Sylvia went back into the house, troubled in mind, and all that day
the thought followed her that she had probably brought about Skelton’s
defeat by what she had done. There was no question of a match between
Jaybird and Alabaster that autumn; but in the spring--however, much
might happen in the meantime, for so Sylvia consoled herself, and
heartily wished that Alabaster had never been seen or heard of.
There had not been much intercourse between Belfield and Deerchase in
the weeks that Skelton had been at home. He had promptly called after
the dinner, and it was understood that he intended giving a large ball
some time or other, but beyond a few of the gentlemen of the county
nobody had been entertained by Skelton at all.
Sylvia could not keep her eyes from wandering towards Deerchase, for
Skelton was a man who always aroused interest, and then her tender
woman’s heart was very soft towards Lewis Pryor.
It was generally agreed that there was a mystery about the boy, and,
for no better reason than this, his existence was ignored by the
county gentry, who paid formal visits to Deerchase, but who did not
take their sons with them if they happened to have boys of Lewis’s
age. Sylvia saw him every day--sailing his boat on the river, fishing
sometimes, or lying down under the trees with his dog--always alone.
Once or twice she met him in the road and stopped and talked with
him. The boy was won by her grace and charming manners, and admired
her shyly while answering her questions, with his black eyes fixed on
the ground. After meeting her two or three times he grew bolder, and
actually one day left at Belfield a bouquet of golden rod, with his
compliments scrawled in a large, boyish hand on a card. Mrs. Shapleigh,
passing through the hall as Lewis, blushing very much, handed the
bouquet in, seized upon it and carried it off in triumph to Sylvia.
“Just look, my dear! No doubt it came from Richard Skelton, poor
fellow! He is just eating his heart out because he can’t ask you to
marry him, but still he likes to pay you these delicate attentions.
Wild flowers, too--so much sentiment!”
“Mamma,” said Sylvia sharply, “please be reasonable. Look at this: they
are from Lewis Pryor, that black-eyed boy that is Mr. Bulstrode’s ward.”
“And not from Richard Skelton! Dear, dear! Do throw the things out,
Sylvia; they are not worth houseroom. And, my dear, there is some
mystery about that boy, and you’d better not have anything to do with
him.”
“Poor little Lewis! The only mystery that I see about him is that he is
young and lonely and wants friends. I never saw a more winning boy in
my life.”
Something in the gift touched Sylvia. She realised, with a smile, that
Lewis had probably endured agonies of bashfulness before and after
sending his bouquet. She wrote him a pretty little note, and sealed
it with a motto such as was the fashion in those days. Bob Skinny
presented the note that night at the dinner table to Lewis with a great
flourish.
“Miss Sylvia Shapleigh, sah, sont you dis heah billy-doo.” Bob Skinny
had not been to Paris for nothing, and interlarded his conversation
with such scraps of French as he could muster.
Lewis, turning very red under Skelton’s eye, opened the note and read
it, afterwards putting it into his pocket with studied carelessness.
Glancing up, he saw Skelton’s gaze, usually so serious, fixed, half
laughingly, upon him.
“You have the advantage of me, Lewis,” said Skelton, smiling; “I have
never been honoured with a note from Miss Shapleigh.”
“Perhaps, sir,” answered Lewis, after a pause, “you never sent Miss
Shapleigh any flowers.”
Skelton was secretly delighted with the aptness of the boy’s reply, and
remarked pleasantly:
“That is true. You seem, however, to have got the start of me in that
respect too.”
Lewis, for the first time in his life before Skelton’s face, burst
out laughing. Skelton started with surprise. He scarcely knew the
boy possessed a laugh so fresh, so merry, so boyish. Then, blushing
violently, Lewis relapsed into silence, but those few words and the
laugh had in some way shown him that the barrier between Skelton and
himself was not so icy after all.
Bulstrode teased the boy unceasingly about his bouquet, but Lewis was
not to be turned from his liking by teasing. Soon after the bouquet
episode he wrote a note in his best hand and carefully copied from the
Complete Letter-writer, inviting Sylvia to take a sail in his boat.
Sylvia accepted, and the next morning she was promptly on hand as the
boat touched the wharf at Belfield.
Lewis was delighted. It was his first taste of responsibility, and the
idea that this charming creature should trust herself with him in his
boat seemed to make a man of him at once. Skelton, glancing out of
the library window, saw Lewis sitting in the stern by Sylvia, who was
steering, while Service, the dog, sat between them, his paws on Lewis’s
knee.
Sylvia might have brought her whole battery of charms to bear on
Skelton with less effect than by her simple kindness to Lewis. Skelton
watched them as the boat sailed gaily past in the dazzling morning, and
something like a blessing on her stirred his heart. He did not wish to
be with them; on the contrary, he felt that he could more indulge his
pleasure at a distance than if he was present, but he felt a profound
and tender gratitude to Sylvia for her kindness to the boy. In the same
way he silently but bitterly resented Mrs. Blair’s not having once
brought or sent Hilary to Deerchase.
The next time he met Sylvia--which was when riding along the road one
afternoon--he stopped her, and she was surprised at the cordiality of
his greeting.
“My young friend Lewis Pryor seems to have the privilege of your
friendship above all of us,” he said.
Sylvia smiled, and felt like making a reply similar to Lewis’s when
Skelton asked him a question of the same sort; but she merely said that
Lewis was a very sweet boy, and the friendship of boys was apt to be
sincere and disinterested.
“And discerning,” added Skelton. “Boys are very astute. I think they
lose some of their astuteness when they get to be men.”
Young women, as a rule, did not interest Skelton; but he was drawn to
study Sylvia, first by her kindness to Lewis, and then by the oddity of
the discovery that the daughter of Mrs. Shapleigh could have so much
mother-wit as Sylvia undoubtedly had. And then, talking about trifles
as their horses stood in the sandy road, under the bare overhanging
branches of the linden trees that lined the lane, the talk drifted
to the Jockey Club. Skelton had just come from a meeting, and was
evidently much interested in the subject.
“I think everybody in the county gets a species of horse madness twice
a year,” he said, “and it is contagious. I assure you, that beast
of mine--Jaybird--takes up an unconscionable amount of my time and
attention. And, after all, that black colt which you chose to call
Alabaster may make me bite the dust.”
Sylvia could not tell whether Skelton hid any real resentment under his
careless manner or not, but an impulse seized upon her to tell him all
about it.
“You know, perhaps,” she said, looking him full in the eyes, “that
Alabaster was mine, and I hated the idea of his being whipped and
spurred as race horses are; and when papa told me that Mr. Blair
wanted him, I quite made up my mind not to part with him. But Mr. Blair
came over one morning, and I declare, I never saw such eagerness--”
Sylvia paused. She was getting upon delicate ground; but Skelton helped
her out:
“Oh, yes; Blair is a maniac upon the subject of beating my horse. He
is scarcely responsible. However, there are pleasanter things to talk
about than horse racing. You have never honoured Deerchase yet with
that visit you promised me, to look at my pictures.”
“Because, whenever I ask papa or mamma to take me, they always say you
are busy on your great book, and I must wait for an invitation.”
“You shall wait no longer,” said Skelton courteously; “come
to-morrow--come to-day.”
As they parted with a half promise on Sylvia’s part about the visit,
she cantered briskly down the lane while Skelton rode back slowly to
Deerchase. Ah, that book! He had made apologies and excuses to himself
for not writing it for fifteen years past. A desperate apprehension of
failure haunted him. Suppose all this brilliant promise should come
to naught! And it was his sole resource under any circumstances. He
was too old, and he had tasted too many pleasures, to make pleasure
an object with him any longer. Domestic life he was shut out from,
unless he chose to pay a price even more preposterous for it than
people imagined; for, although the county was not without information
regarding Skelton’s affairs, there were some particulars, peculiarly
galling to him, that only a few persons in the world knew. Skelton
was the last man on earth to submit easily to any restrictions, but
those laid upon him by the jealous fondness of the dead woman sometimes
made him grind his teeth when he thought of them. Often he would rise
from his bed in the middle of the night and walk the floor for hours,
tormented with the sense of having been robbed of his personal liberty
and of being a slave in the midst of all his power. For the late Mrs.
Skelton, who married him from the purest infatuation, so bitterly
resented the opposition of her family to her marriage with Skelton,
that she determined, even in the event of his marrying again, that
they at least should not profit by it. But in carrying out this fine
scheme a woman and three lawyers managed to create a complication that
was calculated to infuriate any man; and could she have risen from her
grave and have known the result of her handiwork, her chagrin would
have been only second to Skelton’s.
Skelton did not, for a wonder, hate his wife’s memory for this. He
was singularly just in his temperament, and he only hated the three
lawyers, who pocketed each a great fee for making a will that palpably
defeated its own object--a not uncommon occurrence. Although he had not
fully returned the passionate devotion of his wife, he had yet loved
her and felt deeply grateful to her, more for her devotion than her
money; for the secret of Mrs. Skelton’s devotion had been the knowledge
that, after all, Skelton had not married her for her money. Bulstrode
always said that Skelton married her to spite her relations. Certain
it is, the declaration of the great family to which she belonged, that
she never should marry Skelton, did more to precipitate his offer
than anything else. Afterwards his kindness to her, his delicacy, and
the conviction that he did not know how absolutely she was mistress
of her own fortune, deeply impressed her affectionate nature. In her
last illness, which came before she had been married six months, the
greed, the rapacity, the heartlessness of her own family was in marked
contrast to Skelton’s delicate reticence. He declined to talk of her
money, either to her or her lawyers; he left the room when she asked
his wishes; he could not bargain with a creature so young, so tender,
and so short a time for this world. But he reaped his reward, only with
some results that nobody ever dreamed of, and which made Skelton in
his heart denounce the whole tribe of lawyers as dolts, dunderheads,
rascals, cheats, frauds, and incapables.
But although he very much doubted whether he ever would have cared to
risk the matrimonial yoke again, it was inexpressibly irritating to him
to know that he could not, and that everybody knew he could not. He
noticed, sardonically, the manœuvring mothers and designing daughters
gave faint indications that he was not in the running; and worldly-wise
young women would be likely to be shy of his attentions, for they could
mean nothing. Skelton gave them no cause to be shy of him, but the
whole thing humiliated him. There was that charming Sylvia--so thought
Skelton, sitting in the library that afternoon with a book in his hand
which he was not reading--she entertained him vastly; but no doubt that
fool of a mother had canvassed his affairs and his status, and had put
notions in the girl’s head. He was half sorry that he had asked her
there, for to-morrow he meant to make a fair start on his book, to
which he had so far written only the introduction.
The next day Sylvia and her father came over to luncheon, Mrs.
Shapleigh being ill--to Skelton’s great joy. Bulstrode rarely came
to the table, and never when ladies were present; so there were only
Skelton and Lewis Pryor and old Tom Shapleigh and his daughter.
Lewis was delighted to see Sylvia, and showed his pleasure by shy,
adoring glances and vivid blushes whenever she smiled at him. Things
at Deerchase appeared very grand to Sylvia’s provincial eyes, but she
seemed to fit easily and gracefully into the surroundings. Skelton had
never lacked for charm, and he was impelled to do his best in his own
house. Old Tom tried to talk racing once or twice, but Skelton adroitly
headed him off. He fascinated Sylvia with his conversation. It was
thoroughly unaffected, racy, full of anecdote, and all about things
that Sylvia wanted to know. Skelton had been to Abbotsford, and had
spent some days under the great man’s roof. He had travelled post with
Byron, and had walked with Goethe in his garden at Weimar. To a girl at
that time and in that part of the world all this was a splendid dream.
Sylvia looked at Skelton with new eyes. That brown, sinewy hand had
touched Byron’s; that musical voice had talked with Scott and Goethe;
he had walked over the field of Waterloo, and knew London and Paris
like a book. Skelton was pleased and amused with Sylvia’s breathless
interest--her innocent wonder at many very simple things. Much of it
was new to Lewis, and when Sylvia turned to him and said:
“Ah, Lewis! is it not delightful?” Lewis answered:
“Yes, and it is so delightful for us to hear it together.”
Lewis was not quite conscious of the meaning of what he said, but
a roar from old Tom, and much laughter from Skelton, and Sylvia’s
retiring behind her fan, made him blush more than ever and abstain from
further communications with Sylvia.
After luncheon and the pictures, old Tom would by no means be denied
a visit to the stables and Jaybird, so Sylvia was left to the tender
mercies of Bob Skinny as cicerone, who showed her the greenhouses and
gardens. Lewis kept close to her, and plucked up spirit enough to
squeeze her hand whenever he had half a chance, and to offer to take
her out in his boat every day if she would go. Bob Skinny was in his
glory. He wore a blue coat and brass buttons, and a huge cambric ruffle
decorated with cotton lace adorned his shirt-front. If Bob Skinny had
had anything whatever to do in the way of work, this style of dress
would have been an impossibility; but as he managed to make the other
negroes do his work, while he devoted himself to answering Skelton’s
bell, to the care of his own person, and playing the “fluke,” he could
afford to be a magnificent coxcomb.
“Now, Miss Sylvy,” he began loftily, “of co’se Mr. Skelton an’ me is
got sumpin’ else ter do den to go circumventin’ roun’ dese heah flowers
an’ truck. We has got our gre’t work on philosophy ter write. Fifteen
thousan’ books in dat ar libery, Miss Sylvy; fifteen thousan’, ez sho’
as I’se Mr. Skelton’s vally--not dat I breshes his clo’s none, nor
black he boots; Jake, he do dat kin’ o’ demeanin’ work.”
“But I see you are the butler, Bob,” remarked Sylvia, thinking this an
astute bit of flattery.
“You is mistaken, miss,” answered Bob with dignified tartness. “I
is de major domo; Sam Trotter, he de butler. You see, I’se had de
adwantages o’ trabel, an’ I kin read an’ wrote, an’ play de fluke, an’
dem ’complishments is wasted in a butler; but dey is mighty fitten for
a major domo, who is quite a ’nother kind o’ pusson, Miss Sylvy.”
“So I perceive,” answered Sylvia hastily, and exchanging looks with
Lewis.
“Now, when Mr. Skelton was a-tellin’ you dem inwentions o’ his’n ’bout
Mr. Byrum an’ de Duke o’ Scott an’ Lord Gayety, he didn’ tole you dat
I wuz ’long too, an’ I done play de fluke for ev’y one of ’em; an’ dey
ev’y one ax Mr. Skelton what he would tooken for me--’kase dey doan’
hab nuttin’ but white niggers ober d’yar, an’ dey all mighty glad ter
git er cullud gent’man ter wait on ’em. But Mr. Skelton he tole de
Duke o’ Scott, ‘I wouldn’t part wid Bob Skinny for de whole o’ yo’ ole
Rabbitsford.’ Dis heah is de truf I’se tellin’ you, Miss Sylvy.”
“Of course, Bob,” remarked Sylvia affably.
“Bob,” said Lewis gravely, “tell Miss Sylvia about the Duke of
Wellington.”
“Hi, little marse, Miss Sylvy she doan’ want ter hear nuttin’ ’bout de
Duke o’ Wellington,” replied Bob, immensely flattered, but desiring to
be pressed.
“Indeed I do, Bob!” cried Sylvia, seating herself in a rustic settee
with Lewis, while Bob struck an attitude before her.
“Well, Miss Sylvy, I tell you I doan’ think much o’ de duke. He what I
call po’ white trash, ’kase he ain’ got no manners; an’ I done see de
worl’, an’ I alius knowed a gent’man when I see him. I wuz walkin’ long
in de park in London one day--dey got a gre’t place wid trees an’ grass
an’ flowers, an’ dey calls it a park--an’ I see de duke a-comin’ ’long,
walkin’ by hisse’f. He was monst’ous homely, an’ he clo’s warn’t no
better’n mine, an’ I tho’t I’d spoke ter him; so I jes’ step up, an’ I
say, ‘Sarvant, sah, I’se Mr. Skelton’s vally, from Deerchase, Virginny,
de bigges’ plantation an’ de mo’es’ niggers--’ ‘Git out o’ my way,
feller!’ says de duke, wavin’ he stick at me. I wuz gwine tell him all
’bout de Skeltons, an’ pay him my ’spects, but arter dat I didn’ tuk no
mo’ notice on’ him, dough I see him ev’y day stramanadin’ in de park.
I reckon, ef he had done listen when I say I wuz Mr. Skelton’s vally,
he’d er been ez perlite ez a dancin’ master, ’kase he mus’ ’a’ knowed
all ’bout Mr. Skelton an’ Deerchase. But, Miss Sylvy, I doan’ keer much
’bout dem gre’t folks ober d’yar. You dunno ef dey is de fust families
or not. An’ ez for dem white niggers dat waits on ’em, I wouldn’ demean
myse’f to ’sociate wid ’em under no desideratum.”
Bob Skinny then branched off into denunciation of the other negroes
at Deerchase, to whom he fancied himself as much superior as if he
were a being on a higher planet. There was war to the knife between
them naturally, which was very much heightened by Bob’s being a
“backslider.” Bob had been in the habit of “gittin’ ’ligion” regularly
once a year at the revival meetings until Skelton took him to Europe.
As the result of his “trabels” he had taken up the notion, which was
not entirely unknown among his betters, that it was more elegant and
_recherché_ to be without a religion than to have one. Consequently,
Bob returned full of infinite contempt for the Hard-shell Baptists, the
shouting Methodists, and all the other religions that flourished among
the negroes.
“You see, Miss Sylvy,” he explained argumentatively, “now I done see
de worl’ an’ kin read an’ wrote an’ play on de fluke, what I want wid
dis heah nigger ’ligion? I’se a philosopher.” Bob brought this out
magnificently. “I say ter dem niggers, ‘What is it in ’ligion? Nuttin’
’tall. What is it in philosophy? De truf, de whole truf, an’ nuttin’
but de truf.’ I ain’ seen none on ’em yit kin answer my argufyin’.”
After a while old Tom and Skelton came into the greenhouse, where Bob
was still holding forth and giving the botanical names of the plants
according to his own vernacular, but Bob shut up promptly as soon as
Skelton appeared. Sylvia’s hands were full of flowers, given her by
Lewis. The two had got very intimate now, and Lewis wore an air of
boyish triumph. It was not worth while for Skelton to offer her any
flowers if he had desired, she had so many.
They had walked over from Belfield across the bridge, and when they
started to return Skelton and Lewis walked with them, Lewis still
hanging about Sylvia, so that Skelton, who had meant to walk home with
her, was entirely thrown out. On the way they met Bulstrode lumbering
across the lawn with a book in his hand. Sylvia stopped and spoke to
him pleasantly. He remained looking after her, watching her slight
figure as she went across the bridge, still gallantly escorted by Lewis.
“I wonder if she would have jilted Skelton as Mrs. Blair did,” he
thought.