Linnet: A Romance
out, will you tell him the Signora’s not at home to-day? She’s never at
home to him, you may say, except when I’m present.”
Linnet’s blood was boiling. These perpetual insults before her own
servants’ eyes were driving her fast into open rebellion. She answered
not a word, but rose with dignity, and went over like a queen to her
davenport in the corner. “Stop, Ellen,” she said calmly, restraining
herself with an effort. “I’ve a note I want you to post. Stand there,
and wait till I’ve written it.” She turned to her husband, whose hand
was on the door-handle. “Don’t go, Andreas,” she said in her most
authoritative voice. “I wish you to read it before I have it posted.”
She sat down and wrote hastily. Then she directed an envelope. She was
prepared for a scene; but if a scene arose, she was determined it should
be before a friendly witness Ellen stood by, demure, in her cap and
apron. Linnet spoke in English, that she might know what happened.
“I’ve written to Mr Deverill,” she said, as calmly as she could manage,
though her voice trembled somewhat. “We haven’t seen him yet since we
came back to London. And this is what I’ve said: I hope you’ll approve
of it:—
“‘MY DEAR MR DEVERILL,—It will give my husband and myself great
pleasure if you’ll lunch with us here at two next Thursday. We
want to talk over our Italian experiences.—
Yours sincerely,
LINNET HAUSBERGER.’”
Andreas darted at her, livid with rage and jealousy. “You shall not send
that note!” he exclaimed, in German. “I forbid him the house. He shall
not come near you.”
Linnet darted aside, for her part, and held the note out to Ellen. The
girl, terrified at such a scene, and at her master’s loud voice, drew
back, not daring to interpose or to take it. Linnet held it at
arm’s-length. Andreas seized her arm and wrenched it. “You shan’t send
it,” he cried once more, clutching her wrist with his hand till his
nails drew blood from it. He tried to seize the note again, but Linnet
was strong and resisted him. He flung her violently to the ground; but
still she held it out, crying, “Here, post it, Ellen!” Andreas was
beside himself now with rage and fury. He struck her several times; he
hit her wildly with his fist; he caught her by the hair and shook her
angrily like a bulldog. The marks of his hands showed red through her
thin dress upon her neck and shoulders. At last he seized the note, and
tore it into shreds, flung the tatters into her face, and struck her
again heavily. Linnet bent down and let him strike. Her blood was up
now. She was angry too. And she also had inherited the hot heart of the
Tyrol.
At last, Andreas’s passion cooled down of pure fatigue, and, with a
final oath or two, he turned on his heel and left her. As he quitted the
room, he stood for a second with his hand on the door, looking round at
the startled and horrified maid-servant. “Mind, Ellen,” he said,
huskily, “post no letters for your mistress this afternoon; and if the
man Deverill calls, she isn’t at home to him.”
But, as the front door closed with a snap behind him, it came back to
him all at once, that wise and prudent man, that he had played into her
rebellious hands all unawares; he had given her the one plea she still
needed for a divorce—the plea of cruelty.
CHAPTER XLI
GOD’S LAW—OR MAN’S?
Linnet took less than one minute to make up her mind. Not twice in his
life should Andreas treat her so before her own servants. She was too
proud to cry; but as soon as her husband had left the room she picked
herself up from the floor where he had brutally flung her, wiped the
blood from her arm, smoothed her hair with her hand, and motioned
silently to Ellen to follow her into her bedroom. She motioned to her,
because she couldn’t trust herself to speak without crying, and never
now should she allow that hateful man to wring a single tear from her.
In those few brief moments, she had decided once for all what she meant
to do. After all that had passed just now, she must leave him instantly.
The crisis had come; Andreas Hausberger should suffer for it.
Hastily, with Ellen’s aid, she packed a few things into her little
portmanteau. She put in just what she would most need for some evenings’
stay; she put in also her diamonds and the rest of her jewellery, not
omitting the coral necklet Will Deverill gave her long ago in the Tyrol.
Luckily, she had in her desk the week’s money for the housekeeping. She
took it out—it was her own—and turned more calmly to Ellen. “My
child,” she said, laying two sovereigns in her hand, “will you come with
me where I go? Remember, Mr Hausberger says you’re _his_ servant.”
And the girl, looking up at her with a burst of compassion and
enthusiastic affection, made answer at once: “I’d go with you, Signora,
if they was to cut off my head for it. How dare he ever treat you
so—such a man as him—and you a lady anyone ’ud love to die for!”
“Thank you, dear,” Linnet said, much touched; for to her, even her
servants were perfectly human. “Then run up and put your things on as
fast as you can, and ask Maria to call a hansom.”
When it came to the door, she stepped in, and Ellen after her. “Where
shall I drive, Mum?” the cabman asked. And Linnet, through the flap,
made answer boldly, “To Duke Street, St James’s.”
“That’s where Mr Deverill lives, ma’am, isn’t it?” Ellen interposed,
somewhat tremulously.
“Yes, child,” Linnet answered, with a choking voice, but very firmly
still, for she had quite made her mind up. “Mr Deverill lives there—and
I’m going to Mr Deverill’s. I’ve no right to go—but I’m going, all the
same. If you’d rather not come, you can leave me at the door. You know
what it means. Perhaps it would be better.”
The girl glanced back at her, all flushed. “I don’t care a pin whether
it’s right or whether it’s wrong,” she answered warmly. “I’ll go with
you to the world’s end. I’ll go with you anywhere. I’d go with you if
you was going to the worst house in London.”
Linnet answered nothing. She was red with shame—the very words appalled
her—but she meant to go through with it. Too long had she trampled her
own heart under foot; now her heart would have its way, and she meant to
allow it. Her fiery Southern blood had got the better of her. She would
fly from the man who had married her only for what he could make of her,
to the man she had always truly loved—the man who had always truly
loved her.
“Is Mr Deverill in?” she asked with a beating heart of the servant at
the lodgings. And when the man answered, “Yes, ma’am,” in an unconcerned
tone, her heart rose like a lump in her throat within her.
But she kept her exterior coolness. “Bring in the portmanteau, Ellen,”
she said, with a quiet air of command; and the girl obeyed her. “Now,
sit there in the hall till I come down again and call you.”
She trod the stairs like a queen. Will Deverill was seated at his desk
at work, when the servant flung open the door with a flourish, and
announced, in his most grandiose tone, “Signora Casalmonte!”
Will looked up in surprise, and saw Linnet before him.
Her face, which had been flushed five minutes earlier, was now pale and
bloodless with intense excitement. Marks of fingers stood out on her
neck and wrists; a slight bruise scarred the surface of her smooth left
temple. But she was beautiful still, in spite of all such
accidents—very beautiful and winning. She stood a second and gazed at
him. At sight of her one true love, her bosom rose and fell; that
strange wave of delight she had felt at Innsbruck, and again at the
Harmony, thrilled once more through and through her. Of a sudden, as she
paused, her face flushed rosy red again, her eyes grew bright, her full
throat heaved and panted. She spread out her arms towards him with a
hasty little quiver. “O Will, Will, Will,” she cried, in a voice of
complete and intense self-surrender; “at last—I have come to you!”
Will rose in surprise and moved across to her, trembling. He seized her
two hands in his and gazed at her longingly. “Linnet, dear Linnet,” he
cried, drawing a very deep breath; “what has brought you here to-day?
What on earth do you mean by it?”
But Linnet had flung away all artificial restraints and conventions now.
She abandoned herself to her love with the perfect abandonment of a pure
and good woman, when once she has made up her mind to repress nature no
longer. With a wild impulse of delight, she flung herself bodily into
her lover’s arms. She flung herself into Will’s arms, and buried her
head confidingly on his tender shoulder. Then she broke into a storm of
deep-drawn sobs. “It means,” she cried, between little bursts, “I’ve
left him for ever. That man I never loved, I’ve left him for ever. And
I’ve come home at last where I ought to have come to nestle long ago.
Will, Will, dear Will—will you take me? May I stop with you?”
In a transport of joy, Will clasped her to his bosom. Not to have done
so, indeed, would have been more—or less—than human. No man can even
pretend to be otherwise than overjoyed when the woman he loves flings
herself into his arms for the first time in a fierce access of passion.
He clasped her long and hard, breast pressed against heaving breast, and
lips meeting lips in a sharp shower of kisses. For some minutes they
neither knew, nor felt, nor remembered, nor thought of anything else on
earth save their present intoxication. But surely those minutes were in
themselves worth living for! What mattered so many years of cruel and
unnatural repression beside that one fierce draught at the hot wine of
passion?
After a while, however, Will woke up to a true sense of the situation.
Man though he was, and therefore aggressive, it was his duty first of
all to think of protecting Linnet. He must protect her, if need were,
even against her own impulses. He must learn what she meant, and what
could have led her so suddenly to this strange decision—so unlike
herself, so untrue, as it seemed, to her whole past history.
He unwound his arms gently, and placed the poor sobbing, throbbing girl,
half-unresisted, in an arm-chair by the fireplace. Then he drew up a
seat for himself very close by her side, took her hand in his, and
soothed it gently with his other one. “He’s been cruel to you, Linnet, I
can see,” he murmured softly at her ear. “Now, what has led you to this?
Tell me all he has done to you.”
Thereat, Linnet, holding his hand hard, and looking deep into his eyes,
yet crimson for very shame, began in her own tongue the story of their
interview. She hid nothing from Will, and extenuated nothing. She told
him in full how Joaquin Holmes had brought her Andreas’s letter to
Philippina and offered it for sale; how she had refused to buy it, or
have anything to do with it; how he had dropped it by accident and she
had picked it up before him, intending to restore it to its rightful
owner; how a scuffle had ensued, in the midst of which Andreas had
unexpectedly entered; how in his wrath at being discovered, he had
fairly lost his temper, and provoked her for once to an act of
rebellion; and how in his rage at her note he had turned upon her
bodily, and inflicted the marks Will could see so plainly now upon her
person. Only the question of divorce she never touched on; a certain
feminine delicacy made her shrink from alluding to it. Will listened to
every word with profound attention, letting her tell her own tale her
own way, unquestioned, but stroking her hand from time to time very
gently with his own, or smoothing her fiery cheeks with the tips of his
fingers in silent sympathy.
At last she ceased, and looked hard at Will, inquiringly.