compromise. It's a painful thing for the family, but everybody
does it. There was George Kitely, Lord Ragland's son,
went through the Court last week, and was what they
call whitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay
a shilling for him, and--"
"It's not money I want," Rawdon broke in. "I'm not
come to you about myself. Never mind what happens to
me "
"What is the matter, then?" said Pitt, somewhat
relieved.
"It's the boy," said Rawdon in a husky voice. "I want
you to promise me that you will take charge of him
when I'm gone. That dear good wife of yours has always
been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he is of
his . . .--Damn it. Look here, Pitt--you know that I
was to have had Miss Crawley's money. I wasn't brought
up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to
be extravagant and kep idle. But for this I might have
been quite a different man. I didn't do my duty with the
regiment so bad. You know how I was thrown over
about the money, and who got it."
"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in
which I have stood by you, I think this sort of reproach
is useless," Sir Pitt said. "Your marriage was your own
doing, not mine."
"That's over now," said Rawdon. "That's over now."
And the words were wrenched from him with a groan,
which made his brother start.
"Good God! is she dead?" Sir Pitt said with a voice
of genuine alarm and commiseration.
"I wish I was," Rawdon replied. "If it wasn't for little
Rawdon I'd have cut my throat this morning--and that
damned villain's too."
Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that
Lord Steyne was 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
