The Golden Calf

M >> M. E. Braddon >> The Golden Calf

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Fortunately for Bessie's hopes, however, Colonel Wendover did not know
this.

The Curate complained to Aunt Betsy of her brother's hardness.

'Why cannot we be married at the end of this year?' he said. 'We have
pledged ourselves to spend our lives together. Why should we not begin
that bright new life--bright and new, at least to me--in a few months?
That would be ample time for the Colonel and Mrs. Wendover to get
accustomed to the idea of Bessie's marriage.'

'But a few months will not make her old enough or wise enough for a
clergyman's wife,' said Miss Wendover.

'She has plenty of wisdom--the wisdom of a generous and tender heart--the
best kind of wisdom. All her instincts, all her impulses, are pure, and
true, and noble. What can age give her better than that? Girl, as she is,
my parish will be the better for her sweet influence. She will be the
sunshine of my people's life as well as of mine. How will she grow wiser
by living two years longer, and reading novels, and dancing at
Bournemouth? I don't want her to be worldly-wise; and the better kind of
wisdom comes from above. She will learn that in the quiet of her married
home.'

'I see,' said Miss Wendover, smiling at him; 'you don't quite like the
afternoon dances and tennis parties at Bournemouth.'

'Pray don't suppose I am jealous,' said the Curate. 'My trust in my
darling's goodness and purity is the strongest part of my love. But I
don't want to see the best years of her youth, her freshness, her girlish
energy and enthusiasm, frittered away upon dances, and tennis, and dress,
which has lately been elevated into an art. I want her help, I want her
sympathy, I want her for my own--the better part of myself--going hand in
hand with me in all my hopes and acts.'

'Two years sounds a long time,' said Miss Wendover, musingly, 'and I
suppose, at your age and Bessie's, it is a long time; though at mine the
years flow onward with such a gliding motion that it is only one's
looking-glass, and the quarterly accounts, that tell one time is moving.
However, I have seen a good many of these two-year engagements--'

'Yes.'

'And I have seldom seen one of them last a twelvemonth.'

'They have ended unhappily?'

'Quite the contrary. They have ended in a premature wedding. The
young people have put their heads together, and have talked over the
flinty-hearted parents; and some bright morning, when the father and
mother have been in a good temper, the order for the trousseau has been
given, the bridesmaids have received notice, and in six weeks the whole
business was over, And the old people rather glad to have got rid of a
love-sick damsel and her attendant swain. There is no greater nuisance in
a house than engaged sweethearts. Who knows whether you and Bessie may
not be equally fortunate?'

'I hope we may be so,' said the Curate; 'but I don't think we shall make
ourselves obnoxious.'

'Oh, of course you think not. Every man believes himself superior to
every form of silliness, but I never saw a lover yet who did not lapse
sooner or later into mild idiocy.'

_'Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.'_

'Of course. Indeed, with the gods of Olympus it was quite the other way.
Nothing could be more absurd than their goings on.'

Ida was delighted at her friend's happiness, and was never tired of
hearing about Mr. Jardine's virtues. Love had already begun to exercise a
sobering influence upon Bessie. She no longer romped with the boys, and
she wore gloves. She had become very studious of her appearance, but all
those little coquettish arts of the toilet which she had learned last
autumn at Bournemouth, the cluster of flowers pinned on her shoulder, the
laces and frivolities, were eschewed; lest Mr. Jardine should be reminded
of the wanton-eyed daughters of Zion, with their tinkling ornaments, and
chains, and bracelets, and mufflers, and rings, and nose-jewels. She
began to read with a view to improving her mind, and plodded laboriously
through certain books of the advanced Anglican school which her lover had
told her were good. But she learnt a great deal more from Mr. Jardine's
oral instructions than from any books, and when the Winchester boys came
home for an occasional Sunday they found her brimful of ecclesiastical
knowledge, and at once nicknamed her the Perambulating Rubric, or by the
name of any feminine saint which their limited learning suggested.
Fortunately for Bessie, however, their jests were not unkindly meant, and
they liked Mr. Jardine, whose knowledge of natural history, the ways and
manners of every creature that flew, or walked, or crawled, or swam in
that region of hill and valley, made him respectable in their eyes.

'He's not half a bad fellow--for a parson,' said Horatio,
condescendingly.

'And wouldn't he make a jolly schoolmaster?' exclaimed Reginald. 'Boys
would get on capitally with Jardine. They'd never try to bosh _him_.'

'Schoolmaster, indeed?' echoed Bessie, with an offended air.

'I suppose you think it wouldn't be good enough for him? You expect him
to be made an archbishop off-hand, without being educated up to his work
by the rising generation. No doubt you forget that there have been such
men as Arnold, and Temple, and Moberly. Pray what higher office can a man
hold in this world than to form the minds of the rising generation?'

'I wish your master would form your manners,' said Bessie, 'for they are
simply detestable.'

It was nearly the end of June, and the song of the nightingales was
growing rarer in the twilight woods.

Ida started early one heavenly midsummer morning, with her book and her
luncheon in a little basket, to see the old lodge-keeper at Wendover
Abbey, who had nursed the elder Wendovers when they were babies in the
nurseries at the Abbey, and who had lived in a Gothic cottage at the
gate--built on purpose for her by the last squire--ever since her
retirement from active service. This walk to the Abbey was one of Ida's
favourite rambles, and on this June morning the common, the wood, the
corn-fields, and distant hills were glorious with that fleeting beauty of
summer which gives a glamour to the most commonplace scenery.

She had a long idle morning before her, a thing which happened rarely.
Miss Wendover had driven to Romsey with the Colonel and his wife, to
lunch with some old friends in the neighbourhood of that quiet town, and
was not likely to be home till afternoon tea. Bessie was left in charge
of the younger members of the household, and was further deeply engaged
in an elaborate piece of ecclesiastical embroidery, all crimson and gold,
and peacock floss, which she hoped to finish before All Saints' Day.

Old Mrs. Rowse, the gatekeeper, was delighted to see Miss Palliser. The
young lady was a frequent visitor, for the old woman was entitled to
particular attention as a sufferer from chronic rheumatism, unable to
do more than just crawl into her little patch of garden, or to the
grass-plat before her door on a sunny afternoon. Her days were spent, for
the most part, in an arm-chair in front of the neat little grate, where a
handful of fire burnt, winter and summer, diffusing a turfy odour.

Ida liked to hear the old woman talk of the past. She had been a bright
young girl, under-nurse when the old squire was born; and now the squire
had been lying at rest in the family vault for nigh upon fifteen years,
and here she was still, without kith or kin, or a friend in the world
except the Wendovers.

She liked to hold forth upon the remarkable events of her life--from her
birth in a labourer's cottage, about half a mile from the Abbey, to the
last time she had been able to walk as far as the parish church, now five
years ago. She was cheerful, yet made the most of her afflictions, and
seemed to think that chronic rheumatism of her particular type was a
social distinction. She was also proud of her advanced age, and had hopes
of living into the nineties, and having her death recorded in the county
papers.

That romantic feeling about the Abbey, which had taken possession of
Ida's mind on her first visit, had hardly been lessened by familiarity
with the place, or even by those painful associations which made the spot
fatal to her. The time-old deserted mansion was still to her fancy a poem
in stone; and although she could not think about its unknown master
without a shudder, recalling her miserable delusion, she could not banish
his image from her thoughts, when she roamed about the park, or explored
the house, where the few old servants had grown fond of her and suffered
her to wander at will.

When she had spent an hour with Mrs. Rowse, she walked on to the Abbey,
and seated herself to eat her sandwiches and read her beloved Shelley
under the cedar beneath which she and the Wendover party had picnicked so
gaily on the day of her first visit. Shelley harmonized with her
thoughtful moods, for with most of his longer poems there is interwoven
that sense of wrong and sorrow, that idea of a life spoiled and blighted
by the oppression of stern social laws, which could but remind Ida of her
own entanglement. She had bound herself by a chain that could never be
broken, and here she read of how all noblest and grandest impulses are
above the law, and refuse to be so bound; and how, in such cases, it is
noble to defy and trample upon the law. A kind of heroic lawlessness,
spiritualized and diffused in a cloud of exquisite poetry, was what she
found in her Shelley; and it comforted her to know that before her time
there had been lofty souls caught in the web of their own folly.

When she was tired of reading she went into the Abbey. The great hall
door stood open to admit the summer air and sunshine. Ida wandered from
one room to another as freely as if she had been in her own house,
knowing that any servant she met would be pleased to see her there. The
old housekeeper was a devoted admirer of Miss Palliser; the two young
housemaids were her pupils in a class which met every Sunday afternoon
for study of the Scriptures. She had no fear of being considered an
intruder. Many of the casements stood open, and there was the scent of
flowers in the silent old rooms, where all was neat and prim, albeit a
little faded and gray.

Ida loved to explore the library, where the books were for the most part
quaint and old, original editions of seventeenth and eighteenth century
books, in sober, substantial bindings. It was pleasant to take out a
volume of one of the old poets, or the eighteenth century essayists, and
to read a few stanzas, or a paper of Addison's or Steele's, standing by
the open window in the air and sunlight.

The rooms in which she roamed at will were the public apartments of the
Abbey, and, although beautiful in her eyes, they had the stiffness and
solemnity of rooms which are not for the common uses of daily life.

But on one occasion Mrs. Mawley, the housekeeper, in a particularly
communicative mood, showed her the suite of rooms in which Mr. Wendover
lived when he was alone; and here, in the study where he read, and wrote,
and smoked, and brooded in the long quiet days, she saw those personal
belongings which gave at least some clue to the character of the man.
Here, on shelves which lined the room from floor to ceiling, she saw the
books which Brian Wendover had collected for his own especial pleasure,
and the neatness of their arrangement and classification told her that
the master of Wendover Abbey was a man of calm temper and orderly habits.

'You'll never see a book out of place when he leaves the room,' said Mrs.
Mawley. 'I've seen him take down fifty volumes of a morning, when he's at
his studies. I've seen the table covered with books, and books piled up
on the carpet at each side of his chair, but they'd all be back on their
shelves, as neat as a new pin, when I went to tidy up the room after him.
I never allow no butter-fingered girls in this room, except to sweep or
scrub, under my own eye. There's not many ornaments, but what there is is
precious, and the apple of master's eye.'

It was a lovely room, with a panelled oak ceiling, and a fine old oak
mantel-piece, on which were three or four pieces of Oriental crackle. The
large oak writing-table was neatly arranged with crimson leather
blotting-book, despatch-box, old silver inkstand, and a pair of exquisite
bronze statuettes of Apollo and Mercury, which seemed the presiding
geniuses of the place.

'I don't believe Mr. Wendover could get on with his studies if those two
figures weren't there,' said Mrs. Mawley.

The rooms were kept always aired and ready--no one knew at what hour the
master might return. He was a good master, honoured and beloved by the
old servants, who had known him from his infancy; and his lightest whim
was respected. The fact that he should have given the best part of his
life since he left Oxford to roving about foreign countries was lamented;
but this roving temper was regarded as only an eccentric manner of sowing
those wild oats which youth must in some wise scatter; and it was hoped
that with ripening years he would settle down and spend his days in the
home of his ancestors. He might come home at any time, he had informed
Mrs. Mawley in his last letter, received six weeks ago.

That glimpse of the room in which he lived gave Ida a vivid idea of the
man--the calm, orderly student who had won high honours at the
University, and was never happier than when absorbed in books that took
him back to the past--to that very past which was presided over by the
two pagan gods on the writing-table. She noted that the wide block of
books nearest Mr. Wendover's chair were all Greek and Latin; and straying
round the room she found Homers and Horaces, Greek playwrights and
historians, repeating themselves many times, in various quaint costly
editions. A scholar evidently--perhaps pragmatical and priggish. Bessie's
coolness about her cousin implied that he was not altogether agreeable.

'Perhaps I should have liked him no better than the false Brian,' she
said to herself to-day, as she stood musing before the old brown books in
the library, thinking of that more individual collection which she had
been allowed to inspect on her last visit.

She shuddered at the image of that other Brian, remembering but too
vividly how she had last seen him, kneeling to her, claiming her as his
own. God! could he so claim her? Was she verily his, to summon at his
will?--his by the law of heaven and earth, and only enjoying her liberty
by his sufferance?

The thought was horrible. She snatched a book from the shelf--anything to
distract her mind. Happily, the book was Shakespeare, and she was soon
lost in Lear's woes, wilder, deeper than any sorrow she had ever tasted.

She read for an hour, the soft air fanning her, the sun shining upon her,
the scent of roses and lilies breathing gently round her as she sat in
the deep oak window-seat. Then the clock struck three, and it was time to
think of leaving this enchanted castle, where no prince or princess of
fairy tale ever came.

There was no need for haste. She might depart at her leisure, and dawdle
as much as she pleased on her homeward way. All she wanted was to be
seated neat and trim in a carefully arranged room, ready to pour out Aunt
Betsy's afternoon tea, when the cobs returned from Romsey. She put Lear
back in his place, and strolled slowly through the rooms, opening one
into another, to the hall, where she stopped idly to look at her
favourite picture, that portrait of Sir Tristram Wendover which was
attributed to Vandyke--a noble portrait, and with much of Vandyke's
manner, whoever the painter. It occupied the place of honour in a
richly-carved panel above the wide chimney-piece, a trophy of arms
arranged on each side.

Ida stood gazing dreamily at that picture--the dark, earnest eyes, under
strongly marked brows, the commanding features, somewhat ruggedly
modelled, but fine in their general effect--a Rembrandt face--every line
telling; a face in which manhood and intellect predominated over physical
beauty; and yet to Ida's fancy the face was the finest she had ever seen.
It was her ideal of the knightly countenance, the face of the man who has
won many a hard fight over all comers, and has beaten that last and worst
enemy, his own lower nature, leaving the lofty soul paramount over the
world, the flesh, and the devil. So must Lancelot have looked, Ida
thought, towards the close of life, when conscience had conquered
passion. It was a face that showed the traces of sorrows lived down and
temptations overcome--a face which must have been a living reproof to the
butterfly sybarites of Charles the Second's Court. Ida knew no more of
Sir Tristram's history than that he had been a brave soldier and a
faithful servant of the Stuarts in evil and good fortune; that he had
married somewhat late in life, to become the father of an only son, from
whom the present race of Wendovers were descended. Ida had tried in vain
to discover any resemblance to this pictured face in the Colonel or his
sister; but it was only to be supposed that the characteristics of the
loyal knight had dwindled and vanished from the Wendover countenance with
the passage of two centuries.

'No, there is not one of them has that noble look,' murmured Ida,
thinking aloud, as she turned to leave the hall.

She found herself face to face with a man, who stood looking at her with
friendly eyes, which in their earnest expression and grave dark brows
curiously resembled the eyes of the picture. Her heart gave one leap, and
then seemed to stand still. There could be only one man in the world with
such a face as that, and in that house. Yes, it was a modified copy of
the portrait--younger, the features less rugged, the skin paler and less
tawny, the expression less intense. Yet even here, despite the friendly
smile, there was a gravity, a look of determination which verged upon
severity.

This time she was not deceived. This was that very Brian Wendover whom
she had thought of in her foolish day-dreams, the first romantic fancy of
her girlhood, last year; and now, in the flush and glory of summer, he
stood before her, smiling at her with eyes which seemed to invite her
friendship.

'I am glad you like my ancestor's portrait,' he said. 'I could not resist
watching you for the last five minutes, as you stood in rapt
contemplation of the hero of our race; so unlike the manner of most
visitors to the Abbey, who give Sir Tristram a casual glance, and go on
to the next feature in the housekeeper's catalogue.'

She stood with burning cheeks, looking downward, like a guilty thing, and
for a moment or two could hardly speak. Then she said, faltering--

'It is a very interesting portrait,' after which brilliant remark she
stood looking helplessly towards the open door, which she could not reach
without passing the stranger.

'I think I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Palliser,' he said. 'Old
Mrs. Rowse told me you were here. I am Brian Wendover.'

Ida made him a little curtsey, so fluttering, so uncertain, as to have
elicited the most severe reproof from Madame Rigolette could she have
seen her pupil at this moment.

'I hope you do not mind,' she said, hesitatingly. 'Bessie and I have
roamed about the Abbey often, while you were away, and to-day I came
alone, and have been reading in the library for an hour or so.'

'I am delighted that the old house should not be quite abandoned.'

How different his tone in speaking of the Abbey from the false Brian's!
There was tenderness and pride of race in every word.

'And I hope that my return will not scare either you or Bessie away; that
you will come here as often as you feel inclined. I am something of a
recluse when I am at home.'

'You are very kind,' said Ida, moving a little way towards the door.
'Have you been to The Knoll yet?'

'I have only just come from Winchester. I landed at Hull yesterday
afternoon, and I have been travelling ever since. But I am very anxious
to see my aunts and cousins, especially Aunt Betsy. If you will allow me,
I will walk back to Kingthorpe with you.'

Ida looked miserable at the suggestion.

'I--I--don't think Miss Wendover will be at home just yet,' she said.
'She has gone to The Grange, near Romsey, you know, to luncheon.'

'But a luncheon doesn't last for ever. What time do you expect her back?'

'Not till five, at the earliest.'

'And it is nearly half-past three. If you'll allow me to come with you I
can lounge in that dear old orchard till Aunt Betty comes home to give me
some tea.'

What could Ida say to this very simple proposition? To object would have
been prudish in the last degree. Brian Wendover could not know what
manifold and guilty reasons she had for shrinking from any association
with him. He could not know that for her there was something akin to
terror in his name, that a sense of shame mingled with her every thought
of him. For him she must needs be as other women, and it was her business
to make him believe that he was to her as other men.

'I shall be very happy,' she said, and then, with a final effort, she
added, 'but are you not tired after your journey? Would it not be wiser
to rest, and go to the Homestead a little later, at half-past seven, when
you are sure of finding Miss Wendover at home?'

'I had rather risk it, and go now, I am only tired of railway travelling,
smoke and sulphur, dust and heat. A quiet walk across the common and
through the wood will be absolute refreshment and repose.'

After this there was nothing to be said, and they went out into the
carriage-way in front of the Abbey, side by side, and across the broad
expanse of turf, on which the cedars flung their wide stretching shadows,
and so by the Park to the corn-fields, where the corn waved green and
tall, and to the open common, above which the skylarks were soaring and
singing as if the whole world were wild with joy.

They had not much to talk about, being such utter strangers to each
other, and Brian Wendover naturally reserved and inclined to silence; but
the little he did say was made agreeable by a voice of singular richness
and melody--just such a voice as that deep and thrilling organ which
Canon Mozley has described in the famous Provost of Oriel, and which was
a marked characteristic of at least one of Bishop Coplestone's nephews--a
voice which gives weight and significance to mere commonplace.

Ida, not prone to shyness, was to-day as one stricken dumb. She could
not think of this man walking by her side, so unconscious of evil,
without unutterable humiliation. If he had been an altogether commonplace
man--pompous, underbred, ridiculous in any way--the situation would have
been a shade less tragic. But he came too near her ideal. This was the
kind of man she had dreamed of, and she had accepted in his stead the
first frivolous, foppish youth whom chance had presented to her, under a
borrowed name. Her own instinct, her own imagination, had told her the
kind of man Brian of the Abbey must needs be, and, in her sordid craving
for wealth and social status, she had allowed herself to be fobbed off
with so poor a counterfeit. And now her very ideal--the dark-browed
knight, with quiet dignity of manner, and that deep, earnest voice--had
come upon the scene; and she thought of her folly with a keener shame
than had touched her yet.

Brian walked at her side, saying very little, but not unobservant. He
knew a good deal about this Miss Palliser from Bessie's letters, which
had given him a detailed account of her chosen friend. He knew that the
damsel had carried on a clandestine flirtation with his cousin, and had
been expelled from Mauleverer Manor in consequence; and these facts,
albeit Bessie had pictured her friend as the innocent victim of tyranny
and wrong, had not given him a favourable opinion of his cousin's chosen
companion. A girl who would meet a lover on the sly, a girl who was
ignominiously ejected from a boarding-school, although clever and useful
there, could not be a proper person for his cousin to know. He was sorry
that Aunt Betsy's good nature had been stronger than her judgment, and
that she had brought such a girl to Kingthorpe as a permanent resident.
He had imagined her a flashy damsel, underbred, with a vulgar style of
beauty, a superficial cleverness, and all those baser arts by which the
needy sometimes ingratiate themselves into the favour of the rich.
Nothing could be more different from his fancy picture than the girl by
whose side he was walking, under that cloudless sky, where the larks were
singing high up in the blue.

What did he see, as he gravely contemplated the lady by his side? A
perfect profile, in which refinement was as distinctly marked as beauty
of line. Darkly fringed lids drooping over lovely eyes, which looked at
him shyly, shrinkingly, with unaffected modesty, when compelled to look.
A tall and beautifully modelled figure, set off by a simple white gown;
glorious dark hair, crowned with the plainest of straw hats. There was
nothing flashy or vulgar here, no trace of bad breeding in tone or
manner. Was this a girl to carry on illicit flirtations, to be mean
or underhand, to do anything meriting expulsion from a genteel
boarding-school? A thousand times no! He began to think that Bessie was
right, that Aunt Betsy's judgment, face to face with the actual facts,
had been wiser than his own view of the case at a distance. And then,
suddenly remembering upon what grounds he was arriving at this more
liberal view, he began to feel scornful of himself, after the manner of
your thinking man, given to metaphysics.

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