“Sherry or ‘ock, sir?”
George could not have explained why this reminder of the butler’s presence should have made him feel better, but it did. There was something solid and tranquilizing about Keggs. He had noticed it before. For the first time the sensation of having been smitten over the head with some blunt instrument began to abate. It was as if Keggs by the mere intonation of his voice had said, “All this no doubt seems very strange and unusual to you, but feel no alarm! I am here!”
George began to sit up and take notice. A cloud seemed to have cleared from his brain. He found himself looking on his fellow-diners as individuals rather than as a confused mass. The prophet Daniel, after the initial embarrassment of finding himself in the society of the lions had passed away, must have experienced a somewhat similar sensation.
He began to sort these people out and label them. There had been introductions in the drawing-room, but they had left him with a bewildered sense of having heard somebody recite a page from Burke’s peerage. Not since that day in the free library in London, when he had dived into that fascinating volume in order to discover Maud’s identity, had he undergone such a rain of titles. He now took stock, to ascertain how many of these people he could identify.
The stock-taking was an absolute failure. Of all those present the only individuals he could swear to were his own personal little playmates with whom he had sported in other surroundings. There was Lord Belpher, for instance, eyeing him with a hostility that could hardly be called veiled. There was Lord Marshmoreton at the head of the table, listening glumly to the conversation of a stout woman with a pearl necklace, but who was that woman? Was it Lady Jane Allenby or Lady Edith Wade-Beverly or Lady Patricia Fowles? And who, above all, was the pie-faced fellow with the moustache talking to Maud?
He sought assistance from the girl he had taken in to dinner. She appeared, as far as he could ascertain from a short acquaintance, to be an amiable little thing. She was small and young and fluffy, and he had caught enough of her name at the moment of introduction to gather that she was plain “Miss” Something–a fact which seemed to him to draw them together.
“I wish you would tell me who some of these people are,” he said, as she turned from talking to the man on her other-side. “Who is the man over there?”
“Which man?”
“The one talking to Lady Maud. The fellow whose face ought to be shuffled and dealt again.”
“That’s my brother.”
That held George during the soup.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” he said rallying with the fish.
“That’s very sweet of you.”
“It was the light that deceived me. Now that I look again, I see that his face has great charm.”
The girl giggled. George began to feel better.
“Who are some of the others? I didn’t get your name, for instance. They shot it at me so quick that it had whizzed by before I could catch it.”
“My name is Plummer.”
George was electrified. He looked across the table with more vivid interest. The amorous Plummer had been just a Voice to him till now. It was exciting to see him in the flesh.
“And who are the rest of them?”
“They are all members of the family. I thought you knew them.”
“I know Lord Marshmoreton. And Lady Maud. And, of course, Lord Belpher.” He caught Percy’s eye as it surveyed him coldly from the other side of the table, and nodded cheerfully. “Great pal of mine, Lord Belpher.”
The fluffy Miss Plummer twisted her pretty face into a grimace of disapproval.
“I don’t like Percy.”
“No!”
“I think he’s conceited.”
“Surely not? ‘What could he have to be conceited about?”
“He’s stiff.”
“Yes, of course, that’s how he strikes people at first. The first time I met him, I thought he was an awful stiff. But you should see him in his moments of relaxation. He’s one of those fellows you have to get to know. He grows on you.”