Vanity Fair - Page 347/573

So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of their

arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in the

same old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct

Baronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine years

before. How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whom

she refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in

his coat on the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would have

liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman and

talked about horses and the road the whole way; and who kept the inns,

and who horsed the coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when

he and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a carriage and a pair

of horses received them, with a coachman in black. "It's the old drag,

Rawdon," Rebecca said as they got in. "The worms have eaten the cloth

a good deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson the

Ironmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made such a noise about.

It was a bottle of cherry brandy he broke which we went to fetch for

your aunt from Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't be

Polly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the cottage

there. I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds in the

garden."

"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gave

him, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband. Becky bowed and

saluted, and recognized people here and there graciously. These

recognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if she

was not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of her

ancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other hand.

What recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been flitting

across his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?

"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca said, thinking of those

girls for the first time perhaps since she had left them.

"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel. "Hullo! here's old Mother

Lock. How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember me, don't you? Master Rawdon,

hey? Dammy how those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a

boy."

They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whose

hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking old

iron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars

surmounted by the dove and serpent.

"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said, looking about, and

then was silent--so was Becky. Both of them were rather agitated, and

thinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother, whom he

remembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom he

had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt; and about

little Rawdy at home. And Rebecca thought about her own youth and the

dark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life

by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and Amelia.