Greifenstein

by F. Marion Crawford

‘Mother—you ought to have gone, too—’ Hilda began, looking into her face with an expression of mingled anxiety and disappointment.

‘I do not see how I could, my child,’ answered the baroness. ‘If Greif was strong enough to go it was best that he should do so. It would be hard for us to take care of him. He has his cousin at Greifenstein, and they can send for me if he is worse. Besides—’ She hesitated and stopped.

‘What?’ asked Hilda anxiously.

‘He showed good sense, since he was able to go. It is not the custom in the world for young men to make long visits in such cases.’

‘The world, the world!’ exclaimed Hilda wearily. ‘I have heard so much of the world this morning. Mother—He will not send for you. We shall not know how he is—’

‘I will take care that we may know,’ answered the baroness quietly. ‘He is young and very strong. Perhaps it is only fatigue after all, and we shall hear that he is well to-morrow.’

Hilda’s instinct told her to slip from her mother’s side, to pass the gate and run down by the short and steep descent to the foot of the hill. The road made a wide sweep before passing this point and she would have been certain to reach it long before the carriage. But she knew that such wildness could produce no good result. She would stand there waiting for the carriage, it would come, Greif would tell Karl to stop, and then—what could happen? There would be a sort of momentary renewal of the scene which had ended a quarter of an hour ago, with the unpleasant addition of the driver as a witness. She could not get in and drive with him, and so the situation would have to end abruptly, perhaps in another attack of that pain which had so suddenly prostrated Greif. It was very hard that he should have escaped in this way, and nothing but his suffering could excuse his conduct; but to have him return now would be almost worse. After all, Hilda was woman enough to know that she had got the best of the argument at the last, and that Greif’s abrupt departure looked very much like a precipitate flight. She knew also that he loved her, and that it would be impossible for him to leave the country without seeing her again. No woman would believe the man she loves capable of that. It was therefore madness to think of intercepting him upon the road, in order to exchange another word. With hands loosely joined together and hanging down, Hilda stood gazing at the vacant gateway. The happiness she had anticipated an hour earlier, when she had descried the distant carriage that brought Greif to her, had been strangely interrupted, and yet she was not altogether unhappy now, though she was very sad and silent. For all the world she would not have unlived that hour, nor unsaid the words that had passed her lips. The time had been very short, and yet it had sufficed to show her what Greif’s love for her really was, and what he was willing to suffer for her sake. She had, too, the satisfaction of feeling that this suffering had not been brought upon him by herself, and that she had used all her strength to relieve him of it. He had indeed refused to give up the burden to the very end, but Hilda did not believe that he would bear it many days longer after what she had said. Her youth and strength refused to accept such an evil destiny, and her keen feminine perception told her that more than half of his obstinacy had been morbid and unnatural, and would disappear with the change wrought in him by rest and quiet. Her anxiety now was for him, and did not concern herself any longer. She knew nothing of illness save as a sort of vague misfortune, a state of undefined pain during which people stayed in bed and were visited by physicians. Never during her lifetime had any one of the three women who composed the little household been ailing even for a day, and though Hilda had sometimes been told, when she was visiting at Greifenstein, that Clara was not well enough to appear, she had only fancied how the poor lady would look when she was not painted and her hair was all out of curl. That did not help her to realise what an illness meant. She could only recall the look on Greif’s face when he had reeled to the chair and then thrown his head back, while his closed lids turned purple. For a long time that was the only picture evoked in her mind when sickness was spoken of.

Frau von Sigmundskron looked at her daughter, without understanding her thoughts. She guessed what the nature of the interview had probably been, but she had no means of knowing how it had ended. Nevertheless she was willing to wait until Hilda chose to speak, and she knew that she would not wait long. Presently she passed her arm through her daughter’s and led her gently back towards the house. The latter made no resistance, but walked quietly beside her across the sunny court. When they reached the door of the hall Hilda turned and looked again towards the gate.

‘I wonder how it will be when he comes in by that way again!’ she said.

Then she went in with her mother and entered the sitting-room, and sat down in her old place, in the chair into which Greif had fallen. She was left alone for a few minutes, while Frau von Sigmundskron went to tell Berbel that Greif was gone after all, and that there was no need to upset all the household arrangements.