|Outside college that same afternoon Trevor Gillingham, in a loud check
suit, lounged lazily by the big front gate--on the prowl, as he phrased
it himself, for an agreeable companion. For the Born Poet was by nature
a gregarious animal, and hated to do anything alone, if a comrade could
be found for him. But being a person of expansive mind, ever ready to
pick up hints from all and sundry, he preferred to hook himself on by
pure chance to the first stray comer, a process which contributed an
agreeable dramatic variety to the course of his acquaintanceships. He
loved deliberately to survey the kaleidoscope of life, and to try it
anew in ever-varying combinations.
Now, the first man who emerged from the big gate that afternoon
happened, as luck would have it, to be Richard Plantagenet, in his
striped college blazer, on his way to the barges. Gillingham took his
arm at once, as if they were boon companions.
'Are you engaged this afternoon?' he inquired with quite friendly
interest. 'Because, if not, I should so much like the advantage of your
advice and assistance. My governor's coming up next week for a few days
to Oxford, and he wants some rooms--nice rooms to entertain in. He won't
go to the Randolph--banal, very, don't you know--because he'll want to
see friends a good deal. He's convivial, the governor; and he'd like a
place where they'd be able to cook a decent dinner. Now, Edward Street
would do, I should think. First-rate rooms in Edward Street. Can you
come round and help me?'
He said it with an amount of _empressement_ that was really flattering.
Now, Dick had nothing particular to do that afternoon, though he
had been bound for the river; but he always liked a stroll with that
brilliant Gillingham, whom he had never ceased to admire as a creature
from another social sphere--a cross between Lord Byron and the Admirable
Crichton. So he put off his row, and walked round to Edward Street, the
most fashionable quarter for high-class lodgings to be found in Oxford.
Sir Bernard, it seemed, had just returned to England for a few short
weeks from his Roumanian mission, and was anxious to get decent rooms,
his son said--'the sort of rooms, don't you know, where one can dine
one's women folk, for he knows all the dons' families.' They looked
at half a dozen sets, all in the best houses, and Gillingham finally
selected a suite at ten guineas. Dick opened his eyes with astonishment
at that lordly figure: he never really knew till then one could pay so
much for lodgings. But he concealed his surprise from the Born Poet,
his own pride having early taught him that great lesson in life of
_nil admirari,_ which is far more necessary to social salvation in
snob-ridden England than ever it could have been in the Rome of the
Cæsars.
On their way back to college, after a stroll round the meadows, they met
a very small telegraph boy at the doors of Durham.
'Message for you, sir,' the porter said, touching his hat to Dick; and
in great doubt and trepidation, for to him a telegram was a most rare
event, Dick took it and opened it.
His face flushed crimson as he read the contents; but he saw in a second
the only way out of it was to put the best face on things.
'Why, _my_ father's coming up, too!' he said, turning round to
Gillingham. 'He'll arrive tomorrow. I--I must go this moment and hunt up
some rooms for him. My sister doesn't say by what train he's coming; but
he evidently means to stay, from what she tells me.'
'One good turn deserves another,' Gillingham drawled out carelessly. 'I
don't mind going round with you and having another hunt. I should think
that second set we saw round the corner would just about suit him.'
The second set had been rated at seven guineas a week. Dick was weak
enough to colour again.
'Oh no,' he answered hurriedly. 'I--I'd prefer to go alone. Of course, I
shall want some much cheaper place than that. I think I can get the kind
of thing I require in Grove Street.'
'As you will,' Gillingham answered lightly, nodding a brisk farewell,
and turning back into quad. 'Far be it from me to inflict my company
unwillingly on any gentleman anywhere. I'm all for Auberon Herbert and
pure individualism. I say you, Faussett, here's a game;' and he walked
mysteriously round the corner by the Warden's Lodgings. He dropped his
voice to a whisper: 'The Head of the Plantagenets is coming up tomorrow
to visit the Prince of the Blood--fact! I give you my word for it. So
we'll have an opportunity at last of finding out who the dickens the
fellow is, and where on earth he inherited the proud name of Plantagenet
from.'
'There were some Plantagenets at Leeds--no; I think it was Sheffield,'
Faussett put in, trying to remember. 'Somebody was saying to me the
other day this man might be related to them. The family's extinct, and
left a lot of money.'
'Then they can't have anything to do with our Prince of the Blood,'
Gillingham answered carelessly; 'for he isn't a bit extinct, but alive
and kicking: and he hasn't got a crooked sixpence in the world to bless
himself with. He lives on cold tea and Huntley and Palmer's biscuits.
But he's not a bad sort, either, when you come to know him; but you've
got to know him first, as the poet observes: and he's really a fearful
swell at the history of the Plantagenets.'
Dick passed a troubled night. Terrible possibilities loomed vague before
him. Next day he was down at the first two trains by which he thought it
at all possible his father might arrive; and his vigilance was rewarded
by finding Mr. Plantagenet delivered by the second. The Head of the
House was considerably surprised, and not a little disappointed, when he
saw his son and heir awaiting him on the platform.
'What, you here, Dick!' he cried. 'Why, I wanted to surprise you. I
intended to take my modest room for the night at the same hotel at which
you stopped--the Saracen's Head, if I recollect the name aright--and
then to drop in upon you quite unexpectedly about lunch-time.'
'Maud telegraphed to me that you were coming, father,' Dick answered,
taking his hand, it must be acknowledged, a trifle less warmly than
filial feeling might have dictated. Then his face grew fiery red. 'But
I've engaged rooms for you,' he went on, '_not_ at an inn, on purpose. I
hope, father, for your own sake, as well as for mine, while you're here
in Oxford you won't even so much as enter one.'
It was a hard thing to have to say; but, for very shame's sake, Dick
felt he must muster up courage to say it.
As for Mr. Plantagenet himself, poor old sot that he was, a touch of
manly pride brought the colour just for once to his own swollen cheek.
'I hope, Richard,' he said, drawing himself up very erect--for he had
a fine carriage still, in spite of all his degradation--'I hope I
have sufficient sense of what becomes a gentleman, _in_ a society of
gentlemen, to think of doing anything that would I disgrace myself, or
disgrace my son, or disgrace my name, or my literary reputation--which
must be well known to many students of English literature in this
University--by any unbecoming act of any description. And I take
it hardly, Richard, that my eldest son, for whom I have made such
sacrifices'--Mr. Plantagenet had used that phrase so often already in
the parlour of the White Horse that he had almost come by this time to
believe himself there was really some truth in it--'should greet me with
such marked distrust on the very outset of a visit to which I had looked
forward with so much pride and pleasure.'
It was quite a dignified speech for Mr. Plan-tagenet. Dick's, heart was
touched by it.
'I beg your pardon, father,' he replied in a very low tone. 'I'm
sorry if I've hurt you. But I meant no rudeness. I've engaged pleasant
lodgings for you in a very nice street, and I'm sure I'll do everything
in my power to make your visit a happy one.'
As he spoke he almost believed his father would rise for once to the
height of the circumstances, and behave himself circumspectly with
decorum and dignity during his few days at Oxford.
To do Mr. Plantagenet justice, indeed, he tried very hard to keep
straight for once, and during all his stay he never even entered the
doors of a hotel or public-house. Nay, more; in Dick's own rooms, as
Dick noticed with pleasure, he was circumspect in his drinking. It
flattered his vanity and his social pretensions to be introduced to
his son's friends and to walk at his ease through the grounds of the
college. Once more for a day or two Edmund Plantagenet felt himself a
gentleman among gentlemen.
Dick kept as close to him as possible, except at lecture hours; and
then, as far as he could, he handed him over to the friendly care of
Gillespie, who mounted guard in turn, and seemed to enter silently into
the spirit of the situation. As much as possible, on the other hand,
Dick avoided for those days Gillingham and Faussett's set, whose only
wish, he felt sure, would be to draw his father into wild talk about
the Plantagenet pedigree--a subject which Dick himself, in spite of his
profound faith, had the good sense to keep always most sedulously in the
background.
For the first three days Dick was enabled to write nightly and report
to Maud that so far all went well, and there were no signs of a
catastrophe. But on the fourth day, as ill-luck would have it,
Gillingham came round to Faussett's rooms full of a chance discovery he
had that moment lighted upon.
'Why, who'd ever believe it?' he cried, all agog. 'This man Plantagenet,
who's come up to see his son--the Prince of the Blood--is a decayed
writer, a man of letters of the Alaric Watts and Leigh Hunt period, not
unheard of in his day as an inflated essayist. I know a lot of his stuff
by heart--Hazlitt-and-water sort of style; De Quincey gone mad, with
a touch of Bulwer. Learnt it when I was a boy, and we lived at
Constantinople. He's the man who used to gush under the name of Barry
Neville!'
'How did you find it out?' Faussett inquired, all eagerness.
'Why, I happened to turn out a “Dictionary of Pseudonyms” at the Union
just now, in search of somebody else; and there the name Plantagenet
caught my eye by chance. So of course I read, and, looking closer,
I found this fact about the old man and his origin. It's extremely
interesting. So, to make quite sure, I boarded Plantagenet five minutes
ago with the point-blank question. “Hullo, Prince,” said I, “I see your
father's Barry Neville, the writer.” He coloured up to his eyes, as
he does--it's a charming girlish trick of his; but he admitted the
impeachment. There! he's crossing the quad now. I wonder what the
dickens he's done with his governor!'
'I'll run up to his rooms and see,' Faussett answered, laughing. 'He
keeps the old fellow pretty close--in cotton wool, so to speak. Won't
trust him out alone, and sets Gillespie to watch him. But an Exeter man
tells me he's seen the same figure down at a place called Chiddingwick,
where he lives, in Surrey; and according to him, he's a rare old buffer.
I'll go and make his acquaintance, now his R'yal Highness has gone off
unattended to lecture; we'll have some sport out of him.'
And he disappeared, brimming over, up the steps of the New Buildings.
All that afternoon, in fact, Richard noticed for himself that some
change had come over his father's spirit. Mr. Plantagenet was more
silent, and yet even more grandiose and regal than ever. He hadn't been
drinking, thank Heaven--not quite so bad as that, for Dick knew only too
well the signs of drink in his father's face and his father's actions;
but he had altered in demeanour, somehow, and was puffed up with
personal dignity even more markedly than usual. He sat in, and talked a
great deal about the grand days of his youth, and he dwelt so much upon
the past glories of Lady Postlethwaite's _salon_ and the people he used
to meet there that Dick began to wonder what on earth it portended.
'You'll come round to my rooms, father, after Hall?' he asked at
last, as Mr. Plantagenet rose to leave just before evening chapel.
'Gillespie'll be here, and one or two other fellows.'
Mr. Plantagenet smiled dubiously.
'No, no, my boy,' he answered in his lightest and airiest manner. 'You
must excuse me. This evening, you must really excuse me. To tell you
the truth, Richard'--with profound importance--'I have an engagement
elsewhere.'
'An engagement, father! You have an engagement! And in Oxford, too,'
Dick faltered out. 'Why, how on earth can you have managed to pick up an
engagement?'
Mr. Plantagenet drew himself up as he was wont to do for the beginning
of a quadrille, and, assuming an air of offended dignity, replied with
much hauteur:
'I am not in the habit, Richard, of accounting for my engagements, good,
bad, or indifferent, to my own children. I am of age, I fancy. Finding
myself here at Oxford in a congenial society--in the society to which I
may venture to say I was brought up, and of which, but for unfortunate
circumstances, I ought always to have made a brilliant member--finding
myself here in my natural surroundings, I repeat, I have, of course,
_picked up_, as you coarsely put it, a few private acquaintances on
my own account. I'm not so entirely dependent as you suppose upon
you, Richard, for my introduction to Oxford society. My own personal
qualities and characteristics, I hope, go a little way, at least,
towards securing me respect and consideration in whatever social
surroundings I may happen to be mixing.'
And Mr. Plantagenet shook out a clean white cambric pocket-handkerchief
ostentatiously, to wipe his eyes, in which a slight dew was supposed
to have insensibly collected at the thought of Richard's unfilial
depreciation of his qualities and opportunities.
'I'm sorry I've offended you, father,' Dick answered hastily. 'I'm sure
I didn't mean to. But I do hope--I do hope--if you'll allow me to
say so, you're not going round to spend the evening--at any other
undergraduate's rooms--not at Gillingham's or Faussett's.'
Mr. Plantagenet shuffled uneasily: in point of fact, he looked very much
as he had been wont to look in days gone by, when the landlady at the
White Horse inquired of him now and again how soon he intended to settle
his little account for brandy-and-sodas.
'I choose my own acquaintances, Richard,' he answered, with as much
dignity as he could easily command. I don't permit myself to be dictated
to in matters like this by my own children. Your neighbour Mr. Faussett
appears to me a very intelligent and gentlemanly young man: a young man
such as I was accustomed to associate with myself in my own early days,
before I married your poor dear mother: not like _your_ set, Richard,
who are far from being what I myself consider thoroughly gentlemanly.
Mere professional young men, your set, my dear boy: very worthy, no
doubt, and hard-working, and respectable, like this excellent Gillespie;
but not with that _cachet_, that indefinable something, that invisible
hall-mark of true blood and breeding, that I observe with pleasure in
your neighbour Faussett. It's not your fault, my poor boy: I recognise
freely that it's not your fault. You take after your mother. She's
a dear good soul, your mother'--pocket-handkerchief lightly applied
again--'but she's not a Plantagenet, Richard: she's _not_ a
Planta-genet.'
And with this parting shot neatly delivered point-blank at Dick's
crimson face, the offended father sailed majestically out of the room
and strode down the staircase.
Dick's cheek was hot and red with mingled pride and annoyance; but he
answered nothing. Far be it from him to correct or rebuke by word or
deed the living Head of the House of Plantagenet.
'I hope to God,' he thought to himself piteously, 'Faussett hasn't asked
him on purpose to try and make an exhibition of him. But what on earth
else can he have wanted to ask him for, I wonder?'
At that very same moment Faussett was stopping Trevor Gillingham in
the Chapel Quad with a characteristic invitation for a wine-party that
evening.
'Drop in and have a glass of claret with me after Hall, Gillingham,'
he said, laughing. 'I've got a guest coming to-night. I've asked
Plan-tagenet's father round to my rooms at eight. He'll be in splendid
form. He's awfully amusing when he talks at his ease, I'm told. Do come
and give us one of your rousing recitations. I want to make things as
lively as I can, you know.'
Gillingham smiled the tolerant smile of the Born Poet.
'All right, my dear boy,' he answered. 'I'll come. It'll be
stock-in-trade to me, no doubt, for an unborn drama. Though
Plantagenet's not half a bad sort of fellow, after all, when you come
to know him, in spite of his smugging. Still, I'll come, and look on:
an experience, of course, is always an experience. The poet's life must
necessarily be made up of infinite experiences. Do you think Shakespeare
always kept to the beaten path of humanity? A poet can't afford it. He
must see some good--of a sort--in everything; for he must see in it at
least material for a tragedy or a comedy.'
With which comfortable assurance to salve his poetical conscience the
Born Bard strolled off, in cap and gown, with an easy lounging gait, to
evening chapel.