It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and humble,
to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way,
would have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she was
striving to attain it. But--just as the children at Queen's Crawley
went round the room where the body of their father lay--if ever Becky
had these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them and not look
in. She eluded them and despised them--or at least she was committed
to the other path from which retreat was now impossible. And for my
part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral
senses--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never
wakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame
or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people
unhappy in Vanity Fair.
So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends of
the Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring under
control. Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the warmest
demonstrations of good-will. They looked forward with pleasure to the
time when, the family house in Gaunt Street being repaired and
beautified, they were to meet again in London. Lady Southdown made her
up a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence
Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who "honoured" the
letter from the burning. Pitt accompanied them with four horses in the
carriage to Mudbury, having sent on their baggage in a cart previously,
accompanied with loads of game.
"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again!" Lady
Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.
"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She was
immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen's
Crawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was somehow purer
than that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been
dull, but had been kind in their way. "It is all the influence of a
long course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to herself, and was right
very likely.
However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled into
Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street, and
little Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.