The Golden Calf

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

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'Poor Brian! How strangely he talked at dinner last night! Oh, John, I
hardly dare say it--but--is he out of his mind?'

'Temporarily--but it is the delirium of a kind of brain fever, not
madness.'

'And he will recover?'

'Please God; but he is very low. I am seriously alarmed about him.'

'Poor dear Brian!' sighed Bess. 'He was once my favourite cousin. But I
must go back to Ida. You need not be afraid of my neglecting her. I
shan't leave her all day.'

Mr. Jardine went to the housekeeper's room to make an inquiry. He wanted
to know what that box from London had contained, a box delivered upon
such and such a date.

The housekeeper's mind was dark, or worse than dark upon the subject--an
obscurity enlightened by flashes of delusive light. Two housemaids, and
an odd man who looked after the coal scuttles, were produced, and gave
their evidence in a manner which would have laid them open to the charge
of rank prevarication and perjury, as to the receipt of a certain wooden
box, which at some stages of the inquiry became hopelessly entangled with
a hamper from the Petersfield fishmonger, and a band-box from Lady
Palliser's Brighton milliner.

'The carriage must have been paid,' said the housekeeper, 'that's the
difficulty. If there'd been anything to pay, it would have been entered
in my book; but when the carriage is paid, don't you see, sir, it's out
of my jurisdiction, as you may say,' with conscious pride in a free use
of the English language, 'and I may hear nothing about it.'

But now the odd man, after much thoughtful 'scratching of his head, was
suddenly enlightened by a flash of memory from the paleozoic darkness
of three weeks ago. He remembered a heavy wooden box that had come in
his dinner-time--the fact of its coming at that eventful hour had
evidently impressed him--and he had carried it up to Mr. Wendover's own
sitting-room.

It was very heavy, and Mr. Wendover had told him that it contained books.

'Did you open it for Mr. Wendover?'

'No, sir; I offered to open it, but Mr. Wendover says he'd got the tools
himself, and would open it at his leisure. He had no call for the books
yet awhile, he says, and didn't want it opened.

'I see, the box contained books. Thank you, that's all I wanted to know.'

John Jardine had very little doubt in his mind now as to the actual
contents of the box. He had no doubt that Brian, finding himself refused
drink, for which he suffered the drunkard's incessant craving, had
contrived to get himself supplied from London; and that if the fire of
his disease had known no abatement it was because the fuel that fed the
flame had not been wanting.

The only question that remained to be answered was how Brian, carefully
attended as he had been, had managed to dispose of his secret store of
drink, under the very eyes, as it were, of his keeper. But Mr. Jardine
knew that the sufferer from alcoholic poison is no less cunning than the
absolute lunatic, and that falsehood, meanness, and fraud seem to be
symptoms of the disease.

When he went back to Brian's rooms, he found the patient lying on his
bed, exhausted by the agitation and restlessness of the last few hours.
He was not asleep, but was quieter than usual, in a semi-conscious state,
muttering to himself now and then. Towler was sitting at a little table
by the open window, breakfasting comfortably; his enjoyment of the
coffee-pot, and a dish of ham and eggs, being in no manner lessened by
the neighbourhood of the patient.

'Haven't been able to get him to take any nourishment,' whispered Towler,
as Mr. Jardine came quietly into the room 'He's uncommon bad.'

'Mr. Fosbroke will be here presently, I hope.'

'I don't think he'll be able to do much good when he does come,' said
Towler; 'doctors ain't in it with a case of this kind. If he don't go off
into a good sleep by-and-by, I'm afraid this will be a fatal case.'

Mr. Jardine made no reply to this discouraging observation. There are
times when speech is worse than useless. He stood by the window, looking
over at that shrunken figure on the groat old-fashioned four-post bed,
with its voluminous drab damask curtains, its cords, fringes, tassels,
and useless decorations--the nerveless, helpless figure of wasted youth,
the wreckage of an ill-spent life. The haggard countenance, damp with
the dews of mental agony, and of a livid pallor, looked like the face
of death. What could medicine do for this man beyond diagnosing his case,
and giving an opinion about it, for the satisfaction--God save the
mark!--of his friends? John Jardine knew in his heart that not all the
doctors in Christendom could pick this shattered figure up again, and
replace it in its former position among mankind.

Still intent upon solving that mystery about the contents of the
wine-case, Mr. Jardine's eyes wandered about the room, trying to discover
some hiding-place which the careful had overlooked. But so far he could
see no such thing There was the tall four-poster, with its square
cornice, a ponderous mahogany frame with fluted damask stretched across
it. Could Brian have hidden his brandy up yonder, behind the mahogany
cornice? Surely not. First the damask would have bulged with the weight
of the bottles, and, secondly, the place was not accessible enough. He
must have hidden his poison in some spot where he could apply himself to
it furtively, hurriedly twenty, fifty, a hundred times in the day or
night.

Presently Mr. Jardine's glance fell on the half-open door of the
bath-room. It was a slip of a room cut off the study, a room that had
been created within the last twenty years. It was the only room which Mr.
Jardine had not inspected before he went down to breakfast.

He pushed open the door, and went in, followed by Towler, wiping the
egginess and haminess from his mouth as he went.

'You kept your eye upon this room as well as the others, I suppose,' said
Mr. Jardine, looking about him.

'Yes, sir, I have kept an eye upon everything.'

The apartment was not extensive. A large copper bath with a ponderous
mahogany case, panelled, moulded, bevelled, the elaborate workmanship
of local cabinet-makers; a row of brass hooks hung with bath towels,
which looked like surplices pendent in a vestry; a washstand in a corner,
a dressing-table and glass, with its belongings, in the window, and a
wicker arm-chair, comprised the whole extent of furniture. No
hiding-place here, one would suppose.

Mr. Jardine looked about the room thoughtfully. It was the one apartment
in which the patient could hardly be intruded upon by his attendant. Here
he could be sure of privacy.

'Did you examine the case of the bath,' he inquired presently, his
mathematical eye quick to take in the difference between the inner shell
of copper and the outer husk of mahogany.

'No, sir,' answered Towler, briskly. 'Is it 'oller?'

'Of course it's hollow. Surely your eye tells you that.'

'Yes, sir; but there's the hot-water pipes inside--and there's no getting
at it, except for a plumber.'

'Nonsense,' said Mr. Jardine, kneeling down at one end of the bath, where
there was a convenient mahogany door for the accommodation of the
plumber, a door which lay somewhat in shadow, and had escaped Towler's
observation.

'Bring me a candle,' said Mr. Jardine, unconsciously imitating the
brotherhood of plumbers, whose consumption of candles is a household
terror.

Towler returned to fetch a candle, while Mr. Jardine with cautious hand
explored the cavern-like recesses between the bath and its outer shell,
recesses in which lurked serpent-like convolutions of hot-water pipes and
cold-water pipes, waste and overflow.

Yes, before Towler could arrive with the candle, he had fathomed the
mystery. Three or four full bottles, and a large number of empties, were
stowed away in this dusty receptacle. He drew one of the full bottles out
into the light. 'Hennessy's Fine Old Cognac,' said the label. This had
been the secret source of fever and delirium--here had lurked the evil
which had made all remedial measures vain.

Mr. Fosbroke was announced while John Jardine was washing the dust and
the stains of rusty iron from his hands. Brian was in too low a condition
to be rude to the country practitioner, much as he had protested against
his interference. He suffered the apothecary to sit by his bed and feel
his pulse, without a word of remonstrance.

'How do you find him?' asked Mr. Jardine, when Mr. Fosbroke had left the
bedside.

'Very bad; pulse small and thready--a hundred and forty in the minute;
violent throbbing in the temporal and carotid arteries; profuse
perspiration--all bad signs. What medicines has he been taking?'

He was shown the prescriptions.

'Hum--hum--digitalis--bromide of potassium. I should like to inject
chloral; but as the case is in Dr. Mallison's hands--'

'If you think there is danger I will telegraph for Mallison.'

'There is always danger in this stage of the malady, especially in the
case of a patient of Mr. Wendover's age. The season, too, is
unfavourable--the mortality in this complaint is nearly double in summer.
If we can get him into a sound sleep of some hours he may wake with a
decided turn for the better--the delirium subjugated; but in his low
state, even sleep may be fatal--there is so little vital power. Yes, I
should certainly telegraph for Dr. Mallison; and in the meantime I'll try
what can be done with chloral.'

'You must do the utmost you can. Mrs. Wendover has implicit faith in
you.'

'I'll drive back and get the chloral.'

When the apothecary was gone, Mr. Jardine's first act was to telegraph to
the London physician, his next, to put the unused bottles of cognac under
lock and key, and, with Towler's help, to clear away the empty bottles
without the knowledge of the servants. No doubt every member of the
household knew the nature of Mr. Wendover's illness; but it was well to
spare him the exposure of these degrading details.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOUSE IS HIS CASTLE.

Ida felt a strange relief to her spirits, despite the absolute blackness
of her domestic horizon, when the carriage drove away from Wimperfield.
She had left the house very seldom of late, feeling that duty chained her
to the joyless scene of home; and there was an infinite relief in turning
her back upon that stately white building in which was embodied all the
misery of her blighted life. No charnel-house could be fuller of ghastly,
unspeakable horrors than Wimperfield had become to her since that long,
never-to-be-forgotten night when she had listened to her husband's
ravings, and when all the loathsome objects his distracted fancy had
conjured into being, and his never-resting tongue had described, had been
only a little less real to her mind than they had been to his. Could she
ever again know peace and rest in those rooms; ever tread those corridors
without shuddering and dread, ever know happiness again in all the days
of her life? She leaned back in the carriage as they drove along the
avenue, and rested with half-closed eyes, her soul heavy within her, her
body weighed down by the soreness and weariness of her mind. If life
could but end now! She felt that she could be of no more use in the
world. She could do nothing to help her wretched husband. He had chosen
to go his own way to destruction, and he was too near the edge of the pit
now to be snatched back by any friendly hand. She felt that his fate had
passed beyond the regions of hope. God might pity the self-destroyer, and
deal lightly with him at the great audit; but on this earth there was no
hope of cure. Brian Wendover was going down to the pit.

Bessie sat by Ida's side tenderly watching her worn white face, while
Lady Palliser was entirely absorbed by the delight of administering
fussily to her boy, who was well enough to laugh her shawls and
comforters and motherly precautions to scorn, and to jump about in the
carriage, as at each break in the wood some new object of interest caught
his eye--a rabbit, a squirrel, a hawk high up in the blue, invisible to
any gaze less eager than his own. He was in wild spirits at being out of
doors again, a restless eager soul, not to be restrained by any medical
ordinances or maternal anxieties.

They went for a long drive, the horses, very fresh after the little
exercise of the last month, devouring the ground under them--the summer
breeze brisk and inspiring--the country beautiful beyond measure--an
ever-varying landscape of hill and wood and valley, green pastures and
golden grain.

Bessie chatted gaily in her desire to distract Ida's mind, and the boy's
vivacity never flagged; but Ida sat silent, feeling the blessedness of
this brief respite from the horror of home, but quite unable to talk of
indifferent subjects. She was haunted by the image of her husband as she
had seen him that morning--his ashen countenance, the perpetual movement
of his eyes, those nervous attenuated hands, almost transparent in their
bloodlessness, for ever pushing aside the formless horrors that crowded
round him--pictures painted on the empty air, pictures for ever changing,
yet hideously real to that disorganised brain pictures that spoke and
gibbered at him, shadows with which he carried on conversations.

With this awful image fresh in her mind, Ida could not even pretend to be
cheerful, or interested in common things.

'Don't be unhappy about me, dear,' she said once when Bessie squeezed her
hand, and looked at her with tender anxiety; 'I must bear my burden.
Nobody can help me.'

'Except God,' whispered the Vicar's faithful wife. 'He lightens all
burdens, in His good time.'

On the homeward road they wound near the base of Blackman's Hanger, and
at this point Vernon got up and ordered the coachman to drive as near as
he could to the old gamekeeper's cottage.

'We can walk the rest of the way,' said the boy.

'Walk!' shrieked Lady Palliser. 'Oh, Vernie, what are you dreaming about?
Mr. Fosbroke never said you might walk.'

'Very likely not,' retorted the boy; 'but you don't suppose I'm going to
ask old Fosbroke's leave before I use my legs. Look here, mother dear,
I'm as well as ever I was, and I'm not going to be mollicoddled any
more.'

'But Vernie--'

'I am not going to be mollicoddled any more, and I'm going to see old
Jack.'

'Nonsense, Vernie.'

'He came to see me, and I'm going to see him,' said Vernon, resolutely.
'Remember what your favourite author, the Countess of Seven Stars, says
about the necessity of returning a call--"and if the person calling
happen to be your inferior in social status, the obligation to return the
visit within a reasonable time will be so much the stronger." There,
mother; there are the very words of your "Creme de la Creme" for you.'

'But, Vernon, the countess would never have imagined such a person as a
Cheap Jack calling upon anyone for whom her book was intended.'

'The book was intended for a parcel of stuck-up cads,' said Vernon. 'Get
on, Jackson.'

This to the coachman, who was driving slowly, perfectly conscious of the
squabble going on behind him, and anticipating the reversal of Sir
Vernon's order. But Lady Palliser said nothing, so Jackson quickened his
pace a little, and drove along the rough winding road which skirted the
base of the hill.

Directly he drew up his horses Vernon leapt out, and the three women
followed him. After all, the mother inwardly argued, it were a pity to
thwart her darling. He was in such high spirits, and seemed so thoroughly
himself again. His very wilfulness was delightful, for it told of renewed
vigour.

They all climbed the hill together, by a cork-screw track which was not
too distressing. The atmosphere was cool and fresh at this altitude, the
odour of the pines ambrosial.

'I suppose we had better wait a little way off, Vernie,' said Ida, when
they were within a dozen yards of the hut. 'Your friend is so very
uncivil to ladies.'

'Yes, you'd better rest yourselves on that fir tree,' answered Vernon,
pointing to prostrate giant of the grove which had been Lilely felled,'
while I run on and see him.'

They obeyed, but in less than five minutes Vernon came back.

'Jack is out, but his house is open,' he said, eagerly, 'and I want you
all to come and see it. I want you to see the house that my Jack built.'

'But would it be right to go into his cottage when he is away?' asked
Ida.

'Of course it would,' cried her brother, dancing along before them. 'You
must come--there's nothing to be ashamed of, I can tell you. Mother will
see that my Jack isn't a vulgar person, that he can read and write, and
has the ways of a gentleman.'

'I should certainly like to see what kind of person my son associates
with,' said Lady Palliser, who, in common with the non-studious class of
mankind, was a keen inquirer into the details of daily life.

She liked to know where her acquaintance had their gowns made, and what
wages they gave their cooks, and to be the first to hear of matrimonial
engagements and dangerous illnesses.

The cottage door stood wide open, and as there was neither hall nor
passage, the moment the three Fatimas had crossed the threshold they were
standing in the innermost sanctuary of Mr. Cheap Jack's private life, and
the character of the man stood revealed to them, so far as surroundings
can reveal a man's character.

He was a smoker, for the room, albeit the lattice stood wide open, smelt
strongly of tobacco, and over the narrow wooden mantelpiece were slung
three pipes, one a long cherry-wood tube of decidedly Oriental
appearance.

'Quite gentlemanly looking pipes,' said Lady Palliser.

The room was in perfect order, everything arranged with an exquisite
neatness. The floor was covered with a coarse, substantial matting,
spotlessly clean. The furniture consisted of a clumsy old walnut-wood
table, evidently picked up at some farmhouse or cottage in the
neighbourhood, a heavy piece of cabinet work of the same order, half
secretaire half bookcase, a couple of substantial arm-chairs, and a
ponderous old oak chest--also the relic of some dismantled homestead.
There was a brass clock on the chimney-piece, and there were a number of
rather dingy-looking volumes in the bookcase, while the floor under the
table was piled with quartos and thick octavos, which looked like books
of reference. An old leathern despatch box, much the worse for wear,
stood on the table. Ornaments, pictures, or photographs there were none.

'It really looks like a gentleman's room,' said Lady Palliser, after her
eyes had devoured every detail.

'It _is_ a gentleman's room,' answered Vernon, decisively. 'Didn't I tell
you my friend Jack is a gentleman?'

'Vernie dear, a man who goes about the country in a cart selling things
can't be a gentleman!' said his mother.

'I don't quite see that, Lady Palliser,' exclaimed Bessie, who was
inspecting the book-shelves. 'A gentleman may fall upon evil days, and
have to earn his living somehow, don't you know; and why shouldn't he
have a cart, and go about selling things? There's nothing disreputable in
it, though he could hardly go into society, perhaps, while he was driving
the cart, because the mass of mankind are such fools. Why shouldn't
Vernie's instinct be right, and this Cheap Jack be a reduced gentleman?
Froude says that in the colonies Oxford men may be seen mending the
roads. Why shouldn't one man in the world have the courage to do humble
work in his own country? This Jack is a University man.'

'How do you know that?' asked Lady Palliser, eagerly. She was ready to
bow down before a University man as a necessarily superior being. There
had never been such a person of her own blood.

'Here is a volume of AEschylus--the Clarendon Press--with his college
arms. He is a Balliol man, the same college as my cousin Brian's.'

'That proves nothing,' said Lady Palliser, contemptuously. 'He may have
bought the book at a stall. All his furniture is second-hand, why not his
books?'

'Oh, but here are more books with the Balliol arms--Pindar, Theocritus,
Catullus, Horace, Virgil.'

'Can't you find his name in any of them?'

'No; that has been erased in some of the books, and has never been
written in the others. Poor fellow! I daresay he would not like his real
name to be known.'

'Didn't I tell you he was a gentleman, mother?' exclaimed Vernon,
triumphantly.

Lady Palliser was almost convinced. The neat, substantially furnished
room--so free from frippery or foppishness--the queer Oriental pipes--the
well-used books in sober calf bindings, which had once been splendid--the
college arms on almost every volume--these details impressed her in spite
of herself.

'Poor young man! I should like to send him some money,' she said.

'He would not take it; he would scorn your money,' said Vernon. 'What
does he want with pounds, shillings, and pence? He told me that so long
as he has his books to read, his pipe to smoke, and a fine country to
roam about, he cares for nothing else. Your money wouldn't buy him
anything.'

'You don't understand, Vernie dear. We might do something substantial for
him--set him up in a nice little shop at Petersfield, perhaps a
stationer's, or,' with a glance at the rack of pipes, 'a tobacconist's.'

'My Jack keeping a shop! my Jack behind a counter!' cried Vernon: 'if you
knew anything about him you would never talk of such a thing. Why he
likes to be as free as the birds of the air--to roam about all day--and
sit up reading half the night.'

They were all clustered in front of the bookcase, Bessie and Ida looking
at the books, Lady Palliser and her boy intent on their own talk, when
the door was flung open, and the master of the house suddenly appeared
amidst them--a tall, broad-shouldered figure, roughly clad in shooting
jacket, corduroy, and leather, like a gamekeeper--a dark bearded face
under a slouched hat. But the intruders had only the briefest time in
which to observe his appearance. At sight of the group by the bookcase,
Jack tilted his felt hat further over his brows, and strode across the
room to that corner whence a cork-screw stair led to the upper story. He
went up these stairs in three or four bounds, banged and bolted the door
of the upper chamber; and his unbidden guests were left looking at each
other in bewildered silence.

Lady Palliser, after a gasp or two, was the first to speak.

'Did you ever see such manner?' she exclaimed; 'such a perfect brute?
Vernie, you must never speak to that horrid feature again. I never want
to have anything more to do with University men if this is a specimen of
their manners! Never so much as to take off his hat to us!'

'We had no right to come crowding into his room,' said Bessie, who could
seldom find it in her heart to be angry with anyone. 'I daresay the poor
thing feels the change in his position. When Brian, of the Abbey, comes
home--if ever he does come home--I'll ask him to hunt this poor fellow
out, and help him in some way. One Balliol man ought to help another.'

'Let us go back to the carriage instantly,' said Lady Palliser, almost
shouting the substantive, in order that Jack might be reminded what kind
of people he had insulted by his ruffianly bearing. 'I feel that I am
bemeaning myself every moment I stay in this house.'

They hurried down the sandy hill path to the road where they had left the
carriage, and Lady Palliser hustled them into it, breathless, with the
combined effect of the rapid descent and her indignation.

'Why, Ida, how deadly pale you are!' exclaimed Bessie. 'I hope you are
not ill. Have we walked too fast for you?'

'No, dear--only--that man's face reminded me--'

'Of Brian's when he first came home from Norway, and was so dreadfully
sunburnt?' said Bessie; 'so it did me. The idea flashed upon me, as the
rude wretch rushed past us, that he had a sort of look of Brian. Just the
way he carried his head, you know, and something in the shape of his
shoulders--not a real resemblance.'

'Of course not.'

CHAPTER XXIX.

'AS ONE DEAD IN THE BOTTOM OF A TOMB.'

Dr. Mallison came to Wimperfield at the same hour as on the occasion of
his first visit. He was with the patient for nearly half-an-hour, and he
confabulated with Mr. Fosbroke for at least another half hour, so it
could not be said that he performed the physician's duty in a careless or
perfunctory manner. But his opinion was not hopeful; and there was a
gravity in his manner when he talked to Ida and her stepmother which was
evidently intended to prepare them for the worst. He gave a peremptory
order for a second nurse, an able-bodied experienced woman, who could
relieve Towler in his now most onerous duties--duties growing hourly more
painful, since the last development of the patient's delirium was a
violent hatred of his attendant, who, as he believed, was always lying in
wait to do him some injury. Dr. Mallison also advised that Mrs. Wendover
should no longer occupy the bedroom adjoining her husband's. Upon this
point he was very firm, when Ida urged her anxiety to forego no duty
which she owed to her husband.

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