“But how can I know it—here?� asked Sylvia impatiently. “See how circumscribed our lives are! I never knew it until lately, and then it came home to me, as it does every day, that the great, wide, beautiful, exciting world is not as far removed as another planet, which I used to fancy. But when I want to see the world, papa and mamma tell me they will take me to the Springs! That’s not the world. It is only a little piece of this county picked up and put down in another county.�
Skelton was sitting on the bench by her. He watched her lovely, dissatisfied eyes as they glanced impatiently and contemptuously on the still and beautiful scene. Yes, it would be something to teach this woman how much there was beyond the mere beauty and plenty and ease of a country life in a remote provincial place. Sylvia caught his eyes fixed on her so searchingly that she coloured again—the blood that morning was perpetually playing hide and seek in her cheeks.
Skelton went on in a strain rather calculated to foster than to soothe her impatience. He saw at once that he could produce almost any effect he wanted upon her, and that is a power with which men and women are seldom forbearing. Certainly Skelton was not. He loved power better than anything on earth, and the conquest of a woman worth conquering gave him infinite pleasure.
He felt this intoxication of power as he watched Sylvia. Although he was not a vain man, he could almost have fixed the instant when she, who had been long trembling on the brink of falling in love with him, suddenly lost her balance. They had sat in the summerhouse a long time, although it seemed short to them. Their voices unconsciously dropped to a low key, and there were eloquent stretches of silence between them. The noon was gone, and they heard the faint sound of the bugle calling the hands to work in the fields after the midday rest. Sylvia started, and rose as if to go. Skelton, without moving, looked at her with a strange expression of command in his eyes. He touched the tips of her fingers lightly, and that touch brought her back instantly to his side.
The secret contempt that a commonplace man feels for a woman who falls in love with him comes from a secret conviction that he is not worthy of it, however blatant his vanity and self-love may be. But Skelton, the proudest but the least vain of men, was instinctively conscious that a woman who fell in love with him was really in love with certain great and commanding qualities he had. His self-love spoke the language of common sense to him. He did not give up the fight so quickly and conclusively as the younger and more impressionable Sylvia did. Knowing of a great stumbling block in his way, he had guarded himself against vague, sweet fancies. But Skelton was too wise a man not to know that when the master passion appeared and said “Lo, I am here!� he is not to be dismissed like a lackey, but, willingly or unwillingly, he must be entertained. The great passions are all unmannerly. They come at inconvenient seasons without asking leave, and the master of the house must give place to these mighty and commanding guests. Women meet them obsequiously at the door; men remain to be sought by these lordly visitors, but do not thereby escape.
As Skelton felt more and more the charm of Sylvia’s sweetness, the ineffable flattery of her passion for him, a furious dissatisfaction began to work in him. If only he were placed like other men! But if he should love, the only way he could satisfy it would be by endowing the Blairs, whom he hated from his soul, with all his dead wife’s vast fortune, or else proclaiming a certain thing about Lewis Pryor that would indeed make him rich, but make him also to be despised. Neither of these things could he bear to think of then. He was not yet so subjugated that pride and revenge could be displaced at once. But still he could not drag himself away from Sylvia. It was Sylvia, in the end, who broke away from him. She glanced at a little watch she wore, and a flood of colour poured into her face. She looked so guilty that Skelton smiled, but it was rather a melancholy smile. He thought that they were like two fair ships driven against each other to their destruction by vagabond winds and contrary tides.
CHAPTER XIII.
Every circumstance connected with the coming race meeting disgusted Bulstrode more and more. One night, sitting over the walnuts and the wine in the dining-room at Deerchase with Skelton and Lewis, Bulstrode gave vent to his dissatisfaction. He did not always dine with Skelton, and, indeed, when Bob Skinny’s emissary came to his door to say that dinner was served, Bulstrode would generally answer: “Oh, hang dinner! I had a chop in the middle of the day, and I’ll be shot if I’ll sit for two hours with Skelton over a lot of French kickshaws, with him looking superciliously at me every time I touch the decanter.� Bob Skinny would translate this message as follows: “Mr. Bulstrode, he present he compliments, sah, an’ he say, ef you will have de circumlocution to excuse him, he done had he dinner.�
Lewis, though, always dined with Skelton and enjoyed it. Skelton was at his best at dinner, and would sometimes exert himself to please the boy, whose tastes were singularly like his own. Lewis liked the exquisitely appointed table, the sight of the flowers upon it, the subtile air of luxury pervading the whole. He liked to lie back in his chair, making his one small glass of sherry last as long as he could, looking out upon the black clumps of the shrubbery that loomed large in the purple twilight, listening to the soft, melodious ripple of the broad river, and to Skelton’s musical voice as he talked. It always vexed him when Miles Lightfoot was of the party, who was, however, under a good deal of restraint in Skelton’s presence.
On this particular evening, though, Bulstrode was dining with Skelton and Lewis. The room was dim, for all the wax candles in the world could not light it brilliantly, and it was odorous with the scent of the blossoms of a dogwood tree that bloomed outside, and even thrust their bold, pretty faces almost through the window. But Bulstrode was undeniably cross, and uncomfortably attentive to the decanters.