So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness
perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt
House with its smoky coronets and ciphers. The
feasts there were of the grandest in London, but there
was not overmuch content therewith, except among the
guests who sat at my lord’s table. Had
he not been so great a Prince very few possibly would
have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of very
great personages are looked at indulgently. “Nous
regardons a deux fois” (as the French lady said)
before we condemn a person of my lord’s undoubted
quality. Some notorious carpers and squeamish
moralists might be sulky with Lord Steyne, but they
were glad enough to come when he asked them.
“Lord Steyne is really too bad,” Lady
Slingstone said, “but everybody goes, and of
course I shall see that my girls come to no harm.”
“His lordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything
in life,” said the Right Reverend Doctor Trail,
thinking that the Archbishop was rather shaky, and
Mrs. Trail and the young ladies would as soon have
missed going to church as to one of his lordship’s
parties. “His morals are bad,” said
little Lord Southdown to his sister, who meekly expostulated,
having heard terrific legends from her mamma with
respect to the doings at Gaunt House; “but hang
it, he’s got the best dry Sillery in Europe!”
And as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart.—Sir
Pitt that pattern of decorum, Sir Pitt who had led
off at missionary meetings—he never for
one moment thought of not going too. “Where
you see such persons as the Bishop of Ealing and the
Countess of Slingstone, you may be pretty sure, Jane,”
the Baronet would say, “that we cannot be wrong.
The great rank and station of Lord Steyne put him
in a position to command people in our station in
life. The Lord Lieutenant of a County, my dear,
is a respectable man. Besides, George Gaunt and
I were intimate in early life; he was my junior when
we were attaches at Pumpernickel together.”
In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man—everybody
who was asked, as you the reader (do not say nay)
or I the writer hereof would go if we had an invitation.
CHAPTER XLVIII
In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best
of Company
At last Becky’s kindness and attention to the
chief of her husband’s family were destined
to meet with an exceeding great reward, a reward which,
though certainly somewhat unsubstantial, the little
woman coveted with greater eagerness than more positive
benefits. If she did not wish to lead a virtuous
life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for
virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world
can possess this desideratum, until she has put on
a train and feathers and has been presented to her
Sovereign at Court. From that august interview
they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord
Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue.
And as dubious goods or letters are passed through
an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar,
and then pronounced clean, many a lady, whose reputation
would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection,
passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal presence
and issues from it free from all taint.
