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