The Golden Calf Part 59

'Summer! nonsense. Don't you see the snow? Why, it's falling thickly.

Look at the flakes--like feathers. Look, look!' He pointed out of the window into the clear moonlit air, and tried to catch imaginary snowflakes with his long, nervous fingers.

'Brian, you must know that it is summer-time,' Ida said, firmly. 'Look at the woods--those deep ma.s.ses of shadow from the oaks and beeches--in all the beauty of their summer foliage.

'Yes; it's odd, isn't it?--midsummer, and a snow-storm!'

'What have you been doing with all those things?'

'Packing. I must go to London early to-morrow. I have an appointment with the architect.'

'What architect?'

'The man who is to plan the alterations for this house. I shall make great alterations, you know, now that the place is yours. I am going to build an underground riding school, like that at Welbeck.'

'The place mine? What are you dreaming of?'

'Of course it is yours, now Vernon is dead. You were to inherit everything at his death. You cannot have forgotten that.'

'Vernon dead! Why, Brian, he is snug and safe in his room a little way off. I have seen him within this half-hour.'

'You are a fool,' he said; 'he died nearly three months ago. You are the sole owner of this place, and I am going to make it the finest mansion in the county.'

He rambled on, talking rapidly, wildly, of all the improvements and alterations he intended making, with an a.s.sumption of a business-like air amidst all this lunacy, which made his distracted state so much the more painful to contemplate. He talked of builders, specifications, estimates, and quant.i.ties--was full of self-importance--described picture galleries, music rooms, high-art decorations which would have cost a hundred thousand pounds, and all with absolute belief in his own power to realise these splendid visions. Yet every now and then in the very rush of his projects there came a sudden cloud of fear--his jaw fell--he looked apprehensively behind him--became darkly brooding--muttered something about that hideous charge hanging over him--a conspiracy hatched by men who should have been his friends--the probability of a great trial in Westminster Hall; and then he ran on again about builders and architects--Whistler, Burne Jones--and the marvellous mansion he was going to erect on the site of this present Wimperfield.

He rambled on with this horrible garrulity for a time that seemed almost an eternity to his agonised wife, and only ceased at last from positive exhaustion. But when Ida talked to him with gentle firmness, reminding him that Vernon was still the owner of Wimperfield, and that she was never likely to be its mistress, he changed his tone, and appeared to be in some measure recalled to his right senses.

'What, have I been talking rot again?' he muttered, with a sheepish look.

'Yes, of course, the boy is still owner of the place. The alterations must stand over. Get me some brandy and soda, Ida, my mouth is parched.'

Ida rose as if to obey him, and rang the bell; but when the servant came she ordered soda-water only.

'Brandy and soda,' Brian said; 'do you hear? Bring a bottle of brandy. I can't get through the night without a little now and then.'

Ida gave the man a look which he understood. He left the room in silence.

'Brian,' she said, when he was gone, 'you must not have any more brandy.

It is brandy which has done you harm, which has filled your brain with these horrible delusions. Mr. Fosbroke told me so. You affect to despise him; but he is a sensible man who has had large experience.'

'Large experience! in an agricultural village--physicking a handful of rustics!' cried Brian, scornfully.

'I know that he is clever, and I believe him,' answered Ida; 'my own common sense tells me that he is right. I see you the wreck and ruin of what you have been; and I know there is only one reason for this dreadful change.

'It is your fault,' he said sullenly. 'I should be a different man if you had cared for me. I had nothing worth living for.'

Ida soothed him, and argued with him, with inexhaustible patience, full of pity for his fallen state. She was firm in her refusal to order brandy for him, in spite of his angry protest that he was being treated like a child, in spite of his a.s.sertion that the London physician had ordered him to take brandy. She stayed with him for hours, during which he alternated between rambling garrulity and sullen despondency; till at last, worn out with the endeavour to control or to soothe him, she withdrew to her own room, adjoining his, and left him, in the hope that, if left to himself, he would go to bed and sleep.

Rest of any kind for herself was impossible, weighed down with anxiety about her husband's condition, and stricken with remorse at the thought that it was perhaps his ill-starred marriage which had in some wise tended to bring about this ruin of a life. And yet things had gone well with him, existence had been made very easy for him, since his marriage; and only moral perversity would have so blighted a career which had lain open to all the possibilities of good fortune. The initial difficulty--poverty, which so many men have to overcome, had been conquered for Brian within the first year of his marriage. And now six years were gone, and he had done nothing except waste and ruin his mind and body.

Ida left the door ajar between the two rooms, and lay down in her clothes, ready to go to her husband's a.s.sistance if he should need help of any kind. She had taken the key out of the door opening from his room into the corridor, so that he would have to pa.s.s through her own room in going out. She had done this from a vague fear that he might go roaming about the house in the dead of the night, scaring her stepmother or the boy by some mad violence. She made up her mind to telegraph for the London physician early next morning, and to obtain some skilled attendant to watch and protect her husband. She had heard of a man in such a condition throwing himself out of a window, or cutting his throat: and she felt that every moment was a moment of fear, until proper means had been taken to protect Brian from his own madness.

She listened while he paced the adjoining room, muttering to himself; once she looked in, and saw him sitting on the floor, hunting for some imaginary objects which he saw scattered around him.

'How did I come to drop such a lot of silver?' he muttered; 'what a devil of a nuisance not to be able to pick it up properly?'

She watched him groping about the carpet, pursuing imaginary objects, with eager sensitive fingers, and muttering to himself angrily when they evaded him.

By-and-by he flung himself upon his bed, but not to sleep, only to turn restlessly from side to side, over and over again, with a weary monotony which was even more wearisome to the watcher than to himself.

Two or three times he got up and hunted behind the bed curtains, evidently with the idea of some lurking foe, and then lay down again, apparently but half convinced that he was alone. Once he started up suddenly, just as he was dropping off to sleep, and complained of a flash of light which had almost blinded him.

'Lightning,' he muttered; 'I believe I am struck blind. Come here, Ida.'

She went to him and soothed him, and told him there had been no lightning; it was only his fancy.

'Everything is my fancy,' he said, 'the world is built out of fancies, the universe is only an extension of the individual mind;' and then he began to ramble on upon every metaphysical theory he had ever read about, from Plato and Aristotle to Leibnitz and Kant, from Hegel to Bain--talking, talking, talking, through the slow hours of that terrible night.

At last, when the sun was high, he fell into what seemed a sound sleep; and then Ida, utterly worn with care and watching, changed her gown for a cashmere _peignoir_, and lay down on her bed.

She slept soundly for a blessed hour or more of respite and forgetfulness, then woke suddenly with an acute consciousness of trouble, yet vaguely remembering the nature of that trouble Memory came back only too soon. She rose hurriedly, and went to look at her patient.

His room was empty. He had pa.s.sed through her room and gone out into the corridor, without awakening her. She rang her bell, and was answered by Lady Palliser's own maid, Jane Dyson, who came in a leisurely way with the morning cups of tea. It was now seven o'clock.

'Is Mr. Wendover downstairs--in the dining-room or library?' Ida asked, trying not to look too anxious.

'I have not seen him, ma'am.'

'Inquire, please. I want to know where he is, and why he left his room so much earlier than usual.'

She had a dismal feeling that all the household must know what was amiss, that the shame and degradation of the case could hardly be deepened.

'Yes, ma'am; I'll go and see.'

'Do, please, while I take my bath,' said Ida. 'You can come back to me in ten minutes.'

The cold bath refreshed her, and she was dressing hurriedly when Jane Dyson returned to announce that Mr. Wendover and Sir Vernon had gone out fis.h.i.+ng at half-past six--the under-housemaid had seen them go, and had heard Mr. Wendover say that they would have a long day.

'Go and ask her if she heard where they were going,' said Ida, going on with her dressing, eager to be out of doors on her brother's track.

That wild talk of Brian's last night--that horrible delusion about the boy's death--coupled with this early expedition, filled her with unspeakable fear. It was no new thing for Brian and the boy to go out fis.h.i.+ng together. They had spent many a long day whipping distant trout streams in the summer that was gone, but this year Vernon had vainly endeavoured to tempt his old companion to join him in his wanderings with rod and line. Brian had refused all such invitations peevishly or sullenly; as if it were an offence to remind him how poor a creature he had become. And now, after a night of wakefulness and delirium, Brian, with his brain still wild and disordered, perhaps, had taken the boy out with him on some indefinite excursion--alone--the helpless child in the power of a maniac!

Ida did not wait for the return of the maid, but ran downstairs as soon as she was dressed, and questioned Rogers the butler. Rogers, as an old and valuable servant, took his ease of a morning, and only appeared upon the scene when underlings had made all things comfortable and ready to his hand. He therefore knew nothing of the mode and manner of Mr.

Wendover and the boy's departure.

Robert, Sir Vernon's body-guard, groom, and general out-door retainer, was fetched from his breakfast; and he was able to inform Mrs. Wendover how Sir Vernon had gone out to the stables at twenty minutes past six, with his fis.h.i.+ng basket slung over his shoulder, to ask for some artificial flies which Robert had been making for him, and to say that he should not want the pony or Robert all the morning, as he was going out with Mr. Wendover. He had not mentioned his destination, but Robert knew that the water meadows on the other side of Blackman's Hanger were his favourite ground for such sport. He had been there with Robert many a day.

His remotest point in this direction was five or six miles from home. The boy was able to walk twelve miles in a day without undue fatigue, resting a good deal, and taking his own time; but in a general way he rode his pony when he went on any long excursion, and dismounted from time to time as the fancy took him.

'I'm afraid he may overtire himself with Mr. Wendover, said Ida, anxious to give a good reason for her anxiety. 'Get Cleopatra ready for me, and get a horse for yourself, and we'll ride after them. Mr. Wendover is an invalid, and ought not to have the trouble of a child upon his hands all day. If I can overtake them, I shall persuade them both to come back.'