Chapter 23

Redclyffe was now established in the great house which had been so long
and so singularly an object of interest with him. With his customary
impressibility by the influences around him, he begun to take in the
circumstances, and to understand them by more subtile tokens than he
could well explain to himself. There was the steward, [Endnote: 1] or
whatever was his precise office; so quiet, so subdued, so nervous, so
strange! What had been this man's history? What was now the secret of
his daily life? There he was, creeping stealthily up and down the
staircases, and about the passages of the house; always as if he were
afraid of meeting somebody. On seeing Redclyffe in the house, the
latter fancied that the man expressed a kind of interest in his face;
but whether pleasure or pain he could not well tell; only he sometimes
found that he was contemplating him from a distance, or from the
obscurity of the room in which he sat,--or from a corridor, while he
smoked his cigar on the lawn. 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.

"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