WHERE IS THE ENEMY?
It was a very hot afternoon, and Hazel, Hilary, and Cecily Jolliffe were sitting under the big cedar on the lawn at The Gables. Each had her racket by her side, and the tennis-court lay, smooth and inviting, close by; but they did not seem inclined to play just then, and there was something in the expression of all three which indicated a common grievance.
'Well,' said Hazel, the eldest, who was nearly fourteen, 'we need not have excited ourselves about the boys' holidays, if we had only known. They don't give us much of their society—why, we haven't had one single game of cricket together yet!'
'And then to have the impudence to tell us that they didn't care much about our sort of cricket!' said Hilary, 'when I can throw up every bit as far as Jack, and it takes Guy three overs to bowl me! It's beastly cheek of them.'
'Hilary!' cried Cecily, 'what would mother say if she heard you talk like that?'
'Oh, it's the holidays!' said Hilary, lazily. 'Besides, it is a shame! They would have played with us just as they used to, if it hadn't been for that Clarence Tinling.'
'Yes,' Hazel agreed, 'he hates cricket. I do believe that's the reason why he invented this silly army, and talked Jack and Guy into giving up everything for it.'
'They haven't any will of their own, poor things!' said Hilary.
'You forget, Hilary,' put in Cecily, 'Tinling is the guest. They ought to give way to him.'
'Well,' said Hilary, 'it's ridiculous for great boys who have been two terms at school to go marching about with swords and guns. Big babies!'
Perhaps there was a little personal feeling at the bottom of this, for she had offered herself for enlistment, and had been sternly rejected on the ground of her sex.
'I wish he would go, I know that,' said Hazel, making a rather vicious little chop at her shoe with her racket; 'those boys talk about nothing but their stupid army from morning to night. Uncle Lambert says they make him feel quite gunpowdery at lunch. And what do you think is the last thing they've done?—put up a great fence all round their tent, and shut themselves up there all day!'
'Except when they're sentries and hide,' put in Hilary; 'they're always jumping up somewhere and wanting you to give the countersign. It isn't like home, these holidays!'
'Perhaps,' suggested Cecily, 'it makes things safer, you know.'
'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were about as successful as such domestic offices ever are.
'Look out!' cried Hilary, presently; 'they're coming. Don't let's take the least notice of them. They hate that more than anything.'
From the shrubbery filed three boys, the first and tallest of whom wore an imposing dragoon's helmet with a crimson plume, and carried a sabretache and crossbelts, and wore red caps like those of the French army; they carried guns on their shoulders.
'Halt! 'Tention! Dis-miss!' shouted the commanding officer, and the army broke off with admirable precision.
'Don't be alarmed,' said the General considerately to the three girls; 'the army is only out on fatigue duty.'
'Then wouldn't the army like to sit down?' suggested Hilary, forgetting all about her recent proposal.
'Ah, you don't understand,' said General Tinling with some pity. 'It's a military term.'
He was a pale, puffy boy, with reddish hair and freckles, who was evidently fully alive to the dignity of his position.
'Suppose we let military things alone for a little while,' said Hazel. 'We want the army to come and play tennis. You will, won't you, Jack and Guy? and Cis will umpire—she likes it.'
'I don't mind a game,' said Jack.
'I'll play, if you like,' added Guy; but he had forgotten that the General was a bit of a martinet.
'That's nice discipline,' he said. 'I don't know whether you know it; but in some armies you'd be court-martialled for less than that.'
'Well, may we, then?' asked Guy a little impatiently.
'No salute now!' cried his superior. 'I shall never make you fellows smart. Why, at the Haversacks, last Easter, there were half a dozen of us, and we drilled like machines. Of course you mayn't play tennis—this is only a bivouac; and it's over now. Attention! The left wing of the force will occupy the shrubbery; the right will push on and blow up the gate.
'Which of us is the left wing?' inquired Guy.
'You are, of course.'
'Oh, all right; only you said Jack was just now,' grumbled Guy, who was evidently a little disposed to rebel at being deprived of his tennis.
'Look here,' said the General; 'either let's do the thing thoroughly, or not do it at all. It's no pleasure to me to be General, I can tell you; and if I can't have perfect discipline in the ranks—why, we might as well drop the army altogether!'
'Oh, all right,' said Jack, who was a sweet-tempered boy, 'we won't do it again.'
And they went off to carry out their separate instructions, Clarence Tinling remaining by the cedar.
'I have to be a little sharp now and then,' he explained. 'Why, if I didn't keep an iron rule over them, they'd be getting insubordinate in no time. You mustn't think I've any objection to their playing tennis, or anything of that sort; only discipline must be kept up; though it seems severe, perhaps, to you.'
'It doesn't seem to be half bad fun for you, at all events,' said Hazel.
'Of course,' added Hilary, whose cheeks were flushed and eyes suspiciously bright as she plucked all the blades of grass that were within her reach, 'we're glad if you're enjoying being here; but it's a little slow for us girls. You might give the army a half-holiday now and then.'
'An army, especially a small army, like ours,' said Clarence, grandly, 'ought to be constantly prepared for action; else it's no use. Then, look at the protection it is. Why, we've just built a fortified place close to the kitchen garden, where you could all retire to if we were attacked; and, properly provisioned, we could hold out for almost any time.'
'Thank you,' said Hilary. 'I should feel a good deal safer in the box-room. And then, who's going to attack us?'
'Well, you never know,' replied Clarence; 'but, if they did come, it's something to feel we should be able to defend ourselves.'
'Yes, Hilary,' Cecily remarked, 'an army would certainly be a great convenience then.'
'That would depend on what it did,' said her sister. 'It wouldn't be much of a convenience if it ran away.'
'I don't think Jack and Guy would ever do that,' observed Hazel.
'I suppose that means that you think I should?' inquired Clarence, who was quick at discovering personal allusions.
'I wasn't thinking about you at all,' said Hazel, with supreme indifference; 'we don't know you well enough to say whether you're brave or not—we do know our brothers.'
'There wouldn't be much sense in my being the General if I wasn't the bravest, would there?' he demanded.
'Well, as to that, you see,' retorted Hilary, 'we don't see much sense in any of it.'
'Girls can't be expected to see sense in anything,' he said sulkily.
'At all events, no one can be expected to see bravery till there's some danger,' said Hazel; 'and there isn't the least!'
'That's all you know about it; but I've something more important to do than stay here squabbling. I'm off to see what the army's up to.' And he marched off with great pomp.
When he had disappeared, Hilary remarked frankly, 'Isn't he a pig?'
'I don't think it's nice to call our visitors "pigs," Hilary!' remonstrated Cecily, 'and he's not really more greedy than most boys.'
'Don't lecture, Cis. I didn't mean he was that kind of pig—I said he was a pig. And he is!' said Hilary, not over lucidly. 'I wonder what Jack and Guy can see in him. I thought that when they wrote asking him to be invited, that he'd be sure to be such a jolly boy!'
'He may be a jolly boy—at school,' was all that even the tolerant Cecily could find to urge in his favour.
'I believe,' said Hazel, 'that they're not nearly so mad about him as they were—didn't you notice about the tennis just now?'
'He bullies them—that's what it is,' explained Hilary; 'only with talking, I mean, of course, but he talks such a lot, and he will have his own way, and, if they say anything, he reminds them he's a visitor, and ought to be humoured. I wish it was any use getting Uncle Lambert to speak to him—but he's so stupid!'
'Is he, though?' said a lazy voice from behind the cedar.
'Oh, Uncle Lambkin!' cried Hilary, 'I didn't know you were there!'
'Don't apologise,' was the answer. 'I know it must be a trial to have an uncle on the verge of imbecility—but bear with me. I am at least harmless.'
'Of course we know you're really rather clever,' said Hazel, 'but you are stupid about some things—you never interfere, whatever people do!'
'Don't I, really?' said their uncle, as he disposed himself on his back, and tilted his hat over his nose; 'you do surprise me! What a mistake for a man to make, who has come down for perfect quiet! Whom shall I begin to interfere with?'
'Well, you might snub that horrid Tinling boy, instead of encouraging him, as you always do!'
'Encourage him! He's got a fine flow of martial enthusiasm, and a good supply of military terms, and I listen when he gives me long accounts of thrilling engagements, when he came out uncommonly strong—and the enemy, so far as I can gather, never came out at all. I'm passive, because I can't help myself; and then he amuses me in his way—that's all.'
'Do you believe he's brave, uncle?'
'I only know that I saw him kill two wasps with his teaspoon,' was the reply. 'They don't award the Victoria Cross for it—but it's a thing I couldn't have done myself.'
'I should hope not!' exclaimed Hilary; 'but everybody knows you're a coward,' she added (she did not intend this remark to be taken seriously), 'and you're awfully lazy. Still, there are some things you might do!'
'If that means fielding long-leg till tea-time, I respectfully disagree. Irreverent girls, have you never been taught that a digesting uncle is a very solemn and sacred thing?'
'Now you are going to be idiotic again! But as to cricket—why, you must know that we never get a game now! And next summer I shall be too old to play!'
'I never mean to be too old for cricket,' said Hilary, with conviction; 'but we've had none for weeks, uncle, positive weeks!'
'Quite right, too!' observed Uncle Lambert, sleepily. 'Not a game for girls—only spoil your hands—do you think I want a set of nieces with paws like so many glovers' signs?'
'That's utter nonsense,' said Hazel, calmly, 'because we always play in gloves. Mother makes us. At least, when we did play. Now the boys will only play soldiers, and, if they do happen to be inclined for a set at tennis, Clarence comes up and orders them off as pickets or outposts, or something!'
'But he's not Bismarck or Boulanger, is he? I always understood this was a free country.'
'You know what Guy and Jack are—they can't bear their visitor to think he isn't welcome.'
'Well, they seem to have made him feel very much at home—but it isn't my business; if they choose to declare the house in a state of siege, and turn the garden into a seat of war, I can't help it—I'd rather they wouldn't, but it's your mother's affair, not mine!'
And he closed the discussion by lighting a cigarette, and relapsing into a contented silence.
Uncle Lambert was short and stout, with a round red face, a heavy auburn moustache, and little green eyes which never seemed to notice anything. His nieces were fond of him, though they often wished he would pay them the occasional compliment of talking sensibly; but he never did, and he spent all his time at The Gables in elaborately doing nothing at all.
Clarence Tinling had gone off in a decided huff—so much so indeed that he left his devoted army to carry out their rather misty manœuvres without any help from him. He was beginning to find a falling-off in their docility of late, which was no doubt owing to their sisters; it was excessively annoying to him that those girls should be so difficult to convince of the protective value of a fortress, and especially that they should decline to take his own superior nerve and courage for granted. And the worst of it was, nothing but some imminent danger was ever likely to convince them, such were their prejudice and narrow-mindedness.
Later that afternoon the family assembled for tea in the cool, shady dining-room; Mrs. Jolliffe, with a gentle anxiety on her usually placid face, sat at the head (Colonel Jolliffe was away shooting in the North just then). 'Where are all the boys?' she said, looking round the table. 'Why don't they come in?'
'It's no use asking us, mother,' said Hilary, 'we see so very little of them ever.'
'Very likely they are washing their hands,' said her mother.
'So like them!' murmured Uncle Lambert in confidence to his tea-cake. 'But here's the noble General, at all events. Well, Field Marshal, what have you done with the Standing Army?'
Tinling addressed himself to his hostess. 'Oh, Mrs. Jolliffe, I'm so sorry I was late, but I had just to run round to the stables for a minute. Oh, the other two? They're on duty—they're guarding the camp. In fact, I can't stay here very long myself.'
'But the poor dear boys must have their tea!' cried Mrs. Jolliffe.
'Well, you know,' said their veteran officer, as he helped himself to the marmalade, 'I don't think a little roughing it is at all a bad thing for them—teaches them that a soldier's life is not all jam.'
'No,' said Hazel, 'the General seems to get most of that.'
All Clarence said was: 'I'll trouble one of you girls for the tea-cake.'
'I don't think it's fair that the poor army should "rough," as you call it, while you stuff, Clarence,' said Hazel, indignantly. 'Mustn't they come in to tea, mother? It is such nonsense!'
'Yes, dear, run and call them in,' said Mrs. Jolliffe. 'I can't let my boys go without their meals, Clarence, it's so bad for them.'
'It's not discipline,' said the chief; 'still, if they must come, you had better take them this permit from me.' And he scribbled a line on a scrap of paper, which he handed to Hazel, who received it with the utmost disdain.
Hazel crossed the lawn and over a little rustic bridge to the kitchen garden and hothouses, beyond which was the paddock, where the fortress had been erected. It was a very imposing construction, built, with some help from the village carpenter, of portions of some disused fencing. The stockade had loopholes in it, and above the top she could see a fluttering flag and the point of a tent. Jack was perched up on a kind of look-out, and Guy was pacing solemnly before the covered entrance with a musket of very mild aspect over his shoulder.
'Who goes there?' he called out, some time after recognising her.
Hazel vouchsafed no direct reply to this challenge. 'You're to come in to tea directly,' she announced in her most peremptory tone.
'Advance, and give the countersign,' said the sentinel.
'Don't be a donkey!' returned Hazel, tossing back her long brown hair impatiently.
Guy levelled his firearm. It is exasperating when a sister can't enter into the spirit of the thing better than that. Who ever heard of a sentry being told, on challenging, 'not to be a donkey'? 'My orders are to fire on all suspicious persons,' he informed her.
Hazel stopped both her ears. 'No, Guy, please—it makes me jump so.'
'There's no cap on,' said he.
'Then there's a ramrod, or a pea, or something horrid,' she objected; 'do turn it the other way.'
'Hazel's all right, Guy,' said Jack, in rebuke of this excessive zeal; 'we can let her pass.'
'As if I wanted to pass!' exclaimed Hazel. 'I only came to bring you back to tea; and if you're afraid to go without leave, there's a permission from Clarence for you.'
'Oh! come in and have a look now you're here,' said the garrison more hospitably. 'You can't think how jolly the inside is.'
'Well, if I must,' she said; though, as a matter of fact, she was exceedingly curious to see the interior of the stronghold.
'It's like the ones in "Masterman Ready" and "Treasure Island," you see,' explained Jack, proudly. 'And it's pierced for musketry, too; we could open a withering fire on besiegers before they could come near us.'
'They would have to be rather stupid to want to besiege this, wouldn't they?' said Hazel.
'I don't see that—besiegers must besiege something. And it is snug, isn't it, now?'
Hazel was secretly much impressed. In the centre of the enclosure was the commander's tent, with a lantern fixed at the pole for night watches; and rugs and carpets were strewn about; at one of the angles of the palisading was the look-out—an elaborate erection of old wine-cases and egg-boxes—on the top of which was fixed a seven-and-sixpenny telescope that commanded the surrounding country for quite a hundred yards.
She was not the person, however, to go into raptures; she merely smiled a rather teasing little smile, and said, 'Mar-vellous!' but somehow, whatever sarcasm underlay this was accepted by both boys as a tribute.
'You can see now,' said Guy, in a reasonable tone, 'that there wouldn't have been room here for all you girls—now, would there?'
'Girls are always in the way—everywhere,' said Hazel, with a reproachful inflection which was quite lost upon her brothers.
'I knew you'd be sensible about it,' said Jack; 'you can't think what fun we have in here—especially at night, when the lantern's lit. Hallo! there's some one calling.'
A shrill whistle sounded from the kitchen garden, and, a moment after, a stone came flying over the stockade, and was stopped by the canvas of the tent.
'That's cool cheek!' said Jack; 'get up and reconnoitre, Guy—quick!'
Guy mounted the scaffold, and brought the telescope to bear upon the immediate neighbourhood with admirable coolness and science—but no particular result.
'We shall have to scour the bush and see if we can find any traces of the enemy,' said he with infinite relish.
'Was that the stone?' said Hazel, pointing to one that lay at the foot of the fence; 'because there seems to be some paper wrapped round it.'
'So there is!' said Jack, proceeding to unfold it. Presently he exclaimed, 'I say!'
'What is it now?' asked Hazel.
'Nothing for you—it's private!' said Jack, mysteriously. 'Here, Guy, come down and look at this.'
Guy read it and whistled. 'We must report this to the General at once,' he said gravely.
Both boys were very solemn, and yet had a certain novel air of satisfied importance.
'Shall we tell her?' asked Guy.
'She must know it some time,' returned Jack; 'we'll break it by degrees.—We've just had notice that we're going to be attacked by Red Indians, Hazel; don't be alarmed.'
'I'll try not to be,' she said, conquering a very strong inclination to laugh. She saw that they took it quite seriously; and, though she had at once suspected that some one in the village was playing them a trick, she did not choose to enlighten them. Hazel had a malicious desire to see what the General would do. 'I don't believe he will like the idea at all,' she said to herself. 'What fun it will be!'
Hazel's expectations seemed about to be fulfilled; for already she could hear steps on the plank of the little bridge, and in another minute the General himself entered the fortress.
'I say, you fellows,' he began, 'this is too bad—no one on guard, and a girl inside! Why, she might be a spy for anything you could tell!'
'Thank you, Clarence!' said Hazel; for this insinuation was rather trying to a person of her dignity.
'I say, General,' began Jack, 'never mind about rowing us now; we've some queer news to report. This has just fallen into our hands.'
Hazel watched Tinling closely as he read the paper. It was grimy, and printed in lead pencil, and contained these words:—'Be on the lukout. Red Ingians on the Worpath. I Herd Them Saying They ment to atack yure fort at nitefal. From a frend.'
She was soon compelled to own that she had done him a great injustice. He was certainly as far as possible from betraying the slightest fear; on the contrary, his eye seemed actually to brighten with satisfaction. He behaved exactly as all heroes in books of adventure do on such occasions—he went through it twice carefully, and then inquired at what time the warning had arrived.
'About five minutes ago. Round a stone,' answered Guy, with true military conciseness.
'This will be a bad business,' observed the General, his face brightening with the joy of battle. 'We have no time to spare—we must give these demons a lesson they will not forget!' (this was out of the books). 'Look to your arms, my men, and see that we are provisioned for a siege (you might get the cook to give us some of that shortbread, and the rest of the cake we had at tea, Private Jack). We cannot tell to what straits we may be reduced.'
'Then,' inquired Hazel, demurely, 'you mean to stay here and fight them?'
'To the last gasp!' said the General.
Hazel liked him better then than she had done since his first arrival.
'He really is a plucky boy after all,' she thought. 'I wonder if it will last?'