Litchfield enquirer., 1871-11-02

/, the marshes; the yellow sail motionless in 1 the creeks; the mists that steamed over it I like unshaped rainbowed masses beneath I the toFrid hIue of the burning heaven ]? Should he paint the bare and sweating l walls of the room here, with the fungus bedded under the cornice, and the moss upon the lintel? Or yet should he paint the crone who bent and shivered there be- l fore him, withered and parched, very I skeleton, unshapen, wrinkled, haggard, stained with gray blotches like the wing of dead moth; this tomb lain monster and freak of nature, without youth or age; this incarnation of pain, who lifted her head and regarded him with such a fixed, glittering, swelling eye, beneath the yellow ivory of the brow,< above the clenched construction of the lips skin drawn across the teeth? The hag put up her gaunt arm and bony hand, knotted and veined like thing of old, looked at i it with a bewildered stare, and then hid 1t in the threads of her damp and scanty l her eyes to Trefetheness. As for him, he was forced to gaze; and sitting there, bend l ing forward with his hands upon his knees, the fair-faced knightly gentleman, bloom on his cheek and life on his lip, health and strength in every sinew, there came to him the knowledge, in slow and dead ly conviction, of whom this was before I him-this shapeless spectacle of horror So they sat, speechless, kissless, smile less-the Count might well dare now to | leave them alone together If Trefetheness had died in that dreadful gaze, slowly i frozen into death-as it was, who can say that their punishments were unequal?
 ''While they thus sat feet were heard 1 upon the staircase, and entering, there was placed before Agnes, yet not so as to in- tercept Trefethenesss gaze, one of the dazzling pFa8Ea ru8 @ Der left apnffAt afe splendor agaln; and parting her lips, she said-and change the voice-1 have seen no mirror for year. Shall look?
 " 'Noi' he replied, and rose to wheel the demoniac thing to the wall But as he did so her gaze followed him, and fell on her own image reflected there. The 1 Count, pacing the room below, biting his nails and worrying with time, heard the 1 shriek that pierced the tower and rung 1 along the morass, and died in swirls. of | cruel echo above the creeks. There was nothing to end the ensuing swoon, and perhaps it would have ended only with
 
 I her, the warm breath swathing her, the words, tender as ever, breathing in her ear. When the Count returned the mir TOT was where it had been placed, Agnes sat again on her low stool, and Trefethe- ness had sketched the dreadful outline of his work. So day after day he sat paint i ing, and day after day she sat before him. l It was the most exquisite refinement of torture. Could any suffering have been keener than his, not only to see to what
 he had brought the woman dearer than heaven, not only to perpetuate and repeat 1t on canvas himself, hut to infiict on her the yet more piercing pang afforded by l his work, to stab her with every glance? And she-I think the way she endured it, never flinching beneath the gaze that had once been so ardent, revealing herself in hideous pitiableness, knowing that now he sketched the knobbed temple, and now the twisted limb; and here, where had been down and bloom, the tawny spot of mould; and here, where kisses had been showered, the livid lip-that, i'll the con- science goading him, the painter would not demand an atom less strength for the disgust that once he asked for the bland ishment. An! think the way alone in which she saw her lover paint her horror sainted her. She could not fail to pre- ceive the pain it wrought him, when the great drops again beaded his brow, and the lips compressed themselves in deter mined wrinkles, and never relaxed; when the hand quivered and the pencil fell, and tears rained from the weary eyes, and no word passed between them. and the Count came and sat beside him, and counted every throb and took his vengeance in every stroke. The miserable days passed; l he had seen the damp curl ill and fall ill flakes on chair and easel; he had aban- doned himself to the cutting night draughts; he had been bathed in the hot vapors that poured about at noon; his work resembled one that had hung on some wall for century. At last he looked away from the canvas, looked out at the l distant sparkle reckoning on the city roofs, and threw down the brush--the picture was done; and she, more ghastly than some open-eyed corpse, the lover, truer 1 painter than the sun, had placed Agnes before herself. Then he rose, not. the same man who had danced with Agnes, who sat beside her in the summer bower; not even the man whom the Count had met month ago in the city, but one changed through this misery to something strong, stern, and unpitying as himself.
 When you brought her here,' said Trefetheness when you racked her frame and destroyed her beauty and shortened her life; when you served her as, at such season, you should not have served the beast of your field; when you murdered in body and tried to do it in soul, our debt was squared. And after the day in which you brought me here to see her, and gave l her the cursed mirror to see herself, in that day there was not another groan which you had the right to ring from me! But you chose 1t; you put this work before me; and have performed it faithfully, unspar- ingly. I Iwould not have it one pang the less. meant the tally should be full full of pain and woe, and in it I have sealed every sigh and sting, and all re- morse that I shall ever know; for this was | no punishment for past sin. That is all done with. But it is the wages of work mean to do, and which will never re- gret. l mean, Sir Count, to kill your
 stAnd he did kill him, then and there. That was simple justice. The manner of the Counts death was never inquired into I Agnes went back to her old house in the city, and took the wailing child that had 1 been born of her death-in-life at the tower. l Different air and care did all for the poor little wretch that it needed, and so was our family founded
 l '.Then we--"
 seYou see how honorable is our descent, he replied. ''To conclude: Agnes from that hour never again exchanged speech with Trefetheness. Daily he stood in the church; he watched her enter and depart; and though still silent, and though the hems of their garments never touched, daily together they knelt at the altar and offered the same prayer. And day after day, as he returned to his desolate home, it seemed to him that some trait in this picture of his penance was wanting and he retouched 1t so that the color on 1t was forever wet; and day after day 1t grew and changed, till at last over the ghastly dis gust there stole this softness, this light, this half-radience that, if not loveliness, is at least Heavens peace. Meanwhile Agnes devoted the greater part of her fortune