Vanity Fair (79 page)

During the progress of this memorable holiday, little Rawdon, if he
had got no special liking for his uncle, always awful and cold and
locked up in his study, plunged in justice-business and surrounded
by bailiffs and farmers—has gained the good graces of his married
and maiden aunts, of the two little folks of the Hall, and of Jim of
the Rectory, whom Sir Pitt is encouraging to pay his addresses to
one of the young ladies, with an understanding doubtless that he
shall be presented to the living when it shall be vacated by his
fox-hunting old sire. Jim has given up that sport himself and
confines himself to a little harmless duck- or snipe-shooting, or a
little quiet trifling with the rats during the Christmas holidays,
after which he will return to the University and try and not be
plucked, once more. He has already eschewed green coats, red
neckcloths, and other worldly ornaments, and is preparing himself
for a change in his condition. In this cheap and thrifty way Sir
Pitt tries to pay off his debt to his family.

Also before this merry Christmas was over, the Baronet had screwed
up courage enough to give his brother another draft on his bankers,
and for no less a sum than a hundred pounds, an act which caused Sir
Pitt cruel pangs at first, but which made him glow afterwards to
think himself one of the most generous of men. Rawdon and his son
went away with the utmost heaviness of heart. Becky and the ladies
parted with some alacrity, however, and our friend returned to
London to commence those avocations with which we find her occupied
when this chapter begins. Under her care the Crawley House in Great
Gaunt Street was quite rejuvenescent and ready for the reception of
Sir Pitt and his family, when the Baronet came to London to attend
his duties in Parliament and to assume that position in the country
for which his vast genius fitted him.

For the first session, this profound dissembler hid his projects and
never opened his lips but to present a petition from Mudbury. But
he attended assiduously in his place and learned thoroughly the
routine and business of the House. At home he gave himself up to
the perusal of Blue Books, to the alarm and wonder of Lady Jane, who
thought he was killing himself by late hours and intense
application. And he made acquaintance with the ministers, and the
chiefs of his party, determining to rank as one of them before many
years were over.

Lady Jane's sweetness and kindness had inspired Rebecca with such a
contempt for her ladyship as the little woman found no small
difficulty in concealing. That sort of goodness and simplicity
which Lady Jane possessed annoyed our friend Becky, and it was
impossible for her at times not to show, or to let the other divine,
her scorn. Her presence, too, rendered Lady Jane uneasy. Her
husband talked constantly with Becky. Signs of intelligence seemed
to pass between them, and Pitt spoke with her on subjects on which
he never thought of discoursing with Lady Jane. The latter did not
understand them, to be sure, but it was mortifying to remain silent;
still more mortifying to know that you had nothing to say, and hear
that little audacious Mrs. Rawdon dashing on from subject to
subject, with a word for every man, and a joke always pat; and to
sit in one's own house alone, by the fireside, and watching all the
men round your rival.

In the country, when Lady Jane was telling stories to the children,
who clustered about her knees (little Rawdon into the bargain, who
was very fond of her), and Becky came into the room, sneering with
green scornful eyes, poor Lady Jane grew silent under those baleful
glances. Her simple little fancies shrank away tremulously, as
fairies in the story-books, before a superior bad angel. She could
not go on, although Rebecca, with the smallest inflection of sarcasm
in her voice, besought her to continue that charming story. And on
her side gentle thoughts and simple pleasures were odious to Mrs.
Becky; they discorded with her; she hated people for liking them;
she spurned children and children-lovers. "I have no taste for
bread and butter," she would say, when caricaturing Lady Jane and
her ways to my Lord Steyne.

"No more has a certain person for holy water," his lordship replied
with a bow and a grin and a great jarring laugh afterwards.

So these two ladies did not see much of each other except upon those
occasions when the younger brother's wife, having an object to gain
from the other, frequented her. They my-loved and my-deared each
other assiduously, but kept apart generally, whereas Sir Pitt, in
the midst of his multiplied avocations, found daily time to see his
sister-in-law.

On the occasion of his first Speaker's dinner, Sir Pitt took the
opportunity of appearing before his sister-in-law in his uniform—
that old diplomatic suit which he had worn when attache to the
Pumpernickel legation.

Becky complimented him upon that dress and admired him almost as
much as his own wife and children, to whom he displayed himself
before he set out. She said that it was only the thoroughbred
gentleman who could wear the Court suit with advantage: it was only
your men of ancient race whom the culotte courte became. Pitt
looked down with complacency at his legs, which had not, in truth,
much more symmetry or swell than the lean Court sword which dangled
by his side—looked down at his legs, and thought in his heart that
he was killing.

When he was gone, Mrs. Becky made a caricature of his figure, which
she showed to Lord Steyne when he arrived. His lordship carried off
the sketch, delighted with the accuracy of the resemblance. He had
done Sir Pitt Crawley the honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house
and had been most gracious to the new Baronet and member. Pitt was
struck too by the deference with which the great Peer treated his
sister-in-law, by her ease and sprightliness in the conversation,
and by the delight with which the other men of the party listened to
her talk. Lord Steyne made no doubt but that the Baronet had only
commenced his career in public life, and expected rather anxiously
to hear him as an orator; as they were neighbours (for Great Gaunt
Street leads into Gaunt Square, whereof Gaunt House, as everybody
knows, forms one side) my lord hoped that as soon as Lady Steyne
arrived in London she would have the honour of making the
acquaintance of Lady Crawley. He left a card upon his neighbour in
the course of a day or two, having never thought fit to notice his
predecessor, though they had lived near each other for near a
century past.

In the midst of these intrigues and fine parties and wise and
brilliant personages Rawdon felt himself more and more isolated
every day. He was allowed to go to the club more; to dine abroad
with bachelor friends; to come and go when he liked, without any
questions being asked. And he and Rawdon the younger many a time
would walk to Gaunt Street and sit with the lady and the children
there while Sir Pitt was closeted with Rebecca, on his way to the
House, or on his return from it.

The ex-Colonel would sit for hours in his brother's house very
silent, and thinking and doing as little as possible. He was glad
to be employed of an errand; to go and make inquiries about a horse
or a servant, or to carve the roast mutton for the dinner of the
children. He was beat and cowed into laziness and submission.
Delilah had imprisoned him and cut his hair off, too. The bold and
reckless young blood of ten-years back was subjugated and was turned
into a torpid, submissive, middle-aged, stout gentleman.

And poor Lady Jane was aware that Rebecca had captivated her
husband, although she and Mrs. Rawdon my-deared and my-loved each
other every day they met.

Struggles and Trials

Our friends at Brompton were meanwhile passing their Christmas after
their fashion and in a manner by no means too cheerful.

Out of the hundred pounds a year, which was about the amount of her
income, the Widow Osborne had been in the habit of giving up nearly
three-fourths to her father and mother, for the expenses of herself
and her little boy. With #120 more, supplied by Jos, this family of
four people, attended by a single Irish servant who also did for
Clapp and his wife, might manage to live in decent comfort through
the year, and hold up their heads yet, and be able to give a friend
a dish of tea still, after the storms and disappointments of their
early life. Sedley still maintained his ascendency over the family
of Mr. Clapp, his ex-clerk. Clapp remembered the time when, sitting
on the edge of the chair, he tossed off a bumper to the health of
"Mrs. S—, Miss Emmy, and Mr. Joseph in India," at the merchant's
rich table in Russell Square. Time magnified the splendour of those
recollections in the honest clerk's bosom. Whenever he came up from
the kitchen-parlour to the drawing-room and partook of tea or gin-
and-water with Mr. Sedley, he would say, "This was not what you was
accustomed to once, sir," and as gravely and reverentially drink the
health of the ladies as he had done in the days of their utmost
prosperity. He thought Miss 'Melia's playing the divinest music
ever performed, and her the finest lady. He never would sit down
before Sedley at the club even, nor would he have that gentleman's
character abused by any member of the society. He had seen the
first men in London shaking hands with Mr. S—; he said, "He'd known
him in times when Rothschild might be seen on 'Change with him any
day, and he owed him personally everythink."

Clapp, with the best of characters and handwritings, had been able
very soon after his master's disaster to find other employment for
himself. "Such a little fish as me can swim in any bucket," he used
to remark, and a member of the house from which old Sedley had
seceded was very glad to make use of Mr. Clapp's services and to
reward them with a comfortable salary. In fine, all Sedley's
wealthy friends had dropped off one by one, and this poor ex-
dependent still remained faithfully attached to him.

Out of the small residue of her income which Amelia kept back for
herself, the widow had need of all the thrift and care possible in
order to enable her to keep her darling boy dressed in such a manner
as became George Osborne's son, and to defray the expenses of the
little school to which, after much misgiving and reluctance and many
secret pangs and fears on her own part, she had been induced to send
the lad. She had sat up of nights conning lessons and spelling over
crabbed grammars and geography books in order to teach them to
Georgy. She had worked even at the Latin accidence, fondly hoping
that she might be capable of instructing him in that language. To
part with him all day, to send him out to the mercy of a
schoolmaster's cane and his schoolfellows' roughness, was almost
like weaning him over again to that weak mother, so tremulous and
full of sensibility. He, for his part, rushed off to the school
with the utmost happiness. He was longing for the change. That
childish gladness wounded his mother, who was herself so grieved to
part with him. She would rather have had him more sorry, she
thought, and then was deeply repentant within herself for daring to
be so selfish as to wish her own son to be unhappy.

Georgy made great progress in the school, which was kept by a friend
of his mother's constant admirer, the Rev. Mr. Binny. He brought
home numberless prizes and testimonials of ability. He told his
mother countless stories every night about his school-companions:
and what a fine fellow Lyons was, and what a sneak Sniffin was, and
how Steel's father actually supplied the meat for the establishment,
whereas Golding's mother came in a carriage to fetch him every
Saturday, and how Neat had straps to his trowsers—might he have
straps?—and how Bull Major was so strong (though only in Eutropius)
that it was believed he could lick the Usher, Mr. Ward, himself. So
Amelia learned to know every one of the boys in that school as well
as Georgy himself, and of nights she used to help him in his
exercises and puzzle her little head over his lessons as eagerly as
if she was herself going in the morning into the presence of the
master. Once, after a certain combat with Master Smith, George came
home to his mother with a black eye, and bragged prodigiously to his
parent and his delighted old grandfather about his valour in the
fight, in which, if the truth was known he did not behave with
particular heroism, and in which he decidedly had the worst. But
Amelia has never forgiven that Smith to this day, though he is now a
peaceful apothecary near Leicester Square.

In these quiet labours and harmless cares the gentle widow's life
was passing away, a silver hair or two marking the progress of time
on her head and a line deepening ever so little on her fair
forehead. She used to smile at these marks of time. "What matters
it," she asked, "For an old woman like me?" All she hoped for was to
live to see her son great, famous, and glorious, as he deserved to
be. She kept his copy-books, his drawings, and compositions, and
showed them about in her little circle as if they were miracles of
genius. She confided some of these specimens to Miss Dobbin, to
show them to Miss Osborne, George's aunt, to show them to Mr.
Osborne himself—to make that old man repent of his cruelty and ill
feeling towards him who was gone. All her husband's faults and
foibles she had buried in the grave with him: she only remembered
the lover, who had married her at all sacrifices, the noble husband,
so brave and beautiful, in whose arms she had hung on the morning
when he had gone away to fight, and die gloriously for his king.
From heaven the hero must be smiling down upon that paragon of a boy
whom he had left to comfort and console her. We have seen how one of
George's grandfathers (Mr. Osborne), in his easy chair in Russell
Square, daily grew more violent and moody, and how his daughter,
with her fine carriage, and her fine horses, and her name on half
the public charity-lists of the town, was a lonely, miserable,
persecuted old maid. She thought again and again of the beautiful
little boy, her brother's son, whom she had seen. She longed to be
allowed to drive in the fine carriage to the house in which he
lived, and she used to look out day after day as she took her
solitary drive in the park, in hopes that she might see him. Her
sister, the banker's lady, occasionally condescended to pay her old
home and companion a visit in Russell Square. She brought a couple
of sickly children attended by a prim nurse, and in a faint genteel
giggling tone cackled to her sister about her fine acquaintance, and
how her little Frederick was the image of Lord Claud Lollypop and
her sweet Maria had been noticed by the Baroness as they were
driving in their donkey-chaise at Roehampton. She urged her to make
her papa do something for the darlings. Frederick she had determined
should go into the Guards; and if they made an elder son of him (and
Mr. Bullock was positively ruining and pinching himself to death to
buy land), how was the darling girl to be provided for? "I expect
YOU, dear," Mrs. Bullock would say, "for of course my share of our
Papa's property must go to the head of the house, you know. Dear
Rhoda McMull will disengage the whole of the Castletoddy property as
soon as poor dear Lord Castletoddy dies, who is quite epileptic; and
little Macduff McMull will be Viscount Castletoddy. Both the Mr.
Bludyers of Mincing Lane have settled their fortunes on Fanny
Bludyer's little boy. My darling Frederick must positively be an
eldest son; and—and do ask Papa to bring us back his account in
Lombard Street, will you, dear? It doesn't look well, his going to
Stumpy and Rowdy's." After which kind of speeches, in which fashion
and the main chance were blended together, and after a kiss, which
was like the contact of an oyster—Mrs. Frederick Bullock would
gather her starched nurslings and simper back into her carriage.