Peter Binney: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

CHAPTER XV

LUCIUS FINDS A BACKWATER

It was ten o'clock of a late April morning, one of those hot sunny days which sometimes make it not unfitting that the term which in Cambridge begins in April and ends in the middle of June should be known as the Summer Term. The morning in Cambridge, as has been explained, is usually devoted to books, but here was Mr. Lucius Binney of Trinity College in a very light grey flannel suit and a straw hat apparently making preparations for some sort of an expedition. He had collected from different corners of the room a Japanese umbrella, two plethoric silken cushions and a large box of chocolate creams. He put them down on the table and looked for a moment longingly at his collection of pipes, but finally contented himself with filling a cigarette case, which he slipped into his pocket. At this juncture a step was heard approaching. Lucius had just time to cover the box of chocolate creams with a cushion before the door was opened and Mr. Benjamin Stubbs entered the room. He was in cap and gown and carried a notebook.

"Holloa!" he exclaimed, "going on the Backs? Not a bad idea this fine morning. I've a good mind to cut lecture and come with you."

"Oh I shouldn't do that, Dizzy, if I were you," said Lucius, "you'd better go and hear what Mansell has got to say. I can crib your notes afterwards."

"We can both crib 'em off Hare," said Dizzy. "I should like a paddle in a canoe. Lend us a hat and I'll leave these things here."

"I haven't got another hat except that one with the Third Trinity colours and you can't wear that."

"Well, you Juggins, you can wear that and lend me the one you've got on."

"The other doesn't fit me very well," objected Lucius.

"What rot! why, you wear it every day. I'll tell you what it is, young man, you've got some game on and you don't want me to come. What is it?"

Dizzy here took up one of the cushions on the table and disclosed the box of chocolates which it hid. Enlightenment diffused itself over his intelligent features.

"Oh, I see, yes," he said, "Good morning, Binney, I'm afraid I shall be late for lecture." And he betook himself out of the room.

"Silly ass!" soliloquised Lucius. Then he gathered up his properties and made his way out across the Great Court, which lay wide and still beneath a smiling April sky, through the Hostel and down the narrow lane which leads to the river and the raft, where in summer-time a flotilla of boats and canoes is moored under the trees. Lucius selected a Canadian canoe and deposited a cushion at either end, supplementing those supplied by the boatmen. The chocolate creams he stowed carefully behind his own cushion, and taking his seat pushed out into the open water through the maze of pleasure boats which stretched half-way across the river. He was almost alone on the water. The rooks cawed in the high elms which fringe the pleasant gardens by the river, the whirr of a mowing machine came from some unseen lawn close by; there was an idle summer feeling in the air. Lucius paddled in a leisurely manner up the river, past the terraced gardens of Trinity Hall, the prow of his canoe breaking up the reflection of the beautiful Clare Bridge as he passed under it, along the spacious level lawn of King's and under the King's bridge into the darker waters bounded by the old buildings of Queens'. The illicit tinkling of a piano came from an open window in the new King's buildings and two men leant idly on the parapet of the bridge and watched him as he paddled slowly underneath. When he reached the wooden bridge of Queens', the bridge which Sir Isaac Newton is said to have erected without a bolt or nut, he turned round and dropped down the river again. As he neared the King's bridge he pulled out his watch.

"She said half-past ten," he murmured to himself. "I suppose she is bound to be a bit late. Girls always are."

He lay back on his cushions and allowed the canoe to drift. Opposite to him was the entrance to a backwater, arched over with trees, and crossed by a wooden bridge. Lucius surveyed it idly. "I wonder if she will come down there with me," he said to himself.

At this moment a fair vision of youth and beauty in diaphanous summer draperies came into sight on the river bank just above him. Lucius sprang out on to the bank and knelt down on the grass to hold the canoe for the fair vision to step into it. It was his cousin Betty. She looked cool and fresh and not at all as if she was doing a very bold thing as she stepped into the wobbly craft and settled herself on the cushions opposite him.

"This is ripping, Betty," said Lucius. "It is most charming of you to come out with me like this."

"You don't think I came for the pleasure of your company, do you?" inquired Betty.

"Oh, no, not in the least."

"How conceited you are! You know you do think it."

"I assure you, Betty, it never entered my head. When a girl writes to her cousin and asks him to take her out on the river, he would be a conceited ass, as you say, to imagine for a moment that she wanted to go with him."

"I didn't say I didn't want to go with you. If I must go at all I would just as soon go with you as any one."

"I don't know that there's any necessity for you to go at all if you don't want to."

"Ah, but you don't know everything."

"Why did you come, then?"

"I'll tell you when we get back again. Now paddle up to the Bridge of Sighs."

"How mysterious you are! But there's no hurry. Let us go down this little backwater. You can't think how jolly it is. There are shady trees on one side and a field with daisies and cows and buttercups and things on the other."

"No thank you, I don't want to go down a backwater. I want to paddle down to St. John's and back."

"What for?"

"I shan't tell you yet."

"Then I shan't paddle."

"How tiresome you are, Lucius! You spoil all my pleasure in your society."

"You said you didn't take any pleasure in my society just now."

"No more I do. Now paddle along, there's a good boy."

"Who is that female on the bank taking such an interest in us?"

"She isn't a female. Don't be rude. She's one of my particular friends. Now go on please."

"What is she doing there? Why doesn't she go home?"

"She will, when we have been up to the Bridge of Sighs and back, and I shall go with her. Now do paddle on and be quick. I shall get into a row, you know, if anyone else sees me here."

"I shan't go on until you tell me what all this is about. Don't get into a temper. If you kick the bottom of the boat like that your foot will go through and we shall both be in the water."

"You really are too provoking, Lucius. I'll never speak to you again if you don't go on directly."

Lucius began to paddle on slowly. "Now, tell me," he said, "why you wanted to come."

"Well, if you must know, that girl betted me a box of chocolates that I wouldn't, and I do love them so and I've spent all last quarter's allowance and can't afford to buy any. Now do go on, Lucius, there's a good boy. We have only got to get up to the Bridge of Sighs and back, and I shall get them."

Lucius stopped again. "I don't know that I want you to get them particularly," he said, "after what you have said about not wanting to come with me. Didn't you want to come with me a bit?"

"No, of course not."

"Not a little bit?"

"No."

"Then I shan't go on."

"Oh—oh—oh! I feel as if I should like to throw something at you."

"Well, why don't you? Look, there's the girl on the bank grinning at you. How pleased she'll be if I let her win."

"Horrid thing, she is! But I hate you worse still. I feel as if I could do anything to you now."

"What, hurt poor little Cousin Lucy? Oh, Betty, for shame!"

"Well, if you won't go on, turn back then, and I'll get out. Only I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."

"I say, Betty, are you very fond of chocolates?"

"Yes, I am, but I wouldn't sit here for another five minutes for all the chocolates in the world. Turn round and go back, please."

Lucius put his hand behind his back, and drew out the big box already mentioned.

"Look here; let's stop and eat these here, while that girl looks on. Then we'll go up to St. John's and back and you can have hers too."

This plan commended itself to Betty, and she spent a happy ten minutes while the girl on the bank strolled about and pretended to be admiring the Chapel of King's and the beautiful College of Clare, which are both seen to advantage at the point where the canoe had stopped.

There is a time when even Buszard's most expensive confections cease to charm. When this time had arrived for Betty, she said, "I don't much care if I don't get the others now, but I know I shall want them to-morrow, so paddle on, Lucius. I'm much more pleased with you now."

"Thank you, Betty," said Lucius, and the canoe proceeded on its way, under the Clare, Hostel, and Trinity Bridges with the graceful willows sweeping the water, round the curve where the classical front of the Trinity library looks severely towards the paddocks and the elms, and under the wall of the Master of Trinity's garden, where a blossoming tree showed a mass of delicate pink against the red-tile gables of Neville's Court, under yet another bridge flanked by the stone eagles of St. John's, and between the walls of that college until they reached their goal, the covered bridge, which, through no merit of its own, has usurped the name of the Bridge of Sighs.

"Thank you," said Betty. "Now be quick and get back. What a sell for that girl! and we haven't met anybody to matter either."

"Plenty of time for that. We've got to get all the way back again. I didn't tell you before, because I thought you would be frightened, but you remember Dizzy whom you met in my rooms last term when your mother was up?"

"Yes, I hope he isn't coming out, is he?"

"Well, I'm afraid he is. It's an old standing engagement; he promised to row a party of Newnham dons—seven of them—on the Backs this morning."

For one moment Betty's face blanched with terror. Then she said, "You are a donkey, Lucius. Hurry up, please."

But Lucius wasn't going to hurry up. He was very well content with his present position. Betty reclined opposite to him in a graceful attitude, the brilliant colour of the Japanese umbrella a setting to her pretty face.

"Why did you put on that pretty frock?" asked Lucius.

"Because it is so hot; just like summer."

"I know why you put it on."

"Of course you do when I've just told you."

"You put it on because you wanted me to think how pretty you looked in it."

"I didn't do anything of the sort. Don't be so silly."

"You do look awfully pretty in it, you know."

"Now, Lucius, if you begin saying that sort of thing I shall get out."

"All right. The river is shallow here. It won't come much above your shoulders."

"Be quiet, and go on."

"I am going on. I say, Betty!"

"Well?"

"Do you remember those lectures last October term?"

"Yes, pretty well; I've got the notes of them at home if you want them."

"Bother the notes! Do you remember how regular I was?"

"How should I? I didn't know you then."

"Oh, you wicked story! You knew who I was perfectly well, you little witch, and you let me go on like that for two whole terms without making a sign. It was cruel of you."

"Well, did you expect me to stop you in the street and say I was your cousin, when you had never taken the trouble to call on me?"

"You know I thought you were at Girton. Father said you were, and there is someone called German there."

"Yes, and you went to Girton such a lot, didn't you?"

"I could swear now when I think what an idiot I was."

"Then don't do it, please, although I quite agree with you. And, of course, you were much too grand to come and see us at Christmas."

"Confound it! I say, Betty, was it you who got me asked there?"

"I certainly shouldn't think of doing so again. And it was mother who asked you last vacation. I had nothing to do with it."

"Then it was you. Betty, you are a dar——"

"Now, then, be quiet, please."

"You and John are coming to us in town for a week, directly after term."

"Poor old John. I wonder whatever he would say if he saw me now!"

They had now passed Clare again, and were gliding slowly along between the pleasant meadow and the great lawn towards King's bridge.

"I say, Betty," said Lucius, "I don't want to frighten you, but who is that on the bridge?"

"I should think the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Newnham waiting for us," answered Betty without turning round.

"No, but really, I do believe it is John."

Betty turned round and saw a man in a straw hat with a green and black ribbon leaning over the bridge.

"Yes, it is," she said, blushing scarlet, but speaking quite unconcernedly, "he ought to be working. I shall blow him up for it."

"Shall we turn round? He hasn't spotted us yet."

"Turn round? Whatever for? You don't suppose I'm frightened of John, do you?"

"I don't know. You look rather as if you were."

"Of course I'm not. But I don't know what he will think, and I should look so idiotic if I began to explain."

"What about that backwater?"

"Is it very pretty?"

"Yes, very. Hold your umbrella towards the bridge as we go round the corner and he won't see you. I'll pull my hat over my face."

So the canoe glided under the little wooden bridge and into the still, shaded water beyond.

The other girl, who was still walking about along the river bank, and had seen it disappear, waited for an hour, and then went away furious, half intending to report Miss Betty Jermyn to the authorities of her college. Directly she had gone, the canoe came sliding out into the river again.

Betty was speaking.

"I shouldn't much mind if John did see us now, should you, Lucius?"

"Not a bit, darling," answered the happy Lucius. "But it wasn't John at all. I looked when you were holding the umbrella in front of your face."

Our narrative has dwelt so long on a series of painful and discreditable events, that it is hoped that the account of how Lucius and Betty, boy and girl as they were, made up their minds to spend their lives together, may have dissipated the gloom which the sympathetic reader will have experienced in following the chequered career of Mr. Binney. We must now go back a little and fill up the gap which we have left between the end of February and the end of April.

And first let us say that the very time Lucius and Betty were cooing like a pair of young doves in the seclusion of that backwater of the Cam, which now holds for them more tender memories than any other spot in the world, Mr. Binney was still in evidence as an undergraduate member of the University of Cambridge. Lucius's plea had been successful. A week after Mr. Binney's return to Russell Square he had received a letter from Mr. Rimington, to inform him that he might come up again at the beginning of the following term, but that the slightest breach of discipline on his part in the future would mean a sentence of instant dismissal from which there would be no appeal.

But alas! this letter, welcome as its contents were, did not suffice to raise Mr. Binney from the despondency into which he had fallen. After the receipt of Mrs. Higginbotham's mute but eloquent dismissal he had passed a week of such black despair that he could never look back upon it in after life without shuddering. He had beaten his wings against the doors of Mrs. Higginbotham's dwelling, but in vain. There was no admittance for him. He had importuned her by post. His letters remained unanswered. He scarcely knew how to bear the hard fate that he had brought upon himself. He was all alone in the house, for Lucius had gone straight from Cambridge to Norfolk, and was now engaged in the Reverend Mr. Jermyn's pleasant rectory house and garden in laying the train which eventually culminated in the scene between him and Betty recounted at the beginning of this chapter. He would have gone down to his place of business, but he was ashamed to face his manager and his clerks. He thought that every one would know he had been sent down from Cambridge.

As a matter of fact, this particular event of his University career never did become known to any but a very few. Even Mrs. Toller did not know it, although Mr. Binney was convinced that she must have done, for she cut him pointedly in Gower Street one afternoon as he crept miserably along taking a little air and exercise, and audibly instructed her daughter to do the same, as Mr. Binney raised his hat.

After that he was not surprised to receive a letter from his fellow deacons of Dr. Toller's chapel requesting him to resign his office, which he did that day with an added pang of shame, and resolved that, as he had now made the Baptist community too hot to hold him, he would become a Wesleyan Methodist, and work his way up to a position of authority in that body. He also made up his mind to let the house in Russell Square, which was far too large for himself and Lucius, and take a flat in Earl's Court, since Mrs. Higginbotham seemed to be made of adamant, and there seemed very little chance now of her ever gracing his establishment. With all these wrenches in his life, actual and imminent, it may be imagined that Mr. Binney was not a happy man at this time.

When Mr. Rimington's letter came, he decided to make one more appeal to Mrs. Higginbotham. He told her that he was going back to Cambridge, and intended to lead a very different life in the future from that of the past. Might he nourish a hope that if he did something to make up for past disgrace, Mrs. Higginbotham would forgive him and smile on him once more?

To his intense relief and tearful joy Mrs. Higginbotham replied to his letter. It appeared that he was not to be debarred from all hope. But he was not to be allowed to see Mrs. Higginbotham again until he had done something definite at Cambridge to atone for his past misconduct.

"I do not mean success in your play-hours, Peter," wrote Mrs. Higginbotham. "That you have already attained, and it has been the means of leading you astray. Such success as that will never restore my lost confidence in you. You must come to be well spoken of by masters and pupils alike. You must rise to the top of your classes, and acquit yourself well in your examinations. When you have done that you may come and see me again. Until then the memory of the dreadful trouble you have brought upon yourself and upon me, who trusted you, must abide with me. I do not wish to load you with reproaches. Your own conscience must be a very heavy burden for you to bear. But I could not bear to see you with the account that one who shall be nameless gave me of your conduct and appearances still fresh in my memory."

Mr. Binney stifled his renewed feelings of remorse and wrote to ask if the passing of his Little-go in the following June might be considered a passport to Mrs. Higginbotham's society? Mrs. Higginbotham replied, Yes. If he passed that examination well and behaved immaculately in the meantime he might consider himself on the old footing with her. So Mr. Binney took heart, re-engaged the useful Minshull and retired to Cornwall for the Easter vacation, where he ploughed away at his studies so energetically that Minshull held out hopes of his attaining a second class in one part at least of the examination.

When Lucius paddled his canoe out of the backwater with Betty sitting opposite to him in a flutter of dimples and happiness, there was literally no cloud on his horizon. He had been up at Cambridge now for three weeks and his father had never once given him occasion to wish himself away. Mr. Binney behaved himself irreproachably. In fact, if he had kept himself in the background as he was doing now from the time he had entered the University, Lucius would have had no reason to be ashamed of him at all. Even as it was, the contrast of what Mr. Binney was now and what he had been when he first came up was so great that the relief felt by Lucius almost made up for the distress he had previously undergone. Mr. Binney as a subject for discussion had somewhat lost interest by this time, and Lucius lived much in the same way as he would have done if his father had never come to Cambridge. Mr. Binney, whose nature was elastic, had recovered a little of his self-importance now that he had nothing to fear from outraged officialdom, and was rather inclined to patronise his son, and generally to assume the high parental air with which he had treated him before his own arrival in Cambridge.

But Lucius, whose appeal had saved his father from expulsion, took it all in excellent part, and was only too thankful that things were not worse. He could have borne a great deal more and thought nothing of it now that Betty had at last allowed him to put to her the all-important question, and had given him the answer he wanted. He whistled gaily as he walked up to his rooms from the river and thought himself the luckiest fellow in the world.

At the entrance to Whewell's Court he met Dizzy.

"I've done it, old man," he said with a beaming face. "You're the first person I've told about it."

"Then I'm sure I'm extremely flattered," answered Dizzy, "although I haven't the slightest notion what you're talking about."

"I'm going to be married, Dizzy," said Lucius. "Will you be my best man?"

"Well, I'm going to play racquets at two," said Dizzy. "If you could put it off till to-morrow perhaps I could——"

"No, but really, Ben, I asked Betty this morning, and it's all right."

"My dear old man," said Dizzy, grasping him warmly by the hand, while a bright smile lit up his ingenuous features, "I couldn't have been better pleased if I'd done it myself!"