BEGINNINGS OF EVIL
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.