Vanity Fair
"Well," said the old gentleman, twiddling round his wife's card, "you
are bent on becoming a fine lady. You pester my poor old life out to
get you into the world. You won't be able to hold your own there, you
silly little fool. You've got no money."
"You will get us a place," interposed Becky, "as quick as possible."
"You've got no money, and you want to compete with those who have. You
poor little earthenware pipkin, you want to swim down the stream along
with the great copper kettles. All women are alike. Everybody is
striving for what is not worth the having! Gad! I dined with the King
yesterday, and we had neck of mutton and turnips. A dinner of herbs is
better than a stalled ox very often. You will go to Gaunt House. You
give an old fellow no rest until you get there. It's not half so nice
as here. You'll be bored there. I am. My wife is as gay as Lady
Macbeth, and my daughters as cheerful as Regan and Goneril. I daren't
sleep in what they call my bedroom. The bed is like the baldaquin of
St. Peter's, and the pictures frighten me. I have a little brass bed
in a dressing-room, and a little hair mattress like an anchorite. I am
an anchorite. Ho! ho! You'll be asked to dinner next week. And gare
aux femmes, look out and hold your own! How the women will bully you!"
This was a very long speech for a man of few words like my Lord Steyne;
nor was it the first which he uttered for Becky's benefit on that day.
Briggs looked up from the work-table at which she was seated in the
farther room and gave a deep sigh as she heard the great Marquis speak
so lightly of her sex.
"If you don't turn off that abominable sheep-dog," said Lord Steyne,
with a savage look over his shoulder at her, "I will have her poisoned."
"I always give my dog dinner from my own plate," said Rebecca, laughing
mischievously; and having enjoyed for some time the discomfiture of my
lord, who hated poor Briggs for interrupting his tete-a-tete with the
fair Colonel's wife, Mrs. Rawdon at length had pity upon her admirer,
and calling to Briggs, praised the fineness of the weather to her and
bade her to take out the child for a walk.
"I can't send her away," Becky said presently, after a pause, and in a
very sad voice. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, and she
turned away her head.
"You owe her her wages, I suppose?" said the Peer.
"Worse than that," said Becky, still casting down her eyes; "I have
ruined her."
"Ruined her? Then why don't you turn her out?" the gentleman asked.
"Men do that," Becky answered bitterly. "Women are not so bad as you.
Last year, when we were reduced to our last guinea, she gave us
everything. She shall never leave me, until we are ruined utterly
ourselves, which does not seem far off, or until I can pay her the
utmost farthing."
"------ it, how much is it?" said the Peer with an oath. And Becky,
reflecting on the largeness of his means, mentioned not only the sum
which she had borrowed from Miss Briggs, but one of nearly double the
amount.
This caused the Lord Steyne to break out in another brief and energetic
expression of anger, at which Rebecca held down her head the more and
cried bitterly. "I could not help it. It was my only chance. I dare
not tell my husband. He would kill me if I told him what I have done.
I have kept it a secret from everybody but you--and you forced it from
me. Ah, what shall I do, Lord Steyne? for I am very, very unhappy!"
Lord Steyne made no reply except by beating the devil's tattoo and
biting his nails. At last he clapped his hat on his head and flung out
of the room. Rebecca did not rise from her attitude of misery until
the door slammed upon him and his carriage whirled away. Then she rose
up with the queerest expression of victorious mischief glittering in
her green eyes. She burst out laughing once or twice to herself, as
she sat at work, and sitting down to the piano, she rattled away a
triumphant voluntary on the keys, which made the people pause under her
window to listen to her brilliant music.
That night, there came two notes from Gaunt House for the little woman,
the one containing a card of invitation from Lord and Lady Steyne to a
dinner at Gaunt House next Friday, while the other enclosed a slip of
gray paper bearing Lord Steyne's signature and the address of Messrs.
Jones, Brown, and Robinson, Lombard Street.
Rawdon heard Becky laughing in the night once or twice. It was only
her delight at going to Gaunt House and facing the ladies there, she
said, which amused her so. But the truth was that she was occupied
with a great number of other thoughts. Should she pay off old Briggs
and give her her conge? Should she astonish Raggles by settling his
account? She turned over all these thoughts on her pillow, and on the
next day, when Rawdon went out to pay his morning visit to the Club,
Mrs. Crawley (in a modest dress with a veil on) whipped off in a
hackney-coach to the City: and being landed at Messrs. Jones and
Robinson's bank, presented a document there to the authority at the
desk, who, in reply, asked her "How she would take it?"
She gently said "she would take a hundred and fifty pounds in small
notes and the remainder in one note": and passing through St. Paul's
Churchyard stopped there and bought the handsomest black silk gown for
Briggs which money could buy; and which, with a kiss and the kindest
speeches, she presented to the simple old spinster.
Then she walked to Mr. Raggles, inquired about his children
affectionately, and gave him fifty pounds on account. Then she went to
the livery-man from whom she jobbed her carriages and gratified him
with a similar sum. "And I hope this will be a lesson to you, Spavin,"
she said, "and that on the next drawing-room day my brother, Sir Pitt,
will not be inconvenienced by being obliged to take four of us in his
carriage to wait upon His Majesty, because my own carriage is not
forthcoming." It appears there had been a difference on the last
drawing-room day. Hence the degradation which the Colonel had almost
suffered, of being obliged to enter the presence of his Sovereign in a
hack cab.
These arrangements concluded, Becky paid a visit upstairs to the
before-mentioned desk, which Amelia Sedley had given her years and
years ago, and which contained a number of useful and valuable little
things--in which private museum she placed the one note which Messrs.
Jones and Robinson's cashier had given her.
CHAPTER XLIX
In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert
When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning, Lord
Steyne (who took his chocolate in private and seldom disturbed the
females of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or when
they crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box at the
opera he surveyed them in their box on the grand tier) his lordship, we
say, appeared among the ladies and the children who were assembled over
the tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of Rebecca.
"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list for your dinner on
Friday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for Colonel and
Mrs. Crawley."
"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said in a flutter. "Lady Gaunt
writes them."
"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said, a tall and stately
lady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after she had
spoken. It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who had
offended him.
"Send the children out of the room. Go!" said he pulling at the
bell-rope. The urchins, always frightened before him, retired: their
mother would have followed too. "Not you," he said. "You stop."
"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more will you have the goodness to go
to the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?"
"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt said; "I will go
home."
"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the bailiffs at
Bareacres very pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lending
money to your relations and from your own damned tragedy airs. Who are
you to give orders here? You have no money. You've got no brains. You
were here to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired of
you, and George's wife is the only person in the family who doesn't
wish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you were."
"I wish I were," her Ladyship answered with tears and rage in her eyes.
"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while my wife, who
is an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, and never did wrong in her
life, has no objection to meet my young friend Mrs. Crawley. My Lady
Steyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best of women;
that lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, madam,
shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your
mamma?"
"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow," Lady Gaunt
said. To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his Lordship
into a good humour.
"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and never lay my hand
upon a woman, save in the way of kindness. I only wish to correct
little faults in your character. You women are too proud, and sadly
lack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne if
he were here. You mustn't give yourselves airs; you must be meek and
humble, my blessings. For all Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated,
simple, good-humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even more
innocent than herself. Her husband's character is not good, but it is
as good as Bareacres', who has played a little and not paid a great
deal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had and left you
a pauper on my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born, but she
is not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones."
"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady George cried
out--
"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the Marquis said
darkly. "If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honours; your
little boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In the
meanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but
don't give ME any airs. As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan't
demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable lady
by even hinting that it requires a defence. You will be pleased to
receive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all persons
whom I present in this house. This house?" He broke out with a laugh.
"Who is the master of it? and what is it? This Temple of Virtue belongs
to me. And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by ------ they
shall be welcome."
After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steyne
treated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared in
his household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey.
Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and she
and her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and humiliated
hearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of which
caused that innocent woman so much pleasure.
There were families in London who would have sacrificed a year's income
to receive such an honour at the hands of those great ladies. Mrs.
Frederick Bullock, for instance, would have gone on her knees from May
Fair to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had been waiting
in the City to raise her up and say, "Come to us next Friday"--not to
one of the great crushes and grand balls of Gaunt House, whither
everybody went, but to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious,
delicious entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was a
privilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.