CHAPTER XLIV

A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire

Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street,

still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as

a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic

emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and

all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been

during the late baronet's reign. The black outer-coating of the bricks

was removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked

with white: the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,

the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great Gaunt Street

became the smartest in the whole quarter, before the green leaves in

Hampshire had replaced those yellowing ones which were on the trees in

Queen's Crawley Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them for

the last time.

A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seen

about this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little boy,

also might be remarked coming thither daily. It was Miss Briggs and

little Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward renovation of

Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band engaged in stitching

the blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in the drawers and

cupboards crammed with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a

couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take inventories of the

china, the glass, and other properties in the closets and store-rooms.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements, with

full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or purchase

furniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an occupation which

gave full scope to her taste and ingenuity. The renovation of the

house was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November to see

his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in Curzon Street, under

the roof of his affectionate brother and sister.

He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard of

the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned in an

hour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side. It

was impossible sometimes to resist this artless little creature's

hospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably

offered. Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of gratitude when he

agreed to come. "Thank you," she said, squeezing it and looking into

the Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will make

Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading on the servants, who

were carrying his trunks thither. She came in herself laughing, with a

coal-scuttle out of her own room.

A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was Miss

Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with the

maid). "I knew I should bring you," she said with pleasure beaming in

her glance. Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him for a

guest.

Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt stayed

with them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone with her and

Briggs. She went downstairs to the kitchen and actually cooked little

dishes for him. "Isn't it a good salmi?" she said; "I made it for you.

I can make you better dishes than that, and will when you come to see

me."

"Everything you do, you do well," said the Baronet gallantly. "The

salmi is excellent indeed."

"A poor man's wife," Rebecca replied gaily, "must make herself useful,

you know"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that "she was fit to be

the wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic duties was

surely one of the most charming of woman's qualities." And Sir Pitt

thought, with something like mortification, of Lady Jane at home, and

of a certain pie which she had insisted on making, and serving to him

at dinner--a most abominable pie.

Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from his

lordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law a

bottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him from

France, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;

whereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the Marquis

of Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the Baronet's

pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.

Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave him

her hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug on the

sofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the tenderest

kindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for her dear

little boy. Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly humble and

virtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-box. It had

got to be too small for Rawdon long before it was finished.

Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him, she

coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and more

glad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to the

blazing fire in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of law

likewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest--and so

that when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing. How pretty

she looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and waving her

handkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail! She put the

handkerchief to her eyes once. He pulled his sealskin cap over his, as

the coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought to himself how she

respected him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a foolish dull

fellow who didn't half appreciate his wife; and how mum and stupid his

own wife was compared to that brilliant little Becky. Becky had hinted

every one of these things herself, perhaps, but so delicately and

gently that you hardly knew when or where. And, before they parted, it

was agreed that the house in London should be redecorated for the next

season, and that the brothers' families should meet again in the

country at Christmas.

"I wish you could have got a little money out of him," Rawdon said to

his wife moodily when the Baronet was gone. "I should like to give

something to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't. It ain't right, you

know, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his money. It may

be inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides us, you

know."

"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are

settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on

account. Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy," and she took

from her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had handed

over to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger branch

of the Crawleys.

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her husband

expressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so delicately,

and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir Pitt

Crawley was off and alarmed. And he began a long speech, explaining

how straitened he himself was in money matters; how the tenants would

not pay; how his father's affairs, and the expenses attendant upon the

demise of the old gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay off

incumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt

Crawley ended by making a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving

her a very small sum for the benefit of her little boy.

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be. It

could not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old

diplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that

houses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing. He knew very well

that he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,

according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his

younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of

remorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some act

of justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointed

relations. A just, decent man, not without brains, who said his

prayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly through

life, he could not be otherwise than aware that something was due to

his brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's debtor.

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now and

then, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,

acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B., or 10 pounds from

W. T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said A. B.

or W. T., which payments the penitents beg the Right Honourable

gentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public press--so is

the Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly sure

that the above-named A. B. and W. T. are only paying a very small

instalment of what they really owe, and that the man who sends up a

twenty-pound note has very likely hundreds or thousands more for which

he ought to account. Such, at least, are my feelings, when I see

A. B. or W. T.'s insufficient acts of repentance. And I have no doubt

that Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his

younger brother, by whom he had so much profited, was only a very small

dividend upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not

everybody is willing to pay even so much. To part with money is a

sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order. There

is scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for

giving his neighbour five pounds. Thriftless gives, not from a

beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. He

would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his

horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five

pounds. Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny,

turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or denies a poor

relation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the two. Money has

only a different value in the eyes of each.

So, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for his

brother, and then thought that he would think about it some other time.

And with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who expected too much

from the generosity of her neighbours, and so was quite content with

all that Pitt Crawley had done for her. She was acknowledged by the

head of the family. If Pitt would not give her anything, he would get

something for her some day. If she got no money from her

brother-in-law, she got what was as good as money--credit. Raggles was

made rather easy in his mind by the spectacle of the union between the

brothers, by a small payment on the spot, and by the promise of a much

larger sum speedily to be assigned to him. And Rebecca told Miss

Briggs, whose Christmas dividend upon the little sum lent by her Becky

paid with an air of candid joy, and as if her exchequer was brimming

over with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss Briggs, in strict confidence

that she had conferred with Sir Pitt, who was famous as a financier, on

Briggs's special behalf, as to the most profitable investment of Miss

B.'s remaining capital; that Sir Pitt, after much consideration, had

thought of a most safe and advantageous way in which Briggs could lay

out her money; that, being especially interested in her as an attached

friend of the late Miss Crawley, and of the whole family, and that long

before he left town, he had recommended that she should be ready with

the money at a moment's notice, so as to purchase at the most

favourable opportunity the shares which Sir Pitt had in his eye. Poor

Miss Briggs was very grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--it

came so unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought of

removing the money from the funds--and the delicacy enhanced the

kindness of the office; and she promised to see her man of business

immediately and be ready with her little cash at the proper hour.

And this worthy woman was so grateful for the kindness of Rebecca in

the matter, and for that of her generous benefactor, the Colonel, that

she went out and spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in the

purchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by the way, was

grown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a size and age

befitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket and pantaloons.

He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair,

sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching

himself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown,

who gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he saw

that kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the pony--to

Molly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night, and with

good things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughed

at--and to his father especially, whose attachment towards the lad was

curious too to witness. Here, as he grew to be about eight years old,

his attachments may be said to have ended. The beautiful mother-vision

had faded away after a while. During near two years she had scarcely

spoken to the child. She disliked him. He had the measles and the

hooping-cough. He bored her. One day when he was standing at the

landing-place, having crept down from the upper regions, attracted by

the sound of his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, the

drawing room door opening suddenly, discovered the little spy, who but

a moment before had been rapt in delight, and listening to the music.

His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on the

ear. He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who was

amused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper) and fled

down below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief.

"It is not because it hurts me," little Rawdon gasped

out--"only--only"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm. It

was the little boy's heart that was bleeding. "Why mayn't I hear her

singing? Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that baldheaded

man with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various intervals these

exclamations of rage and grief. The cook looked at the housemaid, the

housemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the awful kitchen inquisition

which sits in judgement in every house and knows everything--sat on

Rebecca at that moment.

After this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the

consciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a pain

to her. His very sight annoyed her. Fear, doubt, and resistance

sprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom. They were separated from that

day of the boxes on the ear.

Lord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy. When they met by

mischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared at

him with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face and

double his little fists in return. He knew his enemy, and this

gentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who angered him

most. One day the footman found him squaring his fists at Lord

Steyne's hat in the hall. The footman told the circumstance as a good

joke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it to Lord

Steyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general. And very soon

afterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her appearance at Gaunt

House, the porter who unbarred the gates, the servants of all uniforms

in the hall, the functionaries in white waistcoats, who bawled out from

landing to landing the names of Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knew

about her, or fancied they did. The man who brought her refreshment and

stood behind her chair, had talked her character over with the large

gentleman in motley-coloured clothes at his side. Bon Dieu! it is

awful, that servants' inquisition! You see a woman in a great party in

a splendid saloon, surrounded by faithful admirers, distributing

sparkling glances, dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling and

happy--Discovery walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a huge

powdered man with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (which

is as fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow

carrying the wafer-biscuits. Madam, your secret will be talked over by

those men at their club at the public-house to-night. Jeames will tell

Chawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots.

Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair--mutes who

could not write. If you are guilty, tremble. That fellow behind your

chair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breeches

pocket. If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are

as ruinous as guilt.

"Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgericht of the servants' hall had

pronounced against her.

And, I shame to say, she would not have got credit had they not

believed her to be guilty. It was the sight of the Marquis of Steyne's

carriage-lamps at her door, contemplated by Raggles, burning in the

blackness of midnight, "that kep him up," as he afterwards said, that

even more than Rebecca's arts and coaxings.

And so--guiltless very likely--she was writhing and pushing onward

towards what they call "a position in society," and the servants were

pointing at her as lost and ruined. So you see Molly, the housemaid,

of a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his thread and

laboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, she raises her

broom and sweeps away the thread and the artificer.

A day or two before Christmas, Becky, her husband and her son made

ready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors at

Queen's Crawley. Becky would have liked to leave the little brat

behind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent invitations

to the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and discontent which

Rawdon manifested at her neglect of her son. "He's the finest boy in

England," the father said in a tone of reproach to her, "and you don't

seem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do for your spaniel. He

shan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in the

nursery, and he shall go outside on the coach with me."

"Where you go yourself because you want to smoke those filthy cigars,"

replied Mrs. Rawdon.

"I remember when you liked 'em though," answered the husband.

Becky laughed; she was almost always good-humoured. "That was when I

was on my promotion, Goosey," she said. "Take Rawdon outside with you

and give him a cigar too if you like."

Rawdon did not warm his little son for the winter's journey in this

way, but he and Briggs wrapped up the child in shawls and comforters,

and he was hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the coach in the dark

morning, under the lamps of the White Horse Cellar; and with no small

delight he watched the dawn rise and made his first journey to the

place which his father still called home. It was a journey of infinite

pleasure to the boy, to whom the incidents of the road afforded endless

interest, his father answering to him all questions connected with it

and telling him who lived in the great white house to the right, and

whom the park belonged to. His mother, inside the vehicle, with her

maid and her furs, her wrappers, and her scent bottles, made such a

to-do that you would have thought she never had been in a stage-coach

before--much less, that she had been turned out of this very one to

make room for a paying passenger on a certain journey performed some

half-score years ago.

It was dark again when little Rawdon was wakened up to enter his

uncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it wondering

as the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks of the limes

as they swept by, until they stopped, at length, before the light

windows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmas

welcome. The hall-door was flung open--a big fire was burning in the

great old fire-place--a carpet was down over the chequered black

flags--"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in the Ladies'

Gallery," thought Rebecca, and the next instant was kissing Lady Jane.

She and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity; but

Rawdon, having been smoking, hung back rather from his sister-in-law,

whose two children came up to their cousin; and, while Matilda held out

her hand and kissed him, Pitt Binkie Southdown, the son and heir, stood

aloof rather and examined him as a little dog does a big dog.

Then the kind hostess conducted her guests to the snug apartments

blazing with cheerful fires. Then the young ladies came and knocked at

Mrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to be

useful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the contents

of her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though black, were

of the newest London fashion. And they told her how much the Hall was

changed for the better, and how old Lady Southdown was gone, and how

Pitt was taking his station in the county, as became a Crawley in fact.

Then the great dinner-bell having rung, the family assembled at dinner,

at which meal Rawdon Junior was placed by his aunt, the good-natured

lady of the house, Sir Pitt being uncommonly attentive to his

sister-in-law at his own right hand.

Little Rawdon exhibited a fine appetite and showed a gentlemanlike

behaviour.

"I like to dine here," he said to his aunt when he had completed his

meal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir Pitt,

the younger son and heir was introduced, and was perched on a high

chair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession of the

place and the little wine-glass prepared for her near her mother. "I

like to dine here," said Rawdon Minor, looking up at his relation's

kind face.

"Why?" said the good Lady Jane.

"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home," replied Rawdon Minor, "or

else with Briggs." But Becky was so engaged with the Baronet, her host,

pouring out a flood of compliments and delights and raptures, and

admiring young Pitt Binkie, whom she declared to be the most beautiful,

intelligent, noble-looking little creature, and so like his father,

that she did not hear the remarks of her own flesh and blood at the

other end of the broad shining table.

As a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, Rawdon the

Second was allowed to sit up until the hour when tea being over, and a

great gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all the

domestics of the family streamed in, and Sir Pitt read prayers. It was

the first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard of such

a ceremonial.

The house had been much improved even since the Baronet's brief reign,

and was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming, delightful, when

she surveyed it in his company. As for little Rawdon, who examined it

with the children for his guides, it seemed to him a perfect palace of

enchantment and wonder. There were long galleries, and ancient state

bedrooms, there were pictures and old China, and armour. There were

the rooms in which Grandpapa died, and by which the children walked

with terrified looks. "Who was Grandpapa?" he asked; and they told him

how he used to be very old, and used to be wheeled about in a

garden-chair, and they showed him the garden-chair one day rotting in

the out-house in which it had lain since the old gentleman had been

wheeled away yonder to the church, of which the spire was glittering

over the park elms.

The brothers had good occupation for several mornings in examining the

improvements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and economy.

And as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could talk without

too much boring each other. And Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what a

heavy outlay of money these improvements had occasioned, and that a man

of landed and funded property was often very hard pressed for twenty

pounds. "There is that new lodge-gate," said Pitt, pointing to it

humbly with the bamboo cane, "I can no more pay for it before the

dividends in January than I can fly."

"I can lend you, Pitt, till then," Rawdon answered rather ruefully; and

they went in and looked at the restored lodge, where the family arms

were just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock, for the first

time these many long years, had tight doors, sound roofs, and whole

windows.