The Golden Calf

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'Is it my duty to do as Colonel Wendover tells me?' asked Ida, looking
round at them all with piteous appeal. 'Is it really my duty?'

'In the sight of God, yes,' said the Colonel and John Jardine.

'Yes, my dear, yes, there can be no doubt of it,' said the Colonel's wife
and Aunt Betsy.

Brian of the Abbey said not a word, and Dr. Rylance looked on in silence,
with a diabolical sneer.

What a fate for the girl who had refused a house in Cavendish square, one
of the prettiest victorias in London, and a matchless collection of old
hawthorn blue!

'Then I will do my duty,' said Ida; and then, before Brian Walford could
take her in his arms, or make any demonstration of delight, she threw
herself upon Miss Betsy Wendover's broad bosom, sobbing hysterically, and
crying, 'Take me away, take me out of this house, for pity's sake!'

'I'll take her home with me. She will be calm, and quiet, and happy
to-morrow,' said Aunt Betsy. And then, as Brian Walford was following
them, 'Stay where you are, Brian,' she said authoritatively. 'She shall
see no one but me till to-morrow. You will drive her crazy among you all,
if you are not careful.'

Miss Wendover took the girl away almost in her arms, and Brian Walford
disappeared at the same time without further speech.

'And now that the bride and bridegroom are gone, I suppose the wedding
party can have their dance,' sneered Urania, playing the first few bars
of 'Sweethearts.'

But Brian of the Abbey had vanished immediately after his cousin, and no
one was disposed for dancing; so, after a good deal of talk, Bessie's
birthday party broke up.

'What a dismal failure it has been, though it began so well!' said
Bessie, as she and the other juveniles went upstairs to bed.

'What! still you are not happy,' quoted Horatio. 'Why, I thought you
wanted Brian Walford to marry Ida Palliser?'

'So I did once,' sighed Bessie; 'but I would rather she had married Brian
of the Abbey; and I know he's over head and ears in love with her.'

'Ah, then he'll have to put his love in his pipe and smoke it! That kind
of thing won't do out of a French novel,' said Horatio, whose personal
knowledge of French romancers was derived from the _Philosophe sous les
toils_, as published wish grammatical notes for the use of schools; but
he liked to talk large.

CHAPTER XX.

WAS THIS THE MOTIVE?

Brian Walford came back to The Knoll after the younger members of the
family had gone to their rooms.

'Where have you been all this time?' asked the Colonel, who was strolling
on the broad gravel drive in front of the house, soothing his nerves with
a cheroot, after the agitations of the last hour. 'You are to have your
old room, I believe; I heard it was being got ready.'

'You are very kind. I walked half way to the Abbey with my cousin. We had
a smoke and a talk.'

'I should be glad of a little more talk with you. This business of
to-night is not at all pleasant, you know, Brian. It does not redound to
anybody's credit.'

'I never supposed that it did; but it is not my fault that there should
be this fuss. If my wife had been true to me all would have gone well.'

'I don't think you had a right to expect things to go well, when you had
so cruelly deceived her. It was a base thing to do, Brian.'

'You ought not to say so much as that, sir, knowing so little of the
circumstances. I did not deliberately deceive her.'

'That's skittles,' said the Colonel, flinging away the end of his cigar.

'It is the truth. The business began in sport. Bessie asked me to pretend
to be my cousin, just for fun, to see if Ida would fall in love with
me. Ida had a romantic idea about my cousin, it appears, that he was
an altogether perfect being, and so on. Well, I was introduced to her
as Brian of the Abbey, and though she may have been a little
disappointed--no doubt she was--she accepted me as the perfect being. As
for me--well, sir, you know what she is--how lovely, how winning. I was a
gone coon from that moment. We kept up the fun--Bess, and the boys, and
I--all that evening. I talked of the Abbey as if it were my property,
swaggered a good deal, and so on. Then Bess, knowing that I often stayed
up the river for weeks on end, asked me to go and see Ida, to make sure
that old Pew was not ill-using her, that she was not going into a
decline, and all that kind of thing. So I went, saw Ida, always in the
company of the German teacher, and took no pains to conceal my affection
for her. But I said not another word about the Abbey. I never swaggered
or put on the airs of a rich man; I only told her that I loved her, and
that I hoped our lives would be spent together. I did not even suggest
our marriage as a fact in the near future. I knew I was in no position to
maintain a wife.'

'You should have told her that plainly. As a man of honour you were bound
to undeceive her.'

'I meant to do it, but I wanted her to be very fond of me first. Then
came the row; old Pew expelled her because she had been carrying on a
clandestine flirtation with a young man. Her character was compromised,
and as a man of honour I had no course but to propose immediate
marriage.'

'Her character was not compromised, because Miss Pew chose to act like a
vulgar old tyrant. The German governess, everybody in the school, knew
that Miss Palliser was unjustly treated. There was no wound that needed
to be salved by an imprudent marriage. But in any case, before proposing
such a marriage, it was your bounden duty to tell her the truth about
your circumstances, not to marry her to poverty without her full consent
to the union.'

'Then I did not do my bounden duty,' Brian Walford answered sullenly. 'I
believed in her disinterested affection. Why should she be more mercenary
than I, who was willing to marry her without a sixpence in her pocket,
without a second gown to her back? How could I suppose she was marrying
me for the sake of a fine place and a fine fortune? I thought she was
above such sordid considerations.'

'You ought to have been sure of that before you married her; you ought to
have trusted her fully,' said the Colonel. 'However, having married her,
why did you consent so tamely to let her go? Having let her go, why do
you come here to-night to claim her?'

'Why did I let her go? Well she shrewed me so abominably when she found
out my lowly position that my pride was roused, and I told her she might
go where she pleased. Why did I come here to-night? Well, it was an
impulse that brought me. I am passionately fond of her. I have lived
without her for nearly a year--angry with her and with fate--but to day
was the anniversary of our first meeting. I knew from Bessie that my wife
was here, happy. There was even some hint of a flirtation between her and
_the real Brian,'_--these last words were spoken with intense
bitterness,--'and I thought it was time I should claim my own.'

'I think so to,' said Colonel Wendover, severely; 'you should have
claimed her long ago. Your whole conduct is faulty in the extreme. You
will be a very lucky man if your married life turns out happy after such
a bad beginning.'

'Come, Colonel, we are both young,' remonstrated Brian, with that
careless lightness which seemed natural to him, as a man who could hardly
take the gravest problems of life seriously; 'there is no reason why we
should not shake down into a very happy couple by-and-by.'

'And pray how are you to live?' inquired the Colonel. 'You are taking
this girl from a most comfortable home--a position in which she is valued
and useful. What do you intend to give her in exchange for the Homestead?
A garret and a redherring?'

'Oh, no, sir; I hope it will be a long time before we come to
that--though Beranger says that at twenty a man and the girl he loves may
be happy in a garret. I think we shall do pretty well. My literary work
widened a good deal while I was in Paris. I wrote for some of the London
magazines, and the editors are good enough to think that I am rather a
smart writer. I can earn something by my pen; I think enough to keep the
pot boiling till briefs begin to drop in. My cousin was generous enough
to offer me an income just now--four or five hundred a year so long as I
should require it--but I told him that I thought I could support my wife
with my pen for the next few years.'

'Your cousin is always generous,' said the Colonel.

'Yes, he is an open-handed fellow. I suppose you know that he helped me
while I was in Paris.'

'I did not know, but I am not surprised.'

'Very kind of him, wasn't it? The fact is, I was dipped rather deeply, in
my small way--tailor, and hosier, and so on--before I left London; and I
could not have come back unless Brian had helped me to settle with them,
or I should have had to go through the Bankruptcy Court; and I daresay
some of you would have thought that a disgrace.'

'Some of us!' exclaimed the Colonel; 'we should all have thought so. Do
you suppose the Wendovers are in the habit of cheating their creditors?'

'Oh, but it was not a question of cheating them, only of paying them a
rather insignificant dividend. My only assets are my books and furniture,
and unluckily some of those are still unpaid for.'

'Assets? You have no assets. You are a spendthrift and a scamp!'
protested his uncle, angrily. 'I am deeply sorry for your wife. Good
night. If you want any supper after your journey there are plenty of
people to wait upon you.'

And with that the Colonel turned upon his heel and went into the house,
leaving his nephew to follow at his leisure.

_'Comme il est assommant, le patron,'_ muttered Brian, strolling after
his kinsman.

Brian Walford was not ordinarily an early riser, but he was up betimes on
the morning after Bessie's birthday; breakfasted with the family, and
strolled across dewy fields to the Homestead a little after nine o'clock.
But although this was a late hour in Miss Wendover's household, his
young wife was not prepared to receive him. It was Aunt Betsy who came to
him, after he had waited for nearly a quarter of an hour, prowling
restlessly about the drawing-room, looking at the books, and china, and
water-colours.

'I have come for Ida,' he said abruptly, when he had shaken hands with
his aunt. 'There is a train leaves Winchester at twenty minutes past
eleven. She will be ready for that I suppose?'

He was half prepared for reproaches from his aunt, and wholly prepared to
set her at defiance. But if she were civil he would be civil: he did not
court a quarrel.

'I don't know that she can be ready.'

'But she must. I have made up my mind to travel by that train. Why should
there be any delay? Everybody is agreed that we are to begin our lives
together, and we cannot begin too soon.'

'You need not be in such a hurry. You have contrived to live without her
for nearly a year.'

'That is my business. I am not going to live without her any longer.
Please tell her she must be ready by half-past ten.'

'I will tell her so. I am heartily sorry for her. But she must submit to
fate. What home have you prepared for her?'

'At present none. We can go to an hotel for a day or two, and then I
shall take lodgings in South Kensington, or thereabouts.'

'Have you any money?'

'Yes enough to carry on,' answered Brian.

'Truthfulness was not his strong point, although he was a Wendover, and
that race deemed itself free from the taint of falsehood. There may have
been an injurious admixture of races on the maternal side, perhaps;
albeit his mother personally was good and loyal. However this was, Brian
Walford had, even in trifles, shown himself evasive and shifty.

His aunt looked at him sharply.

'Do not take her to discomfort or want,' she said earnestly. 'She has
been very happy with me, poor girl; and although she deceived me, I
cannot find it in my heart to be angry with her.'

'There is no fear of want,' replied Brian. 'We shall not be rich, but
we shall get on pretty comfortably. Please tell her to make haste. The
dog-cart will be round in half an hour. I'll walk about the garden till
it comes.'

Miss Wendover sighed, and left him, without another word. He went out
into the sunlit garden, and walked up and down smoking his favourite
meerschaum, which was a kind of familiar spirit, always carried in his
pocket ready for every possible opportunity. He had arranged with one
of his uncle's men to drive the dog-cart over to Winchester; his
travelling-bag was put in ready; he had taken leave of his kindred--not a
very cordial leave-taking upon anybody's part, and on Bessie's despondent
even to tears. He was not in a good humour with himself or with fate; and
yet he told himself that things had gone well with him, much better than
he could reasonably have expected. Yet it was hard for a young man of
considerable personal attractions and some talent to be treated like one
of the monsters of classical legend, a damsel-devouring Minotaur, when he
came to claim his young wife.

The dog-cart was at the gate for at least ten minutes, and Brian had
looked at his watch at least ten times before Ida appeared at the glass
door. He was pale with anxiety. There were reasons why it might be ruin
to him to lose this morning train; and yet he did not want to betray too
much eagerness, lest that should spoil his chances.

Here she was at last, white as a corpse, and with red swollen eyelids
which indicated a night of weeping. Her appearance was far from
flattering to her husband, yet she gave him a wan little smile and a
civil good morning.

'Here, Pluto, take your Proserpine,' said Miss Wendover, trying to make
light of the situation, though sore at heart. 'I wish you would be
content to keep her six months of the year, and let me have her for the
other six.'

'It needn't be an eternal parting, Aunt Betsy,' answered Brian, with
assumed cheeriness; 'Ida can come to see you whenever you like, and Ida's
husband too, if you will have him. We are not starting for the
Antipodes.'

'Be kind to her,' said Miss Wendover, gravely, 'for my sake, if not for
her own. It shall be the better for you when I am dead and gone if you
make her a happy woman.'

This promise from a lady who owned a snug little landed estate, and money
in the funds, meant a good deal. Brian grasped his aunt's hand.

'You know that I adore her,' he said. 'I shall be her slave.'

'Be a good husband, honest and true. She doesn't want a slave,' replied
Miss Wendover, in her incisive way.

Ida flung her arms round that generous friend's neck, and kissed her with
passionate fervour.

'God bless you for your goodness to me! God bless you for forgiving me,'
she said.

'He is a Being of infinite love and pity, and He will not bless those who
cannot pardon,' answered Miss Wendover. 'There, my dear, go and be happy
with your young husband. He may not be such a very bad bargain, after
all.'

This was, as it were, the old shoe thrown after the bride and bridegroom.
In another minute the dog-cart was rattling along the lane, Brian
driving, and the groom sitting behind with Ida's luggage, which was more
important by one neat black trunk than it had been a year ago.

Bessie and the younger children were standing on the patch of
grass outside The Knoll gates, in garden hats, and no gloves,
waving affectionate adieux. Brian gave them no chance of any further
leave-taking driving towards the downs at a smart pace. 'Do you remember
my driving you to catch the earlier train, a year ago this day?' he asked
his pale companion, by way of conversation.

'Yes, perfectly.'

'Odd, isn't it?--exactly one year to-day.'

'Very odd.'

And this was about all their discourse till they were at Winchester
Station.

'London papers in yet?' asked Brian.

'No, sir. You'll get them at Basingstoke.'

He took his wife into a first-class carriage--an extravagance which
surprised her, knowing his precarious means.

'I hope you are not travelling first-class on my account,' she said; 'I
am not accustomed to such luxury.'

'Oh, we can afford it to-day. I am not quite such a pauper as I was when
I offered you those two sovereigns. If you would like to buy yourself a
silk gown or a new bonnet, or anything in that line to-day, I can manage
it.'

'No, thank you; I have everything I want,' she answered with a faint
shiver.

The memory of that bygone day was too bitter.

'What a wonderful wife! I thought that to be in want of a new bonnet was
a woman's normal condition,' said Brian, trying to be lively.

He had bought _Punch_ and other comic journals at the station, and spread
them out before his wife--as an intellectual feast. The breezy drive
over the downs had revived her beauty a little. The eyelids had lost
their red swollen look, but she was still very pale, and there was a
nervous quiver of the lips now and then which betokened a tendency to
hysteria. She sat at the open window, looking away towards those
vanishing hills. A moment, and the tufted crest of St. Catherine's had
gone--the low-lying meadows--the winding stream--the cathedral's stunted
tower--it was all gone, like a dream.

'Dreadful hole of a place,' said Brian, contemptuously; 'a comfortably
feathered old nest for rooks and parsons and ancient spinsters, but a
dungeon for anybody else.'

'I think it is the dearest old city in the world.'

'Old enough, and dear enough, in all conscience,' answered Brian. 'My
uncle's tailor had the audacity to charge me thirty shillings for a
waistcoat. But it's the most deadly-lively place I know. All country
towns are deadly-lively; in fact, there are only two places fit for young
people to live in--London and Paris!'

'I suppose you mean to live in London?' said Ida, listlessly. She did not
feel as if she were personally interested in the matter. If she were
forced to live with a man she despised, the place of her habitation would
matter very little.

'I mean to oscillate between the two,' answered Brian. 'Were you ever in
Paris?'

'Never.'

'I envy you. You have something left to live for--a new sensation--a new
birth. We will go there in November.'

He looked for a smile, an expression of pleasure, but there was none. His
wife's face was still turned towards the landscape, her sad eyes still
fixed on the vanishing hills--no longer those familiar hill-tops around
the cathedral city, but like them in character. Soon the last of those
chalky ridges would vanish, and then would come the heathy tracts about
Woking, and the fertile meads in the Thames valley.

The train stopped for five minutes at Basingstoke, and Brian offered his
wife tea, lemonade, anything which the refreshment-room could produce,
but she declined everything.

'We two have not broken bread together since we were one,' he said, still
struggling after liveliness; 'let us eat something together, if it be
only a Bath bun.'

'I am not hungry, thanks,' she answered listlessly.

'Papers! papers!' shouted the small imp attached to the bookstall.
'Morning paper--_Times, Standard, Telegraph, Daily News, Morning Post!_'

Brian drew up the window abruptly, as if he had seen a scorpion.

An elderly gentleman trotted up to the carriage, opened the door, and
came in, his arms full of newspapers. He settled himself in his corner,
and looked about him with a benevolent air, as if courting friendly
intercourse. Brian seated himself opposite his wife, looking black as
thunder. Ida was indifferent to such petty details of life as unknown
elderly gentlemen. Her mind was full of troubled thoughts about the
friends she had left--most of all that one friend whose thrilling voice
still sounded in her ears--that one voice which had power to move her
deepest feeling.

'And come what may, I _have been_ bless'd.' That is a woman's first
thought in any desperate case of this kind. The poet struck a note of
universal truth in that immortal line. There is endless consolation in
the knowledge that heart has answered to heart; that the fond futile love
to which Fate forbids a happy issue has not been lavished on a dumb,
irresponsive idol. If there has been madness, folly, it has not been
one-sided foolishness. He too has loved; he too must suffer. Bind Eloisa
with what vows, surround her with what walls you will, even in her
despair there is one golden thought: her Abelard has loved her--will love
on till the end of life--since such a flame should be eternal as the
stars.

He had loved her! Pride and rapture were in the thought. She told herself
that such pride, such delight was sinful, and that she must fight against
and conquer this sin. She must shut Brian of the Abbey out of her mind
for evermore; she must school herself to believe that he and she had
never met; so train and subjugate herself that a few months hence she
might be able to read the announcement of his marriage--should such a
thing occur--without one guilty pang.

And then she looked back and tried to recall her life before she had
known him. What was it like? A blank? She felt like one who has received
some injury to the brain, or endured severe illness which has blotted out
all memory of the life which went before. She sat with her pale fixed
face turned towards the open window, her eyes gazing on the landscape
with a vacant, far-away look--her husband watching her every now and
then, furtively, anxiously.

The elderly gentleman in the corner beamed at her occasionally through
his spectacles. She was young, handsome, and looked unhappy. He was
interested in her; in a benevolent, paternal spirit. He thought it likely
that the young man was her brother, though there was no likeness between
them; and that she was being parted by family authority from some other
young man who was less, and yet more, than a brother. He made up his
little story about her, and then, by way of consolation, offered her his
_Times_, which he had done with by this time.

Brian turned quickly, and stretched out his hand, as if to intercept the
paper; but he was too late. Ida had taken it, and was staring absently at
the leading articles. She read on listlessly, vaguely, for a little
while, going over the words mechanically, reading how Sir Somebody
Something, a leading light of the Opposition, had been holding forth at
an agricultural meeting, arguing that never since the date of Magna
Charta had the national freedom been in such peril as it was at this
hour; never had any Ministry so wantonly trifled with the rights of a
great people, or so supinely submitted to the degradation of a once
glorious country; never, within the memory of man, or, he would go
further and say, within the records of history, was our agricultural
interest so wantonly neglected, our commercial predominance so supinely
surrendered, our army so unprepared for action, and our influence in the
affairs of Europe so audaciously set at naught. The right honourable
gentleman gave the Ministry another year to complete the ruin of their
country. They might do it in six months; yes, he would venture to say,
or even in three months; but he gave them at most a year. Favourable
accidents, against which even the blind fatuity and garrulous
pig-headedness of septuagenarian senility could not prevail might prolong
the struggle; but the day of doom was inevitable, unless--and so on, and
so on, with a running commentary by the leader writer.

Ida read without knowing what she was reading, till presently her eyes
glanced idly to another part of the page, and there were arrested by a
short paragraph headed, FATAL STORM IN THE HEBRIDES.

Was it not in the Hebrides she had last heard of Sir Vernon's yacht the
_Seamew?_

'Among other accidents in the terrible gale on Tuesday night and
Wednesday morning, we regret to number the loss of the schooner yacht
_Seamew_, which was capsized in a squall off the Isle of Skye, with the
loss of the owner, Sir Vernon Palliser, his brother, Mr. P. Palliser,
Captain Greenway, and seven of the crew. Three men and the cabin-boy were
saved by a fishing boat, the crew of which witnessed the sad catastrophe,
but were too far off to be of much help.' And then followed a description
of the accident, which had been caused by the violence of the storm,
rather than by bad seamanship or carelessness on the part of the captain,
who, with Sir Vernon and his brother, both skilled seamen, had the vessel
well in hand a few minutes before she went down.

Ida let the paper fall from her hand with a cry of horror.

'Vernon, poor Vernon, and Peter too--those good, kind-hearted young
men--dead--both--dead!'

She burst into tears, remembering the two frank, kind faces looking at
her from the marble portico, in the afternoon sunlight, the warm welcome,
the feeling of kindred which had shown itself so thoroughly in their
words and looks. And they were gone--they who a month ago were full of
life and gladness. The cruel inexorable sea had devoured their youth and
strength and all the promises and hopes of their being.

The elderly gentleman moved to the seat next hers full of compassion.

'Look at that,' she said, as Brian picked up the paper; 'my cousins, both
of them.'

'I am sorry you have found bad news in the paper,' said the elderly
stranger, looking at her sympathetically through his spectacles.

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