CHAPTER XII.
Skeltonwas 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 thesubject, 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 farhe 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 stepswhich 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 arefairly 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 somethingof 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 hismind 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. Blairveryunhappy 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’sgot 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 seeingmy 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 preferredeven 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 horsemustwin!� 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 Pryorsitting 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, longhunt 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’sattractions 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 withdelight 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 tofoster 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 conclusivelyas 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.