The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> The Golden Calf

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36

'People are so suspicious,' said the Captain, 'and the handsomer a girl
is the more questions they ask. They seem to think she has no right to be
so handsome. However you must risk it'

Ida wrote her advertisement, an unvarnished statement of her
qualifications as a teacher, and of her willingness to be useful; not a
word about references. The advertisement appeared a few days later, and
the little family at Les Fontaines anxiously awaited the result, even
little Vernon eagerly expressing himself on the subject, his youthful
ears being open to every topic discussed in his presence, and his
youthful mind quick to form opinions.

'You shan't go away!' he exclaimed. 'Ma, she shan't go, shall she? lady
shan't have her; I want her always; you mustn't go, sissie,' all in baby
language, with a curious perversion of consonants. He had climbed on her
knee, and had his arms round her neck--energetic young arms which almost
throttled her. She had been his chief companion and playfellow for the
last five weeks, had read him all his favourite fairy-tales over and over
again, had sat with him of an evening till he fell asleep, an invincible
defence against bogies and vague fears of darkness. She had taken him for
long rural rambles, over breezy downs towards the sea, had dug and delved
with him on the lonely beach below the great white lighthouse, warmly
coated and shawled, and working hard in the November wind; and now, just
when he had grown fonder of her than anyone else in the world, she was
going to leave him. He lifted up his head and howled, and refused all
comfort from mother or father. Ida cried with him. 'My pet, I can't bear
to leave you, but I must; my darling, I shall come back,' she protested,
clasping him to her breast, kissing his fair tearful face, soft round
cheeks, lovely blue eyes swimming in tears.

'To-morrow?' inquired Vernon, with a strangled sob.

'No, darling, not to-morrow; there would be no use in my going just for
one day; but I am not going yet--I don't know when I am going--Vernon
must not cry. See how unhappy he is making poor mamma.'

Mrs. Palliser put her hands before her face, and made a bohooing noise to
keep up the illusion; whereupon the affectionate little fellow slipped
off his sister's knee, and ran to his mother to administer comfort.

'I am not going away yet, Vernon; indeed, I hardly know whether I am ever
going at all. I have come back like a bad penny, and I seem likely to be
as difficult to get rid of as other bad pennies,' said Ida, despondingly,
for three posts had gone by since the insertion of her advertisement, and
had brought her nothing. The market was evidently overstocked with young
ladies knowing French and German, able to play and sing, and willing to
be useful.

After this Vernon would hardly let his sister out of his sight. He had a
suspicion that she would leave him unawares--slip out of the door some
day, and be gone without a moment's warning. That is how joy flees.

'My pet, be reasonable,' said Ida; 'I can't go away without my trunk.'

This comforted him a little, and he made a point of sitting upon one of
Ida's trunks, when they two were alone in that barely furnished chamber
which served for her bed-room and his day-nursery.

She contrived to tell him fairy-tales, and to keep him amused; albeit she
was now busy at carefully overhauling, patching, and repairing her scanty
wardrobe--trying to make neat mending do duty for new clothes, and
getting ready against any sudden summons. She could not bring herself to
ask her father for money, sadly as she wanted new garments. He had given
her five pounds in August, and two sovereigns since her return, and the
way he had doled out those sums indicated the low state of his funds. No,
the gown that had been new at The Knoll must still be her best gown. Last
winter's jacket, albeit threadbare in places, must do duty for this
winter. Before the next summer she might be in the receipt of a salary
and able to clothe herself decently, and to send presents to this beloved
boy, who was not much better clad than herself.

But the days wore on, and brought no answer to her advertisement.

'I shouldn't wonder if it were the foreign address,' said Captain
Palliser, when they were all speculating upon the cause of this dismal
silence. 'People are suspicious of anyone living abroad. If you had been
able to advertise from a rectory in Lincolnshire, or even an obscure
street at the west end of London, they'd have thought better of you. But
Boulogne, Calais, Dieppe, they all hint at impecuniosity and enforced
exile. It's very unlucky.'

The postman stopped at the little green gate next morning, and Ida flew
to receive his packet. It was a letter for her--a bulky letter--in a hand
she knew well, and her heart seemed to stop beating as she looked at the
address.

The hand was Bessie Wendover's. Who could tell what new trouble the
letter might announce? Brian might have told his family the whole history
of his marriage and her unworthy conduct. Oh, what shame, what agony, if
this were so! And how was she to face her father when he asked her the
contents of the letter? She ran out into the garden--the little bare,
joyless garden--to read her letter alone, and to gain time.

This is how the dreaded epistle ran:--

'My dear darling, ill-used, cruel thing,--

'However could you treat me so badly? What is friendship worth, if you
set no higher value upon it than this? I don't believe you know what
friendship means, or you never could act so. How miserable you have made
me! how wretched you must have been yourself! you proud, noble-minded
darling--under the sting of such vile treatment.

'I wrote to you three times last month, and could not imagine why my
letters were unanswered. Brian had told me that you were perfectly well,
and looking splendid when he saw you in October, so I did not think it
could be illness that kept you silent; and at last I began to feel angry,
and to fancy you had forgotten me, and were ungrateful. No, I don't mean
that, dearest. What reason had you for gratitude? The obligation was all
on my side.

'Towards the end of October I wrote to Brian, telling him of your
silence, and asking if he could find out if you were well. He answered
with one of his short, unsatisfactory scrawls that he had reason to know
you were quite well. After this I felt _really_ offended; for I thought
you must have deceived me all along, and that you had never cared a straw
about me; so I coiled myself up in my dignity, and, although I felt very
unhappy, I resolved never to write you another line till you wrote to me.
I was very miserable, but still I felt that I owed a duty to my own
self-respect, don't you know; and just at thistimall went to Bournemouth,
where we were very gay. Father and mother knew no end of people there,
and I began to feel what it really is to be out, which no girl ever could
at Kingthorpe, where there are about three parties in a twelvemonth.

'Well, darling, so I went on leading a frivolous life among people I did
not care twopence for, and hardening my heart against my dearest friend,
when, on the day we came home, I happened to take up the _Times_ in the
railway carriage. I hate newspapers in a common way, but one reads such
things when one is travelling, and out of mere idleness I amused myself
skimming the advertisements, which I found ever so much more interesting
than the leading articles. What should my eye light upon but an
advertisement from a young lady wanting to go out as a governess--address
I.P., Le Rosier, Les Fontaines, near Dieppe--and the whole murder was
out. You must have left old Pew's and be living with your father. I was
horribly indignant with you--as, indeed, I am still--for not having
told me anything about it; but directly I got home I telegraphed to
Polly Cobb, as the best-natured girl I knew at Mauleverer, asking where
you were, and why you had left. I had such a letter from her next
day--spelling bad, but full of kind feeling--giving me a full account of
the row, and old Pew's detestable conduct. She told me that Fräulein
vouched for your having behaved with the most perfect propriety, and
never having seen Brian out of her presence; but Brian's meanness in not
having told me about the trouble he had brought upon you is more than I
can understand.

'Well, darling, I went off to Aunt Betsy, who is always my _confidante_
in all delicate matters, because she's ever so much cleverer than dear
warm-hearted mother, who never could keep a secret in her life, sweet
soul, and is no better than a speaking-tube for conveying information to
the Colonel. I told Aunt Betsy everything--how it was all Brian's fault,
and how I adore you, and how miserable I felt about you, and how you were
trying to get a situation as governess, in spite of that malignant old
Pew--she must be a lineal descendant of the wicked fairy--having said she
would give you no certificate of character or ability.

'Now, what do you think that sweetest and best of aunties said? "Let her
come to me," she said; "I am getting old and dull, and I want something
bright and clever about me, to cheer me and rouse me when I feel
depressed. Let her come to me as a companion and amanuensis, help me to
look after my cottagers, who are getting too much for me, and play to me
of an evening. I like that girl, and I should like to have her in my
house."

'I was enchanted at the thought of your being always near us, and I
fancied you wouldn't altogether dislike it; although Kingthorpe certainly
is the dullest, sleepiest old hole in the universe. So I begged Aunt
Betsy to write to you _instanter_; said I knew you would be charmed to
accept such a situation, and that she would secure a treasure; and, in
all probability, you'll have a letter from her to-morrow.

'And now, dear, I must repeat that you have treated me shamefully. Why
did you not write to me directly you left Mauleverer? Could you think
that I could believe you had really done wrong--that I could possibly be
influenced by the judgment of that old monster, Pew? If you could think
so, you are not worthy to be loved as I love you. However, come to us,
sweetest, directly you get auntie's letter, and all shall be forgiven and
forgotten, as the advertisements say.'

Ida kissed the loving letter. So far, therefore, Brian had not betrayed
her; and, having kept her secret so long, it might be supposed he would
keep it for all time.

Poor little warm-hearted Bessie! Was not she by her foolish
falsification--a piece of mild jocosity, no doubt--the prime author of
all the evil that had followed? And yet Ida could not feel angry with
her, any more than she could have been angry with Vernon for some piece
of sportive mischief.

'Thank God, he has kept our wretched secret,' she thought, as she folded
Bessie's long letter, and went back to the house. 'I am grateful to him
for that.'

She went in radiant, gladdened at the thought of being able to relieve
her father and step-mother of the burden of her maintenance; for the fact
that she was a burden had not been hidden from her. They had been kind;
they had given her to eat and to drink of their best, and had admired her
talents and accomplishments; but they had let her know at the same time
that she was a failure, and that her future was a dark problem still far
from solution--a problem which troubled them in the silent watches of the
night. Nor did they forget to remind her from time to time that by her
imprudence--pardonable although that imprudence might be--she had
forfeited six months' board and lodging, together with those educational
advantages the Captain's fifty pounds had been intended to purchase for
her. These facts had been reiterated, not altogether unkindly, but in a
manner that made life intolerable; and she felt that were she to continue
at Les Fontaines for the natural term of her existence, the same theme
would still furnish the subject for parental harpings.

'Father,' she said, going behind Captain Palliser's chair, as he smoked
his after-breakfast cigar, and read yesterday's _Times_, 'I want you to
read this letter. It is a foolish schoolgirl letter, perhaps; but it will
show you that my friends are not going to discard me on account of Miss
Pew.'

The Captain laid down his paper, and slowly made his way through Bessie's
lengthy epistle, which, although prettily written, with a good deal of
grace in the slopes and curves of the penmanship, gave him considerable
trouble to decipher. It was only when he had discovered that all the B's
looked like H's, and that all the G's were K's, and all the L's S's, and
had, as it were, made a system for himself, that he was able to get on
comfortably.

'Bless my soul,' he murmured, 'why cannot girls write legibly?'

'It is the real Mauleverer hand, papa, and is generally thought very
pretty,' said Ida.

'Pretty, yes; you might have a zigzag pattern over the paper that would
be just as pretty. One wants to be able to read a letter. This is almost
as bad as Arabic. However, the girl seems a good, warm-hearted creature,
and very fond of you; and I should think you could not do better than
accept her aunt's offer. It will be a beginning.'

'It is Hobson's choice, papa; but I am sure I shall be happy with Miss
Wendover,' said Ida; and then she gave a faint sigh, and her heart
sank at the thought of that Damoclesian sword always hanging over her
head--the possibility of her husband claiming her.

Mrs. Palliser was much more rapturous when she heard the contents of
the letter--much more interested in all details about Ida's future home.
She wanted to know what Miss Wendover was like--how many servants she
kept--whether carriage or no carriage--what kind of a house she lived in,
and how it was furnished.

'You will be quite a grand lady,' she said, with a touch of envy, when
Ida had described the cosy red-brick cottage, the verandahed drawing-room
and conservatory added by Miss Wendover, the pair of cobs which that lady
drove, the large well-kept gardens; 'you will look down upon us with our
poor ways, and this house, in which all the rooms smell of whitewash.'

'No, indeed, mamma, I shall always think of you with affection; for you
have been very kind to me, although I know I have been a burden.'

'Everything is a burden when one is poor,' sighed her stepmother; 'even
one extra in the washing-bills makes a difference; and we shall feel it
awfully when Vernon grows up. Boys are so extravagant; and one cannot
talk to them as one can to girls.'

'But I hope you will be better off then, mamma.'

'My dear, you might as well hope we should be dukes and duchesses. What
chance is there of any improvement? Your poor papa has no idea of earning
money. I'm sure I have said to him, often and often, "Reginald, do
_something_. Write for the magazines! Surely you can do _that_? Other men
in your position do it." "Yes," he growled, "and that's why the magazines
are so stupid." No, Ida, your father's circumstances will never improve;
and when the time comes for giving Vernon a proper education we shall be
paupers.'

'Poor papa!' sighed Ida; 'I am afraid he is not strong enough to make any
great effort.'

'He has given way, my dear; that is the root of it all. We shall never be
better off, unless those two healthy, broad-shouldered young men were to
go and get themselves swallowed up by an earthquake; and that is rather
too much for anyone to expect.'

'What young men?' asked Ida, absently.

'Your two cousins.'

'Oh, Sir Vernon and his brother. No, I don't suppose they will die to
oblige us poor creatures.'

'They went up the what's-its-name Horn, in Switzerland,' said Mrs.
Palliser, plaintively. 'It made my blood run cold to hear them talk about
it. "By Jove, Peter, I thought it was all over with you," said Sir
Vernon, when he told us how foolhardy his brother had been. But you see
they got to the bottom all safe and sound, though ever so many people
have been killed on that very mountain.'

'I'm glad they did, mamma. We may want their money very badly, but we are
not murderers, even in thought.'

'God forbid!' sighed the little woman. 'They are fine-grown, gentlemanly
young men, too. Sir Vernon gave my Vernie a sovereign, and promised him a
pony next year; but, good gracious! how could we afford to keep a pony,
even if we had a stable? "You had better make it the other kind of pony,"
says your father, and then they all burst out laughing.'

'So little makes a man laugh!' said Ida, somewhat contemptuously. That
picture of her father making sport of his poverty irritated her. 'Well,
dear mamma,' she said presently, moved by one of those generous impulses
which were a part of her frank, unwise nature, 'if ever I can earn a
hundred a year-and there are many governesses who get as much--you shall
have fifty to help pay Vernon's schooling.'

'You are a dear generous 'arted girl,' exclaimed the stepmother, and the
two women kissed again with tears, an operation which they usually
performed in the hour of domestic trouble.

Miss Wendover's letter came next day, a hearty, frank, affectionate
letter, offering a home that was really meant to be like home, and a
salary of forty pounds a year, 'just to buy your gowns,' Miss Wendover
said. 'I know it is not sufficient remuneration for such accomplishments
as yours, but I want _you_ rather than your accomplishments and I am not
rich enough to give as much as you are worth. But you will, at least,
stave off the drudgery of a governess's life till you are older, and
better able to cope with domineering mothers and insolent pupils.'

Such a salary was a long way off that hundred per annum which Ida had set
before her eyes as the golden goal to be gained by laborious pianoforte
athletics and patient struggles with the profundities of German grammar;
but, as Captain Palliser paid, it was a beginning; and Ida was very glad
so to begin. She wrote to Miss Wendover gratefully accepting her offer,
and in a very humble spirit.

'I fear it is pity that prompts your kind offer,' she wrote, 'and that
you take me because you know I left Mauleverer Manor in disgrace, and
that nobody else would have me. I am a bad penny. That is what my father
called me when I came home to him. And now I am to go back to Kingthorpe
as a bad penny. But, please God, I will try to prove to you that I am not
altogether worthless; and, whatever may happen, I shall love you and be
grateful to you till the end of my life.

'As you are so kind as to say I may come as soon as I like, I shall be
with you on the day after you receive this letter.'

Ida's preparations for departure were not elaborate. Her scanty wardrobe
had been put in the neatest possible order. A few hours sufficed for
packing trunk and bonnet-box. On the last afternoon Mrs. Palliser came to
her highly elated, and proposed a walk to Dieppe, and a drive home in the
diligence which left the Market Place at five o'clock.

'I am going to give you a new hat,' she said, triumphantly. 'You must
have a new hat.'

'But, dear mamma, I know you can't afford it.'

'I _will_ afford it, Ida. You will have to go to church at
Kingthorpe'--Mrs. Palliser regarded church-going as an oppressive
condition of prosperous respectability. One of the few privileges of
being hard up and quite out of society was that one need not go to
church--'and I should like you to appear like a lady. You owe it to your
pa and I. A hat you must 'ave. I can pay for it out of the housekeeping
money, and your pa will never know the difference.'

'No, mamma, but you and Vernon will have to pinch for it,' said Ida,
knowing that there was positively no margin to that household's narrow
means of existence.

'A little pinching won't hurt us. Vernie is as bilious as he can be; he
eats too many compots and little fours. I shall keep him to plain bread
and butter for a bit, and it will do him a world of good. There's no use
talking, Ida, I mean you to 'ave a 'at; and if you won't come and choose
it I must choose it myself,' concluded the little woman, dropping more
aspirates as she grew more excited.

So mother and daughter walked to Dieppe in the dull November afternoon,
Vernon trudging sturdily by his sister's side. They bought the hat, a
gray felt with partridge plumage, which became Ida's rich dark bloom to
perfection; and then they went to the Cathedral, and knelt in the dusky
aisle, and heard the solemn melody of the organ, and the subdued voices
of the choir, in the plaintive music of Vesper Psalms, monotonous
somewhat, but with a sweet soothing influence, music that inspired gentle
thoughts.

Then they went back to the Market-Place, and were in time to get good
places on the _banquette_ of the diligence, before the big white Norman
horses trotted and ambled noisily along the stony street.

Ida left Dieppe late on the following evening, by the same steamer that
had brought her from Newhaven. The British stewardess recognised her.

'Why, you was only across the other day, miss!' she said; 'what a
gad-about you must be!'

She arrived in London by ten o'clock next morning, and left Waterloo at a
quarter-past eleven, reaching Winchester early in the day. How different
were her feelings this time, as the train wound slowly over those chalky
hills! how full of care was her soul! And yet she was no longer a visitor
going among strangers--this time she went to an assured home, she was to
be received among friends. But the knowledge that her liberty was
forfeited for ever, that she was a free-agent only on sufferance, made
her grave and depressed. Never again could she feel as glad and frank a
creature as she had been in the golden prime of the summer that was gone,
when she and Bessie and Urania Rylance came by this same railway, over
those green English hill-sides, to the city that was once the chief seat
of England's power and splendour.

A young man in a plain gray livery and irreproachable top-boots stood
contemplatively regarding the train as it came into the station. He
touched his hat at sight of Miss Palliser, and she remembered him as Miss
Wendover's groom.

'Any luggage, ma'am?' he asked, as she alighted; as if it were as likely
as not that she had come without any.

'There is one box, Needham. That is all besides these things.'

Her bonnet-box--frail ark of woman's pride--was in the carriage, with a
wrap and an umbrella, and her dressing bag.

'All right, ma'am. If you'll show me which it is I'll tell the porter to
bring it. I've got the cobs outside.'

'Oh, I am so sorry,--how good of Miss Wendover!'

'They wanted exercise, 'um. They was a bit above themselves, and the
drive has done 'em good.'

Miss Wendover's cherished brown cobs, animals which in the eyes of
Kingthorpe were almost as sacred as that Egyptian beast whose profane
slaughter was more deeply felt than the nation's ruin--to think that
these exalted brutes should have been sent to fetch that debased
creature, a salaried companion. But then Aunt Betsy was never like anyone
else.

Needham took the cobs across the hills at a pace which he would have
highly disapproved in any other driver. Had Miss Wendover so driven them,
he would have declared she was running them off their legs. But in his
own hands, Brimstone and Treacle--so called to mark their difference of
disposition--could come to no harm. 'They wanted it,' he told Miss
Palliser, when she remarked upon their magnificent pace, 'they never got
half work enough.'

The hills looked lovely, even in this wintry season--yew trees and grass
gave no token of November's gloom. The sky was bright and blue, a faint
mist hung like a veil over the city in the valley, the low Norman tower
of the cathedral, the winding river, and flat fertile meadows--a vision
very soon left far in the rear of Brimstone and Treacle.

'How handsome they look!' said Ida, admiring their strong, bold crests,
like war-horses in a Ninevite picture, their shining black-brown coats.
'Is Brimstone such a very vicious horse?'

'Vicious, mum? no, not a bit of vice about him,' answered Needham
promptly, 'but he's a rare difficult horse to groom. There ain't none but
me as dares touch him. I let the boy try it once, and I found the poor
lad half an hour afterwards standing in the middle of the big loose box
like a statter, while Brimstone raced round him as hard as he could go,
just like one of them circus horses. The boy dursn't stir. If he'd moved
a limb, Brimstone 'ud have 'molished him.'

'What an awful horse! But isn't that viciousness?'

'Lor', no mum. That ain't vice,' answered the groom smiling amusedly at
the lady's ignorance. Vice is crib-biting, or jibbing, or boring or
summat o' that kind. Brimstone is a game hoss, and he's got a bit of a
temper, but he ain't got no vice.'

Here was Kingthorpe, looking almost as pretty as it had looked when she
gazed upon it with tearful eyes in her sad farewell at the close of
summer. The big forest trees were bare, but there were flowers in all the
cottage gardens, even late lingering roses on southern walls, and the
clipped yew-tree abominations--dumb-waiters, peacocks, and other
monstrosities--were in their pride of winter beauty. The ducks were
swimming gaily in the village pond, and the village inn was still
glorious with red geraniums, in redder pots. The Knoll stood out grandly
above all other dwellings--the beds full of chrysanthemums, and a bank of
big scarlet geraniums on each side of the hall door.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36