October shone royally on Richard’s fourteenth birthday. The brown
beechwoods and golden birches glowed to a brilliant sun. Banks of
moveless cloud hung about the horizon, mounded to the west, where slept
the wind. Promise of a great day for Raynham, as it proved to be,
though not in the manner marked out.
Already archery-booths and cricketing-tents were rising on the lower
grounds towards the river, whither the lads of Bursley and Lobourne, in
boats and in carts, shouting for a day of ale and honour, jogged
merrily to match themselves anew, and pluck at the living laurel from
each other’s brows, like manly Britons. The whole park was beginning to
be astir and resound with holiday cries. Sir Austin Feverel, a thorough
good Tory, was no game-preserver, and could be popular whenever he
chose, which Sir Males Papworth, on the other side of the river, a
fast-handed Whig and terror to poachers, never could be. Half the
village of Lobourne was seen trooping through the avenues of the park.
Fiddlers and gipsies clamoured at the gates for admission: white
smocks, and slate, surmounted by hats of serious brim, and now and then
a scarlet cloak, smacking of the old country, dotted the grassy sweeps
to the levels.
And all the time the star of these festivities was receding further and
further, and eclipsing himself with his reluctant serf Ripton, who kept
asking what they were to do and where they were going, and how late it
was in the day, and suggesting that the lads of Lobourne would be
calling out for them, and Sir Austin requiring their presence, without
getting any attention paid to his misery or remonstrances. For Richard
had been requested by his father to submit to medical examination like
a boor enlisting for a soldier, and he was in great wrath.
He was flying as though he would have flown from the shameful thought
of what had been asked of him. By-and-by he communicated his sentiments
to Ripton, who said they were those of a girl: an offensive remark,
remembering which, Richard, after they had borrowed a couple of guns at
the bailiff’s farm, and Ripton had fired badly, called his friend a
fool.
Feeling that circumstances were making him look wonderfully like one,
Ripton lifted his head and retorted defiantly, “I’m not!”
This angry contradiction, so very uncalled for, annoyed Richard, who
was still smarting at the loss of the birds, owing to Ripton’s bad
shot, and was really the injured party. He, therefore bestowed the
abusive epithet on Ripton anew, and with increase of emphasis.
“You shan’t call me so, then, whether I am or not,” says Ripton, and
sucks his lips.
This was becoming personal. Richard sent up his brows, and stared at
his defier an instant. He then informed him that he certainly should
call him so, and would not object to call him so twenty times.
“Do it, and see!” returns Ripton, rocking on his feet, and breathing
quick.
With a gravity of which only boys and other barbarians are capable,
Richard went through the entire number, stressing the epithet to
increase the defiance and avoid monotony, as he progressed, while
Ripton bobbed his head every time in assent, as it were, to his
comrade’s accuracy, and as a record for his profound humiliation. The
dog they had with them gazed at the extraordinary performance with
interrogating wags of the tail.
Twenty times, duly and deliberately, Richard repeated the obnoxious
word.
At the twentieth solemn iteration of Ripton’s capital shortcoming,
Ripton delivered a smart back-hander on Richard’s mouth, and squared
precipitately; perhaps sorry when the deed was done, for he was a
kind-hearted lad, and as Richard simply bowed in acknowledgment of the
blow he thought he had gone too far. He did not know the young
gentleman he was dealing with. Richard was extremely cool.
“Shall we fight here?” he said.
“Anywhere you like,” replied Ripton.
“A little more into the wood, I think. We may be interrupted.” And
Richard led the way with a courteous reserve that somewhat chilled
Ripton’s ardour for the contest. On the skirts of the wood, Richard
threw off his jacket and waistcoat, and, quite collected, waited for
Ripton to do the same. The latter boy was flushed and restless; older
and broader, but not so tight-limbed and well-set. The Gods, sole
witnesses of their battle, betted dead against him. Richard had mounted
the white cockade of the Feverels, and there was a look in him that
asked for tough work to extinguish. His brows, slightly lined upward at
the temples, converging to a knot about the well-set straight nose; his
full grey eyes, open nostrils, and planted feet, and a gentlemanly air
of calm and alertness, formed a spirited picture of a young combatant.
As for Ripton, he was all abroad, and fought in school-boy style—that
is, he rushed at the foe head foremost, and struck like a windmill. He
was a lumpy boy. When he did hit, he made himself felt; but he was at
the mercy of science. To see him come dashing in, blinking and puffing
and whirling his arms abroad while the felling blow went straight
between them, you perceived that he was fighting a fight of
desperation, and knew it. For the dreaded alternative glared him in the
face that, if he yielded, he must look like what he had been twenty
times calumniously called; and he would die rather than yield, and
swing his windmill till he dropped. Poor boy! he dropped frequently.
The gallant fellow fought for appearances, and down he went. The Gods
favour one of two parties. Prince Turnus was a noble youth; but he had
not Pallas at his elbow. Ripton was a capital boy; he had no science.
He could not prove he was not a fool! When one comes to think of it,
Ripton did choose the only possible way, and we should all of us have
considerable difficulty in proving the negative by any other. Ripton
came on the unerring fist again and again; and if it was true, as he
said in short colloquial gasps, that he required as much beating as an
egg to be beaten thoroughly, a fortunate interruption alone saved our
friend from resembling that substance. The boys heard summoning voices,
and beheld Mr. Morton of Poer Hall and Austin Wentworth stepping
towards them.
A truce was sounded, jackets were caught up, guns shouldered, and off
they trotted in concert through the depths of the wood, not stopping
till that and half-a-dozen fields and a larch plantation were well
behind them.
When they halted to take breath, there was a mutual study of faces.
Ripton’s was much discoloured, and looked fiercer with its natural
war-paint than the boy felt. Nevertheless, he squared up dauntlessly on
the new ground, and Richard, whose wrath was appeased, could not
refrain from asking him whether he had not really had enough.
“Never!” shouts the noble enemy.
“Well, look here,” said Richard, appealing to common sense, “I’m tired
of knocking you down. I’ll say you’re not a fool, if you’ll give me
your hand.”
Ripton demurred an instant to consult with honour, who bade him catch
at his chance.
He held out his hand. “There!” and the boys grasped hands and were fast
friends. Ripton had gained his point, and Richard decidedly had the
best of it. So, they were on equal ground. Both, could claim a victory,
which was all the better for their friendship.
Ripton washed his face and comforted his nose at a brook, and was now
ready to follow his friend wherever he chose to lead. They continued to
beat about for birds. The birds on the Raynham estates were found
singularly cunning, and repeatedly eluded the aim of these prime shots,
so they pushed their expedition into the lands of their neighbors, in
search of a stupider race, happily oblivious of the laws and conditions
of trespass; unconscious, too, that they were poaching on the demesne
of the notorious Farmer Blaize, the free-trade farmer under the shield
of the Papworths, no worshipper of the Griffin between two
Wheatsheaves; destined to be much allied with Richard’s fortunes from
beginning to end. Farmer Blaize hated poachers, and, especially young
chaps poaching, who did it mostly from impudence. He heard the
audacious shots popping right and left, and going forth to have a
glimpse at the intruders, and observing their size, swore he would
teach my gentlemen a thing, lords or no lords.
Richard had brought down a beautiful cock-pheasant, and was exulting
over it, when the farmer’s portentous figure burst upon them, cracking
an avenging horsewhip. His salute was ironical.
“Havin’ good sport, gentlemen, are ye?”
“Just bagged a splendid bird!” radiant Richard informed him.
“Oh!” Farmer Blaize gave an admonitory flick of the whip.
“Just let me clap eye on’t, then.”
“Say, please,” interposed Ripton, who was not blind to doubtful
aspects.
Farmer Blaize threw up his chin, and grinned grimly.
“Please to you, sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn’t much mind
what come t’yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do. Tall
ye what ’tis!” He changed his banter to business, “That bird’s mine!
Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young scoundrels! I
know ye!” And he became exceedingly opprobrious, and uttered contempt
of the name of Feverel.
Richard opened his eyes.
“If you wants to be horsewhipped, you’ll stay where y’are!” continued
the farmer. “Giles Blaize never stands nonsense!”
“Then we’ll stay,” quoth Richard.
“Good! so be’t! If you will have’t, have’t, my men!”
As a preparatory measure, Farmer Blaize seized a wing of the bird, on
which both boys flung themselves desperately, and secured it minus the
pinion.
“That’s your game,” cried the farmer. “Here’s a taste of horsewhip for
ye. I never stands nonsense!” and sweetch went the mighty whip, well
swayed. The boys tried to close with him. He kept his distance and
lashed without mercy. Black blood was made by Farmer Blaize that day!
The boys wriggled, in spite of themselves. It was like a relentless
serpent coiling, and biting, and stinging their young veins to madness.
Probably they felt the disgrace of the contortions they were made to go
through more than the pain, but the pain was fierce, for the farmer
laid about from a practised arm, and did not consider that he had done
enough till he was well breathed and his ruddy jowl inflamed. He
paused, to receive the remainder of the cock-pheasant in his face.
“Take your beastly bird,” cried Richard.
“Money, my lads, and interest,” roared the farmer, lashing out again.
Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course open to them.
They decided to surrender the field.
“Look! you big brute,” Richard shook his gun, hoarse with passion, “I’d
have shot you, if I’d been loaded. Mind if I come across you when I’m
loaded, you coward, I’ll fire!” The un-English nature of this threat
exasperated Farmer Blaize, and he pressed the pursuit in time to bestow
a few farewell stripes as they were escaping tight-breeched into
neutral territory. At the hedge they parleyed a minute, the farmer to
inquire if they had had a mortal good tanning and were satisfied, for
when they wanted a further instalment of the same they were to come for
it to Belthorpe Farm, and there it was in pickle: the boys meantime
exploding in menaces and threats of vengeance, on which the farmer
contemptuously turned his back. Ripton had already stocked an armful of
flints for the enjoyment of a little skirmishing. Richard, however,
knocked them all out, saying, “No! Gentlemen don’t fling stones; leave
that to the blackguards.”
“Just one shy at him!” pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer Blaize’s
broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation of the
advantages of light troops in opposition to heavies.
“No,” said Richard, imperatively, “no stones,” and marched briskly
away. Ripton followed with a sigh. His leader’s magnanimity was wholly
beyond him. A good spanking mark at the farmer would have relieved
Master Ripton; it would have done nothing to console Richard Feverel
for the ignominy he had been compelled to submit to. Ripton was
familiar with the rod, a monster much despoiled of his terrors by
intimacy. Birch-fever was past with this boy. The horrible sense of
shame, self-loathing, universal hatred, impotent vengeance, as if the
spirit were steeped in abysmal blackness, which comes upon a courageous
and sensitive youth condemned for the first time to taste this piece of
fleshly bitterness, and suffer what he feels is a defilement, Ripton
had weathered and forgotten. He was seasoned wood, and took the world
pretty wisely; not reckless of castigation, as some boys become, nor
oversensitive as to dishonour, as his friend and comrade beside him
was.
Richard’s blood was poisoned. He had the fever on him severely. He
would not allow stone-flinging, because it was a habit of his to
discountenance it. Mere gentlemanly considerations has scarce shielded
Farmer Blaize, and certain very ungentlemanly schemes were coming to
ghastly heads in the tumult of his brain; rejected solely from their
glaring impracticability even to his young intelligence. A sweeping and
consummate vengeance for the indignity alone should satisfy him.
Something tremendous must be done; and done without delay. At one
moment he thought of killing all the farmer’s cattle; next of killing
him; challenging him to single combat with the arms, and according to
the fashion of gentlemen. But the farmer was a coward; he would refuse.
Then he, Richard Feverel, would stand by the farmer’s bedside, and
rouse him; rouse him to fight with powder and ball in his own chamber,
in the cowardly midnight, where he might tremble, but dare not refuse.
“Lord!” cried simple Ripton, while these hopeful plots were raging in
his comrade’s brain, now sparkling for immediate execution, and anon
lapsing disdainfully dark in their chances of fulfilment, “how I wish
you’d have let me notch him, Ricky! I’m a safe shot. I never miss. I
should feel quite jolly if I’d spanked him once. We should have had the
beat of him at that game. I say!” and a sharp thought drew Ripton’s
ideas nearer home, “I wonder whether my nose is as bad as he says!
Where can I see myself?”
To these exclamations Richard was deaf, and he trudged steadily
forward, facing but one object.
After tearing through innumerable hedges, leaping fences, jumping
dykes, penetrating brambly copses, and getting dirty, ragged, and
tired, Ripton awoke from his dream of Farmer Blaize and a blue nose to
the vivid consciousness of hunger; and this grew with the rapidity of
light upon him, till in the course of another minute he was enduring
the extremes of famine, and ventured to question his leader whither he
was being conducted. Raynham was out of sight. They were a long way
down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools,
yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen;
the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at
leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling
as in the first loneliness of creation; uncooked things that a
famishing boy cannot possibly care for, and must despise. Ripton was in
despair.
“Where are you going to?” he inquired with a voice of the last time of
asking, and halted resolutely.
Richard now broke his silence to reply, “Anywhere.”
“Anywhere!” Ripton took up the moody word. “But ain’t you awfully
hungry?” he gasped vehemently, in a way that showed the total emptiness
of his stomach.
“No,” was Richard’s brief response.
“Not hungry!” Ripton’s amazement lent him increased vehemence. “Why,
you haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast! Not hungry? I declare
I’m starving. I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry bread and cheese!”
Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated a similar
demonstration of the philosopher.
“Come,” cried Ripton, “at all events, tell us where you’re going to
stop.”
Richard faced about to make a querulous retort. The injured and hapless
visage that met his eye disarmed him. The lad’s nose, though not
exactly of the dreaded hue, was really becoming discoloured. To upbraid
him would be cruel. Richard lifted his head, surveyed the position, and
exclaiming “Here!” dropped down on a withered bank, leaving Ripton to
contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new move was a worse
perplexity.