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Дата написания1970-01-01
Язык книгиen
Возрастное ограничение12+
Жанры
зарубежная классика

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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.

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