The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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CHAPTER II.

'I AM GOING TO MARRY FOR MONEY.'

When a schoolgirl of sixteen falls in love with one of her schoolfellows
there are no limits to her devotion. Bessie Wendover's adoration of Miss
Palliser was boundless. Ida's seniority of three years, her beauty, her
talent, placed her, as it were, upon a pinnacle in the eyes of the
younger girl. Her poverty, her inferior position in the school, only made
her more interesting to the warm-hearted Bessie, who passionately
resented any slight offered to her friend. It was in vain that Miss
Rylance took Bessie to task, and demonstrated the absurdity of this
childish fancy for a young person whose future sphere of life must be
necessarily remote from that of a Hampshire squire's daughter. Bessie
despised this worldly wisdom.

'What is the use of attaching yourself to a girl whom you are never
likely to see after you leave school?' argued Miss Rylance.

'I shall see her. I shall ask her home,' said Bessie, sturdily.

'Do you think your people will let you ?'

'Mother will do anything I ask her, and father will do anything mother
asks him. I am going to have Ida home with me all the summer holidays.'

'How do you know that she will come?'

'I shall make her come. It is very nasty of you to insinuate that she
won't.'

'Palliser has a good deal of pride--pride and poverty generally go
together, don't you know. I don't think she'll care about showing herself
at the Grange in her old clothes and her three pairs of stockings, one
on, one off, and one at the laundress's,' said Miss Rylance, winding up
with a viperish little laugh as if she had said something witty.

She had a certain influence with Bessie, whom she had known all her life.
It was she who had inspired Bessie with the desks to come to Mauleverer
Manor, to be finished, after having endured eight years of jog-trot
education from a homely little governess at home--who grounded the boys
in Latin and mathematics before they went to Winchester, and made herself
generally useful. Miss Rylance was the daughter of a fashionable
physician, whose head-quarters were in Cavendish Square, but who spent
his leisure at a something which he called 'a place' at Kingthorpe, a
lovely little village between Winchester and Romsey, where the Wendovers
were indigenous to the soil, whence they seemed to have sprung, like the
armed men in the story; for remotest tradition bore no record of their
having come there from anywhere else, nor was there record of a time when
the land round Kingthorpe belonged to any other family.

Dr. Rylance, whose dainty verandah shaded cottage stood in gardens of
three and a half acres, and who rented a paddock for his cow, was always
lamenting that he could not buy more land.

'The Wendovers have everything,' he said. 'It is impossible for a new man
to establish himself.'

It was to be observed, however, that when land within a reasonable
distance of Kingthorpe came into the market, Dr. Rylance did not put
himself forward as a buyer. His craving for more territory always ended
in words.

Urania Rylance had spent much of her girlhood at Kingthorpe, and had
always been made welcome at The Knoll; but although she saw the Wendovers
established upon their native soil, the rulers of the land, and revered
by all the parish, she had grown up with the firm conviction that Dr.
Rylance, of Cavendish Square, and Dr. Rylance's daughter were altogether
superior to these country bumpkins, with their narrow range of ideas and
their strictly local importance.

The summer days wore on at Mauleverer Manor, not altogether unpleasantly
for the majority of the girls, who contrived to enjoy their lives in
spite of Miss Pew's tyranny, which was considered vile enough to rank
that middle-aged, loud-voiced lady with the Domitians and Attilas of
history. There was a softening influence, happily, in the person of Miss
Dulcibella, who was slim and sentimental, talked about sweetness and
light, loved modern poetry, spent all her available funds upon dress, and
was wonderfully girlish in her tastes and habits at nine-and-thirty years
of age.

It was a splendid summer, a time of roses and sunshine, and the girls
were allowed to carry on their studies in the noble old garden, in the
summer-houses and pleasure domes which the extinct Mauleverers had made
for themselves in their day of power. Grinding at history, grammar, and
geography did not seem so oppressive a burden when it could be done
under the shade of spreading cedars, amid the scent of roses, in an
atmosphere of colour and light. Even Ida's labours seemed a little easier
when she and her pupils sat in a fast-decaying old summer-house in the
rose-garden, with a glimpse of sunlit river flashing athwart the roses.

So the time wore on until the last week in July, and then all the school
was alive with excitement, and every one was looking forward to the great
event of the term, 'breaking up.' 'Old Pew,' had sent out her invitations
for a garden party, an actual garden party--not a mere namby-pamby
entertainment among the girls themselves, in which a liberal supply of
blanc-mange and jam tarts was expected to atone for the absence of the
outside world. Miss Pew had taken it into her head that Mauleverer Manor
ought to be better known, and that a garden party would be a good
advertisement. With this idea, she had ordered a hundred invitation
cards, and had disseminated them among the most eligible of her old
pupils, and the parents and guardians of those damsels now at the Manor.
The good old gardens, where velvet greensward and cedars of Lebanon cost
little labour to maintain in perfect order, were worthy to be exhibited.
The roses, Miss Dulcibella's peculiar care, were, in that lady's opinion,
equal to anything outside Chatsworth or Trentham. A garden party, by all
means, said Miss Dulcibella, and she gave the young ladies to understand
that the whole thing was her doing.

'I waited till Sarah was in a good temper,' she told her satellites, half
a dozen or so of the elder girls who worshipped her, and who, in the
slang phraseology of the school, were known as Miss Dulcie's 'cracks,'
'and then I proposed a garden party. It required a great deal of talking
to bring her even to think about such a thing. You see the expense will
be enormous! Ices, tea and coffee, cakes, sandwiches, claret-cup. Thank
goodness it's too late in the year for people to expect strawberries.
Yes, my dears, you may thank me for your garden party.'

'Dear Miss Dulcibella,' exclaimed one.

'You too delicious darling,' cried another.

'What will you wear?' asked a third, knowing that Miss Dulcie was weak
about dress, and had a morbid craving for originality.

'Well, dears,' began Miss Dulcie, growing radiant at the thrilling
question, 'I have been thinking of making up my art needlework tunic--the
pale green, you know, with garlands of passion flowers, worked in
crewels--over a petticoat of the faintest primrose.'

'That will be quite too lovely,' exclaimed four enthusiasts in a chorus.

'You know how fond I am of those delicate tints in that soft Indian
cashmere, that falls in such artistic folds.'

'Heavenly,' sighed the chorus, and Miss Dulcie went on talking for
half-an-hour by Chertsey clock, in fact till the tea-bell broke up the
little conclave.

What was Ida Palliser going to wear at the garden party? The question was
far more serious for her than for Miss Dulcibella, who had plenty of
money to spend upon her adornment. In Ida the necessity for a new gown
meant difficulty, perhaps mortification.

'Why should I not spend the day in one of the garrets, darning stockings
and packing boxes?' she said bitterly, when a grand discussion about the
garden party was being held in the butterfly-room; 'nobody will want me.
I have no relations coming to admire me.'

'You know you don't mean what you say,' said Miss Rylance. 'You expect to
have half-a-dozen prizes, and to lord it over all of us.'

'I have worked hard enough for the prizes,' answered Ida. 'I don't think
you need grudge me them.'

'I do not,' said Miss Rylance, with languid scorn. 'You know I never go
in for prizes. My father looks upon school as only a preliminary kind of
education. When I am at home with him in the season I shall have lessons
from better masters than any we are favoured with here.'

'What a comfort it is for us to know that!' retorted Ida, her eyes
dancing mischievously.

It was now within a week of the garden party. Miss Pew was grimmer of
aspect and louder of voice than usual, and it was felt that, at the
slightest provocation, she might send forth an edict revoking all her
invitations, and the party might be relegated to the limbo of unrealized
hopes. Never had the conduct of Miss Pew's pupils been so irreproachable,
never had lessons been learned, and exercises prepared, so diligently.

Ida had received a kind little note from Mrs. Wendover, asking her to
spend her summer holidays at Kingthorpe, and at Bessie's earnest desire
had accepted the cordial invitation.

'You don't know what a foolish thing you are doing, Bess,' said Miss
Palliser, when--reluctant to the last--she had written her acceptance,
Bessie looking over her shoulder all the while. 'Foolish for you, foolish
for me. It is a mistake to associate yourself with paupers. You will feel
ashamed of me half-a-dozen times a day at Kingthorpe.'

'No, no, no!' cried the energetic Bessie; 'I shall never feel anything
but pride in you. I shall be proud to show my people what a beautiful,
brilliant, wonderful friend I have chosen for myself.'

'Ardent child!' exclaimed Ida, with a touch of sadness even in her
mockery. 'What a pity you have not a bachelor brother to fall in love
with me!'

'Never mind the brother. I have two bachelor cousins.'

'Of course! The rich Brian, and the poor Brian, whose histories I have
heard almost as often as I heard the story of "Little Red Ridinghood" in
my nursery days. Both good-looking, both clever, both young. One a man of
landed estate. All Kingthorpe parish belongs to him, does it not?'

'All except the little bit that belongs to papa.'

'And Dr. Rylance's garden and paddock; don't forget that.'

'Could I forget the Rylances? Urania says that although her father has no
land at Kingthorpe, he has influence.'

'The other cousin dependent on his talents, and fighting his way at the
Bar. Is not that how the story goes, Bess?'

'Yes, darling. I am afraid poor Brian has hardly begun fighting yet. He
is only eating his terms. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds
rather low.'

'Well, Bess, if I am to marry either of your cousins, it must be the rich
one,' said Ida, decisively.

'Oh, Ida, how can you say so? You can't know which you will like best.'

'My likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it. I am going to marry
for money.'

Miss Rylance had brought her desk to that end of the table where the two
girls were sitting, during the latter part of the conversation. It was
evening, the hour or so of leisure allowed for the preparation of studies
and the writing of home letters. Miss Rylance unlocked her desk, and took
out her paper and pens; but, having got so far as this, she seemed rather
inclined to join in the conversation than to begin her letter.

'Isn't that rather a worldly idea for your time of life?' she asked,
looking at Ida with her usual unfriendly expression.

'No doubt. I should be disgusted if you or Bessie entertained such a
notion. But in me it is only natural. I have drained the cup of poverty
to the dregs. I thirst for the nectar of wealth. I would marry a
soap-boiler, a linseed-crusher, a self-educated navvy who had developed
into a great contractor--any plebian creature, always provided that he
was an honest man.'

'How condescending!' said Miss Rylance. 'I suppose, Bessie, you know that
Miss Pew has especially forbidden us all to indulge in idle talk about
courtship and marriage?'

'Quite so,' said Bessie; 'but as old Pew knows that we are human, I've no
doubt she is quite aware that this is one of her numerous rules which we
diligently set at nought.'

Urania began her letter, but although her pen moved swiftly over her
paper in that elegant Italian hand which was, as it were, a badge of
honour at Mauleverer Manor, her ears were not the less open to the
conversation going on close beside her.

'Marry a soap-boiler, indeed!' exclaimed Bessie, indignantly; 'you ought
to be a duchess!'

'No doubt, dear, if dukes went about the world, like King Cophetua, on
the look out for beggar-maids.'

'I am so happy to think you are coming to Kingthorpe! It is the dearest
old place. We shall be so happy!'

'It will not be your fault if we are not, darling,' said Ida, looking
tenderly at the loving face, uplifted to hers. 'Well, I have written to
my father to ask him for five pounds, and if he sends the five pounds I
will go to Kingthorpe. If not, I must invent an excuse--mumps, or
measles, or something--for staying away. Or I must behave so badly for
the last week of the term that old Pew will revoke her sanction of the
intended visit. I cannot come to Kingthorpe quite out at elbows.'

'You look lovely even in the gown you have on,' said Bessie.

'I don't know anything about my loveliness, but I know that this gown is
absolutely threadbare.'

Bessie, sighed despondently. She knew her friend's resolute temper, and
that any offer of clothes or money from her would be worse than useless.
It would make Ida angry.

'What kind of man is your father, darling?' she asked, thoughtfully.

'Very good-natured.'

'Ah! Then he will send the five pounds.'

'Very weak.'

'Ah! Then he may change his mind about it.'

'Very poor.'

'Then he may not have the money.'

'The lot is in the urn of fate, Bess, We must take our chance. I think,
somehow, that the money will come. I have asked for it urgently, for I do
want to come to Kingthorpe.' Bessie kissed her. 'Yes, dear, I wish with
all my heart to accept your kind mother's invitation; though I know, in
my secret soul, that it is foolishness for me to see the inside of a
happy home, to sit beside a hospitable hearth, when it is my mission in
life to be a dependent in the house of a stranger. If you had half a
dozen small sisters, now, and your people would engage me as a nursery
governess--'

'You a nursery governess!' cried Bessie, 'you who are at the top of every
class, and who do everything better than the masters who teach you?'

'Well, if my perfection prove worth seventy pounds a-year when I go out
into the world, I shall be satisfied,' said Ida.

'What will you buy with your five pounds?' asked Bessie.

'A black cashmere gown, as plain as a nun's, a straw hat, and as many
collars, cuffs, and stockings as I can get for the rest of the money.'

Miss Rylance listened, smiling quietly to herself as she bent over her
desk. To the mind of an only daughter, who had been brought up in a
supremely correct manner, who had had her winter clothes and summer
clothes at exactly the right season, and of the best that money could
buy, there was a piteous depth of poverty and degradation in Ida
Palliser's position. The girl's beauty and talents were as nothing when
weighed against such sordid surroundings.

The prize-day came, a glorious day at the beginning of August, and the
gardens of Mauleverer Manor, the wide reach of blue river, the meadows,
the willows, the distant woods, all looked their loveliest, as if Nature
was playing into the hands of Miss Pew.

'I am sure you girls ought to be very happy to live in such a place!'
said one of the mothers, as she strolled about the velvet lawn with her
daughters, 'instead of being mewed up in a dingy London square.'

'You wouldn't say that if you saw the bread and scrape and the sloppy tea
we have for breakfast,' answered one of the girls,

'It's all very well for you, who see this wretched hole in the sunshine,
and old Pew in her best gown and her company manners. The place is a
whited sepulchre. I should like you to have a glimpse behind the scenes,
ma.'

'Ma' smiled placidly, and turned a deaf ear to these aspersions of the
schoolmistress. Her girls looked well fed and healthy. Bread and scrape
evidently agreed with them much better than that reckless consumption of
butter and marmalade which swelled the housekeeping bills during the
holidays.

It was a great day. Miss Pew the elder was splendid in apple-green moiré
antique; Miss Pew the younger was elegant in pale and flabby raiment of
cashmere and crewel-work. The girls were in that simple white muslin of
the _jeune Meess Anglaise_, to which they were languishing to bid an
eternal adieu. There were a great many pretty girls at Mauleverer Manor,
and on this day, when the white-robed girlish forms were flitting to and
fro upon the green lawns, in the sweet summer air and sunshine, it seemed
as if the old manorial mansion were a bower of beauty. Among the parents
of existing pupils who had accepted the Misses Pew's invitation was Dr.
Rylance, the fashionable physician, whose presence there conferred
distinction upon the school. It was Miss Rylance's last term, and the
doctor wished to assist at those honours which she would doubtless reap
as the reward of meritorious studies. He was not blindly devoted to his
daughter, but he was convinced that, like every thing else belonging to
him, she was of the best quality; and he expected to see her appreciated
by the people who had been privileged to educate her.

The distribution of prizes was the great feature of the day. It was to
take place at four o'clock, in the ball room, a fine old panelled saloon,
in which the only furniture was a pair of grand pianos, somewhat the
worse for wear, a table at the end of the room on which the prizes were
arranged, and benches covered with crimson cloth for the accommodation of
the company.

There was to be a concert before the distribution. Four of the best
pianoforte players in the school were to hammer out an intensely noisy
version of the overture to _Zampa_, arranged for eight hands on two
pianos. The crack singer was to sing 'Una voce,' and Ida Palliser was to
play the 'Moonlight Sonata.'

Dr. Rylance had come early, on purpose to be present at this ceremonial.
He was the most important guest who had yet arrived, and Miss Pew devoted
herself to his entertainment, and went rustling up and down the terrace
in front of the ballroom windows in her armour of apple-green moiré,
listening deferentially to the physician's remarks.

Dr. Rylance was a large fair-complexioned man, who had been handsome in
his youth, and who at seven-and-forty was still remarkably good-looking.
He had fine teeth, good hair, full blue eyes, capable of the hardest,
coldest stare that ever looked out of a human countenance. Mr. Darwin has
told us that the eyes do not smile, that the radiance we fancy we see in
the eye itself is only produced by certain contractions of the muscles
surrounding it. Assuredly there was no smile in the eyes of Dr. Rylance.
His smile, which was bland and frequent, gave only a vague impression of
white teeth and brown whiskers. He had a fine figure, and was proud of
his erect carriage. He dressed carefully and well, and was as particular
as Brummel about his laundress. His manners were considered pleasing by
the people who liked him; while those who disliked him accused him of an
undue estimate of his own merits, and a tendency to depreciate the rest
of humanity. His practice was rather select than extensive, for Dr.
Rylance was a specialist. He had won his reputation as an adviser in
cases of mental disease; and as, happily, mental diseases are less common
than bodily ailments, Dr. Rylance had not the continuous work of a Gull
or a Jenner. His speciality paid him remarkably well. His cases hung long
on hand, and when he had a patient of wealth and standing Dr. Rylance
knew how to keep him. His treatment was soothing and palliative, as
befitted an enlightened age. In an age of scepticism no one could expect
Dr. Rylance to work miraculous cures. It is in no wise to his discredit
to say that he was more successful in sustaining and comforting the
patient's friends than in curing the patient.

This was Laurence Rylance, a man who had begun life in a very humble way,
had raised himself by his own efforts, if not to the top of the medical
tree, certainly to a very comfortable and remunerative perch among its
upper branches; a man thoroughly satisfied with himself and with what
destiny had done for him; a man who, to be a new Caesar, would hardly
have foregone the privilege of being Laurence Rylance.

'My daughter has done well during this last term, I hope, Miss Pew?' he
said, interrogatively, but rather as if the question were needless, as he
walked beside the rustling moiré.

'She has earned my entire approval,' replied Miss Pew, in her oiliest
accents. 'She has application.' Dr. Rylance nodded assentingly. 'She has
a charming deportment. I know of no girl in the school more thoroughly
ladylike. I have never seen her with a collar put on crookedly, or with
rough hair. She is a pattern to many of my girls.'

'That is all gratifying to my pride as a father; but I hope she has made
progress in her studies.'

Miss Pew coughed gently behind a mittened hand.

'She has not made quite so great an advance as I should have wished. She
has talent, no doubt; but it is hardly of a kind that comes into play
among other girls. In after-life, perhaps, there may be development. I am
sorry to say she is not in our roll-call of honour to-day. She has won no
prize.'

'Perhaps she may have hardly thought it worth her while to compete,' said
Dr. Rylance, hurt in his own individual pride by the idea that his
daughter had missed distinction, just as he would have been hurt if
anybody had called one of his pictures a copy, or made light of his blue
china. 'With the Rylances it has always been Caesar or nothing.'

'I regret to say that my three most important prizes have been won by a
young woman whom I cannot esteem,' said Miss Pew, bristling in her
panoply of apple-green, at the thought of Ida Palliser's insolence. 'I
hope I shall ever be just, at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling. I
shall to-day bestow the first prize for modern languages, for music, and
for English history and literature, upon a young person of whose moral
character I have a very low opinion.'

'And pray who is this young lady?' asked Dr. Rylance.

'Miss Palliser, the daughter of a half-pay officer residing in the
neighbourhood of Dieppe--for very good reasons, no doubt.

'Palliser; yes, I have heard my daughter talk of her. An insolent,
ill-bred girl. I have been taught to consider her somewhat a disgrace to
your excellent and well-managed school.'

'Her deportment is certainly deplorable,' admitted Miss Pew; 'but the
girl has remarkable talents.'

More visitors were arriving from this time forward, until everyone was
seated in the ball-room. Miss Pew was engaged in receiving people, and
ushering them to their seats, always assisted by Miss Dulcibella--an
image of limp gracefulness--and the three governesses--all as stiff as
perambulating black-boards. Dr. Rylance strolled by himself for a little
while, sniffed at the great ivory cup of a magnolia, gazed dreamily at
the river--shining yonder across intervening gardens and meadows--and
ultimately found his daughter.

'I am sorry to find you are not to be honoured with a prize, Ranie,' he
said, smiling at her gently.

In no relation of life had he been so nearly perfect as in his conduct as
a father. Were he ever so disappointed in his daughter, he could not
bring himself to be angry with her.

'I have not tried for prizes, papa. Why should I compete with such a girl
as Ida Palliser, who is to get her living as a governess, and who knows
that success at school is a matter of life and death with her?'

'Do you not think it might have been worth your while to work as hard as
Miss Palliser, for the mere honour and glory of being first in your
school?'

'Did you ever work for mere honour and glory, papa?' asked Urania, with
her unpleasant little air of cynicism.

'Well, my love, I confess there has been generally a promise of solid
pudding in the background. Pray, who is this Miss Palliser, whom I hear
of at every turn, and whom nobody seems to like?'

'There you are mistaken, papa. Miss Palliser has her worshippers, though
she is the most disagreeable girl in the school. That silly little Bessie
raves about her, and has actually induced Mrs. Wendover to invite her to
The Knoll!'

'That is a pity, if the girl is ill-bred and unpleasant,' said Dr.
Rylance.

'She's a horror,' exclaimed Urania, vindictively.

Five minutes later Dr. Rylance and his daughter made their entrance into
the ball-room, which was full of people, and whence came the opening
crash of an eight-handed 'Zampa.' Father and daughter went in softly, and
with a hushed air, as if they had been going into church; yet the firing
of a cannon or two more or less would hardly have disturbed the
performers at the two pianos, so tremendous was their own uproar. They
were taking the overture in what they called orchestral time; though it
is doubtful whether even their playing could have kept pace with the
hurrying of excited fiddles in a presto passage, or the roll of the big
drum, simulating distant thunder. Be that as it may, the four performers
were pounding along at a breathless pace; and if their pianissimo
passages failed in delicacy, there was no mistake about their fortissimo.

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