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survived many months, he never recovered the use of
his intellect or his speech completely, and the government
of the estate devolved upon his elder son. In a
strange condition Pitt found it. Sir Pitt was always buying
and mortgaging; he had twenty men of business, and
quarrels with each; quarrels with all his tenants, and
lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers; lawsuits
with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was
proprietor; and with every person with whom he had
business. To unravel these difficulties and to set the
estate clear was a task worthy of the orderly and
persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set
himself to work with prodigious assiduity. His whole family,
of course, was transported to Queen's Crawley, whither
Lady Southdown, of course, came too; and she set about
converting the parish under the Rector's nose, and
brought down her irregular clergy to the dismay of the
angry Mrs Bute. Sir Pitt had concluded no bargain for
the sale of the living of Queen's Crawley; when it should
drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the patronage into
her own hands and present a young protege to the
Rectory, on which subject the diplomatic Pitt said
nothing.
Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy
Horrocks were not carried into effect, and she paid no visit
to Southampton Gaol. She and her father left the Hall
when the latter took possession of the Crawley Arms in
the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir Pitt.
The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there
likewise, which gave him a vote for the borough. The Rector
had another of these votes, and these and four others
formed the representative body which returned the two
members for Queen's Crawley.
There was a show of courtesy kept up between the
Rectory and the Hall ladies, between the younger ones at
least, for Mrs. Bute and Lady Southdown never could
meet without battles, and gradually ceased seeing each
other. Her Ladyship kept her room when the ladies from
the Rectory visited their cousins at the Hall. Perhaps Mr.
Pitt was not very much displeased at these occasional
absences of his mamma-in-law. He believed the Binkie
family to be the greatest and wisest and most interesting
in the world, and her Ladyship and his aunt had long held
ascendency over him; but sometimes he felt that she
commanded him too much. To be considered young was
complimentary, doubtless, but at six-and-forty to be
treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying. Lady Jane
yielded up everything, however, to her mother. She was
only fond of her children in private, and it was lucky
for her that Lady Southdown's multifarious business, her
conferences with ministers, and her correspondence with
all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, aud Australasia, &c.,
occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so that
she had but little time to devote to her granddaughter,
the little Matilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley.
The latter was a feeble child, and it was only by
prodigious quantities of calomel that Lady Southdown was
able to keep him in life at all.
As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments
where Lady Crawley had been previously extinguished,
and here was tended by Miss Hester, the girl upon her
promotion, with constant care and assiduity. What love,
what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of a
nurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make
arrowroot; they get up at nights; they bear complaints
and querulousness; they see the sun shining out of doors
and don't want to go abroad; they sleep on arm-chairs
and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long long
evenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the
patient's drink simmering in the jug; they read the weekly
paper the whole week through; and Law's Serious Call or
the Whole Duty of Man suffices them for literature for
the year--and we quarrel with them because, when their
relations come to see them once a week, a little gin
is smuggled in in their linen basket. Ladies, what man's
love is there that would stand a year's nursing of the
object of his affection? Whereas a nurse will stand by you
for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly
paid. At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about
paying half as much to Miss Hester for her constant
attendance upon the Baronet his father.
Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a
chair on the terrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley
had had at Brighton, and which had been transported
thence with a number of Lady Southdown's effects to
Queen's Crawley. Lady Jane always walked by the old
man, and was an evident favourite with him. He used to
nod many times to her and smile when she came in, and
utter inarticulate deprecatory moans when she was going
away. When the door shut upon her he would cry and
sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was
always exceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was
present, would change at once, and she would make faces
at him and clench her fist and scream out "Hold your
tongue, you stoopid old fool," and twirl away his chair
from the fire which he loved to look at--at which he
would cry more. For this was all that was left after more
than seventy years of cunning, and struggling, and
drinking, and scheming, and sin and selfishness--a
whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleaned
and fed like a baby.
At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was
over. Early one morning, as Pitt Crawley was at his
steward's and bailiff's books in the study, a knock came
to the door, and Hester presented herself, dropping a
curtsey, and said,
"If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir
Pitt. I was a-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel,
Sir Pitt, which he took every morning regular at six, Sir
Pitt, and--I thought I heard a moan-like, Sir Pitt--and--
and--and--" She dropped another curtsey.
What was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite
red? Was it because he was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat
in Parliament, and perhaps future honours in prospect?
"I'll clear the estate now with the ready money," he
thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances and the
improvements which he would make. He would not use his
aunt's money previously lest Sir Pitt should recover and
his outlay be in vain.
All the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory:
the church bell was tolled, and the chancel hung in
black; and Bute Crawley didn't go to a coursing meeting,
but went and dined quietly at Fuddleston, where
they talked about his deceased brother and young Sir
Pitt over their port. Miss Betsy, who was by this time
married to a saddler at Mudbury, cried a good deal.
The family surgeon rode over and paid his respectful
compliments, and inquiries for the health of their
ladyships. The death was talked about at Mudbury and at
the Crawley Arms, the landlord whereof had become
reconciled with the Rector of late, who was occasionally
known to step into the parlour and taste Mr. Horrocks'
mild beer.
"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?" asked
Lady Jane of her husband, Sir Pitt.
"I will write, of course," Sir Pitt said, "and invite him
to the funeral: it will be but becoming."
"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon," said Lady Jane timidly.
"Jane!" said Lady Southdown, "how can you think of
such a thing?"
"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked," said Sir Pitt,
resolutely.
"Not whilst I am in the house!" said Lady Southdown.
"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am
the head of this family," Sir Pitt replied. "If you please,
Lady Jane, you will write a letter to Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, requesting her presence upon this melancholy
occasion."
"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the
Countess.
"I believe I am the head of this family," Sir Pitt
repeated; "and however much I may regret any
circumstance which may lead to your Ladyship quitting this
house, must, if you please, continue to govern it as I see
fit."
Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons
in Lady Macbeth and ordered that horses might be put
to her carriage. If her son and daughter turned her out
of their house, she would hide her sorrows somewhere in
loneliness and pray for their conversion to better
thoughts.
"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said
the timid Lady Jane imploringly.
"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady
should meet, and I will have my horses to-morrow
morning."
"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation,"
said Sir Pitt, rising and throwing himself into an attitude
of command, like the portrait of a Gentleman in the
Exhibition, "and begin. 'Queen's Crawley, September 14,
1822.--My dear brother--' "
Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth,
who had been waiting for a sign of weakness or
vacillation on the part of her son-in-law, rose and, with a
scared look, left the library. Lady Jane looked up to
her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her
mamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.
"She won't go away," he said. "She has let her house
at Brighton and has spent her last half-year's dividends.
A Countess living at an inn is a ruined woman. I have
been waiting long for an opportunity--to take this--this
decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it is
impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family:
and now, if you please, we will resume the dictation. 'My
dear brother, the melancholy intelligence which it is my
duty to convey to my family must have been long
anticipated by,' " &c.
In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having
by good luck, or desert rather, as he considered, assumed
almost all the fortune which his other relatives
had expected, was determined to treat his family kindly
and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley
once more. It pleased him to think that he should be its
chief. He proposed to use the vast influence that his
commanding talents and position must speedily acquire
for him in the county to get his brother placed and his
cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little
sting of repentance as he thought that he was the
proprietor of all that they had hoped for. In the course of
three or four days' reign his bearing was changed and
his plans quite fixed: he determined to rule justly and
honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the
friendliest possible terms with all the relations of his
blood.
So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn
and elaborate letter, containing the profoundest
observations, couched in the longest words, and filling with
wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote under her
husband's order. "What an orator this will be," thought
she, "when he enters the House of Commons" (on which
point, and on the tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had
sometimes dropped hints to his wife in bed); "how wise
and good, and what a genius my husband is! I fancied
him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!"
The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the
letter by heart and had studied it, with diplomatic
secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long before he thought fit to
communicate it to his astonished wife.
This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was
accordingly despatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother
the Colonel, in London. Rawdon Crawley was but
half-pleased at the receipt of it. "What's the use of going
down to that stupid place?" thought he. "I can't stand
being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there
and back will cost us twenty pound."
He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky,
upstairs in her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he
always made and took to her of a morning.
He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on
the dressing-table, before which Becky sat combing her
yellow hair. She took up the black-edged missive, and
having read it, she jumped up from the chair, crying
"Hurray!" and waving the note round her head.
"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure
capering about in a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with
tawny locks dishevelled. "He's not left us anything,
Becky. I had my share when I came of age."
"You'll never be of age, you silly old man," Becky
replied. "Run out now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must
have some mourning: and get a crape on your hat, and a
black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; order it
to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able
to start on Thursday."
"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed.
"Of course I mean to go. I mean that Lady Jane shall
present me at Court next year. I mean that your brother
shall give you a seat in Parliament, you stupid old
creature. I mean that Lord Steyne shall have your vote and
his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be an Irish
Secretary, or a West Indian Governor: or a Treasurer,
or a Consul, or some such thing."
"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money," grumbled
Rawdon.
"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to
be present at the funeral, as he is a relation of the
family: but, no--I intend that we shall go by the coach.
They'll like it better. It seems more humble--"
"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked.
"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to
travel bodkin between you and me. Let him stay here in
the nursery, and Briggs can make him a black frock. Go
you, and do as I bid you. And you had best tell Sparks,
your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will
come in for something considerable when the affairs are
arranged. He'll tell this to Raggles, who has been pressing
for money, and it will console poor Raggles." And so
Becky began sipping her chocolate.
When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening,
he found Becky and her companion, who was no other
than our friend Briggs, busy cutting, ripping, snipping,
and tearing all sorts of black stuffs available for the
melancholy occasion.
"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency
for the death of our Papa," Rebecca said. "Sir Pitt
Crawley is dead, my lord. We have been tearing our hair
all the morning, and now we are tearing up our old
clothes."
"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could
say as she turned up her eyes.
"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord. "So
that old scoundrel's dead, is he? He might have been a
Peer if he had played his cards better. Mr. Pitt had very
nearly made him; but he ratted always at the wrong
time. What an old Silenus it was!"
"I might have been Silenus's widow," said Rebecca.
"Don't you remember, Miss Briggs, how you peeped in
at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on his knees to me?"
Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this
reminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered
her to go downstairs and make him a cup of tea.
Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided
as guardian of her innocence and reputation. Miss Crawley
had left her a little annuity. She would have been
content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady Jane,
who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady
Southdown dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency
permitted; and Mr. Pitt (who thought himself much injured
by the uncalled-for generosity of his deceased relative
towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's
faithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that
exercise of the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin
likewise received their legacies and their dismissals, and
married and set up a lodging-house, according to the
custom of their kind.
Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country,
but found that attempt was vain after the better society
to which she had been accustomed. Briggs's friends, small
tradesmen, in a country town, quarrelled over Miss
Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and more openly
than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's
inheritance. Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called
his sister a purse-proud aristocrat, because she would not
advance a part of her capital to stock his shop; and she
would have done so most likely, but that their sister, a
dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the hatter
and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how
their brother was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took
possession of Briggs for a while. The dissenting
shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to college
and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two
families got a great portion of her private savings out of
her, and finally she fled to London followed by the
anathemas of both, and determined to seek for servitude
again as infinitely less onerous than liberty. And advertising
in the papers that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable
manners, and accustomed to the best society, was anxious
to," &c., she took up her residence with Mr. Bowls
in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of the
advertisement.
So it was that she fell in with Rebecca. Mrs. Rawdon's
dashing little carriage and ponies was whirling down the
street one day, just as Miss Briggs, fatigued, had
reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to the
Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for
the sixth time. Rebecca was driving, and at once
recognized the gentlewoman with agreeable manners, and
being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as we have
seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the
ponies at the doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom,
and jumping out, had hold of both Briggs's hands, before
she of the agreeable manners had recovered from the
shock of seeing an old friend.
Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and
kissed the gentlewoman as soon as they got into the
passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's front parlour, with
the red moreen curtains, and the round looking-glass,
with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of
the ticket in the window which announced "Apartments
to Let."
Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly
uncalled-for sobs and ejaculations of wonder with which
women of her soft nature salute an old acquaintance, or
regard a rencontre in the street; for though people meet
other people every day, yet some there are who insist
upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they
have disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet,
deploring and remembering the time when they last
quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and
Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual
artlessness and candour.
Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in
the passage to the hysterical sniffling and giggling which
went on in the front parlour. Becky had never been a
favourite of hers. Since the establishment of the married
couple in London they had frequented their former
friends of the house of Raggles, and did not like the
latter's account of the Colonel's menage. "I wouldn't trust
him, Ragg, my boy," Bowls remarked; and his wife,
when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, only saluted
the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers
were like so many sausages, cold and lifeless, when she
held them out in deference to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted
in shaking hands with the retired lady's maid. She whirled
away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of smiles
towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window
close under the advertisement-card, and at the next
moment was in the park with a half-dozen of dandies
cantering after her carriage.
When she found how her friend was situated, and how
having a snug legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no
object to our gentlewoman, Becky instantly formed some
benevolent little domestic plans concerning her. This
was just such a companion as would suit her establishment,
and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her
that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little
darling Rawdon.
Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into
the lion's den, "wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my
words, and as sure as my name is Bowls." And Briggs
promised to be very cautious. The upshot of which
caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next
week, and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds
upon annuity before six months were over.
CHAPTER XLI
In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors
So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned
of their arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a
couple of places in the same old High-flyer coach by
which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct Baronet's
company, on her first journey into the world some nine
years before. How well she remembered the Inn Yard,
and the ostler to whom she refused money, and the
insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in his coat on
the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would
have liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by
the coachman and talked about horses and the road the
whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the
coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when
he and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a
carriage and a pair of horses received them, with a
coachman in black. "It's the old drag, Rawdon," Rebecca said
as they got in. "The worms have eaten the cloth a good
deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson
the Ironmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made
such a noise about. It was a bottle of cherry brandy he
broke which we went to fetch for your aunt from
Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't be Polly
Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at
the cottage there. I remember her a mangy little urchin
picking weeds in the garden."
"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the
cottage gave him, by two fingers applied to his crape
hatband. Becky bowed and saluted, and recognized
people here and there graciously. These recognitions were
inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if she was
not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home
of her ancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast
down, on the other hand. What recollections of boyhood
and innocence might have been flitting across his brain?
What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?
"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca
said, thinking of those girls for the first time perhaps
since she had left them.
"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel. "Hullo!
here's old Mother Lock. How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember
me, don't you? Master Rawdon, hey? Dammy how
those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a
boy."
They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old
Mrs. Lock, whose hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking,
as she flung open the creaking old iron gate, and the
carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars
surmounted by the dove and serpent.
"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said,
looking about, and then was silent--so was Becky. Both
of them were rather agitated, and thinking of old times.
He about Eton, and his mother, whom he remembered,
a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom
he had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash
Pitt; and about little Rawdy at home. And Rebecca
thought about her own youth and the dark secrets of
those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life
by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and
Amelia.
The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite
clean. A grand painted hatchment was already over the
great entrance, and two very solemn and tall personages
in black flung open each a leaf of the door as the
carriage pulled up at the familiar steps. Rawdon turned red,
and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the
old hall, arm in arm. She pinched her husband's arm
as they entered the oak parlour, where Sir Pitt and his
wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt in black, Lady
Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large black
head-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her
Ladyship's head like an undertaker's tray.
Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit
the premises. She contented herself by preserving a
solemn and stony silence, when in company of Pitt and
his rebellious wife, and by frightening the children in
the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour.
Only a very faint bending of the head-dress and plumes
welcomed Rawdon and his wife, as those prodigals
returned to their family.
To say the truth, they were not affected very much
one way or other by this coolness. Her Ladyship was a
person only of secondary consideration in their minds
just then--they were intent upon the reception which
the reigning brother and sister would afford them.
Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and
shook his brother by the hand, and saluted Rebecca with
a hand-shake and a very low bow. But Lady Jane took both
the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed her affectionately.
The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of
the little adventuress--which ornaments, as we know,
she wore very seldom. The artless mark of kindness and
confidence touched and pleased her; and Rawdon,
encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part,
twirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady
Jane with a kiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush
exceedingly.
"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane," was his verdict,
when he and his wife were together again. "Pitt's got fat,
too, and is doing the thing handsomely." "He can afford
it," said Rebecca and agreed in her husband's farther
opinion "that the mother-in-law was a tremendous old
Guy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking
young women."
They, too, had been summoned from school to attend
the funeral ceremonies. It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for
the dignity of the house and family, had thought right to
have about the place as many persons in black as could
possibly be assembled. All the men and maids of the
house, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder
Sir Pitt had cheated out of a great portion of their
due, the parish clerk's family, and the special retainers
of both Hall and Rectory were habited in sable; added to
these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, with crapes
and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the
great burying show took place--but these are mute
personages in our drama; and having nothing to do or say,
need occupy a very little space here.
With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not
attempt to forget her former position of Governess
towards them, but recalled it frankly and kindly, and asked
them about their studies with great gravity, and told them
that she had thought of them many and many a day,
and longed to know of their welfare. In fact you would
have supposed that ever since she had left them she had
not ceased to keep them uppermost in her thoughts and to
take the tenderest interest in their welfare. So supposed
Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters.
"She's hardly changed since eight years," said Miss
Rosalind to Miss Violet, as they were preparing for dinner.
"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well,"
replied the other.
"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye
it," Miss Rosalind added. "She is stouter, too, and
altogether improved," continued Miss Rosalind, who was
disposed to be very fat.
"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that
she was our Governess once," Miss Violet said, intimating
that it befitted all governesses to keep their proper place,
and forgetting altogether that she was granddaughter not
only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr. Dawson of
Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. There
are other very well-meaning people whom one meets
every day in Vanity Fair who are surely equally oblivious.
"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that
her mother was an opera-dancer--"
"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with
great liberality. "And I agree with our brother, that as she
is in the family, of course we are bound to notice her.
I am sure Aunt Bute need not talk; she wants to marry
Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant, and absolutely
asked him to come to the Rectory for orders."
"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she
looked very glum upon Mrs. Rawdon," the other said.
"I wish she would. I won't read the Washerwoman
of Finchley Common," vowed Violet; and so saying, and
avoiding a passage at the end of which a certain coffin was
placed with a couple of watchers, and lights perpetually
burning in the closed room, these young women came
down to the family dinner, for which the bell rang as
usual.
But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the
apartments prepared for her, which, with the rest of the
house, had assumed a very much improved appearance
of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, and here
beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had
arrived, and were placed in the bedroom and
dressing-room adjoining, helped her to take off her neat
black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-law in
what more she could be useful.
"What I should like best," said Rebecca, "would be to
go to the nursery and see your dear little children." On
which the two ladies looked very kindly at each other
and went to that apartment hand in hand.
Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four
years old, as the most charming little love in the world;
and the boy, a little fellow of two years--pale, heavy-eyed,
and large-headed--she pronounced to be a perfect
prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty.
"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much
medicine," Lady Jane said with a sigh. "I often think we
should all be better without it." And then Lady Jane and
her new-found friend had one of those confidential medical conversations about the children, which all mothers,
and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in.
Fifty years ago, and when the present writer, being an
interesting little boy, was ordered out of the room with
the ladies after dinner, I remember quite well that their
talk was chiefly about their ailments; and putting this
question directly to two or three since, I have always got
from them the acknowledgement that times are not
changed. Let my fair readers remark for themselves this
very evening when they quit the dessert-table and
assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries. Well
--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and
intimate friends--and in the course of the evening her
Ladyship informed Sir Pitt that she thought her new
sister-in-law was a kind, frank, unaffected, and affectionate
young woman.
And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the
indefatigable little woman bent herself to conciliate the
august Lady Southdown. As soon as she found her Ladyship
alone, Rebecca attacked her on the nursery question
at once and said that her own little boy was saved,
actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all the
physicians in Paris had given the dear child up. And then
she mentioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown
from that excellent man the Reverend Lawrence
Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair, which she
frequented; and how her views were very much changed
by circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that
a past life spent in worldliness and error might not
incapacitate her from more serious thought for the future.
She described how in former days she had been indebted
to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon
the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which she had
read with the greatest profit, and asked about Lady
Emily, its gifted author, now Lady Emily Hornblower, at
Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes of
becoming Bishop of Caffraria.
But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady
Southdown's favour, by feeling very much agitated and
unwell after the funeral and requesting her Ladyship's
medical advice, which the Dowager not only gave, but,
wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady
Macbeth than ever, came privately in the night to Becky's
room with a parcel of favourite tracts, and a medicine
of her own composition, which she insisted that Mrs.
Rawdon should take.
Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine
them with great interest, engaging the Dowager in a
conversation concerning them and the welfare of her soul,
by which means she hoped that her body might escape
medication. But after the religious topics were exhausted,
Lady Macbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her
cup of night-drink was emptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon
was compelled actually to assume a look of gratitude, and
to swallow the medicine under the unyielding old Dowager's
nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.
It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance
was very queer when Rawdon came in and heard what
had happened; and. his explosions of laughter were as
loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which she could
not disguise, even though it was at her own expense,
described the occurrence and how she had been victimized
by Lady Southdown. Lord Steyne, and her son in
London, had many a laugh over the story when Rawdon
and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair. Becky
acted the whole scene for them. She put on a night-cap
and gown. She preached a great sermon in the true serious
manner; she lectured on the virtue of the medicine
which she pretended to administer, with a gravity of
imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was
the Countess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled.
"Give us Lady Southdown and the black dose," was
a constant cry amongst the folks in Becky's little
drawing-room in May Fair. And for the first time in her
life the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.
Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and
veneration which Rebecca had paid personally to himself
in early days, and was tolerably well disposed towards
her. The marriage, ill-advised as it was, had improved
Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's
altered habits and demeanour--and had it not been a
lucky union as regarded Pitt himself? The cunning
diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned that he owed his
fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought not
to cry out against it. His satisfaction was not removed
by Rebecca's own statements, behaviour, and
conversation.
She doubled the deference which before had charmed
him, calling out his conversational powers in such a
manner as quite to surprise Pitt himself, who, always
inclined to respect his own talents, admired them the more
when Rebecca pointed them out to him. With her
sister-in-law, Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it
was Mrs. Bute Crawley who brought about the marriage
which she afterwards so calumniated; that it was Mrs.
Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's
fortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which
caused and invented all the wicked reports against
Rebecca. "She succeeded in making us poor," Rebecca
said with an air of angelical patience; "but how can I
be angry with a woman who has given me one of the best
husbands in the world? And has not her own avarice
been sufficiently punished by the ruin of her own hopes and
the loss of the property by which she set so much
store? Poor!" she cried. "Dear Lady Jane, what care we
for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am
often thankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to
restore the splendour of the noble old family of which
I am so proud to be a member. I am sure Sir Pitt will
make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."
All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the
most faithful of wives, and increased the favourable
impression which Rebecca made; so much so that when,
on the third day after the funeral, the family party were
at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of
the table, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem! Rebecca,
may I give you a wing?"--a speech which made the little
woman's eyes sparkle with pleasure.
While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and
hopes, and Pitt Crawley arranging the funeral ceremonial
and other matters connected with his future progress and
dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her nursery, as far as
her mother would let her, and the sun rising and setting,
and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and
to prayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's
Crawley lay in the apartment which he had occupied,
watched unceasingly by the professional attendants who
were engaged for that rite. A woman or two, and three
or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southampton
could furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy
and tragical demeanour, had charge of the remains which
they watched turn about, having the housekeeper's room
for their place of rendezvous when off duty, where they
played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.
The members of the family and servants of the house
kept away from the gloomy spot, where the bones of the
descendant of an ancient line of knights and gentlemen
lay, awaiting their final consignment to the family crypt.
No regrets attended them, save those of the poor woman
who had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who
had fled in disgrace from the Hall over which she had so
nearly been a ruler. Beyond her and a favourite old pointer
he had, and between whom and himself an attachment
subsisted during the period of his imbecility, the old man
had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed,
during the whole course of his life, never taken the least
pains to secure one. Could the best and kindest of us who
depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting
it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair
feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound)
would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon
our survivors were consoled. And so Sir Pitt was
forgotten--like the kindest and best of us--only a few
weeks sooner.
Those who will may follow his remains to the grave,
whither they were borne on the appointed day, in the most
becoming manner, the family in black coaches, with their
handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for the tears which
did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep
tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of
compliment to the new landlord; the neighbouring gentry's
carriages at three miles an hour, empty, and in profound
affliction; the parson speaking out the formula about "our
dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body,
we play our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with
humbug and ceremonies, laying it in state, and packing it
up in gilt nails and velvet; and we finish our duty by
placing over it a stone, written all over with lies. Bute's
curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt
Crawley composed between them an appropriate Latin
epitaph for the late lamented Baronet, and the former
preached a classical sermon, exhorting the survivors not
to give way to grief and informing them in the most
respectful terms that they also would be one day called
upon to pass that gloomy and mysterious portal which had
just closed upon the remains of their lamented brother.
Then the tenantry mounted on horseback again, or stayed
and refreshed themselves at the Crawley Arms. Then,
after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,
the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different
destinations: then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes,
palls, velvets, ostrich feathers, and other mortuary
properties, clambered up on the roof of the hearse and rode
off to Southampton. Their faces relapsed into a natural
expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into
a brisker trot on the open road; and squads of them
might have been seen, speckling with black the
public-house entrances, with pewter-pots flashing in the
sunshine. Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled away into a
tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl
sometimes at first, but these were the only accents of
grief which were heard in the Hall of which Sir Pitt
Crawley, Baronet, had been master for some threescore years.
As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting
is as it were the duty of an English gentleman of
statesmanlike propensities, Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of
grief over, went out a little and partook of that diversion
in a white hat with crape round it. The sight of those fields
of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many secret
joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he
took no gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane;
Rawdon, his big brother, and the keepers blazing away at
his side. Pitt's money and acres had a great effect upon
his brother. The penniless Colonel became quite obsequious
and respectful to the head of his house, and despised
the milksop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy
to his senior's prospects of planting and draining, gave
his advice about the stables and cattle, rode
over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thought
would carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her,
&c.: the rebellious dragoon was quite humbled and
subdued, and became a most creditable younger brother. He
had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London
respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who
sent messages of his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I
hope you are very well. I hope Mamma is very well. The
pony is very well. Grey takes me to ride in the park.
I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. He
cried when he cantered. I do not cry." Rawdon read these
letters to his brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted
with them. The Baronet promised to take charge of the lad
at school, and his kind-hearted wife gave Rebecca a
bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her little
nephew.
One day followed another, and the ladies of the house
passed their life in those calm pursuits and amusements
which satisfy country ladies. Bells rang to meals and
to prayers. The young ladies took exercise on the
pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving
them the benefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick
shoes and walked in the park or shrubberies, or beyond
the palings into the village, descending upon the cottages,
with Lady Southdown's medicine and tracts for the
sick people there. Lady Southdown drove out in a
pony-chaise, when Rebecca would take her place by the
Dowager's side and listen to her solemn talk with the utmost
interest. She sang Handel and Haydn to the family of
evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work, as if
she had been born to the business and as if this kind
of life was to continue with her until she should sink to
the grave in a polite old age, leaving regrets and a great
quantity of consols behind her--as if there were not cares
and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waiting outside
the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into
the world again.
"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife,"
Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if
I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the
nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water
plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the
geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms
and order half-a-crown's worth of soup for
the poor. I shouldn't miss it much, out of five thousand
a year. I could even drive out ten miles to dine at a
neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last.
I could go to church and keep awake in the great family
pew, or go to sleep behind the curtains, with my veil
down, if I only had practice. I could pay everybody, if
I had but the money. This is what the conjurors here
pride themselves upon doing. They look down with pity
upon us miserable sinners who have none. They think
themselves generous if they give our children a five-pound
note, and us contemptible if we are without one." And
who knows but Rebecca was right in her speculations
--and that it was only a question of money and fortune
which made the difference between her and an honest
woman? If you take temptations into account, who is to
say that he is better than his neighbour? A comfortable
career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at
least keeps them so. An alderman coming from a turtle
feast will not step out of his carnage to steal a leg of
mutton; but put him to starve, and see if he will not
purloin a loaf. Becky consoled herself by so balancing the
chances and equalizing the distribution of good and evil
in the world.
The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses,
ponds, and gardens, the rooms of the old house where
she had spent a couple of years seven years ago, were all
carefully revisited by her. She had been young there, or
comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she ever
WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and
feelings seven years back and contrasted them with those
which she had at present, now that she had seen the
world, and lived with great people, and raised herself far
beyond her original humble station.
"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky
thought, "and almost all the rest of the world are fools.
I could not go back and consort with those people now,
whom I used to meet in my father's studio. Lords come up
to my door with stars and garters, instead of poor
artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have a
gentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my
sister, in the very house where I was little better than a
servant a few years ago. But am I much better to do now
in the world than I was when I was the poor painter's
daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner for
sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was
so fond of me--I couldn't have been much poorer than
I am now. Heigho! I wish I could exchange my position
in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in the
Three Per Cent. Consols"; for so it was that Becky felt
the Vanity of human affairs, and it was in those securities
his intellect or his speech completely, and the government
of the estate devolved upon his elder son. In a
strange condition Pitt found it. Sir Pitt was always buying
and mortgaging; he had twenty men of business, and
quarrels with each; quarrels with all his tenants, and
lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers; lawsuits
with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was
proprietor; and with every person with whom he had
business. To unravel these difficulties and to set the
estate clear was a task worthy of the orderly and
persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set
himself to work with prodigious assiduity. His whole family,
of course, was transported to Queen's Crawley, whither
Lady Southdown, of course, came too; and she set about
converting the parish under the Rector's nose, and
brought down her irregular clergy to the dismay of the
angry Mrs Bute. Sir Pitt had concluded no bargain for
the sale of the living of Queen's Crawley; when it should
drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the patronage into
her own hands and present a young protege to the
Rectory, on which subject the diplomatic Pitt said
nothing.
Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy
Horrocks were not carried into effect, and she paid no visit
to Southampton Gaol. She and her father left the Hall
when the latter took possession of the Crawley Arms in
the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir Pitt.
The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there
likewise, which gave him a vote for the borough. The Rector
had another of these votes, and these and four others
formed the representative body which returned the two
members for Queen's Crawley.
There was a show of courtesy kept up between the
Rectory and the Hall ladies, between the younger ones at
least, for Mrs. Bute and Lady Southdown never could
meet without battles, and gradually ceased seeing each
other. Her Ladyship kept her room when the ladies from
the Rectory visited their cousins at the Hall. Perhaps Mr.
Pitt was not very much displeased at these occasional
absences of his mamma-in-law. He believed the Binkie
family to be the greatest and wisest and most interesting
in the world, and her Ladyship and his aunt had long held
ascendency over him; but sometimes he felt that she
commanded him too much. To be considered young was
complimentary, doubtless, but at six-and-forty to be
treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying. Lady Jane
yielded up everything, however, to her mother. She was
only fond of her children in private, and it was lucky
for her that Lady Southdown's multifarious business, her
conferences with ministers, and her correspondence with
all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, aud Australasia, &c.,
occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so that
she had but little time to devote to her granddaughter,
the little Matilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley.
The latter was a feeble child, and it was only by
prodigious quantities of calomel that Lady Southdown was
able to keep him in life at all.
As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments
where Lady Crawley had been previously extinguished,
and here was tended by Miss Hester, the girl upon her
promotion, with constant care and assiduity. What love,
what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of a
nurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make
arrowroot; they get up at nights; they bear complaints
and querulousness; they see the sun shining out of doors
and don't want to go abroad; they sleep on arm-chairs
and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long long
evenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the
patient's drink simmering in the jug; they read the weekly
paper the whole week through; and Law's Serious Call or
the Whole Duty of Man suffices them for literature for
the year--and we quarrel with them because, when their
relations come to see them once a week, a little gin
is smuggled in in their linen basket. Ladies, what man's
love is there that would stand a year's nursing of the
object of his affection? Whereas a nurse will stand by you
for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly
paid. At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about
paying half as much to Miss Hester for her constant
attendance upon the Baronet his father.
Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a
chair on the terrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley
had had at Brighton, and which had been transported
thence with a number of Lady Southdown's effects to
Queen's Crawley. Lady Jane always walked by the old
man, and was an evident favourite with him. He used to
nod many times to her and smile when she came in, and
utter inarticulate deprecatory moans when she was going
away. When the door shut upon her he would cry and
sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was
always exceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was
present, would change at once, and she would make faces
at him and clench her fist and scream out "Hold your
tongue, you stoopid old fool," and twirl away his chair
from the fire which he loved to look at--at which he
would cry more. For this was all that was left after more
than seventy years of cunning, and struggling, and
drinking, and scheming, and sin and selfishness--a
whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleaned
and fed like a baby.
At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was
over. Early one morning, as Pitt Crawley was at his
steward's and bailiff's books in the study, a knock came
to the door, and Hester presented herself, dropping a
curtsey, and said,
"If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir
Pitt. I was a-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel,
Sir Pitt, which he took every morning regular at six, Sir
Pitt, and--I thought I heard a moan-like, Sir Pitt--and--
and--and--" She dropped another curtsey.
What was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite
red? Was it because he was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat
in Parliament, and perhaps future honours in prospect?
"I'll clear the estate now with the ready money," he
thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances and the
improvements which he would make. He would not use his
aunt's money previously lest Sir Pitt should recover and
his outlay be in vain.
All the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory:
the church bell was tolled, and the chancel hung in
black; and Bute Crawley didn't go to a coursing meeting,
but went and dined quietly at Fuddleston, where
they talked about his deceased brother and young Sir
Pitt over their port. Miss Betsy, who was by this time
married to a saddler at Mudbury, cried a good deal.
The family surgeon rode over and paid his respectful
compliments, and inquiries for the health of their
ladyships. The death was talked about at Mudbury and at
the Crawley Arms, the landlord whereof had become
reconciled with the Rector of late, who was occasionally
known to step into the parlour and taste Mr. Horrocks'
mild beer.
"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?" asked
Lady Jane of her husband, Sir Pitt.
"I will write, of course," Sir Pitt said, "and invite him
to the funeral: it will be but becoming."
"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon," said Lady Jane timidly.
"Jane!" said Lady Southdown, "how can you think of
such a thing?"
"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked," said Sir Pitt,
resolutely.
"Not whilst I am in the house!" said Lady Southdown.
"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am
the head of this family," Sir Pitt replied. "If you please,
Lady Jane, you will write a letter to Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, requesting her presence upon this melancholy
occasion."
"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the
Countess.
"I believe I am the head of this family," Sir Pitt
repeated; "and however much I may regret any
circumstance which may lead to your Ladyship quitting this
house, must, if you please, continue to govern it as I see
fit."
Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons
in Lady Macbeth and ordered that horses might be put
to her carriage. If her son and daughter turned her out
of their house, she would hide her sorrows somewhere in
loneliness and pray for their conversion to better
thoughts.
"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said
the timid Lady Jane imploringly.
"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady
should meet, and I will have my horses to-morrow
morning."
"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation,"
said Sir Pitt, rising and throwing himself into an attitude
of command, like the portrait of a Gentleman in the
Exhibition, "and begin. 'Queen's Crawley, September 14,
1822.--My dear brother--' "
Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth,
who had been waiting for a sign of weakness or
vacillation on the part of her son-in-law, rose and, with a
scared look, left the library. Lady Jane looked up to
her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her
mamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.
"She won't go away," he said. "She has let her house
at Brighton and has spent her last half-year's dividends.
A Countess living at an inn is a ruined woman. I have
been waiting long for an opportunity--to take this--this
decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it is
impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family:
and now, if you please, we will resume the dictation. 'My
dear brother, the melancholy intelligence which it is my
duty to convey to my family must have been long
anticipated by,' " &c.
In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having
by good luck, or desert rather, as he considered, assumed
almost all the fortune which his other relatives
had expected, was determined to treat his family kindly
and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley
once more. It pleased him to think that he should be its
chief. He proposed to use the vast influence that his
commanding talents and position must speedily acquire
for him in the county to get his brother placed and his
cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little
sting of repentance as he thought that he was the
proprietor of all that they had hoped for. In the course of
three or four days' reign his bearing was changed and
his plans quite fixed: he determined to rule justly and
honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the
friendliest possible terms with all the relations of his
blood.
So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn
and elaborate letter, containing the profoundest
observations, couched in the longest words, and filling with
wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote under her
husband's order. "What an orator this will be," thought
she, "when he enters the House of Commons" (on which
point, and on the tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had
sometimes dropped hints to his wife in bed); "how wise
and good, and what a genius my husband is! I fancied
him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!"
The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the
letter by heart and had studied it, with diplomatic
secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long before he thought fit to
communicate it to his astonished wife.
This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was
accordingly despatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother
the Colonel, in London. Rawdon Crawley was but
half-pleased at the receipt of it. "What's the use of going
down to that stupid place?" thought he. "I can't stand
being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there
and back will cost us twenty pound."
He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky,
upstairs in her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he
always made and took to her of a morning.
He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on
the dressing-table, before which Becky sat combing her
yellow hair. She took up the black-edged missive, and
having read it, she jumped up from the chair, crying
"Hurray!" and waving the note round her head.
"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure
capering about in a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with
tawny locks dishevelled. "He's not left us anything,
Becky. I had my share when I came of age."
"You'll never be of age, you silly old man," Becky
replied. "Run out now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must
have some mourning: and get a crape on your hat, and a
black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; order it
to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able
to start on Thursday."
"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed.
"Of course I mean to go. I mean that Lady Jane shall
present me at Court next year. I mean that your brother
shall give you a seat in Parliament, you stupid old
creature. I mean that Lord Steyne shall have your vote and
his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be an Irish
Secretary, or a West Indian Governor: or a Treasurer,
or a Consul, or some such thing."
"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money," grumbled
Rawdon.
"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to
be present at the funeral, as he is a relation of the
family: but, no--I intend that we shall go by the coach.
They'll like it better. It seems more humble--"
"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked.
"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to
travel bodkin between you and me. Let him stay here in
the nursery, and Briggs can make him a black frock. Go
you, and do as I bid you. And you had best tell Sparks,
your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will
come in for something considerable when the affairs are
arranged. He'll tell this to Raggles, who has been pressing
for money, and it will console poor Raggles." And so
Becky began sipping her chocolate.
When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening,
he found Becky and her companion, who was no other
than our friend Briggs, busy cutting, ripping, snipping,
and tearing all sorts of black stuffs available for the
melancholy occasion.
"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency
for the death of our Papa," Rebecca said. "Sir Pitt
Crawley is dead, my lord. We have been tearing our hair
all the morning, and now we are tearing up our old
clothes."
"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could
say as she turned up her eyes.
"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord. "So
that old scoundrel's dead, is he? He might have been a
Peer if he had played his cards better. Mr. Pitt had very
nearly made him; but he ratted always at the wrong
time. What an old Silenus it was!"
"I might have been Silenus's widow," said Rebecca.
"Don't you remember, Miss Briggs, how you peeped in
at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on his knees to me?"
Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this
reminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered
her to go downstairs and make him a cup of tea.
Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided
as guardian of her innocence and reputation. Miss Crawley
had left her a little annuity. She would have been
content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady Jane,
who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady
Southdown dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency
permitted; and Mr. Pitt (who thought himself much injured
by the uncalled-for generosity of his deceased relative
towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's
faithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that
exercise of the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin
likewise received their legacies and their dismissals, and
married and set up a lodging-house, according to the
custom of their kind.
Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country,
but found that attempt was vain after the better society
to which she had been accustomed. Briggs's friends, small
tradesmen, in a country town, quarrelled over Miss
Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and more openly
than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's
inheritance. Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called
his sister a purse-proud aristocrat, because she would not
advance a part of her capital to stock his shop; and she
would have done so most likely, but that their sister, a
dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the hatter
and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how
their brother was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took
possession of Briggs for a while. The dissenting
shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to college
and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two
families got a great portion of her private savings out of
her, and finally she fled to London followed by the
anathemas of both, and determined to seek for servitude
again as infinitely less onerous than liberty. And advertising
in the papers that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable
manners, and accustomed to the best society, was anxious
to," &c., she took up her residence with Mr. Bowls
in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of the
advertisement.
So it was that she fell in with Rebecca. Mrs. Rawdon's
dashing little carriage and ponies was whirling down the
street one day, just as Miss Briggs, fatigued, had
reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to the
Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for
the sixth time. Rebecca was driving, and at once
recognized the gentlewoman with agreeable manners, and
being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as we have
seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the
ponies at the doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom,
and jumping out, had hold of both Briggs's hands, before
she of the agreeable manners had recovered from the
shock of seeing an old friend.
Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and
kissed the gentlewoman as soon as they got into the
passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's front parlour, with
the red moreen curtains, and the round looking-glass,
with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of
the ticket in the window which announced "Apartments
to Let."
Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly
uncalled-for sobs and ejaculations of wonder with which
women of her soft nature salute an old acquaintance, or
regard a rencontre in the street; for though people meet
other people every day, yet some there are who insist
upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they
have disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet,
deploring and remembering the time when they last
quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and
Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual
artlessness and candour.
Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in
the passage to the hysterical sniffling and giggling which
went on in the front parlour. Becky had never been a
favourite of hers. Since the establishment of the married
couple in London they had frequented their former
friends of the house of Raggles, and did not like the
latter's account of the Colonel's menage. "I wouldn't trust
him, Ragg, my boy," Bowls remarked; and his wife,
when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, only saluted
the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers
were like so many sausages, cold and lifeless, when she
held them out in deference to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted
in shaking hands with the retired lady's maid. She whirled
away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of smiles
towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window
close under the advertisement-card, and at the next
moment was in the park with a half-dozen of dandies
cantering after her carriage.
When she found how her friend was situated, and how
having a snug legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no
object to our gentlewoman, Becky instantly formed some
benevolent little domestic plans concerning her. This
was just such a companion as would suit her establishment,
and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her
that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little
darling Rawdon.
Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into
the lion's den, "wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my
words, and as sure as my name is Bowls." And Briggs
promised to be very cautious. The upshot of which
caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next
week, and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds
upon annuity before six months were over.
CHAPTER XLI
In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors
So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned
of their arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a
couple of places in the same old High-flyer coach by
which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct Baronet's
company, on her first journey into the world some nine
years before. How well she remembered the Inn Yard,
and the ostler to whom she refused money, and the
insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in his coat on
the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would
have liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by
the coachman and talked about horses and the road the
whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the
coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when
he and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a
carriage and a pair of horses received them, with a
coachman in black. "It's the old drag, Rawdon," Rebecca said
as they got in. "The worms have eaten the cloth a good
deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson
the Ironmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made
such a noise about. It was a bottle of cherry brandy he
broke which we went to fetch for your aunt from
Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't be Polly
Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at
the cottage there. I remember her a mangy little urchin
picking weeds in the garden."
"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the
cottage gave him, by two fingers applied to his crape
hatband. Becky bowed and saluted, and recognized
people here and there graciously. These recognitions were
inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if she was
not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home
of her ancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast
down, on the other hand. What recollections of boyhood
and innocence might have been flitting across his brain?
What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?
"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca
said, thinking of those girls for the first time perhaps
since she had left them.
"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel. "Hullo!
here's old Mother Lock. How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember
me, don't you? Master Rawdon, hey? Dammy how
those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a
boy."
They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old
Mrs. Lock, whose hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking,
as she flung open the creaking old iron gate, and the
carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars
surmounted by the dove and serpent.
"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said,
looking about, and then was silent--so was Becky. Both
of them were rather agitated, and thinking of old times.
He about Eton, and his mother, whom he remembered,
a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom
he had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash
Pitt; and about little Rawdy at home. And Rebecca
thought about her own youth and the dark secrets of
those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life
by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and
Amelia.
The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite
clean. A grand painted hatchment was already over the
great entrance, and two very solemn and tall personages
in black flung open each a leaf of the door as the
carriage pulled up at the familiar steps. Rawdon turned red,
and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the
old hall, arm in arm. She pinched her husband's arm
as they entered the oak parlour, where Sir Pitt and his
wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt in black, Lady
Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large black
head-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her
Ladyship's head like an undertaker's tray.
Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit
the premises. She contented herself by preserving a
solemn and stony silence, when in company of Pitt and
his rebellious wife, and by frightening the children in
the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour.
Only a very faint bending of the head-dress and plumes
welcomed Rawdon and his wife, as those prodigals
returned to their family.
To say the truth, they were not affected very much
one way or other by this coolness. Her Ladyship was a
person only of secondary consideration in their minds
just then--they were intent upon the reception which
the reigning brother and sister would afford them.
Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and
shook his brother by the hand, and saluted Rebecca with
a hand-shake and a very low bow. But Lady Jane took both
the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed her affectionately.
The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of
the little adventuress--which ornaments, as we know,
she wore very seldom. The artless mark of kindness and
confidence touched and pleased her; and Rawdon,
encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part,
twirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady
Jane with a kiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush
exceedingly.
"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane," was his verdict,
when he and his wife were together again. "Pitt's got fat,
too, and is doing the thing handsomely." "He can afford
it," said Rebecca and agreed in her husband's farther
opinion "that the mother-in-law was a tremendous old
Guy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking
young women."
They, too, had been summoned from school to attend
the funeral ceremonies. It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for
the dignity of the house and family, had thought right to
have about the place as many persons in black as could
possibly be assembled. All the men and maids of the
house, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder
Sir Pitt had cheated out of a great portion of their
due, the parish clerk's family, and the special retainers
of both Hall and Rectory were habited in sable; added to
these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, with crapes
and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the
great burying show took place--but these are mute
personages in our drama; and having nothing to do or say,
need occupy a very little space here.
With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not
attempt to forget her former position of Governess
towards them, but recalled it frankly and kindly, and asked
them about their studies with great gravity, and told them
that she had thought of them many and many a day,
and longed to know of their welfare. In fact you would
have supposed that ever since she had left them she had
not ceased to keep them uppermost in her thoughts and to
take the tenderest interest in their welfare. So supposed
Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters.
"She's hardly changed since eight years," said Miss
Rosalind to Miss Violet, as they were preparing for dinner.
"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well,"
replied the other.
"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye
it," Miss Rosalind added. "She is stouter, too, and
altogether improved," continued Miss Rosalind, who was
disposed to be very fat.
"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that
she was our Governess once," Miss Violet said, intimating
that it befitted all governesses to keep their proper place,
and forgetting altogether that she was granddaughter not
only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr. Dawson of
Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. There
are other very well-meaning people whom one meets
every day in Vanity Fair who are surely equally oblivious.
"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that
her mother was an opera-dancer--"
"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with
great liberality. "And I agree with our brother, that as she
is in the family, of course we are bound to notice her.
I am sure Aunt Bute need not talk; she wants to marry
Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant, and absolutely
asked him to come to the Rectory for orders."
"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she
looked very glum upon Mrs. Rawdon," the other said.
"I wish she would. I won't read the Washerwoman
of Finchley Common," vowed Violet; and so saying, and
avoiding a passage at the end of which a certain coffin was
placed with a couple of watchers, and lights perpetually
burning in the closed room, these young women came
down to the family dinner, for which the bell rang as
usual.
But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the
apartments prepared for her, which, with the rest of the
house, had assumed a very much improved appearance
of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, and here
beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had
arrived, and were placed in the bedroom and
dressing-room adjoining, helped her to take off her neat
black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-law in
what more she could be useful.
"What I should like best," said Rebecca, "would be to
go to the nursery and see your dear little children." On
which the two ladies looked very kindly at each other
and went to that apartment hand in hand.
Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four
years old, as the most charming little love in the world;
and the boy, a little fellow of two years--pale, heavy-eyed,
and large-headed--she pronounced to be a perfect
prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty.
"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much
medicine," Lady Jane said with a sigh. "I often think we
should all be better without it." And then Lady Jane and
her new-found friend had one of those confidential medical conversations about the children, which all mothers,
and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in.
Fifty years ago, and when the present writer, being an
interesting little boy, was ordered out of the room with
the ladies after dinner, I remember quite well that their
talk was chiefly about their ailments; and putting this
question directly to two or three since, I have always got
from them the acknowledgement that times are not
changed. Let my fair readers remark for themselves this
very evening when they quit the dessert-table and
assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries. Well
--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and
intimate friends--and in the course of the evening her
Ladyship informed Sir Pitt that she thought her new
sister-in-law was a kind, frank, unaffected, and affectionate
young woman.
And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the
indefatigable little woman bent herself to conciliate the
august Lady Southdown. As soon as she found her Ladyship
alone, Rebecca attacked her on the nursery question
at once and said that her own little boy was saved,
actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all the
physicians in Paris had given the dear child up. And then
she mentioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown
from that excellent man the Reverend Lawrence
Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair, which she
frequented; and how her views were very much changed
by circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that
a past life spent in worldliness and error might not
incapacitate her from more serious thought for the future.
She described how in former days she had been indebted
to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon
the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which she had
read with the greatest profit, and asked about Lady
Emily, its gifted author, now Lady Emily Hornblower, at
Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes of
becoming Bishop of Caffraria.
But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady
Southdown's favour, by feeling very much agitated and
unwell after the funeral and requesting her Ladyship's
medical advice, which the Dowager not only gave, but,
wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady
Macbeth than ever, came privately in the night to Becky's
room with a parcel of favourite tracts, and a medicine
of her own composition, which she insisted that Mrs.
Rawdon should take.
Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine
them with great interest, engaging the Dowager in a
conversation concerning them and the welfare of her soul,
by which means she hoped that her body might escape
medication. But after the religious topics were exhausted,
Lady Macbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her
cup of night-drink was emptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon
was compelled actually to assume a look of gratitude, and
to swallow the medicine under the unyielding old Dowager's
nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.
It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance
was very queer when Rawdon came in and heard what
had happened; and. his explosions of laughter were as
loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which she could
not disguise, even though it was at her own expense,
described the occurrence and how she had been victimized
by Lady Southdown. Lord Steyne, and her son in
London, had many a laugh over the story when Rawdon
and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair. Becky
acted the whole scene for them. She put on a night-cap
and gown. She preached a great sermon in the true serious
manner; she lectured on the virtue of the medicine
which she pretended to administer, with a gravity of
imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was
the Countess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled.
"Give us Lady Southdown and the black dose," was
a constant cry amongst the folks in Becky's little
drawing-room in May Fair. And for the first time in her
life the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.
Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and
veneration which Rebecca had paid personally to himself
in early days, and was tolerably well disposed towards
her. The marriage, ill-advised as it was, had improved
Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's
altered habits and demeanour--and had it not been a
lucky union as regarded Pitt himself? The cunning
diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned that he owed his
fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought not
to cry out against it. His satisfaction was not removed
by Rebecca's own statements, behaviour, and
conversation.
She doubled the deference which before had charmed
him, calling out his conversational powers in such a
manner as quite to surprise Pitt himself, who, always
inclined to respect his own talents, admired them the more
when Rebecca pointed them out to him. With her
sister-in-law, Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it
was Mrs. Bute Crawley who brought about the marriage
which she afterwards so calumniated; that it was Mrs.
Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's
fortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which
caused and invented all the wicked reports against
Rebecca. "She succeeded in making us poor," Rebecca
said with an air of angelical patience; "but how can I
be angry with a woman who has given me one of the best
husbands in the world? And has not her own avarice
been sufficiently punished by the ruin of her own hopes and
the loss of the property by which she set so much
store? Poor!" she cried. "Dear Lady Jane, what care we
for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am
often thankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to
restore the splendour of the noble old family of which
I am so proud to be a member. I am sure Sir Pitt will
make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."
All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the
most faithful of wives, and increased the favourable
impression which Rebecca made; so much so that when,
on the third day after the funeral, the family party were
at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of
the table, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem! Rebecca,
may I give you a wing?"--a speech which made the little
woman's eyes sparkle with pleasure.
While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and
hopes, and Pitt Crawley arranging the funeral ceremonial
and other matters connected with his future progress and
dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her nursery, as far as
her mother would let her, and the sun rising and setting,
and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and
to prayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's
Crawley lay in the apartment which he had occupied,
watched unceasingly by the professional attendants who
were engaged for that rite. A woman or two, and three
or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southampton
could furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy
and tragical demeanour, had charge of the remains which
they watched turn about, having the housekeeper's room
for their place of rendezvous when off duty, where they
played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.
The members of the family and servants of the house
kept away from the gloomy spot, where the bones of the
descendant of an ancient line of knights and gentlemen
lay, awaiting their final consignment to the family crypt.
No regrets attended them, save those of the poor woman
who had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who
had fled in disgrace from the Hall over which she had so
nearly been a ruler. Beyond her and a favourite old pointer
he had, and between whom and himself an attachment
subsisted during the period of his imbecility, the old man
had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed,
during the whole course of his life, never taken the least
pains to secure one. Could the best and kindest of us who
depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting
it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair
feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound)
would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon
our survivors were consoled. And so Sir Pitt was
forgotten--like the kindest and best of us--only a few
weeks sooner.
Those who will may follow his remains to the grave,
whither they were borne on the appointed day, in the most
becoming manner, the family in black coaches, with their
handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for the tears which
did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep
tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of
compliment to the new landlord; the neighbouring gentry's
carriages at three miles an hour, empty, and in profound
affliction; the parson speaking out the formula about "our
dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body,
we play our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with
humbug and ceremonies, laying it in state, and packing it
up in gilt nails and velvet; and we finish our duty by
placing over it a stone, written all over with lies. Bute's
curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt
Crawley composed between them an appropriate Latin
epitaph for the late lamented Baronet, and the former
preached a classical sermon, exhorting the survivors not
to give way to grief and informing them in the most
respectful terms that they also would be one day called
upon to pass that gloomy and mysterious portal which had
just closed upon the remains of their lamented brother.
Then the tenantry mounted on horseback again, or stayed
and refreshed themselves at the Crawley Arms. Then,
after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,
the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different
destinations: then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes,
palls, velvets, ostrich feathers, and other mortuary
properties, clambered up on the roof of the hearse and rode
off to Southampton. Their faces relapsed into a natural
expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into
a brisker trot on the open road; and squads of them
might have been seen, speckling with black the
public-house entrances, with pewter-pots flashing in the
sunshine. Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled away into a
tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl
sometimes at first, but these were the only accents of
grief which were heard in the Hall of which Sir Pitt
Crawley, Baronet, had been master for some threescore years.
As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting
is as it were the duty of an English gentleman of
statesmanlike propensities, Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of
grief over, went out a little and partook of that diversion
in a white hat with crape round it. The sight of those fields
of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many secret
joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he
took no gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane;
Rawdon, his big brother, and the keepers blazing away at
his side. Pitt's money and acres had a great effect upon
his brother. The penniless Colonel became quite obsequious
and respectful to the head of his house, and despised
the milksop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy
to his senior's prospects of planting and draining, gave
his advice about the stables and cattle, rode
over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thought
would carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her,
&c.: the rebellious dragoon was quite humbled and
subdued, and became a most creditable younger brother. He
had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London
respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who
sent messages of his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I
hope you are very well. I hope Mamma is very well. The
pony is very well. Grey takes me to ride in the park.
I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. He
cried when he cantered. I do not cry." Rawdon read these
letters to his brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted
with them. The Baronet promised to take charge of the lad
at school, and his kind-hearted wife gave Rebecca a
bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her little
nephew.
One day followed another, and the ladies of the house
passed their life in those calm pursuits and amusements
which satisfy country ladies. Bells rang to meals and
to prayers. The young ladies took exercise on the
pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving
them the benefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick
shoes and walked in the park or shrubberies, or beyond
the palings into the village, descending upon the cottages,
with Lady Southdown's medicine and tracts for the
sick people there. Lady Southdown drove out in a
pony-chaise, when Rebecca would take her place by the
Dowager's side and listen to her solemn talk with the utmost
interest. She sang Handel and Haydn to the family of
evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work, as if
she had been born to the business and as if this kind
of life was to continue with her until she should sink to
the grave in a polite old age, leaving regrets and a great
quantity of consols behind her--as if there were not cares
and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waiting outside
the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into
the world again.
"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife,"
Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if
I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the
nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water
plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the
geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms
and order half-a-crown's worth of soup for
the poor. I shouldn't miss it much, out of five thousand
a year. I could even drive out ten miles to dine at a
neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last.
I could go to church and keep awake in the great family
pew, or go to sleep behind the curtains, with my veil
down, if I only had practice. I could pay everybody, if
I had but the money. This is what the conjurors here
pride themselves upon doing. They look down with pity
upon us miserable sinners who have none. They think
themselves generous if they give our children a five-pound
note, and us contemptible if we are without one." And
who knows but Rebecca was right in her speculations
--and that it was only a question of money and fortune
which made the difference between her and an honest
woman? If you take temptations into account, who is to
say that he is better than his neighbour? A comfortable
career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at
least keeps them so. An alderman coming from a turtle
feast will not step out of his carnage to steal a leg of
mutton; but put him to starve, and see if he will not
purloin a loaf. Becky consoled herself by so balancing the
chances and equalizing the distribution of good and evil
in the world.
The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses,
ponds, and gardens, the rooms of the old house where
she had spent a couple of years seven years ago, were all
carefully revisited by her. She had been young there, or
comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she ever
WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and
feelings seven years back and contrasted them with those
which she had at present, now that she had seen the
world, and lived with great people, and raised herself far
beyond her original humble station.
"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky
thought, "and almost all the rest of the world are fools.
I could not go back and consort with those people now,
whom I used to meet in my father's studio. Lords come up
to my door with stars and garters, instead of poor
artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have a
gentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my
sister, in the very house where I was little better than a
servant a few years ago. But am I much better to do now
in the world than I was when I was the poor painter's
daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner for
sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was
so fond of me--I couldn't have been much poorer than
I am now. Heigho! I wish I could exchange my position
in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in the
Three Per Cent. Consols"; for so it was that Becky felt
the Vanity of human affairs, and it was in those securities