Linnet: A Romance
wicked; she knew it was the deadly, unspeakable sin; she knew she must
answer before the throne of God for it.
Oh, how could she confess it, even to her own parish priest! How ask for
penance, absolution, blessing, when she meant in her heart to live, if
she could, every day of her life in unholy desire or unholy union! O
God, God, God, how could she face his anger!
She rose next morning, very pale and haggard. Rue tried to console her.
But no Protestant consolation could touch those inner chords of her
ingrained nature. Strange to say, all those she loved and trusted most
were of the alien creed; and in these her deepest doubts and fears and
troubles they could give her no comfort. About eleven o’clock came a
knock at the door. Linnet sat in the breakfast-room; she heard a sound
of feet on the staircase hard by—two men being shown up, as she
guessed, into the drawing-room.
The servant brought down two cards. Linnet looked at them with a sinking
heart. One was Andreas Hausberger’s; the other bore the name of her
London confessor, a German-speaking priest of the pro-Cathedral at
Kensington.
She passed them to Rue with a sigh. “I may go up with you?” Rue cried,
for she longed to protect her.
But Linnet shrank back. “Oh no, dear,” she answered, shaking her head
very solemnly. “How I wish you could come! You could sit and hold my
hand. It would do me so much good. But this is a visit of religion. My
priest wouldn’t like it.”
She went upstairs with a bold step, but with a throbbing heart. Rue
followed her anxiously, and took a chair on the landing. What happened
next inside, she couldn’t hear in full, but undertones of it came wafted
to her through the door indistinctly. There was a blur of sounds, among
which Rue could distinguish Andreas Hausberger’s cold tone, not angry,
indeed, but rather low and conciliatory; the priest’s sharp German
voice, now inquiring, now chiding, now hortative, now minatory; and
Linnet’s trembling speech, at first defiant, then penitently apologetic,
at last awestruck and terrified. Rue leant forward to listen. She could
just distinguish the note, but not the words. Linnet was speaking now
very earnestly and solemnly. Then came a pause, and the priest spoke
next—exhorting, threatening, denouncing, in fierce German gutturals.
His voice was like the voice of the angry Church, reproving the sins of
the flesh, the pride of the eyes, the lusts of the body. Linnet bowed
her head, Rue felt sure, before that fierce denunciation. There was a
noise of deep sobs, the low wail of a broken heart. Rue drew back,
aghast. The Church was having its way. They had terrified Linnet.
For the first time in her life, the gentle-hearted American felt herself
on the side of the sinners. She would have given anything just that
moment to get Linnet away from those two dreadful men, and set her down
unawares in Will’s chambers in Duke Street. She tried hard to open the
door, but the key was turned. “Linnet, Linnet!” she cried, knocking
loud, and calling the poor girl by her accustomed pet name, “let me in!
I want to speak to you!”
“No, dear; I can’t!” Linnet answered through the door, gulping down a
great sob. “I must fight it out by myself. _My_ sin; _my_ punishment.”
The voices went on again, a little lower for a while. Then sobs came
thick and fast. Linnet was crying bitterly. Rue strained her ear to
hear; she couldn’t catch a single syllable. The priest seemed to be
praying, as she thought,—praying in Latin. Then Linnet appeared to
answer. For more than an hour together they wrestled with one another.
At the end of that time, the tone of the priest’s voice changed. It was
mild; it was gracious. In an agony of horror, Rue realised what that
meant. She felt sure he must be pronouncing or promising absolution.
So Linnet must have confessed!—must have renounced her sin!—must have
engaged to go back and live with that man Andreas!
Right or wrong, crime or shame, Rue would have given ten thousand pounds
that moment—to take her back to Will Deverill’s.
As Rue thought that thought, the door opened at last, and the three came
forth right before her on the landing.
Andreas and the priest wore an air of triumph. Linnet walked out in
front of them, red-eyed, dejected, miserable. The Church had won; but, O
God, what a victory!
Rue sprang at her and seized her hand. “Linnet, Linnet!” she cried
agonised, “don’t tell me you’ve let these two men talk you over! Don’t
tell me you’re going back to that dreadful man! Don’t tell me you’re
going to give up Will Deverill for such a creature!”
Linnet fell upon her neck, weeping. “Rue, Rue, dear Rue,” she sobbed
out, heart-broken, and half beside herself with love and religious
terror, “it is not to _him_ that I yield, O lieber Gott, not to _him_,
but to the Church’s orders.”
“But you mustn’t!” Rue cried, aghast, and undeterred by the frowning
priest. “You must stop here with me, and get a divorce, and marry him!”
And she flung herself upon her.
“There! what did I say?” Andreas interposed, with a demonstrative air,
turning round to the man of God. “I told you I must take her away from
London at once, at all costs, at all hazards—if you didn’t want her to
fall into deadly sin, and the Church to lose its hold over her soul
altogether.”
The priest looked at Rue with a most disapproving eye. “Madam,” he said,
curtly, in somewhat German English, “with exceeding great difficulty
have I rescued this erring daughter from the very brink of mortal
sin—happily, as yet unconsummated; and now, will you, a married woman
yourself, who know what all this means, drive her back from her husband
into the arms of her lover?”
“Yes, yes; _I will_!” Rue cried boldly—and, oh, how Linnet admired her
for it! “I will! I will! I’ll drive her back to Will Deverill! Anything
to get her away from that man whom she hates! Anything to get her back
to the other whom she loves! Linnet, Linnet, come away from them! Come
up with me to my bedroom!”
But Linnet drew back, trembling. “Yes, yes; I hate him!” she wailed out
passionately, looking across at her husband. “I hate him! Oh, I hate
him! And yet, I will go with him. Not for _him_, but for the Church! Oh,
I hate him! I hate him!”
The priest turned to Andreas. “I absolved her too soon, perhaps,” he
said, in German. “Her penitence is skin-deep. She is still rebellious.
Quick, quick, hurry her off from this sinful adviser. You’ll do well, as
you say, to get her away as soon as you can—clear away from London.
It’s no place for her, I’m sure, so long as this man . . . and his
friends and allies . . . are here to tempt her.”
Rue clung hard to her still. “Linnet, dear,” she cried, coaxingly, “come
up to my room! You’re not going with them, are you?”
“Yes; I am, dear,” Linnet sobbed out, in a heart-broken tone. “Oh, how
good you are!—how sweet to me! But I must go. They have conquered me.”
“Then I’ll go round this very minute,” Rue burst forth through her
tears, “and tell Will what they’re doing to you. If it was me, I’d defy
them and their Church to their faces. I’ll go round and tell Will—and
Will’ll come and rescue you!”
The priest motioned Linnet hastily with one hand down the stairs. “_Sie
haben recht, Herr Hausberger_,” he murmured low. “_Apage retro,
Satanas!_ With temptations like these besetting her path, we shall be
justified in hurrying away this poor weak lamb of our flock from the
very brink of a precipice that so threatens to fall with her.”
CHAPTER XLVI
HOME AGAIN!
Andreas Hausberger was always a wise man in his generation. The moment
he knew Linnet had left his house, he realised forthwith that the one
great danger to his interests lay in the chance of her obtaining a
divorce, and marrying Will Deverill. To prevent such a catastrophe to
his best investment was now the chief object in life of the prudent
_impresario_. He had hurried away from home that first afternoon, it is
true, to make sure how things stood with Philippina and her husband; but
as soon as he found out no serious danger menaced him there, he rushed
back to Avenue Road—to find Linnet flown, without a word to say
whither. Now, Andreas, being a very wise man, and knowing his
countrywomen well, felt tolerably sure Linnet was by far too good a
Catholic to agree to a divorce, even if Will suggested it. She might run
away to her lover in a moment of pique—and so shut herself out from the
benefit of the English law on the subject by misconducting herself in
return; but fly in the face of the Church, insult her creed, defy its
authority, annul its sacraments—oh, never! never! Andreas was certain
Linnet would do—just what Linnet really did; fling herself frankly upon
Will Deverill’s mercy, but refuse to marry him.
Moreover, with his usual worldly wisdom, the _wirth_ of St Valentin saw
at a glance that the Church was the only lever which could ever bring
his revolted wife back to him. She had always disliked him; she now
hated and despised him. But he was still, and must always be, in the
sight of God, her lawful husband. Linnet feared and obeyed the Church,
with the unquestioning faith of the genuine Tyrolese; it was to her a
pure fetish—authoritative, absolute, final. Andreas recognised clearly
that his proper course now was to enlist this mighty engine, if
possible, in his own favour. To guard against all adverse chances, he
must get Linnet back into his power at once, must carry her away from
the sphere of Will’s influence, and, if luck permitted, must hurry her
off to some land where divorce was impossible.
Quick as lightning, he made up his mind. To throw up all her engagements
in London forthwith would, of course, cost money—for she was engaged
under forfeit—and to lose money was indeed a serious consideration.
Still, in the present crisis, the temporary loss of a few stray hundreds
was as nothing in Andreas’s eyes compared with the possible prospective
loss of Linnet’s future earnings. He must risk that and more in order to
snatch her from Will Deverill’s clutches. He had meant to take his wife
to America, on tour, a little later in the year; and he adhered to that
programme: but not till she had quite got over her present fit of
rebellion. For the moment, he judged it best on many grounds to venture
on a bold step—no less a step than to go back with her to St Valentin.
For this sudden resolve, he had ample reasons. In the first place, he
would have her there under the thumb of Austrian law; divorce would be
impossible—nay, even unthinkable. But, in the second place—and on this
point Andreas counted far more—he would have her there in an atmosphere
of unquestioning Catholicism, where all the world would take it for
granted that to marry Will Deverill by judgment of an English court was
an insult to Providence ten thousand times worse than to sin and
repent—nay, even than to sin without pretence of repentance, but
without the vain mockery of a heretical marriage. A few weeks in the
Tyrol, Andreas thought in his wise way, surrounded by all the simple
ideas of her childhood, and exposed to the exhortations of her old
friend, the Herr Vicar, would soon bring Linnet back from this flight of
unbridled fancy to a proper frame of mind again. Besides, the mountain
air would be good for her health after so stormy an episode—ozone,
ozone, ozone!—and he wanted her to be in first-rate singing voice,
before he launched her on the fresh world of New York and Chicago. Lots
of money to be made in New York and Chicago! Once get her well across
the Atlantic in a White Star Liner, and all would be changed; she’d soon
forget Will in the new free life of that Western Golconda.
To enlist the Church on his side was therefore Andreas Hausberger’s