But Glory could bear no more. It was an insult to John Storm to be sat upon in judgment by such a woman. With a fiery jet of temper she turned about and said, “Pity there are not more heads cracked, then, if it would only let a little of the light of heaven into them.”
“Oh, if it's like that——” began Betty, looking round significantly, and Lord Robert said, “It is like that, dear Elephant, and if our charming hurricane will pardon me, I'm not surprised that the man has broken out as a Messiah, and if the authorities don't intervene——”
“Hold your tongue, Robert!” cried Drake. “Listen, everybody!”
They were climbing on to the Downs and could hear the deep hum of the people on the course. “My!” said Betty. “Well!” said the lady in blue. “It's like a beehive with the lid off,” said Glory.
As they passed the railway station the people who had come by train poured into the road and the coach had to slow down. “They must have come from the four winds of heaven,” said Glory.
“Wait, only wait!” said Drake.
Some minutes afterward everybody drew breath. They were on the top of the common and had a full view of the course. It was a vast sea of human beings stretched as far as the eye could reach—a black moving ocean without a glimpse of soil or grass. The race track itself was a river of people: the Grand Stand, tier on tier, was black from its lawns at the bottom to its sloping gallery on top; and the “Hill” opposite was a rocky coast of carriages, booths, carts, and clustering crowds. Glory's eyes seemed to leap out of her head. “It's a nation!” she said with panting breath. “An empire!”
They were diving into these breaking, plashing, plunging waters of human life with their multitudinous voices of laughter and speech, and Glory was looking at a dark figure in the hollow below which seemed to stand up above the rest, when Drake cried:
“Sit hard, everybody! We'll take the hill at a gallop.”
Then to the crack of the whip, the whoop of the driver, and the blast of the horn, the horses flew down like the wind. Betty screamed, Rosa groaned, and Glory laughed and looked up at Drake in her delight. When the coach drew up on the other side of the hollow, the bell was ringing at the Grand Stand as signal for another race, and the dark figure had disappeared.