Skelton

“ 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. ”

“ Skelton was, however, probably more gratified by his own Skeltonical style, moulding it with the wantonness of power on whatever theme, comic or serious. In a poem remarkable for its elegant playfulness, a very graceful maiden, whose loveliness the poet has touched with the most vivid colouring, grieving over the fate of her sparrow from its feline foe, chants a dirige, a paternoster, and an Ave Maria for its soul, and the souls of all sparrows. ”

“ Afar off, at the negro quarters, a circle of dark figures sat around an outdoor fire, and a song faintly echoed from them. Skelton tried to distinguish Sylvia’s window from the dark pile of the Belfield house, but could not, and smiled at himself for his folly, and was glad to know such folly. He was no mean philosopher in the actual experiences of life. ”

“ Skelton went straight to the library. Bulstrode was still there, sitting in a great chair leaning heavily forward. The daylight had begun to penetrate through the heavy curtains, and the candles were spluttering in their sockets. The first shock over, Bulstrode had got back some of his courage. Skelton, with an inscrutable smile on his face, walked up to him. Never was there a greater contrast between two men—one, a thoroughbred from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, accustomed to the habit of command; the other, bourgeois all over, and only asserting himself by an effort. ”

“ Skelton, you don’t know what it is to be caged!”
Skelton thought he understood her.
“Some day you will see the world,” he said, “and then you will lose all of your illusions. I am satisfied at Deerchase, because I know it is as good a spot as any in the world.”
“Do you think I will ever see the world?” said Sylvia. “Well, I don’t think I will. I want it too much. We never get what we want very, very much.”
“Yes, we do,” replied Skelton, looking skyward. “We want rain very, very much, and we will get it very soon.” ”

“ If Skelton ever tries to prove that Lewis is his son, mark my words, the boy will fight against it—he will fight against it. I can’t make out what he really thinks now, but he clings so hard to his Pryor parentage, he speaks of it so often, he treasures up every little thing that he inherited from the Pryors, that sometimes I fancy he has doubts. He is always anxious to disclaim any authority Skelton asserts over him. [205] The Pryors and Skelton in the beginning, supposing I knew nothing about the boy, agreed in making me the boy’s guardian. ”

“ O'Water was in his native element, that of hair-breadth escape and peril. As to Heron and Skelton, they might have flagged, but for Richard; he flattered their pride, raised their hopes, making weariness and danger a plaything and a jest. As the sun mounted in the sky, their horses showed many a sign of weariness; and in spite of a store of venison, which the careful Skelton had brought away with him, they needed refreshment; each mile lengthened to ten; each glade grew interminable in their eyes; and the wide forest seemed to possess all England in its extent. ”

“ Bulstrode looked surprised. He could not imagine why a dissipated old hulk like himself should outlast Skelton, who was in the most perfect vigour of manhood. As he watched Skelton walking across the lawn to the bridge he could not but observe his grace, his thoroughbred air, the indescribable something that made other men commonplace beside him. ”

“ They were separated from the house by great clumps of crape myrtle, then in its first pink glory. Some invisible bond seemed to unite all three. Skelton felt with the keenest delight the delicious emotions of youth—he was too true a philosopher not to [229] rejoice that he could still feel—and he had always feared and dreaded that chilling of his sensibilities which is the beginning of old age. How bewitching was Sylvia Shapleigh to him then, and if ever they should be married how kind she would be to Lewis! when suddenly came a piercing sense of chagrin and chafing rebellion. ”

“ The velocity of his verse has a carol of its own. The chimes ring in the ear, and the thoughts are flung about like coruscations. But the magic of the poet is confined to his spell; at his first step out of it he falls to the earth never to recover himself. Skelton is a great creator only when he writes what baffles imitation, for it is his fate, when touching more solemn strains, to betray no quality of a poet—inert in imagination and naked in diction. Whenever his muse plunges into the long measure of heroic verse, she is drowned in no Heliconian stream. ”

“ But growing old soothed by Sylvia’s charming companionship and tender ministrations, and with new ties, new emotions, new pleasures, was not terrifying to him. He revolved these things in his mind, occasionally looking fondly at the sleeping boy, who was indeed all that Skelton said he was. Skelton had no idea of falling asleep, but gradually a delicious languor stole on him. How merrily the blackbirds were singing outside, and the sparrows chirped and chattered under the eaves! ”

“ The sinking sun was shining upon a new heaven and a new earth. The trees, the grass, the shrubbery were diamonded with drops and sparkling brilliantly; the river ran joyously; the damp, sweet-scented air had a delicious freshness; all Nature was refreshed and glad. Skelton felt that it was like his [285] own life—a sunset calm after a storm. He felt not only a happier man than he had been for many years, but a better man.
Half an hour after, when Skelton and Sylvia were sitting together in the cool, dark drawing-room, the door suddenly opened, and Mrs. Shapleigh sailed in, followed by old Tom. ”

“ He is not a bad man; on the contrary, he has a sort of rude honour and conscience of his own. He refused orders in the English Church because he knew himself to be unfit. Besides looking after my books, he is tutor to Lewis Pryor, the son of an old friend and tutor of mine, the Rev. Thomas Pryor.”
Skelton brought all this out in his usual calm, easy, man-of-the-world manner. At that moment the boy passed across the lawn very close to the window, where he stopped and whistled to his dog. Never were two pairs of eyes so alike as Skelton’s and this boy’s. ”

“ Meanwhile, Bulstrode stood in his careless attitude, looking after them, his eyes fixed on Skelton’s straight, well set-up figure.
“There you go,” he apostrophised. “Most men think they could advise the Almighty; but you, Richard Skelton, think yourself the Lord Almighty Himself! ”

“ It seemed as if by some psychic influence he followed the very train of thought then going through Skelton’s mind.
“The women all like Lewis. I tell you, that’s a very dangerous gift for a man—worse, even, than genius.” ”

“ How many days can any mortal point to when one has become happy, has become generous, has become beloved? Yet, such had been this day with Skelton. Sylvia, who had been dear to him before, became dearer. Something in the time, the spot, the aloneness, waked a deeper passion in him than he had felt before. ”

“ It is your business to fit yourself for your manhood. You have every advantage for acquiring the education of a gentleman. Bulstrode, with all his faults, is the best-educated man I ever met; and, besides, it is my wish, my command, that you shall be studious.”
“But, Mr. Skelton,” said Lewis, with strange composure, and as if asking a simple question, “while I know you are very generous to me, why do you command me? Mr. Bulstrode is my guardian.”
The boy’s audacity and the shock of finding that his mind had begun to dwell on his status at Deerchase, completely staggered Skelton. ”

“ Just as Lewis suddenly seemed to become a man and his face lost its boyish character, so Skelton’s face grew younger and gentler by reason of the upspringing of a host of strange feelings. It seems as if the opening of his heart to Lewis had made a new man of him. He sometimes thought to himself: “What wonderful vitality have these old emotions, after all! It seems impossible either to starve them or strangle them.”
Sylvia Shapleigh appeared to him more and more captivating, and he realised after a while that he was as much in love with her as he could be with any woman. ”

“ Skelton has himself furnished a catalogue of his numerous writings, the greater number of which have not come down to us. Literary productions were at that day printed on loose sheets, or in small pamphlets, which the winds seem to have scattered. We learn there of his graver labours. ”

“ He realised well enough that only a woman in a thousand could make him happy, but Sylvia Shapleigh, he began to feel, was the woman. And, considering the extreme affection he felt for Lewis, it was not unlikely—here Skelton laughed to himself—that he was by nature a domestic character. He began to fancy life at Deerchase with Sylvia, and became quite fascinated with the picture drawn by his own imagination. She was a woman well calculated to gratify any man’s pride, and deep down in his own heart Skelton knew that was the great thing with him. ”

“ As for Skelton, he walked down towards the river in a kind of ecstasy. The boy’s heart was his. No lover winning his mistress ever felt a more delicious triumph.
As he strolled along by the cedar hedges near the river, and the masses of crape myrtle and syringa, that could withstand the salt air and the peevish winds of winter, he began to consider all his new sources of happiness. There was the deep, tumultuous joy of Sylvia’s love, and the profound tenderness he felt for Lewis, that had only grown the more [309] for the stern subduing of it ”

“ Skelton fell back in his chair, with something like a groan. He had not meant to tell it in that way; he had been betrayed into it, as it were, by the very tenderness of his love, by the scorn of the idea that anybody should suspect that he would permit the Blairs, or anybody in the world, to profit to Lewis’s disadvantage. He had sometimes in bitterness said to himself that love was not meant for him. Whether he loved—as he truly did—in that first early passion for Elizabeth Armistead, he was scorned and cast aside ”

“ The reverend gentleman was luckily deaf to this, and Skelton immediately rose to go, with a wicked smile at Sylvia, who, in her way, seemed to lack for appreciation of her mother’s ecclesiastical idol quite as much as Bulstrode. When Skelton was back at Deerchase that night he thought Sylvia one of the most winning girls he had ever met. But then, he could not admire a charming girl as other men could. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Mrs. Skelton, Imogene, Blount and himself were preparing to return, and Castleman and his friends were entering their own car, a third party hitherto unknown to Blount or Gregory appeared and engaged the two women in conversation, finally persuading them to return with them in their car. Mrs. Skelton thereupon apologized and explained that they were old friends whom she had not seen for a long time, and that they would all meet at the hotel later for a game of bridge. Blount and Gregory, left thus to themselves, decided to take a short cut to a nearby turnpike so as to beat them home. ”

“ Never man so overreached himself as Richard Skelton. The Pryors both died when Lewis was about five years old. Skelton sent for him—from an awakening sense of duty, I fancy—and immediately conceived such a passion of paternal love as you never saw in your life, and could never part with him afterwards. You love your boy; Skelton idolises his.”
Bulstrode had stopped his agitated walk while telling this, but he began it again, his lumbering figure making grotesque shadows on the wall. Mrs. Blair listened, overwhelmed as much by Bulstrode’s manner as by the strange things he was telling her. ”

“ It is not improbable that Skelton invented the precise form of his favourite metre; but verse embodying its leading features was produced by French and Low-Latin writers before his time (cf. the fabliau ‘Piramus et Tisbé’ in Barbazan et Méon, Fabliaux, iv. 337–8) . That Skelton was acquainted with French literature is proved by his translation of Deguilleville's ‘Pelerinage de la Vie humaine’ and by his frequent interpolation of French words and phrases to meet the exigencies of his exacting scheme of rhymes. ”

“ He was beginning, late in life, to live through what other men are generally done with by that time. In Sylvia’s society he felt always an exquisite sense of well-being that he could not remember ever to have felt before with any human being except in a certain way with Lewis. When the boy had been younger Skelton recalled, that to watch him at play, or at his work, had always given him strange delight—a delight unique of its kind, and more nearly resembling happiness than anything he had ever known. ”