This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was
brought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles
to keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any
hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that
struggling is in vain.
She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations
for his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made
more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and
to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour.
As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons,
the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the
palace of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met those of
Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet.
Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have heard that she quite astonished
her husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and her
determination to disown Mrs. Becky. Of her own movement, she invited
Rawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for
Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not
try to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptions
of all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his
sister-in-law should be corresponding. Not but that Rebecca could have
written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pitt
at his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demand
that the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should be
carried on by lawyers only.
The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her. A short
time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet and
given him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member
for Queen's Crawley. He knew everything regarding her: who her father
was; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been her
previous history; and what her conduct during her married life--as I
have no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated
by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here. But Becky
was left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman
and relative who had been once rather partial to her.
The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large. A part
of them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certain
outstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his high
situation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that he
could not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year,
which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never
trouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would
ensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business,
Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up a
most disagreeable affair.