Vanity Fair - Page 340/573

As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments where Lady

Crawley had been previously extinguished, and here was tended by Miss

Hester, the girl upon her promotion, with constant care and assiduity.

What love, what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of a

nurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make arrowroot; they

get up at nights; they bear complaints and querulousness; they see the

sun shining out of doors and don't want to go abroad; they sleep on

arm-chairs and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long long

evenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the patient's drink

simmering in the jug; they read the weekly paper the whole week

through; and Law's Serious Call or the Whole Duty of Man suffices them

for literature for the year--and we quarrel with them because, when

their relations come to see them once a week, a little gin is smuggled

in in their linen basket. Ladies, what man's love is there that would

stand a year's nursing of the object of his affection? Whereas a nurse

will stand by you for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly

paid. At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about paying half as

much to Miss Hester for her constant attendance upon the Baronet his

father.

Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a chair on the

terrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley had had at Brighton, and

which had been transported thence with a number of Lady Southdown's

effects to Queen's Crawley. Lady Jane always walked by the old man,

and was an evident favourite with him. He used to nod many times to

her and smile when she came in, and utter inarticulate deprecatory

moans when she was going away. When the door shut upon her he would

cry and sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was always

exceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was present, would change

at once, and she would make faces at him and clench her fist and scream

out "Hold your tongue, you stoopid old fool," and twirl away his chair

from the fire which he loved to look at--at which he would cry more.

For this was all that was left after more than seventy years of

cunning, and struggling, and drinking, and scheming, and sin and

selfishness--a whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleaned

and fed like a baby.

At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was over. Early one

morning, as Pitt Crawley was at his steward's and bailiff's books in

the study, a knock came to the door, and Hester presented herself,

dropping a curtsey, and said, "If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir Pitt. I was

a-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel, Sir Pitt, which he took

every morning regular at six, Sir Pitt, and--I thought I heard a

moan-like, Sir Pitt--and--and--and--" She dropped another curtsey.