“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.