The Sherwood Ring (7 page)

"We didn't capture him, if that's what you mean," I told him. "He's probably still just trying to find out where you are. I took that scrap of Drummond tartan off the tree, and kicked apart your landscape map in the clearing."

For some mysterious reason, we seemed to be talking together as easily as if we had known one another all our lives.

Peaceable nodded. "So you noticed the Drummond tartan?" he said a little ruefully. "I should have remembered your name was Grahame before I went ruining my auld mither's plaid in that shocking manner. I daresay you were raised on that sort of thing from the cradle, so to speak. Still, I feel the idea was basically a sound one, and that child's playground with the little landscapes has really been useful to me for a long time. Now I suppose I'll have to think of something else."

"That will be quite unnecessary," I said firmly. "You are coming with me."

Peaceable Sherwood did not seem startled or alarmed in the least. The look he gave me was simply one of polite question.

"Am I?" he said. "Now just how are you proposing to go about that, I wonder?" He sounded as if he were only vaguely interested in the problem. "I observe that you are not carrying a pistol, and this rock is really quite unsuited to swordplay. Surely you don't mean to overcome me with your bare hands? I detest wrestling matches."

"That's regrettable," I answered politely, and reached for him.

It was like taking hold of a flash of lightning. Peaceable Sherwood met my attack with one crashing blow that shuddered up my whole arm and almost sent me off my feet; and then I was down by the edge of the rock fighting for my life against a murderous fury that seemed to be made entirely of whipcord and steel. For one precarious instant we struggled desperately; then I felt the heel of my boot slide on the treacherous slippery rock — there was a whirling rush — and I went hurtling through the air into a crashing greenness of pine boughs that closed over me and went black.

When I came to myself again, it was still fairly dark and the light of a full moon was flickering through the branches above me. Someone had thoughtfully removed my coat and rolled it up to make a rough pillow for my head. But when I tottered uncertainly to my feet, Peaceable Sherwood was no longer standing on the rock, and there was not even the rustle of a leaf in the forest to show which way he had gone.

It must have been almost four o'clock in the morning when I finally got back to the Shipley Farm. Somewhere a sleepy cock was beginning to crow, and all the eastern horizon was luminously green with the coming dawn. But it was still black night under the great elm trees by the porch as I let myself into the shadowy hall and went blundering towards my room in the dark.

"Dick?" said a whispering voice somewhere above my head. "Dick, is that you?"

Eleanor Shipley was coming down the wide stairway carrying a lighted candle in one hand. The glow shone on the butterfly blue of her dress, and her white throat, and the coppery glints in her hair.

"Why are you up?" I whispered back. I was so weary that my voice seemed to come from a long way off, as if it belonged to somebody else. I reached uncertainly for the newel post at the foot of the stairs and steadied myself on it. "Why are you up? Is Felton worse?"

"No, but I expected you back this afternoon, and when you didn't come and didn't come, I thought — Why, Dick!" She broke off sharply and leaned over the banister with a sudden exclamation to look down at me. "Dick, what is it? Are you hurt? Where have you been all this time? You look like death. What's the matter with you?"

I went on standing there stupidly, looking straight ahead of me, not at her, but at the little flame of the candle she was carrying. My voice when I answered her still sounded as if it was coming from a long way off. It seemed to be speaking quietly and dispassionately about another person I neither knew very well nor liked very much.

"I have been behaving like the arrogant fool that I am," the voice said. "I found out by chance today that Peaceable Sherwood was going to Duck's Head Lake to meet some of his followers. I followed him there alone instead of coming back here first to get some help. I told myself that I couldn't spare the time, and the rangers might blunder, and Felton was sick. I was only making excuses for my own pride and folly and spite. I wanted to take him singlehanded as if I were a prince in a fairy tale, and have you looking up to me at last and telling me what a wonder you thought I was."

The voice paused an instant, on a sort of painful breath, and then went on again, even more carefully than before.

"We fought, and my foot slipped because I was wearing my riding boots, like a fool, and he knocked me off the rocks and got clean away because there wasn't anyone else there to stop him. Now I don't suppose we ever will catch him. And General Washington said that I had been recommended to him as an officer with the intelligence and ability needed to carry out a very important mission. Intelligence and ability — isn't that amusing?" I turned my head a little to look up at her. "I see now why you've found me so laughable all these years."

Eleanor was not laughing. To my astonishment, her face had suddenly become a sort of blazing white, and she was so angry that there were actually tears of rage in her eyes. I had not seen her look like that since she was ten years old and flying like a fury at Johnny Tatlock for bullying a small boy much younger than he was. She reached out her hand and caught me hard by the shoulder.

"You stop!" she said, stamping her foot. "You
stop
talking about yourself that way! I won't have it! I won't have it, do you hear me?"

"But Eleanor—" I stammered, almost as completely taken aback as Johnny Tatlock had been in his time.

"Be quiet!" said Eleanor fiercely. "I suppose you think you know more about your own intelligence and ability than General Washington does? Never catch Peaceable Sherwood, indeed! Of all the nonsense! Who almost caught him only tonight? You
would
probably have caught him if your boot only hadn't slipped on the rock, and who cares about a silly old boot? It was all my fault, anyway."

"Your
fault?" I was beginning to feel that my plunge from the rock must really have unsettled my wits.

"For driving you crazy with my pestering, the way I have!" cried Eleanor. "I knew it was wrong, and I shouldn't have done it, but you never would pay any attention to me, and you were always so formal and distant and courteous, and I was only trying to show you — "

"Show me what, exactly?"

"Oh be quiet!" said Eleanor again, two furious tears spilling over her lashes and falling hotly on my hand. "You always treated me like that, even when you were a boy. You know you did."

"But I thought you didn't like me," I said numbly. "You were always laughing and trying to catch me out and making fun of me. You know you were."

"At least you might admit it was you who began it."

"I never did any such thing. I tell you I thought you didn't like me."

"Like
you!" Eleanor wailed. "I did everything but stand on my head trying to make you take the smallest notice of me! I know I kept talking about your arrogance and your stupidity and your airs, but all the time I would have followed you to China at the hint of a kindness. And when I saw you riding down the road on your horse this spring, I thought you the most — "

It was at that moment I began to laugh.

"Eleanor, I warn you that if you call me a dashing young hero just once more, I shall probably fell you to the earth."

Eleanor began to laugh too, and we both stood there idiotically with our hands linked over the banister, laughing at one another. Then, still laughing, she suddenly bent down to me, and for an instant I felt the mocking mouth brush across my cheek as lightly as a butterfly's wing. The next instant she had pulled her hand out of mine and was running away up the stairs.

The second Richard Grahame sat looking out at the garden for a moment, apparently lost in some pleasant memory. Then he turned his head and smiled at me.

"I told you it was a sad story," he said, "but at least it has a happy ending, and incidentally teaches a useful moral lesson which should prove of great value to your future career."

I felt myself coloring a little guiltily. "If you're thinking about Pat —" I began.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I was," said Richard Grahame. "You were planning to 'show' him something, I believe? Because you have your pride? I thought so. Do let me assure you from my own personal experience that it is a most unsatisfactory method of attracting attention."

"It's only that I haven't heard from him at all," I defended myself. "I don't even know where he is."

"I expect you'll find out all in good time," said Richard Grahame offhandedly.

"Maybe he's just sick of us," I suggested rather dolefully. "I can't understand why Uncle Enos won't make friends with him or even utter a word about him."

"I expect you'll find that out all in good time, too." He had risen to his feet and was moving away towards the other end of the library where the shadows were so thick I could barely distinguish him.

"Wait — oh, please wait!" I begged him. "Just tell me one more thing.
Did
you ever catch Peaceable Sherwood?"

This time there was no answer.

UNCLE ENOS, who was Peaceable Sherwood?" I inquired the next morning at breakfast.

Uncle Enos, torn from his coffee and the latest issue of
Antiques and Collectors
, merely glowered at me in a blighting manner, and demanded gruffly where I had heard of Peaceable Sherwood.

"Oh, around," I said airily. "I only wanted to know whether he really ever did get caught in the end. They couldn't have hanged him the way they did poor Major Andre, could they? Because if he was wearing his uniform — "

"I would rather not discuss the subject," remarked Uncle Enos, and started to read
Antiques and Collectors
again.

"But I only want to know — " Uncle Enos quite deliberately rose to his feet, poured himself another cup of coffee, and made off with the cup in the direction of his study.

I sat there looking after him and thinking how I should love — how
much
I should love — to throw my poached egg squarely at the back of his neck.

Then I remembered that I had never finished looking through the bottom drawer of the Chippendale cabinet, and the answer I wanted might possibly be there. Richard Grahame had saved the scrap of Drummond tartan; perhaps he had kept other things as well.

He had, I found, kept a great many other things. In fact, he apparently had been one of those people who have a sort of mania for collecting souvenirs. There was a faded green ribbon of the kind worn by aides-de-camp in the Continental Army — an eagle's feather — a rough sketch of a four-legged animal labeled MY HORSE GAWAINE — a hunting knife — two pairs of spurs, one broken — an old copy book full of Latin sentences with the words "You must exercise greater diligence" written across the cover in a different hand — a tattered piece of flag that looked as if it might have been picked up on a battlefield — and a little note which read crisply: "Eat what I've left on the hob for you the minute you get in. You won't catch Peaceable Sherwood any sooner by starving yourself to death. — E. S." But there seemed to be no other papers in the drawer, and nothing else that had any connection with Peaceable Sherwood at all. I was just about to close the cabinet again when I caught sight of the letter. It had somehow worked its way between the pages of the Latin copy book, and at first glance I had missed it altogether.

It was only a half sheet of very thin paper, and had once evidently been folded very small as well. The handwriting that covered it was very small too, ancient and faded, but with something still rather jaunty and engaging about the sweep of the letters and the flourish of the capitals:

better Meet every evening making Us elegant rich music At invitation, letting loathsome Bald aged tyrants Rock For furious ignorant violence, exaggeratedly concerned about Raid pricking their utmost respectability, each wailing as sees humiliation issuing On new glories to Supply our new Train.

I read it through hastily and then went back and read it once more, with an increasing sense of confusion. There was a certain deceptive rhythm about the sentences that carried you along for a moment; they almost seemed to mean something until you started wondering exactly what it was. Why were the loathsome bald aged tyrants rocking? Who was making the elegant rich music at invitation? Each wailing as he sees humiliation issuing on new glories — I was beginning to feel slightly dizzy. I tried again. It would have been easier, I thought, if the writer had not sprinkled his capital letters about quite so eccentrically.

"Oh, not eccentrically," said a voice from the other side of the room. "Rather carefully, I assure you."

There by the fireplace, beside the deep armchair where Richard Grahame had been sitting the afternoon before, stood a tiny and liltingly pretty girl in a wide-skirted dress of blue dimity, with a glint of ribbon among the curls of her coppery-gold hair. I could see at once why Richard Grahame had compared her to a butterfly — not that she looked at all silly or featherheaded, like the girls who are always being described as "society butterflies" in old-fashioned romances; but she moved with a kind of winging delicacy, and when she dropped down on the big footstool by the armchair, it was really more like alighting than sitting.

"So Dick kept the letter, did he?" she asked. She had a lovely voice, with a sort of mocking caress in it whenever she said the word "Dick," and she put one hand on the arm of the big chair almost as if she were laying it affectionately over another hand that rested there. "I thought he had. Dick always loved to collect things — it was like living in the same house with a jackdaw. He had an untidy little hoard in his desk even at the Farm, when he was almost out of his mind about Peaceable Sherwood and things were at their very worst that awful autumn."