[Illustration: A CERTAIN QUALITY OF ATTRACTION ABOUT BLAIR WHICH MADE
WOMEN LOVE HIM.--_Page 22_]




  Children of Destiny

  _By_ MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

  [Illustration]

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  A. B. WENZELL

  _A. L. BURT COMPANY_

  _Publishers_      _New York_




  COPYRIGHT 1893
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT 1903
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  APRIL




_Children of Destiny_




CHILDREN OF DESTINY.




CHAPTER I.


The hot June sunshine poured down upon the great fields of yellow wheat
at Deerchase, and the velvet wind swept softly over them, making long
billows and shadowy dimples in the golden sea of grain. The air was
all blue and gold, and vibrating with the music of harvest time--the
reedlike harmonies of the wind-swept wheat, the droning of many bees,
the merry drumming of the cicada in the long grass, and, above all,
the song of the black reapers, as they swung their glittering scythes
in the morning sun. One side of the vast field was skirted by purplish
woods, through which went constantly a solemn murmur--the only sad
note in the symphony. On the other side rose great clumps and groves
of live oaks and silver beeches and feathery elms, shading a spacious
brick house with innumerable peaks and gables. Beyond this house and
its pleasure grounds a broad and glittering river went merrily on its
way to the south Atlantic. Nature in this coast country of Virginia
is prodigal of beauty, and bestows all manner of charms with a lavish
hand. Here are found blue rivers and bluer skies, and pale splendours
of moonlit nights and exquisite dawns and fair noons. Here Nature runs
the whole gamut of beauty--through the laughing loveliness of spring
mornings, the capricious sweetness of summer days, when the landscape
hides itself, like a sulky beauty, in white mists and silvery rains,
to the cold glory of the winter nights; there is no discord nor
anything unlovely. But in the harvest time it is most gracious and
love-compelling. There is something ineffably gay in harvest, and the
negroes, those children of the sun, sang as merrily and as naturally as
the grasshoppers that chirped in the green heart of the woods.

The long row of black reapers swung their scythes in rhythm, their
voices rising and falling in cadence with the cutting of the wheat.
The head man led the singing as he led the reapers. After them came
a crowd of negro women, gathering up the wheat and tying it into
bundles--it was as primitive as the harvesting in the days of Ruth and
Boaz. It was not work, it was rather play. The song of the reapers had
an accompaniment of shrill laughter from the women, who occasionally
joined in the singing--

  “When I was young, I useter to wait
  Behine ole marster, han’ he plate,
  An’ pass de bottle when he dry,
  An’ bresh away dat blue-tail fly.”

The men’s voices rolled this out sonorously and melodiously. Then came
the chorus, in which the high sweet voices of the women soared like the
larks and the thrushes:

  “Jim, crack corn, I doan’ keer,
  Jim, crack corn, I doan’ keer,
  Jim, crack corn, I doan’ keer.
    Ole--marster’s--gone--away!”

The last line was a wail; but the first lines were full of a
devil-may-care music, which made some of the women drop their bundles
of wheat, and, picking up their striped cotton skirts, they danced a
breakdown nimbly. A dozen little negro boys carried buckets of water
about the field to refresh the thirsty harvesters, and one negro girl,
with her arms folded and a great pail on her head of whisky and water
with mint floating around in it, was vociferously greeted whenever she
appeared, and a drink from the gourd in the pail invariably caused a
fresh outburst of song.

Hot and bright as the fields were, it was not too hot and bright for
these merry labourers. But there was a stretch of coolness and of
shade on the edge of the woods where the dew still sparkled upon the
blackberry-bushes and the grass and undergrowth. And in a shady place
under a hawthorn bush sat a black-eyed little boy with a dog across his
knees. They had for company a Latin book, which the boy made a lazy
pretence of studying, wearing all the time a sulky scowl. But when he
found that he could put the book to a better use than studying, by
propping the dog’s head upon it so as to bring the tawny, intelligent
eyes upon a level with his own, the scowl cleared away. His face, then,
though full of archness and sweetness, was not altogether happy. He
gazed into the dog’s eyes wistfully, for, although many people gazed
upon him kindly, no creature in the wide world ever gazed upon him so
affectionately as this one poor brute of a dog.

Presently, while lost in a sort of dream, listening to the song of the
reapers as it melted away in the distance, and following up pretty,
idle fancies that danced before him like white butterflies in the
sun, he heard a crashing behind him of a burly figure making its way
through the leaves and grass, and an ungainly man, past middle age, and
blear-eyed and snuffy, appeared before him. In the pure, fresh morning
light he looked coarser, more dissipated than could be imagined; but
when his voice rang out, not even the wood bird’s note put it to
shame--it was so clear, so rich, so sweet. That voice was the one charm
left to him.

“Well, Lewis, my lad,” he cried out, “how are you and my old friend
Horatius Flaccus getting on this deuced fine morning? Drat the dog--you
always have him about.”

“You shouldn’t drat him, Mr. Bulstrode,” answered Lewis, “because old
Service likes Latin better than I do. He has scarcely blinked since I
put the book in his paw.”

“Dogs do like Latin,” answered Bulstrode, with a wink; “let me show
you, sir.”

Lewis burst out laughing at the idea that dogs had any taste for the
classics; and the dog, withdrawing his head, showed his teeth in a
snarl.

“Snarl away, my friend,” said Bulstrode jovially, seating himself, with
awkward comfort, on the grass. “I lay I’ll make you change your tune.
Do you know--” Bulstrode’s pronunciation was not equal to the music
of his voice, and he said “D’ye know.” “D’ye know, boy, that the two
great powers to charm women and dogs are the eye and the voice? Now, as
for my eyes--Lord, I never had any charm in ’em, and the life I’ve led
wasn’t calculated to give ’em any. But see if that damned dog doesn’t
stop his growling when I give him some first-class Latin.”

Bulstrode took the book and began to read sonorously one of the longer
odes. Lewis, whose black eyes were wonderfully expressive, was laughing
to himself, the more so when, as Bulstrode rolled out the lines of
rhythmic beauty, old Service ceased his growling and appeared to be
listening gravely. Bulstrode put out his hand and drew the dog toward
him, and in a little while Service was resting his head on Bulstrode’s
knee and blinking placidly and solemnly into his face.

“There you have it!” cried Bulstrode, slapping the book together. “Let
me tell you, Lewis, in the old days, when my face was fresh and fair,
I used to walk up and down the river bank at Cambridge, reciting these
odes to a gang of undergraduates, and sometimes there’d be a don on the
outskirts of the crowd. Don’t know what a don is? Well, I’ll tell you
some day. And the reason my Latin and Greek are so much better than my
English is because I learned my English from the vulgar. But my Latin
and Greek I learned from the very finest old Latin and Greek gentlemen
that ever were--the cream of the company, boy; and that and my voice
are about the only decent things left about me.”

“And your philosophy,” said Lewis, hesitating--“that great book you’re
helping Mr. Skelton on.”

“Philosophy--fudge!” cried Bulstrode carelessly. “There’s Skelton now,
shut up in that musty library yonder”--jerking his thumb toward the
Deerchase house--“grinding away at his system of philosophy; and here
am I, the true philosopher, enjoying this infernally glorious harvest
and these picturesque black people, that I never can get used to, no
matter how long I live in this odd country. D’ye know what Kant says?
Of course you don’t; so I’ll tell you. He says that two men, like _him_
over yonder”--Bulstrode jerked his thumb again over his shoulder--“and
your humble servant, engaged in pursuing abstract philosophy, are like
two idiots who want a drink of milk; so one milks a post, while the
other holds a sieve. That’s philosophy, my dear boy.”

This puzzled Lewis very much, who was nevertheless accustomed to
hearing Bulstrode pooh-poohing philosophy, while Mr. Skelton always
uttered the word reverently.

“You see yourself,” cried Bulstrode, giving his battered hat a rakish
cock, “Skelton is a fine example of what enormous study and research
will bring a man to, and I’m another one. He has been studying for
twenty years to write the greatest book that ever was written. He’s
spent the twenty best years of his life, and he’s got fifteen thousand
books stored away in that grand new library he has built, and he’s
bought me, body and soul, to help him out, and the result will
be--he’ll _never_ write the book!”

Bulstrode slapped his hand down on his knee as he brought out the
“_never_” in a ringing voice; the dog gave a single loud yelp, and
Lewis Pryor jumped up in surprise.

“You don’t mean it, Mr. Bulstrode!” he cried breathlessly, for he had
been bred upon the expectation that a great work was being then written
in the Deerchase library by Mr. Skelton, and when it was given to the
world the planet would stop revolving for a time at least. Bulstrode
had an ungovernable indiscreetness, and, the string of his tongue being
loosed, he proceeded to discuss Skelton’s affairs with great freedom,
and without regarding in the least the youth of his companion.

“Yes, I do mean it. Skelton’s milking the post, and he’s hired me to
hold the sieve. He’s been preparing--preparing--preparing to write that
book; and the more he prepares, the more he won’t write it. Not that
Skelton hasn’t great powers; you know those things he wrote at the
university, particularly that ‘Voices of the People’? Well, Skelton’s
got a bogie after him--the bogie of a too brilliant promise in his
youth. He’s mortally afraid of the young fellow who wrote ‘Voices of
the People.’ But he’ll carry out that other project of his--no doubt at
all about _that_.”

“What is it?” asked Lewis, full of curiosity, though not altogether
comprehending what he heard.

“Oh, that determination of his to ruin Jack Blair and his wife,”
replied Bulstrode, flapping away a fly. “Mrs. Blair, you know, jilted
the Great Panjandrum fifteen years ago, and ran away with Blair; and
they’ll pay for it with every acre of land and stick of timber they’ve
got in the world!”

Lewis pondered a moment or two.

“But I thought Mr. Skelton and the Blairs were so friendly and polite,
and--”

“O Lord, yes. Deuced friendly and polite! That’s the way with
gentlefolks--genteel brutality--shaking hands and smiling one at
the other, and all the time a knife up the sleeve. Don’t understand
gentlefolks myself.”

This rather shocked Lewis, who was accustomed to hearing everybody he
knew called a gentleman, and the title insisted upon tenaciously.

“Why, Mr. Bulstrode,” he said diffidently, “ain’t you a gentleman?”

“Lord bless you, no!” cried Bulstrode loudly and frankly. “My father
kept a mews, and my mother--God bless her!--I’ll say no more. But look
you, Lewis Pryor,” said he, rising, and with a sort of rude dignity,
“though I be not a gentleman _here_,” slapping his body, “I’m a
gentleman _here_,” tapping his forehead. “I’m an aristocrat from my
chops upward.”

Lewis had risen too. He thought this was very queer talk, but he did
not laugh at it, or feel contempt for Bulstrode, who had straightened
himself up, and had actually lost something of his plebeian aspect.

“And,” he added with an ill-suppressed chuckle, “I’m a gentleman when
I’m drunk. You see, as long as I’m sober I remember the mews, and my
father in his black weepers driving the hearse, and the delight I
used to feel when the young sprigs of the nobility and gentry at the
university would ask me to their wine parties to hear me spout Ovid and
Anacreon, for _they_ knew I wasn’t a gentleman. But when I’m drunk,
I only remember that I was a ‘double first’; that every Greek and
Latinist in England knows Wat Bulstrode’s name; and when this precious
philosopher Skelton was scouring the universities to find a man to
help him out with his--ha! ha!--_great work_, he could not for love
or money get any better man than ragged, drunken, out-at-elbows Wat
Bulstrode. I tell you, boy, when I’m drunk I’m a king! I’m more--I’m a
gentleman! There is something in Greek which provokes an intolerable
thirst. You say that Latin is dry; so it is, so it is, my boy--very dry
and musty!” and then Bulstrode, in a rich, sweet, rollicking voice, as
delicious as his speaking voice, trolled out the fag end of a song that
echoed and re-echoed through the green woods:

  “I went to Strasburg, when I got drunk,
  With the most learned Professor Brunck.
  I went to Wortz, where I got more drunken,
  With the more learned Professor Bruncken.”

Bulstrode had quite forgotten the boy’s presence. Lewis gazed at him
with wide, innocent boyish eyes. It was rather a tipsy age, and to be a
little convivial was considered a mark of a liberal spirit, but Lewis
was astute enough to see that this was not the sort of gentlemanly
joviality which prevailed in the age and in the country. The song of
the reapers was still mellowly heard in the distance; their scythe
blades glittered in the sun, the merriment, the plenty, the beauty and
simplicity of the scene was like Arcady; but the contrast between what
Nature had made, and what man had made of himself, in Bulstrode, was
appalling.

Suddenly, the careless delight expressed in Bulstrode’s look and manner
vanished, and a strange passion of despair overcame him.

“But then, there is the waking up--the waking up--great God!” he
shouted. “Then I see that I’m, after all, nothing but a worthless
dog; that this man Skelton owns me; that I never will be anything but
worthless and learned and drunken; that I’m no better than any other
hanger-on, for all my Greek and Latin! However,” he added, stuffing
his hands in his pockets and as suddenly laying aside his tragic air,
“there never was such a hanger-on. Upon my soul, it’s a question
whether Richard Skelton owns Wat Bulstrode, or Wat Bulstrode and the
books own Richard Skelton. But look’ee here, boy, I had almost forgot
you, and the dog too. I don’t envy Richard Skelton. No man pursues his
enemy with gaiety of heart. He has spent more money in ruining Jack
Blair than would have made ten good men prosperous; and, after all,
it’s that passion of Blair’s for horse racing that will ruin him in the
end. Gad! I don’t know that I’m any worse than Skelton, or any other
man I know.--Why, hello! what the devil--”

This last was involuntarily brought out by Skelton himself, who at that
moment stood before him. Lewis had seen Skelton coming, and had vainly
tugged at Bulstrode’s coat-tails without any effect.

Whether Skelton’s philosophy commanded respect or not, his personality
certainly did. He was about medium height, lean, dark, and well made.
Also, whether he was handsome or not the world had not yet decided
during all his forty years of life; but certain it was few men could
look handsome beside him. His eyes, though, were singularly black and
beautiful, like those of the boy standing by him. He was in riding
dress, and held a little whip in his hand; he had ridden out to the
harvest field, and then dismounted and left his horse while he walked
through the stubble and clover. He had overheard much that Bulstrode
had last said, and, in spite of his invincible composure, his face
showed a silent rage and displeasure. Bulstrode and Lewis knew it by
the sultry gleam of his black eyes. Bulstrode instantly lost his air of
independence, and all of his efforts to retain it only resulted in a
half-cowed swagger.

“Bulstrode,” said Skelton in a cool voice, “how often have I
recommended you not to discuss me or my affairs?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure,” blustered Bulstrode, his hands still in his
pockets. Both of them had realised the boy’s presence. As Bulstrode
really loved him, he hated to be cowed before Lewis. The boy was
looking downwards, his eyes on the ground; the dog nestled close to
him. Both Skelton and Bulstrode remained silent for a moment or two.

“You know,” said Skelton after a pause, “I am not a man to threaten.”

“Yes, by Jove, I do,” answered Bulstrode, breaking into a complaining
whine. “I don’t know why it is, Skelton, that you can always bully
me; unless it’s because you’re a gentleman, and I ain’t. You dashed
patricians always have us plebes under the hack--always, always. The
fellows that went ahorseback were always better than those who went
afootback. Sometimes, by George, I wish I had been born a gentleman!”

Bulstrode’s collapse was so rapid and complete that wrath could not
hold against him. Skelton merely said something about an unbridled
tongue being a firebrand, and then, turning to Lewis, said:

“The harvest is the black man’s holiday. Come with me, and we will see
him enjoy it.”

Skelton’s tone to Lewis was peculiar; although his words were cold, and
his manner reserved, his voice expressed a strange fondness. Lewis felt
sorry for Bulstrode, standing alone and ashamed, and after he had gone
a little way by Skelton’s side he turned back and ran toward Bulstrode,
holding out his book.

“Won’t you have my Horace for company, Mr. Bulstrode?” he cried;
“though I believe you know every word in it. But a book is
company--when one can’t get a dog, that is.”

“Yes, boy,” answered Bulstrode, taking one hand out of his pocket. “Old
Horace and I will forget this workaday world. We have had a good many
bouts in our time, Horatius Flaccus and I. The old fellow was a good
judge of wine. Pity he didn’t know anything about tobacco.” He began
speaking with a sigh, and ended with a grin.

Skelton and Lewis turned off together, and walked along the edge of the
field. The fresh, sweet scent of the newly cut wheat filled the air;
the clover blossoms that grew with the wheat harboured a cloud of happy
bees; over the land hung a soft haze. Lewis drank in delightedly all
of the languid beauty of the scene, and so did Skelton in his quiet,
controlled way.

Lewis shrewdly suspected that the reason Skelton carried him off was to
get him out of Bulstrode’s way, for although Bulstrode was nominally
his tutor, and had plenty of opportunities for talking, he was not
always as communicative as on that morning. The boy was much in awe
of Skelton. He could not altogether make out his own feelings in the
matter. He knew of no relationship between them, and thought he knew he
was the son of Thomas Pryor, in his lifetime a tutor of Skelton’s. He
called Skelton “Mr. Skelton,” and never remembered to have had a caress
from him in all his life. But he never looked into Skelton’s eyes,
which were precisely like his own, that he did not feel as if some
strong and secret bond united them.

Meanwhile, Bulstrode stood in his careless attitude, looking after
them, his eyes fixed on Skelton’s straight, well set-up figure.

“There you go,” he apostrophised. “Most men think they could advise the
Almighty; but you, Richard Skelton, think yourself _the_ Lord Almighty
Himself! Unbridled tongue, indeed! I lay odds that I’ll make you write
that sixth section of your Introduction over again before this day is
out. I know a weak spot in your theory that knocks that chapter into
flinders, and I’ve been saving it up for just such an occasion as this.
But go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

  “Fair and free is the king’s highway!”

he sang, loudly and sweetly.




CHAPTER II.


It is impossible for anything in this tame, latter-day age to be
compared with the marvels of fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. The
worn-out, tired race declines to be awed, or delighted, or startled any
more. “Old Wonder is dead.” People have lost the sense of admiration.
It is the price paid for civilisation.

But it was not always so. Fifty years ago the romantic, the
interesting, even the mysterious, still existed. Luxury was rare,
and life was so hard and poor to most people on this continent that
imagination had to be called in to make it even tolerable. Superlatives
had not gone out of fashion, and therefore it is quite just to apply
the words grand, magnificent, superb, to Deerchase. True, if that
deadly enemy of superlatives, comparison, be levelled against it, there
is no doubt the irreverent modern would smile; for what the fresh,
wonder-loving people in 1820 thought ineffably splendid, the jaded,
sated people of 19-- would think cheap, tawdry, not worth speaking of,
after all. So that the pictures in the main hall at Deerchase would
be pronounced mediocre, the park rather ambitious than imposing, the
stables and the establishment generally insignificant compared with
those of the merchant princes of to-day. But the owner of Deerchase
had this immense advantage over the rich people of to-day--not the
whole possessions of all of them could command half the awe, delight,
and distinction that Deerchase did in its time. And if the power of
places to awe and delight be gone, what shall be said of the lost power
of individuals? But in 1820 hero worship survived with many other
beautiful and imaginative things that the world has outgrown; and
Richard Skelton, Esquire, was an object of envy and admiration to the
whole county, and to half the State of Virginia besides.

For Richard Skelton, Esquire, was certainly born with a golden, not
a silver, spoon in his mouth. In his childhood his dark beauty and a
certain proud, disdainful air, natural to him, made him look like a
little prince. In those days Byron was the poet; and the boy, with
his great fortune, his beauty, his orphanhood, his precocious wit and
melancholy, was called a young Lara. As he grew older, there were
indications in him of strange mental powers, and a cool and determined
will that was perfectly unbreakable. He brooded his youth away (in
these degenerate days it would be said he loafed) sadly and darkly in
the library at Deerchase. Old Tom Shapleigh, his guardian, who feared
neither man nor devil, and who was himself a person of no mean powers,
always felt, when his ward’s dark, inscrutable eyes were fixed upon
him, a ridiculous and awkward inferiority--the more ridiculous and
awkward because old Tom really had accomplished a good deal in life,
while Richard Skelton could not possibly have accomplished anything
at the very early age when he was perfectly commanding, not to say
patronising, to his guardian. Old Tom did not take charge of the great
Skelton property and the strange Skelton boy for pure love. The profits
of managing such a property were considerable, and he was the very best
manager of land and negroes in all the region about. But the Skelton
boy, from the time he was out of round jackets, always assumed an air
toward his guardian as if the guardian were merely his agent. This
gave old Tom much saturnine amusement, for he was one of those men
whose sense of humour was so sharp that he could smile over his own
discomfiture at the hands of a haughty stripling, and could even laugh
grimly at the burden of a silly wife, which he had taken upon himself.

For those who like life with a good strong flavour to it, Skelton
and old Tom Shapleigh, and the people around them, were not devoid
of interest. They belonged to a sturdy, well-fed, hard riding, hard
drinking, landed aristocracy that was as much rooted to the land as
the great oaks that towered in the virgin woods. All landowners are
more or less bound to the soil; but these people were peculiarly so,
because they had no outside world. There was no great city on this
side of the Atlantic Ocean, and their journeys were merely a slight
enlargement of their orbit. Their idea of seeing the world was a trip
in the family coach to the Springs, where they met exactly the same
people, bearing the same names, that they had left at home. This fixity
and monotony produced in them an intensity of provincialism, a strength
of prejudice, hardly to be conceived of now. They were only a few
generations removed from an English ancestry, which in this new land
prayed daily, “God bless England, our sweet native country!” Feudalism,
in the form of a mild and patriarchal slave system, was still strong
with them when it had gone to decay in Europe. The brighter sun had
warmed their blood somewhat; they were more fiery and more wary than
their forefathers. They were arrogant, yet simple-minded, and loved
power more than money. They also loved learning, after their fashion,
and kept the roster full at William and Mary College. But their
learning was used to perpetuate their political power. By means of
putting all their men of parts into politics, they managed to wage
successfully an unequal fight for power during many generations. The
same kind of equality existed among them as among the Spanish grandees,
who call each other by their nicknames as freely as peasants, but are
careful to give an outsider all his titles and dignities. There was
a vast deal of tinsel in their cloth of gold; their luxuries were
shabbily pieced out, and they were not quite as grand as they fancied
themselves. But, after all, there is something imposing in a system
which gives a man his own land, his house built of his own timber,
his bricks made of his own red clay, his servants clothed and shod
by his own workmen, his own blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters,
shoemakers--in short, a little kingdom of which he is the sovereign.
Naturally it makes him arrogant, but it also makes him independent;
and where each man stands upon punctilio everybody is likely to be
polite. So they had few quarrels, but such as they had were deadly. The
hair-splitting, the subtleties of the _fin du siècle_ were unknown,
undreamed of, by them. Everything was simple and direct--love, hate,
fear, remorse, and joy. God and the devil were close to every man.
Their lives were fixed, and had the continuity of an epic, instead
of the fragmentary, disjointed lives that the people of to-day are
living. And as they were necessarily obliged to spend all their mortal
days together, they knew each other and each other’s generations like
a book, and this effectually estopped pretension of all sorts. It was
a picturesque, gay, pleasure-loving life, its Arcadian simplicity
sometimes interrupted by tragedies, but it only lasted until the
railroad and the telegraph brought all the world within speaking
distance.

The rivers, broad and shallow and salt, that made in from the ocean
bays, were the spots wisely chosen for the homesteads. The plantations
extended back into a slightly rolling country, but every “p’int,” as
the negroes called it, was the site for a house. At Deerchase, from
the long stone porch covered with climbing tea roses, which faced the
shining river, half a dozen rambling brick houses on their respective
“p’ints” could be seen. The farthest off was only a mile up the river
as the crow flies, but the indentations of the stream made it more, and
when one undertook to go by land, the multitude of gates to be opened
between different properties and the various windings and turnings to
get there at all made it seem a dozen miles at least. This last place
was Newington, where Mr. and Mrs. Jack Blair lived, and which Bulstrode
so freely predicted would be in the market soon on account of a grudge
owed the Blairs by the Great Panjandrum--Richard Skelton, Esquire. The
next place to Deerchase was Belfield, where old Tom Shapleigh and that
wonderful woman, Mrs. Shapleigh, lived with their daughter Sylvia, who
had inherited more than her father’s brains and less than her mother’s
beauty. Only a shallow creek, running into a marsh, divided Deerchase
and Belfield, and it was not twenty minutes’ walk from one house to the
other. This nearness had been very convenient to old Tom in managing
the Skelton property, but it had not conduced to any intimacy between
guardian and ward. Richard Skelton was not much above Mr. Shapleigh’s
shoulder when he took to asking to be excused when his guardian called.
Old Tom resented this impertinence as an impetuous, full-blooded,
middle-aged gentleman might be expected to. He stormed up and down the
Deerchase hall, nearly frightened Bob Skinny, the black butler, into
fits, blazed away at the tutor, who would go and plead with the boy
through the keyhole of a locked door.

“My dear Richard, come out and see your guardian; Mr. Shapleigh
particularly wants to see you.”

“And I particularly don’t want to see Mr. Shapleigh; so go away and
leave me,” young Skelton would answer in his smooth, soft voice.

As there was nothing for old Tom to do unless he kicked the door down,
he would go home fuming, and have to content himself with writing very
fierce and ungrammatical letters, of which the spelling was reckless,
but the meaning plain, to his ward, which were never answered. Then old
Tom would begin to laugh--it was so comical--and the next time he met
the boy there would be that same haughty reserve on Skelton’s part, at
which his guardian did not know whether to be most angry or amused. He
was philosophic under it, though, and would say:

“Look at the tutors I’ve got for him, begad! and every man-jack of
them has been under the hack of that determined little beggar from the
start. And when a man, woman, or child can get the upper hand of one
who lives in daily, hourly contact, why, you might just as well let
’em go their own gait. Damme, _I_ can’t do anything with the arrogant
little upstart!”

No expense was spared in tutors, and, as each successive one had a
horse to ride and a servant to wait on him, and was treated politely by
young Skelton as long as he was let alone, the tutors never complained,
and old Tom was quite in the dark as to his ward’s real acquirements.
Mrs. Shapleigh frequently urged Mr. Shapleigh to go over to Deerchase
and demand categorically of Richard Skelton exactly how much Latin and
mathematics he knew, but old Tom had tried that caper unsuccessfully
several times. He did find out, though--or rather Mrs. Shapleigh found
out for him--that Skelton had fallen desperately in love with his
cousin, Elizabeth Armistead, who was as poor as a church mouse; and,
although Elizabeth was known to have a weakness for Jack Blair, her
whole family got after her and bullied her into engaging herself to the
handsome stripling at Deerchase. Skelton was then twenty. Elizabeth
herself was only seventeen, but seventeen was considered quite old
in those days. This affair annoyed Mrs. Shapleigh very much, whose
daughter Sylvia, being about ten years old at the time, she looked
forward to seeing established as mistress of Deerchase by the time she
was eighteen.

“Mr. Shapleigh,” his better half complained, “why don’t you go over to
Deerchase and tell Richard Skelton up and down, that if he has fallen
in love with Elizabeth Armistead he has got to fall out again?”

“My love, if I wanted him to fall out of love I’d let him get married.
There’s no such specific for love as matrimony, madam.”

“It is not, indeed, Mr. Shapleigh,” answered madam, who, though weak in
logic was not deficient in spirit, “and I’m sure that’s what my poor
dear mother used to tell me when I thought I was in love with you. But
just look at those Armisteads! Not a penny among them scarcely, and
plotting and planning ever since Richard Skelton was born to get him
for Elizabeth!”

“Gadzooks, ma’am, in that case the Armisteads are too clever for all of
us, because they must have been planning the match at least three years
before Elizabeth was born.”

“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, how silly you talk! Of course they couldn’t have
planned it before Elizabeth was born. But it does seem a hard case that
Richard Skelton should be carried off right under our noses, and Sylvia
here quite ten years old, and I with my heart set on seeing her Mrs.
Skelton, of Deerchase. But those Armisteads are a designing pack. You
may take my word for it.”

“I do, my life, I do,” cried old Tom with a wink. Meanwhile there was
no doubt that young Skelton was indeed violently in love with his
cousin Elizabeth. It was his first passion, and he pursued it with an
indescribable fierceness. Elizabeth, who had both beauty and spirit,
was a little frightened at the intensity of his love and jealousy.
She had been engaged to Jack Blair, of Newington, who was accounted a
good match and was a gallant, lovable fellow enough, but, dazzled by
Skelton’s personality and position and money, and beset by her family,
she threw her lover over. They had one last interview, when Blair left
her weeping and wringing her hands, while he threw himself on his horse
and galloped home with a face as black as midnight.

Elizabeth could not quite forget Blair, and Skelton was too subtle not
to see it. He lavished contempt on Blair, calling him a great hulking
country squire, who cared for nothing but a screeching run after the
hounds or a roaring flirtation with a pretty girl. He quite overlooked
a certain quality of attraction about Blair which made women love him,
children fondle him, and dogs fawn upon him. Skelton waked up to it,
though, one fine morning, when he found that Elizabeth and Blair had
decamped during the night and were then on their way to North Carolina
to be married.

How Skelton took it nobody knew. He shut himself up in the library
at Deerchase, and no one dared to come near him except Bob Skinny,
who would tiptoe softly to the door once in a while with a tray and
something to eat. There was a feeling in the county as if Abingdon
Church had suddenly tumbled down, or the river had all at once turned
backwards, when it was known that Richard Skelton had been actually and
ignominiously jilted. Mrs. Shapleigh had a good heart, and, in spite
of her plans for Sylvia, felt sorry for Skelton.

“Do, Mr. Shapleigh,” she pleaded, “go over and see poor Richard
Skelton, and tell him there’s as good fish in the sea as ever were
caught.”

“Zounds, madam,” answered old Tom, with energy, “I’m no poltroon, but
I wouldn’t trust myself in the Deerchase library with that message for
ten thousand dollars! He’d murder me. You’d be a widow, ma’am, as sure
as shooting.”

“Well, Mr. Shapleigh, I hope, if I ever am a widow, I shall submit
cheerfully to the Lord’s will; and I shall have as handsome a monument
put up over you as there is in the county.”

“And I’ll do the same by you, my dear, if you should precede me. I’ll
have one big enough to put on it the longest epitaph you ever saw; and
I’ll tell my second wife every day of the virtues of my first.”

“Oh, oh, Mr. Shapleigh, why will you start such dreadful subjects!”
cried Mrs. Shapleigh, in great distress.

Let it not be supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh were not as
comfortable as most married couples. Unlike most, though, in
thirty years it had not been determined which was the better man.
Mrs. Shapleigh had the mighty weapon of silliness, which has won
many matrimonial battles. She never knew when she was beaten, and
consequently remained unconquered. Old Tom, having married, like the
average man, because the woman tickled his fancy, accepted with great
good humour the avalanche of daily disgust that he had brought upon
himself, and joked over his misfortune, instead of cutting his throat
about it.

But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, Mr. Shapleigh was
blessed with a slight deafness, which varied according to whether
he did or did not want to hear what Mrs. Shapleigh was saying. At
particular stages in an argument, or at the mention of certain
expenses, he always became as deaf as a post. He did not believe
in cures for deafness, and held on to his beloved infirmity like a
drowning man to a plank.

Thirty years of bickering rather endeared them to each other,
particularly as neither had a bad heart. But old Tom sometimes thought,
with a dash of tragedy, that had the visitation of God come upon him
in the shape of a foolish daughter, he would have been tempted to cut
his throat, after all. Sylvia, however, was far from foolish, and Mr.
Shapleigh sometimes felt that Fate had treated him shabbily in making
his daughter as much too clever as his wife was too silly.

Mrs. Shapleigh sent for Bob Skinny, that he might describe Skelton’s
sufferings to her. Bob, who considered the master of Deerchase
the first person in the universe, and the butler of Deerchase the
second, gloried, after the manner of his race, in the magnitude of
everything--even their misfortunes--that befell the Skeltons.

“Miss Belindy, Mr. Skelton”--this was an innovation in title; but Bob
Skinny considered Skelton much too grand to be spoken of simply as
“Marse Richard”--“Mr. Skelton he is de mos’ distrusted you ever see. He
ain’ eat a mou’full for two weeks lars’ Sad’day, an’ he ain’ sleep a
wink for a mont’!”

“La, Bob, he’ll be ill if he doesn’t eat or sleep.”

“De Skeltons dey kin go ’dout eatin’ an’ sleepin’ more’n common ev’yday
folks,” responded Bob, with dignity.

“Maybe,” said Mrs. Shapleigh sympathetically, “a course of tansy tea
would cure him if his spirits are so bad; and if he’d put some old
nails in a stone jar and pour some water on them, and take it three
times a day, it is as good a tonic as he could find. And if he won’t go
out of the library to take any exercise, if you’d persuade him to swing
a flat-iron about in either hand, it would expand his lungs and do for
exercise.”

None of these suggestions, however, reached young Skelton, shut up in
the library, raging like a wild creature.

In a month or two, however, he appeared again, looking exactly as he
always had looked, and nobody dared to cast a sympathising glance upon
him.

About that time a political pamphlet appeared anonymously. It made
a tremendous sensation. It was, for its day, wildly iconoclastic.
It pointed out the defects in the social system in Virginia, and
predicted, with singular force and clearness, the uprooting of the
whole thing unless a change was inaugurated from within. It showed that
navigation and transportation were about to be revolutionised by steam,
and that, while great material prosperity would result for a time, it
meant enormous and cataclysmal changes, which might be destructive or
might be made almost recreative.

This pamphlet set the whole State by the ears. On the hustings, in the
newspapers, in private and in public, it was eagerly discussed. Even
the pulpiteers took a shy at it. The authorship was laid at the door of
every eminent man in the State and some outside, and it suddenly came
out that it was written by the black-eyed, disappointed boy locked up
in the Deerchase library.

The commotion it raised--the storm of blame and praise--might well have
turned any head. Its literary excellence was unquestioned. Skelton was
considered an infant Junius. But if it produced any effect upon him,
nobody knew it, for there was not the smallest elation in his manner,
or, in fact, any change whatever in him.

“That pamphlet ends my guardianship,” remarked old Tom Shapleigh
shrewdly, “although the boy is still ten months off from his majority.”

Mr. Shapleigh had been vainly trying to get young Skelton to attend
the University of Virginia, but at this time, without consulting his
guardian, Skelton betook himself to Princeton. To say that old Tom was
in a royal rage is putting it very mildly. He felt himself justified
in his wrath, but was careful to exercise it at long range--in writing
furious letters, to which Skelton vouchsafed no reply. Nevertheless old
Tom promptly cashed the drafts made on him by his ward. At Princeton
Skelton apparently spent his time reading French novels, smoking,
and studying problems in chess; but at the end of two years it was
discovered that he had made a higher average than had ever been made by
any man at the university except Aaron Burr. As if content with this,
however, Skelton left without taking his degree. But about that time he
published a pamphlet under his own name. The title was Voices of the
People. Its success was vast and immediate, even surpassing that of its
predecessor. He was now twenty-two years old, his own master, graceful,
full of distinction in his air and manner. The greatest things were
expected of him.




CHAPTER III.


So far, Skelton was a magnificent promise. He remained at Deerchase a
year, which he spent chiefly in improving the house and grounds, which
were already beautiful. This gave him a very good excuse for keeping
strictly to himself. Then he determined to go to Europe. His old flame,
Mrs. Jack Blair, now lived at Newington, and every time she looked out
of her windows she could see the noble brick pile of Deerchase. The
house was a fine old colonial mansion, with walls three feet thick, and
numbers of large and lofty rooms. Skelton added to it with great taste,
and had his grounds laid out by a famous landscape gardener. Newington
was very shabby; and if Mrs. Blair had been an envious woman--which she
was not--she might have suffered many pangs because of the contrast
between the two places. Mrs. Shapleigh declared that Skelton’s only
object in improving Deerchase was to spite Mrs. Blair. But it certainly
spited Mrs. Shapleigh dreadfully. She was seized with a desire that
Belfield should rival Deerchase. Now, the Shapleighs were very well
off, and Belfield was a large and handsome country house, but there
was no rivalling Deerchase in the matter. Skelton had dollars where
old Tom Shapleigh had dimes. Whenever Mrs. Shapleigh would start the
subject of improving Belfield, Mr. Shapleigh would become so totally
and obstinately deaf that there was no making him hear at all; so,
as Mrs. Shapleigh was a much-indulged woman, she went to work on her
own book to do landscape gardening, and to make Belfield as smart as
Deerchase. The effect was fearful and wonderful. A Chinese pagoda
was clapped on to one wing of the Belfield house. This was meant for
a tower. Much red velvet furniture was bought, and old Tom paid the
bills, grinning sardonically as he did it.

“I declare, Mr. Shapleigh,” Mrs. Shapleigh bewailed, “you’ve got no
feeling for your own flesh and blood. There’s nothing more likely than
that Sylvia will one day marry Richard Skelton, and then if we don’t
furnish up some and improve the place, everybody will say she never was
accustomed to anything until she went to Deerchase.”

Mr. Shapleigh declined to weep over this terrible prospect. Then came
the ornamentation of the grounds. Mrs. Shapleigh’s idea of decorative
art was a liberal supply of fresh paint of every hue of the rainbow.
She had an elaborate affair of knobs and latticework, painted a vivid
green, put up in the river between Deerchase and Belfield, in place
of the old water fence of posts and rails. A fence of some sort was
necessary to keep the cattle from wading down the salt marshes and
following the river shore into forbidden fields. The cows came tramping
placidly down the marshy creek until they got to the wonderful water
fence, where they turned tail and trotted rapidly off, their frightened
calves bleating after them. The picturesque, unpainted bridge across
the creek was metamorphosed into a highly ornate construction with a
summerhouse in the middle, expressly designed for Sylvia, who was then
in short frocks, and Skelton to do their courting in eventually. Never
was there such general overhauling and painting. The pigeon house was
painted red and the turnstiles blue. When everything was done, and Mrs.
Shapleigh was felicitating herself that Richard Skelton could no longer
have the satisfaction of thinking Deerchase was unsurpassed, Skelton
could not look toward Belfield without laughing, nor could anybody
else, for that matter.

Skelton spent a full year at Deerchase, and just as he had brought the
house and grounds to perfection this sudden idea of going to Europe
possessed him. It was a great undertaking in those days. He had nobody
to consult, nobody knew he was going, and nobody would grieve for
him except some of the older house servants. Although Skelton was an
indulgent master, he never exchanged a word with his negroes, who were
entirely managed by overseers. The afternoon before he left he was
on the river in his boat. It was a cloudy September day. Usually the
scene was full of light and glow--the broad, bright river, the cheerful
homesteads, his own beautiful Deerchase, and not even Mrs. Shapleigh,
had been able to spoil the fair face of Nature with her miscalled
ornamentation; but on that day it was dull and inexpressibly gloomy.
A grey mist folded the distant landscape. The river went sullenly to
the sea. Afar off in the marshes could be heard the booming of the
frogs--the most doleful of sounds--and the occasional fugitive cry of
birds going south rang shrilly from the leaden sky.

Skelton sailed up and down, almost up to Newington, and down again to
Lone Point--a dreary, sandy point, where three tall and melancholy
pine trees grew almost at the water’s edge, and where the river
opened widely into the bay. He felt that strange mixture of sadness
and exultation which people felt in those far-off days when they were
about to start for distant countries. There was not a soul in sight,
except in the creek by the water fence; Sylvia Shapleigh was standing
barefooted, with her skirts tucked up. Her shoes and stockings lay on
the bank. She had on a white sunbonnet, much beruffled, and was holding
something down in the water with a forked stick.

She was then about twelve years old, with a delicate, pretty,
thoughtful face, and beautiful grey eyes. So unlike was she to her
father and mother that she might have been a changeling.

Skelton guessed at once what she was after. She was catching the crabs
that came up to feed in these shallow, marshy creeks; but after pinning
her crab down she was evidently in a quandary how to get at him. As
Skelton watched her with languid interest she suddenly gave a faint
scream, her sunbonnet fell off into the water, and she stood quite
still and began to cry.

Skelton ran the boat’s nose ashore within twenty yards of her, and,
jumping out, went to her, splashing through the water.

“Oh, oh!” screamed poor Sylvia, “my foot--he’s got my foot!”

Skelton raised her small white foot out of the water, and in half a
minute the crab was dexterously “spancelled” and thrown away, but there
was a cruel mark on the child’s foot, and blood was coming. She looked
at Skelton with wide, frightened eyes, crying bitterly all the time.

“Come, my dear,” said Skelton, soothingly, “let me pick you up and
carry you home.”

“I d-d-don’t want to go home,” wailed Sylvia.

“But something must be done for your foot, child.”

“Then take me to Deerchase, and let Mammy Kitty do it.”

Skelton was puzzled by the child’s unwillingness to go home. But Sylvia
soon enlightened him.

“If I g-go home mamma will scold me, and she will cry over me, and make
me keep on crying, and that will make my head ache; and if I can get
s-something done for my foot--”

“But won’t your mother be frightened about you if I take you to
Deerchase?” asked Skelton.

“No--ooo--oo!” bawled Sylvia, still weeping; “she lets me stay out
until sundown. And she’ll make _such_ a fuss over my foot if I go home!”

Determination was expressed in every line of Sylvia’s tearful, pretty
face. Skelton silently went back to the shore, got her shoes and
stockings, went to his boat and brought it up, Sylvia meanwhile keeping
up a furious beating of the water with her forked stick to frighten
the crabs off. Skelton lifted her in the boat, and they sailed along
to the Deerchase landing. Sylvia wiped her feet on the curtain of her
sunbonnet, put on her stockings and one shoe, and nursed the injured
foot tenderly. Skelton lifted her out on the little stone pier he had
had built, and then proceeded to take down the sail and tie the boat.

“I think,” said Sylvia calmly, “you’ll have to carry me to the house.”

“Hadn’t you better let me send for my _calèche_ and pair for you?”
gravely asked Skelton.

“Oh, no,” cried Sylvia briskly, and Skelton without a word picked her
up and walked across the grassy lawn to the house. She was very light,
and, except for flapping her wet sunbonnet in his face, he had no
objection whatever to her. He carried her up the steps into the hall,
and then turned her over to Mammy Kitty, who wrapped her foot in wet
cabbage-leaves. Skelton went to the library. Presently, Bob Skinny’s
woolly head was thrust in the door.

“Please, sah, Mr. Skelton, de young lady say will you please to come
d’yar?”

Skelton, smiling at himself, rose and went back to the hall. Sylvia was
perched on one foot, like a stork.

“I think,” she said, “if you’ll give me your arm I can walk around and
look at the pretty things. Whenever I’ve been here with mamma she has
always asked so many questions that I didn’t like to ask any myself.”

“You may ask any questions you like,” replied Skelton, still smiling.
He never remembered exchanging a word with the child before. He had
taken for granted that she was her mother’s own daughter, and as such
he had no wish to cultivate her.

But Sylvia was not at all like her mother. She limped around the hall,
looking gravely at the portraits.

The Skeltons were a handsome family, if the portraits could be
believed. They were all dark, with clear-cut faces and high aquiline
noses like Skelton’s, and they were all young.

“_We_ have some portraits, you know,” remarked Sylvia, “but they are
all old and ugly. Now, all of these are of pretty little girls and boys
or handsome young ladies.”

“The Skeltons are not a long-lived family,” said Skelton. “They
generally die before forty. Here is one--Janet Skelton--a little girl
like you. She died at eighteen.”

Sylvia turned her grey eyes full of a limpid green light towards him
pityingly.

“Aren’t you going to live long?”

“Perhaps,” replied Skelton, smiling.

“I think,” said Sylvia calmly, after a while, “if I were grown up I
should like to live here.”

“Very well,” answered Skelton, who at twenty-two thought the
twelve-year-old Sylvia a toddling infant; “as I intend to be an old
bachelor, you may come and be my little sister. You may have my
mother’s room--here it is.”

He opened a door close by, and they entered a little sitting room,
very simple and old-fashioned, and in no way corresponding to the rest
of the house. It had whitewashed walls above the wainscoting, and the
furniture was in faded yellow damask.

“I intend to let this room remain as it is, to remind me that I was
once a boy, for this is the first room I remember in the Deerchase
house.”

Sylvia looked around with calmly contemptuous eyes.

“When I come to Deerchase to live I shall make this room as fine as the
rest. But I must go home now. I can get my shoe on, and perhaps mamma
won’t notice that I limp a little. You’d better take me in the boat, so
I can get back to the house from the river shore.”

Skelton, who thought it high time she was returning, at once agreed. As
he lifted her out of the boat on the Belfield shore a sudden impulse
made him say:

“Sylvia, can you keep a secret?”

“Of course I can,” answered Sylvia promptly.

“Then--I am going away to-morrow morning, to be gone a year, perhaps
longer. This is the last sail I shall take upon the river for a long,
long time.”

Sylvia’s eyes were full of regret. Although she had seen Skelton at a
distance nearly every day of her life when he was at Deerchase, and
had also seen him upon the rare occasions that visits were exchanged
between the two places, yet he had all the charm of a new and dazzling
acquaintance to her. She never remembered speaking a word with him
before, but there was a delightful intimacy between them now, she
thought. She expressed her regret at his going so volubly that Skelton
was forced to laugh; and she wound up by flinging her arms around his
neck and kissing him violently. At this Skelton thought it time to
leave. His last glimpse of Sylvia was as she stood swinging her wet,
white sunbonnet dolefully on the sandy shore.

That night a terrible storm came up. It flooded all the low-lying
fields, swept over the prim gardens at Deerchase, and washed away a
part of the bridge between Deerchase and Belfield. When, at daylight in
the morning, Skelton, with Bob Skinny, left Deerchase, everything was
under water, and trees and shrubs and fences and hedges bore witness of
the fury of the wind and the rain. Skelton’s last view of Deerchase was
a gloomy one. He meant then to be gone a year; he remained away fifteen
years.




CHAPTER IV.


Meanwhile things went on placidly enough around the silent and
uninhabited Deerchase. The negroes worked the plantation under the
overseer’s management, and the house was well cared for, as well as the
grounds. Every year there was an alarm that Skelton was coming home,
but he never came. At last, like a thunderclap, came the news that he
was married to an English woman of rank and wealth.

Sylvia Shapleigh was then eighteen, pretty and full of romance. That
one interview with Skelton had been with her the dividing line between
childhood and womanhood. She brooded over it, and as she grew older she
fell in love with an imaginary Skelton, who was to come home and make
her the grandest lady in the county. She began to look upon Deerchase
as her own, and could picture vividly to herself her gay and splendid
life there. She was haughty to the young squires who openly admired
her, and secretly declared herself meat for their masters. She was
proud and spirited to the last degree, and it seemed to her in her
arrogance and inexperience, that Nature had destined her for something
great; and what could be greater than to be Mrs. Richard Skelton?

When the news came of Skelton’s marriage, Mrs. Shapleigh was luckily
away from home on a visit of several days. Sylvia, on hearing of
the marriage, rose and went to her own room, where she gave way to
a passion of disappointment as acute as if the bond between Richard
Skelton and herself were a real one, instead of the mere figment of a
child’s imagination. It made no difference that it was wholly baseless
and fanciful. In that simple and primitive age, romantic young things
like Sylvia had plenty of time and opportunity to cultivate sentiment.
The only really splendid thing she ever saw in her life was Deerchase,
and she saw it whenever she chose to turn her eyes toward it. She knew
nothing of the power of new scenes to make one forget the old ones,
and the extreme prettiness of the story that she made up for Skelton
and herself charmed her. But then came this sudden disillusion. In the
twinkling of an eye her castle in Spain fell, to rise no more.

But Sylvia, in common with most people who possess thinking and
feeling powers of a high order, had also a great fund of sound good
sense, which came to her rescue. She learned to smile at her own
childish folly, but it was rather a sad and bitter smile: the folly
was childish, but the pain was startlingly real. She did not like
to look at Deerchase after that, because it brought home to her how
great a fool she had been. And then, having lost that illusion--sad to
say--she had no other to take its place. Nothing is more intolerable to
a young, imaginative soul than to be turned out of the fairy kingdom
of fancy. It is all theirs--palaces, smiling courtiers, crown jewels,
and all--and they revel in a royal summer time. Then, some fine day,
the pretty dream melts away and leaves a black abyss, and then Common
Sense, the old curmudgeon, shows himself; and when, as in Sylvia’s
case, the palace would be rebuilt, the flattering courtiers recalled,
the recollection of the pain of its destruction is too keen. Driven
by common sense, Sylvia concluded to live in the real world, not in
the imaginary one. This wise resolve was a good deal helped by the
grotesque form the same picture that had been in her mind took in Mrs.
Shapleigh’s. Sylvia could not help laughing any more than Mr. Shapleigh
could when Mrs. Shapleigh was all for his sending a letter to Skelton,
reproaching him for his “shameful treatment of Sylvia.”

The worthy woman had got all the particulars of that odd, childish
visit out of Sylvia, and bewailed herself as follows:

“Was there ever such a poor, unlucky creature as I! Here for eighteen
years I’ve had but one single, solitary idea in my head, and that
was to see Sylvia mistress of Deerchase; and all through your fault,
Mr. Shapleigh, in not throwing them together when you were Richard
Skelton’s guardian, I am a heart-broken and disappointed woman. But now
that I’ve had this awful blow, it’s as little as you can do to improve
the house and put me up a new wing, as I’ve often asked you.”

“Put you up a new swing?” asked Mr. Shapleigh, becoming very deaf.
“Now, Belinda, what on earth do you want with a swing at your time of
life? You’ll be wanting a skipping-rope next.”

Mr. Shapleigh’s deafness was so obstinate regarding the proposed new
wing that Mrs. Shapleigh was unable to make him understand her.

Within six months came another startling piece of information.
Skelton’s wife had died, and had left him a great fortune upon
condition that he did not marry again.

This nearly drove Mrs. Shapleigh crazy, and Mrs. Shapleigh, in turn,
nearly drove Mr. Shapleigh crazy. Between the propriety and excellence
of Mrs. Skelton’s dying and the abominable means she took to prevent
Sylvia from marrying Skelton--for, of course, the whole scheme was
levelled at Sylvia--Mrs. Shapleigh was at a loss whether to consider
the dead woman as her best friend or her greatest enemy. Sylvia by
that time had grown sensible. She had learned in that first ridiculous
yet terrible experience the dangers of her splendid imagination and
intense emotions, and resolved upon learning to govern both--and Sylvia
had a good strong will of her own. She even smiled as she thought
how tremendously she had concerned herself, at the time of Skelton’s
marriage, about what really did not concern her in the least.

Still Skelton did not come home. The old expectations of his coming
intellectual achievements had by no means vanished. He had given
such extraordinary promise! But there was time enough--he was not
yet thirty. He was known to be studying at the German universities.
He still kept up his interest in his Virginia affairs, and, although
on the other side of the water, he even had a fine racing stable
organised under the charge of Miles Lightfoot, who was a cross between
a gentleman and a “leg.” Racing was the sport in those days, and the
Campdown Jockey Club had just been started upon an imposing basis.
Skelton became a liberal subscriber, and Miles Lightfoot was understood
to have _carte blanche_ in the great affair of making Skelton’s stable
the finest one in the State. Whatever Skelton did he must do better
than anybody else, and, since his large access of fortune, money was
less than ever an object to him. Skelton always heard with pleasure of
his successes on the turf, and Miles Lightfoot found out by some occult
means that his own excellent place and salary, from a professional
point of view, depended upon Skelton’s horses always beating Jack
Blair’s. For Skelton never forgot a friend or an enemy.

At first this rivalry between Skelton’s stable and what Jack Blair
modestly called his “horse or two” was a joke on the courthouse green
and the race track. But when ten years had passed, and Jack Blair
had been steadily losing money all the time on account of matching
his horses against Skelton’s, it had ceased to be a joke. Blair had
more than the average man’s pugnacity, and having early suspected
that Skelton meant to ruin him, it only aroused a more dogged spirit
of opposition in him. Old Tom Shapleigh in the beginning urged Blair
to draw out of the fight, but Blair, with a very natural and human
aggressiveness, refused. Elizabeth at first shared Blair’s confidence
that he could beat Skelton’s horses as easily as he had run away with
Skelton’s sweetheart, but she soon discovered her mistake. Blair was
a superb farmer. He had twelve hundred acres under cultivation, and
every year the bags of wheat marked “Newington” commanded a premium in
the Baltimore market. But no matter how many thousand bushels of wheat
Blair might raise, that “horse or two” ate it all up.

There were two Blair children, Hilary and little Mary. Elizabeth Blair
was full of ambition for her boy. He was to be educated as his father
had been, first at William and Mary, afterwards at the University of
Virginia. But she discovered that there was no money either to send the
boy to school or to employ a tutor at home. Mrs. Blair bore this, to
her, dreadful privation and disappointment with courage, partly born of
patience and partly of a woman’s natural vanity. Blair never ceased to
impress upon her that since Skelton chose to harbour his revenge all
those years, that he--Blair--could not refuse to meet him, particularly
as he had carried off the prize matrimonial in the case. Blair had the
most winning manner in the world. When he would tip his wife’s chin up
with his thumb, and say, “Hang it, Bess, I’ll meet Skelton on the race
track, in the hunting field, anywhere he likes, and take my chances
with him as I did before: I had tremendous odds against me then, but
Fortune favoured me,” Elizabeth would feel an ineffable softness
stealing over her towards her husband. Not many wives could boast of
that sort of gallantry from their husbands. Blair was not disposed to
underrate his triumph over Skelton. Every defeat of his “horse or two”
was met by a debonair laugh, and a reminder, “By Jove, his horses may
leg it faster than mine, but I beat him in a better race and for a
bigger stake than any ever run on a race course!”

This keeping alive of the old rivalry contained in it a subtile
flattery to Elizabeth. But Blair himself was well calculated to
charm. He was fond of a screeching run after the hounds, as Skelton
contemptuously said, but he was a gentleman from the crown of his head
to the sole of his foot. He might not give Hilary a tutor, or Mary a
governess, but his children never heard him utter a rude word to their
mother or any one else, or saw him guilty of the smallest _gaucherie_
in word or deed. His negroes adored him, his horses came at his voice,
his dogs disputed with his children for the touch of his hand. He knew
all the poetry and romance existing, and a great many other things
besides.

It was easy enough to understand why he was the pet and darling of
women--for the sex is discerning. Your true woman’s man is always a
good deal of a man. This was the case with Jack Blair, in spite of
his fatal fondness for a certain ellipse of a mile and a quarter,
upon which he had lost more money than he cared to own up to. But, at
least, there was no deceit about Blair. Elizabeth often implored him
to promise her never to bet at the races, never to bet at cards, and a
great many other things; but he always refused. “No,” he said, “I’ll
make no promise I can’t keep. I may not be the best husband in the
world, but at least I’ve never lied to you, and I don’t propose to put
myself in the way of temptation now.”

It was true that he had never even used a subterfuge towards her. But
Elizabeth was haunted by a fear that Blair thought lightly of money
obligations, and that inability to pay was not, to him, the terrible
and disgraceful thing it was to her. Then, she was tormented by a
perfectly ridiculous and feminine jealousy. For all she was a clever
enough woman, in the matter of jealousy and a few other trifles of
that kind all women are fools alike. This amused Blair hugely, who had
a smile and a soft word and a squeeze of the hand for every woman in
the county, Mrs. Shapleigh included, but who was the soul of loyalty
to Elizabeth. If only he would give up horse racing! for so Elizabeth
came to think to herself when the mortgages multiplied on Newington,
and after every fall and spring meeting of the Jockey Club she was
called upon to sign her name to something or other that Blair paid her
for in the tenderest kisses. But there seemed to be a sort of fatality
about the whole thing. Blair was thought to be the best judge of horses
in the county, yet he rarely had a good horse, and more rarely still
won a race. Something always happened at the last minute to upset his
triumph. Like all men who are the willing victims of chance, Blair
was a firm believer in luck. Everybody knows, he argued, that luck
ebbs and flows. The more he lost on the Campdown course, the more he
was eventually bound to win on that very course. Elizabeth, with her
practical woman’s wit, did not believe at all in luck, but she believed
in Blair, which was the same thing in that case. The county was a great
one for racing, and at Abingdon Church every Sunday, the affairs of the
Jockey Club were so thoroughly discussed by gentlemen sitting around
on the flat tombstones during sermon-time, that the formal meetings
were merely perfunctory. This way of turning church into a club meeting
sincerely distressed the clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Conyers.




CHAPTER V.


Mr. Conyers was one of the county gentry by birth, but it seemed as if
the whole theory of heredity, as well as tradition, fell through in his
case. The people had been used to jolly parsons, who rode to hounds and
could stand up to their bottles of port quite as well as the laity.
Indeed, it was reported that Mr. Conyer’s predecessor upon occasions
only got to church in time to hustle his cassock on over his hunting
jacket and breeches. But Conyers was more soul and spirit than body.
He grew up tall, pale, slender, with but one wish on earth--to preach
the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was an ascetic by nature--an ascetic
among people whose temperaments were sybaritic, and to whom nature and
circumstance cried perpetually, “Eat, drink, and be merry.” They were
a very honest and chivalrous people, but their spiritual part had been
feebly developed. Religion to them meant morality. To Conyers it meant
morality and the whole question of man’s relations to his Maker besides.

Conyers fancied that when he had begun his scholastic training for
the ministry he would enter upon that course of enlightenment of
the soul for which he longed. He was cruelly disappointed. He got a
great deal of morality still, a little weak theology, and a general
recommendation from his ecclesiastical superiors not to be too curious.
He was astute enough to see that morality was one thing and religion
another, but that as long as he maintained a high standard of personal
behaviour he would be allowed a fearful liberty in his beliefs. It was
not an age or a place of religious enquiry, and Conyers found that
all the excellent young men prepared with him for the ministry, were
perfectly well satisfied with historical and biblical explanations
which, to him, appeared grotesquely insufficient. When his soul craved
a knowledge of the Christian religion from its beginning, and when he
would have studied it from the point of sincere belief in regard to its
scope, design, and its effect on man, he was expected to confine his
investigations within an inconceivably narrow range. Although knowing
instinctively the difference between moral practices and religious
beliefs, Conyers was too earnest a lover of moral beauty to put faith
in any except a good man, and he early found that some very bad men
were the fountain head of certain of his beliefs. He did not lack
either courage or good parts, but he lacked knowledge dreadfully, and
there was no fountain open to him. But the seal of the Levite was put
upon him at his birth; tormented with doubts, longings, and terrible
questionings, he must still preach the Word. He kept his burning
thoughts to himself, and received ordination from highly moral men
who had never thought enough to harbour a doubt. He went back to his
native county an ordained clergyman, to begin what he believed to be
his labour in his Master’s vineyard. But never had shepherd such a
flock. When he tried to teach them spiritual things, they resented it
as an attack on their morals. Old Tom Shapleigh, who was a vestryman,
embodied the prevailing sentiment in his reply to Conyers when the
clergyman tried to find out old Tom’s spiritual attitude.

“Now, look here, Conyers, I’ve known you ever since you were born,
and I was a regular communicant in Abingdon church before your father
married your mother. I was married by a bishop--yes, zounds, sir, by
a bishop!--and pretty dear it cost me in more ways than one. I don’t
ill-treat my wife, or starve my negroes, or cheat my neighbour, and,
further than that, you have nothing to do. Spiritual attitude be
hanged! Go after the women if you want to talk that sort of thing.”

Some of the women, notably Mrs. Blair, had a tender, religious
sentiment that was grateful to poor Conyers, going blindly upon
his way. But he could not accept the popular doctrine that only
women had any spiritual side. To him the great fundamental facts of
existence--the soul, the future life, all the mysterious hopes and
fears of poor humanity concerning that future life--were problems that
no thinking man could thrust aside. But when he tried to penetrate
further than Mrs. Blair’s simple belief, her daily reading of the
Bible to her children and servants, he found that he only startled and
confused her. When he tried to get at the master of the house, Blair
flatly refused to have anything to say regarding the state of his soul.
The men like old Tom Shapleigh guyed Conyers; the men of finer fiber,
like Jack Blair, avoided him. When Mr. Conyers, meeting Blair in the
road, tried to talk religion to him, Blair put spurs to his horse and
galloped off, laughing. When Conyers came to Newington on the same
errand Blair announced to his wife that it was useless.

“I’ll be shot if any parson living shall meddle with my religion! I
don’t mind a little sermonising from you, my dear, and you know I made
an agreement with you that if you’d let me smoke in the drawing-room
I’d stand a chapter in the Bible every night; and the fact is, a man
will take a little religious dragooning from his wife or his mother
without grumbling. But when it comes to a man’s trying it--why, Conyers
is an ass, that’s all.”

Poor Conyers, repulsed on every side, knew not what to do. He found but
one person in the whole community willing to _think_ on the subject of
religion, although the women were usually quite ready enough to _feel_.
This was Sylvia Shapleigh. But Sylvia wanted to be instructed.

“Tell me,” she said, “what is true? The Bible puzzles me; I can’t
understand it. Do you?”

Conyers remained silent.

“I see the necessity for right living, Mr. Conyers, for right feeling;
but--there is something more. I know it as well as you.”

Conyers’s glance sought Sylvia’s. Usually his eyes were rather cold
and expressionless, but now they were full of a strange distress,
an untold misery. Here was the first human being who had ever asked
him for knowledge, and he was as helpless to answer her as a little
child. And he aspired to be a teacher of men! He went home and studied
furiously at some expurgated copies of the Fathers he possessed,
and at a few more or less acute commentaries upon them: they did not
give him one ray of light. He had two or three one-sided histories of
the Reformation: these he read, and cast them aside in disgust. The
readiness with which creeds were made, changed, made again, in the
fifteenth century had always astounded and disheartened him. The old,
old difficulty came back to him--provision was made everywhere for
man’s moral nature, and he earnestly believed that provision had been
made for man’s spiritual nature, but he could not find that provision
in the narrow sphere to which his learning and his observation was
confined. But cast, as he was, upon a vast and unknown sea of doubt,
and feeling that he knew nothing, and could explain nothing, he
confined himself to a plain and evangelical style of preaching and an
ascetic strictness of life. He made some vain appeals for help from
his ecclesiastical superior, the bishop, but the bishop plainly did
not understand what Conyers was after, and bade him rather sharply
to cease from troubling. He reminded Conyers of what a good salary
Abingdon church paid him, and in what a very agreeable and hospitable
community his lot was cast. As for the salary, it was very good on
paper. But the laity had a fearful power over the clergy, for all of
a clergyman’s comfort depended upon whether he made himself agreeable
to his parishioners or not. Conyers found this the most harrowing,
debasing, unapostolic circumstance in all his long list of miseries. He
earned a living, but he had trouble in getting it. He was distinctly
unpopular, and one of his first acts after taking charge of the
parish was calculated to foment his unpopularity. He had scruples
about slavery, as he had about everything, for he was a man tormented
by a devil of scrupulosity. He had inherited five negroes, and these
he set free and commended them to God. The result was appalling. Of
the five, two became confirmed criminals, two died of exposure and
neglect of themselves, and one was hanged for murder. The planters,
seeing their own well-fed, well-cared-for slaves around them, pointed
to Conyers’s experiment with triumph. _That_ was what freeing a lot of
irresponsible half-monkeys meant! This humble tragedy haunted Conyers
night and day, and almost drove him mad. Conyers had not been a young
man when he was ordained, but after this he lost every vestige of
youth. There were cruel hollows in his face, and his strange eyes grew
more and more distressed in their expression. Nevertheless, he would
not abandon any one of his theories and principles. The people were
far from vindictive. On the contrary, they were singularly amiable and
easy-going; and had they been any less easy-going, pastor and people
would certainly have parted company. It would have required a concerted
effort to get rid of him, and Conyers, although he would cheerfully
have given up his daily bread for conscience’ sake, yet could not bear
to part with his dream of being a teacher and preacher. And he knew
what a discredited clergyman meant. So, alternately harassed with
doubts and fixed in a dull despair, he presented that spectacle which
the heathen philosopher declared to be the most touching sight in the
world--a good man in adversity. His adversity had a practical side to
it, too. As his congregation did not like him, they were lax about
paying his salary. The pastors they were used to complained readily
enough when the stipend was not forthcoming and drummed up delinquents
briskly, which was a very good and wholesome thing for the delinquents;
and it had not been so very long ago since the heavy hand of the law
was laid upon parishioners who were forgetful of this. But the people
waited for Conyers to remind them of what they owed, and he would
rather have starved by inches than have asked them for a penny. So in
this hospitable, delightful parish he was miserably, desperately poor.
The only thing he wanted of his parishioners was what was due him, and
that was the only thing they would not give him, for they were not
ungenerous in other ways, and occasionally sent him bottles of Madeira
when the rectory roof was leaking, and old Tom Shapleigh sent him
regularly every winter a quarter of beef, which spoiled before the half
of it was eaten. Conyers still took comfort in the tender emotional
religion of some of the women, but Sylvia Shapleigh, whose restless
mind traversed mental depths and heights unknown to most women, was the
one, single, solitary person in the world who really understood why
it was that Conyers was not a happy man. Sylvia herself, with a great
flow of spirits and much wit and a ridiculously overrated beauty, was
not happy either. Her good looks were overrated because she was so
charming; but as she passed for a beauty it was all one. She had, it
is true, a pair of lovely grey eyes, and a delicate complexion like a
March primrose, and her walk was as graceful as the swallow’s flight.
She was getting perilously fast out of her twenties, and there was
apparently no more prospect of her marrying than at eighteen. Yet,
just as people always expected Skelton to perform some wonderful
intellectual achievement, so they still expected Sylvia to make a great
match.

At last, fifteen years after Skelton had left Deerchase, he returned to
it as suddenly as he left it. He brought with him Bob Skinny, who had
become a perfect monster of uppishness, airs, and conceit; Bulstrode,
who was understood to be a remarkable scholar and Skelton’s assistant
in preparing the great work that was to revolutionise the world; and
Lewis Pryor, a black-eyed boy whom Skelton represented to be the
orphan child of a friend of his, a professor at Cambridge. People were
still talking about Skelton’s wonderful promise. He was then getting
on towards forty years old, and had not written a line since “Voices
of the People.” The subject he was engaged upon for his wonderful
forthcoming book was not precisely known, but it was understood to be a
philosophical work, which would not leave the Christian religion a leg
to stand upon.




CHAPTER VI.


When Skelton’s arrival was known it made a tremendous sensation. Mrs.
Blair turned a beautiful rosy red when Blair brought the news home. At
thirty-five she was still girlish-looking, and her dark eyes were as
bright as ever.

“Ah, my girl,” cried Blair, with his offhand tenderness, “Skelton has
never forgiven me for getting ahead of him with you; but if he had got
ahead of me--why, damme, I’d have broken his neck for him long before
this!”

Sylvia Shapleigh felt a little ashamed, as she always did at the
mention, or even the mere thought, of Skelton--she had been such
a very, very great fool! and she had a lively apprehension of her
mother’s course upon the occasion, which was fully justified by events.

“Mr. Shapleigh,” began Mrs. Shapleigh one evening, the very first week
after Skelton’s arrival at Deerchase, “you will have to go and call
upon Richard Skelton, for it would break my heart if I did not see some
of those elegant things he has brought home in that pile of boxes that
came up from the wharf to-day.”

“Certainly, my love, I shall call to see him. As his former guardian,
I feel it incumbent; but, really, the fellow always interested me, for
all his confounded supercilious airs.”

“Well, Mr. Shapleigh, you seem to have altogether forgotten his
treatment of Sylvia; and that English wife of his put it out of his
power to marry again, just to spite my poor child.”

Luckily Sylvia was out of the room during this; but just then she
entered, with a book in her hand, and seated herself at the round
mahogany table in the corner of the room, upon which a tall lamp burned
with shaded softness. Mrs. Shapleigh wisely dropped that branch of the
subject when Sylvia appeared.

“Anyhow, Mr. Shapleigh,” resumed Mrs. Shapleigh, “we shall be obliged
to ask Richard Skelton to dinner. We can’t get out of _that_.”

“Very well, my darling love, we will have Skelton to dinner.”

“But, Mr. Shapleigh, how can we possibly have Richard Skelton to
dinner, when he is accustomed to so much elegance abroad? And although
we live as well as any people in the county, yet it is nothing to what
he will have at Deerchase.”

“Then, my life, we won’t have Skelton to dinner.”

“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, how you talk! You contradict yourself at every
other word.--Sylvia, what have you to say on the subject? I declare,
you read so much you don’t know anything. The simplest thing seems to
puzzle you.”

“Not at all, mamma!” cried Sylvia, with spirit, and bringing her book
together with a clap. “Have Mr. Skelton to dinner, by all means--just
as we would have the Blairs, or any other of the neighbours. I don’t
care a fig for his elegance. We are just as good as the Skeltons any
day; and any one of us--papa, or you, or I--is twice as good-looking as
Mr. Skelton.”

Sylvia was fond of disparaging Skelton both to herself and to other
people.

“Sylvia! Sylvia, my child!” screamed Mrs. Shapleigh; “your vanity is
very unladylike, and, besides, it is sinful, too. Nobody ever heard
_me_ say such a thing, although I had a much greater reputation for
good looks than you ever had. But if my glass pleased me, _I_ never
said anything.”

“You very seldom say anything, my love,” remarked old Tom, quite
gravely.

“Well, Mr. Shapleigh, I hope the next time you get married you will
marry a loquacious woman, and then, perhaps, you’ll long for your poor,
dear, humble Belinda. But to get back to the dinner. Of course, we must
have everything just as nearly like the way they have it at Deerchase
as possible, although how on earth we can have things the least like
they do at Deerchase, even if I put out every piece of glass and
silver I have in the world, is more than I can tell. But whom shall we
ask? That queer person that Richard Skelton brought home to write his
book--Mr. Bulstrode?”

“Yes, by all means,” cried old Tom, grinning. “He looks to me likely to
be an ornament to society.”

“And Mr. and Mrs. Blair?”

“Exactly, my love. Blair and Skelton hate each other like the devil;
and Mrs. Blair jilted Skelton, and I daresay has been sorry for it ever
since. Oh, yes, we’ll have the Blairs, madam.”

“And Mr. Conyers?”

“Gadzooks, madam, you’re a genius! Skelton doesn’t believe in hell in
the next world, and Conyers is trying to make a little hell of his own
in Abingdon parish; so they will do excellently well together.”

“Mr. Shapleigh, you don’t mean to tell me that Richard Skelton doesn’t
_believe in hell_?” asked Mrs. Shapleigh in a shocked voice.

“I do, indeed, my sweet. I’m not sure that he believes in a personal
devil, or the horns and the hoofs, or even the tail.”

“Good gracious, Mr. Shapleigh!” cried Mrs. Shapleigh in much horror and
distress. “If Mr. Skelton doesn’t believe in a hell, we might as well
give up asking him to dinner, because the bishop is coming next month,
and he’ll be certain to hear of it; and what will he say when he hears
that we have been entertaining a person like Richard Skelton, who flies
in the face of everything the bishop says we ought to believe!”

Mr. Shapleigh shook his head with waggish despair, and declared
the dinner was out of the question. This, of course, renewed Mrs.
Shapleigh’s determination to have it, who reflected that, after all,
the bishop might not hear of it, or perhaps he might die before his
annual visitation came off--she had heard he had something the matter
with his liver, anyhow.

Sylvia listened to the discussion calmly--she was used to this kind
of thing; and as her father and mother never grew at all angry in
these matrimonial tiffs, she did not mind them, having had a lifetime
to become accustomed to them. But she felt acutely anxious about
meeting Skelton, and, in a feminine way, about the dinner. She wanted
everything to go off well, but with a person as wonderful as Mrs.
Shapleigh, it was not safe to count on anything.

In due time old Tom called at Deerchase, and was received by Skelton
with more courtesy and deference than ever before in his life. Skelton
met him in the library--a part of the building erected the first year
after Skelton left Princeton. It was a noble room, and from the floor
to the lofty ceiling were books, books, books. Old Tom had never seen
so many books together in his life before.

Skelton had changed but little. As a young man he had looked
middle-aged; as a middle-aged man he looked young. His hair had a few
grey threads in it, and Mrs. Shapleigh’s eager eye discovered a small
place on the top of his head, about as big as a half dollar, where the
hair was getting thin; but it took Mrs. Shapleigh to find this out--Mr.
Shapleigh didn’t observe it at all. Skelton’s only remarkable feature
were his eyes, which were as black and soft and fascinating as ever.
His manner had lost all of its early superciliousness--he knew too
much then to be anything but simple and unassuming. But undoubtedly
there was something imposing in his personality. He greeted old Tom
cordially, and inquired after Mrs. Shapleigh and little Sylvia.

“You mean tall Sylvia, I presume,” said old Tom, laughing. “She is
nearly as tall as I am, and deucedly pretty, if I have any eyes.
Pardon an old man’s fondness, Skelton.”

“No apology is needed. I am sure she is a lovely young woman; but I
begin to realise how many milestones I have passed when I think of her
as a woman grown.”

“She’s more than grown; she has been of a marriageable age for some
years--but a proud creature she is. She gives all sorts of flippant
reasons for refusing good matches; but the fact is, nobody is quite
good enough for her ladyship--so Sylvia thinks.”

“A proud, pretty creature she gave promise of being. However, we can’t
understand them--the simple creature, man, is no match for the complex
creature, woman.”

“O Lord, no!” Mr. Shapleigh brought this out with great emphasis,
having in mind Mrs. Shapleigh and what he had heard of Skelton’s late
wife, who had put the very most effectual barrier he knew against her
husband’s marrying again.

“But now, Skelton,” continued Mr. Shapleigh, earnestly, “we are looking
forward to that something great which you are destined to do. No man I
know of--including those fellows Burke and Sheridan--ever gave greater
promise than you. By George! I shall never forget to my dying day the
state of public feeling after the publication of that first pamphlet of
yours. You would have been nominated to Congress by acclamation had you
been twenty-one years old.”

A flush rose in Skelton’s dark face. That early triumph had been the
bugbear of his whole life.

“I regard that as a very crude performance,” he said curtly.
“It happened to have a peculiar aptness--it struck a particular
conjunction. That was the real reason of its success.”

“Then do something better,” cried old Tom.

“I hope to, some day,” answered Skelton.

They were sitting in the embrasure of the library window. It was in a
glorious mid-summer, and the trees wore their greenest livery.

The bright pink masses of the crape myrtle trees glowed splendidly,
and at the foot of the large lawn the broad, bright river ran laughing
in the sun. The yellow noonday light fell directly upon Skelton’s
face--his olive complexion, his clear-cut features; there was not an
uncertain line in his face. His lean, brown, sinewy hand rested on
the arm of his chair. Old Tom, facing him, was a complete contrast--a
keen-eyed man, for all he was a country squire, his fresh, handsome old
face shining above his ruffled shirt-front and nankeen waistcoat.

“You’ve got a pretty good array of literary fellows about you,” said
old Tom, waving his stick around the library, which not even the July
sun could make bright, but which glowed with the sombre beauty that
seems to dwell in a true library.

“Yes,” answered Skelton, “but I have an old fellow that is worth all
the books to me--Bulstrode; he is a Cambridge man--carried off honours
every year without turning a hair, and was classed as a wonder. But,
you know, when God makes a genius he spoils a man. That’s the way with
Bulstrode. He’s a perfectly worthless dog as far as making a living
and a respectable place in society goes. He is simply a vulgarian
pumped full of knowledge and with the most extraordinary powers of
assimilation. He can’t write--he has no gift of expression whatever.
But I can give him ten words on a slip of paper, and in half an hour he
can give me every idea and every reference upon any possible subject
I demand. He is not a bad man; on the contrary, he has a sort of rude
honour and conscience of his own. He refused orders in the English
Church because he knew himself to be unfit. Besides looking after my
books, he is tutor to Lewis Pryor, the son of an old friend and tutor
of mine, the Rev. Thomas Pryor.”

Skelton brought all this out in his usual calm, easy, man-of-the-world
manner. At that moment the boy passed across the lawn very close to
the window, where he stopped and whistled to his dog. Never were two
pairs of eyes so alike as Skelton’s and this boy’s. Old Tom, turning
his glance from the boy to Skelton, noticed a strange expression of
fondness in Skelton’s eyes as he looked at the boy.

“A very fine-looking youngster,” said old Tom. “What are you going to
do with him?”

“Educate him,” answered Skelton, the indifference of his tone flatly
contradicting the ineffably tender look of his eyes. “Bulstrode was
made his guardian by one of those freaks of dying people. Pryor knew
Bulstrode as well as I do, and he also knew that I would do a good part
by the boy; but for some reason, or want of reason, he chose to leave
the boy in Bulstrode’s power. However, as Bulstrode is in my power, it
does not greatly matter. The boy has a little property, and I intend
giving him advantages. His father was a university man, and Lewis shall
be too.”

“I am afraid you will find the county dull after your life abroad,”
said old Tom, abruptly quitting the subject of Lewis Pryor.

“Not at all. I have felt for some years the necessity of settling down
to work, if I ever expect to do anything. Travelling is a passion
which wears itself out, just as other passions do. I can’t understand
a man’s expatriating himself forever. It is one of the benefits of a
landed gentry that the soil grasps it. Nothing has such a hold on a man
as land. It is one of the good points of our system. You see, I now
admit that there is something good in our system, which I denied so
vehemently before I was old enough to vote.”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Shapleigh. “Land, land, land! That’s the cry of the
Anglo-Saxon all over the world. That’s why it is they are the dominant
people; that’s why it is that they cannot exist on terms of equality
with any other race whatever.”

“True,” said Skelton. “All races that come in contact with them are
held in bondage of some sort. Rule or ruin is the destiny of the
Anglo-Saxon everywhere.”

Skelton had not asked a single question about anybody in the county.
This did not surprise old Tom, who was prepared to tell him a great
deal had Skelton manifested the slightest curiosity. When he rose
to go Skelton very civilly and gracefully thanked him for his care
and guardianship, and made some slight, laughing apology for his own
insubordination.

“No thanks at all--no thanks at all are due,” answered old Tom
jovially. “I rather enjoyed managing such a property, and I flatter
myself it did not decrease in my hands. As for managing you--ha! ha!--I
admit _that_ was a flat failure. So you brought back that black rascal,
Bob Skinny?”

“Oh, yes; and I daresay some fine morning the other negroes will take
him out and hang him to a tree outside my bedroom window. The fellow
is perfectly intolerable--can find nothing good enough for him at
Deerchase. He is a natural and incorrigible liar; and, worse still, he
has learned to play on what he calls the ‘fluke,’ and between playing
the ‘fluke,’ and telling unconscionable lies about his travels, he is
a nuisance. The housekeeper told me, this morning, there would be a
mutiny soon among the house servants if Bob wasn’t suppressed. But the
dog knows his value to me, and presumes upon it, no doubt.”

Then came the invitation to dinner at Belfield, which Skelton accepted
politely, but he would do himself the honour to call on Mrs. Shapleigh
and his little friend Sylvia beforehand.

The call was made, but neither of the ladies was at home. A day or two
after, old Tom Shapleigh had occasion to go on an errand about their
joint water rights, to Deerchase, and Mrs. Shapleigh went with him.
Then, too, as by a singular fate, Skelton was out riding about the
plantation. But Bulstrode and Lewis happened to be in the hall, and
Mrs. Shapleigh, who was dying with curiosity, alighted and went in on
their invitation.

Old Tom immediately began to talk to Bulstrode, while Mrs. Shapleigh
bestowed her attentions on Lewis, much to his embarrassment. Suddenly,
in the midst of the murmur of voices, Mrs. Shapleigh screeched out:

“La!”

“What is it, my dear?” asked old Tom, expecting to hear some such
marvel as that the floor was beautifully dry rubbed, or that Skelton
had cut down a decaying cedar near the house.

“Did you ever see such a likeness as that between this boy and that
picture of Richard Skelton’s father over yonder?”

Every eye except Lewis’s was turned towards the portrait. Skelton had
had all of his family portraits touched up by a competent artist, who
had practically done them over. The portrait was of a boy dressed in
colonial costume, with his hair falling over a wide lace collar. He was
about Lewis’s age, and the likeness was indeed extraordinary. It was
hung in a bad light though, and if it had been designed to keep it out
of sight its situation could not have been better.

Bulstrode glanced quickly at Lewis. The boy’s eyes were bent upon the
ground and his whole face was crimson. Old Tom was glaring at Mrs.
Shapleigh, who, however, prattled on composedly:

“Of course, I recollect Mr. Skelton very well; but as he was at least
thirty before I ever knew him, he had outgrown those clothes, and
looked a good deal more than fifteen or sixteen. But it is certainly
the most wonderful--”

“My love,” cried old Tom in a thundering voice, “look at those Venetian
blinds. If you’d like some to your drawing-room I’ll stand the expense,
by Gad!”

This acted on poor, good Mrs. Shapleigh’s mind like a large stone laid
before a rushing locomotive. It threw her completely off the track,
and there was no more danger of her getting back on it. But Bulstrode
observed that Lewis Pryor did not open his mouth to say another word
during the rest of the visit. As soon as the Shapleighs left, Lewis
took his dog and disappeared until late in the afternoon. When he came
in to dinner he avoided Bulstrode’s eyes, and looked so woe-begone
that Bulstrode felt sorry for him. However, Skelton knew nothing of
all this, and it so happened that he did not meet the Shapleighs,
or, indeed, any of the county people, until the day of the dinner at
Belfield. Blair meanwhile had called too, but, like the Shapleighs, had
found Skelton out on the plantation, and eagerly professed to be unable
to wait for his return home; so that the day of the dinner was the
first time that the Shapleighs, or, indeed, any of the county people,
had seen Skelton.

Mrs. Shapleigh had heard that Skelton dined late, so she named six
o’clock for the dinner--a perfectly preposterous hour at that period of
the nineteenth century. She also managed to have three men to wait at
dinner by pressing into the service James, the coachman and gardener.
James was an inky-black object, who, with a pair of large white cotton
gloves on, was as helpless as a turtle on his back. However, Mrs.
Shapleigh was a first-class housekeeper, and the dinner was sure to
be a good one--so Sylvia comforted herself. Skelton quite truthfully
said it was the best dinner he had seen since he left Virginia--turtle
soup, oysters in half a dozen ways, a royal display of fish, a saddle
of venison, wild ducks and woodcock and partridges, a ham cured with
hickory ashes and boiled in two quart bottles of old Tom Shapleigh’s
best champagne. There were, besides, a great many and-so-forths, but
Skelton did not say that he enjoyed the dinner particularly, and so
saved his reputation for truth.

As a matter of fact, he regarded it as something worse than a bore. He
shrewdly suspected that Elizabeth Blair would be there, and it would be
his first meeting with her after that awkward little _contretemps_ of
so many years ago--for he had managed to avoid her during that solitary
year he spent at Deerchase. In fact, everybody invited to the dinner
was in more or less trepidation.

Skelton arrived punctually at six o’clock, and Bulstrode was with
him. Everybody else, though, had taken six o’clock to mean half-past
five, and were promptly on hand. It was not quite dusk, and the purple
twilight was visible through the open windows, but the wax candles were
lighted and glowed softly in the mellow half-light.

Old Tom greeted Skelton cordially, and so did Mrs. Shapleigh, who had
temporarily buried the hatchet, and who comforted herself by thinking
how awfully sorry Skelton would be that he couldn’t marry Sylvia when
he saw her and heard her play on the guitar and sing. Mrs. Shapleigh
herself was still beautiful; the face that had blinded old Tom thirty
years before to the infinite silliness of the woman who owned it had
not lost its colour or regularity. But its power to charm faded with
its first youth. Stranger than the power of beauty is the narrow
limits to which it is restricted. These ideas passed through Skelton’s
mind as he saw Mrs. Shapleigh the first time in fifteen years. Sylvia,
though, without one half her mother’s beauty, possessed all the charm
and grace the older woman lacked. Skelton glanced at her with calm
though sincere approval. She was very like the little girl who had
swung her white sunbonnet at him, although he knew she must be quite
twenty-seven years old; but in her grey eyes was a perpetual girlish
innocence she could never lose. Then came the difficult part--speaking
to Mr. and Mrs. Blair. Mrs. Blair complicated the situation by blushing
suddenly and furiously down to her white throat when Skelton took her
hand. Skelton could cheerfully have wrung her neck in rage for her
blushing at that moment. She was changed, of course, from seventeen,
but Skelton thought her rather improved; she had gained colour
and flesh without losing her slenderness. Jack Blair had got very
middle-aged looking, to Skelton’s eyes, and his youthful trimness and
slimness were quite gone; but nobody had found it out except Skelton.
Then there was the long, thin parson with the troubled eyes. Bulstrode
was as awkward as a walrus in company, and glanced sympathetically at
James, black and miserable, whose feelings he quite divined.

Sylvia in the course of long years had been forced to acquire quite
an extraordinary amount of tact, in order to cover the performances
of Mrs. Shapleigh, and she found she had use for all of it. Mrs.
Shapleigh, however, was completely awed by the deadly civility with
which Skelton received all of her _non sequiturs_, and soon relapsed
into a blessed silence.

This gave Sylvia a chance to take Skelton off very dexterously in a
corner.

“I am so glad to see Deerchase inhabited again,” she said in her pretty
way. “It is pleasant to see the smoke coming out of the chimneys once
more.”

“It is very pleasant to be there once more,” answered Skelton. “After
all, one longs for one’s own roof. I did not think, the afternoon you
paid me that interesting visit, that fifteen years would pass before I
should see the old place again.”

“Ah, that visit!” cried Sylvia, blushing--blushing for something of
which Skelton never dreamed. “I daresay you were glad enough to get rid
of me. What inconceivable impertinence I had!”

“Is the crab’s bite well yet?”

“Quite well, thank you. And have you remembered that all these years?”

“Perfectly. I never had such a startling adventure with a young lady
before or since.”

There is something peculiarly charming in the simplicity of people who
are something and somebody in themselves. Sylvia realized this when she
saw how Skelton’s way of saying ordinary things lifted them quite above
the ordinary.

How easy and natural he made it all! she thought. And she had expected
the great, the grand, the wonderful Skelton to talk like one of Mr.
Addison’s essays. What a thing it was to travel and see the world, to
be sure! That was why Skelton was so easy, and put her so much at ease
too.

Skelton, meanwhile, was in no enviable frame of mind. Elizabeth
Blair’s presence brought back painful recollections. He remembered some
foolish threats he had made, and he thought, with renewed wonder and
disgust, how he had walked the library floor at Deerchase, night after
night, in frightful agitation, afraid to look toward the table drawer
where his pistols lay for fear of the horrible temptation to end it
all with a pistol shot. She was a sweet enough creature, but no woman
that ever lived was worth half the suffering he had undergone for her.
After all, though, it was not so much regret for her as it was rage
that another man should supplant him. The same feeling waked suddenly
and powerfully within his breast. He had always despised Blair, and he
found the impulse just as strong as ever--a fellow who spent his days
galloping over fields and bawling after dogs preferred to him, Richard
Skelton! Nevertheless, he went up and talked pleasantly and naturally
to Elizabeth, and inquired, as in duty and politeness bound, after
the whole Armistead tribe. Elizabeth was the only one of them left,
and Skelton listened gravely while she told him freely some family
particulars. He had heard of Hilary and little Mary, and expressed a
wish that Hilary should be friends with his own _protégé_, Lewis Pryor.
He carefully repeated what he had told Mr. Shapleigh about Lewis; but
Mrs. Blair said no word of encouragement, and then dinner was ready,
and Skelton went out with Mrs. Shapleigh on his arm.

Sylvia, from motives of prudence, placed herself next him on the other
side. Having a humorous knack, Sylvia could very often turn Mrs.
Shapleigh’s speeches into the safe channel of a joke. At the other end
of the table old Tom had beside him Mrs. Blair, who was quite a pet of
his. Skelton, with infinite tact, talked as if he had been one of them
for the last fifteen years, instead of having been indulging in all
sorts of startling adventures abroad while they were vegetating in the
country.

The conversation pretty soon got on racing, for the Campdown course was
to them their opera, drive, lecture, concert--everything, in short,
except the church. Conyers was quite out of this conversation, and
was used to being so. Bulstrode likewise found it a bore, and took
refuge in gulping down glass after glass of sherry, port, madeira,
champagne--any and every thing that came to hand. But he did not enjoy
it, although old Tom’s cellar was not to be despised. He feared and
revered a good woman, and the presence of the ladies took all the
taste out of the wine and utterly disconcerted him. He had often said
to Skelton: “Curse me, if I can drink comfortably in the presence of
women. They are a standing rebuke to such old ruffians as I.” Skelton,
however, entered into the spirit of the racing talk as if it were of
the greatest possible moment. But it was a very delicate one in Blair’s
presence. Too often had Skelton’s colours--black and yellow--come
in ahead of Blair’s blue jackets and white caps. Skelton and Blair,
though, each showed a gentlemanly obliviousness of all this.

Skelton, however, chose to admire a certain colt of old Tom Shapleigh’s
in a way that made Blair prick up his ears.

“I was walking across your pasture the other day--trespassing, in fact,
as I have half forgotten my own land--when I saw that black horse of
yours--”

“Alabaster!” cried Sylvia. “He is so black that I could not find a name
black enough for him, so I went by the rule of contrary. He is to be my
riding horse.”

“Yes,” groaned old Tom ruefully, “Sylvia says she will have him. He
isn’t a full thoroughbred, but he has some good blood in him, and I
wanted to sell him to somebody, like our friend Blair here, who would
find out how much speed there is in him, for he has it unquestionably.
But he pleases my girl, and she proposes to keep me out of a snug sum
of money in order that she may have a fine black horse to ride. Zounds!
Skelton, I’m the most petticoat-ridden man in this county.”

“No horse is too good for Miss Shapleigh,” answered Skelton, with
gallantry; “but if she could be persuaded that another horse, with a
coat as smooth and a tail as long as Alabaster’s, could carry her, I
should like to see a match between him and that long-legged bay of
mine--Jaybird, I believe, is his name.”

Now Jaybird was the gem of Skelton’s stable, and had beaten everything
against which she had been matched since her _début_, so that to say
that Alabaster possibly had too much foot for her, at once put the
black horse in the category of great horses.

“If you can persuade Sylvia to let me sell him, I’d be delighted,” said
old Tom, with his cheery laugh; “but I’ll not answer for your success
with her. Women are mysterious creatures, my dear Skelton.”

“Undoubtedly they are,” replied Skelton gravely. “Miss Shapleigh
wants Alabaster because she wants Alabaster. Nothing could be more
conclusive.”

“You are quite right,” said Sylvia airily; “and when we cease to be
mysterious and inconsequent we shall cease to charm.”

“Whateley, the old dunderhead, says,” began Bulstrode in his deep, rich
voice, and with perfect seriousness, “that women are always reaching
wrong conclusions from the right premises, and right conclusions from
the wrong premises”; at which everybody laughed, and Sylvia answered:

“Then, as our premises are always wrong, our conclusions must be always
right. Mr. Skelton, I shall keep Alabaster.”

“And my horse, Jaybird, will keep his reputation,” said Skelton, with
his slight but captivating smile.

The instant Skelton said this Blair was possessed with the desire to
own Alabaster. The idea of such a horse being reserved for a girl’s
riding! It was preposterous. Racing in those days was by no means
the fixed and formal affair it is now. It was not a business, but a
sport, and as such each individual had great latitude in the way he
followed it. Matches were among the commonest as well as among the most
interesting forms it took, and a match between Jaybird and Alabaster
struck Blair as of all things the most desirable; and in an instant
he resolved to have Alabaster, if the wit of man could contrive it.
He would show old Tom the weakness, the wickedness, of his conduct
in letting himself be wrapped around Sylvia’s little finger in that
way, and, if necessary, he would try his persuasive powers on Sylvia
herself. Women were not usually insensible to his cajolery.

None of the women at the table took much interest in the talk that
followed. Mrs. Blair saw instinctively that Blair’s passion for horses
was being powerfully stimulated by Skelton’s presence and talk about
the Campdown course, which she secretly considered to be the bane
of her life. But she was too proud to let any one--Skelton least of
all--see how it troubled her. She even submitted to be drawn into the
conversation, which the men at the table were too well bred to leave
the women out of, for by little references and joking allusions they
were beguiled into it. Blair teased Sylvia about her unfailing faith
in a certain bay horse with a long tail, on account of which she had
lost sundry pairs of gloves. Mrs. Shapleigh reminded Mr. Shapleigh of
a promise he had made her that she should one day drive four horses to
her carriage.

“I said four horses to your hearse, my dear,” cried old Tom. “I always
promised you the finest funeral ever seen in the county, and, by Jove,
you shall have it if I have to mortgage every acre I’ve got to do it!”

“Old wretch!” whispered Elizabeth to Mr. Conyers, while Jack Blair
called out good-naturedly:

“I swear, if you hadn’t the best wife in the world, you would have been
strangled long years ago.”

“I daresay I would,” answered old Tom frankly. In those robust days
gentlemen used stronger language than in the present feeble time, and
nobody was at all shocked at either Mr. Shapleigh’s remark or Jack
Blair’s commentary. There was a jovial good humour about old Tom
which took the sting out of his most outrageous speeches. But as the
talk about racing flowed on, Elizabeth Blair grew paler and paler.
Jack Blair’s fever was upon him, and Skelton, whether consciously or
not, was fanning the flame. Skelton said, in a very modest way--for
he was too great a man in the community to need to be anything but
modest--that his interests in racing being much greater than ever, as
he was then on the spot, he should double his subscription to the club.
As it was known that his subscription was already large, this created a
flutter among the gentlemen.

“Of course I can’t double _my_ subscription in the debonair manner of
Mr. Skelton,” said Blair with an easy smile, “but I don’t mind saying
that I shall raise it very considerably.”

At that moment Mrs. Blair caught Skelton’s eyes fixed on her
pityingly--so she imagined--and it spurred her to show him that she was
not an object of commiseration, and that Jack Blair had no domestic rod
in pickle for him on account of that last speech.

“Now, if you change your mind,” she said playfully to her husband,
“don’t lay it on your wife, and say she wouldn’t let you, for here I
sit as meek as a lamb, not making the slightest protest against any of
these schemes, which, however, I don’t pretend to understand in the
least.”

“My dear,” cried Blair, his face slightly flushed with wine and
excitement, “don’t try to pretend, at this late day, that you do not
dragoon me. My subjugation has been county talk ever since that night
you slipped out of the garden gate and rode off with me in search of a
parson.”

A magnetic shock ran through everybody present at this. Blair, in
saying it, glanced maliciously at Skelton. _That_ paid him back for
Oriole beating Miss Betsy, and Jack-o’-Lantern romping in ahead of
Paymaster, and various other defeats that his “horse or two” had met
with from the black and yellow.

In an instant the talk began again very merrily and promptly. Blair
looked audaciously at his ease, but Skelton was not a whit behind him
in composure. He turned, smiling, to Sylvia, and said:

“How all this talk must bore you!”

Sylvia felt furious with Blair. They had not asked Skelton there to
insult him. Therefore she threw an extra softness into her smile, as
she replied:

“It is very nice to talk about something else occasionally. I long to
hear you talk about your travels.”

“My travels are not worth talking about,” answered Skelton in the same
graceful way; “but I have some very pretty prints that I would like to
show you. I hope you will repeat your interesting visit of some years
ago to Deerchase--some time soon.”

“You are cruel to remind me of that visit,” said Sylvia, with her
most charmingly coquettish air. “I have the most painfully distinct
recollection of it, even to finding fault with the little yellow room
because it was not as fine as the rest of the house.”

Skelton concluded that neither a course of travel, a system of
education, nor a knowledge of the world were necessary to teach Miss
Sylvia how to get into the good graces of the other sex. In the midst
of it all, Bulstrode, who heard everything and was constitutionally
averse to holding his tongue, whispered to Conyers:

“That speech of Mr. Blair’s has ruined him--see if it has not”; while
old Tom Shapleigh growled _sotto voce_ to himself, “This comes of the
madam’s damnable mixing people up.”

There was no more real jollity after this, although much affected
gaiety; nor was the subject of racing brought up again. Presently
they all went to the drawing-room, and cards and coffee were brought.
In cutting for partners, Sylvia and Skelton played against Blair and
Bulstrode. Everybody played for money in those days, and there were
little piles of gold dollars by each player. Blair was a crack whist
player, but luck was against him. Besides, he had had an extra glass
or two of wine, and the presence of Skelton was discomposing to him;
so, although the stakes were small, he managed to lose all the money he
had with him. Sylvia could not but admire the exquisite tact with which
the rich man accepted the winnings from the poor man. Skelton gave not
the smallest hint that any difference at all existed between Blair and
himself, and Blair lost his money with the finest air in the world.
As for Skelton, he had always hated Blair, and that speech at dinner
warmed his hatred wonderfully, for Skelton could forgive an injury, but
not an impertinence. Any want of personal respect towards himself he
ranked as a crime deserving the severest punishment.

Towards eleven o’clock the party broke up. Blair had made a mortal
enemy, he had drank too much wine, he had distressed his wife,
offended his hosts, and lost all his money. Bulstrode and Conyers had
been bored to death--Bulstrode because he was all for drink and the
classics, Conyers because it was against his conscience to take part
in jovial dinner parties. Skelton was furiously angry in spite of his
invincible coolness and self-possession. Sylvia was vexed. Old Tom was
sardonically amused. Only Mrs. Shapleigh congratulated herself, as the
last carriage drove off, with:

“Well, the dinner was a great success. I never saw people enjoy
themselves more in my life!”




CHAPTER VII.


The very first and most lasting impression made upon Lewis Pryor’s
boyish mind was that a subtile difference existed between him and
every other boy he had ever known in his life. At the first glance the
difference would seem to have been altogether in Lewis’s favour, for he
always had a plenty of pocket money, and a pony to ride, and a servant
to wait on him; but, being a very healthy-natured, honest-hearted boy,
he regarded these things with admirable indifference, and instinctively
rated them at their true value, which was small. In fact, he came, in
the course of his boyish experiences, to hate these distinctions in
his favour, as he imagined sometimes that it accounted for the shyness
of other boys towards him. From his very earliest recollection there
had been this strange and mystifying avoidance, and the boy’s heart
swelled and his eyes filled with tears whenever he thought of it. Not
only was it strange, but it was cruelly undeserved, for he felt himself
worthy of respect. He had never told a lie in his life, and such
boyish naughtinesses as he had been guilty of were merely the ordinary
lapses of impetuous young creatures. But poor Lewis was perforce a
model boy, for it is tolerably hard for a boy to get in mischief by
himself. Lewis, gazing with melancholy eyes at others of his own age,
would feel, with a tightening at his heart, that he would cheerfully
give his pony and all his fine belongings to be one with those merry,
happy fellows. He remembered dimly his mother--a gentle creature who
lavished tenderness upon him; his father--Thomas Pryor, the tutor--a
tall, thin, spectacled man; and they all lived very quietly somewhere
in the country in England. But even then he had no playmates. Then he
remembered quite distinctly his father and his mother both dying, and
Bulstrode and Bob Skinny being there and taking him to Skelton. Lewis
was then about five years old. After that came a dreary existence of
splendid suites of rooms in foreign hotels, where he and Bulstrode were
usually waiting for Skelton and Bob Skinny to turn up, when they would
all go on to some other splendid suite of rooms in another place, all
equally dreary to the lonely boy. Bulstrode was his guardian, and was
supposed to be his tutor, and Lewis did his lessons with tolerable
regularity. But he had a little store of books--some old romances,
dear to every boy’s heart, and some of Scott’s novels, which were
coming out, and a few other imaginative books, which he devoured with
insatiate delight. Sometimes, with one of these darling dog’s-eared
volumes, he could be perfectly happy, lying on the rug before the fire,
with his dog Service poking his cold nose affectionately into his face,
or flat on his back in the summer time, with the dog on the grass
near him, and the trees murmuring softly overhead. For want of other
companionship he made a friend and confidant of Service; and the two
would exchange queer confidences, and understood each other as only a
boy and a dog can. But more than the dog--even more than his cherished
romances--Lewis’s most beloved possession were certain books inscribed
“Thomas Pryor, M. A.,” and a miniature of his father--a lanky person,
as unlike Lewis’s dark, clear-cut little face as could be imagined--and
a quaint picture in black and white of his mother. But he thought
of her so often and so much that he had in his mind’s eye a perfect
portrait of her. Bulstrode was always ready enough to talk to the boy
about his father and mother, but Lewis soon found that Bulstrode’s
talk amounted to nothing at all, as he had seen but little of either
Mr. or Mrs. Pryor. As for Skelton, Lewis could not make him out. He
was always kind, always indulgent, and Lewis was quite sharp enough
to see that, however Bulstrode might be his guardian, Skelton had the
real authority over both Bulstrode and himself. But there was a perfect
formality between them. The boy remembered, though, once when he was
ill, that Skelton scarcely left him day or night. He always dined with
Skelton, and at dinner had one very small glass of wine, after which he
might have been expected to leave the table. Occasionally after dinner
Skelton would thaw, and would talk to the boy in a way that quite
charmed him, telling him of Skelton’s own boyhood and his travels.
When they came to Virginia, Lewis found the new country more like
his faintly remembered English home than he could express, and was a
thousand times happier than he had been in the splendid lodgings where
so much of his boyhood had been passed. He liked much better riding
over the country on his pony than taking a tiresome canter in a public
park; Service and himself had much jollier times in the woods and
fields than in prim city gardens. And then the negroes were so amusing,
and called him “Little Marse” so obsequiously, and he had a boat to
sail on the river. This last gave him the most acute and intense
pleasure. Skelton, for the first time in his life, taught him something
in teaching him to sail the boat.

“Now, Lewis,” Skelton said, the first morning the boat was put into
the water, “I foresee that you will live in this boat, and as you will
no doubt be upset dozens of times, and be caught in squalls and all
sorts of accidents, the only thing to do is to teach you to depend upon
yourself. The river is not more than fifteen feet deep anywhere, except
in the channel, and with ordinary intelligence and care nothing worse
ought to happen to you than a good wetting once in a while. The boat
is staunch. I myself watched Jim, the wheelwright, making it, and gave
him the dimensions”--for the boat had been built at Deerchase--“and the
sail is quite large enough for it”--Lewis did not agree with this last,
as his ambition was to have the smallest boat and the biggest sail on
the river--“and if you are drowned it will be your own fault.”

Lewis was wonderfully apt at learning anything, and Skelton, in his
quiet way, showed an excellent knack of teaching. Every day, for a
week or more, the two were out in the boat together upon the bright
river glowing in the August sunshine. Lewis often wondered if Skelton
were not bored as they sailed up and down the river, and then beyond
out into the bay, Skelton sitting in the stern, with a book in his
hand, reading when he was not showing Lewis how to manage the boat.
It puzzled the boy because there was usually such a distance, so much
reserve between them. More than once Lewis caught Skelton’s black,
expressive eyes fixed on him with a look that was almost fondness, and
at such moments the boy’s heart would thrill with a strange emotion. He
had often thought that he would ask Skelton some time about his father
and mother, and what better opportunity could he have than when sailing
together for hours upon the blue water? But he never did it. In spite
of Skelton’s interest, and his evident desire to secure Lewis from
danger by making him a good sailor, the barrier remained. In a very
short while, though, Lewis mastered the whole science of a sailboat,
with one exception. Nothing could induce him to take the sail down
until a squall was actually upon him, and in consequence of this he got
into the water several times unnecessarily. But he was a cool-headed
fellow, and a good swimmer besides, so that his various upsets did him
no harm. Skelton, on these occasions, would send for him and give him
lectures upon his foolhardiness, which Lewis would receive respectfully
enough, saying “Yes, sir,” every time Skelton paused. But when the
door was closed Skelton would sigh, and smile too, and say to himself,
“There is no frightening the fellow.”

There was but one boy in the neighbourhood near Lewis’s age. This was
Hilary Blair, a handsome, fair-haired, freckle-faced boy, who began
the acquaintance with a sturdy contempt for Lewis’s prowess. Hilary
was a year older than Lewis, and a heavier and stouter boy. But at the
first personal encounter between the two young gentlemen, which was
precipitated by a dispute over a game of marbles in the main road,
Lewis showed so much science in the manly art, that Hilary was knocked
out ignominiously about the fourth round. Hilary displayed excellent
good sense in the affair. He got up with a black eye, but an undaunted
soul.

“Look here,” he said, “you’ve taken lessons of some sort.”

“Yes,” responded Lewis, shamefacedly, remembering that he had had
lessons of all sorts--boxing, fencing, dancing, riding, everything, in
short--while this country gentleman’s son knew nothing of many of these
things; “but if you want to, I’ll teach you all I know, and then”--here
the fighting instinct in the boy cropped out--“I’ll lick you just as
easy as I do now.”

“I reckon you won’t,” answered Hilary coolly, and it turned out that
he was right; for, with the addition of such scientific instruction
as Lewis could impart, the two boys were very evenly matched in their
future encounters, which were purely friendly and in the interests of
sport.

The boys became fond of each other in a surreptitious way, for Hilary
never came to see Lewis, and an instinctive delicacy kept Lewis from
going to Newington. But they met on the river, out fishing, and in the
woods setting their hare-traps, and they exchanged whispers during
church-time.

On Sundays Lewis sat alone in one of the great square high-backed
pews, which still remained in the old colonial church of Abingdon.
That unlucky singularity of luxury which was the bane of poor Lewis’s
life actually followed him to church, for Skelton’s was the only
upholstered pew in the church; and instead of the faded moreen curtains
of the other pews, when they were curtained at all, there was a fine
purple-silk drapery, behind which the lonely boy sat forlornly. He was
the only person who went to church regularly from Deerchase. Bulstrode
scoffed at the notion, and Skelton alleged usually that he was too
busy. Once in a great while, though, he would saunter into church about
the second lesson. Conyers, who feared no man, not even Skelton, would
stop deliberately in the midst of the sermon as a rebuke to Skelton.
Skelton, however, would be perfectly unmoved by it, as well as by
the hundreds of curious eyes bent upon him, and would walk down the
aisle with his inimitable grace and a half-smile on his lips. Conyers,
though, by that strange contrariety which seems to govern human
affairs, found his best supporters in Skelton and Bulstrode, whom he
expected to be his most powerful foes. So far from antagonising Conyers
on account of the public rebuke administered upon his tardiness,
Skelton respected him for it, and never failed to speak to the parson
politely before all the people as they gossiped in the churchyard. It
was not Skelton’s way to withhold the meed of justice due any man,
and he saw at a glance that the stern, scruple-ridden, conscientious
moralist had a very hard time with his merry, free-handed,
pleasure-loving congregation--the pastor intolerant of pleasure, the
flock intolerant of pain.

As for Bulstrode, Conyers’s sad heart had glowed when he first heard
of the advent of this great scholar in the county. Perhaps here was
light at hand. But the very first sight of Bulstrode was enough for
him. Bulstrode’s guzzling of liquor, his unbridled license of tongue,
were repelling to a natural born ascetic and enthusiast. But Bulstrode
was instantly attracted by the parson with the distressed eyes, which
always seemed to be looking for something which they never could
find. He pursued the acquaintance, and actually tracked Conyers to
his lair in the tumble-down rectory. Here Bulstrode would sit for
hours, clawing his unkempt hair, and drinking innumerable cups of
tea out of a cracked teapot from sheer force of habit. He talked on
every imaginable subject, and poured out the stores of his learning
lavishly. But he never touched, in the remotest degree, upon religion.
Conyers found out, though, that Bulstrode was deeply skilled in that
science called theology, and at last the impulse came to unburden his
mind and heart, which Bulstrode had long foreseen. They were sitting,
one night soon after their acquaintance began, in the shabby rectory
study, when Conyers made his confession--telling it all recklessly, his
sallow face glowing, his deep eyes burning. Bulstrode heard patiently,
even that greatest grievance of all to Conyers--the unwillingness of
people to _think_ upon the great affair of religion, and their perfect
willingness to accept anything rather than to bestow consideration or
thought upon it.

“And do you imagine,” asked Bulstrode gravely, stopping in the midst of
his tea-drinking, “that religion is an intellectual exercise?”

Poor Conyers admitted that he thought it had an intellectual side.

“So it has, so it has; but it has a great emotional side too,” answered
Bulstrode; “that’s where the women are nearer right than men think.
The Christian religion undertakes to make a human being better, but it
doesn’t pretend to make him wiser or happier--or only incidentally; so
you see, it must work in the heart of man as in the brain. And I tell
you, my clerical friend, that the great defect in all the other systems
I’ve studied--and I know ’em all--is that they are meant for thinkers,
and that leaves out nine tenths of the human race. The intellectual
side of man’s relation to the Great First Cause was worked out long
ago by those clever old Greeks. All these modern fellows have been
threshing over old straw.”

Conyers was surprised at this, and said so. It seemed to him that
men who dared to meddle with so vast a subject must be of gigantic
strength and heroic mould. Through the mists of his own ignorance and
inexperience their figures loomed large, but when he expressed this in
halting language, Bulstrode shouted with laughter.

“You think a man must be a second Plato to start a new philosophic
system--a new religion, in fact! Why, look you, parson, most
undergraduates have doubts about a Great First Cause even; and there
are monstrous few university men who don’t expect to make a new
religion some time or other. They have the disease, like measles or
whooping-cough, and get over it and are better afterwards.”

Conyers had an idea that among men of true learning the Christian
religion was treated as a lot of old women’s fables, while all systems
of philosophy were regarded with the utmost respect. This, too, he
expressed to Bulstrode.

“Don’t know, I’m sure, how it is in this queer country,” answered
Bulstrode, pouring himself out a ninth cup of tea, “but, comparing
things according to their size, the biggest system is small compared
with that enormous fact of Christianity. Mind, I ain’t a Christian
myself, though I lean that way, and when I’m drunk and my mind works
rapidly, and I see the relations of things better, I lean that way
still more; for, know you, Wat Bulstrode drunk is a better man than Wat
Bulstrode sober.”

If this was meant as a hint for Conyers to produce something stronger
than tea, it failed of its object, for not even to make Bulstrode
talk like a Christian, would Conyers so far outrage his conscience
as to give liquor to a man already too fond of it. Bulstrode really
threw out the remark more as a test of the man than a hint, but when
Conyers refused the bait a strange glitter came into Bulstrode’s dull
eyes. Here was that honest man, whose untarnished integrity was like
the sun at noonday. Bulstrode, in admiration for this, conceived the
idea of establishing in Conyers a sincere belief of Christianity;
for, half-educated, starved spiritually, and the prey of scruples
that were really doubts, Conyers scarcely knew where he stood. So,
then, the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a man little better
than a heathen preaching the gospel to a man after God’s own heart.
Bulstrode was fully sensible of the grotesqueness of the thing, but
all disposition to laugh was checked by the sublime earnestness with
which Conyers followed him. Bulstrode marshalled with singular power
and precision all the arguments in favour of the immortality of the
soul, beginning with Plato. He then argued profoundly and subtly in
favour of a revealed religion. He pointed out all the weak spots in the
various substitutes for religion that had been offered in various ages,
and laid bare their defects mercilessly. He sat until late in the night
talking, Conyers’s eyes all the time growing less and less sombre.

“Now,” said Bulstrode, getting up toward midnight, “I’ve given you all
the weapons I have, and taught you how to thrust and parry the best I
know how; and, hang me, parson, I’ve almost argued myself into being a
Christian too while I’ve been trying to convert you!”

Conyers smiled involuntarily as he looked at Bulstrode. There was
nothing apostolic in that bulky figure and careless, dissipated face.

Bulstrode went back to Deerchase, and complained next morning that he
had been kept up late the night before labouring with Conyers to make
him a Christian.

Conyers, however, felt that he had been more helped by this boozy
heathen than by all the theologians he had ever met with in his life.

Meanwhile Skelton and his affairs continued to be of prodigious
interest among the county people, who regarded him as their local
prodigy. There was, of course, great speculation about his wife’s
fortune, and much indignation expressed that it could not be bestowed
upon some of the numerous young women who would have presided so
admirably at Deerchase. The universal conviction was that Skelton would
never marry, but, in the strange event that he did, conjecture ran wild
as to what would become of the money.

Some said it went to found a great charity hospital somewhere; others,
that it returned to the late Mrs. Skelton’s family; others still, that,
Mrs. Skelton having quarrelled with her relations, they would get none
of it, but that it would go to Skelton’s next of kin, which, wonderful
to say, were Elizabeth Blair and her children; but everybody was agreed
in thinking that, before Skelton would see the Blairs benefitted by
him, he would turn his back on Helen of Troy could she come back to
earth. However, the solution seemed far enough off. It was perfectly
well known that the late Mrs. Skelton had put an embargo of some sort
upon her place being filled, and they would have to wait until Skelton,
who was in the perfection of physical health, should be laid in his
grave before the mystery would be solved.

Skelton had come home in the early summer, and, although he had been
formally called upon by all the gentry in the county, including Blair,
as soon as he arrived, and the visits had been returned, but little had
been seen of him. Even when the autumn meeting of the Jockey Club had
come off, and when all the people from four counties had assembled and
Skelton’s horses had carried everything before them, Skelton himself
had scarcely appeared on the course at all. The truth was he was
making a desperate effort to work. He shut himself up every day in the
library, and actually got some little way upon his Introduction, but
in a very short while a strange and irritating torpor seized upon him
mentally. He had no distractions--he had all his books close by him,
his notes tabulated; the whole thing was ready to his hand. The hand,
though, refused to work; the mind refused to drive the hand. Skelton
found he did as little in the scholastic retirement which he had
adopted as in the whirl of cities.

He turned to racing as a faint and unsatisfying distraction. He had had
the pleasure of beating Blair all along, even at the autumn meeting;
he had had the savage enjoyment of knowing that Blair was as unlucky
as usual when pitted against him. Skelton’s own secret dissatisfaction
with himself fanned his resentment against Blair. He turned feverishly
to the only thing that interested him--the determination to make Jack
Blair know what it was to oppose Richard Skelton. Blair’s imprudent
speeches, his constant reminders of the why and wherefore of Skelton’s
rivalry, were not lost on him, and men of his type are always dangerous
to trifle with.

Skelton’s doubled subscription to the Jockey Club had had a wonderful
stimulating effect upon that institution, and it also caused Mrs.
Blair to sign her name to a bit of paper which enabled Blair to raise
some money, not only for his own increased subscription, but for that
horse of old Tom Shapleigh’s which Skelton himself had professed to be
afraid of. If once a match could be brought about between Alabaster and
Jaybird, Blair, who was irrepressibly sanguine, believed that he could
wipe out all old scores between them. And, of course, he could buy the
horse--old Tom had not seriously meant that Sylvia was to have for a
riding nag a horse that could beat Jaybird. Blair thought that raising
a certain sum of money, which was in effect an extravagant price, must
certainly buy Alabaster. But he had to go through with some unpleasant
processes before raising that money. He was terribly hard up at that
time, and one of the most necessary conditions was the signing of his
wife’s name to a bit of paper that to him represented Alabaster, money,
coming out ahead of Skelton--everything, in short.

When he went after Elizabeth to sign that paper she was sewing
together the leaves of Hilary’s Latin grammar, and wishing she could
buy some new books that the boy needed--for she taught him herself,
under the womanly pretense that they might thereby save up money for
his university expenses. But she knew in her heart of hearts that no
money was saved or thought of being saved. Only her pride was saved
by that subterfuge. The drawing-room at Newington where she sat was
very unlike the splendid drawing-rooms at Deerchase or the gaudy
show-rooms at Belfield. It was large, plain, and old-fashioned. The
mahogany furniture was scanty, and the ornaments consisted of those
daubs of family portraits which all Virginians possess. It was a
gloomy afternoon early in October, and neither the room nor anything
in it looked cheerful. Blair came in whistling, and stated the case to
Elizabeth. As she had brought him no fortune, it seemed ungracious in
her to refuse him that which was his own, but she thought of Hilary,
and her heart sank. Nevertheless, she signed the paper with the quill
pen that Blair cut for her with his penknife. When asking her to make
the sacrifice for him he did not insult her by any endearments; there
were certain fine points of delicacy about him which well pleased her
woman’s soul. He profoundly respected the love between them, and would
have scorned to use it directly as a means of wheedling anything out of
her. But when her name was signed, he tipped her chin up and kissed her
with ineffable tenderness.

“By heaven, my girl,” he said, “you deserve a better husband than I
have ever made you! But you could never find one that loves you half as
much.”

This gave Elizabeth a chance to air a grievance which she had been
cherishing ever since the dinner at Belfield. Mrs. Blair was an
uncommonly level-headed woman, and if any one had suggested a doubt
of her husband to her, nothing could have exceeded her righteous
resentment towards the suggestor. But there never had been a time
in all their married life that Mrs. Blair had not fancied Blair’s
admiration fixed upon some girl in the county, who nine times out of
ten bored him to death, and Mrs. Blair was always ready with a few
tears and a reproach or two on the subject of these imaginary injuries.

“Yes,” she said, withdrawing with an offended air from his encircling
arm, “you can say these things to me now, but ever since that night at
Belfield, when you never took your eyes off Sylvia Shapleigh, you have
been thinking a great deal too much about her.”

“Elizabeth,” said Blair solemnly, “you are a fool,” and then he
suddenly burst out laughing--a genuine laugh, inspired by the perfect
absurdity of the thing.

“And you won’t deny it?” asked Elizabeth, trying feebly to maintain her
position.

“Of course not,” answered Blair, becoming serious. “If you were a man
I should knock you down. As you are a woman, I can’t, but I decline
to take any notice of what you say. This is the seventeenth girl, I
believe, that you have accused me of making eyes at.”

Elizabeth condescended to smile at this, and harmony was in a fair way
to be restored between them. But after a moment Elizabeth said:

“There is something else, though, which troubled me that night. It was
at the dinner table.”

Blair knew in an instant that she meant his increased subscription to
the Jockey Club, but he asked what she meant.

“Can you ask me?” replied Elizabeth.

“The devil I can,” cried Blair, dropping at once into the ordinary,
every-day, vexed-husband’s tone. “Look here, Elizabeth, didn’t you
encourage me?”

“What could I do,” answered his wife with a piteous smile, “with
Richard Skelton looking on and pitying me?”

“And what could _I_ do, with Skelton challenging me in every tone of
his voice and look of his eye? Don’t I know that Miles Lightfoot has
got his orders to ruin me at any cost? And do you think that a man
would quietly draw out and yield the field to another man under the
circumstances? No, Elizabeth, I beat Skelton in the race for you, and
I’ll beat him again on the Campdown course. And it isn’t so hard as
you think. You know that black colt Alabaster, of old Tom Shapleigh’s?
Well, that colt is more than three fourths thoroughbred--he has a
strain of blood in him that goes straight back to Diomed. Now, that
three fourths thoroughbred can beat any thoroughbred in Skelton’s
stable; and Skelton himself said so in effect the night of that
confounded dinner, and I’m going to have that horse. I shall have him
with this money that you have enabled me to raise, and which I regard
as a gift from you.”

Blair kissed her again--he certainly knew how to express his thanks.
Elizabeth had heard the story about Alabaster and Diomed before.

“But I thought you said Mr. Shapleigh wouldn’t sell him?”

“He _shall_ sell him, by George!” cried Blair violently, and bringing
his fist down on the mantel. “Elizabeth, you can’t imagine how the
desire to own that horse has taken possession of me. You make yourself
jealous about a lot of pink-faced girls that I never looked at twice,
and, if you only knew it, your real rival is Alabaster. I swear I am
in love with that horse! I dream about him at night. I never saw such
quarters in my life--so strong, so sinewy, yet so light! And in the
daytime, as I ride by the pasture and see him roaming around, not half
attended to, it maddens me that such a creature should not be more
appreciated. If I had him I could pay off all the mortgages on this
place. I could send Hilary to school, and have a governess for Mary.
I could give you a new carriage, and, better than all, I could beat
Skelton at his own game.”

He spoke with a strange fierceness, he so debonair and full of
careless good humor. Elizabeth looked at him in amazement. In all their
fifteen years of married life she had never seen this trait in him.
He was so intense, so wrought up over the horse, that she was glad it
was only a horse that excited him. Suppose it had been one of those
pink-faced girls that Blair spoke of so contemptuously, but who liked
his dashing manners and captivating ways only too well, Mrs. Blair
thought.

“But suppose, for an instant, Mr. Shapleigh won’t sell him,” persisted
Elizabeth.

“But he _shall_ sell him!” shouted Blair for the second time. “What
does he want with him--to drive him to old lady Shapleigh’s chaise?
I assure you he talks about Sylvia’s wanting to keep the horse as a
riding horse. It made me grind my teeth. It would be cruel--yes, cruel,
Elizabeth, if I didn’t own that horse!”

Elizabeth was startled; she said nothing more about Alabaster, and
Blair went off with his hands in his pockets toward Belfield, and in
a little while she saw him leaning on the fence that divided the two
places, as the lands came together at the river, eying the black horse
that browsed about in the pasture in the late October afternoon.

The red-brown pasture-land glowed in the setting sun, and the masses
of gorgeous sumac that bordered the field made great dashes of colour
in the landscape. A worm fence divided the two plantations, and upon
this fence Blair leaned, meditatively watching the horses as they
champed about the field. Elizabeth, who was far-sighted, could see him
perfectly well, his stalwart and somewhat overgrown figure outlined
against the twilight sky. A negro boy came through the field whistling,
and singing, to drive the horses into the stable lot at Belfield. He
shied a stick at Alabaster to make him move on. At that Blair sprang
over the fence, and, seizing the boy, shook him so violently that
Elizabeth was frightened, thinking he might really be harmed by Blair
in his rage.

He came home moodily, and told Elizabeth that he believed he could kill
any creature that hurt an animal as valuable as Alabaster. Elizabeth
believed him, after what she had just seen.

Next morning Blair went over to bargain for the horse. Old Tom was
disinclined to sell, and as he talked Blair grew paler and paler. At
last old Tom declared that Sylvia might decide. He had told her the
horse was hers. He didn’t care for the money particularly, although the
horse was certainly worth a good price, and was very speedy, but if
Sylvia chose to part with him it was all right.

Sylvia, on getting a message from her father, tripped down to the
stable lot, where the two men were talking. The morning was warm and
bright, even for the bright October season, and Sylvia wore a white
dress and a large black hat. She had a wild-rose bloom in her cheek,
and was altogether uncommonly pretty that morning. Blair was usually
very observant and appreciative of women’s looks, but no woman that
lived could have taken his attention off from Alabaster at that moment.
Old Tom stated the case, and then walked away, laughing.

“You and Sylvia settle it between you,” he cried. “If she chooses to
sell him I’ll take what you offered me. If not, she wouldn’t let me
sell him for the whole of Newington plantation.”

“I wouldn’t either, if he were my property,” answered Blair, with a
smile upon his handsome ruddy face that had, however, quite a strange
look upon it.

“Now, Miss Sylvia, can’t you let me have him?” he asked, as soon as old
Tom was out of the way.

Sylvia did not at all take in Blair’s intense desire to own the horse.
“Why, Mr. Blair,” she said pettishly, “_I_ want the horse. He is a
splendid riding horse, and I have looked forward to having him for such
a long time.”

Blair threw up his hands in a kind of despair. What creatures women
were! Could they ever be made to understand the great affairs of life?
Sylvia, who was quick of apprehension, caught in a moment the look
which revealed an unsuspected turn in Blair’s character. His expression
was desperate.

“But--but--do you _want_ him very much?” suddenly asked Sylvia.

“Want him!” cried Blair. “Great God!”

Sylvia looked at him in dumb amazement. Blair’s features were
working--he seemed to be asking for something as dear to him as his own
children.

“I don’t think you know how much I want this horse,” he said, with
furious entreaty in his voice and his eyes. “This horse is worth
everything to me, and without him life itself is worth nothing to
me, because I am undoubtedly ruined unless I can get a horse to beat
Skelton’s Jaybird. Alabaster can do it. I don’t know of any other horse
that can. It is not only that I may recoup what I have lost--for I tell
you I’d risk my own soul almost on Alabaster’s coming under the wire
first with Jaybird--but there is feud between Skelton and me, feud such
as you never dreamed of. I hate him, and he hates me.”

Sylvia hesitated for a moment. Blair hung upon her words. She was
serious enough now. Her lips moved once or twice as she patted the
grass with her foot. Of course, it was all over, that childish romance
about Skelton. She was now a young woman nearly out of her twenties,
and he was nearing his fortieth birthday; and, besides, she had nothing
to do with any rivalry on the turf between him and Mr. Blair, nor did
she believe that Alabaster was as certain to carry everything before
him as Blair thought. But--but--she recoiled from being the means of a
possible defeat to Skelton. She knew well enough that there was great
feeling on both sides in these matters between Blair and Skelton, and
she knew Skelton to be unforgiving to the last degree. She raised her
clear grey eyes to Blair’s face, but the expression on it made her
turn a little pale. It was not only fiercely entreating, but it had
a menace in it. Blair, indeed, felt a savage impulse to seize this
slight creature and actually force her to let him have the horse. But
the pity that dwells in every woman’s heart now rose in Sylvia’s. She
felt so sorry for him--he had told her he would be ruined if he did not
get Alabaster; so, after a few moments, painful on both sides, Sylvia
suddenly held out her hand, and said:

“Yes, you may have him.”

Blair seized her hands and kissed them. His face changed to something
like what it usually was. Sylvia’s eyes were full of tears; she
realised that he was really ruined then, although Blair spoke of
Alabaster as destined to prevent it. Blair was so eager, that he had
to take the horse home with him. Sylvia walked slowly back to the
house through the old-fashioned garden, while Blair, in triumph, rode
home, leading his treasure. He made Hilary go with the horse to the
stable, while he went in the house. He felt the need of rest--he, this
great, strong country squire felt a nervous reaction after the singular
excitement of the morning.

“Elizabeth,” he said to his wife, “you accused me of looking at Sylvia
Shapleigh too often. Let me tell you something. I never felt an impulse
of violence towards a woman in my life until this morning. But when I
saw her standing before me so unconcerned and smiling, and making up
her mind so deliberately about the horse, I declare to you, I longed
to--to seize her and throttle her until she came to her senses and
agreed to let me have the horse. There is destiny in this. I wouldn’t
so have longed for the creature if there were not something quite out
of the usual run of events connected with him.”

Elizabeth looked at her husband and said nothing. How unintelligible is
human nature, after all! Here, this man, to whom she had been married
fifteen years, suddenly developed an intensity, a savagery, that she
had no more suspected than she suspected a whirlpool in the placid
river that began its course up in the green marshes and made its broad
and shallow way to the sea. And it came to her again and again, Suppose
it had been not a horse, but a human being that had aroused this
vehement desire of possession? It was enough to make her turn pale.

“And,” continued Blair, with a smile that had something ferocious in
it, “I shall beat Skelton again through a woman. Imagine, he might fall
in love with Sylvia Shapleigh, and then find that she had furnished me
with the means to be revenged on him! Perhaps Sylvia is in love with
him, and that’s why she didn’t want to let me have the horse.”

“But he can’t marry, you know, without giving up his wife’s fortune,
and that he would be most unlikely to do,” said Elizabeth; and she
adroitly got Blair off the subject of Skelton, and Skelton’s plans and
his horses, and horses in general, and Alabaster in particular, on to
some less exciting topic.




CHAPTER VIII.


Sylvia went back into the house, troubled in mind, and all that day
the thought followed her that she had probably brought about Skelton’s
defeat by what she had done. There was no question of a match between
Jaybird and Alabaster that autumn; but in the spring--however, much
might happen in the meantime, for so Sylvia consoled herself, and
heartily wished that Alabaster had never been seen or heard of.

There had not been much intercourse between Belfield and Deerchase in
the weeks that Skelton had been at home. He had promptly called after
the dinner, and it was understood that he intended giving a large ball
some time or other, but beyond a few of the gentlemen of the county
nobody had been entertained by Skelton at all.

Sylvia could not keep her eyes from wandering towards Deerchase, for
Skelton was a man who always aroused interest, and then her tender
woman’s heart was very soft towards Lewis Pryor.

It was generally agreed that there was a mystery about the boy, and,
for no better reason than this, his existence was ignored by the
county gentry, who paid formal visits to Deerchase, but who did not
take their sons with them if they happened to have boys of Lewis’s
age. Sylvia saw him every day--sailing his boat on the river, fishing
sometimes, or lying down under the trees with his dog--always alone.
Once or twice she met him in the road and stopped and talked with
him. The boy was won by her grace and charming manners, and admired
her shyly while answering her questions, with his black eyes fixed on
the ground. After meeting her two or three times he grew bolder, and
actually one day left at Belfield a bouquet of golden rod, with his
compliments scrawled in a large, boyish hand on a card. Mrs. Shapleigh,
passing through the hall as Lewis, blushing very much, handed the
bouquet in, seized upon it and carried it off in triumph to Sylvia.

“Just look, my dear! No doubt it came from Richard Skelton, poor
fellow! He is just eating his heart out because he can’t ask you to
marry him, but still he likes to pay you these delicate attentions.
Wild flowers, too--so much sentiment!”

“Mamma,” said Sylvia sharply, “please be reasonable. Look at this: they
are from Lewis Pryor, that black-eyed boy that is Mr. Bulstrode’s ward.”

“And not from Richard Skelton! Dear, dear! Do throw the things out,
Sylvia; they are not worth houseroom. And, my dear, there is some
mystery about that boy, and you’d better not have anything to do with
him.”

“Poor little Lewis! The only mystery that I see about him is that he is
young and lonely and wants friends. I never saw a more winning boy in
my life.”

Something in the gift touched Sylvia. She realised, with a smile, that
Lewis had probably endured agonies of bashfulness before and after
sending his bouquet. She wrote him a pretty little note, and sealed
it with a motto such as was the fashion in those days. Bob Skinny
presented the note that night at the dinner table to Lewis with a great
flourish.

“Miss Sylvia Shapleigh, sah, sont you dis heah billy-doo.” Bob Skinny
had not been to Paris for nothing, and interlarded his conversation
with such scraps of French as he could muster.

Lewis, turning very red under Skelton’s eye, opened the note and read
it, afterwards putting it into his pocket with studied carelessness.
Glancing up, he saw Skelton’s gaze, usually so serious, fixed, half
laughingly, upon him.

“You have the advantage of me, Lewis,” said Skelton, smiling; “I have
never been honoured with a note from Miss Shapleigh.”

“Perhaps, sir,” answered Lewis, after a pause, “you never sent Miss
Shapleigh any flowers.”

Skelton was secretly delighted with the aptness of the boy’s reply, and
remarked pleasantly:

“That is true. You seem, however, to have got the start of me in that
respect too.”

Lewis, for the first time in his life before Skelton’s face, burst
out laughing. Skelton started with surprise. He scarcely knew the
boy possessed a laugh so fresh, so merry, so boyish. Then, blushing
violently, Lewis relapsed into silence, but those few words and the
laugh had in some way shown him that the barrier between Skelton and
himself was not so icy after all.

Bulstrode teased the boy unceasingly about his bouquet, but Lewis was
not to be turned from his liking by teasing. Soon after the bouquet
episode he wrote a note in his best hand and carefully copied from the
Complete Letter-writer, inviting Sylvia to take a sail in his boat.
Sylvia accepted, and the next morning she was promptly on hand as the
boat touched the wharf at Belfield.

Lewis was delighted. It was his first taste of responsibility, and the
idea that this charming creature should trust herself with him in his
boat seemed to make a man of him at once. Skelton, glancing out of
the library window, saw Lewis sitting in the stern by Sylvia, who was
steering, while Service, the dog, sat between them, his paws on Lewis’s
knee.

Sylvia might have brought her whole battery of charms to bear on
Skelton with less effect than by her simple kindness to Lewis. Skelton
watched them as the boat sailed gaily past in the dazzling morning, and
something like a blessing on her stirred his heart. He did not wish to
be with them; on the contrary, he felt that he could more indulge his
pleasure at a distance than if he was present, but he felt a profound
and tender gratitude to Sylvia for her kindness to the boy. In the same
way he silently but bitterly resented Mrs. Blair’s not having once
brought or sent Hilary to Deerchase.

The next time he met Sylvia--which was when riding along the road one
afternoon--he stopped her, and she was surprised at the cordiality of
his greeting.

“My young friend Lewis Pryor seems to have the privilege of your
friendship above all of us,” he said.

Sylvia smiled, and felt like making a reply similar to Lewis’s when
Skelton asked him a question of the same sort; but she merely said that
Lewis was a very sweet boy, and the friendship of boys was apt to be
sincere and disinterested.

“And discerning,” added Skelton. “Boys are very astute. I think they
lose some of their astuteness when they get to be men.”

Young women, as a rule, did not interest Skelton; but he was drawn to
study Sylvia, first by her kindness to Lewis, and then by the oddity of
the discovery that the daughter of Mrs. Shapleigh could have so much
mother-wit as Sylvia undoubtedly had. And then, talking about trifles
as their horses stood in the sandy road, under the bare overhanging
branches of the linden trees that lined the lane, the talk drifted
to the Jockey Club. Skelton had just come from a meeting, and was
evidently much interested in the subject.

“I think everybody in the county gets a species of horse madness twice
a year,” he said, “and it is contagious. I assure you, that beast
of mine--Jaybird--takes up an unconscionable amount of my time and
attention. And, after all, that black colt which you chose to call
Alabaster may make me bite the dust.”

Sylvia could not tell whether Skelton hid any real resentment under his
careless manner or not, but an impulse seized upon her to tell him all
about it.

“You know, perhaps,” she said, looking him full in the eyes, “that
Alabaster was mine, and I hated the idea of his being whipped and
spurred as race horses are; and when papa told me that Mr. Blair
wanted him, I quite made up my mind not to part with him. But Mr. Blair
came over one morning, and I declare, I never saw such eagerness--”

Sylvia paused. She was getting upon delicate ground; but Skelton helped
her out:

“Oh, yes; Blair is a maniac upon the subject of beating my horse. He
is scarcely responsible. However, there are pleasanter things to talk
about than horse racing. You have never honoured Deerchase yet with
that visit you promised me, to look at my pictures.”

“Because, whenever I ask papa or mamma to take me, they always say you
are busy on your great book, and I must wait for an invitation.”

“You shall wait no longer,” said Skelton courteously; “come
to-morrow--come to-day.”

As they parted with a half promise on Sylvia’s part about the visit,
she cantered briskly down the lane while Skelton rode back slowly to
Deerchase. Ah, that book! He had made apologies and excuses to himself
for not writing it for fifteen years past. A desperate apprehension of
failure haunted him. Suppose all this brilliant promise should come
to naught! And it was his sole resource under any circumstances. He
was too old, and he had tasted too many pleasures, to make pleasure
an object with him any longer. Domestic life he was shut out from,
unless he chose to pay a price even more preposterous for it than
people imagined; for, although the county was not without information
regarding Skelton’s affairs, there were some particulars, peculiarly
galling to him, that only a few persons in the world knew. Skelton
was the last man on earth to submit easily to any restrictions, but
those laid upon him by the jealous fondness of the dead woman sometimes
made him grind his teeth when he thought of them. Often he would rise
from his bed in the middle of the night and walk the floor for hours,
tormented with the sense of having been robbed of his personal liberty
and of being a slave in the midst of all his power. For the late Mrs.
Skelton, who married him from the purest infatuation, so bitterly
resented the opposition of her family to her marriage with Skelton,
that she determined, even in the event of his marrying again, that
they at least should not profit by it. But in carrying out this fine
scheme a woman and three lawyers managed to create a complication that
was calculated to infuriate any man; and could she have risen from her
grave and have known the result of her handiwork, her chagrin would
have been only second to Skelton’s.

Skelton did not, for a wonder, hate his wife’s memory for this. He
was singularly just in his temperament, and he only hated the three
lawyers, who pocketed each a great fee for making a will that palpably
defeated its own object--a not uncommon occurrence. Although he had not
fully returned the passionate devotion of his wife, he had yet loved
her and felt deeply grateful to her, more for her devotion than her
money; for the secret of Mrs. Skelton’s devotion had been the knowledge
that, after all, Skelton had not married her for her money. Bulstrode
always said that Skelton married her to spite her relations. Certain
it is, the declaration of the great family to which she belonged, that
she never should marry Skelton, did more to precipitate his offer
than anything else. Afterwards his kindness to her, his delicacy, and
the conviction that he did not know how absolutely she was mistress
of her own fortune, deeply impressed her affectionate nature. In her
last illness, which came before she had been married six months, the
greed, the rapacity, the heartlessness of her own family was in marked
contrast to Skelton’s delicate reticence. He declined to talk of her
money, either to her or her lawyers; he left the room when she asked
his wishes; he could not bargain with a creature so young, so tender,
and so short a time for this world. But he reaped his reward, only with
some results that nobody ever dreamed of, and which made Skelton in
his heart denounce the whole tribe of lawyers as dolts, dunderheads,
rascals, cheats, frauds, and incapables.

But although he very much doubted whether he ever would have cared to
risk the matrimonial yoke again, it was inexpressibly irritating to him
to know that he could not, and that everybody knew he could not. He
noticed, sardonically, the manœuvring mothers and designing daughters
gave faint indications that he was not in the running; and worldly-wise
young women would be likely to be shy of his attentions, for they could
mean nothing. Skelton gave them no cause to be shy of him, but the
whole thing humiliated him. There was that charming Sylvia--so thought
Skelton, sitting in the library that afternoon with a book in his hand
which he was not reading--she entertained him vastly; but no doubt that
fool of a mother had canvassed his affairs and his status, and had put
notions in the girl’s head. He was half sorry that he had asked her
there, for to-morrow he meant to make a fair start on his book, to
which he had so far written only the introduction.

The next day Sylvia and her father came over to luncheon, Mrs.
Shapleigh being ill--to Skelton’s great joy. Bulstrode rarely came
to the table, and never when ladies were present; so there were only
Skelton and Lewis Pryor and old Tom Shapleigh and his daughter.

Lewis was delighted to see Sylvia, and showed his pleasure by shy,
adoring glances and vivid blushes whenever she smiled at him. Things
at Deerchase appeared very grand to Sylvia’s provincial eyes, but she
seemed to fit easily and gracefully into the surroundings. Skelton had
never lacked for charm, and he was impelled to do his best in his own
house. Old Tom tried to talk racing once or twice, but Skelton adroitly
headed him off. He fascinated Sylvia with his conversation. It was
thoroughly unaffected, racy, full of anecdote, and all about things
that Sylvia wanted to know. Skelton had been to Abbotsford, and had
spent some days under the great man’s roof. He had travelled post with
Byron, and had walked with Goethe in his garden at Weimar. To a girl at
that time and in that part of the world all this was a splendid dream.
Sylvia looked at Skelton with new eyes. That brown, sinewy hand had
touched Byron’s; that musical voice had talked with Scott and Goethe;
he had walked over the field of Waterloo, and knew London and Paris
like a book. Skelton was pleased and amused with Sylvia’s breathless
interest--her innocent wonder at many very simple things. Much of it
was new to Lewis, and when Sylvia turned to him and said:

“Ah, Lewis! is it not delightful?” Lewis answered:

“Yes, and it is so delightful for us to hear it together.”

Lewis was not quite conscious of the meaning of what he said, but
a roar from old Tom, and much laughter from Skelton, and Sylvia’s
retiring behind her fan, made him blush more than ever and abstain from
further communications with Sylvia.

After luncheon and the pictures, old Tom would by no means be denied
a visit to the stables and Jaybird, so Sylvia was left to the tender
mercies of Bob Skinny as cicerone, who showed her the greenhouses and
gardens. Lewis kept close to her, and plucked up spirit enough to
squeeze her hand whenever he had half a chance, and to offer to take
her out in his boat every day if she would go. Bob Skinny was in his
glory. He wore a blue coat and brass buttons, and a huge cambric ruffle
decorated with cotton lace adorned his shirt-front. If Bob Skinny had
had anything whatever to do in the way of work, this style of dress
would have been an impossibility; but as he managed to make the other
negroes do his work, while he devoted himself to answering Skelton’s
bell, to the care of his own person, and playing the “fluke,” he could
afford to be a magnificent coxcomb.

“Now, Miss Sylvy,” he began loftily, “of co’se Mr. Skelton an’ me is
got sumpin’ else ter do den to go circumventin’ roun’ dese heah flowers
an’ truck. We has got our gre’t work on philosophy ter write. Fifteen
thousan’ books in dat ar libery, Miss Sylvy; fifteen thousan’, ez sho’
as I’se Mr. Skelton’s vally--not dat I breshes his clo’s none, nor
black he boots; Jake, he do dat kin’ o’ demeanin’ work.”

“But I see you are the butler, Bob,” remarked Sylvia, thinking this an
astute bit of flattery.

“You is mistaken, miss,” answered Bob with dignified tartness. “I
is de major domo; Sam Trotter, he de butler. You see, I’se had de
adwantages o’ trabel, an’ I kin read an’ wrote, an’ play de fluke, an’
dem ’complishments is wasted in a butler; but dey is mighty fitten for
a major domo, who is quite a ’nother kind o’ pusson, Miss Sylvy.”

“So I perceive,” answered Sylvia hastily, and exchanging looks with
Lewis.

“Now, when Mr. Skelton was a-tellin’ you dem inwentions o’ his’n ’bout
Mr. Byrum an’ de Duke o’ Scott an’ Lord Gayety, he didn’ tole you dat
I wuz ’long too, an’ I done play de fluke for ev’y one of ’em; an’ dey
ev’y one ax Mr. Skelton what he would tooken for me--’kase dey doan’
hab nuttin’ but white niggers ober d’yar, an’ dey all mighty glad ter
git er cullud gent’man ter wait on ’em. But Mr. Skelton he tole de
Duke o’ Scott, ‘I wouldn’t part wid Bob Skinny for de whole o’ yo’ ole
Rabbitsford.’ Dis heah is de truf I’se tellin’ you, Miss Sylvy.”

“Of course, Bob,” remarked Sylvia affably.

“Bob,” said Lewis gravely, “tell Miss Sylvia about the Duke of
Wellington.”

“Hi, little marse, Miss Sylvy she doan’ want ter hear nuttin’ ’bout de
Duke o’ Wellington,” replied Bob, immensely flattered, but desiring to
be pressed.

“Indeed I do, Bob!” cried Sylvia, seating herself in a rustic settee
with Lewis, while Bob struck an attitude before her.

“Well, Miss Sylvy, I tell you I doan’ think much o’ de duke. He what I
call po’ white trash, ’kase he ain’ got no manners; an’ I done see de
worl’, an’ I alius knowed a gent’man when I see him. I wuz walkin’ long
in de park in London one day--dey got a gre’t place wid trees an’ grass
an’ flowers, an’ dey calls it a park--an’ I see de duke a-comin’ ’long,
walkin’ by hisse’f. He was monst’ous homely, an’ he clo’s warn’t no
better’n mine, an’ I tho’t I’d spoke ter him; so I jes’ step up, an’ I
say, ‘Sarvant, sah, I’se Mr. Skelton’s vally, from Deerchase, Virginny,
de bigges’ plantation an’ de mo’es’ niggers--’ ‘Git out o’ my way,
feller!’ says de duke, wavin’ he stick at me. I wuz gwine tell him all
’bout de Skeltons, an’ pay him my ’spects, but arter dat I didn’ tuk no
mo’ notice on’ him, dough I see him ev’y day stramanadin’ in de park.
I reckon, ef he had done listen when I say I wuz Mr. Skelton’s vally,
he’d er been ez perlite ez a dancin’ master, ’kase he mus’ ’a’ knowed
all ’bout Mr. Skelton an’ Deerchase. But, Miss Sylvy, I doan’ keer much
’bout dem gre’t folks ober d’yar. You dunno ef dey is de fust families
or not. An’ ez for dem white niggers dat waits on ’em, I wouldn’ demean
myse’f to ’sociate wid ’em under no desideratum.”

Bob Skinny then branched off into denunciation of the other negroes
at Deerchase, to whom he fancied himself as much superior as if he
were a being on a higher planet. There was war to the knife between
them naturally, which was very much heightened by Bob’s being a
“backslider.” Bob had been in the habit of “gittin’ ’ligion” regularly
once a year at the revival meetings until Skelton took him to Europe.
As the result of his “trabels” he had taken up the notion, which was
not entirely unknown among his betters, that it was more elegant and
_recherché_ to be without a religion than to have one. Consequently,
Bob returned full of infinite contempt for the Hard-shell Baptists, the
shouting Methodists, and all the other religions that flourished among
the negroes.

“You see, Miss Sylvy,” he explained argumentatively, “now I done see
de worl’ an’ kin read an’ wrote an’ play on de fluke, what I want wid
dis heah nigger ’ligion? I’se a philosopher.” Bob brought this out
magnificently. “I say ter dem niggers, ‘What is it in ’ligion? Nuttin’
’tall. What is it in philosophy? De truf, de whole truf, an’ nuttin’
but de truf.’ I ain’ seen none on ’em yit kin answer my argufyin’.”

After a while old Tom and Skelton came into the greenhouse, where Bob
was still holding forth and giving the botanical names of the plants
according to his own vernacular, but Bob shut up promptly as soon as
Skelton appeared. Sylvia’s hands were full of flowers, given her by
Lewis. The two had got very intimate now, and Lewis wore an air of
boyish triumph. It was not worth while for Skelton to offer her any
flowers if he had desired, she had so many.

They had walked over from Belfield across the bridge, and when they
started to return Skelton and Lewis walked with them, Lewis still
hanging about Sylvia, so that Skelton, who had meant to walk home with
her, was entirely thrown out. On the way they met Bulstrode lumbering
across the lawn with a book in his hand. Sylvia stopped and spoke to
him pleasantly. He remained looking after her, watching her slight
figure as she went across the bridge, still gallantly escorted by Lewis.

“I wonder if she would have jilted Skelton as Mrs. Blair did,” he
thought.




CHAPTER IX.


The days passed on quickly enough at Deerchase, but not very
satisfactorily. Skelton took eagerly to the racing scheme, and, with
a little diplomacy on each side, a match was arranged for the spring
meeting between Jaybird and Alabaster. Skelton himself did not appear
at all in the transaction; it was conducted solely between Miles
Lightfoot, the factotum, and Blair himself. With superior judgment
to Blair, Skelton did not by any means regard the match as settled;
he preferred to wait until it was run. But he took the most intense
interest in it, and the thought of paying Blair off for his folly and
presumption was agreeable enough to him. Then, this new amusement gave
him something to do, for the work that he would have done continually
eluded him. He spent many solitary hours in the great, beautiful
library with piles of books and manuscript before him, and when a
knock came at the door he was apt to be found pen in hand, as if hard
at work. But many of those solitary hours were spent in a horrible
idleness--horrible because he felt the time was slipping by and nothing
was being done.

Not even Bulstrode knew of those long days of depression, or that Miles
Lightfoot, with his swagger and his continual boasting that Blair was
to be driven off the turf altogether, was in the nature of a relief
to an overstrained mind. Miles Lightfoot was a continual offense to
Bulstrode, who was disgusted at seeing books and papers and everything
swept off the library table to make room for racing calendars and all
of Miles’s paraphernalia.

As for Lewis, his mind seemed to have taken a sudden start. He had been
thrown with Skelton as he never had been before in his life, and from a
dim wonder what Skelton’s position to him was, came another wonder as
to his own position at Deerchase.

Apparently nothing could be more fixed or agreeable. The servants
called him “little marse,” and seemed to regard him as their future
master; he had the run of the house, the stables, the gardens, and
nobody questioned his right. But Skelton was not only no relation to
him, but not even his guardian. And then he had not made friends with
any boy in the county, except Hilary Blair, and Hilary never came to
Deerchase, nor had he ever been to Newington. Indeed, as Lewis thought,
with tears starting to his eyes, the only real friend he had in the
world was Sylvia Shapleigh. Her kindness made a powerful impression
upon his affectionate nature. He loved her the more because he had
so few things to love. He sometimes determined that he would ask Mr.
Bulstrode, or perhaps even Mr. Skelton, why he had no boy friends, but
he never did it when he thought he would.

Bulstrode had taken a great interest in Mrs. Blair, partly from
curiosity about the woman who had dared to jilt Richard Skelton, and
partly from a reason connected with that preposterous will of the late
Mrs. Skelton--for Elizabeth Blair was Skelton’s only near relative.
The interest had been followed by a real esteem for her, due chiefly
to a remark made quite innocently when Bulstrode went to Newington one
evening. Mrs. Blair was teaching Hilary his Latin lesson, while Blair,
who was a university man, guyed her unmercifully as he lay stretched
out in a great chair.

“When did you learn Latin, my dear madam?” asked Bulstrode, with a
benevolent grin.

“Ah, Mr. Bulstrode, I never learned Latin at all,” answered Mrs. Blair,
with a smile and a blush; “I learned a few nouns and verbs long years
ago, and now that I must teach Hilary, I have furbished them up a
little for his benefit.”

Her modesty pleased Bulstrode, who was disgusted by any assumption of
learning.

“Now, my boy,” he said to Hilary, “do you like Latin?”

“First rate,” answered Hilary sturdily. “Like it better’n any lesson
I’ve got. Wish I could read it like you do, Mr. Bulstrode.”

Bulstrode was delighted.

“My dear Mrs. Blair,” he cried, turning to her, “you have done more
than I could do--you have made the boy like the undying language. If I
could only do that with Lewis Pryor! The boy is bright enough--bright
enough--but he wants to be reading modern histories and romances all
the time.”

Mrs. Blair coloured slightly at the mention of Lewis Pryor. She knew
all about the surreptitious friendship between the two boys, and if
Blair would have allowed it she would have had Lewis at Newington
sometimes. But Blair swore it should not be. For want of something
better to say, she asked:

“How are you all coming on at Deerchase?”

“Deuced badly,” answered Bulstrode, with candid disapproval. “Nothing
but the damnable races, morning, noon, and night. Do you know Miles
Lightfoot?”

Mrs. Blair gave a little shudder.

“Yes, I know him,” she answered.

“The fellow was born a gentleman and bred one, I hear,” continued
Bulstrode with energy, “but rides for pay in any sort of a race that he
can get a mount. I ain’t a gentleman myself, Mrs. Blair, but I know one
when I see him, and Miles Lightfoot has ceased to be a gentleman these
ten years past. Well, he’s fairly domiciled at Deerchase. He is in
charge of the Deerchase stable. Instead of Bulstrode and the library,
Skelton is all for Lightfoot and the stables. Don’t know what made our
friend Skelton take up this craze, but he’s got it, and he’s got an
object in it.”

“What is his object?” timidly asked Mrs. Blair--the boy had gone off
then with his book, and was engaged in a good-natured teasing contest
with his father. Blair’s children adored him, and thought him precisely
their own age.

“I’m dashed if I know,” cried Bulstrode, rumpling up his shock of
grizzly, unkempt hair. “But that he’s got an object-- Lord, Mrs. Blair,
did you ever know Richard Skelton to do anything without an object?”

“It has been a good many years since I knew anything of Richard
Skelton,” she said, with pretty hypocrisy; at which Bulstrode roared
out his great, vulgar, good-natured “Haw! haw! haw!”

“Mr. Blair called at Deerchase when Mr. Skelton returned, and Mr.
Skelton has paid me one visit, when he stayed exactly twenty minutes.”

But all the time her heart was beating painfully. She knew Skelton’s
object--it was, to ruin her husband. Bulstrode kept up his haw-hawing.

“You wouldn’t marry Skelton, ma’am, and you showed your sense. There
are worse men than he in the world, but if I were a woman I’d rather
marry the devil himself than Richard Skelton.”

“But he got on very well with his first wife, didn’t he?” asked Mrs.
Blair, with all a woman’s curiosity.

“O Lord, yes! She worshipped the ground he trod on. It’s the most
curious thing, the way human affairs always go contrary. Skelton,
although he is a rich man, was disinterestedly loved, because his
fortune was nothing to his wife’s--and he had no rank to give her. But
she was an Honourable in her own right. And, stranger still, I believe
he was disinterested in marrying her. I always said he did it to spite
her family. She had a lot of toploftical relations--she was related
to half the peerage and all the baronetage--and they got to hectoring
her about Skelton’s attentions, when I do assure you, madam, I don’t
think he had any notion of falling in love with her. They tried to
hector Skelton. Great powers of heaven! You can just imagine how the
scheme worked, or rather how it didn’t work!” Here Bulstrode winked
portentously. “The lady was her own mistress and could control every
stiver of her money, and one fine morning she walked off to church
and married Skelton without any marriage settlement! When it was done
and over, the great folks wanted to make friends with him, but Skelton
wouldn’t have it at all. He held his own with the best of ’em. One
secret of Skelton’s power is that he don’t give a damn for anybody.
Skelton’s a gentleman, you know. Then the poor young woman was taken
ill, and her relations got to bothering her with letters about what she
was going to do with her money. Mrs. Skelton used to try and talk to
Skelton about it--I was with him then--but he would get up and go out
of the room when she mentioned the subject. He’s a very delicate-minded
man where money is concerned. And then she sent for her lawyers, and
they made her a will, madam, which she signed, after having made some
alterations in it with her own hand. And such a will as it turned out
to be! Lord, Lord, Lord!”

Bulstrode rose and walked about the room excitedly. Mrs. Blair watched
him breathlessly. Blair had stopped his play with Hilary, and was
listening with all his ears. When the string of Bulstrode’s tongue was
unloosed he usually stopped at nothing. But now he was restrained. He
had gone as far as he dared, but he looked hard at Mrs. Blair, and said:

“You are Skelton’s nearest relative--ain’t you, madam?”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Blair, in a low voice. “I am his first cousin--and
I am the last of my family.”

“Lord, Lord, Lord!” shouted Bulstrode again, then relapsed into
silence, and suddenly burst into his great laugh. Mrs. Blair felt
uncomfortable and perplexed, and Blair got up and left the room.

Bulstrode said no more of Skelton, and went back to his grievances
about the racing, and then took up the Latin grammar again. Mrs. Blair,
who had a very just estimate of her own knowledge of Latin, had an
inordinately high one of Blair’s acquirements in that respect.

“You know, Mr. Bulstrode,” she said, “Mr. Blair is really a very fine
scholar. He was quite a distinguished Latinist when he was at William
and Mary.”

Bulstrode sniffed openly at Blair’s scholarship and William and Mary.

“Then he ought to teach your boy, ma’am. I swear, Mrs. Blair, it addles
my brain sometimes when I see the beauty and splendour of the passion
you women bestow on your husbands and children.”

Mrs. Blair’s face flushed a little, and a beautiful angry light burned
in her eyes, as it always did at the slightest implication that Blair
was not perfect.

“Luckily for me,” she said, with a little arrogant air, “my husband and
children are worthy of it. All that I know of unworthy husbands and
children is about other women’s husbands and children.”

“Yes, yes,” eagerly assented Bulstrode, and then went off again on the
subject of his grievances about Miles Lightfoot and the races, and even
that Lewis Pryor was getting too fond of the stables and stayed there
too much, and he meant to speak to Skelton about it.

Bulstrode left Mr. and Mrs. Blair under the impression that there was
some queer complication connected with the late Mrs. Skelton’s money,
with which they were mixed up, and it gave rise naturally to much
speculation on their part.

They talked it over a great deal, but they had nothing positive to go
upon. Elizabeth, womanlike, tried to dismiss it from her mind, and
the more so when she saw that Blair was deeply pondering it. At all
events, Skelton would keep his own until his death, for neither of them
believed he would marry again; and as he was not quite forty--some
years younger than Blair himself--it was idle to think too much about
what was so far in the future.

Bulstrode was as good as his word about Lewis Pryor, and the very next
day made his complaint about Lewis to Skelton.

“Send him to me,” said Skelton briefly.

In due time Lewis stood before Skelton in the library, through whose
diamond-paned windows the woods and fields glowed beautifully under the
red December sun. Skelton began in his calm, reasonable voice:

“Lewis, Mr. Bulstrode tells me that you spend most of your time with
Yellow Jack and the stablemen, instead of at your books. How is this?”

“Because, sir,” answered Lewis, “I am very fond of horses, and I’m not
doing any harm down at the stables.”

Skelton turned and faced the boy, whose tone was perfectly respectful,
but it was that of one disposed to argue the point. As Lewis’s eyes
met his, Skelton was struck by their beauty--they were so deeply, so
beautifully black, and the very same idea came into Lewis’s mind--“What
black, black eyes Mr. Skelton has!”

Skelton’s memory went back twenty-five years. How wonderfully like was
the little scamp’s coolness to his own in the bygone days, when old Tom
Shapleigh would come over to rail and bluster at him!

“At present,” continued Skelton, smiling a little, “horses and horse
racing cannot take up a great deal of your time. It is your business to
fit yourself for your manhood. You have every advantage for acquiring
the education of a gentleman. Bulstrode, with all his faults, is the
best-educated man I ever met; and, besides, it is my wish, my command,
that you shall be studious.”

“But, Mr. Skelton,” said Lewis, with strange composure, and as if
asking a simple question, “while I know you are very generous to me,
why do you command me? Mr. Bulstrode is my guardian.”

The boy’s audacity and the shock of finding that his mind had begun
to dwell on his status at Deerchase, completely staggered Skelton.
Moreover, Lewis’s composure was so inflexible, his eyes so indomitable,
that he all at once seemed to reach the mental stature of a man.
Skelton was entirely at a loss how to answer him, and for a moment the
two pairs of black eyes, so wonderfully alike, met in an earnest gaze.

“I cannot explain that to you now,” answered Skelton after a little
pause; “but I think you will see for yourself that at Deerchase I must
be obeyed. Now, in regard to your continual presence at the stables, it
must stop. I do not forbid you to go, altogether, but you must go much
less than you have been doing, and you must pay more attention to your
studies. You may go.”

Lewis went out and Skelton returned to his books. But he was strangely
shaken. That night he said to Bulstrode, after Lewis had gone to bed:

“What promise there is in the boy! I don’t mean promise of genius--God
forbid! he will write no Voices of the People at nineteen--but of great
firmness of character and clearness of intellect.”

“I don’t see why you are so down on genius,” said Bulstrode, not
without latent malice. “You were always reckoned a genius yourself.”

“That is why I would not have Lewis reckoned one mistakenly, as I
have been. There is something not altogether human about genius; it
is always a miracle. It places a man apart from his fellows. He is an
immortal among mortals. He is a man among centaurs. Give a man all the
talent he can carry, but spare him genius if you would have him happy.
There must be geniuses in the world, but let not Lewis Pryor be one of
them, nor let him--let him be falsely reckoned one!”




CHAPTER X.


The races had always been a great event in the county, but Skelton’s
presence and personal interest in them, and his large outlay upon his
stable, gave an increased zest to the sport. On Sundays the gentlemen
of the county scarcely went in church until sermon-time at all now, but
sat around on the tombstones and talked horse unflaggingly. When it
rained they gathered in the low porch of the church, and the murmur of
their voices penetrated the great doors and accompanied Mr. Conyers’s
voice during the liturgy. Mr. Conyers had conscientious scruples about
racing, as he had about everything else, and, seeing how much his
congregation was given over to it, and hearing of the large sums of
money that would change hands at the spring meeting, he took it upon
himself to preach a sermon against the cult of the horse. Skelton,
for a wonder, happened to be at church that Sunday with Lewis. As the
clergyman preached earnestly and plainly, inveighing against the state
of affairs, people had very little trouble in fitting his remarks to
certain individuals. He spoke of the wrong of men of great wealth and
personal influence throwing both in the scales of demoralising sports;
and every eye was turned on Skelton, who bore it unflinchingly and even
smilingly. His dark, well-cut face, with its high nose and firm chin,
was clearly outlined against the ridiculous purple-silk curtains of his
pew. But he did not move an eyelash under the scrutiny of the whole
congregation. When Conyers branched off, denouncing the greater folly
and wickedness of men who could ill afford it risking their all upon a
matter so full of uncertainties, chances, and cheats as racing, that
brought Blair upright in his pew. He folded his arms and glared angrily
at the preacher. No cool composure was there, but red-hot wrath,
scarcely restrained. Then it was old Tom Shapleigh’s turn. Tom was a
vestryman, and that was the handle that Conyers had against him when
he spoke of the evil example of older men who should be the pillars
of decorum, and who were connected with the church, giving themselves
over to these pernicious amusements. Old Tom was the most enthusiastic
turfite going, and, having become one of the managers of the Campdown
course, had not been to a single meeting of the vestry since that
event. But he could not have been kept away from the managers’ meeting
except by tying him. Mr. Shapleigh was in a rage within half a minute,
bustling about in his pew, and slapping his prayer-book together
angrily. But nothing could exceed Mrs. Shapleigh’s air of profound
satisfaction. “I told you so!” was written all over her face. Sylvia,
like Skelton, managed to maintain her composure. When the congregation
was dismissed and the clergyman came out among the gossiping people in
the churchyard, he was avoided more resolutely than ever, except by a
few persons. Skelton walked up promptly, and said:

“Good-morning, Conyers. You scalped me this morning, but I know it
comes from your being so unnecessarily honest. As I’ve doubled my
subscription to the club, I think it’s only fair to double it to the
church, so you may call on me.”

“Thank you,” said Conyers with real feeling, more touched by Skelton’s
magnanimity than by his money; “I see you appreciate that what I said
was from a motive of conscience.”

“Of course. It won’t damp my enthusiasm for the races, but it certainly
shall not turn me from a man as upright as yourself. Good-morning.”

Next came old Tom Shapleigh, fuming:

“Well, hello, Conyers. You made a devil of a mess of it this morning.”

“Mr. Shapleigh, you shouldn’t speak of the devil before Mr. Conyers,”
remonstrated Mrs. Shapleigh.

“I’m sure he speaks of the devil often enough before me, and of hell,
too, Mrs. Shapleigh!” roared Mr. Shapleigh. “Now, Conyers, I tell you
what: if I can’t be a vestryman and on the board of managers too, why,
begad! I’ll resign from the vestry.--See if I don’t, Mrs. Shapleigh!”

“And the bishop coming too!” groaned Mrs. Shapleigh--for the
long-expected visitation had not yet been made, but was expected
shortly.

“And if a man will go to the dogs,” shouted old Tom, growing more angry
every moment, “why, horse racing is a deuced gentlemanly road to ruin.”

“You are at liberty to think as you please, Mr. Shapleigh,” said poor
Conyers, his sallow face flushing. “I have done my duty, and I fear no
man.”

Sylvia Shapleigh at that moment put her hand in his and gave him one of
the kindest looks in the world out of her soft, expressive, grey eyes.

“You always do your duty, and you never fear any man,” she said, and
Conyers felt as if he had heard a consoling angel.

The Blairs came along on the heels of the Shapleighs. Mrs. Blair,
although usually she bitterly resented any reflection cast on Blair,
was yet secretly pleased at the clergyman’s wigging, in the vain hope
that it might do some good; so she, too, spoke to Conyers cordially and
kindly. Blair passed him with a curt nod. The Blairs proceeded to their
rickety carriage--which, however, was drawn by a pair of first-class
nags, for Blair could always afford a good horse--and went home. For
all their billing and cooing they occasionally differed, and on this
occasion they did not bill and coo at all.

Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh not only did not bill and coo on their way home,
but had a very spirited matrimonial skirmish.

“Mr. Shapleigh,” said Mrs. Shapleigh, as soon as she was settled in the
coach, “I know what I shall do, after your threat to resign from the
vestry. I shall have Mr. Conyers pray for you in church!”

Now, this was the one threat which never failed to infuriate old Tom,
because he knew Mrs. Shapleigh was fully capable of asking it, and
Conyers was fully capable of doing it. So his reply was a shout of
wrath:

“The hell you will! Very well, madam, very well. The day that Conyers
has the effrontery to pray for me, that day my subscription to his
salary stops. I’ll not be prayed for, madam--I’ll be damned if I will!
And I am a very good Churchman, but if I am prayed for in Abingdon
church, I’ll turn Baptist, and be baptized in Hunting Creek just as
soon as we have a freeze, so I can risk my life and say my wife drove
me to it. And I’ll die impenitent--see if I don’t, Mrs. Shapleigh. No,
I’ll do worse: I’ll join the Methodists and pray for _you_, madam, in
prayer meeting--damn me, that’s what I’ll do!”

This last terrible threat prevailed; for once, Mrs. Shapleigh was
beaten, and she knew it.

Blair had continued to feel an almost wild solicitude about Alabaster,
and to regard him more and more as a horse of destiny. Nothing could
shake this belief, not even when Alabaster suddenly developed in
training the most diabolical temper that could be imagined. This,
Blair professed to believe, was another guarantee of Alabaster’s speed
and endurance; he declared he had never known one of those devilish
horses that was not invincible on the race track. But here a serious
difficulty occurred. The horse, being so watched and tended by Blair
and Hilary, took the most vicious dislike towards the negro stablemen
generally, and especially the boy that was to ride him--for most of
the jockeys in that part of the world were negro boys. Hilary was the
only person that could ride him, and even then he would sometimes kick
and bite and plunge furiously; but there was no getting Hilary off a
horse’s back, as Alabaster found out. In those days in Virginia the
boys rode almost before they walked, and amused their adolescence by
riding unbroken colts barebacked.

They rode like Comanche Indians or Don Cossacks. Occasionally an
accident happened, but it was regarded in the light of falling
downstairs, or slipping upon the ice, or any other unlooked-for
dispensation.

Although Skelton and Blair hated each other and made no disguise about
it, yet it was not the fashion for gentlemen to quarrel, and so they
kept on terms scrupulously. Blair had called upon Skelton a second
time, and Skelton was waiting until after the spring race meeting was
over and Jaybird had distanced Alabaster before returning the visit.
On the occasional Sundays when they met at church, both men talked
together civilly enough in a group. Skelton had heard of Alabaster’s
sudden demoralisation, and Blair knew it; but Blair had a trump left
to play before the final game. One Sunday, soon after this, Mrs. Blair
having wheedled Blair into going to church, and Skelton happening
along, a number of gentlemen were standing about the churchyard, and
some talk about the coming match between Jaybird and Alabaster was
indulged in. The deepest interest was felt in this match, and nearly
every man in the county had something on it. Blair had so much on it,
that sometimes the thought of it drove the ruddy colour out of his
face when he was alone and in a reflective mood. And then came in
that sudden change in the horse’s temper, and Blair made up his mind
that Hilary should ride the horse. The boy was, of course, much more
intelligent than the negro jockey, and was, in fact, one of the best
riders in a county where everybody rode well. Mrs. Blair made no
objection--she saw too plainly the necessity for not throwing away a
single chance--but she was unhappy at the idea that her fresh-faced
stripling should be drawn into the vortex.

Blair mentioned this, talking with Skelton and half a dozen men
listening.

“Alabaster has got a devil of a temper,” he said frankly, “but my boy
Hilary can manage him--that is, as far as anybody can. I think Hilary
could keep him in a straight course. Of course, I don’t say he can hold
the horse--the chap’s not yet fifteen--but nobody can, for that matter.
Alabaster has a mouth of iron, and he knows what other horses don’t
know--that nobody can really hold a horse who hasn’t got a mind to be
held. But with Hilary it is simply a question of sticking on him and
heading him right, and the youngster can do that.”

“Do you apprehend any danger?” asked Skelton.

Blair laughed pleasantly, showing his white teeth.

“Well, I’d apprehend some danger for myself. I weigh a hundred and
two-and-sixty, and if the creature landed me unexpectedly in the road
it would be a pretty heavy fall; but as for the boy, why, Alabaster
could no more get rid of him than he could throw a grasshopper. I would
be perfectly willing to back Alabaster with Hilary up against Jaybird
with your young friend Lewis Pryor--that is, if you do not apprehend
any danger.”

“Done!” said Skelton calmly. He had been caught in a trap, and he knew
it; but as Blair had never hesitated to accept a challenge from him, so
he would not under any circumstances refuse a challenge from Blair. Of
course, he at once saw the drift of Blair’s remark--it was malicious,
to bring Lewis forward, and, besides, it was extremely unlikely that he
should be so good a rider as Hilary Blair. Nevertheless Skelton said:

“Lewis Pryor has not ridden barebacked ever since he was born, like
your boy, but he has been well taught in the riding schools, and he is
naturally as fine a rider as I ever saw. Jaybird isn’t vicious; it is
more intelligence than anything else in riding him. I think I can trust
Lewis farther than the negro boys that do duty here for jockeys. They
can ride very much as you say your boy can, but as for any intelligent
management of a race, why they are simply incapable of it.”

Blair did not like the comparison between Hilary and the negro jockeys,
but he, too, said:

“Done!” And Skelton added:

“Come to my house to-morrow, and we’ll arrange it.”

“No,” answered Blair stoutly. “Come to my house.”

“Certainly, if you wish,” replied Skelton courteously.

As Blair drove home with his wife through the odorous woods, already
awaking to the touch of spring although it was only February,
exultation possessed him. As for Jaybird, he had long been of the
opinion that he was a leggy, overbred beast, all looks and no bottom;
and then to be ridden by that black-eyed Pryor boy, that had learned to
ride in a riding-school--why it would simply be beer and skittles for
Hilary and Alabaster. Even if Jaybird could win the race, Lewis Pryor
couldn’t. Mrs. Blair did not wholly share these glorious expectations,
and hated the idea of Hilary having anything to do with it.

Skelton’s silent anger grew more and more, as he thought over the
pit into which Blair had dropped him. He cared nothing for the money
involved, but he cared tremendously for the issue between Blair and
himself. And then, to put Lewis up against Hilary! Skelton would
cheerfully at any moment have given half his fortune rather than Hilary
should have any triumph over Lewis. Then, like Mrs. Blair, he did not
think a precocious acquaintance with the race course a good thing for a
boy, and so he counted this stroke of Blair’s as another grudge owed to
him and assuredly to be paid off.

Bulstrode became every day more disgusted. Work on the great book had
come to a standstill. Skelton still got piles of books every month from
Europe, and stacks of letters from literary and scientific men, but
his heart and soul apparently were in the Campdown course. The whole
neighbourhood was arrayed in hostile camps on the question. Some of
the women, like Mrs. Shapleigh, openly, and Elizabeth Blair, secretly,
opposed it; but among the men, only Mr. Conyers and Bulstrode were
not enthusiastically in favour of it. Skelton persistently described
Blair’s horses as “the Newington stable,” although Blair himself
continued to allude to them deprecatingly as his “horse or two.” And
Skelton was always making inquiries into the pedigree of Blair’s
horses, which rather staggered Blair, who knew that they were not above
reproach, and that an occasional strain of good blood did not entitle
him to call them thoroughbreds. Nevertheless, this could not cure him
of his delusion that his “horse or two” would one day beat Skelton’s
very best blood and brawn.




CHAPTER XI.


In the course of time the bishop arrived upon his yearly visitation.
He was a large, handsome man, with an apostolic manner. He never
condemned; he only remonstrated, and was in himself a harmless and
well-meaning person. But he found a most unsatisfactory state of
affairs in Abingdon parish. The breach between the pastor and the flock
was so wide that, had they not been the slowest and least aggressive
people in the world, they would have long since parted company.

The bishop spent one night at the rectory, and thereafter accepted
very thankfully the lavish hospitality of the laity. The rain leaked
into the bishop’s room at the rectory, and its steady drip, drip, drip
kept him awake. The bed upon which his episcopal form reposed was very
hard, and next morning, when he peered out of his curtainless window,
he saw Mr. Conyers chopping up wood for the black cook. That was enough
for the bishop. The next day he went to Belfield, preferring Mrs.
Shapleigh’s company to the discomforts of Conyers’s meagre home.

Of course, bishop and pastor had talked about the Campdown race course,
and Mr. Conyers had been gently chided for excessive zeal. Mr. Conyers
thereupon said his conscience would not let him remain silent when he
saw the evil the matter was doing. He knew at least a dozen members
of his congregation who had become bankrupt through frequenting the
course, and he knew another one--he meant Blair, but did not speak
the name--who was on the highway to ruin. He had been grieved to see
Mr. Skelton’s immense fortune and great personal influence thrown in
the scale in favour of racing, and it was from the sincerest sense of
duty that he had preached in season and out of season against what had
become a public shame and scandal.

The bishop, in a sonorous voice but with weak reason, argued that
horse racing, although to be deplored, was not necessarily wrong. Mr.
Conyers respectfully submitted that it had proved very wrong in his
personal experience, and that he was striving to prevail against what
was obviously and palpably an evil to the community, and he could not
think it reasonable to suppose that the obvious evil to the men of
the county was balanced by the possible good to the horse. The bishop
“hemmed” and “ha’d” and beat about the bush. Then Conyers was induced,
by some foolish impulse, to impart to the bishop the doubts he had
laboured under. The bishop, who accepted all he was taught without
investigation, strongly recommended Mr. Conyers to do the same. Mr.
Conyers’s mind was unfortunately so constituted that he couldn’t do it.
On the whole, the bishop never had a more uncomfortable visit in his
life, and was sincerely glad when Mrs. Shapleigh’s carriage hove in
sight.

Mrs. Shapleigh was not insensible to the honour of entertaining a
bishop, and even confided to Mr. Shapleigh a wish that the bishop, who
was a widower of two years’ standing, might take a fancy to Sylvia, who
was only thirty years his junior.

The bishop preached the following Sunday at church, and Bulstrode
went to hear him, and took so much snuff during the sermon that the
bishop sneezed seventeen times without any intermission. The bishop,
however, had heard of Bulstrode’s great learning, and of Skelton
and all the glories of Deerchase, and he gently insinuated to Mrs.
Shapleigh that he would like to meet them. So Mrs. Shapleigh at once
sent a darky tearing across the bridge with an invitation for the next
day. The bishop spent his time at Belfield, when he was neither eating
nor sleeping, sitting in a capacious chair in the drawing-room, and
listening very gravely to Mrs. Shapleigh’s prattle.

Sylvia spent most of her time out in the boat with Lewis, in order
to get rid of the bishop, who bored her to death. Lewis told this
to Bulstrode, who repeated it to Skelton. Skelton laughed quietly.
That spirited young woman was not likely to fancy a person after the
bishop’s pattern. Nevertheless, both of these prodigies--Skelton and
Bulstrode--as Mrs. Shapleigh considered them, accepted her invitation
to dinner, and so did Conyers, whose pleasure in going to Belfield was
that Sylvia comforted and understood him.

Bulstrode was disgusted because Conyers came to dine at Belfield that
day. He had meant to wallop the bishop, figuratively speaking, but
respect for Conyers would restrain him.

Skelton was indifferent. He went because he hoped to be amused,
and because the glory of the bishop’s visit would be dimmed if
the distinguished Mr. Skelton, of Deerchase, failed to pay his
respects; and then, he found Sylvia the most interesting woman of his
acquaintance, and he wanted to see how she and the bishop got on. He
was very much diverted upon this last point. The bishop was quite
willing to overlook the thirty years’ difference in their ages, but
Miss Sylvia perversely and subtly brought it forward at every turn.

Old Tom, too, seemed bitten by a devil of contradiction, and the more
Mrs. Shapleigh tried to give the conversation at the dinner table an
evangelical turn, the more persistently old Tom talked about the races,
past and future, the coming spring meeting, the beauties and delights
of racing, and his determination, if he couldn’t be a vestryman and a
manager too, to resign from the vestry. Sylvia cast a roguish glance
at Skelton every now and then from under her eyelashes, and Skelton’s
eyes laughed back at her sympathetically. The bishop shook his head
deprecatingly at Mr. Shapleigh, but said nothing in condemnation. Out
of compliment to Skelton and Bulstrode he tried very hard to introduce
some knotty metaphysical talk, but luck was against him. Skelton
declined to enter the lists with such an antagonist, and Bulstrode
professed the most hypocritical ignorance upon every possible point of
view presented by the bishop. “Don’t know, I’m sure”--“Never heard of
it before”--“Good Gad, ask Skelton there; he reads, I don’t”--until the
bishop became so insistent that Bulstrode suddenly turned and rent him.
This very much amused Sylvia, sitting quiet and demure, playing at
eating her dinner. Then Skelton launched into talk of horses and dogs,
all very refined, very spirited, but to Conyers, watching him with sad
eyes, very painful. How could such a man waste time on such subjects?
Between horse racing and philosophy, poor Conyers had a dull time of it.

[Illustration: SYLVIA DID MUCH FOR HERSELF ... BY THAT SPEECH.

--_Page 139_]

The bishop, however, although he was lamentably deficient in the
philosophy learned out of books, was nevertheless an excellent
philosopher in action, and ate a very good dinner in much comfort,
without disturbing himself about either the principles or the practices
of his neighbours. After dinner Skelton went up to Sylvia in a corner
of the drawing-room, and said in a low voice:

“How have you stood him?”

“Dreadfully ill, I am afraid,” answered Sylvia, hopelessly. “If it
hadn’t been for little Lewis and his boat, I should have gone mad in
these last few days.”

Skelton’s eyes kindled. “How fond that boy is of you!”

“How can one help being fond of him? He is so manly, so intelligent,
so affectionate!” Without knowing it Sylvia did much for herself in
Skelton’s regard by that speech.

Mrs. Shapleigh insisted that Sylvia should play on the guitar for the
bishop. Sylvia began to tune it, but two strings snapped in succession.
Skelton then offered to string it for her, but then the new strings
snapped. Sylvia shot him a grateful glance, as the guitar was laid
away. Mrs. Shapleigh expressed to the bishop, and everybody else, her
regret that the bishop couldn’t have heard Sylvia sing. When she said
so to Bulstrode, he remarked in an audible growl:

“Drat the bishop!”

The reverend gentleman was luckily deaf to this, and Skelton
immediately rose to go, with a wicked smile at Sylvia, who, in her
way, seemed to lack for appreciation of her mother’s ecclesiastical
idol quite as much as Bulstrode. When Skelton was back at Deerchase
that night he thought Sylvia one of the most winning girls he had
ever met. But then, he could not admire a charming girl as other men
could. He was bound hand and foot. This idea threw him in one of his
silent rages, and he walked the library floor for a long time, railing
inwardly at Fate.




CHAPTER XII.


Skelton was naturally far from pleased at having to stultify himself
with Lewis by allowing him the full liberty of the stables, when he had
strictly forbidden it. But there was no help for it after having fallen
into what he considered the clumsy trap set for him by Blair. He was at
great trouble to explain the whole thing to Lewis, when he sent for the
boy in the library, to talk it over, and Lewis, whose wit was nimble
enough, understood in a moment. Boy-like, he was delighted. He saw
himself, the cynosure of all eyes, coming in a winner by an impossible
number of lengths, with the men hurrahing, the ladies waving their
handkerchiefs, and Sylvia Shapleigh handing him a bouquet before all
the crowd of people. He hoped Mrs. Blair would not be there, though, to
see Hilary’s downfall. Skelton explained everything to him carefully,
took him to the stables, and himself watched him every day when he
exercised Jaybird around the half-mile track on the Deerchase land,
back of the stables.

Another reason why Skelton was not pleased at the notion of having
Lewis in the race was that he was afraid the boy would acquire a
fondness for the sport, and he talked to him very seriously upon the
subject, and told him that this first experience would no doubt be his
last of the kind. As it had been during the time Skelton was teaching
him to manage the boat, the two were thrown together much, and Lewis
took the same strange pleasure in Skelton’s company as before.

Bulstrode was not at all pleased with the arrangement, and became
suddenly very strict and exacted a great deal of work from Lewis with
his books. Lewis did the work, putting his mind to it very steadily,
for fear Bulstrode would complain to Skelton, and then Skelton might
not let him ride in the race, after all. Bulstrode was opposed to the
whole thing. If Lewis lost the race he should be sorry, because he
loved the boy; and if Hilary Blair lost it--good heavens! What would
become of that dear Mrs. Blair, with her soft eyes and her sweet,
ridiculous Latin?

Bulstrode was talking about this one day, in his own den, to Lewis.
This was the only shabby spot at Deerchase. It was smoky and snuffy
to the last degree, and full of that comfortable untidiness which
marks a man of books. However, here were only a few battered volumes,
that contrasted strangely with Skelton’s magnificent array down in
the library, which lined one vast room and overflowed into another.
This contrast always tickled Bulstrode immensely, who had a way of
calling attention to it, and then tapping his head, saying, “Here’s my
library.” And there it was indeed.

Lewis was balancing himself on the wide window seat, which was about
twenty feet from the ground, and, after the manner of boys, trying to
see how far he could lean out without tumbling over and breaking his
neck.

Nevertheless, he was listening very closely to Bulstrode, whose
attention was divided. He was, all at once, pursuing the thread of his
own thoughts, saving Lewis from tumbling out, and blowing smoke through
the open window. It was one of the peculiarly bright, cloudless March
days that come in that latitude.

Everything on the plantation was full of the activity of spring. The
great wheat fields in the distance showed a faint green upon the
surface, although only the tenderest points of the wheat had pushed
through the rich black earth. The woods were enveloped in a soft,
green-grey haze, and the delicious smell of the newly ploughed ground
was in the air. Afar off they could hear faintly the voices of the
multitudes of black labourers, singing and laughing and chattering,
as they drove the ploughs merrily. The thrushes and the blackbirds
rioted musically in the trees, and a profligate robin roystered in a
branch of the tall silver beech that grew directly under the window.
The lawn was freshly and perfectly green, and the gravel walks were
being lazily rolled by Sam Trotter, who was Bob Skinny’s coadjutor. The
river was always beautiful, and the sun had turned it to molten gold.
The great, dull, red-brick house, with its quaint peaks and gables,
and the beautifully designed wings which had been added by Skelton,
showed charmingly against the background of noble trees and the hedge
of giant cedars which marked the pleasure grounds. A peacock sunned
himself proudly on the stone steps which led down from the plateau on
which the house stood, while on the marble porch, directly facing the
peacock, stood Bob Skinny, superb in his blue coat and brass buttons
and enormous shirt-ruffle, eying the peacock while the peacock eyed
him. Neither one of them had anything better to do, although Bob
occasionally called out a command to Sam Trotter about the way he was
doing his work, which Sam received in contemptuous silence.

Bulstrode was rather insusceptible to the charm of Nature and still
life, but even he was deeply impressed with the beauty and plenty of
the scene around him. Lewis felt it in the joyous, exhilarating way
that young creatures feel pleasure before they have learned to think.
He felt that it was good to live.

Bulstrode was in his usual communicative mood.

After denouncing horse racing as a foolish and inconsequent sport
in general, he began to give his views about the Campdown races in
particular.

“Human nature is a queer thing,” said he to Lewis--he called it
“natur’.” “Here are these races the whole county is mad about. You
think it’s a comedy, hey, boy? Well, it’s not. It’s a tragedy--a
tragedy, d’ye understand?”

“There seems to be a fight over it all around,” said Lewis, who was
alive to everything. “The parson’s against it. He’s a good man--ain’t
he, Mr. Bulstrode?”

“Yes, by Heaven he is!” cried Bulstrode, taking a huge pinch of snuff.
“And let me tell you, I fear that man, just as I fear and reverence a
good woman, not on account of his brains, although they are fairly
good, but because of his superlative honesty. As for that lunkhead of
a bishop, I protest he is wearisome to me. Mrs. Blair--Heaven bless
her!--beguiled me into going to hear the creetur’ preach”--Bulstrode
never could get such words as “creature” and “nature” and “figure”
right--“and, upon my soul, I never heard such a farrago since God
made me. He attempts to reason, the creetur’ does, and talks about
ecclesiastical history, and he’s got a smattering of what he calls
theology and canon law. Lord help the fools in this world! For every
fool that dies two are born.”

Lewis was accustomed to hearing bishops spoken of disrespectfully, and
therefore took no exception to it.

“Mr. Shapleigh says,” he continued, after another effort to see how far
he could get out of the window without falling and breaking his neck,
“Mr. Shapleigh says the bishop thinks Mr. Conyers has gone too far in
opposing the races.”

Here Lewis nearly succeeded in tumbling out, and Bulstrode caught him
by the leg in the nick of time.

“God bless the boy! can’t you keep quiet half a minute? Of course he
has, to please that old fool, with his defective quantities and his
notion that he is the wisest man that ever lived. However, when I went
to hear that precious sermon I sat right under the creetur’, flapping
about the pulpit in his white nightgown, and I took snuff until I
nearly made him sneeze his head off. The day I was asked to dinner with
him by that damned Mrs. Shapleigh, the ass sought me out--he’d heard
something of Mr. Bulstrode! Ha! ha! He began talking what he thought
was philosophy, and he doesn’t know a syllogism from a churn-dasher,
so I couldn’t but trip him up. I thought it wasn’t worth while to
try him with anything that wasn’t rudimentary, so I said to him, ‘Do
you believe in the Aristotelian system?’ It seems he’d heard of old
Aristotle somewhere or other, so he says, smirking and mighty polite:
‘Of course, I admit the soundness of it, Mr. Bulstrode.’ ‘And,’ said
I very crossly, ‘I suppose you believe in a revealed religion, don’t
you?’ ‘O--w!’ says the bishop, exactly as if I had stuck a pin in him.
‘My cloth, sir, is answer enough to that.’ Then I remarked: ‘You’ve got
to accept Thomas Aquinas too--for if ever a bridge was made between
natural and revealed religion, old Thomas has made it.’ You ought
to have seen his countenance then. It shut him up for at least five
minutes, during which he never opened his mouth except to put something
in it. Then he began to tell me some rigmarole about Anglican theology,
and I banged my fist down on the table, and said, ‘_Who consecrated
Parker?_ Answer me that.’” Bulstrode shouted rather than said this, his
recollection of the bishop’s discomfiture was so keen. “I know Mrs.
Shapleigh said I behaved like an old ruffian to the bishop, but, dang
me, the bishop’s an ass!”

“I believe you think everybody’s an ass except the good folks,” said
Lewis.

“I believe I do,” answered Bulstrode, taking another gigantic pinch of
snuff. “But I told you there was a tragedy about those Campdown races,
and so there is. Now, this is it. Skelton has made up his mind to ruin
Blair. He needn’t trouble himself--Blair will do the work fast enough
without anybody’s help. But our respected friend and benefactor means
to have a hand in it. That’s the meaning of the money he is pouring
out like water, and that’s why Blair is making such a fight. But that
poor wife of his--Lewis, Lewis, if you win that match you’ll stab that
gentle creature to the heart!”

Lewis gazed at Bulstrode with wide-open eyes. He was naturally tender
and reverent to women, and the idea of inflicting pain upon any one of
them was hateful to him. All at once the pleasure in the race seemed to
vanish. What pleasure could it be when he came galloping in ahead, if
poor Mrs. Blair were ruined and wretched and broken-hearted? He stopped
his acrobatic performances and sat quite still in the window, looking
sadly into Bulstrode’s face.

“Will it make Mrs. Blair _very_ unhappy if Jaybird wins?” he asked.

“Unhappy! It will drive Blair to the wall absolutely. He has acted like
a madman all through. He has borrowed every penny he could lay his
hands on to put on that black horse of his. Blair is a study to me. He
is the most practical man in making money and the most unpractical man
in getting rid of it I ever saw. Why, he makes more actual profit out
of that place, Newington, than Skelton does out of Deerchase. Old Tom
Shapleigh says he is the best farmer, stock-raiser, manager of negroes
in the State of Virginia. If he could be driven from the turf he would
be a rich man in ten years. But he’s got that racing vampire fixed
upon him. God help his wife and children!”

This made Lewis very unhappy. He went about haunted with the feeling
that he was Mrs. Blair’s enemy. He began to hate the idea of the race
as much as he had once been captivated by it. This was not lost on
Skelton.

Before that, the two boys had showed much elation over their
coming prominence at the race meeting. When they met they assumed
great knowingness in discussing turf matters, which they only half
understood, and put on mannish airs to each other. Instead of “Lewis”
and “Hilary,” as it had once been, it became “Pryor” and “Blair.” But
afterward Hilary was surprised to find a great want of enthusiasm
in Lewis. He spoke of it to his father, and Blair at once fancied
that Lewis had shown the white feather. He told it triumphantly
to Elizabeth, and adduced it as another proof that he had a “sure
thing.” Elizabeth, though, was not so confident. She had seen too many
disappointments come of Blair’s “sure things.”

Skelton had not intended to return Blair’s last visit until after the
race meeting, but the conviction that Blair would lose the race induced
him to go over one day in the early spring to pay a visit, thinking it
would be very painful to seek Blair out in defeat. So he drove over
in his stylish curricle. Hilary met him at the door of the Newington
house, and Skelton mentally compared him to Lewis Pryor, much to
Lewis’s advantage. Skelton, though, scarcely did Hilary justice. The
boy had his father’s physique and Blair’s wide mouth and white teeth,
and also a great many freckles; but he had his mother’s charming
expression. He escorted Skelton within the house.

Blair at once appeared, and with much apparent cordiality led the way
into the old-fashioned drawing-room, where Elizabeth sat sewing, with
little Mary at her knee. An Arab hospitality prevailed among these
people, and enemies were welcomed at each other’s houses.

They talked together very amicably without once mentioning the subject
which was uppermost in all their minds, until suddenly Hilary, with
that maladroit ingenuity of which boys seem peculiarly possessed, asked
suddenly:

“Mr. Skelton, how’s Lewis Pryor coming on with Jaybird?”

“Admirably,” responded Skelton with the utmost coolness.

Blair had turned red, while Elizabeth had grown pale. Only little Mary
sat and sewed unconcernedly.

“I think,” said Elizabeth, after an awkward pause, and expressing the
first idea that came into her mind, “it is the last race I will ever
consent to let Hilary ride. I don’t think it does boys any good to
interest them in such things.”

Here was an opportunity for Skelton to hit back for Blair’s sneer at
Lewis Pryor when the match was first arranged.

“If you have the slightest objection to it,” he said blandly, “speak
only one word and it is off. I need not say to you that I should regard
the forfeit as nothing, and even give up the pleasure of seeing my
horse matched against Mr. Blair’s, rather than give you one moment’s
pain.”

“Ah, no,” cried Elizabeth--she had taken fire at Skelton’s tone, and
hastened to redeem herself from the humiliation of trying to get out of
it.

Blair simply glared at her. He thought Elizabeth had lost her senses;
and before she could utter another word, he said, with a kind of savage
coolness: “Certainly not. But if you think that your--young ward, is
he--?”

“Lewis Pryor is not my ward, he is Mr. Bulstrode’s,” responded Skelton,
without the slightest change of tone. But there was a flush rising in
his dark face. Blair managed to convey, subtly, a contempt of the boy,
which was to Skelton the most infuriating thing under heaven.

“Very well, then, whatever he is; if you feel any doubts of his ability
to manage a horse--”

“I don’t feel the slightest doubt,” answered Skelton, the flush
mounting higher and showing dully through his olive skin. “It is a pity
that this young gentleman should have started the one subject that
we cannot discuss. It is difficult to teach a boy tact--impossible,
almost, for when they are tactful it is born with them.”

This, delivered in Skelton’s graceful manner, left the impression upon
the mind of Blair and his wife that Skelton had very artfully called
their boy a lout. However, he then turned his attention to little Mary,
the childish image of her mother. Mary answered his questions correctly
and demurely, and presently startled them by asking when Mr. Lewis
Pryor was coming over to give her a ride on his pony.

The child had met him riding about the roads and at church, and they
had struck up an acquaintance, with the result of this promise. But
as Lewis had never been to Newington, and, in fact, had never been
asked, this increased the prevailing discomfort. Skelton, though, with
elaborate ease, promised to find out from Lewis and let her know.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Blair took any part in the discussion, and they
altogether ignored Lewis’s existence. All the ingenuity in the world
could not have devised anything more galling to Skelton.

Then, Blair seemed not to be able to keep off the question of the races
again, although no mention was made of the especial match between
them. Elizabeth listened with an aching heart. What a trifle it was to
Skelton, while to them it was the most tremendous event in the world.
It might mean the turning of herself and Blair and her children out
of house and home. But she gave no sign of this inward fear, speaking
lightly, although she had a horrible feeling that Skelton knew how
hollow their pretence was--that the money Blair had risked might
have to be got by some occult means, for not another penny could be
raised upon Newington. Presently Skelton rose and said good-by, Blair
seeing him to the door and watching him as he stepped lightly into his
curricle. Then Blair came back like a criminal to his wife.

But Elizabeth had no reproaches to make. She was fluent enough when her
feelings were not deeply touched, but under the influence of profound
emotion she became perfectly silent. She was inapt at reproaches too;
but Blair would cheerfully have preferred even the extraordinary
wiggings that Mrs. Shapleigh gave her husband to the still and
heart-breaking reproof of Elizabeth’s despairing, wordless look. He
walked about the room for a few moments, while Elizabeth, with her work
dropping from her listless hand, sat in fixed sadness.

“By Jupiter, the horse _must_ win!” he cried excitedly, after a moment.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth, don’t look at me in that way!”

Elizabeth made a desperate effort to rally.

“How can I accuse you,” she said, “when I, too, am a coward before
Richard Skelton? I ought to say: ‘We are desperately poor and in
debt--we can’t afford to risk anything, no matter how promising the
chances are, because we have nothing to risk. We are living now upon
our creditors.’ Instead of that, I sit by and smile and say I have no
fear, and profess to be willing. I am the greatest coward in the world.
One word, just now, and the whole thing would have been off--but I did
not say it. No, I am as much to blame in this as you are.”

Skelton, driving home, concluded he would stop at Belfield. He was
inwardly raging, as he always was at any slight upon Lewis Pryor. There
was he, Mr. Skelton, of Deerchase, supposed to be the richest and most
powerful man in the county, and yet he could not get a single family
to recognise that boy--except at Belfield. Just as he was turning this
over bitterly in his mind, he drove up to the door of the Belfield
house. It was yet in the bright forenoon.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh were at home. Skelton only stayed a few
minutes, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Sylvia and Lewis
Pryor sitting together in the little summerhouse on the bridge across
the creek that separated the two plantations. Skelton rose.

“I see Miss Shapleigh on the bridge, and if you will excuse me I will
say good-day to you and join her.”

Old Tom was excessively surprised.

“Why,” said he, “you are paying us a monstrous short visit! I thought
you had come especially to see me.”

“Not at all,” said Skelton, “I called to pay my respects to the
ladies,” and, with a bow, he walked out, and they saw him cross the
lawn and follow the bridge to the summerhouse.

“There, now, Mr. Shapleigh!” exclaimed Mrs. Shapleigh triumphantly,
“wasn’t I a long-headed woman, to have that summerhouse built eighteen
years ago for Richard Skelton and Sylvia to make love in?”

“It’s the first time they’ve ever been in it since it was built, ma’am.”

“Well, everything has to have a beginning, Mr. Shapleigh, though, of
course, I know he never can marry my poor, beautiful girl.”

“Yes, he can, Mrs. Shapleigh. If he chooses to pay several hundred
thousand dollars for her, he can.”

“Mr. Shapleigh, you talk very foolishly. What man alive, do you think,
would pay that much to marry any woman? Though I will say, if any woman
is worth it, Sylvia is the one, and she’s not half as good-looking as I
was at her age, either.”

“True, madam. But if one had half a million dollars to buy a wife with,
he might have a good, long hunt before he found a woman like you, my
own love.”

“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, are you joking?”

“I can’t hear you, my sweet,” responded Mr. Shapleigh cheerfully.
“Every day I seem to get deafer and deafer, particularly to your voice.”

“I notice you can hear some things well enough. When I say, ‘Mr.
Shapleigh, we’ve got wild ducks for dinner to-day,’ you can hear as
well as I can. And when I say, ‘Mr. Shapleigh, the moths have made
ravages in the carpets,’ you always think I’m talking about cabbages in
the garden, or something a thousand miles off. You ought to be treated
for your deafness and have it cured.”

“Don’t want to have it cured, ma’am.”

Meanwhile, Skelton had joined Sylvia and Lewis in the summerhouse,
which had been built expressly to harbour those two first named, but
which, as Mr. Shapleigh truly said, had never held them together in
their lives.

Lewis was rather pleased at Skelton’s arrival. He fancied a kind of
rivalry between Skelton and himself with Sylvia, and was immensely
delighted at the notion of letting Skelton see how well he stood in
Sylvia’s good graces. Sylvia, too, was not insensible to the honour
of Skelton’s company, and sometimes wondered if--if--her surmises
here became totally confused; but Skelton was undoubtedly the most
charming man she had ever known, and a woman of Sylvia’s intelligence
was peculiarly sensitive to his charm. On Skelton’s part, he felt
profoundly grateful towards anybody who was kind to Lewis Pryor, and
nothing could have brought Sylvia’s attractions more seductively
before him than her kindness to the boy.

Sylvia and Skelton grew so very friendly that Lewis, feeling himself
slighted, stiffly said good-morning, and went back to Deerchase, when
he got in his boat and sailed straight down the river, past Lone Point,
and did not get back until the afternoon.

Left alone together, the man and the woman suddenly felt a sensation
of intimacy. It was as if they had taken up again that thread which
had been broken off so many years ago. Skelton pointed to the spot on
the shore where she had said good-bye to him on that gusty September
evening.

“There was where you kissed me,” he said. At this Sylvia coloured
deeply and beautifully and took refuge in levity, but the colour
did not die out of her face, and Skelton noticed that her eyelids
fluttered. She was such a very innocent creature, that, in spite of her
cleverness, he could read her like a book.

Something impelled him to speak to her of Elizabeth Blair. “Good God!”
he said, “that any human being should have the power to inflict the
suffering on another that that woman inflicted on me nearly twenty
years ago! And every time Conyers preaches about blessings in disguise
I always think of that prime folly of my youth. Elizabeth Blair is good
and lovely, but how wretched we should have been together. So I forgive
her!” He did not say he forgave Blair.

Sylvia looked at him gravely and sympathetically. Skelton was smiling;
he treated his past agonies with much contempt. But women never feel
contempt for the sufferings of the heart, and listen with delight to
that story of love, which is to them ever new and ever enchanting.

“How charming it must be to have had a great romance,” said Sylvia,
half laughing and yet wholly earnest--“one of those tremendous
passions, you know, that teaches one all one can know! I am afraid I
shall never have one, unless dear little Lewis comes to the rescue.”

“You will know it one day, and that without Lewis,” answered Skelton.
“Some women are formed for grand passions, just as men come into the
world with aptitude for great affairs.”

“But how can I know it--here?” asked Sylvia impatiently. “See how
circumscribed our lives are! I never knew it until lately, and then it
came home to me, as it does every day, that the great, wide, beautiful,
exciting world is not as far removed as another planet, which I used to
fancy. But when I want to see the world, papa and mamma tell me they
will take me to the Springs! That’s not the world. It is only a little
piece of this county picked up and put down in another county.”

Skelton was sitting on the bench by her. He watched her lovely,
dissatisfied eyes as they glanced impatiently and contemptuously on the
still and beautiful scene. Yes, it would be something to teach this
woman how much there was beyond the mere beauty and plenty and ease of
a country life in a remote provincial place. Sylvia caught his eyes
fixed on her so searchingly that she coloured again--the blood that
morning was perpetually playing hide and seek in her cheeks.

Skelton went on in a strain rather calculated to foster than to soothe
her impatience. He saw at once that he could produce almost any effect
he wanted upon her, and that is a power with which men and women are
seldom forbearing. Certainly Skelton was not. He loved power better
than anything on earth, and the conquest of a woman worth conquering
gave him infinite pleasure.

He felt this intoxication of power as he watched Sylvia. Although he
was not a vain man, he could almost have fixed the instant when she,
who had been long trembling on the brink of falling in love with him,
suddenly lost her balance. They had sat in the summerhouse a long time,
although it seemed short to them. Their voices unconsciously dropped to
a low key, and there were eloquent stretches of silence between them.
The noon was gone, and they heard the faint sound of the bugle calling
the hands to work in the fields after the midday rest. Sylvia started,
and rose as if to go. Skelton, without moving, looked at her with a
strange expression of command in his eyes. He touched the tips of her
fingers lightly, and that touch brought her back instantly to his side.

The secret contempt that a commonplace man feels for a woman who falls
in love with him comes from a secret conviction that he is not worthy
of it, however blatant his vanity and self-love may be. But Skelton,
the proudest but the least vain of men, was instinctively conscious
that a woman who fell in love with him was really in love with certain
great and commanding qualities he had. His self-love spoke the language
of common sense to him. He did not give up the fight so quickly and
conclusively as the younger and more impressionable Sylvia did.
Knowing of a great stumbling block in his way, he had guarded himself
against vague, sweet fancies. But Skelton was too wise a man not to
know that when the master passion appeared and said “Lo, I am here!” he
is not to be dismissed like a lackey, but, willingly or unwillingly, he
must be entertained. The great passions are all unmannerly. They come
at inconvenient seasons without asking leave, and the master of the
house must give place to these mighty and commanding guests. Women meet
them obsequiously at the door; men remain to be sought by these lordly
visitors, but do not thereby escape.

As Skelton felt more and more the charm of Sylvia’s sweetness, the
ineffable flattery of her passion for him, a furious dissatisfaction
began to work in him. If only he were placed like other men! But if
he should love, the only way he could satisfy it would be by endowing
the Blairs, whom he hated from his soul, with all his dead wife’s vast
fortune, or else proclaiming a certain thing about Lewis Pryor that
would indeed make him rich, but make him also to be despised. Neither
of these things could he bear to think of then. He was not yet so
subjugated that pride and revenge could be displaced at once. But still
he could not drag himself away from Sylvia. It was Sylvia, in the end,
who broke away from him. She glanced at a little watch she wore, and a
flood of colour poured into her face. She looked so guilty that Skelton
smiled, but it was rather a melancholy smile. He thought that they were
like two fair ships driven against each other to their destruction by
vagabond winds and contrary tides.




CHAPTER XIII.


Every circumstance connected with the coming race meeting disgusted
Bulstrode more and more. One night, sitting over the walnuts and the
wine in the dining-room at Deerchase with Skelton and Lewis, Bulstrode
gave vent to his dissatisfaction. He did not always dine with Skelton,
and, indeed, when Bob Skinny’s emissary came to his door to say that
dinner was served, Bulstrode would generally answer: “Oh, hang dinner!
I had a chop in the middle of the day, and I’ll be shot if I’ll sit for
two hours with Skelton over a lot of French kickshaws, with him looking
superciliously at me every time I touch the decanter.” Bob Skinny
would translate this message as follows: “Mr. Bulstrode, he present he
compliments, sah, an’ he say, ef you will have de circumlocution to
excuse him, he done had he dinner.”

Lewis, though, always dined with Skelton and enjoyed it. Skelton was
at his best at dinner, and would sometimes exert himself to please
the boy, whose tastes were singularly like his own. Lewis liked the
exquisitely appointed table, the sight of the flowers upon it, the
subtile air of luxury pervading the whole. He liked to lie back in his
chair, making his one small glass of sherry last as long as he could,
looking out upon the black clumps of the shrubbery that loomed large
in the purple twilight, listening to the soft, melodious ripple of the
broad river, and to Skelton’s musical voice as he talked. It always
vexed him when Miles Lightfoot was of the party, who was, however,
under a good deal of restraint in Skelton’s presence.

On this particular evening, though, Bulstrode was dining with Skelton
and Lewis. The room was dim, for all the wax candles in the world
could not light it brilliantly, and it was odorous with the scent of
the blossoms of a dogwood tree that bloomed outside, and even thrust
their bold, pretty faces almost through the window. But Bulstrode was
undeniably cross, and uncomfortably attentive to the decanters.

“And how did Jaybird do to-day, Lewis?” asked Skelton; but before Lewis
could answer, Bulstrode burst out:

“Jaybird go to perdition! Every time I think of him I remember that if
the horse wins that race, Blair will be a ruined man. That is, he is
more than half ruined already, but that will finish him.”

“I shall be sorry, but I can’t see how anybody but Blair can be held
responsible,” answered Skelton calmly. “If a man who can’t afford it
_will_ follow horse racing, and if he _will_ put up a scrub against
a thoroughbred, why, there’s no stopping him; that man has an inbred
folly that must bring him to ruin some time or other. I don’t think
this race, or any race especially, will effect the result. Blair has a
passion for gambling on the turf, and that will ruin any man.”

Lewis listened to this with a troubled face. Skelton’s eyes saw it,
and he felt angry with Bulstrode for putting such things into the
boy’s head. And besides, Lewis was only fifteen, and suppose his
feelings should be worked upon to the extent that he should be guilty
of the enormity of “pulling” the race? Skelton hastened to change the
conversation.

The dinner was shorter than usual that night, and Lewis had to gulp
down the last half of his glass of wine rather hurriedly. Skelton went
off as usual to a corner of the square stone porch and smoked steadily.
To his surprise, Bulstrode followed him and sat down on a bench. After
a while Bulstrode began, argumentatively:

“I don’t see why you want to drive Blair to the wall.”

Skelton took his cigar from his lips, and was silent with astonishment.
Bulstrode never presumed to force himself into Skelton’s private
affairs that way.

“And,” continued Bulstrode, with his rich, beautiful voice full of
tears, “he has that sweet and charming wife. Good God! Skelton, you
must have a heart of stone!”

Skelton’s impulse was to pick up a chair and brain Bulstrode on the
spot, but instead, he only said coldly:

“You have been drinking, Bulstrode. You can’t let a decanter pass you.”

“Yes, I’ve been drinking,” cried Bulstrode, with a frank laugh; “but
you know yourself I’m a much better and braver man drunk than sober.
When I’m sober I’m cowed by that devilish cool gentlemanliness of
yours; but when I’ve had a bottle of port I’m as good a man as you,
Skelton; and I see that you will never be happy until you have made
Blair the wretchedest man alive. Come, now. You’ve got lashings of
money. Blair is as poor as a church mouse. You have got everything on
earth.”

Skelton had risen during this, and could scarcely keep his hands off
Bulstrode where he sat; but it was grotesque enough that he could not
make Bulstrode hold his tongue. He could only say between his teeth:

“Drunken dog!”

Bulstrode rose too at that, with a kind of dogged courage. “I am a
drunken dog, I am!” he said; “but I am Wat Bulstrode, too; don’t forget
that. Don’t forget that I know a great deal more out of books than you
do. Don’t forget that you could hardly get another man who could fill
my place. Don’t forget that I am more to you than all those thousands
of volumes you’ve got in yonder. Don’t forget that I am Lewis Pryor’s
guardian until he is one and twenty. You may regret that fact, but you
can’t alter it. And, more than all--let me tell you--_I_ know all the
very curious provisions of your wife’s will. You never condescended
to ask me to keep silence, and I made you no promise. Drunken dog,
indeed! And I could tell that which would turn this county bottom
upwards! Suppose I were to tell Mrs. Blair to make herself easy; that
those fools of lawyers made it so that one day, whether you die or
marry, everything that was your wife’s goes to your heirs--and she is
your heir, because you’ve got no other relations. And Lewis Pryor--ah,
Skelton, how many clever men overreach themselves! I know, too, that
so bunglingly did these legal fools their work, that if you could prove
that you had a son at the time of your wife’s death, he would get the
fortune. That fate was so desperately at work against common sense,
that they forgot to put in whether he should be entitled to your name
or not. But so cleverly have you made it appear that Lewis Pryor is the
son of that lanky, sandy-haired tutor, that maybe you would have a hard
time unravelling your own web. And so you think me a drunken dog, hey?
All this I tell you is as clear as a bell in my--drunken mind, as you
would call it.”

Skelton’s face had turned blue with rage while Bulstrode was speaking;
but there was no way to make him stop, except pounding him with the
chair. And then, Skelton wanted to find out how much Bulstrode really
knew. Yes, he knew it all. Well might Skelton hate Blair and pursue his
ruin. Either the Blairs must happen, by the most fortuitous accident,
to fall into a great fortune at his death, or else the stigma that he
had so carefully removed, as far as the world knew, from Lewis must
be published in two countries. Fury and dismay kept him silent, but
Bulstrode actually quailed under his eye when once Skelton had fixed it
on him. Skelton spoke after a little pause:

“Your knowledge is entirely correct; and more, you are at liberty to
proclaim it to the world any day you feel like it. The extraordinary
part of it is that some wretch, as loose of tongue as you, has not
by this time done so. It is a wonder that some creature, inspired
by gratuitous ill-will towards that innocent boy, has not already
published his shame. But the world, that is so forgiving and gentle
to me, is already arrayed against him. The people in this county, for
example, who seek the society of the owner of Deerchase, have condemned
the innocent boy merely upon suspicion. It was so before I brought him
here. No man or woman looked askant at me, but they put _him_ beyond
the pale. Bah! what a world it is!”

Bulstrode’s courage and swagger had abated all the time Skelton had
been speaking. It never could stand up against Skelton’s coolness and
determination. But some impulse of tenderness towards Lewis made him
say:

“You need not fear for one moment that I would harm the boy. I too love
him. Unlike the world, I hold him to be innocent and you to be guilty.”

“Pshaw!” answered Skelton contemptuously, “you will not do him any harm
until your heedless tongue begins to wag, when, in pure idleness and
wantonness, you will tell all you know. However, the fact that you are
about the only person in the world who takes a true view of the case,
saves me from kicking you out of doors. You must see for yourself I
love that boy with the strongest, strangest affection. It has been my
punishment, to suffer acutely at all the contumely heaped upon him; to
yearn for the only thing I can’t give him--an equality with his kind;
to feel like the cut of a knife every slight, every covert indignity
put upon him. I tell you, had Blair and his wife done the simplest
kind thing for that boy, I believe it would have disarmed me. But, no;
they have flouted him studiously. Blair has never heard Lewis’s name
mentioned before me without a look that made me want to have him by
the throat; and in return, he shall be a beggar.” Skelton said this
with perfect coolness, but it made a cold chill run down Bulstrode’s
backbone. “The least kindness, the smallest gentleness, shown that
boy is eternally remembered by me, and I have too little, too little
to remember. And shall I overlook the insolence of the Blairs towards
him? Ah, no. That is not like me. The strongest hold you have over me,
Bulstrode, is because I know you love that boy, and it would distress
him to part with you. But I think I have had as much of your company as
I care for just now, so go.”

Bulstrode went immediately.

Skelton sat on the porch, or walked about it, far into the night, until
his rage had cooled off. He had been subject to those tempests of still
and almost silent passion all his life, and a fit of it invariably
left him profoundly sad. The injustice to Lewis was inexpressibly
hard to bear. He had all his life enjoyed so much power, prestige,
and distinction, that the slightest contradiction was infinitely
galling to him. One thing he had fully determined: the Blairs should
not get that money. Rather would he proclaim Lewis’s birth to the
world. But with a thrill of pride, as well as pain, he realised that
it would cruelly distress the boy. Skelton knew Lewis’s disposition
perfectly, and he knew the pride, the delicacy, the self-respect, that
were already visible and would grow with the boy’s growth. He felt
convinced that Lewis would never willingly barter what he supposed to
be his respectable parentage for all the money in the world. And what
would be the boy’s feelings towards _him_? Would not Lewis bear him a
life-long hatred? And that suggestion which Bulstrode had thrown out
about the difficulty of unravelling the story of Lewis’s birth, which
Skelton had constructed with so much ingenuity, yes--it must be done in
his lifetime; he would not trust anything to chance. The game was up,
as far as the Blairs were concerned. And then he might, if he chose,
marry Sylvia Shapleigh. She would perhaps awake his tired heart, for
he had gone through with some experiences that had left weariness and
cynical disgust behind them. But that the Blairs should ever have what
might be Lewis’s, that they should profit by those fools of lawyers in
England--Skelton almost swore aloud at the bare idea.

He revolved these things in his mind as he sat perfectly still in the
corner of the porch after his restlessness had departed.

The moon rose late, but the round silver disc had grown bright before
he stirred. He waked Bob Skinny, sleeping soundly on the back porch,
to shut up the house, and went upstairs to his own rooms. As he passed
through the upper hall he saw, to his surprise, Lewis Pryor sitting in
the deep window seat, upon which the moonlight streamed.

“You here?” asked Skelton, surprised, yet in his usual kindly voice.

“Yes,” answered Lewis, perfectly wide awake, and looking somberly at
Skelton in the ghostly light. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking of Mrs.
Blair. I must win that race, and yet, if I do she will be unhappy, and
that makes me unhappy. I wish we had never thought about the race, Mr.
Skelton.”

“Perhaps so,” said Skelton lightly; “but remember, when you are riding
a race you are representing a great many persons. If you win the race,
Mr. Blair will have lost some money; and if Hilary Blair wins, a great
many persons who have backed you will lose money. It is the most
dishonourable thing on earth to willfully lose a race.”

Lewis sighed, and understood very well.

“Come,” said Skelton good-naturedly, “it is time for youngsters like
you to be in bed. It is nearly one o’clock.”

Lewis crept off quite dolefully to his bed, while Skelton, sad at
heart, remained standing before the open window, gazing at the
glittering moon that silvered the lovely, peaceful, and tender
landscape.




CHAPTER XIV.


The days that followed were days of torture to Elizabeth Blair. It was
as if Blair could think of nothing but Alabaster and the famous match.
It got out among the betting fraternity which infests every racing
community that Blair had a superstitious faith in the black horse, and
thereupon they beset him. Blair, in the coolest, most rational, and
self-possessed way in the world, would give the most extraordinary
odds, secretly goaded by the general disposition in favour of Jaybird.
At home it seemed as if he had but one idea, and that was Alabaster. He
was at the stables by dawn of day to see if the horse was all right,
and the last thing he did at night was always to take a lantern and go
into the horse’s stall and examine everything carefully.

The creature, with tawny, vicious eyes, would back his ears and glare
at him, pawing the ground and occasionally hitting a thundering blow
with his hoof against the wooden partition of the stall. His coat was
satin smooth. The black hostler declared solemnly: “Dat hoss, he see
evils, I know he do. Sometimes, in de middle o’ de night, I heah him
whinnyin’ an’ gwine on, an’ den he kick wid he hine foots; dat’s a sho’
sign.”

One night Blair came in the house, where Mrs. Blair sat in the dimly
lighted drawing-room, with Mary and Hilary beside her listening to her
sweet talk, and, coming up to her, said, with pale lips, “Alabaster is
off his feed to-night.”

Elizabeth felt no inclination to laugh. Alabaster’s appetite for his
oats was of great importance to everybody at Newington then. Blair
sat down heavily. His pallor and distress were so great that it moved
Elizabeth to go to him and put her arms tenderly about him.

“Dearest,” she said, “no matter how it goes, try--try--to give this up.
See how much misery it has brought into our married life! It is well
enough for men like Richard Skelton, to whom money is nothing, but to
you it is different. Think of me--think of our children.”

“Yes, I know,” answered Blair drearily. “Here am I, an educated man, a
gentleman, and I swear I spend more time in the society of stablemen
and jockeys than anywhere else. It has brought me and mine to beggary
almost, and yet--and yet, if Alabaster wins, as he must, it would be a
shame not to make some more money out of him; and if he does not, it
will be the purest, cursedest luck in the world--the creature has got
it in him.” And then Blair’s face softened, and he took her hand, and
said; “Do you know, Elizabeth, there is for me no pleasure on earth
so great as that of getting the better of Skelton? and for that you
must thank your own sweet self. The only woman he ever wanted to marry
I took away from him; the only sport he cares for I have sometimes
got the better of him. Now he thinks to ruin me on the turf, but
Alabaster’s swift feet will save us yet, my girl.”

Elizabeth said nothing, but turned away, sighing.

The strain upon Mrs. Blair’s mind reacted upon her body. She became
weak and bloodless, and entirely lost her appetite. She went about,
silent as to her sufferings, but deathly pale, and Blair noticed with
alarm that she not only did not eat but could not sleep. She persisted
gently that nothing ailed her, and would not agree to see a doctor; but
Blair became more distressed every day at her pallor and weakness. One
night, on opening his wife’s door, he saw her sitting at the window
looking out into the dim, moonless night at the river that flowed
darkly. Her attitude was so dejected that Blair was cut to the heart.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “tell me--tell me, what is it that is wearing
your life away?”

“Alabaster,” answered Elizabeth, with a half smile.

“He is destroying _my_ mind, I believe,” Blair replied gloomily enough.

“Darling,” said Elizabeth after a pause, and putting her hands on
Blair’s broad shoulders as he stood over her, “do you want to see me
well, and fresh, and rosy once more?”

“God knows I do,” responded Blair with energy.

“Then--then--make me a promise.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” cried Blair with nervous impatience. “You
mean to ask me to cringe to Skelton, and to abandon this match on some
subterfuge or other, and manage it so that all bets will be declared
off.” In a moment he added: “Forgive me, Elizabeth, but a harassed man
is not responsible for every word he says.”

Elizabeth had not opened her mouth, but her look was enough to bring an
immediate apology.

“What I do want--what would make me well--what would make me happy--is
that you will promise me, after this, to give up racing. I have never
asked this of you before, because I have not fully realised the
terrible hold it had on you. But I tell you, in sober seriousness,
that, beyond what you will bring upon yourself and our children, if
this continues, I shall not live two years. My body is still strong,
but my heart and my soul are both sick--sick--and I know that I could
die of grief, and chagrin, and shame, and disappointment as readily
as if I had been poisoned. I have struggled ever since you began this
thing years ago, but lately I have yielded to despair. Now you can kill
me or you can save my life.”

Blair walked about the room with an agonised look on his fine,
sunburned, expressive face. He believed every word that Elizabeth
uttered. Presently he came up to her and cried:

“Elizabeth, will you promise to live and be happy if I promise you
never to start another horse in a race after this one--never to back
another horse?”

“Yes, I will give you my promise if you will give me yours.”

“And,” continued Blair, with a smile that had more pain than mirth in
it, “will you promise me to smile again, and to look as cheerful as you
used to look when we were first married, and to get back that pretty
colour that you once had in your cheeks? for I can’t stand such a
woe-begone-looking wife another day.”

“I will promise you to be so young, so beautiful, so gay, that you will
be amazed at me. I will not only smile, but laugh. I will never be
jealous any more.”

“My dear, don’t say that,” said Blair, really smiling then; “you can’t
any more help going into tantrums every time I look at a pretty girl
than you can help breathing, and, besides, it diverts me very much.”

“Very well, then; only promise. You know you have never broken your
word to me, and your word is all I want.”

“Then,” said Blair, after a pause, “I promise.”

He was still smiling, but there were drops upon his forehead. He was
not unprepared for this, but it was a crisis with him. Elizabeth
overwhelmed him with sweet endearments. Blair said truly, that it was
the beginning of their second honeymoon.

Elizabeth bravely redeemed her promise. In one week a delightful
change came over her. She tripped about the house singing. Her health
returned with her spirits, and she regained in a few days what she had
lost in as many weeks. Blair himself experienced a certain relief. He
sat down one day and figured up the profits he had made out of his
plantation within the time that he had kept his “horse or two,” and he
was startled at the result. But for that “horse or two” he would have
been a rich man. He anticipated some terrible struggles in the future
against his mania, but if only Alabaster won--and he _must_ win--Blair
would have accomplished his object. He would have got the better of
Skelton, he would have won enough--in short, he would be just at the
point where he could give up with dignity and comparative ease the
sport that had so nearly ruined him.

The eventful day came at last--the closing day of the spring meeting.
There had been four days of racing in perfect May weather, with
splendid attendance and a great concourse of strangers. Skelton’s
stable had been very successful. Every day the two men met at the races
and exchanged nods and a few words of ordinary courtesy. Sometimes
Skelton drove over tandem; once he drove his four-horse coach, with
Lewis Pryor on the box seat. He was always the observed of observers.

Mrs. Blair, on one pretext or another, refrained from attending the
course upon any of the first four days, albeit they were gala occasions
in the county; but on the final day, when the great match was to be
run, her high spirit would not allow her to stay at home. She knew
perfectly well that the whole county understood how things were with
them, for in patriarchal communities everybody’s private affairs are
public property. They even knew that Blair had promised his wife that
this should be the last--the very last--of his horse racing.

The day was very bright even for the bright Southern spring, and there
was a delicious crispness in the golden air. As Elizabeth leaned out
of her window soon after sunrise the beauty and peace around her
lightened her weary heart. Newington had long fallen into a picturesque
shabbiness, to which Elizabeth was quite accustomed and did not feel
to be a hardship. At the back of the house her window opened upon what
had once been a prim garden with box hedges; but the hedge had grown
into trees, and the flowers and shrubs had long ago forgotten to be
prim. Violets, that are natural vagabonds and marauders, bloomed all
over the garden. Of gaudy tulips, there were ranks of bold stragglers
that flaunted their saucy faces in the cold east wind, which slapped
them sharply. There was an arbour nearly sinking under its load of
yellow roses, that bloomed bravely until the December snows covered
them. Down the river the dark-green woods of Deerchase were visible,
with an occasional glimpse of the house through the trees. The
Newington house faced the river, and a great ill-kept lawn sloped
down to the water. It was quite a mile across to the other shore, and
the water was steely blue in the morning light, except where a line
of bent and crippled alders on the shore made a shadowy place in the
brightness. And this home, so dearly loved in spite of its shabbiness,
she might have to leave. What was to become of them in that event
neither she nor Blair knew. He understood but one way of making a
living, and that was out of the ground. He was essentially a landed
proprietor, and take him away from the land and he was as helpless as
a child. He might, it is true, become manager of somebody’s estate,
but that would be to step into a social abyss, for he would then be an
overseer. In short, a landed man taken away from his land in those days
was more helpless than could well be imagined.

Down by the stable lot Elizabeth saw a commotion. Alabaster had been
fed, and the hostler was bringing him out of his stall for his morning
exercise. He came rather more amiably than usual. Blair and Hilary
were both there. Elizabeth could see Blair’s tall figure outlined
distinctly; he was standing meditatively with his hands in his pockets.
Hilary watched the hostler put the saddle on Alabaster, then mounted,
and rode off, the creature going along quietly enough.

When Blair came in to breakfast he wore a look of peace that Elizabeth
had not seen for a long time on his face. Elizabeth, on the contrary,
for once had lost some of her self-control. She was pale and silent,
and could scarcely force a smile to her lips when her husband gave her
his good-morning kiss.

“You look unhappy, Bess,” he said, “but I am more at ease than I have
been for a long time. Come what may, this day I am a free man. Never
since I grew hair on my face have I not been in slavery to horses and
stablemen and jockeys and the whole gang. Of course, it is no easy
thing to give this up; it has had its recompenses. I haven’t had many
happier moments in my life than when Black Bess romped in ahead of
Skelton’s Monarch that day so many years ago. In fact, the pleasure of
beating Skelton has been one of the greatest seductions of the whole
thing. But when he put his mind to it he could beat me. Now, however, I
don’t propose to give him the chance again. That will be pretty hard on
him, considering that he has poured out money like water to do it. From
this day, my dear, I am no longer a racing man.”

Elizabeth brightened at this. No matter what might come, there was no
longer this terrible apprehension all the time of “debts of honour”
hanging over them.

Mrs. Blair, being naturally rather vain and very proud, would have
liked a splendid costume to wear on this momentous occasion, and a
coach and four to drive up to the grand stand in. But her very best
gown was shabby, and her carriage was on its last legs. However she
looked remarkably well on horseback, and there was Black Bess, retired
from the turf, but yet made a very fine appearance under the saddle.
She concluded that she would go on horseback, and Blair would ride with
her.

At one o’clock in the day the Campdown course was full, the grand
stand crowded with all the gentry in the county, and everybody was
on the tiptoe of expectation. It was no mere question of winning a
race--it was whether Skelton would succeed in ruining Blair, or would
Blair escape from Skelton. Skelton was on hand, having ridden over
with Lewis. He was as cool, as distinguished looking, as immaculately
correct as ever. People thought he had little at stake compared with
Blair. But Skelton thought he had a great deal, for he had to have his
vengeance then, or be robbed of it. He knew well enough that it was his
last chance.

Tom Shapleigh was there, and Mrs. Shapleigh and Sylvia, who looked
remarkably pretty, and everybody in the county, even Bulstrode, who
dreaded the catastrophe, but who could not forbear witnessing it.
Skelton, with Lewis close by him, walked about the quarter stretch
and infield. Everybody received him courteously, even obsequiously,
for Skelton was their local great man. But nobody took the slightest
notice of Lewis beyond a nod. The boy, with a bursting heart, realised
this when he saw Hilary Blair surrounded by half a dozen boys of his
own age, and being petted by the women and slapped on the back and
chaffed by the older men.

Presently they came to the Shapleigh carriage. Sylvia had been acutely
conscious of Skelton’s presence ever since he drove into the enclosure;
and she also had seen the contempt visited upon the boy, and her tender
heart rebelled against it. As Skelton and Lewis came up she turned a
beautiful rosy red, and, after having had her hand tenderly pressed
by Skelton, she opened the carriage door and invited Lewis to take a
seat and watch the first events. Skelton declined an invitation of the
same kind for himself, and chose to stand on the ground and have Lewis
monopolise the front seat in the great open barouche. Mrs. Shapleigh
had joined in Sylvia’s cordial invitation, and so profoundly grateful
was Skelton for it that he almost persuaded himself that Mrs. Shapleigh
was not half such a fool after all. As for Sylvia, he thought her at
that moment adorable; and there was certainly some distinction in her
notice, because she was commonly counted to be the most spirited girl
in the county, and one of the most admired, and Miss Sylvia had a quick
wit of her own that could make her respected anywhere. Besides, old Tom
was a man of consequence, so that the backing of the Shapleighs was
about as good as anybody’s.

Sylvia felt intensely sorry for Lewis, and sorry that she had ever
sold Alabaster to Blair. The boy was very silent, and was wondering,
painfully, for the hundredth time, why nobody ever noticed him
scarcely. Sylvia tried to cheer him up. She pinned a rose from a
bouquet she carried to his jacket. She even got out of the carriage
and took a little stroll about the infield, with Lewis for an escort,
leaving Skelton to the tender mercies of Mrs. Shapleigh. Sylvia knew
well enough how to command civility for herself as well as for Lewis,
and when people spoke to her she brought the boy in the conversation
with a pointedness that could not be ignored. She returned after a
while to the barouche with a light of triumph in her eyes. She had
managed much better than Skelton, with all of his distinction and
prestige, women being naturally much cleverer at social fence than men.
Skelton could have kissed her hands in the excess of his gratitude. He
smiled to himself as he thought: “How much more power have women than
men sometimes! Here is this girl, that can circumvent the whole county,
while I only fail in trying to bully it.”

Everybody watched for the appearance of Jack Blair and Mrs. Blair, as
the crowd waits for the condemned at an execution. At last they were
seen entering the enclosure. Both of them were well mounted, and Mrs.
Blair’s black habit fell against the satin coat of Black Bess. She
wore a hat and feathers and sat her horse like a Di Vernon. A delicate
pink was in her cheeks, and her eyes, which were usually soft, were
sparkling. If Skelton or anybody else expected her to show any signs of
weakness, they were much mistaken. Blair was at his best on horseback,
and he had become infected by his wife’s courage. As they rode into the
infield they were greeted cordially, Skelton coming up, hat in hand,
to make his compliments to Mrs. Blair, who stopped her horse quite
close to the Shapleigh carriage. The women spoke to each other affably.
Lewis was still in the carriage as Skelton moved off. Mrs. Blair at
that moment regretted as keenly as Sylvia that Alabaster had ever been
heard of.

Old Tom was there then, all sympathy and bluff good-nature. He felt
sorry for Mrs. Blair, and wanted to show it.

“How d’ye do, Mrs. Blair? Deuced brave woman you are to trust yourself
on that restless beast!” for Black Bess, irritated by the people
pressing about her, threw her head in the air and began to dance about
impatiently.

“Why, this is the very safest creature in the county,” answered Mrs.
Blair, patting her horse’s neck to quiet her. She was so smiling, so
calm, that Tom Shapleigh was astounded.

“Look here, ma’am,” he cried, “you’re a mighty fine woman”--and then
stopped awkwardly. Mrs. Blair fully appreciated the situation, and
Black Bess, just then showing symptoms of backing into Mrs. Shapleigh’s
lap, a reply was avoided. Sylvia uttered a little cry, as Black Bess’s
hind feet scraped against the wheel and her long black tail switched
about uncomfortably in the carriage.

“Don’t be afraid,” cried Mrs. Blair, with sarcastic politeness, “I can
manage her.”

“I hope so,” devoutly answered Sylvia; and old Tom asked:

“Blair, why do you let your wife ride that restless creature?”

“Because I can’t prevent her,” answered Blair, laughing. “When
Mrs. Blair wants Black Bess saddled she has it done. I’m the most
petticoated man in the county.”

At which Mrs. Blair laughed prettily. The hen-pecked men are never the
ones who parade the fact openly.

The scene was very animated. The sun shone hotly upon the white track
and the tramped infield and the crowds of carriages and horsemen.
The women wore their gayest dresses, and in those days men were not
confined to sombre black, and claret-coloured coats and blue coats and
bottle-green coats were common enough. Skelton did not wholly devote
himself to Sylvia, although Lewis still kept his place opposite her,
but went about shaking hands with the men and making himself unusually
agreeable to the women. In spite of the general knowledge that Skelton
would lose the main part of his fortune if he married again, he was
still an object of interest to the feminine contingent, who knew that
Skelton was a good deal of a man whether he had a great fortune or not.
He never went into the society of women, though, that he did not feel
that bond of the dead woman upon his liberty. He loved his liberty so
dearly, that not even that splendid fortune could wholly make up for
it; he wanted all of the power of money, but he wanted to be as free
as other men were; and as it was, he was not free, but a slave. And
he had so much, that a crumpled rose-leaf troubled him. He could have
made Lewis Pryor his heir, and he could have married Sylvia Shapleigh
and have been rich and happy at Deerchase, but that would involve
putting a stain upon Lewis; and that was the worst thing in the world
except one--letting the Blairs have the money. But some day it must
come; and he caught himself debating, in the intervals of talk with
men and women, that, after all, he might not make a bad exchange--his
fortune for Sylvia. As a matter of fact, his money, beyond a certain
expenditure, did him very little good. He had all the books he
wanted--more than were good for him, he sometimes suspected. He had
some pictures and curios, but in those days the art of collecting was
practically unknown. Of course, money implied a mastery of conditions,
and that was the breath of his nostrils; but conditions could be
mastered with less money than he had. If only Lewis could be spared
the shame awaiting him! Skelton’s eye sought him occasionally, as he
still sat in the Shapleighs’ barouche. Sylvia looked lovely to him then
because she was so sweet to Lewis. Mrs. Blair, too, was watched by
Skelton, and he was forced to admire her perfectly indomitable pluck.
It was far superior to her husband’s, who, after a brave effort to
appear unconcerned as the saddling bell rung in the last race, finally
dashed off, and, jumping his horse over the fence, disappeared amid
the crowd of men in the paddock. Elizabeth gave a quick glance around,
and for an instant a sort of anguish appeared in her expressive eyes.
But in the next moment she was again easy, graceful, unconcerned. One
would have thought it a friendly match between her boy and Lewis Pryor
on their ponies. Lewis had then disappeared, of course, but by some
odd chance Skelton was close to Mrs. Blair. He saw that she was in a
passion of nervousness, and he had pity enough for her to move away
when the horses were coming out of the paddock and the boys were being
weighed. But just then Blair rode up to his wife’s side. His face
was flushed, and he had a triumphant ring in his voice as he said to
Elizabeth, while looking at Skelton sharply:

“The boy is all right. I saw the horse saddled myself, and Hilary knows
what to do in any emergency.”

Skelton knew perfectly well, when Blair said “the boy is all right,”
he meant the horse was all right. Blair’s face was menacing and
triumphant; he began to talk to Skelton, who at once took it as a
challenge to stay. Blair thought Skelton bound to lose, and those
savage instincts that still dwell in every human breast came uppermost.
At the moment, he wanted to enjoy his triumph over Skelton. Exactly the
same thoughts burned in Skelton’s mind. An impulse of pity would have
made him spare Mrs. Blair the pain of his presence, but he could feel
no pity for Blair.

The two horses were now prancing before the grand stand. Jaybird was
a magnificent, clean-limbed bay, with an air of equine aristocracy
written all over him. He was perfectly gentle, and even playful,
and apparently knew quite well what was up. Lewis, his dark boyish
face flushed, cantered him past the grand stand, and to the starting
post, where Jaybird stood as motionless as a bronze horse. But not
the slightest welcome was accorded Lewis Pryor. Not a cheer broke the
silence, until old Tom Shapleigh, in his strident voice, sent up a
great “Hurrah!” A few faint echoes followed. But one handkerchief was
waved, and that was in Sylvia Shapleigh’s hand. Skelton, whose feelings
during this could not be described, observed that Sylvia’s eyes were
full of tears. The cruel indifference of the world then present was
heart-breaking. Lewis, with his face set, looked straight before him,
with proud unconsciousness even when a storm of applause broke forth
for Hilary Blair.

Alabaster’s behaviour was in total contrast to Jaybird’s well-bred
dignity. He came out of the paddock kicking and lunging, and only the
most perfect horsemanship on Hilary’s part kept him anywhere within
bounds. The applause seemed to madden him; he reared, then came down on
his front feet, trembling in every limb, not with fear but with rage.
But, as Blair had said, he might as well try to throw a grasshopper as
Hilary. The boy’s coolness and admirable management only caused the
more applause, and this still more excited the black horse. Hilary
was forced to give him a turn half way around the course to bring him
down. During all this, poor Lewis sat like a statue at the starting
post. Jaybird had had his warming-up gallop before, and Lewis felt that
it would be like an effort to divide the applause of the crowd if he
showed the bay off during Alabaster’s gyrations. But what would he not
have given for some of the kind glances that were showered upon Hilary!

Mr. and Mrs. Blair were still close to the Shapleighs, and Skelton was
standing between them and the carriage. He glanced towards Sylvia and
saw the troubled look in her eyes.

“Are you losing faith in your young admirer?” asked Skelton, smiling,
and moving a step towards the carriage.

“No,” answered Sylvia, “but--but--why did I ever let Mr. Blair have
Alabaster! Perhaps I have done him the greatest injury of his whole
life.”

“No, you have not,” replied Skelton, in his musical, penetrating
voice, which Blair, whose attention was abnormal that day, could hear
distinctly; “you have probably done that which will cure Mr. Blair of
racing the entire rest of his life.”

Blair heard the reply and surmised the question. He smiled insultingly
at Skelton, who, however, possessed in perfection the power to appear
unconcerned when he wished it.

The two horses were now at the post, and the starter was making his
way towards his place. There was an intense, suppressed excitement
following the cheering that kept the whole crowd silent. Nearly
everybody present had something on one horse or the other; and then,
they all knew that it was more than a match between Jaybird and
Alabaster--it was a life-and-death contest between Blair and Skelton.
But then the starter was in place and was trying to get the horses off.
Skelton longed to call Lewis to the fence and give him a few last words
of advice, but as Blair did not speak to Hilary he could not bring
himself to show less want of confidence in Lewis.

Hilary had the inside place. There was great difficulty in starting
the horses, owing to Alabaster’s ill humour, and they were turned back
half a dozen times. Each time Elizabeth’s heart grew fainter. Alabaster
was becoming more wildly excited, and the bright gleam of the bit,
as he champed it, throwing his head about fiercely, could plainly be
seen. He had a way of getting the bit between his teeth, when he would
stop short in his course and indulge in every wickedness known to
horseflesh. If he ever began those performances after the flag fell he
was gone. The Blairs watched, in the dazzling sunlight, Hilary stroking
the horse’s neck, saying encouraging words and trying to keep him down.
At last, when they were turned back for the fourth time, Alabaster
ducked his head, and, raising his forefoot, brought it down with a
crash on the rickety fence that separated the track from the infield.
Elizabeth trembled visibly at that, and Blair ground his teeth. That
pawing performance was always the beginning of the horse’s most violent
tantrums.

Jaybird, who was well bred as well as thoroughbred, was in agreeable
contrast to Alabaster. He was perfectly manageable, although eager, and
showed not the slightest temper or nervousness.

At last a cheer rose. They were off. Skelton had had his horse brought,
and had mounted so as to see the course better. Old Tom Shapleigh stood
up in the barouche for the same purpose. The race was to be once around
the mile-and-a-quarter track, with four hurdles and two water jumps. As
soon as the horses were fairly started Alabaster began to lag sullenly.
He had got the bit between his teeth and was champing it furiously, the
foam flowing in all directions. Jaybird had taken the inside track, and
was going along easily. He could win in a canter if that sort of thing
was kept up. Still, Hilary did not touch Alabaster with either whip or
spur. “Great God!” cried old Tom, who had some money on Alabaster, to
nobody in particular, “why doesn’t the boy give him the spur?”

“Because,” said Mrs. Blair in a sweet, composed voice, “he is in a
temper, and to be touched with a spur would simply make him more
unmanageable than he is now. My son knows what to do, you may depend
upon it.”

Elizabeth was scarcely conscious of what she was saying, but nobody
should find fault with Hilary then. Skelton, chancing to meet her
glance at that moment, mechanically raised his hat. There was a woman
for you! Blair leaned over and grasped the pommel of his wife’s saddle,
as if to steady himself. He was ashy pale and trembling in every limb.

There were two hurdles before the water jump. Alabaster did not refuse
either hurdle, but at the water jump he swerved for an instant, only
to take it the next moment. Hilary still showed the most wonderful
self-possession; and as for Lewis Pryor, his intelligence in letting
the sulky horse set the pace was obvious. Nevertheless, he was wary,
and was drawing ahead so gradually that Jaybird actually did not
feel the strain upon him. He had taken all three jumps like a bird.
Alabaster was running along, his head down and his ears backed. The
thousands of people with money on him watched him with a kind of
hatred. One old fellow, who had perched himself on the fence, took off
his battered beaver, and, as Alabaster passed him, he suddenly threw
the old hat full at the horse, shouting, “Run, you rascal, run!”

Blair, who saw and heard it across the field, uttered a slight groan;
Elizabeth grew, if anything, more ghastly pale than before. They both
thought the horse would stop then and there and begin his rearing and
pitching. The effect, though, was exactly the contrary. Alabaster
suddenly raised his head, cocked his ears, and went in for the race.
Blair gave a gasp, and the crowd another cheer; now there was going to
be a race in earnest.

The horse lengthened his stride, and the bit, which he had hitherto
held on to viciously, slipped back into his mouth. Hilary touched
him lightly with the spur, and in half a dozen strides he was up to
Jaybird, who was still going steadily.

Skelton was afraid that Lewis would lose his head and go blundering at
the hurdles. But he did not; he lifted the horse over them beautifully,
a little in advance of Alabaster, who went at them furiously, and
knocked them both down. It was neck and neck to the water jump. Both
horses were then flying along. Alabaster’s black coat was as wet as if
he had been in the river, but Jaybird gave no sign of distress. As they
neared the jump, Alabaster increased his stride superbly. It was plain
what Jaybird could do, but it was a mystery still how much speed the
half-bred horse had. Alabaster rushed at the water jump as if he were
about to throw himself headlong into it, and cleared it with a foot to
spare; Jaybird followed a moment after. His hind feet slipped as he
landed on the other side, and it was a half minute before he recovered
his stride. Alabaster was then three lengths ahead, and Hilary was
giving him whip and spur mercilessly. Nothing that Jaybird had yet
showed could overcome those three lengths at the magnificent rate the
black horse was going.

The crowd burst into a mighty shout: “Alabaster wins! Alabaster!
Alabaster!”

Blair experienced one of the most delicious moments of his life then.
He turned and looked Skelton squarely in the eye. He said not a word,
but the look was eloquent with hatred and triumph. Skelton faced
him as quietly as ever. Blair turned his horse’s head; the race was
his--Newington was saved--_he_ was saved!

“Mr. Blair,” said Skelton, at that instant, in his peculiar musical
drawl, and with a smile that showed every one of his white, even teeth,
“your boy is down.”

Blair glanced towards the track, and the sight seemed to paralyse
him. Alabaster was rolling over, struggling violently, with both
forelegs broken and hanging. He had slipped upon a muddy spot, and
gone down with frightful force. It was terrible to see. Hilary was
lying perfectly limp on the ground, some distance away. The people were
yelling from sheer excitement, and in a second a crowd had run towards
the prostrate horse and boy. Blair found himself, he knew not how,
on the spot. Some one shouted to him: “He’s alive--he breathes--he’s
coming to!”

Before waiting to hear more about Hilary, Blair ran up to the
struggling horse, and, with the savage instinct that had seemed
to possess him all along regarding the creature, stamped his foot
violently a dozen times in its quivering flank. The horse, half dead,
sank back and ceased its convulsive efforts, fixing its glazing eyes
on Blair with a dumb reproach. Blair, struck with shame and horror and
remorse at his action, knelt down on the ground and took the horse’s
head in his arms.

“My poor beauty!” he cried, “my poor beauty!”

Mrs. Blair had sat bolt upright in her saddle, looking before her with
unseeing eyes, until Blair kicked the dying horse; then, without a
word or a cry, she fell over. Skelton caught her in his arms. He laid
her down upon the grass, and Sylvia Shapleigh, jumping out of the
carriage, ran to her. People crowded around. Here was a tragedy for the
Blairs with a vengeance--Hilary perhaps killed, Blair ruined and making
a brute of himself before the whole county, and Mrs. Blair falling
insensible. It was ten minutes before she opened her eyes, and then
only when Lewis Pryor, making his way through the people surrounding
her, threw himself beside her and cried, “Dear Mrs. Blair, it was not
my fault; and he is alive! he is alive!”

The boy’s dark face was grimed with dust and tears. As Skelton looked
at him, the feeling that it might have been Lewis who was thrown made
him long to open his arms and hold the boy to his heart. But he did
not; he only gave him a slight pat on the shoulder. Lewis was crying a
little, completely overcome by the excitement. Everybody, particularly
those who had lost money on Alabaster, scowled at him. But Sylvia
Shapleigh, drawing the boy towards her, took her own white handkerchief
and wiped his eyes, and entreated him to control himself. Skelton, on
seeing that, vowed that, if ever he married, it would be to Sylvia
Shapleigh.

Mrs. Blair, although more than half conscious by that time, yet could
not take it all in. She seemed to be lingering on the borders of a dim
world of peace and sweet forgetfulness, and she dreaded to come back
to the pain and stress from which she had just escaped for a moment or
two. All at once everything returned to her with a rush. She saw Hilary
go down. She saw Blair’s furious and insane action. She uttered a groan
and opened her eyes, which at once fell on Skelton’s.

It was one of the most painful moments of Skelton’s whole life. He did
not relish taking vengeance on a woman.

Mrs. Blair, as if inspired by a new spirit, sat up, and disdaining
Skelton’s arm, and even Mrs. Shapleigh’s or Sylvia’s, rose to her feet.
Just then Blair came up. In ten minutes he had aged ten years. He had
had a crazy moment or two, but now he was deadly calm and pale.

“The boy is all right,” he said. As a matter of fact, Hilary was far
from all right, but Blair did not intend to tell Mrs. Blair then. “Mr.
Bulstrode has already put him in his chaise, and will take him home. Do
you feel able to ride home?”

Sylvia and Mrs. Shapleigh and old Tom at once offered the barouche.
Skelton had withdrawn a little from the group, to spare Mrs. Blair the
sight of him.

Mrs. Blair declined the carriage rather stiffly. She was a
strong-nerved though delicately made woman, and she meant to go through
with it bravely.

“No,” she said, “I will ride.”

Something in her eye showed all of them, including Blair, that it was
useless to protest. Her husband swung her into the saddle, and she
gathered up the reins in her trembling hands. Meanwhile her eye fell
upon Lewis, standing by Sylvia Shapleigh, his eyes still full of tears.

“Please forgive me, Mrs. Blair,” he said.

“There is nothing to forgive,” she answered, feeling, in the midst of
her own distress, the acutest sympathy for the lad; “it was purely an
accident. I hope you will come to see Hilary.”

Lewis thanked her, with tears in his voice as well as his eyes.

Mr. and Mrs. Blair rode off the field together. People gave them all
the room they wanted, for they were encompassed with the dignity of
misfortune. They did not take the main road, which was full of people
in gigs and chaises and carriages and on horseback, all talking about
the Blairs’ affairs and Skelton and everything connected with them.
They took a private road through the woods that led to the Newington
lane. Mrs. Blair did not know whether Alabaster were dead or alive.

“What has become of the horse?” she asked presently.

“Shot,” replied Blair briefly.

Mrs. Blair looked at him intently, to see what effect this had on him,
but strangely enough his face wore a look of relief, and his eyes had
lost the hunted expression they had worn for months.

“But I thought you loved that horse so--so superstitiously.”

“So I did. It was a madness. But it is past. I am a free man now.
If the horse had lived and had won the race, sometimes--sometimes I
doubted if I could have kept my word. But it is easy enough now. We
are ruined, Elizabeth; that’s what running away with Jack Blair has
brought you to, but after this you can never reproach me again with
racing. It has been your only rival; and I tell you, my girl, it is you
that has made Skelton and me hate each other so.”

What woman could be insensible to the subtile flattery contained in
such language at such a time? Elizabeth at that instant forgave Blair
every anxiety he had made her suffer during all their married life, and
professed a perfect willingness to run away with him again under the
same circumstances. One thing was certain, she could believe what Blair
told her; he never lied to her in his life, and his word was as dear to
him as his soul.




CHAPTER XV.


Lewis Pryor was in the greatest distress over the result of the match,
and in riding back to Deerchase, by Skelton’s side, he was the most
doleful boy that ever was seen. Skelton was in a violent fury over the
treatment accorded the boy, and felt like marrying Sylvia Shapleigh out
of hand and establishing her at Deerchase for the purpose of spiting
the other women in the county.

Next morning Lewis asked Bulstrode if he might ride over to Newington
to inquire after Hilary and Mrs. Blair.

“Deuced if I know,” answered Bulstrode. “I haven’t the least objection;
but you’d better ask Mr. Skelton.”

Lewis, without saying a word to Skelton, got on his pony and rode to
Newington. Blair met him at the door, and for the first time he laid
aside the freezing air he had always maintained towards the boy and was
extremely cordial. Hilary was far from all right; the horse had rolled
on him, and it would be some time yet before they could tell how badly
hurt he was. Mrs. Blair felt better, but was a good deal shaken by the
shock. Lewis was so overcome at this that Blair felt sorry for the boy,
and said:

“However, come in the house. Mrs. Blair would like to see you; and
Hilary, too, if he is able.”

Lewis walked into the house for the first time in his life, and sat
down alone in the drawing-room. In a few moments Blair came to fetch
him, and conducted him to Hilary’s room. Mrs. Blair sat by the bed
on which Hilary lay, and as soon as Lewis entered she rose and went
towards him with much sweetness of manner. Hilary, too, welcomed him
feebly. Poor Lewis could hardly refrain from tears. He felt himself the
author of more grief and pain to other people than anybody in the whole
world. And he even envied Hilary, lying helplessly in the bed. His
mother watched him fondly; his father sat by him--and it was always a
pretty sight to see Blair with his children; while little Mary promised
Hilary that, if he should be a cripple for life, she would abandon all
ideas of matrimony and devote her life to him. The little girl, who was
uncommonly pretty, was disposed to regard Lewis as an enemy, but was
finally coaxed into magnanimity, and even condescended to sit on his
knee.

When Lewis rose to go, Mrs. Blair accompanied him to the door. He
made her a thousand earnest apologies, to which Mrs. Blair replied
generously. Even Blair himself was kind to the boy, who left them with
an overflowing heart. Hilary had asked him to come again, and both Mr.
and Mrs. Blair had repeated the invitation.

Skelton, sitting at Deerchase in the library, was triumphant, but
far from happy. Towards noon he missed Lewis, and happening across
Bulstrode in the stone porch, he inquired for the boy.

“Don’t know,” answered Bulstrode, adding, with a grin: “He asked me
about going to Newington. I told him I had no objection, and advised
him to ask you--and by the Lord Harry! I shouldn’t be surprised if he
had gone.”

A very little inquiry showed that Newington was precisely where Lewis
had gone. Bulstrode was secretly much amused.

“Birds of a feather--Skelton and Lewis. The boy is giving him a dose of
his own medicine.”

All Skelton said was to direct the servants immediately upon Lewis’s
arrival to let him know.

When Lewis appeared he was met by Bob Skinny, who directed him
mysteriously to “de libery. An’ Mr. Skelton, he f’yarly sizzlin’, he so
mad.”

Lewis walked into the library quite coolly. Skelton wheeled around and
said, in a voice very unlike his usual almost caressing tone:

“Have you been to Newington, Lewis?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Lewis calmly.

“I considered it unnecessary to tell you not to go, as you know, of
course, the relations between Mr. Blair and myself are not cordial; and
it never occurred to me that you would go off in this manner, in direct
defiance of what you know must be my wishes.”

“I asked Mr. Bulstrode, sir,” answered Lewis in a very soft, composed
voice. “He told me he had no objection. It’s true he advised me to ask
you; but Mr. Bulstrode is my guardian, and when I have his permission I
don’t need anybody else’s, sir.”

Lewis had in perfection Skelton’s trick of expressing the utmost
defiance in the most moderate tone. There was nothing approaching
insolence in his manner, but a perfect knowledge of his rights and a
determination to stand upon them. Skelton was entirely at a loss for a
moment or two. He had not the slightest means of enforcing obedience
from the boy, except a threat of sending him away from Deerchase, and
he suspected that was just what would have pleased Lewis best. But he
spoke in a tone of stern command that he had never used towards the boy
before.

“Mr. Bulstrode seems to have had the right conception of the respect
you owe me,” he said, after a pause, “but I find you did not heed his
very rational advice. Now, understand me distinctly: I do not intend
that you shall go to Newington, and I shall find means to enforce my
wishes.”

Lewis bowed and went out. He could not disregard anything so positive
as that.

But after Lewis had gone out and Skelton was left alone with his anger,
he could not but feel proud of the boy’s spirit and independence, as
well as his shrewdness in getting Bulstrode’s half permission. It was
no ordinary boy that could coolly go against Skelton’s wishes and then
so aptly justify himself. Skelton felt proud of Lewis’s spirit even
when it was directed against himself.

Hilary Blair did not get well at once--indeed, it looked at one time
as if he would never get well at all. Then, there was an execution out
against Blair, and, altogether, the affairs of the family seemed to be
about as desperate as could be. Conyers need no longer preach sermons
against horse racing. Jack Blair’s case was an object lesson that was
worth all the sermons ever preached. Still Conyers felt it his duty to
add warning to warning, and he gave his congregation another discourse
against gambling and betting of all sorts that was received much more
respectfully than the former one. Even old Tom Shapleigh forgot to
scoff. It is true that remorse, or rather regret, had much to do with
old Tom’s feelings. But for that unlucky horse, which he had so proudly
exhibited to Blair, and that equally unlucky agreement to leave the
matter to Sylvia, when Blair could always talk the women around, he
would not have been minus a considerable sum of money. Sylvia herself
endured all the distress that a tender and sensitive soul would suffer
who had, however innocently, become a contributor to such a tragedy.

“I wish I had poisoned the horse,” groaned old Tom.

“I wish so, too,” devoutly added Sylvia.

“I’m sure I’m sorry Mr. Blair lost his money; but you know, Mr.
Shapleigh, poisoning horses is a great sin,” remarked Mrs. Shapleigh.

Old Tom reformed so far as to again attend the vestry meetings, and to
lower his voice while he talked horse to his fellow-vestrymen.

The consideration with which Skelton and Bulstrode treated the
poor harassed clergyman sensibly improved his relations with the
congregation, which did not like him any better, but who treated him
more respectfully. But they were all just as fond of morality and
shy of religion as ever, except Sylvia Shapleigh. She and Conyers
occasionally talked together on the great subject, but neither
could enlighten the other. They were like two travellers meeting
in the desert without map or compass--they could only tell of their
loneliness, their struggles, their terrible ignorance of which way lay
the road to light.

Bulstrode, upon whose movements Skelton never attempted to place any
restrictions, went over to Newington occasionally, and was nearly
broken-hearted by all he saw. He came back, and his mind dwelt
constantly on Mrs. Blair and her troubles. He began to long that he
might tell her not to despair--that there was still a great chance
in store for her--that one day she, or perhaps her children after
her, might have a fortune that would make them the richest people in
the county; for Bulstrode had spoken truly when he said that he had
very grave doubts whether Skelton himself could unravel the web he
had so carefully woven about Lewis Pryor’s identity. And his object
in so doing--to deprive the Blairs of what might come to them, by an
extraordinary conjunction of circumstances--was of itself open to
suspicion. Bulstrode knew that in England the Blairs’ expectations,
even though saddled with uncertainties, would be worth something
in ready money, where ready money was plentiful; but in this new
country, where money was the dearest and scarcest of all products, he
doubted if a penny could be realised upon even a very great fortune in
perspective. He thought over these things until his brain was nearly
addled.

One night in June, while Hilary was still ill, and the Blairs were
liable to be dispossessed at any moment, Bulstrode went over to
Newington. It had lately stormed, and the warm night air was full of
the fragrance of the summer rain. The dripping trees along the road
were odorous, and the wild honeysuckle and the great magnolia blossoms
were lavish of perfume. The river and all the homesteads were perfectly
still; and the only sound, as Bulstrode walked up the weedy drive to
the Newington house, was the occasionally monotonous cry of a night
bird or the soft flutter of bats’ wings through the darkness.

Mrs. Blair was sitting in the dimly lighted drawing-room with one of
Scott’s novels on her lap. She heard Bulstrode’s step on the porch, and
rose to meet him as he entered the room. She looked pale and depressed.

“Ah, romance, romance,” said Bulstrode, picking up the book. “You dear,
sweet, innocent-minded creatures live on it.”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Blair, smiling a little. “It helps us over the
stony part of the road. I have been with my boy all day, and I found I
wanted a tonic for my mind; so I took up this book, and actually forgot
my poor Hilary for a few moments.”

“Is the boy improving, ma’am?”

“I am afraid not. He cannot yet leave his bed. His father and I are
with him all the time, one or the other. Do you know, Mr. Bulstrode,
I never realise what an admirable man my husband is until I see him
with his children. If you but knew how tender and interesting and
even fascinating he is to them! And if only Hilary--gets well--” Mrs.
Blair’s voice broke. “Ah, Mr. Bulstrode, I fear so much--I fear--he
will never be well--although--I try--”

Mrs. Blair burst unexpectedly into tears. This nearly distracted
Bulstrode. He took out his handkerchief and fairly blubbered, saying
between gasps:

“Now, pray don’t, my dear Mrs. Blair--my sweet, sweet creetur’--”
Bulstrode’s grief was inexpressibly ludicrous.

But after a moment or two Mrs. Blair recovered herself and apologised
for her sudden weakness.

“I have had much to try me,” she said, “and then the prospect of being
turned out of this place--”

“Have you made any arrangements to go elsewhere?” asked Bulstrode.

Mrs. Blair shook her head. “My husband would not ask it of his
creditors, but it would be to his advantage if he were allowed to
remain at Newington. He has really done wonderfully well here, and has
made crops that were much better than any his father ever made off the
place. It has all gone, of course, on the Campdown track--but still the
money was made; and now that my husband is done with the turf forever,
I believe in a few years’ time he could be on his feet again.”

“I suppose you are attached to this place?” continued Bulstrode.

“Yes,” cried Mrs. Blair with tears in her voice. “I don’t know why
especially, except that I am prone to become attached to places and
people. And, remember, I have lived here ever since I began to think
and feel. It seems to me that the troubles I have had tie me to it as
much as the joys, and they have been many, Mr. Bulstrode. They were not
the griefs you read about in books, but those plain every-day sorrows
that come to women’s hearts.”

Mrs. Blair stopped; she had uttered no complaint heretofore, and the
habit of forbearance was strong upon her. She went to the window
and looked out. The clouds had melted away and a summer moon shone
fitfully, flooding the river with its silver light. She was recalled by
hearing her name uttered by Bulstrode in a curious voice. She resumed
her chair and turned her delicate profile towards Bulstrode.

“Mrs. Blair,” said he hesitatingly, “have you never speculated upon
what becomes of Skelton’s fortune from his wife if he should marry
again, or at his death? for you know, of course, that it is only his
until one of those things happens.”

“We have heard a great deal of talk, but, naturally, we feel a delicacy
at making any enquiries about it.”

“Delicacy be hanged!” cried Bulstrode, rising. “Do you know, ma’am,
that it’s quite possible--quite probable--that some day you and your
children will have all that money?”

“I cannot think that,” answered Mrs. Blair, rising, too, and supposing
that Bulstrode meant that Skelton might leave it to them. “Although
I am Mr. Skelton’s nearest relative, there is no love lost between
us--and my husband and he are at feud. I am sure Mr. Skelton would
never wish us to benefit by anything he had.”

“But,” cried Bulstrode excitedly, “he can’t help it--he can’t help it!
Don’t you suppose he would if he could?”

Mrs. Blair turned very pale. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean,” said Bulstrode, in his impressive voice, “I mean that by
the fondness of a woman Skelton became possessed of a great fortune;
and by her jealousy it is only his until his death or marriage; and by
her folly it all descends to his heirs. He cannot control one shilling
of his wife’s fortune--it goes to his heirs. And you--_you_--_you_ and
your children are Skelton’s heirs!”

Mrs. Blair was completely dazed by what she heard and by Bulstrode’s
vehemence. His agitation, too, was contagious. She felt herself
trembling, because she saw Bulstrode’s tremor.

“What do you mean?” she stammered.

“What I say,” replied Bulstrode, grasping her arm. “I’ve known it ever
since Mrs. Skelton died. Of course, it wasn’t her intention that it
should be so; she was actuated by two master passions, love and hate.
She meant Skelton to have the property, and that her own relatives, in
punishment for the stand they took at her marriage, should suffer for
it. She had the will made soon after her marriage, when she hoped that
Skelton’s heirs would be their children. It was the worst-made will
ever seen in England. In her last illness she made additions to it,
that only complicated matters more. It was such a muddle that Skelton
was forced to apply to the courts to construe it, with a result that
infuriated him. He is a bond slave in the midst of all that money.
He has his choice of two things, one of which may be impossible; the
other is, to hand over to you and yours three fourths of his money--and
he must do it if he marries again, and his executors must do it if
he dies. Just imagine this state of things upon a man of Skelton’s
temperament! Great God! I wonder he hasn’t gone mad thinking over it!”

Mrs. Blair sat quite silent and still. Bulstrode began to march about
the room, running his hand through his shaggy hair and exclaiming at
intervals, “Great Cæsar!” “Immortal Jove!” “Gadzooks!” Then turning
towards her, he cried: “But there is another factor in it--another
complication”--he came close to Mrs. Blair, and whispered:

“Lewis Pryor.”

Mrs. Blair started, and a rosy blush succeeded her paleness.

“You know, the old Greeks had a word for such children as Lewis Pryor.
They called them ‘the children of the soul.’ Now, the fool of a
solicitor who drew Mrs. Skelton’s will, in securing the reversion of
the property to the children of Richard Skelton, did not provide at
all against any children that he might have had when he married Mrs.
Skelton. Good God! madam, did you ever know such a concatenation of
follies and misunderstandings and mistakes? Scarcely a single design of
Mrs. Skelton’s is carried out; and either you must get the property,
or Skelton must acknowledge Lewis Pryor. But,” continued Bulstrode,
his voice rising to a shout, “the end of difficulties is not yet.
Great Jupiter! all the ingenuity of man could not bring about such
strange complications as blind Fate would have it. Skelton took such
pains to make Lewis Pryor out to be the son of his old tutor and his
wife, and they became so fond of the boy, that among them all they
obliterated every proof that Lewis Pryor was anything but Lewis Pryor.
There stands the testimony of the Pryors in their wills leaving their
little belongings to their ‘beloved son, Lewis’--not a word said about
adoption. They lived in terror that Skelton would some time or other
take the boy away from them, and they meant to make a fight for him.
Skelton then was as anxious as they were that the secret should be
kept. He made them a handsome allowance, but he was so astute about it
that not even _that_ could be proved. Never man so overreached himself
as Richard Skelton. The Pryors both died when Lewis was about five
years old. Skelton sent for him--from an awakening sense of duty, I
fancy--and immediately conceived such a passion of paternal love as you
never saw in your life, and could never part with him afterwards. You
love your boy; Skelton idolises his.”

Bulstrode had stopped his agitated walk while telling this, but he
began it again, his lumbering figure making grotesque shadows on the
wall. Mrs. Blair listened, overwhelmed as much by Bulstrode’s manner
as by the strange things he was telling her. Presently he came, and,
sitting down by the table, brought his fist down so hard that the
candles jumped.

“But there is more--actually more. If Skelton ever tries to prove that
Lewis is his son, mark my words, the boy will fight against it--he
will fight against it. I can’t make out what he really thinks now, but
he clings so hard to his Pryor parentage, he speaks of it so often,
he treasures up every little thing that he inherited from the Pryors,
that sometimes I fancy he has doubts. He is always anxious to disclaim
any authority Skelton asserts over him. The Pryors and Skelton in
the beginning, supposing I knew nothing about the boy, agreed in
making me the boy’s guardian. Skelton knows that he has me under his
thumb--and he has, by George! However, he can’t kick me out of the
house, no matter how much he would like to, so long as I am Lewis
Pryor’s guardian. But if I were called upon to-morrow in a court of law
to say that Lewis is Skelton’s son, I would have no better proof than
Skelton’s word; and the Pryors told me dozens of times that the boy was
theirs. Pryor was an astute fellow, and, although both he and his wife
knew they could not hoodwink me, they were careful never to admit to
me that the boy was anything but theirs. You see, if Skelton had tried
to get him away in their lifetime, he couldn’t have proved anything by
me.” Bulstrode paused for breath and wiped his face.

“The boy has eyes like Richard Skelton’s,” said Mrs. Blair, after a
pause.

“Exactly. But, although he is the same type, and one would use the same
terms in describing Skelton and Lewis, they are not personally very
much alike except their eyes. Strange to say, Lewis is not unlike Mrs.
Pryor, who was a dark, slight woman. She always fancied him to be like
a child she lost, and that was one reason she became so devoted to him.
But to see Skelton and Lewis together in the same house--haw! haw!”

Bulstrode broke into a great, nervous laugh. “_Then_ you’d know they
were father and son. To see that little shaver stand up straight and
eye the great Mr. Skelton as coolly as you please--odd’s my life,
madam, the brat is a gentleman, if I ever saw one! You ought to
see the positive air with which he disclaims any relationship to
Skelton when strangers have asked him about it. That, too, makes
me suspect that he dreads something of the sort. It would be more
natural if he should show a boyish desire to be related to Skelton
and to share his consequence. He has a few books of Pryor’s and a few
trinkets of Mrs. Pryor’s, and I don’t believe all Skelton’s money
could buy those trifling things from him. But this haughty, naturally
self-respecting spirit of the boy only makes Skelton love him the more.
I have predicted to Skelton that the boy will hate him forever if any
disclosure is made about his birth. And Skelton dreads it, too. So you
see, madam, in spite of all he can do--and he will do all that mortal
man can do--you and yours may yet be rich through Skelton.”

Elizabeth sat, roused out of her sad patience into trembling
excitement. Of course, it was far off and doubtful, but it was
startling. Bulstrode had not asked her not to mention it to her
husband, nor would she have made any such promise. Presently Bulstrode
rose to go. Elizabeth realised, without his mentioning it, that if
it ever came to Skelton’s ears what Bulstrode had that night told,
Deerchase would never harbour him another hour, and she knew it was in
pity for her griefs that he had told her at all. She tried to express
this to Bulstrode, and he comprehended her.

He walked back to Deerchase oppressed with the reaction that follows
excitement. Suddenly, as he trudged along the white and sandy road,
under the pale splendour of the moon, he remembered Skelton’s words:
“You will not do the boy any harm until your heedless tongue begins to
wag, and then in pure idleness and wantonness you will tell all you
know.” Yes, Skelton was right, as usual. He had not told it in idleness
or wantonness, but he had told it. He could fancy Lewis’s face if he
had heard what had passed in the Newington drawing-room that night--the
shame, grief, reproach, indignation. Bulstrode sighed, and went heavily
upon his road home.

Mrs. Blair remained sitting in the drawing-room for some hours just
as Bulstrode had left her. The candles burned out and the moonlight
streamed through the open windows and made patches on the polished
floor. A servant went about after a while, shutting the house up, when
Mrs. Blair rose and went to her own room. As she passed Hilary’s door
everything was still, and she was afraid to open the door for fear it
might wake him. She found herself unable to go to bed, though, and at
midnight was sitting at her window looking out without seeing anything,
although the moon was not yet gone.

Presently she heard Blair come softly out of Hilary’s room and go
downstairs into his own den, which was called by courtesy a study, but
which was littered up with all the impedimenta of a country gentleman.
Sometimes during the night watches, when the boy was sleeping, he would
slip down there for a smoke. Nothing could exceed Blair’s tenderness to
his children, and when they were ill their exquisite fondness for him
appeared to redouble.

He had just finished his first cigar when the door opened and Elizabeth
entered with a candle in her hand. She had on a white dressing
wrapper, and her long hair was plaited down her back. Blair knew in an
instant from her face that something strange had happened.

She came forward and seated herself so that her head rested on his
shoulder. Blair at once laid down the cigar he had just lighted. He
did not hesitate to ask her to sign away her rights in everything they
jointly possessed, but he was careful to treat her with every mark of
the most perfect personal respect.

“Is Hilary asleep?” she asked.

“Soundly. He won’t wake up until morning. You had a visitor. I heard
Bulstrode’s voice downstairs.”

“Yes,” answered Elizabeth.

Blair felt her begin to tremble, and asked her what was the matter.

“Only something Mr. Bulstrode told me,” she answered, and then rapidly
and excitedly poured it all out. She could always express herself with
remarkable clearness, and Blair had no difficulty in understanding just
how things were.

“And, although it will probably never benefit us,” said Elizabeth
finally, “for Richard Skelton is as likely to live as we are, yet it
may some day benefit our children.”

“But I don’t see why it shouldn’t benefit us,” said Blair drily.
“Nothing is easier than to get a copy of that will, and somebody can be
found who will risk something upon such magnificent chances. I daresay
Skelton himself would be glad to compromise with us for a handsome sum
if we would convey all our interest in the property back to him.”

Elizabeth listened, startled and annoyed. She had felt some qualms at
the idea that, even if Lewis Pryor should make a successful fight for
his supposed parentage, her children should inherit money that was only
theirs through accident and bungling. But there was nobody else with
any better right to it, for the late Mrs. Skelton had fully determined
that her own family should not have it. And besides, it would be after
Skelton’s death--for she did not for a moment suppose that he would
marry. But this way of setting up an immediate claim to it offended
her. Being a singularly high-minded woman, she did not value money very
greatly, and had many delicate scruples regarding it.

“But--but--you don’t mean that you would take any steps--” she asked
hesitatingly.

“Just wait and see,” answered Blair promptly. “And Skelton may marry,
remember. I think he admires Sylvia Shapleigh very much; and you may
depend upon it, I sha’n’t refuse anything that is mine.”

Elizabeth for the first time in her life felt a little disgusted with
him.

“I am afraid you are not as high-minded as I thought you,” she said
after a moment.

Blair withdrew his arm from around her with displeasure written all
over his strong, expressive face. He began to finger his cigar, which
was a hint that she had better leave him. Usually Elizabeth never
remained a moment after she found she was trespassing, but to-night she
sat quite still. A quarrel between two extremely refined, courteous,
and attached persons is none the less bitter because each one is
scrupulously polite. Blair said, after a few moments:

“Your remark is quite uncalled for, and let me tell you, Elizabeth,
a man knows much more about these things than a woman. A man must be
trusted to manage his own affairs; and if he is incapable, another man
ought to be appointed his conservator.”

Blair had mismanaged his own affairs so beautifully that this sentiment
was peculiarly absurd coming from him. He glanced at Elizabeth and saw
something like a half-smile upon her face. She said nothing, but her
silence was eloquent. Blair wished then for the thousandth time that
Elizabeth would show her displeasure as other women did--with tears and
unguarded words and reproaches, or even as Mrs. Shapleigh did.

“I believe,” she said, after a long and painful pause, “that if the
dead woman had her choice she would be very willing for Lewis Pryor
to have the money, because Richard Skelton loves him so, and because
she loved Richard Skelton so. But I am afraid--I am afraid--it has
just occurred to me--that she would detest the idea of our having it,
because Richard Skelton hates us so. And there cannot be any blessing
attached to money that comes in that way.”

“Damme!” cried Blair rudely.

Elizabeth rose at once. Like him, she was extremely dainty in her ideas
of behaviour, and the only sort of henpecking she ever visited upon
Blair was the strict account she held him to as regarded his manners to
her, which, however, Blair was quite ready to accord usually. Even now
he felt immediate remorse, and held out his hand.

“Forgive me,” he said; “but it seems to me, Elizabeth, that we are
saying very odd and uncomfortable things to each other to-night.”

Elizabeth submitted to be drawn to him, and even to rest her head again
upon his shoulder; but the quarrel between husband and wife had to be
fought out as much as if they were a thousand miles apart. Blair tried
some of his old flattery on her.

“You know I could not forbear any triumph over Skelton--and you know
why. I want the money, but I want revenge, too; and revenge is a much
more gentlemanly vice than avarice, as vices go. However, you never saw
a man in your life who was indifferent to money.”

“Yes, I have--Mr. Conyers.”

“Pooh--a parson!”

“And Lewis Pryor. Mr. Bulstrode says he believes the boy will actually
fight against being made Richard Skelton’s heir, so much more does he
value respectable parentage than money.”

“Pooh--a boy!”

“And I assure you, that many things might make _me_ regret we have that
money, if it comes.”

“Pshaw--a woman!”

“It may be that only parsons, boys, and women are indifferent to money;
but if my son showed--as I hope he would--the same jealous solicitude
for his honour and mine that Lewis Pryor does for his and his mother’s,
I should indeed be proud of him. Fancy,” she said, raising herself and
looking at Blair with luminous eyes, “the bribe of a great fortune
being offered to Hilary if he would cast shame on his mother! And would
I not rather see him dead before my eyes than yielding?”

Blair mumbled something about not being parallel cases.

“Then imagine yourself--all Richard Skelton’s fortune yours”--Elizabeth
waved her hands expressively--“all--all, if you will only agree that
your mother was an unworthy woman.”

Blair remained silent. Elizabeth was too acute for him then.

“Of course,” he said after a moment, “I respect the boy for the spirit
Bulstrode says he has shown, and I hope he’ll stick to it. I hope he’ll
make a fight for it and come out ahead, and prosper, and have all the
money that’s good for him. Skelton has got a very handsome estate of
his own to give him; and he may be master of Deerchase yet.”

“And our little Mary may be mistress of Deerchase,” said Elizabeth,
who had a truly feminine propensity for concocting marriages for her
children from their cradles.

“Never!” Blair brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. “She
shall marry respectably or not at all; and though I like money, my
daughter shall never marry any man who has no name to give her.”

“Perhaps they may run away,” remarked Mrs. Blair demurely, at which
they both laughed a little, and Blair kissed his wife. But there was
still battle between them. Mrs. Blair wanted the matter to rest; Blair
wanted to agitate it immediately.

“Mr. Bulstrode meant to make me happy,” she said bitterly, after a
while; “but I doubt if he has. I even doubt, if that money comes to us,
whether it may not do us more harm than good.”

“I understand quite well what you mean,” cried Blair, blazing up.
“You think I will go back to horse racing, and gambling, and a few
other vices. That is the confidence you have in my word. I tell you,
Elizabeth, a man can’t have any confidence in himself unless somebody
else has some confidence in him; and a man’s wife can make a scoundrel
of him easier than anybody in the world.”

“I did not suspect that I was calculated to make a scoundrel of a man,”
answered Elizabeth; and Blair taking out his watch ostentatiously and
picking up his cigar again, she rose to go. Their voices had not risen
beyond the most ordinary pitch, yet the first serious quarrel of their
married life had come about. Blair relighted her candle for her, and
held the door wide open until she had reached the top of the stair. He
was very polite to her, but he was more angry with her than he supposed
he ever could be. He was angry with her for the little she said, but
more angry with her for the great deal she implied; and he meant to
have some money on his expectations, if it were in the power of mortal
man.




CHAPTER XVI.


Blair was as good as his word, and sent immediately to England for a
copy of Mrs. Skelton’s will. But in those days it was a matter of three
months or more to get a thing of that kind attended to, and meanwhile
affairs with him improved greatly. Old Tom Shapleigh, urged thereto
by Sylvia, and also by Mrs. Shapleigh, who declared she never could
tolerate a new neighbour at Newington, went quietly to work and bought
up all of the most pressing claims against Blair. He knew that he could
get as good interest on his money invested in Newington, under Blair’s
admirable management, as anywhere else; and, besides, he was fond of
the Blairs, and anxious to do them a good turn for the very bad one
of selling Alabaster to Blair. So Blair suddenly found himself very
much better placed than he expected, and with an excellent chance, if
he lived ten years, of paying off his debts. He also had a strange
sense of relief when his race horses were sold, at the feeling that
it was now out of his power to be a turfite any longer. It had always
been a nightmare as well as a vampire to him, and fortunately it was
one of those passions which have a body to them, and can therefore be
destroyed, at least temporarily. His horses brought uncommonly good
prices, which enabled him to pay some of the small debts that harassed
him most. He began to think, with a sort of savage satisfaction, that
what Skelton designed for his destruction might in the end be his
salvation. Hilary, too, began to improve rapidly, and was in six weeks’
time perfectly recovered. Mrs. Blair was amazed at the turn affairs
took; but there was yet an unspoken, still antagonism between Blair
and herself in regard to his course about the Skelton money. They had
been so happy together for so many years that the mere habit of love
was strong. The children saw no shadow between their father and mother,
but nevertheless it was there, and it pursued them; it sat down by
them, and walked with them, and never left them. Elizabeth, seeing how
happy they might have been without this, conceived a tender, womanish
superstition against the money that might be theirs. She had a faint,
quivering doubt that much money might be Blair’s destruction; and,
anyhow, the mere hint of it had brought silent dissension between them,
when nothing else ever had. Mrs. Blair, in the depths of her soul,
heartily wished Bulstrode had never told her what he did, or that she
had never told Blair. She had been able to hold up her head proudly
before Richard Skelton in all the rivalry between him and her husband;
but now, this unseemly looking after what might never be theirs and was
never intended to be theirs, this hankering after dead men’s shoes,
made her ashamed.

What Skelton thought or felt nobody knew. He expressed, however, to
Sylvia, great solicitude in speaking of Hilary Blair’s recovery, and
sent Bob Skinny formally, once or twice, to ask how the boy was.
Sylvia was making herself felt on Skelton’s heart and mind; but, like a
man, he put off entertaining the great guest as long as he could. And
there was his engagement to the world to do something extraordinary.
In the long summer days he was haunted by that unfulfilled promise. He
was so tormented and driven by it, and by his inability to settle down
steadily to his book, that he looked about him for some distraction. He
found it only too often, he began to think, in Sylvia Shapleigh’s soft
eyes and charming talk.

Skelton was not averse to occasional hospitalities on a grand scale,
and one day it occurred to him that he would give a great ball as a
return for the invitations he had received.

On mentioning this embryonic scheme to Sylvia, that young woman
received it with enthusiasm, and even slyly put Lewis Pryor up
to reminding Skelton of it. Lewis, too, was immensely taken with
the notion, and when Skelton found himself the victim of two such
conspirators, he yielded gracefully enough. He declared that he would
send for a man from Baltimore who knew all about balls, that he
might not be bothered with it, and Sylvia forcibly encouraged him in
everything calculated to make the ball a success. The man was sent for
and plans were made, upon which Sylvia’s opinion was asked--to Mrs.
Shapleigh’s delight and consternation and to old Tom’s secret amusement.

“Mr. Shapleigh, the county will say at once that Sylvia is engaged to
Richard Skelton, and then what shall we do?”

“Do, ma’am? Do as the French do in a gale of wind.”

“What is that, Mr. Shapleigh?”

“The best they can.”

“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, why will you say such senseless things? Of course,
there’s nothing for us to do--nothing; and, although Richard Skelton is
the greatest match in the county, even if he does have to give up his
wife’s money, yet there are drawbacks to him. You told me yourself he
didn’t believe in the devil.”

“Well, he will if he ever gets married,” responded old Tom, with an
enormous wink.

The giving of a ball such as Skelton designed was in those days an
undertaking little short of a crusade in the Middle Ages. A sailing
vessel had to be sent to Baltimore for the supper, musicians,
decorations, and everything the plantation did not supply; and it
might return in one week, and it might return in two weeks, and it
might never return at all. Sylvia Shapleigh hypocritically made light
of these difficulties, and handsome cards were sent out to the whole
county, including the Blairs. By some sort of hocus-pocus, Sylvia and
Lewis obtained the privilege of addressing the invitations, so fearful
were they of leaving Skelton a loophole of escape. It was done one June
morning in the summerhouse on the bridge--Skelton sitting back smiling,
while Sylvia and Lewis alternately conspired and squabbled. Skelton
had a way of looking at Sylvia that always agitated her, although she
thought she gave no sign of it. She had by this time acknowledged to
herself that there were only two places in the world for her--the one
where Skelton was, and the other where he was not. She had not, with
all her native acuteness, the slightest idea what Skelton felt for her.
True, he had a manner of paying her small attentions and compliments,
insignificant in themselves, but which he invested with a deep and
peculiar meaning. On this very morning, as she and Lewis chattered,
Skelton sat looking at her with an expression of enjoyment, as if her
mere presence and talk gave him exquisite pleasure. It did give him
pleasure to see how much he dominated her; it was a royal sort of
overbearing, a refined and subtle tyranny, that gratified his secret
inordinate pride.

Sylvia confided in him that she was to have a new white-lutestring
gown, and Mrs. Shapleigh had ordered a turban with a bird of paradise
on it for the occasion. Nothing could exceed Sylvia’s interest and
delight, except Lewis’s.

Bulstrode locked and barred himself in his room when Bridges, the
functionary who was to arrange the ball, arrived from Baltimore.
Skelton took refuge in the library, which was the one spot in the house
upon which Bridges dare not lay his sacrilegious hands. But even the
fastidious and scholarly Skelton could not wholly escape the domestic
hullabaloo of a ball in the country. Lewis Pryor, at first delighted,
soon found that if he showed his nose outside of the library he was
pounced upon by Bridges--a saturnine-looking person, who had exchanged
the calling of an undertaker for that of a caterer--and sent on an
errand of some sort. Lewis, who was not used to this sort of thing,
would have promptly resented it, except that it was for the great, the
grand, the wonderful ball. Why he should be so anxious about the ball,
he did not know; there was nobody to take any notice of him; but still,
he wanted it, and Sylvia had promised to dance the first quadrille
with him. This invitation was given far in advance, with a view of
out-generalling Skelton.

Bob Skinny’s disgust was extreme. The idea that he was to be superseded
by a person of such low origin and inferior talents as Bridges was
exasperating to the last degree.

“Dat ar owdacious Bridges man,” he complained to Lewis, “he think
he know ev’ything. He come a-countin’ my spoons an’ forks, an’ he
say, ‘How many spoons an’ forks has you got?’ An’ I say, ‘Millions
on ’em--millions on ’em; de Skeltons allers had more’n anybody in
de worl’. I nuvver count all on ’em, myse’f.’ _He_ ain’ nuvver been
to furrin parts; an’ when I ax him, jist to discomfuse him, ef he
couldn’ play on de fluke er nuttin’, he say he ain’ got no time fer
sich conjurements. I tole him, maybe he so us’ ter settin’ up wid
dade folks an’ undertakin’ dat he dunno nuttin’ ’bout a party; an’ he
went an’ tole Mr. Skelton. But Mr. Skelton, he shet him up. He say,
‘Well, Bridges, I daresay you’ll have to put up wid Bob Skinny. De
wuffless rascal done had he way fur so long dat nobody now kin hardly
conflagrate him.’ So now, sence de Bridges man know my corndition, I
jes’ walks out in de g’yardin, a-playin’ my fluke, an’ when he sen’ fur
me, I tell him ter go long--I doan’ do no wuk dese days; ’tain’t none
o’ my ball--’tis his’n--an’ ter be sho’ an’ doan’ make no mistake dat
it is a funeral.”

As this was literally true, war to the knife was inaugurated between
Bridges and Bob Skinny. Bob consoled himself, though, by promising
that, when the musicians arrived, “I gwi’ jine ’em, an’ take my place
’longside de hade man, an’ gwi’ show ’em how I play de fluke fo’ de
Duke o’ Wellingcome, an’ de Prince Rejump, and Napoleon Bonyparte, an’
all dem high-flyers dat wuz allus arter Mr. Skelton ter sell me ter ’em
when we wuz ’broad.”

Mrs. Shapleigh was in a state of much agitation, first, for fear
the bird of paradise wouldn’t come, and then for fear it wouldn’t
be becoming. Nor was Sylvia’s mind quite easy until the new
white-lutestring ball dress was an accomplished fact.

And at Newington, too, was much concern. An invitation had been sent
to the Blairs, of course, and as Hilary was now on the highroad to
recovery, there was no reasonable excuse for the Blairs not going.
According to the hospitable customs of the age, to decline to go to a
certain house was an acknowledgment of the most unqualified enmity. The
resources of the people were so few, that to refuse an invitation to a
festivity could only proceed from the most deadly ill-will. People who
avowedly disliked each other yet kept up a visiting acquaintance, for,
as they were planted by each other in perpetuity, they were forced to
be wary in their enmities.

Blair and his wife discussed it amicably; they were more conciliatory
and forbearing, now that there was an inharmonious chord between them,
than before, when they had had their little differences, secure in
their perfect understanding of each other. Blair promptly decided that
they must go, else it would appear as if he were still unreasonably
sore over his defeat. Mrs. Blair acquiesced in this. She could not,
like Sylvia Shapleigh, have a new ball gown, but her white-silk wedding
dress, that cherished gown, bought for her to be married to Skelton
in, and in which she was actually married to Blair, was turned and
furbished up for the occasion. Mrs. Blair felt the exquisite absurdity
of this, and could not forbear smiling when she was engaged in her work.

The night of the ball arrived--a July night, cool for the season.
By seven o’clock the roads leading to Deerchase were full of great,
old-fashioned coaches, gigs, stanhopes, and chaises, bringing the
county gentry to the grand and much-talked-of ball. Mrs. Shapleigh,
whose remains of beauty were not inconsiderable, had begun making her
toilet at three o’clock in the day, and was in full regalia at six. She
had on a superb crimson satin gown, and the bird of paradise nodded
majestically on her head, while she wore so many necklaces around her
neck that she looked like a Christmas turkey. Old Tom was out in his
best full dress, of swallow-tailed blue coat and brass buttons, with a
fine lawn tie to muffle up his throat, after the fashion, and thread
cambric ruffles rushing out of his yellow-satin waistcoat. Sylvia
had resisted her mother’s entreaties to wear a sash, to wear another
necklace, to wear a wreath of artificial flowers, and various other
adornments, and by the charming simplicity of her dress was even more
successful than usual in persuading the world that she was handsome.

At Deerchase, the house was lighted with wax candles as soon as it was
dark. The grounds were illuminated with Chinese lanterns, a luxury
never before witnessed in those parts; there was to be a constant
exhibition of fireworks on the river, and a band of musicians played
in the grounds, and another band in the great hall, which was cleared
for dancing. A ball upon a plantation was always as much enjoyed
by the negroes as the white people, and every negro at Deerchase
was out in his or her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, some to help in
the house, some at the stables to take care of the carriages and
horses, and others who merely enjoyed looking on with intense though
regulated delight. Bob Skinny was simply immense, and fairly outshone
Mrs. Shapleigh in the number and variety of his rings, chains, and
breastpins. He stood on the square portico that faced the drive,
with his arms magnificently folded, his “fluke” under his arm, and
occasionally, with an air of tremendous solemnity, he consulted a
huge silver watch which didn’t run, that Skelton had given him. Bob
arrogated to himself the honour of receiving the guests as they
alighted, while Skelton occupied a comparatively unimportant position
in the hall. Bulstrode was prowling about, completely subdued by his
evening coat and a pair of large white kid gloves. Lewis Pryor, full
of delighted excitement, was surveying his handsome boyish figure in
the glass over the hall chimney-piece, as Skelton descended the stairs,
putting on his gloves.

“How do you like yourself?” he called out.

Lewis blushed furiously and laughed.

Meanwhile Bob Skinny and the “hade man” of the musicians were having a
lively verbal scrimmage in the porch.

“Here you is!” remarked Bob, with an air of lofty patronage, as the
leader of the band, a red-faced German, accompanied by his satellites,
appeared on the porch with their instruments. “Now, I gwi’ show you how
ter play de fluke, an’ I gwi’ play wid you, arter I done git th’u wid
receivin’ de cump’ny. I kin play de fluke better’n anybody you ever
see, but I ain’ proud; I doan’ min’ playin’ wid you.”

“You holt your tongue,” calmly remarked the German. “I got no dime der
drifle.”

“Look a-here,” answered Bob Skinny severely, “doan’ you go fer to
wex me; doan’ you wex nor aggrawate me. I done been ter Germany, and
’tain’t nobody d’yar ’cept po’ white trash. _You’s_ de hade man o’ dem
fiddlers, an’ _I_ is de hade man o’ Mr. Richard Skelton, dat’s got mo’
lan’ an’ niggers en all de wuffless Germans put toge’rr.” Bob’s remarks
were cut short untimely by Skelton’s appearing in the porch, when he
became as mute as an oyster. Meanwhile the musicians had carried their
instruments in, and began tuning up. Bob, however, could not refrain
from tuning and blowing on his “fluke” at the most critical time, when
his enemy, the German, was trying to give the pitch.

In a very little while the carriages began rolling up to the door, in
the soft purple twilight of July. The Blairs and the Shapleighs were
among the first to arrive. Sylvia was really pretty that night, and the
excitement of the music and the Chinese lanterns and the fireworks that
were being set off upon the river, which was all black and gold with
the fire and darkness, was not lost upon her. Never had she seen such
a ball; it was worth a dozen trips to the Springs.

Mrs. Blair, too, was in great form, and her turned wedding-gown set so
gracefully upon her that she looked to be one of the best-dressed women
in the room. Blair put on all his most charming ways, and honey-fuggled
Mrs. Shapleigh and several other ladies of her age most audaciously.
The women all smiled on him, and Elizabeth suffered the most ridiculous
pangs of jealousy that could be imagined. But she was not quite like
her old self; the possibilities of the future were always before her;
her mind was too often engaged in picturing that dim future when she
and Blair and Skelton would be dust and ashes, and her children might
be leading a strange, brilliant, dazzling existence, which would be
immeasurably removed from any life that she had ever known. And that
strong but impalpable estrangement between Blair and herself--she was
ashamed and humiliated when she thought of his investigation and prying
and peering into Skelton’s affairs; and suppose, after all, Skelton
should find a way out of it, and then they would get no fortune at all;
and what a mortifying position would be theirs! for the whole county
must know it--the whole county knew everything.

There was dancing in the main hall and cards in the library, and the
lofty and beautiful drawing-rooms were for lookers-on. Skelton, who
when he greeted her had pressed Sylvia’s hand for the pleasure of
seeing the blood mount in her smooth cheek, asked if she was engaged
for the first dance.

[Illustration: THERE WAS DANCING IN THE MAIN HALL, AND THE
DRAWING-ROOMS WERE FOR LOOKERS-ON.--_Page 224_]

“Yes,” answered Sylvia. “I have been engaged for it for three
weeks--” Skelton scowled; perhaps Sylvia was not as much under his
spell as he fancied, but he smiled when Sylvia continued--“to Lewis
Pryor.”

“The little scamp has circumvented me, I see,” he remarked, and did not
seem displeased at the idea.

Lewis soon sidled up to Sylvia, proud and delighted at her notice. But
it was all the notice he had, except from Mr. Conyers, who patted him
on the head, and a smile from Mrs. Blair. The clergyman had come in
response to a personal note as well as a card from Skelton, and walked
about sadly, thinking on the vast and sorrowful spectacle of human
nature even in the presence of so much fleeting joy. He had not been
in the house an hour, though, before he came up to say good-night.
There was not only much card playing going on in the library, but
considerable betting, which was the fashion in those days, and to that
Conyers was unalterably opposed.

“Mr. Skelton,” said he, coming up to him, “I must say good-night.”

“Why so early?” asked Skelton graciously. “Since you have done me the
honour of coming, why not do me the pleasure of staying?”

“Because,” said Conyers, who spoke the truth in season and out of
season, “it is against my conscience to stay where betting is going
on. Forgive me, if I apparently commit a breach of hospitality, but
consider, Mr. Skelton, you will one day be held accountable for the
iniquity that is now taking place under your roof.”

“I accept the responsibility,” answered Skelton, with unabated
politeness, “and I regret your decision. You are always welcome at
Deerchase, Mr. Conyers, and you have the most perfect liberty of
expressing your opinions.”

“Thank you,” replied poor Conyers, with tears in his eyes. “If
everybody was as tolerant as you, my ministry would be easier than it
is.”

As Conyers went one way, Skelton went off another, thinking to himself,
“Was ever a man so openly defied as I?” True it was he could be openly
defied, and everybody had full liberty, until Skelton’s own orbit was
crossed: then there was no liberty.

Old Tom Shapleigh swung, like a pendulum, between cards and dancing. He
danced with all the vigor of colonial days, and his small, high-bred
feet, cased in white-silk stockings and low shoes, with silver buckles,
twinkled like a ballet dancer’s as he cut the pigeon wing. Mrs. Blair,
who danced sedately and gracefully, was his partner. Bob Skinny, his
head thrown back and wearing an expression of ecstatic delight, watched
the dancers from a corner, occasionally waving his “fluke” to mark the
time. However, by some occult means he had become acquainted with the
champagne punch, and when Skelton’s back was turned, Bob proceeded to
cut the pigeon wing too, and to back-step and double-shuffle with the
most surprising agility. In the midst of this performance, though, a
hint of Skelton’s approach being given, Bob instantly assumed the most
rigid and dignified pose imaginable.

Lewis, after dancing once with Sylvia and once with Mrs. Blair, who
spoke to him kindly, wandered about, lonely enough. The people did not
relax in the least their aloofness towards him. He felt inexpressibly
sad and forlorn, and at this ball, too, which, as a matter of fact,
might never have been given but for him. But the beauty and splendour
of the scene dazzled him. He could not tear himself away.

Something of the same spell was upon Bulstrode. He knew little and
cared less for social life; he was one of those unfortunates who have
but one single, solitary source of enjoyment--the purely intellectual;
but the lights, the music, the gaiety, the festal air, had its
effect even on his sluggish temperament. He sat in a corner of the
drawing-room, his bulky, awkward figure filling up a great chair, and
Lewis came and leaned silently upon the back of it. In some way, master
and pupil felt strange to the rest of the world that night, and drawn
together.

“Mr. Bulstrode,” said Lewis presently, “I always feel alone in a crowd.
Don’t you?”

“Yes, boy,” answered Bulstrode, glancing about him with an odd look of
dejection. “And in a crowd of merry-makers my old heart grows chill
with loneliness.”

“It is much worse to be lonely when you are young,” Lewis moralised.
“But there is Miss Sylvia Shapleigh. I wonder if she will come up and
talk to us?”

Sylvia did come up and speak to them. There was a new brilliancy in her
smile, and a deep and eloquent flush upon her cheek. Bulstrode felt
compelled to pay her one of his awkward compliments.

“My dear young lady,” he said, “to-night you look like one of those
fair Greek girls of old, who lived but to smile and to dance and to
love.”

Sylvia’s colour deepened; she stood quite still, gazing at Bulstrode as
if he had uttered a prophecy; but then Lewis, suddenly seeing people
going out of the bay windows on the lawn, cried out excitedly: “Now the
finest part of the fireworks is going off! Come along!” And, seizing
her hand, they went out on the smooth-shaven lawn as far as the river.

In spite of the coloured lights, it was dim, as there was no moon.
The house, with its great wings, was so illuminated, that it looked
enormously large. Afar off came the strains of music, while in the half
darkness figures moved about like ghosts. Lewis and Sylvia, standing
hand in hand, watched the great golden wheels that rose from a boat in
the river magnificently lighting up the blue-black sky, and reflected
in the blue-black water as they burst in a shower of sparkles. How
good, in those days, were beautiful things to eyes unjaded, to minds
prepared to marvel, to tastes so simple that almost anything could
inspire wonder and delight!

Sylvia had no wrap around her shoulders, and after a while, as she and
Lewis watched the fireworks, she felt a shawl gently placed about her.
She realised, without turning her head, that the hand was Skelton’s.
The rest of the time he stood with them. They were separated from the
house by great clumps of crape myrtle, then in its first pink glory.
Some invisible bond seemed to unite all three. Skelton felt with the
keenest delight the delicious emotions of youth--he was too true a
philosopher not to rejoice that he could still feel--and he had always
feared and dreaded that chilling of his sensibilities which is the
beginning of old age. How bewitching was Sylvia Shapleigh to him then,
and if ever they should be married how kind she would be to Lewis! when
suddenly came a piercing sense of chagrin and chafing rebellion. He was
bound by a chain. All coercion was abnormally hateful to him; and, as
Bulstrode had said, the wonder was that he had not gone mad in thinking
over how he had been bound by the act of a dead woman.

Sylvia felt instinctively a change in him when he spoke. The fireworks
were then over, and they went back to the house, where the dancers’
feet still beat monotonously and the music throbbed. They entered
through the library windows, and Sylvia admired, as she always did, the
noble and imposing array of books.

“Let them alone,” said Skelton, with his rare smile that always had
something melancholy in it. “See what an old fossil it has made of me!”

Sylvia smiled at him archly, and said: “Yes, an old fossil, indeed!
But then, when you have written your great book, you will be among the
immortals. You will never grow old or die.”

The smile died away quickly from Skelton’s face. That book was another
bond upon him--that unfulfilled promise to the world to produce
something extraordinary. Nobody but Skelton knew the misery that
unwritten book had cost him. It had shadowed his whole life.

Lewis Pryor had begun to be sleepy by that time, and after supper
had been served he slipped back into the library, to which the card
players had not yet returned, and curled up on a leather sofa in the
embrasure of a window, where he could see the river and listen to the
music. He pulled the damask curtains around him, and lay there in a
sort of tranquil, happy dream. How far away was the music, and how odd
looked the negroes, peering in at the windows, with their great white
eyeballs! and before Lewis knew it he was sound asleep, with only a
part of his small, glossy-black head showing beyond the curtain.

Bulstrode, as usual, was attentive to the decanters. He hated cards,
and after he had played a few games of loo in the early part of the
evening, and had lost some money, he had had enough of it. He wandered
aimlessly from one room to another. It was all excessively pretty
to him, but childish. His eyes followed Mrs. Blair, and he began to
speculate, as he lounged about, his hands in the pockets of his tight
black trousers, what would be the result if the Blairs should get all
of Skelton’s wife’s money.

“But I sha’n’t be here to see it,” he thought rather cheerfully, “for
Skelton will outlast this old carcass.” Then he began to think, with
the sardonic amusement that always inspired him when his mind was
on that particular subject, how the bare possibility must infuriate
Skelton; and, after all, it would be better to let Lewis alone, and
give him Deerchase and all of Skelton’s own money--that would be quite
as much as would be good for him. On the whole, he was glad he had told
Mrs. Blair, and he hoped the dear soul would live to enjoy all that
would be hers.

As the night wore on and the fumes of the liquor Bulstrode had drank
mounted to his brain, clearing it, as he always protested, the sense of
slavery to Skelton vanished. He was a free man; he was not simply an
embodied intellect kept by Skelton for his uses, as the feudal barons
of old kept the wearers of the motley. Bulstrode began to walk about
jovially, to hold up his head, to mend his slouchy gait and careless
manners. He strolled up to Mrs. Blair, standing by the library door,
with as much of an air as if he owned Deerchase. Skelton, who was not
far off, said, smiling, to Sylvia:

“Drink _does_ improve Bulstrode. He always declares that it makes a
gentleman of him.”

It was now getting towards four o’clock, and people with drives of
ten and fifteen miles before them began to make the move to go. A
few dancers were yet spinning about in the hall. Bulstrode gallantly
complimented Mrs. Blair upon her looks, her gown--everything.
Elizabeth, with a smile, received his praises. Then, emboldened, he
began to be rash, saying:

“And when the time comes, my dear madam, that you are in the commanding
place you ought to have--when you are possessed of the power which
money gives--when what is Skelton’s now shall be yours and your
children’s--”

“Hush!” cried Mrs. Blair nervously and turning pale. Her eyes sought
for Skelton; he was not five feet off, and one look at him showed
that he had heard every word, and he was too acute and instant of
comprehension not to have taken it in at once. Sylvia Shapleigh had
just gone off with her father, and practically Skelton and Mrs. Blair
and Bulstrode were alone.

“You think, perhaps,” said Bulstrode, laughing wickedly, “that I am
afraid Mr. Skelton will hear--” Bulstrode had not seen Skelton, and
thought him altogether out of earshot. “But, to use a very trifling
standard of value, madam, I don’t at this moment care a twopenny damn
whether Skelton hears me or not! The money ought to be yours one day,
and it will be--” As he spoke, there was Skelton at his elbow.

Skelton’s black eyes were simply blazing. He looked ready to fell
Bulstrode with one blow of his sinewy arm. His first glance--a
fearful one--seemed to sober Bulstrode instantly. The music was still
crashing melodiously in the hall; the warm, perfumed air from the long
greenhouse with its wide-open doors floated in; the yellow light from a
group of wax candles in a sconce fell upon them.

Skelton said not a word as he fixed his eyes wrathfully on Bulstrode,
but Bulstrode seemed actually to wither under that look of concentrated
rage.

“Skelton,” said Bulstrode in an agony, the drops appearing upon his
broad forehead, “I have violated no promise.” He stopped, feeling the
weakness of the subterfuge.

“I would scarcely exact a promise from one so incapable of keeping
one,” answered Skelton in calm and modulated tones. He had but one wish
then, and that was to get Mrs. Blair out of the way that he might work
his will on Bulstrode. The restraint of her presence infuriated him,
the more when she said, in trembling tones:

“Pray, forgive him; he was imprudent, but the secret is safe with us.”

“With us!” Then Blair knew as well.

“I have no secret, Mrs. Blair,” answered Skelton with indomitable
coolness. “What this--person told you is no secret. As it is very
remote, and as there are chances of which Bulstrode himself does not
take into account, I thought it useless to inform you. But, if you
desire, I will, to-morrow morning, explain the whole thing to you and
your husband.”

“Pray--pray, do not!” cried Elizabeth.

Skelton bowed, and said: “As you please. But rest assured that,
although I never volunteered the information as this man has, yet I
stand ready to answer all questions from those who are authorised to
ask them.”

Bulstrode gazed helplessly from one to the other, strangely overcome.
There was something inexpressibly appealing in the look; he feared that
he had lost the regard of the only woman who had for him any tenderness
of feeling, had revealed a stain upon the boy he loved better than any
creature in the world, and had mortally offended the man upon whom he
depended for bread.

“Skelton,” he cried, almost in tears, “I told her when the ruin
that you promised Jack Blair seemed to be accomplished; when she,”
indicating Mrs. Blair, “was likely to be houseless and homeless; when
her only son lay stretched upon his bed more dead than alive; when, I
tell you, any man who had not a stone in his bosom for a heart would
have felt for her; when I would have laid down my worthless life for
her to have brought ease. Can you blame me?”

It was getting to be too much of a scene. Skelton turned towards
Bulstrode, who was utterly abject and pitiable. The collapse of any
human being is overpowering, but of a man with an intellect like
Bulstrode’s it became terrible. Mrs. Blair’s large and beautiful eyes
filled with tears that rolled down her cheeks and upon her bare, white
neck. She put her hand on Bulstrode’s arm; it was the first kind touch
of a woman’s hand that he had felt for thirty years.

“It was your kindness, your tenderness for me and mine that made you
tell me; and if all the world turns against you, I will not.”

Bulstrode raised her hand to his lips and kissed it reverently, and her
womanly compassion seemed to awaken some spark of manliness in him. He
made no further appeal.

Skelton all this time was cold with rage. He had been in rages with
Bulstrode many times, and he had wreaked vengeance on him; he could say
words to Bulstrode that would make him wince, but he could not say them
before Mrs. Blair. After a moment he bowed low to her again.

“I will not detain you further. Only, pray remember that you are at
liberty to take me at my word at any time.”

Mrs. Blair paused a moment, and then, recovering herself, replied, with
something like haughtiness:

“I have no desire to inquire further; and since this knowledge has
certainly not made me any happier, and as I am clear that the affair
is in the hands of the law, I have no intention of making it known to
anybody whatever.” Then she said to Bulstrode: “Good-night, my friend.”

Skelton accompanied her quite to her carriage. He doubted the capacity
of any woman to keep a secret, and he was in that state of furious
displeasure and disappointment that the betrayal of what he earnestly
desired to keep secret would place any man. But he had an unshakable
composure. Mrs. Blair, knowing him as well as she did, could not but
admire his coolness under agitating circumstances.

Everybody then was going. Great family carriages were being drawn up
before the broad porch. The lights had burned low, and there was a
greyness over everything; a cloud of white mists lay over the green
fields; the woods were bathed in a ghostly haze; it was the unearthly
morning hour which is neither night nor day.

Skelton stood in the middle of the hall telling everybody good-bye,
receiving calmly and smilingly congratulations on his charming ball.
Sylvia Shapleigh, her eyes languid with excitement and want of sleep,
followed in her mother’s wake to say good-bye. She knew Skelton’s
countenance perfectly, and she alone perceived that something strange
and displeasing had happened.

At last everybody was gone, even the musicians, the negroes--everybody.
Skelton stood in the porch watching the rosy dawn over the delicious
landscape, his face sombre, his whole air one of tension. His fury
against Bulstrode had partly abated. On the contrary, a feeling of
cynical pleasure at the way he would confute him took its place.
So, the heedless old vagabond had gone over to Newington with that
cock-and-bull story of a fortune whenever he, Skelton, was married or
buried; and Mrs. Blair and her husband had been foolish enough to
believe him. Well, they would find out their mistake in short order.

Skelton went straight to the library. Bulstrode was still there,
sitting in a great chair leaning heavily forward. The daylight had
begun to penetrate through the heavy curtains, and the candles were
spluttering in their sockets. The first shock over, Bulstrode had got
back some of his courage. Skelton, with an inscrutable smile on his
face, walked up to him. Never was there a greater contrast between two
men--one, a thoroughbred from the crown of his head to the sole of his
foot, accustomed to the habit of command; the other, bourgeois all
over, and only asserting himself by an effort. Bulstrode, meaning to
show that he was not cowed, began, like a vulgarian, to be violent.

“Look here, Skelton,” he began aggressively, “it’s done, and
there’s no use talking. But recollect that I’m Lewis Pryor’s
guardian--recollect--I--er--” Here Bulstrode began to flounder.

“I recollect it all,” answered Skelton contemptuously; “and I
recollect, too, that you are still half drunk. When you are sober--”

“Sober,” said poor Bulstrode with something like a groan of despair.
“When I’m sober I’m the most miserable, contemptible man on God’s
earth. When I’m sober you can do anything with me. I’m sober now, I’m
afraid.”

He was grotesque even in his deepest emotions. Skelton’s quick eye had
caught sight of Lewis Pryor lying asleep on the sofa. He went towards
him and drew back tenderly the curtains that half enveloped him. The
boy was sleeping the sleep of youth and health, a slight flush upon his
dark cheek, his hair tumbled over his handsome head, one arm thrown
off; there was something wonderfully attractive in his boyish beauty.

“Look at him well,” said Skelton, with a new, strange pride in his
voice. “See how manly, how well formed he is--slight, but a powerful
fellow--worth two of that hulking Blair boy. See his forehead; did you
ever see a fool with a forehead like that? and the cut of the mouth
and chin! Think you, Bulstrode, that with this boy I will ever let the
Blairs get any of that money that you foolishly told them they would?
Could not any father be proud of such a boy? I tell you there are times
when I yearn over him womanishly--when I cannot trust myself near him
for fear I will clasp him in my arms. I envy Blair but one thing, and
that is, that he can show the fondness for his son that I feel for mine
but cannot show. Did you think, did you dream for a moment, that I
would not see this boy righted?” He said “this boy” with an accent of
such devoted pride that Bulstrode could only gaze astounded, well as he
knew Skelton’s secret devotion to the boy. He had never in all his life
seen Skelton so moved by anything. Skelton bent down and kissed Lewis
on the forehead. If the portrait of Skelton’s great-grandfather that
hung over the mantelpiece had stepped down from its frame and kissed
the boy, Bulstrode could scarcely have been more surprised. No mother
over her first-born could have shown more fondness than Skelton.

“Go, now,” presently cried Skelton. His anger had quite vanished. It
seemed as if in that one burst of paternal feeling all pride and anger
had melted away. He could defy the Blairs now. Bulstrode might have
retaliated on him what he had said to Mrs. Blair about it. He might
have said: “How can you prove it? So anxious you were to give this
child a respectable parentage, that you cannot now undo, if you will,
your own work. And who could not see an object in it that would make
people believe you seized upon this boy merely as an instrument against
the Blairs?” But he said not a word. He got up and went out, and, as he
passed, he laid his hand upon the boy’s head.

“I, too, have loved him well,” he said.

“Yes,” said Skelton, “and that may help you yet. No man that loves that
boy can my anger hold against.”

And so poor Lewis, who often felt and said sadly that he had no one to
love him, was fondled adoringly by the last person in the world that he
would have expected.

Skelton shut and locked the library door, and, tenderly placing the
boy’s head in a more comfortable position, sat down in a great chair
and watched him. He could not at that moment bear to have Lewis out of
his sight. Yes, the time had now come that he could tell him what had
burned within him for so long. The boy was in himself so graceful, so
gifted, there was so much to give him, that the foolish world would
be compelled to court him and to forget that stain upon him. Skelton
said to himself that, had he the choice of every quality a boy should
have, he would have chosen just such a mind and character as Lewis
had. He was so thoroughly well balanced; he had a fine and vigorous
mind, high up in the scale of talent, but far removed from the abnormal
quality of genius; there would be for him no stupendous infantile
performances to haunt the whole of his future life, no overweighting
of any one faculty to the disproportion of the rest. And then, he
had an eaglet’s spirit. Skelton smiled when he remembered that no
human being had ever so stood upon punctilio with him as this little
black-eyed boy. He had, too, an exquisite common sense, which enabled
him to submit readily to proper authority; he was obedient enough to
Bulstrode. And then, he had so much pride that he could never be vain;
and he had naturally the most modest and graceful little air in the
world. Ah, to think that with such a boy the Blairs should dream that
heaven and earth would not be moved to see him righted! And, since the
boy was the instrument to defeat the Blairs, there was no reason that
Skelton should not follow up that fancy for Sylvia Shapleigh. On the
whole, he could part with the money with an excellent grace to Lewis,
and he would still be rich, according to the standard of the people
about him. Sylvia would forgive Lewis’s existence. Skelton was no mean
judge of women, and he knew instinctively that Sylvia Shapleigh would
be the most forgiving woman in the world for what had happened in the
past, and the most unforgiving one of any future disloyalty. He even
smiled to himself when he imagined the discomfiture of the Blairs. He
would give them no warning; and he felt perfectly certain that Blair
would not avail himself of that suggestion made to Mrs. Blair to
ride over to Deerchase and see for himself. And then, if Sylvia would
marry him, imagine the excitement of the Blairs, the fierce delight,
and then the chagrin, the disappointment of finding out that Lewis
Pryor was to step in and get all that they had looked upon as theirs.
Skelton even began to see that possibly this forcing a decision upon
him was not half a bad thing. He had been haunted for some months by
Sylvia Shapleigh’s wit and charm; her beauty, he rightly thought, was
overestimated, but her power to please was not esteemed half enough. He
had begun lately for the first time to look forward apprehensively to
old age. He sometimes fancied himself sitting alone in his latter days
at his solitary hearth, and the thought was hateful to him. He realised
well enough that only a woman in a thousand could make him happy, but
Sylvia Shapleigh, he began to feel, was the woman. And, considering
the extreme affection he felt for Lewis, it was not unlikely--here
Skelton laughed to himself--that he was by nature a domestic character.
He began to fancy life at Deerchase with Sylvia, and became quite
fascinated with the picture drawn by his own imagination. She was a
woman well calculated to gratify any man’s pride, and deep down in his
own heart Skelton knew that was the great thing with him. And she had a
heart--in fact, Skelton would have been a little afraid of a creature
with so much feeling if she had not had likewise a fine understanding.
And if that one boy of his gave him such intense happiness, even with
all the wrath and humiliation that had been brought upon him thereby,
what could he not feel for other children in whose existence there
was no shame? And then, the thought of a lonely and unloved old age
became doubly hateful to him. Until lately he had not really been able
to persuade himself that he must bear the common fate; that he, Richard
Skelton, must some day grow old, infirm, dependent. Seeing, though,
that youth had departed in spite of him, he began to fear that old age
might, after all, come upon him. But growing old soothed by Sylvia’s
charming companionship and tender ministrations, and with new ties,
new emotions, new pleasures, was not terrifying to him. He revolved
these things in his mind, occasionally looking fondly at the sleeping
boy, who was indeed all that Skelton said he was. Skelton had no idea
of falling asleep, but gradually a delicious languor stole on him. How
merrily the blackbirds were singing outside, and the sparrows chirped
and chattered under the eaves! Afar off he heard in the stillness of
the summer morning the tinkling of the bells as the cows were being
driven to the pasture, then all the sweet country sounds melted away
into golden silence, and he slept.




CHAPTER XVII.


It was well on towards twelve o’clock before either Skelton or Lewis
awaked. The candles had long since burnt out, and the great, square,
sombre room was quite dark. Since the early morning the sky had
become overcast, and a steady, cold rain was falling outside. The
penetrating damp air chilled Skelton to the bone, and he waked with
an uncomfortable start. At the very same instant, Lewis, lying on the
sofa, also roused, and both pairs of eyes, so strangely alike, were
fixed on each other.

Skelton was still under the spell of that burst of parental passion
that had overcome him the night before. His sleep had been full of
dreams of the boy, and when he waked and saw Lewis’s black eyes gazing
with sleepy wonder into his own, it seemed the most natural thing in
the world.

There was always something compelling in Skelton’s glance, but the
affectionate expression that gave his eyes a velvety softness, like
a woman’s, was altogether new to Lewis Pryor. It exercised a certain
magnetism over him, and he felt his own gaze fixed on Skelton’s by a
power he could not understand. He lay there for some minutes under the
fascination of Skelton’s eyes, with a half-sleepy curiosity; then he
rolled off the sofa, and, still obeying a new and strange impulse,
went up to him. As Lewis stood looking down upon the man that had never
in all those years shown him the slightest mark of personal fondness,
some emotion novel and inscrutable and overpoweringly sweet seemed to
wake within his boyish heart. He felt instinctively the forging of a
new bond, but it was all misty and uncertain to his mind. The waking
in the strange room, instead of his own little cosy bedroom, with Bob
Skinny shaking him and pleading with him “to git up, fur de Lord’s
sake, Marse Lewis”--the rising ready dressed, the finding of Skelton
looking at him with that expression of passionate tenderness, was like
a dream to him. Skelton put out his hand--his impulse was to open his
arms and strain the boy to his breast--and said:

“Lewis, have you slept well?”

“Yes, sir,” after a pause answered Lewis.

“So have I,” said Skelton, “although I did not mean to sleep when I
threw myself in this chair. But you should sleep well and peacefully,
my boy. Tell me,” he continued, holding the boy’s hand in his strong
yet gentle clasp, “tell me, have I, in all these years that we have
lived together, have I ever spoken unkindly to you?”

Lewis thought for a moment gravely, bringing his narrow black brows
together.

“No, sir, not that I remember,” he replied, after a moment.

“It is not likely that I would,” said Skelton in a voice of the most
thrilling sweetness, “for you are mine--you are more to me than the
whole world. You are my son.”

If Skelton expected Lewis to fall upon his neck when these words
were uttered, he was cruelly disappointed. The boy drew himself up
perfectly rigid. He put up his arm as if to ward off a blow, and turned
deathly pale. Skelton, watching him with jealous affection, felt as if
a knife had entered his heart when he saw the pallor, the distress,
that quickly overcame Lewis. Neither spoke for some moments. Skelton,
leaning forwards in his chair, his face pale and set, but his eyes
burning, and his heart thumping like a nervous woman’s, watched the
boy in a sort of agony of affection, waiting for the answering thrill
that was to bring Lewis to his arms. But Lewis involuntarily drew
farther off. A deep flush succeeded his first paleness; his face worked
piteously, and suddenly he burst into a passion of tears.

Skelton fell back in his chair, with something like a groan. He had
not meant to tell it in that way; he had been betrayed into it, as it
were, by the very tenderness of his love, by the scorn of the idea that
anybody should suspect that he would permit the Blairs, or anybody
in the world, to profit to Lewis’s disadvantage. He had sometimes in
bitterness said to himself that love was not meant for him. Whether
he loved--as he truly did--in that first early passion for Elizabeth
Armistead, he was scorned and cast aside; or whether he was loved with
adoring tenderness, as he had been by the woman he married, yet it laid
upon him a burden that he had carried angrily and rebelliously for many
years. And seeing in Sylvia Shapleigh a woman that in his maturity he
could love, there was linked with it either making his enemies rich
at his expense, or else proclaiming the stain upon this boy to the
world. And he did so love the boy! But after a while his indomitable
courage rose. Lewis was excited; he did not fully take in what had been
said to him; he could not understand what splendid possibilities were
opened to him in those few words, how completely the face of existence
was changed for him. Skelton tried to speak, but his voice died in his
throat. He made a mighty effort, and it returned to him, but strained
and husky.

“Lewis,” he said, “what distresses you? When I said that you were mine,
I meant that henceforth you should be acknowledged to the world; that
you should have from me all the tenderness that has been pent up in my
heart for so many years; that you should have a great fortune. If you
think I have wronged you, is not this reparation enough?”

“No,” said the boy after a while, controlling his sobs; “I know what it
means if I am your son, Mr. Skelton. It means that I cannot hold up my
head among honourable people again. Nothing can make up to me for that.”

Skelton remained silent. An impulse of pride in the boy came to him.
Surely, Lewis was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. No boy of
mean extraction could have that lofty sensibility. Lewis, gaining
courage, spoke again, this time with dogged obstinacy.

“Mr. Bulstrode always told me that I was the son of Thomas Pryor
and Margaret Pryor; and I have my father’s books and his picture
upstairs--and--and--I believe he _is_ my father, Mr. Skelton.”

To hear him speak of another man as his father gave Skelton a pang such
as he had not felt for many years.

“But,” he said gently, “it can be proved; and you must see for
yourself, Lewis, how immensely it would be to your worldly advantage.”

“It is not to my advantage to know--to feel--that--that I am nobody’s
son; that my mother was-- No! no!” he cried, bursting into tears again,
“I’ll not believe it.”

It was plain to Skelton from the boy’s manner that the idea was not
wholly new to him. After a painful pause Skelton asked quietly:

“Have you ever had a suspicion, a feeling, that you were not what the
world believes you to be?”

Lewis would not answer this, and Skelton repeated it. Lewis remained
obstinately silent, and that told the whole story.

“And,” again asked Skelton, his voice trembling, “have you never felt
any of those instinctive emotions, any of that natural feeling towards
me, that I felt towards you the first moment I saw you, when you
were barely six years old? for I tell you that, had I never seen you
until this moment, there is something--there is the strong voice of
Nature--that would tell me you were my son.”

To this, also, Lewis would make no answer. It had begun to dawn upon
his boyish soul that, along with his own keen shame and distress, he
was inflicting something infinitely keener and more distressing upon
Skelton.

There was a longer pause after this. Lewis ceased his sobbing, and sat,
with a white and wretched face, looking down, the image of shame and
sorrow. As for Skelton, his heart was torn with a tempest of feeling.
Disappointment and remorse and love and longing battled fiercely within
him. With all his wealth, with all his power, with all his capacity to
charm, he could not bring to him that one childish heart for which he
yearned. He was not unprepared for shame and even reproaches on the
boy’s part, but this stubborn resistance was maddening. A dull-red
flush glowed in his dark face. He was not used to asking forgiveness,
but if the boy exacted it he would not even withhold that.

“It is hard--it is hard for a father to ask forgiveness of his child,
but I ask it of you, Lewis. Your mother granted it me with her dying
breath. Will you be more unforgiving than she? Will you deny me the
reparation that would have made her happy?”

Lewis raised his black eyes to Skelton’s.

“Yes, I forgive you,” he said simply; “but, Mr. Skelton, you can’t
expect me to give up my good name without a struggle for it. Wouldn’t
you struggle for yours, sir?”

“Yes,” answered Skelton, with that glow of pride which he always felt
when Lewis showed manliness of feeling.

“Then, sir, you can’t complain when I--when Mr. Bulstrode--Mr.
Bulstrode is my guardian, sir--”

“But, Lewis,” continued Skelton, without the smallest impatience but
with a loving insistence, “this is trifling. Why should I open this
terrible subject unless everything concerning it were proved--unless it
were demanded? Do you think this a sudden madness on my part? It is
not. It is, I admit, a sudden determination. I had meant to wait until
you were twenty-one--until you were prepared in a measure for it; but
circumstances, and the love I bear you, Lewis, have hastened it.”

Lewis sat gravely considering.

“Then, Mr. Skelton, let it rest until I am twenty-one. I am only
fifteen now--that is,” with a burning blush, “Mr. Bulstrode says I am
only fifteen, and I am not tall for my age--and I can’t--depend upon
myself as I ought; and I think it’s only fair, sir, to wait until I am
a man before forcing this thing on me. But I think it only fair to you,
sir,” he added after a pause, and rising, “to say that I mean to make
the best fight for my good name that I can. It may be as you say; it
may be that--that my mother--” here the boy choked. “I can’t say it,
sir. I don’t remember her, but I tell you, Mr. Skelton,--if--for the
sake of all your money I agreed that my mother was--I mean, sir, if
any man for the sake of money, or anything else, would dishonour his
mother, it would be a villainy. I don’t express myself very well, but I
know what I mean; and I ask you, sir, would you act differently in my
place?”

Lewis had truly said that he was not tall for his age, but as he spoke
his slight, boyish figure seemed to rise to man’s stature. At first he
was hesitating and incoherent in his speech, but before he finished
he fixed his eyes on Skelton’s so boldly that Skelton almost flinched
under the glance. But still there was in his heart that proud instinct
of the father which made itself felt, saying:

“This, indeed, is my son--my soul--my own spirit.”

Lewis waited, as if for an answer. Skelton, whose patience and mildness
had suffered no diminution, answered him gently:

“Our cases are different. You are more unfortunate than I, but one
thing I feel deeply: the regard you have for your good name; the
reluctance you have to exchange it for any worldly consideration is
not lost on me. On the contrary, it makes you still dearer to me. I
acknowledge, had you not recognised the point of honour involved, I
should have been disappointed. But I am not disappointed in you--I
never can be.”

Lewis persisted in his question, though.

“But won’t you tell me, Mr. Skelton--suppose you had been offered
Deerchase, and all your fortune and everything, if you would agree that
your mother was--was--I can’t say it, sir. _And would you have taken
it?_”

The answer was drawn from Skelton against his will; but the boy stood
with the courage and persistence of an accusing conscience, asking the
question of which the answer seemed so conclusive to his young mind.

“No,” at last answered Skelton in a low voice.

“Then, sir,” said Lewis eagerly, “do you blame me for acting likewise?”

“But there is no volition in the case,” said Skelton. “It is forced
upon you, my poor boy. You have no choice.”

“At least,” said Lewis, after a moment, while his eyes filled with
tears, “at least, I will stand up for my mother as long as I can; at
least, I will make the best fight for her own good name that I know
how. And I tell you, Mr. Skelton, that even--even if I am forced, as
you say--to--to--acknowledge it, I’ll never profit by it. This I made
up my mind to a long time ago--ever since I first began to wonder--”

Skelton knew then that, in the boy’s crude, inexperienced way, he had
prepared himself to meet the emergency when it came. Lewis turned to
go out of the room, but Skelton called him back and silently drew the
boy towards him. He passed his hand over Lewis’s closely cropped black
head and rested it fondly on his shoulder, all the time looking into
the boy’s eyes with tenderness unspeakable. In that moment a faint
stirring of Nature came to Lewis. He began to feel his heart swell
towards Skelton with a feeling of oneness. Skelton saw in his troubled,
changeful look a new expression. Something like affection quivered in
the boy’s face. Skelton bent and kissed him softly on the forehead, and
Lewis went out silently.




CHAPTER XVIII.


Skelton remained in the library to recover his composure. He sat
staring, with unseeing eyes, at the fireplace filled with cedar boughs.
Pride and intense affection tugged at his heart. Never, in all his
life, had his proud spirit so abased itself as before this boy, whom
he loved with the concentrated passion of his whole life. He had
not sent him to school from the purest softness of heart, because
he was not happy with Lewis out of his sight. He had watched over
him silently, and at last the barriers of his pride had been swept
away by the torrent of his affection; and with what result? He might
indeed feel proud of the tenacity with which Lewis had held on to what
he thought was his honour; but had not resentment and hatred been
planted in his heart by the revelation made prematurely by Skelton’s
tenderness? And the idea that the Blairs should ever profit to that
boy’s disadvantage--the mere thought enraged him. And Lewis was his own
son in many particulars. His promise that he would never profit by his
own dishonour was no mere boyish threat. Nothing was more likely than
that he should hold to it most steadfastly.

After a while Skelton rose and went out into the hall. Under Bridges’
masterly management everything had assumed its usual appearance,
and, as the day was singularly cold for the season and the downpour
incessant, a little sparkling wood fire had been lighted in the broad
fireplace. Skelton went up to it and warmed his hands and chilled feet
before the cheerful blaze. He was still in his evening dress, and the
daylight, dull as it was, showed plainly certain marks of agitation
upon his features. He looked every day of his forty years. Bob Skinny
came up in a moment to ask if Skelton would have his breakfast then.

“Yes,” he answered briefly. “Where is Mr. Lewis Pryor?”

“He gone up sty’ars, sah, tuggin’ he dog arter him, an’ I heah him lock
he do’. I make Sam Trotter k’yar him some breakfas’, an’ Sam say Marse
Lewis hardly corndescen’ ter open de do’, an’ didn’ eat nuttin’ hardly.”

Skelton was troubled at this. It was a sure sign that Lewis was in
trouble when he clung desperately to Service, his dog.

Skelton had his breakfast on a little round table in the corner of the
hall by the fire, and when it was taken away he sat moodily in the
same spot, trifling with a cigar. He had almost forgotten the ball the
night before. From where he sat his weary eyes took in all the sad and
monotonous landscape--the river, now a sea of grey mist as far as the
eye could reach; the sullen lapping of the water upon the sandy stretch
of shore, distinctly heard in the profound stillness; and the steady
drip, drip, of the rain from the roof, and the tall elms, and the
stunted alders by the edge of the water, was inexpressibly cheerless.
Even the great hall, as he looked around it, was dreary. There were
neither women nor children in that house, and it never had an inhabited
look. Over everything was an air of chill and precise elegance that
often struck Skelton painfully. His glance swept involuntarily to the
portrait of his father, taken when a boy, that so much resembled Lewis;
and then, as his eye travelled round upon the pictures of the dead and
gone Skeltons, he was solemnly reminded how short had been their lives.
They were all young; there was not a grey head in the lot.

Presently he rose and stood before the fire, gazing out of the window
with melancholy indifference, and after a while Bulstrode slouched
across the farther end of the hall. He did not go near Skelton, who
unconsciously grew rigid when he recognised Bulstrode’s passing
presence. He had not for one instant forgotten Bulstrode’s foolish and,
to him, exasperating disclosure to Mrs. Blair; but, after all, nothing
ever could restrain that reckless tongue. Getting angry over it was the
poorest business imaginable.

In a short while Skelton went off to his room. The house, where twelve
hours before there had been lights and music, and dancing and feasting,
was now as quiet as the grave. The only sound heard was the incessant
drip, drip, of the water from the eaves of the house, and from the
sodden trees, and from the damp masses of shrubbery, and the moaning of
the grey river. Over the whole place, where last night had been a great
_fête_, was rain and gloom and sadness; and of the three persons whose
splendid home was here, each was alone and wrapped in silent and bitter
meditation.

Lewis Pryor spent the whole afternoon, with no company but his dog, in
his own room, gazing, just as Skelton was doing at that very moment,
with melancholy eyes out upon the watery landscape. How strange it was,
thought Lewis, that the river, which made the whole scene so lovely
and sparkling on a sunny day, should make it so sad on a dark day! Far
down the troubled water, as the mists scurried to and fro, whipped by
a sharp east wind, he could occasionally see the three desolate pine
trees at Lone Point. They waved their giant arms madly, and fought the
wild rain and the blast. The boy’s heart sank lower every hour. Yes, it
was come--the thing that he had feared for so long with a biting fear.
He was told that he was nobody’s son; that foolish old Mrs. Shapleigh
was right when she said he looked like Skelton’s father--like that
odious picture in the hall. How he hated it, and how he would like to
throw it in the fire! But though his spirits sank, his courage remained
high. A fortune was a very fine thing, but there was such a thing as
paying too dear for it. The determination not to give in--to make a
fight for his own respectability--grew and strengthened hourly within
him. He went and got his few books with the name “Thomas Pryor, M. A.,”
written in them, and names and dates. Then he got out the picture of
the trim, sandy-haired Thomas Pryor, and tried vainly to see a likeness
between his own clear-cut olive face and the one before him. Alas!
there was no likeness. He then studied intently the pen-and-ink sketch
of Mrs. Pryor. The coloring, which had really made some resemblance
between her and Lewis, was lacking in the picture, and the cast of
features was wholly unlike. Lewis got small comfort from that picture.
He felt an inexpressible weight upon his boyish soul; he longed for
comfort; he thought that he must be the only boy in the world who had
never in all his life had any comforter except his dog, or anybody to
whom he could confide his troubles. Something brought Hilary Blair to
mind, and the scene at the bedside as Hilary held his mother’s hand and
fondled it; and then Lewis laid his head down in the cushioned window
seat and cried bitterly. The twilight came on; he heard the servants
moving about below, and presently a tap came at the door. Bob Skinny
announced, “Dinnah, my young marse!”

Lewis winced at the word, which, however, was merely a magniloquent
African compliment that Bob Skinny offered to all the very young
gentlemen he knew.

Lewis and Skelton were remarkably alike in their personal habits.
Each of them made a careful toilet and strove to disguise the marks
of emotion; they were both naturally reticent and had a delicate and
sensitive pride. Lewis took old Service down to dinner with him. Being
still low-spirited, he clung to the dog. Skelton noticed this, and it
told volumes. Bulstrode had expected, tremblingly, all the afternoon, a
summons to Skelton, and, not getting it, was in doubt about appearing
at dinner. In truth, Skelton had by no means forgotten him, but he
rather scorned to take Bulstrode too seriously. He had smiled rather
grimly as he heard Bulstrode during the afternoon make his way down to
the library. “Gone to reading to distract his mind,” he thought. Just
as Lewis showed depression by holding on to Service, Bulstrode showed
it by leaving his few old friends that he kept up in his own room, and
going down into the grand new library after a mental sedative in the
shape of a new book. The effect on this particular occasion had been
such that he screwed up his courage to dine with Skelton.

It seemed as if within the last twelve hours a likeness between Skelton
and Lewis had come out incalculably strong. Each seemed to take
his emotions in the same way: there were the same lines of tension
about the mouth, the same look of indomitable courage in the eye,
the same modulation in the voice. Bulstrode could not but be struck
by it. Dinner passed off quite as usual. Skelton made a few remarks
to Lewis, which Lewis answered respectfully and intelligently, as
usual. Bulstrode occasionally growled out a sentence. Bob Skinny,
elated by the approaching departure of the hated Bridges, flourished
the decanters about freely, but for once Bulstrode was moderate. To
judge by casual appearances, nothing had happened. After dinner, Lewis
disappeared into the library, still lugging his dog after him. Skelton,
whose heart yearned over him, would have liked to follow him, but he
wisely refrained.

The little fire had been renewed, and a pleasant warmth was diffused
through the lofty hall. Sam Trotter, under Bob Skinny’s direction,
brought candles, in tall silver candlesticks, and put them on the
round mahogany table in the corner by the chimney-piece. Bulstrode was
lumbering about the hall with his hands in his pockets. Skelton walked
up to the fireplace and seated himself, with a cigar and a book, as if
unconscious of Bulstrode’s presence. By degrees, Bulstrode’s walk grew
stealthy; then he seated himself on the opposite side of the hearth and
gazed absently into the fire.

The same stillness prevailed as in the afternoon. This struck Skelton
more unpleasantly than usual. He would have liked to see Lewis romping
about, and making cheerful, merry, boyish noises. But there was no
sound except the dreary sough of the rain and the wind, and the harsh
beating of the overhanging trees against the cornice of the house.
The wind seemed to be coming up stronger from the bay, and the waves
rolling in sometimes drowned the falling of the rain. For two hours the
stillness was unbroken. Then, Skelton having laid down his book for a
moment, Bulstrode asked suddenly:

“And how did he take it?”

Skelton knew perfectly well what Bulstrode meant, and, not being a
person of subterfuges, answered exactly to the point:

“Like a man.”

“I thought so,” remarked Bulstrode. If he had studied ten years how to
placate Skelton he could not have hit it off more aptly.

“He grasped the point of honour in a moment--even quicker than I
anticipated. He said he would rather be respectably born than have all
I could give him. The little rebel actually proposed to fight it out;
he ‘hoped I would wait until he was twenty-one’; he ‘wouldn’t profit
by it anyhow!’ and he ‘intended to make the best fight he could.’
Bulstrode, I almost forgive you for having forced that disclosure on
me when I remember the exquisite satisfaction--yes, good God! the
_tremendous_ satisfaction--I felt in that boy when I saw that dogged
determination of his to hold to what he calls his honour.”

Bulstrode knew by these words that Skelton did not intend to turn him
out of doors.

“You ought to have seen his face the day that dratted Mrs. Shapleigh
told him that he looked like that picture.” Bulstrode jerked his thumb
over his shoulder towards the picture of Skelton’s father. “I thought
he would have died of shame.”

Skelton’s face at this became sad, but it was also wonderfully tender.
Bulstrode kept on:

“I never saw you both so much alike as to-night. The boy’s face has
hardened; he is going through with a terrible experience, and he will
come out of it a man, not a boy. And your face, Skelton, seemed to be
softening.”

“And, by heaven, my heart is softening, too!” cried Skelton. “One would
have thought that I would have kicked you out of doors for babbling my
private affairs, but your love for that boy, and his love for you--and
so-- I am a weak fool, and forgive you. I believe I am waking up to the
emotional side of human nature.”

“It’s a monstrous sight deeper and bigger and greater than the
intellectual side,” answered Bulstrode. “That’s what I keep telling
that poor devil, Conyers. I ain’t got any emotional nature myself, to
speak of; you have, though. But you’ve been an intellectual toper
for so long, that I daresay you’d forgotten all about your emotions
yourself. Some men like horse racing, and some like to accumulate
money, and some like to squander it; but your dissipation is in mental
processes of all sorts. You like to read for reading’s sake, and write
for writing’s sake, and your mind has got to that stage, like Michael
Scott’s devil, it has got to be employed or it will rend you. I never
saw such an inveterate appetite for ideas as you have. But will it ever
come to anything? Will you ever write that book?”

Skelton turned a little pale. The fierce ambition within him, the
pride, the licensed egotism, all made him fear defeat; and suppose
this work--But why call it a work? it was as yet inchoate. However, it
pleased some subtile self-love of Skelton’s to have Bulstrode discuss
him. Bulstrode was no respecter of persons; and Skelton appreciated so
much the man’s intellectual makeup, that it pleased him to think that
Bulstrode, after living with him all these years, still found him an
object of deep and abiding interest. So he did not check him. Few men
object to having others talk about themselves.

“Whether I shall ever live to finish it--or to begin it--is a question
I sometimes ask myself,” said Skelton. “When I look around at these,”
pointing with his cigar to the portraits hanging on the wall, “I feel
the futility of it. Forty-six is the oldest of them; most of them
went off before thirty-five. Strange, for we are not physically bad
specimens.”

They were not. Skelton himself looked like a man destined for long
life. He was abstemious in every way, and singularly correct in his
habits.

Bulstrode remained huddled in his chair, and, as usual, when
encouraged, went on talking without the slightest reticence.

“Sometimes, when I sit and look at you, I ask myself, ‘Is he a genius
after all?’ and then I go and read that essay of yours, Voices of the
People, and shoot me if I believe any young fellow of twenty that ever
lived could do any better! But that very finish and completeness--it
would have been better if it had been crude.”

“It is crude, very crude,” answered Skelton with fierce energy, dashing
his cigar stump into the fire. “I have things on my library table that
would make that appear ridiculous.”

“O Lord, no!” replied Bulstrode calmly.

Skelton felt like throwing him out of the window at that, but Bulstrode
was quite unconscious of giving offense. His next words, though, partly
soothed Skelton’s self-love:

“Queer thing, that, how a man’s lucky strokes sometimes are his
destruction. Now, that pamphlet--most unfortunate thing that ever
befell you. The next worst thing for you was that you were born to one
fortune and married another. Had you been a poor man your career would
have been great; but, as it is, handicapped at every step by money, you
can do nothing. For a man of parts to be thrown upon his own resources
is to be cast into the very lap of Fortune, as old Ben Franklin puts
it. But your resources have never been tested.”

There was in this an exquisite and subtile flattery to Skelton, because
Bulstrode was so unconscious of it.

“How about yourself?” asked Skelton after a while. “You were cast in
the lap of Fortune.”

“O Lord!” cried Bulstrode, “that’s a horse of another colour. I came
into the world with a parching thirst that can never be satiated. But,
mind you, Mr. Skelton, had I not been a poor man I could not have been
what I am; you know what that is. I can’t make a living, but _I know
Greek_. I can’t keep away from the brandy bottle, but if old Homer
and our friend Horace and a few other eminent Greeks and Romans were
destroyed this minute I could reproduce much of them. It maddens me
sometimes; the possession of great powers is, after all, a terrible
gift. Lewis Pryor has got it, but he has got it tempered with good
sense. For God’s sake, Skelton, don’t make him a rich man! Look at
yourself, ruined by it. The boy has fine parts. Some day, if he is let
alone and allowed to work for his living, he will be remarkable; he
will be more--he will be admirable! But weight him down with a fortune,
and you will turn him into a country squire like Jack Blair, or into a
_dilettante_ like yourself. That’s all of it.”

Skelton lighted his cigar and began to smoke savagely. Was ever
anything like the perversity of fate--for he recognised as true every
word that Bulstrode had uttered. Because he had much money he had
started out to make Blair feel the weight of his resentment, and he
had spent fifteen or sixteen years at the business, and the result was
that Blair was to-day better off than he had ever been since he came to
man’s estate, as he was free at last from a vice that had been eating
him up body and soul and substance for years. Skelton longed to heap
benefits on Lewis Pryor, but he very much doubted if any of those
things which he designed as benefits would make the boy either happier
or better.

Bulstrode’s tongue continued to wag industriously. It seemed as if by
some psychic influence he followed the very train of thought then going
through Skelton’s mind.

“The women all like Lewis. I tell you, that’s a very dangerous gift for
a man--worse, even, than genius.”

Skelton quite agreed with this sentiment. If the late Mrs. Skelton had
not been so distractedly fond of him, for example, and had simply done
for him what any reasonably affectionate wife would have done for her
husband, he would not now be in the hateful position in which he found
himself. Her relations would be welcome to her money, but she had put
it quite out of the question that it should ever be theirs.

“Women are monstrous queer creatures, anyhow,” resumed Bulstrode
despondingly, as if his whole past and future hinged upon the queerness
of women.

Skelton could not forbear smiling a little. Bulstrode had suffered
about as little from the sex as any man that ever lived.

“Woman, as we know her, is a comparatively modern invention,” answered
Skelton, still smiling. “She didn’t exist until a few hundred years
ago.”

“That’s it,” answered Bulstrode eagerly. “It’s the only fault I find
with my old chums, the classics; they didn’t have any right notions
at all about women; they didn’t know anything between a goddess and
a slave. But these modern fellows, with Will Shakespeare at the head
of the crew, know it all, blamed if they don’t! There is that little
Juliet, for example--all love and lies, and the sweetest little
creetur’ in the world! Now, what did any of those old Greek fellows
know about such a woman? And it’s a common enough type. For my part,
I’m mortally afraid of the whole sex--afraid of the good because they
are so good, and afraid of the bad because they are so deuced bad. And
as for their conversation, it’s a revelation, from that damned Mrs.
Shapleigh up.”

Skelton could not keep from laughing at the mere mention of Mrs.
Shapleigh’s name, although he was in no laughing mood.

“Shoot me,” cried Bulstrode with energy, “if that woman isn’t a walking
_non sequitur_!”

To this Skelton only answered: “Every human being has a natural and
unalienable right to make a fool of himself or herself. But Mrs.
Shapleigh abuses the privilege.”

“Drat her,” was Bulstrode’s only comment.

“How do you account for Miss Shapleigh’s wit and charming _esprit_?”
asked Skelton, with some appearance of interest.

“Because she’s Mrs. Shapleigh’s daughter: everything goes according
to the rule of contrary in this world. I like to hear that grey-eyed
Sylvia talk; there’s nothing like it in the books, it is so sparkling,
inconsequent, and delightful. And she’s got something mightily like
an intellect. Mind, I don’t admit that women have minds in the sense
of abstract intellect, but I say she has got such a vast fund of
perceptions mixed up with her emotions, that it’s twice as useful as
your mind, or mine either. Her education, too, is better than mine, for
it’s all experience, while I am nothing but a sack full of other folks’
ideas.”

After this Bulstrode stopped, and presently slouched off to bed. He was
surprised that Skelton had forgiven him so easily, or rather had been
so indifferent to his offense, but Skelton had a good many reasons for
not falling out with him then and there.

After that things went on very quietly for a time. Skelton did not even
mention the subject that he had talked to Lewis about the morning after
the ball, and Lewis went about, serious and sad, with a weight upon his
heart. The likeness between the two came out stronger every day. Just
as Lewis suddenly seemed to become a man and his face lost its boyish
character, so Skelton’s face grew younger and gentler by reason of the
upspringing of a host of strange feelings. It seems as if the opening
of his heart to Lewis had made a new man of him. He sometimes thought
to himself: “What wonderful vitality have these old emotions, after
all! It seems impossible either to starve them or strangle them.”

Sylvia Shapleigh appeared to him more and more captivating, and he
realised after a while that he was as much in love with her as he
could be with any woman. But a great many things would have to be
settled before he could speak to Sylvia. He reflected that no man could
guarantee to himself one single day of life, and, on the whole, it was
better to have matters arranged in his lifetime. Then it occurred
to him for the first time that if he could satisfy the Blairs that
Lewis put an embargo upon their suppositious claims, there would be no
occasion for making it public. Of course, it would have to be known
to a certain number of persons, but they were chiefly legal people in
England, and England was in those days almost as far off as another
planet. And it must come out at his death, but that might be many
years off, and Lewis might have married into a good family, and the
gossip might have become an old story, and everything much better than
springing it suddenly on the community then. Skelton went quietly to
work, though, and accumulated the proofs of Lewis’s parentage, and
found them much more conclusive than Bulstrode had thought them to be.
He was meanwhile gradually making up his mind to ask Sylvia Shapleigh
to marry him. Of course he must tell her all about Lewis, but he
thought it likely that she knew as much as he could tell her, and if
she really cared for him she would be good to the boy for his sake--to
say nothing of Lewis’s sake, for he was undoubtedly lovable. It was
very unfortunate; he did not know of any man who had a complication so
painful; but still there were ways out of it. One thing was certain:
no one would ever trouble him with remarks on the subject, or Sylvia
either, if they should be married. People might think as they pleased,
but he and Sylvia and Lewis could afford to ignore gossip and idle
tittle-tattle.

Lewis, although obviously depressed, took a suddenly industrious turn
about his lessons. He began to study so hard, that Bulstrode was amazed
and delighted.

“Why,” he cried one day, “you are learning so fast that you’ll soon be
as big a knowledge box as the British Museum.”

“I think I’d better work hard, sir, because some day I shall probably
have to earn my living,” answered Lewis quite gravely.

“Pooh!” said Bulstrode, “you’ll have the greatest fortune that ever
was.”

Lewis turned perfectly crimson, and said nothing. Presently Bulstrode
continued:

“It seems to me, youngster, that you have been going through with a
change lately.”

“I have, sir,” answered Lewis in a low voice. “Mr. Skelton tells me
that if I will acknowledge that--that--I am not Thomas Pryor’s son he
will give me a fortune.”

“Showed you all the kingdoms of the earth to tempt you, eh?”

“Yes, sir, something like it.”

“And you don’t want ’em?”

“Not at the price I have to pay for them, sir.”

“But I don’t believe Skelton can help himself, or you either, from your
having that fortune. I think he wants to marry Miss Sylvia Shapleigh;
and if he dies, or marries, his wife’s money either goes to you or to
the Blairs; and I believe the poor dead woman would turn over in her
grave if she thought anybody that Skelton hates like the Blairs would
get it.”

“But wouldn’t she hate for me to get it?” asked Lewis.

“Well”--here Bulstrode began to rub his shaggy head--“not so much as
the Blairs. You see, you are innocent yourself; nobody would feel any
grudge against you; it all happened before Skelton married her; and
Mrs. Skelton was so desperately fond of Skelton, that she would be very
likely to be tolerant towards any innocent creetur’ that he loved.
Queer subjects women are.”

“If Mr. Skelton thinks I am going to give up without a fight, he’s very
much mistaken!” cried Lewis suddenly.

Bulstrode clapped him on the back and roared out, “Good for you, boy!”

Some days after that Skelton sent for Lewis into the library. Lewis
went with a beating heart. There had not been the slightest change in
their relations since that morning in the library, but it had been
wholly Lewis’s own doing. He maintained a reserve towards Skelton
that was unbroken. Much as he loved the boy, Skelton could not bring
himself to become a supplicant, as it were, for his affections; and so,
although each watched the other, and they lived under the same roof,
there was a grim reserve between them.

When he reached the library, Skelton had before him a sheet of paper
with a translation on it.

“Bulstrode tells me,” said Skelton, pointing to a chair for Lewis to
sit down, “that you did this out of Horace without any assistance. It
isn’t perfect, of course--nobody translates old Horace perfectly--but
it is extraordinarily good for a fellow of your age. And Bulstrode also
gives most gratifying reports of your progress in all your studies.”

Lewis’s heart beat faster still. Here was a chance to let Skelton know
that he had not in the least wavered from his determination not to
take the money in exchange for his name.

“I--I--feel that I ought to study very hard, so that I can--some
day--when I’m a man--make my own living, sir,” he said, blushing very
much.

“Ah!” replied Skelton, with an air of calm inquiry.

“Yes, sir,” responded Lewis, plucking up his courage a little.

Skelton looked him squarely in the eyes, as he had done very often of
late, and was met by a dauntless look. Ah, where was there another
fifteen-year-old boy who showed such a nice sense of honour, such
heroic firmness in withstanding temptation? He expressed something of
this in his words, at which the boy’s face hardened, and his heart
hardened too.

“I only ask, sir,” he said, “that I shall be let alone until I am
twenty-one. When I am a man I shall know how to stand upon my rights.”

“I think, Lewis,” said Skelton calmly, “that your reason is already
convinced. You no longer believe yourself to be the son of Thomas
Pryor, yet you talk about making a fight for it.”

Lewis made no reply. He was no match for Skelton, and he knew it; but
his determination was perfectly unchanged.

“Listen to me,” began Skelton after a moment, leaning forward in his
chair; “you are rather an uncommon boy.” Skelton, as he said this,
smiled slightly, remembering that Lewis could scarcely fail to be
unlike most boys. “I shall talk to you as if you were a man, instead of
a boy, and perhaps you will understand why it is that I intend to do
you right in the face of the world.”

“To do me wrong,” said Lewis under his breath.

Skelton pretended not to hear. He then carefully and in detail went
over the whole thing with Lewis, who happened to know all about it
through Bulstrode. The only answer Skelton got out of the boy was a
dogged

“I don’t want it at the price I have to pay for it. You wouldn’t want
to exchange your respectability for anything.”

“But have I no claim upon you, Lewis?” asked Skelton. His tone was hard
to resist. It conveyed an appeal as well as a right; but Lewis resisted.

“I don’t know,” he said in a distressed voice; “all I know is that I
believe that I am Lewis Pryor, and I want to stay Lewis Pryor; and
if--if--you do as you say, you may make me a rich man some day, but you
make me the inferior of everybody. I know it; I’ve talked it out with
Mr. Bulstrode.”

“And what did Bulstrode say?” asked Skelton, his face darkening. But
Lewis was wary beyond his years.

“I’d rather not tell, sir; Mr. Bulstrode wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t like it,” answered Skelton sardonically, “the
ungrateful old good-for-nothing! But I can guess easily enough what he
has been up to.”

Lewis felt that he was playing a losing game, but he only repeated:

“The Blairs will get that money.”

Skelton had all along spoken in a quiet, conventional tone, but at
this he uttered a slight exclamation, and ground his teeth with silent
fury. The boy’s obstinacy was intolerable to a man accustomed to make
his will the law. Of course, he could do as he pleased about it; he
could prove the whole thing to-morrow morning, if he liked, but he did
not want to be opposed by the person he wished to benefit; and besides,
he loved the boy well, and contradiction from him was therefore doubly
hard.

Lewis got up to go out. As he passed, rather a grim smile came into
Skelton’s face. He saw his own look of firm determination upon the
boy’s thin-lipped, eloquent mouth, and in his dark eyes. Lewis was
growing more like him every day. Poor little fool! Talk about proving
himself to be the son of that lanky, loose-jointed Thomas Pryor! It was
ridiculous.




CHAPTER XIX.


Skelton had cold fits and hot fits as regarded Sylvia. At first he
considered his cold fit as his abnormal condition, and the hot fit as
an agreeable form of insanity. But he soon changed his opinion. He was
beginning, late in life, to live through what other men are generally
done with by that time. In Sylvia’s society he felt always an exquisite
sense of well-being that he could not remember ever to have felt before
with any human being except in a certain way with Lewis. When the boy
had been younger Skelton recalled, that to watch him at play, or at his
work, had always given him strange delight--a delight unique of its
kind, and more nearly resembling happiness than anything he had ever
known. But looking back calmly upon his life, he could not remember
that he had ever known apart from Sylvia and Lewis that joyous sense
of existence which is happiness. He remembered that in his early days
he had felt a sense of triumph when the public--his public--caught at
the idea of his future greatness. He knew well enough a certain refined
and elevated pleasure in purely intellectual pursuits. But happiness is
the child of the affections, and Skelton’s affections had fared rather
badly. He recollected his early passion for Elizabeth Armistead with
hatred. She had given him fierce joys and sharp pain, but that was far
removed from happiness. His marriage had been from a curious mixture of
motives, and he dared not admit to himself how little love had had to
do with it; he had felt tenderness and extreme gratitude to his wife,
but happiness had still eluded him. Now, however, he realised with
keen pleasure that, after all, he was not done with life and youth--he
had not yet come down to the dregs and heel taps of existence. He
had sounded all the depths and shoals of a life of pleasure and of a
life of intellect, and he was tired of both. True it was, that books
still had a fatal fascination for him; that passion for reading and
for making his mind drunk at the fountain of other men’s knowledge was
ineradicable. But he had at last come to crave something else. Like all
men who lead a one-sided life with a two-sided nature, he was seized
with a profound disgust, and would have welcomed almost any change.
Never had he understood the futility of a normal human being trying
to live on ideas alone until he returned to Deerchase. As soon as he
had eliminated everything from his life except books and intellectual
effort, he began to find books more of an anodyne and work more of a
hopeless effort than ever. When he was quite ready for his life work,
when he had prepared himself, his house, his tools, in perfection for
that work, a deadly paralysis had seized upon him, a frightful fear
of failure. Then, following this, he suddenly found an unsuspected
source of pleasure--the society of a woman. He could have as much or as
little of that society as he wanted, even if he married her, for it is
the privilege of the rich to have privacy and independence in every
relation of life. It was true he would have to give up much money,
which most men are unequal to parting with, to marry her. But he would
give it up to Lewis, a creature intensely loved. Still, it would be a
curtailment of his power, for money is power.

At first the consequences seemed enormous; but they assumed much
smaller proportions as he investigated them. He would not be able to
buy thousands of books, as he had done, but he suspected, with a kind
of shame, that he had too many books already. He would no longer be
able to leave orders in blank with the great collectors in London,
and Paris, and Rome to buy him rare editions, but he remembered with
disgust that these orders had been carried out rather with a view of
getting his money than to increasing the value of his collection. He
had caught two of his agents in the act of palming off spurious volumes
upon him, and had informed them of his discovery and had given them no
more orders. As for buying pictures and bric-a-brac, that taste was not
then developed in this country. Hundreds of ways of spending money,
well known in the latter half of the nineteenth century, were quite
unknown in the first half. Skelton found that in giving up his wife’s
fortune he was giving up much in the abstract and but little in the
concrete. And then came his interview with Lewis.

The boy’s unhappy face, though, haunted him. Skelton had not once seen
him smile since that night of the ball. He went about solemnly, his
black eyes, that were usually full of light, sombre and distressed,
and Service was never allowed out of his sight. He kept closely to
Deerchase, and did not even go to Belfield until Sylvia wrote him a
note gently chiding him. As for Sylvia, whatever she felt for Skelton,
she had adopted the general belief that he would never marry at all.
She felt a kind of resentment towards him, for, after comparing him
with the other men she knew, she acknowledged promptly to herself
that she could never marry any of those other men. Skelton had done
her that ill turn; he had shown her so conclusively the charm of a
man with every advantage of birth, breeding, intellect, knowledge of
the world, and, above all, his subtile personal charm, that other men
wearied her. Even Blair, who found women usually responsive to him,
discovered that Sylvia was rather bored with him. She had tasted of the
tree of knowledge, and was neither better nor happier for it. She was
acute enough to see that her society gave Skelton more pleasure than
any other woman’s, but then that was easily understood. Provincials
are generally uninterestingly alike. Sylvia Shapleigh happened to be a
little different from the rest. In her own family she was singularly
lonely. Her father was the conventional good father, and both of
her parents were proud of her. But she was a being different from
any in their experience. Old Tom Shapleigh boasted of her spirit,
and said he believed Sylvia was waiting to marry the President of
the United States; but he was vexed that she was getting out of her
twenties so fast without making a good match, and every offer she had
always provoked a quarrel between father and daughter. Mrs. Shapleigh
considered that Sylvia’s obstinacy in that respect was expressly meant
as a defiance of maternal authority, and continually reproached her
that she would yet bring her mother’s grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave because she wouldn’t accept any offer made to her.

Lewis Pryor was not more lonely than Sylvia Shapleigh, although,
womanlike, she showed more fortitude and was more uncomplaining about
it. But on account of that solitariness common to both of them, the
imaginative woman and the half-developed boy had a sympathy for each
other--an odd, sweet community of thought. Sylvia had heard all the
talk floating about the county regarding Lewis Pryor, and had observed
the coldness with which the world, which smiled so benignly on Skelton,
frowned on the innocent boy; but, more just as well as more generous
than the sodden world, his misfortune was only another reason why she
should be kind to him.

The summer passed slowly to most of them: to Blair, impatiently
awaiting news from England; to his wife, vexed with him for his action;
to Sylvia, who began to feel a painful sense of disappointment and
narrowness and emptiness in existence; to Lewis, prematurely burdened
with the problems of life; to all, except Skelton. Indeed, time had a
way of flying frightfully fast with him, and he barely recovered the
shock and surprise of one birthday before another was precipitated on
him. And yet he was going about that book as if the ages were his!
He had quite given up his racing affairs to Miles Lightfoot, and was
apparently devoting himself to some abstruse studies in his library. So
he was--but Sylvia Shapleigh was the subject.

Although a very arrogant and confident man, Skelton was too
clear-headed not to consider the possibility that Sylvia might not
marry him, but it was always difficult for him to comprehend that he
could not have his own way about anything he desired.

He meant, however, to be very prudent. He would bring all of his
finesse and worldly wisdom to bear, and he would not be outwitted by
any woman. So thought Samson of old.

Skelton did not go to Belfield very often, but in one way and another
he saw Sylvia pretty constantly. He never could quite make out the
faint resentment in her manner to him. But the truth, from Sylvia’s
point of view, was, that he had come into her life and disorganised it,
and made her dissatisfied with what before had satisfied her, and had
shown her other ideals and standards which were beyond her reach; and,
on the whole, Sylvia reckoned Skelton among the enemies of her peace.

In August, Mrs. Shapleigh usually made her hegira to the Springs. One
of Sylvia’s crimes in her mother’s eyes was that she was not always
madly anxious to be off on this annual jaunt. But this year nobody
could complain that Sylvia was not ready enough to go. So eager was she
for a change, that Mrs. Shapleigh declared Sylvia would go off without
a rag to her back if it were not for a mother’s devotion. Lewis Pryor
dreaded her going, and he seemed really the only person whom Sylvia
regretted. But Skelton found himself secretly very much dissatisfied
with the idea that Sylvia should go away.

One hot August afternoon, after having seen the great Belfield
carriage drive out of the lane with Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh, and seeing
Sylvia’s white figure fluttering about on the river shore, Skelton
concluded that he would walk across the bridge and call on Mr. and Mrs.
Shapleigh, which would result, of course, in his seeing only Sylvia.

The day had been sultry, and not a breath stirred the giant trees
around Deerchase. There were masses of coppery clouds in the west, and,
although the sun blazed redly, the river was dark. Skelton predicted a
thunderstorm as he crossed the bridge.

Down by the water was Sylvia, with a rustic hat tied under her chin.

“I am going all over the place for the last time,” she said to Skelton
when he came up. “Day after to-morrow we start--we can’t make the
journey in less than eight days--and oh, I shall be so glad to be on
the road!”

It rather disconcerted Skelton that Sylvia, who seemed so different
from most women, should be so anxious after what seemed to him a
commonplace pleasure. He hated watering places himself.

“It will be very gay, no doubt,” he answered. “But it is such an
immense effort for so little!”

“Yes,” agreed Sylvia, walking slowly along the edge of the river and
looking absently down towards Lone Point; “but there is a dreadful
stagnation here. I wake up every morning at the same moment--to see the
same things--to meet the same people. Ah, how tired I am of it all!”

This was a rare complaint for women to make in those days, when a taste
for travelling was thought depraved. Skelton observed her closely, and
saw signs of an inward restlessness.

“And will you be satisfied at the Springs?” he asked, smiling.

“Of course not,” answered Sylvia airily. “I shall be no better
satisfied than at Belfield; but it will be a change. Ah, Mr. Skelton,
you don’t know what it is to be caged!”

Skelton thought he understood her.

“Some day you will see the world,” he said, “and then you will lose all
of your illusions. I am satisfied at Deerchase, because I know it is as
good a spot as any in the world.”

“Do you think I will ever see the world?” said Sylvia. “Well, I don’t
think I will. I want it too much. We never get what we want very, very
much.”

“Yes, we do,” replied Skelton, looking skyward. “We want rain very,
very much, and we will get it very soon.”

“If you are afraid of being soaked,” said Sylvia, with a kind of soft
insolence, “you had better go home.”

Skelton perceived that she was trying to vex him. “No, I sha’n’t go
home yet a while; and if a storm comes up, I shall stay with you, as I
know your father and mother are away. I saw the carriage drive out of
the lane before I started.”

“Yet you asked very politely if papa and mamma were at home?”

“Certainly I did. Politeness is a necessity when one is carrying out a
deception.”

Sylvia turned a rosy colour, more with anger than with pleasure.
Skelton was amusing himself at her expense. Latterly he had fallen into
a half-bantering love-making with her that was infuriating. Sylvia
shut her lips, threw back her head, and unconsciously quickened her
walk. Skelton, without making the slightest attempt at conversation,
walked by her side. They were following the indentations of the river
towards the bridge. The sky lowered, and presently a few large drops of
rain fell. Sylvia started and turned a little pale. She was afraid of
storms, and already the rumbling of thunder was heard.

“I must fly home!” she cried. “Good-bye,” and gave him her hand.

At that moment the air suddenly turned black, and there was a blinding
flash of light, a sudden roar of thunder, and all at once a great
golden willow not fifty yards from where they stood seemed to shrivel
before their eyes as a bolt struck it. A fearful stillness hung over
the land, although the thunder bellowed overhead. Sylvia trembled, and
clung to Skelton’s sinewy brown hand.

“Don’t go!” she said piteously.

In another instant she felt herself rushed along towards the house. She
was breathless, and the wind, which had suddenly risen, blew the brim
of her large hat over her eyes, but just as the rain swept down in a
torrent she found herself in the Belfield hall, panting and frightened,
but safe.

“Now,” said Skelton coldly and with malicious satisfaction, “good-bye.”

“What do you mean?” cried Sylvia, aghast. “In this rain?”

“The rain is nothing,” replied Skelton, buttoning up his coat. He was
vexed with her, and was sincere in meaning to go home.

“But--but--you _mustn’t_ go,” said Sylvia, looking at him with
terrified eyes.

“Are you afraid to be alone? I will call the servants for you.”

“Yes, I am afraid,” cried Sylvia desperately; “I am afraid for you.”
She paused suddenly. In her nervousness and tremor and agitation she
scarcely knew what she was saying; the roar of the rattling thunder
almost drowned her voice; it died in her throat, and her heart
fluttered wildly as Skelton suddenly seized her hand.

“Are you afraid for me, dear Sylvia?” he asked.

Something compelling in Skelton’s gaze forced Sylvia to raise her eyes
to his, which were blacker, more lustrous, than she had ever seen them.
She made no answer, but her own eyes shone with a deep, green light
that was enchanting. All at once the whole world outside of Skelton
seemed to slip out of sight. But Skelton felt the most delicious ease
and sense of reality. That one glance revealed her whole soul to him.
Here was one creature who could love him; here was that soft, human
fondness of which he had known but little in his life; and he knew
well enough that way lay happiness. He cast prudence and forethought
and finesse to the winds. The inevitable hour had come to him as to
other men. He drew her close to him, and took the great wet hat off her
head and kissed her passionately a dozen times, saying some incoherent
words, which nevertheless both he and Sylvia understood well enough.
All at once an ineffable tenderness had possessed him; life took on
another hue. The beauty of the present hour might be fleeting, but at
least it was well to have known it even for a moment.

The lightning continued to flash constantly in the large, dark hall,
and the reverberation of the thunder was deafening, but it no longer
had the power to alarm Sylvia; it is true it excited her and increased
the tremor of her nerves, and made her quite unconsciously cling
closely to Skelton, but it seemed to her as if they were together under
the most beautiful sky and in the serenest air.

Presently thought returned to Skelton. Sylvia was now in the mood in
which she could refuse him nothing; she had acknowledged that she loved
him; now was the time to speak for Lewis, for the one passion had by no
means swallowed up the other.

“Sylvia,” said he in his most eloquent tones, and looking at her with
his soul in his eyes, “could you forgive much in the past life of the
man you loved? Think well before you answer, because some women who
love much cannot forgive anything.”

Sylvia turned very pale; she knew well enough what he meant; she knew
he was making a plea for Lewis Pryor.

“Yes,” she said, after a tremulous pause, “I could forgive much in the
past. What is past is no injury to me; but I don’t think I could be
forgiving for any injury to _me_.”

She had withdrawn a little from him, and her last words were spoken
quite firmly and clearly and with unflinching eyes. Sylvia had a spirit
of her own, and that was a time for plain speaking. She did not lose
in Skelton’s esteem by her boldness.

“Then we are agreed,” answered Skelton with equal boldness; “for I
shall have no forgiveness to ask in the future. I shall have to ask
forgiveness for something in the past--something I cannot tell you now.
I will write it to you. But I will say this: I believe you to be the
most magnanimous woman in the world, and for that, partly, I love you.”

There is a common delusion that all men make love alike. Never was
there a greater mistake. There is no one particular in which a man
of sense is more strongly differentiated from a fool than in his
love-making. Skelton had the most exquisite tact in the world. He had
to admit to his own wrongdoing, but he did it so adroitly that he
easily won forgiveness. He had to make terms for Lewis, and he had to
tell Sylvia that he could not make her a very rich woman; but he made
the one appear the spontaneous act of Sylvia’s generosity, and the
other was the most powerful proof of his affection for her. So can a
man of brains wrest disadvantage to his advantage.

Sylvia heard him through, making occasionally little faint stands
against him that never amounted to anything. There was already treason
in the citadel, and all she wanted was a chance to surrender. Skelton
knew all the transformations of the cunning passion called love, and
Sylvia’s flutterings were those of a bird in the snare of the fowler.

An hour had passed since the storm had risen, and it was now dying away
as rapidly as it had come up. Sylvia slipped from Skelton and went and
stood by a window at the farther end of the hall. The exaltation was
too keen; she craved a moment’s respite from the torrent of her own
happiness. When Skelton joined her and clasped her hand, both of them
were calmer. They experienced the serener joy of thinking and talking
over their happiness, instead of being engulfed in the tempest of
feeling.

“But do you know, dear Sylvia,” said Skelton, after a while, “that in
marrying me you will not be marrying the richest man in Virginia?”

“I shall be marrying the finest man in Virginia, though,” answered
Sylvia, with a pretty air of haughty confidence.

“But still we sha’n’t starve. We shall have Deerchase.”

“I always liked Deerchase better than any place in the world.”

“And you will have a middle-aged husband.”

“I like middle age.”

“Who has a bad habit of reading more hours than he ought to.”

“Then I shall be rid of him much of the time. However, Lewis and I will
manage to get on very well without you.”

Skelton at that clasped her in his arms with real rapture. It was
the one thing necessary to his happiness--the one condition he would
exact of any woman--that Lewis should have what Skelton considered his
rights. Triumph filled his heart. With that charming, spirited woman
to help him, the little world around them would be forced to be on
its good behaviour to Lewis. Sylvia, who was the most acute of women,
saw in an instant that in this boy she had the most powerful hold on
Skelton. Justice, and generosity, and inclination all urged her to be
kind to the boy; but love, which is stronger than all, showed her that
therein lay the secret of enormous power over Skelton.

But after a moment Sylvia said something which suddenly filled
Skelton’s soul with melancholy:

“Some day--when the great book is written--you will be the most famous
man in the country, and I shall be the proudest woman,” she said with a
little vain, proud air.

The light died out of Skelton’s eyes, and he could hardly resist a
movement of impatience. Everywhere, even in his most sacred love, he
was pursued by this phantom of what he was to do.

Sylvia presently sat down, and Skelton, drawing his chair near her,
hung over her fondly. He knew perfectly well how to make her happy. He
expressed in a hundred delicate ways the tenderness he felt for her;
while Sylvia--proud Sylvia--was so meek and sweet that he scarcely knew
her; so forgiving, so trustful. After all, thought Skelton, there was a
philosophy better than that to be found in the books.

The storm was now over, and suddenly a mocking-bird outside the window
burst into a heavenly song. Skelton went to the wide hall doors and
threw them open. The sinking sun was shining upon a new heaven and a
new earth. The trees, the grass, the shrubbery were diamonded with
drops and sparkling brilliantly; the river ran joyously; the damp,
sweet-scented air had a delicious freshness; all Nature was refreshed
and glad. Skelton felt that it was like his own life--a sunset calm
after a storm. He felt not only a happier man than he had been for many
years, but a better man.

Half an hour after, when Skelton and Sylvia were sitting together
in the cool, dark drawing-room, the door suddenly opened, and Mrs.
Shapleigh sailed in, followed by old Tom. The sight that met their eyes
might well paralyse them--Skelton, with his arm on Sylvia’s chair, his
dark head almost resting on her bright hair; her hand was raised to his
lips. Being a self-possessed lover, he did not commit the _gaucherie_
of dropping her hand, but held on to it firmly, saying coolly:

“Fairly caught, we are, Sylvia.”

Mrs. Shapleigh uttered a faint shriek, while old Tom raised his
bristling eyebrows up to the fringe of grey hair over his forehead.

Mrs. Shapleigh sank down, overcome by astonishment. Old Tom walked up
to Skelton, and said, with a broad grin:

“So you have bamboozled my girl?”

“Completely,” answered Skelton.

Sylvia at that got up and scurried out of the room, with Mrs. Shapleigh
after her.

Mr. Shapleigh and his whilom ward faced each other.

“The game’s up,” was old Tom’s remark.

“Apparently,” answered Skelton, smiling; “and, as the consent of the
father is usually asked, I am quite willing to ask it now.”

“I don’t know that it matters much in any case--least of all in
this--because my daughter Sylvia has a spirit that I have never seen
equalled in man or woman. I have sometimes seen horses who had it.
That’s your prospect, Skelton.”

“I’ll risk it gladly,” answered Skelton, who knew well how to play the
dauntless lover.

“And she has given in to you--the only creature, by Jove! she ever
_did_ give in to. But, Skelton, there’s one thing--”

Skelton knew exactly what was coming.

“There is that boy, Lewis Pryor.”

“Miss Shapleigh and I have agreed upon that,” replied Skelton in a
tone which put a stop to any further discussion. “If she is satisfied,
nobody else can complain.”

“Not even her parents?”

“See here, Mr. Shapleigh, we know each other too well to beat about the
bush. You know your daughter will marry me if she says she will. You
haven’t just known her yesterday.”

“She will, by the powers of heaven!” burst out Mr. Shapleigh; “and so,
I suppose, as you say, it is hardly worth while to talk about it. But,
for the sake of the thing, here’s my hand and my consent with it.”

“Thank you,” answered Skelton, with grim politeness, and taking his hat
at the same time.

He went back to Deerchase in a sort of exaltation not altogether
free from melancholy. He had a feeling that too much of his life was
gone--that, like the day’s sun, which had shone so brilliantly before
its setting, it was a dying glory. Things were becoming too pleasant
to him. The giving up of so much money with so little reluctance
seemed too easy to be normal, yet the fact that this charming Sylvia
had taken him with such a diminished fortune contained the most
intoxicating and subtile flattery. There had been something of this in
his first marriage; but although he felt the extreme of tenderness,
gratitude, and respect for his first wife, it had been more a marriage
of gentle affection than profound passion. Skelton dimly realised what
Bulstrode brutally proclaimed--that if somebody had not violently
opposed that marriage it might never have taken place. But Sylvia
Shapleigh had powerfully attracted him from the first. Skelton had a
vein of fatalism about him. Like the old Greeks, he expected to pay a
price for everything, and it did not surprise him that in the natural
course of events he had to pay a great price for his Sylvia.

It was quite dusk when he stood on the bridge and looked first towards
Belfield and then towards Deerchase. The twilight had fallen, and there
were yellow lights about. Out in the river a vessel lay with a lantern
at her masthead, that glimmered fitfully, showing the dusky outline of
her hull against the shadowy mass of shore and sky. Afar off, at the
negro quarters, a circle of dark figures sat around an outdoor fire,
and a song faintly echoed from them. Skelton tried to distinguish
Sylvia’s window from the dark pile of the Belfield house, but could
not, and smiled at himself for his folly, and was glad to know such
folly. He was no mean philosopher in the actual experiences of life.

“Perhaps,” he said, “now that I shall stop buying books by the
thousand, I shall get something done in the way of work; and having
assumed duties and claims, I shall not have all my time to myself, and
so may be spurred to use it more successfully than I do now--for so
runs life.”

Neither Lewis nor Bulstrode suspected that anything unusual had
happened to Skelton that night. Skelton longed to call Lewis to him and
to tell him that he had a friend--that between Sylvia and himself he
would have two as stout defenders as could be found; but he refrained
for the moment. After dinner, though, when Skelton went out for his
after-dinner smoke on the long, leafy, stone porch covered with
climbing tea roses that were in all their mid-summer glory, Lewis came
too. This was very rare. But to-night he came out and sat looking at
the river, and fondling his dog, as if merely for the pleasure of being
there. He looked less sad, less shy than usual. The truth was, he was
young and full of life, and he could not always be gloomy. Skelton
talked to him a little, and the two sat together in the sweet, odorous
night, until it was long past Lewis’s bedtime. Presently, though, he
began to yawn, and got up to go to bed; and when he said “Good-night,”
he went up to Skelton and touched his hand softly.

That touch went to Skelton’s heart, as a baby’s fingers go to the heart
of the mother; he felt the deep, unmixed delight he had felt when
Sylvia’s radiant, adoring eyes had rested on his; it was one of those
delicious moments of which there are too few in every life. Yes, Lewis
was certainly beginning to love him.

“Good-night, my boy,” said Skelton, laying his hand fondly on Lewis’s
shoulder.

Skelton was so profoundly happy as he walked up and down the long
porch, his fine, expressive face so changed and softened, his black
eyes luminous in the dark, that he asked himself if, after all, Fate
would not demand something more than mere money in payment for so much
that was sweet.




CHAPTER XX.


Next morning early, while Sylvia was yet dreaming, a tap came at her
door, and a great basket of roses and a letter from Skelton were given
to her. The letter told her, most delicately and artfully, what he
had intimated the night before. He made a touching appeal for Lewis,
and he even told her in detail about the disposition of the property
without offending her--for nothing so vitiates sentiment as the talk
of money. But there was nothing to vitiate it in the willingness, and
even eagerness, that Skelton expressed to give up a fortune for her.
Possibly he had not been quite so ready to do it as he professed; but
he knew how to make a virtue of a necessity, and it lost nothing in his
gallant way of putting it. Sylvia was quite sharp enough to see how
ably he had managed awkward facts, and loved him none the less for it,
and admired him considerably more. His money and his past were nothing
to her. All that any human being can claim of another is the present
and the future.

There had been a tremendous commotion at Belfield after Skelton had
left the evening before, but Sylvia scarcely remembered a word of it
next morning. The only fact her mind dwelt on was that Skelton loved
her. One thing, though, Mrs. Shapleigh had promptly resolved before
she had closed her eyes the night before, which was, that the trip to
the Springs must be given up. Sylvia had landed the leviathan of the
matrimonial pool, and Mrs. Shapleigh could not bear to tear herself
away from the county in the first flush of her triumph. It is true
it was not the custom in those days and in that region to announce
engagements, but, nevertheless, Mrs. Shapleigh had no doubt it would
get out, and had convincing reasons for so believing. Old Tom was far
from objecting to the abandonment of the trip to the Springs. He was
not particularly anxious to go himself, and it cost a pretty penny to
transport Mrs. Shapleigh and Sylvia and the maid, and the coachman
and two horses, nearly four hundred miles from the seaboard to the
Alleghany Mountains, and it was destructive to the family coach and
usually foundered the horses.

When Sylvia was greeted at breakfast with the announcement that the
trip to the Springs was off, naturally it did not grieve her in the
least.

Mrs. Shapleigh--good soul!--started upon a round of visits that very
morning to give a number of extraordinary and purposeless reasons why
the trip was abandoned, and everywhere she went she let the cat out of
the bag, to old Tom’s infinite diversion, who went along. Newington was
the last place they went to. Blair met them at the door with his usual
cordiality, and squeezed Mrs. Shapleigh’s hand and ogled her as if she
had been twenty-five instead of fifty--to Mrs. Shapleigh’s obvious
delight, although she archly reproved him.

The place, and the master and the mistress of it, looked more
prosperous than for many years past; but close observers might see that
Blair and his wife were not quite what they had once been; there was a
little rift in the lute. Both of them, however, were genuinely glad to
see the Shapleighs, who were among the best of friends and neighbours.
Mrs. Blair asked after Sylvia, and then the murder was out. Mrs.
Shapleigh began:

“Sitting at home in the drawing-room, mooning with Richard Skelton.
He was over there all yesterday during the storm, and one would think
they had said everything on earth they could think of to each other,
but evidently they haven’t. I can’t imagine what they find to talk
about, for Richard Skelton never knows any news.--What ails you, Mr.
Shapleigh?”

“Nothing at all,” answered old Tom, grinning delightedly, “except that
I’d like to see Richard Skelton’s countenance if he could hear you this
minute.”

“Well, I’m sure Mr. Skelton is quite welcome to hear anything I have to
say. I say he never knows any news--and so he does not, Mr. Shapleigh.
Mr. Skelton may be able to write a great philosophical work that will
lose his own soul, I haven’t the slightest doubt, but as for knowing
what’s going on in the county--why, he knows no more than my shoe. But
Sylvia thinks he’s delightful, news or no news.”

“There you go,” apostrophised Mr. Shapleigh, taking out his big
snuff-box and indulging himself in a huge pinch. Blair usually would
have been highly amused at Mrs. Shapleigh, and would have wickedly
kept her upon the ticklish subject. Instead, however, a strange,
intense look flashed into his countenance as he quietly turned his
eyes full on his wife’s face. Elizabeth grew pale. If Skelton was to
be married to Sylvia Shapleigh--and there had been much talk about it
lately--the crisis was at hand.

Old Tom knew there was a mystery about the disposition of the main
part of Skelton’s money in the event of his death or marriage, and
thought it not unlikely that the Blairs would have an interest in it.
So, as they sat there, simple country gentry as they were, leading the
quietest provincial lives, and talking about their every-day affairs,
there was that mixture of tragedy that is seldom absent from the comedy
of life. Mrs. Shapleigh went into another long-winded explanation of
why they had determined at the last minute to give up the trip to the
Springs. At every reason she gave Mr. Shapleigh grinned more and more
incredulously; but, when she got up to go, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Blair
was in the slightest doubt as to the real reason.

Blair put Mrs. Shapleigh into the carriage, gave old Tom an arm, and
came back in the house to his wife.

Elizabeth saw in a moment that a subtile change had come over him.
Since he had given up the race course and had devoted himself to the
plantation he had looked a different man. An expression of peace had
come into his ruddy, mobile face; he was no longer hunted and driven
by creditors of the worst kind; he did not live, as he once had, on
the frightful edge of expecting a horse’s legs to give out, or his
wind, or something equally important. It is true that he was haunted
by the possible fortune, but it did not keep him from attending to
his legitimate business, as horse racing had done. Now, however, his
face was full of lines; some fierce, sensual self seemed to have come
uppermost and to have altogether changed him. Elizabeth remembered
about that black horse, and she began to think how long would Blair
be able to keep off the turf with money in his pockets. And if he
should get so much money as the Skelton fortune would be, Mrs. Blair’s
feminine good sense told her unerringly that it would not be good for
Blair.

“Well,” he said, standing up before her in the cool drawing-room,
darkened at midday from the August sun, “Skelton is going to be married
to Sylvia Shapleigh. There is no earthly doubt about it.”

Mrs. Blair quite agreed with him, but her face did not wear the look of
uneasy triumph that glowed darkly upon her husband’s.

“I have not heard from England yet, but I feel perfectly certain that
the day he is married his wife’s fortune will be handed over to his
heirs.”

“Lewis Pryor is his heir,” answered Mrs. Blair.

“How do you know it?” cried Blair. “Did not Bulstrode tell you that he
thought it would be very hard for Skelton to prove it?”

“But Mr. Bulstrode is not a man of very good judgment about those
things. He felt sorry for me the night he told me. He was angry with
Mr. Skelton; he says he thinks Lewis will be better off without the
money than with it; and so, putting all those things together, he
concluded that we would get it. But I know Richard Skelton well, and
I know that he would not accept of his own happiness at the price of
enriching us; and he adores that boy. You are deceiving yourself if you
think one stiver of it will ever be ours.”

Blair looked at his wife with deep displeasure in his face.

“I don’t believe you want that money, and I know very well the reason
why. You are afraid of money for me.”

Mrs. Blair did not deny it, but sat, in pale distress, looking into
her husband’s face. They loved each other well, in spite of that
estrangement, and Blair got up and went to her and took her hand.

“Elizabeth, I swear to you, all the animosity I feel towards Skelton
arose first through the love I had for you. Had he not interfered with
me when you and I were first lovers, Skelton and I should have been
jolly good fellows together; but I’ve got into the habit of hating him,
my dear, for your sake, and it’s not easy to leave off.”

This old, old flattery never failed with Elizabeth, nor did it fail now.

The whole county was agog in a week over Skelton’s affairs. The
disposition of his fortune became more and more puzzling and
interesting when it was perfectly well understood that the time for
the solution of the mystery was near at hand. But Skelton himself and
Sylvia Shapleigh knew, or thought they knew, just what would happen
about it.

Skelton, who was a model lover, pressed for an early date for the
marriage to come off, and the late autumn was named. This gave him
time to work on Lewis. He took the boy into the library one day and
told him the whole story of the coming marriage, laying especial stress
on the fact that Deerchase would still be his home and Sylvia his
friend. The great news pleased the boy, and Skelton fondly hoped that
it had reconciled him; but before the interview was out Skelton saw
it had not. Only, instead of being obstinate and stiff-necked, Lewis
begged, with tears in his eyes, that Skelton would not make it public.

“I need not, unless the Blairs put in their claim. The whole thing is
in Bulstrode’s hands,” said Skelton with his unbroken forbearance.

But Lewis, on leaving the room, reiterated that he would never admit
that he was not Lewis Pryor as long as he had a fighting chance. And,
as on every occasion that it had been spoken of, Skelton gloried in the
boy’s spirit with a melancholy joy. Something else besides pride in
Lewis and affection for Sylvia made Skelton happy then. His mind seemed
to awaken from its torpor, induced by excess of reading. All at once he
felt the creative power rise within him like sap in a tree. The very
night after he had pledged himself to Sylvia he went to the library
to read, and suddenly found himself writing. The pen, which had been
so hateful to him, became quickly natural to his hand. He cast aside
his great volumes of notes, at which he had been used to gaze with a
furious sense of being helpless and over-weighted, and wrote as readily
and as rapidly as in the old days when he had written Voices of the
People. Of course, it was not done in the same spirit; he realised he
was making only the first rough draft of a work that would still take
him years to bring into shape; but it was a beginning, and he had been
fifteen years trying to make that beginning. A deep sense of happiness
possessed him. At last, at last he had the thing which had eluded him.
All at once good gifts were showered upon him. He felt a profound
gratitude to Sylvia, for her touch that waked his heart seemed to wake
his intellect too. The lotus eater suddenly cast aside the lotus and
became a man.

Every day Sylvia claimed a part of his day, but the remaining hours
were worth months to him in that recent time when he was nothing better
than an intellectual dram drinker. Bulstrode saw it, and said to him:

“If you live long enough, you’ll write that book.”

If he lived long enough! But why should he not live?

That night, sitting alone in the library, working eagerly and
effectively at that great preliminary plan, he remembered Bulstrode’s
remark, and went and looked at himself in a small mirror in a corner
to examine the signs of age upon him. Yes, the lines were there. But
then the ever-sweet consciousness came to him that Sylvia did not
think him old; that Sylvia would marry him to-morrow and go to live
in the overseer’s house if he asked her. It came with a sweetness of
consolation to him. He was at the very point where the old age of youth
had not yet merged into the youth of old age; forty was a good deal
older in 1820 than in 19--.

There was one person, though, who thought forty was very old--for a
man, although fifty was comparatively young for a woman--and that was
Mrs. Shapleigh. That excellent woman was in mortal terror of her future
son-in-law, but she revenged herself by great freedom in her remarks
about him behind his back, as far as she dared, to Sylvia.

Sylvia was indubitably a perfect fool about Skelton, as her mother
reminded her a dozen times a day. When Sylvia would cunningly place
herself at a window which looked across the fields to Deerchase, Mrs.
Shapleigh would remark fretfully:

“Sylvia, I declare you behave like a lunatic about Richard Skelton. I’m
sure I was as much in love with your father as any well brought up girl
might be, but I assure you it never cost me a wink of sleep.”

“Very probably, mamma.”

“And I was so afraid some one would know it, that I never breathed a
word of our engagement to a soul. It’s true, some people suspected
it after we went to a party at Newington and danced ten quadrilles
together, one after the other, but I denied we were engaged up to two
weeks before the wedding.”

“Did you say ten quadrilles, mamma?”

“Yes, ten.”

“I’m sure Mr. Skelton and I will never dance ten quadrilles in one
evening with each other.”

“And your father was a much younger and handsomer man than Richard
Skelton, who has crow’s-feet in the corners of his eyes.”

“I like crow’s-feet. They impart an air of thoughtful distinction to a
man.”

“And Mr. Skelton has a bald place as big as a dollar on the top of his
head. Does that add an air of thoughtful distinction, too?”

“Of course it does. There is something captivating in Mr. Skelton’s
baldness; it is unique, like himself. It makes me more and more
delighted at the idea that I am going to be married to him.”

“Sylvia!” shrieked Mrs. Shapleigh, “do you dare to be so bold and
forward as to say that you _want_ to marry Mr. Skelton?”

“Yes, indeed, mamma--dreadfully.”

Mrs. Shapleigh raised her hands and let them fall in her lap in despair.

“For a girl to acknowledge such a thing! Now, if you wanted to be
mistress of Deerchase, there’d be no harm in it; but to want to marry
a man because you are in love with him! Dear, dear, dear! what is the
world coming to?”

Sylvia laughed with shameless merriment at this, and just then the door
opened and old Tom came in.

“Mr. Shapleigh,” began Mrs. Shapleigh in a complaining voice, “Sylvia’s
not at all like me.”

“Not a bit,” cheerfully assented old Tom.

“She isn’t ashamed to say that she is in love with Richard Skelton, and
wants to marry him. Nobody ever heard me say, Mr. Shapleigh, that I was
in love with you, or wanted to marry you.”

“No, indeed, madam. It was not worth while. You hung upon me like ivy
on a brick wall.”

“La, Mr. Shapleigh, how you talk!”

“And I’m sure, my love, if anybody doubts my devotion to you during
your lifetime, they’d never doubt it after you’re dead. I’ll engage to
wear more crape and weepers than any ten widowers in the county.”

This always shut Mrs. Shapleigh up. Sylvia gave her father a reproving
look, but she was too much used to this kind of thing to take it
seriously. Old Tom, though, indulged in his sly rallying too.

“Well, my girl, a nice establishment you’ll have at Deerchase. I swear,
I’d throw Bulstrode and Bob Skinny in the river, both of ’em, and let
the fishes eat ’em. However, if you can stand Skelton for a husband,
you can stand anything.”

“Only give me a chance to stand Mr. Skelton, papa,” answered Sylvia
demurely.

“If the house were to catch afire, I wonder which Skelton would think
of first--you or his books?”

“The books, of course,” responded Sylvia, with easy sarcasm. “Wives
come cheaper than books.”

“I’d like to see Richard Skelton’s face the first time you cross him.”

“You would see a very interesting face, papa--not very young, perhaps,
but one that age cannot wither nor custom stale.”

“Sylvia, my child, you are a fool!”

“Only about Mr. Skelton, papa.”

“Lord, Lord, what are we coming to!”

“I know what _I’m_ coming to, papa. I am coming to be the wife of the
finest man in the world, and the kindness and condescension of Mr.
Skelton in wanting to marry me I never can be sufficiently grateful
for--” At which, in the midst of a shriek of protest from Mrs.
Shapleigh, Sylvia ran out of the room.




CHAPTER XXI.


As the time went by, with this new-found happiness and energy Skelton
began every day to take more optimistic views of the future. If only
the Blairs would keep quiet, the story about Lewis might remain unknown
to the world at large indefinitely; and how excellent would this be for
all--for the boy, for Sylvia, and for Skelton himself.

There was, of course, one way of inducing Blair to say nothing and to
make no attempts to prove what he considered his rights, and that was
to offer him a sum of money in hand for his shadowy prospects in the
future. At first, this plan was intolerably distasteful to Skelton;
he only thought of it to dismiss it. But however he might dismiss
it, still it returned. It is true it would give aid and comfort to
his enemy, but it would also give peace and pleasure to the only two
persons on earth whom he loved; for he was certain that, however
Sylvia might be willing to brave talk for his sake, it would be an
immeasurable relief to her to know that there would be no talk. Skelton
also knew perfectly well that the Blairs stood no show whatever; for,
even if Lewis should die, the Blairs could not inherit from him,
because in the eyes of the law he was no relation to them, and it
had pleased Skelton to think how completely he could checkmate Blair
at every turn. But once the plan had entered his mind, his relentless
and logical good sense forced him to consider it. He thought so much
more clearly and rapidly and conclusively than the ordinary man that
in a very little time his mind had made itself up. He did not all at
once love Blair, but he saw that, in order to effect a great gain for
the only two beings he loved in the world, he must agree to benefit
his enemy; and so, under new and better influences, he brought himself
to yield. As Bulstrode was Lewis’s guardian, of course Skelton could
arrange with him as he chose.

When his determination was finally fixed, he told Bulstrode, who said:

“Humph! Best thing you could do. Perhaps the story about Lewis may
never be positively known. _I_ don’t want to publish it, and he
doesn’t, and you don’t; so just get the Blairs to hold their tongues,
and it need not be known any farther than it is now, for God knows how
long--perhaps not until you and I both are dust. Dear, sweet Mrs. Blair
can hold her tongue, I warrant, if any of the sex can.”

Bulstrode, fearing that, after all, the Blairs stood no chance, was
glad for his dear Mrs. Blair to get enough to put her beyond the reach
of poverty.

Skelton felt compelled to mention it to Sylvia. Her relief at the
thought that the story need not be published broadcast was so intense
that Skelton saw that she had suffered much from the apprehension
of it. As she had said not one word about it, he was touched at her
reticence and self-sacrifice. He smiled at the thought that he was
being influenced by a woman and a boy, and the trio was completed
when the parson finished the job. Conyers coming down to Deerchase on
a visit about that time, Skelton, very unexpectedly to the clergyman,
talked the subject over with him on ethical grounds. Naturally, Conyers
endorsed the idea that Skelton’s money could not be put to a better
use than to helping Mrs. Blair and her children; and so, by the three
influences that Skelton was supposed to be least governed, he made
up his mind to do that which a year before he would have scoffed
at. Conyers’s ideas on matters of right and wrong were so clear and
logical, he was so little befogged by interest and prejudice, that
Skelton could not but respect his opinion. True, his mind was made
up when he talked with Conyers about the matter; but the clergyman’s
clearness of belief that the thing was right nullified some of the old
restless hatred of Blair.

“Of course, we shall hate each other as long as we live,” said
Skelton, in his cynically good-natured way, when talking with Conyers
about Blair. “But, however Blair may congratulate himself on getting
something for nothing--for that is what it is--I shall get a great deal
more. I shall keep people from knowing my private affairs for at least
several years to come, and that is worth a fortune to any man.”

Skelton acted promptly on his decision. He wrote Blair briefly and
clearly how things stood, but that, if he would refrain from making any
attempt to prove his supposed claims to the property upon Skelton’s
approaching marriage, a modest sum in ready money would be forthcoming.
He offered Blair every facility for finding out the actual state of
the case, and invited him to come over to Deerchase and consult about
it.

Blair told his wife, who, womanlike, advised him to take the bird in
the hand.

But during the discussion in the Deerchase library one mild September
morning, between the two men, the whole thing liked to have fallen
through. Blair saw so conclusively he had no show that he perceived he
was accepting hush money. This his pride could by no means admit, and
he professed not to consider Skelton’s proofs so positive as Skelton
thought them. This angered Skelton. He saw in a moment where the shoe
pinched. The sum that Skelton offered him was by no means commensurate
with the interests he was giving up, if he had any interests at all;
but still it would put him on his feet; it would make him solvent; he
would once more be a free man. But Blair would not acknowledge this;
he professed to be quite indifferent to it, and, as men will do under
such circumstances, declared he preferred that the law should settle
it. It was as much as Skelton could do to refrain from calling him a
fool. However, Blair was no fool; he was only an intensely human man,
who loved and hated as most men do, and who wanted to satisfy his
creditors, but who did not like the idea of his enemy knowing that
he was taking money for holding his tongue because his rights in the
matter had proved to be a chimera. It looked at one time as if the
final word would be a disagreement. Skelton sat on one side of the
table, with a contemptuous half-smile on his countenance, drawing
pen-and-ink sketches upon scraps of paper. Blair sat on the other
side, his face as black as midnight. But in the end Skelton’s strong
determination prevailed on Blair’s more violent but less certain will
power; coolness prevailed over hot-headedness, reason over unreason. At
the very last, when Blair had yielded and agreed to take some thousands
of dollars, a strange thing happened to Skelton. A perfectly sudden,
overpowering, and phenomenal generosity seized upon him. All at once he
realised how hard he had been upon Blair’s susceptibilities; Blair was
a gentleman, and high-strung for all his faults; it was humiliating to
him to want the money so badly that he was obliged to take it; he would
have liked to have flung it in Skelton’s face; and, thinking this over
rapidly, without a word Skelton sat down, pulled the completed draft of
the agreement toward him, and doubled the first figure of the sum named.

Blair could hardly believe his eyes. He looked at Skelton for fully
five minutes, while the thing was slowly impressing itself upon
his mind. His face flushed scarlet; his lips worked; he was deeply
agitated. Skelton walked to the window and looked out. His eyes sought
the river, and fell upon a boat with its one white sail gleaming like
silver in the morning light; and in the boat were Sylvia and Lewis.
His heart stirred; those two young creatures were doing their work of
humanising him.

Presently Blair spoke some incoherent words of thanks, and Skelton
turned. The two enemies of long standing faced each other. It was a
moment exquisitely painful to both. Skelton, in being generous, could
be thoroughly so; and he was more anxious to escape from Blair than
Blair was to escape from him. He motioned with his hand deprecatingly
and rang the bell. Bob Skinny appeared, and Skelton directed him to
call Mr. Bulstrode and Miles Lightfoot. Skelton had no mind to take
up any more time in the business than he could help. The subject was
distasteful to him, and he intended to settle it all at one sitting.
Likewise he employed no lawyer. He was lawyer enough for so simple a
thing as an agreement of that sort; so in two minutes it was signed,
witnessed, and sealed, and Blair had Skelton’s cheque in his pocket.
Blair went off, half dazed, with his cheque and his agreement in his
breast pocket. Skelton put his copy in his strong box, and when he had
turned the key upon it he felt as if he had locked up his hatred with
it. Bulstrode wanted to see him about some work he had finished, and
Miles Lightfoot was eager to tell him something about his horses, but
Skelton sent them both off impatiently. He was in no mood for books or
horses then. He threw himself in his chair and enjoyed for the first
time the luxury of befriending an enemy. Strange, strange feeling!




CHAPTER XXII.


About one o’clock Lewis returned from his sail. Skelton had come out of
the library then, and was walking up and down the stone porch. He had
just got a note from Mrs. Blair--the most grateful, affectionate note.
Skelton put it in his pocket to show Sylvia that afternoon, having
promised himself the luxury of her sweet approval.

Lewis came up to him and began to tell, boy fashion, of the sail he had
down the river; the wonderful speed of his boat; how Sylvia had been
frightened at a few white caps, and how he had reassured her. Skelton
listened smiling. Lewis was a little vain of his accomplishments as a
sailor. Then, after a few moments, Skelton said to him gravely:

“Lewis, you remember what you are so anxious that no one should know
about you?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Lewis, blushing.

“I have arranged so that I do not think it will be known for some
years certainly--possibly never. Mr. Blair, Mr. Bulstrode, and I have
arranged it.”

The boy looked at him with shining eyes. “Some years” sounds like
“forever” to extreme youth. His face was expressive with delight. He
came up to Skelton, and of his own accord laid his hand timidly upon
Skelton’s arm. It was the second time in his life that he had ever done
such a thing, and the first time he had ever seen Skelton overcome with
emotion. He looked at the boy with an intensity of affection that was
moving; a mist came into his eyes. He rose and walked quickly to the
end of the porch, leaving Lewis standing by his empty chair--amazed,
touched, at what he saw before him. Skelton’s weakness was womanish,
but he did not feel ashamed of it. He felt that in the boy’s heart the
natural affection was quickening for which he had longed with a great
longing.

After a while he turned and made some ordinary remark to Lewis, who
answered him in the same way; but there was a sweet, ineffable change
in their attitude one to the other. Nature had her rights, and she had
vindicated herself. Lewis fondly thought the disgrace that he dreaded
was forever removed from him, and no longer struggled against that
feeling of a son for his father that had been steadily growing in his
breast, although as steadily repressed, ever since he had known really
who he was.

As for Skelton, he walked down towards the river in a kind of ecstasy.
The boy’s heart was his. No lover winning his mistress ever felt a more
delicious triumph.

As he strolled along by the cedar hedges near the river, and the masses
of crape myrtle and syringa, that could withstand the salt air and
the peevish winds of winter, he began to consider all his new sources
of happiness. There was the deep, tumultuous joy of Sylvia’s love,
and the profound tenderness he felt for Lewis, that had only grown
the more for the stern subduing of it; and there was that awakened
creative power which made him feel like a new man. And the spectre
of his hatred of Blair had been laid at least for a time--no one can
hate the being one has just benefitted. And then, looking about him,
he felt that Deerchase was not a possession to be despised. He had
seen too much real grandeur to overestimate the place; yet it was
singularly beautiful, not only with the beauty of green old gardens
and giant trees that clustered around the stately house, and noble
expanses of velvety turf and dewy woods, but it had that rich beauty
of a great, productive, landed estate. Nature was not only lovely, but
she was beneficent. Those green fields brought forth lavishly year
after year. There was room, and work, and food for all. Skelton saw,
half a mile inland, the negroes weeding out the endless ranks of the
corn, then as high as a man’s head, and flaunting its splendid green
banners magnificently in the August air. The toilers were merry, and
sang as they worked; two or three other negroes were half working, half
idling about the grounds, in careless self-content; Bob Skinny sunned
himself under a tree, with his “fluke” across his knee; and the peacock
strutted up and down haughtily on the velvet grass. The river was all
blue and gold, and a long summer swell broke upon the sandy shore. All
the beauty of the scene seemed to enter into Skelton’s soul. It was
exactly attuned to his feelings. He did not long for mountain heights
and lonely peaks or wind-lashed waves; this sweet scene of peace and
plenty was in perfect harmony with him.

He was too happy to work then, but he felt within him a strange power
to work within a few hours. As soon as night came he would go to the
library; those long evenings of slothful dreaming and reading and
painful idleness were no more; he would manage to do a full stint of
work before midnight. He had written in the morning to Sylvia that he
would not see her that day. He had apprehended that after his interview
with Blair he might not be in the most heavenly frame of mind, but,
on the contrary, he was so unexpectedly happy that he longed to go to
Belfield then. But Sylvia would not be ready to see him; she would be
taking a midday nap after her morning sail; he would go at his usual
hour in the afternoon and surprise her.

He continued to stroll about, his straw hat in his hand, that he might
feel the soft south wind upon his forehead, and it reminded him of when
he was a boy. How closely Lewis resembled him!--his ways, his tastes,
were all the same, except healthier than his own had been. He never
remembered the time when he had not withdrawn himself haughtily from
his companions. Lewis was as proud and reserved as he had been, though
from an altogether different motive; for with poor Lewis it was the
reserve of a wounded soul. Skelton remembered well how, in his boyhood,
he had lived in his boat, just as Lewis did, spending long hours lying
flat in the bottom, merely exerting himself enough to keep the boat
from overturning, and going far down into the bay, where the water was
dark and troubled, instead of being blue and placid as it was in the
broad and winding river.

All day until five o’clock the beauty held. At that time Skelton came
out on the stone porch to take his way across the bridge to Belfield.
The sky had not lost its perfect blueness, but great masses of dense
white clouds were piling up, and a low bank of dun color edged the
western sky. The wind, too, was rising, and far down, beyond Lone
Point, the white caps were tumbling over each other, and the wide
bay was black and restless. Just as Skelton came out he saw the one
snow-white sail of Lewis’s boat rounding Lone Point.

Bulstrode was sitting on the porch, snuffing at the rich tea roses, and
with the inevitable book in his hand; but he looked uneasy.

“I wish,” he said to Skelton, “you’d speak to the boy about going
out in that boat in all sorts of weather. There’s a storm coming up
outside, and nothing will please him more than to be caught in it, and
to come home and tell you how near he came to being drowned. You taught
him to manage a boat much too well. He takes all manner of risks, by
Jove!”

“He is venturesome to the last degree,” replied Skelton, “and I cannot
make him otherwise. But, as you know”--Skelton smiled, and hesitated a
moment--“I suffer all sorts of palpitations when he is in danger. Yet,
if he shirked it, I should detest him.” Bulstrode raised his shaggy
brows significantly; he knew all this well enough without Skelton’s
telling him. In a moment Skelton added:

“It has also been a satisfaction to me to see this spirit in him, for
it indicates he will be a man of action. I entreat you, Bulstrode,
if you should outlive me, never let him become a mere dreamer. I
would rather see him squander every dollar that will be his, if the
possession of it should make him a mere _dilettante_--what I have been
so long, but which I shall never be again, by heaven!”

Bulstrode looked surprised. He could not imagine why a dissipated old
hulk like himself should outlast Skelton, who was in the most perfect
vigour of manhood. As he watched Skelton walking across the lawn to the
bridge he could not but observe his grace, his thoroughbred air, the
indescribable something that made other men commonplace beside him.

“Don’t wonder the women fall in love with you!” he growled, returning
to his book.

Over at Belfield, Sylvia, with the train of her white gown over her
arm, was walking daintily through the old-fashioned garden to an
arbour, at the end of the main walk, with a rustic table and chairs in
it. In good weather she and Skelton passed many hours there. Sylvia
was quite alone this afternoon. Her father and mother had gone up the
county for a two days’ visit, and left her at home perforce, because
she would not go with them. Sylvia was, indeed, completely under
Skelton’s spell. His word was law, his presence was everything. She
felt acutely disappointed that she would not see him that day, but she
would go to the arbour and fondly cheat herself into the belief that
he would come. In the old days Sylvia had been a great reader, but
under the new dispensation when she read at all she read idly--sweet
verses, which were merely an epitome of that greater story of life
and love that she was studying for herself. She went into the arbour
and sat down, and spread Skelton’s note out upon the little table.
What perfect notes he wrote!--brief and to the point, but exquisitely
graceful--one of those gallant accomplishments that he excelled in. One
round white arm supported her charming head; the other hung down at her
side, the hand half open, as if her lover had just dropped it. Sylvia
was as pretty a disconsolate picture as could be imagined when Skelton
walked into the arbour. She started up, a beautiful rosy blush suddenly
dawning.

“Here I am, like an old fool,” said Skelton, smiling as he took her
hand. “I concluded I couldn’t come, but then the wish to see you was
too strong for me. See what a havoc you have made in my middle-aged
heart!”

“Your heart, at least, is not middle-aged,” answered Sylvia, with a
sweet, insinuating smile; “and I wish,” she added with bold mendacity,
“that you had some crow’s-feet and grey hairs. I adore crow’s-feet and
grey hairs.”

“I think you can find some of both to adore,” answered Skelton, with
rather a grim smile in return.

They were close by the rustic seat, and both of them sat down,
Skelton’s arm just touching her rounded shoulder. The air had grown
dark, and there was a kind of twilight in the arbour. They seemed as
much alone as if they had been in the depths of the woods, instead of
in an old-fashioned garden.

“I shall have to build you a summerhouse at Deerchase,” said Skelton.
“There is a pretty spot in the garden, near the river, where the
roses have climbed all over an old latticework left standing since my
mother’s time.”

“And shall there be a tea table for me?”

“Yes, a tea table--”

Sylvia knitted her pretty brows.

“I don’t know what we shall do about Mr. Bulstrode and the tea table.
You and Lewis and I are just company enough, but Mr. Bulstrode will not
fit in at all.”

Sylvia was quite clever enough to see that Skelton did not intend
to have Lewis left out of any scheme of happiness in which he was
concerned, and therefore wisely included him.

“I think,” said Skelton, “we will have to leave Bulstrode out of that
little idyl. Bulstrode likes--reveres you, as he does all good and
charming women, but he is undoubtedly afraid of women. He will probably
take up his quarters in the wing, and only prowl about the library.
But you and I and Lewis will be very happy. The boy loves you, and,
Sylvia,” continued Skelton, with his sweetest eloquence of voice and
look, “you have no conception of how he longs for affection. He is very
proud and sensitive, and--poor little soul!--he has no friends but you
and me and Bulstrode, I think.”

“_I_ mean to be his friend,” said Sylvia in a low voice.

“And I, too, felt that longing for affection until--until--” Skelton
finished the sentence by kissing Sylvia’s fair red mouth.

After a while Skelton told her delicately about the interview with
Blair, except that voluntary doubling of what he had first given him.
Sylvia listened, and thought Skelton certainly the most magnanimous man
on earth. She quite forgot that Blair had a score against Skelton, and
a long one, too.

The late afternoon grew dark; the white clouds became a copper red, the
dark line at the horizon rose angrily and covered the heavens. The air
turned chilly, and the wind came up wildly from the bay. One of the
northwest storms peculiar to the season and the latitude was brewing
fast. But Skelton and Sylvia were quite oblivious of it--strangely so
for Skelton, who was rarely forgetful or unobservant of what went on
around him. But that whole day had been an epoch with him. When had he
a whole day of complete happiness in his life? How many days can any
mortal point to when one has become happy, has become generous, has
become beloved? Yet, such had been this day with Skelton. Sylvia, who
had been dear to him before, became dearer. Something in the time, the
spot, the aloneness, waked a deeper passion in him than he had felt
before. He forgot for the first time how the hours were flying. He
could not have told, to save his life, how long he had sat in that half
darkness, with Sylvia’s soft head upon his breast, her hand trembling
in his. A sweet intoxication, different from anything he had ever felt
before, possessed him. Suddenly the wind, which had soughed mournfully
among the trees, rose to a shriek. It flung a rose branch full in
Sylvia’s face, and a dash of cold rain came with it. Skelton started,
rudely awakened from his dream. It was dark within the arbour and dark
outside. What light still lingered in the sullen sky was a pale and
ghastly glare. The river looked black, and, as the wind came screaming
in from the ocean, it dashed the water high over the sandy banks. A
greater change could not be imagined than from the soft beauty of the
afternoon.

Skelton and Sylvia both rose at the same moment. The rain had turned
to hail; the storm that had been gathering all the afternoon at last
burst upon them. In half a moment Sylvia’s white dress was drenched.
As they stood at the entrance to the arbour, Skelton, with his arm
around her, about to make a dash for the house, turned and glanced
over his shoulder towards the river, and there, in the black and angry
water, storm-tossed and lashed by the wind, a boat was floating bottom
upwards. There had evidently not been time to take the sail down, and
every minute it would disappear under the seething waves and then come
up again--and clinging to the bottom of the boat was a drenched boyish
figure that both Skelton and Sylvia recognised in a moment. It was
Lewis Pryor. His hat was gone, and his jacket too; he was holding on
desperately to the bottom of the boat, and the hurricane was driving
the cockleshell down the river at a furious rate.

Skelton uttered an exclamation like a groan and pointed to the boat.

“See!” he cried, “he can scarcely hold on--he has probably been hurt.
Go, dearest, go at once to the house; I must go to the boy.”

There was a boat at the wharf, and the negroes, who had collected on
the shore and were shrieking and running about wildly, were foolishly
trying to raise the sail. In that one quick moment of parting,
as Skelton’s eyes fell upon Sylvia’s, he saw in them an agony of
apprehension for him. It was no safe matter to venture out in the
violence of a northwest storm in the shallow pleasure boat that lay
tossing at the wharf, with the negroes vainly and excitedly toiling at
the sail, which the wind beat out of their strong hands like a whip.
But Sylvia did not ask him to stay. Skelton pressed her once to his
heart; he felt gratitude to her that she did not strive uselessly to
detain him. He ran to the water’s edge, and just as he reached it the
sail, which had been got up, ripped in two with a loud noise, and the
mast snapped short off. The rope, though, that held the boat to the
wharf did not give way, and a dozen stalwart negroes held on to it.

Meanwhile, Lewis’s boat, that had been dimly visible through the hail
and the mist, disappeared. The negroes uttered a loud shriek, which was
echoed from the Deerchase shore by the crowd assembled there. Skelton’s
wildly beating heart stood still, but in the next minute the boat
reappeared some distance farther down the river. Lewis had slightly
changed his position. He still hung on manfully, but he was not in as
good a place as before. The sail, which still held, acted as a drag,
so that the progress of the boat, although terribly swept and tossed
about, was not very rapid.

At the wharf it took a moment or two to clear away the broken mast
and the rags of the sail. Two oars were in the bottom of the boat. As
Skelton was about to spring into it he turned, and saw Sylvia standing
on the edge of the wharf, her hands clasped, her hair half down and
beaten about her pale face by the fierce gust, her white dress soaked
with the rain. She had followed him involuntarily. In the excitement,
and in his fierce anxiety for Lewis, Skelton had not until that moment
thought of the danger to himself. But one look into Sylvia’s face
showed him that she remembered it might be the last time on this earth
that they would look into each other’s eyes. And in an instant, in
the twinkling of an eye, Skelton’s passion for Lewis took its proper
proportion--he loved Sylvia infinitely best at that moment. As if Fate
would punish him for ever letting the boy’s claim interfere with the
woman’s, he was called upon to take his life in his hand--that life
that she had so beautifully transformed for that boy’s sake.

And as Sylvia stood, in the rain and wind, Skelton holding her cold
hands and looking at her with a desperate affection, some knowledge
came from his soul to hers that at last she was supreme. Skelton
himself felt that, when he set out upon that storm-swept river, he
would indeed be setting out upon another river that led to a shoreless
sea. This new, sweet life was saying to him, “Hail and farewell!”

They had not stood thus for more than a minute, but it seemed a
lifetime to both. When it dawned upon Sylvia that nothing short
of Lewis’s cry for life could draw Skelton from her, a smile like
moonlight passed over her pallid face. She had the same presentiment
that Skelton had--he would never return alive. It was as if they heard
together the solemn tolling of the bell that marked the passing of
their happiness. But not even death itself could rob Sylvia of that
one perfect moment. Then, out of the roar of the storm came a cry from
Lewis. Skelton raised Sylvia’s hands and let them drop again. Neither
spoke a word, and the next moment he was in the boat, that both wind
and tide seized and drove down the river like an eggshell.

Skelton had two oars, but they did him little good. He could not direct
the boat at all; the wind that was blowing all the water out of the
river blew him straight down towards Lone Point. He felt sure that he
was following Lewis, and no doubt gaining on him, as he had no wet sail
dragging after him, but the darkness had now descended. It was not more
than seven o’clock, but it might have been midnight.

Suddenly a terrific squall burst roaring upon the storm already raging.
Skelton could hear the hurricane screaming before it struck him. He
turned cold and faint when he thought about the boy clinging to the
boat in the darkness. He was still trying to use his oars when the
squall struck him. One oar was wrenched out of his hand as if it had
been a straw, the other one broke in half.

At that Skelton quietly dropped his arms, and a strange composure
succeeded his agony of fear and apprehension about Lewis. He could now
do nothing more for Lewis, and nothing for himself. He was athletic,
although neither tall nor stout; but he did not have Lewis’s young
litheness, and he was already much exhausted. There would be no
clinging for hours to the bottom of the boat for him, and he was no
swimmer; he would make a fight for his life, but he felt it would be
of no avail. And Sylvia! As he recalled her last look upon him, he
beat his forehead against the side of the boat like a madman; but the
momentary wildness departed as quickly as it came. The recollection
that he was on the threshold of another world calmed him with the awful
majesty of the thought. He said to himself, “Sylvia understands--and
she will never forget!” All sorts of strange ideas came crowding upon
him in the darkness. All around him was a world of black and seething
waters and shrieking winds. Could this be that blue and placid river
upon which so much of his boyhood had been spent? Almost the first
thing he remembered was standing at the windows of his nursery, when
he was scarcely more than a baby, watching the dimpling shadows on
the water, and wondering if it were deep enough to drown a very
little boy. And he had lived in his boat as a boy, just as Lewis did.
Then he remembered the September afternoon, so long ago, when he had
taken Sylvia in his boat, and that night just such a terrible storm
had come up as this; the bridge had been washed away, and the tide
had overflowed all the flower beds at Deerchase and had come almost
up to the hall door. He remembered the morning after, when he left
Deerchase--the river, as far as eye could reach, a gigantic lagoon,
muddy and turbulent. Would it look like that the next morning? and
would a person drowned that night be found within a few hours? He did
not remember ever to have heard of a single person being drowned in
that river, and could not think whether the body would be washed ashore
or would sink for days.

Ah, how sweet had existence become! and in one day he had compassed
the happiness of a lifetime. It was only a few hours ago that Lewis
was sailing past Deerchase so gaily, and Sylvia’s soft hair had been
so lately blown in his face by summer breezes. Presently in the midst
of the darkness and the wildness he again heard a cry; he recognised
Lewis’s voice, faint as it was, and almost drowned by the clamour of
the winds and the waves. Skelton then felt a presentiment that Lewis
would be saved, although he himself would undoubtedly be lost. And
then came the feeling that the mystery of life was to be solved. No
matter now about all his thoughts, all his speculations; in one moment
he would know more than all the world could teach him about those vast
mysteries that subtle men try to fathom. Skelton was too sincere a
man and too fearless to change wholly within the few awful moments of
suspension between two worlds. One was gone from him already, the other
was close at hand. But he had always firmly believed in a Great First
Cause, a Supreme Being. This belief took on strangely the likeness of
the Christian God, the Father, Friend, the Maker who orders things
wisely for His creatures. Instinctively he remembered the proverb of
the poor peasants:

“The good God builds the blind bird’s nest.”

“If there be such a God,” Skelton said to himself, “I adore Him.” The
next moment he felt himself struggling in the water, with blackness
around him and above him, and the wind roaring, and a weight of water
like a million tons fell upon him, and he knew no more.

Within an hour the tempest had gone down and the clouds were drifting
wildly across the pale sky. Occasionally the moon shone fitfully. The
banks of the river were patrolled by frightened and excited crowds
of negroes, with Bulstrode and Blair and Mr. Conyers and one or two
other white persons among them, all engaged in the terrible search
for Skelton and Lewis. The wind had suddenly changed to exactly the
opposite direction, and the tide was running in with inconceivable
rapidity. The black mud of the river bottom near the shore, that had
been drained of water, was now quickly covered. Lights were moving
along the shore, boats were being rowed about the river, and cries
resounded, those asking for information that the others could not give.
Sylvia Shapleigh had spent most of the time on the wharf where Skelton
had left her. The servants had got around her, begging her to go to
the house, out of the storm. Like a person in a dream, she went and
changed her dress, and watched with dazed eyes the fury of sky and air
and water. She could not wait for the watchers on the shore to tell
her what was going on upon the river, and went back obstinately to the
wharf, in spite of the prayers and entreaties of the servants. She
tried to persuade herself that she was watching for Skelton’s return,
but in her inmost heart she felt she would never see him alive again.

It was about nine o’clock when she heard a shout some distance down
the river, and a boat pulled up, through the ghostly light, towards
Deerchase. Sylvia started in feverish haste towards the bridge. She ran
in her eagerness. As she reached the farther end, just at the Deerchase
lawn, she met Conyers coming towards her.

[Illustration: “IT IS LEWIS--LEWIS IS ALIVE!” HE SAID. “HE IS
EXHAUSTED, BUT WILL RECOVER.”--_Page 322_]

“It is Lewis--Lewis is alive!” he said. “He tied the tiller rope
around him--that was what saved him. He is exhausted, but he will
recover. The boat was found drifting about just below Lone Point.”

Sylvia tried to ask, “Has anything been heard of Mr. Skelton?” but she
could not. Conyers understood the dumb question in her eyes, and shook
his head. Poor, poor Sylvia!

Sylvia, scarcely knowing what she did, walked by Conyers’s side across
the Deerchase lawn. They met a crowd--Blair carrying Lewis in his
arms, and Bulstrode trudging along weeping, and the negroes following.
Lewis’s face was purplish, and he seemed scarcely to breathe; but when
Bob Skinny came running out of the house with a bottle of brandy, and
they poured some down his throat, he opened his eyes and managed to
gasp, “Where is Mr. Skelton?”

Nobody answered him. Lewis gulped down more brandy, and cried out in a
weak, distressed voice:

“I saw Mr. Skelton put off in the boat for me, and I was so afraid for
him--”

His head fell over; he could not finish what he was saying.

Blair and Bulstrode took the boy in the house and put him to bed and
worked with him; but Sylvia could not leave the shore, and Conyers
stayed with her and Bob Skinny, down whose ashy face a constant stream
of tears poured. Conyers tried to encourage Sylvia--the search was
still going on, up and down the river--but she looked at him with calm,
despairing eyes.

An hour before midnight a boat was seen coming up the river from Lone
Point. Almost immediately the distant cries, the commotion along the
shore ceased. It was the first boat that had returned, except the
one that brought Lewis. The negroes all gathered in crowds at the
Deerchase landing. Sylvia and Conyers stood on the little pier. The
moon was at the full by that time, and although the water was still
dark and troubled, the silver disc shone with pale serenity, and the
stars glittered in the midnight sky. Conyers, although used to sights
of human suffering, turned his face away from Sylvia’s pallid anguish.
When the boat struck the steps that led down from the wharf, the
negroes suddenly uttered their weird shrieks of lamentation. Skelton’s
body was being lifted out.

Sylvia advanced a step, and the bearers laid their burden down before
her. One side of his face was much discoloured, and one arm hung
down, where it had been wrenched out of its socket. Conyers tore open
the coat and placed his hand upon Skelton’s heart. There was not the
slightest flutter. The discoloured face was set--he had been dead some
little time. Sylvia neither wept nor lamented. Her terrible calmness
made Conyers’s blood run chill.

“Carry him to the house,” she said, after a moment, in which she had
leaned down and touched his cold forehead. “He is quite dead. It is not
worth while to send for a doctor. See, this terrible blow upon the head
stunned him--perhaps killed him. I never saw a dead person before, but
I tell you there is nothing to be done for him.”

The negroes took him up and carried him tenderly, Bob Skinny holding
the poor dislocated arm in place, and everybody wept except Sylvia.
Skelton had been a good master, and the horror of his death worked
upon the quick sympathies of the negroes. Sylvia walked blindly after
them, not knowing where she was going, and not caring. The house was
lighted up, as the house servants had been alarmed in the beginning of
the storm. The body was carried in the house and laid down in the hall;
and Bulstrode, coming down the broad stairs and looking at what once
was Richard Skelton, turned pale and almost fainted.

Then there was an awful moment of uncertainty. What was to be done?
Bulstrode was clearly unable to give directions or to do anything.
Blair was working with Lewis upstairs, and, besides, there was
something too frightfully incongruous in applying to him. Conyers, his
heart breaking for Sylvia, dared not leave her, and there was nobody to
do for the master of the house. Then Bob Skinny, the most useless, the
vainest, the least dependable of creatures, suddenly came to the fore.
He had loved Skelton with blind devotion, and he had been the person
who was with Skelton the most of any one in the world.

“I kin see ’bout Mr. Skelton,” he said, trembling. “Me and Sam Trotter,
an’ dese here house niggers kin do fer him.”

Bulstrode, on coming to himself, actually ran out of the house to
escape that terrible Presence that had just made its majestic self
known. Sylvia, on the contrary, could not be forced away until she had
at least seen Skelton once more. Conyers sat by her in one of the great
drawing-rooms, awed at her perfectly silent and tearless grief. A few
candles made the darkness visible. The room was one that was never
used except upon some festive occasion, and the contrast of Sylvia
sitting in mute despair in the gala room was a ghastly epitome of life
and death. Overhead was audible occasionally the muffled sound of the
watchers moving about Lewis Pryor’s bed; and across the hall, on the
other side, could be heard distinctly in the midnight stillness the
gruesome preparations that His Majesty Death requires. Conyers was as
silent as Sylvia. His emotions were always insoluble in speech, and now
they froze the words upon his tongue. As soon as that one last look at
Skelton was had Sylvia must leave the house.

After waiting as much as an hour, a step was heard crossing the hall,
and Bob Skinny, with a candle in his hand, opened the door noiselessly
and beckoned to Conyers.

Sylvia rose too. She knew what that gesture meant. She walked firmly
forward a few steps, and then stopped, trembling; but, with a supreme
effort, she went upon her way, Conyers close at hand but not touching
her. She felt herself to be in a dream as she crossed the familiar
hall and entered the library, which was peculiarly Skelton’s room.
She turned and closed the door after her, which Conyers had left
partly open. The great room was dimly lighted, but the light scarcely
penetrated the deep darkness of the corners, and the ceiling was lost
in gloom. A window was open, and through it came softly a faint,
chill, odoriferous wind. Sylvia remembered Skelton once telling her
that in the East such a wind was called the Wind of Death. The heavy
curtains moved gently, as if touched by a ghostly hand, and a branch
of white hydrangeas, with which the fireplace was filled, trembled at
it. On the sofa lay Skelton, looking the least deathlike object in
the room. He was dressed in his ordinary evening clothes, and on his
delicate high-arched feet were black silk stockings and pumps with
diamond buckles. He lay on his side quite naturally, his dislocated arm
drawn up under the discoloured side of his face, so that both injuries
were quite concealed. Anything more natural or graceful could not be
conceived. He seemed to have thrown himself on the lounge after dinner,
and have dropped asleep for a few moments.

It was the first dead person Sylvia had ever seen, and at first that
natural human horror of the dead quite overcame her. She covered her
face and fell on a chair, and presently looked fearfully around her,
and everything was terrifying until she saw Skelton. All at once horror
of him was banished. She was no more afraid than if he had been lying
before her asleep.

She went up to him, and knelt by him fondly. She smoothed the black
hair off the pale forehead with a sweet sense of familiarity. She had
felt constrained by a maiden diffidence from any of those caresses that
a woman sometimes bestows on the man she loves. She never remembered
having touched his hair before until that very afternoon, when he had
made that remark about his grey hairs. Yes, there were plenty. She
passed the locks through her fingers--it was soft and rich, although
beginning to lose its perfect blackness. She examined his face
carefully; it was so clear cut--she had never seen a mouth and chin and
nose more delicately and finely outlined.

“He is not really handsome,” she said to herself, looking at him with
ineffable tenderness; “but people had eyes for nobody else when he was
before them. And how strangely young he looks! and so like Lewis!” For
the wonderful youthfulness which death sometimes restores to the human
countenance made Skelton and Lewis most extraordinarily alike at that
moment.

“And how happy we should have been!” she continued, half aloud. “I
meant to have made him love me more through that boy. I took very
meekly the love he gave me, because I knew the time would come when it
would be all mine--all--all. It came at the very moment that we were
forever parted.”

Sylvia bent down to kiss the cold face, and suddenly drew back,
blushing redly, and looking about to see if she was watched--it had
so entirely escaped her that this was not Skelton. She put her warm
young arms around his neck, and kissed him a dozen times, when in a
moment the coldness, the horrible insensibility before her penetrated
her heart. She darted up and ran wildly to the door, almost knocking
Conyers over, who was just about to enter. She seized his hand, and,
trembling violently, cried out:

“I was just a moment ago in love with a corpse--with a dead man, who
could not open his eyes or feel or hear anything; and was it not most
unnatural and horrible? Pray, let us go--”

Conyers caught her cold hands in his, and the words he was about to
speak died on his lips, so much did Sylvia’s face appal him. She flew
out of the house, across the lawn, and was almost at the bridge before
Conyers caught up with her.

“You will kill yourself,” he said breathlessly, but Sylvia only sped on.

There had been no sleep at Belfield that night. A messenger had been
sent to Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh, but they could not get home before
morning. As Sylvia rushed into the house as if pursued, Conyers said:

“Let me send for Mrs. Blair.”

“No, I will be alone,” answered Sylvia.

“God will be with you,” said Conyers.

“Yes,” replied Sylvia, walking about the dimly lighted hall, “God will
be with me. I have had a great many doubts, as you know. I asked--”
She stopped in her restless walk and tried to speak Skelton’s name,
but could not. She continued: “He always put me off gently. He told me
those people were best off who could believe in God, the Father of us
all; that it was very simple, but simple things were usually the best.
He told me I might read a great deal--my mind was very eager on the
subject--but that those who claim God is not proved cannot themselves
prove he is not. And I can even believe in the goodness of God now,
for, at the very moment that I was to lose--” She still could not speak
Skelton’s name, and indicated it by a pause--“I had one moment of
rapture that was worth a lifetime of pain. I found out that _he_ loved
me better than he had ever loved anything on earth. Nothing can ever
rob me of that moment. I shall carry it through this world and into the
next, where there is a glorious possibility that we may meet again.”

She turned, and went quietly and noiselessly up the broad, winding
stair. She looked like a white shadow in the gloomy half-light. About
midway the stair, her form, that to Conyers, watching her, had grown
dimmer at every step, melted softly into the darkness.

Conyers turned and left the house.

When he reached Deerchase again everything was solemnly quiet. In a
corner of the hall Bulstrode was sitting by the round table, with
a lamp on it, leaning his head upon his hands. Lewis was sleeping
upstairs, and Blair was watching him. Conyers, ever mindful of others,
sent the servants off to bed and closed the house. He would be the
watcher for the rest of the night. It was then about two o’clock in the
morning. Conyers went into the library and looked long and fearlessly
at that which lay so peacefully on the sofa. Death had no terrors for
him. He believed the human soul worth everything in the world, but the
body, living or dead, mattered but little.

On the table lay a riding glove of Skelton’s, still retaining the shape
of the fingers. Scraps of his writing were about--two letters, sealed
and addressed--a book with the paper knife still lying between its
uncut leaves. Conyers, calm and almost stoical, looked at it all, and
then, going into the hall, sat down at the table where Bulstrode was,
and, opening a small Bible in his pocket, began to read the Gospel of
St. Matthew. The light from the lamp fell upon his stern features, that
to the ordinary eye were commonplace enough, but to the keener one
were full of spirituality. He was half-educated, but wholly good. He
wandered and blundered miserably, but faith and goodness dwelt within
him.

After a while Bulstrode spoke, his rich voice giving emphasis to his
earnest words:

“Conyers, I would give all I know for the peace you enjoy.”

“Peace!” said poor Conyers, raising his sombre eyes to Bulstrode’s. “I
have no peace. It is all warfare.”

“But with the warfare you have peace, and you have no fear
of--_It_”--Bulstrode shuddered, and pointed toward the library door,
which was slightly ajar--“nor even of death, which has turned Skelton
to _It_ in one moment of time.”

“I certainly have no fear,” answered Conyers, after a pause. “I doubt,
I am at war, I suffer agonies of mind, but not once have I ever feared
death. I fear life much more.”

Bulstrode said nothing for a moment, then disappeared, his shuffling
step sounding with awful distinctness through the silent house. He came
back after a little while. The fumes of brandy were strong upon him,
and in his hand he carried two or three volumes.

“Here,” said he, laying the books down carefully, “here is what I
read when all the mysterious fears of human nature beset and appal
me--Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. They are the only two philosophers
who agree, after all. Old Aristotle went to work and built the most
beautiful and perfect bridge, that ever entered into the mind of man
to conceive, a part of the way across the river that separates the
known from the unknown. He got a solid foundation for every stone of
that bridge; every step is safe; nothing can wash it away. But he
reached a point where he could not see any farther. Mists obscured it
all. If any man that ever lived could have carried this bridge all
the way over in its beauty and perfection, Aristotle was that man;
but having carried it farther than it had ever been carried before,
he said: ‘Here reason stops. Man can do no more. The Great First
Principle must now reveal the rest.’ Observe: All the others claim to
have done a complete work. Kant built a great raft that floated about
and kept men from drowning, but it is not a plain pathway on a bridge;
it cannot connect the two shores; nobody can get from the known to the
unknown on it. Hegel built two or three beautiful arches and called it
complete, but it stopped far short of Aristotle’s, and led nowhere.
Then there were dozens of other fellows, wading around in the shallows
and paddling aimlessly about the river, and all crying out: ‘Here is
the way; this is the ferry to cross. There is no way but mine, and my
way is the only perfect way. There is no more to know except what I
can tell you.’ But Aristotle, who is the embodied Mind, said there was
more to come; he saw beyond him the wavering line of the other shore;
but where he stood was all mist and darkness. He knew--ah, the wise old
Greek!--knew his work stopped short, and he knew it could be carried to
the end. He was so great, therefore, that no imperfections could escape
him; and he did not mistake his splendid fragment for the whole. And
he knew a part so splendid must be a part of the whole. He saw, as it
were, the open door, but he could not enter; he had heard the overture
played, but he could not remain to see the curtain rise. But fourteen
hundred years after Aristotle had done all that mortal man could do
towards solving the great problems of being, came the man who was to
take up the work with the same tools, the same method, that Aristotle
had left off. Ah! that magnificent old heathen knew that it was to
come. But why do I call him a heathen? Zounds, Conyers, if any man ever
gave a leg to revealed religion, it was Aristotle!”

Conyers was listening attentively. Bulstrode’s manner was grotesque,
but his earnestness was extreme and moving.

He picked up one of his books and caressed it.

“This other man was Thomas Aquinas. I can’t help believing these
two men to be now together in some happy region--perhaps in a
garden--walking up and down, and in communion together. I daresay the
Greek was a lean, eagle-eyed man, like ‘_It_’ in yonder--” Bulstrode
looked over his shoulder at the library door--“and Thomas was a great,
lumbering, awkward, silent creature. His fellow-students called him the
‘Dumb Ox,’ but his master said, ‘One day the bellowing of this ox shall
shake the world.’ He was on the other side of the river, and he saw the
beautiful bridge more than half way across, and he went to work boldly
to build up to it. There were so many mists and shadows, that things on
Aristotle’s side had huge, uncanny, misshapen figures to those on the
opposite side. And there were quicksands, too, and sometimes it was
hard to find a bottom. But this Thomas Aquinas found it, and behold!
Magnificent arches spanning the mysterious river--a clear pathway
forever from one side to the other, from the known to the unknown, from
philosophy to the revealed religion.”

All the time he had been speaking Conyers’s melancholy eyes, which had
been fixed on him, gradually lightened, and when Bulstrode stopped they
were glowing.

“It is of comfort to me to hear you say that,” he said.

“So it was to Meno when Aristotle said he believed in the immortality
of the soul. Meno said, ‘I like what you are saying’; and the
Greek answered pleasantly--ah, he was a pleasant fellow, this wise
Aristotle--‘I, too, like what I am saying. Some things I have said
of which I am not altogether confident; but that we shall be better
and braver and less helpless if we think we ought to inquire, than we
should have been if we had indulged the idle fancy that there was no
use in seeking to know what we do not know, that is a theme upon which
I am ready to fight in word and deed to the utmost of my power.’”

“But Aristotle acknowledges there were some things he said about the
great question of which he was not ‘confident.’”

“Yes, yes,” replied Bulstrode impatiently. “There are two voices in
every soul--one doubting and dreading, the other believing and loving.
You see, the other fellows--Hegel and the rest of the crew--are
perfectly cocksure; they are certain of everything. But old Aristotle
saw that something in the way of proof was wanting, and that great,
silent Thomas Aquinas supplied the rest--that is, if there is anything
in Aristotle’s method of reasoning.”

“Then why are you not a follower of Thomas Aquinas into the revealed
religion?” asked Conyers.

Bulstrode was silent a moment, sighing heavily.

“Because--because--Thomas Aquinas leads me inevitably into the field of
morals. You see, all rational religions are deuced moral, and that’s
what keeps me away from ’em. I tell you, Conyers, that if you had led
such a life as I have, you’d be glad enough to think that it was all
over when the blood stopped circulating and the breath ceased. My
awful doubt is, that it’s all _true_--that it doesn’t stop; that not
only life goes on forever, but that the terribly hard rules laid down
by that peasant in Galilee are, after all, the code for humanity, and
then--great God! what is to become of us?”

Bulstrode stopped again and wiped his brow.

“You see,” he continued, in some agitation, after a moment, “you want
it to be true--you dread that it can’t be true--you are tormented with
doubts and harassed with questions. _I_ don’t want it to be true. I
believe with Aristotle that there is a Great First Principle. I can
be convinced by my reason of that; and I think there is overwhelming
presumptive proof of the immortality of the soul; but then--there may
be more, there may be more. The Jewish carpenter, with that wonderful
code of morals, may be right, after all, and I am sincerely afraid
of it; and if I went all the way of the road with Thomas Aquinas, I
should reach, perhaps, a terrible certainty. Talk about Wat Bulstrode
being pure of heart, and keeping himself unspotted from the world,
and loving them who do him evil--and the whole code in its awful
beauty--why, if that be true, then I am the most miserable man alive!
Sometimes I tell myself, if that code were lived up to the social
system would go to pieces; and then it occurs to me, that ideal was
made purposely so divine that there was not the slightest danger of the
poor human creetur’ ever reaching it, in this place of wrath and tears;
that the most he can do is to reach towards it, and _that_ lifts him
immeasurably. But that very impossible perfection, like everything else
about it, is unique, solitary, creative. All other codes of morals are
possible--all lawgivers appoint a limit to human patience, forbearance;
but this strange code does not. And that’s why I say I am afraid--I’m
afraid it’s true.”

Conyers sat looking--looking straight before him. He feared it was
not true, and Bulstrode feared it was true; and he asked himself if
anything more indicative of the vast gulf between two beings of the
same species could be conceived.

Bulstrode began again. His head was sunk on his breast, and he seemed
to fall into the deepest dejection.

“And you’ve got good fighting ground. I realise that every time I try
in my own mind to fight this Dumb Ox.” He laid his great hand on one of
the volumes before him. “There is that tremendous argument of cause and
effect. All the other founders of religions--I mean the real religions,
not the fanciful mythologies--were great men. Buddha and Mohammed would
have been great men had they never broached the subject of religion;
and they had a lifetime to work in. And then comes this Jewish
carpenter, and he does nothing--absolutely nothing--except preach for
a little while in the most obscure corner of the Roman Empire, and
is executed for some shadowy offence against the ecclesiastical law,
and behold! his name is better known than the greatest conqueror, the
wisest philosopher that ever lived. Where one man knows of Aristotle, a
thousand know of him. Now, how could such an enormous effect come from
such a trifling cause? Who was this carpenter, with his new doctrine of
democracy--socialism, if you will--the rights of the masses; and the
masses didn’t know they had any rights until then!

“Most of you half-taught fellows find your arguments in the code of
morals; but although, as I see, the code is ideally far superior to any
other, yet all are good; there were good morals taught ever since man
came upon the earth, for good morals means ordinary common sense.

“But this religion of the carpenter is peculiar. It does for thinkers,
and for the innumerable multitudes of the ages that don’t think and
can’t think. It’s wonderful, and it may be true. And, Conyers, if I
were a good man, instead of a worthless dog, I would not give up the
belief for all the kingdoms of the earth.”

Bulstrode got up then and went away again.

Conyers sat, turning over in his mind the curious circumstance that all
of his so-called theological training that was meant to convince him of
the truths of religion was so badly stated, so confusedly reasoned,
that it opened the way to a fiendish company of doubts; while
Bulstrode, who frankly declared his wish that there might be no future
life, helped, by his very fears, to make Conyers a better Christian
than before.

When Bulstrode returned, the odour of brandy was stronger than ever; he
went to the brandy bottle for fortitude as naturally as Conyers went to
his Bible.

But his eye was brighter, his gait was less slouching, and a new
courage seemed to possess him.

Before this he had turned his back to the library door, and in his two
expeditions after consolation Conyers noticed that he had walked as far
away from that door as possible. But now he boldly went towards the
library, and went in and stayed a considerable time.

When he returned he sat down trembling, and his eyes filled with tears.

“I have been to see _It_. What a strange thing was _It_ when _It_ was
alive, five hours ago! How has _It_ fared since? How fares _It_ now?
How far has _It_ travelled in those five hours? Or is _It_ near at
hand? When _It_ was living--when _It_ was Skelton--he was the most
interesting man I ever knew. He had tremendous natural powers, and, had
not fortune been too kind to him, he would have been known to the whole
world by this time. He was weighted down with money; it was an octopus
to him; it enabled him to do everything he ought not to have done, and
it kept him from doing everything he ought to have done. It gave him a
library that swamped him; it enabled him to hire other men to think
for him, when he could have thought much better for himself; it put it
in his power to follow his enemies relentlessly, and to punish them
remorselessly. Ah, Conyers, old Aristotle himself said, ‘And rich in a
high degree, and good in a high degree, a man cannot be.’ What a great
good it is that few of us can spare the time, the thought, the money,
for our revenges like Skelton! Most of us can only utter a curse and go
about our business, but Skelton could pursue his revenge like a game of
skill. Fate, however, defeats us all. Let man go his way; Fate undoes
all the web he weaves so laboriously. Skelton spent twenty years trying
to ruin Blair, and I believe he saved him. Nothing but some terrible
catastrophe such as Skelton brought about would ever have cured Blair
of that frenzy for the turf.

“But everything with Skelton went according to the rule of contrary.
Did you ever know before of a rich man who was disinterestedly loved?
Yet, I tell you, that English girl that married him could have married
a coronet. His money was a mere bagatelle to hers, and I believe as
truly as I live that Skelton was disinterested in marrying that huge
fortune.

“And Sylvia Shapleigh--ah, that poor, pretty Sylvia!--she will never be
merry any more; and you and I will never see those green-grey eyes of
hers sparkle under her long lashes again. She was the most desperately
in love with Skelton of any creature I ever saw. She didn’t mind the
boy--she knew all about Lewis--she didn’t mind anything; she loved this
rich man not for his money, but for himself. Did you ever hear of such
a queer thing on this ridiculous old planet before? And Lewis--the boy
of whom Skelton was at first ashamed--how proud he became of him! and
how he craved that boy’s love! And nobody ever held out so long against
Skelton as that black-eyed boy, the living image of him, his son from
the crown of his head to the sole of the foot.

“But at last Skelton won Lewis over; he won Sylvia Shapleigh; he won
the power to work; he won everything; only this day he won the battle
over himself; he was generous to Blair, and then in the midst of it
comes Death, the great jester, and says, ‘Mount behind me; leave all
unfinished.’ And Skelton went. The little spark of soul went, that is,
and left behind the mass of the body it dragged around after it.”

Bulstrode paused again, and Conyers, opening the Bible, read some
of the promises out of the Gospel of Matthew. Bulstrode listened
attentively.

“Read that part where it commands the forgiveness of enemies,” he said.

Conyers read them, his voice, although low, echoing solemnly through
the great, high-pitched hall. Bulstrode covered his face with his
hands, and then, rising suddenly, went a second time to the library. He
came back in a few moments. His coarse face was pale, his eyes dimmed.

“I have forgiven him--I have forgiven Skelton,” he said. “He was not
good to me, although he was a thousand, thousand times better to me
than I was to myself; but I have forgiven him all I had against him.
The dead are so meek; even the proud Skelton looks meek in death. And
I tell you, he was a man all but great--all but good.”

The lamp was burning low; there was a faint flutter of sparrows’ wings
under the eaves; a wind, fresh and soft, rustled among the climbing
roses that clung to the outer wall; a blackbird burst suddenly into his
homely song, as if bewitched with the ecstasy of the morning. The pale
grey light that penetrated the chinks and crannies of the hall changed
as if by magic to a rosy colour. The day was at hand. Conyers closed
his Bible, and said, with solemn joy, to Bulstrode:

“And so you fear all this is true? What ineffable comfort it gives me!
A man of your learning and--”

“Learning!” cried Bulstrode, throwing himself back in his chair. “Look
at _It_ in yonder! _It_ was learned; _I_ am learned; but all of us can
only cry, as the Breton mariners do when they put to sea: ‘Lord, have
mercy upon us! for our boat is so small, and Thy ocean is so black and
so wide!’”

“Amen!” said Conyers, after a moment.


THE END.




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  =The Powers and Maxine=. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
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  =Adventures of Captain Kettle.= By Cutcliffe Hyne.
  =Adventures of Gerard.= By A. Conan Doyle.
  =Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle.
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  =Artemus Ward’s Works= (extra illustrated).
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  =Awakening of Helena Richie.= By Margaret Deland.
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  =Man from Red Keg, The.= By Eugene Thwing.
  =Marthon Mystery, The.= By Burton Egbert Stevenson.
  =Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.