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Vanity Fair

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> Vanity Fair




One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were
SURE would delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear
William.

"What was it: was he coming home?" she asked with pleasure beaming
in her eyes.

"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe
that dear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a
very dear friend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael
O'Dowd's sister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a
very beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."

Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she
supposed Glorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was
most kind--but--but she was very happy indeed. And by some impulse
of which I cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms
and kissed him with an extraordinary tenderness. Her eyes were
quite moist when she put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a
word during the whole of the drive--though she was so very happy
indeed.



CHAPTER XXXIX

A Cynical Chapter


Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old Hampshire
acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting the disposal of their
rich kinswoman's property were so woefully disappointed. After
counting upon thirty thousand pounds from his sister, it was a heavy
blow. to Bute Crawley to receive but five; out of which sum, when
he had paid his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a
very small fragment remained to portion off his four plain
daughters. Mrs. Bute never knew, or at least never acknowledged,
how far her own tyrannous behaviour had tended to ruin her husband.
All that woman could do, she vowed and protested she had done. Was
it her fault if she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her
hypocritical nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished him all the
happiness which he merited out of his ill-gotten gains. "At least
the money will remain in the family," she said charitably. "Pitt
will never spend it, my dear, that is quite certain; for a greater
miser does not exist in England, and he is as odious, though in a
different way, as his spendthrift brother, the abandoned Rawdon."

So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and disappointment,
began to accommodate herself as best she could to her altered
fortunes and to save and retrench with all her might. She
instructed her daughters how to bear poverty cheerfully, and
invented a thousand notable methods to conceal or evade it. She
took them about to balls and public places in the neighbourhood,
with praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her friends in a
hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much more
frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy had fallen in.
From her outward bearing nobody would have supposed that the family
had been disappointed in their expectations, or have guessed from
her frequent appearance in public how she pinched and starved at
home. Her girls had more milliners' furniture than they had ever
enjoyed before. They appeared perseveringly at the Winchester and
Southampton assemblies; they penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls
and regatta-gaieties there; and their carriage, with the horses
taken from the plough, was at work perpetually, until it began
almost to be believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left
them by their aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in public
but with the most tender gratitude and regard. I know no sort of
lying which is more frequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be
remarked how people who practise it take credit to themselves for
their hypocrisy, and fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and
praiseworthy, because they are able to deceive the world with regard
to the extent of their means.

Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most virtuous women
in England, and the sight of her happy family was an edifying one to
strangers. They were so cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so
simple! Martha painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the
charity bazaars in the county. Emma was a regular County Bulbul,
and her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were the glory of its
Poet's Corner. Fanny and Matilda sang duets together, Mamma playing
the piano, and the other two sisters sitting with their arms round
each other's waists and listening affectionately. Nobody saw the
poor girls drumming at the duets in private. No one saw Mamma
drilling them rigidly hour after hour. In a word, Mrs. Bute put a
good face against fortune and kept up appearances in the most
virtuous manner.

Everything that a good and respectable mother could do Mrs. Bute
did. She got over yachting men from Southampton, parsons from the
Cathedral Close at Winchester, and officers from the barracks there.
She tried to inveigle the young barristers at assizes and encouraged
Jim to bring home friends with whom he went out hunting with the H.
H. What will not a mother do for the benefit of her beloved ones?

Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the odious Baronet at
the Hall, it is manifest that there could be very little in common.
The rupture between Bute and his brother Sir Pitt was complete;
indeed, between Sir Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man
was a scandal. His dislike for respectable society increased with
age, and the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's carriage-
wheels since Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their visit of duty
after their marriage.

That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be thought of by
the family without horror. Pitt begged his wife, with a ghastly
countenance, never to speak of it, and it was only through Mrs. Bute
herself, who still knew everything which took place at the Hall,
that the circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and
daughter-in-law were ever known at all.

As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat and well-
appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay and wrath great gaps
among the trees--his trees--which the old Baronet was felling
entirely without license. The park wore an aspect of utter
dreariness and ruin. The drives were ill kept, and the neat
carriage splashed and floundered in muddy pools along the road. The
great sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was black and
covered with mosses; the once trim flower-beds rank and weedy.
Shutters were up along almost the whole line of the house; the great
hall-door was unbarred after much ringing of the bell; an individual
in ribbons was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at
length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley and his bride into the
halls of their fathers. He led the way into Sir Pitt's "Library,"
as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growing stronger as Pitt and
Lady Jane approached that apartment, "Sir Pitt ain't very well,"
Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that his master was
afflicted with lumbago.

The library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had
opened one of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the
postilion and Pitt's servant, who seemed to be about to take the
baggage down.

"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing with a pipe
which he held in his hand. "It's only a morning visit, Tucker, you
fool. Lor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels! Ain't there
no one at the King's Head to rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do,
my dear? Come to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face,
too. You ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and
give old Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."

The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the
caresses of the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco,
might well do. But she remembered that her brother Southdown had
mustachios, and smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a
tolerable grace.

"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of affection.
"Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm,
Evening Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for
my Lady Jane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don't stand
stearing there like a fat pig. I won't ask you to stop, my dear;
you'll find it too stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt. I'm
an old man now, and like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of
a night."

"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane, laughing. "I used
to play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't I, Mr. Crawley?"

"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you
are so partial," Pitt said haughtily.

But she wawn't stop for all that. Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury and
give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask
Buty for a dinner. He'll be charmed to see you, you know; he's so
much obliged to you for gettin' the old woman's money. Ha, ha!
Some of it will do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."

"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice, "that your
people will cut down the timber."

"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of
year," Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf. "But I'm
gittin' old, Pitt, now. Law bless you, you ain't far from fifty
yourself. But he wears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's
all godliness, sobriety, and a moral life. Look at me, I'm not very
fur from fowr-score--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and
leered at her and pinched her hand.

Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but the
Baronet was deaf again in an instant.

"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year with the
lumbago. I shan't be here now for long; but I'm glad ee've come,
daughter-in-law. I like your face, Lady Jane: it's got none of the
damned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something
pretty, my dear, to go to Court in." And he shuffled across the room
to a cupboard, from which he took a little old case containing
jewels of some value. "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged
to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty
pearls--never gave 'em the ironmonger's daughter. No, no. Take 'em
and put 'em up quick," said he, thrusting the case into his
daughter's hand, and clapping the door of the cabinet to, as
Horrocks entered with a salver and refreshments.

"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said the individual in
ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old
gentleman. It was Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter--the cause
of the scandal throughout the county--the lady who reigned now
almost supreme at Queen's Crawley.

The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay
by the county and family. The Ribbons opened an account at the
Mudbury Branch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church,
monopolising the pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants
at the Hall. The domestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The
Scotch gardener, who still lingered on the premises, taking a pride
in his walls and hot-houses, and indeed making a pretty good
livelihood by the garden, which he farmed, and of which he sold the
produce at Southampton, found the Ribbons eating peaches on a
sunshiny morning at the south-wall, and had his ears boxed when he
remonstrated about this attack on his property. He and his Scotch
wife and his Scotch children, the only respectable inhabitants of
Queen's Crawley, were forced to migrate, with their goods and their
chattels, and left the stately comfortable gardens to go to waste,
and the flower-beds to run to seed. Poor Lady Crawley's rose-garden
became the dreariest wilderness. Only two or three domestics
shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall. The stables and offices
were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined. Sir Pitt lived in
private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-
steward (as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons.
The times were very much changed since the period when she drove to
Mudbury in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen "Sir." It
may have been shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours,
but the old Cynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-
gates at all now. He quarrelled with his agents and screwed his
tenants by letter. His days were passed in conducting his own
correspondence; the lawyers and farm-bailiffs who had to do business
with him could not reach him but through the Ribbons, who received
them at the door of the housekeeper's room, which commanded the back
entrance by which they were admitted; and so the Baronet's daily
perplexities increased, and his embarrassments multiplied round him.

The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these reports of his
father's dotage reached the most exemplary and correct of gentlemen.
He trembled daily lest he should hear that the Ribbons was
proclaimed his second legal mother-in-law. After that first and
last visit, his father's name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite
and genteel establishment. It was the skeleton in his house, and
all the family walked by it in terror and silence. The Countess
Southdown kept on dropping per coach at the lodge-gate the most
exciting tracts, tracts which ought to frighten the hair off your
head. Mrs. Bute at the parsonage nightly looked out to see if the
sky was red over the elms behind which the Hall stood, and the
mansion was on fire. Sir G. Wapshot and Sir H. Fuddlestone, old
friends of the house, wouldn't sit on the bench with Sir Pitt at
Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the High Street of
Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his dirty old hands
to them. Nothing had any effect upon him; he put his hands into his
pockets, and burst out laughing, as he scrambled into his carriage
and four; he used to burst out laughing at Lady Southdown's tracts;
and he laughed at his sons, and at the world, and at the Ribbons
when she was angry, which was not seldom.

Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's Crawley, and
ruled all the domestics there with great majesty and rigour. All
the servants were instructed to address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--
and there was one little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in
calling her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the
housekeeper. "There has been better ladies, and there has been
worser, Hester," was Miss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her
inferior; so she ruled, having supreme power over all except her
father, whom, however, she treated with considerable haughtiness,
warning him not to be too familiar in his behaviour to one "as was
to be a Baronet's lady." Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted part in
life with great satisfaction to herself, and to the amusement of old
Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her airs and graces, and would laugh by
the hour together at her assumptions of dignity and imitations of
genteel life. He swore it was as good as a play to see her in the
character of a fine dame, and he made her put on one of the first
Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing (entirely to Miss Horrocks'
own concurrence) that the dress became her prodigiously, and
threatening to drive her off that very instant to Court in a coach-
and-four. She had the ransacking of the wardrobes of the two
defunct ladies, and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so as to
suit her own tastes and figure. And she would have liked to take
possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the old Baronet had
locked them away in his private cabinet; nor could she coax or
wheedle him out of the keys. And it is a fact, that some time after
she left Queen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was
discovered, which showed that she had taken great pains in private
to learn the art of writing in general, and especially of writing
her own name as Lady Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth
Crawley, &c.

Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall and
shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strict
knowledge of all that happened there, and were looking out every day
for the catastrophe for which Miss Horrocks was also eager. But
Fate intervened enviously and prevented her from receiving the
reward due to such immaculate love and virtue.

One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he jocularly called
her, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room,
which had scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles
upon it--seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling
to the best of her power in imitation of the music which she had
sometimes heard. The little kitchen-maid on her promotion was
standing at her mistress's side, quite delighted during the
operation, and wagging her head up and down and crying, "Lor, Mum,
'tis bittiful"--just like a genteel sycophant in a real drawing-
room.

This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual. He
narrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course of
the evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks. He
thrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, and
squalled in imitation of her manner of singing. He vowed that such
a beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to
have singing-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous.
He was in great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and
butler an extraordinary quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late
hour the faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his
bedroom.

Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and bustle in the
house. Lights went about from window to window in the lonely
desolate old Hall, whereof but two or three rooms were ordinarily
occupied by its owner. Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off
to Mudbury, to the Doctor's house there. And in another hour (by
which fact we ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs. Bute
Crawley had always kept up an understanding with the great house),
that lady in her clogs and calash, the Reverend Bute Crawley, and
James Crawley, her son, had walked over from the Rectory through the
park, and had entered the mansion by the open hall-door.

They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table
of which stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which had
served for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into Sir
Pitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons,
with a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch
of keys. She dropped them with a scream of terror, as little Mrs.
Bute's eyes flashed out at her from under her black calash.

"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley," cried Mrs. Bute, pointing at
the scared figure of the black-eyed, guilty wench.

"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.

"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed Mrs. Bute. "Bear
witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this good-for-nothing woman in the
act of stealing your brother's property; and she will be hanged, as
I always said she would."

Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on her knees,
bursting into tears. But those who know a really good woman are
aware that she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the
humiliation of an enemy is a triumph to her soul.

"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said. "Go on ringing it till the
people come." The three or four domestics resident in the deserted
old house came presently at that jangling and continued summons.

"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said. "We caught her in
the act of robbing Sir Pitt. Mr. Crawley, you'll make out her
committal--and, Beddoes, you'll drive her over in the spring cart,
in the morning, to Southampton Gaol."

"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--"she's only--"

"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued, stamping in her
clogs. "There used to be handcuffs. Where's the creature's
abominable father?"

"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't he, Hester?
You saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--give 'em me, ever so long ago--
the day after Mudbury fair: not that I want 'em. Take 'em if you
think they ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out from
her pocket a large pair of paste shoe-buckles which had excited her
admiration, and which she had just appropriated out of one of the
bookcases in the study, where they had lain.

"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked story!" said
Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her promotion--"and to
Madame Crawley, so good and kind, and his Rev'rince (with a
curtsey), and you may search all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's
my keys as I'm an honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse
bred--and if you find so much as a beggarly bit of lace or a silk
stocking out of all the gownds as YOU'VE had the picking of, may I
never go to church agin."

"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out the virtuous
little lady in the calash.

"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum, I can show you
her room, Mum, and the press in the housekeeper's room, Mum, where
she keeps heaps and heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager
little Hester with a profusion of curtseys.

"Hold your tongue, if you please. I know the room which the
creature occupies perfectly well. Mrs. Brown, have the goodness to
come with me, and Beddoes don't you lose sight of that woman," said
Mrs. Bute, seizing the candle. "Mr. Crawley, you had better go
upstairs and see that they are not murdering your unfortunate
brother"--and the calash, escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away to the
apartment which, as she said truly, she knew perfectly well.

Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from Mudbury, with the
frightened Horrocks over his master in a chair. They were trying to
bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.

With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr. Pitt Crawley
by the Rector's lady, who assumed the command of everything, and had
watched the old Baronet through the night. He had been brought back
to a sort of life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize
people. Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside. She never seemed
to want to sleep, that little woman, and did not close her fiery
black eyes once, though the Doctor snored in the arm-chair.
Horrocks made some wild efforts to assert his authority and assist
his master; but Mrs. Bute called him a tipsy old wretch and bade him
never show his face again in that house, or he should be transported
like his abominable daughter.

Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr.
James was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found no
liquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum,
which he fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and
his son sat down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that
instant and never to show his face again.

Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys, and he and his
daughter slunk off silently through the night and gave up possession
of the house of Queen's Crawley.



CHAPTER XL

In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family


The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after this
catastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have reigned in Queen's
Crawley. For though the old Baronet survived many months, he never
recovered the use of his intellect or his speech completely, and the
government of the estate devolved upon his elder son. In a strange
condition Pitt found it. Sir Pitt was always buying and mortgaging;
he had twenty men of business, and quarrels with each; quarrels with
all his tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers;
lawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was
proprietor; and with every person with whom he had business. To
unravel these difficulties and to set the estate clear was a task
worthy of the orderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel,
and he set himself to work with prodigious assiduity. His whole
family, of course, was transported to Queen's Crawley, whither Lady
Southdown, of course, came too; and she set about converting the
parish under the Rector's nose, and brought down her irregular
clergy to the dismay of the angry Mrs Bute. Sir Pitt had concluded
no bargain for the sale of the living of Queen's Crawley; when it
should drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the patronage into her
own hands and present a young protege to the Rectory, on which
subject the diplomatic Pitt said nothing.

Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy Horrocks were not
carried into effect, and she paid no visit to Southampton Gaol. She
and her father left the Hall when the latter took possession of the
Crawley Arms in the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir
Pitt. The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there likewise,
which gave him a vote for the borough. The Rector had another of
these votes, and these and four others formed the representative
body which returned the two members for Queen's Crawley.

There was a show of courtesy kept up between the Rectory and the
Hall ladies, between the younger ones at least, for Mrs. Bute and
Lady Southdown never could meet without battles, and gradually
ceased seeing each other. Her Ladyship kept her room when the
ladies from the Rectory visited their cousins at the Hall. Perhaps
Mr. Pitt was not very much displeased at these occasional absences
of his mamma-in-law. He believed the Binkie family to be the
greatest and wisest and most interesting in the world, and her
Ladyship and his aunt had long held ascendency over him; but
sometimes he felt that she commanded him too much. To be considered
young was complimentary, doubtless, but at six-and-forty to be
treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying. Lady Jane yielded up
everything, however, to her mother. She was only fond of her
children in private, and it was lucky for her that Lady Southdown's
multifarious business, her conferences with ministers, and her
correspondence with all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, and
Australasia, &c., occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so
that she had but little time to devote to her granddaughter, the
little Matilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley. The latter
was a feeble child, and it was only by prodigious quantities of
calomel that Lady Southdown was able to keep him in life at all.

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