Chapter Chapter 4 · ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS

. ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS

“Let's pretend,” suggested Harold, “that we're Cavaliers and Roundheads;

and YOU be a Roundhead!”

“O bother,” I replied drowsily, “we pretended that yesterday; and it's

not my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow.” The fact is, I was lazy, and

the call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three younger ones were

stretched at length in the orchard. The sun was hot, the season merry

June, and never (I thought) had there been such wealth and riot of

buttercups throughout the lush grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant

key that day. Instead of active “pretence” with its shouts and

perspiration, how much better--I held--to lie at ease and pretend to

one's self, in green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing,

a careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world all gold and green!

But the persistent Harold was not to be fobbed of.

“Well, then,” he began afresh, “let's pretend we're Knights of the Round

Table; and (with a rush) _I'll_ be Lancelot!”

“I won't play unless I'm Lancelot,” I said. I didn't mean it really, but

the game of Knights always began with this particular contest.

“O PLEASE,” implored Harold. “You know when Edward's here I never get a

chance of being Lancelot. I haven't been Lancelot for weeks!”

Then I yielded gracefully. “All right,” I said. “I'll be Tristram.”

“O, but you can't,” cried Harold again.

“Charlotte has always been Tristram. She won't play unless she's allowed

to be Tristram! Be somebody else this time.”

Charlotte said nothing, but breathed hard, looking straight before her.

The peerless hunter and harper was her special hero of romance, and

rather than see the part in less appreciative hands, she would even have

returned sadly to the stuffy schoolroom.

“I don't care,” I said: “I'll be anything. I'll be Sir Kay. Come on!”

Then once more in this country's story the mail-clad knights paced

through the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing wrong; and

bandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to their caves. Once

again were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every

corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of

heads; while Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir

Breuse Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear

that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in

Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook

with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmament

rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swung

doubtful--now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grim

and great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy

task), and bestrode her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight,

forgetting hard-won fame of old, cried piteously, “You're hurting me,

I tell you! and you're tearing my frock!” Then it happed that Sir Kay,

hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching sight

suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; while

the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, was

borne to our ears.

“What is it?” inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls;

while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to the

hedge.

I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of

“Soldiers!” I was off to the hedge, Charlotte picking herself up and

scurrying after.

Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed in

the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked delightfully; while the men,

in a halo of dust, smoked their short clays like the heroes they were.

In a swirl of intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by,

while we shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly

horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The moment

they were past we were through the hedge and after them. Soldiers were

not the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like this

since the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare of

leaf and monochrome in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-nipt

copse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellow

cry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof

and dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could only

mean that blows and bloodshed were in the air.

“Is there going to be a battle?” panted Harold, hardly able to keep up

for excitement.

“Of course there is,” I replied. “We're just in time. Come on!”

Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet---- The pigs and poultry,

with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerning

the peace that in these latter days lapped this sea-girt realm. In the

schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and

did not legends of the country-side inform us how Cavaliers had once

galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the

village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business

was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed

hard on their tracks.

“Won't Edward be sorry,” puffed Harold, “that he's begun that beastly

Latin?”

It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us all,

was drearily conjugating AMO (of all verbs) between four walls; while

Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat, was struggling with

the uncouth German tongue. “Age,” I reflected, “carries its penalties.”

It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed through the

village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to my companions, ought

to have been loopholed, and strongly held. But no opposition was offered

to the soldiers, who, indeed, conducted themselves with a recklessness

and a want of precaution that seemed simply criminal.

At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered across

me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back.

The small maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged reluctant

feet homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold no stout fellows

slain that day; but Harold and I held steadily on, expecting every

instant to see the environing hedges crackle and spit forth the leaden

death.

“Will they be Indians?” inquired my brother (meaning the enemy); “or

Roundheads, or what?”

I reflected. Harold always required direct, straightforward answers--not

faltering suppositions.

“They won't be Indians,” I replied at last; “nor yet Roundheads. There

haven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long time. They'll be

Frenchmen.”

Harold's face fell. “All right,” he said; “Frenchmen'll do; but I did

hope they'd be Indians.”

“If they were going to be Indians,” I explained, “I--I don't think I'd

go on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they scalp you first, and

then burn you at a stake. But Frenchmen don't do that sort of thing.”

“Are you quite sure?” asked Harold doubtfully.

“Quite,” I replied. “Frenchmen only shut you up in a thing called the

Bastille; and then you get a file sent in to you in a loaf of bread,

and saw the bars through, and slide down a rope, and they all fire at

you--but they don't hit you--and you run down to the seashore as hard as

you can, and swim off to a British frigate, and there you are!”

Harold brightened up again. The programme was rather attractive.

“If they try to take us prisoner,” he said, “we--we won't run, will we?”

Meanwhile, the craven foe was a long time showing himself; and we were

reaching strange outland country, uncivilised, wherein lions might be

expected to prowl at nightfall. I had a stitch in my side, and both

Harold's stockings had come down. Just as I was beginning to have gloomy

doubts of the proverbial courage of Frenchmen, the officer called

out something, the men closed up, and, breaking into a trot, the

troops--already far ahead--vanished out of our sight. With a sinking at

the heart, I began to suspect we had been fooled.

“Are they charging?” cried Harold, weary, but rallying gamely.

“I think not,” I replied doubtfully. “When there's going to be a charge,

the officer always makes a speech, and then they draw their swords and

the trumpets blow, and--but let's try a short cut. We may catch them up

yet.”

So we struck across the fields and into another road, and pounded down

that, and then over more fields, panting, down-hearted, yet hoping for

the best. The sun went in, and a thin drizzle began to fall; we were

muddy, breathless, almost dead beat; but we blundered on, till at last

we struck a road more brutally, more callously unfamiliar than any

road I ever looked upon. Not a hint nor a sign of friendly direction

or assistance on the dogged white face of it. There was no longer

any disguising it--we were hopelessly lost. The small rain continued

steadily, the evening began to come on. Really there are moments when a

fellow is justified in crying; and I would have cried too, if Harold had

not been there. That right-minded child regarded an elder brother as a

veritable god; and I could see that he felt himself as secure as if a

whole Brigade of Guards hedged him round with protecting bayonets. But I

dreaded sore lest he should begin again with his questions.

As I gazed in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the sound

of nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being; increasing to

rapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle the familiar carriage

of the old doctor. If ever a god emerged from a machine, it was when

this heaven-sent friend, recognising us, stopped and jumped out with a

cheery hail. Harold rushed up to him at once. “Have you been there?” he

cried. “Was it a jolly fight? who beat? were there many people killed?”

The doctor appeared puzzled. I briefly explained the situation.

“I see,” said the doctor, looking grave and twisting his face this way

and that. “Well, the fact is, there isn't going to be any battle to-day.

It's been put off, on account of the change in the weather. You will

have due notice of the renewal of hostilities. And now you'd better jump

in and I'll drive you home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, you

might have both been taken and shot as spies!”

This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of it

accentuated the cosey homelike feeling of the cushions we nestled

into as we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the journey with

blood-curdling narratives of personal adventure in the tented field, he

having followed the profession of arms (so it seemed) in every quarter

of the globe. Time, the destroyer of all things beautiful, subsequently

revealed the baselessness of these legends; but what of that? There are

higher things than truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the time

we were dropped at our gate, to the fact that the battle had been

postponed.