The Sherwood Ring (2 page)

"But surely trains don't stop to pick up milk along the tracks any more!" I protested.

The conductor looked at me for a moment and then slowly closed one eye.

"You just leave it to me, miss," he said. "We'll stop."

How he did it I never knew, but ten minutes later the train had stopped and I, with my overnight case, was scrambling out onto the old loading platform that stood by the tracks in Tatlock's hayfield. From the platform the remains of what had once been a wagon road sloped up the field to a gap in the low stone wall. The gap in turn led onto a country road that rambled away over the hill, hand in hand with a noisy little brook. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still overhung with scudding dark clouds and all the ruts were full of water.

I went by two more fields and a pasture where an old white horse turned his head to look after me; then the country lifted and became wilder and more overgrown. The low stone walls disappeared or lay tumbled under clustering masses of blackberry and woodbine. The brook was lost in thickets of young trees. Presently leaves closed in about the road, branches began to meet overhead, and I found myself in a wood — or rather in something that looked like a forgotten corner of the original forest — huge elms and maples and mountainous oaks that must have been old when the first Enos Grahame was young. They were so dense that it was impossible to see more than a foot or two into the tangle on either side, and even where I stood it was almost dark.

I began to walk a little more quickly. It was getting late, and a ground mist had begun to rise from the dripping forest and was blowing vaporously across the road.

Then the road suddenly came to an end.

It was like a bad dream. One moment the road was there; the next it had split into two separate roads, one going off into the trees on the right and the other going off into the trees on the left. There was no signpost and no possible way of telling which branch led to Rest-and-be-thankful.

I came to a dead stop between the two, wondering frantically what on earth I was to do now. My hair was wet, and my feet were wet, and the overnight case was beginning to drag heavily on my arm. I tried to fling back my head bravely, but the gesture only brushed an overhanging branch and sent a shower of cold spray down the back of my neck. It was darker than ever under the trees, and I was sure that it would only be a matter of time before it started to rain again.

"Can I help you?" said a voice over my shoulder. "Have you lost your way?"

There behind me — apparently sprung out of nowhere — was a girl about my own age sitting sidesaddle on a tall black horse. She was wrapped in a long crimson raincape with a hood that was pulled down over her hair and shadowed her face, but even in the dim light and the mist I could see that it was a beautiful face, dark and proud, with wide-set gray eyes that were brilliant as jewels. It did flash through my mind that she was rather curiously dressed and it was strange that I had not heard the horse's hoofs coming up behind me on the road, but at the moment all I could really think was that here at last was somebody who might be able to tell me how to get out of the wood.

"Can I help you?" said the girl again.

"Oh
yes
, please, if you will," I answered gratefully. "I'm trying to walk to Rest-and-be-thankful,

and I don't know what turn I ought to take here."

The girl bent her head and sat for a moment as if she were considering something. Then she looked up, and tucking back a dark curl that was blowing out of her hood, she lifted her riding crop and pointed with it to the road on the left.

"A little past the first bend in
that
direction," she said, "you will come upon a young man repairing a small car which has broken down. I am sure that he would be glad to tell you the way to Rest-and-be-thankful if you asked him."

And without another word she touched her mount with her heel and went off down the road on the right. In another instant both she and the black horse had melted into the depths of the wood as noiselessly as shadows.

Then, as I stood rigid where she had left me, staring after her, utterly mystified, I realized that in spite of her strange appearance and behavior she had been right about one thing at least. There
was
somebody down the road to the left. Through the sighing of the wind and the mournful drip of the branches, I could hear a sharp clinking noise as one piece of metal struck another, and above it — faint but unmistakable — a man whistling a little tune. It was a catchy, swaggering air like an old ballad and it came dancing through the uncanny silences and shadows of the wood as comfortingly as an outstretched hand.

I followed the sounds a little past the first bend of the road, and there — just as the girl on the horse had said — was a small and very shaky-looking old Ford in obvious difficulties. The hood was raised, and the whistler — a tall, fair young man with his shirt sleeves rolled up — was bending over the engine, doing something with a wrench and an oil can. The engine shuddered indignantly and then apparently lost consciousness again.

"Behave yourself, Betsy," said the young man in a severe voice. "Drink your nice oil, or—" He caught sight of me and straightened up with a jerk. "Good Lord, a human being!" he exclaimed. "Where did you come from? I beg your pardon," he added apologetically, "but I haven't seen anybody for so long that you took me by surprise."

"But didn't a girl in red go by you just a few minutes ago?" I asked. "She must have passed you. A girl in red, riding a black horse?"

The young man laughed and shook his head. "No, neither she nor yet a maharajah on a jeweled elephant," he said cheerfully. "There hasn't been anybody at all. What's the matter? Were you looking for her?"

"No; I just happened to meet her down the road. I was trying to get to a place called Rest-and-be-thankful and she thought that you could tell me the way."

"Now that I can do," said the young man. "I'm trying to get there myself, as a matter of fact. Unless Ted Lowry at the garage has played me false, it ought to be about a mile from here, straight ahead. But mayn't I give you a lift? I know your mother probably told you never to accept rides from questionable strangers, but I happen to be the dull, trustworthy type, and while I haven't my Boy Scout merit badges or my letter from the Vicar in my pocket just at the moment — "

"But I think I must have heard about you already," I interrupted. "Aren't you the professor from England who rented Ted Lowry's car and is boarding at Mrs. Dykemann's?"

"England, yes; professor, no — at least not for about another twenty years," said the young man. "It's nice to know that that's the way I impress people, but to tell the truth I'm just a student over here on a scholarship to do some research on your War of Independence. My name is Thorne; most of my friends call me Pat."

"Mine is Grahame — Peggy Grahame. Mr. Grahame at Rest-and-be-thankful is my uncle."

"He
is?"
The young man's eyes lit up. "Miss Grahame, I don't want to seem impertinent or — or intrusive, but would you mind very much if I asked you something? It's just that I can't understand the situation at all, and the fact is — Good Lord, I'm keeping you waiting in the mud! Here, get in the car and put this over you; I think it's probably the original buffalo robe Ted Lowry's grandfather used when he went out courtin' in his cutter, but it may help to keep you warm."

"What were you going to say the fact was?" I asked, spreading the buffalo robe across my knees.

"That's the trouble — I don't know." Pat had returned to the engine and was poking at it rather savagely. "The whole business makes no sense at all. Did you ever read one of those mysteries where the heroine leaves her mother at the hotel for a few hours while she goes out to see the strange city, and when she comes back the mother has disappeared and the room has been refurnished and all the employees swear themselves blue that they never laid eyes on her before? I always used to think it was a silly sort of story myself. But now I'm not so sure."

"You mean you left your mother in a hotel, and — "

"Heavens, no! Only what's been happening to me is just a little too much like that story to be funny. Listen! I told you I was a student over here on a scholarship, didn't I? Well, I got it to do a history of guerrilla warfare in New York during the Revolution. I was particularly keen on the idea because one of the eighteenth-century Thornes was with the British army and is supposed to have been involved with the guerrillas in some way. I remember an old cousin of mine telling me about him once when I was a boy down at the family place on a holiday. He showed me his picture and a great pack of his letters and the diary he'd kept while he was serving in America. I didn't actually read them myself at the time — I couldn't have been more than ten — but I saw them. That I am certain of:
certain."

"But why shouldn't you be?"

"That's just the point. When I heard about the scholarship, naturally the first thing I thought of was laying my hands on that stuff. It was original source material, you see, that had never been published; and since my cousin had said that the eighteenth-century Thorne was a rather remarkable man, it might very well turn out to be really important. My cousin had died that winter, and I'd inherited the place, but a sister of his who'd kept house for him was still living there. So I went down for a week before I sailed to say goodbye and make arrangements for taking the papers with me. And would you believe it? Cousin Mildred simply looked me in the eye and said her poor brother must have been making up bedtime stories to amuse me. There wasn't any picture. There wasn't any diary. There weren't any letters. There hadn't even been any eighteenth-century Thorne who'd fought in the War of Independence. And she would thank me to be a little more quiet and stop pestering her about it. No such person had ever existed, and the sooner I got that through my head the better it would be for all concerned. The worst of it was that as far as I could tell she was quite right."

"You mean you weren't able to find anything — anything at all?"

"Not a trace. Not a whiff. Not a scrap. And it wasn't as if I didn't take the house apart practically brick by brick looking for the stuff, either. There was just one hint I found that kept me from feeling I must be completely mad. The picture I told you about was only a little thing — one of those miniatures painted on ivory with a round gold frame — and my cousin had hung it on the wall beside the desk in his study. By the time I got there, it was gone like all the rest, of course; and a big Victorian water color of Salisbury Cathedral At Sunset was hanging in its place. But underneath there was a little round dark patch on the wallpaper, just the shape and size of the miniature as I remembered it. Something of the kind had certainly been there for years. Wait a minute. I think Betsy's coming out of her tantrum."

He drew down the hood of the car with great care, as if he were afraid of disturbing somebody, and slid cautiously under the wheel. Betsy coughed once or twice in a fretful way and began to snuffle forward.

"What did your Cousin Mildred say when you told her about finding the place for the miniature?"

"She said that if I thought I could hold her accountable for every spot on the wallpaper, I was mistaken, and her sainted mother had painted the water color of Salisbury Cathedral At Sunset with her own hands, and it was very fortunate she wasn't back on earth today to see what the manners of the younger generation had come to. At that point, I gave up. My ship was due to sail in a couple of days, and I decided I might as well let the whole Mildred problem wait till I saw what I could find at this end. My late cousin had said something about the eighteenth-century Thornes being connected in some way with the Grahames at Rest-and-be-thankful — I'd remembered the name because it was so odd — and I thought your uncle might be able to help me out. I particularly wanted to get in touch with him anyway, because everybody had told me that he was
the
authority on local history in Orange County and couldn't be kinder or more generous about letting young scholars consult him and work with his collections. Kind and generous — those were the exact words." Pat scowled furiously, and Betsy, apparently taking his expression as a personal insult, let out a squeal and collapsed again.

"But what happened?" I demanded, when we were moving once more.

"I don't know, I tell you! It was the business with Cousin Mildred all over again, only worse. I wrote him politely when I got in, enclosing my letters of introduction and asking when it would be convenient for me to call. He didn't answer. I wrote him again, and he still didn't answer. I tried telephoning, but the operator says he doesn't have a telephone. Finally, I decided that the only thing left to do was drive out and make one last effort to see him myself. Not that I expect this will work, either, but — look here, Miss Grahame, what's the matter with me? What's wrong? Do you happen to know if I've done anything to offend your uncle? Or is this just the way he usually behaves?"

I was obliged to tell him that I had no more idea than he had of the way Uncle Enos usually behaved, but added soothingly that there had probably been some simple misunderstanding, and everything would be cleared up as soon as we got to Rest-and-be-thankful.