The Golden Calf Part 27

Poor little Mrs. Palliser made strenuous efforts to keep the spa.r.s.ely furnished dusty house as clean and trim as it could be kept; but her life was a perpetual conflict with other people's untidiness.

The house was let furnished, and everything was in the third-rate French style--inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers, chairs cus.h.i.+oned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham tortoisesh.e.l.l clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece, alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the rooms, which seemed mere cells to Ida after the s.p.a.ciousness of Mauleverer Manor and The Knoll. She wondered how her father and mother could breathe in such rooms.

That bed-chamber to which Mrs. Palliser introduced her step-daughter was even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking chair, a battered old table, a heap of old ill.u.s.trated newspapers, and torn toy-books.

'You won't mind Vernon's using the room in the day, dear, will you?' said Mrs. Palliser, apologetically. 'It shall be tidied for you at night.'

This meant that in the daytime Ida would have no place for retreat, no nook or corner of the house which she might call her own. She submitted meekly even to this deprivation, feeling that she was an intruder who had no right to be there.

'I should like to see my father soon,' she said, with a trembling lip, stooping down to caress Vernon, who had followed them upstairs.

He was a lovely, fair-haired boy, with big candid blue eyes, a lovable, confiding child, full of life and spirits and friendly feeling towards all mankind and the whole animal creation, down to its very lowest forms.

'You shall have your breakfast with him,' said Mrs. Palliser, feeling that she was conferring a great favour, for the Captain's breakfast was a meal apart. 'I don't say but what he'll be a little cross to you at first; but you must put up with that. He'll come round afterwards.'

'He has not seen me for two years and a half,' said Ida, thinking that fatherly affection ought to count for something under such circ.u.mstances.

'Yes, it's only two years and a half,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, 'and you were to have stayed at Mauleverer Manor three years. Miss Pew is a wicked old woman to cheat your father out of six months' board and tuition. He paid her fifty pounds in one lump when he articled you--fifty pounds--a heap of money for people in our position; and here you are, come back to us like a bad penny.'

'I am very sorry,' faltered Ida, reddening at that unflattering comparison. 'But I worked very hard at Mauleverer, and am tolerably experienced in tuition. I must try to get a governess's situation directly, and then I shall be paid a salary, and shall be able to give you back the fifty pounds by degrees.'

'Ah, that's the dreadful part of it all,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, who was very seldom in the open air, and had that despondent view of life common to people who live within four narrow walls. 'Goodness knows how you are ever to get a situation without references. Miss Pew says you are not to refer to her; and who else is there who knows anything of you or your capacity?'

'Yes, there is some one else. Bessie Wendover and her family.'

'The people you went to visit in Hamps.h.i.+re. Ah! there went another five pounds in a lump. You have been a heavy expense to us, Ida. I don't know whether anyone wanting to employ you as a governess would take such a reference as that. People are so particular. But we must hope for the best, and in the meantime you can make yourself useful at home in taking care of Vernon and teaching him his letters. He is dreadfully backward.'

'He is an angel,' said Ida, lifting the cherub in her arms, and letting the fair, curly head nestle upon her shoulder. 'I will wait upon him like a slave. You do love me, don't you, pet?'

'Ess, I love 'oo, but I don't know who 'oo is. _Connais pas_,' said Vernon, shaking his head vehemently.

'I am your sister, darling, your only sister.'

'My half-sister,' said Vernon. 'Maman said I had a half-sister, and she was naughty. _Dites donc_, would a whole sister be twice as big as you?'

Thus in his baby language, which may be easier imagined than described, gravely questioned the boy.

'I am your sister, dearest, heart and soul. There is no such thing as half-love or half-sisterhood between us. You should not have talked to him like that, mother,' said Ida, turning her reproachful gaze upon her step-mother, who was melted to tears.

'Your father was so upset by Miss Pew's letter,' she murmured apologetically. 'To pay fifty pounds for you, and for it to end in such humiliation as that. You must own that it was hard for us.'

'It was harder for me,' said Ida; 'I had to stand up and face that wicked woman, who knew that I had done no wrong, and who wreaked her malignity upon me because I am cleverer and better-looking than ever she was in her life.'

'I must go and make your father's omelette,' said the stepmother, 'while you tidy yourself for breakfast. I think there's some water on the washstand, and Vernon shall bring you a clean towel.'

The little fellow trotted out after his mother, and trotted back presently with the towel--one towel, which was about in proportion to the water-jug and basin. Ida shuddered, remembering the plent.i.tude of water and towels at The Knoll. She made her toilet as well as she could, with the scantiest materials, as she might have done on board s.h.i.+p; shook and brushed the shabby gray cashmere--her wedding gown, she thought, with a bitter smile--before she put it on again, and then went down the bare narrow deal staircase, superb in all the freshness of her youth and beauty, which neither care nor poverty could spoil.

Captain Palliser was pacing up and down his little dining parlour, looking flurried and anxious. He turned suddenly as Ida entered, and stood staring at her.

'By Jove, how handsome you have grown!' he said, and then he look her in his arms and kissed her. 'But you know, my dear, this is really too bad,'

he went on in a fretful tone,' to come back upon us like a bad penny.'

'That is what my step-mother said just now.'

'My dear, how can one help saying it, when it's the truth? After my paying fifty pounds, don't you know, and thinking that you were comfortably disposed of for the next three years, and that at the expiry of the term Miss Pew would place you in a gentleman's family, where you would receive from sixty to a hundred per annum, according to your acquirements--those were her very words--to have you sent back to us like this, in disgrace, and to be told that you had been carrying on in an absurd way with a young man on the bank of a river. It is most humiliating. And now my wife tells me the young man has not a sixpence which makes the whole thing so very culpable.'

'Please let me tell you the extent of my iniquity, father, and then you can judge what right Miss Pew had to expel me.'

Whereupon Ida quietly described her afternoon promenades upon the river-path, with the Fraulein always in her company, and how her friend's cousin had been permitted to walk up and down with them.

'n.o.body supposes there was any actual harm,' replied Captain Palliser, 'but you must have been perfectly aware that you were acting foolishly--that this kind of thing was a violation of the school etiquette. Come, now, you knew Miss Pew would disapprove of such goings on, did you not?'

'Well, yes, no doubt I knew old Pew would be horrified. Perhaps it was the idea of that which gave a zest to the thing.'

'Precisely! and you never thought of my fifty pounds, and you ran this risk for the sake of a young man without a penny, who never could be your husband.'

Ida grew scarlet and then deadly pale.

'There, don't look so distressed, child. I must try to forget my fifty pounds, and to think of your future career. It is a deuced awkward business--here come the omelette and the coffee--an escapade of this kind is always cropping up against a girl in after life--sit down and make yourself comfortable--capital dish of kidneys--the world is so small; and of course every pupil at Mauleverer Manor will gabble about this business. No mushrooms!--what is the little woman thinking about?'

Captain Palliser seated himself, and arranged his napkin under his chin, French fas.h.i.+on. His features were of that aquiline type which seems to have been invented on purpose for army men. His eyes were light blue, like his boy's--Ida's dark eyes were a maternal inheritance--his hair was auburn, sprinkled with gray, his moustache straw-colour and with a carefully trained cavalry droop. His clothes and boots were perfect of their kind, albeit they had seen good wear. He had been heard to declare that he had rather wear feathers and war-paint, like a red Indian, than a coat made by a third-rate tailor. He was tall and inclining to stoutness, broad-shouldered, and with an easy carriage and a nonchalant air, which were not without their charm. He had what most people called a patrician look--that is to say the air of never having done anything useful in the whole course of his existence--not such a patrician as a Palmerston, a Russell, a Derby, or a Salisbury, but the ideal lotus-eating aristocrat, who dresses, drives, and dines and gossips through a languid existence.

The Captain's career in the East had not been particularly brilliant. His lines had not lain in great battles or stirring campaigns. Except during the awful episode of the Mutiny, when he was still a young man, he had seen little active service. His life, since his return from India, had been a blank.

His mind, never vigorous, had rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life's river as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events of his life--if it was well with these it was well with him.

There was a rustic tavern where in summer a good many people came to dine, either in the house or the garden, and in a room adjoining the kitchen there was a small French billiard-table with very big b.a.l.l.s. Here the Captain played of an evening with the _habitues_ of the place, and was much looked up to for his superior skill. An occasional drive into Dieppe on the _banquette_ of the diligence, and a saunter by the sea, was his only other amus.e.m.e.nt.

His daughter poured out his coffee, and ministered to his various wants as he breakfasted, eating with but little appet.i.te herself, albeit the fare was excellent.

Captain Palliser talked in a desultory way as he ate, not often looking up from his plate, but meandering on. Happily for Ida, who had been reduced to the lowest stage of self-abas.e.m.e.nt by her welcome, he said no more about Miss Pew or his daughter's gloomy prospects. It was not without a considerable mental effort that he was able to bring his thoughts to bear upon other people's business. He had strained his mind a good deal during the last twenty-four hours, and he was very glad to relax the tension of the bow.

'Rather a dull kind of life for a man who has been used to society--eh, Ida?' he murmured, as he ate his omelette; 'but we contrive to rub on somehow. Your step-mother likes it, and the boy likes it--wonderful healthy air, don't you know--no smoke--no fogs--only three miles from the sea, as the crow flies. It suits them, and it's cheap--a paramount consideration with a poor devil on half-pay; and in the season there are some of the best people in Europe to be seen at the _etabliss.e.m.e.nt_.'

'I suppose you go to Dieppe often in the season, father?' said Ida, pleased to find he had dropped Miss Pew and the governess question.

'Well, yes; I wander in almost every fine day.'

'You don't walk?' exclaimed Ida, surprised at such activity in a man of his languid temper.

'Oh, no; I never walk. I just wander in--on the diligence-or in, a return fly. I wander in and look about me a little, and perhaps take a cup of coffee with a friend at the Hotel des Bains. There is generally some one I know at the Bains or the Royal. Ah, by-the-bye whom, do you think I saw there a fortnight ago?'

'I haven't the least idea,' answered Ida; 'I know so few of your friends.'

'No, of course not. You never saw Sir Vernon Palliser, but you've heard me talk about him.'

'Your rich brother, the wicked old baronet in Suss.e.x, who never did you a kindness in his life?'

'My dear, old Sir Vernon has been dead two years.'