Vanity Fair
the person whose life Rawdon wished to take. The Colonel told his
senior briefly, and in broken accents, the circumstances of the case.
"It was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her," he said. "The
bailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going out of his house;
when I wrote to her for money, she said she was ill in bed and put me
off to another day. And when I got home I found her in diamonds and
sitting with that villain alone." He then went on to describe hurriedly
the personal conflict with Lord Steyne. To an affair of that nature,
of course, he said, there was but one issue, and after his conference
with his brother, he was going away to make the necessary arrangements
for the meeting which must ensue. "And as it may end fatally with me,"
Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and as the boy has no mother, I must
leave him to you and Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if you
will promise me to be his friend."
The elder brother was much affected, and shook Rawdon's hand with a
cordiality seldom exhibited by him. Rawdon passed his hand over his
shaggy eyebrows. "Thank you, brother," said he. "I know I can trust
your word."
"I will, upon my honour," the Baronet said. And thus, and almost
mutely, this bargain was struck between them.
Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little pocket-book which he had
discovered in Becky's desk, and from which he drew a bundle of the
notes which it contained. "Here's six hundred," he said--"you didn't
know I was so rich. I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lent
it to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always felt ashamed of
having taken the poor old woman's money. And here's some more--I've
only kept back a few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get on
with." As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to give to his
brother, but his hands shook, and he was so agitated that the
pocket-book fell from him, and out of it the thousand-pound note which
had been the last of the unlucky Becky's winnings.
Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much wealth. "Not that,"
Rawdon said. "I hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongs
to." He had thought to himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap a
ball in the note and kill Steyne with it.
After this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted. Lady
Jane had heard of the Colonel's arrival, and was waiting for her
husband in the adjoining dining-room, with female instinct, auguring
evil. The door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and the
lady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers passed out of
the study. She held out her hand to Rawdon and said she was glad he
was come to breakfast, though she could perceive, by his haggard
unshorn face and the dark looks of her husband, that there was very
little question of breakfast between them. Rawdon muttered some
excuses about an engagement, squeezing hard the timid little hand which
his sister-in-law reached out to him. Her imploring eyes could read
nothing but calamity in his face, but he went away without another
word. Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation. The children
came up to salute him, and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner.
The mother took both of them close to herself, and held a hand of each
of them as they knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, and
to the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged upon chairs
on the other side of the hissing tea-urn. Breakfast was so late that
day, in consequence of the delays which had occurred, that the
church-bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal;
and Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though her
thoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion.
Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, and
knocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portal
of Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver
waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was scared also
by the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and barred the way as if
afraid that the other was going to force it. But Colonel Crawley only
took out a card and enjoined him particularly to send it in to Lord
Steyne, and to mark the address written on it, and say that Colonel
Crawley would be all day after one o'clock at the Regent Club in St.
James's Street--not at home. The fat red-faced man looked after him
with astonishment as he strode away; so did the people in their Sunday
clothes who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining faces,
the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican shutting his
shutters in the sunshine, against service commenced. The people joked
at the cab-stand about his appearance, as he took a carriage there, and
told the driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.
All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place. He
might have seen his old acquaintance Amelia on her way from Brompton to
Russell Square, had he been looking out. Troops of schools were on
their march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides of coaches in
the suburbs were thronged with people out upon their Sunday pleasure;
but the Colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena,
and, arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the room of
his old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo, who Crawley found, to his
satisfaction, was in barracks.
Captain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo man, greatly liked by
his regiment, in which want of money alone prevented him from attaining
the highest ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed. He had
been at a fast supper-party, given the night before by Captain the
Honourable George Cinqbars, at his house in Brompton Square, to several
young men of the regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps de
ballet, and old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and ranks,
and consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, opera-dancers, bruisers, and
every kind of person, in a word, was resting himself after the night's
labours, and, not being on duty, was in bed.
His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures,
presented to him by comrades as they retired from the regiment, and
married and settled into quiet life. And as he was now nearly fifty
years of age, twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had a
singular museum. He was one of the best shots in England, and, for a
heavy man, one of the best riders; indeed, he and Crawley had been
rivals when the latter was in the Army. To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo was
lying in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very fight
between the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher, which has been before
mentioned--a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved grey
head, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyed
moustache.
When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knew
perfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, and
indeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with the
greatest prudence and skill. His Royal Highness the late lamented
Commander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo on this
account, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in trouble.
"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the old warrior. "No
more gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?"
"It's about--about my wife," Crawley answered, casting down his eyes
and turning very red.
The other gave a whistle. "I always said she'd throw you over," he
began--indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubs
regarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his
wife's character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing the
savage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this opinion,
Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further.
"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain continued in a grave
tone. "Is it only suspicion, you know, or--or what is it? Any letters?
Can't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of that
sort if you can help it." "Think of his only finding her out now," the
Captain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particular
conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley's reputation had
been torn to shreds.
"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied--"and there's only a
way out of it for one of us, Mac--do you understand? I was put out of
the way--arrested--I found 'em alone together. I told him he was a
liar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him."
"Serve him right," Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"
Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.
"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he--that is, they said you--"
"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon; "do you mean that you
ever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"
"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other replied. "What the
deuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked about?"
"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite overcome; and,
covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sight
of which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince with
sympathy. "Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll put a
bullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so."
"You don't know how fond I was of that one," Rawdon said,
half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like a footman. I gave up
everything I had to her. I'm a beggar because I would marry her. By
Jove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything she
fancied; and she--she's been making a purse for herself all the time,
and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod." He then fiercely
and incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor had
never before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of the
story. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it. "She may be
innocent, after all," he said. "She says so. Steyne has been a hundred
times alone with her in the house before."
"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't look very
innocent": and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which he
had found in Becky's pocket-book. "This is what he gave her, Mac, and
she kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refused
to stand by me when I was locked up." The Captain could not but own
that the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.
Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched Captain
Macmurdo's servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the domestic
there to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had great need.
And during the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson's
Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and his second
composed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord Steyne.
Captain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne,
on the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that he
was empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements for the meeting
which, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship's intention to demand, and
which the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable.
Captain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, to
appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M.M.) might communicate, and
desired that the meeting might take place with as little delay as
possible.
In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession a
bank-note for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason to
suppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne. And he was anxious,
on the Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.