England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Genealogy -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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