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.’
