Mr. Edmund Plantagenet residence in Chiddingwick High Street was less
amply commodious, he often complained in the bosom of the family, than
his ancestoral home at Windsor Castle, erected by his august and famous
predecessor, King Edward III. of illustrious memory. Windsor Castle is a
house fit for a gentleman to live in. But as Mr. Plantagenet himself had
never inhabited the home of his forefathers--owing to family differences
which left it for the time being in the occupation of a Lady 'belonging
to the younger branch of the house'--he felt the loss of his hereditary
domains less keenly than might perhaps have been expected from so
sensitive a person. Still, the cottage at Chiddingwick, judged even by
the less exalted standard of Mr. Planta-genet's own early recollections,
was by no means unduly luxuriant. For Edmund Plantagenet had been well
brought up, and received in his day the education of a gentleman. Even
now, in his dishonoured and neglected old age, abundant traces of the
Charterhouse still remained to the bitter end in his voice and manner.
But little else was left. The White Horse had stolen away whatever other
relics of gentility Mr. Plantagenet possessed, and had reduced him in
his latter days to the miserable ruin of what was once a man, and even a
man of letters.
It was a sad history, and, alas! a very common one. Thirty years
before, when Edmund Plan tagenet, not yet a believer in his own real or
pretended royal descent, went up to London from Yorkshire to seek his
fortune in literature, he was one of the handsomest and most popular
young men in his own society. His name alone succeeded in attracting
attention; we are not all of us Plantagenets. The admirable Lady
Postlethwaite, arbiter in her day of literary reputation, gave the
man with the royal surname the run of her well-known _salon_; editors
accepted readily enough his inflated prose and his affected poetry;
and all the world went well with him for a time--while he remained a
bachelor. But one fine day Edmund Plantagenet took it into his head,
like many better men, to fall in love--we have done it ourselves, and we
know how catching it is--and not only to fall in love, but also, which
is worse, to give effect to his feelings by actually getting married.
In after-life Mr. Plantagenet regarded that unfortunate step as the one
fatal error in an otherwise blameless career. He felt that with a name
and prospects like his he ought at least to have married rank, title,
or money. Instead of which he just threw himself away: he married only
beauty, common-sense, and goodness. The first of these fades, the
second palls, and the third Mr. Plantagenet was never constructed to
appreciate. But rank and money appeal to all, and persist unchanged
after such skin-deep attractions as intellect or good looks have ceased
to interest.
From the day of his marriage, then, Edmund Plantagenet's downward career
began. As a married man, he became at once of less importance in Lady
Postlethwaite's society--he was so useful for dances. Editors found out
by degrees that he had only affectation and audacity in place of genius;
work fell short as children increased; and evil days began to close
in upon the growing family. But what was worst of all, as money grew
scarcer, a larger and larger proportion of it went each day to swell the
receipts, at first of his club, and afterwards, when clubs became things
of the past, of the nearest public-house. To make a long story short,
before many years were over, Edmund Plantagenet, the young, the
handsome, the promising, had degenerated from a dashing and well-bred
fellow into a miserable sot of the sorriest description.
But just in proportion as his real position grew worse and worse did Mr.
Plantagenet buoy himself up in secret with magnificent ideas about
his origin and ancestry. Even in his best days, indeed, he would never
consent to write under his own real name; he wouldn't draggle the
honour of the Plantagenets in the dirt of the street, he said with
fine contempt; so he adopted for literary purposes the high-sounding
pseudonym of Barry Neville. But after he began to decline, and to
give way to drink, his pretensions to royal blood became well-nigh
ridiculous. Not, indeed, that anyone ever heard him boast noisily of his
origin; Edmund Plantagenet was too clever a man of the world to adopt
such futile and obvious tactics; he knew a plan worth two of that; he
posed as a genuine descendant of the old Kings of England, more by tacit
assumption than by open assertion. Silence played his game far better
than speech. When people tried to question him on the delicate point
of his pedigree, he evaded them neatly, but with a mysterious air which
seemed to say every bit as plain as words could say it: 'I choose to
waive my legitimate claim, and I won't allow any man to bully me into
asserting it.' As he often implied to his familiar friends, he was too
much a gentleman to dispute the possession of the throne with a lady.
But Mr. Plantagenet's present ostensible means of gaining an honest
livelihood was by no means a regal one. He kept, as he was wont to
phrase it gently himself, a temple of Terpsichore. In other words, he
taught the local dancing-class. In his best days in London, when fortune
still smiled upon him, he had been famed as the most graceful waltzer in
Lady Postlethwaite's set; and now that the jade had deserted him, at
his lowest depth, he had finally settled down as the Chiddingwick
dancing-master. Sot as he was, all Chiddingwick supported him loyally,
for his name's sake; even Lady Agatha's children attended his lessons.
It was a poor sort of trade, indeed, for the last of the Plantagenets;
but he consoled himself under the disgrace with the cheerful reflection
that he served, after all, as it were, as his own Lord Chamberlain.
On this particular night, however, of all the year, Mr. Plantagenet
felt more profoundly out of humour with the world in general and his
own ancestral realm of England in particular, than was at all usual with
him. The fact was, his potential subjects had been treating him with
marked want of consideration for his real position. Kings in exile are
exposed to intolerable affronts. The landlord of the White Horse had
hinted at the desirability of arrears of pay on the score of past
brandies and sodas innumerable. The landlord was friendly, and proud of
his guest, who 'kept the house together'; but at times he broke out in
little fits of petulance. Now, Mr. Planta-genet, as it happened, had not
the wherewithal to settle this little account off-hand, and he took it
ill of Barnes, who, as he justly remarked, 'had had so much out of him,'
that he should endeavour to hurry a gentleman of birth in the matter
of payment. He sat by his own fireside, therefore, in no very amiable
humour, and watched the mother bustling about the room with her domestic
preparations for the family supper.
'Clarence,' Mr. Plantagenet said, after a moment of silence, to one of
the younger boys, 'have you prepared your Thucydides? It's getting very
late. You seem to me to be loafing about doing nothing.'
'Oh, I know it pretty well,' Clarence answered with a nonchalant air,
still whittling at a bit of stick he was engaged in transforming into
a homemade whistle. 'I looked it over in class. It's not very hard.
Thucydides is rot--most awful rot! It won't take five minutes.'
Mr. Plantagenet, with plump fingers, rolled himself another cigarette.
He had come down in the world, and left cigars far behind, a fragrant
memory of the distant past; but as a gentleman he could never descend to
the level of a common clay pipe.
'Very well,' he said blandly, leaning back in his chair and beaming
upon Clarence: a peculiar blandness of tone and manner formed Mr.
Plan-tagenet's keynote. 'That may do for _me_, perhaps; but it won't do
for Richard.'
After which frank admission of his own utter abdication of parental
prerogatives in favour of his own son, he proceeded very deliberately to
light his cigarette and stare with placid eyes at the dilatory Clarence.
There was a minute's pause; then Mr. Plantagenet began again.
'Eleanor,' he remarked, in the same soft, self-indulgent voice, to his
youngest daughter, 'you don't seem to be doing anything. I'm sure you've
got some lessons to prepare for to-morrow.'
Not that Mr. Plantagenet was in the least concerned for the progress of
his children's education; but the deeper they were engaged with their
books, the less noise did they make with their ceaseless chatter in the
one family sitting-room, and the more did they leave their fond father
in peace to his own reflections.
'Oh, there's plenty of time,' Eleanor answered, with a little toss of
her pretty head. 'I can do 'em by-and-by--after Dick comes in. He'll
soon be coming.'
'I wish to goodness he'd come, then!' the head of the house ejaculated
fervently; 'for the noise you all make when he isn't here to look after
you is enough to distract a saint. All day long I have to scrape at my
fiddle; and when I come back home at night I have to sit, as best I can,
in a perfect bedlam. It's too much for my poor nerves. They never were
vigorous.--Henry, my boy, _will_ you stop that intolerable noise?--A
Jew's harp, too! Goodness gracious! what a vulgar instrument!--Dick's
late to-night. I wonder what keeps him.'
It was part and parcel of Mr. Plantagenet's silent method of claiming
royal descent that he called all his children with studious care after
the earlier Plantagenets, his real or supposed ancestors, who were
Kings of England. Thus his firstborn was Richard, in memory of their
distinguished predecessor, the mighty Cour-de-Lion; his next was Lionel
Clarence, after the second son of Edward IV., the particular prince upon
whom Mr. Plantagenet chose to affiliate his family pedigree; and his
third was Henry, that being the Plantagenet name which sat first and
oftenest upon the throne of England. His eldest girl, in like manner,
was christened Maud, after the foundress of his house, who married
Geoffrey Plantagenet, and so introduced the blood of the Conqueror into
the Angevin race; his youngest was Eleanor, after the wife of Henry II.,
'who brought us Poitou and Aquitaine as heirlooms.'
Mr. Plantagenet, indeed, never overtly mentioned these interesting
little points in public himself; but they oozed out, for all that,
by lateral leakage, and redounded thereby much the more to their
contriver's credit. His very reticence told not a little in his favour.
For a dancing-master to claim by word or deed that he is _de jure_ King
of England would be to lay himself open to unsparing ridicule; but to
let it be felt or inferred that he is so, without ever for one moment
arrogating to himself the faintest claim to the dignity, is to pose
in silence as an injured innocent--a person of most distinguished and
exalted origin, with just that little suspicion of pathos and mystery
about his unspoken right which makes the thing really dignified and
interesting. So people at the White Horse were wont to whisper to one
another in an awe-struck undertone that 'if every man had his rights,
there's some as says our Mr. Plantagenet had ought to be sot pretty high
well up where the Queen's a-sitting.' And though Mr. Plantagenet himself
used gently to brush aside the flattering impeachment with one wave of
his pompous hand--'All that's been altered long ago, my dear sir, by
the Act of Settlement'--yet he came in for a good many stray glasses of
sherry at other people's expense, on the strength of the popular belief
that he might, under happier auspices, have filled a throne, instead
of occupying the chair of honour by the old oak chimney-piece in a
public-house parlour.
Hardly, however, had Mr. Plantagenet uttered those memorable words,
'Dick's late to-night; I wonder what keeps him,' when the front door
opened, and the Heir Apparent entered.
Immediately some strange change seemed to pass by magic over the
assembled household. Everybody looked up, as though an event had
occurred. Mrs. Plantagenet herself, a weary-looking woman with gentle
goodness beaming out of every line in her worn face, gave a sigh of
relief.
'Oh, Dick,' she cried, 'I'm so glad you've come! We've all been waiting
for you.'
Richard glanced round the room with a slight air of satisfaction. It was
always a pleasure to him to find his father at home, and not, as was
his wont, in the White Horse parlour; though, to say the truth, the only
reason for Mr. Planta-genet's absence that night from his accustomed
haunt was this little tiff with the landlord over his vulgar hints of
payment. Then he stooped down and kissed his mother tenderly on the
forehead, patted Eleanor's curly head with a brotherly caress, gave a
kindly glance at Prince Hal, as he loved to call him mentally, and sat
down in the easy-chair his mother pushed towards him.
For a moment there was silence; then Dick began in an explanatory voice:
'I'm sorry I'm late; but I had a piece of work to finish to-night,
mother--rather particular work, too: a little bit of bookbinding.'
'You get paid extra for that, Richard, don't you?' his father asked,
growing interested.
'Well, yes,' Dick answered, rather grudgingly;
'I get paid extra for that; I do it in overtime.
But that wasn't all,' he went on hurriedly, well aware that his father
was debating in his own mind whether he couldn't on the strength of it
borrow a shilling. 'It was a special piece of work for the new governess
at the Rectory. And, mother, isn't it odd? her name's Mary Tudor!'
'There isn't much in that,' his father answered, balancing his cigarette
daintily between his first and second finger. '“A' Stuarts are na sib
to the King,” you know, Richard. The Plantagenets who left the money
had nothing to do with the Royal Family--that is to say, with _us_,' Mr.
Plantagenet went on, catching himself up by an after-thought.
'They were mere Sheffield cutlers, people of no antecedents, who
happened to take our name upon themselves by a pure flight of fancy,
because they thought it high-sounding. Which it is, undoubtedly. And as
for Tudors, bless your heart, they're common enough in Wales. In point
of fact--though I'm proud of Elizabeth, as a by-blow of the family--we
must always bear in mind that for _us_, my dear boy, the Tudors were
never anything but a distinct _mesalliance_.'
'Of course,' Richard answered with profound conviction.
His father glanced at him sharply. To Mr. Plantagenet himself this
shadowy claim to royal descent was a pretty toy to be employed for the
mystification of strangers and the aggrandisement of the family--a
lever to work on Lady Agatha's feelings; but to his eldest son it was
an article of faith, a matter of the most cherished and the profoundest
belief, a reason for behaving one's self in every position in life so as
not to bring disgrace on so distinguished an ancestry.
A moment's silence intervened; then Dick turned round with his grave
smile to Clarence:
'And how does Thucydides get on?' he asked with brotherly solicitude.
Clarence wriggled a little uneasily on his wooden chair.
'Well, it's not a hard bit,' he answered, with a shamefaced air. 'I
thought I could do it in a jiffy after you came home, Dick. It won't
take two minutes. It's just that piece, don't you know, about the revolt
in Corcyra.'
Dick looked down at him reproachfully..
'Oh, Clarry,' he cried with a pained face, 'you know you can't have
looked at it. Not a hard bit, indeed! why, it's one of the obscurest
and most debated passages in all Thucydides! Now, what's the use of my
getting you a nomination, old man, and coaching you so hard, and helping
to pay your way at the grammar school, in hopes of your getting an
Exhibition in time, if you won't work for yourself, and lift yourself
on to a better position?' And he glanced at the wooden mantelpiece, on
whose vacant scroll he had carved deep with his penknife his own motto
in life, 'Noblesse oblige,' in Lombardic letters, for his brother's
benefit.
Clarence dropped his eyes and looked really penitent.
'Well, but I say, Dick,' he answered quickly, 'if it's so awfully
difficult, don't you think it 'ud be better for me to go over it with
you first--just a running construe--and then I'd get a clearer idea of
what the chap was driving at from the very beginning?'
'Certainly _not_,' Dick answered gravely, with a little concern in his
voice, for he saw in this clever plea somewhat too strong an echo of Mr.
Plan-tagenet's own fatal plausibility. 'You should spell it out first as
well as you can by yourself; and then, when you've made out all you're
able to with grammar and dictionary, you should come to me in the last
resort to help you. Now sit down to it, there's a good boy. I shan't be
able in future to help you quite as much in your work as I've been used
to do.'
He spoke with a seriousness that was above his years. To say the truth,
Mr. Plantagenet's habits had almost reversed their relative places
in the family. Dick was naturally conscientious, having fortunately
inherited his moral characteristics rather from his mother's side than
from his father's; and being thrown early into the position of assistant
bread-winner and chief adviser to the family, he had grown grave before
his time, and felt the weight of domestic cares already heavy upon
his shoulders. As for Clarence, who had answered his father with scant
respect, he never thought for a moment of disobeying the wishes of his
elder brother. He took up the dog-eared Thucydides that had served
them both in turn, and the old Liddell and Scott that was still common
property, and began conning over the chapter set before him with
conspicuous diligence. Dick looked on meanwhile with no little
satisfaction, while Eleanor went on with her work, in her chair in the
corner, vaguely conscious all the time of meriting his approbation.
At last, just as they sat down to their frugal supper of bread and
cheese and water--for by Dick's desire they were all, save one,
teetotalers--Dick sprang a mine upon the assembled company by saying out
all at once in a most matter-of-fact voice to his neighbour Clarry:
'No, I shan't be able to help you very much in future, I'm
afraid--because, next week, I'm going up to Oxford--to try for a
scholarship.'
A profound spell of awed silence followed this abrupt disclosure of a
long-formed plan. Mr. Plantagenet himself was the first to break it. He
rose to the occasion.
'Well, I'm glad at least, my son,' he said, in his most grandiose
manner, 'you propose to give yourself the education of a gentleman.'
'And therefore,' Dick continued, with a side-glance at Clarence, 'I
shall need all my spare time for my own preparation.'