Next morning early, while Sylvia was yet dreaming, a tap came at her
door, and a great basket of roses and a letter from Skelton were given
to her. The letter told her, most delicately and artfully, what he
had intimated the night before. He made a touching appeal for Lewis,
and he even told her in detail about the disposition of the property
without offending her--for nothing so vitiates sentiment as the talk
of money. But there was nothing to vitiate it in the willingness, and
even eagerness, that Skelton expressed to give up a fortune for her.
Possibly he had not been quite so ready to do it as he professed; but
he knew how to make a virtue of a necessity, and it lost nothing in his
gallant way of putting it. Sylvia was quite sharp enough to see how
ably he had managed awkward facts, and loved him none the less for it,
and admired him considerably more. His money and his past were nothing
to her. All that any human being can claim of another is the present
and the future.
There had been a tremendous commotion at Belfield after Skelton had
left the evening before, but Sylvia scarcely remembered a word of it
next morning. The only fact her mind dwelt on was that Skelton loved
her. One thing, though, Mrs. Shapleigh had promptly resolved before
she had closed her eyes the night before, which was, that the trip to
the Springs must be given up. Sylvia had landed the leviathan of the
matrimonial pool, and Mrs. Shapleigh could not bear to tear herself
away from the county in the first flush of her triumph. It is true
it was not the custom in those days and in that region to announce
engagements, but, nevertheless, Mrs. Shapleigh had no doubt it would
get out, and had convincing reasons for so believing. Old Tom was far
from objecting to the abandonment of the trip to the Springs. He was
not particularly anxious to go himself, and it cost a pretty penny to
transport Mrs. Shapleigh and Sylvia and the maid, and the coachman
and two horses, nearly four hundred miles from the seaboard to the
Alleghany Mountains, and it was destructive to the family coach and
usually foundered the horses.
When Sylvia was greeted at breakfast with the announcement that the
trip to the Springs was off, naturally it did not grieve her in the
least.
Mrs. Shapleigh--good soul!--started upon a round of visits that very
morning to give a number of extraordinary and purposeless reasons why
the trip was abandoned, and everywhere she went she let the cat out of
the bag, to old Tom’s infinite diversion, who went along. Newington was
the last place they went to. Blair met them at the door with his usual
cordiality, and squeezed Mrs. Shapleigh’s hand and ogled her as if she
had been twenty-five instead of fifty--to Mrs. Shapleigh’s obvious
delight, although she archly reproved him.
The place, and the master and the mistress of it, looked more
prosperous than for many years past; but close observers might see that
Blair and his wife were not quite what they had once been; there was a
little rift in the lute. Both of them, however, were genuinely glad to
see the Shapleighs, who were among the best of friends and neighbours.
Mrs. Blair asked after Sylvia, and then the murder was out. Mrs.
Shapleigh began:
“Sitting at home in the drawing-room, mooning with Richard Skelton.
He was over there all yesterday during the storm, and one would think
they had said everything on earth they could think of to each other,
but evidently they haven’t. I can’t imagine what they find to talk
about, for Richard Skelton never knows any news.--What ails you, Mr.
Shapleigh?”
“Nothing at all,” answered old Tom, grinning delightedly, “except that
I’d like to see Richard Skelton’s countenance if he could hear you this
minute.”
“Well, I’m sure Mr. Skelton is quite welcome to hear anything I have to
say. I say he never knows any news--and so he does not, Mr. Shapleigh.
Mr. Skelton may be able to write a great philosophical work that will
lose his own soul, I haven’t the slightest doubt, but as for knowing
what’s going on in the county--why, he knows no more than my shoe. But
Sylvia thinks he’s delightful, news or no news.”
“There you go,” apostrophised Mr. Shapleigh, taking out his big
snuff-box and indulging himself in a huge pinch. Blair usually would
have been highly amused at Mrs. Shapleigh, and would have wickedly
kept her upon the ticklish subject. Instead, however, a strange,
intense look flashed into his countenance as he quietly turned his
eyes full on his wife’s face. Elizabeth grew pale. If Skelton was to
be married to Sylvia Shapleigh--and there had been much talk about it
lately--the crisis was at hand.
Old Tom knew there was a mystery about the disposition of the main
part of Skelton’s money in the event of his death or marriage, and
thought it not unlikely that the Blairs would have an interest in it.
So, as they sat there, simple country gentry as they were, leading the
quietest provincial lives, and talking about their every-day affairs,
there was that mixture of tragedy that is seldom absent from the comedy
of life. Mrs. Shapleigh went into another long-winded explanation of
why they had determined at the last minute to give up the trip to the
Springs. At every reason she gave Mr. Shapleigh grinned more and more
incredulously; but, when she got up to go, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Blair
was in the slightest doubt as to the real reason.
Blair put Mrs. Shapleigh into the carriage, gave old Tom an arm, and
came back in the house to his wife.
Elizabeth saw in a moment that a subtile change had come over him.
Since he had given up the race course and had devoted himself to the
plantation he had looked a different man. An expression of peace had
come into his ruddy, mobile face; he was no longer hunted and driven
by creditors of the worst kind; he did not live, as he once had, on
the frightful edge of expecting a horse’s legs to give out, or his
wind, or something equally important. It is true that he was haunted
by the possible fortune, but it did not keep him from attending to
his legitimate business, as horse racing had done. Now, however, his
face was full of lines; some fierce, sensual self seemed to have come
uppermost and to have altogether changed him. Elizabeth remembered
about that black horse, and she began to think how long would Blair
be able to keep off the turf with money in his pockets. And if he
should get so much money as the Skelton fortune would be, Mrs. Blair’s
feminine good sense told her unerringly that it would not be good for
Blair.
“Well,” he said, standing up before her in the cool drawing-room,
darkened at midday from the August sun, “Skelton is going to be married
to Sylvia Shapleigh. There is no earthly doubt about it.”
Mrs. Blair quite agreed with him, but her face did not wear the look of
uneasy triumph that glowed darkly upon her husband’s.
“I have not heard from England yet, but I feel perfectly certain that
the day he is married his wife’s fortune will be handed over to his
heirs.”
“Lewis Pryor is his heir,” answered Mrs. Blair.
“How do you know it?” cried Blair. “Did not Bulstrode tell you that he
thought it would be very hard for Skelton to prove it?”
“But Mr. Bulstrode is not a man of very good judgment about those
things. He felt sorry for me the night he told me. He was angry with
Mr. Skelton; he says he thinks Lewis will be better off without the
money than with it; and so, putting all those things together, he
concluded that we would get it. But I know Richard Skelton well, and
I know that he would not accept of his own happiness at the price of
enriching us; and he adores that boy. You are deceiving yourself if you
think one stiver of it will ever be ours.”
Blair looked at his wife with deep displeasure in his face.
“I don’t believe you want that money, and I know very well the reason
why. You are afraid of money for me.”
Mrs. Blair did not deny it, but sat, in pale distress, looking into
her husband’s face. They loved each other well, in spite of that
estrangement, and Blair got up and went to her and took her hand.
“Elizabeth, I swear to you, all the animosity I feel towards Skelton
arose first through the love I had for you. Had he not interfered with
me when you and I were first lovers, Skelton and I should have been
jolly good fellows together; but I’ve got into the habit of hating him,
my dear, for your sake, and it’s not easy to leave off.”
This old, old flattery never failed with Elizabeth, nor did it fail now.
The whole county was agog in a week over Skelton’s affairs. The
disposition of his fortune became more and more puzzling and
interesting when it was perfectly well understood that the time for
the solution of the mystery was near at hand. But Skelton himself and
Sylvia Shapleigh knew, or thought they knew, just what would happen
about it.
Skelton, who was a model lover, pressed for an early date for the
marriage to come off, and the late autumn was named. This gave him
time to work on Lewis. He took the boy into the library one day and
told him the whole story of the coming marriage, laying especial stress
on the fact that Deerchase would still be his home and Sylvia his
friend. The great news pleased the boy, and Skelton fondly hoped that
it had reconciled him; but before the interview was out Skelton saw
it had not. Only, instead of being obstinate and stiff-necked, Lewis
begged, with tears in his eyes, that Skelton would not make it public.
“I need not, unless the Blairs put in their claim. The whole thing is
in Bulstrode’s hands,” said Skelton with his unbroken forbearance.
But Lewis, on leaving the room, reiterated that he would never admit
that he was not Lewis Pryor as long as he had a fighting chance. And,
as on every occasion that it had been spoken of, Skelton gloried in the
boy’s spirit with a melancholy joy. Something else besides pride in
Lewis and affection for Sylvia made Skelton happy then. His mind seemed
to awaken from its torpor, induced by excess of reading. All at once he
felt the creative power rise within him like sap in a tree. The very
night after he had pledged himself to Sylvia he went to the library
to read, and suddenly found himself writing. The pen, which had been
so hateful to him, became quickly natural to his hand. He cast aside
his great volumes of notes, at which he had been used to gaze with a
furious sense of being helpless and over-weighted, and wrote as readily
and as rapidly as in the old days when he had written Voices of the
People. Of course, it was not done in the same spirit; he realised he
was making only the first rough draft of a work that would still take
him years to bring into shape; but it was a beginning, and he had been
fifteen years trying to make that beginning. A deep sense of happiness
possessed him. At last, at last he had the thing which had eluded him.
All at once good gifts were showered upon him. He felt a profound
gratitude to Sylvia, for her touch that waked his heart seemed to wake
his intellect too. The lotus eater suddenly cast aside the lotus and
became a man.
Every day Sylvia claimed a part of his day, but the remaining hours
were worth months to him in that recent time when he was nothing better
than an intellectual dram drinker. Bulstrode saw it, and said to him:
“If you live long enough, you’ll write that book.”
If he lived long enough! But why should he not live?
That night, sitting alone in the library, working eagerly and
effectively at that great preliminary plan, he remembered Bulstrode’s
remark, and went and looked at himself in a small mirror in a corner
to examine the signs of age upon him. Yes, the lines were there. But
then the ever-sweet consciousness came to him that Sylvia did not
think him old; that Sylvia would marry him to-morrow and go to live
in the overseer’s house if he asked her. It came with a sweetness of
consolation to him. He was at the very point where the old age of youth
had not yet merged into the youth of old age; forty was a good deal
older in 1820 than in 19--.
There was one person, though, who thought forty was very old--for a
man, although fifty was comparatively young for a woman--and that was
Mrs. Shapleigh. That excellent woman was in mortal terror of her future
son-in-law, but she revenged herself by great freedom in her remarks
about him behind his back, as far as she dared, to Sylvia.
Sylvia was indubitably a perfect fool about Skelton, as her mother
reminded her a dozen times a day. When Sylvia would cunningly place
herself at a window which looked across the fields to Deerchase, Mrs.
Shapleigh would remark fretfully:
“Sylvia, I declare you behave like a lunatic about Richard Skelton. I’m
sure I was as much in love with your father as any well brought up girl
might be, but I assure you it never cost me a wink of sleep.”
“Very probably, mamma.”
“And I was so afraid some one would know it, that I never breathed a
word of our engagement to a soul. It’s true, some people suspected
it after we went to a party at Newington and danced ten quadrilles
together, one after the other, but I denied we were engaged up to two
weeks before the wedding.”
“Did you say ten quadrilles, mamma?”
“Yes, ten.”
“I’m sure Mr. Skelton and I will never dance ten quadrilles in one
evening with each other.”
“And your father was a much younger and handsomer man than Richard
Skelton, who has crow’s-feet in the corners of his eyes.”
“I like crow’s-feet. They impart an air of thoughtful distinction to a
man.”
“And Mr. Skelton has a bald place as big as a dollar on the top of his
head. Does that add an air of thoughtful distinction, too?”
“Of course it does. There is something captivating in Mr. Skelton’s
baldness; it is unique, like himself. It makes me more and more
delighted at the idea that I am going to be married to him.”
“Sylvia!” shrieked Mrs. Shapleigh, “do you dare to be so bold and
forward as to say that you _want_ to marry Mr. Skelton?”
“Yes, indeed, mamma--dreadfully.”
Mrs. Shapleigh raised her hands and let them fall in her lap in despair.
“For a girl to acknowledge such a thing! Now, if you wanted to be
mistress of Deerchase, there’d be no harm in it; but to want to marry
a man because you are in love with him! Dear, dear, dear! what is the
world coming to?”
Sylvia laughed with shameless merriment at this, and just then the door
opened and old Tom came in.
“Mr. Shapleigh,” began Mrs. Shapleigh in a complaining voice, “Sylvia’s
not at all like me.”
“Not a bit,” cheerfully assented old Tom.
“She isn’t ashamed to say that she is in love with Richard Skelton, and
wants to marry him. Nobody ever heard me say, Mr. Shapleigh, that I was
in love with you, or wanted to marry you.”
“No, indeed, madam. It was not worth while. You hung upon me like ivy
on a brick wall.”
“La, Mr. Shapleigh, how you talk!”
“And I’m sure, my love, if anybody doubts my devotion to you during
your lifetime, they’d never doubt it after you’re dead. I’ll engage to
wear more crape and weepers than any ten widowers in the county.”
This always shut Mrs. Shapleigh up. Sylvia gave her father a reproving
look, but she was too much used to this kind of thing to take it
seriously. Old Tom, though, indulged in his sly rallying too.
“Well, my girl, a nice establishment you’ll have at Deerchase. I swear,
I’d throw Bulstrode and Bob Skinny in the river, both of ’em, and let
the fishes eat ’em. However, if you can stand Skelton for a husband,
you can stand anything.”
“Only give me a chance to stand Mr. Skelton, papa,” answered Sylvia
demurely.
“If the house were to catch afire, I wonder which Skelton would think
of first--you or his books?”
“The books, of course,” responded Sylvia, with easy sarcasm. “Wives
come cheaper than books.”
“I’d like to see Richard Skelton’s face the first time you cross him.”
“You would see a very interesting face, papa--not very young, perhaps,
but one that age cannot wither nor custom stale.”
“Sylvia, my child, you are a fool!”
“Only about Mr. Skelton, papa.”
“Lord, Lord, what are we coming to!”
“I know what _I’m_ coming to, papa. I am coming to be the wife of the
finest man in the world, and the kindness and condescension of Mr.
Skelton in wanting to marry me I never can be sufficiently grateful
for--” At which, in the midst of a shriek of protest from Mrs.
Shapleigh, Sylvia ran out of the room.