Erema; Or, My Father's SinBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
History
Erema; Or, My Father's Sin
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
California -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“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.”
For Stixon's own attitude had reminded me of a little point in Jacob
Rigg's description, which otherwise might have escaped me.
“Lor', now, and he carried his chin like that!” resumed the butler, with
an increase of intelligence by no means superfluous. “Why, let me see,
now, let me see. Something do come across my mind when you puts out your
purty chin, miss; but there, it must have been a score of years agone,
or more--perhaps five-and-twenty. What a daft old codger I be getting,
surely! No wonder them new lights puts a bushel over me.”
“No,” I replied; “you are simply showing great power of memory, Stixon.
And now please to tell me, as soon as you can, who it was--a tall man,
remember, and a handsome one, with dark hair, perhaps, or at any rate
dark eyes--who resembled (perhaps not very closely, but still enough to
mislead at a distance) my dear father--Master George, as you call him,
for whose sake you are bound to tell me every thing you know. Now try to
think--do please try your very best, for my sake.”
“That I will, miss; that I will, with all my heart, with all my mind,
with all my soul, and with all my strength, as I used to have to say
with my hands behind my back, afore education were invented. Only please
you to stand with your chin put out, miss, and your profield towards me.
That is what brings it up, and nothing else at all, miss. Only, not to
say a word of any sort to hurry me. A tracherous and a deep thing is the
memory and the remembrance.”
Mr. Stixon's memory was so deep that there seemed to be no bottom to it,
or, at any rate, what lay there took a very long time to get at. And I
waited, with more impatience than hope, the utterance of his researches.
“I got it now; I got it all, miss, clear as any pictur'!” the old man
cried out, at the very moment when I was about to say, “Please to leave
off; I am sure it is too much for you.” “Not a pictur' in all of our
gallery, miss, two-and-fifty of 'em, so clear as I see that there man,
dark as it was, and a heavy wind a-blowing. What you call them things,
miss, if you please, as comes with the sun, like a face upon the water?
Wicked things done again the will of the Lord, and He makes them fade
out afterwards.”
“Perhaps you mean photographs. Is that the word?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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