"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 b.u.t.tered, and who b.u.t.tered 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 sn.o.b.
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 a.s.sociate."
"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 pa.s.s it if it wasn"t."
"Couldn"t pa.s.s 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 facade 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce in front of Trinity College and pa.s.sed through the n.o.ble 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ma.s.s 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 gra.s.s, one of them in all the bravery of a scarlet gown, and pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s-covered cases which hang in the pa.s.sage between the kitchen and b.u.t.tery 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 ma.s.sive boards and benches of polished oak ran up to the das 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sed 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."