The Heart

In 1682, when I was thirty years of age and Mistress Mary Cavendish

just turned of eighteen, she and I together one Sabbath morning in

the month of April were riding to meeting in Jamestown. We were all

alone except for the troop of black slaves straggling in the rear,

blurring the road curiously with their black faces. It seldom

happened that we rode in such wise, for Mistress Catherine

Cavendish, the elder sister of Mistress Mary, and Madam Cavendish,

her grandmother, usually rode with us--Madam Judith Cavendish,

though more than seventy, sitting a horse as well as her

granddaughters, and looking, when viewed from the back, as young as

they, and being in that respect, as well as others, a wonder to the

countryside.

But it happened to-day that Madam Cavendish had a touch

of the rheumatics, that being an ailment to which the swampy estate

of the country rendered those of advanced years somewhat liable, and

had remained at home on her plantation of Drake Hill (so named in

honour of the great Sir Francis Drake, though he was long past the

value of all such earthly honours). Catherine, who was a most

devoted granddaughter, had remained with her--although, I

suspected, with some hesitation at allowing her young sister to go

alone, except for me, the slaves being accounted no more company

than our shadows. Mistress Catherine Cavendish had looked at me

after a fashion which I was at no loss to understand when I had

stood aside to allow Mistress Mary to precede me in passing the

door, but she had no cause for the look, nor for the apprehension

which gave rise to it. By reason of bearing always my burthen upon

my own back, I was even more mindful of it than others were who had

only the sight of it, whereas I had the sore weight and the evil

aspect in my inmost soul. But it was to be borne easily enough by

virtue of that natural resolution of a man which can make but a

featherweight of the sorest ills if it be but put in the balance

against them. I was tutor to Mistress Mary Cavendish, and I had

sailed from England to Virginia under circumstances of disgrace;

being, indeed, a convict.

I knew exceeding well what was my befitting deportment when I set

out that Sabbath morning with Mistress Mary Cavendish, and not only

upon that Sabbath morning but at all other times; still I can well

understand that my appearance may have belied me, since when I

looked in a glass I would often wonder at the sight of my own face,

which seemed younger than my years, and was strangely free from any

recording lines of experiences which might have been esteemed bitter

by any one who had not the pride of bearing them. When my black

eyes, which had a bold daring in them, looked forth at me from the

glass, and my lips smiled with a gay confidence at me, I could not

but surmise that my whole face was as a mask worn unwittingly over a

grave spirit. But since a man must be judged largely by his outward

guise and I had that of a gay young blade, I need not have taken it

amiss if Catherine Cavendish had that look in her eyes when I set

forth with her young sister alone save for those dark people which

some folk believed to have no souls.