Vanity Fair (58 page)

During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one
which showed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by
early neglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession.
When the Countess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican
upstart, as the fashion was in those days, and showed that he was a
monster stained with every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant
not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted, &c., Pitt Crawley
suddenly took up the cudgels in favour of the man of Destiny. He
described the First Consul as he saw him at Paris at the peace of
Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley, had the gratification of making the
acquaintance of the great and good Mr. Fox, a statesman whom,
however much he might differ with him, it was impossible not to
admire fervently—a statesman who had always had the highest opinion
of the Emperor Napoleon. And he spoke in terms of the strongest
indignation of the faithless conduct of the allies towards this
dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously up to their
mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while a
bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead.

This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved Pitt Crawley in
Lady Southdown's opinion, whilst his admiration for Fox and Napoleon
raised him immeasurably in Miss Crawley's eyes. Her friendship with
that defunct British statesman was mentioned when we first
introduced her in this history. A true Whig, Miss Crawley had been
in opposition all through the war, and though, to be sure, the
downfall of the Emperor did not very much agitate the old lady, or
his ill-treatment tend to shorten her life or natural rest, yet Pitt
spoke to her heart when he lauded both her idols; and by that single
speech made immense progress in her favour.

"And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said to the young
lady, for whom she had taken a liking at first sight, as she always
did for pretty and modest young people; though it must be owned her
affections cooled as rapidly as they rose.

Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did not understand
politics, which she left to wiser heads than hers; but though Mamma
was, no doubt, correct, Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully." And
when the ladies were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss
Crawley hoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send her Lady
Jane sometimes, if she could be spared to come down and console a
poor sick lonely old woman." This promise was graciously accorded,
and they separated upon great terms of amity.

"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt," said the old lady.
"She is stupid and pompous, like all your mother's family, whom I
never could endure. But bring that nice good-natured little Jane as
often as ever you please." Pitt promised that he would do so. He
did not tell the Countess of Southdown what opinion his aunt had
formed of her Ladyship, who, on the contrary, thought that she had
made a most delightful and majestic impression on Miss Crawley.

And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry
in her heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of
the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered
round the footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane
became a pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in
her drives, and solaced many of her evenings. She was so naturally
good and soft, that even Firkin was not jealous of her; and the
gentle Briggs thought her friend was less cruel to her when kind
Lady Jane was by. Towards her Ladyship Miss Crawley's manners were
charming. The old spinster told her a thousand anecdotes about her
youth, talking to her in a very different strain from that in which
she had been accustomed to converse with the godless little Rebecca;
for there was that in Lady Jane's innocence which rendered light
talking impertinence before her, and Miss Crawley was too much of a
gentlewoman to offend such purity. The young lady herself had never
received kindness except from this old spinster, and her brother and
father: and she repaid Miss Crawley's engoument by artless
sweetness and friendship.

In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the
gayest among the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear
wounded Amelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in
Miss Crawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight,
her little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the
sea was roaring on the beach. The old spinster used to wake up when
these ditties ceased, and ask for more. As for Briggs, and the
quantity of tears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended
to knit, and looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the
windows, and the lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine—
who, I say can measure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?

Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws
or a Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation
which suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner. He sipped
Madeira: built castles in the air: thought himself a fine fellow:
felt himself much more in love with Jane than he had been any time
these seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without the
slightest impatience on Pitt's part—and slept a good deal. When
the time for coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner,
and summon Squire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy
with his pamphlet.

"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss
Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance
with the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than
an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity
of abusing Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep
better if I had my game."

At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down
to the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted
the room, and the door was quite shut, she said:

"Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to—to play a little
with poor dear papa."

"Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good
little soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this
picturesque and friendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and
the young one, when he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand.
How she did blush all the evening, that poor Lady Jane!

It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped
the attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's
Crawley. Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs.
Bute had friends in the latter county who took care to inform her of
all, and a great deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's
house at Brighton. Pitt was there more and more. He did not come
for months together to the Hall, where his abominable old father
abandoned himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious
society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's success rendered the Rector's
family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed
less) than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and
in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she
had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her
information of what took place there. "It was all Bute's collar-
bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never
would have left her. I am a martyr to duty and to your odious
unclerical habit of hunting, Bute."

"Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her, Barbara," the
divine interposed. "You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil
of a temper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara."

"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your
money."

"I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly. "You ARE
a clever woman, but you manage too well, you know": and the pious
man consoled himself with a big glass of port.

"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" he
continued. "The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose.
I remember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to
flog him round the stables as if he was a whipping-top: and Pitt
would go howling home to his ma—ha, ha! Why, either of my boys
would whop him with one hand. Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as
Miss Crawley still—the spooney.

"I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause.

"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the
table.

"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do
anything with the old lady. He's very near getting his degree, you
know. He's only been plucked twice—so was I—but he's had the
advantages of Oxford and a university education. He knows some of
the best chaps there. He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat. He's a
handsome feller. D— it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey,
and tell him to thrash Pitt if he says anything. Ha, ha, ha!

"Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife said;
adding with a sigh, "If we could but get one of the girls into the
house; but she could never endure them, because they are not
pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves
heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming
away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-
forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at
backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long. But
what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who
are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could
think of nobody but the Curate to take one of them off her hands;
and Jim coming in from the stable at this minute, through the
parlour window, with a short pipe stuck in his oilskin cap, he and
his father fell to talking about odds on the St. Leger, and the
colloquy between the Rector and his wife ended.

Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from the sending of
her son James as an ambassador, and saw him depart in rather a
despairing mood. Nor did the young fellow himself, when told what
his mission was to be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but
he was consoled by the thought that possibly the old lady would give
him some handsome remembrance of her, which would pay a few of his
most pressing bills at the commencement of the ensuing Oxford term,
and so took his place by the coach from Southampton, and was safely
landed at Brighton on the same evening? with his portmanteau, his
favourite bull-dog Towzer, and an immense basket of farm and garden
produce, from the dear Rectory folks to the dear Miss Crawley.
Considering it was too late to disturb the invalid lady on the first
night of his arrival, he put up at an inn, and did not wait upon
Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon of next day.

James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad,
at that uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthly
treble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms
out with appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as a
cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sister's
scissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerable
sensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles
protrude a long way from garments which have grown too tight for
them; when their presence after dinner is at once frightful to the
ladies, who are whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and
inexpressibly odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are
restrained from freedom of intercourse and delightful interchange of
wit by the presence of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion
of the second glass, papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the
evening holds up," and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at
not being yet a man, quits the incomplete banquet. James, then a
hobbadehoy, was now become a young man, having had the benefits of a
university education, and acquired the inestimable polish which is
gained by living in a fast set at a small college, and contracting
debts, and being rusticated, and being plucked.

He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to present himself to
his aunt at Brighton, and good looks were always a title to the
fickle old lady's favour. Nor did his blushes and awkwardness take
away from it: she was pleased with these healthy tokens of the
young gentleman's ingenuousness.

He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see a man of his
college, and—and to pay my respects to you, Ma'am, and my father's
and mother's, who hope you are well."

Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad was announced,
and looked very blank when his name was mentioned. The old lady had
plenty of humour, and enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity. She
asked after all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and
said she was thinking of paying them a visit. She praised the lad
to his face, and said he was well-grown and very much improved, and
that it was a pity his sisters had not some of his good looks; and
finding, on inquiry, that he had taken up his quarters at an hotel,
would not hear of his stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for
Mr. James Crawley's things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she
added, with great graciousness, "you will have the goodness to pay
Mr. James's bill."

She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused that diplomatist
almost to choke with envy. Much as he had ingratiated himself with
his aunt, she had never yet invited him to stay under her roof, and
here was a young whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made
welcome there.

"I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a profound bow;
"what 'otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the luggage from?"

"O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some alarm, "I'll
go."