The man’s comely face darkened.
“You will take it back,” said he. “I’ll smash your blasted head if you don’t.”
The American was suddenly aware that he was in the presence of a very ugly proposition. The man was large, strong, and evidently most earnest and determined. His brows were knotted, his eyes flashing, and his fists clenched. On neutral ground he struck the journalist as really being a very different person to the obsequious and silken footman of Trustall Old Manor. The American had all the courage, both of his race and of his profession, but he realised suddenly that he was very much in the wrong. He was man enough to say so.
“Well, sir, this once,” said the footman, as they shook hands. “I don’t approve of the mixin’ of classes—none of the best servants do. But I’m on my own to-day, so we’ll let it pass. But I wish you’d set it right with your people, sir. I wish you would make them understand that an English servant can give good and proper service and yet that he’s a human bein’ I after all.”
IV. THE FALL OF LORD BARRYMORE
These are few social historians of those days who have not told of the long and fierce struggle between those two famous bucks, Sir Charles Tregellis and Lord Barrymore, for the Lordship of the Kingdom of St. James, a struggle which divided the whole of fashionable London into two opposing camps. It has been chronicled also how the peer retired suddenly and the commoner resumed his great career without a rival. Only here, however, one can read the real and remarkable reason for this sudden eclipse of a star.
It was one morning in the days of this famous struggle that Sir Charles Tregellis was performing his very complicated toilet, and Ambrose, his valet, was helping him to attain that pitch of perfection which had long gained him the reputation of being the best-dressed man in town. Suddenly Sir Charles paused, his coup d’archet half-executed, the final beauty of his neck-cloth half-achieved, while he listened with
surprise and indignation upon his large, comely, fresh-complexioned face. Below, the decorous hum of Jermyn Street had been broken by the sharp, staccato, metallic beating of a doorknocker.
“I begin to think that this uproar must be at our door,” said Sir Charles, as one who thinks aloud. “For five minutes it has come and gone; yet Perkins has his orders.”
At a gesture from his master Ambrose stepped out upon the balcony and craned his discreet head over it. From the street below came a voice, drawling but clear.