Conyers smiled involuntarily as he looked at Bulstrode. There was nothing apostolic in that bulky figure and careless, dissipated face.
Bulstrode went back to Deerchase, and complained next morning that he had been kept up late the night before labouring with Conyers to make him a Christian.
Conyers, however, felt that he had been more helped by this boozy heathen than by all the theologians he had ever met with in his life.
Meanwhile Skelton and his affairs continued to be of prodigious interest among the county people, who regarded him as their local prodigy. There was, of course, great speculation about his wife’s fortune, and much indignation expressed that it could not be bestowed upon some of the numerous young women who would have presided so admirably at Deerchase. The universal conviction was that Skelton would never marry, but, in the strange event that he did, conjecture ran wild as to what would become of the money.
Some said it went to found a great charity hospital somewhere; others, that it returned to the late Mrs. Skelton’s family; others still, that, Mrs. Skelton having quarrelled with her relations, they would get none of it, but that it would go to Skelton’s next of kin, which, wonderful to say, were Elizabeth Blair and her children; but everybody was agreed in thinking that, before Skelton would see the Blairs benefitted by him, he would turn his back on Helen of Troy could she come back to earth. However, the solution seemed far enough off. It was perfectly well known that the late Mrs. Skelton had put an embargo of some sort upon her place being filled, and they would have to wait until Skelton, who was in the perfection of physical health, should be laid in his grave before the mystery would be solved.
Skelton had come home in the early summer, and, although he had been formally called upon by all the gentry in the county, including Blair, as soon as he arrived, and the visits had been returned, but little had been seen of him. Even when the autumn meeting of the Jockey Club had come off, and when all the people from four counties had assembled and Skelton’s horses had carried everything before them, Skelton himself had scarcely appeared on the course at all. The truth was he was making a desperate effort to work. He shut himself up every day in the library, and actually got some little way upon his Introduction, but in a very short while a strange and irritating torpor seized upon him mentally. He had no distractions—he had all his books close by him, his notes tabulated; the whole thing was ready to his hand. The hand, though, refused to work; the mind refused to drive the hand. Skelton found he did as little in the scholastic retirement which he had adopted as in the whirl of cities.
He turned to racing as a faint and unsatisfying distraction. He had had the pleasure of beating Blair all along, even at the autumn meeting; he had had the savage enjoyment of knowing that Blair was as unlucky as usual when pitted against him. Skelton’s own secret dissatisfaction with himself fanned his resentment against Blair. He turned feverishly to the only thing that interested him—the determination to make Jack Blair know what it was to oppose Richard Skelton. Blair’s imprudent speeches, his constant reminders of the why and wherefore of Skelton’s rivalry, were not lost on him, and men of his type are always dangerous to trifle with.
Skelton’s doubled subscription to the Jockey Club had had a wonderful stimulating effect upon that institution, and it also caused Mrs. Blair to sign her name to a bit of paper which enabled Blair to raise some money, not only for his own increased subscription, but for that horse of old Tom Shapleigh’s which Skelton himself had professed to be afraid of. If once a match could be brought about between Alabaster and Jaybird, Blair, who was irrepressibly sanguine, believed that he could wipe out all old scores between them. And, of course, he could buy the horse—old Tom had not seriously meant that Sylvia was to have for a riding nag a horse that could beat Jaybird. Blair thought that raising a certain sum of money, which was in effect an extravagant price, must certainly buy Alabaster. But he had to go through with some unpleasant processes before raising that money. He was terribly hard up at that time, and one of the most necessary conditions was the signing of his wife’s name to a bit of paper that to him represented Alabaster, money, coming out ahead of Skelton—everything, in short.
When he went after Elizabeth to sign that paper she was sewing together the leaves of Hilary’s Latin grammar, and wishing she could buy some new books that the boy needed—for she taught him herself, under the womanly pretense that they might thereby save up money for his university expenses. But she knew in her heart of hearts that no money was saved or thought of being saved. Only her pride was saved by that subterfuge. The drawing-room at Newington where she sat was very unlike the splendid drawing-rooms at Deerchase or the gaudy show-rooms at Belfield. It was large, plain, and old-fashioned. The mahogany furniture was scanty, and the ornaments consisted of those daubs of family portraits which all Virginians possess. It was a gloomy afternoon early in October, and neither the room nor anything in it looked cheerful. Blair came in whistling, and stated the case to Elizabeth. As she had brought him no fortune, it seemed ungracious in her to refuse him that which was his own, but she thought of Hilary, and her heart sank. Nevertheless, she signed the paper with the quill pen that Blair cut for her with his penknife. When asking her to make the sacrifice for him he did not insult her by any endearments; there were certain fine points of delicacy about him which well pleased her woman’s soul. He profoundly respected the love between them, and would have scorned to use it directly as a means of wheedling anything out of her. But when her name was signed, he tipped her chin up and kissed her with ineffable tenderness.
“By heaven, my girl,� he said, “you deserve a better husband than I have ever made you! But you could never find one that loves you half as much.�