Peter Binney Part 5

"He'll pa.s.s this time, Dizzy, I know he will," said Lucius, after receiving a more than usually confident letter from his father, who informed him that Minshull had told him that his Latin prose was, at last, beginning to show signs of an elementary grasp of the fact that there was such a thing as Latin grammar.

"Not he," said Dizzy with complete confidence. "He'll never pa.s.s. I knew an old geezer--no offence to your governor, Lucy--who first took up Latin when his little boys were seven and eight, under a governess.

First week they were all three about equal. Then the eldest boy began to forge ahead. In a fortnight the little one left the old man behind, and after a month the governess said she'd have to go if he didn't do her more credit. He didn't want that, so he married her, which was what he'd been after all along, only hadn't liked to say so. They can't learn things at that time of life, my boy, any more than we can make a pot of money by winking at a fellow on the Stock Exchange. It's not in 'em."

"You don't know my governor," said Lucius, his depression very little lightened by Dizzy's narrative. "He's been at it for nearly a year now, grinding like a galley slave. That fellow Minshull must have got something into his head by this time. And after all the entrance exam isn't anything very big, is it?"

"Not to us; we're educated men," said Dizzy, who was a member of Trinity Hall, where the entrance examination is tempered to the shorn Trinity candidate. "But it's the devil and all to people like your old governor who ain't used to that sort of thing. _He_ won't pa.s.s, Lucy; don't you be afraid of it."

"It's too bad of him wanting to come up, isn't it, Dizzy?" said poor Lucius, who yearned for sympathy and could only obtain it from this one particular friend.

"It _is_ too bad," said Dizzy. "I don't know what governors are coming to. There's mine wrote to me the other day and said I was disgracing the family name, just because I turned out those lights in St. Andrew's Street and got hauled up at the police court for it. I told him I did it entirely to save the ratepayers' money. He's always talking about the enormous fiscal burdens he's got to bear, or some such tommy-rot, and I thought that would please him. But not a bit of it. Governors never listen to reason. I got eight pages back with a lot more about the family name. Hang it, it ain't much of a name after all."

It was not. It was Stubbs. But General Sir Richard Stubbs, V.C., had done his little best to adorn it in days gone by and saw no great probability of his son Benjamin doing the same in days to come.

The account Lucius gave at home of his doings fired Mr. Binney's imagination.

"Splendid, my boy, splendid!" cried the little man, when he described the two b.u.mps which the Third Trinity boat had made in the Lent races.

"I shall go in for rowing myself; best exercise you can have," and Mr.

Binney drew himself up and struck the place where his chest would have been if he had had one. "Is it likely, do you think, Lucius, that you and I will row in the same boat?"

"It's not only unlikely," said Lucius shortly, "it's impossible."

"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Binney, with a dangerous gleam in his eye. "You are such a swell I suppose, that n.o.body else can expect to come near you."

"You wouldn't even belong to the same boat-club," said Lucius. "You ought to know that by this time. Third Trinity is only for Eton and Westminster men, the rest of the college belongs to First Trinity."

"I did know it," said Mr. Binney, "but I had forgotten it for the moment. You needn't take me up so sharp, Lucius. Is First Trinity a good boat club?"

"Of course it is," said Lucius.

"Very well, then, I shall join it, and take up rowing seriously. Have you spoken at the Union yet?"

"No, I don't belong to it. I shouldn't speak if I did, and it's no good belonging to that and the 'Pitt' too."

"The 'Pitt'! What's the 'Pitt'?"

"It's a club."

"Is it the thing to belong to it?"

"Oh, I don't know. A lot of people do."

"Ah, well, I must belong to that too."

"You have to be elected to it. People sometimes get pilled."

"Well, I should hope there wouldn't be much chance of _my_ getting pilled, whatever that may mean. I belong to the National Liberal Club.

That ought to be enough for them, oughtn't it?"

"Quite enough for them, I should think," answered Lucius, who had once dined at that famous inst.i.tution with Peter, and been offensively patronised by one of Mr. Binney's fellow-members, a man old enough to be his father.

"I shall join the Union," continued Mr. Binney. "I expect most of my triumphs will lie there. I am accustomed to addressing large a.s.semblies. I was nearly elected to the London County Council two years ago, as you know. That's where I score, you see, being a man of the world among a lot of boys. I've learnt to do things that they are only just beginning to think about."

"Yes. You've made your pile among other things," replied Lucius.

"Most of us haven't learnt to do that yet. We generally begin at the other end and spend it first."

"I shan't grudge spending some of it," said Mr. Binney. "I hope to entertain the young fellows a good deal. Minshull says if you give a few good breakfasts every term--do the thing well, you know, with perhaps some fruit and a bottle of claret to come after--you get a tremendous reputation for hospitality throughout the 'Varsity. Is that so?"

"Well, I'm not sure I ever met anybody who drank claret at breakfast.

I did know a fellow who used to drink brandy. He certainly did get a tremendous reputation throughout the 'Varsity, but it wasn't for hospitality. He wasn't up there long."

"H'm. Well, Minshull said he knew a man who went up a bit late, who had more money to spend than most people, who got into the first set at Peterhouse through his breakfasts."

"Did he? Lucky fellow! Well, I should give a few breakfasts if I were you, father. We shall all think you a tremendous chap."

"I mean to go one better than that, my boy, and give a little dinner occasionally, to the _elite_ of the 'Varsity--Blues, and people of that sort. I daresay you young fellows will only be too pleased to go outside the ordinary lines once in a way. I suppose there's no rule against giving dinners, is there?"

"I never heard of it. It's pretty often broken if there is."

"I intend to do the thing well, and open a bottle of champagne. I daresay, now, champagne's a thing that's hardly known at Cambridge."

"That's what I told my wine merchant last term. He was rather annoyed."

"I don't object to a little jollification occasionally. I daresay you and I, Lucius---for you shall do what I do--will become pretty well known up there by-and-bye."

"I dare say we shall," said Lucius with a sigh. And, indeed, it did not seem unlikely.

Before Lucius went back to Cambridge for the summer term, he made one last attempt to avert the catastrophe which had now become imminent--for Minshull had told him that Mr. Binney was now quite capable of pa.s.sing the required test. He called on Mrs. Higginbotham, whose bronchial tubes had by this time become less ostentatious in their behaviour.

"Well, Lucius," said that lady, when he was seated opposite to her in her comfortable drawing-room, "you will soon have your dear father to look after you at college. It is not many young men who have a father so ready to share in all their little pleasures."

"No," said Lucius. "Don't you think you could stop him, Mrs.

Higginbotham, if you tried?"

"Stop him!" exclaimed Mrs. Higginbotham with raised voice and hands.

"My dear Lucius, do not tell me that you are so selfish as to be jealous of an excellent father."

"Jealous!" echoed Lucius. "I don't know what you mean."

"You _do_ know what I mean, Lucius," said Mrs. Higginbotham severely.

"And you _are_ jealous. I can see it in your face. Here is your dear father continually talking to me with pride about the things you are doing at Cambridge, while you are only thinking of yourself, and fear that you will lose the position you have won when he is there to compete with you. What a contrast! You should be ashamed of such feelings, Lucius. I am sure I should be if I were in your place. What matter if you do have to take a lower place in the estimation of your young friends, when it is your own father--and _such_ a father--who will replace you? I do not like to think of such behaviour."

"He'll only be laughed at, you know," said Lucius.

"And do you mean to tell me that, as an unworthy revenge for your loss of prestige, you would actually dare to hold your own father up to ridicule?" inquired Mrs. Higginbotham.

"Of course I shouldn't," said Lucius. "I should do my best to prevent his making a f--I mean becoming notorious."

"There!" said Mrs. Higginbotham triumphantly. "Now you have acknowledged your baseness, Lucius. I am thoroughly ashamed of you.