The brothers had good occupation for several mornings
in examining the improvements which had been effected
by Sir Pitt’s genius and economy. And
as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could
talk without too much boring each other. And
Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what a heavy outlay
of money these improvements had occasioned, and that
a man of landed and funded property was often very
hard pressed for twenty pounds. “There is
that new lodge-gate,” said Pitt, pointing to
it humbly with the bamboo cane, “I can no more
pay for it before the dividends in January than I can
fly.”
“I can lend you, Pitt, till then,” Rawdon
answered rather ruefully; and they went in and looked
at the restored lodge, where the family arms were
just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock,
for the first time these many long years, had tight
doors, sound roofs, and whole windows.
Between Hampshire and London
Sir Pitt Crawley had done more than repair fences
and restore dilapidated lodges on the Queen’s
Crawley estate. Like a wise man he had set to
work to rebuild the injured popularity of his house
and stop up the gaps and ruins in which his name had
been left by his disreputable and thriftless old predecessor.
He was elected for the borough speedily after his
father’s demise; a magistrate, a member of parliament,
a county magnate and representative of an ancient
family, he made it his duty to show himself before
the Hampshire public, subscribed handsomely to the
county charities, called assiduously upon all the
county folk, and laid himself out in a word to take
that position in Hampshire, and in the Empire afterwards,
to which he thought his prodigious talents justly
entitled him. Lady Jane was instructed to be
friendly with the Fuddlestones, and the Wapshots,
and the other famous baronets, their neighbours.
Their carriages might frequently be seen in the Queen’s
Crawley avenue now; they dined pretty frequently at
the Hall (where the cookery was so good that it was
clear Lady Jane very seldom had a hand in it), and
in return Pitt and his wife most energetically dined
out in all sorts of weather and at all sorts of distances.
For though Pitt did not care for joviality, being
a frigid man of poor hearth and appetite, yet he considered
that to be hospitable and condescending was quite
incumbent on-his station, and every time that he got
a headache from too long an after-dinner sitting,
he felt that he was a martyr to duty. He talked
about crops, corn-laws, politics, with the best country
gentlemen. He (who had been formerly inclined
to be a sad free-thinker on these points) entered
into poaching and game preserving with ardour.
He didn’t hunt; he wasn’t a hunting man;
he was a man of books and peaceful habits; but he
thought that the breed of horses must be kept up in
the country, and that the breed of foxes must therefore
be looked to, and for his part, if his friend, Sir
