The Heart

For the last part of my stay at Cambridge I saw but little of her,

and not so much as I would fain have done of her sister. I was past

the boyish liberty of lying in wait in the park for a glimpse of

her; she was not of an age for me to pay my court, and there was

little intimacy betwixt my mother and Madam Cavendish. But I can

truly say that never for one minute did I lose the consciousness of

her in the world with me, and that at a time when my love might well

be a somewhat anomalous and sexless thing, since she was grown a

little past my first conception of love toward her, and had not yet

reached my second.

But oh, the glimpses I used to catch of her at that time,

slim-legged and swift, and shrilly sweet of voice as a lark, and as

shyly a-flutter at the motion of a hand toward her, or else seated

prim as any grown maiden, with grave eyes of attention upon her task

of sampler or linen stitching!

My heart used to leap in a fashion that none would have believed nor

understood, at the blue gleam of her gown and the gold gleam of her

little head through the trees of the park, or through the oaken

shadows of the hall at Cavendish Court during my scant visits there.

No maid of my own age drew, for one moment, my heart away from her.

She had no rivals except my books, for I was ever an eager scholar,

though it might have been otherwise had the state of the country

been different. I can imagine that I might in some severe stress

have had my mind, being a hot-headed youth, diverted by the feel of

the sword-hilt. But just then the king sat on his throne, and there

was naught to disturb the public peace except his multiplicity of

loves, which aroused discussion, which salted society with keenest

relish, but went no farther.

I took high honours at Cambridge, though no higher than I should

have done, and so no pride and no modesty in the owning and telling;

and then I came home, and my mother greeted me something more warmly

than she was wont, and my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, took me

by the hand, and my brother John played me at cards that night, and

won, as he mostly did. John was at that time also in Cambridge, but

only in his second year, being, although of quicker grasp upon

circumstances to his own gain than I, yet not so alert at book-lore;

but he had grown a handsome man, as fair as a woman, yet bold as any

cavalier that ever drew sword--the kind to win a woman by his

own strength and her own arts.