Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (best thriller novels to read TXT) 📕

“No, run me through the body if I am!” Rawdon ejaculated.

“You old booby,” Rebecca said, pinching his ear and looking over to see that he made no mistakes in spelling⁠—“beseech is not spelt with an a, and earliest is.” So he altered these words, bowing to the superior knowledge of his little Missis.

“I thought that you were aware of the progress of my attachment,” Rebecca continued: “I knew that Mrs. Bute Crawley confirmed and encouraged it. But I make no reproaches. I married a poor woman, and am content to abide by what I have done. Leave your property, dear Aunt, as you will. I shall never complain of the way in which you dispose of it. I would have you believe that I love you for yourself, and not for money’s sake. I want to be reconciled to you ere I leave England. Let me, let me see you before I go. A few weeks or months hence it may be too late, and I cannot bear the notion of quitting the country without a kind word of farewell from you.”

“She won’t recognise my style in that,” said Becky. “I made the sentences short and brisk on purpose.” And this authentic missive was despatched under cover to Miss Briggs.

Old Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great mystery, handed her over this candid and simple statement. “We may read it now Mrs. Bute is away,” she said. “Read it to me, Briggs.”

When Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness laughed more. “Don’t you see, you goose,” she said to Briggs, who professed to be much touched by the honest affection which pervaded the composition, “don’t you see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it. He never wrote to me without asking for money in his life, and all his letters are full of bad spelling, and dashes, and bad grammar. It is that little serpent of a governess who rules him.” They are all alike, Miss Crawley thought in her heart. They all want me dead, and are hankering for my money.

“I don’t mind seeing Rawdon,” she added, after a pause, and in a tone of perfect indifference. “I had just as soon shake hands with him as not. Provided there is no scene, why shouldn’t we meet? I don’t mind. But human patience has its limits; and mind, my dear, I respectfully decline to receive Mrs. Rawdon⁠—I can’t support that quite”⁠—and Miss Briggs was fain to be content with this half-message of conciliation; and thought that the best method of bringing the old lady and her nephew together, was to warn Rawdon to be in waiting on the Cliff, when Miss Crawley went out for her air in her chair. There they met. I don’t know whether Miss Crawley had any private feeling of regard or emotion upon seeing her old favourite; but she held out a couple of fingers to him with as smiling and good-humoured an air, as if they had met only the day before. And as for Rawdon, he turned as red as scarlet, and wrung off Briggs’s hand, so great was his rapture and his confusion at the meeting. Perhaps it was interest that moved him: or perhaps affection: perhaps he was touched by the change which the illness of the last weeks had wrought in his aunt.

“The old girl has always acted like a trump to me,” he said to his wife, as he narrated the interview, “and I felt, you know, rather queer, and that sort of thing. I walked by the side of the what-dy’e-call-’em, you know, and to her own door, where Bowls came to help her in. And I wanted to go in very much, only⁠—”

“You didn’t go in, Rawdon!” screamed his wife.

“No, my dear; I’m hanged if I wasn’t afraid when it came to the point.”

“You fool! you ought to have gone in, and never come out again,” Rebecca said.

“Don’t call me names,” said the big Guardsman, sulkily. “Perhaps I was a fool, Becky, but you shouldn’t say so”; and he gave his wife a look, such as his countenance could wear when angered, and such as was not pleasant to face.

“Well, dearest, tomorrow you must be on the lookout, and go and see her, mind, whether she asks you or no,” Rebecca said, trying to soothe her angry yoke-mate. On which he replied, that he would do exactly as he liked, and would just thank her to keep a civil tongue in her head⁠—and the wounded husband went away, and passed the forenoon at the billiard-room, sulky, silent, and suspicious.

But before the night was over he was compelled to give in, and own, as usual, to his wife’s superior prudence and foresight, by the most melancholy confirmation of the presentiments which she had regarding the consequences of the mistake which he had made. Miss Crawley must have had some emotion upon seeing him and shaking hands with him after so long a rupture. She mused upon the meeting a considerable time. “Rawdon is getting very fat and old, Briggs,” she said to her companion. “His nose has become red, and he is exceedingly coarse in appearance. His marriage to that woman has hopelessly vulgarised him. Mrs. Bute always said they drank together; and I have no doubt they do. Yes: he smelt of gin abominably. I remarked it. Didn’t you?”

In vain Briggs interposed that Mrs. Bute spoke ill of everybody: and, as far as a person in her humble position could judge, was an⁠—

“An artful designing woman? Yes, so she is, and she does speak ill of everyone⁠—but I am certain that woman has made Rawdon drink. All those low people do⁠—”

“He was very much affected at seeing you, ma’am,” the companion said; “and I am sure, when you remember that he is going to the field of danger⁠—”

“How much money has he promised you, Briggs?” the old spinster cried out, working herself into a