Skelton had cold fits and hot fits as regarded Sylvia. At first he
considered his cold fit as his abnormal condition, and the hot fit as
an agreeable form of insanity. But he soon changed his opinion. He was
beginning, late in life, to live through what other men are generally
done with by that time. In Sylvia’s society he felt always an exquisite
sense of well-being that he could not remember ever to have felt before
with any human being except in a certain way with Lewis. When the boy
had been younger Skelton recalled, that to watch him at play, or at his
work, had always given him strange delight--a delight unique of its
kind, and more nearly resembling happiness than anything he had ever
known. But looking back calmly upon his life, he could not remember
that he had ever known apart from Sylvia and Lewis that joyous sense
of existence which is happiness. He remembered that in his early days
he had felt a sense of triumph when the public--his public--caught at
the idea of his future greatness. He knew well enough a certain refined
and elevated pleasure in purely intellectual pursuits. But happiness is
the child of the affections, and Skelton’s affections had fared rather
badly. He recollected his early passion for Elizabeth Armistead with
hatred. She had given him fierce joys and sharp pain, but that was far
removed from happiness. His marriage had been from a curious mixture of
motives, and he dared not admit to himself how little love had had to
do with it; he had felt tenderness and extreme gratitude to his wife,
but happiness had still eluded him. Now, however, he realised with
keen pleasure that, after all, he was not done with life and youth--he
had not yet come down to the dregs and heel taps of existence. He
had sounded all the depths and shoals of a life of pleasure and of a
life of intellect, and he was tired of both. True it was, that books
still had a fatal fascination for him; that passion for reading and
for making his mind drunk at the fountain of other men’s knowledge was
ineradicable. But he had at last come to crave something else. Like all
men who lead a one-sided life with a two-sided nature, he was seized
with a profound disgust, and would have welcomed almost any change.
Never had he understood the futility of a normal human being trying
to live on ideas alone until he returned to Deerchase. As soon as he
had eliminated everything from his life except books and intellectual
effort, he began to find books more of an anodyne and work more of a
hopeless effort than ever. When he was quite ready for his life work,
when he had prepared himself, his house, his tools, in perfection for
that work, a deadly paralysis had seized upon him, a frightful fear
of failure. Then, following this, he suddenly found an unsuspected
source of pleasure--the society of a woman. He could have as much or as
little of that society as he wanted, even if he married her, for it is
the privilege of the rich to have privacy and independence in every
relation of life. It was true he would have to give up much money,
which most men are unequal to parting with, to marry her. But he would
give it up to Lewis, a creature intensely loved. Still, it would be a
curtailment of his power, for money is power.
At first the consequences seemed enormous; but they assumed much
smaller proportions as he investigated them. He would not be able to
buy thousands of books, as he had done, but he suspected, with a kind
of shame, that he had too many books already. He would no longer be
able to leave orders in blank with the great collectors in London,
and Paris, and Rome to buy him rare editions, but he remembered with
disgust that these orders had been carried out rather with a view of
getting his money than to increasing the value of his collection. He
had caught two of his agents in the act of palming off spurious volumes
upon him, and had informed them of his discovery and had given them no
more orders. As for buying pictures and bric-a-brac, that taste was not
then developed in this country. Hundreds of ways of spending money,
well known in the latter half of the nineteenth century, were quite
unknown in the first half. Skelton found that in giving up his wife’s
fortune he was giving up much in the abstract and but little in the
concrete. And then came his interview with Lewis.
The boy’s unhappy face, though, haunted him. Skelton had not once seen
him smile since that night of the ball. He went about solemnly, his
black eyes, that were usually full of light, sombre and distressed,
and Service was never allowed out of his sight. He kept closely to
Deerchase, and did not even go to Belfield until Sylvia wrote him a
note gently chiding him. As for Sylvia, whatever she felt for Skelton,
she had adopted the general belief that he would never marry at all.
She felt a kind of resentment towards him, for, after comparing him
with the other men she knew, she acknowledged promptly to herself
that she could never marry any of those other men. Skelton had done
her that ill turn; he had shown her so conclusively the charm of a
man with every advantage of birth, breeding, intellect, knowledge of
the world, and, above all, his subtile personal charm, that other men
wearied her. Even Blair, who found women usually responsive to him,
discovered that Sylvia was rather bored with him. She had tasted of the
tree of knowledge, and was neither better nor happier for it. She was
acute enough to see that her society gave Skelton more pleasure than
any other woman’s, but then that was easily understood. Provincials
are generally uninterestingly alike. Sylvia Shapleigh happened to be a
little different from the rest. In her own family she was singularly
lonely. Her father was the conventional good father, and both of
her parents were proud of her. But she was a being different from
any in their experience. Old Tom Shapleigh boasted of her spirit,
and said he believed Sylvia was waiting to marry the President of
the United States; but he was vexed that she was getting out of her
twenties so fast without making a good match, and every offer she had
always provoked a quarrel between father and daughter. Mrs. Shapleigh
considered that Sylvia’s obstinacy in that respect was expressly meant
as a defiance of maternal authority, and continually reproached her
that she would yet bring her mother’s grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave because she wouldn’t accept any offer made to her.
Lewis Pryor was not more lonely than Sylvia Shapleigh, although,
womanlike, she showed more fortitude and was more uncomplaining about
it. But on account of that solitariness common to both of them, the
imaginative woman and the half-developed boy had a sympathy for each
other--an odd, sweet community of thought. Sylvia had heard all the
talk floating about the county regarding Lewis Pryor, and had observed
the coldness with which the world, which smiled so benignly on Skelton,
frowned on the innocent boy; but, more just as well as more generous
than the sodden world, his misfortune was only another reason why she
should be kind to him.
The summer passed slowly to most of them: to Blair, impatiently
awaiting news from England; to his wife, vexed with him for his action;
to Sylvia, who began to feel a painful sense of disappointment and
narrowness and emptiness in existence; to Lewis, prematurely burdened
with the problems of life; to all, except Skelton. Indeed, time had a
way of flying frightfully fast with him, and he barely recovered the
shock and surprise of one birthday before another was precipitated on
him. And yet he was going about that book as if the ages were his!
He had quite given up his racing affairs to Miles Lightfoot, and was
apparently devoting himself to some abstruse studies in his library. So
he was--but Sylvia Shapleigh was the subject.
Although a very arrogant and confident man, Skelton was too
clear-headed not to consider the possibility that Sylvia might not
marry him, but it was always difficult for him to comprehend that he
could not have his own way about anything he desired.
He meant, however, to be very prudent. He would bring all of his
finesse and worldly wisdom to bear, and he would not be outwitted by
any woman. So thought Samson of old.
Skelton did not go to Belfield very often, but in one way and another
he saw Sylvia pretty constantly. He never could quite make out the
faint resentment in her manner to him. But the truth, from Sylvia’s
point of view, was, that he had come into her life and disorganised it,
and made her dissatisfied with what before had satisfied her, and had
shown her other ideals and standards which were beyond her reach; and,
on the whole, Sylvia reckoned Skelton among the enemies of her peace.
In August, Mrs. Shapleigh usually made her hegira to the Springs. One
of Sylvia’s crimes in her mother’s eyes was that she was not always
madly anxious to be off on this annual jaunt. But this year nobody
could complain that Sylvia was not ready enough to go. So eager was she
for a change, that Mrs. Shapleigh declared Sylvia would go off without
a rag to her back if it were not for a mother’s devotion. Lewis Pryor
dreaded her going, and he seemed really the only person whom Sylvia
regretted. But Skelton found himself secretly very much dissatisfied
with the idea that Sylvia should go away.
One hot August afternoon, after having seen the great Belfield
carriage drive out of the lane with Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh, and seeing
Sylvia’s white figure fluttering about on the river shore, Skelton
concluded that he would walk across the bridge and call on Mr. and Mrs.
Shapleigh, which would result, of course, in his seeing only Sylvia.
The day had been sultry, and not a breath stirred the giant trees
around Deerchase. There were masses of coppery clouds in the west, and,
although the sun blazed redly, the river was dark. Skelton predicted a
thunderstorm as he crossed the bridge.
Down by the water was Sylvia, with a rustic hat tied under her chin.
“I am going all over the place for the last time,” she said to Skelton
when he came up. “Day after to-morrow we start--we can’t make the
journey in less than eight days--and oh, I shall be so glad to be on
the road!”
It rather disconcerted Skelton that Sylvia, who seemed so different
from most women, should be so anxious after what seemed to him a
commonplace pleasure. He hated watering places himself.
“It will be very gay, no doubt,” he answered. “But it is such an
immense effort for so little!”
“Yes,” agreed Sylvia, walking slowly along the edge of the river and
looking absently down towards Lone Point; “but there is a dreadful
stagnation here. I wake up every morning at the same moment--to see the
same things--to meet the same people. Ah, how tired I am of it all!”
This was a rare complaint for women to make in those days, when a taste
for travelling was thought depraved. Skelton observed her closely, and
saw signs of an inward restlessness.
“And will you be satisfied at the Springs?” he asked, smiling.
“Of course not,” answered Sylvia airily. “I shall be no better
satisfied than at Belfield; but it will be a change. Ah, Mr. Skelton,
you don’t know what it is to be caged!”
Skelton thought he understood her.
“Some day you will see the world,” he said, “and then you will lose all
of your illusions. I am satisfied at Deerchase, because I know it is as
good a spot as any in the world.”
“Do you think I will ever see the world?” said Sylvia. “Well, I don’t
think I will. I want it too much. We never get what we want very, very
much.”
“Yes, we do,” replied Skelton, looking skyward. “We want rain very,
very much, and we will get it very soon.”
“If you are afraid of being soaked,” said Sylvia, with a kind of soft
insolence, “you had better go home.”
Skelton perceived that she was trying to vex him. “No, I sha’n’t go
home yet a while; and if a storm comes up, I shall stay with you, as I
know your father and mother are away. I saw the carriage drive out of
the lane before I started.”
“Yet you asked very politely if papa and mamma were at home?”
“Certainly I did. Politeness is a necessity when one is carrying out a
deception.”
Sylvia turned a rosy colour, more with anger than with pleasure.
Skelton was amusing himself at her expense. Latterly he had fallen into
a half-bantering love-making with her that was infuriating. Sylvia
shut her lips, threw back her head, and unconsciously quickened her
walk. Skelton, without making the slightest attempt at conversation,
walked by her side. They were following the indentations of the river
towards the bridge. The sky lowered, and presently a few large drops of
rain fell. Sylvia started and turned a little pale. She was afraid of
storms, and already the rumbling of thunder was heard.
“I must fly home!” she cried. “Good-bye,” and gave him her hand.
At that moment the air suddenly turned black, and there was a blinding
flash of light, a sudden roar of thunder, and all at once a great
golden willow not fifty yards from where they stood seemed to shrivel
before their eyes as a bolt struck it. A fearful stillness hung over
the land, although the thunder bellowed overhead. Sylvia trembled, and
clung to Skelton’s sinewy brown hand.
“Don’t go!” she said piteously.
In another instant she felt herself rushed along towards the house. She
was breathless, and the wind, which had suddenly risen, blew the brim
of her large hat over her eyes, but just as the rain swept down in a
torrent she found herself in the Belfield hall, panting and frightened,
but safe.
“Now,” said Skelton coldly and with malicious satisfaction, “good-bye.”
“What do you mean?” cried Sylvia, aghast. “In this rain?”
“The rain is nothing,” replied Skelton, buttoning up his coat. He was
vexed with her, and was sincere in meaning to go home.
“But--but--you _mustn’t_ go,” said Sylvia, looking at him with
terrified eyes.
“Are you afraid to be alone? I will call the servants for you.”
“Yes, I am afraid,” cried Sylvia desperately; “I am afraid for you.”
She paused suddenly. In her nervousness and tremor and agitation she
scarcely knew what she was saying; the roar of the rattling thunder
almost drowned her voice; it died in her throat, and her heart
fluttered wildly as Skelton suddenly seized her hand.
“Are you afraid for me, dear Sylvia?” he asked.
Something compelling in Skelton’s gaze forced Sylvia to raise her eyes
to his, which were blacker, more lustrous, than she had ever seen them.
She made no answer, but her own eyes shone with a deep, green light
that was enchanting. All at once the whole world outside of Skelton
seemed to slip out of sight. But Skelton felt the most delicious ease
and sense of reality. That one glance revealed her whole soul to him.
Here was one creature who could love him; here was that soft, human
fondness of which he had known but little in his life; and he knew
well enough that way lay happiness. He cast prudence and forethought
and finesse to the winds. The inevitable hour had come to him as to
other men. He drew her close to him, and took the great wet hat off her
head and kissed her passionately a dozen times, saying some incoherent
words, which nevertheless both he and Sylvia understood well enough.
All at once an ineffable tenderness had possessed him; life took on
another hue. The beauty of the present hour might be fleeting, but at
least it was well to have known it even for a moment.
The lightning continued to flash constantly in the large, dark hall,
and the reverberation of the thunder was deafening, but it no longer
had the power to alarm Sylvia; it is true it excited her and increased
the tremor of her nerves, and made her quite unconsciously cling
closely to Skelton, but it seemed to her as if they were together under
the most beautiful sky and in the serenest air.
Presently thought returned to Skelton. Sylvia was now in the mood in
which she could refuse him nothing; she had acknowledged that she loved
him; now was the time to speak for Lewis, for the one passion had by no
means swallowed up the other.
“Sylvia,” said he in his most eloquent tones, and looking at her with
his soul in his eyes, “could you forgive much in the past life of the
man you loved? Think well before you answer, because some women who
love much cannot forgive anything.”
Sylvia turned very pale; she knew well enough what he meant; she knew
he was making a plea for Lewis Pryor.
“Yes,” she said, after a tremulous pause, “I could forgive much in the
past. What is past is no injury to me; but I don’t think I could be
forgiving for any injury to _me_.”
She had withdrawn a little from him, and her last words were spoken
quite firmly and clearly and with unflinching eyes. Sylvia had a spirit
of her own, and that was a time for plain speaking. She did not lose
in Skelton’s esteem by her boldness.
“Then we are agreed,” answered Skelton with equal boldness; “for I
shall have no forgiveness to ask in the future. I shall have to ask
forgiveness for something in the past--something I cannot tell you now.
I will write it to you. But I will say this: I believe you to be the
most magnanimous woman in the world, and for that, partly, I love you.”
There is a common delusion that all men make love alike. Never was
there a greater mistake. There is no one particular in which a man
of sense is more strongly differentiated from a fool than in his
love-making. Skelton had the most exquisite tact in the world. He had
to admit to his own wrongdoing, but he did it so adroitly that he
easily won forgiveness. He had to make terms for Lewis, and he had to
tell Sylvia that he could not make her a very rich woman; but he made
the one appear the spontaneous act of Sylvia’s generosity, and the
other was the most powerful proof of his affection for her. So can a
man of brains wrest disadvantage to his advantage.
Sylvia heard him through, making occasionally little faint stands
against him that never amounted to anything. There was already treason
in the citadel, and all she wanted was a chance to surrender. Skelton
knew all the transformations of the cunning passion called love, and
Sylvia’s flutterings were those of a bird in the snare of the fowler.
An hour had passed since the storm had risen, and it was now dying away
as rapidly as it had come up. Sylvia slipped from Skelton and went and
stood by a window at the farther end of the hall. The exaltation was
too keen; she craved a moment’s respite from the torrent of her own
happiness. When Skelton joined her and clasped her hand, both of them
were calmer. They experienced the serener joy of thinking and talking
over their happiness, instead of being engulfed in the tempest of
feeling.
“But do you know, dear Sylvia,” said Skelton, after a while, “that in
marrying me you will not be marrying the richest man in Virginia?”
“I shall be marrying the finest man in Virginia, though,” answered
Sylvia, with a pretty air of haughty confidence.
“But still we sha’n’t starve. We shall have Deerchase.”
“I always liked Deerchase better than any place in the world.”
“And you will have a middle-aged husband.”
“I like middle age.”
“Who has a bad habit of reading more hours than he ought to.”
“Then I shall be rid of him much of the time. However, Lewis and I will
manage to get on very well without you.”
Skelton at that clasped her in his arms with real rapture. It was
the one thing necessary to his happiness--the one condition he would
exact of any woman--that Lewis should have what Skelton considered his
rights. Triumph filled his heart. With that charming, spirited woman
to help him, the little world around them would be forced to be on
its good behaviour to Lewis. Sylvia, who was the most acute of women,
saw in an instant that in this boy she had the most powerful hold on
Skelton. Justice, and generosity, and inclination all urged her to be
kind to the boy; but love, which is stronger than all, showed her that
therein lay the secret of enormous power over Skelton.
But after a moment Sylvia said something which suddenly filled
Skelton’s soul with melancholy:
“Some day--when the great book is written--you will be the most famous
man in the country, and I shall be the proudest woman,” she said with a
little vain, proud air.
The light died out of Skelton’s eyes, and he could hardly resist a
movement of impatience. Everywhere, even in his most sacred love, he
was pursued by this phantom of what he was to do.
Sylvia presently sat down, and Skelton, drawing his chair near her,
hung over her fondly. He knew perfectly well how to make her happy. He
expressed in a hundred delicate ways the tenderness he felt for her;
while Sylvia--proud Sylvia--was so meek and sweet that he scarcely knew
her; so forgiving, so trustful. After all, thought Skelton, there was a
philosophy better than that to be found in the books.
The storm was now over, and suddenly a mocking-bird outside the window
burst into a heavenly song. Skelton went to the wide hall doors and
threw them open. The sinking sun was shining upon a new heaven and a
new earth. The trees, the grass, the shrubbery were diamonded with
drops and sparkling brilliantly; the river ran joyously; the damp,
sweet-scented air had a delicious freshness; all Nature was refreshed
and glad. Skelton felt that it was like his own life--a sunset calm
after a storm. He felt not only a happier man than he had been for many
years, but a better man.
Half an hour after, when Skelton and Sylvia were sitting together
in the cool, dark drawing-room, the door suddenly opened, and Mrs.
Shapleigh sailed in, followed by old Tom. The sight that met their eyes
might well paralyse them--Skelton, with his arm on Sylvia’s chair, his
dark head almost resting on her bright hair; her hand was raised to his
lips. Being a self-possessed lover, he did not commit the _gaucherie_
of dropping her hand, but held on to it firmly, saying coolly:
“Fairly caught, we are, Sylvia.”
Mrs. Shapleigh uttered a faint shriek, while old Tom raised his
bristling eyebrows up to the fringe of grey hair over his forehead.
Mrs. Shapleigh sank down, overcome by astonishment. Old Tom walked up
to Skelton, and said, with a broad grin:
“So you have bamboozled my girl?”
“Completely,” answered Skelton.
Sylvia at that got up and scurried out of the room, with Mrs. Shapleigh
after her.
Mr. Shapleigh and his whilom ward faced each other.
“The game’s up,” was old Tom’s remark.
“Apparently,” answered Skelton, smiling; “and, as the consent of the
father is usually asked, I am quite willing to ask it now.”
“I don’t know that it matters much in any case--least of all in
this--because my daughter Sylvia has a spirit that I have never seen
equalled in man or woman. I have sometimes seen horses who had it.
That’s your prospect, Skelton.”
“I’ll risk it gladly,” answered Skelton, who knew well how to play the
dauntless lover.
“And she has given in to you--the only creature, by Jove! she ever
_did_ give in to. But, Skelton, there’s one thing--”
Skelton knew exactly what was coming.
“There is that boy, Lewis Pryor.”
“Miss Shapleigh and I have agreed upon that,” replied Skelton in a
tone which put a stop to any further discussion. “If she is satisfied,
nobody else can complain.”
“Not even her parents?”
“See here, Mr. Shapleigh, we know each other too well to beat about the
bush. You know your daughter will marry me if she says she will. You
haven’t just known her yesterday.”
“She will, by the powers of heaven!” burst out Mr. Shapleigh; “and so,
I suppose, as you say, it is hardly worth while to talk about it. But,
for the sake of the thing, here’s my hand and my consent with it.”
“Thank you,” answered Skelton, with grim politeness, and taking his hat
at the same time.
He went back to Deerchase in a sort of exaltation not altogether
free from melancholy. He had a feeling that too much of his life was
gone--that, like the day’s sun, which had shone so brilliantly before
its setting, it was a dying glory. Things were becoming too pleasant
to him. The giving up of so much money with so little reluctance
seemed too easy to be normal, yet the fact that this charming Sylvia
had taken him with such a diminished fortune contained the most
intoxicating and subtile flattery. There had been something of this in
his first marriage; but although he felt the extreme of tenderness,
gratitude, and respect for his first wife, it had been more a marriage
of gentle affection than profound passion. Skelton dimly realised what
Bulstrode brutally proclaimed--that if somebody had not violently
opposed that marriage it might never have taken place. But Sylvia
Shapleigh had powerfully attracted him from the first. Skelton had a
vein of fatalism about him. Like the old Greeks, he expected to pay a
price for everything, and it did not surprise him that in the natural
course of events he had to pay a great price for his Sylvia.
It was quite dusk when he stood on the bridge and looked first towards
Belfield and then towards Deerchase. The twilight had fallen, and there
were yellow lights about. Out in the river a vessel lay with a lantern
at her masthead, that glimmered fitfully, showing the dusky outline of
her hull against the shadowy mass of shore and sky. Afar off, at the
negro quarters, a circle of dark figures sat around an outdoor fire,
and a song faintly echoed from them. Skelton tried to distinguish
Sylvia’s window from the dark pile of the Belfield house, but could
not, and smiled at himself for his folly, and was glad to know such
folly. He was no mean philosopher in the actual experiences of life.
“Perhaps,” he said, “now that I shall stop buying books by the
thousand, I shall get something done in the way of work; and having
assumed duties and claims, I shall not have all my time to myself, and
so may be spurred to use it more successfully than I do now--for so
runs life.”
Neither Lewis nor Bulstrode suspected that anything unusual had
happened to Skelton that night. Skelton longed to call Lewis to him and
to tell him that he had a friend--that between Sylvia and himself he
would have two as stout defenders as could be found; but he refrained
for the moment. After dinner, though, when Skelton went out for his
after-dinner smoke on the long, leafy, stone porch covered with
climbing tea roses that were in all their mid-summer glory, Lewis came
too. This was very rare. But to-night he came out and sat looking at
the river, and fondling his dog, as if merely for the pleasure of being
there. He looked less sad, less shy than usual. The truth was, he was
young and full of life, and he could not always be gloomy. Skelton
talked to him a little, and the two sat together in the sweet, odorous
night, until it was long past Lewis’s bedtime. Presently, though, he
began to yawn, and got up to go to bed; and when he said “Good-night,”
he went up to Skelton and touched his hand softly.
That touch went to Skelton’s heart, as a baby’s fingers go to the heart
of the mother; he felt the deep, unmixed delight he had felt when
Sylvia’s radiant, adoring eyes had rested on his; it was one of those
delicious moments of which there are too few in every life. Yes, Lewis
was certainly beginning to love him.
“Good-night, my boy,” said Skelton, laying his hand fondly on Lewis’s
shoulder.
Skelton was so profoundly happy as he walked up and down the long
porch, his fine, expressive face so changed and softened, his black
eyes luminous in the dark, that he asked himself if, after all, Fate
would not demand something more than mere money in payment for so much
that was sweet.