Blood Royal: A Novel

‘I’ll run up to his rooms and see,’ Faussett answered, laughing. ‘He keeps the old fellow pretty close – in cotton wool, so to speak. Won’t trust him out alone, and sets Gillespie to watch him. But an Exeter man tells me he’s seen the same figure down at a place called Chiddingwick, where he lives, in Surrey; and according to him, he’s a rare old buffer. I’ll go and make his acquaintance, now his R’yal Highness has gone off unattended to lecture; we’ll have some sport out of him.’

And he disappeared, brimming over, up the steps of the New Buildings.

All that afternoon, in fact, Richard noticed for himself that some change had come over his father’s spirit. Mr. Plantagenet was more silent, and yet even more grandiose and regal than ever. He hadn’t been drinking, thank Heaven – not quite so bad as that, for Dick knew only too well the signs of drink in his father’s face and his father’s actions; but he had altered in demeanour, somehow, and was puffed up with personal dignity even more markedly than usual. He sat in, and talked a great deal about the grand days of his youth, and he dwelt so much upon the past glories of Lady Postlethwaite’s salon and the people he used to meet there that Dick began to wonder what on earth it portended.

‘You’ll come round to my rooms, father, after Hall?’ he asked at last, as Mr. Plantagenet rose to leave just before evening chapel. ‘Gillespie’ll be here, and one or two other fellows.’

Mr. Plantagenet smiled dubiously.

‘No, no, my boy,’ he answered in his lightest and airiest manner. ‘You must excuse me. This evening, you must really excuse me. To tell you the truth, Richard’ – with profound importance – ‘I have an engagement elsewhere.’

‘An engagement, father! You have an engagement! And in Oxford, too,’ Dick faltered out. ‘Why, how on earth can you have managed to pick up an engagement?’

Mr. Plantagenet drew himself up as he was wont to do for the beginning of a quadrille, and, assuming an air of offended dignity, replied with much hauteur:

‘I am not in the habit, Richard, of accounting for my engagements, good, bad, or indifferent, to my own children. I am of age, I fancy. Finding myself here at Oxford in a congenial society – in the society to which I may venture to say I was brought up, and of which, but for unfortunate circumstances, I ought always to have made a brilliant member – finding myself here in my natural surroundings, I repeat, I have, of course, picked up, as you coarsely put it, a few private acquaintances on my own account. I’m not so entirely dependent as you suppose upon you, Richard, for my introduction to Oxford society. My own personal qualities and characteristics, I hope, go a little way, at least, towards securing me respect and consideration in whatever social surroundings I may happen to be mixing.’

And Mr. Plantagenet shook out a clean white cambric pocket-handkerchief ostentatiously, to wipe his eyes, in which a slight dew was supposed to have insensibly collected at the thought of Richard’s unfilial depreciation of his qualities and opportunities.

‘I’m sorry I’ve offended you, father,’ Dick answered hastily. ‘I’m sure I didn’t mean to. But I do hope – I do hope – if you’ll allow me to say so, you’re not going round to spend the evening – at any other undergraduate’s rooms – not at Gillingham’s or Faussett’s.’

Mr. Plantagenet shuffled uneasily: in point of fact, he looked very much as he had been wont to look in days gone by, when the landlady at the White Horse inquired of him now and again how soon he intended to settle his little account for brandy-and-sodas.

‘I choose my own acquaintances, Richard,’ he answered, with as much dignity as he could easily command. I don’t permit myself to be dictated to in matters like this by my own children. Your neighbour Mr. Faussett appears to me a very intelligent and gentlemanly young man: a young man such as I was accustomed to associate with myself in my own early days, before I married your poor dear mother: not like your set, Richard, who are far from being what I myself consider thoroughly gentlemanly. Mere professional young men, your set, my dear boy: very worthy, no doubt, and hard-working, and respectable, like this excellent Gillespie; but not with that cachet, that indefinable something, that invisible hall-mark of true blood and breeding, that I observe with pleasure in your neighbour Faussett. It’s not your fault, my poor boy: I recognise freely that it’s not your fault. You take after your mother. She’s a dear good soul, your mother’ – pocket-handkerchief lightly applied again – ‘but she’s not a Plantagenet, Richard: she’s not a Planta-genet.’

And with this parting shot neatly delivered point-blank at Dick’s crimson face, the offended father sailed majestically out of the room and strode down the staircase.

Dick’s cheek was hot and red with mingled pride and annoyance; but he answered nothing. Far be it from him to correct or rebuke by word or deed the living Head of the House of Plantagenet.

‘I hope to God,’ he thought to himself piteously, ‘Faussett hasn’t asked him on purpose to try and make an exhibition of him. But what on earth else can he have wanted to ask him for, I wonder?’

At that very same moment Faussett was stopping Trevor Gillingham in the Chapel Quad with a characteristic invitation for a wine-party that evening.

‘Drop in and have a glass of claret with me after Hall, Gillingham,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’ve got a guest coming to-night. I’ve asked Plan-tagenet’s father round to my rooms at eight. He’ll be in splendid form. He’s awfully amusing when he talks at his ease, I’m told. Do come and give us one of your rousing recitations. I want to make things as lively as I can, you know.’

Gillingham smiled the tolerant smile of the Born Poet.

‘All right, my dear boy,’ he answered. ‘I’ll come. It’ll be stock-in-trade to me, no doubt, for an unborn drama. Though Plantagenet’s not half a bad sort of fellow, after all, when you come to know him, in spite of his smugging. Still, I’ll come, and look on: an experience, of course, is always an experience. The poet’s life must necessarily be made up of infinite experiences. Do you think Shakespeare always kept to the beaten path of humanity? A poet can’t afford it. He must see some good – of a sort – in everything; for he must see in it at least material for a tragedy or a comedy.’

With which comfortable assurance to salve his poetical conscience the Born Bard strolled off, in cap and gown, with an easy lounging gait, to evening chapel.

CHAPTER XI. A TRAGEDY OR A COMEDY?

Mr. Plantagenet for a song! Mr. Plantagenet for a song! Hurrah for the Plantagenet!’

The table rang with the knocking of knuckles and the low cries of half-tipsy boys as the half-tipsy old man rose solemnly before them, and proceeded to deliver himself in his earliest style of his famous carol of ‘Bet, the Bagman’s Daughter.’ He was certainly in excellent feather. Standing tall and erect, with the enlivenment of the wine to support him for the moment; all the creases smoothed out of his back, and half the wrinkles out of his brow; even his coarse, bloated face softened a little by the unusual society in which he found himself, Mr. Plantagenet sang his song as he had never sung it at the White Horse at Chiddingwick, with great verve, go, and vigour. He half blushed once or twice – at least, he would have blushed if his cheeks were capable of getting much redder – when he came to the most doubtful verses of that very doubtful composition; but the lads beside him only clapped the harder, and cried, ‘Bravo!’ ‘Jolly good song!’ and ‘Well done, Mr. Plantagenet!’ so he kept through bravely to the very end, singing as he had never sung before since he was a promising young man of eight-and-twenty, the lion of Lady Postlethwaite’s delightful entertainments.

As he sat down a perfect chorus of applause rent the air, and Faussett, anxious not to let so good an opportunity slip by, took occasion to fill Mr. Plan-tagenet’s glass twice over in succession: once during the course of the boisterous song, and once at the end to reward his efforts.

The old man had been unusually circumspect, for him, at first, for he vaguely suspected in his own mind that Faussett might have asked him there on purpose to make him drunk; and though there was nothing he liked better than an opportunity of attaining that supreme end of his existence at somebody else’s expense, he had still some faint sense of self-respect left, lingering somewhere in some unsuspected back corner of his poor old ruined personality, which made him loath to exhibit his shame and degradation before so many well-bred and gentlemanly young Oxonians. But as time wore on, and the lads applauded all his jokes and songs and stories to the echo, Mr. Plantagenet’s heart began by degrees to soften. He was wronging these ingenuous and eminently companionable young fellows. He was over-suspicious in supposing they wanted to make fun of him or to get fun out of him. They had been naturally attracted and pleased by his marked social qualities and characteristics. They recognised in him, under all disguises of capricious fortune, a gentleman and a Plantagenet. He helped himself complacently to another glass of sherry. He held up the golden liquid and glanced askance at the light through it, then he took a delicate sip and rolled it on his palate appreciatively.

It was not very good sherry. An Oxford winemerchant’s thirty-six shilling stuff (for undergraduate consumption) can hardly be regarded as a prime brand of Spanish vintage; but it was, at least, much better than Mr. Plantagenet had been in the habit of tasting for many years past, and perhaps his palate was hardly capable any longer of distinguishing between the nicer flavours of hocks or clarets. He put his glass down with rising enthusiasm.

‘Excellent Amontillado!’ he said, pursing up his lips with the air of a distinguished connoisseur. ‘Ex-cellent Amontillado! It’s a very long time since I tasted any better.’

Which was perfectly true, as far as it went, though not exactly in the nature of a high testimonial to the character of the wine.

Now, nothing pleases a boy of twenty, posing as a man, so much as to praise his port and sherry. Knowing nothing about the subject himself, and inwardly conscious of his own exceeding ignorance, he accepts the verdict of anybody who ventures upon having an opinion with the same easy readiness as the crowd at the Academy accepts the judgment of anyone present who says aloud, with dogmatic certainty, that any picture in the place is well or ill painted.

‘It is good sherry,’ Faussett repeated, much mollified. ‘Have another glass!’

Mr. Plantagenet assented, and leaned back in an easy-chair as being the safest place from which to deliver at ease his aesthetic judgments for the remainder of that evening. For the wine-party was beginning now to arrive at the boisterous stage. There were more songs to follow, not all of them printable; and there was loud, dull laughter, and there was childish pulling of bonbon crackers, and still more childish shying of oranges at one another’s heads across the centre table. The fun was waxing fast and furious. Mr. Plantagenet at the same time was waxing hilarious.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, holding his glass a little obliquely in his right hand, and eyeing it with his head on one side in a very doubtful attitude – ‘Gentlemen.’ And at that formal beginning a hush of expectation fell upon the flushed faces of the noisy lads, ready to laugh at the drunken old man who might have been the father of any one among them.

‘Hush, hush, there! Mr. Plantagenet for a speech!’ Faussett shouted aloud, drumming his glass on the table.

‘Hear, hear!’ Gillingham cried, echoing the appeal heartily. ‘The Plantagenet for a speech! Give us a speech, Mr. Plantagenet!’

Gillingham was a great deal soberer than any of the others, but he was anxious to make notes internally of this singular phenomenon. The human intellect utterly sunk and degraded by wine and debauchery forms a psychological study well worthy the Born Poet’s most attentive consideration. He may need it some day for a Lear or an Othello.

Mr. Plantagenet struggled up manfully upon his shaky legs. ‘Gentlemen,’ he murmured, in a voice a little thick, to be sure, with drinking, but still preserving that exquisitely clear articulation for which Edmund Plantagenet had always been famous – ‘Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to find myself at last, after a long interval of comparative eclipse, in such exceedingly congenial and delightful society. In fact, I may say in the society of my equals – yes, gentlemen, of my equals. I am not proud; I will put it simply “of my equals.” Time was, ‘tis true, when the name of Plantagenet would, perhaps, have implied something more than mere equality – but I pass that. To insist upon the former greatness and distinction of one’s family is as ill-bred and obtrusive as it is really superfluous. But since we here this evening have now sunk into our anecdotage, I will venture to narrate to you a little anecdote’ – here Mr. Plantagenet swayed uneasily from one side to the other, and Gillingham, ever watchful, propped him up from behind with much anxious show of solicitous politeness – ‘a little anecdote of a member of my own kith and kin, with whose name you are all doubtless well acquainted. My late relative, Edward Plantagenet, the Black Prince – ’

At the mention of this incongruous association, most seriously delivered, such a sudden burst of unanimous laughter broke at once from the whole roomful of unruly boys that Mr. Plantagenet, taken aback, felt himself quite unable to continue his family reminiscences. The roar of amusement stunned and half sobered him. He drew his hand across his forehead with a reflective air, steadied himself on his legs, and, shading his eyes with his hand, looked across the table with a frown at the laughing conspirators. Then a light seemed to dawn upon him spasmodically for a moment; the next, again, it had faded away. He forgot entirely the thread of his story, gazed around him impotently with a bland smile of wonder, and sank back into his chair at last with the offended dignity of hopeless drunkenness. It was a painful and horrible sight. To hide his confusion he filled his glass up once more with the profoundest solemnity, tossed it off at a gulp to prevent spilling it, and glanced round yet again upon the tittering company, as if he expected another round of generous applause to follow his efforts.

‘He’s drunk now, anyhow – dead drunk,’ one of the gentlemanly and congenial young fellows half whispered to Gillingham. ‘Let’s mix all the heeltaps for him with a little soapsuds, and make him swallow them off out of the washhand basin, shall we?’

Gillingham’s taste was revolted by the gross vulgarity of this practical suggestion. ‘No, no!’ he replied, without attempting to conceal his genuine disgust; ‘have you no respect at all for his age and his degradation? Don’t you know that a drunken old man is too sacred a thing to be made the common butt of your vulgar ridicule? Dionysus was a great god – a great god in his cups – and even Silenus still retains the respect due to gray hairs. Let him alone, I say; he has lowered himself enough, and more than enough, already, without your trying to lower him any further.’

‘Why, you helped in the fun as well as we did,’ Westall answered, grumbling. ‘You needn’t try to go and make yourself out such a saint as all that after it’s done and finished, for it was you who got him on his legs to make a fool of himself, anyhow.’ ‘Shakespeare must have studied his Falstaff at all moments and in all phases,’ Gillingham replied oracularly, with his gravest irony; ‘but I refuse to believe he ever conspired with a set of young blockheads at the Boar in Eastcheap to mix dregs of sherris sack with beer and soapsuds in a common washhand basin for Green or Marlowe. The Born Poet observes; he does not instigate.’

‘Hush, hush!’ Faussett cried again. ‘Mr. Plantagenet is going to address us. Another speech from the Plantagenet!’

‘Hear, hear!’ Gillingham echoed as before. ‘More experiences, more experiences! Life is wide, and its reflection must be many-sided; we want all experiences harmoniously combined to produce the poet, the philosopher, and the ruler.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Mr. Plantagenet began afresh, rising feebly to his legs and gazing around upon the assembled little crowd in puzzled bewilderment, ‘I’m not quite myself this evening, ladies and gentlemen; my old complaint, my old complaint, gentlemen.’ Here he laid his hand pathetically upon his heart, amid a chorus of titters. ‘Gentlemen, choose your partners. Bow, and fall into places. Eight bars before beginning, then advance in couples – right, left – down the middle. I’ll strike up immediately. My violin, my violin! what have you done with it, gentlemen?’

‘Gracious heavens!’ Gillingham cried, looking over to Faussett, and hardly more than half whispering; ‘why, don’t you understand? the man’s a dancing-master. He thinks we’re his pupils, and he’s going to make us dance the lancers!’

‘By Jove, so he is!’ Faussett exclaimed, delighted at this new development of the situation.

‘Let’s humour him. Fall into places, and let’s have the lancers. Here, Tremenbeere, you be my partner.’

But before they could carry out this ingenious arrangement Mr. Plantagenet had suddenly discovered his mistake, and sat down, or, rather, sank with Gillingham’s assistance into his easy-chair, where he sat now once more, blankly smiling a vacuous and impenetrable smile upon the uproarious company.

‘Stick him out in the yard!’ ‘Pour cold water over him!’ ‘Give him a dose of cayenne!’

‘Turn his coat inside out, and send him to find his way home with a label pinned upon him!’ shouted a whole chorus of congenial and gentlemanly young fellows in varying voices, with varying suggestions for completing the degradation of the poor drunken old creature.