Colonel Piercey looked at her coldly, as he always did. It was on his lips to say, “She was not very good to you, that you should shed tears for her,” but he refrained. He could not refrain, however, from saying—which was perhaps worse—“I am afraid it is a thing which will much affect you.”
“Oh, me!” she cried, with a sort of proud disdain, and turned and left him without a word. Whatever happened he was always her hardest and coldest judge, suggesting meanness in her conduct and thoughts even to herself.
CHAPTER XXV.
No house could be more agitated and disturbed than was Greyshott on the night of Lady Piercey’s funeral. That event, indeed, was enough to throw a heavy cloud over the dwelling, where the imperious old lady had filled so large a place, that the mere emptiness, where her distinct and imposing figure was withdrawn, touched the imagination, even if it did not touch the heart. The impression, however, on such an occasion is generally one of subdued quiet and gloom—an arrest of life; whereas the great house was quivering with fears and suppositions, with the excitement of a struggle which nobody could see the end of, or divine how it should turn. The servants were in a ferment, some of them expecting dismissal; others agreed that under new sway, such as seemed to threaten, Greyshott would not be a place for them. The scene in the housekeeper’s room, where the heads of the female department sat together dismayed, and exchanged presentiments and resolutions, was tragic in its intensity of alarm and wrath. The cook had not given more than a passing thought to the dinner, which an eager kitchen-maid on her promotion had the charge of; and Parsons sat arranging her lists of linen with a proud but melancholy certainty that all would be found right, however hastily her reign might be brought to an end.
“I never thought as I should have to give them up to the likes of her,” Parsons said, among her tears. “Oh, my lady, my poor lady! She’s been took away from the evil to come.”
“She’d never have let the likes of her step within our doors,” said cook, indignant, “if it had only been poor Sir Giles, as is no better than a baby, that had been took, and my lady left to keep things straight.”
“Oh, don’t say that, cook, don’t say that,” cried Parsons, “for then he’d have been Sir Gervase, and she Lady Piercey, and my lady would have—bursted; that’s what she would have done.”
“Lord!” cried the cook, “Lady Piercey! But the Colonel or somebody would have stopped that.”
“There’s nobody as could have stopped it,” said Parsons, better informed. “They might say as he hadn’t his wits, and couldn’t manage his property, or that—but to stop him from being Sir Gervase, and her Lady Piercey, is what nobody can do; no, not the Queen, nor the Parliament: for he was born to that: Softy or not it don’t make no difference.”
“Lord!” said the cook again: and she took an opportunity shortly after of going into the kitchen and giving a look at the dinner, of which that ambitious, pushing kitchen-maid was making a chef-d’œuvre. The same information filtering through the house made several persons nervous. Simpson, the footman, for one, gave himself up for lost; and any other member of the household who had ever entered familiarly at the Seven Thorns, or given a careless order for a pot of beer to Patty, now shook in his shoes. The general sentiments at first had been those of indignation and scorn; but a great change soon came over the household—a universal thrill of alarm, a sense of insecurity. No one ventured now to mention the name of Patty. She, they called her with awe—and in the case of some far-seeing persons, like that kitchen-maid, the intruder had already received her proper name of Mrs. Gervase, or even Lady Gervase, from those whose education was less complete.