CHAPTER XXXIX

A Cynical Chapter

Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old Hampshire

acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting the disposal of their

rich kinswoman's property were so woefully disappointed. After

counting upon thirty thousand pounds from his sister, it was a heavy

blow to Bute Crawley to receive but five; out of which sum, when he

had paid his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a very

small fragment remained to portion off his four plain daughters. Mrs.

Bute never knew, or at least never acknowledged, how far her own

tyrannous behaviour had tended to ruin her husband. All that woman

could do, she vowed and protested she had done. Was it her fault if

she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her hypocritical

nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished him all the happiness which

he merited out of his ill-gotten gains. "At least the money will

remain in the family," she said charitably. "Pitt will never spend it,

my dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not exist in

England, and he is as odious, though in a different way, as his

spendthrift brother, the abandoned Rawdon."

So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and disappointment, began

to accommodate herself as best she could to her altered fortunes and to

save and retrench with all her might. She instructed her daughters how

to bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable methods to

conceal or evade it. She took them about to balls and public places in

the neighbourhood, with praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her

friends in a hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much

more frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy had fallen in.

From her outward bearing nobody would have supposed that the family had

been disappointed in their expectations, or have guessed from her

frequent appearance in public how she pinched and starved at home. Her

girls had more milliners' furniture than they had ever enjoyed before.

They appeared perseveringly at the Winchester and Southampton

assemblies; they penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls and

regatta-gaieties there; and their carriage, with the horses taken from

the plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to be

believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left them by their

aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in public but with the most

tender gratitude and regard. I know no sort of lying which is more

frequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people

who practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy, and

fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, because they

are able to deceive the world with regard to the extent of their means.

Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most virtuous women in

England, and the sight of her happy family was an edifying one to

strangers. They were so cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so

simple! Martha painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the

charity bazaars in the county. Emma was a regular County Bulbul, and

her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were the glory of its Poet's

Corner. Fanny and Matilda sang duets together, Mamma playing the

piano, and the other two sisters sitting with their arms round each

other's waists and listening affectionately. Nobody saw the poor girls

drumming at the duets in private. No one saw Mamma drilling them

rigidly hour after hour. In a word, Mrs. Bute put a good face against

fortune and kept up appearances in the most virtuous manner.

Everything that a good and respectable mother could do Mrs. Bute did.

She got over yachting men from Southampton, parsons from the Cathedral

Close at Winchester, and officers from the barracks there. She tried to

inveigle the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to bring

home friends with whom he went out hunting with the H. H. What will

not a mother do for the benefit of her beloved ones?

Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the odious Baronet at the

Hall, it is manifest that there could be very little in common. The

rupture between Bute and his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed,

between Sir Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was a

scandal. His dislike for respectable society increased with age, and

the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's carriage-wheels since

Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their visit of duty after their marriage.

That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be thought of by the

family without horror. Pitt begged his wife, with a ghastly

countenance, never to speak of it, and it was only through Mrs. Bute

herself, who still knew everything which took place at the Hall, that

the circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and

daughter-in-law were ever known at all.

As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat and

well-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay and wrath great gaps

among the trees--his trees--which the old Baronet was felling entirely

without license. The park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin.

The drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and floundered

in muddy pools along the road. The great sweep in front of the terrace

and entrance stair was black and covered with mosses; the once trim

flower-beds rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the whole

line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred after much ringing

of the bell; an individual in ribbons was seen flitting up the black

oak stair, as Horrocks at length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley

and his bride into the halls of their fathers. He led the way into Sir

Pitt's "Library," as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growing

stronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that apartment, "Sir Pitt

ain't very well," Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that his

master was afflicted with lumbago.

The library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had opened

one of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the postilion and

Pitt's servant, who seemed to be about to take the baggage down.

"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing with a pipe which

he held in his hand. "It's only a morning visit, Tucker, you fool.

Lor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels! Ain't there no one at

the King's Head to rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear?

Come to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too. You

ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and give old

Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."

The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the caresses

of the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco, might well do.

But she remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios, and

smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a tolerable grace.

"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of affection.

"Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm, Evening

Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady

Jane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don't stand stearing there

like a fat pig. I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it too

stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt. I'm an old man now, and

like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of a night."

"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane, laughing. "I used to

play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't I, Mr. Crawley?"

"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you are

so partial," Pitt said haughtily.

"But she wawn't stop for all that. Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury and

give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask Buty

for a dinner. He'll be charmed to see you, you know; he's so much

obliged to you for gettin' the old woman's money. Ha, ha! Some of it

will do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."

"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice, "that your people

will cut down the timber."

"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of year,"

Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf. "But I'm gittin' old,

Pitt, now. Law bless you, you ain't far from fifty yourself. But he

wears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness,

sobriety, and a moral life. Look at me, I'm not very fur from

fowr-score--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered at her

and pinched her hand.

Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but the

Baronet was deaf again in an instant.

"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year with the

lumbago. I shan't be here now for long; but I'm glad ee've come,

daughter-in-law. I like your face, Lady Jane: it's got none of the

damned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something pretty,

my dear, to go to Court in." And he shuffled across the room to a

cupboard, from which he took a little old case containing jewels of

some value. "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged to my mother,

and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty pearls--never gave 'em

the ironmonger's daughter. No, no. Take 'em and put 'em up quick,"

said he, thrusting the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping the

door of the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and

refreshments.

"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said the individual in

ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old gentleman.

It was Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandal

throughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost supreme at

Queen's Crawley.

The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay by

the county and family. The Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury

Branch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the

pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at the Hall. The

domestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The Scotch gardener, who

still lingered on the premises, taking a pride in his walls and

hot-houses, and indeed making a pretty good livelihood by the garden,

which he farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton, found

the Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning at the south-wall, and

had his ears boxed when he remonstrated about this attack on his

property. He and his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only

respectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to migrate,

with their goods and their chattels, and left the stately comfortable

gardens to go to waste, and the flower-beds to run to seed. Poor Lady

Crawley's rose-garden became the dreariest wilderness. Only two or

three domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall. The stables

and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined. Sir Pitt lived

in private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-steward

(as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. The

times were very much changed since the period when she drove to Mudbury

in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen "Sir." It may have

been shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours, but the old

Cynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now.

He quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by letter. His

days were passed in conducting his own correspondence; the lawyers and

farm-bailiffs who had to do business with him could not reach him but

through the Ribbons, who received them at the door of the housekeeper's

room, which commanded the back entrance by which they were admitted;

and so the Baronet's daily perplexities increased, and his

embarrassments multiplied round him.

The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these reports of his

father's dotage reached the most exemplary and correct of gentlemen. He

trembled daily lest he should hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed his

second legal mother-in-law. After that first and last visit, his

father's name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteel

establishment. It was the skeleton in his house, and all the family

walked by it in terror and silence. The Countess Southdown kept on

dropping per coach at the lodge-gate the most exciting tracts, tracts

which ought to frighten the hair off your head. Mrs. Bute at the

parsonage nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the elms

behind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on fire. Sir G.

Wapshot and Sir H. Fuddlestone, old friends of the house, wouldn't sit

on the bench with Sir Pitt at Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the

High Street of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his

dirty old hands to them. Nothing had any effect upon him; he put his

hands into his pockets, and burst out laughing, as he scrambled into

his carriage and four; he used to burst out laughing at Lady

Southdown's tracts; and he laughed at his sons, and at the world, and

at the Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom.

Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's Crawley, and

ruled all the domestics there with great majesty and rigour. All the

servants were instructed to address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--and

there was one little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in calling

her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the housekeeper.

"There has been better ladies, and there has been worser, Hester," was

Miss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled,

having supreme power over all except her father, whom, however, she

treated with considerable haughtiness, warning him not to be too

familiar in his behaviour to one "as was to be a Baronet's lady."

Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted part in life with great satisfaction

to herself, and to the amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her

airs and graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her

assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life. He swore it was

as good as a play to see her in the character of a fine dame, and he

made her put on one of the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing

(entirely to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress became her

prodigiously, and threatening to drive her off that very instant to

Court in a coach-and-four. She had the ransacking of the wardrobes of

the two defunct ladies, and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so

as to suit her own tastes and figure. And she would have liked to take

possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the old Baronet had

locked them away in his private cabinet; nor could she coax or wheedle

him out of the keys. And it is a fact, that some time after she left

Queen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered,

which showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn the art

of writing in general, and especially of writing her own name as Lady

Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c.

Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall and

shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strict

knowledge of all that happened there, and were looking out every day

for the catastrophe for which Miss Horrocks was also eager. But Fate

intervened enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due to

such immaculate love and virtue.

One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he jocularly called

her, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room, which

had scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon

it--seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the

best of her power in imitation of the music which she had sometimes

heard. The little kitchen-maid on her promotion was standing at her

mistress's side, quite delighted during the operation, and wagging her

head up and down and crying, "Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful"--just like a

genteel sycophant in a real drawing-room.

This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual. He

narrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course of

the evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks. He

thrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, and

squalled in imitation of her manner of singing. He vowed that such a

beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to have

singing-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous. He was

in great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and butler an

extraordinary quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour the

faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his bedroom.

Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and bustle in the

house. Lights went about from window to window in the lonely desolate

old Hall, whereof but two or three rooms were ordinarily occupied by

its owner. Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury, to

the Doctor's house there. And in another hour (by which fact we

ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs. Bute Crawley had always kept

up an understanding with the great house), that lady in her clogs and

calash, the Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son, had

walked over from the Rectory through the park, and had entered the

mansion by the open hall-door.

They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table of

which stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which had

served for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into Sir

Pitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons,

with a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch of

keys. She dropped them with a scream of terror, as little Mrs. Bute's

eyes flashed out at her from under her black calash.

"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley," cried Mrs. Bute, pointing at the

scared figure of the black-eyed, guilty wench.

"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.

"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed Mrs. Bute. "Bear

witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this good-for-nothing woman in the act

of stealing your brother's property; and she will be hanged, as I

always said she would."

Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on her knees,

bursting into tears. But those who know a really good woman are aware

that she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the humiliation of an

enemy is a triumph to her soul.

"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said. "Go on ringing it till the

people come." The three or four domestics resident in the deserted old

house came presently at that jangling and continued summons.

"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said. "We caught her in the

act of robbing Sir Pitt. Mr. Crawley, you'll make out her

committal--and, Beddoes, you'll drive her over in the spring cart, in

the morning, to Southampton Gaol."

"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--"she's only--"

"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued, stamping in her clogs.

"There used to be handcuffs. Where's the creature's abominable father?"

"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't he, Hester? You

saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--give 'em me, ever so long ago--the day

after Mudbury fair: not that I want 'em. Take 'em if you think they

ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out from her pocket a

large pair of paste shoe-buckles which had excited her admiration, and

which she had just appropriated out of one of the bookcases in the

study, where they had lain.

"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked story!" said

Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her promotion--"and to Madame

Crawley, so good and kind, and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and you

may search all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm an

honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse bred--and if you find

so much as a beggarly bit of lace or a silk stocking out of all the

gownds as YOU'VE had the picking of, may I never go to church agin."

"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out the virtuous little

lady in the calash.

"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum, I can show you her

room, Mum, and the press in the housekeeper's room, Mum, where she

keeps heaps and heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager little

Hester with a profusion of curtseys.

"Hold your tongue, if you please. I know the room which the creature

occupies perfectly well. Mrs. Brown, have the goodness to come with

me, and Beddoes don't you lose sight of that woman," said Mrs. Bute,

seizing the candle. "Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and see

that they are not murdering your unfortunate brother"--and the calash,

escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away to the apartment which, as she said

truly, she knew perfectly well.

Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from Mudbury, with the

frightened Horrocks over his master in a chair. They were trying to

bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.

With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr. Pitt Crawley by

the Rector's lady, who assumed the command of everything, and had

watched the old Baronet through the night. He had been brought back to

a sort of life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people.

Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside. She never seemed to want to

sleep, that little woman, and did not close her fiery black eyes once,

though the Doctor snored in the arm-chair. Horrocks made some wild

efforts to assert his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Bute

called him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face again in

that house, or he should be transported like his abominable daughter.

Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr.

James was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found no

liquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which

he fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and his son sat

down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that instant and never

to show his face again.

Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys, and he and his

daughter slunk off silently through the night and gave up possession of

the house of Queen's Crawley.