Vanity Fair - Page 352/573

All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the most faithful of

wives, and increased the favourable impression which Rebecca made; so

much so that when, on the third day after the funeral, the family party

were at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of the

table, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem! Rebecca, may I give you a

wing?"--a speech which made the little woman's eyes sparkle with

pleasure.

While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and hopes, and Pitt

Crawley arranging the funeral ceremonial and other matters connected

with his future progress and dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her

nursery, as far as her mother would let her, and the sun rising and

setting, and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and to

prayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's Crawley lay in

the apartment which he had occupied, watched unceasingly by the

professional attendants who were engaged for that rite. A woman or

two, and three or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southampton

could furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy and tragical

demeanour, had charge of the remains which they watched turn about,

having the housekeeper's room for their place of rendezvous when off

duty, where they played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.

The members of the family and servants of the house kept away from the

gloomy spot, where the bones of the descendant of an ancient line of

knights and gentlemen lay, awaiting their final consignment to the

family crypt. No regrets attended them, save those of the poor woman

who had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who had fled in

disgrace from the Hall over which she had so nearly been a ruler.

Beyond her and a favourite old pointer he had, and between whom and

himself an attachment subsisted during the period of his imbecility,

the old man had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed, during

the whole course of his life, never taken the least pains to secure

one. Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have

an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any

Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would

have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were

consoled. And so Sir Pitt was forgotten--like the kindest and best of

us--only a few weeks sooner.

Those who will may follow his remains to the grave, whither they were

borne on the appointed day, in the most becoming manner, the family in

black coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for

the tears which did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep

tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of compliment to the new

landlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages at three miles an hour,

empty, and in profound affliction; the parson speaking out the formula

about "our dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body, we

play our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies,

laying it in state, and packing it up in gilt nails and velvet; and we

finish our duty by placing over it a stone, written all over with lies.

Bute's curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt Crawley

composed between them an appropriate Latin epitaph for the late

lamented Baronet, and the former preached a classical sermon, exhorting

the survivors not to give way to grief and informing them in the most

respectful terms that they also would be one day called upon to pass

that gloomy and mysterious portal which had just closed upon the

remains of their lamented brother. Then the tenantry mounted on

horseback again, or stayed and refreshed themselves at the Crawley

Arms. Then, after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,

the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different destinations:

then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes, palls, velvets, ostrich

feathers, and other mortuary properties, clambered up on the roof of

the hearse and rode off to Southampton. Their faces relapsed into a

natural expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into a

brisker trot on the open road; and squads of them might have been seen,

speckling with black the public-house entrances, with pewter-pots

flashing in the sunshine. Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled away

into a tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl sometimes

at first, but these were the only accents of grief which were heard in

the Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, had been master for some

threescore years.