Greifenstein

by F. Marion Crawford

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.