Vanity Fair (111 page)

"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent,
quite different from that frank and perfectly English "Thank you,"
with which she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour. The portly
gentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him,
sat down; he muttered—"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul.
I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune," and other
words of compliment and confusion. "Do you play much?" the foreign
mask said.

"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air, flinging down
a gold piece.

"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly. But Jos looking
frightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, "You do not
play to win. No more do I. I play to forget, but I cannot. I
cannot forget old times, monsieur. Your little nephew is the image
of his father; and you—you are not changed—but yes, you are.
Everybody changes, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart."

"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.

"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little woman in a sad
voice, and undoing her mask, she looked at him. "You have forgotten
me."

"Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.

"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed
the game still, all the time she was looking at him.

"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued. "Ask for Madame de
Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how
happy! So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph
Sedley." And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if
by a chance movement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes
with a pocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace.

The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. "Come
away," she said. "Come with me a little—we are old friends, are we
not, dear Mr. Sedley?"

And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his
master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking
out and the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.

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.