by Grant Allen
But if Edmund Plantagenet’s legs were a trifle unsteady, his heart was all afire with wrath and remorse at this dramatic interlude. For the first time in so many years he began to think bitterly to himself of his wasted opportunities and ruined talents. Such as they were, he had really and truly wasted them; and though perhaps, after all, they were never much to boast of, time had been when Edmund Plantagenet thought highly indeed of them. Nay, in his heart of hearts the broken old dancing-master thought highly of them still, in spite of everything during all those long years. There were nights when he lay awake sobering, on his hard bed at home, and repeated lovingly to himself the ‘Stanzas to Evelina’ which he had contributed ages ago to the ‘Book of Beauty,’ or the ‘Lines on the Death of Wordsworth’ which he printed at the time in the Yorkshire Magazine, with a profound conviction that they contained, after all, some of the really most beautiful and least appreciated poetry in the English language. As a rule, Mr. Plantagenet was fairly contented with himself and his relics of character; it was society — harsh, unfeeling, stupid society — that he blamed most of all for his misfortunes and failures. Still, to every one of us there come now and then moments of genuine self-revelation, when the clouds of egotism and perverse misrepresentation, through which we usually behold our own personality in a glorified halo, fade away before the piercing light of truer introspective analysis, forced suddenly upon us by some disillusioning incident or accident of the moment; and then, for one brief flash, we have the misery and agony of really seeing ourselves as others see us. Such days may Heaven keep kindly away from all of us! Such a day Edmund Plantagenet had now drearily fallen upon. He wandered wildly down the dark bank toward Iflley lasher, his whole soul within him stirred and upheaved with volcanic energy by the shame and disgrace of that evening’s degradation. The less often a man suffers from these bruts of self-humiliation, the more terrible is their outburst when they finally do arrive to him. Edmund Plantagenet, loathing and despising his present self, by contrast with that younger and idealized image which had perhaps never really existed at all, stumbled in darkness and despair along that narrow path, between the flooded river on one side and the fence that enclosed the damp water-meadows on the other, still more than half drunk, and utterly careless where he went or what on earth might happen to him.
The river in parts had overflowed its banks, and the towing-path for some yards together was often under water. But Mr. Plantagenet, never pausing, walked, slipped, and staggered through the slush and mud, very treacherous under foot, knowing nothing, heeding nothing, save that the coolness about his ankles seemed to revive him a little and to sober his head as he went floundering through it. By-and-by he reached the Long Bridges — a range of frail planks with wooden side-rails, that lead the tow-path across two or three broad stretches of back-water from the Isis. He straggled across somehow, looking down every now and then into the swirling water, where the stars were just reflected in quick flashing eddies, while all the rest about looked black as night, but, oh! so cool and inviting to his fevered forehead. So he wandered on, fiercely remorseful within, burning hot without, till he came abreast of a row of old pollard-willows, close beside the edge of the little offshoot at Iffley lasher. The bank was damp, but he sat down upon it all the same, and grew half drowsy as he sat with the mingled effects of wine and indignation.
After awhile he rose, and stumbled on across a bend of the meadows till he reached the river. Just there the bank was very slippery and treacherous. Even a sober man could hardly have kept his footing on it in so dark a night. ‘One false step,’ Edmund Plantagenet thought to himself with wild despair, ‘and there would be an end of all this fooling. One false step — and splash! A man may slip any day. No suicide in tumbling into a swollen river of a moonless night when the bank’s all flooded.’
Still, on and on he walked, having staggered now far, far below Iffley, and away towards the neighbourhood of Sandford lasher. Slippery bank all the distance, and head growing dizzier and dizzier each moment with cold and wet, as well as wine and anger.
At last, of a sudden, a dull splash in the river! Bargemen, come up late in the evening from Abingdon, and laid by now for the night under shelter of the willows on the opposite side two hundred yards down, heard the noise distinctly. Smoking their pipes on deck very late, it being a fine evening, one says to the other:
‘Sounds precious like a man, Bill!’
Bill, philosophically taking a long pull, answers calmly at the end:
‘More liker a cow, Tom. None of our business, anyhow. Get five bob, mayhap, for bringin’ in the body. Hook it up easy enough to-morrow mornin?
Next morning, sure enough, a body might be seen entangled among the reeds under the steep mud-bank on the Berkshire shore. Bill, taking it in tow and bringing it up to Oxford, got five shillings from the county for his lucky discovery. At the inquest, thought it wise, however, to omit mentioning the splash heard on deck overnight, or that queer little episode of philosophical conversation.
The coroner’s jury, for that end empanelled, attentively considering the circumstances which surrounded the last end of Edmund Plantagenet, late of Chiddingwick, Surrey, had more especially to inquire into the question whether or not deceased at the time he met with his sudden death was perfectly sober. Deceased, it seemed, was father of Mr. Richard Plantagenet, of Durham College, who identified the body. On the night of the accident the unfortunate gentleman had dined at his own lodgings in Grove Street, and afterwards went round to take a glass of wine at Mr. T. M. Faussett’s rooms in Durham. Mr. Faussett testified that deceased when he left loose rooms was perfectly sober. Mr. Trevor Gillingham, with, the other undergraduates and the college porter, unanimously bore witness to the same effect. Persons in St. Aldate’s who had seen deceased on his way to Folly Bridge corroborated this evidence as to sobriety of demeanour. Deceased, though apparently preoccupied, walked as straight as an arrow. On the whole, the coroner considered, all the circumstances seemed to show that Mr. Edmund Plantagenet, who was not a man given to early hours, had strolled off for an evening walk by the river bank to cool himself after dinner, and had slipped and fallen — being a heavy man — owing to the flooded and dangerous state of the tow-path. Jury returned a verdict in accordance with the evidence — accidental death — with a rider suggesting that the Conservators should widen and extend the tow-path.
But Trevor Gillingham, meeting Faussett in quad after Hall that evening, observed to him confidentially in a very low voice:
‘By Jove, old man, we’ve had a precious narrow squeak of it! I only hope the others will be discreetly silent. We might all have got sent down in a lump together for our parts in this curious little family drama. But all’s well that end’s well, as the Immortal One has it. Might make a capital scene, don’t you know, some day — in one of my future tragedies.’
CHAPTER XIII. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
His father’s death put Dick at once in a very different position from the one he had previously occupied. It was a family revolution. And on the very evening of the funeral, that poor shabby funeral, Dick began then and there to think the future over.
Poor people have to manage things very differently from rich ones; and when Edmund Plantagenet was laid to rest at last in the Oxford cemetery, no member of the family save, Dick himself was there to assist at the final ceremony. Only Gillespie accompanied him to the side of the grave out of all the college; but when they reached the chapel, they found Gillingham standing there hatless before them — urged, no doubt, by some late grain of remorse for his own prime part in this domestic drama; or was it only perhaps by a strong desire to see the last act of his tragedy played out to its bitter climax? After the ceremony he left hurriedly at once in the opposite direction. The two friends walked home alone in profound silence. That evening Gillespie came up to Dick’s rooms to bear him company in his trouble. Dick was deeply depressed. After awhile he grew confidential, and explained to his friend the full gravity of the crisis. For Mr
. Plan-tagenet, after all, poor weak sot though he was, had been for many years the chief bread-winner of the family. Dick and Maud, to be sure, had done their best to eke out the housekeeping, expenses, and to aid the younger children as far as possible; but, still, it was the father on whose earnings they all as a family had depended throughout for rent and food and clothing. Only Maud and Dick were independent in any way; Mrs. Plantagenet and the little ones owed everything to the father. He had been a personage at Chiddingwick, a character in his way, and Chiddingwick for some strange reason had always been proud of him. Even ‘carriage company’ sent their children to learn of him at the White Horse, just because he was ‘old Plantagenet,’ and a certain shadowy sentiment attached to his name and personality. Broken reprobate as he was, the halo of past greatness followed him down through life to the lowest depths of degradation and penury.
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, witho
ut 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.
