The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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'And you have really come all the way from Norway to be at Bessie's
picnic?' she faltered at last, feeling that she was expected to say
something.

'I would have come a longer distance for the sake of such a pleasant
meeting,' he answered, smiling at her.

'Bessie,' cried Blanche, who had been grovelling on her knees before the
gipsy fire, 'the kettle will go off the boil if you don't make tea
instantly. If it were not your birthday I should make it myself.'

'You may,' said Bessie, 'although it is my birthday.'

She had walked a little way apart with Urania, and they two were talking
somewhat earnestly.

'Those girls seem to be plotting something,' said Reginald; 'a charade
for to-night, perhaps. It's sure to be stupid if Urania's in it.'

'You mean that it will be too clever,' said Horatio.

'Yes, that kind of cleverness which is the essence of stupidity.'

While Bessie and Miss Rylance conversed apart, and all the younger
Wendovers devoted their energies to the preparation of a tremendous meal,
Ida and Brian Wendover stood face to face upon the breezy hill-top, the
girl sorely embarrassed, the young man gazing at her as if he had never
seen anything so lovely in his life.

'I have heard so much about you from Bessie,' he said after a silence
which seemed long to both. 'Her letters for the last twelve months have
been a perpetual paean--like one of the Homeric hymns, with you for the
heroine. I had quite a dread of meeting you, feeling that, after having
my expectations strung up to such a pitch, I must be disappointed.
Nothing human could justify Bessie's enthusiasm.'

'Please don't talk about it. Bessie's one weak point is her affection for
me. I am very grateful. I love her dearly, but she does her best to make
me ridiculous.'

'I am beginning to think Bessie a very sensible girl,' said Brian,
longing to say much more, so deeply was he impressed by this goddess in a
holland gown, with glorious eyes shining upon him under the shadow of a
coarse straw hat.

'Have you come back to Hampshire for good?' asked Ida, as they strolled
towards Bessie and Urania.

'For good! No, I never stay long.'

'What a pity that lovely old Abbey should be deserted!'

'Yes, it is rather a shame, is it not? But then no one could expect a
young man to live there except in the hunting season--or for the sake of
the shooting.'

'Could anyone ever grow tired of such a place?' asked Ida.

She was wondering at the young man's indifferent air, as if that solemn
abbey, those romantic gardens, were of no account to him. She supposed
that this was in the nature of things. A man born lord of such an elysium
would set little value upon his paradise. Was it not Eve's weariness of
Eden which inclined her ear to the serpent?

And now the banquet was spread upon the short smooth turf, and everybody
was ordered to sit down. They made a merry circle, with the tea-kettle in
the centre, piles of cake, and bread and butter, and jam-pots surrounding
it. Blanche and Horatio were the chief officiators, and were tremendously
busy ministering to the wants of others, while they satisfied their own
hunger and thirst hurriedly between whiles. The damsel sat on the grass
with a big crockery teapot in her lap, while her brother watched and
managed the kettle, and ran to and fro with cups and saucers. Bessie, as
the guest of honour, was commanded to sit still and look on.

'Dreadfully babyish, isn't it?' said Urania, smiling with her superior
air at Brian, who had helped himself to a crust of home-made bread, and a
liberal supply of gooseberry jam.

'Uncommonly jolly,' he answered gaily. 'I confess to a weakness for bread
and jam. I wish people always gave it at afternoon teas.'

'Has it not a slight flavour of the nursery?'

'Of course it has. But a nursery picnic is ever so much better than a
swell garden-party, and bread and jam is a great deal more wholesome than
salmon-mayonaise and Strasbourg pie. You may despise me as much as you
like, Miss Rylance. I came here determined to enjoy myself.'

'That is the right spirit for a picnic,' said Ida, 'People with grand
ideas are not wanted.'

'And I suppose in the evening you will join in the dumb charades, and
play hide-and-seek in the garden, all among spiders and cockchafers.'

'I will do anything I am told to do,' answered Brian, cheerily. 'But I
think the season of the cockchafer is over.'

'What has become of Dr. Rylance?' asked Bessie, looking about her as if
she had only that moment missed him.

'I think he went back to the farm for his horse,' said Urania. 'I suppose
he found our juvenile sports rather depressing.'

'Well, he paid us a compliment in coming at all,' answered Bessie, 'so we
must forgive him for getting tired of us.'

The drive home was very merry, albeit Bessie and her friend were to part
next morning--Ida to go back to slavery. They were both young enough to
be able to enjoy the present hour, even on the edge of darkness.

Bessie clasped her friend's hand as they sat side by side in the landau.

'You must come to us at Christmas,' she whispered: 'I shall ask mother to
invite you.'

Brian was full of talk and gaiety as they drove home through the dusk. He
was very different from that ideal Brian of Ida's girlish fancy--the
Brian who embodied all her favourite attributes, and had all the finest
qualities of the hero of romance. But he was an agreeable, well-bred
young man, bringing with him that knowledge of life and the active world
which made his talk seem new and enlightening after the strictly local
and domestic intellects of the good people with whom she had been living.

With the family at The Knoll conversation had been bounded by Winchester
on one side, and Romsey on the other. There was an agreeable freshness in
the society of a young man who could talk of all that was newest in
European art and literature, and who knew how the world was being
governed.

But this fund of information was hinted at rather than expressed.
To-night Mr. Wendover seemed most inclined to mere nonsense talk--the
lively nothings that please children. Of himself and his Norwegian
adventures he said hardly anything.

'I suppose when a man has travelled so much he gets to look upon strange
countries as a matter of course,' speculated Ida. 'If I had just come
from Norway, I should talk of nothing else.'

The dumb-charades and hide-and-seek were played, but only by the lower
orders, as Bessie called her younger brothers and sisters.

Ida strolled in the moonlit garden with Mr. Wendover, Bessie Urania, and
Mr. Ratcliffe, a very juvenile curate, who was Bessie's admirer and
slave. Urania had no particular admirer She felt that every one at
Kingthorpe must needs behold her with mute worship; but there was no one
so audacious as to give expression to the feeling; no one of sufficient
importance to be favoured with her smiles. She looked forward to her
first season in London next year, and then she would be called upon to
make her selection.

'She is worldly to the tips of her fingers,' said Ida, as she and Bessie
talked apart from the others for a few minutes: 'I wonder she does not
try to captivate your cousin.'

'What--Brian? Oh, he is not at all in her line. He would not suit her a
bit.'

'But don't you think it would suit her to be mistress of the Abbey?'

Bessie gave a little start, as if the idea were new.

'I don't think she has ever thought of him in that light,' she said.

'Don't you? If she hasn't she is not the girl I think her.'

'Oh, I know she is very worldly; but I don't think she's so bad as that.'

'Not so bad as to be capable of marrying for money--no, I suppose not,'
said Ida, thoughtfully.

'I'm sure you would not, darling, said Bessie. 'You talked about it once,
when you were feeling bitter; but I know that in your heart of hearts you
never meant it. You are much too high-minded.'

'I am not a bit high-minded. All my high-mindedness, if I ever had any,
has been squeezed out of me by poverty. My only idea is to escape from
subjection and humiliation--a degrading bondage to vulgar-minded people.'

'But would the escape be worth having at the cost of your own
degradation?' urged Bessie, who felt particularly heroic this evening,
exalted by the moonlight, the loveliness of the garden, the thought of
parting with her dearest friend. 'Marry for love, dearest. Sacrifice
everything in this world rather than be false to yourself.'

'You dear little enthusiast, I may never be asked to make any such
sacrifice. I have not much chance of suitors at Mauleverer, as you
know--and as for falling in love--'

'Oh, you never know when the fatal moment may come. How do you like
Brian?'

'He is very gentlemanlike; he seems very well informed.'

'He is immensely clever,' answered Bessie, almost offended at this
languid praise; 'he is a man who might succeed in any line he chose for
himself. Do you think him handsome?'

'He is certainly nice looking.'

'How cool you are! I had set my heart upon your liking him.'

'What could come of my liking?' asked Ida with a touch of bitterness. 'Is
there a portionless girl in all England who would not like the master of
Wendover Abbey?'

'But for his own sake,' urged Bessie, with a vexed air; 'surely he is
worthy of being liked for his own sake, without a thought of the Abbey.'

'I cannot dissociate him from that lovely old house and gardens. Indeed,
to my mind he rather belongs to the Abbey than the Abbey belongs to him.
You see I knew the Abbey first.'

Here they were interrupted by Brian and Urania, and presently Ida found
herself walking in the moonlight in a broad avenue of standard roses, at
the end of the garden, with Mr. Wendover by her side, and the voices of
the other three sounding ever so far away. On the other side of a low
quickset hedge stretched a wide expanse of level meadow land, while in
the farther distance rose the Wiltshire hills, and nearer the heathy
highlands of the New Forest. The lamp-lit windows of Miss Wendover's
cottage glimmered a little way off, across gardens and meadows.

'And so you are really going to leave us to-morrow morning?' said Brian,
regretfully.

'By the eight o'clock train from Winchester. To-morrow evening I shall be
sitting on a form in a big bare class-room, listening to the babble of a
lot of girls pretending to learn their lessons.'

'Are you fond of teaching?'

'Just imagine to yourself the one occupation which is most odious to you,
and then you may know how fond I am of teaching; and of school-girls; and
of school-life altogether.'

'It is very hard that you should have to pursue such an uncongenial
career.'

'It seems so to me; but, perhaps, that is my selfishness. I suppose half
the people in this world have to live by work they hate.'

'Allowing for the number of people to whom all kind of work is hateful, I
dare say you are right. But I think, in a general way, congenial work
means successful work. No man hates the profession that brings him fame
and money; but the doctor without patients, the briefless barrister, can
hardly love law or medicine.'

He beguiled Ida into talking of her own life, with all its bitterness.
There was something in his voice and manner which tempted her to confide
in him. He seemed thoroughly sympathetic.

'I keep forgetting what strangers we are,' she said, apologizing for her
unreserve.

'We are not strangers. I have heard of you from Bessie so much that I
seem to have known you for years. I hope you will never think of me as a
stranger.'

'I don't think I ever can, after this conversation. I am afraid you will
think me horribly egotistical.'

She had been talking of her father and stepmother, the little brother she
loved so fondly, dwelling with delight upon his perfections.

'I think you all that is good and noble. How I wish this were not your
last evening at the Knoll!'

'Do you think I do not wish it? Hark, there's Bessie calling us.'

They went back to the house, and to the drawing-room, which wore quite a
festive appearance, in honour of Bessie's birthday; ever so many extra
candles dotted about, and a table laid with fruit and sandwiches, cake
and claret-cup, the children evidently considering a superfluity of meals
indispensable to a happy birthday. Blanche and her juniors were sitting
about the room, in the last stage of exhaustion after hide-and-seek.

'This has been a capital birthday,' said Horatio, wiping the perspiration
from his brow, and then filling for himself a bumper of claret-cup; 'and
now we are going to dance. Blanche, give us the Faust Waltz, and go on
playing till we tell you to leave off.'

Blanche, considerably blown, and with her hair like a mop, sat down and
began to touch the piano with resolute fingers and forcible rhythm. ONE,
two, three, ONE, two, three. The boys pushed the furniture into the
corners. Brian offered himself to Ida; Bessie insisted upon surrendering
the curate to Urania, and took one of her brothers for a partner; and the
three couples went gliding round the pretty old room, the cool night
breezes blowing in upon them from wide-open windows.

They danced and played, and sang and talked, till midnight chimed from
the old eight-day clock in the hall,--a sound which struck almost as much
consternation to Bessie's soul as if she had been Cinderella at the royal
ball.

'TWELVE O'CLOCK! and the little ones all up!' she exclaimed, looking
round the circle of towzled heads with remorseful eyes. 'What would
mother say? And she told me she relied on my discretion! Go to bed, every
one of you, this instant!'

'Oh, come, now,' remonstrated Blanche, 'there's no use in hustling us off
like that, after letting us sit up hours after our proper time. I'm going
to have another sandwich; and there's not a bit of good in leaving all
those raspberry tarts. The servants won't thank us. _They_ have as many
jam tarts as they like.'

'You greedy little wretches; you have been doing nothing but eat all
day,' said Ida. 'When I am back at Mauleverer I shall remember you only
as machines for the consumption of pudding and jam. Obey your grown-up
sister, and go to bed directly.'

'Grown up, indeed! How long has she been grown up, I should like to
know!' exclaimed Blanche vindictively. 'She's only an inch and a quarter
taller than me, and she's a mere dumpling compared with Horry.'

The lower orders were got rid of somehow--driven to their quarters, as it
were, at the point of the bayonet; and then the grown-ups bade each other
good-night; the curate escorting Miss Rylance to her home, and Brian
going up to the top floor to a bachelor's room.

'Who is going to drive Miss Palliser to the station?' he asked, as they
stood, candlestick in hand, at the foot of the stairs.

'I am, of course,' answered Reginald. 'Robin will spin us over the hills
in no time. I've ordered the car for seven sharp.'

There was very little sleep for either Bessie or her guest that night.
Both girls were excited by memories of the day that was past, and by
thoughts of the day that was coming. Ida was brooding a little upon her
disappointment in Brian Wendover. He had very pleasant manners, he seemed
soft-hearted and sympathetic, he was very good-looking--but he was not
the Brian of her dreams. That ideal personage had never existed outside
her imagination. It was a shock to her girlish fancy. There was a sense
of loss in her mind.

'I must be very silly,' she told herself, 'to make a fancy picture of a
person, and to be vexed with him because he does not resemble my
portrait.'

She was disappointed, and yet she was interested in this new
acquaintance. He was the first really interesting young man she had ever
met, and he was evidently interested in her. And then she pictured him at
the Abbey, in the splendid solitude of those fine old rooms, leading the
calm, studious life which Bessie had talked of--an altogether enviable
life, Ida thought.

Mr. Wendover was in the dining-room at half-past six when the two girls
went down to breakfast. All the others came trooping down a few minutes
afterwards, Reginald got up to the last degree of four-in-handishness
which the resources of his wardrobe allowed, and with a flower in his
buttonhole. There was a loud cry for eggs and bacon, kippered herrings,
marmalade, Yorkshire cakes; but neither Ida nor Bessie could eat.

'Do have a good breakfast,' pleaded Blanche affectionately; 'you will be
having bread and scrape to-morrow. We have got a nice hamper for you,
with a cake and a lot of jam puffs and things; but those will only last a
short time.'

'You dear child, I wouldn't mind the bread and scrape, if there were only
a little love to flavour it,' answered Ida softly.

The jaunting-car came to the door as the clock struck seven. Ida's
luggage was securely bestowed, then, after a perfect convulsion of
kissing, she was banded to her place, Reginald jumped into his seat and
took the reins, and Brian seated himself beside Ida.

'You are not going with them?' exclaimed Bessie.

'Yes I am, to see that Miss Palliser is not spilt on the hills.'

'What rot!' cried Reginald. 'I should be rather sorry for myself if I
were not able to manage Robin.'

'This is a new development in you, who are generally the laziest of
living creatures,' said Bessie to Brian, and before he could reply, Robin
was bounding cheerily through the village, making very little account of
the jaunting-car and its occupants. Urania was at her garden gate, fresh
and elegant-looking in pale blue cambric. She smiled at Ida, and waved
her a most gracious farewell.

'I don't think I ever saw Miss Rylance look so amiable,' said Ida. 'She
does not often favour me with her smiles.'

'Are you enemies?' asked Brian.

'Not open foes; we have always maintained an armed neutrality. I don't
like her, and she doesn't like me, and we both know it. But perhaps I
ought not to be so candid. She may be a favourite of yours.'

'She might be, but she is not. She is very elegant, very
lady-like--according to her own lights--very viperish.'

It was a lovely drive in the crisp clear air, across the breezy hills.
Ida could not help enjoying the freshness of morning, the beauty of
earth, albeit she was going from comfort to discomfort, from love to cold
indifference or open enmity.

'How I delight in this landscape!' she exclaimed. 'Is it not ever so much
better than Norway?' appealing to Brian.

'It is a milder, smaller kind of beauty,' he answered. 'Would you not
like to see Norway?'

'I would like to see all that is lovely on earth; yet I think I could be
content to spend, a life-time here. This must seem strange to you, who
grow weary of that beautiful Abbey.'

'It is not of his house, but of himself, that a man grows weary,'
answered Brian.

Robin was in a vivacious humour, and rattled the car across the hills at
a good pace. They had a quarter of an hour to wait at the busy little
station. Brian and Ida walked up and down the platform talking, while
Reginald looked after the pony and the luggage. They found so much to say
to each other, that the train seemed to come too soon.

They bade each other good-bye with a tender look on Brian's part, a blush
on Ida's. Reginald had to push his cousin away from the carriage window,
in order to get a word with the departing guest.

'We shall all miss you awfully,' he said; 'but mind, you must come back
at Christmas.'

'I shall be only too glad, if Mrs. Wendover will have me. Good-bye.'

The train moved slowly forward, and she was gone.

'Isn't she a stunner?' asked Reginald of his cousin, as they stood on the
platform looking at each other blankly.

'She is the handsomest girl I ever saw, and out and away the nicest,'
answered Brian.

CHAPTER VII.

IN THE RIVER-MEADOW.

The old hackneyed round of daily life at Mauleverer Manor seemed just a
little worse to Ida Palliser after that happy break of six weeks' pure
and perfect enjoyment. Miss Pew was no less exacting than of old. Miss
Pillby, for whose orphaned and friendless existence there had been no
such thing as a holiday, and who had spent the vacation at Mauleverer
diligently employed in mending the house-linen, resented Ida's visit to
The Knoll as if it were a personal injury, and vented her envy in sneers
and innuendoes of the coarsest character.

'If _I_ were to spoon upon one of the rich pupils, I dare say I could get
invited out for the holidays,' she said, _apropos_ to nothing particular;
'but I am thankful to say I am above such meanness.'

'I never laid myself under an obligation I didn't feel myself able to
return,' said Miss Motley, the English governess, who had spent her
holidays amidst the rank and fashion of Margate. 'When I go to the
sea-side with my sister and her family, I pay my own expenses, and I feel
I've a right to be made comfortable.'

Miss Pillby, who had flattered and toadied every well-to-do pupil, and
laboured desperately to wind herself into the affections of Bessie
Wendover, that warm-hearted young person seeming particularly accessible
to flattery, felt herself absolutely injured by the kindness that had
been lavished upon Ida. She drank in with greedy ears Miss Palliser's
description of The Knoll and its occupants--the picnics, carpet-dances,
afternoon teas; and the thought that all these enjoyments and
festivities, the good things to eat and drink, the pleasant society,
ought to have been hers instead of Ida's, was wormwood.

'When I think of my kindness to Bessie Wendover,' she said to Miss
Motley, in the confidence of that one quiet hour which belonged to the
mistresses after the pupils' curfew-bell had rung youth and hope and
gaiety into retirement, 'when I think of the mustard poultices I have put
upon her chest, and the bronchial troches I have given her when she had
the slightest touch of cold or cough, I am positively appalled at the
ingratitude of the human race.'

'I don't think she likes bronchial troches,' said Miss Motley, a very
matter-of-fact young person who saved money, wore thick boots, and was
never unprovided with an umbrella: 'I have seen her throw them away
directly after you gave them to her.'

'She ought to have liked them,' exclaimed Miss Pillby, sternly. 'They are
very expensive.'

'No doubt she appreciated your kindness,' said Miss Motley, absently,
being just then absorbed in an abstruse calculation as to how many yards
of merino would be required for her winter gown.

'No, she did not,' said Miss Pillby. 'If she had been grateful she would
have invited me to her home. I should not have gone, but the act would
have given me a higher idea of her character.'

'Well, she is gone, and we needn't trouble ourselves any more about her,'
retorted Miss Motley, who hated to be plagued about abstract questions,
being a young woman of an essentially concrete nature, born to consume
and digest three meals a day, and having no views that go beyond that
function.

Miss Pillby sighed at finding herself in communion with so coarse a
nature.

'I don't easily get over a blow of that sort,' she said; 'I am too
tender-hearted.'

'So you are,' acquiesced Miss Motley. 'It doesn't pay in a big
boarding-school, however it may answer in private families.'

Ida, having lost her chief friend and companion, Bessie Wendover, found
life at Mauleverer Manor passing lonely. She even missed the excitement
of her little skirmishes, her passages-at-arms, with Urania Rylance, in
which she had generally got the best of the argument. There had been life
and emotion in these touch-and-go speeches, covert sneers, quick retorts,
innuendoes met and flung back in the very face of the sneerer. Now there
was nothing but dull, dead monotony. Many of the old pupils had departed,
and many new pupils had come, daughters of well-to-do parents,
prosperous, well-dressed, talking largely of the gaieties enjoyed by
their elder sisters, of the wonderful things done by their brothers at
Oxford or Cambridge, and of the grand things which were to happen two or
three year hence, when they themselves should be 'out.' Ida took no
interest in their prattle. It was so apt to sting her with the reminder
of her own poverty, the life of drudgery and dependence that was to be
her portion till the end of her days. She did not, in the Mauleverer
phraseology, 'take to' the new girls. She left them to be courted by Miss
Pillby, and petted by Miss Dulcibella. She felt as lonely as one who has
outlived her generation.

Happily the younger girls in the class which she taught were fond of her,
and when she wanted company she let these juveniles cluster round her in
her garden rambles; but in a general way she preferred loneliness, and to
work at the cracked old piano in the room where she slept. Beethoven and
Chopin, Mozart and Mendelssohn were companions of whom she never grew
weary.

So the slow days wore on till nearly the end of the month, and on one
cool, misty, afternoon, when the river flowed sluggishly under a dull
grey sky she walked alone along that allotted extent of the river-side
path which the mistresses and pupil-teachers were allowed to promenade
without _surveillance_. This river walk skirted a meadow which was in
Miss Pew's occupation, and ranked as a part of the Mauleverer grounds,
although it was divided by the high road from the garden proper.

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