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

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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.”

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