Peter Binney.

by Archibald Marshall.

INTRODUCTION

It is over twenty years since "Peter Binney" was first published in England, and I should be unwilling to offer it to my American readers at this time of day without some plea for leniency towards a young man's book, which contains perhaps more than the average number of crudities to be found in such beginnings. A few of the crudities I have been able to soften, but if you begin tampering with early work in the light of maturer knowledge, you are very apt to rub off the bloom that attaches to it just because it is early work, written with spirit and freshness, though with little skill. So I have left "Peter Binney"

much as it was, with most of its imperfections on its head, and I trust some compensating merits.

One merit I know it to possess. It presents a picture of the lighter side of undergraduate life as it was in Oxford and Cambridge, and as it still exists, in spite of superficial changes; and that is something that can only be done by a young man, whose memories are still fresh, and to whom that life is still important enough to make it the basis of a story.

New York, July, 1921

CHAPTER I

MR. BINNEY MAKES UP HIS MIND

"I'll do it to-day," said Peter Binney.

He had been sitting deep in thought ever since he had climbed on to the omnibus outside his place of business in the Whitechapel Road. As the vehicle pursued its ponderous way through the crowded streets of the City, stopping now and again to add to its load of homeward-bound business men, Mr. Binney sat in his seat, silent and preoccupied, his eyes on the ground and a thoughtful frown on his face. As it left the Post Office, full inside and out, and bowled smartly along the broad asphalted road towards the Viaduct, his face cleared, the light of determination shone in his eye, and looking up, he said aloud:--

"I'll do it to-day."

His fellow pa.s.sengers gazed at him in surprise, and a young lady who sat by his side, heavily fringed and feathered, and laden with a huge cardboard box, laughed a coa.r.s.e laugh, and said:

"That's right, guv'nor, don't you put it off no longer."

Mr. Binney had not intended to express his determination aloud, and the notice his remark had drawn annoyed him. As the young lady was apparently turning over in her mind further witticisms, he decided to leave the omnibus and walk the rest of the way to his house in Russell Square. He made his way slowly down the unsteady stairs, and the young lady said:

"A good cup o' beef tea's what _you_ want, George, and don't forgit the 'ot-water bottle," and as the omnibus pursued its way, leaving him walking briskly along the pavement, she leant over the side and called out, "Git Mariar to put a mustard plaster on yer chest," which made the people on the omnibus laugh, although Mr. Binney could see no humour in the remark.

He had come, however, to such a momentous decision during the last half-hour that by the time he had gone a dozen steps he had ceased to feel any irritation at the young lady's pleasantries, and walked smartly along, his brain all on fire with his mighty purpose.

Peter Binney was a small man of about forty-five years of age. His hair was gingery, and his whiskers decidedly red. He looked rather like a little bantam-c.o.c.k as he strutted along, and this was a curious coincidence, for he had made his fortune by selling poultry food.

Every one has heard of Binney's Food for Poultry. Indeed it would be quite impossible for anybody who is able to read to be unaware of its existence, for its fame is blazoned on every h.o.a.rding in the United Kingdom. It was Peter Binney who first conceived the idea of advancing the cause of art and advertising his wares at the same time. In the early days, when the future world-famed business was just emerging from its chrysalis state of a little cornchandler's shop in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks, he was content to publish a picture of a simpering young woman in a quilted satin petticoat and dancing shoes, feeding a number of plethoric hens in a very clean farmyard. But when the shop became a factory and Mr. Binney's keen business capacity began to tell, he issued his celebrated series of "Raphael's Cartoons for the Home," across the sky of each of which ran the inscription, "Binney's Food for Poultry." After a little time he published an edition of the "Plays of Shakespeare," in which all the pa.s.sages that Mr. Bowdler would have omitted were ingeniously converted by Mr. Binney into eulogies on his Food for Poultry. Poultry and taste were alike fed by Mr. Binney, and his business flourished accordingly.

At the age of forty-five he found himself a rich man, with a house in Russell Square, a family tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery (tenanted at present only by his wife), and a son who was being educated at Eton.

But to return to the present time and Mr. Binney's purpose. When he had let himself into the house in Russell Square, he rang the bell and inquired of the parlour-maid who answered it if Mr. Lucius was at home.

Hearing that he was not, Mr. Binney seemed somewhat relieved, and went straight up into his dressing-room, where he put on the coat and trousers generally reserved for Sunday wear, and exchanged his dark tie for a brilliant red one. Then he looked at his boots, and hesitated.

They were neat enough, but they had lost the sober brilliance of the morning. There was a row of similar boots freshly blacked under the dressing-table, but even these must have wanted something in Mr.

Binney's eyes, for after looking at them thoughtfully he shook his head, and opening the door stole quietly out and upstairs into a room above his own. It was rather an untidy room and evidently occupied by a young man of athletic tastes, to judge by the dumb-bells and Indian clubs, cricket-bats, guncases and fishing-rods that littered the corners. There was a row of boots and shoes under the dressing-table here too, and among them a pair of shining patent leathers. Mr. Binney made his way across the room on tiptoe, and seizing the boots, trees and all, retreated with them hurriedly to his own room, where he sat down and put them on. They were a good deal too big, but an extra pair of winter socks set that right, and when Mr. Binney had b.u.t.toned them he stood up on a chair and surveyed himself in the gla.s.s with considerable satisfaction. "I must get a pair like that," he said.

Then he went downstairs, and putting on his best hat and gloves, and taking his best umbrella out of the stand, he left the house.

Turning to the left, Mr. Binney made his way towards Woburn Square. If he had looked the other way as he came out of his house he would have seen his son Lucius coming towards him not fifty yards off. Lucius was very unlike his father. He was a good-looking boy of about eighteen, tall and slim, with blue eyes and a pleasant smiling mouth fringed with a few fair downy hairs, of which he always spoke collectively. He was very popular among his school-fellows, and was commonly known by the name of "Lucy."

"Halloa!" he said to himself as he caught sight of his father coming down the steps of the parental mansion. "Where's the governor off to, I wonder! Looks jolly smart, too. S'pose he's going to call on that old woman. Jove! he's got a pair of shiny boots on. I say, governor, you're going it! They're a bit too big for you though, my boy. Shall I give him a hail? Think I won't. He might want me to go and call on the old tabby with him."

So Lucius let himself into the house and went upstairs. As he pa.s.sed his father's room, the door of which was open, he looked in and saw that the floor was littered with the component parts of a pair of boot-trees. "Didn't know the governor went in for those luxuries," he said to himself. Then a sudden thought struck him; he went in and took up one of the pieces. "Well, I'm hanged!" he said in a tone of deep annoyance. "They _are_ mine. And he's actually got on my boots.

There's a piece of nerve for you! There'll be a row when you get home, young man. I really can't stand that, you know." And Lucius went out of his father's room very much annoyed.

We left Mr. Binney making his way towards Woburn Square. He walked on until he came to a house with a brightly-painted blue door, where he rang the bell and asked if Mrs. Higginbotham was at home. The maid treated him with the subdued cordiality of an old acquaintance and led him straight upstairs to Mrs. Higginbotham's drawing-room, where her mistress was discovered warming her feet at a bright fire, and reading the _Christian World_. She was a stout, middle-aged lady, and wore a dress of rich black silk. The room wore an air of warm, solid comfort.

Its decorations would not have satisfied the late Mr. William Morris, it is true, but as they completely satisfied Mrs. Higginbotham, that was not a matter of great importance.

"Dear me, Mr. Binney, this is very kind of you," said Mrs.

Higginbotham, rising to greet her visitor.

Mr. Binney shook hands with her and took the chair to which she had motioned him. He did not speak, but the compressed upper lip and the thoughtful look with which he regarded Mrs. Higginbotham caused a slight fluttering in that lady's ample bosom. With a woman's instinct she immediately knew as surely as if he had already told her what he had come to say. "He's going to do it to-day," she said to herself, and true to the tactics of her s.e.x she set herself at once to ward off the critical moment as long as possible. She plunged into conversation of the sprightly religious order, for Mrs. Higginbotham was a good woman and could talk by the hour together of preachers and movements and causes, in which conversation Mr. Binney was quite capable of holding his own, for he and Mrs. Higginbotham sat under the same preacher and held the same theological views. There was another point in common between them, and while Mrs. Higginbotham is struggling to maintain a bright and lively conversation, to which Mr. Binney replies only by terse monosyllables, there will be time to explain what this was.

Both Mr. Binney and Mrs. Higginbotham had a soul above their surroundings. In the case of Mr. Binney this has already been indicated by the way in which, while conducting his business on the most approved lines of commercial progress, he essayed to import into it something better and n.o.bler than the mere pushing of his wares and the piling up of a fortune. Those cartoons from Raphael had infused a love of art into many humble homes, and not a few minds had been enriched by the perusal of Binney's Shakespeare (a play given away with every sack of his food for poultry), to such an extent that the deterioration of eyesight brought about by the quality of paper and print with which those masterpieces were issued was a very small matter in consideration of the mental enlightenment which had been diffused throughout the country.

Mrs. Higginbotham's aspirations were not of so educational a character.

Her literary yearnings were satisfied by the weekly appearance of the _Family Herald Supplement_, to which event she looked forward regularly with great pleasure. That excellent periodical never made its appearance in her drawing-room, although sundry works of fiction from the lending library round the corner, dealing with the habits and customs of the aristocracy, did. Mrs. Higginbotham's father had been a draper in a small way of business, and her husband, beginning life in her father's shop, by the time he died had become a draper in a very large way. Wealth and luxury had been Mrs. Higginbotham's lot for many years, but what she yearned for was the larger, freer life led by those happy beings of whom she read in her chosen novels. To be able to look upon a lord without blinking; to be able to look upon lords every day of your life; to have it said in a newspaper, "I saw Mrs. 'Fluffy'

Higginbotham" (Fluffy had been the term of endearment enjoyed by the late Mr. Higginbotham) "sitting under the Achilles Statue in a plum-coloured gown with lettuce-green _revers_;" to have cards of invitation pouring in, every other one illuminated by a t.i.tle; to regard the London season as something more than the time of year when the days were getting longer and it would soon be time to think about going to the seaside--comfortable as Mrs. Higginbotham's circ.u.mstances were, her life had been singularly devoid of these delights.

And this was not all. Mrs. Higginbotham was romantic. She revelled in a love-story. She adored the Apollo-like heroes of her favourite fiction with an ungrudging wealth of admiration, and she envied hardly less the blushing heroines on whom they lavished the stores of their magnificent affections. Mrs. Higginbotham felt that it ought to be the lot of every girl to be a blushing heroine at one time of her life.

She felt that she herself had been unjustly deprived of that privilege, although she had been an attractive girl, and, if she read the expression in Peter Binney's eyes rightly, was attractive still. The late Mr. Higginbotham had been a good husband to her, but his actual proposal had been of the "Here I am--Take me if you like--If you don't there are plenty that will, and only too glad to get the chance" order.

She _had_ taken him, but he had never satisfied the romantic cravings of her nature. She, on her part, had been a good wife to him, but so far as she was aware he had never, from first to last, regarded her as a heroine, or if he had he had never shown it.

Would Peter Binney do more? Was it too late to hope that a whiff of the fragrant breezes of romance might yet blow upon her? Mrs.

Higginbotham scarcely knew. There was a something in the little man that inclined her to think that he would not be averse to dally in the Indian summer of a romantic courtship if she made it quite plain to him that that was what she required; and there was a something, in spite of his diminutive stature and the byegone forty-five years of his successful life, in the fire of his eye and in his erect and proud bearing, that whispered to Mrs. Higginbotham's heart that she might, by guarding the sensation with extreme care, bring herself to regard him as a very good subst.i.tute for the youthful adorer who it was almost too much to hope would come forward at this time of day.

While these questions pa.s.sed through her mind, Mrs. Higginbotham went on talking, and Mr. Binney, answering her without knowing in the least what she was talking about, mentally braced himself up for the proposal he was about to make. At last he broke into the middle of one of Mrs.

Higginbotham's sentences, and said in a firm and resolute voice, "Mrs.

Higginbotham, ma'am."

Mrs. Higginbotham saw that the time had come, and gave up the struggle.

"Yes, Mr. Binney?" she said in as cool a tone as she could muster.

"I am not so young as I was, ma'am," said Mr. Binney.

"We are none of us that," said Mrs. Higginbotham. "At least not people at our time of life."

"You have no reason to complain, ma'am," said Mr. Binney gallantly.

"My heart is young," said Mrs. Higginbotham, greatly pleased at the compliment, "and if I am not very much mistaken, yours is also."

"I hope it is," said Mr. Binney, greatly pleased in his turn; "and on that account I have a proposal to make to you, ma'am, which I hope you will consider favourably."

"I'm sure I shall do that, whatever it is," said Mrs. Higginbotham comfortably.

"I hope so," said Mr. Binney again. "The fact is, ma'am, that I have long regarded you with feelings of interest, which have in the course of time developed into feelings of affection. I can scarcely hope that those feelings are returned, but I should wish to ask, ma'am, if there is any chance in the near or distant future that they might be."

"Oh, Mr. Binney!" exclaimed Mrs. Higginbotham with a lively recollection of the heroines of fiction. "This is so sudden."