Blood Royal: A Novel

Mary had tact enough and feeling enough, however, not to press her sympathy upon the poor wounded creature. With a hasty side-glance she hurried her charges out of the room as quick as she could, and motioned to the other governesses to do the same for theirs with all possible expedition. Two minutes later the big hall was fairly cleared, and father and daughter stood face to face in silence.

If Maud had followed only the prompting of her own personal feelings, she would have sat down where she was, covered her face with her hands, and cried long and bitterly.

But her sense of duty towards her father prevented her from so giving way. She couldn’t bear to let him see how deeply, for Dick’s sake, she dreaded the idea of his going to Oxford. All she could do was to look up at him with a scared white face, and murmur in a terrified, half-articulate tone: ‘Oh, father, father, you never told me of this! What on earth do you mean by it?’

Mr. Plantagenet eyed his daughter askance out of the corner of his eyes. He was more afraid of Maud than of anyone else on earth; in point of fact, she was his domestic keeper. But he tried to assume his jaunty, happy-go-lucky air, for all that.

‘Well, my dear,’ he said, examining the strings of his fiddle with profound attention, ‘I haven’t had a holiday for a very long time, away from Chiddingwick, and I’m tired with the duties – the duties of my very exacting profession – and I felt I needed a change, and I haven’t been up to Oxford since your brother Richard entered into residence as a member of the University. Now, I naturally feel a desire to see my son in that position in life which a Plantagenet ought to occupy. And so, the long and the short of it is,’ Mr. Plantagenet went on, shuffling about, and glancing up at her anxiously, ‘the long and the short of it is, as you heard me inform my class just now, I think next week of allowing myself the luxury of a trip to Oxford.’

Maud rose and seized his arm. His grandeur and indefiniteness positively alarmed her. Did he think she would be taken in by such grandiose words?

‘Now, father,’ she said boldly, ‘that sort of talk won’t do between us two, you know, at a serious crisis. This is important, very. You must tell me quite plainly what you mean by it all. Does Dick know you’re coming, and why do you want to go to him?’

Mr. Plantagenet, thus attacked, produced from his pocket a rather dirty silk handkerchief, and began to whimper. ‘Has it come to this, then?’ he cried with theatrical pathos; ‘has it come to this, I ask you, that I, the head of all the Plantagenets, have to beg leave and make explanations to my own eldest daughter before I can go to visit my own son at Oxford?’ and he hid his face in the pocket-handkerchief with a studied burst of emotion.

But Maud was inexorable. Dick’s happiness was at stake. Not for worlds, if she could help it, would she have him shamed by the appearance before all the world of Oxford of that shabby, degraded, disreputable old man in the guise of his father.

‘We must be practical,’ she said coldly, taking no notice of his hysterics. ‘You must explain what this means. I want to know all about it. How have you got money to go up to Oxford with – and all those bills unpaid – and Mrs. Waite still dunning us for the rent from last quarter? And where are you going to stop? And does Richard know you’re coming? And have you proper things to go in? Why, I should think the very pride of a Plantagenet ought to prevent you from going to a place where your son lives like a gentleman, as he is, unless you can afford to go in such clothes as won’t disgrace him!’

Thus put upon his mettle, Mr. Plantagenet, deeply moved, at first admitted by slow degrees that he had taken proper steps to replenish his wardrobe for this important occasion. He had ordered a suit of good clothes – very good clothes – at Wilkins’s. And they would be paid for, too, the Head of the House added proudly. Oh, he wasn’t quite so devoid of friends and resources in his old age as his undutiful daughter appeared to imagine. He could sometimes do a thing or two on his own account without asking her assistance. He had money in hand – loads – plenty of money for the journey!

‘The more high-flown and enigmatical Mr. Plantagenet grew, the more terribly was poor Maud distressed and frightened. At last she could stand it no longer. Plantagenet though she was, and as proud as Heaven makes them, she couldn’t prevent the tears from stealing through and betraying her. She flung herself into a chair and took her face in her hands.

‘Now, father,’ she said simply, giving way at last, ‘you must tell me what you mean by it. You must explain the whole thing. Where did you get this money?’

Then, bit by bit, hard pressed, Mr. Plantagenet admitted, with many magnificent disclaimers and curious salves to his offended dignity, how he had become seized of a sum of unexpected magnitude. When he took the last rent of the Assembly Rooms, for the afternoon dancing-lessons, to the landlord of the White Horse, a fortnight earlier, the landlord had given him a receipt in full, and then, to his great surprise, had handed him back the money.

‘You’ve been an old customer to me, Mr. Plantagenet,’ Barnes had said – ‘with real feeling, my dear – I assure you, with very real feeling’ – ‘and a good customer, too, and a customer one could reckon upon, both for the Rooms and the parlour; and I feel, sir, now your son’s gone up to Oxford College, and you a gentleman born, and so brought up, in the manner of speaking, it ‘ud be a comfort to you, and a comfort to him, if you was to go up and see him. This ‘ere little matter of the quarter’s rent ain’t nothing to me: you’ve brought me in as much and more in your time, as I says to my missus, with your conversational faculties. It draws people to the house, that it do, when they know there’s a gent there of your conversational faculties.’

So, in the end, Mr. Plantagenet, after some decent parley, had accepted the gift, ‘in the spirit in which it was offered, my dear – in the spirit in which it was offered,’ and had resolved to apply it to the purpose which the donor indicated, as a means of paying a visit to Bichard at Oxford.

Poor Maud! she sat there heart-broken. She didn’t know what to do. Pure filial feeling made her shrink from acknowledging, even to her own wounded soul, how ashamed she was of her father; far more did it prevent her from letting the poor broken old drunkard himself too plainly perceive it. All she could do was to sit there in blank despair, her hands folded before her, and reflect how all the care and pains she had taken to keep the rent-money sacred from his itching hands had only resulted at last in this supreme discomfiture. It was terrible – terrible! And Dick, she knew, had had social difficulties to contend with at Oxford at first, and was now just overcoming them, and beginning to be recognised as odd, very odd, but a decent sort of fellow. Mr. Plantagenet’s visit would put an end to all that. He couldn’t be kept sober for three days at a stretch; and he would disgrace dear Dick before the whole University.

However, Maud saw at once remonstrance was impossible. All she could conceivably do was to warn Dick beforehand. Forewarned is forearmed. She must warn Dick beforehand. Sorrowfully she went off by herself towards the post-office in the High Street. She would send a telegram. And then, even as she thought it, the idea came over her, how could she ever allow that fuzzy-headed Miss Janson at the Chiddingwick office to suspect the depth of the family disgrace? and another plan suggested itself. The third-class fare to Broughton, the next town of any size, was eightpence-ha’penny return: telegram would be sixpence; one and twopence-ha’penny in all: that was a lot of money! But still, for Dick’s sake, she must venture upon the extravagance. With a beating heart in her breast, she hurried down to the station and took a ticket for Broughton. All the way there she was occupied in making up a telegram that should not compromise Richard; for she imagined to herself that a scholar of Durham would be a public personage of such distinction at Oxford that the telegraph clerks would be sure to note and retail whatever was said to him. At last, after infinite trials, she succeeded in satisfying herself.

‘Plantagenet: Durham College, Oxford. – E. P. visits Oxford to-morrow as surprise. Take precautions. – Maud.’

That came to sevenpence. But try as she would, she couldn’t make it any shorter. Not for worlds would she describe E. P.‘s relationship to the Scholar of Durham. And she blushed to herself as she handed it in to think she should have to ask the brother of whom she was so proud to take precautions against a visit from their own father!

CHAPTER X. MR. PLANTAGENET LIVES AGAIN

Outside college that same afternoon Trevor Gillingham, in a loud check suit, lounged lazily by the big front gate – on the prowl, as he phrased it himself, for an agreeable companion. For the Born Poet was by nature a gregarious animal, and hated to do anything alone, if a comrade could be found for him. But being a person of expansive mind, ever ready to pick up hints from all and sundry, he preferred to hook himself on by pure chance to the first stray comer, a process which contributed an agreeable dramatic variety to the course of his acquaintanceships. He loved deliberately to survey the kaleidoscope of life, and to try it anew in ever-varying combinations.

Now, the first man who emerged from the big gate that afternoon happened, as luck would have it, to be Richard Plantagenet, in his striped college blazer, on his way to the barges. Gillingham took his arm at once, as if they were boon companions.

‘Are you engaged this afternoon?’ he inquired with quite friendly interest. ‘Because, if not, I should so much like the advantage of your advice and assistance. My governor’s coming up next week for a few days to Oxford, and he wants some rooms – nice rooms to entertain in. He won’t go to the Randolph – banal, very, don’t you know – because he’ll want to see friends a good deal. He’s convivial, the governor; and he’d like a place where they’d be able to cook a decent dinner. Now, Edward Street would do, I should think. First-rate rooms in Edward Street. Can you come round and help me?’

He said it with an amount of empressement that was really flattering. Now, Dick had nothing particular to do that afternoon, though he had been bound for the river; but he always liked a stroll with that brilliant Gillingham, whom he had never ceased to admire as a creature from another social sphere – a cross between Lord Byron and the Admirable Crichton. So he put off his row, and walked round to Edward Street, the most fashionable quarter for high-class lodgings to be found in Oxford. Sir Bernard, it seemed, had just returned to England for a few short weeks from his Roumanian mission, and was anxious to get decent rooms, his son said – ‘the sort of rooms, don’t you know, where one can dine one’s women folk, for he knows all the dons’ families.’ They looked at half a dozen sets, all in the best houses, and Gillingham finally selected a suite at ten guineas. Dick opened his eyes with astonishment at that lordly figure: he never really knew till then one could pay so much for lodgings. But he concealed his surprise from the Born Poet, his own pride having early taught him that great lesson in life of nil admirari, which is far more necessary to social salvation in snob-ridden England than ever it could have been in the Rome of the Cæsars.

On their way back to college, after a stroll round the meadows, they met a very small telegraph boy at the doors of Durham.

‘Message for you, sir,’ the porter said, touching his hat to Dick; and in great doubt and trepidation, for to him a telegram was a most rare event, Dick took it and opened it.

His face flushed crimson as he read the contents; but he saw in a second the only way out of it was to put the best face on things.

‘Why, my father’s coming up, too!’ he said, turning round to Gillingham. ‘He’ll arrive tomorrow. I – I must go this moment and hunt up some rooms for him. My sister doesn’t say by what train he’s coming; but he evidently means to stay, from what she tells me.’

‘One good turn deserves another,’ Gillingham drawled out carelessly. ‘I don’t mind going round with you and having another hunt. I should think that second set we saw round the corner would just about suit him.’

The second set had been rated at seven guineas a week. Dick was weak enough to colour again.

‘Oh no,’ he answered hurriedly. ‘I – I’d prefer to go alone. Of course, I shall want some much cheaper place than that. I think I can get the kind of thing I require in Grove Street.’

‘As you will,’ Gillingham answered lightly, nodding a brisk farewell, and turning back into quad. ‘Far be it from me to inflict my company unwillingly on any gentleman anywhere. I’m all for Auberon Herbert and pure individualism. I say you, Faussett, here’s a game;’ and he walked mysteriously round the corner by the Warden’s Lodgings. He dropped his voice to a whisper: ‘The Head of the Plantagenets is coming up tomorrow to visit the Prince of the Blood – fact! I give you my word for it. So we’ll have an opportunity at last of finding out who the dickens the fellow is, and where on earth he inherited the proud name of Plantagenet from.’

‘There were some Plantagenets at Leeds – no; I think it was Sheffield,’ Faussett put in, trying to remember. ‘Somebody was saying to me the other day this man might be related to them. The family’s extinct, and left a lot of money.’

‘Then they can’t have anything to do with our Prince of the Blood,’ Gillingham answered carelessly; ‘for he isn’t a bit extinct, but alive and kicking: and he hasn’t got a crooked sixpence in the world to bless himself with. He lives on cold tea and Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits. But he’s not a bad sort, either, when you come to know him; but you’ve got to know him first, as the poet observes: and he’s really a fearful swell at the history of the Plantagenets.’

Dick passed a troubled night. Terrible possibilities loomed vague before him. Next day he was down at the first two trains by which he thought it at all possible his father might arrive; and his vigilance was rewarded by finding Mr. Plantagenet delivered by the second. The Head of the House was considerably surprised, and not a little disappointed, when he saw his son and heir awaiting him on the platform.

‘What, you here, Dick!’ he cried. ‘Why, I wanted to surprise you. I intended to take my modest room for the night at the same hotel at which you stopped – the Saracen’s Head, if I recollect the name aright – and then to drop in upon you quite unexpectedly about lunch-time.’

‘Maud telegraphed to me that you were coming, father,’ Dick answered, taking his hand, it must be acknowledged, a trifle less warmly than filial feeling might have dictated. Then his face grew fiery red. ‘But I’ve engaged rooms for you,’ he went on, ‘not at an inn, on purpose. I hope, father, for your own sake, as well as for mine, while you’re here in Oxford you won’t even so much as enter one.’

It was a hard thing to have to say; but, for very shame’s sake, Dick felt he must muster up courage to say it.

As for Mr. Plantagenet himself, poor old sot that he was, a touch of manly pride brought the colour just for once to his own swollen cheek.

‘I hope, Richard,’ he said, drawing himself up very erect – for he had a fine carriage still, in spite of all his degradation – ‘I hope I have sufficient sense of what becomes a gentleman, in a society of gentlemen, to think of doing anything that would I disgrace myself, or disgrace my son, or disgrace my name, or my literary reputation – which must be well known to many students of English literature in this University – by any unbecoming act of any description. And I take it hardly, Richard, that my eldest son, for whom I have made such sacrifices’ – Mr. Plantagenet had used that phrase so often already in the parlour of the White Horse that he had almost come by this time to believe himself there was really some truth in it – ‘should greet me with such marked distrust on the very outset of a visit to which I had looked forward with so much pride and pleasure.’

It was quite a dignified speech for Mr. Plan-tagenet. Dick’s, heart was touched by it.

‘I beg your pardon, father,’ he replied in a very low tone. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. But I meant no rudeness. I’ve engaged pleasant lodgings for you in a very nice street, and I’m sure I’ll do everything in my power to make your visit a happy one.’

As he spoke he almost believed his father would rise for once to the height of the circumstances, and behave himself circumspectly with decorum and dignity during his few days at Oxford.

To do Mr. Plantagenet justice, indeed, he tried very hard to keep straight for once, and during all his stay he never even entered the doors of a hotel or public-house. Nay, more; in Dick’s own rooms, as Dick noticed with pleasure, he was circumspect in his drinking. It flattered his vanity and his social pretensions to be introduced to his son’s friends and to walk at his ease through the grounds of the college. Once more for a day or two Edmund Plantagenet felt himself a gentleman among gentlemen.

Dick kept as close to him as possible, except at lecture hours; and then, as far as he could, he handed him over to the friendly care of Gillespie, who mounted guard in turn, and seemed to enter silently into the spirit of the situation. As much as possible, on the other hand, Dick avoided for those days Gillingham and Faussett’s set, whose only wish, he felt sure, would be to draw his father into wild talk about the Plantagenet pedigree – a subject which Dick himself, in spite of his profound faith, had the good sense to keep always most sedulously in the background.

For the first three days Dick was enabled to write nightly and report to Maud that so far all went well, and there were no signs of a catastrophe. But on the fourth day, as ill-luck would have it, Gillingham came round to Faussett’s rooms full of a chance discovery he had that moment lighted upon.

‘Why, who’d ever believe it?’ he cried, all agog. ‘This man Plantagenet, who’s come up to see his son – the Prince of the Blood – is a decayed writer, a man of letters of the Alaric Watts and Leigh Hunt period, not unheard of in his day as an inflated essayist. I know a lot of his stuff by heart – Hazlitt-and-water sort of style; De Quincey gone mad, with a touch of Bulwer. Learnt it when I was a boy, and we lived at Constantinople. He’s the man who used to gush under the name of Barry Neville!’

‘How did you find it out?’ Faussett inquired, all eagerness.

‘Why, I happened to turn out a “Dictionary of Pseudonyms” at the Union just now, in search of somebody else; and there the name Plantagenet caught my eye by chance. So of course I read, and, looking closer, I found this fact about the old man and his origin. It’s extremely interesting. So, to make quite sure, I boarded Plantagenet five minutes ago with the point-blank question. “Hullo, Prince,” said I, “I see your father’s Barry Neville, the writer.” He coloured up to his eyes, as he does – it’s a charming girlish trick of his; but he admitted the impeachment. There! he’s crossing the quad now. I wonder what the dickens he’s done with his governor!’