Page:Vanity Fair 1848.djvu/436

 sorrows somewhere in loneliness and pray for their conversion to better thoughts.

"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said the timid Lady Jane imploringly.

"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady should meet, and I will have my horses to-morrow morning."

"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation," said Sir Pitt rising and throwing himself into an attitude of command like the Portrait of a Gentleman in the Exhibition, "and begin. 'Queen's Crawley, September 14, 1822.—My dear brother—'"

Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth, who had been waiting for a sign of weakness or vacillation on the part of her son-in-law, rose, and with a scared look, left the library. Lady Jane looked up to her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her mamma; but Pitt forbade his wife to move.

"She won't go away," he said. "She has let her house at Brighton, and has spent her last half-year's dividends. A Countess living at an inn is a ruined woman. I have been waiting long for an opportunity to take this—this decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it is impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family: and now, if you please, we will resume the dictation. 'My dear brother, the melancholy intelligence which it is my duty to convey to my family must have long been anticipated by,'" &c.

In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having by good luck, or desert rather, as he considered, assumed almost all the fortune which his other relatives had expected, was determined to treat his family kindly and respectably, and make a house of Queen's Crawley once more. It pleased him to think that he should be its chief. He proposed to use the vast influence that his commanding talents and position must speedily acquire for him in the county to get his brother placed and his cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little sting of repentance as he thought that he was the proprietor of all that they had hoped for. In the course of three or four days' reign his bearing was changed, and his plans quite fixed: he determined to rule justly and honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the friendliest possible terms with all the relations of his blood.

So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon—a solemn and elaborate letter, containing the profoundest observations, couched in the longest words, and filling with wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote under her husband's order. "What an orator this will be," thought she, "when he enters the House of Commons" (on which point, and on the tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had sometimes dropped hints to his wife in bed); "how wise and good, and what a genius my husband is! I fancied him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!"

The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the letter by heart, and had studied it, with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long before he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife.

This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordingly dispatched