“Nonsense, Robert! I gave you credit for too much good sense to listen to the gossip of silly old wives. Put all these ridiculous tales of ghosts and hobgoblins out of your mind, man, and do not make me laugh at you, as if you were a child who had been so frightened by stories of ‘raw-head and bloody-bones,’ that you were afraid to blow out your candle and creep into bed.”
“I am neither a fool nor a coward, and I will fight anything that I can feel has bone and muscle; but I am satisfied that if all the water in Siloam were poured over this place, it would not wash out the curse that people tell me has always rested on it since the time the pirates first located here. I can’t admit I believe in witches, but undoubtedly I do believe in Satan, who seems to have a fee-simple to the place. It is not enough that my poor mother is buried yonder, but 343 my wheat and oats took the rust; the mildew spoiled my grape crop; the rains ruined my melons; the worms ate up every blade of my grass; the cows have got the black-tongue; the gale blew down my pigeon-house and mashed all my squabs; and my splendid carnations and fuchsias are devoured by red spider. Nothing thrives, and I am sick at heart.”
The dogged discontent written so legibly on his countenance, did not encourage the visitor to enter into a discussion of the abstract causes of blight, gales, and black-tongue, and he merely answered,—
“The evils you have enumerated are not peculiar to any locality; and all the farmers in this neighborhood are echoing your complaints. How is Mrs. Gerome?”
“Neither better nor worse. You know what miserable weather we have had for a week. This morning she ordered the small carriage and horses brought to the door, and when I took the reins, she dismissed me and said she preferred driving herself. I told her the grays had not been used, and were badly pampered standing so long in their stalls, and that I was really afraid they would break her neck, as she was not strong enough to manage them; but she laughed, and answered that if they did, it would be the best day’s work they had ever accomplished, and she would give them a chance. Down the beach they went like a flash, and when she came home their flanks smoked like a lime-kiln. What is ever to be done with my mistress, I am sure I don’t know. She makes the house so doleful, that nobody wants to stay here, and only yesterday Katie and Phœbe, the cook, gave notice that they wished to leave when the month was out. She has no idea what she will do, or where she will go. We have wanted a hot-house, and she ordered me to get the builder’s estimate of the cost of two plans which she drew; but when I carried them to her, she pushed them aside, and said she would think of the matter, but thought she might leave this place, and therefore would not need the building. She is as notionate as a child; and no one but my poor mother could ever manage her. Hist! sir! Don’t you hear her? You may be sure there is mischief brewing when she sings like that.”
Dr. Grey walked towards the house, and paused on the portico to listen,—
|
“Quis est homo, qui non fleret Christi matrem si videret, In tanto supplicio.” |
The voice was not so strong as when he had heard it in Addio del Passata, but the solemn mournfulness of its cadences was better suited to the Stabat Mater, and indexed much that no other method of expression would have reached. After some moments she forsook Rossini, and began the Agnus Dei from Haydn’s Third Mass,—
| “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere.” |