Vanity Fair (60 page)

The pipe of tobacco finished the business: and the Bute-Crawleys
never knew how many thousand pounds it cost them. Firkin rushed
downstairs to Bowls who was reading out the "Fire and the Frying
Pan" to his aide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice. The dreadful
secret was told to him by Firkin with so frightened a look, that for
the first moment Mr. Bowls and his young man thought that robbers
were in the house, the legs of whom had probably been discovered by
the woman under Miss Crawley's bed. When made aware of the fact,
however—to rush upstairs at three steps at a time to enter the
unconscious James's apartment, calling out, "Mr. James," in a voice
stifled with alarm, and to cry, "For Gawd's sake, sir, stop that
'ere pipe," was the work of a minute with Mr. Bowls. "O, Mr. James,
what 'AVE you done!" he said in a voice of the deepest pathos, as he
threw the implement out of the window. "What 'ave you done, sir!
Missis can't abide 'em."

"Missis needn't smoke," said James with a frantic misplaced laugh,
and thought the whole matter an excellent joke. But his feelings
were very different in the morning, when Mr. Bowls's young man, who
operated upon Mr. James's boots, and brought him his hot water to
shave that beard which he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note
in to Mr. James in bed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs.

"Dear sir," it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly
disturbed night, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has
been polluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that
she is too unwell to see you before you go—and above all that she
ever induced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is sure you
will be much more comfortable during the rest of your stay at
Brighton."

And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for his aunt's
favour ended. He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he
menaced to do. He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves.

Where meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this
race for money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come
together after Waterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at
Paris in great splendour and gaiety. Rebecca was a good economist,
and the price poor Jos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in
itself sufficient to keep their little establishment afloat for a
year, at the least; there was no occasion to turn into money "my
pistols, the same which I shot Captain Marker," or the gold
dressing-case, or the cloak lined with sable. Becky had it made
into a pelisse for herself, in which she rode in the Bois de
Boulogne to the admiration of all: and you should have seen the
scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoined after
the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, and let
out of her dress all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes,
cheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding,
previous to her meditated flight from Brussels! Tufto was charmed,
and Rawdon roared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was
better than any play he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she
jockeyed Jos, and which she described with infinite fun, carried up
his delight to a pitch of quite insane enthusiasm. He believed in
his wife as much as the French soldiers in Napoleon.

Her success in Paris was remarkable. All the French ladies voted
her charming. She spoke their language admirably. She adopted at
once their grace, their liveliness, their manner. Her husband was
stupid certainly—all English are stupid—and, besides, a dull
husband at Paris is always a point in a lady's favour. He was the
heir of the rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been
open to so many of the French noblesse during the emigration. They
received the colonel's wife in their own hotels—"Why," wrote a
great lady to Miss Crawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at
the Duchess's own price, and given her many a dinner during the
pinching times after the Revolution—"Why does not our dear Miss
come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends in Paris? All
the world raffoles of the charming Mistress and her espiegle beauty.
Yes, we see in her the grace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend
Miss Crawley! The King took notice of her yesterday at the
Tuileries, and we are all jealous of the attention which Monsieur
pays her. If you could have seen the spite of a certain stupid
Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque and feathers may be
seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) when Madame, the
Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion of kings,
desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear
daughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name of France, for
all your benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile!
She is of all the societies, of all the balls—of the balls—yes—of
the dances, no; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair
creature looks surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to
be a mother! To hear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother,
would bring tears to the eyes of ogres. How she loves you! how we
all love our admirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!"

It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did
not by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable,
her respectable, relative. On the contrary, the fury of the old
spinster was beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's
situation, and how audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's
name, to get an entree into Parisian society. Too much shaken in
mind and body to compose a letter in the French language in reply to
that of her correspondent, she dictated to Briggs a furious answer
in her own native tongue, repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley
altogether, and warning the public to beware of her as a most artful
and dangerous person. But as Madame the Duchess of X—had only been
twenty years in England, she did not understand a single word of the
language, and contented herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at
their next meeting, that she had received a charming letter from
that chere Mees, and that it was full of benevolent things for Mrs.
Crawley, who began seriously to have hopes that the spinster would
relent.

Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen: and
had a little European congress on her reception-night. Prussians
and Cossacks, Spanish and English—all the world was at Paris during
this famous winter: to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's
humble saloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy.
Famous warriors rode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her
modest little box at the Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits.
There were no duns in Paris as yet: there were parties every day at
Very's or Beauvilliers'; play was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto
perhaps was sulky. Mrs. Tufto had come over to Paris at her own
invitation, and besides this contretemps, there were a score of
generals now round Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a
dozen bouquets when she went to the play. Lady Bareacres and the
chiefs of the English society, stupid and irreproachable females,
writhed with anguish at the success of the little upstart Becky,
whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts.
But she had all the men on her side. She fought the women with
indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal in any tongue
but their own.

So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passed
away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite
life as if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries
past—and who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a
place of honour in Vanity Fair. In the early spring of 1816,
Galignani's Journal contained the following announcement in an
interesting corner of the paper: "On the 26th of March—the Lady of
Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley, of the Life Guards Green—of a son and
heir."

This event was copied into the London papers, out of which Miss
Briggs read the statement to Miss Crawley, at breakfast, at
Brighton. The intelligence, expected as it might have been, caused
a crisis in the affairs of the Crawley family. The spinster's rage
rose to its height, and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and
for the Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested an
immediate celebration of the marriage which had been so long pending
between the two families. And she announced that it was her
intention to allow the young couple a thousand a year during her
lifetime, at the expiration of which the bulk of her property would
be settled upon her nephew and her dear niece, Lady Jane Crawley.
Waxy came down to ratify the deeds—Lord Southdown gave away his
sister—she was married by a Bishop, and not by the Rev.
Bartholomew Irons—to the disappointment of the irregular prelate.

When they were married, Pitt would have liked to take a hymeneal
tour with his bride, as became people of their condition. But the
affection of the old lady towards Lady Jane had grown so strong,
that she fairly owned she could not part with her favourite. Pitt
and his wife came therefore and lived with Miss Crawley: and
(greatly to the annoyance of poor Pitt, who conceived himself a most
injured character—being subject to the humours of his aunt on one
side, and of his mother-in-law on the other) Lady Southdown, from
her neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family—Pitt, Lady
Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all. She pitilessly
dosed them with her tracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer,
she installed Rodgers, and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the
semblance of authority. The poor soul grew so timid that she
actually left off bullying Briggs any more, and clung to her niece,
more fond and terrified every day. Peace to thee, kind and selfish,
vain and generous old heathen!—We shall see thee no more. Let us
hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and led her with gentle
hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.

Widow and Mother

The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reached
England at the same time. The Gazette first published the result of
the two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilled
with triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after the
announcement of the victories came the list of the wounded and the
slain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened
and read! Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the
three kingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders,
and the feelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and
sickening dismay, when the lists of the regimental losses were gone
through, and it became known whether the dear friend and relative
had escaped or fallen. Anybody who will take the trouble of looking
back to a file of the newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel
at second-hand this breathless pause of expectation. The lists of
casualties are carried on from day to day: you stop in the midst as
in a story which is to be continued in our next. Think what the
feelings must have been as those papers followed each other fresh
from the press; and if such an interest could be felt in our
country, and about a battle where but twenty thousand of our people
were engaged, think of the condition of Europe for twenty years
before, where people were fighting, not by thousands, but by
millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy wounded horribly
some other innocent heart far away.

The news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave a
dreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulged
unrestrained in their grief. The gloom-stricken old father was
still more borne down by his fate and sorrow. He strove to think
that a judgment was on the boy for his disobedience. He dared not
own that the severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its
fulfilment had come too soon upon his curses. Sometimes a
shuddering terror struck him, as if he had been the author of the
doom which he had called down on his son. There was a chance before
of reconciliation. The boy's wife might have died; or he might have
come back and said, Father I have sinned. But there was no hope
now. He stood on the other side of the gulf impassable, haunting
his parent with sad eyes. He remembered them once before so in a
fever, when every one thought the lad was dying, and he lay on his
bed speechless, and gazing with a dreadful gloom. Good God! how the
father clung to the doctor then, and with what a sickening anxiety
he followed him: what a weight of grief was off his mind when,
after the crisis of the fever, the lad recovered, and looked at his
father once more with eyes that recognised him. But now there was no
help or cure, or chance of reconcilement: above all, there were no
humble words to soothe vanity outraged and furious, or bring to its
natural flow the poisoned, angry blood. And it is hard to say which
pang it was that tore the proud father's heart most keenly—that his
son should have gone out of the reach of his forgiveness, or that
the apology which his own pride expected should have escaped him.

Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the stem old man
would have no confidant. He never mentioned his son's name to his
daughters; but ordered the elder to place all the females of the
establishment in mourning; and desired that the male servants should
be similarly attired in deep black. All parties and entertainments,
of course, were to be put off. No communications were made to his
future son-in-law, whose marriage-day had been fixed: but there was
enough in Mr. Osborne's appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from
making any inquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony.
He and the ladies whispered about it under their voices in the
drawing-room sometimes, whither the father never came. He remained
constantly in his own study; the whole front part of the house being
closed until some time after the completion of the general mourning.