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 C?sars.
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 ............