Phemie Frost's Experiences Part 51

There was a great commotion after this. The whole crowd was in a wild whirl of excitement. All the ladies were talking about gloves and pools, and gentleman riders, while the gentlemen talked fast, looked eager, and were restless as caged birds. Something was going to happen now, I was sure of that.

"Do tell me what is the matter," says I to a gentleman that cousin had just introduced to me, "everybody is so excited."

"Yes," says he, "all on the keyvive."

What queer names they do have for horses. Alarm had just come in ahead, and now Keyvive.

"What kind of a horse is the Keyvive?" says I.

He didn't seem to hear me. No wonder, for that very minute five horses, with such nice-looking fellows on their backs, took a start, like a flock of wild deer, and went up the road so swift that before I could see them they were gone.

"It is the hurdle-race," says the same gentleman, "splendid--splendid; what a leap!"

His eyes were bright as stars; they fairly danced in his head.

I sprang up, for a great wind seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng around the hill. Then I gave a scream, for some wicked person had built a fence right across the road, and those five horses were galloping like mad right toward it.

"Oh, stop them--stop them--for mercy's sake!" says I, a-clasping my hands, and pleading wildly to every one around. "They'll be killed--they don't see that awful fence."

While I was screaming, the whole five horses came, one after another, sailed right over the fence, dived down like hen-hawks after a chicken, and away toward another fence that choked up the road. Before I could shriek out, and warn them, over they came, like a whirlwind, without touching the fence or seeming to care--over, and away up the road, taking one's breath with them.

"Mercy on me! what a providential escape!" says I to the gentleman; "what wicked wretch could have heaped up things in the road? I do hope they'll be found out and sent to State's prison. Why, it's just as bad as blocking up a train of cars. Such nice-looking riders, too!"

The gentleman looked a trifle puzzled, then he smiled a little funnily, and says he:

"Perhaps you do not understand that this is a 'hurdle-race.'"

"No," says I; "they told me that it would be horse-racing--nothing worse than that."

"Well," says he, "it is nothing worse than that, only a little more dangerous, and to you ladies more interesting, because the riders are all gentlemen."

"What, those men in the caps, gentlemen--not circus-riders, nor nothing?"

He laughed, and says he:

"I dare say no one of them has ever been in a circus since he left off tunics, but they have learned to hunt, and love these hard leaps."

"You don't mean to say that they skiver over such fences on purpose?"

says I.

"Indeed they do, and build them higher and broader every year."

"You don't say so," says I, feeling my eyes open wide.

"They love the peril, for that increases the excitement."

"What if some of them were to be flung head over heels?"

"Oh, that has happened."

"Not to-day?"

"Yes, but fortunately the man was not killed."

I felt myself a-growing pale.

"But they don't know of it. Everybody is laughing," says I.

"Yes, it is generally known, but that is a part of the excitement. In a crowd like this, it is difficult to realize trouble or death."

"How strange!" says I, putting the handkerchief that I had torn with hard shaking into my pocket, with a deeply penitent feeling.

"It is strange," says he; "but this is no place for deep feeling, or you would not see so many smiling faces around you, for a gentleman who owns some of the race-horses, and came up only a day or two ago to see them tried, is lying dead in his home now."

My heart sank. I felt tears crowding up to my eyes. Death in one place--all this gorgeous confusion and wild gayety here. A lonely widow, weeping bitter tears; all these gay fluttering young people reckless and happy, in spite of it.

I arose, and looked around me. No one seemed to feel this man's death.

Never in my whole life had I been in such a whirlpool of gayety. There was not a sad or thoughtful face in the crowd. Yet many of the persons there had known the man who lay dead in the city. I had never heard of him till then, but no smiles came to my lips after that mournful knowledge reached me. In the midst of all this hilarious gayety I felt the shadow of human suffering creeping over me, and I rode home from the race-park in sad silence.

LXVIII.

OFF AGAIN.

Dear sisters:--New York City is full of epidemical contagions.

Horse-racing is one of them. Every spring and fall it rages fearfully, especially among the female women who wait for the races--dress up for the races, and come out with splendiferous spontaneosity, whenever the fast horses are ready to run.

I have been up to see the creatures rush once, and sent you my report, which, owing to verdancy of mind caught from the Green Mountains, was only skim milk to which I now pour in cream with a liberal hand. To own the truth, it takes more than one visit before a regular New England young lady can understand the inns and outs of a horse-race.

Now, I dare say you think it a sort of agricultural fair for animals--for the horsey kind meant to show off their beauty, try their speed, and encourage farmers to go in for improvement.

Exactly, and a good deal more so. Why, sisters, it's gambling--just gambling, open handed and above board, in which the upper-crust female women of New York take a hand with the men, and glory in it. But I mean to tell you all about it in the regular way, and shall do it as I go along.

You never saw such a crowd of carriages, wagons, buggies, and queer horse machines as crowded along the road when we got within three or four miles of the race-course. When we come to the long bridge that runs across the Harlem River, there were two lines of carriages stretching before and behind us, just as far as we could see, horses that tossed their heads and champed their bits, and shone like satin under harnesses mounted with gold and silver, with little looking-gla.s.ses flying in and out over their heads, and hoofs that struck the ground like the feet of a Vermont girl when she dances from the heart.

All these carriages were filled as if they were on the way to a high jubilation, choke full of ladies, with parasols hovering over them like wild birds taking wing, and great clouds of silk, lace gauze, and s.h.i.+ny stuff a-billowing over the sides, till you could but just see the silk cus.h.i.+ons they leaned against. Then, again, some were crowded over with gentlemen, mostly in white hats--which delighted me--some with cigars in their mouths--some not--but every one of them just boiling over with good-nature and fun.

This was the way we went. Cousin Dempster has made a good deal of money in Was.h.i.+ngton--contracting, or something--and he got a spick-span new open carriage for this high occasion--a carriage made soft as a bird's nest with brown satin cus.h.i.+ons, and that glittered outside like a crow's back whenever the sun struck it.

We had a great big fellow, in new plum-colored clothes on the driver's seat, and another genteel youngster by his side--all plum-color and hat-band, like the coachman. Inside, there was Cousin E. E. with a pea-green dress on, all flounces and fringe, and overskirts piled up so high behind that she couldn't lean back, and your missionary, Miss Phmie Frost, in her pink silk (turned again), and the white hat with plumes of snow, which bespoke at once her good taste and her most sacred political preferences, which would keep going on both sides all I could do.

There, in the front seat, with his back to the horses and his face to us, sat Dempster, looking out with envy and bitter feelings on the men in buggies, that were laughing like fun, and smoking like New England stone chimneys. At such times I do not think that Dempster appreciates all the sweet benefits of female society.

Last and least, I am sorry to say, was that child, Cecilia, with a pink parasol about as big as a good-sized toadstool, fluttering before her face, and all in a storm of flounces above her knees, with nothing but kid boots and silk stockings below.

I do wonder what possesses Dempster and E. E. to train that child along wherever they go! She is just the aggravation of my life.