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

along the road. The great sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was black and covered with mosses; the once trim flowerbeds rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the whole line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred after much ringing of the bell; an individual in ribbons was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at length admitted the heir of Queen’s Crawley and his bride into the halls of their fathers. He led the way into Sir Pitt’s “Library,” as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growing stronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that apartment, “Sir Pitt ain’t very well,” Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that his master was afflicted with lumbago.

The library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had opened one of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the postilion and Pitt’s servant, who seemed to be about to take the baggage down.

“Don’t move none of them trunks,” he cried, pointing with a pipe which he held in his hand. “It’s only a morning visit, Tucker, you fool. Lor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels! Ain’t there no one at the King’s Head to rub ’em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear? Come to see the old man, hay? ’Gad⁠—you’ve a pretty face, too. You ain’t like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and give old Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal.”

The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the caresses of the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco, might well do. But she remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios, and smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a tolerable grace.

“Pitt has got vat,” said the Baronet, after this mark of affection. “Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm, Evening Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady Jane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don’t stand stearing there like a fat pig. I won’t ask you to stop, my dear; you’ll find it too stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt. I’m an old man now, and like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of a night.”

“I can play at backgammon, sir,” said Lady Jane, laughing. “I used to play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn’t I, Mr. Crawley?”

“Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you are so partial,” Pitt said haughtily.

“But she wawn’t stop for all that. Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury and give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask Buty for a dinner. He’ll be charmed to see you, you know; he’s so much obliged to you for gettin’ the old woman’s money. Ha, ha! Some of it will do to patch up the Hall when I’m gone.”

“I perceive, sir,” said Pitt with a heightened voice, “that your people will cut down the timber.”

“Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of year,” Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf. “But I’m gittin’ old, Pitt, now. Law bless you, you ain’t far from fifty yourself. But he wears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don’t he? It’s all godliness, sobriety, and a moral life. Look at me, I’m not very fur from fowr-score⁠—he, he”; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered at her and pinched her hand.

Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but the Baronet was deaf again in an instant.

“I’m gittin’ very old, and have been cruel bad this year with the lumbago. I shan’t be here now for long; but I’m glad ee’ve come, daughter-in-law. I like your face, Lady Jane: it’s got none of the damned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I’ll give ee something pretty, my dear, to go to Court in.” And he shuffled across the room to a cupboard, from which he took a little old case containing jewels of some value. “Take that,” said he, “my dear; it belonged to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty pearls⁠—never gave ’em the ironmonger’s daughter. No, no. Take ’em and put ’em up quick,” said he, thrusting the case into his daughter’s hand, and clapping the door of the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and refreshments.

“What have you a been and given Pitt’s wife?” said the individual in ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old gentleman. It was Miss Horrocks, the butler’s daughter⁠—the cause of the scandal throughout the county⁠—the lady who reigned now almost supreme at Queen’s Crawley.

The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay by the county and family. The Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury Branch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at the Hall. The domestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The Scotch gardener, who still lingered on the premises, taking a pride in his walls and hothouses, and indeed making a pretty good livelihood by the garden, which he farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton, found the Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning at the south-wall, and had his ears boxed when he remonstrated about this attack on his property. He and his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only respectable inhabitants of Queen’s Crawley, were forced to migrate, with their goods and their chattels, and left the stately comfortable gardens to go to waste, and the flowerbeds to run to seed. Poor Lady Crawley’s rose-garden became the dreariest wilderness. Only two or three domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants’ hall. The stables and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined. Sir Pitt lived in private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-steward (as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. The