The Golden Calf

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

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The dinner-gong sounded, and Brian was still missing, but at half-past
eight he came in, and walked straight to the drawing-room, where Ida was
sitting alone. Neither she nor her stepmother had sat down to dinner.
Lady Palliser was in her boy's room, waiting for the doctor.

'Oh, Brian, thank God you are safe!' said his wife, as he came slowly
into the room, and sank into a chair. 'What a scare you have given us
all!'

'Did you think I was drowned, or that I had cut my throat ?' he asked,
sneeringly. 'I don't think either event would have mattered much to
anyone in this house.'

His manner was entirely different from what it had been last night. His
words were cool and deliberate, his expression moody, but in nowise
irrational.

'You have no right to say that; but people who say such things seldom
mean what they say,' replied Ida, quietly. 'Had you not better go to your
room at once and change your clothes, or take a warm bath. It is a kind
of suicide to wander about all day in wet clothes as you have done.'

'Who told you I was wandering about all day?'

'Vernon told us.'

'Vernon!' He started, as if suddenly remembering the boy's existence; and
then in an agitated manner asked, 'Did he come home? Is he all right?'

'He came home, thank God; at least, he was brought home. I doubt if he
could have found his way back alone. I am afraid he is going to be ill.'

'Nonsense! a little cold, perhaps; nothing more. It was a diabolical day.
I never saw such rain--a regular tropical down-pour. But what is a shower
of rain for a healthy boy?'

'Not much, perhaps, if he is able to change his clothes directly
afterwards. But to be wandering about for hours in wet clothes, without
food,--that is enough to kill a stronger boy than my brother.'

'It won't kill him, you may depend,' said Brian, with a cynical laugh; 'I
should profit too much by his death: and I'm not one of fortune's
favourites. He's tough enough.'

'Brian, you have no more heart than a stone.'

'Perhaps not. All the heart I had I gave to you, and you made a football
of it; but "Why should a heart have been there, in the way of a fair
woman's foot?" as the poet asks.'

'Had you not better go to your room and take off your wet clothes?'
repeated Ida.

She had no inclination to argue or remonstrate with a man whose mind was
so evidently askew, who had long ago passed the boundary line of
principle and noble thought, and had become a mere creature of impulse,
blown this way or that way by every gust of passion,--so weak a sinner
that her scornful anger was tempered by pity.

'If you are anxious I should escape a severe cold, perhaps you will be
liberal enough to allow me a little brandy,' said Brian.

Ida was doubtful how to reply. She had been told to withhold all
stimulants, and yet this was an exceptional case. Happily at this very
moment the door was opened, and Mr. Fosbroke, the family doctor, was
announced.

She ran to meet him. 'Vernon has had a severe wetting, and we are afraid
he is going to be ill,' she said. 'I'll take you upstairs at once. Mamma
is with him.'

As soon as they were outside in the hall she told him about Brian's
request, and asked his advice.

'I think I would give him a small tumbler of grog after his wetting. To
refuse would seem too severe. But take care he hasn't the control of the
bottle.'

She ran back to her husband, told him she would take some randy and water
to his room for him by the time he had hanged his clothes, and then she
went with Mr. Fosbroke to in Vernon's room, that bright airy room
overlooking the rose garden, which maternal and sisterly love had
decorated with all possible prettinesses, and furnished with every
appliance of comfort.

Mr. Fosbroke examined the boy carefully, and seemed hardly to like the
aspect of the case, though he maintained the customary professional
cheeriness.

The boy was feverish, very feverish, he admitted;--pulse a good deal too
rapid; temperature high. One could never tell how these cases were going
to turn. The boy had suffered unusual fatigue and deprivation, and for a
child so reared the strain was severe; but in all probability a gentle
febrifuge, which would throw him into a perspiration, and a good night's
rest, would be all that was needed, and he would be as well as ever
to-morrow morning.

'These small things get out of order so easily,' said Mr. Fosbroke,
smiling down at the flushed cheek on the pillow. 'They are like those
foolish little Geneva watches ladies are so fond of wearing. My old
turnip never goes wrong. You must make haste and grow big, Vernon, and
then mamma will not be so easily frightened about you.'

Vernon smiled faintly, without opening his eyes.

'You see, you have contrived between you to make him an exotic,' said the
doctor; 'and you mustn't be surprised if he gives you a little trouble
now and then. Orchids are beautiful flowers, but they are difficult to
rear.'

'Oh, Mr. Fosbroke,' said Lady Palliser, 'how can you say so! Vernie is so
hardy--riding his pony in all weathers.'

'Yes, but always provided with a mackintosh--always told to hurry home at
the first drop of rain. Well, I dare say he will be ready for his pony
to-morrow, if he takes my draught.'

To-morrow came, but Vernon was not in a condition to ride his pony. The
fever and prostration were worse than they had been over night, and while
Brian seemed to have taken no harm from his exposure to the storm, the
boy had evidently suffered a shock to the system, from which he would be
slow to recover.

Tortured with anxiety about this idolised brother, Ida did not forget her
duty to her husband. She did what she had resolved to do during the long
watches of that agonising night, in which she had seen Brian the victim
of his own weak self-indulgence, to all intents and purposes a madman,
yet unworthy of the compassion which lunacy inspires, since this madness
was self-induced,--she telegraphed to the London physician whose advice
her husband affected to value; and at five o'clock in the afternoon she
had the satisfaction of seeing a soberly-clad gray-haired gentleman
alight from a Petersfield fly in front of the portico. This was Dr.
Mallison, of Harley Street, a great authority in all nervous
disorders--as thorough and as real a man as Dr. Rylance was artificial
and shallow, yet a, man whom some of Dr. Rylance's most profitable
patients denounced as a brute.

Dr. Mallison's plain and straightforward manner invited confidence, and
Ida confided her fears and anxieties to him without scruple, telling him
faithfully all that she had observed in her husband's conduct before and
after that one dreadful night, which she described shudderingly.

'Yes, I remember his case. This seems to have been rather a sharp attack.
He had one early in the spring, just before he came to me.'

'An attack--like this one--an attack of--'

'Delirium tremens. Not quite so bad as this last, from his own account;
but then one can never quite trust a patient's account. And you say he is
better now?'

'Yes; he has been in his room all to-day, writing or reading. He seems
dull and low-spirited, that is all.'

'No delusions to-day?'

'Not that I have discovered; but I have only seen him now and then. My
little brother is ill, and I have been in his room most of my time.'

'Poor soul! that is a bad job,' said Dr. Mallison, kindly. 'Well, you
must have an attendant for your husband. Can you get anybody here, do you
think? Or shall I send you a man from town?'

'I shall be very grateful if you will send some one. It would be
difficult to get any one here.'

'I dare say it would. I'll get a person despatched to you by the mail
train, if I am back in time. Your husband must not be left to himself.
That is a vital point. Still so long as he is reasonable, and shows no
sign of violence, it will not do to let him suppose that he is watched.
That would aggravate matters. You must be diplomatic. Let the man pass as
an extra servant, not a professional nurse. All invalids detest
professional nurses.'

'Is this dreadful malady likely to pass away?' asked Ida, falteringly.

It was unspeakably painful to her to discuss her husband's failing; and
yet she wanted to learn all that could be known about it.

'Undoubtedly. Remove the cause, and the effect will cease. But you have
to do more than that. You have to restore the constitution to its normal
state--to renew the tissues which intemperance has destroyed--in a word,
to eliminate the poison and then the craving for drink will cease, and
your husband may begin life again, like Naaman after his seventh dip in
Jordan. At Mr. Wendover's age, such a habit ought not to be fatal. There
is ample time for reform; but I give you fair warning that it is not an
easy disease to cure. I'm not talking of delirium tremens, which is a
symptom rather than a disease, but of alcoholic poisoning. The craving
for alcohol once established is an ugly weed to root out.'

'If patience and care can cure him, he shall be cured,' said Ida, with a
steadfast look, which gave new nobility to her beautiful face in the
observant eyes of the physician--a man keen to appreciate every gradation
of the physical and the mental, and to tell to the nicest shade where
sense left off and soul began. Here was a woman assuredly in whom soul
predominated over sense.

'I believe that, madam,' he said, kindly; 'and you shall have my best
assistance, depend upon it.'

'Why should a young man bring upon himself such an affliction as this?'
Ida asked, wonderingly. 'Ours is counted a sober era.'

'Why, indeed? After-dinner boozing and three-bottle men are a tradition
of the dark ages; and yet there are dozens of young men in London--gifted
young men some of them--who are doing this thing every year. Half the
untimely deaths you hear of might be traced home to the brandy bottle, if
a man had only the curiosity to look into first causes. One man dies of
congestion of the lungs. Yes, but he had burnt up his lungs first with
perpetual alcohol. Another is a victim to liver. Why, madam, a temperate
man may work thirty years under an Indian sun, and hardly know that he
has a liver. Another is said to have died of too much brain work. Yes,
work done by a brain steeped in alcohol--not a brain, but a preparation
in spirits. They all do the same thing--pegging--pegging--pegging--from
breakfast to bed-time; and most of them would deny that they are
drunkards.'

'Do you think that if my husband drank it was because he was not
happy--because he had something on his mind?'

'Much more likely that it was because he had nothing on his mind, my dear
madam. These briefless barristers in the Temple--men with private means,
not obliged to hunt for work, with a little fancy for literature, and a
little taste for the drama--these idle youths, whose only idea of social
intercourse is to be gossiping and drinking in one another's rooms all
day long, living an undomestic life in chambers, without the public
interests or athletic sports of a university--these are the chosen
victims of alcohol. Of course, I don't pretend for a moment that they all
drink; but where the tendency to drink exists this is the kind of life to
foster it.'

'My husband was not obliged to live in chambers--he had a home here.'

'Yea; but young men, unless they are sportsmen, hate the country; and
then, once in the London vortex, a man can't easily escape. And now, I
suppose, I had better go and see the patient Does he know I have been
sent for?'

'No.'

'Then perhaps we shall have a scene. He may be angry.'

'I must risk that,' said Ida, firmly. 'He refused to be treated by our
family doctor, and I felt that things could not go on any longer as they
were going on.'

She led the way to Brian's room. He was lounging by the open window,
smoking; his books and papers were scattered about the tables in reckless
disorder.

'Dr. Mallison has come to see you, Brian,' said Ida, quietly, as the
physician followed her into the room.

'You sent for him, then!' exclaimed Brian, starting up angrily.

'There was no alternative; you refused to be attended by Mr. Fosbroke.'

'Fosbroke--a village apothecary, the parish doctor, who would have
poisoned me. Yes, I should think so. How dare you send for anyone? How
dare you treat me like a child?'

'I dare do anything which I believe to be for your good,' Ida answered,
unflinchingly.

He quailed before her, and changed his tone in a moment. 'Well, if it
gratifies you to spend your money upon physicians--How do you do, Dr.
Mallison? Of course, I am very glad to see you, as a friend; but I want
no doctoring.'

'I'm afraid you do,' said the physician. 'You have not done what I told
you when I saw you in London.'

'What was that?'

'To give up all stimulants.'

'Oh, that was impossible! It's just like asking a man to shut his mouth,
and breathe only through his nostrils, when he has lived all his life
with his mouth open. No man can change his habits all at once, at the
fiat of a physician. But I have been very moderate ever since I saw you.'

'And yet you have had another attack?'

'Who told you that?' asked Brian, with an angry glance at his wife.

'Your own appearance tells me--yes, and your pulse. You have been
indulging in the old habits--nipping all day long; and you have been
sleeping badly.'

'Sleeping badly!' muttered Brian moodily; 'I wish to Heaven I could sleep
anyhow. I have forgotten the sensation of being asleep--I don't know what
it means. Just as I fancy myself dropping off there comes a flash of
light in my eyes, and I am broad awake again. The other night I thought
it lightened perpetually, but my wife said there was no lightning.'

'A case of shattered nerves, and all your own doing,' said Dr. Mallison.
'You must leave off brandy.'

'Brandy has left me off,' retorted Brian. 'My wife and her step-mother
have gone in for strict economy. I am not allowed a spoonful of cognac,
although I tell them it is the only thing that staves off racking
neuralgic pains.

'You must endure neuralgia rather than go on poisoning yourself with
brandy. For you alcohol is rank poison--you are suffering now from the
cumulative effect of all you have taken within the last twelve months.
There are men who can drink with impunity--go on drinking hard through a
long life; but you are not one of those. Drink for you means death.'

'A man can die but once,' grumbled Brian; 'and an early death is better
than an aimless life.'

'For shame!' said the physician. 'If I had such a wife as you have, the
aim of my life would be to make myself worthy of her, and to win
distinction for her sake.'

'Ah, there was a time when I thought the same,' answered Brian; 'but
that's over and done with.'

Ida left the doctor and his patient together, and walked up and down the
corridor outside her husband's room, waiting to hear Dr. Mallison's final
directions. He remained closeted with Brian for about a quarter of an
hour.

'I have said all I could, and I have written a prescription which may do
some good,' he told Ida. 'This is a case for moral suasion rather than
medical treatment. If you can exercise a good influence over your
husband, and keep all stimulants away from him, he will recover. But his
constitution has been undermined by bad habits--an indolent unhealthy
life--a life spent in hot rooms, by artificial light. Get him out of
doors as much as you can, without exposing him to bad weather or undue
fatigue. He is very weak, and altogether out of gear; and you mustn't
expect much improvement until he recovers tone and appetite; but if you
can ward off any return of the delirium, that will be something gained.'

'Indeed it will. The delirium was too terrible.'

'Well, keep all drink away from him.'

'Even if he seems to suffer for want of it?'

'Yes. The old-fashioned idea was that stopping a man's drink suddenly
would bring on an attack of delirium tremens; but we know better than
that now. We know that the delirium is only a consequence of alcoholic
poisoning, and inevitable where that goes on.'

Ida went back to the drawing-room with the doctor. The tea-table was
ready, and there were decanters and sandwiches on another table. Dr.
Mallison took a cup of tea and a sandwich, while he gave Ida minute
directions as to the treatment of the patient. And then he accepted the
handsome cheque which had been written for him, with Mr. Fosbroke's
advice as to amount, and took his departure, promising to send a skilled
attendant within the next twelve hours.

Ida felt happier after she had seen Dr. Mallison. There was very little
that could be done for her husband. He had sown his wild oats, and that
light scattering of the seeds of folly had been pleasant enough, no
doubt, in the time of sowing; and this was the unanticipated result--a
bitter harvest of care and pain which had to be endured somehow.

And now came for that household at Wimperfield a period of agonising
trouble and fear. The boy's illness developed into an acute attack of
rheumatic fever, and for three dreadful days and nights his life trembled
in the balance. Not once did Ida enter her husband's room during that
awful period of fear. She could not steel herself to look upon the man
whose sin, or whose folly, had brought this evil on her beloved one. 'My
murdered boy,' she kept repeating to herself. Even on her knees, when she
tried to pray, humbly and meekly appealing to the Fountain of mercy and
grace--even then, while she knelt with bowed head and folded hands, those
awful words flashed into her mind. Her murdered boy.

If he were to die, who could doubt that his death would lie at Brian's
door? who could put away the dark suspicion that Brian had wantonly, and
with murderous intent, exposed the delicate child to bad weather and long
hours of fasting and fatigue?

CHAPTER XXVI.

'AND, IF I DIE, NO SOUL WILL PITY ME.'

At last their long watchings, their tender care, directed by one of the
most famous men in London--who was summoned to Wimperfield at Mr.
Fosbroke's suggestion within a week of Dr. Mallison's visit--and attended
twice or thrice a day by the clever apothecary, were rewarded by the
assurance that the time of immediate danger was over, and that now a slow
and gradual recovery might fairly be anticipated. It was only then that
Ida could bring herself to face Brian again, and even then she met him
with an icy look, as if the life within her were frozen by grief and
care, and those rigid lips of hers could never again melt into smiles.

Brian had been leading a fitful and wandering life during the boy's
illness, watched and waited upon by Towler, the man from London, with
whom he quarrelled twenty times a day, and who needed his long experience
of the "ways" of alcoholic victims to enable him to endure the fitfulness
and freakishness of his present charge.

Warned by Dr. Mallison that he must spend as much of his life in the open
air as possible, Brian had taken to going in and out of the house fifty
times a day, now wandering for five or ten minutes in the garden, anon
rambling as far as the edge of the park, then running into the stable
yard, and ordering a horse to be saddled instantly, but never mounting
the horse. After seeing the animal led up and down the yard once or
twice, he would always find some excuse for not riding; the fact being
that he had no longer courage enough to get into the saddle. His riding
days were over. Even the stable mastiff, an old favourite with Brian,
gave him a painful shock when the great tawny brute leapt out of his
kennel, straining at his chain, and baying deep-mouthed thunder by way of
friendly greeting.

Towler had a hard time of it, following his charge here and there,
waiting upon him, bearing his abuse; but Towler had a peculiar gift, a
faculty for getting on with patients of this kind. He knew how to dodge,
and follow, and circumvent them; how to take liberties with them, and
scold them, without too deeply wounding their _amour-propre;_ how to
humour and manage them; and although Mr. Wendover quarrelled with his
attendant fifty times a day, he yet liked the man, and tolerated his
presence; and had already come to lean upon him, and to be angry when
Towler absented himself.

'Well,' said Brian, looking up as Ida entered his room on that happy
morning on which she had been told that her brother was out of
danger--'the boy is better, I hear?'

These things are quickly known in a household, when there has been
general anxiety about the issue of an illness.

'Yes, he is better. By God's grace, he will live; but his life has
trembled in the balance. Brian, it would have been your fault if he had
died.'

'Would it? Yes, I suppose indirectly I should have been the cause. I was
a fool to take him out that morning; but,' shrugging his shoulders, 'I
wanted a ramble, and I wanted company. Who could tell there would be such
a diabolical storm, or that we should lose our way? Thank God he is out
of danger. Poor little beggar! Did you think I wanted to put him out of
the way?' he asked, suddenly, looking at her with a keen flash of
interrogation.

'To think that would be to think you a murderer,' she answered, coldly.
'I have thought that you had little affection for him or for me when you
exposed him to that danger; and then I schooled myself to think better of
you--to remember that, perhaps, on that day you were hardly responsible
for your actions.'

'In fact, that I was a lunatic,' said Brian.

'I would rather think you mad than wicked.'

'Perhaps I am neither. Why have you put that man as a spy upon me?'

The discreet Towler had retired into the adjacent bedroom during this
conversation.

'He is not a spy. Dr. Mallison said you ought to have a servant specially
to wait upon you, that in your sleepless nights you might not be left
alone.'

'No, they are a trial, those long nights. Towler is not a bad fellow, but
he irritates me sometimes. Last night he let a black-muzzled gipsy brute
hide behind my curtains, and then told me it was my "delusions."
Delusions! when I saw the fellow as plain as I see you now.'

Ida was silent. She had hoped that the patient had passed this stage, and
was on the road to recovery of health and reason. She interrogated Towler
by-and-by, and he assured her that Mr. Wendover had taken no stimulants
since he had been attending upon him.

'Are you sure he cannot get any without your knowledge?' Ida asked. 'Dr.
Mallison told me that in this malady a patient is terribly artful--that
he will contrive to evade the closest watchfulness, if it is any way
possible to get drink.'

'Ah, that's true enough, ma'am,' sighed the man; 'there's no getting to
the bottom of their artfulness: but I'm an old hand, and I know all the
ins and outs of the complaint. It isn't possible for Mr. Wendover to get
any drink in this house, and he never goes out of it without me. Every
drop of wine and spirits is under lock and key, and all the servants are
warned against giving him anything.'

Ida sighed, full of shame at the thought that her husband, the man whom
it was her duty to honour and obey, should be degraded by such
humiliating precautions; and yet there was no help for it. He had brought
himself to this pass. This is the end of ambrosial nights, the feast of
reason, the flow of soul, wit drowned in whisky, satire stimulated by
brandy and soda.

Ida went back to her brother's room. It was there her love, her fears,
her cares were all concentrated. Duty might make her careful and
thoughtful for her husband, but here love was paramount. To sit by his
pillow, to talk to him, or read to him, or pray for him, to minister to
him, jealous of the skilled nurse who had been hired to perform these
offices,--these things were her delight. Lady Palliser, worn out with
watching and anxiety, had now broken down altogether, and had consented
to take a long day's rest; but Ida's more energetic nature could do with
much less rest--half an hour's delicious sleep now and then, with her
head on her darling's pillow, was all-sufficient to restore her.

And so the blessed days of hope went on, and every morning and every
afternoon Mr. Fosbroke's report was more favourable. It was a tedious
recovery from a cruel disease, happily shortened by at least two-thirds
of its old-fashioned length by modern treatment; but all was going well,
and the hearts of the watchers were at ease. The boy lay swathed in
cotton wool, very helpless, very languid, fed and petted from morning
till night, like a young bird brought up by hand: and Ida and her
stepmother had to be patient and thankful.

Ida had often thought during the boy's illness of the man who had found
him, and brought him safely home to them on that anxious day; and she
wished much to testify her gratitude to the misanthropic dweller in the
gamekeeper's cottage; but she hesitated as to her manner of approaching
him. To go herself would be futile, when he had so obdurately shut his
door against her. Then she had Vernon's assurance that this Bohemian
hated women. She might have sent a servant with a message; but she had
reason to know, from Vernon's description of the man, that he was
altogether above the servant class, and would be likely to resent such a
form of approach. She might have written to him; but her pride recoiled
from that course, remembering his cavalier treatment of her. And so she
let the days slip by, until Vernon began to recover strength and good
spirits, and to inquire about his friend.

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