“You shall wait no longer,� said Skelton courteously; “come to-morrow—come to-day.�
As they parted with a half promise on Sylvia’s part about the visit, she cantered briskly down the lane while Skelton rode back slowly to Deerchase. Ah, that book! He had made apologies and excuses to himself for not writing it for fifteen years past. A desperate apprehension of failure haunted him. Suppose all this brilliant promise should come to naught! And it was his sole resource under any circumstances. He was too old, and he had tasted too many pleasures, to make pleasure an object with him any longer. Domestic life he was shut out from, unless he chose to pay a price even more preposterous for it than people imagined; for, although the county was not without information regarding Skelton’s affairs, there were some particulars, peculiarly galling to him, that only a few persons in the world knew. Skelton was the last man on earth to submit easily to any restrictions, but those laid upon him by the jealous fondness of the dead woman sometimes made him grind his teeth when he thought of them. Often he would rise from his bed in the middle of the night and walk the floor for hours, tormented with the sense of having been robbed of his personal liberty and of being a slave in the midst of all his power. For the late Mrs. Skelton, who married him from the purest infatuation, so bitterly resented the opposition of her family to her marriage with Skelton, that she determined, even in the event of his marrying again, that they at least should not profit by it. But in carrying out this fine scheme a woman and three lawyers managed to create a complication that was calculated to infuriate any man; and could she have risen from her grave and have known the result of her handiwork, her chagrin would have been only second to Skelton’s.
Skelton did not, for a wonder, hate his wife’s memory for this. He was singularly just in his temperament, and he only hated the three lawyers, who pocketed each a great fee for making a will that palpably defeated its own object—a not uncommon occurrence. Although he had not fully returned the passionate devotion of his wife, he had yet loved her and felt deeply grateful to her, more for her devotion than her money; for the secret of Mrs. Skelton’s devotion had been the knowledge that, after all, Skelton had not married her for her money. Bulstrode always said that Skelton married her to spite her relations. Certain it is, the declaration of the great family to which she belonged, that she never should marry Skelton, did more to precipitate his offer than anything else. Afterwards his kindness to her, his delicacy, and the conviction that he did not know how absolutely she was mistress of her own fortune, deeply impressed her affectionate nature. In her last illness, which came before she had been married six months, the greed, the rapacity, the heartlessness of her own family was in marked contrast to Skelton’s delicate reticence. He declined to talk of her money, either to her or her lawyers; he left the room when she asked his wishes; he could not bargain with a creature so young, so tender, and so short a time for this world. But he reaped his reward, only with some results that nobody ever dreamed of, and which made Skelton in his heart denounce the whole tribe of lawyers as dolts, dunderheads, rascals, cheats, frauds, and incapables.
But although he very much doubted whether he ever would have cared to risk the matrimonial yoke again, it was inexpressibly irritating to him to know that he could not, and that everybody knew he could not. He noticed, sardonically, the manœuvring mothers and designing daughters gave faint indications that he was not in the running; and worldly-wise young women would be likely to be shy of his attentions, for they could mean nothing. Skelton gave them no cause to be shy of him, but the whole thing humiliated him. There was that charming Sylvia—so thought Skelton, sitting in the library that afternoon with a book in his hand which he was not reading—she entertained him vastly; but no doubt that fool of a mother had canvassed his affairs and his status, and had put notions in the girl’s head. He was half sorry that he had asked her there, for to-morrow he meant to make a fair start on his book, to which he had so far written only the introduction.
The next day Sylvia and her father came over to luncheon, Mrs. Shapleigh being ill—to Skelton’s great joy. Bulstrode rarely came to the table, and never when ladies were present; so there were only Skelton and Lewis Pryor and old Tom Shapleigh and his daughter.
Lewis was delighted to see Sylvia, and showed his pleasure by shy, adoring glances and vivid blushes whenever she smiled at him. Things at Deerchase appeared very grand to Sylvia’s provincial eyes, but she seemed to fit easily and gracefully into the surroundings. Skelton had never lacked for charm, and he was impelled to do his best in his own house. Old Tom tried to talk racing once or twice, but Skelton adroitly headed him off. He fascinated Sylvia with his conversation. It was thoroughly unaffected, racy, full of anecdote, and all about things that Sylvia wanted to know. Skelton had been to Abbotsford, and had spent some days under the great man’s roof. He had travelled post with Byron, and had walked with Goethe in his garden at Weimar. To a girl at that time and in that part of the world all this was a splendid dream. Sylvia looked at Skelton with new eyes. That brown, sinewy hand had touched Byron’s; that musical voice had talked with Scott and Goethe; he had walked over the field of Waterloo, and knew London and Paris like a book. Skelton was pleased and amused with Sylvia’s breathless interest—her innocent wonder at many very simple things. Much of it was new to Lewis, and when Sylvia turned to him and said:
“Ah, Lewis! is it not delightful?� Lewis answered:
“Yes, and it is so delightful for us to hear it together.�
Lewis was not quite conscious of the meaning of what he said, but a roar from old Tom, and much laughter from Skelton, and Sylvia’s retiring behind her fan, made him blush more than ever and abstain from further communications with Sylvia.
After luncheon and the pictures, old Tom would by no means be denied a visit to the stables and Jaybird, so Sylvia was left to the tender mercies of Bob Skinny as cicerone, who showed her the greenhouses and gardens. Lewis kept close to her, and plucked up spirit enough to squeeze her hand whenever he had half a chance, and to offer to take her out in his boat every day if she would go. Bob Skinny was in his glory. He wore a blue coat and brass buttons, and a huge cambric ruffle decorated with cotton lace adorned his shirt-front. If Bob Skinny had had anything whatever to do in the way of work, this style of dress would have been an impossibility; but as he managed to make the other negroes do his work, while he devoted himself to answering Skelton’s bell, to the care of his own person, and playing the “fluke,� he could afford to be a magnificent coxcomb.