It was well on towards twelve o’clock before either Skelton or Lewis
awaked. The candles had long since burnt out, and the great, square,
sombre room was quite dark. Since the early morning the sky had
become overcast, and a steady, cold rain was falling outside. The
penetrating damp air chilled Skelton to the bone, and he waked with
an uncomfortable start. At the very same instant, Lewis, lying on the
sofa, also roused, and both pairs of eyes, so strangely alike, were
fixed on each other.
Skelton was still under the spell of that burst of parental passion
that had overcome him the night before. His sleep had been full of
dreams of the boy, and when he waked and saw Lewis’s black eyes gazing
with sleepy wonder into his own, it seemed the most natural thing in
the world.
There was always something compelling in Skelton’s glance, but the
affectionate expression that gave his eyes a velvety softness, like
a woman’s, was altogether new to Lewis Pryor. It exercised a certain
magnetism over him, and he felt his own gaze fixed on Skelton’s by a
power he could not understand. He lay there for some minutes under the
fascination of Skelton’s eyes, with a half-sleepy curiosity; then he
rolled off the sofa, and, still obeying a new and strange impulse,
went up to him. As Lewis stood looking down upon the man that had never
in all those years shown him the slightest mark of personal fondness,
some emotion novel and inscrutable and overpoweringly sweet seemed to
wake within his boyish heart. He felt instinctively the forging of a
new bond, but it was all misty and uncertain to his mind. The waking
in the strange room, instead of his own little cosy bedroom, with Bob
Skinny shaking him and pleading with him “to git up, fur de Lord’s
sake, Marse Lewis”--the rising ready dressed, the finding of Skelton
looking at him with that expression of passionate tenderness, was like
a dream to him. Skelton put out his hand--his impulse was to open his
arms and strain the boy to his breast--and said:
“Lewis, have you slept well?”
“Yes, sir,” after a pause answered Lewis.
“So have I,” said Skelton, “although I did not mean to sleep when I
threw myself in this chair. But you should sleep well and peacefully,
my boy. Tell me,” he continued, holding the boy’s hand in his strong
yet gentle clasp, “tell me, have I, in all these years that we have
lived together, have I ever spoken unkindly to you?”
Lewis thought for a moment gravely, bringing his narrow black brows
together.
“No, sir, not that I remember,” he replied, after a moment.
“It is not likely that I would,” said Skelton in a voice of the most
thrilling sweetness, “for you are mine--you are more to me than the
whole world. You are my son.”
If Skelton expected Lewis to fall upon his neck when these words
were uttered, he was cruelly disappointed. The boy drew himself up
perfectly rigid. He put up his arm as if to ward off a blow, and turned
deathly pale. Skelton, watching him with jealous affection, felt as if
a knife had entered his heart when he saw the pallor, the distress,
that quickly overcame Lewis. Neither spoke for some moments. Skelton,
leaning forwards in his chair, his face pale and set, but his eyes
burning, and his heart thumping like a nervous woman’s, watched the
boy in a sort of agony of affection, waiting for the answering thrill
that was to bring Lewis to his arms. But Lewis involuntarily drew
farther off. A deep flush succeeded his first paleness; his face worked
piteously, and suddenly he burst into a passion of tears.
Skelton fell back in his chair, with something like a groan. He had
not meant to tell it in that way; he had been betrayed into it, as it
were, by the very tenderness of his love, by the scorn of the idea that
anybody should suspect that he would permit the Blairs, or anybody
in the world, to profit to Lewis’s disadvantage. He had sometimes in
bitterness said to himself that love was not meant for him. Whether
he loved--as he truly did--in that first early passion for Elizabeth
Armistead, he was scorned and cast aside; or whether he was loved with
adoring tenderness, as he had been by the woman he married, yet it laid
upon him a burden that he had carried angrily and rebelliously for many
years. And seeing in Sylvia Shapleigh a woman that in his maturity he
could love, there was linked with it either making his enemies rich
at his expense, or else proclaiming the stain upon this boy to the
world. And he did so love the boy! But after a while his indomitable
courage rose. Lewis was excited; he did not fully take in what had been
said to him; he could not understand what splendid possibilities were
opened to him in those few words, how completely the face of existence
was changed for him. Skelton tried to speak, but his voice died in his
throat. He made a mighty effort, and it returned to him, but strained
and husky.
“Lewis,” he said, “what distresses you? When I said that you were mine,
I meant that henceforth you should be acknowledged to the world; that
you should have from me all the tenderness that has been pent up in my
heart for so many years; that you should have a great fortune. If you
think I have wronged you, is not this reparation enough?”
“No,” said the boy after a while, controlling his sobs; “I know what it
means if I am your son, Mr. Skelton. It means that I cannot hold up my
head among honourable people again. Nothing can make up to me for that.”
Skelton remained silent. An impulse of pride in the boy came to him.
Surely, Lewis was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. No boy of
mean extraction could have that lofty sensibility. Lewis, gaining
courage, spoke again, this time with dogged obstinacy.
“Mr. Bulstrode always told me that I was the son of Thomas Pryor
and Margaret Pryor; and I have my father’s books and his picture
upstairs--and--and--I believe he _is_ my father, Mr. Skelton.”
To hear him speak of another man as his father gave Skelton a pang such
as he had not felt for many years.
“But,” he said gently, “it can be proved; and you must see for
yourself, Lewis, how immensely it would be to your worldly advantage.”
“It is not to my advantage to know--to feel--that--that I am nobody’s
son; that my mother was-- No! no!” he cried, bursting into tears again,
“I’ll not believe it.”
It was plain to Skelton from the boy’s manner that the idea was not
wholly new to him. After a painful pause Skelton asked quietly:
“Have you ever had a suspicion, a feeling, that you were not what the
world believes you to be?”
Lewis would not answer this, and Skelton repeated it. Lewis remained
obstinately silent, and that told the whole story.
“And,” again asked Skelton, his voice trembling, “have you never felt
any of those instinctive emotions, any of that natural feeling towards
me, that I felt towards you the first moment I saw you, when you
were barely six years old? for I tell you that, had I never seen you
until this moment, there is something--there is the strong voice of
Nature--that would tell me you were my son.”
To this, also, Lewis would make no answer. It had begun to dawn upon
his boyish soul that, along with his own keen shame and distress, he
was inflicting something infinitely keener and more distressing upon
Skelton.
There was a longer pause after this. Lewis ceased his sobbing, and sat,
with a white and wretched face, looking down, the image of shame and
sorrow. As for Skelton, his heart was torn with a tempest of feeling.
Disappointment and remorse and love and longing battled fiercely within
him. With all his wealth, with all his power, with all his capacity to
charm, he could not bring to him that one childish heart for which he
yearned. He was not unprepared for shame and even reproaches on the
boy’s part, but this stubborn resistance was maddening. A dull-red
flush glowed in his dark face. He was not used to asking forgiveness,
but if the boy exacted it he would not even withhold that.
“It is hard--it is hard for a father to ask forgiveness of his child,
but I ask it of you, Lewis. Your mother granted it me with her dying
breath. Will you be more unforgiving than she? Will you deny me the
reparation that would have made her happy?”
Lewis raised his black eyes to Skelton’s.
“Yes, I forgive you,” he said simply; “but, Mr. Skelton, you can’t
expect me to give up my good name without a struggle for it. Wouldn’t
you struggle for yours, sir?”
“Yes,” answered Skelton, with that glow of pride which he always felt
when Lewis showed manliness of feeling.
“Then, sir, you can’t complain when I--when Mr. Bulstrode--Mr.
Bulstrode is my guardian, sir--”
“But, Lewis,” continued Skelton, without the smallest impatience but
with a loving insistence, “this is trifling. Why should I open this
terrible subject unless everything concerning it were proved--unless it
were demanded? Do you think this a sudden madness on my part? It is
not. It is, I admit, a sudden determination. I had meant to wait until
you were twenty-one--until you were prepared in a measure for it; but
circumstances, and the love I bear you, Lewis, have hastened it.”
Lewis sat gravely considering.
“Then, Mr. Skelton, let it rest until I am twenty-one. I am only
fifteen now--that is,” with a burning blush, “Mr. Bulstrode says I am
only fifteen, and I am not tall for my age--and I can’t--depend upon
myself as I ought; and I think it’s only fair, sir, to wait until I am
a man before forcing this thing on me. But I think it only fair to you,
sir,” he added after a pause, and rising, “to say that I mean to make
the best fight for my good name that I can. It may be as you say; it
may be that--that my mother--” here the boy choked. “I can’t say it,
sir. I don’t remember her, but I tell you, Mr. Skelton,--if--for the
sake of all your money I agreed that my mother was--I mean, sir, if
any man for the sake of money, or anything else, would dishonour his
mother, it would be a villainy. I don’t express myself very well, but I
know what I mean; and I ask you, sir, would you act differently in my
place?”
Lewis had truly said that he was not tall for his age, but as he spoke
his slight, boyish figure seemed to rise to man’s stature. At first he
was hesitating and incoherent in his speech, but before he finished
he fixed his eyes on Skelton’s so boldly that Skelton almost flinched
under the glance. But still there was in his heart that proud instinct
of the father which made itself felt, saying:
“This, indeed, is my son--my soul--my own spirit.”
Lewis waited, as if for an answer. Skelton, whose patience and mildness
had suffered no diminution, answered him gently:
“Our cases are different. You are more unfortunate than I, but one
thing I feel deeply: the regard you have for your good name; the
reluctance you have to exchange it for any worldly consideration is
not lost on me. On the contrary, it makes you still dearer to me. I
acknowledge, had you not recognised the point of honour involved, I
should have been disappointed. But I am not disappointed in you--I
never can be.”
Lewis persisted in his question, though.
“But won’t you tell me, Mr. Skelton--suppose you had been offered
Deerchase, and all your fortune and everything, if you would agree that
your mother was--was--I can’t say it, sir. _And would you have taken
it?_”
The answer was drawn from Skelton against his will; but the boy stood
with the courage and persistence of an accusing conscience, asking the
question of which the answer seemed so conclusive to his young mind.
“No,” at last answered Skelton in a low voice.
“Then, sir,” said Lewis eagerly, “do you blame me for acting likewise?”
“But there is no volition in the case,” said Skelton. “It is forced
upon you, my poor boy. You have no choice.”
“At least,” said Lewis, after a moment, while his eyes filled with
tears, “at least, I will stand up for my mother as long as I can; at
least, I will make the best fight for her own good name that I know
how. And I tell you, Mr. Skelton, that even--even if I am forced, as
you say--to--to--acknowledge it, I’ll never profit by it. This I made
up my mind to a long time ago--ever since I first began to wonder--”
Skelton knew then that, in the boy’s crude, inexperienced way, he had
prepared himself to meet the emergency when it came. Lewis turned to
go out of the room, but Skelton called him back and silently drew the
boy towards him. He passed his hand over Lewis’s closely cropped black
head and rested it fondly on his shoulder, all the time looking into
the boy’s eyes with tenderness unspeakable. In that moment a faint
stirring of Nature came to Lewis. He began to feel his heart swell
towards Skelton with a feeling of oneness. Skelton saw in his troubled,
changeful look a new expression. Something like affection quivered in
the boy’s face. Skelton bent and kissed him softly on the forehead, and
Lewis went out silently.