Peter Binney Part 20

"Hullo, Binney, old chap," he said, "here you are at last. I've been in once or twice to try and find you this morning. You did jolly well in the races. I was there on Friday and saw you make your b.u.mp."

"It's a splendid thing, you know, Howden," said Mr. Binney, "taking part in a great contest like that. You know what it is, for you're a celebrated athlete yourself. It makes you feel warm all over, doesn't it?"

"It makes you feel black and blue all over," said Howden, "after a game like yesterday. We didn't do so badly, Binney, did we? We never expected to beat them like that. Look here, I've got some of the fellows who were playing yesterday coming to supper with me this evening, and two of the Irish chaps who are staying here over Sunday are coming as well. You come too, Binney. We shall have a jolly rowdy evening, quite like old times. You're out of training now, and you haven't had a bust since the beginning of the term. Eight o'clock in my rooms."

Mr. Binney looked shocked.

"What, on Sunday evening?" he exclaimed. "My dear Howden, I couldn't entertain the idea for a moment."

"Oh, well," said Howden, somewhat abashed, "we shan't be doing any harm. You must feed somewhere even if it is Sunday."

"I always dine in hall on Sunday," said Mr. Binney, "and go to church afterwards. I am sorry I can't join you, Howden, although, if it had been on any other night in the week, I should have been delighted.

Those dinners we used to have were rather good fun, weren't they? I shouldn't mind another one now if we could keep it a bit quieter. I'll tell you what, Howden, we _will_ have another dinner in my rooms to-morrow night; just to celebrate our going head."

"What, the old lot!" exclaimed Howden. "That will be ripping, Binney.

I've never had such jolly dinners since I've been up here as yours were. You're such a capital good host, you know."

"Well, I like entertaining my friends," said Mr. Binney, much gratified. "I used to enjoy those dinners myself, but they certainly were getting rather too rowdy. We must keep a bit quieter to-morrow."

"Right you are," said Howden, and he and Mr. Binney drew out a list of half a dozen constellations of the athletic world, who had already had experience of Mr. Binney's hospitality in days gone by, and might be supposed to be willing to partake of it again.

Mr. Binney's dinner was a repet.i.tion of those which had brought him into disrepute during the previous term, only, instead of being quieter than had been customary with those entertainments, it was a noisier revel than any of them. b.u.mpers had to be drunk to the First Trinity Boat Club, and to the c.o.x of its first Lent boat. This was done before the fish came on. By the time the _entree_ had made its appearance success to the University Rugby Football Club had been duly honoured, and the healths of the various members of it there present brought them to dessert in a state of hilarious good fellowship. Mr. Binney usually objected to b.u.mpers, but it was pointed out to him that his refusal to empty them would be considered a cowardly insult to his guests in whose honour they were proposed.

Alas! before dinner was well over, Mr. Binney was in a state the mere imagination of which would have made him blush with shame in his more collected moments. His face was flushed, his speech thick, and his laughter meaningless but incessant. His guests were, most of them, in a similar state, and the unhappy little man, instead of mildly rebuking them for their excesses, as he had been accustomed to do, encouraged them to further libations, and filled their gla.s.ses himself with an unsteady hand, and giggling exhortations to make a night of it. At a later stage of the evening Mr. Binney was on his legs making the inevitable speech. It was an entirely incoherent speech, but his hearers applauded it no less for that. When a gleam of intelligence did detach itself from Mr. Binney's rambling procession of verbiage and pierce their heated brains, the cheers and hammerings on the table rose to fever pitch, and spurred on the poor little object to still greater exertions. During one of these interludes, when the applause was at its height and Mr. Binney stood leaning against the table with gla.s.sy eye and fatuous smile waiting for the din to subside, and bracing himself up for a further attempt, the door of the room opened, and a tall black figure, its face wearing an expression of scandalised amazement, stood framed in the door-way. It was the Reverend Dr.

Toller come to expostulate with the wandering sheep of his otherwise irreproachable flock.

Mr. Binney was the first to notice him. He frowned slightly in a determined effort to regain his scattered senses. Then the amiable smile spread once more over his face as he recognised his friend.

"Dorrertoller!" he cried, in a delighted impulse of hospitable welcome.

"Come in, my dear sir, and dring a gla.s.s o' wine. You see me, Dorrertoller, s'rounded by m' friends, celebrelating merrificent vickery, boclub. Genelmel, 'low me, ole friend, Dorrertoller. Come in, ole boy. Mayself tome. Siddown."

"Mr. Binney!" said the good doctor in an awful tone. "Are you aware, sir, of the terrible scandal you are bringing upon yourself and your friends by this unseemly--this disgraceful conduct?"

"Thashalri, Dorrertoll," said the unhappy Mr. Binney. "Siddow. All ole frells here."

It would ill become us to protract the account of this shameful scene.

Dr. Toller, shocked and horrified beyond all bounds, lifted up his voice in expostulation and reproof to the best of his ability, but all in vain. Mr. Binney was past taking heed of rebukes, and wandered foolishly along, pressing the doctor to make one of the party, and drink the health of some of the best fellows he was ever likely to meet. That at least was the intention of his invitation, but his enunciation not being so clear as could be wished, the warmth of his welcome could only be gathered from his engaging smile and his ineffectual attempts to drag a chair up to the table, a chair on which one of his guests happened already to be sitting. Most of the other men took Dr. Toller for a Proctor and kept quiet, while Mr. Binney used his utmost endeavours to induce him to join them. They returned again to their previous state of merriment when the Doctor had left the room, having perceived that anything that he might have to say to Mr. Binney would have to be kept until the next morning.

Later on in the evening, a Proctor did pay them a visit, the noise having become so insistent that it was bound to attract the attention of any one pa.s.sing down Jesus Lane. He took the names of all the party, but Mr. Binney went to bed in happy oblivion of the event, as well as of the advent of his pastor, and woke up in the morning with a bad headache and a dim impression that something had happened the night before which would cause him great uneasiness if only he could remember what it was.

As he sat with throbbing head and smarting eyeb.a.l.l.s over a late cup of tea, which he dignified by the name of breakfast, a "bull-dog" was announced, who brought him a slip of paper requesting him to call on the Junior Proctor at a stated time.

Mr. Binney groaned. He had a dim idea that he had had an unfinished conversation with a Proctor at some previous state of his existence, but he could not remember when. He supposed it must have been during the previous evening, but he could not remember having gone out after dinner.

A little later on, a similar notice was brought to him from his Tutor.

Mr. Binney was in such a low state that he actually shed tears at this fresh misfortune. He must have done something very bad indeed. If only he could remember what it was! But he couldn't, and his head was too painful to allow him to exert it to any great extent. All he knew was that he would never be able to hold up that head again. He would be sent down for a certainty. He would be eternally disgraced in the eyes of all his friends, before whom he had been used to bear himself so proudly. He grew cold when he thought of what Mrs. Higginbotham would say to him. Then his thoughts flew with a deadly sinking of heart to Dr. Toller and his fellow-officers in the congregation of which Dr. Toller was the shining leader. At this moment there was a ring at the bell, and in a few moments Dr. Toller himself was announced. Mr. Binney buried his head in the cushions of his armchair and wept aloud.

CHAPTER XIV

NEMESIS

Dr. Toller left Mr. Binney an hour afterwards, chastened and repentant.

The full enormity of his crime had been brought home to him. His only plea was that this was the first time such a dreadful thing had happened. Dr. Toller did not refer in direct terms to the _New Court Chronicle_, as he remembered in time that his wife had not told him before he left home how its numbers had fallen into her hands. But he drew from Mr. Binney an account of the occurrences of the term, and amongst them of the attack that Piper had made upon him in his paper.

"I went in for revelry to some extent last term," Mr. Binney explained, "but, even then, nothing of the sort that happened last night took place. This term my life has been hitherto irreproachable, and I did not deserve these attacks."

Dr. Toller was pleased to hear it. Poor Mr. Binney was so ashamed of himself and looked such a pitiable object bundled up in his armchair with a despairing look on his white face and black rings under his eyes, that he readily promised to keep the account of the previous night's orgie from Mr. Binney's friends in Bloomsbury, and before he went gave the repentant sinner full absolution and a great deal of very good advice.

When the doctor had removed himself it was time for Mr. Binney to call on the Proctor, who was a Fellow of Jesus College. Mr. Binney crawled along down the sunny side of the lane feeling very miserable. But the interview was not quite so painful as he had imagined. The Proctor was a young man with a keen sense of humour. He tried to impart a fitting air of severity into his strictures on the disgraceful scene he had interrupted, but spoilt it all by bursting into a peal of laughter in the middle of his lecture. After that there was nothing further to be done but to extort a heavy fine from the culprit and to let him go.

Mr. Binney felt somewhat relieved as he walked out through the gates of Jesus down the pa.s.sage into the lane, but his heart sank again like lead as he remembered his coming interview with his Tutor. He had just time enough to go into his rooms and drink a gla.s.s of milk and soda, before it was time to repair to Trinity College to undergo the ordeal of Mr. Rimington's displeasure.

Mr. Binney had to wait some time in the Tutor's ante-room. His thoughts were very bitter as he sat turning over the pages of a book, keenly aware of the t.i.tters and whispers of the men who were waiting with him.

The Tutor's face, when Mr. Binney at last entered the inner room, was not rea.s.suring. It wore a severe, and, to Mr. Binney's overstrung perceptions, it seemed a contemptuous look. Mr. Rimington did not shake hands with his pupil as was his wont, but motioned him to a chair and plunged immediately _in medias res_.

"You know, of course, why I have sent for you, Mr. Binney," he said.

"I have no intention of expostulating with you. I have tried that already, and it proved to be of no avail. I simply have to say that the college can no longer put up with the way you choose to behave yourself, and you must go down to-day."

"What? go down for good, sir?" said poor Mr. Binney in a broken voice.

"Yes, I think so," said the Tutor.

"Oh, surely you can't be so hard as that," pleaded Mr. Binney. "Think of the disgrace, sir."

"I do think of the disgrace," said the Tutor, with a short laugh. "I wish you had thought of it yourself a little sooner."

It will be remembered that on the last occasion of a conversation between Mr. Rimington and Mr. Binney, the latter had taken a very high line, for which he had subsequently apologised, but not quite adequately. Mr. Rimington had become very tired of Mr. Binney's methods of speech and conduct, and had made up his mind to speak shortly and sharply, and not to allow any discussion of his decision.

He was not, however, prepared for the total breakdown of Mr. Binney's opposition to his authority. The poor little creature sitting crumpled up before him in abject and hot-eyed misery was a very different person from the combative self-sufficient gentleman who had resisted his warnings in such a high-handed fashion when he had before animadverted on his conduct, so he did not refuse to listen when Mr. Binney began to plead with him in a piteous, broken-hearted manner.

"I know I have disgraced myself, sir," he said, "I feel it deeply. But such a thing will never happen again, and it has never happened before."

"Oh, pardon me, Mr. Binney," said the Tutor. "This affair is only the climax to a consistent course of such behaviour. I have had reason to speak to you before about it. You can't possibly have forgotten that."

"Not about drunkenness, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I was drunk last night, you know. I confess it. That has never happened before, and will never happen again."

"There are degrees of culpability, of course, in these matters," said Mr. Rimington. "Where you seem to disagree with me is in thinking that these disorderly meetings are allowable at all when a man of your age and influence takes the lead in setting all rules of order and good conduct aside."

"I don't disagree with you at all, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I am very sorry that anything of the sort has ever happened in my rooms. I promise you, if you will only give me another chance, that it shall never happen again."

"You forget, Mr. Binney, that I ventured to impress my views upon you at the end of last term, and warned you that if anything of the sort happened again I should be compelled to take a serious view of it. The first man I had to deal with at the beginning of this term had got into trouble through--er--his companionship with you. And further than that your name has become synonymous with disorderly behaviour throughout the University."

What would not Mr. Binney have given at that moment to recall the vanished days and spend them to better advantage? The contemptible light in which he must appear to men of his own standing was borne in upon him like a flood, and he felt that it would indeed be better if he left Cambridge for good and never showed his face there again.

"I deserve to be sent down in disgrace," he said feebly. "There is only one reason why I beg you to exercise your clemency--for the sake of my boy."

Mr. Rimington's mild eyes flashed fire. "I can scarcely trust myself to speak to you on that subject," he said. "If I do so it is because I feel it my duty as a clergyman to try and bring home to you the enormity of your conduct towards your son. Are you incapable of----"