St. George and St. Michael, Volume 2MacDonald, George
History
St. George and St. Michael, Volume 2
MacDonald, George
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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