“Do you know anything of an American who says he is the cousin of the page-boy?”
“The boy Albert did introduce a nominee whom he stated to be ‘is cousin ‘ome from New York on a visit and anxious to oblige. I trust he ‘as given no dissatisfaction, your lordship? He seemed a respectable young man.”
“No, no, not at all. I merely wished to know if you knew him. One can’t be too careful.”
“No, indeed, your lordship.”
“That’s all, then.”
“Thank you, your lordship.”
Lord Belpher was satisfied. He was also relieved. He felt that prudence and a steady head had kept him from making himself ridiculous. When George presently returned with the life-saving fluid, he thanked him and turned his thoughts to other things.
But, if the young master was satisfied, Keggs was not. Upon Keggs a bright light had shone. There were few men, he flattered himself, who could more readily put two and two together and bring the sum to a correct answer. Keggs knew of the strange American gentleman who had taken up his abode at the cottage down by Platt’s farm. His looks, his habits, and his motives for coming there had formed food for discussion throughout one meal in the servant’s hall; a stranger whose abstention from brush and palette showed him to be no artist being an object of interest. And while the solution put forward by a romantic lady’s-maid, a great reader of novelettes, that the young man had come there to cure himself of some unhappy passion by communing with nature, had been scoffed at by the company, Keggs had not been so sure that there might not be something in it. Later events had deepened his suspicion, which now, after this interview with Lord Belpher, had become certainty.
The extreme fishiness of Albert’s sudden production of a cousin from America was so manifest that only his preoccupation at the moment when he met the young man could have prevented him seeing it before. His knowledge of Albert told him that, if one so versed as that youth in the art of Swank had really possessed a cousin in America, he would long ago have been boring the servants’ hall with fictions about the man’s wealth and importance. For Albert not to lie about a thing, practically proved that thing non-existent. Such was the simple creed of Keggs.
He accosted a passing fellow-servitor.
“Seen young blighted Albert anywhere, Freddy?”
It was in this shameful manner that that mastermind was habitually referred to below stairs.
“Seen ‘im going into the scullery not ‘arf a minute ago,” replied Freddy.
“Thanks.”
“So long,” said Freddy.
“Be good!” returned Keggs, whose mode of speech among those of his own world differed substantially from that which he considered it became him to employ when conversing with the titled.
The fall of great men is but too often due to the failure of their miserable bodies to give the necessary support to their great brains. There are some, for example, who say that Napoleon would have won the battle of Waterloo if he had not had dyspepsia. Not otherwise was it with Albert on that present occasion. The arrival of Keggs found him at a disadvantage. He had been imprudent enough, on leaving George, to endeavour to smoke a cigar, purloined from the box which stood hospitably open on a table in the hall. But for this, who knows with what cunning counter-attacks he might have foiled the butler’s onslaught? As it was, the battle was a walk-over for the enemy.
“I’ve been looking for you, young blighted Albert!” said Keggs coldly.
Albert turned a green but defiant face to the foe.
“Go and boil yer ‘ead!” he advised.
“Never mind about my ‘ead. If I was to do my duty to you, I’d give you a clip side of your ‘ead, that’s what I’d do.”
“And then bury it in the woods,” added Albert, wincing as the consequences of his rash act swept through his small form like some nauseous tidal wave. He shut his eyes. It upset him to see Keggs shimmering like that. A shimmering butler is an awful sight.
Keggs laughed a hard laugh. “You and your cousins from America!”