So far, Skelton was a magnificent promise. He remained at Deerchase a year, which he spent chiefly in improving the house and grounds, which were already beautiful. This gave him a very good excuse for keeping strictly to himself. Then he determined to go to Europe. His old flame, Mrs. Jack Blair, now lived at Newington, and every time she looked out of her windows she could see the noble brick pile of Deerchase. The house was a fine old colonial mansion, with walls three feet thick, and numbers of large and lofty rooms. Skelton added to it with great taste, and had his grounds laid out by a famous landscape gardener. Newington was very shabby; and if Mrs. Blair had been an envious woman—which she was not—she might have suffered many pangs because of the contrast between the two places. Mrs. Shapleigh declared that Skelton’s only object in improving Deerchase was to spite Mrs. Blair. But it certainly spited Mrs. Shapleigh dreadfully. She was seized with a desire that Belfield should rival Deerchase. Now, the Shapleighs were very well off, and Belfield was a large and handsome country house, but there was no rivalling Deerchase in the matter. Skelton had dollars where old Tom Shapleigh had dimes. Whenever Mrs. Shapleigh would start the subject of improving Belfield, Mr. Shapleigh would become so totally and obstinately deaf that there was no making him hear at all; so, as Mrs. Shapleigh was a much-indulged woman, she went to work on her own book to do landscape gardening, and to make Belfield as smart as Deerchase. The effect was fearful and wonderful. A Chinese pagoda was clapped on to one wing of the Belfield house. This was meant for a tower. Much red velvet furniture was bought, and old Tom paid the bills, grinning sardonically as he did it.
“I declare, Mr. Shapleigh,� Mrs. Shapleigh bewailed, “you’ve got no feeling for your own flesh and blood. There’s nothing more likely than that Sylvia will one day marry Richard Skelton, and then if we don’t furnish up some and improve the place, everybody will say she never was accustomed to anything until she went to Deerchase.�
Mr. Shapleigh declined to weep over this terrible prospect. Then came the ornamentation of the grounds. Mrs. Shapleigh’s idea of decorative art was a liberal supply of fresh paint of every hue of the rainbow. She had an elaborate affair of knobs and latticework, painted a vivid green, put up in the river between Deerchase and Belfield, in place of the old water fence of posts and rails. A fence of some sort was necessary to keep the cattle from wading down the salt marshes and following the river shore into forbidden fields. The cows came tramping placidly down the marshy creek until they got to the wonderful water fence, where they turned tail and trotted rapidly off, their frightened calves bleating after them. The picturesque, unpainted bridge across the creek was metamorphosed into a highly ornate construction with a summerhouse in the middle, expressly designed for Sylvia, who was then in short frocks, and Skelton to do their courting in eventually. Never was there such general overhauling and painting. The pigeon house was painted red and the turnstiles blue. When everything was done, and Mrs. Shapleigh was felicitating herself that Richard Skelton could no longer have the satisfaction of thinking Deerchase was unsurpassed, Skelton could not look toward Belfield without laughing, nor could anybody else, for that matter.
Skelton spent a full year at Deerchase, and just as he had brought the house and grounds to perfection this sudden idea of going to Europe possessed him. It was a great undertaking in those days. He had nobody to consult, nobody knew he was going, and nobody would grieve for him except some of the older house servants. Although Skelton was an indulgent master, he never exchanged a word with his negroes, who were entirely managed by overseers. The afternoon before he left he was on the river in his boat. It was a cloudy September day. Usually the scene was full of light and glow—the broad, bright river, the cheerful homesteads, his own beautiful Deerchase, and not even Mrs. Shapleigh, had been able to spoil the fair face of Nature with her miscalled ornamentation; but on that day it was dull and inexpressibly gloomy. A grey mist folded the distant landscape. The river went sullenly to the sea. Afar off in the marshes could be heard the booming of the frogs—the most doleful of sounds—and the occasional fugitive cry of birds going south rang shrilly from the leaden sky.
Skelton sailed up and down, almost up to Newington, and down again to Lone Point—a dreary, sandy point, where three tall and melancholy pine trees grew almost at the water’s edge, and where the river opened widely into the bay. He felt that strange mixture of sadness and exultation which people felt in those far-off days when they were about to start for distant countries. There was not a soul in sight, except in the creek by the water fence; Sylvia Shapleigh was standing barefooted, with her skirts tucked up. Her shoes and stockings lay on the bank. She had on a white sunbonnet, much beruffled, and was holding something down in the water with a forked stick.
She was then about twelve years old, with a delicate, pretty, thoughtful face, and beautiful grey eyes. So unlike was she to her father and mother that she might have been a changeling.
Skelton guessed at once what she was after. She was catching the crabs that came up to feed in these shallow, marshy creeks; but after pinning her crab down she was evidently in a quandary how to get at him. As Skelton watched her with languid interest she suddenly gave a faint scream, her sunbonnet fell off into the water, and she stood quite still and began to cry.
Skelton ran the boat’s nose ashore within twenty yards of her, and, jumping out, went to her, splashing through the water.
“Oh, oh!� screamed poor Sylvia, “my foot—he’s got my foot!�
Skelton raised her small white foot out of the water, and in half a minute the crab was dexterously “spancelled� and thrown away, but there was a cruel mark on the child’s foot, and blood was coming. She looked at Skelton with wide, frightened eyes, crying bitterly all the time.