Linda Tressel

by Anthony Trollope

But there were others who watched, and spoke among themselves, and felt that the silent solemnity of Linda's mode of life was a cause for trembling. Max Bogen's wife had come to her father's house, and had seen Linda, and had talked to Tetchen, and had said at home that Linda was—mad. Her father had become frightened, and had refused to take any part in the matter. He acknowledged that he had given his advice in favour of the marriage, but he had done this merely as a matter of course,—to oblige his neighbour, Madame Staubach. He would have nothing more to do with it. When Fanny told him that she feared that Linda would lose her senses, he went into his workshop and busied himself with a great chair. But Tetchen was not so reticent. Tetchen said much to Madame Staubach;—so much that the unfortunate widow was nearly always on her knees, asking for help, asking in very truth for new gifts of obstinate persistency; and Tetchen also said much to Fanny Bogen.

"But what can we do, Tetchen?" asked Fanny.

"If I had my will," said Tetchen, "I would so handle him that he would be glad enough to be off his bargain. But you'll see they'll never live together as man and wife,—never for a day."

They who said that Linda was mad at this time were probably half-right; but if so, her madness had shown itself in none of those forms which are held to justify interference by authority. There was no one in Nuremberg who could lock a woman up because she was silent; or could declare her to be unfit for marriage because she refused to buy wedding clothes. The marriage must go on. Linda herself felt that it must be accomplished. Her silence and her sternness were not now consciously used by her as means of opposing or delaying the coming ceremony, but simply betrayed the state of mind to which she was reduced. She counted the days and she counted the hours as a criminal counts them who sits in his cell and waits for the executioner. She knew, she thought she knew, that she would stand in the church and have her hand put into that of Peter Steinmarc; but what might happen after that she did not know.

She would stand at the altar and have her hand put into that of Peter Steinmarc, and she would be called his wife in sight of God and man. She spent hours in solitude attempting to realise the position with all its horrors. She never devoted a minute to the task of reconciling herself to it. She did not make one slightest endeavour towards teaching herself that after all it might be possible for her to live with the man as his companion in peace and quietness. She hated him with all the vigour of her heart, and she would hate him to the end. On that subject no advice, no prayer, no grace from heaven, could be of service to her. Satan, with all the horrors of hell, as they had been described to her, was preferable to the companionship of Peter Steinmarc. And yet she went on without flinching.

She went on without flinching till the night of the tenth of March. Up to that time, from the day on which she had last consented to her martyrdom, no idea of escape had occurred to her. As she left her aunt on that evening, Madame Staubach spoke to her. "You should at any rate pray for him," said Madame Staubach. "I hope that you pray that this marriage may be for his welfare." How could she pray for him? And how could she utter such a prayer as that? But she tried; and as she tried, she reflected that the curse to him would be as great as it was to her. Not only was she to be sacrificed, but the miserable man was bringing himself also to utter wretchedness. Unless she could die, there would be no escape for him, as also there would be none for her. That she should speak to him, touch him, hold intercourse with him, was, she now told herself, out of the question. She might be his servant, if he would allow her to be so at a distance, but nothing more. Or it might be possible that she should be his murderess! A woman who has been taught by her religion that she is and must be a child of the Evil One, may become guilty of what most terrible crime you please without much increase of damage to her own cause,—without much damage according to her own views of life and death. Linda, as she thought of it in her own chamber, with her eyes wide open, looking into the dark night from out of her window, declared to herself that in certain circumstances she would certainly attempt to kill him. She shuddered and shook till she almost fell from her chair. Come what might, she would not endure the pressure of his caress.

Then she got up and resolved that she would even yet make one other struggle to escape. It would not be true of her to say that at this moment she was mad, but the mixed excitement and terror of her position as she was waiting her doom, joined to her fears, her doubts, and, worse than all, her certainties as to her condition in the sight of God, had almost unstrung her mind. She had almost come to believe that the world was at its end, and that the punishment of which she had heard so much was already upon her. "If this is to be a doom for ever," she said to herself, "the God I have striven to love is very cruel." But then there came an exercise of reason which told her that it could not be a doom for ever. It was clear to her that there was much as yet within her own power which could certainly not be so in that abode of the unblessed to which she was to be summoned. There was the window before her, with the silent river running below; and she knew that she could throw herself from it if she chose to put forth the power which she still possessed. She felt that "she herself might her quietus make with a bare bodkin." Why should she

"Fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after life, The undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of."

Linda knew nothing of Hamlet, but the thought was there, exact; and the knowledge that some sort of choice was still open to her, if it were only the choice of sending herself at once to a world different from this, a world in which Peter Steinmarc would not be the avenger of her life's wickedness, made her aware that even yet something might be done.

On the following morning she was in the kitchen, as was usual with her now, at an early hour, and made the coffee for her aunt's breakfast, and for Peter's. Tetchen was there also, and to Tetchen she spoke a word or two in good humour. Tetchen said afterwards that she knew that something was to happen, because Linda's manner to her had been completely changed that morning. She sat down with her aunt at eight, and ate a morsel of bread, and endeavoured to swallow her coffee. She was thinking at the time that it might be the case that she would never see her aunt again. All the suffering that she had endured at Madame Staubach's hands had never quenched her love. Miserable as she had been made by the manner in which this woman had executed the trust which circumstances had placed in her hands, Linda had hardly blamed her aunt even within her own bosom. When with a frenzy of agony Madame Staubach would repeat prayer after prayer, extending her hands towards heaven, and seeking to obtain that which she desired by the painful intensity of her own faith, it had never occurred to Linda that in such proceedings she was ill-treated by her aunt. Her aunt, she thought, had ever shown to her all that love which a mother has for her child, and Linda in her misery was never ungrateful. As soon as the meal was finished she put on her hat and cloak, which she had brought down from her room, and then kissed her aunt.