CHAPTER XX.
Nextmorning 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 thatSkelton 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 havewickedly 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 giveout, 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 thosethings 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 lateautumn 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 samespirit; 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 fortywas 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 youwantto 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 morecrape 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 whatI’mcoming 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.