Linnet: A Romance
“Look here, Florian,” he cried, all sympathy, “we must go at once and
see the Archbishop.”
“My dear fellow,” Florian answered, shaking his head, “it isn’t the
slightest use. I’ve tried too long. The man’s pure priest. Heart or pity
he has none. The bowels of compassion have been all trained out of him.
The simplest offence against ecclesiastical law is to him sheer heresy.”
“Never mind,” Will answered. “We can always try.” It struck him, in
fact, that the Archbishop might perhaps be more easily moved by himself
than by Florian. “Philippina must go with us. We’ll see whether or not
we can move the Churchman.”
They drove off together in a cab to Westminster; but Linnet went back by
herself to St John’s Wood.
When she reached her home, Andreas met her at the door with a little
sneer on his face. Though they lived more simply than ever _prima donna_
lived before, his avarice grew more marked as Linnet’s earnings
increased; and since Philippina’s marriage he had been unkinder than
ever to her. “What did you want with a cab?” he asked, “wasting your
money like that. Wherever you’ve been—without my knowledge or
consent—you might at least have come home by the Underground, I should
fancy.”
Linnet’s face flushed hot. In her anxiety for her friend’s soul, she had
never thought of such trifles as the hire of a hansom. “It was for
Philippina,” she said, reproachfully, with a good home thrust: and
Andreas, wincing, imagined he could detect a faintly personal stress
upon Philippina’s name which almost disconcerted him. “She came round
here in such a terrible state of distress that I couldn’t help going
with her. She can’t get her absolution; she’s almost out of her mind
with it.”
Andreas’ face set harder and sterner than ever. He eyed his wife
narrowly. “Philippina can settle for her own cabs,” he said with an ugly
frown. “What’s Philippina to us or we to Philippina, that we should
waste our hard-earned money upon her? Let Philippina pay for the saving
of her own precious soul, if she wants to save it. Don’t spend a penny
upon her that belongs to your husband.”
An answer struggled hard for utterance upon Linnet’s tongue; but with an
effort she repressed it. Andreas hadn’t always thought so little of
Philippina—before she married the handsome brown-eyed American.
However, Linnet refrained from answering him back as he himself would
have answered her. The Blessed Madonna in her hand gave her strength to
restrain herself. She merely said, with a little sigh, “I never thought
about the cab; it was Florian who called it.”
Andreas turned upon her sharply. “So so!” he exclaimed, with an air of
discovery. “You’ve been round to Herr Florian’s! And the other man was
there, I suppose! You went by appointment to meet him!”
“Herr Will was there, if you mean _him_,” Linnet answered, fiery red,
but disdaining the weak subterfuge of a pretended ignorance. “I didn’t
go to meet him, though; I didn’t know he was there. He’s gone round with
her, poor girl, to see the Archbishop.”
Andreas drew himself up very stiff. He hadn’t quite liked that stress
Linnet put on Philippina’s name, and he wasn’t sorry accordingly for
this stray chance of a diversion. “So Herr Will was there!” he repeated,
with a meaning smile, “What a singular coincidence! You’ve been seeing
too much altogether of Herr Will of late. I’m not a jealous man, but
mind you, Linnet, I draw a line somewhere.”
Linnet’s face was crimson. “It’s not _you_ who have had cause to feel
jealous,” she answered, quietly. “Herr Will is too good a man to act
. . . well, to act as you would do. You _know_ what you say or what you
hint at isn’t true. You’re put out because——”
“Because what?” Andreas asked, provokingly, as she broke off and
hesitated.
But Linnet brushed past him, and went up to her own room without
answering a word. She was too proud to finish the sentence she had
begun, “Because Philippina has given you up and married the American.”
She had known it all along—known it, and never minded. But she felt in
her heart the reason why; she had never loved Andreas, so how could she
be jealous of him? He had married her as a very sound investment; he had
never pretended to care for her at all in herself; and she, in turn, had
never pretended to care for him. But now, in an agony of remorse and
terror, she flung herself on her bed and, with white hands clasped,
besought Our Lady, with all the strength she possessed, to save her from
despising and hating her husband. She had never loved him, to be sure;
but to her, as a Catholic, marriage was a most holy sacrament of the
Church, and she must try to live up to it. She prayed, too, for strength
to love Will Deverill less—to forget him, to neglect him. Yet, even as
she prayed, she thought to herself ten thousand times over how different
it would all have been if she had married Will Deverill; how much she
would have loved him; how true at heart she would have been to him. All
heretic that he was, his image rose up between herself and Our Lady. She
wiped her brimming eyes, and, with sobs and entreaties, begged hard to
love him less, begged hard to be forgiven that she loved him now so
dearly.
Yet, even in her own distress, Linnet thought of Philippina. She prayed
hard, too, for Philippina. She begged Our Lady, with tears and sighs, to
soften the obdurate Archbishop’s heart, and make smooth for Philippina
the path to Paradise. For, in a way, she really liked that big, bouncing
alp-girl. Unlike as they were in mould, they both came from St Valentin;
Philippina was to Linnet the one tie she still possessed that bound her
in memory to the land of her birth—the land where her father and mother
lay dead, awaiting their souls’ return from the flames of purgatory.
That evening at the theatre, Philippina burst in upon her with a radiant
face, as she dressed for her part in _Cophetua’s Adventure_. “It’s all
right,” she cried aloud in German, half-wild with joy. “Mr Deverill has
managed it! He spoke to the Archbishop, and the Archbishop said _Yes_;
and he gave me absolution then and there on the spot, and I went home
for Theodore; and I’m to spend to-night at a lodging-house alone, and
he’ll marry us with all the rites of the Church to-morrow.”
Linnet clasped her hand tight. “I’m so glad, dear,” she answered. “I
knew he’d give way if Herr Will only spoke to him. Herr Will’s so kind
and good, no mortal on earth can refuse him anything. He’s a heretic, to
be sure, but, O Philippina, there’s no Catholic like him! . . .
Besides,” she added, after a pause, rearranging the folds in the Beggar
Maid’s dress with pretended pre-occupation, “I prayed Our Lady that she
might soften the Archbishop’s heart; and Our Lady heard my prayer; she
always hears me.”
As she spoke, a great pang passed suddenly through her bosom: Our Lady
had answered _that_ prayer; would she answer _the other one_? Would she
grant Linnet’s wish to love Will Deverill less? Staring before her in an
agony, she sobbed at the bare thought. It was horrible, hateful! A flood
of conflicting emotion came over her like a wave. Sinful as she felt it
herself to be, she _knew_ she never meant that prayer she had uttered.
Love Will Deverill less? Forget him? Oh, impossible! She might be
breaking every commandment in her heart at once, but she _couldn’t_
frame that prayer she must and would love him!
Oh, foolishness of men, who think they can bind the human heart with a
vow! You may promise to _do_ or leave undone what you will; but promise
to _feel_ or not to feel! The bare idea is preposterous!
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HUSBAND OR LOVER?
The Hausbergers spent that winter in Italy. Andreas thought the London
air was beginning to tell upon Linnet’s throat, and he took good care,
accordingly, to get her an autumn engagement in Vienna, followed by a
winter one at Rome and Naples. The money was less, to be sure, but in
the end ’twould repay him. Linnet was an investment, and he managed his
investment with consummate prudence. Before they went away, however, he
and Linnet had another slight difference of opinion about Will Deverill.
On the very morning of their departure, a bouquet arrived at the door in
Avenue Road, with a neat little note attached, which Linnet opened and
read with undisguised eagerness. Bouquets and notes were not infrequent
arrivals at that house, indeed, and Andreas, as a rule, took little or
no notice of them—unless accompanied by a holder of the precious
metals. But Linnet flushed so with pleasure as she read this particular
missive that Andreas leaned across and murmured casually, “What’s up?
Let me look at it.”
“I’d—I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Linnet answered, colouring up,
and half-trying to hide it.
Andreas snatched the paper unceremoniously from her trembling hands. He
recognised the handwriting. “Ho, Will Deverill!” he cried, with a sneer.
“Let’s see what he says! It’s poetry, is it, then? He drops into verse!”
And he glanced at it angrily.
“TO LINNET.”
“Fair fortune gild your southward track,
Dear bird of passage, taking wing.
For me, when April wafts you back,
Will not the spring be twice the spring?”
It was imprudent of Will, to be sure; but we are all of us a _leetle_
imprudent at times (present company of course excepted); and some small
licence in these matters is accorded by common consent to poets. But
Andreas was angry, and more than merely angry; he was suspicious as
well—beginning to be afraid, in fact, of his hold over Linnet. At
first, when he came to England, the wise _impresario_ was so sure of his
wife—so sure of keeping her, and all the money she brought him, in his
own hands—that he rather threw her designedly into Will’s company than
otherwise. He saw she sang better when she was much with Will; and for
the sake of her singing, he lumped the little question of personal
preference. But of late he had begun really to fear Will Deverill. It
occurred to him at odd moments as just within the bounds of possibility,
after all, that Will might some day rob him of his wife altogether,—and
to rob him of his wife was to rob him of his most serious and profitable
property. Why, the sale of her presents alone—bracelets,
bouquet-holders, rings, and such like trifles—was quite a small fortune
to him. And, all Catholic that she was, and devout at that—a pure woman
who valued her own purity high—quite unlike Philippina—Andreas felt
none the less she might conceivably go off in the end with Will
Deverill. The heart is always a very vulnerable point in women. He might
attack her through the heart, or some such sentimental rubbish; and
Linnet had a heart such a fellow as that could strike chords upon
easily.
So Andreas looked at the flowers and simple little versicles with an
angry eye. Then he said, in his curt way, “Pretty things to address to a
married woman, indeed! Pack them up and send them back again!”
Linnet flushed, and flared up. For once in her life, her temper failed
her. “I won’t,” she answered, firmly. “I shall keep them if I choose.
There’s nothing in them a poet mayn’t rightly say to a married woman. If
there was, you know quite well I wouldn’t allow him to say it. . . .
Besides,” she went on, warmly, “you wouldn’t have asked me to send them
back if they’d been pearls or diamonds. You kept the duke’s necklet.”
And she hid the note in her bosom before the very eyes of her husband.
Andreas was not a noisy man. He knew a more excellent way than that to
carry his point in the end—by biding his time, and watching and
waiting. So he said no more for the moment, except to mutter a
resounding High German oath, as he flung the flowers, paper cover and