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

Pet and the Barking Butcher, which has been before mentioned⁠—a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved grey head, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyed moustache.

When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knew perfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, and indeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with the greatest prudence and skill. His Royal Highness the late lamented Commander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo on this account, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in trouble.

“What’s the row about, Crawley, my boy?” said the old warrior. “No more gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?”

“It’s about⁠—about my wife,” Crawley answered, casting down his eyes and turning very red.

The other gave a whistle. “I always said she’d throw you over,” he began⁠—indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubs regarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his wife’s character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing the savage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this opinion, Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further.

“Is there no way out of it, old boy?” the Captain continued in a grave tone. “Is it only suspicion, you know, or⁠—or what is it? Any letters? Can’t you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of that sort if you can help it.” “Think of his only finding her out now,” the Captain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particular conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley’s reputation had been torn to shreds.

“There’s no way but one out of it,” Rawdon replied⁠—“and there’s only a way out of it for one of us, Mac⁠—do you understand? I was put out of the way⁠—arrested⁠—I found ’em alone together. I told him he was a liar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him.”

“Serve him right,” Macmurdo said. “Who is it?”

Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.

“The deuce! a Marquis! they said he⁠—that is, they said you⁠—”

“What the devil do you mean?” roared out Rawdon; “do you mean that you ever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn’t tell me, Mac?”

“The world’s very censorious, old boy,” the other replied. “What the deuce was the good of my telling you what any tomfools talked about?”

“It was damned unfriendly, Mac,” said Rawdon, quite overcome; and, covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sight of which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince with sympathy.

“Hold up, old boy,” he said; “great man or not, we’ll put a bullet in him, damn him. As for women, they’re all so.”

“You don’t know how fond I was of that one,” Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. “Damme, I followed her like a footman. I gave up everything I had to her. I’m a beggar because I would marry her. By Jove, sir, I’ve pawned my own watch in order to get her anything she fancied; and she⁠—she’s been making a purse for herself all the time, and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod.” He then fiercely and incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor had never before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of the story. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it.

“She may be innocent, after all,” he said. “She says so. Steyne has been a hundred times alone with her in the house before.”

“It may be so,” Rawdon answered sadly, “but this don’t look very innocent”: and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which he had found in Becky’s pocketbook. “This is what he gave her, Mac, and she kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refused to stand by me when I was locked up.” The Captain could not but own that the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched Captain Macmurdo’s servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the domestic there to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had great need. And during the man’s absence, and with great labour and a Johnson’s Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and his second composed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord Steyne. Captain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne, on the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that he was empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements for the meeting which, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship’s intention to demand, and which the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable. Captain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, to appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M. M.) might communicate, and desired that the meeting might take place with as little delay as possible.

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession a banknote for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason to suppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne. And he was anxious, on the Colonel’s behalf, to give up the note to its owner.

By the time this note was composed, the Captain’s servant returned from his mission to Colonel Crawley’s house in Curzon Street, but without the carpetbag and portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with a very puzzled and odd face.

“They won’t give ’em up,” said the man; “there’s a regular shinty in the house, and everything at sixes and sevens. The landlord’s come in and took possession. The servants was a drinkin’ up in the drawing-room. They said⁠—they said you had gone off with the plate, Colonel”⁠—the man added after a pause⁠—“One of the servants is off already. And Simpson, the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed, says nothing shall go out of the house