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 passed 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 pass 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.
"He'll pass 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 pass. 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 pass, 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 bumps 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 nobody 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 institution 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
assemblies. 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 passing 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.
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.