Plantagenet family, which the bookseller’s lad hoped to win back to some small extent in the noblest and best of all ways – by deserving it.
The days wore away; Stubbs and Freeman were well thumbed; the two books for Mary Tudor were bound in the daintiest fashion known to Chiddingwickian art, and on the morning of the eventful Wednesday itself, when he was first to try his fate at Oxford, Dick took them up in person, neatly wrapped in white tissue-paper, to the door of the Rectory.
Half-way up the garden-path Mary met him by accident. She was walking in the grounds with one of the younger children; and Dick, whose quick imagination had built up already a curious castle in the air, felt half shocked to find that a future Queen of England, Wales, and Ireland (de jure) should be set to take care of the Rector’s babies. However, he forgot his indignation when Mary, recognising him, advanced with a pleasant smile – her smile was always considered the prettiest thing about her – and said in a tone as if addressed to an equal:
‘Oh, you’ve brought back my books, have you? That’s punctuality itself. Don’t mind taking them to the door. How much are they, please? I’ll pay at once for them.’
Now, this was a trifle disconcerting to Dick, who had reasons of his own for not wishing her to open the parcel before him. Still, as there was no way out of it, he answered in a somewhat shamefaced and embarrassed voice: ‘It comes to three-and-sixpence.’
Mary had opened the packet meanwhile, and glanced hastily at the covers. She saw in a second that the bookseller’s lad had exceeded her instructions. For the books were bound in full calf, very dainty and delicate, and on the front cover of each was stamped in excellent workmanship a Tudor rose, with the initials M. T. intertwined in a neat little monogram beneath it. She looked at them for a moment with blank dismay in her eye, thinking just at first what a lot he must be going to charge her for it; then, as he named the price, a flush of shame rose of a sudden to her soft round cheek.
‘Oh no,’ she said hurriedly. ‘It must be more than that. You couldn’t possibly bind them so for only three-and-sixpence!’
‘Yes, I did,’ Dick answered, now as crimson as herself. ‘You’ll find the bill inside. Mr. Wells wrote it out. There’s no error at all. You’ll see it’s what I tell you.’
Mary fingered her well-worn purse with uncertain fingers.
‘Surely,’ she said again, ‘you’ve done it all in calf. Mr. Wells can’t have known exactly how you were doing it.’
This put a Plantagenet at once upon his mettle.
‘Certainly he did,’ Dick answered, almost haughtily. ‘It was a remnant of calf, no use for anything else, that I just made fit by designing those corners. He said I could use it up if I cared to take the trouble. And I did care to take the trouble, and to cut a block for the rose, and to put on the monogram, which was all my own business, in my own overtime. Three-and-sixpence is the amount it’s entered in the books for.’
Mary 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
