Страница:
her house without carrying respectfully away with him
piles of her quack theology and medicine. O, my dear
brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity Fair, which
among you does not know and suffer under such
benevolent despots? It is in vain you say to them, "Dear
Madam, I took Podgers' specific at your orders last year,
and believe in it. Why, why am I to recant and accept the
Rodgers' articles now?" There is no help for it; the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument,
bursts into tears, and the refusant finds himself, at the
end of the contest, taking down the bolus, and saying,
"Well, well, Rodgers' be it."
"And as for her spiritual state," continued the Lady,
"that of course must be looked to immediately: with
Creamer about her, she may go off any day: and in what
a condition, my dear Pitt, in what a dreadful condition!
I will send the Reverend Mr. Irons to her instantly. Jane,
write a line to the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, in the
third person, and say that I desire the pleasure of his
company this evening at tea at half-past six. He is an
awakening man; he ought to see Miss Crawley before she
rests this night. And Emily, my love, get ready a packet
of books for Miss Crawley. Put up 'A Voice from the
Flames,' 'A Trumpet-warning to Jericho,' and the
'Fleshpots Broken; or, the Converted Cannibal.' "
"And the 'Washerwoman of Finchley Common,'
Mamma," said Lady Emily. "It is as well to begin
soothingly at first."
"Stop, my dear ladies," said Pitt, the diplomatist.
"With every deference to the opinion of my beloved and
respected Lady Southdown, I think it would be quite
unadvisable to commence so early upon serious topics with
Miss Crawley. Remember her delicate condition, and how
little, how very little accustomed she has hitherto been
to considerations connected with her immortal welfare."
"Can we then begin too early, Pitt?" said Lady Emily,
rising with six little books already in her hand.
"If you begin abruptly, you will frighten her altogether.
I know my aunt's worldly nature so well as to be sure
that any abrupt attempt at conversion will be the very
worst means that can be employed for the welfare of that
unfortunate lady. You will only frighten and annoy her.
She will very likely fling the books away, and refuse all
acquaintance with the givers."
"You are as worldly as Miss Crawley, Pitt," said Lady
Emily, tossing out of the room, her books in her hand.
"And I need not tell you, my dear Lady Southdown,"
Pitt continued, in a low voice, and without heeding the
interruption, "how fatal a little want of gentleness and
caution may be to any hopes which we may entertain with
regard to the worldly possessions of my aunt. Remember
she has seventy thousand pounds; think of her age, and
her highly nervous and delicate condition; I know that she
has destroyed the will which was made in my brother's
(Colonel Crawley's) favour: it is by soothing that
wounded spirit that we must lead it into the right path,
and not by frightening it; and so I think you will agree
with me that--that--'
"Of course, of course," Lady Southdown remarked.
"Jane, my love, you need not send that note to Mr. Irons.
If her health is such that discussions fatigue her, we will
wait her amendment. I will call upon Miss Crawley
tomorrow."
"And if I might suggest, my sweet lady," Pitt said in a
bland tone, "it would be as well not to take our precious
Emily, who is too enthusiastic; but rather that you should
be accompanied by our sweet and dear Lady Jane."
"Most certainly, Emily would ruin everything," Lady
Southdown said; and this time agreed to forego her usual
practice, which was, as we have said, before she bore
down personally upon any individual whom she proposed
to subjugate, to fire in a quantity of tracts upon the
menaced party (as a charge of the French was always
preceded by a furious cannonade). Lady Southdown, we
say, for the sake of the invalid's health, or for the sake
of her soul's ultimate welfare, or for the sake of her
money, agreed to temporise.
The next day, the great Southdown female family
carriage, with the Earl's coronet and the lozenge (upon
which the three lambs trottant argent upon the field vert
of the Southdowns, were quartered with sable on a bend
or, three snuff-mulls gules, the cognizance of the house of
Binkie), drove up in state to Miss Crawley's door, and
the tall serious footman handed in to Mr. Bowls her
Ladyship's cards for Miss Crawley, and one likewise for
Miss Briggs. By way of compromise, Lady Emily sent in a
packet in the evening for the latter lady, containing
copies of the "Washerwoman," and other mild and favourite
tracts for Miss B.'s own perusal; and a few for the
servants' hall, viz.: "Crumbs from the Pantry," "The
Frying Pan and the Fire," and "The Livery of Sin," of a
much stronger kind.
CHAPTER XXXIV
James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out
The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's
kind reception of her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who
was enabled to speak a good word for the latter, after
the cards of the Southdown family had been presented to
Miss Crawley. A Countess's card left personally too for
her, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendless
companion. "What could Lady Southdown mean by
leaving a card upon you, I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said
the republican Miss Crawley; upon which the companion
meekly said "that she hoped there could be no harm in a
lady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman," and
she put away this card in her work-box amongst her most
cherished personal treasures. Furthermore, Miss Briggs
explained how she had met Mr. Crawley walking with his
cousin and long affianced bride the day before: and she
told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, and what
a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles
of which, from the bonnet down to the boots, she
described and estimated with female accuracy.
Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without
interrupting her too much. As she got well, she was pining
for society. Mr. Creamer, her medical man, would not
hear of her returning to her old haunts and dissipation in
London. The old spinster was too glad to find any
companionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards
acknowledged the very next day, but Pitt Crawley was
graciously invited to come and see his aunt. He came,
bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter. The
dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss
Crawley's soul; but talked with much discretion about the
weather: about the war and the downfall of the monster
Bonaparte: and above all, about doctors, quacks, and the
particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then
patronised.
During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great
stroke, and one which showed that, had his diplomatic
career not been blighted by early neglect, he might have
risen to a high rank in his profession. When the Countess
Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart,
as the fashion was in those days, and showed that he was
a monster stained with every conceivable crime, a coward
and a tyrant not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted,
&c., Pitt Crawley suddenly took up the cudgels in favour
of the man of Destiny. He described the First Consul as
he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt
Crawley, had the gratification of making the acquaintance
of the great and good Mr. Fox, a statesman whom,
however much he might differ with him, it was impossible not
to admire fervently--a statesman who had always had
the highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon. And he
spoke in terms of the strongest indignation of the faithless
conduct of the allies towards this dethroned monarch,
who, after giving himself generously up to their mercy,
was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while
a bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in
his stead.
This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved
Pitt Crawley in Lady Southdown's opinion, whilst his
admiration for Fox and Napoleon raised him immeasurably
in Miss Crawley's eyes. Her friendship with that
defunct British statesman was mentioned when we first
introduced her in this history. A true Whig, Miss Crawley
had been in opposition all through the war, and though, to
be sure, the downfall of the Emperor did not very much
agitate the old lady, or his ill-treatment tend to shorten
her life or natural rest, yet Pitt spoke to her heart when
he lauded both her idols; and by that single speech made
immense progress in her favour.
"And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said
to the young lady, for whom she had taken a liking at
first sight, as she always did for pretty and modest young
people; though it must be owned her affections cooled as
rapidly as they rose.
Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did
not understand politics, which she left to wiser heads
than hers; but though Mamma was, no doubt, correct,
Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully." And when the ladies
were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss Crawley
hoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send
her Lady Jane sometimes, if she could be spared to come
down and console a poor sick lonely old woman." This
promise was graciously accorded, and they separated
upon great terms of amity.
"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt," said the
old lady. "She is stupid and pompous, like all your mother's
family, whom I never could endure. But bring that nice
good-natured little Jane as often as ever you please." Pitt
promised that he would do so. He did not tell the Countess
of Southdown what opinion his aunt had formed of
her Ladyship, who, on the contrary, thought that she had
made a most delightful and majestic impression on Miss
Crawley.
And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and
perhaps not sorry in her heart to be freed now and again
from the dreary spouting of the Reverend Bartholomew
Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered round the
footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady
Jane became a pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley,
accompanied her in her drives, and solaced many of her
evenings. She was so naturally good and soft, that even
Firkin was not jealous of her; and the gentle Briggs
thought her friend was less cruel to her when kind Lady
Jane was by. Towards her Ladyship Miss Crawley's
manners were charming. The old spinster told her a thousand
anecdotes about her youth, talking to her in a very
different strain from that in which she had been accustomed
to converse with the godless little Rebecca; for there was
that in Lady Jane's innocence which rendered light talking impertinence before her, and Miss Crawley was too
much of a gentlewoman to offend such purity. The young
lady herself had never received kindness except from this
old spinster, and her brother and father: and she repaid
Miss Crawley's engoument by artless sweetness and
friendship.
In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting
at Paris, the gayest among the gay conquerors there, and
our Amelia, our dear wounded Amelia, ah! where was
she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss Crawley's
drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her
little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting
and the sea was roaring on the beach. The old spinster
used to wake up when these ditties ceased, and ask for
more. As for Briggs, and the quantity of tears of happiness
which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and
looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the
windows, and the lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to
shine--who, I say can measure the happiness and
sensibility of Briggs?
Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on
the Corn Laws or a Missionary Register by his side, took
that kind of recreation which suits romantic and unromantic
men after dinner. He sipped Madeira: built castles
in the air: thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself much
more in love with Jane than he had been any time these
seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without
the slightest impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good
deal. When the time for coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to
enter in a noisy manner, and summon Squire Pitt, who
would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.
"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet
with me," Miss Crawley said one night when this functionary
made his appearance with the candles and the coffee.
"Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so
stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing
Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should
sleep better if I had my game."
At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears,
and down to the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr.
Bowls had quitted the room, and the door was quite shut,
she said:
"Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to--to play
a little with poor dear papa."
"Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant,
you dear good little soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy:
and in this picturesque and friendly occupation Mr. Pitt
found the old lady and the young one, when he came
upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush
all the evening, that poor Lady Jane!
It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices
escaped the attention of his dear relations at the
Rectory at Queen's Crawley. Hampshire and Sussex lie
very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends in the
latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great
deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house
at Brighton. Pitt was there more and more. He did not
come for months together to the Hall, where his abominable
old father abandoned himself completely to rum-
and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family.
Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and
Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed less)
than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs,
and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and
Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place
there. "It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in
saying; "if that had not broke, I never would have left her. I
am a martyr to duty and to your odious unclerical habit
of hunting, Bute."
"Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her,
Barbara," the divine interposed. "You're a clever woman,
but you've got a devil of a temper; and you're a screw
with your money, Barbara."
"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not
kept your money."
"I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly.
"You ARE a clever woman, but you manage too
well, you know": and the pious man consoled himself
with a big glass of port.
"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt
Crawley?" he continued. "The fellow has not pluck enough
to say Bo to a goose. I remember when Rawdon, who is a
man, and be hanged to him, used to flog him round the
stables as if he was a whipping-top: and Pitt would go
howling home to his ma--ha, ha! Why, either of my boys
would whop him with one hand. Jim says he's
remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawley still--the spooney.
"I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause.
"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and
drumming the table.
"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he
can do anything with the old lady. He's very near getting
his degree, you know. He's only been plucked twice--so
was I--but he's had the advantages of Oxford and a
university education. He knows some of the best chaps there.
He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat. He's a handsome
feller. D-- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman,
hey, and tell him to thrash Pitt if he says anything.
Ha, ha, ha!
"Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife
said; adding with a sigh, "If we could but get one of
the girls into the house; but she could never endure them,
because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and
well-educated women made themselves heard from the
neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming
away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the
piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at
music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history,
the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments,
in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain,
and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could think of
nobody but the Curate to take one of them off her hands;
and Jim coming in from the stable at this minute, through
the parlour window, with a short pipe stuck in his
oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about odds on
the St. Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his
wife ended.
Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from
the sending of her son James as an ambassador, and saw
him depart in rather a despairing mood. Nor did the
young fellow himself, when told what his mission was to
be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but he was
consoled by the thought that possibly the old lady would
give him some handsome remembrance of her, which
would pay a few of his most pressing bills at the
commencement of the ensuing Oxford term, and so took his
place by the coach from Southampton, and was safely
landed at Brighton on the same evening? with his
portmanteau, his favourite bull-dog Towzer, and an
immense basket of farm and garden produce, from the dear
Rectory folks to the dear Miss Crawley. Considering it
was too late to disturb the invalid lady on the first night
of his arrival, he put up at an inn, and did not wait upon
Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon of next day.
James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was
a gawky lad, at that uncomfortable age when the voice
varies between an unearthly treble and a preternatural
bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms out with
appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as
a cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their
sister's scissors, and the sight of other young women
produces intolerable sensations of terror in them; when the
great hands and ankles protrude a long way from
garments which have grown too tight for them; when their
presence after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who
are whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and
inexpressibly odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany,
who are restrained from freedom of intercourse and
delightful interchange of wit by the presence of that gawky
innocence; when, at the conclusion of the second glass,
papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening
holds up," and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at
not being yet a man, quits the incomplete banquet. James,
then a hobbadehoy, was now become a young man,
having had the benefits of a university education, and
acquired the inestimable polish which is gained by living in a
fast set at a small college, and contracting debts, and
being rusticated, and being plucked.
He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to
present himself to his aunt at Brighton, and good looks
were always a title to the fickle old lady's favour. Nor did
his blushes and awkwardness take away from it: she
was pleased with these healthy tokens of the young
gentleman's ingenuousness.
He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see
a man of his college, and--and to pay my respects to you,
Ma'am, and my father's and mother's, who hope you are
well."
Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad
was announced, and looked very blank when his name
was mentioned. The old lady had plenty of humour, and
enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity. She asked after
all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and said
she was thinking of paying them a visit. She praised the
lad to his face, and said he was well-grown and very much
improved, and that it was a pity his sisters had not some
of his good looks; and finding, on inquiry, that he had
taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hear of his
stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James
Crawley's things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she
added, with great graciousness, "you will have the
goodness to pay Mr. James's bill."
She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused
that diplomatist almost to choke with envy. Much as he
had ingratiated himself with his aunt, she had never yet
invited him to stay under her roof, and here was a young
whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome
there.
"I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a
profound bow; "what otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the
luggage from?"
"O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some
alarm, "I'll go."
"What!" said Miss Crawley.
"The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply.
Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title. Mr.
Bowls gave one abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant
of the family, but choked the rest of the volley; the
diplomatist only smiled.
"I--I didn't know any better," said James, looking down.
"I've never been here before; it was the coachman told
me." The young story-teller! The fact is, that on the
Southampton coach, the day previous, James Crawley had
met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton to
make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted
by the Pet's conversation, had passed the evening in
company with that scientific man and his friends, at the inn
in question.
"I--I'd best go and settle the score," James continued.
"Couldn't think of asking you, Ma'am," he added,
generously.
This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.
"Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of
her hand, "and bring it to me."
Poor lady, she did not know what she had done! "There
--there's a little dawg," said James, looking frightfully
guilty. "I'd best go for him. He bites footmen's calves."
All the party cried out with laughing at this description;
even Briggs and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute
during the interview between Miss Crawley and her
nephew: and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room.
Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss
Crawley persisted in being gracious to the young Oxonian.
There were no limits to her kindness or her compliments
when they once began. She told Pitt he might come to
dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her
in her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the
cliff, on the back seat of the barouche. During all this
excursion, she condescended to say civil things to him:
she quoted Italian and French poetry to the poor
bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar,
and was perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and
be a Senior Wrangler.
"Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these
compliments; "Senior Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other
shop."
"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady.
"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the
scholar, with a knowing air; and would probably have
been more confidential, but that suddenly there
appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up
pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl
buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean
Fibber, with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance,
who all saluted poor James there in the carriage as he
sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth's spirits,
and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter
during the rest of the drive.
On his return he found his room prepared, and his
portmanteau ready, and might have remarked that Mr.
Bowls's countenance, when the latter conducted him to
his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and
compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter
his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament
in which he found himself, in a house full of old women,
jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him.
"Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest
boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not
even Briggs--when she began to talk to him; whereas,
put him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the
boldest bargeman.
At dinner, James appeared choking in a white
neckcloth, and had the honour of handing my Lady Jane
downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawley followed
afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus of
bundles, and shawls, and cushions. Half of Briggs's time
at dinner was spent in superintending the invalid's
comfort, and in cutting up chicken for her fat spaniel. James
did not talk much, but he made a point of asking all
the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr. Crawley's
challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle of
champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in
his honour. The ladies having withdrawn, and the two
cousins being left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, be
came very communicative and friendly. He asked after
James's career at college--what his prospects in life
were--hoped heartily he would get on; and, in a word,
was frank and amiable. James's tongue unloosed with
the port, and he told his cousin his life, his prospects,
his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rows with
the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him,
and flying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity.
"The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr.
Crawley, filling his glass, "is that people should do as they
like in her house. This is Liberty Hall, James, and you
can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindness than to do
as you please, and ask for what you will. I know you
have all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory.
Miss Crawley is liberal enough to suit any fancy. She
is a Republican in principle, and despises everything like
rank or title."
"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?"
said James.
"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's
fault that she is well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly
air. "She cannot help being a lady. Besides, I am a
Tory, you know."
"Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old
blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your
radicals. I know what it is to be a gentleman, dammy.
See the chaps in a boat-race; look at the fellers in a
fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins?
the good-blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old
boy, whilst I buzz this bottle-here. What was I asaying?"
"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt
remarked mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to
"buzz.~
"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting
man? Do you want to see a dawg as CAN kill a rat?
If you do, come down with me to Tom Corduroy's, in
Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier
as--Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing
at his own absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg
or rat; it's all nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know
the difference between a dog and a duck."
"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness,
"it was about blood you were talking, and the
personal advantages which people derive from patrician
birth. Here's the fresh bottle."
"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid
down. "Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND
men. Why, only last term, just before I was rusticated,
that is, I mean just before I had the measles, ha, ha--there
was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood,
Lord Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at
Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either
of us for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a
sling; couldn't even take the drag down--a brute of a
mare of mine had fell with me only two days before,
out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke.
Well, sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat
off at once--he stood up to the Banbury man for three
minutes, and polished him off in four rounds easy. Gad,
how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, all
blood."
"You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued.
"In my time at Oxford, the men passed round the bottle
a little quicker than you young fellows seem to do."
"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his
nose and winking at his cousin with a pair of vinous
eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying it on on me. You
want to trot me out, but it's no go. In vino veritas, old
boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my
aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's
a precious good tap."
"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or
make the best of your time now. What says the bard?
'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,' "
and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above with a House
of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine
with an immense flourish of his glass.
At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was
opened after dinner, the young ladies had each a glass
from a bottle of currant wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass
of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as
his father grew very sulky if he made further inroads
on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from
trying for more, and subsided either into the currant wine,
or to some private gin-and-water in the stables, which
he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his
pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited,
but the quality was inferior: but when quantity and
quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that
he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed any
of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the
second bottle supplied by Mr. Bowls.
When the time for coffee came, however, and for a
return to the ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young
gentleman's agreeable frankness left him, and he relapsed
into his usual surly timidity; contenting himself by
saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by
upsetting one cup of coffee during the evening.
If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner,
and his presence threw a damp upon the modest
proceedings of the evening, for Miss Crawley and Lady Jane
at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work, felt that
his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy
under that maudlin look.
"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said
Miss Crawley to Mr. Pitt.
"He is more communicative in men's society than with
ladies," Machiavel dryly replied: perhaps rather
disappointed that the port wine had not made Jim
speak more.
He had spent the early part of the next morning in
writing home to his mother a most flourishing account
of his reception by Miss Crawley. But ah! he little knew
what evils the day was bringing for him, and how short his
reign of favour was destined to be. A circumstance
which Jim had forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance
--had taken place at the Cribb's Arms on the night
before he had come to his aunt's house. It was no other
than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition,
and when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the
course of the night treated the Tutbury champion and
the Rottingdean man, and their friends, twice or thrice
to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that no less than
eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass were
charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill. It was not the
amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which
told fatally against poor James's character, when his
aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his mistress's
request to pay the young gentleman's bill. The landlord,
fearing lest the account should be refused altogether,
swore solemnly that the young gent had consumed
personally every farthing's worth of the liquor: and Bowls
paid the bill finally, and showed it on his return home
to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightful
prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs as
accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention
the circumstance to her principal, Miss Crawley.
Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old
spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr.
Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen
glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an ignoble
pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be
pardoned readily. Everything went against the lad: he came
home perfumed from the stables, whither he had been
to pay his dog Towzer a visit--and whence he was
going to take his friend out for an airing, when he met
Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which
Towzer would have eaten up had not the Blenheim fled
squealing to the protection of Miss Briggs, while the
atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing at the
horrible persecution.
This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise
forsaken him. He was lively and facetious at dinner.
During the repast he levelled one or two jokes against Pitt
Crawley: he drank as much wine as upon the previous
day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room,
began to entertain the ladies there with some choice
Oxford stories. He described the different pugilistic qualities
of Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give
Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet against the
Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose:
and crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back
himself against his cousin Pitt Crawley, either with or without
the gloves. "And that's a fair offer, my buck," he said,
with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on the shoulder, "and
my father told me to make it too, and he'll go halves
in the bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the engaging youth nodded
knowingly at poor Miss Briggs, and pointed his thumb
over his shoulder at Pitt Crawley in a jocular and
exulting manner.
Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not
unhappy in the main. Poor Jim had his laugh out: and
staggered across the room with his aunt's candle, when
the old lady moved to retire, and offered to salute her
with the blandest tipsy smile: and he took his own leave
and went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied with
himself, and with a pleased notion that his aunt's money
would be left to him in preference to his father and all
the rest of the family.
Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he
could not make matters worse; and yet this unlucky boy
did. The moon was shining very pleasantly out on the
sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by the romantic
appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he
would further enjoy them while smoking. Nobody would
smell the tobacco, he thought, if he cunningly opened
the window and kept his head and pipe in the fresh air.
This he did: but being in an excited state, poor Jim
had forgotten that his door was open all this time, so
that the breeze blowing inwards and a fine thorough
draught being established, the clouds of tobacco were
carried downstairs, and arrived with quite undiminished
fragrance to Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs.
The pipe of tobacco finished the business: and the
Bute-Crawleys never knew how many thousand pounds
it cost them. Firkin rushed downstairs to Bowls who
was reading out the "Fire and the Frying Pan" to his
aide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice. The dreadful
secret was told to him by Firkin with so frightened a look,
that for the first moment Mr. Bowls and his young man
thought that robbers were in the house, the legs of whom
had probably been discovered by the woman under Miss
Crawley's bed. When made aware of the fact, however
--to rush upstairs at three steps at a time to enter
the unconscious James's apartment, calling out, "Mr.
James," in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry, "For
Gawd's sake, sir, stop that 'ere pipe," was the work of
a minute with Mr. Bowls. "O, Mr. James, what 'AVE you
done!" he said in a voice of the deepest pathos, as he
threw the implement out of the window. "What 'ave you
done, sir! Missis can't abide 'em."
"Missis needn't smoke," said James with a frantic
misplaced laugh, and thought the whole matter an excellent
joke. But his feelings were very different in the morning,
when Mr. Bowls's young man, who operated upon Mr.
James's boots, and brought him his hot water to shave
that beard which he was so anxiously expecting, handed
a note in to Mr. James in bed, in the handwriting of
Miss Briggs.
"Dear sir," it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an
exceedingly disturbed night, owing to the shocking manner
in which the house has been polluted by tobacco; Miss
Crawley bids me say she regrets that she is too unwell
to see you before you go--and above all that she ever
induced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is
sure you will be much more comfortable during the rest
of your stay at Brighton."
And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for
his aunt's favour ended. He had in fact, and without
knowing it, done what he menaced to do. He had fought
his cousin Pitt with the gloves.
Where meanwhile was he who had been once first
favourite for this race for money? Becky and Rawdon,
as we have seen, were come together after Waterloo,
and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in great
splendour and gaiety. Rebecca was a good economist,
and the price poor Jos Sedley had paid for her two
horses was in itself sufficient to keep their little
establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there was no
occasion to turn into money "my pistols, the same which
I shot Captain Marker," or the gold dressing-case, or
the cloak lined with sable. Becky had it made into a
pelisse for herself, in which she rode in the Bois de
Boulogne to the admiration of all: and you should have
seen the scene between her and her delighted husband,
whom she rejoined after the army had entered Cambray,
and when she unsewed herself, and let out of her dress
all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes, cheques, and
valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previous
to her meditated flight from Brussels! Tufto was charmed,
and Rawdon roared with delighted laughter, and swore
that she was better than any play he ever saw, by Jove.
And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, and which
she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to
a pitch of quite insane enthusiasm. He believed in his
wife as much as the French soldiers in Napoleon.
Her success in Paris was remarkable. All the French
ladies voted her charming. She spoke their language
admirably. She adopted at once their grace, their liveliness,
their manner. Her husband was stupid certainly--all
English are stupid--and, besides, a dull husband at Paris is
always a point in a lady's favour. He was the heir of the
rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been
open to so many of the French noblesse during the
emigration. They received the colonel's wife in their own
hotels--"Why," wrote a great lady to Miss Crawley, who
had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess's own
price, and given her many a dinner during the pinching
times after the Revolution--"Why does not our dear Miss
come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends
in Paris? All the world raffoles of the charming Mistress
and her espiegle beauty. Yes, we see in her the grace,
the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley!
The King took notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries,
and we are all jealous of the attention which Monsieur
pays her. If you could have seen the spite of a certain
stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque
and feat,hers may be seen peering over the heads of all
assemblies) when Madame, the Duchess of Angouleme,
the august daughter and companion of kings, desired
especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear
daughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name
of France, for all your benevolence towards our
unfortunates during their exile! She is of all the societies,
of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of the dances, no;
and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature looks
surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to
be a mother! To hear her speak of you, her protectress,
her mother, would bring tears to the eyes of ogres. How
she loves you! how we all love our admirable, our
respectable Miss Crawley!"
It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great
lady did not by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest
with her admirable, her respectable, relative. On the
contrary, the fury of the old spinster was beyond bounds,
when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and how
audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name,
to get an entree into Parisian society. Too much shaken
in mind and body to compose a letter in the French
language in reply to that of her correspondent, she
dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue,
repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning
the public to beware of her as a most artful and
dangerous person. But as Madame the Duchess of X--
had only been twenty years in England, she did not
understand a single word of the language, and contented
herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next
meeting, that she had received a charming letter from
that chere Mees, and that it was full of benevolent
things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have
hopes that the spinster would relent.
Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of
Englishwomen: and had a little European congress on her
reception-night. Prussians and Cossacks, Spanish and
English--all the world was at Paris during this famous
winter: to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's
humble saloon would have made all Baker Street pale
with envy. Famous warriors rode by her carriage in
the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at the Opera.
Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns
in Paris as yet: there were parties every day at Very's
or Beauvilliers'; play was plentiful and his luck good.
Tufto perhaps was sulky. Mrs. Tufto had come over to
Paris at her own invitation, and besides this
contretemps, there were a score of generals now round
Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a dozen
bouquets when she went to the play. Lady Bareacres
and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and
irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the
success of the little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes
quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts. But she
had all the men on her side. She fought the women
with indomitable courage, and they could not talk
scandal in any tongue but their own.
So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of
1815-16 passed away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,
who accommodated herself to polite life as if her
ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--
and who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited
a place of honour in Vanity Fair. In the early spring of
1816, Galignani's Journal contained the following
announcement in an interesting corner of the paper: "On
the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel
Crawley, of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir."
This event was copied into the London papers, out of
which Miss Briggs read the statement to Miss Crawley,
at breakfast, at Brighton. The intelligence, expected as
it might have been, caused a crisis in the affairs of
the Crawley family. The spinster's rage rose to its height,
and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the
Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested
an immediate celebration of the marriage which had been
so long pending between the two families. And she
announced that it was her intention to allow the young
couple a thousand a year during her lifetime, at the
expiration of which the bulk of her property would be
settled upon her nephew and her dear niece, Lady Jane
Crawley. Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord
Southdown gave away his sister--she was married by a
Bishop, and not by the Rev. Bartholomew Irons--to the
disappointment of the irregular prelate.
When they were married, Pitt would have liked to
take a hymeneal tour with his bride, as became people
of their condition. But the affection of the old lady
towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairly
owned she could not part with her favourite. Pitt and
his wife came therefore and lived with Miss Crawley:
and (greatly to the annoyance of poor Pitt, who
conceived himself a most injured character--being subject
to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of his
mother-in-law on the other) Lady Southdown, from her
neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family--
Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and
all. She pitilessly dosed them with her tracts and her
medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers,
and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance
of authority. The poor soul grew so timid that she
actually left off bullying Briggs any more, and clung to
her niece, more fond and terrified every day. Peace to
thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--
We shall see thee no more. Let us hope that Lady Jane
supported her kindly, and led her with gentle hand out
of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.
CHAPTER XXXV
Widow and Mother
The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo
reached England at the same time. The Gazette first
published the result of the two battles; at which glorious
intelligence all England thrilled with triumph and fear.
Particulars then followed; and after the announcement of
the victories came the list of the wounded and the slain.
Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was
opened and read! Fancy, at every village and homestead
almost through the three kingdoms, the great news
coming of the battles in Flanders, and the feelings of
exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,
when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through,
and it became known whether the dear friend and relative
had escaped or fallen. Anybody who will take the trouble
of looking back to a file of the newspapers of the
time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this breathless
pause of expectation. The lists of casualties are carried
on from day to day: you stop in the midst as in a story
which is to be continued in our next. Think what the
piles of her quack theology and medicine. O, my dear
brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity Fair, which
among you does not know and suffer under such
benevolent despots? It is in vain you say to them, "Dear
Madam, I took Podgers' specific at your orders last year,
and believe in it. Why, why am I to recant and accept the
Rodgers' articles now?" There is no help for it; the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument,
bursts into tears, and the refusant finds himself, at the
end of the contest, taking down the bolus, and saying,
"Well, well, Rodgers' be it."
"And as for her spiritual state," continued the Lady,
"that of course must be looked to immediately: with
Creamer about her, she may go off any day: and in what
a condition, my dear Pitt, in what a dreadful condition!
I will send the Reverend Mr. Irons to her instantly. Jane,
write a line to the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, in the
third person, and say that I desire the pleasure of his
company this evening at tea at half-past six. He is an
awakening man; he ought to see Miss Crawley before she
rests this night. And Emily, my love, get ready a packet
of books for Miss Crawley. Put up 'A Voice from the
Flames,' 'A Trumpet-warning to Jericho,' and the
'Fleshpots Broken; or, the Converted Cannibal.' "
"And the 'Washerwoman of Finchley Common,'
Mamma," said Lady Emily. "It is as well to begin
soothingly at first."
"Stop, my dear ladies," said Pitt, the diplomatist.
"With every deference to the opinion of my beloved and
respected Lady Southdown, I think it would be quite
unadvisable to commence so early upon serious topics with
Miss Crawley. Remember her delicate condition, and how
little, how very little accustomed she has hitherto been
to considerations connected with her immortal welfare."
"Can we then begin too early, Pitt?" said Lady Emily,
rising with six little books already in her hand.
"If you begin abruptly, you will frighten her altogether.
I know my aunt's worldly nature so well as to be sure
that any abrupt attempt at conversion will be the very
worst means that can be employed for the welfare of that
unfortunate lady. You will only frighten and annoy her.
She will very likely fling the books away, and refuse all
acquaintance with the givers."
"You are as worldly as Miss Crawley, Pitt," said Lady
Emily, tossing out of the room, her books in her hand.
"And I need not tell you, my dear Lady Southdown,"
Pitt continued, in a low voice, and without heeding the
interruption, "how fatal a little want of gentleness and
caution may be to any hopes which we may entertain with
regard to the worldly possessions of my aunt. Remember
she has seventy thousand pounds; think of her age, and
her highly nervous and delicate condition; I know that she
has destroyed the will which was made in my brother's
(Colonel Crawley's) favour: it is by soothing that
wounded spirit that we must lead it into the right path,
and not by frightening it; and so I think you will agree
with me that--that--'
"Of course, of course," Lady Southdown remarked.
"Jane, my love, you need not send that note to Mr. Irons.
If her health is such that discussions fatigue her, we will
wait her amendment. I will call upon Miss Crawley
tomorrow."
"And if I might suggest, my sweet lady," Pitt said in a
bland tone, "it would be as well not to take our precious
Emily, who is too enthusiastic; but rather that you should
be accompanied by our sweet and dear Lady Jane."
"Most certainly, Emily would ruin everything," Lady
Southdown said; and this time agreed to forego her usual
practice, which was, as we have said, before she bore
down personally upon any individual whom she proposed
to subjugate, to fire in a quantity of tracts upon the
menaced party (as a charge of the French was always
preceded by a furious cannonade). Lady Southdown, we
say, for the sake of the invalid's health, or for the sake
of her soul's ultimate welfare, or for the sake of her
money, agreed to temporise.
The next day, the great Southdown female family
carriage, with the Earl's coronet and the lozenge (upon
which the three lambs trottant argent upon the field vert
of the Southdowns, were quartered with sable on a bend
or, three snuff-mulls gules, the cognizance of the house of
Binkie), drove up in state to Miss Crawley's door, and
the tall serious footman handed in to Mr. Bowls her
Ladyship's cards for Miss Crawley, and one likewise for
Miss Briggs. By way of compromise, Lady Emily sent in a
packet in the evening for the latter lady, containing
copies of the "Washerwoman," and other mild and favourite
tracts for Miss B.'s own perusal; and a few for the
servants' hall, viz.: "Crumbs from the Pantry," "The
Frying Pan and the Fire," and "The Livery of Sin," of a
much stronger kind.
CHAPTER XXXIV
James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out
The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's
kind reception of her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who
was enabled to speak a good word for the latter, after
the cards of the Southdown family had been presented to
Miss Crawley. A Countess's card left personally too for
her, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendless
companion. "What could Lady Southdown mean by
leaving a card upon you, I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said
the republican Miss Crawley; upon which the companion
meekly said "that she hoped there could be no harm in a
lady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman," and
she put away this card in her work-box amongst her most
cherished personal treasures. Furthermore, Miss Briggs
explained how she had met Mr. Crawley walking with his
cousin and long affianced bride the day before: and she
told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, and what
a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles
of which, from the bonnet down to the boots, she
described and estimated with female accuracy.
Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without
interrupting her too much. As she got well, she was pining
for society. Mr. Creamer, her medical man, would not
hear of her returning to her old haunts and dissipation in
London. The old spinster was too glad to find any
companionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards
acknowledged the very next day, but Pitt Crawley was
graciously invited to come and see his aunt. He came,
bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter. The
dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss
Crawley's soul; but talked with much discretion about the
weather: about the war and the downfall of the monster
Bonaparte: and above all, about doctors, quacks, and the
particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then
patronised.
During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great
stroke, and one which showed that, had his diplomatic
career not been blighted by early neglect, he might have
risen to a high rank in his profession. When the Countess
Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart,
as the fashion was in those days, and showed that he was
a monster stained with every conceivable crime, a coward
and a tyrant not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted,
&c., Pitt Crawley suddenly took up the cudgels in favour
of the man of Destiny. He described the First Consul as
he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt
Crawley, had the gratification of making the acquaintance
of the great and good Mr. Fox, a statesman whom,
however much he might differ with him, it was impossible not
to admire fervently--a statesman who had always had
the highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon. And he
spoke in terms of the strongest indignation of the faithless
conduct of the allies towards this dethroned monarch,
who, after giving himself generously up to their mercy,
was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while
a bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in
his stead.
This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved
Pitt Crawley in Lady Southdown's opinion, whilst his
admiration for Fox and Napoleon raised him immeasurably
in Miss Crawley's eyes. Her friendship with that
defunct British statesman was mentioned when we first
introduced her in this history. A true Whig, Miss Crawley
had been in opposition all through the war, and though, to
be sure, the downfall of the Emperor did not very much
agitate the old lady, or his ill-treatment tend to shorten
her life or natural rest, yet Pitt spoke to her heart when
he lauded both her idols; and by that single speech made
immense progress in her favour.
"And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said
to the young lady, for whom she had taken a liking at
first sight, as she always did for pretty and modest young
people; though it must be owned her affections cooled as
rapidly as they rose.
Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did
not understand politics, which she left to wiser heads
than hers; but though Mamma was, no doubt, correct,
Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully." And when the ladies
were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss Crawley
hoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send
her Lady Jane sometimes, if she could be spared to come
down and console a poor sick lonely old woman." This
promise was graciously accorded, and they separated
upon great terms of amity.
"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt," said the
old lady. "She is stupid and pompous, like all your mother's
family, whom I never could endure. But bring that nice
good-natured little Jane as often as ever you please." Pitt
promised that he would do so. He did not tell the Countess
of Southdown what opinion his aunt had formed of
her Ladyship, who, on the contrary, thought that she had
made a most delightful and majestic impression on Miss
Crawley.
And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and
perhaps not sorry in her heart to be freed now and again
from the dreary spouting of the Reverend Bartholomew
Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered round the
footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady
Jane became a pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley,
accompanied her in her drives, and solaced many of her
evenings. She was so naturally good and soft, that even
Firkin was not jealous of her; and the gentle Briggs
thought her friend was less cruel to her when kind Lady
Jane was by. Towards her Ladyship Miss Crawley's
manners were charming. The old spinster told her a thousand
anecdotes about her youth, talking to her in a very
different strain from that in which she had been accustomed
to converse with the godless little Rebecca; for there was
that in Lady Jane's innocence which rendered light talking impertinence before her, and Miss Crawley was too
much of a gentlewoman to offend such purity. The young
lady herself had never received kindness except from this
old spinster, and her brother and father: and she repaid
Miss Crawley's engoument by artless sweetness and
friendship.
In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting
at Paris, the gayest among the gay conquerors there, and
our Amelia, our dear wounded Amelia, ah! where was
she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss Crawley's
drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her
little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting
and the sea was roaring on the beach. The old spinster
used to wake up when these ditties ceased, and ask for
more. As for Briggs, and the quantity of tears of happiness
which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and
looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the
windows, and the lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to
shine--who, I say can measure the happiness and
sensibility of Briggs?
Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on
the Corn Laws or a Missionary Register by his side, took
that kind of recreation which suits romantic and unromantic
men after dinner. He sipped Madeira: built castles
in the air: thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself much
more in love with Jane than he had been any time these
seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without
the slightest impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good
deal. When the time for coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to
enter in a noisy manner, and summon Squire Pitt, who
would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.
"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet
with me," Miss Crawley said one night when this functionary
made his appearance with the candles and the coffee.
"Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so
stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing
Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should
sleep better if I had my game."
At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears,
and down to the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr.
Bowls had quitted the room, and the door was quite shut,
she said:
"Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to--to play
a little with poor dear papa."
"Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant,
you dear good little soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy:
and in this picturesque and friendly occupation Mr. Pitt
found the old lady and the young one, when he came
upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush
all the evening, that poor Lady Jane!
It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices
escaped the attention of his dear relations at the
Rectory at Queen's Crawley. Hampshire and Sussex lie
very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends in the
latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great
deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house
at Brighton. Pitt was there more and more. He did not
come for months together to the Hall, where his abominable
old father abandoned himself completely to rum-
and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family.
Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and
Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed less)
than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs,
and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and
Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place
there. "It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in
saying; "if that had not broke, I never would have left her. I
am a martyr to duty and to your odious unclerical habit
of hunting, Bute."
"Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her,
Barbara," the divine interposed. "You're a clever woman,
but you've got a devil of a temper; and you're a screw
with your money, Barbara."
"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not
kept your money."
"I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly.
"You ARE a clever woman, but you manage too
well, you know": and the pious man consoled himself
with a big glass of port.
"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt
Crawley?" he continued. "The fellow has not pluck enough
to say Bo to a goose. I remember when Rawdon, who is a
man, and be hanged to him, used to flog him round the
stables as if he was a whipping-top: and Pitt would go
howling home to his ma--ha, ha! Why, either of my boys
would whop him with one hand. Jim says he's
remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawley still--the spooney.
"I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause.
"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and
drumming the table.
"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he
can do anything with the old lady. He's very near getting
his degree, you know. He's only been plucked twice--so
was I--but he's had the advantages of Oxford and a
university education. He knows some of the best chaps there.
He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat. He's a handsome
feller. D-- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman,
hey, and tell him to thrash Pitt if he says anything.
Ha, ha, ha!
"Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife
said; adding with a sigh, "If we could but get one of
the girls into the house; but she could never endure them,
because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and
well-educated women made themselves heard from the
neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming
away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the
piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at
music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history,
the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments,
in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain,
and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could think of
nobody but the Curate to take one of them off her hands;
and Jim coming in from the stable at this minute, through
the parlour window, with a short pipe stuck in his
oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about odds on
the St. Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his
wife ended.
Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from
the sending of her son James as an ambassador, and saw
him depart in rather a despairing mood. Nor did the
young fellow himself, when told what his mission was to
be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but he was
consoled by the thought that possibly the old lady would
give him some handsome remembrance of her, which
would pay a few of his most pressing bills at the
commencement of the ensuing Oxford term, and so took his
place by the coach from Southampton, and was safely
landed at Brighton on the same evening? with his
portmanteau, his favourite bull-dog Towzer, and an
immense basket of farm and garden produce, from the dear
Rectory folks to the dear Miss Crawley. Considering it
was too late to disturb the invalid lady on the first night
of his arrival, he put up at an inn, and did not wait upon
Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon of next day.
James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was
a gawky lad, at that uncomfortable age when the voice
varies between an unearthly treble and a preternatural
bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms out with
appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as
a cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their
sister's scissors, and the sight of other young women
produces intolerable sensations of terror in them; when the
great hands and ankles protrude a long way from
garments which have grown too tight for them; when their
presence after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who
are whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and
inexpressibly odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany,
who are restrained from freedom of intercourse and
delightful interchange of wit by the presence of that gawky
innocence; when, at the conclusion of the second glass,
papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening
holds up," and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at
not being yet a man, quits the incomplete banquet. James,
then a hobbadehoy, was now become a young man,
having had the benefits of a university education, and
acquired the inestimable polish which is gained by living in a
fast set at a small college, and contracting debts, and
being rusticated, and being plucked.
He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to
present himself to his aunt at Brighton, and good looks
were always a title to the fickle old lady's favour. Nor did
his blushes and awkwardness take away from it: she
was pleased with these healthy tokens of the young
gentleman's ingenuousness.
He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see
a man of his college, and--and to pay my respects to you,
Ma'am, and my father's and mother's, who hope you are
well."
Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad
was announced, and looked very blank when his name
was mentioned. The old lady had plenty of humour, and
enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity. She asked after
all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and said
she was thinking of paying them a visit. She praised the
lad to his face, and said he was well-grown and very much
improved, and that it was a pity his sisters had not some
of his good looks; and finding, on inquiry, that he had
taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hear of his
stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James
Crawley's things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she
added, with great graciousness, "you will have the
goodness to pay Mr. James's bill."
She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused
that diplomatist almost to choke with envy. Much as he
had ingratiated himself with his aunt, she had never yet
invited him to stay under her roof, and here was a young
whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome
there.
"I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a
profound bow; "what otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the
luggage from?"
"O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some
alarm, "I'll go."
"What!" said Miss Crawley.
"The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply.
Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title. Mr.
Bowls gave one abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant
of the family, but choked the rest of the volley; the
diplomatist only smiled.
"I--I didn't know any better," said James, looking down.
"I've never been here before; it was the coachman told
me." The young story-teller! The fact is, that on the
Southampton coach, the day previous, James Crawley had
met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton to
make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted
by the Pet's conversation, had passed the evening in
company with that scientific man and his friends, at the inn
in question.
"I--I'd best go and settle the score," James continued.
"Couldn't think of asking you, Ma'am," he added,
generously.
This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.
"Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of
her hand, "and bring it to me."
Poor lady, she did not know what she had done! "There
--there's a little dawg," said James, looking frightfully
guilty. "I'd best go for him. He bites footmen's calves."
All the party cried out with laughing at this description;
even Briggs and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute
during the interview between Miss Crawley and her
nephew: and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room.
Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss
Crawley persisted in being gracious to the young Oxonian.
There were no limits to her kindness or her compliments
when they once began. She told Pitt he might come to
dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her
in her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the
cliff, on the back seat of the barouche. During all this
excursion, she condescended to say civil things to him:
she quoted Italian and French poetry to the poor
bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar,
and was perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and
be a Senior Wrangler.
"Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these
compliments; "Senior Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other
shop."
"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady.
"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the
scholar, with a knowing air; and would probably have
been more confidential, but that suddenly there
appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up
pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl
buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean
Fibber, with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance,
who all saluted poor James there in the carriage as he
sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth's spirits,
and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter
during the rest of the drive.
On his return he found his room prepared, and his
portmanteau ready, and might have remarked that Mr.
Bowls's countenance, when the latter conducted him to
his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and
compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter
his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament
in which he found himself, in a house full of old women,
jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him.
"Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest
boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not
even Briggs--when she began to talk to him; whereas,
put him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the
boldest bargeman.
At dinner, James appeared choking in a white
neckcloth, and had the honour of handing my Lady Jane
downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawley followed
afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus of
bundles, and shawls, and cushions. Half of Briggs's time
at dinner was spent in superintending the invalid's
comfort, and in cutting up chicken for her fat spaniel. James
did not talk much, but he made a point of asking all
the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr. Crawley's
challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle of
champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in
his honour. The ladies having withdrawn, and the two
cousins being left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, be
came very communicative and friendly. He asked after
James's career at college--what his prospects in life
were--hoped heartily he would get on; and, in a word,
was frank and amiable. James's tongue unloosed with
the port, and he told his cousin his life, his prospects,
his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rows with
the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him,
and flying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity.
"The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr.
Crawley, filling his glass, "is that people should do as they
like in her house. This is Liberty Hall, James, and you
can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindness than to do
as you please, and ask for what you will. I know you
have all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory.
Miss Crawley is liberal enough to suit any fancy. She
is a Republican in principle, and despises everything like
rank or title."
"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?"
said James.
"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's
fault that she is well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly
air. "She cannot help being a lady. Besides, I am a
Tory, you know."
"Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old
blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your
radicals. I know what it is to be a gentleman, dammy.
See the chaps in a boat-race; look at the fellers in a
fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins?
the good-blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old
boy, whilst I buzz this bottle-here. What was I asaying?"
"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt
remarked mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to
"buzz.~
"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting
man? Do you want to see a dawg as CAN kill a rat?
If you do, come down with me to Tom Corduroy's, in
Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier
as--Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing
at his own absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg
or rat; it's all nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know
the difference between a dog and a duck."
"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness,
"it was about blood you were talking, and the
personal advantages which people derive from patrician
birth. Here's the fresh bottle."
"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid
down. "Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND
men. Why, only last term, just before I was rusticated,
that is, I mean just before I had the measles, ha, ha--there
was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood,
Lord Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at
Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either
of us for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a
sling; couldn't even take the drag down--a brute of a
mare of mine had fell with me only two days before,
out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke.
Well, sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat
off at once--he stood up to the Banbury man for three
minutes, and polished him off in four rounds easy. Gad,
how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, all
blood."
"You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued.
"In my time at Oxford, the men passed round the bottle
a little quicker than you young fellows seem to do."
"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his
nose and winking at his cousin with a pair of vinous
eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying it on on me. You
want to trot me out, but it's no go. In vino veritas, old
boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my
aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's
a precious good tap."
"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or
make the best of your time now. What says the bard?
'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,' "
and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above with a House
of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine
with an immense flourish of his glass.
At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was
opened after dinner, the young ladies had each a glass
from a bottle of currant wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass
of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as
his father grew very sulky if he made further inroads
on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from
trying for more, and subsided either into the currant wine,
or to some private gin-and-water in the stables, which
he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his
pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited,
but the quality was inferior: but when quantity and
quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that
he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed any
of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the
second bottle supplied by Mr. Bowls.
When the time for coffee came, however, and for a
return to the ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young
gentleman's agreeable frankness left him, and he relapsed
into his usual surly timidity; contenting himself by
saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by
upsetting one cup of coffee during the evening.
If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner,
and his presence threw a damp upon the modest
proceedings of the evening, for Miss Crawley and Lady Jane
at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work, felt that
his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy
under that maudlin look.
"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said
Miss Crawley to Mr. Pitt.
"He is more communicative in men's society than with
ladies," Machiavel dryly replied: perhaps rather
disappointed that the port wine had not made Jim
speak more.
He had spent the early part of the next morning in
writing home to his mother a most flourishing account
of his reception by Miss Crawley. But ah! he little knew
what evils the day was bringing for him, and how short his
reign of favour was destined to be. A circumstance
which Jim had forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance
--had taken place at the Cribb's Arms on the night
before he had come to his aunt's house. It was no other
than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition,
and when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the
course of the night treated the Tutbury champion and
the Rottingdean man, and their friends, twice or thrice
to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that no less than
eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass were
charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill. It was not the
amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which
told fatally against poor James's character, when his
aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his mistress's
request to pay the young gentleman's bill. The landlord,
fearing lest the account should be refused altogether,
swore solemnly that the young gent had consumed
personally every farthing's worth of the liquor: and Bowls
paid the bill finally, and showed it on his return home
to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightful
prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs as
accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention
the circumstance to her principal, Miss Crawley.
Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old
spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr.
Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen
glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an ignoble
pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be
pardoned readily. Everything went against the lad: he came
home perfumed from the stables, whither he had been
to pay his dog Towzer a visit--and whence he was
going to take his friend out for an airing, when he met
Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which
Towzer would have eaten up had not the Blenheim fled
squealing to the protection of Miss Briggs, while the
atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing at the
horrible persecution.
This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise
forsaken him. He was lively and facetious at dinner.
During the repast he levelled one or two jokes against Pitt
Crawley: he drank as much wine as upon the previous
day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room,
began to entertain the ladies there with some choice
Oxford stories. He described the different pugilistic qualities
of Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give
Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet against the
Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose:
and crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back
himself against his cousin Pitt Crawley, either with or without
the gloves. "And that's a fair offer, my buck," he said,
with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on the shoulder, "and
my father told me to make it too, and he'll go halves
in the bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the engaging youth nodded
knowingly at poor Miss Briggs, and pointed his thumb
over his shoulder at Pitt Crawley in a jocular and
exulting manner.
Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not
unhappy in the main. Poor Jim had his laugh out: and
staggered across the room with his aunt's candle, when
the old lady moved to retire, and offered to salute her
with the blandest tipsy smile: and he took his own leave
and went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied with
himself, and with a pleased notion that his aunt's money
would be left to him in preference to his father and all
the rest of the family.
Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he
could not make matters worse; and yet this unlucky boy
did. The moon was shining very pleasantly out on the
sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by the romantic
appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he
would further enjoy them while smoking. Nobody would
smell the tobacco, he thought, if he cunningly opened
the window and kept his head and pipe in the fresh air.
This he did: but being in an excited state, poor Jim
had forgotten that his door was open all this time, so
that the breeze blowing inwards and a fine thorough
draught being established, the clouds of tobacco were
carried downstairs, and arrived with quite undiminished
fragrance to Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs.
The pipe of tobacco finished the business: and the
Bute-Crawleys never knew how many thousand pounds
it cost them. Firkin rushed downstairs to Bowls who
was reading out the "Fire and the Frying Pan" to his
aide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice. The dreadful
secret was told to him by Firkin with so frightened a look,
that for the first moment Mr. Bowls and his young man
thought that robbers were in the house, the legs of whom
had probably been discovered by the woman under Miss
Crawley's bed. When made aware of the fact, however
--to rush upstairs at three steps at a time to enter
the unconscious James's apartment, calling out, "Mr.
James," in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry, "For
Gawd's sake, sir, stop that 'ere pipe," was the work of
a minute with Mr. Bowls. "O, Mr. James, what 'AVE you
done!" he said in a voice of the deepest pathos, as he
threw the implement out of the window. "What 'ave you
done, sir! Missis can't abide 'em."
"Missis needn't smoke," said James with a frantic
misplaced laugh, and thought the whole matter an excellent
joke. But his feelings were very different in the morning,
when Mr. Bowls's young man, who operated upon Mr.
James's boots, and brought him his hot water to shave
that beard which he was so anxiously expecting, handed
a note in to Mr. James in bed, in the handwriting of
Miss Briggs.
"Dear sir," it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an
exceedingly disturbed night, owing to the shocking manner
in which the house has been polluted by tobacco; Miss
Crawley bids me say she regrets that she is too unwell
to see you before you go--and above all that she ever
induced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is
sure you will be much more comfortable during the rest
of your stay at Brighton."
And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for
his aunt's favour ended. He had in fact, and without
knowing it, done what he menaced to do. He had fought
his cousin Pitt with the gloves.
Where meanwhile was he who had been once first
favourite for this race for money? Becky and Rawdon,
as we have seen, were come together after Waterloo,
and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in great
splendour and gaiety. Rebecca was a good economist,
and the price poor Jos Sedley had paid for her two
horses was in itself sufficient to keep their little
establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there was no
occasion to turn into money "my pistols, the same which
I shot Captain Marker," or the gold dressing-case, or
the cloak lined with sable. Becky had it made into a
pelisse for herself, in which she rode in the Bois de
Boulogne to the admiration of all: and you should have
seen the scene between her and her delighted husband,
whom she rejoined after the army had entered Cambray,
and when she unsewed herself, and let out of her dress
all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes, cheques, and
valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previous
to her meditated flight from Brussels! Tufto was charmed,
and Rawdon roared with delighted laughter, and swore
that she was better than any play he ever saw, by Jove.
And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, and which
she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to
a pitch of quite insane enthusiasm. He believed in his
wife as much as the French soldiers in Napoleon.
Her success in Paris was remarkable. All the French
ladies voted her charming. She spoke their language
admirably. She adopted at once their grace, their liveliness,
their manner. Her husband was stupid certainly--all
English are stupid--and, besides, a dull husband at Paris is
always a point in a lady's favour. He was the heir of the
rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been
open to so many of the French noblesse during the
emigration. They received the colonel's wife in their own
hotels--"Why," wrote a great lady to Miss Crawley, who
had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess's own
price, and given her many a dinner during the pinching
times after the Revolution--"Why does not our dear Miss
come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends
in Paris? All the world raffoles of the charming Mistress
and her espiegle beauty. Yes, we see in her the grace,
the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley!
The King took notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries,
and we are all jealous of the attention which Monsieur
pays her. If you could have seen the spite of a certain
stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque
and feat,hers may be seen peering over the heads of all
assemblies) when Madame, the Duchess of Angouleme,
the august daughter and companion of kings, desired
especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear
daughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name
of France, for all your benevolence towards our
unfortunates during their exile! She is of all the societies,
of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of the dances, no;
and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature looks
surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to
be a mother! To hear her speak of you, her protectress,
her mother, would bring tears to the eyes of ogres. How
she loves you! how we all love our admirable, our
respectable Miss Crawley!"
It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great
lady did not by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest
with her admirable, her respectable, relative. On the
contrary, the fury of the old spinster was beyond bounds,
when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and how
audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name,
to get an entree into Parisian society. Too much shaken
in mind and body to compose a letter in the French
language in reply to that of her correspondent, she
dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue,
repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning
the public to beware of her as a most artful and
dangerous person. But as Madame the Duchess of X--
had only been twenty years in England, she did not
understand a single word of the language, and contented
herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next
meeting, that she had received a charming letter from
that chere Mees, and that it was full of benevolent
things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have
hopes that the spinster would relent.
Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of
Englishwomen: and had a little European congress on her
reception-night. Prussians and Cossacks, Spanish and
English--all the world was at Paris during this famous
winter: to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's
humble saloon would have made all Baker Street pale
with envy. Famous warriors rode by her carriage in
the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at the Opera.
Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns
in Paris as yet: there were parties every day at Very's
or Beauvilliers'; play was plentiful and his luck good.
Tufto perhaps was sulky. Mrs. Tufto had come over to
Paris at her own invitation, and besides this
contretemps, there were a score of generals now round
Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a dozen
bouquets when she went to the play. Lady Bareacres
and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and
irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the
success of the little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes
quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts. But she
had all the men on her side. She fought the women
with indomitable courage, and they could not talk
scandal in any tongue but their own.
So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of
1815-16 passed away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,
who accommodated herself to polite life as if her
ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--
and who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited
a place of honour in Vanity Fair. In the early spring of
1816, Galignani's Journal contained the following
announcement in an interesting corner of the paper: "On
the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel
Crawley, of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir."
This event was copied into the London papers, out of
which Miss Briggs read the statement to Miss Crawley,
at breakfast, at Brighton. The intelligence, expected as
it might have been, caused a crisis in the affairs of
the Crawley family. The spinster's rage rose to its height,
and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the
Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested
an immediate celebration of the marriage which had been
so long pending between the two families. And she
announced that it was her intention to allow the young
couple a thousand a year during her lifetime, at the
expiration of which the bulk of her property would be
settled upon her nephew and her dear niece, Lady Jane
Crawley. Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord
Southdown gave away his sister--she was married by a
Bishop, and not by the Rev. Bartholomew Irons--to the
disappointment of the irregular prelate.
When they were married, Pitt would have liked to
take a hymeneal tour with his bride, as became people
of their condition. But the affection of the old lady
towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairly
owned she could not part with her favourite. Pitt and
his wife came therefore and lived with Miss Crawley:
and (greatly to the annoyance of poor Pitt, who
conceived himself a most injured character--being subject
to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of his
mother-in-law on the other) Lady Southdown, from her
neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family--
Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and
all. She pitilessly dosed them with her tracts and her
medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers,
and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance
of authority. The poor soul grew so timid that she
actually left off bullying Briggs any more, and clung to
her niece, more fond and terrified every day. Peace to
thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--
We shall see thee no more. Let us hope that Lady Jane
supported her kindly, and led her with gentle hand out
of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.
CHAPTER XXXV
Widow and Mother
The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo
reached England at the same time. The Gazette first
published the result of the two battles; at which glorious
intelligence all England thrilled with triumph and fear.
Particulars then followed; and after the announcement of
the victories came the list of the wounded and the slain.
Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was
opened and read! Fancy, at every village and homestead
almost through the three kingdoms, the great news
coming of the battles in Flanders, and the feelings of
exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,
when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through,
and it became known whether the dear friend and relative
had escaped or fallen. Anybody who will take the trouble
of looking back to a file of the newspapers of the
time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this breathless
pause of expectation. The lists of casualties are carried
on from day to day: you stop in the midst as in a story
which is to be continued in our next. Think what the