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

were taking early tea and hot buttered toast in the former lady’s apartment, and wondered how the Rawding Crawleys could git on, the valet had damped and folded the paper once more, so that it looked quite fresh and innocent against the arrival of the master of the house.

Poor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and read it until his brother should arrive. But the print fell blank upon his eyes, and he did not know in the least what he was reading. The Government news and appointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound to peruse, otherwise he would by no means permit the introduction of Sunday papers into his household), the theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundred pounds a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury Pet, the Gaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a most complimentary though guarded account of the famous charades of which Mrs. Becky had been the heroine⁠—all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as he sat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family.

Punctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble study clock began to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his appearance, fresh, neat, smugly shaved, with a waxy clean face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty hair combed and oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairs majestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel dressing-gown⁠—a real old English gentleman, in a word⁠—a model of neatness and every propriety. He started when he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbled clothes, with bloodshot eyes, and his hair over his face. He thought his brother was not sober, and had been out all night on some orgy. “Good gracious, Rawdon,” he said, with a blank face, “what brings you here at this time of the morning? Why ain’t you at home?”

“Home,” said Rawdon with a wild laugh. “Don’t be frightened, Pitt. I’m not drunk. Shut the door; I want to speak to you.”

Pitt closed the door and came up to the table, where he sat down in the other armchair⁠—that one placed for the reception of the steward, agent, or confidential visitor who came to transact business with the Baronet⁠—and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever.

“Pitt, it’s all over with me,” the Colonel said after a pause. “I’m done.”

“I always said it would come to this,” the Baronet cried peevishly, and beating a tune with his clean-trimmed nails. “I warned you a thousand times. I can’t help you any more. Every shilling of my money is tied up. Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last night were promised to my lawyer tomorrow morning, and the want of it will put me to great inconvenience. I don’t mean to say that I won’t assist you ultimately. But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as well hope to pay the National Debt. It is madness, sheer madness, to think of such a thing. You must come to a compromise. It’s a painful thing for the family, but everybody does it. There was George Kitely, Lord Ragland’s son, went through the Court last week, and was what they call whitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay a shilling for him, and⁠—”

“It’s not money I want,” Rawdon broke in. “I’m not come to you about myself. Never mind what happens to me⁠—”

“What is the matter, then?” said Pitt, somewhat relieved.

“It’s the boy,” said Rawdon in a husky voice. “I want you to promise me that you will take charge of him when I’m gone. That dear good wife of yours has always been good to him; and he’s fonder of her than he is of his⁠ ⁠… —Damn it. Look here, Pitt⁠—you know that I was to have had Miss Crawley’s money. I wasn’t brought up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle. But for this I might have been quite a different man. I didn’t do my duty with the regiment so bad. You know how I was thrown over about the money, and who got it.”

“After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in which I have stood by you, I think this sort of reproach is useless,” Sir Pitt said. “Your marriage was your own doing, not mine.”

“That’s over now,” said Rawdon. “That’s over now.” And the words were wrenched from him with a groan, which made his brother start.

“Good God! is she dead?” Sir Pitt said with a voice of genuine alarm and commiseration.

“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