Vanity Fair
Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the very highest rank
in Vanity Fair. The distinguished courtesy with which Lord Steyne
treated her charmed everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused the
severest critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to own
that his Lordship's heart at least was in the right place.
The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to their aid, in
order to repulse the common enemy. One of Lady Gaunt's carriages went
to Hill Street for her Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were in
the hands of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was said,
had been seized by those inexorable Israelites. Bareacres Castle was
theirs, too, with all its costly pictures, furniture, and articles of
vertu--the magnificent Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; the
Lawrence portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemed
as precious as works of real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph of
Canova, for which Lady Bareacres had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacres
splendid then, and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless,
bald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of state. Her lord,
painted at the same time by Lawrence, as waving his sabre in front of
Bareacres Castle, and clothed in his uniform as Colonel of the
Thistlewood Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a greatcoat and
a Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of mornings chiefly and dining
alone at clubs. He did not like to dine with Steyne now. They had run
races of pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the winner. But
Steyne had more bottom than he and had lasted him out. The Marquis was
ten times a greater man now than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, and
Bareacres nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken down.
He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to find it pleasant to meet
his old comrade often. The latter, whenever he wished to be merry,
used jeeringly to ask Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to see
her. "He has not been here for four months," Lord Steyne would say. "I
can always tell by my cheque-book afterwards, when I get a visit from
Bareacres. What a comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of my
sons' fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!"
Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounter
on this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not become
the present historian to say much. There was his Excellency the Prince
of Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with a
large military chest, on which the plaque of his order shone
magnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece round
his neck. He was the owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. I
think he must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to Lord
Steyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white,
with the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of a
venerable bell-wether.
There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the
American Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, by
way of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,
during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend,
George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimate
at Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a full
and particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in the
Demagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, giving
biographical sketches of the principal people. He described the
persons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;
the size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines
served; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of the
plate. Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up under
fifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, until
very lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendation
to the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate
terms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord. He
was most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl
of Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession to
the dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to a
very pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between me
and the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I was
fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stout
red-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had
better luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."
The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore as
many blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he is
confronted with his sister's schoolfellows. It has been told before
that honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life to
ladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess room, he was
well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with the
boldest of them. He had had his time for female friendships too, but
that was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those
with whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having been
familiar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle.
The times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of
company which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequenting
every day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which is
known to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at
St. James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral of
societies is determined to ignore. In a word, although Colonel Crawley
was now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life to
meet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife. All
except her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamed
and won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his first
dinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark except
to state that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have left
him at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by her
side to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first
appearance in polite society.
On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her hand,
and greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to Lady
Steyne, and their ladyships, her daughters. Their ladyships made three
stately curtsies, and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to the
newcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.
Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing a
reverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master, put
herself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordship
had been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she, Becky,
had learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from the days of
her childhood. The fact is that Lord Steyne had once purchased a
couple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan could
never forget her gratitude for that favour.
The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance--to whom the
Colonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance: it was returned
with severe dignity by the exalted person in question.
"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at Brussels,
ten years ago," Becky said in the most winning manner. "I had the good
fortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, the
night before the Battle of Waterloo. And I recollect your Ladyship,
and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting in the carriage in the
porte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship's
diamonds are safe."
Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The famous diamonds
had undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, of
course, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown into
a window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as Rawdon
told him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and "knuckling down
by Jove," to Mrs. Crawley. "I think I needn't be afraid of THAT
woman," Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged terrified and
angry looks with her daughter and retreated to a table, where she began
to look at pictures with great energy.
When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, the
conversation was carried on in the French language, and the Lady
Bareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther mortification,
that Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with that tongue, and
spoke it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met other
Hungarian magnates with the army in France in 1816-17. She asked after
her friends with great interest. The foreign personages thought that she
was a lady of great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess asked
severally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom they conducted to
dinner, who was that petite dame who spoke so well?
Finally, the procession being formed in the order described by the
American diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the banquet
was served, and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it,
he shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his fancy.
But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of war
would come. And then indeed the little woman found herself in such a
situation as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's
caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere.
As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irishmen; so,
assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women. When poor little
Becky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither the
great ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched away and took
possession of a table of drawings. When Becky followed them to the
table of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire again. She
tried to speak to one of the children (of whom she was commonly fond in
public places), but Master George Gaunt was called away by his mamma;
and the stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady
Steyne herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless little
woman.
"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with a
blush, "says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wish
you would do me the kindness to sing to me."
"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or to
you," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at the
piano, began to sing.
She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites of
Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the lady,
lingering round the piano, sat down by its side and listened until the
tears rolled down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies at
the other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing and
talking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours. She was a
child again--and had wandered back through a forty years' wilderness to
her convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones, the
organist, the sister whom she loved best of the community, had taught
them to her in those early happy days. She was a girl once more, and
the brief period of her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she
started when the jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laugh
from Lord Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety.