The Ordeal of Richard Feverel | Page 7

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