I hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs.Crawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a visit to so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whom they proposed to honour with a visit were not merely out of fashion, but out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no possible manner.Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable old house where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked by brokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures given up to public desecration and plunder.A month after her flight, she had bethought her of Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse-laugh, had expressed a perfect willingness to see young George Osborne again."He's a very agreeable acquaintance, Beck," the wag added."I'd like to sell him another horse, Beck.I'd like to play a few more games at billiards with him.He'd be what Icall useful just now, Mrs.C.--ha, ha!" by which sort of speech it is not to be supposed that Rawdon Crawley had a deliberate desire to cheat Mr.Osborne at play, but only wished to take that fair advantage of him which almost every sporting gentleman in Vanity Fair considers to be his due from his neighbour.
The old aunt was long in "coming-to." A month had elapsed.Rawdon was denied the door by Mr.Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgment in the house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened.Miss Crawley never stirred out--she was unwell--and Mrs.Bute remained still and never left her.Crawley and his wife both of them augured evil from the continued presence of Mrs.Bute.
"Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us together at Queen's Crawley," Rawdon said.
"What an artful little woman!" ejaculated Rebecca.
"Well, I don't regret it, if you don't," the Captain cried, still in an amorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by way of reply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidence of her husband.
"If he had but a little more brains," she thought to herself, "I might make something of him"; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatest interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and Bob Martingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom Cinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase.When he came home she was alert and happy: when he went out she pressed him to go: when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort.The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites.We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue.
Who has not seen a woman hide the dulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth.A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in a different way.
By these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley, found himself converted into a very happy and submissive married man.His former haunts knew him not.
They asked about him once or twice at his clubs, but did not miss him much: in those booths of Vanity Fair people seldom do miss each other.His secluded wife ever smiling and cheerful, his little comfortable lodgings, snug meals, and homely evenings, had all the charms of novelty and secrecy.The marriage was not yet declared to the world, or published in the Morning Post.All his creditors would have come rushing on him in a body, had they known that he was united to a woman without fortune.