CHAPTER XXXVII

The Subject Continued

In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are

bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. These

mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have credit

with Messrs. Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly montees

and decorated entirely according to your own fancy; or they are to be

let furnished, a less troublesome and complicated arrangement to most

parties. It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their

house.

Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and cellar

in Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was

born on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger

son of a gardener there. By good conduct, a handsome person and

calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to the

footboard of the carriage; from the footboard to the butler's pantry.

When he had been a certain number of years at the head of Miss

Crawley's establishment, where he had had good wages, fat perquisites,

and plenty of opportunities of saving, he announced that he was about

to contract a matrimonial alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's,

who had subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a mangle,

and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood.

The truth is, that the ceremony had been clandestinely performed some

years back; although the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first

brought to Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight

years of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen had attracted the

attention of Miss Briggs.

Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the superintendence

of the small shop and the greens. He added milk and cream, eggs and

country-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself whilst other retired

butlers were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the

simplest country produce. And having a good connection amongst the

butlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back parlour where he and Mrs.

Raggles received them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by

many of the fraternity, and his profits increased every year. Year

after year he quietly and modestly amassed money, and when at length

that snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street,

May Fair, lately the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace,

gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by the first

makers, was brought to the hammer, who should go in and purchase the

lease and furniture of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of the

money he borrowed, it is true, and at rather a high interest, from a

brother butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with no

small pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carved

mahogany, with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass opposite

to her, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all

the family.

Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently an apartment so

splendid. It was in order to let the house again that Raggles

purchased it. As soon as a tenant was found, he subsided into the

greengrocer's shop once more; but a happy thing it was for him to walk

out of that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey his

house--his own house--with geraniums in the window and a carved bronze

knocker. The footman occasionally lounging at the area railing,

treated him with respect; the cook took her green stuff at his house

and called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing the tenants

did, or one dish which they had for dinner, that Raggles might not know

of, if he liked.

He was a good man; good and happy. The house brought him in so

handsome a yearly income that he was determined to send his children to

good schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent

to boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and little Matilda to

Miss Peckover's, Laurentinum House, Clapham.

Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the author of all his

prosperity in life. He had a silhouette of his mistress in his back

shop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by

that spinster herself in India ink--and the only addition he made to

the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen's

Crawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole Crawley, Baronet, who was

represented in a gilded car drawn by six white horses, and passing by a

lake covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops, and

musicians with flags and periwigs. Indeed Raggles thought there was no

such palace in all the world, and no such august family.

As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let when

Rawdon and his wife returned to London. The Colonel knew it and its

owner quite well; the latter's connection with the Crawley family had

been kept up constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever Miss

Crawley received friends. And the old man not only let his house to

the Colonel but officiated as his butler whenever he had company; Mrs.

Raggles operating in the kitchen below and sending up dinners of which

old Miss Crawley herself might have approved. This was the way, then,

Crawley got his house for nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxes

and rates, and the interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; and

the insurance of his life; and the charges for his children at school;

and the value of the meat and drink which his own family--and for a

time that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and though the poor wretch

was utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on the

streets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison: yet somebody must

pay even for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was this

unlucky Raggles was made the representative of Colonel Crawley's

defective capital.

I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great

practitioners in Crawley's way?--how many great noblemen rob their petty

tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched

little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noble

nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has

an execution in his house--and that one or other owes six or seven

millions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in

the vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who can't get

his money for powdering the footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter who

has ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's

dejeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes,

and who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries

ready, which my lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the great

house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed:

as they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself,

he sends plenty of other souls thither.

Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage to all such of Miss

Crawley's tradesmen and purveyors as chose to serve them. Some were

willing enough, especially the poor ones. It was wonderful to see the

pertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting brought the cart

every Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles himself had

to supply the greengroceries. The bill for servants' porter at the

Fortune of War public house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer.

Every servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and thus

kept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in fact was paid.

Not the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended the

pane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it;

nor the butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals which

roasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the servants who ate it:

and this I am given to understand is not unfrequently the way in which

people live elegantly on nothing a year.

In a little town such things cannot be done without remark. We know

there the quantity of milk our neighbour takes and espy the joint or

the fowls which are going in for his dinner. So, probably, 200 and 202

in Curzon Street might know what was going on in the house between

them, the servants communicating through the area-railings; but Crawley

and his wife and his friends did not know 200 and 202. When you came to

201 there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and a

jolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there, just for all

the world as if they had been undisputed masters of three or four

thousand a year--and so they were, not in money, but in produce and

labour--if they did not pay for the mutton, they had it: if they did

not give bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know? Never

was better claret at any man's table than at honest Rawdon's; dinners

more gay and neatly served. His drawing-rooms were the prettiest,

little, modest salons conceivable: they were decorated with the

greatest taste, and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca:

and when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a lightsome heart,

the stranger voted himself in a little paradise of domestic comfort and

agreed that, if the husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming,

and the dinners the pleasantest in the world.

Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue in

London among a certain class. You saw demure chariots at her door, out

of which stepped very great people. You beheld her carriage in the

park, surrounded by dandies of note. The little box in the third tier

of the opera was crowded with heads constantly changing; but it must be

confessed that the ladies held aloof from her, and that their doors

were shut to our little adventurer.

With regard to the world of female fashion and its customs, the present

writer of course can only speak at second hand. A man can no more

penetrate or understand those mysteries than he can know what the

ladies talk about when they go upstairs after dinner. It is only by

inquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets hints of those

secrets; and by a similar diligence every person who treads the Pall

Mall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis knows, either

through his own experience or through some acquaintance with whom he

plays at billiards or shares the joint, something about the genteel

world of London, and how, as there are men (such as Rawdon Crawley,

whose position we mentioned before) who cut a good figure to the eyes

of the ignorant world and to the apprentices in the park, who behold

them consorting with the most notorious dandies there, so there are

ladies, who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by all

the gentlemen and cut or slighted by all their wives. Mrs. Firebrace

is of this sort; the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see

every day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and most famous

dandies of this empire. Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties are

announced laboriously in the fashionable newspapers and with whom you

see that all sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and many

more might be mentioned had they to do with the history at present in

hand. But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country

people with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their

seeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who

are better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies have

no more chance of establishing themselves in "society," than the

benighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings in

the Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of these awful

truths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and wealth

are excluded from this "society." The frantic efforts which they make

to enter this circle, the meannesses to which they submit, the insults

which they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human or

womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficulties

would be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, the

leisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for the

compiling of such a history.

Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad not

only declined to visit her when she came to this side of the Channel,

but cut her severely when they met in public places. It was curious to

see how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether a

pleasant study to Rebecca. When Lady Bareacres met her in the

waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters about her as if

they would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and retreating a step

or two, placed herself in front of them, and stared at her little

enemy. To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer glance than

even the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out of her dismal eyes. When

Lady de la Mole, who had ridden a score of times by Becky's side at

Brussels, met Mrs. Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship

was quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her former

friend. Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife, cut her at church.

Becky went regularly to church now; it was edifying to see her enter

there with Rawdon by her side, carrying a couple of large gilt

prayer-books, and afterwards going through the ceremony with the

gravest resignation.

Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were passed upon

his wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and savage. He talked of

calling out the husbands or brothers of every one of the insolent women

who did not pay a proper respect to his wife; and it was only by the

strongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was brought into

keeping a decent behaviour. "You can't shoot me into society," she

said good-naturedly. "Remember, my dear, that I was but a governess,

and you, you poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt,

and dice, and all sorts of wickedness. We shall get quite as many

friends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile you must be a good

boy and obey your schoolmistress in everything she tells you to do.

When we heard that your aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and his

wife, do you remember what a rage you were in? You would have told all

Paris, if I had not made you keep your temper, and where would you have

been now?--in prison at Ste. Pelagie for debt, and not established in

London in a handsome house, with every comfort about you--you were in

such a fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you,

and what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the

world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we

should be friends with your brother's family than enemies, as those

foolish Butes are. When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a

pleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in. If we are ruined,

you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a governess

to Lady Jane's children. Ruined! fiddlede-dee! I will get you a good

place before that; or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will be

Sir Rawdon and my lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear,

and I intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for you?

Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was obliged to confess that he

owed all these benefits to his wife, and to trust himself to her

guidance for the future.

Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for which

all her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally left to

Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had been

left to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in such

a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage abuse upon his

nephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them ended in an utter

breach of intercourse. Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand,

who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish his brother and

delight his sister-in-law, who was disposed to look kindly upon all the

members of her husband's family. He wrote to his brother a very frank,

manly, good-humoured letter from Paris. He was aware, he said, that by

his own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he did

not disguise his disappointment that she should have been so entirely

relentless towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept in

their branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother on

his good fortune. He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister,

and hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter

concluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter lady's own

handwriting. She, too, begged to join in her husband's

congratulations. She should ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to

her in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of

his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderest

interest. She wished him every happiness in his married life, and,

asking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose

goodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day she might

be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt, and begged

to bespeak for him their good-will and protection.

Pitt Crawley received this communication very graciously--more

graciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebecca's previous

compositions in Rawdon's handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so

charmed with the letter that she expected her husband would instantly

divide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions and send off one-half

to his brother at Paris.

To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate his

brother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds. But he made Rawdon a

handsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come to England

and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her good opinion

of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his willingness to

take any opportunity to serve her little boy.

Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the brothers.

When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London. Many a

time she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had

taken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the new family did

not make its appearance; it was only through Raggles that she heard of

their movements--how Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed with

decent gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his appearance

in London, when he stopped for a few days at the house, did business

with his lawyers there, and sold off all Miss Crawley's French novels

to a bookseller out of Bond Street. Becky had reasons of her own which

caused her to long for the arrival of her new relation. "When Lady Jane

comes," thought she, "she shall be my sponsor in London society; and as

for the women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men want

to see me."

An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham or

her bouquet is her companion. I have always admired the way in which

the tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire an

exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost

inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown

seated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the back

seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as

jolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in the

repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of Vanity

Fair. What? even battered, brazen, beautiful, conscienceless,

heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame: even

lovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man

in England will take, and who drives her greys in the park, while her

mother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath still--even those who are so

bold, one might fancy they could face anything, dare not face the world

without a female friend. They must have somebody to cling to, the

affectionate creatures! And you will hardly see them in any public

place without a shabby companion in a dyed silk, sitting somewhere in

the shade close behind them.

"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were

seated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to her

house to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the

best in London): "I must have a sheep-dog."

"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte table.

"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown. "My dear Mrs. Crawley, what

a fancy! Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as a

camel-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your brougham. Or a

Persian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug that

would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes? There's a man at

Bayswater got one with such a nose that you might--I mark the king and

play--that you might hang your hat on it."

"I mark the trick," Rawdon gravely said. He attended to his game

commonly and didn't much meddle with the conversation, except when it

was about horses and betting.

"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively little Southdown

continued.

"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog," said Becky, laughing and looking up at

Lord Steyne.

"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship.

"A dog to keep the wolves off me," Rebecca continued. "A companion."

"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one," said the marquis; and his

jaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leering

towards Rebecca.

The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The

fire crackled and blazed pleasantly. There was a score of candles

sparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of

gilt and bronze and porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure to

admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy

flowers. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose; her

dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin hazy

scarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her

neck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of

the silk: the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal in

the finest silk stocking in the world.

The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which was

fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little

twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. His jaw

was underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded

themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been

dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short

man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the

fineness of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee.

"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to defend his lambkin?"

"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs,"

answered Becky, laughing.

"'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--"what a mouth for a

pipe!"

"I take your three to two," here said Rawdon, at the card-table.

"Hark at Meliboeus," snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorally

occupied too: he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey?

Damme, what a snowy fleece!"

Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. "My lord," she said,

"you are a knight of the Order." He had the collar round his neck,

indeed--a gift of the restored princes of Spain.

Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and his

success at play. He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox at

hazard. He had won money of the most august personages of the realm:

he had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table; but he did

not like an allusion to those bygone fredaines. Rebecca saw the scowl

gathering over his heavy brow.

She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee cup out of his

hand with a little curtsey. "Yes," she said, "I must get a watchdog.

But he won't bark at YOU." And, going into the other drawing-room, she

sat down to the piano and began to sing little French songs in such a

charming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman speedily followed

her into that chamber, and might be seen nodding his head and bowing

time over her.

Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until they had enough.

The Colonel won; but, say that he won ever so much and often, nights

like these, which occurred many times in the week--his wife having all

the talk and all the admiration, and he sitting silent without the

circle, not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, the

mystical language within--must have been rather wearisome to the

ex-dragoon.

"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him by way

of a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his avocation in

life. He was Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.

About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it is

because he is hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or has crawled

below into the kitchen for companionship. His mother scarcely ever

took notice of him. He passed the days with his French bonne as long

as that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and when the

Frenchwoman went away, the little fellow, howling in the loneliness of

the night, had compassion taken on him by a housemaid, who took him out

of his solitary nursery into her bed in the garret hard by and

comforted him.

Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-room

taking tea after the opera, when this shouting was heard overhead.

"It's my cherub crying for his nurse," she said. She did not offer to

move to go and see the child. "Don't agitate your feelings by going to

look for him," said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" replied the other,

with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself to sleep"; and they fell to

talking about the opera.

Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son and heir; and came

back to the company when he found that honest Dolly was consoling the

child. The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper regions. He

used to see the boy there in private. They had interviews together

every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a box by his

father's side and watching the operation with never-ceasing pleasure.

He and the sire were great friends. The father would bring him

sweetmeats from the dessert and hide them in a certain old epaulet box,

where the child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on discovering

the treasure; laughed, but not too loud: for mamma was below asleep

and must not be disturbed. She did not go to rest till very late and

seldom rose till after noon.

Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his nursery

with toys. Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up by the

father's own hand and purchased by him for ready money. When he was

off duty with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing

hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his great

mustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent days with him in

indefatigable gambols. The room was a low room, and once, when the

child was not five years old, his father, who was tossing him wildly up

in his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against the

ceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified was he at the

disaster.

Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl--the severity

of the blow indeed authorized that indulgence; but just as he was going

to begin, the father interposed.

"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he cried. And the child,

looking in a very hard and piteous way at his father, bit his lips,

clenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit. Rawdon told that story at

the clubs, at the mess, to everybody in town. "By Gad, sir," he

explained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one that boy

of mine is--what a trump he is! I half-sent his head through the

ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his mother."

Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited the upper regions

in which the child lived. She came like a vivified figure out of the

Magasin des Modes--blandly smiling in the most beautiful new clothes

and little gloves and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels

glittered about her. She had always a new bonnet on, and flowers

bloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling ostrich

feathers, soft and snowy as camellias. She nodded twice or thrice

patronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his dinner or from

the pictures of soldiers he was painting. When she left the room, an

odour of rose, or some other magical fragrance, lingered about the

nursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his

father--to all the world: to be worshipped and admired at a distance.

To drive with that lady in the carriage was an awful rite: he sat up

in the back seat and did not dare to speak: he gazed with all his eyes

at the beautifully dressed Princess opposite to him. Gentlemen on

splendid prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her. How

her eyes beamed upon all of them! Her hand used to quiver and wave

gracefully as they passed. When he went out with her he had his new

red dress on. His old brown holland was good enough when he stayed at

home. Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was making his

bed, he came into his mother's room. It was as the abode of a fairy to

him--a mystic chamber of splendour and delights. There in the wardrobe

hung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted. There was

the jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous bronze hand on the

dressing-table, glistening all over with a hundred rings. There was

the cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see his

own wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly distorted, and

as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the pillows of the bed.

Oh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy! Mother is the name for God

in the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was

worshipping a stone!

Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had certain manly

tendencies of affection in his heart and could love a child and a woman

still. For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness then, which

did not escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to her

husband. It did not annoy her: she was too good-natured. It only

increased her scorn for him. He felt somehow ashamed of this paternal

softness and hid it from his wife--only indulging in it when alone with

the boy.

He used to take him out of mornings when they would go to the stables

together and to the park. Little Lord Southdown, the best-natured of

men, who would make you a present of the hat from his head, and whose

main occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might give them

away afterwards, bought the little chap a pony not much bigger than a

large rat, the donor said, and on this little black Shetland pygmy

young Rawdon's great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk

by his side in the park. It pleased him to see his old quarters, and

his old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge: he had begun to think of his

bachelorhood with something like regret. The old troopers were glad to

recognize their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel. Colonel

Crawley found dining at mess and with his brother-officers very

pleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her--I know it. She

won't miss me," he used to say: and he was right, his wife did not

miss him.

Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always perfectly good-humoured

and kind to him. She did not even show her scorn much for

him; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool. He was her

upper servant and maitre d'hotel. He went on her errands; obeyed her

orders without question; drove in the carriage in the ring with her

without repining; took her to the opera-box, solaced himself at his

club during the performance, and came punctually back to fetch her when

due. He would have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, but

even to that he reconciled himself. "Hang it, you know she's so

clever," he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you know." For, as we

have said before, it requires no great wisdom to be able to win at

cards and billiards, and Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort

of skill.

When the companion came, his domestic duties became very light. His

wife encouraged him to dine abroad: she would let him off duty at the

opera. "Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear,"

she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore you. I would

not ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I have a

sheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone."

"A sheep-dog--a companion! Becky Sharp with a companion! Isn't it

good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself. The notion tickled hugely

her sense of humour.

One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony

were taking their accustomed walk in the park, they passed by an old

acquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was

in conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy in his

arms about the age of little Rawdon. This other youngster had seized

hold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and was examining

it with delight.

"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to the "How do,

Clink?" of the Colonel. "This ere young gentleman is about the little

Colonel's age, sir," continued the corporal.

"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman, who

carried the boy. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"

"Yes," said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony were looking at

each other with all their might--solemnly scanning each other as

children do.

"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.

"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old gentleman rather

pompously. "Captain George Osborne, sir--perhaps you knew him. He

died the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant."

Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. "I knew him very well, sir," he

said, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--how is she?"

"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman, putting down the boy

and taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to the

Colonel. On it written--

"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal

Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages,

Fulham Road West."

Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony.

"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle.

"Yes," said Georgy. The Colonel, who had been looking at him with some

interest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.

"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little boy round the

waist--his name is Rawdon." And both the children began to laugh.

"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's day, sir," said

the good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr.

Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children.