The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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'Heaven help me! I am as weak as the rest of my sex,' he said to himself.
'Because she is lovely I am ready to think she is good--ready to fall
into the old, old trap which has snapped its wicked jaws upon so many
victims. However, be she what she may, at the worst she is not vulgar. I
am glad of that, for Bessie's sake.'

He tried to make a little conversation during the rest of the way, asking
about different members of the Wendover family, and telling Ida some
stray facts about his late wanderings. But she did not encourage him to
talk. Her answers were faltering, her manner absent-minded. He began to
think her stupid; and yet he had been told that she was a wonder of
cleverness.

'I daresay her talent all lies in her fingers' ends,' he thought. 'She
plays Beethoven and works in crewels. That is a girl's idea of feminine
genius. Perhaps she makes her own gowns, which is a higher flight, since
it involves usefulness.'

It was only four o'clock when they went in at the little orchard gate,
and Miss Wendover could hardly be expected for an hour. What was Ida to
do with her guest, unless he kept his word and stayed in the orchard?

'Shall I send you out the newspapers, or any refreshment?' she asked.

There were rustic tables and chairs, a huge Japanese umbrella, every
accommodation for lounging, in that prettiest bit of the spacious old
orchard which adjoined the garden, and here Ida made this polite offer of
refreshment for mind or body.

'No, thank you; I'll stay here and smoke a cigarette. I can get on very
well without newspapers, having lived so long beyond easy reach of them.'

She left him, but glancing back at the garden gate she saw him take a
book from his pocket and settle himself in one of the basket chairs, with
a luxurious air, like a man perfectly content. This was a kind of thing
quite new to her in her experience of the Wendovers, who were not a
bookish race.

She went into the house, and made all her little preparations for
afternoon tea, filling the vases with freshly-cut flowers, drawing up
blinds, arranging book-tables, work-baskets, curtains--all the details of
the prettiest drawing-room in Kingthorpe, but walking to and fro all the
while like a creature in a dream. She had not half recovered from her
surprise, her painful wonder at Brian Wendover's appearance, at his
strange likeness to her ideal knight--strange to her, but not miraculous,
since such hereditary faces are to be found after the lapse of centuries.

When all her small duties had been performed she went up to her room,
bathed her face and brushed her hair, and put on a fresher gown, and then
sat down to read, trying to lose herself in the thoughts of another mind,
trying to forget this embarrassment, this sense of humiliation, which had
come upon her. She sat thus for half an hour or so, reading 'The
Caxtons,' one of her favourite novels, and felt a little more composed
and philosophical, when the rythmical beat of Brimstone and Treacle's
eight iron shoes told her that Miss Wendover had returned.

She ran to the gate to welcome that kind friend, looking so fresh and
bright in her clean white gown that Aunt Betsy saw no sign of the past
struggle.

'Mr. Wendover is here,' she said, shyly, when Aunt Betsy had kissed her
and given her some brief account of the day's adventures. The rest of the
party had been deposited at The Knoll.

'Whom do you mean by Mr. Wendover, child?'

'Mr. Wendover of the Abbey. He is reading in the orchard.'

'Of course, I never saw him without a book in his hand. So he has
come back at last. I am very glad. He is a good fellow, a little too
reserved and self-contained, too fond of brooding over some beautiful
truism of Plato's when he ought to be thinking of deep drainage and a new
school-house; but a good fellow for all that, and always ready with his
cheque-book. Let us go and look for him.'

'You will find him in the orchard,' said Ida. 'I will go and hurry on the
tea. You must want some tea after your dusty drive.'

'Dusty!' exclaimed Miss Wendover; 'we are positively smothered. Yes. I am
dying for my tea; but I must see this nephew of mine first.'

Ida went back to the drawing-room, where everything was perfectly ready,
as she knew very well beforehand; but she shrank with a sickly dread from
any further acquaintance with the master of Wendover Abbey. She hoped
that he and his aunt might say all they had to say to each other in the
orchard, and that he would go on to The Knoll to pay his respects to the
rest of his relations.

In this she was disappointed. Scarcely had she seated herself before the
tea-table when Aunt Betsy and her nephew entered through the open window.

'You two young people have contrived to get acquainted without my aid,'
said Miss Wendover, cheerily, 'so there's no necessity for any
introduction. Now, Brian, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Give
him some tea, Ida. I believe he is just civilized enough to like tea, in
spite of his wanderings.'

'On account of them you might as well say, Aunt Betsy. I drank nothing
but tea in Scandinavia. It was the easiest thing to get.'

Ida's occupation at the table gave her an excuse for silence. She had
only to attend to her cups and saucers, and to listen to Miss Wendover
and her nephew, who had plenty to talk about. To hear that deep full
voice, with its perfect intonation, was in itself a pleasure--pleasant,
also, to discover that Brian Wendover, albeit a famous Balliol man and a
Greek scholar after the Porsonian ideal, could still be warmly interested
in simple things and lowly folk. She began to feel at ease in his
presence; she began to perceive that here was a thoroughly noble nature,
a mind so lofty and liberal that even had the man known her pitiful
sordid story he would have been more inclined to compassionate than to
condemn.

Having recovered her favourite nephew, after so long a severance, Aunt
Betsy was in no wise disposed to let him go. She insisted upon his
staying to dinner; and before the evening was over Ida found herself
quite at home with the dreaded master of the Abbey. At Miss Wendover's
request she played for nearly an hour, and Brian listened with evident
appreciation, sitting at his ease just outside the open window, among the
roses and lilies of June, under a moonlit sky. It was a calm, peaceful,
rational kind of evening, and Ida's mind was tranquillized by the time it
was over; and when she went to her room, after a friendly parting with
Miss Wendover's nephew, she told herself that she was not likely to be
often troubled with his society. He was too much a lover of learned
solitude to be likely to be interested in the small amusements and
occupations of the family at The Knoll--too much in the clouds to concern
himself with Aunt Betsy's various endeavours to improve her poorer
neighbours in themselves and their surroundings.

She did not long remain under this delusion. She was busy in the garden,
with basket and scissors, trimming away fading roses and cankered buds
from the luxuriance of bush and standard, arch and trellis, at eleven
o'clock next morning, when she heard the garden gate open, and beheld Mr.
Wendover, Bessie, and Urania coming across the lawn.

'We are going for a botanical prowl in the woods,' said Bessie, 'and we
want you to come with us. You are always anxious to improve your mind,
and here is a grand opportunity for you. Brian is a tremendous botanist,
and Mr. Jardine is not an ignoramus in that line.'

'Oh, then Mr. Jardine is going to prowl too?' said Ida, smiling at her.

'Yes, he is going to give himself a holiday, for once in a way. Blanche
is packing a basket. She and Eva are to have the car, but the rest of us
are going to walk. Come along, Ida, just as you are. We are going to
grovel and grub after club-mosses and toad-stools. Your oldest gown is
too good.'

'Please wear a white gown, as you did yesterday,' said Brian. 'White has
such a lovely effect amidst the lights and shadows of a wood.'

'Isn't it rather too violent a contrast?' argued Urania. 'A faint
sage-green, or a pale gray--or even that too lovely terra-cotta red--'

'Flower-pot colour!' screamed Bessie. 'Horrid!'

'I should like to go,' faltered Ida, 'but I have so much to do--an
afternoon class--no, it is quite impossible. Thank you very much for
thinking of me, all the same.

'You utterly disagreeable thing!' exclaimed Bessie; and at this moment
Miss Wendover came upon the scene, from an adjacent green-house, where
she had been working diligently with sponge and watering-pot. She heard
the rights and wrongs of the case, and insisted that Ida should go.

'Never mind the afternoon class--I'll take that. You work hard enough,
child; you must have a holiday sometimes.'

'I had a holiday yesterday, Aunt Betsy; and really I had rather not go.
The day is so very warm, and I have a slight headache already.'

'Go and lose it in the wood, where Rosalind lost her heart-ache. Nothing
like a long ramble when one is a little out of sorts. Go and get rid of
your basket, and get your sunshade. Where are you going for your
botanising?'

'All over the world,' said Bessie; 'just as fancy leads us. If you will
promise to meet us anywhere, we'll be there.'

'So be it,' replied Aunt Betsy. 'Suppose we arrange a tea-meeting. I will
be ready for you by the Queen Beech, in Framleigh Wood, as the clock
strikes five, and we will all come home together. And now run away,
before the day gets old. Glad to see you unbending for once in a way,
Urania.'

Miss Rylance had been curiously willing to unbend this morning, when
Bessie ran in and surprised her at her morning practice with the
wonderful tidings of Brian's return. She appeared delighted at the idea
of a botanising expedition, though she cared as little for botany as she
did for Hebrew. But when a young lady of large aspirations is compelled
to vegetate in a village--even after her presentation at court and
introduction into society--she is naturally avid for the society of the
one eligible man in the parish.

'Mr. Jardine is coming with us,' Bessie told her, as a further
temptation.

Urania gave her hand a little squeeze, and murmured, 'Yes, darling, I'll
come: Mr. Jardine is so nice. Will my frock do?'

The frock was of the pre-Raffaelite or Bedford-Parkian order,
short-waisted, flowing, and flabby, colour the foliage of a lavender
bush, relieved by a broad brick-dust sash. An amber necklace, a large
limp Leghorn hat with a sunflower in it, and a pair of long yellow
gloves, completed Urania's costume.

'Your frock will be spoilt in the woods,' said Bessie; but Urania did not
mean to do much botanical work, and was not afraid of spoiling her frock.

They found Mr. Jardine waiting for them at the churchyard gate, and to
him Bessie presented her cousin, somewhat reversing the ceremonial order
of things, since Brian Wendover was the patron of the living, and could
have made John Jardine vicar on the arising of a vacancy.

Brian and the Curate walked on ahead with Miss Rylance, who seemed bent
upon keeping them both in conversation, and Bessie fell back a little way
with Ida.

'You dearest darling,' she exclaimed, squeezing her arm rapturously.

'What has happened, Bess? Why such unusual radiance?'

'Do you suppose I am not glad of Brian's return?'

'I thought you liked the other one best?'

'Well, yes; one is more at home with him, don't you see. This one was a
double-first--got the Ireland Scholarship. Why Ireland, when it was at
Oxford he got it? He is awfully learned; knows Greek plays by heart, just
as that sweet Mr. Brandram who came last winter to read for the new
school-house knows Shakespeare. But I am very fond of him, all the same;
and oh, Ida, what a too heavenly thing it would be if he were to fall in
love with you!'

'Bessie!' exclaimed Ida, with an indignant frown.

'Don't look so angry. You should have heard how he spoke of you
this morning at breakfast; such praise! Approbation from Sir Hubert
What's-his-name is praise indeed, don't you know. There's Shakespeare for
you!' added Bessie, whose knowledge of polite literature had its limits.

'Bessie, you contrived once--meaning no harm, of course--to give me great
pain, to humiliate me to the very dust,' said Ida, seriously. 'Let us
have no more such fooling. Your cousin is--your cousin--quite out of my
sphere. However civil he may be to me, however kindly he may speak of me,
he can never be any more to me than he is at this moment.'

'Very well,' said Bess, meekly, 'I will be as silent as the grave. I
don't think I said anything very offensive, but--I apologize. Do you
think you would very much mind kissing me, just as if nothing had
happened?'

Ida clasped the lovable damsel in her arms and kissed her warmly. And now
Mr. Jardine turned back and joined them at the entrance to a wood
supposed to be particularly rich in mosses, flowers, and fungi. Urania
still absorbed the attention of Mr. Wendover, who strolled by her side
and listened somewhat languidly to her disquisitions upon various phases
of modern thought.

'What a beautiful girl Bessie has discovered for her bosom friend,' he
said, presently.

'Miss Palliser: yes, she is quite too lovely, is she not?' said Urania,
with that air of heartiness which every well-trained young woman assumes
when she discusses a rival beauty; 'but she has not the purity of the
early Italian manner. It is a Carlo-Dolci face--the beauty of the
Florentine decadence. I was at school with her.'

'So I understood. Were you great friends?'

'No,' replied Miss Rylance, decisively; 'if we had been at school for as
many years as it took to evolve man from the lowest of the vertebrata we
should not have been friends.'

'I understand. The thousandth part of an inch, unbridged, is as
metaphysically impassable as the gulf which divides us from the farthest
nebula. In your case there was no conveying medium, no sympathy to draw
you together,' said Brian, answering the young lady in her own coin.

She glanced at him doubtfully, rather inclined to think he was laughing
at her, if any one could laugh at Miss Rylance.

'She was frankly detestable,' said Urania. 'I endure her here for
Bessie's sake; just as I would endure the ungraceful curves of a
Dachshund if Bess took it into her head to make a pet of one; but at
school I could keep her at a distance.'

'What has she done to offend you?'

'Done? nothing. She exists, that is quite enough. Her whole nature--her
moral being--is antagonistic to mine. What is your opinion of a young
woman who declares in cold blood that she means to marry for money?'

'Not a pleasant avowal from such lips, certainly,' said Brian. 'She may
have been only joking.'

'After events showed that she was in earnest.'

'How so? Has she married for money? I thought she was still Miss
Palliser?'

'She is; but that is not her fault. She tried her hardest to secure a
husband whom she supposed to be rich.'

And then Miss Rylance told how in frolic mood his penniless cousin had
been palmed upon Miss Palliser as the owner of the Abbey; how she had
fallen readily into the trap, and had carried on a clandestine
acquaintance which had resulted in her expulsion from the school where
she had filled the subordinate position of pupil-teacher.

'I have heard most of this before, from Bessie, but not the full
particulars of the practical joke which put Brian Walford in my shoes,'
said Mr. Wendover.

He felt more shocked, more wounded than there was need for him to feel,
perhaps; but the girl's beauty had charmed him, and he was prepared to
think her a goddess.

'How do you know that Miss Palliser did not like my cousin for his own
sake?' he speculated presently. 'Brian Walford is a very nice fellow.'

'She did not like him well enough to marry him when she knew the truth,'
replied Urania. 'I believe the poor fellow was passionately in love with
her. She encouraged him, fooled him to the top of his bent, and then
flung him over directly she found he was not the rich Mr. Wendover. He
has never been to Kingthorpe since. That would show how deeply he was
wounded.'

'The fooling was not all on her side,' said Mr. Wendover. 'She had a
right to resent the trick that had been played upon her. I am surprised
that Bessie could lend herself to such a mean attempt to put her friend
at a disadvantage.'

'Oh, I am sure Bessie meant only the most innocent fun; her tremendous
animal spirits carry her away sometimes, don't you know. And then, again,
she thinks her chosen friend perfection. She could not understand that
Miss Palliser could really marry a man for the sake of his houses and
lands. _I_ knew her better.'

'And it was you who hatched the plot, I think,' said Brian.

Miss Rylance had not been prepared to admit as much. She intended Bessie
to bear whatever blame there might be attached to the escapade in Mr.
Wendover's mind; but it seemed from this remark of his that Bessie had
betrayed her.

'I may have thrown out the idea when your cousin suddenly appeared upon
the scene. We were all in wild spirits that day. And really Miss Palliser
had made herself very absurd by her romantic admiration of the Abbey.'

'Well, I hope this young lady-like conspiracy did no harm,' said Brian;
'but I have a hearty abhorrence of all practical jokes.'

They were in a deep, rutty lane by this time, a lane with banks rich in
ferns and floral growth, and here came Blanche and Eva and the youngest
boy, released from Latin grammar and Greek delectus at an earlier hour
than usual. The car was sent on to the wood, and Bessie and her two
sisters produced their fern trowels, and began digging and delving for
rare specimens--real or imaginary--assisted by Mr. Jardine, who had more
knowledge but less enthusiasm than the girls.

'I can't think what you can want with more ferns,' said Urania,
disdainfully; 'every corner at The Knoll has its fernery.'

'Oh, but one can't have too much of a good thing; and then there is the
pleasure of looking for them. Aren't you going to hunt for anything?'

'Thanks, no. It is a day for basking rather than work. Shall we go to the
end of the lane--there is a lovely view from there--and sit and bask?'

'With all my heart,' replied Mr. Wendover. 'Come, Miss Palliser, of
course you'll join the basking detachment.'

Urania would have liked to leave Ida out of the business, but she smiled
sweetly at Mr. Wendover's speech, and they all three strolled to the end
of the lane, which ascended all the way, till they found themselves upon
a fine upland, with a lovely view of woodland and valley stretching away
towards Alresford. Here in the warm June sunshine they seated themselves
on a ferny bank to wait for the diggers and delvers below. It was verily
weather in which to bask was quite the most rapturous employment. The
orchestral harmonies of summer insects made a low drowsy music around
them. There was just enough air to faintly stir the petals of the
dog-roses without blowing them from their frail stems. The dazzling light
above, the cool verdure around, made a delicious contrast. Ida looked
dreamily across the bold grassy downs, with here and there a patch of
white, which shone like a jewel in the sun. It was very pleasant to sit
here--very pleasant to listen to Brian Wendover's description of Norway
and the Norwegians. A book of travels might have been ever so much
better, perhaps; but there was a charm in these vivid pictures of recent
experiences which no printed page could have conveyed. And then the talk
was delightfully desultory, now touching upon literature, now upon art,
now even descending to family reminiscences, stories of the time when
Brian had been a Winchester boy, as his cousins were now, and his happy
hunting grounds had been among these hills.

Ida talked very little. She was disposed to be silent; but had it been
otherwise she would have found slight opportunity for conversation. Miss
Rylance, educated up to the standard of good professional society, was
ready to give her opinions upon anything between heaven and earth, from
the spectrum analysis of the sun's rays to the latest discovery in the
habits of ants. She did not mean Ida to shine, and she so usurped the
conversation that Miss Palliser's opinions and ideas remained a blank to
Mr. Wendover.

Yet a glance at Ida's face now and then told him that she was not
unintelligent, and by the time that summer day was over, and they all sat
round the gipsy tea-kettle in the wood, with Aunt Betsy presiding over
the feast, Mr. Wendover felt as if he knew a good deal about Miss
Palliser. They had talked, and walked, and botanized together in the
wood, in spite of Miss Rylance; and Urania felt somehow that the day had
been a failure. She had made up her mind long ago that Mr. Wendover of
the Abbey was just the one person in Hampshire whom she could allow
herself to marry. Anyone else in that locality was impossible.

Under these circumstances it was trying to behold Mr. Wendover laying
himself, as it were, at the feet of a poor dependent and hanger-on of his
family, merely because that young person happened to be handsome. He
could have no ulterior views; he was only revealing that innate
shallowness and frivolity of the masculine mind which allows even the
wisest man to be caught by a pair of fine eyes, a Grecian nose, and a
brilliant complexion. Mr. Wendover was no doubt a great deal too wise to
have any serious ideas about such a person as Ida Palliser; but he liked
to talk to her, he liked to watch the sensitive colour come and go upon
the perfect oval of her cheek, while the dark eye brightened or clouded
with every change of feeling; and while he was yielding to these vulgar
distractions there was no chance of his falling in love with Urania
Rylance.

It was a crushing blow to Miss Rylance when a little conversation at
tea-time showed that Mr. Wendover was not disposed to think Miss Palliser
altogether a nobody, and that a young woman who earned a salary as a
useful companion might belong to a better family than Miss Rylance could
boast.

'I have heard your name before to-day, Miss Palliser,' said Brian. 'Is
your father any relation to Sir Vernon Palliser?'

'Sir Vernon is my father's nephew.'

'Indeed! Then your father is the Captain Palliser of whom I've heard
Vernon and Peter Palliser talk sometimes. Your cousins are members of the
Alpine Club, and of the Travellers', and we have often met. Capital
fellows, both of them.'

'I have never seen them,' said Ida, 'so much of my life has been spent at
school. Sir Vernon and his brother went to see my father and step-mother
last October, and made a very good impression. But that is all I know of
them.'

A baronet for a first cousin! and she had never mentioned the fact at
Mauleverer, where it would have scored high. What an unaccountable kind
of girl, and quite wanting in human feeling, thought Urania, listening
intently, though pretending to be interested in a vehement discussion
between Blanche and Bessie as to whether a certain puffy excrescence was
or was not a beef-steak fungus, and should or should not be cooked for
dinner.

'Do you know your cousin's Sussex property? Have you ever been at
Wimperfield?' inquired Brian.

'Never. I have heard my father say it is a lovely place, a little way
beyond Petersfield.'

'Yes, I know every inch of the country round. It is charming.'

'It cannot be prettier than this,' said Ida, with conviction.

'I hardly agree with you there. It is a wilder and more varied landscape.
Hampshire has nothing so picturesque on this side of the New Forest. If
Sir Veron and his brother are at Wimperfield this summer, we might make
up a party and drive over to see the place. I know he would give us a
hearty welcome.'

Ida was silent, but Aunt Betsy and her niece declared that it was a
splendid idea of Brian's, and must certainly be carried out.

'Fancy Brian introducing Ida to her cousin!' exclaimed Bessie. 'Would it
not be quite too deliciously absurd? "Sir Vernon Palliser, permit me to
introduce you to your first cousin!"

And then Bessie, who was an incorrigible matchmaker where Ida was
concerned, began to think what a happy thing it would be if Sir Vernon
Palliser were to fall in love with his cousin, and incontinently propose
to make her mistress of this delightful place near Petersfield.

They all walked back to Kingthorpe together, and parted at the Homestead
gate.

Miss Rylance, who hated woods, wild-flowers, ferns and toadstools, and
all the accompaniments of rustic life, went back to her aesthetic
drawing-room in a savage humour, albeit that fine training which comes of
advanced civilization enabled her to part from her friends with endearing
smiles.

She expected her father that evening, and she was looking forward to the
refreshment of hearing of that metropolis which suited her so much better
than Hampshire hills and woods; nay, there was even the possibility that
he might bring someone down with him, as it was his custom to do now and
then. But instead of Dr. Rylance she found an orange-coloured envelope
upon the hall table containing an apologetic message.

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