The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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'I feel as if I was going to be ill and die, and I hope I am,' said Ida,
petulantly.

'Don't, dear; it's wicked to say such a thing as that. You needn't be
afraid of your poor pa; he takes everything easily.'

'Yes, he is always good. Where is he?'

'Not up yet. He comes down in time for his little _déjeûner à la
fourchette_. Poor fellow, he had to get up so early in India.'

Captain Palliser had for the last seven years been trying to recover
those arrears of sleep incurred during his Eastern career. He had been
active enough under a tropical sky, when his mind was kept alive by a
modicum of hard work and a very wide margin of sport--pig-sticking,
peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But
now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of
Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he
was glad to shorten his days by dozing away the fresher hours of the
morning, while his wife toiled at the preparation of that elaborate meal
which he loved to talk about as tiffin.

Poor little Mrs. Palliser made strenuous efforts to keep the sparsely
furnished dusty house as clean and trim as it could be kept; but her life
was a perpetual conflict with other people's untidiness.

The house was let furnished, and everything was in the third-rate French
style--inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little
rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers,
chairs cushioned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham
tortoiseshell clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece,
alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing
home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the
rooms, which seemed mere cells to Ida after the spaciousness of
Mauleverer Manor and The Knoll. She wondered how her father and mother
could breathe in such rooms.

That bed-chamber to which Mrs. Palliser introduced her step-daughter was
even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot
here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden
horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence
everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking
chair, a battered old table, a heap of old illustrated newspapers, and
torn toy-books.

'You won't mind Vernon's using the room in the day, dear, will you?' said
Mrs. Palliser, apologetically. 'It shall be tidied for you at night.'

This meant that in the daytime Ida would have no place for retreat, no
nook or corner of the house which she might call her own. She submitted
meekly even to this deprivation, feeling that she was an intruder who had
no right to be there.

'I should like to see my father soon,' she said, with a trembling lip,
stooping down to caress Vernon, who had followed them upstairs.

He was a lovely, fair-haired boy, with big candid blue eyes, a lovable,
confiding child, full of life and spirits and friendly feeling towards
all mankind and the whole animal creation, down to its very lowest forms.

'You shall have your breakfast with him,' said Mrs. Palliser, feeling
that she was conferring a great favour, for the Captain's breakfast was a
meal apart. 'I don't say but what he'll be a little cross to you at
first; but you must put up with that. He'll come round afterwards.'

'He has not seen me for two years and a half,' said Ida, thinking that
fatherly affection ought to count for something under such circumstances.

'Yes, it's only two years and a half,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, 'and you
were to have stayed at Mauleverer Manor three years. Miss Pew is a wicked
old woman to cheat your father out of six months' board and tuition. He
paid her fifty pounds in one lump when he articled you--fifty pounds--a
heap of money for people in our position; and here you are, come back to
us like a bad penny.'

'I am very sorry,' faltered Ida, reddening at that unflattering
comparison. 'But I worked very hard at Mauleverer, and am tolerably
experienced in tuition. I must try to get a governess's situation
directly, and then I shall be paid a salary, and shall be able to give
you back the fifty pounds by degrees.'

'Ah, that's the dreadful part of it all,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, who was
very seldom in the open air, and had that despondent view of life common
to people who live within four narrow walls. 'Goodness knows how you are
ever to get a situation without references. Miss Pew says you are not to
refer to her; and who else is there who knows anything of you or your
capacity?'

'Yes, there is some one else. Bessie Wendover and her family.'

'The people you went to visit in Hampshire. Ah! there went another five
pounds in a lump. You have been a heavy expense to us, Ida. I don't know
whether anyone wanting to employ you as a governess would take such a
reference as that. People are so particular. But we must hope for the
best, and in the meantime you can make yourself useful at home in taking
care of Vernon and teaching him his letters. He is dreadfully backward.'

'He is an angel,' said Ida, lifting the cherub in her arms, and letting
the fair, curly head nestle upon her shoulder. 'I will wait upon him like
a slave. You do love me, don't you, pet?'

'Ess, I love 'oo, but I don't know who 'oo is. _Connais pas_,' said
Vernon, shaking his head vehemently.

'I am your sister, darling, your only sister.'

'My half-sister,' said Vernon. 'Maman said I had a half-sister, and she
was naughty. _Dites donc_, would a whole sister be twice as big as you?'

Thus in his baby language, which may be easier imagined than described,
gravely questioned the boy.

'I am your sister, dearest, heart and soul. There is no such thing as
half-love or half-sisterhood between us. You should not have talked to
him like that, mother,' said Ida, turning her reproachful gaze upon her
step-mother, who was melted to tears.

'Your father was so upset by Miss Pew's letter,' she murmured
apologetically. 'To pay fifty pounds for you, and for it to end in such
humiliation as that. You must own that it was hard for us.'

'It was harder for me,' said Ida; 'I had to stand up and face that wicked
woman, who knew that I had done no wrong, and who wreaked her malignity
upon me because I am cleverer and better-looking than ever she was in her
life.'

'I must go and make your father's omelette,' said the stepmother, 'while
you tidy yourself for breakfast. I think there's some water on the
washstand, and Vernon shall bring you a clean towel.'

The little fellow trotted out after his mother, and trotted back
presently with the towel--one towel, which was about in proportion to the
water-jug and basin. Ida shuddered, remembering the plentitude of water
and towels at The Knoll. She made her toilet as well as she could, with
the scantiest materials, as she might have done on board ship; shook and
brushed the shabby gray cashmere--her wedding gown, she thought, with a
bitter smile--before she put it on again, and then went down the bare
narrow deal staircase, superb in all the freshness of her youth and
beauty, which neither care nor poverty could spoil.

Captain Palliser was pacing up and down his little dining parlour,
looking flurried and anxious. He turned suddenly as Ida entered, and
stood staring at her.

'By Jove, how handsome you have grown!' he said, and then he look her in
his arms and kissed her. 'But you know, my dear, this is really too bad,'
he went on in a fretful tone,' to come back upon us like a bad penny.'

'That is what my step-mother said just now.'

'My dear, how can one help saying it, when it's the truth? After my
paying fifty pounds, don't you know, and thinking that you were
comfortably disposed of for the next three years, and that at the expiry
of the term Miss Pew would place you in a gentleman's family, where you
would receive from sixty to a hundred per annum, according to your
acquirements--those were her very words--to have you sent back to us like
this, in disgrace, and to be told that you had been carrying on in an
absurd way with a young man on the bank of a river. It is most
humiliating. And now my wife tells me the young man has not a sixpence
which makes the whole thing so very culpable.'

'Please let me tell you the extent of my iniquity, father, and then you
can judge what right Miss Pew had to expel me.'

Whereupon Ida quietly described her afternoon promenades upon the
river-path, with the Fräulein always in her company, and how her friend's
cousin had been permitted to walk up and down with them.

'Nobody supposes there was any actual harm,' replied Captain Palliser,
'but you must have been perfectly aware that you were acting
foolishly--that this kind of thing was a violation of the school
etiquette. Come, now, you knew Miss Pew would disapprove of such goings
on, did you not?'

'Well, yes, no doubt I knew old Pew would be horrified. Perhaps it was
the idea of that which gave a zest to the thing.'

'Precisely! and you never thought of my fifty pounds, and you ran this
risk for the sake of a young man without a penny, who never could be your
husband.'

Ida grew scarlet and then deadly pale.

'There, don't look so distressed, child. I must try to forget my fifty
pounds, and to think of your future career. It is a deuced awkward
business--here come the omelette and the coffee--an escapade of this kind
is always cropping up against a girl in after life--sit down and make
yourself comfortable--capital dish of kidneys--the world is so small; and
of course every pupil at Mauleverer Manor will gabble about this
business. No mushrooms!--what is the little woman thinking about?'

Captain Palliser seated himself, and arranged his napkin under his chin,
French fashion. His features were of that aquiline type which seems to
have been invented on purpose for army men. His eyes were light blue,
like his boy's--Ida's dark eyes were a maternal inheritance--his hair was
auburn, sprinkled with gray, his moustache straw-colour and with a
carefully trained cavalry droop. His clothes and boots were perfect of
their kind, albeit they had seen good wear. He had been heard to declare
that he had rather wear feathers and war-paint, like a red Indian, than a
coat made by a third-rate tailor. He was tall and inclining to stoutness,
broad-shouldered, and with an easy carriage and a nonchalant air, which
were not without their charm. He had what most people called a patrician
look--that is to say the air of never having done anything useful in the
whole course of his existence--not such a patrician as a Palmerston, a
Russell, a Derby, or a Salisbury, but the ideal lotus-eating aristocrat,
who dresses, drives, and dines and gossips through a languid existence.

The Captain's career in the East had not been particularly brilliant. His
lines had not lain in great battles or stirring campaigns. Except during
the awful episode of the Mutiny, when he was still a young man, he had
seen little active service. His life, since his return from India, had
been a blank.

His mind, never vigorous, had rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his
days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life's river
as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events
of his life--if it was well with these it was well with him.

There was a rustic tavern where in summer a good many people came to
dine, either in the house or the garden, and in a room adjoining the
kitchen there was a small French billiard-table with very big balls. Here
the Captain played of an evening with the _habitués_ of the place, and
was much looked up to for his superior skill. An occasional drive into
Dieppe on the _banquette_ of the diligence, and a saunter by the sea, was
his only other amusement.

His daughter poured out his coffee, and ministered to his various wants
as he breakfasted, eating with but little appetite herself, albeit the
fare was excellent.

Captain Palliser talked in a desultory way as he ate, not often looking
up from his plate, but meandering on. Happily for Ida, who had been
reduced to the lowest stage of self-abasement by her welcome, he said no
more about Miss Pew or his daughter's gloomy prospects. It was not
without a considerable mental effort that he was able to bring his
thoughts to bear upon other people's business. He had strained his mind a
good deal during the last twenty-four hours, and he was very glad to
relax the tension of the bow.

'Rather a dull kind of life for a man who has been used to society--eh,
Ida?' he murmured, as he ate his omelette; 'but we contrive to rub on
somehow. Your step-mother likes it, and the boy likes it--wonderful
healthy air, don't you know--no smoke--no fogs--only three miles from the
sea, as the crow flies. It suits them, and it's cheap--a paramount
consideration with a poor devil on half-pay; and in the season there are
some of the best people in Europe to be seen at the _établissement_.'

'I suppose you go to Dieppe often in the season, father?' said Ida,
pleased to find he had dropped Miss Pew and the governess question.

'Well, yes; I wander in almost every fine day.'

'You don't walk?' exclaimed Ida, surprised at such activity in a man of
his languid temper.

'Oh, no; I never walk. I just wander in--on the diligence-or in, a return
fly. I wander in and look about me a little, and perhaps take a cup of
coffee with a friend at the Hôtel des Bains. There is generally some one
I know at the Bains or the Royal. Ah, by-the-bye whom, do you think I saw
there a fortnight ago?'

'I haven't the least idea,' answered Ida; 'I know so few of your
friends.'

'No, of course not. You never saw Sir Vernon Palliser, but you've heard
me talk about him.'

'Your rich brother, the wicked old baronet in Sussex, who never did you a
kindness in his life?'

'My dear, old Sir Vernon has been dead two years.'

'I never heard of his death.'

'No, by-the-bye. It wasn't worth while worrying you about it, especially
as we could not afford to go into mourning. Your step-mother fretted
about that dreadfully, poor little woman; as if it could matter to her,
when she had never seen the man in her life. She said if one had a
baronet in one's family one ought to go into mourning for him. I can't
understand the passion some women have for mourning. They are eager to
smother themselves in crape at the slightest provocation, and for a mean
old beggar like Vernon, who never gave me a sixpence. But as I was
saying, these two young fellows turned up the other day in front of the
Hôtel des Bains.'

'Which two young fellows, my dear father? I haven't the faintest idea of
whom you are talking,' protested Ida, who found her father's conversation
very difficult to follow.

'Why, Sir Vernon, of course--the present Sir Vernon and his brother
Peter: ugly name, isn't it, Ida? but there has always been a Peter in the
family; and as a rule,' added Captain Palliser, growing slower and
dreamier of speech as he fell into reminiscences of the past--'as a
rule the Peter Pallisers have gone to the dogs. There was Major
Palliser--fought in the Peninsula--knew George the Fourth--married a very
pretty woman and beat her--died in the Bench.'

'Tell me about the present Sir Vernon,' asked Ida, more interested in the
moving, breathing life of to-day than in memories of the unknown dead.
'Is he nice?'

'He is a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow--seven or eight and twenty.
No, not handsome--my brother Vernon was never distinguished for beauty,
though he had all the markings of race. There is nothing like race, Ida;
you see it in a man's walk; you hear it in every tone of a man's voice.'

'Dear father, I was asking about this particular Sir Vernon,' urged Ida,
with a touch of impatience, unaccustomed to this slow meandering talk.

'And I was telling you about him,' answered the Captain, slightly
offended. His little low-born wife never hurried and hustled his thoughts
in this way. She was content to sit at his feet, and let him meander on
for hours. True that she did not often listen, but she was always
respectful. 'I was remarking that Sir Vernon is a fine young fellow, and
likely to live to see himself a great-grandfather. His brother, too, is
nearly as big and healthy--healthy to a degree. The breakfast I saw those
two young men devour at the hotel would have made your hair stand on end.
But, thank heaven, I have never been the kind of man to wait for dead
men's shoes.'

'I see,' said Ida. 'If these boys had been sickly and had died young, you
would have succeeded to the baronetcy.'

'To the baronetcy and to the estate in Sussex, which is a very fine
estate, worth eight thousand a year.'

'Then, of course, they are strong, and likely to live to the age of
Methuselah!' exclaimed Ida, with a laugh of passing bitterness. 'Who ever
heard of luck coming our way? It is not in our race to be fortunate.'

The shame and agony of her own failure to win fortune were still strong
upon her.

'Who knows what might happen?' said the Captain, with amiable
listlessness. 'I have never allowed my thoughts to dwell upon the
possibilities of the future; yet it is a fact that, so long as those
young men remain unmarried, there are only two lives between me and
wealth. They feel the position themselves; for when Sir Vernon came over
here to lunch, he patted my boy on the head and said, in his joking way,
"If Peter and I had fallen down a crevasse the other day in the Oberland,
this little chap would have been heir to Wimperfield."'

'No doubt Sir Vernon and his brother will marry and set up nurseries of
their own within the next two or three years,' said Ida, carelessly.
Eager as she had been to be rich during those two and a half bitter years
in which she had so keenly felt the sting of poverty, she was not capable
of seeing her way to fortune through the dark gate of death.

'Yes, I daresay they will both marry,' replied Captain Palliser, gravely,
folding his napkin and whisking an accidental crumb off his waistcoat.
'Young men always get drifted into matrimony. If they are rich all the
women are after them, If they are poor--well, there is generally some
woman weak enough to prefer dual starvation to bread and cheese and
solitude. Vernon told me he had no idea of marriage. He and his brother
are both rovers--fond of mountain-climbing, yachting, every open-air
amusement.'

'Did you see much of them while they were at Dieppe ?'

'They only stayed three days. They walked over here to lunch, put the
poor little woman in a fluster--although they were very pleasant and easy
about everything--invited me to dinner, tipped the boy munificently, and
went off by the night-boat, bound straight for Wimperfield and the
partridges. Very fine partridge shooting at Wimperfield! Vernon asked me
to go across with him and stay at the old place for a week or two; but my
sporting days are over. I can't get up early; and I can't walk in
shooting-boots. Besides, the little woman would have fretted if I had
left her alone so long.'

'But the change would have done you good, father.'

'No, my dear; any change of habits would worry me. I have dropped into my
groove and I must stay in it. What a pity you were not here when your
cousins called! Who knows what might have happened? Vernon might have
fallen over head and ears in love with you.'

'Don't, father!' cried Ida, with absolute pain in her voice. 'Don't talk
about marrying for money. There is nothing in life so revolting, so
degrading. Be sure, it is a sin which always brings its own punishment.'

'My dear,' said the Captain, gravely, 'there are so many love-matches
which bring their own punishment, that I am inclined to believe that
marrying for money is a virtue which ought to ensure its own reward. You
may depend, if we could get statistics upon the subject, one would find
that after ten years' marriage the couples who were drawn together by
prudential motives are just as fond of each other as those more romantic
pairs who wedded for love. A decade of matrimony rounds a good many sharp
angles, and dispels a good many illusions.'

CHAPTER XI.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT A DISCOUNT.

Now began for Ida a life of supreme dullness--an empty, almost hopeless,
life, waiting upon fortune. Her father was kind to her in his easy-going,
lymphatic way, liking well enough to have her about him, pleased with her
affection for his boy, proud of her beauty and her talents, but with no
earnest care for her welfare in the present or the future. What was to
become of wife, son and daughter when he was dead and gone, was a
question which Captain Palliser dared not ask himself. For the widow
there would be a pittance, for son and daughter nothing. It was therefore
vital that Ida should either marry well or become a money-earning
personage. Of marriage at Les Fontaines there seemed not the faintest
probability, since the experiences of the past afford so few instances of
wandering swains caught and won by a face at a window, or the casual
appearance of a beautiful girl on a country road.

Of friends or acquaintance, in his present abode, Captain Palliser had
none. The only people he had ever cared for were the men and women he had
known in India; and he had lost sight of those since his marriage. They
were scattered; and he was too proud to expose his fallen fortunes to
those who had known him in his happier days, those days when the careless
expenditure of his modest capital had given him a false air of easy
circumstances.

His life at Les Fontaines suited him well enough, individually. It was a
kind of hibernation. He slept a good deal, and ate a good deal, and
smoked incessantly, and took very little exercise. For all that is best
and noblest in life, Captain Palliser might just as well have been dead.
He had outlived hope and ambition, thought, invention. He exercised no
influence upon the lives of others, except upon the little homely wife,
who was a slave to him. He was no possible good in the world. Yet his
daughter was fond of him, and pleased to bear him company when he would
have her; and under her influence his sluggish intellect brightened a
little.

For the first few weeks of her residence at Les Fontaines, Ida was
tortured by a continually recurring fear of Brian Wendover's pursuit. He
had let her go coolly enough; but what if he were to change his mind and
follow and claim her? She belonged to him. She was his goods, his
chattels--to have and to hold till death did them part. Her life was no
longer her own to dispose of as she pleased. Would he let her alone?--he
who had held her in his arms with passionate force, who had entreated her
to stay with him, and had surrendered her reluctantly in sullen anger.

What if anger, which had been stronger with him than love at that last
moment, should urge him to denounce her--to tell the world how base a
thing she was--a woman who had been eager to marry a rich man and had
been trapped by a pauper! She glanced with a sickening dread at every
letter which her father received, lest it should be from Brian, telling
her shameful story. She counted the days as they went by, saying to
herself, 'A fortnight since we were married; surely if he had meant to
claim me he would have come before now.' 'Three weeks! now I must be
safe!' And then came the dull November morning which completed the
calendar month since her wedding-day, and her husband had made no sign.
She began to feel easier, to believe that he repented his marriage as
deeply as she did, and that he was very glad to be free from its bondage.

And now she was able to think more seriously of her future. She had
answered a great many advertisements in the _Times_, wherein paragons
were demanded for the tuition of youth or the companionship of age; but
as she saw the papers only on the day after their publication, other
paragons, on the spot, were beforehand with her. She did not receive a
single answer to those carefully written letters, setting forth her
qualifications and her willingness to work hard.

'I shall waste a small fortune in postage-stamps, father,' she said at
last, 'and shall be no nearer the mark. My only chance is to advertise.
Will you give me the money for an advertisement? I am sorry to ask you,
but--'

'My dear, you are always asking me for money,' replied Captain Palliser,
peevishly; which was hardly fair, as she had asked him nothing since
her return, except the sum of thirty shillings, being the exact amount
of which she stood indebted to kind-hearted Miss Cobb. 'However, I
suppose you must have it.' He produced a half sovereign from his
meagrely-furnished purse. 'It is only right you should do something;
indeed, anything is better than wasting your life in such a hole as this.
But what if you do get any answers to your advertisement? Who is to give
you a character, since that old witch at Mauleverer Manor has chosen to
put up her back against you?'

'That must be managed somehow,' answered Ida, moodily. 'Will it not be
enough for the people to know who you are, and that I have never been in
a situation before? Why should they apply to the schoolmistress who
finished my education?'

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