Guy Livingstone | Page 8

the "glorious uncertainty" which backers of horses execrate and ring-men adore. All the favorites were out of the race early. Our best man, Barlowe, the centre of many hopes, and carrying a heavy investment of Oxford money, was floored at the second double post-and-rail. The Cambridge cracks, too, by divers casualties, were soon disposed of. At the last fence, an Oxford man was leading by sixty yards; but it was his maiden race, and he lost his head when he found himself looking like a winner so near home. Instead of taking the stake-and-bound at the weakest place, he rode at the strongest; his horse swerved to the gap, took the fence sideways, and came down heavily into the ditch of the winning field. The representative of Cambridge, who came next, riding a good steady hunter, not fast, but safe at his fences, cantered in by himself. I remember he was so bewildered by his unexpected victory that one of his backers had to hold him fast in the saddle, or he would have dismounted before riding to scale, and so lost the stakes.
Well, the race was over and the laurels lost, so we had nothing to do but pay and look pleasant, and then adjourn to the inevitable banquet at "The George." There was little to distinguish the proceedings from the routine of such festivals. The winners stood Champagne, and the losers drank it--to any amount. The accidents of flood and field were discussed over and over again; and, I believe, every man of the twenty-three who had ridden that day could and did prove, to his own entire satisfaction, that he must have won but for some freak of fortune totally unavoidable, and defying human calculation.
About nine o'clock I went out with another man to get some fresh air, and something I wanted in the town. At the corner of every street there was a group of heavy, sullen faces, looking viciously ready for a row, while out of the windows of the frequent public houses gushed bursts of revelry hideously discordant, from the low-browed rooms where the wild Irish sat howling and wrangling over their liquor. However, we got what we wanted, and were returning, when, in a street on our left, we heard cries and a trampling of many feet. Two figures, looking like University men, passed us at speed, and, throwing something down before us, dived into an alley opposite, and were lost to sight. My companion picked up the object; and we had just time to make out that it was a bell-handle and name-plate, when the pursuers came up--six or seven "peelers" and specials, with a ruck of men and boys. We were collared on the instant. The fact of the property being found in our possession constituted a _flagrans delictum_--we were caught "red-handed." It was vain to argue that, had we been the delinquents, we should scarcely have been standing there still, awaiting discovery. The idea of arguing with a rural policeman, when, by a rare coincidence, popular feeling is with him! The mob regarded our capture, exulting like the Romans over Jugurtha in chains. It was decided "we were to go before the Inspector." We were placed in the centre of a phalanx of specials, each guarded by two regulars; and so the triumph, followed by a train that swelled at every turning, moved slowly along the Sacred Way toward the temple of the station-house, where the municipal Jupiter Capitolinus sat in his glory.
Before we had proceeded three hundred yards there was a shout from the crowd, "Look out! here come the 'Varsity!" and down a cross street leading from the inn, two hundred gownsmen, wild with wrath and wassail, came leaping to the rescue.
In the van of all I caught sight of two figures--one that I knew very well, towering, bareheaded, a hand's-breadth above the throng; the other, something below the middle height, but shaggy, vast-chested, and double-jointed as a red Highland steer--M'Diarmid of Trinity, glory of the Cambridge gymnasium, and "5" in the University eight. They were not shouting like the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly; and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of corn. Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the unscientific strength of his nervous arm.
But my two guards, very Abdiels in their duty, never let me go; on the contrary, one tightened his gripe on my throat suffocatingly, while the other, though I remained perfectly quiescent, kept giving me gentle hints to keep the peace with the end of his staff. I was getting sick and dizzy, when something passed my cheek like