'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.