Blood Royal: A Novel

‘Neither,’ Dick answered. ‘My line’s modern history.’

With a sudden little start, Gillingham seemed to wake up to interest. ‘So’s mine,’ he put in, looking extremely wise. ‘It’s the one subject now taught at our existing Universities that a creature with a soul – immortal or otherwise – would be justified in bothering his head about for one moment. Classics and ‘mathematics! oh, fiddlesticks! shade of Shelley, my gorge rises at them!’

‘You won’t have any chance against Gillingham, though, Faussett interposed with profound conviction. ‘He’s a fearful dab at history! You never knew such a howler. He’s read pretty well everything that’s ever been written in it from the earliest ages to the present time. Herodotus and York Powell alike at his finger-ends! We consider at Rugby that a man’s got to get up uncommon early if he wants to take a rise out of Trevor Gillingham.’

‘I’m sorry for that,’ Dick answered quite earnestly, astonished, now he stood face to face with these men of the world, at his own presumption in venturing even to try his luck against them. ‘For I can’t have many shots at Scholarships myself; and, unless I get one, I can’t afford to come up at all to the University.’

His very pride made him confess this much to his new friends at once, for he didn’t wish to seem as if he made their acquaintance under false pretences.

‘Oh, for my part, I don’t care twopence about the coin,’ Gillingham replied with lordly indifference, cocking his hat yet a trifle more one-sidedly than ever. ‘Only, the commoner’s gown, you know, is such, an inartistic monstrosity! I couldn’t bear to wear it! And if one goes to a college at all, one likes to feel one goes on the very best possible footing, as a member of the foundation, and not as a mere outsider, admitted on sufferance.’

It made poor Dick’s mouth water to hear the fellow talk so. What a shame these rich men – mere nouveaux riches, too, by the side of a Plantagenet – should come in like this, and take for pure honour and glory the coveted allowance that other men need as bare provision for their career at the University! He thought it quite unjustifiable. So he walked along in silence the rest of the way to the college gate, while Gillingham and Faussett, schoolboys out of school, continued to talk and chaff and swing their cherry canes in unconcerned good-humour. It was evident the ceremony meant very little to them, which to him meant more than he cared even to acknowledge. Faussett, indeed, had no expectation of a scholarship for himself at all. He went in for it for form’s sake, at his father’s desire – ‘just to satisfy the governor’ – and in hopes it might secure him an offer of rooms from the college authorities.

The first sight of the walls and outer gate of Durham impressed and overawed Dick Plantagenet not a little. To boys brought up in one of our great public schools, indeed, the aspect of Magdalen or Merton or Oriel has in it nothing of the awesome or appalling. It’s only the same old familiar quads on a larger scale over again. But to lads whose whole ideas have been formed from the first at a small country grammar school, the earliest glimpse of University life is something almost terrifying. Richard looked up at the big gate, with its sculptured saints in shrine-like niches, and then beyond again at the great quadrangle with its huge chapel window and its ivy-covered hall, and wondered to himself how he could ever have dreamt of trying to force himself in among so much unwonted splendour. A few lazy undergraduates, great overgrown schoolboys, were lounging about the quad in very careless attitudes. Some were in flannels, bound for the cricket-field or the tennis-courts; others, who were boating men, stood endued in most gorgeous many-coloured blazers. Dick regarded them with awe as dreadfully grand young gentlemen, and trembled to fancy what they would say or think of his carefully-kept black coat, rather shiny at the seams, and his well-brushed hat preserved over from last season. His heart sank within him at the novelty of his surroundings. But just at that moment, in the very nick of time, he raised his eyes by accident, and caught sight – of what? Why the Plantagenet leopards, three deep, upon the façade of the gatehouse. At view of those familiar beasts, the cognisance of his ancestors, he plucked up courage again; after all, he was a Plantagenet, and a member of his own house had founded and endowed that lordly pile he half shrank from entering.

Gillingham saw where his eyes wandered, and half read his unspoken thought. ‘Ah, the family arms!’ he said, laughing a quick little laugh.

‘You’re to the manner born here. If any preference is shown to founder’s kin, you ought to beat us all at this shop, Plantagenet!’ And he passed under the big gateway with the lordly tread of the rich man’s son, who walks this world without one pang of passing dread at that ubiquitous and unsocial British notice, ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted.’

Dick followed him, trembling, into the large paved quad, and up the stone steps of the Dean’s staircase, and quivered visibly to Faussett’s naked eye as they were all three ushered into the great man’s presence. The room was panelled, after Clarence’s own heart: severe engravings from early Italian masters alone relieved the monotony of its old wooden wainscots.

A servant announced their names. The Dean, a precise-looking person in most clerical dress, sealed at a little oak table all littered with papers, turned listlessly round in his swinging chair to receive them. ‘Mr. Gillingham of Rugby,’ he said, focussing his eye-glass on the credentials of respectability which the Born Poet presented to him. ‘Oh, yes, that’s all right. Sixth Form – h’m, h’m. Your headmaster was so kind as to write to me about you. I’m very glad to see you at Barham, I’m sure, Mr. Gillingham; hope we may number you among ourselves before long. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your father once – I think it was at Athens. Or no, the Piræus. Sir Bernard was good enough to use his influence in securing me an escort from the Greek Government for my explorations in Boetia. Country very much disturbed; soldiers absolutely necessary. These papers are quite satisfactory, of course; h’m, h’m! highly satisfactory. Your Head tells me you write verses, too. Well, well, we shall see. You’ll go in for the Newdigate. The Keats of the future!’

‘We call him the Born Poet at Rugby, sir,’ Paussett put in, somewhat mischievously.

‘And you’re going in for the modern history examination?’ the Dean said, smiling, but otherwise not heeding the cheeky interruption. ‘Well, history will be flattered.’ He readjusted his eyeglass. ‘Mr. Faussett: Rugby, too, I believe? H’m; h’m; well, your credentials are respectable – decidedly respectable, though by no means brilliant. You’ve a brother at Christ Church, I understand. Ah, yes; exactly. You take up classics. Quite so. – And now for you, sir. Let me see.’ He dropped his eyeglass, and stared hard at the letter Richard laid before him. ‘Mr. – er – Plantagenet, of – what is it? – oh, I see – Chiddingwick Grammar School. Chiddingwick, Chiddingwick? H’m? h’m? never heard of it. Eh? What’s that? In Yorkshire, is it? Oh, ah, in Surrey; exactly; quite so. You’re a candidate for the History Scholarship, it seems. Well, the name Plantagenet’s not unknown in history. That’ll do, Mr. Plantagenet; you can go. Good-morning. Examination begins in hall to-morrow at ten o’clock punctually. – Mr. Gillingham, will you and our friend lunch with me on Friday at half-past one? No engagement? Most fortunate.’ And with a glance at the papers still scattered about his desk, he dismissed them silently.

Dick slunk down the steps with a more oppressive consciousness of his own utter nothingness in the scheme of things than he had ever before in his life experienced. It was impossible for him to overlook the obvious difference between the nature of the reception he had himself obtained and that held out to the son of Sir Bernard Gillingham and his companion from Rugby. He almost regretted now he had ever been rash enough to think of pitting his own home-bred culture against that of these rich men’s sons, taught by first-class masters at great public schools, and learned in all the learning of the Egyptians.

As they emerged into Oriel Street, Faussett turned to him with a broad smile.

‘I just cheeked him about the Born Poet, didn’t I?’ he said, laughing. ‘But he took it like an angel. You see, they’ve heard a good bit about Gillingham already. That makes all the difference. Our Head backs Gillingham for next Poet Laureate, if Tennyson holds out long enough. He’ll get this history thing slap off; you see if he doesn’t. I could tell from the Dean’s manner it was as good as decided. They mean to give it to him.’

‘But, surely,’ Dick cried, flushing up with honest indignation, ‘they wouldn’t treat it as a foregone conclusion like that. They wouldn’t bring us all up here, and put us to the trouble and expense of an hotel, and make us work three days, if they didn’t mean to abide by the result of the examination!’

Faussett gazed at him and smiled.

‘Well, you are green!’ he answered, laughing.

‘You are just a verdant one! What lovely simplicity! You don’t mean to say you think that’s the way this world is governed? I’ve a father in the House, and I trust I know better. Kissing goes by favour. They’ll give it to Gillingham; you may take your oath on that. And a jolly good thing, too; for I’m sure he deserves it!’

Gillingham himself was a trifle more modest and also more cautious. He made no prediction. Brought up entirely in diplomatic circles, he did credit to his teachers. He contented himself with saying in an oracular voice, ‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,’ and throwing back his head in his most poetical manner.

This was a safe quotation, for it committed him to nothing. If he won, it would pass as very charming modesty; if he lost, it would discount and condone his failure.

As for Dick, he strolled with his two chance acquaintances down the beautiful High Street and into the gardens at Magdalen, very heavy in heart at their dire predictions. The cloisters themselves failed to bring him comfort. He felt himself foredoomed already to a disastrous fiasco. So many places and things he had only read about in books, this brilliant, easy-going, very grown-up Trevor Gillingham had seen and mixed in and made himself a part of. He had pervaded the Continent.

The more Gillingham talked, indeed, the more Dick’s heart sank. Why, the man knew well every historical site and building in Britain or out of it! History to him was not an old almanac, but an affair of real life. Paris, Brussels, Rome – Bath, Lincoln, Holyrood – he had known and seen them! Dick longed to go back and hide his own discomfited head once more in the congenial obscurity of dear sleepy old Chiddingwick.

But how could he ever go back without that boasted Scholarship? How cover his defeat after Mr. Plantagenet’s foolish talk at the White Horse? How face his fellow-townsmen – and Mary Tudor? For very shame’s sake, he felt he must brazen it out now, and do the best he knew – for the honour of the family.

CHAPTER VI. THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING

Dick slept little that night: he lay awake, despondent. Next day he rose unrefreshed, and by a quarter to ten was in the quad at Durham. Not another candidate as yet had showed up so early. But undergraduates were astir, moving aimlessly across the quad in caps and gowns, and staring hard at the intruder, as one might stare at a strange wild beast from some distant country. Dick shrank nervously from their gaze, hardly daring to remember how he had hoped at Chiddingwick to be reckoned in their number. One thing only gave him courage every time he raised his eyes – the Plantagenet leopards on the facade of the buildings. Should he, the descendant of so many great kings —ataris editas regibus– should he slink ashamed from the sons of men whom his ancestors would have treated as rebellious subjects? He refused such degradation. For the honour of the Plantagenets he would still do his best; and more than his best the Black Prince himself could never have accomplished.

He lounged around the quad till the doors of the hall were opened. A minute before that time Gillingham strolled casually up in sombrero and gray suit, and nodded a distant nod to him.

‘Morning, Plantagenet,’ he said languidly, putting his pipe in his pocket; and it was with an effort that Dick managed to answer, as if unconcerned: ‘Good-morning, Gillingham.’

The first paper was a stiff one – a feeler on general European history, to begin with. Dick glanced over it in haste, and saw to his alarm and horror a great many questions that seemed painfully unfamiliar. Who on earth were Jacopo Nardi, and Requesens, and Jean Bey? What was meant by the publication of the Edict of Rostock? And he thought himself a historian! Pah! this was simply horrible! He glanced up mutely at the other candidates. One or two of them appeared every bit as ill at ease as himself; but others smiled satisfied; and as for the Born Poet, leaning back against the wall with pen poised in one hand, he surveyed the printed form with a pleased smirk on his face that said as plainly as words could say it, ‘This paper was just made for me! If I’d chosen the questions myself, I couldn’t have chosen anything that would have suited me better.’ He set to work at it at once with a business-like air, while Dick chewed his quill-pen, evidently flooring every item in the lot consecutively. No picking and choosing for him; he dashed straight at it: Peter the Great or Charles XII., Cæsar Borgia or Robespierre, it was all one, Dick could see, to the Born Poet. He wrote away for dear life with equal promptitude on the Reformation in Germany and the Picts in Scotland; he seemed just as much at home with the Moors at Granada as with the Normans in Sicily; he never hesitated for a second over that fearful stumper, ‘State what you know of the rise and progress of the Bavarian Monarchy’; and he splashed off three whole pages of crowded foolscap without turning a hair in answer to the command: ‘Describe succinctly the alterations effected in the Polish Constitution during the seventeenth century.’ Such encyclopaedic knowledge appalled and alarmed poor Dick, with his narrower British outlook. He began to feel he had been ill-advised indeed to measure his own strength against the diplomatic service and the historical geniuses of the old foundations.

When they came out at mid-day he compared notes on their respective performances with Gillingham. All three young men lunched together at the Saracen’s Head, Dick ordering cold beef and a glass of water, for Mr. Plantagenet’s example had made him a teetotaler; while the two Rugby boys fared sumptuously every day off cutlets, asparagus, fresh strawberries, and claret. Gillingham had walked through the paper, he averred – a set of absurdly elementary questions.

‘I floored Jacopo Nardi,’ he remarked with a genial smile, ‘and I simply polished off the Edict of Rostock.’

Dick, more despondent, went through it in detail, confessing with shame to entire ignorance of more than one important matter.

‘Oh, the Poet wins!’ Faussett exclaimed, with deep admiration. ‘He wins in a canter. I tell you, it’s no use any other fellow going in when the Poet’s in the field. It’s Gillingham first, and the rest nowhere. He knows his books, you see. He’s a fearful pro. at them.’

‘Perhaps there’s a dark horse, though,’ Gillingham suggested, smiling. ‘The Prince of the Blood may hold the lists, after all, against all comers.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Faussett answered with a short little laugh. ‘But I’ll back the Rugby lot against the field, all the same, for a fiver. The rest are rank outsiders. Even money on the Poet! Now, gentlemen, now’s your chance! The Poet for a fiver! even money on the Poet – the Poet wins! “Who’ll back the Plantagenet?”’

Dick coloured to the very roots of his hair; he felt himself beaten in the race beforehand. Oh, why had he ever come up to this glorious, impossible place at all? And why did he ever confide the secret of his intentions to the imprudent head of the house of Plantagenet?

That day and the next day it was always the same. He sat and bit his pen, and looked hard at the questions, and waited for inspiration that never seemed to come; while Gillingham, the brilliant, the omniscient, the practical, fully equipped at all points, went on and wrote – wrote, scratching his foolscap noisily with a hurrying pen, straight through the paper. Dick envied him his fluency his readiness, his rapidity; the Born Poet kept his knowledge all packed for immediate use at the ends of his fingers, and seemed able to pour it forth, on no matter what topic, the very instant he required it. Words came to him quick as thought; he never paused for a second. Before the end of the examination Dick had long ago given up all for lost, and only went on writing at the papers at all from a dogged sense that it ill became a Plantagenet to admit he was beaten as long as a drop of blood or a whiff of breath remained in his body.

The three days of the examination passed slowly away, and each day Dick felt even more dissatisfied with his work than he had felt on the previous one. On the very last evening he indited a despondent letter to Maud, so as to break the disappointment for her gently, explaining how unequally he was matched with this clever fellow Gillingham, whom all Rugby regarded with unanimous voice as a heaven-sent genius, a natural historian, and a Born Poet. After which, with many sighs, he betook himself once more for the twentieth time to the study of the questions he had answered worst, wondering how on earth he could ever have made that stupid blunder about Aidan and the Synod of Whitby, and what could have induced him to suppose for one second that Peter of Amboise was really the same person as Peter the Hermit.. With these and other like errors he made his soul miserable that live-long night; and he worried himself with highly-coloured mental pictures of the disgrace he would feel it to return to Chiddingwick, no Oxford man at all, but a bookseller’s assistant.

Not till twelve o’clock next day was the result to be announced. Richard spent the morning listlessly with Gillingham and Faussett. The Born Poet was not boastful; he hated ostentation; but he let it be clearly felt he knew he had acquitted himself with distinguished credit. Poor Dick was miserable. He half reflected upon the desirability of returning at once to Chiddingwick, without waiting to hear the result of the examination; but the blood of the Plantagenets revolted within him against such a confession of abject cowardice. At twelve o’clock or a little after he straggled round to Durham. In the big Chapel Quad a crowd of eager competitors gathered thick in front of the notice-board. Dick hardly dared to press in among them and read in plain black and white the story of his own unqualified discomfiture. He held back and hesitated. Two elderly men in caps and gowns, whom he knew now by sight as Fellows and Tutors, were talking to one another quite loud by the gate. ‘But we haven’t seen Plantagenet yet,’ the gravest of them said to his neighbour; he was a tall fair man, with a cultivated red beard and a most aesthetic pince-nez.

Dick’s heart came up in his mouth. He stood forward diffidently.

‘My name’s Plantagenet,’ he said, with a very white face. ‘Did you want to speak to me?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Tutor answered, shaking him warmly by the hand; ‘you must come up, you know, to enter your name on the books, and be introduced to the Warden.’

Dick trembled like a girl. His heart jumped within him.

‘Why, what have I got?’ he asked, hardly daring even to ask it, lest he should find himself mistaken.

The man with the red beard held out a duplicate copy of the paper on the notice-board.

‘You can see for yourself,’ he answered; and Dick looked at it much agitated.

‘Modern History: Mr. Richard Plantagenet, late of Chiddingwick Grammar School, is elected to a Scholarship of the annual value of One Hundred Pounds. Proximo accessit, Mr. Trevor Gillingham, of Rugby School. Mr. Gillingham is offered a set of rooms, rent free, in the College.’

The world reeled round and round on Dick as a pivot. It was too good to be true. He couldn’t even now believe it. Of what happened next he never had any clear or connected recollection. In some vague phantasmagoric fashion he was dimly aware of being taken by the Tutor into the College Hall and introduced by name to a bland-looking effigy in a crimson gown, supposed to represent the Head of the College; after which it seemed to him that somebody made him sign a large book of statutes or something of the sort in medieval Latin, wherein he described himself as ‘Plantagenet, Ricardus, gen. fil., hujus ædis alumnus,’ and that somebody else informed him in the same tongue he was duly elected. And then he bowed himself out in what Mr. Plantagenet the elder would have considered a painfully inadequate manner, and disappeared with brimming eyes into the front quadrangle.