Blood Royal: A Novel

‘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.’

CHAPTER III. DISCOUNTING IT

Mrs. Plantagenet looked across the table at her son with vague eyes of misgiving. ‘This is all very sudden, Dick,’ she faltered out, not without some slight tremor.

‘Sudden for you, dear mother,’ Dick answered, taking her hand in his own; ‘but not for me.

Very much otherwise.. I’ve had it in my mind for a great many months; and this is what decided me.’

He drew from his pocket as he spoke a small scrap of newspaper and handed it across to her. It was a cutting from the Times. Mrs. Plantagenet read it through with swimming eyes. ‘University Intelligence: Oxford. – Four Foundation Scholarships will be awarded after public examination at Durham College on May 20th. Two will be of the annual value of One Hundred Pounds, for Classics; one of the same value for Natural Science; and one for Modern History. Application to be made, on or before Wednesday, the 19th, to the Rev. the Dean, at Durham College, who will also supply all needful information to intending candidates.’

The words swam in a mist before Mrs. Planta-genet’s eyes. ‘What does it all mean, dear Dick?’ she inquired almost tearfully.

‘It means, mother,’ Dick answered with the gentlest tenderness, ‘that Durham is the only college in the University which gives as good a Scholarship as a hundred a year for Modern History. Now, ever since I left the grammar school, I haven’t had it out of my mind for a day to go, if I could, to Oxford. I think it’s incumbent upon a man in my position to give himself, if possible, a University training.’

He said the words without the slightest air of conceit or swagger, but with a profound consciousness of their import; for to Richard Plantagenet the myth or legend of the ancient greatness of his family was a spur urging him ever on to make himself worthy of so glorious an ancestry. ‘So I’ve been working and saving ever since,’ he went on, ‘with that idea constantly before me; and I’ve looked out for twelve months or more in the Times every day for the announcement of an exam, for the Durham Scholarship.’

‘But you won’t get it, my boy,’ Mr. Plantagenet put in philosophically, after a moment’s consideration. ‘You never can get it. Your early disadvantages, you know – your inadequate schooling – so many young fellows well coached from Eton and Harrow!’

‘If it had been a classical one, I should agree with you: I couldn’t, I’m afraid,’ Bichard responded frankly, for he was by no means given to over-estimate his own abilities; ‘but in history it’s different. You see, so much of it’s just our own family pedigree and details of our ancestry. That acted as a fillip – gave me an interest in the subject from the very first; and as soon as I determined to begin reading for Oxford, I felt at once my best chance would lie in Modern History. And that’s why I’ve been working away at it as hard as ever I could in all my spare time for more than a twelvemonth.’

‘But have you been reading the right books, Dick? – that’s the question,’ his father put in dubiously, with a critical air, making a manful effort to recall the names of the works that were most authoritative in the subject when he himself last looked at a history: ‘Sharon Turner, Kemble, Palgrave, Thierry, Guizot and so forth?’

Richard had too deep a respect for the chief of the Plantagenets, miserable sot though he was, to be betrayed into a smile by this belated catalogue. He only answered with perfect gravity: ‘I’m afraid none of those would be of much use to me nowadays in a Scholarship exam.: another generation has arisen, which knows not Joseph. But I’ve got up all the books recommended in the circular of the Board of Studies – Freeman, you know, and Stubbs and Green, and Froude and Gardner. And I’ve worked especially at the reigns of the earlier Plantagenets, and the development of the towns and guilds, and all that sort of thing, in Brentano and Seebohm.’

Mr. Plantagenet held his peace and looked profoundly wise. He had barely heard the names of any of these gentlemen himself: at the best of times his knowledge had always been shallow – rather showy than exact; a journalist’s stock-in-trade – and since his final collapse into the ignominious position of dancing-master at Chiddingwick he had ceased to trouble himself much about any form of literature save the current newspaper. A volume of ‘Barry Neville’s Collected Essays,’ bound in the antiquated style of the ‘Book of Beauty,’ with a portrait of the author in a blue frock-coat and stock for frontispiece, stood on his shelf by way of fossil evidence to his extinct literary pretensions; but Barry Neville himself had dropped with time into the usual listless apathy of a small English country town. So he held his peace, not to display his ignorance further; for he felt at once, from this glib list of authorities, that Dick’s fluent display of acquaintance with so many new writers, whose very names he had never before heard – though they were well enough known in the modern world of letters to be recommended by an Oxford Board of Studies – put him hopelessly out of court on the subject under discussion.

‘Jones tertius has a brother at Oxford,’ Clarence put in very eagerly; ‘and he’s a howling swell – he lives in a room that’s panelled with oak from top to bottom.’

‘And if you get the Scholarship, Dick,’ his mother went on wistfully, ‘will you have to go and live there, and be away from us always?’

‘Only half the year, mother dear,’ Richard answered coaxingly; for he knew what she was thinking – how hard it would be for her to be left alone in Chiddingwick, among all those unruly children and her drunken husband, without the aid of her one help and mainstay. ‘You know, there’s only about five months of term, and all the rest’s vacation. In vacation I’d come home, and do something to earn money towards making up the deficit.’

‘It’s a very long time, though, five months,’ Mrs. Plantagenet said pensively. ‘But, there!’ she added, after a pause, brightening up, ‘perhaps you won’t get it.’