The Heart

I know not how Capt. Calvin Tabor managed his part to tranship those

goods without discovery, but he had a shrewd head, and no doubt the

captain of the Earl of Fairfax another, and by eight o'clock that

May day the Golden Horn lay at her wharf discharging her cargo right

lustily with such openness of zeal and shouts of encouragement and

groans of labour 'twas enough to acquaint all the colony. And

straightway to the great house they brought my Lady Culpeper's

fallals, and clamped them in the hall where we were all at supper.

Mistress Mary sprang to her feet, and ran to them and bent over

them. "What are these?" she said, all in a quiver.

"The goods which you ordered, madam," spoke up one of the sailors,

with a grin which he had copied from Captain Tabor, and pulled a

forelock and ducked his head.

"The goods," said she, speaking faintly, for hers was rather the

headlong course of enthusiasm than the secret windings of diplomacy.

"Art thou gone daft, sweetheart? The goods of which you gave the

list this morning, which have but now come in on the Golden Horn,"

spake up Catherine, sharply. I marvelled as I heard her whether it

be ease or tenderness of conscience which can appease a woman with

the letter and not the substance of the truth, for I am confident

that her keeping to the outward show of honesty in her life was no

small comfort to Catherine Cavendish.

Madam Cavendish was at table that night, though moving with grimaces

from the stiffness of her rheumatic joints, and she ordered that the

sailors be given cider, the which they drank with some haste, and

were gone. Then Madam Cavendish asked Mistress Mary, with her

wonderful keenness of gaze, which I never saw excelled, "Are those

the goods which you ordered by the Golden Horn?" But I answered for

her, knowing that Madam Cavendish would pardon such presumption from

me. "Madam, those are the goods. I have it from Capt. Calvin Tabor

himself." I spoke with no roundings nor glossings of subterfuge,

having ever held that all the excuse for a lie was its boldness in a

good cause, and believing in slaying a commandment like an enemy

with a clean cut of the sword.

Mistress Mary gave a little gasp, and looked at me, and looked at

her sister Catherine, and well I knew it was on the tip of her

tongue to out with the whole to her grandmother. And so she would

doubtless have done had not her wonderment and suspicion that maybe

in some wise Catherine had conspired to buy for her in England the

goods of which she had cheated herself, and the terror of doing harm

to her sister and me. But never saw I a maid go so white and red and

make the strife within her so evident.