Vanity Fair - Page 63/573

So we sat for an hour until steps were heard.

"Put away the cards, girls," cried my lady, in a great tremor; "put

down Mr. Crawley's books, Miss Sharp"; and these orders had been

scarcely obeyed, when Mr. Crawley entered the room.

"We will resume yesterday's discourse, young ladies," said he, "and you

shall each read a page by turns; so that Miss a--Miss Short may have an

opportunity of hearing you"; and the poor girls began to spell a long

dismal sermon delivered at Bethesda Chapel, Liverpool, on behalf of the

mission for the Chickasaw Indians. Was it not a charming evening?

At ten the servants were told to call Sir Pitt and the household to

prayers. Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and rather

unsteady in his gait; and after him the butler, the canaries, Mr.

Crawley's man, three other men, smelling very much of the stable, and

four women, one of whom, I remarked, was very much overdressed, and who

flung me a look of great scorn as she plumped down on her knees.

After Mr. Crawley had done haranguing and expounding, we received our

candles, and then we went to bed; and then I was disturbed in my

writing, as I have described to my dearest sweetest Amelia.

Good night. A thousand, thousand, thousand kisses!

Saturday.--This morning, at five, I heard the shrieking of the little

black pig. Rose and Violet introduced me to it yesterday; and to the

stables, and to the kennel, and to the gardener, who was picking fruit

to send to market, and from whom they begged hard a bunch of hot-house

grapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered every "Man Jack" of

them, and it would be as much as his place was worth to give any away.

The darling girls caught a colt in a paddock, and asked me if I would

ride, and began to ride themselves, when the groom, coming with horrid

oaths, drove them away.

Lady Crawley is always knitting the worsted. Sir Pitt is always tipsy,

every night; and, I believe, sits with Horrocks, the butler. Mr.

Crawley always reads sermons in the evening, and in the morning is

locked up in his study, or else rides to Mudbury, on county business,

or to Squashmore, where he preaches, on Wednesdays and Fridays, to the

tenants there.

A hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa and mamma. Is your

poor brother recovered of his rack-punch? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How men

should beware of wicked punch!

Ever and ever thine own REBECCA Everything considered, I think it is quite as well for our dear Amelia

Sedley, in Russell Square, that Miss Sharp and she are parted. Rebecca

is a droll funny creature, to be sure; and those descriptions of the

poor lady weeping for the loss of her beauty, and the gentleman "with

hay-coloured whiskers and straw-coloured hair," are very smart,

doubtless, and show a great knowledge of the world. That she might,

when on her knees, have been thinking of something better than Miss

Horrocks's ribbons, has possibly struck both of us. But my kind reader

will please to remember that this history has "Vanity Fair" for a

title, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full

of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while the

moralist, who is holding forth on the cover ( an accurate portrait of

your humble servant), professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but

only the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation is

arrayed: yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one

knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and a

deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an

undertaking.