The Hearts Highway | Page 2

having become the property of
my younger brother John.
But when I speak of my possessing an imagination which could gild all
the common things of life, I meant not to include Mistress Mary
Cavendish therein, for she needed not such gilding, being one of the
most uncommon things in the earth, as uncommon as a great diamond
which is rumoured to have been seen by travellers in far India. My
imagination when directed toward her was exercised only with the
comparing and combining of various and especial beauties of different
times and circumstances, when she was attired this way or that way, or
was grave or gay, or sweetly helpless and clinging or full of daring.
When, riding near her, I did not look at her, she seemed all of these in
one, and I was conscious of such a great dazzle forcing my averted eyes,
that I seemed to be riding behind a star.
I knew full well, though, as I said before, not studying the matter, just
how Mistress Mary Cavendish sat her horse, which was a noble
thoroughbred from England, though the one which I rode was a nobler,
she having herself selected him for my use. The horse which she rode,
Merry Roger, did not belie his name, for he was full of prances and
tosses of his fine head, and prickings of his dainty pointed ears, but
Mistress Mary sat him as lightly and truly and unswervingly as a
blossom sits a dancing bough.
That morning Mistress Mary glowed and glittered and flamed in
gorgeous apparel, until she seemed to fairly overreach all the innocent

young flowery beauties of the spring with one rich trill of colour, like a
high note of a bird above a wide chorus of others. Mistress Mary that
morning wore a tabby petticoat of a crimson colour, and a crimson
satin bodice shining over her arms and shoulders like the plumage of a
bird, and down her back streamed her curls, shining like gold under her
gauze love-hood. I knew well how she had sat up late the night before
fashioning that hood from one which her friend Cicely Hyde's
grandmother had sent her from England, and I knew, the first pages of a
young maid being easy to spell out, that she wondered if I, though only
her tutor, approved her in it, but I gave no sign. The love-hood was
made of such thin and precious stuff that the gold of her head showed
through.
Mistress Mary wore a mask of black velvet to screen her face from the
sun, and only her sweet forehead and her great blue eyes and the
rose-leaf tip of her chin showed.
All that low, swampy country was lush and green that April morning,
with patches of grass gleaming like emeralds in the wetness of sunken
places and unexpected pools of marsh water gleaming out of the
distances like sapphires. The blossoms thrust out toward us from every
hand like insistent arms of beauty. There was a frequent bush by the
wayside full of a most beautiful pink-horned flower, so exceeding
sweet that it harmed the worth of its own sweetness, and its cups
seemed fairly dripping with honey and were gummed together with it.
There were patches of a flower of a most brilliant and wonderful blue
colour, and spreads as of cloth of gold from cowslips over the lowlands.
The road was miry in places, and then I would fall behind her farther
still that the water and red mud splashing from beneath my horse's
hoofs might not reach her. Then, finally, after I had done thus some few
times, she reined in her Merry Roger, and looked over her shoulder
with a flash of her blue eyes which compelled mine.
"Why do you ride so far away, Master Wingfield?" said she.
I lifted my hat and bent so low in my saddle that the feather on it
grazed the red mud.

"Because I fear to splash your fine tabby petticoat, Madam," I
answered.
"I care not for my fine petticoat," said she in a petulant way, like that of
a spoiled child who is forbidden sweets and the moon, and questions
love in consequence, yet still there was some little fear and hesitation in
her tone. Mistress Mary was a most docile pupil, seeming to have great
respect for my years and my learning, and was as gentle under my hand
as was her Merry Roger under hers, and yet with the same sort of
gentleness, which is as the pupil and not as the master decides, and let
the pull of the other will be felt.
I answered not, yet kept at my distance, but at the next miry place she
held in Merry Roger until I was forced