CHAPTER XLIX

In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert

When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning, Lord

Steyne (who took his chocolate in private and seldom disturbed the

females of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or when

they crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box at the

opera he surveyed them in their box on the grand tier) his lordship, we

say, appeared among the ladies and the children who were assembled over

the tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of Rebecca.

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list for your dinner on

Friday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for Colonel and

Mrs. Crawley."

"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said in a flutter. "Lady Gaunt

writes them."

"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said, a tall and stately

lady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after she had

spoken. It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who had

offended him.

"Send the children out of the room. Go!" said he pulling at the

bell-rope. The urchins, always frightened before him, retired: their

mother would have followed too. "Not you," he said. "You stop."

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more will you have the goodness to go

to the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?"

"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt said; "I will go

home."

"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the bailiffs at

Bareacres very pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lending

money to your relations and from your own damned tragedy airs. Who are

you to give orders here? You have no money. You've got no brains. You

were here to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired of

you, and George's wife is the only person in the family who doesn't

wish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you were."

"I wish I were," her Ladyship answered with tears and rage in her eyes.

"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while my wife, who

is an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, and never did wrong in her

life, has no objection to meet my young friend Mrs. Crawley. My Lady

Steyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best of women;

that lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, madam,

shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your

mamma?"

"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow," Lady Gaunt

said. To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his Lordship

into a good humour.

"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and never lay my hand

upon a woman, save in the way of kindness. I only wish to correct

little faults in your character. You women are too proud, and sadly

lack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne if

he were here. You mustn't give yourselves airs; you must be meek and

humble, my blessings. For all Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated,

simple, good-humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even more

innocent than herself. Her husband's character is not good, but it is

as good as Bareacres', who has played a little and not paid a great

deal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had and left you

a pauper on my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born, but she

is not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones."

"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady George cried

out--

"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the Marquis said

darkly. "If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honours; your

little boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In the

meanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but

don't give ME any airs. As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan't

demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable lady

by even hinting that it requires a defence. You will be pleased to

receive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all persons

whom I present in this house. This house?" He broke out with a laugh.

"Who is the master of it? and what is it? This Temple of Virtue belongs

to me. And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by ------ they

shall be welcome."

After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steyne

treated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared in

his household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey.

Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and she

and her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and humiliated

hearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of which

caused that innocent woman so much pleasure.

There were families in London who would have sacrificed a year's income

to receive such an honour at the hands of those great ladies. Mrs.

Frederick Bullock, for instance, would have gone on her knees from May

Fair to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had been waiting

in the City to raise her up and say, "Come to us next Friday"--not to

one of the great crushes and grand balls of Gaunt House, whither

everybody went, but to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious,

delicious entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was a

privilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.

Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the very highest rank

in Vanity Fair. The distinguished courtesy with which Lord Steyne

treated her charmed everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused the

severest critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to own

that his Lordship's heart at least was in the right place.

The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to their aid, in

order to repulse the common enemy. One of Lady Gaunt's carriages went

to Hill Street for her Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were in

the hands of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was said,

had been seized by those inexorable Israelites. Bareacres Castle was

theirs, too, with all its costly pictures, furniture, and articles of

vertu--the magnificent Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; the

Lawrence portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemed

as precious as works of real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph of

Canova, for which Lady Bareacres had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacres

splendid then, and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless,

bald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of state. Her lord,

painted at the same time by Lawrence, as waving his sabre in front of

Bareacres Castle, and clothed in his uniform as Colonel of the

Thistlewood Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a greatcoat and

a Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of mornings chiefly and dining

alone at clubs. He did not like to dine with Steyne now. They had run

races of pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the winner. But

Steyne had more bottom than he and had lasted him out. The Marquis was

ten times a greater man now than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, and

Bareacres nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken down.

He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to find it pleasant to meet

his old comrade often. The latter, whenever he wished to be merry,

used jeeringly to ask Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to see

her. "He has not been here for four months," Lord Steyne would say. "I

can always tell by my cheque-book afterwards, when I get a visit from

Bareacres. What a comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of my

sons' fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!"

Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounter

on this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not become

the present historian to say much. There was his Excellency the Prince

of Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with a

large military chest, on which the plaque of his order shone

magnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece round

his neck. He was the owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. I

think he must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to Lord

Steyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white,

with the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of a

venerable bell-wether.

There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the

American Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, by

way of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,

during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend,

George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimate

at Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a full

and particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in the

Demagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, giving

biographical sketches of the principal people. He described the

persons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;

the size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines

served; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of the

plate. Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up under

fifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, until

very lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendation

to the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate

terms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord. He

was most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl

of Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession to

the dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to a

very pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.

Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between me

and the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I was

fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stout

red-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had

better luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."

The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore as

many blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he is

confronted with his sister's schoolfellows. It has been told before

that honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life to

ladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess room, he was

well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with the

boldest of them. He had had his time for female friendships too, but

that was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those

with whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having been

familiar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle.

The times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of

company which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequenting

every day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which is

known to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at

St. James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral of

societies is determined to ignore. In a word, although Colonel Crawley

was now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life to

meet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife. All

except her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamed

and won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his first

dinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark except

to state that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have left

him at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by her

side to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first

appearance in polite society.

On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her hand,

and greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to Lady

Steyne, and their ladyships, her daughters. Their ladyships made three

stately curtsies, and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to the

newcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.

Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing a

reverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master, put

herself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordship

had been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she, Becky,

had learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from the days of

her childhood. The fact is that Lord Steyne had once purchased a

couple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan could

never forget her gratitude for that favour.

The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance--to whom the

Colonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance: it was returned

with severe dignity by the exalted person in question.

"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at Brussels,

ten years ago," Becky said in the most winning manner. "I had the good

fortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, the

night before the Battle of Waterloo. And I recollect your Ladyship,

and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting in the carriage in the

porte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship's

diamonds are safe."

Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The famous diamonds

had undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, of

course, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown into

a window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as Rawdon

told him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and "knuckling down

by Jove," to Mrs. Crawley. "I think I needn't be afraid of THAT

woman," Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged terrified and

angry looks with her daughter and retreated to a table, where she began

to look at pictures with great energy.

When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, the

conversation was carried on in the French language, and the Lady

Bareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther mortification,

that Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with that tongue, and

spoke it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met other

Hungarian magnates with the army in France in 1816-17. She asked after

her friends with great interest. The foreign personages thought that she

was a lady of great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess asked

severally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom they conducted to

dinner, who was that petite dame who spoke so well?

Finally, the procession being formed in the order described by the

American diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the banquet

was served, and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it,

he shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his fancy.

But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of war

would come. And then indeed the little woman found herself in such a

situation as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's

caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere.

As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irishmen; so,

assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women. When poor little

Becky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither the

great ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched away and took

possession of a table of drawings. When Becky followed them to the

table of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire again. She

tried to speak to one of the children (of whom she was commonly fond in

public places), but Master George Gaunt was called away by his mamma;

and the stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady

Steyne herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless little

woman.

"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with a

blush, "says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wish

you would do me the kindness to sing to me."

"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or to

you," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at the

piano, began to sing.

She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites of

Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the lady,

lingering round the piano, sat down by its side and listened until the

tears rolled down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies at

the other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing and

talking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours. She was a

child again--and had wandered back through a forty years' wilderness to

her convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones, the

organist, the sister whom she loved best of the community, had taught

them to her in those early happy days. She was a girl once more, and

the brief period of her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she

started when the jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laugh

from Lord Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety.

He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence, and was grateful

to his wife for once. He went and spoke to her, and called her by her

Christian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--"My wife

says you have been singing like an angel," he said to Becky. Now there

are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming in

their way.

Whatever the previous portion of the evening had been, the rest of that

night was a great triumph for Becky. She sang her very best, and it

was so good that every one of the men came and crowded round the piano.

The women, her enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr. Paul Jefferson

Jones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her

Ladyship and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing.