Street.
Rawdon heard Becky laughing in the night once or
twice. It was only her delight at going to Gaunt House
and facing the ladies there, she said, which amused her
so. But the truth was that she was occupied with a great
number of other thoughts. Should she pay off old Briggs
and give her her conge? Should she astonish Raggles
by settling his account? She turned over all these thoughts
on her pillow, and on the next day, when Rawdon went
out to pay his morning visit to the Club, Mrs. Crawley
(in a modest dress with a veil on) whipped off in a
hackney-coach to the City: and being landed at Messrs.
Jones and Robinson's bank, presented a document there
to the authority at the desk, who, in reply, asked her
"How she would take it?"
She gently said "she would take a hundred and fifty
pounds in small notes and the remainder in one note":
and passing through St. Paul's Churchyard stopped there
and bought the handsomest black silk gown for Briggs
which money could buy; and which, with a kiss and the
kindest speeches, she presented to the simple old
spinster.
Then she walked to Mr. Raggles, inquired about his
children affectionately, and gave him fifty pounds on
account. Then she went to the livery-man from whom
she jobbed her carriages and gratified him with a similar
sum. "And I hope this will be a lesson to you, Spavin,"
she said, "and that on the next drawing-room day my
brother, Sir Pitt, will not be inconvenienced by being
obliged to take four of us in his carriage to wait upon
His Majesty, because my own carriage is not forthcoming."
It appears there had been a difference on the last
drawing-room day. Hence the degradation which the
Colonel had almost suffered, of being obliged to enter
the presence of his Sovereign in a hack cab.
These arrangements concluded, Becky paid a visit
upstairs to the before-mentioned desk, which Amelia
Sedley had given her years and years ago, and which
contained a number of useful and valuable little things--in
which private museum she placed the one note which
Messrs. Jones and Robinson's cashier had given her.
CHAPTER XLIX
In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert
When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that
morning, Lord Steyne (who took his chocolate in private
and seldom disturbed the females of his household,
or saw them except upon public days, or when they
crossed each other in the hall, or when from his
pit-box at the opera he surveyed them in their box on the
grand tier) his lordship, we say, appeared among the
ladies and the children who were assembled over the
tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of
Rebecca.
"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list
for your dinner on Friday; and I want you, if you please,
to write a card for Colonel and Mrs. Crawley."
"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said in a flutter.
"Lady Gaunt writes them."
"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said,
a tall and stately lady, who looked up for an instant
and then down again after she had spoken. It was not
good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who had
offended him.
"Send the children out of the room. Go!" said he
pulling at the bell-rope. The urchins, always frightened
before him, retired: their mother would have followed
too. "Not you," he said. "You stop."
"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more will you have
the goodness to go to the desk and write that card for
your dinner on Friday?"
"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt
said; "I will go home."
"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find
the bailiffs at Bareacres very pleasant company, and I
shall be freed from lending money to your relations and
from your own damned tragedy airs. Who are you to
give orders here? You have no money. You've got no
brains. You were here to have children, and you have
not had any. Gaunt's tired of you, and George's wife
is the only person in the family who doesn't wish you
were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you were."
"I wish I were," her Ladyship answered with tears
and rage in her eyes.
"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while
my wife, who is an immaculate saint, as everybody knows,
and never did wrong in her life, has no objection to meet
my young friend Mrs. Crawley. My Lady Steyne knows
that appearances are sometimes against the best of
women; that lies are often told about the most innocent
of them. Pray, madam, shall I tell you some little
anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your mamma?"
"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel
blow," Lady Gaunt said. To see his wife and daughter
suffering always put his Lordship into a good humour.
"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and
never lay my hand upon a woman, save in the way of
kindness. I only wish to correct little faults in your
character. You women are too proud, and sadly lack
humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady
Steyne if he were here. You mustn't give yourselves airs;
you must be meek and humble, my blessings. For all
Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated, simple, good-
humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even more
innocent than herself. Her husband's character is not
good, but it is as good as Bareacres', who has played
a little and not paid a great deal, who cheated you out
of the only legacy you ever had and left you a pauper
on my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born,
but she is not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor,
the first de la Jones."
"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady
George cried out--
"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the
Marquis said darkly. "If Gaunt dies, your husband may
come to his honours; your little boys may inherit them,
and who knows what besides? In the meanwhile, ladies,
be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but don't
give ME any airs. As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I
shan't demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly
irreproachable lady by even hinting that it requires a
defence. You will be pleased to receive her with the
utmost cordiality, as you will receive all persons whom
I present in this house. This house?" He broke out with
a laugh. "Who is the master of it? and what is it?
This Temple of Virtue belongs to me. And if I invite all
Newgate or all Bedlam here, by -- they shall be
welcome."
After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort
Lord Steyne treated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms
of insubordination appeared in his household, the
crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey. Lady Gaunt
wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and
she and her mother-in-law drove in person, and with
bitter and humiliated hearts, to leave the cards on Mrs.
Rawdon, the reception of which caused that innocent
woman so much pleasure.
There were families in London who would have
sacrificed a year's income to receive such an honour at the
hands of those great ladies. Mrs. Frederick Bullock, for
instance, would have gone on her knees from May Fair
to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had
been waiting in the City to raise her up and say, "Come
to us next Friday"--not to one of the great crushes and
grand balls of Gaunt House, whither everybody went, but
to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious, delicious
entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was a
privilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.
Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the
very highest rank in Vanity Fair. The distinguished
courtesy with which Lord Steyne treated her charmed
everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused the severest
critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to
own that his Lordship's heart at least was in the right
place.
The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to
their aid, in order to repulse the common enemy. One
of Lady Gaunt's carriages went to Hill Street for her
Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were in the hands
of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was
said, had been seized by those inexorable Israelites.
Bareacres Castle was theirs, too, with all its costly
pictures, furniture, and articles of vertu--the magnificent
Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; the Lawrence
portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago,
deemed as precious as works of real genius; the matchless
Dancing Nymph of Canova, for which Lady Bareacres
had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacres splendid then,
and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless,
bald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of
state. Her lord, painted at the same time by Lawrence,
as waving his sabre in front of Bareacres Castle, and
clothed in his uniform as Colonel of the Thistlewood
Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a
greatcoat and a Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of
mornings chiefly and dining alone at clubs. He did not
like to dine with Steyne now. They had run races of
pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the
winner. But Steyne had more bottom than he and had lasted
him out. The Marquis was ten times a greater man now
than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, and Bareacres
nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken
down. He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to
find it pleasant to meet his old comrade often. The latter,
whenever he wished to be merry, used jeeringly to ask
Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to see her.
"He has not been here for four months," Lord Steyne
would say. "I can always tell by my cheque-book
afterwards, when I get a visit from Bareacres. What a
comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of my sons'
fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!"
Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the
honour to encounter on this her first presentation to the
grand world, it does not become the present historian
to say much. There was his Excellency the Prince of
Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly
girthed, with a large military chest, on which the plaque
of his order shone magnificently, and wearing the red
collar of the Golden Fleece round his neck. He was the
owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. I think he
must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to
Lord Steyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long,
solemn, and white, with the ornament round his neck,.
bore some resemblance to that of a venerable bell-wether.
There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly
attached to the American Embassy and correspondent
of the New York Demagogue, who, by way of making
himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,
during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his
dear friend, George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and
George had been most intimate at Naples and had gone
up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a full and
particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in
the Demagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of
all the guests, giving biographical sketches of the principal
people. He described the persons of the ladies with
great eloquence; the service of the table; the size and
costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines
served; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable
value of the plate. Such a dinner he calculated could not
be dished up under fifteen or eighteen dollars per head.
And he was in the habit, until very lately, of sending
over proteges, with letters of recommendation to the
present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the
intimate terms on which he had lived with his dear
friend, the late lord. He was most indignant that a
young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl of Southdown,
should have taken the pas of him in their procession to
the dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my
hand to a very pleasing and witty fashionable, the
brilliant and exclusive Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote
--"the young patrician interposed between me and the
lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology.
I was fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the
lady's husband, a stout red-faced warrior who
distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had better luck
than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."
The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite
society wore as many blushes as the face of a boy of
sixteen assumes when he is confronted with his sister's
schoolfellows. It has been told before that honest Rawdon
had not been much used at any period of his life to
ladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess
room, he was well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke,
or play at billiards with the boldest of them. He had had
his time for female friendships too, but that was twenty
years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those with
whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as
having been familiar before he became abashed in the
presence of Miss Hardcastle. The times are such that
one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of company
which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are
frequenting every day, which nightly fills casinos and
dancing-rooms, which is known to exist as well as the
Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at St. James's
--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral
of societies is determined to ignore. In a word, although
Colonel Crawley was now five-and-forty years of age,
it had not been his lot in life to meet with a half dozen
