The Hearts Highway | Page 3

to come up, and then she spoke
again, and as she spoke a mock-bird was singing somewhere over on
the bank of the river.
"Did you ever hear a sweeter bird's song than that, Master Wingfield?"
said she, and I answered that it was very sweet, as indeed it was.
"What do you think the bird is mocking, Master Wingfield?" said she,
and then I answered like a fool, for the man who meets sweetness with
his own bitterness and keeps it not locked in his own soul is a fool.
"I know not," said I, "but he may be mocking the hope of the spring,
and he may be mocking the hope in the heart of man. The song seems
too sweet for a mock of any bird which has no thought beyond this
year's nest."
I spoke thus as I would not now, when I have learned that the soul of
man, like the moon, hath a face which he should keep ever turned
toward the Unseen, and Mistress Mary's blue eyes, as helpless of
comprehension as a flower, looked in mine.
"But there will be another spring, Master Wingfield," said she
somewhat timidly, and then she added, and I knew that she was
blushing under her mask at her own tenderness, "and sometimes the
hopes of the heart come true."

She rode on with her head bent as one who considers deeply, but I,
knowing her well, knew that the mood would soon pass, as it did.
Suddenly she tossed her head and flung out her curls to the breeze, and
swung Merry Roger's bridle-rein, and was away at a gallop and I after
her, measuring the ground with wide paces on my tall thoroughbred. In
this fashion we soon left the plodding blacks so far behind that they
became a part of the distance-shadows. Then, all at once, Mistress
Mary swerved off from the main road and was riding down the track
leading to the plantation-wharf, whence all the tobacco was shipped for
England and all the merchandise imported for household use unladen.
There the way was very wet and the mire was splashed high upon
Mistress Mary's fine tabby skirt, but she rode on at a reckless pace, and
I also, much at a loss to know what had come to her, yet not venturing,
or rather, perhaps, deigning to inquire. And then I saw what she had
doubtless seen before, the masts of a ship rising straightly among the
trees with that stiffness and straightness of dead wood, which is beyond
that of live, unless, indeed, in a storm at sea, when the wind can so
inspirit it, that I have seen a mast of pine possessed by all the rage of
yielding of its hundred years on the spur of a mountain.
When I saw the mast I knew that the ship belonging to Madam
Cavendish, which was called "The Golden Horn," and had upon the
bow the likeness of a gilt-horn, running over with fruit and flowers, had
arrived. It was by this ship that Madam Cavendish sent the tobacco
raised upon the plantation of Drake Hill to England.
But even then I knew not what had so stirred Mistress Mary that she
had left her sober churchward road upon the Sabbath day, and judged
that it must be the desire to see "The Golden Horn" fresh from her
voyage, nor did I dream what she purposed doing.
Toward the end of the rolling road the wetness increased; there were
little pools left from the recedence of the salt tide, and the wild breath
of it was in our faces. Then we heard voices singing together in a
sailor-song which had a refrain not quite suited to the day, according to
common opinions, having a refrain about a lad who sailed away on
bounding billow and left poor Jane to wear the willow; but what's a

lass's tears of brine to the Spanish Main and a flask of wine?
As we came up to the ship lying in her dock, we saw sailors on deck
grouped around a cask of that same wine which they had taken the
freedom to broach, in order to celebrate their safe arrival in port,
though it was none of theirs. The sight aroused my anger, but Mary
Cavendish did not seem to see any occasion for wrath. She sat her
prancing horse, her head up, and her curls streaming like a flag of gold,
and there was a blue flash in her eyes, of which I knew the meaning.
The blood of her great ancestor, the sea king, Thomas Cavendish, who
was second only to Sir Francis Drake, was astir within her. She sat
there with the salt sea wind in her nostrils, and her hair flung upon