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Updated: May 15, 2025
Redclyffe's tone, and finely modulated voice, and glanced at his face, and then over his dress and figure, as if to gather from them some reliable data as to his station.
However, there was still the same heartiness under it all; and after a little he seemed, in some degree, to take Redclyffe's own view of the matter; namely, that, being so temporary as these republican distinctions are, they really do not go skin deep, have no reality in them, and that the sterling quality of the man, be it higher or lower, is nowise altered by it; an apothegm that is true even of an hereditary nobility, and still more so of our own Honorables and Excellencies.
A great part, if not the whole of this, he imputed to his knowledge of Redclyffe's connections with the Doctor; but yet this hardly seemed sufficient to account for the pertinacity with which the old man haunted his footsteps, the poor, nervous old thing, always near him, or often unexpectedly so; and yet apparently not very willing to hold conversation with him, having nothing of importance to say.
And yet it seemed very strange that Redclyffe should have gone so unceremoniously; nor was he half satisfied, though he knew not why he should be otherwise. "Do you happen to know Mr. Redclyffe's address in London," asked the Warden. "Not at all," said Braithwaite.
The old servant, whose grave, circumspect courtesy was a matter quite beyond Redclyffe's experience, soon knocked at the chamber door, and suggested that the guest might desire to await the Warden's arrival in the library, which was the customary sitting-room.
So it was with him when he first became aware of the old man, sitting there with that age-long regard directed towards him. But, by degrees, a sense of wonder had its will, and grew, slowly at first, in Redclyffe's mind; and almost twin-born with it, and growing piece by piece, there was a sense of awful fear, as his waking senses came slowly back to him.
It was too common an object to excite in his mind, as it did in Redclyffe's, visions of the long ago time when it was founded, when mass was first said there, and the glimmer of torches at the altar was seen through the vista of that broad-browed porch; and of all the procession of villagers that had since gone in and come out during nine hundred years, in their varying costume and fashion, but yet and this was the strongest and most thrilling part of the idea all, the very oldest of them, bearing a resemblance of feature, the kindred, the family likeness, to those who died yesterday, to those who still went thither to worship; and that all the grassy and half-obliterated graves around had held those who bore the same traits.
It must not be omitted, that there was a fragrance in the room, which, unlike as the scene was, brought back, through so many years, to Redclyffe's mind a most vivid remembrance of poor old Doctor Grim's squalid chamber, with his wild, bearded presence in the midst of it, puffing his everlasting cloud; for here was the same smell of tobacco, and on the mantel-piece of a chimney lay a German pipe, and an old silver tobacco-box into which was wrought the leopard's head and the inscription in black letter.
This history is a fine specimen of the kind." The work to which Redclyffe's attention was thus drawn was in two large folio volumes, published about thirty years before, bound in calf by some famous artist in that line, illustrated with portraits and views of ruined castles, churches, cathedrals, the seats of nobility and gentry; Roman, British, and Saxon remains, painted windows, oak carvings, and so forth.
Omskirk put it on the table in its original glass, and Braithwaite filled Redclyffe's glass and his own, and raised the latter to his lips, with a frank expression of his mobile countenance. "May you have a secure possession of your estate," said he, "and live long in the midst of your possessions. To me, on the whole, it seems better than your American prospects."
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