CHAPTER LXIV

A Vagabond Chapter

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that

lightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, that

has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable

repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. There are things

we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak of

them: as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him:

and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description

of vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit the

word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam,

both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much

shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what

complexions you would have! It is only when their naughty names are

called out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of

outrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through

this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present

prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light,

easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be

offended. I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some

vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and

inoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and smiling,

coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers

all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the

monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down

under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and

twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or

curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not

everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most

squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however,

the Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the

water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look

into it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough when they sit upon

a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and

beckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink

into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about no

good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals,

revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims. And so, when

Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well

employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact

the better.

If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of

years that followed after the Curzon Street catastrophe, there might be

some reason for people to say this book was improper. The actions of

very vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often improper

(as are many of yours, my friend with the grave face and spotless

reputation--but that is merely by the way); and what are those of a

woman without faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think

that there was a period in Mrs. Becky's life when she was seized, not by

remorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her person

and did not even care for her reputation.

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was

brought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles

to keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any

hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that

struggling is in vain.

She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations

for his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made

more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and

to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour.

As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons,

the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the

palace of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met those of

Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet.

Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have heard that she quite astonished

her husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and her

determination to disown Mrs. Becky. Of her own movement, she invited

Rawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for

Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not

try to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptions

of all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his

sister-in-law should be corresponding. Not but that Rebecca could have

written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pitt

at his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demand

that the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should be

carried on by lawyers only.

The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her. A short

time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet and

given him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member

for Queen's Crawley. He knew everything regarding her: who her father

was; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been her

previous history; and what her conduct during her married life--as I

have no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated

by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here. But Becky

was left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman

and relative who had been once rather partial to her.

The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large. A part

of them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certain

outstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his high

situation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that he

could not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year,

which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never

trouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would

ensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business,

Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up a

most disagreeable affair.

She was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs of

business with her husband's lawyers that she forgot to take any step

whatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even once

propose to go and see him. That young gentleman was consigned to the

entire guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom had

always possessed a great share of the child's affection. His mamma

wrote him a neat letter from Boulogne, when she quitted England, in

which she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going to

take a Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure of

writing to him again. But she never did for a year afterwards, and

not, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy, always sickly, died of

hooping-cough and measles--then Rawdon's mamma wrote the most

affectionate composition to her darling son, who was made heir of

Queen's Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than ever to

the kind lady, whose tender heart had already adopted him. Rawdon

Crawley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when he got the letter.

"Oh, Aunt Jane, you are my mother!" he said; "and not--and not that

one." But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca,

then living at a boarding-house at Florence. But we are advancing

matters.

Our darling Becky's first flight was not very far. She perched upon

the French coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much exiled English

innocence, and there lived in rather a genteel, widowed manner, with a

femme de chambre and a couple of rooms, at an hotel. She dined at the

table d'hote, where people thought her very pleasant, and where she

entertained her neighbours by stories of her brother, Sir Pitt, and her

great London acquaintance, talking that easy, fashionable slip-slop

which has so much effect upon certain folks of small breeding. She

passed with many of them for a person of importance; she gave little

tea-parties in her private room and shared in the innocent amusements

of the place in sea-bathing, and in jaunts in open carriages, in

strolls on the sands, and in visits to the play. Mrs. Burjoice, the

printer's lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for the

summer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a Saturday and Sunday, voted

her charming, until that little rogue of a Burjoice began to pay her

too much attention. But there was nothing in the story, only that

Becky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and with men

especially.

Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the end of the season,

and Becky had plenty of opportunities of finding out by the behaviour

of her acquaintances of the great London world the opinion of "society"

as regarded her conduct. One day it was Lady Partlet and her daughters

whom Becky confronted as she was walking modestly on Boulogne pier, the

cliffs of Albion shining in the distance across the deep blue sea.

Lady Partlet marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of her

parasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage glances at poor

little Becky who stood alone there.

On another day the packet came in. It had been blowing fresh, and it

always suited Becky's humour to see the droll woe-begone faces of the

people as they emerged from the boat. Lady Slingstone happened to be

on board this day. Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill in her

carriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely fit to walk up the

plank from the ship to the pier. But all her energies rallied the

instant she saw Becky smiling roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving

her a glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most women, she

walked into the Custom House quite unsupported. Becky only laughed:

but I don't think she liked it. She felt she was alone, quite alone,

and the far-off shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.

The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't know what change.

Grinstone showed his teeth and laughed in her face with a familiarity

that was not pleasant. Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her

three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain to see for her

carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was talking to Fitzoof of the

Guards (Lord Heehaw's son) one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her

walk there. Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without

moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the heir of Heehaw.

Tom Raikes tried to walk into her sitting-room at the inn with a cigar

in his mouth, but she closed the door upon him, and would have locked

it, only that his fingers were inside. She began to feel that she was

very lonely indeed. "If HE'D been here," she said, "those cowards

would never have dared to insult me." She thought about "him" with

great sadness and perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant

kindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good humour;

his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried, for she was

particularly lively, and had put on a little extra rouge, when she came

down to dinner.

She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got Cognac for her besides

that which was charged in the hotel bill.

Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so intolerable to her

as the sympathy of certain women. Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington

White passed through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland. The party

were protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and of course old

Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl. THEY did not avoid her.

They giggled, cackled, tattled, condoled, consoled, and patronized her

until they drove her almost wild with rage. To be patronized by THEM!

she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing her. And she

heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the stair and knew quite well how to

interpret his hilarity.

It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her weekly bills,

Becky who had made herself agreeable to everybody in the house, who

smiled at the landlady, called the waiters "monsieur," and paid the

chambermaids in politeness and apologies, what far more than

compensated for a little niggardliness in point of money (of which

Becky never was free), that Becky, we say, received a notice to quit

from the landlord, who had been told by some one that she was quite an

unfit person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not sit

down with her. And she was forced to fly into lodgings of which the

dulness and solitude were most wearisome to her.

Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to make a

character for herself and conquer scandal. She went to church very

regularly and sang louder than anybody there. She took up the cause of

the widows of the shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for

the Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly and WOULDN'T

waltz. In a word, she did everything that was respectable, and that is

why we dwell upon this part of her career with more fondness than upon

subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant. She saw

people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled upon them; you never

could suppose from her countenance what pangs of humiliation she might

be enduring inwardly.

Her history was after all a mystery. Parties were divided about her.

Some people who took the trouble to busy themselves in the matter said

that she was the criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent

as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault. She won over a good

many by bursting into tears about her boy and exhibiting the most

frantic grief when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like him.

She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way, who was rather the

Queen of British Boulogne and gave the most dinners and balls of all

the residents there, by weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr.

Swishtail's academy to pass his holidays with his mother. "He and her

Rawdon were of the same age, and so like," Becky said in a voice

choking with agony; whereas there was five years' difference between

the boys' ages, and no more likeness between them than between my

respected reader and his humble servant. Wenham, when he was going

abroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord Steyne, enlightened Mrs.

Alderney on this point and told her how he was much more able to

describe little Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and

never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while little Alderney was

but nine, fair, while the other darling was dark--in a word, caused the

lady in question to repent of her good humour.

Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with incredible toils

and labour, somebody came and swept it down rudely, and she had all her

work to begin over again. It was very hard; very hard; lonely and

disheartening.

There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some time, attracted by

the sweetness of her singing at church and by her proper views upon

serious subjects, concerning which in former days, at Queen's Crawley,

Mrs. Becky had had a good deal of instruction. Well, she not only took

tracts, but she read them. She worked flannel petticoats for the

Quashyboos--cotton night-caps for the Cocoanut Indians--painted

handscreens for the conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr.

Rowls on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended two Sunday

services at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the Darbyite, in the evening,

and all in vain. Mrs. Newbright had occasion to correspond with the

Countess of Southdown about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji Islanders

(for the management of which admirable charity both these ladies formed

part of a female committee), and having mentioned her "sweet friend,"

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a letter

regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts, falsehoods, and

general comminations, that intimacy between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs.

Crawley ceased forthwith, and all the serious world of Tours, where

this misfortune took place, immediately parted company with the

reprobate. Those who know the English Colonies abroad know that we

carry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces,

cayenne-peppers, and other Lares, making a little Britain wherever we

settle down.

From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily. From Boulogne to

Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen to Tours--trying with all her

might to be respectable, and alas! always found out some day or other

and pecked out of the cage by the real daws.

Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--a woman without a

blemish in her character and a house in Portman Square. She was

staying at the hotel at Dieppe, whither Becky fled, and they made each

other's acquaintance first at sea, where they were swimming together,

and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel. Mrs. Eagles had

heard--who indeed had not?--some of the scandal of the Steyne affair;

but after a conversation with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley

was an angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an unprincipled

wretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case against Mrs. Crawley an

infamous and wicked conspiracy of that rascal Wenham. "If you were a

man of any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears the next

time you see him at the Club," she said to her husband. But Eagles was

only a quiet old gentleman, husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for

geology, and not tall enough to reach anybody's ears.

The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to live with her at

her own house at Paris, quarrelled with the ambassador's wife because

she would not receive her protegee, and did all that lay in woman's

power to keep Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.

Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but the life of

humdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her before long. It was the

same routine every day, the same dulness and comfort, the same drive

over the same stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an evening,

the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the same opera always being

acted over and over again; Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily

for her, young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother, seeing

the impression which her little friend made upon him, straightway gave

Becky warning.

Then she tried keeping house with a female friend; then the double

menage began to quarrel and get into debt. Then she determined upon a

boarding-house existence and lived for some time at that famous mansion

kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at Paris, where she

began exercising her graces and fascinations upon the shabby dandies

and fly-blown beauties who frequented her landlady's salons. Becky

loved society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an

opium-eater without his dram, and she was happy enough at the period of

her boarding-house life. "The women here are as amusing as those in

May Fair," she told an old London friend who met her, "only, their

dresses are not quite so fresh. The men wear cleaned gloves, and are

sad rogues, certainly, but they are not worse than Jack This and Tom

That. The mistress of the house is a little vulgar, but I don't think

she is so vulgar as Lady ------" and here she named the name of a great

leader of fashion that I would die rather than reveal. In fact, when

you saw Madame de Saint Amour's rooms lighted up of a night, men with

plaques and cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little

distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good society, and

that Madame was a real Countess. Many people did so fancy, and Becky

was for a while one of the most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.

But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found her out and

caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to fly

from the city rather suddenly, and went thence to Brussels.

How well she remembered the place! She grinned as she looked up at the

little entresol which she had occupied, and thought of the Bareacres

family, bawling for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the

porte-cochere of the hotel. She went to Waterloo and to Laeken, where

George Osborne's monument much struck her. She made a little sketch of

it. "That poor Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with

me, and what a fool he was! I wonder whether little Emmy is alive. It

was a good little creature; and that fat brother of hers. I have his

funny fat picture still among my papers. They were kind simple people."

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to her

friend, Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General,

the famous Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the

deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte table.

Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who always have a lawsuit,

and very simple English folks, who fancy they see "Continental society"

at these houses, put down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de

Borodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the company round

to champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hired

horses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the play

or the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the

ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire about

their felicitous introduction to foreign society.

Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen, and ruled in

select pensions. She never refused the champagne, or the bouquets, or

the drives into the country, or the private boxes; but what she

preferred was the ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First

she played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for

Napoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able to pay her

month's pension: then she borrowed from the young gentlemen: then she

got into cash again and bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed

and wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a time, and

in a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's allowance would come

in, and she would pay off Madame de Borodino's score and would once

more take the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de

Raff.

When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she owed three months'

pension to Madame de Borodino, of which fact, and of the gambling, and

of the drinking, and of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.

Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him, and of her coaxing

and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev.

Mr. Muff, whom she used to take into her private room, and of whom she

won large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a hundred of her

other knaveries, the Countess de Borodino informs every English person

who stops at her establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was no

better than a vipere.

So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various cities

of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste

for disrespectability grew more and more remarkable. She became a

perfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make your

hair stand on end to meet.

There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of

English raffs--men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out

periodically at the Sheriffs' Court--young gentlemen of very good

family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of

billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and

gaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons--they drink and

swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away without paying--they have

duels with French and German officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at

ecarte--they get the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent

britzkas--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the tables

with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless bucks, until they can

swindle a Jew banker with a sham bill of exchange, or find another Mr.

Spooney to rob. The alternations of splendour and misery which these

people undergo are very queer to view. Their life must be one of great

excitement. Becky--must it be owned?--took to this life, and took to

it not unkindly. She went about from town to town among these

Bohemians. The lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in

Germany. She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at Florence

together. It is said she was ordered out of Munich, and my friend Mr.

Frederick Pigeon avers that it was at her house at Lausanne that he was

hocussed at supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder and the

Honourable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you see, to give some account

of Becky's biography, but of this part, the less, perhaps, that is said

the better.

They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly down on her luck, she

gave concerts and lessons in music here and there. There was a Madame

de Raudon, who certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad, accompanied

by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of Wallachia, and my

little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew everybody and had travelled

everywhere, always used to declare that he was at Strasburg in the year

1830, when a certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the opera

of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious row in the theatre

there. She was hissed off the stage by the audience, partly from her

own incompetency, but chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some

persons in the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their

admissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate debutante in

question was no other than Mrs. Rawdon Crawley.

She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this earth. When she

got her money she gambled; when she had gambled it she was put to

shifts to live; who knows how or by what means she succeeded? It is

said that she was once seen at St. Petersburg, but was summarily

dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there cannot be any

possibility of truth in the report that she was a Russian spy at

Toplitz and Vienna afterwards. I have even been informed that at Paris

she discovered a relation of her own, no less a person than her

maternal grandmother, who was not by any means a Montmorenci, but a

hideous old box-opener at a theatre on the Boulevards. The meeting

between them, of which other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem

to have been acquainted, must have been a very affecting interview.

The present historian can give no certain details regarding the event.

It happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's half-year's salary had

just been paid into the principal banker's there, and, as everybody who

had a balance of above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls

which this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky had the

honour of a card, and appeared at one of the Prince and Princess

Polonia's splendid evening entertainments. The Princess was of the

family of Pompili, lineally descended from the second king of Rome, and

Egeria of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,

Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences, tobacco, and

pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for gentlemen, and lent money in a

small way. All the great company in Rome thronged to his

saloons--Princes, Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori,

young bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of man. His

halls blazed with light and magnificence; were resplendent with gilt

frames (containing pictures), and dubious antiques; and the enormous

gilt crown and arms of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson

field (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he sold), and the

silver fountain of the Pompili family shone all over the roof, doors,

and panels of the house, and over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared

to receive Popes and Emperors.

So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from Florence, and was

lodged at an inn in a very modest way, got a card for Prince Polonia's

entertainment, and her maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went

to this fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom she

happened to be travelling at the time--(the same man who shot Prince

Ravoli at Naples the next year, and was caned by Sir John Buckskin for

carrying four kings in his hat besides those which he used in playing

at ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together, and Becky saw

a number of old faces which she remembered in happier days, when she

was not innocent, but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number of

foreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty striped ribbons in

their buttonholes, and a very small display of linen; but his own

countrymen, it might be remarked, eschewed the Major. Becky, too, knew

some ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian countesses,

whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh--what shall we say, we who

have moved among some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this

refuse and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean cards,

and not with this dirty pack. But every man who has formed one of the

innumerable army of travellers has seen these marauding irregulars

hanging on, like Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's

colours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging for themselves,

and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.

Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder, and they went through

the rooms together, and drank a great quantity of champagne at the

buffet, where the people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,

struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the pair had had

enough, they pushed on until they reached the Duchess's own pink velvet

saloon, at the end of the suite of apartments (where the statue of the

Venus is, and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver), and

where the princely family were entertaining their most distinguished

guests at a round table at supper. It was just such a little select

banquet as that of which Becky recollected that she had partaken at

Lord Steyne's--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.

The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald, shining forehead made a

burning red mark; his red whiskers were dyed of a purple hue, which

made his pale face look still paler. He wore his collar and orders,

his blue ribbon and garter. He was a greater Prince than any there,

though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal Highness, with their

princesses, and near his Lordship was seated the beautiful Countess of

Belladonna, nee de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della

Belladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological collections,

had been long absent on a mission to the Emperor of Morocco.

When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face, how vulgar all of

a sudden did Major Loder appear to her, and how that odious Captain

Rook did smell of tobacco! In one instant she reassumed her

fine-ladyship and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair

once more. "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured," she thought; "I

am sure she can't amuse him. No, he must be bored by her--he never was

by me." A hundred such touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated

in her little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the rouge

which she wore up to her eyelids made them twinkle) towards the great

nobleman. Of a Star and Garter night Lord Steyne used also to put on

his grandest manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he

was. Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and stately.

Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he was, what a brilliant wit,

what a rich fund of talk, what a grand manner!--and she had exchanged

this for Major Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and

Captain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring slang, and their

like. "I wonder whether he will know me," she thought. Lord Steyne

was talking and laughing with a great and illustrious lady at his side,

when he looked up and saw Becky.

She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she put on the

very best smile she could muster, and dropped him a little, timid,

imploring curtsey. He stared aghast at her for a minute, as Macbeth

might on beholding Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and

remained looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major Loder

pulled her away.

"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.," was that gentleman's remark:

"seeing these nobs grubbing away has made me peckish too. Let's go and

try the old governor's champagne." Becky thought the Major had had a

great deal too much already.

The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--the Hyde Park of

the Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to have another sight of Lord

Steyne. But she met another acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, his

lordship's confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather

familiarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame was

here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have some advice to

give Madame."

"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming as much of her

dignity as she could muster, and not a little agitated by hope and

expectation.

"No," said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very unwholesome."

"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after Easter."

"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always malaria for some

people. That cursed marsh wind kills many at all seasons. Look, Madame

Crawley, you were always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you,

parole d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you--or you

will be ill and die."

Becky laughed, though in rage and fury. "What! assassinate poor little

me?" she said. "How romantic! Does my lord carry bravos for couriers,

and stilettos in the fourgons? Bah! I will stay, if but to plague him.

I have those who will defend me whilst I am here."

It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now. "Defend you," he said, "and

who? The Major, the Captain, any one of those gambling men whom Madame

sees would take her life for a hundred louis. We know things about

Major Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord the Marquis) which

would send him to the galleys or worse. We know everything and have

friends everywhere. We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations

you found there. Yes, Madame may stare, but we do. How was it that no

minister on the Continent would receive Madame? She has offended

somebody: who never forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you.

He was like a madman last night when he came home. Madame de

Belladonna made him a scene about you and fired off in one of her

furies."

"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky said, relieved a

little, for the information she had just got had scared her.

"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous. I tell you it was

Monseigneur. You did wrong to show yourself to him. And if you stay

here you will repent it. Mark my words. Go. Here is my lord's

carriage"--and seizing Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the

garden as Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices, came

whirling along the avenue, borne by the almost priceless horses, and

bearing Madame de Belladonna lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and

blooming, a King Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her

head, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid face and

ghastly eyes. Hate, or anger, or desire caused them to brighten now

and then still, but ordinarily, they gave no light, and seemed tired of

looking out on a world of which almost all the pleasure and all the

best beauty had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.

"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that night, never,"

Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley as the carriage flashed by,

and she peeped out at it from behind the shrubs that hid her. "That

was a consolation at any rate," Becky thought.

Whether my lord really had murderous intentions towards Mrs. Becky as

Monsieur Fiche said (since Monseigneur's death he has returned to his

native country, where he lives much respected, and has purchased from

his Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum objected to have

to do with assassination; or whether he simply had a commission to

frighten Mrs. Crawley out of a city where his Lordship proposed to pass

the winter, and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to the

great nobleman, is a point which has never been ascertained: but the

threat had its effect upon the little woman, and she sought no more to

intrude herself upon the presence of her old patron.

Everybody knows the melancholy end of that nobleman, which befell at

Naples two months after the French Revolution of 1830; when the Most

Honourable George Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of

Gaunt Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough, Baron

Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,

of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas

of the First Class, of the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of

the Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of the Gaunt or

Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee of the British Museum, an

Elder Brother of the Trinity House, a Governor of the White Friars, and

D.C.L.--died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said, by

the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by the downfall of

the ancient French monarchy.

An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print, describing his

virtues, his magnificence, his talents, and his good actions. His

sensibility, his attachment to the illustrious House of Bourbon, with

which he claimed an alliance, were such that he could not survive the

misfortunes of his august kinsmen. His body was buried at Naples, and

his heart--that heart which always beat with every generous and noble

emotion was brought back to Castle Gaunt in a silver urn. "In him,"

Mr. Wagg said, "the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent

patron, society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England one of

her loftiest patriots and statesmen," &c., &c.

His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was made to force

from Madame de Belladonna the celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye"

diamond, which his lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it

was said that she removed from it after his lamented demise. But his

confidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche proved that the ring

had been presented to the said Madame de Belladonna two days before the

Marquis's death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and French

bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and claimed by his heirs

from that injured woman.