by Grant Allen
But she kept her exterior coolness. “Bring in the portmanteau, Ellen,” she said, with a quiet air of command; and the girl obeyed her. “Now, sit there in the hall till I come down again and call you.”
She trod the stairs like a queen. Will Deverill was seated at his desk at work, when the servant flung open the door with a flourish, and announced, in his most grandiose tone, “Signora Casalmonte!”
Will looked up in surprise, and saw Linnet before him.
Her face, which had been flushed five minutes earlier, was now pale and bloodless with intense excitement. Marks of fingers stood out on her neck and wrists; a slight bruise scarred the surface of her smooth left temple. But she was beautiful still, in spite of all such accidents — very beautiful and winning. She stood a second and gazed at him. At sight of her one true love, her bosom rose and fell; that strange wave of delight she had felt at Innsbruck, and again at the Harmony, thrilled once more through and through her. Of a sudden, as she paused, her face flushed rosy red again, her eyes grew bright, her full throat heaved and panted. She spread out her arms towards him with a hasty little quiver. “O Will, Will, Will,” she cried, in a voice of complete and intense self-surrender; “at last — I have come to you!”
Will rose in surprise and moved across to her, trembling. He seized her two hands in his and gazed at her longingly. “Linnet, dear Linnet,” he cried, drawing a very deep breath; “what has brought you here to-day? What on earth do you mean by it?”
But Linnet had flung away all artificial restraints and conventions now. She abandoned herself to her love with the perfect abandonment of a pure and good woman, when once she has made up her mind to repress nature no longer. With a wild impulse of delight, she flung herself bodily into her lover’s arms. She flung herself into Will’s arms, and buried her head confidingly on his tender shoulder. Then she broke into a storm of deep-drawn sobs. “It means,” she cried, between little bursts, “I’ve left him for ever. That man I never loved, I’ve left him for ever. And I’ve come home at last where I ought to have come to nestle long ago. Will, Will, dear Will — will you take me? May I stop with you?”
In a transport of joy, Will clasped her to his bosom. Not to have done so, indeed, would have been more — or less — than human. No man can even pretend to be otherwise than overjoyed when the woman he loves flings herself into his arms for the first time in a fierce access of passion. He clasped her long and hard, breast pressed against heaving breast, and lips meeting lips in a sharp shower of kisses. For some minutes they neither knew, nor felt, nor remembered, nor thought of anything else on earth save their present intoxication. But surely those minutes were in themselves worth living for! What mattered so many years of cruel and unnatural repression beside that one fierce draught at the hot wine of passion?
After a while, however, Will woke up to a true sense of the situation. Man though he was, and therefore aggressive, it was his duty first of all to think of protecting Linnet. He must protect her, if need were, even against her own impulses. He must learn what she meant, and what could have led her so suddenly to this strange decision — so unlike herself, so untrue, as it seemed, to her whole past history.
He unwound his arms gently, and placed the poor sobbing, throbbing girl, half-unresisted, in an arm-chair by the fireplace. Then he drew up a seat for himself very close by her side, took her hand in his, and soothed it gently with his other one. “He’s been cruel to you, Linnet, I can see,” he murmured softly at her ear. “Now, what has led you to this? Tell me all he has done to you.”
Thereat, Linnet, holding his hand hard, and looking deep into his eyes, yet crimson for very shame, began in her own tongue the story of their interview. She hid nothing from Will, and extenuated nothing. She told him in full how Joaquin Holmes had brought her Andreas’s letter to Philippina and offered it for sale; how she had refused to buy it, or have anything to do with it; how he had dropped it by accident and she had picked it up before him, intending to restore it to its rightful owner; how a scuffle had ensued, in the midst of which Andreas had unexpectedly entered; how in his wrath at being discovered, he had fairly lost his temper, and provoked her for once to an act of rebellion; and how in his rage at her note he had turned upon her bodily, and inflicted the marks Will could see so plainly now upon her person. Only the question of divorce she never touched on; a certain feminine delicacy made her shrink from alluding to it. Will listened to every word with profound attention, letting her tell her own tale her own way, unquestioned, but stroking her hand from time to time very gently with his own, or smoothing her fiery cheeks with the tips of his fingers in silent sympathy.
At last she ceased, and looked hard at Will, inquiringly.
“So I’ve come to you, Will,” she said, in her simple way, with childlike confidence; “and, now I’ve come, may I stop with you always? May I never go away again?”
Will’s heart beat high. Her loving trust, her perfect self-surrender, could not fail to touch him. Yet he gazed at her ruefully. “My darling,” he said with a burst, belying his words as he spoke by laying her soft head once more in the hollow of his shoulder; “you shouldn’t have come to me. You’ve done very very wrong — very foolishly I mean. I’m the exact last person on earth you should have come to.”
Linnet nestled to him close. “But I love you,” she cried, pleadingly. “You’re the only living soul I’d have cared to come to.”
“Yes, yes; I know,” Will answered hastily. “I didn’t mean that, of course. You’re mine, mine, mine! Sooner or later, now, you must certainly come to me. But for the present, darling, I mean, it’s so unwise, so foolish. It’ll prejudice your case, if it ever comes to be heard of. We must take you somewhere else — somewhere free from all blame, don’t you see — for the immediate future.”
“Prejudice my case!” Linnet exclaimed, looking up at him in amazement, and growing more shamefaced still with awe at her own boldness. “You must take me somewhere else! Ah, Will, I don’t understand you. No, no; I must stop here — I must stop here with you for ever. I’ve broken away from him now; I’ve broken away from everything. I can never, never go back. I’m yours, and yours only.”
“No; you can never go back, Linnet,” Will answered decisively. “You’re mine, darling, mine, mine, mine only”; and he kissed her again fervently. “But we must be prudent, of course, if we’re to make this thing straight before the eyes of the world; and for your sake, dearest, you must see yourself how absolutely necessary it is that we should make it so.”
Linnet gazed at him once more in childlike astonishment. She failed utterly to comprehend him. “What do you mean, Will?” she faltered out. “You don’t mean to say I’m not to stop with you?”
Her eyes filled fast with tears, and her face looked up at his, full of wistful pleading. She clung to him so tight, in her love and her terror, that Will bent over her yet again and covered her with kisses. “Yes, darling; you’re to stop with me,” he cried; “to stop with me all your life — but not just at present. We must make this thing straight in the regular way first. Meanwhile, you must stay with some friend — some lady whose name is above suspicion. All must be carefully arranged. Even to have come here to-night may be positively fatal. We must play our cards cautiously. You’ve kept the letter?”
Linnet drew it, much crumpled, from the folds of her bosom, and handed it to him at once, without a moment’s hesitation. What he meant, she couldn’t imagine. Will ran his eye over it hastily. Then he glanced at the deep red marks on her neck, and her half-bared arm — for she had rolled back her sleeve like a child to show him. “This is conclusive,” he said slowly. “Prudent man as he is, he has cut his own throat. And you had a witness, too — a friendly witness; that’s lucky. We must take you to a doctor, and let him see you to-night, as soon as ever we’ve arranged where you can sleep this evening. The evidence of cruelty — and of the other thing — is more th
an sufficient. No court in England would refuse you a divorce upon such conduct.”
Linnet started at the word. “Divorce!” she cried, growing redder and still redder with shame. “Oh, Will, not that, not that! You don’t understand me. Divorce would be no use in the world to me. I’m a Catholic, you must remember, and I could never, never marry you. If I did, it would only be a mockery and a snare. It would be worse than sin; it would be open rebellion. I want no divorce; I want only to be allowed to stop here with you for ever.”
She laid her hand on his arm, as if to draw him to herself in some natural symbolism. Her face was flushed with her womanly modesty. She hid it once more like a shy child on his shoulder. Will looked at her, sore puzzled. How strange that this pure and passionate nature should see things in a light that to him was so unfamiliar! But he remembered what she had said to him in Philippina’s trouble, and began to understand now in what manner she regarded it.
“Well, but, Linnet,” he cried eagerly lifting her head from where she put it, and laying her cheek against his own, “you must see for yourself how much better it would be, if only from the mere worldly point of view, to arrange this matter as the world would arrange it. Granting even that a marriage after an English divorce would mean to you, from the strictly religious standpoint, simply nothing — why, surely, even then, it must be no small matter to set oneself right with the world, to be received and acknowledged as an honest woman, and my wife, in ordinary English society. If we get a divorce, we can do all that; and to get a divorce, we must act now circumspectly. But if we don’t get one, and if you try to stop here with me without it — remember, dear, the penalty; you lose position at once, and become for society an utter outcast.”
Linnet flung herself upon him once more in a perfect fervour of abandonment. Her love and her shame were fighting hard within her. Her passionate Southern nature overcame her entirely. “Will, Will, dear Will,” she cried, hiding her face from him yet again, “you don’t understand; you can’t fathom the depth of the sacrifice I would make for you. I come to you to-day bringing my life in my hand — my eternal life, my soul, my future; I offer you all I have, all I am, all I will be. For you I give up my good name, my faith, my hopes of salvation. For you I will endure the worst tortures of purgatory. I’ve tried to keep away — I’ve tried hard to keep away — Our Dear Lady knows how hard — all these months, all these years — but I can keep away no longer. Two great powers seemed to pull different ways within me. My Church said to me plainly, ‘You must never think of him; you must stop with Andreas.’ My heart said to me no less plainly, but a thousand times more persuasively, ‘You must fly from that man’s side; you must go to Will Deverill.’ I knew, if I followed my heart, the fires of hell would rise up and take hold of me. I haven’t minded for that; I’ve dared the fires of hell; the two have fought it out — the Church and my heart — and, my heart has conquered.”
She paused, and drew a great sigh. “Dear Will,” she went on softly, burying her head yet deeper in that tender bosom, “if I got a divorce, the divorce would be nothing to me — a mere waste paper. What people think of me matters little, very little in my mind, compared to what God and my Church will say of me. If I stop with you here, I shall be living in open sin; but I shall be living with the man my heart loves best; I shall have at least my own heart’s unmixed approval. While I lived with Andreas, the Church and God approved; but my own heart told me, every night of my life, I was living in sin, unspeakable sin against human nature and my own body. Oh, Will, I don’t know why, but it somehow seems as if God and our hearts were at open war; you must live by one or you must live by the other. If I stop with you, I’m living by my own heart’s law; I will take the sin upon me; I will pay the penalty. If God punishes me for it at last — well, I will take my punishment and bear it bravely; I won’t flinch from pain; I won’t shrink from the fires of hell or purgatory. But, at least, I do it all with my eyes wide open. I know I’m disobeying God’s law for the law of my own heart. I won’t profane God’s holy sacrament of marriage by asking a heretical and un-Catholic Church to bless a union which is all my own — my own heart’s making, not God’s ordinance, God’s sacrament. I love you so well, darling, I can never leave you. Let me stop with you, Will; let me stop with you! Let me live with you; let me die with you; let me burn in hell-fire for you!”
A man is a man. And the man within Will Deverill drove him on irresistibly. He clasped her hard once more to his straining bosom. “As you wish,” he said, quivering. “Your will is law, Linnet.”
“No, no,” she cried, nestling against him, with a satisfied sigh of delight. “My law is Will.” And she looked up and smiled at her own little conceit. “You shall do as you wish with me.”
CHAPTER XLII
PRUDENCE
It was a trying position for Will. He hardly knew what to do. Duty and love pulled him one way, chivalry and the hot blood of youth the other. When a beautiful woman makes one an offer like that, it would be scarcely human, scarcely virile to resist it. And Will was not only a man but also a poet — for a poet is a man with whom moods and impulses are stronger than with most of us. As poet, he cared little for mere conventional rules; it was the consequences to Linnet herself he had most to think about. But he saw it was no use talking to her from the standpoint he would have adopted with most ordinary Englishwomen. It was no use pointing out to her what he himself realised most distinctly, that her union with Andreas was in its very essence an unholy one, an insult to her own body, a treason against all that was truest and best in her being. It ran counter from the very first to the dictates of her own heart, which are the voice of Nature and of God within us. But to Linnet, those plain truths would have seemed but the veriest human sophisms. She looked upon her marriage with Andreas as a holy sacrament of the Church; and any attempt to set aside that sacrament by an earthly court, and to substitute for it a verbal marriage that was no marriage at all to her, but a profound mockery, would have seemed to her soul ten thousand times worse than avowed desertion and unconcealed wickedness. Better live in open sin, she thought, though she paid for it with her body, than insult her God by pretending to invoke his aid and blessing on an adulterous union.
Will argued feebly with her for a while, but it was all to no purpose. The teachings of her youth had too firm a hold upon her. He saw she was quite fixed in her own mind upon one thing; she might stop with him or she might go back, but she was Andreas Hausberger’s wife by the Church’s act, and no earthly power could make anything else of her. So Will gave up the attempt to convince her, as all in vain, at least for the present. He saw what he had to do first was to provide at once for the immediate future. Linnet couldn’t remain in his rooms alone with him that night; to him, at least, so much was certain. For her own dear sake, he must save her from herself; he must throw at least some decent veil for the moment over the relations between them.
For Linnet herself, long before this, the die was cast. She felt she had already deserted her husband; she had sinned in her heart the unspeakable sin; all the rest was in her eyes mere detail and convention. But she realised gratefully none the less Will’s goodness and kindness to her. “You are better to me far than I’ve been to myself,” she cried, clinging hard to him still; “I’ve wrecked my own soul, and you would try to save my poor earthly body.” And yet, in the mere intoxication of being near him and touching him, she more than half-forgot all else on earth; her warm Southern nature rejoiced in the light of her poet’s presence. She cared for nothing now; she thought of nothing, feared nothing; with Will by her side, she would gladly give her soul to burn for ever in nethermost hell, for the sake of those precious, those fleeting moments.
“I must find some place for you to spend the night in, Linnet,” Will said at last seriously. “Even if it were only to save scandal for the immediate future, I should have to do that; by to-morrow, all the world in London would be talking of i
t. 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!”