Chapter: A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire

Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street,
still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as
a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic
emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and
all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been
during the late baronet's reign.  The black outer-coating of the bricks
was removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked
with white: the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,
the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great Gaunt Street
became the smartest in the whole quarter, before the green leaves in
Hampshire had replaced those yellowing ones which were on the trees in
Queen's Crawley Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them for
the last time.

A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seen
about this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little boy,
also might be remarked coming thither daily.  It was Miss Briggs and
little Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward renovation of
Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band engaged in stitching
the blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in the drawers and
cupboards crammed with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a
couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take inventories of the
china, the glass, and other properties in the closets and store-rooms.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements, with
full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or purchase
furniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an occupation which
gave full scope to her taste and ingenuity.  The renovation of the
house was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November to see
his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in Curzon Street, under
the roof of his affectionate brother and sister.

He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard of
the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned in an
hour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side.  It
was impossible sometimes to resist this artless little creature's
hospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably
offered.  Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of gratitude when he
agreed to come.  "Thank you," she said, squeezing it and looking into
the Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will make
Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading on the servants, who
were carrying his trunks thither.  She came in herself laughing, with a
coal-scuttle out of her own room.

A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was Miss
Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with the
maid).  "I knew I should bring you," she said with pleasure beaming in
her glance.  Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him for a
guest.

Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt stayed
with them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone with her and
Briggs.  She went downstairs to the kitchen and actually cooked little
dishes for him.  "Isn't it a good salmi?" she said; "I made it for you.
I can make you better dishes than that, and will when you come to see
me."

"Everything you do, you do well," said the Baronet gallantly.  "The
salmi is excellent indeed."

"A poor man's wife," Rebecca replied gaily, "must make herself useful,
you know"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that "she was fit to be
the wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic duties was
surely one of the most charming of woman's qualities." And Sir Pitt
thought, with something like mortification, of Lady Jane at home, and
of a certain pie which she had insisted on making, and serving to him
at dinner--a most abominable pie.

Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from his
lordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law a
bottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him from
France, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;
whereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the Marquis
of Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the Baronet's
pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.

Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave him
her hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug on the
sofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the tenderest
kindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for her dear
little boy.  Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly humble and
virtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-box.  It had
got to be too small for Rawdon long before it was finished.

Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him, she
coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and more
glad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to the
blazing fire in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of law
likewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest--and so
that when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing. How pretty
she looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and waving her
handkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail! She put the
handkerchief to her eyes once.  He pulled his sealskin cap over his, as
the coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought to himself how she
respected him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a foolish dull
fellow who didn't half appreciate his wife; and how mum and stupid his
own wife was compared to that brilliant little Becky.  Becky had hinted
every one of these things herself, perhaps, but so delicately and
gently that you hardly knew when or where.  And, before they parted, it
was agreed that the house in London should be redecorated for the next
season, and that the brothers' families should meet again in the
country at Christmas.

"I wish you could have got a little money out of him," Rawdon said to
his wife moodily when the Baronet was gone.  "I should like to give
something to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't.  It ain't right, you
know, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his money.  It may
be inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides us, you
know."

"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are
settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on
account.  Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy," and she took
from her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had handed
over to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger branch
of the Crawleys.

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her husband
expressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so delicately,
and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir Pitt
Crawley was off and alarmed.  And he began a long speech, explaining
how straitened he himself was in money matters; how the tenants would
not pay; how his father's affairs, and the expenses attendant upon the
demise of the old gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay off
incumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt
Crawley ended by making a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving
her a very small sum for the benefit of her little boy.

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be.  It
could not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old
diplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that
houses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing.  He knew very well
that he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,
according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his
younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of
remorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some act
of justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointed
relations.  A just, decent man, not without brains, who said his
prayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly through
life, he could not be otherwise than aware that something was due to
his brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's debtor.

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now and
then, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B., or 10 pounds from
W. T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said A. B.
or W. T., which payments the penitents beg the Right Honourable
gentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public press--so is
the Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly sure
that the above-named A. B.  and W. T. are only paying a very small
instalment of what they really owe, and that the man who sends up a
twenty-pound note has very likely hundreds or thousands more for which
he ought to account.  Such, at least, are my feelings, when I see
A. B. or W. T.'s insufficient acts of repentance.  And I have no doubt
that Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his
younger brother, by whom he had so much profited, was only a very small
dividend upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not
everybody is willing to pay even so much.  To part with money is a
sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order.  There
is scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for
giving his neighbour five pounds.  Thriftless gives, not from a
beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. He
would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his
horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five
pounds.  Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny,
turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or denies a poor
relation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the two.  Money has
only a different value in the eyes of each.

So, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for his
brother, and then thought that he would think about it some other time.

And with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who expected too much
from the generosity of her neighbours, and so was quite content with
all that Pitt Crawley had done for her.  She was acknowledged by the
head of the family.  If Pitt would not give her anything, he would get
something for her some day.  If she got no money from her
brother-in-law, she got what was as good as money--credit.  Raggles was
made rather easy in his mind by the spectacle of the union between the
brothers, by a small payment on the spot, and by the promise of a much
larger sum speedily to be assigned to him.  And Rebecca told Miss
Briggs, whose Christmas dividend upon the little sum lent by her Becky
paid with an air of candid joy, and as if her exchequer was brimming
over with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss Briggs, in strict confidence
that she had conferred with Sir Pitt, who was famous as a financier, on
Briggs's special behalf, as to the most profitable investment of Miss
B.'s remaining capital; that Sir Pitt, after much consideration, had
thought of a most safe and advantageous way in which Briggs could lay
out her money; that, being especially interested in her as an attached
friend of the late Miss Crawley, and of the whole family, and that long
before he left town, he had recommended that she should be ready with
the money at a moment's notice, so as to purchase at the most
favourable opportunity the shares which Sir Pitt had in his eye.  Poor
Miss Briggs was very grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--it
came so unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought of
removing the money from the funds--and the delicacy enhanced the
kindness of the office; and she promised to see her man of business
immediately and be ready with her little cash at the proper hour.

And this worthy woman was so grateful for the kindness of Rebecca in
the matter, and for that of her generous benefactor, the Colonel, that
she went out and spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in the
purchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by the way, was
grown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a size and age
befitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket and pantaloons.

He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair,
sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching
himself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown,
who gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he saw
that kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the pony--to
Molly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night, and with
good things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughed
at--and to his father especially, whose attachment towards the lad was
curious too to witness.  Here, as he grew to be about eight years old,
his attachments may be said to have ended.  The beautiful mother-vision
had faded away after a while.  During near two years she had scarcely
spoken to the child. She disliked him.  He had the measles and the
hooping-cough.  He bored her.  One day when he was standing at the
landing-place, having crept down from the upper regions, attracted by
the sound of his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, the
drawing room door opening suddenly, discovered the little spy, who but
a moment before had been rapt in delight, and listening to the music.

His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on the
ear.  He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who was
amused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper) and fled
down below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief.

"It is not because it hurts me," little Rawdon gasped
out--"only--only"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm.  It
was the little boy's heart that was bleeding.  "Why mayn't I hear her
singing?  Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that baldheaded
man with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various intervals these
exclamations of rage and grief.  The cook looked at the housemaid, the
housemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the awful kitchen inquisition
which sits in judgement in every house and knows everything--sat on
Rebecca at that moment.

After this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the
consciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a pain
to her.  His very sight annoyed her.  Fear, doubt, and resistance
sprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom.  They were separated from that
day of the boxes on the ear.

Lord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy.  When they met by
mischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared at
him with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face and
double his little fists in return.  He knew his enemy, and this
gentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who angered him
most.  One day the footman found him squaring his fists at Lord
Steyne's hat in the hall.  The footman told the circumstance as a good
joke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it to Lord
Steyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general. And very soon
afterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her appearance at Gaunt
House, the porter who unbarred the gates, the servants of all uniforms
in the hall, the functionaries in white waistcoats, who bawled out from
landing to landing the names of Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knew
about her, or fancied they did. The man who brought her refreshment and
stood behind her chair, had talked her character over with the large
gentleman in motley-coloured clothes at his side.  Bon Dieu! it is
awful, that servants' inquisition!  You see a woman in a great party in
a splendid saloon, surrounded by faithful admirers, distributing
sparkling glances, dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling and
happy--Discovery walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a huge
powdered man with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (which
is as fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow
carrying the wafer-biscuits.  Madam, your secret will be talked over by
those men at their club at the public-house to-night.  Jeames will tell
Chawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots.
Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair--mutes who
could not write. If you are guilty, tremble.  That fellow behind your
chair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breeches
pocket.  If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are
as ruinous as guilt.

"Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgericht of the servants' hall had
pronounced against her.

And, I shame to say, she would not have got credit had they not
believed her to be guilty.  It was the sight of the Marquis of Steyne's
carriage-lamps at her door, contemplated by Raggles, burning in the
blackness of midnight, "that kep him up," as he afterwards said, that
even more than Rebecca's arts and coaxings.

And so--guiltless very likely--she was writhing and pushing onward
towards what they call "a position in society," and the servants were
pointing at her as lost and ruined.  So you see Molly, the housemaid,
of a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his thread and
laboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, she raises her
broom and sweeps away the thread and the artificer.

A day or two before Christmas, Becky, her husband and her son made
ready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors at
Queen's Crawley.  Becky would have liked to leave the little brat
behind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent invitations
to the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and discontent which
Rawdon manifested at her neglect of her son.  "He's the finest boy in
England," the father said in a tone of reproach to her, "and you don't
seem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do for your spaniel.  He
shan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in the
nursery, and he shall go outside on the coach with me."

"Where you go yourself because you want to smoke those filthy cigars,"
replied Mrs. Rawdon.

"I remember when you liked 'em though," answered the husband.

Becky laughed; she was almost always good-humoured. "That was when I
was on my promotion, Goosey," she said.  "Take Rawdon outside with you
and give him a cigar too if you like."

Rawdon did not warm his little son for the winter's journey in this
way, but he and Briggs wrapped up the child in shawls and comforters,
and he was hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the coach in the dark
morning, under the lamps of the White Horse Cellar; and with no small
delight he watched the dawn rise and made his first journey to the
place which his father still called home. It was a journey of infinite
pleasure to the boy, to whom the incidents of the road afforded endless
interest, his father answering to him all questions connected with it
and telling him who lived in the great white house to the right, and
whom the park belonged to.  His mother, inside the vehicle, with her
maid and her furs, her wrappers, and her scent bottles, made such a
to-do that you would have thought she never had been in a stage-coach
before--much less, that she had been turned out of this very one to
make room for a paying passenger on a certain journey performed some
half-score years ago.

It was dark again when little Rawdon was wakened up to enter his
uncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it wondering
as the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks of the limes
as they swept by, until they stopped, at length, before the light
windows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmas
welcome.  The hall-door was flung open--a big fire was burning in the
great old fire-place--a carpet was down over the chequered black
flags--"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in the Ladies'
Gallery," thought Rebecca, and the next instant was kissing Lady Jane.

She and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity; but
Rawdon, having been smoking, hung back rather from his sister-in-law,
whose two children came up to their cousin; and, while Matilda held out
her hand and kissed him, Pitt Binkie Southdown, the son and heir, stood
aloof rather and examined him as a little dog does a big dog.

Then the kind hostess conducted her guests to the snug apartments
blazing with cheerful fires.  Then the young ladies came and knocked at
Mrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to be
useful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the contents
of her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though black, were
of the newest London fashion.  And they told her how much the Hall was
changed for the better, and how old Lady Southdown was gone, and how
Pitt was taking his station in the county, as became a Crawley in fact.
Then the great dinner-bell having rung, the family assembled at dinner,
at which meal Rawdon Junior was placed by his aunt, the good-natured
lady of the house, Sir Pitt being uncommonly attentive to his
sister-in-law at his own right hand.

Little Rawdon exhibited a fine appetite and showed a gentlemanlike
behaviour.

"I like to dine here," he said to his aunt when he had completed his
meal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir Pitt,
the younger son and heir was introduced, and was perched on a high
chair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession of the
place and the little wine-glass prepared for her near her mother.  "I
like to dine here," said Rawdon Minor, looking up at his relation's
kind face.

"Why?" said the good Lady Jane.

"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home," replied Rawdon Minor, "or
else with Briggs." But Becky was so engaged with the Baronet, her host,
pouring out a flood of compliments and delights and raptures, and
admiring young Pitt Binkie, whom she declared to be the most beautiful,
intelligent, noble-looking little creature, and so like his father,
that she did not hear the remarks of her own flesh and blood at the
other end of the broad shining table.

As a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, Rawdon the
Second was allowed to sit up until the hour when tea being over, and a
great gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all the
domestics of the family streamed in, and Sir Pitt read prayers.  It was
the first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard of such
a ceremonial.

The house had been much improved even since the Baronet's brief reign,
and was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming, delightful, when
she surveyed it in his company.  As for little Rawdon, who examined it
with the children for his guides, it seemed to him a perfect palace of
enchantment and wonder.  There were long galleries, and ancient state
bedrooms, there were pictures and old China, and armour.  There were
the rooms in which Grandpapa died, and by which the children walked
with terrified looks.  "Who was Grandpapa?" he asked; and they told him
how he used to be very old, and used to be wheeled about in a
garden-chair, and they showed him the garden-chair one day rotting in
the out-house in which it had lain since the old gentleman had been
wheeled away yonder to the church, of which the spire was glittering
over the park elms.

The brothers had good occupation for several mornings in examining the
improvements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and economy.
And as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could talk without
too much boring each other.  And Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what a
heavy outlay of money these improvements had occasioned, and that a man
of landed and funded property was often very hard pressed for twenty
pounds. "There is that new lodge-gate," said Pitt, pointing to it
humbly with the bamboo cane, "I can no more pay for it before the
dividends in January than I can fly."

"I can lend you, Pitt, till then," Rawdon answered rather ruefully; and
they went in and looked at the restored lodge, where the family arms
were just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock, for the first
time these many long years, had tight doors, sound roofs, and whole
windows.

 In London Becky is in charge of redecorating the Crawley family's Gaunt Street house. She loves this job, which plays to her artistic and creative abilities. When young Sir Pitt comes to town, she meets him and invites him to stay at her house while the Gaunt Street house is being worked on. She sings to him, compliments him, sucks up to him, and even very mildly flirts with him. He is definitely into it. However, whenever Becky brings up the question of money, young Sir Pitt gets defensive and nervous and launches into long speeches about how broke he actually is because of all the house and estate restorations. Becky has low expectations of everyone, so she doesn't let this bother her too much. Meanwhile, she uses the fact that Rawdon and young Sir Pitt seem to have made up to get even more credit from all the tradesmen. She also tells Briggs that Sir Pitt wants to help Briggs invest her small savings better. Briggs gets all excited and takes her money out of the funds it was in. Rawdon Jr. is now about 8. He loves Lord Southdown , Molly the cook, Briggs , and most of all his father. He detests his mother, and Becky pretty much hates and resents him in return. Of all the bad things Becky does throughout the course of the book, this lack of maternal instinct is shown to be the most horrible. For instance, one day when Becky is singing to Lord Steyne, Rawdon Jr. comes out of his room and listens on the stairs. When Becky sees him, she runs up and hits him. This is when the all the servants start gossiping about and passing judgment on her, her relationship with Lord Steyne, and how awful she is to Rawdon Jr. The assumption is that she and Lord Steyne are having an affair. The novel does not make it clear whether they actually are or not. It doesn't really matter. What Thackeray is interested in is the perception of wrongdoing, not the actual bad behavior itself. On the one hand, Becky's servants condemn her for her horrendous immorality. On the other hand, the fact that Lord Steyne is there so much is what makes her tradesmen keep giving her credit. They assume that Lord Steyne is sleeping with her, and therefore he must be giving her lots of money. So life goes on until Christmas, when Becky, Rawdon, and Rawdon Jr. go to Queen's Crawley. Rawdon and his son ride on the outside of the carriage and talk about everything and everyone they see. Rawdon Jr. loves the trip. At Queen's Crawley, Pitt Binkie and Matilda take Rawdon Jr. around and they all get to be good friends. Lady Jane really likes Rawdon Jr., who is a serious and gentlemanly sort of boy. While they are getting to know each other, Rawdon Jr. lets slip a few things that indicate to Jane just how neglected he actually is at home.

