His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on the
ear. He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who was
amused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper) and fled
down below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief.
"It is not because it hurts me," little Rawdon gasped
out--"only--only"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm. It
was the little boy's heart that was bleeding. "Why mayn't I hear her
singing? Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that baldheaded
man with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various intervals these
exclamations of rage and grief. The cook looked at the housemaid, the
housemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the awful kitchen inquisition
which sits in judgement in every house and knows everything--sat on
Rebecca at that moment.
After this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the
consciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a pain
to her. His very sight annoyed her. Fear, doubt, and resistance
sprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom. They were separated from that
day of the boxes on the ear.
Lord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy. When they met by
mischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared at
him with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face and
double his little fists in return. He knew his enemy, and this
gentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who angered him
most. One day the footman found him squaring his fists at Lord
Steyne's hat in the hall. The footman told the circumstance as a good
joke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it to Lord
Steyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general. And very soon
afterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her appearance at Gaunt
House, the porter who unbarred the gates, the servants of all uniforms
in the hall, the functionaries in white waistcoats, who bawled out from
landing to landing the names of Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knew
about her, or fancied they did. The man who brought her refreshment and
stood behind her chair, had talked her character over with the large
gentleman in motley-coloured clothes at his side. Bon Dieu! it is
awful, that servants' inquisition! You see a woman in a great party in
a splendid saloon, surrounded by faithful admirers, distributing
sparkling glances, dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling and
happy--Discovery walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a huge
powdered man with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (which
is as fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow
carrying the wafer-biscuits. Madam, your secret will be talked over by
those men at their club at the public-house to-night. Jeames will tell
Chawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots.
Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair--mutes who
could not write. If you are guilty, tremble. That fellow behind your
chair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breeches
pocket. If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are
as ruinous as guilt.