"This is such a blighted day that I am going to watch a footer match," he said, "it amuses me to see thirty people tumbling about in the mud, and we can go and play pool at Wright's when we have had enough, if you will come."
I did not intend to tell Dennison that I was ill, so I said I would go if Ward would come with us, and as soon as we got into the Broad and the rain fairly beat upon us, I began to feel much better and more capable of being disagreeable to Dennison. I was in the state of mind which makes one anxious to be unpleasant, the sort of mood in which horrid people abuse servants or try to kick animals, and I was glad to have Dennison, who deserved every rudeness imaginable, at my disposal. But the worst of feeling so thoroughly disagreeable is that you are ashamed of yourself so quickly. I am either violently angry or not angry at all, and it is the people who are good at sulks and call them dignity who get their own way in this world. I once tried to be dignified at home, and I am not inclined to repeat the experiment; my father told me not to be a fool, my sister walked about as if wrestling with suppressed laughter, and my mother offered me various medicines. Rudeness is my rôle, its intention is not so easily mistaken.
So I hung on to Dennison very earnestly, and though Ward did all he knew to keep the peace, I had managed before we reached the Parks, to convince both of them that our walk was a mistake.
We went to the far end of the ground where very few spectators were standing, for an Oxford crowd always collect behind the goal of the visiting side, hoping magnificently that by those means they will see most of the game. It is very noble of them, but they are sometimes disappointed, and this happened to be one of the days on which those who were behind the 'Varsity goal-posts saw a good deal more than they wanted. For the day was made for the Richmond XV., who were big, bulky men, very heavy in the scrimmage, and the three-quarter backs on both sides spent most of their time trying to keep warm. Dennison said he was bored to death, and I told him Richmond never were any good outside the scrum and were playing a jolly good game. He answered that he was not a Football Encyclopaedia, and I assured him that he never could be anything half so useful. We kept up this kind of conversation for some time, while Ward stamped his feet and asked us to stop.
"How long have you been gated for?" I asked Dennison suddenly, springing the question upon him as had been the habit of one master at Cliborough when he was going to ask me something very embarrassing. Ward hit me in the ribs with his elbow, and Dennison pretended not to hear, so I moved a little further from Ward and repeated my question. "The Subby didn't send for me," he replied; "I wasn't caught and I made no row to speak of."
"Oh well, if you like to get out of the whole thing it has nothing to do with me," I said, and the thought suddenly struck me that if I really goaded Dennison into giving up his name I should feel a brute for the rest of my existence. What I wanted to do was to prove that Ward was worth about ten of him, but it is very uphill work trying to convince a man that he is only a fraction of the fellow he thinks himself, I have often seen people going sorrowfully away from tasks of that kind.
"There is no question of getting out of it," Dennison said quite calmly, "because I have never been in it."
"No question at all," Ward put in.
"At any rate you arranged it," I retorted.
"And the very deuce of a job it was," he replied.