And Linnet and Philippina burst in upon them like a whirlwind.
Will rose hurriedly to greet them. In a moment, he saw something serious was amiss. Philippina’s eyes were red and swollen2 with crying; Linnet’s, though less bloodshot, looked weary and anxious. “Why, Madre de Dios, what’s the matter?” Florian exclaimed in his affected3 way, rushing forward effusively4 in his brown velvet5 smoking-coat. “My dear Signora, to what happy star do I owe the honour of this unexpected visit? And all unbidden, too! Such good luck is too infrequent!”
“It’s poor Philippina!” Linnet cried, half-inarticulate with sympathy. “She’s in such a dreadful state. She really doesn’t know what on earth to do about it.”
Florian smiled the calm smile of superior wisdom. “What, already?” he exclaimed, raising one impressive hand. “So soon? So soon? A little rift6 within the lute7, a little tiff8 with her Theodore? Well, well, dear Diva, we know these offences must needs come, in the best regulated families. They’re part and parcel of our ridiculous marriage system. Will and I are wiser in our generation, you see; we keep well out of it.”
“No, no; it is not zat!” Philippina cried, excitedly. Then turning to Will, she burst out in German, “I’ve been to see the priest and the bishop9 to-day, to ask for absolution, and it’s all no use; they’ll neither of them give it to me. I’ve been to ask them again and again these two weeks; but they’re hard like rock; hard, hard, as that mantelpiece: they refuse to forgive me. They say it’s no true marriage at all that I’ve made, but the lusts10 of the flesh?—?a sinful union. Ach! what shall I do, what ever shall I do? This is terrible, terrible!” And she wrung11 her hands hard. “It’ll kill me,” she cried; “it’ll kill me.”
Linnet turned in explanation to the bewildered Florian. “You see,” she said simply, “she’s living in sin now, and they won’t absolve12 her. She may not take the mass, nor receive the sacraments of the Church in any form. She’s like one excommunicated. If she died to-morrow, they would refuse her extreme unction; she would pass away in her sin, and must go at once, straight, straight to perdition.”
“But surely,” Florian ventured to observe, turning theologian for once, in these peculiar13 circumstances, “her present life?—?well, my dear Signora, without rudeness to the lady, we must all admit, it’s?—?h’m, h’m?—?how shall I put it? It’s at least quite as innocent as her previous habits.”
Linnet made no false pretence14 of misunderstanding his plain meaning. This was a serious matter, and she felt its full seriousness herself so deeply that she sympathised with Philippina. “You don’t understand,” she answered, gasping15; “you don’t at all understand; you can’t throw yourself into our standpoint. You’re not a Catholic, you see, and you don’t feel as we feel about it. To sin once, twice, three times, till seventy times seven, I care not how often?—?that is simply to sin: and if we repent16 in our hearts?—?God is faithful and just?—?the Church absolves17 us. But to live in open sin, to persist in one’s wrong, to set the authority and discipline of the Church at defiance18?—?ah! that to us is quite another matter. Philippina may have done wrong sometimes; we are all of us human; Heaven forbid I should judge her”?—?she spoke19 very earnestly; “but to continue in sin, to live her life without the sacraments and consolations20 of the Church, to remain with a man whom no Catholic can recognise as really her husband?—?that is too, too terrible. And, just think, if she were to die?—?” Linnet gazed up at him appealingly.
“But that can’t be the Catholic doctrine21!” Will exclaimed with great vehemence22.
Florian was more practical. “I dare say not,” he answered, with a shrug23?—?“as the Catholic doctrine is understood by theologians, archbishops, and casuistical text-books. But that’s nothing to the point. It is the Catholic doctrine as these women understand it, and it’s sufficient to make them both supremely24 unhappy. That’s enough for us. What we’ve got to ask is, how can we help them now out of this hole they’ve got into?”
The longer they talked about it, indeed, the clearer did this central fact come out to them. Philippina had married in haste, without the Church’s consent; she was repenting25 at leisure now, in the effort to obtain it. And she sat there, cowering26 and quivering in bodily terror of those pains and penalties of fire and flame which were every whit27 as real to her to-day in London as they had been long ago by the wayside shrines28 at St Valentin. Either she must give up her husband, she said, or her hopes of salvation29. It was evident that to her mind the little peccadilloes30 which the Church could absolve were as absolutely nothing; but to live with the husband whom the Church disowned, appalled31 and alarmed her. Her agonised terror was as genuine as though the danger she feared were actually confronting her. She saw and heard the hissing32 flames of purgatory33. It made Will realise far more keenly than he had ever realised before the deep hold their creed34 keeps over these Tyrolese women. He couldn’t help thinking how much Linnet would suffer, with her finer mould, and her profounder emotions, under similar circumstances, if even Philippina, that buxom35, coarse-fibred girl, took so deeply to heart the Church’s displeasure. He remembered it afterwards at a great crisis of their history; it was one of the events in life that most profoundly affected him.
Philippina, meanwhile, rocked herself up and down, moaning and trembling piteously. Will’s heart was touched. He seized his friend by the arm. “Look here, Florian,” he cried, all sympathy, “we must go at once and see the Archbishop.”
“My dear fellow,” Florian answered, shaking his head, “it isn’t the slightest use. I’ve tried too long. The man’s pure priest. Heart or pity he has none. The bowels36 of compassion37 have been all trained out of him. The simplest offence against ecclesiastical law is to him sheer heresy38.”
“Never mind,” Will answered. “We can always try.” It struck him, in fact, that the Archbishop might perhaps be more easily moved by himself than by Florian. “Philippina must go with us. We’ll see whether or not we can move the Churchman.”
They drove off together in a cab to Westminster; but Linnet went back by herself to St John’s Wood.
When she reached her home, Andreas met her at the door with a little sneer39 on his face. Though they lived more simply than ever prima donna lived before, his avarice40 grew more marked as Linnet’s earnings41 increased; and since Philippina’s marriage he had been unkinder than ever to her. “What did you want with a cab?” he asked, “wasting your money like that. Wherever you’ve been?—?without my knowledge or consent?—?you might at least have come home by the Underground, I should fancy.”
Linnet’s face flushed hot. In her anxiety for her friend’s soul, she had never thought of such trifles as the hire of a hansom. “It was for Philippina,” she said, reproachfully, with a good home thrust: and Andreas, wincing42, imagined he could detect a faintly personal stress upon Philippina’s name which almost disconcerted him. “She came round here in such a terrible state of distress43 that I couldn’t help going with her. She can’t get her absolution; she’s almost out of her mind with it.”
Andreas’ face set harder and sterner than ever. He eyed his wife narrowly. “Philippina can settle for her own cabs,” he said with an ugly frown. “What’s Philippina to us or we to Philippina, that we should waste our hard-earned money upon her? Let Philippina pay for the saving of her own precious soul, if she wants to save it. Don’t spend a penny upon her that belongs to your husband.”
An answer struggled hard for utterance44 upon Linnet’s tongue; but with an effort she repressed it. Andreas hadn’t always thought so little of Philippina?—?before she married the handsome brown-eyed American. However, Linnet refrained from answering him back as he himself would have answered her. The Blessed Madonna in her hand gave her strength to restrain herself. She merely said, with a little sigh, “I never thought about the cab; it was Florian who called it.”
Andreas turned upon her sharply. “So so!” he exclaimed, with an air of discovery. “You’ve been round to Herr Florian’s! And the other man was there, I suppose! You went by appointment to meet him!”
“Herr Will was there, if you mean him,” Linnet answered, fiery45 red, but disdaining46 the weak subterfuge47 of a pretended ignorance. “I didn’t go to meet him, though; I didn’t know he was there. He’s gone round with her, poor girl, to see the Archbishop.”
Andreas drew himself up very stiff. He hadn’t quite liked that stress Linnet put on Philippina’s name, and he wasn’t sorry accordingly for this stray chance of a diversion. “So Herr Will was there!” he repeated, with a meaning smile, “What a singular coincidence! You’ve been seeing too much altogether of Herr Will of late. I’m not a jealous man, but mind you, Linnet, I draw a line somewhere.”
Linnet’s face was crimson48. “It’s not you who have had cause to feel jealous,” she answered, quietly. “Herr Will is too good a man to act . . . well, to act as you would do. You know what you say or what you hint at isn’t true. You’re put out because?——”
“Because what?” Andreas asked, provokingly, as she broke off and hesitated.
But Linnet brushed past him, and went up to her own room without answering a word. She was too proud to finish the sentence she had begun, “Because Philippina has given you up and married the American.”
She had known it all along?—?known it, and never minded. But she felt in her heart the reason why; she had never loved Andreas, so how could she be jealous of him? He had married her as a very sound investment; he had never pretended to care for her at all in herself; and she, in turn, had never pretended to care for him. But now, in an agony of remorse49 and terror, she flung herself on her bed and, with white hands clasped, besought50 Our Lady, with all the strength she possessed51, to save her from despising and hating her husband. She had never loved him, to be sure; but to her, as a Catholic, marriage was a most holy sacrament of the Church, and she must try to live up to it. She prayed, too, for strength to love Will Deverill less?—?to forget him, to neglect him. Yet, even as she prayed, she thought to herself ten thousand times over how different it would all have been if she had married Will Deverill; how much she would have loved him; how true at heart she would have been to him. All heretic that he was, his image rose up between herself and Our Lady. She wiped her brimming eyes, and, with sobs52 and entreaties53, begged hard to love him less, begged hard to be forgiven that she loved him now so dearly.
Yet, even in her own distress, Linnet thought of Philippina. She prayed hard, too, for Philippina. She begged Our Lady, with tears and sighs, to soften54 the obdurate55 Archbishop’s heart, and make smooth for Philippina the path to Paradise. For, in a way, she really liked that big, bouncing alp-girl. Unlike as they were in mould, they both came from St Valentin; Philippina was to Linnet the one tie she still possessed that bound her in memory to the land of her birth?—?the land where her father and mother lay dead, awaiting their souls’ return from the flames of purgatory.
That evening at the theatre, Philippina burst in upon her with a radiant face, as she dressed for her part in Cophetua’s Adventure. “It’s all right,” she cried aloud in German, half-wild with joy. “Mr Deverill has managed it! He spoke to the Archbishop, and the Archbishop said Yes; and he gave me absolution then and there on the spot, and I went home for Theodore; and I’m to spend to-night at a lodging-house alone, and he’ll marry us with all the rites56 of the Church to-morrow.”
Linnet clasped her hand tight. “I’m so glad, dear,” she answered. “I knew he’d give way if Herr Will only spoke to him. Herr Will’s so kind and good, no mortal on earth can refuse him anything. He’s a heretic, to be sure, but, O Philippina, there’s no Catholic like him! . . . Besides,” she added, after a pause, rearranging the folds in the Beggar Maid’s dress with pretended pre-occupation, “I prayed Our Lady that she might soften the Archbishop’s heart; and Our Lady heard my prayer; she always hears me.”
As she spoke, a great pang57 passed suddenly through her bosom58: Our Lady had answered that prayer; would she answer the other one? Would she grant Linnet’s wish to love Will Deverill less? Staring before her in an agony, she sobbed59 at the bare thought. It was horrible, hateful! A flood of conflicting emotion came over her like a wave. Sinful as she felt it herself to be, she knew she never meant that prayer she had uttered. Love Will Deverill less? Forget him? Oh, impossible! She might be breaking every commandment in her heart at once, but she couldn’t frame that prayer she must and would love him!
Oh, foolishness of men, who think they can bind60 the human heart with a vow61! You may promise to do or leave undone62 what you will; but promise to feel or not to feel! The bare idea is preposterous63!
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1
nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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effusively
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| adv.变溢地，热情洋溢地 | |
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5
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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6
rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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lute
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| n.琵琶，鲁特琴 | |
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tiff
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| n.小争吵，生气 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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12
absolve
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| v.赦免，解除（责任等） | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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15
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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16
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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17
absolves
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| 宣告…无罪，赦免…的罪行，宽恕…的罪行( absolve的第三人称单数 )； 不受责难，免除责任 [义务] ,开脱（罪责） | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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19
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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consolations
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| n.安慰，慰问( consolation的名词复数 )；起安慰作用的人（或事物） | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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repenting
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的现在分词 ) | |
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cowering
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 ) | |
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whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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shrines
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| 圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
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29
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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peccadilloes
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| n.轻罪，小过失( peccadillo的名词复数 ) | |
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31
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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32
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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33
purgatory
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| n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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buxom
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| adj.（妇女）丰满的，有健康美的 | |
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bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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39
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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40
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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41
earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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42
wincing
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的现在分词 ) | |
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43
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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44
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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45
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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46
disdaining
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| 鄙视( disdain的现在分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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47
subterfuge
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| n.诡计；藉口 | |
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48
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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49
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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50
besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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51
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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52
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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53
entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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54
soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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55
obdurate
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| adj.固执的，顽固的 | |
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56
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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57
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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58
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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59
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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60
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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61
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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62
undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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63
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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