Linnet: A Romance

Maud nodded assent, and went on unconcerned, with a quiet smile on her calm face, arranging the geranium and maiden-hair in a neat little spray at one side of her much frizzed locks, with the profoundest attention.

“Well?” she said inquiringly at last, as Will, floundering on, paused for a moment and glanced at her. “So the lady with many names – Casalmonte, Hausberger, Linnet, Carlotta, and so forth – is this moment at your rooms, and I suppose is going to sup there. A queer proceeding, isn’t it? It’s no business of mine, of course, but I certainly must say I should have thought your own sister was the last person in the world even you would dream of coming to tell about this nice little escapade of yours.”

“Maud,” Will said, very seriously, “let’s be grave; this is no laughing matter.” Then, in brief words once more, he went on to explain the difficulty he felt as to Linnet’s arrangements for the immediate future. He said nothing about the divorce, of course; nothing about his love and devotion towards Linnet. Those chords could have struck no answering string in the British matron’s severely proper nature. He merely pointed out that Linnet was a friend in distress, whose good name he wished to save against unjust aspersions. Having left her husband she ought to go somewhere to a responsible married woman – “And I’ve come to ask you, Maud,” he concluded, “as an act of Christian charity to a sister in distress, will you take her in, for to-night at least, till I can see with greater clearness what to do with her in future?”

Maud stared at him in blank horror. “My dear boy,” she cried, “are you mad? What a proposal to make to me! How on earth can you ever think I could possibly do it?”

“And it would be such a splendid chance, too,” Will cried, carried away by his enthusiasm – “the Dean coming to dinner and all! in a clergyman’s house, with such people to vouch for her! Why, with backers like that, scandal itself couldn’t venture to wag its vile tongue at her!”

Maud looked at him with a faint quiver in her clear-cut nostrils. “That’s just it!” she answered promptly. “But there, Will, you’re a heathen! You’ll never understand! You have quite a congenital incapacity for appreciating and entering into the clerical situation. Isn’t that so, dear Arthur? You belong to another world – the theatrical world – where morals and religion are all topsy-turvy, anyhow! How could you suppose for a moment a clergyman’s wife could receive into her house, on such a night as this, an opera-singing woman with three aliases to her name, who’s just run away in a fit of pique from her lawful husband! Whether she’s right or wrong, she’s not a person one could associate with! To mix oneself up like that with a playhouse scandal! and the Dean coming to dine, whose influence for a canonry’s so important to us all! The dear, good Dean! Now Arthur, isn’t Will just too ridiculous for anything?”

“It certainly would seem extremely inconsistent,” Arthur Sartoris replied, fingering that clerical face dubiously; “extremely inconsistent.” But he added after a pause, with a professional afterthought, “Though, of course, Maud, if she’s leaving him on sufficient grounds – compelled to it, in fact, not through any fault of her own, but through the man’s misconduct – and if she thinks it would be wrong to put up with him any longer, yet feels anxious to avoid all appearance of evil, why, naturally, as Christians, we sympathise with her most deeply. But as to taking her into our house – now really, Will, you must see – I put it to you personally – would you do it yourself if you were in our position?”

Maud for her part, being a woman, was more frankly worldly. “And it’d get into the papers, too!” she cried. “Labby’d put it in the papers… Just imagine it in Truth, Arthur! – ‘I’m also told, on very good authority, that the erring soul, having drifted from her anchorage, went straight from her husband’s house to Mrs Arthur Sartoris’s. Now, Mrs Arthur Sartoris, it may be necessary to inform the innocent reader, is Mr Deverill’s sister; and Mr Deverill is the well-known author and composer of Cophetua’s Adventure, – in which capacity he must doubtless have enjoyed, for many months, abundant opportunities for making the best of the Signora’s society. Verbum sap. – but I would advise the Reverend Arthur to remember in future the Apostle’s injunctions on the duty of ruling his own house well, and having his children in subjection with all gravity.’ That’s just about what Labby would say of it!”

Will’s face burned bright red. If his own sister spoke thus, what things could he expect the outer world to say of his stainless Linnet. “You forget,” he said, a little angrily, “the Apostle advises, too, in the self-same passage, that a bishop should be given to hospitality; and that his wife should be grave; not a slanderer; sober and faithful in all things. I came to you to-night hoping you would extend that hospitality to an injured wife who desires to take refuge blamelessly from an unworthy husband. If you refuse her such aid, you are helping in so far to drive her into evil courses. I asked you as my sister; I’m sorry you’ve refused me.”

“But, my dear boy,” Maud began, “you must see for yourself that for a clergyman’s wife to have her name mixed up – oh, good gracious, there’s the bell! They’re coming, Will, I’m sure. I must rush up this very moment, and put on my bodice at once. Thank goodness, Arthur, you’re dressed, or what ever should I do? Stop down here and receive them.”

“Then you absolutely refuse?” Will cried, as she fled, scuffling, woman-wise, to the door.

“I absolutely refuse!” Maud answered from the landing. “I’m surprised that you should even dream of asking your sister to take into her house, under circumstances like these, a runaway actress-woman!” And, with a glance towards the hall, she scurried hastily upstairs, with the shuffling gait of a woman surprised, to her own bedroom.

Mechanically, Will shook hands with that irreproachable Arthur Sartoris, passed the Dean, all wrinkled smiles, in the vestibule below, and returned again with a hot heart to his waiting hansom. “Hans Place, Chelsea!” he cried through the flap: and the cabman drove him straight to Rue’s miniature palace.

Mrs Palmer was at home; yes, sir; but she was dressing for dinner. “Say I must see her at once!” Will cried with a burst. And in less than half-a-minute Rue descended, looking sweet, to him.

She had thrown a light tea-gown rapidly around her to come down; her hair was just knotted in a natural coil on top; she was hardly presentable, she said, with an apologetic smile, and a quick glance at the glass; but Will thought he had never seen her look prettier or more charming in all his life than she looked that moment.

“I wouldn’t keep you waiting, Will,” she cried, seizing both his hands in hers. “I knew if you called at this unusual hour, you must want to see me about something serious.”

“It is serious,” Will answered, with a very grave face. “Rue, I’ve something to tell you that may surprise you much. That wretch Hausberger has been very, very cruel to Linnet. He’s offered her bodily violence to-day. And that’s not all; – she has proof, written proof of his intimacy with Philippina. He’s thrown her on the floor, and struck her and bruised her. So she’s left him at once – and she’s now at my chambers.”

A sudden shade came over Rue’s face. The shock was a terrible one. This news was different, very different indeed from what she expected to hear. Could Will have found out, she asked herself with a flutter, as she put on her tea-gown, that he loved her at last, better even than Linnet? Linnet had been away one whole long winter; and when he dined here last week, he was so kind and attentive! So she came down with a throbbing heart, all expectant of results. That was why Will had never seen her look so pretty before. And now, to find out it was all for Linnet he had come! All for Linnet, not for her! Ah me, the pity of it!

Yet she bore up bravely, all the same, though her lips quivered quick, and her eyelids blinked hard to suppress the rising moisture. “At your chambers!” she cried, with a jump of her heart. “O Will, she mustn’t stop there!”

She sank into a chair, and looked across at him piteously. Will, dimly perceptive, seized her hands once more, and held them in his own with a gentle pressure. Then he went on to explain, in very different words from those he had used to Maud, all that had happened that day to himself and to Linnet. He didn’t even hide from Rue the question of divorce, or the story of Linnet’s complete self-surrender. He knew Rue would understand; he knew Linnet herself would not be afraid of Rue’s violating her confidence. He said everything out, exactly as he felt it. Last of all, he explained how he had been round to Maud’s, what he had asked of Maud, and what answer Maud had made to him.

He had got so far when Rue rose and faced him. Her cheeks were very white, and she trembled violently. But she spoke out like a woman, with a true woman’s heart. “She must come here at once, Will,” she cried. “There’s not a moment to lose. She must come here at once. Go quick home and fetch her.”

“You’re quite sure you can take her in, Rue?” Will asked, with a very guilty feeling, seizing her hands once more. “I can’t bear to ask you; but since you offer it of your own accord – ”

Rue held his hands tremulously in her own for awhile, and gazed at him hard with a wistful countenance. “Dear Will,” she faltered out in a half-articulate voice, “I invite her here myself; I beg of you to bring her. Though it breaks my own heart – it breaks my heart. Yet I ask you all the same – bring her here, oh, bring her!”

Heart-broken she looked, indeed. Will leant forward automatically. “Dear Rue,” he cried, “you’re too good – too good and kind for anything; I never knew till this moment how very good and kind you were. And I love you so much!” He held forward his face. “Only once!” he murmured, drawing her towards him with one arm. “Just this once! It’s so good of you!”

Rue held up her face in return, and answered him back in a choking voice, “Yes, yes; just this once, O Will, my Will – before I feel you’re Linnet’s for ever!”

He clasped her tight in his arms. Rue let him embrace her unresistingly. She kissed him long and hard, and nestled there tenderly. For fifty whole seconds she was in heaven indeed. At last, with a little start, she broke away and left him. “Now go,” she said, standing a yard or two off, and gazing at him, tearfully. “Go at once and fetch her. Every moment she stops in your rooms is compromising… Go, go; goodbye!.. You’re mine no longer. But, Will, don’t be afraid I shall be sad when she comes! I’ll have my good cry out in my own room first; and, by the time she arrives, I’ll be smiling to receive her!”

CHAPTER XLIV

AND WILL’S

At Will’s chambers, meanwhile, Linnet sat and waited, her flushed face in her hands, her hot ears tingling. She had plenty of time in Will’s absence to reflect and to ruminate. Horror and shame for her own outspokenness began to overcome her. If Will had accepted her sacrifice, indeed, as frankly as she offered it, that profound emotional nature would have felt nothing of the kind: her passion would have hallowed and sanctified her love in her own eyes – not as the Church could have done, to be sure; not from the religious side at all; but still, from the alternative point of view of the human heart, which to her was almost equally sacred in its way, ’twould have hallowed and sanctified it. Linnet would have regarded her union with Will as sinful and wrong, but not as impure or unholy; she wouldn’t have attempted to justify it, but she would never have felt ashamed of it. She recognised it as the union imposed upon her by the laws of her own highest nature; the laws of God, as she understood them, might forbid it and punish it – they never could make it anything else for her than pure and beautiful and true and ennobling.

But Will’s refusal, for her own sake, to accept her self-surrender, filled her soul with shame for her slighted womanhood. She understood Will’s reasons; she saw how unselfish and kind were his motives; but still, the sense remained that she had debased herself before him, all to no purpose. She had offered him the most precious gift a woman can offer to any man – and he, he had rejected it. Linnet bowed down her head in intense humiliation. On her own scheme of life, she would have been far less dishonoured by Will’s accepting her then and there, in a hot flood of passion, than by his proposal to wait till she could get a purely meaningless and invalid release from her sacrament with Andreas. Having once made up her mind to desert her husband and follow her own heart, in spite of ultimate consequences, it seemed to her almost foolish that Will should shrink on her account from the verdict of the world, when she herself did not shrink – so great was her love – from the wrath of heaven and eternal punishment.

But, as she sat there and ruminated, it began gradually to dawn upon her that in some ways Will was right; even if she sinned boldly and openly, as she was prepared to sin, before Our Lady and the Saints, it might be well for her immediate comfort and happiness to keep up appearances before English society. Perhaps it was desirable for the next few days, till the talk blew over, to go, as Will said, under some married woman’s protection. But what married woman? Not that calmly terrible Mrs Sartoris, at any rate. She dreaded Will’s sister, more even than she dreaded the average middle-aged British matron. She knew how Maud would treat her, if she took her in at all; better anything at that moment of volcanic passion than the cold and cutting repose, the icy calmness of the British matron’s unemotional demeanour.

As Linnet was sitting there with her face in her hands, longing for Will’s return, and half-doubting in her own heart whether she had done quite right, even from her own heart’s standpoint, in coming straight away to him – Florian Wood, in a faultless frock-coat, with a moss-rose in his buttonhole, strolled by himself in a lazy mood down Piccadilly. It was Florian’s way to lounge through life, and he was lounging as usual. He pulled out his watch. Hullo! time for dinner! Now, Florian was always a creature of impulse. He hesitated for a moment, with cane poised in his dainty hand, which of three courses to pursue that lay open before him. Should he drop into the Savile for his evening meal; should he go home by himself to Grosvenor Gardens; or should he take pot-luck with Will Deverill in Duke Street? Bah! the dinner at the Savile’s a mere bad table d’hôte. At home, he would be lonely with a solitary chop. The social instinct within him impelled him at once to seek for society with his old friend in St James’s.

He opened the door for himself, for he had a latch-key that fitted it. In the hall, Ellen was seated, and the man-servant of the house was standing by and flirting with her. “Mr Deverill’s not at home, sir,” he said, with a hurried start, as Florian entered.

“Never mind,” the Epicurean philosopher replied, with his bland, small smile. “Pretty girl on the chair there. He’s coming back to dinner, I suppose, at the usual hour. Very well, that’s right; I’ll go up and wait for him. You can tell Mrs Watts to lay covers for two. I purpose to dine here.”

“Beg your pardon, sir,” the man said, placing himself full in front of Florian’s delicate form, so as to half-block the passage; “there’s a lady upstairs.” He hesitated, and simpered. “I rather think,” he continued, very doubtful how to proceed, “Mr Deverill wished nobody to go up till he came back again. Leastways, I had orders.”

“Why, it’s Signora Casalmonte!” Florian broke in, interrupting him; for he recognised the pretty girl on a second glance as the housemaid at Linnet’s. An expansive smile diffused itself over his close-shaven face. This was indeed a discovery! Linnet come to Will Deverill’s! And with a portmanteau, too! – Will, whose stern morality had read him so many pretty lectures on conduct in the Tyrol. And Linnet – that devout Catholic, so demure, so immaculate, the very pink of public singers, the pure flower of the stage! Who on earth would have believed it? But there, it’s these quiet souls who are always the deepest! While Florian himself, for all his talk, how innocent he was, how harmless, how free from every taint of guile, wile, or deception! What reconciled him to life, as he grew older every day, was the thought that, after all, ’twas so very amusing.

The man hesitated still more. “I don’t think you must go up, sir,” he said, still barring the way, “Mr Deverill told me if Hare Houseberger called, to say he wasn’t at home to him.”

Florian’s face was a study. It rippled over with successive waves of stifled laughter. But Ellen, with feminine quickness, saw the error of the man’s clumsy male intelligence. It would never do for Mr Wood, that silver-tongued man-about-town to go away and explain at every club in London how he’d caught the Casalmonte, with her maid and her portmanteau, on a surreptitious visit to Will Deverill’s chambers. Better far he should go up and see the Signora herself. Principals, in such cases, should invent their own lies, untrammelled by their subordinates. The Signora might devise what excuse she thought best to keep Florian’s mouth shut; and Will himself might come back before long to corroborate it.

“No, no,” she said hastily, with much evident artlessness. “You can go up, sir, of course. The Signora’s just waiting to see Mr Deverill.”

Florian brushed past the man with a spring, and ran lightly up the stairs, with quite as much agility as so small a body can be expected to compass. He burst into the room unannounced. Linnet rose, in very obvious dismay, to greet him. She was taken aback, Florian could see – and glad indeed he was to notice it. This little contretemps was clearly the wise man’s opportunity. Providential, providential! He grasped her hand with warmth, printing a delicate little squeeze on the soft bit of muscle between thumb and fingers. “What, Linnet!” he cried, “alone, and in Will Deverill’s rooms! How lucky I am to catch you! This is really delightful!”

Linnet sank back in her chair. She hardly knew what to say, how to cover her confusion. But excuse herself she must; some portion at least of what had passed she must explain to him. In a faltering voice, with many pauses and hesitations, she told him a faint outline of what had happened that day – her quarrel with Andreas, his cruel treatment, how he had struck her and hurt her, how she had fled from him precipitately. She hinted to him even in her most delicate way some dim suggestion of her husband’s letter to Philippina. Florian stroked himself and smiled; he nodded wisely. “We knew all that before,” he put in at last, with a knowing little air of sagacious innuendo. “We knew Friend Hausberger’s little ways. Though, how quiet he kept over them! A taciturn Don Juan! a most prudent Lothario!” It was the wise man’s cue now to set Linnet still further against her husband.

“So I left him,” Linnet went on simply, with transparent naïveté; “I left him, and came away, just packing a few clothes into my portmanteau, hurriedly. I didn’t know where to go, so I came straight to Mr Deverill’s. He was always a good friend of mine, you know, was Mr Deverill.” She paused, and blushed. “I’ve sent him out,” she continued, with a little pardonable deviation from the strictest veracity, “to see if he can find me some house among his friends – some English lady’s – where I can stop for the present, till I know what I mean to do, now I’ve come away from Andreas. He’s going to his sister’s first, to see if she can take me in; after that, if she can’t, he’s going to look about elsewhere.”

She gazed up at him timidly. She felt, as she spoke, Will was right after all. How could she brave the whole world’s censure, openly and frankly expressed, if she shrank so instinctively from the prying gaze of that one man, Florian? God, who reads all hearts, would know, if she sinned, she sinned for true love; but the world – that hateful world – Linnet leant back in her seat and shut her eyes with horror.

As for Florian, however, he seized the occasion with avidity. He saw his chance now. He was all respectful sympathy. The man Hausberger was a wretch who had never been fit for her; he had entrapped her by fraud; she did right to leave him. What horrid marks on her arm, and on that soft brown neck of hers! Did the cur do that? What a creature, to lay hands on so divine a woman! Though, of course, it was unwise of her to come round to Will’s; the world – and here Florian assumed his most virtuously sympathetic expression of face – the world is so cruel, so suspicious, so censorious. For themselves, they two moved on a higher plane; they saw through the conventions and restrictions of society. Still, it was always well to respect the convenances. Mrs Sartoris! Oh, dear, no! unsympathetic, out of touch with her! And yet, oh, how dangerous to stop here in these rooms one moment longer. With dexterous little side hints the wise man worked upon Linnet’s fears insensibly. That fellow in the passage, now – the people of the house – so unwise, so uncertain; who could tell friend from enemy?

As he spoke, Linnet grew every moment more and more uneasy. “I wish Will would come back!” she cried. “I wish I had somewhere to go! It makes me so afraid, you see – this delay, this uncertainty.”

Florian played a trump card boldly. “Why not come off with me at once, then,” he suggested, “to my sister’s?”

“Your sister’s?” Linnet asked. “But I didn’t know you had one!”

Florian waved his hand airily, with a compulsive gesture, as if he could call sisters to command from the vasty deep, in any required quantity – as indeed was the case. “Oh dear, yes,” he answered. “She hasn’t been long in town. She – er – she lives mostly in Brittany.” He paused for a second to give his fancy free play. Ah, happy thought! just so! – a clergyman’s wife would be the very thing for the purpose. “Her husband’s chaplain at Dinan,” he went on, with his bland smile, romancing readily. “She doesn’t often come over. She’s not well off, poor dear; but this year she’s taken a house for the season.. in Pimlico. You might go round there, at least, while you’re waiting for Will. It’s less compromising than this; and we could leave a note behind to tell him where he could find you.”

Linnet debated internally. Florian paused, and looked judicial. “What sort of person is she?” Linnet asked at last, hesitating. “Kind – nice – sympathetic?”

“You’ve summed her up in one word!” Florian answered with a flourish. “Sympathetic – that’s just it; she’s bubbling over with sympathy. She goes out to all troubled souls. Though I’m her own brother, and therefore naturally prejudiced against her, I never knew anyone so intensely capable of throwing herself forth towards other people as my sister Marian. She’s the exact antipodes of that unspeakable Sartoris woman; human, human, human, above all things human; she brims and overflows with the milk of human kindness! And she took such a fancy to you, too, when she saw you one night, in Cophetua’s Adventure. She said to me, ‘O Florian, do you think she’d come and stay with us? I’d give anything to know that sweet creature personally.’ I told her, of course, you never stayed with anybody under the rank of a crowned head or a millionaire soap-boiler. She was quite disappointed, and she’d be only too delighted now, I’m sure, if she could be of any service to you.”