The Sherwood Ring (24 page)

"Be a lamb and run around through the hall and look it over while I plow through Lesson Four."

I ran around obediently and looked. There was no closet jutting out into the morning room, but neither was there any door through to the study. For a moment I wondered if there might not possibly be two walls, one false, with the treasure room lying the whole length between. But when I paced off the distance from the corner nearest the study to the first window, and then paced it off again on the path outside, I found that the distances matched, and that meant the partition could be only of normal thickness.

"I thought it would be," said Pat, with a sigh of satisfaction. "Cross out the north wall. Very well. Now we come to something really interesting. The west wall on my right is made up of three more panels separated by another bookcase and the fireplace. Just on the other side is the central hall stairway to the second floor. Is the space under the stairs open or closed in? I didn't notice."

"Closed. I was wondering just now why they didn't leave it open and put the door to the morning room there. I had to go all the way around at the back to get in."

"Hm'm. There must be room for the chimney in the thickness of the wall here too. A chimney and a closed flight of stairs in combination like this always rouses the blackest suspicion in anyone accustomed to ye olde Englishe manor houses where those everlasting Cavaliers and Roundheads and smugglers seemed to spend all their time chasing each other in and out of the paneling. I suppose at this point I ought to start tapping it to see if it sounds hollow somewhere, but I always think that must look so silly, like crawling around the rug with a magnifying glass — and if the man who designed that door knew his business, it won't sound hollow anyway." He got up stretching from the chair and stood facing the wall with his hands clasped lightly behind his back.

"Oh, do get on with it, Pat! Hurry!"

"The Sherwoods have always been a lazy lot. You should hear some of the stories they tell about Peaceable Drummond. Give me a minute to think, can't you? Not, I think, that carved shell at the top of the bookcase. It's too high and inconveniently out of reach. These nice garlands on the panels look much more promising . . . The winter months for the fireside end of the room, what a pleasant idea. Starting at the left-hand corner nearest the library, we have November: oak leaves and apples and ears of dried corn. On the other side of the bookcase, December: ivy and berries and clusters of pine cones. And over here beyond the fireplace on the far right, just where the stairs in the hall must be getting high, we come to January: thorny briers and empty seed pods (br'rr, it's cold!)
and
tucked neatly away under the twist of ribbon that ties everything up — one single solitary summer daisy that doesn't belong there. Well, who'd have thought it? After he worked out all the others so carefully, too!"

"That's funny; I never noticed. Do you suppose he could have started carving the panel before he realized he was doing the wrong month?"

"Perhaps; but I don't believe it. To me it looked more like an eighteenth-century gentleman playing a mildly entertaining little joke on the general public. I think the time has come for that pressing and rapping and knocking and beating you were talking about. Now then! Ready? Sherwood the Magician puts his finger on the center of the daisy — the quickness of the hand deceives the eye — trumpet fanfare and roll of drums from the orchestra — all done by logic — and there you are!"

It really was almost like some act of magic. The dark January panel with the thorny briers and the empty seed pods turned sweetly and slid away in complete silence under Pat's hand, and the afternoon light flashed suddenly back blazing from crystal and silver and enamel and gold.

We were looking into a small paneled room that must have taken up the whole thickness of the chimney-wall and the raised space under the stairway beyond it. I had one dizzying glimpse of shelves covered with cups and medallions and coffers and candelabra and bowls — the Paul Revere punch bowl on a stand by itself — and a tall inlaid cabinet with narrow drawers that were apparently meant for jewels — and then I was down on the floor beside Pat, kneeling over a battered old chest, the lid thrown back and books and documents and letters spilling out of it in a great confused pile, along with an antique army sword, a signet ring, and a small miniature portrait in a round gold frame.

The next thing I remember clearly is sitting with one arm across the chest and staring down at the portrait in my hand. It must have been painted when he was still very young — perhaps sixteen or seventeen — but the smile was there already, and the air of elegance, and the lazy, mocking glint in the eyes. I put it down gently on my knee and picked up one of the papers. It was a letter to his uncle giving an extremely impertinent and hilariously funny account of his voyage to America on the troop ship, and ending: "I remain, with regret, your very undutiful and disobedient nephew to command, Peaceable Drummond Sherwood." I could not quite understand why Uncle Anthony had not thrown it into the fire the instant he had read it. As a matter of fact, it did seem rather badly crumpled, as if it had been crushed in a savage grip.

The next letter was different. It had been written to a "Doctor Mornington" who had once been Peaceable's tutor and was still the chaplain and librarian at Thorne. He was also evidently an intelligent and lonely man who had been very much attached to the lonely and intelligent boy. I gathered from the letter that he had been ill, and Peaceable was doing his best to interest and entertain him. He gave a long description of life in New York during the British occupation of the city — so vivid that I could almost smell the mud on the streets and hear the voices of the refugee Tories clamoring at headquarters for rations and firewood — with some highly interesting observations on the underlying causes of the war and the strategic importance of the Battle of Saratoga. This letter had been carefully folded again and tied with narrow library tape. Looking down into the chest, I could see that it was partly filled with almost a hundred other letters of the same kind.

"So
that
was what General Burgoyne really said about Sir Henry Clinton!" Pat exclaimed suddenly. He was stretched out on the floor beside me, papers strewn all around him, and his head bent over one of the brown leather diary books. "Heaven, suppose he'd ever left this lying about on his desk and somebody'd found it! The War Office in London would have blown sky-high. And Peggy! do listen to this one! September fifteenth, 1780, John Andre asked him out for dinner, 'to inquire into the state of the roads around West Point' — that must have been when he was planning the interview with Benedict Arnold — 'professing great respect for my knowledge and experience, which I told him he might better prove by paying a little more regard to my misgivings about the whole enterprise. He is very contemptuous of the enemy, and overpersuaded that he can buy his way out of any conceivable difficulty by offering a moderate bribe to the rebels, though I warned him that a dishonest American is only infuriated by a
moderate
bribe, and an honest one by any kind. He began to laugh and coax the tavern cat with a bit of the pigeon from his plate; and she came up to him purring; he tossed her the bit of meat and said, "Nonsense! It will be just like this!" — and when I went away, he was still laughing and playing with the cat.' Laughing and playing with the cat — Oh Lord! Can't you see him doing it?"

I thought of the desperate Andre trying to bribe the three militiamen on the dark road a week later, and shivered. I could not help wondering if he had remembered the cat.

"Fair makes your blood run cold, doesn't it?" said Pat. "Talk about the stuff history's made of! Do you suppose all the rest of it is just as good as this? No wonder your Uncle Enos couldn't bear to part with it! And speaking of Uncle Enos —" he turned his head and scrambled suddenly to his feet, "isn't that somebody out in the library now? It's all right, Dr. Lewis! We've found them."

"That's one blessing, anyway," said the doctor's voice somewhere outside. "He's rational now, and most of the sedative's worn off, but the sooner he stops worrying about those papers, the — Merciful heavens! What have you got in here? Captain Kidd's secret headquarters?"

"Complete with skeleton. We think this must be what he's had on his mind all along. Can we take it up to him now?"

The doctor eyed the chest dubiously.

"You can't very well go dumping all that on his bed," he objected. "One or two of the papers and a book, perhaps. Just enough to show that you've got them. I told him you were here. Make it as short as you can, won't you? He really shouldn't be talking to anybody."

Uncle Enos was propped against the pillows, watching the door with a sort of painful eagerness as we came into the room. He did not say anything, and apparently he did not even see the doctor or me. He was looking at Pat. The rest of us might have been spectators standing unnoticed at the back of the courtroom or lost in the crowd around the foot of the gallows. It really was almost dreadfully like the moment just before a trial or an execution.

Then Pat did something which would probably have made me fall in love with him if I had not fallen in love with him already. He went straight across to the bed without even an instant's hesitation, and put the diary book and the letters down on the coverlet.

"There you are, sir," he said gently. "I was glad to find that they'd been in such good hands."

Uncle Enos straightened up and made an effort to speak. The words came very slowly, as if they were being forced out of him one by one under enormous pressure, but his voice was steady and perfectly clear.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "It was a contemptible thing to do. There was no possible excuse for it."

"You are distressing yourself quite unnecessarily, sir."

"Nothing could be more necessary," said Uncle Enos, still in that steady voice. "If there is any satisfaction that I can give you as a gentleman — "

I saw the corner of Pat's mouth twitch.

"I can't very well offer you a choice of swords or pistols at dawn in Central Park," he observed gravely. "It's this degenerate age we live in. I had thought of asking you if you couldn't see your way to working on them in collaboration with me instead. A little later on, perhaps, when you're stronger?"

Uncle Enos stared up at him incredulously.

"You can't be serious," he whispered.

"I am entirely serious."

"But — "

"They really ought to be kept in the family," Pat added, persuasively.

For some mysterious reason, the word "family" seemed to comfort and reassure Uncle Enos. He drew a long breath of relief and sank back against his pillows. "I suppose they really ought to be," he agreed, in a voice that was suddenly very indistinct and tremulous.

Pat only smiled back at him, and went on standing quietly for a moment beside the bed. Uncle Enos's head sank a little deeper into the pillows, and his eyes closed as if he could no longer keep them open. One hand went out and touched the brown leather cover of the diary book. "Did you see what he said about the plot to discredit Cornwallis?" he murmured drowsily.

"No; not yet. Only the bit about John Andre and the cat."

"Oh, that's nothing, my boy," Uncle Enos assured him, sitting up again immediately. "Wait till you read the entry for the first of June, in '79! The part about Andre going over to one of Peaceable's rendezvous places near Duck Head's Lake and the man who came out secretly to meet him there. You'll never guess who it was. Not Washington himself, of course, but short of that — well, I could hardly believe it myself. Fortunately, he wanted too much, and Clinton decided to let him go and concentrate on Arnold instead."

"But I thought Andre was at the capture of Stony Point on the first," Pat objected, dropping down absent-mindedly on the edge of the bed. "Professor Van Doren says in his book — "

"That was only the story they put about. Actually, it seems that Andre — "

The doctor took an imperative step forward. "All right, you two," he said. "Break it up. You've got all the rest of your lives to talk history."

It must have been almost half past five when Pat and I finally left the house again and went wandering lazily up through the orchard to bring Betsy down from the gate. The late afternoon light was already beginning to fall through the apple trees in a lovely stillness of green and gold. We walked slowly, taking our time, without trying to say much of anything, and stood leaning against the gate side by side looking down at Rest-and-be-thankful at the foot of the hill, while the stillness deepened and the light stretched out on the grass under the apple trees, as if it too saw no particular reason why the moment should ever come to an end.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Pat. "I took away that signet ring with me just now when we locked up the panel again. I thought it would do for the time being until I can see about getting you the real one. Would you like me to send home for the official Thorne Betrothal Ring, which is a ghastly great object full of sapphires that we haven't been able to sell because it's got to go down in the family, or would you rather I bought you a modest diamond chip with my entire income?"

He took Peaceable's signet out of his pocket and began trying to see if he could balance it on a knothole in the top rail about halfway between us.

"I — I don't know whether we really ought to be thinking about anything like that yet," I murmured. "Y-you said I could have as long as I liked to — to accustom myself to the idea."

"This is only to help you get accustomed to it sooner," said Pat, slipping the ring on my finger and then laying his hand firmly over mine on the top rail to keep me from doing anything about it. "You're not used to being happy, are you, Peggy? Is that what's the trouble?"

"I suppose it is. You don't understand, Pat. I know it's silly. But to be so completely happy, all