Mrs. McDermott, in truth, was not a lady who ever troubled herself to make her presence agreeable to those with whom she might be staying. Consideration for the comfort of others was a thought that never entered her mind. From the day of her arrival at Pincote she began to interfere with the existing arrangements of the house; finding fault with everything: changing this, altering the other, and evidently determined to have her own way in all. The first thing she did was to find fault with her bedroom, although it was one of the pleasantest apartments in the house, and had been especially arranged by Jane herself with a view to her aunt’s comfort. But it was not the best bedroom—the state bedroom, therefore Mrs. McDermott would have none of it. Into the state bedroom, a gloomy apartment fronting the north, which was never used above once or twice in half a dozen years, she migrated at once with all her belongings. Her next act, she being without a maid of her own at the time, was to induct one of the Pincote servants into that office, taking her altogether from her proper duties, and not permitting her to do a stroke of work for any one but herself. Then she talked her brother into allowing the dinner hour to be altered from six to half-past seven; so that, as the Squire grumbled to himself, the cloth was hardly removed before it was time to go to bed. Then the Squire must never appear at dinner without a dress coat, and a white tie—articles which, or late years, he had been tacitly allowed to dispense with when dining en famille. A white cravat especially was to him an abomination. He never could tie the knot properly, and after crumpling three or four, and throwing them across the room in a rage, Jane’s services would generally have to be called into requisition as a last resource.
One other infliction there was which the Squire found it very difficult to bear patiently. After dinner, when there was no particular company at Pincote, it was an understood thing that the Squire should have the dining-room to himself for half an hour, in order that he might enjoy the post-prandial snooze which long custom had made almost a necessity with him. But this was an arrangement that failed to meet with the approbation of Mrs. McDermott. She insisted that the Squire should either accompany the ladies, or, otherwise, she herself would keep him company in the dining-room; and woe be to him if he dared so much as close an eye for five seconds! It was “Where are your manners, sir? I’m thoroughly ashamed of you;” or else, “Falling asleep, sir, in the presence of a lady? a clodhopper could do no more than that!” till the Squire felt as if his life were being slowly tormented out of him.
Nor did Jane fail to come in for a share of her aunt’s strictures. Mrs. McDermott evidently looked upon her as little more than a child. Firstly, her hair was not arranged in accordance with her aunt’s ideas of propriety in such matters, which, truth to say, belonged to a somewhat antiquated school. Then the girl was altogether too bright and sunny-looking, with her bows of ribbon and bits of lace showing daintily here and there. And she was too forward in introducing topics of conversation at meal-times, instead of allowing the introduction of appropriate themes to come from her elders and her betters. Then Jane was addicted to the heinous offence of laughing too heartily, and too often. Altogether her aunt saw in her much that stood in need of reformation. Jane bore everything with a sort of good-humoured indifference. “The time to speak is not come yet. I will see how much further she will go,” she said to herself. But when the cook came to her one morning and said: “If you please, miss, Mrs. Dermott says that for the future I am to take my dinner orders from her,” then Jane thought that the time to speak was drawing very near indeed.
“Do as Mrs. McDermott tells you,” she said quietly to the astonished cook.
“Well, I never! I thought that the mistress had more spirit than that,” said the woman as she went back to her duties in the kitchen.
Next day brought the coachman. “Beg pardon, miss,” he said, with a touch of his hair; “but Mrs. McDermott have given orders that the brougham and gray mare is to be ready for her every afternoon at three o’clock to the minute. I am to take the order, miss, I suppose?”
“Quite right, John, till I give you orders to the contrary.”
Next came the gardener. “Very sorry, miss, but I shall have to give notice—I shall really.”
“Why, what’s amiss now, Gibson?”
“It’s all Mrs. McDermott, miss; begging your pardon for saying so. Why will she pretend to understand gardening better than me that has been at it, man and boy, for fifty year? Why will she come finding fault with this, that, and the other, in a way that neither the Squire nor you, miss, ever thinks of doing? And she not only finds fault, but gives orders, ridiculous orders, about things she knows nothing of. I can’t stand it, miss, I really can’t.”