Linnet: A Romance
first and chief endeavour. With this object in view, he took the
unwonted step of confessing himself in due form to the priest of the
pro-Cathedral the very day after Linnet left him. ’Twas a well-timed
confession. Andreas admitted to the full his own misconduct—admitted it
with a most exemplary and edifying show of masculine contrition. But
then he went on to point out to the priest that between his wife’s case
and his there was a great gulf fixed, from the point of view of the
ecclesiastical vision. _He_ had sinned, it was true, and deserved
reprehension; but he was anxious, all the same, to remain in close union
as ever with his wife, to admit the obligation and sanctity of the
sacrament. Frau Hausberger, on the other hand, had left his hearth and
home, and seemed now on the very point of falling into the hands of
heretics, who might persuade her to accept the dissolving verdict of a
mere earthly court, and to marry again during her husband’s lifetime, in
open defiance of the Church’s authority. Her soul was thus placed in
very serious jeopardy. If she continued to remain with Will or with
Will’s friends, and if they over-persuaded her to obtain a divorce, she
would become a Protestant, or at any rate would enter into an irregular
union which no Catholic could regard as anything other than legalised
adultery.
The justness and soundness of Herr Hausberger’s views deeply impressed
the candid mind of his confessor. It is pleasant indeed, in these
degenerate days, to find a layman who so thoroughly enters into the
Church’s idea as to the obligation of the sacraments. Moreover, to let a
well-known lamb of the flock thus stray from the fold before the eyes of
all Europe—and on such a question—the confessor saw well would be a
serious calamity. Indeed, the Church had somewhat prided itself in its
way on Signora Casalmonte. It had pointed to her more than once as a
conspicuous example of pure Catholic life under trying circumstances. A
Tyrolese peasant-girl, brought up in a country where Catholic influences
still bear undisputed sway, and transplanted to the most dangerous and
least approved of professions, she had comported herself on the stage,
in spite of every temptation, with conspicuous modesty and religious
feeling. Beautiful, graceful, much admired, much sought after in all the
capitals of Europe, she had resisted the many snares that beset a
singer’s career, and had shown a singular instance of pure domestic life
in a sphere where such life is, alas, too uncommon. So much could the
lessons of the Church effect; so great was the lasting power of early
Catholic influences.
And now, if they must eat their own words publicly, and go back on their
own encomiums, if Linnet, on whom they had prided themselves as a
shining example of the success of their method, was to go off before the
eyes of all the world with a non-Catholic poet—worse still, if she was
to fly in the face of their most cherished principles, and request a
divorce at the hands of purely secular judges, Catholicism itself would
receive a serious blow in the eyes of many doubtful or wavering
adherents. A person like the Casalmonte commands public attention. Of
course, if the worst came to the worst, it would be easy enough for the
Church to disown her; easy enough to remark, with a casual little sneer,
that Rome had never approved of the theatrical profession—above all,
for women. Still, it is a good pastor’s duty, if possible, to save,
above all things, the souls of his flock; and the first thing to do, it
was clear, the confessor thought, was to bring the Casalmonte back again
into subjection to her own husband. They must strain every nerve to
prevent her obtaining or even demanding a divorce; they must strive, if
they could, to obviate a gross and open scandal.
Actuated by such motives, and by many others of a more technical
character, the confessor, after some demur, consented at last to the
somewhat unusual course of calling upon the lost lamb, if her
whereabouts could be found, and endeavouring to save her either from
open sin or still more open rebellion. As soon as he learned she hadn’t
gone off with Will Deverill, but was quietly staying with a wealthy
American lady, an intimate friend of her suspected lover’s, the priest
made up his sapient mind at once this meant a determination to seek a
divorce, which must instantly be combated by every means in his power.
So he worked upon Linnet’s susceptible Southern nature by striking
successively all the profoundest chords of religion, shame, penitence,
remorse, and terror. He appalled her with the authoritative voice of the
Church; he convicted her of sin; he overawed her with the mysterious
sanctity of a divine sacrament. Before he had finished his harangue,
Linnet crouched and cowered in abject fear before him. She loved Will
with all her heart: she would always love him; she hated Andreas with
all her soul: she couldn’t help but hate him. Still, if God and the
Church so ordained, she would follow that man she hated, till death them
did part; she would forsake that man she loved, though her heart broke
with love for him.
Andreas seized his opportunity; he struck while the iron was hot. His
brougham was at the door; he had sent their luggage on to Charing Cross
before him. In haste and trembling, he hurried Linnet away, hardly even
waiting for Ellen to bring down the portmanteau with her jewellery and
necessaries. They drove straight to Charing Cross, and took the Club
train southwards. That night they spent in Paris. Linnet, heart-broken
but calm, insisted on separate rooms; for that, at least, she must
stipulate; she would follow him, she said, as the Church directed, to
the bitter end, but never again while he lived should he dare to lay
those heavy hands of his upon her. Next morning, they took the early
express to Innsbruck, _via_ Zurich and the Vorarlberg. Two evenings
later, they sat together at St Valentin.
How strange it all seemed to her now, that familiar old world of her own
native Tyrol! Everything was there, just as of yore, to be sure—land,
people, villages—but oh, how small, how petty, how mean, how shrunken!
St Valentin had dwindled down to a mere collection of farm-houses; the
church, whose green steeple once looked so tall and great, had grown
short and stumpy and odd and squalid-looking; the _Wirthshaus_, that
once prosperous and commodious inn, seemed in her eyes to-day a mere
fourth-rate little simple country tavern. To all of us, when we revisit
well-known scenes of our childhood, space seems to have shrunk, the
world to have grown smaller and meaner and uglier. But to Linnet, the
change seemed even greater than to most of us. She had been taken
straight away from that petty hamlet, and elevated with surprising
rapidity into European fame—a popular favourite of Milan and Naples,
Rome and Paris, Munich and Brussels, London and Vienna. The break in her
life had been sudden and enormous; she had passed at once, as it were,
from the village inn to the courts of kings and the adulation of great
cities. And now, when she came back again, all was blank and dreary. The
dear mother was dead; Will Deverill was away, and she might not see him;
the Herr Vicar turned out a greasy, frowsy Austrian parish priest;
Cousin Fridolin had a fat wife and two dirty-faced babies. The poetry
seemed to have faded out of the Tyrol she once knew; the very cow-bells
rang harsh—and Will Deverill, who could make music of them, was away
over in London.
Only Nature itself remained to console her. And Andreas in his wisdom
allowed her to commune much with Nature. The eternal hills had still
some slight balm for her wounded spirit. Linnet and her husband stopped
as guests at the _Wirthshaus_; it was Andreas’s still, but he had let it
to Cousin Fridolin. In the morning, after Linnet had gulped down the
coffee and roll that seemed to half choke her, she would stroll up the
hill behind the village inn, and sit on the boulders, just above the
belt of pine wood, where she had sat long ago hand in hand with Will
Deverill. The village children sometimes came and gazed at her, and
whispered to one another in an awestruck undertone how this was Lina
Telser, who once minded cows in a châlet on the Alps, and who was now
the Casalmonte, a great, rich singer in England, with diamonds in her
box, and grand rings on her fingers. Linnet dressed very simply for this
mountain life, and tried to seem the same as of yore to Cousin Fridolin,
and the priest, and the good old neighbours: but, ah me, how changed was
the world of the Tyrol! And how curious it seemed to hear the same
familiar chatter still running on about the same old gossips, the same
petty jealousies, the same narrow hopes, and fears, and ideals, when she
herself had passed through so much, meanwhile—had known other men, new
ideas, strange cities!
So for a fortnight, Linnet lived on, scarcely speaking to Andreas, but
sitting by herself on those springtide hills, where the globe-flowers
scattered gold with a stintless hand and the orchids empurpled whole
wide tracts of the meadows. She sat there—and thought of Will—and
obeyed the Church—and followed Andreas. Yet, oh, how strange that God
and our hearts should be thus at open war! that Nature should tell us
one thing and the Church another! ’Twas a consequence of the Fall of
Man, the Herr Vicar assured her; for the heart, the heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. And it was desperately wicked
of her, no doubt, to think so much about Will; but there—Church or no
Church, Linnet couldn’t help thinking of him.
She was resigned, in a way; very much resigned; her heart had been
crushed once for all when she married Andreas. It had flared up in a
fitful flicker of open rebellion when she left his house and flung
herself fiercely on Will Deverill’s bosom; and then—Will himself had
bruised the broken reed, had quenched the smoking flax, and sent her
away hurt, bleeding, and humiliated. He did it for her own sake, she
knew, but, oh, she would have loved him better if he’d been a little
less thoughtful for her, less noble, less generous! Loved him better? Oh
no; to love him better would be impossible! But they would both have
been happier, with the world well lost, and present love for the reward
of Paradise closed to them hereafter.
Purgatory? Ah, what did she care for their purgatory now! To count one
year of love fulfilled with Will, she would gladly give her poor body to
be burnt in burning hell for ever and ever. It was the Church that
intervened to prevent it, not she; for herself, she was Will’s; she
could live for him, she could die for him, she could lose her own soul
for him.
She never said a word to Cousin Fridolin and his wife, or to the people
of St Valentin, of her relations with Andreas. Still, the villagers
guessed them all. Simple villagers know more of the world than we
reckon. She was rich, she was grand, they said, since she’d married the
_Wirth_, and become a great lady: but she wasn’t happy with Herr
Andreas; he was cold and unkind to her. Those marks on her little
wrists—they were surely the impress of Herr Andreas’s big fingers;
those red eyes, that pale face—they were surely the result of Herr
Andreas’s infidelities. Money, after all, isn’t everything in this
world: Lina Telser had diamonds and pearls at command, and she drank
fine red wine, specially brought from Innsbruck; but she would have been
happier, people thought at St Valentin in the Zillerthal, if she’d
married Cousin Fridolin, or even Franz Lindner!
CHAPTER XLVII
SEEMINGLY UNCONNECTED
Franz Lindner! And how was Franz Lindner engaged during these stormy