Here we may leave these choice spirits to their potations. Mr. Sawyer, as his friends remarked, was noisier that usual, and mixed his glass remarkably strong. He did not feel inclined to go to bed, but was quite determined not to return to the ball. Perhaps, without knowing it, he could not have adopted a more judicious resolution.
Cissy looked for him everywhere. She even excused herself from dancing, more than once, in expectation of his return—meaning, however, to pay him off to some purpose when he did come back. But even at the cloak-room door there was no Mr. Sawyer. Bob Blazer got her shawl and Savage called the carriage, and Vainhopes put her into it. Yet Cissy felt out of spirits and out of humour. Though she declared she had never enjoyed a ball so much, her mamma thought she was very silent all the way home; and she took her bedroom candle and retired upstairs the very moment they arrived at the Rectory.
It was a “new sensation” to Miss Dove not to have everything entirely her own way.
CHAPTER XXV
THE RACE
With many men, and those not the least dashing and brilliant horsemen, courage is apt to be very much a question of caloric: their pluck rises and falls with the thermometer. When the mercury stands at 45 or 50 deg. they negotiate with pleasure the largest and most dangerous of fences; at a few degrees above freezing they are content to seek humbly for the gaps or weak places, and a gate, instead of being jumped, is lifted off its hinges; whilst at 32 deg. the turnpike-road has invincible attractions, and is not to be deserted under any provocation.
Granting such meteorological affinities, it is needless to observe that a steeple-chase is usually contested in the bitterest possible weather, with a cutting east wind.
The great event at Market Harborough was no exception to this general rule, and the important day was ushered in by about as unpleasant a morning as any gentleman could desire for the purpose of exposing himself in a silk jacket and racing leathers about the thickness of kid gloves. Frequent storms swept across the sky, bearing with them heavy showers of mingled sleet and hail, which stung the unprotected face like pins and needles. It was a bad day to see; a bad day to hear; above all, a bad day to ride.
Struggles observed: “It was lucky they were not out hunting.”
Behold, then, between the storms, under a delusive gleam of sunshine, about two P.M., half-a-dozen canvas booths erected in a large, sloppy grass-field, within a few miles of Market Harborough. Behold, congregated around the same, a motley group of tramps, list-sellers, vagrants of every description, gipsies, and card-sharpers. Behold a few jolly yeomen and farmers, pulling their wet collars over their mouths to concentrate the fumes of that last glass of brandy, and poking their horses about in the crowd, to stumble ever and anon over certain mysterious ropes, placed, for no apparent purpose, in everybody’s way. Behold two or three carriages of the gentlefolks herding together, as if rather ashamed of their company, and a pretty face or two, amongst which you may recognise that of Miss Dove, a little paler than usual, peeping out from under a multiplicity of wrappers, with an air of vague astonishment, the owner having been on the ground for more than an hour, and nothing done yet. Behold also Mr. Tiptop, galloping his master’s best hack as fast as the animal can lay legs to the ground, in the direction of a dripping marquee, near which there is a little knot of gentlemen in waterproof clothing, who seem to constitute an assemblage of their own. Let us lift the dank, heavy sackcloth, and peep in.