The Golden Calf
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M. E. Braddon >> The Golden Calf
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Bessie had intended scrupulously to avoid any such home question; but her
feelings carried her away directly she began to talk of John Jardine.
'I cannot tell you a lie. Bessie; no, my life is not a happy one. All
colour and brightness, all youthfulness and fervour, went out of me when
I left Kingthorpe; but it is an endurable life, and I make the best of
it.'
'Brian is not unkind to you, I hope?' cried Bessie, prepared to be
indignant.
'No, he is not unkind. I have no complaint to make against him.'
'But surely he is nice,' argued Bessie; 'I have always thought him one of
the nicest young men I know. He has very good manners, he knows a good
deal, can talk of almost any subject, and he is full of life and spirits,
when he wants to be amusing.'
'I have no doubt he is a very agreeable person,' answered Ida, gloomily.
'I have never disputed that. And yet our marriage was a mistake, all the
same.'
'But when you married him, surely then you must have cared for him, just
a little?'
'I thought I did. It was the glamour of his imaginary wealth. It was the
worship of the golden calf, exemplified in one of its vilest phases, a
mercenary marriage.'
'Do not lower yourself too much, dearest,' pleaded Bessie hugging her
friend's arm affectionately, as they tramped across the withered
bracken.' You are too good to have been governed by any sordid feeling.
The delusion must have gone deeper?'
'It did. I married in a rhapsody of gratitude, thinking that I had found
a modern Cophetua. Say no more about it, Bess, if you love me!'
'I will never say another word, dear,' sighed Bess; 'but I do wish you
had been single when you met the other Brian, for I know he was more than
half in love with you. And now he is going off to the other end of the
world again, and goodness knows if he will ever come back.'
The upper tracts of heaven were beginning to grow gray, the sun was
sinking in a bed of red and gold behind a clump of oaks on the edge of
the horizon--the dark and delicate outline of leafless branches
distinctly marked against that yellow light. Wimperfield Park was almost
at its best upon such an afternoon as this, the turf soft and springy
after autumnal rains, the atmosphere tranquil and balmy, and all animal
creation--deer, oxen, rabbits, feathered game, and an innumerable army of
rooks--full of life and motion. Ida was slow to reply to Bessie's news
about her cousin. The two girls walked on in silence for a little way,
Vernon running ever so far ahead of them to look for fallen nuts in a
grove of fine old Spanish chestnuts, which stood boldly out on the top of
a hill.
'Don't you feel sorry that he is going away?' asked Bessie at last; 'just
as he had established himself among us, and begun all kinds of
improvement at the Abbey farm, and was even thinking of building new
schools.'
'It is a pity,' said Ida.
'It is simply horrid. He is quite as bad as those Irish Absentees who are
continually getting murdered; or he would be as bad, if he had not
arranged with my father for the carrying on of all his plans while he is
away.'
'That is very good of him.'
'Good, yes; but it will be a dreadful responsibility for poor father, and
I daresay we shall all be worried about it. He will have builders on the
brain till the work is finished. My poor John has promised to look after
the schools; and he is so conscientious that he will wear himself to a
shadow rather than neglect the smallest detail.'
'But are you not pleased that he can be of so much use?'
'I am obliged to be pleased. I am going to be a clergyman's wife; and I
must teach myself to look at everything from the parochial point of view.
John and I will not belong to ourselves, but to our parish. Our own
pleasure, our own health, our own interests, must be as nothing to us. We
must only exist as machines for the maintenance of the proper church
services and for the relief of the sick and poor.'
'If you think it too hard a life, dear, there is time for you to draw
back!'
'Oh, Ida, do you think I am like Lot's wife, regretting the false
frivolous world I am going to renounce? What life could be too hard
shared with _him?_'
'God bless you, dear. I believe your life will be a very happy one,' said
Ida, earnestly, and with a touch of melancholy. There was so much that
was enviable in Bessie's fate. Then, after a pause, she said
hesitatingly, 'Do you know why your cousin is going to leave England?'
'No; I know no reason except his natural restlessness. He is a member of
the Geographical, you know, and attends all their meetings. The other day
he went up to hear some old fellow prose about the regions north of
Afghanistan, and he was so interested that he made arrangements at once
for an exploration on his own account. And I daresay he will get killed
by some savage tribe, or die of fever.'
'He is not going alone, I hope?'
'No, he has a friend almost as mad as himself, and they are going
together. That will mean two for the savages to kill instead of one; and
I suppose they will have an interpreter and two or three servants, which
will be a few more for the savages.'
'Let us hope they will not go into really dangerous places, There must be
so much for a traveller to see in India, without running any great
risks,' said Ida, affecting a cheerful tone.
'But you know English travellers love to run risks. It is their only idea
of enjoyment. A man like Brian is told of some mountain or some
settlement where no Englishman has ever set his foot before, and he says,
"That is the very place for me," and the experiment naturally results in
his getting murdered.' They had finished their ramble, and were in front
of the portico by this time.
'Oh, Bessie!' said Ida, with a stifled sob, 'life is full of sad changes.
Do you remember that summer afternoon, three mouths ago, when Vernon and
Peter stood on those steps bidding us good-bye, as we drove away with
your cousin? and now those two are lying at the bottom of the sea, and he
is going to the other end of the world.'
The Wendover visit was altogether a success. There was something so
conciliating, so sympathetic, so entirely comfortable in Mrs. Wendover's
nature and outward characteristics, that Lady Palliser felt almost
immediately at her ease with her, and forgot her newly-acquired manners,
becoming a good deal more ladylike in consequence; since the strict and
stern system of etiquette, formulated in the 'Creme de la Creme,' did not
lie conformably to the original formation of the little woman's
disposition. To be free and easy, loquacious, fussy, and kind was Fanny
Palliser's nature, and she became odious when she tried to restrain those
simple impulses by the armour of formal manners.
'I never had a lady friend I liked better than Mrs. Wendover,' she told
Ida, in confidence, on the second day of the visit.
Fanny Palliser was not quite so much at ease with Aunt Betsy. She had an
idea that the spinster was satirical, and was inwardly critical of her
shortcomings. She was impressed by the wide extent of Aunt Betsy's
information, most especially when that lady talked politics with Sir
Reginald, and contrived to hem him into corners whence there was no
logical thoroughfare. Aunt Betsy was Liberal to the verge of Radicalism;
Sir Reginald a Tory of the good old pig-headed type, who looked upon all
advance movements as revolutionary, and thought that his own party had
gone mad.
'I don't like strong-minded women,' Lady Palliser told Ida when the
guests had left. 'I have no doubt Miss Wendover is very kind-hearted and
generous--I'm sure her kindness to you was wonderful--but she is not _my_
idea of a lady. That brocade dinner-gown was lovely, and fitted her like
a glove; but the way she put her elbows on the table when she talked to
Sir Reginald at dessert--well, I never did!'
Brian Walford had made himself particularly agreeable during the brief
visit of his kindred--agreeable to both sides of the house. It was his
desire to stand well with both. He wanted his uncle and aunts to see that
he was thought much of at Wimperfield--that he was a valued member of the
household, respected and liked by his wife's family, that he had done
well for himself by his marriage, and that whatever cloud had
overshadowed the opening of his wedded life had vanished altogether from
his horizon. People so soon forgive and forget a little wrong-doing if
the sinner comes comfortably out of his difficulties, and becomes a
prosperous member of society. The Colonel and his wife, who had always
liked Ida, liked her all the better now that they saw her established in
a stately home--the only daughter of a man of fortune and position.
On the morning of her departure, Miss Wendover contrived to have a
_tete-a-tete_ with Sir Reginald; in the course of which she informed
him that she meant to leave half her money to her niece Bessie, and the
other half to her nephew--Brian Walford.
'The land, of course, will go to Brian of the Abbey,' she said. 'We
Wendovers can't afford to divide the soil. Out chances of doing good in
the land depend upon our having a large interest in the neighbourhood.'
'Why, Miss Wendover, I thought you were a Radical!' exclaimed Sir
Reginald.
'So I am in many of my ideas, but not for cutting up the land into little
bits, to pass from hand to hand like a ten-pound note, until there should
not be an estate left in England with a long family history, nor a rich
man left in the rural districts to take care of the poor. England would
be badly off without her squirearchy.'
Sir Reginald and Miss Wendover were thoroughly agreed upon this point. He
thanked her for her generous intentions towards her nephew; and he told
her that he meant to provide fairly for his daughter. 'The entail expires
in my person,' he said; 'I can do what I like for my girl. Of course the
whole of the estate will go to Vernon. He is the last of his race, and I
hope I may live to see him married, and the father of sons to inherit his
name. It is a hard thing to think that a good old name must perish off
the face of the land. However, I am free to make my will as I like, and I
shall leave Ida six or seven hundred a year. She and Brian ought to get
on very well with that, and his profession. I should like to see him a
little more energetic--a little fonder of hard work,' pursued Sir
Reginald, with a sigh, conscious of having never felt a strong
inclination that way on his own part; 'but I suppose all young men are
idle.'
'No, they are not,' retorted Aunt Betsy, sharply. 'There are workers
and idlers in all families--men born to honour or to dishonour--races
apart--like the drones and the working bees. Look at my other nephew, for
example--a man who has seven thousand a year, and not a creature to
gainsay him if he chose to dissipate his days and nights on worldly
pleasures. He is your true type of worker--a fine Greek scholar--a
naturalist, a traveller, a thorough sportsman, where sport means courage,
adventure, intelligence, endurance. Fortune made him a rich man, but he
has made himself a man of mark in every circle in which he has ever
lived, and I am proud to own him for my own flesh and blood. Nature gave
Brian Walford many gifts, and what has he done for himself? Learnt to
dress as foplings dress, and to think as foplings think!'
'He is a very nice young fellow!' said Sir Reginald kindly; 'we are all
fond of him; only we think--for his own sake--it would be better if he
took life more seriously.'
'He must be made to take life seriously,' replied the spinster sternly.
'Yes, he is very nice--that is the worst of it; if he were nasty no one
would tolerate him. I'm afraid his good qualities will be his ruin.' And
thus, promising good things, yet prophesying evil, Miss Wendover left
Wimperfield. Ida was to go and stay with her later on at the Homestead,
when Brian Walford should be reading law in those new Chambers which he
often talked about. There were times when to hear him talk people thought
him a youth gnawed and consumed by ambition, only panting for the
opportunity to work.
Two days after the Wendovers had gone back, Brian showed his wife a
letter from his cousin, Brian of the Abbey.
'I am leaving England for a longer period than usual, and going farther
afield,' wrote the master of Wendover Abbey; 'so before starting I feel
myself bound to do something definite for you.'
'He has helped me with odd sums now and then, I suppose you know?' said
Brian, as Ida read this passage.
'I did not know,' she answered coldly; 'but I am not surprised to hear
that he has been generous to you.'
'No, he is your paragon--your preux chevalier--is he not?' sneered Brian.
'Bessie told me as much.'
'She told you only the truth. No one who lives at Kingthorpe can help
knowing that your cousin is a good man.'
She went on with the letter.
'Now you are married the claims upon you will be larger than they
have been, and I know you will not care to be a pensioner upon your
father-in-law's bounty. I have, therefore, arranged with my bankers that
you should draw on me quarterly for a hundred and fifty pounds while I am
away. This will help you to keep the wolf from the door while you are
reading for the Bar. I hope to find you a successful junior, in the first
stage of a prosperous journey to the Bench, when I come back.'
'Six hundred a year. Not half bad, is it, Ida?'
'It is very good of him. I hope you will do as he suggests.'
'How do you mean?'
'Work hard at your profession.'
'I shall work hard enough,' answered Brian, turning sullen, 'unless you
all badger me. I hate being badgered.'
CHAPTER XXIII.
'ALL OUR LIFE IS MIXED WITH DEATH.'
Four years and more had gone, and there were changes at
Wimperfield--changes at Kingthorpe. Death had come to the Georgian
mansion among the wood-crowned hills. The easy-going master of that good
old house had taken life a little too easily, had disregarded the
warnings of wife and doctor, had dined and slept, and drunk his favourite
wines--not immoderately, but with utter disregard of medical regimen--had
neither walked, nor ridden, but had let life slip by him in a placid,
plethoric self-indulgence--shunning all exertion, all pleasure even, if
it were allied with activity of any kind. So, in an existence almost as
sleepy as the spell-bound slumber in Beauty's enchanted palace, Ida's
father had left the door of his mansion ajar to the fell visitor Death,
and the fatal day had come suddenly, with no more warning than Sir
Reginald heard Sunday after Sunday in church, or read any evening in his
favourite Horace, as he turned the carmine-bordered leaves of one of
Firmin Didot's exquisite duodecimos, and mused pleasantly over the poet's
perpetual variations upon the old theme--
'Brother, we must all die.'
The guest came like a thief in the night, and snatched his prey, in the
midst of the family circle, in the leisurely lamplit hour after dinner,
with the sound of gay voices and light laughter in the air. The senseless
body breathed and throbbed for another day and another light: and then
all was over--and Ida and her stepmother knelt side by side, clasped in
each other's arms, by the clay which both had fondly loved.
They were alone in their sorrow. Brian was in London. Vernon was with Mr.
and Mrs. Jardine, at their parsonage on Salisbury Plain, being prepared
for Eton. The two women grieved together in a mournful solitude for the
first day on which the house was darkened, and the presence of death was
palpable in their midst.
Brian hurried down to Wimperfield directly the news reached him. He was
agitated by the event, which had happened without any note of warning. He
was not given to forecasting the future, and it had seemed to him that
life at Wimperfield was to go on for ever in the same groove--immutable
as the course of the planets; that he was always to have a luxurious home
there--a fine stable--an indulgent father-in-law. He had been really fond
of Sir Reginald, after his manner, and his sudden death shocked and
grieved him. And then it gave a shade of uncertainty to his own future.
He did not know how the estate might be left--how tied up and hedged
round by executors and trustees, shutting him out of his present almost
proprietorial enjoyment of the place. Some smug London lawyer, perhaps,
would put his sleek paw upon everything during the boy's minority. Sir
Reginald had never talked to Brian of his will.
The smug town lawyer came down, but not to impound Wimperfield--only to
read the late baronet's will, which was entirely in harmony with the dead
man's easy and generous temper.
He left his widow an annuity of fifteen hundred pounds, and the privilege
of occupying Wimperfield until his son should come of age, and on leaving
Wimperfield she was to receive the sum of two thousand pounds, to enable
her to furnish any house she might choose to rent for herself. To his
daughter he left any two horses she might select from the existing stud,
and seven hundred a year in the Three per Cents, the principal to be
divided among her children, if of age at the date of her death, or to be
held in trust for them if under age. In the event of Vernon dying
unmarried, Ida was to inherit everything; in the event of his marrying
but having no children, his widow was to take the same annuity as that
bequeathed to Lady Palliser, and the estate was to go to Ida, with
reversion to her eldest son, or, in the event of no son, to her eldest
daughter, whose husband was to take the name of Palliser. In this manner
had short-lived man endeavoured to make his name live after him.
Ida and her stepmother were left joint guardians of the boy, Vernon.
To Brian Walford Wendover, Sir Reginald bequeathed only his favourite
hunter, a leash of chumber spaniels, and fifty pounds for a memorial
ring. Mr. Wendover could not find fault with a will which left his wife
seven hundred a year; but he felt that his position was diminished by his
father-in-law's death, and he was morbidly jealous of the boy, who had
absorbed so much of his wife's care and affection from the first hour of
their coming to Wimperfield.
'I suppose we are to turn out now,' he said to Ida the night after the
funeral, when they two were slowly and sadly pacing the terrace, in front
of the drawing-room windows. It was the beginning of December--bleak,
cheerless weather--and the woods looked black against a dull gray sky.
There was only one feeble streak of pale yellow light in the west Bonder,
behind gaunt patriarchal oaks.
'Your father's will is a very handsome will,' continued Brian, 'but it
leaves no provision for our living on here, and I suppose we shall have
to clear out.'
'Leave Wimperfield! Oh, no, I'm sure Lady Palliser has no idea of such a
thing. Leave Wimperfield, and Vernon? He has a double claim upon me now,
my fatherless darling.'
'Of course, Vernon is your first thought,' sneered Brian. 'But wouldn't
it be just as well to think of ways and means! Who is to keep up
Wimperfield? Lady Palliser, on her fifteen hundred a year; or you, on
your seven hundred?'
'I can help mamma. She can have all my income, except just enough to buy
my clothes; and my father gave me gowns enough to last for the next five
years. But I heard the lawyer say that the place would be kept up for
Vernie. Lady Palliser would hardly have any occasion to spend her income,
except in paying for actual personal expenses, her own servants, and so
on.'
'Good for Lady Palliser; but that doesn't make our position any more
secure, if she should want to get rid of us?'
'I'm sure she will want us to stay. You ought to know her better than to
suggest such a thing. You must know her affectionate nature, and how fond
she is of us both.'
'I never presume to _know_ anything of any woman. She seems to like us;
but who can tell what may lurk under that seeming. She may marry again,
and want to make a clean sweep of old associations.'
'Mamma! How can you think of such a horrid thing? No, she is as true as
steel; she has been a good and loyal wife to my father.'
'That doesn't prevent her being good and loyal to a second husband; nay,
her very virtues--affectionateness, a soft clinging nature--point to the
probability of a second marriage. It is just such women who fail into the
adventurer's trap. However, we won't quarrel about her, and so long as
she is cordial, and likes to have us here, Wimperfield can be our country
house.'
This was a somewhat loose way of sneaking, for Wimperfield had been
Ida's only house during her married life. Brian had his chambers in
the Temple at a rent of a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, his
sitting-room furnished with none of that Spartan ruggedness which so well
became George Warrington, of Pump Court, but in the willow-pattern and
peacock-feather style of art; the dingy old walls glorified by fine
photographs of Gerome's Roman Gladiators, Phryne before her judges,
Socrates searching for Alcibiades at the house of Aspasia, and enlarged
carbonized portraits of the reigning beauties in London society. But
these chambers, though supposed to be devoted to days of patient work and
much consumption of midnight oil, had served chiefly as a basis for late
breakfasts, club-dinners, and theatre-going, while the midnight oil had
been mostly associated with lobster salad at snug little suppers after
the play. Ida had never been at these chambers, although she had been
invited there frequently during the first few months of her husband's
tenancy. As time went by Mr. Wendover found it was more convenient that
his town and country residences should be completely distinct; and it had
gradually become an accepted fact at Wimperfield that Temple Chambers
were a kind of habitation which a man's wife could hardly visit without
violating the first principles of legal etiquette.
Brian Walford was speedily reassured as to his position at Wimperfield.
Lady Palliser clung to her stepdaughter in her widowhood with a still
warmer affection than she had shown during her husband's lifetime. Ida
was her adviser, her strong rock, her resource in all difficulties and
perplexities, social or domestic. Nor would she allow her stepdaughter or
her stepdaughter's husband to share the expenses of housekeeping at
Wimperfield. The allowance for the young baronet's maintenance during
his minority was large enough to cover all expenses of the very quiet
household, likely to be even more quiet now that Sir Reginald Palliser, a
man of particularly social habits, was gone.
Lady Palliser had never been able to feel thoroughly at home among the
county people. Their language was not her language, nor their habits her
habits. She could have got on ever so much better with them had they been
less homely and free and easy in their ways. She had schooled herself in
a politeness of line and rule, had learnt good manners by rote; and to
find all her theories continually ignored or traversed was a perplexity
and a trouble to her. If the county people had only treated her with the
rigid stiffness enjoined in a three-and-sixpenny manual, she could have
met them upon equal ground. She could have remembered the social laws
made and provided for her guidance as guest or hostess--how to enter and
leave a room, in what attitude to stand or sit, with the fitting use of
every item of table furniture, from the fish knife and fork to the salver
of rose water. But when she beheld the county people doing outrageous
things with their legs, and altogether heterodox in their way of eating
and drinking, when she heard them talk very much as the 'lady friends' of
her girlhood had talked over their washtubs, or kitchen ranges, yet with
an indescribable difference, and never by any chance realising her own
innate ideas of company manners, Lady Palliser felt herself more and more
at sea in this new world of hers. Thus it was that she fell into the way
of letting Ida manage everything for her, and of meekly accepting such
friends as Ida brought round her, and making much of those mothers whose
boys were of an age to be play-fellows for her own beloved son.
And now the master of the house, the central figure in the family
picture, was gone, and the two women had to face life for the most part
alone. Brian had grown fonder of London lately. He had held a few briefs
during the last twelve months and could plead business in the
metropolitan law-courts as a reason for being very little at Wimperfield
out of the hunting season. The boy was with the Jardines at Hopsley
Vicarage, except during the happy interval of holidays. He was always
glad to come home, but he was generally tired of home before the holiday
was over, and went back to the Jardines with a keen delight which made
his mother's heart ache.
Ida's character had ripened and strengthened in the years which were
gone, years of quiet, submissive performance of duty. She had been a fond
and obedient daughter, an almost adoring sister, a good and faithful
wife. If she had not given her husband the love he had hoped to inspire,
she had been more considerate, more sympathetic than many a wife who has
married for love. She had never wounded him by hard words, had never
exacted sacrifices from him, never pursued her own pleasure when it was
at variance with his. She had long ago gauged his shallow nature--she
knew but too well that he was a reed, and not a rock, and that in all the
trials of life she would have to stand alone; but if she sometimes
inwardly scorned him, she never betrayed her scorn, either to him or to
the world after she had once made up her mind as to the nature of the
bond between them, and the duties attached to that bond. With ripening
years and growing wisdom she had atoned nobly for the errors of impulse
and reckless anger.
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