In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the gayest among the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear wounded Amelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss Crawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the sea was roaring on the beach.The old spinster used to wake up when these ditties ceased, and ask for more.As for Briggs, and the quantity of tears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the windows, and the lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--who, I say can measure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?
Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws or a Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation which suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner.He sipped Madeira: built castles in the air: thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself much more in love with Jane than he had been any time these seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightest impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal.When the time for coffee came, Mr.Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner, and summon Squire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.
"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with the candles and the coffee.
"Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if I had my game."At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down to the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr.
Bowls had quitted the room, and the door was quite shut, she said:
"Miss Crawley, I can play a little.I used to--to play a little with poor dear papa.""Come and kiss me.Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good little soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy:
and in this picturesque and friendly occupation Mr.Pitt found the old lady and the young one, when he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand.How she did blush all the evening, that poor Lady Jane!
It must not be imagined that Mr.Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped the attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley.Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs.Bute had friends in the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton.Pitt was there more and more.He did not come for months together to the Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family.
Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs.Bute regretted more (though she confessed less)than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there."It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never would have left her.Iam a martyr to duty and to your odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute.""Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her, Barbara," the divine interposed."You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil of a temper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara.""You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your money.""I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly.
"You ARE a clever woman, but you manage too well, you know": and the pious man consoled himself with a big glass of port.
"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" he continued."The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose.I remember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to flog him round the stables as if he was a whipping-top: and Pitt would go howling home to his ma--ha, ha! Why, either of my boys would whop him with one hand.Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawley still--the spooney.
"I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause.
"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the table.
"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do anything with the old lady.He's very near getting his degree, you know.He's only been plucked twice--so was I--but he's had the advantages of Oxford and a university education.He knows some of the best chaps there.
He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat.He's a handsome feller.D-- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey, and tell him to thrash Pitt if he says anything.
Ha, ha, ha!
"Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife said; adding with a sigh, "If we could but get one of the girls into the house; but she could never endure them, because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long.But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? Mrs.Bute could think of nobody but the Curate to take one of them off her hands;and Jim coming in from the stable at this minute, through the parlour window, with a short pipe stuck in his oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about odds on the St.Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his wife ended.