The Sherwood Ring (14 page)

"Merry Christmas, Barbara," called my brother from the gloom at the foot of the stairs. "Captain Sherwood told me you were here."

"Merry Christmas, Dick," I called back, feeling my way down the steep steps one by one. "Hannah sent you a piece of fruitcake."

"Good old Hannah!" He accepted the fruitcake through the bars of the door with a brushing kiss on the back of my hand as he took it. "How is she, these days?"

"It desolates me, Colonel Grahame," interrupted a pleasant voice from the open door above, "to remind you that enemy ears will be obliged to listen to every word of your conversation. I regret the necessity for so much caution, which I beg you to believe I should not dream of using if I did not consider your sister a very remarkable young lady." He had seated himself at the topmost step and was leaning lazily against the door frame. I could see his thin profile delicately outlined in shadow on a square of lighted wall halfway up the stairs.

"I only wish you could have met her under more pleasant circumstances," Dick was replying with equal courtesy; "and forgive us if we bore you with all the family news. Have you heard anything of Father lately, Barbara? Or Mr. MacTavish? What's become of dear old Mr. MacTavish?"

I stared at my brother in bewilderment. Mr. MacTavish was a disagreeable fool of an elderly Scotsman, once our tutor, who had, much to our joy, quitted Rest-and-be-thankful in fury ten years before, when my father refused to agree with him that the Iroquois Indians were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel. I had long since forgotten his very existence.

"Mr. MacTavish, Dick?" I echoed uncertainly. "Why, you know as well as I do that I haven't seen Mr. MacTavish in — "

"And please tell Hannah I was never more hungry for a piece of her fruitcake in my life," Dick cut in loudly before I could complete the sentence. "Not that Captain Sherwood hasn't fed me well, you understand — in fact, he breakfasted with me down here only this morning: we had a most entertaining talk on field-fortification and got through a whole quart of baked beans between us. That's the crock now, rolling about on the floor there by your left foot — your
left foot,
Barbara."

Then I understood. Back in the evil days of Mr. MacTavish, Dick and I had invented a simple method of conducting conversations with our feet under the cover of the schoolroom table. It was an almost foolproof system of little taps and pressures, easy to learn and impossible to forget once you had learned it.

I drew a deep breath, and stealthily moved the toe of one riding boot an inch nearer the door.

"We received a letter from Father only last week, Dick. He's been stationed at Philadelphia for the winter, very comfortably except for the difficulties his friend General Arnold is having with the Congress. Aunt Susanna, thank heaven, continues fairly well, though she complains of dizzy spells, terrible fluttering pains, wakeful nights — " Safely launched on the long list of Aunt Susanna's complaints, which I could reel off by the hour without thought or effort, I cautiously advanced my toe another inch and met Dick's toe under the grating.

" — indigestion, palpitations of the heart... KEY. WHERE. QUESTION MARK."

"PEACEABLE. POCKET."

" — spasms, fits of coughing, faintness . . . WILL. GET. KEY."

Dick's boot merely came down heavily across my instep with a dull thud that had once meant, DON'T TRY ANYTHING SILLY, NOW.

" — occasional headaches, shortness of breath, unnatural fever, and nervous attacks."

"Poor Aunt Susanna! Give her my affectionate regards. What's she dosing herself with nowadays? Remember when it used to be vinegar, rhubarb . . . MEN. FEAST, KITCHEN, TONIGHT. . . . laudanum, antimony . . . DRINK, HEADS, OFF . . . sulphur and molasses . . . WON'T, WATCH . . . elixir of rose hips . . . YOU. DODGE. PEACEABLE. GET. AWAY . . . poppy seed and hot lemon juice?"

"She's changed to Seneca oil and Peruvian bark now, with sleeping-drops for her headaches . . . WON'T, LEAVE, YOU."

"FOOL, NITWIT, MUTTONHEAD . . . Sleeping-drops? I thought the war had cut off the supply."

"There must have been another shipment. The apothecary filled an order for me only this morning on my way here. That's how I contrived to get away." I made the sign which had once meant: YOU JUST LET ME HANDLE THIS, WILL YOU?

"NO. EXCLAMATION MARK. REPEAT. NO. DANGE — " He broke off abruptly with the word half-finished, and gave me the sudden kick in the ankle which had once meant: BE CAREFUL THE TEACHER IS WATCHING US.

"Dinner is served," said Peaceable Sherwood from the top of the stairs, "and little as I like to interrupt this exceedingly interesting conversation, I must ask Miss Grahame to accompany me back to the library."

"Bring me the crusts when it's all over," was Dick's only comment. "And don't let Barbara eat the mince pie if there is any. It always gives her nightmares."

Someone had evidently worked hard in the library during our absence. My tangle of pillows and blankets and armchairs had disappeared, and in its place a small table was drawn up before the fire, and decorated bravely with pine sprays, lighted candles, a strange array of mixed crockery, and an even stranger collection of assorted foods.

"What have we here?" said Peaceable Sherwood, courteously seating me at the head of the table and beginning to uncover the dishes one by one. "Will you object if I wait on you myself, Miss Grahame? — my men, though excellent riders and very fair shots, are rather unskilled in the little niceties of passing the butter and handling the gravy. The chicken and the ham I can recommend. They came from Mrs. Tatlock's oven no later than this noon. The wine you probably know better than I do — at least you ought to — it's your own. Mrs. Hopegood's plum pudding I hesitate to offer you. I distrust the cooking of any woman who faints away at the very sight of a British uniform."

"Have you been robbing the Hopegoods and the Tatlocks?" I demanded indignantly.

"The Hopegoods and the Tatlocks and the Barlows, and the Smiths and the Van Dusers and the Browns, to be exact," replied Peaceable Sherwood complacently. "I daresay they'll all be clamoring for justice down at the Shipley Farm as soon as the weather clears, just like the good old days. Do have a little of this stuffing. Ah! More baked beans! I discovered the baked bean, Miss Grahame, when I was in Boston with General Gage in '76. Why is it that people who can cook such admirable beans seem quite incapable of making a pot of tea that's fit to drink? I never had a really good cup of tea the whole time I was there. No wonder the poor wretched populace finally revolted and threw it into Boston Harbor by the ton! That reminds me — did you ever hear the story about General Gage and the time he tried to talk about the Boston Tea Party to the deaf old lady who thought it must be some sort of social occasion? One of the Loyalist dignitaries was giving a reception for the staff officers, and it seems the old lady — "

The story was so outrageously funny — especially the way the old lady kept repeating, "Very odd to brew the tea with salt water, very odd indeed!" — that I broke out laughing in spite of myself, and simply could not resist telling him in return about the afternoon that old Madam Losser arrived to call on Aunt Susanna with her pet spaniel, and what happened when the spaniel accidentally lapped up some of the medicine in Aunt Susanna's saucer while nobody was looking. And after that — I did not quite know exactly how it happened, but somehow we both seemed to be laughing and talking and having a little more of the chicken, as if we were sitting together over a real Christmas dinner with the fire and the candles making a circle of light and warmth all around us. By the time we came to the nuts and the wine, we were arguing like old friends about Aunt Susanna, Peaceable insisting that he had an uncle of his own who was even more trying to live with than she was.

"And at least she isn't your guardian," he pointed out firmly. "Do reflect for a moment on the horror of having my Uncle Anthony for one's nearest surviving blood relative!"

"Is he really so bad?"

"I may be doing him an injustice. The first time he saw me, twenty-two years ago, he informed me that I was the ugliest little rat of a newborn baby he had ever seen in his life; whereupon I instantly tried to stick my finger in his eye — and so we have gone on ever since. The only consolation is that it's so hard to believe he really exists, and isn't just some figment of a playwright's imagination. He roars and flourishes his cane and stamps his gouty foot exactly like one of those tyrant fathers in a very bad comedy. I never see one of his performances that I don't start looking around for the orange girl and wishing it was time for the curtain to come down. Still, I must admit that, all things considered, I owe him a good deal."

"You mean he actually is like a tyrant father in a comedy, with a heart of gold hidden under his crusty exterior?"

"Oh, no. I was only reflecting that if it had not been for my Uncle Anthony's wretched temper and deplorable lack of self-control, I should not be sitting on the other side of this table enjoying your company at the present moment."

"What?"

"It's very simple. Uncle Anthony was with the army himself in his younger days before the gout felled him, and he's still in a position to make a considerable nuisance of himself at the War Office. He bought me a commission when these troubles broke out, and had me shipped off to America with strict orders that I was to be given the hardest and dirtiest post available — preferably one from which I should never return. Tell me, did you or your brother ever happen to wonder why Sir Henry Clinton was so slow to take up and multiply my little organization for discontented Loyalists?"

"Dick did wonder — often. He thought that possibly Sir Henry was too stupid to understand the merits of the plan."

Peaceable laughed softly and a little bitterly. "Oh, it wasn't that, Miss Grahame. He was perfectly capable of understanding the merits — if it had only been John Andre or some other officer in good standing who presented the plan. But unfortunately, you see, it was
my
plan — and my uncle has so many friends at court back in England that he'd sooner touch poison."

"But that simply isn't possible! You can't be serious! Surely, if he's your own uncle, he wouldn't — "

"Why wouldn't he? You live seventy years or more in a place where you own every man and woman and blade of grass for a day's ride in any direction, and then see how you behave when you can't make somebody do what you like. He called me an ill-conditioned lout, and an ungrateful young mongrel, and — oh, never mind. The scene went on as it always did, and after a while it ended as it always did, too. He started waving his cane and swearing before God he'd break my cursed stubborn spirit if it killed me, and I started laughing at him and told him he was welcome to try. And so — " concluded Peaceable, dismissing the whole subject with a careless wave of his hand, "he tried."

"But why was he so angry with you? What on earth had you done to him?"

"I wouldn't marry the half-wit he'd selected for me."

"The . . . what?"

"Half-wit. Oh, she didn't bay at the moon," Peaceable admitted grudgingly. "Or gnash her teeth, or think she was a rabbit. Uncle Anthony even gave me to understand that she was very highly regarded in her own circle. But she was the most unutterable
fool!
She used to say 'La, sir!' and giggle, and flutter her fan whenever I spoke to her."

"All the young ladies you meet do that nowadays. It's the fashion."

"Precisely what my uncle said to me. To which I replied that if that was the fashion, I'd rather die single. I intend to get married when I meet a young lady as intelligent as I am — and not before. Miss Grahame, what are you laughing at?"

"I beg your pardon," I choked apologetically. "I know it's rude to laugh, but — b-but it was the way you said it, as if all you had to do was just give her notice of your intentions — a-and I was only wondering how you'd feel if s-she had the — the intelligence to refuse you."

"She won't, Miss Grahame. I'm like my uncle — remarkably set on having my own way. So were all the other Sherwoods, as far back as the family history goes. We even have a motto about it on our coat-of-arms:
Quod, desidero obtineo
which roughly translated from the Latin, means: I get what I want."

"You wait until you meet the young lady, Captain Sherwood."

"I met her, Miss Grahame, this afternoon."

He said it quite slowly and casually, without the slightest change in his lazy voice — indeed, he was not so much as looking at me, but twirling the stem of his wineglass absent-mindedly between his fingers and staring dreamily at the fire. Unfortunately, however, I knew Peaceable Sherwood fairly well by that time, and his air of elegant heedlessness did not deceive me in the least.

"You aren't drinking your wine; let me fetch you some from the dining-parlor sideboard — Italian — Father brought it back from Rome," I interrupted him hastily, and ran out of the room before he could say anything else.

I knew it, I knew it, I ought to have made him lock me up with Dick in the cellar, I thought, my heart pounding as I fumbled with the door of the dining-parlor sideboard. Oh, why didn't I stay at home and learn to flutter my fan like a sensible girl? I got down the Venetian glasses from the corner cabinet and filled them carefully with the Italian wine. Then I reached down the hidden fold of my riding habit for the bottle of Aunt Susanna's headache drops, trying to remember exactly what it was that the little apprentice had told me that morning. How many drops had he said it would take to knock a strong man flat?

"Seven," I murmured, breaking the seal on the bottle and turning my head to listen. Across the hall in the library, the tongs clinked faintly as Peaceable Sherwood mended the fire again. Somewhere a long way off in the kitchen I could hear shouting and the sound of feet stamping happily on the floor. A man with a high sweet voice was just beginning to sing a plaintive, wailing little tune. It was the old ballad about the girl who lost her lover by her hardness and her cruelty.

"In Scarlet Town, where I was born,