“You agree to it?” Andreas asked, laying his palm on her neck behind with what tenderness he could muster.
Linnet shook it away angrily. “Never, never!” she cried, “never!”
Andreas bore with her patiently. He knew the ways of women. They were all little idiots! And this Engländer on the hill had filled her poor head with sentimental rubbish. With infinite forbearance, like a business man, he began to explain, to expostulate, to admonish her. He pointed out to her how rare a chance in life it was for a girl in her position to get an offer of marriage from a man in his; how his capital would enable her to train herself for the stage; how, without it, she must remain for ever just what she was now; how, with it, she might rise to the very crown and head of an admired profession. And, besides, she was bound to him for three years in any case. In those three years, of course, he could do as he liked with her.
But Linnet, weeping passionately, with her face in her hands, and every nerve in her body quivering with emotion, only sobbed out now and again in a heart-broken voice, “No; never, never!”
At last, after one such convulsive outburst, even fiercer than before, Andreas put the question point blank, “Is it because of this Engländer?”
And Linnet, raising her head, and clasping her hands in despair, made answer, obliquely, in one wild burst of speech, “Oh, I love him, I love him!”
At those words, Andreas smiled a peculiar cold smile, and began once more. He kept his head cool; he explained, he reasoned. The Engländer, of course, never meant to marry her. Marriage in such a case was out of the question. She must know what that meant; why go off on such side-issues?.. And, besides, she must never forget – the man was a heretic!
Still, Linnet, unflinching, looked up and clasped her hands. “I don’t care for that,” she cried wildly. “I love him! I love him!”
“Then you refuse, point blank?” Andreas asked, stepping a little aside, and holding the knob of the bedroom door in his hand, half-irresolute.
“I utterly refuse!” Linnet answered, very firm, but sobbing.
With an air of cruel triumph, Andreas opened wide the door. “Come in, Herr Vicar!” he cried, with real theatrical effect. And even as he spoke, the Herr Vicar entered.
Linnet gazed at him, dumb with awe, surprise, and amazement. How had he ever got here? It was her own parish priest – her confessor from St Valentin!
CHAPTER XIX
SPIRITUAL WEAPONS
The Herr Vicar in Meran! It was wonderful, miraculous!
For a minute or two, Linnet was so utterly taken aback at this unexpected portent that she hardly knew how to comport herself under such novel circumstances. Now, that was exactly the result Andreas Hausberger had counted upon. Andreas loved not the Church, to be sure, but, like all sound strategists, political or social, he knew how to make use of it for his own wise purposes. As soon as ever he learned from Franz Lindner how things were going on between Linnet and her Engländer, and had ascertained by private inquiry from the Herr Oberkellner at the Erzherzog Johann that Herr Will was going away for a few days’ tour among the Botzen Dolomites, – why, taking opportunity by the forelock, he telegraphed at once to the Herr Vicar at St Valentin to come on by the first train, all expenses paid, over the Brenner to Meran, on purpose to save the soul of an erring member of his flock, in imminent danger of faith and morals, from a heretic Englishman. And the Herr Vicar, in return, though he loved not Andreas – for the wirth was a Liberal, an enemy of the “Blacks,” and reputed to be even not far short of a freethinker – the Herr Vicar, for his part, was by no means averse to a pleasant holiday in a fashionable watering-place south of the Alps at that delightful season, especially if some one else was to pay the piper. It is well to combine the salvation of souls with an agreeable excursion. The Herr Vicar was prepared to make free use of the Mammon of Unrighteousness – in the Church’s service; a good pastor employs it without stint or compunction to secure the eternal bliss of the particular flock committed to his guidance.
Not that the astute priest began at once with the matter in hand, on which Herr Andreas had already most amply coached him. He was far too wise and politic a fisher of souls for so clumsy a procedure. He angled gently. He started on his task by striking, first, all the familiar home chords of St Valentin. The moment he entered the room, indeed, Linnet rushed up and seized his hand – she had known him from her childhood, and taken the mass from him often; she had confessed to him her sins, and received time and again his paternal blessing. At such a moment as that any old friend from St Valentin would have been a welcome counsellor: how much more then the Herr Vicar, who had taught her the Credo, and the Vater Unser, and the Ave; who had prepared her lisping lips for First Communion; who had absolved her from her sins from her babyhood onward! And he had seen that dear mother only the day before! How she flooded him with questions as to everyone at St Valentin.
The Herr Vicar, in reply, folding two plump hands over his capacious waistband, sank back in an easy-chair, and answered her at full length as to all that had happened since she left the village. The good mother was well, very well indeed, seldom better in November; some holy oil rubbed on night and morning, had proved highly effectual against her threatened rheumatism. Oh yes; she had duly received the five florins that Linnet sent her – thanks very much for them – and had expended two of them, as Linnet would no doubt herself have wished, in the performance of a mass for the deliverance of the dear father’s soul from purgatory. She knew the Herr Vicar was coming to Meran, and would see her daughter, and she had sent many messages (all detailed at full length) – how the cow with the crooked horn was giving no milk, and how the cat had five kittens, and how pleased they all were to hear at St Valentin there was talk Linnet was to make such a brilliant marriage.
Then poor Linnet faltered out, half-sobbing again, when the Herr Vicar spoke of that mass for the repose of her father’s soul, how great a trial it had been to her to be away from St Valentin for the first time in her life on All Souls Day – the Feast of the Dead – when it had always been her custom to lay a little wreath, and burn four small tapers on her father’s grave in the village churchyard. She was afraid that dear spirit in its present home would feel itself neglected by the duty unperformed in due season.
But the Herr Vicar, with a benign smile, was happy he should be able to reassure her as to this matter. The candles and the wreath had been forthcoming as usual; he had seen to them himself – at Herr Andreas’s request, who had written to him on the subject from Meran most thoughtfully.
That was kind, Linnet thought, far kinder than she ever could have expected from Andreas. But that wasn’t all. He had provided in many ways, or intended to provide, for the good mother’s comfort. Then the Herr Vicar went on to speak still more of Andreas, who slipped out as he spoke, leaving priest and penitent alone together. So Herr Andreas, it seemed, was going to marry her! For a girl like her, that was a very great honour. And the sooner the better, indeed; the sooner the better! These were grave and painful rumours now afloat in St Valentin – and the Herr Vicar shook his head in solemn warning – grave and painful rumours, how Linnet had been seen on the hillsides more than once – with an English heretic. And he had followed her to Innsbruck! and then to Meran! and now, Heaven knew what he was trying to do with her! ’Twas a dangerous thing, a compromising thing (the Herr Vicar thought) for a girl to get involved in an affair like that with a man so much above herself in position and station. But Herr Andreas was so kind, and consented to overlook it; there were very few men who in a similar case would act like Herr Andreas. In other matters the Herr Vicar had withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; but in this, he had behaved like a generous gentleman.
To all which, poor Linnet, hiding her face in her hands, only made answer once more, “I can never marry Andreas Hausberger.”
“Why not?” the priest asked, sharply.
And Linnet, hardly knowing how to answer him for fear and shame, yet murmured very low, “Because I don’t love him.”
Then the Herr Vicar, thus aroused, went off at a tangent into a clerical exhortation on the nature, duties, and inducements of matrimony. We must remember that, in these matters, the wishes of the flesh were not alone or even chiefly to be consulted. They were of minor importance. There was her duty as a daughter, for example: Herr Andreas was rich; how much might he not do to lighten her mother’s old age? how much to release her poor father’s soul from the flames of purgatory? There was her duty as a woman, and a child of the Church; how much might not Herr Andreas’s money enable her to accomplish for the good of the world and for the souls of her people? She was still a giddy girl. What temptations such a marriage would enable her to avoid; what a brilliant future in the end it might open out before her! And then these floating rumours had disturbed him much; on his way from Jenbach, if she would only believe him, he had said prayers on her behalf to Our Lady, to preserve her honour.
But Linnet, raising her head, and looking him straight in the eyes, made answer at last in these wicked, rebellious words, “I love the Engländer! Ah, I love the Engländer! If ever I marry at all, I’ll marry the Engländer!”
The Herr Vicar grew grave. This was a case, indeed, not for humouring and coaxing, but for the sternest admonition. And he administered it without stint. With the simple directness of the Tyrolese priest, accustomed to deal with coarse, straightforward natures, he spoke the plain truth; he brought her future sin home to her with homely force and unvarnished language. In the first place, this young man clearly meant no good by her. That was obvious to everyone. Now, if he were one of her own sort, a faithful son of the Church, and a Tyrolese jäger, well, the Herr Vicar might, in that case, have been disposed, no doubt, to be somewhat more lenient. He admitted, while he deplored, the temptations and difficulties of a sennerin’s life, and was never too hard on them. And besides, in such circumstances, the young man might mean in the end to marry her. But this Engländer assuredly meant nothing of the kind; and, what was worse, even if he did, the Herr Vicar could by no means approve of such a union. The Holy See, acting as ever on the Apostolic advice, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” disallowed and discouraged the union of Catholics with Jews, heretics, infidels, and other schismatics, under one or other of which unholy categories (and the Herr Vicar frowned) he must needs place her Engländer. True, the Holy Father was sometimes pleased, on good cause duly shown, to grant certain persons an exceptional dispensation. But even if the Engländer desired to marry her, which was scarcely likely, and even if he consented to invoke such aid, which was still more improbable, how could he, the Herr Vicar, knowing the young man’s circumstances, back up such a request? – how consign a lamb of his flock to the keeping of an infidel? Every sentiment of gratitude should bind her to Herr Andreas. Every feeling of a Catholic should turn her instinctively away from the false wiles of a schismatic.
To all which theological argument, Linnet, raising her head, and wringing her hands, only answered once more, in a wildly despairing voice, “But I love him, I love him!”
The priest saw at once this was a case for strong measures. Unless he adopted them, a lamb might slip from his pastoral grasp, a doubtful soul might stray for ever from the fold of true believers. He put on at once the set tone and manner of the confessional. It was no longer a question now of merely meeting Herr Andreas’s wishes – though Herr Andreas’s aid would be most useful indeed in the affairs of the parish; it was a question of preserving this poor sheep of his flock from everlasting perdition. What are a few fleeting years, with this lover or that, compared with an eternity of unceasing torment? The Herr Vicar was an honest and conscientious man, according to his lights; this poor girl was in deadly danger of her immortal soul – and that window for the chancel, which Herr Andreas vowed, would be a work of piety most pleasing to their holy patron saint, the blessed Valentin.
So, with all the strength of imagery he possessed at his command, the priest began to play of deliberate design upon the chords of poor Linnet’s superstitious terror. In horribly vivid and realistic language, such as only a Tyrolese tongue could command, he conjured up before her mind that familiar picture of dead souls in purgatory, lost souls in torment. He poured out upon her trembling head all the thunders of the Church against unholy love, or, what came to the same thing, against an uncatholic union. Linnet listened, and cowered. To you and me, this would just have been a well-meaning but ignorant parish priest; to Linnet, he was the embodied voice of all Catholic Christendom. She had sat upon his knees; she had learnt prayers from his lips; she had looked upon him for years as the mouthpiece of whatever was right and just and holy. And now, he was bringing all the weight of his authority to bear against the dictates of her poor hot heart; he was terrifying her with his words; he was denouncing upon her the horrible woes of apostasy. Whether the man meant to marry her or not, all was equally sin; she was bent on the downward path; she was flying in the face of God and His priest, to her own destruction. She might marry Andreas or not – that was a question of inclination; but if she persisted in her relations with an infidel, who could mean her no good, she was hurrying straight to the devil and all his angels. And the devil and all his angels were very real and very near indeed to Linnet; the flames of purgatory were as familiar to her eyes as the fire on the hearth; the tortures of hell were as solid and as material as she had seen them pictured on every roadside oratory.
And the effect? Ah, well, only those who know the profound religious faith of the Tyrolese peasantry can fully understand the appalling effect this pastoral exhortation produced upon Linnet. It was no new discovery, indeed. All along, amid the tremulous delight of her first great love, she had known in her heart this thing she was doing, though sweet – too sweet – was unspeakably wicked. She was paltering with sin, giving her heart to a heretic. She herself had seen him pass many a wayside crucifix, many a shrine of Our Dear Lady, without raising his hat or letting his knee do obeisance, as was right, before them. He was good, he was kind; in a purely human sort of way he sympathised with her, and understood her as no one else in the world had ever yet done; but still – he was a heretic. She had known that all along; she had known the danger she ran, and the end, the horrible end, it must finally lead her to. And now, when her parish priest, her earliest friend, her own tried confessor, pointed out her sin to her, she quivered and crouched before him in bodily terror and abject submission. The flames of hell seemed to rise up and take hold of her. And the more frightened she grew, the more vehement and fierce grew the priest’s denunciation. He saw his opportunity, and made the best use of it. What were the few short years of this life to an eternity of pain? What a dream of brief love to fiery floods for ever?
At last, appalled and horrified, Linnet, bowing her frightened head, held up her bloodless hands, and begged convulsively for mercy. “Give me absolution,” she cried; “Father! O Father, forgive me!”
Her confessor seized the occasion, for her soul’s benefit. “Not unless you abandon him!” he answered, in a very stern voice. “While you remain in your sin, how can God’s priest absolve you?”
Linnet wrung her hands for a moment in silent agony. She couldn’t give him up! Oh, no; she couldn’t! “Father,” she cried at last with a despairing burst, “what shall I do to be saved? Guide me! Save me!”
The priest snatched at the chance. “Will you come back to St Valentin to-morrow?” he asked, with two uplifted fingers poised half-doubtful in air, as if waiting to bless her. “Will you come back to St Valentin – and marry Andreas Hausberger?”
In an agony of abject religious terror, Linnet bowed her head. “Is there no other way?” she cried, trembling, “No other way of salvation?”
The priest pressed his advantage. “If you died to-night,” he answered, in a very solemn voice, “you would die in your sin, and hell’s mouth would yawn wide for you. Accept the escape an honourable man offers you, and be clear of your heretic!”
Linnet flung herself on her knees, and clasped her hands before him. The horrors of eternity and of the offended Church made her shake in every limb. She was half-dumb with terror.
“I’ll do as you wish, Father,” she moaned, in a voice of hushed awe, “if you’ll only bless me. I’ll go back to St Valentin and marry Andreas Hausberger!”
CHAPTER XX
FLORIAN ON MATRIMONY
In spite of the lateness of the season, and Will’s preoccupation, that visit to the Dolomites turned out a complete success. Rue was in excellent spirits; Florian was in fine form; Nature smiled compliance, as he consummately phrased it – in other words, the weather was lovely, the mountains clear of cloud, the horses fresh, and the roads (for Austria) in very good order. Their capacious carriage held its party of five comfortably, – for Rue, with her wonted wisdom, had consulted Mrs Grundy’s feelings by inviting an old Indian colonel and his wife, whose acquaintance she had picked up at the Erzherzog Johann, to accompany them on their trip, and chaperon the expedition. Rue herself enjoyed those four days immensely. She had lots of long talks with Will on the hillsides, and she noticed Will spoke much – though always in an abstract and highly impersonal way – of the human heart, its doubts and its difficulties. He was thinking of Linnet, who engaged his thoughts much during that enforced absence; but Rue imagined he was thinking of himself and her, and was glad accordingly. She was growing very fond of her English poet. She hoped and half-believed he in turn was growing fond of her.
As for Will, now he was away from Linnet for awhile, he began to think much more seriously than he had ever thought before of the nature of his relations with her, and the end to which they were inevitably leading him. As long as Linnet was near, as long as he could hold her hand in his, and look deep into her eyes, and hear that wonderful voice of hers carolling out some sweet song for his ear alone among the clambering vineyards, – why, he could think of nothing else but the passing joy and delight of her immediate presence. Imperceptibly, and half-unconsciously to himself, she had grown very dear to him. But now that he was away from her, and alone with Rue, he began to realise how much he longed to be once more by her side – how little he was prepared to do without her, how deeply she had entwined herself into his inmost being. Again and again the question presented itself to his mind, “When I go back to Meran, on what footing shall I stand with her? If I find it so hard to run away for four days, how shall I ever run away from her for ever and ever?”
Besides, during those few happy weeks at Meran, Linnet had begun to reveal herself to him as another person. He was catching faint glimpses now of the profounder depths of that deeply artistic, though as yet almost wholly undeveloped, character. The books he had read to her she understood so fast; the things he had told her she caught at so readily; the change to new scenes seemed so soon to quicken and stimulate all her latent faculties. Had not Nature said of her, as of Wordsworth’s country lass, “She shall be mine and I will make A lady of my own”? For that she was a lady indeed had been forcing itself every day more and more plainly upon Will’s mind, as he walked and talked with her. At Innsbruck, he had thought more than once to himself, “How could one dream in a world where there are women like Rue, of tying oneself for life to this sweet-voiced alp-girl?” Among the Dolomites, three weeks later, he asked himself rather, “How could one ever be content with mere brightness and sunniness like that charming Rue’s, in a world which holds women so tender, so true, and so passionate as Linnet?”
Slowly, bit by bit, he began to wonder how he could muster up courage to tear himself away again – and, if he did, for how long he could manage to keep away from her? And then, as he debated, there arose in his mind the profounder question of justice or injustice to Linnet. Was it right of him so deeply to engage her affections, unless he meant by it something real, something sure, something definite? She loved him so well that to leave her now would surely break her heart for her. What end could there be to this serious complication save the end he had so strenuously denied to Florian?
On the very last evening of their drive through those great bare unearthly peaks that look down upon Botzen, Florian came into Will’s room for an evening gossip. They sat up long over the smouldering embers of a fragrant pinewood fire. There’s nothing more confidential than young men’s confabulations over a smouldering hearth in the small hours of the morning. The two friends talked – and talked, and talked, and talked – till at last Will was moved to make a clean breast of his feelings in the matter to Florian. He put his dilemma neatly. He acknowledged he was going just where Florian had said he would go. “I pointed out the noose to you,” the epicurean philosopher observed, with bland self-satisfaction, “and you’ve run your neck right into it. Instead of playing with her like a doll as a sensible man would have done, you’ve simply gone ahead and lost your heart outright to her. Foolish, foolish, exceedingly foolish; but, just what I expected from you. I said from the very first, ‘Now mark my words, Deverill, as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll end by marrying her.’ ”
“I don’t say I’ll marry her now,” Will replied, somewhat sheepishly. “How can I, indeed? I’ve got nothing to marry on. I find it hard enough work to keep body and soul together for myself in London, without thinking of an engagement to keep somebody else’s into the bargain.”
“Then what do you mean to do?” Florian inquired, with sound common-sense. “If you don’t mean to marry her, and you don’t mean to harm her, and you can’t go away from her, and you can’t afford to stop with her, – why, what possible new term are you going to introduce into human relations and the English language to cover your ways with her?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know,” Will answered, in a somewhat hopeless and helpless voice, piling the embers together in the centre as he spoke, just to keep them alight for some minutes longer. “There’s the rub. I admit it. Nobody feels it more than I do. But I don’t see any possible kind of way out of it. I’ve been thinking to myself – or perhaps half-thinking – I might manage it like this, if Linnet would assent to it. We might get married first – ”
Florian raised one warning hand, and nodded his shapely head up and down two or three times solemnly. “I told you so,” he interposed, in a tone of most mitigated and mournful triumph. “There we get at it at last. You have said the word. I was sure ’twould come to that. Marry, marry, marry!”
“And then,” Will went on, with a very shamefaced air, never heeding his comment, “what’s enough for one’s enough for two, they say – or very nearly. I thought we might live in lodgings quite quietly for awhile, somewhere cheap, in London – ”
“Not live,” Florian corrected gravely, with another sage nod of that sapient head; “lurk, linger, vegetate. A very sad end! A most dismal downfall! I see it all: Surrey side, thirty shillings a week; cold mutton for dinner; bread and cheese for lunch; an ill-furnished parlour, a sloppy-faced slavey! I know the sort of thing. Pah! My gorge rises at it!”
“And then, I could get Linnet’s voice trained and prepared for the stage,” Will continued, perusing his boots, “and work very hard myself to keep us both alive till she could come out in public. In a year or two, I feel sure, if I watched her close and saw her capabilities, I could write and compose some good piece of my own to suit her exactly. With me to make the songs, and Linnet to interpret them, I believe, sooner or later, we ought easily to earn a very good livelihood. But it’d be a hard pull first; I don’t conceal that from myself. We’d have a struggle for life, though in the end, I feel sure, we’d live it down and conquer.”
Florian lighted a cigarette and watched the thin blue smoke curl upward, languidly. “Love’s young dream!” he mused to himself with a placid smile of superior wisdom. “I know the style of old. Bread and cheese and kisses! Very charming, very charming! Chorus hymeneal of the most approved pattern. So odd, so interesting! I’ve often asked myself what it is in the world that leads otherwise sensible and intelligent fellows to make wrecks of their lives in this incredible way – and all for the sake of somebody else’s daughter! Why this insane desire to relieve some other man of his natural responsibilities? I account for it in my own mind on evolutionary principles. Marriage, it seems to me, is an irrational and incomprehensible civilised instinct, by which the individual sacrifices himself on the shrine of duty for the benefit of the species. Have you ever heard of the lemmings?”
“The lemmings!” Will repeated, unable to conceive the connection in Florian’s mind between two such totally dissimilar and unrelated subjects. “Not those little brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway?”
“Precisely,” Florian answered, waving his cigarette airily. “Those little brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway. You put it like a dictionary. Well, every year or two, you know, an irresistible desire seizes on many myriads of those misguided rodents at once, to march straight to the sea in a body together, plunge boldly into the water, and swim out in a straight line, without rhyme or reason, till they can swim no farther but drown themselves by cartloads. What’s the origin of this swarmery? It’s only an instinct which keeps down the number of the lemmings, and so acts as a check against over-population. A beautiful and ingenious provision of Nature they call it!” and Florian smiled sweetly. “I’ve always thought,” he went on, puffing a contemptuous ring of smoke from his pursed-up lips, “that marriage among mankind was a very similar instinct. It’s death to the individual – mental and moral death; but it ensures at least a due continuance of the species. The wise man doesn’t marry; he knows too well for that; he stands by and looks on; but he leaves no descendants, and his wisdom dies with him. Whereas the foolish burden themselves with a wife and family, and become thereby the perpetuators of their race in future. It’s a wonderful dispensation; I admire it – at a distance!”
“But you said you’d marry yourself,” Will objected, “if you met the right person; and, to tell you the truth, Florian, I fancied you’d been rather markedly attentive to Rue for the last few weeks or so.”
Florian stroked a smooth small chin with five meditative fingers. “That’s quite another matter,” he answered, in a self-satisfied tone. “Circumstances, it has been well remarked by an anonymous thinker, alter cases. If an Oriental potentate in all his glory were to order me to flop down on my marrow-bones before him and kiss his imperial foot as an act of pure homage, I should take my proud stand as a British subject, and promptly decline so degrading a ceremony. But if he offered me a thousand pounds down to comply with his wishes, I would give the polite request my most earnest consideration. If he made it ten thousand, I would almost certainly accede; and if he went to half-a-million, which is a fortune for life, well, no gentleman on earth could dream of disputing the question any further with him. Just so, I say, with marriage. If a lady desires me, without due cause assigned, to become her abject slave, and serve her alone for a lifetime, I will politely but firmly answer, ‘No, thank you.’ If she confers upon me, incidentally, a modest competence, I shall perpend for a moment, and murmur, ‘Well, possibly.’ But if she renders me independent and comfortable for life, with a chance of surrounding myself with books, pictures, music, without a moment’s hesitation I shall answer, ‘Like a bird,’ to her. Slavery, in short, though in itself disagreeable, may be mitigated or altogether outweighed by concomitant advantages.”
“Florian,” Will said, earnestly, “I don’t know what you mean. You speak a foreign language to me. If I felt like that, I could never bring myself to marry any woman. If I married at all, I must do it for the sake of the girl I loved – and to make her happy.”
Florian gazed at him compassionately. “Quixotic,” he answered low, shaking his sculpturesque head once or twice with a face of solemn warning. “Quixotic, exceedingly! The pure lemming instinct; they will rush into it! It’s the moth and the candle again: dazzle, buzz, and flutter, – and pom! pom! pom! – in a second, you’re caught, and sizzled hot in the flame, and reduced to ashes. That’s how it’ll be with you, my dear fellow: you’ll go back to Meran and, by Jingo, to-morrow, you’ll go straight up the hill, and ask the cow-girl to marry you.”
“I think I will,” the poet answered, taking up his candlestick with a sigh to leave the room. “I think I will, Florian. I’ll fight it out to the bitter end, sloppy slavey and all, on your threatened south side, in those dingy lodgings.” And he took himself off with a hurried nod to his bland companion.