The Heart

I answered not, yet kept at my distance, but at the next miry place

she held in Merry Roger until I was forced 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.