Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place

in mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of some

novelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, when

it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness. But,

without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the

bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair

exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private

life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal

repentances sometimes overcome him. Recollection of the best ordained

banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most

becoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to

console faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of

existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant

divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very

small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view,

about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brother

wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of

grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear

friends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through

the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should

all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be

perfectly miserable in private.

"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders," Mrs. Bute

Crawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under present

circumstances, to this unhappy old lady! He might make her repent of

her shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, and

cast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and his

family; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and the

two boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance which

their relatives can give them."

And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.

Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper

abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle's

wife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served to

condemn a whole regiment of young officers. If a man has committed

wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his

errors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs. Bute showed a

perfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history. She had all

the particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in which

Rawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain. She

knew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house at

Oxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched a

card in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at the

Cocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and

perverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds. She described

with the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom

he had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and

poverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition. She knew

the poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean

shifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding

falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and

the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices.

She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the

whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian

woman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse or

compunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very

likely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon

her resolute manner of performing it. Yes, if a man's character is to

be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the

business. And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch

of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and

that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his

friends' parts.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024