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in the house now, there was no need for her to remain at the Gloster Coffee-House where the Portsmouth mail had set her down, and whence she ordered Mr. Bowls’s aide-de-camp the footman to bring away her trunks.
Miss Crawley, be it known, did not leave her room until near noon—taking chocolate in bed in the morning, while Becky Sharp read the Morning Post to her, or otherwise amusing herself or dawdling. The conspirators below agreed that they would spare the dear lady’s feelings until she appeared in her drawing-room: meanwhile it was announced to her, that Mrs. Bute Crawley had come up from Hampshire by the mail, was staying at the Gloster, sent her love to Miss Crawley, and asked for breakfast with Miss Briggs. The arrival of Mrs. Bute, which would not have caused any extreme delight at another period, was hailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being pleased at the notion of a gossip with her sister-in-law regarding the late Lady Crawley, the funeral arrangements pending, and Sir Pitt’s abrupt proposal to Rebecca.
It was not until the old lady was fairly ensconced in her usual arm-chair in the drawing-room, and the preliminary embraces and inquiries had taken place between the ladies, that the conspirators thought it advisable to submit her to the operation. Who has not admired the artifices and delicate approaches with which women “prepare” their friends for bad news? Miss Crawley’s two friends made such an apparatus of mystery before they broke the intelligence to her, that they worked her up to the necessary degree of doubt and alarm.
“And she refused Sir Pitt, my dear, dear Miss Crawley, prepare yourself for it,” Mrs. Bute said, “because—because she couldn’t help herself.”
“Of course there was a reason,” Miss Crawley answered. “She liked somebody else. I told Briggs so yesterday.”
“Likes somebody else!” Briggs gasped. “O my dear friend, she is married already.”
“Married already,” Mrs. Bute chimed in; and both sate with hands clasped looking from each other at their victim.
“Send her to me, the instant she comes in. The sly little wretch: how dare she not tell me?” cried out Miss Crawley.
“She won’t come in soon. Prepare yourself, dear friend—she’s gone out for a long time—she’s—she’s gone altogether.”
“Gracious goodness, and who’s to make my chocolate? Send for her and have her back: I desire that she come back,” the old lady said.
“She decamped last night, Ma’am,” cried Mrs. Bute.
“She left a letter for me,” Briggs exclaimed. “She’s married to”—
“Prepare her, for heaven’s sake. Don’t torture her, my dear Miss Briggs.”
“She’s married to whom?” cries the spinster in a nervous fury.
“To—to a relation of—”
“She refused Sir Pitt,” cried the victim. “Speak at once. Don’t drive me mad.”
“O Ma’am—prepare her, Miss Briggs—she’s married to Rawdon Crawley.”
“Rawdon married—Rebecca—governess—nobod—Get out of my house, you fool, you idiot—you stupid old Briggs—how dare you? You’re in the plot—you made him marry, thinking that I’d leave my money from him—you did, Martha,” the poor old lady screamed in hysteric sentences.
“I, Ma’am, ask a member of this family to marry a drawing-master’s daughter?”
“Her mother was a Montmorency,” cried out the old lady, pulling at the bell with all her might.
“Her mother was an opera-girl, and she has been on the stage or worse herself,” said Mrs. Bute.
Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint. They were forced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted. One fit of hysterics succeeded another. The doctor was sent for—the apothecary arrived. Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her bedside. “Her relations ought to be round about her,” that amiable woman said.
She had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a new person arrived to whom it was also necessary to break the news. This was Sir Pitt. “Where’s Becky?” he said, coming in. “Where’s her traps? She’s coming with me to Queen’s Crawley.”
“Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence regarding her surreptitious union?” Briggs asked.
“What’s that to me?” Sir Pitt asked. “I know she’s married. That makes no odds. Tell her to come down at once, and not keep me.”
“Are you not aware, sir,” Miss Briggs asked, “that she has left our roof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is nearly killed by the intelligence of Captain Rawdon’s union with her?”
When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married to his son, he broke out into a fury of language, which it would do no good to repeat in this place, as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out of the room; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure of the frenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled desire.
One day after he went to Queen’s Crawley, he burst like a madman into the room she had used when there—dashed open her boxes with his foot, and flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics. Miss Horrocks, the butler’s daughter, took some of them. The children dressed themselves and acted plays in the others. It was but a few days after the poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-place; and was laid, unwept and disregarded, in a vault full of strangers.
“Suppose the old lady doesn’t come to,” Rawdon said to his little wife, as they sate together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety; the new shawls became her wonderfully; the new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist; “suppose she don’t come round, eh, Becky?”
“I’ll make your fortune,” she said; and Delilah patted Samson’s cheek.
“You can do anything,” he said, kissing her little hand. “By Jove you can; and we’ll drive down to the Star and Garter, and dine, by Jove.”
CHAPTER 17 How Captain Dobbin bought a Piano
If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the strangest contrasts, laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very few London people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and all with a taste for moralising must have thought, with a sensation and interest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes’s assignees, or will be instructed by the executors to offer to public competition, the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar of wines of Epicurus deceased.
Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity-fairian, as he witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can’t but feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives’s remains are in the family vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciously commemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir, who is disposing of his goods. What guests at Dives’s table can pass the familiar house without a sigh?—the familiar house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven o’clock, of which the hall-doors opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up the comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining them. How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and hated each other everywhere else! He was pompous,