CHAPTER LII

A CONFESSION OF FAITH

It was a terrible time for Linnet, those few days at the inn, while she

waited to bury her murdered husband. She felt so lonely, here among her

own people; her isolation came out even more vividly than she could have

expected: she had outgrown them, that was the fact, and they could no

longer sympathise with her. Their very deference and respect chilled her

heart to the core in that appalling season of solitary wretchedness:

they regarded her just in the light of the great lady from London, too

grand and too fine for them to venture upon comforting her. So Linnet

was forced to have out her dark hour by herself, and be content for the

rest with the respectful silence of her poor fellow-country-people.

The first night, in particular, was a very painful trial to her. By

evening, they had brought back Franz’s body from the snowdrift; and now

it lay with Ludwig Dangl beside her dead husband’s in the dancing-hall

that stood just below the very room where Linnet had to spend the first

night of her widowhood. Though she kept the candle burning, and the

crucifix by her side, the awful sense of solitude through the long slow

hours, with those three hostile corpses lying side by side in the hall

beneath her, made her shudder with affright each time she woke with a

start from a snatch of hurried sleep, much disturbed by hateful dreams,

to the reality of her still more hateful position.

Early next morning, however, a messenger arrived post haste from Zell,

with a telegram directed to Frau Hausberger, St Valentin. Linnet tore it

open mechanically, half dreading some fresh surprise. As she read it,

she drew a deep breath. Oh, that dear, dear Rue! This was quite too good

of her. “Have heard of your trouble, and sympathise with you deeply. Am

on my way to join you. Shall reach St Valentin to-morrow evening.”

It was a measure to Linnet of how English she had become, that, as she

stood on the platform at Jenbach next day, awaiting the arrival of Rue’s

train from Innsbruck, she felt as though she were expecting the advent

of some familiar home-friend, coming to cheer her solitude in a land of

strangers. When at last the train drew up, Rue leapt from the carriage

into her rival’s arms, and caressed her tenderly. Linnet looked sweet in

her simple dark dress, the plainest she possessed, for she hadn’t yet

had time to get her mourning ready. “How did you hear of it all, you

dear kind Rue?” she inquired, half-hysterically, clasping her new friend

to her bosom in a sudden outburst of sated sympathy. “It couldn’t surely

have got so soon into the English papers.”

“No, dear,” Rue answered, in her tenderest tone, laying one soft hand

soothingly on the pale cheek as she answered. “I’d written to St

Valentin beforehand, to some one whose address Will Deverill gave me,

asking for news of you every day, and enclosing money; and he

telegraphed to me at once as soon as all this happened. His name’s

Fridolin Telser, and Will says he is a cousin of yours. So, of course,

as soon as I heard, I felt I must come out, post haste, to join you; for

I knew, Linnet, how lonely you’d be—and how much in need of a woman’s

sympathy.”

Linnet answered nothing. That “of course” was too much for her. She

burst into tears instead, and sobbed her full heart out contentedly on

Rue’s friendly shoulder. They drove back to St Valentin hand-in-hand

together. That night, Rue slept with her, in a little room in the

village; and though they talked for hours with one another, and only

dozed at intervals, Linnet rose next morning fresher and stronger by far

than she had felt at any time since the day of the murder.

Rue stopped on with her all that week, till Andreas was buried, and she

could leave St Valentin. Linnet shrank now from taking anything that had

ever been his. The Wirthshaus was to be sold: Cousin Fridolin bought it

at a low price with his hoarded savings, and the proceeds were to be

devoted to a new school for the village. The Herr Vicar, too, was richer

by many masses for the repose of the unworthy soul which Linnet felt

sure had now much need of his orisons. Nor were even Franz Lindner and

Ludwig Dangl forgotten: the shrine on the hill-top, by the Chamois

Rocks, marking the spot whence they took their fatal leap, was erected,

the guides will tell you, “by the famous singer, Casalmonte, who came

originally from this village.”

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.]