The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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Ida was allowed to assist at these banquets, and there was nothing in her
new life which she enjoyed more than the sight of all those glad young
faces round the board, or the sound of that frank, rustic laughter. Some
there were naturally of a bovine dullness, in whom even Miss Wendover
could not awaken a ray of intelligence; but these were few. The
generality of the children were far above the average rustic in
brightness of intellect, and this superiority might fairly be ascribed to
Aunt Betsy's influence.

A fortnight before Christmas, by which time Ida had been at the Homestead
more than a month, Miss Wendover suggested a drive to Winchester, and
before starting she handed Ida a ten-pound note. 'You may want some
additional finery for Christmas,' she said kindly. 'Girls generally do.
So you may as well buy it to-day.'

'But, dear Aunt Betsy, I have only been with you a month.'

'Never mind that, my dear. We will not be particular as to quarter-days.
When I think you want money I shall give it to you, and we can make up
our accounts at the end of the year.'

'You are ever so much too good to me,' said Ida, with a loving look that
said a good deal more than words.

There was a light frost that whitened the hills, and the keen freshness
of the air stimulated Brimstone to conduct of a somewhat riotous
character, but Miss Wendover's firm hand held his spirits in check.
Treacle was a sagacious beast, who never did more work than he was
absolutely obliged to do, and who allowed Brimstone to drag the phaeton
while he trotted complacently on the other side of the pole. But Miss
Wendover would stand no nonsense, even from the amiable Treacle. She sent
the pair across the hills at a splendid pace, and drove them under the
old archway and down the stony street with a style which won the
admiration of every experienced eye.

They drew up at the chief draper's of the town; and here Miss Wendover
retired to hold a solemn conference with the head milliner, a judicious
and accomplished person who made Aunt Betsy's gowns and bonnets--all of a
solid and substantial architecture, as if modelled on the adjacent
cathedral. Ida, left alone amidst all the fascinations of the chief shop
in a smart county town, and feeling herself a Croesus, had much need of
fortitude and coolness of temper. Happily she remembered what a little
way that five-pound note had gone in preparing her for her summer visit
to The Knoll, and this brought wisdom. Before spending sixpence upon
herself she bought a gown--an olive merino gown, and velvet to trim it
withal--for her stepmother.

'I don't think she gets a new gown much oftener than I do,' she thought;
'and even if this costs four or five shillings for carriage it will be
worth the money, as a Christmas surprise.'

The gown left only trifling change out of two sovereigns, so that by the
time Ida had bought herself a dark brown cloth jacket and a brown
cashmere gown there were only four sovereigns left out of the ten. She
spent one of these upon some pale pink cashmere for an evening dress, and
half a sovereign on gloves, as she knew Miss Wendover liked to see people
neatly gloved. Ten shillings more were spent upon calico, and another
sovereign went by-and-by at the bootmaker's, leaving the damsel with
just twenty shillings out of her quarter's wage; but as the need of
pocket-money at Kingthorpe, except for the Sunday offertory, was nil, she
felt herself passing rich in the possession of that last remaining
sovereign. She would have liked to spend it all upon Christmas gifts for
her young friends at The Knoll; but this fond wish she relinquished with
a sigh. Paupers could not be givers of gifts. Whatever she gave must be
the fruit of her own labour--some delicate piece of handiwork made out of
cheap materials.

'They are all too good to think meanly of me because I can only show my
gratitude in words,' she told herself.

As Christmas drew near Ida listened anxiously for any allusion to Brian
Walford as a probable visitor; and to her infinite relief, just three
days before the festival, she heard that he was not coming. He had been
invited, and he had left his young cousins in suspense as to his
intentions till the last moment, and then had written to say that he had
accepted an invitation to Norfolk, where there would be shooting, and a
probability of a stag-hunt on foot.

'Which I call horridly mean of him,' protested Horatio, who had come
across the fields expressly to announce this fact to Ida. 'Why can't he
come and shoot here? I don't mean to say that there is anything
particular to shoot, but he and I could go out together and try our luck.
Our hills are splendid for hares.'

'Do you mean that there are plenty of hares?' inquired Ida.

'No, not exactly that. But it would be capital ground for them, don't you
know, if there were any.'

'And where is your other cousin Brian?' asked Ida, merely for the sake of
conversation.

All interest, all idle dreaming about the unknown Brian was over with her
since the fatal mistake which had marred her life. She could not conceive
that anything save evil could ever arise to her henceforward out of that
hated name.

'Oh, he is in Sweden, or Turkey, or Russia, or somewhere,' replied
Horatio, with a disgusted air; 'always on the move, instead of keeping up
the Abbey in proper style, and cultivating his cousins. A man with such
an income is bound in duty to his fellow-creatures to keep a pack of
foxhounds. What else was he sent into the world for, I should like to
know?'

'Perhaps to cultivate the knowledge of his fellow-creatures in distant
countries, and to improve his mind.'

'Rot!' exclaimed Horatio, who was not choice in his language. 'What does
he want with mind? or to make a walking Murray or Baedeker of himself?
Society requires him to lay out his money to the local advantage. Here we
are, with no foxhounds nearer than the New Forest, when we ought to have
a pack at our door!'

Ida could not enter into the keen sense of deprivation caused by a dearth
of foxhounds, so she went on quietly with her work, shading the wing of
the inevitable swallow flitting across the inevitable bulrushes which
formed the design for a piano back.

Presently Bessie came bouncing in, her sealskin flung on anyhow, and the
most disreputable thing in hats perched sideways on her bright brown
curls.

'Mother is going to let us have a dance,' she burst forth breathlessly,
'on Twelfth Night! Won't that be too jolly? A regular party, don't you
know, with a crumb-cloth, and a pianiste from Winchester, and perhaps a
cornet. It's only another guinea, and if father's in a good temper he's
sure to say yes. You must come over to The Knoll every evening to
practise your waltzing. We shall have nothing but round dances in the
programme. I'll take care of that!'

'But if there are any matrons who like to have a romp in the Lancers or
the Caledonians, ain't it rather a shame to leave them out in the cold?'
suggested Horatio. 'You're so blessed selfish, Bess.'

'We are not going to have any matrons. Mother will matronize the whole
party. We are going to have the De Travers, and the Pococks, and the
Ducies, and the Bullinghams over from Bournemouth.'

'And where the deuce are you going to put 'em?'

'Oh, we can put up at least twenty--on spare mattresses, don't you know,
in the old nursery, and in the dressing-rooms and bath-room; and as for
us, why, of course, _we_ can sleep anywhere.'

'Thank you,' replied Horatio; 'I hope you don't suppose I am going to
turn out of my den, or to allow a pack of girls to ransack my drawers and
smoke my favourite pipe.'

'I don't suppose any decent-minded girl would consent to sleep in such a
loathsome hole,' retorted Bessie. 'She would prefer a pillow and a rug on
the landing.'

'My den is quite as tidy as that barrack of yours,' said the Wykhamiste,
'though I haven't yet risen to disfiguring my walls with kitchen plates
and fourpenny fans. The cheap aesthetic is not my line.

'Don't pretend to be cantankerous, Horatio,' said Ida, looking at him
with the loveliest eyes, twinkling a little at his expense; 'we all know
that you are brimming over with good-humour.

Perhaps Aunt Betsy will take in some of your visitors, Bess. I am sure
they shall be welcome to my room, if I have to sleep in the poultry
yard.'

'Happy thought,' cried Bessie; 'I'll sound the dear creature as to her
views on the subject this very day.'

Aunt Betsy was all goodness, and offered to accommodate half a dozen
young ladies of neat and cleanly habits. She protested that she would
have no candle-grease droppers or door-mat despisers in her house.

'The Homestead is the only toy I have,' she said,' and I won't have it
ill-used.'

So six irreproachable young women, the pride of careful mothers, were
billeted on Miss Wendover, while the more Bohemian damsels were to revel
in the improvised accommodation of The Knoll.

That particular Christmas-tide at Kingthorpe was a time of innocent mirth
and youthful happiness which might have banished black care, for the
nonce, from the oldest, weariest breast. For Ida, still young and fresh,
loving and lovable, the contagion of that youthful mirth was
irresistible.

She forgot by how fine a hair hung the sword that dangled over her guilty
head--or began to think that the hair was tough enough to hold good for
ever. And what mattered the existence of the sword provided it was never
to fall? Sometimes it seemed to her in the pure and perfect happiness of
this calm rural home, this useful, innocent life, as if that ill-advised
act of hers had never been acted--as if that autumn morning, that one
half-hour in the modern Gothic church, still smelling of mortar and
pitch-pine, set in flat fields, from which October mists were rising
ghostlike, was no more than a troubled dream--a dream that she had
dreamed and done with for ever. Could it be that such an hour--so dim, so
shadowy to look back upon from the substantial footing of her present
existence--was to give colour to all the rest of her life? No, it was the
dark dream of a troubled past, and she had nothing to do but to forget it
as soon as possible.

Forgetfulness--or at least a temporary kind of forgetfulness--was
tolerably easy while Brian Walford was civil enough to stay away from
Kingthorpe; but the problem of life would be difficult were he to appear
in the midst of that cordial circle--difficult to impossibility.

'It is evident that he doesn't mean to come while I am here,' she told
herself, 'and that at least is kind. But in that case I must not stay
here too long. It is not fair that I should shut him out of his uncle's
house. It is I who am the interloper.'

She thought with bitterest grief of any change from this peaceful life
among friends who loved her, to service in the house of a stranger; but
her conscience recognised the necessity for such a change.

She had no right to squat upon the family of the man she had married--to
exclude him from his rightful heritage, she who refused to acknowledge
his right as her husband. He had done her a deep wrong; he had deceived
her cruelly; and she deemed that she had a right to repudiate a bond
tainted by fraud; but she knew that she had no right to banish him from
his family circle--to dwell, under false pretences, by the hearth of his
kindred.

'I did wrong in coming here,' she thought; 'it was a mean thing to do.
Yet how could I resist the temptation, when no other place offered, and
when I knew I was such a burden at home?'

In the very midst of her happiness, therefore, there was always this
corroding care, this remorseful sense of wrong-doing. This present life
of hers was all blissful, but it was bliss which could not, which must
not, last. Yet what fortitude would be needed ere she could break this
flowery bondage, loosen these dear fetters which love had laid upon her!

Once, during that jovial Christmas season, she hinted at a possible
change in the future.

'What a happy day this has been!' she said as she walked across the
wintry fields with Miss Wendover on the verge of midnight, after a
Christmas dinner and a long evening of Christmas games at The Knoll,
Needham marching in front of them with an unnecessary lantern, and all
the stars of heaven shining in blue frosty brilliance above their heads,
'and what a happy home! I feel it is a privilege to have seen so much of
it; and by-and-by, when I am among strangers--'

'What do you mean?' exclaimed Aunt Betsy, sharply; 'there is to be no
such by-and-by; or, if there ever be such a time, it will be your making,
not mine. You suit me capitally, and I mean to keep you as long as ever I
can, without absolute selfishness. If an eligible husband should want to
carry you off, I must let you go; but I will part with you to no one less
than a husband--unless, indeed,' and here Betsy Wendover's voice took a
colder and graver tone, 'unless you should want to better yourself, as
the servants say, and get more money than I can afford to give you. I
know your accomplishments are worth much more; but it is not everybody to
whom you would be as their own flesh and blood.'

'Oh, Aunt Betsy, can you think that I should ever set money in the scale
against your kindness--your infinite goodness to me?'

'When you talk of a change by-and-by, you set me thinking. Perhaps you
are already beginning to tire of this rustic dullness.'

'No, no, no; I never was so happy in my life--never since I was a child
playing about on board the ship that brought my mother and me to England.
Everybody were kind to me, and made much of me. My mother and I adored
each other; and I did not know that she was dying. Soon after we landed
she grew dangerously ill, and lay for weeks in a darkened room, which I
was not allowed to enter. It was a dreary, miserable time; a lonely,
friendless child pining in a furnished lodging, with no one but a servant
and a sick-nurse to speak to; and then, one dark November morning, the
black hearse and coaches came to the door, and I stood peeping behind a
corner of the parlour blind, and saw my mother's coffin carried out of
the house. No; from the time we left the ship till I came to The Knoll I
had never known what perfect happiness meant.'

'Surely you must have had some happy days with your father?' said Aunt
Betsy.

'Very few. There was always a cloud. Papa is not the kind of man who can
be cheerful under difficulties. Besides, I have seen so little of him,
poor dear. He did not come home from India till I was thirteen, and then
he fell in love with my stepmother, and married her, and took her to
France, where he fancies it is cheaper to live than in England. Yet I
cannot help thinking there are corners of dear old England where he might
find a prettier home and live quite as cheaply.'

'Of course, if he were a sensible man; but I gather from all you have
told me that there is a gentlemanlike helplessness about him--as of a
person who ought to have inherited a handsome income, and is out of his
element as a struggler.'

'That is quite true,' answered Ida; 'my father was not born to wrestle
with Fate.'

They were at the glass door which opened into the morning-room by this
time. The room was steeped in rosy light--such a pretty room, with chintz
curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the
only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold
work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a
large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an
odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt
Betsy's favourite Persian cat, a marvel of fluffy whiteness, rose from
the hearth to welcome them. It was a delightful picture of home life.

Miss Wendover seemed in no hurry to go to bed. She seated herself in the
low arm-chair by the fire, and allowed the Persian to rub its white head
and arch its back against her dark brocade skirt. No one within twenty
miles of Winchester wore such brocades or such velvets as Miss
Wendover's. They were supposed to be woven on purpose for her. Her gowns
were gowns of the old school, and lasted for years, smelling of the
sandal or camphor wood chests in which they reposed for months at a
stretch, yet, by virtue of some wonderful tact in the wearer, never
looked dowdy or out of date.

'Now,' said Miss Wendover, with a resolute air, 'let us understand each
other, my dear Ida. I don't quite like what you said just now; and I want
to hear for certain that you are satisfied with your life here.'

'I am utterly happy here, dear Aunt Betsy. Is that a sufficient answer?
Only, when I came here, I felt that it was charity--an impulse of
kindness for a friendless girl--that prompted you to offer me a home;
that, in accepting your kindness, I had no right to become an
encumbrance; that, having enjoyed your genial hospitality for a space, I
ought to move on upon my journey, to go where I could be of more use.'

'You too ridiculous girl, can you suppose that you are not useful to me?'
exclaimed Aunt Betsy, impatiently. 'Is there a single hour of your day
unoccupied? Granted that my original motive was a desire to give a
comfortable home to a dear girl who seemed in need of new surroundings,
but that idea would hardly have occurred to me unless I had begun to feel
the want of some energetic helpmate to lighten the load of my daily
duties. The experiment has answered admirably, so far as I am concerned.
But it is just possible you feel otherwise. You may think that you could
make better use of your powers--earn double my poor salary, win
distinction by your fine playing, dress better, see more of the world. I
daresay to a girl of your age Kingthorpe seems a kind of living death.'

'So far from that, I love Kingthorpe with all my heart, so much that I
almost hate myself for not having been born here, for not being able to
say these are my native fields, I was cradled among these hills.'

'So be it. If you love Kingthorpe and love me, you have nothing to do but
to stay here till the hero of your life-story comes to carry you off.'

'There will be no such hero.'

'Oh, yes, there will! Every story, however humble, has its hero; but
yours is going to be a very magnificent personage, I hope.'

The little clock on the chimney-piece chimed the half-hour after
midnight, whereupon Aunt Betsy started up and called for her candle. She
and Ida kissed as they wished each other good night on the threshold of
the elder lady's room.

After this conversation, how could Ida ever again broach the subject of
departure? and yet she felt that sooner or later she must depart. Honour,
conscience, womanly feeling, forbade that she should remain at the cost
of Brian Walford's banishment.

CHAPTER XIII.

KINGTHORPE SOCIETY.

On New Year's Eve Miss Wendover gave one of her famous dinner-parties;
famous because it was always said that her dinners were, on their scale,
better than anybody else's--yea, even that Dr. Rylance's, although that
gentleman spared no expense, and had been known to induce the French cook
from the Dolphin at Southampton to come over and prepare the feast for
him.

Miss Wendover's dinner was an excuse for the bringing forth of rich
stores of old china, old glass, and older silver--the accumulations of
aunts and uncles for past generations, and in some part of the lady
herself, who had the true spirit of a collector, that special gift which
the French connoisseur calls _le flair_. Ida and the lady of the house
worked diligently all the morning in papering and polishing these
treasures; and the dinner table, with its antique silver, Derby china,
heavy diamond-cut glass, and white and scarlet exotics, was a picture to
gladden the eyes of Aunt Betsy's guests.

The party consisted of Colonel and Mrs. Wendover, with their daughter
Bessie, admitted to this sacred function for the first time in her young
life, and duly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion; the Vicar
and his wife; the new curate, an Oxford M.A., and a sprig of a good old
family tree, altogether something very superior in the way of curates;
Mr. and Mrs. Hildrop Havenant, the great people of a neighbouring
settlement, with their eldest son, also an Oxonion; and Dr. and Miss
Rylance.

'Be sure you two girls look your best to-night,' said Miss Wendover, as
she sat before the fire with Bessie and Ida, enjoying the free and easy
luxury of a substantial afternoon tea, which would enable them all to be
gracefully indifferent to the more solid features of dinner, and duly on
the alert, to make conversation. 'We shall have three eligible men.'

'How do you make three, Aunt Betsy?' inquired her niece. 'Of course we
all know that young Hildrop Havenant is heir to nearly all the land
between Havenant and Romsey; but he is such a mass of affectation that I
can't imagine anybody wanting to marry him. And as for Mr. Jardine--'

'Is he a mass of affectation, too, Bess?' inquired Aunt Betsy with
intention, for Mr. Jardine, the curate, was supposed to have impressed
the damsel's fancy more deeply than she would care to own. 'He is an
Oxford man.'

'There is Oxford and Oxford,' said Bess. 'If all the Oxford men were like
young Havenant, the only course open to the rest of the world would be to
burn Oxford, just as Oxford burned the martyrs.'

'Well, we may count Mr. Jardine as an eligible, I suppose?'

'But that only makes two. Who is your third?' asked Bessie.

'Dr. Rylance.'

'Dr. Rylance an eligible?' cried Bessie, with girlhood's frank laughter
at the absurd idea of middle age coming into the market to bid for youth.
'Why, auntie, the man must be fifty.'

'Five-and-forty at most, and very young-looking for his age; very
polished, very well off. There are many girls who would be proud to win
such a husband,' said Miss Wendover, glancing at Ida in the firelight.

She wanted to test the girl's temper--to find out, were it possible,
whether this girl, whom she so inclined to love, tried in the fierce
furnace of poverty, had acquired mercenary instincts. She had heard from
Urania of that reckless speech about marrying for money, and she wanted
to know how much or how little that speech had implied.

Ida was silent. She had never told anyone of Dr. Rylance's offer. She
would have deemed it dishonourable to let anyone into the secret of his
humiliation--to let his little world know that he, so superior a person,
could offer himself and be rejected.

'What do you think now, Bess,' pursued Miss Wendover; 'would it not be
rather a nice thing if Dr. Rylance were to marry Ida? We all know how
much he admires her.'

'It would be a very horrid thing!' cried the impetuous Bess. 'I would
ever so much rather Ida married poor Brian, although they had to pig in
furnished lodgings for the first ten years of their life. Crabbed age and
youth cannot dwell together.'

'But Dr. Rylance is not crabbed, and he is not old.'

'Let him marry a lady of the same doubtful age, which seems old to me,
but young to you, and then no one will find fault with him,' said Bess,
savagely. 'I feel an inward and spiritual conviction that Ida is doomed
to marry Brian Walford. The poor fellow was so hopelessly in love with
her when he left this place, that, if she had not a stone inside her
instead of a heart, she would have accepted him; but _magno est amor et
praevalebit!_' concluded Bess, with a mighty effort; 'I'm sure I hope
that's right.'

'I think it must be time for you to go home and dress, if you really wish
to look nice to-night,' said Ida, severely. 'You know you generally find
yourself without frilling, or something wrong, at the last moment.'

'Heavens!' exclaimed Bessie, starting up and upsetting the petted
Persian, which had been reposing in her lap, and which now skulked off
resentfully, with a swollen tail, to hide its indignation under a chair,
'you are as bad as an oracle. I have yards and yards of frilling to sew
on before I dress--my sleeves--my neck--my sweeper.'

'Shall I run over and sew the frills on for you?' asked Ida.

'You! when you are going to wear that lovely pink gown. You will want
hours to dress. No: Blanche must make herself useful for once in her
ridiculous life. _Au revoir_, auntie darling. Go, lovely rose'--to
Ida--'and make yourself still lovelier in order to captivate Dr.
Rylance.'

The dinner was over. It had passed without a hitch, and the gentlemen
were now enjoying their claret and conversation in a comfortable
semicircle in front of Miss Wendover's roomy hearth.

The conversation was for the most part strictly local, Colonel Wendover
and Mr. Hildrop Havenant leading, and the Vicar a good second; but now
and then there was a brief diversion from the parish to European
politics, when Dr. Rylance--who secretly abhorred parochial talk--dashed
to the fore and talked with an authority which it was hard for the others
to keep under. He spoke of the impending declaration of war--there is
generally some such thing--as if he had been at the War Office that
morning in confidential converse with the chief officials; but this was
more than Squire Havenant could endure, and he flatly contradicted the
physician on the strength of his morning's correspondence. Mr. Havenant
always talked of his letters as if they contained all the law and the
prophets. His correspondents were high in office, unimpeachable
authorities, men who had the ear of the House, or who pulled the strings
of the Government.

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