Blood Royal: A Novel - Allen Grant

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gazed hard at him in doubt. She scarcely knew what to do. She felt by pure instinct he was too much of a gentleman to insult him by offering him money for what had obviously been a labour of love to him; and yet, for her own part, she didn’t like to receive those handsome covers to some extent as a present from a perfect stranger, and especially from a man in his peculiar position. Still, what else could she do? The books were her own; she couldn’t refuse them now, merely because he chose to put a Tudor rose upon them – all the more as they contained those little marginal notes of ‘localities’ and ‘finds’ which even the amateur botanist prizes in his heart above all printed records; and she couldn’t bear to ask this grave and dignified young man to take the volumes back, remove the covers on which he had evidently spent so much pains and thought, and replace them by three-and-sixpence worth of plain cloth, unlettered. In the end she was constrained to say frigidly, in a lowered voice:

      ‘They’re extremely pretty. It was good of you to take so much trouble about an old book like this.

      There’s the money; thank you – and – I’m greatly obliged to you.’

      The words stuck in her throat. She said them almost necessarily with some little stiffness. And as she spoke she looked down, and dug her parasol into the gravel of the path for nervousness. But Richard Plantagenet’s pride was far deeper than her own. He took the money frankly; that was Mr. Wells’s; then he answered in that lordly voice he had inherited from his father:

      ‘I’m glad you like the design. It’s not quite original; I copied it myself with a few variations from the cover of a book that once belonged to Margaret Tudor. Her initials and yours are the same. But I see you think I oughtn’t to have done it. I’m sorry for that; yet I had some excuse. I thought a Plantagenet might venture to take a little more pains than usual over a book for a Tudor. Noblesse oblige.’

      And as he spoke, standing a yard or two off her, with an air of stately dignity, he lifted his hat, and then moved slowly off down the path to the gate again.

      Mary didn’t know why, but with one of those impulsive fits which often come over sympathetic women, she ran hastily after him.

      ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, catching him up, and looking into his face with her own as flushed as his. ‘I’m afraid I’ve hurt you. I’m sure I didn’t mean to. It was very, very kind of you to design and print that monogram so nicely. I understand your reasons, and I’m immensely obliged. It’s a beautiful design. I shall be proud to possess it.’

      As for Richard, he dared hardly raise his eyes to meet hers, they were so full of tears. This rebuff was very hard on him. But the tell-tale moisture didn’t quite escape Mary.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. I meant no rudeness; very much the contrary. The coincidence interested me; it made me wish to do the thing for you as well as I could. I’m sorry if I was obtrusive. But – one sometimes forgets – or perhaps remembers. It’s good of you to speak so kindly.’

      And he raised his hat once more, and, walking rapidly off without another word, disappeared down the road in the direction of the High Street.

      As soon as he was gone Mary went back into the Rectory. Mrs. Tradescant, the Rector’s wife, was standing in the hall. Mary reflected at once that the little girl had listened open-eared to all this queer colloquy, and that, to prevent misapprehension, the best thing she could do would be to report it all herself before the child could speak of it. So she told the whole story of the strange young man who had insisted on binding her poor dog-eared old botany-book in such regal fashion. Mrs. Tradescant glanced at it, and only smiled.

      ‘Oh, my dear, you mustn’t mind him,’ she said. ‘He’s one of those crazy Plantagenets. They’re a very queer lot – as mad as hatters. The poor old father’s a drunken old wretch; come down in the world, they say. He teaches dancing; but his mania is that he ought by rights to be King of England. He never says so openly, you know; he’s too cunning for that; but in a covert sort of way he lays tacit claim to it. The son’s a very well-con-ducted young man in his own rank, I believe, but as cracked as the father; and as for the daughter, oh, my dear – such a stuck-up sort of a girl, with a feather in her hat and a bee in her bonnet, who goes out and gives music-lessons! It’s dreadful, really! She plays the violin rather nicely, I hear; but she’s an odious creature. The books? Oh yes, that’s just the sort of thing Dick Plantagenet would love. He’s mad on antiquity. If he saw on the title-page your name was Mary Tudor, he’d accept you at once as a remote cousin, and he’d claim acquaintance off-hand by a royal monogram. The rose is not bad. But the best thing you can do is to take no further notice of him.’

      A little later that very same morning, however, Richard Plantagenet, mad or sane, was speeding away across country, in a parliamentary train, towards Reading and Oxford, decided in his own mind now about two separate plans he had deeply at heart. The first one was that, for the honour of the Plantagenets, he mustn’t fail to get that Scholarship at Durham College; the second was that, when he came back with it to Chiddingwick, he must make Mary Tudor understand he was at least a gentleman. He was rather less in love with her, to be sure, after this second meeting, than he had been after the first; but, still, he liked her immensely, and in spite of her coldness was somehow attracted towards her; and he couldn’t bear to think a mere Welsh Tudor, not even really royal, should feel herself degraded by receiving a gift of a daintily-bound book from the hands of the Heir Apparent of the true and only Plantagenets.

      CHAPTER V. GOOD SOCIETY

      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

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