The Sherwood Ring (3 page)

"I certainly hope so," said Pat gloomily. "I'm beginning to feel like one of those characters who's under a mysterious family curse."

"The sun's coming out again, anyway," I went on. "Maybe it's a good omen. The woods seem to be getting thinner, too, and — oh, look! Look there!"

The last of the trees had fallen away behind us, and the road was dipping down into a little valley that lay between two curving hills, a valley full of apple trees, all in full bloom — immense, straggling apple trees, the largest and oldest I had ever seen. Where the two hills met, there rose suddenly from the drifts of delicate flowers, as if from some enchanted sea, the mossy dark roof of a huge stone house. There were four enormous chimneys, two at each of the main gables, and between them along the ridgepole perched three white pigeons, sunning themselves after the rain. Below, there were glimpses through the foaming branches of weathered stone walls and dark shutters.

I had never been in a place that looked so quiet, so utterly hushed. No one was in sight; not a leaf stirred or a voice broke the golden stillness that lay like a spell over everything. Even the pigeons on the roof sat without cooing or preening, the afternoon light gleaming on their motionless feathers.

"So that was why they called it Rest-and-be-thankful," I murmured. For some reason I did not feel as if I ought to raise my voice.

"Betsy seems to think so, anyway," said Pat ruefully. "She's stopping again."

This time Betsy had apparently settled down for a long nap, and it proved impossible to rouse her. In the end, Pat took my overnight case and we walked down the driveway under the apple trees and on through a velvet-like formal garden to the house. There, four steps led up to a flagged terrace with a balustrade and great urns heaped with trailing ivy and rose geranium.

"You know, I'm inclined to think that poor Betsy was just trying to be tactful," said Pat, glancing up at the fanlight and the fluted white columns of the doorway. "This isn't the kind of setting where she looks her best. We really ought to be arriving in a coach and four, with outriders and powdered footmen up behind."

At that moment the door opened and a very old butler with white hair bowed to me, saying something in a voice which shook so that I could only distinguish the words "Miss Peggy" and "come in" and "a great day for the house." Behind him was a wide shadowy hall with a grandfather clock that ticked loudly in the stillness and a huge fireplace with a trophy of guns and swords over the mantel. At the back a vast mahogany staircase went up into gloom.

"Mr. Enos is in the study," said the old butler, opening a door at the right. "He's been expecting you."

We passed into a dim, paneled library with high bookcases that reached to the ceiling and across it to another door on the far side. My heart was beginning to beat thunderously and my feet kept stumbling over each other. I glanced frantically around for Pat, but he only caught my eye and winked at me outrageously.

"Miss Peggy, sir," said the butler.

Uncle Enos was sitting in a high-backed wing chair by the fire. I recognized him instantly: very tall, very dark, very slender, with what we called "the Grahame face" — long and narrow, the thin straight black eyebrows over wide-set gray eyes, like my father's and my own. But my father had never stood so erect, or carried himself with such overwhelming dignity. When Uncle Enos came forward and held out his hand to me, it was almost as if he were tossing a ruffle of lace back from his wrist.

"My dear child," he said magnificently.

He sounded so like a character in an eighteenth- century novel that I felt I really ought to sink down in a deep curtsey and ask him for his blessing. As it was, I merely found myself touching his hand for a brief instant and murmuring something about being glad to see him. Uncle Enos in return expressed the polite hope that I had not had too long or difficult a journey. "But I see," he added, "that you were traveling with friends?" — and his eyes went inquiringly to Pat standing near the door.

Pat set down the overnight case and took a determined step forward.

"My name is Thorne, sir," he said clearly, "and I have been very eager to meet you for a long time now."

I had wondered what was going to happen when Pat and Uncle Enos finally came together, but not even in my wildest speculations had I hit upon the sort of thing that actually occurred. Uncle Enos stared at him for one stupefied instant, and then said in the most appalling voice:

"You!"

"Why, yes, I suppose so," said poor Pat, utterly taken aback. "You remember that I wrote you some time ago for information in connection with my study of guerrilla warfare in Orange County during the — "

Uncle Enos merely drew himself up in front of his desk as if he were bodily trying to protect its contents from the contamination of Pat's glance.

"I have nothing whatever to say to you, sir," he interrupted him in a voice of ice. "You will leave this house at once."

And with that he actually stretched out his arm and pointed his finger at the door, exactly like the outraged father in an old steel engraving called "Her Tory Lover" that I remembered hanging on the wall of Mrs. Campbell's inn parlor.

"Uncle Enos, please!" I clutched at his other arm desperately. "Please! You don't understand. This gentleman has been very kind to me. He — "

"Be quiet, child!" Uncle Enos made a fierce gesture with his free hand. "Let me deal with this! I don't know how he contrived to make your acquaintance, but you are never to have anything more to do with him. Never, do you hear me?"

"But why, Uncle Enos? Why? What is it? What is he supposed to have done?"

"Yes, if you don't mind, sir, what
am
I supposed to have done?" Pat cut in. "Look, Mr. Grahame, I'm sure that there must be some mistake. If you'll only explain — "

"I have no explanation to offer you, now or on any future occasion," announced Uncle Enos grandly. "I have told you to leave my house, and I have told my niece she is not to see you again. That is enough for you both. I refuse to discuss the subject any further." He flung back his head, standing very straight, one hand at his hip as if it were resting on the hilt of a sword. He looked more like an eighteenth-century gentleman than ever.

But Pat was beginning to lose his own temper and look rather like an eighteenth-century gentleman himself — the haughty young officer in "Her Tory Lover," in fact. He did not rage or stamp or shout. He simply allowed his gaze to rest on Uncle Enos as if he were seeing him from somewhere a long way off and did not find him particularly attractive.

"In that case, sir," he retorted, "I think there is nothing more I have to say to you, except perhaps — " he turned with his hand on the knob of the door and grinned at Uncle Enos impertinently, "that I have every intention of seeing your niece again, very soon, whether you like it or not." Then he was gone.

As the door swung shut behind him, Uncle Enos suddenly began to shake. He caught rather fumblingly at the back of his desk chair and sank down into it, almost as though he could no longer stand.

"What shall I do now?" he whispered. "What on earth shall I do?" He was speaking to himself — apparently he did not even realize that I was still in the room — and his face looked so white and miserable that I could not help going to him and putting my hand on his shoulder.

"Dear Uncle Enos," I begged, "can't you possibly tell me what's the matter?"

But Uncle Enos was already recovering himself. He twitched his shoulder away from my touch and pulled his chair around to the desk, turning his back on me altogether.

"I thought I told you I was not going to discuss the subject." He reached for his pen and letter pad with an impatient jerk. "Run along now like a good child, and don't bother me. I have work to do. If you'll just go back to the hall and speak to the butler, he'll take you up to your room."

The butler, however, had gone away and there was nobody in the hall when I came out but a maid winding the grandfather clock — a very pretty girl in a long, full-skirted dress of flowered chintz with a ruffled cap and an organdy apron. She told me her name was Petunia, and she was the "downstairs" maid at Rest-and-be-thankful. She had an older sister, Zinnia, who attended to the "upstairs," and a younger sister, Gladiola, who helped the cook in the kitchen. All three were daughters of the butler, Christopher Seven — so called because he was descended from the original Christopher who had been butler in the days of the first Enos Grahame and had died in 1792, leaving a son, Christopher Two, and a grandson, Christopher Three, to carry on the line. The present Christopher was the seventh and last of the family. "And Mr. Enos has gone and got him so stuck-up about that name that he won't even let his own children call him Daddy no more," concluded Petunia, with a disrespectful giggle. "Did you say you wanted to go up to your room now, Miss Peggy? Dinner won't be till seven o'clock if you'd like to lie down a while first. You must be mighty tired after all that trip."

Suddenly I realized that I
was
tired — cruelly tired — so tired that it seemed a long way across the hall to the stairs. The strain and excitement and confusion of the afternoon had worn me out completely. Everything that had happened was whirling and jumbling incoherently through my mind — the walk through Martin's Wood; the mysterious girl on the horse; Pat and the curious story he had told me; my first glimpse of Rest-and-be-thankful among the apple trees; the scene in the study when Uncle Enos had so strangely refused to have anything more to do with Pat and had driven him out of the house . . .

Maybe it will get clearer tomorrow, I thought foggily as I trailed behind Petunia up the stairs. Anyway, I can ask Uncle Enos about the girl on the horse. She must live somewhere around here . . . he probably knows who she is.

But as it turned out, I did not have to ask Uncle Enos after all. The next moment I had come around the bend of the stair into the landing; and there, gleaming down from the paneled wall, hung a great life-size portrait in a carved and gilded frame. It was the portrait of a girl wearing a long crimson cloak — a beautiful girl, dark and proud, with wide-set gray eyes that were brilliant as jewels. One of her hands rested on the shoulder of a tall black horse, just visible behind her in the shadows; the other hand was lifted to tuck back a dark curl that was blowing out of her hood. On the frame under the picture was a small square plaque with an inscription:

BARBARA GRAHAME

At the Age of Sixteen

Painted by

John Singleton Copley

1773

I stood staring at the portrait for a long time before I could get it through my head that I had already met my first ghost at Rest-and-be-thankful.

I WAS SITTING on the floor in the library at Rest-and-be-thankful, sulking. Theoretically I was tidying up the bottom drawer of the big Chippendale cabinet, but actually I was sulking. Outside the sun was shining and the birds were singing and the open windows were clustered round with yellow roses — it was now three weeks since my arrival and we were well into June— but I was in no mood to do anything but sit on the floor with my back to the garden and think bitterly about my wrongs and grievances. There were a great many of them; and I was getting a certain miserable satisfaction from laying them all out and rummaging through them over and over again.

It was all very well for my father to say that I couldn't expect Uncle Enos to change his ways on my account. But surely my father had not supposed that Uncle Enos was going to behave as if he hardly knew I was even in the house? After three weeks I was still no better acquainted with him than I had been at the beginning. In fact, I almost never saw him except at meals, which were eaten in state at a long walnut table designed for twenty, with an enormous centerpiece of antique crystal and silver to conceal anyone sitting at one end from his companion at the other. Uncle Enos would come wandering in on the last stroke of the gong, with a book under his arm, say "Good morning" or "Good evening" absent-mindedly to me, prop open the book in front of him, and read it (as far as I could judge for the distance and the centerpiece) throughout the meal. The rest of the day he usually spent working in his study, and when interrupted would simply tell me over his shoulder to run along and stop bothering him.

Where was I to run to? What was I to do with myself? There was always the house to explore, of course — and I had to admit that Rest-and-be-thankful was a wonderful house — but what was the use of finding all sorts of fascinating things if I didn't know what they meant and the only person who could tell me wouldn't take the trouble?

That scrap of tartan, for instance.

I had just come across the scrap of tartan as I was turning out the bottom drawer of the Chippendale cabinet. It was a very small scrap, and looked as if it had been torn roughly out of a much larger piece like a kilt or a plaid. Somebody, perhaps a hundred years before, had pinned it carefully to a sheet of letter paper that was now dry and rustling with old age. Written across the paper, in brown faded ink, was one line — a verse from the Bible: "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." The writer had then added three exclamation marks, and drawn a small hand in the margin with one finger pointed warningly upward at the scrap of tartan.

It was not a scrap of the Grahame tartan. The colors and design — what old Mrs. Campbell in Scotland had called "the sett" — were quite different. Ours was very dark — mostly dull greens and blacks on a ground of deep blue. This was bright scarlet, with a dazzling pattern of yellows and whites and greens that must once have fairly glittered in the sun. If it was not ours, then whose was it? Why had it been so carefully kept all these years? Uncle Enos, of course, probably knew. I looked longingly across the room at the door of the study; but the door of the study was firmly shut, and I knew it would be useless to knock. Uncle Enos didn't want me bothering him. Nobody wanted me bothering him. Even Pat —

I threw the scrap of tartan back where I had found it and shut the drawer of the cabinet with a savage bang. Pat was the real trouble. I could have put up with Uncle Enos and the study door and the dining-room table and all the rest, if it only hadn't been for Pat.