It is impossible for anything in this tame, latter-day age to be
compared with the marvels of fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. The
worn-out, tired race declines to be awed, or delighted, or startled any
more. “Old Wonder is dead.” People have lost the sense of admiration.
It is the price paid for civilisation.
But it was not always so. Fifty years ago the romantic, the
interesting, even the mysterious, still existed. Luxury was rare,
and life was so hard and poor to most people on this continent that
imagination had to be called in to make it even tolerable. Superlatives
had not gone out of fashion, and therefore it is quite just to apply
the words grand, magnificent, superb, to Deerchase. True, if that
deadly enemy of superlatives, comparison, be levelled against it, there
is no doubt the irreverent modern would smile; for what the fresh,
wonder-loving people in 1820 thought ineffably splendid, the jaded,
sated people of 19-- would think cheap, tawdry, not worth speaking of,
after all. So that the pictures in the main hall at Deerchase would
be pronounced mediocre, the park rather ambitious than imposing, the
stables and the establishment generally insignificant compared with
those of the merchant princes of to-day. But the owner of Deerchase
had this immense advantage over the rich people of to-day--not the
whole possessions of all of them could command half the awe, delight,
and distinction that Deerchase did in its time. And if the power of
places to awe and delight be gone, what shall be said of the lost power
of individuals? But in 1820 hero worship survived with many other
beautiful and imaginative things that the world has outgrown; and
Richard Skelton, Esquire, was an object of envy and admiration to the
whole county, and to half the State of Virginia besides.
For Richard Skelton, Esquire, was certainly born with a golden, not
a silver, spoon in his mouth. In his childhood his dark beauty and a
certain proud, disdainful air, natural to him, made him look like a
little prince. In those days Byron was the poet; and the boy, with
his great fortune, his beauty, his orphanhood, his precocious wit and
melancholy, was called a young Lara. As he grew older, there were
indications in him of strange mental powers, and a cool and determined
will that was perfectly unbreakable. He brooded his youth away (in
these degenerate days it would be said he loafed) sadly and darkly in
the library at Deerchase. Old Tom Shapleigh, his guardian, who feared
neither man nor devil, and who was himself a person of no mean powers,
always felt, when his ward’s dark, inscrutable eyes were fixed upon
him, a ridiculous and awkward inferiority--the more ridiculous and
awkward because old Tom really had accomplished a good deal in life,
while Richard Skelton could not possibly have accomplished anything
at the very early age when he was perfectly commanding, not to say
patronising, to his guardian. Old Tom did not take charge of the great
Skelton property and the strange Skelton boy for pure love. The profits
of managing such a property were considerable, and he was the very best
manager of land and negroes in all the region about. But the Skelton
boy, from the time he was out of round jackets, always assumed an air
toward his guardian as if the guardian were merely his agent. This
gave old Tom much saturnine amusement, for he was one of those men
whose sense of humour was so sharp that he could smile over his own
discomfiture at the hands of a haughty stripling, and could even laugh
grimly at the burden of a silly wife, which he had taken upon himself.
For those who like life with a good strong flavour to it, Skelton
and old Tom Shapleigh, and the people around them, were not devoid
of interest. They belonged to a sturdy, well-fed, hard riding, hard
drinking, landed aristocracy that was as much rooted to the land as
the great oaks that towered in the virgin woods. All landowners are
more or less bound to the soil; but these people were peculiarly so,
because they had no outside world. There was no great city on this
side of the Atlantic Ocean, and their journeys were merely a slight
enlargement of their orbit. Their idea of seeing the world was a trip
in the family coach to the Springs, where they met exactly the same
people, bearing the same names, that they had left at home. This fixity
and monotony produced in them an intensity of provincialism, a strength
of prejudice, hardly to be conceived of now. They were only a few
generations removed from an English ancestry, which in this new land
prayed daily, “God bless England, our sweet native country!” Feudalism,
in the form of a mild and patriarchal slave system, was still strong
with them when it had gone to decay in Europe. The brighter sun had
warmed their blood somewhat; they were more fiery and more wary than
their forefathers. They were arrogant, yet simple-minded, and loved
power more than money. They also loved learning, after their fashion,
and kept the roster full at William and Mary College. But their
learning was used to perpetuate their political power. By means of
putting all their men of parts into politics, they managed to wage
successfully an unequal fight for power during many generations. The
same kind of equality existed among them as among the Spanish grandees,
who call each other by their nicknames as freely as peasants, but are
careful to give an outsider all his titles and dignities. There was
a vast deal of tinsel in their cloth of gold; their luxuries were
shabbily pieced out, and they were not quite as grand as they fancied
themselves. But, after all, there is something imposing in a system
which gives a man his own land, his house built of his own timber,
his bricks made of his own red clay, his servants clothed and shod
by his own workmen, his own blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters,
shoemakers--in short, a little kingdom of which he is the sovereign.
Naturally it makes him arrogant, but it also makes him independent;
and where each man stands upon punctilio everybody is likely to be
polite. So they had few quarrels, but such as they had were deadly. The
hair-splitting, the subtleties of the _fin du siècle_ were unknown,
undreamed of, by them. Everything was simple and direct--love, hate,
fear, remorse, and joy. God and the devil were close to every man.
Their lives were fixed, and had the continuity of an epic, instead
of the fragmentary, disjointed lives that the people of to-day are
living. And as they were necessarily obliged to spend all their mortal
days together, they knew each other and each other’s generations like
a book, and this effectually estopped pretension of all sorts. It was
a picturesque, gay, pleasure-loving life, its Arcadian simplicity
sometimes interrupted by tragedies, but it only lasted until the
railroad and the telegraph brought all the world within speaking
distance.
The rivers, broad and shallow and salt, that made in from the ocean
bays, were the spots wisely chosen for the homesteads. The plantations
extended back into a slightly rolling country, but every “p’int,” as
the negroes called it, was the site for a house. At Deerchase, from
the long stone porch covered with climbing tea roses, which faced the
shining river, half a dozen rambling brick houses on their respective
“p’ints” could be seen. The farthest off was only a mile up the river
as the crow flies, but the indentations of the stream made it more, and
when one undertook to go by land, the multitude of gates to be opened
between different properties and the various windings and turnings to
get there at all made it seem a dozen miles at least. This last place
was Newington, where Mr. and Mrs. Jack Blair lived, and which Bulstrode
so freely predicted would be in the market soon on account of a grudge
owed the Blairs by the Great Panjandrum--Richard Skelton, Esquire. The
next place to Deerchase was Belfield, where old Tom Shapleigh and that
wonderful woman, Mrs. Shapleigh, lived with their daughter Sylvia, who
had inherited more than her father’s brains and less than her mother’s
beauty. Only a shallow creek, running into a marsh, divided Deerchase
and Belfield, and it was not twenty minutes’ walk from one house to the
other. This nearness had been very convenient to old Tom in managing
the Skelton property, but it had not conduced to any intimacy between
guardian and ward. Richard Skelton was not much above Mr. Shapleigh’s
shoulder when he took to asking to be excused when his guardian called.
Old Tom resented this impertinence as an impetuous, full-blooded,
middle-aged gentleman might be expected to. He stormed up and down the
Deerchase hall, nearly frightened Bob Skinny, the black butler, into
fits, blazed away at the tutor, who would go and plead with the boy
through the keyhole of a locked door.
“My dear Richard, come out and see your guardian; Mr. Shapleigh
particularly wants to see you.”
“And I particularly don’t want to see Mr. Shapleigh; so go away and
leave me,” young Skelton would answer in his smooth, soft voice.
As there was nothing for old Tom to do unless he kicked the door down,
he would go home fuming, and have to content himself with writing very
fierce and ungrammatical letters, of which the spelling was reckless,
but the meaning plain, to his ward, which were never answered. Then old
Tom would begin to laugh--it was so comical--and the next time he met
the boy there would be that same haughty reserve on Skelton’s part, at
which his guardian did not know whether to be most angry or amused. He
was philosophic under it, though, and would say:
“Look at the tutors I’ve got for him, begad! and every man-jack of
them has been under the hack of that determined little beggar from the
start. And when a man, woman, or child can get the upper hand of one
who lives in daily, hourly contact, why, you might just as well let
’em go their own gait. Damme, _I_ can’t do anything with the arrogant
little upstart!”
No expense was spared in tutors, and, as each successive one had a
horse to ride and a servant to wait on him, and was treated politely by
young Skelton as long as he was let alone, the tutors never complained,
and old Tom was quite in the dark as to his ward’s real acquirements.
Mrs. Shapleigh frequently urged Mr. Shapleigh to go over to Deerchase
and demand categorically of Richard Skelton exactly how much Latin and
mathematics he knew, but old Tom had tried that caper unsuccessfully
several times. He did find out, though--or rather Mrs. Shapleigh found
out for him--that Skelton had fallen desperately in love with his
cousin, Elizabeth Armistead, who was as poor as a church mouse; and,
although Elizabeth was known to have a weakness for Jack Blair, her
whole family got after her and bullied her into engaging herself to the
handsome stripling at Deerchase. Skelton was then twenty. Elizabeth
herself was only seventeen, but seventeen was considered quite old
in those days. This affair annoyed Mrs. Shapleigh very much, whose
daughter Sylvia, being about ten years old at the time, she looked
forward to seeing established as mistress of Deerchase by the time she
was eighteen.
“Mr. Shapleigh,” his better half complained, “why don’t you go over to
Deerchase and tell Richard Skelton up and down, that if he has fallen
in love with Elizabeth Armistead he has got to fall out again?”
“My love, if I wanted him to fall out of love I’d let him get married.
There’s no such specific for love as matrimony, madam.”
“It is not, indeed, Mr. Shapleigh,” answered madam, who, though weak in
logic was not deficient in spirit, “and I’m sure that’s what my poor
dear mother used to tell me when I thought I was in love with you. But
just look at those Armisteads! Not a penny among them scarcely, and
plotting and planning ever since Richard Skelton was born to get him
for Elizabeth!”
“Gadzooks, ma’am, in that case the Armisteads are too clever for all of
us, because they must have been planning the match at least three years
before Elizabeth was born.”
“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, how silly you talk! Of course they couldn’t have
planned it before Elizabeth was born. But it does seem a hard case that
Richard Skelton should be carried off right under our noses, and Sylvia
here quite ten years old, and I with my heart set on seeing her Mrs.
Skelton, of Deerchase. But those Armisteads are a designing pack. You
may take my word for it.”
“I do, my life, I do,” cried old Tom with a wink. Meanwhile there was
no doubt that young Skelton was indeed violently in love with his
cousin Elizabeth. It was his first passion, and he pursued it with an
indescribable fierceness. Elizabeth, who had both beauty and spirit,
was a little frightened at the intensity of his love and jealousy.
She had been engaged to Jack Blair, of Newington, who was accounted a
good match and was a gallant, lovable fellow enough, but, dazzled by
Skelton’s personality and position and money, and beset by her family,
she threw her lover over. They had one last interview, when Blair left
her weeping and wringing her hands, while he threw himself on his horse
and galloped home with a face as black as midnight.
Elizabeth could not quite forget Blair, and Skelton was too subtle not
to see it. He lavished contempt on Blair, calling him a great hulking
country squire, who cared for nothing but a screeching run after the
hounds or a roaring flirtation with a pretty girl. He quite overlooked
a certain quality of attraction about Blair which made women love him,
children fondle him, and dogs fawn upon him. Skelton waked up to it,
though, one fine morning, when he found that Elizabeth and Blair had
decamped during the night and were then on their way to North Carolina
to be married.
How Skelton took it nobody knew. He shut himself up in the library
at Deerchase, and no one dared to come near him except Bob Skinny,
who would tiptoe softly to the door once in a while with a tray and
something to eat. There was a feeling in the county as if Abingdon
Church had suddenly tumbled down, or the river had all at once turned
backwards, when it was known that Richard Skelton had been actually and
ignominiously jilted. Mrs. Shapleigh had a good heart, and, in spite
of her plans for Sylvia, felt sorry for Skelton.
“Do, Mr. Shapleigh,” she pleaded, “go over and see poor Richard
Skelton, and tell him there’s as good fish in the sea as ever were
caught.”
“Zounds, madam,” answered old Tom, with energy, “I’m no poltroon, but
I wouldn’t trust myself in the Deerchase library with that message for
ten thousand dollars! He’d murder me. You’d be a widow, ma’am, as sure
as shooting.”
“Well, Mr. Shapleigh, I hope, if I ever am a widow, I shall submit
cheerfully to the Lord’s will; and I shall have as handsome a monument
put up over you as there is in the county.”
“And I’ll do the same by you, my dear, if you should precede me. I’ll
have one big enough to put on it the longest epitaph you ever saw; and
I’ll tell my second wife every day of the virtues of my first.”
“Oh, oh, Mr. Shapleigh, why will you start such dreadful subjects!”
cried Mrs. Shapleigh, in great distress.
Let it not be supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh were not as
comfortable as most married couples. Unlike most, though, in
thirty years it had not been determined which was the better man.
Mrs. Shapleigh had the mighty weapon of silliness, which has won
many matrimonial battles. She never knew when she was beaten, and
consequently remained unconquered. Old Tom, having married, like the
average man, because the woman tickled his fancy, accepted with great
good humour the avalanche of daily disgust that he had brought upon
himself, and joked over his misfortune, instead of cutting his throat
about it.
But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, Mr. Shapleigh was
blessed with a slight deafness, which varied according to whether
he did or did not want to hear what Mrs. Shapleigh was saying. At
particular stages in an argument, or at the mention of certain
expenses, he always became as deaf as a post. He did not believe
in cures for deafness, and held on to his beloved infirmity like a
drowning man to a plank.
Thirty years of bickering rather endeared them to each other,
particularly as neither had a bad heart. But old Tom sometimes thought,
with a dash of tragedy, that had the visitation of God come upon him
in the shape of a foolish daughter, he would have been tempted to cut
his throat, after all. Sylvia, however, was far from foolish, and Mr.
Shapleigh sometimes felt that Fate had treated him shabbily in making
his daughter as much too clever as his wife was too silly.
Mrs. Shapleigh sent for Bob Skinny, that he might describe Skelton’s
sufferings to her. Bob, who considered the master of Deerchase
the first person in the universe, and the butler of Deerchase the
second, gloried, after the manner of his race, in the magnitude of
everything--even their misfortunes--that befell the Skeltons.
“Miss Belindy, Mr. Skelton”--this was an innovation in title; but Bob
Skinny considered Skelton much too grand to be spoken of simply as
“Marse Richard”--“Mr. Skelton he is de mos’ distrusted you ever see. He
ain’ eat a mou’full for two weeks lars’ Sad’day, an’ he ain’ sleep a
wink for a mont’!”
“La, Bob, he’ll be ill if he doesn’t eat or sleep.”
“De Skeltons dey kin go ’dout eatin’ an’ sleepin’ more’n common ev’yday
folks,” responded Bob, with dignity.
“Maybe,” said Mrs. Shapleigh sympathetically, “a course of tansy tea
would cure him if his spirits are so bad; and if he’d put some old
nails in a stone jar and pour some water on them, and take it three
times a day, it is as good a tonic as he could find. And if he won’t go
out of the library to take any exercise, if you’d persuade him to swing
a flat-iron about in either hand, it would expand his lungs and do for
exercise.”
None of these suggestions, however, reached young Skelton, shut up in
the library, raging like a wild creature.
In a month or two, however, he appeared again, looking exactly as he
always had looked, and nobody dared to cast a sympathising glance upon
him.
About that time a political pamphlet appeared anonymously. It made
a tremendous sensation. It was, for its day, wildly iconoclastic.
It pointed out the defects in the social system in Virginia, and
predicted, with singular force and clearness, the uprooting of the
whole thing unless a change was inaugurated from within. It showed that
navigation and transportation were about to be revolutionised by steam,
and that, while great material prosperity would result for a time, it
meant enormous and cataclysmal changes, which might be destructive or
might be made almost recreative.
This pamphlet set the whole State by the ears. On the hustings, in the
newspapers, in private and in public, it was eagerly discussed. Even
the pulpiteers took a shy at it. The authorship was laid at the door of
every eminent man in the State and some outside, and it suddenly came
out that it was written by the black-eyed, disappointed boy locked up
in the Deerchase library.
The commotion it raised--the storm of blame and praise--might well have
turned any head. Its literary excellence was unquestioned. Skelton was
considered an infant Junius. But if it produced any effect upon him,
nobody knew it, for there was not the smallest elation in his manner,
or, in fact, any change whatever in him.
“That pamphlet ends my guardianship,” remarked old Tom Shapleigh
shrewdly, “although the boy is still ten months off from his majority.”
Mr. Shapleigh had been vainly trying to get young Skelton to attend
the University of Virginia, but at this time, without consulting his
guardian, Skelton betook himself to Princeton. To say that old Tom was
in a royal rage is putting it very mildly. He felt himself justified
in his wrath, but was careful to exercise it at long range--in writing
furious letters, to which Skelton vouchsafed no reply. Nevertheless old
Tom promptly cashed the drafts made on him by his ward. At Princeton
Skelton apparently spent his time reading French novels, smoking,
and studying problems in chess; but at the end of two years it was
discovered that he had made a higher average than had ever been made by
any man at the university except Aaron Burr. As if content with this,
however, Skelton left without taking his degree. But about that time he
published a pamphlet under his own name. The title was Voices of the
People. Its success was vast and immediate, even surpassing that of its
predecessor. He was now twenty-two years old, his own master, graceful,
full of distinction in his air and manner. The greatest things were
expected of him.