Andreas Hausberger was right. Philippina’s nemesis found her out all too quickly. Just six weeks later, Will Deverill had called round one afternoon at Florian’s rooms in Grosvenor Gardens. They were engaged in discussing Florian’s latest purchase?—?an etching of a wood-nymph after a new Dutch artist, very pure and precious?—?when Mr Barnes, that impeccable man-servant, opened the door with a flourish, and announced in his cut-and-dried official voice, “Signora Cazzlemonty; Mrs Theodore Livingstone!”
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 swollen with crying; Linnet’s, though less bloodshot, looked weary and anxious. “Why, Madre de Dios, what’s the matter?” Florian exclaimed in his affected way, rushing forward effusively in his brown velvet 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 rift within the lute, a little tiff 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 bishop 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 lusts of the flesh?—?a sinful union. Ach! what shall I do, what ever shall I do? This is terrible, terrible!” And she wrung 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 absolve 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 peculiar 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 pretence 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, gasping; “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 repent in our hearts?—?God is faithful and just?—?the Church absolves us. But to live in open sin, to persist in one’s wrong, to set the authority and discipline of the Church at defiance?—?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 spoke very earnestly; “but to continue in sin, to live her life without the sacraments and consolations 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 doctrine!” Will exclaimed with great vehemence.
Florian was more practical. “I dare say not,” he answered, with a shrug?—?“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 supremely 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 repenting at leisure now, in the effort to obtain it. And she sat there, cowering and quivering in bodily terror of those pains and penalties of fire and flame which were every whit as real to her to-day in London as they had been long ago by the wayside shrines at St Valentin. Either she must give up her husband, she said, or her hopes of salvation. It was evident that to her mind the little peccadilloes which the Church could absolve were as absolutely nothing; but to live with the husband whom the Church disowned, appalled and alarmed her. Her agonised terror was as genuine as though the danger she feared were actually confronting her. She saw and heard the hissing flames of purgatory. It made Will realise far more keenly than he had ever realised before the deep hold their creed 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 buxom, 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 bowels of compassion have been all trained out of him. The simplest offence against ecclesiastical law is to him sheer heresy.”
“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............