Blood Royal: A Novel

But now that his father was dead, Dick began to realize for the first time how far the whole family had been dependent for support upon the old man’s profession. Little as he had earned, indeed, that little had been bread-and-butter to his wife and children. And now that Dick came to face the problem before him like a man, he saw only too plainly that he himself must fill the place Mr. Plantagenet had vacated. It was a terrible fate, but he saw no way out of it. At one deadly blow all his hopes for the future were dashed utterly to the ground. Much as he hated to think it, he saw at once it was now his imperative duty to go down from Oxford. He must do something-without delay to earn a livelihood somehow for his mother and sisters. He couldn’t go on living there in comparative luxury while the rest of his family starved, or declined on the tender mercies of the Chiddingwick workhouse.

Gradually, bit by bit, he confided all this, broken-hearted, to Gillespie. There were no secrets between them now; for the facts as to poor Mr. Plantagenet’s pitiable profession had come out fully at the inquest, and all Oxford knew that night that Plantagenet of Durham, the clever and rising history man, who was considered safe for the Marquis of Lothian’s Essay, was, after all, but the son of a country dancing-master. So Dick, with a crimson face, putting his pride in his pocket, announced to his friend the one plan for the future that now seemed to him feasible – to return at once to Chiddingwick and take up his father’s place, so as to keep together the clientele. Clearly he must do something to make money without delay; and that sad resolve was the only device he could think of on the spur of the moment.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to try for a schoolmaster-ship?’ Gillespie suggested cautiously. He had the foresight of his countrymen. ‘That wouldn’t so much unclass you in the end as the other. You haven’t a degree, of course, and the want of one would naturally tell against you. But you might get a vacant place in some preparatory school – though the pay, of course, would be something dreadfully trivial.’

‘That’s just it,’ Dick answered, bursting with shame and misery, but facing it out like a man. ‘Gillespie, you’re kindness itself – such a dear, good fellow! – and I could say things to you I couldn’t say to anybody else on earth that I know of, except my own family. But even to you I can’t bear to say what must be said sooner or later. You see, for my mother’s sake, for my sisters’, for my brothers’, I must do whatever enables me to make most money. I must pocket my pride – and I’ve got a great deal – ever so much too much – but I must pocket it all the same, and think only of what’s best in the end for the family. Now, I should hate the dancing – oh, my dear, dear fellow, I can’t tell you how I should hate it! But it’s the one thing by which I could certainly earn most money. There’s a good connection there at Chiddingwiok, and it’s all in the hands of the family.

People would support me because I was my father’s son. If I went home at once, before anybody else came to the town to fill the empty place, I could keep the connection together; and as I wouldn’t spend any money – well, in the ways my poor father often spent it – I should easily earn enough to keep myself and the children. It’ll break my heart to do it – oh, it’ll break my heart! – for I’m a very proud man; but I see no way out of it. And I, who hoped to build up again by legitimate means the fortunes of the Plantagenets!’

Gillespie was endowed with a sound amount of good Scotch common-sense. He looked at things more soberly.

‘If I were you,’ he said in a tone that seemed to calm Dick’s nerves, ‘even at the risk of letting the golden opportunity slip, I’d do nothing rashly. A step down in the social scale is easy enough to take; but, once taken, we all know it’s very hard to recover. Have you mentioned this plan of yours to your mother or sister?’

‘I wrote to Maud about it this, evening,’ Dick answered sadly, ‘and I told her I might possibly have to make this sacrifice.’

Gillespie paused and reflected. After a minute’s consideration, he drew his pipe from his mouth and shook out the ashes.

‘If I were you,’ he said again, in a very decided voice, ‘I’d let the thing hang a bit. Why shouldn’t you run down to Chiddingwick tomorrow and talk matters over with your people? It costs money, I know; and just at present I can understand every penny’s a penny to you. But I’ve a profound respect for the opinions of one’s women in all these questions. They look more at the social side, I’ll admit, than men; yet they often see things more clearly and intelligently, for all that, than we do. They’ve got such insight. If they demand this sacrifice of you, I suppose you must make it; but if, as I expect, they refuse to sanction it, why, then, you must try to find some other way out of it.’

Gillespie’s advice fell in exactly with Dick’s own ideas; for not only did he wish to see his mother and Maud, but also he was anxious to meet Mary Tudor again and explain to her with regret that the engagement which had never existed at all between them must now be ended. So he decided to take his friend’s advice at once, and start off by the first train in the morning to Chiddingwick.

He went next day. Gillespie breakfasted with him, and remained when he left in quiet possession of the armchair by the fireside. He took up a book – the third volume of Mommsen – and sat on and smoked, without thinking of the time, filling up the interval till his eleven o’clock lecture. For at eleven the Senior Tutor lectured on Plato’s ‘Republic.’ Just as the clock struck ten, a hurried knock at the door aroused Gillespie’s attention.

‘Come in!’ he said quickly, taking his pipe from his mouth.

The door opened with a timid movement, standing a quarter ajar, and a pale face peeped in with manifest indecision.

‘A lady!’ Gillespie said to himself, and instinctively knocked the unconsumed tobacco out of his short clay pipe as he rose to greet her.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ a small voice said, in very frightened accents. ‘I think I must be mistaken. I wanted Mr. Richard Plantagenet’s rooms. Can you kindly direct me to them?’

‘These are Mr. Plantagenet’s rooms,’ Gillespie answered, as gently as a woman himself, for he saw the girl was slight, and tired, and delicate, and dressed in deep mourning of the simplest description. ‘He left me here in possession when he went out this morning, and I’ve been sitting ever since in them.’

The slight girl came in a step or two with evident hesitation.

‘Will he be long gone?’ she asked tremulously. ‘Perhaps he’s at lecture. I must sit down and wait for him.’

Gillespie motioned her into a chair, and instinctively pulled a few things straight in the room to receive a lady.

‘Well, to tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘Plantagenet’s gone down this morning to Chiddingwick. I – I beg your pardon, but I suppose you’re his sister.’

Maud let herself drop into the chair he set for her, with a despondent gesture.

‘Gone to Chiddingwick! Oh, how unfortunate!’ she cried, looking puzzled. ‘What am I ever to do? This is really dreadful!’

And, indeed, the situation was sufficiently embarrassing; for she had run up in haste, on the spur of the moment, when she received Dick’s letter threatening instant return, without any more money than would pay her fare one way, trusting to Dick’s purse to frank her back again. But she didn’t mention these facts, of course, to the young man in Dick’s rooms, with the blue-and-white boating jacket, who sat and looked hard at her with profound admiration, reflecting to himself, meanwhile, how very odd it was of Plantagenet never to have given him to understand that his sister was beautiful! For Maud was always beautiful, in a certain delicate, slender, shrinking fashion, though she had lots of character; and her eyes, red with tears, and her simple little black dress, instead of spoiling her looks, somehow served to accentuate the peculiar charms of her beauty.

She sat there a minute or two, wondering what on earth to do, while Gillespie stood by in respectful silence. At last she spoke.

‘Yes, I’m his sister,’ she said simply, raising her face with a timid glance towards the strange young man. ‘Did Dick tell you when he was coming back? I’m afraid I must wait for him.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be back till rather late,’ Gillespie answered, with sympathy. ‘He took his name off Hall. That means to say,’ he added in explanation, ‘he won’t be home to dinner.’

Maud considered for a moment in doubt. This was really serious. Then she spoke once more, rather terrified.

‘He won’t stop away all night, I suppose?’ she asked, turning up her face appealingly to the kindly-featured stranger. For what she could do in that case, in a strange, big town, without a penny in her pocket, she really couldn’t imagine.

Gillespie’s confident answer reassured her on that head.

‘Oh no; he won’t stop away,’ he replied, ‘for he hasn’t got leave; and he wouldn’t be allowed to sleep out without it. But he mayn’t be back, all the same, till quite late at night – perhaps ten or eleven. It would be hardly safe for you, I think, to wait on till then for him. I mean,’ he added apologetically, ‘it might perhaps be too late to get a train back to Chiddingwick.’

Maud looked down and hesitated. She perused the hearthrug.

‘I think,’ she said at last, after a very long pause, ‘you must be Mr. Gillespie.’

‘That’s my name,’ the young man answered, with an inclination of the head, rather pleased she should have heard of him.

Maud hesitated once more. Then, after a moment, she seemed to make her mind up.

‘I’m so glad it’s you,’ she said simply, with pretty womanly confidence; ‘for I know you’re Dick’s friend, and I dare say you’ll have guessed what’s brought me up here to-day, even in the midst of our great trouble. Oh, Mr. Gillespie, did he tell you what he wrote last night to me?’

Gillespie gazed down at her. Tears stood in her eyes as she glanced up at him piteously. He thought he had never seen any face before so pathetically pretty.

‘Ye – es; he told me,’ the young man answered; hardly liking even to acknowledge it. ‘He said he thought of going back at once to Chiddingwick, to take up – well, to keep together your poor father’s connection.’

With a violent effort Maud held back her tears.

‘Yes; that’s just what he wrote,’ she went on, with downcast eyes, her lips trembling as she said it. Then she turned her face to him yet again.

‘But, oh, Mr. Gillespie!’ she cried, clasping her hands in her earnestness, ‘that’s just what he must never, never, never think of!’

‘But he tells me it’s the only thing – the family has – to live upon,’ Gillespie interposed, hesitating.

‘Then the family can starve!’ Maud cried, with a sudden flash of those tearful eyes. ‘We’re Plantagenets, and we can bear it. But for Dick to leave Oxford, and spoil all our best hopes for him – oh, Mr. Gillespie, can’t you feel it would be too, too dreadful? We could never stand it!’

Gillespie surveyed her from head to foot in admiration of her spirit. Such absolute devotion to the family honour struck a kindred chord in his half-Celtic nature.

‘You speak like a Plantagenet,’ he, answered very gravely – for he, too, had caught some faint infection of the great Plantagenet myth. ‘You deserve to have him stop. You’re worthy of such a brother. But don’t you think yourself it would be right of him – as he does – to think first of your mother and his sisters and brothers?’

Maud rose and faced him.

‘Mr. Gillespie,’ she cried, clasping her hands, and looking beautiful as she did so, ‘I don’t know why I can speak to you so frankly: I suppose it’s because you’re Dick’s friend, and because in this terrible loss which has come upon us so suddenly we stand so much in need of human sympathy. But, oh – it’s wrong to say it, of course, yet say it I must; I don’t care one penny whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong; let us starve or not, I dodo want Dick to stop on at Oxford!’

Gillespie regarded her respectfully. Such courage appealed to him.

‘Well, I dare say I’m as wrong as you,’ he answered frankly; ‘but, to tell you the truth – so do I; and I honour you for saying it.’

‘Thank you,’ Maud cried, letting the tears roll now unchecked, for sympathy overcame her. She fell back again into, her chair. ‘Do you know,’-she said unaffectedly, ‘we don’t care one bit what we do at Chiddingwick; we don’t care, not one of us! We’d work our fingers to the bone, even Nellie, who’s the youngest, to keep Dick at Oxford. We don’t mind if we starve, for we’re only the younger ones. But Richard’s head of our house now, heir of our name and race; and we were all so proud when he got this Scholarship. We thought he’d be brought up as the chief of the Plantagenets ought to be.’ She paused a moment and reflected; then she spoke again. ‘To leave Oxford would be bad enough,’ she went on, ‘and would cost us all sore; it would be a terrible blow to us, though, I suppose, that’s inevitable; but to come back to Chiddingwick, and take up my dear father’s profession – oh, don’t think me undutiful to his memory, Mr. Gillespie, for our father was a man – if you’d known him long ago, before he grew careless – a man we had much to be proud of – but still, well, there! if Dick was to do it, it would break our very hearts for us.’