Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
She had some difficulty in making Dick go slowly--quietly she could
not--for the first minute or two, as lord Herbert had directed. He had
had but little exercise of late, and moved as if his four legs felt like
wings. Dorothy had ridden him very little since she came to the castle,
but being very handy, lord Charles had used him, and one of the grooms
had always taken him to ride messages. He had notwithstanding had but
little of the pleasure of speed for a long time, and when Dorothy at
length gave him the rein, he flew as if every member of his body from
tail to ears and eyelids had been an engine of propulsion. But Dorothy
had more wings than Dick. Her whole being was full of wings. It was a
small thing that she had not had a right gallop since she left Wyfern;
the strength she had been putting forth to bear the Atlas burden that
night lifted from her soul, was now left free to upbear her, and she
seemed in spirit to soar aloft into the regions of aether. With her
horse under her, the moon over her, "the wind of their own speed" around
them, and her heart beating with a joy such as she had never known, she
could hardly help doubting sometimes for a moment whether she was not
out in one of those delightful dreams of liberty and motion which had so
frequently visited her sleep since she came to Raglan. Three shrill
whistles she had blown, about a hundred yards from the gate, had heard
the eager crowded bark of her dog in answer, and then Dick went flying
over the fields like a water-bird over the lake, that scratches its
smooth surface with its feet as it flies. Around the rampart they went.
The still night was jubilant around them as they flew. The stars shone
as if they knew all about her joy, that the shadow of guilt had been
lifted from her, and that to her the world again was fair. She felt as
the freed Psyche must feel when she drops the clay, and lo! the whole
chrysalid world, which had hitherto hung as a clog at her foot, fast by
the inexorable chain our blindness calls gravitation, has dropped from
her with the clay, and the universe is her own.
At intervals she blew her whistle, and ever kept her keen eyes and ears
awake, looking and listening before and behind, in the hope of hearing
her dog, or seeing him come bounding through the moonlight.
Meantime lord Herbert and his wife had taken their stand on the top of
the great tower, and were looking down--the lady into the stone court,
and her husband into the grass one. Dorothy's shrill whistle came once,
twice--and just as it began to sound a third time,
'Here he comes!' cried lady Margaret.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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