Peter Binney Part 6

But you will learn that you _cannot_ prevent your father from becoming notorious. He is _bound_ to take the lead in whatever he takes up, especially among a lot of boys many years his juniors, and far inferior in capacity. I am afraid that in addition to your miserable jealousy, Lucius, there are things you wish to hide in your life at Cambridge, things that you do not wish your father to know of. I hope, indeed, that is not so. I should be truly sorry if the innocent life to which he is looking forward with such pleasure was to be spoiled by the misbehaviour of one for whom he has done so much."

"I've got nothing to be ashamed of in my life at Cambridge, Mrs.

Higginbotham," said Lucius. "You don't seem to be any more reasonable about this silly scheme than my father himself. I had better go, I think."

"I think so too," said Mrs. Higginbotham. "And do not come and see me again, Lucius, until you are in a better frame of mind, and can speak with more respect to one of your father's oldest friends."

"I won't come and see you again at all, you silly old fool," said Lucius; but he waited to say it until he was on the other side of the door.

CHAPTER V

MR. BINNEY ARRIVES IN CAMBRIDGE

Lucius's first May term wore itself out with a burst of glorious summer weather. The boat races and cricket matches, the dances and college concerts, the crowds of sisters and cousins, the mayonnaises and iced cups, and all the other attributes of those ten days of mid-June which go by the name of the May week, played their accustomed parts in mitigating the severity of the toil to which Cambridge devotes itself for the rest of the academic year.

But to Lucius there was a heavy cloud darkening the vivid blue of the summer sky. Mr. Binney was to arrive at the end of the term, to undergo his examination. The days pa.s.sed with relentless speed, and one unhappy morning he found himself walking up and down the long unlovely platform of the Cambridge station, awaiting the train which was bearing his father rapidly towards the scene of his future exploits. So far only Mr. Benjamin Stubbs shared with him the knowledge of the evil fate that was in store for him. But the secret was bound to come out now, and Lucius wondered whether there was a more unhappy man in all Cambridge than himself.

Mr. Binney arrived, accompanied by Minshull, for whom he had taken rooms at the Hoop, in order that he might have the advantage of his able tuition up to the very last moment, for he was determined to throw away no little chance that might add to his prospect of success. Mr.

Binney himself had been allotted rooms in college for the few days during which the examination lasted. If he was not already a Cambridge man this was the next best thing to it, and a proud man was Mr. Binney to find himself the occupant of a garret in the Great Court with a bedroom which any one of his servants at Russell Square would have turned up her nose at. They were the rooms of a sizar, and were barely furnished even for a very poor man's rooms, but the sizar had blossomed into the Senior Wrangler of that year, and that fact repaid Mr. Binney in full for any little inconvenience he might have felt at being deprived of most of the necessities and all the luxuries of life to which he had been accustomed.

Lucius accompanied his father to these rooms and left him to himself, for he was lunching with the captain of his boat. It was the last night of the races, and Mr. Binney proposed, after spending a busy afternoon with Minshull over his books, to go down to Ditton Corner and see the boats. Lucius thanked his lucky stars that he was rowing and need not present his father to an admiring circle of friends on that very public occasion. He would have been pleased enough to introduce him as a father, there or at any other place, if he had come up simply to pay him a visit, for Lucius was a right-minded boy and showed no disposition to be ashamed of his somewhat humble origin among his circle of more or less gilded youth; but to have to say "My father, who is coming up here next term," and to have to stand by while little Mr.

Binney tried to reduce himself to the level of an inexperienced schoolboy, as he felt certain he would do, was an ordeal that he did not feel equal to, and he made up his mind to let the inevitable catastrophe bring itself about in its own way. He told himself that he was happy to have averted it for so long, for although some of the dons knew of Mr. Binney's intention, and his own Tutor had actually talked to him about it, the secret did not seem to have become public property among the undergraduates of the college.

Mr. Binney was delighted with everything he saw. The gay crowd in the paddock at Ditton Corner, the lines of carriages on one side, and the flotilla of moored boats under the bank, appealed to him with all the force of a delightful novelty. The boating men and others on the tow-path across the river, with the photographers plying their trade and letting off their amiable witticisms through their megaphones, the boat crews in their coloured coats, some of them with flowers in their hats, swinging down to their stations round the bend, gave him great pleasure. Then, after a pause, filled with the gossip and laughter of the crowd, when a distant gun was heard, and three minutes afterwards a second, and a minute after yet another; when the men in the boats under the bank straightened themselves and said, "They're off"; when a moving ma.s.s of the heads of men running was seen far away under the willows across the meadows; when little men laden with bundles of coats fled along the tow-path opposite towards the "Pike and Eel"; when the noise of the shouting and the springing of rattles drew nearer; when every head in the crowd was turned towards Ditton Corner, and two boats came into sight very close to one another, and after them two more, and the shouting and cheering was taken up by every one around him, Mr. Binney lost his head with excitement, and yelled with the best of them, especially for the heroes of Fitzwilliam Hall whom he, for some reason or other, mistook for a Trinity crew.

"It's grand, Minshull, it's grand," he said as they made their way home with the crowd along the river bank and across Midsummer Common. "I don't wonder at your being proud of Cambridge, Minshull."

"I'm glad Pothouse made their b.u.mp just opposite Ditton," said Minshull complacently. "Now you see what rowing is like, Mr. Binney."

"Lucius rowed well," said Mr. Binney. "Didn't you think so?"

"Yes," said Minshull, who had been a diligent but ineffective La Crosse and hockey player during his residence at the University, and hardly knew an oar from a barge pole. "But it seemed to me that he hardly caught the beginning enough."

"You had better tell him that," said Mr. Binney with unconscious irony.

"I dare say he'll be glad of any hints he can get."

Lucius sat in his rooms in Jesus Lane the next afternoon in a very depressed frame of mind. His father had intimated that he was coming to tea. Lucius had invited Dizzy to meet him, hoping that his friend's pleasant flow of conversation would help out the entertainment, and prevent his own plentiful lack of cheerfulness from becoming too apparent; but Dizzy had not arrived yet. He devoutly hoped that n.o.body else would unexpectedly honour him with his society. But alas! an Eton friend, one year his junior, who was in for the entrance examination, took that untoward opportunity of paying him a visit.

"There's such a rummy little devil up," he said in the course of conversation, "about sixty years old, with carrotty whiskers. It oughtn't to be allowed."

The blow had fallen. Poor Lucius sat silent in untold misery, and just then in walked Mr. Binney. "My father," said the wretched boy. "Lord Blathgowrie."

Lord Blathgowrie shook hands with Mr. Binney without visible embarra.s.sment, and then, suddenly remembering a pressing engagement, went out to spread his extraordinary news.

"A lord!" said little Mr. Binney with great satisfaction. "Well, there are a good many lords I could buy up. However, that seems a nice young fellow. I wonder how he got on with his Virgil paper. I must ask him to-morrow."

Lucius groaned inwardly. "I shouldn't pal up to chaps like that, if I were you, father," he said. "I should keep as quiet as I could, or you'll make yourself and me look jolly ridiculous."

"Allow me to tell you, sir," said Mr. Binney up in arms at once, "that no action I choose to take is likely to make either you or myself look ridiculous. And I object to being made the b.u.t.t of such observations from my own son. It isn't the first time it has happened, and in order that it may be the last, I beg to tell you that it is my intention to knock ten pounds a year off your very handsome allowance for every speech of that sort that I am called upon to listen to."

Lucius groaned again and pa.s.sed his hand wearily across his brow, but made no verbal remonstrance to his father's harsh announcement, and just then the door of the house was heard to slam, and Dizzy tumbled noisily upstairs and into the room.

"My father--Mr. Stubbs," said Lucius dejectedly.

"How do you do, Mr. Binney," said the cheerful Dizzy. "Pleased to meet you. Lucy--I mean Lucius, told me you were thinking of giving us a turn up here. Not a bad place, is it? Better than Threadneedle Street, eh?"

"I don't know very much about Threadneedle Street, Mr. Stubbs," said Mr. Binney, a little taken aback by Dizzy's extreme friendliness, "but this certainly is _not_ a bad place. Indeed it is a very good place.

It is a n.o.ble place."

"How did you get on with your papers?" inquired Dizzy, helping himself to a large slice of cake. "Pipped 'em all right, I hope."

"I think I acquitted myself tolerably satisfactorily, thank you,"

answered Mr. Binney. "We were examined on the Acts of the Apostles this afternoon."

"Rummy old boys, those Apostles," began Dizzy in a vein of reminiscent anecdote, but Mr. Binney interrupted him.

"Mr. Stubbs," he said, "I am a man of religious views. I must beg you not to make light of sacred matters. You'll excuse my making the stipulation, but----"

"Oh, not at all," said the unabashed Dizzy ambiguously, "don't mention it. I was only going to say that it seems a rummy thing--however, perhaps I'd better not. See the races yesterday?"

"I did," said Mr. Binney, warming at once. "I never saw anything which pleased me better. What a thing it is to see a lot of young fellows going in for such a grand sport as that!"

"It is," said Dizzy. "I'm a whale on sport. I ain't much of a hand in a boat myself, but put me on a horse and I'll undertake to----"

"Tumble off," interpolated Lucius, who was in a state of irritation verging on desperation.

"Lucy, you've got a fit of the green-eyed monster," said Dizzy. "You ride like a bag of potatoes yourself, and you're jealous of those who can beat you. Don't you pay any attention to him, Mr. Binney. You'll get to know him by-and-bye. Going to keep a horse up here?"

"I hadn't thought of it," said Mr. Binney doubtfully. "I rather thought of devoting myself to rowing."

"Capital thing," said Dizzy. "I knew a fellow who----"

Dizzy's anecdote was so little to the point that it may be omitted. In later life he would probably become one of those old men who interrupt conversation with the dread opening, "I recollect upon one occasion,"

and sail off into interminable pointless reminiscence. But, at present, his absolute lack of self-consciousness and his flow of youthful good spirits made him very agreeable company, and when he left Lucius's rooms half-an-hour later, he had completely captivated Mr.

Binney with his artless prattle.

"That's a very nice young fellow," said Mr. Binney, when the door had closed on Dizzy's back. "If all your friends at Trinity are like that, Lucius----"

"Stubbs isn't at Trinity," said Lucius, "he's at the Hall."

"Really!" said Mr. Binney, much surprised, "I thought that Trinity men never a.s.sociated on equal terms with men of other colleges."

"That's one of Minshull's ridiculous ideas, I suppose," said Lucius.

"It doesn't matter what college a fellow is at if he's a good chap, and there are plenty of good chaps in Cambridge outside Trinity, especially at the Hall."

"But I should have expected a little more--what shall I say?--deference, in a man from another college."