The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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A green paling, and a little green gate, always padlocked, secured this
meadow from intrusion on the road-side, but it was open to the river. To
be entrusted with the key of this pastoral retreat was a privilege only
accorded to governesses and pupil-teachers.

It was supposed by Miss Pew that no young person in her employment would
be capable of walking quite alone, where it was within the range of
possibility that her solitude might be intruded upon by an unknown member
of the opposite sex. She trusted, as she said afterwards, in the refined
feeling of any person brought into association with her, and, until
rudely awakened by facts, she never would have stooped from the lofty
pinnacle of her own purity to suspect the evil consequences which arose
from the liberty too generously accorded to her dependents.

Ida detested Miss Pillby and despised Miss Motley; and the greatest
relief she knew to the dismal monotony of her days was a lonely walk by
the river, with a shabby Wordsworth or a battered little volume of
Shelley's minor poems for her companions. She possessed so few books that
it was only natural for her to read those she had until love ripened with
familiarity.

On this autumnal afternoon she walked with slow steps, while the river
went murmuring by, and now and then a boat drifted lazily down the
stream. The boating season was over for the most part--the season of
picnics and beanfeasts, and Cockney holiday-making, and noisy revelry,
smart young women, young men in white flannels, with bare arms and
sunburnt noses. It was the dull blank time when everybody who could
afford to wander far from this suburban paradise, was away upon his and
her travels. Only parsons, doctors, schoolmistresses, and poverty stayed
at home. Yet now and then a youth in boating costume glided by, his
shoulders bending slowly to the lazy dip of his oars, his keel now and
then making a rushing sound among long trailing weeds.

Such a youth presently came creeping along the bank, almost at Ida's
feet, but passed her unseen. Her heavy lids were drooping, her eyes
intent upon the familiar page. The young man looked up at her with keen
gray eyes, recognised her, and pushed his boat in among the rushes by the
bank, moored it to a pollard willow, and with light footstep leaped on
shore.

He landed a few yards in the rear of Ida's slowly moving figure, followed
softly, came close behind her, and read aloud across her shoulder:

'There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this garden; a ruling grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.'

Ida looked round, first indignant, then laughing.

'How you startled me!' she exclaimed; 'I thought you were some horrid,
impertinent stranger; and yet the voice had a familiar sound. How are
they all at The Knoll? It is nearly a fortnight since Bessie wrote to me.
If she only knew how I hunger for her letters.'

'Very sweet of you,' answered Mr. Wendover, holding the girl's hand with
a lingering pressure, releasing it reluctantly when her rising colour
told him it would be insolent to keep it longer.

How those large dark eyes beamed with pleasure at seeing him! Was it for
his own sake, or for love of her friends at Kingthorpe? The smile was
perhaps too frank to be flattering.

'Very sweet of you to care so much for Bessie's girlish epistles,' he
said lazily; 'they are full of affection, but the style of composition
always recalls our dear Mrs. Nickleby. "Aunt Betsy was asking after you
the other day: and that reminds me that the last litter of black
Hampshires was sixteen--the largest number father ever remembers having.
The vicar and his wife are coming to dinner on Tuesday, and do tell me if
this new picture that everybody is talking about is really better than
the Derby Day," and that sort of thing. Not a very consecutive style,
don't you know.'

'Every word is interesting to me,' said Ida, with a look that told him
she was not one of those young ladies who enjoy a little good-natured
ridicule of their nearest and dearest. 'Is it long since you left
Kingthorpe?'

'Not four-and-twenty hours. I promised Bessie that my very first
occupation on coming to London should be to make my way down here to see
you, in order that I may tell her faithfully and truly whether you are
well and happy. She has a lurking conviction that you are unable to live
without her, that you will incontinently go into a galloping consumption,
and keep the fact concealed from all your friends until they receive a
telegram summoning them to your death-bed. I know that is the picture
Bessie's sentimental fancies have depicted.'

'I did not think Bessie was so morbid,' said Ida, laughing. 'No, I am not
one of those whom the gods love. I am made of very tough material, or I
should hardly have lived till now. I see before me a perspective of
lonely, loveless old age--finishing in a governess' almshouse. I hope
there are almshouses for governesses.

'Nobody will pity your loneliness or lovelessness,' retorted Brian,' for
they will both be your own fault.'

She blushed, looking dreamily across the dark-gray river to the level
shores beyond--the low meadows--gentle hills in the back-ground--the
wooded slopes of Weybridge and Chertsey. If this speaker, whose voice
dropped to so tender a tone, had been like the Brian of her
imaginings--if he had looked at her with the dark eyes of Sir Tristram's
picture, how differently his speech would have affected her! As it was,
she listened with airy indifference, only blushing girlishly at his
compliment, and wondering a little if he really admired her--he the
owner of that glorious old Abbey--the wealthy head of the house of
Wendover--the golden fish for whom so many pretty fishers must have
angled in days gone by.

'Did you stay at The Knoll all the time,' she inquired, her thoughts
having flown back to Kingthorpe; 'or at the Abbey?'

'At The Knoll. It is ever so much livelier, and my cousins like to have
me with them.'

'Naturally. But I wonder you did not prefer living in that lovely old
house of yours. To occupy it must seem like living in the Middle Ages.'

'Uncommonly. One is twelve miles from a station, and four from
post-office, butcher, and baker. Very like the Middle Ages. There is no
gas even in the offices, and there are as many rats behind the wainscot
as there were Israelites in Egypt. All the rooms are draughty and some
are damp. No servant who has not been born and bred on the estate will
stay more than six months. There is a deficient water supply in dry
summers, and there are three distinct ghosts all the year round.
Extremely like the Middle Ages.'

'I would not mind ghosts, rats, anything, if it were my house' exclaimed
Ida, enthusiastically. 'The house is a poem.'

'Perhaps; but it is not a house; in the modern sense of the word, that is
to say, which implies comfort and convenience.'

Ida sighed, deeply disgusted at this want of appreciation of the romantic
spot where she had dreamed away more than one happy summer noontide,
while the Wendover children played hide-and-seek in the overgrown old
shrubberies.

No doubt life was always thus. The people to whom blind fortune gave such
blessings were unable to appreciate them, and only the hungry outsiders
could imagine the delight of possession.

'Are you living in London now?' she asked, as Mr. Wendover lingered at
her side, and seemed to expect the conversation to be continued
indefinitely.

His boat was safe enough, moving gently up and down among the rushes,
with the gentle flow of the tide. Ida looked at it longingly, thinking
how sweet it would be to step into it and let it carry her--any whither,
so long as it was away from Mauleverer Manor.

'Yes, I am in London for the present.'

'But not for long, I suppose.'

'I hardly know. I have no plans. I won't say with Romeo that I am
fortune's fool--but I am fortune's shuttlecock; and I suppose that means
pretty much the same.'

'It was very kind of you to come to see me,' said Ida.

'Kind to myself, for in coming I indulged the dearest wish of my soul,'
said the young man, looking at her with eyes whose meaning even her
inexperience could not misread.

'Please don't pay me compliments,' she said, hastily, 'or I shall feel
very sorry you came. And now I must hurry back to the house--the tea-bell
will ring in a few minutes. Please tell Bessie I am very well, and only
longing for one of her dear letters. Good-bye.'

She made him a little curtsey, and would have gone without shaking hands,
but he caught her hand and detained her in spite of herself.

'Don't be angry,' he pleaded; 'don't look at me with such cold, proud
eyes. Is it an offence to admire, to love you too quickly? If it is, I
have sinned deeply, and am past hope of pardon. Must one serve an
apprenticeship to mere formal acquaintance first, then rise step by step
to privileged friendship, before one dares to utter the sweet word love?
Remember, at least, that I am your dearest friend's first cousin, and
ought not to appear to you as a stranger.'

'I can remember nothing when you talk so wildly,' said Ida, crimson to
the roots of her hair. Never before had a young lover talked to her of
love. 'Pray let me go. Miss Pew will be angry if I am not at tea.'

'To think that such a creature as you should be under the control of any
such harpy,' exclaimed Brian. 'Well, if I must go, at least tell me I am
forgiven, and that I may exist upon the hope of seeing you again. I
suppose if I were to come to the hall-door, and send in my card, I should
not be allowed to see you?'

'Certainly not. Not if you were my own cousin instead of Bessie's.
Good-bye.'

'Then I shall happen to be going by in my boat every afternoon for the
next month or so. There is a dear good soul at the lock who lets
lodgings. I shall take up my abode there.'

'Please never land on this pathway again,' said Ida earnestly 'Miss Pew
would be horribly angry if she heard I had spoken to you. And now I must
go.'

She withdrew her hand from his grasp, and ran off across the meadow,
light-footed as Atalanta. Her heart was beating wildly, beating
furiously, when she flew up to her room to take off her hat and jacket
and smooth her disordered hair. Never before had any man, except
middle-aged Dr. Rylance, talked to her of love: and that this man of all
others, this man, sole master of the old mansion she so intensely
admired, her friend's kinsman, owner of a good old Saxon name; this man,
who could lift her in a moment from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to
place and station; that this man should look at her with admiring eyes,
and breathe impassioned words into her ear, was enough to set her heart
beating tumultuously, to bring hot blushes to her cheeks. It was too wild
a dream.

True, that for the man himself, considered apart from his belongings, his
name and race, she cared not at all. But just now, in this tumult of
excited feeling, she was disposed to confuse the man with his
surroundings--to think of him, not as that young man with gray eyes and
thin lips, who had walked with her at The Knoll, who had stood beside her
just now by the river, but as the living embodiment of fortune, pride,
delight.

Perhaps the vision really dominant in her mind was the thought of
Herself as mistress of the Abbey, herself as living for ever among the
people she loved, amidst those breezy Hampshire hills, in the odour of
pine-woods--rich, important, honoured, and beloved, doing good to all who
came within the limit of her life. Yes, that was a glorious vision, and
its reflected light shone upon Brian Wendover, and in somewise glorified
him.

She went down to tea with such a triumphant light in her eyes that the
smaller pupils who sat at her end of the table, so as to be under her
_surveillance_ during the meal, exclaimed at her beauty.

'What a colour you've got, Miss Palliser!' said Lucy Dobbs, 'and how your
eyes sparkle! You look as if you'd just had a hamper.'

'I'm not quite so greedy as you, Lucy,' retorted Ida; 'I don't think a
hamper would make my eyes sparkle, even if there were anybody to send me
one.'

'But there is somebody to send you one,' argued Lucy, with her mouth full
of bread and butter; 'your father isn't dead?'

'No.'

'Then he might send you a hamper.'

'He might, if he lived within easy reach of Mauleverer Manor,' replied
Ida; 'but as he lives in France--'

'He could send a post-office order to a confectioner in London, and the
confectioner would send you a big box of cakes, and marmalade, and jam,
and mixed biscuits, and preserved ginger,' said Lucy, her cheeks glowing
with the rapture of her theme. 'That is what my mamma and papa did, when
they were in Switzerland, on my birthday. I never had such a hamper as
that one. I was ill for a week afterwards.'

'And I suppose you were very glad your mother and father were away,' said
Ida, while the other children laughed in chorus.

'It was a splendid hamper,' said Lucy, stolidly. 'I shall never forget
it. So you see your father might send you a hamper,' she went on, for the
sake of argument, 'though he is in France.'

'Certainly,' said Ida, 'if I were not too old to care about cakes and
jam.'

'_We_ are not too old,' persisted Lucy; 'you might share them among us.'

Ida's heart had not stilled its stormy vehemence yet. She talked likely
to her young companions, and tried to eat a little bread and butter, but
that insipid fare almost choked her. Her mind was overcharged with
thought and wonder.

Could he have meant all or half he said just now?--this young man with
the delicate features, pale complexion, and thin lips. He had seemed
intensely earnest. Those gray eyes of his, somewhat too pale of hue for
absolutely beauty, had glowed with a fire which even Ida's inexperience
recognised as something above and beyond common feeling. His hand had
trembled as it clasped hers. Could there be such a thing as love at first
sight? and was she destined to be the object of that romantic passion?
She had read of the triumphs of beauty, and she knew that she was
handsome. She had been told the fact in too many ways--by praise
sometimes, but much more often by envy--to remain unconscious of her
charms. She was scornful of her beauty, inclined to undervalue the gift
as compared with the blessings of other girls--a prosperous home, the
world's respect, the means to gratify the natural yearnings of youth--but
she knew that she was beautiful. And now it seemed to her all at once
that beauty was a much more valuable gift than she had supposed
hitherto--indeed, a kind of talisman or Aladdin's lamp, which could win
for her all she wanted in this world--Wendover Abbey and the position of
a country squire's wife. It was not a dazzling or giddy height to which
to aspire; but to Ida just now it seemed the topmost pinnacle of social
success.

'Oh, what a wretch I am!' she said to herself presently; 'what a
despicable, mercenary creature! I don't care a straw for this man; and
yet I am already thinking of myself as his wife.'

And then, remembering how she had once openly declared her intention of
marrying for money, she shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.

'Ought I to hesitate when the chance comes to me?' she thought. 'I always
meant to marry for money, if ever such wonderful fortune as a rich
husband fell in my way.'

And yet she had refused Dr. Rylance's offer, without a moment's
hesitation. Was it really as he had said, in the bitterness of his wrath,
because the offer was not good enough, the temptation not large enough?
No, she told herself, she had rejected the smug physician, with his West
End mansion and dainty Hampshire villa, his courtly manners, his perfect
dress, because the man himself was obnoxious to her. Now, she did not
dislike Brian Wendover--indeed, she was rather inclined to like him. She
was only just a little disappointed that he was not the ideal Brian of
her dreams. The dark-browed cavalier, with grave forehead and eagle eyes.
She had a vague recollection of having once heard Blanche say that her
cousin Brian of the Abbey was like Sir Tristram's portrait; but this must
have been a misapprehension upon her part, since no two faces could have
differed more than the pale delicate-featured countenance of the living
man and the dark rugged face in the picture.

She quieted the trouble of her thoughts as well as she could before tea
was over and the evening task of preparation,--the gulfs and straits, the
predicates and noun sentences, rule of three, common denominators, and
all the dry-as-dust machinery was set in motion again.

Helping her pupils through their difficulties, battling with their
stupidities, employed her too closely for any day-dreams of her own. But
when prayers had been read, and the school had dispersed, and the
butterfly-room was hushed into the silence of midnight, Ida Palliser lay
broad awake, wondering at what Fate was doing for her.

'To think that perhaps I am going to be rich after all--honoured, looked
up to, able to help those I love,' she thought, thrilling at the
splendour of her visions.

Ah! if this thing were verily to come to pass, how kind, how good she
would be to others! She would have them all at the Abbey,--the shabby old
half-pay father, shabby no longer in those glorious days; the vulgar
little stepmother, improved into elegance; the five-year old brother,
that loveliest and dearest of created beings. How lovely to see him
rioting in the luxuriance of those dear old gardens, rolling on that
velvet sward, racing his favourite dogs round and round the grand old
cedars! What a pony he should ride! His daily raiment should be Genoa
velvet and old point lace. He should be the admiration and delight of
half the county. And Bessie--how kind she could be to Bessie, repaying
in some small measure that which never could be fully repaid--the
kindness shown by the prosperous girl to the poor dependent. And above
all,--vision sweeter even than the thought of doing good,--how she would
trample on Urania Rylance--how the serpentine coils of that damsel's
malice and pride could be trodden under foot! Not a ball, not a dinner,
not a garden-party given at the Abbey that would not be a thorn in
Urania's side, a nail in Urania's coffin.

So ran her fancies--in a very fever--all through the troubled night; but
when the first streak of the autumn dawn glimmered coldly in the east,
dismal presage of the discordant dressing-bell, then she turned upon her
pillow with a weary sigh, and muttered to herself:--

'After all I daresay Mr. Wendover is only fooling me. Perhaps it is his
habit to make love to every decent-looking girl he meets.'

The next day Ida walked on the same riverside path, but this time
not alone. Her natural modesty shrank from the possibility of a second
_tête-à-tête_ with her admirer, and she stooped from her solitary state
to ask Fräulein Wolf to accompany her in her afternoon walk.

Fräulein was delighted, honoured even, by the request. She was a
wishy-washy person, sentimental, vapourish, altogether feeble, and she
intensely admired Ida Palliser's vigorous young beauty.

The day was bright and sunny, the air deliciously mild, the river simply
divine. The two young women paced the path slowly, talking of German
poetry. The Fräulein knew her Schiller by heart, having expounded him
daily for the last four years, and she fondly believed that after
Shakespeare Schiller was the greatest poet who had ever trodden this
globe.

'And if God had spared him for twenty more years, who knows if he would
not have been greater than Shakespeare? inquired the Fräulein, blandly.

She talked of Schiller's idea of friendship, as represented by the
Marquis of Posa.

'Ah,' sighed Ida, 'I doubt if there is any such friendship as that out of
a book.'

'I could be like the marquis,' said the Fräulein, smiling tenderly.' Oh,
Ida, you don't know what I would do for anyone I loved--for a dear and
valued friend, like you for instance, if you would only let me love you;
but you have always held me at arm's length.'

'I did not mean to do so,' answered Ida, frankly; 'but perhaps I am not
particularly warm-hearted. It is not in my nature to have many friends. I
was very fond of Bessie Wendover, but then she is such a dear clinging
thing, like a chubby child that puts its fat arms round your neck--an
irresistible creature. She made me love her in spite of myself.'

'Why cannot I make you love me?' asked the fair Gertrude, with a
languishing look.

Ida could have alleged several reasons, but they would have been
unflattering, so she only said feebly,--

'Oh, I really like you very much, and I enjoy talking about German
literature with you. Tell me more about Schiller--you know his poetry so
well--and Jean Paul. I never can quite understand the German idolatry of
him. He is too much in the clouds for me.'

'Too philosophic, you mean,' said Fräulein. 'I love philosophy.'

'"Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, it helps not, it avails not,"'
said a manly voice from the river close by, and Brian Wendover shot his
boat in against the bank and leapt up from among the rushes like a
river-god.

Miss Palliser blushed crimson, but it hardly needed her blushes to
convince Fräulein Wolf that this young stranger was a lover. Her
sentimental soul thrilled at the idea of having plunged into the very
midst of an intrigue.

Ida's heart throbbed heavily, not so much with emotion at beholding her
admirer as at the recollection of her visions last night. She tried to
look calm and indifferent.

'How do you do?' she said, shaking hands with him. 'Mr. Wendover--Miss
Wolf, our German mistress.'

The Fräulein blushed, sniggered, and curtseyed.

'This gentleman is Bessie Wendover's first cousin, Fräulein,' said Ida,
with an explanatory air. 'He was staying at The Knoll during the last
part of my visit.'

'Yes, and you saw much of each other, and you became heart-friends,'
gushed Miss Wolf, beaming benevolently at Brian with her pale green orbs.

Brian answered in very fair German, sinking his voice a little so as only
to be heard by the Fräulein, who was in raptures with this young
stranger. So good-looking, so elegant, and speaking Hanoverian German. He
told her that he had seen only too little of Ida at The Knoll, but enough
to know that she was his 'Schicksal'; and then he took the Fräulein's
hand and pressed it gently.

'I know you are our friend,' he said.

'Bis den Tod,' gasped Gertrude.

After this no one felt any more restraint. The Fräulein dropped into her
place of confidante as easily as possible.

'What brings you here again this afternoon, Mr. Wendover?' asked Ida,
trying to sustain the idea of being unconcerned in the matter.

'My load-star; the same that drew me here yesterday, and will draw me
here to-morrow.'

'You had better not come here any more; you have no idea what a terrible
person Miss Pew is. These river-side fields are her own particular
property. Didn't you see the board, "Trespassers will be prosecuted"?'

'Let her prosecute. If her wrath were deadly, I would risk it You know
what Borneo says--

"Wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,
I would adventure for such merchandize"

And shall I be afraid of Miss Pew, when the path to my paradise lies so
near?'

'Please don't talk such nonsense,' pleaded Ida; 'Fräulein will think you
a very absurd person.'

But Miss Wolf protested that she would think nothing of the sort.
Sentiment of that kind was her idea of common sense.

'I am established at Penton Hook,' said Brian. 'I live on the water, and
my only thought in life is to be near you. I shall know every stump of
willow--every bulrush before I am a month older.'

'But surely you are not going to stay at Penton Hook for a month!'
exclaimed Ida, 'buried alive in that little lock-house?'

'I shall have my daily resurrection when I see you.'

'But you cannot imagine that I shall walk upon this path every afternoon,
in order that you may land and talk nonsense?' protested Ida.

'I only imagine that this path is your daily walk, and that you would not
be so heartless as to change your habits in order to deprive me of the
sunshine of your presence,' replied Brian, gazing at her tenderly, as if
Miss Wolf counted for nothing, and they two were standing alone among the
reeds and willows.

'You will simply make this walk impossible for me. It is quite out of the
question that I should come here again so long as you are likely to be
lying in wait for me. Is it not so, Fräulein? You know Miss Pew's way of
thinking, and how she would regard such conduct.'

Fräulein shook her head dolefully, and admitted that in Miss Pew's
social code such a derogation from maiden dignity would be, in a manner,
death--an offence beyond all hope of pardon.

'Hang Miss Pew!' exclaimed Brian. 'If Miss Pew were Minerva, with all the
weight and influence of her father, the Thunderer, to back her up, I
would defy her. Confess now, dear Fräulein--liebste Fräulein'--how tender
his accents sounded in German!--'_you_ do not think it wrong for me to
see the lady of my love for a few all-too-happy moments once a day?'

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