The Golden Calf

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

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Then, again, the fact that she could hear very little about Mr. Wendover
from his cousins, stimulated her curiosity about him, and intensified her
interest in him. Brian's merits were a subject which the Wendover
children always shirked, or passed over so lightly that Ida was no wiser
for her questioning; and maidenly reserve forbade her too eager inquiry.

About Brian Walford, the son of Parson Wendover, youngest of the three
brothers, for seven years vicar of a parish near Hereford, and for the
last twelve years at rest in the village churchyard, the young Wendovers
had plenty to say. He was good-looking, they assured Ida. She would
inevitably fall in love with him when they met. He was the cleverest
young man in England, and was certain to finish his career as Lord
Chancellor, despite the humility of his present stage of being.

'He has no fortune, I suppose?' hazarded Ida, in a conversation with
Horatio.

She did not ask the question from any interest in the subject. Brian
Walford was a being whose image never presented itself to her mind. She
only made the remark for the sake of saying something.

'Not a denarius,' said Horry, who liked occasionally to be classical.
'But what of that? If I were as clever as Brian I shouldn't mind how poor
I was. With his talents he is sure to get to the top of the tree.'

'What can he do?' asked Ida.

'Ride a bicycle better than any man I know.'

'What else?'

'Sing a first-rate comic song.'

'What else?'

'Get longer breaks at billiards than any fellow I ever played with.'

'What else?'

'Pick the winner out of a score of race-horses in the preliminary
canter.'

'Those are great gifts, I have no doubt,' said Ida. 'But do eminent
lawyers, in a general way, win their advancement by riding bicycles and
singing comic songs?'

'Don't sneer, Ida. When a fellow is clever in one thing he is clever in
other things. Genius is many-sided, universal. Carlyle says as much. If
Napoleon Bonaparte had not been a great general, he would have been a
great writer like Voltaire--or a great lawyer like Thurlow.'

From this time forward Ida had an image of Brian Walford in her mind. It
was the picture of a vapid youth, fair-haired, with thin moustache
elaborately trained, and thinner whiskers--a fribble that gave half its
little mind to its collar, and the other half to its boots. Such images
are photographed in a flash of lightning on the sensitive brain of youth,
and are naturally more often false guesses than true ones.

There was delightful riot in the house of the Wendovers on the night
before the picnic. The Colonel had developed a cold and cough within the
last week, so he and his wife had jogged off to Bournemouth, in the
T-cart, with one portmanteau and one servant, leaving Bessie mistress of
all things. It was a grief to Mrs. Wendover to be separated from home and
children at any time, and she was especially regretful at being absent on
her eldest daughter's birthday; but the Colonel was paramount. If his
cough could be cured by sea air, to the sea he must go, with his faithful
wife in attendance upon him.

'Don't let the children turn the house quite out of windows, darling,'
said Mrs. Wendover, at the moment of parting.

'No, mother dear, we are all going to be goodness itself.'

'I know, dears, you always are. And I hope you will all enjoy
yourselves.'

'We're sure to do that, mother,' answered Reginald, with a cheerfulness
that seemed almost heartless.

The departing parent would not have liked them to be unhappy, but a few
natural tears would have been a pleasing tribute. Not a tear was shed.
Even the little Eva skipped joyously on the doorstep as the phaeton drove
away. The idea of the picnic was all-absorbing.

The Colonel and his wife were to spend a week, at Bournemouth. Ida would
see them no more this year.

'You must come again next summer, Mrs. Wendover said heartily, as she
kissed her daughter's friend.

'Of course she must,' cried Horry. 'She is coming every summer. She is
one of the institutions of Kingthorpe. I only wonder how we ever managed
to get on so long without her.'

All that evening was devoted to the packing of hampers, and to general
skirmishing. The picnic was to be held on the highest hill-top between
Kingthorpe and Winchester, one of those little Lebanons, fair and green,
on which the yew-trees flourished like the cedars of the East, but with a
sturdy British air that was all their own.

The birthday dawned with the soft pearly gray and tender opal tints which
presage a fair noontide. Before six o'clock the children had all besieged
Bessie's door, with noisy tappings and louder congratulations. At seven,
they were all seated at breakfast, the table strewn with birthday gifts,
mostly of that useless and semi-idiotic character peculiar to such
tributes-ormolu inkstands, holding a thimbleful of ink--penholders
warranted to break before they have been used three times--purses with
impossible snaps--photograph frames and pomatum-pots.

Bessie pretended to be enraptured with everything. The purse Horry gave
her was 'too lovely.' Reginald's penholder was the very thing she had
been wanting for an age. Dear little Eva's pomatum-pot was perfection.
The point-lace handkerchief Ida had worked in secret was exquisite.
Blanche's crochet slippers were so lovely that their not being big enough
was hardly a fault. They were much too pretty to be worn. Urania
contributed a more costly gift, in the shape of a perfume cabinet, all
cut-glass, walnut-wood, and ormolu.

'Urania's presents are always meant to crush one,' said Blanche
disrespectfully; 'they are like the shields and bracelets those rude
soldiers flung at poor Tarpeia.'

Urania was to be one of the picnic party. She was to be the only stranger
present. There had been a disappointment about the two cousins. Neither
Brian had accepted the annual summons. One was supposed to be still in
Norway, the other had neglected to answer the letter which had been sent
more than a week ago to his address in Herefordshire.

'I'm afraid you'll find it dreadfully like our every-day picnics,' Bessie
said to Ida, as they were starting.

'I shall be satisfied if it be half as pleasant.'

'Ah, it would have been nice enough if the two Brians had been with us.
Brian Walford is so amusing.'

'He would have sung comic songs, I suppose?' said Ida rather
contemptuously.

'Oh, no; you must not suppose that he is always singing comic songs. He
is one of those versatile people who can do anything.'

'I don't want to be rude about your own flesh and blood Bess, but in a
general way I detest versatile people,' said Ida.

'What a queer girl you are, Ida! I'm afraid you have taken a dislike to
Brian Walford,' complained Bessie.

'No,' said Ida, deep in thought,--the two girls were standing at the
hall-door, waiting for the carriage,--'it is not that.'

'You like the idea of the other Brian better?'

Ida's wild-rose bloom deepened to a rich carnation.

'Oh, Ida,' cried Bessie; 'do you remember what you said about marrying
for money?'

'It was a revolting sentiment; but it was wrung from me by the infinite
vexations of poverty.'

'Wouldn't it be too lovely if Brian the Great were to fall in love with
you, and ask you to be mistress of that dear old Abbey which you admire
so much?

'Don't be ecstatic, Bessie. I shall never be the mistress of the Abbey. I
was not born under a propitious star. There must have been a very ugly
concatenation of planets ruling the heavens at the hour of my birth. You
see, Brian the Great does not even put himself in the way of falling
captive to my charms.'

This was said half in sport, half in bitterness; indeed, there was a
bitter flavour in much of Ida Palliser's mirth. She was thinking of the
stories she had read in which a woman had but to be young and lovely, and
all creation bowed down to her. Yet her beauty had been for the most part
a cause of vexation, and had made people hate her. She had been
infinitely happy during the last six weeks; but embodied hatred had been
close at hand in the presence of Miss Rylance; and if anyone had fallen
in love with her during that time, it was the wrong person.

The young ladies were to go in the landau, leaving the exclusive
enjoyment of Robin's variable humours to Horatio and the juveniles. There
was a general idea that Robin, in conjunction with a hilly country, might
be sooner or later fatal to the young Wendovers; but they went on driving
him, nevertheless, as everybody knew that if he did ultimately prove
disastrous to them it would be with the best intentions and without loss
of temper.

Bessie and Ida took their seats in the roomy carriage, Reginald mounted
to the perch beside the coachman, and they drove triumphantly through the
village to the gate of Dr. Rylance's cottage, where Urania stood waiting
for them.

'I hope we haven't kept you long?' said Bessie.

'Not more than a quarter of an hour,' answered Urania, meekly; 'but that
seems rather long in a broiling sun. You always have such insufferably
hot weather on your birthdays, Bessie.'

'It will be cool enough on the hills by-and-by,' said Bess,
apologetically.

'I daresay there will be a cold wind,' returned Urania, who wore an
unmistakable air of discontent. 'There generally is on these unnatural
September days.'

'One would think you bore a grudge against the month of September because
I was born in it,' retorted Bessie. And then, remembering her
obligations, she hastened to add, 'How can I thank you sufficiently for
that exquisite scent-case? It is far too lovely.'

'I am very glad you like it. One hardly knows what to choose.'

Miss Rylance had taken her seat in the landau by this time, and they were
bowling along the smooth high road at that gentle jog-trot pace affected
by a country gentleman's coachman.

The day was heavenly; the wind due south; a day on which life--mere
sensual existence--is a delight. The landscape still wore its richest
summer beauty--not a leaf had fallen. They were going upward, to the
hilly region between Kingthorpe and Winchester, to a spot where there was
a table-shaped edifice of stones, supposed to be of Druidic origin.

The young Wendovers were profoundly indifferent to the Druids, and to
that hypothetical race who lived ages before the Druids, and have broken
out all over the earth in stony excrescences, as yet vaguely classified.
That three-legged granite table, whose origin was lost in the remoteness
of past time, seemed to the young Wendovers a thing that had been created
expressly for their amusement, to be climbed upon or crawled under as the
fancy moved them. It was a capital rallying-point for a picnic or a gipsy
tea-drinking.

'We are to have no grown-ups to-day,' said Reginald, looking down from
his place beside the coachman. 'The pater and mater are away, and Aunt
Betsy has a headache; so we can have things all our own way.'

'You are mistaken, Reginald,' said Urania; 'my father is going to join us
by-and-by. I hope he won't be considered an interloper. I told him that
it was to be a young party, and that I was sure he would be in the way;
but he wouldn't take my advice. He is going to ride over in the broiling
sun. Very foolish, I think.'

'I thought Dr. Rylance was in London?'

'He was till last night. He came down on purpose to be at your picnic.'

'I am sure I feel honoured,' said Bessie.

'Do you? I don't think _you_ are the attraction,' answered Urania, with a
cantankerous glance at Miss Palliser.

Ida's dark eyes were looking far away across the hills. It seemed as if
she neither heard Miss Rylance's speech nor saw the sneer which
emphasized it.

Dr. Rylance's substantial hunter came plodding over the turfy ridge
behind them five minutes afterwards, and presently he was riding at a
measured trot beside the carriage door, congratulating Bessie on the
beauty of the day, and saying civil things to every one.

'I could not resist the temptation to give myself a day's idleness in the
Hampshire air,' he said.

Reginald felt an utterably savage. What a trouble-feast the man was. They
would have to adapt the proceedings of the day to his middle-aged good
manners. There could be no wild revelry, no freedom. Dr. Rylance was an
embodiment of propriety.

Half-an-hour after dinner they were all scattered upon the hills.

Reginald, who cherished a secret passion for Ida, which was considerably
in advance of his years, and who had calculated upon being her guide,
philosopher, and friend all through the day, found himself ousted by the
West End physician, who took complete possession of Miss Palliser, under
the pretence of explaining the history--altogether speculative--of the
spot. He discoursed eloquently about the Druids, expatiated upon the City
of Winchester, dozing in the sunshine yonder, among its fat water
meadows. He talked of the Saxons and the Normans, of William of Wykeham,
and his successors, until poor Ida felt sick and faint from very
weariness. It was all very delightful talk, no doubt--the polished
utterance of a man who read his _Saturday Review_ and _Athenaeum_
diligently, saw an occasional number of _Fors Clavigera_, and even
skimmed the more aesthetic papers in the _Architect_; but to Ida this
expression of modern culture was all weariness. She would rather have
been racing those wild young Wendovers down the slippery hill-side, on
which they were perilling their necks; she would rather have been lying
beside the lake in Kingthorpe Park, reading her well-thumbed Tennyson, or
her shabby little Keats.

Her thoughts had wandered ever so far away when she was called back to
the work-a-day world by finding that Dr. Rylance's conversation had
suddenly slipped from archaeology into a more personal tone.

'Are you really going away to-morrow?' he asked.

'Yes,' answered Ida, sadly, looking at one of the last of the
butterflies, whose brief summertide of existence was wearing to its
close, like her own.

'You are going back to Mauleverer Manor?'

'Yes. I have another half-year of bondage, I am going back to drudgery
and self-contempt, to be brow-beaten by Miss Pew, and looked down upon by
most of her pupils. The girls in my own class are very fond of me, but
I'm afraid their fondness is half pity. The grown-up girls with happy
homes and rich fathers despise me. I hardly wonder at it. Genteel poverty
certainly is contemptible. There is nothing debasing in a smock-frock or
a fustian jacket. The labourers I see about Kingthorpe have a glorious
air of independence, and I daresay are as proud, in their way, as if they
were dukes. But shabby finery--genteel gowns worn threadbare: there is a
deep degradation in those.'

'Not for you,' answered Dr. Rylance, earnestly, with an admiring look in
his blue-gray eyes. They were somewhat handsome eyes when they did not
put on their cruel expression. 'Not for you. Nothing could degrade,
nothing could exalt you. You are superior to the accident of your
surroundings.'

'It's very kind of you to say that; but it's a fallacy, all the same,'
said Ida. 'Do you think Napoleon at St. Helena, squabbling with Sir
Hudson Lowe, is as dignified a figure as Napoleon at the Tuileries, in
the zenith of his power? But I ought not to be grumbling at fate. I have
been happy for six sunshiny weeks. If I were to live to be a century old,
I could never forget how good people at Kingthorpe have been to me. I
will go back to my old slavery, and live upon the memory of that
happiness.'

'Why should you go back to slavery?' asked Dr. Rylance, taking her hand
in his and holding it with so strong a grasp that she could hardly have
withdrawn it without violence. 'There is a home at Kingthorpe ready to
receive you. If you have been happy there in the last few weeks, why not
try if you can be happy there always? There is a house in Cavendish
Square whose master would be proud to make you its mistress. Ida, we have
seen very little of each other, and I may be precipitate in hazarding
this offer; but I am as fond of you as if I had known you half a
lifetime, and I believe that I could make your life happy.'

Ida Palliser's heart thrilled with a chill sense of horror and aversion.
She had talked recklessly enough of her willingness to marry for money,
and, lo! here was a prosperous man laying two handsomely furnished houses
at her feet--a man of gentlemanlike bearing, good-looking, well-informed,
well-spoken, with no signs of age in his well-preserved face and figure;
a man whom any woman, friendless, portionless, a mere waif upon earth's
surface, at the mercy of all the winds that blow, ought proudly and
gladly to accept for her husband.

No, too bold had been her challenge to fate. She had said that she would
marry any honest man who would lift her out of the quagmire of poverty:
but she was not prepared to accept Dr. Rylance's offer, generous as it
sounded. She would rather go back to the old treadmill, and her old
fights with Miss Pew, than reign supreme over the dainty cottage at
Kingthorpe and the house in Cavendish Square. Her time had not come.

Dr. Rylance had not risen to eloquence in making his offer; and Ida's
reply was in plainest words.

'I am very sorry,' she faltered. 'I feel that it is very good of you to
make such a proposal; but I cannot accept it.'

'There is some one else,' said the doctor. 'Your heart is given away
already.'

'No,' she answered sadly; 'my heart is like an empty sepulchre.'

'Then why should I not hope to win you? I have been hasty, no doubt: but
I want if possible to prevent your return to that odious school. If you
would but make me happy by saying yes, you could stay with your kind
friends at The Knoll till the day that makes you mistress of my house. We
might be married in time to spend November in Italy. It is the nicest
month for Rome. You have never seen Italy, perhaps?'

'No. I have seen very little that is worth seeing.'

'Ida, why will you not say yes? Do you doubt that I should try my
uttermost to make you happy?'

'No,' she answered gravely, but I doubt my own capacity for that kind of
happiness.'

Dr. Rylance was deeply wounded. He had been petted and admired by women
during the ten years of his widowhood, favoured and a favourite
everywhere. He had made up his mind deliberately to marry this penniless
girl. Looked at from a worldling's point of view, it would seem, at the
first glance, an utterly disadvantageous alliance: but Dr. Rylance had an
eye that could sweep over horizons other than are revealed to the average
gaze, and he told himself that so lovely a woman as Ida Palliser must
inevitably become the fashion in that particular society which Dr.
Rylance most affected: and a wife famed for her beauty and elegance
Would assuredly be of more advantage to a fashionable physician than a
common-place wife with a fortune. Dr. Rylance liked money; but he liked
it only for what it could buy. He had no sons, and he was much too fond
of himself to lead laborious days in order to leave a large fortune to
his daughter. He had bought a lease of his London house, which would last
his time; he had bought the freehold of the Kingthorpe cottage; and he
was living up to his income. When he died there would be two houses of
furniture, plate, pictures, horses and carriages, and the Kingthorpe
cottage, to be realized for Urania. He estimated these roughly as worth
between six and seven thousand pounds, and he considered seven thousand
pounds an ample fortune for his only daughter. Urania was in happy
ignorance of the modesty of his views. She imagined herself an heiress on
a much larger scale.

To offer himself to a penniless girl of whose belongings he knew
absolutely nothing, and to be peremptorily refused! Dr. Rylance could
hardly believe such a thing possible. The girl must be trifling with him,
playing her fish, with the fixed intention of landing him presently. It
was in the nature of girls to do that kind of thing. 'Why do you reject
me?' he asked seriously 'is it because I am old enough to be your
father?'

'No, I would marry a man old enough to be my grandfather if I loved him,'
answered Ida, with cruel candour.

'And I am to understand that your refusal is irrevocable? he urged.

'Quite irrevocable. But I hope you believe that I am grateful for the
honour you have done me.'

'That is the correct thing to say upon such occasions, answered Dr.
Rylance, coldly; 'I wonder the sentence is not written in your copy
books, among those moral aphorisms which are of so little use in after
life.'

'The phrase may seem conventional, but in my case it means much more than
usual,' said Ida; 'a girl who has neither money nor friends has good
reason to be grateful when a gentleman asks her to be his wife.'

'I wish I could be grateful for your gratitude,' said Dr. Rylance, 'but I
can't. I want your love, and nothing else. Is it on Urania's account that
you reject me?' he urged. 'If you think that she would be a hindrance to
your happiness, pray dismiss the thought. If she did not accommodate
herself pleasantly to my choice her life would have to be spent apart
from us. I would brook no rebellion.'

The cruel look had come into Dr. Rylance's eyes. He was desperately
angry. He was surprised, humiliated, indignant. Never had the possibility
of rejection occurred to him. It had been for him to decide whether he
would or would not take this girl for his wife; and after due
consideration of her merits and all surrounding circumstances, he had
decided that he would take her.

'Is my daughter the stumbling-block?' he urged.

'No,' she answered, 'there is no stumbling-block. I would marry you
to-morrow, if I felt that I could love you as a wife ought to love her
husband. I said once--only a little while ago--that I would marry for
money. I find that I am not so base as I thought myself.'

'Perhaps the temptation is not large enough,' said Dr. Rylance. 'If I had
been Brian Wendover, and the owner of Kingthorpe Abbey, you would hardly
have rejected me so lightly.'

Ida crimsoned to the roots of her hair. The shaft went home. It was as if
Dr. Rylance had been inside her mind and knew all the foolish day-dreams
she had dreamed in the idle summer afternoons, under the spreading cedar
branches, or beside the lake in the Abbey grounds. Before she had time to
express her resentment a cluster of young Wendovers came sweeping down
the greensward at her side, and in the next minute Blanche was hanging
upon her bodily, like a lusty parasite strangling a slim young tree.

'Darling,' cried Blanche gaspingly, 'such news. Brian has come--cousin
Brian--after all, though he thought he couldn't. But he made a great
effort, and he has come all the way as fast as he could tear to be here
on Bessie's birthday. Isn't it too jolly?'

'All the way from Norway?' asked Ida.

'Yes,' said Urania, who had been carried down the hill with the torrent
of Wendovers, 'all the way from Norway. Isn't it nice of him?'

Blanche's frank face was brimming over with smiles. The boys were all
laughing. How happy Brian's coming had made them!

Ida looked at them wonderingly.

'How pleased you all seem!' she said. 'I did not know you were so fond of
your cousin. I thought it was the other you liked.'

'Oh, we like them both,' said Blanche, 'and it is so nice of Brian to
come on purpose for Bessie's birthday. Do come and see him. He is on the
top of the hill talking to Bess; and the kettle boils, and we are just
going to have tea. We are all starving.'

'After such a dinner!' exclaimed Ida.

'Such a dinner, indeed!--two or three legs of fowls and a plate or so of
pie!' ejaculated Reginald, contemptuously. 'I began to be hungry a
quarter of an hour afterwards. Come and see Brian.'

Ida looked round her wonderingly, feeling as if she was in a dream.

Dr. Rylance had disappeared. Urania was smiling at her sweetly, more
sweetly than it was her wont to smile at Ida Palliser.

'One would think she knew that I had refused her father,' mused Ida.

They all climbed the hill, the children talking perpetually, Ida
unusually silent. The smoke of a gipsy fire was going up from a hollow
near the Druid altar, and two figures were standing beside the altar;
one, a young man, with his arm resting on the granite slab, and his head
bent as he talked, with seeming earnestness, to Bessie Wendover. He
turned as the crowd approached, and Bessie introduced him to Miss
Palliser. 'My cousin Brian--my dearest friend Ida,' she said.

'She is desperately fond of the Abbey,' said Blanche; 'so I hope she will
like you. "Love me, love my dog," says the proverb, so I suppose one
might say, "Love my house, love me."'

Ida stood silent amidst her loquacious friends, looking at the stranger
with a touch of wonder. No, this was not the image which she had pictured
to herself. Mr. Wendover was very good-looking--interesting even; he had
the kind of face which women call nice--a pale complexion, dreamy gray
eyes, thin lips, a well-shaped nose, a fairly intellectual forehead. But
the Brian of her fancies was a man of firmer mould, larger features, a
more resolute air, an eye with more fire, a brow marked by stronger
lines. For some unknown reason she had fancied the master of the Abbey
like that Sir Tristram Wendover who had been so loyal a subject and so
brave a soldier, and before whose portrait she had so often lingered in
dreamy contemplation.

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