“Yes, I’ve been drinking,� cried Bulstrode, with a frank laugh; “but you know yourself I’m a much better and braver man drunk than sober. When I’m sober I’m cowed by that devilish cool gentlemanliness of yours; but when I’ve had a bottle of port I’m as good a man as you, Skelton; and I see that you will never be happy until you have made Blair the wretchedest man alive. Come, now. You’ve got lashings of money. Blair is as poor as a church mouse. You have got everything on earth.�
Skelton had risen during this, and could scarcely keep his hands off Bulstrode where he sat; but it was grotesque enough that he could not make Bulstrode hold his tongue. He could only say between his teeth:
“Drunken dog!�
Bulstrode rose too at that, with a kind of dogged courage. “I am a drunken dog, I am!� he said; “but I am Wat Bulstrode, too; don’t forget that. Don’t forget that I know a great deal more out of books than you do. Don’t forget that you could hardly get another man who could fill my place. Don’t forget that I am more to you than all those thousands of volumes you’ve got in yonder. Don’t forget that I am Lewis Pryor’s guardian until he is one and twenty. You may regret that fact, but you can’t alter it. And, more than all—let me tell you—I know all the very curious provisions of your wife’s will. You never condescended to ask me to keep silence, and I made you no promise. Drunken dog, indeed! And I could tell that which would turn this county bottom upwards! Suppose I were to tell Mrs. Blair to make herself easy; that those fools of lawyers made it so that one day, whether you die or marry, everything that was your wife’s goes to your heirs—and she is your heir, because you’ve got no other relations. And Lewis Pryor—ah, Skelton, how many clever men overreach themselves! I know, too, that so bunglingly did these legal fools their work, that if you could prove that you had a son at the time of your wife’s death, he would get the fortune. That fate was so desperately at work against common sense, that they forgot to put in whether he should be entitled to your name or not. But so cleverly have you made it appear that Lewis Pryor is the son of that lanky, sandy-haired tutor, that maybe you would have a hard time unravelling your own web. And so you think me a drunken dog, hey? All this I tell you is as clear as a bell in my—drunken mind, as you would call it.�
Skelton’s face had turned blue with rage while Bulstrode was speaking; but there was no way to make him stop, except pounding him with the chair. And then, Skelton wanted to find out how much Bulstrode really knew. Yes, he knew it all. Well might Skelton hate Blair and pursue his ruin. Either the Blairs must happen, by the most fortuitous accident, to fall into a great fortune at his death, or else the stigma that he had so carefully removed, as far as the world knew, from Lewis must be published in two countries. Fury and dismay kept him silent, but Bulstrode actually quailed under his eye when once Skelton had fixed it on him. Skelton spoke after a little pause:
“Your knowledge is entirely correct; and more, you are at liberty to proclaim it to the world any day you feel like it. The extraordinary part of it is that some wretch, as loose of tongue as you, has not by this time done so. It is a wonder that some creature, inspired by gratuitous ill-will towards that innocent boy, has not already published his shame. But the world, that is so forgiving and gentle to me, is already arrayed against him. The people in this county, for example, who seek the society of the owner of Deerchase, have condemned the innocent boy merely upon suspicion. It was so before I brought him here. No man or woman looked askant at me, but they put him beyond the pale. Bah! what a world it is!�
Bulstrode’s courage and swagger had abated all the time Skelton had been speaking. It never could stand up against Skelton’s coolness and determination. But some impulse of tenderness towards Lewis made him say:
“You need not fear for one moment that I would harm the boy. I too love him. Unlike the world, I hold him to be innocent and you to be guilty.�
“Pshaw!� answered Skelton contemptuously, “you will not do him any harm until your heedless tongue begins to wag, when, in pure idleness and wantonness, you will tell all you know. However, the fact that you are about the only person in the world who takes a true view of the case, saves me from kicking you out of doors. You must see for yourself I love that boy with the strongest, strangest affection. It has been my punishment, to suffer acutely at all the contumely heaped upon him; to yearn for the only thing I can’t give him—an equality with his kind; to feel like the cut of a knife every slight, every covert indignity put upon him. I tell you, had Blair and his wife done the simplest kind thing for that boy, I believe it would have disarmed me. But, no; they have flouted him studiously. Blair has never heard Lewis’s name mentioned before me without a look that made me want to have him by the throat; and in return, he shall be a beggar.� Skelton said this with perfect coolness, but it made a cold chill run down Bulstrode’s backbone. “The least kindness, the smallest gentleness, shown that boy is eternally remembered by me, and I have too little, too little to remember. And shall I overlook the insolence of the Blairs towards him? Ah, no. That is not like me. The strongest hold you have over me, Bulstrode, is because I know you love that boy, and it would distress him to part with you. But I think I have had as much of your company as I care for just now, so go.�
Bulstrode went immediately.