"I'll see him d-- before I take his place," growled
out Rawdon.
"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr.
Wenham calmly resumed; "and now, in the name of
common sense and justice, tell me why?"
"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.
"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick
on the ground.
"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most
agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of
the world--as an honest man--and see if you have not
been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in
Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance
strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times
before in the same position? Upon my honour and word
as a gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on
his waistcoat with a parliamentary air--"I declare I think
that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly
unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman
who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."
"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's
mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo.
"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my
wife, Mrs. Wenham," Mr. Wenham said with great
energy. "I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy,
my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm
and old man of high station, his constant friend and
benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour,
his son's future reputation, and his own prospects in
life."
"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham
continued with great solemnity; "I was sent for this
morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state,
as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of
age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with
a man of your strength. I say to your face; it was a
cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel
Crawley. It was not only the body of my noble and
excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and
regarded with affection had subjected him to the foulest
indignity. What was this very appointment, which appears
in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to
you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found him
in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you
are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by
blood. You know he has given his proofs, I presume,
Colonel Crawley?"
"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel. "Nobody
ever said he hadn't."
"His first order to me was to write a letter of
challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley. One or
other of us," he said, "must not survive the outrage
of last night."
Crawley nodded. "You're coming to the point,
Wenham," he said.
"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. Good God!
sir," I said, "how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself
had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's invitation to sup with
her!"
"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo
said.
"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop
--no, this is another paper--I thought I had h, but it's
of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the
fact. If we had come--and it was only one of Mrs.
Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers
under them a good deal, especially in the spring--if we
had come, and you had returned home, there would have
been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion--and so it is
positively because my poor wife has a headache that you
are to bring death down upon two men of honour and
plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families
in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow."
Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air
of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a
kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not
believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?
Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory,
which in his place in Parliament he had so often
practised--"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's
bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him
that the circumstances were after all suspicious--they
were suspicious. I acknowledge it--any man in your
position might have been taken in--I said that a man
furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel
between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties
concerned--that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had
no right in these days, when the most atrocious
revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a
public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common
people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I
implored him not to send the challenge."
"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said
Rawdon, grinding his teeth. "I believe it a d-- lie, and
that you're in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don't
come from him, by Jove it shall come from me."
Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage
interruption of the Colonel and looked towards the door.
But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That
gentleman rose up with an oath and rebuked Rawdon
for his language. "You put the affair into my hands, and
you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do.
You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort
of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an
apology. And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you
may get somebody else to carry it, I won't. If my lord,
after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him.
And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my
belief is, there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's
innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at
any rate that you would be a d--fool not to take the
place and hold your tongue."
"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,"
Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved--"I forget
any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the
irritation of the moment."
"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.
"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said
good-naturedly. "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and
quite right, too."
"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried,
"ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion. A
word concerning it should never pass these doors. I
speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel
Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."
"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very
much," said Captain Macmurdo; "and I don't see why
our side should. The affair ain't a very pretty one, any
way you take it, and the less said about it the better.
It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."
Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain
Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon
himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving Rawdon chafing
within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an
expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.
"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.
"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the
other with a smile. "Upon my honour and conscience
now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the opera."
"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-
aches. I say, I've got a thousand-pound note here, which
I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and
I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne.
My man shan't fight him. But we had rather not take
his money."
"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the
other said with the utmost innocence of manner; and was
bowed down the Club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just
as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a slight
acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the
Captain, going back with the Baronet to the room where the
latter's brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he
had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and
the Colonel.
Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence,
and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful
issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks
upon the evils of duelling and the unsatisfactory nature
of that sort of settlement of disputes.
And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence
to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife.
He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made,
pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted
his own firm belief in her innocence.
But Rawdon would not hear of it. "She has kep money
concealed from me these ten years," he said "She swore,
last night only, she had none from Steyne. She knew it
was all up, directly I found it. If she's not guilty, Pitt,
she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her again--
never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke
the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.
"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.
Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of
taking the place which had been procured for him by so
odious a patron, and was also for removing the boy
from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had placed
him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these
benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo,
but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a
fury Steyne would be in to think that his enemy's
fortune was made through his means.
When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his
accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and
congratulated himself and the Service upon having made
so excellent an appointment. These congratulations were
received with a degree of gratitude which may be
imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.
The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel
Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as
Wenham said; that is, by the seconds and the principals.
But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty
dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself
went to seven evening parties and told the story with
comments and emendations at each place. How Mrs.
Washington White revelled in it! The Bishopess of Ealing
was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House
that very day. Little Southdown was sorry; so you may
be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry. Lady
Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of
Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days,
and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions
of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.
The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in
Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little
mansion was in the meanwhile--where? Who cared! Who
asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all
know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict
of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people
said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne,
whilst others averred that his Lordship quitted that city
and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky's arrival; some
said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame
d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was
at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at
Cheltenham.
Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may
be sure that she was a woman who could make a little
money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have
paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no
money on the strength of his salary. He remitted,
however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little
boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars
and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot
pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette,
in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose
wife was not asked to Government House, declared that
his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero
was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used
to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.
His mother never made any movement to see the child.
He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he
soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and
rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to
Hampshire.
CHAPTER LVI
Georgy is Made a Gentleman
Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his
grandfather's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his
father's room in the house and heir apparent of all the
splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and
gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's
heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever
he had been of the elder George.
The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than
had been awarded his father. Osborne's commerce had
prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and
importance in the City had very much increased. He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George
