Linnet: A Romance
immediate future, I should have to do that; by to-morrow, all the world
in London would be talking of it. But I hope, after a while, when I’ve
reasoned this thing out with you, you may see it all differently—you
may come round to my point of view; and then, you’ll be glad I arranged
things now so as to leave the last loophole of divorce and re-marriage
still open before you.”
Linnet shook her head firmly. “I’m a Catholic,” she said, with a sigh,
“and to me, dear Will, religion means simply the Catholic faith and the
Catholic practice. If I gave up that, I should give up everything.
Either marriage is a sacrament, or it’s nothing at all. It’s to the
sacrament alone that I attach importance. But if you wish me to go, I’ll
go anywhere you take me; though, if I obeyed my own heart, I’d never
move away from your dear side again, my darling, my darling!”
She clung to him with passionate force. Will felt it was hard to drive
her from him against her will—how hard, perhaps, no woman could ever
tell; for with women, the aggressiveness of love is a thing unknown; but
for the love’s sake he bore her, he kept down his longing for her. “Have
you brought any luggage with you?” he asked at last, drawing himself
suddenly back, and descending all at once to the level of the practical.
“A little portmanteau, and—all I need for the night,” Linnet answered
with a deep blush, still clinging hard to him. “My maid’s in the
passage.”
“But how about the theatre this evening?” Will inquired with a little
start. “You know, this was to have been your first appearance this
season.”
Linnet opened her palms outward with a speaking gesture. “The theatre!”
she cried, half-scornfully. “What do I care for the theatre? Now I’ve
come to _you_, Will, what do I care for anything? If I had my own way,
I’d stop here with _you_ for ever and ever. The theatre—well, the
theatre might do as best it could without me!”
Will paused, and reflected. He saw he must absolutely take measures to
protect this hot passionate creature against the social consequences of
her own hot passion. “You’ve got an understudy, I suppose,” he said;
“someone who could fill the part pretty decently in your enforced
absence? They don’t depend altogether upon you, I hope, for to-night’s
performance.”
“Yes; I’ve got an understudy,” Linnet answered, in a very careless
voice, clasping his hand tight in hers, and gripping it hard now and
again, as though understudies were a matter of the supremest
indifference to her. “She doesn’t know her part very well, and I’m the
soul of the piece; but I daresay they could get along with her very
tolerably enough somehow. Besides,” she added, in a little afterthought,
looking down at her wounded arm, “after what Andreas has done to me, I’m
too ill and too shaken to appear to-night, whatever might have happened.
Even if I’d stopped at home, instead of coming here, I couldn’t possibly
have undertaken to sing in public this evening.”
“Very well, then,” Will replied, making up his mind at once. “We must
act accordingly. If that’s the case, the best thing I can do is to go
out and telegraph to the management, without delay, that Signora
Casalmonte is seriously indisposed, and won’t be able to appear in
_Carmen_ this evening.”
“To go out!” Linnet cried, clutching his arm in dismay. “Oh, dear Will,
don’t do that! Don’t leave me for a moment. Suppose Andreas were to
come, and to find me here alone? What on earth could I do? What on earth
could I say to him?”
Will stroked her cheek once more, that beautiful soft cheek that he
loved so dearly, as he answered in a grave and very serious tone, “Now,
Linnet, you must be brave; and, above all, you must be practical. This
is a crisis in our lives. A great deal depends upon it. If you love me,
you must do as I advise you in this emergency. You have done quite right
to come away from Andreas—instantly, the very moment you discovered
this letter—the very moment he offered you such unmanly violence. In
that, you were true woman. You’re in the right now, and if you behave
circumspectly, all the world will admit it; all the world will say so.
But you mustn’t stop here one second longer than is absolutely
necessary. You must spend the night with some friend whom we know, some
lady of position and unblemished reputation; and the world must think
you went straight from your husband’s roof to hers, when all these
things happened.”
Linnet drew back, all aghast. “What, go from you!” she cried: “this
first night of our love. O Will, dear Will! Go, go right away from you!”
“Yes,” Will answered firmly. “For the moment, the one thing needful is
to find such a shelter for you. If you took refuge in a hotel or private
lodging to-night, people would whisper and hint—you know what they
would hint; we must stop their hateful whisperings! Now, darling, you
mustn’t say _no_; you must act as I advise. I’m going out at once to
find that lady. I shall ask my sister first—she’s a clergyman’s wife,
and nothing looks so well as a clergyman’s wife in England. But if _she_
objects, I must try some other woman. You’re agitated to-night, and I
should be doing you a gross wrong if I took advantage now of your love
and your agitation. Though it isn’t you and myself I’m thinking of at
all; you and I know, you and I understand one another. Let me not to the
marriage of true minds admit impediment; it isn’t that that I trouble
for—it’s the hateful prying eyes and lying tongues of other people. For
myself, darling, my creed is quite other than your priests’; I hold
that, here to-night, you are mine, and I am yours; God and Nature have
joined us, by the witness of our own hearts”; his voice sank solemnly,
“and whom God hath joined together,” he added, in a very grave tone,
“let not man put asunder.” He paused and hesitated. “But, for to-night,”
he went on, “we must make some temporary arrangement; to-morrow and
afterwards, we may settle for the future with one another at our
leisure. When you look at it more calmly, dearest, you may change your
mind about the matter of the divorce; till then, we must be cautious,
and, in any case, we must take care to give the wicked world no handle
against you.”
Linnet clutched him tight still. “But if you go,” she cried, all
eagerness, “you won’t leave me; I may go with you.”
Her voice was so pleading, it cut Will to the quick to be obliged to
refuse her. He leant over her tenderly. “My Linnet,” he cried, caressing
her with one strong hand as he spoke, “I’d give worlds to be able to say
_yes_; I can’t bear to say _no_ to you. But for your own dear sake, once
more, I must, I must. I can’t possibly let you go with me. Just consider
this; how foolish it would be for me to let you be seen with me,
to-night, on foot or in a cab, in the streets of London. All the world
would say—with truth—you’d run away from your husband, and rushed
straight into the arms of your lover. You and I know you’ve done
perfectly right in that. But the world—the world would never know it.
We must never let them have the chance of saying what, after their kind,
we feel sure they would say about it.”
He rose from his chair. She clung to him, passionately. “Oh, take me
with you, Will!” she cried, in a perfect fever of love. “Suppose Andreas
was to come! Suppose he was to try and carry me off by force against my
will! Oh, take me, take me with you!—don’t leave me here, alone, to
Andreas!”
Sadly against his wish, Will disengaged her arms and untwined her
fingers. He did it very tenderly but with perfect firmness. “No,
darling,” he said, in a quiet tone of command; “let go! I must leave you
here alone; it’s imperative. And it’s wisest so; it’s right; it’s the
best thing to do for you. You are mine in future—you were always
mine—and we shall have plenty of time to love one another as we will,
hereafter. But to-night I must see you suffer no harm by this first
false step of yours. My servant knows your husband well. He shall wait
in the hall; and, if Andreas comes, deny us both to him. Your maid can
come up here with you. I’ll take care no evil happens to you in any way
in my absence. Trust me, trust me for this, Linnet; you needn’t be
afraid of me.”
With a sudden change of front, Linnet held up her face to him. “I can
always trust you, dear Will,” she cried. “I have always trusted you. All
these long, long years I’ve known and seen how you yearned for one
kiss—and would never take it. All these long, long years, I’ve known
how you hungered and thirsted for my love—and kept down your own heart,
letting only your eyes tell me a little—a very little—while your lips
kept silence. The other men asked me many things, and asked me
often—you know a singer’s life, what it is, and what rich people think
of us, that they have but to offer us gold, and we will yield them
anything. I never gave to one of them what I was keeping for you, my
darling; I said to myself, ‘I am Andreas’s by the sacrament of the
Church; but Will’s, Will’s, Will’s, by my own heart, and by the law of
my nature!’ I trusted you then; I’ll trust you always. Good-bye, dear
heart; go quick: come back again quick to me!”
She held the ripe red flower of her lips pursed upward towards his face.
Will printed one hard kiss on that rich full mouth of hers. Then, sorely
against his will, he tore himself away, and, in a tumult of warring
impulses, descended the staircase.
CHAPTER XLIII
LINNET’S RIVAL
Will hailed a cab in St James’s Street, and drove straight to his
sister’s, only pausing by the way to despatch a hasty telegram to the
management of the Harmony: “Signora Casalmonte seriously indisposed.
Quite unable to sing this evening. Must fill up her place for to-night,
at least, and probably for to-morrow as well, by understudy.”
Then he went on to Maud’s. “Mrs Sartoris at home?”
“Yes, sir; but she’s just this minute gone up to dress for dinner.”
“Tell her I must see her at once,” Will exclaimed with decision,—“on
important business. Let her come down just as she is. If she’s not
presentable, ask her to throw a dressing-gown round her, or anything, to
save time, and run down without delay, as I must speak with her
immediately on a most pressing matter.”
The maid, smiling incredulity, ran upstairs with his message. Will, with
heart on fire, much perturbed on Linnet’s account, walked alone into the
drawing-room, to await his sister’s coming. He was too anxious to sit
still; he paced up and down the room, with hands behind his back, and
eyes fixed on the carpet. A minute . . . two minutes . . . four, five,
ten passed, and yet no Maud. It seemed almost as if she meant to keep
him waiting on purpose. He chafed at it inwardly; at so critical a
juncture, surely she might hurry herself after such an urgent message.
At last, Maud descended—ostentatiously half-dressed. She wore an
evening skirt—very rich and handsome; but, in place of a bodice, she
had thrown loosely around her a becoming blue bedroom jacket, trimmed
with dainty brown facings. Arthur Sartoris, in full clerical evening
costume and spotless white tie, followed close behind her. Maud burst
into the room with a stately sweep of implied remonstrance. “This is
very inconvenient, Will,” she said in her chilliest tone, holding up one
cheek as she spoke in a frigid way for a fraternal salute, and pulling
her jacket together symbolically—“very, very inconvenient. We’ve the
Dean and his wife coming to dine, as you know, in a quarter of an
hour—and the Jenkinses, and the Macgregors, and those people from St
Christopher’s. Fortunately, I happened to go up early to dress, and had
got pretty well through with my hair when your name was announced, or
I’m sure I don’t know how I could ever have come down to you. Oh,