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.
When she found how her friend was situated, and how
having a snug legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no
object to our gentlewoman, Becky instantly formed some
benevolent little domestic plans concerning her. This
was just such a companion as would suit her establishment,
and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her
that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little
darling Rawdon.
Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into
the lion's den, "wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my
words, and as sure as my name is Bowls." And Briggs
promised to be very cautious. The upshot of which
caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next
week, and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds
upon annuity before six months were over.
CHAPTER XLI
In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors
So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned
of their arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a
couple of places in the same old High-flyer coach by
which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct Baronet's
company, on her first journey into the world some nine
years before. How well she remembered the Inn Yard,
and the ostler to whom she refused money, and the
insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in his coat on
the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would
have liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by
the coachman and talked about horses and the road the
whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the
coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when
he and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a
carriage and a pair of horses received them, with a
coachman in black. "It's the old drag, Rawdon," Rebecca said
as they got in. "The worms have eaten the cloth a good
deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson
the Ironmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made
such a noise about. It was a bottle of cherry brandy he
broke which we went to fetch for your aunt from
Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't be Polly
Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at
the cottage there. I remember her a mangy little urchin
picking weeds in the garden."
"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the
cottage gave him, by two fingers applied to his crape
hatband. Becky bowed and saluted, and recognized
people here and there graciously. These recognitions were
inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if she was
not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home
of her ancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast
down, on the other hand. What recollections of boyhood
and innocence might have been flitting across his brain?
What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?
"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca
said, thinking of those girls for the first time perhaps
since she had left them.
"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel. "Hullo!
here's old Mother Lock. How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember
me, don't you? Master Rawdon, hey? Dammy how
those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a
boy."
They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old
Mrs. Lock, whose hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking,
as she flung open the creaking old iron gate, and the
carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars
surmounted by the dove and serpent.
"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said,
looking about, and then was silent--so was Becky. Both
of them were rather agitated, and thinking of old times.
He about Eton, and his mother, whom he remembered,
a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom
he had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash
Pitt; and about little Rawdy at home. And Rebecca
thought about her own youth and the dark secrets of
those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life
by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and
Amelia.
The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite
clean. A grand painted hatchment was already over the
great entrance, and two very solemn and tall personages
in black flung open each a leaf of the door as the
carriage pulled up at the familiar steps. Rawdon turned red,
and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the
old hall, arm in arm. She pinched her husband's arm
as they entered the oak parlour, where Sir Pitt and his
wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt in black, Lady
Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large black
head-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her
Ladyship's head like an undertaker's tray.
Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit
the premises. She contented herself by preserving a
solemn and stony silence, when in company of Pitt and
his rebellious wife, and by frightening the children in
the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour.
Only a very faint bending of the head-dress and plumes
