Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray (portable ebook reader .txt) 📖

house, the legs of whom had probably been discovered by the woman under Miss Crawley’s bed.

When made aware of the fact, however⁠—to rush upstairs at three steps at a time to enter the unconscious James’s apartment, calling out, “Mr. James,” in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry, “For Gawd’s sake, sir, stop that ’ere pipe,” was the work of a minute with Mr. Bowls. “O, Mr. James, what ’ave you done!” he said in a voice of the deepest pathos, as he threw the implement out of the window. “What ’ave you done, sir! Missis can’t abide ’em.”

“Missis needn’t smoke,” said James with a frantic misplaced laugh, and thought the whole matter an excellent joke.

But his feelings were very different in the morning, when Mr. Bowls’s young man, who operated upon Mr. James’s boots, and brought him his hot water to shave that beard which he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note in to Mr. James in bed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs.

“Dear sir,” it said, “Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly disturbed night, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has been polluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that she is too unwell to see you before you go⁠—and above all that she ever induced you to remove from the alehouse, where she is sure you will be much more comfortable during the rest of your stay at Brighton.”

And herewith honest James’s career as a candidate for his aunt’s favour ended. He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he menaced to do. He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves.

Where meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this race for money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come together after Waterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in great splendour and gaiety. Rebecca was a good economist, and the price poor Jos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in itself sufficient to keep their little establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there was no occasion to turn into money “my pistols, the same which I shot Captain Marker,” or the gold dressing-case, or the cloak lined with sable. Becky had it made into a pelisse for herself, in which she rode in the Bois de Boulogne to the admiration of all: and you should have seen the scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoined after the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, and let out of her dress all those watches, knickknacks, banknotes, cheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previous to her meditated flight from Brussels! Tufto was charmed, and Rawdon roared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was better than any play he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, and which she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to a pitch of quite insane enthusiasm. He believed in his wife as much as the French soldiers in Napoleon.

Her success in Paris was remarkable. All the French ladies voted her charming. She spoke their language admirably. She adopted at once their grace, their liveliness, their manner. Her husband was stupid certainly⁠—all English are stupid⁠—and, besides, a dull husband at Paris is always a point in a lady’s favour. He was the heir of the rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been open to so many of the French noblesse during the emigration. They received the colonel’s wife in their own hotels⁠—“Why,” wrote a great lady to Miss Crawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess’s own price, and given her many a dinner during the pinching times after the Revolution⁠—“Why does not our dear Miss come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends in Paris? All the world raffoles of the charming Mistress and her espiègle beauty. Yes, we see in her the grace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley! The King took notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries, and we are all jealous of the attention which Monsieur pays her. If you could have seen the spite of a certain stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque and feathers may be seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) when Madame, the Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion of kings, desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear daughter and protégée, and thanked her in the name of France, for all your benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile! She is of all the societies, of all the balls⁠—of the balls⁠—yes⁠—of the dances, no; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature looks surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to be a mother! To hear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother, would bring tears to the eyes of ogres. How she loves you! how we all love our admirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!”

It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did not by any means advance Mrs. Becky’s interest with her admirable, her respectable, relative. On the contrary, the fury of the old spinster was beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca’s situation, and how audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley’s name, to get an entrée into Parisian society. Too much shaken in mind and body to compose a letter in the French language in reply to that of her correspondent, she dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue, repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning the public to beware of her as a most artful and dangerous person. But as Madame the Duchess of X⁠⸺ had only been twenty years in England, she did not understand a single word of the language, and contented herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next meeting, that she had received a charming