“Perhaps,” replied Mr. Bent airily, “perhaps. And very likely I should have been right.”
CHAPTER IX
“GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN”
“I always wonder, Bent,” said Mr. Rankin, as the two men met in Colonus on their way to the ground where the Cock-house match was about to begin—“I always wonder why you, who pour such scorn on athleticism, never by any chance miss a house match.”
“There are many things in this world to wonder at,” replied Mr. Bent; “for instance, why the sea is boiling hot and why Radicals are the most inveterate Tories in private life. But, as a matter of fact, it is not the football that attracts me on these occasions so much as the psychology of the competing housemasters.”
“Translate with brief notes,” said his companion.
“To an observer of human nature,” Mr. Bent explained, “nothing is so illuminating as the behaviour of a housemaster when his house is playing a match. Chowdler, of course, is elemental, and offers few points of interest; he has the naked simplicity of the savage or the sportsman—blatant in victory, ungenerous in defeat. But Trimble is more complex, and, therefore, more worthy of study. If I join him, he will affect an air of complete detachment and ask me for my views on Welsh Disestablishment or Woman Suffrage; but he will interrupt himself at intervals to murmur ‘Fools! asses! idiots! they deserve to be beaten!’ Of course they will be beaten?”
“Don’t be too sure of that!” said Mr. Rankin. “Two of Chowdler’s best men are crocked, and Trimble’s have come on a lot lately.”
“Chowdler being beaten,” said Mr. Bent, “is a much more amusing spectacle than Chowdler winning. But I don’t regard it as possible. He always keeps a reserve force—a kind of territorial army—of lean and hungry veterans with Christian names, who have grown old in the service of their country. I am credibly informed, that his senior fag, whom I see on the field, is a widower and maintains a family of four at Brighton. They all belong to the class which Chowdler designates as ‘poor old’ or ‘good old’; and against this combination of age, godliness, and thrift, no ordinary house eleven stands a chance.”
“Don’t talk rot,” said Mr. Rankin, “I back Trimble’s. They’ll take a lot of beating to-day.”
The whole school and most of the masters were out to watch the game. Mr. Tipham was conspicuous in his post-impressionist scarf, shouting ostentatiously for Trimble’s. Mr. Grady hovered uneasily on the outskirts, with the hunted look on his face; perhaps the noise reminded him of his more uproarious classes. Mrs. Chowdler and Mrs. Trimble were seated in a reserved enclosure, exchanging feline amenities. Their better halves wandered about on opposite sides of the ground—Mr. Chowdler on the touch-line, Mr. Trimble a little in the rear of the spectators, in a state of internal agitation which would have made sitting impossible. For the game was of a most thrilling description. In the first half Trimble’s did most of the attacking and crossed over with a lead of one goal to nothing.