TWO PEERS SANS PEERAGE
Sir John had arrived and I caught sight of his heavy, expressionless face, which seemed more colourless than ever in the candle light.
Consternation reigned in the Hall,—a vast tumult of whispering and guarded gabble among servants, checked by sobs,—and I saw officers come and go, and the tall forms of Mohawks still as pines on a summer night.
The entire household was there—all excepting only Michael Cardigan and Felicity Warren.
The two score farm slaves were there huddled along the wall in dusky clusters, and their great, dark eyes wet with tears.
I saw Sir William's lawyer, Lafferty, come in with Flood, the Baronet's Bouw-Meester.[1]
His blacksmith, his tailor, and his armourer were there; also his gardener; the German, Frank, his butler; Pontioch, his personal waiter; and those two uncanny and stunted servants, the Bartholomews, with their dead white faces and dwarfish dignity.
Also I saw poor Billy, Sir William's fiddler, gulping down the blubbers; and there was his personal physician, Doctor Daly, very grave; and the servile Wall, schoolmaster to Lady Molly's brood; and I saw Nicholas, his valet, and black Flora, his cook, both sobbing into the same bandanna.
The dark Lady Johnson was there, very quiet in her grief, slow-moving, still beautiful, having by the hands the two youngest girls and boy, while near her clustered the older children, fat Peter and Betsy and pretty Lana.
A great multitude of candles burned throughout the hall; Sir William's silver and mahogany sparkled everywhere; and so did the naked claymores of the Highlanders on guard where the dead man lay in his own chamber, done, at last, with all perplexity and grief.