“Nay, holy sir,” said Hugh, keeping his head down, “but I promised.”
“Nevertheless—” began the chaplain, when the knight interrupted.
“Prithee no more, father; a promise is a sacred thing, and the urchin is in the right. Keep covenant is ever the king’s word. What was thy promise, boy?”
“That I would learn the craft, and he hoped that in time I might work there,” pointing to the Cathedral. “But William Franklyn says I never shall.”
“Pay no heed to his croaking,” said Sir Thomas heartily. “Work there, ay, that shalt thou, and when I ride here again with the king, thou shalt show me what thou hast done.”
He kept the boy longer, speaking kindly, and sending him away at length with the gift of a mark, as he said, to buy a remembrance of Mistress Nell. And when he had gone he turned to the chaplain.
“That was a struggle gallantly got through,” he said. “I would I could be sure mine own Edgar would keep as loyally to my words when I am gone. But the boy prince’s example and influence are of the worst.”
And Hugh?
He had done what was right, but right doing does not always bring immediate satisfaction—very often it is the other way, and we think with regret upon what we have given up, and something within us suggests that we have been too hasty, and that there were ways by which we might have done what was almost right and yet had what we wanted. If Master Gervase could have been brought to consent, knowing all Stephen Bassett’s wishes, why, then, surely Hugh might have gone his way, feeling that he had tried to follow his father’s road, and only given up when he found he could not get on. And yet twist it as he would, this reasoning would not come fair and smooth, and there was always something which he had to pass over in a hurry. Sir Thomas, too, had said he was right.
Wat pounced upon him before he had gone far, evidently expecting that he would have a great deal to tell—perhaps have seen the king in his crown. At any other time Hugh might have held his peace, but just now there was a hungry longing in his heart, so that he poured all out to Wat—Sir Thomas’s offer and his own refusal. It must be owned that he was disappointed that Wat took it as a matter of course, while agreeing that it would have been very fine to have ridden away from Exeter in the king’s train.