Vanity Fair - Page 353/573

As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as it

were the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities,

Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little and

partook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it. The sight

of those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many

secret joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took no

gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his big brother,

and the keepers blazing away at his side. Pitt's money and acres had a

great effect upon his brother. The penniless Colonel became quite

obsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised the

milksop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior's

prospects of planting and draining, gave his advice about the stables

and cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thought

would carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her, &c.: the rebellious

dragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditable

younger brother. He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London

respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messages

of his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I hope you are very well. I

hope Mamma is very well. The pony is very well. Grey takes me to ride

in the park. I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. He

cried when he cantered. I do not cry." Rawdon read these letters to

his brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them. The Baronet

promised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted wife

gave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her

little nephew.

One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their life

in those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies.

Bells rang to meals and to prayers. The young ladies took exercise on

the pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them the

benefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick shoes and walked in

the park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings into the village,

descending upon the cottages, with Lady Southdown's medicine and tracts

for the sick people there. Lady Southdown drove out in a pony-chaise,

when Rebecca would take her place by the Dowager's side and listen to

her solemn talk with the utmost interest. She sang Handel and Haydn to

the family of evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work,

as if she had been born to the business and as if this kind of life was

to continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite old

age, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as if

there were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waiting

outside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into the

world again.