Peter Binney: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

"I expect to take a first in both parts of the examination," said Mr. Binney, rising. "Good-morning, sir."

As the summer term passed quickly away with its feverish work and its incessant pleasures, for it is the term when examinations closely jostle its crowded gaieties, Mr. Binney found himself nearing two important events. In one week about the beginning of June he was to go in for both parts of his Little-go, and at the end of it to steer the First Trinity first boat in the May races. With regard to his examination, he felt confident of acquitting himself well. That he was over-confident was shown by his boast to Mr. Rimington, for it is not out of material such as himself that first classes are made, even in the most elementary examination that Cambridge affords. But he had worked so hard that he was certain of passing, and he looked forward with trembling hope to a renewal of his intercourse with Mrs. Higginbotham as a reward of his success. In being chosen to steer the representative oarsmen of First Trinity he had been extremely fortunate. When he had so disgraced himself in the previous term after the success of his boat in the Lent races, Mirrilees had sworn that he should never again steer a boat with which he had anything to do. But one of the coxswains tried for the first boat had fallen ill, others had proved unsatisfactory, and by the middle of term, by which time Mr. Binney had already proved that his manner of life would be innocuous for the future, Mirrilees had relented, and he was installed in the proud position that he so coveted. Trinity Hall was the head boat on the river, First Trinity was second, and Third Trinity was behind them. All three were considered equally good, and no one could safely prophesy what the result of the races would be so far as they were concerned. The Hall men laughed at the idea of losing their place; the First Trinity men expected to bump them, and said so; while Third Trinity kept quiet, but expected to find themselves in the second place if not head of the river by the time the races were over.

Lucius was rowing bow in the Third Trinity boat, and his quiet confidence that Third were a better crew than First exasperated Mr. Binney, who wouldn't hear of it.

"Don't talk such nonsense," he said in an annoyed tone, when Lucius ventured to advance the opinion that Third would finish head of the river and First second. "We shall row away from you, and catch the Hall at Ditton on the first night."

"We shall see," said Lucius calmly.

"No, we shall not see, sir," said Mr. Binney angrily. "I mean we shall see. And we shall see that I am right." He had quite recovered his bombastic tone, only he had learnt by bitter experience to quell it, except when addressing his son, who was too good-tempered to resent it.

Betty, of course, showed the utmost interest in the prospects of the Third Trinity crew. She was delighted when she heard that they were to row behind the boat which was to be steered by Mr. Binney, for she still maintained a deep-rooted prejudice against her future father-in-law, in spite of the welcome he had given her as Lucius's intended bride. "If they bump them, and I see it," she said to one of her friends, the girl from whom she had won the box of chocolate creams, "I think I shall scream with joy. Oh, won't cousin Peter's face be worth seeing when he has to hold up his hand and acknowledge he has been beaten. I'd give worlds to see it."

"You show a very vindictive spirit," said her friend.

Mr. Binney's time was fully occupied between putting the finishing touches to his reading, and his work on the river. He had almost entirely dropped out of the social side of University life. Although his wings had been clipped, and he would now have been a quite harmless companion, the men with whom he might have associated, had he behaved differently when he first came up, still looked rather shyly on him; and he had entirely dropped the society of men like Howden, for he had learnt such a lesson that he would have been almost frightened of results if one of them had even come into his rooms. Indeed, the poor little man led a very dull life, and when he had time to think about it, on Sundays perhaps, or for half-an-hour after his work was done, and before he went to bed, he often asked himself what was the use of his staying up at Cambridge at all, since so much of what he had hoped to gain from the place seemed to have been an illusive dream. He had lost his Martha, at any rate for the present, and in his moments of insight he could not disguise from himself the fact that he was unpopular, although he endeavoured to carry off the conviction with an added bumptiousness of manner which did not endear him to those with whom he came in contact. He would probably have made up his mind to leave Cambridge after this term, when he would have passed one examination and attained to a considerable measure of success on the river, but one consideration deterred him. He hoped to be chosen to steer the University boat in the following spring, and on the chance of having that ambition realised he would have stayed on at Cambridge if everyone in the place had cut him.

June came and brought the roses, and with them the anxieties of Triposes and all the multitude of lesser examinations. Mr. Binney went in for the Little-go. All day long he sat at a narrow desk in the Corn Exchange, that classical building which the University of Cambridge periodically hires for the purpose of putting her sons through their facings, and wrote assiduously, only leaving off now and again to gaze up at the roof with an expression of agonised effort, or to rest his brain for a minute by idly reading the names on the corn dealers' lockers which lined the walls. On these occasions he would find his thoughts wandering off to business affairs, for the corn dealers' names meant considerably more to Mr. Binney than to the other few hundred undergraduates who attained a short-lived familiarity with them during those few days of effort. But when he found his thoughts slipping he would bring them back with a frown and wrestle eagerly with his translations and his problems, for the card nailed on to the desk before him reminded him that he was "Binney of Trinity," and that Peter Binney of the Whitechapel Road must be ignored at least for the next few days.