Linnet: A Romance
“So I’ve come to you, Will,” she said, in her simple way, with childlike
confidence; “and, now I’ve come, may I stop with you always? May I never
go away again?”
Will’s heart beat high. Her loving trust, her perfect self-surrender,
could not fail to touch him. Yet he gazed at her ruefully. “My darling,”
he said with a burst, belying his words as he spoke by laying her soft
head once more in the hollow of his shoulder; “you shouldn’t have come
to me. You’ve done very very wrong—very foolishly I mean. I’m the exact
last person on earth you should have come to.”
Linnet nestled to him close. “But I _love_ you,” she cried, pleadingly.
“You’re the only living soul I’d have cared to come to.”
“Yes, yes; I know,” Will answered hastily. “I didn’t mean that, of
course. You’re mine, mine, mine! Sooner or later, now, you must
certainly come to me. But for the present, darling, I mean, it’s so
unwise, so foolish. It’ll prejudice your case, if it ever comes to be
heard of. We must take you somewhere else—somewhere free from all
blame, don’t you see—for the immediate future.”
“Prejudice my case!” Linnet exclaimed, looking up at him in amazement,
and growing more shamefaced still with awe at her own boldness. “You
must take me somewhere else! Ah, Will, I don’t understand you. No, no; I
must stop here—I must stop here with you for ever. I’ve broken away
from him now; I’ve broken away from everything. I can never, never go
back. I’m yours, and yours only.”
“No; you can never go back, Linnet,” Will answered decisively. “You’re
mine, darling, mine, mine, mine only”; and he kissed her again
fervently. “But we must be prudent, of course, if we’re to make this
thing straight before the eyes of the world; and for _your_ sake,
dearest, you must see yourself how absolutely necessary it is that we
should make it so.”
Linnet gazed at him once more in childlike astonishment. She failed
utterly to comprehend him. “What do you mean, Will?” she faltered out.
“You don’t mean to say I’m not to stop with you?”
Her eyes filled fast with tears, and her face looked up at his, full of
wistful pleading. She clung to him so tight, in her love and her terror,
that Will bent over her yet again and covered her with kisses. “Yes,
darling; you’re to stop with me,” he cried; “to stop with me all your
life—but not just at present. We must make this thing straight in the
regular way first. Meanwhile, you must stay with some friend—some lady
whose name is above suspicion. All must be carefully arranged. Even to
have come here to-night may be positively fatal. We must play our cards
cautiously. You’ve kept the letter?”
Linnet drew it, much crumpled, from the folds of her bosom, and handed
it to him at once, without a moment’s hesitation. What he meant, she
couldn’t imagine. Will ran his eye over it hastily. Then he glanced at
the deep red marks on her neck, and her half-bared arm—for she had
rolled back her sleeve like a child to show him. “This is conclusive,”
he said slowly. “Prudent man as he is, he has cut his own throat. And
you had a witness, too—a friendly witness; that’s lucky. We must take
you to a doctor, and let him see you to-night, as soon as ever we’ve
arranged where you can sleep this evening. The evidence of cruelty—and
of the other thing—is more than sufficient. No court in England would
refuse you a divorce upon such conduct.”
Linnet started at the word. “Divorce!” she cried, growing redder and
still redder with shame. “Oh, Will, not that, not that! You don’t
understand me. Divorce would be no use in the world to _me_. I’m a
Catholic, you must remember, and I could never, never _marry_ you. If I
did, it would only be a mockery and a snare. It would be worse than sin;
it would be open rebellion. I want no divorce; I want only to be allowed
to stop here with you for ever.”
She laid her hand on his arm, as if to draw him to herself in some
natural symbolism. Her face was flushed with her womanly modesty. She
hid it once more like a shy child on his shoulder. Will looked at her,
sore puzzled. How strange that this pure and passionate nature should
see things in a light that to him was so unfamiliar! But he remembered
what she had said to him in Philippina’s trouble, and began to
understand now in what manner she regarded it.
“Well, but, Linnet,” he cried eagerly lifting her head from where she
put it, and laying her cheek against his own, “you must see for yourself
how much better it would be, if only from the mere worldly point of
view, to arrange this matter as the world would arrange it. Granting
even that a marriage after an English divorce would mean to you, from
the strictly religious standpoint, simply nothing—why, surely, even
then, it must be no small matter to set oneself right with the world, to
be received and acknowledged as an honest woman, and my wife, in
ordinary English society. If we get a divorce, we can do all that; and
to get a divorce, we must act now circumspectly. But if we don’t get
one, and if you try to stop here with me without it—remember, dear, the
penalty; you lose position at once, and become for society an utter
outcast.”
Linnet flung herself upon him once more in a perfect fervour of
abandonment. Her love and her shame were fighting hard within her. Her
passionate Southern nature overcame her entirely. “Will, Will, dear
Will,” she cried, hiding her face from him yet again, “you don’t
understand; you can’t fathom the depth of the sacrifice I would make for
you. I come to you to-day bringing my life in my hand—my eternal life,
my soul, my future; I offer you all I have, all I am, all I will be. For
you I give up my good name, my faith, my hopes of salvation. For you I
will endure the worst tortures of purgatory. I’ve tried to keep
away—I’ve tried hard to keep away—Our Dear Lady knows how hard—all
these months, all these years—but I can keep away no longer. Two great
powers seemed to pull different ways within me. My Church said to me
plainly, ‘You must never think of him; you must stop with Andreas.’ My
heart said to me no less plainly, but a thousand times more
persuasively, ‘You must fly from that man’s side; you must go to Will
Deverill.’ I knew, if I followed my heart, the fires of hell would rise
up and take hold of me. I haven’t minded for that; I’ve dared the fires
of hell; the two have fought it out—the Church and my heart—and, my
heart has conquered.”
She paused, and drew a great sigh. “Dear Will,” she went on softly,
burying her head yet deeper in that tender bosom, “if I got a divorce,
the divorce would be nothing to me—a mere waste paper. What people
think of me matters little, very little in my mind, compared to what God
and my Church will say of me. If I stop with you here, I shall be living
in open sin; but I shall be living with the man my heart loves best; I
shall have at least my own heart’s unmixed approval. While I lived with
Andreas, the Church and God approved; but my own heart told me, every
night of my life, I was living in sin, unspeakable sin against human
nature and my own body. Oh, Will, I don’t know why, but it somehow seems
as if God and our hearts were at open war; you must live by one or you
must live by the other. If I stop with you, I’m living by my own heart’s
law; I will take the sin upon me; I will pay the penalty. If God
punishes me for it at last—well, I will take my punishment and bear it
bravely; I won’t flinch from pain; I won’t shrink from the fires of hell
or purgatory. But, at least, I do it all with my eyes wide open. I know
I’m disobeying God’s law for the law of my own heart. I won’t profane
God’s holy sacrament of marriage by asking a heretical and un-Catholic
Church to bless a union which is all my own—my own heart’s making, not
God’s ordinance, God’s sacrament. I love you so well, darling, I can
never leave you. Let me stop with you, Will; let me stop with you! Let
me live with you; let me die with you; let me burn in hell-fire for
you!”
A man is a man. And the man within Will Deverill drove him on
irresistibly. He clasped her hard once more to his straining bosom. “As
you wish,” he said, quivering. “Your will is law, Linnet.”
“No, no,” she cried, nestling against him, with a satisfied sigh of
delight. “My law is Will.” And she looked up and smiled at her own
little conceit. “You shall do as you wish with me.”
CHAPTER XLII
PRUDENCE
It was a trying position for Will. He hardly knew what to do. Duty and
love pulled him one way, chivalry and the hot blood of youth the other.
When a beautiful woman makes one an offer like that, it would be
scarcely human, scarcely virile to resist it. And Will was not only a
man but also a poet—for a poet is a man with whom moods and impulses
are stronger than with most of us. As poet, he cared little for mere
conventional rules; it was the consequences to Linnet herself he had
most to think about. But he saw it was no use talking to her from the
standpoint he would have adopted with most ordinary Englishwomen. It was
no use pointing out to her what he himself realised most distinctly,
that her union with Andreas was in its very essence an unholy one, an
insult to her own body, a treason against all that was truest and best
in her being. It ran counter from the very first to the dictates of her
own heart, which are the voice of Nature and of God within us. But to
Linnet, those plain truths would have seemed but the veriest human
sophisms. She looked upon her marriage with Andreas as a holy sacrament
of the Church; and any attempt to set aside that sacrament by an earthly
court, and to substitute for it a verbal marriage that was no marriage
at all to her, but a profound mockery, would have seemed to her soul ten
thousand times worse than avowed desertion and unconcealed wickedness.
Better live in open sin, she thought, though she paid for it with her
body, than insult her God by pretending to invoke his aid and blessing
on an adulterous union.
Will argued feebly with her for a while, but it was all to no purpose.
The teachings of her youth had too firm a hold upon her. He saw she was
quite fixed in her own mind upon one thing; she might stop with him or
she might go back, but she was Andreas Hausberger’s wife by the Church’s
act, and no earthly power could make anything else of her. So Will gave
up the attempt to convince her, as all in vain, at least for the
present. He saw what he had to do first was to provide at once for the
immediate future. Linnet couldn’t remain in his rooms alone with him
that night; to him, at least, so much was certain. For her own dear
sake, he must save her from herself; he must throw at least some decent
veil for the moment over the relations between them.
For Linnet herself, long before this, the die was cast. She felt she had
already deserted her husband; she had sinned in her heart the
unspeakable sin; all the rest was in her eyes mere detail and
convention. But she realised gratefully none the less Will’s goodness
and kindness to her. “You are better to me far than I’ve been to
myself,” she cried, clinging hard to him still; “I’ve wrecked my own
soul, and you would try to save my poor earthly body.” And yet, in the
mere intoxication of being near him and touching him, she more than
half-forgot all else on earth; her warm Southern nature rejoiced in the
light of her poet’s presence. She cared for nothing now; she thought of
nothing, feared nothing; with Will by her side, she would gladly give
her soul to burn for ever in nethermost hell, for the sake of those
precious, those fleeting moments.
“I must find some place for you to spend the night in, Linnet,” Will
said at last seriously. “Even if it were only to save scandal for the