Vanity Fair - Page 282/573

In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the gayest

among the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear wounded

Amelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss

Crawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her

little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the sea

was roaring on the beach. The old spinster used to wake up when these

ditties ceased, and ask for more. As for Briggs, and the quantity of

tears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and

looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the windows, and the

lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--who, I say can

measure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?

Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws or

a Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation which

suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner. He sipped Madeira:

built castles in the air: thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself

much more in love with Jane than he had been any time these seven

years, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightest

impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal. When the time for

coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner, and summon

Squire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.

"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss

Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with

the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl,

she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing

Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if I

had my game."

At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down to

the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted the

room, and the door was quite shut, she said: "Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to--to play a little with

poor dear papa."

"Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good little

soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this picturesque and

friendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and the young one, when

he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush all

the evening, that poor Lady Jane!

It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped the

attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley.

Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends

in the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great

deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton.

Pitt was there more and more. He did not come for months together to

the Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely

to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's

success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted

more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so

insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to

Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss

Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there.

"It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had

not broke, I never would have left her. I am a martyr to duty and to

your odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute."