The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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Brian walked his team gently up a gentle hill, while Sir Vernon and his
brother walked their horses beside him, and during this ascent all
necessary introductions were duly made, everybody being properly
presented except Blanche, who felt that she was being treated with
contumely.

'I am very glad to see you at last, cousin Ida,' said Sir Vernon,
pleasantly. 'I have been hearing of you all my life, but we seemed fated
not to meet.'

He was a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a frank,
fresh-coloured countenance, auburn whiskers, and curly brown hair. His
brother was after the same pattern, hair a little lighter, no whiskers,
eyes rather a brighter blue. They were as much alike as brothers can be
without being mistaken for each other. There was nothing romantic looking
about either of them, Bessie thought, regretfully. She would have liked
Sir Vernon to have resembled her favourite hero in fiction (the man she
always put in confession books), and to have fallen desperately in love
with Ida at first sight. And here he was, a most matter-of-fact looking
young man, riding behind the wagonette in a provokingly matter-of-fact
way.

Yet perhaps there was a providence in this; for if Brian of the Abbey
were in love with Ida, as Bessie shrewdly suspected, it would have been a
terrible thing for him to have found a rival in a titled cousin. If Ida
were ambitious, the title might have turned the scale.

'And I have so set my heart upon having her for my cousin, thought
Bessie. 'The other Brian was a failure, but this Brian may win the
prize.'

Mr. Jardine had not been able to leave his parish for a long day; so
Bessie had plenty of leisure to speculate upon the possible loves of
other people, instead of enjoying the blissfulness of her own love
affair.

Wimperfield was a mansion built in the Italian manner which prevailed
about a century ago, a style about as uninteresting as any order of
domestic architecture, but which makes a house a good feature in a fine
landscape. The Corinthian façade of Wimperfield stood boldly out against
the verdant slope of a hill, backed and sheltered on either side by
woods. Behind that classic portico there was the usual prim range of
windows, and there were the usual barrack-like rooms. The furniture was
of the same heavy and substantial character, rich dark rosewood, amber
satin hangings faded by a quarter of a century; Spanish mahogany in
dining-rooms and bedrooms; Gillow's fine workmanship everywhere, but the
style dating back to the very infancy of that ancient house.

The large, finely-lighted hall, which looked like the vestibule of some
learned institute, was adorned with four Carrara marble statues, placid
gods and goddesses smirking at vacancy, on pedestals of verde antico. The
only pictures in the reception-rooms were family portraits, and a few of
those large Dutch landscapes, battle scenes, sea-pieces and fruit-pieces,
which cry aloud that they are furniture pictures, and have been bought to
fit the panelling of the rooms.

But for its noble situation this temple of English domestic life would
have been utterly without charm; but the situation was superb, the
gardens were in beautiful order, and the stables, as Aunt Betsy declared
after personal inspection, were perfect.

Sir Vernon did the honours of his house in a frank, friendly manner.
He took his guests round the gardens and stables, showed Ida the old
nursery in which his father and her father had spent their infancy; the
gun-room in which their first guns were carefully preserved; the very
rocking-horse on which they had ridden, and which now occupied a recess
in an obscure lobby opening into the garden.

'Peter and I didn't care to ride him,' said Sir Vernon. 'We had Shelties
when we were three-year-olds; but I know when I began Virgil I used to
think the wooden horse that got into Troy was an exaggerated copy of this
one.

He showed his cousin the room in which her grandfather and grandmother
died--an immense apartment, wherein stood, grim and tall, a gigantic
mahogany four-poster, draped with dark green velvet.

'I can't fancy anybody doing anything else in such a room,' said Ida, to
whom the spacious chamber looked as gloomy as a charnel-house. 'I beg
your pardon. I hope you don't sleep here.'

'No, my diggings are at the other end of the house, looking into the
stable-yard. I like to be able to put my head out of window and order my
horse--saves time and trouble. We keep the rooms at this end for
visitors.'

The gong boomed loud and long, much to the relief of poor Blanche, whose
spirits had been slowly sinking, in unison with her inward cravings, and
who had begun to think that the promised luncheon was a delusion and a
snare, which would end in the fashionable frivolity of afternoon tea.

Sir Vernon offered his arm to Miss Wendover, and asked Brian to take Miss
Palliser, while Peter was told off to Miss Rylance, leaving Bessie and
the clinging Blanche like twin cherries on one stem. It was curious for
Ida to find herself seated presently beside the wealthy cousin of whom
she had heard as a far-off and almost mythical personage, of very little
account in her life; since it was so improbable that any of his wealth
would ever come her way.

The luncheon was of the old-fashioned and ponderous order, excellent of
its kind: the orchard-houses had given up their finest peaches and
nectarines and their earliest grapes to do honour to the occasion. Miss
Rylance contemplated the table decorations with mute scorn, which she
hardly cared to disguise. No Venetian wine-flasks, no languorous lilies
swooning in Salviati goblets, no pottery of the new green and yellow
school, but massive silver, and heavy diamond-cut glass--gaudy
Staffordshire china of 'too utterly quite' the worst period of art.
Everything essentially Philistine.

Sir Vernon had placed his cousin on his left hand, and he talked to her a
good deal during luncheon--asking questions as to her past life, which
she answered with perfect candour. It was only when he spoke of her
future that the fair brow clouded, and the cheeks reddened with a painful
glow.

'I hope, now that the ice has been broken, that we are not going to be
strangers any more,' said Vernon, pleasantly. 'To think that you should
be such a near neighbour of mine, and that I should know nothing about
it! You have been at Kingthorpe since last November, you say? How long
are you going to stay there?'

'For a good many Novembers, I hope,' said Aunt Betsy, 'unless she gets
tired of rural solitude, or unless a husband steals her away from me.'

'Ah, that is what all young ladies anticipate. They never are but always
to be blest,' replied Vernon, laughing. He was one of those open-hearted
souls who always appreciate their own mild jokelets.

Brian, who saw Ida's pained expression, made haste to change the
conversation, by an inquiry about Sir Vernon's plans for the autumn,
which set that gentleman on a sporting tack, and spared Miss Palliser all
further trouble.

After luncheon they went to look at the hot-houses, and dawdled away the
time very agreeably until afternoon tea, Miss Rylance doing her best to
improve the occasion with Peter, who was not educated up to the standard
of metropolitan or South Kensingtonian young ladyhood, and who came out
very badly under the process of development; for when talked to about
Ruskin he was at first altogether vacuoous, but, on being pushed har
believed there was a biggish swell of some such name among the Oxford
dons, about whom he could not fairly be expected to know anything, as he
and his brother were Cantabs: while on being languidly asked his opinion
of Swinburne's last tragedy, he grew cheerful, and said he had seen him
play the King to Irving's Hamlet, and that it was a very fine
performance, the actor in question being a good stayer.

The thing was hopeless, and Miss Rylance felt she was wasting herself
upon a dolt. After this she hardly took the trouble to suppress her
yawns; yet if she had condescended to question Peter about his Alpine
adventures, or to talk about his horses, guns, and dogs, she would have
found him lively enough as a companion; but an education of musical 'at
homes' and afternoon teas had tuned Miss Rylance's slender pipe to one
particular strain, which did not suit everybody's dancing. She was heavy
at heart, feeling that the whole business of the day had conduced to Ida
Palliser's glorification. To be the daughter of a man born in that
substantial family mansion--scion of a respectable old county family--was
in itself a distinction far beyond anything Miss Rylance could boast, her
grandfather having been a chemist and druggist in an obscure market town,
and her father the architect of his own fortunes. She had done her best
to forget this fact hitherto, but it was brought home to her mind
unpleasantly to-day, when she saw the articled pupil, whose three pairs
of stockings had moved her to scornful wonder, strolling about her
ancestral home by the side of her first cousin, and that first cousin a
baronet of Charles II's creation.

Sir Vernon and his brother were full of cordiality for their cousin, full
of anticipations of future meetings, and of hopes that Captain Palliser
would come to them in October for what they called a 'shy' at the
pheasants.

Ida had good cause to remember that parting in front of the classic
portico in the warm afternoon sunlight, the two brothers standing side by
side, with frank, bright faces, looking up at their departing guests, all
smiles and cheerful pleasure in this world's pleasantest things--a Dandie
Dinmont and a big black-and-tan colley looking on at their master's
knees--the _beau idéal_ of young English manhood--frank, generous,
outspoken, fearless--the men who can do and die when the need comes. Her
eyes lingered affectionately on that picture as the wagonette drove away
by the broad gravel sweep towards the avenue; and those two figures in
the sunlight haunted her memory in the days to come.

CHAPTER XVII.

OUGHT SHE TO STAY?

A week after the drive to Wimperfield Miss Wendover received a very big
box of peaches and grapes, enclosing a very brief letter from Vernon
Palliser to his cousin Ida.

'My dear Ida,--I venture to send Miss Wendover some of our fruit,' he
wrote, 'for I understood her to say she has not much glass, and grows
only flowers. Peter and I are just off to Scotland, where I suppose we
shall do a little shooting, and I hope a good deal of yachting and
fishing. I wish you and that nice plump little friend of yours--Bessie, I
think you called her--were coming to us. Such a jolly life, bobbing about
between the islands and the mainland, with the chance of an occasional
storm. But I shall look forward to seeing you again in October, when I
hope Miss Wendover will bring you over to stay for a week or two. What
splendid ideas she has about summering hunters!--never met a more
sensible woman. Always your affectionate cousin,
VERNON PALLISER.'

Aunt Betsy was pleased with the tribute of hothouse fruit, and even more
gratified by that remark about summering horses.

'Your cousin is a fine thoroughbred young fellow,' she said. 'If I had
not been fully satisfied you came from a good stock, by my knowledge of
your own organisation, I should be sure of the fact now I have seen those
two young men. They are all that Englishmen ought to be.'

Ida was silent, for to her mind there was one Englishman who more
completely realised her ideal of manhood--one who was no less generous
and outspoken than her kind young cousins, but whose intellectual gifts,
whose highly cultivated mind, and passionate love of all that is most
beautiful in life, made him infinitely their superior.

And now came, perhaps, the most bitter trial of a young life which had
already seen more cloud than sunshine. The hour had come when Ida told
herself that she must no longer dawdle along the flowery path of sin, no
longer palter with fate. Stern duty must be obeyed, She must leave
Kingthorpe. It was no longer a question of feeling, but a question of
conscience--right against wrong, truth against falsehood, honour against
dishonour; for she knew in her heart of hearts that Brian loved her, and
that she gave him back his love, measure for measure. He had said nothing
definite; she had contrived to ward off anything like a declaration; but
she had not been able to prevent his absorbing her society on all
possible occasions, taking possession of her, as it were, as of one who
belonged to him in the present and the future, deferring to her lightest
wish as only a lover defers to his mistress, studying her preferences in
everything, and hardly taking the trouble to hide his comparative
indifference to the society of other people. It had come to this, and she
knew that there must be no further delay.

One evening, when she and Aunt Betsy had been dining alone, and had
returned to the drawing-room, where it was Ida's custom at this hour to
play her kind patroness to sleep with all the dreamiest and most pensive
melodies in her extensive _répertoire_, the girl suddenly faltered in her
playing, wandered from one air into another, and with a touch so
uncertain that Aunt Betsy, who was fast lapsing into dreamland, became
broad awake again all at once, and wanted to know the reason why.

'Is anything the matter? Are you ill, child?' she asked, abruptly.

Ida rose from the piano, where her tears had been dropping on the keys,
and came out of the shadowy corner to the verandah, where Aunt Betsy sat
among her roses, wrapped in a China crape shawl, one of the gifts of that
Indian warrior, Colonel Wendover, August was nearly over, but the weather
was still warm enough for sitting out of doors in the twilight.

'What is the matter, Ida? What has happened?' repeated Miss Wendover,
with her hand on the girl's shoulder, as she bent to listen to her.

Ida was kneeling by Aunt Betsy's side, her head leaning against the arm
of her chair, her face hidden.

'Nothing, nothing that you can help or cure, dearest friend,' she
answered in a broken voice. 'You must know how good you have been to me.
Yes, even you must know that, although it is your nature to make light of
your goodness. I think you know I love you and am grateful. Tell me that
you believe that before I say another word.'

'I do believe it. Your whole conduct since you have been with me has
shown as much,' answered Miss Wendover, calmly. She saw that Ida was
powerfully moved, and she wanted to tranquillise her. 'What is the
meaning of this preface?'

'Only that I must ask you to let me leave you.'

'Leave me! Oh, you want a holiday, I suppose?--that is natural enough. We
needn't be tragic about that. You want to go over to Dieppe to see your
people?'

'I want to go away from Kingthorpe for ever.'

'For ever? Ah, now we are really tragic!' said Miss Wendover, lightly,
her broad, firm white hand tenderly smoothing the girl's hair and brow.
'My dear child, what has gone amiss with you? Something has, I can see.
Have you and Miss Rylance quarrelled? I know she is a viper; but I did
not think she would play any of her viperish tricks with my property.'

'Miss Rylance has done nothing. I have quarrelled with nobody. I love
and honour you and the whole house of Wendover with all my heart and
mind. But there is a reason--a reason which I implore you to refrain
from asking--why I ought never to have come into your house, as I did
come--why I ought to leave it--must leave it for ever!'

'This is very mysterious,' said Aunt Betsy, thinking deeply. 'I
could understand a reason--which might exist in a girl's romantic
mind--a mistaken generosity, or a mistaken pride--the outcome of late
events--which might urge you to run away--like that always wrong-headed
and misguided young person, the heroine of a novel: but what reason
there could have been when you came to me last winter against your
coming--no--that is more than I can comprehend.'

'You are not to comprehend. It is my secret--my burden--which I must
bear. I want you to believe me, that is all,--only to believe me when
I say that I love you dearly, and that I have been unspeakably happy
in your house--and just quietly let me go and seek my fortune
elsewhere--without saying anything to anybody until I am gone.'

'And a nice weeping and wailing there will be from Bessie and her
brothers and sisters when you _are_ gone!' exclaimed Miss Wendover; 'a
pleasant time I shall have of it, with all of them--to say nothing of my
own feelings. Do you think it is fair, Ida, to treat me like this; to
make yourself pleasant to me, useful, necessary to me--to wind yourself
into my heart--and then all at once, with a sudden wrench, to pluck
yourself out again, and leave me to do without you? Do you call that fair
play?'

'I know that it must seem like base ingratitude,' answered Ida, calm now,
with a despairing calmness; 'but I cannot help myself. I am more proud
than I can say that you should care for me--that my loving services have
not been unwelcome. I know that you took me out of charity; and it is a
delight to know that I have not been altogether a bad bargain. But I must
go away.'

'I begin to see light,' said Miss Wendover, who had been thinking all
this time. 'It's your father's doing. He thinks you are not making a
profitable use of your education and talents. He has ordered you to go
where you will get a larger salary. But don't let his needs separate us,
my dear. I love you better than a few pounds a quarter. I will give you
seventy, or even eighty pounds a year, if that will satisfy Captain
Palliser.'

'No, no, dear Aunt Betsy. Thank God, my father is not that kind of man.
He knows how happy I have been, he is grateful to you for all your
goodness to me, and more than content that I should be happy without
being a burden to him.'

'Then _why_ do you want to leave me?' asked Miss Wendover, with her hands
on the girl's shoulders, her eyes reading the white agonised face looking
up at her in the thickening twilight. There was just light enough for her
to see the look of intense pain in that pallid countenance.

'_Why_ do you want to go away?' she repeated. 'What kind of reason can
that be which you fear to tell me? It must be an unworthy reason; and yet
I cannot believe that you could have such a reason. Is it on account of
my nephew Brian? Have you found out what I have suspected for a long
time? Have you discovered that he is in love with you, and do you fancy
yourself an ineligible match for him, because he is rich and you are
poor, and do you think that you ought to run away in order to give him a
chance of doing better for himself? If you have any such high-flown idea,
abandon it. The Wendovers are not a mercenary tribe. We shall welcome
Brian's bride, whoever she be, for her own sake, and not for her dowry.'

'It is no such reason. I _cannot_ tell you. You must forgive me, and let
me go.'

'Then I forgive you, and you can go,' replied Miss Wendover, coldly. 'I
am deeply disappointed in you. If you cared for me as you say you do, you
would trust me. Love without faith is an impossibility. However, I don't
want to distress you. If you are to leave me I will make your departure
as pleasant as I can. When do you want to go?'

'Immediately. As soon as you can spare me.'

'I cannot spare you at all; a few weeks or days more or less will make no
difference to me. Do you want to go among strangers, to be a governess?
or do you wish to go back to your people?'

'I want to earn my own living. The harder I have to work the better I
shall like it. I would not mind even going into a school, though my
experience of Mauleverer is hateful.'

'You shall not go into a school. I will send an advertisement to the
_Times_.'

'Would it not be better for me to go to Winchester and apply at some
agency for servants and governesses? When I advertised in the _Times_
there was not a single answer.'

'You may have better luck this time,' replied Miss Wendover, in a
business-like tone. She was too proud to show any further indications of
sorrow, or even to reveal how deeply she was wounded. 'I will do what I
can to help you, though--'

'Though I do not deserve it,' said Ida.

'You know best about that. Yes,' after some moments of silent thought,
'it may not be too late even now. When I lunched with the Trevors, at
Romsey, the day of Brian's return, Mrs. Trevor's sister, Lady
Micheldever, was in a state of anxiety about governesses. Her old
governess was to be married in a few weeks, such an inestimable treasure
that Lady Micheldever thought it would be impossible to replace her, so
sweet, so ladylike, so accomplished. Now, if the situation is not yet
filled, I think it would suit you exactly. They are people who would give
you a liberal salary--you would be able to help your father.'

'I should be glad of that. Do the Micheldevers live near here?' faltered
Ida. 'I want to go quite away.'

'They have property near here, but their place is close to Savernake
Forest, and they spend their winters in Italy. Sir George has a weak
chest, and all the children are delicate. If you go to them, nearly half
your life will be spent abroad.'

'I should like that very much,' said Ida.

'Nothing so pleasant as variety of scenery and people,' replied Miss
Wendover, with a touch of irony in her voice.

She began to think Ida cold-hearted and hypocritical. It was evident to
her that this feverish longing for change was mere selfish ambition, a
desire to be better placed in the world. She had met with the same kind
of feeling too often in her rustic _protégées_ of the cook and house-maid
class, who, when they had learnt all she could teach them, were eager to
spread their wings and soar to the servants' halls of Mayfair, and the
society of powdered footmen.

'Nine o'clock,' said Miss Wendover, wrapping her shawl round her,
and rising to go into the drawing-room as the church clock chimed
silver-sweet across the elm tops and the misty meadows. 'Too late for
this evening's post; but I will write to Lady Micheldever to-night, and
my letter will be ready for the midday mail to-morrow. I hope she has not
found anybody yet.'

'You are too good,' faltered Ida, as they went into the lamplit room.

'I am only doing my duty,' replied Miss Wendover. '"Welcome the coming,
speed the parting guest!"'

'You will not tell Bessie, or anyone, till I am gone?' pleaded Ida,
earnestly.

'Certainly not--if that is your wish.'

CHAPTER XVIII

AFTER A STORM COMES A CALM.

While Ida Palliser was thus planning her escape from that earthly
paradise where she was dangerously happy, Brian Wendover was thinking of
her and dreaming of her, and building the whole fabric of his life on a
happy future to be shared with her, cherishing the sweet certainty that
she loved him, and that he had only to say the word which was to unite
them for ever. He had been in no haste to say that fateful word; life was
so sweet to him in its present stage--he was so confident of the future.
He had closely and carefully studied the character of the woman he loved,
in the beginning of their acquaintance, before his judgment had lost its
balance, before affection had got the better of the critical faculty. He
had been in somewise impressed by what Urania had told him about Ida. The
slanderer's malice was obvious; but the slander might have some element
of truth. He watched Ida narrowly during the first month of their
acquaintance, expecting to find the serpent-trail somewhere; but no trace
of the evil one had appeared. She was frank, straightforward, intelligent
to a high degree, and with that eager thirst for knowledge which is
generally accompanied by a profound humility. He could see in her no base
worship of wealth for its own sake, no craving for splendour or
fashionable pleasures. She found delight in all the simplest things, in
rustic scenery, in hill and down and wood, in dogs and horses, and birds
and flowers, music and books. A girl who could be happy in such a life as
Ida Palliser lived at Kingthorpe must be in a manner independent of
fortune; her pleasures were not those that cost money.

'If she is the kind of girl Miss Rylance describes her she will set her
cap at me,' he thought. 'If she wants to be mistress of Wendover Abbey,
one mistake and one failure will not daunt her.'

But there was no such setting of caps. For a long time Ida treated Mr.
Wendover of the Abbey with the perfect frankness of friendship. Then, as
his love grew, showing itself by every delicate and unobtrusive token,
there came a change, and a subtle one, in her conduct; and the lover told
himself with triumphant heart that he was beloved. Her sweet shyness, her
careful avoidance of every possible _tête-à-tête,_ her evident
embarrassment on those rare occasions when she found herself alone with
him--surely these things meant love, and love only! There could be no
other meaning. He was no coxcomb, ready to believe every woman in love
with him. He had gone through the world very quietly, admiring many
women, but never till now having found one who seemed to him worth the
infinite anxieties, and fevers, and agues of love. And now he had found
that pearl above price, the one woman predestinate to be adored by him.

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