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.