|Dick knew nothing of Oxford, and would hardly even have guessed where
in the town to locate himself while the examination was going on, had
not his old head-master at Chiddingwick Grammar School supplied him with
the address of a small hotel, much frequented by studious and economical
young men on similar errands. Hither, then, he repaired, Gladstone bag
in hand, and engaged a modest second-floor room; after which, with much
trepidation, he sallied forth at once in his best black suit to call in
due form on the Reverend the Dean at Durham College.
By the door of the Saracen's Head, which was the old-fashioned name of
his old-fashioned hostelry, two young men--mere overgrown schoolboys of
the Oxford pattern--lounged, chatting and chaffing together, as if bent
on some small matter of insignificant importance. Each swung a light
cane, and each looked and talked as if the town were his freehold. One
was a fellow in a loose gray tweed suit and a broad-brimmed slouch-hat
of affectedly large and poetical pretensions; the other was a
faster-looking and bolder young person, yet more quietly clad in a
black cut-away coat and a billycock hat, to which commonplace afternoon
costume of the English gentleman he nevertheless managed to give a touch
of distinctly rowdy and rapid character.
As Dick passed them on the steps to go forth into the street, the young
man in black observed oracularly: 'Lamb ten to the slaughter to which
his companion answered with brisk good-humour in the self-same dialect:
'Lamb ten it is; these meadows pullulate; we shall have a full field of
them.'
By a burst of inspiration Dick somehow gathered that they were referring
to the field for the Durham Scholarships, and that they knew of ten
candidates at least in the place who were also going in for them. He
didn't much care for the looks of his two fellow-competitors, for such
he judged them to be; but the mere natural loneliness of a sensitive
young man in such strange conditions somehow' prompted him, almost
against his will, to accost them.
'I beg your pardon,' he said timidly, in a rather soft voice, 'but
I--that is to say--could you either of you tell me which is the nearest
way to Durham College?'
The lad in the gray tweed suit laughed, and surveyed him from head to
foot with a somewhat supercilious glance as he answered with a curious
self-assertive swagger: 'You're going to call on the Dean, I suppose.
Well, so are we. Durham it is. If you want to know the way, you can come
along with us.'
Companionship in misery is dear to the unsophisticated human soul; and
Richard, in spite of all his father's lessons in deportment, shrank so
profoundly from this initial ordeal of the introductory visit that he
was really grateful to the supercilious youth in the broad-brimmed hat
for his condescending offer. Though, to be sure, if it came to that,
nobody in England had a right to be either supercilious or condescending
to a scion of the Plantagenets.
'Thank you,' he said, a little nervously. 'This is my first visit to
Oxford, and I don't know my way about. But I suppose you're not in for
the Scholarship yourself?' And he gazed half unconsciously at his new
acquaintance's gray tweed suit and big sombrero, which were certainly
somewhat noisy for a formal visit.
The young man in the billycock interpreted the glance aright, and
answered it promptly.
'Oh, you don't know my friend,' he said, with a twinkle in his eye and
a jerk of the head towards the lad in gray tweed; 'this is Gillingham of
Rugby--otherwise known as the Born Poet. England expects every man to
do his duty; but she never expects Gillingham to dress or behave like
the vest of us poor common everyday mortals. And quite right, too.
What's the good of being a born poet, I should like to know, if you've
got to mind your P's and Q's just like other people?'
'Well, I'm certainly glad I'm not an Other Person,' Gillingham responded
calmly, with a nonchalant air of acknowledged superiority.
'Other people, for the most part, are so profoundly uninteresting! But
if you're going to walk with us, let me complete the introduction my
friend has begun. This is Faussett of Rugby, otherwise known as the Born
Philistine. Congenitally incapable of the faintest tincture of culture
himself, he regards the possession of that alien attribute by others
as simply ridiculous.' Gillingham waved his hand vaguely towards the
horizon in general. 'Disregard what he says,' he went on, 'as unworthy
a serious person's intelligent consideration, and dismiss him to that
limbo where he finds himself most at home--among the rowdy mob of all
the Gaths and Askelons!'
Dick hardly knew how to comport himself in such unwonted company.
Gillingham's manner was unlike anything else to which he had ever been
accustomed. But he felt dimly aware that politeness compelled him to
give his own name in return for the others'; so he faltered out somewhat
feebly, 'My name's Plantagenet,' and then relapsed into a timid silence.
'Whew! How's that for arme?' Gillingham exclaimed, taken aback. 'Rather
high, Tom, isn't it? Are you any relation to the late family so called,
who were Kings of England?'
This was a point-blank question which Dick could hardly avoid; but he
got over the thin ice warily by answering, with a smile:
'I never heard of more than one family of Plantagenets in England.'
'Eton, _of_ course?' Gillingham suggested with a languid look. 'It must
Le Eton. It was founded by an ancestor.'
To Dick himself the question of the Plantagenet pedigree was too sacred
for a jest; but he saw the only way to treat the matter in the present
company was by joking; so he answered with a little laugh:
'I believe there's no provision there for the founder's kin, so I
didn't benefit by it. I come only from a very small country grammar
school--Chiddingwick, in Surrey.'
'Chiddingwick! Chiddingwick! Never knew there was such a place,'
Gillingham put in with crushing emphasis. And he said it with an air
which showed at once so insignificant a school was wholly unworthy a
Born Poet's attention.
As for the Philistine, he laughed.
'Well, which are you going in for?' he asked, with a careless swing of
his cane: 'The science, or the classics?'
'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.