The Heart

"Madam Cavendish would surely never betray her own flesh and blood,"

said I, though doubtfully, when I reflected upon her hardness to

Catherine herself, for Madam Judith Cavendish was not one for whom

love could change the colour of the clear light of justice, and she

would see forever her own as they were.

"There is to her no such word as betray except in the service of the

king," said Catherine. Then she added in a whisper, "Know you the

story of her youngest son, my uncle Ralph Cavendish, who went over

to Cromwell?"

I nodded. I knew it well, and had heard it from a lad how Ralph

Cavendish's own mother had turned him from her door one night with

the king's troops in the neighbourhood, though it was afterward

argued that she did not know of that, and he had been taken before

morning and afterwards executed, and she had never said a word nor

shed a tear that any one saw.

"When the Golden Horn comes in she will demand to see the goods,"

Catherine repeated.

"Then--the Golden Horn must not come in," said I.

Catherine looked at me with that flash of ready wit in her eyes

which was like to the flash of fire from gunpowder meeting tinder.

Then she cried out, "Quick, then, quick, I pray thee, Harry

Wingfield, to the wharf! For if ever I saw sail, I saw that, and the

tide will have turned 'm. Quick, quick!"

She waited not for any head-gear, but forth into the May sunlight

she rushed, and I with her, and shouted at the top of my lungs to

the slaves for my horse, then went myself, having no mind to wait,

and hustled the poor beast from his feed-bin, and was on his back

and at a hard gallop to the wharf, with Mistress Catherine following

as fast as she was able. Now and then, when I turned, I saw her slim

green shape advancing, looking for all the world to my fancy like

some nymph who had been changed into a river-reed and had gotten

life again.

When I reached the wharf, with my horse all afoam, there was indeed

the Golden Horn down the river, coming in. The tide and the wind had

been against her, or she would have reached shore ere now. Then

along the bank I urged my horse, and in some parts, where there was

no footing and the tangle of woods too close, into the stream we

plunged and swam, then up bank again, and so on with a mighty

splatter of mire and water and rain of green leaves and blossoms

from the low hang of branches through which we tore way, till we

came abreast of the Golden Horn. Then I hallooed, first making sure

that there was no one lurking near to overhear, and waved my

handkerchief, keeping my horse standing to his fetlocks in the

current, until over the water came an answering halloo from the

Golden Horn, and I could plainly see Captain Calvin Tabor on the

quarter-deck. The ship was not far distant, and I could have swam to

her, and would have, though the tide was strong, had there been no

other way.