Robert H. Wilson - "Out Around Rigel"

John Kirtland, ed. - "Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles"

Marcel Proust - "A L'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleur, Volume 2"

Arsene Houssaye - "Les grandes dames"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Golden Calf

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




'I do not think he will take anything of that kind. He has set his face
against accepting your advice.'

'I believe if you were to take a decided tone, he would succumb; if not,
you had better ask Dr. Mallison to come down and see him. It will be a
costly visit, and money thrown away, as the case is perfectly simple; but
I dare say you will not mind that.'

'I should mind nothing if he could be cured. It is horrible to see such
ruin of body and mind in one so young,' Ida answered sadly.

'Well, you must see what influence you can exercise over him for his own
good. I will call every other day, and hear how you are getting on with
him; and if you fail, we must summon Dr. Mallison.'

Ida spoke to the butler. It was a hard thing to do, and it seemed to her
a kind of treachery against her husband--as if she were inflicting
everlasting disgrace upon him in secret, like a midnight assassin, who
stabs his victim in the back. Her voice trembled, and her face was deadly
pale as she spoke to the butler, an old servant who had been in the
household from his boyhood.

'Rogers, I want you to be a little more careful in your arrangements
about wine and spirits,' she began, falteringly. 'Mr. Wendover is in a
low state of health--suffering from a nervous complaint, in fact; and we
fear that he is taking too much brandy. Will you kindly try to prevent
it?'

'It will be very difficult, ma'am. Mr. Wendover gives his orders, and he
expects to be obeyed.'

'But upon this one point you must not obey him. You can say that you have
Lady Palliser's orders that no more brandy is to be brought up from the
cellar. I shall tell her that I have told you this.'

'Yes, ma'am. I was afraid too much brandy was being drunk, but it was not
my place to mention it,' said Rogers, politely.

He would have said the same, perhaps, had the house been on fire.

Neither sherry nor champagne was served at dinner that day, and the
claret which was offered Mr. Wendover was of a very thin quality.

'I'll take champagne,' he said to the butler.

'There is not any upstairs, sir.'

Brian turned angrily upon the man, and Ida, pale but resolute, came to
the rescue.

'We do not drink champagne at dinner when we are alone, Brian,' she said;
'and I don't think it is quite fair to Vernie's cellars that Moet should
be served every day because you are here.

'Vernon's cellars! Ah, I forgot that we are all here on sufferance, and,
that I am drinking Vernon's wine.'

'You may have as much of my champagne as you like,' said Vernie, getting
very red; 'but I don't think it does you any good, for you are always so
cross afterwards.'

Brian looked at the boy with a savage gleam in his eyes, and muttered
something, but made no audible reply.

'I'll go back to my chambers to-morrow,' he said: 'I can have a bottle of
Moet there without being under an obligation to anybody. Give me some
brandy and soda,' he said to the butler; 'I can't drink this verjuice.'

'There is no brandy, sir.'

'Oh! Sir Vernon's cognac is to be kept sacred, too. I congratulate you,
Vernon, upon having two such economical guardians. Your minority will be
a period of considerable saving.'

He made no further remonstrance, drank neither claret nor hock, ate
hardly anything, but sat through the dinner in sullen silence, and went
off to his room directly Lady Palliser had said grace, leaving the others
to take their strawberries and cream alone. Vernon was what Kogers the
butler called 'a mark on' strawberries and cream.

When Vernie had finished his strawberries, Ida went to her husband's
study; but the door was locked, and when she asked to be admitted Brian
refused.

'I'd rather be alone, thank you,' he answered, curtly. 'I have an article
to write for one of the legal papers. You can amuse yourself with the
baronet. I know you are always glad to be free.'

'Come for a stroll in the park, Brian,' she pleaded gently, pitying him
with all her heart, more tenderly inclined to him in his decay and
degradation than she had been in his prime of manhood, before these fatal
habits began. 'Do come with us, dear. We won't walk further than you
like; it's a lovely evening.'

'I hate a summer twilight,' returned Brian; 'it always gives me the
horrors--a creepy time, when all sorts of loathsome creatures are
abroad--bats, and owls, and stag-beetles, cockchafers, and other
abominations. Can't you let me alone?' he went on, angrily. 'I tell you I
have work to do.'

Ida left him upon this, without a word. What was she to do? This was her
first experience of a mind diseased, and it seemed to her worse than any
trouble that had ever touched her before. She had stood beside her
father's death-bed, and the hair of her flesh had stood up at the awful
moment of dissolution, when it was as if verily a spirit had passed
before her face, calling her beloved from the known to the unknown. Yet
in the awe and horror of death there had been holiness and comfort, a
whisper of hope leading her thoughts to higher regions, a promise that
this pitiful, inexplicable parting was not the end. This dissolution in
the living man, this palpable progress of degradation, visible day by day
and hour by hour, was worse than death. It meant the decay and min of a
mind, the wreck of an immortal soul. What place could there be in heaven
for the drunkard, who had dribbled away his reason, his power to
discriminate between right and wrong, by perpetual doses of brandy? what
could be pleaded in extenuation of this gradual and deliberate suicide?

Ida went slowly downstairs, her soul steeped in gloom, seeing no ray of
light on the horizon; for with the most earnest desire to save her erring
husband, she felt herself powerless to help him against himself. If he
were denied the things he cared for at Wimperfield, there was little
doubt that he would go back to his solitary chambers, where he was his
own master. He was not so ill either in mind or body as to justify her in
using actual restraint.

At the moment she thought of telegraphing for Aunt Betsy, whose firm
manly mind might offer valuable aid in such a crisis: but she shrank from
the idea of exposing her husband's degradation even to his aunt. She did
not want the family at Kingthorpe to know how low he had fallen. Mr. and
Mrs. Jardine had been impressed by the change in him, and Bessie had
harped upon his lost good looks, habitual irritability, and deteriorated
manners; but neither had hinted at an inkling of the cause; and Ida hoped
the hideous truth had been unsuspected by either. She decided, therefore,
during those few minutes of meditation which she spent in the portico
waiting for Vernon, that she would rely on her own intelligence, and upon
professional aid rather than upon any family intervention. If she could,
by her own strong hand, with the help of the London physician, lead her
husband's footsteps out of this Tophet into which he had sunk himself,
she would spare no trouble, withhold no sacrifice, to effect his rescue,
and she and her stepmother, the kindliest of women, would keep the secret
between them.

Vernon came bounding out of the hall, eager for the accustomed evening
ramble. This evening walk with the boy had been Ida's happiest time of
late, perhaps the only portion of her day in which she had enjoyed the
sense of freedom from ever present anxiety, in which she had put away
troubled thought. She had gone back to her duty meekly and resignedly
when this time of respite was over, but with a sense of unspeakable woe.
Wimperfield with its lighted windows, stone walls, and classic portico,
had seemed to her only as a prison-house, a whited sepulchre, fair
without and loathsome within.

Vernie was full of curiosity about that little scene at the dinner table.
The boy had that quick perception of the minds and acts of others which
is generally developed in a child who spends the greater part of his life
with grown-up people; and he had been quite as conscious as his elders of
the unpleasantness of the scene.

'I hope Brian doesn't think I'm stingy about the wine,' he said; 'he
might drink it all for anything I should care. I don't want it.'

'I know, darling; but you were quite right in what you said at dinner.
The wine does Brian harm, and that's why mamma and I don't want him to
take any.'

'Has it always done him harm?' asked Vernon.

'Always; that is, lately.'

'Then why did you let him take so much--a whole bottle, sometimes two
bottles--all to himself at dinner? I heard Rogers tell Mrs. Moggs about
it.'

'Rogers ought not to have given him so much.'

'Oh! but Rogers said it wasn't his place to make remarks, only he was
very sorry for poor Mrs. Wendover--that's you, you know--not Mrs.
Wendover at Kingthorpe.'

'Oh, Vernie, you were not listening?'

'Of course not. I wasn't listening on purpose; but I was in the lobby
outside the housekeeper's room, waiting for some grease for my shooting
boots. I always grease them myself, you know, for nobody else does it
properly; and Rogers said the brandy Mr. Wendover had drunk in three
weeks would make Mrs. Moggs' hair stand on end; but it couldn't,--could
it?--when she wears a front. A front couldn't stand on end,' said Vernon,
exploding at his own small joke, which, like most of the witticisms of
childhood, was founded on the physical deficiencies of age.

'Look, Vernie! there is going to be a lovely sunset,' said Ida, anxious
to change the conversation.

But Vernon's inquiring mind was not satisfied.

'Is it wicked to drink champagne and brandy?' he asked.

'Yes, dear, it is wicked to take anything which we know will do us harm.
It would be wicked to take poison; and brandy is a kind of poison.'

'Except for poor people, when they are ill; they always come to the
vicarage for brandy when they are ill, and Mrs. Jardine gives them a
little.'

'Brandy is a medicine sometimes, but it is a poison if anyone takes too
much of it--a poison that ruins body and soul. I hope Brian will not take
any more; but we mustn't talk about it, darling, above all to strangers.'

'No, I shouldn't talk of it to anybody but you, because I like Brian. He
used to go fishing with me, and to be so good-natured, and to tell me
funny stories, and do imitations of actors for me; but now he's so cross.
Is that the brandy?'

'I'm afraid it is.'

'Then I hate brandy.'

They were in the park by this time, wandering in the wildest part of the
ground, where the bracken grew breast high in great sweeps of feathery
green. They came to a spot on the edge of a hill where three or four
noble old elms had been felled, and where a couple of men in smock frocks
were sawing coffin boards.

'What are those broad planks wanted for?' the boy asked; 'and why do you
make them so short?'

'They're not uncommon short, Sir Vernon,' the man answered, touching his
hat; 'the shortest on 'em is six foot. Them be for coffins, Sir Vernon.'

'How horrid! I hope they won't be wanted for ages,' said the boy.

'Not much chance o' that, sir; there's allus summun a wantin' a weskit o'
this make,' answered the man, with a grin, as Vernon and Ida went on,
uncomfortably impressed by the idea of those two men sawing their
coffin-boards in the calm, bright evening, with every articulation of the
branching fern standing sharply out against the yellow light, as on the
margin of a golden sea.

They rambled on, and presently Ida was repeating passages from those
Shakespearian plays which had formed Vernon's first introduction to
English history, and of which he had never tired. Ida knew all the great
speeches, and indeed a good many of the more famous scenes, by heart, and
Vernon liked to hear them over and over again, alternately detesting the
Lancastrians and pitying the Yorkists, or hating York and compassionating
Lancaster, as the fortunes of war wavered. And then there was Richard the
Second, more tenderly touched by Shakespeare than by Hume or Hallam; and
Richard the Third, whose iniquities were made respectable by a kind of
diabolical thoroughness; and that feebler villain John. Vernon was as
familiar with them as if they had been flesh and blood acquaintances.

'Cheap Jack knows Shakespeare as well as you do,' said Vernon presently,
when they had left the park by a wooden gate that opened into a patch of
common land, which lay between the Wimperfield fence and Blackman's
Hanger.

'Who is Cheap Jack?' asked Ida absently.

'The man you saw the night I came home, when Mr. Jardine was with us.
Don't you remember?'

'The man in the cart--the showman? Yes, I know; but I did not see him.'

'No; he hates the gentry, and women, too, I think. But he likes
Shakespeare.'

'I shouldn't have thought he would have known anything about
Shakespeare.'

'Oh, but he does--better than you even. When he was mending my
fishing-rod--you remember, don't you?--I told you how clever he was at
fishing-rods.'

'Yes, I remember--it was the day you were out so long quite alone; and I
was dreadfully frightened about you.'

'Oh, but that was silly. Besides, I wasn't alone--I was with Jack all
day. And if I had been alone, I can take care of myself--I shall be
twelve next birthday. Nobody would try to steal me now,' said Vernon,
drawing himself up and swaggering a little.

'What, not even good Mrs. Brown? Well, no; I think you are too clever to
be stolen. Still you must not go out again without Robert.' (Robert was a
youth of two-and-twenty, Sir Vernon's body-guard and particular
attendant, to whom the little baronet occasionally gave the go-by.)
'Besides, I don't think you ought to associate with such a person as this
Cheap Jack--a vagabond stroller, whose past life nobody knows.'

'Oh, but you don't know what kind of man Jack is--he's the cleverest man
I ever knew--cleverer than Mr. Jardine; he knows everything. Let's go up
on the hanger.'

'No, dear, it's getting late; we must go home.'

'No, we needn't go home till we like--nobody wants us. Mamma will be
asleep over her knitting,--how she does sleep!--and she'll wake up
surprised when we go home, and say, "Gracious, is it ten o'clock? These
summer evenings are so short!"'

'But you ought to be in bed, Vernie.'

'No, I oughtn't. The thrushes haven't gone to bed yet. Hark at that one
singing his evening hymn! Do come just a wee bit further.'

They were at the foot of the hanger by this time, and now began to climb
the slope. The atmosphere was balmy with the breath of the pines, and
there was an almost tropical warmth in the wood--languorous, inviting to
repose. The crescent moon hung pale above the tops of the trees, pale
above that rosy flush of evening which filled the western sky.

'What makes you think Jack so clever?' inquired Ida, more for the sake of
sustaining the conversation than from any personal interest in the
subject.

'Oh, because he knows everything. He told me all about Macbeth,
the witches, don't you know, and the ghost, and Mrs.--no, Lady
Macbeth--walking in her sleep, and then he made my flesh creep--worse
than you do when you talk about ghosts. And then he told me about
Agamemnon, the same that's in Homer. I haven't begun Greek yet, but Mr.
Jardine told me about him and Cly--Cly--what's her name?--his wife. And
then he told me about Africa and the black men, and about India, and
tiger-hunts, and snakes, and the great mountains where there are tribes
of wild monkeys;--I should so like to have a monkey, Ida! Can I have a
monkey I And he told me about South America, just as if he had been there
and seen it all.'

'He must be a genius,' said Ida, smiling.

'Can I have a monkey?'

'If your mother doesn't object, and if we can get a nice one that won't
bite you.'

'Oh, he wouldn't bite me; I should be friends with him directly. When I
am grown up I shall shoot tigers.'

'I shall not like Mr. Cheap Jack if he puts such ideas into your head.'

'Oh, but you must like him, Ida, for I mean to have him always for my
friend; and when I come of age I shall go to the Rockies with him, and
shoot moose and things.'

'Oh, you unkind boy! is that all the happiness I am to have when you are
grown up.'

'You can come too.'

'What, go about America with a Cheap Jack! What a dreadful fate for me!'

'He is not dreadful--he is a splendid fellow.'

'But if he hates women he would make himself disagreeable.'

'Not to you. He would like you. I talked to him about you once, and he
listened, and seemed so pleased, and made me tell him a lot more.'

'Impertinent curiosity!' said Ida, with a vexed air. 'You are a very
silly boy to talk about your relations to a man of that class.'

'He is not a man of that class,' retorted Vernon angrily; 'besides I
didn't talk about my relations, as you call it. I only talked about you.
When I told him about mamma he didn't seem to listen. I could see that by
his eyes, you know; but he made me go on talking about you, and asked me
all kinds of questions.'

'He is a very impertinent person.'

'Hush, there he is, smoking outside his cottage,' cried the 'boy,
pointing to a figure sitting on a rude bench in front of that hovel which
had once sheltered Lord Pontifex's under-keeper.

Ida saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure with a tawny face and a long
brown beard. The face was half hidden under a slouched felt hat, the
figure was clad in clumsy corduroy. Ida was just near enough to see that
the outline of the face was good, when the man rose and went into his
hut, shutting the door behind him.

'Discourteous, to say the least of it,' she exclaimed, laughing at
Vernon's disconcerted look.

'I'll make him open his door,' said the boy, running towards the cottage;
but Ida ran after him and stopped him midway.

'Don't, my pet,' she said; 'every man's house is his castle, even Cheap
Jack's. Besides I have really no wish to make your friend's acquaintance.
Oh, Vernie,' looking at her watch, 'it's a quarter-past nine! We must go
home as fast as ever we can.'

'He is a nasty disagreeable thing,' said Vernon. 'I did so want you to
see the inside of his cottage. He has no end of books, and the handsomest
fox terrier you ever saw--and such a lot of pipes, and black bear skins
to put over his bed at night--such a jolly comfortable little den! I
shall have one just like it in the park when I come of age.'

'You talk of doing so many things when you come of age.'

'Yes; and I mean to do them, every one; unless you and mother let me do
them sooner. It's a dreadful long time to wait till I'm twenty-one!'

'I don't think we are tyrants, or that we shall refuse you anything
reasonable.'

'Not a cottage in the park?'

'No, not even a cottage in the park.'

They walked back at a brisk pace, by common and park, not loitering to
look at anything, though the glades and hills and hollows were lovely in
that dim half-light which is the darkness of summer. The new moon hung
like a silver lamp in mid-heaven, and all the multitude of stars were
shining around and above her, while far away in unfathomable space, shone
the mysterious light which started on its earthward journey in the years
that are gone for ever.

Lady Palliser was not calmly slumbering in front of the tea-table, in the
mellow light of a duplex lamp, after her wont. She was standing at the
open window, watching for Ida's return.

'Oh, my dear, I have been so frightened,' she exclaimed, as Ida and
Vernon appeared.

'About what, dear mamma?'

'About Brian. He has been going on so. Rogers came to tell me, and I went
up to the corridor, and asked him to unlock his door and let me in, but
he wouldn't. Perhaps it was providential that he didn't unlock the door,
for he might have killed me.'

'Oh, mamma, what nonsense!' exclaimed Ida. She hurried Vernon off to bed
before his mother could say another word, and then went back to the
widow, who was walking about the drawing-room in much perturbation.

'Now tell me everything,' said Ida; 'I did not want Vernon to be
frightened.'

'No, indeed, poor pet. But oh! Ida, if he should try to kill Vernon!'

'Dear mother, he has no idea of killing anyone. What can have put such
dreadful notions in your head?'

'The way he went on, Ida. I stopped outside his door ever so long
listening to him. He walked up and down like a mad-man, throwing things
about, talking and muttering to himself all the time. I think he was
packing his portmanteau.'

'There is nothing so dreadful in that--nothing to alarm you.'

'Oh! Ida, when a person is once out of their mind, there is no knowing
what they may do.'

Ida did all in her power to soothe and reassure the frightened little
woman, and, having done this, she went straight to her husband's room.

She knocked two or three times without receiving any answer; then came a
sullen refusal: 'I don't want to be worried by anyone. You can go to your
own room, and leave me alone.'

But, upon her assuming a tone of authority, he opened the door, grumbling
all the while.

The room was in frightful confusion--a couple of portmanteaux lay open on
the floor; books, papers, clothes, were scattered in every direction.
There was nothing packed. Brian was in shirt-sleeves and slippers, and
had been smoking furiously, for the room was full of tobacco.

'Why don't you open your windows, Brian?' said his wife; 'the atmosphere
is horrible.'

She went over to one of the windows, and flung open the sash. 'That's a
comfortable thing to do,' he said, coming over to her, 'to open my window
on a snowy night.'

'Snowy, Brian! Why, it's summer--a lovely night!'

'Summer! nonsense. Don't you see the snow? Why, it's falling thickly.
Look at the flakes--like feathers. Look, look!' He pointed out of the
window into the clear moonlit air, and tried to catch imaginary
snowflakes with his long, nervous fingers.

'Brian, you must know that it is summer-time,' Ida said, firmly. 'Look at
the woods--those deep masses of shadow from the oaks and beeches--in all
the beauty of their summer foliage.

'Yes; it's odd, isn't it?--midsummer, and a snow-storm!'

'What have you been doing with all those things?'

'Packing. I must go to London early to-morrow. I have an appointment with
the architect.'

'What architect?'

'The man who is to plan the alterations for this house. I shall make
great alterations, you know, now that the place is yours. I am going to
build an underground riding school, like that at Welbeck.'

'The place mine? What are you dreaming of?'

'Of course it is yours, now Vernon is dead. You were to inherit
everything at his death. You cannot have forgotten that.'

'Vernon dead! Why, Brian, he is snug and safe in his room a little way
off. I have seen him within this half-hour.'

'You are a fool,' he said; 'he died nearly three months ago. You are the
sole owner of this place, and I am going to make it the finest mansion in
the county.'

He rambled on, talking rapidly, wildly, of all the improvements and
alterations he intended making, with an assumption of a business-like air
amidst all this lunacy, which made his distracted state so much the more
painful to contemplate. He talked of builders, specifications, estimates,
and quantities--was full of self-importance--described picture galleries,
music rooms, high-art decorations which would have cost a hundred
thousand pounds, and all with absolute belief in his own power to realise
these splendid visions. Yet every now and then in the very rush of his
projects there came a sudden cloud of fear--his jaw fell--he looked
apprehensively behind him--became darkly brooding--muttered something
about that hideous charge hanging over him--a conspiracy hatched by
men who should have been his friends--the probability of a great trial
in Westminster Hall; and then he ran on again about builders and
architects--Whistler, Burne Jones--and the marvellous mansion he was
going to erect on the site of this present Wimperfield.

He rambled on with this horrible garrulity for a time that seemed almost
an eternity to his agonised wife, and only ceased at last from positive
exhaustion. But when Ida talked to him with gentle firmness, reminding
him that Vernon was still the owner of Wimperfield, and that she was
never likely to be its mistress, he changed his tone, and appeared to be
in some measure recalled to his right senses.

'What, have I been talking rot again?' he muttered, with a sheepish look.
'Yes, of course, the boy is still owner of the place. The alterations
must stand over. Get me some brandy and soda, Ida, my mouth is parched.'

Ida rose as if to obey him, and rang the bell; but when the servant came
she ordered soda-water only.

'Brandy and soda,' Brian said; 'do you hear? Bring a bottle of brandy. I
can't get through the night without a little now and then.'

Ida gave the man a look which he understood. He left the room in silence.

'Brian,' she said, when he was gone, 'you must not have any more brandy.
It is brandy which has done you harm, which has filled your brain with
these horrible delusions. Mr. Fosbroke told me so. You affect to despise
him; but he is a sensible man who has had large experience.'

'Large experience! in an agricultural village--physicking a handful of
rustics!' cried Brian, scornfully.

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