Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  ‘What do you mean?‘ said the colonel.

  ‘It‘s in the Observer and the Royalist too,‘ said Mr. Smith.

  ‘What?‘ Rawdon cried, turning very red. He thought that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the public prints. Smith looked up wondering and smiling at the agitation which the colonel exhibited as he took up the paper, and, trembling, began to read.

  Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with whom Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been talking about the colonel just before he came in.

  ‘It is come just in the nick of time,‘ said Smith. ‘I suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world.‘

  ‘It‘s a wind that blows everybody good,‘ Mr. Brown said. ‘He can‘t go away without paying me a ponyre he owes me.‘

  ‘What‘s the salary?‘ asked Smith.

  ‘Two or three thousand,‘ answered the other. ‘But the climate‘s so infernal, they don‘t enjoy it long. Liverseege died after eighteen months of it: and the man before went off in six weeks, I hear.‘

  ‘Some people say his brother is a very clever man. I always found him a d—bore,‘ Smith ejaculated. ‘He must have good interest, though. He must have got the colonel the place.‘

  ‘He!‘ said Brown, with a sneer.—‘Pooh.—It was Lord Steyne got it.‘

  ‘How do you mean?‘

  ‘A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,‘rf answered the other, enigmatically, and went to read his papers.

  Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following astonishing paragraph:—

  GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.-H.M.S. Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and papers from Coventry Island. H.E. Sir Thomas Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at Swamptown. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing colony. We hear that the Governorship has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo officer. We need not only men of acknowledged bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend the affairs of our colonies; and we have no doubt that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which he is about to occupy.

  ‘Coventry Island! where was it? who had appointed him to the government ? You must take me out as your secretary, old boy,‘ Captain Macmurdo said, laughing; and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and perplexed over the announcement, the club waiter brought in to the colonel a card, on which the name of Mr. Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel Crawley.

  The colonel and his aide de camp went out to meet the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an emissary of Lord Steyne. ‘How d‘ye do, Crawley? I am glad to see you,‘ said Mr. Wenham, with a bland smile, and grasping Crawley‘s hand with great cordiality.

  ‘You come, I suppose, from—‘

  ‘Exactly,‘ said Mr. Wenham.

  ‘Then this is my friend Captain Macmardo of the Life Guards Green.‘

  ‘Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I‘m sure,‘ Mr. Wenham said, and tendered another smile and shake of the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal. Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove, and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put in communication with a pékin, and thought that Lord Steyne should have sent him a colonel at the very least.

  ‘As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,‘ Crawley said, ‘I had better retire and leave you together.‘

  ‘Of course,‘ said Macmurdo.

  ‘By no means, my dear colonel,‘ Mr. Wenham said; ‘the interview which I had the honour of requesting was with you personally, though the company of Captain Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing. In fact, captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none but the most agreeable results, very different from those which my friend Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate.‘

  ‘Humph!‘ said Captain Macmurdo. Be hanged to these civilians, he thought to himself, they are always for arranging and speechifying. Mr. Wenham took a chair which was not offered to him—took a paper from his pocket, and resumed:—

  ‘You have seen this gratifying announcement in the papers this morning, colonel? Government has secured a most valuable servant, and you, if you accept office, as I presume you will, an excellent appointment. Three thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-house, all your own way in the colony, and a certain promotion. I congratulate you with all my heart. I presume you know, gentlemen, to whom my friend is indebted for this piece of patronage?‘

  ‘Hanged if I know,‘ the captain said: his principal turned very red.

  ‘To one of the most generous and kindest men in the world, as he is one of the greatest—to my excellent friend, the Marquis of Steyne.‘

  ‘I‘ll see him d—before I take his place,‘ growled out Rawdon.

  ‘You are irritated against my noble friend,‘ Mr. Wenham calmly resumed : ‘and now, in the name of common sense and justice, tell me why?‘

  ‘Why?‘ cried Rawdon, in surprise.

  ‘Why? Dammy!‘ said the captain, ringing his stick on the ground.

  ‘Dammy, indeed,‘ said Mr. Wenham, with the most agreeable smile; ‘still look at the matter as a man of the world—as an honest man, and see if you have not been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, and find— what?—my Lord Steyne supping at your house in Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times before in the same position? Upon my honour and word as a gentleman‘ (Mr. Wenham here put his hand on his waistcoat, with a parliamentary air), ‘I declare I think that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman who has proved his goodwill towards you by a thousand benefactions—and a most spotless and innocent lady.‘

  ‘You don‘t mean to say that—that Crawley‘s mistaken?‘ said Mr. Macmurdo.

  ‘I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my wife, Mrs. Wenham,‘ Mr. Wenham said, with great energy. ‘I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy, my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm and old man of high station, his constant friend and benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour, his son‘s future reputation, and his own prospects in life.

  ‘I will tell you what happened,‘ Mr. Wenham continued, with great solemnity; ‘I was sent for this morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state, as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with a man of your strength. I say to your face; it was a cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel Crawley. It was not only the body of my noble and excellent friend which was wounded—his heart, sir, was bleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and regarded with affection, had subjected him to the foulest indignity. What was this very appointment, which appears in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to you? When I saw his lordship this morning I found him in a state pitiable indeed to see: and as anxious as you are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by blood. You know he has given his proofs, I presume, Colonel Crawley?‘

  ‘He has plenty of pluck,‘ said the colonel. ‘Nobody ever said he hadn‘t.‘

  ‘His first order to me was to write a letter of challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley. One or other of you, he said, must not survive the outrage of last night.‘

  Crawley nodded. ‘You‘re coming to the point, Wenham,‘ he said.

  ‘I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. “Good God! sir,” I said, “how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself had not accepted Mrs. Crawley‘s invitation to sup with her!” ‘

  ‘She asked you to sup with her?‘ Captain Macmurdo said.

  ‘After the Opera. Here‘s the note of invitation—stop—no, this is another paper—I thought I had it, but it‘s of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the fact. If we had come, and it was only one of Mrs. Wenham‘s headaches which prevented us—sh
e suffers under them a good deal, especially in the spring—if we had come, and you had returned home, there would have been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion—and so it is positively because my poor wife has a headache that you are to bring death down upon two men of honour, and plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow.‘

  Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air of a man profoundly puzzled; and Rawdon felt with a kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or disprove it ?

  Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory, which in his place in Parliament he had so often practised-‘I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne‘s bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forgo his intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him that the circumstances were after all suspicious—they were suspicious. I acknowledge it, any man in your position might have been taken in—I said that a man furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a madman, and should be as such regarded—that a duel between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties concerned—that a man of his lordship‘s exalted station had no right in these days, when the most atrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I implored him not to send the challenge.‘

  ‘I don‘t believe one word of the whole story,‘ said Rawdon, grinding his teeth. ‘I believe it a d—lie, and that you‘re in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don‘t come from him, by Jove it shall come from me.‘

  Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage interruption of the colonel, and looked towards the door.

  But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That gentleman rose up with an oath, and rebuked Rawdon for his language. ‘You put the affair into my hands, and you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do. You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an apology. And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you may get somebody else to carry it, I won‘t. If my lord, after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him. And as for the affair with—with Mrs. Crawley, my belief is, there‘s nothing proved at all: that your wife‘s innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is: and at any rate, that you would be a d—fool not to take the place and hold your tongue.‘

  ‘Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,‘ Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved—‘I forget any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the irritation of the moment.‘

  ‘I thought you would,‘ Rawdon said, with a sneer.

  ‘Shut your mouth, you old stoopid,‘ the captain said, good-naturedly. ‘Mr. Wenham ain‘t a fighting man; and quite right, too.‘

  ‘This matter, in my belief,‘ the Steyne emissary cried, ‘ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion. A word concerning it should never pass these doors. I speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy.‘

  ‘I suppose Lord Steyne won‘t talk about it very much,‘ said Captain Macmurdo; ‘and I don‘t see why our side should. The affair ain‘t a very pretty one, any way you take it; and the less said about it the better. It‘s you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied, why, I think, we should be.‘

  Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon himself and Lord Steyne‘s agent, leaving Rawdon chafing within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo looked hard at the other ambassador, and with an expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.

  ‘You don‘t stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham,‘ he said.

  ‘You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo,‘ answered the other, with a smile. ‘Upon my honour and conscience, now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the Opera.‘

  ‘Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her headaches. I say, I‘ve got a thousand-pound note here, which I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne. My man shan‘t fight him. But we had rather not take his money.‘

  ‘It was all a mistake,—all a mistake, my dear sir,‘ the other said, with the utmost innocence of manner; and was bowed down the club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a slight acquaintance between these two gentlemen; and the captain, going back with the baronet to the room where the latter‘s brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and the colonel.

  Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence; and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks upon the evils of duelling, and the unsatisfactory nature of that sort of settlement of disputes.

  And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife. He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made, pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted his own firm belief in her innocence.

  But Rawdon would not hear of it. ‘She has kep money concealed from me these ten years,‘ he said. ‘She swore, last night only, she had none from Steyne. She. knew it was all up, directly I found it. If she‘s not guilty, Pitt, she‘s as bad as guilty; and I‘ll never see her again,—never.‘ His head sank down on his chest as he spoke the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.

  ‘Poor old boy,‘ Macmurdo said, shaking his head.

  Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of taking the place which had been procured for him by so odious a patron: and was also for removing the boy from the school where Lord Steyne‘s interest had placed him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo: but mainly by the latter pointing out to him what a fury Steyne would be in, to think that his enemy‘s fortune was made through his means.

  When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and congratulated himself and the Service upon having made so excellent an appointment. These congratulations were received with a degree of gratitude which may be imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.

  The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as Wenham said; that is by the seconds and the principals. But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself went to seven evening parties, and told the story with comments and emendations at each place. How Mrs. Washington White revelled in it! The Bishopess of Ealing was shocked beyond expression: the bishop went and wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House that very day. Little Southdown was sorry: so you may be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry. Lady Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days, and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.

  The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little mansion was in the meanwhile—where? Who cared? Who asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne; whilst others averred that his lordship quitted that city, and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky‘s arrival; some said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame d‘honneurrg to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding- house at Cheltenham.

  Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity; and we may be sure that she was a woman who could make a little money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any Insurance Office to take his life; but the climate of Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no money on the strength of his an
nuity. He remitted, however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars; and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane. He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette, in which the new governor was praised with immense enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose wife was not asked to Government House, declared that his excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used to like to get the papers and read about his excellency.

  His mother never made any movement to see the child. He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he soon knew every bird‘s-nest about Queen‘s Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone‘s hounds, which he admired so on his first well-remembered visit to Hampshire.

  CHAPTER LVI

  Georgy Is Made a Gentleman

  Georgy Osborne 27 was now fairly established in his grandfather‘s mansion in Russell Square: occupant of his father‘s room in the house, and heir-apparent of all the splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire‘s heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever he had been of the elder George.

  The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than had been awarded to his father. Osborne‘s commerce had prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and importance in the City had very much increased. He had been glad enough in former days to put the elder George to a good private school; and a commission in the army for his son had been a source of no small pride to him: for little George and his future prospects the old man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne‘s constant saying regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind‘s eye, a collegian, a Parliament-man,—a baronet, perhaps. The old man thought he would die contented if he could see his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would have none but a tip-top college man to educate him,—none of your quacks and pretenders,—no, no. A few years before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all parsons, scholars, and the like,—declaring that they were a pack of humbugs, and quacks, that weren‘t fit to get their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set of supercilious dogs, that pretended to look down upon British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half a hundred of ‘em. He would mourn now, in a very solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected, and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy, the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.