To this cheering conclusion the doubting Thomas within her replied that so desirable a miracle could never be; and she cherished the doubt, though rather to provoke contrary fate into refuting it than because it embodied her convictions. She knew that some day Lady Washington must come back.
After Jim had sold Lady Washington, he had been informed by Chloe, the parlor-maid, how Angelica felt, and he repented his act. He had tried to buy the mare back, but the man to whom he had sold her had sold her to a dealer, and he had sold her to somebody who had gone abroad, and no one knew what this person had done with her. So Lady Washington had disappeared, and Angelica mourned for her. Two years passed, two years that were filled with doubt and disappointment. Each autumn Jim went North with his horses, but never suggested taking Angelica. As for Angelica, the subject was too near her heart for her to broach it. Thus it seemed that life was slipping away, harshly withholding opportunity.
That November, for reasons of his own, Jim decided to take Angelica along with him. When he told her of his intention, she gasped, but made no demonstration. On the threshold of fulfilling her hope she was afraid to exult: she knew how things are snatched away the moment one begins to count upon them; but inwardly she was happy to the point of apprehension. On the trip North she “knocked wood” scrupulously every time she was lured into a day-dream which pictured the finding of Lady Washington, and thus she gave the evil forces of destiny no opening.
The first hour of the show overwhelmed her. It was too splendid and mystifying to be comprehended immediately, or to permit a divided attention. Even Lady Washington dropped out of her thoughts, but only until the jumping classes began. The first hunter that trotted across the tan-bark brought her back to her quest.
But after two days the mystery was no more a mystery, and the splendor had faded out. The joy of it had faded out, too. For two days she had pored over the entry-lists and had studied every horse that entered the ring; but the search for Lady Washington had been a vain one. Furthermore, all the best horses by this time had appeared in some class, and the chances of Lady Washington’s turning up seemed infinitesimal. Reluctantly she gave up hope. She explained it to herself that probably there had been a moment of vainglorious pride when she had neglected to “knock wood.” She would have liked to discuss it with somebody; but Chloe and her colored mammy, who understood such matters, were at the “Pines” in Virginia, and Jim would probably laugh at her; so she maintained silence and kept her despair to herself.
It was the evening of the third day, and she was at the show again, dressed in her habit, because she was going to ride. Her brother was at the other end of the Garden, hidden by a row of horses. He was waiting to show in a class of park hacks. There was nothing in it that looked like Lady Washington, and she turned her eyes away from the ring with a heavy heart. The band had stopped playing, and there was no one to talk to but her aunt’s maid, and this maid was not companionable. She fell to watching the people in the boxes; she wished that she knew some of them. There was a box just below her which looked attractive. There were two pretty women in it, and some men who looked as if they were nice; they were laughing and seemed to be having a good time. She wished she was with them, or home, or anywhere else than where she was.
Presently the music struck up again; the hum of the innumerable voices took a higher pitch. The ceaseless current of promenaders staring and bowing at the boxes went slowly around and around. Nobody paid any attention to the horses, but all jostled and chattered and craned their necks to see the people. When her brother’s Redgauntlet took the blue ribbon in the heavy-weight green-hunter class, not a person in the whole Garden applauded except herself. She heard a man ask, “What took the blue?” And she heard his friend answer, “Southern horse, I believe; don’t know the owner.” They didn’t even know Jim! She would have left the place and gone back to her aunt’s for a comfortable cry, but she was going to ride Hilda in the ladies’ saddle class, which came toward the end of the evening.
The next thing on the program were some qualified hunters which might be expected to show some good jumping. This was something to be thankful for, and she turned her attention to the ring.
“I think I’ll go down on the floor,” she said to the maid. “I’m tired of sitting still.”
In theory Miss Angelica Stanton was at the horse show escorted by her brother; but in fact she was in the custody of Caroline, the maid of her aunt Henrietta Cushing, who lived in Washington Square. Miss Cushing was elderly, and she disapproved of the horse show because her father had been a charter member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and because to go to it in the afternoon interfered with her drive and with her tea, while to go to it in the evening interfered with her whist, and that was not to be thought of. Consequently, when Angelica arrived, the horse show devolved upon Caroline, who accepted the situation not altogether with resignation. She had done Miss Cushing’s curls for twenty years, and had absorbed her views.