Peter Binney Part 4

"I shall be at Henley as well," said Mr. Binney, "and Mrs. Higginbotham has kindly consented to accompany me. She takes a great interest in your rowing career, Lucius, as she does in every other manly sport.

Ah! I hope the day may come when I myself--but we mustn't count our chickens before they are hatched, must we? With regard to Henley, you will be able to go about with us, I suppose, and see that----"

"Very sorry, father," interrupted Lucius hastily, "I shall be rowing nearly all day long. We're in for the Grand and the Ladies' Plate.

Besides, the captain of the boats is a terrible fellow. If he caught one of us so much as speaking to a lady he'd cut up very rough."

"Why is that, pray?" inquired Mr. Binney.

"Oh, I don't know. They might offer us an ice or something. We have to be awfully strict, you know, over training."

"Ah, well, that's a pity. Mrs. Higginbotham would like to meet a few of the young fellows who will be my companions for the next three years. She said so. Perhaps you might get one of your cricketing friends who would be unoccupied to look after us."

"I'm afraid most of them will have people of their own to look after.

However, if any of them happens to lose his father and mother between now and Henley, I'll see what can be done."

"And now I must go to bed," said Mr. Binney, "so as to begin work early to-morrow morning. I don't want to lose a minute more than I can help.

I'm not getting on terms with Mr. Plato as quickly as I should like. I shall be able to introduce you to Minshull before you start, Lucius.

He's a good chap, and not a bit stand-offish as you might expect, considering he's a B.A., and I'm not even a freshman yet. You'll find him quite easy to get on with."

Minshull was one of those people in whose eyes a three years' residence at Oxford or Cambridge is such a glorious thing, that if they have gone through it themselves they can talk or think of nothing else throughout their lives. The healthy pleasant life of the average undergraduate is idealised into a sort of seventh heaven, and a "blue" takes his place immediately below the archangels and considerably above any mere mortal. Seniority of residence forms an almost complete bar to social intercourse with undergraduates of lower standing, and the little code of etiquette invented to enliven proceedings in the lesser colleges is as the laws of the Medes and Persians. To be or to have been "a 'Varsity man" was the only thing quite necessary in Minshull's eyes, if you were to call yourself a gentleman, and he therefore saw nothing that was not entirely laudable in Mr. Binney's determination to acquire this hall-mark of superiority, however late in life. While trying to instil into his pupil the requisite amount of Latin and Greek, he imparted to him at the same time his own particular point of view in matters of undergraduate custom, taught him what to admire and what to avoid, until Mr. Binney was infused with the spirit of a provincial youth about to enter the gates of the University paradise from his country grammar school. Mr. Binney had first of all considered a belated career at Cambridge as an opportunity for mending a defective education; under the encouragement of Mrs. Higginbotham's yearnings after vanished delights he had come to look upon it as a means of gaining some of the prestige of golden youth; influenced by Minshull's complacent reverence, he had insensibly drifted away from the careless acquiescence with which Lucius, for instance, regarded his own proposed residence at the University, and now felt that he should break his heart if he was prevented from taking his part in the glamorous delights which his tutor held before his eyes. He made herculean efforts to get on terms with his examination subjects, and worked harder than he had ever done in his life before.

Minshull arrived at nine o'clock the next morning as usual. Mr.

Binney, who had been working since seven and had breakfasted at eight, had not yet returned from a short const.i.tutional, and Lucius had the privilege of an interview with his father's tutor.

Minshull was a tall young man, rather shabbily dressed, with a long solemn face diversified by little ranges of spots of an eruptive tendency. He greeted Lucius with some respect, for Lucius was a potential "blue," and Minshull would have been as incapable of keeping on his hat in church as of talking without due reverence to a "blue."

"How's the governor getting on with his work?" asked Lucius with an abashed sn.i.g.g.e.r.

"Oh, pretty well," replied Minshull. "He works very hard, but of course he has to do everything from the beginning."

"No chance of his getting through, I suppose?" said Lucius.

"Oh, I don't know," said Minshull. "If he works as hard as he has been doing so far for the next three months he may just be able to sc.r.a.pe through in October."

Lucius began to pace the room.

"If he gets into Trinity I won't go up, that's flat," he said.

"What! Not go up to the "Varsity' when you've got a chance!"

exclaimed Minshull. "My dear fellow, you don't know what you're talking about. You will regret it all your life if you don't."

"Look here," said Lucius, "you were at Cambridge, weren't you?"

"Yes, certainly," said Minshull, slightly offended. "I took my degree last year."

"Well, how would you have liked to have your old governor playing the fool up there at the same college?"

"I see no reason to suppose that Mr. Binney will play the fool," said Minshull stiffly. "I have put him up to everything he ought to know.

He won't make mistakes. He is not likely to carry an umbrella with a cap and gown or anything of that sort."

"Why shouldn't he carry an umbrella if it rains? Look here, can't you make certain of his getting pilled for this examination?"

Minshull looked horrified. "What! and prevent his going up to the 'Varsity when he wants to?" he exclaimed.

"Or if you can't do that and he's likely to get through, tell him that you don't think much of Trinity, and get him to go somewhere else."

"There are plenty of good colleges in Cambridge besides Trinity," said Minshull, "although Trinity men don't seem to think so. My own college, for instance, Peterhouse, isn't big, but it is one of the best, if not _the_ best of the smaller ones."

"Is it? Well then, get him to go there. Do you mean to say you don't think it's a beastly shame him wanting to come up and spoil all my time at Cambridge?"

"I can't see----" began Minshull, but just then Mr. Binney came in, and Lucius left them to their labours, with the uncomfortable conviction that the toils were closing in on him and that there was no help at any rate to be gained from his father's tutor.

Henley week came round in due course, but Mrs. Higginbotham, alas, did not come round with it. Her cold had settled on her lungs and the poor lady was brought very low. At the time Mr. Binney hoped to have been paddling her about on the Thames in a Canadian canoe she was surveying the beauties of Torquay in a bathchair. Mr. Binney had been told by Minshull that if he really wished to pa.s.s the Trinity entrance examination in October, it was absolutely imperative that he should not lose a single day's work if he could possibly help it, so Lucius won a reprieve for that occasion, at least, and as the Eton boys managed to win the Ladies' Plate and rowed a good race in the semi-final heat for the Grand Challenge Cup, he spent on the whole a pleasant Henley.

During the first few weeks of his holidays he was training for and rowing in some of the up-river regattas, and September he spent with various school-fellows in Scotland, so it was not until just before he was due at Cambridge that he found himself once more in the house in Russell Square and the society of his father. Mr. Binney, in the meantime, fired with a mighty ambition to show his mettle and acquit himself well in his examination, had retired to an east coast village with Minshull, and devoted himself strenuously to his books. He had worked very hard for six months, but a man who has left a cheap commercial school at the age of fourteen, and that thirty years before, can hardly expect to do in that time what a public school boy has been working steadily up to ever since his education began. A month before the examination, Minshull saw that his pupil had no chance of success, and told him so one morning as they were walking together by the sea.

Mr. Binney was heart-broken.

"_No_ chance, Minshull?" he asked plaintively. "I don't mind working another two hours a day, you know. Isn't there _any_ chance?"

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Binney," said Minshull. "You have worked very hard; you couldn't have done better; but you see the work is all new to you. You might get in at the Hall, perhaps, or if you cared about it I should think I might have enough influence with the Peterhouse authorities to----"

"Never," said Mr. Binney firmly. "Trinity or nowhere. If I make up my mind to a thing, I stick to it. I shouldn't have made my fortune if I hadn't."

"I should advise you, sir, to give up all ideas of attempting the October examination," said Minshull. "I can a.s.sure you you can't possibly pa.s.s it, and if you do very badly it may be prejudicial to your chances in the future. Take a month's holiday, or you'll knock yourself up. Then set to work again and be ready for them next spring."

"I feel you're right," said poor Mr. Binney. "I feel you're right, Minshull, but it's a sad blow. You'll excuse me if I just walk on alone for a bit. I shall get over it better."

Minshull left him, and Mr. Binney spent a very bitter hour by himself.

He had never been beaten before when he had made up his mind to succeed, and it enraged him to think of the two hundred beardless boys who would enter Trinity College as freshmen in a month's time, most of whom had succeeded without any difficulty in doing what he could not do even with the most strenuous endeavours. Lucius, for instance, had taken the whole thing very calmly, although he was not a particularly clever nor a particularly diligent boy. Then his thoughts pa.s.sed on to Mrs. Higginbotham--Martha. That was the worst thought of all. He had written once a week to Mrs. Higginbotham, alluding in an airy way to his new acquaintances, Plato and Virgil and Euclid, as if he and they were on the most intimate terms of familiarity. Now he would have to tell her that their thoughts were too deep for him--for him who had familiarised all England with the mind of a Shakespeare--and that the languages by means of which they expressed their thoughts still presented such a mountain of obstacles to him that it was doubtful if he would ever succeed in getting over them. Still, the confession would have to be made, and Mr. Binney, with that directness which characterised all his actions, determined that it should be made that very night. "I am very, very sorry, Martha," he wrote, "I have really done my best. I shouldn't have been worthy of you if I hadn't. I'm afraid your Peter is a bit of a dunce, although he never thought so before. Write and say you will not throw me over for it, and I shall set to work again with renewed earnestness."

Mrs. Higginbotham, although deeply disappointed, wrote a very kind and consoling letter from Torquay, where her bronchial tubes, which had a.s.sumed complete mastery over all her actions, still detained her.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again," she wrote, and thought she had said a very original thing. "I always found, when I was a young lady at school, that if I couldn't master my tasks immediately, the only thing for it was, not to give them up, but to determine that I _would_ master them in time; and my mistress, Miss Dolby--now an angel--used frequently to point me out to the parents of other pupils, and say, 'That child has great determination, and will undoubtedly make her mark.' I am aware that I have not fulfilled Miss Dolby's prophecy up to present date, but your triumphs are mine, Peter, and I trust that we shall both grow famous together."

Mr. Binney was much encouraged by Mrs. Higginbotham's letter. He took a holiday and went to Torquay, and by the time Lucius went up to Cambridge early in October, very much relieved at the idea of at least one year free from the companions.h.i.+p of his father as a fellow undergraduate, he had settled down for a hard winter's work in Russell Square.

CHAPTER IV

NO HELP TO BE GAINED FROM MRS. HIGGINBOTHAM

Lucius Binney enjoyed his first year at Cambridge exceedingly. He had been popular at school and he was very much liked at the University.

He did enough work to enable him to avoid friction with the authorities and pa.s.sed both parts of his Littlego in his first term. He rowed in the Trial Eights, but as he was not heavy enough to fill any place but bow in a University boat, a place which was adequately filled already, he did not get his Blue. His allowance enabled him to play his part in the hospitalities of University life with credit, and he showed no disposition to exceed it. He was made a member of the historic Amateur Dramatic Club, commonly known as the A.D.C., and played the part of a maid-servant in the first performances of his year on the most approved principles of Cambridge dramatic art, with a slim waist, a high colour, and an unmistakably masculine voice. He would have been one of the happiest men in the University if he had not been continually haunted by the thought of his father.

But for some reason or other Mr. Binney, although he insisted upon lengthy letters being written to him, giving the fullest possible account of University matters, expressed no intention of paying him a visit, as Lucius lived in continual fear of his doing. Perhaps he was ashamed of his inability to pa.s.s the entrance examination after having made certain of doing so; perhaps he preferred to make his first appearance amongst Cambridge men as an undergraduate and not as the guest of an undergraduate. At any rate he left Lucius unmolested during his first two terms, but his letters became more and more jubilant as he worked on at his examination subjects, and felt himself getting nearer the desired goal.

Lucius had a friend called Dizzy. His name was not really Dizzy, but it is only fair to state that he had been christened Benjamin. To him alone, of all his friends, Lucius had disclosed, under a solemn promise of secrecy, the dark fate that was hanging over him.