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. ............