Grant Allen - Blood Royal - A Novel

At last, just as they sat down to their frugal supper of bread and cheese and water – for by Dick’s desire they were all, save one, teetotalers – Dick sprang a mine upon the assembled company by saying out all at once in a most matter-of-fact voice to his neighbour Clarry:

‘No, I shan’t be able to help you very much in future, I’m afraid – because, next week, I’m going up to Oxford – to try for a scholarship.’

A profound spell of awed silence followed this abrupt disclosure of a long-formed plan. Mr. Plantagenet himself was the first to break it. He rose to the occasion.

‘Well, I’m glad at least, my son,’ he said, in his most grandiose manner, ‘you propose to give yourself the education of a gentleman.’

‘And therefore,’ Dick continued, with a side-glance at Clarence, ‘I shall need all my spare time for my own preparation.’

Mrs. Plantagenet looked across the table at her son with vague eyes of misgiving. ‘This is all very sudden, Dick,’ she faltered out, not without some slight tremor.

‘Sudden for you, dear mother,’ Dick answered, taking her hand in his own; ‘but not for me.

Very much otherwise.. I’ve had it in my mind for a great many months; and this is what decided me.’

He drew from his pocket as he spoke a small scrap of newspaper and handed it across to her. It was a cutting from the Times . Mrs. Plantagenet read it through with swimming eyes. ‘University Intelligence: Oxford. – Four Foundation Scholarships will be awarded after public examination at Durham College on May 20th. Two will be of the annual value of One Hundred Pounds, for Classics; one of the same value for Natural Science; and one for Modern History. Application to be made, on or before Wednesday, the 19th, to the Rev. the Dean, at Durham College, who will also supply all needful information to intending candidates.’

The words swam in a mist before Mrs. Planta-genet’s eyes. ‘What does it all mean, dear Dick?’ she inquired almost tearfully.

‘It means, mother,’ Dick answered with the gentlest tenderness, ‘that Durham is the only college in the University which gives as good a Scholarship as a hundred a year for Modern History. Now, ever since I left the grammar school, I haven’t had it out of my mind for a day to go, if I could, to Oxford. I think it’s incumbent upon a man in my position to give himself, if possible, a University training.’

He said the words without the slightest air of conceit or swagger, but with a profound consciousness of their import; for to Richard Plantagenet the myth or legend of the ancient greatness of his family was a spur urging him ever on to make himself worthy of so glorious an ancestry. ‘So I’ve been working and saving ever since,’ he went on, ‘with that idea constantly before me; and I’ve looked out for twelve months or more in the Times every day for the announcement of an exam, for the Durham Scholarship.’

‘But you won’t get it, my boy,’ Mr. Plantagenet put in philosophically, after a moment’s consideration. ‘You never can get it. Your early disadvantages, you know – your inadequate schooling – so many young fellows well coached from Eton and Harrow!’

‘If it had been a classical one, I should agree with you: I couldn’t, I’m afraid,’ Bichard responded frankly, for he was by no means given to over-estimate his own abilities; ‘but in history it’s different. You see, so much of it’s just our own family pedigree and details of our ancestry. That acted as a fillip – gave me an interest in the subject from the very first; and as soon as I determined to begin reading for Oxford, I felt at once my best chance would lie in Modern History. And that’s why I’ve been working away at it as hard as ever I could in all my spare time for more than a twelvemonth.’

‘But have you been reading the right books, Dick? – that’s the question,’ his father put in dubiously, with a critical air, making a manful effort to recall the names of the works that were most authoritative in the subject when he himself last looked at a history: ‘Sharon Turner, Kemble, Palgrave, Thierry, Guizot and so forth?’

Richard had too deep a respect for the chief of the Plantagenets, miserable sot though he was, to be betrayed into a smile by this belated catalogue. He only answered with perfect gravity: ‘I’m afraid none of those would be of much use to me nowadays in a Scholarship exam.: another generation has arisen, which knows not Joseph. But I’ve got up all the books recommended in the circular of the Board of Studies – Freeman, you know, and Stubbs and Green, and Froude and Gardner. And I’ve worked especially at the reigns of the earlier Plantagenets, and the development of the towns and guilds, and all that sort of thing, in Brentano and Seebohm.’

Mr. Plantagenet held his peace and looked profoundly wise. He had barely heard the names of any of these gentlemen himself: at the best of times his knowledge had always been shallow – rather showy than exact; a journalist’s stock-in-trade – and since his final collapse into the ignominious position of dancing-master at Chiddingwick he had ceased to trouble himself much about any form of literature save the current newspaper. A volume of ‘Barry Neville’s Collected Essays,’ bound in the antiquated style of the ‘Book of Beauty,’ with a portrait of the author in a blue frock-coat and stock for frontispiece, stood on his shelf by way of fossil evidence to his extinct literary pretensions; but Barry Neville himself had dropped with time into the usual listless apathy of a small English country town. So he held his peace, not to display his ignorance further; for he felt at once, from this glib list of authorities, that Dick’s fluent display of acquaintance with so many new writers, whose very names he had never before heard – though they were well enough known in the modern world of letters to be recommended by an Oxford Board of Studies – put him hopelessly out of court on the subject under discussion.

‘Jones tertius has a brother at Oxford,’ Clarence put in very eagerly; ‘and he’s a howling swell – he lives in a room that’s panelled with oak from top to bottom.’

‘And if you get the Scholarship, Dick,’ his mother went on wistfully, ‘will you have to go and live there, and be away from us always?’

‘Only half the year, mother dear,’ Richard answered coaxingly; for he knew what she was thinking – how hard it would be for her to be left alone in Chiddingwick, among all those unruly children and her drunken husband, without the aid of her one help and mainstay. ‘You know, there’s only about five months of term, and all the rest’s vacation. In vacation I’d come home, and do something to earn money towards making up the deficit.’

‘It’s a very long time, though, five months,’ Mrs. Plantagenet said pensively. ‘But, there!’ she added, after a pause, brightening up, ‘perhaps you won’t get it.’

Grave as he usually was, Richard couldn’t help bursting into a merry laugh at this queer little bit of topsy-turvy self-comfort. ‘Oh, I hope to goodness I shall,’ he cried, with a twinkle, ‘in spite of that, mother. It won’t be five months all in a lump, you know; I shall go up for some six or eight weeks at a time – never more than eight together, I believe – and then come down again. But you really needn’t take it to heart just yet, for we’re counting our chickens before they’re hatched, after all. I mayn’t get it, as you say; and, indeed, as father said just now, when one comes to think how many fellows will be in for it who have been thoroughly coached and crammed at the great public schools, my chance can’t be worth much – though I mean to try it.’