Vanity Fair (illustrated)

The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand gaping and grinning out of the great front window of the Club, had not arrived at their posts as yet - the newspaper-room was almost empty. One man was present whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed a little score for whist, and whom, in consequence, he did not care to meet; a third was reading the Royalist (a periodical famous for its scandal and its attachment to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and looking up at Crawley with some interest, said, “Crawley, I congratulate you.”

“What do you mean?” said the Colonel.

“It’s in the Observer and the Royalist too,” said Mr. Smith.

“What?” Rawdon cried, turning very red. He thought that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the public prints. Smith looked up wondering and smiling at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as he took up the paper and, trembling, began to read.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with.whom Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been talking about the Colonel just before he came in.

“It is come just in the nick of time,” said Smith. “I suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world.”

“It’s a wind that blows everybody good,” Mr. Brown said. “He can’t go away without paying me a pony he owes me.”

“What’s the salary?” asked Smith.

“Two or three thousand,” answered the other. “But the climate’s so infernal, they don’t enjoy it long. Liverseege died after eighteen months of it, and the man before went off in six weeks, I hear.”

“Some people say his brother is a very clever man. I always found him a d-- bore,” Smith ejaculated. “He must have good interest, though. He must have got the Colonel the place.”

“He!” said Brown. with a sneer. “Pooh. It was Lord Steyne got it.

“How do you mean?”

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,” answered the other enigmatically, and went to read his papers.

Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following astonishing paragraph:

GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND. - H.M.S. Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and papers from Coventry Island. H. E. Sir Thomas Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at Swampton. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing colony. We hear that the Governorship has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo officer. We need not only men of acknowledged bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend the affairs of our colonies, and we have no doubt that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which he is about to occupy.”

“Coventry Island! Where was it? Who had appointed him to the government? You must take me out as your secretary, old boy,” Captain Macmurdo said laughing; and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought in to the Colonel a card on which the name of Mr. Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel Crawley.

The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an emissary of Lord Steyne. “How d’ye do, Crawley? I am glad to see you,” said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile, and grasping Crawley’s hand with great cordiality.

“You come, I suppose, from - ”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Wenham.

“Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life Guards Green.”

“Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I’m sure,” Mr. Wenham said and tendered another smile and shake of the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal. Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove, and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put in communication with a pekin, and thought that Lord Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at the very least.

“As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,” Crawley said, “I had better retire and leave you together.”

“Of course,” said Macmurdo.