CHAPTER XIX

Miss Crawley at Nurse

We have seen how Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, as soon as any event of

importance to the Crawley family came to her knowledge, felt bound to

communicate it to Mrs. Bute Crawley, at the Rectory; and have before

mentioned how particularly kind and attentive that good-natured lady

was to Miss Crawley's confidential servant. She had been a gracious

friend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had secured the

latter's good-will by a number of those attentions and promises, which

cost so little in the making, and are yet so valuable and agreeable to

the recipient. Indeed every good economist and manager of a household

must know how cheap and yet how amiable these professions are, and what

a flavour they give to the most homely dish in life. Who was the

blundering idiot who said that "fine words butter no parsnips"? Half

the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other

sauce. As the immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for a

half-penny than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetables

and meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasing

phrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in the

hands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits often

sicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of fine

words, and be always eager for more of the same food. Mrs. Bute had

told Briggs and Firkin so often of the depth of her affection for them;

and what she would do, if she had Miss Crawley's fortune, for friends

so excellent and attached, that the ladies in question had the deepest

regard for her; and felt as much gratitude and confidence as if Mrs.

Bute had loaded them with the most expensive favours.

Rawdon Crawley, on the other hand, like a selfish heavy dragoon as he

was, never took the least trouble to conciliate his aunt's aides-de-camp,

showed his contempt for the pair with entire frankness--made

Firkin pull off his boots on one occasion--sent her out in the rain on

ignominious messages--and if he gave her a guinea, flung it to her as

if it were a box on the ear. As his aunt, too, made a butt of Briggs,

the Captain followed the example, and levelled his jokes at her--jokes

about as delicate as a kick from his charger. Whereas, Mrs. Bute

consulted her in matters of taste or difficulty, admired her poetry,

and by a thousand acts of kindness and politeness, showed her

appreciation of Briggs; and if she made Firkin a twopenny-halfpenny

present, accompanied it with so many compliments, that the

twopence-half-penny was transmuted into gold in the heart of the

grateful waiting-maid, who, besides, was looking forwards quite

contentedly to some prodigious benefit which must happen to her on the

day when Mrs. Bute came into her fortune.

The different conduct of these two people is pointed out respectfully

to the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, I

say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both

point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there

is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of

saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his

estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal

with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may

sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.

In a word, during Rawdon Crawley's prosperity, he was only obeyed with

sulky acquiescence; when his disgrace came, there was nobody to help or

pity him. Whereas, when Mrs. Bute took the command at Miss Crawley's

house, the garrison there were charmed to act under such a leader,

expecting all sorts of promotion from her promises, her generosity, and

her kind words.

That he would consider himself beaten, after one defeat, and make no

attempt to regain the position he had lost, Mrs. Bute Crawley never

allowed herself to suppose. She knew Rebecca to be too clever and

spirited and desperate a woman to submit without a struggle; and felt

that she must prepare for that combat, and be incessantly watchful

against assault; or mine, or surprise.

In the first place, though she held the town, was she sure of the

principal inhabitant? Would Miss Crawley herself hold out; and had she

not a secret longing to welcome back the ousted adversary? The old

lady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her. Mrs. Bute could not

disguise from herself the fact that none of her party could so

contribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady. "My girls' singing,

after that little odious governess's, I know is unbearable," the candid

Rector's wife owned to herself. "She always used to go to sleep when

Martha and Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners and

poor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her. If

I took her to the Rectory, she would grow angry with us all, and fly, I

know she would; and might fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutches

again, and be the victim of that little viper of a Sharp. Meanwhile,

it is clear to me that she is exceedingly unwell, and cannot move for

some weeks, at any rate; during which we must think of some plan to

protect her from the arts of those unprincipled people."

In the very best of moments, if anybody told Miss Crawley that she was,

or looked ill, the trembling old lady sent off for her doctor; and I

daresay she was very unwell after the sudden family event, which might

serve to shake stronger nerves than hers. At least, Mrs. Bute thought

it was her duty to inform the physician, and the apothecary, and the

dame-de-compagnie, and the domestics, that Miss Crawley was in a most

critical state, and that they were to act accordingly. She had the

street laid knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr.

Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day;

and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody

entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that

it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not

look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the

latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside. They seemed to

lighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she moved

about the room on velvet paws like a cat. There Miss Crawley lay for

days--ever so many days--Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her: for

nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing,

the night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the

stealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling

eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary

darkened ceiling. Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a

regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim? It has been

said that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerable

inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals

as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook

her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an

utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner.

Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place

in mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of some

novelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, when

it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness. But,

without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the

bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair

exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private

life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal

repentances sometimes overcome him. Recollection of the best ordained

banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most

becoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to

console faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of

existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant

divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very

small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view,

about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brother

wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of

grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear

friends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through

the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should

all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be

perfectly miserable in private.

"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders," Mrs. Bute

Crawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under present

circumstances, to this unhappy old lady! He might make her repent of

her shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, and

cast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and his

family; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and the

two boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance which

their relatives can give them."

And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.

Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper

abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle's

wife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served to

condemn a whole regiment of young officers. If a man has committed

wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his

errors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs. Bute showed a

perfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history. She had all

the particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in which

Rawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain. She

knew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house at

Oxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched a

card in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at the

Cocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and

perverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds. She described

with the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom

he had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and

poverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition. She knew

the poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean

shifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding

falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and

the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices.

She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the

whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian

woman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse or

compunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very

likely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon

her resolute manner of performing it. Yes, if a man's character is to

be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the

business. And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch

of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and

that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his

friends' parts.

Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share of

Mrs. Bute's kind inquiries. This indefatigable pursuer of truth

(having given strict orders that the door was to be denied to all

emissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage, and

drove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House, Chiswick

Mall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of Captain

Rawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got sundry strange

particulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and early history. The

friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give. Miss

Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters.

This one was from a spunging-house: that entreated an advance: another

was full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception by the ladies of

Chiswick: and the last document from the unlucky artist's pen was that

in which, from his dying bed, he recommended his orphan child to Miss

Pinkerton's protection. There were juvenile letters and petitions from

Rebecca, too, in the collection, imploring aid for her father or

declaring her own gratitude. Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no

better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your dear friend's of

ten years back--your dear friend whom you hate now. Look at a file of

your sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled about

the twenty-pound legacy! Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son

who has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or a

parcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, which

were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob--your

mistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows,

love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly they read after a

while! There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction

of every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a

certain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who

advertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their

wicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that

faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank,

so that you might write on it to somebody else.

From Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track of

Sharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greek Street, which the

defunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the landlady in

white satin, and of the husband in brass buttons, done by Sharp in lieu

of a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlour walls. Mrs. Stokes

was a communicative person, and quickly told all she knew about Mr.

Sharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how good-natured and amusing;

how he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady's

horror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his

wife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild

vixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and

mimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was

known in all the studios in the quarter--in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a

full account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behaviour as

would scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that such

inquiries were being made concerning her.

Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl. She had danced

herself. She had been a model to the painters. She was brought up as

became her mother's daughter. She drank gin with her father, &c. &c.

It was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to be

inferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair was

irremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever notice

them again.

These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together in

Park Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which she

fortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon and

his wife would lay to Miss Crawley.

But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that she

was too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made Miss

Crawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid

succumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the

victim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fell

in her way. Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women who

order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person

concerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes speculate

upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme

consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.

Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in the

world, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep,

dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carried

her conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managed

her into her coffin. She pointed out her sacrifices and their results

one day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump.

"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have been

wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew

has laid on the bed of sickness. I never shrink from personal

discomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself."

"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable," Mr. Clump says,

with a low bow; "but--"

"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep,

health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was in

the smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him? No."

"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best of

mothers; but--"

"As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I

humbly trust that my principles are good," Mrs. Bute said, with a happy

solemnity of conviction; "and, as long as Nature supports me, never,

never, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty. Others may bring

that grey head with sorrow to the bed of sickness (here Mrs. Bute,

waving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-coloured

fronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room), but I will

never quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump! I fear, I know, that the couch needs

spiritual as well as medical consolation."

"What I was going to observe, my dear Madam,"--here the resolute Clump

once more interposed with a bland air--"what I was going to observe

when you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much honour, was

that I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our kind friend, and

sacrifice your own health too prodigally in her favour."

"I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my

husband's family," Mrs. Bute interposed.

"Yes, Madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs. Bute Crawley to be a

martyr," Clump said gallantly. "Dr. Squills and myself have both

considered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you may

suppose. We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events have

agitated her."

"Her nephew will come to perdition," Mrs. Crawley cried.

"Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear

Madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the

pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our

amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed

necessary. She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her

depression. She should have change, fresh air, gaiety; the most

delightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia," Mr. Clump said, grinning and

showing his handsome teeth. "Persuade her to rise, dear Madam; drag

her from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon her taking little

drives. They will restore the roses too to your cheeks, if I may so

speak to Mrs. Bute Crawley."

"The sight of her horrid nephew casually in the Park, where I am told

the wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes," Mrs. Bute

said (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), "would

cause her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed

again. She must not go out, Mr. Clump. She shall not go out as long

as I remain to watch over her; And as for my health, what matters it?

I give it cheerfully, sir. I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty."

"Upon my word, Madam," Mr. Clump now said bluntly, "I won't answer for

her life if she remains locked up in that dark room. She is so nervous

that we may lose her any day; and if you wish Captain Crawley to be her

heir, I warn you frankly, Madam, that you are doing your very best to

serve him."

"Gracious mercy! is her life in danger?" Mrs. Bute cried. "Why, why,

Mr. Clump, did you not inform me sooner?"

The night before, Mr. Clump and Dr. Squills had had a consultation

(over a bottle of wine at the house of Sir Lapin Warren, whose lady was

about to present him with a thirteenth blessing), regarding Miss

Crawley and her case.

"What a little harpy that woman from Hampshire is, Clump," Squills

remarked, "that has seized upon old Tilly Crawley. Devilish good

Madeira."

"What a fool Rawdon Crawley has been," Clump replied, "to go and marry

a governess! There was something about the girl, too."

"Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development,"

Squills remarked. "There is something about her; and Crawley was a

fool, Squills."

"A d---- fool--always was," the apothecary replied.

"Of course the old girl will fling him over," said the physician, and

after a pause added, "She'll cut up well, I suppose."

"Cut up," says Clump with a grin; "I wouldn't have her cut up for two

hundred a year."

"That Hampshire woman will kill her in two months, Clump, my boy, if

she stops about her," Dr. Squills said. "Old woman; full feeder;

nervous subject; palpitation of the heart; pressure on the brain;

apoplexy; off she goes. Get her up, Clump; get her out: or I wouldn't

give many weeks' purchase for your two hundred a year." And it was

acting upon this hint that the worthy apothecary spoke with so much

candour to Mrs. Bute Crawley.

Having the old lady under her hand: in bed: with nobody near, Mrs. Bute

had made more than one assault upon her, to induce her to alter her

will. But Miss Crawley's usual terrors regarding death increased

greatly when such dismal propositions were made to her, and Mrs. Bute

saw that she must get her patient into cheerful spirits and health

before she could hope to attain the pious object which she had in view.

Whither to take her was the next puzzle. The only place where she is

not likely to meet those odious Rawdons is at church, and that won't

amuse her, Mrs. Bute justly felt. "We must go and visit our beautiful

suburbs of London," she then thought. "I hear they are the most

picturesque in the world"; and so she had a sudden interest for

Hampstead, and Hornsey, and found that Dulwich had great charms for

her, and getting her victim into her carriage, drove her to those

rustic spots, beguiling the little journeys with conversations about

Rawdon and his wife, and telling every story to the old lady which

could add to her indignation against this pair of reprobates.

Perhaps Mrs. Bute pulled the string unnecessarily tight. For though she

worked up Miss Crawley to a proper dislike of her disobedient nephew,

the invalid had a great hatred and secret terror of her victimizer, and

panted to escape from her. After a brief space, she rebelled against

Highgate and Hornsey utterly. She would go into the Park. Mrs. Bute

knew they would meet the abominable Rawdon there, and she was right.

One day in the ring, Rawdon's stanhope came in sight; Rebecca was

seated by him. In the enemy's equipage Miss Crawley occupied her usual

place, with Mrs. Bute on her left, the poodle and Miss Briggs on the

back seat. It was a nervous moment, and Rebecca's heart beat quick as

she recognized the carriage; and as the two vehicles crossed each other

in a line, she clasped her hands, and looked towards the spinster with

a face of agonized attachment and devotion. Rawdon himself trembled,

and his face grew purple behind his dyed mustachios. Only old Briggs

was moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervously

towards her old friends. Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely turned

towards the Serpentine. Mrs. Bute happened to be in ecstasies with the

poodle, and was calling him a little darling, and a sweet little zoggy,

and a pretty pet. The carriages moved on, each in his line.

"Done, by Jove," Rawdon said to his wife.

"Try once more, Rawdon," Rebecca answered. "Could not you lock your

wheels into theirs, dearest?"

Rawdon had not the heart for that manoeuvre. When the carriages met

again, he stood up in his stanhope; he raised his hand ready to doff

his hat; he looked with all his eyes. But this time Miss Crawley's

face was not turned away; she and Mrs. Bute looked him full in the

face, and cut their nephew pitilessly. He sank back in his seat with

an oath, and striking out of the ring, dashed away desperately

homewards.

It was a gallant and decided triumph for Mrs. Bute. But she felt the

danger of many such meetings, as she saw the evident nervousness of

Miss Crawley; and she determined that it was most necessary for her

dear friend's health, that they should leave town for a while, and

recommended Brighton very strongly.