The Spectre Cook of Bangletop - Page 2

invariably took what is
commonly known as French leave no occupant could ever learn, because, male
or female, the departed domestics never returned to tell, and even had
they done so, the pride of the Bangletops would not have permitted them to
listen to the explanation. The Bangletop escutcheon was clear of blots, no
suspicion even of a conversational blemish appearing thereon, and it was
always a matter of extreme satisfaction to the family that no one of its
scions since the title was created had ever been known to speak directly
to any one of lesser rank than himself, communication with inferiors being
always had through the medium of a private secretary, himself a baron, or
better, in reduced circumstances.

The first cook to leave Bangletop under circumstances of a Gallic
nature--that is, without known cause, wages, or luggage--had been employed
by Fitzherbert Alexander, seventeenth Baron of Bangletop, through Charles
Mortimor de Herbert, Baron Peddlington, formerly of Peddlington Manor at
Dunwoodie-on-the-Hike, his private secretary, a handsome old gentleman of
sixty-five, who had been deprived of his estates by the crown in 1629
because he was suspected of having inspired a comic broadside published in
those troublous days, and directed against Charles the First, which had
set all London in a roar.

This broadside, one of very few which are not preserved in the British
Museum--and a greater tribute to its rarity could not be devised--was
called, "A Good Suggestion as to ye Proper Use of ye Chinne Whisker," and
consisted of a few lines of doggerel printed beneath a caricature of the
king, with the crown hanging from his goatee, reading as follows:

"_Ye King doth sporte a gallous grey goatee
Uponne ye chinne, where every one may see.
And since ye Monarch's head's too small to holde
With comfort to himselfe ye crowne of gold,
Why not enwax and hooke ye goatee rare,
And lette ye British crown hang down from there?_"

Whether or no the Baron of Peddlington was guilty of this traitorous
effusion no one, not even the king, could ever really make up his mind.
The charge was never fully proven, nor was De Herbert ever able to refute
it successfully, although he made frantic efforts to do so. The king,
eminently just in such matters, gave the baron the benefit of the doubt,
and inflicted only half the penalty prescribed, confiscating his estates,
and letting him keep his head and liberty. De Herbert's family begged the
crown to reverse the sentence, permitting them to keep the estates, the
king taking their uncle's head in lieu thereof, he being unmarried and
having no children who would mourn his loss. But Charles was poor rather
than vindictive at this period, and preferring