The spinster caused Briggs to write back to the Colonel a gracious and complimentary letter, encouraging him to continue his correspondence.His first letter was so excessively lively and amusing that she should look with pleasure for its successors.--"Of course, I know,"she explained to,Miss Briggs, "that Rawdon could not write such a good letter any more than you could, my poor Briggs, and that it is that clever little wretch of a Rebecca, who dictates every word to him; but that is no reason why my nephew should not amuse me; and so Iwish to let him understand that I am in high good humour."I wonder whether she knew that it was not only Becky who wrote the letters, but that Mrs.Rawdon actually took and sent home the trophies which she bought for a few francs, from one of the innumerable pedlars who immediately began to deal in relics of the war.The novelist, who knows everything, knows this also.Be this, however, as it may, Miss Crawley's gracious reply greatly encouraged our young friends, Rawdon and his lady, who hoped for the best from their aunt's evidently pacified humour: and they took care to entertain her with many delightful letters from Paris, whither, as Rawdon said, they had the good luck to go in the track of the conquering army.
To the rector's lady, who went off to tend her husband's broken collar-bone at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley, the spinster's communications were by no means so gracious.Mrs.Bute, that brisk, managing, lively, imperious woman, had committed the most fatal of all errors with regard to her sister-in-law.She had not merely oppressed her and her household--she had bored Miss Crawley; and if poor Miss Briggs had been a woman of any spirit, she might have been made happy by the commission which her principal gave her to write a letter to Mrs.Bute Crawley, saying that Miss Crawley's health was greatly improved since Mrs.Bute had left her, and begging the latter on no account to put herself to trouble, or quit her family for Miss Crawley's sake.This triumph over a lady who had been very haughty and cruel in her behaviour to Miss Briggs, would have rejoiced most women; but the truth is, Briggs was a woman of no spirit at all, and the moment her enemy was discomfited, she began to feel compassion in her favour.
"How silly I was," Mrs.Bute thought, and with reason, "ever to hint that I was coming, as I did, in that foolish letter when we sent Miss Crawley the guinea-fowls.I ought to have gone without a word to the poor dear doting old creature, and taken her out of the hands of that ninny Briggs, and that harpy of a femme de chambre.Oh! Bute, Bute, why did you break your collar-bone?"
Why, indeed? We have seen how Mrs.Bute, having the game in her hands, had really played her cards too well.
She had ruled over Miss Crawley's household utterly and completely, to be utterly and completely routed when a favourable opportunity for rebellion came.She and her household, however, considered that she had been the victim of horrible selfishness and treason, and that her sacrifices in Miss Crawley's behalf had met with the most savage ingratitude.Rawdon's promotion, and the honourable mention made of his name in the Gazette, filled this good Christian lady also with alarm.Would his aunt relent towards him now that he was a Lieutenant-Colonel and a C.B.? and would that odious Rebecca once more get into favour? The Rector's wife wrote a sermon for her husband about the vanity of military glory and the prosperity of the wicked, which the worthy parson read in his best voice and without understanding one syllable of it.He had Pitt Crawley for one of his auditors--Pitt, who had come with his two half-sisters to church, which.the old Baronet could now by no means be brought to frequent.
Since the departure of Becky Sharp, that old wretch had given himself up entirely to his bad courses, to the great scandal of the county and the mute horror of his son.The ribbons in Miss Horrocks's cap became more splendid than ever.The polite families fled the hall and its owner in terror.Sir Pitt went about tippling at his tenants' houses; and drank rum-and-water with the farmers at Mudbury and the neighbouring places on market-days.He drove the family coach-and-four to Southampton with Miss Horrocks inside: and the county people expected, every week, as his son did in speechless agony, that his marriage with her would be announced in the provincial paper.It was indeed a rude burthen for Mr.
Crawley to bear.His eloquence was palsied at the missionary meetings, and other religious assemblies in the neighbourhood, where he had been in the habit of presiding, and of speaking for hours; for he felt, when he rose, that the audience said, "That is the son of the old reprobate Sir Pitt, who is very likely drinking at the public house at this very moment." And once when he was speaking of the benighted condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and the number of his wives who were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreant from the crowd asked, "How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young Squaretoes?" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr.Pitt's speech.And the two daughters of the house of Queen's Crawley would have been allowed to run utterly wild (for Sir Pitt swore that no governess should ever enter into his doors again), had not Mr.Crawley, by threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send them to school.
