CHAPTER VI.
WhenSkelton’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. Ashis 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 ofthat.�
“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. “HaveMr. 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 heardmesay such a thing, although I had a much greater reputation for good looks than you ever had. But if my glass pleased me,Inever 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 eachother 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’tbelieve 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 andmother 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 deucedlypretty, 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,� hesaid 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 andwith 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 managingsuch a property, and I flatter myself it did not decrease in my hands. As for managing you—ha! ha!—I admitthatwas 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, inthe 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 dozenways, 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 littlecontretempsof 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 thenarrow 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 ofhernon 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 ofmind. 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 ownprotégé, 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 theother 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 forgottenmy 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 herdébut, 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 Sylviaherself. 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 jovialgood 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 doublemysubscription 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 nightyou 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.Thatpaid 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 growledsotto voceto 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!�