Bob turned scarlet — I was looking at him through father’s field-glasses — and I believe he was swearing to himself. Then the game began again.
Bob told me afterwards, in a calmer moment, that my cry was the turning-point. Up to then he had been fearfully ashamed of himself for letting the Cambridge man kick the ball away from him, but that now be felt that he must look so foolish that it was not worth while trying to realize it. He said he was like the girl in Shakespeare who smiled at grief. He had passed the limits of human feeling. The result was that he found himself suddenly icy cool, without nerves or anxiety or anything. He isn’t good at explaining his feelings, but I think I understand what he meant. I have felt it sometimes myself when, directly after I have had my best dress trodden on and torn at a dance, I have gone down to supper and found that all the meringues have been eaten. It is a sort of calm, divine despair. You know nothing else that can happen to you can be bad enough in comparison to be worth troubling about.
Anyhow, the result was that Bob began to play really splendidly. I can’t judge football at all, of course, but even I could see how good he was. He slipped about as if he were made of indiarubber. He sprang at Stevens and took the ball away from him. He kept kicking the ball back to the Cambridge goal. In fact, he thoroughly redeemed himself, and if it hadn’t been for the Cambridge goalkeeper Oxford would have scored any number of times. Just before half-time an Oxford man did score, so that made them level.
“Well, Romney’s done all right lately,” said one of the young men. If he plays like that all the time we might win. What on earth he was doing at the start I can’t think.”
The sun was getting very low now, and Cambridge had to play facing it. It seemed to bother them a good deal, and Oxford kept on attacking, Bob coming up to help. At last, after they had been playing about twenty minutes, Stevens went off again, and Bob had to race back and stop him. He just managed to kick the ball over the touch-line. One of the Cambridge men picked it up and threw it in to another Cambridge man, but Bob suddenly darted between them, got the ball, and tore down the field. There were only two men in front of him besides the goalkeeper, and he wriggled past one of them, and father stood up and waved his hat and shouted instructions. Then the last Cambridge man bore down on him. It was thrilling. They were on the point of charging into one another when Bob kicked the ball to the left and ran to the right, and the Cambridge man shot past, and there was Bob in front of the goal just getting ready to shoot. Then the ball whizzed into the net, and all over the ground you could see hats flying into the air and sticks waving and a great roar went up from everywhere. It sounded like guns. “All the same,” said the bright brown young man, he ought to have passed.”
Nothing more was scored, so Oxford just won.
The end was rather funny, because I know you are wondering what I said to Mr. Hook and what he said to me, and what Bob did.
But it wasn’t a bit like what I had expected. When I came down to the drawing-room after dressing for dinner Bob and the captain were standing talking by the fire.
“I think you have met my sister already,” said Bob, dismally.
“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” murmured the other man.
Bob turned to me.
“I thought you said you met Watson at Aunt Edith’s ball. So you were pulling my leg after all?”
“I didn’t. I wasn’t. I said I met the captain of the Oxford football team.”
“Well, that’s Watson,”
“Are you captain, really?” I asked.
“I’ve always been told so.”
“Then,” I said, I think it’s my duty to tell you that there is a man called Hook — T. B. Hook — who goes about pretending he’s captain.”