Eleanor stole a glance at Sinclair, and they shared a private smile. Moira turned, abashed.
“Oh, do forgive me, sir! I forgot myself.”
“It’s quite all right,” Sinclair replied. “It wouldn’t be the first time such a sentiment was uttered here.”
Indeed, Eleanor had already heard far worse, and working in a hospital—even one that was dedicated to the care exclusively of women with some breeding—had inured her to both grisly sights and desperate oaths. She had seen people whom she knew would have been perfectly upright and respectable if she had met them in the normal course of their lives, reduced to violence and rage. She had learned that physical anguish—and sometimes merely mental perturbation—could warp a person’s character out of all recognizable shape. Meek seamstresses had screamed and writhed and forced her to tie their hands with bandages to the bedposts; a governess, from one of the finest houses in the city, had once ripped the buttons off her uniform and hurled a dirty bedpan at her. A milliner, from whom a tumor had had to be removed, had scratched her arms with sharp nails and cursed her in language Eleanor thought only sailors might use. Suffering, she had learned, was transforming. Sometimes it elevated the spirit—she had seen that, too—but more often than was generally admitted it simply ran roughshod over its helpless victims.
In words as well as in actions, Miss Florence Nightingale had taught her that lesson. “She is simply not herself,” Miss Nightingale would say, overlooking whatever transgression had just occurred.
“Look! Look, Ellie!” Moira cried. “She’s gaining! She’s gaining!”
Eleanor looked across the racecourse, and yes, she could see a flicker of crimson, like a tiny flame, beating its way, slowly but surely, toward the front of the pack. Only two other horses—one black, one white—were running ahead. Even Sinclair seemed excited by the turn of events.
“Good show!” he shouted. “Nightingale, come on! Come on!” He squeezed Eleanor by the elbow, and she felt as if her whole arm—no, her whole body—was galvanized. She could barely focus on the race at all. Sinclair’s hand stayed where it was, though his eyes were on the horses charging around the far post.
“The white one, she’s faltering!” Moira called out with glee.
“And the black one looks fagged, too,” Sinclair said, rapping his own rolled-up program nervously on the rail. “Come on, Nightingale! You can do it!”
There was something so boyishly charming about Sinclair just then—the rapt enthusiasm, the pale moustache made nearly transparent by the direct sun. Eleanor had not failed to notice the attention he drew from other women; when they had come through the crowd, parasols had twirled brightly, as if their owners were hoping to catch his eye, and one young woman, on the arm of an elderly gent, had gone so far as to drop a handkerchief in his path—which he retrieved and returned, with a half smile, while moving on. Eleanor had become more and more conscious of her own attire, and wished that she, too, had something more colorful, or stylish, or becoming to wear; she had but this one fine dress, and it was a rather somber forest green, of ribbed taffeta, with old-fashioned gigot sleeves. It buttoned firmly up to her throat, and on a day like this especially, she might have wished for something that bared at least a bit of her neck and shoulders.
Moira had simply opened the collar of her own dress—a peach-colored affair that neatly matched the color of her hair and complexion—and was even then pressing the cool but empty lemonade glass against the base of her throat. Still, she looked about to faint from the mounting excitement.
The horses were barreling around the near side of the oval track, and the white one had indeed faltered. Its jockey was whipping it mercilessly, but the horse was falling farther behind every second. And the black one, a frisky colt, was simply holding its own, hoping to make it to the finish line without any greater exertion. Nightingale’s Song, however, was not spent at all; indeed, the horse seemed only then to be stretching itself to its utmost. Eleanor could see every sinew and muscle in its legs pumping and its head bobbing up and down as the jockey, sitting uncustomarily far forward on its withers, spurred it on, the chestnut mane flying into his face.
“By God,” Sinclair cried, “she’s going to do it!”