Linnet: A Romance
“Your sister’s?” Linnet asked. “But I didn’t know you had one!”
Florian waved his hand airily, with a compulsive gesture, as if he could
call sisters to command from the vasty deep, in any required
quantity—as indeed was the case. “Oh dear, yes,” he answered. “She
hasn’t been long in town. She—er—she lives mostly in Brittany.” He
paused for a second to give his fancy free play. Ah, happy thought! just
so!—a clergyman’s wife would be the very thing for the purpose. “Her
husband’s chaplain at Dinan,” he went on, with his bland smile,
romancing readily. “She doesn’t often come over. She’s not well off,
poor dear; but this year she’s taken a house for the season . . . in
Pimlico. You might go round there, at least, while you’re waiting for
Will. It’s less compromising than this; and we could leave a note behind
to tell him where he could find you.”
Linnet debated internally. Florian paused, and looked judicial. “What
sort of person is she?” Linnet asked at last, hesitating.
“Kind—nice—sympathetic?”
“You’ve summed her up in one word!” Florian answered with a flourish.
“Sympathetic—that’s just it; she’s bubbling over with sympathy. She
goes out to all troubled souls. Though I’m her own brother, and
therefore naturally prejudiced against her, I never knew anyone so
intensely capable of throwing herself forth towards other people as my
sister Marian. She’s the exact antipodes of that unspeakable Sartoris
woman; human, human, human, above all things human; she brims and
overflows with the milk of human kindness! And she took such a fancy to
you, too, when she saw you one night, in _Cophetua’s Adventure_. She
said to me, ‘O Florian, do you think she’d come and stay with us? I’d
give anything to know that sweet creature personally.’ I told her, of
course, you never stayed with anybody under the rank of a crowned head
or a millionaire soap-boiler. She was quite disappointed, and she’d be
only too delighted now, I’m sure, if she could be of any service to
you.”
He looked at her hard. He had provided a sister, mentally. As a matter
of fact, he knew a lady—a most obliging lady—tolerably reputable,
too—in a side street in Pimlico, who would be willing (for a slight
consideration) to take Linnet in, and adopt any relation she was told to
Florian. Once get a married woman (and a singer-body at that) away from
her husband, into a house of your own choosing, and—given agreeable
manners and a persuasive tongue—you can do before long pretty much what
you like with her. So, at least, Florian’s philosophy had always
instructed him. He chuckled to himself to think pure chance should have
enabled him thus to anticipate Will Deverill. And if Will was playing
this game, this simple little game, why on earth shouldn’t _he_ play it
too, and outwit his rival?
He went on to expatiate very enthusiastically to Linnet on the imaginary
sister’s sympathetic virtues. In a few minutes he had made her so
absolutely charming—for he was a fluent talker—that at last Linnet,
who, like all Tyrolese, was impulsive at heart, jumped up from her seat
and exclaimed with a sudden burst, “Very well, then; I’ll go there. It’s
safer there than here. We can leave a line for Will to let him have the
address. I’ll sit down and write it.”
“No, no,” Florian cried, eagerly, seizing a pen in haste. “I’ll write it
myself. Then we’ll take a cab outside, and go round there together.”
For if once Linnet was seen with him in a hansom in the street—after
leaving her husband—her fate was sealed. She might as well _do_ what
all the world would immediately say she was bent on doing.
CHAPTER XLV
BY AUTHORITY
As Florian sat there, scribbling off a few lines of apology for their
hasty departure, the door opened of a sudden—and Will Deverill entered.
Florian rose, a little abashed—though, to be sure, it took a good deal
to abash Florian. He stood by the desk, hesitating, with his unfinished
letter dangling idly in his hand, while he debated inwardly what
plausible lie he could invent on the spur of the moment and palm off to
excuse himself. But before he could make up his mind to a suitable
story, Linnet—that impulsive southern Linnet—had rushed forward, all
eager, with her own version of the episode. “O Will,” she cried,
spoiling all by her frank avowal, “I’m so glad you’ve come at last! I
couldn’t bear to wait here in doubt any longer; and Florian’s so kind:
he was just going to take me off for the night to his sister’s!”
Will turned from her and gazed at Florian for a brief space in blank
surprise. Then, as by degrees it dawned upon him what this treachery
really meant, his face changed little by little to one of shocked and
horrified incredulity. “Florian,” he said, in a very serious voice,
“come out here into the passage. This thing must be explained. I want to
speak with you.”
Florian followed him on to the landing, hardly knowing what he did.
Will’s eye was cold and stern. “Now, look here,” he said, frigidly,
fixing his man with his icy gaze, “it’s no use lying to me. I know as
well as you do, you’ve got no sister.”
Florian smiled imperturbable. “Well, no,” he said, blandly; “but—I
thought I might improvise one.”
Will took him in at a glance. He pointed with one hand to the stairs,
impressively, “Go! without another word,” he said. “You’ve behaved like
a cad. Instead of trying to save and help this poor girl, you’ve
concocted a vile plan in my absence to ruin her.”
Florian turned to him, cynically. “You were looking out for a house to
take her to yourself,” he answered. “I don’t suppose _you_ meant to
return her to her husband. If _you_ may do it, why not _I_ as well? Two
can play at that game, you know. It’s quits between us. You needn’t
pretend to such high morality at the very moment when you’re engaged in
enticing another man’s wife away from her husband.”
Will didn’t deign any further to bandy words with the fellow. “Go!” he
said, once more, pointing sternly to the doorway. Florian turned on his
heel, and slunk down the stairs, as jauntily as he could, but looking
for all that just a trifle disconcerted. Will leant over the banisters,
as he went, with a sudden afterthought. “And if ever you dare to say
anything to anyone on earth about having seen Linnet here, at my rooms,
to-night,” he called out, very pointedly, “I shall think you, if
possible, even a greater cad than I think you now, and not hesitate to
say so.”
He returned to Linnet in his sitting-room. He wouldn’t speak before her
to Florian because he couldn’t bear she should even suspect how bad an
opinion the man had had of her, and what plot he had laid for her.
“You shall go round to Mrs Palmer’s, Linnet,” he said, taking her hand
in his. “The place Florian spoke of isn’t at all the right place for a
girl like you. But Rue will receive you like a sister till we can
arrange some other plan for you. At _her_ house, you’ll be safe from
every whisper of scandal.”
“You’ll take me there, won’t you?” Linnet inquired, gazing wistfully at
him.
On that point, however, Will was firm as a rock. “No, dearest,” he
answered, laying one hand on her full round arm, persuasively. “You must
go there alone, with only your maid. It’s better so. Rue has a friend or
two coming in to dine with her to-night. They’ll see you arrive at her
door by yourself; and if any talk comes of it, they’ll know how to
answer it.”
Linnet flung herself upon him once more, in a last clinging embrace. She
was wildly in love with him. Will pressed her hard to his heart; then he
gently disengaged himself, and led her to the door. A cab was in
waiting—the cab that brought him there. Linnet got into it at once, and
drove off with Ellen. In twenty minutes more, she was in Rue’s pretty
drawing-room.
That night, when all the rest were gone, she and Rue sat up long and
late, talking together earnestly. Their talk was of Will. Linnet didn’t
try to conceal from her new friend how much she loved him. Rue listened
sympathetically, suppressing her own heart, so that Linnet ceased even
to remember to herself how she had thought once of the grand lady as her
most dangerous rival.
But all the time, Rue preached to her one line of action alone: “You
must get a divorce, of course, dear, and marry Will Deverill.” And all
the time, Linnet shook her head, and answered through her tears, “A
divorce to me is a mockery and a delusion. I’d rather stop with him
openly, and defy the world and the Church together, than affront my God
by pretending to marry him, when I know in my heart Andreas Hausberger
is and must always be my one real husband.”
At last they went to bed. Neither slept much that evening. Linnet
thought about Will; Rue thought about Linnet. As things now stood, Rue
would give much to help them. Since Will loved this woman far more than
he loved _her_, she wished indeed Linnet might be freed at last from
that hateful man, and they two might somehow be happy together. Only the
Church stood in the way—that implacable Church, with its horrible dogma
of indissoluble marriage.
Next day, Linnet spent very quietly at Rue’s. Will never came near the
house; but he wrote round a long and earnest letter to Linnet, urging
her with all the force and persuasiveness he knew to go down that night
as usual to the theatre. It was best, he said, in order to avoid a
scandal, that she should appear to have left her unworthy husband on
grounds of his own misconduct alone, and be anxious to fulfil in every
other way all her ordinary engagements.
Linnet went, sick at heart. She hardly knew how she was to get through
_Carmen_. But when she saw Will’s face in a box at the side, watching
her with eager anxiety, she plucked up heart, and, fired by her own
excitement, sang her part in that stirring romance as she had never
before sung it. She rushed at her Toreador as she would have rushed at
Will Deverill. At times, too, as in the cigar factory scene, she was
defiant with a wonderful and life-like defiance; for she marked another
face in the stalls before her—Andreas Hausberger’s hard face, gazing up
at his flown bird with intense determination. Rue had come to see her
through. At the end of the performance, Rue waited at the door for her.
Will passed by, and spoke casually just a few simple words of friendly
congratulation on her splendid performance; then she drove away,
flushed, to Hans Place, in Rue’s carriage.
It didn’t escape her notice, however, that, as she stepped in, Andreas
Hausberger stood behind, with his hand on the door of their own hired
brougham. As Linnet drove off, he leaned forward to the coachman.
“Follow the green livery,” he called out in so loud a voice that Linnet
overheard it. When they drew up at Rue’s door, he was close behind them.
But he noted the number, that was all; he had been there before, indeed,
to Rue’s Sunday afternoons, and only wished to make sure of the house,
and that Linnet was stopping there. “Drive on home,” he called to the
man; and disappeared in the distance. Linnet looked after him and
shuddered. She knew what that meant; and she trembled at the thought. He
would come back to fetch her.
She was a Catholic still. If he came and bid her follow him—her lawful
husband—how could she dare refuse him?
All that night long, she lay awake and prayed, torturing her pure soul
with many doubts and terrors. In the lone hours of early morning,
ghastly fears beset her. The anger of Heaven seemed to thunder in her
ears; the flames of Hell rose up to take hold of her. She would give her
very life to go back again to Will; and the nether abyss yawned wide its
fiery mouth to receive her as she thought it. She would go back to Will,
let what would, come;—but she knew it was wrong; she knew it was