Читать книгу Griffith Gaunt (Musaicum Romance Series) - Charles Reade Reade - Страница 5

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Miss Peyton drew herself up, and back, by one motion, like a queen at bay; but still she eyed him with a certain respect, and was careful now not to provoke nor pain him needlessly.

"I prefer you—though you speak harshly to me, sir," said she, with gentle dignity.

"Then give me your hand with that man in sight, and end my torments: promise to marry me this very week. Ah, Kate! have pity on your poor faithful servant who has loved you so long."

"I do, Griffith, I do," said she sweetly; "but I shall never marry now. Only set your mind at rest about Mr. Neville there. He has never asked me, for one thing."

"He soon will then."

"No, no; I declare I will be very cool to him after what you have said to me. But I cannot marry you neither. I dare not. Listen to me, and do pray govern your temper as I am doing mine. I have often read of men with a passion for jealousy—I mean men whose jealousy feeds upon air, and defies reason. I know you now for such a man. Marriage would not cure this madness, for wives do not escape admiration any more than maids. Something tells me you would be jealous of every fool that paid me some stale compliment, jealous of my female friends, and jealous of my relations, and perhaps jealous of your own children, and of that holy persecuted church which must still have a large share of my heart. No, no; your face and your words have shown me a precipice. I tremble, and draw back, and now I never will marry at all; from this day I give myself to the church."

Griffith did not believe one word of all this. "That is your answer to me," said he bitterly. "When the right man puts the question (and he is not far off) you will tell another tale. You take me for a fool, and you mock me: you are not the lass to die an old maid, and men are not the fools to let you. With faces like yours the new servant comes before the first one is gone. Well, I have got my answer. County Cumberland, you are no place for me. The ways and the fields we two have rid together, oh how could I bear their sight without my dear? Why what a poor-spirited fool am I to stay and whine! Come, mistress, your lover waits you there, and your discarded servant knows good breeding: he leaves the country not to spoil your sport."

Catherine panted heavily. "Well, sir," said she, "then it is your doing, not mine. Will you not even shake hands with me, Griffith?"

"I were a brute else," sighed the jealous one, with a sudden revulsion of feeling. "I have spent the happiest hours of my life beside you. If I loved thee less I had never left thee."

He clung a little while to her hand, more like a drowning man than anything else; then let it go, and suddenly shook his clenched fist in the direction of George Neville, and cried out with a savage yell, "My curse on him that parts us twain! And you, Kate, may God bless you single, and curse you married: and that is my last word in Cumberland."

"Amen," said Catherine resignedly.

And even with this they wheeled their horses apart, and rode away from each other: she very pale, but erect with wounded pride; he reeling in his saddle like a drunken man.

And so Griffith Gaunt, stung mad by jealousy, affronted his sweetheart, the proudest girl in Cumberland, and, yielding to his foible, fled from his pain.

Our foibles are our manias.