|Dick's first year at the Pipe-roll was anything but a lazy one.
Opulence in the shape of two hundred and fifty a year came to him with
the encumbrance of plenty to do for it. He had the office routine
to learn, and rolls and tallies to decipher, and endless household
difficulties of his own to meet, and all the children's schooling and
other arrangements to look after, It was still a struggle. But by dint
of hard work and pinching, with Maud's able assistance, things came
straight in the end somehow. Dick got a pupil or two in his spare
time--happier men than himself, who were going up under luckier auspices
to Oxford; for, though Dick put the best face upon it, still, it _was_ a
pull leaving that beloved University without a degree. However, the
year wore on, as most years wear on, good, bad, or indifferent; and Mary
Tudor, too, left her place at Chiddingwick Rectory, and got another one,
better paid, with nice people in Westminster. She was a constant Sunday
visitor at the Plantagenets' rooms; and so, in vacation, was Archie
Gillespie, whose unfailing devotion to his college friend struck Dick
every day as something truly remarkable. Brothers are so dense. Maud
smiled at him often. If _he_ had paid a quarter the attention to any
other girl that Archie paid _her_, how instantly _she_ would have
perceived it! But Dick--dear Dick--never seemed to suspect that Archie
could come for anything else on earth except to talk over the affairs of
the family with him. And yet men consider women the inferior creatures!
Much of Dick's spare time, however--for, being a very busy man, of
course he had often spare time on his hands, amounting frequently to
as much as half an hour together--was spent in a curious yet congenial
occupation--the laborious hunting-up of the Plantagenet pedigree. A
certain insane desire to connect his family with the old Royal House of
England pursued Dick through life, and made him look upon this purely
useless and ornamental object as though it were a matter of the gravest
practical importance. Maud felt its gravity, too, quite as much as her
brother; it was an almost inevitable result, indeed, of their peculiar
upbringing.
Every man has, necessarily, what the French call, well, 'the defects of
his qualities'--faults which are either the correlatives or the excess
of his particular virtues. Now, the Plantagenets had preserved
their strong sense of self-respect and many other valuable personal
characteristics under trying circumstances, by dint of this self-same
family pride. It was almost necessary, therefore, that when Dick found
himself in a position to prove, as he thought, the goodness of his claim
to represent in our day the old Plantagenet stock, he should prosecute
the research after the missing links with all the innate energy of his
active nature.
Mary Tudor, indeed, whose practical common-sense was of a different
order, sometimes regretted that Dick should waste so much valuable time
on so unimportant an object; to her it seemed a pity that a man whose
days were mainly spent in poring over dusty documents in the public
service should devote a large part of his evenings as well to poring
over other equally dusty documents for a personal and purely sentimental
purpose.
'What good will it do you, Dick, even if you do find out you're the
rightful heir to the throne of England?' she asked him more than once.
'Parliament won't repeal the Acts of Union with Scotland and Ireland,
and get rid of the Settlement, to make you King and Maud and Nellie
Princesses of the blood royal.'
Dick admitted that was so; but, still, her frivolity shocked him.
'It's a noble inheritance!' he said, with a touch of romance in his
voice. 'Surely, Mary, you wouldn't wish me to remain insensible, like a
log, to the proud distinction of so unique an ancestry! They were such
_men_, those old Plantagenets! Look at Henry II., for example, who
founded our House for most practical purposes; _there_ was a wonderful
organizer for you! And Edward I.--what a statesman! so far before
his age! and the Black Prince--and Edward III.--and Henry V., what
strategists! It isn't merely that they were kings, mind you; I don't
care about that; since I came to know what really makes a man great, I
haven't attached so much importance to the mere fact of their position.
But just see what workers the old Plantagenets were in themselves, and
how much they did for the building-up of England--and, indeed, of all
Britain, if it comes to that, for wasn't Scotch independence itself
a direct result of the national opposition to Edward Plantagenet's
premature policy of unification? When I think of all those things I feel
a glow of pride; I realize to myself what a grand heritage it is to be
the descendant and representative of such early giants; for there were
giants in those days, and no man could then be King unless he had at
least a strenuous personality--oftenest, too, unless he were also a
real live statesman. Our ancestors themselves knew all that very well;
and when one of our line fell short of his ancestral standard, like
Edward II. and Richard II., he went soon to the wall, and made way for
a stronger. It's not about them I care, nor about mere puling devotees
like poor Henry III.; it's my descent from men like those great early
organizers, and thinkers, and rulers, who built up the administrative
and judicial system we all still live under.'
When he talked like that, Maud thought it was really beautiful. She
wondered how Mary could ever be insensible to the romantic charms of
such old descent. But there! Mary wasn't a Plantagenet--only a mere
Welsh Tudor; and though she was a dear good girl, and as sweet as
they're made, how could you expect her to enter fully into the feelings
of the real old family? As for Archie Gillespie, he said to Mary more
than once:
'Let Dick go his own way, Miss Tudor; it gives him pleasure. He thinks
some mysterious good is going to come out of it all for him and his, if
he can fill in the missing links in the Plantagenet pedigree. Of
course, that's pure moonshine. Still, we must always remember it was the
Plantagonet pedigree that gave our Dick his first interest in English
history, and so made him what he is; and anything deserves respect which
could keep Edmund Plantagenet's children from degenerating, as they
would have degenerated, from their father's example, without this
inspiriting idea of _noblesse oblige_: an idea which has made Dick and
Maud--I mean, Miss Plantagenet--hold their heads high through life in
spite of their poverty. It can do Dick no harm now to pursue a little
farther this innocent hobby; it will give him a better insight into
the by-ways and alleys of early English history; and if he can really
establish the Plantagenet pedigree throughout, it may serve to call
attention to him as a sound historical researcher. Fortunately, he knows
what evidence is; and he won't go wrong, therefore, by making heedless
assumptions and incredible skips and jumps, like half our genealogists.'
So Dick persevered for fully twelve months in his eager attempt, by hook
and by crook, to trace his own family up to Lionel of Clarence, upon
whom Mr. Plantagenet himself had early fixed--at pure haphazard--as the
special transmitter of the Plantagenet blood to the later branches of
the House, himself included. The longer Dick worked at it, too, the more
confident he became of ultimate success. Step by step turned out right.
He had brought the thing down, he told Mary, to a moral certainty; only
one link now remained to complete the entire pedigree. That's always the
way, it may be mentioned parenthetically, with your doubtful genealogy;
there's only one link missing--but, unfortunately, that's the link on
proof of which the whole chain is dependent. And very naturally, too:
for this is how the thing works out. You track your own genealogy, let
us say, back to a person named Plantagenet, who lived some time in
the sixteenth century, and with whom you are really and undoubtedly
connected by an unbroken and traceable ancestral series. Then you
track the family tree of Lionel of Clarence forward, in the opposite
direction, to a real and historical Plantagenet who 'flourished,' as the
books say, near the end of the fifteenth century. After that you say:
'If my ancestor, the sixteenth-century Plantagenet, turns out to be the
son of Lionel's descendant in the fifteenth century--as is extremely
probable--why, then, it's all made out--I'm descended direct from Lionel
of Clarence; and in any case, don't you see, there's only one link
missing!' Wise genealogists usually abstain on purpose from the attempt
to hunt up that fatal missing link; they know right well that the safest
plan is to assume identity, while efforts at proving it are frequently
disastrous. But Dick was still young, and not perhaps overwise; so once
he had brought down the matter to a question of a solitary missing link,
he couldn't rest night or day till he had finally settled it.
One evening he returned home from the office to Maud, overflowing with a
new and most important discovery.
'Well, the thing's all but proved, at last!' he cried in a triumphant
voice, as he kissed her warmly; 'at least, that is to say, I've found a
valuable clue that will decide the matter finally one way or the
other. I've discovered a conveyance of the sixteenth century, dated
1533--here's a verbatim copy of it--which describes Thomas Plantagenet,
our great-great-grandfather's grandfather, as being really the son of
Giles Plantagenet, the missing-link man, who is said in it to have owned
a house--and this, you will see, is the new and important point--at
Framlingham, in Suffolk. He seems to have been some sort of a petty
tradesman.
Where Giles first came from, we had till now no means of knowing. But
after this clue, all we've got to do next is just to hunt up the local
records at Framlingliam and find out that this Giles Plantagenet,
already known to us, was the son of that Geoffrey Plantagenet of
Richmond, in Yorkshire, whom I showed long ago to have been the last
traceable descendant of Lionel of Clarence, and concerning whom Lysons
says, without a shadow of authority, _decissit sine prole_--he died
without issue.'
'It seems rather a leap, though, for those days, doesn't it,' Mary put
in timidly, for she dreaded the effect of a disappointment upon Dick's
nervous nature, 'from Richmond to Framlingham? I thought people rarely
went then much beyond their own county.'
'That was true, no doubt, for the middle and lower classes,' Dick
answered with a faint tinge of Plantagenet pride in his voice; 'but
hardly even then, I should say, for people of such distinction as
Geoffrey Plantagenet. Gentlemen of high rank, and members of the peerage
and the Royal Family, had manors, you know, in many different counties,
and moved on from one to another from time to time, or left them about
by will to various sons and daughters. We mustn't judge such great folk
by the common analogies of ordinary people.'
'Still, Dick,' Maud interposed, a little startled herself, 'even if
Mary's objection doesn't hold good, it _does_ seem a little odd, doesn't
it, that Giles Plantagenet should be a petty tradesman at Framlingham,
if he was really the son of such a man as Geoffrey, whom we know to have
been a county gentleman of distinction in Yorkshire?'
'I don't think so at all,' Dick answered with a little surprise. 'In
those days, you see, Maud, when there was no middle class, people went
up and down easily. Attainder was so common, and loss of estates such an
every-day occurrence, that the vicissitudes of families must often have
been much more rapid and startling than nowadays. Moreover, it's no use
arguing beforehand about a plain question of fact. It was so, or it
wasn't. I shall soon find out which. The records are almost sure to be
preserved at Framlingham, because it was the seat of the Howards; and
I shall go down there next Bank Holiday and settle the question. After
that, I'll publish the result of my search; and then nobody will ever
be able to say in future we made a false pretence of being real royal
Plantagenets.'
He spoke so confidently that he really frightened poor Mary. She
couldn't help thinking what a terrible shock it would be to him if by
any chance he should turn out after all to be mistaken, and if Giles
Plantagenet should prove to be other than the son of Geoffrey.
So real did this danger appear to her, indeed, that as Bank Holiday
approached, and Dick talked more and more certainly of his visit to
Framling-ham, she spoke quite seriously on the matter to Maud.
'Do you know, dear,' she said, taking her friend's hand, 'if I could
have got away for the day, I'd go right down to Framlingham with
him, though it seems to me a dreadful waste of money for so useless
a purpose.' At that, Maud's eyes flashed; poor dear Mary! she never
_would_ understand the feelings of a Plantagenet. 'What I feel is this,'
Mary went on, all unheeding: 'I'm obliged to stop at home that day with
the children; but I wish I could go: for _if_ by any chance it should
happen to turn out that' Dick was mistaken after all, and Giles
Plantagenet _wasn't_ the son of Geoffrey, I'm afraid the shock would
quite unman him for the moment, and I hardly know what he might be
tempted to do in the first keen sense of intense disappointment.'
Maud's lip curled slightly. Nursery governess as she was, the old
dancing-master's daughter had all the pride of a Duchess--and why not,
indeed, since she was a Princess of the blood royal?
'Oh, that wouldn't make any difference, dear,' she answered confidently.
'We _are_ Plantagenets, don't you see? And if we don't happen to be
descended from that particular man Geoffrey, we must be descended
through some other member of the Plantagenet family. My poor father
was sure of it; and it's always been known in Yorkshire for many
generations.'
However, Mary was so urgent, and so afraid of the consequences of
a sudden disappointment--for she knew Dick's nature, and loved him
dearly--that at last Maud consented to accompany her brother on his
projected trip, and guard him against the results of an impossible
failure.
Bank Holiday came in due time--a lovely summer day; and Dick and Maud
went down together by cheap train to Framlingham. The banks by the side
of the rail were thick with flowers. They reached there early in the
day, and Dick called upon the Rector at once, sending in his card with
name and address at the Pipe-rolls. As he expected, that introduction
amply sufficed him. Nor was he disappointed about the preservation
of the Framlingham records. The church possessed a singularly perfect
collection of baptismal and marriage entries from the beginning of the
fifteenth century onward. In less than half an hour Dick was thick in
their midst, turning over the dusty leaves of those worn old books with
all the eagerness and enthusiasm of a born genealogist.
Maud sat with him for awhile in the gloom of that dimly-lighted chancel;
but after half an hour or more of hunting page by page, her patience
began to give out, and she proposed to stroll away towards the
castle ruins, and return a little later to see how Dick progressed with
his quest after ancestors. Dick acquiesced readily enough, and Maud went
off by herself down the leafy lane that leads straight to the castle.
For some time she amused herself in the deep hollow of the moat,
and waited round the great circuit of the frowning rampart. It was a
splendid ruin, she thought, the finest she had seen. Then she mounted
the broken wall, and looked out upon the wide plain, and admired the
beautiful view of the church and village. A flag floated from the tower,
as if in honour of Dick's presence. At last, as lunch-time approached,
she lounged back lazily to Dick. They had brought their own bread and
cheese and a few sandwiches with them, and she had picked out mentally
a cool spot under the spreading chestnuts, which seemed to her the very
place in which to make their impromptu picnic. So she opened the church
door in very good spirits, for the fresh country air had exhilarated her
like champagne after so long a spell of that dusty London; and she went
straight to the chancel, where she had left poor Dick an hour before
among his tattered registers.
As she drew near, a sudden terror rushed over her unexpectedly. What on
earth could this mean? Dick was gazing at the books with an ashen-white
face, and with eyes that fairly started out of their sockets for
staring. He raised his head and looked at her. He couldn't speak for
horror. With one hand he beckoned his sister mysteriously to his side;
then he moistened his lips at last and pointed with one accusing finger
to the entries.
'Look there, Maud,' he faltered with a painful effort; and Maud looked
where he bid her.
It was a mongrel entry, half Latin, half English: 'Die 14 Junii, anno
1498, Giles, the son of Richard Plantagenet, cobbler, and of Joan,
uxoris eius, huius parochiæ.'
Maud glanced at the words herself with a certain vague sense of terror.
'But perhaps,' she cried, 'after all, this Richard Plantagenet himself
was of royal ancestry.'
Dick shook his head with a terrible, a despondent shake. He knew when he
was beaten.
'Oh no,' he answered aloud, though he could hardly frame the words.
'I know what I say. I've found out all about this Richard Plantagenet,
Maud. He was the ancestor of the other people--the false Plantagenets,
don't you know, the Sheffield family who left the money. He never was a
true Plantagenet in any way at all. It was only a nickname. He acted
the parts of the Plantagenet kings, one after the other, in a masque
or pageant, and was known from that time by pure fun as Richard
Plantagenet. But that was in London; and we didn't know till now he was
ever settled at Framlingham.
'And _must_ we be descended from him, Dick?' She asked it piteously,
pleadingly.
'Oh, Maud--yes, we must. There's no other way out of it. I've worked
up the whole thing so thoroughly now--to my own destruction. I know all
about him. His real name was Muggins; and that's _our_ real name, too;
and this book--this horrid book gives all the facts necessary to prove
our descent from him; and the Sheffield people's, too, who are really
our cousins.'
He said it with utter despondency. The truth was wrenched out of
him. Maud clasped her white hands and looked hard at poor Dick. This
disillusion was just as terrible for her as for him.
'You're quite, quite sure?' she murmured once more in a voice of pure
agony.
'Yes, quite, quite sure,' Dick answered with a tremor, but with manful
persistence. 'There can't be a doubt of it. I knew everything about
this wretched creature before, except that he was a Framlingham man; and
there are entries here in the book--you can see them for yourself--that
leave no shadow of doubt anywhere about the fellow's identity. Maud,
Maud, it's been all a foolish, foolish dream! We are not--we never
were--real royal Plantagenets!'
Maud looked down at the ground and burst into hot tears.
'Then I'll never marry Archie,' she cried. 'Never, never, never! I'll
never ask him to take a mere nobody from Chiddingwick. My pride wouldn't
allow it--my pride would stand in the way--for I'm as proud as before,
Dick, though I'm _not_ a Plantagenet!'