Linnet: A Romance
agreeable excursion. The Herr Vicar was prepared to make free use of the
Mammon of Unrighteousness—in the Church’s service; a good pastor
employs it without stint or compunction to secure the eternal bliss of
the particular flock committed to his guidance.
Not that the astute priest began at once with the matter in hand, on
which Herr Andreas had already most amply coached him. He was far too
wise and politic a fisher of souls for so clumsy a procedure. He angled
gently. He started on his task by striking, first, all the familiar home
chords of St Valentin. The moment he entered the room, indeed, Linnet
rushed up and seized his hand—she had known him from her childhood, and
taken the mass from him often; she had confessed to him her sins, and
received time and again his paternal blessing. At such a moment as that
any old friend from St Valentin would have been a welcome counsellor:
how much more then the Herr Vicar, who had taught her the Credo, and the
Vater Unser, and the Ave; who had prepared her lisping lips for First
Communion; who had absolved her from her sins from her babyhood onward!
And he had seen that dear mother only the day before! How she flooded
him with questions as to everyone at St Valentin.
The Herr Vicar, in reply, folding two plump hands over his capacious
waistband, sank back in an easy-chair, and answered her at full length
as to all that had happened since she left the village. The good mother
was well, very well indeed, seldom better in November; some holy oil
rubbed on night and morning, had proved highly effectual against her
threatened rheumatism. Oh yes; she had duly received the five florins
that Linnet sent her—thanks very much for them—and had expended two of
them, as Linnet would no doubt herself have wished, in the performance
of a mass for the deliverance of the dear father’s soul from purgatory.
She knew the Herr Vicar was coming to Meran, and would see her daughter,
and she had sent many messages (all detailed at full length)—how the
cow with the crooked horn was giving no milk, and how the cat had five
kittens, and how pleased they all were to hear at St Valentin there was
talk Linnet was to make such a brilliant marriage.
Then poor Linnet faltered out, half-sobbing again, when the Herr Vicar
spoke of that mass for the repose of her father’s soul, how great a
trial it had been to her to be away from St Valentin for the first time
in her life on All Souls Day—the Feast of the Dead—when it had always
been her custom to lay a little wreath, and burn four small tapers on
her father’s grave in the village churchyard. She was afraid that dear
spirit in its present home would feel itself neglected by the duty
unperformed in due season.
But the Herr Vicar, with a benign smile, was happy he should be able to
reassure her as to this matter. The candles and the wreath had been
forthcoming as usual; he had seen to them himself—at Herr Andreas’s
request, who had written to him on the subject from Meran most
thoughtfully.
That was kind, Linnet thought, far kinder than she ever could have
expected from Andreas. But that wasn’t all. He had provided in many
ways, or intended to provide, for the good mother’s comfort. Then the
Herr Vicar went on to speak still more of Andreas, who slipped out as he
spoke, leaving priest and penitent alone together. So Herr Andreas, it
seemed, was going to marry her! For a girl like her, that was a very
great honour. And the sooner the better, indeed; the sooner the better!
These were grave and painful rumours now afloat in St Valentin—and the
Herr Vicar shook his head in solemn warning—grave and painful rumours,
how Linnet had been seen on the hillsides more than once—with an
English heretic. And he had followed her to Innsbruck! and then to
Meran! and now, Heaven knew what he was trying to do with her! ’Twas a
dangerous thing, a compromising thing (the Herr Vicar thought) for a
girl to get involved in an affair like that with a man so much above
herself in position and station. But Herr Andreas was so kind, and
consented to overlook it; there were very few men who in a similar case
would act like Herr Andreas. In other matters the Herr Vicar had
withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; but in this, he
had behaved like a generous gentleman.
To all which, poor Linnet, hiding her face in her hands, only made
answer once more, “I can never marry Andreas Hausberger.”
“Why not?” the priest asked, sharply.
And Linnet, hardly knowing how to answer him for fear and shame, yet
murmured very low, “Because I don’t love him.”
Then the Herr Vicar, thus aroused, went off at a tangent into a clerical
exhortation on the nature, duties, and inducements of matrimony. We must
remember that, in these matters, the wishes of the flesh were not alone
or even chiefly to be consulted. They were of minor importance. There
was her duty as a daughter, for example: Herr Andreas was rich; how much
might he not do to lighten her mother’s old age? how much to release her
poor father’s soul from the flames of purgatory? There was her duty as a
woman, and a child of the Church; how much might not Herr Andreas’s
money enable her to accomplish for the good of the world and for the
souls of her people? She was still a giddy girl. What temptations such a
marriage would enable her to avoid; what a brilliant future in the end
it might open out before her! And then these floating rumours had
disturbed him much; on his way from Jenbach, if she would only believe
him, he had said prayers on her behalf to Our Lady, to preserve her
honour.
But Linnet, raising her head, and looking him straight in the eyes, made
answer at last in these wicked, rebellious words, “I love the Engländer!
Ah, I love the Engländer! If ever I marry at all, I’ll marry the
Engländer!”
The Herr Vicar grew grave. This was a case, indeed, not for humouring
and coaxing, but for the sternest admonition. And he administered it
without stint. With the simple directness of the Tyrolese priest,
accustomed to deal with coarse, straightforward natures, he spoke the
plain truth; he brought her future sin home to her with homely force and
unvarnished language. In the first place, this young man clearly meant
no good by her. That was obvious to everyone. Now, if he were one of her
own sort, a faithful son of the Church, and a Tyrolese jäger, well, the
Herr Vicar might, in that case, have been disposed, no doubt, to be
somewhat more lenient. He admitted, while he deplored, the temptations
and difficulties of a _sennerin’s_ life, and was never too hard on them.
And besides, in such circumstances, the young man might mean in the end
to marry her. But this Engländer assuredly meant nothing of the kind;
and, what was worse, even if he did, the Herr Vicar could by no means
approve of such a union. The Holy See, acting as ever on the Apostolic
advice, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” disallowed
and discouraged the union of Catholics with Jews, heretics, infidels,
and other schismatics, under one or other of which unholy categories
(and the Herr Vicar frowned) he must needs place her Engländer. True,
the Holy Father was sometimes pleased, on good cause duly shown, to
grant certain persons an exceptional dispensation. But even if the
Engländer desired to marry her, which was scarcely likely, and even if
he consented to invoke such aid, which was still more improbable, how
could _he_, the Herr Vicar, knowing the young man’s circumstances, back
up such a request?—how consign a lamb of his flock to the keeping of an
infidel? Every sentiment of gratitude should bind her to Herr Andreas.
Every feeling of a Catholic should turn her instinctively away from the
false wiles of a schismatic.
To all which theological argument, Linnet, raising her head, and
wringing her hands, only answered once more, in a wildly despairing
voice, “But I love him, I love him!”
The priest saw at once this was a case for strong measures. Unless he
adopted them, a lamb might slip from his pastoral grasp, a doubtful soul
might stray for ever from the fold of true believers. He put on at once
the set tone and manner of the confessional. It was no longer a question
now of merely meeting Herr Andreas’s wishes—though Herr Andreas’s aid
would be most useful indeed in the affairs of the parish; it was a
question of preserving this poor sheep of his flock from everlasting
perdition. What are a few fleeting years, with this lover or that,
compared with an eternity of unceasing torment? The Herr Vicar was an
honest and conscientious man, according to his lights; this poor girl
was in deadly danger of her immortal soul—and that window for the
chancel, which Herr Andreas vowed, would be a work of piety most
pleasing to their holy patron saint, the blessed Valentin.
So, with all the strength of imagery he possessed at his command, the
priest began to play of deliberate design upon the chords of poor
Linnet’s superstitious terror. In horribly vivid and realistic language,
such as only a Tyrolese tongue could command, he conjured up before her
mind that familiar picture of dead souls in purgatory, lost souls in
torment. He poured out upon her trembling head all the thunders of the
Church against unholy love, or, what came to the same thing, against an
uncatholic union. Linnet listened, and cowered. To you and me, this
would just have been a well-meaning but ignorant parish priest; to
Linnet, he was the embodied voice of all Catholic Christendom. She had
sat upon his knees; she had learnt prayers from his lips; she had looked
upon him for years as the mouthpiece of whatever was right and just and
holy. And now, he was bringing all the weight of his authority to bear
against the dictates of her poor hot heart; he was terrifying her with
his words; he was denouncing upon her the horrible woes of apostasy.
Whether the man meant to marry her or not, all was equally sin; she was
bent on the downward path; she was flying in the face of God and His
priest, to her own destruction. She might marry Andreas or not—that was
a question of inclination; but if she persisted in her relations with an
infidel, who could mean her no good, she was hurrying straight to the
devil and all his angels. And the devil and all his angels were very
real and very near indeed to Linnet; the flames of purgatory were as
familiar to her eyes as the fire on the hearth; the tortures of hell
were as solid and as material as she had seen them pictured on every
roadside oratory.
And the effect? Ah, well, only those who know the profound religious
faith of the Tyrolese peasantry can fully understand the appalling
effect this pastoral exhortation produced upon Linnet. It was no new
discovery, indeed. All along, amid the tremulous delight of her first
great love, she had known in her heart this thing she was doing, though
sweet—too sweet—was unspeakably wicked. She was paltering with sin,
giving her heart to a heretic. She herself had seen him pass many a
wayside crucifix, many a shrine of Our Dear Lady, without raising his
hat or letting his knee do obeisance, as was right, before them. He was
good, he was kind; in a purely human sort of way he sympathised with
her, and understood her as no one else in the world had ever yet done;
but still—he was a heretic. She had known that all along; she had known
the danger she ran, and the end, the horrible end, it must finally lead
her to. And now, when her parish priest, her earliest friend, her own
tried confessor, pointed out her sin to her, she quivered and crouched
before him in bodily terror and abject submission. The flames of hell
seemed to rise up and take hold of her. And the more frightened she
grew, the more vehement and fierce grew the priest’s denunciation. He