Vanity Fair (59 page)

"What!" said Miss Crawley.

"The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply.

Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title. Mr. Bowls gave one
abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant of the family, but choked
the rest of the volley; the diplomatist only smiled.

"I—I didn't know any better," said James, looking down. "I've never
been here before; it was the coachman told me." The young story-
teller! The fact is, that on the Southampton coach, the day
previous, James Crawley had met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to
Brighton to make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted
by the Pet's conversation, had passed the evening in company with
that scientific man and his friends, at the inn in question.

"I—I'd best go and settle the score," James continued. "Couldn't
think of asking you, Ma'am," he added, generously.

This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.

"Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of her hand,
"and bring it to me."

Poor lady, she did not know what she had done! "There—there's a
little dawg," said James, looking frightfully guilty. "I'd best go
for him. He bites footmen's calves."

All the party cried out with laughing at this description; even
Briggs and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute during the interview
between Miss Crawley and her nephew: and Bowls, without a word,
quitted the room.

Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss Crawley persisted
in being gracious to the young Oxonian. There were no limits to her
kindness or her compliments when they once began. She told Pitt he
might come to dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her
in her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the cliff, on the
back seat of the barouche. During all this excursion, she
condescended to say civil things to him: she quoted Italian and
French poetry to the poor bewildered lad, and persisted that he was
a fine scholar, and was perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal,
and be a Senior Wrangler.

"Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these compliments; "Senior
Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other shop."

"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady.

"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the scholar, with
a knowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but
that suddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a
bang-up pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl
buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber,
with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted
poor James there in the carriage as he sate. This incident damped
the ingenuous youth's spirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be
induced to utter during the rest of the drive.

On his return he found his room prepared, and his portmanteau ready,
and might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the
latter conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity,
wonder, and compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter
his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he
found himself, in a house full of old women, jabbering French and
Italian, and talking poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!"
exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her
sex—not even Briggs—when she began to talk to him; whereas, put
him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the boldest bargeman.

At dinner, James appeared choking in a white neckcloth, and had the
honour of handing my Lady Jane downstairs, while Briggs and Mr.
Crawley followed afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her
apparatus of bundles, and shawls, and cushions. Half of Briggs's
time at dinner was spent in superintending the invalid's comfort,
and in cutting up chicken for her fat spaniel. James did not talk
much, but he made a point of asking all the ladies to drink wine,
and accepted Mr. Crawley's challenge, and consumed the greater part
of a bottle of champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in
his honour. The ladies having withdrawn, and the two cousins being
left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, be came very communicative
and friendly. He asked after James's career at college—what his
prospects in life were—hoped heartily he would get on; and, in a
word, was frank and amiable. James's tongue unloosed with the port,
and he told his cousin his life, his prospects, his debts, his
troubles at the little-go, and his rows with the proctors, filling
rapidly from the bottles before him, and flying from Port to Madeira
with joyous activity.

"The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr. Crawley, filling
his glass, "is that people should do as they like in her house.
This is Liberty Hall, James, and you can't do Miss Crawley a greater
kindness than to do as you please, and ask for what you will. I
know you have all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory.
Miss Crawley is liberal enough to suit any fancy. She is a
Republican in principle, and despises everything like rank or
title."

"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?" said James.

"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's fault that she
is well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly air. "She cannot help
being a lady. Besides, I am a Tory, you know."

"Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old blood; no,
dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your radicals. I know what it
is to be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-race; look at
the fellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats—which is
it wins? the good-blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old boy,
whilst I buzz this bottle-here. What was I asaying?"

"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt remarked
mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to "buzz."

"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want
to see a dawg as CAN kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to Tom
Corduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-
terrier as—Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing at his
own absurdity—"YOU don't care about a dawg or rat; it's all
nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know the difference between a
dog and a duck."

"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness, "it was
about blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which
people derive from patrician birth. Here's the fresh bottle."

"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid down.
"Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND men. Why, only last
term, just before I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I
had the measles, ha, ha—there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch,
Bob Ringwood, Lord Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at
Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either of us
for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a sling; couldn't
even take the drag down—a brute of a mare of mine had fell with me
only two days before, out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm
was broke. Well, sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat
off at once—he stood up to the Banbury man for three minutes, and
polished him off in four rounds easy. Gad, how he did drop, sir,
and what was it? Blood, sir, all blood."

"You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued. "In my time at
Oxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you
young fellows seem to do."

"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking
at his cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no
trying it on on me. You want to trot me out, but it's no go. In
vino veritas, old boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish
my aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's a
precious good tap."

"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or make the best of
your time now. What says the bard? 'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras
ingens iterabimus aequor,'" and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above
with a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine
with an immense flourish of his glass.

At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after
dinner, the young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant
wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple
commonly, but as his father grew very sulky if he made further
inroads on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from trying
for more, and subsided either into the currant wine, or to some
private gin-and-water in the stables, which he enjoyed in the
company of the coachman and his pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of
wine was unlimited, but the quality was inferior: but when quantity
and quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that he
could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed any of his cousin's
encouragement in draining off the second bottle supplied by Mr.
Bowls.

When the time for coffee came, however, and for a return to the
ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young gentleman's agreeable
frankness left him, and he relapsed into his usual surly timidity;
contenting himself by saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane,
and by upsetting one cup of coffee during the evening.

If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presence
threw a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for Miss
Crawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work,
felt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy under
that maudlin look.

"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said Miss Crawley to
Mr. Pitt.

"He is more communicative in men's society than with ladies,"
Machiavel dryly replied: perhaps rather disappointed that the port
wine had not made Jim speak more.

He had spent the early part of the next morning in writing home to
his mother a most flourishing account of his reception by Miss
Crawley. But ah! he little knew what evils the day was bringing for
him, and how short his reign of favour was destined to be. A
circumstance which Jim had forgotten—a trivial but fatal
circumstance—had taken place at the Cribb's Arms on the night
before he had come to his aunt's house. It was no other than this—
Jim, who was always of a generous disposition, and when in his cups
especially hospitable, had in the course of the night treated the
Tutbury champion and the Rottingdean man, and their friends, twice
or thrice to the refreshment of gin-and-water—so that no less than
eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass were charged
in Mr. James Crawley's bill. It was not the amount of eightpences,
but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor James's
character, when his aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his
mistress's request to pay the young gentleman's bill. The landlord,
fearing lest the account should be refused altogether, swore
solemnly that the young gent had consumed personally every
farthing's worth of the liquor: and Bowls paid the bill finally,
and showed it on his return home to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at
the frightful prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs
as accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention the
circumstance to her principal, Miss Crawley.

Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have
pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen
drank claret. But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in
an ignoble pot-house—it was an odious crime and not to be pardoned
readily. Everything went against the lad: he came home perfumed
from the stables, whither he had been to pay his dog Towzer a visit—
and whence he was going to take his friend out for an airing, when
he met Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which Towzer
would have eaten up had not the Blenheim fled squealing to the
protection of Miss Briggs, while the atrocious master of the bull-
dog stood laughing at the horrible persecution.

This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise forsaken him.
He was lively and facetious at dinner. During the repast he levelled
one or two jokes against Pitt Crawley: he drank as much wine as
upon the previous day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the
drawing-room, began to entertain the ladies there with some choice
Oxford stories. He described the different pugilistic qualities of
Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds
upon the Tutbury Pet against the Rottingdean man, or take them, as
her Ladyship chose: and crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back
himself against his cousin Pitt Crawley, either with or without the
gloves. "And that's a fair offer, my buck," he said, with a loud
laugh, slapping Pitt on the shoulder, "and my father told me to make
it too, and he'll go halves in the bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the
engaging youth nodded knowingly at poor Miss Briggs, and pointed his
thumb over his shoulder at Pitt Crawley in a jocular and exulting
manner.

Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not unhappy in
the main. Poor Jim had his laugh out: and staggered across the
room with his aunt's candle, when the old lady moved to retire, and
offered to salute her with the blandest tipsy smile: and he took
his own leave and went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied
with himself, and with a pleased notion that his aunt's money would
be left to him in preference to his father and all the rest of the
family.

Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he could not make
matters worse; and yet this unlucky boy did. The moon was shining
very pleasantly out on the sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by
the romantic appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he
would further enjoy them while smoking. Nobody would smell the
tobacco, he thought, if he cunningly opened the window and kept his
head and pipe in the fresh air. This he did: but being in an
excited state, poor Jim had forgotten that his door was open all
this time, so that the breeze blowing inwards and a fine thorough
draught being established, the clouds of tobacco were carried
downstairs, and arrived with quite undiminished fragrance to Miss
Crawley and Miss Briggs.