The Sherwood Ring (15 page)

There was a fair maid dwellin',

Made every youth cry Well-a-Way!

Her name was Barbara Allen.

All in the merry month of May,

When green buds they were swellin'
— "

"Get on with it, can't you!" I told myself fiercely. "The longer you put it off, the worse it will hurt in the end. You were a fool to let him talk to you at all."

"So slowly, slowly rase she up,

And slowly she came nigh him —

the voice from the kitchen sang behind me as I put the glasses on a tray and went back across the hall to the library.

Peaceable Sherwood was still lounging in his chair and gazing down at the fire. He did not glance up when I entered, nor did he try to return to the interrupted conversation about the intelligent young lady. He simply sat there looking most alarmingly like a man prepared to go on sitting there patiently, for years and years, if necessary, until he got what he wanted.

"These are the Venetian glasses," I said rather too quickly and nervously, putting one down on the table before him and returning to my own seat with the other. "Father brought them from Italy especially to serve this particular wine. Mine, you see, is shaped like yours, but sea-green and decorated with a dolphin instead of a snake. Curious, aren't they?"

Peaceable lifted his, and regarded it gravely. It shone in his hand like a jewel. The snake curled around the stem glittered and flickered in the firelight as if it were alive.

"Very curious," he agreed with me placidly. "And so easy to tell apart. No chance of the wrong person getting the wrong glass, is there?"

"No, I suppose there isn't. Don't you think we ought to drink a toast? To the New Year? Or the end of the war? Or anything you choose?"

"Certainly, Miss Grahame. And since these are the Venetian glasses, suppose we drink it after the Venetian manner?"

"What is the Venetian manner, Captain Sherwood?"

"This."

He moved so quickly that I did not even realize what had happened until I suddenly found myself staring down at the crimson glass on the table before me, and Peaceable Sherwood back in his chair languidly examining the dolphin curved about the stem of the green one.

"In Venice," he explained kindly, "the host and the guest always exchange their glasses before they drink a toast — I understand the fashion dates from the time of the Renaissance, when one never knew precisely when one might be poisoned. Pretty custom, isn't it? I have a great liking for pretty customs. They add so much to life. " Then, without altering his voice in the least: "What did you put in it, Miss Grahame? Your Aunt Susanna's headache drops?"

"I don't know what you mean," I stammered weakly.

"That's very fortunate, Miss Grahame. I should hate to see anything happen to you. Would you care to propose the toast now, or shall I?"

"Please give me back my own glass, Captain Sherwood, and stop this nonsensical foolery."

"But is it nonsensical?" inquired Peaceable, dreamily. "I wonder."

"Please, Captain Sherwood! I happen to dislike this particular glass very much. I — I have a horror of snakes."

"Indeed, Miss Grahame? I thought of you as a woman with a soul above these trivial superstitions."

"I tell you, Captain Sherwood," I insisted desperately, "that I did not put poison in your wine."

"You discourage me, Miss Grahame. I told your brother an hour ago that you were a very remarkable young lady. Now I begin to think that you must actually be as foolish and as silly as any other member of your silly, foolish sex. Don't you know that it was very stupid of you to think you could remove that bottle from the pocket of your cloak and conceal it in your riding habit without my knowledge? And that it was even more stupid to inform your brother that the apothecary sold you a sleeping drug only this morning on your way here?" He was speaking now very gently and quietly, like a sensible person trying to reason with a — I gulped bitterly over the word — a half-wit. "And do you really suppose that you can sit there and ask me to believe that there is nothing in that wine but wine? I don't blame you for trying, you understand. It's only the general lack of intelligence that annoys me."

"You're wrong," I retorted, but my voice sounded feeble and unconvincing in my own ears. "You're wrong."

"I am delighted to hear it, Miss Grahame — and I beg your pardon for misjudging you." He bowed to me apologetically across the table. (There could unhappily be no doubt that he was enjoying himself very much.) "I assume that we can now proceed to our toast without further discussion? Since I have your word that there is nothing amiss with your wine, you will of course feel no hesitation about drinking it with me."

Or, less politely: take that drug and prove yourself a liar; refuse to take it, and prove yourself a liar just the same.

"I never drink with people who distrust me, Captain Sherwood."

"But in this case may I persuade you to break your rule?" He leaned forward and pushed the crimson snake into my fingers with a grave courtesy that made me long to pitch it at his face. "I propose a toast to my intelligent young lady — if she exists," he added, and emptied his glass.

"To your intelligent young lady, then, Captain Sherwood," I responded calmly — and emptied my own.

Peaceable Sherwood turned sharply, and we sat looking at one another for a long moment in a stillness so tense that I could hear the logs whispering in the fire, and once again, very faint and far off, laughter and voices from the distant kitchen. A whole chorus was singing now. The lilting words came clear and curiously distinct through the silence.

"O when I was a young man, I lived to myself,

And I worked at the weaver's trade:

And the only, only thing that I ever did wrong

Was to woo a fair young maid.

I wooed her in the winter-time,

And in the summer, too:

And the only, only thing that I ever did wrong,

Was to save her from the foggy, foggy dew — "

Peaceable Sherwood drew a long breath and set down his glass carefully in the exact center of his plate.

"The only, only thing that I ever did wrong," he remarked. "It was in the green glass all the time, wasn't it?"

"I didn't know how I could get the bottle out of my cloak without your seeing it," I answered, in a voice that was suddenly rather shaky and exhausted. "So the only chance was to let you see it, because then you might think it was amusing to pretend you hadn't. You like watching other people make fools of themselves, don't you? And leading them on, and outwitting them, and hanging them with their own rope at the very last minute? I told Dick about the sleeping drops in the cellar just to make certain. Anybody else would simply have taken them away from me, or refused to drink anything at all, or spilt the wine by accident — but not you: that wouldn't have been entertaining enough. I was almost sure you'd get the notion of exchanging those glasses, because it was so much more clever. And I shouldn't attempt to rise if I were you, Captain Sherwood. You'll be unconscious in another moment."

But Peaceable had risen already — to this day I do not know how he did it — swaying dizzily, with one hand clenched over the back of his chair, yet insanely, unbelievably, erect and unruffled.

"A gentleman can hardly continue to sit," he explained, in his serenest and most level voice, "when he asks a very remarkable young lady to do him the honor of marrying him. And — "he somehow contrived to grin at me wickedly, "I usually get what I want, Miss Grahame," he added, and pitched over in a tangled heap on the floor.

Then I fear I made a fool of myself. I began to laugh wildly; then I began to cry; then my head was down on my arms and I was sobbing and choking and shaking uncontrollably, in a manner that would have disgraced even the most die-away female who said, "La, sir!" and giggled and fluttered her fan whenever anybody spoke to her. It took a sudden stamping of feet and a wild outbreak of applauding

yells from the kitchen to remind me sharply that I was even yet in no position to sit there luxuriating in my own tears and hysterics. The early December twilight was already closing in; Dick was still in the cellar; we were a long five miles from the Shipley Farm and safety; and at any moment Abraham Porson or one of his drunken companions might take it into his head to wander down the hall and glance into the library as he passed.

Key, my weary brain insisted as I struggled to my feet. Key — Dick said he had it in his pocket, with the other one.

All the house keys were in Peaceable's pocket, fastened together on their ring — Dick must have brought them with him and then lost them when he was taken on the previous night. They clashed noisily in my shaking hand when I pulled them out. I tried frantically to quiet them with the other hand as I ran down the hall past the closed door of the kitchen. But the tipsy voices inside were roaring the chorus of "Foggy, foggy dew" so loud that I might have driven a coach-and-four up the corridor without attracting the slightest attention. The big kitchen key was still standing in the lock where they had left it, and I risked stopping an instant to turn it very softly before I darted on to the cellar. Dick was sitting on the floor beside a candle stuck in the empty bean pot, whistling "The only, only thing that I ever did wrong . . ." in harmony with the music upstairs. He came to his feet as he caught sight of me.

"I put the sleeping drops in his wine," I whispered, fumbling desperately with the locks and the bolts. "The rest of them are shut up in the kitchen. And he said the horses were all down in the stable. Oh, hurry, Dick! What are you standing there for?"

Dick thrust the candle into my hand, and turned his head to glance up the stairs.

"You get down to the stable by the hedge path from the cellar and start saddling up," he whispered back. "I'll be with you in a minute or two. Where's Peaceable?"

"In the library, but — oh, come along, Dick! Please come along! You can't — "

"Do as you're told!" said Dick briefly, and was gone up the stairs.

It must have stopped snowing while we were still having dinner in the library: everything was quiet when I opened the cellar door, and there was a glint of clear sky above the feathery drifts clinging to the tall hedges that lined the path. The stable was warm and shadowy and already dark. I put the candle in a lantern and hung it on a nail before I turned to the horses. Most of them looked thin and shabby and rough-coated, as if they had been having hard times lately. The only ones that seemed to be really in good condition were Dick's charger Gawaine, my own mare, and a sturdy little chestnut cob that had apparently come from the Tatlock Farm along with the chicken and the ham that morning.

"Home you go, boy," I told him, as he pricked his ears and whickered appealingly at me. "This your saddle? Gently, now — gently! I suppose you were led astray by bad company? . . . Well, I must admit it can have a good deal of charm sometimes."

A low voice said, "All well, Barbara?" from the doorway, and I heard Dick's feet on the saddling floor behind me, walking slowly, as if he were carrying a heavy load. I turned quickly, and the light from the lantern caught the white upturned face and the limp arm in the patched scarlet sleeve swinging down over his shoulder.

"Here, come help me with him," he said, panting. "We'll have to put him down across the saddle and tie him on somehow, I suppose. You seem to have done a nice, thorough piece of work while you were about it. He probably won't know he's even on earth till morning. Not that I'd really trust Peaceable anywhere short of a cemetery, and then only with a large, heavy monument to hold him down, if you see what I — Careful! careful! steady, that's right. Now bring me some cord out of the cupboard over there on the left. No, the
left,
you nitwit! Good. Now keep his hand steady a moment so I can get at the wrist."

The thin hand stirred an instant as my own closed around it, and then relaxed helplessly again. "Oh, Dick!" I said in an uncertain whisper. "Dick, do you have to?"

"Want him sliding off the horse?" grunted Dick, bending down to lash the wrist to the stirrup-leather.

"No, I didn't — it isn't that ... I mean, do you have to take him with us when we go? Do you
have
to?"

Dick straightened up abruptly and gave me a look of the liveliest exasperation.

"Of course I have to take him with me!" he snapped. "And he'd have to do the same to me if he had the chance. You know that as well as I do. What's the matter with you, Barbara? This is a fine time for you to start behaving like a female, I must say! Women!"