It was a sad history, and, alas! a very common one. Thirty years before, when Edmund Plan tagenet, not yet a believer in his own real or pretended royal descent, went up to London from Yorkshire to seek his fortune in literature, he was one of the handsomest and most popular young men in his own society. His name alone succeeded in attracting attention; we are not all of us Plantagenets. The admirable Lady Postlethwaite, arbiter in her day of literary reputation, gave the man with the royal surname the run of her well-known salon; editors accepted readily enough his inflated prose and his affected poetry; and all the world went well with him for a time while he remained a bachelor. But one fine day Edmund Plantagenet took it into his head, like many better men, to fall in love we have done it ourselves, and we know how catching it is and not only to fall in love, but also, which is worse, to give effect to his feelings by actually getting married. In after-life Mr. Plantagenet regarded that unfortunate step as the one fatal error in an otherwise blameless career. He felt that with a name and prospects like his he ought at least to have married rank, title, or money. Instead of which he just threw himself away: he married only beauty, common-sense, and goodness. The first of these fades, the second palls, and the third Mr. Plantagenet was never constructed to appreciate. But rank and money appeal to all, and persist unchanged after such skin-deep attractions as intellect or good looks have ceased to interest.
From the day of his marriage, then, Edmund Plantagenets downward career began. As a married man, he became at once of less importance in Lady Postlethwaites society he was so useful for dances. Editors found out by degrees that he had only affectation and audacity in place of genius; work fell short as children increased; and evil days began to close in upon the growing family. But what was worst of all, as money grew scarcer, a larger and larger proportion of it went each day to swell the receipts, at first of his club, and afterwards, when clubs became things of the past, of the nearest public-house. To make a long story short, before many years were over, Edmund Plantagenet, the young, the handsome, the promising, had degenerated from a dashing and well-bred fellow into a miserable sot of the sorriest description.
But just in proportion as his real position grew worse and worse did Mr. Plantagenet buoy himself up in secret with magnificent ideas about his origin and ancestry. Even in his best days, indeed, he would never consent to write under his own real name; he wouldnt draggle the honour of the Plantagenets in the dirt of the street, he said with fine contempt; so he adopted for literary purposes the high-sounding pseudonym of Barry Neville. But after he began to decline, and to give way to drink, his pretensions to royal blood became well-nigh ridiculous. Not, indeed, that anyone ever heard him boast noisily of his origin; Edmund Plantagenet was too clever a man of the world to adopt such futile and obvious tactics; he knew a plan worth two of that; he posed as a genuine descendant of the old Kings of England, more by tacit assumption than by open assertion. Silence played his game far better than speech. When people tried to question him on the delicate point of his pedigree, he evaded them neatly, but with a mysterious air which seemed to say every bit as plain as words could say it: I choose to waive my legitimate claim, and I wont allow any man to bully me into asserting it. As he often implied to his familiar friends, he was too much a gentleman to dispute the possession of the throne with a lady.
But Mr. Plantagenets present ostensible means of gaining an honest livelihood was by no means a regal one. He kept, as he was wont to phrase it gently himself, a temple of Terpsichore. In other words, he taught the local dancing-class. In his best days in London, when fortune still smiled upon him, he had been famed as the most graceful waltzer in Lady Postlethwaites set; and now that the jade had deserted him, at his lowest depth, he had finally settled down as the Chiddingwick dancing-master. Sot as he was, all Chiddingwick supported him loyally, for his names sake; even Lady Agathas children attended his lessons. It was a poor sort of trade, indeed, for the last of the Plantagenets; but he consoled himself under the disgrace with the cheerful reflection that he served, after all, as it were, as his own Lord Chamberlain.
On this particular night, however, of all the year, Mr. Plantagenet felt more profoundly out of humour with the world in general and his own ancestral realm of England in particular, than was at all usual with him. The fact was, his potential subjects had been treating him with marked want of consideration for his real position. Kings in exile are exposed to intolerable affronts. The landlord of the White Horse had hinted at the desirability of arrears of pay on the score of past brandies and sodas innumerable. The landlord was friendly, and proud of his guest, who kept the house together; but at times he broke out in little fits of petulance. Now, Mr. Planta-genet, as it happened, had not the wherewithal to settle this little account off-hand, and he took it ill of Barnes, who, as he justly remarked, had had so much out of him, that he should endeavour to hurry a gentleman of birth in the matter of payment. He sat by his own fireside, therefore, in no very amiable humour, and watched the mother bustling about the room with her domestic preparations for the family supper.
Clarence, Mr. Plantagenet said, after a moment of silence, to one of the younger boys, have you prepared your Thucydides? Its getting very late. You seem to me to be loafing about doing nothing.
Oh, I know it pretty well, Clarence answered with a nonchalant air, still whittling at a bit of stick he was engaged in transforming into a homemade whistle. I looked it over in class. Its not very hard. Thucydides is rot most awful rot! It wont take five minutes.
Mr. Plantagenet, with plump fingers, rolled himself another cigarette. He had come down in the world, and left cigars far behind, a fragrant memory of the distant past; but as a gentleman he could never descend to the level of a common clay pipe.
Very well, he said blandly, leaning back in his chair and beaming upon Clarence: a peculiar blandness of tone and manner formed Mr. Plan-tagenets keynote. That may do for me, perhaps; but it wont do for Richard.
After which frank admission of his own utter abdication of parental prerogatives in favour of his own son, he proceeded very deliberately to light his cigarette and stare with placid eyes at the dilatory Clarence.
There was a minutes pause; then Mr. Plantagenet began again.
Eleanor, he remarked, in the same soft, self-indulgent voice, to his youngest daughter, you dont seem to be doing anything. Im sure youve got some lessons to prepare for to-morrow.
Not that Mr. Plantagenet was in the least concerned for the progress of his childrens education; but the deeper they were engaged with their books, the less noise did they make with their ceaseless chatter in the one family sitting-room, and the more did they leave their fond father in peace to his own reflections.
Oh, theres plenty of time, Eleanor answered, with a little toss of her pretty head. I can do em by-and-by after Dick comes in. Hell soon be coming.
I wish to goodness hed come, then! the head of the house ejaculated fervently; for the noise you all make when he isnt 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. Its too much for my poor nerves. They never were vigorous. Henry, my boy, will you stop that intolerable noise? A Jews harp, too! Goodness gracious! what a vulgar instrument! Dicks late to-night. I wonder what keeps him.
I wish to goodness hed come, then! the head of the house ejaculated fervently; for the noise you all make when he isnt 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. Its too much for my poor nerves. They never were vigorous. Henry, my boy, will you stop that intolerable noise? A Jews harp, too! Goodness gracious! what a vulgar instrument! Dicks late to-night. I wonder what keeps him.
It was part and parcel of Mr. Plantagenets 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 contrivers 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, theres some as says our Mr. Plantagenet had ought to be sot pretty high well up where the Queens a-sitting. And though Mr. Plantagenet himself used gently to brush aside the flattering impeachment with one wave of his pompous hand All thats 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 peoples 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, Dicks 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, Im so glad youve come! Weve 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-genets 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 Eleanors 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:
Im sorry Im 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, dont 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 wasnt all, he went on hurriedly, well aware that his father was debating in his own mind whether he couldnt on the strength of it borrow a shilling. It was a special piece of work for the new governess at the Rectory. And, mother, isnt it odd? her names Mary Tudor!
There isnt 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, theyre common enough in Wales. In point of fact though Im 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 Agathas 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 ones self in every position in life so as not to bring disgrace on so distinguished an ancestry.
A moments 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, its 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 wont take two minutes. Its just that piece, dont you know, about the revolt in Corcyra.
Dick looked down at him reproachfully..
Oh, Clarry, he cried with a pained face, you know you cant have looked at it. Not a hard bit, indeed! why, its one of the obscurest and most debated passages in all Thucydides! Now, whats 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 wont 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 brothers benefit.
Clarence dropped his eyes and looked really penitent.
Well, but I say, Dick, he answered quickly, if its so awfully difficult, dont you think it ud be better for me to go over it with you first just a running construe and then Id get a clearer idea of what the chap was driving at from the very beginning?