The Golden Calf by M. E. Braddon

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The Fräulein declared that it was the most natural thing in the world for
them thus to meet, and that she for her part would be enchanted to play
propriety, and to be her dearest Ida's companion on all such occasions,
nor would thumbscrew or rack extort from her the secret of their loves.

'Nonsense!' exclaimed Ida, 'in future I shall always walk in the kitchen
garden; the walls are ten feet high, and unless you had a horse that
could fly, like Perseus, you would never be able to get at me.'

'I will get a flying horse,' answered Brian. 'Don't defy me. Remember
there are things that have been heard of before now in love-stories,
called ladders.'

After this their conversation became as light and airy as that dandelion
seed which every breath of summer blows across the land. They were all
three young, happy in health and hope despite of fortune. Ida began to
think that Brian Wendover, if in nowise resembling her ideal, was a very
agreeable young man. He was full of life and spirits; he spoke German
admirably. He had the Fräulein's idolized Schiller on the tip of his
tongue. He quoted Heine's tenderest love songs. Altogether his society
was much more intellectual and more agreeable than any to be had at
Mauleverer Manor. Miss Wolf parted from him reluctantly, and thought that
Ida was unreasonably urgent when she insisted on leaving him at the end
of half an hour's dawdling walk up and down the river path.

'Ach, how he is handsome! how he is clever! What for a man!' exclaimed
Miss Wolf, as they went back to the Manor grounds, across the dusty
high-road, the mere passage over which had a faint flavour of excitement,
as a momentary escape into the outside world. 'How proud you must be of
his devotion to you!'

'Indeed I am not,' answered Ida, frankly. 'I only wonder at it. We have
seen so little of each other; we have known each other so short a time.'

'I don't think time counts for lovers,' argued the romantic Gertrude.
'One sees a face which is one's fate, and only wonders how one can have
lived until that moment, since life must have been so empty without
_him_.'

'Have you done that sort of thing often?' asked Ida, with rather a
cynical air. 'You talk as if it were a common experience of yours.'

Fräulein Wolf blushed and simpered.

'There was one,' she murmured, 'when I was very young. He was to me as a
bright particular star. His father kept a shop, but, oh, his soul would
have harmonized with the loftiest rank in the land. He was in the
Landwehr. If you had seen him in his uniform--ach, Himmel! He went away
to the Franco-Prussian war. I wept for him; I thought of him as Leonora
of her Wilhelm. He came back. Ach!'

'Was he a ghost? Did he carry you off to the churchyard?'

'Neither to churchyard nor church,' sighed Gertrude. 'He was false! He
married his father's cook--a fat, rosy-cheeked Swabian. All that was
delicate and refined in his nature, every poetical yearning of his soul,
had been trampled out of him in that hellish war!'

'I dare say he was hungry after a prolonged existence upon wurst,' said
Ida, 'and that instinct drew him to the cook-maid.'

After this there came many afternoons on which the Fräulein and Ida
walked in the meadow path by the river, and walk there when they would,
the light wherry always came glancing along the tide, and shot in among
the reeds, and Miss Palliser's faithful swain was in attendance upon her.
On doubtful afternoons, when Ida was inclined to stay indoors, the
sentimental Fräulein was always at her side to urge her to take the
accustomed walk. Not only was Mr. Wendover's society agreeable to her
poetic soul, but he occasionally brought some tender offering in the
shape of hothouse grapes or Jersey pears, which were still more welcome
to the fair German.

The governesses, Miss Motley, Miss Pillby, and Mademoiselle were always
on duty on fine afternoons, in attendance upon the pupils' regulation
walks--long dusty perambulations of dull high roads; and thus it happened
that Ida and the Fräulein had the meadow path to themselves.

Nothing occurred during the space of a fortnight to disturb their sense
of security. The river-side seemed a kind of Paradise, without the
possibility of a serpent. Ida's lover had not yet made her any
categorical and formal offer of marriage. Indeed, he had never been one
minute alone with her since their first meeting; but he talked as if it
was a settled thing that they two were to be man and wife in the days to
come. He did not speak as if their marriage were an event in the near
future; and at this Ida wondered a little, seeing that the owner of
Wendover Abbey could have no need to wait for a wife--to consider ways
and means--and to be prudently patient, as struggling professional youth
must be. This was curious; for that he loved her passionately there could
be little doubt. Every look, every tone told her as much a hundred times
in an hour. Nor did she make any protest when he spoke of her as one
pledged to him, though no formal covenant had been entered upon. She
allowed him to talk as he pleased about their future; and her only wonder
was, that in all his conversation he spoke so little of the house in
which he was born, and indeed of his belongings generally.

Once she expatiated to Fräulein Wolf in Brian's presence upon the
picturesque beauties of the Abbey.

'It is the dearest, noblest old house you can conceive,' she said; 'and
the old, old gardens and park are something too lovely: but I believe Mr.
Wendover does not care a straw about the place.'

'You know what comes of familiarity,' answered Brian, carelessly. 'I have
seen too much of the Abbey to be moved to rapture by its Gothic charms
every time I see it after the agony of separation.'

'But you would like to live there?'

'I would infinitely prefer living anywhere else. The place is too remote
from civilization. A spot one might enjoy, perhaps, on the downhill side
of sixty; but in youth or active middle age every sensible man should
shun seclusion. A man has to fight against an inherent tendency to lapse
into a vegetable.'

'Fox did not become a vegetable,' said Ida; 'yet how he adored St. Ann's
Hill!'

'Fox was a hard drinker and a fast liver,' answered Brian.

'If he had not let the clock run down now and then, the works would have
worn out sooner than they did.'

'But do you never feel the need of rest?' asked Ida.

Brian stifled a yawn.

'No; I'm afraid I have never worked hard enough for that. The need will
come, perhaps, later--when the work comes.'

On more than one occasion when Ida talked of the Abbey, Mr. Wendover
replied in the same tone. It was evident that he was indifferent to the
family seat, or that he even disliked it. He had no pride in surroundings
which might have inspired another man.

'One would think you had been frightened by the family ghost,' Ida said
laughingly, 'you so studiously avoid talking about the Abbey.'

'I have not been frightened by the ghost--I am too modern to believe in
ghosts.'

'Oh, but it is modern to believe in everything
impossible--spirit-rapping, thought-reading.'

'Perhaps; but I am not of that temper.' And then, with a graver look than
Ida had ever seen in his face, he said, 'You are full of enthusiasm about
that old place among the hills, Ida. I hope you do not care more for the
Abbey than for me.'

She crimsoned and looked down. The question touched her weakness too
nearly.

'Oh, no,' she faltered; 'what are cedars and limestone as compared with
humanity?'

'And if I were without the Abbey--if the Abbey and I were nothing to each
other--should I be nobody in your sight?'

'It is difficult to dissociate a man from his surroundings,' she
answered; 'but I suppose you would be just the same person?'

'I hope so,' said Brian. '"The rank is but the guinea stamp, the man's a
man for a' that." But the guinea stamp is an uncommonly good thing in its
way, I admit.'

These afternoon promenades between four and five o'clock, while the rest
of the school was out walking, had been going on for a fortnight, and no
harm to Ida had come of her indiscretion. Perhaps she hardly considered
how wrong a thing she was doing in violating Miss Pew's confidence by
conduct so entirely averse from Miss Pew's ideas of good behaviour. The
confidence had been so grudgingly given, Miss Pew had been so
systematically unkind, that the girl may be forgiven for detesting her,
nay, even for glorying in the notion of acting in a manner which would
shock all Miss Pew's dearest prejudices. Her meeting with her lover could
scarcely be called clandestine, for she took very little pains to conceal
the fact. If the affair had gone on secretly for so long, it was because
of no artifice on her part.

But that any act of any member of the Mauleverer household could remain
long unknown was almost an impossibility. If there had been but one pair
of eyes in the establishment, and those the eyes of Miss Pillby, the
thing would have been discovered; for those pale unlovely orbs were as
the eyes of Argus himself in their manifold power to spy out the
proceedings of other people--more especially of any person whom their
owner disliked.

Now Miss Pillby had never loved Ida Palliser, objecting to her on broad
grounds as a person whose beauty and talents were an indirect injury to
mediocre people. Since Ida's visit to The Knoll her angry feeling had
intensified with every mention of the pleasures and comforts of that
abode. Miss Pillby, who never opened a book for her own pleasure, who
cared nothing for music, and whose highest notion of art was all
blacklead pencil and bread-crumbs, had plenty of vacant space in her
mind for other people's business. She was a sharp observer of the
fiddle-faddle of daily life; she had a keen scent for evil motives
underlying simple actions. Thus when she perceived the intimacy which had
newly arisen between the Fräulein and Miss Palliser, she told herself
that there must be some occult reason for the fact. Why did those two
always walk together? What hidden charm had they discovered in the
river-meadow?

For this question, looked at from Miss Pillby's point of view, there
could be only one answer. The attraction was masculine. One or other of
the damsels must have an admirer whom she contrived to see somehow, or to
correspond with somehow, during her meadow walk. That the thing had gone
so far as it really had gone, that any young lady at Mauleverer could
dare to walk and talk with an unlicensed man in the broad light of day,
was more than Miss Pillby's imagination could conceive. But she
speculated upon some transient glimpse of a man on the opposite bank, or
in the middle distance of the river--a handkerchief waved, a signal
given, perhaps a love-letter hidden in a hollow bree. This was about the
culminating point to which any intrigue at Mauleverer had ever reached
hitherto. Beyond this Miss Pillby's fancy ventured not.

It was on the second Sunday in October, when the Mauleverer pupils were
beginning to look forward, almost hopefully, to the Christmas vacation,
that a flood of light streamed suddenly upon Miss Pillby's troubled mind.
The revelation happened in this wise. Evening service at a smart little
newly-built church, where the function was Anglican to the verge of
Ritualism, was a privilege reserved for the elder and more favoured of
the Mauleverer flock. All the girls liked this evening service at St.
Dunstan's. It had a flavour of dissipation. The lamps, the music, the
gaily decorated altar, the Saint's-day banners and processional hymn,
were faintly suggestive of the opera. The change from the darkness of the
country road to the glow and glitter of the tabernacle was thrilling.
Evening service at St. Dunstan's was the most exciting event of the week.
There was a curate who intoned exquisitely, with that melodious snuffle
so dear to modern congregations, and whose voice had a dying fall when he
gave out a hymn which almost moved girl-worshippers to tears. He was
thought to be in a consumption--had a little dry hacking cough, actually
caused by relaxed tonsils, but painfully recalling her of the camelias.
The Mauleverer girls called him interesting, and hoped that he would
never marry, but live and die like St. Francis de Sales. On this
particular Sunday, Miss Pew--vulgarly Old Pew--happened to be unusually
amiable. That morning's post had brought her the promise of three new
pupils, daughters of a mighty sheep farmer lately returned from
Australia, and supposed to be a millionaire. He was a widower, and wanted
motherly care for his orphans. They were to be clothed as well as fed at
Mauleverer; they were to have all those tender cares and indulgences
which a loving mother could give them. This kind of transaction was
eminently profitable to the Miss Pews. Maternal care meant a tremendous
list of extra charges--treats, medical attendance, little comforts of all
kinds, from old port to lamb's-wool sleeping-socks. Orphans of this kind
were the pigeons whose tender breasts furnished the down with which that
experienced crow, Miss Pew, feathered her nest. She had read the
Australian's letter over three times before evening service, and she was
inclined to think kindly of the human race; so when Miss Palliser asked
if she too--she, the Pariah, might go to St. Dunstan's--she, whose
general duty of a Sunday evening was to hear the little ones their
catechism, or keep them quiet by reading aloud to them 'Pilgrim's
Progress' or 'Agathos,' perhaps--Miss Pew said, loftily, 'I do not see
any objection.'

There was no kindness, no indulgence in her tone, but she said she saw no
objection, and Ida flew off to put on her bonnet,--that poor little black
lace bonnet with yellow rosebuds which had done duty for so many
services.

It was a relief to get a way from school, and its dull monotony, even for
a couple of hours; and then there was the music. Ida loved music too
passionately to be indifferent to the harmony of village voices,
carefully trained to sing her favourite hymns to the sound of a small but
excellent organ.

The little church was somewhat poorly attended on this fine autumn
evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the
river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan
and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which
tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather
than to worship in the warm little temple.

The Mauleverer girls made a solid block of humanity on one side of the
nave, but on the other side the congregation was scattered thinly in the
open oaken seats.

Miss Pillby, perusing those figures within her view, as she stood in the
back row of the school seats, perceived a stranger--a stranger of elegant
and pleasing appearance, who was evidently casting stolen glances at the
lambs of the Mauleverer fold. Nor was Miss Pillby's keen eye slow to
discover for which lamb those ardent looks were intended. The object of
the stranger's admiration was evidently Ida Palliser.

'I thought as much,' mused Miss Pillby, as she listened, or seemed to
listen, to the trials and triumphs of the children of Israel, chanted by
fresh young voices with a decidedly rural twang; 'this explains
everything.'

When they left the church, Miss Pillby was perfectly aware of the
stranger following the Mauleverer flock, evidently in the hope of getting
speech with Miss Palliser. He hung on the pathway near them, he shot
ahead of them, and then turned and strolled slowly back. All in vain. Ida
was too closely hemmed in and guarded for him to get speech of her; and
the maiden procession passed on without any violation of the proprieties.

'Did you see that underbred young man following us as we came home?'
asked Miss Pillby, with a disgusted air, as she shared an invigorating
repast of bread and butter and toast and water with the pupils who had
been to church. 'Some London shopman, no doubt, by his bad manners.' She
stole a look at Ida, who flushed ever so slightly at hearing Brian
Wendover thus maligned.

Fräulein Wolf slept in the room occupied by Miss Pillby and Miss
Motley--three narrow iron bedsteads in a particularly inconvenient room,
always devoted to governesses, and supposed to be a temple of learning.

While Miss Motley was saying her prayers, Miss Pillby wriggled up to the
Fräulein, who was calmly brushing her flaxen tresses, and whispered
impetuously, 'I have seen him! I know all about it!'

'Ach, Himmel,' cried the Fräulein. 'Thou wouldst not betray?'

'Not for the world.'

'Is he not handsome, godlike?' demanded the Fräulein, still in German.

'Yes, he is very nice-looking. Don't tell Palliser that I know anything
about him. She mightn't like it.'

The Fräulein shook her head, and put her finger to her lips, just as Miss
Motley rose from her knees, remarking that it was impossible for anybody
to pray in a proper business-like manner with such whispering and
chattering going on.

Next day Miss Pillby contrived to get a walk in the garden before the
early dinner. Here among the asparagus beds she had a brief conversation
with a small boy employed in the kitchen-garden, a youth whose mother
washed for the school, and had frequent encounters with Miss Pillby, that
lady having charge of the linen, and being, in the laundress's eye, a
power in the establishment. Miss Pillby had furthermore been what she
called 'kind' to the laundress's hope. She had insisted upon his learning
his catechism, and attending church twice every Sunday, and she had
knitted him a comforter, the material being that harsh and scrubby
worsted which makes the word comforter a sound of derision.

Strong in the sense of these favours, Miss Pillby put it upon the boy as
a duty which he owed to her and to society to watch Ida Palliser's
proceedings in the river-meadow. She also promised him sixpence if he
found out anything bad.

The influence of the Church Catechism, learned by rote, parrot fashion,
had not awakened in the laundress's boy any keen sense of honour. He had
a dim feeling that it was a shabby service which he was called upon to
perform; but then of course Miss Pillby, who taught the young ladies, and
who was no doubt a wise and discreet personage, knew best; and a possible
sixpence was a great temptation.

'Them rushes and weeds down by the bank wants cutting. Gar'ner told me
about it last week,' said the astute youth. 'I'll do 'em this very
afternoon.'

'Do, Sam. Be there between four and five. Keep out of sight as much as
you can, but be well within hearing. I want you to tell me all that goes
on.'

'And when shall I see you agen, miss?'

'Let me see. That's rather difficult. I'm afraid it can't be managed till
to-morrow. You are in the house at six every morning to clean the boots?'

'Yes, miss.'

'Then I'll come down to the boot-room at half-past six to-morrow morning
and hear what you've got to tell me.'

'Lor, miss, it's such a mucky place--all among the coal-cellars.'

'I don't mind,' said Miss Pillby; which was quite true. There was no
amount of muckiness Miss Pillby would not have endured in order to injure
a person she disliked.

'I have never shrunk from my duty, however painful it might be, Sam!' she
said, and left the youth impressed by the idea of her virtues.

In the duskiness of the October dawn Miss Pillby stole stealthily down by
back stairs and obscure passages to the boot-room, where she found Sam
hard at work with brushes and blacking, by the light of a tallow candle,
in an atmosphere flavoured with coals.

'Well, Sam?' asked the vestal, eagerly.

'Well, miss, I seed 'em and I heerd 'em,' answered the boy; 'such goin's
on. Orful?'

'What kind of thing, Sam?'

'Love-makin,' miss; keepin' company. The young ladies hadn't been there
five minutes when a boat dashes up to the bank, and a young gent jumps
ashore. My, how he went on! I was down among the rushes, right under his
feet, as you may say, most of the time, and I heerd him beautiful. How he
did talk; like a poetry book!'

'Did he kiss her?'

'Yes, miss, just one as they parted company. She was very stand-offish
with him, but he catched hold of her just as she was wishing of him
good-bye. He gave her a squeedge like, and took her unawares. It was only
one kiss, yer know, miss, but he made it last as long as he could. The
foreigner looked the other way.'

'Shameful creatures, both of them!' exclaimed Miss Pillby. 'There's your
sixpence, Sam, and don't say a word to anybody about what you've seen,
till I tell you. I may want you to repeat it all to Miss Pew. If I do,
I'll give you another sixpence.'

'Lawks, miss, that would be cheap at a shilling,' said the boy. 'It would
freeze my blood to have to stand up to talk before Miss Pew.'

'Nonsense, Sam, you will be only telling the truth, and there can be
nothing to frighten you. However, I dare say she will be satisfied with
my statement. She won't want confirmation from you.'

'Confirmation from me,' muttered Sam, as Miss Pillby left his den. 'No, I
should think not. Why, that's what the bishops do. Fancy old Pew being
confirmed too--old Pew in a white frock and a veil. That is a good'un,'
and Sam exploded over his blacking-brush at the preposterous idea.

It was Miss Pew's habit to take a cup of tea and a square of buttered
toast every morning at seven, before she left her pillow; in order to
fortify herself for the effort of getting up and dressing, so as to be in
her place, at the head of the chief table in the school dining-room, when
eight o'clock struck. Had Miss Pew consulted her own inclination she
would have reposed until a much later hour; but the maintenance of
discipline compelled that she should be the head and front of all
virtuous movements at Mauleverer Manor. How could she inveigh with due
force against the sin of sloth if she were herself a slug-a-bed?
Therefore did Miss Pew vanquish the weakness of the flesh, and rise at a
quarter past seven, summer and winter. But this struggle between duty and
inclination made the lady's temper somewhat critical in the morning
hours.

Now it was the custom for one of the mistresses to carry Miss Pew's
tea-tray, and to attend at her bedside while she sipped her bohea and
munched her toast. It was a delicate attention, a recognition of her
dignity, which Miss Pew liked. It was the _lever du roi_ upon a small
scale. And this afforded an opportunity for the mistress on duty to
inform her principal of any small fact in connection with the school or
household which it was well for Miss Pew to know. Not for worlds would
Sarah Pew have encouraged a spy, according to her own view of her own
character; but she liked people with keen eyes, who could tell her
everything that was going on under her roof.

'Good morning, Pillby,' said Miss Pew, sitting up against a massive
background of pillows, like a female Jove upon a bank of clouds, an awful
figure in frilled white raiment, with an eye able to command, but hardly
to flatter; 'what kind of a day in it?'

'Dull and heavy,' answered Miss Pillby; 'I shouldn't wonder if there was
a thunderstorm.'

'Don't talk nonsense, child; it's too late in the year for thunder. We
shall have the equinoctial gales soon, I dare say.'

'No doubt,' replied Miss Pillby, who had heard about the equinox and its
carryings on all her life without having arrived at any clear idea of its
nature and properties. 'We shall have it very equinoctial before the end
of the month, I've no doubt.'

'Well, is there anything going on? Any of the girls bilious? One of my
black draughts wanted anywhere?'

Miss Pew was not highly intellectual, but she was a great hand at
finance, household economies, and domestic medicine. She compounded most
of the doses taken at Mauleverer with her own fair hands, and her black
draughts were a feature in the school. The pupils never forgot them.
However faint became the memory of youthful joys in after years, the
flavour of Miss Pew's jalap and senna was never obliterated.

'No; there's nobody ill this morning,' answered Miss Pillby, with a faint
groan.

'Ah, you may well sigh,' retorted her principal; 'the way those girls ate
veal and ham yesterday was enough to have turned the school into a
hospital--and with raspberry jam tart after, too.'

Veal with ham was the Sunday dinner at Mauleverer, a banquet upon which
Miss Pew prided herself, as an instance of luxurious living rarely to be
met with in boarding-schools. If the girls were ill after it, that was
their look out.

'There's something wrong, I can see by your face, said Miss Pew, after
she had sipped half her tea and enjoyed the whole of her toast; 'is it
the servants or the pupils?'

Strange to say, Miss Pew did not look grateful to the bearer of evil
tidings. This was one of her idiosyncrasies. She insisted upon being kept
informed of all that went wrong in her establishment, but she was apt to
be out of temper with the informant.

'Neither,' answered Miss Pillby, with an awful shake of her sandy locks;
'I don't believe there is a servant in this house who would so far forget
herself. And as to the pupils--'

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