The Golden Calf - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (best books to read ever TXT) 📗

word to anybody about what you've seen, till I tell you. I may want you to repeat it all to Miss Pew. If I do, I'll give you another sixpence.'

'Lawks, miss, that would be cheap at a shilling,' said the boy. 'It would freeze my blood to have to stand up to talk before Miss Pew.'

'Nonsense, Sam, you will be only telling the truth, and there can be nothing to frighten you. However, I dare say she will be satisfied with my statement. She won't want confirmation from you.'

'Confirmation from me,' muttered Sam, as Miss Pillby left his den. 'No, I should think not. Why, that's what the bishops do. Fancy old Pew being confirmed too--old Pew in a white frock and a veil. That is a good'un,' and Sam exploded over his blacking-brush at the preposterous idea.

It was Miss Pew's habit to take a cup of tea and a square of buttered toast every morning at seven, before she left her pillow; in order to fortify herself for the effort of getting up and dressing, so as to be in her place, at the head of the chief table in the school dining-room, when eight o'clock struck. Had Miss Pew consulted her own inclination she would have reposed until a much later hour; but the maintenance of discipline compelled that she should be the head and front of all virtuous movements at Mauleverer Manor. How could she inveigh with due force against the sin of sloth if she were herself a slug-a-bed? Therefore did Miss Pew vanquish the weakness of the flesh, and rise at a quarter past seven, summer and winter. But this struggle between duty and inclination made the lady's temper somewhat critical in the morning hours.

Now it was the custom for one of the mistresses to carry Miss Pew's tea-tray, and to attend at her bedside while she sipped her bohea and munched her toast. It was a delicate attention, a recognition of her dignity, which Miss Pew liked. It was the _lever du roi_ upon a small scale. And this afforded an opportunity for the mistress on duty to inform her principal of any small fact in connection with the school or household which it was well for Miss Pew to know. Not for worlds would Sarah Pew have encouraged a spy, according to her own view of her own character; but she liked people with keen eyes, who could tell her everything that was going on under her roof.

'Good morning, Pillby,' said Miss Pew, sitting up against a massive background of pillows, like a female Jove upon a bank of clouds, an awful figure in frilled white raiment, with an eye able to command, but hardly to flatter; 'what kind of a day in it?'

'Dull and heavy,' answered Miss Pillby; 'I shouldn't wonder if there was a thunderstorm.'

'Don't talk nonsense, child; it's too late in the year for thunder. We shall have the equinoctial gales soon, I dare say.'

'No doubt,' replied Miss Pillby, who had heard about the equinox and its carryings on all her life without having arrived at any clear idea of its nature and properties. 'We shall have it very equinoctial before the end of the month, I've no doubt.'

'Well, is there anything going on? Any of the girls bilious? One of my black draughts wanted anywhere?'

Miss Pew was not highly intellectual, but she was a great hand at finance, household economies, and domestic medicine. She compounded most of the doses taken at Mauleverer with her own fair hands, and her black draughts were a feature in the school. The pupils never forgot them. However faint became the memory of youthful joys in after years, the flavour of Miss Pew's jalap and senna was never obliterated.

'No; there's nobody ill this morning,' answered Miss Pillby, with a faint groan.

'Ah, you may well sigh,' retorted her principal; 'the way those girls ate veal and ham yesterday was enough to have turned the school into a hospital--and with raspberry jam tart after, too.'

Veal with ham was the Sunday dinner at Mauleverer, a banquet upon which Miss Pew prided herself, as an instance of luxurious living rarely to be met with in boarding-schools. If the girls were ill after it, that was their look out.

'There's something wrong, I can see by your face, said Miss Pew, after she had sipped half her tea and enjoyed the whole of her toast; 'is it the servants or the pupils?'

Strange to say, Miss Pew did not look grateful to the bearer of evil tidings. This was one of her idiosyncrasies. She insisted upon being kept informed of all that went wrong in her establishment, but she was apt to be out of temper with the informant.

'Neither,' answered Miss Pillby, with an awful shake of her sandy locks; 'I don't believe there is a servant in this house who would so far forget herself. And as to the pupils--'

'We know what they are,' snapped Miss Pew; 'I never heard of anything bad enough to be beyond their reach. Who is it?'

'Your clever pupil teacher, Ida Palliser.'

'Ah,' grunted Miss Pew, setting down her cup; 'I can believe anything of her. That girl was born to be troublesome. What has she done now?'

Miss Pillby related the circumstances of Miss Palliser's crime setting forth her own cleverness in the course of her narrative--how her misgivings had been excited by the unwonted familiarity between Ida and the Fräulein--a young person always open to suspicion as a stranger in the land--how her fears had been confirmed by the conduct of an unknown man in the church; and how, urged by her keen sense of duty, she had employed Mrs. Jones's boy to watch the delinquents.

'I'll make an example of her,' said Miss Pew, flinging back the bed-clothes with a tragic air as she rose from her couch. 'That will do, Pillby. I want no further details. I'll wring the rest out of that bold-faced minx in the face of all the school. You can go.'

And without any word of praise or thanks from her principal, Miss Pillby retired: yet she knew in her heart that for this piece of ill news Miss Pew was not ungrateful.

Never had Sarah Pew looked more awful than she appeared that morning at the breakfast table, clad in sombre robes of olive green merino, and a cap bristling with olive-green berries and brambly twigs--a cap which to the more advanced of the pupils suggested the head-gear of Medusa.

Miss Dulcibella, gentle, limp, sea-greeny, looked at her stronger-minded sister, and was so disturbed by the gloom upon that imperial brow as to be unable to eat her customary rasher. Not a word did Miss Pew speak to sister or mistresses during that brief but awful meal; but when the delft breakfast cups were empty, and the stacks of thick bread and butter had diminished to nothingness, and the girls were about to rise and disperse for their morning studies, Miss Pew's voice arose suddenly amidst them like the sound of thunder.

'Keep your seats, if you please, young ladies. I am about to make an example; and I hope what I have to say and do may be for the general good. Miss Palliser, stand up.'

Ida rose in her place, at that end of the table where she was supposed to exercise a corrective influence upon the younger pupils. She stood up where all the rest were seated, a tall and perfect figure, a beautiful statuesque head, supported by a neck like a marble column. She stood up among all those other girls the handsomest of them all, pale, with flashing eyes, feeling very sure that she was going to be ill-treated.

'Pray, Miss Palliser, who is the person whom it is your daily habit to meet and converse with in my grounds? Who is the man who has dared to trespass on my meadow at your invitation?'

'Not at my invitation,' answered Ida, as calm as marble 'The gentleman came of his own accord. His name is Brian Wendover, and he and I are engaged to be married.'

Miss Pew laughed a loud ironical laugh, a laugh which froze the blood of all the seventeen-year-old pupils who were not without fear or reproach upon the subject of clandestine glances, little notes, or girlish carryings-on in the flirtation line.

'Engaged?' she exclaimed, in her stentorian voice, 'That is really too good a joke. Engaged? Pray, which Mr. Brian Wendover is it?

'Mr. Wendover of the Abbey.'

'Mr. Wendover of the Abbey, the head of the Wendover family?' cried Miss Pew. 'And you would wish us to believe that Mr. Wendover, of Wendover Abbey--a gentleman with an estate worth something like seven thousand a year, young ladies--has engaged himself to the youngest of my pupil-teachers, whose acquaintance he has cultivated while trespassing on my meadow? Miss Palliser, when a gentleman of Mr. Wendover's means and social status wishes to marry a young person in your position--a concatenation which occurs very rarely in the history of the human race--he comes to the hall door. Mr. Wendover no more means to marry you than he means to marry the moon. His views are of quite a different kind, and you know it.'

Ida cast a withering look at her tyrant, and moved quickly from her place.

'You are a wretch to say such a thing to me,' she cried passionately; 'I will not stay another hour under your roof to be so insulted.'

'No, you will not stay under my roof, Miss Palliser,' retorted Miss Pew. 'My mind was made up more than an hour ago on that point. You will not be allowed to stay in this house one minute longer than is needed for the packing up of your clothes, and that, I take it,' added the schoolmistress, with an insolent laugh, 'will not be a lengthy operation. You are expelled, Miss Palliser--expelled from this establishment for grossly improper conduct; and I am only sorry for your poor father's sake that you will have to begin your career as a governess with disgrace attached to your name.'

'There is no disgrace, except in your own foul mind,' said Ida. 'I can imagine that as nobody ever admired you or made love to you when you were young, you may have mistaken ideas as to the nature of lovers and love-making'--despite the universal awe, this provoked a faint, irrepressible titter--'but it is hard that you should revenge your ignorance upon me. Mr. Wendover has never said a word to me which a gentleman should not say. Fräulein Wolf, who has heard his every word, knows that this is true.'

'Fräulein will leave this house to-morrow, if she is not careful,' said Miss Pew, who had, however, no intention of parting with so useful and cheap a teacher.

She could afford to revenge herself upon Ida, whose period of tutelage was nearly over.

'Fräulein knows that Mr. Wendover speaks of our future as the future of man and wife.'

'Ja wohl,' murmured the Fräulein, 'that is true; ganz und gan.'

'I will not hear another word!' cried Miss Pew, swelling with rage, while every thorn and berry on her autumnal cap quivered. 'Ungrateful, impudent young woman! Leave my house instantly. I will not have these innocent girls perverted by your vile example. In speech and in conduct you are alike detestable.'

'Good-bye, girls,' cried Ida, lightly: 'you all know how much harm my speech and my example have done you. Good-bye, Fräulein; don't you be afraid of dismissal,--you are too well worth your salt.'