The Heart

When I first saw Mary Cavendish she was, as I said before, a little

baby maid of two and I a loutish lad of fourteen, and I was going

through the park of Cavendish Hall, which lay next ours, one morning

in May, when all the hedges were white and pink, and the blue was

full of wings and songs. Cavendish Hall had been vacant, save for a

caretaker, that many a day. Francis Cavendish, the owner, had been

for years in India, but he had lately died, and now the younger

brother, Geoffry, Mary's father, had come home from America to take

possession of the estate, and he brought with him his daughter

Catherine by a former marriage, a maid a year older than I; his

second wife, a delicate lady scarce more than a girl, and his little

daughter Mary.

And they had left to come thither two fine estates in

Virginia--namely these two: Laurel Creek, which was Mary's

mother's in her own right, and Drake Hill; and the second wife had

come with some misgiving and attended by a whole troop of black

slaves, which made all our country fall agog at once with awe and

ridicule and admiration. I was myself full of interest in this

unwonted folk, and prone to linger about the park for a sight, and

maybe a chance word with them, having ever from a child had a desire

to look farther into that which has been hitherto unknown, whether

it be in books or in the world at large. My lessons had been learned

that morning, as was easily done, for I was accounted quick in

learning, though no more so than others, did they put themselves to

it with the same wish to have it over. My tutor also was not one to

linger unduly at the task of teaching, since he was given to

rambling about by himself with a book under one arm and a fish-pole

over shoulder; a scholar of gentle, melancholy moving through the

world, with such frequent pauses of abstraction that I used often to

wonder if he rightfully knew himself whither he was bound.

But my mother was fond of him and so was my brother John, and as for

my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, he had too weighty matters upon

his mind, matters which pertained to Church and State and life and

death, to think much about tutors. I myself was not averse to Master

Snowdon, though he was to my mind, which was ever fain to seize

knowledge as a man and a soldier should, by the forelock instead of

dallying, too mild and deprecatory, thereby, perhaps, letting the

best of her elude him. Still Master Snowdon was accounted, and was,

a learned man, though scarcely knowing what he knew and easily

shaken by any bout of even my boyish argument, until, I think, he

was in some terror of me, and like one set free when he had heard my

last page construed, and was off with his fish-pole and his book to

the green side of some quiet pool. So I, with my book-lesson done,

but my mind still athirst for more knowledge, and, maybe, curious,

for all thirst is not for the noblest ends, crawled through a gap in

the snowy May hedge, and was slinking across the park of Cavendish

Hall with long, loose-jointed lopes like a stray puppy, and maybe

with some sense of being where I should not, though I could not have

rightly told why, since there were no warnings up against

trespassers, and I had no designs upon any hare nor deer.