III - The Stockade

Summary

WHEN Oliver and Felix started, they left Philip, the third and youngest of the three brothers, still at breakfast. They turned to the left, on getting out of doors, and again to the left, through the covered passage between the steward's store and the kitchens. Then crossing the waggon yard, they paused a moment to glance in at the forge, where two men were repairing part of a plough.

Oliver must also look for a moment at his mare, after which they directed their steps to the South Gate. The massive oaken door was open, the bolts having been drawn back at hornblow. There was a guard-room on one side of the gate under the platform in the corner, where there was always supposed to be a watch.

But in times of peace, and when there were no apprehensions of attack, the men whose turn it was to watch there were often called away for a time to assist in some labour going forward, and at that moment were helping to move the woolpacks farther into the warehouse. Still they were close at hand, and had the day watchman or warder, who was now on the roof, blown his horn, would have rushed direct to the gate. Felix did not like this relaxation of discipline. His precise ideas were upset at the absence of the guard; method, organisation, and precision, were the characteristics of his mind, and this kind of uncertainty irritated him.

‘I wish Sir Constans would insist on the guard being kept,’ he remarked. Children, in speaking of their parents, invariably gave them their titles. Now their father's title was properly ‘my lord’, as he was a baron, and one of the most ancient. But he had so long abnegated the exercise of his rights and privileges, sinking the noble in the mechanician, that men had forgotten the proper style in which they should address him. ‘Sir’ was applied to all nobles, whether they possessed estates or not. The brothers were invariably addressed as Sir Felix or Sir Oliver. It marked, therefore, the low estimation in which the Baron was held when even his own sons spoke of him by that title.

Oliver, though a military man by profession, laughed at Felix's strict view of the guards’ duties. Familiarity with danger, and natural carelessness, had rendered him contemptuous of it.