The Golden Calf Part 7

'Yes.'

'What have you put in?'

'That's my secret,' answered Blanche. 'Do you think I am going to tell you what you are to have for lunch? That would spoil all the fun.'

'Blanche isn't half a bad caterer,' said Reg. 'I place myself in her hands unreservedly; I will only venture to hint that I hope she hasn't forgotten the chutnee, Tirhoot, and plenty of it. What's the good of having a father who was shoulder to shoulder with Gough in the Punjab, if we are to run short of Indian condiments?'

At nine o'clock the young people were all ready to start. The jaunting-car held five, including the driver; Bessie and her friend were to occupy one side, Eva, the round child who loved pigs, was to have a seat, and a place was to be kept for Miss Rylance, who was to be invited to join the exploration party, much to the disgust of the Winchester lads, who denounced her as a stuck-up minx, and distinguished her with various other epithets of an abusive character selected from a vocabulary known only to Wyckhamists. Blanche and Horatio and a smaller boy, called Ernest, who was dressed like a gillie, and had all the wildness of a young Highlander, were to walk, with the occasional charity of a lift.

The jaunting-car was drawn by a large white pony, fat and pampered, overfed with dainties from the children's tables, and petted and played with until he had become almost human in his intelligence, and a match for his youthful masters in cunning and mischief. This impish animal had been christened Robin Goodfellow, a name that was shortened for convenience to Robin. Robin's eagerness to depart was now made known to the family by an incessant rattling of his bit.

Reginald took the reins, and got into his seat with the quiet grandeur of a celebrity in the four-in-hand club. Ida and Bessie were handed to their places by Horatio, the chubby Eva scrambled into her seat, with a liberal display of Oxford blue stocking, under the shortest of striped petticoats; and off they drove to the cottage, Dr. Rylance's miniature dwelling, where the plate-gla.s.s windows were s.h.i.+ning in the morning sun, and the colours of the flower-beds were almost too bright to be looked at.

Bessie found Miss Rylance in the dainty little drawing-room, all ebonized wood and blue china, as neat as an interior by Mieris. The fair Urania was yawning over a book of travels--trying to improve a mind which was not naturally fertile--and she was not sorry to be interrupted by an irruption of noisy Wendovers, even though they left impressions of their boots on the delicate tones of the carpet, and made havoc of the cretonne chair-covers.

Miss Rylance had no pa.s.sion for country life. Fields and trees, hills and winding streams, even when enlivened by the society of the lower animals, were not all-sufficient for her happiness. It was all very well for her father to oscillate between Cavendish Square and Kingthorpe, avoiding the expense and trouble of autumn touring, and taking his rest and his pleasure in this rustic retreat. But her summer holidays for the last three years had been all Kingthorpe, and Miss Rylance detested the picturesque village, the busy duck-pond, the insignificant hills, which n.o.body had ever heard of, and the monotonous sequence of events.

'We are going to the Abbey for a nice long day, taking our dinner with us, and coming round to Aunt Betsy's to tea on our way home,' said Bessie, as if she were proposing an entirely novel excursion; 'and we want you to come with us, Ranie.'

Miss Rylance stifled a yawn. She had been trying to pin her thoughts to a particular tribe of Abyssinians, who fought all the surrounding tribes, and always welcomed the confiding stranger with a shower of poisoned arrows. She did not care for the Wendover children, but they were better than those wearisome Abyssinians.

'You are very kind, but I know the Abbey so well,' she said, determined to yield her consent as a favour.

'Never mind that. Ida has never seen it. We are going to show her everything. We want her to feel one of us.'

'We shall have a jolly lunch,' interjected Blanche. 'There are some lemon cheesecakes that I made myself yesterday afternoon. Cook was in a good temper, and let me do it.'

'I hope you washed your hands first,' said Horatio. 'I'd sooner cook had made the cheesecakes.'

'Of course I washed my hands, you too suggestive pig. But I should-hope that in a general way my hands are cleaner than cook's. It is only schoolboys who luxuriate in dirt.'

'You'll come, Ranie?' pleaded Bess.

'If you really wish it.'

'I do, or I shouldn't be here. But I hope you wish it too. You ought to be longing to get out of doors on such a lovely morning. Houses were never intended for such weather as this Come and join the birds and b.u.t.terflies, and all the happiest things in creation.'

'I must go for my hat and sunshade. I wasn't born full-dressed, like the birds and b.u.t.terflies,' replied Urania.

She ran away, leaving Bessie and Ida in the drawing-room. The younger children having rushed in and left their mark upon the room, had now rushed out again to the jaunting-car.

'A pretty drawing-room, isn't it?' asked Bess. 'It looks so neat and fresh and bright after ours.'

'It doesn't look half so much like home,' said Ida.

'Perhaps not. But I believe it is just the exact thing a drawing-room ought to be in this latter part of the nineteenth century; or, at least, so Dr. Rylance says. How do you like the blue china? Dr. Rylance is an amateur of blue china. He will have no other. Dresden and Sevres have no existence for him. He recognizes nothing beyond his own particular breed of ginger-jars.'

Miss Rylance came back, dressed as carefully as if she had been going for a morning lounge in Hyde Park, hat and feather, pongee sunshade, mousquetaire gloves. The Wendovers all wore their gloves in their pockets, and cultivated blisters on the palms of their hands, as a mark of distinction, which implied great feats in rowing, or the pulling in of desperate horses.

Now they were all mounted on the car, just as the church clock struck ten. Reginald gave the reins a shake, cracked his whip, and Robin, who always knew where his young friends wanted to go, twisted the vehicle sharply round a corner and started at an agreeable canter, expressive of good spirits.

Robin carried them joltingly along a lovely lane till they came to a gentle acclivity, by which time, having given vent to his exuberance, the pony settled down into a crawl. Vainly did Reginald crack his whip--vain even stinging switches on Robin's fat sides. Out of that crawl nothing could move him. The sun was gaining power with every moment, and blazing down upon the occupants of the car; but Robin cared not at all. He was an animal of tropical origin, and had no apprehension of suns.h.i.+ne; his eyes were so constructed as to accommodate themselves to a superfluity of light.

'I think we shall be tolerably well roasted by the time we get to the Abbey,' said Bessie. 'Don't you think if we were all to get down and push the back of the car, Robin might go a little faster?'

'He'll go fast enough when he has blown a bit,' said Reg. 'Can't you admire the landscape?'

'We could, if we were not being baked,' replied Ida.

Miss Rylance sat silent under her pongee umbrella, and wished herself in Cavendish Square; even though western London were as empty and barren as the great wilderness.

They were on the ridge of a hill, overlooking undulating pastures and quiet sheep-walks, fair hills on which the yew-trees cast their dark shadows, a broad stretch of pastoral country with sunny gleams of water s.h.i.+ning low in the distance.

Suddenly the road dipped, and Robin was going downhill with alarming speed.

'This means that we shall all be in the ditch presently,' said Bessie.

'Never mind. It's only a dry bed of dock and used-up stinging nettles. We shan't be much hurt.'

After two or three miraculous escapes they landed at the bottom of the hill, and Ida beheld the good old gates of Kingthorpe Abbey, low iron gates that stood open, between tall stone pillars supporting the sculptured escutcheon of the Wendovers. There was a stone lodge on each side of the gate, past which the car drove in triumph into an avenue of ancient yew-trees, low and wide-spreading, with a solemn gloom that would better have become a churchyard than a gentleman's park.

It was a n.o.ble old park, richly timbered with oaks as old as those immemorial trees that make the glory of Stoneleigh. There was a lake in a wooded hollow in front of the Abbey, a long low pile of stone, the newest part of which was as old as the days of the last Tudor. Nor had much money been spent on the restoration or decorative repair of that fine old house. It had been kept wind and weather proof. It had been protected against the injuries of time; and that was all. There it stood, a brave and solid monument of the remote past, grand in its stern simplicity and its historic a.s.sociations.

'Oh, what a dear old house!' cried Ida, clasping her hands, as the car came out of the yew-tree avenue into the open s.p.a.ce in front of the Abbey; a wide lawn, where four mighty cedars of Lebanon spread their dense shadows--grave old trees--which were in somewise impostors, as they looked older than the house, and yet had been saplings in the days of Queen Anne. 'What a sweet old place!' repeated Ida; 'and how I envy the rich Brian!'

'Don't you think the rich Brian's wife will be still more enviable sneered Miss Rylance.

'That depends. She may be a Vere-de-Vereish kind of person, and pine amongst her halls and towers,' said Ida.

'Not if she had been brought up in poverty. She would revel in the advantages of her position as Mrs. Wendover of the Abbey,' a.s.serted Miss Rylance.

'Would she? The Earl of Burleigh's wife had been poor, and yet did not enjoy being rich and great,' said Bessie. 'It killed her, poor thing. And yet she had married for love, and had no remorse of conscience to weigh her down.'

'She was a sensitive little fool,' said Ida; 'I have no patience with her.'

'Modern young ladies are not easily crushed,' remarked Miss Rylance; 'they make marrying for money a profession.'

'Is that your idea of life?' asked Ida.

'No; but I understand it is yours. I heard you say you meant to marry for money.'

'Then you must have been listening to a conversation in which you had no concern,' Ida answered coolly. 'I never said as much to you.'

The three girls, and the chubby Eva, had alighted from the car, which was being conveyed to the stables at a hand-gallop, and this conversation was continued on the broad gravel sweep in front of the Abbey. Just as the discussion was intensifying in unpleasantness, the arrival of the pedestrians made an agreeable diversion. Blanche and her two brothers had come by a short cut, across fields and common, had given chase to b.u.t.terflies, experimented with tadpoles, and looked for hedge-birds' eggs in the course of their journey, and were altogether in a state of dilapidation--perspiration running down their sunburnt faces--their hats anyhow--their hands embellished with recent scratches--their boots coated with clay.

'Did ever anyone see such objects?' exclaimed Bessie, who had imbibed certain conventional ideas of decency at Mauleverer Manor: 'you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.'

'I daresay we ought, but we aren't,' retorted Horatio. 'I found a tadpole in an advanced stage of trans.m.u.tation, Miss Palliser, and it has almost converted me to Darwinism. Given a single step and you may accept the whole ladder. If from tadpoles frogs, why not from monkeys man?'

'Go and be a Darwinian, and don't prose,' said Blanche, impatiently. 'We are going to show Ida the Abbey. How do you like the outside, darling?'