"Mr. Omskirk," said Redclyffe to him, a day or two after the commencement of his visit, "how many years have you now been in this situation?"
"0, sir, ever since the Doctor's departure for America," said Omskirk, "now thirty and five years, five months, and three days."
"A long time," said Redclyffe, smiling, "and you seem to keep the account of it very accurately."
"A very long time, your honor," said Omskirk; "so long, that I seem to have lived one life before it began, and I cannot think of any life than just what I had. My life was broken off short in the midst; and what belonged to the earlier part of it was another man's life; this is mine."
"It might be a pleasant life enough, I should think, in this fine old Hall," said Redclyffe; "rather monotonous, however. Would you not like a relaxation of a few days, a pleasure trip, in all these thirty-five years? You old Englishmen are so sturdily faithful to one thing. You do not resemble my countrymen in that."
"0, none of them ever lived in an old mansion-house like this," replied Omskirk, "they do not know the sort of habits that a man gets here. They do not know my business either, nor any man's here."
"Is your master then, so difficult?" said Redclyffe.
"My master! Who was speaking of him?" said the old man, as if surprised. "Ah, I was thinking of Dr. Grimshawe. He was my master, you know."
And Redclyffe was again inconceivably struck with the strength of the impression that was made on the poor old man's mind by the character of the old Doctor; so that, after thirty years of other service, he still felt him to be the master, and could not in the least release himself from those earlier bonds. He remembered a story that the Doctor used to tell of his once recovering a hanged person, and more and more came to the conclusion that this was the man, and that, as the Doctor had said, this hold of a strong mind over a weak one, strengthened by the idea that he had made him, had subjected the man to him in a kind of slavery that embraced the soul.
And then, again, the lord of the estate interested him greatly, and not unpleasantly. He compared what he seemed to be now with what, according to all reports, he had been in the past, and could make nothing of it, nor reconcile the two characters in the least. It seemed as if the estate were possessed by a devil,--a foul and melancholy fiend,--who resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least, so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he felt a similar influence coming over himself, even in this little time that he had spent here; gradually, should this be his permanent residence,--and not so very gradually either,--there would come its own individual mode of change over him. That quick suggestive mind would gather the moss and lichens of decay. Palsy of its powers would probably be the form it would assume. He looked back through the vanished years to the time which he had spent with the old Doctor, and he felt unaccountably as if the mysterious old man were yet ruling him, as he did in his boyhood; as if his inscrutable, inevitable eye were upon him in all his movements; nay, as if he had guided every step that he took in coming hither, and were stalking mistily before him, leading him about. He sometimes would gladly have given up all these wild and enticing prospects, these dreams that had occupied him so long, if he could only have gone away and looked back upon the house, its inmates, and his own recollections no more; but there came a fate, and took the shape of the old Doctor's apparition, holding him back.