Fred didn't answer, and Esther moved away, wondering where she should find
Sarah.
XXXIII
The crowd shouted. She looked where the others looked, but saw only the burning blue with the white stand marked upon it. It was crowded like the deck of a sinking vessel, and Esther wondered at the excitement, the cause of which was hidden from her. She wandered to the edge of the crowd until she came to a chalk road where horses and mules were tethered. A little higher up she entered the crowd again, and came suddenly upon a switchback railway. Full of laughing and screaming girls, it bumped over a middle hill, and then rose slowly till it reached the last summit. It was shot back again into the midst of its fictitious perils, and this mock voyaging was accomplished to the sound of music from a puppet orchestra. Bells and drums, a fife and a triangle, cymbals clashed mechanically, and a little soldier beat the time. Further on, under a striped awning, were the wooden horses. They were arranged so well that they rocked to and fro, imitating as nearly as possible the action of real horses. Esther watched the riders. A blue skirt looked like a riding habit, and a girl in salmon pink leaned back in her saddle just as if she had been taught how to ride. A girl in a grey jacket encouraged a girl in white who rode a grey horse. But before Esther could make out for certain that the man in the blue Melton jacket was Bill Evans he had passed out of sight, and she had to wait until his horse came round the second time. At that moment she caught sight of the red poppies in Sarah's hat.
The horses began to slacken speed. They went slower and slower, then stopped altogether. The riders began to dismount and Esther pressed through the bystanders, fearing she would not be able to overtake her friends.
"Oh, here you are," said Sarah. "I thought I never should find you again.
How hot it is!"
"Were you on in that ride? Let's have another, all three of us. These three horses."
Round and round they went, their steeds bobbing nobly up and down to the sound of fifes, drums and cymbals. They passed the winning-post many times; they had to pass it five times, and the horse that stopped nearest it won the prize. A long-drawn-out murmur, continuous as the sea, swelled up from the course—a murmur which at last passed into words: "Here they come; blue wins, the favourite's beat." Esther paid little attention to these cries; she did not understand them; they reached her indistinctly and soon died away, absorbed in the strident music that accompanied the circling horses. These had now begun to slacken speed…. They went slower and slower. Sarah and Bill, who rode side by side, seemed like winning, but at the last moment they glided by the winning-post. Esther's steed stopped in time, and she was told to choose a china mug from a great heap.
"You've all the luck to-day," said Bill. "Hayfield, who was backed all the winter, broke down a month ago…. 2 to 1 against Fly-leaf, 4 to 1 against Signet-ring, 4 to 1 against Dewberry, 10 to 1 against Vanguard, the winner at 50 to 1 offered. Your husband must have won a little fortune. Never was there such a day for the bookies."
Esther said she was very glad, and was undecided which mug she should choose. At last she saw one on which "Jack" was written in gold letters. They then visited the peep-shows, and especially liked St. James's Park with the Horse Guards out on parade; the Spanish bull-fight did not stir them, and Sarah couldn't find a single young man to her taste in the House of Commons. Among the performing birds they liked best a canary that climbed a ladder. Bill was attracted by the American strength-testers, and he gave an exhibition of his muscle, to Sarah's very great admiration. They all had some shies at cocoa-nuts, and passed by J. Bilton's great bowling saloon without visiting it. Once more the air was rent with the cries of "Here they come! Here they come!" Even the 'commodation men left their canvas shelters and pressed forward inquiring which had won. A moment after a score of pigeons floated and flew through the blue air and then departed in different directions, some making straight for London, others for the blue mysterious evening that had risen about the Downs—the sun-baked Downs strewn with waste paper and covered by tipsy men and women, a screaming and disordered animality.
"Well, so you've come back at last," said William. "The favourite was beaten. I suppose you know that a rank outsider won. But what about this gentleman?"