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 passed 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
mass 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 bump 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 nobody
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
embarrassment, 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 butt 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 passed 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 noble 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 associated 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."
"Well, then, I'm afraid it's one of those expectations in which you'll
be disappointed if you're really coming up here. Trinity's the best
college in Cambridge--or Oxford either for that matter--but it isn't
the only one, and nobody thinks it is unless it's fellows like
Minshull, who are always running it down, although they would have
given their ears to belong to it themselves."
"I don't like the tone you take up about Minshull, Lucius," said Mr.
Binney. "Minshull's a very good fellow, although he hasn't had the
advantages that you and I have. I owe him a great deal, and I shan't
forget it. Now I must go and look over the subjects for to-morrow's
papers."