Vanity Fair. Уильям Мейкпис Теккерей
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splendour, and with a numerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill. But we must not let the recollections of this good fellow cause us to diverge from the principal history.
I do hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs. Crawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a visit to so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whom they proposed to honour with a visit were not merely out of fashion, but out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no possible manner. Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable old house where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked by brokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures given up to public desecration and plunder. A month after her flight, she had bethought her of Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse-laugh, had expressed a perfect willingness to see young George Osborne again. “He’s a very agreeable acquaintance, Beck,” the wag added. “I’d like to sell him another horse, Beck. I’d like to play a few more games at billiards with him. He’d be what I call useful just now, Mrs. C.—ha, ha!” by which sort of speech it is not to be supposed that Rawdon Crawley had a deliberate desire to cheat Mr. Osborne at play, but only wished to take that fair advantage of him which almost every sporting gentleman in Vanity Fair considers to be his due from his neighbour.
The old aunt was long in “coming to.” A month had elapsed. Rawdon was denied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgement in the house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened. Miss Crawley never stirred out—she was unwell—and Mrs. Bute remained still and never left her. Crawley and his wife both of them augured evil from the continued presence of Mrs. Bute.
“Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us together at Queen’s Crawley,” Rawdon said.
“What an artful little woman!” ejaculated Rebecca.
“Well, I don’t regret it, if you don’t,” the Captain cried, still in an amorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by way of reply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidence of her husband.
“If he had but a little more brains,” she thought to herself, “I might make something of him”; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatest interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and Bob Martingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom Cinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase. When he came home she was alert and happy; when he went out she pressed him to go; when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don’t know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles, which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm—I don’t mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it; we call this pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and Cornelia’s husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was—only in a different way.
By these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley, found himself converted into a very happy and submissive married man. His former haunts knew him not. They asked about him once or twice at his clubs, but did not miss him much; in those booths of Vanity Fair people seldom do miss each other. His secluded wife ever smiling and cheerful, his little comfortable lodgings, snug meals, and homely evenings, had all the charms of novelty and secrecy. The marriage was not yet declared to the world, or published in the Morning Post. All his creditors would have come rushing on him in a body, had they known that he was united to a woman without fortune. “My relations won’t cry fie upon me,” Becky said, with rather a bitter laugh; and she was quite contented to wait until the old aunt should be reconciled, before she claimed her place in society. So she lived at Brompton, and meanwhile saw no one, or only those few of her husband’s male companions who were admitted into her little dining-room. These were all charmed with her. The little dinners, the laughing and chatting, the music afterwards, delighted all who participated in these enjoyments. Major Martingale never thought about asking to see the marriage licence. Captain Cinqbars was perfectly enchanted with her skill in making punch. And young Lieutenant Spatterdash (who was fond of piquet, and whom Crawley would often invite) was evidently and quickly smitten by Mrs. Crawley; but her own circumspection and modesty never forsook her for a moment, and Crawley’s reputation as a fire-eating and jealous warrior was a further and complete defence to his little wife.
There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, who never have entered a lady’s drawing-room; so that though Rawdon Crawley’s marriage might be talked about in his county, where, of course, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or not heeded, or not talked about at all. He lived comfortably on credit. He had a large capital of debts, which, laid out judiciously, will carry a man along for many years, and on which certain men about town contrive to live a hundred times better than even men with ready money can do. Indeed, who is there that walks London streets, but can point out a half dozen of men riding by him splendidly while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying themselves nothing, and living on who knows what? We see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate. “How did this begin,” we say, “or where will it end?”—“My dear fellow,” I heard Jack say once, “I owe money in every capital in Europe.” The end must come some day, but in the meantime Jack thrives as much as ever; people are glad enough to shake him by the hand, ignore the little dark stories that are whispered every now and then against him, and pronounce him a good-natured, jovial, reckless fellow.
Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman of this order. Everything was plentiful in his house but ready money, of which their ménage pretty early felt the want; and reading the Gazette one day, and coming upon the announcement of “Lieutenant G. Osborne to be Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges,” Rawdon uttered that sentiment regarding Amelia’s lover, which ended in the visit to Russell Square.
When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin at the sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallen Rebecca’s old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and such information as they got was from a stray porter or broker at the auction.
“Look at them with their hooked beaks,” Becky said, getting into the buggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee. “They’re like vultures after a battle.”
“Don’t know. Never was in action, my dear. Ask Martingale; he was in Spain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes.”
“He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley,” Rebecca said; “I’m really sorry he’s gone wrong.”
“Oh, stockbrokers—bankrupts—used to it, you know,” Rawdon replied, cutting a fly off the horse’s ear.
“I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon,” the wife continued sentimentally. “Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously dear for that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood’s for Amelia, when she came from school. It only cost five-and-thirty then.”
“What-d’ye-call ’em—Osborne, will cry off now, I suppose, since the family is smashed. How cut up your pretty little friend will be; hey, Becky?”
“I daresay she’ll recover it;” Becky said, with a smile—and they drove on and talked about something else.
CHAPTER 18 Who played on the piano Captain Dobbin bought
Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous events and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. When the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying from Provence, where they perched after a brief sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to