As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as it
were the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities,
Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little and
partook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it. The sight
of those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many
secret joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took no
gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his big brother,
and the keepers blazing away at his side. Pitt's money and acres had a
great effect upon his brother. The penniless Colonel became quite
obsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised the
milksop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior's
prospects of planting and draining, gave his advice about the stables
and cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thought
would carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her, &c.: the rebellious
dragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditable
younger brother. He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London
respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messages
of his own. "I am very well," he wrote. "I hope you are very well. I
hope Mamma is very well. The pony is very well. Grey takes me to ride
in the park. I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. He
cried when he cantered. I do not cry." Rawdon read these letters to
his brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them. The Baronet
promised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted wife
gave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her
little nephew.
One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their life
in those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies.
Bells rang to meals and to prayers. The young ladies took exercise on
the pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them the
benefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick shoes and walked in
the park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings into the village,
descending upon the cottages, with Lady Southdown's medicine and tracts
for the sick people there. Lady Southdown drove out in a pony-chaise,
when Rebecca would take her place by the Dowager's side and listen to
her solemn talk with the utmost interest. She sang Handel and Haydn to
the family of evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work,
as if she had been born to the business and as if this kind of life was
to continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite old
age, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as if
there were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waiting
outside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into the
world again.