Vanity Fair - Page 541/573

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.