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.