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Henrik Ibsen - "A Doll's House"

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The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete




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.




CHAPTER III

Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes, not written or
formally taught, but intuitively understood by all, and invariably acted
upon by the loyal and the true. The race is not nearly civilized, we must
remember. Thus, not to follow your leader whithersoever he may think
proper to lead; to back out of an expedition because the end of it frowns
dubious, and the present fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a comrade on
the road, and return home without him: these are tricks which no boy of
spirit would be guilty of, let him come to any description of mortal
grief in consequence. Better so than have his own conscience denouncing
him sneak. Some boys who behave boldly enough are not troubled by this
conscience, and the eyes and the lips of their fellows have to supply the
deficiency. They do it with just as haunting, and even more horrible
pertinacity, than the inner voice, and the result, if the probation be
not very severe and searching, is the same. The leader can rely on the
faithfulness of his host: the comrade is sworn to serve. Master Ripton
Thompson was naturally loyal. The idea of turning off and forsaking his
friend never once crossed his mind, though his condition was desperate,
and his friend's behaviour that of a Bedlamite. He announced several
times impatiently that they would be too late for dinner. His friend did
not budge. Dinner seemed nothing to him. There he lay plucking grass, and
patting the old dog's nose, as if incapable of conceiving what a thing
hunger was. Ripton took half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at last flung
himself down beside the taciturn boy, accepting his fate.

Now, the chance that works for certain purposes sent a smart shower from
the sinking sun, and the wet sent two strangers for shelter in the lane
behind the hedge where the boys reclined. One was a travelling tinker,
who lit a pipe and spread a tawny umbrella. The other was a burly young
countryman, pipeless and tentless. They saluted with a nod, and began
recounting for each other's benefit the daylong-doings of the weather, as
it had affected their individual experience and followed their
prophecies. Both had anticipated and foretold a bit of rain before night,
and therefore both welcomed the wet with satisfaction. A monotonous
betweenwhiles kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony with the still
hum of the air. From the weather theme they fell upon the blessings of
tobacco; how it was the poor man's friend, his company, his consolation,
his comfort, his refuge at night, his first thought in the morning.

"Better than a wife!" chuckled the tinker. "No curtain-lecturin' with a
pipe. Your pipe an't a shrew."

"That be it!" the other chimed in. "Your pipe doan't mak' ye out wi' all
the cash Saturday evenin'."

"Take one," said the tinker, in the enthusiasm of the moment, handing a
grimy short clay. Speed-the-Plough filled from the tinker's pouch, and
continued his praises.

"Penny a day, and there y'are, primed! Better than a wife? Ha, ha!"

"And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when ye wants," added
tinker.

"So ye can!" Speed-the-Plough took him up. "And ye doan't want for to.
Leastways, t'other case. I means pipe."

"And," continued tinker, comprehending him perfectly, "it don't bring
repentance after it."

"Not nohow, master, it doan't! And"--Speed-the-Plough cocked his eye--"it
doan't eat up half the victuals, your pipe doan't."

Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a clincher, which
the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to speak, sealed up the subject
by saying the best thing that could be said, the two smoked for some time
in silence to the drip and patter of the shower.

Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through the briar hedge.
He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her, every now
and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought
that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full length, with
his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the tinker's pots, smoking,
profoundly contemplative. The minutes seemed to be taken up alternately
by the grey puffs from their mouths.

It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he, "Times is bad!"

His companion assented, "Sure-ly!"

"But it somehow comes round right," resumed the tinker. "Why, look here.
Where's the good o' moping? I sees it all come round right and tight. Now
I travels about. I've got my beat. 'Casion calls me t'other day to
Newcastle!--Eh?"

"Coals!" ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously.

"Coals!" echoed the tinker. "You ask what I goes there for, mayhap? Never
you mind. One sees a mort o' life in my trade. Not for coals it isn't.
And I don't carry 'em there, neither. Anyhow, I comes back. London's my
mark. Says I, I'll see a bit o' the sea, and steps aboard a collier. We
were as nigh wrecked as the prophet Paul."

"--A--who's him?" the other wished to know.

"Read your Bible," said the tinker. "We pitched and tossed--'tain't that
game at sea 'tis on land, I can tell ye! I thinks, down we're
a-going--say your prayers, Bob Tiles! That was a night, to be sure! But
God's above the devil, and here I am, ye see." Speed-the-Plough lurched
round on his elbow and regarded him indifferently. "D'ye call that
doctrin'? He bean't al'ays, or I shoo'n't be scrapin' my heels wi'
nothin' to do, and, what's warse, nothin' to eat. Why, look heer. Luck's
luck, and bad luck's the con-trary. Varmer Bollop, t'other day, has's
rick burnt down. Next night his gran'ry's burnt. What do he tak' and go
and do? He takes and goes and hangs unsel', and turns us out of his
employ. God warn't above the devil then, I thinks, or I can't make out
the reckonin'."

The tinker cleared his throat, and said it was a bad case.

"And a darn'd bad case. I'll tak' my oath on't!" cried Speed-the-Plough.
"Well, look heer! Heer's another darn'd bad case. I threshed for Varmer
Blaize Blaize o' Beltharpe afore I goes to Varmer Bollop. Varmer Blaize
misses pilkins. He swears our chaps steals pilkins. 'Twarn't me steals
'em. What do he tak' and go and do? He takes and tarns us off, me and
another, neck and crop, to scuffle about and starve, for all he keers.
God warn't above the devil then, I thinks. Not nohow, as I can see!"

The tinker shook his head, and said that was a bad case also.

"And you can't mend it," added Speed-the-Plough. "It's bad, and there it
be. But I'll tell ye what, master. Bad wants payin' for." He nodded and
winked mysteriously. "Bad has its wages as well's honest work, I'm
thinkin'. Varmer Bollop I don't owe no grudge to: Varmer Blaize I do. And
I shud like to stick a Lucifer in his rick some dry windy night."
Speed-the-Plough screwed up an eye villainously. "He wants hittin' in the
wind,--jest where the pocket is, master, do Varmer Blaize, and he'll cry
out 'O Lor'!' Varmer Blaize will. You won't get the better o' Varmer
Blaize by no means, as I makes out, if ye doan't hit into him jest
there."

The tinker sent a rapid succession of white clouds from his mouth, and
said that would be taking the devil's side of a bad case.
Speed-the-Plough observed energetically that, if Farmer Blaize was on the
other, he should be on that side.

There was a young gentleman close by, who thought with him. The hope of
Raynham had lent a careless half-compelled attention to the foregoing
dialogue, wherein a common labourer and a travelling tinker had
propounded and discussed one of the most ancient theories of transmundane
dominion and influence on mundane affairs. He now started to his feet,
and came tearing through the briar hedge, calling out for one of them to
direct them the nearest road to Bursley. The tinker was kindling
preparations for his tea, under the tawny umbrella. A loaf was set forth,
oh which Ripton's eyes, stuck in the edge, fastened ravenously.
Speed-the-Plough volunteered information that Bursley was a good three
mile from where they stood, and a good eight mile from Lobourne.

"I'll give you half-a-crown for that loaf, my good fellow," said Richard
to the tinker.

"It's a bargain;" quoth the tinker, "eh, missus?"

His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.

The half-crown was tossed down, and Ripton, who had just succeeded in
freeing his limbs from the briar, prickly as a hedgehog, collared the
loaf.

"Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake," said the tinker to
his companion. "Come! we'll to Bursley after 'em, and talk it out over a
pot o' beer." Speed-the-Plough was nothing loath, and in a short time
they were following the two lads on the road to Bursley, while a
horizontal blaze shot across the autumn and from the Western edge of the
rain-cloud.




CHAPTER IV

Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over Raynham, and
Sir Austin was in grievous discontent. None had seen them save Austin
Wentworth and Mr. Morton. The baronet sat construing their account of the
flight of the lads when they were hailed, and resolved it into an act of
rebellion on the part of his son. At dinner he drank the young heir's
health in ominous silence. Adrian Harley stood up in his place to propose
the health. His speech was a fine piece of rhetoric. He warmed in it
till, after the Ciceronic model, inanimate objects were personified, and
Richard's table-napkin and vacant chair were invoked to follow the steps
of a peerless father, and uphold with his dignity the honour of the
Feverels. Austin Wentworth, whom a soldier's death compelled to take his
father's place in support of the toast, was tame after such
magniloquence. But the reply, the thanks which young Richard should have
delivered in person were not forthcoming. Adrian's oratory had given but
a momentary life to napkin and chair. The company of honoured friends,
and aunts and uncles, remotest cousins, were glad to disperse and seek
amusement in music and tea. Sir Austin did his utmost to be hospitable
cheerful, and requested them to dance. If he had desired them to laugh he
would have been obeyed, and in as hearty a manner.

"How triste!" said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne's curate, as that most
enamoured automaton went through his paces beside her with professional
stiffness.

"One who does not suffer can hardly assent," the curate answered, basking
in her beams.

"Ah, you are good!" exclaimed the lady. "Look at my Clare. She will not
dance on her cousin's birthday with anyone but him. What are we to do to
enliven these people?"

"Alas, madam! you cannot do for all what you do for one," the curate
sighed, and wherever she wandered in discourse, drew her back with silken
strings to gaze on his enamoured soul.

He was the only gratified stranger present. The others had designs on the
young heir. Lady Attenbury of Longford House had brought her
highly-polished specimen of market-ware, the Lady Juliana Jaye, for a
first introduction to him, thinking he had arrived at an age to estimate
and pine for her black eyes and pretty pert mouth. The Lady Juliana had
to pair off with a dapper Papworth, and her mama was subjected to the
gallantries of Sir Miles, who talked land and steam-engines to her till
she was sick, and had to be impertinent in self-defence. Lady Blandish,
the delightful widow, sat apart with Adrian, and enjoyed his sarcasms on
the company. By ten at night the poor show ended, and the rooms were
dark, dark as the prognostics multitudinously hinted by the disappointed
and chilled guests concerning the probable future of the hope of Raynham.
Little Clare kissed her mama, curtsied to the lingering curate, and went
to bed like a very good girl. Immediately the maid had departed, little
Clare deliberately exchanged night, attire for that of day. She was noted
as an obedient child. Her light was allowed to burn in her room for
half-an-hour, to counteract her fears of the dark. She took the light,
and stole on tiptoe to Richard's room. No Richard was there. She peeped
in further and further. A trifling agitation of the curtains shot her
back through the door and along the passage to her own bedchamber with
extreme expedition. She was not much alarmed, but feeling guilty she was
on her guard. In a short time she was prowling about the passages again.
Richard had slighted and offended the little lady, and was to be asked
whether he did not repent such conduct toward his cousin; not to be asked
whether he had forgotten to receive his birthday kiss from her; for, if
he did not choose to remember that, Miss Clare would never remind him of
it, and to-night should be his last chance of a reconciliation. Thus she
meditated, sitting on a stair, and presently heard Richard's voice below
in the hall, shouting for supper.

"Master Richard has returned," old Benson the butler tolled out
intelligence to Sir Austin.

"Well?" said the baronet.

"He complains of being hungry," the butler hesitated, with a look of
solemn disgust.

"Let him eat."

Heavy Benson hesitated still more as he announced that the boy had called
for wine. It was an unprecedented thing. Sir Austin's brows were
portending an arch, but Adrian suggested that he wanted possibly to drink
his birthday, and claret was conceded.

The boys were in the vortex of a partridge-pie when Adrian strolled in to
them. They had now changed characters. Richard was uproarious. He drank a
health with every glass; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes brilliant.
Ripton looked very much like a rogue on the tremble of detection, but his
honest hunger and the partridge-pie shielded him awhile from Adrian's
scrutinizing glance. Adrian saw there was matter for study, if it were
only on Master Ripton's betraying nose, and sat down to hear and mark.

"Good sport, gentlemen, I trust to hear?" he began his quiet banter, and
provoked a loud peal of laughter from Richard.

"Ha, ha! I say, Rip: 'Havin' good sport, gentlemen, are ye?' You remember
the farmer! Your health, parson! We haven't had our sport yet. We're
going to have some first-rate sport. Oh, well! we haven't much show of
birds. We shot for pleasure, and returned them to the proprietors. You're
fond of game, parson! Ripton is a dead shot in what Cousin Austin calls
the Kingdom of 'would-have-done' and 'might-have-been.' Up went the
birds, and cries Rip, 'I've forgotten to load!' Oh, ho!--Rip! some more
claret.--Do just leave that nose of yours alone.--Your health, Ripton
Thompson! The birds hadn't the decency to wait for him, and so, parson,
it's their fault, and not Rip's, you haven't a dozen brace at your feet.
What have you been doing at home, Cousin Rady?"

"Playing Hamlet, in the absence of the Prince of Denmark. The day without
you, my dear boy, must be dull, you know."

"'He speaks: can I trust what he says is sincere?
There's an edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer.'

"Sandoe's poems! You know the couplet, Mr. Rady. Why shouldn't I quote
Sandoe? You know you like him, Rady. But, if you've missed me, I'm sorry.
Rip and I have had a beautiful day. We've made new acquaintances. We've
seen the world. I'm the monkey that has seen the world, and I'm going to
tell you all about it. First, there's a gentleman who takes a rifle for a
fowling-piece. Next, there's a farmer who warns everybody, gentleman and
beggar, off his premises. Next, there's a tinker and a ploughman, who
think that God is always fighting with the devil which shall command the
kingdoms of the earth. The tinker's for God, and the ploughman"--

"I'll drink your health, Ricky," said Adrian, interrupting.

"Oh, I forgot, parson;--I mean no harm, Adrian. I'm only telling what
I've heard."

"No harm, my dear boy," returned Adrian. "I'm perfectly aware that
Zoroaster is not dead. You have been listening to a common creed. Drink
the Fire-worshippers, if you will."