Vanity Fair (78 page)

"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.

Between Hampshire and London

Sir Pitt Crawley had done more than repair fences and restore
dilapidated lodges on the Queen's Crawley estate. Like a wise man he
had set to work to rebuild the injured popularity of his house and
stop up the gaps and ruins in which his name had been left by his
disreputable and thriftless old predecessor. He was elected for the
borough speedily after his father's demise; a magistrate, a member
of parliament, a county magnate and representative of an ancient
family, he made it his duty to show himself before the Hampshire
public, subscribed handsomely to the county charities, called
assiduously upon all the county folk, and laid himself out in a word
to take that position in Hampshire, and in the Empire afterwards, to
which he thought his prodigious talents justly entitled him. Lady
Jane was instructed to be friendly with the Fuddlestones, and the
Wapshots, and the other famous baronets, their neighbours. Their
carriages might frequently be seen in the Queen's Crawley avenue
now; they dined pretty frequently at the Hall (where the cookery was
so good that it was clear Lady Jane very seldom had a hand in it),
and in return Pitt and his wife most energetically dined out in all
sorts of weather and at all sorts of distances. For though Pitt did
not care for joviality, being a frigid man of poor hearth and
appetite, yet he considered that to be hospitable and condescending
was quite incumbent on-his station, and every time that he got a
headache from too long an after-dinner sitting, he felt that he was
a martyr to duty. He talked about crops, corn-laws, politics, with
the best country gentlemen. He (who had been formerly inclined to be
a sad free-thinker on these points) entered into poaching and game
preserving with ardour. He didn't hunt; he wasn't a hunting man; he
was a man of books and peaceful habits; but he thought that the
breed of horses must be kept up in the country, and that the breed
of foxes must therefore be looked to, and for his part, if his
friend, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, liked to draw his country and
meet as of old the F. hounds used to do at Queen's Crawley, he
should be happy to see him there, and the gentlemen of the
Fuddlestone hunt. And to Lady Southdown's dismay too he became more
orthodox in his tendencies every day; gave up preaching in public
and attending meeting-houses; went stoutly to church; called on the
Bishop and all the Clergy at Winchester; and made no objection when
the Venerable Archdeacon Trumper asked for a game of whist. What
pangs must have been those of Lady Southdown, and what an utter
castaway she must have thought her son-in-law for permitting such a
godless diversion! And when, on the return of the family from an
oratorio at Winchester, the Baronet announced to the young ladies
that he should next year very probably take them to the "county
balls," they worshipped him for his kindness. Lady Jane was only
too obedient, and perhaps glad herself to go. The Dowager wrote off
the direst descriptions of her daughter's worldly behaviour to the
authoress of the Washerwoman of Finchley Common at the Cape; and her
house in Brighton being about this time unoccupied, returned to that
watering-place, her absence being not very much deplored by her
children. We may suppose, too, that Rebecca, on paying a second
visit to Queen's Crawley, did not feel particularly grieved at the
absence of the lady of the medicine chest; though she wrote a
Christmas letter to her Ladyship, in which she respectfully recalled
herself to Lady Southdown's recollection, spoke with gratitude of
the delight which her Ladyship's conversation had given her on the
former visit, dilated on the kindness with which her Ladyship had
treated her in sickness, and declared that everything at Queen's
Crawley reminded her of her absent friend.

A great part of the altered demeanour and popularity of Sir Pitt
Crawley might have been traced to the counsels of that astute little
lady of Curzon Street. "You remain a Baronet—you consent to be a
mere country gentleman," she said to him, while he had been her
guest in London. "No, Sir Pitt Crawley, I know you better. I know
your talents and your ambition. You fancy you hide them both, but
you can conceal neither from me. I showed Lord Steyne your pamphlet
on malt. He was familiar with it, and said it was in the opinion of
the whole Cabinet the most masterly thing that had appeared on the
subject. The Ministry has its eye upon you, and I know what you
want. You want to distinguish yourself in Parliament; every one
says you are the finest speaker in England (for your speeches at
Oxford are still remembered). You want to be Member for the County,
where, with your own vote and your borough at your back, you can
command anything. And you want to be Baron Crawley of Queen's
Crawley, and will be before you die. I saw it all. I could read
your heart, Sir Pitt. If I had a husband who possessed your
intellect as he does your name, I sometimes think I should not be
unworthy of him—but—but I am your kinswoman now," she added with a
laugh. "Poor little penniless, I have got a little interest—and
who knows, perhaps the mouse may be able to aid the lion." Pitt
Crawley was amazed and enraptured with her speech. "How that woman
comprehends me!" he said. "I never could get Jane to read three
pages of the malt pamphlet. She has no idea that I have commanding
talents or secret ambition. So they remember my speaking at Oxford,
do they? The rascals! Now that I represent my borough and may sit
for the county, they begin to recollect me! Why, Lord Steyne cut me
at the levee last year; they are beginning to find out that Pitt
Crawley is some one at last. Yes, the man was always the same whom
these people neglected: it was only the opportunity that was
wanting, and I will show them now that I can speak and act as well
as write. Achilles did not declare himself until they gave him the
sword. I hold it now, and the world shall yet hear of Pitt
Crawley."

Therefore it was that this roguish diplomatist has grown so
hospitable; that he was so civil to oratorios and hospitals; so kind
to Deans and Chapters; so generous in giving and accepting dinners;
so uncommonly gracious to farmers on market-days; and so much
interested about county business; and that the Christmas at the Hall
was the gayest which had been known there for many a long day.

On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the
Crawleys from the Rectory came to dine. Rebecca was as frank and
fond of Mrs. Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was
affectionately interested in the dear girls, and surprised at the
progress which they had made in music since her time, and insisted
upon encoring one of the duets out of the great song-books which
Jim, grumbling, had been forced to bring under his arm from the
Rectory. Mrs. Bute, perforce, was obliged to adopt a decent
demeanour towards the little adventuress—of course being free to
discourse with her daughters afterwards about the absurd respect
with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law. But Jim, who had sat
next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and one and all of
the Rector's family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fine boy.
They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and the
title there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie.

The children were very good friends. Pitt Binkie was too little a
dog for such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being
only a girl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who
was near eight years old, and going into jackets very soon. He took
the command of this small party at once—the little girl and the
little boy following him about with great reverence at such times as
he condescended to sport with them. His happiness and pleasure in
the country were extreme. The kitchen garden pleased him hugely,
the flowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the
stables when he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects
to him. He resisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he
allowed Lady Jane sometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side
that he liked to sit when, the signal to retire to the drawing-room
being given, the ladies left the gentlemen to their claret—by her
side rather than by his mother. For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness
was the fashion, called Rawdon to her one evening and stooped down
and kissed him in the presence of all the ladies.

He looked her full in the face after the operation, trembling and
turning very red, as his wont was when moved. "You never kiss me at
home, Mamma," he said, at which there was a general silence and
consternation and a by no means pleasant look in Becky's eyes.

Rawdon was fond of his sister-in-law, for her regard for his son.
Lady Jane and Becky did not get on quite so well at this visit as on
occasion of the former one, when the Colonel's wife was bent upon
pleasing. Those two speeches of the child struck rather a chill.
Perhaps Sir Pitt was rather too attentive to her.

But Rawdon, as became his age and size, was fonder of the society of
the men than of the women, and never wearied of accompanying his
sire to the stables, whither the Colonel retired to smoke his cigar
—Jim, the Rector's son, sometimes joining his cousin in that and
other amusements. He and the Baronet's keeper were very close
friends, their mutual taste for "dawgs" bringing them much together.
On one day, Mr. James, the Colonel, and Horn, the keeper, went and
shot pheasants, taking little Rawdon with them. On another most
blissful morning, these four gentlemen partook of the amusement of
rat-hunting in a barn, than which sport Rawdon as yet had never seen
anything more noble. They stopped up the ends of certain drains in
the barn, into the other openings of which ferrets were inserted,
and then stood silently aloof, with uplifted stakes in their hands,
and an anxious little terrier (Mr. James's celebrated "dawg"
Forceps, indeed) scarcely breathing from excitement, listening
motionless on three legs, to the faint squeaking of the rats below.
Desperately bold at last, the persecuted animals bolted above-
ground—the terrier accounted for one, the keeper for another;
Rawdon, from flurry and excitement, missed his rat, but on the other
hand he half-murdered a ferret.

But the greatest day of all was that on which Sir Huddlestone
Fuddlestone's hounds met upon the lawn at Queen's Crawley.

That was a famous sight for little Rawdon. At half-past ten, Tom
Moody, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's huntsman, was seen trotting up
the avenue, followed by the noble pack of hounds in a compact body—
the rear being brought up by the two whips clad in stained scarlet
frocks—light hard-featured lads on well-bred lean horses,
possessing marvellous dexterity in casting the points of their long
heavy whips at the thinnest part of any dog's skin who dares to
straggle from the main body, or to take the slightest notice, or
even so much as wink, at the hares and rabbits starting under their
noses.

Next comes boy Jack, Tom Moody's son, who weighs five stone,
measures eight-and-forty inches, and will never be any bigger. He
is perched on a large raw-boned hunter, half-covered by a capacious
saddle. This animal is Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's favourite
horse the Nob. Other horses, ridden by other small boys, arrive from
time to time, awaiting their masters, who will come cantering on
anon.

Tom Moody rides up to the door of the Hall, where he is welcomed by
the butler, who offers him drink, which he declines. He and his
pack then draw off into a sheltered corner of the lawn, where the
dogs roll on the grass, and play or growl angrily at one another,
ever and anon breaking out into furious fight speedily to be quelled
by Tom's voice, unmatched at rating, or the snaky thongs of the
whips.

Many young gentlemen canter up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed
to the knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay
their respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike,
divest themselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their
hunters, and warm their blood by a preliminary gallop round the
lawn. Then they collect round the pack in the corner and talk with
Tom Moody of past sport, and the merits of Sniveller and Diamond,
and of the state of the country and of the wretched breed of foxes.

Sir Huddlestone presently appears mounted on a clever cob and rides
up to the Hall, where he enters and does the civil thing by the
ladies, after which, being a man of few words, he proceeds to
business. The hounds are drawn up to the hall-door, and little
Rawdon descends amongst them, excited yet half-alarmed by the
caresses which they bestow upon him, at the thumps he receives from
their waving tails, and at their canine bickerings, scarcely
restrained by Tom Moody's tongue and lash.

Meanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the
Nob: "Let's try Sowster's Spinney, Tom," says the Baronet, "Farmer
Mangle tells me there are two foxes in it." Tom blows his horn and
trots off, followed by the pack, by the whips, by the young gents
from Winchester, by the farmers of the neighbourhood, by the
labourers of the parish on foot, with whom the day is a great
holiday, Sir Huddlestone bringing up the rear with Colonel Crawley,
and the whole cortege disappears down the avenue.

The Reverend Bute Crawley (who has been too modest to appear at the
public meet before his nephew's windows), whom Tom Moody remembers
forty years back a slender divine riding the wildest horses, jumping
the widest brooks, and larking over the newest gates in the country—
his Reverence, we say, happens to trot out from the Rectory Lane on
his powerful black horse just as Sir Huddlestone passes; he joins
the worthy Baronet. Hounds and horsemen disappear, and little
Rawdon remains on the doorsteps, wondering and happy.