About one o’clock Lewis returned from his sail. Skelton had come out of
the library then, and was walking up and down the stone porch. He had
just got a note from Mrs. Blair--the most grateful, affectionate note.
Skelton put it in his pocket to show Sylvia that afternoon, having
promised himself the luxury of her sweet approval.
Lewis came up to him and began to tell, boy fashion, of the sail he had
down the river; the wonderful speed of his boat; how Sylvia had been
frightened at a few white caps, and how he had reassured her. Skelton
listened smiling. Lewis was a little vain of his accomplishments as a
sailor. Then, after a few moments, Skelton said to him gravely:
“Lewis, you remember what you are so anxious that no one should know
about you?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Lewis, blushing.
“I have arranged so that I do not think it will be known for some
years certainly--possibly never. Mr. Blair, Mr. Bulstrode, and I have
arranged it.”
The boy looked at him with shining eyes. “Some years” sounds like
“forever” to extreme youth. His face was expressive with delight. He
came up to Skelton, and of his own accord laid his hand timidly upon
Skelton’s arm. It was the second time in his life that he had ever done
such a thing, and the first time he had ever seen Skelton overcome with
emotion. He looked at the boy with an intensity of affection that was
moving; a mist came into his eyes. He rose and walked quickly to the
end of the porch, leaving Lewis standing by his empty chair--amazed,
touched, at what he saw before him. Skelton’s weakness was womanish,
but he did not feel ashamed of it. He felt that in the boy’s heart the
natural affection was quickening for which he had longed with a great
longing.
After a while he turned and made some ordinary remark to Lewis, who
answered him in the same way; but there was a sweet, ineffable change
in their attitude one to the other. Nature had her rights, and she had
vindicated herself. Lewis fondly thought the disgrace that he dreaded
was forever removed from him, and no longer struggled against that
feeling of a son for his father that had been steadily growing in his
breast, although as steadily repressed, ever since he had known really
who he was.
As for Skelton, he walked down towards the river in a kind of ecstasy.
The boy’s heart was his. No lover winning his mistress ever felt a more
delicious triumph.
As he strolled along by the cedar hedges near the river, and the masses
of crape myrtle and syringa, that could withstand the salt air and
the peevish winds of winter, he began to consider all his new sources
of happiness. There was the deep, tumultuous joy of Sylvia’s love,
and the profound tenderness he felt for Lewis, that had only grown
the more for the stern subduing of it; and there was that awakened
creative power which made him feel like a new man. And the spectre
of his hatred of Blair had been laid at least for a time--no one can
hate the being one has just benefitted. And then, looking about him,
he felt that Deerchase was not a possession to be despised. He had
seen too much real grandeur to overestimate the place; yet it was
singularly beautiful, not only with the beauty of green old gardens
and giant trees that clustered around the stately house, and noble
expanses of velvety turf and dewy woods, but it had that rich beauty
of a great, productive, landed estate. Nature was not only lovely, but
she was beneficent. Those green fields brought forth lavishly year
after year. There was room, and work, and food for all. Skelton saw,
half a mile inland, the negroes weeding out the endless ranks of the
corn, then as high as a man’s head, and flaunting its splendid green
banners magnificently in the August air. The toilers were merry, and
sang as they worked; two or three other negroes were half working, half
idling about the grounds, in careless self-content; Bob Skinny sunned
himself under a tree, with his “fluke” across his knee; and the peacock
strutted up and down haughtily on the velvet grass. The river was all
blue and gold, and a long summer swell broke upon the sandy shore. All
the beauty of the scene seemed to enter into Skelton’s soul. It was
exactly attuned to his feelings. He did not long for mountain heights
and lonely peaks or wind-lashed waves; this sweet scene of peace and
plenty was in perfect harmony with him.
He was too happy to work then, but he felt within him a strange power
to work within a few hours. As soon as night came he would go to the
library; those long evenings of slothful dreaming and reading and
painful idleness were no more; he would manage to do a full stint of
work before midnight. He had written in the morning to Sylvia that he
would not see her that day. He had apprehended that after his interview
with Blair he might not be in the most heavenly frame of mind, but,
on the contrary, he was so unexpectedly happy that he longed to go to
Belfield then. But Sylvia would not be ready to see him; she would be
taking a midday nap after her morning sail; he would go at his usual
hour in the afternoon and surprise her.
He continued to stroll about, his straw hat in his hand, that he might
feel the soft south wind upon his forehead, and it reminded him of when
he was a boy. How closely Lewis resembled him!--his ways, his tastes,
were all the same, except healthier than his own had been. He never
remembered the time when he had not withdrawn himself haughtily from
his companions. Lewis was as proud and reserved as he had been, though
from an altogether different motive; for with poor Lewis it was the
reserve of a wounded soul. Skelton remembered well how, in his boyhood,
he had lived in his boat, just as Lewis did, spending long hours lying
flat in the bottom, merely exerting himself enough to keep the boat
from overturning, and going far down into the bay, where the water was
dark and troubled, instead of being blue and placid as it was in the
broad and winding river.
All day until five o’clock the beauty held. At that time Skelton came
out on the stone porch to take his way across the bridge to Belfield.
The sky had not lost its perfect blueness, but great masses of dense
white clouds were piling up, and a low bank of dun color edged the
western sky. The wind, too, was rising, and far down, beyond Lone
Point, the white caps were tumbling over each other, and the wide
bay was black and restless. Just as Skelton came out he saw the one
snow-white sail of Lewis’s boat rounding Lone Point.
Bulstrode was sitting on the porch, snuffing at the rich tea roses, and
with the inevitable book in his hand; but he looked uneasy.
“I wish,” he said to Skelton, “you’d speak to the boy about going
out in that boat in all sorts of weather. There’s a storm coming up
outside, and nothing will please him more than to be caught in it, and
to come home and tell you how near he came to being drowned. You taught
him to manage a boat much too well. He takes all manner of risks, by
Jove!”
“He is venturesome to the last degree,” replied Skelton, “and I cannot
make him otherwise. But, as you know”--Skelton smiled, and hesitated a
moment--“I suffer all sorts of palpitations when he is in danger. Yet,
if he shirked it, I should detest him.” Bulstrode raised his shaggy
brows significantly; he knew all this well enough without Skelton’s
telling him. In a moment Skelton added:
“It has also been a satisfaction to me to see this spirit in him, for
it indicates he will be a man of action. I entreat you, Bulstrode,
if you should outlive me, never let him become a mere dreamer. I
would rather see him squander every dollar that will be his, if the
possession of it should make him a mere _dilettante_--what I have been
so long, but which I shall never be again, by heaven!”
Bulstrode looked surprised. He could not imagine why a dissipated old
hulk like himself should outlast Skelton, who was in the most perfect
vigour of manhood. As he watched Skelton walking across the lawn to the
bridge he could not but observe his grace, his thoroughbred air, the
indescribable something that made other men commonplace beside him.
“Don’t wonder the women fall in love with you!” he growled, returning
to his book.
Over at Belfield, Sylvia, with the train of her white gown over her
arm, was walking daintily through the old-fashioned garden to an
arbour, at the end of the main walk, with a rustic table and chairs in
it. In good weather she and Skelton passed many hours there. Sylvia
was quite alone this afternoon. Her father and mother had gone up the
county for a two days’ visit, and left her at home perforce, because
she would not go with them. Sylvia was, indeed, completely under
Skelton’s spell. His word was law, his presence was everything. She
felt acutely disappointed that she would not see him that day, but she
would go to the arbour and fondly cheat herself into the belief that
he would come. In the old days Sylvia had been a great reader, but
under the new dispensation when she read at all she read idly--sweet
verses, which were merely an epitome of that greater story of life
and love that she was studying for herself. She went into the arbour
and sat down, and spread Skelton’s note out upon the little table.
What perfect notes he wrote!--brief and to the point, but exquisitely
graceful--one of those gallant accomplishments that he excelled in. One
round white arm supported her charming head; the other hung down at her
side, the hand half open, as if her lover had just dropped it. Sylvia
was as pretty a disconsolate picture as could be imagined when Skelton
walked into the arbour. She started up, a beautiful rosy blush suddenly
dawning.
“Here I am, like an old fool,” said Skelton, smiling as he took her
hand. “I concluded I couldn’t come, but then the wish to see you was
too strong for me. See what a havoc you have made in my middle-aged
heart!”
“Your heart, at least, is not middle-aged,” answered Sylvia, with a
sweet, insinuating smile; “and I wish,” she added with bold mendacity,
“that you had some crow’s-feet and grey hairs. I adore crow’s-feet and
grey hairs.”
“I think you can find some of both to adore,” answered Skelton, with
rather a grim smile in return.
They were close by the rustic seat, and both of them sat down,
Skelton’s arm just touching her rounded shoulder. The air had grown
dark, and there was a kind of twilight in the arbour. They seemed as
much alone as if they had been in the depths of the woods, instead of
in an old-fashioned garden.
“I shall have to build you a summerhouse at Deerchase,” said Skelton.
“There is a pretty spot in the garden, near the river, where the
roses have climbed all over an old latticework left standing since my
mother’s time.”
“And shall there be a tea table for me?”
“Yes, a tea table--”
Sylvia knitted her pretty brows.
“I don’t know what we shall do about Mr. Bulstrode and the tea table.
You and Lewis and I are just company enough, but Mr. Bulstrode will not
fit in at all.”
Sylvia was quite clever enough to see that Skelton did not intend
to have Lewis left out of any scheme of happiness in which he was
concerned, and therefore wisely included him.
“I think,” said Skelton, “we will have to leave Bulstrode out of that
little idyl. Bulstrode likes--reveres you, as he does all good and
charming women, but he is undoubtedly afraid of women. He will probably
take up his quarters in the wing, and only prowl about the library.
But you and I and Lewis will be very happy. The boy loves you, and,
Sylvia,” continued Skelton, with his sweetest eloquence of voice and
look, “you have no conception of how he longs for affection. He is very
proud and sensitive, and--poor little soul!--he has no friends but you
and me and Bulstrode, I think.”
“_I_ mean to be his friend,” said Sylvia in a low voice.
“And I, too, felt that longing for affection until--until--” Skelton
finished the sentence by kissing Sylvia’s fair red mouth.
After a while Skelton told her delicately about the interview with
Blair, except that voluntary doubling of what he had first given him.
Sylvia listened, and thought Skelton certainly the most magnanimous man
on earth. She quite forgot that Blair had a score against Skelton, and
a long one, too.
The late afternoon grew dark; the white clouds became a copper red, the
dark line at the horizon rose angrily and covered the heavens. The air
turned chilly, and the wind came up wildly from the bay. One of the
northwest storms peculiar to the season and the latitude was brewing
fast. But Skelton and Sylvia were quite oblivious of it--strangely so
for Skelton, who was rarely forgetful or unobservant of what went on
around him. But that whole day had been an epoch with him. When had he
a whole day of complete happiness in his life? How many days can any
mortal point to when one has become happy, has become generous, has
become beloved? Yet, such had been this day with Skelton. Sylvia, who
had been dear to him before, became dearer. Something in the time, the
spot, the aloneness, waked a deeper passion in him than he had felt
before. He forgot for the first time how the hours were flying. He
could not have told, to save his life, how long he had sat in that half
darkness, with Sylvia’s soft head upon his breast, her hand trembling
in his. A sweet intoxication, different from anything he had ever felt
before, possessed him. Suddenly the wind, which had soughed mournfully
among the trees, rose to a shriek. It flung a rose branch full in
Sylvia’s face, and a dash of cold rain came with it. Skelton started,
rudely awakened from his dream. It was dark within the arbour and dark
outside. What light still lingered in the sullen sky was a pale and
ghastly glare. The river looked black, and, as the wind came screaming
in from the ocean, it dashed the water high over the sandy banks. A
greater change could not be imagined than from the soft beauty of the
afternoon.
Skelton and Sylvia both rose at the same moment. The rain had turned
to hail; the storm that had been gathering all the afternoon at last
burst upon them. In half a moment Sylvia’s white dress was drenched.
As they stood at the entrance to the arbour, Skelton, with his arm
around her, about to make a dash for the house, turned and glanced
over his shoulder towards the river, and there, in the black and angry
water, storm-tossed and lashed by the wind, a boat was floating bottom
upwards. There had evidently not been time to take the sail down, and
every minute it would disappear under the seething waves and then come
up again--and clinging to the bottom of the boat was a drenched boyish
figure that both Skelton and Sylvia recognised in a moment. It was
Lewis Pryor. His hat was gone, and his jacket too; he was holding on
desperately to the bottom of the boat, and the hurricane was driving
the cockleshell down the river at a furious rate.
Skelton uttered an exclamation like a groan and pointed to the boat.
“See!” he cried, “he can scarcely hold on--he has probably been hurt.
Go, dearest, go at once to the house; I must go to the boy.”
There was a boat at the wharf, and the negroes, who had collected on
the shore and were shrieking and running about wildly, were foolishly
trying to raise the sail. In that one quick moment of parting,
as Skelton’s eyes fell upon Sylvia’s, he saw in them an agony of
apprehension for him. It was no safe matter to venture out in the
violence of a northwest storm in the shallow pleasure boat that lay
tossing at the wharf, with the negroes vainly and excitedly toiling at
the sail, which the wind beat out of their strong hands like a whip.
But Sylvia did not ask him to stay. Skelton pressed her once to his
heart; he felt gratitude to her that she did not strive uselessly to
detain him. He ran to the water’s edge, and just as he reached it the
sail, which had been got up, ripped in two with a loud noise, and the
mast snapped short off. The rope, though, that held the boat to the
wharf did not give way, and a dozen stalwart negroes held on to it.
Meanwhile, Lewis’s boat, that had been dimly visible through the hail
and the mist, disappeared. The negroes uttered a loud shriek, which was
echoed from the Deerchase shore by the crowd assembled there. Skelton’s
wildly beating heart stood still, but in the next minute the boat
reappeared some distance farther down the river. Lewis had slightly
changed his position. He still hung on manfully, but he was not in as
good a place as before. The sail, which still held, acted as a drag,
so that the progress of the boat, although terribly swept and tossed
about, was not very rapid.
At the wharf it took a moment or two to clear away the broken mast
and the rags of the sail. Two oars were in the bottom of the boat. As
Skelton was about to spring into it he turned, and saw Sylvia standing
on the edge of the wharf, her hands clasped, her hair half down and
beaten about her pale face by the fierce gust, her white dress soaked
with the rain. She had followed him involuntarily. In the excitement,
and in his fierce anxiety for Lewis, Skelton had not until that moment
thought of the danger to himself. But one look into Sylvia’s face
showed him that she remembered it might be the last time on this earth
that they would look into each other’s eyes. And in an instant, in
the twinkling of an eye, Skelton’s passion for Lewis took its proper
proportion--he loved Sylvia infinitely best at that moment. As if Fate
would punish him for ever letting the boy’s claim interfere with the
woman’s, he was called upon to take his life in his hand--that life
that she had so beautifully transformed for that boy’s sake.
And as Sylvia stood, in the rain and wind, Skelton holding her cold
hands and looking at her with a desperate affection, some knowledge
came from his soul to hers that at last she was supreme. Skelton
himself felt that, when he set out upon that storm-swept river, he
would indeed be setting out upon another river that led to a shoreless
sea. This new, sweet life was saying to him, “Hail and farewell!”
They had not stood thus for more than a minute, but it seemed a
lifetime to both. When it dawned upon Sylvia that nothing short
of Lewis’s cry for life could draw Skelton from her, a smile like
moonlight passed over her pallid face. She had the same presentiment
that Skelton had--he would never return alive. It was as if they heard
together the solemn tolling of the bell that marked the passing of
their happiness. But not even death itself could rob Sylvia of that
one perfect moment. Then, out of the roar of the storm came a cry from
Lewis. Skelton raised Sylvia’s hands and let them drop again. Neither
spoke a word, and the next moment he was in the boat, that both wind
and tide seized and drove down the river like an eggshell.
Skelton had two oars, but they did him little good. He could not direct
the boat at all; the wind that was blowing all the water out of the
river blew him straight down towards Lone Point. He felt sure that he
was following Lewis, and no doubt gaining on him, as he had no wet sail
dragging after him, but the darkness had now descended. It was not more
than seven o’clock, but it might have been midnight.
Suddenly a terrific squall burst roaring upon the storm already raging.
Skelton could hear the hurricane screaming before it struck him. He
turned cold and faint when he thought about the boy clinging to the
boat in the darkness. He was still trying to use his oars when the
squall struck him. One oar was wrenched out of his hand as if it had
been a straw, the other one broke in half.
At that Skelton quietly dropped his arms, and a strange composure
succeeded his agony of fear and apprehension about Lewis. He could now
do nothing more for Lewis, and nothing for himself. He was athletic,
although neither tall nor stout; but he did not have Lewis’s young
litheness, and he was already much exhausted. There would be no
clinging for hours to the bottom of the boat for him, and he was no
swimmer; he would make a fight for his life, but he felt it would be
of no avail. And Sylvia! As he recalled her last look upon him, he
beat his forehead against the side of the boat like a madman; but the
momentary wildness departed as quickly as it came. The recollection
that he was on the threshold of another world calmed him with the awful
majesty of the thought. He said to himself, “Sylvia understands--and
she will never forget!” All sorts of strange ideas came crowding upon
him in the darkness. All around him was a world of black and seething
waters and shrieking winds. Could this be that blue and placid river
upon which so much of his boyhood had been spent? Almost the first
thing he remembered was standing at the windows of his nursery, when
he was scarcely more than a baby, watching the dimpling shadows on
the water, and wondering if it were deep enough to drown a very
little boy. And he had lived in his boat as a boy, just as Lewis did.
Then he remembered the September afternoon, so long ago, when he had
taken Sylvia in his boat, and that night just such a terrible storm
had come up as this; the bridge had been washed away, and the tide
had overflowed all the flower beds at Deerchase and had come almost
up to the hall door. He remembered the morning after, when he left
Deerchase--the river, as far as eye could reach, a gigantic lagoon,
muddy and turbulent. Would it look like that the next morning? and
would a person drowned that night be found within a few hours? He did
not remember ever to have heard of a single person being drowned in
that river, and could not think whether the body would be washed ashore
or would sink for days.
Ah, how sweet had existence become! and in one day he had compassed
the happiness of a lifetime. It was only a few hours ago that Lewis
was sailing past Deerchase so gaily, and Sylvia’s soft hair had been
so lately blown in his face by summer breezes. Presently in the midst
of the darkness and the wildness he again heard a cry; he recognised
Lewis’s voice, faint as it was, and almost drowned by the clamour of
the winds and the waves. Skelton then felt a presentiment that Lewis
would be saved, although he himself would undoubtedly be lost. And
then came the feeling that the mystery of life was to be solved. No
matter now about all his thoughts, all his speculations; in one moment
he would know more than all the world could teach him about those vast
mysteries that subtle men try to fathom. Skelton was too sincere a
man and too fearless to change wholly within the few awful moments of
suspension between two worlds. One was gone from him already, the other
was close at hand. But he had always firmly believed in a Great First
Cause, a Supreme Being. This belief took on strangely the likeness of
the Christian God, the Father, Friend, the Maker who orders things
wisely for His creatures. Instinctively he remembered the proverb of
the poor peasants:
“The good God builds the blind bird’s nest.”
“If there be such a God,” Skelton said to himself, “I adore Him.” The
next moment he felt himself struggling in the water, with blackness
around him and above him, and the wind roaring, and a weight of water
like a million tons fell upon him, and he knew no more.
Within an hour the tempest had gone down and the clouds were drifting
wildly across the pale sky. Occasionally the moon shone fitfully. The
banks of the river were patrolled by frightened and excited crowds
of negroes, with Bulstrode and Blair and Mr. Conyers and one or two
other white persons among them, all engaged in the terrible search
for Skelton and Lewis. The wind had suddenly changed to exactly the
opposite direction, and the tide was running in with inconceivable
rapidity. The black mud of the river bottom near the shore, that had
been drained of water, was now quickly covered. Lights were moving
along the shore, boats were being rowed about the river, and cries
resounded, those asking for information that the others could not give.
Sylvia Shapleigh had spent most of the time on the wharf where Skelton
had left her. The servants had got around her, begging her to go to
the house, out of the storm. Like a person in a dream, she went and
changed her dress, and watched with dazed eyes the fury of sky and air
and water. She could not wait for the watchers on the shore to tell
her what was going on upon the river, and went back obstinately to the
wharf, in spite of the prayers and entreaties of the servants. She
tried to persuade herself that she was watching for Skelton’s return,
but in her inmost heart she felt she would never see him alive again.
It was about nine o’clock when she heard a shout some distance down
the river, and a boat pulled up, through the ghostly light, towards
Deerchase. Sylvia started in feverish haste towards the bridge. She ran
in her eagerness. As she reached the farther end, just at the Deerchase
lawn, she met Conyers coming towards her.
[Illustration: “IT IS LEWIS--LEWIS IS ALIVE!” HE SAID. “HE IS
EXHAUSTED, BUT WILL RECOVER.”--_Page 322_]
“It is Lewis--Lewis is alive!” he said. “He tied the tiller rope
around him--that was what saved him. He is exhausted, but he will
recover. The boat was found drifting about just below Lone Point.”
Sylvia tried to ask, “Has anything been heard of Mr. Skelton?” but she
could not. Conyers understood the dumb question in her eyes, and shook
his head. Poor, poor Sylvia!
Sylvia, scarcely knowing what she did, walked by Conyers’s side across
the Deerchase lawn. They met a crowd--Blair carrying Lewis in his
arms, and Bulstrode trudging along weeping, and the negroes following.
Lewis’s face was purplish, and he seemed scarcely to breathe; but when
Bob Skinny came running out of the house with a bottle of brandy, and
they poured some down his throat, he opened his eyes and managed to
gasp, “Where is Mr. Skelton?”
Nobody answered him. Lewis gulped down more brandy, and cried out in a
weak, distressed voice:
“I saw Mr. Skelton put off in the boat for me, and I was so afraid for
him--”
His head fell over; he could not finish what he was saying.
Blair and Bulstrode took the boy in the house and put him to bed and
worked with him; but Sylvia could not leave the shore, and Conyers
stayed with her and Bob Skinny, down whose ashy face a constant stream
of tears poured. Conyers tried to encourage Sylvia--the search was
still going on, up and down the river--but she looked at him with calm,
despairing eyes.
An hour before midnight a boat was seen coming up the river from Lone
Point. Almost immediately the distant cries, the commotion along the
shore ceased. It was the first boat that had returned, except the
one that brought Lewis. The negroes all gathered in crowds at the
Deerchase landing. Sylvia and Conyers stood on the little pier. The
moon was at the full by that time, and although the water was still
dark and troubled, the silver disc shone with pale serenity, and the
stars glittered in the midnight sky. Conyers, although used to sights
of human suffering, turned his face away from Sylvia’s pallid anguish.
When the boat struck the steps that led down from the wharf, the
negroes suddenly uttered their weird shrieks of lamentation. Skelton’s
body was being lifted out.
Sylvia advanced a step, and the bearers laid their burden down before
her. One side of his face was much discoloured, and one arm hung
down, where it had been wrenched out of its socket. Conyers tore open
the coat and placed his hand upon Skelton’s heart. There was not the
slightest flutter. The discoloured face was set--he had been dead some
little time. Sylvia neither wept nor lamented. Her terrible calmness
made Conyers’s blood run chill.
“Carry him to the house,” she said, after a moment, in which she had
leaned down and touched his cold forehead. “He is quite dead. It is not
worth while to send for a doctor. See, this terrible blow upon the head
stunned him--perhaps killed him. I never saw a dead person before, but
I tell you there is nothing to be done for him.”
The negroes took him up and carried him tenderly, Bob Skinny holding
the poor dislocated arm in place, and everybody wept except Sylvia.
Skelton had been a good master, and the horror of his death worked
upon the quick sympathies of the negroes. Sylvia walked blindly after
them, not knowing where she was going, and not caring. The house was
lighted up, as the house servants had been alarmed in the beginning of
the storm. The body was carried in the house and laid down in the hall;
and Bulstrode, coming down the broad stairs and looking at what once
was Richard Skelton, turned pale and almost fainted.
Then there was an awful moment of uncertainty. What was to be done?
Bulstrode was clearly unable to give directions or to do anything.
Blair was working with Lewis upstairs, and, besides, there was
something too frightfully incongruous in applying to him. Conyers, his
heart breaking for Sylvia, dared not leave her, and there was nobody to
do for the master of the house. Then Bob Skinny, the most useless, the
vainest, the least dependable of creatures, suddenly came to the fore.
He had loved Skelton with blind devotion, and he had been the person
who was with Skelton the most of any one in the world.
“I kin see ’bout Mr. Skelton,” he said, trembling. “Me and Sam Trotter,
an’ dese here house niggers kin do fer him.”
Bulstrode, on coming to himself, actually ran out of the house to
escape that terrible Presence that had just made its majestic self
known. Sylvia, on the contrary, could not be forced away until she had
at least seen Skelton once more. Conyers sat by her in one of the great
drawing-rooms, awed at her perfectly silent and tearless grief. A few
candles made the darkness visible. The room was one that was never
used except upon some festive occasion, and the contrast of Sylvia
sitting in mute despair in the gala room was a ghastly epitome of life
and death. Overhead was audible occasionally the muffled sound of the
watchers moving about Lewis Pryor’s bed; and across the hall, on the
other side, could be heard distinctly in the midnight stillness the
gruesome preparations that His Majesty Death requires. Conyers was as
silent as Sylvia. His emotions were always insoluble in speech, and now
they froze the words upon his tongue. As soon as that one last look at
Skelton was had Sylvia must leave the house.
After waiting as much as an hour, a step was heard crossing the hall,
and Bob Skinny, with a candle in his hand, opened the door noiselessly
and beckoned to Conyers.
Sylvia rose too. She knew what that gesture meant. She walked firmly
forward a few steps, and then stopped, trembling; but, with a supreme
effort, she went upon her way, Conyers close at hand but not touching
her. She felt herself to be in a dream as she crossed the familiar
hall and entered the library, which was peculiarly Skelton’s room.
She turned and closed the door after her, which Conyers had left
partly open. The great room was dimly lighted, but the light scarcely
penetrated the deep darkness of the corners, and the ceiling was lost
in gloom. A window was open, and through it came softly a faint,
chill, odoriferous wind. Sylvia remembered Skelton once telling her
that in the East such a wind was called the Wind of Death. The heavy
curtains moved gently, as if touched by a ghostly hand, and a branch
of white hydrangeas, with which the fireplace was filled, trembled at
it. On the sofa lay Skelton, looking the least deathlike object in
the room. He was dressed in his ordinary evening clothes, and on his
delicate high-arched feet were black silk stockings and pumps with
diamond buckles. He lay on his side quite naturally, his dislocated arm
drawn up under the discoloured side of his face, so that both injuries
were quite concealed. Anything more natural or graceful could not be
conceived. He seemed to have thrown himself on the lounge after dinner,
and have dropped asleep for a few moments.
It was the first dead person Sylvia had ever seen, and at first that
natural human horror of the dead quite overcame her. She covered her
face and fell on a chair, and presently looked fearfully around her,
and everything was terrifying until she saw Skelton. All at once horror
of him was banished. She was no more afraid than if he had been lying
before her asleep.
She went up to him, and knelt by him fondly. She smoothed the black
hair off the pale forehead with a sweet sense of familiarity. She had
felt constrained by a maiden diffidence from any of those caresses that
a woman sometimes bestows on the man she loves. She never remembered
having touched his hair before until that very afternoon, when he had
made that remark about his grey hairs. Yes, there were plenty. She
passed the locks through her fingers--it was soft and rich, although
beginning to lose its perfect blackness. She examined his face
carefully; it was so clear cut--she had never seen a mouth and chin and
nose more delicately and finely outlined.
“He is not really handsome,” she said to herself, looking at him with
ineffable tenderness; “but people had eyes for nobody else when he was
before them. And how strangely young he looks! and so like Lewis!” For
the wonderful youthfulness which death sometimes restores to the human
countenance made Skelton and Lewis most extraordinarily alike at that
moment.
“And how happy we should have been!” she continued, half aloud. “I
meant to have made him love me more through that boy. I took very
meekly the love he gave me, because I knew the time would come when it
would be all mine--all--all. It came at the very moment that we were
forever parted.”
Sylvia bent down to kiss the cold face, and suddenly drew back,
blushing redly, and looking about to see if she was watched--it had
so entirely escaped her that this was not Skelton. She put her warm
young arms around his neck, and kissed him a dozen times, when in a
moment the coldness, the horrible insensibility before her penetrated
her heart. She darted up and ran wildly to the door, almost knocking
Conyers over, who was just about to enter. She seized his hand, and,
trembling violently, cried out:
“I was just a moment ago in love with a corpse--with a dead man, who
could not open his eyes or feel or hear anything; and was it not most
unnatural and horrible? Pray, let us go--”
Conyers caught her cold hands in his, and the words he was about to
speak died on his lips, so much did Sylvia’s face appal him. She flew
out of the house, across the lawn, and was almost at the bridge before
Conyers caught up with her.
“You will kill yourself,” he said breathlessly, but Sylvia only sped on.
There had been no sleep at Belfield that night. A messenger had been
sent to Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh, but they could not get home before
morning. As Sylvia rushed into the house as if pursued, Conyers said:
“Let me send for Mrs. Blair.”
“No, I will be alone,” answered Sylvia.
“God will be with you,” said Conyers.
“Yes,” replied Sylvia, walking about the dimly lighted hall, “God will
be with me. I have had a great many doubts, as you know. I asked--”
She stopped in her restless walk and tried to speak Skelton’s name,
but could not. She continued: “He always put me off gently. He told me
those people were best off who could believe in God, the Father of us
all; that it was very simple, but simple things were usually the best.
He told me I might read a great deal--my mind was very eager on the
subject--but that those who claim God is not proved cannot themselves
prove he is not. And I can even believe in the goodness of God now,
for, at the very moment that I was to lose--” She still could not speak
Skelton’s name, and indicated it by a pause--“I had one moment of
rapture that was worth a lifetime of pain. I found out that _he_ loved
me better than he had ever loved anything on earth. Nothing can ever
rob me of that moment. I shall carry it through this world and into the
next, where there is a glorious possibility that we may meet again.”
She turned, and went quietly and noiselessly up the broad, winding
stair. She looked like a white shadow in the gloomy half-light. About
midway the stair, her form, that to Conyers, watching her, had grown
dimmer at every step, melted softly into the darkness.
Conyers turned and left the house.
When he reached Deerchase again everything was solemnly quiet. In a
corner of the hall Bulstrode was sitting by the round table, with
a lamp on it, leaning his head upon his hands. Lewis was sleeping
upstairs, and Blair was watching him. Conyers, ever mindful of others,
sent the servants off to bed and closed the house. He would be the
watcher for the rest of the night. It was then about two o’clock in the
morning. Conyers went into the library and looked long and fearlessly
at that which lay so peacefully on the sofa. Death had no terrors for
him. He believed the human soul worth everything in the world, but the
body, living or dead, mattered but little.
On the table lay a riding glove of Skelton’s, still retaining the shape
of the fingers. Scraps of his writing were about--two letters, sealed
and addressed--a book with the paper knife still lying between its
uncut leaves. Conyers, calm and almost stoical, looked at it all, and
then, going into the hall, sat down at the table where Bulstrode was,
and, opening a small Bible in his pocket, began to read the Gospel of
St. Matthew. The light from the lamp fell upon his stern features, that
to the ordinary eye were commonplace enough, but to the keener one
were full of spirituality. He was half-educated, but wholly good. He
wandered and blundered miserably, but faith and goodness dwelt within
him.
After a while Bulstrode spoke, his rich voice giving emphasis to his
earnest words:
“Conyers, I would give all I know for the peace you enjoy.”
“Peace!” said poor Conyers, raising his sombre eyes to Bulstrode’s. “I
have no peace. It is all warfare.”
“But with the warfare you have peace, and you have no fear
of--_It_”--Bulstrode shuddered, and pointed toward the library door,
which was slightly ajar--“nor even of death, which has turned Skelton
to _It_ in one moment of time.”
“I certainly have no fear,” answered Conyers, after a pause. “I doubt,
I am at war, I suffer agonies of mind, but not once have I ever feared
death. I fear life much more.”
Bulstrode said nothing for a moment, then disappeared, his shuffling
step sounding with awful distinctness through the silent house. He came
back after a little while. The fumes of brandy were strong upon him,
and in his hand he carried two or three volumes.
“Here,” said he, laying the books down carefully, “here is what I
read when all the mysterious fears of human nature beset and appal
me--Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. They are the only two philosophers
who agree, after all. Old Aristotle went to work and built the most
beautiful and perfect bridge, that ever entered into the mind of man
to conceive, a part of the way across the river that separates the
known from the unknown. He got a solid foundation for every stone of
that bridge; every step is safe; nothing can wash it away. But he
reached a point where he could not see any farther. Mists obscured it
all. If any man that ever lived could have carried this bridge all
the way over in its beauty and perfection, Aristotle was that man;
but having carried it farther than it had ever been carried before,
he said: ‘Here reason stops. Man can do no more. The Great First
Principle must now reveal the rest.’ Observe: All the others claim to
have done a complete work. Kant built a great raft that floated about
and kept men from drowning, but it is not a plain pathway on a bridge;
it cannot connect the two shores; nobody can get from the known to the
unknown on it. Hegel built two or three beautiful arches and called it
complete, but it stopped far short of Aristotle’s, and led nowhere.
Then there were dozens of other fellows, wading around in the shallows
and paddling aimlessly about the river, and all crying out: ‘Here is
the way; this is the ferry to cross. There is no way but mine, and my
way is the only perfect way. There is no more to know except what I
can tell you.’ But Aristotle, who is the embodied Mind, said there was
more to come; he saw beyond him the wavering line of the other shore;
but where he stood was all mist and darkness. He knew--ah, the wise old
Greek!--knew his work stopped short, and he knew it could be carried to
the end. He was so great, therefore, that no imperfections could escape
him; and he did not mistake his splendid fragment for the whole. And
he knew a part so splendid must be a part of the whole. He saw, as it
were, the open door, but he could not enter; he had heard the overture
played, but he could not remain to see the curtain rise. But fourteen
hundred years after Aristotle had done all that mortal man could do
towards solving the great problems of being, came the man who was to
take up the work with the same tools, the same method, that Aristotle
had left off. Ah! that magnificent old heathen knew that it was to
come. But why do I call him a heathen? Zounds, Conyers, if any man ever
gave a leg to revealed religion, it was Aristotle!”
Conyers was listening attentively. Bulstrode’s manner was grotesque,
but his earnestness was extreme and moving.
He picked up one of his books and caressed it.
“This other man was Thomas Aquinas. I can’t help believing these
two men to be now together in some happy region--perhaps in a
garden--walking up and down, and in communion together. I daresay the
Greek was a lean, eagle-eyed man, like ‘_It_’ in yonder--” Bulstrode
looked over his shoulder at the library door--“and Thomas was a great,
lumbering, awkward, silent creature. His fellow-students called him the
‘Dumb Ox,’ but his master said, ‘One day the bellowing of this ox shall
shake the world.’ He was on the other side of the river, and he saw the
beautiful bridge more than half way across, and he went to work boldly
to build up to it. There were so many mists and shadows, that things on
Aristotle’s side had huge, uncanny, misshapen figures to those on the
opposite side. And there were quicksands, too, and sometimes it was
hard to find a bottom. But this Thomas Aquinas found it, and behold!
Magnificent arches spanning the mysterious river--a clear pathway
forever from one side to the other, from the known to the unknown, from
philosophy to the revealed religion.”
All the time he had been speaking Conyers’s melancholy eyes, which had
been fixed on him, gradually lightened, and when Bulstrode stopped they
were glowing.
“It is of comfort to me to hear you say that,” he said.
“So it was to Meno when Aristotle said he believed in the immortality
of the soul. Meno said, ‘I like what you are saying’; and the
Greek answered pleasantly--ah, he was a pleasant fellow, this wise
Aristotle--‘I, too, like what I am saying. Some things I have said
of which I am not altogether confident; but that we shall be better
and braver and less helpless if we think we ought to inquire, than we
should have been if we had indulged the idle fancy that there was no
use in seeking to know what we do not know, that is a theme upon which
I am ready to fight in word and deed to the utmost of my power.’”
“But Aristotle acknowledges there were some things he said about the
great question of which he was not ‘confident.’”
“Yes, yes,” replied Bulstrode impatiently. “There are two voices in
every soul--one doubting and dreading, the other believing and loving.
You see, the other fellows--Hegel and the rest of the crew--are
perfectly cocksure; they are certain of everything. But old Aristotle
saw that something in the way of proof was wanting, and that great,
silent Thomas Aquinas supplied the rest--that is, if there is anything
in Aristotle’s method of reasoning.”
“Then why are you not a follower of Thomas Aquinas into the revealed
religion?” asked Conyers.
Bulstrode was silent a moment, sighing heavily.
“Because--because--Thomas Aquinas leads me inevitably into the field of
morals. You see, all rational religions are deuced moral, and that’s
what keeps me away from ’em. I tell you, Conyers, that if you had led
such a life as I have, you’d be glad enough to think that it was all
over when the blood stopped circulating and the breath ceased. My
awful doubt is, that it’s all _true_--that it doesn’t stop; that not
only life goes on forever, but that the terribly hard rules laid down
by that peasant in Galilee are, after all, the code for humanity, and
then--great God! what is to become of us?”
Bulstrode stopped again and wiped his brow.
“You see,” he continued, in some agitation, after a moment, “you want
it to be true--you dread that it can’t be true--you are tormented with
doubts and harassed with questions. _I_ don’t want it to be true. I
believe with Aristotle that there is a Great First Principle. I can
be convinced by my reason of that; and I think there is overwhelming
presumptive proof of the immortality of the soul; but then--there may
be more, there may be more. The Jewish carpenter, with that wonderful
code of morals, may be right, after all, and I am sincerely afraid
of it; and if I went all the way of the road with Thomas Aquinas, I
should reach, perhaps, a terrible certainty. Talk about Wat Bulstrode
being pure of heart, and keeping himself unspotted from the world,
and loving them who do him evil--and the whole code in its awful
beauty--why, if that be true, then I am the most miserable man alive!
Sometimes I tell myself, if that code were lived up to the social
system would go to pieces; and then it occurs to me, that ideal was
made purposely so divine that there was not the slightest danger of the
poor human creetur’ ever reaching it, in this place of wrath and tears;
that the most he can do is to reach towards it, and _that_ lifts him
immeasurably. But that very impossible perfection, like everything else
about it, is unique, solitary, creative. All other codes of morals are
possible--all lawgivers appoint a limit to human patience, forbearance;
but this strange code does not. And that’s why I say I am afraid--I’m
afraid it’s true.”
Conyers sat looking--looking straight before him. He feared it was
not true, and Bulstrode feared it was true; and he asked himself if
anything more indicative of the vast gulf between two beings of the
same species could be conceived.
Bulstrode began again. His head was sunk on his breast, and he seemed
to fall into the deepest dejection.
“And you’ve got good fighting ground. I realise that every time I try
in my own mind to fight this Dumb Ox.” He laid his great hand on one of
the volumes before him. “There is that tremendous argument of cause and
effect. All the other founders of religions--I mean the real religions,
not the fanciful mythologies--were great men. Buddha and Mohammed would
have been great men had they never broached the subject of religion;
and they had a lifetime to work in. And then comes this Jewish
carpenter, and he does nothing--absolutely nothing--except preach for
a little while in the most obscure corner of the Roman Empire, and
is executed for some shadowy offence against the ecclesiastical law,
and behold! his name is better known than the greatest conqueror, the
wisest philosopher that ever lived. Where one man knows of Aristotle, a
thousand know of him. Now, how could such an enormous effect come from
such a trifling cause? Who was this carpenter, with his new doctrine of
democracy--socialism, if you will--the rights of the masses; and the
masses didn’t know they had any rights until then!
“Most of you half-taught fellows find your arguments in the code of
morals; but although, as I see, the code is ideally far superior to any
other, yet all are good; there were good morals taught ever since man
came upon the earth, for good morals means ordinary common sense.
“But this religion of the carpenter is peculiar. It does for thinkers,
and for the innumerable multitudes of the ages that don’t think and
can’t think. It’s wonderful, and it may be true. And, Conyers, if I
were a good man, instead of a worthless dog, I would not give up the
belief for all the kingdoms of the earth.”
Bulstrode got up then and went away again.
Conyers sat, turning over in his mind the curious circumstance that all
of his so-called theological training that was meant to convince him of
the truths of religion was so badly stated, so confusedly reasoned,
that it opened the way to a fiendish company of doubts; while
Bulstrode, who frankly declared his wish that there might be no future
life, helped, by his very fears, to make Conyers a better Christian
than before.
When Bulstrode returned, the odour of brandy was stronger than ever; he
went to the brandy bottle for fortitude as naturally as Conyers went to
his Bible.
But his eye was brighter, his gait was less slouching, and a new
courage seemed to possess him.
Before this he had turned his back to the library door, and in his two
expeditions after consolation Conyers noticed that he had walked as far
away from that door as possible. But now he boldly went towards the
library, and went in and stayed a considerable time.
When he returned he sat down trembling, and his eyes filled with tears.
“I have been to see _It_. What a strange thing was _It_ when _It_ was
alive, five hours ago! How has _It_ fared since? How fares _It_ now?
How far has _It_ travelled in those five hours? Or is _It_ near at
hand? When _It_ was living--when _It_ was Skelton--he was the most
interesting man I ever knew. He had tremendous natural powers, and, had
not fortune been too kind to him, he would have been known to the whole
world by this time. He was weighted down with money; it was an octopus
to him; it enabled him to do everything he ought not to have done, and
it kept him from doing everything he ought to have done. It gave him a
library that swamped him; it enabled him to hire other men to think
for him, when he could have thought much better for himself; it put it
in his power to follow his enemies relentlessly, and to punish them
remorselessly. Ah, Conyers, old Aristotle himself said, ‘And rich in a
high degree, and good in a high degree, a man cannot be.’ What a great
good it is that few of us can spare the time, the thought, the money,
for our revenges like Skelton! Most of us can only utter a curse and go
about our business, but Skelton could pursue his revenge like a game of
skill. Fate, however, defeats us all. Let man go his way; Fate undoes
all the web he weaves so laboriously. Skelton spent twenty years trying
to ruin Blair, and I believe he saved him. Nothing but some terrible
catastrophe such as Skelton brought about would ever have cured Blair
of that frenzy for the turf.
“But everything with Skelton went according to the rule of contrary.
Did you ever know before of a rich man who was disinterestedly loved?
Yet, I tell you, that English girl that married him could have married
a coronet. His money was a mere bagatelle to hers, and I believe as
truly as I live that Skelton was disinterested in marrying that huge
fortune.
“And Sylvia Shapleigh--ah, that poor, pretty Sylvia!--she will never be
merry any more; and you and I will never see those green-grey eyes of
hers sparkle under her long lashes again. She was the most desperately
in love with Skelton of any creature I ever saw. She didn’t mind the
boy--she knew all about Lewis--she didn’t mind anything; she loved this
rich man not for his money, but for himself. Did you ever hear of such
a queer thing on this ridiculous old planet before? And Lewis--the boy
of whom Skelton was at first ashamed--how proud he became of him! and
how he craved that boy’s love! And nobody ever held out so long against
Skelton as that black-eyed boy, the living image of him, his son from
the crown of his head to the sole of the foot.
“But at last Skelton won Lewis over; he won Sylvia Shapleigh; he won
the power to work; he won everything; only this day he won the battle
over himself; he was generous to Blair, and then in the midst of it
comes Death, the great jester, and says, ‘Mount behind me; leave all
unfinished.’ And Skelton went. The little spark of soul went, that is,
and left behind the mass of the body it dragged around after it.”
Bulstrode paused again, and Conyers, opening the Bible, read some
of the promises out of the Gospel of Matthew. Bulstrode listened
attentively.
“Read that part where it commands the forgiveness of enemies,” he said.
Conyers read them, his voice, although low, echoing solemnly through
the great, high-pitched hall. Bulstrode covered his face with his
hands, and then, rising suddenly, went a second time to the library. He
came back in a few moments. His coarse face was pale, his eyes dimmed.
“I have forgiven him--I have forgiven Skelton,” he said. “He was not
good to me, although he was a thousand, thousand times better to me
than I was to myself; but I have forgiven him all I had against him.
The dead are so meek; even the proud Skelton looks meek in death. And
I tell you, he was a man all but great--all but good.”
The lamp was burning low; there was a faint flutter of sparrows’ wings
under the eaves; a wind, fresh and soft, rustled among the climbing
roses that clung to the outer wall; a blackbird burst suddenly into his
homely song, as if bewitched with the ecstasy of the morning. The pale
grey light that penetrated the chinks and crannies of the hall changed
as if by magic to a rosy colour. The day was at hand. Conyers closed
his Bible, and said, with solemn joy, to Bulstrode:
“And so you fear all this is true? What ineffable comfort it gives me!
A man of your learning and--”
“Learning!” cried Bulstrode, throwing himself back in his chair. “Look
at _It_ in yonder! _It_ was learned; _I_ am learned; but all of us can
only cry, as the Breton mariners do when they put to sea: ‘Lord, have
mercy upon us! for our boat is so small, and Thy ocean is so black and
so wide!’”
“Amen!” said Conyers, after a moment.
THE END.
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=That Printer of Udell’s.= By Harold Bell Wright.
=Throwback, The.= By Alfred Henry Lewis.
=Trail of the Sword, The.= By Gilbert Parker.
=Treasure of Heaven, The.= By Marie Corelli.
=Two Vanrevels, The.= By Booth Tarkington.
=Up From Slavery.= By Booker T. Washington.
=Vashti.= By Augusta Evans Wilson.
=Viper of Milan, The= (original edition). By Marjorie Bowen.
=Voice of the People, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=Wheel of Life, The.= By Ellen Glasgow.
=When Wilderness Was King.= By Randall Parrish.
=Where the Trail Divides.= By Will Lillibridge.
=Woman in Grey, A.= By Mrs. C. N. Williamson.
=Woman in the Alcove, The.= By Anna Katharine Green.
=Younger Set, The.= By Robert W. Chambers.
=The Weavers.= By Gilbert Parker.
=The Little Brown Jug at Kildare.= By Meredith Nicholson.
=The Prisoners of Chance.= By Randall Parrish.
=My Lady of Cleve.= By Percy J. Hartley.
=Loaded Dice.= By Ellery H. Clark.
=Get Rich Quick Wallingford.= By George Randolph Chester.
=The Orphan.= By Clarence Mulford.
=A Gentleman of France.= By Stanley J. Weyman.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.