Vanity Fair - Page 371/573

"I wish you could have got a little money out of him," Rawdon said to

his wife moodily when the Baronet was gone. "I should like to give

something to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't. It ain't right, you

know, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his money. It may

be inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides us, you

know."

"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are

settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on

account. Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy," and she took

from her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had handed

over to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger branch

of the Crawleys.

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her husband

expressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so delicately,

and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir Pitt

Crawley was off and alarmed. And he began a long speech, explaining

how straitened he himself was in money matters; how the tenants would

not pay; how his father's affairs, and the expenses attendant upon the

demise of the old gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay off

incumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt

Crawley ended by making a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving

her a very small sum for the benefit of her little boy.

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be. It

could not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old

diplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that

houses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing. He knew very well

that he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,

according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his

younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of

remorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some act

of justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointed

relations. A just, decent man, not without brains, who said his

prayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly through

life, he could not be otherwise than aware that something was due to

his brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's debtor.

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now and

then, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,

acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B., or 10 pounds from

W. T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said A. B.

or W. T., which payments the penitents beg the Right Honourable

gentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public press--so is

the Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly sure

that the above-named A. B. and W. T. are only paying a very small

instalment of what they really owe, and that the man who sends up a

twenty-pound note has very likely hundreds or thousands more for which

he ought to account. Such, at least, are my feelings, when I see

A. B. or W. T.'s insufficient acts of repentance. And I have no doubt

that Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his

younger brother, by whom he had so much profited, was only a very small

dividend upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not

everybody is willing to pay even so much. To part with money is a

sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order. There

is scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for

giving his neighbour five pounds. Thriftless gives, not from a

beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. He

would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his

horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five

pounds. Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny,

turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or denies a poor

relation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the two. Money has

only a different value in the eyes of each.