When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married
to his son, he broke out into a fury of language,
which it would do no good to repeat in this place,
as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out of the
room; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure
of the frenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane
with baffled desire.
One day after he went to Queen’s Crawley, he
burst like a madman into the room she had used when
there—dashed open her boxes with his foot,
and flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics.
Miss Horrocks, the butler’s daughter, took some
of them. The children dressed themselves and
acted plays in the others. It was but a few
days after the poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-place;
and was laid, unwept and disregarded, in a vault full
of strangers.
“Suppose the old lady doesn’t come to,”
Rawdon said to his little wife, as they sate together
in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had
been trying the new piano all the morning. The
new gloves fitted her to a nicety; the new shawls
became her wonderfully; the new rings glittered on
her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her
waist; “suppose she don’t come round, eh,
Becky?”
“I’ll make your fortune,” she
said; and Delilah patted Samson’s cheek.
“You can do anything,” he said, kissing
the little hand. “By Jove you can; and
we’ll drive down to the Star and Garter, and
dine, by Jove.”
How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano
If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which
Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together;
where you light on the strangest contrasts laughable
and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic,
or savage and cynical with perfect propriety:
it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of
which are advertised every day in the last page of
the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George
Robins used to preside with so much dignity.
There are very few London people, as I fancy, who have
not attended at these meetings, and all with a taste
for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation
and interest not a little startling and queer, of
the day when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown
will sell by the orders of Diogenes’ assignees,
or will be instructed by the executors, to offer to
public competition, the library, furniture, plate,
wardrobe, and choice cellar of wines of Epicurus deceased.
Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity
Fairian, as he witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies
of a departed friend, can’t but feel some sympathies
and regret. My Lord Dives’s remains are
in the family vault: the statuaries are cutting
an inscription veraciously commemorating his virtues,
and the sorrows of his heir, who is disposing of his
goods. What guest at Dives’s table can
pass the familiar house without a sigh?—the
familiar house of which the lights used to shine so
