Irresolute Catherine

by Violet Jacob

The two friends went off into the victorious crow which is the yokel’s recognition of another’s discomfiture.

Susannah checked the exclamation on her tongue; there was hardly any one in the world at that moment who interested her so much, and she rose and pressed forward a little to get a better view of Charles, whom she had never seen. As she surveyed him she wavered between her sense of his inferiority to Heber as a masculine creature, and her surprise that Catherine should have attracted so important a suitor. She edged nearer to the group in which he stood, but the passing and repassing of animals, and the varied sounds of the fair, prevented her from hearing anything that was said by himself or by his companions. Business was getting brisker as the sun climbed the sky, and it was evident that Saunders and his friends were waiting for a horse to be trotted out from the crowd choking the road at the entrance to the town.

She stood lost in contemplation of Catherine’s jilted bridegroom. So many things were surging in her mind that the shouts along the road were unheeded, and she only realised, when a hand pulled her back to the grass, that a horse was almost upon her.

Roars of laughter were gathering density, like a snowball on its career, and for an instant she imagined herself and her threatened mishap to be their cause. A wrathful flush was on her cheek and it was only on the beast’s return journey that the redoubled merriment undeceived her.

Every one was standing back to have a fuller view of the passing horseman. He was a long, elderly man, whose appearance and demeanour made the horse under him a mere adjunct to himself and commerce a secondary matter. The lightning trot that formed his charger’s chief qualification was of such incredible swiftness that he had gone by almost before the onlookers knew what had happened. In order that this should not degenerate into a canter, the rider had laid himself forward on the leggy creature’s neck, and was firmly grasping its ears, from between which his own face, crowned by a pot hat and framed in streaming whiskers, stared into futurity. Behind him, the bellying skirts of an old greatcoat flew high above tail and crupper and a gale of laughter ran alongside him as he went, hanging in his wake like rubbish in the draught of an express train.

Susannah had some humour, but it was of that unreliable sort which flies from its owner at a personal touch, and not even the passage of such a figure across her vision could divert her eyes from Saunders. It did not escape her observation that, though he opened his mouth and shouted with the rest of the world, he shut it again quickly; and that, while his companions closed in on the road to get a last view of the horseman as he disappeared into the town, he alone kept his place. It was clear that he was pre-occupied; and the sullen uneasiness of his expression when he was separated from his friends told the woman who watched him something of his mind.

As the day went on, and horse after horse was led or ridden out for the benefit of the farmers, old Moorhouse’s stiff limbs were growing uneasy on his log and he summoned his niece and began to move homeward. Susannah was obliged to go with him, but she determined to return when she had left him within safe distance of his own door; for she had spread his midday bread and cheese on the kitchen table before leaving the house, and there were possibilities waiting for her in Talgwynne of which she had not dreamed as she set out for the fair. By hook or by crook, she meant to have a word with Saunders.

Her uncle moved slowly, and the crowd made it so difficult for them to get on, that they were forced to take the most devious way to avoid it. Though she did not enter the house, it was almost an hour before she found herself in the town and once more in the middle of the throng. There was no sign of Saunders, and she guessed that he was still on the road; but she stayed where she was, keeping as much as possible in the background and shunning those acquaintances whom she saw. She told herself that he must return to fetch his horse, for she knew, by his splashed leggings and the whip under his arm, that he had ridden to the fair. There would be a better chance of attracting his attention quietly in the hurly-burly than on the open road.

She was standing in the shadow of a doorway when at last she saw him and observed a greater geniality on his face. He was flushed, and his hat sat at a more cheerful angle; and though his assured and steady manner of threading the maze of people held him above all suspicion of being drunk, Susannah suspected that he had been bolstering his fallen spirits in the popular way. She edged again into the moving mass of humanity and soon found herself close to him. He seemed to be searching for some person, for it was nearly impossible to catch his eye. She plucked him boldly by the sleeve.