Chapter 66
"I knew it was a lie."
"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no shame?" she said.
"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.
"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"
"G.o.d knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and forgive me, and say farewell!"
Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.
"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are betrayed by our own pa.s.sions, and the chief of those pa.s.sions is love.
It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and goading some to great wrong."
"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.
"Would to G.o.d it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.
"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night.
There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."
"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.
Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."
"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.
"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"
Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since we parted at these doors," she said.
"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said Hugh.
"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, pa.s.sionately.
Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said, in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you--you and I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name--my place--my inheritance."
Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.
"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What has he done to earn your love that I have not
"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.
"Selfish?--be it so. All love is selfish."
"Leave me--leave me!"
Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever, and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will promise me one thing."
"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.
"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great, think of the misery that it buys--and buries. You would sacrifice something for me, would you not?"
His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light of hopeless love was in his great eyes.
"Say that you would--for me--me!" He held out his arms toward her as if soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.
Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.
"Let me think that you would do something for my sake--mine," he pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."
"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet with tears.
"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even knelt in prayer in G.o.d's house that man might see or G.o.d might hear.
Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."
"What is it?" said Greta, again.
Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."
Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.
"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said, quietly.
"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to me," said Hugh.
"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to them is to be true to him."
There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the white heat of high pa.s.sion that broke the silence when he spoke again.
"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is any truth in what that priest told us to-night--if it is not a dream and a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple--if there is a G.o.d and judgment--my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than these; but it was not to be."
"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.
Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.
"That your husband is in my hands--that one word from me would commit him to a doom more dreadful than death--that if he is to be saved as a free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."
"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.
"Choose--quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband for lifelong imprisonment?"
Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of them. He stepped before her.
"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie.
I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my inheritance, and let a b.a.s.t.a.r.d stand in my place, if I had not believed it?"
"What further lie is this?" said Greta.