Peter Binney: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

CHAPTER II

MR. BINNEY INTERVIEWS ONE TUTOR AND ENGAGES ANOTHER

Mr. Binney and his son sat over their wine that evening in the seclusion of the dining-room in Russell Square. Mr. Binney had been somewhat silent during dinner, thinking over the disclosure he was about to make. Somehow, now that it came to the point, he felt a certain diffidence in mentioning it. Lucius also had something to say, but waited until the servants were out of the room.

"I say, father," he said, when they were left alone, "I've ordered a new pair of patent leather boots from Peal's, and asked them to send the bill in to you."

Mr. Binney, immersed in his thoughts, had forgotten the occurrence of the afternoon, or he would not have rushed with such haste to his own destruction. "Bill into me, Lucius?" he exclaimed angrily. "What do you mean? You've got your own allowance, and a very handsome one it is. I'm not going to pay your bills for you besides. If it comes into me I shall tear it up."

"You've got your own boots," retorted Lucius, "and very handsome ones they are. If you take a fancy to mine I don't mind you wearing them a bit, only I haven't got enough for us both, so I thought you wouldn't mind my getting another pair, as I can't do without."

"H'm! Ah! yes!" said Mr. Binney, a trifle confused. "No, I don't mind really, my boy, though I don't think there are many fathers who would take it like that."

"There aren't many fathers who would take their sons' boots," said Lucius. "By the way, father, talking about allowances, what allowance are you going to make me at Cambridge?"

"Ah, Cambridge!" echoed Mr. Binney, as if that ancient seat of learning had just been brought to his notice for the first time. "Yes, we must talk about Cambridge."

"I should like to have it settled before I go back to Eton for my last half, if you don't mind," said Lucius. "A lot of my friends are going up, and we shall be sure to be talking over it a good deal. I should like to know what I shall be able to do and what I shan't."

"You ought to think yourself very lucky to be going to Cambridge at all," said Mr. Binney with a shake of the head. "I never had the chance of going to Cambridge when I was a young fellow."

"Oh, I daresay it's a jolly enough place," said Lucius, "although I shall be sorry to leave Eton. Still, it isn't all fun, you know, father. There's a certain amount of work to be done."

"Work! Of course there is," said Mr. Binney. "But what work! Think of being able to carry on your education till you're twenty-two or thereabouts. It's a grand thing, education. I never had any myself, at least not what you would call education, although I flatter myself I know as much as most people."

"Oh, yes, father," said Lucius. "Why, bless me, you've edited the text of Shakespeare."

"H'm, yes," said Mr. Binney, on whom a certain amount of adverse comment had bred a measure of distrust in this feat. He took a gulp of port. "We've always been friends, my boy, you and I, haven't we?" he continued rather nervously.

"Friends, father?" said Lucius. "Why, of course. I should think so."

"You might, perhaps, almost say that we are more like brothers than father and son," pursued Mr. Binney.

"I don't know that I should go quite so far as that," said Lucius. "But we always get on very well together, don't we?"

"Yes, that is what I meant," said Mr. Binney. "Now I've got an idea, which may be a little unusual." ("Not at all," murmured Lucius politely.) "But I hope you'll fall in with it. At least when I say, I hope, it doesn't matter a fig whether you do or not. I'm not going to be dictated to by my son, though he has been to a public school and I haven't. Who sent him there?"

"Why, you did, of course, father," said Lucius. "I don't want to dictate to you. What is your idea? That I shall go into the business when I come down from Cambridge?"

"That you'll do, of course," said Mr. Binney. "I hope you know on which side your bread's buttered, and who buttered it for you. No, my idea is about myself. I have worked very hard until now, but I haven't had the time for self-improvement that I should have liked. Now, what I propose to do is to take three years holiday off business and go up to Cambridge with you in October. What do you think of that?"

What Lucius thought of it might have been accurately gathered from the length of his face. All power of speech seemed to have left him. He could only sit with open mouth staring at his father, and this demeanour instantly set up the comb of that peppery little bantam.

"Well, well, what have you got to say? Why don't you speak?" he cried, with some heat.

Suddenly Lucius lay back in his chair, and gave vent to a loud, but entirely mirthless, peal of laughter. "That's a good joke, father," he said. "Gad! you are a ripper. Won't the fellows laugh when I tell 'em?"

This behaviour seemed to have a very ill effect on the circulation of Mr. Binney's blood, which flew into his head to such an extent that his face got as red as a tomato.

"What do you mean, sir?" he cried angrily. "It isn't a joke at all. Why should the fellows laugh, I should like to know? I tell you what it is, sir, you're ashamed of your father, you ungrateful young snob. Where would you have been, I should like to know, if I hadn't made my fortune and sacrificed myself to give you a good education? Sweeping a shop, I dare say, or a clerk on ten shillings a week. That's what you would have been, my fine fellow, and a good deal too good for you, too, you idle young——"

"Steady on, father," interposed Lucius, now quite serious again. "I'm not ashamed of you, you know that quite well—there's nothing to be ashamed of—but I didn't think you could mean it, really. You can't mean it, you know, why it's ridic—it's out of the question."

"Why is it out of the question, sir?" asked Mr. Binney. "Why is it out of the question?"

"Well," said Lucius, "look what a precious pair of fools we shall look."

"You may, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I dare say you will. I can't help your looking anything you please. But I flatter myself there's nothing particularly foolish looking about me, is there? Is there, I say?"

"Oh, no, nothing at all," Lucius made haste to reply, "but I should think there would be if you went up to Cambridge as an undergraduate—something precious foolish. I suppose you mean to take a house there, though, or something, and enter at some small college where they won't worry you."

"I intend to do nothing of the sort, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I shall enter myself at Trinity. It is, I believe, the best college at Cambridge. You chose it yourself. And I have no intention of taking a house. I shall live in the college, and comport myself in the same way as the steady young men with whom I, and you, too, I hope, expect to associate."

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Lucius. "Are we to go about together as steady young men? Well, you can't get into Trinity, you know, that's one comfort. The entrance examination is over and you couldn't pass it if it wasn't."

"Couldn't pass it, sir! You little know either your father's ability or determination. And it is not over. There is another in October, for which I shall present myself."

"You'll have your work cut out for you to get ready for it. I suppose you'll go to school for a term. I should go to Johnson's at Margate if I were you, where you sent me—you see you're just over age for a public school—they'll take you as a parlour-boarder, and I should think you might get the good-conduct prize if you're careful."

"That's right, sir," said Peter bitterly. "Pour scorn on your own father, who has given you all the advantages you ever had. Of course, you're a gentleman. You've been to Eton and you're going to Trinity. Yet you grudge me having my little bit of education, though I pay for both."

"Oh, blow the education, father. Why don't you stew up for London University, and live comfortably at home?"

"Because I choose to 'stew up' for Cambridge University, sir, and let that be an end of the matter. You'll find there will only be one of us there if you're not precious careful, and it won't be you."

Poor Lucius went to bed that night with a heavy heart. He had rowed for one year in the Eton eight, and wore with great satisfaction a flannel coat of light blue. He had hitherto looked forward with pleasure to his career at Cambridge, with the hope of wearing another light blue coat of a slightly different cut and shade of colour in the course of it. Now a dark cloud had arisen to obscure the happy azure of his mental horizon.

"If he's going to be such a fool as to go up," he said to himself as he undressed, "I'm hanged if I will. I'll go to Oxford instead, although all the chaps I know best are going to the other shop, and I shan't like it half as well."

He broached this proposition to his father the next morning at breakfast, hoping all the time that he had given up his intention. But Mr. Binney was more than ever confirmed in it, having spent a happy night in dreams of glorious youthful feats to be laid at the feet of the fair Mrs. Higginbotham; and Lucius's idea was received so badly that he relinquished it at once, and made up his mind ruefully that he should either have to go to Cambridge with his father as his close companion, or not go at all. He went back to Eton the next day with all his pleasure in the coming half spoilt by the dark fate that was hanging over him, his only consolation being the recollection of the difficulty of the Trinity entrance examination, which it had taken him all his time to get through, although his work for the last ten years had led directly up to it.

"Of course he can't do the work by October," he said to himself. "He doesn't know a word of Greek and only about three of Latin."

And this consolation had to suffice him, for he knew his father well enough to realise that if he had made up his mind to do this thing, and it was in him to do it, do it he would. Moreover, on the day he had left Russell Square for Eton he had seen a letter on the hall-table addressed in his father's handwriting to the tutor on whose side he himself was entered at Trinity, and blushed to think of what it contained.

Lucius's tutor, who was the most popular in the college, wrote to say that his own side was full, but that his colleague, Mr. Rimington, still had a few vacancies. So Peter wrote to Mr. Rimington and received a reply requesting him to go up to Cambridge for a personal interview.

Peter travelled to Cambridge the same evening and put up at the "Bull." After dinner he went out to make his first acquaintance with a University town. It was a lovely April evening. The deep violet of the twilight sky revealed the irregular roofs and towers of the old buildings. There was a half foreign air about the clean paved streets with the open rivulets running along the pavements. Peter walked up King's Parade and viewed with awe the pile of the famous chapel of King's, past the University Library and the Senate House, and the modern pretentious façade of Caius College, conceived and executed in the best Insurance office style of architecture, and into the narrow, noisy little Trinity Street. The streets were full of men in caps and gowns, and a few still in flannels and straw hats. Mr. Binney wondered how these latter could walk along so unconcernedly when they might at any corner run straight into the arms of a perambulating Proctor. He was so imbued with the idea of himself as a budding undergraduate that he half expected to be taken for one, and felt quite nervous when he did meet a Proctor a little later on, lest he should be asked for his name and college. He was a little disappointed when that functionary passed him without comment, but so reverential were his feelings towards one who held such high office in the University that he could not refrain from taking off his hat to him, a salute which the Proctor gravely returned, much to Mr. Binney's gratification. He would perhaps have been less gratified if he had known that the great man, who was not accustomed to receiving respectful greetings from middle-aged gentlemen, took him for a subservient tradesman whose face he happened to have forgotten.

When Mr. Binney turned into the open space in front of Trinity College and passed through the noble gateway into the Great Court, his heart swelled with pride as he stood and looked round him. The twilight had deepened into night, and the court lay quiet and spacious under the stars. Opposite to him stood the hall, its painted windows shining brightly through the dusk. To its right lay the Master's lodge, which Mr. Binney had been told was also a royal palace, and in front of it plashed the fountain underneath its graceful canopy of stone. To his right was the dark mass of the closed chapel, and all round the court stretched the long low buildings with their lighted windows and busy staircases, their modest regularity broken up by the three gate towers, the hall, the lodge, and the chapel. A little group of chatty dons came towards him from the combination room, across the sacred grass, one of them in all the bravery of a scarlet gown, and passed out through the gate. A porter touched his hat to them and Mr. Binney felt that he could have done the same with pleasure. Towards the undergraduates who went to and fro in the court, along the flagged pathways, his feelings were less reverential, but more curious, for he hoped some day to be one of them. What a proud thing it would be to walk on these very stones in a square cap and a blue gown and feel that one had a share in all the ancient surrounding glories. He walked slowly across the court, and up the steps of the hall. He stopped to read the college notices in the glass-covered cases which hang in the passage between the kitchen and buttery hatches on the one side, and the carved screen which gives access to the hall itself, through heavy swing doors, on the other. A crowd of waiters in their shirt-sleeves were busy between the two clearing away the remains of the feast. Mr. Binney looked into the hall which was now nearly ready to be shut up for the night. The massive boards and benches of polished oak ran up to the daïs in which were the two long tables where the dons sit at their dinner long after the undergraduates have finished and left them to their grandeur. The pictures of bygone worthies whom their college delights to honour looked down on him solemnly from the walls. Behind him was the beautiful screen with the gallery above, from which the panels are removed on state occasions, when a bright array of fair visitors looks down on the "animals feeding." The lights were going out now, and the high-pitched roof with its many rafters was fading into dimness. Mr. Binney turned with a sigh and went out, while a servant locked the door and left the great hall to its solitude, with the moonlight streaming in through the blazoned windows and the wakeful eyes of the departed worthies watching through the night.

The next morning Mr. Binney called on Mr. Rimington. He had to sit for a quarter of an hour in the Tutor's ante-room, where half-a-dozen undergraduates were awaiting their turn for admittance, looking over the bound volumes of Punch which were laid on the table for their amusement. Two of them were talking, and Mr. Binney listened with open ears to their conversation which was "shoppy" in the extreme, and all the more interesting to him on that account. His appearance caused no surprise, for fathers do sometimes visit their son's Tutors, but Mr. Binney thought that every one present would know what he had come for, and felt a little shy.

He was shown presently into the inner room, a handsome one with a beautiful ceiling, and was received very kindly by Mr. Rimington, who, however, seemed a little nervous.

"I don't know, Mr. Binney," he said, with some hesitation, "whether I quite understood your letter." (Here he took Mr. Binney's application from an orderly little pile on his desk.) "It seemed to mean that you wished to enter yourself as an undergraduate of the college."

Mr. Binney sat on a chair before the Tutor fumbling his hat between his knees. "Certainly, sir," he said, "that is what I meant."

"There is an undergraduate of your name already entered, I believe, on Mr. Segrave's side?"

"Yes, my boy Lucius. He passed the certificate examination last month."

"Quite so. We are very glad to have him here. We hope he may row in the boat and help us to beat Oxford."

Mr. Binney was surprised to find a don taking an interest in such a frivolous affair as a boat-race, but it put him a little more at his ease.

"There is nothing to prevent a man of my age entering at the University, I suppose?" he inquired.

"No," said Mr. Rimington with some hesitation, "not from our point of view. But have you thought what it means, Mr. Binney? It is a little—er—unusual for father and son to be undergraduate members of the same college at the same time. Our rules are not at all irksome for a young man—in fact, some people think we allow too much freedom, although we find that we get on better by not drawing the rein so tight as they do at some other colleges—but such as they are we could not relax them, and in your case they might very well prove to be irksome."

"Not at all," said Mr. Binney, "not at all. I am prepared to take the rough with the smooth, and I can keep rules, if they are sensible rules, as well as the young fellows."

Mr. Rimington laughed nervously. "May I ask your reason for wanting to come up to Cambridge so—so late in life?" he asked.

"I have a passion for education, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I left school at the age of fourteen, and have worked hard at my business ever since. But money-making isn't the sole interest in life—besides I have got as much money as I want. I wish to regain some of the lost opportunities of youth."

"Have you kept up your classical studies at all since you left school?" asked the Tutor.

"I never learnt any classics, sir," answered Mr. Binney airily; "that has all to come. They didn't consider that Latin and Greek prepared us for the business of life when I was a boy."

"Oh! then I am afraid it is not of the slightest use your attempting to enter for our examination," said the Tutor, with a visible shade of relief overspreading his face, "it would take you years to come up to the standard we require."

"That is my affair, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I shall not only attempt it, I shall succeed. I have ability and determination."

Mr. Rimington looked annoyed. "I think you will find you are mistaken," he said. "However, as you say, that is your affair and not mine. But, apart from that, I am not sure, Mr. Binney—I speak quite openly—that it is the kindest course you could take, as far as your son is concerned, to enter at the same college. He comes to us with a very good character, and we hope he will do us credit. But it is likely to go against him—I mean it will hardly be giving him a fair chance with the other men of the college to be constantly under your supervision. A University education, you know, Mr. Binney, is a valuable training for a young man, because he begins to learn to stand alone, while he is not left entirely alone. Your son would lose that advantage, whatever else he might gain, if you were to be constantly with him."

Mr. Binney straightened himself up. Mr. Rimington's opposition roused his fighting business instincts, which prompted him to take every opportunity of gaining an advantage. "That again is a matter for me to decide, sir," he said. "Lucius and I are very good friends and understand one another thoroughly. I have given him advantages of education that I never had, but when I put my foot down he has to obey. He knows that by this time. We will leave him out of the question, if you please."

Mr. Rimington again looked annoyed.

"If you are determined to come up for entrance to this college," he said, "and succeed in passing the necessary test, which, I warn you, will be a harder matter than you imagine, you would find yourself compelled to associate with men of very immature views, Mr. Binney."

"I am not afraid of that," said Mr. Binney. "In fact I shall enjoy it. I have preserved my youth and can take the young fellows on their own ground and beat 'em."

Mr. Rimington passed his hand over his mouth. "Then I had better give you the necessary papers," he said. "You must send us a certificate of good conduct, signed by a clergyman who has known you for three years."

"My pastor, the celebrated Dr. Toller, under whose ministrations I have sat for the last twenty years would do, I suppose," said Mr. Binney. "I am a Baptist."

"Yes, certainly," said the Tutor. "Then there is the certificate of birth. And this paper will tell you all about the subjects for examination. I should advise you to engage a private coach. You are too late, of course, for the first examination, but——"

"There is another in October," interrupted Mr. Binney. "I know. I shall present myself for that."

"Then I will wish you good-morning, Mr. Binney," said the Tutor. "You will excuse me, but I have a good many pupils to see." Mr. Rimington summoned up his usual amiable smile and took leave of Mr. Binney with a warm grasp of the hand; and Mr. Binney went out through the ante-room, where the waiting crowd had swelled to unusual proportions, and clattered down the oak staircase into the court, hugging his precious sheaf of papers.

In the Combination Room, that evening, Mr. Rimington and Mr. Segrave discussed Mr. Binney over their wine.

"I did my best to dissuade him," said Mr. Rimington. "It is very hard lines on the boy."

"He is a nice boy," said the other. "Wargrave"—this was Lucius's house-master at Eton—"says he is one of the best boys he has in his house; not at all brilliant, but of excellent character and a first-rate oar—just the sort of freshman we want, as we can't expect them all to be scholars. I'm afraid it will spoil his life here if his father insists upon inflicting himself on us. What sort of a man is he?"

Mr. Rimington laughed. He would have liked to say, "Just a cocky little tradesman," but he was a charitable man. "If I were the boy," he said, "I would rather have him in London than at Cambridge. But I don't think we shall see him at Cambridge. He left school thirty years ago and has never learnt either Latin or Greek, or indeed anything that we want, excepting, perhaps, arithmetic, and we don't want much of that. Yet he expects us to admit him in October."

"Oh, well then, we may set our minds at rest," said Mr. Segrave. "But it's a curious idea altogether."

Mr. Binney had got back to Russell Square by that time and was just then engaged in writing out an advertisement for a resident tutor.