The next day he spent with a very vague consciousness of what went on around him. For he was bound, by a long-standing invitation, to pass this particular Sunday on the river with Massey, Dicky Wood, and a fast Guardsman, one Captain Pascoe, who was a far too intimate friend of the gentle Dicky’s. They would not let him off, as he had wished, because he was by far the best oarsman among them, and the only one who could be depended upon to resist the temptations of champagne-cup sufficiently to keep up the credit of the crew when the sun had been beating mercilessly down upon river and field for half a dozen hours. It was a beastly day altogether, as they one and all described it afterwards. To begin with, when they arrived by train at Maidenhead, from which place it had been determined to row up to Pangbourne or Streatley and back, they found that the boat, which was the joint property of Massey and Wood, had been left at Kingston some days before by the former, whom the rest fell upon and slanged for his dear little irresponsible ways. Then there was a general wrangle as to what they should do, some being for going down to Kingston, some for hiring a boat, and George being lustily and heartily for going back to town. However, the matter was settled for all of them by the discovery that there was no train to anywhere for two hours, so they got a bad old boat which was the only one at liberty, and started in the worst of humours all round. The numerous defects of the craft supplied them with a subject for invective for the first couple of miles, during which George and Dicky Wood pulled, Captain Pascoe steered, and Massey baled out the water which they had had the pleasure of discovering at the bottom of the boat. Long before they reached Marlow George had had enough of their society, and proposed to tow them up in order that he might be able to indulge his dreams of coming happiness undisturbed. Captain Pascoe was a fair-haired, pallid man of thirty-five, always well-dressed, almost always good-humoured, popular with women of every rank and of every class, and liked by all men but a few who loathed him as they would a noxious reptile. He was a man of the world in the sense of taking the lowest possible view of it, and was familiar with every phase of fast life; he had any amount of easy philosophy and indubitable pluck, but was selfish, _blasé_, and corrupt, pointed out as the hero of half a dozen intrigues with women whose position was loftier than their virtue, and of whose favours, it was said, he did not scruple to boast, and at present the slave of one of the most notorious women in London.