CHAPTER VIII.
Sylviawent 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 taketheir 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 racehorses 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 worldknew. 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 nevershould 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 simplethings. 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 herselfin 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 beenin 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 andrecherchéto 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 theymet 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.