The Golden Calf, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

free admittance to the best theatres on the best nights; prescribing for newspaper-men and literary lions, who sang his praises wherever they went.

Urania had fallen at once into all the tricks and manners of the new school. She had taken to short waists and broad sashes, and a style of drapery which accentuated the elegant slimness of her figure. She affected out-of-the-way colours, and quaint combinations--pale pinks and olive greens, tawny yellow and faded russet--and bought her gowns at a Japanese warehouse, where limp lengths of flimsy cashmere were mixed in artistic confusion with sixpenny teapots and paper umbrellas. In a word, Miss Rylance had become a disciple of the peacock-feather school of art, and affected to despise every other development of intellect, or beauty.

This was the first time that she and Ida had met since the latter's return to Kingthorpe, except indeed for briefest greetings in the churchyard after morning service. Ida had not yet upbraided her for the trick of which she was the author and originator, but Urania was in no wise grateful for this forbearance. She had acted with deliberate maliciousness; and she wanted to know that her malice had given pain. The whole thing was a failure if it had not hurt the girl who had been audacious enough to outshine Miss Rylance, and to fascinate Miss Rylance's father. Urania had no idea that the physician had offered himself and his two houses to Ida Palliser, nay, had even pledged himself to sacrifice his daughter at the shrine of his new love. She knew that he admired Miss Palliser more than he had ever admired anyone else within her knowledge, and this was more than enough to make Ida hateful.

Ida was particularly obnoxious this evening, in that pale pink cashmere gown, with a falling collar of fine old Brussels point, a Christmas gift from Mrs. Wendover. The gown might not be the highest development of the Grosvenor Gallery school, but it was at once picturesque and becoming, and Ida was looking her loveliest.

'Why have you never come to see me since your return?' inquired Urania, with languid graciousness.

'I did not think you wanted me,' Ida answered, coolly.

'I am always glad to see my friends. I stop at home on Thursday afternoons on purpose; but perhaps you have not quite forgiven Bess and me for that little bit of fun we indulged in last September,' said Urania.

'I have quite forgiven Bess her share of the joke,' answered Ida, scanning Miss Rylance's smiling countenance with dark, scornful eyes, 'because I know she had no idea of giving me pain.'

'But won't you forgive me too? Are you going to leave me out in the cold?'

'I don't think you care a straw whether I forgive or do not forgive you. You wanted to wound me--to humiliate me--and you succeeded--to a certain degree. But you see I have survived the humiliation. You did not hurt me quite so much as you intended, perhaps.'

'What a too absurd view to take of the thing!' cried Urania, with an injured air. 'An innocent practical joke, not involving harm of any kind; a little girlish prank played on the spur of the moment. I thought you were more sensible than to be offended--much less seriously angry--at any such nonsense.'

Ida contemplated her enemy silently for a few moments, as her hands wandered softly through one of those Kinder-scenen which she knew by heart.

'If I am mistaken in your motives it is I who have to apologize,' she said, quietly. 'Perhaps I am inclined to make too much of what is really nothing. But I detest all practical jokes, and I should have thought you were the very last person to indulge in one, Miss Rylance. Sportiveness is hardly in your line.'

'Nobody is always wise,' murmured Urania, with her disagreeable simper.

'Not even Miss Rylance?' questioned Ida, without looking up from the keys.

'Please don't quarrel,' pleaded Bessie, piteously; 'such a bad use for the last night of the year. It was more my fault than anyone else's, though the suggestion did certainly come from Urania--but no harm has come of it--nor good either, I am sorry to say--and I have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Why should the dismal failure be raked up to-night?'

'I should not have spoken of it if Miss Rylance had been silent,' said Ida; and here, happily, the two young men came in, and made at once for the group of girls by the piano, whereupon Urania had an opportunity of parading her newest ideas, all second, third, or even fourth-hand, before the young Oxonians. One young Oxonian was chillingly indifferent to the later developments of modern thought, and had eyes for no one but Bessie, whose childish face beamed with smiles as he talked to her, although his homely theme was old Sam Jones's rheumatics, and the Providence which had preserved Martha Morris's boy from instant death when he tumbled into the fire. It was only parish talk, but Bessie felt as happy as if one of the saints of old had condescended to converse with her--proud and pleased, too, when Mr. Jardine told her how grateful old Jones was for her occasional visits, and how her goodness to Mrs. Morris had made a deep impression upon that personage, commonly reported to have 'a temper' and to be altogether a difficult subject.

The conversation drifted not unnaturally from parochial to more personal topics, and Mr. Jardine showed himself interested in Bessie's pursuits, studies, and amusements.

'I hear so much of you from those two brothers of yours,' said the Curate--'fine, frank fellows. They often join me in my walks.'

'I'm sure it is very good of you to have anything to say to them,' replied Bessie, feeling, like other girls of eighteen, that there could hardly be anything more despicable--from a Society point of view--than her two brothers.' They are laboriously idle all through the holidays.'

'Well, I daresay they might work a little more, with ultimate advantage,' said Mr. Jardine, smiling; 'but it is pleasant to see boys enjoy life so thoroughly. They are fond of all open air amusements, and they are keen observers, and I find that they think a good deal, which is a stage towards work.'

'They are not utterly idiotic,' sighed Bessie; 'but they never read, and they break things in a dreadful way. The legs of our chairs snap under those two boys as if old oak were touchwood; and Blanche and Eva, who ought to know better, devote all their energies to imitating them.'

The other gentlemen had come in by this time, and Dr. Rylance came gliding across the room with his gentlemanly but somewhat catlike tread, and planted himself behind Ida, bending down to question her about her music, and letting her see that he admired her as much as ever, and had even forgiven her for refusing him. But she rose as soon as she decently could, and left the piano.

'Miss Rylance will sing, I hope,' she said, politely. Miss Wendover came over to make the same request, and Urania sane the last fashionable ballad, 'Blind Man's Holiday,' in a hard chilly voice which was as unpleasant as a voice well could be without being actually out of tune.

After this Bessie sang 'Darby and Joan,' in a sweet contralto, but with a doleful slowness which hung heavily upon the spirits of the company, and a duly dismal effect having been produced, the young ladies were cordially thanked for--leaving off.

A pair of whist-tables were now started for the elders, while the three girls and the two Oxonians still clustered round the piano, and seemed to find plenty to talk about till sweetly and suddenly upon the still night air came the silver tones of the church bells.

Miss Wendover started up from the card-table with a solemn look, as the curate opened a window and let in a flood of sound. A silent hush fell upon everyone.

'The New Year is born,' said Aunt Betsy; 'may it spare us those we love, and end as peacefully for us as the year that is just dead.'

And then they all shook hands with each other and parted.

The dance at The Knoll was a success, and Ida danced with the best men in the room, and was as much courted and admired as if she had been the greatest heiress in that part of Hampshire. Urania Rylance went simpering about the room telling everybody, in the kindest way, who Miss Palliser was, and how she had been an ill-used drudge at a suburban finishing school, before that dear good Miss Wendover took her as a useful companion; but even that crushing phrase, 'useful companion,' did not degrade Ida in the eyes of her admirers.

'Palliser's a good name,' said one youth. 'There's a Sir Vernon Palliser--knew him and his brother at Cambridge--members of the Alpine Club--great athletes. Any relation?'

'Very distant, I should think, from what I know of Miss Palliser's circumstances;' answered Miss Rylance, with an incredulous sneer.

But Urania failed in making youth and beauty contemptible, and was fain to admit to herself that Ida Palliser was the belle of the room. Dr. Rylance, who had not been invited, but who looked so well and so young that no one could be angry with him for coming, hung upon Miss Palliser's steps, and tortured her with his politeness.

For Ida the festivity was not all happiness. She would have been happier at the Homestead, sitting by the fire reading aloud to Miss Wendover--happier almost anywhere--for she had not only to endure a kind of gentlemanly persecution from Dr. Rylance, but she was tormented by an ever-present dread of Brian Walford's appearance. Bessie had sent him a telegram only that morning, imploring him, as a personal favour, to be present at her ball, vowing that she would be deeply offended with him if he did not come; and more than once in the course of the evening Bessie had told Ida that there was still time, there was a train now just due at Winchester, and that might have brought him. Ida breathed more freely after midnight, when it was obviously too late for any one else to arrive.

'It is your fault,' said Bessie, pettishly. 'If you had not treated him very unkindly at Mauleverer he would be here to-night. He never failed me before.'

Ida reddened, and then grew very pale.

'I see,' she said, 'you think I deprive you of your cousin's society. I will ask Miss Wendover to let me go back to France.'

'No, no, no, you inhuman creature! how can you talk like that? You know that I love you ever so much better than Brian, though he is my own kith and kin. I would not lose you for worlds. I don't care a straw about his coming, for my own sake. Only I should so like you to marry him, and be one of us. Oh, here's that odious Dr. Rylance stealing after you. Aunt Betsy is quite right--the man would like to marry you--but you won't accept him, will you, darling?--not even to have your own house in Cavendish Square, a victoria and brougham, and all those blessings we hear so much about from Urania. Remember, you would have her for a stepdaughter into the bargain.'

'Be assured, dear Bess, I shall never be Urania's stepmother. And now, darling, put all thoughts of matrimony out of your head; for me, at least.'

That brief flash of Christmas and New Year's gaiety was soon over. The Knoll resumed its wonted domestic calm. Dr. Rylance went back