Linnet: A Romance

At last she ceased, and looked hard at Will, inquiringly.

“So I’ve come to you, Will,” she said, in her simple way, with childlike confidence; “and, now I’ve come, may I stop with you always? May I never go away again?”

Will’s heart beat high. Her loving trust, her perfect self-surrender, could not fail to touch him. Yet he gazed at her ruefully. “My darling,” he said with a burst, belying his words as he spoke by laying her soft head once more in the hollow of his shoulder; “you shouldn’t have come to me. You’ve done very very wrong – very foolishly I mean. I’m the exact last person on earth you should have come to.”

Linnet nestled to him close. “But I love you,” she cried, pleadingly. “You’re the only living soul I’d have cared to come to.”

“Yes, yes; I know,” Will answered hastily. “I didn’t mean that, of course. You’re mine, mine, mine! Sooner or later, now, you must certainly come to me. But for the present, darling, I mean, it’s so unwise, so foolish. It’ll prejudice your case, if it ever comes to be heard of. We must take you somewhere else – somewhere free from all blame, don’t you see – for the immediate future.”

“Prejudice my case!” Linnet exclaimed, looking up at him in amazement, and growing more shamefaced still with awe at her own boldness. “You must take me somewhere else! Ah, Will, I don’t understand you. No, no; I must stop here – I must stop here with you for ever. I’ve broken away from him now; I’ve broken away from everything. I can never, never go back. I’m yours, and yours only.”

“No; you can never go back, Linnet,” Will answered decisively. “You’re mine, darling, mine, mine, mine only”; and he kissed her again fervently. “But we must be prudent, of course, if we’re to make this thing straight before the eyes of the world; and for your sake, dearest, you must see yourself how absolutely necessary it is that we should make it so.”

Linnet gazed at him once more in childlike astonishment. She failed utterly to comprehend him. “What do you mean, Will?” she faltered out. “You don’t mean to say I’m not to stop with you?”

Her eyes filled fast with tears, and her face looked up at his, full of wistful pleading. She clung to him so tight, in her love and her terror, that Will bent over her yet again and covered her with kisses. “Yes, darling; you’re to stop with me,” he cried; “to stop with me all your life – but not just at present. We must make this thing straight in the regular way first. Meanwhile, you must stay with some friend – some lady whose name is above suspicion. All must be carefully arranged. Even to have come here to-night may be positively fatal. We must play our cards cautiously. You’ve kept the letter?”

Linnet drew it, much crumpled, from the folds of her bosom, and handed it to him at once, without a moment’s hesitation. What he meant, she couldn’t imagine. Will ran his eye over it hastily. Then he glanced at the deep red marks on her neck, and her half-bared arm – for she had rolled back her sleeve like a child to show him. “This is conclusive,” he said slowly. “Prudent man as he is, he has cut his own throat. And you had a witness, too – a friendly witness; that’s lucky. We must take you to a doctor, and let him see you to-night, as soon as ever we’ve arranged where you can sleep this evening. The evidence of cruelty – and of the other thing – is more than sufficient. No court in England would refuse you a divorce upon such conduct.”

Linnet started at the word. “Divorce!” she cried, growing redder and still redder with shame. “Oh, Will, not that, not that! You don’t understand me. Divorce would be no use in the world to me. I’m a Catholic, you must remember, and I could never, never marry you. If I did, it would only be a mockery and a snare. It would be worse than sin; it would be open rebellion. I want no divorce; I want only to be allowed to stop here with you for ever.”

She laid her hand on his arm, as if to draw him to herself in some natural symbolism. Her face was flushed with her womanly modesty. She hid it once more like a shy child on his shoulder. Will looked at her, sore puzzled. How strange that this pure and passionate nature should see things in a light that to him was so unfamiliar! But he remembered what she had said to him in Philippina’s trouble, and began to understand now in what manner she regarded it.

“Well, but, Linnet,” he cried eagerly lifting her head from where she put it, and laying her cheek against his own, “you must see for yourself how much better it would be, if only from the mere worldly point of view, to arrange this matter as the world would arrange it. Granting even that a marriage after an English divorce would mean to you, from the strictly religious standpoint, simply nothing – why, surely, even then, it must be no small matter to set oneself right with the world, to be received and acknowledged as an honest woman, and my wife, in ordinary English society. If we get a divorce, we can do all that; and to get a divorce, we must act now circumspectly. But if we don’t get one, and if you try to stop here with me without it – remember, dear, the penalty; you lose position at once, and become for society an utter outcast.”

Linnet flung herself upon him once more in a perfect fervour of abandonment. Her love and her shame were fighting hard within her. Her passionate Southern nature overcame her entirely. “Will, Will, dear Will,” she cried, hiding her face from him yet again, “you don’t understand; you can’t fathom the depth of the sacrifice I would make for you. I come to you to-day bringing my life in my hand – my eternal life, my soul, my future; I offer you all I have, all I am, all I will be. For you I give up my good name, my faith, my hopes of salvation. For you I will endure the worst tortures of purgatory. I’ve tried to keep away – I’ve tried hard to keep away – Our Dear Lady knows how hard – all these months, all these years – but I can keep away no longer. Two great powers seemed to pull different ways within me. My Church said to me plainly, ‘You must never think of him; you must stop with Andreas.’ My heart said to me no less plainly, but a thousand times more persuasively, ‘You must fly from that man’s side; you must go to Will Deverill.’ I knew, if I followed my heart, the fires of hell would rise up and take hold of me. I haven’t minded for that; I’ve dared the fires of hell; the two have fought it out – the Church and my heart – and, my heart has conquered.”

She paused, and drew a great sigh. “Dear Will,” she went on softly, burying her head yet deeper in that tender bosom, “if I got a divorce, the divorce would be nothing to me – a mere waste paper. What people think of me matters little, very little in my mind, compared to what God and my Church will say of me. If I stop with you here, I shall be living in open sin; but I shall be living with the man my heart loves best; I shall have at least my own heart’s unmixed approval. While I lived with Andreas, the Church and God approved; but my own heart told me, every night of my life, I was living in sin, unspeakable sin against human nature and my own body. Oh, Will, I don’t know why, but it somehow seems as if God and our hearts were at open war; you must live by one or you must live by the other. If I stop with you, I’m living by my own heart’s law; I will take the sin upon me; I will pay the penalty. If God punishes me for it at last – well, I will take my punishment and bear it bravely; I won’t flinch from pain; I won’t shrink from the fires of hell or purgatory. But, at least, I do it all with my eyes wide open. I know I’m disobeying God’s law for the law of my own heart. I won’t profane God’s holy sacrament of marriage by asking a heretical and un-Catholic Church to bless a union which is all my own – my own heart’s making, not God’s ordinance, God’s sacrament. I love you so well, darling, I can never leave you. Let me stop with you, Will; let me stop with you! Let me live with you; let me die with you; let me burn in hell-fire for you!”

A man is a man. And the man within Will Deverill drove him on irresistibly. He clasped her hard once more to his straining bosom. “As you wish,” he said, quivering. “Your will is law, Linnet.”

“No, no,” she cried, nestling against him, with a satisfied sigh of delight. “My law is Will.” And she looked up and smiled at her own little conceit. “You shall do as you wish with me.”

CHAPTER XLII

PRUDENCE

It was a trying position for Will. He hardly knew what to do. Duty and love pulled him one way, chivalry and the hot blood of youth the other. When a beautiful woman makes one an offer like that, it would be scarcely human, scarcely virile to resist it. And Will was not only a man but also a poet – for a poet is a man with whom moods and impulses are stronger than with most of us. As poet, he cared little for mere conventional rules; it was the consequences to Linnet herself he had most to think about. But he saw it was no use talking to her from the standpoint he would have adopted with most ordinary Englishwomen. It was no use pointing out to her what he himself realised most distinctly, that her union with Andreas was in its very essence an unholy one, an insult to her own body, a treason against all that was truest and best in her being. It ran counter from the very first to the dictates of her own heart, which are the voice of Nature and of God within us. But to Linnet, those plain truths would have seemed but the veriest human sophisms. She looked upon her marriage with Andreas as a holy sacrament of the Church; and any attempt to set aside that sacrament by an earthly court, and to substitute for it a verbal marriage that was no marriage at all to her, but a profound mockery, would have seemed to her soul ten thousand times worse than avowed desertion and unconcealed wickedness. Better live in open sin, she thought, though she paid for it with her body, than insult her God by pretending to invoke his aid and blessing on an adulterous union.

Will argued feebly with her for a while, but it was all to no purpose. The teachings of her youth had too firm a hold upon her. He saw she was quite fixed in her own mind upon one thing; she might stop with him or she might go back, but she was Andreas Hausberger’s wife by the Church’s act, and no earthly power could make anything else of her. So Will gave up the attempt to convince her, as all in vain, at least for the present. He saw what he had to do first was to provide at once for the immediate future. Linnet couldn’t remain in his rooms alone with him that night; to him, at least, so much was certain. For her own dear sake, he must save her from herself; he must throw at least some decent veil for the moment over the relations between them.

For Linnet herself, long before this, the die was cast. She felt she had already deserted her husband; she had sinned in her heart the unspeakable sin; all the rest was in her eyes mere detail and convention. But she realised gratefully none the less Will’s goodness and kindness to her. “You are better to me far than I’ve been to myself,” she cried, clinging hard to him still; “I’ve wrecked my own soul, and you would try to save my poor earthly body.” And yet, in the mere intoxication of being near him and touching him, she more than half-forgot all else on earth; her warm Southern nature rejoiced in the light of her poet’s presence. She cared for nothing now; she thought of nothing, feared nothing; with Will by her side, she would gladly give her soul to burn for ever in nethermost hell, for the sake of those precious, those fleeting moments.

“I must find some place for you to spend the night in, Linnet,” Will said at last seriously. “Even if it were only to save scandal for the immediate future, I should have to do that; by to-morrow, all the world in London would be talking of it. But I hope, after a while, when I’ve reasoned this thing out with you, you may see it all differently – you may come round to my point of view; and then, you’ll be glad I arranged things now so as to leave the last loophole of divorce and re-marriage still open before you.”

Linnet shook her head firmly. “I’m a Catholic,” she said, with a sigh, “and to me, dear Will, religion means simply the Catholic faith and the Catholic practice. If I gave up that, I should give up everything. Either marriage is a sacrament, or it’s nothing at all. It’s to the sacrament alone that I attach importance. But if you wish me to go, I’ll go anywhere you take me; though, if I obeyed my own heart, I’d never move away from your dear side again, my darling, my darling!”

She clung to him with passionate force. Will felt it was hard to drive her from him against her will – how hard, perhaps, no woman could ever tell; for with women, the aggressiveness of love is a thing unknown; but for the love’s sake he bore her, he kept down his longing for her. “Have you brought any luggage with you?” he asked at last, drawing himself suddenly back, and descending all at once to the level of the practical.

“A little portmanteau, and – all I need for the night,” Linnet answered with a deep blush, still clinging hard to him. “My maid’s in the passage.”

“But how about the theatre this evening?” Will inquired with a little start. “You know, this was to have been your first appearance this season.”

Linnet opened her palms outward with a speaking gesture. “The theatre!” she cried, half-scornfully. “What do I care for the theatre? Now I’ve come to you, Will, what do I care for anything? If I had my own way, I’d stop here with you for ever and ever. The theatre – well, the theatre might do as best it could without me!”

Will paused, and reflected. He saw he must absolutely take measures to protect this hot passionate creature against the social consequences of her own hot passion. “You’ve got an understudy, I suppose,” he said; “someone who could fill the part pretty decently in your enforced absence? They don’t depend altogether upon you, I hope, for to-night’s performance.”

“Yes; I’ve got an understudy,” Linnet answered, in a very careless voice, clasping his hand tight in hers, and gripping it hard now and again, as though understudies were a matter of the supremest indifference to her. “She doesn’t know her part very well, and I’m the soul of the piece; but I daresay they could get along with her very tolerably enough somehow. Besides,” she added, in a little afterthought, looking down at her wounded arm, “after what Andreas has done to me, I’m too ill and too shaken to appear to-night, whatever might have happened. Even if I’d stopped at home, instead of coming here, I couldn’t possibly have undertaken to sing in public this evening.”

“Very well, then,” Will replied, making up his mind at once. “We must act accordingly. If that’s the case, the best thing I can do is to go out and telegraph to the management, without delay, that Signora Casalmonte is seriously indisposed, and won’t be able to appear in Carmen this evening.”

“To go out!” Linnet cried, clutching his arm in dismay. “Oh, dear Will, don’t do that! Don’t leave me for a moment. Suppose Andreas were to come, and to find me here alone? What on earth could I do? What on earth could I say to him?”

Will stroked her cheek once more, that beautiful soft cheek that he loved so dearly, as he answered in a grave and very serious tone, “Now, Linnet, you must be brave; and, above all, you must be practical. This is a crisis in our lives. A great deal depends upon it. If you love me, you must do as I advise you in this emergency. You have done quite right to come away from Andreas – instantly, the very moment you discovered this letter – the very moment he offered you such unmanly violence. In that, you were true woman. You’re in the right now, and if you behave circumspectly, all the world will admit it; all the world will say so. But you mustn’t stop here one second longer than is absolutely necessary. You must spend the night with some friend whom we know, some lady of position and unblemished reputation; and the world must think you went straight from your husband’s roof to hers, when all these things happened.”

Linnet drew back, all aghast. “What, go from you!” she cried: “this first night of our love. O Will, dear Will! Go, go right away from you!”

“Yes,” Will answered firmly. “For the moment, the one thing needful is to find such a shelter for you. If you took refuge in a hotel or private lodging to-night, people would whisper and hint – you know what they would hint; we must stop their hateful whisperings! Now, darling, you mustn’t say no; you must act as I advise. I’m going out at once to find that lady. I shall ask my sister first – she’s a clergyman’s wife, and nothing looks so well as a clergyman’s wife in England. But if she objects, I must try some other woman. You’re agitated to-night, and I should be doing you a gross wrong if I took advantage now of your love and your agitation. Though it isn’t you and myself I’m thinking of at all; you and I know, you and I understand one another. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment; it isn’t that that I trouble for – it’s the hateful prying eyes and lying tongues of other people. For myself, darling, my creed is quite other than your priests’; I hold that, here to-night, you are mine, and I am yours; God and Nature have joined us, by the witness of our own hearts”; his voice sank solemnly, “and whom God hath joined together,” he added, in a very grave tone, “let not man put asunder.” He paused and hesitated. “But, for to-night,” he went on, “we must make some temporary arrangement; to-morrow and afterwards, we may settle for the future with one another at our leisure. When you look at it more calmly, dearest, you may change your mind about the matter of the divorce; till then, we must be cautious, and, in any case, we must take care to give the wicked world no handle against you.”

Linnet clutched him tight still. “But if you go,” she cried, all eagerness, “you won’t leave me; I may go with you.”

Her voice was so pleading, it cut Will to the quick to be obliged to refuse her. He leant over her tenderly. “My Linnet,” he cried, caressing her with one strong hand as he spoke, “I’d give worlds to be able to say yes; I can’t bear to say no to you. But for your own dear sake, once more, I must, I must. I can’t possibly let you go with me. Just consider this; how foolish it would be for me to let you be seen with me, to-night, on foot or in a cab, in the streets of London. All the world would say – with truth – you’d run away from your husband, and rushed straight into the arms of your lover. You and I know you’ve done perfectly right in that. But the world – the world would never know it. We must never let them have the chance of saying what, after their kind, we feel sure they would say about it.”

He rose from his chair. She clung to him, passionately. “Oh, take me with you, Will!” she cried, in a perfect fever of love. “Suppose Andreas was to come! Suppose he was to try and carry me off by force against my will! Oh, take me, take me with you! – don’t leave me here, alone, to Andreas!”

Sadly against his wish, Will disengaged her arms and untwined her fingers. He did it very tenderly but with perfect firmness. “No, darling,” he said, in a quiet tone of command; “let go! I must leave you here alone; it’s imperative. And it’s wisest so; it’s right; it’s the best thing to do for you. You are mine in future – you were always mine – and we shall have plenty of time to love one another as we will, hereafter. But to-night I must see you suffer no harm by this first false step of yours. My servant knows your husband well. He shall wait in the hall; and, if Andreas comes, deny us both to him. Your maid can come up here with you. I’ll take care no evil happens to you in any way in my absence. Trust me, trust me for this, Linnet; you needn’t be afraid of me.”

With a sudden change of front, Linnet held up her face to him. “I can always trust you, dear Will,” she cried. “I have always trusted you. All these long, long years I’ve known and seen how you yearned for one kiss – and would never take it. All these long, long years, I’ve known how you hungered and thirsted for my love – and kept down your own heart, letting only your eyes tell me a little – a very little – while your lips kept silence. The other men asked me many things, and asked me often – you know a singer’s life, what it is, and what rich people think of us, that they have but to offer us gold, and we will yield them anything. I never gave to one of them what I was keeping for you, my darling; I said to myself, ‘I am Andreas’s by the sacrament of the Church; but Will’s, Will’s, Will’s, by my own heart, and by the law of my nature!’ I trusted you then; I’ll trust you always. Good-bye, dear heart; go quick: come back again quick to me!”

She held the ripe red flower of her lips pursed upward towards his face. Will printed one hard kiss on that rich full mouth of hers. Then, sorely against his will, he tore himself away, and, in a tumult of warring impulses, descended the staircase.

CHAPTER XLIII

LINNET’S RIVAL

Will hailed a cab in St James’s Street, and drove straight to his sister’s, only pausing by the way to despatch a hasty telegram to the management of the Harmony: “Signora Casalmonte seriously indisposed. Quite unable to sing this evening. Must fill up her place for to-night, at least, and probably for to-morrow as well, by understudy.”

Then he went on to Maud’s. “Mrs Sartoris at home?”

“Yes, sir; but she’s just this minute gone up to dress for dinner.”

“Tell her I must see her at once,” Will exclaimed with decision, – “on important business. Let her come down just as she is. If she’s not presentable, ask her to throw a dressing-gown round her, or anything, to save time, and run down without delay, as I must speak with her immediately on a most pressing matter.”

The maid, smiling incredulity, ran upstairs with his message. Will, with heart on fire, much perturbed on Linnet’s account, walked alone into the drawing-room, to await his sister’s coming. He was too anxious to sit still; he paced up and down the room, with hands behind his back, and eyes fixed on the carpet. A minute.. two minutes.. four, five, ten passed, and yet no Maud. It seemed almost as if she meant to keep him waiting on purpose. He chafed at it inwardly; at so critical a juncture, surely she might hurry herself after such an urgent message.

At last, Maud descended – ostentatiously half-dressed. She wore an evening skirt – very rich and handsome; but, in place of a bodice, she had thrown loosely around her a becoming blue bedroom jacket, trimmed with dainty brown facings. Arthur Sartoris, in full clerical evening costume and spotless white tie, followed close behind her. Maud burst into the room with a stately sweep of implied remonstrance. “This is very inconvenient, Will,” she said in her chilliest tone, holding up one cheek as she spoke in a frigid way for a fraternal salute, and pulling her jacket together symbolically – “very, very inconvenient. We’ve the Dean and his wife coming to dine, as you know, in a quarter of an hour – and the Jenkinses, and the Macgregors, and those people from St Christopher’s. Fortunately, I happened to go up early to dress, and had got pretty well through with my hair when your name was announced, or I’m sure I don’t know how I could ever have come down to you. Oh, Arthur – you’re ready – run and get me the maiden-hair and the geranium from my room; I can be sticking them in before the glass, while Will’s talking to me about this sudden and mysterious business of his. They’re in the tumbler on the wash-hand-stand, behind the little red pot; and – wait a moment – of course I shall want some hairpins – the thin twisted American ones. You know where I keep them – in the silver-topped box. Go quick, there’s a dear. Well, Will, what do you want me for?”

This was a discouraging reception, to be sure, and boded small good for his important errand. Will knew well on a dinner night the single emotion of a British matron! Church, crown, and constitution might fall apart piecemeal before Maud Sartoris’s eyes, and she would take no notice of them. Still at least he must try, for Linnet’s sake he must try; and he began accordingly. In as brief words as he could find, he explained hastily to Maud the nature and gravity of the existing situation. Signora Casalmonte, that beautiful, graceful singer who had made the success of Cophetua’s Adventure – Signora Casalmonte (he never spoke of her as “Linnet” to Maud, of course,) had long suffered terribly at the hands of her husband, whose physical cruelty, not to mention other things, had driven her to-day to leave his house hurriedly, without hope of return again. Flying in haste from his violence, and not knowing where to look for aid in her trouble, she had taken refuge for the moment – Will eyed his sister close – it was an error of judgment – no more – at his rooms in St James’s. “You recollect,” he said apologetically, “we were very old friends; I had known her in the Tyrol, and had so much to do with her while she was singing in my opera.”