The Sherwood Ring

by Elizabeth Marie Pope

  "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.

  "I
n Scarlet Town, where I was born,

  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 t
o 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?"