The Tenants of Malory. Volume 3. Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan

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      He wished she was not so pretty – so beautiful, in fact. It pained him, and somehow he had grown strange with her; and she was changed, grave, and silent, rather, and, as it seemed, careless quite whether he was there or not, although he could never charge her with positive unkindness, much less with rudeness. He wished she would be rude. He would have liked to upbraid her. But her gentle, careless cruelty was a torture that justified no complaint, and admitted no redress.

      He could talk volubly and pleasantly enough for hours with Charity, not caring a farthing whether he pleased her or not, and thinking only whether Agnes, who sat silent at her work, liked his stories and was amused by his fun; and went away elated for a whole night and day because a joke of his had made her laugh. Never had Tom felt more proud and triumphant in all his days.

      But when Charity left the room to see old Vane Etherage in the study, a strange silence fell upon Tom. You could hear each stitch of her tambour-work. You could hear Tom's breathing. He fancied she might hear the beating of his heart. He was ashamed of his silence. He could have been eloquent had he spoken from that loaded heart. But he dare not, and failing this he must be silent.

      By this time Tom was always thinking of Agnes Etherage, and wondering at the perversity of fate. He was in love. He could not cheat himself into any evasion of that truth – a tyrant truth that had ruled him mercilessly; and there was she pining for love of quite another, and bestowing upon him, who disdained it, all the treasure of her heart, while even a look would have been cherished with gratitude by Sedley.

      What was the good of his going up every day to Hazelden, Tom Sedley thought, to look at her, and talk to Charity, and laugh, and recount entertaining gossip, and make jokes, and be agreeable, with a heavy and strangely suffering heart, and feel himself every day more and more in love with her, when he knew that the sound of Cleve's footsteps, as he walked by, thinking of himself, would move her heart more than all Tom Sedley, adoring her, could say in his lifetime?

      What a fool he was! Before Cleve appeared she was fancy free; no one else in the field, and his opportunities unlimited. He had lapsed his time, and occasion had spread its wings and flown.

      "What beautiful sunshine! What do you say to a walk on the Green?" said Tom to Charity, and listening for a word from Agnes. She raised her pretty eyes and looked out, but said nothing.

      "Yes. I think it would be very nice; and there is no wind. What do you say, Agnes?"

      "I don't know. I'm lazy to-day, I think, and I have this to finish," said Agnes.

      "But you ought to take a walk, Agnes; it would do you good; and Thomas Sedley and I are going for a walk on the Green."

      "Pray, do," pleaded Tom, timidly.

      Agnes smiled and shook her head, looking out of the window, and, making no other answer, resumed her work.

      "You are very obstinate," remarked Charity.

      "Yes, and lazy, like the donkeys on the Green, where you are going; but you don't want me particularly – I mean you, Charrie – and Mr. Sedley, I know, will excuse me, for I really feel that it would tire me to-day. It would tire me to death," said Agnes, winding up with an emphasis.

      "Well, I'll go and put on my things, and if you like to come you can come, and if you don't you can stay where you are. But I wish you would not be a fool. It is a beautiful day, and nothing on earth to prevent you."

      "I don't like the idea of a walk to-day. I know I should feel tired immediately, and have to bring you back again; and I've really grown interested in this little bit of work, and I feel as if I must finish it to-day."

      "Why need you finish it to-day? You are such a goose, Agnes," said Charity, marching out of the room.

      Tom remained there standing, his hat in his hand, looking out of the window – longing to speak, his heart being full, yet not knowing how to begin, or how to go on if he had begun.

      Agnes worked on diligently, and looked out from the window at her side over the shorn grass and flower-beds, through the old trees in the foreground – over the tops of the sloping forest, with the back-ground of the grand Welsh mountains, and a glimpse of the estuary, here and there, seen through the leaves, stretching far off, in dim gold and gray.

      "You like that particular window," said Tom, making a wonderful effort; "I mean, why do you like always to sit there?" He spoke in as careless a way as he could, looking still out of his window, which commanded a different view.

      "This window! oh, my frame stands here always, and when one is accustomed to a particular place, it puts one out to change."

      Then Agnes dropped her pretty eyes again to her worsted, and worked and hummed very faintly a little air, and Tom's heart swelled within him, and he hummed as faintly the same gay air.

      "I thought perhaps you liked that view?" said Tom Sedley, arresting the music.

      She looked out again.

      "Well, it's very pretty."

      "The best from these windows; some people think, I believe, the prettiest view you have," said Tom, gathering force, "the water is always so pretty."

      "Yes, the water," she assented listlessly.

      "Quite a romantic view," continued Sedley, a little bitterly.

      "Yes, every pretty view is romantic," she acquiesced, looking out for a moment again. "If one knew exactly what romantic means – it's a word we use so often, and so vaguely."

      "And can't you define it, Agnes?"

      "Define it? I really don't think I could."

      "Well, that does surprise me."

      "You are so much more clever than I, of course it does."

      "No, quite the contrary; you are clever – I'm serious, I assure you – and I'm a dull fellow, and I know it quite well —I can't define it; but that doesn't surprise me."

      "Then we are both in the same case; but I won't allow it's stupidity – the idea is quite undefinable, and that is the real difficulty. You can't describe the perfume of a violet, but you know it quite well, and I really think flowers a more interesting subject than romance."

      "Oh, really! not, surely, than the romance of that view. It is so romantic!"

      "You seem quite in love with it," said she, with a little laugh, and began again with a grave face to stitch in the glory of her saint in celestial yellow worsted.

      "The water – yes – and the old trees of Ware, and just that tower, at the angle of the house."

      Agnes just glanced through her window, but said nothing.

      "I think," said Sedley, "if I were peopling this scene, you know, I should put my hero in that Castle of Ware – that is, if I could invent a romance, which, of course, I couldn't." He spoke with a meaning, I think.

      "Why should there be heroes in romances?" asked Miss Agnes, looking nevertheless toward Ware, with her hand and the needle resting idly upon the frame. "Don't you think a romance ought to resemble reality a little; and do you ever find such a monster as a hero in the world? I don't expect to see one, I know," and she laughed again, but Tom thought, a little bitterly, and applied once more diligently to her СКАЧАТЬ