The Golden Calf Part 33

'Thank you,' replied Horatio; 'I hope you don't suppose I am going to turn out of my den, or to allow a pack of girls to ransack my drawers and smoke my favourite pipe.'

'I don't suppose any decent-minded girl would consent to sleep in such a loathsome hole,' retorted Bessie. 'She would prefer a pillow and a rug on the landing.'

'My den is quite as tidy as that barrack of yours,' said the Wykhamiste, 'though I haven't yet risen to disfiguring my walls with kitchen plates and fourpenny fans. The cheap aesthetic is not my line.

'Don't pretend to be cantankerous, Horatio,' said Ida, looking at him with the loveliest eyes, twinkling a little at his expense; 'we all know that you are br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with good-humour.

Perhaps Aunt Betsy will take in some of your visitors, Bess. I am sure they shall be welcome to my room, if I have to sleep in the poultry yard.'

'Happy thought,' cried Bessie; 'I'll sound the dear creature as to her views on the subject this very day.'

Aunt Betsy was all goodness, and offered to accommodate half a dozen young ladies of neat and cleanly habits. She protested that she would have no candle-grease droppers or door-mat despisers in her house.

'The Homestead is the only toy I have,' she said,' and I won't have it ill-used.'

So six irreproachable young women, the pride of careful mothers, were billeted on Miss Wendover, while the more Bohemian damsels were to revel in the improvised accommodation of The Knoll.

That particular Christmas-tide at Kingthorpe was a time of innocent mirth and youthful happiness which might have banished black care, for the nonce, from the oldest, weariest breast. For Ida, still young and fresh, loving and lovable, the contagion of that youthful mirth was irresistible.

She forgot by how fine a hair hung the sword that dangled over her guilty head--or began to think that the hair was tough enough to hold good for ever. And what mattered the existence of the sword provided it was never to fall? Sometimes it seemed to her in the pure and perfect happiness of this calm rural home, this useful, innocent life, as if that ill-advised act of hers had never been acted--as if that autumn morning, that one half-hour in the modern Gothic church, still smelling of mortar and pitch-pine, set in flat fields, from which October mists were rising ghostlike, was no more than a troubled dream--a dream that she had dreamed and done with for ever. Could it be that such an hour--so dim, so shadowy to look back upon from the substantial footing of her present existence--was to give colour to all the rest of her life? No, it was the dark dream of a troubled past, and she had nothing to do but to forget it as soon as possible.

Forgetfulness--or at least a temporary kind of forgetfulness--was tolerably easy while Brian Walford was civil enough to stay away from Kingthorpe; but the problem of life would be difficult were he to appear in the midst of that cordial circle--difficult to impossibility.

'It is evident that he doesn't mean to come while I am here,' she told herself, 'and that at least is kind. But in that case I must not stay here too long. It is not fair that I should shut him out of his uncle's house. It is I who am the interloper.'

She thought with bitterest grief of any change from this peaceful life among friends who loved her, to service in the house of a stranger; but her conscience recognised the necessity for such a change.

She had no right to squat upon the family of the man she had married--to exclude him from his rightful heritage, she who refused to acknowledge his right as her husband. He had done her a deep wrong; he had deceived her cruelly; and she deemed that she had a right to repudiate a bond tainted by fraud; but she knew that she had no right to banish him from his family circle--to dwell, under false pretences, by the hearth of his kindred.

'I did wrong in coming here,' she thought; 'it was a mean thing to do.

Yet how could I resist the temptation, when no other place offered, and when I knew I was such a burden at home?'

In the very midst of her happiness, therefore, there was always this corroding care, this remorseful sense of wrong-doing. This present life of hers was all blissful, but it was bliss which could not, which must not, last. Yet what fort.i.tude would be needed ere she could break this flowery bondage, loosen these dear fetters which love had laid upon her!

Once, during that jovial Christmas season, she hinted at a possible change in the future.

'What a happy day this has been!' she said as she walked across the wintry fields with Miss Wendover on the verge of midnight, after a Christmas dinner and a long evening of Christmas games at The Knoll, Needham marching in front of them with an unnecessary lantern, and all the stars of heaven shining in blue frosty brilliance above their heads, 'and what a happy home! I feel it is a privilege to have seen so much of it; and by-and-by, when I am among strangers--'

'What do you mean?' exclaimed Aunt Betsy, sharply; 'there is to be no such by-and-by; or, if there ever be such a time, it will be your making, not mine. You suit me capitally, and I mean to keep you as long as ever I can, without absolute selfishness. If an eligible husband should want to carry you off, I must let you go; but I will part with you to no one less than a husband--unless, indeed,' and here Betsy Wendover's voice took a colder and graver tone, 'unless you should want to better yourself, as the servants say, and get more money than I can afford to give you. I know your accomplishments are worth much more; but it is not everybody to whom you would be as their own flesh and blood.'

'Oh, Aunt Betsy, can you think that I should ever set money in the scale against your kindness--your infinite goodness to me?'

'When you talk of a change by-and-by, you set me thinking. Perhaps you are already beginning to tire of this rustic dullness.'

'No, no, no; I never was so happy in my life--never since I was a child playing about on board the ship that brought my mother and me to England.

Everybody were kind to me, and made much of me. My mother and I adored each other; and I did not know that she was dying. Soon after we landed she grew dangerously ill, and lay for weeks in a darkened room, which I was not allowed to enter. It was a dreary, miserable time; a lonely, friendless child pining in a furnished lodging, with no one but a servant and a sick-nurse to speak to; and then, one dark November morning, the black hea.r.s.e and coaches came to the door, and I stood peeping behind a corner of the parlour blind, and saw my mother's coffin carried out of the house. No; from the time we left the ship till I came to The Knoll I had never known what perfect happiness meant.'

'Surely you must have had some happy days with your father?' said Aunt Betsy.

'Very few. There was always a cloud. Papa is not the kind of man who can be cheerful under difficulties. Besides, I have seen so little of him, poor dear. He did not come home from India till I was thirteen, and then he fell in love with my stepmother, and married her, and took her to France, where he fancies it is cheaper to live than in England. Yet I cannot help thinking there are corners of dear old England where he might find a prettier home and live quite as cheaply.'

'Of course, if he were a sensible man; but I gather from all you have told me that there is a gentlemanlike helplessness about him--as of a person who ought to have inherited a handsome income, and is out of his element as a struggler.'

'That is quite true,' answered Ida; 'my father was not born to wrestle with Fate.'

They were at the gla.s.s door which opened into the morning-room by this time. The room was steeped in rosy light--such a pretty room, with chintz curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the only ponderous piece of furniture an old j.a.panese cabinet, rich in gold work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a large shallow brown gla.s.s vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt Betsy's favourite Persian cat, a marvel of fluffy whiteness, rose from the hearth to welcome them. It was a delightful picture of home life.

Miss Wendover seemed in no hurry to go to bed. She seated herself in the low arm-chair by the fire, and allowed the Persian to rub its white head and arch its back against her dark brocade skirt. No one within twenty miles of Winchester wore such brocades or such velvets as Miss Wendover's. They were supposed to be woven on purpose for her. Her gowns were gowns of the old school, and lasted for years, smelling of the sandal or camphor wood chests in which they reposed for months at a stretch, yet, by virtue of some wonderful tact in the wearer, never looked dowdy or out of date.

'Now,' said Miss Wendover, with a resolute air, 'let us understand each other, my dear Ida. I don't quite like what you said just now; and I want to hear for certain that you are satisfied with your life here.'

'I am utterly happy here, dear Aunt Betsy. Is that a sufficient answer?

Only, when I came here, I felt that it was charity--an impulse of kindness for a friendless girl--that prompted you to offer me a home; that, in accepting your kindness, I had no right to become an enc.u.mbrance; that, having enjoyed your genial hospitality for a s.p.a.ce, I ought to move on upon my journey, to go where I could be of more use.'

'You too ridiculous girl, can you suppose that you are not useful to me?'

exclaimed Aunt Betsy, impatiently. 'Is there a single hour of your day unoccupied? Granted that my original motive was a desire to give a comfortable home to a dear girl who seemed in need of new surroundings, but that idea would hardly have occurred to me unless I had begun to feel the want of some energetic helpmate to lighten the load of my daily duties. The experiment has answered admirably, so far as I am concerned.

But it is just possible you feel otherwise. You may think that you could make better use of your powers--earn double my poor salary, win distinction by your fine playing, dress better, see more of the world. I daresay to a girl of your age Kingthorpe seems a kind of living death.'

'So far from that, I love Kingthorpe with all my heart, so much that I almost hate myself for not having been born here, for not being able to say these are my native fields, I was cradled among these hills.'

'So be it. If you love Kingthorpe and love me, you have nothing to do but to stay here till the hero of your life-story comes to carry you off.'

'There will be no such hero.'

'Oh, yes, there will! Every story, however humble, has its hero; but yours is going to be a very magnificent personage, I hope.'

The little clock on the chimney-piece chimed the half-hour after midnight, whereupon Aunt Betsy started up and called for her candle. She and Ida kissed as they wished each other good night on the threshold of the elder lady's room.

After this conversation, how could Ida ever again broach the subject of departure? and yet she felt that sooner or later she must depart. Honour, conscience, womanly feeling, forbade that she should remain at the cost of Brian Walford's banishment.

CHAPTER XIII.

KINGTHORPE SOCIETY.

On New Year's Eve Miss Wendover gave one of her famous dinner-parties; famous because it was always said that her dinners were, on their scale, better than anybody else's--yea, even that Dr. Rylance's, although that gentleman spared no expense, and had been known to induce the French cook from the Dolphin at Southampton to come over and prepare the feast for him.

Miss Wendover's dinner was an excuse for the bringing forth of rich stores of old china, old gla.s.s, and older silver--the acc.u.mulations of aunts and uncles for past generations, and in some part of the lady herself, who had the true spirit of a collector, that special gift which the French connoisseur calls _le flair_. Ida and the lady of the house worked diligently all the morning in papering and polishing these treasures; and the dinner table, with its antique silver, Derby china, heavy diamond-cut gla.s.s, and white and scarlet exotics, was a picture to gladden the eyes of Aunt Betsy's guests.

The party consisted of Colonel and Mrs. Wendover, with their daughter Bessie, admitted to this sacred function for the first time in her young life, and duly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion; the Vicar and his wife; the new curate, an Oxford M.A., and a sprig of a good old family tree, altogether something very superior in the way of curates; Mr. and Mrs. Hildrop Havenant, the great people of a neighbouring settlement, with their eldest son, also an Oxonion; and Dr. and Miss Rylance.

'Be sure you two girls look your best to-night,' said Miss Wendover, as she sat before the fire with Bessie and Ida, enjoying the free and easy luxury of a substantial afternoon tea, which would enable them all to be gracefully indifferent to the more solid features of dinner, and duly on the alert, to make conversation. 'We shall have three eligible men.'

'How do you make three, Aunt Betsy?' inquired her niece. 'Of course we all know that young Hildrop Havenant is heir to nearly all the land between Havenant and Romsey; but he is such a ma.s.s of affectation that I can't imagine anybody wanting to marry him. And as for Mr. Jardine--'