"I wish I was," Rawdon replied."If it wasn't for little Rawdon I'd have cut my throat this morning--and that damned villain's too."Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that Lord Steyne was the person whose life Rawdon wished to take.The Colonel told his senior briefly, and in broken accents, the circumstances of the case."It was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her," he said."The bailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going out of his house; when I wrote to her for money, she said she was ill in bed and put me off to another day.
And when I got home I found her in diamonds and sitting with that villain alone." He then went on to describe hurriedly the personal conflict with Lord Steyne.To an affair of that nature, of course, he said, there was but one issue, and after his conference with his brother, he was going away to make the necessary arrangements for the meeting which must ensue."And as it may end fatally with me," Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and as the boy has no mother, I must leave him to you and Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if you will promise me to be his friend."The elder brother was much affected, and shook Rawdon's hand with a cordiality seldom exhibited by him.
Rawdon passed his hand over his shaggy eyebrows.
"Thank you, brother," said he."I know I can trust your word.""I will, upon my honour," the Baronet said.And thus, and almost mutely, this bargain was struck between them.
Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little pocket-book which he had discovered in Becky's desk, and from which he drew a bundle of the notes which it contained.
"Here's six hundred," he said--"you didn't know I was so rich.I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lent it to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always felt ashamed of having taken the poor old woman's money.And here's some more--I've only kept back a few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get on with." As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to give to his brother, but his hands shook, and he was so agitated that the pocket-book fell from him, and out of it the thousand-pound note which had been the last of the unlucky Becky's winnings.
Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much wealth."Not that," Rawdon said."I hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongs to." He had thought to himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap a ball in the note and kill Steyne with it.
After this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted.Lady Jane had heard of the Colonel's arrival, and was waiting for her husband in the adjoining dining-room, with female instinct, auguring evil.The door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and the lady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers passed out of the study.She held out her hand to Rawdon and said she was glad he was come to breakfast, though she could perceive, by his haggard unshorn face and the dark looks of her husband, that there was very little question of breakfast between them.Rawdon muttered some excuses about an engagement, squeezing hard the timid little hand which his sister-in-law reached out to him.Her imploring eyes could read nothing but calamity in his face, but he went away without another word.Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation.
The children came up to salute him, and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner.The mother took both of them close to herself, and held a hand of each of them as they knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, and to the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged upon chairs on the other side of the hissing tea-urn.
Breakfast was so late that day, in consequence of the delays which had occurred, that the church-bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal; and Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though her thoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion.
Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, and knocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portal of Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace.The man was scared also by the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and barred the way as if afraid that the other was going to force it.But Colonel Crawley only took out a card and enjoined him particularly to send it in to Lord Steyne, and to mark the address written on it, and say that Colonel Crawley would be all day after one o'clock at the Regent Club in St.James's Street--not at home.The fat red-faced man looked after him with astonishment as he strode away; so did the people in their Sunday clothes who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining faces, the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican shutting his shutters in the sunshine, against service commenced.The people joked at the cab-stand about his appearance, as he took a carriage there, and told the driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.
All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place.He might have seen his old acquaintance Amelia on her way from Brompton to Russell Square, had he been looking out.Troops of schools were on their march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides of coaches in the suburbs were thronged with people out upon their Sunday pleasure; but the Colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena, and, arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the room of his old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo, who Crawley found, to his satisfaction, was in barracks.
