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

“She’s married to whom?” cries the spinster in a nervous fury.

“To⁠—to a relation of⁠—”

“She refused Sir Pitt,” cried the victim. “Speak at once. Don’t drive me mad.”

“O Ma’am⁠—prepare her, Miss Briggs⁠—she’s married to Rawdon Crawley.”

“Rawdon married Rebecca⁠—governess⁠—nobod⁠—Get out of my house, you fool, you idiot⁠—you stupid old Briggs⁠—how dare you? You’re in the plot⁠—you made him marry, thinking that I’d leave my money from him⁠—you did, Martha,” the poor old lady screamed in hysteric sentences.

“I, Ma’am, ask a member of this family to marry a drawing-master’s daughter?”

“Her mother was a Montmorency,” cried out the old lady, pulling at the bell with all her might.

“Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on the stage or worse herself,” said Mrs. Bute.

Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint. They were forced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted. One fit of hysterics succeeded another. The doctor was sent for⁠—the apothecary arrived. Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her bedside. “Her relations ought to be round about her,” that amiable woman said.

She had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a new person arrived to whom it was also necessary to break the news. This was Sir Pitt. “Where’s Becky?” he said, coming in. “Where’s her traps? She’s coming with me to Queen’s Crawley.”

“Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence regarding her surreptitious union?” Briggs asked.

“What’s that to me?” Sir Pitt asked. “I know she’s married. That makes no odds. Tell her to come down at once, and not keep me.”

“Are you not aware, sir,” Miss Briggs asked, “that she has left our roof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is nearly killed by the intelligence of Captain Rawdon’s union with her?”

When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married to his son, he broke out into a fury of language, which it would do no good to repeat in this place, as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out of the room; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure of the frenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled desire.

One day after he went to Queen’s Crawley, he burst like a madman into the room she had used when there⁠—dashed open her boxes with his foot, and flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics. Miss Horrocks, the butler’s daughter, took some of them. The children dressed themselves and acted plays in the others. It was but a few days after the poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-place; and was laid, unwept and disregarded, in a vault full of strangers.

“Suppose the old lady doesn’t come to,” Rawdon said to his little wife, as they sat together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety; the new shawls became her wonderfully; the new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist; “suppose she don’t come round, eh, Becky?”

“I’ll make your fortune,” she said; and Delilah patted Samson’s cheek.

“You can do anything,” he said, kissing the little hand. “By Jove you can; and we’ll drive down to the Star and Garter, and dine, by Jove.”

If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in the last page of The Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very few London people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and all with a taste for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation and interest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes’ assignees, or will be instructed by the executors, to offer to public competition, the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar of wines of Epicurus deceased.

Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian, as he witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can’t but feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives’s remains are in the family vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciously commemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir, who is disposing of his goods. What guest at Dives’s table can pass the familiar house without a sigh?⁠—the familiar house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven o’clock, of which the hall-doors opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up the comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining them. How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and hated each other everywhere else! He was pompous, but with such a cook what would one not swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but would not such wine make any conversation pleasant? We must get some of his Burgundy at any price, the mourners cry at his club. “I got this box at old Dives’s sale,” Pincher says, handing it round, “one of Louis XV’s mistresses⁠—pretty thing, is it not?⁠—sweet miniature,” and they talk of the way in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune.

How changed the house is, though! The front is patched over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring capitals. They have