Peter Binney: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEWNHAM GIRL

The morning hours in Cambridge are for books, the afternoon for exercise, and the evening for social intercourse. So, at least, the majority of the undergraduate members of the University regard them, and sometimes throw in an extra hour or two of work between tea and dinner. Of course there are those who work all the evening as well as all the morning, and there are others who do not work at all; but the morning for lectures and books is a general rule, and one that has few exceptions, however squeezed up the morning may be between late breakfast and early luncheon. If you go into the Great Court of Trinity, let us say about ten minutes to eleven in the morning, you will find it, comparatively speaking, deserted. Quite deserted it never is, unless in the dead hours of night, and not always then; but now its chief occupants appear to be the bed-makers, who empty their pails down the gratings, or stand for a few minutes' gossip by their respective staircases. Every now and then an idler passes through in a leisurely manner, or a don scurries across the grass in a terrible hurry. White-aproned cooks from the college kitchens collect plate and crockery from the various gyp-rooms and carry them away in green boxes balanced on their heads. Tradesmen's boys, their baskets on their arms, pass from one staircase to another, quite unawed by their surroundings, whistling as if their errands were taking them down a street of numbered houses instead of to the studious rooms of a venerable college, for centuries devoted to learning. But of the undergraduate life which is so busy in the courts of a college at other times of the day there is very little, for most undergraduates are listening to lecturers or coaches, or reading in their own rooms.

But the hour strikes and everything is changed. Men in gowns of blue or black, with note-books under their arms, come pouring out of the lecture-rooms into the court. Interspersed with them are the lecturers, laden with books, their long gowns and ribbons flying; and most curious of all, little groups of girls stand about the court waiting until it is time for another lecturer to appear and dart hurriedly into the room where his wisdom is to keep them entranced for the next hour. How horrified our grandfathers would have been could they have pictured girls and men sitting in the same lecture-room to-day, and how incredulous, could they have been told what a very little difference such an unforeseen arrangement would make in the daily life of their colleges. For the women are already in Cambridge. They have their own colleges, and if they have not yet their own lecturers, they make very good use of ours. And, strange to say, nobody takes much notice of them, or realises that they are there at all, except when they form their little groups round the college doorways, or when their names are read out before those of the men in the Senate House, or when they want something which Cambridge with all its chivalry is not quite prepared to give them.

One such little group of girls was standing by the Trinity Chapel one bright November morning in the first term of Lucius's second year, waiting for the learned gentleman who was to lecture to them during the next hour on some subject connected with the Classical Tripos. The learned gentleman was a little late and all the other lecturers had by this time penned their flocks and were busily engaged in feeding, and in some cases shearing them. The men who were booked for the same lecture as the girls were standing in twos and threes a little distance away, or strolling up and down the flagged pathways. At ten minutes past the hour the lecturer was seen approaching at a hurried pace from the direction of Neville's Court, and a minute later, girls, men, and lecturer had disappeared, and the Great Court had settled down again to its normal morning condition of dignified calm.

One of the girls was conspicuously attractive. She wore a neat costume of blue serge and a hat that showed up the gold of her pretty head. Her eyes were blue and innocent, her little nose had a mischievous tilt to it, and her mouth was like Cupid's bow. These last named attractions were not visible to Lucius Binney, who sat at the corner of a desk a few rows behind her; but he had a good view of the soft curves of a delicate tinted cheek, and a little shell-like ear perched coquettishly underneath the wavy brown hair, and, to do him justice, these beauties were not unappreciated by him, for he paid a good deal more attention to them than to the dulcet tones of the learned lecturer. It was now about the middle of the Michaelmas term, and Lucius had already sat in the same corner and looked at the same girl three times a week since the beginning of term, eleven times in all, and each time he looked his sense of the beautiful was more satisfied than before. Besides minor varieties the girl sometimes wore another costume of grey-green cloth and a felt hat to match, with a woodcock's tip in it. Lucius was like the lover in Tennyson's poem who speaks of his lady's dresses:—

"Now I know her but in two,
Nor can pronounce upon it,
If one should ask me whether
The habit, hat and feather,
Or the frock and gipsy bonnet
Be the neater and completer;
For nothing could be sweeter
Than maiden Maud in either."

He sometimes spoke of her to Dizzy, who attended the same lecture, and whose admiration of the girl was æsthetically great, but had not succeeded in penetrating his feelings. These two would hang about the court, chatting unconcernedly together, while she went out through the Great Gate with her companions. After the first week, when Lucius's appreciation of her charms had begun to bite a little, she sometimes gave him the merest glance out of the corners of her blue eyes as she passed him. There seemed to be a trace of amusement lurking in the glance, and Lucius understood that his admiration, although by no means obtrusive, had been observed—and dared he hope in some measure accepted?—by its object.

"Oh, Dizzy, old man, she really is—that girl!" sighed Lucius, after silently watching the blue serge coat and skirt and the fair hair under the little hat disappear round the corner. "She really is—"

What she really was did not transpire, but Dizzy quite understood and agreed.

"She's a topper," said Dizzy. "I can't say fairer than that. She's a topper."

"Have you noticed those little fluffy curls on her neck?" inquired Lucius. "With most girls they stick out straight and look as if they ought to be tucked in somewhere. But hers don't."

"Why don't you take a snap-shot at them with a Kodak in the lecture-room?" suggested Dizzy.

Lucius did buy a Kodak after this, and stayed away from the charmed lecture-room one morning with a heavy heart, in order to take photographs of the girl as she went through the court to and from the lecture. He ensconced himself in a friend's rooms on the kitchen staircase, the nearest position he could gain, for he did not want her to see him standing in the court; but after pressing the button feverishly six or eight times, and waiting impatiently for three weeks until the other people had done the rest, he was rewarded with several curious pictures of fog effects, only one of which showed a scene which could be recognised as the Great Court, with a few dark little spots some miles away, which Lucius interpreted as the girl and her companions leaving the college, but did not gain much satisfaction from the possession of them even with the help of a magnifying glass.

The girl was a Newnhamite (hideous word!). Lucius and Dizzy knew that much, though they could not discover her name. She must have known theirs, for the lecturer was in the habit of calling them over after each lecture. Unfortunately he omitted to do so in the case of the lady students.

"It's just my luck, you know," said Lucius disconsolately. "I've got a cousin of sorts at Girton. I ought to have looked her up before now—I promised the governor I would—and I'd have done it pretty quick, you bet, if she had had the sense to go to the other place."

"What is she like?" asked Dizzy.

"I don't know. I've never seen her. She is a sister of my cousin at Queens'."

"Oh, I should look her up if I were you. She may be pretty," said Dizzy.

"Have you seen my cousin at Queens'?"

Dizzy had, and acknowledged that the inferences were not encouraging.

"Still there's no telling," he said. "She may be a regular topper."

"Her father's a country parson," said Lucius, "and she has never been anywhere. I don't see the fun of tramping out to Girton to see a fat girl with spectacles."

"And a space between her belt and the top of her skirt with hooks and eyes showing," added Dizzy. "No, I agree with you it isn't good enough, although, of course, she may be a topper, you can't tell."

Lucius did bicycle out to Girton before the end of the term along a straight and appallingly hideous road, only to find Miss Jermyn "not at home" at the end of it, and then dismissed his cousin Elizabeth and Girton College from his mind, and indulged himself in roseate dreams of the Newnham girl instead. Although he was constantly plunged in shame at the behaviour of his father, and was gradually growing poorer and poorer as time went on, owing to Mr. Binney's relentless views on the subject of filial conduct, his first term at Cambridge in the companionship of his father was not altogether an unhappy one.

At the end of it Mr. Binney went in for the first part of his Little-go and failed ignominiously, for his work had greatly deteriorated since he had been admitted to the friendship of Howden and the rest. But the disquieting news did not reach him until he had left Cambridge at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, and that blow was not added to the one caused by his failure at the Union, and another which befel him at the end of term in the shape of an interview with his Tutor. Mr. Rimington looked grave as Mr. Binney entered his presence, and shook hands with him without his usual smile.

"Sit down, please, Mr. Binney," he said. "I didn't send for you when I heard about that foolish affair in Mr. Miniken's rooms, because I thought you must have taken part in it against your will, and I couldn't but believe that nothing of the sort would happen again. But I learn, to my surprise, that you seem to have made a—a specialty of that sort of behaviour, and however unpleasant the duty may be, I must remonstrate seriously with you on the course you have adopted here."

Mr. Binney's mouth was dry. Mr. Rimington's tone was more conciliatory than that of the Junior Dean, but the latter, after his first few words, had treated him just like any other undergraduate, while Mr. Rimington addressed him as a middle-aged gentleman who had been making a fool of himself; and Mr. Binney disliked this above all things.

Mr. Rimington paused, and Mr. Binney felt he was expected to speak.

"I was gated for that affair of Miniken's, sir," he said with a gulp, "and the subject ought to be at an end. It was foolish, perhaps, but it was all done in good part, and I had no idea the man would make such a fuss about it. Since then I am not aware of having done anything to bring my conduct under the notice of the officials of the college."

Mr. Rimington heard him out in grave silence. "You have done nothing that has actually had to be punished," he said, "but if you imagine, Mr. Binney, that your conduct has not come very seriously under the notice of the officials of the college, you are mistaken. Behaviour that would not call for much remark from a boy of eighteen or nineteen is a different matter in a man of your age. For one thing it is demoralising in the extreme to the undergraduates with whom you associate. It is a very disagreeable task to have to point this out to you, and I must say that it surprises me exceedingly that there should be any necessity for my having to do so." He paused so as to give Mr. Binney a chance of speaking, who, however, took no advantage of his opportunity, but sat gazing on the carpet. His attitude seemed to show that he was taking his Tutor's remonstrances to heart, but a slight frown on his brow and the set of his mouth belied that assumption.

"Have you anything to say, Mr. Binney?" asked the Tutor.

"I should like to hear what you have got to say first, sir," said Mr. Binney. "Then I will give utterance to my opinions."

"Very well," said Mr. Rimington. "Then I had better say what I have got to say in as few words and as strongly as possible. When we talked over your coming up here as an undergraduate in the spring, I pointed out that it would hardly be fair to your son to be under your constant supervision, and I pointed out other reasons why I thought you should reconsider your decision. You did not agree with me, and the objections were not strong enough to induce the college to refuse your application when you persisted in making it. No man in his senses could have foreseen that at the end of your first term, your son, who has been here over a year, should bear a high character in the college, while you, his father, should be giving us a great deal of trouble in matters of conduct. If that could have been foreseen I need scarcely say that we should not have admitted you.

"Now, look here, Mr. Rimington," said Mr. Binney, with his most uncompromising air. "I take great objection to your manner of speaking to me. My son I refuse to discuss. As far as I myself am concerned, you have acknowledged that with one exception, for which I have paid the appointed penalty, my conduct has not been such as to have called for any special remark, supposing I had been of the age of the ordinary undergraduate with whom you have to deal. I take my stand on that statement. These references to my age are offensive to me. I am here in the position of an ordinary undergraduate, and I demand fair treatment as such. That puts the matter in a nutshell."

Mr. Rimington kept his temper. "You seem to forget, Mr. Binney," he said quietly, "that no ordinary undergraduate would be permitted to speak to me in those terms. You take advantage of your age, which I think is about the same as mine, to address me as an equal, but wish it to be ignored entirely in my estimation of your behaviour. That, of course, is an unreasonable demand, and one that I cannot entertain. I sent for you to remonstrate with you on the course that you have seen fit to adopt. But as you have taken my remonstrance so badly, I must point out to you that my powers go far beyond a mere remonstrance, and if you are incapable of seeing yourself in the wrong and mending your ways, the college will have to think very seriously of asking you to take your name off the books."

"Then, sir," said Mr. Binney, now very angry, "I have to inform you that I shall not comply with the request of the college. I am here, and here I shall remain. The treatment I have received I consider infamous. I demand to be let alone. I shall keep on the right side of the law in the future, as I have done in the past, and I challenge—I dare the college to touch me. Let me remind you, Mr. Rimington, that this University has been thrown open—yes, open, sir. The old iniquitous Test Acts have been done away. One man has as much right here as another. If I am interfered with further, I will raise such a storm throughout the country, that not only Trinity College but Cambridge University shall tremble in its shoes. I will wish you good-morning, sir; and let me advise you to take my words to heart," and with this Mr. Binney took himself out of his Tutor's rooms, and went straight round to the Union to write a fiery letter of indignation to the Daily Chronicle, unmasking the unwarrantable interference with the liberties of the subject practised by the authorities of a "well-known college in a well-known University." His letter was not inserted. So the storm he had threatened to raise delayed its raging for the present.

After his departure, Mr. Rimington pondered for some time on his course of action, and then wrote the following letter:—

"DEAR MR. BINNEY,—I enclose the exeat which you will require in order to enable you to leave Cambridge for the Christmas vacation. I have dated it for to-morrow. You will, I think, on consideration regret your manner towards me in our conversation of this morning, and I shall be glad to receive any expressions of regret you may feel inclined to make. I must also repeat my statement that it is subversive of all discipline in the college that a gentleman in your peculiar position should constitute himself a leader in disorderly behaviour, and warn you that if such behaviour is persisted in you will not be allowed to remain here.—Yours sincerely,

"ROBERT RIMINGTON."

"Let 'em try to remove me, that's all," said Mr. Binney, when he received this very moderate communication. "They'll be sorry for it all their lives. Exeat dated for to-morrow! What does he mean? I don't want to go down to-morrow. A piece of impertinence! I shan't go."

But on consideration Mr. Binney did go down on the appointed day, and having arrived at a more reasonable frame of mind after a few days' residence in Russell Square, wrote to Mr. Rimington that he regretted that he had been led in the heat of the moment to express himself in a way he could not justify, and that, while he still stood his stand on a position which, he thought, would prove to be unassailable, there was no reason why he and Mr. Rimington should not agree to differ in a perfectly friendly and gentlemanly way.