Vanity Fair

by

William Makepeace Thackeray

BEFORE THE CURTAIN

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boardsand looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes overhim in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity ofeating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and thecontrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there arebullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!)bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at thetinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while thelight-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, thisis VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, thoughvery noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when theycome off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off hischeeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little JackPuddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and hewill be turning over head and heels, and crying, "How are you?"

A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition ofthis sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or otherpeople's hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches andamuses him here and there--a pretty child looking at a gingerbreadstall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and choosesher fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bonewith the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the generalimpression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come homeyou sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business. 

I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "VanityFair. " Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families: very likely they are right. Butpersons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or asarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and lookat the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadfulcombats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriatescenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles. 

What more has the Manager of the Performance to say?--To acknowledgethe kindness with which it has been received in all the principal townsof England through which the Show has passed, and where it has beenmost favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the publicPress, and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is proud to think that hisPuppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in thisempire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to beuncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the AmeliaDoll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet beencarved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the DobbinFigure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing andnatural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; andplease to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, onwhich no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away atthe end of this singular performance. 

And with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires, and the curtain rises. 

LONDON, June 28, 1848

CONTENTS

 I Chiswick Mall II In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign III Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy IV The Green Silk Purse V Dobbin of Ours VI Vauxhall VII Crawley of Queen's Crawley VIII Private and Confidential IX Family Portraits X Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends XI Arcadian Simplicity XII Quite a Sentimental Chapter XIII Sentimental and Otherwise XIV Miss Crawley at Home XV In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time XVI The Letter on the Pincushion XVII How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano XVIII Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought XIX Miss Crawley at Nurse XX In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen XXI A Quarrel About an Heiress XXII A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon XXIII Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass XXIV In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible XXV In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton XXVI Between London and Chatham XXVII In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment XXVIII In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries XXIX Brussels XXX "The Girl I Left Behind Me" XXXI In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister XXXII In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close XXXIII In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her XXXIV James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out XXXV Widow and Mother XXXVI How to Live Well on Nothing a Year XXXVII The Subject Continued XXXVIII A Family in a Very Small Way XXXIX A Cynical Chapter XL In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family XLI In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors XLII Which Treats of the Osborne Family XLIII In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape XLIV A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire XLV Between Hampshire and London XLVI Struggles and Trials XLVII Gaunt House XLVIII In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company XLIX In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert L Contains a Vulgar Incident LI In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader LII In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light LIII A Rescue and a Catastrophe LIV Sunday After the Battle LV In Which the Same Subject is Pursued LVI Georgy is Made a Gentleman LVII Eothen LVIII Our Friend the Major LIX The Old Piano LX Returns to the Genteel World LXI In Which Two Lights are Put Out LXII Am Rhein LXIII In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance LXIV A Vagabond Chapter LXV Full of Business and Pleasure LXVI Amantium Irae LXVII Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths

CHAPTER I

Chiswick Mall

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morningin June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton'sacademy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, withtwo fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in athree-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A blackservant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled hisbandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton'sshining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score ofyoung heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the statelyold brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized thelittle red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, risingover some geranium pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room. 

"It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister, " said Miss Jemima. "Sambo, theblack servant, has just rung the bell; and the coachman has a new redwaistcoat. "

"Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident to MissSedley's departure, Miss Jemima?" asked Miss Pinkerton herself, thatmajestic lady; the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of DoctorJohnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself. 

"The girls were up at four this morning, packing her trunks, sister, "replied Miss Jemima; "we have made her a bow-pot. "

"Say a bouquet, sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel. "

"Well, a booky as big almost as a haystack; I have put up two bottlesof the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt for makingit, in Amelia's box. "

"And I trust, Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss Sedley'saccount. This is it, is it? Very good--ninety-three pounds, fourshillings. Be kind enough to address it to John Sedley, Esquire, andto seal this billet which I have written to his lady. "

In Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, MissPinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been aletter from a sovereign. Only when her pupils quitted theestablishment, or when they were about to be married, and once, whenpoor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known towrite personally to the parents of her pupils; and it was Jemima'sopinion that if anything could console Mrs. Birch for her daughter'sloss, it would be that pious and eloquent composition in which MissPinkerton announced the event. 

In the present instance Miss Pinkerton's "billet" was to the followingeffect:--

The Mall, Chiswick, June 15, 18

MADAM, --After her six years' residence at the Mall, I have the honourand happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as ayoung lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polishedand refined circle. Those virtues which characterize the young Englishgentlewoman, those accomplishments which become her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose INDUSTRYand OBEDIENCE have endeared her to her instructors, and whosedelightful sweetness of temper has charmed her AGED and her YOUTHFULcompanions. 

In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroideryand needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends' fondestwishes. In geography there is still much to be desired; and a carefuland undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily during thenext three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement ofthat dignified DEPORTMENT AND CARRIAGE, so requisite for every younglady of FASHION. 

In the principles of religion and morality, Miss Sedley will be foundworthy of an establishment which has been honoured by the presence ofTHE GREAT LEXICOGRAPHER, and the patronage of the admirable Mrs. Chapone. In leaving the Mall, Miss Amelia carries with her the heartsof her companions, and the affectionate regards of her mistress, whohas the honour to subscribe herself, Madam, Your most obliged humble servant, BARBARA PINKERTON

P. S. --Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley. It is particularly requestedthat Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed ten days. Thefamily of distinction with whom she is engaged, desire to availthemselves of her services as soon as possible. 

This letter completed, Miss Pinkerton proceeded to write her own name, and Miss Sedley's, in the fly-leaf of a Johnson's Dictionary--theinteresting work which she invariably presented to her scholars, ontheir departure from the Mall. On the cover was inserted a copy of"Lines addressed to a young lady on quitting Miss Pinkerton's school, at the Mall; by the late revered Doctor Samuel Johnson. " In fact, theLexicographer's name was always on the lips of this majestic woman, anda visit he had paid to her was the cause of her reputation and herfortune. 

Being commanded by her elder sister to get "the Dictionary" from thecupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from thereceptacle in question. When Miss Pinkerton had finished theinscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid air, handed her the second. 

"For whom is this, Miss Jemima?" said Miss Pinkerton, with awfulcoldness. 

"For Becky Sharp, " answered Jemima, trembling very much, and blushingover her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on her sister. "For Becky Sharp: she's going too. "

"MISS JEMIMA!" exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the largest capitals. "Areyou in your senses? Replace the Dixonary in the closet, and neverventure to take such a liberty in future. "

"Well, sister, it's only two-and-ninepence, and poor Becky will bemiserable if she don't get one. "

"Send Miss Sedley instantly to me, " said Miss Pinkerton. And soventuring not to say another word, poor Jemima trotted off, exceedinglyflurried and nervous. 

Miss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of some wealth;whereas Miss Sharp was an articled pupil, for whom Miss Pinkerton haddone, as she thought, quite enough, without conferring upon her atparting the high honour of the Dixonary. 

Although schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor lessthan churchyard epitaphs; yet, as it sometimes happens that a persondeparts this life who is really deserving of all the praises the stonecutter carves over his bones; who IS a good Christian, a good parent, child, wife, or husband; who actually DOES leave a disconsolate familyto mourn his loss; so in academies of the male and female sex it occursevery now and then that the pupil is fully worthy of the praisesbestowed by the disinterested instructor. Now, Miss Amelia Sedley was ayoung lady of this singular species; and deserved not only all thatMiss Pinkerton said in her praise, but had many charming qualitieswhich that pompous old Minerva of a woman could not see, from thedifferences of rank and age between her pupil and herself. 

For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, anddance like Hillisberg or Parisot; and embroider beautifully; and spellas well as a Dixonary itself; but she had such a kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of everybodywho came near her, from Minerva herself down to the poor girl in thescullery, and the one-eyed tart-woman's daughter, who was permitted tovend her wares once a week to the young ladies in the Mall. She hadtwelve intimate and bosom friends out of the twenty-four young ladies. Even envious Miss Briggs never spoke ill of her; high and mighty MissSaltire (Lord Dexter's granddaughter) allowed that her figure wasgenteel; and as for Miss Swartz, the rich woolly-haired mulatto fromSt. Kitt's, on the day Amelia went away, she was in such a passion oftears that they were obliged to send for Dr. Floss, and half tipsifyher with salvolatile. Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may besupposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calmand dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times atthe idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, wouldhave gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paiddouble) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowedto parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and theservants to superintend. But why speak about her? It is probable thatwe shall not hear of her again from this moment to the end of time, andthat when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, she andher awful sister will never issue therefrom into this little world ofhistory. 

But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm insaying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear littlecreature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which(and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless andgood-natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need todescribe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather shortthan otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red for aheroine; but her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with thefreshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with thebrightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filledwith tears, and that was a great deal too often; for the silly thingwould cry over a dead canary-bird; or over a mouse, that the cat haplyhad seized upon; or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid;and as for saying an unkind word to her, were any persons hard-heartedenough to do so--why, so much the worse for them. Even Miss Pinkerton, that austere and godlike woman, ceased scolding her after the firsttime, and though she no more comprehended sensibility than she didAlgebra, gave all masters and teachers particular orders to treat MissSedley with the utmost gentleness, as harsh treatment was injurious toher. 

So that when the day of departure came, between her two customs oflaughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puzzled how to act. Shewas glad to go home, and yet most woefully sad at leaving school. Forthree days before, little Laura Martin, the orphan, followed her aboutlike a little dog. She had to make and receive at least fourteenpresents--to make fourteen solemn promises of writing every week:"Send my letters under cover to my grandpapa, the Earl of Dexter, " saidMiss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather shabby). "Never mind thepostage, but write every day, you dear darling, " said the impetuous andwoolly-headed, but generous and affectionate Miss Swartz; and theorphan little Laura Martin (who was just in round-hand), took herfriend's hand and said, looking up in her face wistfully, "Amelia, whenI write to you I shall call you Mamma. " All which details, I have nodoubt, JONES, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to beexcessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental. Yes; Ican see Jones at this minute (rather flushed with his joint of muttonand half pint of wine), taking out his pencil and scoring under thewords "foolish, twaddling, " &c. , and adding to them his own remark of"QUITE TRUE. " Well, he is a lofty man of genius, and admires the greatand heroic in life and novels; and so had better take warning and goelsewhere. 

Well, then. The flowers, and the presents, and the trunks, andbonnet-boxes of Miss Sedley having been arranged by Mr. Sambo in thecarriage, together with a very small and weather-beaten old cow's-skintrunk with Miss Sharp's card neatly nailed upon it, which was deliveredby Sambo with a grin, and packed by the coachman with a correspondingsneer--the hour for parting came; and the grief of that moment wasconsiderably lessened by the admirable discourse which Miss Pinkertonaddressed to her pupil. Not that the parting speech caused Amelia tophilosophise, or that it armed her in any way with a calmness, theresult of argument; but it was intolerably dull, pompous, and tedious;and having the fear of her schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, MissSedley did not venture, in her presence, to give way to any ebullitionsof private grief. A seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced inthe drawing-room, as on the solemn occasions of the visits of parents, and these refreshments being partaken of, Miss Sedley was at liberty todepart. 

"You'll go in and say good-by to Miss Pinkerton, Becky!" said MissJemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who wascoming downstairs with her own bandbox. 

"I suppose I must, " said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the wonder ofMiss Jemima; and the latter having knocked at the door, and receivingpermission to come in, Miss Sharp advanced in a very unconcernedmanner, and said in French, and with a perfect accent, "Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux. "

Miss Pinkerton did not understand French; she only directed those whodid: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosedhead (on the top of which figured a large and solemn turban), she said, "Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning. " As the Hammersmith Semiramisspoke, she waved one hand, both by way of adieu, and to give Miss Sharpan opportunity of shaking one of the fingers of the hand which was leftout for that purpose. 

Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and bow, and quite declined to accept the proffered honour; on which Semiramistossed up her turban more indignantly than ever. In fact, it was alittle battle between the young lady and the old one, and the latterwas worsted. "Heaven bless you, my child, " said she, embracing Amelia, and scowling the while over the girl's shoulder at Miss Sharp. "Comeaway, Becky, " said Miss Jemima, pulling the young woman away in greatalarm, and the drawing-room door closed upon them for ever. 

Then came the struggle and parting below. Words refuse to tell it. Allthe servants were there in the hall--all the dear friend--all the youngladies--the dancing-master who had just arrived; and there was such ascuffling, and hugging, and kissing, and crying, with the hystericalYOOPS of Miss Swartz, the parlour-boarder, from her room, as no pen candepict, and as the tender heart would fain pass over. The embracing wasover; they parted--that is, Miss Sedley parted from her friends. MissSharp had demurely entered the carriage some minutes before. Nobodycried for leaving HER. 

Sambo of the bandy legs slammed the carriage door on his young weepingmistress. He sprang up behind the carriage. "Stop!" cried MissJemima, rushing to the gate with a parcel. 

"It's some sandwiches, my dear, " said she to Amelia. "You may behungry, you know; and Becky, Becky Sharp, here's a book for you that mysister--that is, I--Johnson's Dixonary, you know; you mustn't leave uswithout that. Good-by. Drive on, coachman. God bless you!"

And the kind creature retreated into the garden, overcome with emotion. 

But, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale faceout of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden. 

This almost caused Jemima to faint with terror. "Well, I never"--saidshe--"what an audacious"--Emotion prevented her from completing eithersentence. The carriage rolled away; the great gates were closed; thebell rang for the dancing lesson. The world is before the two youngladies; and so, farewell to Chiswick Mall. 

CHAPTER II

In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign

When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the lastchapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of thelittle garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished MissJemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an almostlivid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was scarcely moreagreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind, saying--"So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick. "

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as MissJemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had leftschool, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that spaceof time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth lastfor ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman ofsixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a veryagitated countenance, "I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr. Raine. " Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the courseof that evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him inhis heart, then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If theDoctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the ageof threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, "Boy, take downyour pant--"? Well, well, Miss Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at thisact of insubordination. 

"How could you do so, Rebecca?" at last she said, after a pause. 

"Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back tothe black-hole?" said Rebecca, laughing. 

"No: but--"

"I hate the whole house, " continued Miss Sharp in a fury. "I hope Imay never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in the bottom of theThames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick herout, that I wouldn't. O how I should like to see her floating in thewater yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, andher nose like the beak of a wherry. "

"Hush!" cried Miss Sedley. 

"Why, will the black footman tell tales?" cried Miss Rebecca, laughing. "He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all mysoul; and I wish he would; and I wish I had a means of proving it, too. For two years I have only had insults and outrage from her. I have beentreated worse than any servant in the kitchen. I have never had afriend or a kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend thelittle girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother tongue. But that talking French to MissPinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word ofFrench, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that whichmade her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la France!Vive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!"

"O Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame!" cried Miss Sedley; for this was thegreatest blasphemy Rebecca had as yet uttered; and in those days, inEngland, to say, "Long live Bonaparte!" was as much as to say, "Longlive Lucifer!" "How can you--how dare you have such wicked, revengefulthoughts?"

"Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural, " answered Miss Rebecca. "I'mno angel. " And, to say the truth, she certainly was not. 

For it may be remarked in the course of this little conversation (whichtook place as the coach rolled along lazily by the river side) thatthough Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank Heaven, ithas been, in the first place, for ridding her of some person whom shehated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her enemies to some sortof perplexity or confusion; neither of which are very amiable motivesfor religious gratitude, or such as would be put forward by persons ofa kind and placable disposition. Miss Rebecca was not, then, in theleast kind or placable. All the world used her ill, said this youngmisanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all theworld treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get. The worldis a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of hisown face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laughat it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let allyoung persons take their choice. This is certain, that if the worldneglected Miss Sharp, she never was known to have done a good action inbehalf of anybody; nor can it be expected that twenty-four young ladiesshould all be as amiable as the heroine of this work, Miss Sedley (whomwe have selected for the very reason that she was the best-natured ofall, otherwise what on earth was to have prevented us from putting upMiss Swartz, or Miss Crump, or Miss Hopkins, as heroine in her place!)it could not be expected that every one should be of the humble andgentle temper of Miss Amelia Sedley; should take every opportunity tovanquish Rebecca's hard-heartedness and ill-humour; and, by a thousandkind words and offices, overcome, for once at least, her hostility toher kind. 

Miss Sharp's father was an artist, and in that quality had givenlessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton's school. He was a clever man; apleasant companion; a careless student; with a great propensity forrunning into debt, and a partiality for the tavern. When he was drunk, he used to beat his wife and daughter; and the next morning, with aheadache, he would rail at the world for its neglect of his genius, andabuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and sometimes with perfectreason, the fools, his brother painters. As it was with the utmostdifficulty that he could keep himself, and as he owed money for a mileround Soho, where he lived, he thought to better his circumstances bymarrying a young woman of the French nation, who was by profession anopera-girl. The humble calling of her female parent Miss Sharp neveralluded to, but used to state subsequently that the Entrechats were anoble family of Gascony, and took great pride in her descent from them. And curious it is that as she advanced in life this young lady'sancestors increased in rank and splendour. 

Rebecca's mother had had some education somewhere, and her daughterspoke French with purity and a Parisian accent. It was in those daysrather a rare accomplishment, and led to her engagement with theorthodox Miss Pinkerton. For her mother being dead, her father, finding himself not likely to recover, after his third attack ofdelirium tremens, wrote a manly and pathetic letter to Miss Pinkerton, recommending the orphan child to her protection, and so descended tothe grave, after two bailiffs had quarrelled over his corpse. Rebeccawas seventeen when she came to Chiswick, and was bound over as anarticled pupil; her duties being to talk French, as we have seen; andher privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year, togather scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school. 

She was small and slight in person; pale, sandy-haired, and with eyeshabitually cast down: when they looked up they were very large, odd, and attractive; so attractive that the Reverend Mr. Crisp, fresh fromOxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a glance ofher eyes which was fired all the way across Chiswick Church from theschool-pew to the reading-desk. This infatuated young man usedsometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he had beenpresented by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriagein an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was charged todeliver. Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, and abruptly carried offher darling boy; but the idea, even, of such an eagle in the Chiswickdovecot caused a great flutter in the breast of Miss Pinkerton, whowould have sent away Miss Sharp but that she was bound to her under aforfeit, and who never could thoroughly believe the young lady'sprotestations that she had never exchanged a single word with Mr. Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two occasions when she had methim at tea. 

By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in theestablishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had thedismal precocity of poverty. Many a dun had she talked to, and turnedaway from her father's door; many a tradesman had she coaxed andwheedled into good-humour, and into the granting of one meal more. Shesate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her wit, and heardthe talk of many of his wild companions--often but ill-suited for agirl to hear. But she never had been a girl, she said; she had been awoman since she was eight years old. Oh, why did Miss Pinkerton letsuch a dangerous bird into her cage?

The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest creaturein the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her father broughther to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the part of the ingenue; andonly a year before the arrangement by which Rebecca had been admittedinto her house, and when Rebecca was sixteen years old, Miss Pinkertonmajestically, and with a little speech, made her a present of adoll--which was, by the way, the confiscated property of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the fatherand daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the eveningparty (it was on the occasion of the speeches, when all the professorswere invited) and how Miss Pinkerton would have raged had she seen thecaricature of herself which the little mimic, Rebecca, managed to makeout of her doll. Becky used to go through dialogues with it; it formedthe delight of Newman Street, Gerrard Street, and the Artists' quarter:and the young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water withtheir lazy, dissolute, clever, jovial senior, used regularly to askRebecca if Miss Pinkerton was at home: she was as well known to them, poor soul! as Mr. Lawrence or President West. Once Rebecca had thehonour to pass a few days at Chiswick; after which she brought backJemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy: for though that honestcreature had made and given her jelly and cake enough for threechildren, and a seven-shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense ofridicule was far stronger than her gratitude, and she sacrificed MissJemmy quite as pitilessly as her sister. 

The catastrophe came, and she was brought to the Mall as to her home. The rigid formality of the place suffocated her: the prayers and themeals, the lessons and the walks, which were arranged with a conventualregularity, oppressed her almost beyond endurance; and she looked backto the freedom and the beggary of the old studio in Soho with so muchregret, that everybody, herself included, fancied she was consumed withgrief for her father. She had a little room in the garret, where themaids heard her walking and sobbing at night; but it was with rage, andnot with grief. She had not been much of a dissembler, until now herloneliness taught her to feign. She had never mingled in the society ofwomen: her father, reprobate as he was, was a man of talent; hisconversation was a thousand times more agreeable to her than the talkof such of her own sex as she now encountered. The pompous vanity ofthe old schoolmistress, the foolish good-humour of her sister, thesilly chat and scandal of the elder girls, and the frigid correctnessof the governesses equally annoyed her; and she had no soft maternalheart, this unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle and talk of the youngerchildren, with whose care she was chiefly intrusted, might have soothedand interested her; but she lived among them two years, and not one wassorry that she went away. The gentle tender-hearted Amelia Sedley wasthe only person to whom she could attach herself in the least; and whocould help attaching herself to Amelia?

The happiness the superior advantages of the young women round abouther, gave Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy. "What airs that girlgives herself, because she is an Earl's grand-daughter, " she said ofone. "How they cringe and bow to that Creole, because of her hundredthousand pounds! I am a thousand times cleverer and more charming thanthat creature, for all her wealth. I am as well bred as the Earl'sgrand-daughter, for all her fine pedigree; and yet every one passes meby here. And yet, when I was at my father's, did not the men give uptheir gayest balls and parties in order to pass the evening with me?"She determined at any rate to get free from the prison in which shefound herself, and now began to act for herself, and for the first timeto make connected plans for the future. 

She took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place offeredher; and as she was already a musician and a good linguist, shespeedily went through the little course of study which was considerednecessary for ladies in those days. Her music she practisedincessantly, and one day, when the girls were out, and she had remainedat home, she was overheard to play a piece so well that Minervathought, wisely, she could spare herself the expense of a master forthe juniors, and intimated to Miss Sharp that she was to instruct themin music for the future. 

The girl refused; and for the first time, and to the astonishment ofthe majestic mistress of the school. "I am here to speak French withthe children, " Rebecca said abruptly, "not to teach them music, andsave money for you. Give me money, and I will teach them. "

Minerva was obliged to yield, and, of course, disliked her from thatday. "For five-and-thirty years, " she said, and with great justice, "Inever have seen the individual who has dared in my own house toquestion my authority. I have nourished a viper in my bosom. "

"A viper--a fiddlestick, " said Miss Sharp to the old lady, almostfainting with astonishment. "You took me because I was useful. Thereis no question of gratitude between us. I hate this place, and want toleave it. I will do nothing here but what I am obliged to do. "

It was in vain that the old lady asked her if she was aware she wasspeaking to Miss Pinkerton? Rebecca laughed in her face, with a horridsarcastic demoniacal laughter, that almost sent the schoolmistress intofits. "Give me a sum of money, " said the girl, "and get rid of me--or, if you like better, get me a good place as governess in a nobleman'sfamily--you can do so if you please. " And in their further disputesshe always returned to this point, "Get me a situation--we hate eachother, and I am ready to go. "

Worthy Miss Pinkerton, although she had a Roman nose and a turban, andwas as tall as a grenadier, and had been up to this time anirresistible princess, had no will or strength like that of her littleapprentice, and in vain did battle against her, and tried to overaweher. Attempting once to scold her in public, Rebecca hit upon thebefore-mentioned plan of answering her in French, which quite routedthe old woman. In order to maintain authority in her school, it becamenecessary to remove this rebel, this monster, this serpent, thisfirebrand; and hearing about this time that Sir Pitt Crawley's familywas in want of a governess, she actually recommended Miss Sharp for thesituation, firebrand and serpent as she was. "I cannot, certainly, "she said, "find fault with Miss Sharp's conduct, except to myself; andmust allow that her talents and accomplishments are of a high order. Asfar as the head goes, at least, she does credit to the educationalsystem pursued at my establishment. "

And so the schoolmistress reconciled the recommendation to herconscience, and the indentures were cancelled, and the apprentice wasfree. The battle here described in a few lines, of course, lasted forsome months. And as Miss Sedley, being now in her seventeenth year, was about to leave school, and had a friendship for Miss Sharp ("'tisthe only point in Amelia's behaviour, " said Minerva, "which has notbeen satisfactory to her mistress"), Miss Sharp was invited by herfriend to pass a week with her at home, before she entered upon herduties as governess in a private family. 

Thus the world began for these two young ladies. For Amelia it wasquite a new, fresh, brilliant world, with all the bloom upon it. Itwas not quite a new one for Rebecca--(indeed, if the truth must be toldwith respect to the Crisp affair, the tart-woman hinted to somebody, who took an affidavit of the fact to somebody else, that there was agreat deal more than was made public regarding Mr. Crisp and MissSharp, and that his letter was in answer to another letter). But whocan tell you the real truth of the matter? At all events, if Rebeccawas not beginning the world, she was beginning it over again. 

By the time the young ladies reached Kensington turnpike, Amelia hadnot forgotten her companions, but had dried her tears, and had blushedvery much and been delighted at a young officer of the Life Guards, whospied her as he was riding by, and said, "A dem fine gal, egad!" andbefore the carriage arrived in Russell Square, a great deal ofconversation had taken place about the Drawing-room, and whether or notyoung ladies wore powder as well as hoops when presented, and whethershe was to have that honour: to the Lord Mayor's ball she knew she wasto go. And when at length home was reached, Miss Amelia Sedley skippedout on Sambo's arm, as happy and as handsome a girl as any in the wholebig city of London. Both he and coachman agreed on this point, and sodid her father and mother, and so did every one of the servants in thehouse, as they stood bobbing, and curtseying, and smiling, in the hallto welcome their young mistress. 

You may be sure that she showed Rebecca over every room of the house, and everything in every one of her drawers; and her books, and herpiano, and her dresses, and all her necklaces, brooches, laces, andgimcracks. She insisted upon Rebecca accepting the white cornelian andthe turquoise rings, and a sweet sprigged muslin, which was too smallfor her now, though it would fit her friend to a nicety; and shedetermined in her heart to ask her mother's permission to present herwhite Cashmere shawl to her friend. Could she not spare it? and hadnot her brother Joseph just brought her two from India?

When Rebecca saw the two magnificent Cashmere shawls which JosephSedley had brought home to his sister, she said, with perfect truth, "that it must be delightful to have a brother, " and easily got the pityof the tender-hearted Amelia for being alone in the world, an orphanwithout friends or kindred. 

"Not alone, " said Amelia; "you know, Rebecca, I shall always be yourfriend, and love you as a sister--indeed I will. "

"Ah, but to have parents, as you have--kind, rich, affectionateparents, who give you everything you ask for; and their love, which ismore precious than all! My poor papa could give me nothing, and I hadbut two frocks in all the world! And then, to have a brother, a dearbrother! Oh, how you must love him!"

Amelia laughed. 

"What! don't you love him? you, who say you love everybody?"

"Yes, of course, I do--only--"

"Only what?"

"Only Joseph doesn't seem to care much whether I love him or not. Hegave me two fingers to shake when he arrived after ten years' absence!He is very kind and good, but he scarcely ever speaks to me; I think heloves his pipe a great deal better than his"--but here Amelia checkedherself, for why should she speak ill of her brother? "He was very kindto me as a child, " she added; "I was but five years old when he wentaway. "

"Isn't he very rich?" said Rebecca. "They say all Indian nabobs areenormously rich. "

"I believe he has a very large income. "

"And is your sister-in-law a nice pretty woman?"

"La! Joseph is not married, " said Amelia, laughing again. 

Perhaps she had mentioned the fact already to Rebecca, but that younglady did not appear to have remembered it; indeed, vowed and protestedthat she expected to see a number of Amelia's nephews and nieces. Shewas quite disappointed that Mr. Sedley was not married; she was sureAmelia had said he was, and she doted so on little children. 

"I think you must have had enough of them at Chiswick, " said Amelia, rather wondering at the sudden tenderness on her friend's part; andindeed in later days Miss Sharp would never have committed herself sofar as to advance opinions, the untruth of which would have been soeasily detected. But we must remember that she is but nineteen as yet, unused to the art of deceiving, poor innocent creature! and making herown experience in her own person. The meaning of the above series ofqueries, as translated in the heart of this ingenious young woman, wassimply this: "If Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should Inot marry him? I have only a fortnight, to be sure, but there is noharm in trying. " And she determined within herself to make thislaudable attempt. She redoubled her caresses to Amelia; she kissed thewhite cornelian necklace as she put it on; and vowed she would never, never part with it. When the dinner-bell rang she went downstairs withher arm round her friend's waist, as is the habit of young ladies. Shewas so agitated at the drawing-room door, that she could hardly findcourage to enter. "Feel my heart, how it beats, dear!" said she to herfriend. 

"No, it doesn't, " said Amelia. "Come in, don't be frightened. Papawon't do you any harm. "

CHAPTER III

Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy

A VERY stout, puffy man, in buckskins and Hessian boots, with severalimmense neckcloths that rose almost to his nose, with a red stripedwaistcoat and an apple green coat with steel buttons almost as large ascrown pieces (it was the morning costume of a dandy or blood of thosedays) was reading the paper by the fire when the two girls entered, andbounced off his arm-chair, and blushed excessively, and hid his entireface almost in his neckcloths at this apparition. 

"It's only your sister, Joseph, " said Amelia, laughing and shaking thetwo fingers which he held out. "I've come home FOR GOOD, you know; andthis is my friend, Miss Sharp, whom you have heard me mention. "

"No, never, upon my word, " said the head under the neckcloth, shakingvery much--"that is, yes--what abominably cold weather, Miss"--andherewith he fell to poking the fire with all his might, although it wasin the middle of June. 

"He's very handsome, " whispered Rebecca to Amelia, rather loud. 

"Do you think so?" said the latter. "I'll tell him. "

"Darling! not for worlds, " said Miss Sharp, starting back as timid as afawn. She had previously made a respectful virgin-like curtsey to thegentleman, and her modest eyes gazed so perseveringly on the carpetthat it was a wonder how she should have found an opportunity to seehim. 

"Thank you for the beautiful shawls, brother, " said Amelia to the firepoker. "Are they not beautiful, Rebecca?"

"O heavenly!" said Miss Sharp, and her eyes went from the carpetstraight to the chandelier. 

Joseph still continued a huge clattering at the poker and tongs, puffing and blowing the while, and turning as red as his yellow facewould allow him. "I can't make you such handsome presents, Joseph, "continued his sister, "but while I was at school, I have embroideredfor you a very beautiful pair of braces. "

"Good Gad! Amelia, " cried the brother, in serious alarm, "what do youmean?" and plunging with all his might at the bell-rope, that articleof furniture came away in his hand, and increased the honest fellow'sconfusion. "For heaven's sake see if my buggy's at the door. I CAN'Twait. I must go. D---- that groom of mine. I must go. "

At this minute the father of the family walked in, rattling his sealslike a true British merchant. "What's the matter, Emmy?" says he. 

"Joseph wants me to see if his--his buggy is at the door. What is abuggy, Papa?"

"It is a one-horse palanquin, " said the old gentleman, who was a wag inhis way. 

Joseph at this burst out into a wild fit of laughter; in which, encountering the eye of Miss Sharp, he stopped all of a sudden, as ifhe had been shot. 

"This young lady is your friend? Miss Sharp, I am very happy to seeyou. Have you and Emmy been quarrelling already with Joseph, that hewants to be off?"

"I promised Bonamy of our service, sir, " said Joseph, "to dine withhim. "

"O fie! didn't you tell your mother you would dine here?"

"But in this dress it's impossible. "

"Look at him, isn't he handsome enough to dine anywhere, Miss Sharp?"

On which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both setoff in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman. 

"Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at Miss Pinkerton's?"continued he, following up his advantage. 

"Gracious heavens! Father, " cried Joseph. 

"There now, I have hurt his feelings. Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I havehurt your son's feelings. I have alluded to his buckskins. Ask MissSharp if I haven't? Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and letus all go to dinner. "

"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa has broughthome the best turbot in Billingsgate. "

"Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will followwith these two young women, " said the father, and he took an arm ofwife and daughter and walked merrily off. 

If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making theconquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right toblame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, andwith becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicatematters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble offher hands. What causes young people to "come out, " but the nobleambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places?What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through awhole mortal season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas, and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and towear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they maybring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows andarrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up theircarpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of theiryear's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love oftheir species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy anddancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and, as honest Mrs. Sedley has, in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a scoreof little schemes for the settlement of her Amelia, so also had ourbeloved but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best tosecure the husband, who was even more necessary for her than for herfriend. She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the ArabianNights and Guthrie's Geography; and it is a fact that while she wasdressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brotherwas very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle inthe air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in thebackground (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would nottherefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity ofshawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon anelephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay avisit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it isthe happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fancifulyoung creature besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in these delightfulday-dreams ere now!

Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia. He was inthe East India Company's Civil Service, and his name appeared, at theperiod of which we write, in the Bengal division of the East IndiaRegister, as collector of Boggley Wollah, an honourable and lucrativepost, as everybody knows: in order to know to what higher posts Josephrose in the service, the reader is referred to the same periodical. 

Boggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy, jungly district, famous for snipe-shooting, and where not unfrequently you may flush atiger. Ramgunge, where there is a magistrate, is only forty miles off, and there is a cavalry station about thirty miles farther; so Josephwrote home to his parents, when he took possession of hiscollectorship. He had lived for about eight years of his life, quitealone, at this charming place, scarcely seeing a Christian face excepttwice a year, when the detachment arrived to carry off the revenueswhich he had collected, to Calcutta. 

Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure ofwhich he returned to Europe, and which was the source of great comfortand amusement to him in his native country. He did not live with hisfamily while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like a gay youngbachelor. Before he went to India he was too young to partake of thedelightful pleasures of a man about town, and plunged into them on hisreturn with considerable assiduity. He drove his horses in the Park;he dined at the fashionable taverns (for the Oriental Club was not asyet invented); he frequented the theatres, as the mode was in thosedays, or made his appearance at the opera, laboriously attired intights and a cocked hat. 

On returning to India, and ever after, he used to talk of the pleasureof this period of his existence with great enthusiasm, and give you tounderstand that he and Brummel were the leading bucks of the day. Buthe was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley Wollah. He scarcelyknew a single soul in the metropolis: and were it not for his doctor, and the society of his blue-pill, and his liver complaint, he must havedied of loneliness. He was lazy, peevish, and a bon-vivant; theappearance of a lady frightened him beyond measure; hence it was butseldom that he joined the paternal circle in Russell Square, wherethere was plenty of gaiety, and where the jokes of his good-natured oldfather frightened his amour-propre. His bulk caused Joseph muchanxious thought and alarm; now and then he would make a desperateattempt to get rid of his superabundant fat; but his indolence and loveof good living speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform, and he found himself again at his three meals a day. He never was welldressed; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, andpassed many hours daily in that occupation. His valet made a fortuneout of his wardrobe: his toilet-table was covered with as many pomatumsand essences as ever were employed by an old beauty: he had tried, inorder to give himself a waist, every girth, stay, and waistband theninvented. Like most fat men, he would have his clothes made too tight, and took care they should be of the most brilliant colours and youthfulcut. When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would issue forth totake a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in orderto dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House. He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one ofthe results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the betterof him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person ofno ordinary cleverness. 

The first move showed considerable skill. When she called Sedley avery handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, whowould probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased bythe compliment paid to her son. All mothers are. If you had toldSycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would havebeen pleased, witch as she was. Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley wouldoverhear the compliment--Rebecca spoke loud enough--and he did hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praisethrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle withpleasure. Then, however, came a recoil. "Is the girl making fun ofme?" he thought, and straightway he bounced towards the bell, and wasfor retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes and hismother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where he was. Heconducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and agitated frameof mind. "Does she really think I am handsome?" thought he, "or is sheonly making game of me?" We have talked of Joseph Sedley being as vainas a girl. Heaven help us! the girls have only to turn the tables, andsay of one of their own sex, "She is as vain as a man, " and they willhave perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager forpraise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of theirpersonal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world. 

Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca verymodest, and holding her green eyes downwards. She was dressed inwhite, with bare shoulders as white as snow--the picture of youth, unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. "I must be veryquiet, " thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about India. "

Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for herson, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of thisdish was offered to Rebecca. "What is it?" said she, turning anappealing look to Mr. Joseph. 

"Capital, " said he. His mouth was full of it: his face quite red withthe delightful exercise of gobbling. "Mother, it's as good as my owncurries in India. "

"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish, " said Miss Rebecca. "Iam sure everything must be good that comes from there. "

"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear, " said Mr. Sedley, laughing. 

Rebecca had never tasted the dish before. 

"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?" said Mr. Sedley. 

"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with thecayenne pepper. 

"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp, " said Joseph, really interested. 

"A chili, " said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh yes!" She thought a chili wassomething cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. "Howfresh and green they look, " she said, and put one into her mouth. Itwas hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the StockExchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). "They arereal Indian, I assure you, " said he. "Sambo, give Miss Sharp somewater. "

The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca sufferedtoo much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowedher mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humouredair, "I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess ofPersia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you putcayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?"

Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humouredgirl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad inBengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've gotto prefer it!"

"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp, " said the oldgentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily oldfellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her capat you. "

"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered. "I recollect, sir, therewas a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, andafterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me inthe year '4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you beforedinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--he's a magistrate atBudgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, theArtillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me, 'Sedley, ' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hookseither you or Mulligatawney before the rains. ' 'Done, ' says I; andegad, sir--this claret's very good. Adamson's or Carbonell's?"

A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day. But he wasalways exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and has told thisdelightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and the blue-pill. 

Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle ofclaret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of platesfull of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes thatwere lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for novelistshave the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal aboutthe girl upstairs. "A nice, gay, merry young creature, " thought he tohimself. "How she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief atdinner! She dropped it twice. Who's that singing in the drawing-room?'Gad! shall I go up and see?"

But his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force. Hisfather was asleep: his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-coachstanding hard by in Southampton Row. "I'll go and see the FortyThieves, " said he, "and Miss Decamp's dance"; and he slipped awaygently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, withoutwaking his worthy parent. 

"There goes Joseph, " said Amelia, who was looking from the open windowsof the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano. 

"Miss Sharp has frightened him away, " said Mrs. Sedley. "Poor Joe, whyWILL he be so shy?"

CHAPTER IV

The Green Silk Purse

Poor Joe's panic lasted for two or three days; during which he did notvisit the house, nor during that period did Miss Rebecca ever mentionhis name. She was all respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley; delightedbeyond measure at the Bazaars; and in a whirl of wonder at the theatre, whither the good-natured lady took her. One day, Amelia had aheadache, and could not go upon some party of pleasure to which the twoyoung people were invited: nothing could induce her friend to gowithout her. "What! you who have shown the poor orphan what happinessand love are for the first time in her life--quit YOU? Never!" andthe green eyes looked up to Heaven and filled with tears; and Mrs. Sedley could not but own that her daughter's friend had a charming kindheart of her own. 

As for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughed at them with a cordialityand perseverance which not a little pleased and softened thatgood-natured gentleman. Nor was it with the chiefs of the family alonethat Miss Sharp found favour. She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop byevincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving, whichoperation was then going on in the Housekeeper's room; she persisted incalling Sambo "Sir, " and "Mr. Sambo, " to the delight of that attendant;and she apologised to the lady's maid for giving her trouble inventuring to ring the bell, with such sweetness and humility, that theServants' Hall was almost as charmed with her as the Drawing Room. 

Once, in looking over some drawings which Amelia had sent from school, Rebecca suddenly came upon one which caused her to burst into tears andleave the room. It was on the day when Joe Sedley made his secondappearance. 

Amelia hastened after her friend to know the cause of this display offeeling, and the good-natured girl came back without her companion, rather affected too. "You know, her father was our drawing-master, Mamma, at Chiswick, and used to do all the best parts of our drawings. "

"My love! I'm sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did nottouch them--he only mounted them. " "It was called mounting, Mamma. Rebecca remembers the drawing, and her father working at it, and thethought of it came upon her rather suddenly--and so, you know, she--"

"The poor child is all heart, " said Mrs. Sedley. 

"I wish she could stay with us another week, " said Amelia. 

"She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet at Dumdum, onlyfairer. She's married now to Lance, the Artillery Surgeon. Do youknow, Ma'am, that once Quintin, of the 14th, bet me--"

"O Joseph, we know that story, " said Amelia, laughing. "Never mind abouttelling that; but persuade Mamma to write to Sir Something Crawley forleave of absence for poor dear Rebecca: here she comes, her eyes redwith weeping. "

"I'm better, now, " said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible, taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing itrespectfully. "How kind you all are to me! All, " she added, with alaugh, "except you, Mr. Joseph. "

"Me!" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure "Gracious Heavens!Good Gad! Miss Sharp!'

"Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horridpepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you? You are not sogood to me as dear Amelia. "

"He doesn't know you so well, " cried Amelia. 

"I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear, " said her mother. 

"The curry was capital; indeed it was, " said Joe, quite gravely. "Perhaps there was NOT enough citron juice in it--no, there was NOT. "

"And the chilis?"

"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe, caught by the ridiculeof the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter which endedquite suddenly, as usual. 

"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me another time, " saidRebecca, as they went down again to dinner. "I didn't think men werefond of putting poor harmless girls to pain. "

"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world. "

"No, " said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she gave him ever sogentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quitefrightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then downat the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart didnot thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion of regard onthe part of the simple girl. 

It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputablecorrectness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but, yousee, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If aperson is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he mustsweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle matterswith the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh, what a mercyit is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can'tresist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, andmen go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fairopportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of thefield, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirelyif they did. 

"Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I exactly begin tofeel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler. " Many sweet little appeals, half tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishesat dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of considerablefamiliarity with the family, and as for the girls, they loved eachother like sisters. Young unmarried girls always do, if they are in ahouse together for ten days. 

As if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every way--what mustAmelia do, but remind her brother of a promise made last Easterholidays--"When I was a girl at school, " said she, laughing--a promisethat he, Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall. "Now, " she said, "thatRebecca is with us, will be the very time. "

"O, delightful!" said Rebecca, going to clap her hands; but sherecollected herself, and paused, like a modest creature, as she was. 

"To-night is not the night, " said Joe. 

"Well, to-morrow. "

"To-morrow your Papa and I dine out, " said Mrs. Sedley. 

"You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed?" said her husband, "andthat a woman of your years and size is to catch cold, in such anabominable damp place?"

"The children must have someone with them, " cried Mrs. Sedley. 

"Let Joe go, " said-his father, laughing. "He's big enough. " At whichspeech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laughing, and poor fatJoe felt inclined to become a parricide almost. 

"Undo his stays!" continued the pitiless old gentleman. "Fling somewater in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him upstairs: the dearcreature's fainting. Poor victim! carry him up; he's as light as afeather!"

"If I stand this, sir, I'm d------!" roared Joseph. 

"Order Mr. Jos's elephant, Sambo!" cried the father. "Send to Exeter'Change, Sambo"; but seeing Jos ready almost to cry with vexation, theold joker stopped his laughter, and said, holding out his hand to hisson, "It's all fair on the Stock Exchange, Jos--and, Sambo, never mindthe elephant, but give me and Mr. Jos a glass of Champagne. Boneyhimself hasn't got such in his cellar, my boy!"

A goblet of Champagne restored Joseph's equanimity, and before thebottle was emptied, of which as an invalid he took two-thirds, he hadagreed to take the young ladies to Vauxhall. 

"The girls must have a gentleman apiece, " said the old gentleman. "Joswill be sure to leave Emmy in the crowd, he will be so taken up withMiss Sharp here. Send to 96, and ask George Osborne if he'll come. "

At this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley lookedat her husband and laughed. Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a mannerindescribably roguish, and he looked at Amelia; and Amelia, hangingdown her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how toblush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life--at leastnot since she was eight years old, and when she was caught stealing jamout of a cupboard by her godmother. "Amelia had better write a note, "said her father; "and let George Osborne see what a beautifulhandwriting we have brought back from Miss Pinkerton's. Do youremember when you wrote to him to come on Twelfth-night, Emmy, andspelt twelfth without the f?"

"That was years ago, " said Amelia. 

"It seems like yesterday, don't it, John?" said Mrs. Sedley to herhusband; and that night in a conversation which took place in a frontroom in the second floor, in a sort of tent, hung round with chintz ofa rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico of a tenderrose-colour; in the interior of which species of marquee was afeatherbed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round redfaces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one, endingin a tassel--in a CURTAIN LECTURE, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husbandto task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe. 

"It was quite wicked of you, Mr. Sedley, " said she, "to torment thepoor boy so. "

"My dear, " said the cotton-tassel in defence of his conduct, "Jos is agreat deal vainer than you ever were in your life, and that's saying agood deal. Though, some thirty years ago, in the year seventeenhundred and eighty--what was it?--perhaps you had a right to be vain--Idon't say no. But I've no patience with Jos and his dandified modesty. It is out-Josephing Joseph, my dear, and all the while the boy is onlythinking of himself, and what a fine fellow he is. I doubt, Ma'am, weshall have some trouble with him yet. Here is Emmy's little friendmaking love to him as hard as she can; that's quite clear; and if shedoes not catch him some other will. That man is destined to be a preyto woman, as I am to go on 'Change every day. It's a mercy he did notbring us over a black daughter-in-law, my dear. But, mark my words, the first woman who fishes for him, hooks him. "

"She shall go off to-morrow, the little artful creature, " said Mrs. Sedley, with great energy. 

"Why not she as well as another, Mrs. Sedley? The girl's a white faceat any rate. I don't care who marries him. Let Joe please himself. "

And presently the voices of the two speakers were hushed, or werereplaced by the gentle but unromantic music of the nose; and save whenthe church bells tolled the hour and the watchman called it, all wassilent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell Square, and theStock Exchange. 

When morning came, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley no longer thought ofexecuting her threats with regard to Miss Sharp; for though nothing ismore keen, nor more common, nor more justifiable, than maternaljealousy, yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the little, humble, grateful, gentle governess would dare to look up to such amagnificent personage as the Collector of Boggley Wollah. The petition, too, for an extension of the young lady's leave of absence had alreadybeen despatched, and it would be difficult to find a pretext forabruptly dismissing her. 

And as if all things conspired in favour of the gentle Rebecca, thevery elements (although she was not inclined at first to acknowledgetheir action in her behalf) interposed to aid her. For on the eveningappointed for the Vauxhall party, George Osborne having come to dinner, and the elders of the house having departed, according to invitation, to dine with Alderman Balls at Highbury Barn, there came on such athunder-storm as only happens on Vauxhall nights, and as obliged theyoung people, perforce, to remain at home. Mr. Osborne did not seem inthe least disappointed at this occurrence. He and Joseph Sedley drank afitting quantity of port-wine, tete-a-tete, in the dining-room, duringthe drinking of which Sedley told a number of his best Indian stories;for he was extremely talkative in man's society; and afterwards MissAmelia Sedley did the honours of the drawing-room; and these four youngpersons passed such a comfortable evening together, that they declaredthey were rather glad of the thunder-storm than otherwise, which hadcaused them to put off their visit to Vauxhall. 

Osborne was Sedley's godson, and had been one of the family any timethese three-and-twenty years. At six weeks old, he had received fromJohn Sedley a present of a silver cup; at six months old, a coral withgold whistle and bells; from his youth upwards he was "tipped"regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas: and on going back toschool, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George animpudent urchin of ten years old. In a word, George was as familiarwith the family as such daily acts of kindness and intercourse couldmake him. 

"Do you remember, Sedley, what a fury you were in, when I cut off thetassels of your Hessian boots, and how Miss--hem!--how Amelia rescuedme from a beating, by falling down on her knees and crying out to herbrother Jos, not to beat little George?"

Jos remembered this remarkable circumstance perfectly well, but vowedthat he had totally forgotten it. 

"Well, do you remember coming down in a gig to Dr. Swishtail's to seeme, before you went to India, and giving me half a guinea and a pat onthe head? I always had an idea that you were at least seven feet high, and was quite astonished at your return from India to find you notaller than myself. "

"How good of Mr. Sedley to go to your school and give you the money!"exclaimed Rebecca, in accents of extreme delight. 

"Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too. Boys neverforget those tips at school, nor the givers. "

"I delight in Hessian boots, " said Rebecca. Jos Sedley, who admiredhis own legs prodigiously, and always wore this ornamental chaussure, was extremely pleased at this remark, though he drew his legs under hischair as it was made. 

"Miss Sharp!" said George Osborne, "you who are so clever an artist, you must make a grand historical picture of the scene of the boots. Sedley shall be represented in buckskins, and holding one of theinjured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have hold of myshirt-frill. Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little handsup; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as thefrontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book. "

"I shan't have time to do it here, " said Rebecca. "I'll do itwhen--when I'm gone. " And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad andpiteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry theywould be to part with her. 

"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca, " said Amelia. 

"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly. "That I may be only themore unhap--unwilling to lose you?" And she turned away her head. Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears which, wehave said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing. GeorgeOsborne looked at the two young women with a touched curiosity; andJoseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out of his big chest, as he cast his eyes down towards his favourite Hessian boots. 

"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley--Amelia, " said George, who felt atthat moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize theabove-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face ofthe company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should saythat they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling an untruth, for the fact is that these twoyoung people had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose, and their banns had, as it were, been read in their respective familiesany time these ten years. They went off to the piano, which wassituated, as pianos usually are, in the back drawing-room; and as itwas rather dark, Miss Amelia, in the most unaffected way in the world, put her hand into Mr. Osborne's, who, of course, could see the wayamong the chairs and ottomans a great deal better than she could. Butthis arrangement left Mr. Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, atthe drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied in knitting agreen silk purse. 

"There is no need to ask family secrets, " said Miss Sharp. "Those twohave told theirs. "

"As soon as he gets his company, " said Joseph, "I believe the affair issettled. George Osborne is a capital fellow. "

"And your sister the dearest creature in the world, " said Rebecca. "Happy the man who wins her!" With this, Miss Sharp gave a great sigh. 

When two unmarried persons get together, and talk upon such delicatesubjects as the present, a great deal of confidence and intimacy ispresently established between them. There is no need of giving aspecial report of the conversation which now took place between Mr. Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged fromthe foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent; it seldomis in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown andingenious novels. As there was music in the next room, the talk wascarried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though, for thematter of that, the couple in the next apartment would not have beendisturbed had the talking been ever so loud, so occupied were they withtheir own pursuits. 

Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found himselftalking, without the least timidity or hesitation, to a person of theother sex. Miss Rebecca asked him a great number of questions aboutIndia, which gave him an opportunity of narrating many interestinganecdotes about that country and himself. He described the balls atGovernment House, and the manner in which they kept themselves cool inthe hot weather, with punkahs, tatties, and other contrivances; and hewas very witty regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto, theGovernor-General, patronised; and then he described a tiger-hunt; andthe manner in which the mahout of his elephant had been pulled off hisseat by one of the infuriated animals. How delighted Miss Rebecca wasat the Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories of theScotch aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a sad wicked satiricalcreature; and how frightened she was at the story of the elephant! "Foryour mother's sake, dear Mr. Sedley, " she said, "for the sake of allyour friends, promise NEVER to go on one of those horrid expeditions. "

"Pooh, pooh, Miss Sharp, " said he, pulling up his shirt-collars; "thedanger makes the sport only the pleasanter. " He had never been but onceat a tiger-hunt, when the accident in question occurred, and when hewas half killed--not by the tiger, but by the fright. And as he talkedon, he grew quite bold, and actually had the audacity to ask MissRebecca for whom she was knitting the green silk purse? He was quitesurprised and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner. 

"For any one who wants a purse, " replied Miss Rebecca, looking at himin the most gentle winning way. Sedley was going to make one of themost eloquent speeches possible, and had begun--"O Miss Sharp, how--"when some song which was performed in the other room came to an end, and caused him to hear his own voice so distinctly that he stopped, blushed, and blew his nose in great agitation. 

"Did you ever hear anything like your brother's eloquence?" whisperedMr. Osborne to Amelia. "Why, your friend has worked miracles. "

"The more the better, " said Miss Amelia; who, like almost all women whoare worth a pin, was a match-maker in her heart, and would have beendelighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India. She had, too, in the course of this few days' constant intercourse, warmed into amost tender friendship for Rebecca, and discovered a million of virtuesand amiable qualities in her which she had not perceived when they wereat Chiswick together. For the affection of young ladies is of as rapidgrowth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night. Itis no blame to them that after marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebesubsides. It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, calla yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonlynot satisfied until they have husbands and children on whom they maycentre affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in smallchange. 

Having expended her little store of songs, or having stayed long enoughin the back drawing-room, it now appeared proper to Miss Amelia to askher friend to sing. "You would not have listened to me, " she said toMr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib), "had you heardRebecca first. "

"I give Miss Sharp warning, though, " said Osborne, "that, right orwrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley the first singer in the world. "

"You shall hear, " said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was actually politeenough to carry the candles to the piano. Osborne hinted that he shouldlike quite as well to sit in the dark; but Miss Sedley, laughing, declined to bear him company any farther, and the two accordinglyfollowed Mr. Joseph. Rebecca sang far better than her friend (thoughof course Osborne was free to keep his opinion), and exerted herself tothe utmost, and, indeed, to the wonder of Amelia, who had never knownher perform so well. She sang a French song, which Joseph did notunderstand in the least, and which George confessed he did notunderstand, and then a number of those simple ballads which were thefashion forty years ago, and in which British tars, our King, poorSusan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes. Theyare not, it is said, very brilliant, in a musical point of view, butcontain numberless good-natured, simple appeals to the affections, which people understood better than the milk-and-water lagrime, sospiri, and felicita of the eternal Donizettian music with which weare favoured now-a-days. 

Conversation of a sentimental sort, befitting the subject, was carriedon between the songs, to which Sambo, after he had brought the tea, thedelighted cook, and even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, condescendedto listen on the landing-place. 

Among these ditties was one, the last of the concert, and to thefollowing effect:

Ah! bleak and barren was the moor, Ah! loud and piercing was the storm, The cottage roof was shelter'd sure, The cottage hearth was bright andwarm--An orphan boy the lattice pass'd, And, as he mark'd its cheerfulglow, Felt doubly keen the midnight blast, And doubly cold the fallensnow. 

They mark'd him as he onward prest, With fainting heart and weary limb;Kind voices bade him turn and rest, And gentle faces welcomed him. Thedawn is up--the guest is gone, The cottage hearth is blazing still;Heaven pity all poor wanderers lone! Hark to the wind upon the hill!

It was the sentiment of the before-mentioned words, "When I'm gone, "over again. As she came to the last words, Miss Sharp's "deep-tonedvoice faltered. " Everybody felt the allusion to her departure, and toher hapless orphan state. Joseph Sedley, who was fond of music, andsoft-hearted, was in a state of ravishment during the performance ofthe song, and profoundly touched at its conclusion. If he had had thecourage; if George and Miss Sedley had remained, according to theformer's proposal, in the farther room, Joseph Sedley's bachelorhoodwould have been at an end, and this work would never have been written. But at the close of the ditty, Rebecca quitted the piano, and givingher hand to Amelia, walked away into the front drawing-room twilight;and, at this moment, Mr. Sambo made his appearance with a tray, containing sandwiches, jellies, and some glittering glasses anddecanters, on which Joseph Sedley's attention was immediately fixed. When the parents of the house of Sedley returned from theirdinner-party, they found the young people so busy in talking, that theyhad not heard the arrival of the carriage, and Mr. Joseph was in theact of saying, "My dear Miss Sharp, one little teaspoonful of jelly torecruit you after your immense--your--your delightful exertions. "

"Bravo, Jos!" said Mr. Sedley; on hearing the bantering of whichwell-known voice, Jos instantly relapsed into an alarmed silence, andquickly took his departure. He did not lie awake all night thinkingwhether or not he was in love with Miss Sharp; the passion of lovenever interfered with the appetite or the slumber of Mr. Joseph Sedley;but he thought to himself how delightful it would be to hear such songsas those after Cutcherry--what a distinguee girl she was--how she couldspeak French better than the Governor-General's lady herself--and whata sensation she would make at the Calcutta balls. "It's evident thepoor devil's in love with me, " thought he. "She is just as rich asmost of the girls who come out to India. I might go farther, and fareworse, egad!" And in these meditations he fell asleep. 

How Miss Sharp lay awake, thinking, will he come or not to-morrow? neednot be told here. To-morrow came, and, as sure as fate, Mr. JosephSedley made his appearance before luncheon. He had never been knownbefore to confer such an honour on Russell Square. George Osborne wassomehow there already (sadly "putting out" Amelia, who was writing toher twelve dearest friends at Chiswick Mall), and Rebecca was employedupon her yesterday's work. As Joe's buggy drove up, and while, afterhis usual thundering knock and pompous bustle at the door, theex-Collector of Boggley Wollah laboured up stairs to the drawing-room, knowing glances were telegraphed between Osborne and Miss Sedley, andthe pair, smiling archly, looked at Rebecca, who actually blushed asshe bent her fair ringlets over her knitting. How her heart beat asJoseph appeared--Joseph, puffing from the staircase in shining creakingboots--Joseph, in a new waistcoat, red with heat and nervousness, andblushing behind his wadded neckcloth. It was a nervous moment for all;and as for Amelia, I think she was more frightened than even the peoplemost concerned. 

Sambo, who flung open the door and announced Mr. Joseph, followedgrinning, in the Collector's rear, and bearing two handsome nosegays offlowers, which the monster had actually had the gallantry to purchasein Covent Garden Market that morning--they were not as big as thehaystacks which ladies carry about with them now-a-days, in cones offiligree paper; but the young women were delighted with the gift, asJoseph presented one to each, with an exceedingly solemn bow. 

"Bravo, Jos!" cried Osborne. 

"Thank you, dear Joseph, " said Amelia, quite ready to kiss her brother, if he were so minded. (And I think for a kiss from such a dearcreature as Amelia, I would purchase all Mr. Lee's conservatories outof hand. )

"O heavenly, heavenly flowers!" exclaimed Miss Sharp, and smelt themdelicately, and held them to her bosom, and cast up her eyes to theceiling, in an ecstasy of admiration. Perhaps she just looked firstinto the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet-doux hidden amongthe flowers; but there was no letter. 

"Do they talk the language of flowers at Boggley Wollah, Sedley?" askedOsborne, laughing. 

"Pooh, nonsense!" replied the sentimental youth. "Bought 'em atNathan's; very glad you like 'em; and eh, Amelia, my dear, I bought apine-apple at the same time, which I gave to Sambo. Let's have it fortiffin; very cool and nice this hot weather. " Rebecca said she hadnever tasted a pine, and longed beyond everything to taste one. 

So the conversation went on. I don't know on what pretext Osborne leftthe room, or why, presently, Amelia went away, perhaps to superintendthe slicing of the pine-apple; but Jos was left alone with Rebecca, whohad resumed her work, and the green silk and the shining needles werequivering rapidly under her white slender fingers. 

"What a beautiful, BYOO-OOTIFUL song that was you sang last night, dearMiss Sharp, " said the Collector. "It made me cry almost; 'pon myhonour it did. "

"Because you have a kind heart, Mr. Joseph; all the Sedleys have, Ithink. "

"It kept me awake last night, and I was trying to hum it this morning, in bed; I was, upon my honour. Gollop, my doctor, came in at eleven(for I'm a sad invalid, you know, and see Gollop every day), and, 'gad!there I was, singing away like--a robin. "

"O you droll creature! Do let me hear you sing it. "

"Me? No, you, Miss Sharp; my dear Miss Sharp, do sing it. " "Not now, Mr. Sedley, " said Rebecca, with a sigh. "My spirits are not equal toit; besides, I must finish the purse. Will you help me, Mr. Sedley?"And before he had time to ask how, Mr. Joseph Sedley, of the East IndiaCompany's service, was actually seated tete-a-tete with a young lady, looking at her with a most killing expression; his arms stretched outbefore her in an imploring attitude, and his hands bound in a web ofgreen silk, which she was unwinding. 

In this romantic position Osborne and Amelia found the interestingpair, when they entered to announce that tiffin was ready. The skeinof silk was just wound round the card; but Mr. Jos had never spoken. 

"I am sure he will to-night, dear, " Amelia said, as she pressedRebecca's hand; and Sedley, too, had communed with his soul, and saidto himself, "'Gad, I'll pop the question at Vauxhall. "

CHAPTER V

Dobbin of Ours

Cuff's fight with Dobbin, and the unexpected issue of that contest, will long be remembered by every man who was educated at Dr. Swishtail's famous school. The latter Youth (who used to be calledHeigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, and by many other names indicative ofpuerile contempt) was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed, the dullest of all Dr. Swishtail's young gentlemen. His parent was agrocer in the city: and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted intoDr. Swishtail's academy upon what are called "mutual principles"--thatis to say, the expenses of his board and schooling were defrayed by hisfather in goods, not money; and he stood there--most at the bottom ofthe school--in his scraggy corduroys and jacket, through the seams ofwhich his great big bones were bursting--as the representative of somany pounds of tea, candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of which avery mild proportion was supplied for the puddings of theestablishment), and other commodities. A dreadful day it was for youngDobbin when one of the youngsters of the school, having run into thetown upon a poaching excursion for hardbake and polonies, espied thecart of Dobbin & Rudge, Grocers and Oilmen, Thames Street, London, atthe Doctor's door, discharging a cargo of the wares in which the firmdealt. 

Young Dobbin had no peace after that. The jokes were frightful, andmerciless against him. "Hullo, Dobbin, " one wag would say, "here'sgood news in the paper. Sugars is ris', my boy. " Another would set asum--"If a pound of mutton-candles cost sevenpence-halfpenny, how muchmust Dobbin cost?" and a roar would follow from all the circle of youngknaves, usher and all, who rightly considered that the selling of goodsby retail is a shameful and infamous practice, meriting the contemptand scorn of all real gentlemen. 

"Your father's only a merchant, Osborne, " Dobbin said in private to thelittle boy who had brought down the storm upon him. At which thelatter replied haughtily, "My father's a gentleman, and keeps hiscarriage"; and Mr. William Dobbin retreated to a remote outhouse in theplayground, where he passed a half-holiday in the bitterest sadness andwoe. Who amongst us is there that does not recollect similar hours ofbitter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice; who shrinks beforea slight; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitudefor kindness, as a generous boy? and how many of those gentle souls doyou degrade, estrange, torture, for the sake of a little loosearithmetic, and miserable dog-latin?

Now, William Dobbin, from an incapacity to acquire the rudiments of theabove language, as they are propounded in that wonderful book the EtonLatin Grammar, was compelled to remain among the very last of DoctorSwishtail's scholars, and was "taken down" continually by littlefellows with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with the lowerform, a giant amongst them, with his downcast, stupefied look, hisdog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys. High and low, all madefun of him. They sewed up those corduroys, tight as they were. Theycut his bed-strings. They upset buckets and benches, so that he mightbreak his shins over them, which he never failed to do. They sent himparcels, which, when opened, were found to contain the paternal soapand candles. There was no little fellow but had his jeer and joke atDobbin; and he bore everything quite patiently, and was entirely dumband miserable. 

Cuff, on the contrary, was the great chief and dandy of the SwishtailSeminary. He smuggled wine in. He fought the town-boys. Ponies usedto come for him to ride home on Saturdays. He had his top-boots in hisroom, in which he used to hunt in the holidays. He had a goldrepeater: and took snuff like the Doctor. He had been to the Opera, and knew the merits of the principal actors, preferring Mr. Kean to Mr. Kemble. He could knock you off forty Latin verses in an hour. Hecould make French poetry. What else didn't he know, or couldn't he do?They said even the Doctor himself was afraid of him. 

Cuff, the unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his subjects, andbullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes:that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls atcricket during whole summer afternoons. "Figs" was the fellow whom hedespised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneeringat him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold personal communication. 

One day in private, the two young gentlemen had had a difference. Figs, alone in the schoolroom, was blundering over a home letter; when Cuff, entering, bade him go upon some message, of which tarts were probablythe subject. 

"I can't, " says Dobbin; "I want to finish my letter. "

"You CAN'T?" says Mr. Cuff, laying hold of that document (in which manywords were scratched out, many were mis-spelt, on which had been spentI don't know how much thought, and labour, and tears; for the poorfellow was writing to his mother, who was fond of him, although she wasa grocer's wife, and lived in a back parlour in Thames Street). "YouCAN'T?" says Mr. Cuff: "I should like to know why, pray? Can't youwrite to old Mother Figs to-morrow?"

"Don't call names, " Dobbin said, getting off the bench very nervous. 

"Well, sir, will you go?" crowed the cock of the school. 

"Put down the letter, " Dobbin replied; "no gentleman readth letterth. "

"Well, NOW will you go?" says the other. 

"No, I won't. Don't strike, or I'll THMASH you, " roars out Dobbin, springing to a leaden inkstand, and looking so wicked, that Mr. Cuffpaused, turned down his coat sleeves again, put his hands into hispockets, and walked away with a sneer. But he never meddled personallywith the grocer's boy after that; though we must do him the justice tosay he always spoke of Mr. Dobbin with contempt behind his back. 

Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, on asunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor William Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the playground, spelling over a favouritecopy of the Arabian Nights which he had apart from the rest of theschool, who were pursuing their various sports--quite lonely, andalmost happy. If people would but leave children to themselves; ifteachers would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upondirecting their thoughts, and dominating their feelings--those feelingsand thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I knowof each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbour, andhow far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad orgirl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull andworld-corrupted person who rules him?)--if, I say, parents and masterswould leave their children alone a little more, small harm wouldaccrue, although a less quantity of as in praesenti might be acquired. 

Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was awaywith Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmedand the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the Princefound her, and whither we should all like to make a tour; when shrillcries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie; andlooking up, he saw Cuff before him, belabouring a little boy. 

It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer's cart; but hebore little malice, not at least towards the young and small. "How dareyou, sir, break the bottle?" says Cuff to the little urchin, swinging ayellow cricket-stump over him. 

The boy had been instructed to get over the playground wall (at aselected spot where the broken glass had been removed from the top, andniches made convenient in the brick); to run a quarter of a mile; topurchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit; to brave all the Doctor'soutlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground again; duringthe performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and the bottle wasbroken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his pantaloons had beendamaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly guilty andtrembling, though harmless, wretch. 

"How dare you, sir, break it?" says Cuff; "you blundering little thief. You drank the shrub, and now you pretend to have broken the bottle. Hold out your hand, sir. "

Down came the stump with a great heavy thump on the child's hand. Amoan followed. Dobbin looked up. The Fairy Peribanou had fled into theinmost cavern with Prince Ahmed: the Roc had whisked away Sindbad theSailor out of the Valley of Diamonds out of sight, far into the clouds:and there was everyday life before honest William; and a big boybeating a little one without cause. 

"Hold out your other hand, sir, " roars Cuff to his little schoolfellow, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin quivered, and gatheredhimself up in his narrow old clothes. 

"Take that, you little devil!" cried Mr. Cuff, and down came the wicketagain on the child's hand. --Don't be horrified, ladies, every boy at apublic school has done it. Your children will so do and be done by, inall probability. Down came the wicket again; and Dobbin started up. 

I can't tell what his motive was. Torture in a public school is asmuch licensed as the knout in Russia. It would be ungentlemanlike (ina manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin's foolish soul revolted againstthat exercise of tyranny; or perhaps he had a hankering feeling ofrevenge in his mind, and longed to measure himself against thatsplendid bully and tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp, circumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, in theplace. Whatever may have been his incentive, however, up he sprang, and screamed out, "Hold off, Cuff; don't bully that child any more; orI'll--"

"Or you'll what?" Cuff asked in amazement at this interruption. "Holdout your hand, you little beast. "

"I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life, " Dobbinsaid, in reply to the first part of Cuff's sentence; and littleOsborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder and incredulity atseeing this amazing champion put up suddenly to defend him: whileCuff's astonishment was scarcely less. Fancy our late monarch GeorgeIII when he heard of the revolt of the North American colonies: fancybrazen Goliath when little David stepped forward and claimed a meeting;and you have the feelings of Mr. Reginald Cuff when this rencontre wasproposed to him. 

"After school, " says he, of course; after a pause and a look, as muchas to say, "Make your will, and communicate your last wishes to yourfriends between this time and that. "

"As you please, " Dobbin said. "You must be my bottle holder, Osborne. "

"Well, if you like, " little Osborne replied; for you see his papa kepta carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his champion. 

Yes, when the hour of battle came, he was almost ashamed to say, "Goit, Figs"; and not a single other boy in the place uttered that cry forthe first two or three rounds of this famous combat; at thecommencement of which the scientific Cuff, with a contemptuous smile onhis face, and as light and as gay as if he was at a ball, planted hisblows upon his adversary, and floored that unlucky champion three timesrunning. At each fall there was a cheer; and everybody was anxious tohave the honour of offering the conqueror a knee. 

"What a licking I shall get when it's over, " young Osborne thought, picking up his man. "You'd best give in, " he said to Dobbin; "it'sonly a thrashing, Figs, and you know I'm used to it. " But Figs, allwhose limbs were in a quiver, and whose nostrils were breathing rage, put his little bottle-holder aside, and went in for a fourth time. 

As he did not in the least know how to parry the blows that were aimedat himself, and Cuff had begun the attack on the three precedingoccasions, without ever allowing his enemy to strike, Figs nowdetermined that he would commence the engagement by a charge on his ownpart; and accordingly, being a left-handed man, brought that arm intoaction, and hit out a couple of times with all his might--once at Mr. Cuff's left eye, and once on his beautiful Roman nose. 

Cuff went down this time, to the astonishment of the assembly. "Wellhit, by Jove, " says little Osborne, with the air of a connoisseur, clapping his man on the back. "Give it him with the left, Figs my boy. "

Figs's left made terrific play during all the rest of the combat. Cuffwent down every time. At the sixth round, there were almost as manyfellows shouting out, "Go it, Figs, " as there were youths exclaiming, "Go it, Cuff. " At the twelfth round the latter champion was all abroad, as the saying is, and had lost all presence of mind and power of attackor defence. Figs, on the contrary, was as calm as a quaker. His facebeing quite pale, his eyes shining open, and a great cut on hisunderlip bleeding profusely, gave this young fellow a fierce andghastly air, which perhaps struck terror into many spectators. Nevertheless, his intrepid adversary prepared to close for thethirteenth time. 

If I had the pen of a Napier, or a Bell's Life, I should like todescribe this combat properly. It was the last charge of theGuard--(that is, it would have been, only Waterloo had not yet takenplace)--it was Ney's column breasting the hill of La Haye Sainte, bristling with ten thousand bayonets, and crowned with twentyeagles--it was the shout of the beef-eating British, as leaping downthe hill they rushed to hug the enemy in the savage arms of battle--inother words, Cuff coming up full of pluck, but quite reeling andgroggy, the Fig-merchant put in his left as usual on his adversary'snose, and sent him down for the last time. 

"I think that will do for him, " Figs said, as his opponent dropped asneatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot's ball plump into thepocket at billiards; and the fact is, when time was called, Mr. Reginald Cuff was not able, or did not choose, to stand up again. 

And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as would have madeyou think he had been their darling champion through the whole battle;and as absolutely brought Dr. Swishtail out of his study, curious toknow the cause of the uproar. He threatened to flog Figs violently, ofcourse; but Cuff, who had come to himself by this time, and was washinghis wounds, stood up and said, "It's my fault, sir--not Figs'--notDobbin's. I was bullying a little boy; and he served me right. " Bywhich magnanimous speech he not only saved his conqueror a whipping, but got back all his ascendancy over the boys which his defeat hadnearly cost him. 

Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of the transaction. 

Sugarcane House, Richmond, March, 18--

DEAR MAMA, --I hope you are quite well. I should be much obliged to youto send me a cake and five shillings. There has been a fight herebetween Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, you know, was the Cock of the School. They fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked. So Cuff is now OnlySecond Cock. The fight was about me. Cuff was licking me for breakinga bottle of milk, and Figs wouldn't stand it. We call him Figs becausehis father is a Grocer--Figs & Rudge, Thames St. , City--I think as hefought for me you ought to buy your Tea & Sugar at his father's. Cuffgoes home every Saturday, but can't this, because he has 2 Black Eyes. He has a white Pony to come and fetch him, and a groom in livery on abay mare. I wish my Papa would let me have a Pony, and I am

Your dutiful Son, GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE

P. S. --Give my love to little Emmy. I am cutting her out a Coach incardboard. Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake. 

In consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose prodigiously inthe estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the name of Figs, whichhad been a byword of reproach, became as respectable and popular anickname as any other in use in the school. "After all, it's not hisfault that his father's a grocer, " George Osborne said, who, though alittle chap, had a very high popularity among the Swishtail youth; andhis opinion was received with great applause. It was voted low to sneerat Dobbin about this accident of birth. "Old Figs" grew to be a name ofkindness and endearment; and the sneak of an usher jeered at him nolonger. 

And Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He madewonderful advances in scholastic learning. The superb Cuff himself, atwhose condescension Dobbin could only blush and wonder, helped him onwith his Latin verses; "coached" him in play-hours: carried himtriumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-sized form;and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered, thatalthough dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonlyquick. To the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got aFrench prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should haveseen his mother's face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) waspresented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and theparents and company, with an inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin. All theboys clapped hands in token of applause and sympathy. His blushes, hisstumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed ashe went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate? Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him twoguineas publicly; most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for theschool: and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays. 

Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happychange in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manlydisposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his goodfortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, towhom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt bychildren--such an affection, as we read in the charming fairy-book, uncouth Orson had for splendid young Valentine his conqueror. He flunghimself down at little Osborne's feet, and loved him. Even before theywere acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was hisvalet, his dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be thepossessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, themost active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. Heshared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic books, with large coloured pictures of knights and robbers, in many of whichlatter you might read inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire, from his attached friend William Dobbin--the which tokens of homageGeorge received very graciously, as became his superior merit. 

So that Lieutenant Osborne, when coming to Russell Square on the day ofthe Vauxhall party, said to the ladies, "Mrs. Sedley, Ma'am, I hope youhave room; I've asked Dobbin of ours to come and dine here, and go withus to Vauxhall. He's almost as modest as Jos. "

"Modesty! pooh, " said the stout gentleman, casting a vainqueur look atMiss Sharp. 

"He is--but you are incomparably more graceful, Sedley, " Osborne added, laughing. "I met him at the Bedford, when I went to look for you; andI told him that Miss Amelia was come home, and that we were all bent ongoing out for a night's pleasuring; and that Mrs. Sedley had forgivenhis breaking the punch-bowl at the child's party. Don't you rememberthe catastrophe, Ma'am, seven years ago?"

"Over Mrs. Flamingo's crimson silk gown, " said good-natured Mrs. Sedley. "What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much moregraceful. Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of them. Such figures! my dears. "

"The Alderman's very rich, isn't he?" Osborne said archly. "Don't youthink one of the daughters would be a good spec for me, Ma'am?"

"You foolish creature! Who would take you, I should like to know, withyour yellow face?"

"Mine a yellow face? Stop till you see Dobbin. Why, he had the yellowfever three times; twice at Nassau, and once at St. Kitts. "

"Well, well; yours is quite yellow enough for us. Isn't it, Emmy?"Mrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss Amelia only made a smile and ablush; and looking at Mr. George Osborne's pale interestingcountenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers, which the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinarycomplacency, she thought in her little heart that in His Majesty'sarmy, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a hero. "I don't care about Captain Dobbin's complexion, " she said, "or abouthis awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know, " her little reasonbeing, that he was the friend and champion of George. 

"There's not a finer fellow in the service, " Osborne said, "nor abetter officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly. " And he lookedtowards the glass himself with much naivete; and in so doing, caughtMiss Sharp's eye fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a little, and Rebecca thought in her heart, "Ah, mon beau Monsieur! I think Ihave YOUR gauge"--the little artful minx!

That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in awhite muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like alark, and as fresh as a rose--a very tall ungainly gentleman, withlarge hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped headof black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat and cocked hatof those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiestbows that was ever performed by a mortal. 

This was no other than Captain William Dobbin, of His Majesty'sRegiment of Foot, returned from yellow fever, in the West Indies, towhich the fortune of the service had ordered his regiment, whilst somany of his gallant comrades were reaping glory in the Peninsula. 

He had arrived with a knock so very timid and quiet that it wasinaudible to the ladies upstairs: otherwise, you may be sure MissAmelia would never have been so bold as to come singing into the room. As it was, the sweet fresh little voice went right into the Captain'sheart, and nestled there. When she held out her hand for him to shake, before he enveloped it in his own, he paused, and thought--"Well, is itpossible--are you the little maid I remember in the pink frock, such ashort time ago--the night I upset the punch-bowl, just after I wasgazetted? Are you the little girl that George Osborne said should marryhim? What a blooming young creature you seem, and what a prize therogue has got!" All this he thought, before he took Amelia's hand intohis own, and as he let his cocked hat fall. 

His history since he left school, until the very moment when we havethe pleasure of meeting him again, although not fully narrated, hasyet, I think, been indicated sufficiently for an ingenious reader bythe conversation in the last page. Dobbin, the despised grocer, wasAlderman Dobbin--Alderman Dobbin was Colonel of the City Light Horse, then burning with military ardour to resist the French Invasion. Colonel Dobbin's corps, in which old Mr. Osborne himself was but anindifferent corporal, had been reviewed by the Sovereign and the Dukeof York; and the colonel and alderman had been knighted. His son hadentered the army: and young Osborne followed presently in the sameregiment. They had served in the West Indies and in Canada. Theirregiment had just come home, and the attachment of Dobbin to GeorgeOsborne was as warm and generous now as it had been when the two wereschoolboys. 

So these worthy people sat down to dinner presently. They talked aboutwar and glory, and Boney and Lord Wellington, and the last Gazette. Inthose famous days every gazette had a victory in it, and the twogallant young men longed to see their own names in the glorious list, and cursed their unlucky fate to belong to a regiment which had beenaway from the chances of honour. Miss Sharp kindled with this excitingtalk, but Miss Sedley trembled and grew quite faint as she heard it. Mr. Jos told several of his tiger-hunting stories, finished the oneabout Miss Cutler and Lance the surgeon; helped Rebecca to everythingon the table, and himself gobbled and drank a great deal. 

He sprang to open the door for the ladies, when they retired, with themost killing grace--and coming back to the table, filled himself bumperafter bumper of claret, which he swallowed with nervous rapidity. 

"He's priming himself, " Osborne whispered to Dobbin, and at length thehour and the carriage arrived for Vauxhall. 

CHAPTER VI

Vauxhall

I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there aresome terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-naturedreader to remember that we are only discoursing at present about astockbroker's family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, orluncheon, or dinner, or talking and making love as people do in commonlife, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to markthe progress of their loves. The argument stands thus--Osborne, inlove with Amelia, has asked an old friend to dinner and toVauxhall--Jos Sedley is in love with Rebecca. Will he marry her? Thatis the great subject now in hand. 

We might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in the romantic, or in the facetious manner. Suppose we had laid the scene in GrosvenorSquare, with the very same adventures--would not some people havelistened? Suppose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley fell in love, andthe Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady Amelia, with the fullconsent of the Duke, her noble father: or instead of the supremelygenteel, suppose we had resorted to the entirely low, and describedwhat was going on in Mr. Sedley's kitchen--how black Sambo was in lovewith the cook (as indeed he was), and how he fought a battle with thecoachman in her behalf; how the knife-boy was caught stealing a coldshoulder of mutton, and Miss Sedley's new femme de chambre refused togo to bed without a wax candle; such incidents might be made to provokemuch delightful laughter, and be supposed to represent scenes of"life. " Or if, on the contrary, we had taken a fancy for the terrible, and made the lover of the new femme de chambre a professional burglar, who bursts into the house with his band, slaughters black Sambo at thefeet of his master, and carries off Amelia in her night-dress, not tobe let loose again till the third volume, we should easily haveconstructed a tale of thrilling interest, through the fiery chapters ofwhich the reader should hurry, panting. But my readers must hope forno such romance, only a homely story, and must be content with achapter about Vauxhall, which is so short that it scarce deserves to becalled a chapter at all. And yet it is a chapter, and a very importantone too. Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seemto be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

Let us then step into the coach with the Russell Square party, and beoff to the Gardens. There is barely room between Jos and Miss Sharp, who are on the front seat. Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin opposite, between Captain Dobbin and Amelia. 

Every soul in the coach agreed that on that night Jos would propose tomake Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley. The parents at home had acquiesced inthe arrangement, though, between ourselves, old Mr. Sedley had afeeling very much akin to contempt for his son. He said he was vain, selfish, lazy, and effeminate. He could not endure his airs as a manof fashion, and laughed heartily at his pompous braggadocio stories. "I shall leave the fellow half my property, " he said; "and he willhave, besides, plenty of his own; but as I am perfectly sure that ifyou, and I, and his sister were to die to-morrow, he would say 'GoodGad!' and eat his dinner just as well as usual, I am not going to makemyself anxious about him. Let him marry whom he likes. It's no affairof mine. "

Amelia, on the other hand, as became a young woman of her prudence andtemperament, was quite enthusiastic for the match. Once or twice Joshad been on the point of saying something very important to her, towhich she was most willing to lend an ear, but the fat fellow could notbe brought to unbosom himself of his great secret, and very much to hissister's disappointment he only rid himself of a large sigh and turnedaway. 

This mystery served to keep Amelia's gentle bosom in a perpetualflutter of excitement. If she did not speak with Rebecca on the tendersubject, she compensated herself with long and intimate conversationswith Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, who dropped some hints to thelady's-maid, who may have cursorily mentioned the matter to the cook, who carried the news, I have no doubt, to all the tradesmen, so thatMr. Jos's marriage was now talked of by a very considerable number ofpersons in the Russell Square world. 

It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son would demeanhimself by a marriage with an artist's daughter. "But, lor', Ma'am, "ejaculated Mrs. Blenkinsop, "we was only grocers when we married Mr. S. , who was a stock-broker's clerk, and we hadn't five hundred poundsamong us, and we're rich enough now. " And Amelia was entirely of thisopinion, to which, gradually, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley was brought. 

Mr. Sedley was neutral. "Let Jos marry whom he likes, " he said; "it'sno affair of mine. This girl has no fortune; no more had Mrs. Sedley. She seems good-humoured and clever, and will keep him in order, perhaps. Better she, my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen ofmahogany grandchildren. "

So that everything seemed to smile upon Rebecca's fortunes. She tookJos's arm, as a matter of course, on going to dinner; she had sate byhim on the box of his open carriage (a most tremendous "buck" he was, as he sat there, serene, in state, driving his greys), and thoughnobody said a word on the subject of the marriage, everybody seemed tounderstand it. All she wanted was the proposal, and ah! how Rebeccanow felt the want of a mother!--a dear, tender mother, who would havemanaged the business in ten minutes, and, in the course of a littledelicate confidential conversation, would have extracted theinteresting avowal from the bashful lips of the young man!

Such was the state of affairs as the carriage crossed Westminsterbridge. 

The party was landed at the Royal Gardens in due time. As the majesticJos stepped out of the creaking vehicle the crowd gave a cheer for thefat gentleman, who blushed and looked very big and mighty, as he walkedaway with Rebecca under his arm. George, of course, took charge ofAmelia. She looked as happy as a rose-tree in sunshine. 

"I say, Dobbin, " says George, "just look to the shawls and things, there's a good fellow. " And so while he paired off with Miss Sedley, and Jos squeezed through the gate into the gardens with Rebecca at hisside, honest Dobbin contented himself by giving an arm to the shawls, and by paying at the door for the whole party. 

He walked very modestly behind them. He was not willing to spoilsport. About Rebecca and Jos he did not care a fig. But he thoughtAmelia worthy even of the brilliant George Osborne, and as he saw thatgood-looking couple threading the walks to the girl's delight andwonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort of fatherlypleasure. Perhaps he felt that he would have liked to have somethingon his own arm besides a shawl (the people laughed at seeing the gawkyyoung officer carrying this female burthen); but William Dobbin wasvery little addicted to selfish calculation at all; and so long as hisfriend was enjoying himself, how should he be discontented? And thetruth is, that of all the delights of the Gardens; of the hundredthousand extra lamps, which were always lighted; the fiddlers in cockedhats, who played ravishing melodies under the gilded cockle-shell inthe midst of the gardens; the singers, both of comic and sentimentalballads, who charmed the ears there; the country dances, formed bybouncing cockneys and cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping and laughter; the signal which announced that Madame Saqui wasabout to mount skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; thehermit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, sofavourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout handedabout by the people in the shabby old liveries; and the twinklingboxes, in which the happy feasters made-believe to eat slices of almostinvisible ham--of all these things, and of the gentle Simpson, thatkind smiling idiot, who, I daresay, presided even then over theplace--Captain William Dobbin did not take the slightest notice. 

He carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attendedunder the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Salmon performed the Battle ofBorodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had latelymet with his Russian reverses)--Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it as he walkedaway, and found he was humming--the tune which Amelia Sedley sang onthe stairs, as she came down to dinner. 

He burst out laughing at himself; for the truth is, he could sing nobetter than an owl. 

It is to be understood, as a matter of course, that our young people, being in parties of two and two, made the most solemn promises to keeptogether during the evening, and separated in ten minutes afterwards. Parties at Vauxhall always did separate, but 'twas only to meet againat supper-time, when they could talk of their mutual adventures in theinterval. 

What were the adventures of Mr. Osborne and Miss Amelia? That is asecret. But be sure of this--they were perfectly happy, and correct intheir behaviour; and as they had been in the habit of being togetherany time these fifteen years, their tete-a-tete offered no particularnovelty. 

But when Miss Rebecca Sharp and her stout companion lost themselves ina solitary walk, in which there were not above five score more ofcouples similarly straying, they both felt that the situation wasextremely tender and critical, and now or never was the moment MissSharp thought, to provoke that declaration which was trembling on thetimid lips of Mr. Sedley. They had previously been to the panorama ofMoscow, where a rude fellow, treading on Miss Sharp's foot, caused herto fall back with a little shriek into the arms of Mr. Sedley, and thislittle incident increased the tenderness and confidence of thatgentleman to such a degree, that he told her several of his favouriteIndian stories over again for, at least, the sixth time. 

"How I should like to see India!" said Rebecca. 

"SHOULD you?" said Joseph, with a most killing tenderness; and was nodoubt about to follow up this artful interrogatory by a question stillmore tender (for he puffed and panted a great deal, and Rebecca's hand, which was placed near his heart, could count the feverish pulsations ofthat organ), when, oh, provoking! the bell rang for the fireworks, and, a great scuffling and running taking place, these interesting loverswere obliged to follow in the stream of people. 

Captain Dobbin had some thoughts of joining the party at supper: as, intruth, he found the Vauxhall amusements not particularly lively--but heparaded twice before the box where the now united couples were met, andnobody took any notice of him. Covers were laid for four. The matedpairs were prattling away quite happily, and Dobbin knew he was asclean forgotten as if he had never existed in this world. 

"I should only be de trop, " said the Captain, looking at them ratherwistfully. "I'd best go and talk to the hermit, "--and so he strolledoff out of the hum of men, and noise, and clatter of the banquet, intothe dark walk, at the end of which lived that well-known pasteboardSolitary. It wasn't very good fun for Dobbin--and, indeed, to be aloneat Vauxhall, I have found, from my own experience, to be one of themost dismal sports ever entered into by a bachelor. 

The two couples were perfectly happy then in their box: where the mostdelightful and intimate conversation took place. Jos was in his glory, ordering about the waiters with great majesty. He made the salad; anduncorked the Champagne; and carved the chickens; and ate and drank thegreater part of the refreshments on the tables. Finally, he insistedupon having a bowl of rack punch; everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall. "Waiter, rack punch. "

That bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this history. And why nota bowl of rack punch as well as any other cause? Was not a bowl ofprussic acid the cause of Fair Rosamond's retiring from the world? Wasnot a bowl of wine the cause of the demise of Alexander the Great, or, at least, does not Dr. Lempriere say so?--so did this bowl of rackpunch influence the fates of all the principal characters in this"Novel without a Hero, " which we are now relating. It influenced theirlife, although most of them did not taste a drop of it. 

The young ladies did not drink it; Osborne did not like it; and theconsequence was that Jos, that fat gourmand, drank up the wholecontents of the bowl; and the consequence of his drinking up the wholecontents of the bowl was a liveliness which at first was astonishing, and then became almost painful; for he talked and laughed so loud as tobring scores of listeners round the box, much to the confusion of theinnocent party within it; and, volunteering to sing a song (which hedid in that maudlin high key peculiar to gentlemen in an inebriatedstate), he almost drew away the audience who were gathered round themusicians in the gilt scollop-shell, and received from his hearers agreat deal of applause. 

"Brayvo, Fat un!" said one; "Angcore, Daniel Lambert!" said another;"What a figure for the tight-rope!" exclaimed another wag, to theinexpressible alarm of the ladies, and the great anger of Mr. Osborne. 

"For Heaven's sake, Jos, let us get up and go, " cried that gentleman, and the young women rose. 

"Stop, my dearest diddle-diddle-darling, " shouted Jos, now as bold as alion, and clasping Miss Rebecca round the waist. Rebecca started, butshe could not get away her hand. The laughter outside redoubled. Joscontinued to drink, to make love, and to sing; and, winking and wavinghis glass gracefully to his audience, challenged all or any to come inand take a share of his punch. 

Mr. Osborne was just on the point of knocking down a gentleman intop-boots, who proposed to take advantage of this invitation, and acommotion seemed to be inevitable, when by the greatest good luck agentleman of the name of Dobbin, who had been walking about thegardens, stepped up to the box. "Be off, you fools!" said thisgentleman--shouldering off a great number of the crowd, who vanishedpresently before his cocked hat and fierce appearance--and he enteredthe box in a most agitated state. 

"Good Heavens! Dobbin, where have you been?" Osborne said, seizing thewhite cashmere shawl from his friend's arm, and huddling up Amelia init. --"Make yourself useful, and take charge of Jos here, whilst I takethe ladies to the carriage. "

Jos was for rising to interfere--but a single push from Osborne'sfinger sent him puffing back into his seat again, and the lieutenantwas enabled to remove the ladies in safety. Jos kissed his hand tothem as they retreated, and hiccupped out "Bless you! Bless you!" Then, seizing Captain Dobbin's hand, and weeping in the most pitiful way, heconfided to that gentleman the secret of his loves. He adored thatgirl who had just gone out; he had broken her heart, he knew he had, byhis conduct; he would marry her next morning at St. George's, HanoverSquare; he'd knock up the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth: hewould, by Jove! and have him in readiness; and, acting on this hint, Captain Dobbin shrewdly induced him to leave the gardens and hasten toLambeth Palace, and, when once out of the gates, easily conveyed Mr. Jos Sedley into a hackney-coach, which deposited him safely at hislodgings. 

George Osborne conducted the girls home in safety: and when the doorwas closed upon them, and as he walked across Russell Square, laughedso as to astonish the watchman. Amelia looked very ruefully at herfriend, as they went up stairs, and kissed her, and went to bed withoutany more talking. 

"He must propose to-morrow, " thought Rebecca. "He called me his soul'sdarling, four times; he squeezed my hand in Amelia's presence. He mustpropose to-morrow. " And so thought Amelia, too. And I dare say shethought of the dress she was to wear as bridesmaid, and of the presentswhich she should make to her nice little sister-in-law, and of asubsequent ceremony in which she herself might play a principal part, &c. , and &c. , and &c. , and &c. 

Oh, ignorant young creatures! How little do you know the effect of rackpunch! What is the rack in the punch, at night, to the rack in the headof a morning? To this truth I can vouch as a man; there is no headachein the world like that caused by Vauxhall punch. Through the lapse oftwenty years, I can remember the consequence of two glasses! twowine-glasses! but two, upon the honour of a gentleman; and JosephSedley, who had a liver complaint, had swallowed at least a quart ofthe abominable mixture. 

That next morning, which Rebecca thought was to dawn upon her fortune, found Sedley groaning in agonies which the pen refuses to describe. Soda-water was not invented yet. Small beer--will it be believed!--wasthe only drink with which unhappy gentlemen soothed the fever of theirprevious night's potation. With this mild beverage before him, GeorgeOsborne found the ex-Collector of Boggley Wollah groaning on the sofaat his lodgings. Dobbin was already in the room, good-naturedlytending his patient of the night before. The two officers, looking atthe prostrate Bacchanalian, and askance at each other, exchanged themost frightful sympathetic grins. Even Sedley's valet, the most solemnand correct of gentlemen, with the muteness and gravity of anundertaker, could hardly keep his countenance in order, as he looked athis unfortunate master. 

"Mr. Sedley was uncommon wild last night, sir, " he whispered inconfidence to Osborne, as the latter mounted the stair. "He wanted tofight the 'ackney-coachman, sir. The Capting was obliged to bring himupstairs in his harms like a babby. " A momentary smile flickered overMr. Brush's features as he spoke; instantly, however, they relapsedinto their usual unfathomable calm, as he flung open the drawing-roomdoor, and announced "Mr. Hosbin. "

"How are you, Sedley?" that young wag began, after surveying hisvictim. "No bones broke? There's a hackney-coachman downstairs with ablack eye, and a tied-up head, vowing he'll have the law of you. "

"What do you mean--law?" Sedley faintly asked. 

"For thrashing him last night--didn't he, Dobbin? You hit out, sir, like Molyneux. The watchman says he never saw a fellow go down sostraight. Ask Dobbin. "

"You DID have a round with the coachman, " Captain Dobbin said, "andshowed plenty of fight too. "

"And that fellow with the white coat at Vauxhall! How Jos drove at him!How the women screamed! By Jove, sir, it did my heart good to see you. I thought you civilians had no pluck; but I'll never get in your waywhen you are in your cups, Jos. "

"I believe I'm very terrible, when I'm roused, " ejaculated Jos from thesofa, and made a grimace so dreary and ludicrous, that the Captain'spoliteness could restrain him no longer, and he and Osborne fired off aringing volley of laughter. 

Osborne pursued his advantage pitilessly. He thought Jos a milksop. Hehad been revolving in his mind the marriage question pending betweenJos and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of afamily into which he, George Osborne, of the --th, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody--a little upstartgoverness. "You hit, you poor old fellow!" said Osborne. "Youterrible! Why, man, you couldn't stand--you made everybody laugh in theGardens, though you were crying yourself. You were maudlin, Jos. Don't you remember singing a song?"

"A what?" Jos asked. 

"A sentimental song, and calling Rosa, Rebecca, what's her name, Amelia's little friend--your dearest diddle-diddle-darling?" And thisruthless young fellow, seizing hold of Dobbin's hand, acted over thescene, to the horror of the original performer, and in spite ofDobbin's good-natured entreaties to him to have mercy. 

"Why should I spare him?" Osborne said to his friend's remonstrances, when they quitted the invalid, leaving him under the hands of DoctorGollop. "What the deuce right has he to give himself his patronizingairs, and make fools of us at Vauxhall? Who's this little schoolgirlthat is ogling and making love to him? Hang it, the family's low enoughalready, without HER. A governess is all very well, but I'd ratherhave a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've properpride, and know my own station: let her know hers. And I'll take downthat great hectoring Nabob, and prevent him from being made a greaterfool than he is. That's why I told him to look out, lest she broughtan action against him. "

"I suppose you know best, " Dobbin said, though rather dubiously. "Youalways were a Tory, and your family's one of the oldest in England. But--"

"Come and see the girls, and make love to Miss Sharp yourself, " thelieutenant here interrupted his friend; but Captain Dobbin declined tojoin Osborne in his daily visit to the young ladies in Russell Square. 

As George walked down Southampton Row, from Holborn, he laughed as hesaw, at the Sedley Mansion, in two different stories two heads on thelook-out. 

The fact is, Miss Amelia, in the drawing-room balcony, was looking veryeagerly towards the opposite side of the Square, where Mr. Osbornedwelt, on the watch for the lieutenant himself; and Miss Sharp, fromher little bed-room on the second floor, was in observation until Mr. Joseph's great form should heave in sight. 

"Sister Anne is on the watch-tower, " said he to Amelia, "but there'snobody coming"; and laughing and enjoying the joke hugely, he describedin the most ludicrous terms to Miss Sedley, the dismal condition of herbrother. 

"I think it's very cruel of you to laugh, George, " she said, lookingparticularly unhappy; but George only laughed the more at her piteousand discomfited mien, persisted in thinking the joke a most divertingone, and when Miss Sharp came downstairs, bantered her with a greatdeal of liveliness upon the effect of her charms on the fat civilian. 

"O Miss Sharp! if you could but see him this morning, " hesaid--"moaning in his flowered dressing-gown--writhing on his sofa; ifyou could but have seen him lolling out his tongue to Gollop theapothecary. "

"See whom?" said Miss Sharp. 

"Whom? O whom? Captain Dobbin, of course, to whom we were all soattentive, by the way, last night. "

"We were very unkind to him, " Emmy said, blushing very much. "I--Iquite forgot him. "

"Of course you did, " cried Osborne, still on the laugh. 

"One can't be ALWAYS thinking about Dobbin, you know, Amelia. Can one, Miss Sharp?"

"Except when he overset the glass of wine at dinner, " Miss Sharp said, with a haughty air and a toss of the head, "I never gave the existenceof Captain Dobbin one single moment's consideration. "

"Very good, Miss Sharp, I'll tell him, " Osborne said; and as he spokeMiss Sharp began to have a feeling of distrust and hatred towards thisyoung officer, which he was quite unconscious of having inspired. "Heis to make fun of me, is he?" thought Rebecca. "Has he been laughingabout me to Joseph? Has he frightened him? Perhaps he won't come. "--Afilm passed over her eyes, and her heart beat quite quick. 

"You're always joking, " said she, smiling as innocently as she could. "Joke away, Mr. George; there's nobody to defend ME. " And GeorgeOsborne, as she walked away--and Amelia looked reprovingly at him--feltsome little manly compunction for having inflicted any unnecessaryunkindness upon this helpless creature. "My dearest Amelia, " said he, "you are too good--too kind. You don't know the world. I do. Andyour little friend Miss Sharp must learn her station. "

"Don't you think Jos will--"

"Upon my word, my dear, I don't know. He may, or may not. I'm not hismaster. I only know he is a very foolish vain fellow, and put my dearlittle girl into a very painful and awkward position last night. Mydearest diddle-diddle-darling!" He was off laughing again, and he didit so drolly that Emmy laughed too. 

All that day Jos never came. But Amelia had no fear about this; forthe little schemer had actually sent away the page, Mr. Sambo'saide-de-camp, to Mr. Joseph's lodgings, to ask for some book he hadpromised, and how he was; and the reply through Jos's man, Mr. Brush, was, that his master was ill in bed, and had just had the doctor withhim. He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she never had thecourage to speak a word on the subject to Rebecca; nor did that youngwoman herself allude to it in any way during the whole evening afterthe night at Vauxhall. 

The next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on the sofa, pretending to work, or to write letters, or to read novels, Sambo cameinto the room with his usual engaging grin, with a packet under hisarm, and a note on a tray. "Note from Mr. Jos, Miss, " says Sambo. 

How Amelia trembled as she opened it!

So it ran:

Dear Amelia, --I send you the "Orphan of the Forest. " I was too ill tocome yesterday. I leave town to-day for Cheltenham. Pray excuse me, if you can, to the amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at Vauxhall, andentreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have uttered whenexcited by that fatal supper. As soon as I have recovered, for myhealth is very much shaken, I shall go to Scotland for some months, andam

Truly yours, Jos Sedley

It was the death-warrant. All was over. Amelia did not dare to lookat Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes, but she dropt the letter intoher friend's lap; and got up, and went upstairs to her room, and criedher little heart out. 

Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently withconsolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept confidentially, and relievedherself a good deal. "Don't take on, Miss. I didn't like to tell you. But none of us in the house have liked her except at fust. I sor herwith my own eyes reading your Ma's letters. Pinner says she's alwaysabout your trinket-box and drawers, and everybody's drawers, and she'ssure she's put your white ribbing into her box. "

"I gave it her, I gave it her, " Amelia said. 

But this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss Sharp. "Idon't trust them governesses, Pinner, " she remarked to the maid. "Theygive themselves the hairs and hupstarts of ladies, and their wages isno better than you nor me. "

It now became clear to every soul in the house, except poor Amelia, that Rebecca should take her departure, and high and low (always withthe one exception) agreed that that event should take place as speedilyas possible. Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards, reticules, and gimcrack boxes--passed in review all her gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and fallals--selecting this thingand that and the other, to make a little heap for Rebecca. And goingto her Papa, that generous British merchant, who had promised to giveher as many guineas as she was years old--she begged the old gentlemanto give the money to dear Rebecca, who must want it, while she lackedfor nothing. 

She even made George Osborne contribute, and nothing loth (for he wasas free-handed a young fellow as any in the army), he went to BondStreet, and bought the best hat and spenser that money could buy. 

"That's George's present to you, Rebecca, dear, " said Amelia, quiteproud of the bandbox conveying these gifts. "What a taste he has!There's nobody like him. "

"Nobody, " Rebecca answered. "How thankful I am to him!" She wasthinking in her heart, "It was George Osborne who prevented mymarriage. "--And she loved George Osborne accordingly. 

She made her preparations for departure with great equanimity; andaccepted all the kind little Amelia's presents, after just the properdegree of hesitation and reluctance. She vowed eternal gratitude toMrs. Sedley, of course; but did not intrude herself upon that good ladytoo much, who was embarrassed, and evidently wishing to avoid her. Shekissed Mr. Sedley's hand, when he presented her with the purse; andasked permission to consider him for the future as her kind, kindfriend and protector. Her behaviour was so affecting that he was goingto write her a cheque for twenty pounds more; but he restrained hisfeelings: the carriage was in waiting to take him to dinner, so hetripped away with a "God bless you, my dear, always come here when youcome to town, you know. --Drive to the Mansion House, James. "

Finally came the parting with Miss Amelia, over which picture I intendto throw a veil. But after a scene in which one person was in earnestand the other a perfect performer--after the tenderest caresses, themost pathetic tears, the smelling-bottle, and some of the very bestfeelings of the heart, had been called into requisition--Rebecca andAmelia parted, the former vowing to love her friend for ever and everand ever. 

CHAPTER VII

Crawley of Queen's Crawley

Among the most respected of the names beginning in C which theCourt-Guide contained, in the year 18--, was that of Crawley, Sir Pitt, Baronet, Great Gaunt Street, and Queen's Crawley, Hants. Thishonourable name had figured constantly also in the Parliamentary listfor many years, in conjunction with that of a number of other worthygentlemen who sat in turns for the borough. 

It is related, with regard to the borough of Queen's Crawley, thatQueen Elizabeth in one of her progresses, stopping at Crawley tobreakfast, was so delighted with some remarkably fine Hampshire beerwhich was then presented to her by the Crawley of the day (a handsomegentleman with a trim beard and a good leg), that she forthwith erectedCrawley into a borough to send two members to Parliament; and theplace, from the day of that illustrious visit, took the name of Queen'sCrawley, which it holds up to the present moment. And though, by thelapse of time, and those mutations which age produces in empires, cities, and boroughs, Queen's Crawley was no longer so populous a placeas it had been in Queen Bess's time--nay, was come down to thatcondition of borough which used to be denominated rotten--yet, as SirPitt Crawley would say with perfect justice in his elegant way, "Rotten! be hanged--it produces me a good fifteen hundred a year. "

Sir Pitt Crawley (named after the great Commoner) was the son ofWalpole Crawley, first Baronet, of the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office inthe reign of George II. , when he was impeached for peculation, as werea great number of other honest gentlemen of those days; and WalpoleCrawley was, as need scarcely be said, son of John Churchill Crawley, named after the celebrated military commander of the reign of QueenAnne. The family tree (which hangs up at Queen's Crawley) furthermorementions Charles Stuart, afterwards called Barebones Crawley, son ofthe Crawley of James the First's time; and finally, Queen Elizabeth'sCrawley, who is represented as the foreground of the picture in hisforked beard and armour. Out of his waistcoat, as usual, grows a tree, on the main branches of which the above illustrious names areinscribed. Close by the name of Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet (the subjectof the present memoir), are written that of his brother, the ReverendBute Crawley (the great Commoner was in disgrace when the reverendgentleman was born), rector of Crawley-cum-Snailby, and of variousother male and female members of the Crawley family. 

Sir Pitt was first married to Grizzel, sixth daughter of Mungo Binkie, Lord Binkie, and cousin, in consequence, of Mr. Dundas. She broughthim two sons: Pitt, named not so much after his father as after theheaven-born minister; and Rawdon Crawley, from the Prince of Wales'sfriend, whom his Majesty George IV forgot so completely. Many yearsafter her ladyship's demise, Sir Pitt led to the altar Rosa, daughterof Mr. G. Dawson, of Mudbury, by whom he had two daughters, for whosebenefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as governess. It will beseen that the young lady was come into a family of very genteelconnexions, and was about to move in a much more distinguished circlethan that humble one which she had just quitted in Russell Square. 

She had received her orders to join her pupils, in a note which waswritten upon an old envelope, and which contained the following words:

Sir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be hear on Tuesday, as I leaf for Queen's Crawley to-morrow morning ERLY. 

Great Gaunt Street. 

Rebecca had never seen a Baronet, as far as she knew, and as soon asshe had taken leave of Amelia, and counted the guineas whichgood-natured Mr. Sedley had put into a purse for her, and as soon asshe had done wiping her eyes with her handkerchief (which operation sheconcluded the very moment the carriage had turned the corner of thestreet), she began to depict in her own mind what a Baronet must be. "Iwonder, does he wear a star?" thought she, "or is it only lords thatwear stars? But he will be very handsomely dressed in a court suit, with ruffles, and his hair a little powdered, like Mr. Wroughton atCovent Garden. I suppose he will be awfully proud, and that I shall betreated most contemptuously. Still I must bear my hard lot as well asI can--at least, I shall be amongst GENTLEFOLKS, and not with vulgarcity people": and she fell to thinking of her Russell Square friendswith that very same philosophical bitterness with which, in a certainapologue, the fox is represented as speaking of the grapes. 

Having passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt Street, thecarriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy house between two othertall gloomy houses, each with a hatchment over the middle drawing-roomwindow; as is the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in whichgloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual. The shutters of thefirst-floor windows of Sir Pitt's mansion were closed--those of thedining-room were partially open, and the blinds neatly covered up inold newspapers. 

John, the groom, who had driven the carriage alone, did not care todescend to ring the bell; and so prayed a passing milk-boy to performthat office for him. When the bell was rung, a head appeared betweenthe interstices of the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened bya man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat, a foul oldneckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leeringred face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a mouth perpetually on thegrin. 

"This Sir Pitt Crawley's?" says John, from the box. 

"Ees, " says the man at the door, with a nod. 

"Hand down these 'ere trunks then, " said John. 

"Hand 'n down yourself, " said the porter. 

"Don't you see I can't leave my hosses? Come, bear a hand, my finefeller, and Miss will give you some beer, " said John, with ahorse-laugh, for he was no longer respectful to Miss Sharp, as herconnexion with the family was broken off, and as she had given nothingto the servants on coming away. 

The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his breeches pockets, advanced on this summons, and throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over hisshoulder, carried it into the house. 

"Take this basket and shawl, if you please, and open the door, " saidMiss Sharp, and descended from the carriage in much indignation. "Ishall write to Mr. Sedley and inform him of your conduct, " said she tothe groom. 

"Don't, " replied that functionary. "I hope you've forgot nothink? Miss'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as the lady's maid was to have 'ad?I hope they'll fit you. Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of'ER, " continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp: "abad lot, I tell you, a bad lot, " and so saying, Mr. Sedley's groomdrove away. The truth is, he was attached to the lady's maid inquestion, and indignant that she should have been robbed of herperquisites. 

On entering the dining-room, by the orders of the individual ingaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not more cheerful than such roomsusually are, when genteel families are out of town. The faithfulchambers seem, as it were, to mourn the absence of their masters. Theturkey carpet has rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under thesideboard: the pictures have hidden their faces behind old sheets ofbrown paper: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a dismal sack of brownholland: the window-curtains have disappeared under all sorts of shabbyenvelopes: the marble bust of Sir Walpole Crawley is looking from itsblack corner at the bare boards and the oiled fire-irons, and the emptycard-racks over the mantelpiece: the cellaret has lurked away behindthe carpet: the chairs are turned up heads and tails along the walls:and in the dark corner opposite the statue, is an old-fashioned crabbedknife-box, locked and sitting on a dumb waiter. 

Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an attenuated old poker andtongs were, however, gathered round the fire-place, as was a saucepanover a feeble sputtering fire. There was a bit of cheese and bread, and a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter in apint-pot. 

"Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for you? Like a drop ofbeer?"

"Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?" said Miss Sharp majestically. 

"He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe me a pint for bringingdown your luggage. He, he! Ask Tinker if I aynt. Mrs. Tinker, MissSharp; Miss Governess, Mrs. Charwoman. Ho, ho!"

The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her appearancewith a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she had been despatched aminute before Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over toSir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire. 

"Where's the farden?" said he. "I gave you three halfpence. Where'sthe change, old Tinker?"

"There!" replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin; "it's onlybaronets as cares about farthings. "

"A farthing a day is seven shillings a year, " answered the M. P. ; "sevenshillings a year is the interest of seven guineas. Take care of yourfarthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite nat'ral. "

"You may be sure it's Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman, " said Mrs. Tinker, surlily; "because he looks to his farthings. You'll know him betterafore long. "

"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp, " said the old gentleman, withan air almost of politeness. "I must be just before I'm generous. "

"He never gave away a farthing in his life, " growled Tinker. 

"Never, and never will: it's against my principle. Go and get anotherchair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you want to sit down; and then we'llhave a bit of supper. "

Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan on the fire, andwithdrew from the pot a piece of tripe and an onion, which he dividedinto pretty equal portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker. "You see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board wages: whenI'm in town she dines with the family. Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp'snot hungry, ain't you, Tink?" And they fell to upon their frugal supper. 

After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his pipe; and when itbecame quite dark, he lighted the rushlight in the tin candlestick, andproducing from an interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, beganreading them, and putting them in order. 

"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it happens that Ishall have the pleasure of such a pretty travelling companionto-morrow. "

"He's always at law business, " said Mrs. Tinker, taking up the pot ofporter. 

"Drink and drink about, " said the Baronet. "Yes; my dear, Tinker isquite right: I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. Look here at Crawley, Bart. V. Snaffle. I'll throw him over, or myname's not Pitt Crawley. Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart. Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart. They can't prove it'scommon: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine. It no more belongs to theparish than it does to you or Tinker here. I'll beat 'em, if it costme a thousand guineas. Look over the papers; you may if you like, mydear. Do you write a good hand? I'll make you useful when we're atQueen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp. Now the dowager's dead Iwant some one. "

"She was as bad as he, " said Tinker. "She took the law of every one ofher tradesmen; and turned away forty-eight footmen in four year. "

"She was close--very close, " said the Baronet, simply; "but she was avalyble woman to me, and saved me a steward. "--And in this confidentialstrain, and much to the amusement of the new-comer, the conversationcontinued for a considerable time. Whatever Sir Pitt Crawley'squalities might be, good or bad, he did not make the least disguise ofthem. He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest andvulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of theworld. And so, with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five inthe morning, he bade her good night. "You'll sleep with Tinkerto-night, " he said; "it's a big bed, and there's room for two. LadyCrawley died in it. Good night. "

Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great bleak stone stairs, pastthe great dreary drawing-room doors, with the handles muffled up inpaper, into the great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept herlast. The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy, you might havefancied, not only that Lady Crawley died in the room, but that herghost inhabited it. Rebecca sprang about the apartment, however, withthe greatest liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, andthe closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers which werelocked, and examined the dreary pictures and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman was saying her prayers. "I shouldn't like tosleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss, " said the oldwoman. "There's room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts in it, " saysRebecca. "Tell me all about Lady Crawley and Sir Pitt Crawley, andeverybody, my DEAR Mrs. Tinker. "

But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little cross-questioner;and signifying to her that bed was a place for sleeping, notconversation, set up in her corner of the bed such a snore as only thenose of innocence can produce. Rebecca lay awake for a long, longtime, thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which she wasgoing, and of her chances of success there. The rushlight flickered inthe basin. The mantelpiece cast up a great black shadow, over half ofa mouldy old sampler, which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a collegegown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier. When she went tosleep, Rebecca chose that one to dream about. 

At four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning as even made GreatGaunt Street look cheerful, the faithful Tinker, having wakened herbedfellow, and bid her prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted thegreat hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled thesleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way into Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand there. It is needless to particularizethe number of the vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationedthus early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes that someyoung buck, reeling homeward from the tavern, might need the aid of hisvehicle, and pay him with the generosity of intoxication. 

It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had any suchhopes as those above stated, was grossly disappointed; and that theworthy Baronet whom he drove to the City did not give him one singlepenny more than his fare. It was in vain that Jehu appealed andstormed; that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter at the'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his fare. 

"You'd better not, " said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir Pitt Crawley. "

"So it is, Joe, " cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and I'd like to seethe man can do me. "

"So should oi, " said Joe, grinning sulkily, and mounting the Baronet'sbaggage on the roof of the coach. 

"Keep the box for me, Leader, " exclaims the Member of Parliament to thecoachman; who replied, "Yes, Sir Pitt, " with a touch of his hat, andrage in his soul (for he had promised the box to a young gentleman fromCambridge, who would have given a crown to a certainty), and Miss Sharpwas accommodated with a back seat inside the carriage, which might besaid to be carrying her into the wide world. 

How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his five great-coats infront; but was reconciled when little Miss Sharp was made to quit thecarriage, and mount up beside him--when he covered her up in one of hisBenjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how the asthmaticgentleman, the prim lady, who declared upon her sacred honour she hadnever travelled in a public carriage before (there is always such alady in a coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?), and thefat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places inside--how theporter asked them all for money, and got sixpence from the gentlemanand five greasy halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage atlength drove away--now threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anonclattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's, jingling rapidly by thestrangers' entry of Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has nowdeparted to the world of shadows--how they passed the White Bear inPiccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the market-gardens ofKnightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen, Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--neednot be told here. But the writer of these pages, who has pursued informer days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkablejourney, cannot but think of it with a sweet and tender regret. Whereis the road now, and its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelseaor Greenwich for the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder whereare they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead? and thewaiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds ofbeef inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinkingpail, where is he, and where is his generation? To those greatgeniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the belovedreader's children, these men and things will be as much legend andhistory as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard. For themstage-coaches will have become romances--a team of four bays asfabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, asthe stable-men pulled their clothes off, and away they went--ah, howtheir tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end theydemurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we shall never hear thehorn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more. Whither, however, is the light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us?Let us be set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation, andsee how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there. 

CHAPTER VIII

Private and Confidential

Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley, Russell Square, London. (Free. --Pitt Crawley. )

MY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA, With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the pen to write to mydearest friend! Oh, what a change between to-day and yesterday! Now Iam friendless and alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet companyof a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!

I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed the fatal nightin which I separated from you. YOU went on Tuesday to joy andhappiness, with your mother and YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by yourside; and I thought of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, theprettiest, I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball. I wasbrought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt Crawley's townhouse, where, after John the groom had behaved most rudely andinsolently to me (alas! 'twas safe to insult poverty and misfortune!), I was given over to Sir P. 's care, and made to pass the night in an oldgloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy old charwoman, who keepsthe house. I did not sleep one single wink the whole night. 

Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to read Cecilia atChiswick, imagined a baronet must have been. Anything, indeed, lesslike Lord Orville cannot be imagined. Fancy an old, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, whosmokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper in a saucepan. He speaks with a country accent, and swore a great deal at the oldcharwoman, at the hackney coachman who drove us to the inn where thecoach went from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THEGREATER PART OF THE WAY. 

I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and having arrived at theinn, was at first placed inside the coach. But, when we got to a placecalled Leakington, where the rain began to fall very heavily--will youbelieve it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a proprietorof the coach, and as a passenger came at Mudbury, who wanted an insideplace, I was obliged to go outside in the rain, where, however, a younggentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very kindly in one of hisseveral great coats. 

This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir Pitt very well, andlaughed at him a great deal. They both agreed in calling him an oldscrew; which means a very stingy, avaricious person. He never givesany money to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and theyoung gentleman made me remark that we drove very slow for the last twostages on the road, because Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he isproprietor of the horses for this part of the journey. "But won't Iflog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?" said the youngCantab. "And sarve 'em right, Master Jack, " said the guard. When Icomprehended the meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intendedto drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir Pitt's horses, of course I laughed too. 

A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with armorial bearings, however, awaited us at Mudbury, four miles from Queen's Crawley, and wemade our entrance to the baronet's park in state. There is a fineavenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman at thelodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent and a dove, thesupporters of the Crawley arms), made us a number of curtsies as sheflung open the old iron carved doors, which are something like those atodious Chiswick. 

"There's an avenue, " said Sir Pitt, "a mile long. There's six thousandpound of timber in them there trees. Do you call that nothing?" Hepronounced avenue--EVENUE, and nothing--NOTHINK, so droll; and he had aMr. Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the carriage with him, and theytalked about distraining, and selling up, and draining and subsoiling, and a great deal about tenants and farming--much more than I couldunderstand. Sam Miles had been caught poaching, and Peter Bailey hadgone to the workhouse at last. "Serve him right, " said Sir Pitt; "himand his family has been cheating me on that farm these hundred andfifty years. " Some old tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent. Sir Pitt might have said "he and his family, " to be sure; but richbaronets do not need to be careful about grammar, as poor governessesmust be. 

As we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire rising above some oldelms in the park; and before them, in the midst of a lawn, and someouthouses, an old red house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, andthe windows shining in the sun. "Is that your church, sir?" I said. 

"Yes, hang it, " (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, A MUCH WICKEDERWORD); "how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my brother Bute, my dear--my brotherthe parson. Buty and the Beast I call him, ha, ha!"

Hodson laughed too, and then looking more grave and nodding his head, said, "I'm afraid he's better, Sir Pitt. He was out on his ponyyesterday, looking at our corn. "

"Looking after his tithes, hang'un (only he used the same wicked word). Will brandy and water never kill him? He's as tough as oldwhatdyecallum--old Methusalem. "

Mr. Hodson laughed again. "The young men is home from college. They'vewhopped John Scroggins till he's well nigh dead. "

"Whop my second keeper!" roared out Sir Pitt. 

"He was on the parson's ground, sir, " replied Mr. Hodson; and Sir Pittin a fury swore that if he ever caught 'em poaching on his ground, he'dtransport 'em, by the lord he would. However, he said, "I've sold thepresentation of the living, Hodson; none of that breed shall get it, Iwar'nt"; and Mr. Hodson said he was quite right: and I have no doubtfrom this that the two brothers are at variance--as brothers often are, and sisters too. Don't you remember the two Miss Scratchleys atChiswick, how they used always to fight and quarrel--and Mary Box, howshe was always thumping Louisa?

Presently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the wood, Mr. Hodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir Pitt's order, and rushed uponthem with his whip. "Pitch into 'em, Hodson, " roared the baronet;"flog their little souls out, and bring 'em up to the house, thevagabonds; I'll commit 'em as sure as my name's Pitt. " And presently weheard Mr. Hodson's whip cracking on the shoulders of the poor littleblubbering wretches, and Sir Pitt, seeing that the malefactors were incustody, drove on to the hall. 

All the servants were ready to meet us, and . . . 

Here, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a dreadful thumping atmy door: and who do you think it was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his night-capand dressing-gown, such a figure! As I shrank away from such a visitor, he came forward and seized my candle. "No candles after eleveno'clock, Miss Becky, " said he. "Go to bed in the dark, you prettylittle hussy" (that is what he called me), "and unless you wish me tocome for the candle every night, mind and be in bed at eleven. " Andwith this, he and Mr. Horrocks the butler went off laughing. You maybe sure I shall not encourage any more of their visits. They let loosetwo immense bloodhounds at night, which all last night were yelling andhowling at the moon. "I call the dog Gorer, " said Sir Pitt; "he'skilled a man that dog has, and is master of a bull, and the mother Iused to call Flora; but now I calls her Aroarer, for she's too old tobite. Haw, haw!"

Before the house of Queen's Crawley, which is an odious old-fashionedred brick mansion, with tall chimneys and gables of the style of QueenBess, there is a terrace flanked by the family dove and serpent, and onwhich the great hall-door opens. And oh, my dear, the great hall I amsure is as big and as glum as the great hall in the dear castle ofUdolpho. It has a large fireplace, in which we might put half MissPinkerton's school, and the grate is big enough to roast an ox at thevery least. Round the room hang I don't know how many generations ofCrawleys, some with beards and ruffs, some with huge wigs and toesturned out, some dressed in long straight stays and gowns that look asstiff as towers, and some with long ringlets, and oh, my dear! scarcelyany stays at all. At one end of the hall is the great staircase all inblack oak, as dismal as may be, and on either side are tall doors withstags' heads over them, leading to the billiard-room and the library, and the great yellow saloon and the morning-rooms. I think there areat least twenty bedrooms on the first floor; one of them has the bed inwhich Queen Elizabeth slept; and I have been taken by my new pupilsthrough all these fine apartments this morning. They are not renderedless gloomy, I promise you, by having the shutters always shut; andthere is scarce one of the apartments, but when the light was let intoit, I expected to see a ghost in the room. We have a schoolroom on thesecond floor, with my bedroom leading into it on one side, and that ofthe young ladies on the other. Then there are Mr. Pitt'sapartments--Mr. Crawley, he is called--the eldest son, and Mr. RawdonCrawley's rooms--he is an officer like SOMEBODY, and away with hisregiment. There is no want of room I assure you. You might lodge allthe people in Russell Square in the house, I think, and have space tospare. 

Half an hour after our arrival, the great dinner-bell was rung, and Icame down with my two pupils (they are very thin insignificant littlechits of ten and eight years old). I came down in your dear muslingown (about which that odious Mrs. Pinner was so rude, because you gaveit me); for I am to be treated as one of the family, except on companydays, when the young ladies and I are to dine upstairs. 

Well, the great dinner-bell rang, and we all assembled in the littledrawing-room where my Lady Crawley sits. She is the second LadyCrawley, and mother of the young ladies. She was an ironmonger'sdaughter, and her marriage was thought a great match. She looks as ifshe had been handsome once, and her eyes are always weeping for theloss of her beauty. She is pale and meagre and high-shouldered, andhas not a word to say for herself, evidently. Her stepson Mr. Crawley, was likewise in the room. He was in full dress, as pompous as anundertaker. He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has thin legs, nochest, hay-coloured whiskers, and straw-coloured hair. He is the verypicture of his sainted mother over the mantelpiece--Griselda of thenoble house of Binkie. 

"This is the new governess, Mr. Crawley, " said Lady Crawley, comingforward and taking my hand. "Miss Sharp. "

"O!" said Mr. Crawley, and pushed his head once forward and began againto read a great pamphlet with which he was busy. 

"I hope you will be kind to my girls, " said Lady Crawley, with her pinkeyes always full of tears. 

"Law, Ma, of course she will, " said the eldest: and I saw at a glancethat I need not be afraid of THAT woman. "My lady is served, " says thebutler in black, in an immense white shirt-frill, that looked as if ithad been one of the Queen Elizabeth's ruffs depicted in the hall; andso, taking Mr. Crawley's arm, she led the way to the dining-room, whither I followed with my little pupils in each hand. 

Sir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug. He had just beento the cellar, and was in full dress too; that is, he had taken hisgaiters off, and showed his little dumpy legs in black worstedstockings. The sideboard was covered with glistening old plate--oldcups, both gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like Rundelland Bridge's shop. Everything on the table was in silver too, and twofootmen, with red hair and canary-coloured liveries, stood on eitherside of the sideboard. 

Mr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said amen, and the greatsilver dish-covers were removed. 

"What have we for dinner, Betsy?" said the Baronet. 

"Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt, " answered Lady Crawley. 

"Mouton aux navets, " added the butler gravely (pronounce, if youplease, moutongonavvy); "and the soup is potage de mouton al'Ecossaise. The side-dishes contain pommes de terre au naturel, andchoufleur a l'eau. "

"Mutton's mutton, " said the Baronet, "and a devilish good thing. WhatSHIP was it, Horrocks, and when did you kill?" "One of the black-facedScotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday. 

"Who took any?"

"Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir Pitt; but he saysthe last was too young and confounded woolly, Sir Pitt. "

"Will you take some potage, Miss ah--Miss Blunt? said Mr. Crawley. 

"Capital Scotch broth, my dear, " said Sir Pitt, "though they call it bya French name. "

"I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society, " said Mr. Crawley, haughtily, "to call the dish as I have called it"; and it was served tous on silver soup plates by the footmen in the canary coats, with themouton aux navets. Then "ale and water" were brought, and served to usyoung ladies in wine-glasses. I am not a judge of ale, but I can saywith a clear conscience I prefer water. 

While we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took occasion to ask whathad become of the shoulders of the mutton. 

"I believe they were eaten in the servants' hall, " said my lady, humbly. 

"They was, my lady, " said Horrocks, "and precious little else we getthere neither. "

Sir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his conversation withMr. Horrocks. "That there little black pig of the Kent sow's breedmust be uncommon fat now. "

"It's not quite busting, Sir Pitt, " said the butler with the gravestair, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young ladies, this time, beganto laugh violently. 

"Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley, " said Mr. Crawley, "your laughterstrikes me as being exceedingly out of place. "

"Never mind, my lord, " said the Baronet, "we'll try the porker onSaturday. Kill un on Saturday morning, John Horrocks. Miss Sharpadores pork, don't you, Miss Sharp?"

And I think this is all the conversation that I remember at dinner. When the repast was concluded a jug of hot water was placed before SirPitt, with a case-bottle containing, I believe, rum. Mr. Horrocksserved myself and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and abumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired, she took from herwork-drawer an enormous interminable piece of knitting; the youngladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We hadbut one candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silvercandlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady, I had mychoice of amusement between a volume of sermons, and a pamphlet on thecorn-laws, which Mr. Crawley had been reading before dinner. 

So we sat for an hour until steps were heard. 

"Put away the cards, girls, " cried my lady, in a great tremor; "putdown Mr. Crawley's books, Miss Sharp"; and these orders had beenscarcely obeyed, when Mr. Crawley entered the room. 

"We will resume yesterday's discourse, young ladies, " said he, "and youshall each read a page by turns; so that Miss a--Miss Short may have anopportunity of hearing you"; and the poor girls began to spell a longdismal sermon delivered at Bethesda Chapel, Liverpool, on behalf of themission for the Chickasaw Indians. Was it not a charming evening?

At ten the servants were told to call Sir Pitt and the household toprayers. Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and ratherunsteady in his gait; and after him the butler, the canaries, Mr. Crawley's man, three other men, smelling very much of the stable, andfour women, one of whom, I remarked, was very much overdressed, and whoflung me a look of great scorn as she plumped down on her knees. 

After Mr. Crawley had done haranguing and expounding, we received ourcandles, and then we went to bed; and then I was disturbed in mywriting, as I have described to my dearest sweetest Amelia. 

Good night. A thousand, thousand, thousand kisses!

Saturday. --This morning, at five, I heard the shrieking of the littleblack pig. Rose and Violet introduced me to it yesterday; and to thestables, and to the kennel, and to the gardener, who was picking fruitto send to market, and from whom they begged hard a bunch of hot-housegrapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered every "Man Jack" ofthem, and it would be as much as his place was worth to give any away. The darling girls caught a colt in a paddock, and asked me if I wouldride, and began to ride themselves, when the groom, coming with horridoaths, drove them away. 

Lady Crawley is always knitting the worsted. Sir Pitt is always tipsy, every night; and, I believe, sits with Horrocks, the butler. Mr. Crawley always reads sermons in the evening, and in the morning islocked up in his study, or else rides to Mudbury, on county business, or to Squashmore, where he preaches, on Wednesdays and Fridays, to thetenants there. 

A hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa and mamma. Is yourpoor brother recovered of his rack-punch? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How menshould beware of wicked punch!

Ever and ever thine own REBECCA

Everything considered, I think it is quite as well for our dear AmeliaSedley, in Russell Square, that Miss Sharp and she are parted. Rebeccais a droll funny creature, to be sure; and those descriptions of thepoor lady weeping for the loss of her beauty, and the gentleman "withhay-coloured whiskers and straw-coloured hair, " are very smart, doubtless, and show a great knowledge of the world. That she might, when on her knees, have been thinking of something better than MissHorrocks's ribbons, has possibly struck both of us. But my kind readerwill please to remember that this history has "Vanity Fair" for atitle, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, fullof all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while themoralist, who is holding forth on the cover ( an accurate portrait ofyour humble servant), professes to wear neither gown nor bands, butonly the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation isarrayed: yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as oneknows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and adeal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such anundertaking. 

I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at Naples, preachingto a pack of good-for-nothing honest lazy fellows by the sea-shore, work himself up into such a rage and passion with some of the villainswhose wicked deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audiencecould not resist it; and they and the poet together would burst outinto a roar of oaths and execrations against the fictitious monster ofthe tale, so that the hat went round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it, in the midst of a perfect storm of sympathy. 

At the little Paris theatres, on the other hand, you will not only hearthe people yelling out "Ah gredin! Ah monstre:" and cursing the tyrantof the play from the boxes; but the actors themselves positively refuseto play the wicked parts, such as those of infames Anglais, brutalCossacks, and what not, and prefer to appear at a smaller salary, intheir real characters as loyal Frenchmen. I set the two stories oneagainst the other, so that you may see that it is not from meremercenary motives that the present performer is desirous to show up andtrounce his villains; but because he has a sincere hatred of them, which he cannot keep down, and which must find a vent in suitable abuseand bad language. 

I warn my "kyind friends, " then, that I am going to tell a story ofharrowing villainy and complicated--but, as I trust, intenselyinteresting--crime. My rascals are no milk-and-water rascals, Ipromise you. When we come to the proper places we won't spare finelanguage--No, no! But when we are going over the quiet country we mustperforce be calm. A tempest in a slop-basin is absurd. We willreserve that sort of thing for the mighty ocean and the lonelymidnight. The present Chapter is very mild. Others--But we will notanticipate THOSE. 

And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man anda brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step downfrom the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, tolove them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly, to laugh atthem confidentially in the reader's sleeve: if they are wicked andheartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admitsof. 

Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice ofdevotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I wholaughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of abaronet--whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverenceexcept for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Suchpeople there are living and flourishing in the world--Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with mightand main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks andfools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, thatLaughter was made. 

CHAPTER IX

Family Portraits

Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called lowlife. His first marriage with the daughter of the noble Binkie hadbeen made under the auspices of his parents; and as he often told LadyCrawley in her lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome high-bredjade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take another ofher sort, at her ladyship's demise he kept his promise, and selectedfor a second wife Miss Rose Dawson, daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson, ironmonger, of Mudbury. What a happy woman was Rose to be my LadyCrawley!

Let us set down the items of her happiness. In the first place, shegave up Peter Butt, a young man who kept company with her, and inconsequence of his disappointment in love, took to smuggling, poaching, and a thousand other bad courses. Then she quarrelled, as in dutybound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth, who, of course, could not be received by my Lady at Queen's Crawley--nor did she findin her new rank and abode any persons who were willing to welcome her. Who ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three daughters who allhoped to be Lady Crawley. Sir Giles Wapshot's family were insultedthat one of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage, and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at theircomrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave togrumble anonymously. 

Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for any one of them. He had his pretty Rose, and what more need a man require than to pleasehimself? So he used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rosesometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to London for theparliamentary session, without a single friend in the wide world. EvenMrs. Bute Crawley, the Rector's wife, refused to visit her, as she saidshe would never give the pas to a tradesman's daughter. 

As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley werethose of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort ofcharacter, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements, nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls to thelot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt's affections wasnot very great. Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the prettyfreshness left her figure after the birth of a couple of children, andshe became a mere machine in her husband's house of no more use thanthe late Lady Crawley's grand piano. Being a light-complexioned woman, she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, inpreference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue. She workedthat worsted day and night, or other pieces like it. She hadcounterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley. She had a small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection;but beyond this no other like or disliking. When her husband was rudeto her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her she cried. She hadnot character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshodand in curl-papers all day. O Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! This mighthave been, but for you, a cheery lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy manand wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portionof pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles--but a title and a coach andfour are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harrythe Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do yousuppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presentedthis season?

The languid dulness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed, awaken much affection in her little daughters, but they were very happyin the servants' hall and in the stables; and the Scotch gardenerhaving luckily a good wife and some good children, they got a littlewholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was the onlyeducation bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came. 

Her engagement was owing to the remonstrances of Mr. Pitt Crawley, theonly friend or protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only person, besides her children, for whom she entertained a little feebleattachment. Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from whom he wasdescended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman. When he grew toman's estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began to reform theslackened discipline of the hall, in spite of his father, who stood inawe of him. He was a man of such rigid refinement, that he would havestarved rather than have dined without a white neckcloth. Once, whenjust from college, and when Horrocks the butler brought him a letterwithout placing it previously on a tray, he gave that domestic a look, and administered to him a speech so cutting, that Horrocks ever aftertrembled before him; the whole household bowed to him: Lady Crawley'scurl-papers came off earlier when he was at home: Sir Pitt's muddygaiters disappeared; and if that incorrigible old man still adhered toother old habits, he never fuddled himself with rum-and-water in hisson's presence, and only talked to his servants in a very reserved andpolite manner; and those persons remarked that Sir Pitt never swore atLady Crawley while his son was in the room. 

It was he who taught the butler to say, "My lady is served, " and whoinsisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner. He seldom spoke to her, but when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he never lether quit the apartment without rising in the most stately manner toopen the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress. 

At Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, hisyounger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently. But though hisparts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent bymeritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years atschool, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thoughtnone but a cherub can escape. 

At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here heprepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced bythe patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the ancientand modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking unceasingly atthe debating societies. But though he had a fine flux of words, anddelivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure tohimself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was notperfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet hefailed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insuredany man a success. He did not even get the prize poem, which all hisfriends said he was sure of. 

After leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie, andwas then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel, which posthe filled with perfect honour, and brought home despatches, consistingof Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of the day. After remainingten years Attache (several years after the lamented Lord Binkie'sdemise), and finding the advancement slow, he at length gave up thediplomatic service in some disgust, and began to turn country gentleman. 

He wrote a pamphlet on Malt on returning to England (for he was anambitious man, and always liked to be before the public), and took astrong part in the Negro Emancipation question. Then he became afriend of Mr. Wilberforce's, whose politics he admired, and had thatfamous correspondence with the Reverend Silas Hornblower, on theAshantee Mission. He was in London, if not for the Parliament session, at least in May, for the religious meetings. In the country he was amagistrate, and an active visitor and speaker among those destitute ofreligious instruction. He was said to be paying his addresses to LadyJane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third daughter, and whose sister, Lady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts, "The Sailor's True Binnacle, " and"The Applewoman of Finchley Common. "

Miss Sharp's accounts of his employment at Queen's Crawley were notcaricatures. He subjected the servants there to the devotionalexercises before mentioned, in which (and so much the better) hebrought his father to join. He patronised an Independent meeting-housein Crawley parish, much to the indignation of his uncle the Rector, andto the consequent delight of Sir Pitt, who was induced to go himselfonce or twice, which occasioned some violent sermons at Crawley parishchurch, directed point-blank at the Baronet's old Gothic pew there. Honest Sir Pitt, however, did not feel the force of these discourses, as he always took his nap during sermon-time. 

Mr. Crawley was very earnest, for the good of the nation and of theChristian world, that the old gentleman should yield him up his placein Parliament; but this the elder constantly refused to do. Both wereof course too prudent to give up the fifteen hundred a year which wasbrought in by the second seat (at this period filled by Mr. Quadroon, with carte blanche on the Slave question); indeed the family estate wasmuch embarrassed, and the income drawn from the borough was of greatuse to the house of Queen's Crawley. 

It had never recovered the heavy fine imposed upon Walpole Crawley, first baronet, for peculation in the Tape and Sealing Wax Office. SirWalpole was a jolly fellow, eager to seize and to spend money (alieniappetens, sui profusus, as Mr. Crawley would remark with a sigh), andin his day beloved by all the county for the constant drunkenness andhospitality which was maintained at Queen's Crawley. The cellars werefilled with burgundy then, the kennels with hounds, and the stableswith gallant hunters; now, such horses as Queen's Crawley possessedwent to plough, or ran in the Trafalgar Coach; and it was with a teamof these very horses, on an off-day, that Miss Sharp was brought to theHall; for boor as he was, Sir Pitt was a stickler for his dignity whileat home, and seldom drove out but with four horses, and though he dinedoff boiled mutton, had always three footmen to serve it. 

If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley mighthave become very wealthy--if he had been an attorney in a country town, with no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he would haveturned them to good account, and might have achieved for himself a veryconsiderable influence and competency. But he was unluckily endowedwith a good name and a large though encumbered estate, both of whichwent rather to injure than to advance him. He had a taste for law, which cost him many thousands yearly; and being a great deal too cleverto be robbed, as he said, by any single agent, allowed his affairs tobe mismanaged by a dozen, whom he all equally mistrusted. He was such asharp landlord, that he could hardly find any but bankrupt tenants; andsuch a close farmer, as to grudge almost the seed to the ground, whereupon revengeful Nature grudged him the crops which she granted tomore liberal husbandmen. He speculated in every possible way; he workedmines; bought canal-shares; horsed coaches; took government contracts, and was the busiest man and magistrate of his county. As he would notpay honest agents at his granite quarry, he had the satisfaction offinding that four overseers ran away, and took fortunes with them toAmerica. For want of proper precautions, his coal-mines filled withwater: the government flung his contract of damaged beef upon hishands: and for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the kingdomknew that he lost more horses than any man in the country, fromunderfeeding and buying cheap. In disposition he was sociable, and farfrom being proud; nay, he rather preferred the society of a farmer or ahorse-dealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, his son: he was fondof drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers' daughters: he wasnever known to give away a shilling or to do a good action, but was ofa pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink hisglass with a tenant and sell him up the next day; or have his laughwith the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour. Hispoliteness for the fair sex has already been hinted at by Miss RebeccaSharp--in a word, the whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputableold man. That blood-red hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be inanybody's pocket except his own; and it is with grief and pain, that, as admirers of the British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged toadmit the existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name isin Debrett. 

One great cause why Mr. Crawley had such a hold over the affections ofhis father, resulted from money arrangements. The Baronet owed his sona sum of money out of the jointure of his mother, which he did not findit convenient to pay; indeed he had an almost invincible repugnance topaying anybody, and could only be brought by force to discharge hisdebts. Miss Sharp calculated (for she became, as we shall hearspeedily, inducted into most of the secrets of the family) that themere payment of his creditors cost the honourable Baronet severalhundreds yearly; but this was a delight he could not forego; he had asavage pleasure in making the poor wretches wait, and in shifting fromcourt to court and from term to term the period of satisfaction. What's the good of being in Parliament, he said, if you must pay yourdebts? Hence, indeed, his position as a senator was not a little usefulto him. 

Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and didnot care to read--who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whoseaim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, orenjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, andhonours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and apillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had ahigher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue. 

Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's largefortune, and though the Baronet proposed to borrow this money of her onmortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred the securityof the funds. She had signified, however, her intention of leaving herinheritance between Sir Pitt's second son and the family at theRectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of Rawdon Crawley in hiscareer at college and in the army. Miss Crawley was, in consequence, anobject of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawley, for she had abalance at her banker's which would have made her beloved anywhere. 

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! Howtenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may everyreader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old creature wefind her! How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smilingto the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman!How, when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunityto let our friends know her station in the world! We say (and withperfect truth) I wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to a cheque forfive thousand pounds. She wouldn't miss it, says your wife. She is myaunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if MissMacWhirter is any relative. Your wife is perpetually sending herlittle testimonies of affection, your little girls work endless worstedbaskets, cushions, and footstools for her. What a good fire there isin her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife lacesher stays without one! The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. Youyourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and findyourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of arubber. What good dinners you have--game every day, Malmsey-Madeira, and no end of fish from London. Even the servants in the kitchen sharein the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of MissMacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and theconsumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes hermeals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? Iappeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers! I wish you wouldsend me an old aunt--a maiden aunt--an aunt with a lozenge on hercarriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured hair--how my childrenshould work workbags for her, and my Julia and I would make hercomfortable! Sweet--sweet vision! Foolish--foolish dream!

CHAPTER X

Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends

And now, being received as a member of the amiable family whoseportraits we have sketched in the foregoing pages, it became naturallyRebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to herbenefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power. Who can but admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected orphan;and, if there entered some degree of selfishness into her calculations, who can say but that her prudence was perfectly justifiable? "I amalone in the world, " said the friendless girl. "I have nothing to lookfor but what my own labour can bring me; and while that littlepink-faced chit Amelia, with not half my sense, has ten thousand poundsand an establishment secure, poor Rebecca (and my figure is far betterthan hers) has only herself and her own wits to trust to. Well, let ussee if my wits cannot provide me with an honourable maintenance, and ifsome day or the other I cannot show Miss Amelia my real superiorityover her. Not that I dislike poor Amelia: who can dislike such aharmless, good-natured creature?--only it will be a fine day when I cantake my place above her in the world, as why, indeed, should I not?"Thus it was that our little romantic friend formed visions of thefuture for herself--nor must we be scandalised that, in all her castlesin the air, a husband was the principal inhabitant. Of what else haveyoung ladies to think, but husbands? Of what else do their dear mammasthink? "I must be my own mamma, " said Rebecca; not without a tinglingconsciousness of defeat, as she thought over her little misadventurewith Jos Sedley. 

So she wisely determined to render her position with the Queen'sCrawley family comfortable and secure, and to this end resolved to makefriends of every one around her who could at all interfere with hercomfort. 

As my Lady Crawley was not one of these personages, and a woman, moreover, so indolent and void of character as not to be of the leastconsequence in her own house, Rebecca soon found that it was not at allnecessary to cultivate her good will--indeed, impossible to gain it. She used to talk to her pupils about their "poor mamma"; and, thoughshe treated that lady with every demonstration of cool respect, it wasto the rest of the family that she wisely directed the chief part ofher attentions. 

With the young people, whose applause she thoroughly gained, her methodwas pretty simple. She did not pester their young brains with too muchlearning, but, on the contrary, let them have their own way in regardto educating themselves; for what instruction is more effectual thanself-instruction? The eldest was rather fond of books, and as there wasin the old library at Queen's Crawley a considerable provision of worksof light literature of the last century, both in the French and Englishlanguages (they had been purchased by the Secretary of the Tape andSealing Wax Office at the period of his disgrace), and as nobody evertroubled the bookshelves but herself, Rebecca was enabled agreeably, and, as it were, in playing, to impart a great deal of instruction toMiss Rose Crawley. 

She and Miss Rose thus read together many delightful French and Englishworks, among which may be mentioned those of the learned Dr. Smollett, of the ingenious Mr. Henry Fielding, of the graceful and fantasticMonsieur Crebillon the younger, whom our immortal poet Gray so muchadmired, and of the universal Monsieur de Voltaire. Once, when Mr. Crawley asked what the young people were reading, the governess replied"Smollett. " "Oh, Smollett, " said Mr. Crawley, quite satisfied. "Hishistory is more dull, but by no means so dangerous as that of Mr. Hume. It is history you are reading?" "Yes, " said Miss Rose; without, however, adding that it was the history of Mr. Humphrey Clinker. Onanother occasion he was rather scandalised at finding his sister with abook of French plays; but as the governess remarked that it was for thepurpose of acquiring the French idiom in conversation, he was fain tobe content. Mr. Crawley, as a diplomatist, was exceedingly proud ofhis own skill in speaking the French language (for he was of the worldstill), and not a little pleased with the compliments which thegoverness continually paid him upon his proficiency. 

Miss Violet's tastes were, on the contrary, more rude and boisterousthan those of her sister. She knew the sequestered spots where thehens laid their eggs. She could climb a tree to rob the nests of thefeathered songsters of their speckled spoils. And her pleasure was toride the young colts, and to scour the plains like Camilla. She was thefavourite of her father and of the stablemen. She was the darling, andwithal the terror of the cook; for she discovered the haunts of thejam-pots, and would attack them when they were within her reach. Sheand her sister were engaged in constant battles. Any of whichpeccadilloes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she did not tell them to LadyCrawley; who would have told them to the father, or worse, to Mr. Crawley; but promised not to tell if Miss Violet would be a good girland love her governess. 

With Mr. Crawley Miss Sharp was respectful and obedient. She used toconsult him on passages of French which she could not understand, though her mother was a Frenchwoman, and which he would construe to hersatisfaction: and, besides giving her his aid in profane literature, hewas kind enough to select for her books of a more serious tendency, andaddress to her much of his conversation. She admired, beyond measure, his speech at the Quashimaboo-Aid Society; took an interest in hispamphlet on malt: was often affected, even to tears, by his discoursesof an evening, and would say--"Oh, thank you, sir, " with a sigh, and alook up to heaven, that made him occasionally condescend to shake handswith her. "Blood is everything, after all, " would that aristocraticreligionist say. "How Miss Sharp is awakened by my words, when not oneof the people here is touched. I am too fine for them--too delicate. Imust familiarise my style--but she understands it. Her mother was aMontmorency. "

Indeed it was from this famous family, as it appears, that Miss Sharp, by the mother's side, was descended. Of course she did not say that hermother had been on the stage; it would have shocked Mr. Crawley'sreligious scruples. How many noble emigres had this horrid revolutionplunged in poverty! She had several stories about her ancestors ereshe had been many months in the house; some of which Mr. Crawleyhappened to find in D'Hozier's dictionary, which was in the library, and which strengthened his belief in their truth, and in thehigh-breeding of Rebecca. Are we to suppose from this curiosity andprying into dictionaries, could our heroine suppose that Mr. Crawleywas interested in her?--no, only in a friendly way. Have we not statedthat he was attached to Lady Jane Sheepshanks?

He took Rebecca to task once or twice about the propriety of playing atbackgammon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a godless amusement, andthat she would be much better engaged in reading "Thrump's Legacy, " or"The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields, " or any work of a more seriousnature; but Miss Sharp said her dear mother used often to play the samegame with the old Count de Trictrac and the venerable Abbe du Cornet, and so found an excuse for this and other worldly amusements. 

But it was not only by playing at backgammon with the Baronet, that thelittle governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer. She foundmany different ways of being useful to him. She read over, withindefatigable patience, all those law papers, with which, before shecame to Queen's Crawley, he had promised to entertain her. Shevolunteered to copy many of his letters, and adroitly altered thespelling of them so as to suit the usages of the present day. Shebecame interested in everything appertaining to the estate, to thefarm, the park, the garden, and the stables; and so delightful acompanion was she, that the Baronet would seldom take hisafter-breakfast walk without her (and the children of course), when shewould give her advice as to the trees which were to be lopped in theshrubberies, the garden-beds to be dug, the crops which were to be cut, the horses which were to go to cart or plough. Before she had been ayear at Queen's Crawley she had quite won the Baronet's confidence; andthe conversation at the dinner-table, which before used to be heldbetween him and Mr. Horrocks the butler, was now almost exclusivelybetween Sir Pitt and Miss Sharp. She was almost mistress of the housewhen Mr. Crawley was absent, but conducted herself in her new andexalted situation with such circumspection and modesty as not to offendthe authorities of the kitchen and stable, among whom her behaviour wasalways exceedingly modest and affable. She was quite a differentperson from the haughty, shy, dissatisfied little girl whom we haveknown previously, and this change of temper proved great prudence, asincere desire of amendment, or at any rate great moral courage on herpart. Whether it was the heart which dictated this new system ofcomplaisance and humility adopted by our Rebecca, is to be proved byher after-history. A system of hypocrisy, which lasts through wholeyears, is one seldom satisfactorily practised by a person ofone-and-twenty; however, our readers will recollect, that, though youngin years, our heroine was old in life and experience, and we havewritten to no purpose if they have not discovered that she was a veryclever woman. 

The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley were, like thegentleman and lady in the weather-box, never at home together--theyhated each other cordially: indeed, Rawdon Crawley, the dragoon, had agreat contempt for the establishment altogether, and seldom camethither except when his aunt paid her annual visit. 

The great good quality of this old lady has been mentioned. Shepossessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon. Shedisliked her elder nephew exceedingly, and despised him as a milksop. In return he did not hesitate to state that her soul was irretrievablylost, and was of opinion that his brother's chance in the next worldwas not a whit better. "She is a godless woman of the world, " wouldMr. Crawley say; "she lives with atheists and Frenchmen. My mindshudders when I think of her awful, awful situation, and that, near asshe is to the grave, she should be so given up to vanity, licentiousness, profaneness, and folly. " In fact, the old lady declinedaltogether to hear his hour's lecture of an evening; and when she cameto Queen's Crawley alone, he was obliged to pretermit his usualdevotional exercises. 

"Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss Crawley comes down, " said hisfather; "she has written to say that she won't stand the preachifying. "

"O, sir! consider the servants. "

"The servants be hanged, " said Sir Pitt; and his son thought even worsewould happen were they deprived of the benefit of his instruction. 

"Why, hang it, Pitt!" said the father to his remonstrance. "Youwouldn't be such a flat as to let three thousand a year go out of thefamily?"

"What is money compared to our souls, sir?" continued Mr. Crawley. 

"You mean that the old lady won't leave the money to you?"--and whoknows but it was Mr. Crawley's meaning?

Old Miss Crawley was certainly one of the reprobate. She had a snuglittle house in Park Lane, and, as she ate and drank a great deal toomuch during the season in London, she went to Harrowgate or Cheltenhamfor the summer. She was the most hospitable and jovial of old vestals, and had been a beauty in her day, she said. (All old women werebeauties once, we very well know. ) She was a bel esprit, and a dreadfulRadical for those days. She had been in France (where St. Just, theysay, inspired her with an unfortunate passion), and loved, ever after, French novels, French cookery, and French wines. She read Voltaire, and had Rousseau by heart; talked very lightly about divorce, and mostenergetically of the rights of women. She had pictures of Mr. Fox inevery room in the house: when that statesman was in opposition, I amnot sure that she had not flung a main with him; and when he came intooffice, she took great credit for bringing over to him Sir Pitt and hiscolleague for Queen's Crawley, although Sir Pitt would have come overhimself, without any trouble on the honest lady's part. It is needlessto say that Sir Pitt was brought to change his views after the death ofthe great Whig statesman. 

This worthy old lady took a fancy to Rawdon Crawley when a boy, senthim to Cambridge (in opposition to his brother at Oxford), and, whenthe young man was requested by the authorities of the first-namedUniversity to quit after a residence of two years, she bought him hiscommission in the Life Guards Green. 

A perfect and celebrated "blood, " or dandy about town, was this youngofficer. Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-handdriving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy; and he was anadept in all these noble sciences. And though he belonged to thehousehold troops, who, as it was their duty to rally round the PrinceRegent, had not shown their valour in foreign service yet, RawdonCrawley had already (apropos of play, of which he was immoderatelyfond) fought three bloody duels, in which he gave ample proofs of hiscontempt for death. 

"And for what follows after death, " would Mr. Crawley observe, throwinghis gooseberry-coloured eyes up to the ceiling. He was always thinkingof his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with himin opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious givethemselves. 

Silly, romantic Miss Crawley, far from being horrified at the courageof her favourite, always used to pay his debts after his duels; andwould not listen to a word that was whispered against his morality. "He will sow his wild oats, " she would say, "and is worth far more thanthat puling hypocrite of a brother of his. "

CHAPTER XI

Arcadian Simplicity

Besides these honest folks at the Hall (whose simplicity and sweetrural purity surely show the advantage of a country life over a townone), we must introduce the reader to their relatives and neighbours atthe Rectory, Bute Crawley and his wife. 

The Reverend Bute Crawley was a tall, stately, jolly, shovel-hattedman, far more popular in his county than the Baronet his brother. Atcollege he pulled stroke-oar in the Christchurch boat, and had thrashedall the best bruisers of the "town. " He carried his taste for boxingand athletic exercises into private life; there was not a fight withintwenty miles at which he was not present, nor a race, nor a coursingmatch, nor a regatta, nor a ball, nor an election, nor a visitationdinner, nor indeed a good dinner in the whole county, but he foundmeans to attend it. You might see his bay mare and gig-lamps a scoreof miles away from his Rectory House, whenever there was anydinner-party at Fuddleston, or at Roxby, or at Wapshot Hall, or at thegreat lords of the county, with all of whom he was intimate. He had afine voice; sang "A southerly wind and a cloudy sky"; and gave the"whoop" in chorus with general applause. He rode to hounds in apepper-and-salt frock, and was one of the best fishermen in the county. 

Mrs. Crawley, the rector's wife, was a smart little body, who wrotethis worthy divine's sermons. Being of a domestic turn, and keepingthe house a great deal with her daughters, she ruled absolutely withinthe Rectory, wisely giving her husband full liberty without. He waswelcome to come and go, and dine abroad as many days as his fancydictated, for Mrs. Crawley was a saving woman and knew the price ofport wine. Ever since Mrs. Bute carried off the young Rector ofQueen's Crawley (she was of a good family, daughter of the lateLieut. -Colonel Hector McTavish, and she and her mother played for Buteand won him at Harrowgate), she had been a prudent and thrifty wife tohim. In spite of her care, however, he was always in debt. It tookhim at least ten years to pay off his college bills contracted duringhis father's lifetime. In the year 179-, when he was just clear ofthese incumbrances, he gave the odds of 100 to 1 (in twenties) againstKangaroo, who won the Derby. The Rector was obliged to take up themoney at a ruinous interest, and had been struggling ever since. Hissister helped him with a hundred now and then, but of course his greathope was in her death--when "hang it" (as he would say), "Matilda mustleave me half her money. "

So that the Baronet and his brother had every reason which two brotherspossibly can have for being by the ears. Sir Pitt had had the betterof Bute in innumerable family transactions. Young Pitt not only didnot hunt, but set up a meeting house under his uncle's very nose. Rawdon, it was known, was to come in for the bulk of Miss Crawley'sproperty. These money transactions--these speculations in life anddeath--these silent battles for reversionary spoil--make brothers veryloving towards each other in Vanity Fair. I, for my part, have known afive-pound note to interpose and knock up a half century's attachmentbetween two brethren; and can't but admire, as I think what a fine anddurable thing Love is among worldly people. 

It cannot be supposed that the arrival of such a personage as Rebeccaat Queen's Crawley, and her gradual establishment in the good graces ofall people there, could be unremarked by Mrs. Bute Crawley. Mrs. Bute, who knew how many days the sirloin of beef lasted at the Hall; how muchlinen was got ready at the great wash; how many peaches were on thesouth wall; how many doses her ladyship took when she was ill--for suchpoints are matters of intense interest to certain persons in thecountry--Mrs. Bute, I say, could not pass over the Hall governesswithout making every inquiry respecting her history and character. There was always the best understanding between the servants at theRectory and the Hall. There was always a good glass of ale in thekitchen of the former place for the Hall people, whose ordinary drinkwas very small--and, indeed, the Rector's lady knew exactly how muchmalt went to every barrel of Hall beer--ties of relationship existedbetween the Hall and Rectory domestics, as between their masters; andthrough these channels each family was perfectly well acquainted withthe doings of the other. That, by the way, may be set down as ageneral remark. When you and your brother are friends, his doings areindifferent to you. When you have quarrelled, all his outgoings andincomings you know, as if you were his spy. 

Very soon then after her arrival, Rebecca began to take a regular placein Mrs. Crawley's bulletin from the Hall. It was to this effect: "Theblack porker's killed--weighed x stone--salted the sides--pig's puddingand leg of pork for dinner. Mr. Cramp from Mudbury, over with Sir Pittabout putting John Blackmore in gaol--Mr. Pitt at meeting (with all thenames of the people who attended)--my lady as usual--the young ladieswith the governess. "

Then the report would come--the new governess be a rare manager--SirPitt be very sweet on her--Mr. Crawley too--He be reading tracts toher--"What an abandoned wretch!" said little, eager, active, black-faced Mrs. Bute Crawley. 

Finally, the reports were that the governess had "come round"everybody, wrote Sir Pitt's letters, did his business, managed hisaccounts--had the upper hand of the whole house, my lady, Mr. Crawley, the girls and all--at which Mrs. Crawley declared she was an artfulhussy, and had some dreadful designs in view. Thus the doings at theHall were the great food for conversation at the Rectory, and Mrs. Bute's bright eyes spied out everything that took place in the enemy'scamp--everything and a great deal besides. 

Mrs. Bute Crawley to Miss Pinkerton, The Mall, Chiswick. 

Rectory, Queen's Crawley, December--. 

My Dear Madam, --Although it is so many years since I profited by yourdelightful and invaluable instructions, yet I have ever retained theFONDEST and most reverential regard for Miss Pinkerton, and DEARChiswick. I hope your health is GOOD. The world and the cause ofeducation cannot afford to lose Miss Pinkerton for MANY MANY YEARS. When my friend, Lady Fuddleston, mentioned that her dear girls requiredan instructress (I am too poor to engage a governess for mine, but wasI not educated at Chiswick?)--"Who, " I exclaimed, "can we consult butthe excellent, the incomparable Miss Pinkerton?" In a word, have you, dear madam, any ladies on your list, whose services might be madeavailable to my kind friend and neighbour? I assure you she will takeno governess BUT OF YOUR CHOOSING. 

My dear husband is pleased to say that he likes EVERYTHING WHICH COMESFROM MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL. How I wish I could present him and mybeloved girls to the friend of my youth, and the ADMIRED of the greatlexicographer of our country! If you ever travel into Hampshire, Mr. Crawley begs me to say, he hopes you will adorn our RURAL RECTORY withyour presence. 'Tis the humble but happy home of

Your affectionate Martha Crawley

P. S. Mr. Crawley's brother, the baronet, with whom we are not, alas!upon those terms of UNITY in which it BECOMES BRETHREN TO DWELL, has agoverness for his little girls, who, I am told, had the good fortune tobe educated at Chiswick. I hear various reports of her; and as I havethe tenderest interest in my dearest little nieces, whom I wish, inspite of family differences, to see among my own children--and as Ilong to be attentive to ANY PUPIL OF YOURS--do, my dear Miss Pinkerton, tell me the history of this young lady, whom, for YOUR SAKE, I am mostanxious to befriend. --M. C. 

Miss Pinkerton to Mrs. Bute Crawley. 

Johnson House, Chiswick, Dec. 18--. 

Dear Madam, --I have the honour to acknowledge your politecommunication, to which I promptly reply. 'Tis most gratifying to onein my most arduous position to find that my maternal cares haveelicited a responsive affection; and to recognize in the amiable Mrs. Bute Crawley my excellent pupil of former years, the sprightly andaccomplished Miss Martha MacTavish. I am happy to have under my chargenow the daughters of many of those who were your contemporaries at myestablishment--what pleasure it would give me if your own beloved youngladies had need of my instructive superintendence!

Presenting my respectful compliments to Lady Fuddleston, I have thehonour (epistolarily) to introduce to her ladyship my two friends, MissTuffin and Miss Hawky. 

Either of these young ladies is PERFECTLY QUALIFIED to instruct inGreek, Latin, and the rudiments of Hebrew; in mathematics and history;in Spanish, French, Italian, and geography; in music, vocal andinstrumental; in dancing, without the aid of a master; and in theelements of natural sciences. In the use of the globes both areproficients. In addition to these Miss Tuffin, who is daughter of thelate Reverend Thomas Tuffin (Fellow of Corpus College, Cambridge), caninstruct in the Syriac language, and the elements of Constitutionallaw. But as she is only eighteen years of age, and of exceedinglypleasing personal appearance, perhaps this young lady may beobjectionable in Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's family. 

Miss Letitia Hawky, on the other hand, is not personally well-favoured. She is-twenty-nine; her face is much pitted with the small-pox. Shehas a halt in her gait, red hair, and a trifling obliquity of vision. Both ladies are endowed with EVERY MORAL AND RELIGIOUS VIRTUE. Theirterms, of course, are such as their accomplishments merit. With mymost grateful respects to the Reverend Bute Crawley, I have the honourto be, Dear Madam, Your most faithful and obedient servant, Barbara Pinkerton. 

P. S. The Miss Sharp, whom you mention as governess to Sir PittCrawley, Bart. , M. P. , was a pupil of mine, and I have nothing to say inher disfavour. Though her appearance is disagreeable, we cannot controlthe operations of nature: and though her parents were disreputable (herfather being a painter, several times bankrupt, and her mother, as Ihave since learned, with horror, a dancer at the Opera); yet hertalents are considerable, and I cannot regret that I received her OUTOF CHARITY. My dread is, lest the principles of the mother--who wasrepresented to me as a French Countess, forced to emigrate in the laterevolutionary horrors; but who, as I have since found, was a person ofthe very lowest order and morals--should at any time prove to beHEREDITARY in the unhappy young woman whom I took as AN OUTCAST. Buther principles have hitherto been correct (I believe), and I am surenothing will occur to injure them in the elegant and refined circle ofthe eminent Sir Pitt Crawley. 

Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley. 

I have not written to my beloved Amelia for these many weeks past, forwhat news was there to tell of the sayings and doings at Humdrum Hall, as I have christened it; and what do you care whether the turnip cropis good or bad; whether the fat pig weighed thirteen stone or fourteen;and whether the beasts thrive well upon mangelwurzel? Every day since Ilast wrote has been like its neighbour. Before breakfast, a walk withSir Pitt and his spud; after breakfast studies (such as they are) inthe schoolroom; after schoolroom, reading and writing about lawyers, leases, coal-mines, canals, with Sir Pitt (whose secretary I ambecome); after dinner, Mr. Crawley's discourses on the baronet'sbackgammon; during both of which amusements my lady looks on with equalplacidity. She has become rather more interesting by being ailing oflate, which has brought a new visitor to the Hall, in the person of ayoung doctor. Well, my dear, young women need never despair. The youngdoctor gave a certain friend of yours to understand that, if she choseto be Mrs. Glauber, she was welcome to ornament the surgery! I told hisimpudence that the gilt pestle and mortar was quite ornament enough; asif I was born, indeed, to be a country surgeon's wife! Mr. Glauber wenthome seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling draught, and isnow quite cured. Sir Pitt applauded my resolution highly; he would besorry to lose his little secretary, I think; and I believe the oldwretch likes me as much as it is in his nature to like any one. Marry, indeed! and with a country apothecary, after-- No, no, one cannot sosoon forget old associations, about which I will talk no more. Let usreturn to Humdrum Hall. 

For some time past it is Humdrum Hall no longer. My dear, Miss Crawleyhas arrived with her fat horses, fat servants, fat spaniel--the greatrich Miss Crawley, with seventy thousand pounds in the five per cents. , whom, or I had better say WHICH, her two brothers adore. She looksvery apoplectic, the dear soul; no wonder her brothers are anxiousabout her. You should see them struggling to settle her cushions, orto hand her coffee! "When I come into the country, " she says (for shehas a great deal of humour), "I leave my toady, Miss Briggs, at home. My brothers are my toadies here, my dear, and a pretty pair they are!"

When she comes into the country our hall is thrown open, and for amonth, at least, you would fancy old Sir Walpole was come to lifeagain. We have dinner-parties, and drive out in the coach-and-four thefootmen put on their newest canary-coloured liveries; we drink claretand champagne as if we were accustomed to it every day. We have waxcandles in the schoolroom, and fires to warm ourselves with. LadyCrawley is made to put on the brightest pea-green in her wardrobe, andmy pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old tartan pelisses, and wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as fashionable baronets'daughters should. Rose came in yesterday in a sad plight--theWiltshire sow (an enormous pet of hers) ran her down, and destroyed amost lovely flowered lilac silk dress by dancing over it--had thishappened a week ago, Sir Pitt would have sworn frightfully, have boxedthe poor wretch's ears, and put her upon bread and water for a month. All he said was, "I'll serve you out, Miss, when your aunt's gone, " andlaughed off the accident as quite trivial. Let us hope his wrath willhave passed away before Miss Crawley's departure. I hope so, for MissRose's sake, I am sure. What a charming reconciler and peacemaker moneyis!

Another admirable effect of Miss Crawley and her seventy thousandpounds is to be seen in the conduct of the two brothers Crawley. Imean the baronet and the rector, not OUR brothers--but the former, whohate each other all the year round, become quite loving at Christmas. I wrote to you last year how the abominable horse-racing rector was inthe habit of preaching clumsy sermons at us at church, and how Sir Pittsnored in answer. When Miss Crawley arrives there is no such thing asquarrelling heard of--the Hall visits the Rectory, and vice versa--theparson and the Baronet talk about the pigs and the poachers, and thecounty business, in the most affable manner, and without quarrelling intheir cups, I believe--indeed Miss Crawley won't hear of theirquarrelling, and vows that she will leave her money to the ShropshireCrawleys if they offend her. If they were clever people, thoseShropshire Crawleys, they might have it all, I think; but theShropshire Crawley is a clergyman like his Hampshire cousin, andmortally offended Miss Crawley (who had fled thither in a fit of rageagainst her impracticable brethren) by some strait-laced notions ofmorality. He would have prayers in the house, I believe. 

Our sermon books are shut up when Miss Crawley arrives, and Mr. Pitt, whom she abominates, finds it convenient to go to town. On the otherhand, the young dandy--"blood, " I believe, is the term--Captain Crawleymakes his appearance, and I suppose you will like to know what sort ofa person he is. 

Well, he is a very large young dandy. He is six feet high, and speakswith a great voice; and swears a great deal; and orders about theservants, who all adore him nevertheless; for he is very generous ofhis money, and the domestics will do anything for him. Last week thekeepers almost killed a bailiff and his man who came down from Londonto arrest the Captain, and who were found lurking about the Parkwall--they beat them, ducked them, and were going to shoot them forpoachers, but the baronet interfered. 

The Captain has a hearty contempt for his father, I can see, and callshim an old PUT, an old SNOB, an old CHAW-BACON, and numberless otherpretty names. He has a DREADFUL REPUTATION among the ladies. He bringshis hunters home with him, lives with the Squires of the county, askswhom he pleases to dinner, and Sir Pitt dares not say no, for fear ofoffending Miss Crawley, and missing his legacy when she dies of herapoplexy. Shall I tell you a compliment the Captain paid me? I must, it is so pretty. One evening we actually had a dance; there was SirHuddleston Fuddleston and his family, Sir Giles Wapshot and his youngladies, and I don't know how many more. Well, I heard him say--"ByJove, she's a neat little filly!" meaning your humble servant; and hedid me the honour to dance two country-dances with me. He gets onpretty gaily with the young Squires, with whom he drinks, bets, rides, and talks about hunting and shooting; but he says the country girls areBORES; indeed, I don't think he is far wrong. You should see thecontempt with which they look down on poor me! When they dance I sitand play the piano very demurely; but the other night, coming in ratherflushed from the dining-room, and seeing me employed in this way, heswore out loud that I was the best dancer in the room, and took a greatoath that he would have the fiddlers from Mudbury. 

"I'll go and play a country-dance, " said Mrs. Bute Crawley, veryreadily (she is a little, black-faced old woman in a turban, rathercrooked, and with very twinkling eyes); and after the Captain and yourpoor little Rebecca had performed a dance together, do you know sheactually did me the honour to compliment me upon my steps! Such a thingwas never heard of before; the proud Mrs. Bute Crawley, first cousin tothe Earl of Tiptoff, who won't condescend to visit Lady Crawley, exceptwhen her sister is in the country. Poor Lady Crawley! during most partof these gaieties, she is upstairs taking pills. 

Mrs. Bute has all of a sudden taken a great fancy to me. "My dear MissSharp, " she says, "why not bring over your girls to the Rectory?--theircousins will be so happy to see them. " I know what she means. SignorClementi did not teach us the piano for nothing; at which price Mrs. Bute hopes to get a professor for her children. I can see through herschemes, as though she told them to me; but I shall go, as I amdetermined to make myself agreeable--is it not a poor governess's duty, who has not a friend or protector in the world? The Rector's wife paidme a score of compliments about the progress my pupils made, andthought, no doubt, to touch my heart--poor, simple, country soul!--asif I cared a fig about my pupils!

Your India muslin and your pink silk, dearest Amelia, are said tobecome me very well. They are a good deal worn now; but, you know, wepoor girls can't afford des fraiches toilettes. Happy, happy you! whohave but to drive to St. James's Street, and a dear mother who willgive you any thing you ask. Farewell, dearest girl, Your affectionate Rebecca. 

P. S. --I wish you could have seen the faces of the Miss Blackbrooks(Admiral Blackbrook's daughters, my dear), fine young ladies, withdresses from London, when Captain Rawdon selected poor me for a partner!

When Mrs. Bute Crawley (whose artifices our ingenious Rebecca had sosoon discovered) had procured from Miss Sharp the promise of a visit, she induced the all-powerful Miss Crawley to make the necessaryapplication to Sir Pitt, and the good-natured old lady, who loved to begay herself, and to see every one gay and happy round about her, wasquite charmed, and ready to establish a reconciliation and intimacybetween her two brothers. It was therefore agreed that the young peopleof both families should visit each other frequently for the future, andthe friendship of course lasted as long as the jovial old mediatrix wasthere to keep the peace. 

"Why did you ask that scoundrel, Rawdon Crawley, to dine?" said theRector to his lady, as they were walking home through the park. "Idon't want the fellow. He looks down upon us country people as so manyblackamoors. He's never content unless he gets my yellow-sealed wine, which costs me ten shillings a bottle, hang him! Besides, he's such aninfernal character--he's a gambler--he's a drunkard--he's a profligatein every way. He shot a man in a duel--he's over head and ears indebt, and he's robbed me and mine of the best part of Miss Crawley'sfortune. Waxy says she has him"--here the Rector shook his fist at themoon, with something very like an oath, and added, in a melancholioustone, "--down in her will for fifty thousand; and there won't be abovethirty to divide. "

"I think she's going, " said the Rector's wife. "She was very red inthe face when we left dinner. I was obliged to unlace her. "

"She drank seven glasses of champagne, " said the reverend gentleman, ina low voice; "and filthy champagne it is, too, that my brother poisonsus with--but you women never know what's what. "

"We know nothing, " said Mrs. Bute Crawley. 

"She drank cherry-brandy after dinner, " continued his Reverence, "andtook curacao with her coffee. I wouldn't take a glass for a five-poundnote: it kills me with heartburn. She can't stand it, Mrs. Crawley--she must go--flesh and blood won't bear it! and I lay five totwo, Matilda drops in a year. "

Indulging in these solemn speculations, and thinking about his debts, and his son Jim at College, and Frank at Woolwich, and the four girls, who were no beauties, poor things, and would not have a penny but whatthey got from the aunt's expected legacy, the Rector and his ladywalked on for a while. 

"Pitt can't be such an infernal villain as to sell the reversion of theliving. And that Methodist milksop of an eldest son looks toParliament, " continued Mr. Crawley, after a pause. 

"Sir Pitt Crawley will do anything, " said the Rector's wife. "We mustget Miss Crawley to make him promise it to James. "

"Pitt will promise anything, " replied the brother. "He promised he'dpay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd build thenew wing to the Rectory; he promised he'd let me have Jibb's field andthe Six-acre Meadow--and much he executed his promises! And it's tothis man's son--this scoundrel, gambler, swindler, murderer of a RawdonCrawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk of her money. I say it'sun-Christian. By Jove, it is. The infamous dog has got every viceexcept hypocrisy, and that belongs to his brother. "

"Hush, my dearest love! we're in Sir Pitt's grounds, " interposed hiswife. 

"I say he has got every vice, Mrs. Crawley. Don't Ma'am, bully me. Didn't he shoot Captain Marker? Didn't he rob young Lord Dovedale atthe Cocoa-Tree? Didn't he cross the fight between Bill Soames and theCheshire Trump, by which I lost forty pound? You know he did; and asfor the women, why, you heard that before me, in my own magistrate'sroom. "

"For heaven's sake, Mr. Crawley, " said the lady, "spare me the details. "

"And you ask this villain into your house!" continued the exasperatedRector. "You, the mother of a young family--the wife of a clergyman ofthe Church of England. By Jove!"

"Bute Crawley, you are a fool, " said the Rector's wife scornfully. 

"Well, Ma'am, fool or not--and I don't say, Martha, I'm so clever asyou are, I never did. But I won't meet Rawdon Crawley, that's flat. I'll go over to Huddleston, that I will, and see his black greyhound, Mrs. Crawley; and I'll run Lancelot against him for fifty. By Jove, Iwill; or against any dog in England. But I won't meet that beastRawdon Crawley. "

"Mr. Crawley, you are intoxicated, as usual, " replied his wife. Andthe next morning, when the Rector woke, and called for small beer, sheput him in mind of his promise to visit Sir Huddleston Fuddleston onSaturday, and as he knew he should have a wet night, it was agreed thathe might gallop back again in time for church on Sunday morning. Thusit will be seen that the parishioners of Crawley were equally happy intheir Squire and in their Rector. 

Miss Crawley had not long been established at the Hall before Rebecca'sfascinations had won the heart of that good-natured London rake, asthey had of the country innocents whom we have been describing. Takingher accustomed drive, one day, she thought fit to order that "thatlittle governess" should accompany her to Mudbury. Before they hadreturned Rebecca had made a conquest of her; having made her laugh fourtimes, and amused her during the whole of the little journey. 

"Not let Miss Sharp dine at table!" said she to Sir Pitt, who hadarranged a dinner of ceremony, and asked all the neighbouring baronets. "My dear creature, do you suppose I can talk about the nursery withLady Fuddleston, or discuss justices' business with that goose, old SirGiles Wapshot? I insist upon Miss Sharp appearing. Let Lady Crawleyremain upstairs, if there is no room. But little Miss Sharp! Why, she'sthe only person fit to talk to in the county!"

Of course, after such a peremptory order as this, Miss Sharp, thegoverness, received commands to dine with the illustrious company belowstairs. And when Sir Huddleston had, with great pomp and ceremony, handed Miss Crawley in to dinner, and was preparing to take his placeby her side, the old lady cried out, in a shrill voice, "Becky Sharp!Miss Sharp! Come you and sit by me and amuse me; and let SirHuddleston sit by Lady Wapshot. "

When the parties were over, and the carriages had rolled away, theinsatiable Miss Crawley would say, "Come to my dressing room, Becky, and let us abuse the company"--which, between them, this pair offriends did perfectly. Old Sir Huddleston wheezed a great deal atdinner; Sir Giles Wapshot had a particularly noisy manner of imbibinghis soup, and her ladyship a wink of the left eye; all of which Beckycaricatured to admiration; as well as the particulars of the night'sconversation; the politics; the war; the quarter-sessions; the famousrun with the H. H. , and those heavy and dreary themes, about whichcountry gentlemen converse. As for the Misses Wapshot's toilettes andLady Fuddleston's famous yellow hat, Miss Sharp tore them to tatters, to the infinite amusement of her audience. 

"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille, " Miss Crawley would say. "Iwish you could come to me in London, but I couldn't make a butt of youas I do of poor Briggs no, no, you little sly creature; you are tooclever--Isn't she, Firkin?"

Mrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small remnant of hair whichremained on Miss Crawley's pate), flung up her head and said, "I thinkMiss is very clever, " with the most killing sarcastic air. In fact, Mrs. Firkin had that natural jealousy which is one of the mainprinciples of every honest woman. 

After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss Crawley ordered thatRawdon Crawley should lead her in to dinner every day, and that Beckyshould follow with her cushion--or else she would have Becky's arm andRawdon with the pillow. "We must sit together, " she said. "We're theonly three Christians in the county, my love"--in which case, it mustbe confessed, that religion was at a very low ebb in the county ofHants. 

Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley was, as we havesaid, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and always took occasion to expressthese in the most candid manner. 

"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca--"Look at my brotherPitt; look at the Huddlestons, who have been here since Henry II; lookat poor Bute at the parsonage--is any one of them equal to you inintelligence or breeding? Equal to you--they are not even equal to poordear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler. You, my love, are alittle paragon--positively a little jewel--You have more brains thanhalf the shire--if merit had its reward you ought to be a Duchess--no, there ought to be no duchesses at all--but you ought to have nosuperior, and I consider you, my love, as my equal in every respect;and--will you put some coals on the fire, my dear; and will you pickthis dress of mine, and alter it, you who can do it so well?" So thisold philanthropist used to make her equal run of her errands, executeher millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels, every night. 

At this time, as some old readers may recollect, the genteel world hadbeen thrown into a considerable state of excitement by two events, which, as the papers say, might give employment to the gentlemen of thelong robe. Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady Barbara Fitzurse, theEarl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor Vere Vane, a gentlemanwho, up to forty, had maintained a most respectable character andreared a numerous family, suddenly and outrageously left his home, forthe sake of Mrs. Rougemont, the actress, who was sixty-five years ofage. 

"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord Nelson's character, "Miss Crawley said. "He went to the deuce for a woman. There must begood in a man who will do that. I adore all impudent matches. -- WhatI like best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as LordFlowerdale did--it makes all the women so angry--I wish some great manwould run away with you, my dear; I'm sure you're pretty enough. "

"Two post-boys!--Oh, it would be delightful!" Rebecca owned. 

"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run away with arich girl. I have set my heart on Rawdon running away with some one. "

"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"

"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I give him. He iscrible de dettes--he must repair his fortunes, and succeed in theworld. "

"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked. 

"Clever, my love?--not an idea in the world beyond his horses, and hisregiment, and his hunting, and his play; but he must succeed--he's sodelightfully wicked. Don't you know he has hit a man, and shot aninjured father through the hat only? He's adored in his regiment; andall the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree swear by him. "

When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend the account of thelittle ball at Queen's Crawley, and the manner in which, for the firsttime, Captain Crawley had distinguished her, she did not, strange torelate, give an altogether accurate account of the transaction. TheCaptain had distinguished her a great number of times before. TheCaptain had met her in a half-score of walks. The Captain had lightedupon her in a half-hundred of corridors and passages. The Captain hadhung over her piano twenty times of an evening (my Lady was nowupstairs, being ill, and nobody heeded her) as Miss Sharp sang. TheCaptain had written her notes (the best that the great blunderingdragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on as well as anyother quality with women). But when he put the first of the notes intothe leaves of the song she was singing, the little governess, risingand looking him steadily in the face, took up the triangular missivedaintily, and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she, advancing to the enemy, popped the note into the fire, and made him avery low curtsey, and went back to her place, and began to sing awayagain more merrily than ever. 

"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her after-dinner dozeby the stoppage of the music. 

"It's a false note, " Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and Rawdon Crawleyfumed with rage and mortification. 

Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to welcomethe young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley, her husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They became veryfond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her nephew. He gave uphunting; he declined entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dinewith the mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to strollover to Crawley parsonage--whither Miss Crawley came too; and as theirmamma was ill, why not the children with Miss Sharp? So the children(little dears!) came with Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of theparty would walk back together. Not Miss Crawley--she preferred hercarriage--but the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at the littlepark wicket, and through the dark plantation, and up the checkeredavenue to Queen's Crawley, was charming in the moonlight to two suchlovers of the picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca. 

"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say, turning hertwinkling green eyes up towards them. "I feel myself almost a spiritwhen I gaze upon them. "

"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp, " the other enthusiastreplied. "You don't mind my cigar, do you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharploved the smell of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in theworld--and she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, andgave a little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle, andrestored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his moustache, andstraightway puffed it into a blaze that glowed quite red in the darkplantation, and swore--"Jove--aw--Gad--aw--it's the finest segaw I eversmoked in the world aw, " for his intellect and conversation were alikebrilliant and becoming to a heavy young dragoon. 

Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and talking to JohnHorrocks about a "ship" that was to be killed, espied the pair sooccupied from his study-window, and with dreadful oaths swore that ifit wasn't for Miss Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out ofdoors, like a rogue as he was. 

"He be a bad'n, sure enough, " Mr. Horrocks remarked; "and his manFlethers is wuss, and have made such a row in the housekeeper's roomabout the dinners and hale, as no lord would make--but I think MissSharp's a match for'n, Sir Pitt, " he added, after a pause. 

And so, in truth, she was--for father and son too. 

CHAPTER XII

Quite a Sentimental Chapter

We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable people practisingthe rural virtues there, and travel back to London, to inquire what hasbecome of Miss Amelia "We don't care a fig for her, " writes someunknown correspondent with a pretty little handwriting and a pink sealto her note. "She is fade and insipid, " and adds some more kindremarks in this strain, which I should never have repeated at all, butthat they are in truth prodigiously complimentary to the young ladywhom they concern. 

Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society, never heardsimilar remarks by good-natured female friends; who always wonder whatyou CAN see in Miss Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD induceMajor Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering MissThompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to recommend her? Whatis there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dearMoralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, theaccomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and aladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are farmore valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms whicha few years will inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hearwomen speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty. 

But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatureswho suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be continuallyput in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though, very likely, theheroic female character which ladies admire is a more glorious andbeautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, tender littledomestic goddess, whom men are inclined to worship--yet the latter andinferior sort of women must have this consolation--that the men doadmire them after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends'warnings and protests, we go on in our desperate error and folly, andshall to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my own part, though I havebeen repeatedly told by persons for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is an insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothingbut her petit minois chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to sayfor herself; yet I know that I have had the most delightfulconversations with Mrs. Black (of course, my dear Madam, they areinviolable): I see all the men in a cluster round Mrs. White's chair:all the young fellows battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I amtempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very greatcompliment to a woman. 

The young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her verysatisfactorily. For instance, there was scarcely any point upon whichthe Misses Osborne, George's sisters, and the Mesdemoiselles Dobbinagreed so well as in their estimate of her very trifling merits: andtheir wonder that their brothers could find any charms in her. "We arekind to her, " the Misses Osborne said, a pair of fine black-browedyoung ladies who had had the best of governesses, masters, andmilliners; and they treated her with such extreme kindness andcondescension, and patronised her so insufferably, that the poor littlething was in fact perfectly dumb in their presence, and to all outwardappearance as stupid as they thought her. She made efforts to likethem, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her future husband. Shepassed "long mornings" with them--the most dreary and serious offorenoons. She drove out solemnly in their great family coach withthem, and Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal. They tookher to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and to the oratorio, andto St. Paul's to see the charity children, where in such terror was sheof her friends, she almost did not dare be affected by the hymn thechildren sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa's table richand handsome; their society solemn and genteel; their self-respectprodigious; they had the best pew at the Foundling: all their habitswere pompous and orderly, and all their amusements intolerably dull anddecorous. After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was whenthey were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess, asked each other with increased wonder, "Whatcould George find in that creature?"

How is this? some carping reader exclaims. How is it that Amelia, whohad such a number of friends at school, and was so beloved there, comesout into the world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dearsir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's establishment except the olddancing-master; and you would not have had the girls fall out aboutHIM? When George, their handsome brother, ran off directly afterbreakfast, and dined from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder theneglected sisters felt a little vexation. When young Bullock (of thefirm of Hulker, Bullock & Co. , Bankers, Lombard Street), who had beenmaking up to Miss Maria the last two seasons, actually asked Amelia todance the cotillon, could you expect that the former young lady shouldbe pleased? And yet she said she was, like an artless forgivingcreature. "I'm so delighted you like dear Amelia, " she said quiteeagerly to Mr. Bullock after the dance. "She's engaged to my brotherGeorge; there's not much in her, but she's the best-natured and mostunaffected young creature: at home we're all so fond of her. " Deargirl! who can calculate the depth of affection expressed in thatenthusiastic SO?

Miss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so earnestly andfrequently impressed upon George Osborne's mind the enormity of thesacrifice he was making, and his romantic generosity in throwinghimself away upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really thoughthe was one of the most deserving characters in the British army, andgave himself up to be loved with a good deal of easy resignation. 

Somehow, although he left home every morning, as was stated, and dinedabroad six days in the week, when his sisters believed the infatuatedyouth to be at Miss Sedley's apron-strings: he was NOT always withAmelia, whilst the world supposed him at her feet. Certain it is thaton more occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin called to look for hisfriend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive to the Captain, andanxious to hear his military stories, and to know about the health ofhis dear Mamma), would laughingly point to the opposite side of thesquare, and say, "Oh, you must go to the Sedleys' to ask for George; WEnever see him from morning till night. " At which kind of speech theCaptain would laugh in rather an absurd constrained manner, and turnoff the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topicof general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball atCarlton House, or the weather--that blessing to society. 

"What an innocent it is, that pet of yours, " Miss Maria would then sayto Miss Jane, upon the Captain's departure. "Did you see how heblushed at the mention of poor George on duty?"

"It's a pity Frederick Bullock hadn't some of his modesty, Maria, "replies the elder sister, with a toss of he head. 

"Modesty! Awkwardness you mean, Jane. I don't want Frederick totrample a hole in my muslin frock, as Captain Dobbin did in yours atMrs. Perkins'. "

"In YOUR frock, he, he! How could he? Wasn't he dancing with Amelia?"

The fact is, when Captain Dobbin blushed so, and looked so awkward, heremembered a circumstance of which he did not think it was necessary toinform the young ladies, viz. , that he had been calling at Mr. Sedley'shouse already, on the pretence of seeing George, of course, and Georgewasn't there, only poor little Amelia, with rather a sad wistful face, seated near the drawing-room window, who, after some very triflingstupid talk, ventured to ask, was there any truth in the report thatthe regiment was soon to be ordered abroad; and had Captain Dobbin seenMr. Osborne that day?

The regiment was not ordered abroad as yet; and Captain Dobbin had notseen George. "He was with his sister, most likely, " the Captain said. "Should he go and fetch the truant?" So she gave him her hand kindlyand gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited and waited, but George never came. 

Poor little tender heart! and so it goes on hoping and beating, andlonging and trusting. You see it is not much of a life to describe. There is not much of what you call incident in it. Only one feelingall day--when will he come? only one thought to sleep and wake upon. Ibelieve George was playing billiards with Captain Cannon in SwallowStreet at the time when Amelia was asking Captain Dobbin about him; forGeorge was a jolly sociable fellow, and excellent in all games of skill. 

Once, after three days of absence, Miss Amelia put on her bonnet, andactually invaded the Osborne house. "What! leave our brother to come tous?" said the young ladies. "Have you had a quarrel, Amelia? Do tellus!" No, indeed, there had been no quarrel. "Who could quarrel withhim?" says she, with her eyes filled with tears. She only came overto--to see her dear friends; they had not met for so long. And thisday she was so perfectly stupid and awkward, that the Misses Osborneand their governess, who stared after her as she went sadly away, wondered more than ever what George could see in poor little Amelia. 

Of course they did. How was she to bare that timid little heart forthe inspection of those young ladies with their bold black eyes? It wasbest that it should shrink and hide itself. I know the Misses Osbornewere excellent critics of a Cashmere shawl, or a pink satin slip; andwhen Miss Turner had hers dyed purple, and made into a spencer; andwhen Miss Pickford had her ermine tippet twisted into a muff andtrimmings, I warrant you the changes did not escape the two intelligentyoung women before mentioned. But there are things, look you, of afiner texture than fur or satin, and all Solomon's glories, and all thewardrobe of the Queen of Sheba--things whereof the beauty escapes theeyes of many connoisseurs. And there are sweet modest little souls onwhich you light, fragrant and blooming tenderly in quiet shady places;and there are garden-ornaments, as big as brass warming-pans, that arefit to stare the sun itself out of countenance. Miss Sedley was not ofthe sunflower sort; and I say it is out of the rules of all proportionto draw a violet of the size of a double dahlia. 

No, indeed; the life of a good young girl who is in the paternal nestas yet, can't have many of those thrilling incidents to which theheroine of romance commonly lays claim. Snares or shot may take offthe old birds foraging without--hawks may be abroad, from which theyescape or by whom they suffer; but the young ones in the nest have apretty comfortable unromantic sort of existence in the down and thestraw, till it comes to their turn, too, to get on the wing. WhileBecky Sharp was on her own wing in the country, hopping on all sorts oftwigs, and amid a multiplicity of traps, and pecking up her food quiteharmless and successful, Amelia lay snug in her home of Russell Square;if she went into the world, it was under the guidance of the elders;nor did it seem that any evil could befall her or that opulent cheerycomfortable home in which she was affectionately sheltered. Mamma hadher morning duties, and her daily drive, and the delightful round ofvisits and shopping which forms the amusement, or the profession as youmay call it, of the rich London lady. Papa conducted his mysteriousoperations in the City--a stirring place in those days, when war wasraging all over Europe, and empires were being staked; when the"Courier" newspaper had tens of thousands of subscribers; when one daybrought you a battle of Vittoria, another a burning of Moscow, or anewsman's horn blowing down Russell Square about dinner-time, announcedsuch a fact as--"Battle of Leipsic--six hundred thousand menengaged--total defeat of the French--two hundred thousand killed. " OldSedley once or twice came home with a very grave face; and no wonder, when such news as this was agitating all the hearts and all the Stocksof Europe. 

Meanwhile matters went on in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, just as ifmatters in Europe were not in the least disorganised. The retreat fromLeipsic made no difference in the number of meals Mr. Sambo took in theservants' hall; the allies poured into France, and the dinner-bell rangat five o'clock just as usual. I don't think poor Amelia caredanything about Brienne and Montmirail, or was fairly interested in thewar until the abdication of the Emperor; when she clapped her hands andsaid prayers--oh, how grateful! and flung herself into George Osborne'sarms with all her soul, to the astonishment of everybody who witnessedthat ebullition of sentiment. The fact is, peace was declared, Europewas going to be at rest; the Corsican was overthrown, and LieutenantOsborne's regiment would not be ordered on service. That was the wayin which Miss Amelia reasoned. The fate of Europe was LieutenantGeorge Osborne to her. His dangers being over, she sang Te Deum. Hewas her Europe: her emperor: her allied monarchs and august princeregent. He was her sun and moon; and I believe she thought the grandillumination and ball at the Mansion House, given to the sovereigns, were especially in honour of George Osborne. 

We have talked of shift, self, and poverty, as those dismal instructorsunder whom poor Miss Becky Sharp got her education. Now, love was MissAmelia Sedley's last tutoress, and it was amazing what progress ouryoung lady made under that popular teacher. In the course of fifteenor eighteen months' daily and constant attention to this eminentfinishing governess, what a deal of secrets Amelia learned, which MissWirt and the black-eyed young ladies over the way, which old MissPinkerton of Chiswick herself, had no cognizance of! As, indeed, howshould any of those prim and reputable virgins? With Misses P. And W. The tender passion is out of the question: I would not dare to breathesuch an idea regarding them. Miss Maria Osborne, it is true, was"attached" to Mr. Frederick Augustus Bullock, of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Bullock; but hers was a most respectable attachment, and shewould have taken Bullock Senior just the same, her mind being fixed--asthat of a well-bred young woman should be--upon a house in Park Lane, acountry house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and two prodigious tallhorses and footmen, and a fourth of the annual profits of the eminentfirm of Hulker & Bullock, all of which advantages were represented inthe person of Frederick Augustus. Had orange blossoms been inventedthen (those touching emblems of female purity imported by us fromFrance, where people's daughters are universally sold in marriage), Miss Maria, I say, would have assumed the spotless wreath, and steppedinto the travelling carriage by the side of gouty, old, bald-headed, bottle-nosed Bullock Senior; and devoted her beautiful existence to hishappiness with perfect modesty--only the old gentleman was marriedalready; so she bestowed her young affections on the junior partner. Sweet, blooming, orange flowers! The other day I saw Miss Trotter(that was), arrayed in them, trip into the travelling carriage at St. George's, Hanover Square, and Lord Methuselah hobbled in after. Withwhat an engaging modesty she pulled down the blinds of the chariot--thedear innocent! There were half the carriages of Vanity Fair at thewedding. 

This was not the sort of love that finished Amelia's education; and inthe course of a year turned a good young girl into a good youngwoman--to be a good wife presently, when the happy time should come. This young person (perhaps it was very imprudent in her parents toencourage her, and abet her in such idolatry and silly romantic ideas)loved, with all her heart, the young officer in His Majesty's servicewith whom we have made a brief acquaintance. She thought about him thevery first moment on waking; and his was the very last name mentionedin her prayers. She never had seen a man so beautiful or so clever:such a figure on horseback: such a dancer: such a hero in general. Talk of the Prince's bow! what was it to George's? She had seen Mr. Brummell, whom everybody praised so. Compare such a person as that toher George! Not amongst all the beaux at the Opera (and there werebeaux in those days with actual opera hats) was there any one to equalhim. He was only good enough to be a fairy prince; and oh, whatmagnanimity to stoop to such a humble Cinderella! Miss Pinkerton wouldhave tried to check this blind devotion very likely, had she beenAmelia's confidante; but not with much success, depend upon it. It isin the nature and instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, andsome to love; and I wish any respected bachelor that reads this maytake the sort that best likes him. 

While under this overpowering impression, Miss Amelia neglected hertwelve dear friends at Chiswick most cruelly, as such selfish peoplecommonly will do. She had but this subject, of course, to think about;and Miss Saltire was too cold for a confidante, and she couldn't bringher mind to tell Miss Swartz, the woolly-haired young heiress from St. Kitt's. She had little Laura Martin home for the holidays; and mybelief is, she made a confidante of her, and promised that Laura shouldcome and live with her when she was married, and gave Laura a greatdeal of information regarding the passion of love, which must have beensingularly useful and novel to that little person. Alas, alas! I fearpoor Emmy had not a well-regulated mind. 

What were her parents doing, not to keep this little heart from beatingso fast? Old Sedley did not seem much to notice matters. He was graverof late, and his City affairs absorbed him. Mrs. Sedley was of so easyand uninquisitive a nature that she wasn't even jealous. Mr. Jos wasaway, being besieged by an Irish widow at Cheltenham. Amelia had thehouse to herself--ah! too much to herself sometimes--not that she everdoubted; for, to be sure, George must be at the Horse Guards; and hecan't always get leave from Chatham; and he must see his friends andsisters, and mingle in society when in town (he, such an ornament toevery society!); and when he is with the regiment, he is too tired towrite long letters. I know where she kept that packet she had--and cansteal in and out of her chamber like Iachimo--like Iachimo? No--thatis a bad part. I will only act Moonshine, and peep harmless into thebed where faith and beauty and innocence lie dreaming. 

But if Osborne's were short and soldierlike letters, it must beconfessed, that were Miss Sedley's letters to Mr. Osborne to bepublished, we should have to extend this novel to such a multiplicityof volumes as not the most sentimental reader could support; that shenot only filled sheets of large paper, but crossed them with the mostastonishing perverseness; that she wrote whole pages out ofpoetry-books without the least pity; that she underlined words andpassages with quite a frantic emphasis; and, in fine, gave the usualtokens of her condition. She wasn't a heroine. Her letters were fullof repetition. She wrote rather doubtful grammar sometimes, and in herverses took all sorts of liberties with the metre. But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference betweentrimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and everyschoolmaster perish miserably!

CHAPTER XIII

Sentimental and Otherwise

I fear the gentleman to whom Miss Amelia's letters were addressed wasrather an obdurate critic. Such a number of notes followed LieutenantOsborne about the country, that he became almost ashamed of the jokesof his mess-room companions regarding them, and ordered his servantnever to deliver them except at his private apartment. He was seenlighting his cigar with one, to the horror of Captain Dobbin, who, itis my belief, would have given a bank-note for the document. 

For some time George strove to keep the liaison a secret. There was awoman in the case, that he admitted. "And not the first either, " saidEnsign Spooney to Ensign Stubble. "That Osborne's a devil of a fellow. There was a judge's daughter at Demerara went almost mad about him;then there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss Pye, at St. Vincent's, you know; and since he's been home, they say he's a regularDon Giovanni, by Jove. "

Stubble and Spooney thought that to be a "regular Don Giovanni, byJove" was one of the finest qualities a man could possess, andOsborne's reputation was prodigious amongst the young men of theregiment. He was famous in field-sports, famous at a song, famous onparade; free with his money, which was bountifully supplied by hisfather. His coats were better made than any man's in the regiment, andhe had more of them. He was adored by the men. He could drink morethan any officer of the whole mess, including old Heavytop, thecolonel. He could spar better than Knuckles, the private (who wouldhave been a corporal but for his drunkenness, and who had been in theprize-ring); and was the best batter and bowler, out and out, of theregimental club. He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won theGarrison cup at Quebec races. There were other people besides Ameliawho worshipped him. Stubble and Spooney thought him a sort of Apollo;Dobbin took him to be an Admirable Crichton; and Mrs. Major O'Dowdacknowledged he was an elegant young fellow, and put her in mind ofFitzjurld Fogarty, Lord Castlefogarty's second son. 

Well, Stubble and Spooney and the rest indulged in most romanticconjectures regarding this female correspondent of Osborne's--opiningthat it was a Duchess in London who was in love with him--or that itwas a General's daughter, who was engaged to somebody else, and madlyattached to him--or that it was a Member of Parliament's lady, whoproposed four horses and an elopement--or that it was some other victimof a passion delightfully exciting, romantic, and disgraceful to allparties, on none of which conjectures would Osborne throw the leastlight, leaving his young admirers and friends to invent and arrangetheir whole history. 

And the real state of the case would never have been known at all inthe regiment but for Captain Dobbin's indiscretion. The Captain waseating his breakfast one day in the mess-room, while Cackle, theassistant-surgeon, and the two above-named worthies were speculatingupon Osborne's intrigue--Stubble holding out that the lady was aDuchess about Queen Charlotte's court, and Cackle vowing she was anopera-singer of the worst reputation. At this idea Dobbin became somoved, that though his mouth was full of eggs and bread-and-butter atthe time, and though he ought not to have spoken at all, yet hecouldn't help blurting out, "Cackle, you're a stupid fool. You'realways talking nonsense and scandal. Osborne is not going to run offwith a Duchess or ruin a milliner. Miss Sedley is one of the mostcharming young women that ever lived. He's been engaged to her ever solong; and the man who calls her names had better not do so in myhearing. " With which, turning exceedingly red, Dobbin ceased speaking, and almost choked himself with a cup of tea. The story was over theregiment in half-an-hour; and that very evening Mrs. Major O'Dowd wroteoff to her sister Glorvina at O'Dowdstown not to hurry fromDublin--young Osborne being prematurely engaged already. 

She complimented the Lieutenant in an appropriate speech over a glassof whisky-toddy that evening, and he went home perfectly furious toquarrel with Dobbin (who had declined Mrs. Major O'Dowd's party, andsat in his own room playing the flute, and, I believe, writing poetryin a very melancholy manner)--to quarrel with Dobbin for betraying hissecret. 

"Who the deuce asked you to talk about my affairs?" Osborne shoutedindignantly. "Why the devil is all the regiment to know that I amgoing to be married? Why is that tattling old harridan, Peggy O'Dowd, to make free with my name at her d--d supper-table, and advertise myengagement over the three kingdoms? After all, what right have you tosay I am engaged, or to meddle in my business at all, Dobbin?"

"It seems to me, " Captain Dobbin began. 

"Seems be hanged, Dobbin, " his junior interrupted him. "I am underobligations to you, I know it, a d--d deal too well too; but I won't bealways sermonised by you because you're five years my senior. I'mhanged if I'll stand your airs of superiority and infernal pity andpatronage. Pity and patronage! I should like to know in what I'm yourinferior?"

"Are you engaged?" Captain Dobbin interposed. 

"What the devil's that to you or any one here if I am?"

"Are you ashamed of it?" Dobbin resumed. 

"What right have you to ask me that question, sir? I should like toknow, " George said. 

"Good God, you don't mean to say you want to break off?" asked Dobbin, starting up. 

"In other words, you ask me if I'm a man of honour, " said Osborne, fiercely; "is that what you mean? You've adopted such a tone regardingme lately that I'm ------ if I'll bear it any more. "

"What have I done? I've told you you were neglecting a sweet girl, George. I've told you that when you go to town you ought to go to her, and not to the gambling-houses about St. James's. "

"You want your money back, I suppose, " said George, with a sneer. 

"Of course I do--I always did, didn't I?" says Dobbin. "You speak likea generous fellow. "

"No, hang it, William, I beg your pardon"--here George interposed in afit of remorse; "you have been my friend in a hundred ways, Heavenknows. You've got me out of a score of scrapes. When Crawley of theGuards won that sum of money of me I should have been done but for you:I know I should. But you shouldn't deal so hardly with me; youshouldn't be always catechising me. I am very fond of Amelia; I adoreher, and that sort of thing. Don't look angry. She's faultless; Iknow she is. But you see there's no fun in winning a thing unless youplay for it. Hang it: the regiment's just back from the West Indies, Imust have a little fling, and then when I'm married I'll reform; I willupon my honour, now. And--I say--Dob--don't be angry with me, andI'll give you a hundred next month, when I know my father will standsomething handsome; and I'll ask Heavytop for leave, and I'll go totown, and see Amelia to-morrow--there now, will that satisfy you?"

"It is impossible to be long angry with you, George, " said thegood-natured Captain; "and as for the money, old boy, you know if I wantedit you'd share your last shilling with me. "

"That I would, by Jove, Dobbin, " George said, with the greatestgenerosity, though by the way he never had any money to spare. 

"Only I wish you had sown those wild oats of yours, George. If youcould have seen poor little Miss Emmy's face when she asked me aboutyou the other day, you would have pitched those billiard-balls to thedeuce. Go and comfort her, you rascal. Go and write her a longletter. Do something to make her happy; a very little will. "

"I believe she's d--d fond of me, " the Lieutenant said, with aself-satisfied air; and went off to finish the evening with some jollyfellows in the mess-room. 

Amelia meanwhile, in Russell Square, was looking at the moon, which wasshining upon that peaceful spot, as well as upon the square of theChatham barracks, where Lieutenant Osborne was quartered, and thinkingto herself how her hero was employed. Perhaps he is visiting thesentries, thought she; perhaps he is bivouacking; perhaps he isattending the couch of a wounded comrade, or studying the art of war upin his own desolate chamber. And her kind thoughts sped away as if theywere angels and had wings, and flying down the river to Chatham andRochester, strove to peep into the barracks where George was. . . . Allthings considered, I think it was as well the gates were shut, and thesentry allowed no one to pass; so that the poor little white-robedangel could not hear the songs those young fellows were roaring overthe whisky-punch. 

The day after the little conversation at Chatham barracks, youngOsborne, to show that he would be as good as his word, prepared to goto town, thereby incurring Captain Dobbin's applause. "I should haveliked to make her a little present, " Osborne said to his friend inconfidence, "only I am quite out of cash until my father tips up. " ButDobbin would not allow this good nature and generosity to be balked, and so accommodated Mr. Osborne with a few pound notes, which thelatter took after a little faint scruple. 

And I dare say he would have bought something very handsome for Amelia;only, getting off the coach in Fleet Street, he was attracted by ahandsome shirt-pin in a jeweller's window, which he could not resist;and having paid for that, had very little money to spare for indulgingin any further exercise of kindness. Never mind: you may be sure itwas not his presents Amelia wanted. When he came to Russell Square, her face lighted up as if he had been sunshine. The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know howmany days and nights, were forgotten, under one moment's influence ofthat familiar, irresistible smile. He beamed on her from thedrawing-room door--magnificent, with ambrosial whiskers, like a god. Sambo, whose face as he announced Captain Osbin (having conferred abrevet rank on that young officer) blazed with a sympathetic grin, sawthe little girl start, and flush, and jump up from her watching-placein the window; and Sambo retreated: and as soon as the door was shut, she went fluttering to Lieutenant George Osborne's heart as if it wasthe only natural home for her to nestle in. Oh, thou poor pantinglittle soul! The very finest tree in the whole forest, with thestraightest stem, and the strongest arms, and the thickest foliage, wherein you choose to build and coo, may be marked, for what you know, and may be down with a crash ere long. What an old, old simile thatis, between man and timber!

In the meanwhile, George kissed her very kindly on her forehead andglistening eyes, and was very gracious and good; and she thought hisdiamond shirt-pin (which she had not known him to wear before) theprettiest ornament ever seen. 

The observant reader, who has marked our young Lieutenant's previousbehaviour, and has preserved our report of the brief conversation whichhe has just had with Captain Dobbin, has possibly come to certainconclusions regarding the character of Mr. Osborne. Some cynicalFrenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction:the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated. Perhaps the love is occasionally on the man's side; perhaps on thelady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistakeninsensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity forsweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan. Perhaps somebeloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and gloryof her imagination; admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshippedhis selfishness as manly superiority; treated his stupidity as majesticgravity, and used him as the brilliant fairy Titania did a certainweaver at Athens. I think I have seen such comedies of errors going onin the world. But this is certain, that Amelia believed her lover tobe one of the most gallant and brilliant men in the empire: and it ispossible Lieutenant Osborne thought so too. 

He was a little wild: how many young men are; and don't girls like arake better than a milksop? He hadn't sown his wild oats as yet, buthe would soon: and quit the army now that peace was proclaimed; theCorsican monster locked up at Elba; promotion by consequence over; andno chance left for the display of his undoubted military talents andvalour: and his allowance, with Amelia's settlement, would enable themto take a snug place in the country somewhere, in a good sportingneighbourhood; and he would hunt a little, and farm a little; and theywould be very happy. As for remaining in the army as a married man, that was impossible. Fancy Mrs. George Osborne in lodgings in a countytown; or, worse still, in the East or West Indies, with a society ofofficers, and patronized by Mrs. Major O'Dowd! Amelia died withlaughing at Osborne's stories about Mrs. Major O'Dowd. He loved hermuch too fondly to subject her to that horrid woman and hervulgarities, and the rough treatment of a soldier's wife. He didn'tcare for himself--not he; but his dear little girl should take theplace in society to which, as his wife, she was entitled: and to theseproposals you may be sure she acceded, as she would to any other fromthe same author. 

Holding this kind of conversation, and building numberless castles inthe air (which Amelia adorned with all sorts of flower-gardens, rusticwalks, country churches, Sunday schools, and the like; while George hadhis mind's eye directed to the stables, the kennel, and the cellar), this young pair passed away a couple of hours very pleasantly; and asthe Lieutenant had only that single day in town, and a great deal ofmost important business to transact, it was proposed that Miss Emmyshould dine with her future sisters-in-law. This invitation wasaccepted joyfully. He conducted her to his sisters; where he left hertalking and prattling in a way that astonished those ladies, whothought that George might make something of her; and he then went offto transact his business. 

In a word, he went out and ate ices at a pastry-cook's shop in CharingCross; tried a new coat in Pall Mall; dropped in at the OldSlaughters', and called for Captain Cannon; played eleven games atbilliards with the Captain, of which he won eight, and returned toRussell Square half an hour late for dinner, but in very good humour. 

It was not so with old Mr. Osborne. When that gentleman came from theCity, and was welcomed in the drawing-room by his daughters and theelegant Miss Wirt, they saw at once by his face--which was puffy, solemn, and yellow at the best of times--and by the scowl and twitchingof his black eyebrows, that the heart within his large white waistcoatwas disturbed and uneasy. When Amelia stepped forward to salute him, which she always did with great trembling and timidity, he gave a surlygrunt of recognition, and dropped the little hand out of his greathirsute paw without any attempt to hold it there. He looked roundgloomily at his eldest daughter; who, comprehending the meaning of hislook, which asked unmistakably, "Why the devil is she here?" said atonce:

"George is in town, Papa; and has gone to the Horse Guards, and will beback to dinner. "

"O he is, is he? I won't have the dinner kept waiting for him, Jane";with which this worthy man lapsed into his particular chair, and thenthe utter silence in his genteel, well-furnished drawing-room was onlyinterrupted by the alarmed ticking of the great French clock. 

When that chronometer, which was surmounted by a cheerful brass groupof the sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five in a heavy cathedral tone, Mr. Osborne pulled the bell at his right hand--violently, and thebutler rushed up. 

"Dinner!" roared Mr. Osborne. 

"Mr. George isn't come in, sir, " interposed the man. 

"Damn Mr. George, sir. Am I master of the house? DINNER!" Mr. Osbornescowled. Amelia trembled. A telegraphic communication of eyes passedbetween the other three ladies. The obedient bell in the lower regionsbegan ringing the announcement of the meal. The tolling over, the headof the family thrust his hands into the great tail-pockets of his greatblue coat with brass buttons, and without waiting for a furtherannouncement strode downstairs alone, scowling over his shoulder at thefour females. 

"What's the matter now, my dear?" asked one of the other, as they roseand tripped gingerly behind the sire. "I suppose the funds arefalling, " whispered Miss Wirt; and so, trembling and in silence, thishushed female company followed their dark leader. They took theirplaces in silence. He growled out a blessing, which sounded as grufflyas a curse. The great silver dish-covers were removed. Amelia trembledin her place, for she was next to the awful Osborne, and alone on herside of the table--the gap being occasioned by the absence of George. 

"Soup?" says Mr. Osborne, clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on her, in a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did not speakfor a while. 

"Take Miss Sedley's plate away, " at last he said. "She can't eat thesoup--no more can I. It's beastly. Take away the soup, Hicks, andto-morrow turn the cook out of the house, Jane. "

Having concluded his observations upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a fewcurt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satiricaltendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of theplace. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses ofwine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the doortold of George's arrival when everybody began to rally. 

"He could not come before. General Daguilet had kept him waiting atthe Horse Guards. Never mind soup or fish. Give him anything--hedidn't care what. Capital mutton--capital everything. " His good humourcontrasted with his father's severity; and he rattled on unceasinglyduring dinner, to the delight of all--of one especially, who need notbe mentioned. 

As soon as the young ladies had discussed the orange and the glass ofwine which formed the ordinary conclusion of the dismal banquets at Mr. Osborne's house, the signal to make sail for the drawing-room wasgiven, and they all arose and departed. Amelia hoped George would soonjoin them there. She began playing some of his favourite waltzes (thennewly imported) at the great carved-legged, leather-cased grand pianoin the drawing-room overhead. This little artifice did not bring him. He was deaf to the waltzes; they grew fainter and fainter; thediscomfited performer left the huge instrument presently; and thoughher three friends performed some of the loudest and most brilliant newpieces of their repertoire, she did not hear a single note, but satethinking, and boding evil. Old Osborne's scowl, terrific always, hadnever before looked so deadly to her. His eyes followed her out of theroom, as if she had been guilty of something. When they brought hercoffee, she started as though it were a cup of poison which Mr. Hicks, the butler, wished to propose to her. What mystery was there lurking?Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and makedarlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformedchildren. 

The gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George Osbornewith anxiety. With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly bilious, howwas he to extract that money from the governor, of which George wasconsumedly in want? He began praising his father's wine. That wasgenerally a successful means of cajoling the old gentleman. 

"We never got such Madeira in the West Indies, sir, as yours. ColonelHeavytop took off three bottles of that you sent me down, under hisbelt the other day. "

"Did he?" said the old gentleman. "It stands me in eight shillings abottle. "

"Will you take six guineas a dozen for it, sir?" said George, with alaugh. "There's one of the greatest men in the kingdom wants some. "

"Does he?" growled the senior. "Wish he may get it. "

"When General Daguilet was at Chatham, sir, Heavytop gave him abreakfast, and asked me for some of the wine. The General liked itjust as well--wanted a pipe for the Commander-in-Chief. He's his RoyalHighness's right-hand man. "

"It is devilish fine wine, " said the Eyebrows, and they looked moregood-humoured; and George was going to take advantage of thiscomplacency, and bring the supply question on the mahogany, when thefather, relapsing into solemnity, though rather cordial in manner, badehim ring the bell for claret. "And we'll see if that's as good as theMadeira, George, to which his Royal Highness is welcome, I'm sure. Andas we are drinking it, I'll talk to you about a matter of importance. "

Amelia heard the claret bell ringing as she sat nervously upstairs. Shethought, somehow, it was a mysterious and presentimental bell. Of thepresentiments which some people are always having, some surely mustcome right. 

"What I want to know, George, " the old gentleman said, after slowlysmacking his first bumper--"what I want to know is, how youand--ah--that little thing upstairs, are carrying on?"

"I think, sir, it is not hard to see, " George said, with aself-satisfied grin. "Pretty clear, sir. --What capital wine!"

"What d'you mean, pretty clear, sir?"

"Why, hang it, sir, don't push me too hard. I'm a modest man. I--ah--I don't set up to be a lady-killer; but I do own that she's asdevilish fond of me as she can be. Anybody can see that with half aneye. "

"And you yourself?"

"Why, sir, didn't you order me to marry her, and ain't I a good boy?Haven't our Papas settled it ever so long?"

"A pretty boy, indeed. Haven't I heard of your doings, sir, with LordTarquin, Captain Crawley of the Guards, the Honourable Mr. Deuceace andthat set. Have a care sir, have a care. "

The old gentleman pronounced these aristocratic names with the greatestgusto. Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, andmy-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do. He came home andlooked out his history in the Peerage: he introduced his name into hisdaily conversation; he bragged about his Lordship to his daughters. Hefell down prostrate and basked in him as a Neapolitan beggar does inthe sun. George was alarmed when he heard the names. He feared hisfather might have been informed of certain transactions at play. Butthe old moralist eased him by saying serenely:

"Well, well, young men will be young men. And the comfort to me is, George, that living in the best society in England, as I hope you do;as I think you do; as my means will allow you to do--"

"Thank you, sir, " says George, making his point at once. "One can'tlive with these great folks for nothing; and my purse, sir, look atit"; and he held up a little token which had been netted by Amelia, andcontained the very last of Dobbin's pound notes. 

"You shan't want, sir. The British merchant's son shan't want, sir. Myguineas are as good as theirs, George, my boy; and I don't grudge 'em. Call on Mr. Chopper as you go through the City to-morrow; he'll havesomething for you. I don't grudge money when I know you're in goodsociety, because I know that good society can never go wrong. There'sno pride in me. I was a humbly born man--but you have had advantages. Make a good use of 'em. Mix with the young nobility. There's many of'em who can't spend a dollar to your guinea, my boy. And as for thepink bonnets (here from under the heavy eyebrows there came a knowingand not very pleasing leer)--why boys will be boys. Only there's onething I order you to avoid, which, if you do not, I'll cut you off witha shilling, by Jove; and that's gambling. "

"Oh, of course, sir, " said George. 

"But to return to the other business about Amelia: why shouldn't youmarry higher than a stockbroker's daughter, George--that's what I wantto know?"

"It's a family business, sir, ". Says George, cracking filberts. "Youand Mr. Sedley made the match a hundred years ago. "

"I don't deny it; but people's positions alter, sir. I don't deny thatSedley made my fortune, or rather put me in the way of acquiring, by myown talents and genius, that proud position, which, I may say, I occupyin the tallow trade and the City of London. I've shown my gratitude toSedley; and he's tried it of late, sir, as my cheque-book can show. George! I tell you in confidence I don't like the looks of Mr. Sedley's affairs. My chief clerk, Mr. Chopper, does not like the looksof 'em, and he's an old file, and knows 'Change as well as any man inLondon. Hulker & Bullock are looking shy at him. He's been dabblingon his own account I fear. They say the Jeune Amelie was his, which wastaken by the Yankee privateer Molasses. And that's flat--unless I seeAmelia's ten thousand down you don't marry her. I'll have no lameduck's daughter in my family. Pass the wine, sir--or ring for coffee. "

With which Mr. Osborne spread out the evening paper, and George knewfrom this signal that the colloquy was ended, and that his papa wasabout to take a nap. 

He hurried upstairs to Amelia in the highest spirits. What was it thatmade him more attentive to her on that night than he had been for along time--more eager to amuse her, more tender, more brilliant intalk? Was it that his generous heart warmed to her at the prospect ofmisfortune; or that the idea of losing the dear little prize made himvalue it more?

She lived upon the recollections of that happy evening for many daysafterwards, remembering his words; his looks; the song he sang; hisattitude, as he leant over her or looked at her from a distance. As itseemed to her, no night ever passed so quickly at Mr. Osborne's housebefore; and for once this young person was almost provoked to be angryby the premature arrival of Mr. Sambo with her shawl. 

George came and took a tender leave of her the next morning; and thenhurried off to the City, where he visited Mr. Chopper, his father'shead man, and received from that gentleman a document which heexchanged at Hulker & Bullock's for a whole pocketful of money. AsGeorge entered the house, old John Sedley was passing out of thebanker's parlour, looking very dismal. But his godson was much tooelated to mark the worthy stockbroker's depression, or the dreary eyeswhich the kind old gentleman cast upon him. Young Bullock did not comegrinning out of the parlour with him as had been his wont in formeryears. 

And as the swinging doors of Hulker, Bullock & Co. Closed upon Mr. Sedley, Mr. Quill, the cashier (whose benevolent occupation it is tohand out crisp bank-notes from a drawer and dispense sovereigns out ofa copper shovel), winked at Mr. Driver, the clerk at the desk on hisright. Mr. Driver winked again. 

"No go, " Mr. D. Whispered. 

"Not at no price, " Mr. Q. Said. "Mr. George Osborne, sir, how willyou take it?" George crammed eagerly a quantity of notes into hispockets, and paid Dobbin fifty pounds that very evening at mess. 

That very evening Amelia wrote him the tenderest of long letters. Herheart was overflowing with tenderness, but it still foreboded evil. What was the cause of Mr. Osborne's dark looks? she asked. Had anydifference arisen between him and her papa? Her poor papa returned somelancholy from the City, that all were alarmed about him at home--infine, there were four pages of loves and fears and hopes andforebodings. 

"Poor little Emmy--dear little Emmy. How fond she is of me, " Georgesaid, as he perused the missive--"and Gad, what a headache that mixedpunch has given me!" Poor little Emmy, indeed. 

CHAPTER XIV

Miss Crawley at Home

About this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug andwell-appointed house in Park Lane, a travelling chariot with a lozenge onthe panels, a discontented female in a green veil and crimped curls onthe rumble, and a large and confidential man on the box. It was theequipage of our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants. Thecarriage windows were shut; the fat spaniel, whose head and tongueordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the lap of thediscontented female. When the vehicle stopped, a large round bundle ofshawls was taken out of the carriage by the aid of various domesticsand a young lady who accompanied the heap of cloaks. That bundlecontained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed upstairs forthwith, and putinto a bed and chamber warmed properly as for the reception of aninvalid. Messengers went off for her physician and medical man. Theycame, consulted, prescribed, vanished. The young companion of MissCrawley, at the conclusion of their interview, came in to receive theirinstructions, and administered those antiphlogistic medicines which theeminent men ordered. 

Captain Crawley of the Life Guards rode up from Knightsbridge Barracksthe next day; his black charger pawed the straw before his invalidaunt's door. He was most affectionate in his inquiries regarding thatamiable relative. There seemed to be much source of apprehension. Hefound Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented female) unusually sulky anddespondent; he found Miss Briggs, her dame de compagnie, in tears alonein the drawing-room. She had hastened home, hearing of her belovedfriend's illness. She wished to fly to her couch, that couch whichshe, Briggs, had so often smoothed in the hour of sickness. She wasdenied admission to Miss Crawley's apartment. A stranger wasadministering her medicines--a stranger from the country--an odiousMiss . .. --tears choked the utterance of the dame de compagnie, andshe buried her crushed affections and her poor old red nose in herpocket handkerchief. 

Rawdon Crawley sent up his name by the sulky femme de chambre, and MissCrawley's new companion, coming tripping down from the sick-room, puta little hand into his as he stepped forward eagerly to meet her, gavea glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and beckoning theyoung Guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him downstairs intothat now desolate dining-parlour, where so many a good dinner had beencelebrated. 

Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, thesymptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which periodthe parlour bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by Mr. Bowls, Miss Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed, happenedto be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview); and theCaptain coming out, curling his mustachios, mounted the black chargerpawing among the straw, to the admiration of the little blackguard boyscollected in the street. He looked in at the dining-room window, managing his horse, which curvetted and capered beautifully--for oneinstant the young person might be seen at the window, when her figurevanished, and, doubtless, she went upstairs again to resume theaffecting duties of benevolence. 

Who could this young woman be, I wonder? That evening a little dinnerfor two persons was laid in the dining-room--when Mrs. Firkin, thelady's maid, pushed into her mistress's apartment, and bustled aboutthere during the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the newnurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal. 

Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take amorsel of meat. The young person carved a fowl with the utmostdelicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs, before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a greatclattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushinghysterical state. 

"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?" said the personto Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so. Briggs seized itmechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and beganto play with the chicken on her plate. 

"I think we shall be able to help each other, " said the person withgreat suavity: "and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls's kind services. Mr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you. " He wentdownstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses uponthe unoffending footman, his subordinate. 

"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs, " the young lady said, with acool, slightly sarcastic, air. 

"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-o-on't see me, " gurgled out Briggsin an agony of renewed grief. 

"She's not very ill any more. Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs. Shehas only overeaten herself--that is all. She is greatly better. Shewill soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped andfrom medical treatment, but she will rally immediately. Pray consoleyourself, and take a little more wine. "

"But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs bleated out. "Oh, Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is this thereturn to your poor, poor Arabella?"

"Don't cry too much, poor Arabella, " the other said (with ever solittle of a grin); "she only won't see you, because she says you don'tnurse her as well as I do. It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night. I wish you might do it instead. "

"Have I not tended that dear couch for years?" Arabella said, "andnow--"

"Now she prefers somebody else. Well, sick people have these fancies, and must be humoured. When she's well I shall go. "

"Never, never, " Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle. 

"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?" the other said, with the sameprovoking good-nature. "Pooh--she will be well in a fortnight, when Ishall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to theirmother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend. You need not bejealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs. I am a poor little girl withoutany friends, or any harm in me. I don't want to supplant you in MissCrawley's good graces. She will forget me a week after I am gone: andher affection for you has been the work of years. Give me a littlewine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends. I'msure I want friends. "

The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her handat this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all that, and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the endof half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such, astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been describedingeniously as "the person" hitherto), went upstairs again to herpatient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, sheeliminated poor Firkin. "Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do;how nicely you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted. " "Thankyou"; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of jealousy, only themore dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom. 

Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the firstfloor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened bythe hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heardthe creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon andgruel-basin the neglected female carried. 

"Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the apartment. "Well, Jane?"

"Wuss and wuss, Miss B. , " Firkin said, wagging her head. 

"Is she not better then?"

"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little moreeasy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B. , I neverthought to have seen this day!" And the water-works again began toplay. 

"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought, while enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firmfriends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find astranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my stilldearest Matilda!" Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her language, was ofa literary and sentimental turn, and had once published a volume ofpoems--"Trills of the Nightingale"--by subscription. 

"Miss B. , they are all infatyated about that young woman, " Firkinreplied. "Sir Pitt wouldn't have let her go, but he daredn't refuseMiss Crawley anything. Mrs. Bute at the Rectory jist as bad--neverhappy out of her sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawleymortial jealous. Since Miss C. Was took ill, she won't have nobody nearher but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for where nor for why; and I thinksomethink has bewidged everybody. "

Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley; thenext night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had time forseveral hours' comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot ofher patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well that she satup and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss Briggs and hergrief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs' weeping snuffle, and hermanner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered that MissCrawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors whenthey visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world, when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depressionand terror of death. 

Captain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins from MissRebecca respecting his aunt's health. This improved so rapidly, thatpoor Briggs was allowed to see her patroness; and persons with tenderhearts may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental female, and the affecting nature of the interview. 

Miss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal soon. Rebecca used tomimic her to her face with the most admirable gravity, therebyrendering the imitation doubly piquant to her worthy patroness. 

The causes which had led to the deplorable illness of Miss Crawley, andher departure from her brother's house in the country, were of such anunromantic nature that they are hardly fit to be explained in thisgenteel and sentimental novel. For how is it possible to hint of adelicate female, living in good society, that she ate and drank toomuch, and that a hot supper of lobsters profusely enjoyed at theRectory was the reason of an indisposition which Miss Crawley herselfpersisted was solely attributable to the dampness of the weather? Theattack was so sharp that Matilda--as his Reverence expressed it--wasvery nearly "off the hooks"; all the family were in a fever ofexpectation regarding the will, and Rawdon Crawley was making sure ofat least forty thousand pounds before the commencement of the Londonseason. Mr. Crawley sent over a choice parcel of tracts, to prepareher for the change from Vanity Fair and Park Lane for another world;but a good doctor from Southampton being called in in time, vanquishedthe lobster which was so nearly fatal to her, and gave her sufficientstrength to enable her to return to London. The Baronet did notdisguise his exceeding mortification at the turn which affairs took. 

While everybody was attending on Miss Crawley, and messengers everyhour from the Rectory were carrying news of her health to theaffectionate folks there, there was a lady in another part of thehouse, being exceedingly ill, of whom no one took any notice at all;and this was the lady of Crawley herself. The good doctor shook hishead after seeing her; to which visit Sir Pitt consented, as it couldbe paid without a fee; and she was left fading away in her lonelychamber, with no more heed paid to her than to a weed in the park. 

The young ladies, too, lost much of the inestimable benefit of theirgoverness's instruction, So affectionate a nurse was Miss Sharp, thatMiss Crawley would take her medicines from no other hand. Firkin hadbeen deposed long before her mistress's departure from the country. That faithful attendant found a gloomy consolation on returning toLondon, in seeing Miss Briggs suffer the same pangs of jealousy andundergo the same faithless treatment to which she herself had beensubject. 

Captain Rawdon got an extension of leave on his aunt's illness, andremained dutifully at home. He was always in her antechamber. (Shelay sick in the state bedroom, into which you entered by the littleblue saloon. ) His father was always meeting him there; or if he camedown the corridor ever so quietly, his father's door was sure to open, and the hyena face of the old gentleman to glare out. What was it setone to watch the other so? A generous rivalry, no doubt, as to whichshould be most attentive to the dear sufferer in the state bedroom. Rebecca used to come out and comfort both of them; or one or the otherof them rather. Both of these worthy gentlemen were most anxious tohave news of the invalid from her little confidential messenger. 

At dinner--to which meal she descended for half an hour--she kept thepeace between them: after which she disappeared for the night; whenRawdon would ride over to the depot of the 150th at Mudbury, leavinghis papa to the society of Mr. Horrocks and his rum and water. Shepassed as weary a fortnight as ever mortal spent in Miss Crawley'ssick-room; but her little nerves seemed to be of iron, as she was quiteunshaken by the duty and the tedium of the sick-chamber. 

She never told until long afterwards how painful that duty was; howpeevish a patient was the jovial old lady; how angry; how sleepless; inwhat horrors of death; during what long nights she lay moaning, and inalmost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quiteignored when she was in good health. --Picture to yourself, oh fairyoung reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionlessold woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture herto yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and pray!

Sharp watched this graceless bedside with indomitable patience. Nothingescaped her; and, like a prudent steward, she found a use foreverything. She told many a good story about Miss Crawley's illness inafter days--stories which made the lady blush through her artificialcarnations. During the illness she was never out of temper; alwaysalert; she slept light, having a perfectly clear conscience; and couldtake that refreshment at almost any minute's warning. And so you sawvery few traces of fatigue in her appearance. Her face might be atrifle paler, and the circles round her eyes a little blacker thanusual; but whenever she came out from the sick-room she was alwayssmiling, fresh, and neat, and looked as trim in her littledressing-gown and cap, as in her smartest evening suit. 

The Captain thought so, and raved about her in uncouth convulsions. Thebarbed shaft of love had penetrated his dull hide. Sixweeks--appropinquity--opportunity--had victimised him completely. Hemade a confidante of his aunt at the Rectory, of all persons in theworld. She rallied him about it; she had perceived his folly; shewarned him; she finished by owning that little Sharp was the most clever, droll, odd, good-natured, simple, kindly creature in England. Rawdonmust not trifle with her affections, though--dear Miss Crawley wouldnever pardon him for that; for she, too, was quite overcome by the littlegoverness, and loved Sharp like a daughter. Rawdon must go away--goback to his regiment and naughty London, and not play with a poorartless girl's feelings. 

Many and many a time this good-natured lady, compassionating theforlorn life-guardsman's condition, gave him an opportunity of seeingMiss Sharp at the Rectory, and of walking home with her, as we haveseen. When men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love, though they seethe hook and the string, and the whole apparatus with which they are tobe taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless--they must come to it--theymust swallow it--and are presently struck and landed gasping. Rawdonsaw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part to captivate himwith Rebecca. He was not very wise; but he was a man about town, andhad seen several seasons. A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as hethought, through a speech of Mrs. Bute's. 

"Mark my words, Rawdon, " she said. "You will have Miss Sharp one dayfor your relation. "

"What relation--my cousin, hey, Mrs. Bute? James sweet on her, hey?"inquired the waggish officer. 

"More than that, " Mrs. Bute said, with a flash from her black eyes. 

"Not Pitt? He sha'n't have her. The sneak a'n't worthy of her. He'sbooked to Lady Jane Sheepshanks. "

"You men perceive nothing. You silly, blind creature--if anythinghappens to Lady Crawley, Miss Sharp will be your mother-in-law; andthat's what will happen. "

Rawdon Crawley, Esquire, gave vent to a prodigious whistle, in token ofastonishment at this announcement. He couldn't deny it. His father'sevident liking for Miss Sharp had not escaped him. He knew the oldgentleman's character well; and a more unscrupulous old--whyou--he didnot conclude the sentence, but walked home, curling his mustachios, andconvinced he had found a clue to Mrs. Bute's mystery. 

"By Jove, it's too bad, " thought Rawdon, "too bad, by Jove! I dobelieve the woman wants the poor girl to be ruined, in order that sheshouldn't come into the family as Lady Crawley. "

When he saw Rebecca alone, he rallied her about his father's attachmentin his graceful way. She flung up her head scornfully, looked him fullin the face, and said, "Well, suppose he is fond of me. I know he is, and others too. Youdon't think I am afraid of him, Captain Crawley? You don't suppose Ican't defend my own honour, " said the little woman, looking as statelyas a queen. 

"Oh, ah, why--give you fair warning--look out, you know--that's all, "said the mustachio-twiddler. 

"You hint at something not honourable, then?" said she, flashing out. 

"O Gad--really--Miss Rebecca, " the heavy dragoon interposed. 

"Do you suppose I have no feeling of self-respect, because I am poorand friendless, and because rich people have none? Do you think, because I am a governess, I have not as much sense, and feeling, andgood breeding as you gentlefolks in Hampshire? I'm a Montmorency. Doyou suppose a Montmorency is not as good as a Crawley?"

When Miss Sharp was agitated, and alluded to her maternal relatives, she spoke with ever so slight a foreign accent, which gave a greatcharm to her clear ringing voice. "No, " she continued, kindling as shespoke to the Captain; "I can endure poverty, but not shame--neglect, but not insult; and insult from--from you. "

Her feelings gave way, and she burst into tears. 

"Hang it, Miss Sharp--Rebecca--by Jove--upon my soul, I wouldn't for athousand pounds. Stop, Rebecca!"

She was gone. She drove out with Miss Crawley that day. It was beforethe latter's illness. At dinner she was unusually brilliant andlively; but she would take no notice of the hints, or the nods, or theclumsy expostulations of the humiliated, infatuated guardsman. Skirmishes of this sort passed perpetually during the littlecampaign--tedious to relate, and similar in result. The Crawley heavycavalry was maddened by defeat, and routed every day. 

If the Baronet of Queen's Crawley had not had the fear of losing hissister's legacy before his eyes, he never would have permitted his deargirls to lose the educational blessings which their invaluablegoverness was conferring upon them. The old house at home seemed adesert without her, so useful and pleasant had Rebecca made herselfthere. Sir Pitt's letters were not copied and corrected; his books notmade up; his household business and manifold schemes neglected, nowthat his little secretary was away. And it was easy to see hownecessary such an amanuensis was to him, by the tenor and spelling ofthe numerous letters which he sent to her, entreating her andcommanding her to return. Almost every day brought a frank from theBaronet, enclosing the most urgent prayers to Becky for her return, orconveying pathetic statements to Miss Crawley, regarding the neglectedstate of his daughters' education; of which documents Miss Crawley tookvery little heed. 

Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion wasa sinecure and a derision; and her company was the fat spaniel in thedrawing-room, or occasionally the discontented Firkin in thehousekeeper's closet. Nor though the old lady would by no means hearof Rebecca's departure, was the latter regularly installed in office inPark Lane. Like many wealthy people, it was Miss Crawley's habit toaccept as much service as she could get from her inferiors; andgood-naturedly to take leave of them when she no longer found themuseful. Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or tobe thought of. They take needy people's services as their due. Norhave you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason tocomplain! Your friendship for Dives is about as sincere as the returnwhich it usually gets. It is money you love, and not the man; and wereCroesus and his footman to change places you know, you poor rogue, whowould have the benefit of your allegiance. 

And I am not sure that, in spite of Rebecca's simplicity and activity, and gentleness and untiring good humour, the shrewd old London lady, upon whom these treasures of friendship were lavished, had not alurking suspicion all the while of her affectionate nurse and friend. It must have often crossed Miss Crawley's mind that nobody doesanything for nothing. If she measured her own feeling towards theworld, she must have been pretty well able to gauge those of the worldtowards herself; and perhaps she reflected that it is the ordinary lotof people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody. 

Well, meanwhile Becky was the greatest comfort and convenience to her, and she gave her a couple of new gowns, and an old necklace and shawl, and showed her friendship by abusing all her intimate acquaintances toher new confidante (than which there can't be a more touching proof ofregard), and meditated vaguely some great future benefit--to marry herperhaps to Clump, the apothecary, or to settle her in some advantageousway of life; or at any rate, to send her back to Queen's Crawley whenshe had done with her, and the full London season had begun. 

When Miss Crawley was convalescent and descended to the drawing-room, Becky sang to her, and otherwise amused her; when she was well enoughto drive out, Becky accompanied her. And amongst the drives which theytook, whither, of all places in the world, did Miss Crawley's admirablegood-nature and friendship actually induce her to penetrate, but toRussell Square, Bloomsbury, and the house of John Sedley, Esquire. 

Ere that event, many notes had passed, as may be imagined, between thetwo dear friends. During the months of Rebecca's stay in Hampshire, the eternal friendship had (must it be owned?) suffered considerablediminution, and grown so decrepit and feeble with old age as tothreaten demise altogether. The fact is, both girls had their own realaffairs to think of: Rebecca her advance with her employers--Amelia herown absorbing topic. When the two girls met, and flew into eachother's arms with that impetuosity which distinguishes the behaviour ofyoung ladies towards each other, Rebecca performed her part of theembrace with the most perfect briskness and energy. Poor little Ameliablushed as she kissed her friend, and thought she had been guilty ofsomething very like coldness towards her. 

Their first interview was but a very short one. Amelia was just readyto go out for a walk. Miss Crawley was waiting in her carriage below, her people wondering at the locality in which they found themselves, and gazing upon honest Sambo, the black footman of Bloomsbury, as oneof the queer natives of the place. But when Amelia came down with herkind smiling looks (Rebecca must introduce her to her friend, MissCrawley was longing to see her, and was too ill to leave hercarriage)--when, I say, Amelia came down, the Park Lane shoulder-knotaristocracy wondered more and more that such a thing could come out ofBloomsbury; and Miss Crawley was fairly captivated by the sweetblushing face of the young lady who came forward so timidly and sogracefully to pay her respects to the protector of her friend. 

"What a complexion, my dear! What a sweet voice!" Miss Crawley said, asthey drove away westward after the little interview. "My dear Sharp, your young friend is charming. Send for her to Park Lane, do youhear?" Miss Crawley had a good taste. She liked natural manners--alittle timidity only set them off. She liked pretty faces near her; asshe liked pretty pictures and nice china. She talked of Amelia withrapture half a dozen times that day. She mentioned her to RawdonCrawley, who came dutifully to partake of his aunt's chicken. 

Of course, on this Rebecca instantly stated that Amelia was engaged tobe married--to a Lieutenant Osborne--a very old flame. 

"Is he a man in a line-regiment?" Captain Crawley asked, rememberingafter an effort, as became a guardsman, the number of the regiment, the --th. 

Rebecca thought that was the regiment. "The Captain's name, " she said, "was Captain Dobbin. "

"A lanky gawky fellow, " said Crawley, "tumbles over everybody. I knowhim; and Osborne's a goodish-looking fellow, with large black whiskers?"

"Enormous, " Miss Rebecca Sharp said, "and enormously proud of them, Iassure you. "

Captain Rawdon Crawley burst into a horse-laugh by way of reply; andbeing pressed by the ladies to explain, did so when the explosion ofhilarity was over. "He fancies he can play at billiards, " said he. "Iwon two hundred of him at the Cocoa-Tree. HE play, the young flat!He'd have played for anything that day, but his friend Captain Dobbincarried him off, hang him!"

"Rawdon, Rawdon, don't be so wicked, " Miss Crawley remarked, highlypleased. 

"Why, ma'am, of all the young fellows I've seen out of the line, Ithink this fellow's the greenest. Tarquin and Deuceace get what moneythey like out of him. He'd go to the deuce to be seen with a lord. Hepays their dinners at Greenwich, and they invite the company. "

"And very pretty company too, I dare say. "

"Quite right, Miss Sharp. Right, as usual, Miss Sharp. Uncommon prettycompany--haw, haw!" and the Captain laughed more and more, thinking hehad made a good joke. 

"Rawdon, don't be naughty!" his aunt exclaimed. 

"Well, his father's a City man--immensely rich, they say. Hang thoseCity fellows, they must bleed; and I've not done with him yet, I cantell you. Haw, haw!"

"Fie, Captain Crawley; I shall warn Amelia. A gambling husband!"

"Horrid, ain't he, hey?" the Captain said with great solemnity; andthen added, a sudden thought having struck him: "Gad, I say, ma'am, we'll have him here. "

"Is he a presentable sort of a person?" the aunt inquired. 

"Presentable?--oh, very well. You wouldn't see any difference, "Captain Crawley answered. "Do let's have him, when you begin to see afew people; and his whatdyecallem--his inamorato--eh, Miss Sharp;that's what you call it--comes. Gad, I'll write him a note, and havehim; and I'll try if he can play piquet as well as billiards. Wheredoes he live, Miss Sharp?"

Miss Sharp told Crawley the Lieutenant's town address; and a few daysafter this conversation, Lieutenant Osborne received a letter, inCaptain Rawdon's schoolboy hand, and enclosing a note of invitationfrom Miss Crawley. 

Rebecca despatched also an invitation to her darling Amelia, who, youmay be sure, was ready enough to accept it when she heard that Georgewas to be of the party. It was arranged that Amelia was to spend themorning with the ladies of Park Lane, where all were very kind to her. Rebecca patronised her with calm superiority: she was so much thecleverer of the two, and her friend so gentle and unassuming, that shealways yielded when anybody chose to command, and so took Rebecca'sorders with perfect meekness and good humour. Miss Crawley'sgraciousness was also remarkable. She continued her raptures aboutlittle Amelia, talked about her before her face as if she were a doll, or a servant, or a picture, and admired her with the most benevolentwonder possible. I admire that admiration which the genteel worldsometimes extends to the commonalty. There is no more agreeable objectin life than to see Mayfair folks condescending. Miss Crawley'sprodigious benevolence rather fatigued poor little Amelia, and I am notsure that of the three ladies in Park Lane she did not find honest MissBriggs the most agreeable. She sympathised with Briggs as with allneglected or gentle people: she wasn't what you call a woman of spirit. 

George came to dinner--a repast en garcon with Captain Crawley. 

The great family coach of the Osbornes transported him to Park Lanefrom Russell Square; where the young ladies, who were not themselvesinvited, and professed the greatest indifference at that slight, nevertheless looked at Sir Pitt Crawley's name in the baronetage; andlearned everything which that work had to teach about the Crawleyfamily and their pedigree, and the Binkies, their relatives, &c. , &c. Rawdon Crawley received George Osborne with great frankness andgraciousness: praised his play at billiards: asked him when he wouldhave his revenge: was interested about Osborne's regiment: and wouldhave proposed piquet to him that very evening, but Miss Crawleyabsolutely forbade any gambling in her house; so that the youngLieutenant's purse was not lightened by his gallant patron, for thatday at least. However, they made an engagement for the next, somewhere: to look at a horse that Crawley had to sell, and to try himin the Park; and to dine together, and to pass the evening with somejolly fellows. "That is, if you're not on duty to that pretty MissSedley, " Crawley said, with a knowing wink. "Monstrous nice girl, 'ponmy honour, though, Osborne, " he was good enough to add. "Lots of tin, I suppose, eh?"

Osborne wasn't on duty; he would join Crawley with pleasure: and thelatter, when they met the next day, praised his new friend'shorsemanship--as he might with perfect honesty--and introduced him tothree or four young men of the first fashion, whose acquaintanceimmensely elated the simple young officer. 

"How's little Miss Sharp, by-the-bye?" Osborne inquired of his friendover their wine, with a dandified air. "Good-natured little girl that. Does she suit you well at Queen's Crawley? Miss Sedley liked her a gooddeal last year. "

Captain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out of his littleblue eyes, and watched him when he went up to resume his acquaintancewith the fair governess. Her conduct must have relieved Crawley ifthere was any jealousy in the bosom of that life-guardsman. 

When the young men went upstairs, and after Osborne's introduction toMiss Crawley, he walked up to Rebecca with a patronising, easy swagger. He was going to be kind to her and protect her. He would even shakehands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, "Ah, Miss Sharp!how-dy-doo?" held out his left hand towards her, expecting that shewould be quite confounded at the honour. 

Miss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him a little nod, socool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley, watching the operations from theother room, could hardly restrain his laughter as he saw theLieutenant's entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause, and theperfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended to take thefinger which was offered for his embrace. 

"She'd beat the devil, by Jove!" the Captain said, in a rapture; andthe Lieutenant, by way of beginning the conversation, agreeably askedRebecca how she liked her new place. 

"My place?" said Miss Sharp, coolly, "how kind of you to remind me ofit! It's a tolerably good place: the wages are pretty good--not sogood as Miss Wirt's, I believe, with your sisters in Russell Square. How are those young ladies?--not that I ought to ask. "

"Why not?" Mr. Osborne said, amazed. 

"Why, they never condescended to speak to me, or to ask me into theirhouse, whilst I was staying with Amelia; but we poor governesses, youknow, are used to slights of this sort. "

"My dear Miss Sharp!" Osborne ejaculated. 

"At least in some families, " Rebecca continued. "You can't think whata difference there is though. We are not so wealthy in Hampshire asyou lucky folks of the City. But then I am in a gentleman'sfamily--good old English stock. I suppose you know Sir Pitt's fatherrefused a peerage. And you see how I am treated. I am prettycomfortable. Indeed it is rather a good place. But how very good ofyou to inquire!"

Osborne was quite savage. The little governess patronised him andpersiffled him until this young British Lion felt quite uneasy; norcould he muster sufficient presence of mind to find a pretext forbacking out of this most delectable conversation. 

"I thought you liked the City families pretty well, " he said, haughtily. 

"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that horrid vulgar school?Of course I did. Doesn't every girl like to come home for theholidays? And how was I to know any better? But oh, Mr. Osborne, whata difference eighteen months' experience makes! eighteen months spent, pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen. As for dear Amelia, she, Igrant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere. There now, Isee you are beginning to be in a good humour; but oh these queer oddCity people! And Mr. Jos--how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?"

"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr. Joseph lastyear, " Osborne said kindly. 

"How severe of you! Well, entre nous, I didn't break my heart abouthim; yet if he had asked me to do what you mean by your looks (and veryexpressive and kind they are, too), I wouldn't have said no. "

Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, "Indeed, how very obliging!"

"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law, you are thinking?To be sister-in-law to George Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne, Esquire, son of--what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne? Well, don't beangry. You can't help your pedigree, and I quite agree with you that Iwould have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for could a poor penniless girl dobetter? Now you know the whole secret. I'm frank and open;considering all things, it was very kind of you to allude to thecircumstance--very kind and polite. Amelia dear, Mr. Osborne and Iwere talking about your poor brother Joseph. How is he?"

Thus was George utterly routed. Not that Rebecca was in the right; butshe had managed most successfully to put him in the wrong. And he nowshamefully fled, feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he wouldhave been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia. 

Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was above the meannessof talebearing or revenge upon a lady--only he could not help cleverlyconfiding to Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regardingMiss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous one, a desperateflirt, &c. ; in all of which opinions Crawley agreed laughingly, andwith every one of which Miss Rebecca was made acquainted beforetwenty-four hours were over. They added to her original regard for Mr. Osborne. Her woman's instinct had told her that it was George who hadinterrupted the success of her first love-passage, and she esteemed himaccordingly. 

"I only just warn you, " he said to Rawdon Crawley, with a knowinglook--he had bought the horse, and lost some score of guineas afterdinner, "I just warn you--I know women, and counsel you to be on thelook-out. "

"Thank you, my boy, " said Crawley, with a look of peculiar gratitude. "You're wide awake, I see. " And George went off, thinking Crawley wasquite right. 

He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled RawdonCrawley--a devilish good, straightforward fellow--to be on his guardagainst that little sly, scheming Rebecca. 

"Against whom?" Amelia cried. 

"Your friend the governess. --Don't look so astonished. "

"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said. For her woman's eyes, which Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered asecret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, andabove all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig, Lieutenant Osborne. 

For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these twofriends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking andconspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up toRebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said, "Rebecca, I seeit all. "

Rebecca kissed her. 

And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said byeither of the young women. But it was destined to come out before long. 

Some short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp stillremaining at her patroness's house in Park Lane, one more hatchmentmight have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the manywhich usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir PittCrawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet's demise. It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served asa funeral compliment to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager LadyCrawley. Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down fromthe front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the backpremises of Sir Pitt's mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson. Sir Pitt was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield alongwith his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's. She had no arms. Butthe cherubs painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as forSir Pitt's mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked bythe Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam. --Here isan opportunity for moralising!

Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless bedside. She went outof the world strengthened by such words and comfort as he could giveher. For many years his was the only kindness she ever knew; the onlyfriendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul. Her heartwas dead long before her body. She had sold it to become Sir PittCrawley's wife. Mothers and daughters are making the same bargainevery day in Vanity Fair. 

When the demise took place, her husband was in London attending to someof his innumerable schemes, and busy with his endless lawyers. He hadfound time, nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatchmany notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her, commanding her toreturn to her young pupils in the country, who were now utterly withoutcompanionship during their mother's illness. But Miss Crawley wouldnot hear of her departure; for though there was no lady of fashion inLondon who would desert her friends more complacently as soon as shewas tired of their society, and though few tired of them sooner, yet aslong as her engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and sheclung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca. 

The news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more grief or comment thanmight have been expected in Miss Crawley's family circle. "I suppose Imust put off my party for the 3rd, " Miss Crawley said; and added, aftera pause, "I hope my brother will have the decency not to marry again. ""What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if he does, " Rawdon remarked, with his usual regard for his elder brother. Rebecca said nothing. Sheseemed by far the gravest and most impressed of the family. She leftthe room before Rawdon went away that day; but they met by chancebelow, as he was going away after taking leave, and had a parleytogether. 

On the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window, she startled MissCrawley, who was placidly occupied with a French novel, by crying outin an alarmed tone, "Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!" and the Baronet's knockfollowed this announcement. 

"My dear, I can't see him. I won't see him. Tell Bowls not at home, or go downstairs and say I'm too ill to receive any one. My nervesreally won't bear my brother at this moment, " cried out Miss Crawley, and resumed the novel. 

"She's too ill to see you, sir, " Rebecca said, tripping down to SirPitt, who was preparing to ascend. 

"So much the better, " Sir Pitt answered. "I want to see YOU, MissBecky. Come along a me into the parlour, " and they entered thatapartment together. 

"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss, " the baronet said, fixinghis eyes upon her, and taking off his black gloves and his hat with itsgreat crape hat-band. His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed uponher so steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble. 

"I hope to come soon, " she said in a low voice, "as soon as MissCrawley is better--and return to--to the dear children. "

"You've said so these three months, Becky, " replied Sir Pitt, "andstill you go hanging on to my sister, who'll fling you off like an oldshoe, when she's wore you out. I tell you I want you. I'm going backto the Vuneral. Will you come back? Yes or no?"

"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be alone--with you, sir, " Becky said, seemingly in great agitation. 

"I say agin, I want you, " Sir Pitt said, thumping the table. "I can'tgit on without you. I didn't see what it was till you went away. Thehouse all goes wrong. It's not the same place. All my accounts hasgot muddled agin. You MUST come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, docome. "

"Come--as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out. 

"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like, " the Baronet said, grasping hiscrape hat. "There! will that zatusfy you? Come back and be my wife. Your vit vor't. Birth be hanged. You're as good a lady as ever I see. You've got more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife inthe county. Will you come? Yes or no?"

"Oh, Sir Pitt!" Rebecca said, very much moved. 

"Say yes, Becky, " Sir Pitt continued. "I'm an old man, but a good'n. I'm good for twenty years. I'll make you happy, zee if I don't. Youshall do what you like; spend what you like; and 'ave it all your ownway. I'll make you a zettlement. I'll do everything reglar. Lookyear!" and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at her like asatyr. 

Rebecca started back a picture of consternation. In the course of thishistory we have never seen her lose her presence of mind; but she didnow, and wept some of the most genuine tears that ever fell from hereyes. 

"Oh, Sir Pitt!" she said. "Oh, sir--I--I'm married ALREADY. "

CHAPTER XV

In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time

Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire no other) must havebeen pleased with the tableau with which the last act of our littledrama concluded; for what can be prettier than an image of Love on hisknees before Beauty?

But when Love heard that awful confession from Beauty that she wasmarried already, he bounced up from his attitude of humility on thecarpet, uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to bemore frightened than she was when she made her avowal. "Married;you're joking, " the Baronet cried, after the first explosion of rageand wonder. "You're making vun of me, Becky. Who'd ever go to marryyou without a shilling to your vortune?"

"Married! married!" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears--her voicechoking with emotion, her handkerchief up to her ready eyes, faintingagainst the mantelpiece a figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurateheart. "O Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me ungrateful for allyour goodness to me. It is only your generosity that has extorted mysecret. "

"Generosity be hanged!" Sir Pitt roared out. "Who is it tu, then, you're married? Where was it?"

"Let me come back with you to the country, sir! Let me watch over youas faithfully as ever! Don't, don't separate me from dear Queen'sCrawley!"

"The feller has left you, has he?" the Baronet said, beginning, as hefancied, to comprehend. "Well, Becky--come back if you like. You can'teat your cake and have it. Any ways I made you a vair offer. Coomback as governess--you shall have it all your own way. " She held outone hand. She cried fit to break her heart; her ringlets fell over herface, and over the marble mantelpiece where she laid it. 

"So the rascal ran off, eh?" Sir Pitt said, with a hideous attempt atconsolation. "Never mind, Becky, I'LL take care of 'ee. "

"Oh, sir! it would be the pride of my life to go back to Queen'sCrawley, and take care of the children, and of you as formerly, whenyou said you were pleased with the services of your little Rebecca. When I think of what you have just offered me, my heart fills withgratitude indeed it does. I can't be your wife, sir; let me--let me beyour daughter. " Saying which, Rebecca went down on HER knees in a mosttragical way, and, taking Sir Pitt's horny black hand between her owntwo (which were very pretty and white, and as soft as satin), looked upin his face with an expression of exquisite pathos and confidence, when--when the door opened, and Miss Crawley sailed in. 

Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs, who happened by chance to be at theparlour door soon after the Baronet and Rebecca entered the apartment, had also seen accidentally, through the keyhole, the old gentlemanprostrate before the governess, and had heard the generous proposalwhich he made her. It was scarcely out of his mouth when Mrs. Firkinand Miss Briggs had streamed up the stairs, had rushed into thedrawing-room where Miss Crawley was reading the French novel, and hadgiven that old lady the astounding intelligence that Sir Pitt was onhis knees, proposing to Miss Sharp. And if you calculate the time forthe above dialogue to take place--the time for Briggs and Firkin to flyto the drawing-room--the time for Miss Crawley to be astonished, and todrop her volume of Pigault le Brun--and the time for her to comedownstairs--you will see how exactly accurate this history is, and howMiss Crawley must have appeared at the very instant when Rebecca hadassumed the attitude of humility. 

"It is the lady on the ground, and not the gentleman, " Miss Crawleysaid, with a look and voice of great scorn. "They told me that YOU wereon your knees, Sir Pitt: do kneel once more, and let me see this prettycouple!"

"I have thanked Sir Pitt Crawley, Ma'am, " Rebecca said, rising, "andhave told him that--that I never can become Lady Crawley. "

"Refused him!" Miss Crawley said, more bewildered than ever. Briggsand Firkin at the door opened the eyes of astonishment and the lips ofwonder. 

"Yes--refused, " Rebecca continued, with a sad, tearful voice. 

"And am I to credit my ears that you absolutely proposed to her, SirPitt?" the old lady asked. 

"Ees, " said the Baronet, "I did. "

"And she refused you as she says?"

"Ees, " Sir Pitt said, his features on a broad grin. 

"It does not seem to break your heart at any rate, " Miss Crawleyremarked. 

"Nawt a bit, " answered Sir Pitt, with a coolness and good-humour whichset Miss Crawley almost mad with bewilderment. That an old gentlemanof station should fall on his knees to a penniless governess, and burstout laughing because she refused to marry him--that a pennilessgoverness should refuse a Baronet with four thousand a year--these weremysteries which Miss Crawley could never comprehend. It surpassed anycomplications of intrigue in her favourite Pigault le Brun. 

"I'm glad you think it good sport, brother, " she continued, gropingwildly through this amazement. 

"Vamous, " said Sir Pitt. "Who'd ha' thought it! what a sly littledevil! what a little fox it waws!" he muttered to himself, chucklingwith pleasure. 

"Who'd have thought what?" cries Miss Crawley, stamping with her foot. "Pray, Miss Sharp, are you waiting for the Prince Regent's divorce, that you don't think our family good enough for you?"

"My attitude, " Rebecca said, "when you came in, ma'am, did not look asif I despised such an honour as this good--this noble man has deignedto offer me. Do you think I have no heart? Have you all loved me, andbeen so kind to the poor orphan--deserted--girl, and am I to feelnothing? O my friends! O my benefactors! may not my love, my life, myduty, try to repay the confidence you have shown me? Do you grudge meeven gratitude, Miss Crawley? It is too much--my heart is too full";and she sank down in a chair so pathetically, that most of the audiencepresent were perfectly melted with her sadness. 

"Whether you marry me or not, you're a good little girl, Becky, and I'myour vriend, mind, " said Sir Pitt, and putting on his crape-bound hat, he walked away--greatly to Rebecca's relief; for it was evident thather secret was unrevealed to Miss Crawley, and she had the advantage ofa brief reprieve. 

Putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and nodding away honest Briggs, who would have followed her upstairs, she went up to her apartment;while Briggs and Miss Crawley, in a high state of excitement, remainedto discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not less moved, dived downinto the kitchen regions, and talked of it with all the male and femalecompany there. And so impressed was Mrs. Firkin with the news, thatshe thought proper to write off by that very night's post, "with herhumble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley and the family at the Rectory, and SirPitt has been and proposed for to marry Miss Sharp, wherein she hasrefused him, to the wonder of all. "

The two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy Miss Briggs wasdelighted to be admitted once more to confidential conversation withher patroness) wondered to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's offer, and Rebecca's refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that there musthave been some obstacle in the shape of a previous attachment, otherwise no young woman in her senses would ever have refused soadvantageous a proposal. 

"You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you, Briggs?" MissCrawley said, kindly. 

"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's sister?" Briggsreplied, with meek evasion. 

"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley, after all, " MissCrawley remarked (who was mollified by the girl's refusal, and veryliberal and generous now there was no call for her sacrifices). "Shehas brains in plenty (much more wit in her little finger than you have, my poor dear Briggs, in all your head). Her manners are excellent, nowI have formed her. She is a Montmorency, Briggs, and blood issomething, though I despise it for my part; and she would have held herown amongst those pompous stupid Hampshire people much better than thatunfortunate ironmonger's daughter. "

Briggs coincided as usual, and the "previous attachment" was thendiscussed in conjectures. "You poor friendless creatures are alwayshaving some foolish tendre, " Miss Crawley said. "You yourself, youknow, were in love with a writing-master (don't cry, Briggs--you'realways crying, and it won't bring him to life again), and I supposethis unfortunate Becky has been silly and sentimental too--someapothecary, or house-steward, or painter, or young curate, or somethingof that sort. "

"Poor thing! poor thing!" says Briggs (who was thinking of twenty-fouryears back, and that hectic young writing-master whose lock of yellowhair, and whose letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she cherishedin her old desk upstairs). "Poor thing, poor thing!" says Briggs. Once more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen; she was at eveningchurch, and the hectic writing-master and she were quavering out of thesame psalm-book. 

"After such conduct on Rebecca's part, " Miss Crawley saidenthusiastically, "our family should do something. Find out who is theobjet, Briggs. I'll set him up in a shop; or order my portrait of him, you know; or speak to my cousin, the Bishop and I'll doter Becky, andwe'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the breakfast, and bea bridesmaid. "

Briggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed that her dearMiss Crawley was always kind and generous, and went up to Rebecca'sbedroom to console her and prattle about the offer, and the refusal, and the cause thereof; and to hint at the generous intentions of MissCrawley, and to find out who was the gentleman that had the mastery ofMiss Sharp's heart. 

Rebecca was very kind, very affectionate and affected--responded toBriggs's offer of tenderness with grateful fervour--owned there was asecret attachment--a delicious mystery--what a pity Miss Briggs had notremained half a minute longer at the keyhole! Rebecca might, perhaps, have told more: but five minutes after Miss Briggs's arrival inRebecca's apartment, Miss Crawley actually made her appearancethere--an unheard-of honour--her impatience had overcome her; she couldnot wait for the tardy operations of her ambassadress: so she came inperson, and ordered Briggs out of the room. And expressing her approvalof Rebecca's conduct, she asked particulars of the interview, and theprevious transactions which had brought about the astonishing offer ofSir Pitt. 

Rebecca said she had long had some notion of the partiality with whichSir Pitt honoured her (for he was in the habit of making his feelingsknown in a very frank and unreserved manner) but, not to mentionprivate reasons with which she would not for the present trouble MissCrawley, Sir Pitt's age, station, and habits were such as to render amarriage quite impossible; and could a woman with any feeling ofself-respect and any decency listen to proposals at such a moment, whenthe funeral of the lover's deceased wife had not actually taken place?

"Nonsense, my dear, you would never have refused him had there not beensome one else in the case, " Miss Crawley said, coming to her point atonce. "Tell me the private reasons; what are the private reasons?There is some one; who is it that has touched your heart?"

Rebecca cast down her eyes, and owned there was. "You have guessedright, dear lady, " she said, with a sweet simple faltering voice. "Youwonder at one so poor and friendless having an attachment, don't you? Ihave never heard that poverty was any safeguard against it. I wish itwere. "

"My poor dear child, " cried Miss Crawley, who was always quite ready tobe sentimental, "is our passion unrequited, then? Are we pining insecret? Tell me all, and let me console you. "

"I wish you could, dear Madam, " Rebecca said in the same tearful tone. "Indeed, indeed, I need it. " And she laid her head upon Miss Crawley'sshoulder and wept there so naturally that the old lady, surprised intosympathy, embraced her with an almost maternal kindness, uttered manysoothing protests of regard and affection for her, vowed that she lovedher as a daughter, and would do everything in her power to serve her. "And now who is it, my dear? Is it that pretty Miss Sedley's brother?You said something about an affair with him. I'll ask him here, mydear. And you shall have him: indeed you shall. "

"Don't ask me now, " Rebecca said. "You shall know all soon. Indeedyou shall. Dear kind Miss Crawley--dear friend, may I say so?"

"That you may, my child, " the old lady replied, kissing her. 

"I can't tell you now, " sobbed out Rebecca, "I am very miserable. ButO! love me always--promise you will love me always. " And in the midstof mutual tears--for the emotions of the younger woman had awakened thesympathies of the elder--this promise was solemnly given by MissCrawley, who left her little protege, blessing and admiring her as adear, artless, tender-hearted, affectionate, incomprehensible creature. 

And now she was left alone to think over the sudden and wonderfulevents of the day, and of what had been and what might have been. Whatthink you were the private feelings of Miss, no (begging her pardon) ofMrs. Rebecca? If, a few pages back, the present writer claimed theprivilege of peeping into Miss Amelia Sedley's bedroom, andunderstanding with the omniscience of the novelist all the gentle painsand passions which were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why shouldhe not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too, master of hersecrets, and seal-keeper of that young woman's conscience?

Well, then, in the first place, Rebecca gave way to some very sincereand touching regrets that a piece of marvellous good fortune shouldhave been so near her, and she actually obliged to decline it. In thisnatural emotion every properly regulated mind will certainly share. What good mother is there that would not commiserate a pennilessspinster, who might have been my lady, and have shared four thousand ayear? What well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, whowill not feel for a hard-working, ingenious, meritorious girl, who getssuch an honourable, advantageous, provoking offer, just at the verymoment when it is out of her power to accept it? I am sure our friendBecky's disappointment deserves and will command every sympathy. 

I remember one night being in the Fair myself, at an evening party. Iobserved old Miss Toady there also present, single out for her specialattentions and flattery little Mrs. Briefless, the barrister's wife, who is of a good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor aspoor can be. 

What, I asked in my own mind, can cause this obsequiousness on the partof Miss Toady; has Briefless got a county court, or has his wife had afortune left her? Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicitywhich distinguishes all her conduct. "You know, " she said, "MrsBriefless is granddaughter of Sir John Redhand, who is so ill atCheltenham that he can't last six months. Mrs. Briefless's papasucceeds; so you see she will be a baronet's daughter. " And Toady askedBriefless and his wife to dinner the very next week. 

If the mere chance of becoming a baronet's daughter can procure a ladysuch homage in the world, surely, surely we may respect the agonies ofa young woman who has lost the opportunity of becoming a baronet'swife. Who would have dreamed of Lady Crawley dying so soon? She wasone of those sickly women that might have lasted these tenyears--Rebecca thought to herself, in all the woes of repentance--and Imight have been my lady! I might have led that old man whither Iwould. I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her patronage, and Mr. Pittfor his insufferable condescension. I would have had the town-housenewly furnished and decorated. I would have had the handsomestcarriage in London, and a box at the opera; and I would have beenpresented next season. All this might have been; and now--now all wasdoubt and mystery. 

But Rebecca was a young lady of too much resolution and energy ofcharacter to permit herself much useless and unseemly sorrow for theirrevocable past; so, having devoted only the proper portion of regretto it, she wisely turned her whole attention towards the future, whichwas now vastly more important to her. And she surveyed her position, and its hopes, doubts, and chances. 

In the first place, she was MARRIED--that was a great fact. Sir Pittknew it. She was not so much surprised into the avowal, as induced tomake it by a sudden calculation. It must have come some day: and whynot now as at a later period? He who would have married her himselfmust at least be silent with regard to her marriage. How Miss Crawleywould bear the news--was the great question. Misgivings Rebecca had;but she remembered all Miss Crawley had said; the old lady's avowedcontempt for birth; her daring liberal opinions; her general romanticpropensities; her almost doting attachment to her nephew, and herrepeatedly expressed fondness for Rebecca herself. She is so fond ofhim, Rebecca thought, that she will forgive him anything: she is soused to me that I don't think she could be comfortable without me: whenthe eclaircissement comes there will be a scene, and hysterics, and agreat quarrel, and then a great reconciliation. At all events, whatuse was there in delaying? the die was thrown, and now or to-morrow theissue must be the same. And so, resolved that Miss Crawley should havethe news, the young person debated in her mind as to the best means ofconveying it to her; and whether she should face the storm that mustcome, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown over. In thisstate of meditation she wrote the following letter:

Dearest Friend, The great crisis which we have debated about so often is COME. Half ofmy secret is known, and I have thought and thought, until I am quitesure that now is the time to reveal THE WHOLE OF THE MYSTERY. Sir Pittcame to me this morning, and made--what do you think?--A DECLARATION INFORM. Think of that! Poor little me. I might have been Lady Crawley. How pleased Mrs. Bute would have been: and ma tante if I had takenprecedence of her! I might have been somebody's mamma, instead of--O, Itremble, I tremble, when I think how soon we must tell all!

Sir Pitt knows I am married, and not knowing to whom, is not very muchdispleased as yet. Ma tante is ACTUALLY ANGRY that I should haverefused him. But she is all kindness and graciousness. Shecondescends to say I would have made him a good wife; and vows that shewill be a mother to your little Rebecca. She will be shaken when shefirst hears the news. But need we fear anything beyond a momentaryanger? I think not: I AM SURE not. She dotes upon you so (younaughty, good-for-nothing man), that she would pardon you ANYTHING:and, indeed, I believe, the next place in her heart is mine: and thatshe would be miserable without me. Dearest! something TELLS ME we shallconquer. You shall leave that odious regiment: quit gaming, racing, and BE A GOOD BOY; and we shall all live in Park Lane, and ma tanteshall leave us all her money. 

I shall try and walk to-morrow at 3 in the usual place. If Miss B. Accompanies me, you must come to dinner, and bring an answer, and putit in the third volume of Porteus's Sermons. But, at all events, cometo your own

R. 

To Miss Eliza Styles, At Mr. Barnet's, Saddler, Knightsbridge. 

And I trust there is no reader of this little story who has notdiscernment enough to perceive that the Miss Eliza Styles (an oldschoolfellow, Rebecca said, with whom she had resumed an activecorrespondence of late, and who used to fetch these letters from thesaddler's), wore brass spurs, and large curling mustachios, and wasindeed no other than Captain Rawdon Crawley. 

CHAPTER XVI

The Letter on the Pincushion

How they were married is not of the slightest consequence to anybody. What is to hinder a Captain who is a major, and a young lady who is ofage, from purchasing a licence, and uniting themselves at any church inthis town? Who needs to be told, that if a woman has a will she willassuredly find a way?--My belief is that one day, when Miss Sharp hadgone to pass the forenoon with her dear friend Miss Amelia Sedley inRussell Square, a lady very like her might have been seen entering achurch in the City, in company with a gentleman with dyed mustachios, who, after a quarter of an hour's interval, escorted her back to thehackney-coach in waiting, and that this was a quiet bridal party. 

And who on earth, after the daily experience we have, can question theprobability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the wise andlearned have married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the mostprudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax bothin love with their servant maids? And are we to expect a heavy dragoonwith strong desires and small brains, who had never controlled apassion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden, and to refuseto pay any price for an indulgence to which he had a mind? If peopleonly made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!

It seems to me, for my part, that Mr. Rawdon's marriage was one of thehonestest actions which we shall have to record in any portion of thatgentleman's biography which has to do with the present history. No onewill say it is unmanly to be captivated by a woman, or, beingcaptivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight, the passion, the wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic adoration with which, by degrees, this big warrior got to regard the little Rebecca, werefeelings which the ladies at least will pronounce were not altogetherdiscreditable to him. When she sang, every note thrilled in his dullsoul, and tingled through his huge frame. When she spoke, he broughtall the force of his brains to listen and wonder. If she was jocular, he used to revolve her jokes in his mind, and explode over them half anhour afterwards in the street, to the surprise of the groom in thetilbury by his side, or the comrade riding with him in Rotten Row. Herwords were oracles to him, her smallest actions marked by an infalliblegrace and wisdom. "How she sings, --how she paints, " thought he. "Howshe rode that kicking mare at Queen's Crawley!" And he would say toher in confidential moments, "By Jove, Beck, you're fit to beCommander-in-Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury, by Jove. " Is hiscase a rare one? and don't we see every day in the world many an honestHercules at the apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsonsprostrate in Delilah's lap?

When, then, Becky told him that the great crisis was near, and the timefor action had arrived, Rawdon expressed himself as ready to act underher orders, as he would be to charge with his troop at the command ofhis colonel. There was no need for him to put his letter into thethird volume of Porteus. Rebecca easily found a means to get rid ofBriggs, her companion, and met her faithful friend in "the usual place"on the next day. She had thought over matters at night, andcommunicated to Rawdon the result of her determinations. He agreed, ofcourse, to everything; was quite sure that it was all right: that whatshe proposed was best; that Miss Crawley would infallibly relent, or"come round, " as he said, after a time. Had Rebecca's resolutions beenentirely different, he would have followed them as implicitly. "Youhave head enough for both of us, Beck, " said he. "You're sure to getus out of the scrape. I never saw your equal, and I've met with someclippers in my time too. " And with this simple confession of faith, thelove-stricken dragoon left her to execute his part of the project whichshe had formed for the pair. 

It consisted simply in the hiring of quiet lodgings at Brompton, or inthe neighbourhood of the barracks, for Captain and Mrs. Crawley. ForRebecca had determined, and very prudently, we think, to fly. Rawdonwas only too happy at her resolve; he had been entreating her to takethis measure any time for weeks past. He pranced off to engage thelodgings with all the impetuosity of love. He agreed to pay twoguineas a week so readily, that the landlady regretted she had askedhim so little. He ordered in a piano, and half a nursery-house full offlowers: and a heap of good things. As for shawls, kid gloves, silkstockings, gold French watches, bracelets and perfumery, he sent themin with the profusion of blind love and unbounded credit. And havingrelieved his mind by this outpouring of generosity, he went and dinednervously at the club, waiting until the great moment of his lifeshould come. 

The occurrences of the previous day; the admirable conduct ofRebecca in refusing an offer so advantageous to her, the secretunhappiness preying upon her, the sweetness and silence with which shebore her affliction, made Miss Crawley much more tender than usual. Anevent of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a proposal, thrillsthrough a whole household of women, and sets all their hystericalsympathies at work. As an observer of human nature, I regularlyfrequent St. George's, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriageseason; and though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends giveway to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see women who are not in the leastconcerned in the operations going on--old ladies who are long pastmarrying, stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters, let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who are on theirpromotion, and may naturally take an interest in the ceremony--I say itis quite common to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling;hiding their little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs;and heaving, old and young, with emotion. When my friend, thefashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely Lady Belgravia GreenParker, the excitement was so general that even the little snuffy oldpew-opener who let me into the seat was in tears. And wherefore? Iinquired of my own soul: she was not going to be married. 

Miss Crawley and Briggs in a word, after the affair of Sir Pitt, indulged in the utmost luxury of sentiment, and Rebecca became anobject of the most tender interest to them. In her absence MissCrawley solaced herself with the most sentimental of the novels in herlibrary. Little Sharp, with her secret griefs, was the heroine of theday. 

That night Rebecca sang more sweetly and talked more pleasantly thanshe had ever been heard to do in Park Lane. She twined herself roundthe heart of Miss Crawley. She spoke lightly and laughingly of SirPitt's proposal, ridiculed it as the foolish fancy of an old man; andher eyes filled with tears, and Briggs's heart with unutterable pangsof defeat, as she said she desired no other lot than to remain for everwith her dear benefactress. "My dear little creature, " the old ladysaid, "I don't intend to let you stir for years, that you may dependupon it. As for going back to that odious brother of mine after whathas passed, it is out of the question. Here you stay with me andBriggs. Briggs wants to go to see her relations very often. Briggs, you may go when you like. But as for you, my dear, you must stay andtake care of the old woman. "

If Rawdon Crawley had been then and there present, instead of being atthe club nervously drinking claret, the pair might have gone down ontheir knees before the old spinster, avowed all, and been forgiven in atwinkling. But that good chance was denied to the young couple, doubtless in order that this story might be written, in which numbersof their wonderful adventures are narrated--adventures which couldnever have occurred to them if they had been housed and sheltered underthe comfortable uninteresting forgiveness of Miss Crawley. 

Under Mrs. Firkin's orders, in the Park Lane establishment, was a youngwoman from Hampshire, whose business it was, among other duties, toknock at Miss Sharp's door with that jug of hot water which Firkinwould rather have perished than have presented to the intruder. Thisgirl, bred on the family estate, had a brother in Captain Crawley'stroop, and if the truth were known, I daresay it would come out thatshe was aware of certain arrangements, which have a great deal to dowith this history. At any rate she purchased a yellow shawl, a pair ofgreen boots, and a light blue hat with a red feather with three guineaswhich Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was by no means too liberalwith her money, no doubt it was for services rendered that Betty Martinwas so bribed. 

On the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to Miss Sharp, the sunrose as usual, and at the usual hour Betty Martin, the upstairs maid, knocked at the door of the governess's bedchamber. 

No answer was returned, and she knocked again. Silence was stilluninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water, opened the door andentered the chamber. 

The little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as on the dayprevious, when Betty's own hands had helped to make it. Two littletrunks were corded in one end of the room; and on the table before thewindow--on the pincushion the great fat pincushion lined with pinkinside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap--lay a letter. It had beenreposing there probably all night. 

Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were afraid to awakeit--looked at it, and round the room, with an air of great wonder andsatisfaction; took up the letter, and grinned intensely as she turnedit round and over, and finally carried it into Miss Briggs's room below. 

How could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs, I should liketo know? All the schooling Betty had had was at Mrs. Bute Crawley'sSunday school, and she could no more read writing than Hebrew. 

"La, Miss Briggs, " the girl exclaimed, "O, Miss, something must havehappened--there's nobody in Miss Sharp's room; the bed ain't been slepin, and she've run away, and left this letter for you, Miss. "

"WHAT!" cries Briggs, dropping her comb, the thin wisp of faded hairfalling over her shoulders; "an elopement! Miss Sharp a fugitive! What, what is this?" and she eagerly broke the neat seal, and, as they say, "devoured the contents" of the letter addressed to her. 

Dear Miss Briggs [the refugee wrote], the kindest heart in the world, as yours is, will pity and sympathise with me and excuse me. Withtears, and prayers, and blessings, I leave the home where the poororphan has ever met with kindness and affection. Claims even superiorto those of my benefactress call me hence. I go to my duty--to myHUSBAND. Yes, I am married. My husband COMMANDS me to seek the HUMBLEHOME which we call ours. Dearest Miss Briggs, break the news as yourdelicate sympathy will know how to do it--to my dear, my beloved friendand benefactress. Tell her, ere I went, I shed tears on her dearpillow--that pillow that I have so often soothed in sickness--that Ilong AGAIN to watch--Oh, with what joy shall I return to dear ParkLane! How I tremble for the answer which is to SEAL MY FATE! When SirPitt deigned to offer me his hand, an honour of which my beloved MissCrawley said I was DESERVING (my blessings go with her for judging thepoor orphan worthy to be HER SISTER!) I told Sir Pitt that I wasalready A WIFE. Even he forgave me. But my courage failed me, when Ishould have told him all--that I could not be his wife, for I WAS HISDAUGHTER! I am wedded to the best and most generous of men--MissCrawley's Rawdon is MY Rawdon. At his COMMAND I open my lips, andfollow him to our humble home, as I would THROUGH THE WORLD. O, myexcellent and kind friend, intercede with my Rawdon's beloved aunt forhim and the poor girl to whom all HIS NOBLE RACE have shown suchUNPARALLELED AFFECTION. Ask Miss Crawley to receive HER CHILDREN. Ican say no more, but blessings, blessings on all in the dear house Ileave, prays

Your affectionate and GRATEFUL Rebecca Crawley. Midnight. 

Just as Briggs had finished reading this affecting and interestingdocument, which reinstated her in her position as first confidante ofMiss Crawley, Mrs. Firkin entered the room. "Here's Mrs. Bute Crawleyjust arrived by the mail from Hampshire, and wants some tea; will youcome down and make breakfast, Miss?"

And to the surprise of Firkin, clasping her dressing-gown around her, the wisp of hair floating dishevelled behind her, the littlecurl-papers still sticking in bunches round her forehead, Briggs saileddown to Mrs. Bute with the letter in her hand containing the wonderfulnews. 

"Oh, Mrs. Firkin, " gasped Betty, "sech a business. Miss Sharp have agone and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney Green!"We would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, didnot the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse. 

When Mrs. Bute Crawley, numbed with midnight travelling, and warmingherself at the newly crackling parlour fire, heard from Miss Briggs theintelligence of the clandestine marriage, she declared it was quiteprovidential that she should have arrived at such a time to assist poordear Miss Crawley in supporting the shock--that Rebecca was an artfullittle hussy of whom she had always had her suspicions; and that as forRawdon Crawley, she never could account for his aunt's infatuationregarding him, and had long considered him a profligate, lost, andabandoned being. And this awful conduct, Mrs. Bute said, will have atleast this good effect, it will open poor dear Miss Crawley's eyes tothe real character of this wicked man. Then Mrs. Bute had acomfortable hot toast and tea; and as there was a vacant room in thehouse now, there was no need for her to remain at the Gloster CoffeeHouse where the Portsmouth mail had set her down, and whence sheordered Mr. Bowls's aide-de-camp the footman to bring away her trunks. 

Miss Crawley, be it known, did not leave her room until near noon--takingchocolate in bed in the morning, while Becky Sharp read theMorning Post to her, or otherwise amusing herself or dawdling. Theconspirators below agreed that they would spare the dear lady'sfeelings until she appeared in her drawing-room: meanwhile it wasannounced to her that Mrs. Bute Crawley had come up from Hampshire bythe mail, was staying at the Gloster, sent her love to Miss Crawley, and asked for breakfast with Miss Briggs. The arrival of Mrs. Bute, which would not have caused any extreme delight at another period, washailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being pleased at the notion of agossip with her sister-in-law regarding the late Lady Crawley, thefuneral arrangements pending, and Sir Pitt's abrupt proposal to Rebecca. 

It was not until the old lady was fairly ensconced in her usualarm-chair in the drawing-room, and the preliminary embraces and inquirieshad taken place between the ladies, that the conspirators thought itadvisable to submit her to the operation. Who has not admired theartifices and delicate approaches with which women "prepare" theirfriends for bad news? Miss Crawley's two friends made such anapparatus of mystery before they broke the intelligence to her, thatthey worked her up to the necessary degree of doubt and alarm. 

"And she refused Sir Pitt, my dear, dear Miss Crawley, prepare yourselffor it, " Mrs. Bute said, "because--because she couldn't help herself. "

"Of course there was a reason, " Miss Crawley answered. "She likedsomebody else. I told Briggs so yesterday. "

"LIKES somebody else!" Briggs gasped. "O my dear friend, she ismarried already. "

"Married already, " Mrs. Bute chimed in; and both sate with claspedhands looking from each other at their victim. 

"Send her to me, the instant she comes in. The little sly wretch: howdared she not tell me?" cried out Miss Crawley. 

"She won't come in soon. Prepare yourself, dear friend--she's gone outfor a long time--she's--she's gone altogether. "

"Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate? Send for her andhave her back; I desire that she come back, " the old lady said. 

"She decamped last night, Ma'am, " cried Mrs. Bute. 

"She left a letter for me, " Briggs exclaimed. "She's married to--"

"Prepare her, for heaven's sake. Don't torture her, my dear MissBriggs. "

"She's married to whom?" cries the spinster in a nervous fury. 

"To--to a relation of--"

"She refused Sir Pitt, " cried the victim. "Speak at once. Don't driveme mad. "

"O Ma'am--prepare her, Miss Briggs--she's married to Rawdon Crawley. "

"Rawdon married Rebecca--governess--nobod-- Get out of my house, youfool, you idiot--you stupid old Briggs--how dare you? You're in theplot--you made him marry, thinking that I'd leave my money from him--youdid, Martha, " the poor old lady screamed in hysteric sentences. 

"I, Ma'am, ask a member of this family to marry a drawing-master'sdaughter?"

"Her mother was a Montmorency, " cried out the old lady, pulling at thebell with all her might. 

"Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on the stage or worseherself, " said Mrs. Bute. 

Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint. They wereforced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted. One fitof hysterics succeeded another. The doctor was sent for--theapothecary arrived. Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her bedside. "Her relations ought to be round about her, " that amiable woman said. 

She had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a new person arrivedto whom it was also necessary to break the news. This was Sir Pitt. "Where's Becky?" he said, coming in. "Where's her traps? She's comingwith me to Queen's Crawley. "

"Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence regarding hersurreptitious union?" Briggs asked. 

"What's that to me?" Sir Pitt asked. "I know she's married. Thatmakes no odds. Tell her to come down at once, and not keep me. "

"Are you not aware, sir, " Miss Briggs asked, "that she has left ourroof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is nearly killed by theintelligence of Captain Rawdon's union with her?"

When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married to his son, hebroke out into a fury of language, which it would do no good to repeatin this place, as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out of theroom; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure of thefrenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled desire. 

One day after he went to Queen's Crawley, he burst like a madman intothe room she had used when there--dashed open her boxes with his foot, and flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics. Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter, took some of them. The children dressedthemselves and acted plays in the others. It was but a few days afterthe poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-place; and was laid, unwept and disregarded, in a vault full of strangers. 

"Suppose the old lady doesn't come to, " Rawdon said to his little wife, as they sate together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She hadbeen trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted herto a nicety; the new shawls became her wonderfully; the new ringsglittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist;"suppose she don't come round, eh, Becky?"

"I'LL make your fortune, " she said; and Delilah patted Samson's cheek. 

"You can do anything, " he said, kissing the little hand. "By Jove youcan; and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter, and dine, by Jove. "

CHAPTER XVII

How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano

If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire andSentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on thestrangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle andpathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one ofthose public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day inthe last page of the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very fewLondon people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, andall with a taste for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation andinterest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turnshall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes'assignees, or will be instructed by the executors, to offer to publiccompetition, the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellarof wines of Epicurus deceased. 

Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian, as hewitnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can'tbut feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives's remains are in thefamily vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciouslycommemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir, who isdisposing of his goods. What guest at Dives's table can pass thefamiliar house without a sigh?--the familiar house of which the lightsused to shine so cheerfully at seven o'clock, of which the hall-doorsopened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed upthe comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, untilit reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends!What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertainingthem. How witty people used to be here who were morose when they gotout of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered andhated each other everywhere else! He was pompous, but with such a cookwhat would one not swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but would notsuch wine make any conversation pleasant? We must get some of hisBurgundy at any price, the mourners cry at his club. "I got this boxat old Dives's sale, " Pincher says, handing it round, "one of LouisXV's mistresses--pretty thing, is it not?--sweet miniature, " and theytalk of the way in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune. 

How changed the house is, though! The front is patched over withbills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staringcapitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairswindow--a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps--thehall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrustprinted cards into your hand, and offer to bid. Old women and amateurshave invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, pokinginto the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobedrawers to and fro. Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring thelooking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new menage(Snob will brag for years that he has purchased this or that at Dives'ssale), and Mr. Hammerdown is sitting on the great mahoganydining-tables, in the dining-room below, waving the ivory hammer, andemploying all the artifices of eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason, despair; shouting to his people; satirizing Mr. Davids for hissluggishness; inspiriting Mr. Moss into action; imploring, commanding, bellowing, until down comes the hammer like fate, and we pass to thenext lot. O Dives, who would ever have thought, as we sat round thebroad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have seen sucha dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?

It was rather late in the sale. The excellent drawing-room furnitureby the best makers; the rare and famous wines selected, regardless ofcost, and with the well-known taste of the purchaser; the rich andcomplete set of family plate had been sold on the previous days. Certain of the best wines (which all had a great character amongamateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased for his master, whoknew them very well, by the butler of our friend John Osborne, Esquire, of Russell Square. A small portion of the most useful articles of theplate had been bought by some young stockbrokers from the City. Andnow the public being invited to the purchase of minor objects, ithappened that the orator on the table was expatiating on the merits ofa picture, which he sought to recommend to his audience: it was by nomeans so select or numerous a company as had attended the previous daysof the auction. 

"No. 369, " roared Mr. Hammerdown. "Portrait of a gentleman on anelephant. Who'll bid for the gentleman on the elephant? Lift up thepicture, Blowman, and let the company examine this lot. " A long, pale, military-looking gentleman, seated demurely at the mahogany table, could not help grinning as this valuable lot was shown by Mr. Blowman. "Turn the elephant to the Captain, Blowman. What shall we say, sir, for the elephant?" but the Captain, blushing in a very hurried anddiscomfited manner, turned away his head. 

"Shall we say twenty guineas for this work of art?--fifteen, five, nameyour own price. The gentleman without the elephant is worth fivepound. "

"I wonder it ain't come down with him, " said a professional wag, "he'sanyhow a precious big one"; at which (for the elephant-rider wasrepresented as of a very stout figure) there was a general giggle inthe room. 

"Don't be trying to deprecate the value of the lot, Mr. Moss, " Mr. Hammerdown said; "let the company examine it as a work of art--theattitude of the gallant animal quite according to natur'; the gentlemanin a nankeen jacket, his gun in his hand, is going to the chase; in thedistance a banyhann tree and a pagody, most likely resemblances of someinteresting spot in our famous Eastern possessions. How much for thislot? Come, gentlemen, don't keep me here all day. "

Some one bid five shillings, at which the military gentleman lookedtowards the quarter from which this splendid offer had come, and theresaw another officer with a young lady on his arm, who both appeared tobe highly amused with the scene, and to whom, finally, this lot wasknocked down for half a guinea. He at the table looked more surprisedand discomposed than ever when he spied this pair, and his head sankinto his military collar, and he turned his back upon them, so as toavoid them altogether. 

Of all the other articles which Mr. Hammerdown had the honour to offerfor public competition that day it is not our purpose to make mention, save of one only, a little square piano, which came down from the upperregions of the house (the state grand piano having been disposed ofpreviously); this the young lady tried with a rapid and skilful hand(making the officer blush and start again), and for it, when its turncame, her agent began to bid. 

But there was an opposition here. The Hebrew aide-de-camp in theservice of the officer at the table bid against the Hebrew gentlemanemployed by the elephant purchasers, and a brisk battle ensued overthis little piano, the combatants being greatly encouraged by Mr. Hammerdown. 

At last, when the competition had been prolonged for some time, theelephant captain and lady desisted from the race; and the hammer comingdown, the auctioneer said:--"Mr. Lewis, twenty-five, " and Mr. Lewis'schief thus became the proprietor of the little square piano. Havingeffected the purchase, he sate up as if he was greatly relieved, andthe unsuccessful competitors catching a glimpse of him at this moment, the lady said to her friend, "Why, Rawdon, it's Captain Dobbin. "

I suppose Becky was discontented with the new piano her husband hadhired for her, or perhaps the proprietors of that instrument hadfetched it away, declining farther credit, or perhaps she had aparticular attachment for the one which she had just tried to purchase, recollecting it in old days, when she used to play upon it, in thelittle sitting-room of our dear Amelia Sedley. 

The sale was at the old house in Russell Square, where we passed someevenings together at the beginning of this story. Good old John Sedleywas a ruined man. His name had been proclaimed as a defaulter on theStock Exchange, and his bankruptcy and commercial extermination hadfollowed. Mr. Osborne's butler came to buy some of the famous portwine to transfer to the cellars over the way. As for one dozenwell-manufactured silver spoons and forks at per oz. , and one dozendessert ditto ditto, there were three young stockbrokers (Messrs. Dale, Spiggot, and Dale, of Threadneedle Street, indeed), who, having haddealings with the old man, and kindnesses from him in days when he waskind to everybody with whom he dealt, sent this little spar out of thewreck with their love to good Mrs. Sedley; and with respect to thepiano, as it had been Amelia's, and as she might miss it and want onenow, and as Captain William Dobbin could no more play upon it than hecould dance on the tight rope, it is probable that he did not purchasethe instrument for his own use. 

In a word, it arrived that evening at a wonderful small cottage in astreet leading from the Fulham Road--one of those streets which havethe finest romantic names--(this was called St. Adelaide Villas, Anna-Maria Road West), where the houses look like baby-houses; wherethe people, looking out of the first-floor windows, must infallibly, asyou think, sit with their feet in the parlours; where the shrubs in thelittle gardens in front bloom with a perennial display of littlechildren's pinafores, little red socks, caps, &c. (polyandriapolygynia); whence you hear the sound of jingling spinets and womensinging; where little porter pots hang on the railings sunningthemselves; whither of evenings you see City clerks padding wearily:here it was that Mr. Clapp, the clerk of Mr. Sedley, had his domicile, and in this asylum the good old gentleman hid his head with his wifeand daughter when the crash came. 

Jos Sedley had acted as a man of his disposition would, when theannouncement of the family misfortune reached him. He did not come toLondon, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatevermoney was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old parents had nopresent poverty to fear. This done, Jos went on at the boarding-houseat Cheltenham pretty much as before. He drove his curricle; he drankhis claret; he played his rubber; he told his Indian stories, and theIrish widow consoled and flattered him as usual. His present of money, needful as it was, made little impression on his parents; and I haveheard Amelia say that the first day on which she saw her father lift uphis head after the failure was on the receipt of the packet of forksand spoons with the young stockbrokers' love, over which he burst outcrying like a child, being greatly more affected than even his wife, towhom the present was addressed. Edward Dale, the junior of the house, who purchased the spoons for the firm, was, in fact, very sweet uponAmelia, and offered for her in spite of all. He married Miss LouisaCutts (daughter of Higham and Cutts, the eminent cornfactors) with ahandsome fortune in 1820; and is now living in splendour, and with anumerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill. But we must notlet the recollections of this good fellow cause us to diverge from theprincipal history. 

I hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs. Crawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a visitto so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whomthey proposed to honour with a visit were not merely out of fashion, but out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no possiblemanner. Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortableold house where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked bybrokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures given up topublic desecration and plunder. A month after her flight, she hadbethought her of Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse-laugh, had expresseda perfect willingness to see young George Osborne again. "He's a veryagreeable acquaintance, Beck, " the wag added. "I'd like to sell himanother horse, Beck. I'd like to play a few more games at billiardswith him. He'd be what I call useful just now, Mrs. C. --ha, ha!" bywhich sort of speech it is not to be supposed that Rawdon Crawley had adeliberate desire to cheat Mr. Osborne at play, but only wished to takethat fair advantage of him which almost every sporting gentleman inVanity Fair considers to be his due from his neighbour. 

The old aunt was long in "coming-to. " A month had elapsed. Rawdon wasdenied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgment inthe house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened. MissCrawley never stirred out--she was unwell--and Mrs. Bute remained stilland never left her. Crawley and his wife both of them augured evilfrom the continued presence of Mrs. Bute. 

"Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us togetherat Queen's Crawley, " Rawdon said. 

"What an artful little woman!" ejaculated Rebecca. 

"Well, I don't regret it, if you don't, " the Captain cried, still in anamorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by way ofreply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidenceof her husband. 

"If he had but a little more brains, " she thought to herself, "I mightmake something of him"; but she never let him perceive the opinion shehad of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories ofthe stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatestinterest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and BobMartingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and TomCinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase. When he came home shewas alert and happy: when he went out she pressed him to go: when hestayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul incomfort. The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) arehypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchfulthey are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often thosefrank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude ordisarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide thedulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? Weaccept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we callthis pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of necessity ahumbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only ina different way. 

By these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley, found himselfconverted into a very happy and submissive married man. His formerhaunts knew him not. They asked about him once or twice at his clubs, but did not miss him much: in those booths of Vanity Fair people seldomdo miss each other. His secluded wife ever smiling and cheerful, hislittle comfortable lodgings, snug meals, and homely evenings, had allthe charms of novelty and secrecy. The marriage was not yet declaredto the world, or published in the Morning Post. All his creditorswould have come rushing on him in a body, had they known that he wasunited to a woman without fortune. "My relations won't cry fie uponme, " Becky said, with rather a bitter laugh; and she was quitecontented to wait until the old aunt should be reconciled, before sheclaimed her place in society. So she lived at Brompton, and meanwhilesaw no one, or only those few of her husband's male companions who wereadmitted into her little dining-room. These were all charmed with her. The little dinners, the laughing and chatting, the music afterwards, delighted all who participated in these enjoyments. Major Martingalenever thought about asking to see the marriage licence, CaptainCinqbars was perfectly enchanted with her skill in making punch. Andyoung Lieutenant Spatterdash (who was fond of piquet, and whom Crawleywould often invite) was evidently and quickly smitten by Mrs. Crawley;but her own circumspection and modesty never forsook her for a moment, and Crawley's reputation as a fire-eating and jealous warrior was afurther and complete defence to his little wife. 

There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, whonever have entered a lady's drawing-room; so that though RawdonCrawley's marriage might be talked about in his county, where, ofcourse, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or notheeded, or not talked about at all. He lived comfortably on credit. He had a large capital of debts, which laid out judiciously, will carrya man along for many years, and on which certain men about towncontrive to live a hundred times better than even men with ready moneycan do. Indeed who is there that walks London streets, but can pointout a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denyingthemselves nothing, and living on who knows what? We see JackThriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down PallMall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate. "How did thisbegin, " we say, "or where will it end?" "My dear fellow, " I heard Jackonce say, "I owe money in every capital in Europe. " The end must comesome day, but in the meantime Jack thrives as much as ever; people areglad enough to shake him by the hand, ignore the little dark storiesthat are whispered every now and then against him, and pronounce him agood-natured, jovial, reckless fellow. 

Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman ofthis order. Everything was plentiful in his house but ready money, ofwhich their menage pretty early felt the want; and reading the Gazetteone day, and coming upon the announcement of "Lieutenant G. Osborne tobe Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges, " Rawdon uttered thatsentiment regarding Amelia's lover, which ended in the visit to RussellSquare. 

When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin atthe sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallenRebecca's old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and suchinformation as they got was from a stray porter or broker at theauction. 

"Look at them with their hooked beaks, " Becky said, getting into thebuggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee. "They're likevultures after a battle. "

"Don't know. Never was in action, my dear. Ask Martingale; he was inSpain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes. "

"He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley, " Rebecca said; "I'm reallysorry he's gone wrong. "

"O stockbrokers--bankrupts--used to it, you know, " Rawdon replied, cutting a fly off the horse's ear. 

"I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon, " the wifecontinued sentimentally. "Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously dearfor that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia, when shecame from school. It only cost five-and-thirty then. "

"What-d'-ye-call'em--'Osborne, ' will cry off now, I suppose, since thefamily is smashed. How cut up your pretty little friend will be; hey, Becky?"

"I daresay she'll recover it, " Becky said with a smile--and they droveon and talked about something else. 

CHAPTER XVIII

Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought

Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famousevents and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. Whenthe eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flyingfrom Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of NotreDame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a littlecorner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might havethought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mightywings would pass unobserved there?

"Napoleon has landed at Cannes. " Such news might create a panic atVienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into acorner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together, while Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry, were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young lady inRussell Square, before whose door the watchman sang the hours when shewas asleep: who, if she strolled in the square, was guarded there bythe railings and the beadle: who, if she walked ever so short adistance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was followed by BlackSambo with an enormous cane: who was always cared for, dressed, put tobed, and watched over by ever so many guardian angels, with and withoutwages? Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful rush of thegreat Imperial struggle can't take place without affecting a poorlittle harmless girl of eighteen, who is occupied in billing andcooing, or working muslin collars in Russell Square? You too, kindly, homely flower!--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep youdown, here, although cowering under the shelter of Holborn? Yes;Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor little Emmy Sedley'shappiness forms, somehow, part of it. 

In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down with that fatalnews. All his speculations had of late gone wrong with the lucklessold gentleman. Ventures had failed; merchants had broken; funds hadrisen when he calculated they would fall. What need to particularize?If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruinis. Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel. Everything seemed to goon as usual in the quiet, opulent house; the good-natured mistresspursuing, quite unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easyavocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender thought, and quite regardless of all the world besides, when that final crashcame, under which the worthy family fell. 

One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party; the Osbornes hadgiven one, and she must not be behindhand; John Sedley, who had comehome very late from the City, sate silent at the chimney side, whilehis wife was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room ailing andlow-spirited. "She's not happy, " the mother went on. "George Osborneneglects her. I've no patience with the airs of those people. Thegirls have not been in the house these three weeks; and George has beentwice in town without coming. Edward Dale saw him at the Opera. Edward would marry her I'm sure: and there's Captain Dobbin who, Ithink, would--only I hate all army men. Such a dandy as George hasbecome. With his military airs, indeed! We must show some folks thatwe're as good as they. Only give Edward Dale any encouragement, andyou'll see. We must have a party, Mr. S. Why don't you speak, John?Shall I say Tuesday fortnight? Why don't you answer? Good God, John, what has happened?"

John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his wife, who ran tohim. He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, "We'reruined, Mary. We've got the world to begin over again, dear. It'sbest that you should know all, and at once. " As he spoke, he trembledin every limb, and almost fell. He thought the news would haveoverpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a hard word. But it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the shock was to her. When he sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the officeof consoler. She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put itround her neck: she called him her John--her dear John--her oldman--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherentlove and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wroughtthis sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheeredand solaced his over-burdened soul. 

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate together, andpoor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his lossesand embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest friends, themanly kindness of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in ageneral confession--only once did the faithful wife give way to emotion. 

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart, " she said. 

The father had forgotten the poor girl. She was lying, awake andunhappy, overhead. In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone. To how many people can any one tell all? Who will beopen where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those whonever can understand? Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary. She had noconfidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide. Shecould not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-besisters seemed every day more strange to her. And she had misgivingsand fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she wasalways secretly brooding over them. 

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthyand faithful to her, though she knew otherwise. How many a thing hadshe said, and got no echo from him. How many suspicions of selfishnessand indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome. Towhom could the poor little martyr tell these daily struggles andtortures? Her hero himself only half understood her. She did not dareto own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she hadgiven her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden wastoo modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman torecall it. We are Turks with the affections of our women; and havemade them subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroadliberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguisethem instead of veils and yakmaks. But their souls must be seen byonly one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain athome as our slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us. 

So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart, when in themonth of March, Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and LouisXVIII fled, and all Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and oldJohn Sedley was ruined. 

We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker through thoselast pangs and agonies of ruin through which he passed before hiscommercial demise befell. They declared him at the Stock Exchange; hewas absent from his house of business: his bills were protested: hisact of bankruptcy formal. The house and furniture of Russell Squarewere seized and sold up, and he and his family were thrust away, as wehave seen, to hide their heads where they might. 

John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic establishment whohave appeared now and anon in our pages and of whom he was now forcedby poverty to take leave. The wages of those worthy people weredischarged with that punctuality which men frequently show who only owein great sums--they were sorry to leave good places--but they did notbreak their hearts at parting from their adored master and mistress. Amelia's maid was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resignedto better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town. Black Sambo, with the infatuation of his profession, determined on setting up apublic-house. Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop indeed, who had seen thebirth of Jos and Amelia, and the wooing of John Sedley and his wife, was for staying by them without wages, having amassed a considerablesum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen people into theirnew and humble place of refuge, where she tended them and grumbledagainst them for a while. 

Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors which nowensued, and harassed the feelings of the humiliated old gentleman soseverely, that in six weeks he oldened more than he had done forfifteen years before--the most determined and obstinate seemed to beJohn Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne, whom he hadset up in life--who was under a hundred obligations to him--and whoseson was to marry Sedley's daughter. Any one of these circumstanceswould account for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition. 

When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as itwere, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere strangerwould be. To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude insuch a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is notthat you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of aspeculation--no, no--it is that your partner has led you into it by thebasest treachery and with the most sinister motives. From a mere senseof consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is avillain--otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself. 

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined tobe severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed arealtogether honest, very likely. They conceal something; theyexaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs;say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a smilingface (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy--are ready tolay hold of any pretext for delay or of any money, so as to stave offthe inevitable ruin a few days longer. "Down with such dishonesty, "says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy. "Youfool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm good sense says to the manthat is drowning. "You villain, why do you shrink from plunging intothe irretrievable Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battlingin that black gulf. Who has not remarked the readiness with which theclosest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each otherof cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue. 

Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad andirritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated. Finally, he had to break off the match between Sedley's daughter andhis son; and as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl'shappiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was necessary toshow the strongest reasons for the rupture, and for John Osborne toprove John Sedley to be a very bad character indeed. 

At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself with asavageness and scorn towards Sedley, which almost succeeded in breakingthe heart of that ruined bankrupt man. On George's intercourse withAmelia he put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions ifhe broke his commands, and vilipending the poor innocent girl as thebasest and most artful of vixens. One of the great conditions of angerand hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hatedobject, in order, as we said, to be consistent. 

When the great crash came--the announcement of ruin, and the departurefrom Russell Square, and the declaration that all was over between herand George--all over between her and love, her and happiness, her andfaith in the world--a brutal letter from John Osborne told her in a fewcurt lines that her father's conduct had been of such a nature that allengagements between the families were at an end--when the final awardcame, it did not shock her so much as her parents, as her mother ratherexpected (for John Sedley himself was entirely prostrate in the ruinsof his own affairs and shattered honour). Amelia took the news verypalely and calmly. It was only the confirmation of the dark presageswhich had long gone before. It was the mere reading of thesentence--of the crime she had long ago been guilty--the crime ofloving wrongly, too violently, against reason. She told no more of herthoughts now than she had before. She seemed scarcely more unhappy nowwhen convinced all hope was over, than before when she felt but darednot confess that it was gone. So she changed from the large house tothe small one without any mark or difference; remained in her littleroom for the most part; pined silently; and died away day by day. I donot mean to say that all females are so. My dear Miss Bullock, I donot think your heart would break in this way. You are a strong-mindedyoung woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that minewould; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived. But thereare some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, and delicate, andtender. 

Whenever old John Sedley thought of the affair between George andAmelia, or alluded to it, it was with bitterness almost as great as Mr. Osborne himself had shown. He cursed Osborne and his family asheartless, wicked, and ungrateful. No power on earth, he swore, wouldinduce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain, and heordered Emmy to banish George from her mind, and to return all thepresents and letters which she had ever had from him. 

She promised acquiescence, and tried to obey. She put up the two orthree trinkets: and, as for the letters, she drew them out of the placewhere she kept them; and read them over--as if she did not know them byheart already: but she could not part with them. That effort was toomuch for her; she placed them back in her bosom again--as you have seena woman nurse a child that is dead. Young Amelia felt that she woulddie or lose her senses outright, if torn away from this lastconsolation. How she used to blush and lighten up when those letterscame! How she used to trip away with a beating heart, so that shemight read unseen! If they were cold, yet how perversely this fondlittle soul interpreted them into warmth. If they were short orselfish, what excuses she found for the writer!

It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded. She lived in her past life--every letter seemed to recall somecircumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks andtones, his dress, what he said and how--these relics and remembrancesof dead affection were all that were left her in the world. And thebusiness of her life, was--to watch the corpse of Love. 

To death she looked with inexpressible longing. Then, she thought, Ishall always be able to follow him. I am not praising her conduct orsetting her up as a model for Miss Bullock to imitate. Miss B. Knowshow to regulate her feelings better than this poor little creature. Miss B. Would never have committed herself as that imprudent Amelia haddone; pledged her love irretrievably; confessed her heart away, and gotback nothing--only a brittle promise which was snapt and worthless in amoment. A long engagement is a partnership which one party is free tokeep or to break, but which involves all the capital of the other. 

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy ofloving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feelvery little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest andconfiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselvesmarried as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids andconfidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make youuncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any requiredmoment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and berespected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair. 

If Amelia could have heard the comments regarding her which were madein the circle from which her father's ruin had just driven her, shewould have seen what her own crimes were, and how entirely hercharacter was jeopardised. Such criminal imprudence Mrs. Smith neverknew of; such horrid familiarities Mrs. Brown had always condemned, andthe end might be a warning to HER daughters. "Captain Osborne, ofcourse, could not marry a bankrupt's daughter, " the Misses Dobbin said. "It was quite enough to have been swindled by the father. As for thatlittle Amelia, her folly had really passed all--"

"All what?" Captain Dobbin roared out. "Haven't they been engaged eversince they were children? Wasn't it as good as a marriage? Dare anysoul on earth breathe a word against the sweetest, the purest, thetenderest, the most angelical of young women?"

"La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with US. We're not men. Wecan't fight you, " Miss Jane said. "We've said nothing against MissSedley: but that her conduct throughout was MOST IMPRUDENT, not to callit by any worse name; and that her parents are people who certainlymerit their misfortunes. "

"Hadn't you better, now that Miss Sedley is free, propose for heryourself, William?" Miss Ann asked sarcastically. "It would be a mosteligible family connection. He! he!"

"I marry her!" Dobbin said, blushing very much, and talking quick. "Ifyou are so ready, young ladies, to chop and change, do you suppose thatshe is? Laugh and sneer at that angel. She can't hear it; and she'smiserable and unfortunate, and deserves to be laughed at. Go onjoking, Ann. You're the wit of the family, and the others like to hearit. "

"I must tell you again we're not in a barrack, William, " Miss Annremarked. 

"In a barrack, by Jove--I wish anybody in a barrack would say what youdo, " cried out this uproused British lion. "I should like to hear aman breathe a word against her, by Jupiter. But men don't talk in thisway, Ann: it's only women, who get together and hiss, and shriek, andcackle. There, get away--don't begin to cry. I only said you were acouple of geese, " Will Dobbin said, perceiving Miss Ann's pink eyeswere beginning to moisten as usual. "Well, you're not geese, you'reswans--anything you like, only do, do leave Miss Sedley alone. "

Anything like William's infatuation about that silly little flirting, ogling thing was never known, the mamma and sisters agreed together inthinking: and they trembled lest, her engagement being off withOsborne, she should take up immediately her other admirer and Captain. In which forebodings these worthy young women no doubt judged accordingto the best of their experience; or rather (for as yet they had had noopportunities of marrying or of jilting) according to their own notionsof right and wrong. 

"It is a mercy, Mamma, that the regiment is ordered abroad, " the girlssaid. "THIS danger, at any rate, is spared our brother. "

Such, indeed, was the fact; and so it is that the French Emperor comesin to perform a part in this domestic comedy of Vanity Fair which weare now playing, and which would never have been enacted without theintervention of this august mute personage. It was he that ruined theBourbons and Mr. John Sedley. It was he whose arrival in his capitalcalled up all France in arms to defend him there; and all Europe tooust him. While the French nation and army were swearing fidelity roundthe eagles in the Champ de Mars, four mighty European hosts weregetting in motion for the great chasse a l'aigle; and one of these wasa British army, of which two heroes of ours, Captain Dobbin and CaptainOsborne, formed a portion. 

The news of Napoleon's escape and landing was received by the gallant--th with a fiery delight and enthusiasm, which everybody canunderstand who knows that famous corps. From the colonel to thesmallest drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope andambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor as for apersonal kindness in coming to disturb the peace of Europe. Now wasthe time the --th had so long panted for, to show their comrades inarms that they could fight as well as the Peninsular veterans, and thatall the pluck and valour of the --th had not been killed by the WestIndies and the yellow fever. Stubble and Spooney looked to get theircompanies without purchase. Before the end of the campaign (which sheresolved to share), Mrs. Major O'Dowd hoped to write herself Mrs. Colonel O'Dowd, C. B. Our two friends (Dobbin and Osborne) were quiteas much excited as the rest: and each in his way--Mr. Dobbin veryquietly, Mr. Osborne very loudly and energetically--was bent upon doinghis duty, and gaining his share of honour and distinction. 

The agitation thrilling through the country and army in consequence ofthis news was so great, that private matters were little heeded: andhence probably George Osborne, just gazetted to his company, busy withpreparations for the march, which must come inevitably, and panting forfurther promotion--was not so much affected by other incidents whichwould have interested him at a more quiet period. He was not, it mustbe confessed, very much cast down by good old Mr. Sedley's catastrophe. He tried his new uniform, which became him very handsomely, on the daywhen the first meeting of the creditors of the unfortunate gentlemantook place. His father told him of the wicked, rascally, shamefulconduct of the bankrupt, reminded him of what he had said about Amelia, and that their connection was broken off for ever; and gave him thatevening a good sum of money to pay for the new clothes and epaulets inwhich he looked so well. Money was always useful to this free-handedyoung fellow, and he took it without many words. The bills were up inthe Sedley house, where he had passed so many, many happy hours. Hecould see them as he walked from home that night (to the OldSlaughters', where he put up when in town) shining white in the moon. That comfortable home was shut, then, upon Amelia and her parents:where had they taken refuge? The thought of their ruin affected him nota little. He was very melancholy that night in the coffee-room at theSlaughters'; and drank a good deal, as his comrades remarked there. 

Dobbin came in presently, cautioned him about the drink, which he onlytook, he said, because he was deuced low; but when his friend began toput to him clumsy inquiries, and asked him for news in a significantmanner, Osborne declined entering into conversation with him, avowing, however, that he was devilish disturbed and unhappy. 

Three days afterwards, Dobbin found Osborne in his room at thebarracks--his head on the table, a number of papers about, the youngCaptain evidently in a state of great despondency. "She--she's sent meback some things I gave her--some damned trinkets. Look here!" Therewas a little packet directed in the well-known hand to Captain GeorgeOsborne, and some things lying about--a ring, a silver knife he hadbought, as a boy, for her at a fair; a gold chain, and a locket withhair in it. "It's all over, " said he, with a groan of sickeningremorse. "Look, Will, you may read it if you like. "

There was a little letter of a few lines, to which he pointed, whichsaid:

My papa has ordered me to return to you these presents, which you madein happier days to me; and I am to write to you for the last time. Ithink, I know you feel as much as I do the blow which has come upon us. It is I that absolve you from an engagement which is impossible in ourpresent misery. I am sure you had no share in it, or in the cruelsuspicions of Mr. Osborne, which are the hardest of all our griefs tobear. Farewell. Farewell. I pray God to strengthen me to bear thisand other calamities, and to bless you always. A. 

I shall often play upon the piano--your piano. It was like you to sendit. 

Dobbin was very soft-hearted. The sight of women and children in painalways used to melt him. The idea of Amelia broken-hearted and lonelytore that good-natured soul with anguish. And he broke out into anemotion, which anybody who likes may consider unmanly. He swore thatAmelia was an angel, to which Osborne said aye with all his heart. He, too, had been reviewing the history of their lives--and had seen herfrom her childhood to her present age, so sweet, so innocent, socharmingly simple, and artlessly fond and tender. 

What a pang it was to lose all that: to have had it and not prized it!A thousand homely scenes and recollections crowded on him--in which healways saw her good and beautiful. And for himself, he blushed withremorse and shame, as the remembrance of his own selfishness andindifference contrasted with that perfect purity. For a while, glory, war, everything was forgotten, and the pair of friends talked about heronly. 

"Where are they?" Osborne asked, after a long talk, and a longpause--and, in truth, with no little shame at thinking that he hadtaken no steps to follow her. "Where are they? There's no address tothe note. "

Dobbin knew. He had not merely sent the piano; but had written a noteto Mrs. Sedley, and asked permission to come and see her--and he hadseen her, and Amelia too, yesterday, before he came down to Chatham;and, what is more, he had brought that farewell letter and packet whichhad so moved them. 

The good-natured fellow had found Mrs. Sedley only too willing toreceive him, and greatly agitated by the arrival of the piano, which, as she conjectured, MUST have come from George, and was a signal ofamity on his part. Captain Dobbin did not correct this error of theworthy lady, but listened to all her story of complaints andmisfortunes with great sympathy--condoled with her losses andprivations, and agreed in reprehending the cruel conduct of Mr. Osbornetowards his first benefactor. When she had eased her overflowing bosomsomewhat, and poured forth many of her sorrows, he had the courage toask actually to see Amelia, who was above in her room as usual, andwhom her mother led trembling downstairs. 

Her appearance was so ghastly, and her look of despair so pathetic, that honest William Dobbin was frightened as he beheld it; and read themost fatal forebodings in that pale fixed face. After sitting in hiscompany a minute or two, she put the packet into his hand, and said, "Take this to Captain Osborne, if you please, and--and I hope he'squite well--and it was very kind of you to come and see us--and we likeour new house very much. And I--I think I'll go upstairs, Mamma, forI'm not very strong. " And with this, and a curtsey and a smile, thepoor child went her way. The mother, as she led her up, cast backlooks of anguish towards Dobbin. The good fellow wanted no suchappeal. He loved her himself too fondly for that. Inexpressiblegrief, and pity, and terror pursued him, and he came away as if he wasa criminal after seeing her. 

When Osborne heard that his friend had found her, he made hot andanxious inquiries regarding the poor child. How was she? How did shelook? What did she say? His comrade took his hand, and looked him inthe face. 

"George, she's dying, " William Dobbin said--and could speak no more. 

There was a buxom Irish servant-girl, who performed all the duties ofthe little house where the Sedley family had found refuge: and thisgirl had in vain, on many previous days, striven to give Amelia aid orconsolation. Emmy was much too sad to answer, or even to be aware ofthe attempts the other was making in her favour. 

Four hours after the talk between Dobbin and Osborne, this servant-maidcame into Amelia's room, where she sate as usual, broodingsilently over her letters--her little treasures. The girl, smiling, and looking arch and happy, made many trials to attract poor Emmy'sattention, who, however, took no heed of her. 

"Miss Emmy, " said the girl. 

"I'm coming, " Emmy said, not looking round. 

"There's a message, " the maid went on. "There'ssomething--somebody--sure, here's a new letter for you--don't be readingthem old ones any more. " And she gave her a letter, which Emmy took, andread. 

"I must see you, " the letter said. "Dearest Emmy--dearestlove--dearest wife, come to me. "

George and her mother were outside, waiting until she had read theletter. 

CHAPTER XIX

Miss Crawley at Nurse

We have seen how Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, as soon as any event ofimportance to the Crawley family came to her knowledge, felt bound tocommunicate it to Mrs. Bute Crawley, at the Rectory; and have beforementioned how particularly kind and attentive that good-natured ladywas to Miss Crawley's confidential servant. She had been a graciousfriend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had secured thelatter's good-will by a number of those attentions and promises, whichcost so little in the making, and are yet so valuable and agreeable tothe recipient. Indeed every good economist and manager of a householdmust know how cheap and yet how amiable these professions are, and whata flavour they give to the most homely dish in life. Who was theblundering idiot who said that "fine words butter no parsnips"? Halfthe parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no othersauce. As the immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for ahalf-penny than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetablesand meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasingphrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in thehands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits oftensicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of finewords, and be always eager for more of the same food. Mrs. Bute hadtold Briggs and Firkin so often of the depth of her affection for them;and what she would do, if she had Miss Crawley's fortune, for friendsso excellent and attached, that the ladies in question had the deepestregard for her; and felt as much gratitude and confidence as if Mrs. Bute had loaded them with the most expensive favours. 

Rawdon Crawley, on the other hand, like a selfish heavy dragoon as hewas, never took the least trouble to conciliate his aunt's aides-de-camp, showed his contempt for the pair with entire frankness--madeFirkin pull off his boots on one occasion--sent her out in the rain onignominious messages--and if he gave her a guinea, flung it to her asif it were a box on the ear. As his aunt, too, made a butt of Briggs, the Captain followed the example, and levelled his jokes at her--jokesabout as delicate as a kick from his charger. Whereas, Mrs. Buteconsulted her in matters of taste or difficulty, admired her poetry, and by a thousand acts of kindness and politeness, showed herappreciation of Briggs; and if she made Firkin a twopenny-halfpennypresent, accompanied it with so many compliments, that thetwopence-half-penny was transmuted into gold in the heart of thegrateful waiting-maid, who, besides, was looking forwards quitecontentedly to some prodigious benefit which must happen to her on theday when Mrs. Bute came into her fortune. 

The different conduct of these two people is pointed out respectfullyto the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, Isay to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment bothpoint-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know thereis a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance ofsaying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in hisestate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so dealwith your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it maysprout into a prodigious bit of timber. 

In a word, during Rawdon Crawley's prosperity, he was only obeyed withsulky acquiescence; when his disgrace came, there was nobody to help orpity him. Whereas, when Mrs. Bute took the command at Miss Crawley'shouse, the garrison there were charmed to act under such a leader, expecting all sorts of promotion from her promises, her generosity, andher kind words. 

That he would consider himself beaten, after one defeat, and make noattempt to regain the position he had lost, Mrs. Bute Crawley neverallowed herself to suppose. She knew Rebecca to be too clever andspirited and desperate a woman to submit without a struggle; and feltthat she must prepare for that combat, and be incessantly watchfulagainst assault; or mine, or surprise. 

In the first place, though she held the town, was she sure of theprincipal inhabitant? Would Miss Crawley herself hold out; and had shenot a secret longing to welcome back the ousted adversary? The oldlady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her. Mrs. Bute could notdisguise from herself the fact that none of her party could socontribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady. "My girls' singing, after that little odious governess's, I know is unbearable, " the candidRector's wife owned to herself. "She always used to go to sleep whenMartha and Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners andpoor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her. IfI took her to the Rectory, she would grow angry with us all, and fly, Iknow she would; and might fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutchesagain, and be the victim of that little viper of a Sharp. Meanwhile, it is clear to me that she is exceedingly unwell, and cannot move forsome weeks, at any rate; during which we must think of some plan toprotect her from the arts of those unprincipled people. "

In the very best-of moments, if anybody told Miss Crawley that she was, or looked ill, the trembling old lady sent off for her doctor; and Idaresay she was very unwell after the sudden family event, which mightserve to shake stronger nerves than hers. At least, Mrs. Bute thoughtit was her duty to inform the physician, and the apothecary, and thedame-de-compagnie, and the domestics, that Miss Crawley was in a mostcritical state, and that they were to act accordingly. She had thestreet laid knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day;and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybodyentered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, thatit frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could notlook without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as thelatter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside. They seemed tolighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she movedabout the room on velvet paws like a cat. There Miss Crawley lay fordays--ever so many days--Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her: fornights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by thestealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinklingeyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the drearydarkened ceiling. Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such aregimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim? It has beensaid that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerableinhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and moralsas Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtookher, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and anutter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner. 

Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of placein mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of somenovelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, whenit is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness. But, without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that thebustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fairexhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into privatelife, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismalrepentances sometimes overcome him. Recollection of the best ordainedbanquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the mostbecoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way toconsole faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period ofexistence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphantdivisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of verysmall account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brotherwearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick ofgrinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dearfriends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you throughthe Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we shouldall come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and beperfectly miserable in private. 

"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders, " Mrs. ButeCrawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under presentcircumstances, to this unhappy old lady! He might make her repent ofher shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, andcast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and hisfamily; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and thetwo boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance whichtheir relatives can give them. "

And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs. Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a properabhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle'swife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served tocondemn a whole regiment of young officers. If a man has committedwrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point hiserrors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs. Bute showed aperfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history. She had allthe particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in whichRawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain. Sheknew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house atOxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched acard in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at theCocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer andperverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds. She describedwith the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whomhe had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour andpoverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition. She knewthe poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the meanshifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astoundingfalsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, andthe ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices. She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her thewhole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christianwoman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse orcompunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, verylikely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself uponher resolute manner of performing it. Yes, if a man's character is tobe abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do thebusiness. And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretchof a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, andthat all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on hisfriends' parts. 

Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share ofMrs. Bute's kind inquiries. This indefatigable pursuer of truth(having given strict orders that the door was to be denied to allemissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage, anddrove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House, ChiswickMall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of CaptainRawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got sundry strangeparticulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and early history. Thefriend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give. MissJemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters. This one was from a spunging-house: that entreated an advance: anotherwas full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception by the ladies ofChiswick: and the last document from the unlucky artist's pen was thatin which, from his dying bed, he recommended his orphan child to MissPinkerton's protection. There were juvenile letters and petitions fromRebecca, too, in the collection, imploring aid for her father ordeclaring her own gratitude. Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are nobetter satires than letters. Take a bundle of your dear friend's often years back--your dear friend whom you hate now. Look at a file ofyour sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled aboutthe twenty-pound legacy! Get down the round-hand scrawls of your sonwho has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or aparcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, whichwere sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob--yourmistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows, love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly they read after awhile! There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destructionof every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after acertain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes whoadvertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with theirwicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one thatfaded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else. 

From Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track ofSharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greek Street, which thedefunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the landlady inwhite satin, and of the husband in brass buttons, done by Sharp in lieuof a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlour walls. Mrs. Stokeswas a communicative person, and quickly told all she knew about Mr. Sharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how good-natured and amusing;how he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady'shorror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry hiswife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wildvixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun andmimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and wasknown in all the studios in the quarter--in brief, Mrs. Bute got such afull account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behaviour aswould scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that suchinquiries were being made concerning her. 

Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit. Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl. She had dancedherself. She had been a model to the painters. She was brought up asbecame her mother's daughter. She drank gin with her father, &c. &c. It was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to beinferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair wasirremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever noticethem again. 

These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together inPark Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which shefortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon andhis wife would lay to Miss Crawley. 

But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that shewas too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made MissCrawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalidsuccumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that thevictim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fellin her way. Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women whoorder everything for everybody, and know so much better than any personconcerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes speculateupon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extremeconsequences resulting from their overstrained authority. 

Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in theworld, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep, dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carriedher conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managedher into her coffin. She pointed out her sacrifices and their resultsone day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump. 

"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump, " she said, "no efforts of mine have beenwanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephewhas laid on the bed of sickness. I never shrink from personaldiscomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself. "

"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable, " Mr. Clump says, with a low bow; "but--"

"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep, health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was inthe smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him? No. "

"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best ofmothers; but--"

"As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, Ihumbly trust that my principles are good, " Mrs. Bute said, with a happysolemnity of conviction; "and, as long as Nature supports me, never, never, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty. Others may bringthat grey head with sorrow to the bed of sickness (here Mrs. Bute, waving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-colouredfronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room), but I willnever quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump! I fear, I know, that the couch needsspiritual as well as medical consolation. "

"What I was going to observe, my dear Madam, "--here the resolute Clumponce more interposed with a bland air--"what I was going to observewhen you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much honour, wasthat I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our kind friend, andsacrifice your own health too prodigally in her favour. "

"I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of myhusband's family, " Mrs. Bute interposed. 

"Yes, Madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs Bute Crawley to be amartyr, " Clump said gallantly. "Dr Squills and myself have bothconsidered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you maysuppose. We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events haveagitated her. "

"Her nephew will come to perdition, " Mrs. Crawley cried. 

"Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dearMadam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under thepressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that ouramiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bednecessary. She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to herdepression. She should have change, fresh air, gaiety; the mostdelightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia, " Mr. Clump said, grinning andshowing his handsome teeth. "Persuade her to rise, dear Madam; dragher from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon her taking littledrives. They will restore the roses too to your cheeks, if I may sospeak to Mrs. Bute Crawley. "

"The sight of her horrid nephew casually in the Park, where I am toldthe wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes, " Mrs. Butesaid (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), "wouldcause her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bedagain. She must not go out, Mr. Clump. She shall not go out as longas I remain to watch over her; And as for my health, what matters it?I give it cheerfully, sir. I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty. "

"Upon my word, Madam, " Mr. Clump now said bluntly, "I won't answer forher life if she remains locked up in that dark room. She is so nervousthat we may lose her any day; and if you wish Captain Crawley to be herheir, I warn you frankly, Madam, that you are doing your very best toserve him. "

"Gracious mercy! is her life in danger?" Mrs. Bute cried. "Why, why, Mr. Clump, did you not inform me sooner?"

The night before, Mr. Clump and Dr. Squills had had a consultation(over a bottle of wine at the house of Sir Lapin Warren, whose lady wasabout to present him with a thirteenth blessing), regarding MissCrawley and her case. 

"What a little harpy that woman from Hampshire is, Clump, " Squillsremarked, "that has seized upon old Tilly Crawley. Devilish goodMadeira. "

"What a fool Rawdon Crawley has been, " Clump replied, "to go and marrya governess! There was something about the girl, too. "

"Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development, "Squills remarked. "There is something about her; and Crawley was afool, Squills. "

"A d---- fool--always was, " the apothecary replied. 

"Of course the old girl will fling him over, " said the physician, andafter a pause added, "She'll cut up well, I suppose. "

"Cut up, " says Clump with a grin; "I wouldn't have her cut up for twohundred a year. "

"That Hampshire woman will kill her in two months, Clump, my boy, ifshe stops about her, " Dr. Squills said. "Old woman; full feeder;nervous subject; palpitation of the heart; pressure on the brain;apoplexy; off she goes. Get her up, Clump; get her out: or I wouldn'tgive many weeks' purchase for your two hundred a year. " And it wasacting upon this hint that the worthy apothecary spoke with so muchcandour to Mrs. Bute Crawley. 

Having the old lady under her hand: in bed: with nobody near, Mrs. Butehad made more than one assault upon her, to induce her to alter herwill. But Miss Crawley's usual terrors regarding death increasedgreatly when such dismal propositions were made to her, and Mrs. Butesaw that she must get her patient into cheerful spirits and healthbefore she could hope to attain the pious object which she had in view. Whither to take her was the next puzzle. The only place where she isnot likely to meet those odious Rawdons is at church, and that won'tamuse her, Mrs. Bute justly felt. "We must go and visit our beautifulsuburbs of London, " she then thought. "I hear they are the mostpicturesque in the world"; and so she had a sudden interest forHampstead, and Hornsey, and found that Dulwich had great charms forher, and getting her victim into her carriage, drove her to thoserustic spots, beguiling the little journeys with conversations aboutRawdon and his wife, and telling every story to the old lady whichcould add to her indignation against this pair of reprobates. 

Perhaps Mrs. Bute pulled the string unnecessarily tight. For though sheworked up Miss Crawley to a proper dislike of her disobedient nephew, the invalid had a great hatred and secret terror of her victimizer, andpanted to escape from her. After a brief space, she rebelled againstHighgate and Hornsey utterly. She would go into the Park. Mrs. Buteknew they would meet the abominable Rawdon there, and she was right. One day in the ring, Rawdon's stanhope came in sight; Rebecca wasseated by him. In the enemy's equipage Miss Crawley occupied her usualplace, with Mrs. Bute on her left, the poodle and Miss Briggs on theback seat. It was a nervous moment, and Rebecca's heart beat quick asshe recognized the carriage; and as the two vehicles crossed each otherin a line, she clasped her hands, and looked towards the spinster witha face of agonized attachment and devotion. Rawdon himself trembled, and his face grew purple behind his dyed mustachios. Only old Briggswas moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervouslytowards her old friends. Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely turnedtowards the Serpentine. Mrs. Bute happened to be in ecstasies with thepoodle, and was calling him a little darling, and a sweet little zoggy, and a pretty pet. The carriages moved on, each in his line. 

"Done, by Jove, " Rawdon said to his wife. 

"Try once more, Rawdon, " Rebecca answered. "Could not you lock yourwheels into theirs, dearest?"

Rawdon had not the heart for that manoeuvre. When the carriages metagain, he stood up in his stanhope; he raised his hand ready to doffhis hat; he looked with all his eyes. But this time Miss Crawley'sface was not turned away; she and Mrs. Bute looked him full in theface, and cut their nephew pitilessly. He sank back in his seat withan oath, and striking out of the ring, dashed away desperatelyhomewards. 

It was a gallant and decided triumph for Mrs. Bute. But she felt thedanger of many such meetings, as she saw the evident nervousness ofMiss Crawley; and she determined that it was most necessary for herdear friend's health, that they should leave town for a while, andrecommended Brighton very strongly. 

CHAPTER XX

In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen

Without knowing how, Captain William Dobbin found himself the greatpromoter, arranger, and manager of the match between George Osborne andAmelia. But for him it never would have taken place: he could not butconfess as much to himself, and smiled rather bitterly as he thoughtthat he of all men in the world should be the person upon whom the careof this marriage had fallen. But though indeed the conducting of thisnegotiation was about as painful a task as could be set to him, yetwhen he had a duty to perform, Captain Dobbin was accustomed to gothrough it without many words or much hesitation: and, having made uphis mind completely, that if Miss Sedley was balked of her husband shewould die of the disappointment, he was determined to use all his bestendeavours to keep her alive. 

I forbear to enter into minute particulars of the interview betweenGeorge and Amelia, when the former was brought back to the feet (orshould we venture to say the arms?) of his young mistress by theintervention of his friend honest William. A much harder heart thanGeorge's would have melted at the sight of that sweet face so sadlyravaged by grief and despair, and at the simple tender accents in whichshe told her little broken-hearted story: but as she did not faint whenher mother, trembling, brought Osborne to her; and as she only gaverelief to her overcharged grief, by laying her head on her lover'sshoulder and there weeping for a while the most tender, copious, andrefreshing tears--old Mrs. Sedley, too greatly relieved, thought it wasbest to leave the young persons to themselves; and so quitted Emmycrying over George's hand, and kissing it humbly, as if he were hersupreme chief and master, and as if she were quite a guilty andunworthy person needing every favour and grace from him. 

This prostration and sweet unrepining obedience exquisitely touched andflattered George Osborne. He saw a slave before him in that simpleyielding faithful creature, and his soul within him thrilled secretlysomehow at the knowledge of his power. He would be generous-minded, Sultan as he was, and raise up this kneeling Esther and make a queen ofher: besides, her sadness and beauty touched him as much as hersubmission, and so he cheered her, and raised her up and forgave her, so to speak. All her hopes and feelings, which were dying andwithering, this her sun having been removed from her, bloomed again andat once, its light being restored. You would scarcely have recognisedthe beaming little face upon Amelia's pillow that night as the one thatwas laid there the night before, so wan, so lifeless, so careless ofall round about. The honest Irish maid-servant, delighted with thechange, asked leave to kiss the face that had grown all of a sudden sorosy. Amelia put her arms round the girl's neck and kissed her withall her heart, like a child. She was little more. She had that nighta sweet refreshing sleep, like one--and what a spring of inexpressiblehappiness as she woke in the morning sunshine!

"He will be here again to-day, " Amelia thought. "He is the greatestand best of men. " And the fact is, that George thought he was one ofthe generousest creatures alive: and that he was making a tremendoussacrifice in marrying this young creature. 

While she and Osborne were having their delightful tete-a-tete abovestairs, old Mrs. Sedley and Captain Dobbin were conversing below uponthe state of the affairs, and the chances and future arrangements ofthe young people. Mrs. Sedley having brought the two lovers togetherand left them embracing each other with all their might, like a truewoman, was of opinion that no power on earth would induce Mr. Sedley toconsent to the match between his daughter and the son of a man who hadso shamefully, wickedly, and monstrously treated him. And she told along story about happier days and their earlier splendours, whenOsborne lived in a very humble way in the New Road, and his wife wastoo glad to receive some of Jos's little baby things, with which Mrs. Sedley accommodated her at the birth of one of Osborne's own children. The fiendish ingratitude of that man, she was sure, had broken Mr. S. 'sheart: and as for a marriage, he would never, never, never, neverconsent. 

"They must run away together, Ma'am, " Dobbin said, laughing, "andfollow the example of Captain Rawdon Crawley, and Miss Emmy's friendthe little governess. " Was it possible? Well she never! Mrs. Sedleywas all excitement about this news. She wished that Blenkinsop werehere to hear it: Blenkinsop always mistrusted that Miss Sharp. -- Whatan escape Jos had had! and she described the already well-knownlove-passages between Rebecca and the Collector of Boggley Wollah. 

It was not, however, Mr. Sedley's wrath which Dobbin feared, so much asthat of the other parent concerned, and he owned that he had a veryconsiderable doubt and anxiety respecting the behaviour of theblack-browed old tyrant of a Russia merchant in Russell Square. He hasforbidden the match peremptorily, Dobbin thought. He knew what a savagedetermined man Osborne was, and how he stuck by his word. "The onlychance George has of reconcilement, " argued his friend, "is bydistinguishing himself in the coming campaign. If he dies they both gotogether. If he fails in distinction--what then? He has some moneyfrom his mother, I have heard enough to purchase his majority--or hemust sell out and go and dig in Canada, or rough it in a cottage in thecountry. " With such a partner Dobbin thought he would not mindSiberia--and, strange to say, this absurd and utterly imprudent youngfellow never for a moment considered that the want of means to keep anice carriage and horses, and of an income which should enable itspossessors to entertain their friends genteelly, ought to operate asbars to the union of George and Miss Sedley. 

It was these weighty considerations which made him think too that themarriage should take place as quickly as possible. Was he anxioushimself, I wonder, to have it over?--as people, when death hasoccurred, like to press forward the funeral, or when a parting isresolved upon, hasten it. It is certain that Mr. Dobbin, having takenthe matter in hand, was most extraordinarily eager in the conduct ofit. He urged on George the necessity of immediate action: he showedthe chances of reconciliation with his father, which a favourablemention of his name in the Gazette must bring about. If need were hewould go himself and brave both the fathers in the business. At allevents, he besought George to go through with it before the orderscame, which everybody expected, for the departure of the regiment fromEngland on foreign service. 

Bent upon these hymeneal projects, and with the applause and consent ofMrs. Sedley, who did not care to break the matter personally to herhusband, Mr. Dobbin went to seek John Sedley at his house of call inthe City, the Tapioca Coffee-house, where, since his own offices wereshut up, and fate had overtaken him, the poor broken-down oldgentleman used to betake himself daily, and write letters and receivethem, and tie them up into mysterious bundles, several of which hecarried in the flaps of his coat. I don't know anything more dismalthan that business and bustle and mystery of a ruined man: thoseletters from the wealthy which he shows you: those worn greasydocuments promising support and offering condolence which he placeswistfully before you, and on which he builds his hopes of restorationand future fortune. My beloved reader has no doubt in the course of hisexperience been waylaid by many such a luckless companion. He takesyou into the corner; he has his bundle of papers out of his gaping coatpocket; and the tape off, and the string in his mouth, and thefavourite letters selected and laid before you; and who does not knowthe sad eager half-crazy look which he fixes on you with his hopelesseyes?

Changed into a man of this sort, Dobbin found the once florid, jovial, and prosperous John Sedley. His coat, that used to be so glossy andtrim, was white at the seams, and the buttons showed the copper. Hisface had fallen in, and was unshorn; his frill and neckcloth hung limpunder his bagging waistcoat. When he used to treat the boys in olddays at a coffee-house, he would shout and laugh louder than anybodythere, and have all the waiters skipping round him; it was quitepainful to see how humble and civil he was to John of the Tapioca, ablear-eyed old attendant in dingy stockings and cracked pumps, whosebusiness it was to serve glasses of wafers, and bumpers of ink inpewter, and slices of paper to the frequenters of this dreary house ofentertainment, where nothing else seemed to be consumed. As forWilliam Dobbin, whom he had tipped repeatedly in his youth, and who hadbeen the old gentleman's butt on a thousand occasions, old Sedley gavehis hand to him in a very hesitating humble manner now, and called him"Sir. " A feeling of shame and remorse took possession of William Dobbinas the broken old man so received and addressed him, as if he himselfhad been somehow guilty of the misfortunes which had brought Sedley solow. 

"I am very glad to see you, Captain Dobbin, sir, " says he, after askulking look or two at his visitor (whose lanky figure and militaryappearance caused some excitement likewise to twinkle in the blear eyesof the waiter in the cracked dancing pumps, and awakened the old ladyin black, who dozed among the mouldy old coffee-cups in the bar). "Howis the worthy alderman, and my lady, your excellent mother, sir?" Helooked round at the waiter as he said, "My lady, " as much as to say, "Hark ye, John, I have friends still, and persons of rank andreputation, too. " "Are you come to do anything in my way, sir? Myyoung friends Dale and Spiggot do all my business for me now, until mynew offices are ready; for I'm only here temporarily, you know, Captain. What can we do for you, sir? Will you like to take anything?"

Dobbin, with a great deal of hesitation and stuttering, protested thathe was not in the least hungry or thirsty; that he had no business totransact; that he only came to ask if Mr. Sedley was well, and to shakehands with an old friend; and, he added, with a desperate perversion oftruth, "My mother is very well--that is, she's been very unwell, and isonly waiting for the first fine day to go out and call upon Mrs. Sedley. How is Mrs. Sedley, sir? I hope she's quite well. " And herehe paused, reflecting on his own consummate hypocrisy; for the day wasas fine, and the sunshine as bright as it ever is in Coffin Court, where the Tapioca Coffee-house is situated: and Mr. Dobbin rememberedthat he had seen Mrs. Sedley himself only an hour before, having drivenOsborne down to Fulham in his gig, and left him there tete-a-tete withMiss Amelia. 

"My wife will be very happy to see her ladyship, " Sedley replied, pulling out his papers. "I've a very kind letter here from yourfather, sir, and beg my respectful compliments to him. Lady D. Willfind us in rather a smaller house than we were accustomed to receiveour friends in; but it's snug, and the change of air does good to mydaughter, who was suffering in town rather--you remember little Emmy, sir?--yes, suffering a good deal. " The old gentleman's eyes werewandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else, as hesate thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape. 

"You're a military man, " he went on; "I ask you, Bill Dobbin, could anyman ever have speculated upon the return of that Corsican scoundrelfrom Elba? When the allied sovereigns were here last year, and we gave'em that dinner in the City, sir, and we saw the Temple of Concord, andthe fireworks, and the Chinese bridge in St. James's Park, could anysensible man suppose that peace wasn't really concluded, after we'dactually sung Te Deum for it, sir? I ask you, William, could I supposethat the Emperor of Austria was a damned traitor--a traitor, andnothing more? I don't mince words--a double-faced infernal traitor andschemer, who meant to have his son-in-law back all along. And I saythat the escape of Boney from Elba was a damned imposition and plot, sir, in which half the powers of Europe were concerned, to bring thefunds down, and to ruin this country. That's why I'm here, William. That's why my name's in the Gazette. Why, sir?--because I trusted theEmperor of Russia and the Prince Regent. Look here. Look at mypapers. Look what the funds were on the 1st of March--what the Frenchfives were when I bought for the count. And what they're at now. There was collusion, sir, or that villain never would have escaped. Where was the English Commissioner who allowed him to get away? Heought to be shot, sir--brought to a court-martial, and shot, by Jove. "

"We're going to hunt Boney out, sir, " Dobbin said, rather alarmed atthe fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell, and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist. "We are goingto hunt him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expectmarching orders every day. "

"Give him no quarter. Bring back the villain's head, sir. Shoot thecoward down, sir, " Sedley roared. "I'd enlist myself, by--; but I'm abroken old man--ruined by that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel ofswindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are rollingin their carriages now, " he added, with a break in his voice. 

Dobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once kind oldfriend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving with senile anger. Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are thechiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair. 

"Yes, " he continued, "there are some vipers that you warm, and theysting you afterwards. There are some beggars that you put onhorseback, and they're the first to ride you down. You know whom Imean, William Dobbin, my boy. I mean a purse-proud villain in RussellSquare, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom I pray and hope to seea beggar as he was when I befriended him. "

"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend George, " Dobbinsaid, anxious to come to his point. "The quarrel between you and hisfather has cut him up a great deal, sir. Indeed, I'm the bearer of amessage from him. "

"O, THAT'S your errand, is it?" cried the old man, jumping up. "What!perhaps he condoles with me, does he? Very kind of him, thestiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West End swagger. He'shankering about my house, is he still? If my son had the courage of aman, he'd shoot him. He's as big a villain as his father. I won'thave his name mentioned in my house. I curse the day that ever I lethim into it; and I'd rather see my daughter dead at my feet thanmarried to him. "

"His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir. Your daughter'slove for him is as much your doing as his. Who are you, that you areto play with two young people's affections and break their hearts atyour will?"

"Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off, " old Sedleycried out. "It's I that forbid it. That family and mine are separatedfor ever. I'm fallen low, but not so low as that: no, no. And so youmay tell the whole race--son, and father and sisters, and all. "

"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the right toseparate those two, " Dobbin answered in a low voice; "and that if youdon't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marrywithout it. There's no reason she should die or live miserably becauseyou are wrong-headed. To my thinking, she's just as much married as ifthe banns had been read in all the churches in London. And what betteranswer can there be to Osborne's charges against you, as charges thereare, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry yourdaughter?"

A light of something like satisfaction seemed to break over old Sedleyas this point was put to him: but he still persisted that with hisconsent the marriage between Amelia and George should never take place. 

"We must do it without, " Dobbin said, smiling, and told Mr. Sedley, ashe had told Mrs. Sedley in the day, before, the story of Rebecca'selopement with Captain Crawley. It evidently amused the old gentleman. "You're terrible fellows, you Captains, " said he, tying up his papers;and his face wore something like a smile upon it, to the astonishmentof the blear-eyed waiter who now entered, and had never seen such anexpression upon Sedley's countenance since he had used the dismalcoffee-house. 

The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps, theold gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and Dobbinparted pretty good friends. 

"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs, " George said, laughing. "How they must set off her complexion! A perfectillumination it must be when her jewels are on her neck. Herjet-black hair is as curly as Sambo's. I dare say she wore a nose ringwhen she went to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knotshe would look a perfect Belle Sauvage. "

George, in conversation with Amelia, was rallying the appearance of ayoung lady of whom his father and sisters had lately made theacquaintance, and who was an object of vast respect to the RussellSquare family. She was reported to have I don't know how manyplantations in the West Indies; a deal of money in the funds; and threestars to her name in the East India stockholders' list. She had amansion in Surrey, and a house in Portland Place. The name of the richWest India heiress had been mentioned with applause in the MorningPost. Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, her relative, "chaperoned" her, and kept her house. She was just from school, whereshe had completed her education, and George and his sisters had met herat an evening party at old Hulker's house, Devonshire Place (Hulker, Bullock, and Co. Were long the correspondents of her house in the WestIndies), and the girls had made the most cordial advances to her, whichthe heiress had received with great good humour. An orphan in herposition--with her money--so interesting! the Misses Osborne said. They were full of their new friend when they returned from the Hulkerball to Miss Wirt, their companion; they had made arrangements forcontinually meeting, and had the carriage and drove to see her the verynext day. Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, a relation ofLord Binkie, and always talking of him, struck the dear unsophisticatedgirls as rather haughty, and too much inclined to talk about her greatrelations: but Rhoda was everything they could wish--the frankest, kindest, most agreeable creature--wanting a little polish, but sogood-natured. The girls Christian-named each other at once. 

"You should have seen her dress for court, Emmy, " Osborne cried, laughing. "She came to my sisters to show it off, before she waspresented in state by my Lady Binkie, the Haggistoun's kinswoman. She'srelated to every one, that Haggistoun. Her diamonds blazed out likeVauxhall on the night we were there. (Do you remember Vauxhall, Emmy, and Jos singing to his dearest diddle diddle darling?) Diamonds andmahogany, my dear! think what an advantageous contrast--and the whitefeathers in her hair--I mean in her wool. She had earrings likechandeliers; you might have lighted 'em up, by Jove--and a yellow satintrain that streeled after her like the tail of a cornet. "

"How old is she?" asked Emmy, to whom George was rattling awayregarding this dark paragon, on the morning of their reunion--rattlingaway as no other man in the world surely could. 

"Why the Black Princess, though she has only just left school, must betwo or three and twenty. And you should see the hand she writes! Mrs. Colonel Haggistoun usually writes her letters, but in a moment ofconfidence, she put pen to paper for my sisters; she spelt satinsatting, and Saint James's, Saint Jams. "

"Why, surely it must be Miss Swartz, the parlour boarder, " Emmy said, remembering that good-natured young mulatto girl, who had been sohysterically affected when Amelia left Miss Pinkerton's academy. 

"The very name, " George said. "Her father was a German Jew--aslave-owner they say--connected with the Cannibal Islands in some wayor other. He died last year, and Miss Pinkerton has finished hereducation. She can play two pieces on the piano; she knows threesongs; she can write when Mrs. Haggistoun is by to spell for her; andJane and Maria already have got to love her as a sister. "

"I wish they would have loved me, " said Emmy, wistfully. "They werealways very cold to me. "

"My dear child, they would have loved you if you had had two hundredthousand pounds, " George replied. "That is the way in which they havebeen brought up. Ours is a ready-money society. We live among bankersand City big-wigs, and be hanged to them, and every man, as he talks toyou, is jingling his guineas in his pocket. There is that jackass FredBullock is going to marry Maria--there's Goldmore, the East IndiaDirector, there's Dipley, in the tallow trade--OUR trade, " George said, with an uneasy laugh and a blush. "Curse the whole pack ofmoney-grubbing vulgarians! I fall asleep at their great heavy dinners. I feel ashamed in my father's great stupid parties. I've beenaccustomed to live with gentlemen, and men of the world and fashion, Emmy, not with a parcel of turtle-fed tradesmen. Dear little woman, you are the only person of our set who ever looked, or thought, orspoke like a lady: and you do it because you're an angel and can't helpit. Don't remonstrate. You are the only lady. Didn't Miss Crawleyremark it, who has lived in the best company in Europe? And as forCrawley, of the Life Guards, hang it, he's a fine fellow: and I likehim for marrying the girl he had chosen. "

Amelia admired Mr. Crawley very much, too, for this; and trustedRebecca would be happy with him, and hoped (with a laugh) Jos would beconsoled. And so the pair went on prattling, as in quite early days. Amelia's confidence being perfectly restored to her, though sheexpressed a great deal of pretty jealousy about Miss Swartz, andprofessed to be dreadfully frightened--like a hypocrite as she was--lestGeorge should forget her for the heiress and her money and herestates in Saint Kitt's. But the fact is, she was a great deal toohappy to have fears or doubts or misgivings of any sort: and havingGeorge at her side again, was not afraid of any heiress or beauty, orindeed of any sort of danger. 

When Captain Dobbin came back in the afternoon to these people--whichhe did with a great deal of sympathy for them--it did his heart good tosee how Amelia had grown young again--how she laughed, and chirped, andsang familiar old songs at the piano, which were only interrupted bythe bell from without proclaiming Mr. Sedley's return from the City, before whom George received a signal to retreat. 

Beyond the first smile of recognition--and even that was an hypocrisy, for she thought his arrival rather provoking--Miss Sedley did not oncenotice Dobbin during his visit. But he was content, so that he saw herhappy; and thankful to have been the means of making her so. 

CHAPTER XXI

A Quarrel About an Heiress

Love may be felt for any young lady endowed with such qualities as MissSwartz possessed; and a great dream of ambition entered into old Mr. Osborne's soul, which she was to realize. He encouraged, with theutmost enthusiasm and friendliness, his daughters' amiable attachmentto the young heiress, and protested that it gave him the sincerestpleasure as a father to see the love of his girls so well disposed. 

"You won't find, " he would say to Miss Rhoda, "that splendour and rankto which you are accustomed at the West End, my dear Miss, at ourhumble mansion in Russell Square. My daughters are plain, disinterested girls, but their hearts are in the right place, andthey've conceived an attachment for you which does them honour--I say, which does them honour. I'm a plain, simple, humble Britishmerchant--an honest one, as my respected friends Hulker and Bullockwill vouch, who were the correspondents of your late lamented father. You'll find us a united, simple, happy, and I think I may sayrespected, family--a plain table, a plain people, but a warm welcome, my dear Miss Rhoda--Rhoda, let me say, for my heart warms to you, itdoes really. I'm a frank man, and I like you. A glass of Champagne!Hicks, Champagne to Miss Swartz. "

There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he said, and thatthe girls were quite earnest in their protestations of affection forMiss Swartz. People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quitenaturally. If the simplest people are disposed to look not a littlekindly on great Prosperity (for I defy any member of the British publicto say that the notion of Wealth has not something awful and pleasingto him; and you, if you are told that the man next you at dinner hasgot half a million, not to look at him with a certain interest)--if thesimple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlingsregard it! Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money. Theirkind sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessorsof it. I know some respectable people who don't consider themselves atliberty to indulge in friendship for any individual who has not acertain competency, or place in society. They give a loose to theirfeelings on proper occasions. And the proof is, that the major part ofthe Osborne family, who had not, in fifteen years, been able to get upa hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss Swartz in thecourse of a single evening as the most romantic advocate of friendshipat first sight could desire. 

What a match for George she'd be (the sisters and Miss Wirt agreed), and how much better than that insignificant little Amelia! Such adashing young fellow as he is, with his good looks, rank, andaccomplishments, would be the very husband for her. Visions of ballsin Portland Place, presentations at Court, and introductions to halfthe peerage, filled the minds of the young ladies; who talked ofnothing but George and his grand acquaintances to their beloved newfriend. 

Old Osborne thought she would be a great match, too, for his son. Heshould leave the army; he should go into Parliament; he should cut afigure in the fashion and in the state. His blood boiled with honestBritish exultation, as he saw the name of Osborne ennobled in theperson of his son, and thought that he might be the progenitor of aglorious line of baronets. He worked in the City and on 'Change, untilhe knew everything relating to the fortune of the heiress, how hermoney was placed, and where her estates lay. Young Fred Bullock, oneof his chief informants, would have liked to make a bid for her himself(it was so the young banker expressed it), only he was booked to MariaOsborne. But not being able to secure her as a wife, the disinterestedFred quite approved of her as a sister-in-law. "Let George cut indirectly and win her, " was his advice. "Strike while the iron's hot, you know--while she's fresh to the town: in a few weeks some d----fellow from the West End will come in with a title and a rottenrent-roll and cut all us City men out, as Lord Fitzrufus did last yearwith Miss Grogram, who was actually engaged to Podder, of Podder &Brown's. The sooner it is done the better, Mr. Osborne; them's mysentiments, " the wag said; though, when Osborne had left the bankparlour, Mr. Bullock remembered Amelia, and what a pretty girl she was, and how attached to George Osborne; and he gave up at least ten secondsof his valuable time to regretting the misfortune which had befallenthat unlucky young woman. 

While thus George Osborne's good feelings, and his good friend andgenius, Dobbin, were carrying back the truant to Amelia's feet, George's parent and sisters were arranging this splendid match for him, which they never dreamed he would resist. 

When the elder Osborne gave what he called "a hint, " there was nopossibility for the most obtuse to mistake his meaning. He calledkicking a footman downstairs a hint to the latter to leave his service. With his usual frankness and delicacy he told Mrs. Haggistoun that hewould give her a cheque for five thousand pounds on the day his son wasmarried to her ward; and called that proposal a hint, and considered ita very dexterous piece of diplomacy. He gave George finally suchanother hint regarding the heiress; and ordered him to marry her out ofhand, as he would have ordered his butler to draw a cork, or his clerkto write a letter. 

This imperative hint disturbed George a good deal. He was in the veryfirst enthusiasm and delight of his second courtship of Amelia, whichwas inexpressibly sweet to him. The contrast of her manners andappearance with those of the heiress, made the idea of a union with thelatter appear doubly ludicrous and odious. Carriages and opera-boxes, thought he; fancy being seen in them by the side of such a mahoganycharmer as that! Add to all that the junior Osborne was quite asobstinate as the senior: when he wanted a thing, quite as firm in hisresolution to get it; and quite as violent when angered, as his fatherin his most stern moments. 

On the first day when his father formally gave him the hint that he wasto place his affections at Miss Swartz's feet, George temporised withthe old gentleman. "You should have thought of the matter sooner, sir, " he said. "It can't be done now, when we're expecting every day togo on foreign service. Wait till my return, if I do return"; and thenhe represented, that the time when the regiment was daily expecting toquit England, was exceedingly ill-chosen: that the few days or weeksduring which they were still to remain at home, must be devoted tobusiness and not to love-making: time enough for that when he came homewith his majority; "for, I promise you, " said he, with a satisfied air, "that one way or other you shall read the name of George Osborne in theGazette. "

The father's reply to this was founded upon the information which hehad got in the City: that the West End chaps would infallibly catchhold of the heiress if any delay took place: that if he didn't marryMiss S. , he might at least have an engagement in writing, to come intoeffect when he returned to England; and that a man who could get tenthousand a year by staying at home, was a fool to risk his life abroad. 

"So that you would have me shown up as a coward, sir, and our namedishonoured for the sake of Miss Swartz's money, " George interposed. 

This remark staggered the old gentleman; but as he had to reply to it, and as his mind was nevertheless made up, he said, "You will dine hereto-morrow, sir, and every day Miss Swartz comes, you will be here topay your respects to her. If you want for money, call upon Mr. Chopper. " Thus a new obstacle was in George's way, to interfere withhis plans regarding Amelia; and about which he and Dobbin had more thanone confidential consultation. His friend's opinion respecting theline of conduct which he ought to pursue, we know already. And as forOsborne, when he was once bent on a thing, a fresh obstacle or two onlyrendered him the more resolute. 

The dark object of the conspiracy into which the chiefs of the Osbornefamily had entered, was quite ignorant of all their plans regarding her(which, strange to say, her friend and chaperon did not divulge), and, taking all the young ladies' flattery for genuine sentiment, and being, as we have before had occasion to show, of a very warm and impetuousnature, responded to their affection with quite a tropical ardour. Andif the truth may be told, I dare say that she too had some selfishattraction in the Russell Square house; and in a word, thought GeorgeOsborne a very nice young man. His whiskers had made an impression uponher, on the very first night she beheld them at the ball at Messrs. Hulkers; and, as we know, she was not the first woman who had beencharmed by them. George had an air at once swaggering and melancholy, languid and fierce. He looked like a man who had passions, secrets, and private harrowing griefs and adventures. His voice was rich anddeep. He would say it was a warm evening, or ask his partner to takean ice, with a tone as sad and confidential as if he were breaking hermother's death to her, or preluding a declaration of love. He trampledover all the young bucks of his father's circle, and was the hero amongthose third-rate men. Some few sneered at him and hated him. Some, like Dobbin, fanatically admired him. And his whiskers had begun to dotheir work, and to curl themselves round the affections of Miss Swartz. 

Whenever there was a chance of meeting him in Russell Square, thatsimple and good-natured young woman was quite in a flurry to see herdear Misses Osborne. She went to great expenses in new gowns, andbracelets, and bonnets, and in prodigious feathers. She adorned herperson with her utmost skill to please the Conqueror, and exhibited allher simple accomplishments to win his favour. The girls would ask her, with the greatest gravity, for a little music, and she would sing herthree songs and play her two little pieces as often as ever they asked, and with an always increasing pleasure to herself. During thesedelectable entertainments, Miss Wirt and the chaperon sate by, andconned over the peerage, and talked about the nobility. 

The day after George had his hint from his father, and a short timebefore the hour of dinner, he was lolling upon a sofa in thedrawing-room in a very becoming and perfectly natural attitude ofmelancholy. He had been, at his father's request, to Mr. Chopper inthe City (the old-gentleman, though he gave great sums to his son, would never specify any fixed allowance for him, and rewarded him onlyas he was in the humour). He had then been to pass three hours withAmelia, his dear little Amelia, at Fulham; and he came home to find hissisters spread in starched muslin in the drawing-room, the dowagerscackling in the background, and honest Swartz in her favouriteamber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings, flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about aselegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day. 

The girls, after vain attempts to engage him in conversation, talkedabout fashions and the last drawing-room until he was perfectly sick oftheir chatter. He contrasted their behaviour with little Emmy's--theirshrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes and theirelbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements and modestgraces. Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had beenaccustomed to sit. Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her ambersatin lap. Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes rolledabout. She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and thinkingherself charming. Anything so becoming as the satin the sisters hadnever seen. 

"Dammy, " George said to a confidential friend, "she looked like a Chinadoll, which has nothing to do all day but to grin and wag its head. ByJove, Will, it was all I I could do to prevent myself from throwing thesofa-cushion at her. " He restrained that exhibition of sentiment, however. 

The sisters began to play the Battle of Prague. "Stop that d----thing, " George howled out in a fury from the sofa. "It makes me mad. You play us something, Miss Swartz, do. Sing something, anything butthe Battle of Prague. "

"Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?" MissSwartz asked. 

"That sweet thing from the Cabinet, " the sisters said. 

"We've had that, " replied the misanthrope on the sofa

"I can sing 'Fluvy du Tajy, '" Swartz said, in a meek voice, "if I hadthe words. " It was the last of the worthy young woman's collection. 

"O, 'Fleuve du Tage, '" Miss Maria cried; "we have the song, " and wentoff to fetch the book in which it was. 

Now it happened that this song, then in the height of the fashion, hadbeen given to the young ladies by a young friend of theirs, whose namewas on the title, and Miss Swartz, having concluded the ditty withGeorge's applause (for he remembered that it was a favourite ofAmelia's), was hoping for an encore perhaps, and fiddling with theleaves of the music, when her eye fell upon the title, and she saw"Amelia Sedley" written in the comer. 

"Lor!" cried Miss Swartz, spinning swiftly round on the music-stool, "is it my Amelia? Amelia that was at Miss P. 's at Hammersmith? I knowit is. It's her, and-- Tell me about her--where is she?"

"Don't mention her, " Miss Maria Osborne said hastily. "Her family hasdisgraced itself. Her father cheated Papa, and as for her, she isnever to be mentioned HERE. " This was Miss Maria's return for George'srudeness about the Battle of Prague. 

"Are you a friend of Amelia's?" George said, bouncing up. "God blessyou for it, Miss Swartz. Don't believe what the girls say. SHE'S notto blame at any rate. She's the best--"

"You know you're not to speak about her, George, " cried Jane. "Papaforbids it. "

"Who's to prevent me?" George cried out. "I will speak of her. I sayshe's the best, the kindest, the gentlest, the sweetest girl inEngland; and that, bankrupt or no, my sisters are not fit to holdcandles to her. If you like her, go and see her, Miss Swartz; shewants friends now; and I say, God bless everybody who befriends her. Anybody who speaks kindly of her is my friend; anybody who speaksagainst her is my enemy. Thank you, Miss Swartz"; and he went up andwrung her hand. 

"George! George!" one of the sisters cried imploringly. 

"I say, " George said fiercely, "I thank everybody who loves AmeliaSed--" He stopped. Old Osborne was in the room with a face livid withrage, and eyes like hot coals. 

Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, hewas not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallyinginstantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with anotherso indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man quailed inhis turn, and looked away. He felt that the tussle was coming. "Mrs. Haggistoun, let me take you down to dinner, " he said. "Give your arm toMiss Swartz, George, " and they marched. 

"Miss Swartz, I love Amelia, and we've been engaged almost all ourlives, " Osborne said to his partner; and during all the dinner, Georgerattled on with a volubility which surprised himself, and made hisfather doubly nervous for the fight which was to take place as soon asthe ladies were gone. 

The difference between the pair was, that while the father was violentand a bully, the son had thrice the nerve and courage of the parent, and could not merely make an attack, but resist it; and finding thatthe moment was now come when the contest between him and his father wasto be decided, he took his dinner with perfect coolness and appetitebefore the engagement began. Old Osborne, on the contrary, wasnervous, and drank much. He floundered in his conversation with theladies, his neighbours: George's coolness only rendering him moreangry. It made him half mad to see the calm way in which George, flapping his napkin, and with a swaggering bow, opened the door for theladies to leave the room; and filling himself a glass of wine, smackedit, and looked his father full in the face, as if to say, "Gentlemen ofthe Guard, fire first. " The old man also took a supply of ammunition, but his decanter clinked against the glass as he tried to fill it. 

After giving a great heave, and with a purple choking face, he thenbegan. "How dare you, sir, mention that person's name before MissSwartz to-day, in my drawing-room? I ask you, sir, how dare you do it?"

"Stop, sir, " says George, "don't say dare, sir. Dare isn't a word tobe used to a Captain in the British Army. "

"I shall say what I like to my son, sir. I can cut him off with ashilling if I like. I can make him a beggar if I like. I WILL say whatI like, " the elder said. 

"I'm a gentleman though I AM your son, sir, " George answered haughtily. "Any communications which you have to make to me, or any orders whichyou may please to give, I beg may be couched in that kind of languagewhich I am accustomed to hear. "

Whenever the lad assumed his haughty manner, it always created eithergreat awe or great irritation in the parent. Old Osborne stood insecret terror of his son as a better gentleman than himself; andperhaps my readers may have remarked in their experience of this VanityFair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so muchmistrusts as that of a gentleman. 

"My father didn't give me the education you have had, nor theadvantages you have had, nor the money you have had. If I had kept thecompany SOME FOLKS have had through MY MEANS, perhaps my son wouldn'thave any reason to brag, sir, of his SUPERIORITY and WEST END AIRS(these words were uttered in the elder Osborne's most sarcastic tones). But it wasn't considered the part of a gentleman, in MY time, for a manto insult his father. If I'd done any such thing, mine would havekicked me downstairs, sir. "

"I never insulted you, sir. I said I begged you to remember your sonwas a gentleman as well as yourself. I know very well that you give meplenty of money, " said George (fingering a bundle of notes which he hadgot in the morning from Mr. Chopper). "You tell it me often enough, sir. There's no fear of my forgetting it. "

"I wish you'd remember other things as well, sir, " the sire answered. "I wish you'd remember that in this house--so long as you choose toHONOUR it with your COMPANY, Captain--I'm the master, and that name, and that that--that you--that I say--"

"That what, sir?" George asked, with scarcely a sneer, filling anotherglass of claret. 

"----!" burst out his father with a screaming oath--"that the name ofthose Sedleys never be mentioned here, sir--not one of the whole damnedlot of 'em, sir. "

"It wasn't I, sir, that introduced Miss Sedley's name. It was mysisters who spoke ill of her to Miss Swartz; and by Jove I'll defendher wherever I go. Nobody shall speak lightly of that name in mypresence. Our family has done her quite enough injury already, Ithink, and may leave off reviling her now she's down. I'll shoot anyman but you who says a word against her. "

"Go on, sir, go on, " the old gentleman said, his eyes starting out ofhis head. 

"Go on about what, sir? about the way in which we've treated that angelof a girl? Who told me to love her? It was your doing. I might havechosen elsewhere, and looked higher, perhaps, than your society: but Iobeyed you. And now that her heart's mine you give me orders to flingit away, and punish her, kill her perhaps--for the faults of otherpeople. It's a shame, by Heavens, " said George, working himself upinto passion and enthusiasm as he proceeded, "to play at fast and loosewith a young girl's affections--and with such an angel as that--one sosuperior to the people amongst whom she lived, that she might haveexcited envy, only she was so good and gentle, that it's a wonderanybody dared to hate her. If I desert her, sir, do you suppose sheforgets me?"

"I ain't going to have any of this dam sentimental nonsense and humbughere, sir, " the father cried out. "There shall be no beggar-marriagesin my family. If you choose to fling away eight thousand a year, whichyou may have for the asking, you may do it: but by Jove you take yourpack and walk out of this house, sir. Will you do as I tell you, oncefor all, sir, or will you not?"

"Marry that mulatto woman?" George said, pulling up his shirt-collars. "I don't like the colour, sir. Ask the black that sweeps oppositeFleet Market, sir. I'm not going to marry a Hottentot Venus. "

Mr. Osborne pulled frantically at the cord by which he was accustomedto summon the butler when he wanted wine--and almost black in the face, ordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne. 

"I've done it, " said George, coming into the Slaughters' an hourafterwards, looking very pale. 

"What, my boy?" says Dobbin. 

George told what had passed between his father and himself. 

"I'll marry her to-morrow, " he said with an oath. "I love her moreevery day, Dobbin. "

CHAPTER XXII

A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon

Enemies the most obstinate and courageous can't hold out againststarvation; so the elder Osborne felt himself pretty easy about hisadversary in the encounter we have just described; and as soon asGeorge's supplies fell short, confidently expected his unconditionalsubmission. It was unlucky, to be sure, that the lad should havesecured a stock of provisions on the very day when the first encountertook place; but this relief was only temporary, old Osborne thought, and would but delay George's surrender. No communication passedbetween father and son for some days. The former was sulky at thissilence, but not disquieted; for, as he said, he knew where he couldput the screw upon George, and only waited the result of thatoperation. He told the sisters the upshot of the dispute between them, but ordered them to take no notice of the matter, and welcome George onhis return as if nothing had happened. His cover was laid as usualevery day, and perhaps the old gentleman rather anxiously expected him;but he never came. Some one inquired at the Slaughters' regarding him, where it was said that he and his friend Captain Dobbin had left town. 

One gusty, raw day at the end of April--the rain whipping the pavementof that ancient street where the old Slaughters' Coffee-house was oncesituated--George Osborne came into the coffee-room, looking veryhaggard and pale; although dressed rather smartly in a blue coat andbrass buttons, and a neat buff waistcoat of the fashion of those days. Here was his friend Captain Dobbin, in blue and brass too, havingabandoned the military frock and French-grey trousers, which were theusual coverings of his lanky person. 

Dobbin had been in the coffee-room for an hour or more. He had triedall the papers, but could not read them. He had looked at the clockmany scores of times; and at the street, where the rain was patteringdown, and the people as they clinked by in pattens, left longreflections on the shining stone: he tattooed at the table: he bit hisnails most completely, and nearly to the quick (he was accustomed toornament his great big hands in this way): he balanced the tea-spoondexterously on the milk jug: upset it, &c. , &c. ; and in fact showedthose signs of disquietude, and practised those desperate attempts atamusement, which men are accustomed to employ when very anxious, andexpectant, and perturbed in mind. 

Some of his comrades, gentlemen who used the room, joked him about thesplendour of his costume and his agitation of manner. One asked him ifhe was going to be married? Dobbin laughed, and said he would send hisacquaintance (Major Wagstaff of the Engineers) a piece of cake whenthat event took place. At length Captain Osborne made his appearance, very smartly dressed, but very pale and agitated as we have said. Hewiped his pale face with a large yellow bandanna pocket-handkerchiefthat was prodigiously scented. He shook hands with Dobbin, looked atthe clock, and told John, the waiter, to bring him some curacao. Ofthis cordial he swallowed off a couple of glasses with nervouseagerness. His friend asked with some interest about his health. 

"Couldn't get a wink of sleep till daylight, Dob, " said he. "Infernalheadache and fever. Got up at nine, and went down to the Hummums for abath. I say, Dob, I feel just as I did on the morning I went out withRocket at Quebec. "

"So do I, " William responded. "I was a deuced deal more nervous thanyou were that morning. You made a famous breakfast, I remember. Eatsomething now. "

"You're a good old fellow, Will. I'll drink your health, old boy, andfarewell to--"

"No, no; two glasses are enough, " Dobbin interrupted him. "Here, takeaway the liqueurs, John. Have some cayenne-pepper with your fowl. Make haste though, for it is time we were there. "

It was about half an hour from twelve when this brief meeting andcolloquy took place between the two captains. A coach, into whichCaptain Osborne's servant put his master's desk and dressing-case, hadbeen in waiting for some time; and into this the two gentlemen hurriedunder an umbrella, and the valet mounted on the box, cursing the rainand the dampness of the coachman who was steaming beside him. "Weshall find a better trap than this at the church-door, " says he;"that's a comfort. " And the carriage drove on, taking the road downPiccadilly, where Apsley House and St. George's Hospital wore redjackets still; where there were oil-lamps; where Achilles was not yetborn; nor the Pimlico arch raised; nor the hideous equestrian monsterwhich pervades it and the neighbourhood; and so they drove down byBrompton to a certain chapel near the Fulham Road there. 

A chariot was in waiting with four horses; likewise a coach of the kindcalled glass coaches. Only a very few idlers were collected on accountof the dismal rain. 

"Hang it!" said George, "I said only a pair. "

"My master would have four, " said Mr. Joseph Sedley's servant, who wasin waiting; and he and Mr. Osborne's man agreed as they followed Georgeand William into the church, that it was a "reg'lar shabby turn hout;and with scarce so much as a breakfast or a wedding faviour. "

"Here you are, " said our old friend, Jos Sedley, coming forward. "You're five minutes late, George, my boy. What a day, eh? Demmy, it'slike the commencement of the rainy season in Bengal. But you'll findmy carriage is watertight. Come along, my mother and Emmy are in thevestry. "

Jos Sedley was splendid. He was fatter than ever. His shirt collarswere higher; his face was redder; his shirt-frill flaunted gorgeouslyout of his variegated waistcoat. Varnished boots were not invented asyet; but the Hessians on his beautiful legs shone so, that they musthave been the identical pair in which the gentleman in the old pictureused to shave himself; and on his light green coat there bloomed a finewedding favour, like a great white spreading magnolia. 

In a word, George had thrown the great cast. He was going to bemarried. Hence his pallor and nervousness--his sleepless night andagitation in the morning. I have heard people who have gone throughthe same thing own to the same emotion. After three or fourceremonies, you get accustomed to it, no doubt; but the first dip, everybody allows, is awful. 

The bride was dressed in a brown silk pelisse (as Captain Dobbin hassince informed me), and wore a straw bonnet with a pink ribbon; overthe bonnet she had a veil of white Chantilly lace, a gift from Mr. Joseph Sedley, her brother. Captain Dobbin himself had asked leave topresent her with a gold chain and watch, which she sported on thisoccasion; and her mother gave her her diamond brooch--almost the onlytrinket which was left to the old lady. As the service went on, Mrs. Sedley sat and whimpered a great deal in a pew, consoled by the Irishmaid-servant and Mrs. Clapp from the lodgings. Old Sedley would not bepresent. Jos acted for his father, giving away the bride, whilstCaptain Dobbin stepped up as groomsman to his friend George. 

There was nobody in the church besides the officiating persons and thesmall marriage party and their attendants. The two valets sat aloofsuperciliously. The rain came rattling down on the windows. In theintervals of the service you heard it, and the sobbing of old Mrs. Sedley in the pew. The parson's tones echoed sadly through the emptywalls. Osborne's "I will" was sounded in very deep bass. Emmy'sresponse came fluttering up to her lips from her heart, but wasscarcely heard by anybody except Captain Dobbin. 

When the service was completed, Jos Sedley came forward and kissed hissister, the bride, for the first time for many months--George's look ofgloom had gone, and he seemed quite proud and radiant. "It's your turn, William, " says he, putting his hand fondly upon Dobbin's shoulder; andDobbin went up and touched Amelia on the cheek. 

Then they went into the vestry and signed the register. "God bless you, Old Dobbin, " George said, grasping him by the hand, with something verylike moisture glistening in his eyes. William replied only by noddinghis head. His heart was too full to say much. 

"Write directly, and come down as soon as you can, you know, " Osbornesaid. After Mrs. Sedley had taken an hysterical adieu of her daughter, the pair went off to the carriage. "Get out of the way, you littledevils, " George cried to a small crowd of damp urchins, that werehanging about the chapel-door. The rain drove into the bride andbridegroom's faces as they passed to the chariot. The postilions'favours draggled on their dripping jackets. The few children made adismal cheer, as the carriage, splashing mud, drove away. 

William Dobbin stood in the church-porch, looking at it, a queerfigure. The small crew of spectators jeered him. He was not thinkingabout them or their laughter. 

"Come home and have some tiffin, Dobbin, " a voice cried behind him; asa pudgy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the honest fellow's reveriewas interrupted. But the Captain had no heart to go a-feasting withJos Sedley. He put the weeping old lady and her attendants into thecarriage along with Jos, and left them without any farther wordspassing. This carriage, too, drove away, and the urchins gave anothersarcastical cheer. 

"Here, you little beggars, " Dobbin said, giving some sixpences amongstthem, and then went off by himself through the rain. It was all over. They were married, and happy, he prayed God. Never since he was a boyhad he felt so miserable and so lonely. He longed with a heart-sickyearning for the first few days to be over, that he might see her again. 

Some ten days after the above ceremony, three young men of ouracquaintance were enjoying that beautiful prospect of bow windows onthe one side and blue sea on the other, which Brighton affords to thetraveller. Sometimes it is towards the ocean--smiling with countlessdimples, speckled with white sails, with a hundred bathing-machineskissing the skirt of his blue garment--that the Londoner looksenraptured: sometimes, on the contrary, a lover of human nature ratherthan of prospects of any kind, it is towards the bow windows that heturns, and that swarm of human life which they exhibit. From one issuethe notes of a piano, which a young lady in ringlets practises sixhours daily, to the delight of the fellow-lodgers: at another, lovelyPolly, the nurse-maid, may be seen dandling Master Omnium in her arms:whilst Jacob, his papa, is beheld eating prawns, and devouring theTimes for breakfast, at the window below. Yonder are the Misses Leery, who are looking out for the young officers of the Heavies, who arepretty sure to be pacing the cliff; or again it is a City man, with anautical turn, and a telescope, the size of a six-pounder, who has hisinstrument pointed seawards, so as to command every pleasure-boat, herring-boat, or bathing-machine that comes to, or quits, the shore, &c. , &c. But have we any leisure for a description of Brighton?--forBrighton, a clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni--for Brighton, thatalways looks brisk, gay, and gaudy, like a harlequin's jacket--forBrighton, which used to be seven hours distant from London at the timeof our story; which is now only a hundred minutes off; and which mayapproach who knows how much nearer, unless Joinville comes and untimelybombards it?

"What a monstrous fine girl that is in the lodgings over themilliner's, " one of these three promenaders remarked to the other;"Gad, Crawley, did you see what a wink she gave me as I passed?"

"Don't break her heart, Jos, you rascal, " said another. "Don't triflewith her affections, you Don Juan!"

"Get away, " said Jos Sedley, quite pleased, and leering up at themaid-servant in question with a most killing ogle. Jos was even moresplendid at Brighton than he had been at his sister's marriage. He hadbrilliant under-waistcoats, any one of which would have set up amoderate buck. He sported a military frock-coat, ornamented with frogs, knobs, black buttons, and meandering embroidery. He had affected amilitary appearance and habits of late; and he walked with his twofriends, who were of that profession, clinking his boot-spurs, swaggering prodigiously, and shooting death-glances at all the servantgirls who were worthy to be slain. 

"What shall we do, boys, till the ladies return?" the buck asked. Theladies were out to Rottingdean in his carriage on a drive. 

"Let's have a game at billiards, " one of his friends said--the tallone, with lacquered mustachios. 

"No, dammy; no, Captain, " Jos replied, rather alarmed. "No billiardsto-day, Crawley, my boy; yesterday was enough. "

"You play very well, " said Crawley, laughing. "Don't he, Osborne? Howwell he made that-five stroke, eh?"

"Famous, " Osborne said. "Jos is a devil of a fellow at billiards, andat everything else, too. I wish there were any tiger-hunting abouthere! we might go and kill a few before dinner. (There goes a finegirl! what an ankle, eh, Jos?) Tell us that story about the tiger-hunt, and the way you did for him in the jungle--it's a wonderful story that, Crawley. " Here George Osborne gave a yawn. "It's rather slow work, "said he, "down here; what shall we do?"

"Shall we go and look at some horses that Snaffler's just brought fromLewes fair?" Crawley said. 

"Suppose we go and have some jellies at Dutton's, " and the rogue Jos, willing to kill two birds with one stone. "Devilish fine gal atDutton's. "

"Suppose we go and see the Lightning come in, it's just about time?"George said. This advice prevailing over the stables and the jelly, they turned towards the coach-office to witness the Lightning's arrival. 

As they passed, they met the carriage--Jos Sedley's open carriage, withits magnificent armorial bearings--that splendid conveyance in which heused to drive, about at Cheltonham, majestic and solitary, with hisarms folded, and his hat cocked; or, more happy, with ladies by hisside. 

Two were in the carriage now: one a little person, with light hair, anddressed in the height of the fashion; the other in a brown silkpelisse, and a straw bonnet with pink ribbons, with a rosy, round, happy face, that did you good to behold. She checked the carriage asit neared the three gentlemen, after which exercise of authority shelooked rather nervous, and then began to blush most absurdly. "We havehad a delightful drive, George, " she said, "and--and we're so glad tocome back; and, Joseph, don't let him be late. "

"Don't be leading our husbands into mischief, Mr. Sedley, you wicked, wicked man you, " Rebecca said, shaking at Jos a pretty little fingercovered with the neatest French kid glove. "No billiards, no smoking, no naughtiness!"

"My dear Mrs. Crawley--Ah now! upon my honour!" was all Jos couldejaculate by way of reply; but he managed to fall into a tolerableattitude, with his head lying on his shoulder, grinning upwards at hisvictim, with one hand at his back, which he supported on his cane, andthe other hand (the one with the diamond ring) fumbling in hisshirt-frill and among his under-waistcoats. As the carriage drove offhe kissed the diamond hand to the fair ladies within. He wished allCheltenham, all Chowringhee, all Calcutta, could see him in thatposition, waving his hand to such a beauty, and in company with such afamous buck as Rawdon Crawley of the Guards. 

Our young bride and bridegroom had chosen Brighton as the place wherethey would pass the first few days after their marriage; and havingengaged apartments at the Ship Inn, enjoyed themselves there in greatcomfort and quietude, until Jos presently joined them. Nor was he theonly companion they found there. As they were coming into the hotelfrom a sea-side walk one afternoon, on whom should they light butRebecca and her husband. The recognition was immediate. Rebecca flewinto the arms of her dearest friend. Crawley and Osborne shook handstogether cordially enough: and Becky, in the course of a very fewhours, found means to make the latter forget that little unpleasantpassage of words which had happened between them. "Do you remember thelast time we met at Miss Crawley's, when I was so rude to you, dearCaptain Osborne? I thought you seemed careless about dear Amelia. Itwas that made me angry: and so pert: and so unkind: and so ungrateful. Do forgive me!" Rebecca said, and she held out her hand with so frankand winning a grace, that Osborne could not but take it. By humbly andfrankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no knowing, my son, what good you may do. I knew once a gentleman and very worthypractitioner in Vanity Fair, who used to do little wrongs to hisneighbours on purpose, and in order to apologise for them in an openand manly way afterwards--and what ensued? My friend Crocky Doyle wasliked everywhere, and deemed to be rather impetuous--but the honestestfellow. Becky's humility passed for sincerity with George Osborne. 

These two young couples had plenty of tales to relate to each other. The marriages of either were discussed; and their prospects in lifecanvassed with the greatest frankness and interest on both sides. George's marriage was to be made known to his father by his friendCaptain Dobbin; and young Osborne trembled rather for the result ofthat communication. Miss Crawley, on whom all Rawdon's hopes depended, still held out. Unable to make an entry into her house in Park Lane, her affectionate nephew and niece had followed her to Brighton, wherethey had emissaries continually planted at her door. 

"I wish you could see some of Rawdon's friends who are always about ourdoor, " Rebecca said, laughing. "Did you ever see a dun, my dear; or abailiff and his man? Two of the abominable wretches watched all lastweek at the greengrocer's opposite, and we could not get away untilSunday. If Aunty does not relent, what shall we do?"

Rawdon, with roars of laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes ofhis duns, and Rebecca's adroit treatment of them. He vowed with agreat oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditorover as she could. Almost immediately after their marriage, herpractice had begun, and her husband found the immense value of such awife. They had credit in plenty, but they had bills also in abundance, and laboured under a scarcity of ready money. Did thesedebt-difficulties affect Rawdon's good spirits? No. Everybody inVanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortablyand thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly andeasy they are in their minds. Rawdon and his wife had the very bestapartments at the inn at Brighton; the landlord, as he brought in thefirst dish, bowed before them as to his greatest customers: and Rawdonabused the dinners and wine with an audacity which no grandee in theland could surpass. Long custom, a manly appearance, faultless bootsand clothes, and a happy fierceness of manner, will often help a man asmuch as a great balance at the banker's. 

The two wedding parties met constantly in each other's apartments. After two or three nights the gentlemen of an evening had a littlepiquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart. This pastime, and thearrival of Jos Sedley, who made his appearance in his grand opencarriage, and who played a few games at billiards with Captain Crawley, replenished Rawdon's purse somewhat, and gave him the benefit of thatready money for which the greatest spirits are sometimes at astand-still. 

So the three gentlemen walked down to see the Lightning coach come in. Punctual to the minute, the coach crowded inside and out, the guardblowing his accustomed tune on the horn--the Lightning came tearingdown the street, and pulled up at the coach-office. 

"Hullo! there's old Dobbin, " George cried, quite delighted to see hisold friend perched on the roof; and whose promised visit to Brightonhad been delayed until now. "How are you, old fellow? Glad you're comedown. Emmy'll be delighted to see you, " Osborne said, shaking hiscomrade warmly by the hand as soon as his descent from the vehicle waseffected--and then he added, in a lower and agitated voice, "What's thenews? Have you been in Russell Square? What does the governor say?Tell me everything. "

Dobbin looked very pale and grave. "I've seen your father, " said he. "How's Amelia--Mrs. George? I'll tell you all the news presently: butI've brought the great news of all: and that is--"

"Out with it, old fellow, " George said. 

"We're ordered to Belgium. All the army goes--guards and all. Heavytop's got the gout, and is mad at not being able to move. O'Dowdgoes in command, and we embark from Chatham next week. " This news ofwar could not but come with a shock upon our lovers, and caused allthese gentlemen to look very serious. 

CHAPTER XXIII

Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass

What is the secret mesmerism which friendship possesses, and under theoperation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or timid, becomes wise, active, and resolute, in another's behalf? As Alexis, after a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads with theback of his head, sees miles off, looks into next week, and performsother wonders, of which, in his own private normal condition, he isquite incapable; so you see, in the affairs of the world and under themagnetism of friendships, the modest man becomes bold, the shyconfident, the lazy active, or the impetuous prudent and peaceful. What is it, on the other hand, that makes the lawyer eschew his owncause, and call in his learned brother as an adviser? And what causesthe doctor, when ailing, to send for his rival, and not sit down andexamine his own tongue in the chimney Bass, or write his ownprescription at his study-table? I throw out these queries forintelligent readers to answer, who know, at once, how credulous we are, and how sceptical, how soft and how obstinate, how firm for others andhow diffident about ourselves: meanwhile, it is certain that ourfriend William Dobbin, who was personally of so complying a dispositionthat if his parents had pressed him much, it is probable he would havestepped down into the kitchen and married the cook, and who, to furtherhis own interests, would have found the most insuperable difficulty inwalking across the street, found himself as busy and eager in theconduct of George Osborne's affairs, as the most selfish tacticiancould be in the pursuit of his own. 

Whilst our friend George and his young wife were enjoying the firstblushing days of the honeymoon at Brighton, honest William was left asGeorge's plenipotentiary in London, to transact all the business partof the marriage. His duty it was to call upon old Sedley and his wife, and to keep the former in good humour: to draw Jos and hisbrother-in-law nearer together, so that Jos's position and dignity, ascollector of Boggley Wollah, might compensate for his father's loss ofstation, and tend to reconcile old Osborne to the alliance: andfinally, to communicate it to the latter in such a way as should leastirritate the old gentleman. 

Now, before he faced the head of the Osborne house with the news whichit was his duty to tell, Dobbin bethought him that it would be politicto make friends of the rest of the family, and, if possible, have theladies on his side. They can't be angry in their hearts, thought he. No woman ever was really angry at a romantic marriage. A little cryingout, and they must come round to their brother; when the three of uswill lay siege to old Mr. Osborne. So this Machiavellian captain ofinfantry cast about him for some happy means or stratagem by which hecould gently and gradually bring the Misses Osborne to a knowledge oftheir brother's secret. 

By a little inquiry regarding his mother's engagements, he was prettysoon able to find out by whom of her ladyship's friends parties weregiven at that season; where he would be likely to meet Osborne'ssisters; and, though he had that abhorrence of routs and eveningparties which many sensible men, alas! entertain, he soon found onewhere the Misses Osborne were to be present. Making his appearance atthe ball, where he danced a couple of sets with both of them, and wasprodigiously polite, he actually had the courage to ask Miss Osbornefor a few minutes' conversation at an early hour the next day, when hehad, he said, to communicate to her news of the very greatest interest. 

What was it that made her start back, and gaze upon him for a moment, and then on the ground at her feet, and make as if she would faint onhis arm, had he not by opportunely treading on her toes, brought theyoung lady back to self-control? Why was she so violently agitated atDobbin's request? This can never be known. But when he came the nextday, Maria was not in the drawing-room with her sister, and Miss Wirtwent off for the purpose of fetching the latter, and the Captain andMiss Osborne were left together. They were both so silent that theticktock of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia clock on the mantelpiece becamequite rudely audible. 

"What a nice party it was last night, " Miss Osborne at length began, encouragingly; "and--and how you're improved in your dancing, CaptainDobbin. Surely somebody has taught you, " she added, with amiablearchness. 

"You should see me dance a reel with Mrs. Major O'Dowd of ours; and ajig--did you ever see a jig? But I think anybody could dance with you, Miss Osborne, who dance so well. "

"Is the Major's lady young and beautiful, Captain?" the fair questionercontinued. "Ah, what a terrible thing it must be to be a soldier'swife! I wonder they have any spirits to dance, and in these dreadfultimes of war, too! O Captain Dobbin, I tremble sometimes when I thinkof our dearest George, and the dangers of the poor soldier. Are theremany married officers of the --th, Captain Dobbin?"

"Upon my word, she's playing her hand rather too openly, " Miss Wirtthought; but this observation is merely parenthetic, and was not heardthrough the crevice of the door at which the governess uttered it. 

"One of our young men is just married, " Dobbin said, now coming to thepoint. "It was a very old attachment, and the young couple are as pooras church mice. " "O, how delightful! O, how romantic!" Miss Osbornecried, as the Captain said "old attachment" and "poor. " Her sympathyencouraged him. 

"The finest young fellow in the regiment, " he continued. "Not a braveror handsomer officer in the army; and such a charming wife! How youwould like her! how you will like her when you know her, MissOsborne. " The young lady thought the actual moment had arrived, andthat Dobbin's nervousness which now came on and was visible in manytwitchings of his face, in his manner of beating the ground with hisgreat feet, in the rapid buttoning and unbuttoning of his frock-coat, &c. --Miss Osborne, I say, thought that when he had given himself alittle air, he would unbosom himself entirely, and prepared eagerly tolisten. And the clock, in the altar on which Iphigenia was situated, beginning, after a preparatory convulsion, to toll twelve, the meretolling seemed as if it would last until one--so prolonged was theknell to the anxious spinster. 

"But it's not about marriage that I came to speak--that is thatmarriage--that is--no, I mean--my dear Miss Osborne, it's about ourdear friend George, " Dobbin said. 

"About George?" she said in a tone so discomfited that Maria and MissWirt laughed at the other side of the door, and even that abandonedwretch of a Dobbin felt inclined to smile himself; for he was notaltogether unconscious of the state of affairs: George having oftenbantered him gracefully and said, "Hang it, Will, why don't you takeold Jane? She'll have you if you ask her. I'll bet you five to two shewill. "

"Yes, about George, then, " he continued. "There has been a differencebetween him and Mr. Osborne. And I regard him so much--for you knowwe have been like brothers--that I hope and pray the quarrel may besettled. We must go abroad, Miss Osborne. We may be ordered off at aday's warning. Who knows what may happen in the campaign? Don't beagitated, dear Miss Osborne; and those two at least should partfriends. "

"There has been no quarrel, Captain Dobbin, except a little usual scenewith Papa, " the lady said. "We are expecting George back daily. WhatPapa wanted was only for his good. He has but to come back, and I'msure all will be well; and dear Rhoda, who went away from here in sadsad anger, I know will forgive him. Woman forgives but too readily, Captain. "

"Such an angel as YOU I am sure would, " Mr. Dobbin said, with atrociousastuteness. "And no man can pardon himself for giving a woman pain. What would you feel, if a man were faithless to you?"

"I should perish--I should throw myself out of window--I should takepoison--I should pine and die. I know I should, " Miss cried, who hadnevertheless gone through one or two affairs of the heart without anyidea of suicide. 

"And there are others, " Dobbin continued, "as true and as kind-heartedas yourself. I'm not speaking about the West Indian heiress, MissOsborne, but about a poor girl whom George once loved, and who was bredfrom her childhood to think of nobody but him. I've seen her in herpoverty uncomplaining, broken-hearted, without a fault. It is of MissSedley I speak. Dear Miss Osborne, can your generous heart quarrelwith your brother for being faithful to her? Could his own conscienceever forgive him if he deserted her? Be her friend--she always lovedyou--and--and I am come here charged by George to tell you that heholds his engagement to her as the most sacred duty he has; and toentreat you, at least, to be on his side. "

When any strong emotion took possession of Mr. Dobbin, and after thefirst word or two of hesitation, he could speak with perfect fluency, and it was evident that his eloquence on this occasion made someimpression upon the lady whom he addressed. 

"Well, " said she, "this is--most surprising--most painful--mostextraordinary--what will Papa say?--that George should fling away sucha superb establishment as was offered to him but at any rate he hasfound a very brave champion in you, Captain Dobbin. It is of no use, however, " she continued, after a pause; "I feel for poor Miss Sedley, most certainly--most sincerely, you know. We never thought the match agood one, though we were always very kind to her here--very. But Papawill never consent, I am sure. And a well brought up young woman, youknow--with a well-regulated mind, must--George must give her up, dearCaptain Dobbin, indeed he must. "

"Ought a man to give up the woman he loved, just when misfortune befellher?" Dobbin said, holding out his hand. "Dear Miss Osborne, is thisthe counsel I hear from you? My dear young lady! you must befriendher. He can't give her up. He must not give her up. Would a man, think you, give YOU up if you were poor?"

This adroit question touched the heart of Miss Jane Osborne not alittle. "I don't know whether we poor girls ought to believe what youmen say, Captain, " she said. "There is that in woman's tenderness whichinduces her to believe too easily. I'm afraid you are cruel, crueldeceivers, "--and Dobbin certainly thought he felt a pressure of thehand which Miss Osborne had extended to him. 

He dropped it in some alarm. "Deceivers!" said he. "No, dear MissOsborne, all men are not; your brother is not; George has loved AmeliaSedley ever since they were children; no wealth would make him marryany but her. Ought he to forsake her? Would you counsel him to do so?"

What could Miss Jane say to such a question, and with her own peculiarviews? She could not answer it, so she parried it by saying, "Well, ifyou are not a deceiver, at least you are very romantic"; and CaptainWilliam let this observation pass without challenge. 

At length when, by the help of farther polite speeches, he deemed thatMiss Osborne was sufficiently prepared to receive the whole news, hepoured it into her ear. "George could not give up Amelia--George wasmarried to her"--and then he related the circumstances of the marriageas we know them already: how the poor girl would have died had not herlover kept his faith: how Old Sedley had refused all consent to thematch, and a licence had been got: and Jos Sedley had come fromCheltenham to give away the bride: how they had gone to Brighton inJos's chariot-and-four to pass the honeymoon: and how George counted onhis dear kind sisters to befriend him with their father, as women--sotrue and tender as they were--assuredly would do. And so, askingpermission (readily granted) to see her again, and rightly conjecturingthat the news he had brought would be told in the next five minutes tothe other ladies, Captain Dobbin made his bow and took his leave. 

He was scarcely out of the house, when Miss Maria and Miss Wirt rushedin to Miss Osborne, and the whole wonderful secret was imparted to themby that lady. To do them justice, neither of the sisters was very muchdispleased. There is something about a runaway match with which fewladies can be seriously angry, and Amelia rather rose in theirestimation, from the spirit which she had displayed in consenting tothe union. As they debated the story, and prattled about it, andwondered what Papa would do and say, came a loud knock, as of anavenging thunder-clap, at the door, which made these conspiratorsstart. It must be Papa, they thought. But it was not he. It was onlyMr. Frederick Bullock, who had come from the City according toappointment, to conduct the ladies to a flower-show. 

This gentleman, as may be imagined, was not kept long in ignorance ofthe secret. But his face, when he heard it, showed an amazement whichwas very different to that look of sentimental wonder which thecountenances of the sisters wore. Mr. Bullock was a man of the world, and a junior partner of a wealthy firm. He knew what money was, andthe value of it: and a delightful throb of expectation lighted up hislittle eyes, and caused him to smile on his Maria, as he thought thatby this piece of folly of Mr. George's she might be worth thirtythousand pounds more than he had ever hoped to get with her. 

"Gad! Jane, " said he, surveying even the elder sister with someinterest, "Eels will be sorry he cried off. You may be a fiftythousand pounder yet. "

The sisters had never thought of the money question up to that moment, but Fred Bullock bantered them with graceful gaiety about it duringtheir forenoon's excursion; and they had risen not a little in theirown esteem by the time when, the morning amusement over, they droveback to dinner. And do not let my respected reader exclaim againstthis selfishness as unnatural. It was but this present morning, as herode on the omnibus from Richmond; while it changed horses, thispresent chronicler, being on the roof, marked three little childrenplaying in a puddle below, very dirty, and friendly, and happy. Tothese three presently came another little one. "POLLY, " says she, "YOURSISTER'S GOT A PENNY. " At which the children got up from the puddleinstantly, and ran off to pay their court to Peggy. And as the omnibusdrove off I saw Peggy with the infantine procession at her tail, marching with great dignity towards the stall of a neighbouringlollipop-woman. 

CHAPTER XXIV

In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible

So having prepared the sisters, Dobbin hastened away to the City toperform the rest and more difficult part of the task which he hadundertaken. The idea of facing old Osborne rendered him not a littlenervous, and more than once he thought of leaving the young ladies tocommunicate the secret, which, as he was aware, they could not longretain. But he had promised to report to George upon the manner inwhich the elder Osborne bore the intelligence; so going into the Cityto the paternal counting-house in Thames Street, he despatched thence anote to Mr. Osborne begging for a half-hour's conversation relative tothe affairs of his son George. Dobbin's messenger returned from Mr. Osborne's house of business, with the compliments of the latter, whowould be very happy to see the Captain immediately, and awayaccordingly Dobbin went to confront him. 

The Captain, with a half-guilty secret to confess, and with theprospect of a painful and stormy interview before him, entered Mr. Osborne's offices with a most dismal countenance and abashed gait, and, passing through the outer room where Mr. Chopper presided, was greetedby that functionary from his desk with a waggish air which fartherdiscomfited him. Mr. Chopper winked and nodded and pointed his pentowards his patron's door, and said, "You'll find the governor allright, " with the most provoking good humour. 

Osborne rose too, and shook him heartily by the hand, and said, "Howdo, my dear boy?" with a cordiality that made poor George's ambassadorfeel doubly guilty. His hand lay as if dead in the old gentleman'sgrasp. He felt that he, Dobbin, was more or less the cause of all thathad happened. It was he had brought back George to Amelia: it was hehad applauded, encouraged, transacted almost the marriage which he wascome to reveal to George's father: and the latter was receiving himwith smiles of welcome; patting him on the shoulder, and calling him"Dobbin, my dear boy. " The envoy had indeed good reason to hang hishead. 

Osborne fully believed that Dobbin had come to announce his son'ssurrender. Mr. Chopper and his principal were talking over the matterbetween George and his father, at the very moment when Dobbin'smessenger arrived. Both agreed that George was sending in hissubmission. Both had been expecting it for some days--and "Lord!Chopper, what a marriage we'll have!" Mr. Osborne said to his clerk, snapping his big fingers, and jingling all the guineas and shillings inhis great pockets as he eyed his subordinate with a look of triumph. 

With similar operations conducted in both pockets, and a knowing jollyair, Osborne from his chair regarded Dobbin seated blank and silentopposite to him. "What a bumpkin he is for a Captain in the army, " oldOsborne thought. "I wonder George hasn't taught him better manners. "

At last Dobbin summoned courage to begin. "Sir, " said he, "I'vebrought you some very grave news. I have been at the Horse Guards thismorning, and there's no doubt that our regiment will be ordered abroad, and on its way to Belgium before the week is over. And you know, sir, that we shan't be home again before a tussle which may be fatal to manyof us. " Osborne looked grave. "My s--, the regiment will do itsduty, sir, I daresay, " he said. 

"The French are very strong, sir, " Dobbin went on. "The Russians andAustrians will be a long time before they can bring their troops down. We shall have the first of the fight, sir; and depend on it Boney willtake care that it shall be a hard one. "

"What are you driving at, Dobbin?" his interlocutor said, uneasy andwith a scowl. "I suppose no Briton's afraid of any d---- Frenchman, hey?"

"I only mean, that before we go, and considering the great and certainrisk that hangs over every one of us--if there are any differencesbetween you and George--it would be as well, sir, that--that youshould shake hands: wouldn't it? Should anything happen to him, Ithink you would never forgive yourself if you hadn't parted in charity. "

As he said this, poor William Dobbin blushed crimson, and felt andowned that he himself was a traitor. But for him, perhaps, thisseverance need never have taken place. Why had not George's marriagebeen delayed? What call was there to press it on so eagerly? He feltthat George would have parted from Amelia at any rate without a mortalpang. Amelia, too, MIGHT have recovered the shock of losing him. Itwas his counsel had brought about this marriage, and all that was toensue from it. And why was it? Because he loved her so much that hecould not bear to see her unhappy: or because his own sufferings ofsuspense were so unendurable that he was glad to crush them at once--aswe hasten a funeral after a death, or, when a separation from those welove is imminent, cannot rest until the parting be over. 

"You are a good fellow, William, " said Mr. Osborne in a softened voice;"and me and George shouldn't part in anger, that is true. Look here. I've done for him as much as any father ever did. He's had three timesas much money from me, as I warrant your father ever gave you. But Idon't brag about that. How I've toiled for him, and worked andemployed my talents and energy, I won't say. Ask Chopper. Askhimself. Ask the City of London. Well, I propose to him such amarriage as any nobleman in the land might be proud of--the only thingin life I ever asked him--and he refuses me. Am I wrong? Is thequarrel of MY making? What do I seek but his good, for which I've beentoiling like a convict ever since he was born? Nobody can say there'sanything selfish in me. Let him come back. I say, here's my hand. Isay, forget and forgive. As for marrying now, it's out of thequestion. Let him and Miss S. Make it up, and make out the marriageafterwards, when he comes back a Colonel; for he shall be a Colonel, byG-- he shall, if money can do it. I'm glad you've brought him round. I know it's you, Dobbin. You've took him out of many a scrape before. Let him come. I shan't be hard. Come along, and dine in RussellSquare to-day: both of you. The old shop, the old hour. You'll find aneck of venison, and no questions asked. "

This praise and confidence smote Dobbin's heart very keenly. Everymoment the colloquy continued in this tone, he felt more and moreguilty. "Sir, " said he, "I fear you deceive yourself. I am sure youdo. George is much too high-minded a man ever to marry for money. Athreat on your part that you would disinherit him in case ofdisobedience would only be followed by resistance on his. "

"Why, hang it, man, you don't call offering him eight or ten thousand ayear threatening him?" Mr. Osborne said, with still provoking goodhumour. "'Gad, if Miss S. Will have me, I'm her man. I ain'tparticular about a shade or so of tawny. " And the old gentleman gavehis knowing grin and coarse laugh. 

"You forget, sir, previous engagements into which Captain Osborne hadentered, " the ambassador said, gravely. 

"What engagements? What the devil do you mean? You don't mean, " Mr. Osborne continued, gathering wrath and astonishment as the thought nowfirst came upon him; "you don't mean that he's such a d---- fool as tobe still hankering after that swindling old bankrupt's daughter? You'venot come here for to make me suppose that he wants to marry HER? MarryHER, that IS a good one. My son and heir marry a beggar's girl out ofa gutter. D---- him, if he does, let him buy a broom and sweep acrossing. She was always dangling and ogling after him, I recollectnow; and I've no doubt she was put on by her old sharper of a father. "

"Mr. Sedley was your very good friend, sir, " Dobbin interposed, almostpleased at finding himself growing angry. "Time was you called himbetter names than rogue and swindler. The match was of your making. George had no right to play fast and loose--"

"Fast and loose!" howled out old Osborne. "Fast and loose! Why, hangme, those are the very words my gentleman used himself when he gavehimself airs, last Thursday was a fortnight, and talked about theBritish army to his father who made him. What, it's you who have beena setting of him up--is it? and my service to you, CAPTAIN. It's youwho want to introduce beggars into my family. Thank you for nothing, Captain. Marry HER indeed--he, he! why should he? I warrant you she'dgo to him fast enough without. "

"Sir, " said Dobbin, starting up in undisguised anger; "no man shallabuse that lady in my hearing, and you least of all. "

"O, you're a-going to call me out, are you? Stop, let me ring the bellfor pistols for two. Mr. George sent you here to insult his father, did he?" Osborne said, pulling at the bell-cord. 

"Mr. Osborne, " said Dobbin, with a faltering voice, "it's you who areinsulting the best creature in the world. You had best spare her, sir, for she's your son's wife. "

And with this, feeling that he could say no more, Dobbin went away, Osborne sinking back in his chair, and looking wildly after him. Aclerk came in, obedient to the bell; and the Captain was scarcely outof the court where Mr. Osborne's offices were, when Mr. Chopper thechief clerk came rushing hatless after him. 

"For God's sake, what is it?" Mr. Chopper said, catching the Captain bythe skirt. "The governor's in a fit. What has Mr. George been doing?"

"He married Miss Sedley five days ago, " Dobbin replied. "I was hisgroomsman, Mr. Chopper, and you must stand his friend. "

The old clerk shook his head. "If that's your news, Captain, it's bad. The governor will never forgive him. "

Dobbin begged Chopper to report progress to him at the hotel where hewas stopping, and walked off moodily westwards, greatly perturbed as tothe past and the future. 

When the Russell Square family came to dinner that evening, they foundthe father of the house seated in his usual place, but with that air ofgloom on his face, which, whenever it appeared there, kept the wholecircle silent. The ladies, and Mr. Bullock who dined with them, feltthat the news had been communicated to Mr. Osborne. His dark looksaffected Mr. Bullock so far as to render him still and quiet: but hewas unusually bland and attentive to Miss Maria, by whom he sat, and toher sister presiding at the head of the table. 

Miss Wirt, by consequence, was alone on her side of the board, a gapbeing left between her and Miss Jane Osborne. Now this was George'splace when he dined at home; and his cover, as we said, was laid forhim in expectation of that truant's return. Nothing occurred duringdinner-time except smiling Mr. Frederick's flagging confidentialwhispers, and the clinking of plate and china, to interrupt the silenceof the repast. The servants went about stealthily doing their duty. Mutes at funerals could not look more glum than the domestics of Mr. Osborne The neck of venison of which he had invited Dobbin to partake, was carved by him in perfect silence; but his own share went awayalmost untasted, though he drank much, and the butler assiduouslyfilled his glass. 

At last, just at the end of the dinner, his eyes, which had beenstaring at everybody in turn, fixed themselves for a while upon theplate laid for George. He pointed to it presently with his left hand. His daughters looked at him and did not comprehend, or choose tocomprehend, the signal; nor did the servants at first understand it. 

"Take that plate away, " at last he said, getting up with an oath--andwith this pushing his chair back, he walked into his own room. 

Behind Mr. Osborne's dining-room was the usual apartment which went inhis house by the name of the study; and was sacred to the master of thehouse. Hither Mr. Osborne would retire of a Sunday forenoon when notminded to go to church; and here pass the morning in his crimsonleather chair, reading the paper. A couple of glazed book-cases werehere, containing standard works in stout gilt bindings. The "AnnualRegister, " the "Gentleman's Magazine, " "Blair's Sermons, " and "Hume andSmollett. " From year's end to year's end he never took one of thesevolumes from the shelf; but there was no member of the family thatwould dare for his life to touch one of the books, except upon thoserare Sunday evenings when there was no dinner-party, and when the greatscarlet Bible and Prayer-book were taken out from the corner where theystood beside his copy of the Peerage, and the servants being rung up tothe dining parlour, Osborne read the evening service to his family in aloud grating pompous voice. No member of the household, child, ordomestic, ever entered that room without a certain terror. Here hechecked the housekeeper's accounts, and overhauled the butler'scellar-book. Hence he could command, across the clean gravelcourt-yard, the back entrance of the stables with which one of hisbells communicated, and into this yard the coachman issued from hispremises as into a dock, and Osborne swore at him from the studywindow. Four times a year Miss Wirt entered this apartment to get hersalary; and his daughters to receive their quarterly allowance. Georgeas a boy had been horsewhipped in this room many times; his mothersitting sick on the stair listening to the cuts of the whip. The boywas scarcely ever known to cry under the punishment; the poor womanused to fondle and kiss him secretly, and give him money to soothe himwhen he came out. 

There was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece, removed thitherfrom the front room after Mrs. Osborne's death--George was on a pony, the elder sister holding him up a bunch of flowers; the younger led byher mother's hand; all with red cheeks and large red mouths, simperingon each other in the approved family-portrait manner. The mother layunderground now, long since forgotten--the sisters and brother had ahundred different interests of their own, and, familiar still, wereutterly estranged from each other. Some few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satirethere is in those flaunting childish family-portraits, with their farceof sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious andself-satisfied. Osborne's own state portrait, with that of his greatsilver inkstand and arm-chair, had taken the place of honour in thedining-room, vacated by the family-piece. 

To this study old Osborne retired then, greatly to the relief of thesmall party whom he left. When the servants had withdrawn, they beganto talk for a while volubly but very low; then they went upstairsquietly, Mr. Bullock accompanying them stealthily on his creakingshoes. He had no heart to sit alone drinking wine, and so close to theterrible old gentleman in the study hard at hand. 

An hour at least after dark, the butler, not having received anysummons, ventured to tap at his door and take him in wax candles andtea. The master of the house sate in his chair, pretending to read thepaper, and when the servant, placing the lights and refreshment on thetable by him, retired, Mr. Osborne got up and locked the door afterhim. This time there was no mistaking the matter; all the householdknew that some great catastrophe was going to happen which was likelydirely to affect Master George. 

In the large shining mahogany escritoire Mr. Osborne had a drawerespecially devoted to his son's affairs and papers. Here he kept allthe documents relating to him ever since he had been a boy: here werehis prize copy-books and drawing-books, all bearing George's hand, andthat of the master: here were his first letters in large round-handsending his love to papa and mamma, and conveying his petitions for acake. His dear godpapa Sedley was more than once mentioned in them. Curses quivered on old Osborne's livid lips, and horrid hatred anddisappointment writhed in his heart, as looking through some of thesepapers he came on that name. They were all marked and docketed, andtied with red tape. It was--"From Georgy, requesting 5s. , April 23, 18--; answered, April 25"--or "Georgy about a pony, October 13"--and soforth. In another packet were "Dr. S. 's accounts"--"G. 's tailor's billsand outfits, drafts on me by G. Osborne, jun. , " &c. --his letters fromthe West Indies--his agent's letters, and the newspapers containing hiscommissions: here was a whip he had when a boy, and in a paper a locketcontaining his hair, which his mother used to wear. 

Turning one over after another, and musing over these memorials, theunhappy man passed many hours. His dearest vanities, ambitious hopes, had all been here. What pride he had in his boy! He was thehandsomest child ever seen. Everybody said he was like a nobleman'sson. A royal princess had remarked him, and kissed him, and asked hisname in Kew Gardens. What City man could show such another? Could aprince have been better cared for? Anything that money could buy hadbeen his son's. He used to go down on speech-days with four horses andnew liveries, and scatter new shillings among the boys at the schoolwhere George was: when he went with George to the depot of hisregiment, before the boy embarked for Canada, he gave the officers sucha dinner as the Duke of York might have sat down to. Had he everrefused a bill when George drew one? There they were--paid without aword. Many a general in the army couldn't ride the horses he had! Hehad the child before his eyes, on a hundred different days when heremembered George after dinner, when he used to come in as bold as alord and drink off his glass by his father's side, at the head of thetable--on the pony at Brighton, when he cleared the hedge and kept upwith the huntsman--on the day when he was presented to the PrinceRegent at the levee, when all Saint James's couldn't produce a fineryoung fellow. And this, this was the end of all!--to marry a bankruptand fly in the face of duty and fortune! What humiliation and fury:what pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds ofoutraged vanity, tenderness even, had this old worldling now to sufferunder!

Having examined these papers, and pondered over this one and the other, in that bitterest of all helpless woe, with which miserable men thinkof happy past times--George's father took the whole of the documentsout of the drawer in which he had kept them so long, and locked theminto a writing-box, which he tied, and sealed with his seal. Then heopened the book-case, and took down the great red Bible we have spokenof a pompous book, seldom looked at, and shining all over with gold. There was a frontispiece to the volume, representing Abrahamsacrificing Isaac. Here, according to custom, Osborne had recorded onthe fly-leaf, and in his large clerk-like hand, the dates of hismarriage and his wife's death, and the births and Christian names ofhis children. Jane came first, then George Sedley Osborne, then MariaFrances, and the days of the christening of each. Taking a pen, hecarefully obliterated George's names from the page; and when the leafwas quite dry, restored the volume to the place from which he had movedit. Then he took a document out of another drawer, where his ownprivate papers were kept; and having read it, crumpled it up andlighted it at one of the candles, and saw it burn entirely away in thegrate. It was his will; which being burned, he sate down and wrote offa letter, and rang for his servant, whom he charged to deliver it inthe morning. It was morning already: as he went up to bed, the wholehouse was alight with the sunshine; and the birds were singing amongthe fresh green leaves in Russell Square. 

Anxious to keep all Mr. Osborne's family and dependants in good humour, and to make as many friends as possible for George in his hour ofadversity, William Dobbin, who knew the effect which good dinners andgood wines have upon the soul of man, wrote off immediately on hisreturn to his inn the most hospitable of invitations to Thomas Chopper, Esquire, begging that gentleman to dine with him at the Slaughters'next day. The note reached Mr. Chopper before he left the City, andthe instant reply was, that "Mr. Chopper presents his respectfulcompliments, and will have the honour and pleasure of waiting onCaptain D. " The invitation and the rough draft of the answer wereshown to Mrs. Chopper and her daughters on his return to Somers' Townthat evening, and they talked about military gents and West End menwith great exultation as the family sate and partook of tea. When thegirls had gone to rest, Mr. And Mrs. C. Discoursed upon the strangeevents which were occurring in the governor's family. Never had theclerk seen his principal so moved. When he went in to Mr. Osborne, after Captain Dobbin's departure, Mr. Chopper found his chief black inthe face, and all but in a fit: some dreadful quarrel, he was certain, had occurred between Mr. O. And the young Captain. Chopper had beeninstructed to make out an account of all sums paid to Captain Osbornewithin the last three years. "And a precious lot of money he has hadtoo, " the chief clerk said, and respected his old and young master themore, for the liberal way in which the guineas had been flung about. The dispute was something about Miss Sedley. Mrs. Chopper vowed anddeclared she pitied that poor young lady to lose such a handsome youngfellow as the Capting. As the daughter of an unlucky speculator, whohad paid a very shabby dividend, Mr. Chopper had no great regard forMiss Sedley. He respected the house of Osborne before all others inthe City of London: and his hope and wish was that Captain Georgeshould marry a nobleman's daughter. The clerk slept a great dealsounder than his principal that night; and, cuddling his children afterbreakfast (of which he partook with a very hearty appetite, though hismodest cup of life was only sweetened with brown sugar), he set off inhis best Sunday suit and frilled shirt for business, promising hisadmiring wife not to punish Captain D. 's port too severely that evening. 

Mr. Osborne's countenance, when he arrived in the City at his usualtime, struck those dependants who were accustomed, for good reasons, towatch its expression, as peculiarly ghastly and worn. At twelveo'clock Mr. Higgs (of the firm of Higgs & Blatherwick, solicitors, Bedford Row) called by appointment, and was ushered into the governor'sprivate room, and closeted there for more than an hour. At about oneMr. Chopper received a note brought by Captain Dobbin's man, andcontaining an inclosure for Mr. Osborne, which the clerk went in anddelivered. A short time afterwards Mr. Chopper and Mr. Birch, the nextclerk, were summoned, and requested to witness a paper. "I've beenmaking a new will, " Mr. Osborne said, to which these gentlemen appendedtheir names accordingly. No conversation passed. Mr. Higgs lookedexceedingly grave as he came into the outer rooms, and very hard in Mr. Chopper's face; but there were not any explanations. It was remarkedthat Mr. Osborne was particularly quiet and gentle all day, to thesurprise of those who had augured ill from his darkling demeanour. Hecalled no man names that day, and was not heard to swear once. He leftbusiness early; and before going away, summoned his chief clerk oncemore, and having given him general instructions, asked him, after someseeming hesitation and reluctance to speak, if he knew whether CaptainDobbin was in town?

Chopper said he believed he was. Indeed both of them knew the factperfectly. 

Osborne took a letter directed to that officer, and giving it to theclerk, requested the latter to deliver it into Dobbin's own handsimmediately. 

"And now, Chopper, " says he, taking his hat, and with a strange look, "my mind will be easy. " Exactly as the clock struck two (there was nodoubt an appointment between the pair) Mr. Frederick Bullock called, and he and Mr. Osborne walked away together. 

The Colonel of the --th regiment, in which Messieurs Dobbin and Osbornehad companies, was an old General who had made his first campaign underWolfe at Quebec, and was long since quite too old and feeble forcommand; but he took some interest in the regiment of which he was thenominal head, and made certain of his young officers welcome at histable, a kind of hospitality which I believe is not now common amongsthis brethren. Captain Dobbin was an especial favourite of this oldGeneral. Dobbin was versed in the literature of his profession, andcould talk about the great Frederick, and the Empress Queen, and theirwars, almost as well as the General himself, who was indifferent to thetriumphs of the present day, and whose heart was with the tacticians offifty years back. This officer sent a summons to Dobbin to come andbreakfast with him, on the morning when Mr. Osborne altered his willand Mr. Chopper put on his best shirt frill, and then informed hisyoung favourite, a couple of days in advance, of that which they wereall expecting--a marching order to go to Belgium. The order for theregiment to hold itself in readiness would leave the Horse Guards in aday or two; and as transports were in plenty, they would get theirroute before the week was over. Recruits had come in during the stayof the regiment at Chatham; and the old General hoped that the regimentwhich had helped to beat Montcalm in Canada, and to rout Mr. Washingtonon Long Island, would prove itself worthy of its historical reputationon the oft-trodden battle-grounds of the Low Countries. "And so, mygood friend, if you have any affaire la, " said the old General, taking apinch of snuff with his trembling white old hand, and then pointing tothe spot of his robe de chambre under which his heart was still feeblybeating, "if you have any Phillis to console, or to bid farewell topapa and mamma, or any will to make, I recommend you to set about yourbusiness without delay. " With which the General gave his young friend afinger to shake, and a good-natured nod of his powdered and pigtailedhead; and the door being closed upon Dobbin, sate down to pen a poulet(he was exceedingly vain of his French) to Mademoiselle Amenaide of HisMajesty's Theatre. 

This news made Dobbin grave, and he thought of our friends at Brighton, and then he was ashamed of himself that Amelia was always the firstthing in his thoughts (always before anybody--before father and mother, sisters and duty--always at waking and sleeping indeed, and all daylong); and returning to his hotel, he sent off a brief note to Mr. Osborne acquainting him with the information which he had received, andwhich might tend farther, he hoped, to bring about a reconciliationwith George. 

This note, despatched by the same messenger who had carried theinvitation to Chopper on the previous day, alarmed the worthy clerk nota little. It was inclosed to him, and as he opened the letter hetrembled lest the dinner should be put off on which he was calculating. His mind was inexpressibly relieved when he found that the envelope wasonly a reminder for himself. ("I shall expect you at half-past five, "Captain Dobbin wrote. ) He was very much interested about his employer'sfamily; but, que voulez-vous? a grand dinner was of more concern to himthan the affairs of any other mortal. 

Dobbin was quite justified in repeating the General's information toany officers of the regiment whom he should see in the course of hisperegrinations; accordingly he imparted it to Ensign Stubble, whom hemet at the agent's, and who--such was his military ardour--went offinstantly to purchase a new sword at the accoutrement-maker's. Herethis young fellow, who, though only seventeen years of age, and aboutsixty-five inches high, with a constitution naturally rickety and muchimpaired by premature brandy and water, had an undoubted courage and alion's heart, poised, tried, bent, and balanced a weapon such as hethought would do execution amongst Frenchmen. Shouting "Ha, ha!" andstamping his little feet with tremendous energy, he delivered the pointtwice or thrice at Captain Dobbin, who parried the thrust laughinglywith his bamboo walking-stick. 

Mr. Stubble, as may be supposed from his size and slenderness, was ofthe Light Bobs. Ensign Spooney, on the contrary, was a tall youth, andbelonged to (Captain Dobbin's) the Grenadier Company, and he tried on anew bearskin cap, under which he looked savage beyond his years. Thenthese two lads went off to the Slaughters', and having ordered a famousdinner, sate down and wrote off letters to the kind anxious parents athome--letters full of love and heartiness, and pluck and bad spelling. Ah! there were many anxious hearts beating through England at thattime; and mothers' prayers and tears flowing in many homesteads. 

Seeing young Stubble engaged in composition at one of the coffee-roomtables at the Slaughters', and the tears trickling down his nose on tothe paper (for the youngster was thinking of his mamma, and that hemight never see her again), Dobbin, who was going to write off a letterto George Osborne, relented, and locked up his desk. "Why should I?"said he. "Let her have this night happy. I'll go and see my parentsearly in the morning, and go down to Brighton myself to-morrow. "

So he went up and laid his big hand on young Stubble's shoulder, andbacked up that young champion, and told him if he would leave offbrandy and water he would be a good soldier, as he always was agentlemanly good-hearted fellow. Young Stubble's eyes brightened up atthis, for Dobbin was greatly respected in the regiment, as the bestofficer and the cleverest man in it. 

"Thank you, Dobbin, " he said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, "Iwas just--just telling her I would. And, O Sir, she's so dam kind tome. " The water pumps were at work again, and I am not sure that thesoft-hearted Captain's eyes did not also twinkle. 

The two ensigns, the Captain, and Mr. Chopper, dined together in thesame box. Chopper brought the letter from Mr. Osborne, in which thelatter briefly presented his compliments to Captain Dobbin, andrequested him to forward the inclosed to Captain George Osborne. Chopper knew nothing further; he described Mr. Osborne's appearance, itis true, and his interview with his lawyer, wondered how the governorhad sworn at nobody, and--especially as the wine circledround--abounded in speculations and conjectures. But these grew morevague with every glass, and at length became perfectly unintelligible. At a late hour Captain Dobbin put his guest into a hackney coach, in ahiccupping state, and swearing that he would be the kick--thekick--Captain's friend for ever and ever. 

When Captain Dobbin took leave of Miss Osborne we have said that heasked leave to come and pay her another visit, and the spinsterexpected him for some hours the next day, when, perhaps, had he come, and had he asked her that question which she was prepared to answer, she would have declared herself as her brother's friend, and areconciliation might have been effected between George and his angryfather. But though she waited at home the Captain never came. He hadhis own affairs to pursue; his own parents to visit and console; and atan early hour of the day to take his place on the Lightning coach, andgo down to his friends at Brighton. In the course of the day MissOsborne heard her father give orders that that meddling scoundrel, Captain Dobbin, should never be admitted within his doors again, andany hopes in which she may have indulged privately were thus abruptlybrought to an end. Mr. Frederick Bullock came, and was particularlyaffectionate to Maria, and attentive to the broken-spirited oldgentleman. For though he said his mind would be easy, the means whichhe had taken to secure quiet did not seem to have succeeded as yet, andthe events of the past two days had visibly shattered him. 

CHAPTER XXV

In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton

Conducted to the ladies, at the Ship Inn, Dobbin assumed a jovial andrattling manner, which proved that this young officer was becoming amore consummate hypocrite every day of his life. He was trying to hidehis own private feelings, first upon seeing Mrs. George Osborne in hernew condition, and secondly to mask the apprehensions he entertained asto the effect which the dismal news brought down by him would certainlyhave upon her. 

"It is my opinion, George, " he said, "that the French Emperor will beupon us, horse and foot, before three weeks are over, and will give theDuke such a dance as shall make the Peninsula appear mere child's play. But you need not say that to Mrs. Osborne, you know. There mayn't beany fighting on our side after all, and our business in Belgium mayturn out to be a mere military occupation. Many persons think so; andBrussels is full of fine people and ladies of fashion. " So it wasagreed to represent the duty of the British army in Belgium in thisharmless light to Amelia. 

This plot being arranged, the hypocritical Dobbin saluted Mrs. GeorgeOsborne quite gaily, tried to pay her one or two compliments relativeto her new position as a bride (which compliments, it must beconfessed, were exceedingly clumsy and hung fire woefully), and thenfell to talking about Brighton, and the sea-air, and the gaieties ofthe place, and the beauties of the road and the merits of the Lightningcoach and horses--all in a manner quite incomprehensible to Amelia, andvery amusing to Rebecca, who was watching the Captain, as indeed shewatched every one near whom she came. 

Little Amelia, it must be owned, had rather a mean opinion of herhusband's friend, Captain Dobbin. He lisped--he was very plain andhomely-looking: and exceedingly awkward and ungainly. She liked himfor his attachment to her husband (to be sure there was very littlemerit in that), and she thought George was most generous and kind inextending his friendship to his brother officer. George had mimickedDobbin's lisp and queer manners many times to her, though to do himjustice, he always spoke most highly of his friend's good qualities. Inher little day of triumph, and not knowing him intimately as yet, shemade light of honest William--and he knew her opinions of him quitewell, and acquiesced in them very humbly. A time came when she knewhim better, and changed her notions regarding him; but that was distantas yet. 

As for Rebecca, Captain Dobbin had not been two hours in the ladies'company before she understood his secret perfectly. She did not likehim, and feared him privately; nor was he very much prepossessed in herfavour. He was so honest, that her arts and cajoleries did not affecthim, and he shrank from her with instinctive repulsion. And, as she wasby no means so far superior to her sex as to be above jealousy, shedisliked him the more for his adoration of Amelia. Nevertheless, shewas very respectful and cordial in her manner towards him. A friend tothe Osbornes! a friend to her dearest benefactors! She vowed sheshould always love him sincerely: she remembered him quite well on theVauxhall night, as she told Amelia archly, and she made a little fun ofhim when the two ladies went to dress for dinner. Rawdon Crawley paidscarcely any attention to Dobbin, looking upon him as a good-naturednincompoop and under-bred City man. Jos patronised him with muchdignity. 

When George and Dobbin were alone in the latter's room, to which Georgehad followed him, Dobbin took from his desk the letter which he hadbeen charged by Mr. Osborne to deliver to his son. "It's not in myfather's handwriting, " said George, looking rather alarmed; nor was it:the letter was from Mr. Osborne's lawyer, and to the following effect:

 "Bedford Row, May 7, 1815. 

"SIR, "I am commissioned by Mr. Osborne to inform you, that he abides by thedetermination which he before expressed to you, and that in consequenceof the marriage which you have been pleased to contract, he ceases toconsider you henceforth as a member of his family. This determinationis final and irrevocable. 

"Although the monies expended upon you in your minority, and the billswhich you have drawn upon him so unsparingly of late years, far exceedin amount the sum to which you are entitled in your own right (beingthe third part of the fortune of your mother, the late Mrs. Osborne andwhich reverted to you at her decease, and to Miss Jane Osborne and MissMaria Frances Osborne); yet I am instructed by Mr. Osborne to say, thathe waives all claim upon your estate, and that the sum of 2, 000 pounds, 4 per cent. Annuities, at the value of the day (being your one-thirdshare of the sum of 6, 000 pounds), shall be paid over to yourself oryour agents upon your receipt for the same, by

 "Your obedient Servt. , "S. HIGGS. 

"P. S. --Mr. Osborne desires me to say, once for all, that he declines toreceive any messages, letters, or communications from you on this orany other subject. 

"A pretty way you have managed the affair, " said George, lookingsavagely at William Dobbin. "Look there, Dobbin, " and he flung over tothe latter his parent's letter. "A beggar, by Jove, and all inconsequence of my d--d sentimentality. Why couldn't we have waited? Aball might have done for me in the course of the war, and may still, and how will Emmy be bettered by being left a beggar's widow? It wasall your doing. You were never easy until you had got me married andruined. What the deuce am I to do with two thousand pounds? Such asum won't last two years. I've lost a hundred and forty to Crawley atcards and billiards since I've been down here. A pretty manager of aman's matters YOU are, forsooth. "

"There's no denying that the position is a hard one, " Dobbin replied, after reading over the letter with a blank countenance; "and as yousay, it is partly of my making. There are some men who wouldn't mindchanging with you, " he added, with a bitter smile. "How many captainsin the regiment have two thousand pounds to the fore, think you? Youmust live on your pay till your father relents, and if you die, youleave your wife a hundred a year. "

"Do you suppose a man of my habits call live on his pay and a hundred ayear?" George cried out in great anger. "You must be a fool to talkso, Dobbin. How the deuce am I to keep up my position in the worldupon such a pitiful pittance? I can't change my habits. I must havemy comforts. I wasn't brought up on porridge, like MacWhirter, or onpotatoes, like old O'Dowd. Do you expect my wife to take in soldiers'washing, or ride after the regiment in a baggage waggon?"

"Well, well, " said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, "we'll get her abetter conveyance. But try and remember that you are only a dethronedprince now, George, my boy; and be quiet whilst the tempest lasts. Itwon't be for long. Let your name be mentioned in the Gazette, and I'llengage the old father relents towards you:"

"Mentioned in the Gazette!" George answered. "And in what part of it?Among the killed and wounded returns, and at the top of the list, verylikely. "

"Psha! It will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt, " Dobbinsaid. "And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a little, and I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my godson in mywill, " he added, with a smile. Whereupon the dispute ended--as manyscores of such conversations between Osborne and his friend hadconcluded previously--by the former declaring there was no possibilityof being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him very generouslyafter abusing him without cause. 

"I say, Becky, " cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to hislady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber. 

"What?" said Becky's shrill voice. She was looking over her shoulderin the glass. She had put on the neatest and freshest white frockimaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little necklace, and a lightblue sash, she looked the image of youthful innocence and girlishhappiness. 

"I say, what'll Mrs. O. Do, when O. Goes out with the regiment?"Crawley said coming into the room, performing a duet on his head withtwo huge hair-brushes, and looking out from under his hair withadmiration on his pretty little wife. 

"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out, " Becky answered. "She has beenwhimpering half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to me. "

"YOU don't care, I suppose?" Rawdon said, half angry at his wife's wantof feeling. 

"You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with you, " Beckyreplied. "Besides, you're different. You go as General Tufto'saide-de-camp. We don't belong to the line, " Mrs. Crawley said, throwing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that hestooped down and kissed it. 

"Rawdon dear--don't you think--you'd better get that--money from Cupid, before he goes?" Becky continued, fixing on a killing bow. She calledGeorge Osborne, Cupid. She had flattered him about his good looks ascore of times already. She watched over him kindly at ecarte of anight when he would drop in to Rawdon's quarters for a half-hour beforebed-time. 

She had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch, and threatened totell Emmy of his wicked ways and naughty extravagant habits. Shebrought his cigar and lighted it for him; she knew the effect of thatmanoeuvre, having practised it in former days upon Rawdon Crawley. Hethought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguee, delightful. In their littledrives and dinners, Becky, of course, quite outshone poor Emmy, whoremained very mute and timid while Mrs. Crawley and her husband rattledaway together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos after he joined the youngmarried people) gobbled in silence. 

Emmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend. Rebecca's wit, spirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet. Theywere only a week married, and here was George already suffering ennui, and eager for others' society! She trembled for the future. How shallI be a companion for him, she thought--so clever and so brilliant, andI such a humble foolish creature? How noble it was of him to marryme--to give up everything and stoop down to me! I ought to haverefused him, only I had not the heart. I ought to have stopped at homeand taken care of poor Papa. And her neglect of her parents (andindeed there was some foundation for this charge which the poor child'suneasy conscience brought against her) was now remembered for the firsttime, and caused her to blush with humiliation. Oh! thought she, Ihave been very wicked and selfish--selfish in forgetting them in theirsorrows--selfish in forcing George to marry me. I know I'm not worthyof him--I know he would have been happy without me--and yet--I tried, Itried to give him up. 

It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are over, such thoughtsand confessions as these force themselves on a little bride's mind. But so it was, and the night before Dobbin came to join these youngpeople--on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May--so warm and balmythat the windows were flung open to the balcony, from which George andMrs. Crawley were gazing upon the calm ocean spread shining beforethem, while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at backgammon within--Ameliacouched in a great chair quite neglected, and watching both theseparties, felt a despair and remorse such as were bitter companions forthat tender lonely soul. Scarce a week was past, and it was come tothis! The future, had she regarded it, offered a dismal prospect; butEmmy was too shy, so to speak, to look to that, and embark alone onthat wide sea, and unfit to navigate it without a guide and protector. I know Miss Smith has a mean opinion of her. But how many, my dearMadam, are endowed with your prodigious strength of mind?

"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!" George said, witha puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skywards. 

"How delicious they smell in the open air! I adore them. Who'd thinkthe moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred andforty-seven miles off?" Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile. "Isn't it clever of me to remember that? Pooh! we learned it all atMiss Pinkerton's! How calm the sea is, and how clear everything. Ideclare I can almost see the coast of France!" and her bright greeneyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if they could see throughit. 

"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she said; "I find I canswim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley's companion--oldBriggs, you know--you remember her--that hook-nosed woman, with thelong wisps of hair--when Briggs goes out to bathe, I intend to diveunder her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in the water. Isn'tthat a stratagem?"

George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting. "What'sthe row there, you two?" Rawdon shouted out, rattling the box. Ameliawas making a fool of herself in an absurd hysterical manner, andretired to her own room to whimper in private. 

Our history is destined in this chapter to go backwards and forwards ina very irresolute manner seemingly, and having conducted our story toto-morrow presently, we shall immediately again have occasion to stepback to yesterday, so that the whole of the tale may get a hearing. Asyou behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the ambassadors' and highdignitaries' carriages whisk off from a private door, while CaptainJones's ladies are waiting for their fly: as you see in the Secretaryof the Treasury's antechamber, a half-dozen of petitioners waitingpatiently for their audience, and called out one by one, when suddenlyan Irish member or some eminent personage enters the apartment, andinstantly walks into Mr. Under-Secretary over the heads of all thepeople present: so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged toexercise this most partial sort of justice. Although all the littleincidents must be heard, yet they must be put off when the great eventsmake their appearance; and surely such a circumstance as that whichbrought Dobbin to Brighton, viz. , the ordering out of the Guards andthe line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in thatcountry under the command of his Grace the Duke of Wellington--such adignified circumstance as that, I say, was entitled to the pas over allminor occurrences whereof this history is composed mainly, and hence alittle trifling disarrangement and disorder was excusable and becoming. We have only now advanced in time so far beyond Chapter XXII as to havegot our various characters up into their dressing-rooms before thedinner, which took place as usual on the day of Dobbin's arrival. 

George was too humane or too much occupied with the tie of hisneckcloth to convey at once all the news to Amelia which his comradehad brought with him from London. He came into her room, however, holding the attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn andimportant an air that his wife, always ingeniously on the watch forcalamity, thought the worst was about to befall, and running up to herhusband, besought her dearest George to tell her everything--he wasordered abroad; there would be a battle next week--she knew there would. 

Dearest George parried the question about foreign service, and with amelancholy shake of the head said, "No, Emmy; it isn't that: it's notmyself I care about: it's you. I have had bad news from my father. Herefuses any communication with me; he has flung us off; and leaves usto poverty. I can rough it well enough; but you, my dear, how will youbear it? read here. " And he handed her over the letter. 

Amelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes, listened to her noblehero as he uttered the above generous sentiments, and sitting down onthe bed, read the letter which George gave her with such a pompousmartyr-like air. Her face cleared up as she read the document, however. The idea of sharing poverty and privation in company with thebeloved object is, as we have before said, far from being disagreeableto a warm-hearted woman. The notion was actually pleasant to littleAmelia. Then, as usual, she was ashamed of herself for feeling happyat such an indecorous moment, and checked her pleasure, sayingdemurely, "O, George, how your poor heart must bleed at the idea ofbeing separated from your papa!"

"It does, " said George, with an agonised countenance. 

"But he can't be angry with you long, " she continued. "Nobody could, I'm sure. He must forgive you, my dearest, kindest husband. O, Ishall never forgive myself if he does not. "

"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune, but yours, " Georgesaid. "I don't care for a little poverty; and I think, without vanity, I've talents enough to make my own way. "

"That you have, " interposed his wife, who thought that war shouldcease, and her husband should be made a general instantly. 

"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another, " Osborne went on; "butyou, my dear girl, how can I bear your being deprived of the comfortsand station in society which my wife had a right to expect? My dearestgirl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching regiment; subjectto all sorts of annoyance and privation! It makes me miserable. "

Emmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only cause of disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face and smile began to warble thatstanza from the favourite song of "Wapping Old Stairs, " in which theheroine, after rebuking her Tom for inattention, promises "his trousersto mend, and his grog too to make, " if he will be constant and kind, and not forsake her. "Besides, " she said, after a pause, during whichshe looked as pretty and happy as any young woman need, "isn't twothousand pounds an immense deal of money, George?"

George laughed at her naivete; and finally they went down to dinner, Amelia clinging to George's arm, still warbling the tune of "WappingOld Stairs, " and more pleased and light of mind than she had been forsome days past. 

Thus the repast, which at length came off, instead of being dismal, wasan exceedingly brisk and merry one. The excitement of the campaigncounteracted in George's mind the depression occasioned by thedisinheriting letter. Dobbin still kept up his character of rattle. Heamused the company with accounts of the army in Belgium; where nothingbut fetes and gaiety and fashion were going on. Then, having aparticular end in view, this dexterous captain proceeded to describeMrs. Major O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe, and how hisbest epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister, whilst her ownfamous yellow turban, with the bird of paradise wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the Major's tin cocked-hat case, and wondered whateffect it would have at the French king's court at Ghent, or the greatmilitary balls at Brussels. 

"Ghent! Brussels!" cried out Amelia with a sudden shock and start. "Isthe regiment ordered away, George--is it ordered away?" A look ofterror came over the sweet smiling face, and she clung to George as byan instinct. 

"Don't be afraid, dear, " he said good-naturedly; "it is but a twelvehours' passage. It won't hurt you. You shall go, too, Emmy. "

"I intend to go, " said Becky. "I'm on the staff. General Tufto is agreat flirt of mine. Isn't he, Rawdon?" Rawdon laughed out with hisusual roar. William Dobbin flushed up quite red. "She can't go, " hesaid; "think of the--of the danger, " he was going to add; but had notall his conversation during dinner-time tended to prove there was none?He became very confused and silent. 

"I must and will go, " Amelia cried with the greatest spirit; andGeorge, applauding her resolution, patted her under the chin, and askedall the persons present if they ever saw such a termagant of a wife, and agreed that the lady should bear him company. "We'll have Mrs. O'Dowd to chaperon you, " he said. What cared she so long as herhusband was near her? Thus somehow the bitterness of a parting wasjuggled away. Though war and danger were in store, war and dangermight not befall for months to come. There was a respite at any rate, which made the timid little Amelia almost as happy as a full reprievewould have done, and which even Dobbin owned in his heart was verywelcome. For, to be permitted to see her was now the greatestprivilege and hope of his life, and he thought with himself secretlyhow he would watch and protect her. I wouldn't have let her go if Ihad been married to her, he thought. But George was the master, andhis friend did not think fit to remonstrate. 

Putting her arm round her friend's waist, Rebecca at length carriedAmelia off from the dinner-table where so much business of importancehad been discussed, and left the gentlemen in a highly exhilaratedstate, drinking and talking very gaily. 

In the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family-note from hiswife, which, although he crumpled it up and burnt it instantly in thecandle, we had the good luck to read over Rebecca's shoulder. "Greatnews, " she wrote. "Mrs. Bute is gone. Get the money from Cupidtonight, as he'll be off to-morrow most likely. Mind this. --R. " Sowhen the little company was about adjourning to coffee in the women'sapartment, Rawdon touched Osborne on the elbow, and said gracefully, "Isay, Osborne, my boy, if quite convenient, I'll trouble you for that'ere small trifle. " It was not quite convenient, but neverthelessGeorge gave him a considerable present instalment in bank-notes fromhis pocket-book, and a bill on his agents at a week's date, for theremaining sum. 

This matter arranged, George, and Jos, and Dobbin, held a council ofwar over their cigars, and agreed that a general move should be madefor London in Jos's open carriage the next day. Jos, I think, wouldhave preferred staying until Rawdon Crawley quitted Brighton, butDobbin and George overruled him, and he agreed to carry the party totown, and ordered four horses, as became his dignity. With these theyset off in state, after breakfast, the next day. Amelia had risen veryearly in the morning, and packed her little trunks with the greatestalacrity, while Osborne lay in bed deploring that she had not a maid tohelp her. She was only too glad, however, to perform this office forherself. A dim uneasy sentiment about Rebecca filled her mind already;and although they kissed each other most tenderly at parting, yet weknow what jealousy is; and Mrs. Amelia possessed that among othervirtues of her sex. 

Besides these characters who are coming and going away, we mustremember that there were some other old friends of ours at Brighton;Miss Crawley, namely, and the suite in attendance upon her. Now, although Rebecca and her husband were but at a few stones' throw of thelodgings which the invalid Miss Crawley occupied, the old lady's doorremained as pitilessly closed to them as it had been heretofore inLondon. As long as she remained by the side of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Bute Crawley took care that her beloved Matilda should not beagitated by a meeting with her nephew. When the spinster took herdrive, the faithful Mrs. Bute sate beside her in the carriage. WhenMiss Crawley took the air in a chair, Mrs. Bute marched on one side ofthe vehicle, whilst honest Briggs occupied the other wing. And if theymet Rawdon and his wife by chance--although the former constantly andobsequiously took off his hat, the Miss-Crawley party passed him bywith such a frigid and killing indifference, that Rawdon began todespair. 

"We might as well be in London as here, " Captain Rawdon often said, with a downcast air. 

"A comfortable inn in Brighton is better than a spunging-house inChancery Lane, " his wife answered, who was of a more cheerfultemperament. "Think of those two aides-de-camp of Mr. Moses, thesheriff's-officer, who watched our lodging for a week. Our friendshere are very stupid, but Mr. Jos and Captain Cupid are bettercompanions than Mr. Moses's men, Rawdon, my love. "

"I wonder the writs haven't followed me down here, " Rawdon continued, still desponding. 

"When they do, we'll find means to give them the slip, " said dauntlesslittle Becky, and further pointed out to her husband the great comfortand advantage of meeting Jos and Osborne, whose acquaintance hadbrought to Rawdon Crawley a most timely little supply of ready money. 

"It will hardly be enough to pay the inn bill, " grumbled the Guardsman. 

"Why need we pay it?" said the lady, who had an answer for everything. 

Through Rawdon's valet, who still kept up a trifling acquaintance withthe male inhabitants of Miss Crawley's servants' hall, and wasinstructed to treat the coachman to drink whenever they met, old MissCrawley's movements were pretty well known by our young couple; andRebecca luckily bethought herself of being unwell, and of calling inthe same apothecary who was in attendance upon the spinster, so thattheir information was on the whole tolerably complete. Nor was MissBriggs, although forced to adopt a hostile attitude, secretly inimicalto Rawdon and his wife. She was naturally of a kindly and forgivingdisposition. Now that the cause of jealousy was removed, her dislikefor Rebecca disappeared also, and she remembered the latter'sinvariable good words and good humour. And, indeed, she and Mrs. Firkin, the lady's-maid, and the whole of Miss Crawley's household, groaned under the tyranny of the triumphant Mrs. Bute. 

As often will be the case, that good but imperious woman pushed heradvantages too far, and her successes quite unmercifully. She had inthe course of a few weeks brought the invalid to such a state ofhelpless docility, that the poor soul yielded herself entirely to hersister's orders, and did not even dare to complain of her slavery toBriggs or Firkin. Mrs. Bute measured out the glasses of wine whichMiss Crawley was daily allowed to take, with irresistible accuracy, greatly to the annoyance of Firkin and the butler, who found themselvesdeprived of control over even the sherry-bottle. She apportioned thesweetbreads, jellies, chickens; their quantity and order. Night andnoon and morning she brought the abominable drinks ordained by theDoctor, and made her patient swallow them with so affecting anobedience that Firkin said "my poor Missus du take her physic like alamb. " She prescribed the drive in the carriage or the ride in thechair, and, in a word, ground down the old lady in her convalescence insuch a way as only belongs to your proper-managing, motherly moralwoman. If ever the patient faintly resisted, and pleaded for a littlebit more dinner or a little drop less medicine, the nurse threatenedher with instantaneous death, when Miss Crawley instantly gave in. "She's no spirit left in her, " Firkin remarked to Briggs; "she ain'tave called me a fool these three weeks. " Finally, Mrs. Bute had made upher mind to dismiss the aforesaid honest lady's-maid, Mr. Bowls thelarge confidential man, and Briggs herself, and to send for herdaughters from the Rectory, previous to removing the dear invalidbodily to Queen's Crawley, when an odious accident happened whichcalled her away from duties so pleasing. The Reverend Bute Crawley, her husband, riding home one night, fell with his horse and broke hiscollar-bone. Fever and inflammatory symptoms set in, and Mrs. Bute wasforced to leave Sussex for Hampshire. As soon as ever Bute wasrestored, she promised to return to her dearest friend, and departed, leaving the strongest injunctions with the household regarding theirbehaviour to their mistress; and as soon as she got into theSouthampton coach, there was such a jubilee and sense of relief in allMiss Crawley's house, as the company of persons assembled there had notexperienced for many a week before. That very day Miss Crawley leftoff her afternoon dose of medicine: that afternoon Bowls opened anindependent bottle of sherry for himself and Mrs. Firkin: that nightMiss Crawley and Miss Briggs indulged in a game of piquet instead ofone of Porteus's sermons. It was as in the old nursery-story, whenthe stick forgot to beat the dog, and the whole course of eventsunderwent a peaceful and happy revolution. 

At a very early hour in the morning, twice or thrice a week, MissBriggs used to betake herself to a bathing-machine, and disport in thewater in a flannel gown and an oilskin cap. Rebecca, as we have seen, was aware of this circumstance, and though she did not attempt to stormBriggs as she had threatened, and actually dive into that lady'spresence and surprise her under the sacredness of the awning, Mrs. Rawdon determined to attack Briggs as she came away from her bath, refreshed and invigorated by her dip, and likely to be in good humour. 

So getting up very early the next morning, Becky brought the telescopein their sitting-room, which faced the sea, to bear upon thebathing-machines on the beach; saw Briggs arrive, enter her box; andput out to sea; and was on the shore just as the nymph of whom she camein quest stepped out of the little caravan on to the shingles. It wasa pretty picture: the beach; the bathing-women's faces; the long lineof rocks and building were blushing and bright in the sunshine. Rebecca wore a kind, tender smile on her face, and was holding out herpretty white hand as Briggs emerged from the box. What could Briggs dobut accept the salutation?

"Miss Sh--Mrs. Crawley, " she said. 

Mrs. Crawley seized her hand, pressed it to her heart, and with asudden impulse, flinging her arms round Briggs, kissed heraffectionately. "Dear, dear friend!" she said, with a touch of suchnatural feeling, that Miss Briggs of course at once began to melt, andeven the bathing-woman was mollified. 

Rebecca found no difficulty in engaging Briggs in a long, intimate, anddelightful conversation. Everything that had passed since the morningof Becky's sudden departure from Miss Crawley's house in Park Lane upto the present day, and Mrs. Bute's happy retreat, was discussed anddescribed by Briggs. All Miss Crawley's symptoms, and the particularsof her illness and medical treatment, were narrated by the confidantewith that fulness and accuracy which women delight in. About theircomplaints and their doctors do ladies ever tire of talking to eachother? Briggs did not on this occasion; nor did Rebecca weary oflistening. She was thankful, truly thankful, that the dear kindBriggs, that the faithful, the invaluable Firkin, had been permitted toremain with their benefactress through her illness. Heaven bless her!though she, Rebecca, had seemed to act undutifully towards MissCrawley; yet was not her fault a natural and excusable one? Could shehelp giving her hand to the man who had won her heart? Briggs, thesentimental, could only turn up her eyes to heaven at this appeal, andheave a sympathetic sigh, and think that she, too, had given away heraffections long years ago, and own that Rebecca was no very greatcriminal. 

"Can I ever forget her who so befriended the friendless orphan? No, though she has cast me off, " the latter said, "I shall never cease tolove her, and I would devote my life to her service. As my ownbenefactress, as my beloved Rawdon's adored relative, I love and admireMiss Crawley, dear Miss Briggs, beyond any woman in the world, and nextto her I love all those who are faithful to her. I would never havetreated Miss Crawley's faithful friends as that odious designing Mrs. Bute has done. Rawdon, who was all heart, " Rebecca continued, "although his outward manners might seem rough and careless, had said ahundred times, with tears in his eyes, that he blessed Heaven forsending his dearest Aunty two such admirable nurses as her attachedFirkin and her admirable Miss Briggs. Should the machinations of thehorrible Mrs. Bute end, as she too much feared they would, in banishingeverybody that Miss Crawley loved from her side, and leaving that poorlady a victim to those harpies at the Rectory, Rebecca besought her(Miss Briggs) to remember that her own home, humble as it was, wasalways open to receive Briggs. Dear friend, " she exclaimed, in atransport of enthusiasm, "some hearts can never forget benefits; allwomen are not Bute Crawleys! Though why should I complain of her, "Rebecca added; "though I have been her tool and the victim to her arts, do I not owe my dearest Rawdon to her?" And Rebecca unfolded to Briggsall Mrs. Bute's conduct at Queen's Crawley, which, thoughunintelligible to her then, was clearly enough explained by the eventsnow--now that the attachment had sprung up which Mrs. Bute hadencouraged by a thousand artifices--now that two innocent people hadfallen into the snares which she had laid for them, and loved andmarried and been ruined through her schemes. 

It was all very true. Briggs saw the stratagems as clearly aspossible. Mrs. Bute had made the match between Rawdon and Rebecca. Yet, though the latter was a perfectly innocent victim, Miss Briggscould not disguise from her friend her fear that Miss Crawley'saffections were hopelessly estranged from Rebecca, and that the oldlady would never forgive her nephew for making so imprudent a marriage. 

On this point Rebecca had her own opinion, and still kept up a goodheart. If Miss Crawley did not forgive them at present, she might atleast relent on a future day. Even now, there was only that puling, sickly Pitt Crawley between Rawdon and a baronetcy; and should anythinghappen to the former, all would be well. At all events, to have Mrs. Bute's designs exposed, and herself well abused, was a satisfaction, and might be advantageous to Rawdon's interest; and Rebecca, after anhour's chat with her recovered friend, left her with the most tenderdemonstrations of regard, and quite assured that the conversation theyhad had together would be reported to Miss Crawley before many hourswere over. 

This interview ended, it became full time for Rebecca to return to herinn, where all the party of the previous day were assembled at afarewell breakfast. Rebecca took such a tender leave of Amelia asbecame two women who loved each other as sisters; and having used herhandkerchief plentifully, and hung on her friend's neck as if they wereparting for ever, and waved the handkerchief (which was quite dry, bythe way) out of window, as the carriage drove off, she came back to thebreakfast table, and ate some prawns with a good deal of appetite, considering her emotion; and while she was munching these delicacies, explained to Rawdon what had occurred in her morning walk betweenherself and Briggs. Her hopes were very high: she made her husbandshare them. She generally succeeded in making her husband share allher opinions, whether melancholy or cheerful. 

"You will now, if you please, my dear, sit down at the writing-tableand pen me a pretty little letter to Miss Crawley, in which you'll saythat you are a good boy, and that sort of thing. " So Rawdon sate down, and wrote off, "Brighton, Thursday, " and "My dear Aunt, " with greatrapidity: but there the gallant officer's imagination failed him. Hemumbled the end of his pen, and looked up in his wife's face. Shecould not help laughing at his rueful countenance, and marching up anddown the room with her hands behind her, the little woman began todictate a letter, which he took down. 

"Before quitting the country and commencing a campaign, which verypossibly may be fatal. "

"What?" said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the humour of thephrase, and presently wrote it down with a grin. 

"Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come hither--"

"Why not say come here, Becky? Come here's grammar, " the dragooninterposed. 

"I have come hither, " Rebecca insisted, with a stamp of her foot, "tosay farewell to my dearest and earliest friend. I beseech you before Igo, not perhaps to return, once more to let me press the hand fromwhich I have received nothing but kindnesses all my life. "

"Kindnesses all my life, " echoed Rawdon, scratching down the words, andquite amazed at his own facility of composition. 

"I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in anger. I havethe pride of my family on some points, though not on all. I married apainter's daughter, and am not ashamed of the union. "

"No, run me through the body if I am!" Rawdon ejaculated. 

"You old booby, " Rebecca said, pinching his ear and looking over to seethat he made no mistakes in spelling--"beseech is not spelt with an a, and earliest is. " So he altered these words, bowing to the superiorknowledge of his little Missis. 

"I thought that you were aware of the progress of my attachment, "Rebecca continued: "I knew that Mrs. Bute Crawley confirmed andencouraged it. But I make no reproaches. I married a poor woman, andam content to abide by what I have done. Leave your property, dearAunt, as you will. I shall never complain of the way in which youdispose of it. I would have you believe that I love you for yourself, and not for money's sake. I want to be reconciled to you ere I leaveEngland. Let me, let me see you before I go. A few weeks or monthshence it may be too late, and I cannot bear the notion of quitting thecountry without a kind word of farewell from you. "

"She won't recognise my style in that, " said Becky. "I made thesentences short and brisk on purpose. " And this authentic missive wasdespatched under cover to Miss Briggs. 

Old Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great mystery, handed herover this candid and simple statement. "We may read it now Mrs. Buteis away, " she said. "Read it to me, Briggs. "

When Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness laughed more. "Don't you see, you goose, " she said to Briggs, who professed to bemuch touched by the honest affection which pervaded the composition, "don't you see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it. He never wrote tome without asking for money in his life, and all his letters are fullof bad spelling, and dashes, and bad grammar. It is that littleserpent of a governess who rules him. " They are all alike, Miss Crawleythought in her heart. They all want me dead, and are hankering for mymoney. 

"I don't mind seeing Rawdon, " she added, after a pause, and in a toneof perfect indifference. "I had just as soon shake hands with him asnot. Provided there is no scene, why shouldn't we meet? I don't mind. But human patience has its limits; and mind, my dear, I respectfullydecline to receive Mrs. Rawdon--I can't support that quite"--and MissBriggs was fain to be content with this half-message of conciliation;and thought that the best method of bringing the old lady and hernephew together, was to warn Rawdon to be in waiting on the Cliff, whenMiss Crawley went out for her air in her chair. There they met. Idon't know whether Miss Crawley had any private feeling of regard oremotion upon seeing her old favourite; but she held out a couple offingers to him with as smiling and good-humoured an air, as if they hadmet only the day before. And as for Rawdon, he turned as red asscarlet, and wrung off Briggs's hand, so great was his rapture and hisconfusion at the meeting. Perhaps it was interest that moved him: orperhaps affection: perhaps he was touched by the change which theillness of the last weeks had wrought in his aunt. 

"The old girl has always acted like a trump to me, " he said to hiswife, as he narrated the interview, "and I felt, you know, ratherqueer, and that sort of thing. I walked by the side of thewhat-dy'e-call-'em, you know, and to her own door, where Bowls came to helpher in. And I wanted to go in very much, only--"

"YOU DIDN'T GO IN, Rawdon!" screamed his wife. 

"No, my dear; I'm hanged if I wasn't afraid when it came to the point. "

"You fool! you ought to have gone in, and never come out again, "Rebecca said. 

"Don't call me names, " said the big Guardsman, sulkily. "Perhaps I WASa fool, Becky, but you shouldn't say so"; and he gave his wife a look, such as his countenance could wear when angered, and such as was notpleasant to face. 

"Well, dearest, to-morrow you must be on the look-out, and go and seeher, mind, whether she asks you or no, " Rebecca said, trying to sootheher angry yoke-mate. On which he replied, that he would do exactly ashe liked, and would just thank her to keep a civil tongue in herhead--and the wounded husband went away, and passed the forenoon at thebilliard-room, sulky, silent, and suspicious. 

But before the night was over he was compelled to give in, and own, asusual, to his wife's superior prudence and foresight, by the mostmelancholy confirmation of the presentiments which she had regardingthe consequences of the mistake which he had made. Miss Crawley musthave had some emotion upon seeing him and shaking hands with him afterso long a rupture. She mused upon the meeting a considerable time. "Rawdon is getting very fat and old, Briggs, " she said to hercompanion. "His nose has become red, and he is exceedingly coarse inappearance. His marriage to that woman has hopelessly vulgarised him. Mrs. Bute always said they drank together; and I have no doubt they do. Yes: he smelt of gin abominably. I remarked it. Didn't you?"

In vain Briggs interposed that Mrs. Bute spoke ill of everybody: and, as far as a person in her humble position could judge, was an--

"An artful designing woman? Yes, so she is, and she does speak ill ofevery one--but I am certain that woman has made Rawdon drink. All thoselow people do--"

"He was very much affected at seeing you, ma'am, " the companion said;"and I am sure, when you remember that he is going to the field ofdanger--"

"How much money has he promised you, Briggs?" the old spinster criedout, working herself into a nervous rage--"there now, of course youbegin to cry. I hate scenes. Why am I always to be worried? Go andcry up in your own room, and send Firkin to me--no, stop, sit down andblow your nose, and leave off crying, and write a letter to CaptainCrawley. " Poor Briggs went and placed herself obediently at thewriting-book. Its leaves were blotted all over with relics of thefirm, strong, rapid handwriting of the spinster's late amanuensis, Mrs. Bute Crawley. 

"Begin 'My dear sir, ' or 'Dear sir, ' that will be better, and say youare desired by Miss Crawley--no, by Miss Crawley's medical man, by Mr. Creamer, to state that my health is such that all strong emotions wouldbe dangerous in my present delicate condition--and that I must declineany family discussions or interviews whatever. And thank him for comingto Brighton, and so forth, and beg him not to stay any longer on myaccount. And, Miss Briggs, you may add that I wish him a bon voyage, and that if he will take the trouble to call upon my lawyer's in Gray'sInn Square, he will find there a communication for him. Yes, that willdo; and that will make him leave Brighton. " The benevolent Briggspenned this sentence with the utmost satisfaction. 

"To seize upon me the very day after Mrs. Bute was gone, " the old ladyprattled on; "it was too indecent. Briggs, my dear, write to Mrs. Crawley, and say SHE needn't come back. No--she needn't--and sheshan't--and I won't be a slave in my own house--and I won't be starvedand choked with poison. They all want to kill me--all--all"--and withthis the lonely old woman burst into a scream of hysterical tears. 

The last scene of her dismal Vanity Fair comedy was fast approaching;the tawdry lamps were going out one by one; and the dark curtain wasalmost ready to descend. 

That final paragraph, which referred Rawdon to Miss Crawley's solicitorin London, and which Briggs had written so good-naturedly, consoled thedragoon and his wife somewhat, after their first blank disappointment, on reading the spinster's refusal of a reconciliation. And it effectedthe purpose for which the old lady had caused it to be written, bymaking Rawdon very eager to get to London. 

Out of Jos's losings and George Osborne's bank-notes, he paid his billat the inn, the landlord whereof does not probably know to this day howdoubtfully his account once stood. For, as a general sends his baggageto the rear before an action, Rebecca had wisely packed up all theirchief valuables and sent them off under care of George's servant, whowent in charge of the trunks on the coach back to London. Rawdon andhis wife returned by the same conveyance next day. 

"I should have liked to see the old girl before we went, " Rawdon said. "She looks so cut up and altered that I'm sure she can't last long. Iwonder what sort of a cheque I shall have at Waxy's. Two hundred--itcan't be less than two hundred--hey, Becky?"

In consequence of the repeated visits of the aides-de-camp of theSheriff of Middlesex, Rawdon and his wife did not go back to theirlodgings at Brompton, but put up at an inn. Early the next morning, Rebecca had an opportunity of seeing them as she skirted that suburb onher road to old Mrs. Sedley's house at Fulham, whither she went to lookfor her dear Amelia and her Brighton friends. They were all off toChatham, thence to Harwich, to take shipping for Belgium with theregiment--kind old Mrs. Sedley very much depressed and tearful, solitary. Returning from this visit, Rebecca found her husband, whohad been off to Gray's Inn, and learnt his fate. He came back furious. 

"By Jove, Becky, " says he, "she's only given me twenty pound!"

Though it told against themselves, the joke was too good, and Beckyburst out laughing at Rawdon's discomfiture. 

CHAPTER XXVI

Between London and Chatham

On quitting Brighton, our friend George, as became a person of rank andfashion travelling in a barouche with four horses, drove in state to afine hotel in Cavendish Square, where a suite of splendid rooms, and atable magnificently furnished with plate and surrounded by a half-dozenof black and silent waiters, was ready to receive the young gentlemanand his bride. George did the honours of the place with a princely airto Jos and Dobbin; and Amelia, for the first time, and with exceedingshyness and timidity, presided at what George called her own table. 

George pooh-poohed the wine and bullied the waiters royally, and Josgobbled the turtle with immense satisfaction. Dobbin helped him to it;for the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed, was soignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley withoutbestowing upon him either calipash or calipee. 

The splendour of the entertainment, and the apartments in which it wasgiven, alarmed Mr. Dobbin, who remonstrated after dinner, when Jos wasasleep in the great chair. But in vain he cried out against theenormity of turtle and champagne that was fit for an archbishop. "I'vealways been accustomed to travel like a gentleman, " George said, "and, damme, my wife shall travel like a lady. As long as there's a shot inthe locker, she shall want for nothing, " said the generous fellow, quite pleased with himself for his magnificence of spirit. Nor didDobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness was not centred inturtle-soup. 

A while after dinner, Amelia timidly expressed a wish to go and see hermamma, at Fulham: which permission George granted her with somegrumbling. And she tripped away to her enormous bedroom, in the centreof which stood the enormous funereal bed, "that the EmperorHalixander's sister slep in when the allied sufferings was here, " andput on her little bonnet and shawl with the utmost eagerness andpleasure. George was still drinking claret when she returned to thedining-room, and made no signs of moving. "Ar'n't you coming with me, dearest?" she asked him. No; the "dearest" had "business" that night. His man should get her a coach and go with her. And the coach being atthe door of the hotel, Amelia made George a little disappointed curtseyafter looking vainly into his face once or twice, and went sadly downthe great staircase, Captain Dobbin after, who handed her into thevehicle, and saw it drive away to its destination. The very valet wasashamed of mentioning the address to the hackney-coachman before thehotel waiters, and promised to instruct him when they got further on. 

Dobbin walked home to his old quarters and the Slaughters', thinkingvery likely that it would be delightful to be in that hackney-coach, along with Mrs. Osborne. George was evidently of quite a differenttaste; for when he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price atthe play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock. Captain Osborne was agreat lover of the drama, and had himself performed high-comedycharacters with great distinction in several garrison theatricalentertainments. Jos slept on until long after dark, when he woke upwith a start at the motions of his servant, who was removing andemptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-coach stand wasagain put into requisition for a carriage to convey this stout hero tohis lodgings and bed. 

Mrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to her heart withall maternal eagerness and affection, running out of the door as thecarriage drew up before the little garden-gate, to welcome the weeping, trembling, young bride. Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his shirt-sleeves, trimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed. The Irish servant-lassrushed up from the kitchen and smiled a "God bless you. " Amelia couldhardly walk along the flags and up the steps into the parlour. 

How the floodgates were opened, and mother and daughter wept, when theywere together embracing each other in this sanctuary, may readily beimagined by every reader who possesses the least sentimental turn. When don't ladies weep? At what occasion of joy, sorrow, or otherbusiness of life, and, after such an event as a marriage, mother anddaughter were surely at liberty to give way to a sensibility which isas tender as it is refreshing. About a question of marriage I have seenwomen who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly. How muchmore do they feel when they love! Good mothers are married over againat their daughters' weddings: and as for subsequent events, who doesnot know how ultra-maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, untilshe is a grandmother, does not often really know what to be a motheris. Let us respect Amelia and her mamma whispering and whimpering andlaughing and crying in the parlour and the twilight. Old Mr. Sedleydid. HE had not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up. Hehad not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed her verywarmly when she entered the room (where he was occupied, as usual, withhis papers and tapes and statements of accounts), and after sittingwith the mother and daughter for a short time, he very wisely left thelittle apartment in their possession. 

George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious manner at Mr. Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes. He took off hishat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked newsabout his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his horseshad been down to Brighton, and about that infernal traitor Bonaparty, and the war; until the Irish maid-servant came with a plate and abottle of wine, from which the old gentleman insisted upon helping thevalet. He gave him a half-guinea too, which the servant pocketed witha mixture of wonder and contempt. "To the health of your master andmistress, Trotter, " Mr. Sedley said, "and here's something to drinkyour health when you get home, Trotter. "

There were but nine days past since Amelia had left that little cottageand home--and yet how far off the time seemed since she had bidden itfarewell. What a gulf lay between her and that past life. She couldlook back to it from her present standing-place, and contemplate, almost as another being, the young unmarried girl absorbed in her love, having no eyes but for one special object, receiving parental affectionif not ungratefully, at least indifferently, and as if it were herdue--her whole heart and thoughts bent on the accomplishment of onedesire. The review of those days, so lately gone yet so far away, touched her with shame; and the aspect of the kind parents filled herwith tender remorse. Was the prize gained--the heaven of life--and thewinner still doubtful and unsatisfied? As his hero and heroine passthe matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, asif the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended:as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasantthere: and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link each other'sarms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy andperfect fruition. But our little Amelia was just on the bank of hernew country, and was already looking anxiously back towards the sadfriendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from theother distant shore. 

In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it necessaryto prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and after the firstebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, anddived down to the lower regions of the house to a sort ofkitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. And Mrs. Clapp, and in the evening, when her dishes were washed and her curl-papers removed, by MissFlannigan, the Irish servant), there to take measures for the preparingof a magnificent ornamented tea. All people have their ways ofexpressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a muffin and aquantity of orange marmalade spread out in a little cut-glass saucerwould be peculiarly agreeable refreshments to Amelia in her mostinteresting situation. 

While these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving thedrawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew how, in the little room which she had occupied before her marriage, and inthat very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours. She sankback in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to thinking overthe past week, and the life beyond it. Already to be looking sadly andvaguely back: always to be pining for something which, when obtained, brought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here was the lot of ourpoor little creature and harmless lost wanderer in the great strugglingcrowds of Vanity Fair. 

Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George towhich she had knelt before marriage. Did she own to herself howdifferent the real man was from that superb young hero whom she hadworshipped? It requires many, many years--and a man must be very badindeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such aconfession. Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful smilelighted upon her, and filled her with dismay. And so she sate forawhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that verylistless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant had foundher, on the day when she brought up the letter in which George renewedhis offer of marriage. 

She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few daysbefore, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and wake, as formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning: Then shethought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vastand dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the grand hotel inCavendish Square. Dear little white bed! how many a long night had shewept on its pillow! How she had despaired and hoped to die there; andnow were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of whom she haddespaired her own for ever? Kind mother! how patiently and tenderlyshe had watched round that bed! She went and knelt down by the bedside;and there this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul, soughtfor consolation, where as yet, it must be owned, our little girl hadbut seldom looked for it. Love had been her faith hitherto; and thesad, bleeding disappointed heart began to feel the want of anotherconsoler. 

Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers? These, brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which our storylies. 

But this may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, ouryoung lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did notdespond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness, orRebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late. She wentdownstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the oldgentleman, and made him more merry than he had been for many a day. Shesate down at the piano which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang overall her father's favourite old songs. She pronounced the tea to beexcellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which the marmalade wasarranged in the saucers. And in determining to make everybody elsehappy, she found herself so; and was sound asleep in the great funerealpavilion, and only woke up with a smile when George arrived from thetheatre. 

For the next day, George had more important "business" to transact thanthat which took him to see Mr. Kean in Shylock. Immediately on hisarrival in London he had written off to his father's solicitors, signifying his royal pleasure that an interview should take placebetween them on the morrow. His hotel bill, losses at billiards andcards to Captain Crawley had almost drained the young man's purse, which wanted replenishing before he set out on his travels, and he hadno resource but to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which theattorneys were commissioned to pay over to him. He had a perfectbelief in his own mind that his father would relent before very long. How could any parent be obdurate for a length of time against such aparagon as he was? If his mere past and personal merits did notsucceed in mollifying his father, George determined that he woulddistinguish himself so prodigiously in the ensuing campaign that theold gentleman must give in to him. And if not? Bah! the world wasbefore him. His luck might change at cards, and there was a deal ofspending in two thousand pounds. 

So he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her mamma, with strictorders and carte blanche to the two ladies to purchase everythingrequisite for a lady of Mrs. George Osborne's fashion, who was going ona foreign tour. They had but one day to complete the outfit, and itmay be imagined that their business therefore occupied them prettyfully. In a carriage once more, bustling about from milliner tolinen-draper, escorted back to the carriage by obsequious shopmen orpolite owners, Mrs. Sedley was herself again almost, and sincerelyhappy for the first time since their misfortunes. Nor was Mrs. Ameliaat all above the pleasure of shopping, and bargaining, and seeing andbuying pretty things. (Would any man, the most philosophic, givetwopence for a woman who was?) She gave herself a little treat, obedient to her husband's orders, and purchased a quantity of lady'sgear, showing a great deal of taste and elegant discernment, as all theshopfolks said. 

And about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne was not much alarmed;Bonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle. Margate packetswere sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note, on their way to Brussels and Ghent. People were going not so much to awar as to a fashionable tour. The newspapers laughed the wretchedupstart and swindler to scorn. Such a Corsican wretch as thatwithstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the immortalWellington! Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs not to besaid that this soft and gentle creature took her opinions from thosepeople who surrounded her, such fidelity being much too humble-mindedto think for itself. Well, in a word, she and her mother performed agreat day's shopping, and she acquitted herself with considerableliveliness and credit on this her first appearance in the genteel worldof London. 

George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and hisswaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into theattorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who wasscribbling there. He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs that CaptainOsborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way, as if the pekinof an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty times his money, and athousand times his experience, was a wretched underling who shouldinstantly leave all his business in life to attend on the Captain'spleasure. He did not see the sneer of contempt which passed all roundthe room, from the first clerk to the articled gents, from the articledgents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes tootight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, andthinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were. Themiserable poor devils knew all about his affairs. They talked aboutthem over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to otherclerks of a night. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerksknow in London! Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and theirfamilies mutely rule our city. 

Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to findthat gentleman commissioned to give him some message of compromise orconciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and cold demeanourwas adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution: but if so, hisfierceness was met by a chilling coolness and indifference on theattorney's part, that rendered swaggering absurd. He pretended to bewriting at a paper, when the Captain entered. "Pray, sit down, sir, "said he, "and I will attend to your little affair in a moment. Mr. Poe, get the release papers, if you please"; and then he fell towriting again. 

Poe having produced those papers, his chief calculated the amount oftwo thousand pounds stock at the rate of the day; and asked CaptainOsborne whether he would take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers, orwhether he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that amount. "One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out of town, " he saidindifferently, "but my client wishes to meet your wishes, and have donewith the business as quick as possible. "

"Give me a cheque, sir, " said the Captain very surlily. "Damn theshillings and halfpence, sir, " he added, as the lawyer was making outthe amount of the draft; and, flattering himself that by this stroke ofmagnanimity he had put the old quiz to the blush, he stalked out of theoffice with the paper in his pocket. 

"That chap will be in gaol in two years, " Mr. Higgs said to Mr. Poe. 

"Won't O. Come round, sir, don't you think?"

"Won't the monument come round, " Mr. Higgs replied. 

"He's going it pretty fast, " said the clerk. "He's only married aweek, and I saw him and some other military chaps handing Mrs. Highflyer to her carriage after the play. " And then another case wascalled, and Mr. George Osborne thenceforth dismissed from these worthygentlemen's memory. 

The draft was upon our friends Hulker and Bullock of Lombard Street, towhose house, still thinking he was doing business, George bent his way, and from whom he received his money. Frederick Bullock, Esq. , whoseyellow face was over a ledger, at which sate a demure clerk, happenedto be in the banking-room when George entered. His yellow face turnedto a more deadly colour when he saw the Captain, and he slunk backguiltily into the inmost parlour. George was too busy gloating overthe money (for he had never had such a sum before), to mark thecountenance or flight of the cadaverous suitor of his sister. 

Fred Bullock told old Osborne of his son's appearance and conduct. "Hecame in as bold as brass, " said Frederick. "He has drawn out everyshilling. How long will a few hundred pounds last such a chap asthat?" Osborne swore with a great oath that he little cared when or howsoon he spent it. Fred dined every day in Russell Square now. Butaltogether, George was highly pleased with his day's business. All hisown baggage and outfit was put into a state of speedy preparation, andhe paid Amelia's purchases with cheques on his agents, and with thesplendour of a lord. 

CHAPTER XXVII

In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment

When Jos's fine carriage drove up to the inn door at Chatham, the firstface which Amelia recognized was the friendly countenance of CaptainDobbin, who had been pacing the street for an hour past in expectationof his friends' arrival. The Captain, with shells on his frockcoat, and a crimson sash and sabre, presented a military appearance, whichmade Jos quite proud to be able to claim such an acquaintance, and thestout civilian hailed him with a cordiality very different from thereception which Jos vouchsafed to his friend in Brighton and BondStreet. 

Along with the Captain was Ensign Stubble; who, as the barouche nearedthe inn, burst out with an exclamation of "By Jove! what a prettygirl"; highly applauding Osborne's choice. Indeed, Amelia dressed inher wedding-pelisse and pink ribbons, with a flush in her face, occasioned by rapid travel through the open air, looked so fresh andpretty, as fully to justify the Ensign's compliment. Dobbin liked himfor making it. As he stepped forward to help the lady out of thecarriage, Stubble saw what a pretty little hand she gave him, and whata sweet pretty little foot came tripping down the step. He blushedprofusely, and made the very best bow of which he was capable; to whichAmelia, seeing the number of the the regiment embroidered on theEnsign's cap, replied with a blushing smile, and a curtsey on her part;which finished the young Ensign on the spot. Dobbin took most kindly toMr. Stubble from that day, and encouraged him to talk about Amelia intheir private walks, and at each other's quarters. It became thefashion, indeed, among all the honest young fellows of the --th toadore and admire Mrs. Osborne. Her simple artless behaviour, andmodest kindness of demeanour, won all their unsophisticated hearts; allwhich simplicity and sweetness are quite impossible to describe inprint. But who has not beheld these among women, and recognised thepresence of all sorts of qualities in them, even though they say nomore to you than that they are engaged to dance the next quadrille, orthat it is very hot weather? George, always the champion of hisregiment, rose immensely in the opinion of the youth of the corps, byhis gallantry in marrying this portionless young creature, and by hischoice of such a pretty kind partner. 

In the sitting-room which was awaiting the travellers, Amelia, to hersurprise, found a letter addressed to Mrs. Captain Osborne. It was atriangular billet, on pink paper, and sealed with a dove and an olivebranch, and a profusion of light blue sealing wax, and it was writtenin a very large, though undecided female hand. 

"It's Peggy O'Dowd's fist, " said George, laughing. "I know it by thekisses on the seal. " And in fact, it was a note from Mrs. Major O'Dowd, requesting the pleasure of Mrs. Osborne's company that very evening toa small friendly party. "You must go, " George said. "You will makeacquaintance with the regiment there. O'Dowd goes in command of theregiment, and Peggy goes in command. "

But they had not been for many minutes in the enjoyment of Mrs. O'Dowd's letter, when the door was flung open, and a stout jolly lady, in a riding-habit, followed by a couple of officers of Ours, enteredthe room. 

"Sure, I couldn't stop till tay-time. Present me, Garge, my dearfellow, to your lady. Madam, I'm deloighted to see ye; and to presentto you me husband, Meejor O'Dowd"; and with this, the jolly lady in theriding-habit grasped Amelia's hand very warmly, and the latter knew atonce that the lady was before her whom her husband had so often laughedat. "You've often heard of me from that husband of yours, " said thelady, with great vivacity. 

"You've often heard of her, " echoed her husband, the Major. 

Amelia answered, smiling, "that she had. "

"And small good he's told you of me, " Mrs. O'Dowd replied; adding that"George was a wicked divvle. "

"That I'll go bail for, " said the Major, trying to look knowing, atwhich George laughed; and Mrs. O'Dowd, with a tap of her whip, told theMajor to be quiet; and then requested to be presented in form to Mrs. Captain Osborne. 

"This, my dear, " said George with great gravity, "is my very good, kind, and excellent friend, Auralia Margaretta, otherwise called Peggy. "

"Faith, you're right, " interposed the Major. 

"Otherwise called Peggy, lady of Major Michael O'Dowd, of our regiment, and daughter of Fitzjurld Ber'sford de Burgo Malony of Glenmalony, County Kildare. "

"And Muryan Squeer, Doblin, " said the lady with calm superiority. 

"And Muryan Square, sure enough, " the Major whispered. 

"'Twas there ye coorted me, Meejor dear, " the lady said; and the Majorassented to this as to every other proposition which was made generallyin company. 

Major O'Dowd, who had served his sovereign in every quarter of theworld, and had paid for every step in his profession by some more thanequivalent act of daring and gallantry, was the most modest, silent, sheep-faced and meek of little men, and as obedient to his wife as ifhe had been her tay-boy. At the mess-table he sat silently, and dranka great deal. When full of liquor, he reeled silently home. When hespoke, it was to agree with everybody on every conceivable point; andhe passed through life in perfect ease and good-humour. The hottestsuns of India never heated his temper; and the Walcheren ague nevershook it. He walked up to a battery with just as much indifference asto a dinner-table; had dined on horse-flesh and turtle with equalrelish and appetite; and had an old mother, Mrs. O'Dowd of O'Dowdstownindeed, whom he had never disobeyed but when he ran away and enlisted, and when he persisted in marrying that odious Peggy Malony. 

Peggy was one of five sisters, and eleven children of the noble houseof Glenmalony; but her husband, though her own cousin, was of themother's side, and so had not the inestimable advantage of being alliedto the Malonys, whom she believed to be the most famous family in theworld. Having tried nine seasons at Dublin and two at Bath andCheltenham, and not finding a partner for life, Miss Malony ordered hercousin Mick to marry her when she was about thirty-three years of age;and the honest fellow obeying, carried her off to the West Indies, topreside over the ladies of the --th regiment, into which he had justexchanged. 

Before Mrs. O'Dowd was half an hour in Amelia's (or indeed in anybodyelse's) company, this amiable lady told all her birth and pedigree toher new friend. "My dear, " said she, good-naturedly, "it was myintention that Garge should be a brother of my own, and my sisterGlorvina would have suited him entirely. But as bygones are bygones, and he was engaged to yourself, why, I'm determined to take you as asister instead, and to look upon you as such, and to love you as one ofthe family. Faith, you've got such a nice good-natured face and waywidg you, that I'm sure we'll agree; and that you'll be an addition toour family anyway. "

"'Deed and she will, " said O'Dowd, with an approving air, and Ameliafelt herself not a little amused and grateful to be thus suddenlyintroduced to so large a party of relations. 

"We're all good fellows here, " the Major's lady continued. "There's nota regiment in the service where you'll find a more united society nor amore agreeable mess-room. There's no quarrelling, bickering, slandthering, nor small talk amongst us. We all love each other. "

"Especially Mrs. Magenis, " said George, laughing. 

"Mrs. Captain Magenis and me has made up, though her treatment of mewould bring me gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. "

"And you with such a beautiful front of black, Peggy, my dear, " theMajor cried. 

"Hould your tongue, Mick, you booby. Them husbands are always in theway, Mrs. Osborne, my dear; and as for my Mick, I often tell him heshould never open his mouth but to give the word of command, or to putmeat and drink into it. I'll tell you about the regiment, and warn youwhen we're alone. Introduce me to your brother now; sure he's a mightyfine man, and reminds me of me cousin, Dan Malony (Malony ofBallymalony, my dear, you know who mar'ied Ophalia Scully, ofOystherstown, own cousin to Lord Poldoody). Mr. Sedley, sir, I'mdeloighted to be made known te ye. I suppose you'll dine at the messto-day. (Mind that divvle of a docther, Mick, and whatever ye du, keepyourself sober for me party this evening. )"

"It's the 150th gives us a farewell dinner, my love, " interposed theMajor, "but we'll easy get a card for Mr. Sedley. "

"Run Simple (Ensign Simple, of Ours, my dear Amelia. I forgot tointrojuice him to ye). Run in a hurry, with Mrs. Major O'Dowd'scompliments to Colonel Tavish, and Captain Osborne has brought hisbrothernlaw down, and will bring him to the 150th mess at five o'clocksharp--when you and I, my dear, will take a snack here, if you like. "Before Mrs. O'Dowd's speech was concluded, the young Ensign wastrotting downstairs on his commission. 

"Obedience is the soul of the army. We will go to our duty while Mrs. O'Dowd will stay and enlighten you, Emmy, " Captain Osborne said; andthe two gentlemen, taking each a wing of the Major, walked out withthat officer, grinning at each other over his head. 

And, now having her new friend to herself, the impetuous Mrs. O'Dowdproceeded to pour out such a quantity of information as no poor littlewoman's memory could ever tax itself to bear. She told Amelia athousand particulars relative to the very numerous family of which theamazed young lady found herself a member. "Mrs. Heavytop, theColonel's wife, died in Jamaica of the yellow faver and a broken heartcomboined, for the horrud old Colonel, with a head as bald as acannon-ball, was making sheep's eyes at a half-caste girl there. Mrs. Magenis, though without education, was a good woman, but she had thedivvle's tongue, and would cheat her own mother at whist. Mrs. CaptainKirk must turn up her lobster eyes forsooth at the idea of an honestround game (wherein me fawther, as pious a man as ever went to church, me uncle Dane Malony, and our cousin the Bishop, took a hand at loo, orwhist, every night of their lives). Nayther of 'em's goin' with theregiment this time, " Mrs. O'Dowd added. "Fanny Magenis stops with hermother, who sells small coal and potatoes, most likely, inIslington-town, hard by London, though she's always bragging of herfather's ships, and pointing them out to us as they go up the river:and Mrs. Kirk and her children will stop here in Bethesda Place, to benigh to her favourite preacher, Dr. Ramshorn. Mrs. Bunny's in aninteresting situation--faith, and she always is, then--and has giventhe Lieutenant seven already. And Ensign Posky's wife, who joined twomonths before you, my dear, has quarl'd with Tom Posky a score oftimes, till you can hear'm all over the bar'ck (they say they're cometo broken pleets, and Tom never accounted for his black oi), and she'llgo back to her mother, who keeps a ladies' siminary at Richmond--badluck to her for running away from it! Where did ye get your finishing, my dear? I had moin, and no expince spared, at Madame Flanahan's, atIlyssus Grove, Booterstown, near Dublin, wid a Marchioness to teach usthe true Parisian pronunciation, and a retired Mejor-General of theFrench service to put us through the exercise. "

Of this incongruous family our astonished Amelia found herself all of asudden a member: with Mrs. O'Dowd as an elder sister. She waspresented to her other female relations at tea-time, on whom, as shewas quiet, good-natured, and not too handsome, she made rather anagreeable impression until the arrival of the gentlemen from the messof the 150th, who all admired her so, that her sisters began, ofcourse, to find fault with her. 

"I hope Osborne has sown his wild oats, " said Mrs. Magenis to Mrs. Bunny. "If a reformed rake makes a good husband, sure it's she willhave the fine chance with Garge, " Mrs. O'Dowd remarked to Posky, whohad lost her position as bride in the regiment, and was quite angrywith the usurper. And as for Mrs. Kirk: that disciple of Dr. Ramshornput one or two leading professional questions to Amelia, to see whethershe was awakened, whether she was a professing Christian and so forth, and finding from the simplicity of Mrs. Osborne's replies that she wasyet in utter darkness, put into her hands three little penny books withpictures, viz. , the "Howling Wilderness, " the "Washerwoman ofWandsworth Common, " and the "British Soldier's best Bayonet, " which, bent upon awakening her before she slept, Mrs. Kirk begged Amelia toread that night ere she went to bed. 

But all the men, like good fellows as they were, rallied round theircomrade's pretty wife, and paid her their court with soldierlygallantry. She had a little triumph, which flushed her spirits andmade her eyes sparkle. George was proud of her popularity, and pleasedwith the manner (which was very gay and graceful, though naive and alittle timid) with which she received the gentlemen's attentions, andanswered their compliments. And he in his uniform--how much handsomerhe was than any man in the room! She felt that he was affectionatelywatching her, and glowed with pleasure at his kindness. "I will makeall his friends welcome, " she resolved in her heart. "I will love allas I love him. I will always try and be gay and good-humoured and makehis home happy. "

The regiment indeed adopted her with acclamation. The Captainsapproved, the Lieutenants applauded, the Ensigns admired. Old Cutler, the Doctor, made one or two jokes, which, being professional, need notbe repeated; and Cackle, the Assistant M. D. Of Edinburgh, condescendedto examine her upon leeterature, and tried her with his three bestFrench quotations. Young Stubble went about from man to manwhispering, "Jove, isn't she a pretty gal?" and never took his eyes offher except when the negus came in. 

As for Captain Dobbin, he never so much as spoke to her during thewhole evening. But he and Captain Porter of the 150th took home Jos tothe hotel, who was in a very maudlin state, and had told his tiger-huntstory with great effect, both at the mess-table and at the soiree, toMrs. O'Dowd in her turban and bird of paradise. Having put theCollector into the hands of his servant, Dobbin loitered about, smokinghis cigar before the inn door. George had meanwhile very carefullyshawled his wife, and brought her away from Mrs. O'Dowd's after ageneral handshaking from the young officers, who accompanied her to thefly, and cheered that vehicle as it drove off. So Amelia gave Dobbinher little hand as she got out of the carriage, and rebuked himsmilingly for not having taken any notice of her all night. 

The Captain continued that deleterious amusement of smoking, long afterthe inn and the street were gone to bed. He watched the lights vanishfrom George's sitting-room windows, and shine out in the bedroom closeat hand. It was almost morning when he returned to his own quarters. He could hear the cheering from the ships in the river, where thetransports were already taking in their cargoes preparatory to droppingdown the Thames. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries

The regiment with its officers was to be transported in ships providedby His Majesty's government for the occasion: and in two days afterthe festive assembly at Mrs. O'Dowd's apartments, in the midst ofcheering from all the East India ships in the river, and the militaryon shore, the band playing "God Save the King, " the officers wavingtheir hats, and the crews hurrahing gallantly, the transports went downthe river and proceeded under convoy to Ostend. Meanwhile the gallantJos had agreed to escort his sister and the Major's wife, the bulk ofwhose goods and chattels, including the famous bird of paradise andturban, were with the regimental baggage: so that our two heroinesdrove pretty much unencumbered to Ramsgate, where there were plenty ofpackets plying, in one of which they had a speedy passage to Ostend. 

That period of Jos's life which now ensued was so full of incident, that it served him for conversation for many years after, and even thetiger-hunt story was put aside for more stirring narratives which hehad to tell about the great campaign of Waterloo. As soon as he hadagreed to escort his sister abroad, it was remarked that he ceasedshaving his upper lip. At Chatham he followed the parades and drillswith great assiduity. He listened with the utmost attention to theconversation of his brother officers (as he called them in after dayssometimes), and learned as many military names as he could. In thesestudies the excellent Mrs. O'Dowd was of great assistance to him; andon the day finally when they embarked on board the Lovely Rose, whichwas to carry them to their destination, he made his appearance in abraided frock-coat and duck trousers, with a foraging cap ornamentedwith a smart gold band. Having his carriage with him, and informingeverybody on board confidentially that he was going to join the Duke ofWellington's army, folks mistook him for a great personage, acommissary-general, or a government courier at the very least. 

He suffered hugely on the voyage, during which the ladies were likewiseprostrate; but Amelia was brought to life again as the packet madeOstend, by the sight of the transports conveying her regiment, whichentered the harbour almost at the same time with the Lovely Rose. Joswent in a collapsed state to an inn, while Captain Dobbin escorted theladies, and then busied himself in freeing Jos's carriage and luggagefrom the ship and the custom-house, for Mr. Jos was at present withouta servant, Osborne's man and his own pampered menial having conspiredtogether at Chatham, and refused point-blank to cross the water. Thisrevolt, which came very suddenly, and on the last day, so alarmed Mr. Sedley, junior, that he was on the point of giving up the expedition, but Captain Dobbin (who made himself immensely officious in thebusiness, Jos said), rated him and laughed at him soundly: themustachios were grown in advance, and Jos finally was persuaded toembark. In place of the well-bred and well-fed London domestics, whocould only speak English, Dobbin procured for Jos's party a swarthylittle Belgian servant who could speak no language at all; but who, byhis bustling behaviour, and by invariably addressing Mr. Sedley as "Mylord, " speedily acquired that gentleman's favour. Times are altered atOstend now; of the Britons who go thither, very few look like lords, oract like those members of our hereditary aristocracy. They seem forthe most part shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of billiards andbrandy, and cigars and greasy ordinaries. 

But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the Duke ofWellington's army paid his way. The remembrance of such a fact surelybecomes a nation of shopkeepers. It was a blessing for acommerce-loving country to be overrun by such an army of customers: andto have such creditable warriors to feed. And the country which theycame to protect is not military. For a long period of history theyhave let other people fight there. When the present writer went tosurvey with eagle glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the conductorof the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran, whether he had beenat the battle. "Pas si bete"--such an answer and sentiment as noFrenchman would own to--was his reply. But, on the other hand, thepostilion who drove us was a Viscount, a son of some bankrupt ImperialGeneral, who accepted a pennyworth of beer on the road. The moral issurely a good one. 

This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked more richand prosperous than in that opening summer of 1815, when its greenfields and quiet cities were enlivened by multiplied red-coats: whenits wide chaussees swarmed with brilliant English equipages: when itsgreat canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and pleasant quaint oldvillages, by old chateaux lying amongst old trees, were all crowdedwith well-to-do English travellers: when the soldier who drank at thevillage inn, not only drank, but paid his score; and Donald, theHighlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-house, rocked the baby'scradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out getting in the hay. As ourpainters are bent on military subjects just now, I throw out this as agood subject for the pencil, to illustrate the principle of an honestEnglish war. All looked as brilliant and harmless as a Hyde Parkreview. Meanwhile, Napoleon screened behind his curtain offrontier-fortresses, was preparing for the outbreak which was to driveall these orderly people into fury and blood; and lay so many of themlow. 

Everybody had such a perfect feeling of confidence in the leader (forthe resolute faith which the Duke of Wellington had inspired in thewhole English nation was as intense as that more frantic enthusiasmwith which at one time the French regarded Napoleon), the countryseemed in so perfect a state of orderly defence, and the help at handin case of need so near and overwhelming, that alarm was unknown, andour travellers, among whom two were naturally of a very timid sort, were, like all the other multiplied English tourists, entirely at ease. The famous regiment, with so many of whose officers we have madeacquaintance, was drafted in canal boats to Bruges and Ghent, thence tomarch to Brussels. Jos accompanied the ladies in the public boats; thewhich all old travellers in Flanders must remember for the luxury andaccommodation they afforded. So prodigiously good was the eating anddrinking on board these sluggish but most comfortable vessels, thatthere are legends extant of an English traveller, who, coming toBelgium for a week, and travelling in one of these boats, was sodelighted with the fare there that he went backwards and forwards fromGhent to Bruges perpetually until the railroads were invented, when hedrowned himself on the last trip of the passage-boat. Jos's death wasnot to be of this sort, but his comfort was exceeding, and Mrs. O'Dowdinsisted that he only wanted her sister Glorvina to make his happinesscomplete. He sate on the roof of the cabin all day drinking Flemishbeer, shouting for Isidor, his servant, and talking gallantly to theladies. 

His courage was prodigious. "Boney attack us!" he cried. "My dearcreature, my poor Emmy, don't be frightened. There's no danger. Theallies will be in Paris in two months, I tell you; when I'll take youto dine in the Palais Royal, by Jove! There are three hundred thousandRooshians, I tell you, now entering France by Mayence and theRhine--three hundred thousand under Wittgenstein and Barclay de Tolly, my poor love. You don't know military affairs, my dear. I do, and Itell you there's no infantry in France can stand against Rooshianinfantry, and no general of Boney's that's fit to hold a candle toWittgenstein. Then there are the Austrians, they are five hundredthousand if a man, and they are within ten marches of the frontier bythis time, under Schwartzenberg and Prince Charles. Then there are theProoshians under the gallant Prince Marshal. Show me a cavalry chieflike him now that Murat is gone. Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd? Do you think ourlittle girl here need be afraid? Is there any cause for fear, Isidor?Hey, sir? Get some more beer. "

Mrs. O'Dowd said that her "Glorvina was not afraid of any man alive, let alone a Frenchman, " and tossed off a glass of beer with a winkwhich expressed her liking for the beverage. 

Having frequently been in presence of the enemy, or, in other words, faced the ladies at Cheltenham and Bath, our friend, the Collector, hadlost a great deal of his pristine timidity, and was now, especiallywhen fortified with liquor, as talkative as might be. He was rather afavourite with the regiment, treating the young officers withsumptuosity, and amusing them by his military airs. And as there is onewell-known regiment of the army which travels with a goat heading thecolumn, whilst another is led by a deer, George said with respect tohis brother-in-law, that his regiment marched with an elephant. 

Since Amelia's introduction to the regiment, George began to be ratherashamed of some of the company to which he had been forced to presenther; and determined, as he told Dobbin (with what satisfaction to thelatter it need not be said), to exchange into some better regimentsoon, and to get his wife away from those damned vulgar women. Butthis vulgarity of being ashamed of one's society is much more commonamong men than women (except very great ladies of fashion, who, to besure, indulge in it); and Mrs. Amelia, a natural and unaffected person, had none of that artificial shamefacedness which her husband mistookfor delicacy on his own part. Thus Mrs. O'Dowd had a cock's plume inher hat, and a very large "repayther" on her stomach, which she used toring on all occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her byher fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and theseornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife, gaveexcruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the Major'scame in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the honest lady'seccentricities, and not in the least ashamed of her company. 

As they made that well-known journey, which almost every Englishman ofmiddle rank has travelled since, there might have been moreinstructive, but few more entertaining, companions than Mrs. MajorO'Dowd. "Talk about kenal boats; my dear! Ye should see the kenalboats between Dublin and Ballinasloe. It's there the rapid travellingis; and the beautiful cattle. Sure me fawther got a goold medal (andhis Excellency himself eat a slice of it, and said never was finer matein his loif) for a four-year-old heifer, the like of which ye never sawin this country any day. " And Jos owned with a sigh, "that for goodstreaky beef, really mingled with fat and lean, there was no countrylike England. "

"Except Ireland, where all your best mate comes from, " said the Major'slady; proceeding, as is not unusual with patriots of her nation, tomake comparisons greatly in favour of her own country. The idea ofcomparing the market at Bruges with those of Dublin, although she hadsuggested it herself, caused immense scorn and derision on her part. "I'll thank ye tell me what they mean by that old gazabo on the top ofthe market-place, " said she, in a burst of ridicule fit to have broughtthe old tower down. The place was full of English soldiery as theypassed. English bugles woke them in the morning; at nightfall theywent to bed to the note of the British fife and drum: all the countryand Europe was in arms, and the greatest event of history pending: andhonest Peggy O'Dowd, whom it concerned as well as another, went onprattling about Ballinafad, and the horses in the stables atGlenmalony, and the clar't drunk there; and Jos Sedley interposed aboutcurry and rice at Dumdum; and Amelia thought about her husband, and howbest she should show her love for him; as if these were the greattopics of the world. 

Those who like to lay down the History-book, and to speculate upon whatMIGHT have happened in the world, but for the fatal occurrence of whatactually did take place (a most puzzling, amusing, ingenious, andprofitable kind of meditation), have no doubt often thought tothemselves what a specially bad time Napoleon took to come back fromElba, and to let loose his eagle from Gulf San Juan to Notre Dame. Thehistorians on our side tell us that the armies of the allied powerswere all providentially on a war-footing, and ready to bear down at amoment's notice upon the Elban Emperor. The august jobbers assembled atVienna, and carving out the kingdoms of Europe according to theirwisdom, had such causes of quarrel among themselves as might have setthe armies which had overcome Napoleon to fight against each other, butfor the return of the object of unanimous hatred and fear. Thismonarch had an army in full force because he had jobbed to himselfPoland, and was determined to keep it: another had robbed half Saxony, and was bent upon maintaining his acquisition: Italy was the object ofa third's solicitude. Each was protesting against the rapacity of theother; and could the Corsican but have waited in prison until all theseparties were by the ears, he might have returned and reignedunmolested. But what would have become of our story and all ourfriends, then? If all the drops in it were dried up, what would becomeof the sea?

In the meanwhile the business of life and living, and the pursuits ofpleasure, especially, went on as if no end were to be expected to them, and no enemy in front. When our travellers arrived at Brussels, inwhich their regiment was quartered, a great piece of good fortune, asall said, they found themselves in one of the gayest and most brilliantlittle capitals in Europe, and where all the Vanity Fair booths werelaid out with the most tempting liveliness and splendour. Gambling washere in profusion, and dancing in plenty: feasting was there to fillwith delight that great gourmand of a Jos: there was a theatre where amiraculous Catalani was delighting all hearers: beautiful rides, allenlivened with martial splendour; a rare old city, with strangecostumes and wonderful architecture, to delight the eyes of littleAmelia, who had never before seen a foreign country, and fill her withcharming surprises: so that now and for a few weeks' space in a finehandsome lodging, whereof the expenses were borne by Jos and Osborne, who was flush of money and full of kind attentions to his wife--forabout a fortnight, I say, during which her honeymoon ended, Mrs. Ameliawas as pleased and happy as any little bride out of England. 

Every day during this happy time there was novelty and amusement forall parties. There was a church to see, or a picture-gallery--therewas a ride, or an opera. The bands of the regiments were making musicat all hours. The greatest folks of England walked in the Park--therewas a perpetual military festival. George, taking out his wife to anew jaunt or junket every night, was quite pleased with himself asusual, and swore he was becoming quite a domestic character. And ajaunt or a junket with HIM! Was it not enough to set this little heartbeating with joy? Her letters home to her mother were filled withdelight and gratitude at this season. Her husband bade her buy laces, millinery, jewels, and gimcracks of all sorts. Oh, he was the kindest, best, and most generous of men!

The sight of the very great company of lords and ladies and fashionablepersons who thronged the town, and appeared in every public place, filled George's truly British soul with intense delight. They flungoff that happy frigidity and insolence of demeanour which occasionallycharacterises the great at home, and appearing in numberless publicplaces, condescended to mingle with the rest of the company whom theymet there. One night at a party given by the general of the divisionto which George's regiment belonged, he had the honour of dancing withLady Blanche Thistlewood, Lord Bareacres' daughter; he bustled for icesand refreshments for the two noble ladies; he pushed and squeezed forLady Bareacres' carriage; he bragged about the Countess when he gothome, in a way which his own father could not have surpassed. Hecalled upon the ladies the next day; he rode by their side in the Park;he asked their party to a great dinner at a restaurateur's, and wasquite wild with exultation when they agreed to come. Old Bareacres, who had not much pride and a large appetite, would go for a dinneranywhere. 

"I hope there will be no women besides our own party, " Lady Bareacressaid, after reflecting upon the invitation which had been made, andaccepted with too much precipitancy. 

"Gracious Heaven, Mamma--you don't suppose the man would bring hiswife, " shrieked Lady Blanche, who had been languishing in George's armsin the newly imported waltz for hours the night before. "The men arebearable, but their women--"

"Wife, just married, dev'lish pretty woman, I hear, " the old Earl said. 

"Well, my dear Blanche, " said the mother, "I suppose, as Papa wants togo, we must go; but we needn't know them in England, you know. " And so, determined to cut their new acquaintance in Bond Street, these greatfolks went to eat his dinner at Brussels, and condescending to make himpay for their pleasure, showed their dignity by making his wifeuncomfortable, and carefully excluding her from the conversation. Thisis a species of dignity in which the high-bred British female reignssupreme. To watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humblerwomen, is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of VanityFair. 

This festival, on which honest George spent a great deal of money, wasthe very dismallest of all the entertainments which Amelia had in herhoneymoon. She wrote the most piteous accounts of the feast home toher mamma: how the Countess of Bareacres would not answer when spokento; how Lady Blanche stared at her with her eye-glass; and what a rageCaptain Dobbin was in at their behaviour; and how my lord, as they cameaway from the feast, asked to see the bill, and pronounced it a d----bad dinner, and d---- dear. But though Amelia told all these stories, and wrote home regarding her guests' rudeness, and her owndiscomfiture, old Mrs. Sedley was mightily pleased nevertheless, andtalked about Emmy's friend, the Countess of Bareacres, with suchassiduity that the news how his son was entertaining peers andpeeresses actually came to Osborne's ears in the City. 

Those who know the present Lieutenant-General Sir George Tufto, K. C. B. , and have seen him, as they may on most days in the season, padded andin stays, strutting down Pall Mall with a rickety swagger on hishigh-heeled lacquered boots, leering under the bonnets of passers-by, or riding a showy chestnut, and ogling broughams in the Parks--thosewho know the present Sir George Tufto would hardly recognise the daringPeninsular and Waterloo officer. He has thick curling brown hair andblack eyebrows now, and his whiskers are of the deepest purple. He waslight-haired and bald in 1815, and stouter in the person and in thelimbs, which especially have shrunk very much of late. When he wasabout seventy years of age (he is now nearly eighty), his hair, whichwas very scarce and quite white, suddenly grew thick, and brown, andcurly, and his whiskers and eyebrows took their present colour. Ill-natured people say that his chest is all wool, and that his hair, because it never grows, is a wig. Tom Tufto, with whose father hequarrelled ever so many years ago, declares that Mademoiselle deJaisey, of the French theatre, pulled his grandpapa's hair off in thegreen-room; but Tom is notoriously spiteful and jealous; and theGeneral's wig has nothing to do with our story. 

One day, as some of our friends of the --th were sauntering in theflower-market of Brussels, having been to see the Hotel de Ville, whichMrs. Major O'Dowd declared was not near so large or handsome as herfawther's mansion of Glenmalony, an officer of rank, with an orderlybehind him, rode up to the market, and descending from his horse, cameamongst the flowers, and selected the very finest bouquet which moneycould buy. The beautiful bundle being tied up in a paper, the officerremounted, giving the nosegay into the charge of his military groom, who carried it with a grin, following his chief, who rode away in greatstate and self-satisfaction. 

"You should see the flowers at Glenmalony, " Mrs. O'Dowd was remarking. "Me fawther has three Scotch garners with nine helpers. We have an acreof hot-houses, and pines as common as pays in the sayson. Our greepsweighs six pounds every bunch of 'em, and upon me honour and conscienceI think our magnolias is as big as taykettles. "

Dobbin, who never used to "draw out" Mrs. O'Dowd as that wicked Osbornedelighted in doing (much to Amelia's terror, who implored him to spareher), fell back in the crowd, crowing and sputtering until he reached asafe distance, when he exploded amongst the astonished market-peoplewith shrieks of yelling laughter. 

"Hwhat's that gawky guggling about?" said Mrs. O'Dowd. "Is it his nosebleedn? He always used to say 'twas his nose bleedn, till he must havepomped all the blood out of 'um. An't the magnolias at Glenmalony asbig as taykettles, O'Dowd?"

"'Deed then they are, and bigger, Peggy, " the Major said. When theconversation was interrupted in the manner stated by the arrival of theofficer who purchased the bouquet. 

"Devlish fine horse--who is it?" George asked. 

"You should see me brother Molloy Malony's horse, Molasses, that wonthe cop at the Curragh, " the Major's wife was exclaiming, and wascontinuing the family history, when her husband interrupted her bysaying--

"It's General Tufto, who commands the ---- cavalry division"; addingquietly, "he and I were both shot in the same leg at Talavera. "

"Where you got your step, " said George with a laugh. "General Tufto!Then, my dear, the Crawleys are come. "

Amelia's heart fell--she knew not why. The sun did not seem to shineso bright. The tall old roofs and gables looked less picturesque allof a sudden, though it was a brilliant sunset, and one of the brightestand most beautiful days at the end of May. 

CHAPTER XXIX

Brussels

Mr. Jos had hired a pair of horses for his open carriage, with whichcattle, and the smart London vehicle, he made a very tolerable figurein the drives about Brussels. George purchased a horse for his privateriding, and he and Captain Dobbin would often accompany the carriage inwhich Jos and his sister took daily excursions of pleasure. They wentout that day in the park for their accustomed diversion, and there, sure enough, George's remark with regard to the arrival of RawdonCrawley and his wife proved to be correct. In the midst of a littletroop of horsemen, consisting of some of the very greatest persons inBrussels, Rebecca was seen in the prettiest and tightest ofriding-habits, mounted on a beautiful little Arab, which she rode toperfection (having acquired the art at Queen's Crawley, where theBaronet, Mr. Pitt, and Rawdon himself had given her many lessons), andby the side of the gallant General Tufto. 

"Sure it's the Juke himself, " cried Mrs. Major O'Dowd to Jos, who beganto blush violently; "and that's Lord Uxbridge on the bay. How eleganthe looks! Me brother, Molloy Malony, is as like him as two pays. "

Rebecca did not make for the carriage; but as soon as she perceived herold acquaintance Amelia seated in it, acknowledged her presence by agracious nod and smile, and by kissing and shaking her fingersplayfully in the direction of the vehicle. Then she resumed herconversation with General Tufto, who asked "who the fat officer was inthe gold-laced cap?" on which Becky replied, "that he was an officer inthe East Indian service. " But Rawdon Crawley rode out of the ranks ofhis company, and came up and shook hands heartily with Amelia, and saidto Jos, "Well, old boy, how are you?" and stared in Mrs. O'Dowd's faceand at the black cock's feathers until she began to think she had madea conquest of him. 

George, who had been delayed behind, rode up almost immediately withDobbin, and they touched their caps to the august personages, amongwhom Osborne at once perceived Mrs. Crawley. He was delighted to seeRawdon leaning over his carriage familiarly and talking to Amelia, andmet the aide-de-camp's cordial greeting with more than correspondingwarmth. The nods between Rawdon and Dobbin were of the very faintestspecimens of politeness. 

Crawley told George where they were stopping with General Tufto at theHotel du Parc, and George made his friend promise to come speedily toOsborne's own residence. "Sorry I hadn't seen you three days ago, "George said. "Had a dinner at the Restaurateur's--rather a nice thing. Lord Bareacres, and the Countess, and Lady Blanche, were good enough todine with us--wish we'd had you. " Having thus let his friend know hisclaims to be a man of fashion, Osborne parted from Rawdon, who followedthe august squadron down an alley into which they cantered, whileGeorge and Dobbin resumed their places, one on each side of Amelia'scarriage. 

"How well the Juke looked, " Mrs. O'Dowd remarked. "The Wellesleys andMalonys are related; but, of course, poor I would never dream ofintrojuicing myself unless his Grace thought proper to remember ourfamily-tie. "

"He's a great soldier, " Jos said, much more at ease now the great manwas gone. "Was there ever a battle won like Salamanca? Hey, Dobbin?But where was it he learnt his art? In India, my boy! The jungle'sthe school for a general, mark me that. I knew him myself, too, Mrs. O'Dowd: we both of us danced the same evening with Miss Cutler, daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and a devilish fine girl, atDumdum. "

The apparition of the great personages held them all in talk during thedrive; and at dinner; and until the hour came when they were all to goto the Opera. 

It was almost like Old England. The house was filled with familiarBritish faces, and those toilettes for which the British female haslong been celebrated. Mrs. O'Dowd's was not the least splendid amongstthese, and she had a curl on her forehead, and a set of Irish diamondsand Cairngorms, which outshone all the decorations in the house, in hernotion. Her presence used to excruciate Osborne; but go she would uponall parties of pleasure on which she heard her young friends were bent. It never entered into her thought but that they must be charmed withher company. 

"She's been useful to you, my dear, " George said to his wife, whom hecould leave alone with less scruple when she had this society. "Butwhat a comfort it is that Rebecca's come: you will have her for afriend, and we may get rid now of this damn'd Irishwoman. " To thisAmelia did not answer, yes or no: and how do we know what her thoughtswere?

The coup d'oeil of the Brussels opera-house did not strike Mrs. O'Dowdas being so fine as the theatre in Fishamble Street, Dublin, nor wasFrench music at all equal, in her opinion, to the melodies of hernative country. She favoured her friends with these and other opinionsin a very loud tone of voice, and tossed about a great clattering fanshe sported, with the most splendid complacency. 

"Who is that wonderful woman with Amelia, Rawdon, love?" said a lady inan opposite box (who, almost always civil to her husband in private, was more fond than ever of him in company). 

"Don't you see that creature with a yellow thing in her turban, and ared satin gown, and a great watch?"

"Near the pretty little woman in white?" asked a middle-aged gentlemanseated by the querist's side, with orders in his button, and severalunder-waistcoats, and a great, choky, white stock. 

"That pretty woman in white is Amelia, General: you are remarking allthe pretty women, you naughty man. "

"Only one, begad, in the world!" said the General, delighted, and thelady gave him a tap with a large bouquet which she had. 

"Bedad it's him, " said Mrs. O'Dowd; "and that's the very bokay hebought in the Marshy aux Flures!" and when Rebecca, having caught herfriend's eye, performed the little hand-kissing operation once more, Mrs. Major O'D. , taking the compliment to herself, returned the salutewith a gracious smile, which sent that unfortunate Dobbin shrieking outof the box again. 

At the end of the act, George was out of the box in a moment, and hewas even going to pay his respects to Rebecca in her loge. He metCrawley in the lobby, however, where they exchanged a few sentencesupon the occurrences of the last fortnight. 

"You found my cheque all right at the agent's? George said, with aknowing air. 

"All right, my boy, " Rawdon answered. "Happy to give you your revenge. Governor come round?"

"Not yet, " said George, "but he will; and you know I've some privatefortune through my mother. Has Aunty relented?"

"Sent me twenty pound, damned old screw. When shall we have a meet?The General dines out on Tuesday. Can't you come Tuesday? I say, makeSedley cut off his moustache. What the devil does a civilian mean witha moustache and those infernal frogs to his coat! By-bye. Try and comeon Tuesday"; and Rawdon was going-off with two brilliant younggentlemen of fashion, who were, like himself, on the staff of a generalofficer. 

George was only half pleased to be asked to dinner on that particularday when the General was not to dine. "I will go in and pay myrespects to your wife, " said he; at which Rawdon said, "Hm, as youplease, " looking very glum, and at which the two young officersexchanged knowing glances. George parted from them and strutted downthe lobby to the General's box, the number of which he had carefullycounted. 

"Entrez, " said a clear little voice, and our friend found himself inRebecca's presence; who jumped up, clapped her hands together, and heldout both of them to George, so charmed was she to see him. TheGeneral, with the orders in his button, stared at the newcomer with asulky scowl, as much as to say, who the devil are you?

"My dear Captain George!" cried little Rebecca in an ecstasy. "Howgood of you to come. The General and I were moping together tete-a-tete. General, this is my Captain George of whom you heard me talk. "

"Indeed, " said the General, with a very small bow; "of what regiment isCaptain George?"

George mentioned the --th: how he wished he could have said it was acrack cavalry corps. 

"Come home lately from the West Indies, I believe. Not seen muchservice in the late war. Quartered here, Captain George?"--the Generalwent on with killing haughtiness. 

"Not Captain George, you stupid man; Captain Osborne, " Rebecca said. The General all the while was looking savagely from one to the other. 

"Captain Osborne, indeed! Any relation to the L------ Osbornes?"

"We bear the same arms, " George said, as indeed was the fact; Mr. Osborne having consulted with a herald in Long Acre, and picked theL------ arms out of the peerage, when he set up his carriage fifteenyears before. The General made no reply to this announcement; but tookup his opera-glass--the double-barrelled lorgnon was not invented inthose days--and pretended to examine the house; but Rebecca saw thathis disengaged eye was working round in her direction, and shooting outbloodshot glances at her and George. 

She redoubled in cordiality. "How is dearest Amelia? But I needn'task: how pretty she looks! And who is that nice good-natured lookingcreature with her--a flame of yours? O, you wicked men! And there isMr. Sedley eating ice, I declare: how he seems to enjoy it! General, why have we not had any ices?"

"Shall I go and fetch you some?" said the General, bursting with wrath. 

"Let ME go, I entreat you, " George said. 

"No, I will go to Amelia's box. Dear, sweet girl! Give me your arm, Captain George"; and so saying, and with a nod to the General, shetripped into the lobby. She gave George the queerest, knowingest look, when they were together, a look which might have been interpreted, "Don't you see the state of affairs, and what a fool I'm making ofhim?" But he did not perceive it. He was thinking of his own plans, and lost in pompous admiration of his own irresistible powers ofpleasing. 

The curses to which the General gave a low utterance, as soon asRebecca and her conqueror had quitted him, were so deep, that I am sureno compositor would venture to print them were they written down. Theycame from the General's heart; and a wonderful thing it is to thinkthat the human heart is capable of generating such produce, and canthrow out, as occasion demands, such a supply of lust and fury, rageand hatred. 

Amelia's gentle eyes, too, had been fixed anxiously on the pair, whoseconduct had so chafed the jealous General; but when Rebecca entered herbox, she flew to her friend with an affectionate rapture which showeditself, in spite of the publicity of the place; for she embraced herdearest friend in the presence of the whole house, at least in fullview of the General's glass, now brought to bear upon the Osborneparty. Mrs. Rawdon saluted Jos, too, with the kindliest greeting: sheadmired Mrs. O'Dowd's large Cairngorm brooch and superb Irish diamonds, and wouldn't believe that they were not from Golconda direct. Shebustled, she chattered, she turned and twisted, and smiled upon one, and smirked on another, all in full view of the jealous opera-glassopposite. And when the time for the ballet came (in which there was nodancer that went through her grimaces or performed her comedy of actionbetter), she skipped back to her own box, leaning on Captain Dobbin'sarm this time. No, she would not have George's: he must stay and talkto his dearest, best, little Amelia. 

"What a humbug that woman is!" honest old Dobbin mumbled to George, when he came back from Rebecca's box, whither he had conducted her inperfect silence, and with a countenance as glum as an undertaker's. "She writhes and twists about like a snake. All the time she was here, didn't you see, George, how she was acting at the General over the way?"

"Humbug--acting! Hang it, she's the nicest little woman in England, "George replied, showing his white teeth, and giving his ambrosialwhiskers a twirl. "You ain't a man of the world, Dobbin. Dammy, lookat her now, she's talked over Tufto in no time. Look how he'slaughing! Gad, what a shoulder she has! Emmy, why didn't you have abouquet? Everybody has a bouquet. "

"Faith, then, why didn't you BOY one?" Mrs. O'Dowd said; and bothAmelia and William Dobbin thanked her for this timely observation. Butbeyond this neither of the ladies rallied. Amelia was overpowered bythe flash and the dazzle and the fashionable talk of her worldly rival. Even the O'Dowd was silent and subdued after Becky's brilliantapparition, and scarcely said a word more about Glenmalony all theevening. 

"When do you intend to give up play, George, as you have promised me, any time these hundred years?" Dobbin said to his friend a few daysafter the night at the Opera. "When do you intend to give upsermonising?" was the other's reply. "What the deuce, man, are youalarmed about? We play low; I won last night. You don't supposeCrawley cheats? With fair play it comes to pretty much the same thingat the year's end. "

"But I don't think he could pay if he lost, " Dobbin said; and hisadvice met with the success which advice usually commands. Osborne andCrawley were repeatedly together now. General Tufto dined abroadalmost constantly. George was always welcome in the apartments (veryclose indeed to those of the General) which the aide-de-camp and hiswife occupied in the hotel. 

Amelia's manners were such when she and George visited Crawley and hiswife at these quarters, that they had very nearly come to their firstquarrel; that is, George scolded his wife violently for her evidentunwillingness to go, and the high and mighty manner in which shecomported herself towards Mrs. Crawley, her old friend; and Amelia didnot say one single word in reply; but with her husband's eye upon her, and Rebecca scanning her as she felt, was, if possible, more bashfuland awkward on the second visit which she paid to Mrs. Rawdon, than onher first call. 

Rebecca was doubly affectionate, of course, and would not take notice, in the least, of her friend's coolness. "I think Emmy has becomeprouder since her father's name was in the--since Mr. Sedley'sMISFORTUNES, " Rebecca said, softening the phrase charitably forGeorge's ear. 

"Upon my word, I thought when we were at Brighton she was doing me thehonour to be jealous of me; and now I suppose she is scandalisedbecause Rawdon, and I, and the General live together. Why, my dearcreature, how could we, with our means, live at all, but for a friendto share expenses? And do you suppose that Rawdon is not big enough totake care of my honour? But I'm very much obliged to Emmy, very, " Mrs. Rawdon said. 

"Pooh, jealousy!" answered George, "all women are jealous. "

"And all men too. Weren't you jealous of General Tufto, and theGeneral of you, on the night of the Opera? Why, he was ready to eat mefor going with you to visit that foolish little wife of yours; as if Icare a pin for either of you, " Crawley's wife said, with a pert toss ofher head. "Will you dine here? The dragon dines with theCommander-in-Chief. Great news is stirring. They say the French havecrossed the frontier. We shall have a quiet dinner. "

George accepted the invitation, although his wife was a little ailing. They were now not quite six weeks married. Another woman was laughingor sneering at her expense, and he not angry. He was not even angrywith himself, this good-natured fellow. It is a shame, he owned tohimself; but hang it, if a pretty woman WILL throw herself in your way, why, what can a fellow do, you know? I AM rather free about women, hehad often said, smiling and nodding knowingly to Stubble and Spooney, and other comrades of the mess-table; and they rather respected himthan otherwise for this prowess. Next to conquering in war, conqueringin love has been a source of pride, time out of mind, amongst men inVanity Fair, or how should schoolboys brag of their amours, or Don Juanbe popular?

So Mr. Osborne, having a firm conviction in his own mind that he was awoman-killer and destined to conquer, did not run counter to his fate, but yielded himself up to it quite complacently. And as Emmy did notsay much or plague him with her jealousy, but merely became unhappy andpined over it miserably in secret, he chose to fancy that she was notsuspicious of what all his acquaintance were perfectly aware--namely, that he was carrying on a desperate flirtation with Mrs. Crawley. Herode with her whenever she was free. He pretended regimental businessto Amelia (by which falsehood she was not in the least deceived), andconsigning his wife to solitude or her brother's society, passed hisevenings in the Crawleys' company; losing money to the husband andflattering himself that the wife was dying of love for him. It is verylikely that this worthy couple never absolutely conspired and agreedtogether in so many words: the one to cajole the young gentleman, whilst the other won his money at cards: but they understood each otherperfectly well, and Rawdon let Osborne come and go with entire goodhumour. 

George was so occupied with his new acquaintances that he and WilliamDobbin were by no means so much together as formerly. George avoidedhim in public and in the regiment, and, as we see, did not like thosesermons which his senior was disposed to inflict upon him. If someparts of his conduct made Captain Dobbin exceedingly grave and cool; ofwhat use was it to tell George that, though his whiskers were large, and his own opinion of his knowingness great, he was as green as aschoolboy? that Rawdon was making a victim of him as he had done ofmany before, and as soon as he had used him would fling him off withscorn? He would not listen: and so, as Dobbin, upon those days whenhe visited the Osborne house, seldom had the advantage of meeting hisold friend, much painful and unavailing talk between them was spared. Our friend George was in the full career of the pleasures of VanityFair. 

There never was, since the days of Darius, such a brilliant train ofcamp-followers as hung round the Duke of Wellington's army in the LowCountries, in 1815; and led it dancing and feasting, as it were, up tothe very brink of battle. A certain ball which a noble Duchess gave atBrussels on the 15th of June in the above-named year is historical. All Brussels had been in a state of excitement about it, and I haveheard from ladies who were in that town at the period, that the talkand interest of persons of their own sex regarding the ball was muchgreater even than in respect of the enemy in their front. Thestruggles, intrigues, and prayers to get tickets were such as onlyEnglish ladies will employ, in order to gain admission to the societyof the great of their own nation. 

Jos and Mrs. O'Dowd, who were panting to be asked, strove in vain toprocure tickets; but others of our friends were more lucky. Forinstance, through the interest of my Lord Bareacres, and as a set-offfor the dinner at the restaurateur's, George got a card for Captain andMrs. Osborne; which circumstance greatly elated him. Dobbin, who was afriend of the General commanding the division in which their regimentwas, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similarinvitation, which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the deuce heshould be getting into society. Mr. And Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were ofcourse invited; as became the friends of a General commanding a cavalrybrigade. 

On the appointed night, George, having commanded new dresses andornaments of all sorts for Amelia, drove to the famous ball, where hiswife did not know a single soul. After looking about for LadyBareacres, who cut him, thinking the card was quite enough--and afterplacing Amelia on a bench, he left her to her own cogitations there, thinking, on his own part, that he had behaved very handsomely ingetting her new clothes, and bringing her to the ball, where she wasfree to amuse herself as she liked. Her thoughts were not of thepleasantest, and nobody except honest Dobbin came to disturb them. 

Whilst her appearance was an utter failure (as her husband felt with asort of rage), Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's debut was, on the contrary, verybrilliant. She arrived very late. Her face was radiant; her dressperfection. In the midst of the great persons assembled, and theeye-glasses directed to her, Rebecca seemed to be as cool and collectedas when she used to marshal Miss Pinkerton's little girls to church. Numbers of the men she knew already, and the dandies thronged roundher. As for the ladies, it was whispered among them that Rawdon hadrun away with her from out of a convent, and that she was a relation ofthe Montmorency family. She spoke French so perfectly that there mightbe some truth in this report, and it was agreed that her manners werefine, and her air distingue. Fifty would-be partners thronged roundher at once, and pressed to have the honour to dance with her. But shesaid she was engaged, and only going to dance very little; and made herway at once to the place where Emmy sate quite unnoticed, and dismallyunhappy. And so, to finish the poor child at once, Mrs. Rawdon ran andgreeted affectionately her dearest Amelia, and began forthwith topatronise her. She found fault with her friend's dress, and herhairdresser, and wondered how she could be so chaussee, and vowed thatshe must send her corsetiere the next morning. She vowed that it was adelightful ball; that there was everybody that every one knew, and onlya VERY few nobodies in the whole room. It is a fact, that in afortnight, and after three dinners in general society, this young womanhad got up the genteel jargon so well, that a native could not speak itbetter; and it was only from her French being so good, that you couldknow she was not a born woman of fashion. 

George, who had left Emmy on her bench on entering the ball-room, verysoon found his way back when Rebecca was by her dear friend's side. Becky was just lecturing Mrs. Osborne upon the follies which herhusband was committing. "For God's sake, stop him from gambling, mydear, " she said, "or he will ruin himself. He and Rawdon are playing atcards every night, and you know he is very poor, and Rawdon will winevery shilling from him if he does not take care. Why don't youprevent him, you little careless creature? Why don't you come to us ofan evening, instead of moping at home with that Captain Dobbin? I daresay he is tres aimable; but how could one love a man with feet of suchsize? Your husband's feet are darlings--Here he comes. Where have youbeen, wretch? Here is Emmy crying her eyes out for you. Are youcoming to fetch me for the quadrille?" And she left her bouquet andshawl by Amelia's side, and tripped off with George to dance. Womenonly know how to wound so. There is a poison on the tips of theirlittle shafts, which stings a thousand times more than a man's blunterweapon. Our poor Emmy, who had never hated, never sneered all herlife, was powerless in the hands of her remorseless little enemy. 

George danced with Rebecca twice or thrice--how many times Ameliascarcely knew. She sat quite unnoticed in her corner, except whenRawdon came up with some words of clumsy conversation: and later inthe evening, when Captain Dobbin made so bold as to bring herrefreshments and sit beside her. He did not like to ask her why shewas so sad; but as a pretext for the tears which were filling in hereyes, she told him that Mrs. Crawley had alarmed her by telling herthat George would go on playing. 

"It is curious, when a man is bent upon play, by what clumsy rogues hewill allow himself to be cheated, " Dobbin said; and Emmy said, "Indeed. " She was thinking of something else. It was not the loss ofthe money that grieved her. 

At last George came back for Rebecca's shawl and flowers. She wasgoing away. She did not even condescend to come back and say good-byeto Amelia. The poor girl let her husband come and go without saying aword, and her head fell on her breast. Dobbin had been called away, and was whispering deep in conversation with the General of thedivision, his friend, and had not seen this last parting. George wentaway then with the bouquet; but when he gave it to the owner, there laya note, coiled like a snake among the flowers. Rebecca's eye caught itat once. She had been used to deal with notes in early life. She putout her hand and took the nosegay. He saw by her eyes as they met, that she was aware what she should find there. Her husband hurried heraway, still too intent upon his own thoughts, seemingly, to take noteof any marks of recognition which might pass between his friend and hiswife. These were, however, but trifling. Rebecca gave George her handwith one of her usual quick knowing glances, and made a curtsey andwalked away. George bowed over the hand, said nothing in reply to aremark of Crawley's, did not hear it even, his brain was so throbbingwith triumph and excitement, and allowed them to go away without a word. 

His wife saw the one part at least of the bouquet-scene. It was quitenatural that George should come at Rebecca's request to get her herscarf and flowers: it was no more than he had done twenty times beforein the course of the last few days; but now it was too much for her. "William, " she said, suddenly clinging to Dobbin, who was near her, "you've always been very kind to me--I'm--I'm not well. Take me home. "She did not know she called him by his Christian name, as George wasaccustomed to do. He went away with her quickly. Her lodgings werehard by; and they threaded through the crowd without, where everythingseemed to be more astir than even in the ball-room within. 

George had been angry twice or thrice at finding his wife up on hisreturn from the parties which he frequented: so she went straight tobed now; but although she did not sleep, and although the din andclatter, and the galloping of horsemen were incessant, she never heardany of these noises, having quite other disturbances to keep her awake. 

Osborne meanwhile, wild with elation, went off to a play-table, andbegan to bet frantically. He won repeatedly. "Everything succeeds withme to-night, " he said. But his luck at play even did not cure him ofhis restlessness, and he started up after awhile, pocketing hiswinnings, and went to a buffet, where he drank off many bumpers of wine. 

Here, as he was rattling away to the people around, laughing loudly andwild with spirits, Dobbin found him. He had been to the card-tables tolook there for his friend. Dobbin looked as pale and grave as hiscomrade was flushed and jovial. 

"Hullo, Dob! Come and drink, old Dob! The Duke's wine is famous. Giveme some more, you sir"; and he held out a trembling glass for theliquor. 

"Come out, George, " said Dobbin, still gravely; "don't drink. "

"Drink! there's nothing like it. Drink yourself, and light up yourlantern jaws, old boy. Here's to you. "

Dobbin went up and whispered something to him, at which George, givinga start and a wild hurray, tossed off his glass, clapped it on thetable, and walked away speedily on his friend's arm. "The enemy haspassed the Sambre, " William said, "and our left is already engaged. Come away. We are to march in three hours. "

Away went George, his nerves quivering with excitement at the news solong looked for, so sudden when it came. What were love and intriguenow? He thought about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk tohis quarters--his past life and future chances--the fate which might bebefore him--the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he might beabout to part. Oh, how he wished that night's work undone! and thatwith a clear conscience at least he might say farewell to the tenderand guileless being by whose love he had set such little store!

He thought over his brief married life. In those few weeks he hadfrightfully dissipated his little capital. How wild and reckless hehad been! Should any mischance befall him: what was then left forher? How unworthy he was of her. Why had he married her? He was notfit for marriage. Why had he disobeyed his father, who had been alwaysso generous to him? Hope, remorse, ambition, tenderness, and selfishregret filled his heart. He sate down and wrote to his father, remembering what he had said once before, when he was engaged to fighta duel. Dawn faintly streaked the sky as he closed this farewellletter. He sealed it, and kissed the superscription. He thought how hehad deserted that generous father, and of the thousand kindnesses whichthe stern old man had done him. 

He had looked into Amelia's bedroom when he entered; she lay quiet, andher eyes seemed closed, and he was glad that she was asleep. Onarriving at his quarters from the ball, he had found his regimentalservant already making preparations for his departure: the man hadunderstood his signal to be still, and these arrangements were veryquickly and silently made. Should he go in and wake Amelia, hethought, or leave a note for her brother to break the news of departureto her? He went in to look at her once again. 

She had been awake when he first entered her room, but had kept hereyes closed, so that even her wakefulness should not seem to reproachhim. But when he had returned, so soon after herself, too, this timidlittle heart had felt more at ease, and turning towards him as he steptsoftly out of the room, she had fallen into a light sleep. George camein and looked at her again, entering still more softly. By the palenight-lamp he could see her sweet, pale face--the purple eyelids werefringed and closed, and one round arm, smooth and white, lay outside ofthe coverlet. Good God! how pure she was; how gentle, how tender, andhow friendless! and he, how selfish, brutal, and black with crime!Heart-stained, and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, andlooked at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he, to pray for oneso spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to the bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep; and he bentover the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale face. 

Two fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he stooped down. "I amawake, George, " the poor child said, with a sob fit to break the littleheart that nestled so closely by his own. She was awake, poor soul, and to what? At that moment a bugle from the Place of Arms begansounding clearly, and was taken up through the town; and amidst thedrums of the infantry, and the shrill pipes of the Scotch, the wholecity awoke. 

CHAPTER XXX

"The Girl I Left Behind Me"

We do not claim to rank among the military novelists. Our place is withthe non-combatants. When the decks are cleared for action we go belowand wait meekly. We should only be in the way of the manoeuvres thatthe gallant fellows are performing overhead. We shall go no fartherwith the --th than to the city gate: and leaving Major O'Dowd to hisduty, come back to the Major's wife, and the ladies and the baggage. 

Now the Major and his lady, who had not been invited to the ball atwhich in our last chapter other of our friends figured, had much moretime to take their wholesome natural rest in bed, than was accorded topeople who wished to enjoy pleasure as well as to do duty. "It's mybelief, Peggy, my dear, " said he, as he placidly pulled his nightcapover his ears, "that there will be such a ball danced in a day or twoas some of 'em has never heard the chune of"; and he was much morehappy to retire to rest after partaking of a quiet tumbler, than tofigure at any other sort of amusement. Peggy, for her part, would haveliked to have shown her turban and bird of paradise at the ball, butfor the information which her husband had given her, and which made hervery grave. 

"I'd like ye wake me about half an hour before the assembly beats, " theMajor said to his lady. "Call me at half-past one, Peggy dear, and seeme things is ready. May be I'll not come back to breakfast, Mrs. O'D. "With which words, which signified his opinion that the regiment wouldmarch the next morning, the Major ceased talking, and fell asleep. 

Mrs. O'Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a camisole, felt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep, at this juncture. "Time enough for that, " she said, "when Mick's gone"; and so she packedhis travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his cloak, his cap, and other warlike habiliments, set them out in order for him; andstowed away in the cloak pockets a light package of portablerefreshments, and a wicker-covered flask or pocket-pistol, containingnear a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy, of which she and theMajor approved very much; and as soon as the hands of the "repayther"pointed to half-past one, and its interior arrangements (it had a tonequite equal to a cathaydral, its fair owner considered) knelled forththat fatal hour, Mrs. O'Dowd woke up her Major, and had as comfortablea cup of coffee prepared for him as any made that morning in Brussels. And who is there will deny that this worthy lady's preparationsbetokened affection as much as the fits of tears and hysterics by whichmore sensitive females exhibited their love, and that their partakingof this coffee, which they drank together while the bugles weresounding the turn-out and the drums beating in the various quarters ofthe town, was not more useful and to the purpose than the outpouring ofany mere sentiment could be? The consequence was, that the Majorappeared on parade quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosycountenance, as he sate on horseback, giving cheerfulness andconfidence to the whole corps. All the officers saluted her when theregiment marched by the balcony on which this brave woman stood, andwaved them a cheer as they passed; and I daresay it was not from wantof courage, but from a sense of female delicacy and propriety, that sherefrained from leading the gallant--th personally into action. 

On Sundays, and at periods of a solemn nature, Mrs. O'Dowd used to readwith great gravity out of a large volume of her uncle the Dean'ssermons. It had been of great comfort to her on board the transport asthey were coming home, and were very nearly wrecked, on their returnfrom the West Indies. After the regiment's departure she betookherself to this volume for meditation; perhaps she did not understandmuch of what she was reading, and her thoughts were elsewhere: but thesleep project, with poor Mick's nightcap there on the pillow, was quitea vain one. So it is in the world. Jack or Donald marches away toglory with his knapsack on his shoulder, stepping out briskly to thetune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me. " It is she who remains andsuffers--and has the leisure to think, and brood, and remember. 

Knowing how useless regrets are, and how the indulgence of sentimentonly serves to make people more miserable, Mrs. Rebecca wiselydetermined to give way to no vain feelings of sorrow, and bore theparting from her husband with quite a Spartan equanimity. IndeedCaptain Rawdon himself was much more affected at the leave-taking thanthe resolute little woman to whom he bade farewell. She had masteredthis rude coarse nature; and he loved and worshipped her with all hisfaculties of regard and admiration. In all his life he had never beenso happy, as, during the past few months, his wife had made him. Allformer delights of turf, mess, hunting-field, and gambling-table; allprevious loves and courtships of milliners, opera-dancers, and the likeeasy triumphs of the clumsy military Adonis, were quite insipid whencompared to the lawful matrimonial pleasures which of late he hadenjoyed. She had known perpetually how to divert him; and he had foundhis house and her society a thousand times more pleasant than any placeor company which he had ever frequented from his childhood until now. And he cursed his past follies and extravagances, and bemoaned his vastoutlying debts above all, which must remain for ever as obstacles toprevent his wife's advancement in the world. He had often groaned overthese in midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelorthey had never given him any disquiet. He himself was struck with thisphenomenon. "Hang it, " he would say (or perhaps use a still strongerexpression out of his simple vocabulary), "before I was married Ididn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses wouldwait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on never minding. But since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I give you my honourI've not touched a bit of stamped paper. "

Rebecca always knew how to conjure away these moods of melancholy. "Why, my stupid love, " she would say, "we have not done with your auntyet. If she fails us, isn't there what you call the Gazette? or, stop, when your uncle Bute's life drops, I have another scheme. The livinghas always belonged to the younger brother, and why shouldn't you sellout and go into the Church?" The idea of this conversion set Rawdoninto roars of laughter: you might have heard the explosion through thehotel at midnight, and the haw-haws of the great dragoon's voice. General Tufto heard him from his quarters on the first floor abovethem; and Rebecca acted the scene with great spirit, and preachedRawdon's first sermon, to the immense delight of the General atbreakfast. 

But these were mere by-gone days and talk. When the final news arrivedthat the campaign was opened, and the troops were to march, Rawdon'sgravity became such that Becky rallied him about it in a manner whichrather hurt the feelings of the Guardsman. "You don't suppose I'mafraid, Becky, I should think, " he said, with a tremor in his voice. "But I'm a pretty good mark for a shot, and you see if it brings medown, why I leave one and perhaps two behind me whom I should wish toprovide for, as I brought 'em into the scrape. It is no laughingmatter that, Mrs. C. , anyways. "

Rebecca by a hundred caresses and kind words tried to soothe thefeelings of the wounded lover. It was only when her vivacity and senseof humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they would dounder most circumstances of life indeed) that she would break out withher satire, but she could soon put on a demure face. "Dearest love, "she said, "do you suppose I feel nothing?" and hastily dashingsomething from her eyes, she looked up in her husband's face with asmile. 

"Look here, " said he. "If I drop, let us see what there is for you. Ihave had a pretty good run of luck here, and here's two hundred andthirty pounds. I have got ten Napoleons in my pocket. That is as muchas I shall want; for the General pays everything like a prince; and ifI'm hit, why you know I cost nothing. Don't cry, little woman; I maylive to vex you yet. Well, I shan't take either of my horses, butshall ride the General's grey charger: it's cheaper, and I told himmine was lame. If I'm done, those two ought to fetch you something. Grigg offered ninety for the mare yesterday, before this confoundednews came, and like a fool I wouldn't let her go under the two o's. Bullfinch will fetch his price any day, only you'd better sell him inthis country, because the dealers have so many bills of mine, and soI'd rather he shouldn't go back to England. Your little mare theGeneral gave you will fetch something, and there's no d--d liverystable bills here as there are in London, " Rawdon added, with a laugh. "There's that dressing-case cost me two hundred--that is, I owe two forit; and the gold tops and bottles must be worth thirty or forty. Please to put THAT up the spout, ma'am, with my pins, and rings, andwatch and chain, and things. They cost a precious lot of money. MissCrawley, I know, paid a hundred down for the chain and ticker. Goldtops and bottles, indeed! dammy, I'm sorry I didn't take more now. Edwards pressed on me a silver-gilt boot-jack, and I might have had adressing-case fitted up with a silver warming-pan, and a service ofplate. But we must make the best of what we've got, Becky, you know. "

And so, making his last dispositions, Captain Crawley, who had seldomthought about anything but himself, until the last few months of hislife, when Love had obtained the mastery over the dragoon, went throughthe various items of his little catalogue of effects, striving to seehow they might be turned into money for his wife's benefit, in case anyaccident should befall him. He pleased himself by noting down with apencil, in his big schoolboy handwriting, the various items of hisportable property which might be sold for his widow's advantage as, forexample, "My double-barril by Manton, say 40 guineas; my driving cloak, lined with sable fur, 50 pounds; my duelling pistols in rosewood case(same which I shot Captain Marker), 20 pounds; my regulationsaddle-holsters and housings; my Laurie ditto, " and so forth, over allof which articles he made Rebecca the mistress. 

Faithful to his plan of economy, the Captain dressed himself in hisoldest and shabbiest uniform and epaulets, leaving the newest behind, under his wife's (or it might be his widow's) guardianship. And thisfamous dandy of Windsor and Hyde Park went off on his campaign with akit as modest as that of a sergeant, and with something like a prayeron his lips for the woman he was leaving. He took her up from theground, and held her in his arms for a minute, tight pressed againsthis strong-beating heart. His face was purple and his eyes dim, as heput her down and left her. He rode by his General's side, and smokedhis cigar in silence as they hastened after the troops of the General'sbrigade, which preceded them; and it was not until they were some mileson their way that he left off twirling his moustache and broke silence. 

And Rebecca, as we have said, wisely determined not to give way tounavailing sentimentality on her husband's departure. She waved him anadieu from the window, and stood there for a moment looking out afterhe was gone. The cathedral towers and the full gables of the quaint oldhouses were just beginning to blush in the sunrise. There had been norest for her that night. She was still in her pretty ball-dress, herfair hair hanging somewhat out of curl on her neck, and the circlesround her eyes dark with watching. "What a fright I seem, " she said, examining herself in the glass, "and how pale this pink makes onelook!" So she divested herself of this pink raiment; in doing which anote fell out from her corsage, which she picked up with a smile, andlocked into her dressing-box. And then she put her bouquet of the ballinto a glass of water, and went to bed, and slept very comfortably. 

The town was quite quiet when she woke up at ten o'clock, and partookof coffee, very requisite and comforting after the exhaustion and griefof the morning's occurrences. 

This meal over, she resumed honest Rawdon's calculations of the nightprevious, and surveyed her position. Should the worst befall, allthings considered, she was pretty well to do. There were her owntrinkets and trousseau, in addition to those which her husband had leftbehind. Rawdon's generosity, when they were first married, has alreadybeen described and lauded. Besides these, and the little mare, theGeneral, her slave and worshipper, had made her many very handsomepresents, in the shape of cashmere shawls bought at the auction of abankrupt French general's lady, and numerous tributes from thejewellers' shops, all of which betokened her admirer's taste andwealth. As for "tickers, " as poor Rawdon called watches, herapartments were alive with their clicking. For, happening to mentionone night that hers, which Rawdon had given to her, was of Englishworkmanship, and went ill, on the very next morning there came to her alittle bijou marked Leroy, with a chain and cover charmingly set withturquoises, and another signed Brequet, which was covered with pearls, and yet scarcely bigger than a half-crown. General Tufto had boughtone, and Captain Osborne had gallantly presented the other. Mrs. Osborne had no watch, though, to do George justice, she might have hadone for the asking, and the Honourable Mrs. Tufto in England had an oldinstrument of her mother's that might have served for the plate-warmingpan which Rawdon talked about. If Messrs. Howell and James were topublish a list of the purchasers of all the trinkets which they sell, how surprised would some families be: and if all these ornaments wentto gentlemen's lawful wives and daughters, what a profusion ofjewellery there would be exhibited in the genteelest homes of VanityFair!

Every calculation made of these valuables Mrs. Rebecca found, notwithout a pungent feeling of triumph and self-satisfaction, that shouldcircumstances occur, she might reckon on six or seven hundred pounds atthe very least, to begin the world with; and she passed the morningdisposing, ordering, looking out, and locking up her properties in themost agreeable manner. Among the notes in Rawdon's pocket-book was adraft for twenty pounds on Osborne's banker. This made her think aboutMrs. Osborne. "I will go and get the draft cashed, " she said, "and paya visit afterwards to poor little Emmy. " If this is a novel without ahero, at least let us lay claim to a heroine. No man in the Britisharmy which has marched away, not the great Duke himself, could be morecool or collected in the presence of doubts and difficulties, than theindomitable little aide-de-camp's wife. 

And there was another of our acquaintances who was also to be leftbehind, a non-combatant, and whose emotions and behaviour we havetherefore a right to know. This was our friend the ex-collector ofBoggley Wollah, whose rest was broken, like other people's, by thesounding of the bugles in the early morning. Being a great sleeper, and fond of his bed, it is possible he would have snoozed on until hisusual hour of rising in the forenoon, in spite of all the drums, bugles, and bagpipes in the British army, but for an interruption, which did not come from George Osborne, who shared Jos's quarters withhim, and was as usual occupied too much with his own affairs or withgrief at parting with his wife, to think of taking leave of hisslumbering brother-in-law--it was not George, we say, who interposedbetween Jos Sedley and sleep, but Captain Dobbin, who came and rousedhim up, insisting on shaking hands with him before his departure. 

"Very kind of you, " said Jos, yawning, and wishing the Captain at thedeuce. 

"I--I didn't like to go off without saying good-bye, you know, " Dobbinsaid in a very incoherent manner; "because you know some of us mayn'tcome back again, and I like to see you all well, and--and that sort ofthing, you know. "

"What do you mean?" Jos asked, rubbing his eyes. The Captain did notin the least hear him or look at the stout gentleman in the nightcap, about whom he professed to have such a tender interest. The hypocritewas looking and listening with all his might in the direction ofGeorge's apartments, striding about the room, upsetting the chairs, beating the tattoo, biting his nails, and showing other signs of greatinward emotion. 

Jos had always had rather a mean opinion of the Captain, and now beganto think his courage was somewhat equivocal. "What is it I can do foryou, Dobbin?" he said, in a sarcastic tone. 

"I tell you what you can do, " the Captain replied, coming up to thebed; "we march in a quarter of an hour, Sedley, and neither George norI may ever come back. Mind you, you are not to stir from this townuntil you ascertain how things go. You are to stay here and watch overyour sister, and comfort her, and see that no harm comes to her. Ifanything happens to George, remember she has no one but you in theworld to look to. If it goes wrong with the army, you'll see her safeback to England; and you will promise me on your word that you willnever desert her. I know you won't: as far as money goes, you werealways free enough with that. Do you want any? I mean, have you enoughgold to take you back to England in case of a misfortune?"

"Sir, " said Jos, majestically, "when I want money, I know where to askfor it. And as for my sister, you needn't tell me how I ought tobehave to her. "

"You speak like a man of spirit, Jos, " the other answered good-naturedly, "and I am glad that George can leave her in such good hands. So I may give him your word of honour, may I, that in case of extremityyou will stand by her?"

"Of course, of course, " answered Mr. Jos, whose generosity in moneymatters Dobbin estimated quite correctly. 

"And you'll see her safe out of Brussels in the event of a defeat?"

"A defeat! D---- it, sir, it's impossible. Don't try and frighten ME, "the hero cried from his bed; and Dobbin's mind was thus perfectly setat ease now that Jos had spoken out so resolutely respecting hisconduct to his sister. "At least, " thought the Captain, "there will bea retreat secured for her in case the worst should ensue. "

If Captain Dobbin expected to get any personal comfort and satisfactionfrom having one more view of Amelia before the regiment marched away, his selfishness was punished just as such odious egotism deserved tobe. The door of Jos's bedroom opened into the sitting-room which wascommon to the family party, and opposite this door was that of Amelia'schamber. The bugles had wakened everybody: there was no use inconcealment now. George's servant was packing in this room: Osbornecoming in and out of the contiguous bedroom, flinging to the man sucharticles as he thought fit to carry on the campaign. And presentlyDobbin had the opportunity which his heart coveted, and he got sight ofAmelia's face once more. But what a face it was! So white, so wildand despair-stricken, that the remembrance of it haunted him afterwardslike a crime, and the sight smote him with inexpressible pangs oflonging and pity. 

She was wrapped in a white morning dress, her hair falling on hershoulders, and her large eyes fixed and without light. By way ofhelping on the preparations for the departure, and showing that she toocould be useful at a moment so critical, this poor soul had taken up asash of George's from the drawers whereon it lay, and followed him toand fro with the sash in her hand, looking on mutely as his packingproceeded. She came out and stood, leaning at the wall, holding thissash against her bosom, from which the heavy net of crimson droppedlike a large stain of blood. Our gentle-hearted Captain felt a guiltyshock as he looked at her. "Good God, " thought he, "and is it grieflike this I dared to pry into?" And there was no help: no means tosoothe and comfort this helpless, speechless misery. He stood for amoment and looked at her, powerless and torn with pity, as a parentregards an infant in pain. 

At last, George took Emmy's hand, and led her back into the bedroom, from whence he came out alone. The parting had taken place in thatmoment, and he was gone. 

"Thank Heaven that is over, " George thought, bounding down the stair, his sword under his arm, as he ran swiftly to the alarm ground, wherethe regiment was mustered, and whither trooped men and officershurrying from their billets; his pulse was throbbing and his cheeksflushed: the great game of war was going to be played, and he one ofthe players. What a fierce excitement of doubt, hope, and pleasure!What tremendous hazards of loss or gain! What were all the games ofchance he had ever played compared to this one? Into all contestsrequiring athletic skill and courage, the young man, from his boyhoodupwards, had flung himself with all his might. The champion of hisschool and his regiment, the bravos of his companions had followed himeverywhere; from the boys' cricket-match to the garrison-races, he hadwon a hundred of triumphs; and wherever he went women and men hadadmired and envied him. What qualities are there for which a man getsso speedy a return of applause, as those of bodily superiority, activity, and valour? Time out of mind strength and courage have beenthe theme of bards and romances; and from the story of Troy down toto-day, poetry has always chosen a soldier for a hero. I wonder is itbecause men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, andplace military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward andworship?

So, at the sound of that stirring call to battle, George jumped awayfrom the gentle arms in which he had been dallying; not without afeeling of shame (although his wife's hold on him had been but feeble), that he should have been detained there so long. The same feeling ofeagerness and excitement was amongst all those friends of his of whomwe have had occasional glimpses, from the stout senior Major, who ledthe regiment into action, to little Stubble, the Ensign, who was tobear its colours on that day. 

The sun was just rising as the march began--it was a gallant sight--theband led the column, playing the regimental march--then came theMajor in command, riding upon Pyramus, his stout charger--then marchedthe grenadiers, their Captain at their head; in the centre were thecolours, borne by the senior and junior Ensigns--then George camemarching at the head of his company. He looked up, and smiled atAmelia, and passed on; and even the sound of the music died away. 

CHAPTER XXXI

In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister

Thus all the superior officers being summoned on duty elsewhere, JosSedley was left in command of the little colony at Brussels, withAmelia invalided, Isidor, his Belgian servant, and the bonne, who wasmaid-of-all-work for the establishment, as a garrison under him. Thoughhe was disturbed in spirit, and his rest destroyed by Dobbin'sinterruption and the occurrences of the morning, Jos neverthelessremained for many hours in bed, wakeful and rolling about there untilhis usual hour of rising had arrived. The sun was high in the heavens, and our gallant friends of the --th miles on their march, before thecivilian appeared in his flowered dressing-gown at breakfast. 

About George's absence, his brother-in-law was very easy in mind. Perhaps Jos was rather pleased in his heart that Osborne was gone, forduring George's presence, the other had played but a very secondarypart in the household, and Osborne did not scruple to show his contemptfor the stout civilian. But Emmy had always been good and attentive tohim. It was she who ministered to his comforts, who superintended thedishes that he liked, who walked or rode with him (as she had many, toomany, opportunities of doing, for where was George?) and who interposedher sweet face between his anger and her husband's scorn. Many timidremonstrances had she uttered to George in behalf of her brother, butthe former in his trenchant way cut these entreaties short. "I'm anhonest man, " he said, "and if I have a feeling I show it, as an honestman will. How the deuce, my dear, would you have me behaverespectfully to such a fool as your brother?" So Jos was pleased withGeorge's absence. His plain hat, and gloves on a sideboard, and theidea that the owner was away, caused Jos I don't know what secretthrill of pleasure. "HE won't be troubling me this morning, " Josthought, "with his dandified airs and his impudence. "

"Put the Captain's hat into the ante-room, " he said to Isidor, theservant. 

"Perhaps he won't want it again, " replied the lackey, looking knowinglyat his master. He hated George too, whose insolence towards him wasquite of the English sort. 

"And ask if Madame is coming to breakfast, " Mr. Sedley said with greatmajesty, ashamed to enter with a servant upon the subject of hisdislike for George. The truth is, he had abused his brother to thevalet a score of times before. 

Alas! Madame could not come to breakfast, and cut the tartines thatMr. Jos liked. Madame was a great deal too ill, and had been in afrightful state ever since her husband's departure, so her bonne said. Jos showed his sympathy by pouring her out a large cup of tea It washis way of exhibiting kindness: and he improved on this; he not onlysent her breakfast, but he bethought him what delicacies she would mostlike for dinner. 

Isidor, the valet, had looked on very sulkily, while Osborne's servantwas disposing of his master's baggage previous to the Captain'sdeparture: for in the first place he hated Mr. Osborne, whose conductto him, and to all inferiors, was generally overbearing (nor does thecontinental domestic like to be treated with insolence as our ownbetter-tempered servants do), and secondly, he was angry that so manyvaluables should be removed from under his hands, to fall into otherpeople's possession when the English discomfiture should arrive. Ofthis defeat he and a vast number of other persons in Brussels andBelgium did not make the slightest doubt. The almost universal beliefwas, that the Emperor would divide the Prussian and English armies, annihilate one after the other, and march into Brussels before threedays were over: when all the movables of his present masters, who wouldbe killed, or fugitives, or prisoners, would lawfully become theproperty of Monsieur Isidor. 

As he helped Jos through his toilsome and complicated daily toilette, this faithful servant would calculate what he should do with the veryarticles with which he was decorating his master's person. He wouldmake a present of the silver essence-bottles and toilet knicknacks to ayoung lady of whom he was fond; and keep the English cutlery and thelarge ruby pin for himself. It would look very smart upon one of thefine frilled shirts, which, with the gold-laced cap and the froggedfrock coat, that might easily be cut down to suit his shape, and theCaptain's gold-headed cane, and the great double ring with the rubies, which he would have made into a pair of beautiful earrings, hecalculated would make a perfect Adonis of himself, and renderMademoiselle Reine an easy prey. "How those sleeve-buttons will suitme!" thought he, as he fixed a pair on the fat pudgy wrists of Mr. Sedley. "I long for sleeve-buttons; and the Captain's boots with brassspurs, in the next room, corbleu! what an effect they will make in theAllee Verte!" So while Monsieur Isidor with bodily fingers was holdingon to his master's nose, and shaving the lower part of Jos's face, hisimagination was rambling along the Green Avenue, dressed out in afrogged coat and lace, and in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he wasloitering in spirit on the banks, and examining the barges sailingslowly under the cool shadows of the trees by the canal, or refreshinghimself with a mug of Faro at the bench of a beer-house on the road toLaeken. 

But Mr. Joseph Sedley, luckily for his own peace, no more knew what waspassing in his domestic's mind than the respected reader, and I suspectwhat John or Mary, whose wages we pay, think of ourselves. What ourservants think of us!--Did we know what our intimates and dearrelations thought of us, we should live in a world that we should beglad to quit, and in a frame of mind and a constant terror, that wouldbe perfectly unbearable. So Jos's man was marking his victim down, asyou see one of Mr. Paynter's assistants in Leadenhall Street ornamentan unconscious turtle with a placard on which is written, "Soupto-morrow. "

Amelia's attendant was much less selfishly disposed. Few dependentscould come near that kind and gentle creature without paying theirusual tribute of loyalty and affection to her sweet and affectionatenature. And it is a fact that Pauline, the cook, consoled her mistressmore than anybody whom she saw on this wretched morning; for when shefound how Amelia remained for hours, silent, motionless, and haggard, by the windows in which she had placed herself to watch the lastbayonets of the column as it marched away, the honest girl took thelady's hand, and said, Tenez, Madame, est-ce qu'il n'est pas aussi al'armee, mon homme a moi? with which she burst into tears, and Ameliafalling into her arms, did likewise, and so each pitied and soothed theother. 

Several times during the forenoon Mr. Jos's Isidor went from hislodgings into the town, and to the gates of the hotels and lodging-housesround about the Parc, where the English were congregated, andthere mingled with other valets, couriers, and lackeys, gathered suchnews as was abroad, and brought back bulletins for his master'sinformation. Almost all these gentlemen were in heart partisans of theEmperor, and had their opinions about the speedy end of the campaign. The Emperor's proclamation from Avesnes had been distributed everywhereplentifully in Brussels. "Soldiers!" it said, "this is theanniversary of Marengo and Friedland, by which the destinies of Europewere twice decided. Then, as after Austerlitz, as after Wagram, wewere too generous. We believed in the oaths and promises of princeswhom we suffered to remain upon their thrones. Let us march once moreto meet them. We and they, are we not still the same men? Soldiers!these same Prussians who are so arrogant to-day, were three to oneagainst you at Jena, and six to one at Montmirail. Those among you whowere prisoners in England can tell their comrades what frightfultorments they suffered on board the English hulks. Madmen! a momentof prosperity has blinded them, and if they enter into France it willbe to find a grave there!" But the partisans of the French prophesieda more speedy extermination of the Emperor's enemies than this; and itwas agreed on all hands that Prussians and British would never returnexcept as prisoners in the rear of the conquering army. 

These opinions in the course of the day were brought to operate uponMr. Sedley. He was told that the Duke of Wellington had gone to tryand rally his army, the advance of which had been utterly crushed thenight before. 

"Crushed, psha!" said Jos, whose heart was pretty stout atbreakfast-time. "The Duke has gone to beat the Emperor as he hasbeaten all his generals before. "

"His papers are burned, his effects are removed, and his quarters arebeing got ready for the Duke of Dalmatia, " Jos's informant replied. "Ihad it from his own maitre d'hotel. Milor Duc de Richemont's peopleare packing up everything. His Grace has fled already, and the Duchessis only waiting to see the plate packed to join the King of France atOstend. "

"The King of France is at Ghent, fellow, " replied Jos, affectingincredulity. 

"He fled last night to Bruges, and embarks today from Ostend. The Ducde Berri is taken prisoner. Those who wish to be safe had better gosoon, for the dykes will be opened to-morrow, and who can fly when thewhole country is under water?"

"Nonsense, sir, we are three to one, sir, against any force Boney canbring into the field, " Mr. Sedley objected; "the Austrians and theRussians are on their march. He must, he shall be crushed, " Jos said, slapping his hand on the table. 

"The Prussians were three to one at Jena, and he took their army andkingdom in a week. They were six to one at Montmirail, and hescattered them like sheep. The Austrian army is coming, but with theEmpress and the King of Rome at its head; and the Russians, bah! theRussians will withdraw. No quarter is to be given to the English, onaccount of their cruelty to our braves on board the infamous pontoons. Look here, here it is in black and white. Here's the proclamation ofhis Majesty the Emperor and King, " said the now declared partisan ofNapoleon, and taking the document from his pocket, Isidor sternlythrust it into his master's face, and already looked upon the froggedcoat and valuables as his own spoil. 

Jos was, if not seriously alarmed as yet, at least considerablydisturbed in mind. "Give me my coat and cap, sir, " said he, "and followme. I will go myself and learn the truth of these reports. " Isidor wasfurious as Jos put on the braided frock. "Milor had better not wearthat military coat, " said he; "the Frenchmen have sworn not to givequarter to a single British soldier. "

"Silence, sirrah!" said Jos, with a resolute countenance still, andthrust his arm into the sleeve with indomitable resolution, in theperformance of which heroic act he was found by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who at this juncture came up to visit Amelia, and entered withoutringing at the antechamber door. 

Rebecca was dressed very neatly and smartly, as usual: her quiet sleepafter Rawdon's departure had refreshed her, and her pink smiling cheekswere quite pleasant to look at, in a town and on a day when everybodyelse's countenance wore the appearance of the deepest anxiety andgloom. She laughed at the attitude in which Jos was discovered, andthe struggles and convulsions with which the stout gentleman thrusthimself into the braided coat. 

"Are you preparing to join the army, Mr. Joseph?" she said. "Is thereto be nobody left in Brussels to protect us poor women?" Jos succeededin plunging into the coat, and came forward blushing and stuttering outexcuses to his fair visitor. "How was she after the events of themorning--after the fatigues of the ball the night before?" MonsieurIsidor disappeared into his master's adjacent bedroom, bearing off theflowered dressing-gown. 

"How good of you to ask, " said she, pressing one of his hands in bothher own. "How cool and collected you look when everybody else isfrightened! How is our dear little Emmy? It must have been an awful, awful parting. "

"Tremendous, " Jos said. 

"You men can bear anything, " replied the lady. "Parting or danger arenothing to you. Own now that you were going to join the army and leaveus to our fate. I know you were--something tells me you were. I was sofrightened, when the thought came into my head (for I do sometimesthink of you when I am alone, Mr. Joseph), that I ran off immediatelyto beg and entreat you not to fly from us. "

This speech might be interpreted, "My dear sir, should an accidentbefall the army, and a retreat be necessary, you have a verycomfortable carriage, in which I propose to take a seat. " I don't knowwhether Jos understood the words in this sense. But he was profoundlymortified by the lady's inattention to him during their stay atBrussels. He had never been presented to any of Rawdon Crawley's greatacquaintances: he had scarcely been invited to Rebecca's parties; forhe was too timid to play much, and his presence bored George and Rawdonequally, who neither of them, perhaps, liked to have a witness of theamusements in which the pair chose to indulge. "Ah!" thought Jos, "nowshe wants me she comes to me. When there is nobody else in the way shecan think about old Joseph Sedley!" But besides these doubts he feltflattered at the idea Rebecca expressed of his courage. 

He blushed a good deal, and put on an air of importance. "I should liketo see the action, " he said. "Every man of any spirit would, you know. I've seen a little service in India, but nothing on this grand scale. "

"You men would sacrifice anything for a pleasure, " Rebecca answered. "Captain Crawley left me this morning as gay as if he were going to ahunting party. What does he care? What do any of you care for theagonies and tortures of a poor forsaken woman? (I wonder whether hecould really have been going to the troops, this great lazy gourmand?)Oh! dear Mr. Sedley, I have come to you for comfort--for consolation. I have been on my knees all the morning. I tremble at the frightfuldanger into which our husbands, our friends, our brave troops andallies, are rushing. And I come here for shelter, and find another ofmy friends--the last remaining to me--bent upon plunging into thedreadful scene!"

"My dear madam, " Jos replied, now beginning to be quite soothed, "don'tbe alarmed. I only said I should like to go--what Briton would not?But my duty keeps me here: I can't leave that poor creature in thenext room. " And he pointed with his finger to the door of the chamberin which Amelia was. 

"Good noble brother!" Rebecca said, putting her handkerchief to hereyes, and smelling the eau-de-cologne with which it was scented. "Ihave done you injustice: you have got a heart. I thought you had not. "

"O, upon my honour!" Jos said, making a motion as if he would lay hishand upon the spot in question. "You do me injustice, indeed youdo--my dear Mrs. Crawley. "

"I do, now your heart is true to your sister. But I remember two yearsago--when it was false to me!" Rebecca said, fixing her eyes upon himfor an instant, and then turning away into the window. 

Jos blushed violently. That organ which he was accused by Rebecca ofnot possessing began to thump tumultuously. He recalled the days whenhe had fled from her, and the passion which had once inflamed him--thedays when he had driven her in his curricle: when she had knit thegreen purse for him: when he had sate enraptured gazing at her whitearms and bright eyes. 

"I know you think me ungrateful, " Rebecca continued, coming out of thewindow, and once more looking at him and addressing him in a lowtremulous voice. "Your coldness, your averted looks, your manner whenwe have met of late--when I came in just now, all proved it to me. Butwere there no reasons why I should avoid you? Let your own heart answerthat question. Do you think my husband was too much inclined towelcome you? The only unkind words I have ever had from him (I will doCaptain Crawley that justice) have been about you--and most cruel, cruel words they were. "

"Good gracious! what have I done?" asked Jos in a flurry of pleasureand perplexity; "what have I done--to--to--?"

"Is jealousy nothing?" said Rebecca. "He makes me miserable about you. And whatever it might have been once--my heart is all his. I aminnocent now. Am I not, Mr. Sedley?"

All Jos's blood tingled with delight, as he surveyed this victim to hisattractions. A few adroit words, one or two knowing tender glances ofthe eyes, and his heart was inflamed again and his doubts andsuspicions forgotten. From Solomon downwards, have not wiser men thanhe been cajoled and befooled by women? "If the worst comes to theworst, " Becky thought, "my retreat is secure; and I have a right-handseat in the barouche. "

There is no knowing into what declarations of love and ardour thetumultuous passions of Mr. Joseph might have led him, if Isidor thevalet had not made his reappearance at this minute, and begun to busyhimself about the domestic affairs. Jos, who was just going to gaspout an avowal, choked almost with the emotion that he was obliged torestrain. Rebecca too bethought her that it was time she should go inand comfort her dearest Amelia. "Au revoir, " she said, kissing herhand to Mr. Joseph, and tapped gently at the door of his sister'sapartment. As she entered and closed the door on herself, he sank downin a chair, and gazed and sighed and puffed portentously. "That coatis very tight for Milor, " Isidor said, still having his eye on thefrogs; but his master heard him not: his thoughts were elsewhere: nowglowing, maddening, upon the contemplation of the enchanting Rebecca:anon shrinking guiltily before the vision of the jealous RawdonCrawley, with his curling, fierce mustachios, and his terrible duellingpistols loaded and cocked. 

Rebecca's appearance struck Amelia with terror, and made her shrinkback. It recalled her to the world and the remembrance of yesterday. In the overpowering fears about to-morrow she had forgottenRebecca--jealousy--everything except that her husband was gone and wasin danger. Until this dauntless worldling came in and broke the spell, and lifted the latch, we too have forborne to enter into that sadchamber. How long had that poor girl been on her knees! what hours ofspeechless prayer and bitter prostration had she passed there! Thewar-chroniclers who write brilliant stories of fight and triumphscarcely tell us of these. These are too mean parts of the pageant:and you don't hear widows' cries or mothers' sobs in the midst of theshouts and jubilation in the great Chorus of Victory. And yet when wasthe time that such have not cried out: heart-broken, humbleprotestants, unheard in the uproar of the triumph!

After the first movement of terror in Amelia's mind--when Rebecca'sgreen eyes lighted upon her, and rustling in her fresh silks andbrilliant ornaments, the latter tripped up with extended arms toembrace her--a feeling of anger succeeded, and from being deadly palebefore, her face flushed up red, and she returned Rebecca's look aftera moment with a steadiness which surprised and somewhat abashed herrival. 

"Dearest Amelia, you are very unwell, " the visitor said, putting forthher hand to take Amelia's. "What is it? I could not rest until I knewhow you were. "

Amelia drew back her hand--never since her life began had that gentlesoul refused to believe or to answer any demonstration of good-will oraffection. But she drew back her hand, and trembled all over. "Whyare you here, Rebecca?" she said, still looking at her solemnly withher large eyes. These glances troubled her visitor. 

"She must have seen him give me the letter at the ball, " Rebeccathought. "Don't be agitated, dear Amelia, " she said, looking down. "Icame but to see if I could--if you were well. "

"Are you well?" said Amelia. "I dare say you are. You don't love yourhusband. You would not be here if you did. Tell me, Rebecca, did Iever do you anything but kindness?"

"Indeed, Amelia, no, " the other said, still hanging down her head. 

"When you were quite poor, who was it that befriended you? Was I not asister to you? You saw us all in happier days before he married me. Iwas all in all then to him; or would he have given up his fortune, hisfamily, as he nobly did to make me happy? Why did you come between mylove and me? Who sent you to separate those whom God joined, and takemy darling's heart from me--my own husband? Do you think you could Ilove him as I did? His love was everything to me. You knew it, andwanted to rob me of it. For shame, Rebecca; bad and wickedwoman--false friend and false wife. "

"Amelia, I protest before God, I have done my husband no wrong, "Rebecca said, turning from her. 

"Have you done me no wrong, Rebecca? You did not succeed, but youtried. Ask your heart if you did not. "

She knows nothing, Rebecca thought. 

"He came back to me. I knew he would. I knew that no falsehood, noflattery, could keep him from me long. I knew he would come. I prayedso that he should. "

The poor girl spoke these words with a spirit and volubility whichRebecca had never before seen in her, and before which the latter wasquite dumb. "But what have I done to you, " she continued in a morepitiful tone, "that you should try and take him from me? I had him butfor six weeks. You might have spared me those, Rebecca. And yet, fromthe very first day of our wedding, you came and blighted it. Now he isgone, are you come to see how unhappy I am?" she continued. "You mademe wretched enough for the past fortnight: you might have spared meto-day. "

"I--I never came here, " interposed Rebecca, with unlucky truth. 

"No. You didn't come. You took him away. Are you come to fetch himfrom me?" she continued in a wilder tone. "He was here, but he is gonenow. There on that very sofa he sate. Don't touch it. We sate andtalked there. I was on his knee, and my arms were round his neck, andwe said 'Our Father. ' Yes, he was here: and they came and took himaway, but he promised me to come back. "

"He will come back, my dear, " said Rebecca, touched in spite of herself. 

"Look, " said Amelia, "this is his sash--isn't it a pretty colour?" andshe took up the fringe and kissed it. She had tied it round her waistat some part of the day. She had forgotten her anger, her jealousy, the very presence of her rival seemingly. For she walked silently andalmost with a smile on her face, towards the bed, and began to smoothdown George's pillow. 

Rebecca walked, too, silently away. "How is Amelia?" asked Jos, whostill held his position in the chair. 

"There should be somebody with her, " said Rebecca. "I think she is veryunwell": and she went away with a very grave face, refusing Mr. Sedley's entreaties that she would stay and partake of the early dinnerwhich he had ordered. 

Rebecca was of a good-natured and obliging disposition; and she likedAmelia rather than otherwise. Even her hard words, reproachful as theywere, were complimentary--the groans of a person stinging under defeat. Meeting Mrs. O'Dowd, whom the Dean's sermons had by no means comforted, and who was walking very disconsolately in the Parc, Rebecca accostedthe latter, rather to the surprise of the Major's wife, who was notaccustomed to such marks of politeness from Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, andinforming her that poor little Mrs. Osborne was in a desperatecondition, and almost mad with grief, sent off the good-naturedIrishwoman straight to see if she could console her young favourite. 

"I've cares of my own enough, " Mrs. O'Dowd said, gravely, "and Ithought poor Amelia would be little wanting for company this day. Butif she's so bad as you say, and you can't attend to her, who used to beso fond of her, faith I'll see if I can be of service. And so goodmarning to ye, Madam"; with which speech and a toss of her head, thelady of the repayther took a farewell of Mrs. Crawley, whose companyshe by no means courted. 

Becky watched her marching off, with a smile on her lip. She had thekeenest sense of humour, and the Parthian look which the retreatingMrs. O'Dowd flung over her shoulder almost upset Mrs. Crawley'sgravity. "My service to ye, me fine Madam, and I'm glad to see ye socheerful, " thought Peggy. "It's not YOU that will cry your eyes outwith grief, anyway. " And with this she passed on, and speedily foundher way to Mrs. Osborne's lodgings. 

The poor soul was still at the bedside, where Rebecca had left her, andstood almost crazy with grief. The Major's wife, a stronger-mindedwoman, endeavoured her best to comfort her young friend. "You must bearup, Amelia, dear, " she said kindly, "for he mustn't find you ill whenhe sends for you after the victory. It's not you are the only womanthat are in the hands of God this day. "

"I know that. I am very wicked, very weak, " Amelia said. She knew herown weakness well enough. The presence of the more resolute friendchecked it, however; and she was the better of this control andcompany. They went on till two o'clock; their hearts were with thecolumn as it marched farther and farther away. Dreadful doubt andanguish--prayers and fears and griefs unspeakable--followed theregiment. It was the women's tribute to the war. It taxes both alike, and takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women. 

At half-past two, an event occurred of daily importance to Mr. Joseph:the dinner-hour arrived. Warriors may fight and perish, but he mustdine. He came into Amelia's room to see if he could coax her to sharethat meal. "Try, " said he; "the soup is very good. Do try, Emmy, " andhe kissed her hand. Except when she was married, he had not done somuch for years before. "You are very good and kind, Joseph, " she said. "Everybody is, but, if you please, I will stay in my room to-day. "

The savour of the soup, however, was agreeable to Mrs. O'Dowd'snostrils: and she thought she would bear Mr. Jos company. So the twosate down to their meal. "God bless the meat, " said the Major's wife, solemnly: she was thinking of her honest Mick, riding at the head ofhis regiment: "'Tis but a bad dinner those poor boys will get to-day, "she said, with a sigh, and then, like a philosopher, fell to. 

Jos's spirits rose with his meal. He would drink the regiment'shealth; or, indeed, take any other excuse to indulge in a glass ofchampagne. "We'll drink to O'Dowd and the brave --th, " said he, bowinggallantly to his guest. "Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd? Fill Mrs. O'Dowd's glass, Isidor. "

But all of a sudden, Isidor started, and the Major's wife laid down herknife and fork. The windows of the room were open, and lookedsouthward, and a dull distant sound came over the sun-lighted roofsfrom that direction. "What is it?" said Jos. "Why don't you pour, yourascal?"

"Cest le feu!" said Isidor, running to the balcony. 

"God defend us; it's cannon!" Mrs. O'Dowd cried, starting up, andfollowed too to the window. A thousand pale and anxious faces mighthave been seen looking from other casements. And presently it seemedas if the whole population of the city rushed into the streets. 

CHAPTER XXXII

In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close

We of peaceful London City have never beheld--and please God nevershall witness--such a scene of hurry and alarm, as that which Brusselspresented. Crowds rushed to the Namur gate, from which direction thenoise proceeded, and many rode along the level chaussee, to be inadvance of any intelligence from the army. Each man asked hisneighbour for news; and even great English lords and ladiescondescended to speak to persons whom they did not know. The friendsof the French went abroad, wild with excitement, and prophesying thetriumph of their Emperor. The merchants closed their shops, and cameout to swell the general chorus of alarm and clamour. Women rushed tothe churches, and crowded the chapels, and knelt and prayed on theflags and steps. The dull sound of the cannon went on rolling, rolling. Presently carriages with travellers began to leave the town, galloping away by the Ghent barrier. The prophecies of the Frenchpartisans began to pass for facts. "He has cut the armies in two, " itwas said. "He is marching straight on Brussels. He will overpower theEnglish, and be here to-night. " "He will overpower the English, "shrieked Isidor to his master, "and will be here to-night. " The manbounded in and out from the lodgings to the street, always returningwith some fresh particulars of disaster. Jos's face grew paler andpaler. Alarm began to take entire possession of the stout civilian. All the champagne he drank brought no courage to him. Before sunset hewas worked up to such a pitch of nervousness as gratified his friendIsidor to behold, who now counted surely upon the spoils of the ownerof the laced coat. 

The women were away all this time. After hearing the firing for amoment, the stout Major's wife bethought her of her friend in the nextchamber, and ran in to watch, and if possible to console, Amelia. Theidea that she had that helpless and gentle creature to protect, gaveadditional strength to the natural courage of the honest Irishwoman. She passed five hours by her friend's side, sometimes in remonstrance, sometimes talking cheerfully, oftener in silence and terrified mentalsupplication. "I never let go her hand once, " said the stout ladyafterwards, "until after sunset, when the firing was over. " Pauline, the bonne, was on her knees at church hard by, praying for son homme aelle. 

When the noise of the cannonading was over, Mrs. O'Dowd issued out ofAmelia's room into the parlour adjoining, where Jos sate with twoemptied flasks, and courage entirely gone. Once or twice he hadventured into his sister's bedroom, looking very much alarmed, and asif he would say something. But the Major's wife kept her place, and hewent away without disburthening himself of his speech. He was ashamedto tell her that he wanted to fly. 

But when she made her appearance in the dining-room, where he sate inthe twilight in the cheerless company of his empty champagne bottles, he began to open his mind to her. 

"Mrs. O'Dowd, " he said, "hadn't you better get Amelia ready?"

"Are you going to take her out for a walk?" said the Major's lady;"sure she's too weak to stir. "

"I--I've ordered the carriage, " he said, "and--and post-horses; Isidoris gone for them, " Jos continued. 

"What do you want with driving to-night?" answered the lady. "Isn'tshe better on her bed? I've just got her to lie down. "

"Get her up, " said Jos; "she must get up, I say": and he stamped hisfoot energetically. "I say the horses are ordered--yes, the horses areordered. It's all over, and--"

"And what?" asked Mrs. O'Dowd. 

"I'm off for Ghent, " Jos answered. "Everybody is going; there's aplace for you! We shall start in half-an-hour. "

The Major's wife looked at him with infinite scorn. "I don't move tillO'Dowd gives me the route, " said she. "You may go if you like, Mr. Sedley; but, faith, Amelia and I stop here. "

"She SHALL go, " said Jos, with another stamp of his foot. Mrs. O'Dowdput herself with arms akimbo before the bedroom door. 

"Is it her mother you're going to take her to?" she said; "or do youwant to go to Mamma yourself, Mr. Sedley? Good marning--a pleasantjourney to ye, sir. Bon voyage, as they say, and take my counsel, andshave off them mustachios, or they'll bring you into mischief. "

"D--n!" yelled out Jos, wild with fear, rage, and mortification; andIsidor came in at this juncture, swearing in his turn. "Pas dechevaux, sacre bleu!" hissed out the furious domestic. All the horseswere gone. Jos was not the only man in Brussels seized with panic thatday. 

But Jos's fears, great and cruel as they were already, were destined toincrease to an almost frantic pitch before the night was over. It hasbeen mentioned how Pauline, the bonne, had son homme a elle also in theranks of the army that had gone out to meet the Emperor Napoleon. Thislover was a native of Brussels, and a Belgian hussar. The troops ofhis nation signalised themselves in this war for anything but courage, and young Van Cutsum, Pauline's admirer, was too good a soldier todisobey his Colonel's orders to run away. Whilst in garrison atBrussels young Regulus (he had been born in the revolutionary times)found his great comfort, and passed almost all his leisure moments, inPauline's kitchen; and it was with pockets and holsters crammed full ofgood things from her larder, that he had take leave of his weepingsweetheart, to proceed upon the campaign a few days before. 

As far as his regiment was concerned, this campaign was over now. Theyhad formed a part of the division under the command of his Sovereignapparent, the Prince of Orange, and as respected length of swords andmustachios, and the richness of uniform and equipments, Regulus and hiscomrades looked to be as gallant a body of men as ever trumpet soundedfor. 

When Ney dashed upon the advance of the allied troops, carrying oneposition after the other, until the arrival of the great body of theBritish army from Brussels changed the aspect of the combat of QuatreBras, the squadrons among which Regulus rode showed the greatestactivity in retreating before the French, and were dislodged from onepost and another which they occupied with perfect alacrity on theirpart. Their movements were only checked by the advance of the Britishin their rear. Thus forced to halt, the enemy's cavalry (whosebloodthirsty obstinacy cannot be too severely reprehended) had atlength an opportunity of coming to close quarters with the braveBelgians before them; who preferred to encounter the British ratherthan the French, and at once turning tail rode through the Englishregiments that were behind them, and scattered in all directions. Theregiment in fact did not exist any more. It was nowhere. It had nohead-quarters. Regulus found himself galloping many miles from thefield of action, entirely alone; and whither should he fly for refugeso naturally as to that kitchen and those faithful arms in whichPauline had so often welcomed him?

At some ten o'clock the clinking of a sabre might have been heard upthe stair of the house where the Osbornes occupied a story in thecontinental fashion. A knock might have been heard at the kitchendoor; and poor Pauline, come back from church, fainted almost withterror as she opened it and saw before her her haggard hussar. Helooked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora. Pauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called hermasters, and discovered her friend. She stifled her scream, then, andleading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice bitsfrom the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste. The hussarshowed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh and beerwhich he devoured--and during the mouthfuls he told his tale ofdisaster. 

His regiment had performed prodigies of courage, and had withstood fora while the onset of the whole French army. But they were overwhelmedat last, as was the whole British army by this time. Ney destroyed eachregiment as it came up. The Belgians in vain interposed to prevent thebutchery of the English. The Brunswickers were routed and hadfled--their Duke was killed. It was a general debacle. He sought todrown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of beer. 

Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation andrushed out to inform his master. "It is all over, " he shrieked to Jos. "Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed; the Britisharmy is in full flight; there is only one man escaped, and he is in thekitchen now--come and hear him. " So Jos tottered into that apartmentwhere Regulus still sate on the kitchen table, and clung fast to hisflagon of beer. In the best French which he could muster, and whichwas in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hussar totell his tale. The disasters deepened as Regulus spoke. He was theonly man of his regiment not slain on the field. He had seen the Dukeof Brunswick fall, the black hussars fly, the Ecossais pounded down bythe cannon. "And the --th?" gasped Jos. 

"Cut in pieces, " said the hussar--upon which Pauline cried out, "O mymistress, ma bonne petite dame, " went off fairly into hysterics, andfilled the house with her screams. 

Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for safety. He rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and cast anappealing look at Amelia's door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had closed andlocked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the latter hadreceived him, and after pausing and listening for a brief space at thedoor, he left it, and resolved to go into the street, for the firsttime that day. So, seizing a candle, he looked about for hisgold-laced cap, and found it lying in its usual place, on aconsole-table, in the anteroom, placed before a mirror at which Josused to coquet, always giving his side-locks a twirl, and his cap theproper cock over his eye, before he went forth to make appearance inpublic. Such is the force of habit, that even in the midst of histerror he began mechanically to twiddle with his hair, and arrange thecock of his hat. Then he looked amazed at the pale face in the glassbefore him, and especially at his mustachios, which had attained a richgrowth in the course of near seven weeks, since they had come into theworld. They WILL mistake me for a military man, thought he, remembering Isidor's warning as to the massacre with which all thedefeated British army was threatened; and staggering back to hisbedchamber, he began wildly pulling the bell which summoned his valet. 

Isidor answered that summons. Jos had sunk in a chair--he had torn offhis neckcloths, and turned down his collars, and was sitting with bothhis hands lifted to his throat. 

"Coupez-moi, Isidor, " shouted he; "vite! Coupez-moi!"

Isidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished hisvalet to cut his throat. 

"Les moustaches, " gasped Joe; "les moustaches--coupy, rasy, vite!"--hisFrench was of this sort--voluble, as we have said, but notremarkable for grammar. 

Isidor swept off the mustachios in no time with the razor, and heardwith inexpressible delight his master's orders that he should fetch ahat and a plain coat. "Ne porty ploo--habit militair--bonn--bonny avoo, prenny dehors"--were Jos's words--the coat and cap were at lasthis property. 

This gift being made, Jos selected a plain black coat and waistcoatfrom his stock, and put on a large white neckcloth, and a plain beaver. If he could have got a shovel hat he would have worn it. As it was, youwould have fancied he was a flourishing, large parson of the Church ofEngland. 

"Venny maintenong, " he continued, "sweevy--ally--party--dong la roo. "And so having said, he plunged swiftly down the stairs of the house, and passed into the street. 

Although Regulus had vowed that he was the only man of his regiment orof the allied army, almost, who had escaped being cut to pieces by Ney, it appeared that his statement was incorrect, and that a good numbermore of the supposed victims had survived the massacre. Many scores ofRegulus's comrades had found their way back to Brussels, and allagreeing that they had run away--filled the whole town with an idea ofthe defeat of the allies. The arrival of the French was expectedhourly; the panic continued, and preparations for flight went oneverywhere. No horses! thought Jos, in terror. He made Isidor inquireof scores of persons, whether they had any to lend or sell, and hisheart sank within him, at the negative answers returned everywhere. Should he take the journey on foot? Even fear could not render thatponderous body so active. 

Almost all the hotels occupied by the English in Brussels face theParc, and Jos wandered irresolutely about in this quarter, with crowdsof other people, oppressed as he was by fear and curiosity. Somefamilies he saw more happy than himself, having discovered a team ofhorses, and rattling through the streets in retreat; others again therewere whose case was like his own, and who could not for any bribes orentreaties procure the necessary means of flight. Amongst thesewould-be fugitives, Jos remarked the Lady Bareacres and her daughter, who sate in their carriage in the porte-cochere of their hotel, alltheir imperials packed, and the only drawback to whose flight was thesame want of motive power which kept Jos stationary. 

Rebecca Crawley occupied apartments in this hotel; and had before thisperiod had sundry hostile meetings with the ladies of the Bareacresfamily. My Lady Bareacres cut Mrs. Crawley on the stairs when they metby chance; and in all places where the latter's name was mentioned, spoke perseveringly ill of her neighbour. The Countess was shocked atthe familiarity of General Tufto with the aide-de-camp's wife. TheLady Blanche avoided her as if she had been an infectious disease. Only the Earl himself kept up a sly occasional acquaintance with her, when out of the jurisdiction of his ladies. 

Rebecca had her revenge now upon these insolent enemies. If becameknown in the hotel that Captain Crawley's horses had been left behind, and when the panic began, Lady Bareacres condescended to send her maidto the Captain's wife with her Ladyship's compliments, and a desire toknow the price of Mrs. Crawley's horses. Mrs. Crawley returned a notewith her compliments, and an intimation that it was not her custom totransact bargains with ladies' maids. 

This curt reply brought the Earl in person to Becky's apartment; but hecould get no more success than the first ambassador. "Send a lady'smaid to ME!" Mrs. Crawley cried in great anger; "why didn't my LadyBareacres tell me to go and saddle the horses! Is it her Ladyship thatwants to escape, or her Ladyship's femme de chambre?" And this was allthe answer that the Earl bore back to his Countess. 

What will not necessity do? The Countess herself actually came to waitupon Mrs. Crawley on the failure of her second envoy. She entreatedher to name her own price; she even offered to invite Becky toBareacres House, if the latter would but give her the means ofreturning to that residence. Mrs. Crawley sneered at her. 

"I don't want to be waited on by bailiffs in livery, " she said; "youwill never get back though most probably--at least not you and yourdiamonds together. The French will have those They will be here in twohours, and I shall be half way to Ghent by that time. I would not sellyou my horses, no, not for the two largest diamonds that your Ladyshipwore at the ball. " Lady Bareacres trembled with rage and terror. Thediamonds were sewed into her habit, and secreted in my Lord's paddingand boots. "Woman, the diamonds are at the banker's, and I WILL havethe horses, " she said. Rebecca laughed in her face. The infuriateCountess went below, and sate in her carriage; her maid, her courier, and her husband were sent once more through the town, each to look forcattle; and woe betide those who came last! Her Ladyship was resolvedon departing the very instant the horses arrived from any quarter--withher husband or without him. 

Rebecca had the pleasure of seeing her Ladyship in the horselesscarriage, and keeping her eyes fixed upon her, and bewailing, in theloudest tone of voice, the Countess's perplexities. "Not to be able toget horses!" she said, "and to have all those diamonds sewed into thecarriage cushions! What a prize it will be for the French when theycome!--the carriage and the diamonds, I mean; not the lady!" She gavethis information to the landlord, to the servants, to the guests, andthe innumerable stragglers about the courtyard. Lady Bareacres couldhave shot her from the carriage window. 

It was while enjoying the humiliation of her enemy that Rebecca caughtsight of Jos, who made towards her directly he perceived her. 

That altered, frightened, fat face, told his secret well enough. Hetoo wanted to fly, and was on the look-out for the means of escape. "HEshall buy my horses, " thought Rebecca, "and I'll ride the mare. "

Jos walked up to his friend, and put the question for the hundredthtime during the past hour, "Did she know where horses were to be had?"

"What, YOU fly?" said Rebecca, with a laugh. "I thought you were thechampion of all the ladies, Mr. Sedley. "

"I--I'm not a military man, " gasped he. 

"And Amelia?--Who is to protect that poor little sister of yours?"asked Rebecca. "You surely would not desert her?"

"What good can I do her, suppose--suppose the enemy arrive?" Josanswered. "They'll spare the women; but my man tells me that they havetaken an oath to give no quarter to the men--the dastardly cowards. "

"Horrid!" cried Rebecca, enjoying his perplexity. 

"Besides, I don't want to desert her, " cried the brother. "She SHAN'Tbe deserted. There is a seat for her in my carriage, and one for you, dear Mrs. Crawley, if you will come; and if we can get horses--" sighedhe--

"I have two to sell, " the lady said. Jos could have flung himself intoher arms at the news. "Get the carriage, Isidor, " he cried; "we'vefound them--we have found them. "

"My horses never were in harness, " added the lady. "Bullfinch would kickthe carriage to pieces, if you put him in the traces. "

"But he is quiet to ride?" asked the civilian. 

"As quiet as a lamb, and as fast as a hare, " answered Rebecca. 

"Do you think he is up to my weight?" Jos said. He was already on hisback, in imagination, without ever so much as a thought for poorAmelia. What person who loved a horse-speculation could resist such atemptation?

In reply, Rebecca asked him to come into her room, whither he followedher quite breathless to conclude the bargain. Jos seldom spent ahalf-hour in his life which cost him so much money. Rebecca, measuringthe value of the goods which she had for sale by Jos's eagerness topurchase, as well as by the scarcity of the article, put upon herhorses a price so prodigious as to make even the civilian draw back. "She would sell both or neither, " she said, resolutely. Rawdon hadordered her not to part with them for a price less than that which shespecified. Lord Bareacres below would give her the same money--and withall her love and regard for the Sedley family, her dear Mr. Joseph mustconceive that poor people must live--nobody, in a word, could be moreaffectionate, but more firm about the matter of business. 

Jos ended by agreeing, as might be supposed of him. The sum he had togive her was so large that he was obliged to ask for time; so large asto be a little fortune to Rebecca, who rapidly calculated that withthis sum, and the sale of the residue of Rawdon's effects, and herpension as a widow should he fall, she would now be absolutelyindependent of the world, and might look her weeds steadily in the face. 

Once or twice in the day she certainly had herself thought aboutflying. But her reason gave her better counsel. "Suppose the Frenchdo come, " thought Becky, "what can they do to a poor officer's widow?Bah! the times of sacks and sieges are over. We shall be let to gohome quietly, or I may live pleasantly abroad with a snug littleincome. "

Meanwhile Jos and Isidor went off to the stables to inspect the newlypurchased cattle. Jos bade his man saddle the horses at once. He wouldride away that very night, that very hour. And he left the valet busyin getting the horses ready, and went homewards himself to prepare forhis departure. It must be secret. He would go to his chamber by theback entrance. He did not care to face Mrs. O'Dowd and Amelia, and ownto them that he was about to run. 

By the time Jos's bargain with Rebecca was completed, and his horseshad been visited and examined, it was almost morning once more. Butthough midnight was long passed, there was no rest for the city; thepeople were up, the lights in the houses flamed, crowds were stillabout the doors, and the streets were busy. Rumours of various natureswent still from mouth to mouth: one report averred that the Prussianshad been utterly defeated; another that it was the English who had beenattacked and conquered: a third that the latter had held their ground. This last rumour gradually got strength. No Frenchmen had made theirappearance. Stragglers had come in from the army bringing reports moreand more favourable: at last an aide-de-camp actually reached Brusselswith despatches for the Commandant of the place, who placardedpresently through the town an official announcement of the success ofthe allies at Quatre Bras, and the entire repulse of the French underNey after a six hours' battle. The aide-de-camp must have arrivedsometime while Jos and Rebecca were making their bargain together, orthe latter was inspecting his purchase. When he reached his own hotel, he found a score of its numerous inhabitants on the thresholddiscoursing of the news; there was no doubt as to its truth. And hewent up to communicate it to the ladies under his charge. He did notthink it was necessary to tell them how he had intended to take leaveof them, how he had bought horses, and what a price he had paid forthem. 

But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had only thoughtfor the safety of those they loved. Amelia, at the news of the victory, became still more agitated even than before. She was for going thatmoment to the army. She besought her brother with tears to conduct herthither. Her doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poorgirl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved and ranhither and thither in hysteric insanity--a piteous sight. No manwrithing in pain on the hard-fought field fifteen miles off, where lay, after their struggles, so many of the brave--no man suffered morekeenly than this poor harmless victim of the war. Jos could not bearthe sight of her pain. He left his sister in the charge of her stouterfemale companion, and descended once more to the threshold of thehotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked, and waited for morenews. 

It grew to be broad daylight as they stood here, and fresh news beganto arrive from the war, brought by men who had been actors in thescene. Wagons and long country carts laden with wounded came rollinginto the town; ghastly groans came from within them, and haggard faceslooked up sadly from out of the straw. Jos Sedley was looking at oneof these carriages with a painful curiosity--the moans of the peoplewithin were frightful--the wearied horses could hardly pull the cart. "Stop! stop!" a feeble voice cried from the straw, and the carriagestopped opposite Mr. Sedley's hotel. 

"It is George, I know it is!" cried Amelia, rushing in a moment to thebalcony, with a pallid face and loose flowing hair. It was not George, however, but it was the next best thing: it was news of him. 

It was poor Tom Stubble, who had marched out of Brussels so gallantlytwenty-four hours before, bearing the colours of the regiment, which hehad defended very gallantly upon the field. A French lancer hadspeared the young ensign in the leg, who fell, still bravely holding tohis flag. At the conclusion of the engagement, a place had been foundfor the poor boy in a cart, and he had been brought back to Brussels. 

"Mr. Sedley, Mr. Sedley!" cried the boy, faintly, and Jos came upalmost frightened at the appeal. He had not at first distinguished whoit was that called him. 

Little Tom Stubble held out his hot and feeble hand. "I'm to be takenin here, " he said. "Osborne--and--and Dobbin said I was; and you areto give the man two napoleons: my mother will pay you. " This youngfellow's thoughts, during the long feverish hours passed in the cart, had been wandering to his father's parsonage which he had quitted onlya few months before, and he had sometimes forgotten his pain in thatdelirium. 

The hotel was large, and the people kind, and all the inmates of thecart were taken in and placed on various couches. The young ensign wasconveyed upstairs to Osborne's quarters. Amelia and the Major's wifehad rushed down to him, when the latter had recognised him from thebalcony. You may fancy the feelings of these women when they were toldthat the day was over, and both their husbands were safe; in what muterapture Amelia fell on her good friend's neck, and embraced her; inwhat a grateful passion of prayer she fell on her knees, and thankedthe Power which had saved her husband. 

Our young lady, in her fevered and nervous condition, could have had nomore salutary medicine prescribed for her by any physician than thatwhich chance put in her way. She and Mrs. O'Dowd watched incessantlyby the wounded lad, whose pains were very severe, and in the duty thusforced upon her, Amelia had not time to brood over her personalanxieties, or to give herself up to her own fears and forebodings afterher wont. The young patient told in his simple fashion the events ofthe day, and the actions of our friends of the gallant --th. They hadsuffered severely. They had lost very many officers and men. TheMajor's horse had been shot under him as the regiment charged, and theyall thought that O'Dowd was gone, and that Dobbin had got his majority, until on their return from the charge to their old ground, the Majorwas discovered seated on Pyramus's carcase, refreshing him-self from acase-bottle. It was Captain Osborne that cut down the French lancerwho had speared the ensign. Amelia turned so pale at the notion, thatMrs. O'Dowd stopped the young ensign in this story. And it was CaptainDobbin who at the end of the day, though wounded himself, took up thelad in his arms and carried him to the surgeon, and thence to the cartwhich was to bring him back to Brussels. And it was he who promisedthe driver two louis if he would make his way to Mr. Sedley's hotel inthe city; and tell Mrs. Captain Osborne that the action was over, andthat her husband was unhurt and well. 

"Indeed, but he has a good heart that William Dobbin, " Mrs. O'Dowdsaid, "though he is always laughing at me. "

Young Stubble vowed there was not such another officer in the army, andnever ceased his praises of the senior captain, his modesty, hiskindness, and his admirable coolness in the field. To these parts ofthe conversation, Amelia lent a very distracted attention: it was onlywhen George was spoken of that she listened, and when he was notmentioned, she thought about him. 

In tending her patient, and in thinking of the wonderful escapes of theday before, her second day passed away not too slowly with Amelia. There was only one man in the army for her: and as long as he waswell, it must be owned that its movements interested her little. Allthe reports which Jos brought from the streets fell very vaguely on herears; though they were sufficient to give that timorous gentleman, andmany other people then in Brussels, every disquiet. The French hadbeen repulsed certainly, but it was after a severe and doubtfulstruggle, and with only a division of the French army. The Emperor, with the main body, was away at Ligny, where he had utterly annihilatedthe Prussians, and was now free to bring his whole force to bear uponthe allies. The Duke of Wellington was retreating upon the capital, anda great battle must be fought under its walls probably, of which thechances were more than doubtful. The Duke of Wellington had but twentythousand British troops on whom he could rely, for the Germans were rawmilitia, the Belgians disaffected, and with this handful his Grace hadto resist a hundred and fifty thousand men that had broken into Belgiumunder Napoleon. Under Napoleon! What warrior was there, howeverfamous and skilful, that could fight at odds with him?

Jos thought of all these things, and trembled. So did all the rest ofBrussels--where people felt that the fight of the day before was butthe prelude to the greater combat which was imminent. One of thearmies opposed to the Emperor was scattered to the winds already. Thefew English that could be brought to resist him would perish at theirposts, and the conqueror would pass over their bodies into the city. Woe be to those whom he found there! Addresses were prepared, publicfunctionaries assembled and debated secretly, apartments were gotready, and tricoloured banners and triumphal emblems manufactured, towelcome the arrival of His Majesty the Emperor and King. 

The emigration still continued, and wherever families could find meansof departure, they fled. When Jos, on the afternoon of the 17th ofJune, went to Rebecca's hotel, he found that the great Bareacres'carriage had at length rolled away from the porte-cochere. The Earlhad procured a pair of horses somehow, in spite of Mrs. Crawley, andwas rolling on the road to Ghent. Louis the Desired was getting readyhis portmanteau in that city, too. It seemed as if Misfortune wasnever tired of worrying into motion that unwieldy exile. 

Jos felt that the delay of yesterday had been only a respite, and thathis dearly bought horses must of a surety be put into requisition. Hisagonies were very severe all this day. As long as there was an Englisharmy between Brussels and Napoleon, there was no need of immediateflight; but he had his horses brought from their distant stables, tothe stables in the court-yard of the hotel where he lived; so that theymight be under his own eyes, and beyond the risk of violent abduction. Isidor watched the stable-door constantly, and had the horses saddled, to be ready for the start. He longed intensely for that event. 

After the reception of the previous day, Rebecca did not care to comenear her dear Amelia. She clipped the bouquet which George had broughther, and gave fresh water to the flowers, and read over the letterwhich he had sent her. "Poor wretch, " she said, twirling round thelittle bit of paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her withthis!--and it is for a thing like this that she must break her heart, forsooth--for a man who is stupid--a coxcomb--and who does not care forher. My poor good Rawdon is worth ten of this creature. " And then shefell to thinking what she should do if--if anything happened to poorgood Rawdon, and what a great piece of luck it was that he had left hishorses behind. 

In the course of this day too, Mrs. Crawley, who saw not without angerthe Bareacres party drive off, bethought her of the precaution whichthe Countess had taken, and did a little needlework for her ownadvantage; she stitched away the major part of her trinkets, bills, andbank-notes about her person, and so prepared, was ready for anyevent--to fly if she thought fit, or to stay and welcome the conqueror, were he Englishman or Frenchman. And I am not sure that she did notdream that night of becoming a duchess and Madame la Marechale, whileRawdon wrapped in his cloak, and making his bivouac under the rain atMount Saint John, was thinking, with all the force of his heart, aboutthe little wife whom he had left behind him. 

The next day was a Sunday. And Mrs. Major O'Dowd had the satisfactionof seeing both her patients refreshed in health and spirits by somerest which they had taken during the night. She herself had slept on agreat chair in Amelia's room, ready to wait upon her poor friend or theensign, should either need her nursing. When morning came, this robustwoman went back to the house where she and her Major had their billet;and here performed an elaborate and splendid toilette, befitting theday. And it is very possible that whilst alone in that chamber, whichher husband had inhabited, and where his cap still lay on the pillow, and his cane stood in the corner, one prayer at least was sent up toHeaven for the welfare of the brave soldier, Michael O'Dowd. 

When she returned she brought her prayer-book with her, and her unclethe Dean's famous book of sermons, out of which she never failed toread every Sabbath; not understanding all, haply, not pronouncing manyof the words aright, which were long and abstruse--for the Dean was alearned man, and loved long Latin words--but with great gravity, vastemphasis, and with tolerable correctness in the main. How often has myMick listened to these sermons, she thought, and me reading in thecabin of a calm! She proposed to resume this exercise on the presentday, with Amelia and the wounded ensign for a congregation. The sameservice was read on that day in twenty thousand churches at the samehour; and millions of British men and women, on their knees, imploredprotection of the Father of all. 

They did not hear the noise which disturbed our little congregation atBrussels. Much louder than that which had interrupted them two dayspreviously, as Mrs. O'Dowd was reading the service in her best voice, the cannon of Waterloo began to roar. 

When Jos heard that dreadful sound, he made up his mind that he wouldbear this perpetual recurrence of terrors no longer, and would fly atonce. He rushed into the sick man's room, where our three friends hadpaused in their prayers, and further interrupted them by a passionateappeal to Amelia. 

"I can't stand it any more, Emmy, " he said; "I won't stand it; and youmust come with me. I have bought a horse for you--never mind at whatprice--and you must dress and come with me, and ride behind Isidor. "

"God forgive me, Mr. Sedley, but you are no better than a coward, " Mrs. O'Dowd said, laying down the book. 

"I say come, Amelia, " the civilian went on; "never mind what she says;why are we to stop here and be butchered by the Frenchmen?"

"You forget the --th, my boy, " said the little Stubble, the woundedhero, from his bed--"and and you won't leave me, will you, Mrs. O'Dowd?"

"No, my dear fellow, " said she, going up and kissing the boy. "No harmshall come to you while I stand by. I don't budge till I get the wordfrom Mick. A pretty figure I'd be, wouldn't I, stuck behind that chapon a pillion?"

This image caused the young patient to burst out laughing in his bed, and even made Amelia smile. "I don't ask her, " Jos shouted out--"Idon't ask that--that Irishwoman, but you Amelia; once for all, will youcome?"

"Without my husband, Joseph?" Amelia said, with a look of wonder, andgave her hand to the Major's wife. Jos's patience was exhausted. 

"Good-bye, then, " he said, shaking his fist in a rage, and slamming thedoor by which he retreated. And this time he really gave his order formarch: and mounted in the court-yard. Mrs. O'Dowd heard theclattering hoofs of the horses as they issued from the gate; andlooking on, made many scornful remarks on poor Joseph as he rode downthe street with Isidor after him in the laced cap. The horses, whichhad not been exercised for some days, were lively, and sprang about thestreet. Jos, a clumsy and timid horseman, did not look to advantage inthe saddle. "Look at him, Amelia dear, driving into the parlourwindow. Such a bull in a china-shop I never saw. " And presently thepair of riders disappeared at a canter down the street leading in thedirection of the Ghent road, Mrs. O'Dowd pursuing them with a fire ofsarcasm so long as they were in sight. 

All that day from morning until past sunset, the cannon never ceased toroar. It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden. 

All of us have read of what occurred during that interval. The tale isin every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when thegreat battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing andrecounting the history of that famous action. Its remembrance ranklesstill in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave menwho lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging thathumiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacyof hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called gloryand shame, and to the alternations of successful and unsuccessfulmurder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centurieshence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing eachother still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honour. 

All our friends took their share and fought like men in the greatfield. All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away, thelines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repellingthe furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which were heard atBrussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and theresolute survivors closing in. Towards evening, the attack of theFrench, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury. Theyhad other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for afinal onset. It came at last: the columns of the Imperial Guardmarched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep theEnglish from the height which they had maintained all day, and spite ofall: unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death fromthe English line--the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave andfalter. Then it stopped, still facing the shot. Then at last theEnglish troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been ableto dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled. 

No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying forGeorge, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through hisheart. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her

The kind reader must please to remember--while the army is marchingfrom Flanders, and, after its heroic actions there, is advancing totake the fortifications on the frontiers of France, previous to anoccupation of that country--that there are a number of persons livingpeaceably in England who have to do with the history at present inhand, and must come in for their share of the chronicle. During thetime of these battles and dangers, old Miss Crawley was living atBrighton, very moderately moved by the great events that were going on. The great events rendered the newspapers rather interesting, to besure, and Briggs read out the Gazette, in which Rawdon Crawley'sgallantry was mentioned with honour, and his promotion was presentlyrecorded. 

"What a pity that young man has taken such an irretrievable step in theworld!" his aunt said; "with his rank and distinction he might havemarried a brewer's daughter with a quarter of a million--like MissGrains; or have looked to ally himself with the best families inEngland. He would have had my money some day or other; or his childrenwould--for I'm not in a hurry to go, Miss Briggs, although you may bein a hurry to be rid of me; and instead of that, he is a doomed pauper, with a dancing-girl for a wife. "

"Will my dear Miss Crawley not cast an eye of compassion upon theheroic soldier, whose name is inscribed in the annals of his country'sglory?" said Miss Briggs, who was greatly excited by the Waterlooproceedings, and loved speaking romantically when there was anoccasion. "Has not the Captain--or the Colonel as I may now stylehim--done deeds which make the name of Crawley illustrious?"

"Briggs, you are a fool, " said Miss Crawley: "Colonel Crawley hasdragged the name of Crawley through the mud, Miss Briggs. Marry adrawing-master's daughter, indeed!--marry a dame de compagnie--for shewas no better, Briggs; no, she was just what you are--only younger, anda great deal prettier and cleverer. Were you an accomplice of thatabandoned wretch, I wonder, of whose vile arts he became a victim, andof whom you used to be such an admirer? Yes, I daresay you were anaccomplice. But you will find yourself disappointed in my will, I cantell you: and you will have the goodness to write to Mr. Waxy, and saythat I desire to see him immediately. " Miss Crawley was now in thehabit of writing to Mr. Waxy her solicitor almost every day in theweek, for her arrangements respecting her property were all revoked, and her perplexity was great as to the future disposition of her money. 

The spinster had, however, rallied considerably; as was proved by theincreased vigour and frequency of her sarcasms upon Miss Briggs, allwhich attacks the poor companion bore with meekness, with cowardice, with a resignation that was half generous and half hypocritical--withthe slavish submission, in a word, that women of her disposition andstation are compelled to show. Who has not seen how women bully women?What tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeatedshafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by thetyrants of their sex? Poor victims! But we are starting from ourproposition, which is, that Miss Crawley was always particularlyannoying and savage when she was rallying from illness--as they saywounds tingle most when they are about to heal. 

While thus approaching, as all hoped, to convalescence, Miss Briggs wasthe only victim admitted into the presence of the invalid; yet MissCrawley's relatives afar off did not forget their beloved kinswoman, and by a number of tokens, presents, and kind affectionate messages, strove to keep themselves alive in her recollection. 

In the first place, let us mention her nephew, Rawdon Crawley. A fewweeks after the famous fight of Waterloo, and after the Gazette hadmade known to her the promotion and gallantry of that distinguishedofficer, the Dieppe packet brought over to Miss Crawley at Brighton, abox containing presents, and a dutiful letter, from the Colonel hernephew. In the box were a pair of French epaulets, a Cross of theLegion of Honour, and the hilt of a sword--relics from the field ofbattle: and the letter described with a good deal of humour how thelatter belonged to a commanding officer of the Guard, who having swornthat "the Guard died, but never surrendered, " was taken prisoner thenext minute by a private soldier, who broke the Frenchman's sword withthe butt of his musket, when Rawdon made himself master of theshattered weapon. As for the cross and epaulets, they came from aColonel of French cavalry, who had fallen under the aide-de-camp's armin the battle: and Rawdon Crawley did not know what better to do withthe spoils than to send them to his kindest and most affectionate oldfriend. Should he continue to write to her from Paris, whither the armywas marching? He might be able to give her interesting news from thatcapital, and of some of Miss Crawley's old friends of the emigration, to whom she had shown so much kindness during their distress. 

The spinster caused Briggs to write back to the Colonel a gracious andcomplimentary letter, encouraging him to continue his correspondence. His first letter was so excessively lively and amusing that she shouldlook with pleasure for its successors. --"Of course, I know, " sheexplained to Miss Briggs, "that Rawdon could not write such a goodletter any more than you could, my poor Briggs, and that it is thatclever little wretch of a Rebecca, who dictates every word to him; butthat is no reason why my nephew should not amuse me; and so I wish tolet him understand that I am in high good humour. "

I wonder whether she knew that it was not only Becky who wrote theletters, but that Mrs. Rawdon actually took and sent home the trophieswhich she bought for a few francs, from one of the innumerable pedlarswho immediately began to deal in relics of the war. The novelist, whoknows everything, knows this also. Be this, however, as it may, MissCrawley's gracious reply greatly encouraged our young friends, Rawdonand his lady, who hoped for the best from their aunt's evidentlypacified humour: and they took care to entertain her with manydelightful letters from Paris, whither, as Rawdon said, they had thegood luck to go in the track of the conquering army. 

To the rector's lady, who went off to tend her husband's brokencollar-bone at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley, the spinster'scommunications were by no means so gracious. Mrs. Bute, that brisk, managing, lively, imperious woman, had committed the most fatal of allerrors with regard to her sister-in-law. She had not merely oppressedher and her household--she had bored Miss Crawley; and if poor MissBriggs had been a woman of any spirit, she might have been made happyby the commission which her principal gave her to write a letter toMrs. Bute Crawley, saying that Miss Crawley's health was greatlyimproved since Mrs. Bute had left her, and begging the latter on noaccount to put herself to trouble, or quit her family for MissCrawley's sake. This triumph over a lady who had been very haughty andcruel in her behaviour to Miss Briggs, would have rejoiced most women;but the truth is, Briggs was a woman of no spirit at all, and themoment her enemy was discomfited, she began to feel compassion in herfavour. 

"How silly I was, " Mrs. Bute thought, and with reason, "ever to hintthat I was coming, as I did, in that foolish letter when we sent MissCrawley the guinea-fowls. I ought to have gone without a word to thepoor dear doting old creature, and taken her out of the hands of thatninny Briggs, and that harpy of a femme de chambre. Oh! Bute, Bute, why did you break your collar-bone?"

Why, indeed? We have seen how Mrs. Bute, having the game in her hands, had really played her cards too well. She had ruled over Miss Crawley'shousehold utterly and completely, to be utterly and completely routedwhen a favourable opportunity for rebellion came. She and herhousehold, however, considered that she had been the victim of horribleselfishness and treason, and that her sacrifices in Miss Crawley'sbehalf had met with the most savage ingratitude. Rawdon's promotion, and the honourable mention made of his name in the Gazette, filled thisgood Christian lady also with alarm. Would his aunt relent towards himnow that he was a Lieutenant-Colonel and a C. B. ? and would that odiousRebecca once more get into favour? The Rector's wife wrote a sermon forher husband about the vanity of military glory and the prosperity ofthe wicked, which the worthy parson read in his best voice and withoutunderstanding one syllable of it. He had Pitt Crawley for one of hisauditors--Pitt, who had come with his two half-sisters to church, whichthe old Baronet could now by no means be brought to frequent. 

Since the departure of Becky Sharp, that old wretch had given himselfup entirely to his bad courses, to the great scandal of the county andthe mute horror of his son. The ribbons in Miss Horrocks's cap becamemore splendid than ever. The polite families fled the hall and itsowner in terror. Sir Pitt went about tippling at his tenants' houses;and drank rum-and-water with the farmers at Mudbury and theneighbouring places on market-days. He drove the family coach-and-fourto Southampton with Miss Horrocks inside: and the county peopleexpected, every week, as his son did in speechless agony, that hismarriage with her would be announced in the provincial paper. It wasindeed a rude burthen for Mr. Crawley to bear. His eloquence waspalsied at the missionary meetings, and other religious assemblies inthe neighbourhood, where he had been in the habit of presiding, and ofspeaking for hours; for he felt, when he rose, that the audience said, "That is the son of the old reprobate Sir Pitt, who is very likelydrinking at the public house at this very moment. " And once when he wasspeaking of the benighted condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and thenumber of his wives who were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreantfrom the crowd asked, "How many is there at Queen's Crawley, YoungSquaretoes?" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr. Pitt's speech. And the two daughters of the house of Queen's Crawleywould have been allowed to run utterly wild (for Sir Pitt swore that nogoverness should ever enter into his doors again), had not Mr. Crawley, by threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send them toschool. 

Meanwhile, as we have said, whatever individual differences there mightbe between them all, Miss Crawley's dear nephews and nieces wereunanimous in loving her and sending her tokens of affection. Thus Mrs. Bute sent guinea-fowls, and some remarkably fine cauliflowers, and apretty purse or pincushion worked by her darling girls, who begged tokeep a LITTLE place in the recollection of their dear aunt, while Mr. Pitt sent peaches and grapes and venison from the Hall. TheSouthampton coach used to carry these tokens of affection to MissCrawley at Brighton: it used sometimes to convey Mr. Pitt thither too:for his differences with Sir Pitt caused Mr. Crawley to absent himselfa good deal from home now: and besides, he had an attraction atBrighton in the person of the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, whose engagementto Mr. Crawley has been formerly mentioned in this history. HerLadyship and her sisters lived at Brighton with their mamma, theCountess Southdown, that strong-minded woman so favourably known inthe serious world. 

A few words ought to be said regarding her Ladyship and her noblefamily, who are bound by ties of present and future relationship to thehouse of Crawley. Respecting the chief of the Southdown family, ClementWilliam, fourth Earl of Southdown, little need be told, except that hisLordship came into Parliament (as Lord Wolsey) under the auspices ofMr. Wilberforce, and for a time was a credit to his political sponsor, and decidedly a serious young man. But words cannot describe thefeelings of his admirable mother, when she learned, very shortly afterher noble husband's demise, that her son was a member of severalworldly clubs, had lost largely at play at Wattier's and the CocoaTree; that he had raised money on post-obits, and encumbered thefamily estate; that he drove four-in-hand, and patronised the ring; andthat he actually had an opera-box, where he entertained the mostdangerous bachelor company. His name was only mentioned with groans inthe dowager's circle. 

The Lady Emily was her brother's senior by many years; and tookconsiderable rank in the serious world as author of some of thedelightful tracts before mentioned, and of many hymns and spiritualpieces. A mature spinster, and having but faint ideas of marriage, herlove for the blacks occupied almost all her feelings. It is to her, Ibelieve, we owe that beautiful poem. 

 Lead us to some sunny isle, Yonder in the western deep; Where the skies for ever smile, And the blacks for ever weep, &c. 

She had correspondences with clerical gentlemen in most of our East andWest India possessions; and was secretly attached to the Reverend SilasHornblower, who was tattooed in the South Sea Islands. 

As for the Lady Jane, on whom, as it has been said, Mr. Pitt Crawley'saffection had been placed, she was gentle, blushing, silent, and timid. In spite of his falling away, she wept for her brother, and was quiteashamed of loving him still. Even yet she used to send him littlehurried smuggled notes, and pop them into the post in private. The onedreadful secret which weighed upon her life was, that she and the oldhousekeeper had been to pay Southdown a furtive visit at his chambersin the Albany; and found him--O the naughty dear abandonedwretch!--smoking a cigar with a bottle of Curacao before him. Sheadmired her sister, she adored her mother, she thought Mr. Crawley themost delightful and accomplished of men, after Southdown, that fallenangel: and her mamma and sister, who were ladies of the most superiorsort, managed everything for her, and regarded her with that amiablepity, of which your really superior woman always has such a share togive away. Her mamma ordered her dresses, her books, her bonnets, andher ideas for her. She was made to take pony-riding, or piano-exercise, or any other sort of bodily medicament, according as my Lady Southdownsaw meet; and her ladyship would have kept her daughter in pinafores upto her present age of six-and-twenty, but that they were thrown offwhen Lady Jane was presented to Queen Charlotte. 

When these ladies first came to their house at Brighton, it was to themalone that Mr. Crawley paid his personal visits, contenting himself byleaving a card at his aunt's house, and making a modest inquiry of Mr. Bowls or his assistant footman, with respect to the health of theinvalid. When he met Miss Briggs coming home from the library with acargo of novels under her arm, Mr. Crawley blushed in a manner quiteunusual to him, as he stepped forward and shook Miss Crawley'scompanion by the hand. He introduced Miss Briggs to the lady with whomhe happened to be walking, the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, saying, "LadyJane, permit me to introduce to you my aunt's kindest friend and mostaffectionate companion, Miss Briggs, whom you know under another title, as authoress of the delightful 'Lyrics of the Heart, ' of which you areso fond. " Lady Jane blushed too as she held out a kind little hand toMiss Briggs, and said something very civil and incoherent about mamma, and proposing to call on Miss Crawley, and being glad to be made knownto the friends and relatives of Mr. Crawley; and with soft dove-likeeyes saluted Miss Briggs as they separated, while Pitt Crawley treatedher to a profound courtly bow, such as he had used to H. H. The Duchessof Pumpernickel, when he was attache at that court. 

The artful diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian Binkie! Itwas he who had given Lady Jane that copy of poor Briggs's early poems, which he remembered to have seen at Queen's Crawley, with a dedicationfrom the poetess to his father's late wife; and he brought the volumewith him to Brighton, reading it in the Southampton coach and markingit with his own pencil, before he presented it to the gentle Lady Jane. 

It was he, too, who laid before Lady Southdown the great advantageswhich might occur from an intimacy between her family and MissCrawley--advantages both worldly and spiritual, he said: for MissCrawley was now quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance ofhis brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that reprobateyoung man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of Mrs. Bute Crawley hadcaused the old lady to revolt against the exorbitant pretensions ofthat part of the family; and though he himself had held off all hislife from cultivating Miss Crawley's friendship, with perhaps animproper pride, he thought now that every becoming means should betaken, both to save her soul from perdition, and to secure her fortuneto himself as the head of the house of Crawley. 

The strong-minded Lady Southdown quite agreed in both proposals of herson-in-law, and was for converting Miss Crawley off-hand. At her ownhome, both at Southdown and at Trottermore Castle, this tall and awfulmissionary of the truth rode about the country in her barouche withoutriders, launched packets of tracts among the cottagers and tenants, and would order Gaffer Jones to be converted, as she would order GoodyHicks to take a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefitof clergy. My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic andsimple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of approving of everythingwhich his Matilda did and thought. So that whatever changes her ownbelief might undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigiousvariety of opinion, taken from all sorts of doctors among theDissenters) she had not the least scruple in ordering all her tenantsand inferiors to follow and believe after her. Thus whether shereceived the Reverend Saunders McNitre, the Scotch divine; or theReverend Luke Waters, the mild Wesleyan; or the Reverend Giles Jowls, the illuminated Cobbler, who dubbed himself Reverend as Napoleoncrowned himself Emperor--the household, children, tenantry of my LadySouthdown were expected to go down on their knees with her Ladyship, and say Amen to the prayers of either Doctor. During these exercisesold Southdown, on account of his invalid condition, was allowed to sitin his own room, and have negus and the paper read to him. Lady Janewas the old Earl's favourite daughter, and tended him and loved himsincerely: as for Lady Emily, the authoress of the "Washerwoman ofFinchley Common, " her denunciations of future punishment (at thisperiod, for her opinions modified afterwards) were so awful that theyused to frighten the timid old gentleman her father, and the physiciansdeclared his fits always occurred after one of her Ladyship's sermons. 

"I will certainly call, " said Lady Southdown then, in reply to theexhortation of her daughter's pretendu, Mr. Pitt Crawley--"Who is MissCrawley's medical man?"

Mr. Crawley mentioned the name of Mr. Creamer. 

"A most dangerous and ignorant practitioner, my dear Pitt. I haveprovidentially been the means of removing him from several houses:though in one or two instances I did not arrive in time. I could notsave poor dear General Glanders, who was dying under the hands of thatignorant man--dying. He rallied a little under the Podgers' pillswhich I administered to him; but alas! it was too late. His death wasdelightful, however; and his change was only for the better; Creamer, my dear Pitt, must leave your aunt. "

Pitt expressed his perfect acquiescence. He, too, had been carriedalong by the energy of his noble kinswoman, and future mother-in-law. He had been made to accept Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters, Giles Jowls, Podgers' Pills, Rodgers' Pills, Pokey's Elixir, every one of herLadyship's remedies spiritual or temporal. He never left her housewithout carrying respectfully away with him piles of her quack theologyand medicine. O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in VanityFair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolentdespots? It is in vain you say to them, "Dear Madam, I took Podgers'specific at your orders last year, and believe in it. Why, why am I torecant and accept the Rodgers' articles now?" There is no help for it;the faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument, burstsinto tears, and the refusant finds himself, at the end of the contest, taking down the bolus, and saying, "Well, well, Rodgers' be it. "

"And as for her spiritual state, " continued the Lady, "that of coursemust be looked to immediately: with Creamer about her, she may go offany day: and in what a condition, my dear Pitt, in what a dreadfulcondition! I will send the Reverend Mr. Irons to her instantly. Jane, write a line to the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, in the third person, and say that I desire the pleasure of his company this evening at teaat half-past six. He is an awakening man; he ought to see Miss Crawleybefore she rests this night. And Emily, my love, get ready a packet ofbooks for Miss Crawley. Put up 'A Voice from the Flames, ' 'ATrumpet-warning to Jericho, ' and the 'Fleshpots Broken; or, theConverted Cannibal. '"

"And the 'Washerwoman of Finchley Common, ' Mamma, " said Lady Emily. "Itis as well to begin soothingly at first. "

"Stop, my dear ladies, " said Pitt, the diplomatist. "With everydeference to the opinion of my beloved and respected Lady Southdown, Ithink it would be quite unadvisable to commence so early upon serioustopics with Miss Crawley. Remember her delicate condition, and howlittle, how very little accustomed she has hitherto been toconsiderations connected with her immortal welfare. "

"Can we then begin too early, Pitt?" said Lady Emily, rising with sixlittle books already in her hand. 

"If you begin abruptly, you will frighten her altogether. I know myaunt's worldly nature so well as to be sure that any abrupt attempt atconversion will be the very worst means that can be employed for thewelfare of that unfortunate lady. You will only frighten and annoyher. She will very likely fling the books away, and refuse allacquaintance with the givers. "

"You are as worldly as Miss Crawley, Pitt, " said Lady Emily, tossingout of the room, her books in her hand. 

"And I need not tell you, my dear Lady Southdown, " Pitt continued, in alow voice, and without heeding the interruption, "how fatal a littlewant of gentleness and caution may be to any hopes which we mayentertain with regard to the worldly possessions of my aunt. Remembershe has seventy thousand pounds; think of her age, and her highlynervous and delicate condition; I know that she has destroyed the willwhich was made in my brother's (Colonel Crawley's) favour: it is bysoothing that wounded spirit that we must lead it into the right path, and not by frightening it; and so I think you will agree with methat--that--'

"Of course, of course, " Lady Southdown remarked. "Jane, my love, youneed not send that note to Mr. Irons. If her health is such thatdiscussions fatigue her, we will wait her amendment. I will call uponMiss Crawley tomorrow. "

"And if I might suggest, my sweet lady, " Pitt said in a bland tone, "itwould be as well not to take our precious Emily, who is tooenthusiastic; but rather that you should be accompanied by our sweetand dear Lady Jane. "

"Most certainly, Emily would ruin everything, " Lady Southdown said; andthis time agreed to forego her usual practice, which was, as we havesaid, before she bore down personally upon any individual whom sheproposed to subjugate, to fire in a quantity of tracts upon the menacedparty (as a charge of the French was always preceded by a furiouscannonade). Lady Southdown, we say, for the sake of the invalid'shealth, or for the sake of her soul's ultimate welfare, or for the sakeof her money, agreed to temporise. 

The next day, the great Southdown female family carriage, with theEarl's coronet and the lozenge (upon which the three lambs trottantargent upon the field vert of the Southdowns, were quartered with sableon a bend or, three snuff-mulls gules, the cognizance of the house ofBinkie), drove up in state to Miss Crawley's door, and the tall seriousfootman handed in to Mr. Bowls her Ladyship's cards for Miss Crawley, and one likewise for Miss Briggs. By way of compromise, Lady Emilysent in a packet in the evening for the latter lady, containing copiesof the "Washerwoman, " and other mild and favourite tracts for Miss B. 'sown perusal; and a few for the servants' hall, viz. : "Crumbs from thePantry, " "The Frying Pan and the Fire, " and "The Livery of Sin, " of amuch stronger kind. 

CHAPTER XXXIV

James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out

The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's kind reception ofher, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a good wordfor the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family had beenpresented to Miss Crawley. A Countess's card left personally too forher, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendlesscompanion. "What could Lady Southdown mean by leaving a card upon you, I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said the republican Miss Crawley; upon whichthe companion meekly said "that she hoped there could be no harm in alady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman, " and she put awaythis card in her work-box amongst her most cherished personaltreasures. Furthermore, Miss Briggs explained how she had met Mr. Crawley walking with his cousin and long affianced bride the daybefore: and she told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, andwhat a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles ofwhich, from the bonnet down to the boots, she described and estimatedwith female accuracy. 

Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without interrupting her toomuch. As she got well, she was pining for society. Mr. Creamer, hermedical man, would not hear of her returning to her old haunts anddissipation in London. The old spinster was too glad to find anycompanionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards acknowledged thevery next day, but Pitt Crawley was graciously invited to come and seehis aunt. He came, bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter. The dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss Crawley's soul;but talked with much discretion about the weather: about the war andthe downfall of the monster Bonaparte: and above all, about doctors, quacks, and the particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she thenpatronised. 

During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one whichshowed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by earlyneglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession. When theCountess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart, as thefashion was in those days, and showed that he was a monster stainedwith every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted, &c. , Pitt Crawley suddenly took up thecudgels in favour of the man of Destiny. He described the First Consulas he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley, had the gratification of making the acquaintance of the great and goodMr. Fox, a statesman whom, however much he might differ with him, itwas impossible not to admire fervently--a statesman who had always hadthe highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon. And he spoke in terms ofthe strongest indignation of the faithless conduct of the alliestowards this dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously upto their mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, whilea bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead. 

This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved Pitt Crawley in LadySouthdown's opinion, whilst his admiration for Fox and Napoleon raisedhim immeasurably in Miss Crawley's eyes. Her friendship with thatdefunct British statesman was mentioned when we first introduced her inthis history. A true Whig, Miss Crawley had been in opposition allthrough the war, and though, to be sure, the downfall of the Emperordid not very much agitate the old lady, or his ill-treatment tend toshorten her life or natural rest, yet Pitt spoke to her heart when helauded both her idols; and by that single speech made immense progressin her favour. 

"And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said to the young lady, for whom she had taken a liking at first sight, as she always did forpretty and modest young people; though it must be owned her affectionscooled as rapidly as they rose. 

Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did not understandpolitics, which she left to wiser heads than hers; but though Mammawas, no doubt, correct, Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully. " And whenthe ladies were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss Crawleyhoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send her Lady Janesometimes, if she could be spared to come down and console a poor sicklonely old woman. " This promise was graciously accorded, and theyseparated upon great terms of amity. 

"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt, " said the old lady. "She isstupid and pompous, like all your mother's family, whom I never couldendure. But bring that nice good-natured little Jane as often as everyou please. " Pitt promised that he would do so. He did not tell theCountess of Southdown what opinion his aunt had formed of her Ladyship, who, on the contrary, thought that she had made a most delightful andmajestic impression on Miss Crawley. 

And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry inher heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of theReverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered roundthe footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane became apretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in her drives, and solaced many of her evenings. She was so naturally good and soft, that even Firkin was not jealous of her; and the gentle Briggs thoughther friend was less cruel to her when kind Lady Jane was by. Towardsher Ladyship Miss Crawley's manners were charming. The old spinstertold her a thousand anecdotes about her youth, talking to her in a verydifferent strain from that in which she had been accustomed to conversewith the godless little Rebecca; for there was that in Lady Jane'sinnocence which rendered light talking impertinence before her, andMiss Crawley was too much of a gentlewoman to offend such purity. Theyoung lady herself had never received kindness except from this oldspinster, and her brother and father: and she repaid Miss Crawley'sengoument by artless sweetness and friendship. 

In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the gayestamong the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear woundedAmelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in MissCrawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, herlittle simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the seawas roaring on the beach. The old spinster used to wake up when theseditties ceased, and ask for more. As for Briggs, and the quantity oftears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended to knit, andlooked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the windows, and thelamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--who, I say canmeasure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?

Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws ora Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation whichsuits romantic and unromantic men after dinner. He sipped Madeira:built castles in the air: thought himself a fine fellow: felt himselfmuch more in love with Jane than he had been any time these sevenyears, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightestimpatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal. When the time forcoffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner, and summonSquire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet. 

"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me, " MissCrawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance withthe candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusingBriggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if Ihad my game. "

At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down tothe ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted theroom, and the door was quite shut, she said:

"Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to--to play a little withpoor dear papa. "

"Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good littlesoul, " cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this picturesque andfriendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and the young one, whenhe came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush allthe evening, that poor Lady Jane!

It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped theattention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley. Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friendsin the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a greatdeal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton. Pitt was there more and more. He did not come for months together tothe Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completelyto rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt'ssuccess rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regrettedmore (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in soinsulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious toBowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in MissCrawley's household to give her information of what took place there. "It was all Bute's collar-bone, " she persisted in saying; "if that hadnot broke, I never would have left her. I am a martyr to duty and toyour odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute. "

"Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her, Barbara, " thedivine interposed. "You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil of atemper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara. "

"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your money. "

"I know I would, my dear, " said the Rector, good-naturedly. "You ARE aclever woman, but you manage too well, you know": and the pious manconsoled himself with a big glass of port. 

"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" hecontinued. "The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose. Iremember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to floghim round the stables as if he was a whipping-top: and Pitt would gohowling home to his ma--ha, ha! Why, either of my boys would whop himwith one hand. Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawleystill--the spooney. 

"I say, Barbara, " his reverence continued, after a pause. 

"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the table. 

"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do anythingwith the old lady. He's very near getting his degree, you know. He'sonly been plucked twice--so was I--but he's had the advantages ofOxford and a university education. He knows some of the best chapsthere. He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat. He's a handsome feller. D---- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey, and tell him tothrash Pitt if he says anything. Ha, ha, ha!

"Jim might go down and see her, certainly, " the housewife said; addingwith a sigh, "If we could but get one of the girls into the house; butshe could never endure them, because they are not pretty!" Thoseunfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from theneighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hardfingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their motherspoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or atgeography, or at history, the whole day long. But what avail all theseaccomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could think of nobody but theCurate to take one of them off her hands; and Jim coming in from thestable at this minute, through the parlour window, with a short pipestuck in his oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about oddson the St. Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his wifeended. 

Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from the sending of herson James as an ambassador, and saw him depart in rather a despairingmood. Nor did the young fellow himself, when told what his mission wasto be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but he was consoled bythe thought that possibly the old lady would give him some handsomeremembrance of her, which would pay a few of his most pressing bills atthe commencement of the ensuing Oxford term, and so took his place bythe coach from Southampton, and was safely landed at Brighton on thesame evening? with his portmanteau, his favourite bull-dog Towzer, andan immense basket of farm and garden produce, from the dear Rectoryfolks to the dear Miss Crawley. Considering it was too late to disturbthe invalid lady on the first night of his arrival, he put up at aninn, and did not wait upon Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noonof next day. 

James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad, atthat uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthlytreble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly bloomsout with appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as acure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sister'sscissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerablesensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles protrudea long way from garments which have grown too tight for them; whentheir presence after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who arewhispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and inexpressiblyodious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are restrained fromfreedom of intercourse and delightful interchange of wit by thepresence of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion of the secondglass, papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening holdsup, " and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at not being yet aman, quits the incomplete banquet. James, then a hobbadehoy, was nowbecome a young man, having had the benefits of a university education, and acquired the inestimable polish which is gained by living in a fastset at a small college, and contracting debts, and being rusticated, and being plucked. 

He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to present himself to hisaunt at Brighton, and good looks were always a title to the fickle oldlady's favour. Nor did his blushes and awkwardness take away from it:she was pleased with these healthy tokens of the young gentleman'singenuousness. 

He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see a man of hiscollege, and--and to pay my respects to you, Ma'am, and my father's andmother's, who hope you are well. "

Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad was announced, andlooked very blank when his name was mentioned. The old lady had plentyof humour, and enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity. She askedafter all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and said shewas thinking of paying them a visit. She praised the lad to his face, and said he was well-grown and very much improved, and that it was apity his sisters had not some of his good looks; and finding, oninquiry, that he had taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hearof his stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James Crawley'sthings instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls, " she added, with greatgraciousness, "you will have the goodness to pay Mr. James's bill. "

She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused that diplomatistalmost to choke with envy. Much as he had ingratiated himself with hisaunt, she had never yet invited him to stay under her roof, and herewas a young whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome there. 

"I beg your pardon, sir, " says Bowls, advancing with a profound bow;"what 'otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the luggage from?"

"O, dam, " said young James, starting up, as if in some alarm, "I'll go. "

"What!" said Miss Crawley. 

"The Tom Cribb's Arms, " said James, blushing deeply. 

Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title. Mr. Bowls gave oneabrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant of the family, but choked therest of the volley; the diplomatist only smiled. 

"I--I didn't know any better, " said James, looking down. "I've neverbeen here before; it was the coachman told me. " The young story-teller!The fact is, that on the Southampton coach, the day previous, James Crawley had met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton tomake a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted by the Pet'sconversation, had passed the evening in company with that scientificman and his friends, at the inn in question. 

"I--I'd best go and settle the score, " James continued. "Couldn't thinkof asking you, Ma'am, " he added, generously. 

This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more. 

"Go and settle the bill, Bowls, " she said, with a wave of her hand, "and bring it to me. "

Poor lady, she did not know what she had done! "There--there's alittle dawg, " said James, looking frightfully guilty. "I'd best go forhim. He bites footmen's calves. "

All the party cried out with laughing at this description; even Briggsand Lady Jane, who was sitting mute during the interview between MissCrawley and her nephew: and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room. 

Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss Crawley persisted inbeing gracious to the young Oxonian. There were no limits to herkindness or her compliments when they once began. She told Pitt hemight come to dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her inher drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the cliff, on the backseat of the barouche. During all this excursion, she condescended tosay civil things to him: she quoted Italian and French poetry to thepoor bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar, and wasperfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and be a Senior Wrangler. 

"Haw, haw, " laughed James, encouraged by these compliments; "SeniorWrangler, indeed; that's at the other shop. "

"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady. 

"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford, " said the scholar, with aknowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but thatsuddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-uppony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl buttons, hisfriends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber, with three othergentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted poor James there inthe carriage as he sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth'sspirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter duringthe rest of the drive. 

On his return he found his room prepared, and his portmanteau ready, and might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the latterconducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, andcompassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head. Hewas deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in ahouse full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talkingpoetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modestboy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not even Briggs--whenshe began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and he couldout-slang the boldest bargeman. 

At dinner, James appeared choking in a white neckcloth, and had thehonour of handing my Lady Jane downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawleyfollowed afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus ofbundles, and shawls, and cushions. Half of Briggs's time at dinner wasspent in superintending the invalid's comfort, and in cutting upchicken for her fat spaniel. James did not talk much, but he made apoint of asking all the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr. Crawley's challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle ofchampagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in his honour. Theladies having withdrawn, and the two cousins being left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, he came very communicative and friendly. He askedafter James's career at college--what his prospects in life were--hopedheartily he would get on; and, in a word, was frank and amiable. James's tongue unloosed with the port, and he told his cousin his life, his prospects, his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rowswith the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him, andflying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity. 

"The chief pleasure which my aunt has, " said Mr. Crawley, filling hisglass, "is that people should do as they like in her house. This isLiberty Hall, James, and you can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindnessthan to do as you please, and ask for what you will. I know you haveall sneered at me in the country for being a Tory. Miss Crawley isliberal enough to suit any fancy. She is a Republican in principle, and despises everything like rank or title. "

"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?" said James. 

"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's fault that she iswell born, " Pitt replied, with a courtly air. "She cannot help being alady. Besides, I am a Tory, you know. "

"Oh, as for that, " said Jim, "there's nothing like old blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your radicals. I know what it isto be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-race; look at thefellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins?the good-blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old boy, whilst Ibuzz this bottle-here. What was I asaying?"

"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats, " Pitt remarked mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to "buzz. "

"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want tosee a dawg as CAN kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to TomCorduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrieras--Pooh! gammon, " cried James, bursting out laughing at hisown absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg or rat; it's all nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know the difference between a dog and a duck. "

"No; by the way, " Pitt continued with increased blandness, "it wasabout blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which peoplederive from patrician birth. Here's the fresh bottle. "

"Blood's the word, " said James, gulping the ruby fluid down. "Nothinglike blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND men. Why, only last term, justbefore I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I had the measles, ha, ha--there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood, LordCinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at Blenheim, when theBanbury bargeman offered to fight either of us for a bowl of punch. Icouldn't. My arm was in a sling; couldn't even take the drag down--abrute of a mare of mine had fell with me only two days before, out withthe Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke. Well, sir, I couldn'tfinish him, but Bob had his coat off at once--he stood up to theBanbury man for three minutes, and polished him off in four roundseasy. Gad, how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, allblood. "

"You don't drink, James, " the ex-attache continued. "In my time atOxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you youngfellows seem to do. "

"Come, come, " said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking athis cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying iton on me. You want to trot me out, but it's no go. In vino veritas, old boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my aunt would senddown some of this to the governor; it's a precious good tap. "

"You had better ask her, " Machiavel continued, "or make the best ofyour time now. What says the bard? 'Nunc vino pellite curas, Crasingens iterabimus aequor, '" and the Bacchanalian, quoting the abovewith a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of winewith an immense flourish of his glass. 

At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after dinner, the young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but ashis father grew very sulky if he made further inroads on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from trying for more, and subsidedeither into the currant wine, or to some private gin-and-water in thestables, which he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited, but the quality wasinferior: but when quantity and quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly neededany of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the second bottlesupplied by Mr. Bowls. 

When the time for coffee came, however, and for a return to the ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young gentleman's agreeable frankness lefthim, and he relapsed into his usual surly timidity; contenting himselfby saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by upsetting onecup of coffee during the evening. 

If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presencethrew a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for MissCrawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work, felt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy underthat maudlin look. 

"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad, " said Miss Crawley toMr. Pitt. 

"He is more communicative in men's society than with ladies, " Machiaveldryly replied: perhaps rather disappointed that the port wine had notmade Jim speak more. 

He had spent the early part of the next morning in writing home to hismother a most flourishing account of his reception by Miss Crawley. But ah! he little knew what evils the day was bringing for him, and howshort his reign of favour was destined to be. A circumstance which Jimhad forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance--had taken place at theCribb's Arms on the night before he had come to his aunt's house. Itwas no other than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition, and when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the course of thenight treated the Tutbury champion and the Rottingdean man, and theirfriends, twice or thrice to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so thatno less than eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glasswere charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill. It was not the amount ofeightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poorJames's character, when his aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at hismistress's request to pay the young gentleman's bill. The landlord, fearing lest the account should be refused altogether, swore solemnlythat the young gent had consumed personally every farthing's worth ofthe liquor: and Bowls paid the bill finally, and showed it on hisreturn home to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightfulprodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs asaccountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention the circumstanceto her principal, Miss Crawley. 

Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could havepardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drankclaret. But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in anignoble pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be pardonedreadily. Everything went against the lad: he came home perfumed fromthe stables, whither he had been to pay his dog Towzer a visit--andwhence he was going to take his friend out for an airing, when he metMiss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which Towzer would haveeaten up had not the Blenheim fled squealing to the protection of MissBriggs, while the atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing atthe horrible persecution. 

This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise forsaken him. Hewas lively and facetious at dinner. During the repast he levelled oneor two jokes against Pitt Crawley: he drank as much wine as upon theprevious day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room, beganto entertain the ladies there with some choice Oxford stories. Hedescribed the different pugilistic qualities of Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Petagainst the Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose: andcrowned the pleasantry by proposing to back himself against his cousinPitt Crawley, either with or without the gloves. "And that's a fairoffer, my buck, " he said, with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on theshoulder, "and my father told me to make it too, and he'll go halves inthe bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the engaging youth nodded knowingly atpoor Miss Briggs, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder at PittCrawley in a jocular and exulting manner. 

Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not unhappy in themain. Poor Jim had his laugh out: and staggered across the room withhis aunt's candle, when the old lady moved to retire, and offered tosalute her with the blandest tipsy smile: and he took his own leaveand went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied with himself, andwith a pleased notion that his aunt's money would be left to him inpreference to his father and all the rest of the family. 

Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he could not makematters worse; and yet this unlucky boy did. The moon was shining verypleasantly out on the sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by theromantic appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he wouldfurther enjoy them while smoking. Nobody would smell the tobacco, hethought, if he cunningly opened the window and kept his head and pipein the fresh air. This he did: but being in an excited state, poor Jimhad forgotten that his door was open all this time, so that the breezeblowing inwards and a fine thorough draught being established, theclouds of tobacco were carried downstairs, and arrived with quiteundiminished fragrance to Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs. 

The pipe of tobacco finished the business: and the Bute-Crawleys neverknew how many thousand pounds it cost them. Firkin rushed downstairsto Bowls who was reading out the "Fire and the Frying Pan" to hisaide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice. The dreadful secret was toldto him by Firkin with so frightened a look, that for the first momentMr. Bowls and his young man thought that robbers were in the house, thelegs of whom had probably been discovered by the woman under MissCrawley's bed. When made aware of the fact, however--to rush upstairsat three steps at a time to enter the unconscious James's apartment, calling out, "Mr. James, " in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry, "For Gawd's sake, sir, stop that 'ere pipe, " was the work of a minutewith Mr. Bowls. "O, Mr. James, what 'AVE you done!" he said in a voiceof the deepest pathos, as he threw the implement out of the window. "What 'ave you done, sir! Missis can't abide 'em. "

"Missis needn't smoke, " said James with a frantic misplaced laugh, andthought the whole matter an excellent joke. But his feelings were verydifferent in the morning, when Mr. Bowls's young man, who operated uponMr. James's boots, and brought him his hot water to shave that beardwhich he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note in to Mr. James inbed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs. 

"Dear sir, " it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly disturbednight, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has beenpolluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that she istoo unwell to see you before you go--and above all that she everinduced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is sure you will bemuch more comfortable during the rest of your stay at Brighton. "

And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for his aunt's favourended. He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he menaced todo. He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves. 

Where meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this racefor money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come together afterWaterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in greatsplendour and gaiety. Rebecca was a good economist, and the price poorJos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in itself sufficient to keeptheir little establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there wasno occasion to turn into money "my pistols, the same which I shotCaptain Marker, " or the gold dressing-case, or the cloak lined withsable. Becky had it made into a pelisse for herself, in which she rodein the Bois de Boulogne to the admiration of all: and you should haveseen the scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoinedafter the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, andlet out of her dress all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes, cheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previousto her meditated flight from Brussels! Tufto was charmed, and Rawdonroared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was better than anyplay he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, andwhich she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to apitch of quite insane enthusiasm. He believed in his wife as much asthe French soldiers in Napoleon. 

Her success in Paris was remarkable. All the French ladies voted hercharming. She spoke their language admirably. She adopted at oncetheir grace, their liveliness, their manner. Her husband was stupidcertainly--all English are stupid--and, besides, a dull husband atParis is always a point in a lady's favour. He was the heir of therich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been open to so manyof the French noblesse during the emigration. They received thecolonel's wife in their own hotels--"Why, " wrote a great lady to MissCrawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess's ownprice, and given her many a dinner during the pinching times after theRevolution--"Why does not our dear Miss come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends in Paris? All the world raffoles of thecharming Mistress and her espiegle beauty. Yes, we see in her thegrace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley! The Kingtook notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries, and we are all jealousof the attention which Monsieur pays her. If you could have seen thespite of a certain stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toqueand feathers may be seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) whenMadame, the Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion ofkings, desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your deardaughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name of France, for allyour benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile! She is ofall the societies, of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of the dances, no; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature lookssurrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to be a mother! Tohear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother, would bring tearsto the eyes of ogres. How she loves you! how we all love ouradmirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!"

It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did notby any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable, herrespectable, relative. On the contrary, the fury of the old spinsterwas beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and howaudaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name, to get an entreeinto Parisian society. Too much shaken in mind and body to compose aletter in the French language in reply to that of her correspondent, she dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue, repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning the public tobeware of her as a most artful and dangerous person. But as Madame theDuchess of X--had only been twenty years in England, she did notunderstand a single word of the language, and contented herself byinforming Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next meeting, that she hadreceived a charming letter from that chere Mees, and that it was fullof benevolent things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to havehopes that the spinster would relent. 

Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen: andhad a little European congress on her reception-night. Prussians andCossacks, Spanish and English--all the world was at Paris during thisfamous winter: to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's humblesaloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy. Famous warriorsrode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her modest little box atthe Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns inParis as yet: there were parties every day at Very's or Beauvilliers';play was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto perhaps was sulky. Mrs. Tufto had come over to Paris at her own invitation, and besides thiscontretemps, there were a score of generals now round Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a dozen bouquets when she went to theplay. Lady Bareacres and the chiefs of the English society, stupid andirreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the success of thelittle upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled intheir chaste breasts. But she had all the men on her side. She foughtthe women with indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal inany tongue but their own. 

So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passedaway with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite lifeas if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--andwho from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a place of honourin Vanity Fair. In the early spring of 1816, Galignani's Journalcontained the following announcement in an interesting corner of thepaper: "On the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley, of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir. "

This event was copied into the London papers, out of which Miss Briggsread the statement to Miss Crawley, at breakfast, at Brighton. Theintelligence, expected as it might have been, caused a crisis in theaffairs of the Crawley family. The spinster's rage rose to its height, and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested an immediate celebration of themarriage which had been so long pending between the two families. Andshe announced that it was her intention to allow the young couple athousand a year during her lifetime, at the expiration of which thebulk of her property would be settled upon her nephew and her dearniece, Lady Jane Crawley. Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--LordSouthdown gave away his sister--she was married by a Bishop, and not bythe Rev. Bartholomew Irons--to the disappointment of the irregularprelate. 

When they were married, Pitt would have liked to take a hymeneal tourwith his bride, as became people of their condition. But the affectionof the old lady towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairlyowned she could not part with her favourite. Pitt and his wife cametherefore and lived with Miss Crawley: and (greatly to the annoyance ofpoor Pitt, who conceived himself a most injured character--beingsubject to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of hismother-in-law on the other) Lady Southdown, from her neighbouringhouse, reigned over the whole family--Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all. She pitilessly dosed them with hertracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers, and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance of authority. Thepoor soul grew so timid that she actually left off bullying Briggs anymore, and clung to her niece, more fond and terrified every day. Peaceto thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--We shall seethee no more. Let us hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and ledher with gentle hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair. 

CHAPTER XXXV

Widow and Mother

The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reachedEngland at the same time. The Gazette first published the result ofthe two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilledwith triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after theannouncement of the victories came the list of the wounded and theslain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened andread! Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the threekingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders, and thefeelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay, when the lists of the regimental losses were gone through, and itbecame known whether the dear friend and relative had escaped orfallen. Anybody who will take the trouble of looking back to a file ofthe newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel at second-hand thisbreathless pause of expectation. The lists of casualties are carriedon from day to day: you stop in the midst as in a story which is to becontinued in our next. Think what the feelings must have been as thosepapers followed each other fresh from the press; and if such aninterest could be felt in our country, and about a battle where buttwenty thousand of our people were engaged, think of the condition ofEurope for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not bythousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemywounded horribly some other innocent heart far away. 

The news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave adreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulgedunrestrained in their grief. The gloom-stricken old father was stillmore borne down by his fate and sorrow. He strove to think that ajudgment was on the boy for his disobedience. He dared not own thatthe severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its fulfilmenthad come too soon upon his curses. Sometimes a shuddering terrorstruck him, as if he had been the author of the doom which he hadcalled down on his son. There was a chance before of reconciliation. The boy's wife might have died; or he might have come back and said, Father I have sinned. But there was no hope now. He stood on theother side of the gulf impassable, haunting his parent with sad eyes. He remembered them once before so in a fever, when every one thoughtthe lad was dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with adreadful gloom. Good God! how the father clung to the doctor then, andwith what a sickening anxiety he followed him: what a weight of griefwas off his mind when, after the crisis of the fever, the ladrecovered, and looked at his father once more with eyes that recognisedhim. But now there was no help or cure, or chance of reconcilement:above all, there were no humble words to soothe vanity outraged andfurious, or bring to its natural flow the poisoned, angry blood. Andit is hard to say which pang it was that tore the proud father's heartmost keenly--that his son should have gone out of the reach of hisforgiveness, or that the apology which his own pride expected shouldhave escaped him. 

Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the stem old manwould have no confidant. He never mentioned his son's name to hisdaughters; but ordered the elder to place all the females of theestablishment in mourning; and desired that the male servants should besimilarly attired in deep black. All parties and entertainments, ofcourse, were to be put off. No communications were made to his futureson-in-law, whose marriage-day had been fixed: but there was enough inMr. Osborne's appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from making anyinquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony. He and theladies whispered about it under their voices in the drawing-roomsometimes, whither the father never came. He remained constantly inhis own study; the whole front part of the house being closed untilsome time after the completion of the general mourning. 

About three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr. Osborne's acquaintance, Sir William Dobbin, called at Mr. Osborne's house in Russell Square, with a very pale and agitated face, and insisted upon seeing thatgentleman. Ushered into his room, and after a few words, which neitherthe speaker nor the host understood, the former produced from aninclosure a letter sealed with a large red seal. "My son, MajorDobbin, " the Alderman said, with some hesitation, "despatched me aletter by an officer of the --th, who arrived in town to-day. My son'sletter contains one for you, Osborne. " The Alderman placed the letteron the table, and Osborne stared at him for a moment or two in silence. His looks frightened the ambassador, who after looking guiltily for alittle time at the grief-stricken man, hurried away without anotherword. 

The letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting. It was that onewhich he had written before daybreak on the 16th of June, and justbefore he took leave of Amelia. The great red seal was emblazoned withthe sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from the Peerage, with"Pax in bello" for a motto; that of the ducal house with which the vainold man tried to fancy himself connected. The hand that signed it wouldnever hold pen or sword more. The very seal that sealed it had beenrobbed from George's dead body as it lay on the field of battle. Thefather knew nothing of this, but sat and looked at the letter interrified vacancy. He almost fell when he went to open it. 

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you!What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests ofdead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love!What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have gotor written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which wekeep and shun. Osborne trembled long before the letter from his deadson. 

The poor boy's letter did not say much. He had been too proud toacknowledge the tenderness which his heart felt. He only said, that onthe eve of a great battle, he wished to bid his father farewell, andsolemnly to implore his good offices for the wife--it might be for thechild--whom he left behind him. He owned with contrition that hisirregularities and his extravagance had already wasted a large part ofhis mother's little fortune. He thanked his father for his formergenerous conduct; and he promised him that if he fell on the field orsurvived it, he would act in a manner worthy of the name of GeorgeOsborne. 

His English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had prevented him fromsaying more. His father could not see the kiss George had placed onthe superscription of his letter. Mr. Osborne dropped it with thebitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge. His son wasstill beloved and unforgiven. 

About two months afterwards, however, as the young ladies of the familywent to church with their father, they remarked how he took a differentseat from that which he usually occupied when he chose to attend divineworship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked up at the wallover their heads. This caused the young women likewise to gaze in thedirection towards which their father's gloomy eyes pointed: and theysaw an elaborate monument upon the wall, where Britannia wasrepresented weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a couchant lionindicated that the piece of sculpture had been erected in honour of adeceased warrior. The sculptors of those days had stocks of suchfunereal emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St. Paul's, which are covered with hundreds of these braggart heathenallegories. There was a constant demand for them during the firstfifteen years of the present century. 

Under the memorial in question were emblazoned the well-known andpompous Osborne arms; and the inscription said, that the monument was"Sacred to the memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq. , late a Captainin his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the 18th of June, 1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his king and country in theglorious victory of Waterloo. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. "

The sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the sisters so much, that Miss Maria was compelled to leave the church. The congregationmade way respectfully for those sobbing girls clothed in deep black, and pitied the stern old father seated opposite the memorial of thedead soldier. "Will he forgive Mrs. George?" the girls said tothemselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over. Muchconversation passed too among the acquaintances of the Osborne family, who knew of the rupture between the son and father caused by theformer's marriage, as to the chance of a reconciliation with the youngwidow. There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell Squareand in the City. 

If the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible recognition ofAmelia as a daughter of the family, it was increased presently, andtowards the end of the autumn, by their father's announcement that hewas going abroad. He did not say whither, but they knew at once thathis steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were aware that George'swidow was still in Brussels. They had pretty accurate news indeed ofpoor Amelia from Lady Dobbin and her daughters. Our honest Captain hadbeen promoted in consequence of the death of the second Major of theregiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd, who had distinguishedhimself greatly here as upon all occasions where he had a chance toshow his coolness and valour, was a Colonel and Companion of the Bath. 

Very many of the brave --th, who had suffered severely upon both daysof action, were still at Brussels in the autumn, recovering of theirwounds. The city was a vast military hospital for months after thegreat battles; and as men and officers began to rally from their hurts, the gardens and places of public resort swarmed with maimed warriors, old and young, who, just rescued out of death, fell to gambling, andgaiety, and love-making, as people of Vanity Fair will do. Mr. Osbornefound out some of the --th easily. He knew their uniform quite well, and had been used to follow all the promotions and exchanges in theregiment, and loved to talk about it and its officers as if he had beenone of the number. On the day after his arrival at Brussels, and as heissued from his hotel, which faced the park, he saw a soldier in thewell-known facings, reposing on a stone bench in the garden, and wentand sate down trembling by the wounded convalescent man. 

"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?" he said, and added, after apause, "he was my son, sir. "

The man was not of the Captain's company, but he lifted up hisunwounded arm and touched-his cap sadly and respectfully to the haggardbroken-spirited gentleman who questioned him. "The whole army didn'tcontain a finer or a better officer, " the soldier said. "The Sergeantof the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it now), was in town, though, and was just well of a shot in the shoulder. His honour mightsee him if he liked, who could tell him anything he wanted to knowabout--about the --th's actions. But his honour had seen Major Dobbin, no doubt, the brave Captain's great friend; and Mrs. Osborne, who washere too, and had been very bad, he heard everybody say. They say shewas out of her mind like for six weeks or more. But your honour knowsall about that--and asking your pardon"--the man added. 

Osborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told him he shouldhave another if he would bring the Sergeant to the Hotel du Parc; apromise which very soon brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne'spresence. And the first soldier went away; and after telling a comradeor two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived, and what a free-handedgenerous gentleman he was, they went and made good cheer with drink andfeasting, as long as the guineas lasted which had come from the proudpurse of the mourning old father. 

In the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent, Osborne madethe journey of Waterloo and Quatre Bras, a journey which thousands ofhis countrymen were then taking. He took the Sergeant with him in hiscarriage, and went through both fields under his guidance. He saw thepoint of the road where the regiment marched into action on the 16th, and the slope down which they drove the French cavalry who werepressing on the retreating Belgians. There was the spot where thenoble Captain cut down the French officer who was grappling with theyoung Ensign for the colours, the Colour-Sergeants having been shotdown. Along this road they retreated on the next day, and here was thebank at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the night ofthe seventeenth. Further on was the position which they took and heldduring the day, forming time after time to receive the charge of theenemy's horsemen and lying down under the shelter of the bank from thefurious French cannonade. And it was at this declivity when at eveningthe whole English line received the order to advance, as the enemy fellback after his last charge, that the Captain, hurraying and rushingdown the hill waving his sword, received a shot and fell dead. "It wasMajor Dobbin who took back the Captain's body to Brussels, " theSergeant said, in a low voice, "and had him buried, as your honourknows. " The peasants and relic-hunters about the place were screaminground the pair, as the soldier told his story, offering for sale allsorts of mementoes of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and shatteredcuirasses, and eagles. 

Osborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant when he parted withhim, after having visited the scenes of his son's last exploits. Hisburial-place he had already seen. Indeed, he had driven thitherimmediately after his arrival at Brussels. George's body lay in thepretty burial-ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place, havingonce visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly expressed a wishto have his grave made. And there the young officer was laid by hisfriend, in the unconsecrated corner of the garden, separated by alittle hedge from the temples and towers and plantations of flowers andshrubs, under which the Roman Catholic dead repose. It seemed ahumiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to liein ground where mere foreigners were buried. Which of us is there cantell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and howselfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon themingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishnesswere combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did wasright, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way--and like thesting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonousagainst anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as ofeverything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, andnever to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullnesstakes the lead in the world?

As after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage was nearing thegates of the city at sunset, they met another open barouche, in whichwere a couple of ladies and a gentleman, and by the side of which anofficer was riding. Osborne gave a start back, and the Sergeant, seated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour, as hetouched his cap to the officer, who mechanically returned his salute. It was Amelia, with the lame young Ensign by her side, and opposite toher her faithful friend Mrs. O'Dowd. It was Amelia, but how changedfrom the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew. Her face was white andthin. Her pretty brown hair was parted under a widow's cap--the poorchild. Her eyes were fixed, and looking nowhere. They stared blank inthe face of Osborne, as the carriages crossed each other, but she didnot know him; nor did he recognise her, until looking up, he saw Dobbinriding by her: and then he knew who it was. He hated her. He did notknow how much until he saw her there. When her carriage had passed on, he turned and stared at the Sergeant, with a curse and defiance in hiseye cast at his companion, who could not help looking at him--as muchas to say "How dare you look at me? Damn you! I do hate her. It isshe who has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down. " "Tell thescoundrel to drive on quick, " he shouted with an oath, to the lackey onthe box. A minute afterwards, a horse came clattering over the pavementbehind Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up. His thoughts had beenelsewhere as the carriages passed each other, and it was not until hehad ridden some paces forward, that he remembered it was Osborne whohad just passed him. Then he turned to examine if the sight of herfather-in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but the poor girl didnot know who had passed. Then William, who daily used to accompany herin his drives, taking out his watch, made some excuse about anengagement which he suddenly recollected, and so rode off. She did notremark that either: but sate looking before her, over the homelylandscape towards the woods in the distance, by which George marchedaway. 

"Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!" cried Dobbin, as he rode up and held outhis hand. Osborne made no motion to take it, but shouted out once moreand with another curse to his servant to drive on. 

Dobbin laid his hand on the carriage side. "I will see you, sir, " hesaid. "I have a message for you. "

"From that woman?" said Osborne, fiercely. 

"No, " replied the other, "from your son"; at which Osborne fell backinto the corner of his carriage, and Dobbin allowing it to pass on, rode close behind it, and so through the town until they reached Mr. Osborne's hotel, and without a word. There he followed Osborne up tohis apartments. George had often been in the rooms; they were thelodgings which the Crawleys had occupied during their stay in Brussels. 

"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain Dobbin, or, I beg yourpardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin, since better men than you are dead, and you step into their SHOES?" said Mr. Osborne, in that sarcastictone which he sometimes was pleased to assume. 

"Better men ARE dead, " Dobbin replied. "I want to speak to you aboutone. "

"Make it short, sir, " said the other with an oath, scowling at hisvisitor. 

"I am here as his closest friend, " the Major resumed, "and the executorof his will. He made it before he went into action. Are you aware howsmall his means are, and of the straitened circumstances of his widow?"

"I don't know his widow, sir, " Osborne said. "Let her go back to herfather. " But the gentleman whom he addressed was determined to remainin good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption. 

"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reasonalmost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her. It isvery doubtful whether she will rally. There is a chance left for her, however, and it is about this I came to speak to you. She will be amother soon. Will you visit the parent's offence upon the child'shead? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?"

Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and imprecations;--bythe first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his conduct; bythe second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George. No father in allEngland could have behaved more generously to a son, who had rebelledagainst him wickedly. He had died without even so much as confessinghe was wrong. Let him take the consequences of his undutifulness andfolly. As for himself, Mr. Osborne, he was a man of his word. He hadsworn never to speak to that woman, or to recognize her as his son'swife. "And that's what you may tell her, " he concluded with an oath;"and that's what I will stick to to the last day of my life. "

There was no hope from that quarter then. The widow must live on herslender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her. "I might tellher, and she would not heed it, " thought Dobbin, sadly: for the poorgirl's thoughts were not here at all since her catastrophe, and, stupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were alikeindifferent to her. 

So, indeed, were even friendship and kindness. She received them bothuncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her grief. 

Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place tohave passed in the life of our poor Amelia. She has spent the firstportion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we whohave been watching and describing some of the emotions of that weak andtender heart, must draw back in the presence of the cruel grief underwhich it is bleeding. Tread silently round the hapless couch of thepoor prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of the dark chamber whereinshe suffers, as those kind people did who nursed her through the firstmonths of her pain, and never left her until heaven had sent herconsolation. A day came--of almost terrified delight and wonder--whenthe poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, withthe eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful as acherub. What a miracle it was to hear its first cry! How she laughedand wept over it--how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in herbosom as the baby nestled there. She was safe. The doctors whoattended her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had waitedanxiously for this crisis before they could pronounce that either wassecure. It was worth the long months of doubt and dread which thepersons who had constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyesonce more beaming tenderly upon them. 

Our friend Dobbin was one of them. It was he who brought her back toEngland and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving aperemptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit herpatient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laughof triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had asense of humour. William was the godfather of the child, and exertedhis ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and coralsfor this little Christian. 

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how shedrove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her own totouch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she could conferupon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the Major occasionallyto dandle him, need not be told here. This child was her being. Herexistence was a maternal caress. She enveloped the feeble andunconscious creature with love and worship. It was her life which thebaby drank in from her bosom. Of nights, and when alone, she hadstealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God'smarvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--joys how farhigher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions which onlywomen's hearts know. It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon thesemovements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made himdivine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could seewith a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him. Andso, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it. 

I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the intentions of theMajor, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin visitedtheir house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, orwith the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family. He brought, onone pretext or another, presents to everybody, and almost every day;and went, with the landlord's little girl, who was rather a favouritewith Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums. It was this little childwho commonly acted as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce him toMrs. Osborne. She laughed one day when Major Sugarplums' cab drove upto Fulham, and he descended from it, bringing out a wooden horse, adrum, a trumpet, and other warlike toys, for little Georgy, who wasscarcely six months old, and for whom the articles in question wereentirely premature. 

The child was asleep. "Hush, " said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at thecreaking of the Major's boots; and she held out her hand; smilingbecause William could not take it until he had rid himself of his cargoof toys. "Go downstairs, little Mary, " said he presently to the child, "I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne. " She looked up rather astonished, andlaid down the infant on its bed. 

"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia, " said he, taking her slender littlewhite hand gently. 

"Good-bye? and where are you going?" she said, with a smile. 

"Send the letters to the agents, " he said; "they will forward them; foryou will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time. "

"I'll write to you about Georgy, " she said. "Dear' William, how goodyou have been to him and to me. Look at him. Isn't he like an angel?"

The little pink hands of the child closed mechanically round the honestsoldier's finger, and Amelia looked up in his face with bright maternalpleasure. The cruellest looks could not have wounded him more thanthat glance of hopeless kindness. He bent over the child and mother. He could not speak for a moment. And it was only with all his strengththat he could force himself to say a God bless you. "God bless you, "said Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him. 

"Hush! Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William Dobbin went to thedoor with heavy steps. She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels ashe drove away: she was looking at the child, who was laughing in hissleep. 

CHAPTER XXXVI

How to Live Well on Nothing a Year

I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours so littleobservant as not to think sometimes about the worldly affairs of hisacquaintances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder how hisneighbour Jones, or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at theend of the year. With the utmost regard for the family, for instance(for I dine with them twice or thrice in the season), I cannot but ownthat the appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouchewith the grenadier-footmen, will surprise and mystify me to my dyingday: for though I know the equipage is only jobbed, and all theJenkins people are on board wages, yet those three men and the carriagemust represent an expense of six hundred a year at the very least--andthen there are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the prizegoverness and masters for the girls, the trip abroad, or to Eastbourneor Worthing, in the autumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's(who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate dinners which J. Gives, as I know very well, having been invited to one of them to filla vacant place, when I saw at once that these repasts are very superiorto the common run of entertainments for which the humbler sort of J. 'sacquaintances get cards)--who, I say, with the most good-naturedfeelings in the world, can help wondering how the Jenkinses make outmatters? What is Jenkins? We all know--Commissioner of the Tape andSealing Wax Office, with 1200 pounds a year for a salary. Had his wifea private fortune? Pooh!--Miss Flint--one of eleven children of a smallsquire in Buckinghamshire. All she ever gets from her family is aturkey at Christmas, in exchange for which she has to board two orthree of her sisters in the off season, and lodge and feed her brotherswhen they come to town. How does Jenkins balance his income? I say, asevery friend of his must say, How is it that he has not been outlawedlong since, and that he ever came back (as he did to the surprise ofeverybody) last year from Boulogne?

"I" is here introduced to personify the world in general--the Mrs. Grundy of each respected reader's private circle--every one of whom canpoint to some families of his acquaintance who live nobody knows how. Many a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have very little doubt, hob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver and wondering how the deucehe paid for it. 

Some three or four years after his stay in Paris, when Rawdon Crawleyand his wife were established in a very small comfortable house inCurzon Street, May Fair, there was scarcely one of the numerous friendswhom they entertained at dinner that did not ask the above questionregarding them. The novelist, it has been said before, knowseverything, and as I am in a situation to be able to tell the publichow Crawley and his wife lived without any income, may I entreat thepublic newspapers which are in the habit of extracting portions of thevarious periodical works now published not to reprint the followingexact narrative and calculations--of which I ought, as the discoverer(and at some expense, too), to have the benefit? My son, I would say, were I blessed with a child--you may by deep inquiry and constantintercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably on nothing ayear. But it is best not to be intimate with gentlemen of thisprofession and to take the calculations at second hand, as you dologarithms, for to work them yourself, depend upon it, will cost yousomething considerable. 

On nothing per annum then, and during a course of some two or threeyears, of which we can afford to give but a very brief history, Crawleyand his wife lived very happily and comfortably at Paris. It was inthis period that he quitted the Guards and sold out of the army. Whenwe find him again, his mustachios and the title of Colonel on his cardare the only relics of his military profession. 

It has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her arrival in Paris, took a very smart and leading position in the society of that capital, and was welcomed at some of the most distinguished houses of therestored French nobility. The English men of fashion in Paris courtedher, too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives, who could not bearthe parvenue. For some months the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain, in which her place was secured, and the splendours of the new Court, where she was received with much distinction, delighted and perhaps alittle intoxicated Mrs. Crawley, who may have been disposed during thisperiod of elation to slight the people--honest young military menmostly--who formed her husband's chief society. 

But the Colonel yawned sadly among the Duchesses and great ladies ofthe Court. The old women who played ecarte made such a noise about afive-franc piece that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to sitdown at a card-table. The wit of their conversation he could notappreciate, being ignorant of their language. And what good could hiswife get, he urged, by making curtsies every night to a whole circle ofPrincesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone, resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements amongst the amiablefriends of his own choice. 

The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly onnothing a year, we use the word "nothing" to signify something unknown;meaning, simply, that we don't know how the gentleman in questiondefrays the expenses of his establishment. Now, our friend the Colonelhad a great aptitude for all games of chance: and exercising himself, as he continually did, with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it isnatural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use ofthese articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them. To use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil, or a Germanflute, or a small-sword--you cannot master any one of these implementsat first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined toa natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. NowCrawley, from being only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be aconsummate master of billiards. Like a great General, his genius usedto rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to himfor a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would, with consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits whichwould restore the battle, and come in a victor at the end, to theastonishment of everybody--of everybody, that is, who was a stranger tohis play. Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how theystaked their money against a man of such sudden resources and brilliantand overpowering skill. 

At games of cards he was equally skilful; for though he wouldconstantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing socarelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often inclinedto think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action and awakenedto caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked that Crawley'splay became quite different, and that he was pretty sure of beating hisenemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few men couldsay that they ever had the better of him. His successes were sorepeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished spoke sometimeswith bitterness regarding them. And as the French say of the Duke ofWellington, who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishingseries of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner; yeteven they allow that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win thelast great trick: so it was hinted at headquarters in England thatsome foul play must have taken place in order to account for thecontinuous successes of Colonel Crawley. 

Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, themania for play was so widely spread that the public gambling-rooms didnot suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in privatehouses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying thepassion. At Crawley's charming little reunions of an evening thisfatal amusement commonly was practised--much to good-natured littleMrs. Crawley's annoyance. She spoke about her husband's passion fordice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it to everybody who came toher house. She besought the young fellows never, never to touch a box;and when young Green, of the Rifles, lost a very considerable sum ofmoney, Rebecca passed a whole night in tears, as the servant told theunfortunate young gentleman, and actually went on her knees to herhusband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the acknowledgement. How could he? He had lost just as much himself to Blackstone of theHussars, and Count Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry. Green might haveany decent time; but pay?--of course he must pay; to talk of burningIOU's was child's play. 

Other officers, chiefly young--for the young fellows gathered roundMrs. Crawley--came from her parties with long faces, having droppedmore or less money at her fatal card-tables. Her house began to havean unfortunate reputation. The old hands warned the less experiencedof their danger. Colonel O'Dowd, of the --th regiment, one of thoseoccupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that corps. A loudand violent fracas took place between the infantry Colonel and hislady, who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and Colonel and Mrs. Crawley; who were also taking their meal there. The ladies engaged onboth sides. Mrs. O'Dowd snapped her fingers in Mrs. Crawley's face andcalled her husband "no betther than a black-leg. " Colonel Crawleychallenged Colonel O'Dowd, C. B. The Commander-in-Chief hearing of thedispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was getting ready the samepistols "which he shot Captain Marker, " and had such a conversationwith him that no duel took place. If Rebecca had not gone on her kneesto General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back to England; and hedid not play, except with civilians, for some weeks after. 

But, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant successes, itbecame evident to Rebecca, considering these things, that theirposition was but a precarious one, and that, even although they paidscarcely anybody, their little capital would end one day by dwindlinginto zero. "Gambling, " she would say, "dear, is good to help yourincome, but not as an income itself. Some day people may be tired ofplay, and then where are we?" Rawdon acquiesced in the justice of heropinion; and in truth he had remarked that after a few nights of hislittle suppers, &c. , gentlemen were tired of play with him, and, inspite of Rebecca's charms, did not present themselves very eagerly. 

Easy and pleasant as their life at Paris was, it was after all only anidle dalliance and amiable trifling; and Rebecca saw that she must pushRawdon's fortune in their own country. She must get him a place orappointment at home or in the colonies, and she determined to make amove upon England as soon as the way could be cleared for her. As afirst step she had made Crawley sell out of the Guards and go onhalf-pay. His function as aide-de-camp to General Tufto had ceasedpreviously. Rebecca laughed in all companies at that officer, at histoupee (which he mounted on coming to Paris), at his waistband, at hisfalse teeth, at his pretensions to be a lady-killer above all, and hisabsurd vanity in fancying every woman whom he came near was in lovewith him. It was to Mrs. Brent, the beetle-browed wife of Mr. Commissary Brent, to whom the general transferred his attentionsnow--his bouquets, his dinners at the restaurateurs', his opera-boxes, and his knick-knacks. Poor Mrs. Tufto was no more happy than before, and had still to pass long evenings alone with her daughters, knowingthat her General was gone off scented and curled to stand behind Mrs. Brent's chair at the play. Becky had a dozen admirers in his place, tobe sure, and could cut her rival to pieces with her wit. But, as wehave said, she was growing tired of this idle social life:opera-boxes and restaurateur dinners palled upon her: nosegays couldnot be laid by as a provision for future years: and she could not liveupon knick-knacks, laced handkerchiefs, and kid gloves. She felt thefrivolity of pleasure and longed for more substantial benefits. 

At this juncture news arrived which was spread among the many creditorsof the Colonel at Paris, and which caused them great satisfaction. Miss Crawley, the rich aunt from whom he expected his immenseinheritance, was dying; the Colonel must haste to her bedside. Mrs. Crawley and her child would remain behind until he came to reclaimthem. He departed for Calais, and having reached that place in safety, it might have been supposed that he went to Dover; but instead he tookthe diligence to Dunkirk, and thence travelled to Brussels, for whichplace he had a former predilection. The fact is, he owed more money atLondon than at Paris; and he preferred the quiet little Belgian city toeither of the more noisy capitals. 

Her aunt was dead. Mrs. Crawley ordered the most intense mourning forherself and little Rawdon. The Colonel was busy arranging the affairsof the inheritance. They could take the premier now, instead of thelittle entresol of the hotel which they occupied. Mrs. Crawley and thelandlord had a consultation about the new hangings, an amicable wrangleabout the carpets, and a final adjustment of everything except thebill. She went off in one of his carriages; her French bonne with her;the child by her side; the admirable landlord and landlady smilingfarewell to her from the gate. General Tufto was furious when he heardshe was gone, and Mrs. Brent furious with him for being furious;Lieutenant Spooney was cut to the heart; and the landlord got ready hisbest apartments previous to the return of the fascinating little womanand her husband. He _serred_ the trunks which she left in his chargewith the greatest care. They had been especially recommended to him byMadame Crawley. They were not, however, found to be particularlyvaluable when opened some time after. 

But before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs. Crawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her littleson upon the continent, under the care of her French maid. 

The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause eitherparty much pain. She had not, to say truth, seen much of the younggentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers, she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the neighbourhood ofParis, where little Rawdon passed the first months of his life, notunhappily, with a numerous family of foster-brothers in wooden shoes. His father would ride over many a time to see him here, and the elderRawdon's paternal heart glowed to see him rosy and dirty, shoutinglustily, and happy in the making of mud-pies under the superintendenceof the gardener's wife, his nurse. 

Rebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir. Once hespoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers. He preferred his nurse'scaresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that jolly nurseand almost parent, he cried loudly for hours. He was only consoled byhis mother's promise that he should return to his nurse the next day;indeed the nurse herself, who probably would have been pained at theparting too, was told that the child would immediately be restored toher, and for some time awaited quite anxiously his return. 

In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of thatbrood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently invaded theContinent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect inthose happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honour ofBritons. They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle forbargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them. The greatcities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of ourrascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy inwhich you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with thathappy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere, swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulousbankers, robbing coach-makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of theirtrinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards, even publiclibraries of their books--thirty years ago you needed but to be a MilorAnglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your handwherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, werecheated. It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys' departure thatthe landlord of the hotel which they occupied during their residence atParis found out the losses which he had sustained: not until MadameMarabou, the milliner, made repeated visits with her little bill forarticles supplied to Madame Crawley; not until Monsieur Didelot fromBoule d'Or in the Palais Royal had asked half a dozen times whethercette charmante Miladi who had bought watches and bracelets of him wasde retour. It is a fact that even the poor gardener's wife, who hadnursed madame's child, was never paid after the first six months forthat supply of the milk of human kindness with which she had furnishedthe lusty and healthy little Rawdon. No, not even the nurse waspaid--the Crawleys were in too great a hurry to remember their triflingdebt to her. As for the landlord of the hotel, his curses against theEnglish nation were violent for the rest of his natural life. He askedall travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley--avec safemme une petite dame, tres spirituelle. "Ah, Monsieur!" he wouldadd--"ils m'ont affreusement vole. " It was melancholy to hear hisaccents as he spoke of that catastrophe. 

Rebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind ofcompromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering thema dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a returnfor him into his own country. It does not become us to trace the stepswhich she took in the conduct of this most difficult negotiation; but, having shown them to their satisfaction that the sum which she wasempowered to offer was all her husband's available capital, and havingconvinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer a perpetual retirementon the Continent to a residence in this country with his debtsunsettled; having proved to them that there was no possibility of moneyaccruing to him from other quarters, and no earthly chance of theirgetting a larger dividend than that which she was empowered to offer, she brought the Colonel's creditors unanimously to accept herproposals, and purchased with fifteen hundred pounds of ready moneymore than ten times that amount of debts. 

Mrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was sosimple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she made thelawyers of the creditors themselves do the business. And Mr. Lewisrepresenting Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss acting forMr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the Colonel's), complimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which she did business, and declared that there was no professional man who could beat her. 

Rebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered abottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings whereshe dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's lawyers:shook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour, andreturned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and sonand acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire liberation. As for the latter, he had been considerably neglected during hismother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French maid; for thatyoung woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier in the garrison ofCalais, forgot her charge in the society of this militaire, and littleRawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on Calais sands at this period, where the absent Genevieve had left and lost him. 

And so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at theirhouse in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skillwhich must be possessed by those who would live on the resources abovenamed. 

CHAPTER XXXVII

The Subject Continued

In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we arebound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. Thesemansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have creditwith Messrs. Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly monteesand decorated entirely according to your own fancy; or they are to belet furnished, a less troublesome and complicated arrangement to mostparties. It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire theirhouse. 

Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and cellarin Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who wasborn on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a youngerson of a gardener there. By good conduct, a handsome person andcalves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to thefootboard of the carriage; from the footboard to the butler's pantry. When he had been a certain number of years at the head of MissCrawley's establishment, where he had had good wages, fat perquisites, and plenty of opportunities of saving, he announced that he was aboutto contract a matrimonial alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's, who had subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a mangle, and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood. The truth is, that the ceremony had been clandestinely performed someyears back; although the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was firstbrought to Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eightyears of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen had attracted theattention of Miss Briggs. 

Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the superintendenceof the small shop and the greens. He added milk and cream, eggs andcountry-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself whilst other retiredbutlers were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in thesimplest country produce. And having a good connection amongst thebutlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back parlour where he and Mrs. Raggles received them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted bymany of the fraternity, and his profits increased every year. Yearafter year he quietly and modestly amassed money, and when at lengththat snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street, May Fair, lately the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace, gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by the firstmakers, was brought to the hammer, who should go in and purchase thelease and furniture of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of themoney he borrowed, it is true, and at rather a high interest, from abrother butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with nosmall pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carvedmahogany, with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass oppositeto her, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and allthe family. 

Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently an apartment sosplendid. It was in order to let the house again that Ragglespurchased it. As soon as a tenant was found, he subsided into thegreengrocer's shop once more; but a happy thing it was for him to walkout of that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey hishouse--his own house--with geraniums in the window and a carved bronzeknocker. The footman occasionally lounging at the area railing, treated him with respect; the cook took her green stuff at his houseand called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing the tenantsdid, or one dish which they had for dinner, that Raggles might not knowof, if he liked. 

He was a good man; good and happy. The house brought him in sohandsome a yearly income that he was determined to send his children togood schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sentto boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and little Matilda toMiss Peckover's, Laurentinum House, Clapham. 

Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the author of all hisprosperity in life. He had a silhouette of his mistress in his backshop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done bythat spinster herself in India ink--and the only addition he made tothe decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen'sCrawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole Crawley, Baronet, who wasrepresented in a gilded car drawn by six white horses, and passing by alake covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops, andmusicians with flags and penwigs. Indeed Raggles thought there was nosuch palace in all the world, and no such august family. 

As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let whenRawdon and his wife returned to London. The Colonel knew it and itsowner quite well; the latter's connection with the Crawley family hadbeen kept up constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever MissCrawley received friends. And the old man not only let his house tothe Colonel but officiated as his butler whenever he had company; Mrs. Raggles operating in the kitchen below and sending up dinners of whichold Miss Crawley herself might have approved. This was the way, then, Crawley got his house for nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxesand rates, and the interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; andthe insurance of his life; and the charges for his children at school;and the value of the meat and drink which his own family--and for atime that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and though the poor wretchwas utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on thestreets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison: yet somebody mustpay even for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was thisunlucky Raggles was made the representative of Colonel Crawley'sdefective capital. 

I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by greatpractitioners in Crawlers way?--how many great noblemen rob their pettytradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretchedlittle sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noblenobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman hasan execution in his house--and that one or other owes six or sevenmillions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim inthe vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who can't gethis money for powdering the footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter whohas ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady'sdejeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveriesready, which my lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the greathouse tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed:as they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither. 

Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage to all such of MissCrawley's tradesmen and purveyors as chose to serve them. Some werewilling enough, especially the poor ones. It was wonderful to see thepertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting brought the cartevery Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles himself hadto supply the greengroceries. The bill for servants' porter at theFortune of War public house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer. Every servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and thuskept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in fact was paid. Not the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended thepane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it;nor the butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals whichroasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the servants who ate it:and this I am given to understand is not unfrequently the way in whichpeople live elegantly on nothing a year. 

In a little town such things cannot be done without remark. We knowthere the quantity of milk our neighbour takes and espy the joint orthe fowls which are going in for his dinner. So, probably, 200 and 202in Curzon Street might know what was going on in the house betweenthem, the servants communicating through the area-railings; but Crawleyand his wife and his friends did not know 200 and 202. When you came to201 there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and ajolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there, just for allthe world as if they had been undisputed masters of three or fourthousand a year--and so they were, not in money, but in produce andlabour--if they did not pay for the mutton, they had it: if they didnot give bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know? Neverwas better claret at any man's table than at honest Rawdon's; dinnersmore gay and neatly served. His drawing-rooms were the prettiest, little, modest salons conceivable: they were decorated with thegreatest taste, and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca:and when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a lightsome heart, the stranger voted himself in a little paradise of domestic comfort andagreed that, if the husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming, and the dinners the pleasantest in the world. 

Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue inLondon among a certain class. You saw demure chariots at her door, outof which stepped very great people. You beheld her carriage in thepark, surrounded by dandies of note. The little box in the third tierof the opera was crowded with heads constantly changing; but it must beconfessed that the ladies held aloof from her, and that their doorswere shut to our little adventurer. 

With regard to the world of female fashion and its customs, the presentwriter of course can only speak at second hand. A man can no morepenetrate or under-stand those mysteries than he can know what theladies talk about when they go upstairs after dinner. It is only byinquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets hints of thosesecrets; and by a similar diligence every person who treads the PallMall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis knows, eitherthrough his own experience or through some acquaintance with whom heplays at billiards or shares the joint, something about the genteelworld of London, and how, as there are men (such as Rawdon Crawley, whose position we mentioned before) who cut a good figure to the eyesof the ignorant world and to the apprentices in the park, who beholdthem consorting with the most notorious dandies there, so there areladies, who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by allthe gentlemen and cut or slighted by all their wives. Mrs. Firebraceis of this sort; the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you seeevery day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and most famousdandies of this empire. Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties areannounced laboriously in the fashionable newspapers and with whom yousee that all sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and manymore might be mentioned had they to do with the history at present inhand. But while simple folks who are out of the world, or countrypeople with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in theirseeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons whoare better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies haveno more chance of establishing themselves in "society, " than thebenighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings inthe Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of these awfultruths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and wealthare excluded from this "society. " The frantic efforts which they maketo enter this circle, the meannesses to which they submit, the insultswhich they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human orwomankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficultieswould be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, theleisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for thecompiling of such a history. 

Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad notonly declined to visit her when she came to this side of the Channel, but cut her severely when they met in public places. It was curious tosee how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether apleasant study to Rebecca. When Lady Bareacres met her in thewaiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters about her as ifthey would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and retreating a stepor two, placed herself in front of them, and stared at her littleenemy. To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer glance thaneven the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out of her dismal eyes. WhenLady de la Mole, who had ridden a score of times by Becky's side atBrussels, met Mrs. Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyshipwas quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her formerfriend. Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife, cut her at church. Becky went regularly to church now; it was edifying to see her enterthere with Rawdon by her side, carrying a couple of large giltprayer-books, and afterwards going through the ceremony with thegravest resignation. 

Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were passed uponhis wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and savage. He talked ofcalling out the husbands or brothers of every one of the insolent womenwho did not pay a proper respect to his wife; and it was only by thestrongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was brought intokeeping a decent behaviour. "You can't shoot me into society, " shesaid good-naturedly. "Remember, my dear, that I was but a governess, and you, you poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt, and dice, and all sorts of wickedness. We shall get quite as manyfriends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile you must be a goodboy and obey your schoolmistress in everything she tells you to do. When we heard that your aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and hiswife, do you remember what a rage you were in? You would have told allParis, if I had not made you keep your temper, and where would you havebeen now?--in prison at Ste. Pelagie for debt, and not established inLondon in a handsome house, with every comfort about you--you were insuch a fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you, and what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in theworld won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that weshould be friends with your brother's family than enemies, as thosefoolish Butes are. When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be apleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in. If we are ruined, you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a governessto Lady Jane's children. Ruined! fiddlede-dee! I will get you a goodplace before that; or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will beSir Rawdon and my lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear, and I intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for you?Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was obliged to confess that heowed all these benefits to his wife, and to trust himself to herguidance for the future. 

Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for whichall her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally left toPitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had beenleft to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in sucha fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage abuse upon hisnephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them ended in an utterbreach of intercourse. Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand, who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish his brother anddelight his sister-in-law, who was disposed to look kindly upon all themembers of her husband's family. He wrote to his brother a very frank, manly, good-humoured letter from Paris. He was aware, he said, that byhis own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he didnot disguise his disappointment that she should have been so entirelyrelentless towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept intheir branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother onhis good fortune. He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister, and hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letterconcluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter lady's ownhandwriting. She, too, begged to join in her husband'scongratulations. She should ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness toher in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress ofhis little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderestinterest. She wished him every happiness in his married life, and, asking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of whosegoodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day she mightbe allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt, and beggedto bespeak for him their good-will and protection. 

Pitt Crawley received this communication very graciously--moregraciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebecca's previouscompositions in Rawdon's handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was socharmed with the letter that she expected her husband would instantlydivide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions and send off one-halfto his brother at Paris. 

To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate hisbrother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds. But he made Rawdon ahandsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come to Englandand choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her good opinionof himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his willingness totake any opportunity to serve her little boy. 

Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the brothers. When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London. Many atime she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they hadtaken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the new family didnot make its appearance; it was only through Raggles that she heard oftheir movements--how Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed withdecent gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his appearancein London, when he stopped for a few days at the house, did businesswith his lawyers there, and sold off all Miss Crawley's French novelsto a bookseller out of Bond Street. Becky had reasons of her own whichcaused her to long for the arrival of her new relation. "When Lady Janecomes, " thought she, "she shall be my sponsor in London society; and asfor the women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men wantto see me. "

An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham orher bouquet is her companion. I have always admired the way in whichthe tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire anexceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almostinseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gownseated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the backseat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, asjolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in therepasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of VanityFair. What? even battered, brazen, beautiful, conscienceless, heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame: evenlovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any manin England will take, and who drives her greys in the park, while hermother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath still--even those who are sobold, one might fancy they could face anything dare not face the worldwithout a female friend. They must have somebody to cling to, theaffectionate creatures! And you will hardly see them in any publicplace without a shabby companion in a dyed silk, sitting somewhere inthe shade close behind them. 

"Rawdon, " said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen wereseated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to herhouse to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, thebest in London): "I must have a sheep-dog. "

"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte table. 

"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown. "My dear Mrs. Crawley, whata fancy! Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as acamel-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your brougham. Or aPersian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug thatwould go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes? There's a man atBayswater got one with such a nose that you might--I mark the king andplay--that you might hang your hat on it. "

"I mark the trick, " Rawdon gravely said. He attended to his gamecommonly and didn't much meddle with the conversation, except when itwas about horses and betting. 

"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively little Southdowncontinued. 

"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog, " said Becky, laughing and looking up atLord Steyne. 

"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship. 

"A dog to keep the wolves off me, " Rebecca continued. "A companion. "

"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one, " said the marquis; and hisjaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leeringtowards Rebecca. 

The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. Thefire crackled and blazed pleasantly There was a score of candlessparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, ofgilt and bronze and porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure toadmiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudyflowers. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose; herdazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin hazyscarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round herneck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds ofthe silk: the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal inthe finest silk stocking in the world. 

The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which wasfringed with red hair. He had thick bushy eyebrows, with littletwinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. His jawwas underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protrudedthemselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had beendining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A shortman was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of thefineness of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee. 

"And so the shepherd is not enough, " said he, "to defend his lambkin?"

"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs, "answered Becky, laughing. 

"'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--"what a mouth for apipe!"

"I take your three to two, " here said Rawdon, at the card-table. 

"Hark at Meliboeus, " snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorallyoccupied too: he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey?Damme, what a snowy fleece!"

Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. "My lord, " she said, "you are a knight of the Order. " He had the collar round his neck, indeed--a gift of the restored princes of Spain. 

Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and hissuccess at play. He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox athazard. He had won money of the most august personages of the realm:he had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table; but he didnot like an allusion to those bygone fredaines. Rebecca saw the scowlgathering over his heavy brow. 

She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee cup out of hishand with a little curtsey. "Yes, " she said, "I must get a watchdog. But he won't bark at YOU. " And, going into the other drawing-room, shesat down to the piano and began to sing little French songs in such acharming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman speedily followedher into that chamber, and might be seen nodding his head and bowingtime over her. 

Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until they had enough. The Colonel won; but, say that he won ever so much and often, nightslike these, which occurred many times in the week--his wife having allthe talk and all the admiration, and he sitting silent without thecircle, not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, themystical language within--must have been rather wearisome to theex-dragoon. 

"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him by wayof a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his avocation inlife. He was Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband. 

About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it isbecause he is hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or has crawledbelow into the kitchen for companionship. His mother scarcely evertook notice of him. He passed the days with his French bonne as longas that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and when theFrenchwoman went away, the little fellow, howling in the loneliness ofthe night, had compassion taken on him by a housemaid, who took him outof his solitary nursery into her bed in the garret hard by andcomforted him. 

Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-roomtaking tea after the opera, when this shouting was heard overhead. "It's my cherub crying for his nurse, " she said. She did not offer tomove to go and see the child. "Don't agitate your feelings by going tolook for him, " said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" replied the other, with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself to sleep"; and they fell totalking about the opera. 

Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son and heir; and cameback to the company when he found that honest Dolly was consoling thechild. The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper regions. Heused to see the boy there in private. They had interviews togetherevery morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a box by hisfather's side and watching the operation with never-ceasing pleasure. He and the sire were great friends. The father would bring himsweetmeats from the dessert and hide them in a certain old epaulet box, where the child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on discoveringthe treasure; laughed, but not too loud: for mamma was below asleepand must not be disturbed. She did not go to rest till very late andseldom rose till after noon. 

Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his nurserywith toys. Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up by thefather's own hand and purchased by him for ready money. When he wasoff duty with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passinghours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his greatmustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent days with him inindefatigable gambols. The room was a low room, and once, when thechild was not five years old, his father, who was tossing him wildly upin his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against theceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified was he at thedisaster. 

Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl--the severityof the blow indeed authorized that indulgence; but just as he was goingto begin, the father interposed. 

"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma, " he cried. And the child, looking in a very hard and piteous way at his father, bit his lips, clenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit. Rawdon told that story atthe clubs, at the mess, to everybody in town. "By Gad, sir, " heexplained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one that boyof mine is--what a trump he is! I half-sent his head through theceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his mother. "

Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited the upper regionsin which the child lived. She came like a vivified figure out of theMagasin des Modes--blandly smiling in the most beautiful new clothesand little gloves and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewelsglittered about her. She had always a new bonnet on, and flowersbloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling ostrichfeathers, soft and snowy as camellias. She nodded twice or thricepatronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his dinner or fromthe pictures of soldiers he was painting. When she left the room, anodour of rose, or some other magical fragrance, lingered about thenursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to hisfather--to all the world: to be worshipped and admired at a distance. To drive with that lady in the carriage was an awful rite: he sat upin the back seat and did not dare to speak: he gazed with all his eyesat the beautifully dressed Princess opposite to him. Gentlemen onsplendid prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her. Howher eyes beamed upon all of them! Her hand used to quiver and wavegracefully as they passed. When he went out with her he had his newred dress on. His old brown holland was good enough when he stayed athome. Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was making hisbed, he came into his mother's room. It was as the abode of a fairy tohim--a mystic chamber of splendour and delights. There in the wardrobehung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted. There wasthe jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous bronze hand on thedressing-table, glistening all over with a hundred rings. There wasthe cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see hisown wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly distorted, andas if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the pillows of the bed. Oh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy! Mother is the name for Godin the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who wasworshipping a stone!

Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had certain manlytendencies of affection in his heart and could love a child and a womanstill. For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness then, whichdid not escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to herhusband. It did not annoy her: she was too good-natured. It onlyincreased her scorn for him. He felt somehow ashamed of this paternalsoftness and hid it from his wife--only indulging in it when alone withthe boy. 

He used to take him out of mornings when they would go to the stablestogether and to the park. Little Lord Southdown, the best-natured ofmen, who would make you a present of the hat from his head, and whosemain occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might give themaway afterwards, bought the little chap a pony not much bigger than alarge rat, the donor said, and on this little black Shetland pygmyyoung Rawdon's great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walkby his side in the park. It pleased him to see his old quarters, andhis old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge: he had begun to think of hisbachelorhood with something like regret. The old troopers were glad torecognize their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel. ColonelCrawley found dining at mess and with his brother-officers verypleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her--I know it. Shewon't miss me, " he used to say: and he was right, his wife did notmiss him. 

Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always perfectly good-humouredand kind to him. She did not even show her scorn much forhim; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool. He was herupper servant and maitre d'hotel. He went on her errands; obeyed herorders without question; drove in the carriage in the ring with herwithout repining; took her to the opera-box, solaced himself at hisclub during the performance, and came punctually back to fetch her whendue. He would have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, buteven to that he reconciled himself. "Hang it, you know she's soclever, " he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you know. " For, as wehave said before, it requires no great wisdom to be able to win atcards and billiards, and Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sortof skill. 

When the companion came, his domestic duties became very light. Hiswife encouraged him to dine abroad: she would let him off duty at theopera. "Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear, "she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore you. I wouldnot ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I have asheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone. "

"A sheep-dog--a companion! Becky Sharp with a companion! Isn't itgood fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself. The notion tickled hugelyher sense of humour. 

One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the ponywere taking their accustomed walk in the park, they passed by an oldacquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who wasin conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy in hisarms about the age of little Rawdon. This other youngster had seizedhold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and was examiningit with delight. 

"Good morning, your Honour, " said Clink, in reply to the "How do, Clink?" of the Colonel. "This ere young gentleman is about the littleColonel's age, sir, " continued the corporal. 

"His father was a Waterloo man, too, " said the old gentleman, whocarried the boy. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"

"Yes, " said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony were looking ateach other with all their might--solemnly scanning each other aschildren do. 

"In a line regiment, " Clink said with a patronizing air. 

"He was a Captain in the --th regiment, " said the old gentleman ratherpompously. "Captain George Osborne, sir--perhaps you knew him. Hedied the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant. "Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. "I knew him very well, sir, " hesaid, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--how is she?"

"She is my daughter, sir, " said the old gentleman, putting down the boyand taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to theColonel. On it written--

"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder CoalAssociation, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West. "

Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony. 

"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle. 

"Yes, " said Georgy. The Colonel, who had been looking at him with someinterest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor. 

"Take hold of him, Georgy, " he said--"take my little boy round thewaist--his name is Rawdon. " And both the children began to laugh. 

"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's day, sir, " saidthe good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A Family in a Very Small Way

We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridgetowards Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that villageregarding some friends whom we have left there. How is Mrs. Ameliaafter the storm of Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has comeof Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her premises? Andis there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah? The factsconcerning the latter are briefly these:

Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long afterhis escape from Brussels. Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded tomeet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight. However it might be, hewent back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken uphis residence at St. Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor. To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that it was not thefirst time he and the Corsican had met, and that the civilian hadbearded the French General at Mount St. John. He had a thousandanecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position of everyregiment and the loss which each had incurred. He did not deny that hehad been concerned in those victories--that he had been with the armyand carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington. And he describedwhat the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment of the day ofWaterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments andproceedings that it was clear he must have been by the conqueror's sidethroughout the day; though, as a non-combatant, his name was notmentioned in the public documents relative to the battle. Perhaps heactually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with thearmy; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation for some timeat Calcutta, and was called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of hissubsequent stay in Bengal. 

The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky horseswere paid without question by him and his agents. He never was heardto allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty what becameof the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his Belgianservant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one which Jos rode, atValenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815. 

Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty poundsyearly to his parents at Fulham. It was the chief support of the oldcouple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to hisbankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman'sfortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commissionlottery agent, &c. , &c. He sent round prospectuses to his friendswhenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for thedoor, and talked pompously about making his fortune still. But Fortunenever came back to the feeble and stricken old man. One by one hisfriends dropped off, and were weary of buying dear coals and bad winefrom him; and there was only his wife in all the world who fancied, when he tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still doingany business there. At evening he crawled slowly back; and he used togo of nights to a little club at a tavern, where he disposed of thefinances of the nation. It was wonderful to hear him talk aboutmillions, and agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was doing, andBaring Brothers. He talked of such vast sums that the gentlemen of theclub (the apothecary, the undertaker, the great carpenter and builder, the parish clerk, who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp, our old acquaintance, ) respected the old gentleman. "I was better offonce, sir, " he did not fail to tell everybody who "used the room. " "Myson, sir, is at this minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in thePresidency of Bengal, and touching his four thousand rupees per mensem. My daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked. I might draw uponmy son, the first magistrate, sir, for two thousand pounds to-morrow, and Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir. But the Sedleys were always a proud family. " You and I, my dear reader, may drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friendsattained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us: our place onthe boards be taken by better and younger mimes--the chance of liferoll away and leave us shattered and stranded. Then men will walkacross the road when they meet you--or, worse still, hold you out acouple of fingers and patronize you in a pitying way--then you willknow, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a"Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chaphas thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and three thousand a year isnot the summit of the reward nor the end of God's judgment of men. Ifquacks prosper as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed andknaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck andprosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest amongstus--I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot beheld of any great account, and that it is probable . . . But we arewandering out of the domain of the story. 

Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it afterher husband's ruin and, occupying a large house, would have taken inboarders. The broken Sedley would have acted well as theboarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; thetitular lord and master: the carver, house-steward, and humble husbandof the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen men of good brainsand breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who feasted squiresand kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton forrancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their drearytables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle aboutfor "a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family, " such asone reads of in the Times. She was content to lie on the shore wherefortune had stranded her--and you could see that the career of this oldcouple was over. 

I don't think they were unhappy. Perhaps they were a little prouder intheir downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a greatperson for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed manyhours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The Irish maidBetty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, herreckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea andsugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much asthe doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and thecoachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a housekeeper with a regimentof female domestics--her former household, about which the good ladytalked a hundred times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedleyhad all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend. She knewhow each tenant of the cottages paid or owed his little rent. Shestepped aside when Mrs. Rougemont the actress passed with her dubiousfamily. She flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary'slady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse chaise. She hadcolloquies with the greengrocer about the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley loved; she kept an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; andmade visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of oxen very likelywith less ado than was made about Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton: andshe counted the potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days, dressed in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's Sermonsin the evening. 

On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays from taking sucha pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little grandsonGeorgy to the neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see thesoldiers or to feed the ducks. Georgy loved the redcoats, and hisgrandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, andintroduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals ontheir breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented thechild as the son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously onthe glorious eighteenth. He has been known to treat some of thesenon-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in theirfirst Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorgingthe boy with apples and parliament, to the detriment of hishealth--until Amelia declared that George should never go out with hisgrandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly, and on his honour, notto give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever. 

Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness aboutthis boy, and a secret jealousy--for one evening in George's very earlydays, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little parlourscarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran upstairsinstinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had beenasleep until that moment--and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act ofsurreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant. Amelia, the gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she found thismeddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all overwith anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed up, until theywere as red as they used to be when she was a child of twelve yearsold. She seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then grasped atthe bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her, furious, and holdingthe guilty tea-spoon. 

Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. "I will NOT havebaby poisoned, Mamma, " cried Emmy, rocking the infant about violentlywith both her arms round him and turning with flashing eyes at hermother. 

"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language to me?"

"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for hin. He told me that Daffy's Elixir was poison. "

"Very good: you think I'm a murderess then, " replied Mrs. Sedley. "This is the language you use to your mother. I have met withmisfortunes: I have sunk low in life: I have kept my carriage, andnow walk on foot: but I did not know I was a murderess before, andthank you for the NEWS. "

"Mamma, " said the poor girl, who was always ready for tears--"youshouldn't be hard upon me. I--I didn't mean--I mean, I did not wish tosay you would to any wrong to this dear child, only--"

"Oh, no, my love, --only that I was a murderess; in which case I hadbetter go to the Old Bailey. Though I didn't poison YOU, when you werea child, but gave you the best of education and the most expensivemasters money could procure. Yes; I've nursed five children and buriedthree; and the one I loved the best of all, and tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and hooping-cough, and brought up withforeign masters, regardless of expense, and with accomplishments atMinerva House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was too gladto honour my father and mother, that I might live long in the land, andto be useful, and not to mope all day in my room and act the finelady--says I'm a murderess. Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish aviper in your bosom, that's MY prayer. "

"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the child in her armsset up a frantic chorus of shouts. "A murderess, indeed! Go down onyour knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart, Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do. " And Mrs. Sedley tossed out ofthe room, hissing out the word poison once more, and so ending hercharitable benediction. 

Till the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended. The quarrel gavethe elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to turn toaccount with female ingenuity and perseverance. For instance, shescarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards. She warned thedomestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne might be offended. She asked her daughter to see and satisfy herself that there was nopoison prepared in the little daily messes that were concocted forGeorgy. When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she referred thempointedly to Mrs. Osborne. SHE never ventured to ask whether the babywas well or not. SHE would not touch the child although he was hergrandson, and own precious darling, for she was not USED to children, and might kill it. And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healinginquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornfuldemeanour, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewoodherself, whom he had the honour of attending professionally, could giveherself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took afee. And very likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as whatmother is not, of those who would manage her children for her, orbecome candidates for the first place in their affections. It iscertain that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and thatshe would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend himthan she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung upover her little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl hadgone to his; and to which she retired now for many long, silent, tearful, but happy years. 

In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure. Here it was that shetended her boy and watched him through the many ills of childhood, witha constant passion of love. The elder George returned in him somehow, only improved, and as if come back from heaven. In a hundred littletones, looks, and movements, the child was so like his father that thewidow's heart thrilled as she held him to it; and he would often askthe cause of her tears. It was because of his likeness to his father, she did not scruple to tell him. She talked constantly to him aboutthis dead father, and spoke of her love for George to the innocent andwondering child; much more than she ever had done to George himself, orto any confidante of her youth. To her parents she never talked aboutthis matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them. Little Georgevery likely could understand no better than they, but into his ears shepoured her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only. Thevery joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least, that its expression was tears. Her sensibilities were so weak andtremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book. Iwas told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician, witha sumptuous dark green carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and ahouse in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child was asight that would have unmanned a Herod. He was very soft-hearted manyyears ago, and his wife was mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then andlong afterwards. 

Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy: most womenshared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia'sacquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which theother sex regarded her. For almost all men who came near her lovedher; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why. She wasnot brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over much, nor extraordinarilyhandsome. But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one ofthe male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulityof her own sisterhood. I think it was her weakness which was herprincipal charm--a kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemedto appeal to each man she met for his sympathy and protection. We haveseen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to few of George'scomrades there, all the swords of the young fellows at the mess-tablewould have leapt from their scabbards to fight round her; and so it wasin the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she interestedand pleased everybody. If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of thegreat house of Mango, Plantain, and Co. , Crutched Friars, and themagnificent proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summerdejeuners frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about the parishwith magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royalstables at Kensington themselves could not turn out--I say had she beenMrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of theEarl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the head of the firm), the tradesmen of the neighbourhood could not pay her more honour thanthey invariably showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed bytheir doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops. 

Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton theyoung assistant, who doctored the servant maids and small tradesmen, and might be seen any day reading the Times in the surgery, who openlydeclared himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne. He was a personable younggentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings than his principal;and if anything went wrong with Georgy, he would drop in twice orthrice in the day to see the little chap, and without so much as thethought of a fee. He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and otherproduce from the surgery-drawers for little Georgy's benefit, andcompounded draughts and mixtures for him of miraculous sweetness, sothat it was quite a pleasure to the child to be ailing. He andPestler, his chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in thatmomentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and when youwould have thought, from the mother's terror, that there had never beenmeasles in the world before. Would they have done as much for otherpeople? Did they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when RalphPlantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the same juvenilecomplaint? Did they sit up for little Mary Clapp, the landlord'sdaughter, who actually caught the disease of little Georgy? Truthcompels one to say, no. They slept quite undisturbed, at least as faras she was concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which wouldalmost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two, and threw in barkwhen the child rallied, with perfect indifference, and just for form'ssake. 

Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave lessonsin his native tongue at various schools in the neighbourhood, and whomight be heard in his apartment of nights playing tremulous oldgavottes and minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever this powdered andcourteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the convent chapel atHammersmith, and who was in all respects, thoughts, conduct, andbearing utterly unlike the bearded savages of his nation, who curseperfidious Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in theQuadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the old Chevalier deTalonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne, he would first finish his pinchof snuff, flick away the remaining particles of dust with a gracefulwave of his hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and, bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss, exclaiming, Ah! la divine creature! He vowed and protested that when Amelia walkedin the Brompton Lanes flowers grew in profusion under her feet. Hecalled little Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma; andtold the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, andthe favourite attendant of the Reine des Amours. 

Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and unconsciouspopularity. Did not Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of thedistrict chapel, which the family attended, call assiduously upon thewidow, dandle the little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin, to the anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house for him?"There is nothing in her, Beilby, " the latter lady would say. "Whenshe comes to tea here she does not speak a word during the wholeevening. She is but a poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my beliefhas no heart at all. It is only her pretty face which all yougentlemen admire so. Miss Grits, who has five thousand pounds, andexpectations besides, has twice as much character, and is a thousandtimes more agreeable to my taste; and if she were good-looking I knowthat you would think her perfection. "

Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent. It IS the prettyface which creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those wicked rogues. A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give noheed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair ofbright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not red lips and sweetaccents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome norwise. 

These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our heroine. Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader has already nodoubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of her proceedingsduring the seven years after the birth of her son, there would be foundfew incidents more remarkable in it than that of the measles, recordedin the foregoing page. Yes, one day, and greatly to her wonder, theReverend Mr. Binny, just mentioned, asked her to change her name ofOsborne for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her eyes andvoice, she thanked him for his regard for her, expressed gratitude forhis attentions to her and to her poor little boy, but said that shenever, never could think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost. 

On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of June, the days ofmarriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating them(and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought, herlittle boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of thatdeparted friend. During the day she was more active. She had to teachGeorge to read and to write and a little to draw. She read books, inorder that she might tell him stories from them. As his eyes openedand his mind expanded under the influence of the outward nature roundabout him, she taught the child, to the best of her humble power, toacknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and every morning he andshe--(in that awful and touching communion which I think must bring athrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who remembersit)--the mother and the little boy--prayed to Our Father together, themother pleading with all her gentle heart, the child lisping after heras she spoke. And each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, asif he were alive and in the room with them. To wash and dress thisyoung gentleman--to take him for a run of the mornings, beforebreakfast, and the retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for himthe most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thriftywidow cut up and altered every available little bit of finery which shepossessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborneherself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes, especially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a strawbonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of the day. Othersshe had to spare, at the service of her mother and her old father. Shehad taken the pains to learn, and used to play cribbage with thisgentleman on the nights when he did not go to his club. She sang forhim when he was so minded, and it was a good sign, for he invariablyfell into a comfortable sleep during the music. She wrote out hisnumerous memorials, letters, prospectuses, and projects. It was in herhandwriting that most of the old gentleman's former acquaintances wereinformed that he had become an agent for the Black Diamond andAnti-Cinder Coal Company and could supply his friends and the publicwith the best coals at --s. Per chaldron. All he did was to sign thecirculars with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a shaky, clerklike hand. One of these papers was sent to Major Dobbin, --Regt. , care of Messrs. Cox and Greenwood; but the Major being in Madras atthe time, had no particular call for coals. He knew, though, the handwhich had written the prospectus. Good God! what would he not havegiven to hold it in his own! A second prospectus came out, informingthe Major that J. Sedley and Company, having established agencies atOporto, Bordeaux, and St. Mary's, were enabled to offer to theirfriends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated growthsof ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices and underextraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiouslycanvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, theregiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency, and sent hometo Sedley and Co. Orders for wine which perfectly astonished Mr. Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co. In the business. But no moreorders came after that first burst of good fortune, on which poor oldSedley was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of clerks, adock to himself, and correspondents all over the world. The oldgentleman's former taste in wine had gone: the curses of the mess-roomassailed Major Dobbin for the vile drinks he had been the means ofintroducing there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine andsold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself. As for Jos, who was by this time promoted to a seat at the Revenue Board atCalcutta, he was wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundleof these Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from hisfather, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in thisenterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as perinvoice, drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same. Jos, whowould no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, ofthe Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than thathe was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote backcontumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his ownaffairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co. Had totake it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madrasventure, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings. 

Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had been five hundredpounds, as her husband's executor stated, left in the agent's hands atthe time of Osborne's demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbinproposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of agency. Mr. Sedley, who thought the Major had some roguish intentions of his ownabout the money, was strongly against this plan; and he went to theagents to protest personally against the employment of the money inquestion, when he learned, to his surprise, that there had been no suchsum in their hands, that all the late Captain's assets did not amountto a hundred pounds, and that the five hundred pounds in question mustbe a separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars. Morethan ever convinced that there was some roguery, old Sedley pursued theMajor. As his daughter's nearest friend, he demanded with a high handa statement of the late Captain's accounts. Dobbin's stammering, blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's convictions that he hada rogue to deal with, and in a majestic tone he told that officer apiece of his mind, as he called it, simply stating his belief that theMajor was unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money. 

Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had not been soold and so broken, a quarrel might have ensued between them at theSlaughters' Coffee-house, in a box of which place of entertainment thegentlemen had their colloquy. "Come upstairs, sir, " lisped out theMajor. "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will show whichis the injured party, poor George or I"; and, dragging the oldgentleman up to his bedroom, he produced from his desk Osborne'saccounts, and a bundle of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to dohim justice, was always ready to give an IOU. "He paid his bills inEngland, " Dobbin added, "but he had not a hundred pounds in the worldwhen he fell. I and one or two of his brother officers made up thelittle sum, which was all that we could spare, and you dare tell usthat we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan. " Sedley was verycontrite and humbled, though the fact is that William Dobbin had told agreat falsehood to the old gentleman; having himself given everyshilling of the money, having buried his friend, and paid all the feesand charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor Amelia. 

About these expenses old Osborne had never given himself any trouble tothink, nor any other relative of Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed. She trusted to Major Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhatconfused calculations for granted, and never once suspected how muchshe was in his debt. 

Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise, she wrote himletters to Madras, letters all about little Georgy. How he treasuredthese papers! Whenever Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then. But he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his godson and toher. He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand ivory set ofchess-men from China. The pawns were little green and white men, withreal swords and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castleswere on the backs of elephants. "Mrs. Mango's own set at the Pinerieswas not so fine, " Mr. Pestler remarked. These chess-men were thedelight of Georgy's life, who printed his first letter inacknowledgement of this gift of his godpapa. He sent over preservesand pickles, which latter the young gentleman tried surreptitiously inthe sideboard and half-killed himself with eating. He thought it was ajudgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot. Emmy wrote acomical little account of this mishap to the Major: it pleased him tothink that her spirits were rallying and that she could be merrysometimes now. He sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her anda black one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red scarfs, as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George. The shawls wereworth fifty guineas apiece at the very least, as Mrs. Sedley knew. Shewore hers in state at church at Brompton, and was congratulated by herfemale friends upon the splendid acquisition. Emmy's, too, becameprettily her modest black gown. "What a pity it is she won't think ofhim!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends ofBrompton. "Jos never sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges useverything. It is evident that the Major is over head and ears in lovewith her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it, she turns red andbegins to cry and goes and sits upstairs with her miniature. I'm sickof that miniature. I wish we had never seen those odious purse-proudOsbornes. "

Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's early youth waspassed, and the boy grew up delicate, sensitive, imperious, woman-bred--domineering the gentle mother whom he loved with passionateaffection. He ruled all the rest of the little world round about him. As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty manner and hisconstant likeness to his father. He asked questions about everything, as inquiring youth will do. The profundity of his remarks andinterrogatories astonished his old grandfather, who perfectly bored theclub at the tavern with stories about the little lad's learning andgenius. He suffered his grandmother with a good-humouredindifference. The small circle round about him believed that the equalof the boy did not exist upon the earth. Georgy inherited his father'spride, and perhaps thought they were not wrong. 

When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began to write to himvery much. The Major wanted to hear that Georgy was going to a schooland hoped he would acquit himself with credit there: or would he havea good tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn; andhis godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to be allowed to defraythe charges of the boy's education, which would fall heavily upon hismother's straitened income. The Major, in a word, was always thinkingabout Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents kept thelatter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes, desks, and allconceivable implements of amusement and instruction. Three days beforeGeorge's sixth birthday a gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant, drove up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George Osborne:it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit Street, who came at theMajor's order to measure the young gentleman for a suit of clothes. Hehad had the honour of making for the Captain, the young gentleman'sfather. Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt, hissisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family carriage to takeAmelia and the little boy to drive if they were so inclined. Thepatronage and kindness of these ladies was very uncomfortable toAmelia, but she bore it meekly enough, for her nature was to yield;and, besides, the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgyimmense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the child mightpass a day with them, and he was always glad to go to that finegarden-house at Denmark Hill, where they lived, and where there weresuch fine grapes in the hot-houses and peaches on the walls. 

One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were SUREwould delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear William. 

"What was it: was he coming home?" she asked with pleasure beaming inher eyes. 

"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe thatdear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a very dearfriend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd'ssister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a verybeautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said. "

Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she supposedGlorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was mostkind--but--but she was very happy indeed. And by some impulse of whichI cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms and kissedhim with an extraordinary tenderness. Her eyes were quite moist whenshe put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a word during the wholeof the drive--though she was so very happy indeed. 

CHAPTER XXXIX

A Cynical Chapter

Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old Hampshireacquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting the disposal of theirrich kinswoman's property were so woefully disappointed. Aftercounting upon thirty thousand pounds from his sister, it was a heavyblow to Bute Crawley to receive but five; out of which sum, when hehad paid his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a verysmall fragment remained to portion off his four plain daughters. Mrs. Bute never knew, or at least never acknowledged, how far her owntyrannous behaviour had tended to ruin her husband. All that womancould do, she vowed and protested she had done. Was it her fault ifshe did not possess those sycophantic arts which her hypocriticalnephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished him all the happiness whichhe merited out of his ill-gotten gains. "At least the money willremain in the family, " she said charitably. "Pitt will never spend it, my dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not exist inEngland, and he is as odious, though in a different way, as hisspendthrift brother, the abandoned Rawdon. "

So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and disappointment, beganto accommodate herself as best she could to her altered fortunes and tosave and retrench with all her might. She instructed her daughters howto bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable methods toconceal or evade it. She took them about to balls and public places inthe neighbourhood, with praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained herfriends in a hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and muchmore frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy had fallen in. From her outward bearing nobody would have supposed that the family hadbeen disappointed in their expectations, or have guessed from herfrequent appearance in public how she pinched and starved at home. Hergirls had more milliners' furniture than they had ever enjoyed before. They appeared perseveringly at the Winchester and Southamptonassemblies; they penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls andregatta-gaieties there; and their carriage, with the horses taken fromthe plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to bebelieved that the four sisters had had fortunes left them by theiraunt, whose name the family never mentioned in public but with the mosttender gratitude and regard. I know no sort of lying which is morefrequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be remarked how peoplewho practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy, andfancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, because theyare able to deceive the world with regard to the extent of their means. 

Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most virtuous women inEngland, and the sight of her happy family was an edifying one tostrangers. They were so cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, sosimple! Martha painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half thecharity bazaars in the county. Emma was a regular County Bulbul, andher verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were the glory of its Poet'sCorner. Fanny and Matilda sang duets together, Mamma playing thepiano, and the other two sisters sitting with their arms round eachother's waists and listening affectionately. Nobody saw the poor girlsdrumming at the duets in private. No one saw Mamma drilling themrigidly hour after hour. In a word, Mrs. Bute put a good face againstfortune and kept up appearances in the most virtuous manner. 

Everything that a good and respectable mother could do Mrs. Bute did. She got over yachting men from Southampton, parsons from the CathedralClose at Winchester, and officers from the barracks there. She tried toinveigle the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to bringhome friends with whom he went out hunting with the H. H. What willnot a mother do for the benefit of her beloved ones?

Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the odious Baronet at theHall, it is manifest that there could be very little in common. Therupture between Bute and his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed, between Sir Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was ascandal. His dislike for respectable society increased with age, andthe lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's carriage-wheels sincePitt and Lady Jane came to pay their visit of duty after their marriage. 

That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be thought of by thefamily without horror. Pitt begged his wife, with a ghastlycountenance, never to speak of it, and it was only through Mrs. Buteherself, who still knew everything which took place at the Hall, thatthe circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son anddaughter-in-law were ever known at all. 

As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat andwell-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay and wrath great gapsamong the trees--his trees--which the old Baronet was felling entirelywithout license. The park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin. The drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and flounderedin muddy pools along the road. The great sweep in front of the terraceand entrance stair was black and covered with mosses; the once trimflower-beds rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the wholeline of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred after much ringingof the bell; an individual in ribbons was seen flitting up the blackoak stair, as Horrocks at length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawleyand his bride into the halls of their fathers. He led the way into SirPitt's "Library, " as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growingstronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that apartment, "Sir Pittain't very well, " Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that hismaster was afflicted with lumbago. 

The library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had openedone of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the postilion andPitt's servant, who seemed to be about to take the baggage down. 

"Don't move none of them trunks, " he cried, pointing with a pipe whichhe held in his hand. "It's only a morning visit, Tucker, you fool. Lor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels! Ain't there no one atthe King's Head to rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear?Come to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too. Youain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and give oldPitt a kiss, like a good little gal. "

The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the caressesof the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco, might well do. But she remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios, andsmoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a tolerable grace. 

"Pitt has got vat, " said the Baronet, after this mark of affection. "Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm, EveningHymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my LadyJane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don't stand stearing therelike a fat pig. I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it toostoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt. I'm an old man now, andlike my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of a night. "

"I can play at backgammon, sir, " said Lady Jane, laughing. "I used toplay with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't I, Mr. Crawley?"

"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you areso partial, " Pitt said haughtily. 

"But she wawn't stop for all that. Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury andgive Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask Butyfor a dinner. He'll be charmed to see you, you know; he's so muchobliged to you for gettin' the old woman's money. Ha, ha! Some of itwill do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone. "

"I perceive, sir, " said Pitt with a heightened voice, "that your peoplewill cut down the timber. "

"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of year, "Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf. "But I'm gittin' old, Pitt, now. Law bless you, you ain't far from fifty yourself. But hewears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness, sobriety, and a moral life. Look at me, I'm not very fur fromfowr-score--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered at herand pinched her hand. 

Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but theBaronet was deaf again in an instant. 

"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year with thelumbago. I shan't be here now for long; but I'm glad ee've come, daughter-in-law. I like your face, Lady Jane: it's got none of thedamned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something pretty, my dear, to go to Court in. " And he shuffled across the room to acupboard, from which he took a little old case containing jewels ofsome value. "Take that, " said he, "my dear; it belonged to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty pearls--never gave 'emthe ironmonger's daughter. No, no. Take 'em and put 'em up quick, "said he, thrusting the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping thedoor of the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver andrefreshments. 

"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said the individual inribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old gentleman. It was Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandalthroughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost supreme atQueen's Crawley. 

The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay bythe county and family. The Ribbons opened an account at the MudburyBranch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising thepony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at the Hall. Thedomestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The Scotch gardener, whostill lingered on the premises, taking a pride in his walls andhot-houses, and indeed making a pretty good livelihood by the garden, which he farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton, foundthe Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning at the south-wall, andhad his ears boxed when he remonstrated about this attack on hisproperty. He and his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the onlyrespectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to migrate, with their goods and their chattels, and left the stately comfortablegardens to go to waste, and the flower-beds to run to seed. Poor LadyCrawley's rose-garden became the dreariest wilderness. Only two orthree domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall. The stablesand offices were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined. Sir Pitt livedin private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-steward(as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. Thetimes were very much changed since the period when she drove to Mudburyin the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen "Sir. " It may havebeen shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours, but the oldCynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now. He quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by letter. Hisdays were passed in conducting his own correspondence; the lawyers andfarm-bailiffs who had to do business with him could not reach him butthrough the Ribbons, who received them at the door of the housekeeper'sroom, which commanded the back entrance by which they were admitted;and so the Baronet's daily perplexities increased, and hisembarrassments multiplied round him. 

The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these reports of hisfather's dotage reached the most exemplary and correct of gentlemen. Hetrembled daily lest he should hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed hissecond legal mother-in-law. After that first and last visit, hisfather's name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteelestablishment. It was the skeleton in his house, and all the familywalked by it in terror and silence. The Countess Southdown kept ondropping per coach at the lodge-gate the most exciting tracts, tractswhich ought to frighten the hair off your head. Mrs. Bute at theparsonage nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the elmsbehind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on fire. Sir G. Wapshot and Sir H. Fuddlestone, old friends of the house, wouldn't siton the bench with Sir Pitt at Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in theHigh Street of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering hisdirty old hands to them. Nothing had any effect upon him; he put hishands into his pockets, and burst out laughing, as he scrambled intohis carriage and four; he used to burst out laughing at LadySouthdown's tracts; and he laughed at his sons, and at the world, andat the Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom. 

Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's Crawley, andruled all the domestics there with great majesty and rigour. All theservants were instructed to address her as "Mum, " or "Madam"--andthere was one little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in callingher "My Lady, " without any rebuke on the part of the housekeeper. "There has been better ladies, and there has been worser, Hester, " wasMiss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled, having supreme power over all except her father, whom, however, shetreated with considerable haughtiness, warning him not to be toofamiliar in his behaviour to one "as was to be a Baronet's lady. "Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted part in life with great satisfactionto herself, and to the amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at herairs and graces, and would laugh by the hour together at herassumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life. He swore it wasas good as a play to see her in the character of a fine dame, and hemade her put on one of the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing(entirely to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress became herprodigiously, and threatening to drive her off that very instant toCourt in a coach-and-four. She had the ransacking of the wardrobes ofthe two defunct ladies, and cut and hacked their posthumous finery soas to suit her own tastes and figure. And she would have liked to takepossession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the old Baronet hadlocked them away in his private cabinet; nor could she coax or wheedlehim out of the keys. And it is a fact, that some time after she leftQueen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered, which showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn the artof writing in general, and especially of writing her own name as LadyCrawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c. 

Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall andshunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strictknowledge of all that happened there, and were looking out every dayfor the catastrophe for which Miss Horrocks was also eager. But Fateintervened enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due tosuch immaculate love and virtue. 

One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship, " as he jocularly calledher, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room, whichhad scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles uponit--seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to thebest of her power in imitation of the music which she had sometimesheard. The little kitchen-maid on her promotion was standing at hermistress's side, quite delighted during the operation, and wagging herhead up and down and crying, "Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful"--just like agenteel sycophant in a real drawing-room. 

This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual. Henarrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course ofthe evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks. Hethrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, andsqualled in imitation of her manner of singing. He vowed that such abeautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to havesinging-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous. He wasin great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and butler anextraordinary quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour thefaithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his bedroom. 

Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and bustle in thehouse. Lights went about from window to window in the lonely desolateold Hall, whereof but two or three rooms were ordinarily occupied byits owner. Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury, tothe Doctor's house there. And in another hour (by which fact weascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs. Bute Crawley had always keptup an understanding with the great house), that lady in her clogs andcalash, the Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son, hadwalked over from the Rectory through the park, and had entered themansion by the open hall-door. 

They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table ofwhich stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which hadserved for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into SirPitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons, with a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch ofkeys. She dropped them with a scream of terror, as little Mrs. Bute'seyes flashed out at her from under her black calash. 

"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley, " cried Mrs. Bute, pointing at thescared figure of the black-eyed, guilty wench. 

"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried. 

"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed Mrs. Bute. "Bearwitness, Mr. Crawley, we found this good-for-nothing woman in the actof stealing your brother's property; and she will be hanged, as Ialways said she would. "

Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on her knees, bursting into tears. But those who know a really good woman are awarethat she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the humiliation of anenemy is a triumph to her soul. 

"Ring the bell, James, " Mrs. Bute said. "Go on ringing it till thepeople come. " The three or four domestics resident in the deserted oldhouse came presently at that jangling and continued summons. 

"Put that woman in the strong-room, " she said. "We caught her in theact of robbing Sir Pitt. Mr. Crawley, you'll make out hercommittal--and, Beddoes, you'll drive her over in the spring cart, inthe morning, to Southampton Gaol. "

"My dear, " interposed the Magistrate and Rector--"she's only--"

"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued, stamping in her clogs. "There used to be handcuffs. Where's the creature's abominable father?"

"He DID give 'em me, " still cried poor Betsy; "didn't he, Hester? Yousaw Sir Pitt--you know you did--give 'em me, ever so long ago--the dayafter Mudbury fair: not that I want 'em. Take 'em if you think theyain't mine. " And here the unhappy wretch pulled out from her pocket alarge pair of paste shoe-buckles which had excited her admiration, andwhich she had just appropriated out of one of the bookcases in thestudy, where they had lain. 

"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked story!" saidHester, the little kitchen-maid late on her promotion--"and to MadameCrawley, so good and kind, and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and youmay search all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm anhonest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse bred--and if you findso much as a beggarly bit of lace or a silk stocking out of all thegownds as YOU'VE had the picking of, may I never go to church agin. "

"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy, " hissed out the virtuous littlelady in the calash. 

"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum, I can show you herroom, Mum, and the press in the housekeeper's room, Mum, where shekeeps heaps and heaps of things, Mum, " cried out the eager littleHester with a profusion of curtseys. 

"Hold your tongue, if you please. I know the room which the creatureoccupies perfectly well. Mrs. Brown, have the goodness to come withme, and Beddoes don't you lose sight of that woman, " said Mrs. Bute, seizing the candle. "Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and seethat they are not murdering your unfortunate brother"--and the calash, escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away to the apartment which, as she saidtruly, she knew perfectly well. 

Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from Mudbury, with thefrightened Horrocks over his master in a chair. They were trying tobleed Sir Pitt Crawley. 

With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr. Pitt Crawley bythe Rector's lady, who assumed the command of everything, and hadwatched the old Baronet through the night. He had been brought back toa sort of life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people. Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside. She never seemed to want tosleep, that little woman, and did not close her fiery black eyes once, though the Doctor snored in the arm-chair. Horrocks made some wildefforts to assert his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Butecalled him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face again inthat house, or he should be transported like his abominable daughter. 

Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr. James was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found noliquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, whichhe fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and his son satdown, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that instant and neverto show his face again. 

Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys, and he and hisdaughter slunk off silently through the night and gave up possession ofthe house of Queen's Crawley. 

CHAPTER XL

In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family

The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after thiscatastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have reigned in Queen'sCrawley. For though the old Baronet survived many months, he neverrecovered the use of his intellect or his speech completely, and thegovernment of the estate devolved upon his elder son. In a strangecondition Pitt found it. Sir Pitt was always buying and mortgaging; hehad twenty men of business, and quarrels with each; quarrels with allhis tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers;lawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was proprietor;and with every person with whom he had business. To unravel thesedifficulties and to set the estate clear was a task worthy of theorderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set himselfto work with prodigious assiduity. His whole family, of course, wastransported to Queen's Crawley, whither Lady Southdown, of course, cametoo; and she set about converting the parish under the Rector's nose, and brought down her irregular clergy to the dismay of the angry MrsBute. Sir Pitt had concluded no bargain for the sale of the living ofQueen's Crawley; when it should drop, her Ladyship proposed to take thepatronage into her own hands and present a young protege to theRectory, on which subject the diplomatic Pitt said nothing. 

Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy Horrocks were notcarried into effect, and she paid no visit to Southampton Gaol. Sheand her father left the Hall when the latter took possession of theCrawley Arms in the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir Pitt. The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there likewise, which gavehim a vote for the borough. The Rector had another of these votes, andthese and four others formed the representative body which returned thetwo members for Queen's Crawley. 

There was a show of courtesy kept up between the Rectory and the Hallladies, between the younger ones at least, for Mrs. Bute and LadySouthdown never could meet without battles, and gradually ceased seeingeach other. Her Ladyship kept her room when the ladies from theRectory visited their cousins at the Hall. Perhaps Mr. Pitt was notvery much displeased at these occasional absences of his mamma-in-law. He believed the Binkie family to be the greatest and wisest and mostinteresting in the world, and her Ladyship and his aunt had long heldascendency over him; but sometimes he felt that she commanded him toomuch. To be considered young was complimentary, doubtless, but atsix-and-forty to be treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying. LadyJane yielded up everything, however, to her mother. She was only fondof her children in private, and it was lucky for her that LadySouthdown's multifarious business, her conferences with ministers, andher correspondence with all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, andAustralasia, &c. , occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so thatshe had but little time to devote to her granddaughter, the littleMatilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley. The latter was a feeblechild, and it was only by prodigious quantities of calomel that LadySouthdown was able to keep him in life at all. 

As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments where LadyCrawley had been previously extinguished, and here was tended by MissHester, the girl upon her promotion, with constant care and assiduity. What love, what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of anurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make arrowroot; theyget up at nights; they bear complaints and querulousness; they see thesun shining out of doors and don't want to go abroad; they sleep onarm-chairs and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long longevenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the patient's drinksimmering in the jug; they read the weekly paper the whole weekthrough; and Law's Serious Call or the Whole Duty of Man suffices themfor literature for the year--and we quarrel with them because, whentheir relations come to see them once a week, a little gin is smuggledin in their linen basket. Ladies, what man's love is there that wouldstand a year's nursing of the object of his affection? Whereas a nursewill stand by you for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highlypaid. At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about paying half asmuch to Miss Hester for her constant attendance upon the Baronet hisfather. 

Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a chair on theterrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley had had at Brighton, andwhich had been transported thence with a number of Lady Southdown'seffects to Queen's Crawley. Lady Jane always walked by the old man, and was an evident favourite with him. He used to nod many times toher and smile when she came in, and utter inarticulate deprecatorymoans when she was going away. When the door shut upon her he wouldcry and sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was alwaysexceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was present, would changeat once, and she would make faces at him and clench her fist and screamout "Hold your tongue, you stoopid old fool, " and twirl away his chairfrom the fire which he loved to look at--at which he would cry more. For this was all that was left after more than seventy years ofcunning, and struggling, and drinking, and scheming, and sin andselfishness--a whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleanedand fed like a baby. 

At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was over. Early onemorning, as Pitt Crawley was at his steward's and bailiff's books inthe study, a knock came to the door, and Hester presented herself, dropping a curtsey, and said, "If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir Pitt. I wasa-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel, Sir Pitt, which he tookevery morning regular at six, Sir Pitt, and--I thought I heard amoan-like, Sir Pitt--and--and--and--" She dropped another curtsey. 

What was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite red? Was it becausehe was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat in Parliament, and perhaps futurehonours in prospect? "I'll clear the estate now with the ready money, "he thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances and the improvementswhich he would make. He would not use his aunt's money previously lestSir Pitt should recover and his outlay be in vain. 

All the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory: the churchbell was tolled, and the chancel hung in black; and Bute Crawley didn'tgo to a coursing meeting, but went and dined quietly at Fuddleston, where they talked about his deceased brother and young Sir Pitt overtheir port. Miss Betsy, who was by this time married to a saddler atMudbury, cried a good deal. The family surgeon rode over and paid hisrespectful compliments, and inquiries for the health of theirladyships. The death was talked about at Mudbury and at the CrawleyArms, the landlord whereof had become reconciled with the Rector oflate, who was occasionally known to step into the parlour and taste Mr. Horrocks' mild beer. 

"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?" asked Lady Jane of herhusband, Sir Pitt. 

"I will write, of course, " Sir Pitt said, "and invite him to thefuneral: it will be but becoming. "

"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon, " said Lady Jane timidly. 

"Jane!" said Lady Southdown, "how can you think of such a thing?"

"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked, " said Sir Pitt, resolutely. 

"Not whilst I am in the house!" said Lady Southdown. 

"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am the head of thisfamily, " Sir Pitt replied. "If you please, Lady Jane, you will write aletter to Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, requesting her presence upon thismelancholy occasion. "

"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the Countess. 

"I believe I am the head of this family, " Sir Pitt repeated; "andhowever much I may regret any circumstance which may lead to yourLadyship quitting this house, must, if you please, continue to governit as I see fit. "

Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbethand ordered that horses might be put to her carriage. If her son anddaughter turned her out of their house, she would hide her sorrowssomewhere in loneliness and pray for their conversion to betterthoughts. 

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

"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady should meet, and Iwill 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 theportrait of a Gentleman in the Exhibition, "and begin. 'Queen'sCrawley, September 14, 1822. --My dear brother--'"

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

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

In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having by good luck, ordesert rather, as he considered, assumed almost all the fortune whichhis other relatives had expected, was determined to treat his familykindly 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 touse the vast influence that his commanding talents and position mustspeedily acquire for him in the county to get his brother placed andhis cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little sting ofrepentance as he thought that he was the proprietor of all that theyhad hoped for. In the course of three or four days' reign his bearingwas changed and his plans quite fixed: he determined to rule justlyand honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the friendliestpossible terms with all the relations of his blood. 

So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn and elaborateletter, containing the profoundest observations, couched in the longestwords, and filling with wonder the simple little secretary, who wroteunder her husband's order. "What an orator this will be, " thought she, "when he enters the House of Commons" (on which point, and on thetyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had sometimes dropped hints to his wifein bed); "how wise and good, and what a genius my husband is! Ifancied 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 andhad studied it, with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly, longbefore he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife. 

This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordinglydespatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother the Colonel, in London. Rawdon Crawley was but half-pleased at the receipt of it. "What's theuse of going down to that stupid place?" thought he. "I can't standbeing alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there and back will costus twenty pound. "

He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky, upstairsin her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he always made and took toher of a morning. 

He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on the dressing-table, before which Becky sat combing her yellow hair. She took up theblack-edged missive, and having read it, she jumped up from the chair, crying "Hurray!" and waving the note round her head. 

"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure capering about ina streaming flannel dressing-gown, with tawny locks dishevelled. "He'snot left us anything, Becky. I had my share when I came of age. "

"You'll never be of age, you silly old man, " Becky replied. "Run outnow to Madam Brunoy's, for I must have some mourning: and get a crapeon your hat, and a black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; orderit to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able to start onThursday. "

"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed. 

"Of course I mean to go. I mean that Lady Jane shall present me atCourt next year. I mean that your brother shall give you a seat inParliament, you stupid old creature. I mean that Lord Steyne shallhave your vote and his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall bean Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor: or a Treasurer, or aConsul, or some such thing. "

"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money, " grumbled Rawdon. 

"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to be present at thefuneral, as he is a relation of the family: but, no--I intend that weshall go by the coach. They'll like it better. It seems more humble--"

"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked. 

"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to travel bodkinbetween you and me. Let him stay here in the nursery, and Briggs canmake him a black frock. Go you, and do as I bid you. And you had besttell Sparks, your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will comein for something considerable when the affairs are arranged. He'lltell this to Raggles, who has been pressing for money, and it willconsole poor Raggles. " And so Becky began sipping her chocolate. 

When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening, he found Beckyand her companion, who was no other than our friend Briggs, busycutting, ripping, snipping, and tearing all sorts of black stuffsavailable for the melancholy occasion. 

"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency for the deathof our Papa, " Rebecca said. "Sir Pitt Crawley is dead, my lord. Wehave been tearing our hair all the morning, and now we are tearing upour old clothes. "

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could say as sheturned up her eyes. 

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord. "So that old scoundrel'sdead, is he? He might have been a Peer if he had played his cardsbetter. Mr. Pitt had very nearly made him; but he ratted always at thewrong time. What an old Silenus it was!"

"I might have been Silenus's widow, " said Rebecca. "Don't you remember, Miss Briggs, how you peeped in at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on hisknees to me?" Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at thisreminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered her to godownstairs and make him a cup of tea. 

Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided as guardian of herinnocence and reputation. Miss Crawley had left her a little annuity. She would have been content to remain in the Crawley family with LadyJane, who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady Southdowndismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency permitted; and Mr. Pitt(who thought himself much injured by the uncalled-for generosity of hisdeceased relative towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley'sfaithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that exerciseof the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin likewise received theirlegacies and their dismissals, and married and set up a lodging-house, according to the custom of their kind. 

Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country, but found thatattempt was vain after the better society to which she had beenaccustomed. Briggs's friends, small tradesmen, in a country town, quarrelled over Miss Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and moreopenly than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's inheritance. Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called his sister apurse-proud aristocrat, because she would not advance a part of hercapital to stock his shop; and she would have done so most likely, butthat their sister, a dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with thehatter and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how their brotherwas on the verge of bankruptcy, and took possession of Briggs for awhile. The dissenting shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son tocollege and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two families gota great portion of her private savings out of her, and finally she fledto London followed by the anathemas of both, and determined to seek forservitude again as infinitely less onerous than liberty. Andadvertising in the papers that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable manners, andaccustomed to the best society, was anxious to, " &c. , she took up herresidence with Mr. Bowls in Half Moon Street, and waited the result ofthe advertisement. 

So it was that she fell in with Rebecca. Mrs. Rawdon's dashing littlecarriage and ponies was whirling down the street one day, just as MissBriggs, fatigued, had reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk tothe Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for the sixthtime. Rebecca was driving, and at once recognized the gentlewoman withagreeable manners, and being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as wehave seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the ponies atthe doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom, and jumping out, had holdof both Briggs's hands, before she of the agreeable manners hadrecovered from the shock of seeing an old friend. 

Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and kissed the gentlewomanas soon as they got into the passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls'sfront parlour, with the red moreen curtains, and the roundlooking-glass, with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back ofthe ticket in the window which announced "Apartments to Let. "

Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobsand ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salutean old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for thoughpeople meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upondiscovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked eachother, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the timewhen they last quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessnessand candour. 

Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in the passage to thehysterical sniffling and giggling which went on in the front parlour. Becky had never been a favourite of hers. Since the establishment ofthe married couple in London they had frequented their former friendsof the house of Raggles, and did not like the latter's account of theColonel's menage. "I wouldn't trust him, Ragg, my boy, " Bowlsremarked; and his wife, when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, onlysaluted the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers were like somany sausages, cold and lifeless, when she held them out in deferenceto Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted in shaking hands with the retired lady'smaid. She whirled away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest ofsmiles towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window close underthe advertisement-card, and at the next moment was in the park with ahalf-dozen of dandies cantering after her carriage. 

When she found how her friend was situated, and how having a snuglegacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no object to our gentlewoman, Becky instantly formed some benevolent little domestic plans concerningher. This was just such a companion as would suit her establishment, and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little darling Rawdon. 

Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into the lion's den, "wherein you will rue it, Miss B. , mark my words, and as sure as myname is Bowls. " And Briggs promised to be very cautious. The upshot ofwhich caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next week, and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds upon annuity before sixmonths were over. 

CHAPTER XLI

In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors

So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of theirarrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in thesame old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunctBaronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine yearsbefore. How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whomshe refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her inhis coat on the journey! Rawdon took his place outside, and would haveliked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman andtalked about horses and the road the whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the coach by which he had travelled so many a time, whenhe and Pitt were boys going to Eton. At Mudbury a carriage and a pairof horses received them, with a coachman in black. "It's the old drag, Rawdon, " Rebecca said as they got in. "The worms have eaten the clotha good deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha! I see Dawson theIronmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made such a noise about. It was a bottle of cherry brandy he broke which we went to fetch foryour aunt from Southampton. How time flies, to be sure! That can't bePolly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the cottagethere. I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds in thegarden. "

"Fine gal, " said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gavehim, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband. Becky bowed andsaluted, and recognized people here and there graciously. Theserecognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her. It seemed as if shewas not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of herancestors. Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other hand. What recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been flittingacross his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?

"Your sisters must be young women now, " Rebecca said, thinking of thosegirls for the first time perhaps since she had left them. 

"Don't know, I'm shaw, " replied the Colonel. "Hullo! here's old MotherLock. How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember me, don't you? Master Rawdon, hey? Dammy how those old women last; she was a hundred when I was aboy. "

They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whosehand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking oldiron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillarssurmounted by the dove and serpent. 

"The governor has cut into the timber, " Rawdon said, looking about, andthen was silent--so was Becky. Both of them were rather agitated, andthinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother, whom heremembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom hehad been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt; and aboutlittle Rawdy at home. And Rebecca thought about her own youth and thedark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her entrance into lifeby yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and Amelia. 

The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite clean. A grandpainted hatchment was already over the great entrance, and two verysolemn and tall personages in black flung open each a leaf of the dooras the carriage pulled up at the familiar steps. Rawdon turned red, and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the old hall, arm inarm. She pinched her husband's arm as they entered the oak parlour, where Sir Pitt and his wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt inblack, Lady Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large blackhead-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her Ladyship's headlike an undertaker's tray. 

Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit the premises. She contented herself by preserving a solemn and stony silence, when incompany of Pitt and his rebellious wife, and by frightening thechildren in the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour. Only avery faint bending of the head-dress and plumes welcomed Rawdon and hiswife, as those prodigals returned to their family. 

To say the truth, they were not affected very much one way or other bythis coolness. Her Ladyship was a person only of secondaryconsideration in their minds just then--they were intent upon thereception which the reigning brother and sister would afford them. 

Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and shook his brother bythe hand, and saluted Rebecca with a hand-shake and a very low bow. But Lady Jane took both the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed heraffectionately. The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of thelittle adventuress--which ornaments, as we know, she wore very seldom. The artless mark of kindness and confidence touched and pleased her;and Rawdon, encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part, twirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady Jane with akiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush exceedingly. 

"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane, " was his verdict, when he andhis wife were together again. "Pitt's got fat, too, and is doing thething handsomely. " "He can afford it, " said Rebecca and agreed in herhusband's farther opinion "that the mother-in-law was a tremendous oldGuy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking young women. "

They, too, had been summoned from school to attend the funeralceremonies. It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for the dignity of the houseand family, had thought right to have about the place as many personsin black as could possibly be assembled. All the men and maids of thehouse, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder Sir Pitt hadcheated out of a great portion of their due, the parish clerk's family, and the special retainers of both Hall and Rectory were habited insable; added to these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, withcrapes and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the great buryingshow took place--but these are mute personages in our drama; and havingnothing to do or say, need occupy a very little space here. 

With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not attempt to forget herformer position of Governess towards them, but recalled it frankly andkindly, and asked them about their studies with great gravity, and toldthem that she had thought of them many and many a day, and longed toknow of their welfare. In fact you would have supposed that ever sinceshe had left them she had not ceased to keep them uppermost in herthoughts and to take the tenderest interest in their welfare. Sosupposed Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters. 

"She's hardly changed since eight years, " said Miss Rosalind to MissViolet, as they were preparing for dinner. 

"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well, " replied the other. 

"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye it, " MissRosalind added. "She is stouter, too, and altogether improved, "continued Miss Rosalind, who was disposed to be very fat. 

"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that she was ourGoverness once, " Miss Violet said, intimating that it befitted allgovernesses to keep their proper place, and forgetting altogether thatshe was granddaughter not only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr. Dawson of Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. Thereare other very well-meaning people whom one meets every day in VanityFair who are surely equally oblivious. 

"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that her motherwas an opera-dancer--"

"A person can't help their birth, " Rosalind replied with greatliberality. "And I agree with our brother, that as she is in thefamily, of course we are bound to notice her. I am sure Aunt Bute neednot talk; she wants to marry Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant, and absolutely asked him to come to the Rectory for orders. "

"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she looked very glumupon Mrs. Rawdon, " the other said. 

"I wish she would. I won't read the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, "vowed Violet; and so saying, and avoiding a passage at the end of whicha certain coffin was placed with a couple of watchers, and lightsperpetually burning in the closed room, these young women came down tothe family dinner, for which the bell rang as usual. 

But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the apartments preparedfor her, which, with the rest of the house, had assumed a very muchimproved appearance of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, andhere beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had arrived, andwere placed in the bedroom and dressing-room adjoining, helped her totake off her neat black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-lawin what more she could be useful. 

"What I should like best, " said Rebecca, "would be to go to the nurseryand see your dear little children. " On which the two ladies looked verykindly at each other and went to that apartment hand in hand. 

Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four years old, as themost charming little love in the world; and the boy, a little fellow oftwo years--pale, heavy-eyed, and large-headed--she pronounced to be aperfect prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty. 

"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much medicine, " LadyJane said with a sigh. "I often think we should all be better withoutit. " And then Lady Jane and her new-found friend had one of thoseconfidential medical conversations about the children, which allmothers, and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in. Fiftyyears ago, and when the present writer, being an interesting littleboy, was ordered out of the room with the ladies after dinner, Iremember quite well that their talk was chiefly about their ailments;and putting this question directly to two or three since, I have alwaysgot from them the acknowledgement that times are not changed. Let myfair readers remark for themselves this very evening when they quit thedessert-table and assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries. Well--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and intimatefriends--and in the course of the evening her Ladyship informed SirPitt that she thought her new sister-in-law was a kind, frank, unaffected, and affectionate young woman. 

And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the indefatigablelittle woman bent herself to conciliate the august Lady Southdown. Assoon as she found her Ladyship alone, Rebecca attacked her on thenursery question at once and said that her own little boy was saved, actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all thephysicians in Paris had given the dear child up. And then shementioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown from that excellentman the Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair, which she frequented; and how her views were very much changed bycircumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a past life spentin worldliness and error might not incapacitate her from more seriousthought for the future. She described how in former days she had beenindebted to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon theWasherwoman of Finchley Common, which she had read with the greatestprofit, and asked about Lady Emily, its gifted author, now Lady EmilyHornblower, at Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes ofbecoming Bishop of Caffraria. 

But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady Southdown's favour, by feeling very much agitated and unwell after the funeral andrequesting her Ladyship's medical advice, which the Dowager not onlygave, but, wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady Macbeththan ever, came privately in the night to Becky's room with a parcel offavourite tracts, and a medicine of her own composition, which sheinsisted that Mrs. Rawdon should take. 

Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine them with greatinterest, engaging the Dowager in a conversation concerning them andthe welfare of her soul, by which means she hoped that her body mightescape medication. But after the religious topics were exhausted, LadyMacbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her cup of night-drink wasemptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon was compelled actually to assume alook of gratitude, and to swallow the medicine under the unyielding oldDowager's nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction. 

It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance was very queerwhen Rawdon came in and heard what had happened; and his explosionsof laughter were as loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which shecould not disguise, even though it was at her own expense, describedthe occurrence and how she had been victimized by Lady Southdown. LordSteyne, and her son in London, had many a laugh over the story whenRawdon and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair. Beckyacted the whole scene for them. She put on a night-cap and gown. Shepreached a great sermon in the true serious manner; she lectured on thevirtue of the medicine which she pretended to administer, with agravity of imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was theCountess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled. "Give us LadySouthdown and the black dose, " was a constant cry amongst the folks inBecky's little drawing-room in May Fair. And for the first time in herlife the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing. 

Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and veneration whichRebecca had paid personally to himself in early days, and was tolerablywell disposed towards her. The marriage, ill-advised as it was, hadimproved Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's alteredhabits and demeanour--and had it not been a lucky union as regardedPitt himself? The cunning diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned thathe owed his fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought notto cry out against it. His satisfaction was not removed by Rebecca'sown statements, behaviour, and conversation. 

She doubled the deference which before had charmed him, calling out hisconversational powers in such a manner as quite to surprise Pitthimself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired themthe more when Rebecca pointed them out to him. With her sister-in-law, Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it was Mrs. Bute Crawleywho brought about the marriage which she afterwards so calumniated;that it was Mrs. Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley'sfortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which caused andinvented all the wicked reports against Rebecca. "She succeeded inmaking us poor, " Rebecca said with an air of angelical patience; "buthow can I be angry with a woman who has given me one of the besthusbands in the world? And has not her own avarice been sufficientlypunished by the ruin of her own hopes and the loss of the property bywhich she set so much store? Poor!" she cried. "Dear Lady Jane, whatcare we for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am oftenthankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to restore the splendour ofthe noble old family of which I am so proud to be a member. I am sureSir Pitt will make a much better use of it than Rawdon would. "

All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the most faithful ofwives, and increased the favourable impression which Rebecca made; somuch so that when, on the third day after the funeral, the family partywere at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of thetable, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem! Rebecca, may I give you awing?"--a speech which made the little woman's eyes sparkle withpleasure. 

While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and hopes, and PittCrawley arranging the funeral ceremonial and other matters connectedwith his future progress and dignity, and Lady Jane busy with hernursery, as far as her mother would let her, and the sun rising andsetting, and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and toprayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's Crawley lay inthe apartment which he had occupied, watched unceasingly by theprofessional attendants who were engaged for that rite. A woman ortwo, and three or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southamptoncould furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy and tragicaldemeanour, had charge of the remains which they watched turn about, having the housekeeper's room for their place of rendezvous when offduty, where they played at cards in privacy and drank their beer. 

The members of the family and servants of the house kept away from thegloomy spot, where the bones of the descendant of an ancient line ofknights and gentlemen lay, awaiting their final consignment to thefamily crypt. No regrets attended them, save those of the poor womanwho had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who had fled indisgrace from the Hall over which she had so nearly been a ruler. Beyond her and a favourite old pointer he had, and between whom andhimself an attachment subsisted during the period of his imbecility, the old man had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed, duringthe whole course of his life, never taken the least pains to secureone. Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth havean opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that anyVanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) wouldhave a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors wereconsoled. And so Sir Pitt was forgotten--like the kindest and best ofus--only a few weeks sooner. 

Those who will may follow his remains to the grave, whither they wereborne on the appointed day, in the most becoming manner, the family inblack coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready forthe tears which did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deeptribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of compliment to the newlandlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages at three miles an hour, empty, and in profound affliction; the parson speaking out the formulaabout "our dear brother departed. " As long as we have a man's body, weplay our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies, laying it in state, and packing it up in gilt nails and velvet; and wefinish our duty by placing over it a stone, written all over with lies. Bute's curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt Crawleycomposed between them an appropriate Latin epitaph for the latelamented Baronet, and the former preached a classical sermon, exhortingthe survivors not to give way to grief and informing them in the mostrespectful terms that they also would be one day called upon to passthat gloomy and mysterious portal which had just closed upon theremains of their lamented brother. Then the tenantry mounted onhorseback again, or stayed and refreshed themselves at the CrawleyArms. Then, after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley, the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different destinations:then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes, palls, velvets, ostrichfeathers, and other mortuary properties, clambered up on the roof ofthe hearse and rode off to Southampton. Their faces relapsed into anatural expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into abrisker trot on the open road; and squads of them might have been seen, speckling with black the public-house entrances, with pewter-potsflashing in the sunshine. Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled awayinto a tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl sometimesat first, but these were the only accents of grief which were heard inthe Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, had been master for somethreescore years. 

As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as itwere the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities, Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little andpartook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it. The sightof those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him manysecret joys. Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took nogun, 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 agreat effect upon his brother. The penniless Colonel became quiteobsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised themilksop Pitt no longer. Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior'sprospects of planting and draining, gave his advice about the stablesand cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thoughtwould carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her, &c. : the rebelliousdragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditableyounger brother. He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in Londonrespecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messagesof his own. "I am very well, " he wrote. "I hope you are very well. Ihope Mamma is very well. The pony is very well. Grey takes me to ridein the park. I can canter. I met the little boy who rode before. Hecried when he cantered. I do not cry. " Rawdon read these letters tohis brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them. The Baronetpromised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted wifegave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for herlittle nephew. 

One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their lifein those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies. Bells rang to meals and to prayers. The young ladies took exercise onthe pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them thebenefit of her instruction. Then they put on thick shoes and walked inthe park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings into the village, descending upon the cottages, with Lady Southdown's medicine and tractsfor 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 toher solemn talk with the utmost interest. She sang Handel and Haydn tothe 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 wasto continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite oldage, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as ifthere were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waitingoutside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into theworld again. 

"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife, " Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. Icould dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from thegeraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and orderhalf-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor. I shouldn't miss it much, out of five thousand a year. I could even drive out ten miles to dineat a neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last. Icould go to church and keep awake in the great family pew, or go tosleep behind the curtains, with my veil down, if I only had practice. I could pay everybody, if I had but the money. This is what theconjurors here pride themselves upon doing. They look down with pityupon us miserable sinners who have none. They think themselvesgenerous if they give our children a five-pound note, and uscontemptible if we are without one. " And who knows but Rebecca wasright in her speculations--and that it was only a question of money andfortune which made the difference between her and an honest woman? Ifyou take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better thanhis neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not makepeople honest, at least keeps them so. An alderman coming from aturtle feast will not step out of his carnage to steal a leg of mutton;but put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf. Beckyconsoled herself by so balancing the chances and equalizing thedistribution of good and evil in the world. 

The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, andgardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple ofyears seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She hadbeen young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when sheever WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and feelings sevenyears back and contrasted them with those which she had at present, nowthat she had seen the world, and lived with great people, and raisedherself far beyond her original humble station. 

"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains, " Becky thought, "andalmost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back andconsort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father'sstudio. Lords come up to my door with stars and garters, instead ofpoor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have agentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my sister, in thevery house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago. But am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was thepoor painter's daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner forsugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me--Icouldn't have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho! I wish I couldexchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum inthe Three Per Cent. Consols"; for so it was that Becky felt the Vanityof human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would haveliked to cast anchor. 

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 wasstriving to attain it. But--just as the children at Queen's Crawleywent round the room where the body of their father lay--if ever Beckyhad these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them and not lookin. She eluded them and despised them--or at least she was committedto the other path from which retreat was now impossible. And for mypart I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moralsenses--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some neverwakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shameor punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few peopleunhappy in Vanity Fair. 

So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends ofthe Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring undercontrol. Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the warmestdemonstrations of good-will. They looked forward with pleasure to thetime when, the family house in Gaunt Street being repaired andbeautified, they were to meet again in London. Lady Southdown made herup a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. LawrenceGrills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who "honoured" theletter from the burning. Pitt accompanied them with four horses in thecarriage 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!" LadyCrawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman. 

"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She wasimmensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen'sCrawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was somehow purerthan that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had beendull, but had been kind in their way. "It is all the influence of along course of Three Per Cents, " Becky said to herself, and was rightvery likely. 

However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled intoPiccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street, andlittle Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma. 

CHAPTER XLII

Which Treats of the Osborne Family

Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectablefriend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square. He has not been thehappiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred whichhave not improved his temper, and in more in stances than one he hasnot been allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in thisreasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; andresistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, andthe force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down. Hisstiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death;his-face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured outhis glass of port wine. He led his clerks a dire life in the City:his family at home were not much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom wehave seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her povertyand the dare-devil excitement and chances of her life for Osborne'smoney and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him. He had proposed forMiss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of thatlady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was aman to have married a woman out of low life and bullied her dreadfullyafterwards; but no person presented herself suitable to his taste, and, instead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home. She had afine carriage and fine horses and sat at the head of a table loadedwith the grandest plate. She had a cheque-book, a prize footman tofollow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and complimentsfrom all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; butshe spent a woeful time. The little charity-girls at the Foundling, thesweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in theservants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate and nowmiddle-aged young lady. 

Frederick Bullock, Esq. , of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock, had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty andgrumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead and cut out of hisfather's will, Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman'sproperty should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time, refused, "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr. Frederick's ownexpression) on any other terms. Osborne said Fred had agreed to takehis daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to nomore. "Fred might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and behanged. " Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George had beendisinherited, thought himself infamously swindled by the old merchant, and for some time made as if he would break off the match altogether. Osborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Changewith a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of acertain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in hisusual violent manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Mariaduring this family feud. "I always told you, Maria, that it was yourmoney he loved and not you, " she said, soothingly. 

"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't choose you andyours, " replied Maria, tossing up her head. 

The rapture was, however, only temporary. Fred's father and seniorpartners counselled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousandsettled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with thechances of the further division of the property. So he "knuckleddown, " again to use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with peaceableovertures to Osborne. It was his father, he said, who would not hearof the match, and had made the difficulties; he was most anxious tokeep the engagement. The excuse was sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne. Hulker and Bullock were a high family of the City aristocracy, andconnected with the "nobs" at the West End. It was something for the oldman to be able to say, "My son, sir, of the house of Hulker, Bullock, and Co. , sir; my daughter's cousin, Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter ofthe Right Hon. The Earl of Castlemouldy. " In his imagination he sawhis house peopled by the "nobs. " So he forgave young Bullock andconsented that the marriage should take place. 

It was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the breakfast, their habitations being near St. George's, Hanover Square, where thebusiness took place. The "nobs of the West End" were invited, and manyof them signed the book. Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there, with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as bridesmaids;Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest son of the house ofBludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane), another cousin of the bridegroom, andthe Honourable Mrs. Bludyer; the Honourable George Boulter, LordLevant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord ViscountCastletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly MissSwartz); and a host of fashionables, who have all married into LombardStreet and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill. 

The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a small villa atRoehampton, among the banking colony there. Fred was considered tohave made rather a mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whosegrandfather had been in a Charity School, and who were allied throughthe husbands with some of the best blood in England. And Maria wasbound, by superior pride and great care in the composition of hervisiting-book, to make up for the defects of birth, and felt it herduty to see her father and sister as little as possible. 

That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so manyscores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose. FredBullock would never allow her to do that. But she was still young andincapable of hiding her feelings; and by inviting her papa and sisterto her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when theycame, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly begging herfather to quit that odious vulgar place, she did more harm than allFrederick's diplomacy could repair, and perilled her chance of herinheritance like a giddy heedless creature as she was. 

"So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?" said theold gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his daughterdrove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock's, after dinner. "Soshe invites her father and sister to a second day's dinner (if thosesides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'md--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the Earls andthe Ladies, and the Honourables to herself. Honourables? DamnHonourables. I am a plain British merchant I am, and could buy thebeggarly hounds over and over. Lords, indeed!--why, at one of herswarreys I saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise. And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why, I'll lay mylife I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it, and can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinneron my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking, stuck-up fools. Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to RussellSquare--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh. With such reflections on his own superior merit, it was the custom ofthe old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself. 

Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting hersister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's first-born, FrederickAugustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, whowas invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himselfwith sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it forthe nurse. "That's more than any of your Lords will give, I'LLwarrant, " he said and refused to attend at the ceremony. 

The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to thehouse of Bullock. Maria thought that her father was very much pleasedwith her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir. 

One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude inRussell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name occurredevery now and then, in the articles headed "Fashionable Reunions, " andwhere she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F. Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady FredericaBullock. Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no suchgrandeur. It was an awful existence. She had to get up of blackwinter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, whowould have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not beenready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parentread his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea. At half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost freetill dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold theservants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who wereprodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's at the greatglum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in thelarge drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece ofworsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. Thegreat glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great consoleglass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied betweenthem the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you sawthese brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and thisapartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system ofdrawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the grandpiano and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with amournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house. George'spicture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; andthough there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter ofteninstinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was evermade of the brave and once darling son. 

At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and hisdaughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and wassavage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they sharedtwice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank andage. Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr. Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from hisbusiness, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End"; old ColonelLivermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper BedfordPlace; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir ThomasCoffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square. Sir Thomas was celebratedas a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when hedined with Mr. Osborne. 

These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchantpompous dinners back again. They had solemn rubbers of whist, whenthey went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called athalf past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habitof envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described. Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the onlybachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebratedladies' doctor. 

I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of thisawful existence: the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane'slife which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature, pride, and over-feeding had made him. This secret was connected withMiss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated sinceas a portrait-painter and R. A. , but who once was glad enough to givedrawing lessons to ladies of fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten whereRussell Square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him. 

Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a dissolute, irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of hisart) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her toMiss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after variousincomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and itis believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the confidante ofthis intrigue. I know not whether she used to leave the room where themaster and his pupil were painting, in order to give them anopportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot beuttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I know notwhether she hoped that should her cousin succeed in carrying off therich merchant's daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of thewealth which she had enabled him to win--all that is certain is thatMr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from the Cityabruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found thepainter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly palethere; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would breakevery bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirtlikewise, kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on herbandboxes, and shaking his fist at her hackney coach as it bore heraway. 

Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days. She was not allowed tohave a companion afterwards. Her father swore to her that she shouldnot have a shilling of his money if she made any match without hisconcurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did notchoose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to give up allprojects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and wascontent to be an old maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having childrenwith finer names every year and the intercourse between the two grewfainter continually. "Jane and I do not move in the same sphere oflife, " Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her as a sister, of course"--whichmeans--what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as asister?

It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with their father ata fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there were beautiful graperies andpeach-trees which delighted little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin, who drove often to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes toRussell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance MissOsborne. I believe it was in consequence of the commands of theirbrother the Major in India (for whom their papa had a prodigiousrespect), that they paid attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, thegodfather and guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that thechild's grandfather might be induced to relent towards him andacknowledge him for the sake of his son. The Misses Dobbin kept MissOsborne acquainted with the state of Amelia's affairs; how she wasliving with her father and mother; how poor they were; how theywondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear CaptainOsborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how she wasstill, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affectedcreature--but how the boy was really the noblest little boy everseen--for the hearts of all women warm towards young children, and thesourest spinster is kind to them. 

One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin, Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at DenmarkHill--a part of which day she spent herself in writing to the Major inIndia. She congratulated him on the happy news which his sisters hadjust conveyed to her. She prayed for his prosperity and that of thebride he had chosen. She thanked him for a thousand thousand kindoffices and proofs of stead fast friendship to her in her affliction. She told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone tospend that very day with his sisters in the country. She underlinedthe letter a great deal, and she signed herself affectionately hisfriend, Amelia Osborne. She forgot to send any message of kindness toLady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not mention Glorvina by name, andonly in italics, as the Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings. But the news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had kept uptowards him. She was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly andgratefully she regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous ofGlorvina (Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angelfrom heaven had hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back inthe pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven bySir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold chainand watch. He said an old lady, not pretty, had given it him, whocried and kissed him a great deal. But he didn't like her. He likedgrapes very much. And he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrank andstarted; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when she heardthat the relations of the child's father had seen him. 

Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He had made agood speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that day, and chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured. "What'sthe matter, Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say. 

The woman burst into tears. "Oh, sir, " she said, "I've seen littleGeorge. He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like him!" The old manopposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up and began to tremblein every limb. 

CHAPTER XLIII

In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape

The astonished reader must be called upon to transport himself tenthousand miles to the military station of Bundlegunge, in the Madrasdivision of our Indian empire, where our gallant old friends of the--th regiment are quartered under the command of the brave Colonel, SirMichael O'Dowd. Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer, as itdoes ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good tempers andare not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel playsa good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons with greatsuccess at dinner. He smokes his hookah after both meals and puffs asquietly while his wife scolds him as he did under the fire of theFrench at Waterloo. Age and heat have not diminished the activity orthe eloquence of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys. HerLadyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at Madras as atBrussels in the cantonment as under the tents. On the march you sawher at the head of the regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noblesight. Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers inthe jungle, she has been received by native princes, who have welcomedher and Glorvina into the recesses of their zenanas and offered hershawls and jewels which it went to her heart to refuse. The sentriesof all arms salute her wherever she makes her appearance, and shetouches her hat gravely to their salutation. Lady O'Dowd is one of thegreatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel with LadySmith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge, is still remembered bysome at Madras, when the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in theJudge's lady's face and said SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarlycivilian. Even now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, peopleremember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government House, where shedanced down two Aides-de-Camp, a Major of Madras cavalry, and twogentlemen of the Civil Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C. B. , second in command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassatanondum satiata recessit. 

Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and thought;impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant over her Michael; adragon amongst all the ladies of the regiment; a mother to all theyoung men, whom she tends in their sickness, defends in all theirscrapes, and with whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular. But theSubalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried) cabal againsther a good deal. They say that Glorvina gives herself airs and thatPeggy herself is ill tolerably domineering. She interfered with alittle congregation which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the youngmen away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had nobusiness to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much better mendingher husband's clothes; and, if the regiment wanted sermons, that shehad the finest in the world, those of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptlyput a termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of theregiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to comedown upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed from her (for theyoung fellow was still of an extravagant turn) unless he broke off atonce and went to the Cape on sick leave. On the other hand, she housedand sheltered Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night, pursuedby her infuriate husband, wielding his second brandy bottle, andactually carried Posky through the delirium tremens and broke him ofthe habit of drinking, which had grown upon that officer, as all evilhabits will grow upon men. In a word, in adversity she was the best ofcomforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having aperfectly good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolutionto have her own way. 

Among other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should marryour old friend Dobbin. Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's expectations andappreciated his good qualities and the high character which he enjoyedin his profession. Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured, black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a horse, or play asonata with any girl out of the County Cork, seemed to be the veryperson destined to insure Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poorgood little weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take onso. --"Look at Glorvina enter a room, " Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "andcompare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who couldn't say boo to agoose. She'd be worthy of you, Major--you're a quiet man yourself, andwant some one to talk for ye. And though she does not come of suchgood blood as the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of anancient family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into. "

But before she had come to such a resolution and determined tosubjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned thatGlorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere. She had had aseason in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, andMallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom thedepots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemedeligible. She had been engaged to be married a half-score times inIreland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She hadflirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief mate of theRamchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the Presidency with herbrother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there, while the Major of theregiment was in command at the station. Everybody admired her there;everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was worth themarrying--one or two exceedingly young subalterns sighed after her, anda beardless civilian or two, but she rejected these as beneath herpretensions--and other and younger virgins than Glorvina were marriedbefore her. There are women, and handsome women too, who have thisfortune in life. They fall in love with the utmost generosity; theyride and walk with half the Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still: Glorvinapersisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge'slady, she would have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at the head of the civil service (and who afterwardsmarried Miss Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who hadjust arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposingto her. 

Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a great number oftimes every day, and upon almost every conceivable subject--indeed, ifMick O'Dowd had not possessed the temper of an angel two such womenconstantly about his ears would have driven him out of his senses--yetthey agreed between themselves on this point, that Glorvina shouldmarry Major Dobbin, and were determined that the Major should have norest until the arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty orfifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him. She sang Irishmelodies at him unceasingly. She asked him so frequently andpathetically, Will ye come to the bower? that it is a wonder how anyman of feeling could have resisted the invitation. She was never tiredof inquiring, if Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready tolisten and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and hiscampaigns. It has been said that our honest and dear old friend usedto perform on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duetswith him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit the room whenthe young couple were so engaged. Glorvina forced the Major to ridewith her of mornings. The whole cantonment saw them set out andreturn. She was constantly writing notes over to him at his house, borrowing his books, and scoring with her great pencil-marks suchpassages of sentiment or humour as awakened her sympathy. She borrowedhis horses, his servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder thatpublic rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters inEngland should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-law. 

Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the meanwhile in astate of the most odious tranquillity. He used to laugh when the youngfellows of the regiment joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentionsto him. "Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--shepractises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano, because it's themost handy instrument in the station. I am much too battered and oldfor such a fine young lady as Glorvina. " And so he went on riding withher, and copying music and verses into her albums, and playing at chesswith her very submissively; for it is with these simple amusements thatsome officers in India are accustomed to while away their leisuremoments, while others of a less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shootsnipes, or gamble and smoke cheroots, and betake themselves tobrandy-and-water. As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and hersister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain himself and notkeep on torturing a poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the oldsoldier refused point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy. "Faith, the Major's big enough to choose for himself, " Sir Michaelsaid; "he'll ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the matteroff jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young to keep house, andhad written home to ask lave of his mamma. " Nay, he went farther, andin private communications with his Major would caution and rally him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent on mischief--meLady has just got a box of gowns from Europe, and there's a pink satinfor Glorvina, which will finish ye, Dob, if it's in the power of womanor satin to move ye. "

But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer him. Ourhonest friend had but one idea of a woman in his head, and that one didnot in the least resemble Miss Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin. A gentlelittle woman in black, with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking, save when spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling MissGlorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant and beckoning theMajor up with a smile to look at him--a rosy-cheeked lass comingsinging into the room in Russell Square or hanging on George Osborne'sarm, happy and loving--there was but this image that filled our honestMajor's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it always. Verylikely Amelia was not like the portrait the Major had formed of her:there was a figure in a book of fashions which his sisters had inEngland, and with which William had made away privately, pasting itinto the lid of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to Mrs. Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and can vouch that it isbut the picture of a high-waisted gown with an impossible doll's facesimpering over it--and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was nomore like the real one than this absurd little print which hecherished. But what man in love, of us, is better informed?--or is hemuch happier when he sees and owns his delusion? Dobbin was under thisspell. He did not bother his friends and the public much about hisfeelings, or indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account ofthem. His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or twoof silver may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise. But hisfeelings are not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remainsas fresh as a man's recollections of boyhood are. 

We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the Major'scorrespondents in Europe, wrote him letters from England, Mrs. Osbornecongratulating him with great candour and cordiality upon hisapproaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd. "Your sister has just kindlyvisited me, " Amelia wrote in her letter, "and informed me of anINTERESTING EVENT, upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERECONGRATULATIONS. I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to beUNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who is himself allkindness and goodness. The poor widow has only her prayers to offerand her cordial cordial wishes for YOUR PROSPERITY! Georgy sends hislove to HIS DEAR GODPAPA and hopes that you will not forget him. I tellhim that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who I am suremerits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of coursebe the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that Iam sure the widow and the child whom you have ever protected and lovedwill always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The letter, which has beenbefore alluded to, went on in this strain, protesting throughout as tothe extreme satisfaction of the writer. 

This letter, which arrived by the very same ship which brought outLady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be sureDobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the mailbrought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina, and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became perfectlyodious to him. The Major cursed the talk of women, and the sex ingeneral. Everything annoyed him that day--the parade was insufferablyhot and wearisome. Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste hislife, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting fools throughtheir manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of the young men at mess wasmore than ever jarring. What cared he, a man on the high road to forty, to know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or what were theperformances of Ensign Brown's mare? The jokes about the table filledhim with shame. He was too old to listen to the banter of theassistant surgeon and the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily. The old man hadlistened to those jokes any time these thirty years--Dobbin himself hadbeen fifteen years hearing them. And after the boisterous dulness ofthe mess-table, the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!It was unbearable, shameful. "O Amelia, Amelia, " he thought, "you towhom I have been so faithful--you reproach me! It is because youcannot feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life. And you rewardme after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage, forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poorWilliam; more than ever wretched and lonely. He would like to havedone with life and its vanity altogether--so bootless andunsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospectseemed to him. He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to gohome. Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him. No fidelity, noconstant truth and passion, could move her into warmth. She would notsee that he loved her. Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her. "GoodGod, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I only love you in theworld--you, who are a stone to me--you, whom I tended through monthsand months of illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smileon your face, and forgot me before the door shut between us!" Thenative servants lying outside his verandas beheld with wonder theMajor, so cold and quiet ordinarily, at present so passionately movedand cast down. Would she have pitied him had she seen him? He readover and over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters ofbusiness relative to the little property which he had made her believeher husband had left to her--brief notes of invitation--every scrap ofwriting that she had ever sent to him--how cold, how kind, howhopeless, how selfish they were!

Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read andappreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign ofAmelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might haveflowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jettyringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this dashing youngwoman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather on making theMajor admire HER--a most vain and hopeless task, too, at leastconsidering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry it out. She curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as much as to say, did ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned athim so that he might see that every tooth in her head was sound--and henever heeded all these charms. Very soon after the arrival of the boxof millinery, and perhaps indeed in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and theladies of the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's Regimentsand the civilians at the station. Glorvina sported the killing pinkfrock, and the Major, who attended the party and walked very ruefullyup and down the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment. Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of thestation, and the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance, or angry because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper. It was not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, andGlorvina had nothing more. 

So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and eachlonging for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with rage atthe failure. She had set her mind on the Major "more than on any ofthe others, " she owned, sobbing. "He'll break my heart, he will, Peggy, " she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they were goodfriends; "sure every one of me frocks must be taken in--it's such askeleton I'm growing. " Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, onhorseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to the Major. Andthe Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints, wouldsuggest that Glory should have some black frocks out in the next boxfrom London, and told a mysterious story of a lady in Ireland who diedof grief for the loss of her husband before she got ere a one. 

While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing, and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europebringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the heartlessman. These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that ofthe former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized among his thehandwriting of his sister, who always crossed and recrossed her lettersto her brother--gathered together all the possible bad news which shecould collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterlyfrankness, and always left him miserable for the day after "dearestWilliam" had achieved the perusal of one of her epistles--the truthmust be told that dearest William did not hurry himself to break theseal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited for a particularly favourableday and mood for doing so. A fortnight before, moreover, he hadwritten to scold her for telling those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne, and had despatched a letter in reply to that lady, undeceiving her withrespect to the reports concerning him and assuring her that "he had nosort of present intention of altering his condition. "

Two or three nights after the arrival of the second package of letters, the Major had passed the evening pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd'shouse, where Glorvina thought that he listened with rather moreattention than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel Boy, and one or two other specimens of song with which she favoured him (thetruth is, he was no more listening to Glorvina than to the howling ofthe jackals in the moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers asusual), and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage with thesurgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening pastime), Major Dobbin tookleave of the Colonel's family at his usual hour and retired to his ownhouse. 

There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching him. He tookit up, ashamed rather of his negligence regarding it, and preparedhimself for a disagreeable hour's communing with that crabbed-handedabsent relative. . . . It may have been an hour after the Major'sdeparture from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping the sleepof the just; Glorvina had arranged her black ringlets in theinnumerable little bits of paper, in which it was her habit to confinethem; Lady O'Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, onthe ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains round her fairform, when the guard at the gates of the Commanding-Officer's compoundbeheld Major Dobbin, in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with aswift step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the sentineland went up to the windows of the Colonel's bedchamber. 

"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great shouting. 

"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers, putting out herhead too, from her window. 

"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting there was a firein the station, or that the route had come from headquarters. 

"I--I must have leave of absence. I must go to England--on the mosturgent private affairs, " Dobbin said. 

"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina, trembling with allthe papillotes. 

"I want to be off--now--to-night, " Dobbin continued; and the Colonelgetting up, came out to parley with him. 

In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the Major had justcome upon a paragraph, to the following effect:--"I drove yesterday tosee your old ACQUAINTANCE, Mrs. Osborne. The wretched place they liveat, since they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S. , to judge from a BRASSPLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better) is a coal-merchant. The little boy, your godson, is certainly a fine child, though forward, and inclined to be saucy and self-willed. But we have taken notice ofhim as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt, Miss O. , whowas rather pleased with him. Perhaps his grandpapa, not the bankruptone, who is almost doting, but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may beinduced to relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING ANDSELF-WILLED SON. And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to give him up. The widow is CONSOLED, and is about to marry a reverend gentleman, theRev. Mr. Binny, one of the curates of Brompton. A poor match. ButMrs. O. Is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--shewas in very good spirits: and your little godson overate himself atour house. Mamma sends her love with that of your affectionate, AnnDobbin. "

CHAPTER XLIV

A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire

Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there asa token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldicemblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, andall the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever beenduring the late baronet's reign. The black outer-coating of the brickswas removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streakedwith white: the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely, the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great Gaunt Streetbecame the smartest in the whole quarter, before the green leaves inHampshire had replaced those yellowing ones which were on the trees inQueen's Crawley Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them forthe last time. 

A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seenabout this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little boy, also might be remarked coming thither daily. It was Miss Briggs andlittle Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward renovation ofSir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band engaged in stitchingthe blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in the drawers andcupboards crammed with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of acouple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take inventories of thechina, the glass, and other properties in the closets and store-rooms. 

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements, withfull orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or purchasefurniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an occupation whichgave full scope to her taste and ingenuity. The renovation of thehouse was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November to seehis lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in Curzon Street, underthe roof of his affectionate brother and sister. 

He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard ofthe Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned in anhour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side. Itwas impossible sometimes to resist this artless little creature'shospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiablyoffered. Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of gratitude when heagreed to come. "Thank you, " she said, squeezing it and looking intothe Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will makeRawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading on the servants, whowere carrying his trunks thither. She came in herself laughing, with acoal-scuttle out of her own room. 

A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was MissBriggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with themaid). "I knew I should bring you, " she said with pleasure beaming inher glance. Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him for aguest. 

Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt stayedwith them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone with her andBriggs. She went downstairs to the kitchen and actually cooked littledishes for him. "Isn't it a good salmi?" she said; "I made it for you. I can make you better dishes than that, and will when you come to seeme. "

"Everything you do, you do well, " said the Baronet gallantly. "Thesalmi is excellent indeed. "

"A poor man's wife, " Rebecca replied gaily, "must make herself useful, you know"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that "she was fit to bethe wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic duties wassurely one of the most charming of woman's qualities. " And Sir Pittthought, with something like mortification, of Lady Jane at home, andof a certain pie which she had insisted on making, and serving to himat dinner--a most abominable pie. 

Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from hislordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law abottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him fromFrance, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;whereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the Marquisof Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the Baronet'spallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame. 

Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave himher hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug on thesofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the tenderestkindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for her dearlittle boy. Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly humble andvirtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-box. It hadgot to be too small for Rawdon long before it was finished. 

Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him, shecoaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and moreglad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to theblazing fire in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of lawlikewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest--and sothat when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing. How prettyshe looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and waving herhandkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail! She put thehandkerchief to her eyes once. He pulled his sealskin cap over his, asthe coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought to himself how sherespected him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a foolish dullfellow who didn't half-appreciate his wife; and how mum and stupid hisown wife was compared to that brilliant little Becky. Becky had hintedevery one of these things herself, perhaps, but so delicately andgently that you hardly knew when or where. And, before they parted, itwas agreed that the house in London should be redecorated for the nextseason, and that the brothers' families should meet again in thecountry at Christmas. 

"I wish you could have got a little money out of him, " Rawdon said tohis wife moodily when the Baronet was gone. "I should like to givesomething to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't. It ain't right, youknow, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his money. It maybe inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides us, youknow. "

"Tell him, " said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs aresettled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something onaccount. Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy, " and she tookfrom her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had handedover to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger branchof the Crawleys. 

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her husbandexpressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so delicately, and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir PittCrawley was off and alarmed. And he began a long speech, explaininghow straitened he himself was in money matters; how the tenants wouldnot pay; how his father's affairs, and the expenses attendant upon thedemise of the old gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay offincumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were overdrawn; and PittCrawley ended by making a compromise with his sister-in-law and givingher a very small sum for the benefit of her little boy. 

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be. Itcould not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced olddiplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and thathouses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing. He knew very wellthat he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which, according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to hisyounger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs ofremorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some actof justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointedrelations. A just, decent man, not without brains, who said hisprayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly throughlife, he could not be otherwise than aware that something was due tohis brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's debtor. 

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now andthen, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B. , or 10 pounds fromW. T. , as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said A. B. Or W. T. , which payments the penitents beg the Right Honourablegentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public press--so isthe Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly surethat the above-named A. B. And W. T. Are only paying a very smallinstalment of what they really owe, and that the man who sends up atwenty-pound note has very likely hundreds or thousands more for whichhe ought to account. Such, at least, are my feelings, when I seeA. B. Or W. T. 's insufficient acts of repentance. And I have no doubtthat Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness if you will, towards hisyounger brother, by whom he had so much profited, was only a very smalldividend upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Noteverybody is willing to pay even so much. To part with money is asacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order. Thereis scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious forgiving his neighbour five pounds. Thriftless gives, not from abeneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. Hewould not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not hishorse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the fivepounds. Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny, turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or denies a poorrelation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the two. Money hasonly a different value in the eyes of each. 

So, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for hisbrother, and then thought that he would think about it some other time. 

And with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who expected too muchfrom the generosity of her neighbours, and so was quite content withall that Pitt Crawley had done for her. She was acknowledged by thehead of the family. If Pitt would not give her anything, he would getsomething for her some day. If she got no money from herbrother-in-law, she got what was as good as money--credit. Raggles wasmade rather easy in his mind by the spectacle of the union between thebrothers, by a small payment on the spot, and by the promise of a muchlarger sum speedily to be assigned to him. And Rebecca told MissBriggs, whose Christmas dividend upon the little sum lent by her Beckypaid with an air of candid joy, and as if her exchequer was brimmingover with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss Briggs, in strict confidencethat she had conferred with Sir Pitt, who was famous as a financier, onBriggs's special behalf, as to the most profitable investment of MissB. 's remaining capital; that Sir Pitt, after much consideration, hadthought of a most safe and advantageous way in which Briggs could layout her money; that, being especially interested in her as an attachedfriend of the late Miss Crawley, and of the whole family, and that longbefore he left town, he had recommended that she should be ready withthe money at a moment's notice, so as to purchase at the mostfavourable opportunity the shares which Sir Pitt had in his eye. PoorMiss Briggs was very grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--itcame so unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought ofremoving the money from the funds--and the delicacy enhanced thekindness of the office; and she promised to see her man of businessimmediately and be ready with her little cash at the proper hour. 

And this worthy woman was so grateful for the kindness of Rebecca inthe matter, and for that of her generous benefactor, the Colonel, thatshe went out and spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in thepurchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by the way, wasgrown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a size and agebefitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket and pantaloons. 

He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair, sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attachinghimself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown, who gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he sawthat kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the pony--toMolly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night, and withgood things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughedat--and to his father especially, whose attachment towards the lad wascurious too to witness. Here, as he grew to be about eight years old, his attachments may be said to have ended. The beautiful mother-visionhad faded away after a while. During near two years she had scarcelyspoken to the child. She disliked him. He had the measles and thehooping-cough. He bored her. One day when he was standing at thelanding-place, having crept down from the upper regions, attracted bythe sound of his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, thedrawing room door opening suddenly, discovered the little spy, who buta moment before had been rapt in delight, and listening to the music. 

His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on theear. He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who wasamused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper) and fleddown below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief. 

"It is not because it hurts me, " little Rawdon gaspedout--"only--only"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm. Itwas the little boy's heart that was bleeding. "Why mayn't I hear hersinging? Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that baldheadedman with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various intervals theseexclamations of rage and grief. The cook looked at the housemaid, thehousemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the awful kitchen inquisitionwhich sits in judgement in every house and knows everything--sat onRebecca at that moment. 

After this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; theconsciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a painto her. His very sight annoyed her. Fear, doubt, and resistancesprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom. They were separated from thatday of the boxes on the ear. 

Lord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy. When they met bymischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared athim with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face anddouble his little fists in return. He knew his enemy, and thisgentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who angered himmost. One day the footman found him squaring his fists at LordSteyne's hat in the hall. The footman told the circumstance as a goodjoke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it to LordSteyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general. And very soonafterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her appearance at GauntHouse, the porter who unbarred the gates, the servants of all uniformsin the hall, the functionaries in white waistcoats, who bawled out fromlanding to landing the names of Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knewabout her, or fancied they did. The man who brought her refreshment andstood behind her chair, had talked her character over with the largegentleman in motley-coloured clothes at his side. Bon Dieu! it isawful, that servants' inquisition! You see a woman in a great party ina splendid saloon, surrounded by faithful admirers, distributingsparkling glances, dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling andhappy--Discovery walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a hugepowdered man with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (whichis as fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellowcarrying the wafer-biscuits. Madam, your secret will be talked over bythose men at their club at the public-house to-night. Jeames will tellChawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots. Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair--mutes whocould not write. If you are guilty, tremble. That fellow behind yourchair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breechespocket. If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which areas ruinous as guilt. 

"Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgericht of tho servants' hall hadpronounced against her. 

And, I shame to say, she would not have got credit had they notbelieved her to be guilty. It was the sight of the Marquis of Steyne'scarriage-lamps at her door, contemplated by Raggles, burning in theblackness of midnight, "that kep him up, " as he afterwards said, thateven more than Rebecca's arts and coaxings. 

And so--guiltless very likely--she was writhing and pushing onwardtowards what they call "a position in society, " and the servants werepointing at her as lost and ruined. So you see Molly, the housemaid, of a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his thread andlaboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, she raises herbroom and sweeps away the thread and the artificer. 

A day or two before Christmas, Becky, her husband and her son madeready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors atQueen's Crawley. Becky would have liked to leave the little bratbehind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent invitationsto the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and discontent whichRawdon manifested at her neglect of her son. "He's the finest boy inEngland, " the father said in a tone of reproach to her, "and you don'tseem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do for your spaniel. Heshan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in thenursery, and he shall go outside on the coach with me. "

"Where you go yourself because you want to smoke those filthy cigars, "replied Mrs. Rawdon. 

"I remember when you liked 'em though, " answered the husband. 

Becky laughed; she was almost always good-humoured. "That was when Iwas on my promotion, Goosey, " she said. "Take Rawdon outside with youand give him a cigar too if you like. "

Rawdon did not warm his little son for the winter's journey in thisway, but he and Briggs wrapped up the child in shawls and comforters, and he was hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the coach in the darkmorning, under the lamps of the White Horse Cellar; and with no smalldelight he watched the dawn rise and made his first journey to theplace which his father still called home. It was a journey of infinitepleasure to the boy, to whom the incidents of the road afforded endlessinterest, his father answering to him all questions connected with itand telling him who lived in the great white house to the right, andwhom the park belonged to. His mother, inside the vehicle, with hermaid and her furs, her wrappers, and her scent bottles, made such ato-do that you would have thought she never had been in a stage-coachbefore--much less, that she had been turned out of this very one tomake room for a paying passenger on a certain journey performed somehalf-score years ago. 

It was dark again when little Rawdon was wakened up to enter hisuncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it wonderingas the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks of the limesas they swept by, until they stopped, at length, before the lightwindows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmaswelcome. The hall-door was flung open--a big fire was burning in thegreat old fire-place--a carpet was down over the chequered blackflags--"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in the Ladies'Gallery, " thought Rebecca, and the next instant was kissing Lady Jane. 

She and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity; butRawdon, having been smoking, hung back rather from his sister-in-law, whose two children came up to their cousin; and, while Matilda held outher hand and kissed him, Pitt Binkie Southdown, the son and heir, stoodaloof rather and examined him as a little dog does a big dog. 

Then the kind hostess conducted her guests to the snug apartmentsblazing with cheerful fires. Then the young ladies came and knocked atMrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to beuseful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the contentsof her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though black, wereof the newest London fashion. And they told her how much the Hall waschanged for the better, and how old Lady Southdown was gone, and howPitt was taking his station in the county, as became a Crawley in fact. Then the great dinner-bell having rung, the family assembled at dinner, at which meal Rawdon Junior was placed by his aunt, the good-naturedlady of the house, Sir Pitt being uncommonly attentive to hissister-in-law at his own right hand. 

Little Rawdon exhibited a fine appetite and showed a gentlemanlikebehaviour. 

"I like to dine here, " he said to his aunt when he had completed hismeal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir Pitt, the younger son and heir was introduced, and was perched on a highchair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession of theplace and the little wine-glass prepared for her near her mother. "Ilike to dine here, " said Rawdon Minor, looking up at his relation'skind face. 

"Why?" said the good Lady Jane. 

"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home, " replied Rawdon Minor, "orelse with Briggs. " But Becky was so engaged with the Baronet, her host, pouring out a flood of compliments and delights and raptures, andadmiring young Pitt Binkie, whom she declared to be the most beautiful, intelligent, noble-looking little creature, and so like his father, that she did not hear the remarks of her own flesh and blood at theother end of the broad shining table. 

As a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, Rawdon theSecond was allowed to sit up until the hour when tea being over, and agreat gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all thedomestics of the family streamed in, and Sir Pitt read prayers. It wasthe first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard of sucha ceremonial. 

The house had been much improved even since the Baronet's brief reign, and was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming, delightful, whenshe surveyed it in his company. As for little Rawdon, who examined itwith the children for his guides, it seemed to him a perfect palace ofenchantment and wonder. There were long galleries, and ancient statebedrooms, there were pictures and old China, and armour. There werethe rooms in which Grandpapa died, and by which the children walkedwith terrified looks. "Who was Grandpapa?" he asked; and they told himhow he used to be very old, and used to be wheeled about in agarden-chair, and they showed him the garden-chair one day rotting inthe out-house in which it had lain since the old gentleman had beenwheeled away yonder to the church, of which the spire was glitteringover the park elms. 

The brothers had good occupation for several mornings in examining theimprovements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and economy. And as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could talk withouttoo much boring each other. And Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what aheavy outlay of money these improvements had occasioned, and that a manof landed and funded property was often very hard pressed for twentypounds. "There is that new lodge-gate, " said Pitt, pointing to ithumbly with the bamboo cane, "I can no more pay for it before thedividends in January than I can fly. "

"I can lend you, Pitt, till then, " Rawdon answered rather ruefully; andthey went in and looked at the restored lodge, where the family armswere just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock, for the firsttime these many long years, had tight doors, sound roofs, and wholewindows. 

CHAPTER XLV

Between Hampshire and London

Sir Pitt Crawley had done more than repair fences and restoredilapidated lodges on the Queen's Crawley estate. Like a wise man hehad set to work to rebuild the injured popularity of his house and stopup the gaps and ruins in which his name had been left by hisdisreputable and thriftless old predecessor. He was elected for theborough speedily after his father's demise; a magistrate, a member ofparliament, a county magnate and representative of an ancient family, he made it his duty to show himself before the Hampshire public, subscribed handsomely to the county charities, called assiduously uponall the county folk, and laid himself out in a word to take thatposition in Hampshire, and in the Empire afterwards, to which hethought his prodigious talents justly entitled him. Lady Jane wasinstructed to be friendly with the Fuddlestones, and the Wapshots, andthe other famous baronets, their neighbours. Their carriages mightfrequently be seen in the Queen's Crawley avenue now; they dined prettyfrequently at the Hall (where the cookery was so good that it was clearLady Jane very seldom had a hand in it), and in return Pitt and hiswife most energetically dined out in all sorts of weather and at allsorts of distances. For though Pitt did not care for joviality, beinga frigid man of poor hearth and appetite, yet he considered that to behospitable and condescending was quite incumbent on-his station, andevery time that he got a headache from too long an after-dinnersitting, he felt that he was a martyr to duty. He talked about crops, corn-laws, politics, with the best country gentlemen. He (who had beenformerly inclined to be a sad free-thinker on these points) enteredinto poaching and game preserving with ardour. He didn't hunt; hewasn't a hunting man; he was a man of books and peaceful habits; but hethought that the breed of horses must be kept up in the country, andthat the breed of foxes must therefore be looked to, and for his part, if his friend, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, liked to draw his countryand meet as of old the F. Hounds used to do at Queen's Crawley, heshould be happy to see him there, and the gentlemen of the Fuddlestonehunt. And to Lady Southdown's dismay too he became more orthodox inhis tendencies every day; gave up preaching in public and attendingmeeting-houses; went stoutly to church; called on the Bishop and allthe Clergy at Winchester; and made no objection when the VenerableArchdeacon Trumper asked for a game of whist. What pangs must havebeen those of Lady Southdown, and what an utter castaway she must havethought her son-in-law for permitting such a godless diversion! Andwhen, on the return of the family from an oratorio at Winchester, theBaronet announced to the young ladies that he should next year veryprobably take them to the "county balls, " they worshipped him for hiskindness. Lady Jane was only too obedient, and perhaps glad herself togo. The Dowager wrote off the direst descriptions of her daughter'sworldly behaviour to the authoress of the Washerwoman of FinchleyCommon at the Cape; and her house in Brighton being about this timeunoccupied, returned to that watering-place, her absence being not verymuch deplored by her children. We may suppose, too, that Rebecca, onpaying a second visit to Queen's Crawley, did not feel particularlygrieved at the absence of the lady of the medicine chest; though shewrote a Christmas letter to her Ladyship, in which she respectfullyrecalled herself to Lady Southdown's recollection, spoke with gratitudeof the delight which her Ladyship's conversation had given her on theformer visit, dilated on the kindness with which her Ladyship hadtreated her in sickness, and declared that everything at Queen'sCrawley reminded her of her absent friend. 

A great part of the altered demeanour and popularity of Sir PittCrawley might have been traced to the counsels of that astute littlelady of Curzon Street. "You remain a Baronet--you consent to be a merecountry gentleman, " she said to him, while he had been her guest inLondon. "No, Sir Pitt Crawley, I know you better. I know your talentsand your ambition. You fancy you hide them both, but you can concealneither from me. I showed Lord Steyne your pamphlet on malt. He wasfamiliar with it, and said it was in the opinion of the whole Cabinetthe most masterly thing that had appeared on the subject. The Ministryhas its eye upon you, and I know what you want. You want todistinguish yourself in Parliament; every one says you are the finestspeaker in England (for your speeches at Oxford are still remembered). You want to be Member for the County, where, with your own vote andyour borough at your back, you can command anything. And you want tobe Baron Crawley of Queen's Crawley, and will be before you die. I sawit all. I could read your heart, Sir Pitt. If I had a husband whopossessed your intellect as he does your name, I sometimes think Ishould not be unworthy of him--but--but I am your kinswoman now, " sheadded with a laugh. "Poor little penniless, I have got a littleinterest--and who knows, perhaps the mouse may be able to aid thelion. " Pitt Crawley was amazed and enraptured with her speech. "Howthat woman comprehends me!" he said. "I never could get Jane to readthree pages of the malt pamphlet. She has no idea that I havecommanding talents or secret ambition. So they remember my speaking atOxford, do they? The rascals! Now that I represent my borough and maysit for the county, they begin to recollect me! Why, Lord Steyne cutme at the levee last year; they are beginning to find out that PittCrawley is some one at last. Yes, the man was always the same whomthese people neglected: it was only the opportunity that was wanting, and I will show them now that I can speak and act as well as write. Achilles did not declare himself until they gave him the sword. I holdit now, and the world shall yet hear of Pitt Crawley. "

Therefore it was that this roguish diplomatist has grown so hospitable;that he was so civil to oratorios and hospitals; so kind to Deans andChapters; so generous in giving and accepting dinners; so uncommonlygracious to farmers on market-days; and so much interested about countybusiness; and that the Christmas at the Hall was the gayest which hadbeen known there for many a long day. 

On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the Crawleysfrom the Rectory came to dine. Rebecca was as frank and fond of Mrs. Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was affectionatelyinterested in the dear girls, and surprised at the progress which theyhad made in music since her time, and insisted upon encoring one of theduets out of the great song-books which Jim, grumbling, had been forcedto bring under his arm from the Rectory. Mrs. Bute, perforce, wasobliged to adopt a decent demeanour towards the little adventuress--ofcourse being free to discourse with her daughters afterwards about theabsurd respect with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law. But Jim, who had sat next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and oneand all of the Rector's family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fineboy. They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and thetitle there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie. 

The children were very good friends. Pitt Binkie was too little a dogfor such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being only agirl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who was neareight years old, and going into jackets very soon. He took the commandof this small party at once--the little girl and the little boyfollowing him about with great reverence at such times as hecondescended to sport with them. His happiness and pleasure in thecountry were extreme. The kitchen garden pleased him hugely, theflowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the stableswhen he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects to him. Heresisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he allowed Lady Janesometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side that he liked to sitwhen, the signal to retire to the drawing-room being given, the ladiesleft the gentlemen to their claret--by her side rather than by hismother. For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness was the fashion, calledRawdon to her one evening and stooped down and kissed him in thepresence of all the ladies. 

He looked her full in the face after the operation, trembling andturning very red, as his wont was when moved. "You never kiss me athome, Mamma, " he said, at which there was a general silence andconsternation and a by no means pleasant look in Becky's eyes. 

Rawdon was fond of his sister-in-law, for her regard for his son. LadyJane and Becky did not get on quite so well at this visit as onoccasion of the former one, when the Colonel's wife was bent uponpleasing. Those two speeches of the child struck rather a chill. Perhaps Sir Pitt was rather too attentive to her. 

But Rawdon, as became his age and size, was fonder of the society ofthe men than of the women, and never wearied of accompanying his sireto the stables, whither the Colonel retired to smoke his cigar--Jim, the Rector's son, sometimes joining his cousin in that and otheramusements. He and the Baronet's keeper were very close friends, theirmutual taste for "dawgs" bringing them much together. On one day, Mr. James, the Colonel, and Horn, the keeper, went and shot pheasants, taking little Rawdon with them. On another most blissful morning, these four gentlemen partook of the amusement of rat-hunting in a barn, than which sport Rawdon as yet had never seen anything more noble. They stopped up the ends of certain drains in the barn, into the otheropenings of which ferrets were inserted, and then stood silently aloof, with uplifted stakes in their hands, and an anxious little terrier (Mr. James's celebrated "dawg" Forceps, indeed) scarcely breathing fromexcitement, listening motionless on three legs, to the faint squeakingof the rats below. Desperately bold at last, the persecuted animalsbolted above-ground--the terrier accounted for one, the keeper foranother; Rawdon, from flurry and excitement, missed his rat, but on theother hand he half-murdered a ferret. 

But the greatest day of all was that on which Sir HuddlestoneFuddlestone's hounds met upon the lawn at Queen's Crawley. 

That was a famous sight for little Rawdon. At half-past ten, TomMoody, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's huntsman, was seen trotting up theavenue, followed by the noble pack of hounds in a compact body--therear being brought up by the two whips clad in stained scarletfrocks--light hard-featured lads on well-bred lean horses, possessingmarvellous dexterity in casting the points of their long heavy whips atthe thinnest part of any dog's skin who dares to straggle from the mainbody, or to take the slightest notice, or even so much as wink, at thehares and rabbits starting under their noses. 

Next comes boy Jack, Tom Moody's son, who weighs five stone, measureseight-and-forty inches, and will never be any bigger. He is perched ona large raw-boned hunter, half-covered by a capacious saddle. Thisanimal is Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's favourite horse the Nob. Otherhorses, ridden by other small boys, arrive from time to time, awaitingtheir masters, who will come cantering on anon. 

Tom Moody rides up to the door of the Hall, where he is welcomed by thebutler, who offers him drink, which he declines. He and his pack thendraw off into a sheltered corner of the lawn, where the dogs roll onthe grass, and play or growl angrily at one another, ever and anonbreaking out into furious fight speedily to be quelled by Tom's voice, unmatched at rating, or the snaky thongs of the whips. 

Many young gentlemen canter up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed tothe knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay theirrespects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divestthemselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their hunters, and warm their blood by a preliminary gallop round the lawn. Then theycollect round the pack in the corner and talk with Tom Moody of pastsport, and the merits of Sniveller and Diamond, and of the state of thecountry and of the wretched breed of foxes. 

Sir Huddlestone presently appears mounted on a clever cob and rides upto the Hall, where he enters and does the civil thing by the ladies, after which, being a man of few words, he proceeds to business. Thehounds are drawn up to the hall-door, and little Rawdon descendsamongst them, excited yet half-alarmed by the caresses which theybestow upon him, at the thumps he receives from their waving tails, andat their canine bickerings, scarcely restrained by Tom Moody's tongueand lash. 

Meanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the Nob:"Let's try Sowster's Spinney, Tom, " says the Baronet, "Farmer Mangletells me there are two foxes in it. " Tom blows his horn and trots off, followed by the pack, by the whips, by the young gents from Winchester, by the farmers of the neighbourhood, by the labourers of the parish onfoot, with whom the day is a great holiday, Sir Huddlestone bringing upthe rear with Colonel Crawley, and the whole cortege disappears downthe avenue. 

The Reverend Bute Crawley (who has been too modest to appear at thepublic meet before his nephew's windows), whom Tom Moody remembersforty years back a slender divine riding the wildest horses, jumpingthe widest brooks, and larking over the newest gates in the country--hisReverence, we say, happens to trot out from the Rectory Lane on hispowerful black horse just as Sir Huddlestone passes; he joins theworthy Baronet. Hounds and horsemen disappear, and little Rawdonremains on the doorsteps, wondering and happy. 

During the progress of this memorable holiday, little Rawdon, if he hadgot no special liking for his uncle, always awful and cold and lockedup in his study, plunged in justice-business and surrounded by bailiffsand farmers--has gained the good graces of his married and maidenaunts, of the two little folks of the Hall, and of Jim of the Rectory, whom Sir Pitt is encouraging to pay his addresses to one of the youngladies, with an understanding doubtless that he shall be presented tothe living when it shall be vacated by his fox-hunting old sire. Jimhas given up that sport himself and confines himself to a littleharmless duck- or snipe-shooting, or a little quiet trifling with therats during the Christmas holidays, after which he will return to theUniversity and try and not be plucked, once more. He has alreadyeschewed green coats, red neckcloths, and other worldly ornaments, andis preparing himself for a change in his condition. In this cheap andthrifty way Sir Pitt tries to pay off his debt to his family. 

Also before this merry Christmas was over, the Baronet had screwed upcourage enough to give his brother another draft on his bankers, andfor no less a sum than a hundred pounds, an act which caused Sir Pittcruel pangs at first, but which made him glow afterwards to thinkhimself one of the most generous of men. Rawdon and his son went awaywith the utmost heaviness of heart. Becky and the ladies parted withsome alacrity, however, and our friend returned to London to commencethose avocations with which we find her occupied when this chapterbegins. Under her care the Crawley House in Great Gaunt Street wasquite rejuvenescent and ready for the reception of Sir Pitt and hisfamily, when the Baronet came to London to attend his duties inParliament and to assume that position in the country for which hisvast genius fitted him. 

For the first session, this profound dissembler hid his projects andnever opened his lips but to present a petition from Mudbury. But heattended assiduously in his place and learned thoroughly the routineand business of the House. At home he gave himself up to the perusalof Blue Books, to the alarm and wonder of Lady Jane, who thought he waskilling himself by late hours and intense application. And he madeacquaintance with the ministers, and the chiefs of his party, determining to rank as one of them before many years were over. 

Lady Jane's sweetness and kindness had inspired Rebecca with such acontempt for her ladyship as the little woman found no small difficultyin concealing. That sort of goodness and simplicity which Lady Janepossessed annoyed our friend Becky, and it was impossible for her attimes not to show, or to let the other divine, her scorn. Her presence, too, rendered Lady Jane uneasy. Her husband talked constantly withBecky. Signs of intelligence seemed to pass between them, and Pittspoke with her on subjects on which he never thought of discoursingwith Lady Jane. The latter did not understand them, to be sure, but itwas mortifying to remain silent; still more mortifying to know that youhad nothing to say, and hear that little audacious Mrs. Rawdon dashingon from subject to subject, with a word for every man, and a jokealways pat; and to sit in one's own house alone, by the fireside, andwatching all the men round your rival. 

In the country, when Lady Jane was telling stories to the children, whoclustered about her knees (little Rawdon into the bargain, who was veryfond of her), and Becky came into the room, sneering with greenscornful eyes, poor Lady Jane grew silent under those baleful glances. Her simple little fancies shrank away tremulously, as fairies in thestory-books, before a superior bad angel. She could not go on, although Rebecca, with the smallest inflection of sarcasm in her voice, besought her to continue that charming story. And on her side gentlethoughts and simple pleasures were odious to Mrs. Becky; they discordedwith her; she hated people for liking them; she spurned children andchildren-lovers. "I have no taste for bread and butter, " she wouldsay, when caricaturing Lady Jane and her ways to my Lord Steyne. 

"No more has a certain person for holy water, " his lordship repliedwith a bow and a grin and a great jarring laugh afterwards. 

So these two ladies did not see much of each other except upon thoseoccasions when the younger brother's wife, having an object to gainfrom the other, frequented her. They my-loved and my-deared each otherassiduously, but kept apart generally, whereas Sir Pitt, in the midstof his multiplied avocations, found daily time to see his sister-in-law. 

On the occasion of his first Speaker's dinner, Sir Pitt took theopportunity of appearing before his sister-in-law in his uniform--thatold diplomatic suit which he had worn when attache to the Pumpernickellegation. 

Becky complimented him upon that dress and admired him almost as muchas his own wife and children, to whom he displayed himself before heset out. She said that it was only the thoroughbred gentleman whocould wear the Court suit with advantage: it was only your men ofancient race whom the culotte courte became. Pitt looked down withcomplacency at his legs, which had not, in truth, much more symmetry orswell than the lean Court sword which dangled by his side--looked downat his legs, and thought in his heart that he was killing. 

When he was gone, Mrs. Becky made a caricature of his figure, which sheshowed to Lord Steyne when he arrived. His lordship carried off thesketch, delighted with the accuracy of the resemblance. He had doneSir Pitt Crawley the honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house and hadbeen most gracious to the new Baronet and member. Pitt was struck tooby the deference with which the great Peer treated his sister-in-law, by her ease and sprightliness in the conversation, and by the delightwith which the other men of the party listened to her talk. Lord Steynemade no doubt but that the Baronet had only commenced his career inpublic life, and expected rather anxiously to hear him as an orator; asthey were neighbours (for Great Gaunt Street leads into Gaunt Square, whereof Gaunt House, as everybody knows, forms one side) my lord hopedthat as soon as Lady Steyne arrived in London she would have the honourof making the acquaintance of Lady Crawley. He left a card upon hisneighbour in the course of a day or two, having never thought fit tonotice his predecessor, though they had lived near each other for neara century past. 

In the midst of these intrigues and fine parties and wise and brilliantpersonages Rawdon felt himself more and more isolated every day. Hewas allowed to go to the club more; to dine abroad with bachelorfriends; to come and go when he liked, without any questions beingasked. And he and Rawdon the younger many a time would walk to GauntStreet and sit with the lady and the children there while Sir Pitt wascloseted with Rebecca, on his way to the House, or on his return fromit. 

The ex-Colonel would sit for hours in his brother's house very silent, and thinking and doing as little as possible. He was glad to beemployed of an errand; to go and make inquiries about a horse or aservant, or to carve the roast mutton for the dinner of the children. He was beat and cowed into laziness and submission. Delilah hadimprisoned him and cut his hair off, too. The bold and reckless youngblood of ten-years back was subjugated and was turned into a torpid, submissive, middle-aged, stout gentleman. 

And poor Lady Jane was aware that Rebecca had captivated her husband, although she and Mrs. Rawdon my-deared and my-loved each other everyday they met. 

CHAPTER XLVI

Struggles and Trials

Our friends at Brompton were meanwhile passing their Christmas aftertheir fashion and in a manner by no means too cheerful. 

Out of the hundred pounds a year, which was about the amount of herincome, the Widow Osborne had been in the habit of giving up nearlythree-fourths to her father and mother, for the expenses of herself andher little boy. With #120 more, supplied by Jos, this family of fourpeople, attended by a single Irish servant who also did for Clapp andhis wife, might manage to live in decent comfort through the year, andhold up their heads yet, and be able to give a friend a dish of teastill, after the storms and disappointments of their early life. Sedleystill maintained his ascendency over the family of Mr. Clapp, hisex-clerk. Clapp remembered the time when, sitting on the edge of thechair, he tossed off a bumper to the health of "Mrs. S--, Miss Emmy, and Mr. Joseph in India, " at the merchant's rich table in RussellSquare. Time magnified the splendour of those recollections in thehonest clerk's bosom. Whenever he came up from the kitchen-parlour tothe drawing-room and partook of tea or gin-and-water with Mr. Sedley, he would say, "This was not what you was accustomed to once, sir, " andas gravely and reverentially drink the health of the ladies as he haddone in the days of their utmost prosperity. He thought Miss 'Melia'splaying the divinest music ever performed, and her the finest lady. Henever would sit down before Sedley at the club even, nor would he havethat gentleman's character abused by any member of the society. He hadseen the first men in London shaking hands with Mr. S--; he said, "He'dknown him in times when Rothschild might be seen on 'Change with himany day, and he owed him personally everythink. "

Clapp, with the best of characters and handwritings, had been able verysoon after his master's disaster to find other employment for himself. "Such a little fish as me can swim in any bucket, " he used to remark, and a member of the house from which old Sedley had seceded was veryglad to make use of Mr. Clapp's services and to reward them with acomfortable salary. In fine, all Sedley's wealthy friends had droppedoff one by one, and this poor ex-dependent still remained faithfullyattached to him. 

Out of the small residue of her income which Amelia kept back forherself, the widow had need of all the thrift and care possible inorder to enable her to keep her darling boy dressed in such a manner asbecame George Osborne's son, and to defray the expenses of the littleschool to which, after much misgiving and reluctance and many secretpangs and fears on her own part, she had been induced to send the lad. She had sat up of nights conning lessons and spelling over crabbedgrammars and geography books in order to teach them to Georgy. She hadworked even at the Latin accidence, fondly hoping that she might becapable of instructing him in that language. To part with him all day, to send him out to the mercy of a schoolmaster's cane and hisschoolfellows' roughness, was almost like weaning him over again tothat weak mother, so tremulous and full of sensibility. He, for hispart, rushed off to the school with the utmost happiness. He waslonging for the change. That childish gladness wounded his mother, whowas herself so grieved to part with him. She would rather have had himmore sorry, she thought, and then was deeply repentant within herselffor daring to be so selfish as to wish her own son to be unhappy. 

Georgy made great progress in the school, which was kept by a friend ofhis mother's constant admirer, the Rev. Mr. Binny. He brought homenumberless prizes and testimonials of ability. He told his mothercountless stories every night about his school-companions: and what afine fellow Lyons was, and what a sneak Sniffin was, and how Steel'sfather actually supplied the meat for the establishment, whereasGolding's mother came in a carriage to fetch him every Saturday, andhow Neat had straps to his trowsers--might he have straps?--and howBull Major was so strong (though only in Eutropius) that it wasbelieved he could lick the Usher, Mr. Ward, himself. So Amelia learnedto know every one of the boys in that school as well as Georgy himself, and of nights she used to help him in his exercises and puzzle herlittle head over his lessons as eagerly as if she was herself going inthe morning into the presence of the master. Once, after a certaincombat with Master Smith, George came home to his mother with a blackeye, and bragged prodigiously to his parent and his delighted oldgrandfather about his valour in the fight, in which, if the truth wasknown he did not behave with particular heroism, and in which hedecidedly had the worst. But Amelia has never forgiven that Smith tothis day, though he is now a peaceful apothecary near Leicester Square. 

In these quiet labours and harmless cares the gentle widow's life waspassing away, a silver hair or two marking the progress of time on herhead and a line deepening ever so little on her fair forehead. Sheused to smile at these marks of time. "What matters it, " she asked, "For an old woman like me?" All she hoped for was to live to see herson great, famous, and glorious, as he deserved to be. She kept hiscopy-books, his drawings, and compositions, and showed them about inher little circle as if they were miracles of genius. She confidedsome of these specimens to Miss Dobbin, to show them to Miss Osborne, George's aunt, to show them to Mr. Osborne himself--to make that oldman repent of his cruelty and ill feeling towards him who was gone. All her husband's faults and foibles she had buried in the grave withhim: she only remembered the lover, who had married her at allsacrifices, the noble husband, so brave and beautiful, in whose armsshe had hung on the morning when he had gone away to fight, and diegloriously for his king. From heaven the hero must be smiling down uponthat paragon of a boy whom he had left to comfort and console her. Wehave seen how one of George's grandfathers (Mr. Osborne), in his easychair in Russell Square, daily grew more violent and moody, and how hisdaughter, with her fine carriage, and her fine horses, and her name onhalf the public charity-lists of the town, was a lonely, miserable, persecuted old maid. She thought again and again of the beautifullittle boy, her brother's son, whom she had seen. She longed to beallowed to drive in the fine carriage to the house in which he lived, and she used to look out day after day as she took her solitary drivein the park, in hopes that she might see him. Her sister, the banker'slady, occasionally condescended to pay her old home and companion avisit in Russell Square. She brought a couple of sickly childrenattended by a prim nurse, and in a faint genteel giggling tone cackledto her sister about her fine acquaintance, and how her little Frederickwas the image of Lord Claud Lollypop and her sweet Maria had beennoticed by the Baroness as they were driving in their donkey-chaise atRoehampton. She urged her to make her papa do something for thedarlings. Frederick she had determined should go into the Guards; andif they made an elder son of him (and Mr. Bullock was positivelyruining and pinching himself to death to buy land), how was the darlinggirl to be provided for? "I expect YOU, dear, " Mrs. Bullock would say, "for of course my share of our Papa's property must go to the head ofthe house, you know. Dear Rhoda McMull will disengage the whole of theCastletoddy property as soon as poor dear Lord Castletoddy dies, who isquite epileptic; and little Macduff McMull will be ViscountCastletoddy. Both the Mr. Bludyers of Mincing Lane have settled theirfortunes on Fanny Bludyer's little boy. My darling Frederick mustpositively be an eldest son; and--and do ask Papa to bring us back hisaccount in Lombard Street, will you, dear? It doesn't look well, hisgoing to Stumpy and Rowdy's. " After which kind of speeches, in whichfashion and the main chance were blended together, and after a kiss, which was like the contact of an oyster--Mrs. Frederick Bullock wouldgather her starched nurslings and simper back into her carriage. 

Every visit which this leader of ton paid to her family was moreunlucky for her. Her father paid more money into Stumpy and Rowdy's. Her patronage became more and more insufferable. The poor widow in thelittle cottage at Brompton, guarding her treasure there, little knewhow eagerly some people coveted it. 

On that night when Jane Osborne had told her father that she had seenhis grandson, the old man had made her no reply, but he had shown noanger--and had bade her good-night on going himself to his room inrather a kindly voice. And he must have meditated on what she said andhave made some inquiries of the Dobbin family regarding her visit, fora fortnight after it took place, he asked her where was her littleFrench watch and chain she used to wear?

"I bought it with my money, sir, " she said in a great fright. 

"Go and order another like it, or a better if you can get it, " said theold gentleman and lapsed again into silence. 

Of late the Misses Dobbin more than once repeated their entreaties toAmelia, to allow George to visit them. His aunt had shown herinclination; perhaps his grandfather himself, they hinted, might bedisposed to be reconciled to him. Surely, Amelia could not refuse suchadvantageous chances for the boy. Nor could she, but she acceded totheir overtures with a very heavy and suspicious heart, was alwaysuneasy during the child's absence from her, and welcomed him back as ifhe was rescued out of some danger. He brought back money and toys, atwhich the widow looked with alarm and jealousy; she asked him always ifhe had seen any gentleman--"Only old Sir William, who drove him aboutin the four-wheeled chaise, and Mr. Dobbin, who arrived on thebeautiful bay horse in the afternoon--in the green coat and pinkneck-cloth, with the gold-headed whip, who promised to show him theTower of London and take him out with the Surrey hounds. " At last, hesaid, "There was an old gentleman, with thick eyebrows, and a broadhat, and large chain and seals. " He came one day as the coachman waslunging Georgy round the lawn on the gray pony. "He looked at me verymuch. He shook very much. I said 'My name is Norval' after dinner. My aunt began to cry. She is always crying. " Such was George's reporton that night. 

Then Amelia knew that the boy had seen his grandfather; and looked outfeverishly for a proposal which she was sure would follow, and whichcame, in fact, in a few days afterwards. Mr. Osborne formally offeredto take the boy and make him heir to the fortune which he had intendedthat his father should inherit. He would make Mrs. George Osborne anallowance, such as to assure her a decent competency. If Mrs. GeorgeOsborne proposed to marry again, as Mr. O. Heard was her intention, hewould not withdraw that allowance. But it must be understood that thechild would live entirely with his grandfather in Russell Square, or atwhatever other place Mr. O. Should select, and that he would beoccasionally permitted to see Mrs. George Osborne at her own residence. This message was brought or read to her in a letter one day, when hermother was from home and her father absent as usual in the City. 

She was never seen angry but twice or thrice in her life, and it was inone of these moods that Mr. Osborne's attorney had the fortune tobehold her. She rose up trembling and flushing very much as soon as, after reading the letter, Mr. Poe handed it to her, and she tore thepaper into a hundred fragments, which she trod on. "I marry again! Itake money to part from my child! Who dares insult me by proposingsuch a thing? Tell Mr. Osborne it is a cowardly letter, sir--a cowardlyletter--I will not answer it. I wish you good morning, sir--and shebowed me out of the room like a tragedy Queen, " said the lawyer whotold the story. 

Her parents never remarked her agitation on that day, and she nevertold them of the interview. They had their own affairs to interestthem, affairs which deeply interested this innocent and unconsciouslady. The old gentleman, her father, was always dabbling inspeculation. We have seen how the wine company and the coal company hadfailed him. But, prowling about the City always eagerly and restlesslystill, he lighted upon some other scheme, of which he thought so wellthat he embarked in it in spite of the remonstrances of Mr. Clapp, towhom indeed he never dared to tell how far he had engaged himself init. And as it was always Mr. Sedley's maxim not to talk about moneymatters before women, they had no inkling of the misfortunes that werein store for them until the unhappy old gentleman was forced to makegradual confessions. 

The bills of the little household, which had been settled weekly, firstfell into arrear. The remittances had not arrived from India, Mr. Sedley told his wife with a disturbed face. As she had paid her billsvery regularly hitherto, one or two of the tradesmen to whom the poorlady was obliged to go round asking for time were very angry at a delayto which they were perfectly used from more irregular customers. Emmy's contribution, paid over cheerfully without any questions, keptthe little company in half-rations however. And the first six monthspassed away pretty easily, old Sedley still keeping up with the notionthat his shares must rise and that all would be well. 

No sixty pounds, however, came to help the household at the end of thehalf year, and it fell deeper and deeper into trouble--Mrs. Sedley, whowas growing infirm and was much shaken, remained silent or wept a greatdeal with Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen. The butcher was particularlysurly, the grocer insolent: once or twice little Georgy had grumbledabout the dinners, and Amelia, who still would have been satisfied witha slice of bread for her own dinner, could not but perceive that herson was neglected and purchased little things out of her private purseto keep the boy in health. 

At last they told her, or told her such a garbled story as people indifficulties tell. One day, her own money having been received, andAmelia about to pay it over, she, who had kept an account of the moneysexpended by her, proposed to keep a certain portion back out of herdividend, having contracted engagements for a new suit for Georgy. 

Then it came out that Jos's remittances were not paid, that the housewas in difficulties, which Amelia ought to have seen before, her mothersaid, but she cared for nothing or nobody except Georgy. At this shepassed all her money across the table, without a word, to her mother, and returned to her room to cry her eyes out. She had a great access ofsensibility too that day, when obliged to go and countermand theclothes, the darling clothes on which she had set her heart forChristmas Day, and the cut and fashion of which she had arranged inmany conversations with a small milliner, her friend. 

Hardest of all, she had to break the matter to Georgy, who made a loudoutcry. Everybody had new clothes at Christmas. The others wouldlaugh at him. He would have new clothes. She had promised them tohim. The poor widow had only kisses to give him. She darned the oldsuit in tears. She cast about among her little ornaments to see if shecould sell anything to procure the desired novelties. There was herIndia shawl that Dobbin had sent her. She remembered in former daysgoing with her mother to a fine India shop on Ludgate Hill, where theladies had all sorts of dealings and bargains in these articles. Hercheeks flushed and her eyes shone with pleasure as she thought of thisresource, and she kissed away George to school in the morning, smilingbrightly after him. The boy felt that there was good news in her look. 

Packing up her shawl in a handkerchief (another of the gifts of thegood Major), she hid them under her cloak and walked flushed and eagerall the way to Ludgate Hill, tripping along by the park wall andrunning over the crossings, so that many a man turned as she hurried byhim and looked after her rosy pretty face. She calculated how sheshould spend the proceeds of her shawl--how, besides the clothes, shewould buy the books that he longed for, and pay his half-year'sschooling; and how she would buy a cloak for her father instead of thatold great-coat which he wore. She was not mistaken as to the value ofthe Major's gift. It was a very fine and beautiful web, and themerchant made a very good bargain when he gave her twenty guineas forher shawl. 

She ran on amazed and flurried with her riches to Darton's shop, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and there purchased the Parents' Assistant and theSandford and Merton Georgy longed for, and got into the coach therewith her parcel, and went home exulting. And she pleased herself bywriting in the fly-leaf in her neatest little hand, "George Osborne, AChristmas gift from his affectionate mother. " The books are extant tothis day, with the fair delicate superscription. 

She was going from her own room with the books in her hand to placethem on George's table, where he might find them on his return fromschool, when in the passage, she and her mother met. The gilt bindingsof the seven handsome little volumes caught the old lady's eye. 

"What are those?" she said. 

"Some books for Georgy, " Amelia replied--"I--I promised them to him atChristmas. "

"Books!" cried the elder lady indignantly, "Books, when the whole housewants bread! Books, when to keep you and your son in luxury, and yourdear father out of gaol, I've sold every trinket I had, the India shawlfrom my back even down to the very spoons, that our tradesmen mightn'tinsult us, and that Mr. Clapp, which indeed he is justly entitled, being not a hard landlord, and a civil man, and a father, might havehis rent. Oh, Amelia! you break my heart with your books and that boyof yours, whom you are ruining, though part with him you will not. Oh, Amelia, may God send you a more dutiful child than I have had! There'sJos, deserts his father in his old age; and there's George, who mightbe provided for, and who might be rich, going to school like a lord, with a gold watch and chain round his neck--while my dear, dear old manis without a sh--shilling. " Hysteric sobs and cries ended Mrs. Sedley'sspeech--it echoed through every room in the small house, whereof theother female inmates heard every word of the colloquy. 

"Oh, Mother, Mother!" cried poor Amelia in reply. "You told menothing--I--I promised him the books. I--I only sold my shawl thismorning. Take the money--take everything"--and with quivering handsshe took out her silver, and her sovereigns--her precious goldensovereigns, which she thrust into the hands of her mother, whence theyoverflowed and tumbled, rolling down the stairs. 

And then she went into her room, and sank down in despair and uttermisery. She saw it all now. Her selfishness was sacrificing the boy. But for her he might have wealth, station, education, and his father'splace, which the elder George had forfeited for her sake. She had butto speak the words, and her father was restored to competency and theboy raised to fortune. Oh, what a conviction it was to that tender andstricken heart!

CHAPTER XLVII

Gaunt House

All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in GauntSquare, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads, whither we firstconducted Rebecca, in the time of the departed Sir Pitt Crawley. Peering over the railings and through the black trees into the gardenof the Square, you see a few miserable governesses with wan-facedpupils wandering round and round it, and round the dreary grass-plot inthe centre of which rises the statue of Lord Gaunt, who fought atMinden, in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited like a RomanEmperor. Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the Square. Theremaining three sides are composed of mansions that have passed awayinto dowagerism--tall, dark houses, with window-frames of stone, orpicked out of a lighter red. Little light seems to be behind thoselean, comfortless casements now, and hospitality to have passed awayfrom those doors as much as the laced lacqueys and link-boys of oldtimes, who used to put out their torches in the blank ironextinguishers that still flank the lamps over the steps. Brass plateshave penetrated into the square--Doctors, the Diddlesex Bank WesternBranch--the English and European Reunion, &c. --it has a drearylook--nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less dreary. All I have ever seenof it is the vast wall in front, with the rustic columns at the greatgate, through which an old porter peers sometimes with a fat and gloomyred face--and over the wall the garret and bedroom windows, and thechimneys, out of which there seldom comes any smoke now. For thepresent Lord Steyne lives at Naples, preferring the view of the Bay andCapri and Vesuvius to the dreary aspect of the wall in Gaunt Square. 

A few score yards down New Gaunt Street, and leading into Gaunt Mewsindeed, is a little modest back door, which you would not remark fromthat of any of the other stables. But many a little close carriage hasstopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom Eaves, who knowseverything, and who showed me the place) told me. "The Prince andPerdita have been in and out of that door, sir, " he had often told me;"Marianne Clarke has entered it with the Duke of ------. It conducts tothe famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne--one, sir, fitted up allin ivory and white satin, another in ebony and black velvet; there is alittle banqueting-room taken from Sallust's house at Pompeii, andpainted by Cosway--a little private kitchen, in which every saucepanwas silver and all the spits were gold. It was there that EgaliteOrleans roasted partridges on the night when he and the Marquis ofSteyne won a hundred thousand from a great personage at ombre. Half ofthe money went to the French Revolution, half to purchase Lord Gaunt'sMarquisate and Garter--and the remainder--" but it forms no part of ourscheme to tell what became of the remainder, for every shilling ofwhich, and a great deal more, little Tom Eaves, who knows everybody'saffairs, is ready to account. 

Besides his town palace, the Marquis had castles and palaces in variousquarters of the three kingdoms, whereof the descriptions may be foundin the road-books--Castle Strongbow, with its woods, on the Shannonshore; Gaunt Castle, in Carmarthenshire, where Richard II was takenprisoner--Gauntly Hall in Yorkshire, where I have been informed therewere two hundred silver teapots for the breakfasts of the guests of thehouse, with everything to correspond in splendour; and Stillbrook inHampshire, which was my lord's farm, an humble place of residence, ofwhich we all remember the wonderful furniture which was sold at mylord's demise by a late celebrated auctioneer. 

The Marchioness of Steyne was of the renowned and ancient family of theCaerlyons, Marquises of Camelot, who have preserved the old faith eversince the conversion of the venerable Druid, their first ancestor, andwhose pedigree goes far beyond the date of the arrival of King Brute inthese islands. Pendragon is the title of the eldest son of the house. The sons have been called Arthurs, Uthers, and Caradocs, fromimmemorial time. Their heads have fallen in many a loyal conspiracy. Elizabeth chopped off the head of the Arthur of her day, who had beenChamberlain to Philip and Mary, and carried letters between the Queenof Scots and her uncles the Guises. A cadet of the house was anofficer of the great Duke and distinguished in the famous SaintBartholomew conspiracy. During the whole of Mary's confinement, thehouse of Camelot conspired in her behalf. It was as much injured by itscharges in fitting out an armament against the Spaniards, during thetime of the Armada, as by the fines and confiscations levied on it byElizabeth for harbouring of priests, obstinate recusancy, and popishmisdoings. A recreant of James's time was momentarily perverted fromhis religion by the arguments of that great theologian, and thefortunes of the family somewhat restored by his timely weakness. Butthe Earl of Camelot, of the reign of Charles, returned to the old creedof his family, and they continued to fight for it, and ruin themselvesfor it, as long as there was a Stuart left to head or to instigate arebellion. 

Lady Mary Caerlyon was brought up at a Parisian convent; the DauphinessMarie Antoinette was her godmother. In the pride of her beauty she hadbeen married--sold, it was said--to Lord Gaunt, then at Paris, who wonvast sums from the lady's brother at some of Philip of Orleans'sbanquets. The Earl of Gaunt's famous duel with the Count de la Marche, of the Grey Musqueteers, was attributed by common report to thepretensions of that officer (who had been a page, and remained afavourite of the Queen) to the hand of the beautiful Lady MaryCaerlyon. She was married to Lord Gaunt while the Count lay ill of hiswound, and came to dwell at Gaunt House, and to figure for a short timein the splendid Court of the Prince of Wales. Fox had toasted her. Morris and Sheridan had written songs about her. Malmesbury had madeher his best bow; Walpole had pronounced her charming; Devonshire hadbeen almost jealous of her; but she was scared by the wild pleasuresand gaieties of the society into which she was flung, and after she hadborne a couple of sons, shrank away into a life of devout seclusion. No wonder that my Lord Steyne, who liked pleasure and cheerfulness, wasnot often seen after their marriage by the side of this trembling, silent, superstitious, unhappy lady. 

The before-mentioned Tom Eaves (who has no part in this history, exceptthat he knew all the great folks in London, and the stories andmysteries of each family) had further information regarding my LadySteyne, which may or may not be true. "The humiliations, " Tom used tosay, "which that woman has been made to undergo, in her own house, havebeen frightful; Lord Steyne has made her sit down to table with womenwith whom I would rather die than allow Mrs. Eaves to associate--withLady Crackenbury, with Mrs. Chippenham, with Madame de la Cruchecassee, the French secretary's wife (from every one of which ladies TomEaves--who would have sacrificed his wife for knowing them--was tooglad to get a bow or a dinner) with the REIGNING FAVOURITE in a word. And do you suppose that that woman, of that family, who are as proud asthe Bourbons, and to whom the Steynes are but lackeys, mushrooms ofyesterday (for after all, they are not of the Old Gaunts, but of aminor and doubtful branch of the house); do you suppose, I say (thereader must bear in mind that it is always Tom Eaves who speaks) thatthe Marchioness of Steyne, the haughtiest woman in England, would benddown to her husband so submissively if there were not some cause? Pooh!I tell you there are secret reasons. I tell you that, in theemigration, the Abbe de la Marche who was here and was employed in theQuiberoon business with Puisaye and Tinteniac, was the same Colonel ofMousquetaires Gris with whom Steyne fought in the year '86--that he andthe Marchioness met again--that it was after the Reverend Colonel wasshot in Brittany that Lady Steyne took to those extreme practices ofdevotion which she carries on now; for she is closeted with herdirector every day--she is at service at Spanish Place, every morning, I've watched her there--that is, I've happened to be passing there--anddepend on it, there's a mystery in her case. People are not so unhappyunless they have something to repent of, " added Tom Eaves with aknowing wag of his head; "and depend on it, that woman would not be sosubmissive as she is if the Marquis had not some sword to hold overher. "

So, if Mr. Eaves's information be correct, it is very likely that thislady, in her high station, had to submit to many a private indignityand to hide many secret griefs under a calm face. And let us, mybrethren who have not our names in the Red Book, console ourselves bythinking comfortably how miserable our betters may be, and thatDamocles, who sits on satin cushions and is served on gold plate, hasan awful sword hanging over his head in the shape of a bailiff, or anhereditary disease, or a family secret, which peeps out every now andthen from the embroidered arras in a ghastly manner, and will be sureto drop one day or the other in the right place. 

In comparing, too, the poor man's situation with that of the great, there is (always according to Mr. Eaves) another source of comfort forthe former. You who have little or no patrimony to bequeath or toinherit, may be on good terms with your father or your son, whereas theheir of a great prince, such as my Lord Steyne, must naturally be angryat being kept out of his kingdom, and eye the occupant of it with novery agreeable glances. "Take it as a rule, " this sardonic old Laveswould say, "the fathers and elder sons of all great families hate eachother. The Crown Prince is always in opposition to the crown orhankering after it. Shakespeare knew the world, my good sir, and whenhe describes Prince Hal (from whose family the Gaunts pretend to bedescended, though they are no more related to John of Gaunt than youare) trying on his father's coronet, he gives you a natural descriptionof all heirs apparent. If you were heir to a dukedom and a thousandpounds a day, do you mean to say you would not wish for possession?Pooh! And it stands to reason that every great man, having experiencedthis feeling towards his father, must be aware that his son entertainsit towards himself; and so they can't but be suspicious and hostile. 

"Then again, as to the feeling of elder towards younger sons. My dearsir, you ought to know that every elder brother looks upon the cadetsof the house as his natural enemies, who deprive him of so much readymoney which ought to be his by right. I have often heard George MacTurk, Lord Bajazet's eldest son, say that if he had his will when hecame to the title, he would do what the sultans do, and clear theestate by chopping off all his younger brothers' heads at once; and sothe case is, more or less, with them all. I tell you they are allTurks in their hearts. Pooh! sir, they know the world. " And here, haply, a great man coming up, Tom Eaves's hat would drop off his head, and he would rush forward with a bow and a grin, which showed that heknew the world too--in the Tomeavesian way, that is. And having laidout every shilling of his fortune on an annuity, Tom could afford tobear no malice to his nephews and nieces, and to have no other feelingwith regard to his betters but a constant and generous desire to dinewith them. 

Between the Marchioness and the natural and tender regard of mother forchildren, there was that cruel barrier placed of difference of faith. The very love which she might feel for her sons only served to renderthe timid and pious lady more fearful and unhappy. The gulf whichseparated them was fatal and impassable. She could not stretch herweak arms across it, or draw her children over to that side away fromwhich her belief told her there was no safety. During the youth of hissons, Lord Steyne, who was a good scholar and amateur casuist, had nobetter sport in the evening after dinner in the country than in settingthe boys' tutor, the Reverend Mr. Trail (now my Lord Bishop of Ealing)on her ladyship's director, Father Mole, over their wine, and inpitting Oxford against St. Acheul. He cried "Bravo, Latimer! Wellsaid, Loyola!" alternately; he promised Mole a bishopric if he wouldcome over, and vowed he would use all his influence to get Trail acardinal's hat if he would secede. Neither divine allowed himself tobe conquered, and though the fond mother hoped that her youngest andfavourite son would be reconciled to her church--his mother church--asad and awful disappointment awaited the devout lady--a disappointmentwhich seemed to be a judgement upon her for the sin of her marriage. 

My Lord Gaunt married, as every person who frequents the Peerage knows, the Lady Blanche Thistlewood, a daughter of the noble house ofBareacres, before mentioned in this veracious history. A wing of GauntHouse was assigned to this couple; for the head of the family chose togovern it, and while he reigned to reign supreme; his son and heir, however, living little at home, disagreeing with his wife, andborrowing upon post-obits such moneys as he required beyond the verymoderate sums which his father was disposed to allow him. The Marquisknew every shilling of his son's debts. At his lamented demise, he wasfound himself to be possessor of many of his heir's bonds, purchasedfor their benefit, and devised by his Lordship to the children of hisyounger son. 

As, to my Lord Gaunt's dismay, and the chuckling delight of his naturalenemy and father, the Lady Gaunt had no children--the Lord George Gauntwas desired to return from Vienna, where he was engaged in waltzing anddiplomacy, and to contract a matrimonial alliance with the HonourableJoan, only daughter of John Johnes, First Baron Helvellyn, and head ofthe firm of Jones, Brown, and Robinson, of Threadneedle Street, Bankers; from which union sprang several sons and daughters, whosedoings do not appertain to this story. 

The marriage at first was a happy and prosperous one. My Lord GeorgeGaunt could not only read, but write pretty correctly. He spoke Frenchwith considerable fluency; and was one of the finest waltzers inEurope. With these talents, and his interest at home, there was littledoubt that his lordship would rise to the highest dignities in hisprofession. The lady, his wife, felt that courts were her sphere, andher wealth enabled her to receive splendidly in those continental townswhither her husband's diplomatic duties led him. There was talk ofappointing him minister, and bets were laid at the Travellers' that hewould be ambassador ere long, when of a sudden, rumours arrived of thesecretary's extraordinary behaviour. At a grand diplomatic dinner givenby his chief, he had started up and declared that a pate de foie graswas poisoned. He went to a ball at the hotel of the Bavarian envoy, the Count de Springbock-Hohenlaufen, with his head shaved and dressedas a Capuchin friar. It was not a masked ball, as some folks wanted topersuade you. It was something queer, people whispered. Hisgrandfather was so. It was in the family. 

His wife and family returned to this country and took up their abode atGaunt House. Lord George gave up his post on the European continent, and was gazetted to Brazil. But people knew better; he never returnedfrom that Brazil expedition--never died there--never lived there--neverwas there at all. He was nowhere; he was gone out altogether. "Brazil, " said one gossip to another, with a grin--"Brazil is St. John's Wood. Rio de Janeiro is a cottage surrounded by four walls, andGeorge Gaunt is accredited to a keeper, who has invested him with theorder of the Strait-Waistcoat. " These are the kinds of epitaphs whichmen pass over one another in Vanity Fair. 

Twice or thrice in a week, in the earliest morning, the poor motherwent for her sins and saw the poor invalid. Sometimes he laughed at her(and his laughter was more pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes shefound the brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Viennadragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's baby's doll. Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole, her director and companion;oftener he forgot her, as he had done wife, children, love, ambition, vanity. But he remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry if hiswine-and-water was not strong enough. 

It was the mysterious taint of the blood; the poor mother had broughtit from her own ancient race. The evil had broken out once or twice inthe father's family, long before Lady Steyne's sins had begun, or herfasts and tears and penances had been offered in their expiation. Thepride of the race was struck down as the first-born of Pharaoh. Thedark mark of fate and doom was on the threshold--the tall oldthreshold surmounted by coronets and caned heraldry. 

The absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and grew on quiteunconscious that the doom was over them too. First they talked oftheir father and devised plans against his return. Then the name ofthe living dead man was less frequently in their mouth--then notmentioned at all. But the stricken old grandmother trembled to thinkthat these too were the inheritors of their father's shame as well asof his honours, and watched sickening for the day when the awfulancestral curse should come down on them. 

This dark presentiment also haunted Lord Steyne. He tried to lay thehorrid bedside ghost in Red Seas of wine and jollity, and lost sight ofit sometimes in the crowd and rout of his pleasures. But it alwayscame back to him when alone, and seemed to grow more threatening withyears. "I have taken your son, " it said, "why not you? I may shut youup in a prison some day like your son George. I may tap you on thehead to-morrow, and away go pleasure and honours, feasts and beauty, friends, flatterers, French cooks, fine horses and houses--in exchangefor a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress like George Gaunt's. " Andthen my lord would defy the ghost which threatened him, for he knew ofa remedy by which he could baulk his enemy. 

So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronetsand ciphers. The feasts there were of the grandest in London, butthere was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests whosat at my lord's table. Had he not been so great a Prince very fewpossibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of verygreat personages are looked at indulgently. "Nous regardons a deuxfois" (as the French lady said) before we condemn a person of my lord'sundoubted quality. Some notorious carpers and squeamish moralistsmight be sulky with Lord Steyne, but they were glad enough to come whenhe asked them. 

"Lord Steyne is really too bad, " Lady Slingstone said, "but everybodygoes, and of course I shall see that my girls come to no harm. " "Hislordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything in life, " said theRight Reverend Doctor Trail, thinking that the Archbishop was rathershaky, and Mrs. Trail and the young ladies would as soon have missedgoing to church as to one of his lordship's parties. "His morals arebad, " said little Lord Southdown to his sister, who meeklyexpostulated, having heard terrific legends from her mamma with respectto the doings at Gaunt House; "but hang it, he's got the best drySillery in Europe!" And as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart. --Sir Pitt thatpattern of decorum, Sir Pitt who had led off at missionary meetings--henever for one moment thought of not going too. "Where you see suchpersons as the Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of Slingstone, you maybe 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 tocommand people in our station in life. The Lord Lieutenant of aCounty, my dear, is a respectable man. Besides, George Gaunt and Iwere intimate in early life; he was my junior when we were attaches atPumpernickel together. "

In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man--everybody who wasasked, as you the reader (do not say nay) or I the writer hereof wouldgo 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'sfamily were destined to meet with an exceeding great reward, a rewardwhich, though certainly somewhat unsubstantial, the little womancoveted with greater eagerness than more positive benefits. If she didnot wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy acharacter for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world canpossess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers andhas been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that augustinterview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlaingives them a certificate of virtue. And as dubious goods or lettersare passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromaticvinegar, and then pronounced clean, many a lady, whose reputation wouldbe doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through thewholesome ordeal of the Royal presence and issues from it free from alltaint. 

It might be very well for my Lady Bareacres, my Lady Tufto, Mrs. ButeCrawley in the country, and other ladies who had come into contact withMrs. Rawdon Crawley to cry fie at the idea of the odious littleadventuress making her curtsey before the Sovereign, and to declarethat, if dear good Queen Charlotte had been alive, she never would haveadmitted such an extremely ill-regulated personage into her chastedrawing-room. But when we consider that it was the First Gentleman inEurope in whose high presence Mrs. Rawdon passed her examination, andas it were, took her degree in reputation, it surely must be flatdisloyalty to doubt any more about her virtue. I, for my part, lookback with love and awe to that Great Character in history. Ah, what ahigh and noble appreciation of Gentlewomanhood there must have been inVanity Fair, when that revered and august being was invested, by theuniversal acclaim of the refined and educated portion of this empire, with the title of Premier Gentilhomme of his Kingdom. Do you remember, dear M--, oh friend of my youth, how one blissful night five-and-twentyyears since, the "Hypocrite" being acted, Elliston being manager, Dowton and Liston performers, two boys had leave from their loyalmasters to go out from Slaughter-House School where they were educatedand to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a crowd which assembledthere to greet the king. THE KING? There he was. Beefeaters werebefore the august box; the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the PowderCloset) and other great officers of state were behind the chair onwhich he sat, HE sat--florid of face, portly of person, covered withorders, and in a rich curling head of hair--how we sang God save him!How the house rocked and shouted with that magnificent music. How theycheered, and cried, and waved handkerchiefs. Ladies wept; mothersclasped their children; some fainted with emotion. People weresuffocated in the pit, shrieks and groans rising up amidst the writhingand shouting mass there of his people who were, and indeed showedthemselves almost to be, ready to die for him. Yes, we saw him. Fatecannot deprive us of THAT. Others have seen Napoleon. Some few stillexist who have beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor Johnson, MarieAntoinette, &c. --be it our reasonable boast to our children, that wesaw George the Good, the Magnificent, the Great. 

Well, there came a happy day in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's existence whenthis angel was admitted into the paradise of a Court which she coveted, her sister-in-law acting as her godmother. On the appointed day, SirPitt and his lady, in their great family carriage (just newly built, and ready for the Baronet's assumption of the office of High Sheriff ofhis county), drove up to the little house in Curzon Street, to theedification of Raggles, who was watching from his greengrocer's shop, and saw fine plumes within, and enormous bunches of flowers in thebreasts of the new livery-coats of the footmen. 

Sir Pitt, in a glittering uniform, descended and went into CurzonStreet, his sword between his legs. Little Rawdon stood with his faceagainst the parlour window-panes, smiling and nodding with all hismight to his aunt in the carriage within; and presently Sir Pitt issuedforth from the house again, leading forth a lady with grand feathers, covered in a white shawl, and holding up daintily a train ofmagnificent brocade. She stepped into the vehicle as if she were aprincess and accustomed all her life to go to Court, smiling graciouslyon the footman at the door and on Sir Pitt, who followed her into thecarriage. 

Then Rawdon followed in his old Guards' uniform, which had grownwoefully shabby, and was much too tight. He was to have followed theprocession and waited upon his sovereign in a cab, but that hisgood-natured sister-in-law insisted that they should be a family party. The coach was large, the ladies not very big, they would hold theirtrains in their laps--finally, the four went fraternally together, andtheir carriage presently joined the line of royal equipages which wasmaking its way down Piccadilly and St. James's Street, towards the oldbrick palace where the Star of Brunswick was in waiting to receive hisnobles and gentlefolks. 

Becky felt as if she could bless the people out of the carriagewindows, so elated was she in spirit, and so strong a sense had she ofthe dignified position which she had at last attained in life. Even ourBecky had her weaknesses, and as one often sees how men pridethemselves upon excellences which others are slow to perceive: how, forinstance, Comus firmly believes that he is the greatest tragic actor inEngland; how Brown, the famous novelist, longs to be considered, not aman of genius, but a man of fashion; while Robinson, the great lawyer, does not in the least care about his reputation in Westminster Hall, but believes himself incomparable across country and at a five-barredgate--so to be, and to be thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aimin life, and she got up the genteel with amazing assiduity, readiness, and success. We have said, there were times when she believed herselfto be a fine lady and forgot that there was no money in the chest athome--duns round the gate, tradesmen to coax and wheedle--no ground towalk upon, in a word. And as she went to Court in the carriage, thefamily carriage, she adopted a demeanour so grand, self-satisfied, deliberate, and imposing that it made even Lady Jane laugh. She walkedinto the royal apartments with a toss of the head which would havebefitted an empress, and I have no doubt had she been one, she wouldhave become the character perfectly. 

We are authorized to state that Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's costume de couron the occasion of her presentation to the Sovereign was of the mostelegant and brilliant description. Some ladies we may have seen--wewho wear stars and cordons and attend the St. James's assemblies, orwe, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and down Pall Mall and peep into thecoaches as they drive up with the great folks in their feathers--someladies of fashion, I say, we may have seen, about two o'clock of theforenoon of a levee day, as the laced-jacketed band of the Life Guardsare blowing triumphal marches seated on those prancing music-stools, their cream-coloured chargers--who are by no means lovely and enticingobjects at that early period of noon. A stout countess of sixty, decolletee, painted, wrinkled with rouge up to her drooping eyelids, and diamonds twinkling in her wig, is a wholesome and edifying, but nota pleasant sight. She has the faded look of a St. James's Streetillumination, as it may be seen of an early morning, when half thelamps are out, and the others are blinking wanly, as if they were aboutto vanish like ghosts before the dawn. Such charms as those of whichwe catch glimpses while her ladyship's carriage passes should appearabroad at night alone. If even Cynthia looks haggard of an afternoon, as we may see her sometimes in the present winter season, with Phoebusstaring her out of countenance from the opposite side of the heavens, how much more can old Lady Castlemouldy keep her head up when the sunis shining full upon it through the chariot windows, and showing allthe chinks and crannies with which time has marked her face! No. Drawing-rooms should be announced for November, or the first foggy day, or the elderly sultanas of our Vanity Fair should drive up in closedlitters, descend in a covered way, and make their curtsey to theSovereign under the protection of lamplight. 

Our beloved Rebecca had no need, however, of any such a friendly haloto set off her beauty. Her complexion could bear any sunshine as yet, and her dress, though if you were to see it now, any present lady ofVanity Fair would pronounce it to be the most foolish and preposterousattire ever worn, was as handsome in her eyes and those of the public, some five-and-twenty years since, as the most brilliant costume of themost famous beauty of the present season. A score of years hence thattoo, that milliner's wonder, will have passed into the domain of theabsurd, along with all previous vanities. But we are wandering toomuch. Mrs. Rawdon's dress was pronounced to be charmante on theeventful day of her presentation. Even good little Lady Jane was forcedto acknowledge this effect, as she looked at her kinswoman, and ownedsorrowfully to herself that she was quite inferior in taste to Mrs. Becky. 

She did not know how much care, thought, and genius Mrs. Rawdon hadbestowed upon that garment. Rebecca had as good taste as any millinerin Europe, and such a clever way of doing things as Lady Jane littleunderstood. The latter quickly spied out the magnificence of thebrocade of Becky's train, and the splendour of the lace on her dress. 

The brocade was an old remnant, Becky said; and as for the lace, it wasa great bargain. She had had it these hundred years. 

"My dear Mrs. Crawley, it must have cost a little fortune, " Lady Janesaid, looking down at her own lace, which was not nearly so good; andthen examining the quality of the ancient brocade which formed thematerial of Mrs. Rawdon's Court dress, she felt inclined to say thatshe could not afford such fine clothing, but checked that speech, withan effort, as one uncharitable to her kinswoman. 

And yet, if Lady Jane had known all, I think even her kindly temperwould have failed her. The fact is, when she was putting Sir Pitt'shouse in order, Mrs. Rawdon had found the lace and the brocade in oldwardrobes, the property of the former ladies of the house, and hadquietly carried the goods home, and had suited them to her own littleperson. Briggs saw her take them, asked no questions, told no stories;but I believe quite sympathised with her on this matter, and so wouldmany another honest woman. 

And the diamonds--"Where the doose did you get the diamonds, Becky?"said her husband, admiring some jewels which he had never seen beforeand which sparkled in her ears and on her neck with brilliance andprofusion. 

Becky blushed a little and looked at him hard for a moment. PittCrawley blushed a little too, and looked out of window. The fact is, he had given her a very small portion of the brilliants; a prettydiamond clasp, which confined a pearl necklace which she wore--and theBaronet had omitted to mention the circumstance to his lady. 

Becky looked at her husband, and then at Sir Pitt, with an air of saucytriumph--as much as to say, "Shall I betray you?"

"Guess!" she said to her husband. "Why, you silly man, " she continued, "where do you suppose I got them?--all except the little clasp, which adear friend of mine gave me long ago. I hired them, to be sure. Ihired them at Mr. Polonius's, in Coventry Street. You don't supposethat all the diamonds which go to Court belong to the wearers; likethose beautiful stones which Lady Jane has, and which are muchhandsomer than any which I have, I am certain. "

"They are family jewels, " said Sir Pitt, again looking uneasy. And inthis family conversation the carriage rolled down the street, until itscargo was finally discharged at the gates of the palace where theSovereign was sitting in state. 

The diamonds, which had created Rawdon's admiration, never went back toMr. Polonius, of Coventry Street, and that gentleman never applied fortheir restoration, but they retired into a little private repository, in an old desk, which Amelia Sedley had given her years and years ago, and in which Becky kept a number of useful and, perhaps, valuablethings, about which her husband knew nothing. To know nothing, orlittle, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature ofhow many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitiousmilliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which youdaren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxingwith smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvetgown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has anynotion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas andthat Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!

Thus Rawdon knew nothing about the brilliant diamond ear-rings, or thesuperb brilliant ornament which decorated the fair bosom of his lady;but Lord Steyne, who was in his place at Court, as Lord of the PowderCloset, and one of the great dignitaries and illustrious defences ofthe throne of England, and came up with all his stars, garters, collars, and cordons, and paid particular attention to the littlewoman, knew whence the jewels came and who paid for them. 

As he bowed over her he smiled, and quoted the hackneyed and beautifullines from The Rape of the Lock about Belinda's diamonds, "which Jewsmight kiss and infidels adore. "

"But I hope your lordship is orthodox, " said the little lady with atoss of her head. And many ladies round about whispered and talked, and many gentlemen nodded and whispered, as they saw what markedattention the great nobleman was paying to the little adventuress. 

What were the circumstances of the interview between Rebecca Crawley, nee Sharp, and her Imperial Master, it does not become such a feebleand inexperienced pen as mine to attempt to relate. The dazzled eyesclose before that Magnificent Idea. Loyal respect and decency telleven the imagination not to look too keenly and audaciously about thesacred audience-chamber, but to back away rapidly, silently, andrespectfully, making profound bows out of the August Presence. 

This may be said, that in all London there was no more loyal heart thanBecky's after this interview. The name of her king was always on herlips, and he was proclaimed by her to be the most charming of men. Shewent to Colnaghi's and ordered the finest portrait of him that art hadproduced, and credit could supply. She chose that famous one in whichthe best of monarchs is represented in a frock-coat with a fur collar, and breeches and silk stockings, simpering on a sofa from under hiscurly brown wig. She had him painted in a brooch and wore it--indeedshe amused and somewhat pestered her acquaintance with her perpetualtalk about his urbanity and beauty. Who knows! Perhaps the littlewoman thought she might play the part of a Maintenon or a Pompadour. 

But the finest sport of all after her presentation was to hear her talkvirtuously. She had a few female acquaintances, not, it must be owned, of the very highest reputation in Vanity Fair. But being made anhonest woman of, so to speak, Becky would not consort any longer withthese dubious ones, and cut Lady Crackenbury when the latter nodded toher from her opera-box, and gave Mrs. Washington White the go-by in theRing. "One must, my dear, show one is somebody, " she said. "Onemustn't be seen with doubtful people. I pity Lady Crackenbury from myheart, and Mrs. Washington White may be a very good-natured person. YOU may go and dine with them, as you like your rubber. But I mustn't, and won't; and you will have the goodness to tell Smith to say I am notat home when either of them calls. "

The particulars of Becky's costume were in the newspapers--feathers, lappets, superb diamonds, and all the rest. Lady Crackenbury read theparagraph in bitterness of spirit and discoursed to her followers aboutthe airs which that woman was giving herself. Mrs. Bute Crawley andher young ladies in the country had a copy of the Morning Post fromtown, and gave a vent to their honest indignation. "If you had beensandy-haired, green-eyed, and a French rope-dancer's daughter, " Mrs. Bute said to her eldest girl (who, on the contrary, was a very swarthy, short, and snub-nosed young lady), "You might have had superb diamondsforsooth, and have been presented at Court by your cousin, the LadyJane. But you're only a gentlewoman, my poor dear child. You haveonly some of the best blood in England in your veins, and goodprinciples and piety for your portion. I, myself, the wife of aBaronet's younger brother, too, never thought of such a thing as goingto Court--nor would other people, if good Queen Charlotte had beenalive. " In this way the worthy Rectoress consoled herself, and herdaughters sighed and sat over the Peerage all night. 

A few days after the famous presentation, another great and exceedinghonour was vouchsafed to the virtuous Becky. Lady Steyne's carriagedrove up to Mr. Rawdon Crawley's door, and the footman, instead ofdriving down the front of the house, as by his tremendous knocking heappeared to be inclined to do, relented and only delivered in a coupleof cards, on which were engraven the names of the Marchioness of Steyneand the Countess of Gaunt. If these bits of pasteboard had beenbeautiful pictures, or had had a hundred yards of Malines lace rolledround them, worth twice the number of guineas, Becky could not haveregarded them with more pleasure. You may be sure they occupied aconspicuous place in the china bowl on the drawing-room table, whereBecky kept the cards of her visitors. Lord! lord! how poor Mrs. Washington White's card and Lady Crackenbury's card--which our littlefriend had been glad enough to get a few months back, and of which thesilly little creature was rather proud once--Lord! lord! I say, howsoon at the appearance of these grand court cards, did those poorlittle neglected deuces sink down to the bottom of the pack. Steyne!Bareacres, Johnes of Helvellyn! and Caerylon of Camelot! we may besure that Becky and Briggs looked out those august names in thePeerage, and followed the noble races up through all the ramificationsof the family tree. 

My Lord Steyne coming to call a couple of hours afterwards, and lookingabout him, and observing everything as was his wont, found his ladies'cards already ranged as the trumps of Becky's hand, and grinned, asthis old cynic always did at any naive display of human weakness. Becky came down to him presently; whenever the dear girl expected hislordship, her toilette was prepared, her hair in perfect order, hermouchoirs, aprons, scarfs, little morocco slippers, and other femalegimcracks arranged, and she seated in some artless and agreeableposture ready to receive him--whenever she was surprised, of course, she had to fly to her apartment to take a rapid survey of matters inthe glass, and to trip down again to wait upon the great peer. 

She found him grinning over the bowl. She was discovered, and sheblushed a little. "Thank you, Monseigneur, " she said. "You see yourladies have been here. How good of you! I couldn't come before--I wasin the kitchen making a pudding. "

"I know you were, I saw you through the area-railings as I drove up, "replied the old gentleman. 

"You see everything, " she replied. 

"A few things, but not that, my pretty lady, " he said good-naturedly. "You silly little fibster! I heard you in the room overhead, where Ihave no doubt you were putting a little rouge on--you must give someof yours to my Lady Gaunt, whose complexion is quite preposterous--andI heard the bedroom door open, and then you came downstairs. "

"Is it a crime to try and look my best when YOU come here?" answeredMrs. Rawdon plaintively, and she rubbed her cheek with her handkerchiefas if to show there was no rouge at all, only genuine blushes andmodesty in her case. About this who can tell? I know there is somerouge that won't come off on a pocket-handkerchief, and some so goodthat even tears will not disturb it. 

"Well, " said the old gentleman, twiddling round his wife's card, "youare bent on becoming a fine lady. You pester my poor old life out toget you into the world. You won't be able to hold your own there, yousilly little fool. You've got no money. "

"You will get us a place, " interposed Becky, "as quick as possible. "

"You've got no money, and you want to compete with those who have. Youpoor little earthenware pipkin, you want to swim down the stream alongwith the great copper kettles. All women are alike. Everybody isstriving for what is not worth the having! Gad! I dined with the Kingyesterday, and we had neck of mutton and turnips. A dinner of herbs isbetter than a stalled ox very often. You will go to Gaunt House. Yougive an old fellow no rest until you get there. It's not half so niceas here. You'll be bored there. I am. My wife is as gay as LadyMacbeth, and my daughters as cheerful as Regan and Goneril. I daren'tsleep in what they call my bedroom. The bed is like the baldaquin ofSt. Peter's, and the pictures frighten me. I have a little brass bedin a dressing-room, and a little hair mattress like an anchorite. I aman anchorite. Ho! ho! You'll be asked to dinner next week. And gareaux femmes, look out and hold your own! How the women will bully you!"This was a very long speech for a man of few words like my Lord Steyne;nor was it the first which he uttered for Becky's benefit on that day. 

Briggs looked up from the work-table at which she was seated in thefarther room and gave a deep sigh as she heard the great Marquis speakso lightly of her sex. 

"If you don't turn off that abominable sheep-dog, " said Lord Steyne, with a savage look over his shoulder at her, "I will have her poisoned. "

"I always give my dog dinner from my own plate, " said Rebecca, laughingmischievously; and having enjoyed for some time the discomfiture of mylord, who hated poor Briggs for interrupting his tete-a-tete with thefair Colonel's wife, Mrs. Rawdon at length had pity upon her admirer, and calling to Briggs, praised the fineness of the weather to her andbade her to take out the child for a walk. 

"I can't send her away, " Becky said presently, after a pause, and in avery sad voice. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, and sheturned away her head. 

"You owe her her wages, I suppose?" said the Peer. 

"Worse than that, " said Becky, still casting down her eyes; "I haveruined her. "

"Ruined her? Then why don't you turn her out?" the gentleman asked. 

"Men do that, " Becky answered bitterly. "Women are not so bad as you. Last year, when we were reduced to our last guinea, she gave useverything. She shall never leave me, until we are ruined utterlyourselves, which does not seem far off, or until I can pay her theutmost farthing. "

"------ it, how much is it?" said the Peer with an oath. And Becky, reflecting on the largeness of his means, mentioned not only the sumwhich she had borrowed from Miss Briggs, but one of nearly double theamount. 

This caused the Lord Steyne to break out in another brief and energeticexpression of anger, at which Rebecca held down her head the more andcried bitterly. "I could not help it. It was my only chance. I darenot tell my husband. He would kill me if I told him what I have done. I have kept it a secret from everybody but you--and you forced it fromme. Ah, what shall I do, Lord Steyne? for I am very, very unhappy!"

Lord Steyne made no reply except by beating the devil's tattoo andbiting his nails. At last he clapped his hat on his head and flung outof the room. Rebecca did not rise from her attitude of misery untilthe door slammed upon him and his carriage whirled away. Then she roseup with the queerest expression of victorious mischief glittering inher green eyes. She burst out laughing once or twice to herself, asshe sat at work, and sitting down to the piano, she rattled away atriumphant voluntary on the keys, which made the people pause under herwindow to listen to her brilliant music. 

That night, there came two notes from Gaunt House for the little woman, the one containing a card of invitation from Lord and Lady Steyne to adinner at Gaunt House next Friday, while the other enclosed a slip ofgray paper bearing Lord Steyne's signature and the address of Messrs. Jones, Brown, and Robinson, Lombard Street. 

Rawdon heard Becky laughing in the night once or twice. It was onlyher delight at going to Gaunt House and facing the ladies there, shesaid, which amused her so. But the truth was that she was occupiedwith a great number of other thoughts. Should she pay off old Briggsand give her her conge? Should she astonish Raggles by settling hisaccount? She turned over all these thoughts on her pillow, and on thenext day, when Rawdon went out to pay his morning visit to the Club, Mrs. Crawley (in a modest dress with a veil on) whipped off in ahackney-coach to the City: and being landed at Messrs. Jones andRobinson's bank, presented a document there to the authority at thedesk, who, in reply, asked her "How she would take it?"

She gently said "she would take a hundred and fifty pounds in smallnotes and the remainder in one note": and passing through St. Paul'sChurchyard stopped there and bought the handsomest black silk gown forBriggs which money could buy; and which, with a kiss and the kindestspeeches, she presented to the simple old spinster. 

Then she walked to Mr. Raggles, inquired about his childrenaffectionately, and gave him fifty pounds on account. Then she went tothe livery-man from whom she jobbed her carriages and gratified himwith a similar sum. "And I hope this will be a lesson to you, Spavin, "she said, "and that on the next drawing-room day my brother, Sir Pitt, will not be inconvenienced by being obliged to take four of us in hiscarriage to wait upon His Majesty, because my own carriage is notforthcoming. " It appears there had been a difference on the lastdrawing-room day. Hence the degradation which the Colonel had almostsuffered, of being obliged to enter the presence of his Sovereign in ahack cab. 

These arrangements concluded, Becky paid a visit upstairs to thebefore-mentioned desk, which Amelia Sedley had given her years andyears ago, and which contained a number of useful and valuable littlethings--in which private museum she placed the one note which Messrs. Jones and Robinson's cashier had given her. 

CHAPTER XLIX

In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert

When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning, LordSteyne (who took his chocolate in private and seldom disturbed thefemales of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or whenthey crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box at theopera he surveyed them in their box on the grand tier) his lordship, wesay, appeared among the ladies and the children who were assembled overthe tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of Rebecca. 

"My Lady Steyne, " he said, "I want to see the list for your dinner onFriday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for Colonel andMrs. Crawley. "

"Blanche writes them, " Lady Steyne said in a flutter. "Lady Gauntwrites them. "

"I will not write to that person, " Lady Gaunt said, a tall and statelylady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after she hadspoken. It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who hadoffended him. 

"Send the children out of the room. Go!" said he pulling at thebell-rope. The urchins, always frightened before him, retired: theirmother would have followed too. "Not you, " he said. "You stop. "

"My Lady Steyne, " he said, "once more will you have the goodness to goto the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?"

"My Lord, I will not be present at it, " Lady Gaunt said; "I will gohome. "

"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the bailiffs atBareacres very pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lendingmoney to your relations and from your own damned tragedy airs. Who areyou to give orders here? You have no money. You've got no brains. Youwere here to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired ofyou, and George's wife is the only person in the family who doesn'twish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you were. "

"I wish I were, " her Ladyship answered with tears and rage in her eyes. 

"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while my wife, whois an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, and never did wrong in herlife, has no objection to meet my young friend Mrs. Crawley. My LadySteyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best of women;that lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, madam, shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, yourmamma?"

"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow, " Lady Gauntsaid. To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his Lordshipinto a good humour. 

"My sweet Blanche, " he said, "I am a gentleman, and never lay my handupon a woman, save in the way of kindness. I only wish to correctlittle faults in your character. You women are too proud, and sadlylack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne ifhe were here. You mustn't give yourselves airs; you must be meek andhumble, my blessings. For all Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated, simple, good-humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even moreinnocent than herself. Her husband's character is not good, but it isas good as Bareacres', who has played a little and not paid a greatdeal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had and left youa pauper on my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born, but sheis not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones. "

"The money which I brought into the family, sir, " Lady George criedout--

"You purchased a contingent reversion with it, " the Marquis saiddarkly. "If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honours; yourlittle boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In themeanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, butdon't give ME any airs. As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan'tdemean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable ladyby even hinting that it requires a defence. You will be pleased toreceive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all personswhom I present in this house. This house?" He broke out with a laugh. "Who is the master of it? and what is it? This Temple of Virtue belongsto me. And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by ------ theyshall be welcome. "

After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steynetreated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared inhis household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey. Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and sheand her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and humiliatedhearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of whichcaused that innocent woman so much pleasure. 

There were families in London who would have sacrificed a year's incometo receive such an honour at the hands of those great ladies. Mrs. Frederick Bullock, for instance, would have gone on her knees from MayFair to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had been waitingin the City to raise her up and say, "Come to us next Friday"--not toone of the great crushes and grand balls of Gaunt House, whithereverybody went, but to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious, delicious entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was aprivilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed. 

Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the very highest rankin Vanity Fair. The distinguished courtesy with which Lord Steynetreated her charmed everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused theseverest critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to ownthat his Lordship's heart at least was in the right place. 

The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to their aid, inorder to repulse the common enemy. One of Lady Gaunt's carriages wentto Hill Street for her Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were inthe hands of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was said, had been seized by those inexorable Israelites. Bareacres Castle wastheirs, too, with all its costly pictures, furniture, and articles ofvertu--the magnificent Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; theLawrence portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemedas precious as works of real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph ofCanova, for which Lady Bareacres had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacressplendid then, and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless, bald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of state. Her lord, painted at the same time by Lawrence, as waving his sabre in front ofBareacres Castle, and clothed in his uniform as Colonel of theThistlewood Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a greatcoat anda Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of mornings chiefly and diningalone at clubs. He did not like to dine with Steyne now. They had runraces of pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the winner. ButSteyne had more bottom than he and had lasted him out. The Marquis wasten times a greater man now than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, andBareacres nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken down. He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to find it pleasant to meethis old comrade often. The latter, whenever he wished to be merry, used jeeringly to ask Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to seeher. "He has not been here for four months, " Lord Steyne would say. "Ican always tell by my cheque-book afterwards, when I get a visit fromBareacres. What a comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of mysons' fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!"

Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounteron this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not becomethe present historian to say much. There was his Excellency the Princeof Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with alarge military chest, on which the plaque of his order shonemagnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece roundhis neck. He was the owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. Ithink he must be descended from a sheep, " Becky whispered to LordSteyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white, with the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of avenerable bell-wether. 

There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to theAmerican Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, byway of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne, during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend, George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimateat Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a fulland particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in theDemagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, givingbiographical sketches of the principal people. He described thepersons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;the size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and winesserved; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of theplate. Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up underfifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, untilvery lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendationto the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimateterms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord. Hewas most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earlof Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession tothe dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to avery pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, "--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between meand the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I wasfain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stoutred-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he hadbetter luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans. "

The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore asmany blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he isconfronted with his sister's schoolfellows. It has been told beforethat honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life toladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess room, he waswell enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with theboldest of them. He had had his time for female friendships too, butthat was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of thosewith whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having beenfamiliar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle. The times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind ofcompany which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequentingevery day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which isknown to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation atSt. James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral ofsocieties is determined to ignore. In a word, although Colonel Crawleywas now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life tomeet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife. Allexcept her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamedand won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his firstdinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark exceptto state that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have lefthim at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by herside to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her firstappearance in polite society. 

On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her hand, and greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to LadySteyne, and their ladyships, her daughters. Their ladyships made threestately curtsies, and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to thenewcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble. 

Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing areverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master, putherself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordshiphad been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she, Becky, had learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from the days ofher childhood. The fact is that Lord Steyne had once purchased acouple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan couldnever forget her gratitude for that favour. 

The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance--to whom theColonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance: it was returnedwith severe dignity by the exalted person in question. 

"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at Brussels, ten years ago, " Becky said in the most winning manner. "I had the goodfortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, thenight before the Battle of Waterloo. And I recollect your Ladyship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting in the carriage in theporte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship'sdiamonds are safe. "

Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The famous diamondshad undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, ofcourse, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown intoa window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as Rawdontold him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and "knuckling downby Jove, " to Mrs. Crawley. "I think I needn't be afraid of THATwoman, " Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged terrified andangry looks with her daughter and retreated to a table, where she beganto look at pictures with great energy. 

When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, theconversation was carried on in the French language, and the LadyBareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther mortification, that Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with that tongue, andspoke it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met otherHungarian magnates with the army in France in 1816-17. She asked afterher friends with great interest The foreign personages thought that shewas a lady of great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess askedseverally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom they conducted todinner, who was that petite dame who spoke so well?

Finally, the procession being formed in the order described by theAmerican diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the banquetwas served, and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his fancy. 

But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of warwould come. And then indeed the little woman found herself in such asituation as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne'scaution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere. As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irishmen; so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women. When poor littleBecky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither thegreat ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched away and tookpossession of a table of drawings. When Becky followed them to thetable of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire again. Shetried to speak to one of the children (of whom she was commonly fond inpublic places), but Master George Gaunt was called away by his mamma;and the stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even LadySteyne herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless littlewoman. 

"Lord Steyne, " said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with ablush, "says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wishyou would do me the kindness to sing to me. "

"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or toyou, " said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at thepiano, began to sing. 

She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites ofLady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the lady, lingering round the piano, sat down by its side and listened until thetears rolled down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies atthe other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing andtalking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours. She was achild again--and had wandered back through a forty years' wilderness toher convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones, theorganist, the sister whom she loved best of the community, had taughtthem to her in those early happy days. She was a girl once more, andthe brief period of her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--shestarted when the jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laughfrom Lord Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety. 

He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence, and was gratefulto his wife for once. He went and spoke to her, and called her by herChristian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--"My wifesays you have been singing like an angel, " he said to Becky. Now thereare angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming intheir way. 

Whatever the previous portion of the evening had been, the rest of thatnight was a great triumph for Becky. She sang her very best, and itwas so good that every one of the men came and crowded round the piano. The women, her enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr. Paul JeffersonJones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to herLadyship and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing. 

CHAPTER L

Contains a Vulgar Incident

The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this Comic History must nowdescend from the genteel heights in which she has been soaring and havethe goodness to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley atBrompton, and describe what events are taking place there. Here, too, in this humble tenement, live care, and distrust, and dismay. Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen is grumbling in secret to her husband about therent, and urging the good fellow to rebel against his old friend andpatron and his present lodger. Mrs. Sedley has ceased to visit herlandlady in the lower regions now, and indeed is in a position topatronize Mrs. Clapp no longer. How can one be condescending to a ladyto whom one owes a matter of forty pounds, and who is perpetuallythrowing out hints for the money? The Irish maidservant has not alteredin the least in her kind and respectful behaviour; but Mrs. Sedleyfancies that she is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guiltythief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening innuendoes andhints of capture in all the girl's speeches and answers. Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman now, is declared by the soured old lady to bean unbearable and impudent little minx. Why Amelia can be so fond ofher, or have her in her room so much, or walk out with her soconstantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive. The bitterness of poverty haspoisoned the life of the once cheerful and kindly woman. She isthankless for Amelia's constant and gentle bearing towards her; carpsat her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her for hersilly pride in her child and her neglect of her parents. Georgy'shouse is not a very lively one since Uncle Jos's annuity has beenwithdrawn and the little family are almost upon famine diet. 

Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find some means ofincreasing the small pittance upon which the household is starving. Can she give lessons in anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? Shefinds that women are working hard, and better than she can, fortwopence a day. She buys a couple of begilt Bristol boards at theFancy Stationer's and paints her very best upon them--a shepherd witha red waistcoat on one, and a pink face smiling in the midst of apencil landscape--a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge, with a little dog, nicely shaded. The man of the Fancy Repository andBrompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of whom she bought the screens, vainlyhoping that he would repurchase them when ornamented by her hand) canhardly hide the sneer with which he examines these feeble works of art. He looks askance at the lady who waits in the shop, and ties up thecards again in their envelope of whitey-brown paper, and hands them tothe poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such beautiful thingsin her life, and had been quite confident that the man must give atleast two guineas for the screens. They try at other shops in theinterior of London, with faint sickening hopes. "Don't want 'em, " saysone. "Be off, " says another fiercely. Three-and-sixpence has beenspent in vain--the screens retire to Miss Clapp's bedroom, whopersists in thinking them lovely. 

She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and after longthought and labour of composition, in which the public is informed that"A Lady who has some time at her disposal, wishes to undertake theeducation of some little girls, whom she would instruct in English, inFrench, in Geography, in History, and in Music--address A. O. , at Mr. Brown's"; and she confides the card to the gentleman of the Fine ArtRepository, who consents to allow it to lie upon the counter, where itgrows dingy and fly-blown. Amelia passes the door wistfully many atime, in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news to give her, but henever beckons her in. When she goes to make little purchases, there isno news for her. Poor simple lady, tender and weak--how are you tobattle with the struggling violent world?

She grows daily more care-worn and sad, fixing upon her child alarmedeyes, whereof the little boy cannot interpret the expression. Shestarts up of a night and peeps into his room stealthily, to see that heis sleeping and not stolen away. She sleeps but little now. Aconstant thought and terror is haunting her. How she weeps and praysin the long silent nights--how she tries to hide from herself thethought which will return to her, that she ought to part with the boy, that she is the only barrier between him and prosperity. She can't, she can't. Not now, at least. Some other day. Oh! it is too hard tothink of and to bear. 

A thought comes over her which makes her blush and turn fromherself--her parents might keep the annuity--the curate would marry herand give a home to her and the boy. But George's picture and dearestmemory are there to rebuke her. Shame and love say no to thesacrifice. She shrinks from it as from something unholy, and suchthoughts never found a resting-place in that pure and gentle bosom. 

The combat, which we describe in a sentence or two, lasted for manyweeks in poor Amelia's heart, during which she had no confidante;indeed, she could never have one, as she would not allow to herself thepossibility of yielding, though she was giving way daily before theenemy with whom she had to battle. One truth after another wasmarshalling itself silently against her and keeping its ground. Povertyand misery for all, want and degradation for her parents, injustice tothe boy--one by one the outworks of the little citadel were taken, inwhich the poor soul passionately guarded her only love and treasure. 

At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a letter oftender supplication to her brother at Calcutta, imploring him not towithdraw the support which he had granted to their parents and paintingin terms of artless pathos their lonely and hapless condition. She didnot know the truth of the matter. The payment of Jos's annuity wasstill regular, but it was a money-lender in the City who was receivingit: old Sedley had sold it for a sum of money wherewith to prosecutehis bootless schemes. Emmy was calculating eagerly the time that wouldelapse before the letter would arrive and be answered. She had writtendown the date in her pocket-book of the day when she dispatched it. Toher son's guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not communicatedany of her griefs and perplexities. She had not written to him sinceshe wrote to congratulate him on his approaching marriage. She thoughtwith sickening despondency, that that friend--the only one, the one whohad felt such a regard for her--was fallen away. 

One day, when things had come to a very bad pass--when the creditorswere pressing, the mother in hysteric grief, the father in more thanusual gloom, the inmates of the family avoiding each other, eachsecretly oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion ofwrong--the father and daughter happened to be left alone together, andAmelia thought to comfort her father by telling him what she had done. She had written to Joseph--an answer must come in three or four months. He was always generous, though careless. He could not refuse, when heknew how straitened were the circumstances of his parents. 

Then the poor old gentleman revealed the whole truth to her--that hisson was still paying the annuity, which his own imprudence had flungaway. He had not dared to tell it sooner. He thought Amelia's ghastlyand terrified look, when, with a trembling, miserable voice he made theconfession, conveyed reproaches to him for his concealment. "Ah!" saidhe with quivering lips and turning away, "you despise your old fathernow!"

"Oh, papa! it is not that, " Amelia cried out, falling on his neck andkissing him many times. "You are always good and kind. You did it forthe best. It is not for the money--it is--my God! my God! have mercyupon me, and give me strength to bear this trial"; and she kissed himagain wildly and went away. 

Still the father did not know what that explanation meant, and theburst of anguish with which the poor girl left him. It was that shewas conquered. The sentence was passed. The child must go fromher--to others--to forget her. Her heart and her treasure--her joy, hope, love, worship--her God, almost! She must give him up, andthen--and then she would go to George, and they would watch over thechild and wait for him until he came to them in Heaven. 

She put on her bonnet, scarcely knowing what she did, and went out towalk in the lanes by which George used to come back from school, andwhere she was in the habit of going on his return to meet the boy. Itwas May, a half-holiday. The leaves were all coming out, the weatherwas brilliant; the boy came running to her flushed with health, singing, his bundle of school-books hanging by a thong. There he was. Both her arms were round him. No, it was impossible. They could not begoing to part. "What is the matter, Mother?" said he; "you look verypale. "

"Nothing, my child, " she said and stooped down and kissed him. 

That night Amelia made the boy read the story of Samuel to her, and howHannah, his mother, having weaned him, brought him to Eli the HighPriest to minister before the Lord. And he read the song of gratitudewhich Hannah sang, and which says, who it is who maketh poor and makethrich, and bringeth low and exalteth--how the poor shall be raised upout of the dust, and how, in his own might, no man shall be strong. Then he read how Samuel's mother made him a little coat and brought itto him from year to year when she came up to offer the yearlysacrifice. And then, in her sweet simple way, George's mother madecommentaries to the boy upon this affecting story. How Hannah, thoughshe loved her son so much, yet gave him up because of her vow. And howshe must always have thought of him as she sat at home, far away, making the little coat; and Samuel, she was sure, never forgot hismother; and how happy she must have been as the time came (and theyears pass away very quick) when she should see her boy and how goodand wise he had grown. This little sermon she spoke with a gentlesolemn voice, and dry eyes, until she came to the account of theirmeeting--then the discourse broke off suddenly, the tender heartoverflowed, and taking the boy to her breast, she rocked him in herarms and wept silently over him in a sainted agony of tears. 

Her mind being made up, the widow began to take such measures as seemedright to her for advancing the end which she proposed. One day, MissOsborne, in Russell Square (Amelia had not written the name or numberof the house for ten years--her youth, her early story came back to heras she wrote the superscription) one day Miss Osborne got a letter fromAmelia which made her blush very much and look towards her father, sitting glooming in his place at the other end of the table. 

In simple terms, Amelia told her the reasons which had induced her tochange her mind respecting her boy. Her father had met with freshmisfortunes which had entirely ruined him. Her own pittance was sosmall that it would barely enable her to support her parents and wouldnot suffice to give George the advantages which were his due. Great asher sufferings would be at parting with him she would, by God's help, endure them for the boy's sake. She knew that those to whom he wasgoing would do all in their power to make him happy. She described hisdisposition, such as she fancied it--quick and impatient of control orharshness, easily to be moved by love and kindness. In a postscript, she stipulated that she should have a written agreement, that sheshould see the child as often as she wished--she could not part withhim under any other terms. 

"What? Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?" old Osborne said, when witha tremulous eager voice Miss Osborne read him the letter. "Reg'larstarved out, hey? Ha, ha! I knew she would. " He tried to keep hisdignity and to read his paper as usual--but he could not follow it. Hechuckled and swore to himself behind the sheet. 

At last he flung it down and, scowling at his daughter, as his wontwas, went out of the room into his study adjoining, from whence hepresently returned with a key. He flung it to Miss Osborne. 

"Get the room over mine--his room that was--ready, " he said. "Yes, sir, " his daughter replied in a tremble. It was George's room. It hadnot been opened for more than ten years. Some of his clothes, papers, handkerchiefs, whips and caps, fishing-rods and sporting gear, werestill there. An Army list of 1814, with his name written on the cover;a little dictionary he was wont to use in writing; and the Bible hismother had given him, were on the mantelpiece, with a pair of spurs anda dried inkstand covered with the dust of ten years. Ah! since thatink was wet, what days and people had passed away! The writing-book, still on the table, was blotted with his hand. 

Miss Osborne was much affected when she first entered this room withthe servants under her. She sank quite pale on the little bed. "Thisis blessed news, m'am--indeed, m'am, " the housekeeper said; "and thegood old times is returning, m'am. The dear little feller, to be sure, m'am; how happy he will be! But some folks in May Fair, m'am, will owehim a grudge, m'am"; and she clicked back the bolt which held thewindow-sash and let the air into the chamber. 

"You had better send that woman some money, " Mr. Osborne said, beforehe went out. "She shan't want for nothing. Send her a hundred pound. "

"And I'll go and see her to-morrow?" Miss Osborne asked. 

"That's your look out. She don't come in here, mind. No, by ------, not for all the money in London. But she mustn't want now. So lookout, and get things right. " With which brief speeches Mr. Osborne tookleave of his daughter and went on his accustomed way into the City. 

"Here, Papa, is some money, " Amelia said that night, kissing the oldman, her father, and putting a bill for a hundred pounds into hishands. "And--and, Mamma, don't be harsh with Georgy. He--he is notgoing to stop with us long. " She could say nothing more, and walkedaway silently to her room. Let us close it upon her prayers and hersorrow. I think we had best speak little about so much love and grief. 

Miss Osborne came the next day, according to the promise contained inher note, and saw Amelia. The meeting between them was friendly. Alook and a few words from Miss Osborne showed the poor widow that, withregard to this woman at least, there need be no fear lest she shouldtake the first place in her son's affection. She was cold, sensible, not unkind. The mother had not been so well pleased, perhaps, had therival been better looking, younger, more affectionate, warmer-hearted. Miss Osborne, on the other hand, thought of old times and memories andcould not but be touched with the poor mother's pitiful situation. Shewas conquered, and laying down her arms, as it were, she humblysubmitted. That day they arranged together the preliminaries of thetreaty of capitulation. 

George was kept from school the next day, and saw his aunt. Amelialeft them alone together and went to her room. She was trying theseparation--as that poor gentle Lady Jane Grey felt the edge of the axethat was to come down and sever her slender life. Days were passed inparleys, visits, preparations. The widow broke the matter to Georgywith great caution; she looked to see him very much affected by theintelligence. He was rather elated than otherwise, and the poor womanturned sadly away. He bragged about the news that day to the boys atschool; told them how he was going to live with his grandpapa hisfather's father, not the one who comes here sometimes; and that hewould be very rich, and have a carriage, and a pony, and go to a muchfiner school, and when he was rich he would buy Leader's pencil-caseand pay the tart-woman. The boy was the image of his father, as hisfond mother thought. 

Indeed I have no heart, on account of our dear Amelia's sake, to gothrough the story of George's last days at home. 

At last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little humble packetscontaining tokens of love and remembrance were ready and disposed inthe hall long since--George was in his new suit, for which the tailorhad come previously to measure him. He had sprung up with the sun andput on the new clothes, his mother hearing him from the room close by, in which she had been lying, in speechless grief and watching. Daysbefore she had been making preparations for the end, purchasing littlestores for the boy's use, marking his books and linen, talking with himand preparing him for the change--fondly fancying that he neededpreparation. 

So that he had change, what cared he? He was longing for it. By athousand eager declarations as to what he would do, when he went tolive with his grandfather, he had shown the poor widow how little theidea of parting had cast him down. "He would come and see his mammaoften on the pony, " he said. "He would come and fetch her in thecarriage; they would drive in the park, and she should have everythingshe wanted. " The poor mother was fain to content herself with theseselfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to convince herself howsincerely her son loved her. He must love her. All children were so:a little anxious for novelty, and--no, not selfish, but self-willed. Her child must have his enjoyments and ambition in the world. Sheherself, by her own selfishness and imprudent love for him had deniedhim his just rights and pleasures hitherto. 

I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement andself-humiliation of a woman. How she owns that it is she and not theman who is guilty; how she takes all the faults on her side; how shecourts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has notcommitted and persists in shielding the real culprit! It is those whoinjure women who get the most kindness from them--they are born timidand tyrants and maltreat those who are humblest before them. 

So poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery for her son'sdeparture, and had passed many and many a long solitary hour in makingpreparations for the end. George stood by his mother, watching herarrangements without the least concern. Tears had fallen into hisboxes; passages had been scored in his favourite books; old toys, relics, treasures had been hoarded away for him, and packed withstrange neatness and care--and of all these things the boy took nonote. The child goes away smiling as the mother breaks her heart. Byheavens it is pitiful, the bootless love of women for children inVanity Fair. 

A few days are past, and the great event of Amelia's life isconsummated. No angel has intervened. The child is sacrificed andoffered up to fate, and the widow is quite alone. 

The boy comes to see her often, to be sure. He rides on a pony with acoachman behind him, to the delight of his old grandfather, Sedley, whowalks proudly down the lane by his side. She sees him, but he is nother boy any more. Why, he rides to see the boys at the little school, too, and to show off before them his new wealth and splendour. In twodays he has adopted a slightly imperious air and patronizing manner. He was born to command, his mother thinks, as his father was before him. 

It is fine weather now. Of evenings on the days when he does not come, she takes a long walk into London--yes, as far as Russell Square, andrests on the stone by the railing of the garden opposite Mr. Osborne'shouse. It is so pleasant and cool. She can look up and see thedrawing-room windows illuminated, and, at about nine o'clock, thechamber in the upper story where Georgy sleeps. She knows--he has toldher. She prays there as the light goes out, prays with an humbleheart, and walks home shrinking and silent. She is very tired when shecomes home. Perhaps she will sleep the better for that long wearywalk, and she may dream about Georgy. 

One Sunday she happened to be walking in Russell Square, at somedistance from Mr. Osborne's house (she could see it from a distancethough) when all the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and George and hisaunt came out to go to church; a little sweep asked for charity, andthe footman, who carried the books, tried to drive him away; but Georgystopped and gave him money. May God's blessing be on the boy! Emmyran round the square and, coming up to the sweep, gave him her mitetoo. All the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and she followed them untilshe came to the Foundling Church, into which she went. There she satin a place whence she could see the head of the boy under his father'stombstone. Many hundred fresh children's voices rose up there and sanghymns to the Father Beneficent, and little George's soul thrilled withdelight at the burst of glorious psalmody. His mother could not seehim for awhile, through the mist that dimmed her eyes. 

CHAPTER LI

In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader

After Becky's appearance at my Lord Steyne's private and selectparties, the claims of that estimable woman as regards fashion weresettled, and some of the very greatest and tallest doors in themetropolis were speedily opened to her--doors so great and tall thatthe beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to enter at them. Dear brethren, let us tremble before those august portals. I fancythem guarded by grooms of the chamber with flaming silver forks withwhich they prong all those who have not the right of the entree. Theysay the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the hall and takes down thenames of the great ones who are admitted to the feasts dies after alittle time. He can't survive the glare of fashion long. It scorcheshim up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that poorimprudent Semele--a giddy moth of a creature who ruined herself byventuring out of her natural atmosphere. Her myth ought to be taken toheart amongst the Tyburnians, the Belgravians--her story, and perhapsBecky's too. Ah, ladies!--ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer if Belgravia isnot a sounding brass and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal. These arevanities. Even these will pass away. And some day or other (but itwill be after our time, thank goodness) Hyde Park Gardens will be nobetter known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts of Babylon, and Belgrave Square will be as desolate as Baker Street, or Tadmor inthe wilderness. 

Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street? Whatwould not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester'sparties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vousparle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we satsoberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of thedeparted came in and took their places round the darksome board. Thepilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritualport; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap. Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not bebehindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from underbushy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce'seyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to know how hisglass went up full to his mouth and came down empty; up to the ceilingwhich was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the past dayshave all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now. Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in thewilderness. Eothen saw her there--not in Baker Street, but in the othersolitude. 

It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little ofit? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because itis transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every manwho reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg:aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen, and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy, the horse-radish as you like it--don't spare it. Another glass ofwine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let us eatour fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor. And let us makethe best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise--for these too, like all other mortal delights, were but transitory. 

The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His Highness the Princeof Peterwaradin took occasion to renew his acquaintance with ColonelCrawley, when they met on the next day at the Club, and to complimentMrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a profound salute of thehat. She and her husband were invited immediately to one of thePrince's small parties at Levant House, then occupied by His Highnessduring the temporary absence from England of its noble proprietor. Shesang after dinner to a very little comite. The Marquis of Steyne waspresent, paternally superintending the progress of his pupil. 

At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatestministers that Europe has produced--the Duc de la Jabotiere, thenAmbassador from the Most Christian King, and subsequently Minister tothat monarch. I declare I swell with pride as these august names aretranscribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant company my dearBecky is moving. She became a constant guest at the French Embassy, where no party was considered to be complete without the presence ofthe charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley. Messieurs de Truffigny (of thePerigord family) and Champignac, both attaches of the Embassy, werestraightway smitten by the charms of the fair Colonel's wife, and bothdeclared, according to the wont of their nation (for who ever yet met aFrenchman, come out of England, that has not left half a dozen familiesmiserable, and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?), both, I say, declared that they were au mieux with the charming MadameRavdonn. 

But I doubt the correctness of the assertion. Champignac was very fondof ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings, whileBecky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as forTruffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to theTravellers', where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not hadthe Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must havestarved. I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either ofthese young men as a person on whom she would bestow her specialregard. They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers, went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in athousand ways. And they talked English with adorable simplicity, andto the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would mimicone or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in theEnglish language with a gravity which never failed to tickle theMarquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by wayof winning over Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge of aletter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the person towhom it was addressed, and the composition of which amused everybodywho read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it, everybody but honest Rawdon, to whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed in thelittle house in May Fair. 

Here, before long, Becky received not only "the best" foreigners (asthe phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some ofthe best English people too. I don't mean the most virtuous, or indeedthe least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest, or the best born, but "the best, "--in a word, people about whom thereis no question--such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis, that Patron Saintof Almack's, the great Lady Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth(she was Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry), and thelike. When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her Ladyship is of theKingstreet family, see Debrett and Burke) takes up a person, he or sheis safe. There is no question about them any more. Not that my LadyFitz-Willis is any better than anybody else, being, on the contrary, afaded person, fifty-seven years of age, and neither handsome, norwealthy, nor entertaining; but it is agreed on all sides that she is ofthe "best people. " Those who go to her are of the best: and from anold grudge probably to Lady Steyne (for whose coronet her ladyship, then the youthful Georgina Frederica, daughter of the Prince of Wales'sfavourite, the Earl of Portansherry, had once tried), this great andfamous leader of the fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon Crawley;made her a most marked curtsey at the assembly over which she presided;and not only encouraged her son, St. Kitts (his lordship got his placethrough Lord Steyne's interest), to frequent Mrs. Crawley's house, butasked her to her own mansion and spoke to her twice in the most publicand condescending manner during dinner. The important fact was knownall over London that night. People who had been crying fie about Mrs. Crawley were silent. Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne'sright-hand man, went about everywhere praising her: some who hadhesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, whohad warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, nowbesought to be introduced to her. In a word, she was admitted to beamong the "best" people. Ah, my beloved readers and brethren, do notenvy poor Becky prematurely--glory like this is said to be fugitive. It is currently reported that even in the very inmost circles, they areno happier than the poor wanderers outside the zone; and Becky, whopenetrated into the very centre of fashion and saw the great George IVface to face, has owned since that there too was Vanity. 

We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As Icannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewdidea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take uponhimself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep hisopinions to himself, whatever they are. 

Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her life, when she moved among the very greatest circles of the London fashion. Her success excited, elated, and then bored her. At first nooccupation was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the latter awork of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's very narrow means)--to procure, we say, the prettiestnew dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine dinner parties, where shewas welcomed by great people; and from the fine dinner parties to fineassemblies, whither the same people came with whom she had been dining, whom she had met the night before, and would see on the morrow--theyoung men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatestglossy boots and white gloves--the elders portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy--the young ladies blonde, timid, andin pink--the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and indiamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in thenovels. They talked about each others' houses, and characters, andfamilies--just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky's formeracquaintances hated and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawningin spirit. "I wish I were out of it, " she said to herself. "I wouldrather be a parson's wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or asergeant's lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how muchgayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance before abooth at a fair. "

"You would do it very well, " said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used totell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her artless way--theyamused him. 

"Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyer--Master of the Ceremonies--whatdo you call him--the man in the large boots and the uniform, who goesround the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a militaryfigure. I recollect, " Becky continued pensively, "my father took me tosee a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child, and when we camehome, I made myself a pair of stilts and danced in the studio to thewonder of all the pupils. "

"I should have liked to see it, " said Lord Steyne. 

"I should like to do it now, " Becky continued. "How Lady Blinkey wouldopen her eyes, and Lady Grizzel Macbeth would stare! Hush! silence!there is Pasta beginning to sing. " Becky always made a point of beingconspicuously polite to the professional ladies and gentlemen whoattended at these aristocratic parties--of following them into thecorners where they sat in silence, and shaking hands with them, andsmiling in the view of all persons. She was an artist herself, as shesaid very truly; there was a frankness and humility in the manner inwhich she acknowledged her origin, which provoked, or disarmed, oramused lookers-on, as the case might be. "How cool that woman is, " saidone; "what airs of independence she assumes, where she ought to sitstill and be thankful if anybody speaks to her!" "What an honest andgood-natured soul she is!" said another. "What an artful little minx"said a third. They were all right very likely, but Becky went her ownway, and so fascinated the professional personages that they wouldleave off their sore throats in order to sing at her parties and giveher lessons for nothing. 

Yes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon Street. Manyscores of carriages, with blazing lamps, blocked up the street, to thedisgust of No. 100, who could not rest for the thunder of the knocking, and of 102, who could not sleep for envy. The gigantic footmen whoaccompanied the vehicles were too big to be contained in Becky's littlehall, and were billeted off in the neighbouring public-houses, whence, when they were wanted, call-boys summoned them from their beer. Scoresof the great dandies of London squeezed and trod on each other on thelittle stairs, laughing to find themselves there; and many spotless andsevere ladies of ton were seated in the little drawing-room, listeningto the professional singers, who were singing according to their wont, and as if they wished to blow the windows down. And the day after, there appeared among the fashionable reunions in the Morning Post aparagraph to the following effect:

"Yesterday, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a select party atdinner at their house in May Fair. Their Excellencies the Prince andPrincess of Peterwaradin, H. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador(attended by Kibob Bey, dragoman of the mission), the Marquess ofSteyne, Earl of Southdown, Sir Pitt and Lady Jane Crawley, Mr. Wagg, &c. After dinner Mrs. Crawley had an assembly which was attended bythe Duchess (Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyere, Marchioness ofCheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino, Comte de Brie, BaronSchapzuger, Chevalier Tosti, Countess of Slingstone, and Lady F. Macadam, Major-General and Lady G. Macbeth, and (2) Miss Macbeths;Viscount Paddington, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon. Sands Bedwin, BobachyBahawder, " and an &c. , which the reader may fill at his pleasurethrough a dozen close lines of small type. 

And in her commerce with the great our dear friend showed the samefrankness which distinguished her transactions with the lowly instation. On one occasion, when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was(perhaps rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the Frenchlanguage with a celebrated tenor singer of that nation, while the LadyGrizzel Macbeth looked over her shoulder scowling at the pair. 

"How very well you speak French, " Lady Grizzel said, who herself spokethe tongue in an Edinburgh accent most remarkable to hear. 

"I ought to know it, " Becky modestly said, casting down her eyes. "Itaught it in a school, and my mother was a Frenchwoman. "

Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was mollified towards thelittle woman. She deplored the fatal levelling tendencies of the age, which admitted persons of all classes into the society of theirsuperiors, but her ladyship owned that this one at least was wellbehaved and never forgot her place in life. She was a very good woman:good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious. It is not herladyship's fault that she fancies herself better than you and me. Theskirts of her ancestors' garments have been kissed for centuries; it isa thousand years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the familywere embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and councillors, when thegreat ancestor of the House became King of Scotland. 

Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before Becky, and perhapswas not disinclined to her. The younger ladies of the house of Gauntwere also compelled into submission. Once or twice they set people ather, but they failed. The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried a passageof arms with her, but was routed with great slaughter by the intrepidlittle Becky. When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting ademure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She said thewickedest things with the most simple unaffected air when in this mood, and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so thatall the world should know that she had made them. 

Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and trencher-man of myLord Steyne, was caused by the ladies to charge her; and the worthyfellow, leering at his patronesses and giving them a wink, as much asto say, "Now look out for sport, " one evening began an assault uponBecky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner. The little woman, attacked on a sudden, but never without arms, lighted up in an instant, parried and riposted with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tinglewith shame; then she returned to her soup with the most perfect calmand a quiet smile on her face. Wagg's great patron, who gave himdinners and lent him a little money sometimes, and whose election, newspaper, and other jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such asavage glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the table andburst into tears. He looked piteously at my lord, who never spoke tohim during dinner, and at the ladies, who disowned him. At last Beckyherself took compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk. Hewas not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and Fiche, my lord'sconfidential man, to whom Wagg naturally paid a good deal of court, wasinstructed to tell him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing toMrs. Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes, Milorwould put every one of his notes of hand into his lawyer's hands andsell him up without mercy. Wagg wept before Fiche and implored hisdear friend to intercede for him. He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R. C. , which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-scarumMagazine, which he conducted. He implored her good-will at partieswhere he met her. He cringed and coaxed Rawdon at the club. He wasallowed to come back to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was alwaysgood to him, always amused, never angry. 

His lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant (with a seat inparliament and at the dinner table), Mr. Wenham, was much more prudentin his behaviour and opinions than Mr. Wagg. However much he might bedisposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch oldTrue Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north ofEngland), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort ofhostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with stealthykindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow madeBecky more uneasy than other people's overt hostilities. 

How the Crawleys got the money which was spent upon the entertainmentswith which they treated the polite world was a mystery which gave riseto some conversation at the time, and probably added zest to theselittle festivities. Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gavehis brother a handsome allowance; if he did, Becky's power over theBaronet must have been extraordinary indeed, and his character greatlychanged in his advanced age. Other parties hinted that it was Becky'shabit to levy contributions on all her husband's friends: going to thisone in tears with an account that there was an execution in the house;falling on her knees to that one and declaring that the whole familymust go to gaol or commit suicide unless such and such a bill could bepaid. Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to give manyhundreds through these pathetic representations. Young Feltham, of the--th Dragoons (and son of the firm of Tiler and Feltham, hatters andarmy accoutrement makers), and whom the Crawleys introduced intofashionable life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in thepecuniary way. People declared that she got money from various simplydisposed persons, under pretence of getting them confidentialappointments under Government. Who knows what stories were or were nottold of our dear and innocent friend? Certain it is that if she had hadall the money which she was said to have begged or borrowed or stolen, she might have capitalized and been honest for life, whereas, --but thisis advancing matters. 

The truth is, that by economy and good management--by a sparing use ofready money and by paying scarcely anybody--people can manage, for atime at least, to make a great show with very little means: and it isour belief that Becky's much-talked-of parties, which were not, afterall was said, very numerous, cost this lady very little more than thewax candles which lighted the walls. Stillbrook and Queen's Crawleysupplied her with game and fruit in abundance. Lord Steyne's cellarswere at her disposal, and that excellent nobleman's famous cookspresided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's order the rarestdelicacies from their own. I protest it is quite shameful in the worldto abuse a simple creature, as people of her time abuse Becky, and Iwarn the public against believing one-tenth of the stories against her. If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt andcannot pay--if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve oftheir expenditure--why, what a howling wilderness and intolerabledwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be against hisneighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilizationwould be done away with. We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoidingone another. Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in ragsbecause we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't begiven any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendidhigh-stepping carriage horses--all the delights of life, I say, --wouldgo to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles andavoid those whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charityand mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: wemay abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascalunhanged--but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands whenwe meet. If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine with him, and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus tradeflourishes--civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses arewanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's vintage ofLafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it. 

At the time whereof we are writing, though the Great George was on thethrone and ladies wore gigots and large combs like tortoise-shellshovels in their hair, instead of the simple sleeves and lovely wreathswhich are actually in fashion, the manners of the very polite worldwere not, I take it, essentially different from those of the presentday: and their amusements pretty similar. To us, from the outside, gazing over the policeman's shoulders at the bewildering beauties asthey pass into Court or ball, they may seem beings of unearthlysplendour and in the enjoyment of an exquisite happiness by usunattainable. It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings thatwe are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and triumphs, anddisappointments, of all of which, indeed, as is the case with allpersons of merit, she had her share. 

At this time the amiable amusement of acting charades had come among usfrom France, and was considerably in vogue in this country, enablingthe many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, andthe fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their wit. My LordSteyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps believed herself endowed withboth the above qualifications, to give an entertainment at Gaunt House, which should include some of these little dramas--and we must takeleave to introduce the reader to this brilliant reunion, and, with amelancholy welcome too, for it will be among the very last of thefashionable entertainments to which it will be our fortune to conducthim. 

A portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of Gaunt House, was arranged as the charade theatre. It had been so used when GeorgeIII was king; and a picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still extant, with his hair in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape, as it wascalled, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's tragedy of thatname, performed before their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, theBishop of Osnaburgh, and Prince William Henry, then children like theactor. One or two of the old properties were drawn out of the garrets, where they had lain ever since, and furbished up anew for the presentfestivities. 

Young Bedwin Sands, then an elegant dandy and Eastern traveller, wasmanager of the revels. An Eastern traveller was somebody in thosedays, and the adventurous Bedwin, who had published his quarto andpassed some months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of nosmall importance. In his volume there were several pictures of Sandsin various oriental costumes; and he travelled about with a blackattendant of most unprepossessing appearance, just like another Briande Bois Guilbert. Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were hailed atGaunt House as very valuable acquisitions. 

He led off the first charade. A Turkish officer with an immense plumeof feathers (the Janizaries were supposed to be still in existence, andthe tarboosh had not as yet displaced the ancient and majestichead-dress of the true believers) was seen couched on a divan, andmaking believe to puff at a narghile, in which, however, for the sakeof the ladies, only a fragrant pastille was allowed to smoke. TheTurkish dignitary yawns and expresses signs of weariness and idleness. He claps his hands and Mesrour the Nubian appears, with bare arms, bangles, yataghans, and every Eastern ornament--gaunt, tall, andhideous. He makes a salaam before my lord the Aga. 

A thrill of terror and delight runs through the assembly. The ladieswhisper to one another. The black slave was given to Bedwin Sands byan Egyptian pasha in exchange for three dozen of Maraschino. He hassewn up ever so many odalisques in sacks and tilted them into the Nile. 

"Bid the slave-merchant enter, " says the Turkish voluptuary with a waveof his hand. Mesrour conducts the slave-merchant into my lord'spresence; he brings a veiled female with him. He removes the veil. Athrill of applause bursts through the house. It is Mrs. Winkworth (shewas a Miss Absolom) with the beautiful eyes and hair. She is in agorgeous oriental costume; the black braided locks are twined withinnumerable jewels; her dress is covered over with gold piastres. Theodious Mahometan expresses himself charmed by her beauty. She fallsdown on her knees and entreats him to restore her to the mountainswhere she was born, and where her Circassian lover is still deploringthe absence of his Zuleikah. No entreaties will move the obdurateHassan. He laughs at the notion of the Circassian bridegroom. Zuleikahcovers her face with her hands and drops down in an attitude of themost beautiful despair. There seems to be no hope for her, when--whenthe Kislar Aga appears. 

The Kislar Aga brings a letter from the Sultan. Hassan receives andplaces on his head the dread firman. A ghastly terror seizes him, while on the Negro's face (it is Mesrour again in another costume)appears a ghastly joy. "Mercy! mercy!" cries the Pasha: while theKislar Aga, grinning horribly, pulls out--a bow-string. 

The curtain draws just as he is going to use that awful weapon. Hassanfrom within bawls out, "First two syllables"--and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who is going to act in the charade, comes forward and compliments Mrs. Winkworth on the admirable taste and beauty of her costume. 

The second part of the charade takes place. It is still an Easternscene. Hassan, in another dress, is in an attitude by Zuleikah, who isperfectly reconciled to him. The Kislar Aga has become a peaceful blackslave. It is sunrise on the desert, and the Turks turn their headseastwards and bow to the sand. As there are no dromedaries at hand, the band facetiously plays "The Camels are coming. " An enormousEgyptian head figures in the scene. It is a musical one--and, to thesurprise of the oriental travellers, sings a comic song, composed byMr. Wagg. The Eastern voyagers go off dancing, like Papageno and theMoorish King in The Magic Flute. "Last two syllables, " roars the head. 

The last act opens. It is a Grecian tent this time. A tall andstalwart man reposes on a couch there. Above him hang his helmet andshield. There is no need for them now. Ilium is down. Iphigenia isslain. Cassandra is a prisoner in his outer halls. The king of men (itis Colonel Crawley, who, indeed, has no notion about the sack of Iliumor the conquest of Cassandra), the anax andron is asleep in his chamberat Argos. A lamp casts the broad shadow of the sleeping warriorflickering on the wall--the sword and shield of Troy glitter in itslight. The band plays the awful music of Don Juan, before the statueenters. 

Aegisthus steals in pale and on tiptoe. What is that ghastly facelooking out balefully after him from behind the arras? He raises hisdagger to strike the sleeper, who turns in his bed, and opens his broadchest as if for the blow. He cannot strike the noble slumberingchieftain. Clytemnestra glides swiftly into the room like anapparition--her arms are bare and white--her tawny hair floats down hershoulders--her face is deadly pale--and her eyes are lighted up with asmile so ghastly that people quake as they look at her. 

A tremor ran through the room. "Good God!" somebody said, "it's Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. "

Scornfully she snatches the dagger out of Aegisthus's hand and advancesto the bed. You see it shining over her head in the glimmer of thelamp, and--and the lamp goes out, with a groan, and all is dark. 

The darkness and the scene frightened people. Rebecca performed herpart so well, and with such ghastly truth, that the spectators were alldumb, until, with a burst, all the lamps of the hall blazed out again, when everybody began to shout applause. "Brava! brava!" old Steyne'sstrident voice was heard roaring over all the rest. "By--, she'd do ittoo, " he said between his teeth. The performers were called by thewhole house, which sounded with cries of "Manager! Clytemnestra!"Agamemnon could not be got to show in his classical tunic, but stood inthe background with Aegisthus and others of the performers of thelittle play. Mr. Bedwin Sands led on Zuleikah and Clytemnestra. Agreat personage insisted on being presented to the charmingClytemnestra. "Heigh ha? Run him through the body. Marry somebodyelse, hay?" was the apposite remark made by His Royal Highness. 

"Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was quite killing in the part, " said Lord Steyne. Becky laughed, gay and saucy looking, and swept the prettiest littlecurtsey ever seen. 

Servants brought in salvers covered with numerous cool dainties, andthe performers disappeared to get ready for the second charade-tableau. 

The three syllables of this charade were to be depicted in pantomime, and the performance took place in the following wise:

First syllable. Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C. B. , with a slouched hat anda staff, a great-coat, and a lantern borrowed from the stables, passedacross the stage bawling out, as if warning the inhabitants of thehour. In the lower window are seen two bagmen playing apparently atthe game of cribbage, over which they yawn much. To them enters onelooking like Boots (the Honourable G. Ringwood), which character theyoung gentleman performed to perfection, and divests them of theirlower coverings; and presently Chambermaid (the Right Honourable LordSouthdown) with two candlesticks, and a warming-pan. She ascends tothe upper apartment and warms the bed. She uses the warming-pan as aweapon wherewith she wards off the attention of the bagmen. She exits. They put on their night-caps and pull down the blinds. Boots comes outand closes the shutters of the ground-floor chamber. You hear himbolting and chaining the door within. All the lights go out. Themusic plays Dormez, dormez, chers Amours. A voice from behind thecurtain says, "First syllable. "

Second syllable. The lamps are lighted up all of a sudden. The musicplays the old air from John of Paris, Ah quel plaisir d'etre en voyage. It is the same scene. Between the first and second floors of the houserepresented, you behold a sign on which the Steyne arms are painted. All the bells are ringing all over the house. In the lower apartmentyou see a man with a long slip of paper presenting it to another, whoshakes his fists, threatens and vows that it is monstrous. "Ostler, bring round my gig, " cries another at the door. He chucks Chambermaid(the Right Honourable Lord Southdown) under the chin; she seems todeplore his absence, as Calypso did that of that other eminenttraveller Ulysses. Boots (the Honourable G. Ringwood) passes with awooden box, containing silver flagons, and cries "Pots" with suchexquisite humour and naturalness that the whole house rings withapplause, and a bouquet is thrown to him. Crack, crack, crack, go thewhips. Landlord, chambermaid, waiter rush to the door, but just assome distinguished guest is arriving, the curtains close, and theinvisible theatrical manager cries out "Second syllable. "

"I think it must be 'Hotel, '" says Captain Grigg of the Life Guards;there is a general laugh at the Captain's cleverness. He is not veryfar from the mark. 

While the third syllable is in preparation, the band begins a nauticalmedley--"All in the Downs, " "Cease Rude Boreas, " "Rule Britannia, " "Inthe Bay of Biscay O!"--some maritime event is about to take place. Aben is heard ringing as the curtain draws aside. "Now, gents, for theshore!" a voice exclaims. People take leave of each other. They pointanxiously as if towards the clouds, which are represented by a darkcurtain, and they nod their heads in fear. Lady Squeams (the RightHonourable Lord Southdown), her lap-dog, her bags, reticules, andhusband sit down, and cling hold of some ropes. It is evidently a ship. 

The Captain (Colonel Crawley, C. B. ), with a cocked hat and a telescope, comes in, holding his hat on his head, and looks out; his coat tailsfly about as if in the wind. When he leaves go of his hat to use histelescope, his hat flies off, with immense applause. It is blowingfresh. The music rises and whistles louder and louder; the mariners goacross the stage staggering, as if the ship was in severe motion. TheSteward (the Honourable G. Ringwood) passes reeling by, holding sixbasins. He puts one rapidly by Lord Squeams--Lady Squeams, giving apinch to her dog, which begins to howl piteously, puts herpocket-handkerchief to her face, and rushes away as for the cabin. Themusic rises up to the wildest pitch of stormy excitement, and the thirdsyllable is concluded. 

There was a little ballet, "Le Rossignol, " in which Montessu and Nobletused to be famous in those days, and which Mr. Wagg transferred to theEnglish stage as an opera, putting his verse, of which he was a skilfulwriter, to the pretty airs of the ballet. It was dressed in old Frenchcostume, and little Lord Southdown now appeared admirably attired inthe disguise of an old woman hobbling about the stage with a faultlesscrooked stick. 

Trills of melody were heard behind the scenes, and gurgling from asweet pasteboard cottage covered with roses and trellis work. "Philomele, Philomele, " cries the old woman, and Philomele comes out. 

More applause--it is Mrs. Rawdon Crawley in powder and patches, themost ravissante little Marquise in the world. 

She comes in laughing, humming, and frisks about the stage with all theinnocence of theatrical youth--she makes a curtsey. Mamma says "Why, child, you are always laughing and singing, " and away she goes, with--

 THE ROSE UPON MY BALCONY

 The rose upon my balcony the morning air perfuming Was leafless all the winter time and pining for the spring; You ask me why her breath is sweet and why her cheek is blooming, It is because the sun is out and birds begin to sing. 

 The nightingale, whose melody is through the greenwood ringing, Was silent when the boughs were bare and winds were blowing keen: And if, Mamma, you ask of me the reason of his singing, It is because the sun is out and all the leaves are green. 

 Thus each performs his part, Mamma, the birds have found their voices, The blowing rose a flush, Mamma, her bonny cheek to dye; And there's sunshine in my heart, Mamma, which wakens and rejoices, And so I sing and blush, Mamma, and that's the reason why. 

During the intervals of the stanzas of this ditty, the good-naturedpersonage addressed as Mamma by the singer, and whose large whiskersappeared under her cap, seemed very anxious to exhibit her maternalaffection by embracing the innocent creature who performed thedaughter's part. Every caress was received with loud acclamations oflaughter by the sympathizing audience. At its conclusion (while themusic was performing a symphony as if ever so many birds were warbling)the whole house was unanimous for an encore: and applause and bouquetswithout end were showered upon the Nightingale of the evening. LordSteyne's voice of applause was loudest of all. Becky, the nightingale, took the flowers which he threw to her and pressed them to her heartwith the air of a consummate comedian. Lord Steyne was frantic withdelight. His guests' enthusiasm harmonized with his own. Where wasthe beautiful black-eyed Houri whose appearance in the first charadehad caused such delight? She was twice as handsome as Becky, but thebrilliancy of the latter had quite eclipsed her. All voices were forher. Stephens, Caradori, Ronzi de Begnis, people compared her to oneor the other, and agreed with good reason, very likely, that had shebeen an actress none on the stage could have surpassed her. She hadreached her culmination: her voice rose trilling and bright over thestorm of applause, and soared as high and joyful as her triumph. Therewas a ball after the dramatic entertainments, and everybody pressedround Becky as the great point of attraction of the evening. The RoyalPersonage declared with an oath that she was perfection, and engagedher again and again in conversation. Little Becky's soul swelled withpride and delight at these honours; she saw fortune, fame, fashionbefore her. Lord Steyne was her slave, followed her everywhere, andscarcely spoke to any one in the room beside, and paid her the mostmarked compliments and attention. She still appeared in her Marquisecostume and danced a minuet with Monsieur de Truffigny, Monsieur Le Ducde la Jabotiere's attache; and the Duke, who had all the traditions ofthe ancient court, pronounced that Madame Crawley was worthy to havebeen a pupil of Vestris, or to have figured at Versailles. Only afeeling of dignity, the gout, and the strongest sense of duty andpersonal sacrifice prevented his Excellency from dancing with herhimself, and he declared in public that a lady who could talk and dancelike Mrs. Rawdon was fit to be ambassadress at any court in Europe. Hewas only consoled when he heard that she was half a Frenchwoman bybirth. "None but a compatriot, " his Excellency declared, "could haveperformed that majestic dance in such a way. "

Then she figured in a waltz with Monsieur de Klingenspohr, the Princeof Peterwaradin's cousin and attache. The delighted Prince, havingless retenue than his French diplomatic colleague, insisted upon takinga turn with the charming creature, and twirled round the ball-room withher, scattering the diamonds out of his boot-tassels and hussar jacketuntil his Highness was fairly out of breath. Papoosh Pasha himselfwould have liked to dance with her if that amusement had been thecustom of his country. The company made a circle round her andapplauded as wildly as if she had been a Noblet or a Taglioni. Everybody was in ecstacy; and Becky too, you may be sure. She passedby Lady Stunnington with a look of scorn. She patronized Lady Gauntand her astonished and mortified sister-in-law--she ecrased all rivalcharmers. As for poor Mrs. Winkworth, and her long hair and greateyes, which had made such an effect at the commencement of theevening--where was she now? Nowhere in the race. She might tear herlong hair and cry her great eyes out, but there was not a person toheed or to deplore the discomfiture. 

The greatest triumph of all was at supper time. She was placed at thegrand exclusive table with his Royal Highness the exalted personagebefore mentioned, and the rest of the great guests. She was served ongold plate. She might have had pearls melted into her champagne if sheliked--another Cleopatra--and the potentate of Peterwaradin would havegiven half the brilliants off his jacket for a kind glance from thosedazzling eyes. Jabotiere wrote home about her to his government. Theladies at the other tables, who supped off mere silver and marked LordSteyne's constant attention to her, vowed it was a monstrousinfatuation, a gross insult to ladies of rank. If sarcasm could havekilled, Lady Stunnington would have slain her on the spot. 

Rawdon Crawley was scared at these triumphs. They seemed to separatehis wife farther than ever from him somehow. He thought with a feelingvery like pain how immeasurably she was his superior. 

When the hour of departure came, a crowd of young men followed her toher carriage, for which the people without bawled, the cry being caughtup by the link-men who were stationed outside the tall gates of GauntHouse, congratulating each person who issued from the gate and hopinghis Lordship had enjoyed this noble party. 

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's carriage, coming up to the gate after dueshouting, rattled into the illuminated court-yard and drove up to thecovered way. Rawdon put his wife into the carriage, which drove off. Mr. Wenham had proposed to him to walk home, and offered the Colonelthe refreshment of a cigar. 

They lighted their cigars by the lamp of one of the many link-boysoutside, and Rawdon walked on with his friend Wenham. Two personsseparated from the crowd and followed the two gentlemen; and when theyhad walked down Gaunt Square a few score of paces, one of the men cameup and, touching Rawdon on the shoulder, said, "Beg your pardon, Colonel, I vish to speak to you most particular. " This gentleman'sacquaintance gave a loud whistle as the latter spoke, at which signal acab came clattering up from those stationed at the gate of GauntHouse--and the aide-de-camp ran round and placed himself in front ofColonel Crawley. 

That gallant officer at once knew what had befallen him. He was in thehands of the bailiffs. He started back, falling against the man whohad first touched him. 

"We're three on us--it's no use bolting, " the man behind said. 

"It's you, Moss, is it?" said the Colonel, who appeared to know hisinterlocutor. "How much is it?"

"Only a small thing, " whispered Mr. Moss, of Cursitor Street, ChanceryLane, and assistant officer to the Sheriff of Middlesex--"One hundredand sixty-six, six and eight-pence, at the suit of Mr. Nathan. "

"Lend me a hundred, Wenham, for God's sake, " poor Rawdon said--"I'vegot seventy at home. "

"I've not got ten pounds in the world, " said poor Mr. Wenham--"Goodnight, my dear fellow. "

"Good night, " said Rawdon ruefully. And Wenham walked away--and RawdonCrawley finished his cigar as the cab drove under Temple Bar. 

CHAPTER LII

In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light

When Lord Steyne was benevolently disposed, he did nothing by halves, and his kindness towards the Crawley family did the greatest honour tohis benevolent discrimination. His lordship extended his good-will tolittle Rawdon: he pointed out to the boy's parents the necessity ofsending him to a public school, that he was of an age now whenemulation, the first principles of the Latin language, pugilisticexercises, and the society of his fellow-boys would be of the greatestbenefit to the boy. His father objected that he was not rich enough tosend the child to a good public school; his mother that Briggs was acapital mistress for him, and had brought him on (as indeed was thefact) famously in English, the Latin rudiments, and in generallearning: but all these objections disappeared before the generousperseverance of the Marquis of Steyne. His lordship was one of thegovernors of that famous old collegiate institution called theWhitefriars. It had been a Cistercian Convent in old days, when theSmithfield, which is contiguous to it, was a tournament ground. Obstinate heretics used to be brought thither convenient for burninghard by. Henry VIII, the Defender of the Faith, seized upon themonastery and its possessions and hanged and tortured some of the monkswho could not accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform. Finally, a great merchant bought the house and land adjoining, inwhich, and with the help of other wealthy endowments of land and money, he established a famous foundation hospital for old men and children. An extern school grew round the old almost monastic foundation, whichsubsists still with its middle-age costume and usages--and allCistercians pray that it may long flourish. 

Of this famous house, some of the greatest noblemen, prelates, anddignitaries in England are governors: and as the boys are verycomfortably lodged, fed, and educated, and subsequently inducted togood scholarships at the University and livings in the Church, manylittle gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession fromtheir tenderest years, and there is considerable emulation to procurenominations for the foundation. It was originally intended for thesons of poor and deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noblegovernors of the Institution, with an enlarged and rather capriciousbenevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get aneducation for nothing, and a future livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that some of the richest people did notdisdain it; and not only great men's relations, but great menthemselves, sent their sons to profit by the chance--Right Rev. Prelates sent their own kinsmen or the sons of their clergy, while, onthe other hand, some great noblemen did not disdain to patronize thechildren of their confidential servants--so that a lad entering thisestablishment had every variety of youthful society wherewith to mingle. 

Rawdon Crawley, though the only book which he studied was the RacingCalendar, and though his chief recollections of polite learning wereconnected with the floggings which he received at Eton in his earlyyouth, had that decent and honest reverence for classical learningwhich all English gentlemen feel, and was glad to think that his sonwas to have a provision for life, perhaps, and a certain opportunity ofbecoming a scholar. And although his boy was his chief solace andcompanion, and endeared to him by a thousand small ties, about which hedid not care to speak to his wife, who had all along shown the utmostindifference to their son, yet Rawdon agreed at once to part with himand to give up his own greatest comfort and benefit for the sake of thewelfare of the little lad. He did not know how fond he was of thechild until it became necessary to let him go away. When he was gone, he felt more sad and downcast than he cared to own--far sadder than theboy himself, who was happy enough to enter a new career and findcompanions of his own age. Becky burst out laughing once or twice whenthe Colonel, in his clumsy, incoherent way, tried to express hissentimental sorrows at the boy's departure. The poor fellow felt thathis dearest pleasure and closest friend was taken from him. He lookedoften and wistfully at the little vacant bed in his dressing-room, where the child used to sleep. He missed him sadly of mornings andtried in vain to walk in the park without him. He did not know howsolitary he was until little Rawdon was gone. He liked the people whowere fond of him, and would go and sit for long hours with hisgood-natured sister Lady Jane, and talk to her about the virtues, andgood looks, and hundred good qualities of the child. 

Young Rawdon's aunt, we have said, was very fond of him, as was herlittle girl, who wept copiously when the time for her cousin'sdeparture came. The elder Rawdon was thankful for the fondness ofmother and daughter. The very best and honestest feelings of the mancame out in these artless outpourings of paternal feeling in which heindulged in their presence, and encouraged by their sympathy. Hesecured not only Lady Jane's kindness, but her sincere regard, by thefeelings which he manifested, and which he could not show to his ownwife. The two kinswomen met as seldom as possible. Becky laughedbitterly at Jane's feelings and softness; the other's kindly and gentlenature could not but revolt at her sister's callous behaviour. 

It estranged Rawdon from his wife more than he knew or acknowledged tohimself. She did not care for the estrangement. Indeed, she did notmiss him or anybody. She looked upon him as her errand-man and humbleslave. He might be ever so depressed or sulky, and she did not markhis demeanour, or only treated it with a sneer. She was busy thinkingabout her position, or her pleasures, or her advancement in society;she ought to have held a great place in it, that is certain. 

It was honest Briggs who made up the little kit for the boy which hewas to take to school. Molly, the housemaid, blubbered in the passagewhen he went away--Molly kind and faithful in spite of a long arrear ofunpaid wages. Mrs. Becky could not let her husband have the carriageto take the boy to school. Take the horses into the City!--such athing was never heard of. Let a cab be brought. She did not offer tokiss him when he went, nor did the child propose to embrace her; butgave a kiss to old Briggs (whom, in general, he was very shy ofcaressing), and consoled her by pointing out that he was to come homeon Saturdays, when she would have the benefit of seeing him. As thecab rolled towards the City, Becky's carriage rattled off to the park. She was chattering and laughing with a score of young dandies by theSerpentine as the father and son entered at the old gates of theschool--where Rawdon left the child and came away with a sadder purerfeeling in his heart than perhaps that poor battered fellow had everknown since he himself came out of the nursery. 

He walked all the way home very dismally, and dined alone with Briggs. He was very kind to her and grateful for her love and watchfulness overthe boy. His conscience smote him that he had borrowed Briggs's moneyand aided in deceiving her. They talked about little Rawdon a longtime, for Becky only came home to dress and go out to dinner--and thenhe went off uneasily to drink tea with Lady Jane, and tell her of whathad happened, and how little Rawdon went off like a trump, and how hewas to wear a gown and little knee-breeches, and how young Blackball, Jack Blackball's son, of the old regiment, had taken him in charge andpromised to be kind to him. 

In the course of a week, young Blackball had constituted little Rawdonhis fag, shoe-black, and breakfast toaster; initiated him into themysteries of the Latin Grammar; and thrashed him three or four times, but not severely. The little chap's good-natured honest face won hisway for him. He only got that degree of beating which was, no doubt, good for him; and as for blacking shoes, toasting bread, and fagging ingeneral, were these offices not deemed to be necessary parts of everyyoung English gentleman's education?

Our business does not lie with the second generation and MasterRawdon's life at school, otherwise the present tale might be carried toany indefinite length. The Colonel went to see his son a short timeafterwards and found the lad sufficiently well and happy, grinning andlaughing in his little black gown and little breeches. 

His father sagaciously tipped Blackball, his master, a sovereign, andsecured that young gentleman's good-will towards his fag. As a protegeof the great Lord Steyne, the nephew of a County member, and son of aColonel and C. B. , whose name appeared in some of the most fashionableparties in the Morning Post, perhaps the school authorities weredisposed not to look unkindly on the child. He had plenty ofpocket-money, which he spent in treating his comrades royally toraspberry tarts, and he was often allowed to come home on Saturdays tohis father, who always made a jubilee of that day. When free, Rawdonwould take him to the play, or send him thither with the footman; andon Sundays he went to church with Briggs and Lady Jane and his cousins. Rawdon marvelled over his stories about school, and fights, andfagging. Before long, he knew the names of all the masters and theprincipal boys as well as little Rawdon himself. He invited littleRawdon's crony from school, and made both the children sick withpastry, and oysters, and porter after the play. He tried to lookknowing over the Latin grammar when little Rawdon showed him what partof that work he was "in. " "Stick to it, my boy, " he said to him withmuch gravity, "there's nothing like a good classical education!Nothing!"

Becky's contempt for her husband grew greater every day. "Do what youlike--dine where you please--go and have ginger-beer and sawdust atAstley's, or psalm-singing with Lady Jane--only don't expect me to busymyself with the boy. I have your interests to attend to, as you can'tattend to them yourself. I should like to know where you would havebeen now, and in what sort of a position in society, if I had notlooked after you. " Indeed, nobody wanted poor old Rawdon at the partieswhither Becky used to go. She was often asked without him now. Shetalked about great people as if she had the fee-simple of May Fair, andwhen the Court went into mourning, she always wore black. 

Little Rawdon being disposed of, Lord Steyne, who took such a parentalinterest in the affairs of this amiable poor family, thought that theirexpenses might be very advantageously curtailed by the departure ofMiss Briggs, and that Becky was quite clever enough to take themanagement of her own house. It has been narrated in a former chapterhow the benevolent nobleman had given his protegee money to pay off herlittle debt to Miss Briggs, who however still remained behind with herfriends; whence my lord came to the painful conclusion that Mrs. Crawley had made some other use of the money confided to her than thatfor which her generous patron had given the loan. However, Lord Steynewas not so rude as to impart his suspicions upon this head to Mrs. Becky, whose feelings might be hurt by any controversy on themoney-question, and who might have a thousand painful reasons fordisposing otherwise of his lordship's generous loan. But he determinedto satisfy himself of the real state of the case, and instituted thenecessary inquiries in a most cautious and delicate manner. 

In the first place he took an early opportunity of pumping Miss Briggs. That was not a difficult operation. A very little encouragement wouldset that worthy woman to talk volubly and pour out all within her. Andone day when Mrs. Rawdon had gone out to drive (as Mr. Fiche, hislordship's confidential servant, easily learned at the livery stableswhere the Crawleys kept their carriage and horses, or rather, where thelivery-man kept a carriage and horses for Mr. And Mrs. Crawley)--mylord dropped in upon the Curzon Street house--asked Briggs for a cup ofcoffee--told her that he had good accounts of the little boy atschool--and in five minutes found out from her that Mrs. Rawdon hadgiven her nothing except a black silk gown, for which Miss Briggs wasimmensely grateful. 

He laughed within himself at this artless story. For the truth is, ourdear friend Rebecca had given him a most circumstantial narration ofBriggs's delight at receiving her money--eleven hundred and twenty-fivepounds--and in what securities she had invested it; and what a pangBecky herself felt in being obliged to pay away such a delightful sumof money. "Who knows, " the dear woman may have thought within herself, "perhaps he may give me a little more?" My lord, however, made no suchproposal to the little schemer--very likely thinking that he had beensufficiently generous already. 

He had the curiosity, then, to ask Miss Briggs about the state of herprivate affairs--and she told his lordship candidly what her positionwas--how Miss Crawley had left her a legacy--how her relatives had hadpart of it--how Colonel Crawley had put out another portion, for whichshe had the best security and interest--and how Mr. And Mrs. Rawdonhad kindly busied themselves with Sir Pitt, who was to dispose of theremainder most advantageously for her, when he had time. My lord askedhow much the Colonel had already invested for her, and Miss Briggs atonce and truly told him that the sum was six hundred and odd pounds. 

But as soon as she had told her story, the voluble Briggs repented ofher frankness and besought my lord not to tell Mr. Crawley of theconfessions which she had made. "The Colonel was so kind--Mr. Crawleymight be offended and pay back the money, for which she could get nosuch good interest anywhere else. " Lord Steyne, laughing, promised henever would divulge their conversation, and when he and Miss Briggsparted he laughed still more. 

"What an accomplished little devil it is!" thought he. "What a splendidactress and manager! She had almost got a second supply out of me theother day; with her coaxing ways. She beats all the women I have everseen in the course of all my well-spent life. They are babies comparedto her. I am a greenhorn myself, and a fool in her hands--an old fool. She is unsurpassable in lies. " His lordship's admiration for Becky roseimmeasurably at this proof of her cleverness. Getting the money wasnothing--but getting double the sum she wanted, and paying nobody--itwas a magnificent stroke. And Crawley, my lord thought--Crawley is notsuch a fool as he looks and seems. He has managed the matter cleverlyenough on his side. Nobody would ever have supposed from his face anddemeanour that he knew anything about this money business; and yet heput her up to it, and has spent the money, no doubt. In this opinionmy lord, we know, was mistaken, but it influenced a good deal hisbehaviour towards Colonel Crawley, whom he began to treat with evenless than that semblance of respect which he had formerly shown towardsthat gentleman. It never entered into the head of Mrs. Crawley'spatron that the little lady might be making a purse for herself; and, perhaps, if the truth must be told, he judged of Colonel Crawley by hisexperience of other husbands, whom he had known in the course of thelong and well-spent life which had made him acquainted with a greatdeal of the weakness of mankind. My lord had bought so many men duringhis life that he was surely to be pardoned for supposing that he hadfound the price of this one. 

He taxed Becky upon the point on the very first occasion when he mether alone, and he complimented her, good-humouredly, on her clevernessin getting more than the money which she required. Becky was only alittle taken aback. It was not the habit of this dear creature to tellfalsehoods, except when necessity compelled, but in these greatemergencies it was her practice to lie very freely; and in an instantshe was ready with another neat plausible circumstantial story whichshe administered to her patron. The previous statement which she hadmade to him was a falsehood--a wicked falsehood--she owned it. But whohad made her tell it? "Ah, my Lord, " she said, "you don't know all Ihave to suffer and bear in silence; you see me gay and happy beforeyou--you little know what I have to endure when there is no protectornear me. It was my husband, by threats and the most savage treatment, forced me to ask for that sum about which I deceived you. It was hewho, foreseeing that questions might be asked regarding the disposal ofthe money, forced me to account for it as I did. He took the money. He told me he had paid Miss Briggs; I did not want, I did not dare todoubt him. Pardon the wrong which a desperate man is forced to commit, and pity a miserable, miserable woman. " She burst into tears as shespoke. Persecuted virtue never looked more bewitchingly wretched. 

They had a long conversation, driving round and round the Regent's Parkin Mrs. Crawley's carriage together, a conversation of which it is notnecessary to repeat the details, but the upshot of it was that, whenBecky came home, she flew to her dear Briggs with a smiling face andannounced that she had some very good news for her. Lord Steyne hadacted in the noblest and most generous manner. He was always thinkinghow and when he could do good. Now that little Rawdon was gone toschool, a dear companion and friend was no longer necessary to her. She was grieved beyond measure to part with Briggs, but her meansrequired that she should practise every retrenchment, and her sorrowwas mitigated by the idea that her dear Briggs would be far betterprovided for by her generous patron than in her humble home. Mrs. Pilkington, the housekeeper at Gauntly Hall, was growing exceedinglyold, feeble, and rheumatic: she was not equal to the work ofsuperintending that vast mansion, and must be on the look out for asuccessor. It was a splendid position. The family did not go toGauntly once in two years. At other times the housekeeper was themistress of the magnificent mansion--had four covers daily for hertable; was visited by the clergy and the most respectable people of thecounty--was the lady of Gauntly, in fact; and the two last housekeepersbefore Mrs. Pilkington had married rectors of Gauntly--but Mrs. P. Could not, being the aunt of the present Rector. The place was not tobe hers yet, but she might go down on a visit to Mrs. Pilkington andsee whether she would like to succeed her. 

What words can paint the ecstatic gratitude of Briggs! All shestipulated for was that little Rawdon should be allowed to come downand see her at the Hall. Becky promised this--anything. She ran up toher husband when he came home and told him the joyful news. Rawdon wasglad, deuced glad; the weight was off his conscience about poorBriggs's money. She was provided for, at any rate, but--but his mindwas disquiet. He did not seem to be all right, somehow. He toldlittle Southdown what Lord Steyne had done, and the young man eyedCrawley with an air which surprised the latter. 

He told Lady Jane of this second proof of Steyne's bounty, and she, too, looked odd and alarmed; so did Sir Pitt. "She is too cleverand--and gay to be allowed to go from party to party without acompanion, " both said. "You must go with her, Rawdon, wherever shegoes, and you must have somebody with her--one of the girls fromQueen's Crawley, perhaps, though they were rather giddy guardians forher. "

Somebody Becky should have. But in the meantime it was clear thathonest Briggs must not lose her chance of settlement for life, and soshe and her bags were packed, and she set off on her journey. And sotwo of Rawdon's out-sentinels were in the hands of the enemy. 

Sir Pitt went and expostulated with his sister-in-law upon the subjectof the dismissal of Briggs and other matters of delicate familyinterest. In vain she pointed out to him how necessary was theprotection of Lord Steyne for her poor husband; how cruel it would beon their part to deprive Briggs of the position offered to her. Cajolements, coaxings, smiles, tears could not satisfy Sir Pitt, and hehad something very like a quarrel with his once admired Becky. Hespoke of the honour of the family, the unsullied reputation of theCrawleys; expressed himself in indignant tones about her receivingthose young Frenchmen--those wild young men of fashion, my Lord Steynehimself, whose carriage was always at her door, who passed hours dailyin her company, and whose constant presence made the world talk abouther. As the head of the house he implored her to be more prudent. Society was already speaking lightly of her. Lord Steyne, though anobleman of the greatest station and talents, was a man whoseattentions would compromise any woman; he besought, he implored, hecommanded his sister-in-law to be watchful in her intercourse with thatnobleman. 

Becky promised anything and everything Pitt wanted; but Lord Steynecame to her house as often as ever, and Sir Pitt's anger increased. Iwonder was Lady Jane angry or pleased that her husband at last foundfault with his favourite Rebecca? Lord Steyne's visits continuing, hisown ceased, and his wife was for refusing all further intercourse withthat nobleman and declining the invitation to the charade-night whichthe marchioness sent to her; but Sir Pitt thought it was necessary toaccept it, as his Royal Highness would be there. 

Although he went to the party in question, Sir Pitt quitted it veryearly, and his wife, too, was very glad to come away. Becky hardly somuch as spoke to him or noticed her sister-in-law. Pitt Crawleydeclared her behaviour was monstrously indecorous, reprobated in strongterms the habit of play-acting and fancy dressing as highly unbecominga British female, and after the charades were over, took his brotherRawdon severely to task for appearing himself and allowing his wife tojoin in such improper exhibitions. 

Rawdon said she should not join in any more such amusements--butindeed, and perhaps from hints from his elder brother and sister, hehad already become a very watchful and exemplary domestic character. Heleft off his clubs and billiards. He never left home. He took Beckyout to drive; he went laboriously with her to all her parties. Whenevermy Lord Steyne called, he was sure to find the Colonel. And when Beckyproposed to go out without her husband, or received invitations forherself, he peremptorily ordered her to refuse them: and there was thatin the gentleman's manner which enforced obedience. Little Becky, todo her justice, was charmed with Rawdon's gallantry. If he was surly, she never was. Whether friends were present or absent, she had always akind smile for him and was attentive to his pleasure and comfort. Itwas the early days of their marriage over again: the same good humour, prevenances, merriment, and artless confidence and regard. "How muchpleasanter it is, " she would say, "to have you by my side in thecarriage than that foolish old Briggs! Let us always go on so, dearRawdon. How nice it would be, and how happy we should always be, if wehad but the money!" He fell asleep after dinner in his chair; he didnot see the face opposite to him, haggard, weary, and terrible; itlighted up with fresh candid smiles when he woke. It kissed him gaily. He wondered that he had ever had suspicions. No, he never hadsuspicions; all those dumb doubts and surly misgivings which had beengathering on his mind were mere idle jealousies. She was fond of him;she always had been. As for her shining in society, it was no fault ofhers; she was formed to shine there. Was there any woman who couldtalk, or sing, or do anything like her? If she would but like the boy!Rawdon thought. But the mother and son never could be brought together. 

And it was while Rawdon's mind was agitated with these doubts andperplexities that the incident occurred which was mentioned in the lastchapter, and the unfortunate Colonel found himself a prisoner away fromhome. 

CHAPTER LIII

A Rescue and a Catastrophe

Friend Rawdon drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion in Cursitor Street, and was duly inducted into that dismal place of hospitality. Morningwas breaking over the cheerful house-tops of Chancery Lane as therattling cab woke up the echoes there. A little pink-eyed Jew-boy, with a head as ruddy as the rising morn, let the party into the house, and Rawdon was welcomed to the ground-floor apartments by Mr. Moss, histravelling companion and host, who cheerfully asked him if he wouldlike a glass of something warm after his drive. 

The Colonel was not so depressed as some mortals would be, who, quitting a palace and a placens uxor, find themselves barred into aspunging-house; for, if the truth must be told, he had been a lodger atMr. Moss's establishment once or twice before. We have not thought itnecessary in the previous course of this narrative to mention thesetrivial little domestic incidents: but the reader may be assured thatthey can't unfrequently occur in the life of a man who lives on nothinga year. 

Upon his first visit to Mr. Moss, the Colonel, then a bachelor, hadbeen liberated by the generosity of his aunt; on the second mishap, little Becky, with the greatest spirit and kindness, had borrowed a sumof money from Lord Southdown and had coaxed her husband's creditor (whowas her shawl, velvet-gown, lace pocket-handkerchief, trinket, andgim-crack purveyor, indeed) to take a portion of the sum claimed andRawdon's promissory note for the remainder: so on both these occasionsthe capture and release had been conducted with the utmost gallantry onall sides, and Moss and the Colonel were therefore on the very best ofterms. 

"You'll find your old bed, Colonel, and everything comfortable, " thatgentleman said, "as I may honestly say. You may be pretty sure its kepaired, and by the best of company, too. It was slep in the night aforelast by the Honorable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whoseMar took him out, after a fortnight, jest to punish him, she said. But, Law bless you, I promise you, he punished my champagne, and had aparty ere every night--reglar tip-top swells, down from the clubs andthe West End--Capting Ragg, the Honorable Deuceace, who lives in theTemple, and some fellers as knows a good glass of wine, I warrant you. I've got a Doctor of Diwinity upstairs, five gents in the coffee-room, and Mrs. Moss has a tably-dy-hoty at half-past five, and a littlecards or music afterwards, when we shall be most happy to see you. "

"I'll ring when I want anything, " said Rawdon and went quietly to hisbedroom. He was an old soldier, we have said, and not to be disturbedby any little shocks of fate. A weaker man would have sent off aletter to his wife on the instant of his capture. "But what is the useof disturbing her night's rest?" thought Rawdon. "She won't knowwhether I am in my room or not. It will be time enough to write to herwhen she has had her sleep out, and I have had mine. It's only ahundred-and-seventy, and the deuce is in it if we can't raise that. "And so, thinking about little Rawdon (whom he would not have know thathe was in such a queer place), the Colonel turned into the bed latelyoccupied by Captain Famish and fell asleep. It was ten o'clock when hewoke up, and the ruddy-headed youth brought him, with conscious pride, a fine silver dressing-case, wherewith he might perform the operationof shaving. Indeed Mr. Moss's house, though somewhat dirty, wassplendid throughout. There were dirty trays, and wine-coolers enpermanence on the sideboard, huge dirty gilt cornices, with dingyyellow satin hangings to the barred windows which looked into CursitorStreet--vast and dirty gilt picture frames surrounding pieces sportingand sacred, all of which works were by the greatest masters--andfetched the greatest prices, too, in the bill transactions, in thecourse of which they were sold and bought over and over again. TheColonel's breakfast was served to him in the same dingy and gorgeousplated ware. Miss Moss, a dark-eyed maid in curl-papers, appeared withthe teapot, and, smiling, asked the Colonel how he had slep? And shebrought him in the Morning Post, with the names of all the great peoplewho had figured at Lord Steyne's entertainment the night before. Itcontained a brilliant account of the festivities and of the beautifuland accomplished Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's admirable personifications. 

After a lively chat with this lady (who sat on the edge of thebreakfast table in an easy attitude displaying the drapery of herstocking and an ex-white satin shoe, which was down at heel), ColonelCrawley called for pens and ink, and paper, and being asked how manysheets, chose one which was brought to him between Miss Moss's ownfinger and thumb. Many a sheet had that dark-eyed damsel brought in;many a poor fellow had scrawled and blotted hurried lines of entreatyand paced up and down that awful room until his messenger brought backthe reply. Poor men always use messengers instead of the post. Whohas not had their letters, with the wafers wet, and the announcementthat a person is waiting in the hall?

Now on the score of his application, Rawdon had not many misgivings. 

DEAR BECKY, (Rawdon wrote)

I HOPE YOU SLEPT WELL. Don't be FRIGHTENED if I don't bring you inyour COFFY. Last night as I was coming home smoaking, I met with anACCADENT. I was NABBED by Moss of Cursitor Street--from whose GILT ANDSPLENDID PARLER I write this--the same that had me this time two years. Miss Moss brought in my tea--she is grown very FAT, and, as usual, hadher STOCKENS DOWN AT HEAL. 

It's Nathan's business--a hundred-and-fifty--with costs, hundred-and-seventy. Please send me my desk and some CLOTHS--I'm inpumps and a white tye (something like Miss M's stockings)--I've seventyin it. And as soon as you get this, Drive to Nathan's--offer himseventy-five down, and ASK HIM TO RENEW--say I'll take wine--we may aswell have some dinner sherry; but not PICTURS, they're too dear. 

If he won't stand it. Take my ticker and such of your things as youcan SPARE, and send them to Balls--we must, of coarse, have the sumto-night. It won't do to let it stand over, as to-morrow's Sunday; thebeds here are not very CLEAN, and there may be other things out againstme--I'm glad it an't Rawdon's Saturday for coming home. God bless you. 

Yours in haste, R. C. P. S. Make haste and come. 

This letter, sealed with a wafer, was dispatched by one of themessengers who are always hanging about Mr. Moss's establishment, andRawdon, having seen him depart, went out in the court-yard and smokedhis cigar with a tolerably easy mind--in spite of the barsoverhead--for Mr. Moss's court-yard is railed in like a cage, lest thegentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape fromhis hospitality. 

Three hours, he calculated, would be the utmost time required, beforeBecky should arrive and open his prison doors, and he passed thesepretty cheerfully in smoking, in reading the paper, and in thecoffee-room with an acquaintance, Captain Walker, who happened to bethere, and with whom he cut for sixpences for some hours, with prettyequal luck on either side. 

But the day passed away and no messenger returned--no Becky. Mr. Moss's tably-dy-hoty was served at the appointed hour of half-pastfive, when such of the gentlemen lodging in the house as could affordto pay for the banquet came and partook of it in the splendid frontparlour before described, and with which Mr. Crawley's temporarylodging communicated, when Miss M. (Miss Hem, as her papa called her)appeared without the curl-papers of the morning, and Mrs. Hem did thehonours of a prime boiled leg of mutton and turnips, of which theColonel ate with a very faint appetite. Asked whether he would "stand"a bottle of champagne for the company, he consented, and the ladiesdrank to his 'ealth, and Mr. Moss, in the most polite manner, "lookedtowards him. "

In the midst of this repast, however, the doorbell was heard--youngMoss of the ruddy hair rose up with the keys and answered the summons, and coming back, told the Colonel that the messenger had returned witha bag, a desk and a letter, which he gave him. "No ceramony, Colonel, I beg, " said Mrs. Moss with a wave of her hand, and he opened theletter rather tremulously. It was a beautiful letter, highly scented, on a pink paper, and with a light green seal. 

MON PAUVRE CHER PETIT, (Mrs. Crawley wrote)

I could not sleep ONE WINK for thinking of what had become of my odiousold monstre, and only got to rest in the morning after sending for Mr. Blench (for I was in a fever), who gave me a composing draught and leftorders with Finette that I should be disturbed ON NO ACCOUNT. So thatmy poor old man's messenger, who had bien mauvaise mine Finette says, and sentoit le Genievre, remained in the hall for some hours waiting mybell. You may fancy my state when I read your poor dear old ill-speltletter. 

Ill as I was, I instantly called for the carriage, and as soon as I wasdressed (though I couldn't drink a drop of chocolate--I assure you Icouldn't without my monstre to bring it to me), I drove ventre a terreto Nathan's. I saw him--I wept--I cried--I fell at his odious knees. Nothing would mollify the horrid man. He would have all the money, hesaid, or keep my poor monstre in prison. I drove home with theintention of paying that triste visite chez mon oncle (when everytrinket I have should be at your disposal though they would not fetch ahundred pounds, for some, you know, are with ce cher oncle already), and found Milor there with the Bulgarian old sheep-faced monster, whohad come to compliment me upon last night's performances. Paddingtoncame in, too, drawling and lisping and twiddling his hair; so didChampignac, and his chef--everybody with foison of compliments andpretty speeches--plaguing poor me, who longed to be rid of them, andwas thinking every moment of the time of mon pauvre prisonnier. 

When they were gone, I went down on my knees to Milor; told him we weregoing to pawn everything, and begged and prayed him to give me twohundred pounds. He pish'd and psha'd in a fury--told me not to be sucha fool as to pawn--and said he would see whether he could lend me themoney. At last he went away, promising that he would send it me in themorning: when I will bring it to my poor old monster with a kiss fromhis affectionate

BECKY

I am writing in bed. Oh I have such a headache and such a heartache!

When Rawdon read over this letter, he turned so red and looked sosavage that the company at the table d'hote easily perceived that badnews had reached him. All his suspicions, which he had been trying tobanish, returned upon him. She could not even go out and sell hertrinkets to free him. She could laugh and talk about compliments paidto her, whilst he was in prison. Who had put him there? Wenham hadwalked with him. Was there. .. . He could hardly bear to think of whathe suspected. Leaving the room hurriedly, he ran into his own--openedhis desk, wrote two hurried lines, which he directed to Sir Pitt orLady Crawley, and bade the messenger carry them at once to GauntStreet, bidding him to take a cab, and promising him a guinea if he wasback in an hour. 

In the note he besought his dear brother and sister, for the sake ofGod, for the sake of his dear child and his honour, to come to him andrelieve him from his difficulty. He was in prison, he wanted a hundredpounds to set him free--he entreated them to come to him. 

He went back to the dining-room after dispatching his messenger andcalled for more wine. He laughed and talked with a strangeboisterousness, as the people thought. Sometimes he laughed madly athis own fears and went on drinking for an hour, listening all the whilefor the carriage which was to bring his fate back. 

At the expiration of that time, wheels were heard whirling up to thegate--the young janitor went out with his gate-keys. It was a ladywhom he let in at the bailiff's door. 

"Colonel Crawley, " she said, trembling very much. He, with a knowinglook, locked the outer door upon her--then unlocked and opened theinner one, and calling out, "Colonel, you're wanted, " led her into theback parlour, which he occupied. 

Rawdon came in from the dining-parlour where all those people werecarousing, into his back room; a flare of coarse light following himinto the apartment where the lady stood, still very nervous. 

"It is I, Rawdon, " she said in a timid voice, which she strove torender cheerful. "It is Jane. " Rawdon was quite overcome by that kindvoice and presence. He ran up to her--caught her in his arms--gaspedout some inarticulate words of thanks and fairly sobbed on hershoulder. She did not know the cause of his emotion. 

The bills of Mr. Moss were quickly settled, perhaps to thedisappointment of that gentleman, who had counted on having the Colonelas his guest over Sunday at least; and Jane, with beaming smiles andhappiness in her eyes, carried away Rawdon from the bailiff's house, and they went homewards in the cab in which she had hastened to hisrelease. "Pitt was gone to a parliamentary dinner, " she said, "whenRawdon's note came, and so, dear Rawdon, I--I came myself"; and she puther kind hand in his. Perhaps it was well for Rawdon Crawley that Pittwas away at that dinner. Rawdon thanked his sister a hundred times, and with an ardour of gratitude which touched and almost alarmed thatsoft-hearted woman. "Oh, " said he, in his rude, artless way, "you--youdon't know how I'm changed since I've known you, and--and little Rawdy. I--I'd like to change somehow. You see I want--I want--to be--" He didnot finish the sentence, but she could interpret it. And that nightafter he left her, and as she sat by her own little boy's bed, sheprayed humbly for that poor way-worn sinner. 

Rawdon left her and walked home rapidly. It was nine o'clock at night. He ran across the streets and the great squares of Vanity Fair, and atlength came up breathless opposite his own house. He started back andfell against the railings, trembling as he looked up. The drawing-roomwindows were blazing with light. She had said that she was in bed andill. He stood there for some time, the light from the rooms on hispale face. 

He took out his door-key and let himself into the house. He could hearlaughter in the upper rooms. He was in the ball-dress in which he hadbeen captured the night before. He went silently up the stairs, leaning against the banisters at the stair-head. Nobody was stirringin the house besides--all the servants had been sent away. Rawdon heardlaughter within--laughter and singing. Becky was singing a snatch ofthe song of the night before; a hoarse voice shouted "Brava!Brava!"--it was Lord Steyne's. 

Rawdon opened the door and went in. A little table with a dinner waslaid out--and wine and plate. Steyne was hanging over the sofa onwhich Becky sat. The wretched woman was in a brilliant full toilette, her arms and all her fingers sparkling with bracelets and rings, andthe brilliants on her breast which Steyne had given her. He had herhand in his, and was bowing over it to kiss it, when Becky started upwith a faint scream as she caught sight of Rawdon's white face. At thenext instant she tried a smile, a horrid smile, as if to welcome herhusband; and Steyne rose up, grinding his teeth, pale, and with fury inhis looks. 

He, too, attempted a laugh--and came forward holding out his hand. "What, come back! How d'ye do, Crawley?" he said, the nerves of hismouth twitching as he tried to grin at the intruder. 

There was that in Rawdon's face which caused Becky to fling herselfbefore him. "I am innocent, Rawdon, " she said; "before God, I aminnocent. " She clung hold of his coat, of his hands; her own were allcovered with serpents, and rings, and baubles. "I am innocent. Say Iam innocent, " she said to Lord Steyne. 

He thought a trap had been laid for him, and was as furious with thewife as with the husband. "You innocent! Damn you, " he screamed out. "You innocent! Why every trinket you have on your body is paid for byme. I have given you thousands of pounds, which this fellow has spentand for which he has sold you. Innocent, by ----! You're as innocent asyour mother, the ballet-girl, and your husband the bully. Don't thinkto frighten me as you have done others. Make way, sir, and let mepass"; and Lord Steyne seized up his hat, and, with flame in his eyes, and looking his enemy fiercely in the face, marched upon him, never fora moment doubting that the other would give way. 

But Rawdon Crawley springing out, seized him by the neckcloth, untilSteyne, almost strangled, writhed and bent under his arm. "You lie, you dog!" said Rawdon. "You lie, you coward and villain!" And he struckthe Peer twice over the face with his open hand and flung him bleedingto the ground. It was all done before Rebecca could interpose. Shestood there trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, and victorious. 

"Come here, " he said. She came up at once. 

"Take off those things. " She began, trembling, pulling the jewels fromher arms, and the rings from her shaking fingers, and held them all ina heap, quivering and looking up at him. "Throw them down, " he said, and she dropped them. He tore the diamond ornament out of her breastand flung it at Lord Steyne. It cut him on his bald forehead. Steynewore the scar to his dying day. 

"Come upstairs, " Rawdon said to his wife. "Don't kill me, Rawdon, " shesaid. He laughed savagely. "I want to see if that man lies about themoney as he has about me. Has he given you any?"

"No, " said Rebecca, "that is--"

"Give me your keys, " Rawdon answered, and they went out together. 

Rebecca gave him all the keys but one, and she was in hopes that hewould not have remarked the absence of that. It belonged to the littledesk which Amelia had given her in early days, and which she kept in asecret place. But Rawdon flung open boxes and wardrobes, throwing themultifarious trumpery of their contents here and there, and at last hefound the desk. The woman was forced to open it. It contained papers, love-letters many years old--all sorts of small trinkets and woman'smemoranda. And it contained a pocket-book with bank-notes. Some ofthese were dated ten years back, too, and one was quite a fresh one--anote for a thousand pounds which Lord Steyne had given her. 

"Did he give you this?" Rawdon said. 

"Yes, " Rebecca answered. 

"I'll send it to him to-day, " Rawdon said (for day had dawned again, and many hours had passed in this search), "and I will pay Briggs, whowas kind to the boy, and some of the debts. You will let me know whereI shall send the rest to you. You might have spared me a hundredpounds, Becky, out of all this--I have always shared with you. "

"I am innocent, " said Becky. And he left her without another word. 

What were her thoughts when he left her? She remained for hours afterhe was gone, the sunshine pouring into the room, and Rebecca sittingalone on the bed's edge. The drawers were all opened and theircontents scattered about--dresses and feathers, scarfs and trinkets, aheap of tumbled vanities lying in a wreck. Her hair was falling overher shoulders; her gown was torn where Rawdon had wrenched thebrilliants out of it. She heard him go downstairs a few minutes afterhe left her, and the door slamming and closing on him. She knew hewould never come back. He was gone forever. Would he killhimself?--she thought--not until after he had met Lord Steyne. Shethought of her long past life, and all the dismal incidents of it. Ah, how dreary it seemed, how miserable, lonely and profitless! Should shetake laudanum, and end it, to have done with all hopes, schemes, debts, and triumphs? The French maid found her in this position--sitting inthe midst of her miserable ruins with clasped hands and dry eyes. Thewoman was her accomplice and in Steyne's pay. "Mon Dieu, madame, whathas happened?" she asked. 

What had happened? Was she guilty or not? She said not, but who couldtell what was truth which came from those lips, or if that corruptheart was in this case pure?

All her lies and her schemes, an her selfishness and her wiles, all herwit and genius had come to this bankruptcy. The woman closed thecurtains and, with some entreaty and show of kindness, persuaded hermistress to lie down on the bed. Then she went below and gathered upthe trinkets which had been lying on the floor since Rebecca droppedthem there at her husband's orders, and Lord Steyne went away. 

CHAPTER LIV

Sunday After the Battle

The mansion of Sir Pitt Crawley, in Great Gaunt Street, was justbeginning to dress itself for the day, as Rawdon, in his eveningcostume, which he had now worn two days, passed by the scared femalewho was scouring the steps and entered into his brother's study. LadyJane, in her morning-gown, was up and above stairs in the nurserysuperintending the toilettes of her children and listening to themorning prayers which the little creatures performed at her knee. Every morning she and they performed this duty privately, and beforethe public ceremonial at which Sir Pitt presided and at which all thepeople of the household were expected to assemble. Rawdon sat down inthe study before the Baronet's table, set out with the orderly bluebooks and the letters, the neatly docketed bills and symmetricalpamphlets, the locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, theBible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which all stood as ifon parade awaiting the inspection of their chief. 

A book of family sermons, one of which Sir Pitt was in the habit ofadministering to his family on Sunday mornings, lay ready on the studytable, and awaiting his judicious selection. And by the sermon-bookwas the Observer newspaper, damp and neatly folded, and for Sir Pitt'sown private use. His gentleman alone took the opportunity of perusingthe newspaper before he laid it by his master's desk. Before he hadbrought it into the study that morning, he had read in the journal aflaming account of "Festivities at Gaunt House, " with the names of allthe distinguished personages invited by tho Marquis of Steyne to meethis Royal Highness. Having made comments upon this entertainment tothe housekeeper and her niece as they were taking early tea and hotbuttered toast in the former lady's apartment, and wondered how theRawding Crawleys could git on, the valet had damped and folded thepaper once more, so that it looked quite fresh and innocent against thearrival of the master of the house. 

Poor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and read it until hisbrother should arrive. But the print fell blank upon his eyes, and hedid not know in the least what he was reading. The Government news andappointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound to peruse, otherwise he would by no means permit the introduction of Sunday papersinto his household), the theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundredpounds a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury Pet, theGaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a most complimentarythough guarded account of the famous charades of which Mrs. Becky hadbeen the heroine--all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as hesat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family. 

Punctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble study clockbegan to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his appearance, fresh, neat, smuglyshaved, with a waxy clean face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty haircombed and oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairsmajestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel dressing-gown--areal old English gentleman, in a word--a model of neatness and everypropriety. He started when he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbledclothes, with blood-shot eyes, and his hair over his face. He thoughthis brother was not sober, and had been out all night on some orgy. "Good gracious, Rawdon, " he said, with a blank face, "what brings youhere at this time of the morning? Why ain't you at home?"

"Home, " said Rawdon with a wild laugh. "Don't be frightened, Pitt. I'mnot drunk. Shut the door; I want to speak to you. "

Pitt closed the door and came up to the table, where he sat down in theother arm-chair--that one placed for the reception of the steward, agent, or confidential visitor who came to transact business with theBaronet--and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever. 

"Pitt, it's all over with me, " the Colonel said after a pause. "I'mdone. "

"I always said it would come to this, " the Baronet cried peevishly, andbeating a tune with his clean-trimmed nails. "I warned you a thousandtimes. I can't help you any more. Every shilling of my money is tiedup. Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last night werepromised to my lawyer to-morrow morning, and the want of it will put meto great inconvenience. I don't mean to say that I won't assist youultimately. But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as wellhope to pay the National Debt. It is madness, sheer madness, to thinkof such a thing. You must come to a compromise. It's a painful thingfor the family, but everybody does it. There was George Kitely, LordRagland's son, went through the Court last week, and was what they callwhitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay a shilling for him, and--"

"It's not money I want, " Rawdon broke in. "I'm not come to you aboutmyself. Never mind what happens to me. "

"What is the matter, then?" said Pitt, somewhat relieved. 

"It's the boy, " said Rawdon in a husky voice. "I want you to promiseme that you will take charge of him when I'm gone. That dear good wifeof yours has always been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he isof his . . . --Damn it. Look here, Pitt--you know that I was to havehad Miss Crawley's money. I wasn't brought up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle. But for thisI might have been quite a different man. I didn't do my duty with theregiment so bad. You know how I was thrown over about the money, andwho got it. "

"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in which I have stoodby you, I think this sort of reproach is useless, " Sir Pitt said. "Your marriage was your own doing, not mine. "

"That's over now, " said Rawdon. "That's over now. " And the words werewrenched from him with a groan, which made his brother start. 

"Good God! is she dead?" Sir Pitt said with a voice of genuine alarmand commiseration. 

"I wish I was, " Rawdon replied. "If it wasn't for little Rawdon I'dhave cut my throat this morning--and that damned villain's too. "

Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that Lord Steyne wasthe person whose life Rawdon wished to take. The Colonel told hissenior briefly, and in broken accents, the circumstances of the case. "It was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her, " he said. "Thebailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going out of his house;when I wrote to her for money, she said she was ill in bed and put meoff to another day. And when I got home I found her in diamonds andsitting with that villain alone. " He then went on to describe hurriedlythe personal conflict with Lord Steyne. To an affair of that nature, of course, he said, there was but one issue, and after his conferencewith his brother, he was going away to make the necessary arrangementsfor the meeting which must ensue. "And as it may end fatally with me, "Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and as the boy has no mother, I mustleave him to you and Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if youwill promise me to be his friend. "

The elder brother was much affected, and shook Rawdon's hand with acordiality seldom exhibited by him. Rawdon passed his hand over hisshaggy eyebrows. "Thank you, brother, " said he. "I know I can trustyour word. "

"I will, upon my honour, " the Baronet said. And thus, and almostmutely, this bargain was struck between them. 

Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little pocket-book which he haddiscovered in Becky's desk, and from which he drew a bundle of thenotes which it contained. "Here's six hundred, " he said--"you didn'tknow I was so rich. I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lentit to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always felt ashamed ofhaving taken the poor old woman's money. And here's some more--I'veonly kept back a few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get onwith. " As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to give to hisbrother, but his hands shook, and he was so agitated that thepocket-book fell from him, and out of it the thousand-pound note whichhad been the last of the unlucky Becky's winnings. 

Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much wealth. "Not that, "Rawdon said. "I hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongsto. " He had thought to himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap aball in the note and kill Steyne with it. 

After this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted. LadyJane had heard of the Colonel's arrival, and was waiting for herhusband in the adjoining dining-room, with female instinct, auguringevil. The door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and thelady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers passed out ofthe study. She held out her hand to Rawdon and said she was glad hewas come to breakfast, though she could perceive, by his haggardunshorn face and the dark looks of her husband, that there was verylittle question of breakfast between them. Rawdon muttered someexcuses about an engagement, squeezing hard the timid little hand whichhis sister-in-law reached out to him. Her imploring eyes could readnothing but calamity in his face, but he went away without anotherword. Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation. The childrencame up to salute him, and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner. The mother took both of them close to herself, and held a hand of eachof them as they knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, andto the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged upon chairson the other side of the hissing tea-urn. Breakfast was so late thatday, in consequence of the delays which had occurred, that thechurch-bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal;and Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though herthoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion. 

Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, andknocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portalof Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silverwaistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was scared alsoby the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and barred the way as ifafraid that the other was going to force it. But Colonel Crawley onlytook out a card and enjoined him particularly to send it in to LordSteyne, and to mark the address written on it, and say that ColonelCrawley would be all day after one o'clock at the Regent Club in St. James's Street--not at home. The fat red-faced man looked after himwith astonishment as he strode away; so did the people in their Sundayclothes who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining faces, the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican shutting hisshutters in the sunshine, against service commenced. The people jokedat the cab-stand about his appearance, as he took a carriage there, andtold the driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks. 

All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place. Hemight have seen his old acquaintance Amelia on her way from Brompton toRussell Square, had he been looking out. Troops of schools were ontheir march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides of coaches inthe suburbs were thronged with people out upon their Sunday pleasure;but the Colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena, and, arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the room ofhis old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo, who Crawley found, to hissatisfaction, was in barracks. 

Captain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo man, greatly liked byhis regiment, in which want of money alone prevented him from attainingthe highest ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed. He hadbeen at a fast supper-party, given the night before by Captain theHonourable George Cinqbars, at his house in Brompton Square, to severalyoung men of the regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps deballet, and old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and ranks, and consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, opera-dancers, bruisers, andevery kind of person, in a word, was resting himself after the night'slabours, and, not being on duty, was in bed. 

His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures, presented to him by comrades as they retired from the regiment, andmarried and settled into quiet life. And as he was now nearly fiftyyears of age, twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had asingular museum. He was one of the best shots in England, and, for aheavy man, one of the best riders; indeed, he and Crawley had beenrivals when the latter was in the Army. To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo waslying in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very fightbetween the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher, which has been beforementioned--a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved greyhead, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyedmoustache. 

When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knewperfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, andindeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with thegreatest prudence and skill. His Royal Highness the late lamentedCommander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo on thisaccount, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in trouble. 

"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the old warrior. "Nomore gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?"

"It's about--about my wife, " Crawley answered, casting down his eyesand turning very red. 

The other gave a whistle. "I always said she'd throw you over, " hebegan--indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubsregarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was hiswife's character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing thesavage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this opinion, Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further. 

"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain continued in a gravetone. "Is it only suspicion, you know, or--or what is it? Any letters?Can't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of thatsort if you can help it. " "Think of his only finding her out now, " theCaptain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particularconversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley's reputation hadbeen torn to shreds. 

"There's no way but one out of it, " Rawdon replied--"and there's only away out of it for one of us, Mac--do you understand? I was put out ofthe way--arrested--I found 'em alone together. I told him he was aliar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him. "

"Serve him right, " Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"

Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne. 

"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he--that is, they said you--"

"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon; "do you mean that youever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"

"The world's very censorious, old boy, " the other replied. "What thedeuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked about?"

"It was damned unfriendly, Mac, " said Rawdon, quite overcome; and, covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sightof which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince withsympathy. "Hold up, old boy, " he said; "great man or not, we'll put abullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so. "

"You don't know how fond I was of that one, " Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like a footman. I gave upeverything I had to her. I'm a beggar because I would marry her. ByJove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything shefancied; and she she's been making a purse for herself all the time, and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod. " He then fiercelyand incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor hadnever before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of thestory. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it. "She may beinnocent, after all, " he said. "She says so. Steyne has been a hundredtimes alone with her in the house before. "

"It may be so, " Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't look veryinnocent": and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which hehad found in Becky's pocket-book. "This is what he gave her, Mac, andshe kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refusedto stand by me when I was locked up. " The Captain could not but ownthat the secreting of the money had a very ugly look. 

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched CaptainMacmurdo's servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the domesticthere to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had great need. And during the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson'sDictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and his secondcomposed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord Steyne. Captain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne, on the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that hewas empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements for the meetingwhich, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship's intention to demand, andwhich the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable. Captain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, toappoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M. M. ) might communicate, anddesired that the meeting might take place with as little delay aspossible. 

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession abank-note for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason tosuppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne. And he was anxious, on the Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner. 

By the time this note was composed, the Captain's servant returned fromhis mission to Colonel Crawley's house in Curzon Street, but withoutthe carpet-bag and portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with avery puzzled and odd face. 

"They won't give 'em up, " said the man; "there's a regular shinty inthe house, and everything at sixes and sevens. The landlord's come inand took possession. The servants was a drinkin' up in thedrawingroom. They said--they said you had gone off with the plate, Colonel"--the man added after a pause--"One of the servants is offalready. And Simpson, the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed, saysnothing shall go out of the house until his wages is paid up. "

The account of this little revolution in May Fair astonished and gave alittle gaiety to an otherwise very triste conversation. The twoofficers laughed at Rawdon's discomfiture. 

"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home, " Rawdon said, biting his nails. "You remember him, Mac, don't you, in the Riding School? How he sat thekicker to be sure! didn't he?"

"That he did, old boy, " said the good-natured Captain. 

Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys, in the Chapelof Whitefriars School, thinking, not about the sermon, but about goinghome next Saturday, when his father would certainly tip him and perhapswould take him to the play. 

"He's a regular trump, that boy, " the father went on, still musingabout his son. "I say, Mac, if anything goes wrong--if I drop--Ishould like you to--to go and see him, you know, and say that I wasvery fond of him, and that. And--dash it--old chap, give him thesegold sleeve-buttons: it's all I've got. " He covered his face with hisblack hands, over which the tears rolled and made furrows of white. Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take off his silk night-cap and rubit across his eyes. 

"Go down and order some breakfast, " he said to his man in a loudcheerful voice. "What'll you have, Crawley? Some devilled kidneys anda herring--let's say. And, Clay, lay out some dressing things for theColonel: we were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, andneither of us ride so light as we did when we first entered the corps. "With which, and leaving the Colonel to dress himself, Macmurdo turnedround towards the wall, and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, untilsuch time as his friend's toilette was complete and he was at libertyto commence his own. 

This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain Macmurdo performed withparticular care. He waxed his mustachios into a state of brilliantpolish and put on a tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that allthe young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had preceded hisfriend, complimented Mac on his appearance at breakfast and asked if hewas going to be married that Sunday. 

CHAPTER LV

In Which the Same Subject is Pursued

Becky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion in which theevents of the previous night had plunged her intrepid spirit until thebells of the Curzon Street Chapels were ringing for afternoon service, and rising from her bed she began to ply her own bell, in order tosummon the French maid who had left her some hours before. 

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and though, on the lastoccasion, she rang with such vehemence as to pull down the bell-rope, Mademoiselle Fifine did not make her appearance--no, not though hermistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her hand, came outto the landing-place with her hair over her shoulders and screamed outrepeatedly for her attendant. 

The truth is, she had quitted the premises for many hours, and uponthat permission which is called French leave among us After picking upthe trinkets in the drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to her ownapartments, packed and corded her own boxes there, tripped out andcalled a cab for herself, brought down her trunks with her own hand, and without ever so much as asking the aid of any of the otherservants, who would probably have refused it, as they hated hercordially, and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had made herexit from Curzon Street. 

The game, in her opinion, was over in that little domesticestablishment. Fifine went off in a cab, as we have known more exaltedpersons of her nation to do under similar circumstances: but, moreprovident or lucky than these, she secured not only her own property, but some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could be said to haveany property at all)--and not only carried off the trinkets beforealluded to, and some favourite dresses on which she had long kept hereye, but four richly gilt Louis Quatorze candlesticks, six gilt albums, keepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a gold enamelled snuff-box which hadonce belonged to Madame du Barri, and the sweetest little inkstand andmother-of-pearl blotting book, which Becky used when she composed hercharming little pink notes, had vanished from the premises in CurzonStreet together with Mademoiselle Fifine, and all the silver laid onthe table for the little festin which Rawdon interrupted. The platedware Mademoiselle left behind her was too cumbrous, probably for whichreason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the chimney-glasses, and the rosewood cottage piano. 

A lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's shop in the Rue duHelder at Paris, where she lived with great credit and enjoyed thepatronage of my Lord Steyne. This person always spoke of England as ofthe most treacherous country in the world, and stated to her youngpupils that she had been affreusement vole by natives of that island. It was no doubt compassion for her misfortunes which induced theMarquis of Steyne to be so very kind to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe. Mayshe flourish as she deserves--she appears no more in our quarter ofVanity Fair. 

Hearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the impudence ofthose servants who would not answer her summons, Mrs. Crawley flung hermorning robe round her and descended majestically to the drawing-room, whence the noise proceeded. 

The cook was there with blackened face, seated on the beautiful chintzsofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom she was administeringMaraschino. The page with the sugar-loaf buttons, who carried aboutBecky's pink notes, and jumped about her little carriage with suchalacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers into a cream dish; thefootman was talking to Raggles, who had a face full of perplexity andwoe--and yet, though the door was open, and Becky had been screaming ahalf-dozen of times a few feet off, not one of her attendants hadobeyed her call. "Have a little drop, do'ee now, Mrs. Raggles, " thecook was saying as Becky entered, the white cashmere dressing-gownflouncing around her. 

"Simpson! Trotter!" the mistress of the house cried in great wrath. "How dare you stay here when you heard me call? How dare you sit downin my presence? Where's my maid?" The page withdrew his fingers fromhis mouth with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a glass ofMaraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough, staring at Becky overthe little gilt glass as she drained its contents. The liquor appearedto give the odious rebel courage. 

"YOUR sofy, indeed!" Mrs. Cook said. "I'm a settin' on Mrs. Raggles'ssofy. Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum. I'm a settin' on Mr. And Mrs. Raggles's sofy, which they bought with honest money, and very dear itcost 'em, too. And I'm thinkin' if I set here until I'm paid my wages, I shall set a precious long time, Mrs. Raggles; and set I will, too--ha! ha!" and with this she filled herself another glass of theliquor and drank it with a more hideously satirical air. 

"Trotter! Simpson! turn that drunken wretch out, " screamed Mrs. Crawley. 

"I shawn't, " said Trotter the footman; "turn out yourself. Pay ourselleries, and turn me out too. WE'LL go fast enough. "

"Are you all here to insult me?" cried Becky in a fury; "when ColonelCrawley comes home I'll--"

At this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in which, however, Raggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join. "He ain't a coming back, " Mr. Trotter resumed. "He sent for histhings, and I wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and Idon't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am. He's hoff, and Isuppose you're a goin' after him. You're no better than swindlers, both on you. Don't be a bullyin' ME. I won't stand it. Pay us ourselleries, I say. Pay us our selleries. " It was evident, from Mr. Trotter's flushed countenance and defective intonation, that he, too, had had recourse to vinous stimulus. 

"Mr. Raggles, " said Becky in a passion of vexation, "you will notsurely let me be insulted by that drunken man?" "Hold your noise, Trotter; do now, " said Simpson the page. He was affected by hismistress's deplorable situation, and succeeded in preventing anoutrageous denial of the epithet "drunken" on the footman's part. 

"Oh, M'am, " said Raggles, "I never thought to live to see this yearday: I've known the Crawley family ever since I was born. I livedbutler with Miss Crawley for thirty years; and I little thought one ofthat family was a goin' to ruing me--yes, ruing me"--said the poorfellow with tears in his eyes. "Har you a goin' to pay me? You'velived in this 'ouse four year. You've 'ad my substance: my plate andlinning. You ho me a milk and butter bill of two 'undred pound, youmust 'ave noo laid heggs for your homlets, and cream for your spanildog. "

"She didn't care what her own flesh and blood had, " interposed thecook. "Many's the time, he'd have starved but for me. "

"He's a charaty-boy now, Cooky, " said Mr. Trotter, with a drunken "ha!ha!"--and honest Raggles continued, in a lamentable tone, anenumeration of his griefs. All he said was true. Becky and herhusband had ruined him. He had bills coming due next week and no meansto meet them. He would be sold up and turned out of his shop and hishouse, because he had trusted to the Crawley family. His tears andlamentations made Becky more peevish than ever. 

"You all seem to be against me, " she said bitterly. "What do you want?I can't pay you on Sunday. Come back to-morrow and I'll pay youeverything. I thought Colonel Crawley had settled with you. He willto-morrow. I declare to you upon my honour that he left home thismorning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book. He has left menothing. Apply to him. Give me a bonnet and shawl and let me go outand find him. There was a difference between us this morning. You allseem to know it. I promise you upon my word that you shall all bepaid. He has got a good appointment. Let me go out and find him. "

This audacious statement caused Raggles and the other personagespresent to look at one another with a wild surprise, and with itRebecca left them. She went upstairs and dressed herself this timewithout the aid of her French maid. She went into Rawdon's room, andthere saw that a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with apencil direction that they should be given when called for; then shewent into the Frenchwoman's garret; everything was clean, and all thedrawers emptied there. She bethought herself of the trinkets which hadbeen left on the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled. "GoodHeavens! was ever such ill luck as mine?" she said; "to be so near, and to lose all. Is it all too late?" No; there was one chance more. 

She dressed herself and went away unmolested this time, but alone. Itwas four o'clock. She went swiftly down the streets (she had no moneyto pay for a carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir PittCrawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street. Where was Lady Jane Crawley?She was at church. Becky was not sorry. Sir Pitt was in his study, andhad given orders not to be disturbed--she must see him--she slipped bythe sentinel in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before theastonished Baronet had even laid down the paper. 

He turned red and started back from her with a look of great alarm andhorror. 

"Do not look so, " she said. "I am not guilty, Pitt, dear Pitt; youwere my friend once. Before God, I am not guilty. I seem so. Everything is against me. And oh! at such a moment! just when all myhopes were about to be realized: just when happiness was in store forus. "

"Is this true, what I see in the paper then?" Sir Pitt said--aparagraph in which had greatly surprised him. 

"It is true. Lord Steyne told me on Friday night, the night of thatfatal ball. He has been promised an appointment any time these sixmonths. Mr. Martyr, the Colonial Secretary, told him yesterday that itwas made out. That unlucky arrest ensued; that horrible meeting. I wasonly guilty of too much devotedness to Rawdon's service. I havereceived Lord Steyne alone a hundred times before. I confess I hadmoney of which Rawdon knew nothing. Don't you know how careless he isof it, and could I dare to confide it to him?" And so she went on witha perfectly connected story, which she poured into the ears of herperplexed kinsman. 

It was to the following effect. Becky owned, and with prefectfrankness, but deep contrition, that having remarked Lord Steyne'spartiality for her (at the mention of which Pitt blushed), and beingsecure of her own virtue, she had determined to turn the great peer'sattachment to the advantage of herself and her family. "I looked for apeerage for you, Pitt, " she said (the brother-in-law again turned red). "We have talked about it. Your genius and Lord Steyne's interest madeit more than probable, had not this dreadful calamity come to put anend to all our hopes. But, first, I own that it was my object torescue my dear husband--him whom I love in spite of all his ill usageand suspicions of me--to remove him from the poverty and ruin which wasimpending over us. I saw Lord Steyne's partiality for me, " she said, casting down her eyes. "I own that I did everything in my power tomake myself pleasing to him, and as far as an honest woman may, tosecure his--his esteem. It was only on Friday morning that the newsarrived of the death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lordinstantly secured the appointment for my dear husband. It was intendedas a surprise for him--he was to see it in the papers to-day. Evenafter that horrid arrest took place (the expenses of which Lord Steynegenerously said he would settle, so that I was in a manner preventedfrom coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was laughing with me, and saying that my dearest Rawdon would be consoled when he read of hisappointment in the paper, in that shocking spun--bailiff's house. Andthen--then he came home. His suspicions were excited, --the dreadfulscene took place between my Lord and my cruel, cruel Rawdon--and, O myGod, what will happen next? Pitt, dear Pitt! pity me, and reconcileus!" And as she spoke she flung herself down on her knees, and burstinginto tears, seized hold of Pitt's hand, which she kissed passionately. 

It was in this very attitude that Lady Jane, who, returning fromchurch, ran to her husband's room directly she heard Mrs. RawdonCrawley was closeted there, found the Baronet and his sister-in-law. 

"I am surprised that woman has the audacity to enter this house, " LadyJane said, trembling in every limb and turning quite pale. (HerLadyship had sent out her maid directly after breakfast, who hadcommunicated with Raggles and Rawdon Crawley's household, who had toldher all, and a great deal more than they knew, of that story, and manyothers besides). "How dare Mrs. Crawley to enter the house of--of anhonest family?"

Sir Pitt started back, amazed at his wife's display of vigour. Beckystill kept her kneeling posture and clung to Sir Pitt's hand. 

"Tell her that she does not know all: Tell her that I am innocent, dear Pitt, " she whimpered out. 

"Upon-my word, my love, I think you do Mrs. Crawley injustice, " SirPitt said; at which speech Rebecca was vastly relieved. "Indeed Ibelieve her to be--"

"To be what?" cried out Lady Jane, her clear voice thrilling and, herheart beating violently as she spoke. "To be a wicked woman--aheartless mother, a false wife? She never loved her dear little boy, who used to fly here and tell me of her cruelty to him. She never cameinto a family but she strove to bring misery with her and to weaken themost sacred affections with her wicked flattery and falsehoods. Shehas deceived her husband, as she has deceived everybody; her soul isblack with vanity, worldliness, and all sorts of crime. I tremble whenI touch her. I keep my children out of her sight. "

"Lady Jane!" cried Sir Pitt, starting up, "this is really language--""I have been a true and faithful wife to you, Sir Pitt, " Lady Janecontinued, intrepidly; "I have kept my marriage vow as I made it to Godand have been obedient and gentle as a wife should. But righteousobedience has its limits, and I declare that I will not bear that--thatwoman again under my roof; if she enters it, I and my children willleave it. She is not worthy to sit down with Christian people. You--you must choose, sir, between her and me"; and with this my Ladyswept out of the room, fluttering with her own audacity, and leavingRebecca and Sir Pitt not a little astonished at it. 

As for Becky, she was not hurt; nay, she was pleased. "It was thediamond-clasp you gave me, " she said to Sir Pitt, reaching him out herhand; and before she left him (for which event you may be sure my LadyJane was looking out from her dressing-room window in the upper story)the Baronet had promised to go and seek out his brother, and endeavourto bring about a reconciliation. 

Rawdon found some of the young fellows of the regiment seated in themess-room at breakfast, and was induced without much difficulty topartake of that meal, and of the devilled legs of fowls and soda-waterwith which these young gentlemen fortified themselves. Then they had aconversation befitting the day and their time of life: about the nextpigeon-match at Battersea, with relative bets upon Ross andOsbaldiston; about Mademoiselle Ariane of the French Opera, and who hadleft her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr; and about the fightbetween the Butcher and the Pet, and the probabilities that it was across. Young Tandyman, a hero of seventeen, laboriously endeavouringto get up a pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in themost scientific manner about the battle and the condition of the men. It was he who had driven the Butcher on to the ground in his drag andpassed the whole of the previous night with him. Had there not beenfoul play he must have won it. All the old files of the Ring were init; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't pay. It was buta year since the young Cornet, now so knowing a hand in Cribb'sparlour, had a still lingering liking for toffy, and used to be birchedat Eton. 

So they went on talking about dancers, fights, drinking, demireps, until Macmurdo came down and joined the boys and the conversation. Hedid not appear to think that any especial reverence was due to theirboyhood; the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice asany the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his own grey hairsnor their smooth faces detain him. Old Mac was famous for his goodstories. He was not exactly a lady's man; that is, men asked him todine rather at the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers. There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his, but he was quitecontented with it, such as it was, and led it in perfect good nature, simplicity, and modesty of demeanour. 

By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast, most of the othershad concluded their meal. Young Lord Varinas was smoking an immenseMeerschaum pipe, while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: thatviolent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier between hislegs, was tossing for shillings with all his might (that fellow wasalways at some game or other) against Captain Deuceace; and Mac andRawdon walked off to the Club, neither, of course, having given anyhint of the business which was occupying their minds. Both, on theother hand, had joined pretty gaily in the conversation, for why shouldthey interrupt it? Feasting, drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go onalongside of all sorts of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowdswere pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed down St. James's Street and entered into their Club. 

The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand gaping and grinningout of the great front window of the Club, had not arrived at theirposts as yet--the newspaper-room was almost empty. One man was presentwhom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed a little score forwhist, and whom, in consequence, he did not care to meet; a third wasreading the Royalist (a periodical famous for its scandal and itsattachment to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and lookingup 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 affairwith Lord Steyne was already in the public prints. Smith looked upwondering and smiling at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited ashe took up the paper and, trembling, began to read. 

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

"It is come just in the nick of time, " said Smith. "I suppose Crawleyhad not a shilling in the world. "

"It's a wind that blows everybody good, " Mr. Brown said. "He can't goaway 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 soinfernal, they don't enjoy it long. Liverseege died after eighteenmonths 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 hima 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 otherenigmatically, and went to read his papers. 

Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following astonishingparagraph:

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

"Coventry Island! Where was it? Who had appointed him to thegovernment? You must take me out as your secretary, old boy, " CaptainMacmurdo said laughing; and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering andperplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought in to theColonel a card on which the name of Mr. Wenham was engraved, who beggedto 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'yedo, 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 andtendered another smile and shake of the hand to the second, as he haddone to the principal. Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskinglove, and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put in communication with apekin, and thought that Lord Steyne should have sent him a Colonel atthe very least. 

"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean, " Crawley said, "I hadbetter retire and leave you together. "

"Of course, " said Macmurdo. 

"By no means, my dear Colonel, " Mr. Wenham said; "the interview which Ihad the honour of requesting was with you personally, though thecompany of Captain Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing. Infact, Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none but themost agreeable results, very different from those which my friendColonel Crawley appears to anticipate. "

"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo. Be hanged to these civilians, hethought to himself, they are always for arranging and speechifying. Mr. Wenham took a chair which was not offered to him--took a paper from hispocket, and resumed--

"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the papers this morning, Colonel? Government has secured a most valuable servant, and you, ifyou accept office, as I presume you will, an excellent appointment. Three thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-house, all your own way in the Colony, and a certain promotion. Icongratulate you with all my heart. I presume you know, gentlemen, towhom my friend is indebted for this piece of patronage?"

"Hanged if I know, " the Captain said; his principal turned very red. 

"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the world, as he is oneof the greatest--to my excellent friend, the Marquis of Steyne. "

"I'll see him d---- before I take his place, " growled out Rawdon. 

"You are irritated against my noble friend, " Mr. Wenham calmly resumed;"and now, in the name of common sense and justice, tell me why?"

"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise. 

"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick on the ground. 

"Dammy, indeed, " said Mr. Wenham with the most agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of the world--as an honest man--and see ifyou have not been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, andfind--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in Curzon Street withMrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance strange or novel? Has he not been ahundred times before in the same position? Upon my honour and word as agentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on his waistcoat with aparliamentary air--"I declare I think that your suspicions aremonstrous and utterly unfounded, and that they injure an honourablegentleman who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousandbenefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady. "

"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo. 

"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my wife, Mrs. Wenham, "Mr. Wenham said with great energy. "I believe that, misled by aninfernal jealousy, my friend here strikes a blow against not only aninfirm and old man of high station, his constant friend and benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour, his son's futurereputation, and his own prospects in life. "

"I will tell you what happened, " Mr. Wenham continued with greatsolemnity; "I was sent for this morning by my Lord Steyne, and foundhim in a pitiable state, as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, anyman of age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with a manof your strength. I say to your face; it was a cruel advantage youtook of that strength, Colonel Crawley. It was not only the body of mynoble and excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, wasbleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and regarded withaffection had subjected him to the foulest indignity. What was thisvery appointment, which appears in the journals of to-day, but a proofof his kindness to you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I foundhim in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you are torevenge the outrage committed upon him, by blood. You know he hasgiven his proofs, I presume, Colonel Crawley?"

"He has plenty of pluck, " said the Colonel. "Nobody ever said hehadn't. "

"His first order to me was to write a letter of challenge, and to carryit to Colonel Crawley. One or other of us, " he said, "must not survivethe outrage of last night. "

Crawley nodded. "You're coming to the point, Wenham, " he said. 

"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. Good God! sir, " I said, "how Iregret that Mrs. Wenham and myself had not accepted Mrs. Crawley'sinvitation to sup with her!"

"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo said. 

"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop--no, this isanother paper--I thought I had h, but it's of no consequence, and Ipledge you my word to the fact. If we had come--and it was only one ofMrs. Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers under them agood deal, especially in the spring--if we had come, and you hadreturned home, there would have been no quarrel, no insult, nosuspicion--and so it is positively because my poor wife has a headachethat you are to bring death down upon two men of honour and plunge twoof the most excellent and ancient families in the kingdom into disgraceand sorrow. "

Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air of a man profoundlypuzzled, and Rawdon felt with a kind of rage that his prey was escapinghim. He did not believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit ordisprove it?

Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory, which in his placein Parliament he had so often practised--"I sat for an hour or more byLord Steyne's bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego hisintention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him that thecircumstances were after all suspicious--they were suspicious. Iacknowledge it--any man in your position might have been taken in--Isaid that a man furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes amadman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel between you mustlead to the disgrace of all parties concerned--that a man of hisLordship's exalted station had no right in these days, when the mostatrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levellingdoctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal;and that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he wasguilty. In fine, I implored him not to send the challenge. "

"I don't believe one word of the whole story, " said Rawdon, grindinghis teeth. "I believe it a d------ lie, and that you're in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don't come from him, by Jove it shall comefrom me. "

Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage interruption of theColonel and looked towards the door. 

But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That gentleman rose upwith an oath and rebuked Rawdon for his language. "You put the affairinto my hands, and you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not asyou do. You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort oflanguage; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an apology. And as for achallenge to Lord Steyne, you may get somebody else to carry it, Iwon't. If my lord, after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammylet him. And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my belief is, there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's innocent, as innocentas Mr. Wenham says she is; and at any rate that you would be a d--foolnot to take the place and hold your tongue. "

"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense, " Mr. Wenham criedout, immensely relieved--"I forget any words that Colonel Crawley hasused in the irritation of the moment. "

"I thought you would, " Rawdon said with a sneer. 

"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid, " the Captain said good-naturedly. "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and quite right, too. "

"This matter, in my belief, " the Steyne emissary cried, "ought to beburied in the most profound oblivion. A word concerning it shouldnever pass these doors. I speak in the interest of my friend, as wellas of Colonel Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy. "

"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very much, " said CaptainMacmurdo; "and I don't see why our side should. The affair ain't avery pretty one, any way you take it, and the less said about it thebetter. It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied, why, I think, we should be. "

Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain Macmurdo following himto the door, shut it upon himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leavingRawdon chafing within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdolooked hard at the other ambassador and with an expression of anythingbut respect on his round jolly face. 

"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham, " he said. 

"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo, " answered the other with a smile. "Upon my honour and conscience now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to supafter the opera. "

"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-aches. I say, I've gota thousand-pound note here, which I will give you if you will give me areceipt, please; and I will put the note up in an envelope for LordSteyne. My man shan't fight him. But we had rather not take his money. "

"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir, " the other said withthe utmost innocence of manner; and was bowed down the Club steps byCaptain Macmurdo, just as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was aslight acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the Captain, goingback with the Baronet to the room where the latter's brother was, toldSir Pitt, in confidence, that he had made the affair all right betweenLord Steyne and the Colonel. 

Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence, andcongratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks upon the evils of duelling and theunsatisfactory nature of that sort of settlement of disputes. 

And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence to effect areconciliation between Rawdon and his wife. He recapitulated thestatements which Becky had made, pointed out the probabilities of theirtruth, and asserted his own firm belief in her innocence. 

But Rawdon would not hear of it. "She has kep money concealed from methese ten years, " he said "She swore, last night only, she had nonefrom Steyne. She knew it was all up, directly I found it. If she'snot guilty, Pitt, she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see heragain--never. " His head sank down on his chest as he spoke the words, and he looked quite broken and sad. 

"Poor old boy, " Macmurdo said, shaking his head. 

Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of taking the placewhich had been procured for him by so odious a patron, and was also forremoving the boy from the school where Lord Steyne's interest hadplaced him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these benefits bythe entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo, but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a fury Steyne would be in to think that hisenemy's fortune was made through his means. 

When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his accident, the ColonialSecretary bowed up to him and congratulated himself and the Serviceupon having made so excellent an appointment. These congratulationswere received with a degree of gratitude which may be imagined on thepart of Lord Steyne. 

The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel Crawley was buriedin the profoundest oblivion, as Wenham said; that is, by the secondsand the principals. But before that evening was over it was talked ofat fifty dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself went toseven evening parties and told the story with comments and emendationsat each place. How Mrs. Washington White revelled in it! TheBishopess of Ealing was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went andwrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House that very day. Little Southdown was sorry; so you may be sure was his sister LadyJane, very sorry. Lady Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter atthe Cape of Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days, andwas only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham. 

The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in Curzon Street, andthe late fair tenant of that poor little mansion was in themeanwhile--where? Who cared! Who asked after a day or two? Was sheguilty or not? We all know how charitable the world is, and how theverdict of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people saidshe had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne, whilst others averredthat his Lordship quitted that city and fled to Palermo on hearing ofBecky's arrival; some said she was living in Bierstadt, and had becomea dame d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was atBoulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at Cheltenham. 

Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may be sure that she was awoman who could make a little money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got anyInsurance Office to take his life, but the climate of Coventry Islandwas so bad that he could borrow no money on the strength of his salary. He remitted, however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to hislittle boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars and sentover quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane. He sent his brother home the SwampTown Gazette, in which the new Governor was praised with immenseenthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose wife was not askedto Government House, declared that his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdonused to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency. 

His mother never made any movement to see the child. He went home tohis aunt for Sundays and holidays; he soon knew every bird's nest aboutQueen's Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which headmired so on his first well-remembered visit to Hampshire. 

CHAPTER LVI

Georgy is Made a Gentleman

Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his grandfather's mansionin Russell Square, occupant of his father's room in the house and heirapparent of all the splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's heart forhim. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever he had been of the elderGeorge. 

The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than had been awardedhis father. Osborne's commerce had prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and importance in the City had very much increased. He hadbeen glad enough in former days to put the elder George to a goodprivate school; and a commission in the army for his son had been asource of no small pride to him; for little George and his futureprospects the old man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman ofthe little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying regarding littleGeorgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a collegian, a Parliament man, aBaronet, perhaps. The old man thought he would die contented if hecould see his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would havenone but a tip-top college man to educate him--none of your quacks andpretenders--no, no. A few years before, he used to be savage, andinveigh against all parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that theywere a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get their livingbut by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set of supercilious dogs thatpretended to look down upon British merchants and gentlemen, who couldbuy up half a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very solemnmanner, that his own education had been neglected, and repeatedly pointout, in pompous orations to Georgy, the necessity and excellence ofclassical acquirements. 

When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask the lad what he hadbeen reading during the day, and was greatly interested at the reportthe boy gave of his own studies, pretending to understand little Georgewhen he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred blunders and showedhis ignorance many a time. It did not increase the respect which thechild had for his senior. A quick brain and a better educationelsewhere showed the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and he began accordingly to command him and to look down upon him; forhis previous education, humble and contracted as it had been, had madea much better gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfathercould make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak, and tenderwoman, who had no pride about anything but about him, and whose heartwas so pure and whose bearing was so meek and humble that she could notbut needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices andquiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she never spoke orthought unkind ones; guileless and artless, loving and pure, indeed howcould our poor little Amelia be other than a real gentlewoman!

Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding nature; and thecontrast of its simplicity and delicacy with the coarse pomposity ofthe dull old man with whom he next came in contact made him lord overthe latter too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have beenbetter brought up to think well of himself. 

Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and I do believeevery hour of the day, and during most hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young gentleman had a number of pleasures andconsolations administered to him, which made him for his part bear theseparation from Amelia very easily. Little boys who cry when they aregoing to school cry because they are going to a very uncomfortableplace. It is only a few who weep from sheer affection. When you thinkthat the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a piece ofgingerbread, and that a plum cake was a compensation for the agony ofparting with your mamma and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you neednot be too confident of your own fine feelings. 

Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort and luxury that awealthy and lavish old grandfather thought fit to provide. Thecoachman was instructed to purchase for him the handsomest pony whichcould be bought for money, and on this George was taught to ride, firstat a riding-school, whence, after having performed satisfactorilywithout stirrups, and over the leaping-bar, he was conducted throughthe New Road to Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode instate with Martin the coachman behind him. Old Osborne, who tookmatters more easily in the City now, where he left his affairs to hisjunior partners, would often ride out with Miss O. In the samefashionable direction. As little Georgy came cantering up with hisdandified air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge the lad'saunt and say, "Look, Miss O. " And he would laugh, and his face wouldgrow red with pleasure, as he nodded out of the window to the boy, asthe groom saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master George. Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock (whose chariot might daily beseen in the Ring, with bullocks or emblazoned on the panels andharness, and three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockadesand feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at the little upstart as he rodeby with his hand on his side and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord. 

Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master George wore strapsand the most beautiful little boots like a man. He had gilt spurs, anda gold-headed whip, and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatestlittle kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish. His motherhad given him a couple of neckcloths, and carefully hemmed and madesome little shirts for him; but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttonsin the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put aside--Ibelieve Miss Osborne had given them to the coachman's boy. Ameliatried to think she was pleased at the change. Indeed, she was happyand charmed to see the boy looking so beautiful. 

She had had a little black profile of him done for a shilling, and thiswas hung up by the side of another portrait over her bed. One day theboy came on his accustomed visit, galloping down the little street atBrompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the windows toadmire his splendour, and with great eagerness and a look of triumph inhis face, he pulled a case out of his great-coat--it was a natty whitegreat-coat, with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red moroccocase, which he gave her. 

"I bought it with my own money, Mamma, " he said. "I thought you'd likeit. "

Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a hundred times. It was a miniature-ofhimself, very prettily done (though not half handsome enough, we may besure, the widow thought). His grandfather had wished to have a pictureof him by an artist whose works, exhibited in a shop-window, inSouthampton Row, had caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, whohad plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter how much acopy of the little portrait would cost, saying that he would pay for itout of his own money and that he wanted to give it to his mother. Thepleased painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his satisfaction and gavethe boy twice as many sovereigns as he paid for the miniature. 

But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to Amelia's ecstacy?That proof of the boy's affection charmed her so that she thought nochild in the world was like hers for goodness. For long weeks after, the thought of his love made her happy. She slept better with thepicture under her pillow, and how many many times did she kiss it andweep and pray over it! A small kindness from those she loved made thattimid heart grateful. Since her parting with George she had had nosuch joy and consolation. 

At his new home Master George ruled like a lord; at dinner he invitedthe ladies to drink wine with the utmost coolness, and took off hischampagne in a way which charmed his old grandfather. "Look at him, "the old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a delighted purpleface, "did you ever see such a chap? Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering adressing-case next, and razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't. "

The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr. Osborne's friendsso much as they pleased the old gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffinno pleasure to hear Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil hisstories. Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy halftipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a glass of port-wine over heryellow satin and laughed at the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped" herthird boy (a young gentleman a year older than Georgy, and by chancehome for the holidays from Dr. Tickleus's at Ealing School) in RussellSquare. George's grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns forthat feat and promised to reward him further for every boy above hisown size and age whom he whopped in a similar manner. It is difficultto say what good the old man saw in these combats; he had a vaguenotion that quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a usefulaccomplishment for them to learn. English youth have been so educatedtime out of mind, and we have hundreds of thousands of apologists andadmirers of injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated amongchildren. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy, Georgewished naturally to pursue his conquests further, and one day as he wasstrutting about in prodigiously dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon hisappearance, the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket withgreat spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend who accompanied him(Master Todd, of Great Coram Street, Russell Square, son of the juniorpartner of the house of Osborne and Co. ), George tried to whop thelittle baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable this time, andthe little baker whopped Georgy, who came home with a rueful black eyeand all his fine shirt frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his ownlittle nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in combat with agiant, and frightened his poor mother at Brompton with long, and by nomeans authentic, accounts of the battle. 

This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square, was Master George'sgreat friend and admirer. They both had a taste for paintingtheatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts; for slidingand skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weatherpermitted; for going to the play, whither they were often conducted, byMr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's appointedbody-servant, with whom they sat in great comfort in the pit. 

In the company of this gentleman they visited all the principaltheatres of the metropolis; knew the names of all the actors from DruryLane to Sadler's Wells; and performed, indeed, many of the plays to theTodd family and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters, on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the footman, who was of agenerous disposition, would not unfrequently, when in cash, treat hisyoung master to oysters after the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub fora night-cap. We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in histurn by his young master's liberality and gratitude for the pleasuresto which the footman inducted him. 

A famous tailor from the West End of the town--Mr. Osborne would havenone of your City or Holborn bunglers, he said, for the boy (though aCity tailor was good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament littleGeorge's person, and was told to spare no expense in so doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose to his imagination and sentthe child home fancy trousers, fancy waistcoats, and fancy jacketsenough to furnish a school of little dandies. Georgy had little whitewaistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats fordinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown, for all theworld like a little man. He dressed for dinner every day, "like aregular West End swell, " as his grandfather remarked; one of thedomestics was affected to his special service, attended him at histoilette, answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on asilver tray. 

Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in the dining-roomand read the Morning Post, just like a grown-up man. "How he DU damand swear, " the servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Thosewho remembered the Captain his father, declared Master George was hisPa, every inch of him. He made the house lively by his activity, hisimperiousness, his scolding, and his good-nature. 

George's education was confided to a neighbouring scholar and privatepedagogue who "prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for theUniversities, the senate, and the learned professions: whose systemdid not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised atthe ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils wouldfind the elegances of refined society and the confidence and affectionof a home. " It was in this way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of HartStreet, Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils. 

By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the domestic Chaplain andhis Lady generally succeeded in having one or two scholars by them--whopaid a high figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortablequarters. There was a large West Indian, whom nobody came to see, witha mahogany complexion, a woolly head, and an exceedingly dandyfiedappearance; there was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whoseeducation had been neglected and whom Mr. And Mrs. Veal were tointroduce into the polite world; there were two sons of Colonel Banglesof the East India Company's Service: these four sat down to dinner atMrs. Veal's genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to herestablishment. 

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy; he arrived inthe morning under the guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if itwas fine, would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by thegroom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported in the school to beprodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used to compliment Georgy upon itpersonally, warning him that he was destined for a high station; thatit became him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for thelofty duties to which he would be called in mature age; that obediencein the child was the best preparation for command in the man; and thathe therefore begged George would not bring toffee into the school andruin the health of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wantedat the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal. 

With respect to learning, "the Curriculum, " as Mr. Veal loved to callit, was of prodigious extent, and the young gentlemen in Hart Streetmight learn a something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal hadan orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a theatre (in thewash-house), a chemical apparatus, and what he called a select libraryof all the works of the best authors of ancient and modern times andlanguages. He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted uponthe antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so thataudiences would gather round him as he spoke, and all Bloomsbury highlyadmired him as a prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finestand longest words of which the vocabulary gave him the use, rightlyjudging that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorousepithet, as to use a little stingy one. 

Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed on my return homefrom taking the indulgence of an evening's scientific conversation withmy excellent friend Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, atrue archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated grandfather'salmost princely mansion in Russell Square were illuminated as if forthe purposes of festivity. Am I right in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round his sumptuousboard last night?"

Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used to mimic Mr. Vealto his face with great spirit and dexterity, would reply that Mr. V. Was quite correct in his surmise. 

"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking of Mr. Osborne'shospitality, gentlemen, had no reason, I will lay any wager, tocomplain of their repast. I myself have been more than once sofavoured. (By the way, Master Osborne, you came a little late thismorning, and have been a defaulter in this respect more than once. ) Imyself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been found not unworthyto share Mr. Osborne's elegant hospitality. And though I have feastedwith the great and noble of the world--for I presume that I may call myexcellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George Earl ofBareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you that the board of theBritish merchant was to the full as richly served, and his reception asgratifying and noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please, that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the late arrival ofMaster Osborne. "

To this great man George's education was for some time entrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases, but thought him a prodigy oflearning. That poor widow made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons ofher own. She liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to schoolthere. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni, which tookplace once a month (as you were informed on pink cards, with AOHNHengraved on them), and where the professor welcomed his pupils andtheir friends to weak tea and scientific conversation. Poor littleAmelia never missed one of these entertainments and thought themdelicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her. And shewould walk from Brompton in any weather, and embrace Mrs. Veal withtearful gratitude for the delightful evening she had passed, when, thecompany having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, hisattendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and her shawlspreparatory to walking home. 

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this valuable master ofa hundred sciences, to judge from the weekly reports which the lad tookhome to his grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of ascore or more of desirable branches of knowledge were printed in atable, and the pupil's progress in each was marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in Frenchtres bien, and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything at theend of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, theneglected young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agriculturaldistrict, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd beforementioned, received little eighteen-penny books, with "Athene" engravedon them, and a pompous Latin inscription from the professor to hisyoung friends. 

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced Todd from being a clerk to be a juniorpartner in his establishment. 

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd (who in subsequentlife wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his cards and became a man of decidedfashion), while Miss Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to thefont, and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of tracts, avolume of very low church poetry, or some such memento of her goodnessevery year. Miss O. Drove the Todds out in her carriage now and then;when they were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunchesof mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c. , out of turnips andcarrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the Square, " as itwas called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner, without even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet. Ifany guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffledknock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and theladies under her convoy reached that apartment--and ready to fire offduets and sing until the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; pooryoung lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets and sonatasin the Street, before they appeared in public in the Square!

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy was to domineer overeverybody with whom he came in contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were all to bow the knee before the little fellow. Itmust be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly to thisarrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy liked to play the part ofmaster and perhaps had a natural aptitude for it. 

In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Osbornewas afraid of Georgy. The boy's dashing manners, and offhand rattleabout books and learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciledin Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the young boy themastery. The old man would start at some hereditary feature or toneunconsciously used by the little lad, and fancy that George's fatherwas again before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to makeup for harshness to the elder George. People were surprised at hisgentleness to the boy. He growled and swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when George came down late for breakfast. 

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster, broken down bymore than forty years of dulness and coarse usage. It was easy for alad of spirit to master her. And whenever George wanted anything fromher, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry oldcolours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she had had when shewas a pupil of Mr. Smee and was still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession of the object of his desire, which obtained, hetook no further notice of his aunt. 

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, whoflattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash. It wasdear Mrs. Todd's delight to leave him with her youngest daughter, RosaJemima, a darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked sowell together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the Square, " wemay be sure) "who knows what might happen? Don't they make a prettylittle couple?" the fond mother thought. 

The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was likewise subject tothe little tyrant. He could not help respecting a lad who had suchfine clothes and rode with a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side, was in the constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satirelevelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr. Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper, the old coal-man, theold bankrupt, and by many other such names of brutal contumely. Howwas little George to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after hewas with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died. There had beenlittle love between her and the child. He did not care to show muchgrief. He came down to visit his mother in a fine new suit ofmourning, and was very angry that he could not go to a play upon whichhe had set his heart. 

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps thesafeguard of Amelia. What do men know about women's martyrdoms? Weshould go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily painswhich are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless slavery meeting withno reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant;love, labour, patience, watchfulness, without even so much as theacknowledgement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bearin quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they feltnothing. Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocritesand weak. 

From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed, which she hadnever left, and from which Mrs. Osborne herself was never absent exceptwhen she ran to see George. The old lady grudged her even those rarevisits; she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother once, inthe days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and infirmities had brokendown. Her illness or estrangement did not affect Amelia. They ratherenabled her to support the other calamity under which she wassuffering, and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the ceaselesscalls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness quite gently; smoothedthe uneasy pillow; was always ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as herpious simple heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes thathad once looked so tenderly upon her. 

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation andcomfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow whichhad befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, hishonour, his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support with her gentle arms thetottering, heart-broken old man. We are not going to write the history:it would be too dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning overit d'avance. 

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earlof Bareacres was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up tothe door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two gentlemen steppedout. The young Masters Bangles rushed to the window with a vaguenotion that their father might have arrived from Bombay. The greathulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over apassage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against the panesand looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the box andlet out the persons in the carriage. 

"It's a fat one and a thin one, " Mr. Bluck said as a thundering knockcame to the door. 

Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain himself, who hopedhe saw the fathers of some future pupils, down to Master Georgy, gladof any pretext for laying his book down. 

The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper buttons, who alwaysthrust himself into the tight coat to open the door, came into thestudy and said, "Two gentlemen want to see Master Osborne. " Theprofessor had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that younggentleman, owing to a difference about the introduction of crackers inschool-time; but his face resumed its habitual expression of blandcourtesy as he said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to goand see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to convey therespectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal. "

Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two strangers, whom helooked at with his head up, in his usual haughty manner. One was fat, with mustachios, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat, with a brown face and a grizzled head. 

"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman with a start. "Canyou guess who we are, George?"

The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he was moved, and hiseyes brightened. "I don't know the other, " he said, "but I shouldthink you must be Major Dobbin. "

Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled with pleasure as hegreeted the boy, and taking both the other's hands in his own, drew thelad to him. 

"Your mother has talked to you about me--has she?" he said. 

"That she has, " Georgy answered, "hundreds and hundreds of times. "

CHAPTER LVII

Eothen

It was one of the many causes for personal pride with which old Osbornechose to recreate himself that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, andbenefactor, was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated asto be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the hands of the manwho had most injured and insulted him. The successful man of the worldcursed the old pauper and relieved him from time to time. As hefurnished George with money for his mother, he gave the boy tounderstand by hints, delivered in his brutal, coarse way, that George'smaternal grandfather was but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, andthat John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already owed ever somuch money for the aid which his generosity now chose to administer. George carried the pompous supplies to his mother and the shattered oldwidower whom it was now the main business of her life to tend andcomfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and disappointed oldman. 

It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in Amelia that she chose toaccept these money benefits at the hands of her father's enemy. Butproper pride and this poor lady had never had much acquaintancetogether. A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection; along course of poverty and humility, of daily privations, and hardwords, of kind offices and no returns, had been her lot ever sincewomanhood almost, or since her luckless marriage with George Osborne. You who see your betters bearing up under this shame every day, meeklysuffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied, poor, andrather despised for their poverty, do you ever step down from yourprosperity and wash the feet of these poor wearied beggars? The verythought of them is odious and low. "There must be classes--there mustbe rich and poor, " Dives says, smacking his claret (it is well if heeven sends the broken meat out to Lazarus sitting under the window). Very true; but think how mysterious and often unaccountable it is--thatlottery of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen andsends to the other rags for garments and dogs for comforters. 

So I must own that, without much repining, on the contrary withsomething akin to gratitude, Amelia took the crumbs that her father-in-lawlet drop now and then, and with them fed her own parent. Directly she understood it to be her duty, it was this young woman'snature (ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her ayoung woman even at that age) it was, I say, her nature to sacrificeherself and to fling all that she had at the feet of the belovedobject. During what long thankless nights had she worked out herfingers for little Georgy whilst at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations, poverties had she endured for father and mother!And in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseensacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the worldrespected her, but I believe thought in her heart that she was apoor-spirited, despicable little creature, whose luck in life was onlytoo good for her merits. O you poor women! O you poor secret martyrsand victims, whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks inyour bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the block daily at thedrawing-room table; every man who watches your pains, or peers intothose dark places where the torture is administered to you, must pityyou--and--and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing, yearsago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at Bicetre, near Paris, apoor wretch bent down under the bondage of his imprisonment and hispersonal infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth ofsnuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper. The kindness was too much forthe poor epileptic creature. He cried in an anguish of delight andgratitude: if anybody gave you and me a thousand a year, or saved ourlives, we could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannizeover a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act upon her andbring tears into her eyes, as though you were an angel benefiting her. 

Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune allotted to poorlittle Amelia. Her life, begun not unprosperously, had come down tothis--to a mean prison and a long, ignoble bondage. Little Georgevisited her captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams ofencouragement. Russell Square was the boundary of her prison: shemight walk thither occasionally, but was always back to sleep in hercell at night; to perform cheerless duties; to watch by thanklesssick-beds; to suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulousdisappointed old age. How many thousands of people are there, womenfor the most part, who are doomed to endure this long slavery?--who arehospital nurses without wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, withoutthe romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast, watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and unknown. 

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankindis pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are lesslucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to bescornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success maybe a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperityis very likely a satire. 

They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at Brompton, upon justsuch a rainy, dark day as Amelia recollected when first she had beenthere to marry George. Her little boy sat by her side in pompous newsables. She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk. Her thoughts wereaway in other times as the parson read. But that she held George's handin her own, perhaps she would have liked to change places with. .. . Then, as usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayedinwardly to be strengthened to do her duty. 

So she determined with all her might and strength to try and make herold father happy. She slaved, toiled, patched, and mended, sang andplayed backgammon, read out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for oldSedley, walked him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or theBrompton Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles andaffectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and communing withher own thoughts and reminiscences, as the old man, feeble andquerulous, sunned himself on the garden benches and prattled about hiswrongs or his sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of thewidow were! The children running up and down the slopes and broadpaths in the gardens reminded her of George, who was taken from her;the first George was taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in bothinstances, had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to thinkit was right that she should be so punished. She was such a miserablewicked sinner. She was quite alone in the world. 

I know that the account of this kind of solitary imprisonment isinsufferably tedious, unless there is some cheerful or humorousincident to enliven it--a tender gaoler, for instance, or a waggishcommandant of the fortress, or a mouse to come out and play aboutLatude's beard and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under thecastle, dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historianhas no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative of Amelia'scaptivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this period, very sad, butalways ready to smile when spoken to; in a very mean, poor, not to sayvulgar position of life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards, mending stockings, for her old father's benefit. So, never mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however old, scolding, and bankrupt--may we have in our last days a kind soft shoulder onwhich to lean and a gentle hand to soothe our gouty old pillows. 

Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his wife's death, andAmelia had her consolation in doing her duty by the old man. 

But we are not going to leave these two people long in such a low andungenteel station of life. Better days, as far as worldly prosperitywent, were in store for both. Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessedwho was the stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school incompany with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was another oldacquaintance returned to England, and at a time when his presence waslikely to be of great comfort to his relatives there. 

Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave from hisgood-natured commandant to proceed to Madras, and thence probably toEurope, on urgent private affairs, never ceased travelling night and dayuntil he reached his journey's end, and had directed his march with suchcelerity that he arrived at Madras in a high fever. His servants whoaccompanied him brought him to the house of the friend with whom he hadresolved to stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;and it was thought for many, many days that he would never travelfarther than the burying-ground of the church of St. George's, wherethe troops should fire a salvo over his grave, and where many a gallantofficer lies far away from his home. 

Here, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the people whowatched him might have heard him raving about Amelia. The idea that heshould never see her again depressed him in his lucid hours. Hethought his last day was come, and he made his solemn preparations fordeparture, setting his affairs in this world in order and leaving thelittle property of which he was possessed to those whom he most desiredto benefit. The friend in whose house he was located witnessed histestament. He desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chainwhich he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be known, hehad got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when the young widow's hair wascut off, during the fever which prostrated her after the death ofGeorge Osborne on the plateau at Mount St. John. 

He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone such a processof blood-letting and calomel as showed the strength of his originalconstitution. He was almost a skeleton when they put him on board theRamchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta, touching atMadras, and so weak and prostrate that his friend who had tended himthrough his illness prophesied that the honest Major would neversurvive the voyage, and that he would pass some morning, shrouded inflag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying down to the seawith him the relic that he wore at his heart. But whether it was thesea air, or the hope which sprung up in him afresh, from the day thatthe ship spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards home, ourfriend began to amend, and he was quite well (though as gaunt as agreyhound) before they reached the Cape. "Kirk will be disappointed ofhis majority this time, " he said with a smile; "he will expect to findhimself gazetted by the time the regiment reaches home. " For it must bepremised that while the Major was lying ill at Madras, having made suchprodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had passed manyyears abroad, which after its return from the West Indies had beenbaulked of its stay at home by the Waterloo campaign, and had beenordered from Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Majormight have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to wait for theirarrival at Madras. 

Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his exhausted state againunder the guardianship of Glorvina. "I think Miss O'Dowd would havedone for me, " he said laughingly to a fellow-passenger, "if we had hadher on board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize to Southampton, Jos, myboy. "

For indeed it was no other than our stout friend who was also apassenger on board the Ramchunder. He had passed ten years in Bengal. Constant dinners, tiffins, pale ale and claret, the prodigious labourof cutcherry, and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was forcedto take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley. A voyage toEurope was pronounced necessary for him--and having served his fulltime in India and had fine appointments which had enabled him to lay bya considerable sum of money, he was free to come home and stay with agood pension, or to return and resume that rank in the service to whichhis seniority and his vast talents entitled him. 

He was rather thinner than when we last saw him, but had gained inmajesty and solemnity of demeanour. He had resumed the mustachios towhich his services at Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about ondeck in a magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuseornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person. He took breakfastin his cabin and dressed as solemnly to appear on the quarter-deck asif he were going to turn out for Bond Street, or the Course atCalcutta. He brought a native servant with him, who was his valet andpipe-bearer and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his turban. That oriental menial had a wretched life under the tyranny of JosSedley. Jos was as vain of his person as a woman, and took as long atime at his toilette as any fading beauty. The youngsters among thepassengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little Ricketts, coming home after his third fever, used to draw out Sedley at thecuddy-table and make him tell prodigious stories about himself and hisexploits against tigers and Napoleon. He was great when he visited theEmperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and the youngofficers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by, he described the wholebattle of Waterloo and all but announced that Napoleon never would havegone to Saint Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley. 

After leaving St. Helena he became very generous, disposing of a greatquantity of ship stores, claret, preserved meats, and great caskspacked with soda-water, brought out for his private delectation. Therewere no ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency to thecivilian, so that he was the first dignitary at table, and treated byCaptain Bragg and the officers of the Ramchunder with the respect whichhis rank warranted. He disappeared rather in a panic during atwo-days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin batteneddown, and remained in his cot reading the Washerwoman of FinchleyCommon, left on board the Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the LadyEmily Hornblower, wife of the Rev. Silas Hornblower, when on theirpassage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman was a missionary;but, for common reading, he had brought a stock of novels and playswhich he lent to the rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeableto all by his kindness and condescension. 

Many and many a night as the ship was cutting through the roaring darksea, the moon and stars shining overhead and the bell singing out thewatch, Mr. Sedley and the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of thevessel talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and thecivilian puffed at the hookah which his servant prepared for him. 

In these conversations it was wonderful with what perseverance andingenuity Major Dobbin would manage to bring the talk round to thesubject of Amelia and her little boy. Jos, a little testy about hisfather's misfortunes and unceremonious applications to him, was sootheddown by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill fortunes and oldage. He would not perhaps like to live with the old couple, whose waysand hours might not agree with those of a younger man, accustomed todifferent society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Majorpointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley to have ahouse of his own in London, and not a mere bachelor's establishment asbefore; how his sister Amelia would be the very person to preside overit; how elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good manners. He recounted stories of the success which Mrs. George Osborne had hadin former days at Brussels, and in London, where she was much admiredby people of very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming itwould be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and make a man of him, for his mother and her parents would be sure to spoil him. In a word, this artful Major made the civilian promise to take charge of Ameliaand her unprotected child. He did not know as yet what events hadhappened in the little Sedley family, and how death had removed themother, and riches had carried off George from Amelia. But the fact isthat every day and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentlemanwas thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart was bent upondoing her good. He coaxed, wheedled, cajoled, and complimented JosSedley with a perseverance and cordiality of which he was not awarehimself, very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters ordaughters even, may remember how uncommonly agreeable gentlemen are tothe male relations when they are courting the females; and perhaps thisrogue of a Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy. 

The truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the Ramchumder, verysick, and for the three days she lay in the Madras Roads, he did notbegin to rally, nor did even the appearance and recognition of his oldacquaintance, Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after aconversation which they had one day, as the Major was laid languidly onthe deck. He said then he thought he was doomed; he had left a littlesomething to his godson in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne wouldremember him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was about to make. "Married? not the least, " Jos answered; "he had heard from her: shemade no mention of the marriage, and by the way, it was curious, shewrote to say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and hoped thatHE would be happy. " What were the dates of Sedley's letters fromEurope? The civilian fetched them. They were two months later than theMajor's; and the ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon thetreatment adopted by him towards his new patient, who had beenconsigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with very small hopesindeed; for, from that day, the very day that he changed the draught, Major Dobbin began to mend. And thus it was that deserving officer, Captain Kirk, was disappointed of his majority. 

After they passed St. Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety and strength wassuch as to astonish all his fellow passengers. He larked with themidshipmen, played single-stick with the mates, ran up the shrouds likea boy, sang a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole partyassembled over their grog after supper, and rendered himself so gay, lively, and amiable that even Captain Bragg, who thought there wasnothing in his passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited fellerat first, was constrained to own that the Major was a reserved butwell-informed and meritorious officer. "He ain't got distangy manners, dammy, " Bragg observed to his first mate; "he wouldn't do at GovernmentHouse, Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind to me, and shook hands with me before the whole company, and asking me atdinner to take beer with him, before the Commander-in-Chief himself; heain't got manners, but there's something about him--" And thus CaptainBragg showed that he possessed discrimination as a man, as well asability as a commander. 

But a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was within ten days' sailof England, Dobbin became so impatient and ill-humoured as to surprisethose comrades who had before admired his vivacity and good temper. Hedid not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and was in a highlyexcited state when the pilot came on board. Good God, how his heartbeat as the two friendly spires of Southampton came in sight. 

CHAPTER LVIII

Our Friend the Major

Our Major had rendered himself so popular on board the Ramchunder thatwhen he and Mr. Sedley descended into the welcome shore-boat which wasto take them from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the greatCaptain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers for Major Dobbin, who blushed very much and ducked his head in token of thanks. Jos, whovery likely thought the cheers were for himself, took off hisgold-laced cap and waved it majestically to his friends, and they werepulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier, whence theyproceeded to the Royal George Hotel. 

Although the sight of that magnificent round of beef, and the silvertankard suggestive of real British home-brewed ale and porter, whichperennially greet the eyes of the traveller returning from foreignparts who enters the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating anddelightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug homely Englishinn might well like to stop some days there, yet Dobbin began to talkabout a post-chaise instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than hewished to be on the road to London. Jos, however, would not hear ofmoving that evening. Why was he to pass a night in a post-chaiseinstead of a great large undulating downy feather-bed which was thereready to replace the horrid little narrow crib in which the portlyBengal gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He could notthink of moving till his baggage was cleared, or of travelling until hecould do so with his chillum. So the Major was forced to wait overthat night, and dispatched a letter to his family announcing hisarrival, entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own friends. Jos promised, but didn't keep his promise. The Captain, the surgeon, and one or two passengers came and dined with our two gentlemen at theinn, Jos exerting himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner andpromising to go to town the next day with the Major. The landlord saidit did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley take off his first pint ofporter. If I had time and dared to enter into digressions, I wouldwrite a chapter about that first pint of porter drunk upon Englishground. Ah, how good it is! It is worth-while to leave home for ayear, just to enjoy that one draught. 

Major Dobbin made his appearance the next morning very neatly shavedand dressed, according to his wont. Indeed, it was so early in themorning that nobody was up in the house except that wonderful Boots ofan inn who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could hear thesnores of the various inmates of the house roaring through thecorridors as he creaked about in those dim passages. Then thesleepless Boots went shirking round from door to door, gathering up ateach the Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside. ThenJos's native servant arose and began to get ready his master'sponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his hookah; then themaidservants got up, and meeting the dark man in the passages, shrieked, and mistook him for the devil. He and Dobbin stumbled overtheir pails in the passages as they were scouring the decks of theRoyal George. When the first unshorn waiter appeared and unbarred thedoor of the inn, the Major thought that the time for departure wasarrived, and ordered a post-chaise to be fetched instantly, that theymight set off. 

He then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and opened the curtainsof the great large family bed wherein Mr. Jos was snoring. "Come, up!Sedley, " the Major said, "it's time to be off; the chaise will be atthe door in half an hour. "

Jos growled from under the counterpane to know what the time was; butwhen he at last extorted from the blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might be to his advantage) what was the real hour of themorning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which we will notrepeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to understand that he wouldjeopardy his soul if he got up at that moment, that the Major might goand be hanged, that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it wasmost unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out of his sleep inthat way; on which the discomfited Major was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his interrupted slumbers. 

The chaise came up presently, and the Major would wait no longer. 

If he had been an English nobleman travelling on a pleasure tour, or anewspaper courier bearing dispatches (government messages are generallycarried much more quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly. The post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them. How happy andgreen the country looked as the chaise whirled rapidly from mile-stoneto mile-stone, through neat country towns where landlords came out towelcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns, where thesigns hung on the elms, and horses and waggoners were drinking underthe chequered shadow of the trees; by old halls and parks; rustichamlets clustered round ancient grey churches--and through the charmingfriendly English landscape. Is there any in the world like it? To atraveller returning home it looks so kind--it seems to shake hands withyou as you pass through it. Well, Major Dobbin passed through all thisfrom Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond themilestones along the road. You see he was so eager to see his parentsat Camberwell. 

He grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his old haunt at theSlaughters', whither he drove faithfully. Long years had passed sincehe saw it last, since he and George, as young men, had enjoyed many afeast, and held many a revel there. He had now passed into the stageof old-fellow-hood. His hair was grizzled, and many a passion andfeeling of his youth had grown grey in that interval. There, however, stood the old waiter at the door, in the same greasy black suit, withthe same double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch ofseals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as before, andreceiving the Major as if he had gone away only a week ago. "Put theMajor's things in twenty-three, that's his room, " John said, exhibitingnot the least surprise. "Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose. Youain't got married? They said you was married--the Scotch surgeon ofyours was here. No, it was Captain Humby of the thirty-third, as wasquartered with the --th in Injee. Like any warm water? What do you comein a chay for--ain't the coach good enough?" And with this, thefaithful waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who used thehouse, and with whom ten years were but as yesterday, led the way up toDobbin's old room, where stood the great moreen bed, and the shabbycarpet, a thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture coveredwith faded chintz, just as the Major recollected them in his youth. 

He remembered George pacing up and down the room, and biting his nails, and swearing that the Governor must come round, and that if he didn't, he didn't care a straw, on the day before he was married. He couldfancy him walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his ownhard by--

"You ain't got young, " John said, calmly surveying his friend of formerdays. 

Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a man young, John, "he said. "It is you that are always young--no, you are always old. "

"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John said. "Fine youngfellow that. Lord, how he used to spend his money. He never came backafter that day he was marched from here. He owes me three pound atthis minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10, 1815, Captain Osborne: '3 pounds. ' I wonder whether his father would payme, " and so saying, John of the Slaughters' pulled out the very moroccopocket-book in which he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon agreasy faded page still extant, with many other scrawled memorandaregarding the bygone frequenters of the house. 

Having inducted his customer into the room, John retired with perfectcalmness; and Major Dobbin, not without a blush and a grin at his ownabsurdity, chose out of his kit the very smartest and most becomingcivil costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face and greyhair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little toilet-glass on thedressing-table. 

"I'm glad old John didn't forget me, " he thought. "She'll know me, too, I hope. " And he sallied out of the inn, bending his steps once more inthe direction of Brompton. 

Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia was present tothe constant man's mind as he walked towards her house. The arch andthe Achilles statue were up since he had last been in Piccadilly; ahundred changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely noted. Hebegan to tremble as he walked up the lane from Brompton, thatwell-remembered lane leading to the street where she lived. Was shegoing to be married or not? If he were to meet her with the littleboy--Good God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him with achild of five years old--was that she? He began to shake at the merepossibility. When he came up to the row of houses, at last, where shelived, and to the gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might haveheard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty bless her, whatever has happened, " he thought to himself. "Psha! she may be gonefrom here, " he said and went in through the gate. 

The window of the parlour which she used to occupy was open, and therewere no inmates in the room. The Major thought he recognized thepiano, though, with the picture over it, as it used to be in formerdays, and his perturbations were renewed. Mr. Clapp's brass plate wasstill on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin performed a summons. 

A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and purple cheeks, came to answer the knock and looked hard at the Major as he leant backagainst the little porch. 

He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out the words--"DoesMrs. Osborne live here?"

She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and then turning whitetoo--said, "Lord bless me--it's Major Dobbin. " She held out both herhands shaking--"Don't you remember me?" she said. "I used to call youMajor Sugarplums. " On which, and I believe it was for the first timethat he ever so conducted himself in his life, the Major took the girlin his arms and kissed her. She began to laugh and cry hysterically, and calling out "Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthypeople, who had already been surveying the Major from the casement ofthe ornamental kitchen, and were astonished to find their daughter inthe little passage in the embrace of a great tall man in a bluefrock-coat and white duck trousers. 

"I'm an old friend, " he said--not without blushing though. "Don't youremember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those good cakes you used to make for tea?Don't you recollect me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just comeback from India. " A great shaking of hands ensued--Mrs. Clapp wasgreatly affected and delighted; she called upon heaven to interpose avast many times in that passage. 

The landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy Major into theSedleys' room (whereof he remembered every single article of furniture, from the old brass ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument, Stothard maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone, in the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold watch), and there, as hesat down in the lodger's vacant arm-chair, the father, the mother, andthe daughter, with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative, informed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of particulars inAmelia's history of which he was not aware--namely of Mrs. Sedley'sdeath, of George's reconcilement with his grandfather Osborne, of theway in which the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particularsof her life. Twice or thrice he was going to ask about the marriagequestion, but his heart failed him. He did not care to lay it bare tothese people. Finally, he was informed that Mrs. O. Was gone to walkwith her pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with the oldgentleman (who was very weak and peevish now, and led her a sad life, though she behaved to him like an angel, to be sure), of a fineafternoon, after dinner. 

"I'm very much pressed for time, " the Major said, "and have businessto-night of importance. I should like to see Mrs. Osborne tho'. Suppose Miss Polly would come with me and show me the way?"

Miss Polly was charmed and astonished at this proposal. She knew theway. She would show Major Dobbin. She had often been with Mr. Sedleywhen Mrs. O. Was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the benchwhere he liked to sit. She bounced away to her apartment and appearedpresently in her best bonnet and her mamma's yellow shawl and largepebble brooch, of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself aworthy companion for the Major. 

That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin gloves, gavethe young lady his arm, and they walked away very gaily. He was gladto have a friend at hand for the scene which he dreaded somehow. Heasked a thousand more questions from his companion about Amelia: hiskind heart grieved to think that she should have had to part with herson. How did she bear it? Did she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley prettycomfortable now in a worldly point of view? Polly answered all thesequestions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her power. 

And in the midst of their walk an incident occurred which, though verysimple in its nature, was productive of the greatest delight to MajorDobbin. A pale young man with feeble whiskers and a stiff whiteneckcloth came walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, thatis, on each arm. One was a tall and commanding middle-aged female, with features and a complexion similar to those of the clergyman of theChurch of England by whose side she marched, and the other a stuntedlittle woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet andwhite ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich gold watch in themidst of her person. The gentleman, pinioned as he was by these twoladies, carried further a parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his armswere entirely engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat inacknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary Clapp greeted him. 

He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation, which the twoladies returned with a patronizing air, and at the same time lookingseverely at the individual in the blue coat and bamboo cane whoaccompanied Miss Polly. 

"Who's that?" asked the Major, amused by the group, and after he hadmade way for the three to pass up the lane. Mary looked at him ratherroguishly. 

"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch from MajorDobbin), and his sister Miss B. Lord bless us, how she did use toworret us at Sunday-school; and the other lady, the little one with acast in her eye and the handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits thatwas; her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold Tea Pot inKensington Gravel Pits. They were married last month, and are justcome back from Margate. She's five thousand pound to her fortune; buther and Miss B. , who made the match, have quarrelled already. "

If the Major had twitched before, he started now, and slapped thebamboo on the ground with an emphasis which made Miss Clapp cry, "Law, "and laugh too. He stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, lookingafter the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told their history;but he did not hear beyond the announcement of the reverend gentleman'smarriage; his head was swimming with felicity. After this rencontre hebegan to walk double quick towards the place of his destination--andyet they were too soon (for he was in a great tremor at the idea of ameeting for which he had been longing any time these tenyears)--through the Brompton lanes, and entering at the little oldportal in Kensington Garden wall. 

"There they are, " said Miss Polly, and she felt him again start back onher arm. She was a confidante at once of the whole business. She knewthe story as well as if she had read it in one of her favouritenovel-books--Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs. 

"Suppose you were to run on and tell her, " the Major said. Polly ranforward, her yellow shawl streaming in the breeze. 

Old Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief placed over hisknees, prattling away, according to his wont, with some old story aboutold times to which Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile manya time before. She could of late think of her own affairs, and smileor make other marks of recognition of her father's stories, scarcelyhearing a word of the old man's tales. As Mary came bouncing along, andAmelia caught sight of her, she started up from her bench. Her firstthought was that something had happened to Georgy, but the sight of themessenger's eager and happy face dissipated that fear in the timorousmother's bosom. 

"News! News!" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin. "He's come! He'scome!"

"Who is come?" said Emmy, still thinking of her son. 

"Look there, " answered Miss Clapp, turning round and pointing; in whichdirection Amelia looking, saw Dobbin's lean figure and long shadowstalking across the grass. Amelia started in her turn, blushed up, and, of course, began to cry. At all this simple little creature'sfetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play. He looked at her--oh, how fondly--as she came running towards him, her hands before her, ready to give them to him. She wasn't changed. She was a little pale, a little stouter in figure. Her eyes were the same, the kind trustfuleyes. There were scarce three lines of silver in her soft brown hair. She gave him both her hands as she looked up flushing and smilingthrough her tears into his honest homely face. He took the two littlehands between his two and held them there. He was speechless for amoment. Why did he not take her in his arms and swear that he wouldnever leave her? She must have yielded: she could not but have obeyedhim. 

"I--I've another arrival to announce, " he said after a pause. 

"Mrs. Dobbin?" Amelia said, making a movement back--why didn't he speak?

"No, " he said, letting her hands go: "Who has told you those lies? Imean, your brother Jos came in the same ship with me, and is come hometo make you all happy. "

"Papa, Papa!" Emmy cried out, "here are news! My brother is inEngland. He is come to take care of you. Here is Major Dobbin. "

Mr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering up histhoughts. Then he stepped forward and made an old-fashioned bow to theMajor, whom he called Mr. Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, SirWilliam, was quite well. He proposed to call upon Sir William, who haddone him the honour of a visit a short time ago. Sir William had notcalled upon the old gentleman for eight years--it was that visit he wasthinking of returning. 

"He is very much shaken, " Emmy whispered as Dobbin went up andcordially shook hands with the old man. 

Although he had such particular business in London that evening, theMajor consented to forego it upon Mr. Sedley's invitation to him tocome home and partake of tea. Amelia put her arm under that of heryoung friend with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their returnhomewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share. The old manwalked very slowly and told a number of ancient histories about himselfand his poor Bessy, his former prosperity, and his bankruptcy. Histhoughts, as is usual with failing old men, were quite in former times. The present, with the exception of the one catastrophe which he felt, he knew little about. The Major was glad to let him talk on. His eyeswere fixed upon the figure in front of him--the dear little figurealways present to his imagination and in his prayers, and visiting hisdreams wakeful or slumbering. 

Amelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that evening, performingher duties as hostess of the little entertainment with the utmost graceand propriety, as Dobbin thought. His eyes followed her about as theysat in the twilight. How many a time had he longed for that moment andthought of her far away under hot winds and in weary marches, gentleand happy, kindly ministering to the wants of old age, and decoratingpoverty with sweet submission--as he saw her now. I do not say thathis taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great intellectsto be content with a bread-and-butter paradise, such as sufficed oursimple old friend; but his desires were of this sort, whether for goodor bad, and, with Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as manycups of tea as Doctor Johnson. 

Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged it and lookedexceedingly roguish as she administered to him cup after cup. It istrue she did not know that the Major had had no dinner and that thecloth was laid for him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon tomark that the table was retained, in that very box in which the Majorand George had sat many a time carousing, when she was a child justcome home from Miss Pinkerton's school. 

The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was Georgy's miniature, for which she ran upstairs on her arrival at home. It was not halfhandsome enough of course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him tothink of bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she didnot talk much about Georgy. To hear about Mr. Osborne and RussellSquare was not agreeable to the old man, who very likely wasunconscious that he had been living for some months past mainly on thebounty of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was made tothe other. 

Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than all, that hadhappened on board the Ramchunder, and exaggerated Jos's benevolentdispositions towards his father and resolution to make him comfortablein his old days. The truth is that during the voyage the Major hadimpressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-passenger andextorted promises from him that he would take charge of his sister andher child. He soothed Jos's irritation with regard to the bills whichthe old gentleman had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of hisown sufferings on the same score and of the famous consignment of winewith which the old man had favoured him, and brought Mr. Jos, who wasby no means an ill-natured person when well-pleased and moderatelyflattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his relatives inEurope. 

And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major stretched the truth sofar as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it was mainly a desire to see hisparent which brought Jos once more to Europe. 

At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in his chair, and thenit was Amelia's opportunity to commence her conversation, which she didwith great eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy. She did nottalk at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for indeed, this worthy woman, though she was half-killed by the separation fromthe child, yet thought it was very wicked in her to repine at losinghim; but everything concerning him, his virtues, talents, andprospects, she poured out. She described his angelic beauty; narrateda hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of mind whilstliving with her; how a Royal Duchess had stopped and admired him inKensington Gardens; how splendidly he was cared for now, and how he hada groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he had, and what aprodigiously well-read and delightful person the Reverend Lawrence Vealwas, George's master. "He knows EVERYTHING, " Amelia said. "He has themost delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself, and haveread so much, and are so clever and accomplished--don't shake your headand say no--HE always used to say you were--you will be charmed withMr. Veal's parties. The last Tuesday in every month. He says there isno place in the bar or the senate that Georgy may not aspire to. Lookhere, " and she went to the piano-drawer and drew out a theme ofGeorgy's composition. This great effort of genius, which is still inthe possession of George's mother, is as follows:

On Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the human character, Selfishness is the most odious and contemptible. An undue love of Selfleads to the most monstrous crimes and occasions the greatestmisfortunes both in States and Families. As a selfish man willimpoverish his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish kingbrings ruin on his people and often plunges them into war. 

Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the Greeks--muri Achaiois algeetheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2). The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparteoccasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in the AtlanticOcean. 

We see by these examples that we are not to consult our own interestand ambition, but that we are to consider the interests of others aswell as our own. 

George S. Osborne Athene House, 24 April, 1827

"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek too, at his age, "the delighted mother said. "Oh, William, " she added, holding out herhand to the Major, "what a treasure Heaven has given me in that boy!He is the comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that'sgone!"

"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to him?" Williamthought. "Ought I to be jealous of my friend in the grave, or hurtthat such a heart as Amelia's can love only once and for ever? Oh, George, George, how little you knew the prize you had, though. " Thissentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he was holdingAmelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was veiling her eyes. 

"Dear friend, " she said, pressing the hand which held hers, "how good, how kind you always have been to me! See! Papa is stirring. You willgo and see Georgy tomorrow, won't you?"

"Not to-morrow, " said poor old Dobbin. "I have business. " He did notlike to own that he had not as yet been to his parents' and his dearsister Anne--a remissness for which I am sure every well-regulatedperson will blame the Major. And presently he took his leave, leavinghis address behind him for Jos, against the latter's arrival. And sothe first day was over, and he had seen her. 

When he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl was of course cold, in which condition he ate it for supper. And knowing what early hourshis family kept, and that it would be needless to disturb theirslumbers at so late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treatedhimself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that evening, where letus hope he enjoyed himself. 

CHAPTER LIX

The Old Piano

The Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of agitationand excitement. His daughter could not induce him to settle down tohis customary occupations or amusements that night. He passed theevening fumbling amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers withtrembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against Jos's arrival. He had them in the greatest order--his tapes and his files, hisreceipts, and his letters with lawyers and correspondents; thedocuments relative to the wine project (which failed from a mostunaccountable accident, after commencing with the most splendidprospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital preventedfrom becoming the most successful scheme ever put before the public), the patent saw-mills and sawdust consolidation project, &c. , &c. Allnight, until a very late hour, he passed in the preparation of thesedocuments, trembling about from one room to another, with a quiveringcandle and shaky hands. Here's the wine papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my letters to Calcutta and Madras, and repliesfrom Major Dobbin, C. B. , and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same. "He shallfind no irregularity about ME, Emmy, " the old gentleman said. 

Emmy smiled. "I don't think Jos will care about seeing those papers, Papa, " she said. 

"You don't know anything about business, my dear, " answered the sire, shaking his head with an important air. And it must be confessed thaton this point Emmy was very ignorant, and that is a pity some peopleare so knowing. All these twopenny documents arranged on a side table, old Sedley covered them carefully over with a clean bandannahandkerchief (one out of Major Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid andlandlady of the house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb thosepapers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph Sedley thenext morning, "Mr. Joseph Sedley of the Honourable East India Company'sBengal Civil Service. "

Amelia found him up very early the next morning, more eager, morehectic, and more shaky than ever. "I didn't sleep much, Emmy, mydear, " he said. "I was thinking of my poor Bessy. I wish she wasalive, to ride in Jos's carriage once again. She kept her own andbecame it very well. " And his eyes filled with tears, which trickleddown his furrowed old face. Amelia wiped them away, and smilinglykissed him, and tied the old man's neckcloth in a smart bow, and puthis brooch into his best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit ofmourning, he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the arrivalof his son. 

However, when the postman made his appearance, the little party wereput out of suspense by the receipt of a letter from Jos to his sister, who announced that he felt a little fatigued after his voyage, andshould not be able to move on that day, but that he would leaveSouthampton early the next morning and be with his father and mother atevening. Amelia, as she read out the letter to her father, paused overthe latter word; her brother, it was clear, did not know what hadhappened in the family. Nor could he, for the fact is that, though theMajor rightly suspected that his travelling companion never would begot into motion in so short a space as twenty-four hours, and wouldfind some excuse for delaying, yet Dobbin had not written to Jos toinform him of the calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, beingoccupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour. 

There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High Street ofSouthampton, in the fine plate-glass windows of which hang gorgeouswaistcoats of all sorts, of silk and velvet, and gold and crimson, andpictures of the last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemenwith quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with the exceedinglarge eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in riding habits prancing by theStatue of Achilles at Apsley House. Jos, although provided with someof the most splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought hecould not go to town until he was supplied with one or two of thesegarments, and selected a crimson satin, embroidered with goldbutterflies, and a black and red velvet tartan with white stripes and arolling collar, with which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin, consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink enamel jumpingover it, he thought he might make his entry into London with somedignity. For Jos's former shyness and blundering blushing timidity hadgiven way to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his worth. "I don't care about owning it, " Waterloo Sedley would say to hisfriends, "I am a dressy man"; and though rather uneasy if the ladieslooked at him at the Government House balls, and though he blushed andturned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly from a dreadlest they should make love to him that he avoided them, being averse tomarriage altogether. But there was no such swell in Calcutta asWaterloo Sedley, I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out, gave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate in the wholeplace. 

To make these waistcoats for a man of his size and dignity took atleast a day, part of which he employed in hiring a servant to wait uponhim and his native and in instructing the agent who cleared hisbaggage, his boxes, his books, which he never read, his chests ofmangoes, chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to peoplewhom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his Persicos apparatus. 

At length, he drove leisurely to London on the third day and in the newwaistcoat, the native, with chattering teeth, shuddering in a shawl onthe box by the side of the new European servant; Jos puffing his pipeat intervals within and looking so majestic that the little boys criedHooray, and many people thought he must be a Governor-General. HE, Ipromise, did not decline the obsequious invitation of the landlords toalight and refresh himself in the neat country towns. Having partakenof a copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, atSouthampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to think a glass ofsherry necessary. At Alton he stepped out of the carriage at hisservant's request and imbibed some of the ale for which the place isfamous. At Farnham he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and topartake of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and Frenchbeans, with a bottle of claret. He was cold over Bagshot Heath, wherethe native chattered more and more, and Jos Sahib took somebrandy-and-water; in fact, when he drove into town he was as full ofwine, beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the steward'scabin of a steam-packet. It was evening when his carriage thundered upto the little door in Brompton, whither the affectionate fellow drovefirst, and before hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr. Dobbin at the Slaughters'. 

All the faces in the street were in the windows; the little maidservantflew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames Clapp looked out from thecasement of the ornamented kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was inthe passage among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlourinside, shaking all over. Jos descended from the post-chaise and downthe creaking swaying steps in awful state, supported by the new valetfrom Southampton and the shuddering native, whose brown face was nowlivid with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard. He created animmense sensation in the passage presently, where Mrs. And Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shakingupon the hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous way, and showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth. 

For, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the meeting betweenJos and the old father and the poor little gentle sister inside. Theold man was very much affected; so, of course, was his daughter; norwas Jos without feeling. In that long absence of ten years, the mostselfish will think about home and early ties. Distance sanctifies both. Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates their charm andsweetness. Jos was unaffectedly glad to see and shake the hand of hisfather, between whom and himself there had been a coolness--glad to seehis little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling, and painedat the alteration which time, grief, and misfortune had made in theshattered old man. Emmy had come out to the door in her black clothesand whispered to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it totheir father. There was no need of this caution, for the elder Sedleyhimself began immediately to speak of the event, and prattled about it, and wept over it plenteously. It shocked the Indian not a little andmade him think of himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed todo. 

The result of the interview must have been very satisfactory, for whenJos had reascended his post-chaise and had driven away to his hotel, Emmy embraced her father tenderly, appealing to him with an air oftriumph, and asking the old man whether she did not always say that herbrother had a good heart?

Indeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position in which hefound his relations, and in the expansiveness and overflowing of heartoccasioned by the first meeting, declared that they should never sufferwant or discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time at anyrate, during which his house and everything he had should be theirs:and that Amelia would look very pretty at the head of his table--untilshe would accept one of her own. 

She shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse to the waterworks. She knew what he meant. She and her young confidante, Miss Mary, hadtalked over the matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit, beyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain from talking ofthe discovery which she had made, and describing the start and tremorof joy by which Major Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passedwith his bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a rival tofear. "Didn't you see how he shook all over when you asked if he wasmarried and he said, 'Who told you those lies?' Oh, M'am, " Polly said, "he never kept his eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinkingof you. "

But Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung the portraits of herhusband and son, told her young protegee never, never, to speak on thatsubject again; that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friendand her own and George's most kind and affectionate guardian; that sheloved him as a brother--but that a woman who had been married to suchan angel as that, and she pointed to the wall, could never think of anyother union. Poor Polly sighed: she thought what she should do ifyoung Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who always looked at her so atchurch, and who, by those mere aggressive glances had put her timorouslittle heart into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender atonce, --what she should do if he were to die? She knew he wasconsumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was so uncommon thin in thewaist. 

Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest Major's passion, rebuffedhim in any way, or felt displeased with him. Such an attachment fromso true and loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry. Desdemona wasnot angry with Cassio, though there is very little doubt she saw theLieutenant's partiality for her (and I for my part believe that manymore things took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorishofficer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind to Caliban, andwe may be pretty sure for the same reason. Not that she would encouragehim in the least--the poor uncouth monster--of course not. No morewould Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the Major. She wouldgive him that friendly regard, which so much excellence and fidelitymerited; she would treat him with perfect cordiality and franknessuntil he made his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for herto speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be realized. 

She slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after the conversationwith Miss Polly, and was more than ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos'sdelaying. "I am glad he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd, " shethought. "Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such anaccomplished man as Major William. " Who was there amongst her littlecircle who would make him a good wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too oldand ill-tempered; Miss Osborne? too old too. Little Polly was tooyoung. Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major before shewent to sleep. 

The same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the Slaughters'Coffee-house from his friend at Southampton, begging dear Dob to excuseJos for being in a rage when awakened the day before (he had aconfounded headache, and was just in his first sleep), and entreatingDob to engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley andhis servants. The Major had become necessary to Jos during the voyage. He was attached to him, and hung upon him. The other passengers wereaway to London. Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on thecoach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the reins from Botley;the Doctor was off to his family at Portsea; Bragg gone to town to hisco-partners; and the first mate busy in the unloading of theRamchunder. Mr. Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got thelandlord of the George to take a glass of wine with him that day, atthe very hour at which Major Dobbin was seated at the table of hisfather, Sir William, where his sister found out (for it was impossiblefor the Major to tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne. 

Jos was so comfortably situated in St. Martin's Lane, he could enjoyhis hookah there with such perfect ease, and could swagger down to thetheatres, when minded, so agreeably, that, perhaps, he would haveremained altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major, been at his elbow. That gentleman would not let the Bengalee restuntil he had executed his promise of having a home for Amelia and hisfather. Jos was a soft fellow in anybody's hands, Dobbin most activein anybody's concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easyvictim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist and wasready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish whatever his friendthought fit. Loll Jewab, of whom the boys about St. Martin's Laneused to make cruel fun whenever he showed his dusky countenance in thestreet, was sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East Indiaman, in which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having previously taught Jos'sEuropean the art of preparing curries, pilaus, and pipes. It was amatter of great delight and occupation to Jos to superintend thebuilding of a smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in theneighbouring Long Acre: and a pair of handsome horses were jobbed, with which Jos drove about in state in the park, or to call upon hisIndian friends. Amelia was not seldom by his side on these excursions, when also Major Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage. At other times old Sedley and his daughter took advantage of it, andMiss Clapp, who frequently accompanied her friend, had great pleasurein being recognized as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famousyellow shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face mightcommonly be seen over the window-blinds as she passed. 

Shortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a dismal scene, indeed, took place at that humble cottage at which the Sedleys hadpassed the last ten years of their life. Jos's carriage (the temporaryone, not the chariot under construction) arrived one day and carriedoff old Sedley and his daughter--to return no more. The tears thatwere shed by the landlady and the landlady's daughter at that eventwere as genuine tears of sorrow as any that have been outpoured in thecourse of this history. In their long acquaintanceship and intimacythey could not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia Shehad been all sweetness and kindness, always thankful, always gentle, even when Mrs. Clapp lost her own temper and pressed for the rent. When the kind creature was going away for good and all, the landladyreproached herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression toher--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the window, a papernotifying that the little rooms so long occupied were to let! Theynever would have such lodgers again, that was quite clear. After-lifeproved the truth of this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revengedherself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most savagecontributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of mutton of herlocataires. Most of them scolded and grumbled; some of them did notpay; none of them stayed. The landlady might well regret those old, oldfriends, who had left her. 

As for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure was such as I shallnot attempt to depict. From childhood upwards she had been with herdaily and had attached herself so passionately to that dear good ladythat when the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour, shefainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed scarcely lessaffected than the good-natured girl. Amelia loved her like a daughter. During eleven years the girl had been her constant friend andassociate. The separation was a very painful one indeed to her. Butit was of course arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at thegrand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and where Mary was sureshe would never be so happy as she had been in their humble cot, asMiss Clapp called it, in the language of the novels which she loved. 

Let us hope she was wrong in her judgement. Poor Emmy's days ofhappiness had been very few in that humble cot. A gloomy Fate hadoppressed her there. She never liked to come back to the house aftershe had left it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over herwhen ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had treated her with acoarse familiarity scarcely less odious. Her servility and fulsomecompliments when Emmy was in prosperity were not more to that lady'sliking. She cast about notes of admiration all over the new house, extolling every article of furniture or ornament; she fingered Mrs. Osborne's dresses and calculated their price. Nothing could be too goodfor that sweet lady, she vowed and protested. But in the vulgarsycophant who now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the coarsetyrant who had made her miserable many a time, to whom she had beenforced to put up petitions for time, when the rent was overdue; whocried out at her extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailingmother or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon her. 

Nobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been part of our poorlittle woman's lot in life. She kept them secret from her father, whose improvidence was the cause of much of her misery. She had tobear all the blame of his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentleand humble as to be made by nature for a victim. 

I hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard usage. And, as inall griefs there is said to be some consolation, I may mention thatpoor Mary, when left at her friend's departure in a hystericalcondition, was placed under the medical treatment of the young fellowfrom the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short period. Emmy, when she went away from Brompton, endowed Mary with every articleof furniture that the house contained, only taking away her pictures(the two pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old pianowhich had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age, but which sheloved for reasons of her own. She was a child when first she played onit, and her parents gave it her. It had been given to her again since, as the reader may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruinand the instrument was recovered out of the wreck. 

Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he was superintending thearrangements of Jos's new house--which the Major insisted should bevery handsome and comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringingthe trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that village, and withthem the old piano. Amelia would have it up in her sitting-room, aneat little apartment on the second floor, adjoining her father'schamber, and where the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings. 

When the men appeared then bearing this old music-box, and Amelia gaveorders that it should be placed in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin wasquite elated. "I'm glad you've kept it, " he said in a very sentimentalmanner. "I was afraid you didn't care about it. "

"I value it more than anything I have in the world, " said Amelia. 

"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major. The fact was, as he had bought ithimself, though he never said anything about it, it never entered intohis head to suppose that Emmy should think anybody else was thepurchaser, and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the giftcame from him. "Do you, Amelia?" he said; and the question, the greatquestion of all, was trembling on his lips, when Emmy replied--

"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"

"I did not know, " said poor old Dob, and his countenance fell. 

Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor take immediate heedof the very dismal expression which honest Dobbin's countenanceassumed, but she thought of it afterwards. And then it struck her, with inexpressible pain and mortification too, that it was William whowas the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had fancied. It wasnot George's gift; the only one which she had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing she had cherished beyond all others--herdearest relic and prize. She had spoken to it about George; played hisfavourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours, touching, to thebest of her simple art, melancholy harmonies on the keys, and weepingover them in silence. It was not George's relic. It was valueless now. The next time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it wasshockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that she couldn't play. 

Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself for her pettishnessand ingratitude and determined to make a reparation to honest Williamfor the slight she had not expressed to him, but had felt for hispiano. A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort after dinner, Ameliasaid with rather a faltering voice to Major Dobbin--

"I have to beg your pardon for something. "

"About what?" said he. 

"About--about that little square piano. I never thanked you for itwhen you gave it me, many, many years ago, before I was married. Ithought somebody else had given it. Thank you, William. " She held outher hand, but the poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as forher eyes, of course they were at their work. 

But William could hold no more. "Amelia, Amelia, " he said, "I did buyit for you. I loved you then as I do now. I must tell you. I think Iloved you from the first minute that I saw you, when George brought meto your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was engaged to. You werebut a girl, in white, with large ringlets; you came down singing--doyou remember?--and we went to Vauxhall. Since then I have thought ofbut one woman in the world, and that was you. I think there is no hourin the day has passed for twelve years that I haven't thought of you. I came to tell you this before I went to India, but you did not care, and I hadn't the heart to speak. You did not care whether I stayed orwent. "

"I was very ungrateful, " Amelia said. 

"No, only indifferent, " Dobbin continued desperately. "I have nothingto make a woman to be otherwise. I know what you are feeling now. Youare hurt in your heart at the discovery about the piano, and that itcame from me and not from George. I forgot, or I should never havespoken of it so. It is for me to ask your pardon for being a fool fora moment, and thinking that years of constancy and devotion might havepleaded with you. "

"It is you who are cruel now, " Amelia said with some spirit. "George ismy husband, here and in heaven. How could I love any other but him? Iam his now as when you first saw me, dear William. It was he who toldme how good and generous you were, and who taught me to love you as abrother. Have you not been everything to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend and protector? Had you come a few months soonerperhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful parting. Oh, itnearly killed me, William--but you didn't come, though I wished andprayed for you to come, and they took him too away from me. Isn't he anoble boy, William? Be his friend still and mine"--and here her voicebroke, and she hid her face on his shoulder. 

The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to him as if she was achild, and kissed her head. "I will not change, dear Amelia, " he said. "I ask for no more than your love. I think I would not have itotherwise. Only let me stay near you and see you often. "

"Yes, often, " Amelia said. And so William was at liberty to look andlong--as the poor boy at school who has no money may sigh after thecontents of the tart-woman's tray. 

CHAPTER LX

Returns to the Genteel World

Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are glad to get herout of that low sphere in which she has been creeping hitherto andintroduce her into a polite circle--not so grand and refined as that inwhich our other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but stillhaving no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's friendswere all from the three presidencies, and his new house was in thecomfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was afelicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt terraces infront, so early as 1827)--who does not know these respectable abodes ofthe retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham callsthe Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand enoughto entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live butretired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, andretire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand ayear); he engaged a comfortable house of a second- or third-rate orderin Gillespie Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, andhandsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons from theassignees of Mr. Scape, lately admitted partner into the great CalcuttaHouse of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarkedseventy thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place, who retired to a princely park in Sussex (theFogles have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about tobe raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted, I say, partnerinto the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before itfailed for a million and plunged half the Indian public into misery andruin. 

Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs of the house. Walter Scapewas withdrawn from Eton and put into a merchant's house. FlorenceScape, Fanny Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and willbe heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and bought theircarpets and sideboards and admired himself in the mirrors which hadreflected their kind handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, allhonourably paid, left their cards, and were eager to supply the newhousehold. The large men in white waistcoats who waited at Scape'sdinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and milkmen in their privatecapacity, left their addresses and ingratiated themselves with thebutler. Mr. Chummy, the chimney-purifier, who had swept the last threefamilies, tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose duty itwas to go out covered with buttons and with stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs. Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad. 

It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's valet also, andnever was more drunk than a butler in a small family should be who hasa proper regard for his master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whosekindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was at first terrifiedat the idea of having a servant to wait upon herself, who did not inthe least know how to use one, and who always spoke to domestics withthe most reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in thefamily, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who kept almost entirelyto his own quarter of the house and never mixed in any of the gaydoings which took place there. 

Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady Dobbin and daughterswere delighted at her change of fortune, and waited upon her. MissOsborne from Russell Square came in her grand chariot with the flaminghammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos was reported to beimmensely rich. Old Osborne had no objection that Georgy shouldinherit his uncle's property as well as his own. "Damn it, we will makea man of the feller, " he said; "and I'll see him in Parliament before Idie. You may go and see his mother, Miss O. , though I'll never seteyes on her": and Miss Osborne came. Emmy, you may be sure, was veryglad to see her, and so be brought nearer to George. That young fellowwas allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit hismother. He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie Street and bulliedthe servants and his relations there, just as he did in Russell Square. 

He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however, and more modest inhis demeanour when that gentleman was present. He was a clever lad andafraid of the Major. George could not help admiring his friend'ssimplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly imparted, hisgeneral love of truth and justice. He had met no such man as yet inthe course of his experience, and he had an instinctive liking for agentleman. He hung fondly by his godfather's side, and it was hisdelight to walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk. William told Georgeabout his father, about India and Waterloo, about everything buthimself. When George was more than usually pert and conceited, theMajor made jokes at him, which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. Oneday, taking him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pitbecause it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes, left him there, and went down himself to the pit. He had not been seated there verylong before he felt an arm thrust under his and a dandy little hand ina kid glove squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of hisways and come down from the upper region. A tender laugh ofbenevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and eyes as he looked at therepentant little prodigal. He loved the boy, as he did everything thatbelonged to Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of thisinstance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more kindly on Dobbinthan they ever had done. She blushed, he thought, after looking at himso. 

Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his mother. "I likehim, Mamma, because he knows such lots of things; and he ain't like oldVeal, who is always bragging and using such long words, don't you know?The chaps call him 'Longtail' at school. I gave him the name; ain't itcapital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and French and that; andwhen we go out together he tells me stories about my Papa, and neverabout himself; though I heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say thathe was one of the bravest officers in the army, and had distinguishedhimself ever so much. Grandpapa was quite surprised, and said, 'THATfeller! Why, I didn't think he could say Bo to a goose'--but I know hecould, couldn't he, Mamma?"

Emmy laughed: she thought it was very likely the Major could do thusmuch. 

If there was a sincere liking between George and the Major, it must beconfessed that between the boy and his uncle no great love existed. George had got a way of blowing out his cheeks, and putting his handsin his waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't sayso, " so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was impossible torefrain from laughter. The servants would explode at dinner if thelad, asking for something which wasn't at table, put on thatcountenance and used that favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shootout a sudden peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic hisuncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and Amelia'sterrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted by a dim consciousness that thelad thought him an ass, and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous anddignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was announced thatthe young gentleman was expected in Gillespie Street to dine with hismother, Mr. Jos commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club. Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to come out from his place of refugein the upper stories, and there would be a small family party, whereofMajor Dobbin pretty generally formed one. He was the ami de lamaison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's friend, Jos'scounsel and adviser. "He might almost as well be at Madras for anythingWE see of him, " Miss Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major wanted tomarry?

Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such as became aperson of his eminence. His very first point, of course, was to becomea member of the Oriental Club, where he spent his mornings in thecompany of his brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he broughthome men to dine. 

Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen and their ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith would be in Council; how many lacsJones had brought home with him, how Thomson's House in London hadrefused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co. , the BombayHouse, and how it was thought the Calcutta House must go too; how veryimprudent, to say the least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brownof the Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey of the BodyGuard, sitting up with him on deck until all hours, and losingthemselves as they were riding out at the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman hadhad out her thirteen sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev:Felix Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in theservice; how Hornby was wild because his wife would stay in Europe, andTrotter was appointed Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talktook place at the grand dinners all round. They had the sameconversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a short time afterdessert, when the ladies retired upstairs and talked about theircomplaints and their children. 

Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers' wives talkabout Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies gossip about the Regiment?Don't the clergymen's ladies discourse about Sunday-schools and whotakes whose duty? Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about thatsmall clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should our Indianfriends not have their own conversation?--only I admit it is slow forthe laymen whose fate it sometimes is to sit by and listen. 

Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving about regularlyin a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer (wife of Major-General SirRoger Bludyer, K. C. B. , Bengal Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto; Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are notlong in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage came roundto Gillespie Street every day; that buttony boy sprang up and down fromthe box with Emmy's and Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy andthe carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing; or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old man round theRegent's Park. The lady's maid and the chariot, the visiting-book andthe buttony page, became soon as familiar to Amelia as the humbleroutine of Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess, she would even havedone that duty too. She was voted, in Jos's female society, rather apleasing young person--not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort ofthing. 

The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and simple refineddemeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies at home on furlough--immensedandies these--chained and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of the theatres, living at West End hotels--neverthelessadmired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the park, and tobe admitted to have the honour of paying her a morning visit. Swankeyof the Body Guard himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buckof all the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered by MajorDobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and describing the sport ofpig-sticking to her with great humour and eloquence; and he spokeafterwards of a d--d king's officer that's always hanging about thehouse--a long, thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though, that took the shine out of a man in the talking line. 

Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity he would havebeen jealous of so dangerous a young buck as that fascinating BengalCaptain. But Dobbin was of too simple and generous a nature to haveany doubts about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should pay herrespect, and that others should admire her. Ever since her womanhoodalmost, had she not been persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him tosee how kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spiritsgently rose with her prosperity. Any person who appreciated her paid acompliment to the Major's good judgement--that is, if a man may besaid to have good judgement who is under the influence of Love'sdelusion. 

After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he did as a loyal subjectof his Sovereign (showing himself in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he whohad always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George IV, becamesuch a tremendous Tory and pillar of the State that he was for havingAmelia to go to a Drawing-room, too. He somehow had worked himself upto believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the publicwelfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy unless Jos Sedley andhis family appeared to rally round him at St. James's. 

Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds, Jos?" she said. 

"I wish you would let me buy you some, " thought the Major. "I shouldlike to see any that were too good for you. "

CHAPTER LXI

In Which Two Lights are Put Out

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and solemngaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family indulged was interrupted byan event which happens in most houses. As you ascend the staircase ofyour house from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may haveremarked a little arch in the wall right before you, which at oncegives light to the stair which leads from the second story to the third(where the nursery and servants' chambers commonly are) and serves foranother purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men can give youa notion. They rest the coffins upon that arch, or pass them throughit so as not to disturb in any unseemly manner the cold tenantslumbering within the black ark. 

That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up and down the wellof the staircase and commanding the main thoroughfare by which theinhabitants are passing; by which cook lurks down before daylight toscour her pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young masterstealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and let himselfin after dawn from a jolly night at the Club; down which miss comesrustling in fresh ribbons and spreading muslins, brilliant andbeautiful, and prepared for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommyslides, preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, anddisdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is fondlycarried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as he steps steadily stepby step, and followed by the monthly nurse, on the day when the medicalman has pronounced that the charming patient may go downstairs; upwhich John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering tallow candle, andto gather up before sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in thepassages--that stair, up or down which babies are carried, old peopleare helped, guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to thechristening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the undertaker's men tothe upper floor--what a memento of Life, Death, and Vanity it is--thatarch and stair--if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too forthe last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse will look in atthe curtains, and you take no notice--and then she will fling open thewindows for a little and let in the air. Then they will pull down allthe front blinds of the house and live in the back rooms--then theywill send for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy andmine will have been played then, and we shall be removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting, and the posture-making. If weare gentlefolks they will put hatchments over our late domicile, withgilt cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in Heaven. "Your son will new furnish the house, or perhaps let it, and go into amore modern quarter; your name will be among the "Members Deceased" inthe lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly made--the cook will sendor come up to ask about dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look atyour picture over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed fromthe place of honour, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns. 

Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Thosewho love the survivors the least, I believe. The death of a childoccasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire. The death of an infant whichscarce knew you, which a week's absence from you would have caused toforget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your closestfriend, or your first-born son--a man grown like yourself, withchildren of his own. We may be harsh and stern with Judah andSimeon--our love and pity gush out for Benjamin, the little one. And ifyou are old, as some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich, orold and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself--"These peopleare very good round about me, but they won't grieve too much when I amgone. I am very rich, and they want my inheritance--or very poor, andthey are tired of supporting me. "

The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to cast off his black and appear in thesplendid waistcoats which he loved, when it became evident to thoseabout Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the old manwas about to go seek for his wife in the dark land whither she hadpreceded him. "The state of my father's health, " Jos Sedley solemnlyremarked at the Club, "prevents me from giving any LARGE parties thisseason: but if you will come in quietly at half-past six, Chutney, myboy, and fake a homely dinner with one or two of the old set--I shallbe always glad to see you. " So Jos and his acquaintances dined anddrank their claret among themselves in silence, whilst the sands oflife were running out in the old man's glass upstairs. Thevelvet-footed butler brought them their wine, and they composedthemselves to a rubber after dinner, at which Major Dobbin wouldsometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs. Osborne would occasionallydescend, when her patient above was settled for the night, and hadcommenced one of those lightly troubled slumbers which visit the pillowof old age. 

The old man clung to his daughter during this sickness. He would takehis broths and medicines from scarcely any other hand. To tend himbecame almost the sole business of her life. Her bed was placed closeby the door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive at theslightest noise or disturbance from the couch of the querulous invalid. Though, to do him justice, he lay awake many an hour, silent andwithout stirring, unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse. 

He loved his daughter with more fondness now, perhaps, than ever he haddone since the days of her childhood. In the discharge of gentleoffices and kind filial duties, this simple creature shone mostespecially. "She walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam, " Mr. Dobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from her father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless. When women are brooding over their children, or busied in a sick-room, who has not seen in their faces those sweetangelic beams of love and pity?

A secret feud of some years' standing was thus healed, and with a tacitreconciliation. In these last hours, and touched by her love andgoodness, the old man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongswhich he and his wife had many a long night debated: how she had givenup everything for her boy; how she was careless of her parents in theirold age and misfortune, and only thought of the child; how absurdly andfoolishly, impiously indeed, she took on when George was removed fromher. Old Sedley forgot these charges as he was making up his lastaccount, and did justice to the gentle and uncomplaining little martyr. One night when she stole into his room, she found him awake, when thebroken old man made his confession. "Oh, Emmy, I've been thinking wewere very unkind and unjust to you, " he said and put out his cold andfeeble hand to her. She knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he didtoo, having still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend, maywe have such company in our prayers!

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed beforehim--his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helplesscondition--no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had thebetter of him--neither name nor money to bequeath--a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, Iwonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous andfamous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield;or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be astrange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and the sun will rise, and allthe myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, butI shall be out of the turmoil. "

So there came one morning and sunrise when all the world got up and setabout its various works and pleasures, with the exception of old JohnSedley, who was not to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme anymore, but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown residence in achurchyard at Brompton by the side of his old wife. 

Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains to the grave, in ablack cloth coach. Jos came on purpose from the Star and Garter atRichmond, whither he retreated after the deplorable event. He did notcare to remain in the house, with the--under the circumstances, youunderstand. But Emmy stayed and did her duty as usual. She was boweddown by no especial grief, and rather solemn than sorrowful. Sheprayed that her own end might be as calm and painless, and thought withtrust and reverence of the words which she had heard from her fatherduring his illness, indicative of his faith, his resignation, and hisfuture hope. 

Yes, I think that will be the better ending of the two, after all. Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-do and say on that lastday, "I am very rich; I am tolerably well known; I have lived all mylife in the best society, and thank Heaven, come of a most respectablefamily. I have served my King and country with honour. I was inParliament for several years, where, I may say, my speeches werelistened to and pretty well received. I don't owe any man a shilling:on the contrary, I lent my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fiftypounds, for which my executors will not press him. I leave mydaughters with ten thousand pounds apiece--very good portions forgirls; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for her life; and my landedproperty, besides money in the funds, and my cellar of well-selectedwine in Baker Street, to my son. I leave twenty pound a year to myvalet; and I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against mycharacter. " Or suppose, on the other hand, your swan sings quite adifferent sort of dirge and you say, "I am a poor blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have made an utter failure through life. I was not endowed either with brains or with good fortune, and confessthat I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders. I own to havingforgotten my duty many a time. I can't pay what I owe. On my last bedI lie utterly helpless and humble, and I pray forgiveness for myweakness and throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of theDivine Mercy. " Which of these two speeches, think you, would be thebest oration for your own funeral? Old Sedley made the last; and inthat humble frame of mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter, life and disappointment and vanity sank away from under him. 

"You see, " said old Osborne to George, "what comes of merit, andindustry, and judicious speculations, and that. Look at me and mybanker's account. Look at your poor Grandfather Sedley and hisfailure. And yet he was a better man than I was, this day twentyyears--a better man, I should say, by ten thousand pound. "

Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who came over from Bromptonto pay a visit of condolence, not a single soul alive ever cared apenny piece about old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of sucha person. 

When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel Buckler (as littleGeorgy had already informed us) how distinguished an officer MajorDobbin was, he exhibited a great deal of scornful incredulity andexpressed his surprise how ever such a feller as that should possesseither brains or reputation. But he heard of the Major's fame fromvarious members of his society. Sir William Dobbin had a great opinionof his son and narrated many stories illustrative of the Major'slearning, valour, and estimation in the world's opinion. Finally, hisname appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect upon the old aristocratof Russell Square. 

The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose possession had beenceded to his grandfather, rendered some meetings between the twogentlemen inevitable; and it was in one of these that old Osborne, akeen man of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his wardand the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered him very much, and atonce pained and pleased him, that it was out of William Dobbin's ownpocket that a part of the fund had been supplied upon which the poorwidow and the child had subsisted. 

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not tell lies, blushedand stammered a good deal and finally confessed. "The marriage, " hesaid (at which his interlocutor's face grew dark) "was very much mydoing. I thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from hisengagement would have been dishonour to him and death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she was left without resources, than givewhat money I could spare to maintain her. "

"Major D. , " Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and turning very redtoo--"you did me a great injury; but give me leave to tell you, sir, you are an honest feller. There's my hand, sir, though I little thoughtthat my flesh and blood was living on you--" and the pair shook hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus found out in his actof charitable hypocrisy. 

He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him towards his son'smemory. "He was such a noble fellow, " he said, "that all of us lovedhim, and would have done anything for him. I, as a young man in thosedays, was flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and wasmore pleased to be seen in his company than in that of theCommander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal for pluck and daring and allthe qualities of a soldier"; and Dobbin told the old father as manystories as he could remember regarding the gallantry and achievementsof his son. "And Georgy is so like him, " the Major added. 

"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes, " the grandfathersaid. 

On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with Mr. Osborne (it wasduring the time of the sickness of Mr. Sedley), and as the two sattogether in the evening after dinner, all their talk was about thedeparted hero. The father boasted about him according to his wont, glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and gallantry, but hismood was at any rate better and more charitable than that in which hehad been disposed until now to regard the poor fellow; and theChristian heart of the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms ofreturning peace and good-will. On the second evening old Osbornecalled Dobbin William, just as he used to do at the time when Dobbinand George were boys together, and the honest gentleman was pleased bythat mark of reconciliation. 

On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity ofher age and character, ventured to make some remark reflectingslightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour--the master of thehouse interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him foryourself, Miss O. But them grapes are sour. Ha! ha! Major William isa fine feller. "

"That he is, Grandpapa, " said Georgy approvingly; and going up close tothe old gentleman, he took a hold of his large grey whiskers, andlaughed in his face good-humouredly, and kissed him. And he told thestory at night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy. "Indeed heis, " she said. "Your dear father always said so. He is one of the bestand most upright of men. " Dobbin happened to drop in very soon afterthis conversation, which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the youngscapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin the other part ofthe story. "I say, Dob, " he said, "there's such an uncommon nice girlwants to marry you. She's plenty of tin; she wears a front; and shescolds the servants from morning till night. " "Who is it?" askedDobbin. "It's Aunt O. , " the boy answered. "Grandpapa said so. And Isay, Dob, how prime it would be to have you for my uncle. " Old Sedley'squavering voice from the next room at this moment weakly called forAmelia, and the laughing ended. 

That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear. He asked Georgeabout his uncle sometimes, and laughed at the boy's imitation of theway in which Jos said "God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his soup. Thenhe said, "It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating ofyour relations. Miss O. , when you go out adriving to-day, leave mycard upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear? There's no quarrel betwigst me andhim anyhow. "

The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were asked to dinner--toa dinner the most splendid and stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osbornegave; every inch of the family plate was exhibited, and the bestcompany was asked. Mr. Sedley took down Miss O. To dinner, and shewas very gracious to him; whereas she hardly spoke to the Major, whosat apart from her, and by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid. Jossaid, with great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had evertasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his Madeira. 

"It is some of Sedley's wine, " whispered the butler to his master. "I've had it a long time, and paid a good figure for it, too, " Mr. Osborne said aloud to his guest, and then whispered to his right-handneighbour how he had got it "at the old chap's sale. "

More than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs. George Osborne--atheme on which the Major could be very eloquent when he chose. He toldMr. Osborne of her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to herhusband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender and dutifulmanner in which she had supported her parents, and given up her boy, when it seemed to her her duty to do so. "You don't know what sheendured, sir, " said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, "and Ihope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she took your sonaway from you, she gave hers to you; and however much you loved yourGeorge, depend on it, she loved hers ten times more. "

"By God, you are a good feller, sir, " was all Mr. Osborne said. It hadnever struck him that the widow would feel any pain at parting from theboy, or that his having a fine fortune could grieve her. Areconciliation was announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia'sheart already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting withGeorge's father. 

It was never, however, destined to take place. Old Sedley's lingeringillness and death supervened, after which a meeting was for some timeimpossible. That catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr. Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his mind wasworking inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers, and probably changedsomething in his will. The medical man who looked in pronounced himshaky, agitated, and talked of a little blood and the seaside; but hetook neither of these remedies. 

One day when he should have come down to breakfast, his servant missinghim, went into his dressing-room and found him lying at the foot of thedressing-table in a fit. Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors weresent for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders and cupperscame. Osborne partially regained cognizance, but never could speakagain, though he tried dreadfully once or twice, and in four days hedied. The doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up thestairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the garden in RussellSquare. Bullock rushed from the City in a hurry. "How much money hadhe left to that boy? Not half, surely? Surely share and share alikebetween the three?" It was an agitating moment. 

What was it that poor old man tried once or twice in vain to say? Ihope it was that he wanted to see Amelia and be reconciled before heleft the world to one dear and faithful wife of his son: it was mostlikely that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had so longcherished had gone out of his heart. 

They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the letter with the greatred seal which George had written him from Waterloo. He had looked atthe other papers too, relative to his son, for the key of the box inwhich he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found the sealsand envelopes had been broken--very likely on the night before theseizure--when the butler had taken him tea into his study, and foundhim reading in the great red family Bible. 

When the will was opened, it was found that half the property was leftto George, and the remainder between the two sisters. Mr. Bullock tocontinue, for their joint benefit, the affairs of the commercial house, or to go out, as he thought fit. An annuity of five hundred pounds, chargeable on George's property, was left to his mother, "the widow ofmy beloved son, George Osborne, " who was to resume the guardianship ofthe boy. 

"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend, " was appointedexecutor; "and as out of his kindness and bounty, and with his ownprivate funds, he maintained my grandson and my son's widow, when theywere otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on to say)"I hereby thank him heartily for his love and regard for them, andbeseech him to accept such a sum as may be sufficient to purchase hiscommission as a Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way hemay think fit. "

When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was reconciled to her, herheart melted, and she was grateful for the fortune left to her. Butwhen she heard how Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and bywhom, and how it was William's bounty that supported her in poverty, how it was William who gave her her husband and her son--oh, then shesank on her knees, and prayed for blessings on that constant and kindheart; she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the feet, as itwere, of that beautiful and generous affection. 

And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for such admirabledevotion and benefits--only gratitude! If she thought of any otherreturn, the image of George stood up out of the grave and said, "Youare mine, and mine only, now and forever. "

William knew her feelings: had he not passed his whole life indivining them?

When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known to the world, it wasedifying to remark how Mrs. George Osborne rose in the estimation ofthe people forming her circle of acquaintance. The servants of Jos'sestablishment, who used to question her humble orders and say theywould "ask Master" whether or not they could obey, never thought now ofthat sort of appeal. The cook forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns(which, indeed, were quite eclipsed by that lady's finery when she wasdressed to go to church of a Sunday evening), the others no longergrumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed to answer that summons. The coachman, who grumbled that his 'osses should be brought out andhis carriage made into an hospital for that old feller and Mrs. O. , drove her with the utmost alacrity now, and trembling lest he should besuperseded by Mr. Osborne's coachman, asked "what them there RussellSquare coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit on abox before a lady?" Jos's friends, male and female, suddenly becameinterested about Emmy, and cards of condolence multiplied on her halltable. Jos himself, who had looked on her as a good-natured harmlesspauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and shelter, paid herand the rich little boy, his nephew, the greatest respect--was anxiousthat she should have change and amusement after her troubles andtrials, "poor dear girl"--and began to appear at the breakfast-table, and most particularly to ask how she would like to dispose of the day. 

In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the consent of theMajor, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss Osborne to live in the RussellSquare house as long as ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady, with thanks, declared that she never could think of remaining alone inthat melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics. The rest were liberally paid anddismissed, the faithful old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed toretain, resigning and preferring to invest his savings in apublic-house, where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous. Miss Osbornenot choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs. Osborne also, afterconsultation, declined to occupy the gloomy old mansion there. Thehouse was dismantled; the rich furniture and effects, the awfulchandeliers and dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the richrosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the carpets wererolled up and corded, the small select library of well-bound books wasstowed into two wine-chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away inseveral enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they were to lie untilGeorgy's majority. And the great heavy dark plate-chests went off toMessrs. Stumpy and Rowdy, to lie in the cellars of those eminentbankers until the same period should arrive. 

One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in deep sables, went tovisit the deserted mansion which she had not entered since she was agirl. The place in front was littered with straw where the vans hadbeen laden and rolled off. They went into the great blank rooms, thewalls of which bore the marks where the pictures and mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great blank stone staircases into the upperrooms, into that where grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, andthen higher still into George's own room. The boy was still clingingby her side, but she thought of another besides him. She knew that ithad been his father's room as well as his own. 

She went up to one of the open windows (one of those at which she usedto gaze with a sick heart when the child was first taken from her), andthence as she looked out she could see, over the trees of RussellSquare, the old house in which she herself was born, and where she hadpassed so many happy days of sacred youth. They all came back to her, the pleasant holidays, the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times, and the long pains and trials that had since cast her down. She thoughtof these and of the man who had been her constant protector, her goodgenius, her sole benefactor, her tender and generous friend. 

"Look here, Mother, " said Georgy, "here's a G. O. Scratched on the glasswith a diamond, I never saw it before, I never did it. "

"It was your father's room long before you were born, George, " shesaid, and she blushed as she kissed the boy. 

She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond, where they hadtaken a temporary house: where the smiling lawyers used to comebustling over to see her (and we may be sure noted the visit in thebill): and where of course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, whorode over frequently, having much business to transact on behalf of hislittle ward. 

Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on an unlimitedholiday, and that gentleman was engaged to prepare an inscription for afine marble slab, to be placed up in the Foundling under the monumentof Captain George Osborne. 

The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although despoiled by that littlemonster of one-half of the sum which she expected from her father, nevertheless showed her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled tothe mother and the boy. Roehampton is not far from Richmond, and oneday the chariot, with the golden bullocks emblazoned on the panels, andthe flaccid children within, drove to Amelia's house at Richmond; andthe Bullock family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia wasreading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly dipping strawberries intowine, and the Major in one of his Indian jackets was giving a back toGeorgy, who chose to jump over him. He went over his head and boundedinto the little advance of Bullocks, with immense black bows in theirhats, and huge black sashes, accompanying their mourning mamma. 

"He is just of the age for Rosa, " the fond parent thought, and glancedtowards that dear child, an unwholesome little miss of seven years ofage. 

"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin, " Mrs. Frederick said. "Don't youknow me, George? I am your aunt. "

"I know you well enough, " George said; "but I don't like kissing, please"; and he retreated from the obedient caresses of his cousin. 

"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child, " Mrs. Frederick said, andthose ladies accordingly met, after an absence of more than fifteenyears. During Emmy's cares and poverty the other had never oncethought about coming to see her, but now that she was decentlyprosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as a matter ofcourse. 

So did numbers more. Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and her husband camethundering over from Hampton Court, with flaming yellow liveries, andwas as impetuously fond of Amelia as ever. Miss Swartz would haveliked her always if she could have seen her. One must do her thatjustice. But, que voulez vous?--in this vast town one has not the timeto go and seek one's friends; if they drop out of the rank theydisappear, and we march on without them. Who is ever missed in VanityFair?

But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for Mr. Osborne'sdeath had subsided, Emmy found herself in the centre of a very genteelcircle indeed, the members of which could not conceive that anybodybelonging to it was not very lucky. There was scarce one of the ladiesthat hadn't a relation a Peer, though the husband might be a drysalterin the City. Some of the ladies were very blue and well informed, reading Mrs. Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; otherswere severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall. Emmy, it must beowned, found herself entirely at a loss in the midst of their clavers, and suffered woefully on the one or two occasions on which she wascompelled to accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock's hospitalities. That ladypersisted in patronizing her and determined most graciously to formher. She found Amelia's milliners for her and regulated her householdand her manners. She drove over constantly from Roehampton andentertained her friend with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feebleCourt slip-slop. Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used to go offgrowling at the appearance of this woman, with her twopenny gentility. He went to sleep under Frederick Bullock's bald head, after dinner, atone of the banker's best parties (Fred was still anxious that thebalance of the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy andRowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not know Latin, or whowrote the last crack article in the Edinburgh, and did not in the leastdeplore, or otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary tergiversation onthe fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst the ladies in thegrand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns, trim gravel walks, and glistening hot-houses. 

"She seems good-natured but insipid, " said Mrs. Rowdy; "that Majorseems to be particularly epris. "

"She wants ton sadly, " said Mrs. Hollyock. "My dear creature, younever will be able to form her. "

"She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent, " said Mrs. Glowry with avoice as if from the grave, and a sad shake of the head and turban. "Iasked her if she thought that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls, or in 1839, according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall: andshe said--'Poor Pope! I hope not--What has he done?'"

"She is my brother's widow, my dear friends, " Mrs. Frederick replied, "and as such I think we're all bound to give her every attention andinstruction on entering into the world. You may fancy there can be noMERCENARY motives in those whose DISAPPOINTMENTS are well known. "

"That poor dear Mrs. Bullock, " said Rowdy to Hollyock, as they droveaway together--"she is always scheming and managing. She wants Mrs. Osborne's account to be taken from our house to hers--and the way inwhich she coaxes that boy and makes him sit by that blear-eyed littleRosa is perfectly ridiculous. "

"I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and her Battle ofArmageddon, " cried the other, and the carriage rolled away over PutneyBridge. 

But this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for Emmy, and alljumped for joy when a foreign tour was proposed. 

CHAPTER LXII

Am Rhein

The above everyday events had occurred, and a few weeks had passed, when on one fine morning, Parliament being over, the summer advanced, and all the good company in London about to quit that city for theirannual tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboatleft the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English fugitives. The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the benches and gangways crowdedwith scores of rosy children, bustling nursemaids; ladies in theprettiest pink bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling capsand linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to sprout for theensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans with starched neckcloths andneat-brushed hats, such as have invaded Europe any time since theconclusion of the war, and carry the national Goddem into every city ofthe Continent. The congregation of hat-boxes, and Bramah desks, anddressing-cases was prodigious. There were jaunty young Cambridge-mentravelling with their tutor, and going for a reading excursion toNonnenwerth or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the mostdashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, andprodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on thecontrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided withmaiden coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems andWiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of theseason, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarante to keep theexcitement going; there was old Methuselah, who had married his youngwife, with Captain Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol andguide-books; there was young May who was carrying off his bride on apleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and who had been at school withMay's grandmother); there was Sir John and my Lady with a dozenchildren, and corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee Bareacresfamily that sat by themselves near the wheel, stared at everybody, andspoke to no one. Their carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heapedwith shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a dozenmore such vehicles: it was difficult to pass in and out amongst them;and the poor inmates of the fore-cabin had scarcely any space forlocomotion. These consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemenfrom Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and could havebought half the gay people in the grand saloon; a few honest fellowswith mustachios and portfolios, who set to sketching before they hadbeen half an hour on board; one or two French femmes de chambre whobegan to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had passed Greenwich; agroom or two who lounged in the neighbourhood of the horse-boxes undertheir charge, or leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talkedabout who was good for the Leger, and what they stood to win or losefor the Goodwood cup. 

All the couriers, when they had done plunging about the ship and hadsettled their various masters in the cabins or on the deck, congregatedtogether and began to chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joiningthem and looking at the carriages. There was Sir John's great carriagethat would hold thirteen people; my Lord Methuselah's carriage, my LordBareacres' chariot, britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay forwho liked. It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to pay forthe expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen knew how he got it. They knew what money his Lordship had in his pocket at that instant, and what interest he paid for it, and who gave it him. Finally therewas a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about which thegentlemen speculated. 

"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier with a largemorocco money-bag and ear-rings to another with ear-rings and a largemorocco money-bag. 

"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--qui brenoit dessangviches dans la voiture, " said the courier in a fine German French. 

Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of the hold, where hehad been bellowing instructions intermingled with polyglot oaths to theship's men engaged in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to givean account of himself to his brother interpreters. He informed themthat the carriage belonged to a Nabob from Calcutta and Jamaicaenormously rich, and with whom he was engaged to travel; and at thismoment a young gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between thepaddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the roof of LordMethuselah's carriage, from which he made his way over other carriagesand imperials until he had clambered on to his own, descended thenceand through the window into the body of the carriage, to the applauseof the couriers looking on. 

"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur George, " said thecourier with a grin, as he lifted his gold-laced cap. 

"D---- your French, " said the young gentleman, "where's the biscuits, ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the English language or in suchan imitation of it as he could command--for though he was familiar withall languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, andspoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness. 

The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the biscuits (and indeed itwas time to refresh himself, for he had breakfasted at Richmond fullthree hours before) was our young friend George Osborne. Uncle Jos andhis mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of whom they usedto see a good deal, and the four were about to make a summer tour. 

Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the awning, and prettynearly opposite to the Earl of Bareacres and his family, whoseproceedings absorbed the Bengalee almost entirely. Both the noblecouple looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when Josremembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed, he always gave out inIndia that he was intimately acquainted with them). Lady Bareacres'hair, which was then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereasLord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present of a rich blackwith purple and green reflections in the light. But changed as theywere, the movements of the noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely. The presence of a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothingelse. 

"Those people seem to interest you a good deal, " said Dobbin, laughingand watching him. Amelia too laughed. She was in a straw bonnet withblack ribbons, and otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustleand holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she lookedparticularly happy. 

"What a heavenly day!" Emmy said and added, with great originality, "Ihope we shall have a calm passage. "

Jos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same time under hiseyelids at the great folks opposite. "If you had made the voyages wehave, " he said, "you wouldn't much care about the weather. " Butnevertheless, traveller as he was, he passed the night direfully sickin his carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-waterand every luxury. 

In due time this happy party landed at the quays of Rotterdam, whencethey were transported by another steamer to the city of Cologne. Herethe carriage and the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a littlegratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne newspapers as"Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst Begleitung aus London. " He had hiscourt dress with him; he had insisted that Dobbin should bring hisregimental paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to bepresented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects to theSovereigns of the countries which he honoured with a visit. 

Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was offered, Mr. Josleft his own card and the Major's upon "Our Minister. " It was withgreat difficulty that he could be restrained from putting on his cockedhat and tights to wait upon the English consul at the Free City ofJudenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our travellers todinner. He kept a journal of his voyage and noted elaborately thedefects or excellences of the various inns at which he put up, and ofthe wines and dishes of which he partook. 

As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased. Dobbin used to carryabout for her her stool and sketch-book, and admired the drawings ofthe good-natured little artist as they never had been admired before. She sat upon steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she mountedupon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-towers, attended by her twoaides-de-camp, Georgy and Dobbin. She laughed, and the Major did too, at his droll figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching theground. He was the interpreter for the party; having a good militaryknowledge of the German language, and he and the delighted Georgefought the campaigns of the Rhine and the Palatinate. In the course ofa few weeks, and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the boxof the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in the knowledge ofHigh Dutch, and could talk to hotel waiters and postilions in a waythat charmed his mother and amused his guardian. 

Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon excursions of hisfellow-travellers. He slept a good deal after dinner, or basked in thearbours of the pleasant inn-gardens. Pleasant Rhine gardens! Fairscenes of peace and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests arereflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen you that has nota grateful memory of those scenes of friendly repose and beauty? To laydown the pen and even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes onehappy. At this time of summer evening, the cows are trooping down fromthe hills, lowing and with their bells tinkling, to the old town, withits old moats, and gates, and spires, and chestnut-trees, with longblue shadows stretching over the grass; the sky and the river belowflame in crimson and gold; and the moon is already out, looking paletowards the sunset. The sun sinks behind the great castle-crestedmountains, the night falls suddenly, the river grows darker and darker, lights quiver in it from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinklepeacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore. 

So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna over his faceand be very comfortable, and read all the English news, and every wordof Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of all Englishmenwho have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors of thatpiratical print! ) and whether he woke or slept, his friends did notvery much miss him. Yes, they were very happy. They went to the operaoften of evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in theGerman towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and knits stockings onthe one side, over against the bourgeoisie on the other; and HisTransparency the Duke and his Transparent family, all very fat andgood-natured, come and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pitis full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-colouredmustachios, and twopence a day on full pay. Here it was that Emmy foundher delight, and was introduced for the first time to the wonders ofMozart and Cimarosa. The Major's musical taste has been before alludedto, and his performances on the flute commended. But perhaps the chiefpleasure he had in these operas was in watching Emmy's rapture whilelistening to them. A new world of love and beauty broke upon her whenshe was introduced to those divine compositions; this lady had thekeenest and finest sensibility, and how could she be indifferent whenshe heard Mozart? The tender parts of "Don Juan" awakened in herraptures so exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to sayher prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel so muchdelight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and "Batti Batti" filled hergentle little bosom? But the Major, whom she consulted upon this head, as her theological adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverentsoul), said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made himthankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listeningto fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautifullandscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven assincerely as for any other worldly blessing. And in reply to somefaint objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological workslike the Washerwoman of Finchley Common and others of that school, withwhich Mrs. Osborne had been furnished during her life at Brompton) hetold her an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the sunshine wasunbearable for the eyes and that the Nightingale was a most overratedbird. "It is one's nature to sing and the other's to hoot, " he said, laughing, "and with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you mustbelong to the Bulbul faction. "

I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think that she wascheerful and happy. You see, she has not had too much of that sort ofexistence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to educate hertastes or her intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto byvulgar intellects. It is the lot of many a woman. And as every one ofthe dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes forfolly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dulness; andsilence--which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of rulingfolks, and tacit protestantism--above all, finds no mercy at the handsof the female Inquisition. Thus, my dear and civilized reader, if youand I were to find ourselves this evening in a society of greengrocers, let us say, it is probable that our conversation would not bebrilliant; if, on the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself atyour refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying wittythings, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing her friends topieces in the most delightful manner, it is possible that the strangerwould not be very talkative and by no means interesting or interested. 

And it must be remembered that this poor lady had never met a gentlemanin her life until this present moment. Perhaps these are rarerpersonages than some of us think for. Which of us can point out manysuch in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth isconstant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated in its degree;whose want of meanness makes them simple; who can look the worldhonestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and thesmall? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and ascore who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who arewhat they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centreand bull's-eye of the fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take alittle scrap of paper and each make out his list. 

My friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in mine. He had verylong legs, a yellow face, and a slight lisp, which at first was ratherridiculous. But his thoughts were just, his brains were fairly good, his life was honest and pure, and his heart warm and humble. Hecertainly had very large hands and feet, which the two George Osbornesused to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers and laughter perhapsled poor little Emmy astray as to his worth. But have we not all beenmisled about our heroes and changed our opinions a hundred times? Emmy, in this happy time, found that hers underwent a very great change inrespect of the merits of the Major. 

Perhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives, indeed, if theydid but know it--and who does? Which of us can point out and say thatwas the culmination--that was the summit of human joy? But at allevents, this couple were very decently contented, and enjoyed aspleasant a summer tour as any pair that left England that year. Georgywas always present at the play, but it was the Major who put Emmy'sshawl on after the entertainment; and in the walks and excursions theyoung lad would be on ahead, and up a tower-stair or a tree, whilst thesoberer couple were below, the Major smoking his cigar with greatplacidity and constancy, whilst Emmy sketched the site or the ruin. Itwas on this very tour that I, the present writer of a history of whichevery word is true, had the pleasure to see them first and to maketheir acquaintance. 

It was at the little comfortable Ducal town of Pumpernickel (that veryplace where Sir Pitt Crawley had been so distinguished as an attache;but that was in early early days, and before the news of the Battle ofAusterlitz sent all the English diplomatists in Germany to the rightabout) that I first saw Colonel Dobbin and his party. They had arrivedwith the carriage and courier at the Erbprinz Hotel, the best of thetown, and the whole party dined at the table d'hote. Everybodyremarked the majesty of Jos and the knowing way in which he sipped, orrather sucked, the Johannisberger, which he ordered for dinner. Thelittle boy, too, we observed, had a famous appetite, and consumedschinken, and braten, and kartoffeln, and cranberry jam, and salad, andpudding, and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry that didhonour to his nation. After about fifteen dishes, he concluded therepast with dessert, some of which he even carried out of doors, forsome young gentlemen at table, amused with his coolness and gallantfree-and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons, which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went inthe cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy'smamma, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy asthe dinner went on, and at the various feats and instances ofespieglerie on the part of her son. The Colonel--for so he became verysoon afterwards--I remember joked the boy with a great deal of gravefun, pointing out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating him notto baulk his appetite, but to have a second supply of this or that. 

It was what they call a gast-rolle night at the Royal Grand DucalPumpernickelisch Hof--or Court theatre--and Madame Schroeder Devrient, then in the bloom of her beauty and genius, performed the part of theheroine in the wonderful opera of Fidelio. From our places in thestalls we could see our four friends of the table d'hote in the logewhich Schwendler of the Erbprinz kept for his best guests, and I couldnot help remarking the effect which the magnificent actress and musicproduced upon Mrs. Osborne, for so we heard the stout gentleman in themustachios call her. During the astonishing Chorus of the Prisoners, over which the delightful voice of the actress rose and soared in themost ravishing harmony, the English lady's face wore such an expressionof wonder and delight that it struck even little Fipps, the blaseattache, who drawled out, as he fixed his glass upon her, "Gayd, itreally does one good to see a woman caypable of that stayt ofexcaytement. " And in the Prison Scene, where Fidelio, rushing to herhusband, cries, "Nichts, nichts, mein Florestan, " she fairly lostherself and covered her face with her handkerchief. Every woman in thehouse was snivelling at the time, but I suppose it was because it waspredestined that I was to write this particular lady's memoirs that Iremarked her. 

The next day they gave another piece of Beethoven, Die Schlacht beiVittoria. Malbrook is introduced at the beginning of the performance, as indicative of the brisk advance of the French army. Then come drums, trumpets, thunders of artillery, and groans of the dying, and at last, in a grand triumphal swell, "God Save the King" is performed. 

There may have been a score of Englishmen in the house, but at theburst of that beloved and well-known music, every one of them, we youngfellows in the stalls, Sir John and Lady Bullminster (who had taken ahouse at Pumpernickel for the education of their nine children), thefat gentleman with the mustachios, the long Major in white ducktrousers, and the lady with the little boy upon whom he was so sweet, even Kirsch, the courier in the gallery, stood bolt upright in theirplaces and proclaimed themselves to be members of the dear old Britishnation. As for Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, he rose up in his boxand bowed and simpered, as if he would represent the whole empire. Tapeworm was nephew and heir of old Marshal Tiptoff, who has beenintroduced in this story as General Tiptoff, just before Waterloo, whowas Colonel of the --th regiment in which Major Dobbin served, and whodied in this year full of honours, and of an aspic of plovers' eggs;when the regiment was graciously given by his Majesty to Colonel SirMichael O'Dowd, K. C. B. Who had commanded it in many glorious fields. 

Tapeworm must have met with Colonel Dobbin at the house of theColonel's Colonel, the Marshal, for he recognized him on this night atthe theatre, and with the utmost condescension, his Majesty's ministercame over from his own box and publicly shook hands with his new-foundfriend. 

"Look at that infernal sly-boots of a Tapeworm, " Fipps whispered, examining his chief from the stalls. "Wherever there's a pretty womanhe always twists himself in. " And I wonder what were diplomatists madefor but for that?

"Have I the honour of addressing myself to Mrs. Dobbin?" asked theSecretary with a most insinuating grin. 

Georgy burst out laughing and said, "By Jove, that was a good 'un. "Emmy and the Major blushed: we saw them from the stalls. 

"This lady is Mrs. George Osborne, " said the Major, "and this is herbrother, Mr. Sedley, a distinguished officer of the Bengal CivilService: permit me to introduce him to your lordship. "

My lord nearly sent Jos off his legs with the most fascinating smile. "Are you going to stop in Pumpernickel?" he said. "It is a dull place, but we want some nice people, and we would try and make it SO agreeableto you. Mr. --Ahum--Mrs. --Oho. I shall do myself the honour of callingupon you to-morrow at your inn. " And he went away with a Parthian grinand glance which he thought must finish Mrs. Osborne completely. 

The performance over, the young fellows lounged about the lobbies, andwe saw the society take its departure. The Duchess Dowager went off inher jingling old coach, attended by two faithful and withered old maidsof honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman in waiting, ina brown jasey and a green coat covered with orders--of which the starand the grand yellow cordon of the order of St. Michael of Pumpernickelwere most conspicuous. The drums rolled, the guards saluted, and theold carriage drove away. 

Then came his Transparency the Duke and Transparent family, with hisgreat officers of state and household. He bowed serenely to everybody. And amid the saluting of the guards and the flaring of the torches ofthe running footmen, clad in scarlet, the Transparent carriages droveaway to the old Ducal schloss, with its towers and pinacles standing onthe schlossberg. Everybody in Pumpernickel knew everybody. No soonerwas a foreigner seen there than the Minister of Foreign Affairs, orsome other great or small officer of state, went round to the Erbprinzand found out the name of the new arrival. 

We watched them, too, out of the theatre. Tapeworm had just walkedoff, enveloped in his cloak, with which his gigantic chasseur wasalways in attendance, and looking as much as possible like Don Juan. The Prime Minister's lady had just squeezed herself into her sedan, andher daughter, the charming Ida, had put on her calash and clogs; whenthe English party came out, the boy yawning drearily, the Major takinggreat pains in keeping the shawl over Mrs. Osborne's head, and Mr. Sedley looking grand, with a crush opera-hat on one side of his headand his hand in the stomach of a voluminous white waistcoat. We tookoff our hats to our acquaintances of the table d'hote, and the lady, inreturn, presented us with a little smile and a curtsey, for whicheverybody might be thankful. 

The carriage from the inn, under the superintendence of the bustlingMr. Kirsch, was in waiting to convey the party; but the fat man said hewould walk and smoke his cigar on his way homewards, so the otherthree, with nods and smiles to us, went without Mr. Sedley, Kirsch, with the cigar case, following in his master's wake. 

We all walked together and talked to the stout gentleman about theagremens of the place. It was very agreeable for the English. Therewere shooting-parties and battues; there was a plenty of balls andentertainments at the hospitable Court; the society was generally good;the theatre excellent; and the living cheap. 

"And our Minister seems a most delightful and affable person, " our newfriend said. "With such a representative, and--and a good medical man, I can fancy the place to be most eligible. Good-night, gentlemen. " AndJos creaked up the stairs to bedward, followed by Kirsch with aflambeau. We rather hoped that nice-looking woman would be induced tostay some time in the town. 

CHAPTER LXIII

In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance

Such polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did not fail to have themost favourable effect upon Mr. Sedley's mind, and the very nextmorning, at breakfast, he pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel wasthe pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on their tour. Jos's motives and artifices were not very difficult of comprehension, and Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like a hypocrite as he was, when hefound, by the knowing air of the civilian and the offhand manner inwhich the latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and the other members ofthe family, that Jos had been up already in the morning, consulting histravelling Peerage. Yes, he had seen the Right Honourable the Earl ofBagwig, his lordship's father; he was sure he had, he had met himat--at the Levee--didn't Dob remember? and when the Diplomatist calledon the party, faithful to his promise, Jos received him with such asalute and honours as were seldom accorded to the little Envoy. Hewinked at Kirsch on his Excellency's arrival, and that emissary, instructed before-hand, went out and superintended an entertainment ofcold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon trays, andof which Mr. Jos absolutely insisted that his noble guest shouldpartake. 

Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of admiring thebright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness of complexion boredaylight remarkably well) was not ill pleased to accept any invitationto stay in Mr. Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two dexterous questionsto him about India and the dancing-girls there; asked Amelia about thatbeautiful boy who had been with her; and complimented the astonishedlittle woman upon the prodigious sensation which she had made in thehouse; and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war and theexploits of the Pumpernickel contingent under the command of theHereditary Prince, now Duke of Pumpernickel. 

Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family gallantry, andit was his happy belief that almost every woman upon whom he himselfcast friendly eyes was in love with him. He left Emmy under thepersuasion that she was slain by his wit and attractions and went hometo his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her. She was notfascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering, his scentedcambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered boots. She did notunderstand one-half the compliments which he paid; she had never, inher small experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as yet, and looked upon my lord as something curious rather than pleasant; andif she did not admire, certainly wondered at him. Jos, on thecontrary, was delighted. "How very affable his Lordship is, " he said;"How very kind of his Lordship to say he would send his medical man!Kirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de Schlusselbackdirectly; the Major and I will have the greatest pleasure in paying ourrespects at Court as soon as possible. Put out my uniform, Kirsch--both our uniforms. It is a mark of politeness which everyEnglish gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits to payhis respects to the sovereigns of those countries as to therepresentatives of his own. "

When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber, Body Physician toH. S. H. The Duke, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickelmineral springs and the Doctor's particular treatment would infalliblyrestore the Bengalee to youth and slimness. "Dere came here lastyear, " he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral, tvice so picas you, sir. I sent him back qvite tin after tree months, and hedanced vid Baroness Glauber at the end of two. "

Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the Court, and theCharge d'Affaires convinced him, and he proposed to spend the autumn inthese delightful quarters. And punctual to his word, on the next daythe Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor AureliusXVII, being conducted to their audience with that sovereign by theCount de Schlusselback, Marshal of the Court. 

They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and their intentionof staying in the town being announced, the politest ladies of thewhole town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these, however poor they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos'sdelight was beyond expression. He wrote off to Chutney at the Club tosay that the Service was highly appreciated in Germany, that he wasgoing to show his friend, the Count de Schlusselback, how to stick apig in the Indian fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke andDuchess, were everything that was kind and civil. 

Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as mourning is notadmitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink crape dresswith a diamond ornament in the corsage, presented to her by herbrother, and she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke andCourt (putting out of the question the Major, who had scarcely everseen her before in an evening dress, and vowed that she did not lookfive-and-twenty) all admired her excessively. 

In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin at a Court ball, in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countessof Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen goodquarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany. 

Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley through whichsparkles--to mingle with the Rhine somewhere, but I have not the map athand to say exactly at what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump. In some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, inothers to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last Transparencybut three, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV built amagnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises, surrounded bywater-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his footon the neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and ran aJanissary through the body at the relief of Vienna by Sobieski--but, quite undisturbed by the agonies of that prostrate Mahometan, whowrithes at his feet in the most ghastly manner, the Prince smilesblandly and points with his truncheon in the direction of the AureliusPlatz, where he began to erect a new palace that would have been thewonder of his age had the great-souled Prince but had funds tocomplete it. But the completion of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honestGerman folks call it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it andits park and garden are now in rather a faded condition, and not morethan ten times big enough to accommodate the Court of the reigningSovereign. 

The gardens were arranged to emulate those of Versailles, and amidstthe terraces and groves there are some huge allegorical waterworksstill, which spout and froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frightenone with their enormous aquatic insurrections. There is theTrophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden Tritons aremade not only to spout water, but to play the most dreadful groans outof their lead conchs--there is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract, which the people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression, whenthey come to the yearly fair at the opening of the Chamber, or to thefetes with which the happy little nation still celebrates the birthdaysand marriage-days of its princely governors. 

Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches for nearly tenmile--from Bolkum, which lies on its western frontier bidding defianceto Prussia, from Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, andwhere his dominions are separated by the Pump River from those of theneighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from all the little villages, whichbesides these three great cities, dot over the happy principality--fromthe farms and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in redpetticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with three-cornered hats andpipes in their mouths, who flock to the Residenz and share in thepleasures of the fair and the festivities there. Then the theatre isopen for nothing, then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it islucky that there is company to behold them, for one would be afraid tosee them alone)--then there come mountebanks and riding troops (the wayin which his Transparency was fascinated by one of the horse-riders iswell known, and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she wascalled, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted people arepermitted to march through room after room of the Grand Ducal palaceand admire the slippery floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons atthe doors of all the innumerable chambers. There is one Pavilion atMonblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had arranged--a great Prince buttoo fond of pleasure--and which I am told is a perfect wonder oflicentious elegance. It is painted with the story of Bacchus andAriadne, and the table works in and out of the room by means of awindlass, so that the company was served without any intervention ofdomestics. But the place was shut up by Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of theDuchy during her son's glorious minority, and after the death of herhusband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures. 

The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in that quarter ofGermany. It languished a little when the present Duke in his youthinsisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said oneday, in a fury, from his place in the orchestra, when he attended arehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who wasconducting, and led too slow; and during which time the Duchess Sophiawrote domestic comedies, which must have been very dreary to witness. But the Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess onlygives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction who visit herkind little Court. 

It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour. When there areballs, though there may be four hundred people at supper, there is aservant in scarlet and lace to attend upon every four, and every one isserved on silver. There are festivals and entertainments goingcontinually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and equerries, andthe Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe and ladies of honour, justlike any other and more potent potentates. 

The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamberthat might or might not be elected. I never certainly could hear ofits sitting in my time at Pumpernickel. The Prime Minister hadlodgings in a second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied thecomfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey. The army consisted ofa magnificent band that also did duty on the stage, where it was quitepleasant to see the worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses withrouge on and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with ophicleidesand trombones--to see them again, I say, at night, after one hadlistened to them all the morning in the Aurelius Platz, where theyperformed opposite the cafe where we breakfasted. Besides the band, there was a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a fewmen. Besides the regular sentries, three or four men, habited ashussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I never saw them onhorseback, and au fait, what was the use of cavalry in a time ofprofound peace?--and whither the deuce should the hussars ride?

Everybody--everybody that was noble of course, for as for the bourgeoiswe could not quite be expected to take notice of THEM--visited hisneighbour. H. E. Madame de Burst received once a week, H. E. Madame deSchnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice a week, the Courtgraciously received once, so that a man's life might in fact be aperfect round of pleasure in the unpretending Pumpernickel way. 

That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny. Politics ran veryhigh at Pumpernickel, and parties were very bitter. There was theStrumpff faction and the Lederlung party, the one supported by ourenvoy and the other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M. De Macabau. Indeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for Madame Strumpff, who was clearly the greater singer of the two, and had three more notesin her voice than Madame Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, forour Minister to advance any opinion to have it instantly contradictedby the French diplomatist. 

Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of these factions. TheLederlung was a prettyish little creature certainly, and her voice(what there was of it) was very sweet, and there is no doubt that theStrumpff was not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly toostout; when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula, forinstance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to goout of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all shecould do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend andcreak again under her weight--but how she poured out the finale of theopera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino'sarms--almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung--but atruce to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were the twoflags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and thesociety was divided in its allegiance to those two great nations. 

We had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of the Horse, theDuke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's Tutor; whereas of the Frenchparty were the Foreign Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who hadserved under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his wife, who was gladenough to get the fashions from Pans, and always had them and her capsby M. De Macabau's courier. The Secretary of his Chancery was littleGrignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who madecaricatures of Tapeworm in all the-albums of the place. 

Their headquarters and table d'hote were established at the PariserHof, the other inn of the town; and though, of course, these gentlemenwere obliged to be civil in public, yet they cut at each other withepigrams that were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple ofwrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins and nevershowing their agony upon a muscle of their faces. Neither Tapeworm norMacabau ever sent home a dispatch to his government without a mostsavage series of attacks upon his rival. For instance, on our side wewould write, "The interests of Great Britain in this place, andthroughout the whole of Germany, are perilled by the continuance inoffice of the present French envoy; this man is of a character soinfamous that he will stick at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime, to attain his ends. He poisons the mind of the Court against theEnglish minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in the mostodious and atrocious light, and is unhappily backed by a minister whoseignorance and necessities are as notorious as his influence is fatal. "On their side they would say, "M. De Tapeworm continues his system ofstupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood against the greatestnation in the world. Yesterday he was heard to speak lightly of HerRoyal Highness Madame the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion heinsulted the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate thatH. R. H. The Duke of Orleans was conspiring against the august throne ofthe lilies. His gold is prodigated in every direction which his stupidmenaces fail to frighten. By one and the other, he has won overcreatures of the Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not bequiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe content until thispoisonous viper be crushed under heel": and so on. When one side orthe other had written any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it wassure to slip out. 

Before the winter was far advanced, it is actually on record that Emmytook a night and received company with great propriety and modesty. She had a French master, who complimented her upon the purity of heraccent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had learned longago and grounded herself subsequently in the grammar so as to be ableto teach it to George; and Madam Strumpff came to give her lessons insinging, which she performed so well and with such a true voice thatthe Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the PrimeMinister, were always open to hear the lesson. Some of the Germanladies, who are very sentimental and simple in their tastes, fell inlove with her and began to call her du at once. These are trivialdetails, but they relate to happy times. The Major made himselfGeorge's tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and they had aGerman master and rode out of evenings by the side of Emmy'scarriage--she was always too timid, and made a dreadful outcry at theslightest disturbance on horse-back. So she drove about with one ofher dear German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of thebarouche. 

He was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny de Butterbrod, a verygentle tender-hearted and unassuming young creature, a Canoness andCountess in her own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to herfortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be Amelia's sister wasthe greatest delight that Heaven could bestow on her, and Jos mighthave put a Countess's shield and coronet by the side of his own arms onhis carriage and forks; when--when events occurred, and those grandfetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary Prince of Pumpernickelwith the lovely Princess Amelia of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen tookplace. 

At this festival the magnificence displayed was such as had not beenknown in the little German place since the days of the prodigal VictorXIV. All the neighbouring Princes, Princesses, and Grandees wereinvited to the feast. Beds rose to half a crown per night inPumpernickel, and the Army was exhausted in providing guards of honourfor the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies who arrived from allquarters. The Princess was married by proxy, at her father'sresidence, by the Count de Schlusselback. Snuff-boxes were given awayin profusion (as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold andafterwards bought them again), and bushels of the Order of SaintMichael of Pumpernickel were sent to the nobles of the Court, whilehampers of the cordons and decorations of the Wheel of St. Catherine ofSchlippenschloppen were brought to ours. The French envoy got both. "He is covered with ribbons like a prize cart-horse, " Tapeworm said, who was not allowed by the rules of his service to take anydecorations: "Let him have the cordons; but with whom is the victory?"The fact is, it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French partyhaving proposed and tried their utmost to carry a marriage with aPrincess of the House of Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matterof course, we opposed. 

Everybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage. Garlands andtriumphal arches were hung across the road to welcome the young bride. The great Saint Michael's Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, whilethat in the Artillery Place frothed with beer. The great watersplayed; and poles were put up in the park and gardens for the happypeasantry, which they might climb at their leisure, carrying offwatches, silver forks, prize sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c. , atthe top. Georgy got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the poleto the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the rapidity ofa fall of water. But it was for the glory's sake merely. The boy gavethe sausage to a peasant, who had very nearly seized it, and stood atthe foot of the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful. 

At the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions in theirillumination than ours had; but our transparency, which represented theyoung Couple advancing and Discord flying away, with the most ludicrouslikeness to the French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; andI have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the Cross of the Bathwhich he subsequently attained. 

Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of English, of course. Besides the Court balls, public balls were given at the Town Hall andthe Redoute, and in the former place there was a room fortrente-et-quarante and roulette established, for the week of thefestivities only, and by one of the great German companies from Ems orAix-la-Chapelle. The officers or inhabitants of the town were notallowed to play at these games, but strangers, peasants, ladies wereadmitted, and any one who chose to lose or win money. 

That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others, whose pocketswere always full of dollars and whose relations were away at the grandfestival of the Court, came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of hisuncle's courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a play-room atBaden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm, and where, of course, he wasnot permitted to gamble, came eagerly to this part of the entertainmentand hankered round the tables where the croupiers and the punters wereat work. Women were playing; they were masked, some of them; thislicense was allowed in these wild times of carnival. 

A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means so fresh as it hadbeen, and with a black mask on, through the eyelets of which her eyestwinkled strangely, was seated at one of the roulette-tables with acard and a pin and a couple of florins before her. As the croupiercalled out the colour and number, she pricked on the card with greatcare and regularity, and only ventured her money on the colours afterthe red or black had come up a certain number of times. It was strangeto look at her. 

But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed wrong and the lasttwo florins followed each other under the croupier's rake, as he criedout with his inexorable voice the winning colour and number. She gavea sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out ofher gown, and dashing the pin through the card on to the table, satthrumming it for a while. Then she looked round her and saw Georgy'shonest face staring at the scene. The little scamp! What business hadhe to be there?

When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard through her shiningeyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur n'est pas joueur?"

"Non, Madame, " said the boy; but she must have known, from his accent, of what country he was, for she answered him with a slight foreigntone. "You have nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"

"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again. Mr. Kirsch was at work forhis part at the rouge et noir and did not see his young master. 

"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number, any number. "And she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, theonly coin there, and she put it into George's hand. The boy laughedand did as he was bid. 

The number came up sure enough. There is a power that arranges that, they say, for beginners. 

"Thank you, " said she, pulling the money towards her, "thank you. Whatis your name?"

"My name's Osborne, " said Georgy, and was fingering in his own pocketsfor dollars, and just about to make a trial, when the Major, in hisuniform, and Jos, en Marquis, from the Court ball, made theirappearance. Other people, finding the entertainment stupid andpreferring the fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ballearlier; but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and foundthe boy's absence, for the former instantly went up to him and, takinghim by the shoulder, pulled him briskly back from the place oftemptation. Then, looking round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as wehave said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring Mr. Georgeto such a place. 

"Laissez-moi tranquille, " said Mr. Kirsch, very much excited by playand wine. "Il faut s'amuser, parbleu. Je ne suis pas au service deMonsieur. "

Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue with the man, but contented himself with drawing away George and asking Jos if hewould come away. He was standing close by the lady in the mask, whowas playing with pretty good luck now, and looking on much interestedat the game. 

"Hadn't you better come, Jos, " the Major said, "with George and me?"

"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch, " Jos said; and for thesame reason of modesty, which he thought ought to be preserved beforethe boy, Dobbin did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him andwalked home with Georgy. 

"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out and on their wayhome. 

The boy said "No. "

"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will. "

"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun. " And, in a very eloquentand impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and wouldhave enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, hadhe liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's memory. When he had housed him, he went to bed and saw his light, in the littleroom outside of Amelia's, presently disappear. Amelia's followed halfan hour afterwards. I don't know what made the Major note it soaccurately. 

Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then, andhe had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his courtwaistcoat. He put down one over the fair shoulder of the littlegambler before him, and they won. She made a little movement to makeroom for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from avacant chair there. 

"Come and give me good luck, " she said, still in a foreign accent, quite different from that frank and perfectly English "Thank you, " withwhich she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour. The portlygentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, satdown; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul. I'm veryfortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune, " and other words ofcompliment and confusion. "Do you play much?" the foreign mask said. 

"I put a Nap or two down, " said Jos with a superb air, flinging down agold piece. 

"Yes; ay nap after dinner, " said the mask archly. But Jos lookingfrightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, "You do notplay to win. No more do I. I play to forget, but I cannot. I cannotforget old times, monsieur. Your little nephew is the image of hisfather; and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are. Everybodychanges, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart. "

"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter. 

"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she looked at him. "You have forgotten me. "

"Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos. 

"Rebecca, " said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followedthe game still, all the time she was looking at him. 

"I am stopping at the Elephant, " she continued. "Ask for Madame deRaudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and howhappy! So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley. "And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chancemovement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with apocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace. 

The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. "Comeaway, " she said. "Come with me a little--we are old friends, are wenot, dear Mr. Sedley?"

And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed hismaster out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking outand the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible. 

CHAPTER LXIV

A Vagabond Chapter

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with thatlightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, thathas, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperablerepugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. There are thingswe do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak ofthem: as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him:and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic descriptionof vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit theword breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day, without muchshocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, whatcomplexions you would have! It is only when their naughty names arecalled out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense ofoutrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all throughthis story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at presentprevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may beoffended. I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly somevices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel andinoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readersall round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed themonster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep downunder waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing andtwirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, orcurling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has noteverything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the mostsqueamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, thewater of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to lookinto it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough when they sit upona rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, andbeckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sinkinto their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about nogood, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims. And so, whenBecky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly wellemployed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in factthe better. 

If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple ofyears that followed after the Curzon Street catastrophe, there might besome reason for people to say this book was improper. The actions ofvery vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often improper(as are many of yours, my friend with the grave face and spotlessreputation--but that is merely by the way); and what are those of awoman without faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to thinkthat there was a period in Mrs Becky's life when she was seized, not byremorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her personand did not even care for her reputation. 

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it wasbrought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many strugglesto keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst anyhope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds thatstruggling is in vain. 

She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparationsfor his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed mademore than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, andto work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour. As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons, the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near thepalace of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met those ofWenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet. 

Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have heard that she quite astonishedher husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and herdetermination to disown Mrs. Becky. Of her own movement, she invitedRawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure forCoventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would nottry to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptionsof all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and hissister-in-law should be corresponding. Not but that Rebecca could havewritten had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pittat his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demandthat the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should becarried on by lawyers only. 

The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her. A shorttime after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet andgiven him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the memberfor Queen's Crawley. He knew everything regarding her: who her fatherwas; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been herprevious history; and what her conduct during her married life--as Ihave no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictatedby interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here. But Beckywas left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentlemanand relative who had been once rather partial to her. 

The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large. A partof them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certainoutstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his highsituation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that hecould not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year, which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would nevertrouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons wouldensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business, Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up amost disagreeable affair. 

She was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs ofbusiness with her husband's lawyers that she forgot to take any stepwhatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even oncepropose to go and see him. That young gentleman was consigned to theentire guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom hadalways possessed a great share of the child's affection. His mammawrote him a neat letter from Boulogne, when she quitted England, inwhich she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going totake a Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure ofwriting to him again. But she never did for a year afterwards, andnot, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy, always sickly, died ofhooping-cough and measles--then Rawdon's mamma wrote the mostaffectionate composition to her darling son, who was made heir ofQueen's Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than ever tothe kind lady, whose tender heart had already adopted him. RawdonCrawley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when he got the letter. "Oh, Aunt Jane, you are my mother!" he said; "and not--and not thatone. " But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca, then living at a boarding-house at Florence. But we are advancingmatters. 

Our darling Becky's first flight was not very far. She perched uponthe French coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much exiled Englishinnocence, and there lived in rather a genteel, widowed manner, with afemme de chambre and a couple of rooms, at an hotel. She dined at thetable d'hote, where people thought her very pleasant, and where sheentertained her neighbours by stories of her brother, Sir Pitt, and hergreat London acquaintance, talking that easy, fashionable slip-slopwhich has so much effect upon certain folks of small breeding. Shepassed with many of them for a person of importance; she gave littletea-parties in her private room and shared in the innocent amusementsof the place in sea-bathing, and in jaunts in open carriages, instrolls on the sands, and in visits to the play. Mrs. Burjoice, theprinter's lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for thesummer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a Saturday and Sunday, votedher charming, until that little rogue of a Burjoice began to pay hertoo much attention. But there was nothing in the story, only thatBecky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and with menespecially. 

Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the end of the season, and Becky had plenty of opportunities of finding out by the behaviourof her acquaintances of the great London world the opinion of "society"as regarded her conduct. One day it was Lady Partlet and her daughterswhom Becky confronted as she was walking modestly on Boulogne pier, thecliffs of Albion shining in the distance across the deep blue sea. Lady Partlet marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of herparasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage glances at poorlittle Becky who stood alone there. 

On another day the packet came in. It had been blowing fresh, and italways suited Becky's humour to see the droll woe-begone faces of thepeople as they emerged from the boat. Lady Slingstone happened to beon board this day. Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill in hercarriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely fit to walk up theplank from the ship to the pier. But all her energies rallied theinstant she saw Becky smiling roguishly under a pink bonnet, and givingher a glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most women, shewalked into the Custom House quite unsupported. Becky only laughed:but I don't think she liked it. She felt she was alone, quite alone, and the far-off shining cliffs of England were impassable to her. 

The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't know what change. Grinstone showed his teeth and laughed in her face with a familiaritythat was not pleasant. Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to herthree months before, and would walk a mile in the rain to see for hercarriage in the line at Gaunt House, was talking to Fitzoof of theGuards (Lord Heehaw's son) one day upon the jetty, as Becky took herwalk there. Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, withoutmoving his hat, and continued his conversation with the heir of Heehaw. Tom Raikes tried to walk into her sitting-room at the inn with a cigarin his mouth, but she closed the door upon him, and would have lockedit, only that his fingers were inside. She began to feel that she wasvery lonely indeed. "If HE'D been here, " she said, "those cowardswould never have dared to insult me. " She thought about "him" withgreat sadness and perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constantkindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good humour;his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried, for she wasparticularly lively, and had put on a little extra rouge, when she camedown to dinner. 

She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got Cognac for her besidesthat which was charged in the hotel bill. 

Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so intolerable to heras the sympathy of certain women. Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. WashingtonWhite passed through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland. The partywere protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and of course oldCrackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl. THEY did not avoid her. They giggled, cackled, tattled, condoled, consoled, and patronized heruntil they drove her almost wild with rage. To be patronized by THEM!she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing her. And sheheard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the stair and knew quite well how tointerpret his hilarity. 

It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her weekly bills, Becky who had made herself agreeable to everybody in the house, whosmiled at the landlady, called the waiters "monsieur, " and paid thechambermaids in politeness and apologies, what far more thancompensated for a little niggardliness in point of money (of whichBecky never was free), that Becky, we say, received a notice to quitfrom the landlord, who had been told by some one that she was quite anunfit person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not sitdown with her. And she was forced to fly into lodgings of which thedulness and solitude were most wearisome to her. 

Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to make acharacter for herself and conquer scandal. She went to church veryregularly and sang louder than anybody there. She took up the cause ofthe widows of the shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings forthe Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly and WOULDN'Twaltz. In a word, she did everything that was respectable, and that iswhy we dwell upon this part of her career with more fondness than uponsubsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant. She sawpeople avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled upon them; you nevercould suppose from her countenance what pangs of humiliation she mightbe enduring inwardly. 

Her history was after all a mystery. Parties were divided about her. Some people who took the trouble to busy themselves in the matter saidthat she was the criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocentas a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault. She won over a goodmany by bursting into tears about her boy and exhibiting the mostfrantic grief when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like him. She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way, who was rather theQueen of British Boulogne and gave the most dinners and balls of allthe residents there, by weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr. Swishtail's academy to pass his holidays with his mother. "He and herRawdon were of the same age, and so like, " Becky said in a voicechoking with agony; whereas there was five years' difference betweenthe boys' ages, and no more likeness between them than between myrespected reader and his humble servant. Wenham, when he was goingabroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord Steyne, enlightened Mrs. Alderney on this point and told her how he was much more able todescribe little Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him andnever saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while little Alderney wasbut nine, fair, while the other darling was dark--in a word, caused thelady in question to repent of her good humour. 

Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with incredible toilsand labour, somebody came and swept it down rudely, and she had all herwork to begin over again. It was very hard; very hard; lonely anddisheartening. 

There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some time, attracted bythe sweetness of her singing at church and by her proper views uponserious subjects, concerning which in former days, at Queen's Crawley, Mrs. Becky had had a good deal of instruction. Well, she not only tooktracts, but she read them. She worked flannel petticoats for theQuashyboos--cotton night-caps for the Cocoanut Indians--paintedhandscreens for the conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr. Rowls on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended two Sundayservices at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the Darbyite, in the evening, and all in vain. Mrs. Newbright had occasion to correspond with theCountess of Southdown about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji Islanders(for the management of which admirable charity both these ladies formedpart of a female committee), and having mentioned her "sweet friend, "Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a letterregarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts, falsehoods, andgeneral comminations, that intimacy between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs. Crawley ceased forthwith, and all the serious world of Tours, wherethis misfortune took place, immediately parted company with thereprobate. Those who know the English Colonies abroad know that wecarry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other Lares, making a little Britain wherever wesettle down. 

From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily. From Boulogne toDieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen to Tours--trying with all hermight to be respectable, and alas! always found out some day or otherand pecked out of the cage by the real daws. 

Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--a woman without ablemish in her character and a house in Portman Square. She wasstaying at the hotel at Dieppe, whither Becky fled, and they made eachother's acquaintance first at sea, where they were swimming together, and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel. Mrs Eagles hadheard--who indeed had not?--some of the scandal of the Steyne affair;but after a conversation with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawleywas an angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an unprincipledwretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case against Mrs. Crawley aninfamous and wicked conspiracy of that rascal Wenham. "If you were aman of any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears the nexttime you see him at the Club, " she said to her husband. But Eagles wasonly a quiet old gentleman, husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste forgeology, and not tall enough to reach anybody's ears. 

The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to live with her ather own house at Paris, quarrelled with the ambassador's wife becauseshe would not receive her protegee, and did all that lay in woman'spower to keep Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute. 

Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but the life ofhumdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her before long. It was thesame routine every day, the same dulness and comfort, the same driveover the same stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an evening, the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the same opera always beingacted over and over again; Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckilyfor her, young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother, seeingthe impression which her little friend made upon him, straightway gaveBecky warning. 

Then she tried keeping house with a female friend; then the doublemenage began to quarrel and get into debt. Then she determined upon aboarding-house existence and lived for some time at that famous mansionkept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at Paris, where shebegan exercising her graces and fascinations upon the shabby dandiesand fly-blown beauties who frequented her landlady's salons. Beckyloved society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than anopium-eater without his dram, and she was happy enough at the period ofher boarding-house life. "The women here are as amusing as those inMay Fair, " she told an old London friend who met her, "only, theirdresses are not quite so fresh. The men wear cleaned gloves, and aresad rogues, certainly, but they are not worse than Jack This and TomThat. The mistress of the house is a little vulgar, but I don't thinkshe is so vulgar as Lady ------" and here she named the name of a greatleader of fashion that I would die rather than reveal. In fact, whenyou saw Madame de Saint Amour's rooms lighted up of a night, men withplaques and cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a littledistance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good society, andthat Madame was a real Countess. Many people did so fancy, and Beckywas for a while one of the most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons. 

But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found her out andcaused her to leave Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to flyfrom the city rather suddenly, and went thence to Brussels. 

How well she remembered the place! She grinned as she looked up at thelittle entresol which she had occupied, and thought of the Bareacresfamily, bawling for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in theporte-cochere of the hotel. She went to Waterloo and to Laeken, whereGeorge Osborne's monument much struck her. She made a little sketch ofit. "That poor Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love withme, and what a fool he was! I wonder whether little Emmy is alive. Itwas a good little creature; and that fat brother of hers. I have hisfunny fat picture still among my papers. They were kind simple people. "

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to herfriend, Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General, the famous Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by thedeceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte table. Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who always have a lawsuit, and very simple English folks, who fancy they see "Continental society"at these houses, put down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame deBorodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the company roundto champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hiredhorses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the playor the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at theecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire abouttheir felicitous introduction to foreign society. 

Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen, and ruled inselect pensions. She never refused the champagne, or the bouquets, orthe drives into the country, or the private boxes; but what shepreferred was the ecarte at night, --and she played audaciously. Firstshe played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then forNapoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able to pay hermonth's pension: then she borrowed from the young gentlemen: then shegot into cash again and bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxedand wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a time, andin a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's allowance would comein, and she would pay off Madame de Borodino's score and would oncemore take the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier deRaff. 

When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she owed three months'pension to Madame de Borodino, of which fact, and of the gambling, andof the drinking, and of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr. Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him, and of her coaxingand flirting with Milor Noodle, son of Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev. Mr. Muff, whom she used to take into her private room, and of whom shewon large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a hundred of herother knaveries, the Countess de Borodino informs every English personwho stops at her establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was nobetter than a vipere. 

So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various citiesof Europe, as restless as Ulysses or Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her tastefor disrespectability grew more and more remarkable. She became aperfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make yourhair stand on end to meet. 

There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony ofEnglish raffs--men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads outperiodically at the Sheriffs' Court--young gentlemen of very goodfamily often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters ofbilliard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races andgaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons--they drink andswagger--they fight and brawl--they run away without paying--they haveduels with French and German officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney atecarte--they get the money and drive off to Baden in magnificentbritzkas--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the tableswith empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless bucks, until they canswindle a Jew banker with a sham bill of exchange, or find another Mr. Spooney to rob. The alternations of splendour and misery which thesepeople undergo are very queer to view. Their life must be one of greatexcitement. Becky--must it be owned?--took to this life, and took toit not unkindly. She went about from town to town among theseBohemians. The lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table inGermany. She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at Florencetogether. It is said she was ordered out of Munich, and my friend Mr. Frederick Pigeon avers that it was at her house at Lausanne that he washocussed at supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder and theHonourable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you see, to give some accountof Becky's biography, but of this part, the less, perhaps, that is saidthe better. 

They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly down on her luck, shegave concerts and lessons in music here and there. There was a Madamede Raudon, who certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad, accompaniedby Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of Wallachia, and mylittle friend Mr. Eaves, who knew everybody and had travelledeverywhere, always used to declare that he was at Strasburg in the year1830, when a certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the operaof the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious row in the theatrethere. She was hissed off the stage by the audience, partly from herown incompetency, but chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of somepersons in the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had theiradmissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate debutante inquestion was no other than Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. 

She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this earth. When shegot her money she gambled; when she had gambled it she was put toshifts to live; who knows how or by what means she succeeded? It issaid that she was once seen at St. Petersburg, but was summarilydismissed from that capital by the police, so that there cannot be anypossibility of truth in the report that she was a Russian spy atToplitz and Vienna afterwards. I have even been informed that at Parisshe discovered a relation of her own, no less a person than hermaternal grandmother, who was not by any means a Montmorenci, but ahideous old box-opener at a theatre on the Boulevards. The meetingbetween them, of which other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seemto have been acquainted, must have been a very affecting interview. The present historian can give no certain details regarding the event. 

It happened at Rome once that Mrs. De Rawdon's half-year's salary hadjust been paid into the principal banker's there, and, as everybody whohad a balance of above five hundred scudi was invited to the ballswhich this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky had thehonour of a card, and appeared at one of the Prince and PrincessPolonia's splendid evening entertainments. The Princess was of thefamily of Pompili, lineally descended from the second king of Rome, andEgeria of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather, Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences, tobacco, andpocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for gentlemen, and lent money in asmall way. All the great company in Rome thronged to hissaloons--Princes, Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori, young bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of man. Hishalls blazed with light and magnificence; were resplendent with giltframes (containing pictures), and dubious antiques; and the enormousgilt crown and arms of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimsonfield (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he sold), and thesilver fountain of the Pompili family shone all over the roof, doors, and panels of the house, and over the grand velvet baldaquins preparedto receive Popes and Emperors. 

So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from Florence, and waslodged at an inn in a very modest way, got a card for Prince Polonia'sentertainment, and her maid dressed her with unusual care, and she wentto this fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom shehappened to be travelling at the time--(the same man who shot PrinceRavoli at Naples the next year, and was caned by Sir John Buckskin forcarrying four kings in his hat besides those which he used in playingat ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together, and Becky sawa number of old faces which she remembered in happier days, when shewas not innocent, but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number offoreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty striped ribbons intheir buttonholes, and a very small display of linen; but his owncountrymen, it might be remarked, eschewed the Major. Becky, too, knewsome ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian countesses, whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh--what shall we say, we whohave moved among some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of thisrefuse and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean cards, and not with this dirty pack. But every man who has formed one of theinnumerable army of travellers has seen these marauding irregularshanging on, like Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king'scolours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging for themselves, and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside. 

Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder, and they went throughthe rooms together, and drank a great quantity of champagne at thebuffet, where the people, and especially the Major's irregular corps, struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the pair had hadenough, they pushed on until they reached the Duchess's own pink velvetsaloon, at the end of the suite of apartments (where the statue of theVenus is, and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver), andwhere the princely family were entertaining their most distinguishedguests at a round table at supper. It was just such a little selectbanquet as that of which Becky recollected that she had partaken atLord Steyne's--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him. The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald, shining forehead made aburning red mark; his red whiskers were dyed of a purple hue, whichmade his pale face look still paler. He wore his collar and orders, his blue ribbon and garter. He was a greater Prince than any there, though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal Highness, with theirprincesses, and near his Lordship was seated the beautiful Countess ofBelladonna, nee de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo dellaBelladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological collections, had been long absent on a mission to the Emperor of Morocco. 

When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face, how vulgar all ofa sudden did Major Loder appear to her, and how that odious CaptainRook did smell of tobacco! In one instant she reassumed herfine-ladyship and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Faironce more. "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured, " she thought; "Iam sure she can't amuse him. No, he must be bored by her--he never wasby me. " A hundred such touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitatedin her little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the rougewhich she wore up to her eyelids made them twinkle) towards the greatnobleman. Of a Star and Garter night Lord Steyne used also to put onhis grandest manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as hewas. Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and stately. Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he was, what a brilliant wit, what a rich fund of talk, what a grand manner!--and she had exchangedthis for Major Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, andCaptain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring slang, and theirlike. "I wonder whether he will know me, " she thought. Lord Steynewas talking and laughing with a great and illustrious lady at his side, when he looked up and saw Becky. 

She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she put on thevery best smile she could muster, and dropped him a little, timid, imploring curtsey. He stared aghast at her for a minute, as Macbethmight on beholding Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, andremained looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major Loderpulled her away. 

"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R. , " was that gentleman's remark:"seeing these nobs grubbing away has made me peckish too. Let's go andtry the old governor's champagne. " Becky thought the Major had had agreat deal too much already. 

The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--the Hyde Park ofthe Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to have another sight of LordSteyne. But she met another acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, hislordship's confidential man, who came up nodding to her ratherfamiliarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame washere, " he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have some advice togive Madame. "

"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming as much of herdignity as she could muster, and not a little agitated by hope andexpectation. 

"No, " said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very unwholesome. "

"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after Easter. "

"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always malaria for somepeople. That cursed marsh wind kills many at all seasons. Look, MadameCrawley, you were always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you--or youwill be ill and die. "

Becky laughed, though in rage and fury. "What! assassinate poor littleme?" she said. "How romantic! Does my lord carry bravos for couriers, and stilettos in the fourgons? Bah! I will stay, if but to plague him. I have those who will defend me whilst I am here. "

It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now. "Defend you, " he said, "andwho? The Major, the Captain, any one of those gambling men whom Madamesees would take her life for a hundred louis. We know things aboutMajor Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord the Marquis) whichwould send him to the galleys or worse. We know everything and havefriends everywhere. We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relationsyou found there. Yes, Madame may stare, but we do. How was it that nominister on the Continent would receive Madame? She has offendedsomebody: who never forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you. He was like a madman last night when he came home. Madame deBelladonna made him a scene about you and fired off in one of herfuries. "

"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky said, relieved alittle, for the information she had just got had scared her. 

"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous. I tell you it wasMonseigneur. You did wrong to show yourself to him. And if you stayhere you will repent it. Mark my words. Go. Here is my lord'scarriage"--and seizing Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of thegarden as Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices, camewhirling along the avenue, borne by the almost priceless horses, andbearing Madame de Belladonna lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, andblooming, a King Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over herhead, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid face andghastly eyes. Hate, or anger, or desire caused them to brighten nowand then still, but ordinarily, they gave no light, and seemed tired oflooking out on a world of which almost all the pleasure and all thebest beauty had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man. 

"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that night, never, "Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley as the carriage flashed by, and she peeped out at it from behind the shrubs that hid her. "Thatwas a consolation at any rate, " Becky thought. 

Whether my lord really had murderous intentions towards Mrs. Becky asMonsieur Fiche said (since Monseigneur's death he has returned to hisnative country, where he lives much respected, and has purchased fromhis Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum objected to haveto do with assassination; or whether he simply had a commission tofrighten Mrs. Crawley out of a city where his Lordship proposed to passthe winter, and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to thegreat nobleman, is a point which has never been ascertained: but thethreat had its effect upon the little woman, and she sought no more tointrude herself upon the presence of her old patron. 

Everybody knows the melancholy end of that nobleman, which befell atNaples two months after the French Revolution of 1830; when the MostHonourable George Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and ofGaunt Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough, BaronPitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of the Russian Order of Saint Nicholasof the First Class, of the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord ofthe Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of the Gaunt orRegent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee of the British Museum, anElder Brother of the Trinity House, a Governor of the White Friars, andD. C. L. --died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said, bythe shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by the downfall ofthe ancient French monarchy. 

An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print, describing hisvirtues, his magnificence, his talents, and his good actions. Hissensibility, his attachment to the illustrious House of Bourbon, withwhich he claimed an alliance, were such that he could not survive themisfortunes of his august kinsmen. His body was buried at Naples, andhis heart--that heart which always beat with every generous and nobleemotion was brought back to Castle Gaunt in a silver urn. "In him, "Mr. Wagg said, "the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficentpatron, society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England one ofher loftiest patriots and statesmen, " &c. , &c. 

His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was made to forcefrom Madame de Belladonna the celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye"diamond, which his lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which itwas said that she removed from it after his lamented demise. But hisconfidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche proved that the ringhad been presented to the said Madame de Belladonna two days before theMarquis's death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and Frenchbonds, &c. , found in his lordship's secretaire and claimed by his heirsfrom that injured woman. 

CHAPTER LXV

Full of Business and Pleasure

The day after the meeting at the play-table, Jos had himself arrayedwith unusual care and splendour, and without thinking it necessary tosay a word to any member of his family regarding the occurrences of theprevious night, or asking for their company in his walk, he salliedforth at an early hour, and was presently seen making inquiries at thedoor of the Elephant Hotel. In consequence of the fetes the house wasfull of company, the tables in the street were already surrounded bypersons smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public roomswere in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in his pompous way, andwith his clumsy German, made inquiries for the person of whom he was insearch, was directed to the very top of the house, above thefirst-floor rooms where some travelling pedlars had lived, and wereexhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the second-floorapartments occupied by the etat major of the gambling firm; above thethird-floor rooms, tenanted by the band of renowned Bohemian vaultersand tumblers; and so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, amongstudents, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folks come in for thefestival, Becky had found a little nest--as dirty a little refuge asever beauty lay hid in. 

Becky liked the life. She was at home with everybody in the place, pedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all. She was of a wild, rovingnature, inherited from father and mother, who were both Bohemians, bytaste and circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to hiscourier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the drink, thesmoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the solemn, braggart ways ofthe poor tumblers, the sournois talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger of the students, and the general buzz and hum ofthe place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even when her luckwas down and she had not wherewithal to pay her bill. How pleasant wasall the bustle to her now that her purse was full of the money whichlittle Georgy had won for her the night before!

As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs, and wasspeechless when he got to the landing, and began to wipe his face andthen to look for No. 92, the room where he was directed to seek for theperson he wanted, the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open, and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was lying on thebed smoking a long pipe; whilst another student in long yellow hair anda braided coat, exceeding smart and dirty too, was actually on hisknees at No. 92, bawling through the keyhole supplications to theperson within. 

"Go away, " said a well-known voice, which made Jos thrill, "I expectsomebody; I expect my grandpapa. He mustn't see you there. "

"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brownringlets and the large finger-ring, "do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment. Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. Wewill have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and French wine. Weshall die if you don't. "

"That we will, " said the young nobleman on the bed; and this colloquyJos overheard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that hehad never studied the language in which it was carried on. 

"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait, " Jos said in his grandestmanner, when he was able to speak. 

"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and he bounced intohis own room, where he locked the door, and where Jos heard himlaughing with his comrade on the bed. 

The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of itself and Becky's little head peepedout full of archness and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you, "she said, coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop! notyet--in one minute you shall come in. " In that instant she put arouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor. 

She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a trifle faded andsoiled, and marked here and there with pomaturn; but her arms shone outfrom the loose sleeves of the dress very white and fair, and it wastied round her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim littlefigure of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret. "Comein, " she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder on the chair"; andshe gave the civilian's hand a little squeeze and laughingly placed himupon it. As for herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on thebottle and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have reposed, hadhe chosen that seat; and so there she sat and talked with her oldadmirer. "How little years have changed you, " she said with a look oftender interest. "I should have known you anywhere. What a comfort itis amongst strangers to see once more the frank honest face of an oldfriend!"

The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore anyexpression but one of openness and honesty: it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer littleapartment in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung overthe bed, another depending from a hook of the door; her bonnet obscuredhalf the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair ofbronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with acandle, not of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too, but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which she had putthe candle out on going to sleep. 

"I should have known you anywhere, " she continued; "a woman neverforgets some things. And you were the first man I ever--I ever saw. "

"Was I really?" said Jos. "God bless my soul, you--you don't say so. "

"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was scarcely more than achild, " Becky said. "How is that, dear love? Oh, her husband was a sadwicked man, and of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous. As if I cared about him, heigho! when there was somebody--butno--don't let us talk of old times"; and she passed her handkerchiefwith the tattered lace across her eyelids. 

"Is not this a strange place, " she continued, "for a woman, who haslived in a very different world too, to be found in? I have had so manygriefs and wrongs, Joseph Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruellythat I am almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any place, but wander about always restless and unhappy. All my friends have beenfalse to me--all. There is no such thing as an honest man in theworld. I was the truest wife that ever lived, though I married myhusband out of pique, because somebody else--but never mind that. Iwas true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me. I was the fondestmother. I had but one child, one darling, one hope, one joy, which Iheld to my heart with a mother's affection, which was my life, myprayer, my--my blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it fromme"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate gesture ofdespair, burying her face for a moment on the bed. 

The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate which held thecold sausage. Both were moved, no doubt, by the exhibition of so muchgrief. Max and Fritz were at the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky's sobs and cries. Jos, too, was a good deal frightened andaffected at seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began, forthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and artless thatit was quite evident from hearing her that if ever there was awhite-robed angel escaped from heaven to be subject to the infernalmachinations and villainy of fiends here below, that spotlessbeing--that miserable unsullied martyr, was present on the bed beforeJos--on the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle. 

They had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk there, in thecourse of which Jos Sedley was somehow made aware (but in a manner thatdid not in the least scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had firstlearned to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne hadcertainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which might account forAmelia's jealousy and their little rupture; but that Becky never gavethe least encouragement to the unfortunate officer, and that she hadnever ceased to think about Jos from the very first day she had seenhim, though, of course, her duties as a married woman wereparamount--duties which she had always preserved, and would, to herdying day, or until the proverbially bad climate in which ColonelCrawley was living should release her from a yoke which his cruelty hadrendered odious to her. 

Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous, as she was oneof the most fascinating of women, and revolving in his mind all sortsof benevolent schemes for her welfare. Her persecutions ought to beended: she ought to return to the society of which she was an ornament. He would see what ought to be done. She must quit that place and takea quiet lodging. Amelia must come and see her and befriend her. Hewould go and settle about it, and consult with the Major. She wepttears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and pressed hishand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped down to kiss hers. 

So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as much grace as if itwas a palace of which she did the honours; and that heavy gentlemanhaving disappeared down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of theirhole, pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos to them asshe munched her cold bread and sausage and took draughts of herfavourite brandy-and-water. 

Jos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great solemnity and thereimparted to him the affecting history with which he had just been madeacquainted, without, however, mentioning the play business of the nightbefore. And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together andconsulting as to the best means of being useful to Mrs. Becky, whileshe was finishing her interrupted dejeuner a la fourchette. 

How was it that she had come to that little town? How was it that shehad no friends and was wandering about alone? Little boys at school aretaught in their earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is veryeasy of descent. Let us skip over the interval in the history of herdownward progress. She was not worse now than she had been in the daysof her prosperity--only a little down on her luck. 

As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft and foolishdisposition that when she heard of anybody unhappy, her heartstraightway melted towards the sufferer; and as she had never thoughtor done anything mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrencefor wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more knowing. If shespoiled everybody who came near her with kindness and compliments--ifshe begged pardon of all her servants for troubling them to answer thebell--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece of silk, ormade a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a complimentary remark uponthe elegant state of his crossing--and she was almost capable of everyone of these follies--the notion that an old acquaintance wasmiserable was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of anybody'sbeing deservedly unhappy. A world under such legislation as hers wouldnot be a very orderly place of abode; but there are not many women, atleast not of the rulers, who are of her sort. This lady, I believe, would have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs, whippings, poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was such a mean-spiritedcreature that--we are obliged to confess it--she could even forget amortal injury. 

When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental adventure which hadjust befallen the latter, he was not, it must be owned, nearly as muchinterested as the gentleman from Bengal. On the contrary, hisexcitement was quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use ofa brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman in distress, saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she come to light again?" Henever had had the slightest liking for her, but had heartily mistrustedher from the very first moment when her green eyes had looked at, andturned away from, his own. 

"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes, " the Major saiddisrespectfully. "Who knows what sort of life she has been leading?And what business has she here abroad and alone? Don't tell me aboutpersecutors and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and neveris separated from her family. Why has she left her husband? He mayhave been disreputable and wicked, as you say. He always was. Iremember the confounded blackleg and the way in which he used to cheatand hoodwink poor George. Wasn't there a scandal about theirseparation? I think I heard something, " cried out Major Dobbin, who didnot care much about gossip, and whom Jos tried in vain to convince thatMrs. Becky was in all respects a most injured and virtuous female. 

"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George, " said that arch-diplomatist of aMajor. "Only let us go and consult her. I suppose you will allow thatshe is a good judge at any rate, and knows what is right in suchmatters. "

"Hm! Emmy is very well, " said Jos, who did not happen to be in lovewith his sister. 

"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever met in my life, "bounced out the Major. "I say at once, let us go and ask her if thiswoman ought to be visited or not--I will be content with her verdict. "Now this odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own mindthat he was sure of his case. Emmy, he remembered, was at one timecruelly and deservedly jealous of Rebecca, never mentioned her name butwith a shrinking and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thoughtDobbin: and so the pair went across the street to Mrs. George's house, where she was contentedly warbling at a music lesson with MadameStrumpff. 

When that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business with his usualpomp of words. "Amelia, my dear, " said he, "I have just had the mostextraordinary--yes--God bless my soul! the most extraordinaryadventure--an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of yours, and I may say in old times, has just arrived here, and I should likeyou to see her. "

"Her!" said Amelia, "who is it? Major Dobbin, if you please not tobreak my scissors. " The Major was twirling them round by the littlechain from which they sometimes hung to their lady's waist, and wasthereby endangering his own eye. 

"It is a woman whom I dislike very much, " said the Major, doggedly, "andwhom you have no cause to love. "

"It is Rebecca, I'm sure it is Rebecca, " Amelia said, blushing andbeing very much agitated. 

"You are right; you always are, " Dobbin answered. Brussels, Waterloo, old, old times, griefs, pangs, remembrances, rushed back into Amelia'sgentle heart and caused a cruel agitation there. 

"Don't let me see her, " Emmy continued. "I couldn't see her. "

"I told you so, " Dobbin said to Jos. 

"She is very unhappy, and--and that sort of thing, " Jos urged. "She isvery poor and unprotected, and has been ill--exceedingly ill--and thatscoundrel of a husband has deserted her. "

"Ah!" said Amelia

"She hasn't a friend in the world, " Jos went on, not undexterously, "and she said she thought she might trust in you. She's so miserable, Emmy. She has been almost mad with grief. Her story quite affectedme--'pon my word and honour, it did--never was such a cruel persecutionborne so angelically, I may say. Her family has been most cruel toher. "

"Poor creature!" Amelia said. 

"And if she can get no friend, she says she thinks she'll die, " Josproceeded in a low tremulous voice. "God bless my soul! do you knowthat she tried to kill herself? She carries laudanum with her--I sawthe bottle in her room--such a miserable little room--at a third-ratehouse, the Elephant, up in the roof at the top of all. I went there. "

This did not seem to affect Emmy. She even smiled a little. Perhapsshe figured Jos to herself panting up the stair. 

"She's beside herself with grief, " he resumed. "The agonies that womanhas endured are quite frightful to hear of. She had a little boy, ofthe same age as Georgy. "

"Yes, yes, I think I remember, " Emmy remarked. "Well?"

"The most beautiful child ever seen, " Jos said, who was very fat, andeasily moved, and had been touched by the story Becky told; "a perfectangel, who adored his mother. The ruffians tore him shrieking out ofher arms, and have never allowed him to see her. "

"Dear Joseph, " Emmy cried out, starting up at once, "let us go and seeher this minute. " And she ran into her adjoining bedchamber, tied onher bonnet in a flutter, came out with her shawl on her arm, andordered Dobbin to follow. 

He went and put her shawl--it was a white cashmere, consigned to her bythe Major himself from India--over her shoulders. He saw there wasnothing for it but to obey, and she put her hand into his arm, and theywent away. 

"It is number 92, up four pair of stairs, " Jos said, perhaps not verywilling to ascend the steps again; but he placed himself in the windowof his drawing-room, which commands the place on which the Elephantstands, and saw the pair marching through the market. 

It was as well that Becky saw them too from her garret, for she and thetwo students were chattering and laughing there; they had been jokingabout the appearance of Becky's grandpapa--whose arrival and departurethey had witnessed--but she had time to dismiss them, and have herlittle room clear before the landlord of the Elephant, who knew thatMrs. Osborne was a great favourite at the Serene Court, and respectedher accordingly, led the way up the stairs to the roof story, encouraging Miladi and the Herr Major as they achieved the ascent. 

"Gracious lady, gracious lady!" said the landlord, knocking at Becky'sdoor; he had called her Madame the day before, and was by no meanscourteous to her. 

"Who is it?" Becky said, putting out her head, and she gave a littlescream. There stood Emmy in a tremble, and Dobbin, the tall Major, with his cane. 

He stood still watching, and very much interested at the scene; butEmmy sprang forward with open arms towards Rebecca, and forgave her atthat moment, and embraced her and kissed her with all her heart. Ah, poor wretch, when was your lip pressed before by such pure kisses?

CHAPTER LXVI

Amantium Irae

Frankness and kindness like Amelia's were likely to touch even such ahardened little reprobate as Becky. She returned Emmy's caresses andkind speeches with something very like gratitude, and an emotion which, if it was not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine. That was alucky stroke of hers about the child "torn from her arms shrieking. " Itwas by that harrowing misfortune that Becky had won her friend back, and it was one of the very first points, we may be certain, upon whichour poor simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found acquaintance. 

"And so they took your darling child from you?" our simpleton criedout. "Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering friend, I know what it is tolose a boy, and to feel for those who have lost one. But please Heavenyours will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence hasbrought me back mine. "

"The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful, " Becky owned, not perhaps without a twinge of conscience. It jarred upon her to beobliged to commence instantly to tell lies in reply to so muchconfidence and simplicity. But that is the misfortune of beginningwith this kind of forgery. When one fib becomes due as it were, youmust forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock ofyour lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger ofdetection increases every day. 

"My agonies, " Becky continued, "were terrible (I hope she won't sitdown on the bottle) when they took him away from me; I thought I shoulddie; but I fortunately had a brain fever, during which my doctor gaveme up, and--and I recovered, and--and here I am, poor and friendless. "

"How old is he?" Emmy asked. 

"Eleven, " said Becky. 

"Eleven!" cried the other. "Why, he was born the same year withGeorgy, who is--"

"I know, I know, " Becky cried out, who had in fact quite forgotten allabout little Rawdon's age. "Grief has made me forget so many things, dearest Amelia. I am very much changed: half-wild sometimes. He waseleven when they took him away from me. Bless his sweet face; I havenever seen it again. "

"Was he fair or dark?" went on that absurd little Emmy. "Show me hishair. "

Becky almost laughed at her simplicity. "Not to-day, love--some othertime, when my trunks arrive from Leipzig, whence I came to thisplace--and a little drawing of him, which I made in happy days. "

"Poor Becky, poor Becky!" said Emmy. "How thankful, how thankful Iought to be"; (though I doubt whether that practice of piety inculcatedupon us by our womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful becausewe are better off than somebody else, be a very rational religiousexercise) and then she began to think, as usual, how her son was thehandsomest, the best, and the cleverest boy in the whole world. 

"You will see my Georgy, " was the best thing Emmy could think of toconsole Becky. If anything could make her comfortable that would. 

And so the two women continued talking for an hour or more, duringwhich Becky had the opportunity of giving her new friend a full andcomplete version of her private history. She showed how her marriagewith Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with feelingsof the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law (an artful woman) hadpoisoned her husband's mind against her; how he had formed odiousconnections, which had estranged his affections from her: how she hadborne everything--poverty, neglect, coldness from the being whom shemost loved--and all for the sake of her child; how, finally, and by themost flagrant outrage, she had been driven into demanding a separationfrom her husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that sheshould sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might procure advancementthrough the means of a very great and powerful but unprincipledman--the Marquis of Steyne, indeed. The atrocious monster!

This part of her eventful history Becky gave with the utmost femininedelicacy and the most indignant virtue. Forced to fly her husband'sroof by this insult, the coward had pursued his revenge by taking herchild from her. And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor, unprotected, friendless, and wretched. 

Emmy received this story, which was told at some length, as thosepersons who are acquainted with her character may imagine that shewould. She quivered with indignation at the account of the conduct ofthe miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne. Her eyes made notesof admiration for every one of the sentences in which Becky describedthe persecutions of her aristocratic relatives and the falling away ofher husband. (Becky did not abuse him. She spoke rather in sorrow thanin anger. She had loved him only too fondly: and was he not the fatherof her boy?) And as for the separation scene from the child, whileBecky was reciting it, Emmy retired altogether behind herpocket-handkerchief, so that the consummate little tragedian must havebeen charmed to see the effect which her performance produced on heraudience. 

Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation, Amelia'sconstant escort, the Major (who, of course, did not wish to interrupttheir conference, and found himself rather tired of creaking about thenarrow stair passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat)descended to the ground-floor of the house and into the great roomcommon to all the frequenters of the Elephant, out of which the stairled. This apartment is always in a fume of smoke and liberallysprinkled with beer. On a dirty table stand scores of correspondingbrass candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys hangup in rows over the candles. Emmy had passed blushing through the roomanon, where all sorts of people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellersand Danubian linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruitingthemselves with butterbrods and meat; idlers, playing cards or dominoeson the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers refreshing during the cessationof their performances--in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of aGerman inn in fair time. The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer, as a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and amused himself withthat pernicious vegetable and a newspaper until his charge should comedown to claim him. 

Max and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on one side, theirspurs jingling, their pipes splendid with coats of arms and full-blowntassels, and they hung up the key of No. 90 on the board and called forthe ration of butterbrod and beer. The pair sat down by the Major andfell into a conversation of which he could not help hearing somewhat. It was mainly about "Fuchs" and "Philister, " and duels anddrinking-bouts at the neighbouring University of Schoppenhausen, fromwhich renowned seat of learning they had just come in the Eilwagen, with Becky, as it appeared, by their side, and in order to be presentat the bridal fetes at Pumpernickel. 

"The title Englanderinn seems to be en bays de gonnoisance, " said Max, who knew the French language, to Fritz, his comrade. "After the fatgrandfather went away, there came a pretty little compatriot. I heardthem chattering and whimpering together in the little woman's chamber. "

"We must take the tickets for her concert, " Fritz said. "Hast thou anymoney, Max?"

"Bah, " said the other, "the concert is a concert in nubibus. Hans saidthat she advertised one at Leipzig, and the Burschen took many tickets. But she went off without singing. She said in the coach yesterday thather pianist had fallen ill at Dresden. She cannot sing, it is mybelief: her voice is as cracked as thine, O thou beer-soaking Renowner!"

"It is cracked; I hear her trying out of her window a schrecklich. English ballad, called 'De Rose upon de Balgony. '"

"Saufen and singen go not together, " observed Fritz with the red nose, who evidently preferred the former amusement. "No, thou shalt takenone of her tickets. She won money at the trente and quarante lastnight. I saw her: she made a little English boy play for her. We willspend thy money there or at the theatre, or we will treat her to Frenchwine or Cognac in the Aurelius Garden, but the tickets we will not buy. What sayest thou? Yet, another mug of beer?" and one and anothersuccessively having buried their blond whiskers in the mawkish draught, curled them and swaggered off into the fair. 

The Major, who had seen the key of No. 90 put up on its hook and hadheard the conversation of the two young University bloods, was not at aloss to understand that their talk related to Becky. "The little devilis at her old tricks, " he thought, and he smiled as he recalled olddays, when he had witnessed the desperate flirtation with Jos and theludicrous end of that adventure. He and George had often laughed overit subsequently, and until a few weeks after George's marriage, when healso was caught in the little Circe's toils, and had an understandingwith her which his comrade certainly suspected, but preferred toignore. William was too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom thatdisgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with remorse on hismind, George had alluded to it. It was on the morning of Waterloo, asthe young men stood together in front of their line, surveying theblack masses of Frenchmen who crowned the opposite heights, and as therain was coming down, "I have been mixing in a foolish intrigue with awoman, " George said. "I am glad we were marched away. If I drop, Ihope Emmy will never know of that business. I wish to God it had neverbeen begun!" And William was pleased to think, and had more than oncesoothed poor George's widow with the narrative, that Osborne, afterquitting his wife, and after the action of Quatre Bras, on the firstday, spoke gravely and affectionately to his comrade of his father andhis wife. On these facts, too, William had insisted very strongly inhis conversations with the elder Osborne, and had thus been the meansof reconciling the old gentleman to his son's memory, just at the closeof the elder man's life. 

"And so this devil is still going on with her intrigues, " thoughtWilliam. "I wish she were a hundred miles from here. She bringsmischief wherever she goes. " And he was pursuing these forebodings andthis uncomfortable train of thought, with his head between his hands, and the Pumpernickel Gazette of last week unread under his nose, whensomebody tapped his shoulder with a parasol, and he looked up and sawMrs. Amelia. 

This woman had a way of tyrannizing over Major Dobbin (for the weakestof all people will domineer over somebody), and she ordered him about, and patted him, and made him fetch and carry just as if he was a greatNewfoundland dog. He liked, so to speak, to jump into the water if shesaid "High, Dobbin!" and to trot behind her with her reticule in hismouth. This history has been written to very little purpose if thereader has not perceived that the Major was a spooney. 

"Why did you not wait for me, sir, to escort me downstairs?" she said, giving a little toss of her head and a most sarcastic curtsey. 

"I couldn't stand up in the passage, " he answered with a comicaldeprecatory look; and, delighted to give her his arm and to take herout of the horrid smoky place, he would have walked off without even somuch as remembering the waiter, had not the young fellow run after himand stopped him on the threshold of the Elephant to make him pay forthe beer which he had not consumed. Emmy laughed: she called him anaughty man, who wanted to run away in debt, and, in fact, made somejokes suitable to the occasion and the small-beer. She was in highspirits and good humour, and tripped across the market-place verybriskly. She wanted to see Jos that instant. The Major laughed at theimpetuous affection Mrs. Amelia exhibited; for, in truth, it was notvery often that she wanted her brother "that instant. " They found thecivilian in his saloon on the first-floor; he had been pacing the room, and biting his nails, and looking over the market-place towards theElephant a hundred times at least during the past hour whilst Emmy wascloseted with her friend in the garret and the Major was beating thetattoo on the sloppy tables of the public room below, and he was, onhis side too, very anxious to see Mrs. Osborne. 

"Well?" said he. 

"The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!" Emmy said. 

"God bless my soul, yes, " Jos said, wagging his head, so that hischeeks quivered like jellies. 

"She may have Payne's room, who can go upstairs, " Emmy continued. Paynewas a staid English maid and personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, towhom the courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy used to"lark" dreadfully with accounts of German robbers and ghosts. Shepassed her time chiefly in grumbling, in ordering about her mistress, and in stating her intention to return the next morning to her nativevillage of Clapham. "She may have Payne's room, " Emmy said. 

"Why, you don't mean to say you are going to have that woman into thehouse?" bounced out the Major, jumping up. 

"Of course we are, " said Amelia in the most innocent way in the world. "Don't be angry and break the furniture, Major Dobbin. Of course weare going to have her here. "

"Of course, my dear, " Jos said. 

"The poor creature, after all her sufferings, " Emmy continued; "herhorrid banker broken and run away; her husband--wicked wretch--havingdeserted her and taken her child away from her" (here she doubled hertwo little fists and held them in a most menacing attitude before her, so that the Major was charmed to see such a dauntless virago) "the poordear thing! quite alone and absolutely forced to give lessons insinging to get her bread--and not have her here!"

"Take lessons, my dear Mrs. George, " cried the Major, "but don't haveher in the house. I implore you don't. "

"Pooh, " said Jos. 

"You who are always good and kind--always used to be at any rate--I'mastonished at you, Major William, " Amelia cried. "Why, what is themoment to help her but when she is so miserable? Now is the time to beof service to her. The oldest friend I ever had, and not--"

"She was not always your friend, Amelia, " the Major said, for he wasquite angry. This allusion was too much for Emmy, who, looking theMajor almost fiercely in the face, said, "For shame, Major Dobbin!" andafter having fired this shot, she walked out of the room with a mostmajestic air and shut her own door briskly on herself and her outrageddignity. 

"To allude to THAT!" she said, when the door was closed. "Oh, it wascruel of him to remind me of it, " and she looked up at George'spicture, which hung there as usual, with the portrait of the boyunderneath. "It was cruel of him. If I had forgiven it, ought he tohave spoken? No. And it is from his own lips that I know how wickedand groundless my jealousy was; and that you were pure--oh, yes, youwere pure, my saint in heaven!"

She paced the room, trembling and indignant. She went and leaned onthe chest of drawers over which the picture hung, and gazed and gazedat it. Its eyes seemed to look down on her with a reproach thatdeepened as she looked. The early dear, dear memories of that briefprime of love rushed back upon her. The wound which years had scarcelycicatrized bled afresh, and oh, how bitterly! She could not bear thereproaches of the husband there before her. It couldn't be. Never, never. 

Poor Dobbin; poor old William! That unlucky word had undone the workof many a year--the long laborious edifice of a life of love andconstancy--raised too upon what secret and hidden foundations, whereinlay buried passions, uncounted struggles, unknown sacrifices--a littleword was spoken, and down fell the fair palace of hope--one word, andaway flew the bird which he had been trying all his life to lure!

William, though he saw by Amelia's looks that a great crisis had come, nevertheless continued to implore Sedley, in the most energetic terms, to beware of Rebecca; and he eagerly, almost frantically, adjured Josnot to receive her. He besought Mr. Sedley to inquire at leastregarding her; told him how he had heard that she was in the company ofgamblers and people of ill repute; pointed out what evil she had donein former days, how she and Crawley had misled poor George into ruin, how she was now parted from her husband, by her own confession, and, perhaps, for good reason. What a dangerous companion she would be forhis sister, who knew nothing of the affairs of the world! Williamimplored Jos, with all the eloquence which he could bring to bear, anda great deal more energy than this quiet gentleman was ordinarily inthe habit of showing, to keep Rebecca out of his household. 

Had he been less violent, or more dexterous, he might have succeeded inhis supplications to Jos; but the civilian was not a little jealous ofthe airs of superiority which the Major constantly exhibited towardshim, as he fancied (indeed, he had imparted his opinions to Mr. Kirsch, the courier, whose bills Major Dobbin checked on this journey, and whosided with his master), and he began a blustering speech about hiscompetency to defend his own honour, his desire not to have his affairsmeddled with, his intention, in fine, to rebel against the Major, whenthe colloquy--rather a long and stormy one--was put an end to in thesimplest way possible, namely, by the arrival of Mrs. Becky, with aporter from the Elephant Hotel in charge of her very meagre baggage. 

She greeted her host with affectionate respect and made a shrinking, but amicable salutation to Major Dobbin, who, as her instinct assuredher at once, was her enemy, and had been speaking against her; and thebustle and clatter consequent upon her arrival brought Amelia out ofher room. Emmy went up and embraced her guest with the greatestwarmth, and took no notice of the Major, except to fling him an angrylook--the most unjust and scornful glance that had perhaps everappeared in that poor little woman's face since she was born. But shehad private reasons of her own, and was bent upon being angry with him. And Dobbin, indignant at the injustice, not at the defeat, went off, making her a bow quite as haughty as the killing curtsey with which thelittle woman chose to bid him farewell. 

He being gone, Emmy was particularly lively and affectionate toRebecca, and bustled about the apartments and installed her guest inher room with an eagerness and activity seldom exhibited by our placidlittle friend. But when an act of injustice is to be done, especiallyby weak people, it is best that it should be done quickly, and Emmythought she was displaying a great deal of firmness and proper feelingand veneration for the late Captain Osborne in her present behaviour. 

Georgy came in from the fetes for dinner-time and found four coverslaid as usual; but one of the places was occupied by a lady, instead ofby Major Dobbin. "Hullo! where's Dob?" the young gentleman asked withhis usual simplicity of language. "Major Dobbin is dining out, Isuppose, " his mother said, and, drawing the boy to her, kissed him agreat deal, and put his hair off his forehead, and introduced him toMrs. Crawley. "This is my boy, Rebecca, " Mrs. Osborne said--as much asto say--can the world produce anything like that? Becky looked at himwith rapture and pressed his hand fondly. "Dear boy!" she said--"he isjust like my--" Emotion choked her further utterance, but Ameliaunderstood, as well as if she had spoken, that Becky was thinking ofher own blessed child. However, the company of her friend consoledMrs. Crawley, and she ate a very good dinner. 

During the repast, she had occasion to speak several times, when Georgyeyed her and listened to her. At the desert Emmy was gone out tosuperintend further domestic arrangements; Jos was in his great chairdozing over Galignani; Georgy and the new arrival sat close to eachother--he had continued to look at her knowingly more than once, and atlast he laid down the nutcrackers. 

"I say, " said Georgy. 

"What do you say?" Becky said, laughing. 

"You're the lady I saw in the mask at the Rouge et Noir. "

"Hush! you little sly creature, " Becky said, taking up his hand andkissing it. "Your uncle was there too, and Mamma mustn't know. "

"Oh, no--not by no means, " answered the little fellow. 

"You see we are quite good friends already, " Becky said to Emmy, whonow re-entered; and it must be owned that Mrs. Osborne had introduced amost judicious and amiable companion into her house. 

William, in a state of great indignation, though still unaware of allthe treason that was in store for him, walked about the town wildlyuntil he fell upon the Secretary of Legation, Tapeworm, who invited himto dinner. As they were discussing that meal, he took occasion to askthe Secretary whether he knew anything about a certain Mrs. RawdonCrawley, who had, he believed, made some noise in London; and thenTapeworm, who of course knew all the London gossip, and was besides arelative of Lady Gaunt, poured out into the astonished Major's earssuch a history about Becky and her husband as astonished the querist, and supplied all the points of this narrative, for it was at that verytable years ago that the present writer had the pleasure of hearing thetale. Tufto, Steyne, the Crawleys, and their history--everythingconnected with Becky and her previous life passed under the record ofthe bitter diplomatist. He knew everything and a great deal besides, about all the world--in a word, he made the most astounding revelationsto the simple-hearted Major. When Dobbin said that Mrs. Osborne andMr. Sedley had taken her into their house, Tapeworm burst into a pealof laughter which shocked the Major, and asked if they had not bettersend into the prison and take in one or two of the gentlemen in shavedheads and yellow jackets who swept the streets of Pumpernickel, chainedin pairs, to board and lodge, and act as tutor to that littlescapegrace Georgy. 

This information astonished and horrified the Major not a little. Ithad been agreed in the morning (before meeting with Rebecca) thatAmelia should go to the Court ball that night. There would be theplace where he should tell her. The Major went home, and dressedhimself in his uniform, and repaired to Court, in hopes to see Mrs. Osborne. She never came. When he returned to his lodgings all thelights in the Sedley tenement were put out. He could not see her tillthe morning. I don't know what sort of a night's rest he had with thisfrightful secret in bed with him. 

At the earliest convenient hour in the morning he sent his servantacross the way with a note, saying that he wished very particularly tospeak with her. A message came back to say that Mrs. Osborne wasexceedingly unwell and was keeping her room. 

She, too, had been awake all that night. She had been thinking of athing which had agitated her mind a hundred times before. A hundredtimes on the point of yielding, she had shrunk back from a sacrificewhich she felt was too much for her. She couldn't, in spite of hislove and constancy and her own acknowledged regard, respect, andgratitude. What are benefits, what is constancy, or merit? One curl ofa girl's ringlet, one hair of a whisker, will turn the scale againstthem all in a minute. They did not weigh with Emmy more than with otherwomen. She had tried them; wanted to make them pass; could not; andthe pitiless little woman had found a pretext, and determined to befree. 

When at length, in the afternoon, the Major gained admission to Amelia, instead of the cordial and affectionate greeting, to which he had beenaccustomed now for many a long day, he received the salutation of acurtsey, and of a little gloved hand, retracted the moment after it wasaccorded to him. 

Rebecca, too, was in the room, and advanced to meet him with a smileand an extended hand. Dobbin drew back rather confusedly, "I--I begyour pardon, m'am, " he said; "but I am bound to tell you that it is notas your friend that I am come here now. "

"Pooh! damn; don't let us have this sort of thing!" Jos cried out, alarmed, and anxious to get rid of a scene. 

"I wonder what Major Dobbin has to say against Rebecca?" Amelia said ina low, clear voice with a slight quiver in it, and a very determinedlook about the eyes. 

"I will not have this sort of thing in my house, " Jos again interposed. "I say I will not have it; and Dobbin, I beg, sir, you'll stop it. " Andhe looked round, trembling and turning very red, and gave a great puff, and made for his door. 

"Dear friend!" Rebecca said with angelic sweetness, "do hear what MajorDobbin has to say against me. "

"I will not hear it, I say, " squeaked out Jos at the top of his voice, and, gathering up his dressing-gown, he was gone. 

"We are only two women, " Amelia said. "You can speak now, sir. "

"This manner towards me is one which scarcely becomes you, Amelia, " theMajor answered haughtily; "nor I believe am I guilty of habitualharshness to women. It is not a pleasure to me to do the duty which Iam come to do. "

"Pray proceed with it quickly, if you please, Major Dobbin, " saidAmelia, who was more and more in a pet. The expression of Dobbin'sface, as she spoke in this imperious manner, was not pleasant. 

"I came to say--and as you stay, Mrs. Crawley, I must say it in yourpresence--that I think you--you ought not to form a member of thefamily of my friends. A lady who is separated from her husband, whotravels not under her own name, who frequents public gaming-tables--"

"It was to the ball I went, " cried out Becky. 

"--is not a fit companion for Mrs. Osborne and her son, " Dobbin wenton: "and I may add that there are people here who know you, and whoprofess to know that regarding your conduct about which I don't evenwish to speak before--before Mrs. Osborne. "

"Yours is a very modest and convenient sort of calumny, Major Dobbin, "Rebecca said. "You leave me under the weight of an accusation which, after all, is unsaid. What is it? Is it unfaithfulness to my husband? Iscorn it and defy anybody to prove it--I defy you, I say. My honour isas untouched as that of the bitterest enemy who ever maligned me. Isit of being poor, forsaken, wretched, that you accuse me? Yes, I amguilty of those faults, and punished for them every day. Let me go, Emmy. It is only to suppose that I have not met you, and I am no worseto-day than I was yesterday. It is only to suppose that the night isover and the poor wanderer is on her way. Don't you remember the songwe used to sing in old, dear old days? I have been wandering ever sincethen--a poor castaway, scorned for being miserable, and insultedbecause I am alone. Let me go: my stay here interferes with the plansof this gentleman. "

"Indeed it does, madam, " said the Major. "If I have any authority inthis house--"

"Authority, none!" broke out Amelia "Rebecca, you stay with me. Iwon't desert you because you have been persecuted, or insult youbecause--because Major Dobbin chooses to do so. Come away, dear. " Andthe two women made towards the door. 

William opened it. As they were going out, however, he took Amelia'shand and said--"Will you stay a moment and speak to me?"

"He wishes to speak to you away from me, " said Becky, looking like amartyr. Amelia gripped her hand in reply. 

"Upon my honour it is not about you that I am going to speak, " Dobbinsaid. "Come back, Amelia, " and she came. Dobbin bowed to Mrs. Crawley, as he shut the door upon her. Amelia looked at him, leaningagainst the glass: her face and her lips were quite white. 

"I was confused when I spoke just now, " the Major said after a pause, "and I misused the word authority. "

"You did, " said Amelia with her teeth chattering. 

"At least I have claims to be heard, " Dobbin continued. 

"It is generous to remind me of our obligations to you, " the womananswered. 

"The claims I mean are those left me by George's father, " William said. 

"Yes, and you insulted his memory. You did yesterday. You know youdid. And I will never forgive you. Never!" said Amelia. She shot outeach little sentence in a tremor of anger and emotion. 

"You don't mean that, Amelia?" William said sadly. "You don't mean thatthese words, uttered in a hurried moment, are to weigh against a wholelife's devotion? I think that George's memory has not been injured bythe way in which I have dealt with it, and if we are come to bandyingreproaches, I at least merit none from his widow and the mother of hisson. Reflect, afterwards when--when you are at leisure, and yourconscience will withdraw this accusation. It does even now. " Ameliaheld down her head. 

"It is not that speech of yesterday, " he continued, "which moves you. That is but the pretext, Amelia, or I have loved you and watched youfor fifteen years in vain. Have I not learned in that time to read allyour feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart iscapable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish afancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to matewith, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you. No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knewall along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth thewinning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away myall of truth and ardour against your little feeble remnant of love. Iwill bargain no more: I withdraw. I find no fault with you. You arevery good-natured, and have done your best, but you couldn't--youcouldn't reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, andwhich a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share. Good-bye, Amelia! I have watched your struggle. Let it end. We areboth weary of it. "

Amelia stood scared and silent as William thus suddenly broke the chainby which she held him and declared his independence and superiority. He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little womanhad been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn't wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but thathe should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied inlove. 

William's sally had quite broken and cast her down. HER assault waslong since over and beaten back. 

"Am I to understand then, that you are going--away, William?" she said. 

He gave a sad laugh. "I went once before, " he said, "and came backafter twelve years. We were young then, Amelia. Good-bye. I havespent enough of my life at this play. "

Whilst they had been talking, the door into Mrs. Osborne's room hadopened ever so little; indeed, Becky had kept a hold of the handle andhad turned it on the instant when Dobbin quitted it, and she heardevery word of the conversation that had passed between these two. "Whata noble heart that man has, " she thought, "and how shamefully thatwoman plays with it!" She admired Dobbin; she bore him no rancour forthe part he had taken against her. It was an open move in the game, and played fairly. "Ah!" she thought, "if I could have had such ahusband as that--a man with a heart and brains too! I would not haveminded his large feet"; and running into her room, she absolutelybethought herself of something, and wrote him a note, beseeching him tostop for a few days--not to think of going--and that she could servehim with A. 

The parting was over. Once more poor William walked to the door andwas gone; and the little widow, the author of all this work, had herwill, and had won her victory, and was left to enjoy it as she bestmight. Let the ladies envy her triumph. 

At the romantic hour of dinner, Mr. Georgy made his appearance andagain remarked the absence of "Old Dob. " The meal was eaten in silenceby the party. Jos's appetite not being diminished, but Emmy takingnothing at all. 

After the meal, Georgy was lolling in the cushions of the old window, alarge window, with three sides of glass abutting from the gable, andcommanding on one side the market-place, where the Elephant is, hismother being busy hard by, when he remarked symptoms of movement at theMajor's house on the other side of the street. 

"Hullo!" said he, "there's Dob's trap--they are bringing it out of thecourt-yard. " The "trap" in question was a carriage which the Major hadbought for six pounds sterling, and about which they used to rally hima good deal. 

Emmy gave a little start, but said nothing. 

"Hullo!" Georgy continued, "there's Francis coming out with theportmanteaus, and Kunz, the one-eyed postilion, coming down the marketwith three schimmels. Look at his boots and yellow jacket--ain't he arum one? Why--they're putting the horses to Dob's carriage. Is he goinganywhere?"

"Yes, " said Emmy, "he is going on a journey. "

"Going on a journey; and when is he coming back?"

"He is--not coming back, " answered Emmy. 

"Not coming back!" cried out Georgy, jumping up. "Stay here, sir, "roared out Jos. "Stay, Georgy, " said his mother with a very sad face. The boy stopped, kicked about the room, jumped up and down from thewindow-seat with his knees, and showed every symptom of uneasiness andcuriosity. 

The horses were put to. The baggage was strapped on. Francis came outwith his master's sword, cane, and umbrella tied up together, and laidthem in the well, and his desk and old tin cocked-hat case, which heplaced under the seat. Francis brought out the stained old blue cloaklined with red camlet, which had wrapped the owner up any time thesefifteen years, and had manchen Sturm erlebt, as a favourite song ofthose days said. It had been new for the campaign of Waterloo and hadcovered George and William after the night of Quatre Bras. 

Old Burcke, the landlord of the lodgings, came out, then Francis, withmore packages--final packages--then Major William--Burcke wanted tokiss him. The Major was adored by all people with whom he had to do. It was with difficulty he could escape from this demonstration ofattachment. 

"By Jove, I will go!" screamed out George. "Give him this, " saidBecky, quite interested, and put a paper into the boy's hand. He hadrushed down the stairs and flung across the street in a minute--theyellow postilion was cracking his whip gently. 

William had got into the carriage, released from the embraces of hislandlord. George bounded in afterwards, and flung his arms round theMajor's neck (as they saw from the window), and began asking himmultiplied questions. Then he felt in his waistcoat pocket and gavehim a note. William seized at it rather eagerly, he opened ittrembling, but instantly his countenance changed, and he tore the paperin two and dropped it out of the carriage. He kissed Georgy on thehead, and the boy got out, doubling his fists into his eyes, and withthe aid of Francis. He lingered with his hand on the panel. Fort, Schwager! The yellow postilion cracked his whip prodigiously, upsprang Francis to the box, away went the schimmels, and Dobbin with hishead on his breast. He never looked up as they passed under Amelia'swindow, and Georgy, left alone in the street, burst out crying in theface of all the crowd. 

Emmy's maid heard him howling again during the night and brought himsome preserved apricots to console him. She mingled her lamentationswith his. All the poor, all the humble, all honest folks, all good menwho knew him, loved that kind-hearted and simple gentleman. 

As for Emmy, had she not done her duty? She had her picture of Georgefor a consolation. 

CHAPTER LXVII

Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths

Whatever Becky's private plan might be by which Dobbin's true love wasto be crowned with success, the little woman thought that the secretmight keep, and indeed, being by no means so much interested aboutanybody's welfare as about her own, she had a great number of thingspertaining to herself to consider, and which concerned her a great dealmore than Major Dobbin's happiness in this life. 

She found herself suddenly and unexpectedly in snug comfortablequarters, surrounded by friends, kindness, and good-natured simplepeople such as she had not met with for many a long day; and, wandereras she was by force and inclination, there were moments when rest waspleasant to her. As the most hardened Arab that ever careered acrossthe desert over the hump of a dromedary likes to repose sometimes underthe date-trees by the water, or to come into the cities, walk into thebazaars, refresh himself in the baths, and say his prayers in themosques, before he goes out again marauding, so Jos's tents and pilauwere pleasant to this little Ishmaelite. She picketed her steed, hungup her weapons, and warmed herself comfortably by his fire. The haltin that roving, restless life was inexpressibly soothing and pleasantto her. 

So, pleased herself, she tried with all her might to please everybody;and we know that she was eminent and successful as a practitioner inthe art of giving pleasure. As for Jos, even in that little interviewin the garret at the Elephant Inn, she had found means to win back agreat deal of his good-will. In the course of a week, the civilian washer sworn slave and frantic admirer. He didn't go to sleep afterdinner, as his custom was in the much less lively society of Amelia. He drove out with Becky in his open carriage. He asked little partiesand invented festivities to do her honour. 

Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, who had abused her so cruelly, came todine with Jos, and then came every day to pay his respects to Becky. Poor Emmy, who was never very talkative, and more glum and silent thanever after Dobbin's departure, was quite forgotten when this superiorgenius made her appearance. The French Minister was as much charmedwith her as his English rival. The German ladies, never particularlysqueamish as regards morals, especially in English people, weredelighted with the cleverness and wit of Mrs. Osborne's charmingfriend, and though she did not ask to go to Court, yet the most augustand Transparent Personages there heard of her fascinations and werequite curious to know her. When it became known that she was noble, ofan ancient English family, that her husband was a Colonel of the Guard, Excellenz and Governor of an island, only separated from his lady byone of those trifling differences which are of little account in acountry where Werther is still read and the Wahlverwandtschaften ofGoethe is considered an edifying moral book, nobody thought of refusingto receive her in the very highest society of the little Duchy; and theladies were even more ready to call her du and to swear eternalfriendship for her than they had been to bestow the same inestimablebenefits upon Amelia. Love and Liberty are interpreted by those simpleGermans in a way which honest folks in Yorkshire and Somersetshirelittle understand, and a lady might, in some philosophic and civilizedtowns, be divorced ever so many times from her respective husbands andkeep her character in society. Jos's house never was so pleasant sincehe had a house of his own as Rebecca caused it to be. She sang, sheplayed, she laughed, she talked in two or three languages, she broughteverybody to the house, and she made Jos believe that it was his owngreat social talents and wit which gathered the society of the placeround about him. 

As for Emmy, who found herself not in the least mistress of her ownhouse, except when the bills were to be paid, Becky soon discovered theway to soothe and please her. She talked to her perpetually aboutMajor Dobbin sent about his business, and made no scruple of declaringher admiration for that excellent, high-minded gentleman, and oftelling Emmy that she had behaved most cruelly regarding him. Emmydefended her conduct and showed that it was dictated only by the purestreligious principles; that a woman once, &c. , and to such an angel ashim whom she had had the good fortune to marry, was married forever;but she had no objection to hear the Major praised as much as everBecky chose to praise him, and indeed, brought the conversation roundto the Dobbin subject a score of times every day. 

Means were easily found to win the favour of Georgy and the servants. Amelia's maid, it has been said, was heart and soul in favour of thegenerous Major. Having at first disliked Becky for being the means ofdismissing him from the presence of her mistress, she was reconciled toMrs. Crawley subsequently, because the latter became William's mostardent admirer and champion. And in those nightly conclaves in whichthe two ladies indulged after their parties, and while Miss Payne was"brushing their 'airs, " as she called the yellow locks of the one andthe soft brown tresses of the other, this girl always put in her wordfor that dear good gentleman Major Dobbin. Her advocacy did not makeAmelia angry any more than Rebecca's admiration of him. She madeGeorge write to him constantly and persisted in sending Mamma's kindlove in a postscript. And as she looked at her husband's portrait ofnights, it no longer reproached her--perhaps she reproached it, nowWilliam was gone. 

Emmy was not very happy after her heroic sacrifice. She was verydistraite, nervous, silent, and ill to please. The family had neverknown her so peevish. She grew pale and ill. She used to try to singcertain songs ("Einsam bin ich nicht alleine, " was one of them, thattender love-song of Weber's which in old-fashioned days, young ladies, and when you were scarcely born, showed that those who lived before youknew too how to love and to sing) certain songs, I say, to which theMajor was partial; and as she warbled them in the twilight in thedrawing-room, she would break off in the midst of the song, and walkinto her neighbouring apartment, and there, no doubt, take refuge inthe miniature of her husband. 

Some books still subsisted, after Dobbin's departure, with his namewritten in them; a German dictionary, for instance, with "WilliamDobbin, --th Reg. , " in the fly-leaf; a guide-book with his initials;and one or two other volumes which belonged to the Major. Emmy clearedthese away and put them on the drawers, where she placed her work-box, her desk, her Bible, and prayer-book, under the pictures of the twoGeorges. And the Major, on going away, having left his gloves behindhim, it is a fact that Georgy, rummaging his mother's desk some timeafterwards, found the gloves neatly folded up and put away in what theycall the secret-drawers of the desk. 

Not caring for society, and moping there a great deal, Emmy's chiefpleasure in the summer evenings was to take long walks with Georgy(during which Rebecca was left to the society of Mr. Joseph), and thenthe mother and son used to talk about the Major in a way which evenmade the boy smile. She told him that she thought Major William wasthe best man in all the world--the gentlest and the kindest, thebravest and the humblest. Over and over again she told him how theyowed everything which they possessed in the world to that kind friend'sbenevolent care of them; how he had befriended them all through theirpoverty and misfortunes; watched over them when nobody cared for them;how all his comrades admired him though he never spoke of his owngallant actions; how Georgy's father trusted him beyond all other men, and had been constantly befriended by the good William. "Why, whenyour papa was a little boy, " she said, "he often told me that it wasWilliam who defended him against a tyrant at the school where theywere; and their friendship never ceased from that day until the last, when your dear father fell. "

"Did Dobbin kill the man who killed Papa?" Georgy said. "I'm sure hedid, or he would if he could have caught him, wouldn't he, Mother? WhenI'm in the Army, won't I hate the French?--that's all. "

In such colloquies the mother and the child passed a great deal oftheir time together. The artless woman had made a confidant of theboy. He was as much William's friend as everybody else who knew himwell. 

By the way, Mrs. Becky, not to be behind hand in sentiment, had got aminiature too hanging up in her room, to the surprise and amusement ofmost people, and the delight of the original, who was no other than ourfriend Jos. On her first coming to favour the Sedleys with a visit, the little woman, who had arrived with a remarkably small shabby kit, was perhaps ashamed of the meanness of her trunks and bandboxes, andoften spoke with great respect about her baggage left behind atLeipzig, which she must have from that city. When a traveller talks toyou perpetually about the splendour of his luggage, which he does nothappen to have with him, my son, beware of that traveller! He is, tento one, an impostor. 

Neither Jos nor Emmy knew this important maxim. It seemed to them ofno consequence whether Becky had a quantity of very fine clothes ininvisible trunks; but as her present supply was exceedingly shabby, Emmy supplied her out of her own stores, or took her to the bestmilliner in the town and there fitted her out. It was no more torncollars now, I promise you, and faded silks trailing off at theshoulder. Becky changed her habits with her situation in life--therouge-pot was suspended--another excitement to which she had accustomedherself was also put aside, or at least only indulged in in privacy, aswhen she was prevailed on by Jos of a summer evening, Emmy and the boybeing absent on their walks, to take a little spirit-and-water. But ifshe did not indulge--the courier did: that rascal Kirsch could not bekept from the bottle, nor could he tell how much he took when heapplied to it. He was sometimes surprised himself at the way in whichMr. Sedley's Cognac diminished. Well, well, this is a painful subject. Becky did not very likely indulge so much as she used before sheentered a decorous family. 

At last the much-bragged-about boxes arrived from Leipzig; three ofthem not by any means large or splendid; nor did Becky appear to takeout any sort of dresses or ornaments from the boxes when they didarrive. But out of one, which contained a mass of her papers (it wasthat very box which Rawdon Crawley had ransacked in his furious huntfor Becky's concealed money), she took a picture with great glee, whichshe pinned up in her room, and to which she introduced Jos. It was theportrait of a gentleman in pencil, his face having the advantage ofbeing painted up in pink. He was riding on an elephant away from somecocoa-nut trees and a pagoda: it was an Eastern scene. 

"God bless my soul, it is my portrait, " Jos cried out. It was heindeed, blooming in youth and beauty, in a nankeen jacket of the cut of1804. It was the old picture that used to hang up in Russell Square. 

"I bought it, " said Becky in a voice trembling with emotion; "I went tosee if I could be of any use to my kind friends. I have never partedwith that picture--I never will. "

"Won't you?" Jos cried with a look of unutterable rapture andsatisfaction. "Did you really now value it for my sake?"

"You know I did, well enough, " said Becky; "but why speak--whythink--why look back! It is too late now!"

That evening's conversation was delicious for Jos. Emmy only came in togo to bed very tired and unwell. Jos and his fair guest had a charmingtete-a-tete, and his sister could hear, as she lay awake in heradjoining chamber, Rebecca singing over to Jos the old songs of 1815. He did not sleep, for a wonder, that night, any more than Amelia. 

It was June, and, by consequence, high season in London; Jos, who readthe incomparable Galignani (the exile's best friend) through every day, used to favour the ladies with extracts from his paper during theirbreakfast. Every week in this paper there is a full account ofmilitary movements, in which Jos, as a man who had seen service, wasespecially interested. On one occasion he read out--"Arrival of the--th regiment. Gravesend, June 20. --The Ramchunder, East Indiaman, came into the river this morning, having on board 14 officers, and 132rank and file of this gallant corps. They have been absent fromEngland fourteen years, having been embarked the year after Waterloo, in which glorious conflict they took an active part, and havingsubsequently distinguished themselves in the Burmese war. The veterancolonel, Sir Michael O'Dowd, K. C. B. , with his lady and sister, landedhere yesterday, with Captains Posky, Stubble, Macraw, Malony;Lieutenants Smith, Jones, Thompson, F. Thomson; Ensigns Hicks andGrady; the band on the pier playing the national anthem, and the crowdloudly cheering the gallant veterans as they went into Wayte's hotel, where a sumptuous banquet was provided for the defenders of OldEngland. During the repast, which we need not say was served up inWayte's best style, the cheering continued so enthusiastically thatLady O'Dowd and the Colonel came forward to the balcony and drank thehealths of their fellow-countrymen in a bumper of Wayte's best claret. "

On a second occasion Jos read a brief announcement--Major Dobbin hadjoined the --th regiment at Chatham; and subsequently he promulgatedaccounts of the presentations at the Drawing-room of Colonel SirMichael O'Dowd, K. C. B. , Lady O'Dowd (by Mrs. Malloy Malony ofBallymalony), and Miss Glorvina O'Dowd (by Lady O'Dowd). Almostdirectly after this, Dobbin's name appeared among the Lieutenant-Colonels:for old Marshal Tiptoff had died during the passage of the--th from Madras, and the Sovereign was pleased to advance Colonel SirMichael O'Dowd to the rank of Major-General on his return to England, with an intimation that he should be Colonel of the distinguishedregiment which he had so long commanded. 

Amelia had been made aware of some of these movements. Thecorrespondence between George and his guardian had not ceased by anymeans: William had even written once or twice to her since hisdeparture, but in a manner so unconstrainedly cold that the poor womanfelt now in her turn that she had lost her power over him and that, ashe had said, he was free. He had left her, and she was wretched. Thememory of his almost countless services, and lofty and affectionateregard, now presented itself to her and rebuked her day and night. Shebrooded over those recollections according to her wont, saw the purityand beauty of the affection with which she had trifled, and reproachedherself for having flung away such a treasure. 

It was gone indeed. William had spent it all out. He loved her nomore, he thought, as he had loved her. He never could again. That sortof regard, which he had proffered to her for so many faithful years, can't be flung down and shattered and mended so as to show no scars. The little heedless tyrant had so destroyed it. No, William thoughtagain and again, "It was myself I deluded and persisted in cajoling;had she been worthy of the love I gave her, she would have returned itlong ago. It was a fond mistake. Isn't the whole course of life madeup of such? And suppose I had won her, should I not have beendisenchanted the day after my victory? Why pine, or be ashamed of mydefeat?" The more he thought of this long passage of his life, the moreclearly he saw his deception. "I'll go into harness again, " he said, "and do my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased Heaven toplace me. I will see that the buttons of the recruits are properlybright and that the sergeants make no mistakes in their accounts. Iwill dine at mess and listen to the Scotch surgeon telling his stories. When I am old and broken, I will go on half-pay, and my old sistersshall scold me. I have geliebt und gelebet, as the girl in'Wallenstein' says. I am done. Pay the bills and get me a cigar:find out what there is at the play to-night, Francis; to-morrow wecross by the Batavier. " He made the above speech, whereof Francis onlyheard the last two lines, pacing up and down the Boompjes at Rotterdam. The Batavier was lying in the basin. He could see the place on thequarter-deck where he and Emmy had sat on the happy voyage out. Whathad that little Mrs. Crawley to say to him? Psha; to-morrow we will putto sea, and return to England, home, and duty!

After June all the little Court Society of Pumpernickel used toseparate, according to the German plan, and make for a hundredwatering-places, where they drank at the wells, rode upon donkeys, gambled at the redoutes if they had money and a mind, rushed withhundreds of their kind to gourmandise at the tables d'hote, and idledaway the summer. The English diplomatists went off to Teoplitz andKissingen, their French rivals shut up their chancellerie and whiskedaway to their darling Boulevard de Gand. The Transparent reigningfamily took too to the waters, or retired to their hunting lodges. Everybody went away having any pretensions to politeness, and ofcourse, with them, Doctor von Glauber, the Court Doctor, and hisBaroness. The seasons for the baths were the most productive periodsof the Doctor's practice--he united business with pleasure, and hischief place of resort was Ostend, which is much frequented by Germans, and where the Doctor treated himself and his spouse to what he called a"dib" in the sea. 

His interesting patient, Jos, was a regular milch-cow to the Doctor, and he easily persuaded the civilian, both for his own health's sakeand that of his charming sister, which was really very much shattered, to pass the summer at that hideous seaport town. Emmy did not carewhere she went much. Georgy jumped at the idea of a move. As forBecky, she came as a matter of course in the fourth place inside of thefine barouche Mr. Jos had bought, the two domestics being on the box infront. She might have some misgivings about the friends whom she shouldmeet at Ostend, and who might be likely to tell ugly stories--but bah!she was strong enough to hold her own. She had cast such an anchor inJos now as would require a strong storm to shake. That incident of thepicture had finished him. Becky took down her elephant and put it intothe little box which she had had from Amelia ever so many years ago. Emmy also came off with her Lares--her two pictures--and the party, finally, were, lodged in an exceedingly dear and uncomfortable house atOstend. 

There Amelia began to take baths and get what good she could from them, and though scores of people of Becky's acquaintance passed her and cuther, yet Mrs. Osborne, who walked about with her, and who knew nobody, was not aware of the treatment experienced by the friend whom she hadchosen so judiciously as a companion; indeed, Becky never thought fitto tell her what was passing under her innocent eyes. 

Some of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's acquaintances, however, acknowledged herreadily enough, --perhaps more readily than she would have desired. Among those were Major Loder (unattached), and Captain Rook (late ofthe Rifles), who might be seen any day on the Dike, smoking and staringat the women, and who speedily got an introduction to the hospitableboard and select circle of Mr. Joseph Sedley. In fact they would takeno denial; they burst into the house whether Becky was at home or not, walked into Mrs. Osborne's drawing-room, which they perfumed with theircoats and mustachios, called Jos "Old buck, " and invaded hisdinner-table, and laughed and drank for long hours there. 

"What can they mean?" asked Georgy, who did not like these gentlemen. "I heard the Major say to Mrs. Crawley yesterday, 'No, no, Becky, youshan't keep the old buck to yourself. We must have the bones in, or, dammy, I'll split. ' What could the Major mean, Mamma?"

"Major! don't call him Major!" Emmy said. "I'm sure I can't tell whathe meant. " His presence and that of his friend inspired the little ladywith intolerable terror and aversion. They paid her tipsy compliments;they leered at her over the dinner-table. And the Captain made heradvances that filled her with sickening dismay, nor would she ever seehim unless she had George by her side. 

Rebecca, to do her justice, never would let either of these men remainalone with Amelia; the Major was disengaged too, and swore he would bethe winner of her. A couple of ruffians were fighting for this innocentcreature, gambling for her at her own table, and though she was notaware of the rascals' designs upon her, yet she felt a horror anduneasiness in their presence and longed to fly. 

She besought, she entreated Jos to go. Not he. He was slow ofmovement, tied to his Doctor, and perhaps to some other leading-strings. At least Becky was not anxious to go to England. 

At last she took a great resolution--made the great plunge. She wroteoff a letter to a friend whom she had on the other side of the water, aletter about which she did not speak a word to anybody, which shecarried herself to the post under her shawl; nor was any remark madeabout it, only that she looked very much flushed and agitated whenGeorgy met her, and she kissed him, and hung over him a great deal thatnight. She did not come out of her room after her return from herwalk. Becky thought it was Major Loder and the Captain who frightenedher. 

"She mustn't stop here, " Becky reasoned with herself. "She must goaway, the silly little fool. She is still whimpering after that gabyof a husband--dead (and served right!) these fifteen years. She shan'tmarry either of these men. It's too bad of Loder. No; she shall marrythe bamboo cane, I'll settle it this very night. "

So Becky took a cup of tea to Amelia in her private apartment and foundthat lady in the company of her miniatures, and in a most melancholyand nervous condition. She laid down the cup of tea. 

"Thank you, " said Amelia. 

"Listen to me, Amelia, " said Becky, marching up and down the roombefore the other and surveying her with a sort of contemptuouskindness. "I want to talk to you. You must go away from here and fromthe impertinences of these men. I won't have you harassed by them:and they will insult you if you stay. I tell you they are rascals: menfit to send to the hulks. Never mind how I know them. I knoweverybody. Jos can't protect you; he is too weak and wants a protectorhimself. You are no more fit to live in the world than a baby in arms. You must marry, or you and your precious boy will go to ruin. You musthave a husband, you fool; and one of the best gentlemen I ever saw hasoffered you a hundred times, and you have rejected him, you silly, heartless, ungrateful little creature!"

"I tried--I tried my best, indeed I did, Rebecca, " said Ameliadeprecatingly, "but I couldn't forget--"; and she finished the sentenceby looking up at the portrait. 

"Couldn't forget HIM!" cried out Becky, "that selfish humbug, thatlow-bred cockney dandy, that padded booby, who had neither wit, normanners, nor heart, and was no more to be compared to your friend withthe bamboo cane than you are to Queen Elizabeth. Why, the man wasweary of you, and would have jilted you, but that Dobbin forced him tokeep his word. He owned it to me. He never cared for you. He used tosneer about you to me, time after time, and made love to me the weekafter he married you. "

"It's false! It's false! Rebecca, " cried out Amelia, starting up. 

"Look there, you fool, " Becky said, still with provoking good humour, and taking a little paper out of her belt, she opened it and flung itinto Emmy's lap. "You know his handwriting. He wrote that tome--wanted me to run away with him--gave it me under your nose, the daybefore he was shot--and served him right!" Becky repeated. 

Emmy did not hear her; she was looking at the letter. It was that whichGeorge had put into the bouquet and given to Becky on the night of theDuchess of Richmond's ball. It was as she said: the foolish young manhad asked her to fly. 

Emmy's head sank down, and for almost the last time in which she shallbe called upon to weep in this history, she commenced that work. Herhead fell to her bosom, and her hands went up to her eyes; and therefor a while, she gave way to her emotions, as Becky stood on andregarded her. Who shall analyse those tears and say whether they weresweet or bitter? Was she most grieved because the idol of her life wastumbled down and shivered at her feet, or indignant that her love hadbeen so despised, or glad because the barrier was removed which modestyhad placed between her and a new, a real affection? "There is nothingto forbid me now, " she thought. "I may love him with all my heart now. Oh, I will, I will, if he will but let me and forgive me. " I believe itwas this feeling rushed over all the others which agitated that gentlelittle bosom. 

Indeed, she did not cry so much as Becky expected--the other soothedand kissed her--a rare mark of sympathy with Mrs. Becky. She treatedEmmy like a child and patted her head. "And now let us get pen and inkand write to him to come this minute, " she said. 

"I--I wrote to him this morning, " Emmy said, blushing exceedingly. Becky screamed with laughter--"Un biglietto, " she sang out with Rosina, "eccolo qua!"--the whole house echoed with her shrill singing. 

Two mornings after this little scene, although the day was rainy andgusty, and Amelia had had an exceedingly wakeful night, listening tothe wind roaring, and pitying all travellers by land and by water, yetshe got up early and insisted upon taking a walk on the Dike withGeorgy; and there she paced as the rain beat into her face, and shelooked out westward across the dark sea line and over the swollenbillows which came tumbling and frothing to the shore. Neither spokemuch, except now and then, when the boy said a few words to his timidcompanion, indicative of sympathy and protection. 

"I hope he won't cross in such weather, " Emmy said. 

"I bet ten to one he does, " the boy answered. "Look, Mother, there'sthe smoke of the steamer. " It was that signal, sure enough. 

But though the steamer was under way, he might not be on board; hemight not have got the letter; he might not choose to come. A hundredfears poured one over the other into the little heart, as fast as thewaves on to the Dike. 

The boat followed the smoke into sight. Georgy had a dandy telescopeand got the vessel under view in the most skilful manner. And he madeappropriate nautical comments upon the manner of the approach of thesteamer as she came nearer and nearer, dipping and rising in the water. The signal of an English steamer in sight went fluttering up to themast on the pier. I daresay Mrs. Amelia's heart was in a similarflutter. 

Emmy tried to look through the telescope over George's shoulder, butshe could make nothing of it. She only saw a black eclipse bobbing upand down before her eyes. 

George took the glass again and raked the vessel. "How she does pitch!"he said. "There goes a wave slap over her bows. There's only twopeople on deck besides the steersman. There's a man lying down, anda--chap in a--cloak with a--Hooray!--it's Dob, by Jingo!" He clapped tothe telescope and flung his arms round his mother. As for that lady, let us say what she did in the words of a favourite poet--"Dakruoengelasasa. " She was sure it was William. It could be no other. Whatshe had said about hoping that he would not come was all hypocrisy. Ofcourse he would come; what could he do else but come? She knew he wouldcome. 

The ship came swiftly nearer and nearer. As they went in to meet herat the landing-place at the quay, Emmy's knees trembled so that shescarcely could run. She would have liked to kneel down and say herprayers of thanks there. Oh, she thought, she would be all her lifesaying them!

It was such a bad day that as the vessel came alongside of the quaythere were no idlers abroad, scarcely even a commissioner on the lookout for the few passengers in the steamer. That young scapegraceGeorge had fled too, and as the gentleman in the old cloak lined withred stuff stepped on to the shore, there was scarcely any one presentto see what took place, which was briefly this:

A lady in a dripping white bonnet and shawl, with her two little handsout before her, went up to him, and in the next minute she hadaltogether disappeared under the folds of the old cloak, and waskissing one of his hands with all her might; whilst the other, Isuppose, was engaged in holding her to his heart (which her head justabout reached) and in preventing her from tumbling down. She wasmurmuring something about--forgive--dear William--dear, dear, dearestfriend--kiss, kiss, kiss, and so forth--and in fact went on under thecloak in an absurd manner. 

When Emmy emerged from it, she still kept tight hold of one ofWilliam's hands, and looked up in his face. It was full of sadness andtender love and pity. She understood its reproach and hung down herhead. 

"It was time you sent for me, dear Amelia, " he said. 

"You will never go again, William?"

"No, never, " he answered, and pressed the dear little soul once more tohis heart. 

As they issued out of the custom-house precincts, Georgy broke out onthem, with his telescope up to his eye, and a loud laugh of welcome; hedanced round the couple and performed many facetious antics as he ledthem up to the house. Jos wasn't up yet; Becky not visible (though shelooked at them through the blinds). Georgy ran off to see aboutbreakfast. Emmy, whose shawl and bonnet were off in the passage in thehands of Mrs. Payne, now went to undo the clasp of William's cloak, and--we will, if you please, go with George, and look after breakfastfor the Colonel. The vessel is in port. He has got the prize he hasbeen trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last. There itis with its head on his shoulder, billing and cooing close up to hisheart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he hasasked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he pinedafter. Here it is--the summit, the end--the last page of the thirdvolume. Good-bye, Colonel--God bless you, honest William!--Farewell, dear Amelia--Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the ruggedold oak to which you cling!

Perhaps it was compunction towards the kind and simple creature, whohad been the first in life to defend her, perhaps it was a dislike toall such sentimental scenes--but Rebecca, satisfied with her part inthe transaction, never presented herself before Colonel Dobbin and thelady whom he married. "Particular business, " she said, took her toBruges, whither she went, and only Georgy and his uncle were present atthe marriage ceremony. When it was over, and Georgy had rejoined hisparents, Mrs. Becky returned (just for a few days) to comfort thesolitary bachelor, Joseph Sedley. He preferred a continental life, hesaid, and declined to join in housekeeping with his sister and herhusband. 

Emmy was very glad in her heart to think that she had written to herhusband before she read or knew of that letter of George's. "I knew itall along, " William said; "but could I use that weapon against the poorfellow's memory? It was that which made me suffer so when you--"

"Never speak of that day again, " Emmy cried out, so contrite and humblethat William turned off the conversation by his account of Glorvina anddear old Peggy O'Dowd, with whom he was sitting when the letter ofrecall reached him. "If you hadn't sent for me, " he added with alaugh, "who knows what Glorvina's name might be now?"

At present it is Glorvina Posky (now Mrs. Major Posky); she took him onthe death of his first wife, having resolved never to marry out of theregiment. Lady O'Dowd is also so attached to it that, she says, ifanything were to happen to Mick, bedad she'd come back and marry someof 'em. But the Major-General is quite well and lives in greatsplendour at O'Dowdstown, with a pack of beagles, and (with theexception of perhaps their neighbour, Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty) heis the first man of his county. Her Ladyship still dances jigs, andinsisted on standing up with the Master of the Horse at the LordLieutenant's last ball. Both she and Glorvina declared that Dobbin hadused the latter SHEAMFULLY, but Posky falling in, Glorvina wasconsoled, and a beautiful turban from Paris appeased the wrath of LadyO'Dowd. 

When Colonel Dobbin quitted the service, which he did immediately afterhis marriage, he rented a pretty little country place in Hampshire, notfar from Queen's Crawley, where, after the passing of the Reform Bill, Sir Pitt and his family constantly resided now. All idea of a Peeragewas out of the question, the Baronet's two seats in Parliament beinglost. He was both out of pocket and out of spirits by thatcatastrophe, failed in his health, and prophesied the speedy ruin ofthe Empire. 

Lady Jane and Mrs. Dobbin became great friends--there was a perpetualcrossing of pony-chaises between the Hall and the Evergreens, theColonel's place (rented of his friend Major Ponto, who was abroad withhis family). Her Ladyship was godmother to Mrs. Dobbin's child, whichbore her name, and was christened by the Rev. James Crawley, whosucceeded his father in the living: and a pretty close friendshipsubsisted between the two lads, George and Rawdon, who hunted and shottogether in the vacations, were both entered of the same college atCambridge, and quarrelled with each other about Lady Jane's daughter, with whom they were both, of course, in love. A match between Georgeand that young lady was long a favourite scheme of both the matrons, though I have heard that Miss Crawley herself inclined towards hercousin. 

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's name was never mentioned by either family. Therewere reasons why all should be silent regarding her. For wherever Mr. Joseph Sedley went, she travelled likewise, and that infatuated manseemed to be entirely her slave. The Colonel's lawyers informed himthat his brother-in-law had effected a heavy insurance upon his life, whence it was probable that he had been raising money to dischargedebts. He procured prolonged leave of absence from the East IndiaHouse, and indeed, his infirmities were daily increasing. 

On hearing the news about the insurance, Amelia, in a good deal ofalarm, entreated her husband to go to Brussels, where Jos then was, andinquire into the state of his affairs. The Colonel quitted home withreluctance (for he was deeply immersed in his History of the Punjaubwhich still occupies him, and much alarmed about his little daughter, whom he idolizes, and who was just recovering from the chicken-pox) andwent to Brussels and found Jos living at one of the enormous hotels inthat city. Mrs. Crawley, who had her carriage, gave entertainments, and lived in a very genteel manner, occupied another suite ofapartments in the same hotel. 

The Colonel, of course, did not desire to see that lady, or even thinkproper to notify his arrival at Brussels, except privately to Jos by amessage through his valet. Jos begged the Colonel to come and see himthat night, when Mrs. Crawley would be at a soiree, and when they couldmeet alone. He found his brother-in-law in a condition of pitiableinfirmity--and dreadfully afraid of Rebecca, though eager in hispraises of her. She tended him through a series of unheard-ofillnesses with a fidelity most admirable. She had been a daughter tohim. "But--but--oh, for God's sake, do come and live near me, and--and--see me sometimes, " whimpered out the unfortunate man. 

The Colonel's brow darkened at this. "We can't, Jos, " he said. "Considering the circumstances, Amelia can't visit you. "

"I swear to you--I swear to you on the Bible, " gasped out Joseph, wanting to kiss the book, "that she is as innocent as a child, asspotless as your own wife. "

"It may be so, " said the Colonel gloomily, "but Emmy can't come to you. Be a man, Jos: break off this disreputable connection. Come home toyour family. We hear your affairs are involved. "

"Involved!" cried Jos. "Who has told such calumnies? All my money isplaced out most advantageously. Mrs. Crawley--that is--I mean--it islaid out to the best interest. "

"You are not in debt, then? Why did you insure your life?"

"I thought--a little present to her--in case anything happened; and youknow my health is so delicate--common gratitude you know--and I intendto leave all my money to you--and I can spare it out of my income, indeed I can, " cried out William's weak brother-in-law. 

The Colonel besought Jos to fly at once--to go back to India, whitherMrs. Crawley could not follow him; to do anything to break off aconnection which might have the most fatal consequences to him. 

Jos clasped his hands and cried, "He would go back to India. He woulddo anything, only he must have time: they mustn't say anything to Mrs. Crawley--she'd--she'd kill me if she knew it. You don't know what aterrible woman she is, " the poor wretch said. 

"Then, why not come away with me?" said Dobbin in reply; but Jos hadnot the courage. "He would see Dobbin again in the morning; he must onno account say that he had been there. He must go now. Becky mightcome in. " And Dobbin quitted him, full of forebodings. 

He never saw Jos more. Three months afterwards Joseph Sedley died atAix-la-Chapelle. It was found that all his property had been muddledaway in speculations, and was represented by valueless shares indifferent bubble companies. All his available assets were the twothousand pounds for which his life was insured, and which were leftequally between his beloved "sister Amelia, wife of, &c. , and hisfriend and invaluable attendant during sickness, Rebecca, wife ofLieutenant-Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C. B. , " who was appointedadministratrix. 

The solicitor of the insurance company swore it was the blackest casethat ever had come before him, talked of sending a commission to Aix toexamine into the death, and the Company refused payment of the policy. But Mrs. , or Lady Crawley, as she styled herself, came to town at once(attended with her solicitors, Messrs. Burke, Thurtell, and Hayes, ofThavies Inn) and dared the Company to refuse the payment. They invitedexamination, they declared that she was the object of an infamousconspiracy, which had been pursuing her all through life, and triumphedfinally. The money was paid, and her character established, butColonel Dobbin sent back his share of the legacy to the insuranceoffice and rigidly declined to hold any communication with Rebecca. 

She never was Lady Crawley, though she continued so to call herself. His Excellency Colonel Rawdon Crawley died of yellow fever at CoventryIsland, most deeply beloved and deplored, and six weeks before thedemise of his brother, Sir Pitt. The estate consequently devolved uponthe present Sir Rawdon Crawley, Bart. 

He, too, has declined to see his mother, to whom he makes a liberalallowance, and who, besides, appears to be very wealthy. The Baronetlives entirely at Queen's Crawley, with Lady Jane and her daughter, whilst Rebecca, Lady Crawley, chiefly hangs about Bath and Cheltenham, where a very strong party of excellent people consider her to be a mostinjured woman. She has her enemies. Who has not? Her life is heranswer to them. She busies herself in works of piety. She goes tochurch, and never without a footman. Her name is in all the CharityLists. The destitute orange-girl, the neglected washerwoman, thedistressed muffin-man find in her a fast and generous friend. She isalways having stalls at Fancy Fairs for the benefit of these haplessbeings. Emmy, her children, and the Colonel, coming to London sometime back, found themselves suddenly before her at one of these fairs. She cast down her eyes demurely and smiled as they started away fromher; Emmy scurrying off on the arm of George (now grown a dashing younggentleman) and the Colonel seizing up his little Janey, of whom he isfonder than of anything in the world--fonder even than of his Historyof the Punjaub. 

"Fonder than he is of me, " Emmy thinks with a sigh But he never said aword to Amelia that was not kind and gentle, or thought of a want ofhers that he did not try to gratify. 

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which ofus has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?--come, children, let usshut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.