When Skelton’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. As his 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 of _that_.”
“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. “Have Mr. 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 heard
_me_ say such a thing, although I had a much greater reputation for
good looks than you ever had. But if my glass pleased me, _I_ never
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 each other 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’t
_believe 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 and mother 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 deucedly pretty, 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,” he said 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 and with 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 managing such a property, and I flatter
myself it did not decrease in my hands. As for managing you--ha! ha!--I
admit _that_ was 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,
in the 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 dozen ways, 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 little _contretemps_ of
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 the narrow
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 of her _non 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 of mind. 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 own _protégé_, 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 the other 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 forgotten my 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 her _début_, 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 Sylvia
herself. 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 jovial good 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 double _my_ subscription 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 night
you 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. _That_ paid 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 growled _sotto voce_ to 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!”