ill, and that his suffering had nothing to do with his previous emotion. She opened the door quickly and called for help.

Her mother's room was very near and Frau von Sigmundskron appeared immediately.

'Greif is ill--dying perhaps!' exclaimed Hilda dragging her into the little sitting-room to the young man's side.

The baroness leaned over him anxiously, and at the touch of a strange hand his purple lids opened slowly and he looked up into her face.

'It is in my head--in the back,' he succeeded in saying.

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. The loss of sleep, the deadly impression made upon him by the death of his father and mother, the terrible struggle he had sustained with himself, all had combined together to bring about the crisis. At first it was but a shooting pain in the head, so sharp as to make his features contract. Then it came again and again, till it left him no breathing s.p.a.ce, and he sank down overcome by physical torture, but firm in his intention as he had been in the beginning. It was all over, and he would not argue his case again for many a long day.

'Take me home--I am very ill,' he gasped, as the baroness tried to feel his pulse.

But she shook her head, for it seemed to her that it was too late.

'You must stay here until you are better,' she answered softly. 'The jolting of the carriage would hurt you.'

He closed his eyes again, unable to speak, far less to discuss the matter. The mother and daughter whispered together and then both left the room, casting a last anxious glance at Greif as he lay almost unconscious with pain.

Great was the consternation of Berbel when she heard that the young lord of Greifenstein had suddenly fallen ill in the house, but she was not a woman to waste words when time pressed. There was but one thing to be done. Greif must have Hilda's room and Hilda must take up her quarters with her mother. His carriage must fetch the physician from the nearest town, and bring such things as might be necessary. To Berbel's mind everything seemed already organised, and before any one had time to make a remark she had set about arranging matters to her own satisfaction.