Vanity Fair (82 page)

The absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and grew on quite
unconscious that the doom was over them too. First they talked of
their father and devised plans against his return. Then the name of
the living dead man was less frequently in their mouth—then not
mentioned at all. But the stricken old grandmother trembled to
think that these too were the inheritors of their father's shame as
well as of his honours, and watched sickening for the day when the
awful ancestral curse should come down on them.

This dark presentiment also haunted Lord Steyne. He tried to lay
the horrid bedside ghost in Red Seas of wine and jollity, and lost
sight of it sometimes in the crowd and rout of his pleasures. But
it always came back to him when alone, and seemed to grow more
threatening with years. "I have taken your son," it said, "why not
you? I may shut you up in a prison some day like your son George. I
may tap you on the head to-morrow, and away go pleasure and honours,
feasts and beauty, friends, flatterers, French cooks, fine horses
and houses—in exchange for a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress
like George Gaunt's." And then my lord would defy the ghost which
threatened him, for he knew of a remedy by which he could baulk his
enemy.

So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance,
behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets
and ciphers. The feasts there were of the grandest in London, but
there was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests
who sat at my lord's table. Had he not been so great a Prince very
few possibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of
very great personages are looked at indulgently. "Nous regardons a
deux fois" (as the French lady said) before we condemn a person of
my lord's undoubted quality. Some notorious carpers and squeamish
moralists might be sulky with Lord Steyne, but they were glad enough
to come when he asked them.

"Lord Steyne is really too bad," Lady Slingstone said, "but
everybody goes, and of course I shall see that my girls come to no
harm." "His lordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything in
life," said the Right Reverend Doctor Trail, thinking that the
Archbishop was rather shaky, and Mrs. Trail and the young ladies
would as soon have missed going to church as to one of his
lordship's parties. "His morals are bad," said little Lord
Southdown to his sister, who meekly expostulated, having heard
terrific legends from her mamma with respect to the doings at Gaunt
House; "but hang it, he's got the best dry Sillery in Europe!" And
as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart.—Sir Pitt that pattern of decorum,
Sir Pitt who had led off at missionary meetings—he never for one
moment thought of not going too. "Where you see such persons as the
Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of Slingstone, you may be pretty
sure, Jane," the Baronet would say, "that we cannot be wrong. The
great rank and station of Lord Steyne put him in a position to
command people in our station in life. The Lord Lieutenant of a
County, my dear, is a respectable man. Besides, George Gaunt and I
were intimate in early life; he was my junior when we were attaches
at Pumpernickel together."

In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man—everybody who
was asked, as you the reader (do not say nay) or I the writer hereof
would go if we had an invitation.

In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company

At last Becky's kindness and attention to the chief of her husband's
family were destined to meet with an exceeding great reward, a
reward which, though certainly somewhat unsubstantial, the little
woman coveted with greater eagerness than more positive benefits.
If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to
enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the
genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a
train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court.
From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women.
The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue. And as
dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine,
sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean, many a
lady, whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to
give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal
presence and issues from it free from all taint.

It might be very well for my Lady Bareacres, my Lady Tufto, Mrs.
Bute Crawley in the country, and other ladies who had come into
contact with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley to cry fie at the idea of the
odious little adventuress making her curtsey before the Sovereign,
and to declare that, if dear good Queen Charlotte had been alive,
she never would have admitted such an extremely ill-regulated
personage into her chaste drawing-room. But when we consider that
it was the First Gentleman in Europe in whose high presence Mrs.
Rawdon passed her examination, and as it were, took her degree in
reputation, it surely must be flat disloyalty to doubt any more
about her virtue. I, for my part, look back with love and awe to
that Great Character in history. Ah, what a high and noble
appreciation of Gentlewomanhood there must have been in Vanity Fair,
when that revered and august being was invested, by the universal
acclaim of the refined and educated portion of this empire, with the
title of Premier Gentilhomme of his Kingdom. Do you remember, dear
M—, oh friend of my youth, how one blissful night five-and-twenty
years since, the "Hypocrite" being acted, Elliston being manager,
Dowton and Liston performers, two boys had leave from their loyal
masters to go out from Slaughter-House School where they were
educated and to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a crowd which
assembled there to greet the king. THE KING? There he was.
Beefeaters were before the august box; the Marquis of Steyne (Lord
of the Powder Closet) and other great officers of state were behind
the chair on which he sat, HE sat—florid of face, portly of person,
covered with orders, and in a rich curling head of hair—how we sang
God save him! How the house rocked and shouted with that
magnificent music. How they cheered, and cried, and waved
handkerchiefs. Ladies wept; mothers clasped their children; some
fainted with emotion. People were suffocated in the pit, shrieks
and groans rising up amidst the writhing and shouting mass there of
his people who were, and indeed showed themselves almost to be,
ready to die for him. Yes, we saw him. Fate cannot deprive us of
THAT. Others have seen Napoleon. Some few still exist who have
beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor Johnson, Marie Antoinette, &c.—
be it our reasonable boast to our children, that we saw George the
Good, the Magnificent, the Great.

Well, there came a happy day in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's existence when
this angel was admitted into the paradise of a Court which she
coveted, her sister-in-law acting as her godmother. On the
appointed day, Sir Pitt and his lady, in their great family carriage
(just newly built, and ready for the Baronet's assumption of the
office of High Sheriff of his county), drove up to the little house
in Curzon Street, to the edification of Raggles, who was watching
from his greengrocer's shop, and saw fine plumes within, and
enormous bunches of flowers in the breasts of the new livery-coats
of the footmen.

Sir Pitt, in a glittering uniform, descended and went into Curzon
Street, his sword between his legs. Little Rawdon stood with his
face against the parlour window-panes, smiling and nodding with all
his might to his aunt in the carriage within; and presently Sir Pitt
issued forth from the house again, leading forth a lady with grand
feathers, covered in a white shawl, and holding up daintily a train
of magnificent brocade. She stepped into the vehicle as if she were
a princess and accustomed all her life to go to Court, smiling
graciously on the footman at the door and on Sir Pitt, who followed
her into the carriage.

Then Rawdon followed in his old Guards' uniform, which had grown
woefully shabby, and was much too tight. He was to have followed
the procession and waited upon his sovereign in a cab, but that his
good-natured sister-in-law insisted that they should be a family
party. The coach was large, the ladies not very big, they would hold
their trains in their laps—finally, the four went fraternally
together, and their carriage presently joined the line of royal
equipages which was making its way down Piccadilly and St. James's
Street, towards the old brick palace where the Star of Brunswick was
in waiting to receive his nobles and gentlefolks.

Becky felt as if she could bless the people out of the carriage
windows, so elated was she in spirit, and so strong a sense had she
of the dignified position which she had at last attained in life.
Even our Becky had her weaknesses, and as one often sees how men
pride themselves upon excellences which others are slow to perceive:
how, for instance, Comus firmly believes that he is the greatest
tragic actor in England; how Brown, the famous novelist, longs to be
considered, not a man of genius, but a man of fashion; while
Robinson, the great lawyer, does not in the least care about his
reputation in Westminster Hall, but believes himself incomparable
across country and at a five-barred gate—so to be, and to be
thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aim in life, and she got up
the genteel with amazing assiduity, readiness, and success. We have
said, there were times when she believed herself to be a fine lady
and forgot that there was no money in the chest at home—duns round
the gate, tradesmen to coax and wheedle—no ground to walk upon, in
a word. And as she went to Court in the carriage, the family
carriage, she adopted a demeanour so grand, self-satisfied,
deliberate, and imposing that it made even Lady Jane laugh. She
walked into the royal apartments with a toss of the head which would
have befitted an empress, and I have no doubt had she been one, she
would have become the character perfectly.

We are authorized to state that Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's costume de
cour on the occasion of her presentation to the Sovereign was of the
most elegant and brilliant description. Some ladies we may have
seen—we who wear stars and cordons and attend the St. James's
assemblies, or we, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and down Pall Mall
and peep into the coaches as they drive up with the great folks in
their feathers—some ladies of fashion, I say, we may have seen,
about two o'clock of the forenoon of a levee day, as the laced-
jacketed band of the Life Guards are blowing triumphal marches
seated on those prancing music-stools, their cream-coloured
chargers—who are by no means lovely and enticing objects at that
early period of noon. A stout countess of sixty, decolletee,
painted, wrinkled with rouge up to her drooping eyelids, and
diamonds twinkling in her wig, is a wholesome and edifying, but not
a pleasant sight. She has the faded look of a St. James's Street
illumination, as it may be seen of an early morning, when half the
lamps are out, and the others are blinking wanly, as if they were
about to vanish like ghosts before the dawn. Such charms as those
of which we catch glimpses while her ladyship's carriage passes
should appear abroad at night alone. If even Cynthia looks haggard
of an afternoon, as we may see her sometimes in the present winter
season, with Phoebus staring her out of countenance from the
opposite side of the heavens, how much more can old Lady
Castlemouldy keep her head up when the sun is shining full upon it
through the chariot windows, and showing all the chinks and crannies
with which time has marked her face! No. Drawing-rooms should be
announced for November, or the first foggy day, or the elderly
sultanas of our Vanity Fair should drive up in closed litters,
descend in a covered way, and make their curtsey to the Sovereign
under the protection of lamplight.

Our beloved Rebecca had no need, however, of any such a friendly
halo to set off her beauty. Her complexion could bear any sunshine
as yet, and her dress, though if you were to see it now, any present
lady of Vanity Fair would pronounce it to be the most foolish and
preposterous attire ever worn, was as handsome in her eyes and those
of the public, some five-and-twenty years since, as the most
brilliant costume of the most famous beauty of the present season.
A score of years hence that too, that milliner's wonder, will have
passed into the domain of the absurd, along with all previous
vanities. But we are wandering too much. Mrs. Rawdon's dress was
pronounced to be charmante on the eventful day of her presentation.
Even good little Lady Jane was forced to acknowledge this effect, as
she looked at her kinswoman, and owned sorrowfully to herself that
she was quite inferior in taste to Mrs. Becky.

She did not know how much care, thought, and genius Mrs. Rawdon had
bestowed upon that garment. Rebecca had as good taste as any
milliner in Europe, and such a clever way of doing things as Lady
Jane little understood. The latter quickly spied out the
magnificence of the brocade of Becky's train, and the splendour of
the lace on her dress.

The brocade was an old remnant, Becky said; and as for the lace, it
was a great bargain. She had had it these hundred years.

"My dear Mrs. Crawley, it must have cost a little fortune," Lady
Jane said, looking down at her own lace, which was not nearly so
good; and then examining the quality of the ancient brocade which
formed the material of Mrs. Rawdon's Court dress, she felt inclined
to say that she could not afford such fine clothing, but checked
that speech, with an effort, as one uncharitable to her kinswoman.

And yet, if Lady Jane had known all, I think even her kindly temper
would have failed her. The fact is, when she was putting Sir Pitt's
house in order, Mrs. Rawdon had found the lace and the brocade in
old wardrobes, the property of the former ladies of the house, and
had quietly carried the goods home, and had suited them to her own
little person. Briggs saw her take them, asked no questions, told
no stories; but I believe quite sympathised with her on this matter,
and so would many another honest woman.