'Hear, hear!' Gillingham cried, echoing the appeal heartily. 'The Plantagenet for a speech! Give us a speech, Mr. Plantagenet!'
Gillingham was a great deal soberer than any of the others, but he was anxious to make notes internally of this singular phenomenon. The human intellect utterly sunk and degraded by wine and debauchery forms a psychological study well worthy the Born Poet's most attentive consideration. He may need it some day for a Lear or an Othello.
Mr. Plantagenet struggled up manfully upon his shaky legs. 'Gentlemen,' he murmured, in a voice a little thick, to be sure, with drinking, but still preserving that exquisitely clear articulation for which Edmund Plantagenet had always been famous—'Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to find myself at last, after a long interval of comparative eclipse, in such exceedingly congenial and delightful society. In fact, I may say in the society of my equals—yes, gentlemen, of my equals. I am not proud; I will put it simply “of my equals.” Time was, 'tis true, when the name of Plantagenet would, perhaps, have implied something more than mere equality—but I pass that. To insist upon the former greatness and distinction of one's family is as ill-bred and obtrusive as it is really superfluous. But since we here this evening have now sunk into our anecdotage, I will venture to narrate to you a little anecdote'— here Mr. Plantagenet swayed uneasily from one side to the other, and Gillingham, ever watchful, propped him up from behind with much anxious show of solicitous politeness—'a little anecdote of a member of my own kith and kin, with whose name you are all doubtless well acquainted. My late relative, Edward Plantagenet, the Black Prince——'
At the mention of this incongruous association, most seriously delivered, such a sudden burst of unanimous laughter broke at once from the whole roomful of unruly boys that Mr. Plantagenet, taken aback, felt himself quite unable to continue his family reminiscences. The roar of amusement stunned and half sobered him. He drew his hand across his forehead with a reflective air, steadied himself on his legs, and, shading his eyes with his hand, looked across the table with a frown at the laughing conspirators. Then a light seemed to dawn upon him spasmodically for a moment; the next, again, it had faded away. He forgot entirely the thread of his story, gazed around him impotently with a bland smile of wonder, and sank back into his chair at last with the offended dignity of hopeless drunkenness. It was a painful and horrible sight. To hide his confusion he filled his glass up once more with the profoundest solemnity, tossed it off at a gulp to prevent spilling it, and glanced round yet again upon the tittering company, as if he expected another round of generous applause to follow his efforts.
'He's drunk now, anyhow—dead drunk,' one of the gentlemanly and congenial young fellows half whispered to Gillingham. 'Let's mix all the heeltaps for him with a little soapsuds, and make him swallow them off out of the washhand basin, shall we?'
Gillingham's taste was revolted by the gross vulgarity of this practical suggestion. 'No, no!' he replied, without attempting to conceal his genuine disgust; 'have you no respect at all for his age and his degradation? Don't you know that a drunken old man is too sacred a thing to be made the common butt of your vulgar ridicule? Dionysus was a great god—a great god in his cups—and even Silenus still retains the respect due to gray hairs. Let him alone, I say; he has lowered himself enough, and more than enough, already, without your trying to lower him any further.'
'Why, you helped in the fun as well as we did,' Westall answered, grumbling. 'You needn't try to go and make yourself out such a saint as all that after it's done and finished, for it was you who got him on his legs to make a fool of himself, anyhow.' 'Shakespeare must have studied his Falstaff at all moments and in all phases,' Gillingham replied oracularly, with his gravest irony; 'but I refuse to believe he ever conspired with a set of young blockheads at the Boar in Eastcheap to mix dregs of sherris sack with beer and soapsuds in a common washhand basin for Green or Marlowe. The Born Poet observes; he does not instigate.'
'Hush, hush!' Faussett cried again. 'Mr. Plantagenet is going to address us. Another speech from the Plantagenet!'
'Hear, hear!' Gillingham echoed as before. 'More experiences, more experiences! Life is wide, and its reflection must be many-sided; we want all experiences harmoniously combined to produce the poet, the philosopher, and the ruler.'
'Gentlemen,' Mr. Plantagenet began afresh, rising feebly to his legs and gazing around upon the assembled little crowd in puzzled bewilderment, 'I'm not quite myself this evening, ladies and gentlemen; my old complaint, my old complaint, gentlemen.' Here he laid his hand pathetically upon his heart, amid a chorus of titters. 'Gentlemen, choose your partners. Bow, and fall into places. Eight bars before beginning, then advance in couples—right, left—down the middle. I'll strike up immediately. My violin, my violin! what have you done with it, gentlemen?'