Vanity Fair - Page 425/573

And in her commerce with the great our dear friend showed the same

frankness which distinguished her transactions with the lowly in

station. On one occasion, when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was

(perhaps rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the French

language with a celebrated tenor singer of that nation, while the Lady

Grizzel Macbeth looked over her shoulder scowling at the pair.

"How very well you speak French," Lady Grizzel said, who herself spoke

the tongue in an Edinburgh accent most remarkable to hear.

"I ought to know it," Becky modestly said, casting down her eyes. "I

taught it in a school, and my mother was a Frenchwoman."

Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was mollified towards the

little woman. She deplored the fatal levelling tendencies of the age,

which admitted persons of all classes into the society of their

superiors, but her ladyship owned that this one at least was well

behaved and never forgot her place in life. She was a very good woman:

good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious. It is not her

ladyship's fault that she fancies herself better than you and me. The

skirts of her ancestors' garments have been kissed for centuries; it is

a thousand years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the family

were embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and councillors, when the

great ancestor of the House became King of Scotland.

Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before Becky, and perhaps

was not disinclined to her. The younger ladies of the house of Gaunt

were also compelled into submission. Once or twice they set people at

her, but they failed. The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried a passage

of arms with her, but was routed with great slaughter by the intrepid

little Becky. When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a

demure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She said the

wickedest things with the most simple unaffected air when in this mood,

and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that

all the world should know that she had made them.

Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and trencher-man of my

Lord Steyne, was caused by the ladies to charge her; and the worthy

fellow, leering at his patronesses and giving them a wink, as much as

to say, "Now look out for sport," one evening began an assault upon

Becky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner. The little woman,

attacked on a sudden, but never without arms, lighted up in an instant,

parried and riposted with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tingle

with shame; then she returned to her soup with the most perfect calm

and a quiet smile on her face. Wagg's great patron, who gave him

dinners and lent him a little money sometimes, and whose election,

newspaper, and other jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such a

savage glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the table and

burst into tears. He looked piteously at my lord, who never spoke to

him during dinner, and at the ladies, who disowned him. At last Becky

herself took compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk. He

was not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and Fiche, my lord's

confidential man, to whom Wagg naturally paid a good deal of court, was

instructed to tell him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing to

Mrs. Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes, Milor

would put every one of his notes of hand into his lawyer's hands and

sell him up without mercy. Wagg wept before Fiche and implored his

dear friend to intercede for him. He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R.

C., which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-scarum

Magazine, which he conducted. He implored her good-will at parties

where he met her. He cringed and coaxed Rawdon at the club. He was

allowed to come back to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was always

good to him, always amused, never angry.