The Sherwood Ring

by Elizabeth Marie Pope

  "All right," I answered rather shakily. "I'm coming."

  Uncle Enos was back in his study, a jeweler's glass at his eye, examining two antique wineglasses from the corner cabinet of the dining room. The first Richard Grahame was supposed to have brought them back with him from a voyage to Italy when he was a young man. They were lovely things, fragile as bubbles. One was pale sea-green flecked with gold, the other a blazing crimson that was almost scarlet. There was a plunging dolphin curved about the green stem, and a curling snake twisted around the crimson one, both blown with incredible delicacy out of the glass itself. The rest of the desk was covered with old books and papers and masses of untidy notes.

  "Thank you, child," said Uncle Enos with unusual good humor, when I made my report. "I dislike going down to the cellar. What's that thing you've brought up with you? It looks like a small Colonial bean pot."

  "I fell over it in that little room with the grated door and the chains on the wall."

  "Oh, that one." Uncle Enos was already turning back to his desk. "Old prison," he informed me absent-mindedly, as he leafed through a pile of notes. "First Enos Grahame built it. Used it to scare off Indians. Country still pretty wild around here when he settled. Had a theory they'd never attack the place if they once got the idea it meant being caught and shut up. Never actually put anybody down there as far as I know."

  "Then how do you suppose that the bean pot — "

  But Uncle Enos was now thoroughly tired of rewarding me for my good behavior. He reached for a small leather¬bound book that lay among the litter of papers, and opened it rather as if it were a door through which he was trying to usher me out of the room. "Can't you see I'm busy?" he demanded testily. "Do run along and don't bother me, like a nice child."

  I did not feel at all like a nice child as I retreated to the library, and flung myself passionately down in Dick's big armchair by the fireplace. I hated being a nice child. I did not want to be a nice child. I wanted to be a mean, nasty, horrible shrew and go yell in Uncle Enos's ear until he gave up and told me who had left the bean pot in the cellar.

  "I overlooked it at the time," replied a matter-of- fact voice from the other side of the room. "Very slatternly of me, I confess, but my thoughts were in a state of some confusion. And of course, we had Captain Sherwood on our hands too, and as Richard said, he couldn't be trusted even when he was unconscious."

  It was Barbara Grahame again. She had just closed the hall door behind her and was coming forward into the room. She still had on the same long crimson cloak that she wore the first time I met her; and I noticed with a slight feeling of surprise that in spite of the summer heat the hood was pulled up around her throat and knotted there over a little sprig of pine and red berries as if it were a cold day in the Christmas season.

  "Tell me, Peggy," she said, with a sudden delightful smile that made her look like her brother, "did you find any beans in that pot?"

  "No — only dust. It looked just like plain, ordinary dust to me, too. The pot must have been scraped clean when it was left in the cellar."

  "Between Dick and Peaceable, I suppose it was. Peaceable always did have such an astonishing fondness for baked beans." She laughed softly as if she were remembering something that entertained her. "He used to say that the baked bean was the one poetical food New England had ever produced."

  "Peaceable did?" I repeated in bewilderment. "But — but when did you ever know Peaceable? He got away with his men after he was hurt at the Beemer Mill, didn't he? I thought you were over at New Jerusalem with your Aunt Susanna all the time."

  Indeed I was (said Barbara Grahame), and a weary time it seemed to me, too. Even when I was a baby, there was nothing I hated quite so much as being taken over to call at Aunt Susanna's house. It was one of those little houses, very small and dark and dismal, where you always feel as if it must be raining outside, no matter what kind of day it is. Dick once told me it smelled of misery; though of course it was really only the damp and the medicine. But I believed every word he said (I must have been about six, then), and used to sit on the edge of my chair trying to smell the misery myself, until Aunt Susanna thought I was getting a cold in my head and made me drink some horrible black syrup before I went home! Aunt Susanna terrified me. She had fat white fingers, very soft, but with curiously sharp, horny nails that were apt to scratch as she patted me gently on the cheek; and there was a sort of whining edge in her fat, soft voice that could hurt just as badly as the nails did. No matter how hard I tried, I always flinched and shrank whenever she made me sit on her lap; but it was never any use — Aunt Susanna simply held me down with one remarkably powerful hand, while she looked appealingly at my father and said it was really very sad to be so old and ill and burdensome that even her own little niece couldn't spare a moment out of her happy life to be kind to her poor sick auntie. And then my dear father would feel that he had to talk to me about it very patiently and sweetly all the way home!

  It was the same old story again many years later, when she coaxed him into closing Rest-and-be-thankful and sending me to live with her at New Jerusalem while he and Dick were away with the army. I flinched and shrank. Aunt Susanna talked about her loneliness and her sorrows and her ills while she held me down. My father was very patient and sweet with me — and it all ended exactly as I had known it would: unpacking my boxes in the little corner bedroom where, as Aunt Susanna pointed out, "you can easily hear me if I happen to be awake in the night and want company." And with that she told me to fetch another pillow for her head, and settled back against it to enjoy herself.

  I remember the months that followed only as a sort of nightmare of carrying trays and measuring out medicine and answering calls and trying to persuade Aunt Susanna that Peaceable Sherwood was very unlikely to burn all New Jerusalem over our heads while we slept. The whole house smelled of misery worse than ever. The cook was exhausted, the kitchen-maid sulky, and the underfed "bound out" boy so unhappy that he seemed always to have a sort of mournful drip at the end of his nose. Dick and Eleanor did their best for me, of course. But they had so many troubles of their own that summer I could hardly ask them to carry mine as well. Aunt Susanna did not care to have me wasting my time on anybody but herself, anyway. She was likely to develop terrible fluttering pains that needed all my attention whenever she heard one of my friends asking for me in the hall downstairs, and a simple invitation to a housewarming in November brought on an attack of the vapors that lasted almost a week. Even when I asked if Dick and Eleanor might not come over to spend the afternoon of Christmas day with me — a request we thought she could not possibly refuse — the words were hardly out of my mouth before she was discovering all sorts of reasons why she could not possibly consent.

  "Come over to spend the afternoon with you? A young unprotected girl ride all that distance alone with no other companion than your brother?" cried Aunt Susanna, as if she were hearing of some hideous scandal. "The very idea!"

  "They're going to be married just as soon as Father can get leave to come to the wedding, Aunt Susanna," I ventured to remind her wearily.

  "That makes no difference. If Edward Shipley has one spark of proper feeling, he'll keep that daughter of his at home. When I was young, your grandfather would have whipped me soundly and sent me to bed without my dinner for so much as mentioning any such jaunt."

  I then suggested that instead I might ride over to the Shipley Farm myself on Christmas morning, and spend the day with Dick and Eleanor there.

  Aunt Susanna uttered a little shriek of astonishment and disapproval.

  "Ten miles out and ten miles back again on that forsaken road in all this snow — have you gone clean crazy, child?" she demanded indignantly. "Suppose you happened to meet the villain Sherwood?"

  "Aunt Susanna, how could I possibly meet the villain Sherwood when he's hiding somewhere up in the hills and hasn't been heard of for months? Dick even thinks he's fled the neighborhood altogether. Won't you let me go — please? Only this once?"
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  "And leave your poor sick auntie by herself tomorrow of all days of the year, old and lonely and suffering as she is? In my day, young people were satisfied to stay home and take care of their betters. No, don't argue with me, Barbara — you know how the slightest argument harrows up my nerves. Oh dear, oh dear, I feel as if one of my bad headaches is coming on already."

  "You'll feel better when I've fetched you your evening gruel, Aunt Susanna," I cut in hastily, and got myself out of the room before I completely lost control of my temper. Stamping into the kitchen, I slammed the porringer down on the tray, and spooned gruel out of the pot with a viciousness that almost sent it flying in all directions over the floor, my head whirling with furious crazy plans to get to the Shipley Farm — somehow — anyhow — and then Aunt Susanna could say what she liked to me when I came back. She had cheated me out of my home and my comfort and my brother's companionship for the past eight months. She was not going to cheat me out of Christmas Day with him as well.

  Yet even as I stood there raging, I knew in my heart that she not only could, but would. Running away was out of the question. It was impossible to escape from that house — in fact, it was impossible to so much as move from room to room without fatally attracting the attention of Aunt Susanna, who, for all her sixty-five years and her twenty-seven diseases, had the eye of a hawk and the ear of lynx and the persistence of a mosquito. Of course, she had said upstairs that "one of her bad headaches was coming on" — and when she really had those headaches, she always took a drug in the morning that sent her to sleep for the rest of the day. But I put no faith in anything Aunt Susanna had said upstairs. I knew all about the bad headaches and the terrible fluttering pains and the dizzy spells that were always "coming on," only to vanish mysteriously again as soon as she got her own way.

  For once, however, Aunt Susanna was apparently telling the truth. I awakened in the dawn with the sound of her shrill voice screaming in my ears, shrieking for her sleeping drops and threatening to die if she did not obtain them immediately.

  "Couldn't you get here any faster, you lazy, slow- footed good-for-nothing, you?" she welcomed me politely, as I appeared in the doorway with her spoon and glass in my hand. "Does nobody in this house care if I perish, or did you all intend to go on resting like the dead until the Judgment Day?"

  "I'm sorry, Aunt Susanna," I apologized, holding the glass to her lips; "but we had some difficulty making up the dose. You see, the bottle is nearly empty, and — "

  "Nearly empty? Do you mean that not one of you had the common intelligence to see that it was kept properly filled? Take yourself to the apothecary's while I'm asleep and buy me more. After all, there's no reason why you should sit about the house idling the whole day because I'm not awake to keep an eye on you."

  "I'll go to the apothecary's after breakfast, and I promise you not to sit about the house idling the whole day, Aunt Susanna," I murmured obediently.

  Aunt Susanna began another sentence that ended in a snore as I went out of the room, closing the door carefully behind me. I suddenly felt so lighthearted that I almost danced a jig on the doormat, and I broke a little Christmas spray of pine and red berries for my cloak as I stood on the steps waiting for the horse. Even the bound-out boy had begun to whistle faintly when he came up the path from the stable leading the fat mare which Aunt Susanna considered the only safe mount for a lady.

  I was just settling into my saddle when I felt a timid touch on my boot, and glancing down, saw that it was the exhausted cook, nervously concealing a small object under her apron.

  "You going out, Miss Barbara?" she asked in the beaten, toneless voice all the inmates of Aunt Susanna's house fell into the way of using sooner or later.

  "The mistress wants some medicine from the apothecary's, Hannah, and I was planning to go for a ride afterwards. Why? Would you like me to do anything for you?"

  "If you're sure you don't mind taking it, Miss Barbara? It's only a piece of my special fruitcake to give Mr. Dick, all wrapped up nice to fit into your pocket. Mr. Dick was saying to me the last time he was here that he would sure relish a taste of my fruitcake this Christmas."

  I stared down at the cook with a little gasp, and the cook stared back up at me without a flicker on her jaded, expressionless, overworked face.

  "You don't know anything about this, do you, Hannah?" I asked, warningly.

  "I ain't even seen you, miss," retorted Hannah, and marched back into her kitchen again.

  The fat mare and I ambled together down the road to the apothecary's. We had gone there so often that the apprentice recognized the sound of the hoofbeats, and was smiling on the path to receive me before I could even rein in at the door.

  "Merry Christmas, Miss Barbara," he called to me cheerfully. "And what will it be today? Hartshorn? Seneca oil? Peruvian bark?"

  "Headache drops," I answered, returning his smile and handing down the bottle. "Will you just ask Mr. Elliot to fill this for Miss Susanna Grahame and then fetch it out to me afterwards, so I needn't dismount? I'm in haste today."

  "And so you should be, Miss Barbara, to go by the looks of that sky."

  I did not like "the looks of that sky" myself. A pale silver sun, faint as the moon, was doing its best to break through the haze overhead, but along the whole northern horizon the heavy clouds lay dark and threatening, while an icy wind had already begun to crisp the puddles and scurry through the heaps of fallen snow. I studied the clouds rather anxiously as I waited, hoping against hope that the storm would at least hold off till I got out to the Shipley Farm. I had often ridden longer distances than ten miles simply for pleasure, but never in the dead of winter and never on such a broad, stupid, underexercised excuse for a horse.

  "Here it is, Miss Barbara," said the apprentice, dashing back out of breath to thrust a small parcel into my hand. "And please, Mr. Elliot says to tell you that the last supply of that drug was much stronger than the ordinary, so you must reduce the dose from four drops to two, and measure with the most particular care. And he does beseech you to be cautious, because seven drops will knock a strong man flat, and any more of it he won't answer for the consequences."

  "Tell him I understand. Thank you, Henry, and a happy New Year."

  "And to you, miss," said the little apprentice. "And if I may presume — don't lose any time getting on to the house. It's going to snow again."

  It was going to snow again. The sun was already gone and the sky darkening wickedly when I reached the fringes of the village. There were very few people on the road. The one woman who passed me walked hurriedly, glancing over her shoulder at the clouds and dragging a stumbling child sharply by the hand.

  As we went by the last house, the fat mare gave a disgusted snort, exactly like one of Aunt Susanna's, and sensibly tried to swerve back in the direction of her stable. But I set my jaw and ruthlessly thrust her on. I had made up my mind. After all, I was a strong rider and I knew every inch of the way. There were five miles of rather rough, difficult going until one got over the hills and came out down by the Tatlock Farm — then almost a mile past Tatlock's cornfields and meadow and pasture land to Martin's Wood and the left-hand turn there to Rest-and-be-thankful — and finally, four more miles of excellent road winding away up the valley to the Shipley Farm. With any luck, the snow ought not to begin for another hour or so. Once I got in, it was welcome to come down as hard as it liked, preferably hard enough to make it impossible for me to go back to New Jerusalem for at least a week.

  Unfortunately, however, the storm chose instead to break suddenly and full blast just as I got over the hills and rode out down by the Tatlock Farm. It came with one tremendous whirling rush of driven ice and razor wind that staggered the fat mare and almost sent me reeling out of my saddle. The next moment we were both floundering desperately in choking snow and screaming gusts. Dazed and half-blinded, I steadied the frantic horse and wildly looked about for the nearest place of shelter.

  There was none. The familiar country all around had
melted and vanished into a swirling whiteness that was like thick fog. Tatlock's cornfields and meadow and pasture land were all gone as if they had never existed. I knew Tatlock's house lay somewhere across the fields to the right, with Hopegood's a quarter of a mile beyond it, but I dared not even try to start towards either of them — I would be hopelessly lost and very likely dead in a ditch five minutes after I left the road.

  Then I thought of going back the way I had come, but going back meant five miles against the storm over slippery rock and dangerous slopes — too great a risk, even if I had had the strength to force my horse directly into the wind. There was nothing to do but press on and trust my luck to reach the Shipley Farm sooner or later. The roads were better in that direction, and the gale would be at our backs. I could rest the fat mare awhile in the cover of Martin's Wood; it was only a mile away.

  It was a hideous journey, and it seemed to go on for hours. The wind beat and tore at us incessantly. My hands became so stiff with cold that I could hardly keep hold of the reins. The wild torrents of snow were suffocatingly thick. It was still almost impossible to see — at any moment we might have lurched over a smothered rock or gone off the road altogether. The fat mare stumbled and sobbed.

  "Careful! careful down there, old girl!" I tried to encourage her. "And I wish to heaven I'd taken your advice back at New Jerusalem, if that's any satisfaction to you. Can't you get along any faster, you lazy, slow-footed good-for-nothing, as Aunt Susanna would say? We must be fairly near Martin's Wood now."

  Martin's Wood was swaying murderously in such a fury of straining trunks and whipping branches that I wondered if I ought to linger there even a moment. But any shelter was better than none, and at least under the trees we were not beaten and overwhelmed by the full force of the gale, as we had been out in the open — it was possible to pause, to breathe, even to see a short distance down the road. I guided the mare to a staggering stop against the bulk of a gigantic oak with a windbreak of young pines behind it, and there we rested wearily, while I tried to gather up the last remnants of my strength and courage to face the long four miles still to follow. But by that time I no longer cared greatly whether we ever got to the Shipley Farm or not. I wanted to go on resting. It was warmer in the woods than it had been in the fields — much warmer — in fact, I felt quite warm and comfortable leaning up against the oak . . . very comfortable . . . only so tired ... so tired . . . sleepy . . .