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.




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