CHAPTER VII.
The very first and most lasting impression made upon Lewis Pryor’s boyish mind was that a subtile difference existed between him and every other boy he had ever known in his life. At the first glance the difference would seem to have been altogether in Lewis’s favour, for he always had a plenty of pocket money, and a pony to ride, and a servant to wait on him; but, being a very healthy-natured, honest-hearted boy, he regarded these things with admirable indifference, and instinctively rated them at their true value, which was small. In fact, he came, in the course of his boyish experiences, to hate these distinctions in his favour, as he imagined sometimes that it accounted for the shyness of other boys towards him. From his very earliest recollection there had been this strange and mystifying avoidance, and the boy’s heart swelled and his eyes filled with tears whenever he thought of it. Not only was it strange, but it was cruelly undeserved, for he felt himself worthy of respect. He had never told a lie in his life, and such boyish naughtinesses as he had been guilty of were merely the ordinary lapses of impetuous young creatures. But poor Lewis was perforce a model boy, for it is tolerably hard for a boy to get in mischief by himself. Lewis, gazing with melancholy eyes at others of his own age, would feel, with a tightening at his heart, that he would cheerfully give his pony and all his fine belongings to be one with those merry, happy fellows. He remembered dimly his mother—a gentle creature who lavished tenderness upon him; his father—Thomas Pryor, the tutor—a tall, thin, spectacled man; and they all lived very quietly somewhere in the country in England. But even then he had no playmates. Then he remembered quite distinctly his father and his mother both dying, and Bulstrode and Bob Skinny being there and taking him to Skelton. Lewis was then about five years old. After that came a dreary existence of splendid suites of rooms in foreign hotels, where he and Bulstrode were usually waiting for Skelton and Bob Skinny to turn up, when they would all go on to some other splendid suite of rooms in another place, all equally dreary to the lonely boy. Bulstrode was his guardian, and was supposed to be his tutor, and Lewis did his lessons with tolerable regularity. But he had a little store of books—some old romances, dear to every boy’s heart, and some of Scott’s novels, which were coming out, and a few other imaginative books, which he devoured with insatiate delight. Sometimes, with one of these darling dog’s-eared volumes, he could be perfectly happy, lying on the rug before the fire, with his dog Service poking his cold nose affectionately into his face, or flat on his back in the summer time, with the dog on the grass near him, and the trees murmuring softly overhead. For want of other companionship he made a friend and confidant of Service; and the two would exchange queer confidences, and understood each other as only a boy and a dog can. But more than the dog—even more than his cherished romances—Lewis’s most beloved possession were certain books inscribed “Thomas Pryor, M. A.,� and a miniature of his father—a lanky person, as unlike Lewis’s dark, clear-cut little face as could be imagined—and a quaint picture in black and white of his mother. But he thought of her so often and so much that he had in his mind’s eye a perfect portrait of her. Bulstrode was always ready enough to talk to the boy about his father and mother, but Lewis soon found that Bulstrode’s talk amounted to nothing at all, as he had seen but little of either Mr. or Mrs. Pryor. As for Skelton, Lewis could not make him out. He was always kind, always indulgent, and Lewis was quite sharp enough to see that, however Bulstrode might be his guardian, Skelton had the real authority over both Bulstrode and himself. But there was a perfect formality between them. The boy remembered, though, once when he was ill, that Skelton scarcely left him day or night. He always dined with Skelton, and at dinner had one very small glass of wine, after which he might have been expected to leave the table. Occasionally after dinner Skelton would thaw, and would talk to the boy in a way that quite charmed him, telling him of Skelton’s own boyhood and his travels. When they came to Virginia, Lewis found the new country more like his faintly remembered English home than he could express, and was a thousand times happier than he had been in the splendid lodgings where so much of his boyhood had been passed. He liked much better riding over the country on his pony than taking a tiresome canter in a public park; Service and himself had much jollier times in the woods and fields than in prim city gardens. And then the negroes were so amusing, and called him “Little Marse� so obsequiously, and he had a boat to sail on the river. This last gave him the most acute and intense pleasure. Skelton, for the first time in his life, taught him something in teaching him to sail the boat.
“Now, Lewis,� Skelton said, the first morning the boat was put into the water, “I foresee that you will live in this boat, and as you will no doubt be upset dozens of times, and be caught in squalls and all sorts of accidents, the only thing to do is to teach you to depend upon yourself. The river is not more than fifteen feet deep anywhere, except in the channel, and with ordinary intelligence and care nothing worse ought to happen to you than a good wetting once in a while. The boat is staunch. I myself watched Jim, the wheelwright, making it, and gave him the dimensions�—for the boat had been built at Deerchase—“and the sail is quite large enough for it�—Lewis did not agree with this last, as his ambition was to have the smallest boat and the biggest sail on the river—“and if you are drowned it will be your own fault.�
Lewis was wonderfully apt at learning anything, and Skelton, in his quiet way, showed an excellent knack of teaching. Every day, for a week or more, the two were out in the boat together upon the bright river glowing in the August sunshine. Lewis often wondered if Skelton were not bored as they sailed up and down the river, and then beyond out into the bay, Skelton sitting in the stern, with a book in his hand, reading when he was not showing Lewis how to manage the boat. It puzzled the boy because there was usually such a distance, so much reserve between them. More than once Lewis caught Skelton’s black, expressive eyes fixed on him with a look that was almost fondness, and at such moments the boy’s heart would thrill with a strange emotion. He had often thought that he would ask Skelton some time about his father and mother, and what better opportunity could he have than when sailing together for hours upon the blue water? But he never did it. In spite of Skelton’s interest, and his evident desire to secure Lewis from danger by making him a good sailor, the barrier remained. In a very short while, though, Lewis mastered the whole science of a sailboat, with one exception. Nothing could induce him to take the sail down until a squall was actually upon him, and in consequence of this he got into the water several times unnecessarily. But he was a cool-headed fellow, and a good swimmer besides, so that his various upsets did him no harm. Skelton, on these occasions, would send for him and give him lectures upon his foolhardiness, which Lewis would receive respectfully enough, saying “Yes, sir,� every time Skelton paused. But when the door was closed Skelton would sigh, and smile too, and say to himself, “There is no frightening the fellow.�
There was but one boy in the neighbourhood near Lewis’s age. This was Hilary Blair, a handsome, fair-haired, freckle-faced boy, who began the acquaintance with a sturdy contempt for Lewis’s prowess. Hilary was a year older than Lewis, and a heavier and stouter boy. But at the first personal encounter between the two young gentlemen, which was precipitated by a dispute over a game of marbles in the main road, Lewis showed so much science in the manly art, that Hilary was knocked out ignominiously about the fourth round. Hilary displayed excellent good sense in the affair. He got up with a black eye, but an undaunted soul.
“Look here,� he said, “you’ve taken lessons of some sort.�
“Yes,� responded Lewis, shamefacedly, remembering that he had had lessons of all sorts—boxing, fencing, dancing, riding, everything, in short—while this country gentleman’s son knew nothing of many of these things; “but if you want to, I’ll teach you all I know, and then�—here the fighting instinct in the boy cropped out—“I’ll lick you just as easy as I do now.�
“I reckon you won’t,� answered Hilary coolly, and it turned out that he was right; for, with the addition of such scientific instruction as Lewis could impart, the two boys were very evenly matched in their future encounters, which were purely friendly and in the interests of sport.
The boys became fond of each other in a surreptitious way, for Hilary never came to see Lewis, and an instinctive delicacy kept Lewis from going to Newington. But they met on the river, out fishing, and in the woods setting their hare-traps, and they exchanged whispers during church-time.
On Sundays Lewis sat alone in one of the great square high-backed pews, which still remained in the old colonial church of Abingdon. That unlucky singularity of luxury which was the bane of poor Lewis’s life actually followed him to church, for Skelton’s was the only upholstered pew in the church; and instead of the faded moreen curtains of the other pews, when they were curtained at all, there was a fine purple-silk drapery, behind which the lonely boy sat forlornly. He was the only person who went to church regularly from Deerchase. Bulstrode scoffed at the notion, and Skelton alleged usually that he was too busy. Once in a great while, though, he would saunter into church about the second lesson. Conyers, who feared no man, not even Skelton, would stop deliberately in the midst of the sermon as a rebuke to Skelton. Skelton, however, would be perfectly unmoved by it, as well as by the hundreds of curious eyes bent upon him, and would walk down the aisle with his inimitable grace and a half-smile on his lips. Conyers, though, by that strange contrariety which seems to govern human affairs, found his best supporters in Skelton and Bulstrode, whom he expected to be his most powerful foes. So far from antagonising Conyers on account of the public rebuke administered upon his tardiness, Skelton respected him for it, and never failed to speak to the parson politely before all the people as they gossiped in the churchyard. It was not Skelton’s way to withhold the meed of justice due any man, and he saw at a glance that the stern, scruple-ridden, conscientious moralist had a very hard time with his merry, free-handed, pleasure-loving congregation—the pastor intolerant of pleasure, the flock intolerant of pain.