Peter Binney Part 22

"I shall tell what I please to whomsoever I please," said Mrs. Toller.

"But, my dear, my promise," expostulated the doctor.

"Bother your promise!" said Mrs. Toller, as she went out of the room.

After breakfast the next morning Mr. Binney, to whom another day had brought no cessation of the gnawing pains of remorse, took his courage in both hands, and putting on his hat and coat, went round to Woburn Square.

The maid who opened the door to him gave a little start. "Mrs.

Higginbotham is not at home, sir," she said. "But she told me to give you this little parcel if you happened to call."

Mr. Binney took the parcel, neatly tied up and directed in Mrs.

Higginbotham's well-known writing. "Do you know when Mrs. Higginbotham will be in?" he asked.

The maid hesitated. "She told me to say she was not at home, sir," she repeated awkwardly, and Mr. Binney went down the steps with the terrible realisation hammering at his brain, that Mrs. Higginbotham had heard of his disgrace and refused to receive him.

He waited until he had returned to the seclusion of his own library before he opened the packet which she had directed to him.

It contained all the letters he had ever written to her.

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 j.a.panese umbrella, two plethoric silken cus.h.i.+ons 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 cus.h.i.+on 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 a.s.s!" 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 cus.h.i.+on at either end, supplementing those supplied by the boatmen. The chocolate creams he stowed carefully behind his own cus.h.i.+on, 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 pa.s.sed under it, along the s.p.a.cious 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 gra.s.s 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.s, 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 b.u.t.tercups 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."