Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

20. CHAPTER XX: WILLIAM BELTON DOES NOT GO OUT HUNTING (continued)

'You know what I mean. I'd go anywhere. Where is she to find a home till till she is married?' He had paused at the word; but was determined not to shrink from it, and bolted it out in a loud, sharp tone so that both he and she recognized all the meaning of the word all that was conveyed in the idea. He hated himself when he endeavoured to conceal from his own mind any of the misery that was coming upon him. He loved her. He could not get over it. The passion was on him like a palsy, for the shaking off of which no sufficient physical energy was left to him. It clung to him in his goings out and comings in with a painful, wearing tenacity, against which he would now and again struggle, swearing that it should be so no longer but against which he always struggled in vain. It was with him when he was hunting. He was ever thinking of it when the bird rose before his gun. As he watched the furrow, as his men and horses would drive it straight and deep through the ground, he was thinking of her and not of the straightness and depth of the furrow, as had been his wont in former years. Then he would turn away his f toe, and stand alone in his field, blinded by the salt drops in his eyes, weeping at his own weakness. And when he was quite alone, he would stamp his foot on the ground, and throw abroad his arms, and curse himself. What Nessus's shirt was this that had fallen upon him, and unmanned him from the sole of his foot to the top of his head? He went through the occupations of the week. He hunted, and shot, and gave his orders, and paid his men their wages but he did it all with a palsy of love upon him as he did it. He wanted her, and he could not overcome the want. He could not bear to confess to himself that the thing by which he had set so much store could never belong to him. His sister understood it all, and sometimes he was almost angry with her because of her understanding it. She sympathized with him in all his moods, and sometimes he would shake away her sympathy as though it scalded him. 'Where is she to find a home till till she is married?' he said.