“Except a great bunch of steel keys,” I replied; and gazing at her nice retreating figure, saw it quickened, as a flash of lightning passed, with the effort of both hands to be quit of something.
The storm was dreadful; and I kept the window shut, but could not help watching, with a fearful joy, the many-fingered hazy pale vibrations, the reflections of the levin in the hollow of the land. And sadly I began to think of Uncle Sam and all his goodness; and how in a storm, a thousandfold of this, he went down his valley in the torrent of the waves, and must have been drowned, and perhaps never found again, if he had not been wearing his leathern apron.
This made me humble, as all great thoughts do, and the sidelong drizzle in among the heavy rain (from the big drops jostling each other in the air, and dashing out splashes of difference) gave me an idea of the sort of thing I was—and how very little more. And feeling rather lonely in the turn that things had taken, I rang the bell for somebody; and up came Stixon.
“Lor', miss! Lor', what a burning shame of Prick!—'Prick' we call her, in our genial moments, hearing as the 'k' is hard in Celtic language; and all abroad about her husband. My very first saying to you was, not to be too much okkipied with her. Look at the pinafore on her! Lord be with me! If his lordship, as caught me, that day of this very same month fifty years, in the gooseberry bush—”
“To be sure!” I said, knowing that story by heart, together with all its embellishments; “but things are altered since that day. Nothing can be more to your credit, I am sure, than to be able to tell such a tale in the very place where it happened.”
“But, Miss—Miss Erma, I ain't begun to tell it.”
“Because you remember that I am acquainted with it. A thing so remarkable is not to be forgotten. Now let me ask you a question of importance; and I beg you, as an old servant of this family, to answer it carefully and truly. Do you remember any one, either here or elsewhere, so like my father, Captain Castlewood, as to be taken for him at first sight, until a difference of expression and of walk was noticed?”
Mr. Stixon looked at me with some surprise, and then began to think profoundly, and in doing so he supported his chin with one hand.
“Let me see—like the Captain?” He reflected slowly: “Did I ever see a gentleman like poor Master George, as was? A gentleman, of course, it must have been—and a very tall, handsome, straight gentleman, to be taken anyhow for young Master George. And he must have been very like him, too, to be taken for him by resemblance. Well then, miss, to the best of my judgment, I never did see such a gentleman.”
“I don't know whether it was a gentleman or not,” I answered, with some impatience at his tantalizing slowness; “but he carried his chin stretched forth—like this.”