So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of their
arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in the
same old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct
Baronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine years
before. How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whom
she refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in
his coat on the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would have
liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman and
talked 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, when
he and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a carriage and a pair
of 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 cloth
a good deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson the
Ironmonger 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 for
your aunt from Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't be
Polly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the cottage
there. I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds in the
garden."
"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gave
him, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband. Becky bowed and
saluted, and recognized people here and there graciously. These
recognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if she
was not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of her
ancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other hand.
What recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been flitting
across his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?
"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca said, thinking of those
girls for the first time perhaps since she had left them.
"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel. "Hullo! here's old Mother
Lock. 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 a
boy."
They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whose
hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking old
iron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars
surmounted by the dove and serpent.
"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said, looking about, and
then was silent--so was Becky. Both of them were rather agitated, and
thinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother, whom he
remembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom he
had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt; and about
little Rawdy at home. And Rebecca thought about her own youth and the
dark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life
by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and Amelia.