Greifenstein - F. Marion Crawford

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the faint blush that rose in his son’s face.

      ‘I suppose we must wait another year,’ remarked Greif with a sigh. ‘It seems absurd that at my age I should not have finished my education.’

      ‘You will be glad, when you are married, that you have your military service behind you.’

      ‘I do not know,’ answered the young man absently.

      ‘You do not know!’ exclaimed his father in surprise. ‘Would you like to go and live with Hilda in a garrison town while you served your year as a volunteer?’

      ‘I was not thinking of that. I have thought lately that, after all, I had better take active service. Would you object?’

      Greifenstein was taken by surprise and would possibly have uttered a loud exclamation if he had not long ago schooled himself to be incapable of any such breach of gravity. But he did not answer the question.

      ‘Father,’ began Greif again after a pause, ‘is it true that you ever had a brother?’

      Greifenstein’s tough face turned slowly grey.

      ‘A half-brother,’ he answered with an effort. ‘My mother married again.’

      Greif glanced sideways at his father and saw that he was oddly affected by the inquiry. But the young man had his own reasons for wishing to know the truth.

      ‘Why have you never told me that I had an uncle?’ he asked.

      ‘He is no uncle of yours, my boy, nor brother of mine!’ answered Greifenstein bitterly.

      ‘I fought about him the other day. That is all,’ said Greif.

      ‘He is not worth fighting for.’

      ‘Then the story is true?’

      ‘What story?’ Greifenstein stopped short in his walk and fixed his sharp eyes on his son’s face. ‘What story? What do you know?’

      ‘A man told me that your brother had been discharged from the army with infamy—infam cassirt—and condemned to imprisonment, for betraying some arsenal or armoury into the hands of the rebels in 1848. I told him—well—that he lied. What else could I say? I had never heard of the scoundrel.’

      ‘You were quite right,’ answered Greifenstein, who was very pale. ‘I never meant that you should know, any more than your mother. That is the reason why we live in the country all the year. But I thought it would come—I feared that some one would tell you!’

      ‘I do not think that any one will repeat the experiment,’ observed Greif, turning away and looking down at the torrent, which was visible between the trees. ‘And what has become of this Herr von Rieseneck, if that was his name?’

      ‘He is alive and well. Rich, for anything I know to the contrary. He escaped from the fortress where he was confined and made his way to South America. I had not seen him for some time before that disgraceful affair. We had quarrelled about other matters, and he had entered the Prussian service.’ ‘I wish you had told me about him before.’

      ‘Why should I? Do you think it is a pleasant subject for conversation? As his name was not mine, thank God, there was a chance that you might never know nor hear of him.’

      ‘I see why you do not wish me to enter the army.’

      ‘Yes,’ answered Greifenstein laconically, and he once more walked forward.

      For some time neither spoke. Greifenstein’s profound hatred of his dishonoured brother was too deeply stirred to allow of his continuing the conversation, and in a different way the younger man was quite as much affected as his father. When the student with whom he had fought had cast in his teeth the evil deeds of Kuno von Rieseneck, he had unhesitatingly denied the story, thinking it a merely gratuitous insult invented on the spur of the moment. No one present during the altercation had thought fit to confirm the tale, and Greif had wreaked his vengeance upon his enemy in the most approved fashion, in the presence of the assembled ‘Korps.’ But the words had taken effect and he had determined to learn from his father’s lips whether they had any foundation in fact. Being satisfied of the truth of the story, however, his mood changed. No one who has not studied the character of the German gentleman—the old-fashioned Edelmann—will readily understand how directly he feels himself injured by the disgrace of a relative even very distantly removed. He has often little enough in the world but his name and his pride of caste, but as compared with the former he holds his life as of no value whatsoever, and where the latter is concerned he will suffer much rather than offend the exclusiveness of his class by derogating from the most insignificant of its prejudices. He is not afraid of poverty. No one can maintain the position of a gentleman with more exiguous resources than often fall to his share. Rather than leave the smallest debt of honour unpaid, he will unhesitatingly take his own life. That a man should suffer himself to live after doing such a deed as had broken Kuno von Rieseneck’s career seems to him a crime against humanity. He is often called avaricious, because, like Frau von Sigmundskron, he is often very, very poor; but he has never been called a coward, nor a traitor, by any man, or class of men, who knew him. All gentlemen throughout the world are brothers, it is true, for to be a gentleman is to be brave, honest, courteous, and nothing more. But the gentlemen of different nations are like brothers brought up in different schools. An Englishman who should demand satisfaction by arms, of another Englishman, for a hasty word spoken in jest, would be considered a lunatic in the clubs, and if he carried his warlike intentions into effect with the consent of his adversary, and killed his man, the law would hang him without mercy as a common murderer. On the other hand, a German who should refuse a duel, or not demand one if insulted, would be dismissed from the army and made an outcast from society. And these things do not depend upon civilisation, since modern Germany is probably more civilised than modern England. They depend upon national character.

      When Greif heard of his uncle’s existence, and, at the same time, of his disgrace, it seemed to him that a cloud had descended upon his own brilliant future. He had long nursed in secret his desire for a military life, and had often wondered at his father’s unwillingness to discuss the matter. He now suddenly understood the true state of the case and realised, by the measure of his disappointment, the magnitude to which his hopes had grown. But there was something more than this in the despondency which seized upon him so quickly and would not be thrown off.

      ‘Does Hilda know this?’ he asked, at length giving expression to his thoughts.

      Greifenstein did not answer at once.

      ‘I do not think her mother would have told her,’ he said after a time. ‘But her mother knows.’

      ‘And my mother does not?’

      ‘No, nor never shall, if I can help it.’

      If the two men spoke little on their homeward walk it was not for lack of sympathy between them. On the contrary, if anything could strengthen the strong bond that united them, it was the knowledge that they had a secret in common which they must keep together.

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      To suppose that Hilda, at eighteen years of age, was like the majority of young girls as old as she, would be to imagine that human character is not influenced by its surroundings. She was neither a village Gretchen, such as Faust loved and ruined, nor was she the omniscient damsel of modern society. During the greater part of her existence she had lived without any companions but her mother and the faithful Berbel. But she had grown up in a wild forest country, in a huge dismantled stronghold, of which the windows looked out over the tumbling torrent, and across endless thousands of giant trees, whose dark tops rose like sombre points of shadow out of the deeper shade below. Even the sky was not blue. Half a kingdom of firs and pines and hemlocks drank the colour from the air and left but a sober neutral

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