Vanity Fair
"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the Countess.
"I believe I am the head of this family," Sir Pitt repeated; "and
however much I may regret any circumstance which may lead to your
Ladyship quitting this house, must, if you please, continue to govern
it as I see fit."
Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth
and ordered that horses might be put to her carriage. If her son and
daughter turned her out of their house, she would hide her sorrows
somewhere in loneliness and pray for their conversion to better
thoughts.
"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said the timid Lady Jane
imploringly.
"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady should meet, and I
will have my horses to-morrow morning."
"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation," said Sir Pitt,
rising and throwing himself into an attitude of command, like the
portrait of a Gentleman in the Exhibition, "and begin. 'Queen's
Crawley, September 14, 1822.--My dear brother--'"
Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth, who had been
waiting for a sign of weakness or vacillation on the part of her
son-in-law, rose and, with a scared look, left the library. Lady Jane
looked up to her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her
mamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.
"She won't go away," he said. "She has let her house at Brighton and
has spent her last half-year's dividends. A Countess living at an inn
is a ruined woman. I have been waiting long for an opportunity--to
take this--this decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it
is impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family: and now, if
you please, we will resume the dictation. 'My dear brother, the
melancholy intelligence which it is my duty to convey to my family must
have been long anticipated by,'" &c.
In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having by good luck, or
desert rather, as he considered, assumed almost all the fortune which
his other relatives had expected, was determined to treat his family
kindly and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley once more.
It pleased him to think that he should be its chief. He proposed to
use the vast influence that his commanding talents and position must
speedily acquire for him in the county to get his brother placed and
his cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little sting of
repentance as he thought that he was the proprietor of all that they
had hoped for. In the course of three or four days' reign his bearing
was changed and his plans quite fixed: he determined to rule justly
and honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the friendliest
possible terms with all the relations of his blood.
So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn and elaborate
letter, containing the profoundest observations, couched in the longest
words, and filling with wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote
under her husband's order. "What an orator this will be," thought she,
"when he enters the House of Commons" (on which point, and on the
tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had sometimes dropped hints to his wife
in bed); "how wise and good, and what a genius my husband is! I
fancied him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!"
The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the letter by heart and
had studied it, with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long
before he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife.
This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordingly
despatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother the Colonel, in London.
Rawdon Crawley was but half-pleased at the receipt of it. "What's the
use of going down to that stupid place?" thought he. "I can't stand
being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there and back will cost
us twenty pound."
He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky, upstairs
in her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he always made and took to
her of a morning.
He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on the dressing-table,
before which Becky sat combing her yellow hair. She took up the
black-edged missive, and having read it, she jumped up from the chair,
crying "Hurray!" and waving the note round her head.
"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure capering about in
a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with tawny locks dishevelled. "He's
not left us anything, Becky. I had my share when I came of age."
"You'll never be of age, you silly old man," Becky replied. "Run out
now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must have some mourning: and get a crape
on your hat, and a black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; order
it to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able to start on
Thursday."
"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed.
"Of course I mean to go. I mean that Lady Jane shall present me at
Court next year. I mean that your brother shall give you a seat in
Parliament, you stupid old creature. I mean that Lord Steyne shall
have your vote and his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be
an Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor: or a Treasurer, or a
Consul, or some such thing."
"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money," grumbled Rawdon.
"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to be present at the
funeral, as he is a relation of the family: but, no--I intend that we
shall go by the coach. They'll like it better. It seems more humble--"
"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked.
"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to travel bodkin
between you and me. Let him stay here in the nursery, and Briggs can
make him a black frock. Go you, and do as I bid you. And you had best
tell Sparks, your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will come
in for something considerable when the affairs are arranged. He'll
tell this to Raggles, who has been pressing for money, and it will
console poor Raggles." And so Becky began sipping her chocolate.
When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening, he found Becky
and her companion, who was no other than our friend Briggs, busy
cutting, ripping, snipping, and tearing all sorts of black stuffs
available for the melancholy occasion.
"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency for the death
of our Papa," Rebecca said. "Sir Pitt Crawley is dead, my lord. We
have been tearing our hair all the morning, and now we are tearing up
our old clothes."
"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could say as she
turned up her eyes.
"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord. "So that old scoundrel's
dead, is he? He might have been a Peer if he had played his cards
better. Mr. Pitt had very nearly made him; but he ratted always at the
wrong time. What an old Silenus it was!"
"I might have been Silenus's widow," said Rebecca. "Don't you remember,
Miss Briggs, how you peeped in at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on his
knees to me?" Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this
reminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered her to go
downstairs and make him a cup of tea.
Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided as guardian of her
innocence and reputation. Miss Crawley had left her a little annuity.
She would have been content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady
Jane, who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady Southdown
dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency permitted; and Mr. Pitt
(who thought himself much injured by the uncalled-for generosity of his
deceased relative towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's
faithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that exercise
of the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin likewise received their
legacies and their dismissals, and married and set up a lodging-house,
according to the custom of their kind.
Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country, but found that
attempt was vain after the better society to which she had been
accustomed. Briggs's friends, small tradesmen, in a country town,
quarrelled over Miss Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and more
openly than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's inheritance.
Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called his sister a
purse-proud aristocrat, because she would not advance a part of her
capital to stock his shop; and she would have done so most likely, but
that their sister, a dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the
hatter and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how their brother
was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took possession of Briggs for a
while. The dissenting shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to
college and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two families got
a great portion of her private savings out of her, and finally she fled
to London followed by the anathemas of both, and determined to seek for
servitude again as infinitely less onerous than liberty. And
advertising in the papers that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable manners, and
accustomed to the best society, was anxious to," &c., she took up her
residence with Mr. Bowls in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of
the advertisement.
So it was that she fell in with Rebecca. Mrs. Rawdon's dashing little
carriage and ponies was whirling down the street one day, just as Miss
Briggs, fatigued, had reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to
the Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for the sixth
time. Rebecca was driving, and at once recognized the gentlewoman with
agreeable manners, and being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as we
have seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the ponies at
the doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom, and jumping out, had hold
of both Briggs's hands, before she of the agreeable manners had
recovered from the shock of seeing an old friend.
Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and kissed the gentlewoman
as soon as they got into the passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's
front parlour, with the red moreen curtains, and the round
looking-glass, with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of
the ticket in the window which announced "Apartments to Let."
Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobs
and ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salute
an old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for though
people meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upon
discovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked each
other, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the time
when they last quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history,
and Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessness
and candour.
Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in the passage to the
hysterical sniffling and giggling which went on in the front parlour.
Becky had never been a favourite of hers. Since the establishment of
the married couple in London they had frequented their former friends
of the house of Raggles, and did not like the latter's account of the
Colonel's menage. "I wouldn't trust him, Ragg, my boy," Bowls
remarked; and his wife, when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, only
saluted the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers were like so
many sausages, cold and lifeless, when she held them out in deference
to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted in shaking hands with the retired lady's
maid. She whirled away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of
smiles towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window close under
the advertisement-card, and at the next moment was in the park with a
half-dozen of dandies cantering after her carriage.