Bowls's plate.She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours.When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs.Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside.They seemed to lighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she moved about the room on velvet paws like a cat.There Miss Crawley lay for days--ever so many days--Mr.Bute reading books of devotion to her: for nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the night-light sputter;visited at midnight, the last thing, by the stealthy apothecary;and then left to look at Mrs.Bute's twinkling eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened ceiling.Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim? It has been said that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner.
Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place in mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of some novelists of the present day)to cajole the.public into a sermon, when it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness.But, without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal repentances sometimes overcome him.Recollection of the best ordained banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures.Reminiscences of the most becoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to console faded beauties.Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all of us must some day or other be speculating.O brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear friends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be perfectly miserable in private.
"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders,"Mrs.Bute Crawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under present circumstances, to this unhappy old lady! He might make her repent of her shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, and cast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and his family; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and the two boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance which their relatives can give them."And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle's wife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served to condemn a whole regiment of young officers.If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs.Bute showed a perfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history.She had all the particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in which Rawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain.She knew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house at Oxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched a card in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at the Cocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and perverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds.She described with the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom he had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and poverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition.She knew the poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean shifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices.She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian woman and mother of a family to do so;had not the smallest remorse or compunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very likely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon her resolute manner of performing it.Yes, if a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the business.And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his friends' parts.
