At last the blade broke. “We don’t go quick, do we” he remarked, and looked on the weedy track for another.
“I wish you wouldn’t let me keep you. If you were alone you would be galloping or something of that sort.”
“I was told I must go your pace,” he said mournfully. “And you promised Miss Pembroke not to hurry.”
“Well, I’ll disobey.” But he could not rise above a gentle trot, and even that nearly jerked him out of the saddle.
“Sit like this,” said Stephen. “Can’t you see like this?” Rickie lurched forward, and broke his thumb nail on the horse’s neck. It bled a little, and had to be bound up.
“Thank you—awfully kind—no tighter, please—I’m simply spoiling your day.”
“I can’t think how a man can help riding. You’ve only to leave it to the horse so!—so!—just as you leave it to water in swimming.”
Rickie left it to Dido, who stopped immediately.
“I said LEAVE it.” His voice rose irritably. “I didn’t say ‘die.’ Of course she stops if you die. First you sit her as if you’re Sandow exercising, and then you sit like a corpse. Can’t you tell her you’re alive? That’s all she wants.”
In trying to convey the information, Rickie dropped his whip. Stephen picked it up and rammed it into the belt of his own Norfolk jacket. He was scarcely a fashionable horseman. He was not even graceful. But he rode as a living man, though Rickie was too much bored to notice it. Not a muscle in him was idle, not a muscle working hard. When he returned from the gallop his limbs were still unsatisfied and his manners still irritable. He did not know that he was ill: he knew nothing about himself at all.