Linnet: A Romance
Rue went back with her friend to London, stopping a week or two by the
way at quiet country spots in the Bavarian Highlands, on the Rhine, and
in Belgium. ’Twas early June when they reached town. Rue wouldn’t hear
of Linnet’s returning to her old house in St John’s Wood, where
everything would remind her of that hateful past: she insisted that her
“new sister,” as she called her, must share for the present her home in
Hans Place, till other arrangements could be made for her. “Besides,”
she added, with a little smile, full of deeper import, “it’ll save
scandal, you know. You mustn’t live alone. It’s best you should stop in
some other woman’s house, till you’ve arrived at some fixed
understanding as to your future.”
It was in Rue’s drawing-room, accordingly, a few weeks later, that
Linnet for the first time saw Will Deverill once more after all that had
happened. With the same generous self-restraint he had always shown
wherever Linnet’s reputation was concerned, Will had denied himself for
many days the pleasure of calling upon her. When at last he came, Linnet
made up her mind beforehand she should receive him with becoming
calmness and dignity. But the moment Will entered the room, and took her
two hands in his, and looked deep into her dark eyes, and stood there
silent, thrilling through from head to foot at sight of her, yet
rejoicing in heart at his one love recovered—why, as for Linnet, she
just looked up at him, and drew short gasps of breath, and held his
hands tight in her own, and then with a sweet half-unconscious
self-surrender let herself fall slowly, slowly upon his bosom. There he
allowed her to lie long without speaking one word to her. What need of
words between those two who understood one another instinctively? what
chance of concealing the hope and joy each felt, and knew, and
communicated, unspoken, by mere contact to the other? For touch is to
love the most eloquent of the senses.
At last they found words, and talked long and eagerly. There was no
question between them now in what relation they must henceforth stand to
one another. It was mere details of time, and place, and propriety—the
when and how and where—that interested them at present. “But you can
get a dispensation for me?” Linnet asked, nestling close to him.
Will smiled a gentle smile. “There’s little need of dispensation, for
you and me, my darling,” he said, holding her hand tenderly. “You would
have given me yourself once, in spite of the Church and the world: you
can surely give me yourself now without a qualm of conscience, when the
Church and the world will both smile approval. To me, Linnet, the whole
sanctity of a union between us lies infinitely deeper than any man’s
sanction, be he priest or Pope or king or lawgiver. As I said to you,
once before, you are mine, and I am yours, not by any artificial bond,
but by the voice of our hearts, which is the voice of nature and of God
within us: and whom God hath joined together, man cannot join firmer,
nor yet put asunder. But if it pleases you to ask some priest’s leave
for the union no priest on earth can possibly make sacreder—yes; set
your heart at rest about that, darling;—I’ve seen the Archbishop
already, and he’s promised to get you the regular papal dispensation.”
Linnet leant back, and gazed up at him. Her gaze was half fear, half
frank admiration. “Dearest Will,” she said, pleadingly, in her pretty
foreign English, “you’re a man, I’m a woman, and therefore illogical:
forgive me. I’ve been brought up to think one way, which I know is a
dreadful way: my own heart tells me how foolish and cruel and wicked it
is to think so; and yet—may the Blessed Madonna and all holy saints
forgive me for saying it—I should be afraid of their anger and the
eternal hell if I dared to disbelieve in what seems so cruel. You speak
to me of another way, which my own heart tells me is just and pure and
good and beautiful—which my head approves as common-sense and sound
reasoning; and yet—may the Blessed Madonna forgive me again—though I
try hard to believe it, the teachings of my childhood rise up at every
step and prevent my accepting it. I can’t understand this mystery of
open war between God and our hearts—between God, who made them, on the
one hand, and what is best, not what is worst, within them, on the
other. I pray for light, but no light comes. Why should God’s law fight
so hard against God’s instincts in our souls—against all that we feel
to be purest, noblest, truest, best in our nature?”
“Not God’s law,” Will said gently, smoothing her hand with his own, “but
the priests’, Linnet, the priests’,—which is something quite different.
God’s law is never some precept beyond and outside us: it is the law of
our own being, the law of our own hearts, the law of the native
instincts and impulses that stir us. Your marriage with Andreas, were it
twenty times blessed by priest or by Pope, was from the very first
moment an unholy and unnatural one. It was a sin against purity and your
own body; it was a legalised lie, a lifelong adultery. You felt its
shame yourself, and shrank from the man physically. Your heart was not
his, so how could your body be? Even the laws of men would have allowed
you to leave him and come home to me, whose complement and mate you are
by nature, after his treatment of you that day, and your discovery of
his letter to Philippina. But the laws of your Church, which are not the
laws of men but the laws of priests—and therefore worse and more
unnatural than even the common laws of mankind—forbade you to take
advantage of the loophole of escape which divorce would permit you from
that wicked union your priests had imposed upon you. The Church or the
law that bids you live with a man you loathe and despise, that Church or
law dishonours your own nature; that Church and that law is not of God,
nor even of man, but of priests and the devil. The Church or the law
that forbids you to live with the man your own heart dictates and points
out to you, is equally of the devil. And see how it proves itself so! It
needed the intervention of Franz Lindner’s knife to free you from your
false union with Andreas Hausberger! Can that Church and that law be
right or sound which make a murder the one loophole by which a soul can
free itself from the unholy bond they would unwillingly impose upon it?
Your own heart told you it was wrong and dishonouring to live with
Andreas; your own heart shrank from his loveless embraces; your own
heart showed you it was right to leave him, and fly away to the man you
loved, the man that loved you. Will you believe that God’s law is worse
than your own heart? Will you think there’s something divine in an
institution of men which compels you to degrade and dishonour your own
body, to sin so cruelly against your own pure instincts? Nothing can be
wickeder, I say, than for a woman to sell herself or to yield herself in
any way to a man she loathes. No Church and no law can make right of
that wrong: it’s degrading and debasing to her moral nature. The moment
a woman feels she gives herself up against her own free will and the
instincts of her own heart, she is living in sin—and you know it,
Linnet—though all the priests and all the Popes on earth should stretch
robed arms and hands to bless and absolve her.”
He spoke with fierce conviction. Linnet nestled against his breast: his
words overcame her. “I know it, Will, I know it,” she exclaimed,
half-hysterically. “My heart told me so always—but I couldn’t believe
it. I can’t believe it now,—though I know you’re right when I hear you
speak so. Perhaps, some day, when I’ve lived with you long enough, I
shall come to think and feel as you do. . . . But for the present, my
darling, I’m so glad, oh, so glad,—don’t laugh at me for saying
it—that you’ve got a dispensation.”
W. H. WHITE AND CO. LTD., RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Obvious printer errors have been corrected.
Punctuation corrected including missing apostrophes and closing
quotations necessary to the dialogue.
The use of hyphenated words has been retained. Where two spellings of
the same word appear, the spelling with the highest frequency was
adopted.
[The end of _Linnet; A Romance_, by Grant Allen.]