Faussett obeyed without a word, and they laid the old man out at full length on the couch to sleep off his first drowsiness.
'Now draw him a bottle of neat seltzer,' Gillingham went on with a commanding air; 'you've got to get him out of college somehow before twelve o'clock, you know; and it's better for yourselves to get him out sober. There'll be a precious hot row if he goes out so drunk that the porter has to help him, and worse still if the scouts come in and find him here in your rooms tomorrow morning.'
This common-sense argument, though coming from the Born Poet, seemed so far cogent to the half-tipsy lads that they forthwith exerted themselves to the utmost of their power in drawing the seltzer, and to holding it to Mr. Plantagenet's unwilling lips. After a time the old man half woke up again dreamily, and then Gillingham set to work to try a notable experiment.
'Have you ever heard of Barry Neville, Westall?' he asked, looking hard at him.
'Neville? Neville?' Westall murmured, turning the name over dubiously. 'Well, no, I don't think so. Of this college?'
'Of this college!' Gillingham echoed contemptuously. 'Of this college indeed! No, _not_ of this college. The ideas of most Durham men seem to be bounded strictly by the four blessed walls of this particular college! I thought you wouldn't know him; I guessed as much. And yet he had once a European reputation. Barry Neville,' raising his voice so that Mr. Plantagenet should hear him distinctly--'Barry Neville was an able essayist, poet and journalist of the middle period of this present century.'
'Well,' Gillingham answered, nodding his head with a mysterious look towards the half-awakened drunkard, who had started up at the sound of that familiar name, 'there he lies over on the sofa.'
This last was murmured below his breath to the other lads, so that Mr. Plantagenet didn't catch it in his further corner.
'I'm going to try the effect of a bit of his own writing upon him to-night,' Gillingham continued quietly. 'I'm going to see whether it'll rouse him, or whether he'll even recognise it.--Here, you men, stop your row. I'm thinking of giving you a little recitation.'
'Hear, hear!' Faussett cried, languidly interested in the strange experiment. 'Gillingham for a recitation!--You know, Mr. Plantagenet, our friend Gillingham, the Born Poet, is celebrated as one of the finest and most versatile reciters in all England.'