Linnet: A Romance
good-looking, third-rate actress, whom marriage would perhaps reclaim
for a few brief months from a shifting series of less regular
attachments. But the mere fact that she was an actress told against her
with the Archbishop. Why should he make exception in favour of a young
woman of ill-regulated life and flippant conversation, who belonged to a
profession already ill-seen by the Church, and who wished to enter into
one of the most solemn sacraments of life with a professed unbeliever?
The Archbishop interposed endless objections and vexatious delays. He
must refer _this_ matter to Rome, and _that_ one to further personal
deliberation. He must satisfy himself about the state of the young woman
and the young man by actual interviews. Florian, like most others of his
type, was patient of delays, and seldom lost his temper; but he almost
lost it now with that grim, thin old man who could make such a strange
and unnecessary fuss about allowing a third-rate playhouse singing-girl
to contract marriage with a nondescript hard-shell Baptist!
Two or three weeks passed away in this undecided fashion, and still
Florian called almost daily, and still the Archbishop hummed and hawed
and shilly-shallied. Philippina, all the time, grew more and more
visibly eager, and the hard-shell Baptist himself, unable to enter into
his Eminence’s ecclesiastical frame of mind, consigned the Archbishop
and all his Church to eternal perdition ten times a day in sound round
Western phrases. Florian heartily sympathised with him; it was absurd to
treat so slight a matter so seriously. Why, Florian himself, if he’d
been an Archbishop (which he might have been in the great age of Italian
churchmanship), would have granted the girl dispensations enough in less
than half the time to drive a round dozen of husbands abreast, if her
fancy so dictated. His Eminence couldn’t have asked more questions or
insisted on more proof if he’d been buying a Leonardo for the National
Gallery, instead of handing over the precarious possession of a Tyrolese
cow-girl to a handsome but highly-flavoured Western-American mountebank.
At last, when Florian returned, much disturbed, from his sixth or
seventh unsuccessful interview, to Linnet’s house in Avenue Road, where
he was to meet Philippina and her betrothed by special appointment, his
hansom drew up at the door just as Philippina herself and Mr Theodore
Livingstone, in their most Sunday array, disappeared into the vestibule.
Florian followed them fast upstairs into Linnet’s drawing-room. Andreas
Hausberger was there, with Linnet by his side; Philippina and Mr
Livingstone looked radiantly happy, and bursting with excitement.
“Well, the Archbishop still refuses,” Florian exclaimed, with great
disgust, dropping exhausted on a sofa. “I never in my life met such a
stubborn old dromedary. I’ve tried him with reason, and I’ve tried him
with ridicule, and I’ve tried him with authority, but nothing answers.
He’s impervious to any of ’em—a typical pachyderm. I don’t believe,
myself, if you gird at him for a year, you’ll get anything out of him.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Philippina answered, glibly, withdrawing her
light glove. “Teodore and I haf taken ze law into our own hands. He
persuade me to it zis morning. I do not care by zis time, were it for
twenty Archbishops.”
“Oh dear, what do you mean?” Linnet cried, all aghast, regarding her
friend with profound dismay.
Philippina held up her left hand significantly. “Just zat!” she cried,
with a little air of petulant triumph, touching a plain gold ring on her
third finger. Then she turned to Theodore. “My husband!” she said,
smiling, as if to introduce him in his novel capacity.
“I’d arranged it all beforehand,” the American explained, coming to her
aid at once with a somewhat exulting air; “I’d got the licence, and put
everything well in hand against the Archbishop’s consent; and this
morning I felt I wasn’t going to wait knocking about for the blamed
thing any longer. So I persuaded Philippina, and Philippina gave way;
and we were married by twelve o’clock at a Baptist Chapel, by a minister
of religion, as the Act directs, in the presence of the registrar. I
expect that’s about as binding as you make ’em in England; an Archbishop
himself couldn’t fix it up any firmer with a dozen dispensations.”
“I congratulate you!” Florian cried, fanning his face with his hand.
“You’ve done the right thing. Archbishops, I take it, are impracticable
anachronisms. It’s absurd to let these priests interfere with one’s
individuality in such a private matter.”
But Linnet started back with an awestruck face. “O Philippina,” she
cried, “how dreadful! Why, a Catholic wouldn’t think you were married at
all! There’s been no sacrament. From the Church’s point of view, you
might almost as well not have gone before the registrar.”
Florian laughed down her scruples. The happy bridegroom, never doubting
in his own soul the validity of his marriage, invited them all to dine
with him that evening at the Criterion before the theatre. But a little
later in the afternoon, when the women had left the room, Andreas
Hausberger drew Florian mysteriously aside. “Linnet’s quite right,” he
whispered in the philosopher’s ear. “I know my countrywomen.
Philippina’ll be as happy as the day is long—for a matter of a week or
two; and then, when she comes to think over what it is she’s done,
she’ll never forgive herself. From the Catholic point of view, this is
no marriage at all. Philippina must answer for it sooner or later to the
priests: and they won’t be too gentle to her.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
BEGINNINGS OF EVIL
Andreas Hausberger was right. Philippina’s nemesis found her out all too
quickly. Just six weeks later, Will Deverill had called round one
afternoon at Florian’s rooms in Grosvenor Gardens. They were engaged in
discussing Florian’s latest purchase—an etching of a wood-nymph after a
new Dutch artist, very pure and precious—when Mr Barnes, that
impeccable man-servant, opened the door with a flourish, and announced
in his cut-and-dried official voice, “Signora Cazzlemonty; Mrs Theodore
Livingstone!”
And Linnet and Philippina burst in upon them like a whirlwind.
Will rose hurriedly to greet them. In a moment, he saw something serious
was amiss. Philippina’s eyes were red and swollen with crying; Linnet’s,
though less bloodshot, looked weary and anxious. “Why, Madre de Dios,
what’s the matter?” Florian exclaimed in his affected way, rushing
forward effusively in his brown velvet smoking-coat. “My dear Signora,
to what happy star do I owe the honour of this unexpected visit? And all
unbidden, too! Such good luck is too infrequent!”
“It’s poor Philippina!” Linnet cried, half-inarticulate with sympathy.
“She’s in such a dreadful state. She really doesn’t know what on earth
to do about it.”
Florian smiled the calm smile of superior wisdom. “What, already?” he
exclaimed, raising one impressive hand. “So soon? So soon? A little rift
within the lute, a little tiff with her Theodore? Well, well, dear
_Diva_, we know these offences must needs come, in the best regulated
families. They’re part and parcel of our ridiculous marriage system.
Will and I are wiser in our generation, you see; _we_ keep well out of
it.”
“No, no; it is not zat!” Philippina cried, excitedly. Then turning to
Will, she burst out in German, “I’ve been to see the priest and the
bishop to-day, to ask for absolution, and it’s all no use; they’ll
neither of them give it to me. I’ve been to ask them again and again
these two weeks; but they’re hard like rock; hard, hard, as that
mantelpiece: they refuse to forgive me. They say it’s no true marriage
at all that I’ve made, but the lusts of the flesh—a sinful union. Ach!
what shall I do, what ever shall I do? This is terrible, terrible!” And
she wrung her hands hard. “It’ll kill me,” she cried; “it’ll kill me.”
Linnet turned in explanation to the bewildered Florian. “You see,” she
said simply, “she’s living in sin now, and they won’t absolve her. She
may not take the mass, nor receive the sacraments of the Church in any
form. She’s like one excommunicated. If she died to-morrow, they would
refuse her extreme unction; she would pass away in her sin, and must go
at once, straight, straight to perdition.”
“But surely,” Florian ventured to observe, turning theologian for once,
in these peculiar circumstances, “her present life—well, my dear
Signora, without rudeness to the lady, we must all admit, it’s—h’m,
h’m—how shall I put it? It’s at least quite as innocent as her previous
habits.”
Linnet made no false pretence of misunderstanding his plain meaning.
This was a serious matter, and she felt its full seriousness herself so
deeply that she sympathised with Philippina. “You don’t understand,” she
answered, gasping; “you don’t at all understand; you can’t throw
yourself into our standpoint. You’re not a Catholic, you see, and you
don’t feel as we feel about it. To sin once, twice, three times, till
seventy times seven, I care not how often—that is simply to sin: and if
we repent in our hearts—God is faithful and just—the Church absolves
us. But to live in open sin, to persist in one’s wrong, to set the
authority and discipline of the Church at defiance—ah! that to us is
quite another matter. Philippina may have done wrong sometimes; we are
all of us human; Heaven forbid I should judge her”—she spoke very
earnestly; “but to continue in sin, to live her life without the
sacraments and consolations of the Church, to remain with a man whom no
Catholic can recognise as really her husband—that is too, too terrible.
And, just think, if she were to die—” Linnet gazed up at him
appealingly.
“But that _can’t_ be the Catholic doctrine!” Will exclaimed with great
vehemence.
Florian was more practical. “I dare say _not_,” he answered, with a
shrug—“as the Catholic doctrine is understood by theologians,
archbishops, and casuistical text-books. But that’s nothing to the
point. It is the Catholic doctrine as these women understand it, and
it’s sufficient to make them both supremely unhappy. That’s enough for
us. What we’ve got to ask is, how can we help them now out of this hole
they’ve got into?”
The longer they talked about it, indeed, the clearer did this central
fact come out to them. Philippina had married in haste, without the
Church’s consent; she was repenting at leisure now, in the effort to
obtain it. And she sat there, cowering and quivering in bodily terror of
those pains and penalties of fire and flame which were every whit as
real to her to-day in London as they had been long ago by the wayside
shrines at St Valentin. Either she must give up her husband, she said,
or her hopes of salvation. It was evident that to her mind the little
peccadilloes which the Church could absolve were as absolutely nothing;
but to live with the husband whom the Church disowned, appalled and
alarmed her. Her agonised terror was as genuine as though the danger she
feared were actually confronting her. She saw and heard the hissing
flames of purgatory. It made Will realise far more keenly than he had
ever realised before the deep hold their creed keeps over these Tyrolese
women. He couldn’t help thinking how much Linnet would suffer, with her
finer mould, and her profounder emotions, under similar circumstances,
if even Philippina, that buxom, coarse-fibred girl, took so deeply to
heart the Church’s displeasure. He remembered it afterwards at a great
crisis of their history; it was one of the events in life that most
profoundly affected him.
Philippina, meanwhile, rocked herself up and down, moaning and trembling
piteously. Will’s heart was touched. He seized his friend by the arm.