Vanity Fair (94 page)

His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures,
presented to him by comrades as they retired from the regiment, and
married and settled into quiet life. And as he was now nearly fifty
years of age, twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he
had a singular museum. He was one of the best shots in England,
and, for a heavy man, one of the best riders; indeed, he and Crawley
had been rivals when the latter was in the Army. To be brief, Mr.
Macmurdo was lying in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that
very fight between the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher, which
has been before mentioned—a venerable bristly warrior, with a
little close-shaved grey head, with a silk nightcap, a red face and
nose, and a great dyed moustache.

When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knew
perfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, and
indeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with
the greatest prudence and skill. His Royal Highness the late
lamented Commander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo
on this account, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in
trouble.

"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the old warrior. "No
more gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?"

"It's about—about my wife," Crawley answered, casting down his eyes
and turning very red.

The other gave a whistle. "I always said she'd throw you over," he
began—indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubs
regarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his
wife's character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing
the savage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this
opinion, Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further.

"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain continued in a
grave tone. "Is it only suspicion, you know, or—or what is it? Any
letters? Can't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a
thing of that sort if you can help it." "Think of his only finding
her out now," the Captain thought to himself, and remembered a
hundred particular conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs.
Crawley's reputation had been torn to shreds.

"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied—"and there's
only a way out of it for one of us, Mac—do you understand? I was
put out of the way—arrested—I found 'em alone together. I told
him he was a liar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed
him."

"Serve him right," Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"

Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.

"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he—that is, they said you—"

"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon; "do you mean that
you ever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me,
Mac?"

"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other replied. "What
the deuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked
about?"

"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite overcome; and,
covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the
sight of which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince
with sympathy. "Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll
put a bullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so."

"You don't know how fond I was of that one," Rawdon said, half-
inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like a footman. I gave up
everything I had to her. I'm a beggar because I would marry her.
By Jove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything
she fancied; and she she's been making a purse for herself all the
time, and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod." He then
fiercely and incoherently, and with an agitation under which his
counsellor had never before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the
circumstances of the story. His adviser caught at some stray hints
in it. "She may be innocent, after all," he said. "She says so.
Steyne has been a hundred times alone with her in the house before."

"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't look very
innocent": and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which
he had found in Becky's pocket-book. "This is what he gave her,
Mac, and she kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house,
she refused to stand by me when I was locked up." The Captain could
not but own that the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched
Captain Macmurdo's servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the
domestic there to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had
great need. And during the man's absence, and with great labour and
a Johnson's Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and
his second composed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord
Steyne. Captain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis
of Steyne, on the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to
intimate that he was empowered by the Colonel to make any
arrangements for the meeting which, he had no doubt, it was his
Lordship's intention to demand, and which the circumstances of the
morning had rendered inevitable. Captain Macmurdo begged Lord
Steyne, in the most polite manner, to appoint a friend, with whom he
(Captain M.M.) might communicate, and desired that the meeting might
take place with as little delay as possible.

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession a
bank-note for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason to
suppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne. And he was
anxious, on the Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.

By the time this note was composed, the Captain's servant returned
from his mission to Colonel Crawley's house in Curzon Street, but
without the carpet-bag and portmanteau, for which he had been sent,
and with a very puzzled and odd face.

"They won't give 'em up," said the man; "there's a regular shinty in
the house, and everything at sixes and sevens. The landlord's come
in and took possession. The servants was a drinkin' up in the
drawingroom. They said—they said you had gone off with the plate,
Colonel"—the man added after a pause—"One of the servants is off
already. And Simpson, the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed,
says nothing shall go out of the house until his wages is paid up."

The account of this little revolution in May Fair astonished and
gave a little gaiety to an otherwise very triste conversation. The
two officers laughed at Rawdon's discomfiture.

"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home," Rawdon said, biting his
nails. "You remember him, Mac, don't you, in the Riding School? How
he sat the kicker to be sure! didn't he?"

"That he did, old boy," said the good-natured Captain.

Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys, in the
Chapel of Whitefriars School, thinking, not about the sermon, but
about going home next Saturday, when his father would certainly tip
him and perhaps would take him to the play.

"He's a regular trump, that boy," the father went on, still musing
about his son. "I say, Mac, if anything goes wrong—if I drop—I
should like you to—to go and see him, you know, and say that I was
very fond of him, and that. And—dash it—old chap, give him these
gold sleeve-buttons: it's all I've got." He covered his face with
his black hands, over which the tears rolled and made furrows of
white. Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take off his silk night-
cap and rub it across his eyes.

"Go down and order some breakfast," he said to his man in a loud
cheerful voice. "What'll you have, Crawley? Some devilled kidneys
and a herring—let's say. And, Clay, lay out some dressing things
for the Colonel: we were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my
boy, and neither of us ride so light as we did when we first entered
the corps." With which, and leaving the Colonel to dress himself,
Macmurdo turned round towards the wall, and resumed the perusal of
Bell's Life, until such time as his friend's toilette was complete
and he was at liberty to commence his own.

This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain Macmurdo performed
with particular care. He waxed his mustachios into a state of
brilliant polish and put on a tight cravat and a trim buff
waistcoat, so that all the young officers in the mess-room, whither
Crawley had preceded his friend, complimented Mac on his appearance
at breakfast and asked if he was going to be married that Sunday.

In Which the Same Subject is Pursued

Becky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion in which
the events of the previous night had plunged her intrepid spirit
until the bells of the Curzon Street Chapels were ringing for
afternoon service, and rising from her bed she began to ply her own
bell, in order to summon the French maid who had left her some hours
before.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and though, on the last
occasion, she rang with such vehemence as to pull down the bell-
rope, Mademoiselle Fifine did not make her appearance—no, not
though her mistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her
hand, came out to the landing-place with her hair over her shoulders
and screamed out repeatedly for her attendant.

The truth is, she had quitted the premises for many hours, and upon
that permission which is called French leave among us After picking
up the trinkets in the drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to
her own apartments, packed and corded her own boxes there, tripped
out and called a cab for herself, brought down her trunks with her
own hand, and without ever so much as asking the aid of any of the
other servants, who would probably have refused it, as they hated
her cordially, and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had
made her exit from Curzon Street.

The game, in her opinion, was over in that little domestic
establishment. Fifine went off in a cab, as we have known more
exalted persons of her nation to do under similar circumstances:
but, more provident or lucky than these, she secured not only her
own property, but some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could
be said to have any property at all)—and not only carried off the
trinkets before alluded to, and some favourite dresses on which she
had long kept her eye, but four richly gilt Louis Quatorze
candlesticks, six gilt albums, keepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a
gold enamelled snuff-box which had once belonged to Madame du Barri,
and the sweetest little inkstand and mother-of-pearl blotting book,
which Becky used when she composed her charming little pink notes,
had vanished from the premises in Curzon Street together with
Mademoiselle Fifine, and all the silver laid on the table for the
little festin which Rawdon interrupted. The plated ware
Mademoiselle left behind her was too cumbrous, probably for which
reason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the chimney-glasses,
and the rosewood cottage piano.

A lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's shop in the Rue
du Helder at Paris, where she lived with great credit and enjoyed
the patronage of my Lord Steyne. This person always spoke of
England as of the most treacherous country in the world, and stated
to her young pupils that she had been affreusement vole by natives
of that island. It was no doubt compassion for her misfortunes
which induced the Marquis of Steyne to be so very kind to Madame de
Saint-Amaranthe. May she flourish as she deserves—she appears no
more in our quarter of Vanity Fair.

Hearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the impudence of
those servants who would not answer her summons, Mrs. Crawley flung
her morning robe round her and descended majestically to the
drawing-room, whence the noise proceeded.

The cook was there with blackened face, seated on the beautiful
chintz sofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom she was
administering Maraschino. The page with the sugar-loaf buttons, who
carried about Becky's pink notes, and jumped about her little
carriage with such alacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers
into a cream dish; the footman was talking to Raggles, who had a
face full of perplexity and woe—and yet, though the door was open,
and Becky had been screaming a half-dozen of times a few feet off,
not one of her attendants had obeyed her call. "Have a little drop,
do'ee now, Mrs. Raggles," the cook was saying as Becky entered, the
white cashmere dressing-gown flouncing around her.

"Simpson! Trotter!" the mistress of the house cried in great wrath.
"How dare you stay here when you heard me call? How dare you sit
down in my presence? Where's my maid?" The page withdrew his fingers
from his mouth with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a
glass of Maraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough, staring
at Becky over the little gilt glass as she drained its contents.
The liquor appeared to give the odious rebel courage.

"YOUR sofy, indeed!" Mrs. Cook said. "I'm a settin' on Mrs.
Raggles's sofy. Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum. I'm a settin' on
Mr. and Mrs. Raggles's sofy, which they bought with honest money,
and very dear it cost 'em, too. And I'm thinkin' if I set here
until I'm paid my wages, I shall set a precious long time, Mrs.
Raggles; and set I will, too—ha! ha!" and with this she filled
herself another glass of the liquor and drank it with a more
hideously satirical air.

"Trotter! Simpson! turn that drunken wretch out," screamed Mrs.
Crawley.

"I shawn't," said Trotter the footman; "turn out yourself. Pay our
selleries, and turn me out too. WE'LL go fast enough."

"Are you all here to insult me?" cried Becky in a fury; "when
Colonel Crawley comes home I'll—"

At this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in which, however,
Raggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join.
"He ain't a coming back," Mr. Trotter resumed. "He sent for his
things, and I wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and I
don't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am. He's hoff, and I
suppose you're a goin' after him. You're no better than swindlers,
both on you. Don't be a bullyin' ME. I won't stand it. Pay us our
selleries, I say. Pay us our selleries." It was evident, from Mr.
Trotter's flushed countenance and defective intonation, that he,
too, had had recourse to vinous stimulus.