So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of theirarrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in thesame old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunctBaronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine yearsbefore. How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whomshe refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her inhis coat on the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would haveliked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman andtalked about horses and the road the whole way; and who kept the inns,and who horsed the coach by which he had travelled so many a time, whenhe and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a carriage and a pairof horses received them, with a coachman in black. "It's the old drag,Rawdon," Rebecca said as they got in. "The worms have eaten the clotha good deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson theIronmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made such a noise about.It was a bottle of cherry brandy he broke which we went to fetch foryour aunt from Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't bePolly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the cottagethere. I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds in thegarden."

"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gavehim, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband. Becky bowed andsaluted, and recognized people here and there graciously. Theserecognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if shewas not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of herancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other hand.What recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been flittingacross his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?

"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca said, thinking of thosegirls for the first time perhaps since she had left them.

"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel. "Hullo! here's old MotherLock. How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember me, don't you? Master Rawdon,hey? Dammy how those old women last; she was a hundred when I was aboy."

They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whosehand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking oldiron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillarssurmounted by the dove and serpent.

"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said, looking about, andthen was silent--so was Becky. Both of them were rather agitated, andthinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother, whom heremembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom hehad been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt; and aboutlittle Rawdy at home. And Rebecca thought about her own youth and thedark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her entrance into lifeby yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and Amelia.

The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite clean. A grandpainted hatchment was already over the great entrance, and two verysolemn and tall personages in black flung open each a leaf of the dooras the carriage pulled up at the familiar steps. Rawdon turned red,and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the old hall, arm inarm. She pinched her husband's arm as they entered the oak parlour,where Sir Pitt and his wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt inblack, Lady Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large blackhead-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her Ladyship's headlike an undertaker's tray.

Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit the premises.She contented herself by preserving a solemn and stony silence, when incompany of Pitt and his rebellious wife, and by frightening thechildren in the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour. Only avery faint bending of the head-dress and plumes welcomed Rawdon and hiswife, as those prodigals returned to their family.

To say the truth, they were not affected very much one way or other bythis coolness. Her Ladyship was a person only of secondaryconsideration in their minds just then--they were intent upon thereception which the reigning brother and sister would afford them.

Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and shook his brother bythe hand, and saluted Rebecca with a hand-shake and a very low bow.But Lady Jane took both the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed heraffectionately. The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of thelittle adventuress--which ornaments, as we know, she wore very seldom.The artless mark of kindness and confidence touched and pleased her;and Rawdon, encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part,twirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady Jane with akiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush exceedingly.

"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane," was his verdict, when he andhis wife were together again. "Pitt's got fat, too, and is doing thething handsomely." "He can afford it," said Rebecca and agreed in herhusband's farther opinion "that the mother-in-law was a tremendous oldGuy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking young women."

They, too, had been summoned from school to attend the funeralceremonies. It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for the dignity of the houseand family, had thought right to have about the place as many personsin black as could possibly be assembled. All the men and maids of thehouse, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder Sir Pitt hadcheated out of a great portion of their due, the parish clerk's family,and the special retainers of both Hall and Rectory were habited insable; added to these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, withcrapes and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the great buryingshow took place--but these are mute personages in our drama; and havingnothing to do or say, need occupy a very little space here.

With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not attempt to forget herformer position of Governess towards them, but recalled it frankly andkindly, and asked them about their studies with great gravity, and toldthem that she had thought of them many and many a day, and longed toknow of their welfare. In fact you would have supposed that ever sinceshe had left them she had not ceased to keep them uppermost in herthoughts and to take the tenderest interest in their welfare. Sosupposed Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters.

"She's hardly changed since eight years," said Miss Rosalind to MissViolet, as they were preparing for dinner.

"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well," replied the other.

"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye it," MissRosalind added. "She is stouter, too, and altogether improved,"continued Miss Rosalind, who was disposed to be very fat.

"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that she was ourGoverness once," Miss Violet said, intimating that it befitted allgovernesses to keep their proper place, and forgetting altogether thatshe was granddaughter not only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr.Dawson of Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. Thereare other very well-meaning people whom one meets every day in VanityFair who are surely equally oblivious.

"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that her motherwas an opera-dancer--"

"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with greatliberality. "And I agree with our brother, that as she is in thefamily, of course we are bound to notice her. I am sure Aunt Bute neednot talk; she wants to marry Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant,and absolutely asked him to come to the Rectory for orders."

"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she looked very glumupon Mrs. Rawdon," the other said.

"I wish she would. I won't read the Washerwoman of Finchley Common,"vowed Violet; and so saying, and avoiding a passage at the end of whicha certain coffin was placed with a couple of watchers, and lightsperpetually burning in the closed room, these young women came down tothe family dinner, for which the bell rang as usual.

But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the apartments preparedfor her, which, with the rest of the house, had assumed a very muchimproved appearance of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, andhere beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had arrived, andwere placed in the bedroom and dressing-room adjoining, helped her totake off her neat black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-lawin what more she could be useful.

"What I should like best," said Rebecca, "would be to go to the nurseryand see your dear little children." On which the two ladies looked verykindly at each other and went to that apartment hand in hand.

Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four years old, as themost charming little love in the world; and the boy, a little fellow oftwo years--pale, heavy-eyed, and large-headed--she pronounced to be aperfect prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty.

"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much medicine," LadyJane said with a sigh. "I often think we should all be better withoutit." And then Lady Jane and her new-found friend had one of thoseconfidential medical conversations about the children, which allmothers, and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in. Fiftyyears ago, and when the present writer, being an interesting littleboy, was ordered out of the room with the ladies after dinner, Iremember quite well that their talk was chiefly about their ailments;and putting this question directly to two or three since, I have alwaysgot from them the acknowledgement that times are not changed. Let myfair readers remark for themselves this very evening when they quit thedessert-table and assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries.Well--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and intimatefriends--and in the course of the evening her Ladyship informed SirPitt that she thought her new sister-in-law was a kind, frank,unaffected, and affectionate young woman.

And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the indefatigablelittle woman bent herself to conciliate the august Lady Southdown. Assoon as she found her Ladyship alone, Rebecca attacked her on thenursery question at once and said that her own little boy was saved,actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all thephysicians in Paris had given the dear child up. And then shementioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown from that excellentman the Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair,which she frequented; and how her views were very much changed bycircumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a past life spentin worldliness and error might not incapacitate her from more seriousthought for the future. She described how in former days she had beenindebted to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon theWasherwoman of Finchley Common, which she had read with the greatestprofit, and asked about Lady Emily, its gifted author, now Lady EmilyHornblower, at Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes ofbecoming Bishop of Caffraria.

But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady Southdown's favour,by feeling very much agitated and unwell after the funeral andrequesting her Ladyship's medical advice, which the Dowager not onlygave, but, wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady Macbeththan ever, came privately in the night to Becky's room with a parcel offavourite tracts, and a medicine of her own composition, which sheinsisted that Mrs. Rawdon should take.

Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine them with greatinterest, engaging the Dowager in a conversation concerning them andthe welfare of her soul, by which means she hoped that her body mightescape medication. But after the religious topics were exhausted, LadyMacbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her cup of night-drink wasemptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon was compelled actually to assume alook of gratitude, and to swallow the medicine under the unyielding oldDowager's nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.

It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance was very queerwhen Rawdon came in and heard what had happened; and his explosionsof laughter were as loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which shecould not disguise, even though it was at her own expense, describedthe occurrence and how she had been victimized by Lady Southdown. LordSteyne, and her son in London, had many a laugh over the story whenRawdon and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair. Beckyacted the whole scene for them. She put on a night-cap and gown. Shepreached a great sermon in the true serious manner; she lectured on thevirtue of the medicine which she pretended to administer, with agravity of imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was theCountess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled. "Give us LadySouthdown and the black dose," was a constant cry amongst the folks inBecky's little drawing-room in May Fair. And for the first time in herlife the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.

Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and veneration whichRebecca had paid personally to himself in early days, and was tolerablywell disposed towards her. The marriage, ill-advised as it was, hadimproved Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's alteredhabits and demeanour--and had it not been a lucky union as regardedPitt himself? The cunning diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned thathe owed his fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought notto cry out against it. His satisfaction was not removed by Rebecca'sown statements, behaviour, and conversation.

She doubled the deference which before had charmed him, calling out hisconversational powers in such a manner as quite to surprise Pitthimself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired themthe more when Rebecca pointed them out to him. With her sister-in-law,Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it was Mrs. Bute Crawleywho brought about the marriage which she afterwards so calumniated;that it was Mrs. Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley'sfortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which caused andinvented all the wicked reports against Rebecca. "She succeeded inmaking us poor," Rebecca said with an air of angelical patience; "buthow can I be angry with a woman who has given me one of the besthusbands in the world? And has not her own avarice been sufficientlypunished by the ruin of her own hopes and the loss of the property bywhich she set so much store? Poor!" she cried. "Dear Lady Jane, whatcare we for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am oftenthankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to restore the splendour ofthe noble old family of which I am so proud to be a member. I am sureSir Pitt will make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."

All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the most faithful ofwives, and increased the favourable impression which Rebecca made; somuch so that when, on the third day after the funeral, the family partywere at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of thetable, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem! Rebecca, may I give you awing?"--a speech which made the little woman's eyes sparkle withpleasure.

While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and hopes, and PittCrawley arranging the funeral ceremonial and other matters connectedwith his future progress and dignity, and Lady Jane busy with hernursery, as far as her mother would let her, and the sun rising andsetting, and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and toprayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's Crawley lay inthe apartment which he had occupied, watched unceasingly by theprofessional attendants who were engaged for that rite. A woman ortwo, and three or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southamptoncould furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy and tragicaldemeanour, had charge of the remains which they watched turn about,having the housekeeper's room for their place of rendezvous when offduty, where they played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.

The members of the family and servants of the house kept away from thegloomy spot, where the bones of the descendant of an ancient line ofknights and gentlemen lay, awaiting their final consignment to thefamily crypt. No regrets attended them, save those of the poor womanwho had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who had fled indisgrace from the Hall over which she had so nearly been a ruler.Beyond her and a favourite old pointer he had, and between whom andhimself an attachment subsisted during the period of his imbecility,the old man had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed, duringthe whole course of his life, never taken the least pains to secureone. Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth havean opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that anyVanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) wouldhave a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors wereconsoled. And so Sir Pitt was forgotten--like the kindest and best ofus--only a few weeks sooner.

Those who will may follow his remains to the grave, whither they wereborne on the appointed day, in the most becoming manner, the family inblack coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready forthe tears which did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deeptribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of compliment to the newlandlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages at three miles an hour,empty, and in profound affliction; the parson speaking out the formulaabout "our dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body, weplay our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies,laying it in state, and packing it up in gilt nails and velvet; and wefinish our duty by placing over it a stone, written all over with lies.Bute's curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt Crawleycomposed between them an appropriate Latin epitaph for the latelamented Baronet, and the former preached a classical sermon, exhortingthe survivors not to give way to grief and informing them in the mostrespectful terms that they also would be one day called upon to passthat gloomy and mysterious portal which had just closed upon theremains of their lamented brother. Then the tenantry mounted onhorseback again, or stayed and refreshed themselves at the CrawleyArms. Then, after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different destinations:then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes, palls, velvets, ostrichfeathers, and other mortuary properties, clambered up on the roof ofthe hearse and rode off to Southampton. Their faces relapsed into anatural expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into abrisker trot on the open road; and squads of them might have been seen,speckling with black the public-house entrances, with pewter-potsflashing in the sunshine. Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled awayinto a tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl sometimesat first, but these were the only accents of grief which were heard inthe Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, had been master for somethreescore years.

As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as itwere the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities,Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little andpartook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it. The sightof those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him manysecret joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took nogun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his big brother,and the keepers blazing away at his side. Pitt's money and acres had agreat effect upon his brother. The penniless Colonel became quiteobsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised themilksop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior'sprospects of planting and draining, gave his advice about the stablesand cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thoughtwould carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her, &c.: the rebelliousdragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditableyounger brother. He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in Londonrespecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messagesof his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I hope you are very well. Ihope Mamma is very well. The pony is very well. Grey takes me to ridein the park. I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. Hecried when he cantered. I do not cry." Rawdon read these letters tohis brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them. The Baronetpromised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted wifegave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for herlittle nephew.

One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their lifein those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies.Bells rang to meals and to prayers. The young ladies took exercise onthe pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them thebenefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick shoes and walked inthe park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings into the village,descending upon the cottages, with Lady Southdown's medicine and tractsfor the sick people there. Lady Southdown drove out in a pony-chaise,when Rebecca would take her place by the Dowager's side and listen toher solemn talk with the utmost interest. She sang Handel and Haydn tothe family of evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work,as if she had been born to the business and as if this kind of life wasto continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite oldage, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as ifthere were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waitingoutside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into theworld again.

"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought."I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. Icould dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall.I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from thegeraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and orderhalf-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor. I shouldn't miss it much,out of five thousand a year. I could even drive out ten miles to dineat a neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last. Icould go to church and keep awake in the great family pew, or go tosleep behind the curtains, with my veil down, if I only had practice.I could pay everybody, if I had but the money. This is what theconjurors here pride themselves upon doing. They look down with pityupon us miserable sinners who have none. They think themselvesgenerous if they give our children a five-pound note, and uscontemptible if we are without one." And who knows but Rebecca wasright in her speculations--and that it was only a question of money andfortune which made the difference between her and an honest woman? Ifyou take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better thanhis neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not makepeople honest, at least keeps them so. An alderman coming from aturtle feast will not step out of his carnage to steal a leg of mutton;but put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf. Beckyconsoled herself by so balancing the chances and equalizing thedistribution of good and evil in the world.

The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, andgardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple ofyears seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She hadbeen young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when sheever WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and feelings sevenyears back and contrasted them with those which she had at present, nowthat she had seen the world, and lived with great people, and raisedherself far beyond her original humble station.

"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky thought, "andalmost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back andconsort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father'sstudio. Lords come up to my door with stars and garters, instead ofpoor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have agentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my sister, in thevery house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago.But am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was thepoor painter's daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner forsugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me--Icouldn't have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho! I wish I couldexchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum inthe Three Per Cent. Consols"; for so it was that Becky felt the Vanityof human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would haveliked to cast anchor.

It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and humble,to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way,would have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she wasstriving to attain it. But--just as the children at Queen's Crawleywent round the room where the body of their father lay--if ever Beckyhad these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them and not lookin. She eluded them and despised them--or at least she was committedto the other path from which retreat was now impossible. And for mypart I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moralsenses--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some neverwakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shameor punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few peopleunhappy in Vanity Fair.

So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends ofthe Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring undercontrol. Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the warmestdemonstrations of good-will. They looked forward with pleasure to thetime when, the family house in Gaunt Street being repaired andbeautified, they were to meet again in London. Lady Southdown made herup a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. LawrenceGrills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who "honoured" theletter from the burning. Pitt accompanied them with four horses in thecarriage to Mudbury, having sent on their baggage in a cart previously,accompanied with loads of game.

"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again!" LadyCrawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.

"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She wasimmensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen'sCrawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was somehow purerthan that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had beendull, but had been kind in their way. "It is all the influence of along course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to herself, and was rightvery likely.

However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled intoPiccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street, andlittle Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.