Skelton felt like throwing him out of the window at that, but Bulstrode was quite unconscious of giving offense. His next words, though, partly soothed Skelton’s self-love:
“Queer thing, that, how a man’s lucky strokes sometimes are his destruction. Now, that pamphlet—most unfortunate thing that ever befell you. The next worst thing for you was that you were born to one fortune and married another. Had you been a poor man your career would have been great; but, as it is, handicapped at every step by money, you can do nothing. For a man of parts to be thrown upon his own resources is to be cast into the very lap of Fortune, as old Ben Franklin puts it. But your resources have never been tested.�
There was in this an exquisite and subtile flattery to Skelton, because Bulstrode was so unconscious of it.
“How about yourself?� asked Skelton after a while. “You were cast in the lap of Fortune.�
“O Lord!� cried Bulstrode, “that’s a horse of another colour. I came into the world with a parching thirst that can never be satiated. But, mind you, Mr. Skelton, had I not been a poor man I could not have been what I am; you know what that is. I can’t make a living, but I know Greek. I can’t keep away from the brandy bottle, but if old Homer and our friend Horace and a few other eminent Greeks and Romans were destroyed this minute I could reproduce much of them. It maddens me sometimes; the possession of great powers is, after all, a terrible gift. Lewis Pryor has got it, but he has got it tempered with good sense. For God’s sake, Skelton, don’t make him a rich man! Look at yourself, ruined by it. The boy has fine parts. Some day, if he is let alone and allowed to work for his living, he will be remarkable; he will be more—he will be admirable! But weight him down with a fortune, and you will turn him into a country squire like Jack Blair, or into a dilettante like yourself. That’s all of it.�
Skelton lighted his cigar and began to smoke savagely. Was ever anything like the perversity of fate—for he recognised as true every word that Bulstrode had uttered. Because he had much money he had started out to make Blair feel the weight of his resentment, and he had spent fifteen or sixteen years at the business, and the result was that Blair was to-day better off than he had ever been since he came to man’s estate, as he was free at last from a vice that had been eating him up body and soul and substance for years. Skelton longed to heap benefits on Lewis Pryor, but he very much doubted if any of those things which he designed as benefits would make the boy either happier or better.
Bulstrode’s tongue continued to wag industriously. It seemed as if by some psychic influence he followed the very train of thought then going through Skelton’s mind.
“The women all like Lewis. I tell you, that’s a very dangerous gift for a man—worse, even, than genius.�
Skelton quite agreed with this sentiment. If the late Mrs. Skelton had not been so distractedly fond of him, for example, and had simply done for him what any reasonably affectionate wife would have done for her husband, he would not now be in the hateful position in which he found himself. Her relations would be welcome to her money, but she had put it quite out of the question that it should ever be theirs.
“Women are monstrous queer creatures, anyhow,� resumed Bulstrode despondingly, as if his whole past and future hinged upon the queerness of women.