Linnet: A Romance
So far as the Seer was concerned, this strange woman spoke a foreign
language. Duty was a word that didn’t enter into his vocabulary. He
scanned her from head to foot, as one might scan some queer specimen of
an unknown wild species. “You can’t possibly mean _that_,” he cried,
with a discordant little laugh, for he was used to the free Western
notions on these subjects. “Come now, buy it or not!” he went on,
dangling the letter before her face, between finger and thumb. “It’s
going, going, going! Won’t you make me a bid for it?”
He shook it temptingly, held it aloft; it was valuable evidence. As he
did so, the paper slipped all of a sudden from his grasp, and fell
fluttering at Linnet’s feet. Mr Holmes was quick, but Linnet was quicker
still. Before he could stoop to pick it up, she had darted down upon it
and seized it. Then, with lightning haste, she thrust it inside her
dress, in the shelter of her bosom. The baffled Seer seized her
hand—too late to prevent her.
“Give it back to me!” he cried, twisting her wrist as he spoke. “How
dare you take it? That’s a dirty trick to play a man. It’s mine, I say;
give it back to me!”
Though he hurt her wrist and frightened her, Linnet stood her ground
well. She was stronger than he thought—with all the stored-up strength
of her mountain rearing. She pushed him back with a sudden burst of
explosive energy. “You’re wrong,” she cried, indignantly. “It never was
yours,—though I don’t know how you got it. You must have stolen it, no
doubt, or intercepted it by some vile means, and then tried to make
money out of it. I don’t want it myself, but I won’t give it back. It
belongs to Philippina, and I mean to return it to her.”
“That’s a lie!” the Seer answered, catching her hands with a hasty dash,
and trying to force her on her knees. “Damn your tricks; I’ll have it
back again!” And, in the heat of his rage, he tried to unfasten her
dress and snatch it from her bosom.
She tore herself away. The Seer followed her, still struggling. It was a
hand-to-hand grapple. He fought her for it wildly.
At that very moment, before Linnet had time to scream for help, the door
opened suddenly, and—Andreas Hausberger entered.
CHAPTER XL
OPEN WAR
He glared at them for a moment before he fully took it in. The Seer,
thus suddenly surprised, loosed his hold on Linnet, and drew back
instinctively. But an awful feeling of doubt came over Linnet’s mind.
The position was most equivocal—nay, even compromising. Would Andreas
misunderstand what this man was doing with her—one hand held on her
wrist, and one clutching at her bosom?
But Andreas knew that simple loyal nature too well to doubt her
relations with anyone—except Will Deverill. As he stood there and
stared, he saw only that the American had been offering
violence—personal violence—to Linnet. His hot Tyrolese blood boiled at
once at that insult. He sprang forward and caught Joaquin Holmes by the
throat. “You scoundrel!” he cried through his clenched teeth; “what are
you doing to my wife? How dare you touch her like that? How dare you lay
your blackguard hands upon her?”
The Coloradan freed himself with a jerk, and shook off his assailant,
for he was a powerful man, too, though less sturdy than Andreas. He drew
back half-a-pace, and faced the infuriated husband. His hand wandered
half mechanically to the faithful six-shooter, which after all those
years in civilised England old habit still made him carry always in his
pocket. But he thought better of it after a moment—these Britishers
have such a nasty insular way of stringing one up for the merest
accident!—and answered instead, with an ugly smile, “It’s _her_ fault,
not mine. She snatched a letter away from me. It’s my own, and I want it
back. She won’t give it up to me.”
Andreas Hausberger had his faults; but he had too much sense of dignity
to bandy words with an intruder who had insulted his wife—above all, to
bandy them in his wife’s very presence. It mattered little to him just
then what that question about the letter might really import. He stepped
forward in his wrath once more, and caught the Seer by the shoulders.
“You cur!” he cried, pushing him before him. “How dare you answer me
like that?” And, with a sudden wrench, he flung the fellow against the
door, bruising and hurting him violently.
The Coloradan rushed back on him. There was a short, sharp scuffle. Then
Andreas, getting the better, opened the door with a dash, and dragged
his opponent after him. At the head of the stairs, he paused, and gave
him a sounding kick. The Coloradan writhed and squirmed, but, strong as
he was, he found himself no match for the gigantic Tyroler. Besides, he
was less used than his antagonist to these hand-to-hand struggles.
Andreas, for his part, was quite in his element. “A _Wirth_ who can’t
turn out a noisy or drunken guest, isn’t worth his salt,” he had said
one day to Florian long ago in the Zillerthal; he was well used, indeed,
of old to such impromptu encounters. The Seer on the contrary was more
accustomed to the bowie and the six-shooter than to wrestling and
scuffling. He yielded after a moment to Andreas’s heavy hand, only
stopping to shout back through the open drawing-room door, “Then you owe
me fifty pounds, Signora, for that letter!”
Andreas hauled him down the stairs, dragged him, half-resisting, through
the hall and vestibule, opened the front door with one free hand,
hastily, and kicked his man down the steps with a volley of angry oaths
in his native German. Then he slammed the door in the face of the
discomfited Seer (who had rushed back again to assault him), and went
upstairs once more, as outwardly cool as he could, but hot in the face
and hotter at heart, to Linnet.
Linnet was really grateful to him. The man had frightened her. For the
first time in her life, she admired her husband. The natural admiration
that all her sex feel for physical strength and prowess in men was
exceptionally marked in her, as in most other women of primitive
communities. “Thank you,” she said simply, as Andreas strolled in,
trying to look unconcerned, with his hands in his pockets, and
confronted her stonily. “The man hurt my wrist. If you hadn’t come in, I
don’t know what on earth he might ever have done to me.”
Andreas stared at her in silence with close-knit brows for
half-a-minute. Then he said in an insolent tone, “Now, tell me, what’s
all this fuss he was making about some letter?”
His question brought Linnet back to herself with a sudden revulsion of
feeling. In the tremulousness of those two scuffles, she had almost
forgotten for the moment all about the first cause of them. But now, she
looked her husband back straight in the face, and, without flinching or
hesitating, she answered him in a scarcely audible voice, “He brought me
the last letter you wrote to Philippina. The one making an appointment
at the usual place for three to-morrow. I don’t know how he got it, but
he wanted to sell it to me.”
Andreas never moved a muscle of that impassive face, but his colour came
and went, and his breath stopped short, as he stood still and stared at
her. “My last letter to Philippina!” he repeated, with a glow of shame.
“And that fellow dared to show it to you! I’d have choked him if I’d
known! The mean scoundrelly eavesdropper!”
Linnet folded her hands in front of her where she sat on her low chair.
Her air was resigned. She hardly seemed to notice him. “You needn’t be
afraid,” she said. “It’s no matter to me. I guessed all that long ago. I
didn’t want your letters, or hers either, to prove it to me. I told him
as much. To me, at least, it’s no matter.”
“And he offered to sell it you?” Andreas cried, growing in wrath. “He
tried to make money of it! What did he want you to buy it for?”
“He said I could get a divorce with it,” Linnet answered simply.
“A divorce!” Andreas shouted, losing control of himself for once. That
word went straight home to all the deepest chords in his sordid nature.
“He wanted to egg you on, then, to try and get a divorce from me! He
wanted to cheat me of all I’ve worked and toiled for!” He flung himself
into a chair, and clenched his fists, and ground his teeth. “The damned
rogue!” he cried once more. “When I get at him, oh, I’ll throttle him!”
He sat for a minute or two revolving many things angrily in his own
burning soul. He had not only Linnet to think of now, but Philippina,
too, and her husband. Heaven only knew what harm that man might do him
in revenge for his drubbing—what scandal he might raise, what devils he
might let loose upon him. If Linnet left him now, all the world would
say she was amply justified. And the English law would allow her a
divorce! No; not without cruelty! and he had never been cruel to her.
There was comfort in that: he consoled himself in part with it. He had
spoken harshly to her at times, perhaps, and taken care of her money for
her—women are so reckless that a man must needs look after them. But
cruel! oh no, no; she could never prove _that_ against him!
“Divorce!” he said slowly, knitting his brows, and leaning forward. “He
talked to you of divorce, Linnet! That’s all pure gammon. There’s no
divorce for a woman, by English law, without cruelty or desertion. I’ve
never been cruel to you, and I’m not likely to desert you. You can’t get
a divorce, I say. You can’t get a divorce! You surely didn’t promise him
fifty pounds for that letter!”
“No; I didn’t,” Linnet answered. “I told him I didn’t want it. Divorce
would be no use in the world to me. I’m a Catholic, as you know, and I
believe my religion.”
Andreas stared at her hard. He fingered his chin thoughtfully. She had
struck the right chord. How foolish of him in his haste not to have
thought of that by pure instinct! Divorce, indeed! Why, of course, the
Church wouldn’t hear of it. To think that a Tyrolese woman would accept
the verdict of a mere earthly court to dissolve a holy sacrament!
“You’re quite right,” he muttered slowly, nodding his head once or
twice; “divorce is pure sacrilege. There’s no such thing known in the
Catholic Church; there’s no such thing known in the Austrian Empire.”
He subsided for a moment. Then, all at once, with a bound, another
emotion got the better of him. He must go out without delay and inquire
how all this bother got abroad from Philippina. And yet—’twas hard to
know how he could govern himself aright. Not for worlds would he let
Will Deverill come to the house in his absence now, after all that had
happened. Linnet hadn’t seen him yet since her return from Italy. If he
came in, as things stood, and found her in her present mood, Andreas
felt he himself couldn’t answer for the consequences.
He paused, and reflected. For Philippina’s sake, for his own, nay, even
for Linnet’s, he knew he must go out without one minute’s delay, to
prevent further mischief with Theodore Livingstone. But still—it was
dangerous to go away from Linnet. Yet he must make up his mind one way
or the other; and he made it up quickly. “I’m going out,” he said in his
curt tone, turning sharply to his wife, without one word of apology or
explanation; “but before I go, I’ve a message to give the housemaid.”
“Go when you like,” Linnet answered coldly. Little as she cared for him
now, little as she ever cared for him, it hurt her feelings none the
less that he shouldn’t even try to explain or to excuse himself. His
very silence was insolent. She felt it keenly.
Andreas rang the bell, and then crossed his arms in a sullen fashion.
That attitude alone seemed to exasperate Linnet. The housemaid answered
the bell. He looked up at her with a scowl. “Ellen,” he said, in a very
slow and deliberate voice, “If Mr Will Deverill should call while I’m