Vanity Fair (76 page)

While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing,
and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe
bringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the
heartless man. These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark
than that of the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized
among his the handwriting of his sister, who always crossed and
recrossed her letters to her brother—gathered together all the
possible bad news which she could collect, abused him and read him
lectures with sisterly frankness, and always left him miserable for
the day after "dearest William" had achieved the perusal of one of
her epistles—the truth must be told that dearest William did not
hurry himself to break the seal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited
for a particularly favourable day and mood for doing so. A
fortnight before, moreover, he had written to scold her for telling
those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne, and had despatched a letter in
reply to that lady, undeceiving her with respect to the reports
concerning him and assuring her that "he had no sort of present
intention of altering his condition."

Two or three nights after the arrival of the second package of
letters, the Major had passed the evening pretty cheerfully at Lady
O'Dowd's house, where Glorvina thought that he listened with rather
more attention than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the
Minsthrel Boy, and one or two other specimens of song with which she
favoured him (the truth is, he was no more listening to Glorvina
than to the howling of the jackals in the moonlight outside, and the
delusion was hers as usual), and having played his game at chess
with her (cribbage with the surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite
evening pastime), Major Dobbin took leave of the Colonel's family at
his usual hour and retired to his own house.

There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching him. He
took it up, ashamed rather of his negligence regarding it, and
prepared himself for a disagreeable hour's communing with that
crabbed-handed absent relative. . . . It may have been an hour
after the Major's departure from the Colonel's house—Sir Michael
was sleeping the sleep of the just; Glorvina had arranged her black
ringlets in the innumerable little bits of paper, in which it was
her habit to confine them; Lady O'Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in
the nuptial chamber, on the ground-floor, and had tucked her
musquito curtains round her fair form, when the guard at the gates
of the Commanding-Officer's compound beheld Major Dobbin, in the
moonlight, rushing towards the house with a swift step and a very
agitated countenance, and he passed the sentinel and went up to the
windows of the Colonel's bedchamber.

"O'Dowd—Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great shouting.

"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers, putting out her
head too, from her window.

"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting there was a
fire in the station, or that the route had come from headquarters.

"I—I must have leave of absence. I must go to England—on the most
urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.

"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina, trembling with
all the papillotes.

"I want to be off—now—to-night," Dobbin continued; and the Colonel
getting up, came out to parley with him.

In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the Major had just
come upon a paragraph, to the following effect:—"I drove yesterday
to see your old ACQUAINTANCE, Mrs. Osborne. The wretched place they
live at, since they were bankrupts, you know—Mr. S., to judge from
a BRASS PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better) is a
coal-merchant. The little boy, your godson, is certainly a fine
child, though forward, and inclined to be saucy and self-willed.
But we have taken notice of him as you wish it, and have introduced
him to his aunt, Miss O., who was rather pleased with him. Perhaps
his grandpapa, not the bankrupt one, who is almost doting, but Mr.
Osborne, of Russell Square, may be induced to relent towards the
child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND SELF-WILLED SON. And Amelia
will not be ill-disposed to give him up. The widow is CONSOLED, and
is about to marry a reverend gentleman, the Rev. Mr. Binny, one of
the curates of Brompton. A poor match. But Mrs. O. is getting old,
and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair—she was in very good
spirits: and your little godson overate himself at our house.
Mamma sends her love with that of your affectionate, Ann Dobbin."

A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire

Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street,
still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there
as a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this
heraldic emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of
furniture, and all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant
than it had ever been during the late baronet's reign. The black
outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they appeared with a
cheerful, blushing face streaked with white: the old bronze lions of
the knocker were gilt handsomely, the railings painted, and the
dismallest house in Great Gaunt Street became the smartest in the
whole quarter, before the green leaves in Hampshire had replaced
those yellowing ones which were on the trees in Queen's Crawley
Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them for the last
time.

A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seen
about this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little
boy, also might be remarked coming thither daily. It was Miss
Briggs and little Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward
renovation of Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band
engaged in stitching the blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in
the drawers and cupboards crammed with the dirty relics and
congregated trumperies of a couple of generations of Lady Crawleys,
and to take inventories of the china, the glass, and other
properties in the closets and store-rooms.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements,
with full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or
purchase furniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an
occupation which gave full scope to her taste and ingenuity. The
renovation of the house was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to
town in November to see his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a
week in Curzon Street, under the roof of his affectionate brother
and sister.

He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard
of the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned
in an hour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her
side. It was impossible sometimes to resist this artless little
creature's hospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly
and amiably offered. Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of
gratitude when he agreed to come. "Thank you," she said, squeezing
it and looking into the Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal;
"how happy this will make Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom,
leading on the servants, who were carrying his trunks thither. She
came in herself laughing, with a coal-scuttle out of her own room.

A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was Miss
Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with the
maid). "I knew I should bring you," she said with pleasure beaming
in her glance. Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him
for a guest.

Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt
stayed with them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone
with her and Briggs. She went downstairs to the kitchen and
actually cooked little dishes for him. "Isn't it a good salmi?" she
said; "I made it for you. I can make you better dishes than that,
and will when you come to see me."

"Everything you do, you do well," said the Baronet gallantly. "The
salmi is excellent indeed."

"A poor man's wife," Rebecca replied gaily, "must make herself
useful, you know"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that "she was
fit to be the wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic
duties was surely one of the most charming of woman's qualities."
And Sir Pitt thought, with something like mortification, of Lady
Jane at home, and of a certain pie which she had insisted on making,
and serving to him at dinner—a most abominable pie.

Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from
his lordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law
a bottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him from
France, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;
whereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the
Marquis of Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the
Baronet's pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.

Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave
him her hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug
on the sofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the
tenderest kindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for
her dear little boy. Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly
humble and virtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-
box. It had got to be too small for Rawdon long before it was
finished.

Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him,
she coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and
more glad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to
the blazing fire in Curzon Street—a gladness in which the men of
law likewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest-
-and so that when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing.
How pretty she looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and
waving her handkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail!
She put the handkerchief to her eyes once. He pulled his sealskin
cap over his, as the coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought
to himself how she respected him and how he deserved it, and how
Rawdon was a foolish dull fellow who didn't half-appreciate his
wife; and how mum and stupid his own wife was compared to that
brilliant little Becky. Becky had hinted every one of these things
herself, perhaps, but so delicately and gently that you hardly knew
when or where. And, before they parted, it was agreed that the
house in London should be redecorated for the next season, and that
the brothers' families should meet again in the country at
Christmas.

"I wish you could have got a little money out of him," Rawdon said
to his wife moodily when the Baronet was gone. "I should like to
give something to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't. It ain't
right, you know, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his
money. It may be inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else
besides us, you know."

"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are
settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on
account. Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy," and she took
from her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had
handed over to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the
younger branch of the Crawleys.

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her
husband expressed a wish that she should venture—tried it ever so
delicately, and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about
embarrassments, Sir Pitt Crawley was off and alarmed. And he began
a long speech, explaining how straitened he himself was in money
matters; how the tenants would not pay; how his father's affairs,
and the expenses attendant upon the demise of the old gentleman, had
involved him; how he wanted to pay off incumbrances; and how the
bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt Crawley ended by making
a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving her a very small sum
for the benefit of her little boy.

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be. It
could not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old
diplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that
houses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing. He knew very
well that he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,
according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his
younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of
remorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some
act of justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these
disappointed relations. A just, decent man, not without brains, who
said his prayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly
through life, he could not be otherwise than aware that something
was due to his brother at his hands, and that morally he was
Rawdon's debtor.

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now
and then, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B., or 10 pounds
from W. T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the
said A. B. or W. T., which payments the penitents beg the Right
Honourable gentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public
press—so is the Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise,
always perfectly sure that the above-named A. B. and W. T. are
only paying a very small instalment of what they really owe, and
that the man who sends up a twenty-pound note has very likely
hundreds or thousands more for which he ought to account. Such, at
least, are my feelings, when I see A. B. or W. T.'s insufficient
acts of repentance. And I have no doubt that Pitt Crawley's
contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his younger brother, by
whom he had so much profited, was only a very small dividend upon
the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not everybody is
willing to pay even so much. To part with money is a sacrifice
beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order. There is
scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for
giving his neighbour five pounds. Thriftless gives, not from a
beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending.
He would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not
his horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus
the five pounds. Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man
a penny, turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or
denies a poor relation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the
two. Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.