The Ordeal of Richard Feverel | Page 5

Serpent until Eve sided with
him: a period that might be deferred, he said. He had a system of
education for his son. How it worked we shall see.
CHAPTER II
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 lining laurel from each
other's brows, line 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