"Vanity Fair\n\n\nby\n\nWilliam Makepeace Thackeray\n\n\n\n\nBEFORE THE CURTAIN\n\nAs the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards\nand looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over\nhim in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of\neating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the\ncontrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are\nbullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets,\npolicemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!)\nbawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the\ntinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the\nlight-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this\nis VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though\nvery noisy.  Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they\ncome off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his\ncheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack\nPuddings behind the canvas.   The curtain will be up presently, and he\nwill be turning over head and heels, and crying, \"How are you?\"\n\nA man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of\nthis sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other\npeople's hilarity.   An episode of humour or kindness touches and\namuses him here and there--a pretty child looking at a gingerbread\nstall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses\nher fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone\nwith the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general\nimpression is one more melancholy than mirthful.  When you come home\nyou sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind,\nand apply yourself to your books or your business.\n\nI have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of \"Vanity\nFair.\" Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such,\nwith their servants and families: very likely they are right.  But\npersons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a\nsarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look\nat the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful\ncombats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life,\nand some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental,\nand some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate\nscenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.\n\nWhat more has the Manager of the Performance to say?--To acknowledge\nthe kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns\nof England through which the Show has passed, and where it has been\nmost favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the public\nPress, and by the Nobility and Gentry.  He is proud to think that his\nPuppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this\nempire.  The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be\nuncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the Amelia\nDoll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been\ncarved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the Dobbin\nFigure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and\nnatural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and\nplease to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on\nwhich no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at\nthe end of this singular performance.\n\nAnd with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires,\nand the curtain rises.\n\nLONDON, June 28, 1848\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n       I  Chiswick Mall\n      II  In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the\n          Campaign\n     III  Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy\n      IV  The Green Silk Purse\n       V  Dobbin of Ours\n      VI  Vauxhall\n     VII  Crawley of Queen's Crawley\n    VIII  Private and Confidential\n      IX  Family Portraits\n       X  Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends\n      XI  Arcadian Simplicity\n     XII  Quite a Sentimental Chapter\n    XIII  Sentimental and Otherwise\n     XIV  Miss Crawley at Home\n      XV  In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time\n     XVI  The Letter on the Pincushion\n    XVII  How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano\n   XVIII  Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought\n     XIX  Miss Crawley at Nurse\n      XX  In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen\n     XXI  A Quarrel About an Heiress\n    XXII  A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon\n   XXIII  Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass\n    XXIV  In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible\n     XXV  In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave\n          Brighton\n    XXVI  Between London and Chatham\n   XXVII  In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment\n  XXVIII  In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries\n    XXIX  Brussels\n     XXX  \"The Girl I Left Behind Me\"\n    XXXI  In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister\n   XXXII  In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close\n  XXXIII  In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her\n   XXXIV  James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out\n    XXXV  Widow and Mother\n   XXXVI  How to Live Well on Nothing a Year\n  XXXVII  The Subject Continued\n XXXVIII  A Family in a Very Small Way\n   XXXIX  A Cynical Chapter\n      XL  In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family\n     XLI  In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors\n    XLII  Which Treats of the Osborne Family\n   XLIII  In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape\n    XLIV  A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire\n     XLV  Between Hampshire and London\n    XLVI  Struggles and Trials\n   XLVII  Gaunt House\n  XLVIII  In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company\n    XLIX  In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert\n       L  Contains a Vulgar Incident\n      LI  In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the\n          Reader\n     LII  In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light\n    LIII  A Rescue and a Catastrophe\n     LIV  Sunday After the Battle\n      LV  In Which the Same Subject is Pursued\n     LVI  Georgy is Made a Gentleman\n    LVII  Eothen\n   LVIII  Our Friend the Major\n     LIX  The Old Piano\n      LX  Returns to the Genteel World\n     LXI  In Which Two Lights are Put Out\n    LXII  Am Rhein\n   LXIII  In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance\n    LXIV  A Vagabond Chapter\n     LXV  Full of Business and Pleasure\n    LXVI  Amantium Irae\n   LXVII  Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nChiswick Mall\n\nWhile the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning\nin June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's\nacademy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with\ntwo fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a\nthree-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.  A black\nservant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his\nbandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's\nshining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score of\nyoung heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately\nold brick house.  Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the\nlittle red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising\nover some geranium pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room.\n\n\"It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister,\" said Miss Jemima. \"Sambo, the\nblack servant, has just rung the bell; and the coachman has a new red\nwaistcoat.\"\n\n\"Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident to Miss\nSedley's departure, Miss Jemima?\" asked Miss Pinkerton herself, that\nmajestic lady; the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of Doctor\nJohnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself.\n\n\"The girls were up at four this morning, packing her trunks, sister,\"\nreplied Miss Jemima; \"we have made her a bow-pot.\"\n\n\"Say a bouquet, sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel.\"\n\n\"Well, a booky as big almost as a haystack; I have put up two bottles\nof the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt for making\nit, in Amelia's box.\"\n\n\"And I trust, Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss Sedley's\naccount.  This is it, is it? Very good--ninety-three pounds, four\nshillings.  Be kind enough to address it to John Sedley, Esquire, and\nto seal this billet which I have written to his lady.\"\n\nIn Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss\nPinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been a\nletter from a sovereign.  Only when her pupils quitted the\nestablishment, or when they were about to be married, and once, when\npoor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known to\nwrite personally to the parents of her pupils; and it was Jemima's\nopinion that if anything could console Mrs. Birch for her daughter's\nloss, it would be that pious and eloquent composition in which Miss\nPinkerton announced the event.\n\nIn the present instance Miss Pinkerton's \"billet\" was to the following\neffect:--\n\nThe Mall, Chiswick, June 15, 18\n\nMADAM,--After her six years' residence at the Mall, I have the honour\nand happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as a\nyoung lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polished\nand refined circle.  Those virtues which characterize the young English\ngentlewoman, those accomplishments which become her birth and station,\nwill not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose INDUSTRY\nand OBEDIENCE have endeared her to her instructors, and whose\ndelightful sweetness of temper has charmed her AGED and her YOUTHFUL\ncompanions.\n\nIn music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery\nand needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends' fondest\nwishes.  In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful\nand undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily during the\nnext three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of\nthat dignified DEPORTMENT AND CARRIAGE, so requisite for every young\nlady of FASHION.\n\nIn the principles of religion and morality, Miss Sedley will be found\nworthy of an establishment which has been honoured by the presence of\nTHE GREAT LEXICOGRAPHER, and the patronage of the admirable Mrs.\nChapone.  In leaving the Mall, Miss Amelia carries with her the hearts\nof her companions, and the affectionate regards of her mistress, who\nhas the honour to subscribe herself,\n\nMadam, Your most obliged humble servant, BARBARA PINKERTON\n\nP.S.--Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley.  It is particularly requested\nthat Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed ten days.  The\nfamily of distinction with whom she is engaged, desire to avail\nthemselves of her services as soon as possible.\n\n\nThis letter completed, Miss Pinkerton proceeded to write her own name,\nand Miss Sedley's, in the fly-leaf of a Johnson's Dictionary--the\ninteresting work which she invariably presented to her scholars, on\ntheir departure from the Mall.  On the cover was inserted a copy of\n\"Lines addressed to a young lady on quitting Miss Pinkerton's school,\nat the Mall; by the late revered Doctor Samuel Johnson.\" In fact, the\nLexicographer's name was always on the lips of this majestic woman, and\na visit he had paid to her was the cause of her reputation and her\nfortune.\n\nBeing commanded by her elder sister to get \"the Dictionary\" from the\ncupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from the\nreceptacle in question.  When Miss Pinkerton had finished the\ninscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid air,\nhanded her the second.\n\n\"For whom is this, Miss Jemima?\" said Miss Pinkerton, with awful\ncoldness.\n\n\"For Becky Sharp,\" answered Jemima, trembling very much, and blushing\nover her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on her sister.\n\"For Becky Sharp: she's going too.\"\n\n\"MISS JEMIMA!\" exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the largest capitals. \"Are\nyou in your senses? Replace the Dixonary in the closet, and never\nventure to take such a liberty in future.\"\n\n\"Well, sister, it's only two-and-ninepence, and poor Becky will be\nmiserable if she don't get one.\"\n\n\"Send Miss Sedley instantly to me,\" said Miss Pinkerton. And so\nventuring not to say another word, poor Jemima trotted off, exceedingly\nflurried and nervous.\n\nMiss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of some wealth;\nwhereas Miss Sharp was an articled pupil, for whom Miss Pinkerton had\ndone, as she thought, quite enough, without conferring upon her at\nparting the high honour of the Dixonary.\n\nAlthough schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor less\nthan churchyard epitaphs; yet, as it sometimes happens that a person\ndeparts this life who is really deserving of all the praises the stone\ncutter carves over his bones; who IS a good Christian, a good parent,\nchild, wife, or husband; who actually DOES leave a disconsolate family\nto mourn his loss; so in academies of the male and female sex it occurs\nevery now and then that the pupil is fully worthy of the praises\nbestowed by the disinterested instructor. Now, Miss Amelia Sedley was a\nyoung lady of this singular species; and deserved not only all that\nMiss Pinkerton said in her praise, but had many charming qualities\nwhich that pompous old Minerva of a woman could not see, from the\ndifferences of rank and age between her pupil and herself.\n\nFor she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and\ndance like Hillisberg or Parisot; and embroider beautifully; and spell\nas well as a Dixonary itself; but she had such a kindly, smiling,\ntender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of everybody\nwho came near her, from Minerva herself down to the poor girl in the\nscullery, and the one-eyed tart-woman's daughter, who was permitted to\nvend her wares once a week to the young ladies in the Mall.  She had\ntwelve intimate and bosom friends out of the twenty-four young ladies.\nEven envious Miss Briggs never spoke ill of her; high and mighty Miss\nSaltire (Lord Dexter's granddaughter) allowed that her figure was\ngenteel; and as for Miss Swartz, the rich woolly-haired mulatto from\nSt. Kitt's, on the day Amelia went away, she was in such a passion of\ntears that they were obliged to send for Dr. Floss, and half tipsify\nher with salvolatile.  Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be\nsupposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm\nand dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at\nthe idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would\nhave gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid\ndouble) of St. Kitt's.  Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed\nto parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing,\nand the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the\nservants to superintend.  But why speak about her?  It is probable that\nwe shall not hear of her again from this moment to the end of time, and\nthat when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, she and\nher awful sister will never issue therefrom into this little world of\nhistory.\n\nBut as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in\nsaying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little\ncreature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which\n(and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort,\nthat we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and\ngood-natured a person.  As she is not a heroine, there is no need to\ndescribe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather short\nthan otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red for a\nheroine; but her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the\nfreshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the\nbrightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filled\nwith tears, and that was a great deal too often; for the silly thing\nwould cry over a dead canary-bird; or over a mouse, that the cat haply\nhad seized upon; or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid;\nand as for saying an unkind word to her, were any persons hard-hearted\nenough to do so--why, so much the worse for them.  Even Miss Pinkerton,\nthat austere and godlike woman, ceased scolding her after the first\ntime, and though she no more comprehended sensibility than she did\nAlgebra, gave all masters and teachers particular orders to treat Miss\nSedley with the utmost gentleness, as harsh treatment was injurious to\nher.\n\nSo that when the day of departure came, between her two customs of\nlaughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puzzled how to act. She\nwas glad to go home, and yet most woefully sad at leaving school.  For\nthree days before, little Laura Martin, the orphan, followed her about\nlike a little dog.  She had to make and receive at least fourteen\npresents--to make fourteen solemn promises of writing every week:\n\"Send my letters under cover to my grandpapa, the Earl of Dexter,\" said\nMiss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather shabby).  \"Never mind the\npostage, but write every day, you dear darling,\" said the impetuous and\nwoolly-headed, but generous and affectionate Miss Swartz; and the\norphan little Laura Martin (who was just in round-hand), took her\nfriend's hand and said, looking up in her face wistfully, \"Amelia, when\nI write to you I shall call you Mamma.\" All which details, I have no\ndoubt, JONES, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be\nexcessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental.  Yes; I\ncan see Jones at this minute (rather flushed with his joint of mutton\nand half pint of wine), taking out his pencil and scoring under the\nwords \"foolish, twaddling,\" &c., and adding to them his own remark of\n\"QUITE TRUE.\" Well, he is a lofty man of genius, and admires the great\nand heroic in life and novels; and so had better take warning and go\nelsewhere.\n\nWell, then.  The flowers, and the presents, and the trunks, and\nbonnet-boxes of Miss Sedley having been arranged by Mr. Sambo in the\ncarriage, together with a very small and weather-beaten old cow's-skin\ntrunk with Miss Sharp's card neatly nailed upon it, which was delivered\nby Sambo with a grin, and packed by the coachman with a corresponding\nsneer--the hour for parting came; and the grief of that moment was\nconsiderably lessened by the admirable discourse which Miss Pinkerton\naddressed to her pupil.  Not that the parting speech caused Amelia to\nphilosophise, or that it armed her in any way with a calmness, the\nresult of argument; but it was intolerably dull, pompous, and tedious;\nand having the fear of her schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, Miss\nSedley did not venture, in her presence, to give way to any ebullitions\nof private grief.  A seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced in\nthe drawing-room, as on the solemn occasions of the visits of parents,\nand these refreshments being partaken of, Miss Sedley was at liberty to\ndepart.\n\n\"You'll go in and say good-by to Miss Pinkerton, Becky!\" said Miss\nJemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who was\ncoming downstairs with her own bandbox.\n\n\"I suppose I must,\" said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the wonder of\nMiss Jemima; and the latter having knocked at the door, and receiving\npermission to come in, Miss Sharp advanced in a very unconcerned\nmanner, and said in French, and with a perfect accent, \"Mademoiselle,\nje viens vous faire mes adieux.\"\n\nMiss Pinkerton did not understand French; she only directed those who\ndid: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed\nhead (on the top of which figured a large and solemn turban), she said,\n\"Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning.\" As the Hammersmith Semiramis\nspoke, she waved one hand, both by way of adieu, and to give Miss Sharp\nan opportunity of shaking one of the fingers of the hand which was left\nout for that purpose.\n\nMiss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and bow,\nand quite declined to accept the proffered honour; on which Semiramis\ntossed up her turban more indignantly than ever.  In fact, it was a\nlittle battle between the young lady and the old one, and the latter\nwas worsted.  \"Heaven bless you, my child,\" said she, embracing Amelia,\nand scowling the while over the girl's shoulder at Miss Sharp.  \"Come\naway, Becky,\" said Miss Jemima, pulling the young woman away in great\nalarm, and the drawing-room door closed upon them for ever.\n\nThen came the struggle and parting below.  Words refuse to tell it. All\nthe servants were there in the hall--all the dear friends--all the young\nladies--the dancing-master who had just arrived; and there was such a\nscuffling, and hugging, and kissing, and crying, with the hysterical\nYOOPS of Miss Swartz, the parlour-boarder, from her room, as no pen can\ndepict, and as the tender heart would fain pass over. The embracing was\nover; they parted--that is, Miss Sedley parted from her friends.  Miss\nSharp had demurely entered the carriage some minutes before.  Nobody\ncried for leaving HER.\n\nSambo of the bandy legs slammed the carriage door on his young weeping\nmistress.  He sprang up behind the carriage.  \"Stop!\" cried Miss\nJemima, rushing to the gate with a parcel.\n\n\"It's some sandwiches, my dear,\" said she to Amelia. \"You may be\nhungry, you know; and Becky, Becky Sharp, here's a book for you that my\nsister--that is, I--Johnson's Dixonary, you know; you mustn't leave us\nwithout that.  Good-by.  Drive on, coachman.  God bless you!\"\n\nAnd the kind creature retreated into the garden, overcome with emotion.\n\nBut, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale face\nout of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden.\n\nThis almost caused Jemima to faint with terror.  \"Well, I never\"--said\nshe--\"what an audacious\"--Emotion prevented her from completing either\nsentence.  The carriage rolled away; the great gates were closed; the\nbell rang for the dancing lesson.  The world is before the two young\nladies; and so, farewell to Chiswick Mall.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nIn Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign\n\nWhen Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last\nchapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the\nlittle garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss\nJemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an almost\nlivid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was scarcely more\nagreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind,\nsaying--\"So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick.\"\n\nMiss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss\nJemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left\nschool, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space\nof time.  Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last\nfor ever and ever.  I know, for instance, an old gentleman of\nsixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very\nagitated countenance, \"I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr.\nRaine.\" Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course\nof that evening.  Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in\nhis heart, then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen.  If the\nDoctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age\nof threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, \"Boy, take down\nyour pant--\"? Well, well, Miss Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at this\nact of insubordination.\n\n\"How could you do so, Rebecca?\" at last she said, after a pause.\n\n\"Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to\nthe black-hole?\" said Rebecca, laughing.\n\n\"No: but--\"\n\n\"I hate the whole house,\" continued Miss Sharp in a fury.  \"I hope I\nmay never set eyes on it again.  I wish it were in the bottom of the\nThames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick her\nout, that I wouldn't.  O how I should like to see her floating in the\nwater yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, and\nher nose like the beak of a wherry.\"\n\n\"Hush!\" cried Miss Sedley.\n\n\"Why, will the black footman tell tales?\" cried Miss Rebecca, laughing.\n\"He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all my\nsoul; and I wish he would; and I wish I had a means of proving it, too.\nFor two years I have only had insults and outrage from her. I have been\ntreated worse than any servant in the kitchen. I have never had a\nfriend or a kind word, except from you.  I have been made to tend the\nlittle girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses,\nuntil I grew sick of my mother tongue. But that talking French to Miss\nPinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of\nFrench, and was too proud to confess it.  I believe it was that which\nmade her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French.  Vive la France!\nVive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!\"\n\n\"O Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame!\" cried Miss Sedley; for this was the\ngreatest blasphemy Rebecca had as yet uttered; and in those days, in\nEngland, to say, \"Long live Bonaparte!\" was as much as to say, \"Long\nlive Lucifer!\" \"How can you--how dare you have such wicked, revengeful\nthoughts?\"\n\n\"Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural,\" answered Miss Rebecca. \"I'm\nno angel.\" And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.\n\nFor it may be remarked in the course of this little conversation (which\ntook place as the coach rolled along lazily by the river side) that\nthough Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank Heaven, it\nhas been, in the first place, for ridding her of some person whom she\nhated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her enemies to some sort\nof perplexity or confusion; neither of which are very amiable motives\nfor religious gratitude, or such as would be put forward by persons of\na kind and placable disposition.  Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the\nleast kind or placable.  All the world used her ill, said this young\nmisanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the\nworld treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get.  The world\nis a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his\nown face.  Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh\nat it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all\nyoung persons take their choice. This is certain, that if the world\nneglected Miss Sharp, she never was known to have done a good action in\nbehalf of anybody; nor can it be expected that twenty-four young ladies\nshould all be as amiable as the heroine of this work, Miss Sedley (whom\nwe have selected for the very reason that she was the best-natured of\nall, otherwise what on earth was to have prevented us from putting up\nMiss Swartz, or Miss Crump, or Miss Hopkins, as heroine in her place!)\nit could not be expected that every one should be of the humble and\ngentle temper of Miss Amelia Sedley; should take every opportunity to\nvanquish Rebecca's hard-heartedness and ill-humour; and, by a thousand\nkind words and offices, overcome, for once at least, her hostility to\nher kind.\n\nMiss Sharp's father was an artist, and in that quality had given\nlessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton's school. He was a clever man; a\npleasant companion; a careless student; with a great propensity for\nrunning into debt, and a partiality for the tavern.  When he was drunk,\nhe used to beat his wife and daughter; and the next morning, with a\nheadache, he would rail at the world for its neglect of his genius, and\nabuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and sometimes with perfect\nreason, the fools, his brother painters.  As it was with the utmost\ndifficulty that he could keep himself, and as he owed money for a mile\nround Soho, where he lived, he thought to better his circumstances by\nmarrying a young woman of the French nation, who was by profession an\nopera-girl.  The humble calling of her female parent Miss Sharp never\nalluded to, but used to state subsequently that the Entrechats were a\nnoble family of Gascony, and took great pride in her descent from them.\nAnd curious it is that as she advanced in life this young lady's\nancestors increased in rank and splendour.\n\nRebecca's mother had had some education somewhere, and her daughter\nspoke French with purity and a Parisian accent.  It was in those days\nrather a rare accomplishment, and led to her engagement with the\northodox Miss Pinkerton.  For her mother being dead, her father,\nfinding himself not likely to recover, after his third attack of\ndelirium tremens, wrote a manly and pathetic letter to Miss Pinkerton,\nrecommending the orphan child to her protection, and so descended to\nthe grave, after two bailiffs had quarrelled over his corpse.  Rebecca\nwas seventeen when she came to Chiswick, and was bound over as an\narticled pupil; her duties being to talk French, as we have seen; and\nher privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year, to\ngather scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school.\n\nShe was small and slight in person; pale, sandy-haired, and with eyes\nhabitually cast down: when they looked up they were very large, odd,\nand attractive; so attractive that the Reverend Mr. Crisp, fresh from\nOxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr.\nFlowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a glance of\nher eyes which was fired all the way across Chiswick Church from the\nschool-pew to the reading-desk.  This infatuated young man used\nsometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he had been\npresented by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriage\nin an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was charged to\ndeliver.  Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, and abruptly carried off\nher darling boy; but the idea, even, of such an eagle in the Chiswick\ndovecot caused a great flutter in the breast of Miss Pinkerton, who\nwould have sent away Miss Sharp but that she was bound to her under a\nforfeit, and who never could thoroughly believe the young lady's\nprotestations that she had never exchanged a single word with Mr.\nCrisp, except under her own eyes on the two occasions when she had met\nhim at tea.\n\nBy the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the\nestablishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child.  But she had the\ndismal precocity of poverty.  Many a dun had she talked to, and turned\naway from her father's door; many a tradesman had she coaxed and\nwheedled into good-humour, and into the granting of one meal more. She\nsate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her wit, and heard\nthe talk of many of his wild companions--often but ill-suited for a\ngirl to hear.  But she never had been a girl, she said; she had been a\nwoman since she was eight years old.  Oh, why did Miss Pinkerton let\nsuch a dangerous bird into her cage?\n\nThe fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest creature\nin the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her father brought\nher to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the part of the ingenue; and\nonly a year before the arrangement by which Rebecca had been admitted\ninto her house, and when Rebecca was sixteen years old, Miss Pinkerton\nmajestically, and with a little speech, made her a present of a\ndoll--which was, by the way, the confiscated property of Miss Swindle,\ndiscovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the father\nand daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the evening\nparty (it was on the occasion of the speeches, when all the professors\nwere invited) and how Miss Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the\ncaricature of herself which the little mimic, Rebecca, managed to make\nout of her doll. Becky used to go through dialogues with it; it formed\nthe delight of Newman Street, Gerrard Street, and the Artists' quarter:\nand the young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water with\ntheir lazy, dissolute, clever, jovial senior, used regularly to ask\nRebecca if Miss Pinkerton was at home: she was as well known to them,\npoor soul! as Mr. Lawrence or President West.  Once Rebecca had the\nhonour to pass a few days at Chiswick; after which she brought back\nJemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy: for though that honest\ncreature had made and given her jelly and cake enough for three\nchildren, and a seven-shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense of\nridicule was far stronger than her gratitude, and she sacrificed Miss\nJemmy quite as pitilessly as her sister.\n\nThe catastrophe came, and she was brought to the Mall as to her home.\nThe rigid formality of the place suffocated her: the prayers and the\nmeals, the lessons and the walks, which were arranged with a conventual\nregularity, oppressed her almost beyond endurance; and she looked back\nto the freedom and the beggary of the old studio in Soho with so much\nregret, that everybody, herself included, fancied she was consumed with\ngrief for her father.  She had a little room in the garret, where the\nmaids heard her walking and sobbing at night; but it was with rage, and\nnot with grief.  She had not been much of a dissembler, until now her\nloneliness taught her to feign. She had never mingled in the society of\nwomen: her father, reprobate as he was, was a man of talent; his\nconversation was a thousand times more agreeable to her than the talk\nof such of her own sex as she now encountered. The pompous vanity of\nthe old schoolmistress, the foolish good-humour of her sister, the\nsilly chat and scandal of the elder girls, and the frigid correctness\nof the governesses equally annoyed her; and she had no soft maternal\nheart, this unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle and talk of the younger\nchildren, with whose care she was chiefly intrusted, might have soothed\nand interested her; but she lived among them two years, and not one was\nsorry that she went away.  The gentle tender-hearted Amelia Sedley was\nthe only person to whom she could attach herself in the least; and who\ncould help attaching herself to Amelia?\n\nThe happiness--the superior advantages of the young women round about\nher, gave Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy.  \"What airs that girl\ngives herself, because she is an Earl's grand-daughter,\" she said of\none.  \"How they cringe and bow to that Creole, because of her hundred\nthousand pounds!  I am a thousand times cleverer and more charming than\nthat creature, for all her wealth. I am as well bred as the Earl's\ngrand-daughter, for all her fine pedigree; and yet every one passes me\nby here.  And yet, when I was at my father's, did not the men give up\ntheir gayest balls and parties in order to pass the evening with me?\"\nShe determined at any rate to get free from the prison in which she\nfound herself, and now began to act for herself, and for the first time\nto make connected plans for the future.\n\nShe took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place offered\nher; and as she was already a musician and a good linguist, she\nspeedily went through the little course of study which was considered\nnecessary for ladies in those days.  Her music she practised\nincessantly, and one day, when the girls were out, and she had remained\nat home, she was overheard to play a piece so well that Minerva\nthought, wisely, she could spare herself the expense of a master for\nthe juniors, and intimated to Miss Sharp that she was to instruct them\nin music for the future.\n\nThe girl refused; and for the first time, and to the astonishment of\nthe majestic mistress of the school.  \"I am here to speak French with\nthe children,\" Rebecca said abruptly, \"not to teach them music, and\nsave money for you.  Give me money, and I will teach them.\"\n\nMinerva was obliged to yield, and, of course, disliked her from that\nday.  \"For five-and-thirty years,\" she said, and with great justice, \"I\nnever have seen the individual who has dared in my own house to\nquestion my authority.  I have nourished a viper in my bosom.\"\n\n\"A viper--a fiddlestick,\" said Miss Sharp to the old lady, almost\nfainting with astonishment.  \"You took me because I was useful. There\nis no question of gratitude between us.  I hate this place, and want to\nleave it.  I will do nothing here but what I am obliged to do.\"\n\nIt was in vain that the old lady asked her if she was aware she was\nspeaking to Miss Pinkerton?  Rebecca laughed in her face, with a horrid\nsarcastic demoniacal laughter, that almost sent the schoolmistress into\nfits. \"Give me a sum of money,\" said the girl, \"and get rid of me--or,\nif you like better, get me a good place as governess in a nobleman's\nfamily--you can do so if you please.\"  And in their further disputes\nshe always returned to this point, \"Get me a situation--we hate each\nother, and I am ready to go.\"\n\nWorthy Miss Pinkerton, although she had a Roman nose and a turban, and\nwas as tall as a grenadier, and had been up to this time an\nirresistible princess, had no will or strength like that of her little\napprentice, and in vain did battle against her, and tried to overawe\nher. Attempting once to scold her in public, Rebecca hit upon the\nbefore-mentioned plan of answering her in French, which quite routed\nthe old woman.  In order to maintain authority in her school, it became\nnecessary to remove this rebel, this monster, this serpent, this\nfirebrand; and hearing about this time that Sir Pitt Crawley's family\nwas in want of a governess, she actually recommended Miss Sharp for the\nsituation, firebrand and serpent as she was.  \"I cannot, certainly,\"\nshe said, \"find fault with Miss Sharp's conduct, except to myself; and\nmust allow that her talents and accomplishments are of a high order. As\nfar as the head goes, at least, she does credit to the educational\nsystem pursued at my establishment.\"\n\nAnd so the schoolmistress reconciled the recommendation to her\nconscience, and the indentures were cancelled, and the apprentice was\nfree.  The battle here described in a few lines, of course, lasted for\nsome months.  And as Miss Sedley, being now in her seventeenth year,\nwas about to leave school, and had a friendship for Miss Sharp (\"'tis\nthe only point in Amelia's behaviour,\" said Minerva, \"which has not\nbeen satisfactory to her mistress\"), Miss Sharp was invited by her\nfriend to pass a week with her at home, before she entered upon her\nduties as governess in a private family.\n\nThus the world began for these two young ladies.  For Amelia it was\nquite a new, fresh, brilliant world, with all the bloom upon it.  It\nwas not quite a new one for Rebecca--(indeed, if the truth must be told\nwith respect to the Crisp affair, the tart-woman hinted to somebody,\nwho took an affidavit of the fact to somebody else, that there was a\ngreat deal more than was made public regarding Mr. Crisp and Miss\nSharp, and that his letter was in answer to another letter).  But who\ncan tell you the real truth of the matter? At all events, if Rebecca\nwas not beginning the world, she was beginning it over again.\n\nBy the time the young ladies reached Kensington turnpike, Amelia had\nnot forgotten her companions, but had dried her tears, and had blushed\nvery much and been delighted at a young officer of the Life Guards, who\nspied her as he was riding by, and said, \"A dem fine gal, egad!\" and\nbefore the carriage arrived in Russell Square, a great deal of\nconversation had taken place about the Drawing-room, and whether or not\nyoung ladies wore powder as well as hoops when presented, and whether\nshe was to have that honour: to the Lord Mayor's ball she knew she was\nto go.  And when at length home was reached, Miss Amelia Sedley skipped\nout on Sambo's arm, as happy and as handsome a girl as any in the whole\nbig city of London.  Both he and coachman agreed on this point, and so\ndid her father and mother, and so did every one of the servants in the\nhouse, as they stood bobbing, and curtseying, and smiling, in the hall\nto welcome their young mistress.\n\nYou may be sure that she showed Rebecca over every room of the house,\nand everything in every one of her drawers; and her books, and her\npiano, and her dresses, and all her necklaces, brooches, laces, and\ngimcracks. She insisted upon Rebecca accepting the white cornelian and\nthe turquoise rings, and a sweet sprigged muslin, which was too small\nfor her now, though it would fit her friend to a nicety; and she\ndetermined in her heart to ask her mother's permission to present her\nwhite Cashmere shawl to her friend.  Could she not spare it? and had\nnot her brother Joseph just brought her two from India?\n\nWhen Rebecca saw the two magnificent Cashmere shawls which Joseph\nSedley had brought home to his sister, she said, with perfect truth,\n\"that it must be delightful to have a brother,\" and easily got the pity\nof the tender-hearted Amelia for being alone in the world, an orphan\nwithout friends or kindred.\n\n\"Not alone,\" said Amelia; \"you know, Rebecca, I shall always be your\nfriend, and love you as a sister--indeed I will.\"\n\n\"Ah, but to have parents, as you have--kind, rich, affectionate\nparents, who give you everything you ask for; and their love, which is\nmore precious than all! My poor papa could give me nothing, and I had\nbut two frocks in all the world! And then, to have a brother, a dear\nbrother! Oh, how you must love him!\"\n\nAmelia laughed.\n\n\"What! don't you love him? you, who say you love everybody?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course, I do--only--\"\n\n\"Only what?\"\n\n\"Only Joseph doesn't seem to care much whether I love him or not. He\ngave me two fingers to shake when he arrived after ten years' absence!\nHe is very kind and good, but he scarcely ever speaks to me; I think he\nloves his pipe a great deal better than his\"--but here Amelia checked\nherself, for why should she speak ill of her brother? \"He was very kind\nto me as a child,\" she added; \"I was but five years old when he went\naway.\"\n\n\"Isn't he very rich?\" said Rebecca.  \"They say all Indian nabobs are\nenormously rich.\"\n\n\"I believe he has a very large income.\"\n\n\"And is your sister-in-law a nice pretty woman?\"\n\n\"La! Joseph is not married,\" said Amelia, laughing again.\n\nPerhaps she had mentioned the fact already to Rebecca, but that young\nlady did not appear to have remembered it; indeed, vowed and protested\nthat she expected to see a number of Amelia's nephews and nieces.  She\nwas quite disappointed that Mr. Sedley was not married; she was sure\nAmelia had said he was, and she doted so on little children.\n\n\"I think you must have had enough of them at Chiswick,\" said Amelia,\nrather wondering at the sudden tenderness on her friend's part; and\nindeed in later days Miss Sharp would never have committed herself so\nfar as to advance opinions, the untruth of which would have been so\neasily detected.  But we must remember that she is but nineteen as yet,\nunused to the art of deceiving, poor innocent creature! and making her\nown experience in her own person.  The meaning of the above series of\nqueries, as translated in the heart of this ingenious young woman, was\nsimply this: \"If Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should I\nnot marry him? I have only a fortnight, to be sure, but there is no\nharm in trying.\" And she determined within herself to make this\nlaudable attempt.  She redoubled her caresses to Amelia; she kissed the\nwhite cornelian necklace as she put it on; and vowed she would never,\nnever part with it.  When the dinner-bell rang she went downstairs with\nher arm round her friend's waist, as is the habit of young ladies. She\nwas so agitated at the drawing-room door, that she could hardly find\ncourage to enter.  \"Feel my heart, how it beats, dear!\" said she to her\nfriend.\n\n\"No, it doesn't,\" said Amelia.  \"Come in, don't be frightened.  Papa\nwon't do you any harm.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nRebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy\n\nA VERY stout, puffy man, in buckskins and Hessian boots, with several\nimmense neckcloths that rose almost to his nose, with a red striped\nwaistcoat and an apple green coat with steel buttons almost as large as\ncrown pieces (it was the morning costume of a dandy or blood of those\ndays) was reading the paper by the fire when the two girls entered, and\nbounced off his arm-chair, and blushed excessively, and hid his entire\nface almost in his neckcloths at this apparition.\n\n\"It's only your sister, Joseph,\" said Amelia, laughing and shaking the\ntwo fingers which he held out.  \"I've come home FOR GOOD, you know; and\nthis is my friend, Miss Sharp, whom you have heard me mention.\"\n\n\"No, never, upon my word,\" said the head under the neckcloth, shaking\nvery much--\"that is, yes--what abominably cold weather, Miss\"--and\nherewith he fell to poking the fire with all his might, although it was\nin the middle of June.\n\n\"He's very handsome,\" whispered Rebecca to Amelia, rather loud.\n\n\"Do you think so?\" said the latter.  \"I'll tell him.\"\n\n\"Darling! not for worlds,\" said Miss Sharp, starting back as timid as a\nfawn.  She had previously made a respectful virgin-like curtsey to the\ngentleman, and her modest eyes gazed so perseveringly on the carpet\nthat it was a wonder how she should have found an opportunity to see\nhim.\n\n\"Thank you for the beautiful shawls, brother,\" said Amelia to the fire\npoker.  \"Are they not beautiful, Rebecca?\"\n\n\"O heavenly!\" said Miss Sharp, and her eyes went from the carpet\nstraight to the chandelier.\n\nJoseph still continued a huge clattering at the poker and tongs,\npuffing and blowing the while, and turning as red as his yellow face\nwould allow him.  \"I can't make you such handsome presents, Joseph,\"\ncontinued his sister, \"but while I was at school, I have embroidered\nfor you a very beautiful pair of braces.\"\n\n\"Good Gad! Amelia,\" cried the brother, in serious alarm, \"what do you\nmean?\" and plunging with all his might at the bell-rope, that article\nof furniture came away in his hand, and increased the honest fellow's\nconfusion.  \"For heaven's sake see if my buggy's at the door.  I CAN'T\nwait.  I must go.  D---- that groom of mine. I must go.\"\n\nAt this minute the father of the family walked in, rattling his seals\nlike a true British merchant.  \"What's the matter, Emmy?\" says he.\n\n\"Joseph wants me to see if his--his buggy is at the door.  What is a\nbuggy, Papa?\"\n\n\"It is a one-horse palanquin,\" said the old gentleman, who was a wag in\nhis way.\n\nJoseph at this burst out into a wild fit of laughter; in which,\nencountering the eye of Miss Sharp, he stopped all of a sudden, as if\nhe had been shot.\n\n\"This young lady is your friend? Miss Sharp, I am very happy to see\nyou.  Have you and Emmy been quarrelling already with Joseph, that he\nwants to be off?\"\n\n\"I promised Bonamy of our service, sir,\" said Joseph, \"to dine with\nhim.\"\n\n\"O fie! didn't you tell your mother you would dine here?\"\n\n\"But in this dress it's impossible.\"\n\n\"Look at him, isn't he handsome enough to dine anywhere, Miss Sharp?\"\n\nOn which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both set\noff in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman.\n\n\"Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at Miss Pinkerton's?\"\ncontinued he, following up his advantage.\n\n\"Gracious heavens! Father,\" cried Joseph.\n\n\"There now, I have hurt his feelings.  Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I have\nhurt your son's feelings.  I have alluded to his buckskins.  Ask Miss\nSharp if I haven't? Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let\nus all go to dinner.\"\n\n\"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa has brought\nhome the best turbot in Billingsgate.\"\n\n\"Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will follow\nwith these two young women,\" said the father, and he took an arm of\nwife and daughter and walked merrily off.\n\nIf Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making the\nconquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to\nblame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and\nwith becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas,\nrecollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate\nmatters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself,\nthere was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off\nher hands.  What causes young people to \"come out,\" but the noble\nambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places?\nWhat keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a\nwhole mortal season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas,\nand to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson,\nand to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to\nwear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may\nbring down some \"desirable\" young man with those killing bows and\narrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up their\ncarpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their\nyear's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of\ntheir species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and\ndancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and, as honest Mrs.\nSedley has, in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a score\nof little schemes for the settlement of her Amelia, so also had our\nbeloved but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to\nsecure the husband, who was even more necessary for her than for her\nfriend. She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the Arabian\nNights and Guthrie's Geography; and it is a fact that while she was\ndressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother\nwas very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle in\nthe air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the\nbackground (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would not\ntherefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity of\nshawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon an\nelephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a\nvisit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it is\nthe happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful\nyoung creature besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in these delightful\nday-dreams ere now!\n\nJoseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia.  He was in\nthe East India Company's Civil Service, and his name appeared, at the\nperiod of which we write, in the Bengal division of the East India\nRegister, as collector of Boggley Wollah, an honourable and lucrative\npost, as everybody knows: in order to know to what higher posts Joseph\nrose in the service, the reader is referred to the same periodical.\n\nBoggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy, jungly district,\nfamous for snipe-shooting, and where not unfrequently you may flush a\ntiger.  Ramgunge, where there is a magistrate, is only forty miles off,\nand there is a cavalry station about thirty miles farther; so Joseph\nwrote home to his parents, when he took possession of his\ncollectorship.  He had lived for about eight years of his life, quite\nalone, at this charming place, scarcely seeing a Christian face except\ntwice a year, when the detachment arrived to carry off the revenues\nwhich he had collected, to Calcutta.\n\nLuckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure of\nwhich he returned to Europe, and which was the source of great comfort\nand amusement to him in his native country.  He did not live with his\nfamily while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like a gay young\nbachelor.  Before he went to India he was too young to partake of the\ndelightful pleasures of a man about town, and plunged into them on his\nreturn with considerable assiduity.  He drove his horses in the Park;\nhe dined at the fashionable taverns (for the Oriental Club was not as\nyet invented); he frequented the theatres, as the mode was in those\ndays, or made his appearance at the opera, laboriously attired in\ntights and a cocked hat.\n\nOn returning to India, and ever after, he used to talk of the pleasure\nof this period of his existence with great enthusiasm, and give you to\nunderstand that he and Brummel were the leading bucks of the day.  But\nhe was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley Wollah.  He scarcely\nknew a single soul in the metropolis: and were it not for his doctor,\nand the society of his blue-pill, and his liver complaint, he must have\ndied of loneliness. He was lazy, peevish, and a bon-vivant; the\nappearance of a lady frightened him beyond measure; hence it was but\nseldom that he joined the paternal circle in Russell Square, where\nthere was plenty of gaiety, and where the jokes of his good-natured old\nfather frightened his amour-propre.  His bulk caused Joseph much\nanxious thought and alarm; now and then he would make a desperate\nattempt to get rid of his superabundant fat; but his indolence and love\nof good living speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform,\nand he found himself again at his three meals a day.  He never was well\ndressed; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and\npassed many hours daily in that occupation. His valet made a fortune\nout of his wardrobe: his toilet-table was covered with as many pomatums\nand essences as ever were employed by an old beauty: he had tried, in\norder to give himself a waist, every girth, stay, and waistband then\ninvented.  Like most fat men, he would have his clothes made too tight,\nand took care they should be of the most brilliant colours and youthful\ncut.  When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would issue forth to\ntake a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in order\nto dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House.\nHe was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of\nthe results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better\nof him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of\nno ordinary cleverness.\n\nThe first move showed considerable skill.  When she called Sedley a\nvery handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who\nwould probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by\nthe compliment paid to her son.  All mothers are.  If you had told\nSycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have\nbeen pleased, witch as she was.  Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would\noverhear the compliment--Rebecca spoke loud enough--and he did hear,\nand (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise\nthrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle with\npleasure.  Then, however, came a recoil.  \"Is the girl making fun of\nme?\" he thought, and straightway he bounced towards the bell, and was\nfor retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes and his\nmother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where he was.  He\nconducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and agitated frame\nof mind. \"Does she really think I am handsome?\" thought he, \"or is she\nonly making game of me?\" We have talked of Joseph Sedley being as vain\nas a girl.  Heaven help us! the girls have only to turn the tables, and\nsay of one of their own sex, \"She is as vain as a man,\" and they will\nhave perfect reason.  The bearded creatures are quite as eager for\npraise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their\npersonal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination,\nas any coquette in the world.\n\nDownstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very\nmodest, and holding her green eyes downwards.  She was dressed in\nwhite, with bare shoulders as white as snow--the picture of youth,\nunprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. \"I must be very\nquiet,\" thought Rebecca, \"and very much interested about India.\"\n\nNow we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her\nson, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this\ndish was offered to Rebecca.  \"What is it?\" said she, turning an\nappealing look to Mr. Joseph.\n\n\"Capital,\" said he.  His mouth was full of it: his face quite red with\nthe delightful exercise of gobbling. \"Mother, it's as good as my own\ncurries in India.\"\n\n\"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish,\" said Miss Rebecca. \"I\nam sure everything must be good that comes from there.\"\n\n\"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear,\" said Mr. Sedley, laughing.\n\nRebecca had never tasted the dish before.\n\n\"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?\" said Mr. Sedley.\n\n\"Oh, excellent!\" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the\ncayenne pepper.\n\n\"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp,\" said Joseph, really interested.\n\n\"A chili,\" said Rebecca, gasping.  \"Oh yes!\"  She thought a chili was\nsomething cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. \"How\nfresh and green they look,\" she said, and put one into her mouth.  It\nwas hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer.\nShe laid down her fork.  \"Water, for Heaven's sake, water!\" she cried.\nMr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock\nExchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes).  \"They are\nreal Indian, I assure you,\" said he.  \"Sambo, give Miss Sharp some\nwater.\"\n\nThe paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital.\nThe ladies only smiled a little.  They thought poor Rebecca suffered\ntoo much.  She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed\nher mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it,\nand as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured\nair, \"I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of\nPersia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights.  Do you put\ncayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?\"\n\nOld Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured\ngirl.  Joseph simply said, \"Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in\nBengal.  We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got\nto prefer it!\"\n\n\"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp,\" said the old\ngentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old\nfellow said to his son, \"Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap\nat you.\"\n\n\"Pooh! nonsense!\" said Joe, highly flattered.  \"I recollect, sir, there\nwas a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and\nafterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in\nthe year '4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you before\ndinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--he's a magistrate at\nBudgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, the\nArtillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me,\n'Sedley,' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks\neither you or Mulligatawney before the rains.' 'Done,' says I; and\negad, sir--this claret's very good.  Adamson's or Carbonell's?\"\n\nA slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was asleep,\nand so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day. But he was\nalways exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and has told this\ndelightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop,\nwhen he came to inquire about the liver and the blue-pill.\n\nBeing an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of\nclaret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of plates\nfull of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes that\nwere lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for novelists\nhave the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal about\nthe girl upstairs.  \"A nice, gay, merry young creature,\" thought he to\nhimself.  \"How she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief at\ndinner!  She dropped it twice.  Who's that singing in the drawing-room?\n'Gad! shall I go up and see?\"\n\nBut his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force. His\nfather was asleep: his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-coach\nstanding hard by in Southampton Row.  \"I'll go and see the Forty\nThieves,\" said he, \"and Miss Decamp's dance\"; and he slipped away\ngently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, without\nwaking his worthy parent.\n\n\"There goes Joseph,\" said Amelia, who was looking from the open windows\nof the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano.\n\n\"Miss Sharp has frightened him away,\" said Mrs. Sedley.  \"Poor Joe, why\nWILL he be so shy?\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nThe Green Silk Purse\n\nPoor Joe's panic lasted for two or three days; during which he did not\nvisit the house, nor during that period did Miss Rebecca ever mention\nhis name.  She was all respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley; delighted\nbeyond measure at the Bazaars; and in a whirl of wonder at the theatre,\nwhither the good-natured lady took her.  One day, Amelia had a\nheadache, and could not go upon some party of pleasure to which the two\nyoung people were invited: nothing could induce her friend to go\nwithout her. \"What! you who have shown the poor orphan what happiness\nand love are for the first time in her life--quit YOU?  Never!\"  and\nthe green eyes looked up to Heaven and filled with tears; and Mrs.\nSedley could not but own that her daughter's friend had a charming kind\nheart of her own.\n\nAs for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughed at them with a cordiality\nand perseverance which not a little pleased and softened that\ngood-natured gentleman.  Nor was it with the chiefs of the family alone\nthat Miss Sharp found favour.  She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop by\nevincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving, which\noperation was then going on in the Housekeeper's room; she persisted in\ncalling Sambo \"Sir,\" and \"Mr. Sambo,\" to the delight of that attendant;\nand she apologised to the lady's maid for giving her trouble in\nventuring to ring the bell, with such sweetness and humility, that the\nServants' Hall was almost as charmed with her as the Drawing Room.\n\nOnce, in looking over some drawings which Amelia had sent from school,\nRebecca suddenly came upon one which caused her to burst into tears and\nleave the room. It was on the day when Joe Sedley made his second\nappearance.\n\nAmelia hastened after her friend to know the cause of this display of\nfeeling, and the good-natured girl came back without her companion,\nrather affected too.  \"You know, her father was our drawing-master,\nMamma, at Chiswick, and used to do all the best parts of our drawings.\"\n\n\"My love! I'm sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did not\ntouch them--he only mounted them.\" \"It was called mounting, Mamma.\nRebecca remembers the drawing, and her father working at it, and the\nthought of it came upon her rather suddenly--and so, you know, she--\"\n\n\"The poor child is all heart,\" said Mrs. Sedley.\n\n\"I wish she could stay with us another week,\" said Amelia.\n\n\"She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet at Dumdum, only\nfairer.  She's married now to Lance, the Artillery Surgeon.  Do you\nknow, Ma'am, that once Quintin, of the 14th, bet me--\"\n\n\"O Joseph, we know that story,\" said Amelia, laughing. \"Never mind about\ntelling that; but persuade Mamma to write to Sir Something Crawley for\nleave of absence for poor dear Rebecca: here she comes, her eyes red\nwith weeping.\"\n\n\"I'm better, now,\" said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible,\ntaking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing it\nrespectfully.  \"How kind you all are to me! All,\" she added, with a\nlaugh, \"except you, Mr. Joseph.\"\n\n\"Me!\" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure. \"Gracious Heavens!\nGood Gad! Miss Sharp!'\n\n\"Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horrid\npepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you? You are not so\ngood to me as dear Amelia.\"\n\n\"He doesn't know you so well,\" cried Amelia.\n\n\"I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear,\" said her mother.\n\n\"The curry was capital; indeed it was,\" said Joe, quite gravely.\n\"Perhaps there was NOT enough citron juice in it--no, there was NOT.\"\n\n\"And the chilis?\"\n\n\"By Jove, how they made you cry out!\" said Joe, caught by the ridicule\nof the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter which ended\nquite suddenly, as usual.\n\n\"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me another time,\" said\nRebecca, as they went down again to dinner.  \"I didn't think men were\nfond of putting poor harmless girls to pain.\"\n\n\"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world.\"\n\n\"No,\" said she, \"I KNOW you wouldn't\"; and then she gave him ever so\ngentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quite\nfrightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then down\nat the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart did\nnot thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion of regard on\nthe part of the simple girl.\n\nIt was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable\ncorrectness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but, you\nsee, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself.  If a\nperson is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must\nsweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle matters\nwith the young man, she must do it for herself.  And oh, what a mercy\nit is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't\nresist them, if they do.  Let them show ever so little inclination, and\nmen go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same.\nAnd this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair\nopportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.\nOnly let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the\nfield, and don't know their own power.  They would overcome us entirely\nif they did.\n\n\"Egad!\" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, \"I exactly begin to\nfeel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler.\" Many sweet little appeals,\nhalf tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes\nat dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of considerable\nfamiliarity with the family, and as for the girls, they loved each\nother like sisters.  Young unmarried girls always do, if they are in a\nhouse together for ten days.\n\nAs if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every way--what must\nAmelia do, but remind her brother of a promise made last Easter\nholidays--\"When I was a girl at school,\" said she, laughing--a promise\nthat he, Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall.  \"Now,\" she said, \"that\nRebecca is with us, will be the very time.\"\n\n\"O, delightful!\" said Rebecca, going to clap her hands; but she\nrecollected herself, and paused, like a modest creature, as she was.\n\n\"To-night is not the night,\" said Joe.\n\n\"Well, to-morrow.\"\n\n\"To-morrow your Papa and I dine out,\" said Mrs. Sedley.\n\n\"You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed?\" said her husband, \"and\nthat a woman of your years and size is to catch cold, in such an\nabominable damp place?\"\n\n\"The children must have someone with them,\" cried Mrs. Sedley.\n\n\"Let Joe go,\" said-his father, laughing.  \"He's big enough.\" At which\nspeech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laughing, and poor fat\nJoe felt inclined to become a parricide almost.\n\n\"Undo his stays!\" continued the pitiless old gentleman. \"Fling some\nwater in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him upstairs: the dear\ncreature's fainting.  Poor victim! carry him up; he's as light as a\nfeather!\"\n\n\"If I stand this, sir, I'm d------!\" roared Joseph.\n\n\"Order Mr. Jos's elephant, Sambo!\" cried the father. \"Send to Exeter\n'Change, Sambo\"; but seeing Jos ready almost to cry with vexation, the\nold joker stopped his laughter, and said, holding out his hand to his\nson, \"It's all fair on the Stock Exchange, Jos--and, Sambo, never mind\nthe elephant, but give me and Mr. Jos a glass of Champagne.  Boney\nhimself hasn't got such in his cellar, my boy!\"\n\nA goblet of Champagne restored Joseph's equanimity, and before the\nbottle was emptied, of which as an invalid he took two-thirds, he had\nagreed to take the young ladies to Vauxhall.\n\n\"The girls must have a gentleman apiece,\" said the old gentleman. \"Jos\nwill be sure to leave Emmy in the crowd, he will be so taken up with\nMiss Sharp here.  Send to 96, and ask George Osborne if he'll come.\"\n\nAt this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley looked\nat her husband and laughed.  Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a manner\nindescribably roguish, and he looked at Amelia; and Amelia, hanging\ndown her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how to\nblush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life--at least\nnot since she was eight years old, and when she was caught stealing jam\nout of a cupboard by her godmother.  \"Amelia had better write a note,\"\nsaid her father; \"and let George Osborne see what a beautiful\nhandwriting we have brought back from Miss Pinkerton's.  Do you\nremember when you wrote to him to come on Twelfth-night, Emmy, and\nspelt twelfth without the f?\"\n\n\"That was years ago,\" said Amelia.\n\n\"It seems like yesterday, don't it, John?\" said Mrs. Sedley to her\nhusband; and that night in a conversation which took place in a front\nroom in the second floor, in a sort of tent, hung round with chintz of\na rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico of a tender\nrose-colour; in the interior of which species of marquee was a\nfeatherbed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round red\nfaces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one, ending\nin a tassel--in a CURTAIN LECTURE, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husband\nto task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.\n\n\"It was quite wicked of you, Mr. Sedley,\" said she, \"to torment the\npoor boy so.\"\n\n\"My dear,\" said the cotton-tassel in defence of his conduct, \"Jos is a\ngreat deal vainer than you ever were in your life, and that's saying a\ngood deal.  Though, some thirty years ago, in the year seventeen\nhundred and eighty--what was it?--perhaps you had a right to be vain--I\ndon't say no.  But I've no patience with Jos and his dandified modesty.\nIt is out-Josephing Joseph, my dear, and all the while the boy is only\nthinking of himself, and what a fine fellow he is.  I doubt, Ma'am, we\nshall have some trouble with him yet.  Here is Emmy's little friend\nmaking love to him as hard as she can; that's quite clear; and if she\ndoes not catch him some other will. That man is destined to be a prey\nto woman, as I am to go on 'Change every day.  It's a mercy he did not\nbring us over a black daughter-in-law, my dear.  But, mark my words,\nthe first woman who fishes for him, hooks him.\"\n\n\"She shall go off to-morrow, the little artful creature,\" said Mrs.\nSedley, with great energy.\n\n\"Why not she as well as another, Mrs. Sedley? The girl's a white face\nat any rate.  I don't care who marries him.  Let Joe please himself.\"\n\nAnd presently the voices of the two speakers were hushed, or were\nreplaced by the gentle but unromantic music of the nose; and save when\nthe church bells tolled the hour and the watchman called it, all was\nsilent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell Square, and the\nStock Exchange.\n\nWhen morning came, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley no longer thought of\nexecuting her threats with regard to Miss Sharp; for though nothing is\nmore keen, nor more common, nor more justifiable, than maternal\njealousy, yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the little,\nhumble, grateful, gentle governess would dare to look up to such a\nmagnificent personage as the Collector of Boggley Wollah. The petition,\ntoo, for an extension of the young lady's leave of absence had already\nbeen despatched, and it would be difficult to find a pretext for\nabruptly dismissing her.\n\nAnd as if all things conspired in favour of the gentle Rebecca, the\nvery elements (although she was not inclined at first to acknowledge\ntheir action in her behalf) interposed to aid her.  For on the evening\nappointed for the Vauxhall party, George Osborne having come to dinner,\nand the elders of the house having departed, according to invitation,\nto dine with Alderman Balls at Highbury Barn, there came on such a\nthunder-storm as only happens on Vauxhall nights, and as obliged the\nyoung people, perforce, to remain at home.  Mr. Osborne did not seem in\nthe least disappointed at this occurrence. He and Joseph Sedley drank a\nfitting quantity of port-wine, tete-a-tete, in the dining-room, during\nthe drinking of which Sedley told a number of his best Indian stories;\nfor he was extremely talkative in man's society; and afterwards Miss\nAmelia Sedley did the honours of the drawing-room; and these four young\npersons passed such a comfortable evening together, that they declared\nthey were rather glad of the thunder-storm than otherwise, which had\ncaused them to put off their visit to Vauxhall.\n\nOsborne was Sedley's godson, and had been one of the family any time\nthese three-and-twenty years.  At six weeks old, he had received from\nJohn Sedley a present of a silver cup; at six months old, a coral with\ngold whistle and bells; from his youth upwards he was \"tipped\"\nregularly by the old gentleman at Christmas: and on going back to\nschool, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley,\nwhen the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George an\nimpudent urchin of ten years old.  In a word, George was as familiar\nwith the family as such daily acts of kindness and intercourse could\nmake him.\n\n\"Do you remember, Sedley, what a fury you were in, when I cut off the\ntassels of your Hessian boots, and how Miss--hem!--how Amelia rescued\nme from a beating, by falling down on her knees and crying out to her\nbrother Jos, not to beat little George?\"\n\nJos remembered this remarkable circumstance perfectly well, but vowed\nthat he had totally forgotten it.\n\n\"Well, do you remember coming down in a gig to Dr. Swishtail's to see\nme, before you went to India, and giving me half a guinea and a pat on\nthe head? I always had an idea that you were at least seven feet high,\nand was quite astonished at your return from India to find you no\ntaller than myself.\"\n\n\"How good of Mr. Sedley to go to your school and give you the money!\"\nexclaimed Rebecca, in accents of extreme delight.\n\n\"Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too. Boys never\nforget those tips at school, nor the givers.\"\n\n\"I delight in Hessian boots,\" said Rebecca.  Jos Sedley, who admired\nhis own legs prodigiously, and always wore this ornamental chaussure,\nwas extremely pleased at this remark, though he drew his legs under his\nchair as it was made.\n\n\"Miss Sharp!\" said George Osborne, \"you who are so clever an artist,\nyou must make a grand historical picture of the scene of the boots.\nSedley shall be represented in buckskins, and holding one of the\ninjured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have hold of my\nshirt-frill.  Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little hands\nup; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as the\nfrontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book.\"\n\n\"I shan't have time to do it here,\" said Rebecca.  \"I'll do it\nwhen--when I'm gone.\" And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and\npiteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry they\nwould be to part with her.\n\n\"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca,\" said Amelia.\n\n\"Why?\" answered the other, still more sadly.  \"That I may be only the\nmore unhap--unwilling to lose you?\" And she turned away her head.\nAmelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears which, we\nhave said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing.  George\nOsborne looked at the two young women with a touched curiosity; and\nJoseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out of his big chest,\nas he cast his eyes down towards his favourite Hessian boots.\n\n\"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley--Amelia,\" said George, who felt at\nthat moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the\nabove-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of\nthe company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say\nthat they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time,\nI should perhaps be telling an untruth, for the fact is that these two\nyoung people had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose,\nand their banns had, as it were, been read in their respective families\nany time these ten years.  They went off to the piano, which was\nsituated, as pianos usually are, in the back drawing-room; and as it\nwas rather dark, Miss Amelia, in the most unaffected way in the world,\nput her hand into Mr. Osborne's, who, of course, could see the way\namong the chairs and ottomans a great deal better than she could.  But\nthis arrangement left Mr. Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, at\nthe drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied in knitting a\ngreen silk purse.\n\n\"There is no need to ask family secrets,\" said Miss Sharp.  \"Those two\nhave told theirs.\"\n\n\"As soon as he gets his company,\" said Joseph, \"I believe the affair is\nsettled.  George Osborne is a capital fellow.\"\n\n\"And your sister the dearest creature in the world,\" said Rebecca.\n\"Happy the man who wins her!\" With this, Miss Sharp gave a great sigh.\n\nWhen two unmarried persons get together, and talk upon such delicate\nsubjects as the present, a great deal of confidence and intimacy is\npresently established between them.  There is no need of giving a\nspecial report of the conversation which now took place between Mr.\nSedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged from\nthe foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent; it seldom\nis in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown and\ningenious novels. As there was music in the next room, the talk was\ncarried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though, for the\nmatter of that, the couple in the next apartment would not have been\ndisturbed had the talking been ever so loud, so occupied were they with\ntheir own pursuits.\n\nAlmost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found himself\ntalking, without the least timidity or hesitation, to a person of the\nother sex.  Miss Rebecca asked him a great number of questions about\nIndia, which gave him an opportunity of narrating many interesting\nanecdotes about that country and himself.  He described the balls at\nGovernment House, and the manner in which they kept themselves cool in\nthe hot weather, with punkahs, tatties, and other contrivances; and he\nwas very witty regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto, the\nGovernor-General, patronised; and then he described a tiger-hunt; and\nthe manner in which the mahout of his elephant had been pulled off his\nseat by one of the infuriated animals.  How delighted Miss Rebecca was\nat the Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories of the\nScotch aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a sad wicked satirical\ncreature; and how frightened she was at the story of the elephant! \"For\nyour mother's sake, dear Mr. Sedley,\" she said, \"for the sake of all\nyour friends, promise NEVER to go on one of those horrid expeditions.\"\n\n\"Pooh, pooh, Miss Sharp,\" said he, pulling up his shirt-collars; \"the\ndanger makes the sport only the pleasanter.\" He had never been but once\nat a tiger-hunt, when the accident in question occurred, and when he\nwas half killed--not by the tiger, but by the fright. And as he talked\non, he grew quite bold, and actually had the audacity to ask Miss\nRebecca for whom she was knitting the green silk purse? He was quite\nsurprised and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner.\n\n\"For any one who wants a purse,\" replied Miss Rebecca, looking at him\nin the most gentle winning way. Sedley was going to make one of the\nmost eloquent speeches possible, and had begun--\"O Miss Sharp, how--\"\nwhen some song which was performed in the other room came to an end,\nand caused him to hear his own voice so distinctly that he stopped,\nblushed, and blew his nose in great agitation.\n\n\"Did you ever hear anything like your brother's eloquence?\" whispered\nMr. Osborne to Amelia.  \"Why, your friend has worked miracles.\"\n\n\"The more the better,\" said Miss Amelia; who, like almost all women who\nare worth a pin, was a match-maker in her heart, and would have been\ndelighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India.  She had, too,\nin the course of this few days' constant intercourse, warmed into a\nmost tender friendship for Rebecca, and discovered a million of virtues\nand amiable qualities in her which she had not perceived when they were\nat Chiswick together.  For the affection of young ladies is of as rapid\ngrowth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.  It\nis no blame to them that after marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe\nsubsides.  It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call\na yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly\nnot satisfied until they have husbands and children on whom they may\ncentre affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small\nchange.\n\nHaving expended her little store of songs, or having stayed long enough\nin the back drawing-room, it now appeared proper to Miss Amelia to ask\nher friend to sing.  \"You would not have listened to me,\" she said to\nMr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib), \"had you heard\nRebecca first.\"\n\n\"I give Miss Sharp warning, though,\" said Osborne, \"that, right or\nwrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley the first singer in the world.\"\n\n\"You shall hear,\" said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was actually polite\nenough to carry the candles to the piano. Osborne hinted that he should\nlike quite as well to sit in the dark; but Miss Sedley, laughing,\ndeclined to bear him company any farther, and the two accordingly\nfollowed Mr. Joseph.  Rebecca sang far better than her friend (though\nof course Osborne was free to keep his opinion), and exerted herself to\nthe utmost, and, indeed, to the wonder of Amelia, who had never known\nher perform so well.  She sang a French song, which Joseph did not\nunderstand in the least, and which George confessed he did not\nunderstand, and then a number of those simple ballads which were the\nfashion forty years ago, and in which British tars, our King, poor\nSusan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes. They\nare not, it is said, very brilliant, in a musical point of view, but\ncontain numberless good-natured, simple appeals to the affections,\nwhich people understood better than the milk-and-water lagrime,\nsospiri, and felicita of the eternal Donizettian music with which we\nare favoured now-a-days.\n\nConversation of a sentimental sort, befitting the subject, was carried\non between the songs, to which Sambo, after he had brought the tea, the\ndelighted cook, and even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, condescended\nto listen on the landing-place.\n\nAmong these ditties was one, the last of the concert, and to the\nfollowing effect:\n\nAh! bleak and barren was the moor, Ah! loud and piercing was the storm,\nThe cottage roof was shelter'd sure, The cottage hearth was bright and\nwarm--An orphan boy the lattice pass'd, And, as he mark'd its cheerful\nglow, Felt doubly keen the midnight blast, And doubly cold the fallen\nsnow.\n\nThey mark'd him as he onward prest, With fainting heart and weary limb;\nKind voices bade him turn and rest, And gentle faces welcomed him. The\ndawn is up--the guest is gone, The cottage hearth is blazing still;\nHeaven pity all poor wanderers lone! Hark to the wind upon the hill!\n\nIt was the sentiment of the before-mentioned words, \"When I'm gone,\"\nover again.  As she came to the last words, Miss Sharp's \"deep-toned\nvoice faltered.\" Everybody felt the allusion to her departure, and to\nher hapless orphan state.  Joseph Sedley, who was fond of music, and\nsoft-hearted, was in a state of ravishment during the performance of\nthe song, and profoundly touched at its conclusion. If he had had the\ncourage; if George and Miss Sedley had remained, according to the\nformer's proposal, in the farther room, Joseph Sedley's bachelorhood\nwould have been at an end, and this work would never have been written.\nBut at the close of the ditty, Rebecca quitted the piano, and giving\nher hand to Amelia, walked away into the front drawing-room twilight;\nand, at this moment, Mr. Sambo made his appearance with a tray,\ncontaining sandwiches, jellies, and some glittering glasses and\ndecanters, on which Joseph Sedley's attention was immediately fixed.\nWhen the parents of the house of Sedley returned from their\ndinner-party, they found the young people so busy in talking, that they\nhad not heard the arrival of the carriage, and Mr. Joseph was in the\nact of saying, \"My dear Miss Sharp, one little teaspoonful of jelly to\nrecruit you after your immense--your--your delightful exertions.\"\n\n\"Bravo, Jos!\" said Mr. Sedley; on hearing the bantering of which\nwell-known voice, Jos instantly relapsed into an alarmed silence, and\nquickly took his departure. He did not lie awake all night thinking\nwhether or not he was in love with Miss Sharp; the passion of love\nnever interfered with the appetite or the slumber of Mr. Joseph Sedley;\nbut he thought to himself how delightful it would be to hear such songs\nas those after Cutcherry--what a distinguee girl she was--how she could\nspeak French better than the Governor-General's lady herself--and what\na sensation she would make at the Calcutta balls. \"It's evident the\npoor devil's in love with me,\" thought he.  \"She is just as rich as\nmost of the girls who come out to India.  I might go farther, and fare\nworse, egad!\" And in these meditations he fell asleep.\n\nHow Miss Sharp lay awake, thinking, will he come or not to-morrow? need\nnot be told here.  To-morrow came, and, as sure as fate, Mr. Joseph\nSedley made his appearance before luncheon.  He had never been known\nbefore to confer such an honour on Russell Square. George Osborne was\nsomehow there already (sadly \"putting out\" Amelia, who was writing to\nher twelve dearest friends at Chiswick Mall), and Rebecca was employed\nupon her yesterday's work.  As Joe's buggy drove up, and while, after\nhis usual thundering knock and pompous bustle at the door, the\nex-Collector of Boggley Wollah laboured up stairs to the drawing-room,\nknowing glances were telegraphed between Osborne and Miss Sedley, and\nthe pair, smiling archly, looked at Rebecca, who actually blushed as\nshe bent her fair ringlets over her knitting.  How her heart beat as\nJoseph appeared--Joseph, puffing from the staircase in shining creaking\nboots--Joseph, in a new waistcoat, red with heat and nervousness, and\nblushing behind his wadded neckcloth.  It was a nervous moment for all;\nand as for Amelia, I think she was more frightened than even the people\nmost concerned.\n\nSambo, who flung open the door and announced Mr. Joseph, followed\ngrinning, in the Collector's rear, and bearing two handsome nosegays of\nflowers, which the monster had actually had the gallantry to purchase\nin Covent Garden Market that morning--they were not as big as the\nhaystacks which ladies carry about with them now-a-days, in cones of\nfiligree paper; but the young women were delighted with the gift, as\nJoseph presented one to each, with an exceedingly solemn bow.\n\n\"Bravo, Jos!\" cried Osborne.\n\n\"Thank you, dear Joseph,\" said Amelia, quite ready to kiss her brother,\nif he were so minded.  (And I think for a kiss from such a dear\ncreature as Amelia, I would purchase all Mr. Lee's conservatories out\nof hand.)\n\n\"O heavenly, heavenly flowers!\" exclaimed Miss Sharp, and smelt them\ndelicately, and held them to her bosom, and cast up her eyes to the\nceiling, in an ecstasy of admiration.  Perhaps she just looked first\ninto the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet-doux hidden among\nthe flowers; but there was no letter.\n\n\"Do they talk the language of flowers at Boggley Wollah, Sedley?\" asked\nOsborne, laughing.\n\n\"Pooh, nonsense!\" replied the sentimental youth. \"Bought 'em at\nNathan's; very glad you like 'em; and eh, Amelia, my dear, I bought a\npine-apple at the same time, which I gave to Sambo.  Let's have it for\ntiffin; very cool and nice this hot weather.\" Rebecca said she had\nnever tasted a pine, and longed beyond everything to taste one.\n\nSo the conversation went on.  I don't know on what pretext Osborne left\nthe room, or why, presently, Amelia went away, perhaps to superintend\nthe slicing of the pine-apple; but Jos was left alone with Rebecca, who\nhad resumed her work, and the green silk and the shining needles were\nquivering rapidly under her white slender fingers.\n\n\"What a beautiful, BYOO-OOTIFUL song that was you sang last night, dear\nMiss Sharp,\" said the Collector.  \"It made me cry almost; 'pon my\nhonour it did.\"\n\n\"Because you have a kind heart, Mr. Joseph; all the Sedleys have, I\nthink.\"\n\n\"It kept me awake last night, and I was trying to hum it this morning,\nin bed; I was, upon my honour.  Gollop, my doctor, came in at eleven\n(for I'm a sad invalid, you know, and see Gollop every day), and, 'gad!\nthere I was, singing away like--a robin.\"\n\n\"O you droll creature! Do let me hear you sing it.\"\n\n\"Me? No, you, Miss Sharp; my dear Miss Sharp, do sing it.\"  \"Not now,\nMr. Sedley,\" said Rebecca, with a sigh.  \"My spirits are not equal to\nit; besides, I must finish the purse.  Will you help me, Mr. Sedley?\"\nAnd before he had time to ask how, Mr. Joseph Sedley, of the East India\nCompany's service, was actually seated tete-a-tete with a young lady,\nlooking at her with a most killing expression; his arms stretched out\nbefore her in an imploring attitude, and his hands bound in a web of\ngreen silk, which she was unwinding.\n\nIn this romantic position Osborne and Amelia found the interesting\npair, when they entered to announce that tiffin was ready.  The skein\nof silk was just wound round the card; but Mr. Jos had never spoken.\n\n\"I am sure he will to-night, dear,\" Amelia said, as she pressed\nRebecca's hand; and Sedley, too, had communed with his soul, and said\nto himself, \"'Gad, I'll pop the question at Vauxhall.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nDobbin of Ours\n\nCuff's fight with Dobbin, and the unexpected issue of that contest,\nwill long be remembered by every man who was educated at Dr.\nSwishtail's famous school.  The latter Youth (who used to be called\nHeigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, and by many other names indicative of\npuerile contempt) was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed,\nthe dullest of all Dr. Swishtail's young gentlemen. His parent was a\ngrocer in the city: and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted into\nDr. Swishtail's academy upon what are called \"mutual principles\"--that\nis to say, the expenses of his board and schooling were defrayed by his\nfather in goods, not money; and he stood there--most at the bottom of\nthe school--in his scraggy corduroys and jacket, through the seams of\nwhich his great big bones were bursting--as the representative of so\nmany pounds of tea, candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of which a\nvery mild proportion was supplied for the puddings of the\nestablishment), and other commodities.  A dreadful day it was for young\nDobbin when one of the youngsters of the school, having run into the\ntown upon a poaching excursion for hardbake and polonies, espied the\ncart of Dobbin & Rudge, Grocers and Oilmen, Thames Street, London, at\nthe Doctor's door, discharging a cargo of the wares in which the firm\ndealt.\n\nYoung Dobbin had no peace after that.  The jokes were frightful, and\nmerciless against him.  \"Hullo, Dobbin,\" one wag would say, \"here's\ngood news in the paper.  Sugars is ris', my boy.\" Another would set a\nsum--\"If a pound of mutton-candles cost sevenpence-halfpenny, how much\nmust Dobbin cost?\" and a roar would follow from all the circle of young\nknaves, usher and all, who rightly considered that the selling of goods\nby retail is a shameful and infamous practice, meriting the contempt\nand scorn of all real gentlemen.\n\n\"Your father's only a merchant, Osborne,\" Dobbin said in private to the\nlittle boy who had brought down the storm upon him.  At which the\nlatter replied haughtily, \"My father's a gentleman, and keeps his\ncarriage\"; and Mr. William Dobbin retreated to a remote outhouse in the\nplayground, where he passed a half-holiday in the bitterest sadness and\nwoe.  Who amongst us is there that does not recollect similar hours of\nbitter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice; who shrinks before\na slight; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude\nfor kindness, as a generous boy? and how many of those gentle souls do\nyou degrade, estrange, torture, for the sake of a little loose\narithmetic, and miserable dog-latin?\n\nNow, William Dobbin, from an incapacity to acquire the rudiments of the\nabove language, as they are propounded in that wonderful book the Eton\nLatin Grammar, was compelled to remain among the very last of Doctor\nSwishtail's scholars, and was \"taken down\" continually by little\nfellows with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with the lower\nform, a giant amongst them, with his downcast, stupefied look, his\ndog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys.  High and low, all made\nfun of him.  They sewed up those corduroys, tight as they were. They\ncut his bed-strings.  They upset buckets and benches, so that he might\nbreak his shins over them, which he never failed to do.  They sent him\nparcels, which, when opened, were found to contain the paternal soap\nand candles.  There was no little fellow but had his jeer and joke at\nDobbin; and he bore everything quite patiently, and was entirely dumb\nand miserable.\n\nCuff, on the contrary, was the great chief and dandy of the Swishtail\nSeminary.  He smuggled wine in.  He fought the town-boys. Ponies used\nto come for him to ride home on Saturdays.  He had his top-boots in his\nroom, in which he used to hunt in the holidays.  He had a gold\nrepeater: and took snuff like the Doctor.  He had been to the Opera,\nand knew the merits of the principal actors, preferring Mr. Kean to Mr.\nKemble.  He could knock you off forty Latin verses in an hour.  He\ncould make French poetry. What else didn't he know, or couldn't he do?\nThey said even the Doctor himself was afraid of him.\n\nCuff, the unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his subjects, and\nbullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes:\nthat toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at\ncricket during whole summer afternoons.  \"Figs\" was the fellow whom he\ndespised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering\nat him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold personal communication.\n\nOne day in private, the two young gentlemen had had a difference. Figs,\nalone in the schoolroom, was blundering over a home letter; when Cuff,\nentering, bade him go upon some message, of which tarts were probably\nthe subject.\n\n\"I can't,\" says Dobbin; \"I want to finish my letter.\"\n\n\"You CAN'T?\" says Mr. Cuff, laying hold of that document (in which many\nwords were scratched out, many were mis-spelt, on which had been spent\nI don't know how much thought, and labour, and tears; for the poor\nfellow was writing to his mother, who was fond of him, although she was\na grocer's wife, and lived in a back parlour in Thames Street).  \"You\nCAN'T?\" says Mr. Cuff: \"I should like to know why, pray? Can't you\nwrite to old Mother Figs to-morrow?\"\n\n\"Don't call names,\" Dobbin said, getting off the bench very nervous.\n\n\"Well, sir, will you go?\" crowed the cock of the school.\n\n\"Put down the letter,\" Dobbin replied; \"no gentleman readth letterth.\"\n\n\"Well, NOW will you go?\" says the other.\n\n\"No, I won't.  Don't strike, or I'll THMASH you,\" roars out Dobbin,\nspringing to a leaden inkstand, and looking so wicked, that Mr. Cuff\npaused, turned down his coat sleeves again, put his hands into his\npockets, and walked away with a sneer.  But he never meddled personally\nwith the grocer's boy after that; though we must do him the justice to\nsay he always spoke of Mr. Dobbin with contempt behind his back.\n\nSome time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, on a\nsunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor William Dobbin,\nwho was lying under a tree in the playground, spelling over a favourite\ncopy of the Arabian Nights which he had apart from the rest of the\nschool, who were pursuing their various sports--quite lonely, and\nalmost happy.  If people would but leave children to themselves; if\nteachers would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upon\ndirecting their thoughts, and dominating their feelings--those feelings\nand thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I know\nof each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbour, and\nhow far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or\ngirl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and\nworld-corrupted person who rules him?)--if, I say, parents and masters\nwould leave their children alone a little more, small harm would\naccrue, although a less quantity of as in praesenti might be acquired.\n\nWell, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away\nwith Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed\nand the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the Prince\nfound her, and whither we should all like to make a tour; when shrill\ncries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie; and\nlooking up, he saw Cuff before him, belabouring a little boy.\n\nIt was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer's cart; but he\nbore little malice, not at least towards the young and small. \"How dare\nyou, sir, break the bottle?\" says Cuff to the little urchin, swinging a\nyellow cricket-stump over him.\n\nThe boy had been instructed to get over the playground wall (at a\nselected spot where the broken glass had been removed from the top, and\nniches made convenient in the brick); to run a quarter of a mile; to\npurchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit; to brave all the Doctor's\noutlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground again; during\nthe performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and the bottle was\nbroken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his pantaloons had been\ndamaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly guilty and\ntrembling, though harmless, wretch.\n\n\"How dare you, sir, break it?\" says Cuff; \"you blundering little thief.\nYou drank the shrub, and now you pretend to have broken the bottle.\nHold out your hand, sir.\"\n\nDown came the stump with a great heavy thump on the child's hand.  A\nmoan followed.  Dobbin looked up. The Fairy Peribanou had fled into the\ninmost cavern with Prince Ahmed: the Roc had whisked away Sindbad the\nSailor out of the Valley of Diamonds out of sight, far into the clouds:\nand there was everyday life before honest William; and a big boy\nbeating a little one without cause.\n\n\"Hold out your other hand, sir,\" roars Cuff to his little schoolfellow,\nwhose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin quivered, and gathered\nhimself up in his narrow old clothes.\n\n\"Take that, you little devil!\" cried Mr. Cuff, and down came the wicket\nagain on the child's hand.--Don't be horrified, ladies, every boy at a\npublic school has done it. Your children will so do and be done by, in\nall probability.  Down came the wicket again; and Dobbin started up.\n\nI can't tell what his motive was.  Torture in a public school is as\nmuch licensed as the knout in Russia.  It would be ungentlemanlike (in\na manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin's foolish soul revolted against\nthat exercise of tyranny; or perhaps he had a hankering feeling of\nrevenge in his mind, and longed to measure himself against that\nsplendid bully and tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp,\ncircumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, in the\nplace.  Whatever may have been his incentive, however, up he sprang,\nand screamed out, \"Hold off, Cuff; don't bully that child any more; or\nI'll--\"\n\n\"Or you'll what?\" Cuff asked in amazement at this interruption. \"Hold\nout your hand, you little beast.\"\n\n\"I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life,\" Dobbin\nsaid, in reply to the first part of Cuff's sentence; and little\nOsborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder and incredulity at\nseeing this amazing champion put up suddenly to defend him: while\nCuff's astonishment was scarcely less.  Fancy our late monarch George\nIII when he heard of the revolt of the North American colonies: fancy\nbrazen Goliath when little David stepped forward and claimed a meeting;\nand you have the feelings of Mr. Reginald Cuff when this rencontre was\nproposed to him.\n\n\"After school,\" says he, of course; after a pause and a look, as much\nas to say, \"Make your will, and communicate your last wishes to your\nfriends between this time and that.\"\n\n\"As you please,\" Dobbin said.  \"You must be my bottle holder, Osborne.\"\n\n\"Well, if you like,\" little Osborne replied; for you see his papa kept\na carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his champion.\n\nYes, when the hour of battle came, he was almost ashamed to say, \"Go\nit, Figs\"; and not a single other boy in the place uttered that cry for\nthe first two or three rounds of this famous combat; at the\ncommencement of which the scientific Cuff, with a contemptuous smile on\nhis face, and as light and as gay as if he was at a ball, planted his\nblows upon his adversary, and floored that unlucky champion three times\nrunning.  At each fall there was a cheer; and everybody was anxious to\nhave the honour of offering the conqueror a knee.\n\n\"What a licking I shall get when it's over,\" young Osborne thought,\npicking up his man.  \"You'd best give in,\" he said to Dobbin; \"it's\nonly a thrashing, Figs, and you know I'm used to it.\" But Figs, all\nwhose limbs were in a quiver, and whose nostrils were breathing rage,\nput his little bottle-holder aside, and went in for a fourth time.\n\nAs he did not in the least know how to parry the blows that were aimed\nat himself, and Cuff had begun the attack on the three preceding\noccasions, without ever allowing his enemy to strike, Figs now\ndetermined that he would commence the engagement by a charge on his own\npart; and accordingly, being a left-handed man, brought that arm into\naction, and hit out a couple of times with all his might--once at Mr.\nCuff's left eye, and once on his beautiful Roman nose.\n\nCuff went down this time, to the astonishment of the assembly. \"Well\nhit, by Jove,\" says little Osborne, with the air of a connoisseur,\nclapping his man on the back. \"Give it him with the left, Figs my boy.\"\n\nFigs's left made terrific play during all the rest of the combat. Cuff\nwent down every time.  At the sixth round, there were almost as many\nfellows shouting out, \"Go it, Figs,\" as there were youths exclaiming,\n\"Go it, Cuff.\" At the twelfth round the latter champion was all abroad,\nas the saying is, and had lost all presence of mind and power of attack\nor defence.  Figs, on the contrary, was as calm as a quaker.  His face\nbeing quite pale, his eyes shining open, and a great cut on his\nunderlip bleeding profusely, gave this young fellow a fierce and\nghastly air, which perhaps struck terror into many spectators.\nNevertheless, his intrepid adversary prepared to close for the\nthirteenth time.\n\nIf I had the pen of a Napier, or a Bell's Life, I should like to\ndescribe this combat properly.  It was the last charge of the\nGuard--(that is, it would have been, only Waterloo had not yet taken\nplace)--it was Ney's column breasting the hill of La Haye Sainte,\nbristling with ten thousand bayonets, and crowned with twenty\neagles--it was the shout of the beef-eating British, as leaping down\nthe hill they rushed to hug the enemy in the savage arms of battle--in\nother words, Cuff coming up full of pluck, but quite reeling and\ngroggy, the Fig-merchant put in his left as usual on his adversary's\nnose, and sent him down for the last time.\n\n\"I think that will do for him,\" Figs said, as his opponent dropped as\nneatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot's ball plump into the\npocket at billiards; and the fact is, when time was called, Mr.\nReginald Cuff was not able, or did not choose, to stand up again.\n\nAnd now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as would have made\nyou think he had been their darling champion through the whole battle;\nand as absolutely brought Dr. Swishtail out of his study, curious to\nknow the cause of the uproar.  He threatened to flog Figs violently, of\ncourse; but Cuff, who had come to himself by this time, and was washing\nhis wounds, stood up and said, \"It's my fault, sir--not Figs'--not\nDobbin's.  I was bullying a little boy; and he served me right.\" By\nwhich magnanimous speech he not only saved his conqueror a whipping,\nbut got back all his ascendancy over the boys which his defeat had\nnearly cost him.\n\nYoung Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of the transaction.\n\n\nSugarcane House, Richmond, March, 18--\n\nDEAR MAMA,--I hope you are quite well.  I should be much obliged to you\nto send me a cake and five shillings. There has been a fight here\nbetween Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, you know, was the Cock of the School.\nThey fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked.  So Cuff is now Only\nSecond Cock.  The fight was about me.  Cuff was licking me for breaking\na bottle of milk, and Figs wouldn't stand it.  We call him Figs because\nhis father is a Grocer--Figs & Rudge, Thames St., City--I think as he\nfought for me you ought to buy your Tea & Sugar at his father's.  Cuff\ngoes home every Saturday, but can't this, because he has 2 Black Eyes.\nHe has a white Pony to come and fetch him, and a groom in livery on a\nbay mare.  I wish my Papa would let me have a Pony, and I am\n\nYour dutiful Son, GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE\n\nP.S.--Give my love to little Emmy.  I am cutting her out a Coach in\ncardboard.  Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake.\n\n\nIn consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose prodigiously in\nthe estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the name of Figs, which\nhad been a byword of reproach, became as respectable and popular a\nnickname as any other in use in the school.  \"After all, it's not his\nfault that his father's a grocer,\" George Osborne said, who, though a\nlittle chap, had a very high popularity among the Swishtail youth; and\nhis opinion was received with great applause. It was voted low to sneer\nat Dobbin about this accident of birth. \"Old Figs\" grew to be a name of\nkindness and endearment; and the sneak of an usher jeered at him no\nlonger.\n\nAnd Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He made\nwonderful advances in scholastic learning.  The superb Cuff himself, at\nwhose condescension Dobbin could only blush and wonder, helped him on\nwith his Latin verses; \"coached\" him in play-hours: carried him\ntriumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-sized form;\nand even there got a fair place for him.  It was discovered, that\nalthough dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly\nquick.  To the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a\nFrench prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should have\nseen his mother's face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) was\npresented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the\nparents and company, with an inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin.  All the\nboys clapped hands in token of applause and sympathy.  His blushes, his\nstumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed as\nhe went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate? Old Dobbin,\nhis father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him two\nguineas publicly; most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for the\nschool: and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays.\n\nDobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy\nchange in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly\ndisposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good\nfortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to\nwhom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by\nchildren--such an affection, as we read in the charming fairy-book,\nuncouth Orson had for splendid young Valentine his conqueror.  He flung\nhimself down at little Osborne's feet, and loved him. Even before they\nwere acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret.  Now he was his\nvalet, his dog, his man Friday.  He believed Osborne to be the\npossessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the\nmost active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys.  He\nshared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives,\npencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic books,\nwith large coloured pictures of knights and robbers, in many of which\nlatter you might read inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire,\nfrom his attached friend William Dobbin--the which tokens of homage\nGeorge received very graciously, as became his superior merit.\n\nSo that Lieutenant Osborne, when coming to Russell Square on the day of\nthe Vauxhall party, said to the ladies, \"Mrs. Sedley, Ma'am, I hope you\nhave room; I've asked Dobbin of ours to come and dine here, and go with\nus to Vauxhall.  He's almost as modest as Jos.\"\n\n\"Modesty! pooh,\" said the stout gentleman, casting a vainqueur look at\nMiss Sharp.\n\n\"He is--but you are incomparably more graceful, Sedley,\" Osborne added,\nlaughing.  \"I met him at the Bedford, when I went to look for you; and\nI told him that Miss Amelia was come home, and that we were all bent on\ngoing out for a night's pleasuring; and that Mrs. Sedley had forgiven\nhis breaking the punch-bowl at the child's party. Don't you remember\nthe catastrophe, Ma'am, seven years ago?\"\n\n\"Over Mrs. Flamingo's crimson silk gown,\" said good-natured Mrs.\nSedley.  \"What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much more\ngraceful.  Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of them.\nSuch figures! my dears.\"\n\n\"The Alderman's very rich, isn't he?\" Osborne said archly.  \"Don't you\nthink one of the daughters would be a good spec for me, Ma'am?\"\n\n\"You foolish creature! Who would take you, I should like to know, with\nyour yellow face?\"\n\n\"Mine a yellow face? Stop till you see Dobbin.  Why, he had the yellow\nfever three times; twice at Nassau, and once at St. Kitts.\"\n\n\"Well, well; yours is quite yellow enough for us.  Isn't it, Emmy?\"\nMrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss Amelia only made a smile and a\nblush; and looking at Mr. George Osborne's pale interesting\ncountenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers,\nwhich the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary\ncomplacency, she thought in her little heart that in His Majesty's\narmy, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a hero.\n\"I don't care about Captain Dobbin's complexion,\" she said, \"or about\nhis awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know,\" her little reason\nbeing, that he was the friend and champion of George.\n\n\"There's not a finer fellow in the service,\" Osborne said, \"nor a\nbetter officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly.\" And he looked\ntowards the glass himself with much naivete; and in so doing, caught\nMiss Sharp's eye fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a little,\nand Rebecca thought in her heart, \"Ah, mon beau Monsieur! I think I\nhave YOUR gauge\"--the little artful minx!\n\nThat evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in a\nwhite muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like a\nlark, and as fresh as a rose--a very tall ungainly gentleman, with\nlarge hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped head\nof black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat and cocked hat\nof those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiest\nbows that was ever performed by a mortal.\n\nThis was no other than Captain William Dobbin, of His Majesty's\nRegiment of Foot, returned from yellow fever, in the West Indies, to\nwhich the fortune of the service had ordered his regiment, whilst so\nmany of his gallant comrades were reaping glory in the Peninsula.\n\nHe had arrived with a knock so very timid and quiet that it was\ninaudible to the ladies upstairs: otherwise, you may be sure Miss\nAmelia would never have been so bold as to come singing into the room.\nAs it was, the sweet fresh little voice went right into the Captain's\nheart, and nestled there.  When she held out her hand for him to shake,\nbefore he enveloped it in his own, he paused, and thought--\"Well, is it\npossible--are you the little maid I remember in the pink frock, such a\nshort time ago--the night I upset the punch-bowl, just after I was\ngazetted? Are you the little girl that George Osborne said should marry\nhim?  What a blooming young creature you seem, and what a prize the\nrogue has got!\" All this he thought, before he took Amelia's hand into\nhis own, and as he let his cocked hat fall.\n\nHis history since he left school, until the very moment when we have\nthe pleasure of meeting him again, although not fully narrated, has\nyet, I think, been indicated sufficiently for an ingenious reader by\nthe conversation in the last page.  Dobbin, the despised grocer, was\nAlderman Dobbin--Alderman Dobbin was Colonel of the City Light Horse,\nthen burning with military ardour to resist the French Invasion.\nColonel Dobbin's corps, in which old Mr. Osborne himself was but an\nindifferent corporal, had been reviewed by the Sovereign and the Duke\nof York; and the colonel and alderman had been knighted.  His son had\nentered the army: and young Osborne followed presently in the same\nregiment.  They had served in the West Indies and in Canada.  Their\nregiment had just come home, and the attachment of Dobbin to George\nOsborne was as warm and generous now as it had been when the two were\nschoolboys.\n\nSo these worthy people sat down to dinner presently. They talked about\nwar and glory, and Boney and Lord Wellington, and the last Gazette.  In\nthose famous days every gazette had a victory in it, and the two\ngallant young men longed to see their own names in the glorious list,\nand cursed their unlucky fate to belong to a regiment which had been\naway from the chances of honour.  Miss Sharp kindled with this exciting\ntalk, but Miss Sedley trembled and grew quite faint as she heard it.\nMr. Jos told several of his tiger-hunting stories, finished the one\nabout Miss Cutler and Lance the surgeon; helped Rebecca to everything\non the table, and himself gobbled and drank a great deal.\n\nHe sprang to open the door for the ladies, when they retired, with the\nmost killing grace--and coming back to the table, filled himself bumper\nafter bumper of claret, which he swallowed with nervous rapidity.\n\n\"He's priming himself,\" Osborne whispered to Dobbin, and at length the\nhour and the carriage arrived for Vauxhall.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nVauxhall\n\nI know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are\nsome terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-natured\nreader to remember that we are only discoursing at present about a\nstockbroker's family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, or\nluncheon, or dinner, or talking and making love as people do in common\nlife, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to mark\nthe progress of their loves.  The argument stands thus--Osborne, in\nlove with Amelia, has asked an old friend to dinner and to\nVauxhall--Jos Sedley is in love with Rebecca.  Will he marry her? That\nis the great subject now in hand.\n\nWe might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in the romantic,\nor in the facetious manner.  Suppose we had laid the scene in Grosvenor\nSquare, with the very same adventures--would not some people have\nlistened? Suppose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley fell in love, and\nthe Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady Amelia, with the full\nconsent of the Duke, her noble father: or instead of the supremely\ngenteel, suppose we had resorted to the entirely low, and described\nwhat was going on in Mr. Sedley's kitchen--how black Sambo was in love\nwith the cook (as indeed he was), and how he fought a battle with the\ncoachman in her behalf; how the knife-boy was caught stealing a cold\nshoulder of mutton, and Miss Sedley's new femme de chambre refused to\ngo to bed without a wax candle; such incidents might be made to provoke\nmuch delightful laughter, and be supposed to represent scenes of\n\"life.\" Or if, on the contrary, we had taken a fancy for the terrible,\nand made the lover of the new femme de chambre a professional burglar,\nwho bursts into the house with his band, slaughters black Sambo at the\nfeet of his master, and carries off Amelia in her night-dress, not to\nbe let loose again till the third volume, we should easily have\nconstructed a tale of thrilling interest, through the fiery chapters of\nwhich the reader should hurry, panting.  But my readers must hope for\nno such romance, only a homely story, and must be content with a\nchapter about Vauxhall, which is so short that it scarce deserves to be\ncalled a chapter at all.  And yet it is a chapter, and a very important\none too.  Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem\nto be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?\n\nLet us then step into the coach with the Russell Square party, and be\noff to the Gardens.  There is barely room between Jos and Miss Sharp,\nwho are on the front seat.  Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin opposite,\nbetween Captain Dobbin and Amelia.\n\nEvery soul in the coach agreed that on that night Jos would propose to\nmake Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley.  The parents at home had acquiesced in\nthe arrangement, though, between ourselves, old Mr. Sedley had a\nfeeling very much akin to contempt for his son.  He said he was vain,\nselfish, lazy, and effeminate.  He could not endure his airs as a man\nof fashion, and laughed heartily at his pompous braggadocio stories.\n\"I shall leave the fellow half my property,\" he said; \"and he will\nhave, besides, plenty of his own; but as I am perfectly sure that if\nyou, and I, and his sister were to die to-morrow, he would say 'Good\nGad!' and eat his dinner just as well as usual, I am not going to make\nmyself anxious about him. Let him marry whom he likes.  It's no affair\nof mine.\"\n\nAmelia, on the other hand, as became a young woman of her prudence and\ntemperament, was quite enthusiastic for the match.  Once or twice Jos\nhad been on the point of saying something very important to her, to\nwhich she was most willing to lend an ear, but the fat fellow could not\nbe brought to unbosom himself of his great secret, and very much to his\nsister's disappointment he only rid himself of a large sigh and turned\naway.\n\nThis mystery served to keep Amelia's gentle bosom in a perpetual\nflutter of excitement.  If she did not speak with Rebecca on the tender\nsubject, she compensated herself with long and intimate conversations\nwith Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, who dropped some hints to the\nlady's-maid, who may have cursorily mentioned the matter to the cook,\nwho carried the news, I have no doubt, to all the tradesmen, so that\nMr. Jos's marriage was now talked of by a very considerable number of\npersons in the Russell Square world.\n\nIt was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son would demean\nhimself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.  \"But, lor', Ma'am,\"\nejaculated Mrs. Blenkinsop, \"we was only grocers when we married Mr.\nS., who was a stock-broker's clerk, and we hadn't five hundred pounds\namong us, and we're rich enough now.\" And Amelia was entirely of this\nopinion, to which, gradually, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley was brought.\n\nMr. Sedley was neutral.  \"Let Jos marry whom he likes,\" he said; \"it's\nno affair of mine.  This girl has no fortune; no more had Mrs. Sedley.\nShe seems good-humoured and clever, and will keep him in order,\nperhaps.  Better she, my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen of\nmahogany grandchildren.\"\n\nSo that everything seemed to smile upon Rebecca's fortunes.  She took\nJos's arm, as a matter of course, on going to dinner; she had sate by\nhim on the box of his open carriage (a most tremendous \"buck\" he was,\nas he sat there, serene, in state, driving his greys), and though\nnobody said a word on the subject of the marriage, everybody seemed to\nunderstand it.  All she wanted was the proposal, and ah! how Rebecca\nnow felt the want of a mother!--a dear, tender mother, who would have\nmanaged the business in ten minutes, and, in the course of a little\ndelicate confidential conversation, would have extracted the\ninteresting avowal from the bashful lips of the young man!\n\nSuch was the state of affairs as the carriage crossed Westminster\nbridge.\n\nThe party was landed at the Royal Gardens in due time. As the majestic\nJos stepped out of the creaking vehicle the crowd gave a cheer for the\nfat gentleman, who blushed and looked very big and mighty, as he walked\naway with Rebecca under his arm.  George, of course, took charge of\nAmelia.  She looked as happy as a rose-tree in sunshine.\n\n\"I say, Dobbin,\" says George, \"just look to the shawls and things,\nthere's a good fellow.\" And so while he paired off with Miss Sedley,\nand Jos squeezed through the gate into the gardens with Rebecca at his\nside, honest Dobbin contented himself by giving an arm to the shawls,\nand by paying at the door for the whole party.\n\nHe walked very modestly behind them.  He was not willing to spoil\nsport.  About Rebecca and Jos he did not care a fig.  But he thought\nAmelia worthy even of the brilliant George Osborne, and as he saw that\ngood-looking couple threading the walks to the girl's delight and\nwonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort of fatherly\npleasure.  Perhaps he felt that he would have liked to have something\non his own arm besides a shawl (the people laughed at seeing the gawky\nyoung officer carrying this female burthen); but William Dobbin was\nvery little addicted to selfish calculation at all; and so long as his\nfriend was enjoying himself, how should he be discontented? And the\ntruth is, that of all the delights of the Gardens; of the hundred\nthousand extra lamps, which were always lighted; the fiddlers in cocked\nhats, who played ravishing melodies under the gilded cockle-shell in\nthe midst of the gardens; the singers, both of comic and sentimental\nballads, who charmed the ears there; the country dances, formed by\nbouncing cockneys and cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping,\nthumping and laughter; the signal which announced that Madame Saqui was\nabout to mount skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; the\nhermit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so\nfavourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout handed\nabout by the people in the shabby old liveries; and the twinkling\nboxes, in which the happy feasters made-believe to eat slices of almost\ninvisible ham--of all these things, and of the gentle Simpson, that\nkind smiling idiot, who, I daresay, presided even then over the\nplace--Captain William Dobbin did not take the slightest notice.\n\nHe carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attended\nunder the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Salmon performed the Battle of\nBorodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had lately\nmet with his Russian reverses)--Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it as he walked\naway, and found he was humming--the tune which Amelia Sedley sang on\nthe stairs, as she came down to dinner.\n\nHe burst out laughing at himself; for the truth is, he could sing no\nbetter than an owl.\n\nIt is to be understood, as a matter of course, that our young people,\nbeing in parties of two and two, made the most solemn promises to keep\ntogether during the evening, and separated in ten minutes afterwards.\nParties at Vauxhall always did separate, but 'twas only to meet again\nat supper-time, when they could talk of their mutual adventures in the\ninterval.\n\nWhat were the adventures of Mr. Osborne and Miss Amelia? That is a\nsecret.  But be sure of this--they were perfectly happy, and correct in\ntheir behaviour; and as they had been in the habit of being together\nany time these fifteen years, their tete-a-tete offered no particular\nnovelty.\n\nBut when Miss Rebecca Sharp and her stout companion lost themselves in\na solitary walk, in which there were not above five score more of\ncouples similarly straying, they both felt that the situation was\nextremely tender and critical, and now or never was the moment Miss\nSharp thought, to provoke that declaration which was trembling on the\ntimid lips of Mr. Sedley.  They had previously been to the panorama of\nMoscow, where a rude fellow, treading on Miss Sharp's foot, caused her\nto fall back with a little shriek into the arms of Mr. Sedley, and this\nlittle incident increased the tenderness and confidence of that\ngentleman to such a degree, that he told her several of his favourite\nIndian stories over again for, at least, the sixth time.\n\n\"How I should like to see India!\" said Rebecca.\n\n\"SHOULD you?\" said Joseph, with a most killing tenderness; and was no\ndoubt about to follow up this artful interrogatory by a question still\nmore tender (for he puffed and panted a great deal, and Rebecca's hand,\nwhich was placed near his heart, could count the feverish pulsations of\nthat organ), when, oh, provoking! the bell rang for the fireworks, and,\na great scuffling and running taking place, these interesting lovers\nwere obliged to follow in the stream of people.\n\nCaptain Dobbin had some thoughts of joining the party at supper: as, in\ntruth, he found the Vauxhall amusements not particularly lively--but he\nparaded twice before the box where the now united couples were met, and\nnobody took any notice of him.  Covers were laid for four.  The mated\npairs were prattling away quite happily, and Dobbin knew he was as\nclean forgotten as if he had never existed in this world.\n\n\"I should only be de trop,\" said the Captain, looking at them rather\nwistfully.  \"I'd best go and talk to the hermit,\"--and so he strolled\noff out of the hum of men, and noise, and clatter of the banquet, into\nthe dark walk, at the end of which lived that well-known pasteboard\nSolitary.  It wasn't very good fun for Dobbin--and, indeed, to be alone\nat Vauxhall, I have found, from my own experience, to be one of the\nmost dismal sports ever entered into by a bachelor.\n\nThe two couples were perfectly happy then in their box: where the most\ndelightful and intimate conversation took place.  Jos was in his glory,\nordering about the waiters with great majesty.  He made the salad; and\nuncorked the Champagne; and carved the chickens; and ate and drank the\ngreater part of the refreshments on the tables. Finally, he insisted\nupon having a bowl of rack punch; everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall.\n\"Waiter, rack punch.\"\n\nThat bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this history.  And why not\na bowl of rack punch as well as any other cause? Was not a bowl of\nprussic acid the cause of Fair Rosamond's retiring from the world? Was\nnot a bowl of wine the cause of the demise of Alexander the Great, or,\nat least, does not Dr. Lempriere say so?--so did this bowl of rack\npunch influence the fates of all the principal characters in this\n\"Novel without a Hero,\" which we are now relating.  It influenced their\nlife, although most of them did not taste a drop of it.\n\nThe young ladies did not drink it; Osborne did not like it; and the\nconsequence was that Jos, that fat gourmand, drank up the whole\ncontents of the bowl; and the consequence of his drinking up the whole\ncontents of the bowl was a liveliness which at first was astonishing,\nand then became almost painful; for he talked and laughed so loud as to\nbring scores of listeners round the box, much to the confusion of the\ninnocent party within it; and, volunteering to sing a song (which he\ndid in that maudlin high key peculiar to gentlemen in an inebriated\nstate), he almost drew away the audience who were gathered round the\nmusicians in the gilt scollop-shell, and received from his hearers a\ngreat deal of applause.\n\n\"Brayvo, Fat un!\" said one; \"Angcore, Daniel Lambert!\" said another;\n\"What a figure for the tight-rope!\" exclaimed another wag, to the\ninexpressible alarm of the ladies, and the great anger of Mr. Osborne.\n\n\"For Heaven's sake, Jos, let us get up and go,\" cried that gentleman,\nand the young women rose.\n\n\"Stop, my dearest diddle-diddle-darling,\" shouted Jos, now as bold as a\nlion, and clasping Miss Rebecca round the waist.  Rebecca started, but\nshe could not get away her hand.  The laughter outside redoubled.  Jos\ncontinued to drink, to make love, and to sing; and, winking and waving\nhis glass gracefully to his audience, challenged all or any to come in\nand take a share of his punch.\n\nMr. Osborne was just on the point of knocking down a gentleman in\ntop-boots, who proposed to take advantage of this invitation, and a\ncommotion seemed to be inevitable, when by the greatest good luck a\ngentleman of the name of Dobbin, who had been walking about the\ngardens, stepped up to the box.  \"Be off, you fools!\" said this\ngentleman--shouldering off a great number of the crowd, who vanished\npresently before his cocked hat and fierce appearance--and he entered\nthe box in a most agitated state.\n\n\"Good Heavens! Dobbin, where have you been?\" Osborne said, seizing the\nwhite cashmere shawl from his friend's arm, and huddling up Amelia in\nit.--\"Make yourself useful, and take charge of Jos here, whilst I take\nthe ladies to the carriage.\"\n\nJos was for rising to interfere--but a single push from Osborne's\nfinger sent him puffing back into his seat again, and the lieutenant\nwas enabled to remove the ladies in safety.  Jos kissed his hand to\nthem as they retreated, and hiccupped out \"Bless you! Bless you!\" Then,\nseizing Captain Dobbin's hand, and weeping in the most pitiful way, he\nconfided to that gentleman the secret of his loves.  He adored that\ngirl who had just gone out; he had broken her heart, he knew he had, by\nhis conduct; he would marry her next morning at St. George's, Hanover\nSquare; he'd knock up the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth: he\nwould, by Jove! and have him in readiness; and, acting on this hint,\nCaptain Dobbin shrewdly induced him to leave the gardens and hasten to\nLambeth Palace, and, when once out of the gates, easily conveyed Mr.\nJos Sedley into a hackney-coach, which deposited him safely at his\nlodgings.\n\nGeorge Osborne conducted the girls home in safety: and when the door\nwas closed upon them, and as he walked across Russell Square, laughed\nso as to astonish the watchman.  Amelia looked very ruefully at her\nfriend, as they went up stairs, and kissed her, and went to bed without\nany more talking.\n\n\"He must propose to-morrow,\" thought Rebecca.  \"He called me his soul's\ndarling, four times; he squeezed my hand in Amelia's presence.  He must\npropose to-morrow.\" And so thought Amelia, too. And I dare say she\nthought of the dress she was to wear as bridesmaid, and of the presents\nwhich she should make to her nice little sister-in-law, and of a\nsubsequent ceremony in which she herself might play a principal part,\n&c., and &c., and &c., and &c.\n\nOh, ignorant young creatures! How little do you know the effect of rack\npunch! What is the rack in the punch, at night, to the rack in the head\nof a morning? To this truth I can vouch as a man; there is no headache\nin the world like that caused by Vauxhall punch. Through the lapse of\ntwenty years, I can remember the consequence of two glasses! two\nwine-glasses! but two, upon the honour of a gentleman; and Joseph\nSedley, who had a liver complaint, had swallowed at least a quart of\nthe abominable mixture.\n\nThat next morning, which Rebecca thought was to dawn upon her fortune,\nfound Sedley groaning in agonies which the pen refuses to describe.\nSoda-water was not invented yet.  Small beer--will it be believed!--was\nthe only drink with which unhappy gentlemen soothed the fever of their\nprevious night's potation.  With this mild beverage before him, George\nOsborne found the ex-Collector of Boggley Wollah groaning on the sofa\nat his lodgings.  Dobbin was already in the room, good-naturedly\ntending his patient of the night before.  The two officers, looking at\nthe prostrate Bacchanalian, and askance at each other, exchanged the\nmost frightful sympathetic grins.  Even Sedley's valet, the most solemn\nand correct of gentlemen, with the muteness and gravity of an\nundertaker, could hardly keep his countenance in order, as he looked at\nhis unfortunate master.\n\n\"Mr. Sedley was uncommon wild last night, sir,\" he whispered in\nconfidence to Osborne, as the latter mounted the stair.  \"He wanted to\nfight the 'ackney-coachman, sir. The Capting was obliged to bring him\nupstairs in his harms like a babby.\" A momentary smile flickered over\nMr. Brush's features as he spoke; instantly, however, they relapsed\ninto their usual unfathomable calm, as he flung open the drawing-room\ndoor, and announced \"Mr. Hosbin.\"\n\n\"How are you, Sedley?\" that young wag began, after surveying his\nvictim.  \"No bones broke? There's a hackney-coachman downstairs with a\nblack eye, and a tied-up head, vowing he'll have the law of you.\"\n\n\"What do you mean--law?\" Sedley faintly asked.\n\n\"For thrashing him last night--didn't he, Dobbin? You hit out, sir,\nlike Molyneux.  The watchman says he never saw a fellow go down so\nstraight.  Ask Dobbin.\"\n\n\"You DID have a round with the coachman,\" Captain Dobbin said, \"and\nshowed plenty of fight too.\"\n\n\"And that fellow with the white coat at Vauxhall! How Jos drove at him!\nHow the women screamed! By Jove, sir, it did my heart good to see you.\nI thought you civilians had no pluck; but I'll never get in your way\nwhen you are in your cups, Jos.\"\n\n\"I believe I'm very terrible, when I'm roused,\" ejaculated Jos from the\nsofa, and made a grimace so dreary and ludicrous, that the Captain's\npoliteness could restrain him no longer, and he and Osborne fired off a\nringing volley of laughter.\n\nOsborne pursued his advantage pitilessly.  He thought Jos a milksop. He\nhad been revolving in his mind the marriage question pending between\nJos and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a\nfamily into which he, George Osborne, of the --th, was going to marry,\nshould make a mesalliance with a little nobody--a little upstart\ngoverness.  \"You hit, you poor old fellow!\" said Osborne. \"You\nterrible! Why, man, you couldn't stand--you made everybody laugh in the\nGardens, though you were crying yourself.  You were maudlin, Jos.\nDon't you remember singing a song?\"\n\n\"A what?\" Jos asked.\n\n\"A sentimental song, and calling Rosa, Rebecca, what's her name,\nAmelia's little friend--your dearest diddle-diddle-darling?\" And this\nruthless young fellow, seizing hold of Dobbin's hand, acted over the\nscene, to the horror of the original performer, and in spite of\nDobbin's good-natured entreaties to him to have mercy.\n\n\"Why should I spare him?\" Osborne said to his friend's remonstrances,\nwhen they quitted the invalid, leaving him under the hands of Doctor\nGollop.  \"What the deuce right has he to give himself his patronizing\nairs, and make fools of us at Vauxhall? Who's this little schoolgirl\nthat is ogling and making love to him? Hang it, the family's low enough\nalready, without HER.  A governess is all very well, but I'd rather\nhave a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've proper\npride, and know my own station: let her know hers.  And I'll take down\nthat great hectoring Nabob, and prevent him from being made a greater\nfool than he is.  That's why I told him to look out, lest she brought\nan action against him.\"\n\n\"I suppose you know best,\" Dobbin said, though rather dubiously. \"You\nalways were a Tory, and your family's one of the oldest in England.\nBut--\"\n\n\"Come and see the girls, and make love to Miss Sharp yourself,\" the\nlieutenant here interrupted his friend; but Captain Dobbin declined to\njoin Osborne in his daily visit to the young ladies in Russell Square.\n\nAs George walked down Southampton Row, from Holborn, he laughed as he\nsaw, at the Sedley Mansion, in two different stories two heads on the\nlook-out.\n\nThe fact is, Miss Amelia, in the drawing-room balcony, was looking very\neagerly towards the opposite side of the Square, where Mr. Osborne\ndwelt, on the watch for the lieutenant himself; and Miss Sharp, from\nher little bed-room on the second floor, was in observation until Mr.\nJoseph's great form should heave in sight.\n\n\"Sister Anne is on the watch-tower,\" said he to Amelia, \"but there's\nnobody coming\"; and laughing and enjoying the joke hugely, he described\nin the most ludicrous terms to Miss Sedley, the dismal condition of her\nbrother.\n\n\"I think it's very cruel of you to laugh, George,\" she said, looking\nparticularly unhappy; but George only laughed the more at her piteous\nand discomfited mien, persisted in thinking the joke a most diverting\none, and when Miss Sharp came downstairs, bantered her with a great\ndeal of liveliness upon the effect of her charms on the fat civilian.\n\n\"O Miss Sharp! if you could but see him this morning,\" he\nsaid--\"moaning in his flowered dressing-gown--writhing on his sofa; if\nyou could but have seen him lolling out his tongue to Gollop the\napothecary.\"\n\n\"See whom?\" said Miss Sharp.\n\n\"Whom? O whom?  Captain Dobbin, of course, to whom we were all so\nattentive, by the way, last night.\"\n\n\"We were very unkind to him,\" Emmy said, blushing very much.  \"I--I\nquite forgot him.\"\n\n\"Of course you did,\" cried Osborne, still on the laugh.\n\n\"One can't be ALWAYS thinking about Dobbin, you know, Amelia.  Can one,\nMiss Sharp?\"\n\n\"Except when he overset the glass of wine at dinner,\" Miss Sharp said,\nwith a haughty air and a toss of the head, \"I never gave the existence\nof Captain Dobbin one single moment's consideration.\"\n\n\"Very good, Miss Sharp, I'll tell him,\" Osborne said; and as he spoke\nMiss Sharp began to have a feeling of distrust and hatred towards this\nyoung officer, which he was quite unconscious of having inspired.  \"He\nis to make fun of me, is he?\" thought Rebecca.  \"Has he been laughing\nabout me to Joseph?  Has he frightened him? Perhaps he won't come.\"--A\nfilm passed over her eyes, and her heart beat quite quick.\n\n\"You're always joking,\" said she, smiling as innocently as she could.\n\"Joke away, Mr. George; there's nobody to defend ME.\" And George\nOsborne, as she walked away--and Amelia looked reprovingly at him--felt\nsome little manly compunction for having inflicted any unnecessary\nunkindness upon this helpless creature.  \"My dearest Amelia,\" said he,\n\"you are too good--too kind.  You don't know the world.  I do.  And\nyour little friend Miss Sharp must learn her station.\"\n\n\"Don't you think Jos will--\"\n\n\"Upon my word, my dear, I don't know.  He may, or may not.  I'm not his\nmaster.  I only know he is a very foolish vain fellow, and put my dear\nlittle girl into a very painful and awkward position last night.  My\ndearest diddle-diddle-darling!\" He was off laughing again, and he did\nit so drolly that Emmy laughed too.\n\nAll that day Jos never came.  But Amelia had no fear about this; for\nthe little schemer had actually sent away the page, Mr. Sambo's\naide-de-camp, to Mr. Joseph's lodgings, to ask for some book he had\npromised, and how he was; and the reply through Jos's man, Mr. Brush,\nwas, that his master was ill in bed, and had just had the doctor with\nhim.  He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she never had the\ncourage to speak a word on the subject to Rebecca; nor did that young\nwoman herself allude to it in any way during the whole evening after\nthe night at Vauxhall.\n\nThe next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on the sofa,\npretending to work, or to write letters, or to read novels, Sambo came\ninto the room with his usual engaging grin, with a packet under his\narm, and a note on a tray.  \"Note from Mr. Jos, Miss,\" says Sambo.\n\nHow Amelia trembled as she opened it!\n\nSo it ran:\n\nDear Amelia,--I send you the \"Orphan of the Forest.\" I was too ill to\ncome yesterday.  I leave town to-day for Cheltenham.  Pray excuse me,\nif you can, to the amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at Vauxhall, and\nentreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have uttered when\nexcited by that fatal supper.  As soon as I have recovered, for my\nhealth is very much shaken, I shall go to Scotland for some months, and\nam\n\nTruly yours, Jos Sedley\n\nIt was the death-warrant.  All was over.  Amelia did not dare to look\nat Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes, but she dropt the letter into\nher friend's lap; and got up, and went upstairs to her room, and cried\nher little heart out.\n\nBlenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently with\nconsolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept confidentially, and relieved\nherself a good deal.  \"Don't take on, Miss.  I didn't like to tell you.\nBut none of us in the house have liked her except at fust.  I sor her\nwith my own eyes reading your Ma's letters.  Pinner says she's always\nabout your trinket-box and drawers, and everybody's drawers, and she's\nsure she's put your white ribbing into her box.\"\n\n\"I gave it her, I gave it her,\" Amelia said.\n\nBut this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss Sharp.  \"I\ndon't trust them governesses, Pinner,\" she remarked to the maid. \"They\ngive themselves the hairs and hupstarts of ladies, and their wages is\nno better than you nor me.\"\n\nIt now became clear to every soul in the house, except poor Amelia,\nthat Rebecca should take her departure, and high and low (always with\nthe one exception) agreed that that event should take place as speedily\nas possible. Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards,\nreticules, and gimcrack boxes--passed in review all her gowns, fichus,\ntags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and fallals--selecting this thing\nand that and the other, to make a little heap for Rebecca.  And going\nto her Papa, that generous British merchant, who had promised to give\nher as many guineas as she was years old--she begged the old gentleman\nto give the money to dear Rebecca, who must want it, while she lacked\nfor nothing.\n\nShe even made George Osborne contribute, and nothing loth (for he was\nas free-handed a young fellow as any in the army), he went to Bond\nStreet, and bought the best hat and spenser that money could buy.\n\n\"That's George's present to you, Rebecca, dear,\" said Amelia, quite\nproud of the bandbox conveying these gifts.  \"What a taste he has!\nThere's nobody like him.\"\n\n\"Nobody,\" Rebecca answered.  \"How thankful I am to him!\" She was\nthinking in her heart, \"It was George Osborne who prevented my\nmarriage.\"--And she loved George Osborne accordingly.\n\nShe made her preparations for departure with great equanimity; and\naccepted all the kind little Amelia's presents, after just the proper\ndegree of hesitation and reluctance.  She vowed eternal gratitude to\nMrs. Sedley, of course; but did not intrude herself upon that good lady\ntoo much, who was embarrassed, and evidently wishing to avoid her.  She\nkissed Mr. Sedley's hand, when he presented her with the purse; and\nasked permission to consider him for the future as her kind, kind\nfriend and protector.  Her behaviour was so affecting that he was going\nto write her a cheque for twenty pounds more; but he restrained his\nfeelings: the carriage was in waiting to take him to dinner, so he\ntripped away with a \"God bless you, my dear, always come here when you\ncome to town, you know.--Drive to the Mansion House, James.\"\n\nFinally came the parting with Miss Amelia, over which picture I intend\nto throw a veil.  But after a scene in which one person was in earnest\nand the other a perfect performer--after the tenderest caresses, the\nmost pathetic tears, the smelling-bottle, and some of the very best\nfeelings of the heart, had been called into requisition--Rebecca and\nAmelia parted, the former vowing to love her friend for ever and ever\nand ever.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nCrawley of Queen's Crawley\n\nAmong the most respected of the names beginning in C which the\nCourt-Guide contained, in the year 18--, was that of Crawley, Sir Pitt,\nBaronet, Great Gaunt Street, and Queen's Crawley, Hants.  This\nhonourable name had figured constantly also in the Parliamentary list\nfor many years, in conjunction with that of a number of other worthy\ngentlemen who sat in turns for the borough.\n\nIt is related, with regard to the borough of Queen's Crawley, that\nQueen Elizabeth in one of her progresses, stopping at Crawley to\nbreakfast, was so delighted with some remarkably fine Hampshire beer\nwhich was then presented to her by the Crawley of the day (a handsome\ngentleman with a trim beard and a good leg), that she forthwith erected\nCrawley into a borough to send two members to Parliament; and the\nplace, from the day of that illustrious visit, took the name of Queen's\nCrawley, which it holds up to the present moment.  And though, by the\nlapse of time, and those mutations which age produces in empires,\ncities, and boroughs, Queen's Crawley was no longer so populous a place\nas it had been in Queen Bess's time--nay, was come down to that\ncondition of borough which used to be denominated rotten--yet, as Sir\nPitt Crawley would say with perfect justice in his elegant way,\n\"Rotten! be hanged--it produces me a good fifteen hundred a year.\"\n\nSir Pitt Crawley (named after the great Commoner) was the son of\nWalpole Crawley, first Baronet, of the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office in\nthe reign of George II., when he was impeached for peculation, as were\na great number of other honest gentlemen of those days; and Walpole\nCrawley was, as need scarcely be said, son of John Churchill Crawley,\nnamed after the celebrated military commander of the reign of Queen\nAnne.  The family tree (which hangs up at Queen's Crawley) furthermore\nmentions Charles Stuart, afterwards called Barebones Crawley, son of\nthe Crawley of James the First's time; and finally, Queen Elizabeth's\nCrawley, who is represented as the foreground of the picture in his\nforked beard and armour.  Out of his waistcoat, as usual, grows a tree,\non the main branches of which the above illustrious names are\ninscribed.  Close by the name of Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet (the subject\nof the present memoir), are written that of his brother, the Reverend\nBute Crawley (the great Commoner was in disgrace when the reverend\ngentleman was born), rector of Crawley-cum-Snailby, and of various\nother male and female members of the Crawley family.\n\nSir Pitt was first married to Grizzel, sixth daughter of Mungo Binkie,\nLord Binkie, and cousin, in consequence, of Mr. Dundas.  She brought\nhim two sons: Pitt, named not so much after his father as after the\nheaven-born minister; and Rawdon Crawley, from the Prince of Wales's\nfriend, whom his Majesty George IV forgot so completely. Many years\nafter her ladyship's demise, Sir Pitt led to the altar Rosa, daughter\nof Mr. G. Dawson, of Mudbury, by whom he had two daughters, for whose\nbenefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as governess.  It will be\nseen that the young lady was come into a family of very genteel\nconnexions, and was about to move in a much more distinguished circle\nthan that humble one which she had just quitted in Russell Square.\n\nShe had received her orders to join her pupils, in a note which was\nwritten upon an old envelope, and which contained the following words:\n\nSir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be hear on Tuesday,\nas I leaf for Queen's Crawley to-morrow morning ERLY.\n\nGreat Gaunt Street.\n\nRebecca had never seen a Baronet, as far as she knew, and as soon as\nshe had taken leave of Amelia, and counted the guineas which\ngood-natured Mr. Sedley had put into a purse for her, and as soon as\nshe had done wiping her eyes with her handkerchief (which operation she\nconcluded the very moment the carriage had turned the corner of the\nstreet), she began to depict in her own mind what a Baronet must be. \"I\nwonder, does he wear a star?\" thought she, \"or is it only lords that\nwear stars? But he will be very handsomely dressed in a court suit,\nwith ruffles, and his hair a little powdered, like Mr. Wroughton at\nCovent Garden.  I suppose he will be awfully proud, and that I shall be\ntreated most contemptuously.  Still I must bear my hard lot as well as\nI can--at least, I shall be amongst GENTLEFOLKS, and not with vulgar\ncity people\": and she fell to thinking of her Russell Square friends\nwith that very same philosophical bitterness with which, in a certain\napologue, the fox is represented as speaking of the grapes.\n\nHaving passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt Street, the\ncarriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy house between two other\ntall gloomy houses, each with a hatchment over the middle drawing-room\nwindow; as is the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in which\ngloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual.  The shutters of the\nfirst-floor windows of Sir Pitt's mansion were closed--those of the\ndining-room were partially open, and the blinds neatly covered up in\nold newspapers.\n\nJohn, the groom, who had driven the carriage alone, did not care to\ndescend to ring the bell; and so prayed a passing milk-boy to perform\nthat office for him.  When the bell was rung, a head appeared between\nthe interstices of the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by\na man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat, a foul old\nneckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering\nred face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the\ngrin.\n\n\"This Sir Pitt Crawley's?\" says John, from the box.\n\n\"Ees,\" says the man at the door, with a nod.\n\n\"Hand down these 'ere trunks then,\" said John.\n\n\"Hand 'n down yourself,\" said the porter.\n\n\"Don't you see I can't leave my hosses? Come, bear a hand, my fine\nfeller, and Miss will give you some beer,\" said John, with a\nhorse-laugh, for he was no longer respectful to Miss Sharp, as her\nconnexion with the family was broken off, and as she had given nothing\nto the servants on coming away.\n\nThe bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his breeches pockets,\nadvanced on this summons, and throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over his\nshoulder, carried it into the house.\n\n\"Take this basket and shawl, if you please, and open the door,\" said\nMiss Sharp, and descended from the carriage in much indignation.  \"I\nshall write to Mr. Sedley and inform him of your conduct,\" said she to\nthe groom.\n\n\"Don't,\" replied that functionary.  \"I hope you've forgot nothink? Miss\n'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as the lady's maid was to have 'ad?\nI hope they'll fit you. Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of\n'ER,\" continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp: \"a\nbad lot, I tell you, a bad lot,\" and so saying, Mr. Sedley's groom\ndrove away.  The truth is, he was attached to the lady's maid in\nquestion, and indignant that she should have been robbed of her\nperquisites.\n\nOn entering the dining-room, by the orders of the individual in\ngaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not more cheerful than such rooms\nusually are, when genteel families are out of town.  The faithful\nchambers seem, as it were, to mourn the absence of their masters.  The\nturkey carpet has rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under the\nsideboard: the pictures have hidden their faces behind old sheets of\nbrown paper: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a dismal sack of brown\nholland: the window-curtains have disappeared under all sorts of shabby\nenvelopes: the marble bust of Sir Walpole Crawley is looking from its\nblack corner at the bare boards and the oiled fire-irons, and the empty\ncard-racks over the mantelpiece: the cellaret has lurked away behind\nthe carpet: the chairs are turned up heads and tails along the walls:\nand in the dark corner opposite the statue, is an old-fashioned crabbed\nknife-box, locked and sitting on a dumb waiter.\n\nTwo kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an attenuated old poker and\ntongs were, however, gathered round the fire-place, as was a saucepan\nover a feeble sputtering fire.  There was a bit of cheese and bread,\nand a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter in a\npint-pot.\n\n\"Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for you? Like a drop of\nbeer?\"\n\n\"Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?\" said Miss Sharp majestically.\n\n\"He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley.  Reklect you owe me a pint for bringing\ndown your luggage.  He, he! Ask Tinker if I aynt.  Mrs. Tinker, Miss\nSharp; Miss Governess, Mrs. Charwoman.  Ho, ho!\"\n\nThe lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her appearance\nwith a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she had been despatched a\nminute before Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over to\nSir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire.\n\n\"Where's the farden?\" said he.  \"I gave you three halfpence. Where's\nthe change, old Tinker?\"\n\n\"There!\" replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin; \"it's only\nbaronets as cares about farthings.\"\n\n\"A farthing a day is seven shillings a year,\" answered the M.P.; \"seven\nshillings a year is the interest of seven guineas.  Take care of your\nfarthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite nat'ral.\"\n\n\"You may be sure it's Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman,\" said Mrs. Tinker,\nsurlily; \"because he looks to his farthings.  You'll know him better\nafore long.\"\n\n\"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp,\" said the old gentleman, with\nan air almost of politeness.  \"I must be just before I'm generous.\"\n\n\"He never gave away a farthing in his life,\" growled Tinker.\n\n\"Never, and never will: it's against my principle.  Go and get another\nchair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you want to sit down; and then we'll\nhave a bit of supper.\"\n\nPresently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan on the fire, and\nwithdrew from the pot a piece of tripe and an onion, which he divided\ninto pretty equal portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker.\n\"You see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board wages: when\nI'm in town she dines with the family. Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp's\nnot hungry, ain't you, Tink?\" And they fell to upon their frugal supper.\n\nAfter supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his pipe; and when it\nbecame quite dark, he lighted the rushlight in the tin candlestick, and\nproducing from an interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began\nreading them, and putting them in order.\n\n\"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it happens that I\nshall have the pleasure of such a pretty travelling companion\nto-morrow.\"\n\n\"He's always at law business,\" said Mrs. Tinker, taking up the pot of\nporter.\n\n\"Drink and drink about,\" said the Baronet.  \"Yes; my dear, Tinker is\nquite right: I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England.\nLook here at Crawley, Bart. v. Snaffle.  I'll throw him over, or my\nname's not Pitt Crawley.  Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart.\nOverseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart. They can't prove it's\ncommon: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine. It no more belongs to the\nparish than it does to you or Tinker here.  I'll beat 'em, if it cost\nme a thousand guineas. Look over the papers; you may if you like, my\ndear. Do you write a good hand? I'll make you useful when we're at\nQueen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp. Now the dowager's dead I\nwant some one.\"\n\n\"She was as bad as he,\" said Tinker.  \"She took the law of every one of\nher tradesmen; and turned away forty-eight footmen in four year.\"\n\n\"She was close--very close,\" said the Baronet, simply; \"but she was a\nvalyble woman to me, and saved me a steward.\"--And in this confidential\nstrain, and much to the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation\ncontinued for a considerable time.  Whatever Sir Pitt Crawley's\nqualities might be, good or bad, he did not make the least disguise of\nthem.  He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and\nvulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the\nworld.  And so, with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in\nthe morning, he bade her good night. \"You'll sleep with Tinker\nto-night,\" he said; \"it's a big bed, and there's room for two. Lady\nCrawley died in it.  Good night.\"\n\nSir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn Tinker,\nrushlight in hand, led the way up the great bleak stone stairs, past\nthe great dreary drawing-room doors, with the handles muffled up in\npaper, into the great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her\nlast.  The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy, you might have\nfancied, not only that Lady Crawley died in the room, but that her\nghost inhabited it.  Rebecca sprang about the apartment, however, with\nthe greatest liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and\nthe closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers which were\nlocked, and examined the dreary pictures and toilette appointments,\nwhile the old charwoman was saying her prayers.  \"I shouldn't like to\nsleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss,\" said the old\nwoman.  \"There's room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts in it,\" says\nRebecca.  \"Tell me all about Lady Crawley and Sir Pitt Crawley, and\neverybody, my DEAR Mrs. Tinker.\"\n\nBut old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little cross-questioner;\nand signifying to her that bed was a place for sleeping, not\nconversation, set up in her corner of the bed such a snore as only the\nnose of innocence can produce.  Rebecca lay awake for a long, long\ntime, thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which she was\ngoing, and of her chances of success there.  The rushlight flickered in\nthe basin.  The mantelpiece cast up a great black shadow, over half of\na mouldy old sampler, which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt,\nand over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a college\ngown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier. When she went to\nsleep, Rebecca chose that one to dream about.\n\nAt four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning as even made Great\nGaunt Street look cheerful, the faithful Tinker, having wakened her\nbedfellow, and bid her prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the\ngreat hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled the\nsleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way into Oxford Street,\nsummoned a coach from a stand there.  It is needless to particularize\nthe number of the vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationed\nthus early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes that some\nyoung buck, reeling homeward from the tavern, might need the aid of his\nvehicle, and pay him with the generosity of intoxication.\n\nIt is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had any such\nhopes as those above stated, was grossly disappointed; and that the\nworthy Baronet whom he drove to the City did not give him one single\npenny more than his fare.  It was in vain that Jehu appealed and\nstormed; that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter at the\n'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his fare.\n\n\"You'd better not,\" said one of the ostlers; \"it's Sir Pitt Crawley.\"\n\n\"So it is, Joe,\" cried the Baronet, approvingly; \"and I'd like to see\nthe man can do me.\"\n\n\"So should oi,\" said Joe, grinning sulkily, and mounting the Baronet's\nbaggage on the roof of the coach.\n\n\"Keep the box for me, Leader,\" exclaims the Member of Parliament to the\ncoachman; who replied, \"Yes, Sir Pitt,\" with a touch of his hat, and\nrage in his soul (for he had promised the box to a young gentleman from\nCambridge, who would have given a crown to a certainty), and Miss Sharp\nwas accommodated with a back seat inside the carriage, which might be\nsaid to be carrying her into the wide world.\n\nHow the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his five great-coats in\nfront; but was reconciled when little Miss Sharp was made to quit the\ncarriage, and mount up beside him--when he covered her up in one of his\nBenjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how the asthmatic\ngentleman, the prim lady, who declared upon her sacred honour she had\nnever travelled in a public carriage before (there is always such a\nlady in a coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?), and the\nfat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places inside--how the\nporter asked them all for money, and got sixpence from the gentleman\nand five greasy halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage at\nlength drove away--now threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anon\nclattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's, jingling rapidly by the\nstrangers' entry of Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now\ndeparted to the world of shadows--how they passed the White Bear in\nPiccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the market-gardens of\nKnightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen, Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need\nnot be told here. But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in\nformer days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable\njourney, cannot but think of it with a sweet and tender regret.  Where\nis the road now, and its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea\nor Greenwich for the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen?  I wonder where\nare they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead? and the\nwaiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds of\nbeef inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking\npail, where is he, and where is his generation?  To those great\ngeniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved\nreader's children, these men and things will be as much legend and\nhistory as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard.  For them\nstage-coaches will have become romances--a team of four bays as\nfabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess.  Ah, how their coats shone, as\nthe stable-men pulled their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how\ntheir tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they\ndemurely walked away into the inn-yard.  Alas!  we shall never hear the\nhorn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more.\nWhither, however, is the light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us?\nLet us be set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation, and\nsee how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nPrivate and Confidential\n\nMiss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley, Russell Square, London.\n(Free.--Pitt Crawley.)\n\nMY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA,\n\nWith what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the pen to write to my\ndearest friend!  Oh, what a change between to-day and yesterday! Now I\nam friendless and alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet company\nof a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!\n\nI will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed the fatal night\nin which I separated from you.  YOU went on Tuesday to joy and\nhappiness, with your mother and YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by your\nside; and I thought of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, the\nprettiest, I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball.  I was\nbrought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt Crawley's town\nhouse, where, after John the groom had behaved most rudely and\ninsolently to me (alas! 'twas safe to insult poverty and misfortune!),\nI was given over to Sir P.'s care, and made to pass the night in an old\ngloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy old charwoman, who keeps\nthe house.  I did not sleep one single wink the whole night.\n\nSir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to read Cecilia at\nChiswick, imagined a baronet must have been.  Anything, indeed, less\nlike Lord Orville cannot be imagined.  Fancy an old, stumpy, short,\nvulgar, and very dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, who\nsmokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper in a saucepan.\nHe speaks with a country accent, and swore a great deal at the old\ncharwoman, at the hackney coachman who drove us to the inn where the\ncoach went from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THE\nGREATER PART OF THE WAY.\n\nI was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and having arrived at the\ninn, was at first placed inside the coach.  But, when we got to a place\ncalled Leakington, where the rain began to fall very heavily--will you\nbelieve it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a proprietor\nof the coach, and as a passenger came at Mudbury, who wanted an inside\nplace, I was obliged to go outside in the rain, where, however, a young\ngentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very kindly in one of his\nseveral great coats.\n\nThis gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir Pitt very well, and\nlaughed at him a great deal.  They both agreed in calling him an old\nscrew; which means a very stingy, avaricious person.  He never gives\nany money to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and the\nyoung gentleman made me remark that we drove very slow for the last two\nstages on the road, because Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is\nproprietor of the horses for this part of the journey.  \"But won't I\nflog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?\" said the young\nCantab.  \"And sarve 'em right, Master Jack,\" said the guard.  When I\ncomprehended the meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intended\nto drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir Pitt's horses,\nof course I laughed too.\n\nA carriage and four splendid horses, covered with armorial bearings,\nhowever, awaited us at Mudbury, four miles from Queen's Crawley, and we\nmade our entrance to the baronet's park in state.  There is a fine\navenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman at the\nlodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent and a dove, the\nsupporters of the Crawley arms), made us a number of curtsies as she\nflung open the old iron carved doors, which are something like those at\nodious Chiswick.\n\n\"There's an avenue,\" said Sir Pitt, \"a mile long. There's six thousand\npound of timber in them there trees.  Do you call that nothing?\" He\npronounced avenue--EVENUE, and nothing--NOTHINK, so droll; and he had a\nMr. Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the carriage with him, and they\ntalked about distraining, and selling up, and draining and subsoiling,\nand a great deal about tenants and farming--much more than I could\nunderstand.  Sam Miles had been caught poaching, and Peter Bailey had\ngone to the workhouse at last. \"Serve him right,\" said Sir Pitt; \"him\nand his family has been cheating me on that farm these hundred and\nfifty years.\" Some old tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent.\nSir Pitt might have said \"he and his family,\" to be sure; but rich\nbaronets do not need to be careful about grammar, as poor governesses\nmust be.\n\nAs we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire rising above some old\nelms in the park; and before them, in the midst of a lawn, and some\nouthouses, an old red house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, and\nthe windows shining in the sun.  \"Is that your church, sir?\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, hang it,\" (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, A MUCH WICKEDER\nWORD); \"how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my brother Bute, my dear--my brother\nthe parson.  Buty and the Beast I call him, ha, ha!\"\n\nHodson laughed too, and then looking more grave and nodding his head,\nsaid, \"I'm afraid he's better, Sir Pitt.  He was out on his pony\nyesterday, looking at our corn.\"\n\n\"Looking after his tithes, hang'un (only he used the same wicked word).\nWill brandy and water never kill him? He's as tough as old\nwhatdyecallum--old Methusalem.\"\n\nMr. Hodson laughed again.  \"The young men is home from college. They've\nwhopped John Scroggins till he's well nigh dead.\"\n\n\"Whop my second keeper!\" roared out Sir Pitt.\n\n\"He was on the parson's ground, sir,\" replied Mr. Hodson; and Sir Pitt\nin a fury swore that if he ever caught 'em poaching on his ground, he'd\ntransport 'em, by the lord he would.  However, he said, \"I've sold the\npresentation of the living, Hodson; none of that breed shall get it, I\nwar'nt\"; and Mr. Hodson said he was quite right: and I have no doubt\nfrom this that the two brothers are at variance--as brothers often are,\nand sisters too.  Don't you remember the two Miss Scratchleys at\nChiswick, how they used always to fight and quarrel--and Mary Box, how\nshe was always thumping Louisa?\n\nPresently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the wood, Mr.\nHodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir Pitt's order, and rushed upon\nthem with his whip.  \"Pitch into 'em, Hodson,\" roared the baronet;\n\"flog their little souls out, and bring 'em up to the house, the\nvagabonds; I'll commit 'em as sure as my name's Pitt.\" And presently we\nheard Mr. Hodson's whip cracking on the shoulders of the poor little\nblubbering wretches, and Sir Pitt, seeing that the malefactors were in\ncustody, drove on to the hall.\n\nAll the servants were ready to meet us, and . . .\n\nHere, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a dreadful thumping at\nmy door: and who do you think it was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his night-cap\nand dressing-gown, such a figure! As I shrank away from such a visitor,\nhe came forward and seized my candle.  \"No candles after eleven\no'clock, Miss Becky,\" said he.  \"Go to bed in the dark, you pretty\nlittle hussy\" (that is what he called me), \"and unless you wish me to\ncome for the candle every night, mind and be in bed at eleven.\" And\nwith this, he and Mr. Horrocks the butler went off laughing.  You may\nbe sure I shall not encourage any more of their visits.  They let loose\ntwo immense bloodhounds at night, which all last night were yelling and\nhowling at the moon.  \"I call the dog Gorer,\" said Sir Pitt; \"he's\nkilled a man that dog has, and is master of a bull, and the mother I\nused to call Flora; but now I calls her Aroarer, for she's too old to\nbite.  Haw, haw!\"\n\nBefore the house of Queen's Crawley, which is an odious old-fashioned\nred brick mansion, with tall chimneys and gables of the style of Queen\nBess, there is a terrace flanked by the family dove and serpent, and on\nwhich the great hall-door opens.  And oh, my dear, the great hall I am\nsure is as big and as glum as the great hall in the dear castle of\nUdolpho.  It has a large fireplace, in which we might put half Miss\nPinkerton's school, and the grate is big enough to roast an ox at the\nvery least.  Round the room hang I don't know how many generations of\nCrawleys, some with beards and ruffs, some with huge wigs and toes\nturned out, some dressed in long straight stays and gowns that look as\nstiff as towers, and some with long ringlets, and oh, my dear! scarcely\nany stays at all.  At one end of the hall is the great staircase all in\nblack oak, as dismal as may be, and on either side are tall doors with\nstags' heads over them, leading to the billiard-room and the library,\nand the great yellow saloon and the morning-rooms.  I think there are\nat least twenty bedrooms on the first floor; one of them has the bed in\nwhich Queen Elizabeth slept; and I have been taken by my new pupils\nthrough all these fine apartments this morning.  They are not rendered\nless gloomy, I promise you, by having the shutters always shut; and\nthere is scarce one of the apartments, but when the light was let into\nit, I expected to see a ghost in the room.  We have a schoolroom on the\nsecond floor, with my bedroom leading into it on one side, and that of\nthe young ladies on the other.  Then there are Mr. Pitt's\napartments--Mr. Crawley, he is called--the eldest son, and Mr. Rawdon\nCrawley's rooms--he is an officer like SOMEBODY, and away with his\nregiment.  There is no want of room I assure you.  You might lodge all\nthe people in Russell Square in the house, I think, and have space to\nspare.\n\nHalf an hour after our arrival, the great dinner-bell was rung, and I\ncame down with my two pupils (they are very thin insignificant little\nchits of ten and eight years old).  I came down in your dear muslin\ngown (about which that odious Mrs. Pinner was so rude, because you gave\nit me); for I am to be treated as one of the family, except on company\ndays, when the young ladies and I are to dine upstairs.\n\nWell, the great dinner-bell rang, and we all assembled in the little\ndrawing-room where my Lady Crawley sits.  She is the second Lady\nCrawley, and mother of the young ladies.  She was an ironmonger's\ndaughter, and her marriage was thought a great match.  She looks as if\nshe had been handsome once, and her eyes are always weeping for the\nloss of her beauty.  She is pale and meagre and high-shouldered, and\nhas not a word to say for herself, evidently.  Her stepson Mr. Crawley,\nwas likewise in the room.  He was in full dress, as pompous as an\nundertaker.  He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has thin legs, no\nchest, hay-coloured whiskers, and straw-coloured hair.  He is the very\npicture of his sainted mother over the mantelpiece--Griselda of the\nnoble house of Binkie.\n\n\"This is the new governess, Mr. Crawley,\" said Lady Crawley, coming\nforward and taking my hand.  \"Miss Sharp.\"\n\n\"O!\" said Mr. Crawley, and pushed his head once forward and began again\nto read a great pamphlet with which he was busy.\n\n\"I hope you will be kind to my girls,\" said Lady Crawley, with her pink\neyes always full of tears.\n\n\"Law, Ma, of course she will,\" said the eldest: and I saw at a glance\nthat I need not be afraid of THAT woman. \"My lady is served,\" says the\nbutler in black, in an immense white shirt-frill, that looked as if it\nhad been one of the Queen Elizabeth's ruffs depicted in the hall; and\nso, taking Mr. Crawley's arm, she led the way to the dining-room,\nwhither I followed with my little pupils in each hand.\n\nSir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug.  He had just been\nto the cellar, and was in full dress too; that is, he had taken his\ngaiters off, and showed his little dumpy legs in black worsted\nstockings.  The sideboard was covered with glistening old plate--old\ncups, both gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like Rundell\nand Bridge's shop.  Everything on the table was in silver too, and two\nfootmen, with red hair and canary-coloured liveries, stood on either\nside of the sideboard.\n\nMr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said amen, and the great\nsilver dish-covers were removed.\n\n\"What have we for dinner, Betsy?\" said the Baronet.\n\n\"Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt,\" answered Lady Crawley.\n\n\"Mouton aux navets,\" added the butler gravely (pronounce, if you\nplease, moutongonavvy); \"and the soup is potage de mouton a\nl'Ecossaise.  The side-dishes contain pommes de terre au naturel, and\nchoufleur a l'eau.\"\n\n\"Mutton's mutton,\" said the Baronet, \"and a devilish good thing. What\nSHIP was it, Horrocks, and when did you kill?\"  \"One of the black-faced\nScotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday.\"\n\n\"Who took any?\"\n\n\"Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir Pitt; but he says\nthe last was too young and confounded woolly, Sir Pitt.\"\n\n\"Will you take some potage, Miss ah--Miss Blunt? said Mr. Crawley.\n\n\"Capital Scotch broth, my dear,\" said Sir Pitt, \"though they call it by\na French name.\"\n\n\"I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society,\" said Mr. Crawley,\nhaughtily, \"to call the dish as I have called it\"; and it was served to\nus on silver soup plates by the footmen in the canary coats, with the\nmouton aux navets.  Then \"ale and water\" were brought, and served to us\nyoung ladies in wine-glasses.  I am not a judge of ale, but I can say\nwith a clear conscience I prefer water.\n\nWhile we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took occasion to ask what\nhad become of the shoulders of the mutton.\n\n\"I believe they were eaten in the servants' hall,\" said my lady, humbly.\n\n\"They was, my lady,\" said Horrocks, \"and precious little else we get\nthere neither.\"\n\nSir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his conversation with\nMr. Horrocks.  \"That there little black pig of the Kent sow's breed\nmust be uncommon fat now.\"\n\n\"It's not quite busting, Sir Pitt,\" said the butler with the gravest\nair, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young ladies, this time, began\nto laugh violently.\n\n\"Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley,\" said Mr. Crawley, \"your laughter\nstrikes me as being exceedingly out of place.\"\n\n\"Never mind, my lord,\" said the Baronet, \"we'll try the porker on\nSaturday.  Kill un on Saturday morning, John Horrocks.  Miss Sharp\nadores pork, don't you, Miss Sharp?\"\n\nAnd I think this is all the conversation that I remember at dinner.\nWhen the repast was concluded a jug of hot water was placed before Sir\nPitt, with a case-bottle containing, I believe, rum.  Mr. Horrocks\nserved myself and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and a\nbumper was poured out for my lady.  When we retired, she took from her\nwork-drawer an enormous interminable piece of knitting; the young\nladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty pack of cards.  We had\nbut one candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver\ncandlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady, I had my\nchoice of amusement between a volume of sermons, and a pamphlet on the\ncorn-laws, which Mr. Crawley had been reading before dinner.\n\nSo we sat for an hour until steps were heard.\n\n\"Put away the cards, girls,\" cried my lady, in a great tremor; \"put\ndown Mr. Crawley's books, Miss Sharp\"; and these orders had been\nscarcely obeyed, when Mr. Crawley entered the room.\n\n\"We will resume yesterday's discourse, young ladies,\" said he, \"and you\nshall each read a page by turns; so that Miss a--Miss Short may have an\nopportunity of hearing you\"; and the poor girls began to spell a long\ndismal sermon delivered at Bethesda Chapel, Liverpool, on behalf of the\nmission for the Chickasaw Indians. Was it not a charming evening?\n\nAt ten the servants were told to call Sir Pitt and the household to\nprayers.  Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and rather\nunsteady in his gait; and after him the butler, the canaries, Mr.\nCrawley's man, three other men, smelling very much of the stable, and\nfour women, one of whom, I remarked, was very much overdressed, and who\nflung me a look of great scorn as she plumped down on her knees.\n\nAfter Mr. Crawley had done haranguing and expounding, we received our\ncandles, and then we went to bed; and then I was disturbed in my\nwriting, as I have described to my dearest sweetest Amelia.\n\nGood night.  A thousand, thousand, thousand kisses!\n\nSaturday.--This morning, at five, I heard the shrieking of the little\nblack pig.  Rose and Violet introduced me to it yesterday; and to the\nstables, and to the kennel, and to the gardener, who was picking fruit\nto send to market, and from whom they begged hard a bunch of hot-house\ngrapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered every \"Man Jack\" of\nthem, and it would be as much as his place was worth to give any away.\nThe darling girls caught a colt in a paddock, and asked me if I would\nride, and began to ride themselves, when the groom, coming with horrid\noaths, drove them away.\n\nLady Crawley is always knitting the worsted.  Sir Pitt is always tipsy,\nevery night; and, I believe, sits with Horrocks, the butler. Mr.\nCrawley always reads sermons in the evening, and in the morning is\nlocked up in his study, or else rides to Mudbury, on county business,\nor to Squashmore, where he preaches, on Wednesdays and Fridays, to the\ntenants there.\n\nA hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa and mamma.  Is your\npoor brother recovered of his rack-punch? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How men\nshould beware of wicked punch!\n\nEver and ever thine own REBECCA\n\nEverything considered, I think it is quite as well for our dear Amelia\nSedley, in Russell Square, that Miss Sharp and she are parted.  Rebecca\nis a droll funny creature, to be sure; and those descriptions of the\npoor lady weeping for the loss of her beauty, and the gentleman \"with\nhay-coloured whiskers and straw-coloured hair,\" are very smart,\ndoubtless, and show a great knowledge of the world.  That she might,\nwhen on her knees, have been thinking of something better than Miss\nHorrocks's ribbons, has possibly struck both of us.  But my kind reader\nwill please to remember that this history has \"Vanity Fair\" for a\ntitle, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full\nof all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.  And while the\nmoralist, who is holding forth on the cover ( an accurate portrait of\nyour humble servant), professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but\nonly the very same long-eared livery in which his congregation is\narrayed: yet, look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one\nknows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and a\ndeal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an\nundertaking.\n\nI have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at Naples, preaching\nto a pack of good-for-nothing honest lazy fellows by the sea-shore,\nwork himself up into such a rage and passion with some of the villains\nwhose wicked deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audience\ncould not resist it; and they and the poet together would burst out\ninto a roar of oaths and execrations against the fictitious monster of\nthe tale, so that the hat went round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it,\nin the midst of a perfect storm of sympathy.\n\nAt the little Paris theatres, on the other hand, you will not only hear\nthe people yelling out \"Ah gredin! Ah monstre:\" and cursing the tyrant\nof the play from the boxes; but the actors themselves positively refuse\nto play the wicked parts, such as those of infames Anglais, brutal\nCossacks, and what not, and prefer to appear at a smaller salary, in\ntheir real characters as loyal Frenchmen.  I set the two stories one\nagainst the other, so that you may see that it is not from mere\nmercenary motives that the present performer is desirous to show up and\ntrounce his villains; but because he has a sincere hatred of them,\nwhich he cannot keep down, and which must find a vent in suitable abuse\nand bad language.\n\nI warn my \"kyind friends,\" then, that I am going to tell a story of\nharrowing villainy and complicated--but, as I trust, intensely\ninteresting--crime.  My rascals are no milk-and-water rascals, I\npromise you.  When we come to the proper places we won't spare fine\nlanguage--No, no! But when we are going over the quiet country we must\nperforce be calm.  A tempest in a slop-basin is absurd.  We will\nreserve that sort of thing for the mighty ocean and the lonely\nmidnight.  The present Chapter is very mild.  Others--But we will not\nanticipate THOSE.\n\nAnd, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and\na brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down\nfrom the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to\nlove them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly, to laugh at\nthem confidentially in the reader's sleeve: if they are wicked and\nheartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits\nof.\n\nOtherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice of\ndevotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who\nlaughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a\nbaronet--whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence\nexcept for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Such\npeople there are living and flourishing in the world--Faithless,\nHopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might\nand main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and\nfools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that\nLaughter was made.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nFamily Portraits\n\nSir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low\nlife.  His first marriage with the daughter of the noble Binkie had\nbeen made under the auspices of his parents; and as he often told Lady\nCrawley in her lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome high-bred\njade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take another of\nher sort, at her ladyship's demise he kept his promise, and selected\nfor a second wife Miss Rose Dawson, daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson,\nironmonger, of Mudbury. What a happy woman was Rose to be my Lady\nCrawley!\n\nLet us set down the items of her happiness.  In the first place, she\ngave up Peter Butt, a young man who kept company with her, and in\nconsequence of his disappointment in love, took to smuggling, poaching,\nand a thousand other bad courses.  Then she quarrelled, as in duty\nbound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth, who, of course,\ncould not be received by my Lady at Queen's Crawley--nor did she find\nin her new rank and abode any persons who were willing to welcome her.\nWho ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three daughters who all\nhoped to be Lady Crawley.  Sir Giles Wapshot's family were insulted\nthat one of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage,\nand the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their\ncomrade's misalliance.  Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to\ngrumble anonymously.\n\nSir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for any one of them.\nHe had his pretty Rose, and what more need a man require than to please\nhimself? So he used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rose\nsometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to London for the\nparliamentary session, without a single friend in the wide world.  Even\nMrs. Bute Crawley, the Rector's wife, refused to visit her, as she said\nshe would never give the pas to a tradesman's daughter.\n\nAs the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley were\nthose of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort of\ncharacter, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements,\nnor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls to the\nlot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt's affections was\nnot very great.  Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the pretty\nfreshness left her figure after the birth of a couple of children, and\nshe became a mere machine in her husband's house of no more use than\nthe late Lady Crawley's grand piano. Being a light-complexioned woman,\nshe wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in\npreference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue.  She worked\nthat worsted day and night, or other pieces like it.  She had\ncounterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley.\nShe had a small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection;\nbut beyond this no other like or disliking.  When her husband was rude\nto her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her she cried.  She had\nnot character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod\nand in curl-papers all day.  O Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! This might\nhave been, but for you, a cheery lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy man\nand wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion\nof pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles--but a title and a coach and\nfour are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry\nthe Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you\nsuppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented\nthis season?\n\nThe languid dulness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed,\nawaken much affection in her little daughters, but they were very happy\nin the servants' hall and in the stables; and the Scotch gardener\nhaving luckily a good wife and some good children, they got a little\nwholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was the only\neducation bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came.\n\nHer engagement was owing to the remonstrances of Mr. Pitt Crawley, the\nonly friend or protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only person,\nbesides her children, for whom she entertained a little feeble\nattachment.  Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from whom he was\ndescended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman.  When he grew to\nman's estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began to reform the\nslackened discipline of the hall, in spite of his father, who stood in\nawe of him.  He was a man of such rigid refinement, that he would have\nstarved rather than have dined without a white neckcloth.  Once, when\njust from college, and when Horrocks the butler brought him a letter\nwithout placing it previously on a tray, he gave that domestic a look,\nand administered to him a speech so cutting, that Horrocks ever after\ntrembled before him; the whole household bowed to him: Lady Crawley's\ncurl-papers came off earlier when he was at home: Sir Pitt's muddy\ngaiters disappeared; and if that incorrigible old man still adhered to\nother old habits, he never fuddled himself with rum-and-water in his\nson's presence, and only talked to his servants in a very reserved and\npolite manner; and those persons remarked that Sir Pitt never swore at\nLady Crawley while his son was in the room.\n\nIt was he who taught the butler to say, \"My lady is served,\" and who\ninsisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner.  He seldom spoke to her,\nbut when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he never let\nher quit the apartment without rising in the most stately manner to\nopen the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress.\n\nAt Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, his\nyounger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently.  But though his\nparts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by\nmeritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at\nschool, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thought\nnone but a cherub can escape.\n\nAt college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he\nprepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced by\nthe patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the ancient\nand modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking unceasingly at\nthe debating societies.  But though he had a fine flux of words, and\ndelivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to\nhimself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not\nperfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he\nfailed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured\nany man a success.  He did not even get the prize poem, which all his\nfriends said he was sure of.\n\nAfter leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie, and\nwas then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel, which post\nhe filled with perfect honour, and brought home despatches, consisting\nof Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of the day.  After remaining\nten years Attache (several years after the lamented Lord Binkie's\ndemise), and finding the advancement slow, he at length gave up the\ndiplomatic service in some disgust, and began to turn country gentleman.\n\nHe wrote a pamphlet on Malt on returning to England (for he was an\nambitious man, and always liked to be before the public), and took a\nstrong part in the Negro Emancipation question.  Then he became a\nfriend of Mr. Wilberforce's, whose politics he admired, and had that\nfamous correspondence with the Reverend Silas Hornblower, on the\nAshantee Mission.  He was in London, if not for the Parliament session,\nat least in May, for the religious meetings.  In the country he was a\nmagistrate, and an active visitor and speaker among those destitute of\nreligious instruction.  He was said to be paying his addresses to Lady\nJane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third daughter, and whose sister,\nLady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts, \"The Sailor's True Binnacle,\" and\n\"The Applewoman of Finchley Common.\"\n\nMiss Sharp's accounts of his employment at Queen's Crawley were not\ncaricatures.  He subjected the servants there to the devotional\nexercises before mentioned, in which (and so much the better) he\nbrought his father to join.  He patronised an Independent meeting-house\nin Crawley parish, much to the indignation of his uncle the Rector, and\nto the consequent delight of Sir Pitt, who was induced to go himself\nonce or twice, which occasioned some violent sermons at Crawley parish\nchurch, directed point-blank at the Baronet's old Gothic pew there.\nHonest Sir Pitt, however, did not feel the force of these discourses,\nas he always took his nap during sermon-time.\n\nMr. Crawley was very earnest, for the good of the nation and of the\nChristian world, that the old gentleman should yield him up his place\nin Parliament; but this the elder constantly refused to do. Both were\nof course too prudent to give up the fifteen hundred a year which was\nbrought in by the second seat (at this period filled by Mr. Quadroon,\nwith carte blanche on the Slave question); indeed the family estate was\nmuch embarrassed, and the income drawn from the borough was of great\nuse to the house of Queen's Crawley.\n\nIt had never recovered the heavy fine imposed upon Walpole Crawley,\nfirst baronet, for peculation in the Tape and Sealing Wax Office. Sir\nWalpole was a jolly fellow, eager to seize and to spend money (alieni\nappetens, sui profusus, as Mr. Crawley would remark with a sigh), and\nin his day beloved by all the county for the constant drunkenness and\nhospitality which was maintained at Queen's Crawley. The cellars were\nfilled with burgundy then, the kennels with hounds, and the stables\nwith gallant hunters; now, such horses as Queen's Crawley possessed\nwent to plough, or ran in the Trafalgar Coach; and it was with a team\nof these very horses, on an off-day, that Miss Sharp was brought to the\nHall; for boor as he was, Sir Pitt was a stickler for his dignity while\nat home, and seldom drove out but with four horses, and though he dined\noff boiled mutton, had always three footmen to serve it.\n\nIf mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might\nhave become very wealthy--if he had been an attorney in a country town,\nwith no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he would have\nturned them to good account, and might have achieved for himself a very\nconsiderable influence and competency. But he was unluckily endowed\nwith a good name and a large though encumbered estate, both of which\nwent rather to injure than to advance him.  He had a taste for law,\nwhich cost him many thousands yearly; and being a great deal too clever\nto be robbed, as he said, by any single agent, allowed his affairs to\nbe mismanaged by a dozen, whom he all equally mistrusted. He was such a\nsharp landlord, that he could hardly find any but bankrupt tenants; and\nsuch a close farmer, as to grudge almost the seed to the ground,\nwhereupon revengeful Nature grudged him the crops which she granted to\nmore liberal husbandmen. He speculated in every possible way; he worked\nmines; bought canal-shares; horsed coaches; took government contracts,\nand was the busiest man and magistrate of his county.  As he would not\npay honest agents at his granite quarry, he had the satisfaction of\nfinding that four overseers ran away, and took fortunes with them to\nAmerica.  For want of proper precautions, his coal-mines filled with\nwater: the government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his\nhands: and for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the kingdom\nknew that he lost more horses than any man in the country, from\nunderfeeding and buying cheap. In disposition he was sociable, and far\nfrom being proud; nay, he rather preferred the society of a farmer or a\nhorse-dealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, his son: he was fond\nof drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers' daughters: he was\nnever known to give away a shilling or to do a good action, but was of\na pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink his\nglass with a tenant and sell him up the next day; or have his laugh\nwith the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour.  His\npoliteness for the fair sex has already been hinted at by Miss Rebecca\nSharp--in a word, the whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England,\ndid not contain a more cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable\nold man.  That blood-red hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be in\nanybody's pocket except his own; and it is with grief and pain, that,\nas admirers of the British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to\nadmit the existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name is\nin Debrett.\n\nOne great cause why Mr. Crawley had such a hold over the affections of\nhis father, resulted from money arrangements.  The Baronet owed his son\na sum of money out of the jointure of his mother, which he did not find\nit convenient to pay; indeed he had an almost invincible repugnance to\npaying anybody, and could only be brought by force to discharge his\ndebts.  Miss Sharp calculated (for she became, as we shall hear\nspeedily, inducted into most of the secrets of the family) that the\nmere payment of his creditors cost the honourable Baronet several\nhundreds yearly; but this was a delight he could not forego; he had a\nsavage pleasure in making the poor wretches wait, and in shifting from\ncourt to court and from term to term the period of satisfaction.\nWhat's the good of being in Parliament, he said, if you must pay your\ndebts? Hence, indeed, his position as a senator was not a little useful\nto him.\n\nVanity Fair--Vanity Fair!  Here was a man, who could not spell, and did\nnot care to read--who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose\naim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or\nenjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and\nhonours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a\npillar of the state.  He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach.\nGreat ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a\nhigher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.\n\nSir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's large\nfortune, and though the Baronet proposed to borrow this money of her on\nmortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred the security\nof the funds. She had signified, however, her intention of leaving her\ninheritance between Sir Pitt's second son and the family at the\nRectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of Rawdon Crawley in his\ncareer at college and in the army. Miss Crawley was, in consequence, an\nobject of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a\nbalance at her banker's which would have made her beloved anywhere.\n\nWhat a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How\ntenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may every\nreader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old creature we\nfind her!  How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling\nto the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman!\nHow, when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunity\nto let our friends know her station in the world!  We say (and with\nperfect truth) I wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to a cheque for\nfive thousand pounds.  She wouldn't miss it, says your wife.  She is my\naunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if Miss\nMacWhirter is any relative.  Your wife is perpetually sending her\nlittle testimonies of affection, your little girls work endless worsted\nbaskets, cushions, and footstools for her.  What a good fire there is\nin her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces\nher stays without one!  The house during her stay assumes a festive,\nneat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. You\nyourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find\nyourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a\nrubber.  What good dinners you have--game every day, Malmsey-Madeira,\nand no end of fish from London.  Even the servants in the kitchen share\nin the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of Miss\nMacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the\nconsumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her\nmeals) is not regarded in the least.  Is it so, or is it not so?  I\nappeal to the middle classes.  Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would\nsend me an old aunt--a maiden aunt--an aunt with a lozenge on her\ncarriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured hair--how my children\nshould work workbags for her, and my Julia and I would make her\ncomfortable! Sweet--sweet vision! Foolish--foolish dream!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nMiss Sharp Begins to Make Friends\n\nAnd now, being received as a member of the amiable family whose\nportraits we have sketched in the foregoing pages, it became naturally\nRebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to her\nbenefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power.\nWho can but admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected orphan;\nand, if there entered some degree of selfishness into her calculations,\nwho can say but that her prudence was perfectly justifiable?  \"I am\nalone in the world,\" said the friendless girl.  \"I have nothing to look\nfor but what my own labour can bring me; and while that little\npink-faced chit Amelia, with not half my sense, has ten thousand pounds\nand an establishment secure, poor Rebecca (and my figure is far better\nthan hers) has only herself and her own wits to trust to.  Well, let us\nsee if my wits cannot provide me with an honourable maintenance, and if\nsome day or the other I cannot show Miss Amelia my real superiority\nover her. Not that I dislike poor Amelia: who can dislike such a\nharmless, good-natured creature?--only it will be a fine day when I can\ntake my place above her in the world, as why, indeed, should I not?\"\nThus it was that our little romantic friend formed visions of the\nfuture for herself--nor must we be scandalised that, in all her castles\nin the air, a husband was the principal inhabitant.  Of what else have\nyoung ladies to think, but husbands? Of what else do their dear mammas\nthink?  \"I must be my own mamma,\" said Rebecca; not without a tingling\nconsciousness of defeat, as she thought over her little misadventure\nwith Jos Sedley.\n\nSo she wisely determined to render her position with the Queen's\nCrawley family comfortable and secure, and to this end resolved to make\nfriends of every one around her who could at all interfere with her\ncomfort.\n\nAs my Lady Crawley was not one of these personages, and a woman,\nmoreover, so indolent and void of character as not to be of the least\nconsequence in her own house, Rebecca soon found that it was not at all\nnecessary to cultivate her good will--indeed, impossible to gain it.\nShe used to talk to her pupils about their \"poor mamma\"; and, though\nshe treated that lady with every demonstration of cool respect, it was\nto the rest of the family that she wisely directed the chief part of\nher attentions.\n\nWith the young people, whose applause she thoroughly gained, her method\nwas pretty simple.  She did not pester their young brains with too much\nlearning, but, on the contrary, let them have their own way in regard\nto educating themselves; for what instruction is more effectual than\nself-instruction? The eldest was rather fond of books, and as there was\nin the old library at Queen's Crawley a considerable provision of works\nof light literature of the last century, both in the French and English\nlanguages (they had been purchased by the Secretary of the Tape and\nSealing Wax Office at the period of his disgrace), and as nobody ever\ntroubled the bookshelves but herself, Rebecca was enabled agreeably,\nand, as it were, in playing, to impart a great deal of instruction to\nMiss Rose Crawley.\n\nShe and Miss Rose thus read together many delightful French and English\nworks, among which may be mentioned those of the learned Dr. Smollett,\nof the ingenious Mr. Henry Fielding, of the graceful and fantastic\nMonsieur Crebillon the younger, whom our immortal poet Gray so much\nadmired, and of the universal Monsieur de Voltaire. Once, when Mr.\nCrawley asked what the young people were reading, the governess replied\n\"Smollett.\" \"Oh, Smollett,\" said Mr. Crawley, quite satisfied.  \"His\nhistory is more dull, but by no means so dangerous as that of Mr. Hume.\nIt is history you are reading?\" \"Yes,\" said Miss Rose; without,\nhowever, adding that it was the history of Mr. Humphrey Clinker.  On\nanother occasion he was rather scandalised at finding his sister with a\nbook of French plays; but as the governess remarked that it was for the\npurpose of acquiring the French idiom in conversation, he was fain to\nbe content.  Mr. Crawley, as a diplomatist, was exceedingly proud of\nhis own skill in speaking the French language (for he was of the world\nstill), and not a little pleased with the compliments which the\ngoverness continually paid him upon his proficiency.\n\nMiss Violet's tastes were, on the contrary, more rude and boisterous\nthan those of her sister.  She knew the sequestered spots where the\nhens laid their eggs.  She could climb a tree to rob the nests of the\nfeathered songsters of their speckled spoils.  And her pleasure was to\nride the young colts, and to scour the plains like Camilla. She was the\nfavourite of her father and of the stablemen. She was the darling, and\nwithal the terror of the cook; for she discovered the haunts of the\njam-pots, and would attack them when they were within her reach. She\nand her sister were engaged in constant battles.  Any of which\npeccadilloes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she did not tell them to Lady\nCrawley; who would have told them to the father, or worse, to Mr.\nCrawley; but promised not to tell if Miss Violet would be a good girl\nand love her governess.\n\nWith Mr. Crawley Miss Sharp was respectful and obedient.  She used to\nconsult him on passages of French which she could not understand,\nthough her mother was a Frenchwoman, and which he would construe to her\nsatisfaction: and, besides giving her his aid in profane literature, he\nwas kind enough to select for her books of a more serious tendency, and\naddress to her much of his conversation.  She admired, beyond measure,\nhis speech at the Quashimaboo-Aid Society; took an interest in his\npamphlet on malt: was often affected, even to tears, by his discourses\nof an evening, and would say--\"Oh, thank you, sir,\" with a sigh, and a\nlook up to heaven, that made him occasionally condescend to shake hands\nwith her.  \"Blood is everything, after all,\" would that aristocratic\nreligionist say. \"How Miss Sharp is awakened by my words, when not one\nof the people here is touched.  I am too fine for them--too delicate. I\nmust familiarise my style--but she understands it.  Her mother was a\nMontmorency.\"\n\nIndeed it was from this famous family, as it appears, that Miss Sharp,\nby the mother's side, was descended. Of course she did not say that her\nmother had been on the stage; it would have shocked Mr. Crawley's\nreligious scruples.  How many noble emigres had this horrid revolution\nplunged in poverty!  She had several stories about her ancestors ere\nshe had been many months in the house; some of which Mr. Crawley\nhappened to find in D'Hozier's dictionary, which was in the library,\nand which strengthened his belief in their truth, and in the\nhigh-breeding of Rebecca.  Are we to suppose from this curiosity and\nprying into dictionaries, could our heroine suppose that Mr. Crawley\nwas interested in her?--no, only in a friendly way.  Have we not stated\nthat he was attached to Lady Jane Sheepshanks?\n\nHe took Rebecca to task once or twice about the propriety of playing at\nbackgammon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a godless amusement, and\nthat she would be much better engaged in reading \"Thrump's Legacy,\" or\n\"The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields,\" or any work of a more serious\nnature; but Miss Sharp said her dear mother used often to play the same\ngame with the old Count de Trictrac and the venerable Abbe du Cornet,\nand so found an excuse for this and other worldly amusements.\n\nBut it was not only by playing at backgammon with the Baronet, that the\nlittle governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer. She found\nmany different ways of being useful to him.  She read over, with\nindefatigable patience, all those law papers, with which, before she\ncame to Queen's Crawley, he had promised to entertain her.  She\nvolunteered to copy many of his letters, and adroitly altered the\nspelling of them so as to suit the usages of the present day.  She\nbecame interested in everything appertaining to the estate, to the\nfarm, the park, the garden, and the stables; and so delightful a\ncompanion was she, that the Baronet would seldom take his\nafter-breakfast walk without her (and the children of course), when she\nwould give her advice as to the trees which were to be lopped in the\nshrubberies, the garden-beds to be dug, the crops which were to be cut,\nthe horses which were to go to cart or plough. Before she had been a\nyear at Queen's Crawley she had quite won the Baronet's confidence; and\nthe conversation at the dinner-table, which before used to be held\nbetween him and Mr. Horrocks the butler, was now almost exclusively\nbetween Sir Pitt and Miss Sharp. She was almost mistress of the house\nwhen Mr. Crawley was absent, but conducted herself in her new and\nexalted situation with such circumspection and modesty as not to offend\nthe authorities of the kitchen and stable, among whom her behaviour was\nalways exceedingly modest and affable.  She was quite a different\nperson from the haughty, shy, dissatisfied little girl whom we have\nknown previously, and this change of temper proved great prudence, a\nsincere desire of amendment, or at any rate great moral courage on her\npart.  Whether it was the heart which dictated this new system of\ncomplaisance and humility adopted by our Rebecca, is to be proved by\nher after-history.  A system of hypocrisy, which lasts through whole\nyears, is one seldom satisfactorily practised by a person of\none-and-twenty; however, our readers will recollect, that, though young\nin years, our heroine was old in life and experience, and we have\nwritten to no purpose if they have not discovered that she was a very\nclever woman.\n\nThe elder and younger son of the house of Crawley were, like the\ngentleman and lady in the weather-box, never at home together--they\nhated each other cordially: indeed, Rawdon Crawley, the dragoon, had a\ngreat contempt for the establishment altogether, and seldom came\nthither except when his aunt paid her annual visit.\n\nThe great good quality of this old lady has been mentioned.  She\npossessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon. She\ndisliked her elder nephew exceedingly, and despised him as a milksop.\nIn return he did not hesitate to state that her soul was irretrievably\nlost, and was of opinion that his brother's chance in the next world\nwas not a whit better.  \"She is a godless woman of the world,\" would\nMr. Crawley say; \"she lives with atheists and Frenchmen.  My mind\nshudders when I think of her awful, awful situation, and that, near as\nshe is to the grave, she should be so given up to vanity,\nlicentiousness, profaneness, and folly.\" In fact, the old lady declined\naltogether to hear his hour's lecture of an evening; and when she came\nto Queen's Crawley alone, he was obliged to pretermit his usual\ndevotional exercises.\n\n\"Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss Crawley comes down,\" said his\nfather; \"she has written to say that she won't stand the preachifying.\"\n\n\"O, sir! consider the servants.\"\n\n\"The servants be hanged,\" said Sir Pitt; and his son thought even worse\nwould happen were they deprived of the benefit of his instruction.\n\n\"Why, hang it, Pitt!\" said the father to his remonstrance. \"You\nwouldn't be such a flat as to let three thousand a year go out of the\nfamily?\"\n\n\"What is money compared to our souls, sir?\" continued Mr. Crawley.\n\n\"You mean that the old lady won't leave the money to you?\"--and who\nknows but it was Mr. Crawley's meaning?\n\nOld Miss Crawley was certainly one of the reprobate. She had a snug\nlittle house in Park Lane, and, as she ate and drank a great deal too\nmuch during the season in London, she went to Harrowgate or Cheltenham\nfor the summer.  She was the most hospitable and jovial of old vestals,\nand had been a beauty in her day, she said. (All old women were\nbeauties once, we very well know.) She was a bel esprit, and a dreadful\nRadical for those days.  She had been in France (where St. Just, they\nsay, inspired her with an unfortunate passion), and loved, ever after,\nFrench novels, French cookery, and French wines.  She read Voltaire,\nand had Rousseau by heart; talked very lightly about divorce, and most\nenergetically of the rights of women.  She had pictures of Mr. Fox in\nevery room in the house: when that statesman was in opposition, I am\nnot sure that she had not flung a main with him; and when he came into\noffice, she took great credit for bringing over to him Sir Pitt and his\ncolleague for Queen's Crawley, although Sir Pitt would have come over\nhimself, without any trouble on the honest lady's part.  It is needless\nto say that Sir Pitt was brought to change his views after the death of\nthe great Whig statesman.\n\nThis worthy old lady took a fancy to Rawdon Crawley when a boy, sent\nhim to Cambridge (in opposition to his brother at Oxford), and, when\nthe young man was requested by the authorities of the first-named\nUniversity to quit after a residence of two years, she bought him his\ncommission in the Life Guards Green.\n\nA perfect and celebrated \"blood,\" or dandy about town, was this young\nofficer.  Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-hand\ndriving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy; and he was an\nadept in all these noble sciences.  And though he belonged to the\nhousehold troops, who, as it was their duty to rally round the Prince\nRegent, had not shown their valour in foreign service yet, Rawdon\nCrawley had already (apropos of play, of which he was immoderately\nfond) fought three bloody duels, in which he gave ample proofs of his\ncontempt for death.\n\n\"And for what follows after death,\" would Mr. Crawley observe, throwing\nhis gooseberry-coloured eyes up to the ceiling.  He was always thinking\nof his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him\nin opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give\nthemselves.\n\nSilly, romantic Miss Crawley, far from being horrified at the courage\nof her favourite, always used to pay his debts after his duels; and\nwould not listen to a word that was whispered against his morality.\n\"He will sow his wild oats,\" she would say, \"and is worth far more than\nthat puling hypocrite of a brother of his.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nArcadian Simplicity\n\nBesides these honest folks at the Hall (whose simplicity and sweet\nrural purity surely show the advantage of a country life over a town\none), we must introduce the reader to their relatives and neighbours at\nthe Rectory, Bute Crawley and his wife.\n\nThe Reverend Bute Crawley was a tall, stately, jolly, shovel-hatted\nman, far more popular in his county than the Baronet his brother. At\ncollege he pulled stroke-oar in the Christchurch boat, and had thrashed\nall the best bruisers of the \"town.\" He carried his taste for boxing\nand athletic exercises into private life; there was not a fight within\ntwenty miles at which he was not present, nor a race, nor a coursing\nmatch, nor a regatta, nor a ball, nor an election, nor a visitation\ndinner, nor indeed a good dinner in the whole county, but he found\nmeans to attend it.  You might see his bay mare and gig-lamps a score\nof miles away from his Rectory House, whenever there was any\ndinner-party at Fuddleston, or at Roxby, or at Wapshot Hall, or at the\ngreat lords of the county, with all of whom he was intimate.  He had a\nfine voice; sang \"A southerly wind and a cloudy sky\"; and gave the\n\"whoop\" in chorus with general applause.  He rode to hounds in a\npepper-and-salt frock, and was one of the best fishermen in the county.\n\nMrs. Crawley, the rector's wife, was a smart little body, who wrote\nthis worthy divine's sermons.  Being of a domestic turn, and keeping\nthe house a great deal with her daughters, she ruled absolutely within\nthe Rectory, wisely giving her husband full liberty without. He was\nwelcome to come and go, and dine abroad as many days as his fancy\ndictated, for Mrs. Crawley was a saving woman and knew the price of\nport wine.  Ever since Mrs. Bute carried off the young Rector of\nQueen's Crawley (she was of a good family, daughter of the late\nLieut.-Colonel Hector McTavish, and she and her mother played for Bute\nand won him at Harrowgate), she had been a prudent and thrifty wife to\nhim.  In spite of her care, however, he was always in debt.  It took\nhim at least ten years to pay off his college bills contracted during\nhis father's lifetime. In the year 179-, when he was just clear of\nthese incumbrances, he gave the odds of 100 to 1 (in twenties) against\nKangaroo, who won the Derby.  The Rector was obliged to take up the\nmoney at a ruinous interest, and had been struggling ever since.  His\nsister helped him with a hundred now and then, but of course his great\nhope was in her death--when \"hang it\" (as he would say), \"Matilda must\nleave me half her money.\"\n\nSo that the Baronet and his brother had every reason which two brothers\npossibly can have for being by the ears.  Sir Pitt had had the better\nof Bute in innumerable family transactions.  Young Pitt not only did\nnot hunt, but set up a meeting house under his uncle's very nose.\nRawdon, it was known, was to come in for the bulk of Miss Crawley's\nproperty.  These money transactions--these speculations in life and\ndeath--these silent battles for reversionary spoil--make brothers very\nloving towards each other in Vanity Fair.  I, for my part, have known a\nfive-pound note to interpose and knock up a half century's attachment\nbetween two brethren; and can't but admire, as I think what a fine and\ndurable thing Love is among worldly people.\n\nIt cannot be supposed that the arrival of such a personage as Rebecca\nat Queen's Crawley, and her gradual establishment in the good graces of\nall people there, could be unremarked by Mrs. Bute Crawley.  Mrs. Bute,\nwho knew how many days the sirloin of beef lasted at the Hall; how much\nlinen was got ready at the great wash; how many peaches were on the\nsouth wall; how many doses her ladyship took when she was ill--for such\npoints are matters of intense interest to certain persons in the\ncountry--Mrs. Bute, I say, could not pass over the Hall governess\nwithout making every inquiry respecting her history and character.\nThere was always the best understanding between the servants at the\nRectory and the Hall. There was always a good glass of ale in the\nkitchen of the former place for the Hall people, whose ordinary drink\nwas very small--and, indeed, the Rector's lady knew exactly how much\nmalt went to every barrel of Hall beer--ties of relationship existed\nbetween the Hall and Rectory domestics, as between their masters; and\nthrough these channels each family was perfectly well acquainted with\nthe doings of the other.  That, by the way, may be set down as a\ngeneral remark.  When you and your brother are friends, his doings are\nindifferent to you.  When you have quarrelled, all his outgoings and\nincomings you know, as if you were his spy.\n\nVery soon then after her arrival, Rebecca began to take a regular place\nin Mrs. Crawley's bulletin from the Hall. It was to this effect: \"The\nblack porker's killed--weighed x stone--salted the sides--pig's pudding\nand leg of pork for dinner.  Mr. Cramp from Mudbury, over with Sir Pitt\nabout putting John Blackmore in gaol--Mr. Pitt at meeting (with all the\nnames of the people who attended)--my lady as usual--the young ladies\nwith the governess.\"\n\nThen the report would come--the new governess be a rare manager--Sir\nPitt be very sweet on her--Mr. Crawley too--He be reading tracts to\nher--\"What an abandoned wretch!\" said little, eager, active,\nblack-faced Mrs. Bute Crawley.\n\nFinally, the reports were that the governess had \"come round\"\neverybody, wrote Sir Pitt's letters, did his business, managed his\naccounts--had the upper hand of the whole house, my lady, Mr. Crawley,\nthe girls and all--at which Mrs. Crawley declared she was an artful\nhussy, and had some dreadful designs in view.  Thus the doings at the\nHall were the great food for conversation at the Rectory, and Mrs.\nBute's bright eyes spied out everything that took place in the enemy's\ncamp--everything and a great deal besides.\n\n\nMrs. Bute Crawley to Miss Pinkerton, The Mall, Chiswick.\n\nRectory, Queen's Crawley, December--.\n\nMy Dear Madam,--Although it is so many years since I profited by your\ndelightful and invaluable instructions, yet I have ever retained the\nFONDEST and most reverential regard for Miss Pinkerton, and DEAR\nChiswick.  I hope your health is GOOD.  The world and the cause of\neducation cannot afford to lose Miss Pinkerton for MANY MANY YEARS.\nWhen my friend, Lady Fuddleston, mentioned that her dear girls required\nan instructress (I am too poor to engage a governess for mine, but was\nI not educated at Chiswick?)--\"Who,\" I exclaimed, \"can we consult but\nthe excellent, the incomparable Miss Pinkerton?\" In a word, have you,\ndear madam, any ladies on your list, whose services might be made\navailable to my kind friend and neighbour? I assure you she will take\nno governess BUT OF YOUR CHOOSING.\n\nMy dear husband is pleased to say that he likes EVERYTHING WHICH COMES\nFROM MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL.  How I wish I could present him and my\nbeloved girls to the friend of my youth, and the ADMIRED of the great\nlexicographer of our country! If you ever travel into Hampshire, Mr.\nCrawley begs me to say, he hopes you will adorn our RURAL RECTORY with\nyour presence.  'Tis the humble but happy home of\n\nYour affectionate Martha Crawley\n\nP.S.  Mr. Crawley's brother, the baronet, with whom we are not, alas!\nupon those terms of UNITY in which it BECOMES BRETHREN TO DWELL, has a\ngoverness for his little girls, who, I am told, had the good fortune to\nbe educated at Chiswick.  I hear various reports of her; and as I have\nthe tenderest interest in my dearest little nieces, whom I wish, in\nspite of family differences, to see among my own children--and as I\nlong to be attentive to ANY PUPIL OF YOURS--do, my dear Miss Pinkerton,\ntell me the history of this young lady, whom, for YOUR SAKE, I am most\nanxious to befriend.--M. C.\n\n\nMiss Pinkerton to Mrs. Bute Crawley.\n\nJohnson House, Chiswick, Dec. 18--.\n\nDear Madam,--I have the honour to acknowledge your polite\ncommunication, to which I promptly reply. 'Tis most gratifying to one\nin my most arduous position to find that my maternal cares have\nelicited a responsive affection; and to recognize in the amiable Mrs.\nBute Crawley my excellent pupil of former years, the sprightly and\naccomplished Miss Martha MacTavish.  I am happy to have under my charge\nnow the daughters of many of those who were your contemporaries at my\nestablishment--what pleasure it would give me if your own beloved young\nladies had need of my instructive superintendence!\n\nPresenting my respectful compliments to Lady Fuddleston, I have the\nhonour (epistolarily) to introduce to her ladyship my two friends, Miss\nTuffin and Miss Hawky.\n\nEither of these young ladies is PERFECTLY QUALIFIED to instruct in\nGreek, Latin, and the rudiments of Hebrew; in mathematics and history;\nin Spanish, French, Italian, and geography; in music, vocal and\ninstrumental; in dancing, without the aid of a master; and in the\nelements of natural sciences.  In the use of the globes both are\nproficients.  In addition to these Miss Tuffin, who is daughter of the\nlate Reverend Thomas Tuffin (Fellow of Corpus College, Cambridge), can\ninstruct in the Syriac language, and the elements of Constitutional\nlaw. But as she is only eighteen years of age, and of exceedingly\npleasing personal appearance, perhaps this young lady may be\nobjectionable in Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's family.\n\nMiss Letitia Hawky, on the other hand, is not personally well-favoured.\nShe is twenty-nine; her face is much pitted with the small-pox.  She\nhas a halt in her gait, red hair, and a trifling obliquity of vision.\nBoth ladies are endowed with EVERY MORAL AND RELIGIOUS VIRTUE.  Their\nterms, of course, are such as their accomplishments merit.  With my\nmost grateful respects to the Reverend Bute Crawley, I have the honour\nto be,\n\nDear Madam,\n\nYour most faithful and obedient servant, Barbara Pinkerton.\n\nP.S.  The Miss Sharp, whom you mention as governess to Sir Pitt\nCrawley, Bart., M.P., was a pupil of mine, and I have nothing to say in\nher disfavour. Though her appearance is disagreeable, we cannot control\nthe operations of nature: and though her parents were disreputable (her\nfather being a painter, several times bankrupt, and her mother, as I\nhave since learned, with horror, a dancer at the Opera); yet her\ntalents are considerable, and I cannot regret that I received her OUT\nOF CHARITY.  My dread is, lest the principles of the mother--who was\nrepresented to me as a French Countess, forced to emigrate in the late\nrevolutionary horrors; but who, as I have since found, was a person of\nthe very lowest order and morals--should at any time prove to be\nHEREDITARY in the unhappy young woman whom I took as AN OUTCAST.  But\nher principles have hitherto been correct (I believe), and I am sure\nnothing will occur to injure them in the elegant and refined circle of\nthe eminent Sir Pitt Crawley.\n\n\nMiss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley.\n\nI have not written to my beloved Amelia for these many weeks past, for\nwhat news was there to tell of the sayings and doings at Humdrum Hall,\nas I have christened it; and what do you care whether the turnip crop\nis good or bad; whether the fat pig weighed thirteen stone or fourteen;\nand whether the beasts thrive well upon mangelwurzel? Every day since I\nlast wrote has been like its neighbour.  Before breakfast, a walk with\nSir Pitt and his spud; after breakfast studies (such as they are) in\nthe schoolroom; after schoolroom, reading and writing about lawyers,\nleases, coal-mines, canals, with Sir Pitt (whose secretary I am\nbecome); after dinner, Mr. Crawley's discourses on the baronet's\nbackgammon; during both of which amusements my lady looks on with equal\nplacidity.  She has become rather more interesting by being ailing of\nlate, which has brought a new visitor to the Hall, in the person of a\nyoung doctor. Well, my dear, young women need never despair.  The young\ndoctor gave a certain friend of yours to understand that, if she chose\nto be Mrs. Glauber, she was welcome to ornament the surgery! I told his\nimpudence that the gilt pestle and mortar was quite ornament enough; as\nif I was born, indeed, to be a country surgeon's wife! Mr. Glauber went\nhome seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling draught, and is\nnow quite cured.  Sir Pitt applauded my resolution highly; he would be\nsorry to lose his little secretary, I think; and I believe the old\nwretch likes me as much as it is in his nature to like any one.  Marry,\nindeed! and with a country apothecary, after--  No, no, one cannot so\nsoon forget old associations, about which I will talk no more.  Let us\nreturn to Humdrum Hall.\n\nFor some time past it is Humdrum Hall no longer. My dear, Miss Crawley\nhas arrived with her fat horses, fat servants, fat spaniel--the great\nrich Miss Crawley, with seventy thousand pounds in the five per cents.,\nwhom, or I had better say WHICH, her two brothers adore.  She looks\nvery apoplectic, the dear soul; no wonder her brothers are anxious\nabout her.  You should see them struggling to settle her cushions, or\nto hand her coffee! \"When I come into the country,\" she says (for she\nhas a great deal of humour), \"I leave my toady, Miss Briggs, at home.\nMy brothers are my toadies here, my dear, and a pretty pair they are!\"\n\nWhen she comes into the country our hall is thrown open, and for a\nmonth, at least, you would fancy old Sir Walpole was come to life\nagain.  We have dinner-parties, and drive out in the coach-and-four--the\nfootmen put on their newest canary-coloured liveries; we drink claret\nand champagne as if we were accustomed to it every day.  We have wax\ncandles in the schoolroom, and fires to warm ourselves with.  Lady\nCrawley is made to put on the brightest pea-green in her wardrobe, and\nmy pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old tartan pelisses,\nand wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as fashionable baronets'\ndaughters should.  Rose came in yesterday in a sad plight--the\nWiltshire sow (an enormous pet of hers) ran her down, and destroyed a\nmost lovely flowered lilac silk dress by dancing over it--had this\nhappened a week ago, Sir Pitt would have sworn frightfully, have boxed\nthe poor wretch's ears, and put her upon bread and water for a month.\nAll he said was, \"I'll serve you out, Miss, when your aunt's gone,\" and\nlaughed off the accident as quite trivial.  Let us hope his wrath will\nhave passed away before Miss Crawley's departure.  I hope so, for Miss\nRose's sake, I am sure. What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money\nis!\n\nAnother admirable effect of Miss Crawley and her seventy thousand\npounds is to be seen in the conduct of the two brothers Crawley.  I\nmean the baronet and the rector, not OUR brothers--but the former, who\nhate each other all the year round, become quite loving at Christmas.\nI wrote to you last year how the abominable horse-racing rector was in\nthe habit of preaching clumsy sermons at us at church, and how Sir Pitt\nsnored in answer.  When Miss Crawley arrives there is no such thing as\nquarrelling heard of--the Hall visits the Rectory, and vice versa--the\nparson and the Baronet talk about the pigs and the poachers, and the\ncounty business, in the most affable manner, and without quarrelling in\ntheir cups, I believe--indeed Miss Crawley won't hear of their\nquarrelling, and vows that she will leave her money to the Shropshire\nCrawleys if they offend her.  If they were clever people, those\nShropshire Crawleys, they might have it all, I think; but the\nShropshire Crawley is a clergyman like his Hampshire cousin, and\nmortally offended Miss Crawley (who had fled thither in a fit of rage\nagainst her impracticable brethren) by some strait-laced notions of\nmorality.  He would have prayers in the house, I believe.\n\nOur sermon books are shut up when Miss Crawley arrives, and Mr. Pitt,\nwhom she abominates, finds it convenient to go to town.  On the other\nhand, the young dandy--\"blood,\" I believe, is the term--Captain Crawley\nmakes his appearance, and I suppose you will like to know what sort of\na person he is.\n\nWell, he is a very large young dandy.  He is six feet high, and speaks\nwith a great voice; and swears a great deal; and orders about the\nservants, who all adore him nevertheless; for he is very generous of\nhis money, and the domestics will do anything for him. Last week the\nkeepers almost killed a bailiff and his man who came down from London\nto arrest the Captain, and who were found lurking about the Park\nwall--they beat them, ducked them, and were going to shoot them for\npoachers, but the baronet interfered.\n\nThe Captain has a hearty contempt for his father, I can see, and calls\nhim an old PUT, an old SNOB, an old CHAW-BACON, and numberless other\npretty names.  He has a DREADFUL REPUTATION among the ladies. He brings\nhis hunters home with him, lives with the Squires of the county, asks\nwhom he pleases to dinner, and Sir Pitt dares not say no, for fear of\noffending Miss Crawley, and missing his legacy when she dies of her\napoplexy. Shall I tell you a compliment the Captain paid me?  I must,\nit is so pretty.  One evening we actually had a dance; there was Sir\nHuddleston Fuddleston and his family, Sir Giles Wapshot and his young\nladies, and I don't know how many more.  Well, I heard him say--\"By\nJove, she's a neat little filly!\" meaning your humble servant; and he\ndid me the honour to dance two country-dances with me.  He gets on\npretty gaily with the young Squires, with whom he drinks, bets, rides,\nand talks about hunting and shooting; but he says the country girls are\nBORES; indeed, I don't think he is far wrong. You should see the\ncontempt with which they look down on poor me! When they dance I sit\nand play the piano very demurely; but the other night, coming in rather\nflushed from the dining-room, and seeing me employed in this way, he\nswore out loud that I was the best dancer in the room, and took a great\noath that he would have the fiddlers from Mudbury.\n\n\"I'll go and play a country-dance,\" said Mrs. Bute Crawley, very\nreadily (she is a little, black-faced old woman in a turban, rather\ncrooked, and with very twinkling eyes); and after the Captain and your\npoor little Rebecca had performed a dance together, do you know she\nactually did me the honour to compliment me upon my steps! Such a thing\nwas never heard of before; the proud Mrs. Bute Crawley, first cousin to\nthe Earl of Tiptoff, who won't condescend to visit Lady Crawley, except\nwhen her sister is in the country.  Poor Lady Crawley! during most part\nof these gaieties, she is upstairs taking pills.\n\nMrs. Bute has all of a sudden taken a great fancy to me.  \"My dear Miss\nSharp,\" she says, \"why not bring over your girls to the Rectory?--their\ncousins will be so happy to see them.\" I know what she means.  Signor\nClementi did not teach us the piano for nothing; at which price Mrs.\nBute hopes to get a professor for her children. I can see through her\nschemes, as though she told them to me; but I shall go, as I am\ndetermined to make myself agreeable--is it not a poor governess's duty,\nwho has not a friend or protector in the world? The Rector's wife paid\nme a score of compliments about the progress my pupils made, and\nthought, no doubt, to touch my heart--poor, simple, country soul!--as\nif I cared a fig about my pupils!\n\nYour India muslin and your pink silk, dearest Amelia, are said to\nbecome me very well.  They are a good deal worn now; but, you know, we\npoor girls can't afford des fraiches toilettes.  Happy, happy you! who\nhave but to drive to St. James's Street, and a dear mother who will\ngive you any thing you ask.  Farewell, dearest girl,\n\nYour affectionate Rebecca.\n\nP.S.--I wish you could have seen the faces of the Miss Blackbrooks\n(Admiral Blackbrook's daughters, my dear), fine young ladies, with\ndresses from London, when Captain Rawdon selected poor me for a partner!\n\n\nWhen Mrs. Bute Crawley (whose artifices our ingenious Rebecca had so\nsoon discovered) had procured from Miss Sharp the promise of a visit,\nshe induced the all-powerful Miss Crawley to make the necessary\napplication to Sir Pitt, and the good-natured old lady, who loved to be\ngay herself, and to see every one gay and happy round about her, was\nquite charmed, and ready to establish a reconciliation and intimacy\nbetween her two brothers. It was therefore agreed that the young people\nof both families should visit each other frequently for the future, and\nthe friendship of course lasted as long as the jovial old mediatrix was\nthere to keep the peace.\n\n\"Why did you ask that scoundrel, Rawdon Crawley, to dine?\" said the\nRector to his lady, as they were walking home through the park.  \"I\ndon't want the fellow.  He looks down upon us country people as so many\nblackamoors. He's never content unless he gets my yellow-sealed wine,\nwhich costs me ten shillings a bottle, hang him! Besides, he's such an\ninfernal character--he's a gambler--he's a drunkard--he's a profligate\nin every way.  He shot a man in a duel--he's over head and ears in\ndebt, and he's robbed me and mine of the best part of Miss Crawley's\nfortune.  Waxy says she has him\"--here the Rector shook his fist at the\nmoon, with something very like an oath, and added, in a melancholious\ntone, \"--down in her will for fifty thousand; and there won't be above\nthirty to divide.\"\n\n\"I think she's going,\" said the Rector's wife.  \"She was very red in\nthe face when we left dinner.  I was obliged to unlace her.\"\n\n\"She drank seven glasses of champagne,\" said the reverend gentleman, in\na low voice; \"and filthy champagne it is, too, that my brother poisons\nus with--but you women never know what's what.\"\n\n\"We know nothing,\" said Mrs. Bute Crawley.\n\n\"She drank cherry-brandy after dinner,\" continued his Reverence, \"and\ntook curacao with her coffee.  I wouldn't take a glass for a five-pound\nnote: it kills me with heartburn.  She can't stand it, Mrs.\nCrawley--she must go--flesh and blood won't bear it! and I lay five to\ntwo, Matilda drops in a year.\"\n\nIndulging in these solemn speculations, and thinking about his debts,\nand his son Jim at College, and Frank at Woolwich, and the four girls,\nwho were no beauties, poor things, and would not have a penny but what\nthey got from the aunt's expected legacy, the Rector and his lady\nwalked on for a while.\n\n\"Pitt can't be such an infernal villain as to sell the reversion of the\nliving.  And that Methodist milksop of an eldest son looks to\nParliament,\" continued Mr. Crawley, after a pause.\n\n\"Sir Pitt Crawley will do anything,\" said the Rector's wife.  \"We must\nget Miss Crawley to make him promise it to James.\"\n\n\"Pitt will promise anything,\" replied the brother.  \"He promised he'd\npay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd build the\nnew wing to the Rectory; he promised he'd let me have Jibb's field and\nthe Six-acre Meadow--and much he executed his promises! And it's to\nthis man's son--this scoundrel, gambler, swindler, murderer of a Rawdon\nCrawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk of her money.  I say it's\nun-Christian.  By Jove, it is. The infamous dog has got every vice\nexcept hypocrisy, and that belongs to his brother.\"\n\n\"Hush, my dearest love! we're in Sir Pitt's grounds,\" interposed his\nwife.\n\n\"I say he has got every vice, Mrs. Crawley.  Don't Ma'am, bully me.\nDidn't he shoot Captain Marker? Didn't he rob young Lord Dovedale at\nthe Cocoa-Tree? Didn't he cross the fight between Bill Soames and the\nCheshire Trump, by which I lost forty pound? You know he did; and as\nfor the women, why, you heard that before me, in my own magistrate's\nroom.\"\n\n\"For heaven's sake, Mr. Crawley,\" said the lady, \"spare me the details.\"\n\n\"And you ask this villain into your house!\" continued the exasperated\nRector.  \"You, the mother of a young family--the wife of a clergyman of\nthe Church of England.  By Jove!\"\n\n\"Bute Crawley, you are a fool,\" said the Rector's wife scornfully.\n\n\"Well, Ma'am, fool or not--and I don't say, Martha, I'm so clever as\nyou are, I never did.  But I won't meet Rawdon Crawley, that's flat.\nI'll go over to Huddleston, that I will, and see his black greyhound,\nMrs. Crawley; and I'll run Lancelot against him for fifty.  By Jove, I\nwill; or against any dog in England.  But I won't meet that beast\nRawdon Crawley.\"\n\n\"Mr. Crawley, you are intoxicated, as usual,\" replied his wife.  And\nthe next morning, when the Rector woke, and called for small beer, she\nput him in mind of his promise to visit Sir Huddleston Fuddleston on\nSaturday, and as he knew he should have a wet night, it was agreed that\nhe might gallop back again in time for church on Sunday morning.  Thus\nit will be seen that the parishioners of Crawley were equally happy in\ntheir Squire and in their Rector.\n\nMiss Crawley had not long been established at the Hall before Rebecca's\nfascinations had won the heart of that good-natured London rake, as\nthey had of the country innocents whom we have been describing.  Taking\nher accustomed drive, one day, she thought fit to order that \"that\nlittle governess\" should accompany her to Mudbury. Before they had\nreturned Rebecca had made a conquest of her; having made her laugh four\ntimes, and amused her during the whole of the little journey.\n\n\"Not let Miss Sharp dine at table!\" said she to Sir Pitt, who had\narranged a dinner of ceremony, and asked all the neighbouring baronets.\n\"My dear creature, do you suppose I can talk about the nursery with\nLady Fuddleston, or discuss justices' business with that goose, old Sir\nGiles Wapshot? I insist upon Miss Sharp appearing.  Let Lady Crawley\nremain upstairs, if there is no room. But little Miss Sharp! Why, she's\nthe only person fit to talk to in the county!\"\n\nOf course, after such a peremptory order as this, Miss Sharp, the\ngoverness, received commands to dine with the illustrious company below\nstairs.  And when Sir Huddleston had, with great pomp and ceremony,\nhanded Miss Crawley in to dinner, and was preparing to take his place\nby her side, the old lady cried out, in a shrill voice, \"Becky Sharp!\nMiss Sharp!  Come you and sit by me and amuse me; and let Sir\nHuddleston sit by Lady Wapshot.\"\n\nWhen the parties were over, and the carriages had rolled away, the\ninsatiable Miss Crawley would say, \"Come to my dressing room, Becky,\nand let us abuse the company\"--which, between them, this pair of\nfriends did perfectly.  Old Sir Huddleston wheezed a great deal at\ndinner; Sir Giles Wapshot had a particularly noisy manner of imbibing\nhis soup, and her ladyship a wink of the left eye; all of which Becky\ncaricatured to admiration; as well as the particulars of the night's\nconversation; the politics; the war; the quarter-sessions; the famous\nrun with the H.H., and those heavy and dreary themes, about which\ncountry gentlemen converse.  As for the Misses Wapshot's toilettes and\nLady Fuddleston's famous yellow hat, Miss Sharp tore them to tatters,\nto the infinite amusement of her audience.\n\n\"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille,\" Miss Crawley would say.  \"I\nwish you could come to me in London, but I couldn't make a butt of you\nas I do of poor Briggs no, no, you little sly creature; you are too\nclever--Isn't she, Firkin?\"\n\nMrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small remnant of hair which\nremained on Miss Crawley's pate), flung up her head and said, \"I think\nMiss is very clever,\" with the most killing sarcastic air.  In fact,\nMrs. Firkin had that natural jealousy which is one of the main\nprinciples of every honest woman.\n\nAfter rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss Crawley ordered that\nRawdon Crawley should lead her in to dinner every day, and that Becky\nshould follow with her cushion--or else she would have Becky's arm and\nRawdon with the pillow.  \"We must sit together,\" she said. \"We're the\nonly three Christians in the county, my love\"--in which case, it must\nbe confessed, that religion was at a very low ebb in the county of\nHants.\n\nBesides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley was, as we have\nsaid, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and always took occasion to express\nthese in the most candid manner.\n\n\"What is birth, my dear!\" she would say to Rebecca--\"Look at my brother\nPitt; look at the Huddlestons, who have been here since Henry II; look\nat poor Bute at the parsonage--is any one of them equal to you in\nintelligence or breeding? Equal to you--they are not even equal to poor\ndear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler. You, my love, are a\nlittle paragon--positively a little jewel--You have more brains than\nhalf the shire--if merit had its reward you ought to be a Duchess--no,\nthere ought to be no duchesses at all--but you ought to have no\nsuperior, and I consider you, my love, as my equal in every respect;\nand--will you put some coals on the fire, my dear; and will you pick\nthis dress of mine, and alter it, you who can do it so well?\" So this\nold philanthropist used to make her equal run of her errands, execute\nher millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels, every night.\n\nAt this time, as some old readers may recollect, the genteel world had\nbeen thrown into a considerable state of excitement by two events,\nwhich, as the papers say, might give employment to the gentlemen of the\nlong robe. Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady Barbara Fitzurse, the\nEarl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor Vere Vane, a gentleman\nwho, up to forty, had maintained a most respectable character and\nreared a numerous family, suddenly and outrageously left his home, for\nthe sake of Mrs. Rougemont, the actress, who was sixty-five years of\nage.\n\n\"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord Nelson's character,\"\nMiss Crawley said.  \"He went to the deuce for a woman.  There must be\ngood in a man who will do that.  I adore all impudent matches.--  What\nI like best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as Lord\nFlowerdale did--it makes all the women so angry--I wish some great man\nwould run away with you, my dear; I'm sure you're pretty enough.\"\n\n\"Two post-boys!--Oh, it would be delightful!\" Rebecca owned.\n\n\"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run away with a\nrich girl.  I have set my heart on Rawdon running away with some one.\"\n\n\"A rich some one, or a poor some one?\"\n\n\"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I give him.  He is\ncrible de dettes--he must repair his fortunes, and succeed in the\nworld.\"\n\n\"Is he very clever?\" Rebecca asked.\n\n\"Clever, my love?--not an idea in the world beyond his horses, and his\nregiment, and his hunting, and his play; but he must succeed--he's so\ndelightfully wicked.  Don't you know he has hit a man, and shot an\ninjured father through the hat only? He's adored in his regiment; and\nall the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree swear by him.\"\n\nWhen Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend the account of the\nlittle ball at Queen's Crawley, and the manner in which, for the first\ntime, Captain Crawley had distinguished her, she did not, strange to\nrelate, give an altogether accurate account of the transaction.  The\nCaptain had distinguished her a great number of times before.  The\nCaptain had met her in a half-score of walks. The Captain had lighted\nupon her in a half-hundred of corridors and passages.  The Captain had\nhung over her piano twenty times of an evening (my Lady was now\nupstairs, being ill, and nobody heeded her) as Miss Sharp sang.  The\nCaptain had written her notes (the best that the great blundering\ndragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on as well as any\nother quality with women).  But when he put the first of the notes into\nthe leaves of the song she was singing, the little governess, rising\nand looking him steadily in the face, took up the triangular missive\ndaintily, and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she,\nadvancing to the enemy, popped the note into the fire, and made him a\nvery low curtsey, and went back to her place, and began to sing away\nagain more merrily than ever.\n\n\"What's that?\" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her after-dinner doze\nby the stoppage of the music.\n\n\"It's a false note,\" Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and Rawdon Crawley\nfumed with rage and mortification.\n\nSeeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the new governess,\nhow good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to welcome\nthe young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley,\nher husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They became very\nfond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her nephew.  He gave up\nhunting; he declined entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine\nwith the mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll\nover to Crawley parsonage--whither Miss Crawley came too; and as their\nmamma was ill, why not the children with Miss Sharp? So the children\n(little dears!) came with Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the\nparty would walk back together.  Not Miss Crawley--she preferred her\ncarriage--but the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at the little\npark wicket, and through the dark plantation, and up the checkered\navenue to Queen's Crawley, was charming in the moonlight to two such\nlovers of the picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.\n\n\"O those stars, those stars!\" Miss Rebecca would say, turning her\ntwinkling green eyes up towards them.  \"I feel myself almost a spirit\nwhen I gaze upon them.\"\n\n\"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp,\" the other enthusiast\nreplied.  \"You don't mind my cigar, do you, Miss Sharp?\"  Miss Sharp\nloved the smell of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in the\nworld--and she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, and\ngave a little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle, and\nrestored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his moustache, and\nstraightway puffed it into a blaze that glowed quite red in the dark\nplantation, and swore--\"Jove--aw--Gad--aw--it's the finest segaw I ever\nsmoked in the world aw,\" for his intellect and conversation were alike\nbrilliant and becoming to a heavy young dragoon.\n\nOld Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and talking to John\nHorrocks about a \"ship\" that was to be killed, espied the pair so\noccupied from his study-window, and with dreadful oaths swore that if\nit wasn't for Miss Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out of\ndoors, like a rogue as he was.\n\n\"He be a bad'n, sure enough,\" Mr. Horrocks remarked; \"and his man\nFlethers is wuss, and have made such a row in the housekeeper's room\nabout the dinners and hale, as no lord would make--but I think Miss\nSharp's a match for'n, Sir Pitt,\" he added, after a pause.\n\nAnd so, in truth, she was--for father and son too.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nQuite a Sentimental Chapter\n\nWe must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable people practising\nthe rural virtues there, and travel back to London, to inquire what has\nbecome of Miss Amelia.\n\n\"We don't care a fig for her,\" writes some unknown correspondent with a\npretty little handwriting and a pink seal to her note.  \"She is fade and\ninsipid,\" and adds some more kind remarks in this strain, which I should\nnever have repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously\ncomplimentary to the young lady whom they concern.\n\nHas the beloved reader, in his experience of society, never heard\nsimilar remarks by good-natured female friends; who always wonder what\nyou CAN see in Miss Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD induce\nMajor Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering Miss\nThompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to recommend her? What\nis there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dear\nMoralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, the\naccomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a\nladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry,\nthe power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are far\nmore valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which\na few years will inevitably tarnish.  It is quite edifying to hear\nwomen speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty.\n\nBut though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatures\nwho suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be continually\nput in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though, very likely, the\nheroic female character which ladies admire is a more glorious and\nbeautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, tender little\ndomestic goddess, whom men are inclined to worship--yet the latter and\ninferior sort of women must have this consolation--that the men do\nadmire them after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends'\nwarnings and protests, we go on in our desperate error and folly, and\nshall to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my own part, though I have\nbeen repeatedly told by persons for whom I have the greatest respect,\nthat Miss Brown is an insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing\nbut her petit minois chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to say\nfor herself; yet I know that I have had the most delightful\nconversations with Mrs. Black (of course, my dear Madam, they are\ninviolable): I see all the men in a cluster round Mrs. White's chair:\nall the young fellows battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am\ntempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great\ncompliment to a woman.\n\nThe young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her very\nsatisfactorily.  For instance, there was scarcely any point upon which\nthe Misses Osborne, George's sisters, and the Mesdemoiselles Dobbin\nagreed so well as in their estimate of her very trifling merits: and\ntheir wonder that their brothers could find any charms in her.  \"We are\nkind to her,\" the Misses Osborne said, a pair of fine black-browed\nyoung ladies who had had the best of governesses, masters, and\nmilliners; and they treated her with such extreme kindness and\ncondescension, and patronised her so insufferably, that the poor little\nthing was in fact perfectly dumb in their presence, and to all outward\nappearance as stupid as they thought her.  She made efforts to like\nthem, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her future husband.  She\npassed \"long mornings\" with them--the most dreary and serious of\nforenoons.  She drove out solemnly in their great family coach with\nthem, and Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal.  They took\nher to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and to the oratorio, and\nto St. Paul's to see the charity children, where in such terror was she\nof her friends, she almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the\nchildren sang.  Their house was comfortable; their papa's table rich\nand handsome; their society solemn and genteel; their self-respect\nprodigious; they had the best pew at the Foundling: all their habits\nwere pompous and orderly, and all their amusements intolerably dull and\ndecorous. After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was when\nthey were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria Osborne, and Miss Wirt,\nthe vestal governess, asked each other with increased wonder, \"What\ncould George find in that creature?\"\n\nHow is this? some carping reader exclaims.  How is it that Amelia, who\nhad such a number of friends at school, and was so beloved there, comes\nout into the world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dear\nsir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's establishment except the old\ndancing-master; and you would not have had the girls fall out about\nHIM? When George, their handsome brother, ran off directly after\nbreakfast, and dined from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder the\nneglected sisters felt a little vexation.  When young Bullock (of the\nfirm of Hulker, Bullock & Co., Bankers, Lombard Street), who had been\nmaking up to Miss Maria the last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to\ndance the cotillon, could you expect that the former young lady should\nbe pleased? And yet she said she was, like an artless forgiving\ncreature.  \"I'm so delighted you like dear Amelia,\" she said quite\neagerly to Mr. Bullock after the dance.  \"She's engaged to my brother\nGeorge; there's not much in her, but she's the best-natured and most\nunaffected young creature: at home we're all so fond of her.\" Dear\ngirl! who can calculate the depth of affection expressed in that\nenthusiastic SO?\n\nMiss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so earnestly and\nfrequently impressed upon George Osborne's mind the enormity of the\nsacrifice he was making, and his romantic generosity in throwing\nhimself away upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really thought\nhe was one of the most deserving characters in the British army, and\ngave himself up to be loved with a good deal of easy resignation.\n\nSomehow, although he left home every morning, as was stated, and dined\nabroad six days in the week, when his sisters believed the infatuated\nyouth to be at Miss Sedley's apron-strings: he was NOT always with\nAmelia, whilst the world supposed him at her feet. Certain it is that\non more occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin called to look for his\nfriend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive to the Captain, and\nanxious to hear his military stories, and to know about the health of\nhis dear Mamma), would laughingly point to the opposite side of the\nsquare, and say, \"Oh, you must go to the Sedleys' to ask for George; WE\nnever see him from morning till night.\" At which kind of speech the\nCaptain would laugh in rather an absurd constrained manner, and turn\noff the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic\nof general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at\nCarlton House, or the weather--that blessing to society.\n\n\"What an innocent it is, that pet of yours,\" Miss Maria would then say\nto Miss Jane, upon the Captain's departure.  \"Did you see how he\nblushed at the mention of poor George on duty?\"\n\n\"It's a pity Frederick Bullock hadn't some of his modesty, Maria,\"\nreplies the elder sister, with a toss of he head.\n\n\"Modesty!  Awkwardness you mean, Jane.  I don't want Frederick to\ntrample a hole in my muslin frock, as Captain Dobbin did in yours at\nMrs. Perkins'.\"\n\n\"In YOUR frock, he, he!  How could he? Wasn't he dancing with Amelia?\"\n\nThe fact is, when Captain Dobbin blushed so, and looked so awkward, he\nremembered a circumstance of which he did not think it was necessary to\ninform the young ladies, viz., that he had been calling at Mr. Sedley's\nhouse already, on the pretence of seeing George, of course, and George\nwasn't there, only poor little Amelia, with rather a sad wistful face,\nseated near the drawing-room window, who, after some very trifling\nstupid talk, ventured to ask, was there any truth in the report that\nthe regiment was soon to be ordered abroad; and had Captain Dobbin seen\nMr. Osborne that day?\n\nThe regiment was not ordered abroad as yet; and Captain Dobbin had not\nseen George.  \"He was with his sister, most likely,\" the Captain said.\n\"Should he go and fetch the truant?\"  So she gave him her hand kindly\nand gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited and waited,\nbut George never came.\n\nPoor little tender heart! and so it goes on hoping and beating, and\nlonging and trusting.  You see it is not much of a life to describe.\nThere is not much of what you call incident in it.  Only one feeling\nall day--when will he come? only one thought to sleep and wake upon. I\nbelieve George was playing billiards with Captain Cannon in Swallow\nStreet at the time when Amelia was asking Captain Dobbin about him; for\nGeorge was a jolly sociable fellow, and excellent in all games of skill.\n\nOnce, after three days of absence, Miss Amelia put on her bonnet, and\nactually invaded the Osborne house. \"What! leave our brother to come to\nus?\" said the young ladies.  \"Have you had a quarrel, Amelia? Do tell\nus!\" No, indeed, there had been no quarrel.  \"Who could quarrel with\nhim?\" says she, with her eyes filled with tears. She only came over\nto--to see her dear friends; they had not met for so long.  And this\nday she was so perfectly stupid and awkward, that the Misses Osborne\nand their governess, who stared after her as she went sadly away,\nwondered more than ever what George could see in poor little Amelia.\n\nOf course they did.  How was she to bare that timid little heart for\nthe inspection of those young ladies with their bold black eyes? It was\nbest that it should shrink and hide itself.  I know the Misses Osborne\nwere excellent critics of a Cashmere shawl, or a pink satin slip; and\nwhen Miss Turner had hers dyed purple, and made into a spencer; and\nwhen Miss Pickford had her ermine tippet twisted into a muff and\ntrimmings, I warrant you the changes did not escape the two intelligent\nyoung women before mentioned.  But there are things, look you, of a\nfiner texture than fur or satin, and all Solomon's glories, and all the\nwardrobe of the Queen of Sheba--things whereof the beauty escapes the\neyes of many connoisseurs.  And there are sweet modest little souls on\nwhich you light, fragrant and blooming tenderly in quiet shady places;\nand there are garden-ornaments, as big as brass warming-pans, that are\nfit to stare the sun itself out of countenance.  Miss Sedley was not of\nthe sunflower sort; and I say it is out of the rules of all proportion\nto draw a violet of the size of a double dahlia.\n\nNo, indeed; the life of a good young girl who is in the paternal nest\nas yet, can't have many of those thrilling incidents to which the\nheroine of romance commonly lays claim.  Snares or shot may take off\nthe old birds foraging without--hawks may be abroad, from which they\nescape or by whom they suffer; but the young ones in the nest have a\npretty comfortable unromantic sort of existence in the down and the\nstraw, till it comes to their turn, too, to get on the wing. While\nBecky Sharp was on her own wing in the country, hopping on all sorts of\ntwigs, and amid a multiplicity of traps, and pecking up her food quite\nharmless and successful, Amelia lay snug in her home of Russell Square;\nif she went into the world, it was under the guidance of the elders;\nnor did it seem that any evil could befall her or that opulent cheery\ncomfortable home in which she was affectionately sheltered. Mamma had\nher morning duties, and her daily drive, and the delightful round of\nvisits and shopping which forms the amusement, or the profession as you\nmay call it, of the rich London lady.  Papa conducted his mysterious\noperations in the City--a stirring place in those days, when war was\nraging all over Europe, and empires were being staked; when the\n\"Courier\" newspaper had tens of thousands of subscribers; when one day\nbrought you a battle of Vittoria, another a burning of Moscow, or a\nnewsman's horn blowing down Russell Square about dinner-time, announced\nsuch a fact as--\"Battle of Leipsic--six hundred thousand men\nengaged--total defeat of the French--two hundred thousand killed.\" Old\nSedley once or twice came home with a very grave face; and no wonder,\nwhen such news as this was agitating all the hearts and all the Stocks\nof Europe.\n\nMeanwhile matters went on in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, just as if\nmatters in Europe were not in the least disorganised.  The retreat from\nLeipsic made no difference in the number of meals Mr. Sambo took in the\nservants' hall; the allies poured into France, and the dinner-bell rang\nat five o'clock just as usual.  I don't think poor Amelia cared\nanything about Brienne and Montmirail, or was fairly interested in the\nwar until the abdication of the Emperor; when she clapped her hands and\nsaid prayers--oh, how grateful! and flung herself into George Osborne's\narms with all her soul, to the astonishment of everybody who witnessed\nthat ebullition of sentiment. The fact is, peace was declared, Europe\nwas going to be at rest; the Corsican was overthrown, and Lieutenant\nOsborne's regiment would not be ordered on service.  That was the way\nin which Miss Amelia reasoned.  The fate of Europe was Lieutenant\nGeorge Osborne to her.  His dangers being over, she sang Te Deum.  He\nwas her Europe: her emperor: her allied monarchs and august prince\nregent.  He was her sun and moon; and I believe she thought the grand\nillumination and ball at the Mansion House, given to the sovereigns,\nwere especially in honour of George Osborne.\n\nWe have talked of shift, self, and poverty, as those dismal instructors\nunder whom poor Miss Becky Sharp got her education. Now, love was Miss\nAmelia Sedley's last tutoress, and it was amazing what progress our\nyoung lady made under that popular teacher.  In the course of fifteen\nor eighteen months' daily and constant attention to this eminent\nfinishing governess, what a deal of secrets Amelia learned, which Miss\nWirt and the black-eyed young ladies over the way, which old Miss\nPinkerton of Chiswick herself, had no cognizance of!  As, indeed, how\nshould any of those prim and reputable virgins?  With Misses P. and W.\nthe tender passion is out of the question: I would not dare to breathe\nsuch an idea regarding them.  Miss Maria Osborne, it is true, was\n\"attached\" to Mr. Frederick Augustus Bullock, of the firm of Hulker,\nBullock & Bullock; but hers was a most respectable attachment, and she\nwould have taken Bullock Senior just the same, her mind being fixed--as\nthat of a well-bred young woman should be--upon a house in Park Lane, a\ncountry house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and two prodigious tall\nhorses and footmen, and a fourth of the annual profits of the eminent\nfirm of Hulker & Bullock, all of which advantages were represented in\nthe person of Frederick Augustus. Had orange blossoms been invented\nthen (those touching emblems of female purity imported by us from\nFrance, where people's daughters are universally sold in marriage),\nMiss Maria, I say, would have assumed the spotless wreath, and stepped\ninto the travelling carriage by the side of gouty, old, bald-headed,\nbottle-nosed Bullock Senior; and devoted her beautiful existence to his\nhappiness with perfect modesty--only the old gentleman was married\nalready; so she bestowed her young affections on the junior partner.\nSweet, blooming, orange flowers!  The other day I saw Miss Trotter\n(that was), arrayed in them, trip into the travelling carriage at St.\nGeorge's, Hanover Square, and Lord Methuselah hobbled in after. With\nwhat an engaging modesty she pulled down the blinds of the chariot--the\ndear innocent!  There were half the carriages of Vanity Fair at the\nwedding.\n\nThis was not the sort of love that finished Amelia's education; and in\nthe course of a year turned a good young girl into a good young\nwoman--to be a good wife presently, when the happy time should come.\nThis young person (perhaps it was very imprudent in her parents to\nencourage her, and abet her in such idolatry and silly romantic ideas)\nloved, with all her heart, the young officer in His Majesty's service\nwith whom we have made a brief acquaintance.  She thought about him the\nvery first moment on waking; and his was the very last name mentioned\nin her prayers.  She never had seen a man so beautiful or so clever:\nsuch a figure on horseback: such a dancer: such a hero in general.\nTalk of the Prince's bow! what was it to George's? She had seen Mr.\nBrummell, whom everybody praised so.  Compare such a person as that to\nher George! Not amongst all the beaux at the Opera (and there were\nbeaux in those days with actual opera hats) was there any one to equal\nhim.  He was only good enough to be a fairy prince; and oh, what\nmagnanimity to stoop to such a humble Cinderella!  Miss Pinkerton would\nhave tried to check this blind devotion very likely, had she been\nAmelia's confidante; but not with much success, depend upon it.  It is\nin the nature and instinct of some women.  Some are made to scheme, and\nsome to love; and I wish any respected bachelor that reads this may\ntake the sort that best likes him.\n\nWhile under this overpowering impression, Miss Amelia neglected her\ntwelve dear friends at Chiswick most cruelly, as such selfish people\ncommonly will do.  She had but this subject, of course, to think about;\nand Miss Saltire was too cold for a confidante, and she couldn't bring\nher mind to tell Miss Swartz, the woolly-haired young heiress from St.\nKitt's.  She had little Laura Martin home for the holidays; and my\nbelief is, she made a confidante of her, and promised that Laura should\ncome and live with her when she was married, and gave Laura a great\ndeal of information regarding the passion of love, which must have been\nsingularly useful and novel to that little person.  Alas, alas!  I fear\npoor Emmy had not a well-regulated mind.\n\nWhat were her parents doing, not to keep this little heart from beating\nso fast?  Old Sedley did not seem much to notice matters. He was graver\nof late, and his City affairs absorbed him.  Mrs. Sedley was of so easy\nand uninquisitive a nature that she wasn't even jealous.  Mr. Jos was\naway, being besieged by an Irish widow at Cheltenham.  Amelia had the\nhouse to herself--ah! too much to herself sometimes--not that she ever\ndoubted; for, to be sure, George must be at the Horse Guards; and he\ncan't always get leave from Chatham; and he must see his friends and\nsisters, and mingle in society when in town (he, such an ornament to\nevery society!); and when he is with the regiment, he is too tired to\nwrite long letters. I know where she kept that packet she had--and can\nsteal in and out of her chamber like Iachimo--like Iachimo?  No--that\nis a bad part. I will only act Moonshine, and peep harmless into the\nbed where faith and beauty and innocence lie dreaming.\n\nBut if Osborne's were short and soldierlike letters, it must be\nconfessed, that were Miss Sedley's letters to Mr. Osborne to be\npublished, we should have to extend this novel to such a multiplicity\nof volumes as not the most sentimental reader could support; that she\nnot only filled sheets of large paper, but crossed them with the most\nastonishing perverseness; that she wrote whole pages out of\npoetry-books without the least pity; that she underlined words and\npassages with quite a frantic emphasis; and, in fine, gave the usual\ntokens of her condition.  She wasn't a heroine. Her letters were full\nof repetition.  She wrote rather doubtful grammar sometimes, and in her\nverses took all sorts of liberties with the metre.  But oh, mesdames,\nif you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax,\nand are not to be loved until you all know the difference between\ntrimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every\nschoolmaster perish miserably!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nSentimental and Otherwise\n\nI fear the gentleman to whom Miss Amelia's letters were addressed was\nrather an obdurate critic.  Such a number of notes followed Lieutenant\nOsborne about the country, that he became almost ashamed of the jokes\nof his mess-room companions regarding them, and ordered his servant\nnever to deliver them except at his private apartment. He was seen\nlighting his cigar with one, to the horror of Captain Dobbin, who, it\nis my belief, would have given a bank-note for the document.\n\nFor some time George strove to keep the liaison a secret.  There was a\nwoman in the case, that he admitted. \"And not the first either,\" said\nEnsign Spooney to Ensign Stubble.  \"That Osborne's a devil of a fellow.\nThere was a judge's daughter at Demerara went almost mad about him;\nthen there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss Pye, at St.\nVincent's, you know; and since he's been home, they say he's a regular\nDon Giovanni, by Jove.\"\n\nStubble and Spooney thought that to be a \"regular Don Giovanni, by\nJove\" was one of the finest qualities a man could possess, and\nOsborne's reputation was prodigious amongst the young men of the\nregiment.  He was famous in field-sports, famous at a song, famous on\nparade; free with his money, which was bountifully supplied by his\nfather.  His coats were better made than any man's in the regiment, and\nhe had more of them.  He was adored by the men.  He could drink more\nthan any officer of the whole mess, including old Heavytop, the\ncolonel.  He could spar better than Knuckles, the private (who would\nhave been a corporal but for his drunkenness, and who had been in the\nprize-ring); and was the best batter and bowler, out and out, of the\nregimental club. He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the\nGarrison cup at Quebec races.  There were other people besides Amelia\nwho worshipped him.  Stubble and Spooney thought him a sort of Apollo;\nDobbin took him to be an Admirable Crichton; and Mrs. Major O'Dowd\nacknowledged he was an elegant young fellow, and put her in mind of\nFitzjurld Fogarty, Lord Castlefogarty's second son.\n\nWell, Stubble and Spooney and the rest indulged in most romantic\nconjectures regarding this female correspondent of Osborne's--opining\nthat it was a Duchess in London who was in love with him--or that it\nwas a General's daughter, who was engaged to somebody else, and madly\nattached to him--or that it was a Member of Parliament's lady, who\nproposed four horses and an elopement--or that it was some other victim\nof a passion delightfully exciting, romantic, and disgraceful to all\nparties, on none of which conjectures would Osborne throw the least\nlight, leaving his young admirers and friends to invent and arrange\ntheir whole history.\n\nAnd the real state of the case would never have been known at all in\nthe regiment but for Captain Dobbin's indiscretion.  The Captain was\neating his breakfast one day in the mess-room, while Cackle, the\nassistant-surgeon, and the two above-named worthies were speculating\nupon Osborne's intrigue--Stubble holding out that the lady was a\nDuchess about Queen Charlotte's court, and Cackle vowing she was an\nopera-singer of the worst reputation. At this idea Dobbin became so\nmoved, that though his mouth was full of eggs and bread-and-butter at\nthe time, and though he ought not to have spoken at all, yet he\ncouldn't help blurting out, \"Cackle, you're a stupid fool. You're\nalways talking nonsense and scandal.  Osborne is not going to run off\nwith a Duchess or ruin a milliner. Miss Sedley is one of the most\ncharming young women that ever lived.  He's been engaged to her ever so\nlong; and the man who calls her names had better not do so in my\nhearing.\" With which, turning exceedingly red, Dobbin ceased speaking,\nand almost choked himself with a cup of tea.  The story was over the\nregiment in half-an-hour; and that very evening Mrs. Major O'Dowd wrote\noff to her sister Glorvina at O'Dowdstown not to hurry from\nDublin--young Osborne being prematurely engaged already.\n\nShe complimented the Lieutenant in an appropriate speech over a glass\nof whisky-toddy that evening, and he went home perfectly furious to\nquarrel with Dobbin (who had declined Mrs. Major O'Dowd's party, and\nsat in his own room playing the flute, and, I believe, writing poetry\nin a very melancholy manner)--to quarrel with Dobbin for betraying his\nsecret.\n\n\"Who the deuce asked you to talk about my affairs?\" Osborne shouted\nindignantly.  \"Why the devil is all the regiment to know that I am\ngoing to be married? Why is that tattling old harridan, Peggy O'Dowd,\nto make free with my name at her d--d supper-table, and advertise my\nengagement over the three kingdoms? After all, what right have you to\nsay I am engaged, or to meddle in my business at all, Dobbin?\"\n\n\"It seems to me,\" Captain Dobbin began.\n\n\"Seems be hanged, Dobbin,\" his junior interrupted him.  \"I am under\nobligations to you, I know it, a d--d deal too well too; but I won't be\nalways sermonised by you because you're five years my senior. I'm\nhanged if I'll stand your airs of superiority and infernal pity and\npatronage.  Pity and patronage! I should like to know in what I'm your\ninferior?\"\n\n\"Are you engaged?\" Captain Dobbin interposed.\n\n\"What the devil's that to you or any one here if I am?\"\n\n\"Are you ashamed of it?\" Dobbin resumed.\n\n\"What right have you to ask me that question, sir? I should like to\nknow,\" George said.\n\n\"Good God, you don't mean to say you want to break off?\" asked Dobbin,\nstarting up.\n\n\"In other words, you ask me if I'm a man of honour,\" said Osborne,\nfiercely; \"is that what you mean? You've adopted such a tone regarding\nme lately that I'm ------ if I'll bear it any more.\"\n\n\"What have I done? I've told you you were neglecting a sweet girl,\nGeorge.  I've told you that when you go to town you ought to go to her,\nand not to the gambling-houses about St. James's.\"\n\n\"You want your money back, I suppose,\" said George, with a sneer.\n\n\"Of course I do--I always did, didn't I?\" says Dobbin. \"You speak like\na generous fellow.\"\n\n\"No, hang it, William, I beg your pardon\"--here George interposed in a\nfit of remorse; \"you have been my friend in a hundred ways, Heaven\nknows.  You've got me out of a score of scrapes.  When Crawley of the\nGuards won that sum of money of me I should have been done but for you:\nI know I should.  But you shouldn't deal so hardly with me; you\nshouldn't be always catechising me. I am very fond of Amelia; I adore\nher, and that sort of thing.  Don't look angry.  She's faultless; I\nknow she is. But you see there's no fun in winning a thing unless you\nplay for it.  Hang it: the regiment's just back from the West Indies, I\nmust have a little fling, and then when I'm married I'll reform; I will\nupon my honour, now.  And--I say--Dob--don't be angry with me, and\nI'll give you a hundred next month, when I know my father will stand\nsomething handsome; and I'll ask Heavytop for leave, and I'll go to\ntown, and see Amelia to-morrow--there now, will that satisfy you?\"\n\n\"It is impossible to be long angry with you, George,\" said the\ngood-natured Captain; \"and as for the money, old boy, you know if I wanted\nit you'd share your last shilling with me.\"\n\n\"That I would, by Jove, Dobbin,\" George said, with the greatest\ngenerosity, though by the way he never had any money to spare.\n\n\"Only I wish you had sown those wild oats of yours, George.  If you\ncould have seen poor little Miss Emmy's face when she asked me about\nyou the other day, you would have pitched those billiard-balls to the\ndeuce.  Go and comfort her, you rascal.  Go and write her a long\nletter.  Do something to make her happy; a very little will.\"\n\n\"I believe she's d--d fond of me,\" the Lieutenant said, with a\nself-satisfied air; and went off to finish the evening with some jolly\nfellows in the mess-room.\n\nAmelia meanwhile, in Russell Square, was looking at the moon, which was\nshining upon that peaceful spot, as well as upon the square of the\nChatham barracks, where Lieutenant Osborne was quartered, and thinking\nto herself how her hero was employed.  Perhaps he is visiting the\nsentries, thought she; perhaps he is bivouacking; perhaps he is\nattending the couch of a wounded comrade, or studying the art of war up\nin his own desolate chamber. And her kind thoughts sped away as if they\nwere angels and had wings, and flying down the river to Chatham and\nRochester, strove to peep into the barracks where George was. . . . All\nthings considered, I think it was as well the gates were shut, and the\nsentry allowed no one to pass; so that the poor little white-robed\nangel could not hear the songs those young fellows were roaring over\nthe whisky-punch.\n\nThe day after the little conversation at Chatham barracks, young\nOsborne, to show that he would be as good as his word, prepared to go\nto town, thereby incurring Captain Dobbin's applause.  \"I should have\nliked to make her a little present,\" Osborne said to his friend in\nconfidence, \"only I am quite out of cash until my father tips up.\" But\nDobbin would not allow this good nature and generosity to be balked,\nand so accommodated Mr. Osborne with a few pound notes, which the\nlatter took after a little faint scruple.\n\nAnd I dare say he would have bought something very handsome for Amelia;\nonly, getting off the coach in Fleet Street, he was attracted by a\nhandsome shirt-pin in a jeweller's window, which he could not resist;\nand having paid for that, had very little money to spare for indulging\nin any further exercise of kindness.  Never mind: you may be sure it\nwas not his presents Amelia wanted.  When he came to Russell Square,\nher face lighted up as if he had been sunshine.  The little cares,\nfears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how\nmany days and nights, were forgotten, under one moment's influence of\nthat familiar, irresistible smile.  He beamed on her from the\ndrawing-room door--magnificent, with ambrosial whiskers, like a god.\nSambo, whose face as he announced Captain Osbin (having conferred a\nbrevet rank on that young officer) blazed with a sympathetic grin, saw\nthe little girl start, and flush, and jump up from her watching-place\nin the window; and Sambo retreated: and as soon as the door was shut,\nshe went fluttering to Lieutenant George Osborne's heart as if it was\nthe only natural home for her to nestle in.  Oh, thou poor panting\nlittle soul!  The very finest tree in the whole forest, with the\nstraightest stem, and the strongest arms, and the thickest foliage,\nwherein you choose to build and coo, may be marked, for what you know,\nand may be down with a crash ere long.  What an old, old simile that\nis, between man and timber!\n\nIn the meanwhile, George kissed her very kindly on her forehead and\nglistening eyes, and was very gracious and good; and she thought his\ndiamond shirt-pin (which she had not known him to wear before) the\nprettiest ornament ever seen.\n\nThe observant reader, who has marked our young Lieutenant's previous\nbehaviour, and has preserved our report of the brief conversation which\nhe has just had with Captain Dobbin, has possibly come to certain\nconclusions regarding the character of Mr. Osborne.  Some cynical\nFrenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction:\nthe one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.\nPerhaps the love is occasionally on the man's side; perhaps on the\nlady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken\ninsensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity for\nsweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan. Perhaps some\nbeloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory\nof her imagination; admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshipped\nhis selfishness as manly superiority; treated his stupidity as majestic\ngravity, and used him as the brilliant fairy Titania did a certain\nweaver at Athens.  I think I have seen such comedies of errors going on\nin the world.  But this is certain, that Amelia believed her lover to\nbe one of the most gallant and brilliant men in the empire: and it is\npossible Lieutenant Osborne thought so too.\n\nHe was a little wild: how many young men are; and don't girls like a\nrake better than a milksop?  He hadn't sown his wild oats as yet, but\nhe would soon: and quit the army now that peace was proclaimed; the\nCorsican monster locked up at Elba; promotion by consequence over; and\nno chance left for the display of his undoubted military talents and\nvalour: and his allowance, with Amelia's settlement, would enable them\nto take a snug place in the country somewhere, in a good sporting\nneighbourhood; and he would hunt a little, and farm a little; and they\nwould be very happy.  As for remaining in the army as a married man,\nthat was impossible. Fancy Mrs. George Osborne in lodgings in a county\ntown; or, worse still, in the East or West Indies, with a society of\nofficers, and patronized by Mrs. Major O'Dowd! Amelia died with\nlaughing at Osborne's stories about Mrs. Major O'Dowd.  He loved her\nmuch too fondly to subject her to that horrid woman and her\nvulgarities, and the rough treatment of a soldier's wife.  He didn't\ncare for himself--not he; but his dear little girl should take the\nplace in society to which, as his wife, she was entitled: and to these\nproposals you may be sure she acceded, as she would to any other from\nthe same author.\n\nHolding this kind of conversation, and building numberless castles in\nthe air (which Amelia adorned with all sorts of flower-gardens, rustic\nwalks, country churches, Sunday schools, and the like; while George had\nhis mind's eye directed to the stables, the kennel, and the cellar),\nthis young pair passed away a couple of hours very pleasantly; and as\nthe Lieutenant had only that single day in town, and a great deal of\nmost important business to transact, it was proposed that Miss Emmy\nshould dine with her future sisters-in-law. This invitation was\naccepted joyfully.  He conducted her to his sisters; where he left her\ntalking and prattling in a way that astonished those ladies, who\nthought that George might make something of her; and he then went off\nto transact his business.\n\nIn a word, he went out and ate ices at a pastry-cook's shop in Charing\nCross; tried a new coat in Pall Mall; dropped in at the Old\nSlaughters', and called for Captain Cannon; played eleven games at\nbilliards with the Captain, of which he won eight, and returned to\nRussell Square half an hour late for dinner, but in very good humour.\n\nIt was not so with old Mr. Osborne.  When that gentleman came from the\nCity, and was welcomed in the drawing-room by his daughters and the\nelegant Miss Wirt, they saw at once by his face--which was puffy,\nsolemn, and yellow at the best of times--and by the scowl and twitching\nof his black eyebrows, that the heart within his large white waistcoat\nwas disturbed and uneasy.  When Amelia stepped forward to salute him,\nwhich she always did with great trembling and timidity, he gave a surly\ngrunt of recognition, and dropped the little hand out of his great\nhirsute paw without any attempt to hold it there.  He looked round\ngloomily at his eldest daughter; who, comprehending the meaning of his\nlook, which asked unmistakably, \"Why the devil is she here?\" said at\nonce:\n\n\"George is in town, Papa; and has gone to the Horse Guards, and will be\nback to dinner.\"\n\n\"O he is, is he? I won't have the dinner kept waiting for him, Jane\";\nwith which this worthy man lapsed into his particular chair, and then\nthe utter silence in his genteel, well-furnished drawing-room was only\ninterrupted by the alarmed ticking of the great French clock.\n\nWhen that chronometer, which was surmounted by a cheerful brass group\nof the sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five in a heavy cathedral tone,\nMr. Osborne pulled the bell at his right hand--violently, and the\nbutler rushed up.\n\n\"Dinner!\" roared Mr. Osborne.\n\n\"Mr. George isn't come in, sir,\" interposed the man.\n\n\"Damn Mr. George, sir.  Am I master of the house? DINNER!\" Mr. Osborne\nscowled.  Amelia trembled.  A telegraphic communication of eyes passed\nbetween the other three ladies.  The obedient bell in the lower regions\nbegan ringing the announcement of the meal.  The tolling over, the head\nof the family thrust his hands into the great tail-pockets of his great\nblue coat with brass buttons, and without waiting for a further\nannouncement strode downstairs alone, scowling over his shoulder at the\nfour females.\n\n\"What's the matter now, my dear?\" asked one of the other, as they rose\nand tripped gingerly behind the sire.    \"I suppose the funds are\nfalling,\" whispered Miss Wirt; and so, trembling and in silence, this\nhushed female company followed their dark leader.  They took their\nplaces in silence.  He growled out a blessing, which sounded as gruffly\nas a curse.  The great silver dish-covers were removed. Amelia trembled\nin her place, for she was next to the awful Osborne, and alone on her\nside of the table--the gap being occasioned by the absence of George.\n\n\"Soup?\" says Mr. Osborne, clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on her,\nin a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did not speak\nfor a while.\n\n\"Take Miss Sedley's plate away,\" at last he said.  \"She can't eat the\nsoup--no more can I.  It's beastly.  Take away the soup, Hicks, and\nto-morrow turn the cook out of the house, Jane.\"\n\nHaving concluded his observations upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a few\ncurt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satirical\ntendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of the\nplace. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses of\nwine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the door\ntold of George's arrival when everybody began to rally.\n\n\"He could not come before.  General Daguilet had kept him waiting at\nthe Horse Guards.  Never mind soup or fish.  Give him anything--he\ndidn't care what.  Capital mutton--capital everything.\" His good humour\ncontrasted with his father's severity; and he rattled on unceasingly\nduring dinner, to the delight of all--of one especially, who need not\nbe mentioned.\n\nAs soon as the young ladies had discussed the orange and the glass of\nwine which formed the ordinary conclusion of the dismal banquets at Mr.\nOsborne's house, the signal to make sail for the drawing-room was\ngiven, and they all arose and departed.  Amelia hoped George would soon\njoin them there.  She began playing some of his favourite waltzes (then\nnewly imported) at the great carved-legged, leather-cased grand piano\nin the drawing-room overhead.  This little artifice did not bring him.\nHe was deaf to the waltzes; they grew fainter and fainter; the\ndiscomfited performer left the huge instrument presently; and though\nher three friends performed some of the loudest and most brilliant new\npieces of their repertoire, she did not hear a single note, but sate\nthinking, and boding evil.  Old Osborne's scowl, terrific always, had\nnever before looked so deadly to her.  His eyes followed her out of the\nroom, as if she had been guilty of something. When they brought her\ncoffee, she started as though it were a cup of poison which Mr. Hicks,\nthe butler, wished to propose to her.  What mystery was there lurking?\nOh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make\ndarlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed\nchildren.\n\nThe gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George Osborne\nwith anxiety.  With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly bilious, how\nwas he to extract that money from the governor, of which George was\nconsumedly in want? He began praising his father's wine.  That was\ngenerally a successful means of cajoling the old gentleman.\n\n\"We never got such Madeira in the West Indies, sir, as yours. Colonel\nHeavytop took off three bottles of that you sent me down, under his\nbelt the other day.\"\n\n\"Did he?\" said the old gentleman.  \"It stands me in eight shillings a\nbottle.\"\n\n\"Will you take six guineas a dozen for it, sir?\" said George, with a\nlaugh.  \"There's one of the greatest men in the kingdom wants some.\"\n\n\"Does he?\" growled the senior.  \"Wish he may get it.\"\n\n\"When General Daguilet was at Chatham, sir, Heavytop gave him a\nbreakfast, and asked me for some of the wine.  The General liked it\njust as well--wanted a pipe for the Commander-in-Chief.  He's his Royal\nHighness's right-hand man.\"\n\n\"It is devilish fine wine,\" said the Eyebrows, and they looked more\ngood-humoured; and George was going to take advantage of this\ncomplacency, and bring the supply question on the mahogany, when the\nfather, relapsing into solemnity, though rather cordial in manner, bade\nhim ring the bell for claret.  \"And we'll see if that's as good as the\nMadeira, George, to which his Royal Highness is welcome, I'm sure.  And\nas we are drinking it, I'll talk to you about a matter of importance.\"\n\nAmelia heard the claret bell ringing as she sat nervously upstairs. She\nthought, somehow, it was a mysterious and presentimental bell. Of the\npresentiments which some people are always having, some surely must\ncome right.\n\n\"What I want to know, George,\" the old gentleman said, after slowly\nsmacking his first bumper--\"what I want to know is, how you\nand--ah--that little thing upstairs, are carrying on?\"\n\n\"I think, sir, it is not hard to see,\" George said, with a\nself-satisfied grin.  \"Pretty clear, sir.--What capital wine!\"\n\n\"What d'you mean, pretty clear, sir?\"\n\n\"Why, hang it, sir, don't push me too hard.  I'm a modest man.\nI--ah--I don't set up to be a lady-killer; but I do own that she's as\ndevilish fond of me as she can be.  Anybody can see that with half an\neye.\"\n\n\"And you yourself?\"\n\n\"Why, sir, didn't you order me to marry her, and ain't I a good boy?\nHaven't our Papas settled it ever so long?\"\n\n\"A pretty boy, indeed.  Haven't I heard of your doings, sir, with Lord\nTarquin, Captain Crawley of the Guards, the Honourable Mr. Deuceace and\nthat set.  Have a care sir, have a care.\"\n\nThe old gentleman pronounced these aristocratic names with the greatest\ngusto.  Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, and\nmy-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.  He came home and\nlooked out his history in the Peerage: he introduced his name into his\ndaily conversation; he bragged about his Lordship to his daughters.  He\nfell down prostrate and basked in him as a Neapolitan beggar does in\nthe sun.  George was alarmed when he heard the names.  He feared his\nfather might have been informed of certain transactions at play.  But\nthe old moralist eased him by saying serenely:\n\n\"Well, well, young men will be young men.  And the comfort to me is,\nGeorge, that living in the best society in England, as I hope you do;\nas I think you do; as my means will allow you to do--\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir,\" says George, making his point at once.  \"One can't\nlive with these great folks for nothing; and my purse, sir, look at\nit\"; and he held up a little token which had been netted by Amelia, and\ncontained the very last of Dobbin's pound notes.\n\n\"You shan't want, sir.  The British merchant's son shan't want, sir. My\nguineas are as good as theirs, George, my boy; and I don't grudge 'em.\nCall on Mr. Chopper as you go through the City to-morrow; he'll have\nsomething for you.  I don't grudge money when I know you're in good\nsociety, because I know that good society can never go wrong.  There's\nno pride in me.  I was a humbly born man--but you have had advantages.\nMake a good use of 'em.  Mix with the young nobility. There's many of\n'em who can't spend a dollar to your guinea, my boy.  And as for the\npink bonnets (here from under the heavy eyebrows there came a knowing\nand not very pleasing leer)--why boys will be boys.  Only there's one\nthing I order you to avoid, which, if you do not, I'll cut you off with\na shilling, by Jove; and that's gambling.\"\n\n\"Oh, of course, sir,\" said George.\n\n\"But to return to the other business about Amelia: why shouldn't you\nmarry higher than a stockbroker's daughter, George--that's what I want\nto know?\"\n\n\"It's a family business, sir,\" says George, cracking filberts.  \"You\nand Mr. Sedley made the match a hundred years ago.\"\n\n\"I don't deny it; but people's positions alter, sir.  I don't deny that\nSedley made my fortune, or rather put me in the way of acquiring, by my\nown talents and genius, that proud position, which, I may say, I occupy\nin the tallow trade and the City of London. I've shown my gratitude to\nSedley; and he's tried it of late, sir, as my cheque-book can show.\nGeorge!  I tell you in confidence I don't like the looks of Mr.\nSedley's affairs.  My chief clerk, Mr. Chopper, does not like the looks\nof 'em, and he's an old file, and knows 'Change as well as any man in\nLondon.  Hulker & Bullock are looking shy at him.  He's been dabbling\non his own account I fear. They say the Jeune Amelie was his, which was\ntaken by the Yankee privateer Molasses.  And that's flat--unless I see\nAmelia's ten thousand down you don't marry her.  I'll have no lame\nduck's daughter in my family.  Pass the wine, sir--or ring for coffee.\"\n\nWith which Mr. Osborne spread out the evening paper, and George knew\nfrom this signal that the colloquy was ended, and that his papa was\nabout to take a nap.\n\nHe hurried upstairs to Amelia in the highest spirits. What was it that\nmade him more attentive to her on that night than he had been for a\nlong time--more eager to amuse her, more tender, more brilliant in\ntalk?  Was it that his generous heart warmed to her at the prospect of\nmisfortune; or that the idea of losing the dear little prize made him\nvalue it more?\n\nShe lived upon the recollections of that happy evening for many days\nafterwards, remembering his words; his looks; the song he sang; his\nattitude, as he leant over her or looked at her from a distance.  As it\nseemed to her, no night ever passed so quickly at Mr. Osborne's house\nbefore; and for once this young person was almost provoked to be angry\nby the premature arrival of Mr. Sambo with her shawl.\n\nGeorge came and took a tender leave of her the next morning; and then\nhurried off to the City, where he visited Mr. Chopper, his father's\nhead man, and received from that gentleman a document which he\nexchanged at Hulker & Bullock's for a whole pocketful of money. As\nGeorge entered the house, old John Sedley was passing out of the\nbanker's parlour, looking very dismal.  But his godson was much too\nelated to mark the worthy stockbroker's depression, or the dreary eyes\nwhich the kind old gentleman cast upon him.  Young Bullock did not come\ngrinning out of the parlour with him as had been his wont in former\nyears.\n\nAnd as the swinging doors of Hulker, Bullock & Co. closed upon Mr.\nSedley, Mr. Quill, the cashier (whose benevolent occupation it is to\nhand out crisp bank-notes from a drawer and dispense sovereigns out of\na copper shovel), winked at Mr. Driver, the clerk at the desk on his\nright.  Mr. Driver winked again.\n\n\"No go,\" Mr. D. whispered.\n\n\"Not at no price,\" Mr. Q. said.  \"Mr. George Osborne,  sir, how will\nyou take it?\" George crammed eagerly a quantity of notes into his\npockets, and paid Dobbin fifty pounds that very evening at mess.\n\nThat very evening Amelia wrote him the tenderest of long letters. Her\nheart was overflowing with tenderness, but it still foreboded evil.\nWhat was the cause of Mr. Osborne's dark looks? she asked. Had any\ndifference arisen between him and her papa? Her poor papa returned so\nmelancholy from the City, that all were alarmed about him at home--in\nfine, there were four pages of loves and fears and hopes and\nforebodings.\n\n\"Poor little Emmy--dear little Emmy.  How fond she is of me,\" George\nsaid, as he perused the missive--\"and Gad, what a headache that mixed\npunch has given me!\" Poor little Emmy, indeed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nMiss Crawley at Home\n\nAbout this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug and\nwell-appointed house in Park Lane, a travelling chariot with a lozenge on\nthe panels, a discontented female in a green veil and crimped curls on\nthe rumble, and a large and confidential man on the box.  It was the\nequipage of our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants.  The\ncarriage windows were shut; the fat spaniel, whose head and tongue\nordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the lap of the\ndiscontented female.  When the vehicle stopped, a large round bundle of\nshawls was taken out of the carriage by the aid of various domestics\nand a young lady who accompanied the heap of cloaks.  That bundle\ncontained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed upstairs forthwith, and put\ninto a bed and chamber warmed properly as for the reception of an\ninvalid.  Messengers went off for her physician and medical man.  They\ncame, consulted, prescribed, vanished.  The young companion of Miss\nCrawley, at the conclusion of their interview, came in to receive their\ninstructions, and administered those antiphlogistic medicines which the\neminent men ordered.\n\nCaptain Crawley of the Life Guards rode up from Knightsbridge Barracks\nthe next day; his black charger pawed the straw before his invalid\naunt's door.  He was most affectionate in his inquiries regarding that\namiable relative.  There seemed to be much source of apprehension. He\nfound Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented female) unusually sulky and\ndespondent; he found Miss Briggs, her dame de compagnie, in tears alone\nin the drawing-room.  She had hastened home, hearing of her beloved\nfriend's illness.  She wished to fly to her couch, that couch which\nshe, Briggs, had so often smoothed in the hour of sickness.  She was\ndenied admission to Miss Crawley's apartment.  A stranger was\nadministering her medicines--a stranger from the country--an odious\nMiss ... --tears choked the utterance of the dame de compagnie, and\nshe buried her crushed affections and her poor old red nose in her\npocket handkerchief.\n\nRawdon Crawley sent up his name by the sulky femme de chambre, and Miss\nCrawley's new companion, coming tripping down from the sick-room, put\na little hand into his as he stepped forward eagerly to meet her, gave\na glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and beckoning the\nyoung Guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him downstairs into\nthat now desolate dining-parlour, where so many a good dinner had been\ncelebrated.\n\nHere these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, the\nsymptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which period\nthe parlour bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by Mr.\nBowls, Miss Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed, happened\nto be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview); and the\nCaptain coming out, curling his mustachios, mounted the black charger\npawing among the straw, to the admiration of the little blackguard boys\ncollected in the street.  He looked in at the dining-room window,\nmanaging his horse, which curvetted and capered beautifully--for one\ninstant the young person might be seen at the window, when her figure\nvanished, and, doubtless, she went upstairs again to resume the\naffecting duties of benevolence.\n\nWho could this young woman be, I wonder?  That evening a little dinner\nfor two persons was laid in the dining-room--when Mrs. Firkin, the\nlady's maid, pushed into her mistress's apartment, and bustled about\nthere during the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the new\nnurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal.\n\nBriggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a\nmorsel of meat.  The young person carved a fowl with the utmost\ndelicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs,\nbefore whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a great\nclattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushing\nhysterical state.\n\n\"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?\" said the person\nto Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so.  Briggs seized it\nmechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and began\nto play with the chicken on her plate.\n\n\"I think we shall be able to help each other,\" said the person with\ngreat suavity: \"and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls's kind services.\nMr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you.\" He went\ndownstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon\nthe unoffending footman, his subordinate.\n\n\"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs,\" the young lady said, with a\ncool, slightly sarcastic, air.\n\n\"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-o-on't see me,\" gurgled out Briggs\nin an agony of renewed grief.\n\n\"She's not very ill any more.  Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs. She\nhas only overeaten herself--that is all. She is greatly better. She\nwill soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped and\nfrom medical treatment, but she will rally immediately.  Pray console\nyourself, and take a little more wine.\"\n\n\"But why, why won't she see me again?\" Miss Briggs bleated out. \"Oh,\nMatilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is this the\nreturn to your poor, poor Arabella?\"\n\n\"Don't cry too much, poor Arabella,\" the other said (with ever so\nlittle of a grin); \"she only won't see you, because she says you don't\nnurse her as well as I do. It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night.\nI wish you might do it instead.\"\n\n\"Have I not tended that dear couch for years?\" Arabella said, \"and\nnow--\"\n\n\"Now she prefers somebody else.  Well, sick people have these fancies,\nand must be humoured.  When she's well I shall go.\"\n\n\"Never, never,\" Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.\n\n\"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?\" the other said, with the same\nprovoking good-nature.  \"Pooh--she will be well in a fortnight, when I\nshall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to their\nmother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend.  You need not be\njealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs.  I am a poor little girl without\nany friends, or any harm in me. I don't want to supplant you in Miss\nCrawley's good graces.  She will forget me a week after I am gone: and\nher affection for you has been the work of years.  Give me a little\nwine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends.  I'm\nsure I want friends.\"\n\nThe placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her hand\nat this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all that,\nand bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end\nof half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such,\nastonishing to state, is the name of her who has been described\ningeniously as \"the person\" hitherto), went upstairs again to her\npatient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, she\neliminated poor Firkin. \"Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do;\nhow nicely you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted.\" \"Thank\nyou\"; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of jealousy, only the\nmore dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom.\n\nCould it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the first\nfloor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by\nthe hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard\nthe creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and\ngruel-basin the neglected female carried.\n\n\"Well, Firkin?\" says she, as the other entered the apartment. \"Well,\nJane?\"\n\n\"Wuss and wuss, Miss B.,\" Firkin said, wagging her head.\n\n\"Is she not better then?\"\n\n\"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more\neasy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never\nthought to have seen this day!\"  And the water-works again began to\nplay.\n\n\"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought,\nwhile enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firm\nfriends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find a\nstranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my still\ndearest Matilda!\"  Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her language, was of\na literary and sentimental turn, and had once published a volume of\npoems--\"Trills of the Nightingale\"--by subscription.\n\n\"Miss B., they are all infatyated about that young woman,\" Firkin\nreplied. \"Sir Pitt wouldn't have let her go, but he daredn't refuse\nMiss Crawley anything. Mrs. Bute at the Rectory jist as bad--never\nhappy out of her sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawley\nmortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won't have nobody near\nher but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for where nor for why; and I think\nsomethink has bewidged everybody.\"\n\nRebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley; the\nnext night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had time for\nseveral hours' comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot of\nher patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well that she sat\nup and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss Briggs and her\ngrief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs' weeping snuffle, and her\nmanner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered that Miss\nCrawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors when\nthey visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world,\nwhen the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression\nand terror of death.\n\nCaptain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins from Miss\nRebecca respecting his aunt's health. This improved so rapidly, that\npoor Briggs was allowed to see her patroness; and persons with tender\nhearts may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental female,\nand the affecting nature of the interview.\n\nMiss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal soon.  Rebecca used to\nmimic her to her face with the most admirable gravity, thereby\nrendering the imitation doubly piquant to her worthy patroness.\n\nThe causes which had led to the deplorable illness of Miss Crawley, and\nher departure from her brother's house in the country, were of such an\nunromantic nature that they are hardly fit to be explained in this\ngenteel and sentimental novel.  For how is it possible to hint of a\ndelicate female, living in good society, that she ate and drank too\nmuch, and that a hot supper of lobsters profusely enjoyed at the\nRectory was the reason of an indisposition which Miss Crawley herself\npersisted was solely attributable to the dampness of the weather?  The\nattack was so sharp that Matilda--as his Reverence expressed it--was\nvery nearly \"off the hooks\"; all the family were in a fever of\nexpectation regarding the will, and Rawdon Crawley was making sure of\nat least forty thousand pounds before the commencement of the London\nseason.  Mr. Crawley sent over a choice parcel of tracts, to prepare\nher for the change from Vanity Fair and Park Lane for another world;\nbut a good doctor from Southampton being called in in time, vanquished\nthe lobster which was so nearly fatal to her, and gave her sufficient\nstrength to enable her to return to London. The Baronet did not\ndisguise his exceeding mortification at the turn which affairs took.\n\nWhile everybody was attending on Miss Crawley, and messengers every\nhour from the Rectory were carrying news of her health to the\naffectionate folks there, there was a lady in another part of the\nhouse, being exceedingly ill, of whom no one took any notice at all;\nand this was the lady of Crawley herself.  The good doctor shook his\nhead after seeing her; to which visit Sir Pitt consented, as it could\nbe paid without a fee; and she was left fading away in her lonely\nchamber, with no more heed paid to her than to a weed in the park.\n\nThe young ladies, too, lost much of the inestimable benefit of their\ngoverness's instruction, So affectionate a nurse was Miss Sharp, that\nMiss Crawley would take her medicines from no other hand. Firkin had\nbeen deposed long before her mistress's departure from the country.\nThat faithful attendant found a gloomy consolation on returning to\nLondon, in seeing Miss Briggs suffer the same pangs of jealousy and\nundergo the same faithless treatment to which she herself had been\nsubject.\n\nCaptain Rawdon got an extension of leave on his aunt's illness, and\nremained dutifully at home.  He was always in her antechamber.  (She\nlay sick in the state bedroom, into which you entered by the little\nblue saloon.) His father was always meeting him there; or if he came\ndown the corridor ever so quietly, his father's door was sure to open,\nand the hyena face of the old gentleman to glare out.  What was it set\none to watch the other so?  A generous rivalry, no doubt, as to which\nshould be most attentive to the dear sufferer in the state bedroom.\nRebecca used to come out and comfort both of them; or one or the other\nof them rather.  Both of these worthy gentlemen were most anxious to\nhave news of the invalid from her little confidential messenger.\n\nAt dinner--to which meal she descended for half an hour--she kept the\npeace between them: after which she disappeared for the night; when\nRawdon would ride over to the depot of the 150th at Mudbury, leaving\nhis papa to the society of Mr. Horrocks and his rum and water. She\npassed as weary a fortnight as ever mortal spent in Miss Crawley's\nsick-room; but her little nerves seemed to be of iron, as she was quite\nunshaken by the duty and the tedium of the sick-chamber.\n\nShe never told until long afterwards how painful that duty was; how\npeevish a patient was the jovial old lady; how angry; how sleepless; in\nwhat horrors of death; during what long nights she lay moaning, and in\nalmost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quite\nignored when she was in good health.--Picture to yourself, oh fair\nyoung reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless\nold woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig.  Picture her\nto yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and pray!\n\nSharp watched this graceless bedside with indomitable patience. Nothing\nescaped her; and, like a prudent steward, she found a use for\neverything.  She told many a good story about Miss Crawley's illness in\nafter days--stories which made the lady blush through her artificial\ncarnations.  During the illness she was never out of temper; always\nalert; she slept light, having a perfectly clear conscience; and could\ntake that refreshment at almost any minute's warning.  And so you saw\nvery few traces of fatigue in her appearance.  Her face might be a\ntrifle paler, and the circles round her eyes a little blacker than\nusual; but whenever she came out from the sick-room she was always\nsmiling, fresh, and neat, and looked as trim in her little\ndressing-gown and cap, as in her smartest evening suit.\n\nThe Captain thought so, and raved about her in uncouth convulsions. The\nbarbed shaft of love had penetrated his dull hide.  Six\nweeks--appropinquity--opportunity--had victimised him completely.  He\nmade a confidante of his aunt at the Rectory, of all persons in the\nworld.  She rallied him about it; she had perceived his folly; she\nwarned him; she finished by owning that little Sharp was the most clever,\ndroll, odd, good-natured, simple, kindly creature in England.  Rawdon\nmust not trifle with her affections, though--dear Miss Crawley would\nnever pardon him for that; for she, too, was quite overcome by the little\ngoverness, and loved Sharp like a daughter.  Rawdon must go away--go\nback to his regiment and naughty London, and not play with a poor\nartless girl's feelings.\n\nMany and many a time this good-natured lady, compassionating the\nforlorn life-guardsman's condition, gave him an opportunity of seeing\nMiss Sharp at the Rectory, and of walking home with her, as we have\nseen.  When men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love, though they see\nthe hook and the string, and the whole apparatus with which they are to\nbe taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless--they must come to it--they\nmust swallow it--and are presently struck and landed gasping.  Rawdon\nsaw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part to captivate him\nwith Rebecca.  He was not very wise; but he was a man about town, and\nhad seen several seasons.  A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he\nthought, through a speech of Mrs. Bute's.\n\n\"Mark my words, Rawdon,\" she said.  \"You will have Miss Sharp one day\nfor your relation.\"\n\n\"What relation--my cousin, hey, Mrs. Bute? James sweet on her, hey?\"\ninquired the waggish officer.\n\n\"More than that,\" Mrs. Bute said, with a flash from her black eyes.\n\n\"Not Pitt?  He sha'n't have her.  The sneak a'n't worthy of her. He's\nbooked to Lady Jane Sheepshanks.\"\n\n\"You men perceive nothing.  You silly, blind creature--if anything\nhappens to Lady Crawley, Miss Sharp will be your mother-in-law; and\nthat's what will happen.\"\n\nRawdon Crawley, Esquire, gave vent to a prodigious whistle, in token of\nastonishment at this announcement. He couldn't deny it.  His father's\nevident liking for Miss Sharp had not escaped him.  He knew the old\ngentleman's character well; and a more unscrupulous old--whyou--he did\nnot conclude the sentence, but walked home, curling his mustachios, and\nconvinced he had found a clue to Mrs. Bute's mystery.\n\n\"By Jove, it's too bad,\" thought Rawdon, \"too bad, by Jove! I do\nbelieve the woman wants the poor girl to be ruined, in order that she\nshouldn't come into the family as Lady Crawley.\"\n\nWhen he saw Rebecca alone, he rallied her about his father's attachment\nin his graceful way.  She flung up her head scornfully, looked him full\nin the face, and said,\n\n\"Well, suppose he is fond of me.  I know he is, and others too.  You\ndon't think I am afraid of him, Captain Crawley?  You don't suppose I\ncan't defend my own honour,\" said the little woman, looking as stately\nas a queen.\n\n\"Oh, ah, why--give you fair warning--look out, you know--that's all,\"\nsaid the mustachio-twiddler.\n\n\"You hint at something not honourable, then?\" said she, flashing out.\n\n\"O Gad--really--Miss Rebecca,\" the heavy dragoon interposed.\n\n\"Do you suppose I have no feeling of self-respect, because I am poor\nand friendless, and because rich people have none?  Do you think,\nbecause I am a governess, I have not as much sense, and feeling, and\ngood breeding as you gentlefolks in Hampshire? I'm a Montmorency. Do\nyou suppose a Montmorency is not as good as a Crawley?\"\n\nWhen Miss Sharp was agitated, and alluded to her maternal relatives,\nshe spoke with ever so slight a foreign accent, which gave a great\ncharm to her clear ringing voice.  \"No,\" she continued, kindling as she\nspoke to the Captain; \"I can endure poverty, but not shame--neglect,\nbut not insult; and insult from--from you.\"\n\nHer feelings gave way, and she burst into tears.\n\n\"Hang it, Miss Sharp--Rebecca--by Jove--upon my soul, I wouldn't for a\nthousand pounds.  Stop, Rebecca!\"\n\nShe was gone.  She drove out with Miss Crawley that day.  It was before\nthe latter's illness.  At dinner she was unusually brilliant and\nlively; but she would take no notice of the hints, or the nods, or the\nclumsy expostulations of the humiliated, infatuated guardsman.\nSkirmishes of this sort passed perpetually during the little\ncampaign--tedious to relate, and similar in result.  The Crawley heavy\ncavalry was maddened by defeat, and routed every day.\n\nIf the Baronet of Queen's Crawley had not had the fear of losing his\nsister's legacy before his eyes, he never would have permitted his dear\ngirls to lose the educational blessings which their invaluable\ngoverness was conferring upon them.  The old house at home seemed a\ndesert without her, so useful and pleasant had Rebecca made herself\nthere.  Sir Pitt's letters were not copied and corrected; his books not\nmade up; his household business and manifold schemes neglected, now\nthat his little secretary was away.  And it was easy to see how\nnecessary such an amanuensis was to him, by the tenor and spelling of\nthe numerous letters which he sent to her, entreating her and\ncommanding her to return.  Almost every day brought a frank from the\nBaronet, enclosing the most urgent prayers to Becky for her return, or\nconveying pathetic statements to Miss Crawley, regarding the neglected\nstate of his daughters' education; of which documents Miss Crawley took\nvery little heed.\n\nMiss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion was\na sinecure and a derision; and her company was the fat spaniel in the\ndrawing-room, or occasionally the discontented Firkin in the\nhousekeeper's closet.  Nor though the old lady would by no means hear\nof Rebecca's departure, was the latter regularly installed in office in\nPark Lane.  Like many wealthy people, it was Miss Crawley's habit to\naccept as much service as she could get from her inferiors; and\ngood-naturedly to take leave of them when she no longer found them\nuseful.  Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or to\nbe thought of.  They take needy people's services as their due.  Nor\nhave you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason to\ncomplain!  Your friendship for Dives is about as sincere as the return\nwhich it usually gets.  It is money you love, and not the man; and were\nCroesus and his footman to change places you know, you poor rogue, who\nwould have the benefit of your allegiance.\n\nAnd I am not sure that, in spite of Rebecca's simplicity and activity,\nand gentleness and untiring good humour, the shrewd old London lady,\nupon whom these treasures of friendship were lavished, had not a\nlurking suspicion all the while of her affectionate nurse and friend.\nIt must have often crossed Miss Crawley's mind that nobody does\nanything for nothing.  If she measured her own feeling towards the\nworld, she must have been pretty well able to gauge those of the world\ntowards herself; and perhaps she reflected that it is the ordinary lot\nof people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody.\n\nWell, meanwhile Becky was the greatest comfort and convenience to her,\nand she gave her a couple of new gowns, and an old necklace and shawl,\nand showed her friendship by abusing all her intimate acquaintances to\nher new confidante (than which there can't be a more touching proof of\nregard), and meditated vaguely some great future benefit--to marry her\nperhaps to Clump, the apothecary, or to settle her in some advantageous\nway of life; or at any rate, to send her back to Queen's Crawley when\nshe had done with her, and the full London season had begun.\n\nWhen Miss Crawley was convalescent and descended to the drawing-room,\nBecky sang to her, and otherwise amused her; when she was well enough\nto drive out, Becky accompanied her.  And amongst the drives which they\ntook, whither, of all places in the world, did Miss Crawley's admirable\ngood-nature and friendship actually induce her to penetrate, but to\nRussell Square, Bloomsbury, and the house of John Sedley, Esquire.\n\nEre that event, many notes had passed, as may be imagined, between the\ntwo dear friends.  During the months of Rebecca's stay in Hampshire,\nthe eternal friendship had (must it be owned?) suffered considerable\ndiminution, and grown so decrepit and feeble with old age as to\nthreaten demise altogether.  The fact is, both girls had their own real\naffairs to think of: Rebecca her advance with her employers--Amelia her\nown absorbing topic.  When the two girls met, and flew into each\nother's arms with that impetuosity which distinguishes the behaviour of\nyoung ladies towards each other, Rebecca performed her part of the\nembrace with the most perfect briskness and energy.  Poor little Amelia\nblushed as she kissed her friend, and thought she had been guilty of\nsomething very like coldness towards her.\n\nTheir first interview was but a very short one.  Amelia was just ready\nto go out for a walk.  Miss Crawley was waiting in her carriage below,\nher people wondering at the locality in which they found themselves,\nand gazing upon honest Sambo, the black footman of Bloomsbury, as one\nof the queer natives of the place.  But when Amelia came down with her\nkind smiling looks (Rebecca must introduce her to her friend, Miss\nCrawley was longing to see her, and was too ill to leave her\ncarriage)--when, I say, Amelia came down, the Park Lane shoulder-knot\naristocracy wondered more and more that such a thing could come out of\nBloomsbury; and Miss Crawley was fairly captivated by the sweet\nblushing face of the young lady who came forward so timidly and so\ngracefully to pay her respects to the protector of her friend.\n\n\"What a complexion, my dear! What a sweet voice!\" Miss Crawley said, as\nthey drove away westward after the little interview.  \"My dear Sharp,\nyour young friend is charming.  Send for her to Park Lane, do you\nhear?\" Miss Crawley had a good taste.  She liked natural manners--a\nlittle timidity only set them off.  She liked pretty faces near her; as\nshe liked pretty pictures and nice china.  She talked of Amelia with\nrapture half a dozen times that day.  She mentioned her to Rawdon\nCrawley, who came dutifully to partake of his aunt's chicken.\n\nOf course, on this Rebecca instantly stated that Amelia was engaged to\nbe married--to a Lieutenant Osborne--a very old flame.\n\n\"Is he a man in a line-regiment?\" Captain Crawley asked, remembering\nafter an effort, as became a guardsman, the number of the regiment,\nthe --th.\n\nRebecca thought that was the regiment.  \"The Captain's name,\" she said,\n\"was Captain Dobbin.\"\n\n\"A lanky gawky fellow,\" said Crawley, \"tumbles over everybody.  I know\nhim; and Osborne's a goodish-looking fellow, with large black whiskers?\"\n\n\"Enormous,\" Miss Rebecca Sharp said, \"and enormously proud of them, I\nassure you.\"\n\nCaptain Rawdon Crawley burst into a horse-laugh by way of reply; and\nbeing pressed by the ladies to explain, did so when the explosion of\nhilarity was over.  \"He fancies he can play at billiards,\" said he. \"I\nwon two hundred of him at the Cocoa-Tree.  HE play, the young flat!\nHe'd have played for anything that day, but his friend Captain Dobbin\ncarried him off, hang him!\"\n\n\"Rawdon, Rawdon, don't be so wicked,\" Miss Crawley remarked, highly\npleased.\n\n\"Why, ma'am, of all the young fellows I've seen out of the line, I\nthink this fellow's the greenest.  Tarquin and Deuceace get what money\nthey like out of him.  He'd go to the deuce to be seen with a lord.  He\npays their dinners at Greenwich, and they invite the company.\"\n\n\"And very pretty company too, I dare say.\"\n\n\"Quite right, Miss Sharp.  Right, as usual, Miss Sharp. Uncommon pretty\ncompany--haw, haw!\" and the Captain laughed more and more, thinking he\nhad made a good joke.\n\n\"Rawdon, don't be naughty!\" his aunt exclaimed.\n\n\"Well, his father's a City man--immensely rich, they say.  Hang those\nCity fellows, they must bleed; and I've not done with him yet, I can\ntell you.  Haw, haw!\"\n\n\"Fie, Captain Crawley; I shall warn Amelia.  A gambling husband!\"\n\n\"Horrid, ain't he, hey?\" the Captain said with great solemnity; and\nthen added, a sudden thought having struck him: \"Gad, I say, ma'am,\nwe'll have him here.\"\n\n\"Is he a presentable sort of a person?\" the aunt inquired.\n\n\"Presentable?--oh, very well.  You wouldn't see any difference,\"\nCaptain Crawley answered.  \"Do let's have him, when you begin to see a\nfew people; and his whatdyecallem--his inamorato--eh, Miss Sharp;\nthat's what you call it--comes.  Gad, I'll write him a note, and have\nhim; and I'll try if he can play piquet as well as billiards. Where\ndoes he live, Miss Sharp?\"\n\nMiss Sharp told Crawley the Lieutenant's town address; and a few days\nafter this conversation, Lieutenant Osborne received a letter, in\nCaptain Rawdon's schoolboy hand, and enclosing a note of invitation\nfrom Miss Crawley.\n\nRebecca despatched also an invitation to her darling Amelia, who, you\nmay be sure, was ready enough to accept it when she heard that George\nwas to be of the party.  It was arranged that Amelia was to spend the\nmorning with the ladies of Park Lane, where all were very kind to her.\nRebecca patronised her with calm superiority: she was so much the\ncleverer of the two, and her friend so gentle and unassuming, that she\nalways yielded when anybody chose to command, and so took Rebecca's\norders with perfect meekness and good humour. Miss Crawley's\ngraciousness was also remarkable.  She continued her raptures about\nlittle Amelia, talked about her before her face as if she were a doll,\nor a servant, or a picture, and admired her with the most benevolent\nwonder possible.  I admire that admiration which the genteel world\nsometimes extends to the commonalty. There is no more agreeable object\nin life than to see Mayfair folks condescending.  Miss Crawley's\nprodigious benevolence rather fatigued poor little Amelia, and I am not\nsure that of the three ladies in Park Lane she did not find honest Miss\nBriggs the most agreeable.  She sympathised with Briggs as with all\nneglected or gentle people: she wasn't what you call a woman of spirit.\n\nGeorge came to dinner--a repast en garcon with Captain Crawley.\n\nThe great family coach of the Osbornes transported him to Park Lane\nfrom Russell Square; where the young ladies, who were not themselves\ninvited, and professed the greatest indifference at that slight,\nnevertheless looked at Sir Pitt Crawley's name in the baronetage; and\nlearned everything which that work had to teach about the Crawley\nfamily and their pedigree, and the Binkies, their relatives, &c., &c.\nRawdon Crawley received George Osborne with great frankness and\ngraciousness: praised his play at billiards: asked him when he would\nhave his revenge: was interested about Osborne's regiment: and would\nhave proposed piquet to him that very evening, but Miss Crawley\nabsolutely forbade any gambling in her house; so that the young\nLieutenant's purse was not lightened by his gallant patron, for that\nday at least.  However, they made an engagement for the next,\nsomewhere: to look at a horse that Crawley had to sell, and to try him\nin the Park; and to dine together, and to pass the evening with some\njolly fellows.  \"That is, if you're not on duty to that pretty Miss\nSedley,\" Crawley said, with a knowing wink. \"Monstrous nice girl, 'pon\nmy honour, though, Osborne,\" he was good enough to add.  \"Lots of tin,\nI suppose, eh?\"\n\nOsborne wasn't on duty; he would join Crawley with pleasure: and the\nlatter, when they met the next day, praised his new friend's\nhorsemanship--as he might with perfect honesty--and introduced him to\nthree or four young men of the first fashion, whose acquaintance\nimmensely elated the simple young officer.\n\n\"How's little Miss Sharp, by-the-bye?\" Osborne inquired of his friend\nover their wine, with a dandified air. \"Good-natured little girl that.\nDoes she suit you well at Queen's Crawley? Miss Sedley liked her a good\ndeal last year.\"\n\nCaptain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out of his little\nblue eyes, and watched him when he went up to resume his acquaintance\nwith the fair governess.  Her conduct must have relieved Crawley if\nthere was any jealousy in the bosom of that life-guardsman.\n\nWhen the young men went upstairs, and after Osborne's introduction to\nMiss Crawley, he walked up to Rebecca with a patronising, easy swagger.\nHe was going to be kind to her and protect her.  He would even shake\nhands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, \"Ah, Miss Sharp!\nhow-dy-doo?\" held out his left hand towards her, expecting that she\nwould be quite confounded at the honour.\n\nMiss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him a little nod, so\ncool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley, watching the operations from the\nother room, could hardly restrain his laughter as he saw the\nLieutenant's entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause, and the\nperfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended to take the\nfinger which was offered for his embrace.\n\n\"She'd beat the devil, by Jove!\" the Captain said, in a rapture; and\nthe Lieutenant, by way of beginning the conversation, agreeably asked\nRebecca how she liked her new place.\n\n\"My place?\" said Miss Sharp, coolly, \"how kind of you to remind me of\nit!  It's a tolerably good place: the wages are pretty good--not so\ngood as Miss Wirt's, I believe, with your sisters in Russell Square.\nHow are those young ladies?--not that I ought to ask.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" Mr. Osborne said, amazed.\n\n\"Why, they never condescended to speak to me, or to ask me into their\nhouse, whilst I was staying with Amelia; but we poor governesses, you\nknow, are used to slights of this sort.\"\n\n\"My dear Miss Sharp!\" Osborne ejaculated.\n\n\"At least in some families,\" Rebecca continued.  \"You can't think what\na difference there is though.  We are not so wealthy in Hampshire as\nyou lucky folks of the City. But then I am in a gentleman's\nfamily--good old English stock.  I suppose you know Sir Pitt's father\nrefused a peerage.  And you see how I am treated.  I am pretty\ncomfortable.  Indeed it is rather a good place.  But how very good of\nyou to inquire!\"\n\nOsborne was quite savage.  The little governess patronised him and\npersiffled him until this young British Lion felt quite uneasy; nor\ncould he muster sufficient presence of mind to find a pretext for\nbacking out of this most delectable conversation.\n\n\"I thought you liked the City families pretty well,\" he said, haughtily.\n\n\"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that horrid vulgar school?\nOf course I did.  Doesn't every girl like to come home for the\nholidays?  And how was I to know any better?  But oh, Mr. Osborne, what\na difference eighteen months' experience makes! eighteen months spent,\npardon me for saying so, with gentlemen.  As for dear Amelia, she, I\ngrant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere.  There now, I\nsee you are beginning to be in a good humour; but oh these queer odd\nCity people! And Mr. Jos--how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?\"\n\n\"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr. Joseph last\nyear,\" Osborne said kindly.\n\n\"How severe of you!  Well, entre nous, I didn't break my heart about\nhim; yet if he had asked me to do what you mean by your looks (and very\nexpressive and kind they are, too), I wouldn't have said no.\"\n\nMr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, \"Indeed, how very obliging!\"\n\n\"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law, you are thinking?\nTo be sister-in-law to George Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne,\nEsquire, son of--what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne? Well, don't be\nangry.  You can't help your pedigree, and I quite agree with you that I\nwould have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for could a poor penniless girl do\nbetter?  Now you know the whole secret.  I'm frank and open;\nconsidering all things, it was very kind of you to allude to the\ncircumstance--very kind and polite.  Amelia dear, Mr. Osborne and I\nwere talking about your poor brother Joseph. How is he?\"\n\nThus was George utterly routed.  Not that Rebecca was in the right; but\nshe had managed most successfully to put him in the wrong.  And he now\nshamefully fled, feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would\nhave been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.\n\nThough Rebecca had had the better of him, George was above the meanness\nof talebearing or revenge upon a lady--only he could not help cleverly\nconfiding to Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding\nMiss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous one, a desperate\nflirt, &c.; in all of which opinions Crawley agreed laughingly, and\nwith every one of which Miss Rebecca was made acquainted before\ntwenty-four hours were over.  They added to her original regard for Mr.\nOsborne.  Her woman's instinct had told her that it was George who had\ninterrupted the success of her first love-passage, and she esteemed him\naccordingly.\n\n\"I only just warn you,\" he said to Rawdon Crawley, with a knowing\nlook--he had bought the horse, and lost some score of guineas after\ndinner, \"I just warn you--I know women, and counsel you to be on the\nlook-out.\"\n\n\"Thank you, my boy,\" said Crawley, with a look of peculiar gratitude.\n\"You're wide awake, I see.\" And George went off, thinking Crawley was\nquite right.\n\nHe told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled Rawdon\nCrawley--a devilish good, straightforward fellow--to be on his guard\nagainst that little sly, scheming Rebecca.\n\n\"Against whom?\" Amelia cried.\n\n\"Your friend the governess.--Don't look so astonished.\"\n\n\"O George, what have you done?\" Amelia said.  For her woman's eyes,\nwhich Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered a\nsecret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and\nabove all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,\nLieutenant Osborne.\n\nFor as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these two\nfriends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking and\nconspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to\nRebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said, \"Rebecca, I see\nit all.\"\n\nRebecca kissed her.\n\nAnd regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said by\neither of the young women.  But it was destined to come out before long.\n\nSome short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp still\nremaining at her patroness's house in Park Lane, one more hatchment\nmight have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many\nwhich usually ornament that dismal quarter.  It was over Sir Pitt\nCrawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet's demise.\nIt was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served as\na funeral compliment to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager Lady\nCrawley. Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down from\nthe front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back\npremises of Sir Pitt's mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson.\nSir Pitt was a widower again.  The arms quartered on the shield along\nwith his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's. She had no arms.  But\nthe cherubs painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as for\nSir Pitt's mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked by\nthe Crawley Dove and Serpent.  Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is\nan opportunity for moralising!\n\nMr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless bedside.  She went out\nof the world strengthened by such words and comfort as he could give\nher.  For many years his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only\nfriendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul. Her heart\nwas dead long before her body.  She had sold it to become Sir Pitt\nCrawley's wife.  Mothers and daughters are making the same bargain\nevery day in Vanity Fair.\n\nWhen the demise took place, her husband was in London attending to some\nof his innumerable schemes, and busy with his endless lawyers. He had\nfound time, nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch\nmany notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her, commanding her to\nreturn to her young pupils in the country, who were now utterly without\ncompanionship during their mother's illness.  But Miss Crawley would\nnot hear of her departure; for though there was no lady of fashion in\nLondon who would desert her friends more complacently as soon as she\nwas tired of their society, and though few tired of them sooner, yet as\nlong as her engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and she\nclung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca.\n\nThe news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more grief or comment than\nmight have been expected in Miss Crawley's family circle.  \"I suppose I\nmust put off my party for the 3rd,\" Miss Crawley said; and added, after\na pause, \"I hope my brother will have the decency not to marry again.\"\n\"What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if he does,\" Rawdon remarked,\nwith his usual regard for his elder brother. Rebecca said nothing.  She\nseemed by far the gravest and most impressed of the family.  She left\nthe room before Rawdon went away that day; but they met by chance\nbelow, as he was going away after taking leave, and had a parley\ntogether.\n\nOn the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window, she startled Miss\nCrawley, who was placidly occupied with a French novel, by crying out\nin an alarmed tone, \"Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!\" and the Baronet's knock\nfollowed this announcement.\n\n\"My dear, I can't see him.  I won't see him.  Tell Bowls not at home,\nor go downstairs and say I'm too ill to receive any one.  My nerves\nreally won't bear my brother at this moment,\" cried out Miss Crawley,\nand resumed the novel.\n\n\"She's too ill to see you, sir,\" Rebecca said, tripping down to Sir\nPitt, who was preparing to ascend.\n\n\"So much the better,\" Sir Pitt answered.  \"I want to see YOU, Miss\nBecky.  Come along a me into the parlour,\" and they entered that\napartment together.\n\n\"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss,\" the baronet said, fixing\nhis eyes upon her, and taking off his black gloves and his hat with its\ngreat crape hat-band. His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed upon\nher so steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble.\n\n\"I hope to come soon,\" she said in a low voice, \"as soon as Miss\nCrawley is better--and return to--to the dear children.\"\n\n\"You've said so these three months, Becky,\" replied Sir Pitt, \"and\nstill you go hanging on to my sister, who'll fling you off like an old\nshoe, when she's wore you out. I tell you I want you.  I'm going back\nto the Vuneral. Will you come back?  Yes or no?\"\n\n\"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be alone--with you,\nsir,\" Becky said, seemingly in great agitation.\n\n\"I say agin, I want you,\" Sir Pitt said, thumping the table.  \"I can't\ngit on without you.  I didn't see what it was till you went away.  The\nhouse all goes wrong.  It's not the same place.  All my accounts has\ngot muddled agin. You MUST come back.  Do come back. Dear Becky, do\ncome.\"\n\n\"Come--as what, sir?\" Rebecca gasped out.\n\n\"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like,\" the Baronet said, grasping his\ncrape hat.  \"There! will that zatusfy you? Come back and be my wife.\nYour vit vor't.  Birth be hanged.  You're as good a lady as ever I see.\nYou've got more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife in\nthe county.  Will you come? Yes or no?\"\n\n\"Oh, Sir Pitt!\" Rebecca said, very much moved.\n\n\"Say yes, Becky,\" Sir Pitt continued.  \"I'm an old man, but a good'n.\nI'm good for twenty years.  I'll make you happy, zee if I don't.  You\nshall do what you like; spend what you like; and 'ave it all your own\nway.  I'll make you a zettlement.  I'll do everything reglar.  Look\nyear!\" and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at her like a\nsatyr.\n\nRebecca started back a picture of consternation.  In the course of this\nhistory we have never seen her lose her presence of mind; but she did\nnow, and wept some of the most genuine tears that ever fell from her\neyes.\n\n\"Oh, Sir Pitt!\" she said.  \"Oh, sir--I--I'm married ALREADY.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nIn Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time\n\nEvery reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire no other) must have\nbeen pleased with the tableau with which the last act of our little\ndrama concluded; for what can be prettier than an image of Love on his\nknees before Beauty?\n\nBut when Love heard that awful confession from Beauty that she was\nmarried already, he bounced up from his attitude of humility on the\ncarpet, uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to be\nmore frightened than she was when she made her avowal.  \"Married;\nyou're joking,\" the Baronet cried, after the first explosion of rage\nand wonder.  \"You're making vun of me, Becky.  Who'd ever go to marry\nyou without a shilling to your vortune?\"\n\n\"Married! married!\" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears--her voice\nchoking with emotion, her handkerchief up to her ready eyes, fainting\nagainst the mantelpiece a figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate\nheart.  \"O Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me ungrateful for all\nyour goodness to me.  It is only your generosity that has extorted my\nsecret.\"\n\n\"Generosity be hanged!\" Sir Pitt roared out.  \"Who is it tu, then,\nyou're married? Where was it?\"\n\n\"Let me come back with you to the country, sir!  Let me watch over you\nas faithfully as ever!  Don't, don't separate me from dear Queen's\nCrawley!\"\n\n\"The feller has left you, has he?\" the Baronet said, beginning, as he\nfancied, to comprehend.  \"Well, Becky--come back if you like. You can't\neat your cake and have it.  Any ways I made you a vair offer.  Coom\nback as governess--you shall have it all your own way.\" She held out\none hand.  She cried fit to break her heart; her ringlets fell over her\nface, and over the marble mantelpiece where she laid it.\n\n\"So the rascal ran off, eh?\"  Sir Pitt said, with a hideous attempt at\nconsolation.  \"Never mind, Becky, I'LL take care of 'ee.\"\n\n\"Oh, sir! it would be the pride of my life to go back to Queen's\nCrawley, and take care of the children, and of you as formerly, when\nyou said you were pleased with the services of your little Rebecca.\nWhen I think of what you have just offered me, my heart fills with\ngratitude indeed it does.  I can't be your wife, sir; let me--let me be\nyour daughter.\"  Saying which, Rebecca went down on HER knees in a most\ntragical way, and, taking Sir Pitt's horny black hand between her own\ntwo (which were very pretty and white, and as soft as satin), looked up\nin his face with an expression of exquisite pathos and confidence,\nwhen--when the door opened, and Miss Crawley sailed in.\n\nMrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs, who happened by chance to be at the\nparlour door soon after the Baronet and Rebecca entered the apartment,\nhad also seen accidentally, through the keyhole, the old gentleman\nprostrate before the governess, and had heard the generous proposal\nwhich he made her.  It was scarcely out of his mouth when Mrs. Firkin\nand Miss Briggs had streamed up the stairs, had rushed into the\ndrawing-room where Miss Crawley was reading the French novel, and had\ngiven that old lady the astounding intelligence that Sir Pitt was on\nhis knees, proposing to Miss Sharp.  And if you calculate the time for\nthe above dialogue to take place--the time for Briggs and Firkin to fly\nto the drawing-room--the time for Miss Crawley to be astonished, and to\ndrop her volume of Pigault le Brun--and the time for her to come\ndownstairs--you will see how exactly accurate this history is, and how\nMiss Crawley must have appeared at the very instant when Rebecca had\nassumed the attitude of humility.\n\n\"It is the lady on the ground, and not the gentleman,\" Miss Crawley\nsaid, with a look and voice of great scorn. \"They told me that YOU were\non your knees, Sir Pitt: do kneel once more, and let me see this pretty\ncouple!\"\n\n\"I have thanked Sir Pitt Crawley, Ma'am,\" Rebecca said, rising, \"and\nhave told him that--that I never can become Lady Crawley.\"\n\n\"Refused him!\"  Miss Crawley said, more bewildered than ever. Briggs\nand Firkin at the door opened the eyes of astonishment and the lips of\nwonder.\n\n\"Yes--refused,\" Rebecca continued, with a sad, tearful voice.\n\n\"And am I to credit my ears that you absolutely proposed to her, Sir\nPitt?\" the old lady asked.\n\n\"Ees,\" said the Baronet, \"I did.\"\n\n\"And she refused you as she says?\"\n\n\"Ees,\" Sir Pitt said, his features on a broad grin.\n\n\"It does not seem to break your heart at any rate,\" Miss Crawley\nremarked.\n\n\"Nawt a bit,\" answered Sir Pitt, with a coolness and good-humour which\nset Miss Crawley almost mad with bewilderment.  That an old gentleman\nof station should fall on his knees to a penniless governess, and burst\nout laughing because she refused to marry him--that a penniless\ngoverness should refuse a Baronet with four thousand a year--these were\nmysteries which Miss Crawley could never comprehend.  It surpassed any\ncomplications of intrigue in her favourite Pigault le Brun.\n\n\"I'm glad you think it good sport, brother,\" she continued, groping\nwildly through this amazement.\n\n\"Vamous,\" said Sir Pitt.  \"Who'd ha' thought it! what a sly little\ndevil! what a little fox it waws!\" he muttered to himself, chuckling\nwith pleasure.\n\n\"Who'd have thought what?\" cries Miss Crawley, stamping with her foot.\n\"Pray, Miss Sharp, are you waiting for the Prince Regent's divorce,\nthat you don't think our family good enough for you?\"\n\n\"My attitude,\" Rebecca said, \"when you came in, ma'am, did not look as\nif I despised such an honour as this good--this noble man has deigned\nto offer me.  Do you think I have no heart?  Have you all loved me, and\nbeen so kind to the poor orphan--deserted--girl, and am I to feel\nnothing?  O my friends!  O my benefactors! may not my love, my life, my\nduty, try to repay the confidence you have shown me?  Do you grudge me\neven gratitude, Miss Crawley?  It is too much--my heart is too full\";\nand she sank down in a chair so pathetically, that most of the audience\npresent were perfectly melted with her sadness.\n\n\"Whether you marry me or not, you're a good little girl, Becky, and I'm\nyour vriend, mind,\" said Sir Pitt, and putting on his crape-bound hat,\nhe walked away--greatly to Rebecca's relief; for it was evident that\nher secret was unrevealed to Miss Crawley, and she had the advantage of\na brief reprieve.\n\nPutting her handkerchief to her eyes, and nodding away honest Briggs,\nwho would have followed her upstairs, she went up to her apartment;\nwhile Briggs and Miss Crawley, in a high state of excitement, remained\nto discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not less moved, dived down\ninto the kitchen regions, and talked of it with all the male and female\ncompany there.  And so impressed was Mrs. Firkin with the news, that\nshe thought proper to write off by that very night's post, \"with her\nhumble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley and the family at the Rectory, and Sir\nPitt has been and proposed for to marry Miss Sharp, wherein she has\nrefused him, to the wonder of all.\"\n\nThe two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy Miss Briggs was\ndelighted to be admitted once more to confidential conversation with\nher patroness) wondered to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's offer,\nand Rebecca's refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that there must\nhave been some obstacle in the shape of a previous attachment,\notherwise no young woman in her senses would ever have refused so\nadvantageous a proposal.\n\n\"You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you, Briggs?\" Miss\nCrawley said, kindly.\n\n\"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's sister?\" Briggs\nreplied, with meek evasion.\n\n\"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley, after all,\" Miss\nCrawley remarked (who was mollified by the girl's refusal, and very\nliberal and generous now there was no call for her sacrifices). \"She\nhas brains in plenty (much more wit in her little finger than you have,\nmy poor dear Briggs, in all your head).  Her manners are excellent, now\nI have formed her.  She is a Montmorency, Briggs, and blood is\nsomething, though I despise it for my part; and she would have held her\nown amongst those pompous stupid Hampshire people much better than that\nunfortunate ironmonger's daughter.\"\n\nBriggs coincided as usual, and the \"previous attachment\" was then\ndiscussed in conjectures.  \"You poor friendless creatures are always\nhaving some foolish tendre,\" Miss Crawley said.  \"You yourself, you\nknow, were in love with a writing-master (don't cry, Briggs--you're\nalways crying, and it won't bring him to life again), and I suppose\nthis unfortunate Becky has been silly and sentimental too--some\napothecary, or house-steward, or painter, or young curate, or something\nof that sort.\"\n\n\"Poor thing! poor thing!\" says Briggs (who was thinking of twenty-four\nyears back, and that hectic young writing-master whose lock of yellow\nhair, and whose letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she cherished\nin her old desk upstairs).  \"Poor thing, poor thing!\" says Briggs.\nOnce more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen; she was at evening\nchurch, and the hectic writing-master and she were quavering out of the\nsame psalm-book.\n\n\"After such conduct on Rebecca's part,\" Miss Crawley said\nenthusiastically, \"our family should do something. Find out who is the\nobjet, Briggs.  I'll set him up in a shop; or order my portrait of him,\nyou know; or speak to my cousin, the Bishop and I'll doter Becky, and\nwe'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the breakfast, and be\na bridesmaid.\"\n\nBriggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed that her dear\nMiss Crawley was always kind and generous, and went up to Rebecca's\nbedroom to console her and prattle about the offer, and the refusal,\nand the cause thereof; and to hint at the generous intentions of Miss\nCrawley, and to find out who was the gentleman that had the mastery of\nMiss Sharp's heart.\n\nRebecca was very kind, very affectionate and affected--responded to\nBriggs's offer of tenderness with grateful fervour--owned there was a\nsecret attachment--a delicious mystery--what a pity Miss Briggs had not\nremained half a minute longer at the keyhole!  Rebecca might, perhaps,\nhave told more: but five minutes after Miss Briggs's arrival in\nRebecca's apartment, Miss Crawley actually made her appearance\nthere--an unheard-of honour--her impatience had overcome her; she could\nnot wait for the tardy operations of her ambassadress: so she came in\nperson, and ordered Briggs out of the room. And expressing her approval\nof Rebecca's conduct, she asked particulars of the interview, and the\nprevious transactions which had brought about the astonishing offer of\nSir Pitt.\n\nRebecca said she had long had some notion of the partiality with which\nSir Pitt honoured her (for he was in the habit of making his feelings\nknown in a very frank and unreserved manner) but, not to mention\nprivate reasons with which she would not for the present trouble Miss\nCrawley, Sir Pitt's age, station, and habits were such as to render a\nmarriage quite impossible; and could a woman with any feeling of\nself-respect and any decency listen to proposals at such a moment, when\nthe funeral of the lover's deceased wife had not actually taken place?\n\n\"Nonsense, my dear, you would never have refused him had there not been\nsome one else in the case,\" Miss Crawley said, coming to her point at\nonce.  \"Tell me the private reasons; what are the private reasons?\nThere is some one; who is it that has touched your heart?\"\n\nRebecca cast down her eyes, and owned there was. \"You have guessed\nright, dear lady,\" she said, with a sweet simple faltering voice. \"You\nwonder at one so poor and friendless having an attachment, don't you? I\nhave never heard that poverty was any safeguard against it.  I wish it\nwere.\"\n\n\"My poor dear child,\" cried Miss Crawley, who was always quite ready to\nbe sentimental, \"is our passion unrequited, then?  Are we pining in\nsecret? Tell me all, and let me console you.\"\n\n\"I wish you could, dear Madam,\" Rebecca said in the same tearful tone.\n\"Indeed, indeed, I need it.\" And she laid her head upon Miss Crawley's\nshoulder and wept there so naturally that the old lady, surprised into\nsympathy, embraced her with an almost maternal kindness, uttered many\nsoothing protests of regard and affection for her, vowed that she loved\nher as a daughter, and would do everything in her power to serve her.\n\"And now who is it, my dear?  Is it that pretty Miss Sedley's brother?\nYou said something about an affair with him. I'll ask him here, my\ndear.  And you shall have him: indeed you shall.\"\n\n\"Don't ask me now,\" Rebecca said.  \"You shall know all soon.  Indeed\nyou shall.  Dear kind Miss Crawley--dear friend, may I say so?\"\n\n\"That you may, my child,\" the old lady replied, kissing her.\n\n\"I can't tell you now,\" sobbed out Rebecca, \"I am very miserable. But\nO! love me always--promise you will love me always.\" And in the midst\nof mutual tears--for the emotions of the younger woman had awakened the\nsympathies of the elder--this promise was solemnly given by Miss\nCrawley, who left her little protege, blessing and admiring her as a\ndear, artless, tender-hearted, affectionate, incomprehensible creature.\n\nAnd now she was left alone to think over the sudden and wonderful\nevents of the day, and of what had been and what might have been. What\nthink you were the private feelings of Miss, no (begging her pardon) of\nMrs. Rebecca?  If, a few pages back, the present writer claimed the\nprivilege of peeping into Miss Amelia Sedley's bedroom, and\nunderstanding with the omniscience of the novelist all the gentle pains\nand passions which were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why should\nhe not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too, master of her\nsecrets, and seal-keeper of that young woman's conscience?\n\nWell, then, in the first place, Rebecca gave way to some very sincere\nand touching regrets that a piece of marvellous good fortune should\nhave been so near her, and she actually obliged to decline it.  In this\nnatural emotion every properly regulated mind will certainly share.\nWhat good mother is there that would not commiserate a penniless\nspinster, who might have been my lady, and have shared four thousand a\nyear?  What well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, who\nwill not feel for a hard-working, ingenious, meritorious girl, who gets\nsuch an honourable, advantageous, provoking offer, just at the very\nmoment when it is out of her power to accept it?  I am sure our friend\nBecky's disappointment deserves and will command every sympathy.\n\nI remember one night being in the Fair myself, at an evening party. I\nobserved old Miss Toady there also present, single out for her special\nattentions and flattery little Mrs. Briefless, the barrister's wife,\nwho is of a good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor as\npoor can be.\n\nWhat, I asked in my own mind, can cause this obsequiousness on the part\nof Miss Toady; has Briefless got a county court, or has his wife had a\nfortune left her? Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicity\nwhich distinguishes all her conduct.  \"You know,\" she said, \"Mrs\nBriefless is granddaughter of Sir John Redhand, who is so ill at\nCheltenham that he can't last six months.  Mrs. Briefless's papa\nsucceeds; so you see she will be a baronet's daughter.\" And Toady asked\nBriefless and his wife to dinner the very next week.\n\nIf the mere chance of becoming a baronet's daughter can procure a lady\nsuch homage in the world, surely, surely we may respect the agonies of\na young woman who has lost the opportunity of becoming a baronet's\nwife.  Who would have dreamed of Lady Crawley dying so soon?  She was\none of those sickly women that might have lasted these ten\nyears--Rebecca thought to herself, in all the woes of repentance--and I\nmight have been my lady!  I might have led that old man whither I\nwould.  I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her patronage, and Mr. Pitt\nfor his insufferable condescension.  I would have had the town-house\nnewly furnished and decorated.  I would have had the handsomest\ncarriage in London, and a box at the opera; and I would have been\npresented next season.  All this might have been; and now--now all was\ndoubt and mystery.\n\nBut Rebecca was a young lady of too much resolution and energy of\ncharacter to permit herself much useless and unseemly sorrow for the\nirrevocable past; so, having devoted only the proper portion of regret\nto it, she wisely turned her whole attention towards the future, which\nwas now vastly more important to her.  And she surveyed her position,\nand its hopes, doubts, and chances.\n\nIn the first place, she was MARRIED--that was a great fact.  Sir Pitt\nknew it.  She was not so much surprised into the avowal, as induced to\nmake it by a sudden calculation. It must have come some day: and why\nnot now as at a later period? He who would have married her himself\nmust at least be silent with regard to her marriage. How Miss Crawley\nwould bear the news--was the great question. Misgivings Rebecca had;\nbut she remembered all Miss Crawley had said; the old lady's avowed\ncontempt for birth; her daring liberal opinions; her general romantic\npropensities; her almost doting attachment to her nephew, and her\nrepeatedly expressed fondness for Rebecca herself.  She is so fond of\nhim, Rebecca thought, that she will forgive him anything: she is so\nused to me that I don't think she could be comfortable without me: when\nthe eclaircissement comes there will be a scene, and hysterics, and a\ngreat quarrel, and then a great reconciliation.  At all events, what\nuse was there in delaying? the die was thrown, and now or to-morrow the\nissue must be the same.  And so, resolved that Miss Crawley should have\nthe news, the young person debated in her mind as to the best means of\nconveying it to her; and whether she should face the storm that must\ncome, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown over.  In this\nstate of meditation she wrote the following letter:\n\nDearest Friend,\n\nThe great crisis which we have debated about so often is COME.  Half of\nmy secret is known, and I have thought and thought, until I am quite\nsure that now is the time to reveal THE WHOLE OF THE MYSTERY. Sir Pitt\ncame to me this morning, and made--what do you think?--A DECLARATION IN\nFORM.  Think of that!  Poor little me.  I might have been Lady Crawley.\nHow pleased Mrs. Bute would have been: and ma tante if I had taken\nprecedence of her! I might have been somebody's mamma, instead of--O, I\ntremble, I tremble, when I think how soon we must tell all!\n\nSir Pitt knows I am married, and not knowing to whom, is not very much\ndispleased as yet.  Ma tante is ACTUALLY ANGRY that I should have\nrefused him.  But she is all kindness and graciousness.  She\ncondescends to say I would have made him a good wife; and vows that she\nwill be a mother to your little Rebecca.  She will be shaken when she\nfirst hears the news.  But need we fear anything beyond a momentary\nanger?  I think not: I AM SURE not.  She dotes upon you so (you\nnaughty, good-for-nothing man), that she would pardon you ANYTHING:\nand, indeed, I believe, the next place in her heart is mine: and that\nshe would be miserable without me. Dearest! something TELLS ME we shall\nconquer.  You shall leave that odious regiment: quit gaming, racing,\nand BE A GOOD BOY; and we shall all live in Park Lane, and ma tante\nshall leave us all her money.\n\nI shall try and walk to-morrow at 3 in the usual place. If Miss B.\naccompanies me, you must come to dinner, and bring an answer, and put\nit in the third volume of Porteus's Sermons.  But, at all events, come\nto your own\n\nR.\n\nTo Miss Eliza Styles, At Mr. Barnet's, Saddler, Knightsbridge.\n\nAnd I trust there is no reader of this little story who has not\ndiscernment enough to perceive that the Miss Eliza Styles (an old\nschoolfellow, Rebecca said, with whom she had resumed an active\ncorrespondence of late, and who used to fetch these letters from the\nsaddler's), wore brass spurs, and large curling mustachios, and was\nindeed no other than Captain Rawdon Crawley.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nThe Letter on the Pincushion\n\nHow they were married is not of the slightest consequence to anybody.\nWhat is to hinder a Captain who is a major, and a young lady who is of\nage, from purchasing a licence, and uniting themselves at any church in\nthis town?  Who needs to be told, that if a woman has a will she will\nassuredly find a way?--My belief is that one day, when Miss Sharp had\ngone to pass the forenoon with her dear friend Miss Amelia Sedley in\nRussell Square, a lady very like her might have been seen entering a\nchurch in the City, in company with a gentleman with dyed mustachios,\nwho, after a quarter of an hour's interval, escorted her back to the\nhackney-coach in waiting, and that this was a quiet bridal party.\n\nAnd who on earth, after the daily experience we have, can question the\nprobability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the wise and\nlearned have married their cooks?  Did not Lord Eldon himself, the most\nprudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both\nin love with their servant maids? And are we to expect a heavy dragoon\nwith strong desires and small brains, who had never controlled a\npassion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden, and to refuse\nto pay any price for an indulgence to which he had a mind?  If people\nonly made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!\n\nIt seems to me, for my part, that Mr. Rawdon's marriage was one of the\nhonestest actions which we shall have to record in any portion of that\ngentleman's biography which has to do with the present history.  No one\nwill say it is unmanly to be captivated by a woman, or, being\ncaptivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight, the passion,\nthe wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic adoration with which,\nby degrees, this big warrior got to regard the little Rebecca, were\nfeelings which the ladies at least will pronounce were not altogether\ndiscreditable to him.  When she sang, every note thrilled in his dull\nsoul, and tingled through his huge frame.  When she spoke, he brought\nall the force of his brains to listen and wonder. If she was jocular,\nhe used to revolve her jokes in his mind, and explode over them half an\nhour afterwards in the street, to the surprise of the groom in the\ntilbury by his side, or the comrade riding with him in Rotten Row. Her\nwords were oracles to him, her smallest actions marked by an infallible\ngrace and wisdom. \"How she sings,--how she paints,\" thought he.  \"How\nshe rode that kicking mare at Queen's Crawley!\"  And he would say to\nher in confidential moments, \"By Jove, Beck, you're fit to be\nCommander-in-Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury, by Jove.\"  Is his\ncase a rare one? and don't we see every day in the world many an honest\nHercules at the apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons\nprostrate in Delilah's lap?\n\nWhen, then, Becky told him that the great crisis was near, and the time\nfor action had arrived, Rawdon expressed himself as ready to act under\nher orders, as he would be to charge with his troop at the command of\nhis colonel.  There was no need for him to put his letter into the\nthird volume of Porteus.  Rebecca easily found a means to get rid of\nBriggs, her companion, and met her faithful friend in \"the usual place\"\non the next day.  She had thought over matters at night, and\ncommunicated to Rawdon the result of her determinations. He agreed, of\ncourse, to everything; was quite sure that it was all right: that what\nshe proposed was best; that Miss Crawley would infallibly relent, or\n\"come round,\" as he said, after a time.  Had Rebecca's resolutions been\nentirely different, he would have followed them as implicitly.  \"You\nhave head enough for both of us, Beck,\" said he.  \"You're sure to get\nus out of the scrape.  I never saw your equal, and I've met with some\nclippers in my time too.\" And with this simple confession of faith, the\nlove-stricken dragoon left her to execute his part of the project which\nshe had formed for the pair.\n\nIt consisted simply in the hiring of quiet lodgings at Brompton, or in\nthe neighbourhood of the barracks, for Captain and Mrs. Crawley. For\nRebecca had determined, and very prudently, we think, to fly. Rawdon\nwas only too happy at her resolve; he had been entreating her to take\nthis measure any time for weeks past.  He pranced off to engage the\nlodgings with all the impetuosity of love.  He agreed to pay two\nguineas a week so readily, that the landlady regretted she had asked\nhim so little. He ordered in a piano, and half a nursery-house full of\nflowers: and a heap of good things.  As for shawls, kid gloves, silk\nstockings, gold French watches, bracelets and perfumery, he sent them\nin with the profusion of blind love and unbounded credit.  And having\nrelieved his mind by this outpouring of generosity, he went and dined\nnervously at the club, waiting until the great moment of his life\nshould come.\n\nThe occurrences of the previous day; the admirable conduct of\nRebecca in refusing an offer so advantageous to her, the secret\nunhappiness preying upon her, the sweetness and silence with which she\nbore her affliction, made Miss Crawley much more tender than usual.  An\nevent of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a proposal, thrills\nthrough a whole household of women, and sets all their hysterical\nsympathies at work.  As an observer of human nature, I regularly\nfrequent St. George's, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage\nseason; and though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends give\nway to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy any way affected,\nyet it is not at all uncommon to see women who are not in the least\nconcerned in the operations going on--old ladies who are long past\nmarrying, stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters,\nlet alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who are on their\npromotion, and may naturally take an interest in the ceremony--I say it\nis quite common to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling;\nhiding their little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs;\nand heaving, old and young, with emotion.  When my friend, the\nfashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely Lady Belgravia Green\nParker, the excitement was so general that even the little snuffy old\npew-opener who let me into the seat was in tears.  And wherefore? I\ninquired of my own soul: she was not going to be married.\n\nMiss Crawley and Briggs in a word, after the affair of Sir Pitt,\nindulged in the utmost luxury of sentiment, and Rebecca became an\nobject of the most tender interest to them.  In her absence Miss\nCrawley solaced herself with the most sentimental of the novels in her\nlibrary.  Little Sharp, with her secret griefs, was the heroine of the\nday.\n\nThat night Rebecca sang more sweetly and talked more pleasantly than\nshe had ever been heard to do in Park Lane.  She twined herself round\nthe heart of Miss Crawley. She spoke lightly and laughingly of Sir\nPitt's proposal, ridiculed it as the foolish fancy of an old man; and\nher eyes filled with tears, and Briggs's heart with unutterable pangs\nof defeat, as she said she desired no other lot than to remain for ever\nwith her dear benefactress.  \"My dear little creature,\" the old lady\nsaid, \"I don't intend to let you stir for years, that you may depend\nupon it.  As for going back to that odious brother of mine after what\nhas passed, it is out of the question.  Here you stay with me and\nBriggs.  Briggs wants to go to see her relations very often.  Briggs,\nyou may go when you like. But as for you, my dear, you must stay and\ntake care of the old woman.\"\n\nIf Rawdon Crawley had been then and there present, instead of being at\nthe club nervously drinking claret, the pair might have gone down on\ntheir knees before the old spinster, avowed all, and been forgiven in a\ntwinkling. But that good chance was denied to the young couple,\ndoubtless in order that this story might be written, in which numbers\nof their wonderful adventures are narrated--adventures which could\nnever have occurred to them if they had been housed and sheltered under\nthe comfortable uninteresting forgiveness of Miss Crawley.\n\nUnder Mrs. Firkin's orders, in the Park Lane establishment, was a young\nwoman from Hampshire, whose business it was, among other duties, to\nknock at Miss Sharp's door with that jug of hot water which Firkin\nwould rather have perished than have presented to the intruder.  This\ngirl, bred on the family estate, had a brother in Captain Crawley's\ntroop, and if the truth were known, I daresay it would come out that\nshe was aware of certain arrangements, which have a great deal to do\nwith this history. At any rate she purchased a yellow shawl, a pair of\ngreen boots, and a light blue hat with a red feather with three guineas\nwhich Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was by no means too liberal\nwith her money, no doubt it was for services rendered that Betty Martin\nwas so bribed.\n\nOn the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to Miss Sharp, the sun\nrose as usual, and at the usual hour Betty Martin, the upstairs maid,\nknocked at the door of the governess's bedchamber.\n\nNo answer was returned, and she knocked again.  Silence was still\nuninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water, opened the door and\nentered the chamber.\n\nThe little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as on the day\nprevious, when Betty's own hands had helped to make it.  Two little\ntrunks were corded in one end of the room; and on the table before the\nwindow--on the pincushion--the great fat pincushion lined with pink\ninside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap--lay a letter.  It had been\nreposing there probably all night.\n\nBetty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were afraid to awake\nit--looked at it, and round the room, with an air of great wonder and\nsatisfaction; took up the letter, and grinned intensely as she turned\nit round and over, and finally carried it into Miss Briggs's room below.\n\nHow could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs, I should like\nto know?  All the schooling Betty had had was at Mrs. Bute Crawley's\nSunday school, and she could no more read writing than Hebrew.\n\n\"La, Miss Briggs,\" the girl exclaimed, \"O, Miss, something must have\nhappened--there's nobody in Miss Sharp's room; the bed ain't been slep\nin, and she've run away, and left this letter for you, Miss.\"\n\n\"WHAT!\" cries Briggs, dropping her comb, the thin wisp of faded hair\nfalling over her shoulders; \"an elopement! Miss Sharp a fugitive! What,\nwhat is this?\" and she eagerly broke the neat seal, and, as they say,\n\"devoured the contents\" of the letter addressed to her.\n\nDear Miss Briggs [the refugee wrote], the kindest heart in the world,\nas yours is, will pity and sympathise with me and excuse me. With\ntears, and prayers, and blessings, I leave the home where the poor\norphan has ever met with kindness and affection.  Claims even superior\nto those of my benefactress call me hence.  I go to my duty--to my\nHUSBAND.  Yes, I am married.  My husband COMMANDS me to seek the HUMBLE\nHOME which we call ours.  Dearest Miss Briggs, break the news as your\ndelicate sympathy will know how to do it--to my dear, my beloved friend\nand benefactress.  Tell her, ere I went, I shed tears on her dear\npillow--that pillow that I have so often soothed in sickness--that I\nlong AGAIN to watch--Oh, with what joy shall I return to dear Park\nLane! How I tremble for the answer which is to SEAL MY FATE! When Sir\nPitt deigned to offer me his hand, an honour of which my beloved Miss\nCrawley said I was DESERVING (my blessings go with her for judging the\npoor orphan worthy to be HER SISTER!) I told Sir Pitt that I was\nalready A WIFE.  Even he forgave me.  But my courage failed me, when I\nshould have told him all--that I could not be his wife, for I WAS HIS\nDAUGHTER!  I am wedded to the best and most generous of men--Miss\nCrawley's Rawdon is MY Rawdon. At his COMMAND I open my lips, and\nfollow him to our humble home, as I would THROUGH THE WORLD.  O, my\nexcellent and kind friend, intercede with my Rawdon's beloved aunt for\nhim and the poor girl to whom all HIS NOBLE RACE have shown such\nUNPARALLELED AFFECTION.  Ask Miss Crawley to receive HER CHILDREN.  I\ncan say no more, but blessings, blessings on all in the dear house I\nleave, prays\n\nYour affectionate and GRATEFUL Rebecca Crawley. Midnight.\n\nJust as Briggs had finished reading this affecting and interesting\ndocument, which reinstated her in her position as first confidante of\nMiss Crawley, Mrs. Firkin entered the room.  \"Here's Mrs. Bute Crawley\njust arrived by the mail from Hampshire, and wants some tea; will you\ncome down and make breakfast, Miss?\"\n\nAnd to the surprise of Firkin, clasping her dressing-gown around her,\nthe wisp of hair floating dishevelled behind her, the little\ncurl-papers still sticking in bunches round her forehead, Briggs sailed\ndown to Mrs. Bute with the letter in her hand containing the wonderful\nnews.\n\n\"Oh, Mrs. Firkin,\" gasped Betty, \"sech a business.  Miss Sharp have a\ngone and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney Green!\"\nWe would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, did\nnot the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse.\n\nWhen Mrs. Bute Crawley, numbed with midnight travelling, and warming\nherself at the newly crackling parlour fire, heard from Miss Briggs the\nintelligence of the clandestine marriage, she declared it was quite\nprovidential that she should have arrived at such a time to assist poor\ndear Miss Crawley in supporting the shock--that Rebecca was an artful\nlittle hussy of whom she had always had her suspicions; and that as for\nRawdon Crawley, she never could account for his aunt's infatuation\nregarding him, and had long considered him a profligate, lost, and\nabandoned being.  And this awful conduct, Mrs. Bute said, will have at\nleast this good effect, it will open poor dear Miss Crawley's eyes to\nthe real character of this wicked man.  Then Mrs. Bute had a\ncomfortable hot toast and tea; and as there was a vacant room in the\nhouse now, there was no need for her to remain at the Gloster Coffee\nHouse where the Portsmouth mail had set her down, and whence she\nordered Mr. Bowls's aide-de-camp the footman to bring away her trunks.\n\nMiss Crawley, be it known, did not leave her room until near noon--taking\nchocolate in bed in the morning, while Becky Sharp read the\nMorning Post to her, or otherwise amusing herself or dawdling.  The\nconspirators below agreed that they would spare the dear lady's\nfeelings until she appeared in her drawing-room: meanwhile it was\nannounced to her that Mrs. Bute Crawley had come up from Hampshire by\nthe mail, was staying at the Gloster, sent her love to Miss Crawley,\nand asked for breakfast with Miss Briggs.  The arrival of Mrs. Bute,\nwhich would not have caused any extreme delight at another period, was\nhailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being pleased at the notion of a\ngossip with her sister-in-law regarding the late Lady Crawley, the\nfuneral arrangements pending, and Sir Pitt's abrupt proposal to Rebecca.\n\nIt was not until the old lady was fairly ensconced in her usual\narm-chair in the drawing-room, and the preliminary embraces and inquiries\nhad taken place between the ladies, that the conspirators thought it\nadvisable to submit her to the operation.  Who has not admired the\nartifices and delicate approaches with which women \"prepare\" their\nfriends for bad news?  Miss Crawley's two friends made such an\napparatus of mystery before they broke the intelligence to her, that\nthey worked her up to the necessary degree of doubt and alarm.\n\n\"And she refused Sir Pitt, my dear, dear Miss Crawley, prepare yourself\nfor it,\" Mrs. Bute said, \"because--because she couldn't help herself.\"\n\n\"Of course there was a reason,\" Miss Crawley answered. \"She liked\nsomebody else.  I told Briggs so yesterday.\"\n\n\"LIKES somebody else!\" Briggs gasped.  \"O my dear friend, she is\nmarried already.\"\n\n\"Married already,\" Mrs. Bute chimed in; and both sate with clasped\nhands looking from each other at their victim.\n\n\"Send her to me, the instant she comes in.  The little sly wretch: how\ndared she not tell me?\" cried out Miss Crawley.\n\n\"She won't come in soon.  Prepare yourself, dear friend--she's gone out\nfor a long time--she's--she's gone altogether.\"\n\n\"Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate? Send for her and\nhave her back; I desire that she come back,\" the old lady said.\n\n\"She decamped last night, Ma'am,\" cried Mrs. Bute.\n\n\"She left a letter for me,\" Briggs exclaimed.  \"She's married to--\"\n\n\"Prepare her, for heaven's sake.  Don't torture her, my dear Miss\nBriggs.\"\n\n\"She's married to whom?\" cries the spinster in a nervous fury.\n\n\"To--to a relation of--\"\n\n\"She refused Sir Pitt,\" cried the victim.  \"Speak at once. Don't drive\nme mad.\"\n\n\"O Ma'am--prepare her, Miss Briggs--she's married to Rawdon Crawley.\"\n\n\"Rawdon married Rebecca--governess--nobod-- Get out of my house, you\nfool, you idiot--you stupid old Briggs--how dare you? You're in the\nplot--you made him marry, thinking that I'd leave my money from him--you\ndid, Martha,\" the poor old lady screamed in hysteric sentences.\n\n\"I, Ma'am, ask a member of this family to marry a drawing-master's\ndaughter?\"\n\n\"Her mother was a Montmorency,\" cried out the old lady, pulling at the\nbell with all her might.\n\n\"Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on the stage or worse\nherself,\" said Mrs. Bute.\n\nMiss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint.  They were\nforced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted. One fit\nof hysterics succeeded another.  The doctor was sent for--the\napothecary arrived. Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her bedside.\n\"Her relations ought to be round about her,\" that amiable woman said.\n\nShe had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a new person arrived\nto whom it was also necessary to break the news.  This was Sir Pitt.\n\"Where's Becky?\" he said, coming in.  \"Where's her traps? She's coming\nwith me to Queen's Crawley.\"\n\n\"Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence regarding her\nsurreptitious union?\" Briggs asked.\n\n\"What's that to me?\" Sir Pitt asked.  \"I know she's married.  That\nmakes no odds.  Tell her to come down at once, and not keep me.\"\n\n\"Are you not aware, sir,\" Miss Briggs asked, \"that she has left our\nroof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is nearly killed by the\nintelligence of Captain Rawdon's union with her?\"\n\nWhen Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married to his son, he\nbroke out into a fury of language, which it would do no good to repeat\nin this place, as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out of the\nroom; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure of the\nfrenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled desire.\n\nOne day after he went to Queen's Crawley, he burst like a madman into\nthe room she had used when there--dashed open her boxes with his foot,\nand flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics. Miss Horrocks,\nthe butler's daughter, took some of them.  The children dressed\nthemselves and acted plays in the others.  It was but a few days after\nthe poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-place; and was laid,\nunwept and disregarded, in a vault full of strangers.\n\n\"Suppose the old lady doesn't come to,\" Rawdon said to his little wife,\nas they sate together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had\nbeen trying the new piano all the morning.  The new gloves fitted her\nto a nicety; the new shawls became her wonderfully; the new rings\nglittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist;\n\"suppose she don't come round, eh, Becky?\"\n\n\"I'LL make your fortune,\" she said; and Delilah patted Samson's cheek.\n\n\"You can do anything,\" he said, kissing the little hand. \"By Jove you\ncan; and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter, and dine, by Jove.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nHow Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano\n\nIf there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and\nSentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the\nstrangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and\npathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of\nthose public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in\nthe last page of the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr.\nGeorge Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very few\nLondon people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and\nall with a taste for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation and\ninterest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turn\nshall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes'\nassignees, or will be instructed by the executors, to offer to public\ncompetition, the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar\nof wines of Epicurus deceased.\n\nEven with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian, as he\nwitnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can't\nbut feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives's remains are in the\nfamily vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciously\ncommemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir, who is\ndisposing of his goods.  What guest at Dives's table can pass the\nfamiliar house without a sigh?--the familiar house of which the lights\nused to shine so cheerfully at seven o'clock, of which the hall-doors\nopened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up\nthe comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until\nit reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends!\nWhat a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining\nthem.  How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got\nout of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and\nhated each other everywhere else!  He was pompous, but with such a cook\nwhat would one not swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but would not\nsuch wine make any conversation pleasant?  We must get some of his\nBurgundy at any price, the mourners cry at his club.  \"I got this box\nat old Dives's sale,\" Pincher says, handing it round, \"one of Louis\nXV's mistresses--pretty thing, is it not?--sweet miniature,\" and they\ntalk of the way in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune.\n\nHow changed the house is, though!  The front is patched over with\nbills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring\ncapitals.  They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs\nwindow--a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps--the\nhall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrust\nprinted cards into your hand, and offer to bid.  Old women and amateurs\nhave invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, poking\ninto the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe\ndrawers to and fro. Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring the\nlooking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new menage\n(Snob will brag for years that he has purchased this or that at Dives's\nsale), and Mr. Hammerdown is sitting on the great mahogany\ndining-tables, in the dining-room below, waving the ivory hammer, and\nemploying all the artifices of eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason,\ndespair; shouting to his people; satirizing Mr. Davids for his\nsluggishness; inspiriting Mr. Moss into action; imploring, commanding,\nbellowing, until down comes the hammer like fate, and we pass to the\nnext lot.  O Dives, who would ever have thought, as we sat round the\nbroad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have seen such\na dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?\n\nIt was rather late in the sale.  The excellent drawing-room furniture\nby the best makers; the rare and famous wines selected, regardless of\ncost, and with the well-known taste of the purchaser; the rich and\ncomplete set of family plate had been sold on the previous days.\nCertain of the best wines (which all had a great character among\namateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased for his master, who\nknew them very well, by the butler of our friend John Osborne, Esquire,\nof Russell Square.  A small portion of the most useful articles of the\nplate had been bought by some young stockbrokers from the City.  And\nnow the public being invited to the purchase of minor objects, it\nhappened that the orator on the table was expatiating on the merits of\na picture, which he sought to recommend to his audience: it was by no\nmeans so select or numerous a company as had attended the previous days\nof the auction.\n\n\"No. 369,\" roared Mr. Hammerdown.  \"Portrait of a gentleman on an\nelephant.  Who'll bid for the gentleman on the elephant?  Lift up the\npicture, Blowman, and let the company examine this lot.\" A long, pale,\nmilitary-looking gentleman, seated demurely at the mahogany table,\ncould not help grinning as this valuable lot was shown by Mr. Blowman.\n\"Turn the elephant to the Captain, Blowman.  What shall we say, sir,\nfor the elephant?\" but the Captain, blushing in a very hurried and\ndiscomfited manner, turned away his head.\n\n\"Shall we say twenty guineas for this work of art?--fifteen, five, name\nyour own price.  The gentleman without the elephant is worth five\npound.\"\n\n\"I wonder it ain't come down with him,\" said a professional wag, \"he's\nanyhow a precious big one\"; at which (for the elephant-rider was\nrepresented as of a very stout figure) there was a general giggle in\nthe room.\n\n\"Don't be trying to deprecate the value of the lot, Mr. Moss,\" Mr.\nHammerdown said; \"let the company examine it as a work of art--the\nattitude of the gallant animal quite according to natur'; the gentleman\nin a nankeen jacket, his gun in his hand, is going to the chase; in the\ndistance a banyhann tree and a pagody, most likely resemblances of some\ninteresting spot in our famous Eastern possessions.  How much for this\nlot? Come, gentlemen, don't keep me here all day.\"\n\nSome one bid five shillings, at which the military gentleman looked\ntowards the quarter from which this splendid offer had come, and there\nsaw another officer with a young lady on his arm, who both appeared to\nbe highly amused with the scene, and to whom, finally, this lot was\nknocked down for half a guinea.  He at the table looked more surprised\nand discomposed than ever when he spied this pair, and his head sank\ninto his military collar, and he turned his back upon them, so as to\navoid them altogether.\n\nOf all the other articles which Mr. Hammerdown had the honour to offer\nfor public competition that day it is not our purpose to make mention,\nsave of one only, a little square piano, which came down from the upper\nregions of the house (the state grand piano having been disposed of\npreviously); this the young lady tried with a rapid and skilful hand\n(making the officer blush and start again), and for it, when its turn\ncame, her agent began to bid.\n\nBut there was an opposition here.  The Hebrew aide-de-camp in the\nservice of the officer at the table bid against the Hebrew gentleman\nemployed by the elephant purchasers, and a brisk battle ensued over\nthis little piano, the combatants being greatly encouraged by Mr.\nHammerdown.\n\nAt last, when the competition had been prolonged for some time, the\nelephant captain and lady desisted from the race; and the hammer coming\ndown, the auctioneer said:--\"Mr. Lewis, twenty-five,\" and Mr. Lewis's\nchief thus became the proprietor of the little square piano. Having\neffected the purchase, he sate up as if he was greatly relieved, and\nthe unsuccessful competitors catching a glimpse of him at this moment,\nthe lady said to her friend,\n\n\"Why, Rawdon, it's Captain Dobbin.\"\n\nI suppose Becky was discontented with the new piano her husband had\nhired for her, or perhaps the proprietors of that instrument had\nfetched it away, declining farther credit, or perhaps she had a\nparticular attachment for the one which she had just tried to purchase,\nrecollecting it in old days, when she used to play upon it, in the\nlittle sitting-room of our dear Amelia Sedley.\n\nThe sale was at the old house in Russell Square, where we passed some\nevenings together at the beginning of this story.  Good old John Sedley\nwas a ruined man.  His name had been proclaimed as a defaulter on the\nStock Exchange, and his bankruptcy and commercial extermination had\nfollowed.  Mr. Osborne's butler came to buy some of the famous port\nwine to transfer to the cellars over the way. As for one dozen\nwell-manufactured silver spoons and forks at per oz., and one dozen\ndessert ditto ditto, there were three young stockbrokers (Messrs. Dale,\nSpiggot, and Dale, of Threadneedle Street, indeed), who, having had\ndealings with the old man, and kindnesses from him in days when he was\nkind to everybody with whom he dealt, sent this little spar out of the\nwreck with their love to good Mrs. Sedley; and with respect to the\npiano, as it had been Amelia's, and as she might miss it and want one\nnow, and as Captain William Dobbin could no more play upon it than he\ncould dance on the tight rope, it is probable that he did not purchase\nthe instrument for his own use.\n\nIn a word, it arrived that evening at a wonderful small cottage in a\nstreet leading from the Fulham Road--one of those streets which have\nthe finest romantic names--(this was called St. Adelaide Villas,\nAnna-Maria Road West), where the houses look like baby-houses; where\nthe people, looking out of the first-floor windows, must infallibly, as\nyou think, sit with their feet in the parlours; where the shrubs in the\nlittle gardens in front bloom with a perennial display of little\nchildren's pinafores, little red socks, caps, &c. (polyandria\npolygynia); whence you hear the sound of jingling spinets and women\nsinging; where little porter pots hang on the railings sunning\nthemselves; whither of evenings you see City clerks padding wearily:\nhere it was that Mr. Clapp, the clerk of Mr. Sedley, had his domicile,\nand in this asylum the good old gentleman hid his head with his wife\nand daughter when the crash came.\n\nJos Sedley had acted as a man of his disposition would, when the\nannouncement of the family misfortune reached him.  He did not come to\nLondon, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever\nmoney was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old parents had no\npresent poverty to fear.  This done, Jos went on at the boarding-house\nat Cheltenham pretty much as before.  He drove his curricle; he drank\nhis claret; he played his rubber; he told his Indian stories, and the\nIrish widow consoled and flattered him as usual. His present of money,\nneedful as it was, made little impression on his parents; and I have\nheard Amelia say that the first day on which she saw her father lift up\nhis head after the failure was on the receipt of the packet of forks\nand spoons with the young stockbrokers' love, over which he burst out\ncrying like a child, being greatly more affected than even his wife, to\nwhom the present was addressed.  Edward Dale, the junior of the house,\nwho purchased the spoons for the firm, was, in fact, very sweet upon\nAmelia, and offered for her in spite of all. He married Miss Louisa\nCutts (daughter of Higham and Cutts, the eminent cornfactors) with a\nhandsome fortune in 1820; and is now living in splendour, and with a\nnumerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill.  But we must not\nlet the recollections of this good fellow cause us to diverge from the\nprincipal history.\n\nI hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs.\nCrawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a visit\nto so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whom\nthey proposed to honour with a visit were not merely out of fashion,\nbut out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no possible\nmanner.  Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable\nold house where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked by\nbrokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures given up to\npublic desecration and plunder.  A month after her flight, she had\nbethought her of Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse-laugh, had expressed\na perfect willingness to see young George Osborne again.  \"He's a very\nagreeable acquaintance, Beck,\" the wag added.  \"I'd like to sell him\nanother horse, Beck.  I'd like to play a few more games at billiards\nwith him.  He'd be what I call useful just now, Mrs. C.--ha, ha!\" by\nwhich sort of speech it is not to be supposed that Rawdon Crawley had a\ndeliberate desire to cheat Mr. Osborne at play, but only wished to take\nthat fair advantage of him which almost every sporting gentleman in\nVanity Fair considers to be his due from his neighbour.\n\nThe old aunt was long in \"coming-to.\" A month had elapsed.  Rawdon was\ndenied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgment in\nthe house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened.  Miss\nCrawley never stirred out--she was unwell--and Mrs. Bute remained still\nand never left her.  Crawley and his wife both of them augured evil\nfrom the continued presence of Mrs. Bute.\n\n\"Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us together\nat Queen's Crawley,\" Rawdon said.\n\n\"What an artful little woman!\" ejaculated Rebecca.\n\n\"Well, I don't regret it, if you don't,\" the Captain cried, still in an\namorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by way of\nreply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidence\nof her husband.\n\n\"If he had but a little more brains,\" she thought to herself, \"I might\nmake something of him\"; but she never let him perceive the opinion she\nhad of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of\nthe stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatest\ninterest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and Bob\nMartingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom\nCinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase. When he came home she\nwas alert and happy: when he went out she pressed him to go: when he\nstayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks,\nsuperintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in\ncomfort.  The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are\nhypocrites.  We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful\nthey are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those\nfrank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or\ndisarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models,\nand paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the\ndulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one?  We\naccept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call\nthis pretty treachery truth.  A good housewife is of necessity a\nhumbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in\na different way.\n\nBy these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley, found himself\nconverted into a very happy and submissive married man.  His former\nhaunts knew him not. They asked about him once or twice at his clubs,\nbut did not miss him much: in those booths of Vanity Fair people seldom\ndo miss each other.  His secluded wife ever smiling and cheerful, his\nlittle comfortable lodgings, snug meals, and homely evenings, had all\nthe charms of novelty and secrecy.  The marriage was not yet declared\nto the world, or published in the Morning Post.  All his creditors\nwould have come rushing on him in a body, had they known that he was\nunited to a woman without fortune. \"My relations won't cry fie upon\nme,\" Becky said, with rather a bitter laugh; and she was quite\ncontented to wait until the old aunt should be reconciled, before she\nclaimed her place in society.  So she lived at Brompton, and meanwhile\nsaw no one, or only those few of her husband's male companions who were\nadmitted into her little dining-room.  These were all charmed with her.\nThe little dinners, the laughing and chatting, the music afterwards,\ndelighted all who participated in these enjoyments.  Major Martingale\nnever thought about asking to see the marriage licence, Captain\nCinqbars was perfectly enchanted with her skill in making punch.  And\nyoung Lieutenant Spatterdash (who was fond of piquet, and whom Crawley\nwould often invite) was evidently and quickly smitten by Mrs. Crawley;\nbut her own circumspection and modesty never forsook her for a moment,\nand Crawley's reputation as a fire-eating and jealous warrior was a\nfurther and complete defence to his little wife.\n\nThere are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, who\nnever have entered a lady's drawing-room; so that though Rawdon\nCrawley's marriage might be talked about in his county, where, of\ncourse, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or not\nheeded, or not talked about at all.  He lived comfortably on credit.\nHe had a large capital of debts, which laid out judiciously, will carry\na man along for many years, and on which certain men about town\ncontrive to live a hundred times better than even men with ready money\ncan do.  Indeed who is there that walks London streets, but can point\nout a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot,\ncourted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying\nthemselves nothing, and living on who knows what?  We see Jack\nThriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall\nMall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate.  \"How did this\nbegin,\" we say, \"or where will it end?\" \"My dear fellow,\" I heard Jack\nonce say, \"I owe money in every capital in Europe.\"  The end must come\nsome day, but in the meantime Jack thrives as much as ever; people are\nglad enough to shake him by the hand, ignore the little dark stories\nthat are whispered every now and then against him, and pronounce him a\ngood-natured, jovial, reckless fellow.\n\nTruth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman of\nthis order.  Everything was plentiful in his house but ready money, of\nwhich their menage pretty early felt the want; and reading the Gazette\none day, and coming upon the announcement of \"Lieutenant G. Osborne to\nbe Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges,\" Rawdon uttered that\nsentiment regarding Amelia's lover, which ended in the visit to Russell\nSquare.\n\nWhen Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin at\nthe sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallen\nRebecca's old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and such\ninformation as they got was from a stray porter or broker at the\nauction.\n\n\"Look at them with their hooked beaks,\" Becky said, getting into the\nbuggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee.  \"They're like\nvultures after a battle.\"\n\n\"Don't know.  Never was in action, my dear.  Ask Martingale; he was in\nSpain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes.\"\n\n\"He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley,\" Rebecca said; \"I'm really\nsorry he's gone wrong.\"\n\n\"O stockbrokers--bankrupts--used to it, you know,\" Rawdon replied,\ncutting a fly off the horse's ear.\n\n\"I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon,\" the wife\ncontinued sentimentally.  \"Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously dear\nfor that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia, when she\ncame from school.  It only cost five-and-thirty then.\"\n\n\"What-d'-ye-call'em--'Osborne,' will cry off now, I suppose, since the\nfamily is smashed.  How cut up your pretty little friend will be; hey,\nBecky?\"\n\n\"I daresay she'll recover it,\" Becky said with a smile--and they drove\non and talked about something else.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nWho Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought\n\nOur surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous\nevents and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. When\nthe eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying\nfrom Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba,\nand from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre\nDame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little\ncorner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have\nthought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty\nwings would pass unobserved there?\n\n\"Napoleon has landed at Cannes.\"  Such news might create a panic at\nVienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into a\ncorner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together,\nwhile Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry,\nwere puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young lady in\nRussell Square, before whose door the watchman sang the hours when she\nwas asleep: who, if she strolled in the square, was guarded there by\nthe railings and the beadle:  who, if she walked ever so short a\ndistance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was followed by Black\nSambo with an enormous cane:  who was always cared for, dressed, put to\nbed, and watched over by ever so many guardian angels, with and without\nwages?  Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful rush of the\ngreat Imperial struggle can't take place without affecting a poor\nlittle harmless girl of eighteen, who is occupied in billing and\ncooing, or working muslin collars in Russell Square?  You too, kindly,\nhomely flower!--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep you\ndown, here, although cowering under the shelter of Holborn?  Yes;\nNapoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor little Emmy Sedley's\nhappiness forms, somehow, part of it.\n\nIn the first place, her father's fortune was swept down with that fatal\nnews.  All his speculations had of late gone wrong with the luckless\nold gentleman.  Ventures had failed; merchants had broken; funds had\nrisen when he calculated they would fall.  What need to particularize?\nIf success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin\nis.  Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel. Everything seemed to go\non as usual in the quiet, opulent house; the good-natured mistress\npursuing, quite unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy\navocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender thought,\nand quite regardless of all the world besides, when that final crash\ncame, under which the worthy family fell.\n\nOne night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party; the Osbornes had\ngiven one, and she must not be behindhand; John Sedley, who had come\nhome very late from the City, sate silent at the chimney side, while\nhis wife was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room ailing and\nlow-spirited.  \"She's not happy,\" the mother went on. \"George Osborne\nneglects her.  I've no patience with the airs of those people.  The\ngirls have not been in the house these three weeks; and George has been\ntwice in town without coming.  Edward Dale saw him at the Opera.\nEdward would marry her I'm sure: and there's Captain Dobbin who, I\nthink, would--only I hate all army men.  Such a dandy as George has\nbecome.  With his military airs, indeed!  We must show some folks that\nwe're as good as they.  Only give Edward Dale any encouragement, and\nyou'll see.  We must have a party, Mr. S.  Why don't you speak, John?\nShall I say Tuesday fortnight? Why don't you answer? Good God, John,\nwhat has happened?\"\n\nJohn Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his wife, who ran to\nhim.  He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, \"We're\nruined, Mary.  We've got the world to begin over again, dear.  It's\nbest that you should know all, and at once.\"  As he spoke, he trembled\nin every limb, and almost fell.  He thought the news would have\noverpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a hard word.\nBut it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the shock was to her.\nWhen he sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office\nof consoler.  She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it\nround her neck: she called him her John--her dear John--her old\nman--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent\nlove and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought\nthis sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered\nand solaced his over-burdened soul.\n\nOnly once in the course of the long night as they sate together, and\npoor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his losses\nand embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest friends, the\nmanly kindness of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in a\ngeneral confession--only once did the faithful wife give way to emotion.\n\n\"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart,\" she said.\n\nThe father had forgotten the poor girl.  She was lying, awake and\nunhappy, overhead.  In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents,\nshe was alone.  To how many people can any one tell all?  Who will be\nopen where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who\nnever can understand?  Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary.  She had no\nconfidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to confide.  She\ncould not tell the old mother her doubts and cares; the would-be\nsisters seemed every day more strange to her.  And she had misgivings\nand fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was\nalways secretly brooding over them.\n\nHer heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was worthy\nand faithful to her, though she knew otherwise.  How many a thing had\nshe said, and got no echo from him.  How many suspicions of selfishness\nand indifference had she to encounter and obstinately overcome.  To\nwhom could the poor little martyr tell these daily struggles and\ntortures?  Her hero himself only half understood her. She did not dare\nto own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had\ngiven her heart away too soon.  Given once, the pure bashful maiden was\ntoo modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to\nrecall it.  We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have\nmade them subscribe to our doctrine too.  We let their bodies go abroad\nliberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise\nthem instead of veils and yakmaks.  But their souls must be seen by\nonly one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at\nhome as our slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.\n\nSo imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart, when in the\nmonth of March, Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis\nXVIII fled, and all Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old\nJohn Sedley was ruined.\n\nWe are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker through those\nlast pangs and agonies of ruin through which he passed before his\ncommercial demise befell. They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he\nwas absent from his house of business: his bills were protested: his\nact of bankruptcy formal.  The house and furniture of Russell Square\nwere seized and sold up, and he and his family were thrust away, as we\nhave seen, to hide their heads where they might.\n\nJohn Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic establishment who\nhave appeared now and anon in our pages and of whom he was now forced\nby poverty to take leave.  The wages of those worthy people were\ndischarged with that punctuality which men frequently show who only owe\nin great sums--they were sorry to leave good places--but they did not\nbreak their hearts at parting from their adored master and mistress.\nAmelia's maid was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned\nto better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town.  Black Sambo,\nwith the infatuation of his profession, determined on setting up a\npublic-house.  Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop indeed, who had seen the\nbirth of Jos and Amelia, and the wooing of John Sedley and his wife,\nwas for staying by them without wages, having amassed a considerable\nsum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen people into their\nnew and humble place of refuge, where she tended them and grumbled\nagainst them for a while.\n\nOf all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors which now\nensued, and harassed the feelings of the humiliated old gentleman so\nseverely, that in six weeks he oldened more than he had done for\nfifteen years before--the most determined and obstinate seemed to be\nJohn Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne, whom he had\nset up in life--who was under a hundred obligations to him--and whose\nson was to marry Sedley's daughter. Any one of these circumstances\nwould account for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition.\n\nWhen one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another,\nwith whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it\nwere, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger\nwould be.  To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in\nsuch a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime.  It is not\nthat you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a\nspeculation--no, no--it is that your partner has led you into it by the\nbasest treachery and with the most sinister motives.  From a mere sense\nof consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is a\nvillain--otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself.\n\nAnd as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined to\nbe severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed are\naltogether honest, very likely.  They conceal something; they\nexaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs;\nsay that things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a smiling\nface (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy--are ready to\nlay hold of any pretext for delay or of any money, so as to stave off\nthe inevitable ruin a few days longer. \"Down with such dishonesty,\"\nsays the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking enemy.  \"You\nfool, why do you catch at a straw?\" calm good sense says to the man\nthat is drowning.  \"You villain, why do you shrink from plunging into\nthe irretrievable Gazette?\" says prosperity to the poor devil battling\nin that black gulf.  Who has not remarked the readiness with which the\nclosest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other\nof cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it.\nEverybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.\n\nThen Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad and\nirritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated.\nFinally, he had to break off the match between Sedley's daughter and\nhis son; and as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's\nhappiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was necessary to\nshow the strongest reasons for the rupture, and for John Osborne to\nprove John Sedley to be a very bad character indeed.\n\nAt the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself with a\nsavageness and scorn towards Sedley, which almost succeeded in breaking\nthe heart of that ruined bankrupt man.  On George's intercourse with\nAmelia he put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions if\nhe broke his commands, and vilipending the poor innocent girl as the\nbasest and most artful of vixens. One of the great conditions of anger\nand hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated\nobject, in order, as we said, to be consistent.\n\nWhen the great crash came--the announcement of ruin, and the departure\nfrom Russell Square, and the declaration that all was over between her\nand George--all over between her and love, her and happiness, her and\nfaith in the world--a brutal letter from John Osborne told her in a few\ncurt lines that her father's conduct had been of such a nature that all\nengagements between the families were at an end--when the final award\ncame, it did not shock her so much as her parents, as her mother rather\nexpected (for John Sedley himself was entirely prostrate in the ruins\nof his own affairs and shattered honour).  Amelia took the news very\npalely and calmly. It was only the confirmation of the dark presages\nwhich had long gone before.  It was the mere reading of the\nsentence--of the crime she had long ago been guilty--the crime of\nloving wrongly, too violently, against reason. She told no more of her\nthoughts now than she had before.  She seemed scarcely more unhappy now\nwhen convinced all hope was over, than before when she felt but dared\nnot confess that it was gone.  So she changed from the large house to\nthe small one without any mark or difference; remained in her little\nroom for the most part; pined silently; and died away day by day.  I do\nnot mean to say that all females are so.  My dear Miss Bullock, I do\nnot think your heart would break in this way.  You are a strong-minded\nyoung woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that mine\nwould; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived. But there\nare some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, and delicate, and\ntender.\n\nWhenever old John Sedley thought of the affair between George and\nAmelia, or alluded to it, it was with bitterness almost as great as Mr.\nOsborne himself had shown.  He cursed Osborne and his family as\nheartless, wicked, and ungrateful.  No power on earth, he swore, would\ninduce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain, and he\nordered Emmy to banish George from her mind, and to return all the\npresents and letters which she had ever had from him.\n\nShe promised acquiescence, and tried to obey.  She put up the two or\nthree trinkets: and, as for the letters, she drew them out of the place\nwhere she kept them; and read them over--as if she did not know them by\nheart already: but she could not part with them.  That effort was too\nmuch for her; she placed them back in her bosom again--as you have seen\na woman nurse a child that is dead.  Young Amelia felt that she would\ndie or lose her senses outright, if torn away from this last\nconsolation. How she used to blush and lighten up when those letters\ncame!  How she used to trip away with a beating heart, so that she\nmight read unseen!  If they were cold, yet how perversely this fond\nlittle soul interpreted them into warmth.  If they were short or\nselfish, what excuses she found for the writer!\n\nIt was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded.\nShe lived in her past life--every letter seemed to recall some\ncircumstance of it.  How well she remembered them all!  His looks and\ntones, his dress, what he said and how--these relics and remembrances\nof dead affection were all that were left her in the world. And the\nbusiness of her life, was--to watch the corpse of Love.\n\nTo death she looked with inexpressible longing.  Then, she thought, I\nshall always be able to follow him.  I am not praising her conduct or\nsetting her up as a model for Miss Bullock to imitate.  Miss B. knows\nhow to regulate her feelings better than this poor little creature.\nMiss B. would never have committed herself as that imprudent Amelia had\ndone; pledged her love irretrievably; confessed her heart away, and got\nback nothing--only a brittle promise which was snapt and worthless in a\nmoment.  A long engagement is a partnership which one party is free to\nkeep or to break, but which involves all the capital of the other.\n\nBe cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage.  Be shy of\nloving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel\nvery little.  See the consequences of being prematurely honest and\nconfiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody.  Get yourselves\nmarried as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and\nconfidantes.  At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you\nuncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required\nmoment command and withdraw.  That is the way to get on, and be\nrespected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.\n\nIf Amelia could have heard the comments regarding her which were made\nin the circle from which her father's ruin had just driven her, she\nwould have seen what her own crimes were, and how entirely her\ncharacter was jeopardised.  Such criminal imprudence Mrs. Smith never\nknew of; such horrid familiarities Mrs. Brown had always condemned, and\nthe end might be a warning to HER daughters. \"Captain Osborne, of\ncourse, could not marry a bankrupt's daughter,\" the Misses Dobbin said.\n\"It was quite enough to have been swindled by the father.  As for that\nlittle Amelia, her folly had really passed all--\"\n\n\"All what?\" Captain Dobbin roared out.  \"Haven't they been engaged ever\nsince they were children?  Wasn't it as good as a marriage? Dare any\nsoul on earth breathe a word against the sweetest, the purest, the\ntenderest, the most angelical of young women?\"\n\n\"La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with US.  We're not men.  We\ncan't fight you,\" Miss Jane said.  \"We've said nothing against Miss\nSedley: but that her conduct throughout was MOST IMPRUDENT, not to call\nit by any worse name; and that her parents are people who certainly\nmerit their misfortunes.\"\n\n\"Hadn't you better, now that Miss Sedley is free, propose for her\nyourself, William?\" Miss Ann asked sarcastically.  \"It would be a most\neligible family connection.  He!  he!\"\n\n\"I marry her!\" Dobbin said, blushing very much, and talking quick. \"If\nyou are so ready, young ladies, to chop and change, do you suppose that\nshe is?  Laugh and sneer at that angel.  She can't hear it; and she's\nmiserable and unfortunate, and deserves to be laughed at.  Go on\njoking, Ann.  You're the wit of the family, and the others like to hear\nit.\"\n\n\"I must tell you again we're not in a barrack, William,\" Miss Ann\nremarked.\n\n\"In a barrack, by Jove--I wish anybody in a barrack would say what you\ndo,\" cried out this uproused British lion.  \"I should like to hear a\nman breathe a word against her, by Jupiter.  But men don't talk in this\nway, Ann: it's only women, who get together and hiss, and shriek, and\ncackle.  There, get away--don't begin to cry.  I only said you were a\ncouple of geese,\" Will Dobbin said, perceiving Miss Ann's pink eyes\nwere beginning to moisten as usual.  \"Well, you're not geese, you're\nswans--anything you like, only do, do leave Miss Sedley alone.\"\n\nAnything like William's infatuation about that silly little flirting,\nogling thing was never known, the mamma and sisters agreed together in\nthinking: and they trembled lest, her engagement being off with\nOsborne, she should take up immediately her other admirer and Captain.\nIn which forebodings these worthy young women no doubt judged according\nto the best of their experience; or rather (for as yet they had had no\nopportunities of marrying or of jilting) according to their own notions\nof right and wrong.\n\n\"It is a mercy, Mamma, that the regiment is ordered abroad,\" the girls\nsaid.  \"THIS danger, at any rate, is spared our brother.\"\n\nSuch, indeed, was the fact; and so it is that the French Emperor comes\nin to perform a part in this domestic comedy of Vanity Fair which we\nare now playing, and which would never have been enacted without the\nintervention of this august mute personage.  It was he that ruined the\nBourbons and Mr. John Sedley.  It was he whose arrival in his capital\ncalled up all France in arms to defend him there; and all Europe to\noust him. While the French nation and army were swearing fidelity round\nthe eagles in the Champ de Mars, four mighty European hosts were\ngetting in motion for the great chasse a l'aigle; and one of these was\na British army, of which two heroes of ours, Captain Dobbin and Captain\nOsborne, formed a portion.\n\nThe news of Napoleon's escape and landing was received by the gallant\n--th with a fiery delight and enthusiasm, which everybody can\nunderstand who knows that famous corps.  From the colonel to the\nsmallest drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope and\nambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor as for a\npersonal kindness in coming to disturb the peace of Europe.  Now was\nthe time the --th had so long panted for, to show their comrades in\narms that they could fight as well as the Peninsular veterans, and that\nall the pluck and valour of the --th had not been killed by the West\nIndies and the yellow fever.  Stubble and Spooney looked to get their\ncompanies without purchase. Before the end of the campaign (which she\nresolved to share), Mrs. Major O'Dowd hoped to write herself Mrs.\nColonel O'Dowd, C.B.  Our two friends (Dobbin and Osborne) were quite\nas much excited as the rest: and each in his way--Mr. Dobbin very\nquietly, Mr. Osborne very loudly and energetically--was bent upon doing\nhis duty, and gaining his share of honour and distinction.\n\nThe agitation thrilling through the country and army in consequence of\nthis news was so great, that private matters were little heeded: and\nhence probably George Osborne, just gazetted to his company, busy with\npreparations for the march, which must come inevitably, and panting for\nfurther promotion--was not so much affected by other incidents which\nwould have interested him at a more quiet period. He was not, it must\nbe confessed, very much cast down by good old Mr. Sedley's catastrophe.\nHe tried his new uniform, which became him very handsomely, on the day\nwhen the first meeting of the creditors of the unfortunate gentleman\ntook place. His father told him of the wicked, rascally, shameful\nconduct of the bankrupt, reminded him of what he had said about Amelia,\nand that their connection was broken off for ever; and gave him that\nevening a good sum of money to pay for the new clothes and epaulets in\nwhich he looked so well.  Money was always useful to this free-handed\nyoung fellow, and he took it without many words. The bills were up in\nthe Sedley house, where he had passed so many, many happy hours.  He\ncould see them as he walked from home that night (to the Old\nSlaughters', where he put up when in town) shining white in the moon.\nThat comfortable home was shut, then, upon Amelia and her parents:\nwhere had they taken refuge? The thought of their ruin affected him not\na little.  He was very melancholy that night in the coffee-room at the\nSlaughters'; and drank a good deal, as his comrades remarked there.\n\nDobbin came in presently, cautioned him about the drink, which he only\ntook, he said, because he was deuced low; but when his friend began to\nput to him clumsy inquiries, and asked him for news in a significant\nmanner, Osborne declined entering into conversation with him, avowing,\nhowever, that he was devilish disturbed and unhappy.\n\nThree days afterwards, Dobbin found Osborne in his room at the\nbarracks--his head on the table, a number of papers about, the young\nCaptain evidently in a state of great despondency.  \"She--she's sent me\nback some things I gave her--some damned trinkets.  Look here!\" There\nwas a little packet directed in the well-known hand to Captain George\nOsborne, and some things lying about--a ring, a silver knife he had\nbought, as a boy, for her at a fair; a gold chain, and a locket with\nhair in it.  \"It's all over,\" said he, with a groan of sickening\nremorse. \"Look, Will, you may read it if you like.\"\n\nThere was a little letter of a few lines, to which he pointed, which\nsaid:\n\nMy papa has ordered me to return to you these presents, which you made\nin happier days to me; and I am to write to you for the last time.  I\nthink, I know you feel as much as I do the blow which has come upon us.\nIt is I that absolve you from an engagement which is impossible in our\npresent misery.  I am sure you had no share in it, or in the cruel\nsuspicions of Mr. Osborne, which are the hardest of all our griefs to\nbear.  Farewell. Farewell.  I pray God to strengthen me to bear this\nand other calamities, and to bless you always.     A.\n\nI shall often play upon the piano--your piano.  It was like you to send\nit.\n\nDobbin was very soft-hearted.  The sight of women and children in pain\nalways used to melt him.  The idea of Amelia broken-hearted and lonely\ntore that good-natured soul with anguish.  And he broke out into an\nemotion, which anybody who likes may consider unmanly. He swore that\nAmelia was an angel, to which Osborne said aye with all his heart.  He,\ntoo, had been reviewing the history of their lives--and had seen her\nfrom her childhood to her present age, so sweet, so innocent, so\ncharmingly simple, and artlessly fond and tender.\n\nWhat a pang it was to lose all that: to have had it and not prized it!\nA thousand homely scenes and recollections crowded on him--in which he\nalways saw her good and beautiful.  And for himself, he blushed with\nremorse and shame, as the remembrance of his own selfishness and\nindifference contrasted with that perfect purity. For a while, glory,\nwar, everything was forgotten, and the pair of friends talked about her\nonly.\n\n\"Where are they?\" Osborne asked, after a long talk, and a long\npause--and, in truth, with no little shame at thinking that he had\ntaken no steps to follow her.  \"Where are they? There's no address to\nthe note.\"\n\nDobbin knew.  He had not merely sent the piano; but had written a note\nto Mrs. Sedley, and asked permission to come and see her--and he had\nseen her, and Amelia too, yesterday, before he came down to Chatham;\nand, what is more, he had brought that farewell letter and packet which\nhad so moved them.\n\nThe good-natured fellow had found Mrs. Sedley only too willing to\nreceive him, and greatly agitated by the arrival of the piano, which,\nas she conjectured, MUST have come from George, and was a signal of\namity on his part.  Captain Dobbin did not correct this error of the\nworthy lady, but listened to all her story of complaints and\nmisfortunes with great sympathy--condoled with her losses and\nprivations, and agreed in reprehending the cruel conduct of Mr. Osborne\ntowards his first benefactor. When she had eased her overflowing bosom\nsomewhat, and poured forth many of her sorrows, he had the courage to\nask actually to see Amelia, who was above in her room as usual, and\nwhom her mother led trembling downstairs.\n\nHer appearance was so ghastly, and her look of despair so pathetic,\nthat honest William Dobbin was frightened as he beheld it; and read the\nmost fatal forebodings in that pale fixed face.  After sitting in his\ncompany a minute or two, she put the packet into his hand, and said,\n\"Take this to Captain Osborne, if you please, and--and I hope he's\nquite well--and it was very kind of you to come and see us--and we like\nour new house very much. And I--I think I'll go upstairs, Mamma, for\nI'm not very strong.\" And with this, and a curtsey and a smile, the\npoor child went her way.  The mother, as she led her up, cast back\nlooks of anguish towards Dobbin.  The good fellow wanted no such\nappeal.  He loved her himself too fondly for that.  Inexpressible\ngrief, and pity, and terror pursued him, and he came away as if he was\na criminal after seeing her.\n\nWhen Osborne heard that his friend had found her, he made hot and\nanxious inquiries regarding the poor child.  How was she?  How did she\nlook?  What did she say?  His comrade took his hand, and looked him in\nthe face.\n\n\"George, she's dying,\" William Dobbin said--and could speak no more.\n\nThere was a buxom Irish servant-girl, who performed all the duties of\nthe little house where the Sedley family had found refuge: and this\ngirl had in vain, on many previous days, striven to give Amelia aid or\nconsolation. Emmy was much too sad to answer, or even to be aware of\nthe attempts the other was making in her favour.\n\nFour hours after the talk between Dobbin and Osborne, this servant-maid\ncame into Amelia's room, where she sate as usual, brooding\nsilently over her letters--her little treasures.  The girl, smiling,\nand looking arch and happy, made many trials to attract poor Emmy's\nattention, who, however, took no heed of her.\n\n\"Miss Emmy,\" said the girl.\n\n\"I'm coming,\" Emmy said, not looking round.\n\n\"There's a message,\" the maid went on.  \"There's\nsomething--somebody--sure, here's a new letter for you--don't be reading\nthem old ones any more.\" And she gave her a letter, which Emmy took, and\nread.\n\n\"I must see you,\" the letter said.  \"Dearest Emmy--dearest\nlove--dearest wife, come to me.\"\n\nGeorge and her mother were outside, waiting until she had read the\nletter.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nMiss Crawley at Nurse\n\nWe have seen how Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, as soon as any event of\nimportance to the Crawley family came to her knowledge, felt bound to\ncommunicate it to Mrs. Bute Crawley, at the Rectory; and have before\nmentioned how particularly kind and attentive that good-natured lady\nwas to Miss Crawley's confidential servant. She had been a gracious\nfriend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had secured the\nlatter's good-will by a number of those attentions and promises, which\ncost so little in the making, and are yet so valuable and agreeable to\nthe recipient.  Indeed every good economist and manager of a household\nmust know how cheap and yet how amiable these professions are, and what\na flavour they give to the most homely dish in life.  Who was the\nblundering idiot who said that \"fine words butter no parsnips\"?  Half\nthe parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other\nsauce.  As the immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for a\nhalf-penny than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetables\nand meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasing\nphrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in the\nhands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits often\nsicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of fine\nwords, and be always eager for more of the same food. Mrs. Bute had\ntold Briggs and Firkin so often of the depth of her affection for them;\nand what she would do, if she had Miss Crawley's fortune, for friends\nso excellent and attached, that the ladies in question had the deepest\nregard for her; and felt as much gratitude and confidence as if Mrs.\nBute had loaded them with the most expensive favours.\n\nRawdon Crawley, on the other hand, like a selfish heavy dragoon as he\nwas, never took the least trouble to conciliate his aunt's aides-de-camp,\nshowed his contempt for the pair with entire frankness--made\nFirkin pull off his boots on one occasion--sent her out in the rain on\nignominious messages--and if he gave her a guinea, flung it to her as\nif it were a box on the ear.  As his aunt, too, made a butt of Briggs,\nthe Captain followed the example, and levelled his jokes at her--jokes\nabout as delicate as a kick from his charger. Whereas, Mrs. Bute\nconsulted her in matters of taste or difficulty, admired her poetry,\nand by a thousand acts of kindness and politeness, showed her\nappreciation of Briggs; and if she made Firkin a twopenny-halfpenny\npresent, accompanied it with so many compliments, that the\ntwopence-half-penny was transmuted into gold in the heart of the\ngrateful waiting-maid, who, besides, was looking forwards quite\ncontentedly to some prodigious benefit which must happen to her on the\nday when Mrs. Bute came into her fortune.\n\nThe different conduct of these two people is pointed out respectfully\nto the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, I\nsay to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both\npoint-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there\nis a reasonable chance of his hearing it again.  Never lose a chance of\nsaying a kind word.  As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his\nestate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal\nwith your compliments through life.  An acorn costs nothing; but it may\nsprout into a prodigious bit of timber.\n\nIn a word, during Rawdon Crawley's prosperity, he was only obeyed with\nsulky acquiescence; when his disgrace came, there was nobody to help or\npity him.  Whereas, when Mrs. Bute took the command at Miss Crawley's\nhouse, the garrison there were charmed to act under such a leader,\nexpecting all sorts of promotion from her promises, her generosity, and\nher kind words.\n\nThat he would consider himself beaten, after one defeat, and make no\nattempt to regain the position he had lost, Mrs. Bute Crawley never\nallowed herself to suppose. She knew Rebecca to be too clever and\nspirited and desperate a woman to submit without a struggle; and felt\nthat she must prepare for that combat, and be incessantly watchful\nagainst assault; or mine, or surprise.\n\nIn the first place, though she held the town, was she sure of the\nprincipal inhabitant?  Would Miss Crawley herself hold out; and had she\nnot a secret longing to welcome back the ousted adversary?  The old\nlady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her.  Mrs. Bute could not\ndisguise from herself the fact that none of her party could so\ncontribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady.  \"My girls' singing,\nafter that little odious governess's, I know is unbearable,\" the candid\nRector's wife owned to herself.  \"She always used to go to sleep when\nMartha and Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners and\npoor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her.  If\nI took her to the Rectory, she would grow angry with us all, and fly, I\nknow she would; and might fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutches\nagain, and be the victim of that little viper of a Sharp.  Meanwhile,\nit is clear to me that she is exceedingly unwell, and cannot move for\nsome weeks, at any rate; during which we must think of some plan to\nprotect her from the arts of those unprincipled people.\"\n\nIn the very best of moments, if anybody told Miss Crawley that she was,\nor looked ill, the trembling old lady sent off for her doctor; and I\ndaresay she was very unwell after the sudden family event, which might\nserve to shake stronger nerves than hers.  At least, Mrs. Bute thought\nit was her duty to inform the physician, and the apothecary, and the\ndame-de-compagnie, and the domestics, that Miss Crawley was in a most\ncritical state, and that they were to act accordingly.  She had the\nstreet laid knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr.\nBowls's plate.  She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day;\nand deluged her patient with draughts every two hours.  When anybody\nentered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that\nit frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not\nlook without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the\nlatter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside.  They seemed to\nlighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she moved\nabout the room on velvet paws like a cat.  There Miss Crawley lay for\ndays--ever so many days--Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her: for\nnights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing,\nthe night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the\nstealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling\neyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary\ndarkened ceiling.  Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a\nregimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim?  It has been\nsaid that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerable\ninhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals\nas Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook\nher, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an\nutter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner.\n\nSick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place\nin mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of some\nnovelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, when\nit is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness.  But,\nwithout preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the\nbustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair\nexhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private\nlife, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal\nrepentances sometimes overcome him.  Recollection of the best ordained\nbanquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most\nbecoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to\nconsole faded beauties.  Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of\nexistence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant\ndivisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very\nsmall account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view,\nabout which all of us must some day or other be speculating.  O brother\nwearers of motley!  Are there not moments when one grows sick of\ngrinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells?  This, dear\nfriends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through\nthe Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should\nall come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be\nperfectly miserable in private.\n\n\"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders,\" Mrs. Bute\nCrawley thought to herself, \"how useful he might be, under present\ncircumstances, to this unhappy old lady!  He might make her repent of\nher shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, and\ncast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and his\nfamily; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and the\ntwo boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance which\ntheir relatives can give them.\"\n\nAnd, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.\nBute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper\nabhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle's\nwife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served to\ncondemn a whole regiment of young officers.  If a man has committed\nwrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his\nerrors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs. Bute showed a\nperfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history.  She had all\nthe particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in which\nRawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain.  She\nknew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house at\nOxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched a\ncard in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at the\nCocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and\nperverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds.  She described\nwith the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom\nhe had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and\npoverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition.  She knew\nthe poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean\nshifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding\nfalsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and\nthe ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices.\nShe imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the\nwhole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian\nwoman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse or\ncompunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very\nlikely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon\nher resolute manner of performing it.  Yes, if a man's character is to\nbe abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the\nbusiness.  And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch\nof a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and\nthat all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his\nfriends' parts.\n\nRebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share of\nMrs. Bute's kind inquiries.  This indefatigable pursuer of truth\n(having given strict orders that the door was to be denied to all\nemissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage, and\ndrove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House, Chiswick\nMall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of Captain\nRawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got sundry strange\nparticulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and early history.  The\nfriend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give.  Miss\nJemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters.\nThis one was from a spunging-house: that entreated an advance: another\nwas full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception by the ladies of\nChiswick: and the last document from the unlucky artist's pen was that\nin which, from his dying bed, he recommended his orphan child to Miss\nPinkerton's protection. There were juvenile letters and petitions from\nRebecca, too, in the collection, imploring aid for her father or\ndeclaring her own gratitude.  Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no\nbetter satires than letters.  Take a bundle of your dear friend's of\nten years back--your dear friend whom you hate now.  Look at a file of\nyour sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled about\nthe twenty-pound legacy!  Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son\nwho has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or a\nparcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, which\nwere sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob--your\nmistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows,\nlove, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly they read after a\nwhile!  There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction\nof every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a\ncertain brief and proper interval.  Those quacks and misanthropes who\nadvertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their\nwicked discoveries.  The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that\nfaded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank,\nso that you might write on it to somebody else.\n\nFrom Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track of\nSharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greek Street, which the\ndefunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the landlady in\nwhite satin, and of the husband in brass buttons, done by Sharp in lieu\nof a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlour walls.  Mrs. Stokes\nwas a communicative person, and quickly told all she knew about Mr.\nSharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how good-natured and amusing;\nhow he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady's\nhorror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his\nwife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild\nvixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and\nmimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was\nknown in all the studios in the quarter--in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a\nfull account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behaviour as\nwould scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that such\ninquiries were being made concerning her.\n\nOf all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit.\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl. She had danced\nherself.  She had been a model to the painters.  She was brought up as\nbecame her mother's daughter.  She drank gin with her father, &c. &c.\nIt was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to be\ninferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair was\nirremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever notice\nthem again.\n\nThese were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together in\nPark Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which she\nfortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon and\nhis wife would lay to Miss Crawley.\n\nBut if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that she\nwas too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made Miss\nCrawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid\nsuccumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the\nvictim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fell\nin her way.  Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women who\norder everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person\nconcerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes speculate\nupon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme\nconsequences resulting from their overstrained authority.\n\nThus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in the\nworld, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep,\ndinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carried\nher conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managed\nher into her coffin.  She pointed out her sacrifices and their results\none day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump.\n\n\"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump,\" she said, \"no efforts of mine have been\nwanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew\nhas laid on the bed of sickness.  I never shrink from personal\ndiscomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself.\"\n\n\"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable,\" Mr. Clump says,\nwith a low bow; \"but--\"\n\n\"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep,\nhealth, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was in\nthe smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him?  No.\"\n\n\"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best of\nmothers; but--\"\n\n\"As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I\nhumbly trust that my principles are good,\" Mrs. Bute said, with a happy\nsolemnity of conviction; \"and, as long as Nature supports me, never,\nnever, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty.  Others may bring\nthat grey head with sorrow to the bed of sickness (here Mrs. Bute,\nwaving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-coloured\nfronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room), but I will\nnever quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump!  I fear, I know, that the couch needs\nspiritual as well as medical consolation.\"\n\n\"What I was going to observe, my dear Madam,\"--here the resolute Clump\nonce more interposed with a bland air--\"what I was going to observe\nwhen you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much honour, was\nthat I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our kind friend, and\nsacrifice your own health too prodigally in her favour.\"\n\n\"I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my\nhusband's family,\" Mrs. Bute interposed.\n\n\"Yes, Madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs Bute Crawley to be a\nmartyr,\" Clump said gallantly.  \"Dr Squills and myself have both\nconsidered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you may\nsuppose.  We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events have\nagitated her.\"\n\n\"Her nephew will come to perdition,\" Mrs. Crawley cried.\n\n\"Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear\nMadam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the\npressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our\namiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed\nnecessary.  She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her\ndepression.  She should have change, fresh air, gaiety; the most\ndelightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia,\" Mr. Clump said, grinning and\nshowing his handsome teeth.  \"Persuade her to rise, dear Madam; drag\nher from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon her taking little\ndrives.  They will restore the roses too to your cheeks, if I may so\nspeak to Mrs. Bute Crawley.\"\n\n\"The sight of her horrid nephew casually in the Park, where I am told\nthe wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes,\" Mrs. Bute\nsaid (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), \"would\ncause her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed\nagain.  She must not go out, Mr. Clump.  She shall not go out as long\nas I remain to watch over her; And as for my health, what matters it?\nI give it cheerfully, sir.  I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty.\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Madam,\" Mr. Clump now said bluntly, \"I won't answer for\nher life if she remains locked up in that dark room.  She is so nervous\nthat we may lose her any day; and if you wish Captain Crawley to be her\nheir, I warn you frankly, Madam, that you are doing your very best to\nserve him.\"\n\n\"Gracious mercy! is her life in danger?\" Mrs. Bute cried.  \"Why, why,\nMr. Clump, did you not inform me sooner?\"\n\nThe night before, Mr. Clump and Dr. Squills had had a consultation\n(over a bottle of wine at the house of Sir Lapin Warren, whose lady was\nabout to present him with a thirteenth blessing), regarding Miss\nCrawley and her case.\n\n\"What a little harpy that woman from Hampshire is, Clump,\" Squills\nremarked, \"that has seized upon old Tilly Crawley.  Devilish good\nMadeira.\"\n\n\"What a fool Rawdon Crawley has been,\" Clump replied, \"to go and marry\na governess!  There was something about the girl, too.\"\n\n\"Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development,\"\nSquills remarked.  \"There is something about her; and Crawley was a\nfool, Squills.\"\n\n\"A d---- fool--always was,\" the apothecary replied.\n\n\"Of course the old girl will fling him over,\" said the physician, and\nafter a pause added, \"She'll cut up well, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Cut up,\" says Clump with a grin; \"I wouldn't have her cut up for two\nhundred a year.\"\n\n\"That Hampshire woman will kill her in two months, Clump, my boy, if\nshe stops about her,\" Dr. Squills said. \"Old woman; full feeder;\nnervous subject; palpitation of the heart; pressure on the brain;\napoplexy; off she goes. Get her up, Clump; get her out: or I wouldn't\ngive many weeks' purchase for your two hundred a year.\" And it was\nacting upon this hint that the worthy apothecary spoke with so much\ncandour to Mrs. Bute Crawley.\n\nHaving the old lady under her hand: in bed: with nobody near, Mrs. Bute\nhad made more than one assault upon her, to induce her to alter her\nwill.  But Miss Crawley's usual terrors regarding death increased\ngreatly when such dismal propositions were made to her, and Mrs. Bute\nsaw that she must get her patient into cheerful spirits and health\nbefore she could hope to attain the pious object which she had in view.\nWhither to take her was the next puzzle. The only place where she is\nnot likely to meet those odious Rawdons is at church, and that won't\namuse her, Mrs. Bute justly felt.  \"We must go and visit our beautiful\nsuburbs of London,\" she then thought.  \"I hear they are the most\npicturesque in the world\"; and so she had a sudden interest for\nHampstead, and Hornsey, and found that Dulwich had great charms for\nher, and getting her victim into her carriage, drove her to those\nrustic spots, beguiling the little journeys with conversations about\nRawdon and his wife, and telling every story to the old lady which\ncould add to her indignation against this pair of reprobates.\n\nPerhaps Mrs. Bute pulled the string unnecessarily tight. For though she\nworked up Miss Crawley to a proper dislike of her disobedient nephew,\nthe invalid had a great hatred and secret terror of her victimizer, and\npanted to escape from her.  After a brief space, she rebelled against\nHighgate and Hornsey utterly.  She would go into the Park.  Mrs. Bute\nknew they would meet the abominable Rawdon there, and she was right.\nOne day in the ring, Rawdon's stanhope came in sight; Rebecca was\nseated by him.  In the enemy's equipage Miss Crawley occupied her usual\nplace, with Mrs. Bute on her left, the poodle and Miss Briggs on the\nback seat.  It was a nervous moment, and Rebecca's heart beat quick as\nshe recognized the carriage; and as the two vehicles crossed each other\nin a line, she clasped her hands, and looked towards the spinster with\na face of agonized attachment and devotion. Rawdon himself trembled,\nand his face grew purple behind his dyed mustachios.  Only old Briggs\nwas moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervously\ntowards her old friends.  Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely turned\ntowards the Serpentine.  Mrs. Bute happened to be in ecstasies with the\npoodle, and was calling him a little darling, and a sweet little zoggy,\nand a pretty pet.  The carriages moved on, each in his line.\n\n\"Done, by Jove,\" Rawdon said to his wife.\n\n\"Try once more, Rawdon,\" Rebecca answered.  \"Could not you lock your\nwheels into theirs, dearest?\"\n\nRawdon had not the heart for that manoeuvre.  When the carriages met\nagain, he stood up in his stanhope; he raised his hand ready to doff\nhis hat; he looked with all his eyes.  But this time Miss Crawley's\nface was not turned away; she and Mrs. Bute looked him full in the\nface, and cut their nephew pitilessly.  He sank back in his seat with\nan oath, and striking out of the ring, dashed away desperately\nhomewards.\n\nIt was a gallant and decided triumph for Mrs. Bute. But she felt the\ndanger of many such meetings, as she saw the evident nervousness of\nMiss Crawley; and she determined that it was most necessary for her\ndear friend's health, that they should leave town for a while, and\nrecommended Brighton very strongly.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nIn Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen\n\nWithout knowing how, Captain William Dobbin found himself the great\npromoter, arranger, and manager of the match between George Osborne and\nAmelia.  But for him it never would have taken place:  he could not but\nconfess as much to himself, and smiled rather bitterly as he thought\nthat he of all men in the world should be the person upon whom the care\nof this marriage had fallen. But though indeed the conducting of this\nnegotiation was about as painful a task as could be set to him, yet\nwhen he had a duty to perform, Captain Dobbin was accustomed to go\nthrough it without many words or much hesitation: and, having made up\nhis mind completely, that if Miss Sedley was balked of her husband she\nwould die of the disappointment, he was determined to use all his best\nendeavours to keep her alive.\n\nI forbear to enter into minute particulars of the interview between\nGeorge and Amelia, when the former was brought back to the feet (or\nshould we venture to say the arms?) of his young mistress by the\nintervention of his friend honest William.  A much harder heart than\nGeorge's would have melted at the sight of that sweet face so sadly\nravaged by grief and despair, and at the simple tender accents in which\nshe told her little broken-hearted story: but as she did not faint when\nher mother, trembling, brought Osborne to her; and as she only gave\nrelief to her overcharged grief, by laying her head on her lover's\nshoulder and there weeping for a while the most tender, copious, and\nrefreshing tears--old Mrs. Sedley, too greatly relieved, thought it was\nbest to leave the young persons to themselves; and so quitted Emmy\ncrying over George's hand, and kissing it humbly, as if he were her\nsupreme chief and master, and as if she were quite a guilty and\nunworthy person needing every favour and grace from him.\n\nThis prostration and sweet unrepining obedience exquisitely touched and\nflattered George Osborne.  He saw a slave before him in that simple\nyielding faithful creature, and his soul within him thrilled secretly\nsomehow at the knowledge of his power.  He would be generous-minded,\nSultan as he was, and raise up this kneeling Esther and make a queen of\nher:  besides, her sadness and beauty touched him as much as her\nsubmission, and so he cheered her, and raised her up and forgave her,\nso to speak.  All her hopes and feelings, which were dying and\nwithering, this her sun having been removed from her, bloomed again and\nat once, its light being restored. You would scarcely have recognised\nthe beaming little face upon Amelia's pillow that night as the one that\nwas laid there the night before, so wan, so lifeless, so careless of\nall round about.  The honest Irish maid-servant, delighted with the\nchange, asked leave to kiss the face that had grown all of a sudden so\nrosy.  Amelia put her arms round the girl's neck and kissed her with\nall her heart, like a child.  She was little more.  She had that night\na sweet refreshing sleep, like one--and what a spring of inexpressible\nhappiness as she woke in the morning sunshine!\n\n\"He will be here again to-day,\" Amelia thought.  \"He is the greatest\nand best of men.\"  And the fact is, that George thought he was one of\nthe generousest creatures alive: and that he was making a tremendous\nsacrifice in marrying this young creature.\n\nWhile she and Osborne were having their delightful tete-a-tete above\nstairs, old Mrs. Sedley and Captain Dobbin were conversing below upon\nthe state of the affairs, and the chances and future arrangements of\nthe young people.  Mrs. Sedley having brought the two lovers together\nand left them embracing each other with all their might, like a true\nwoman, was of opinion that no power on earth would induce Mr. Sedley to\nconsent to the match between his daughter and the son of a man who had\nso shamefully, wickedly, and monstrously treated him.  And she told a\nlong story about happier days and their earlier splendours, when\nOsborne lived in a very humble way in the New Road, and his wife was\ntoo glad to receive some of Jos's little baby things, with which Mrs.\nSedley accommodated her at the birth of one of Osborne's own children.\nThe fiendish ingratitude of that man, she was sure, had broken Mr. S.'s\nheart: and as for a marriage, he would never, never, never, never\nconsent.\n\n\"They must run away together, Ma'am,\" Dobbin said, laughing, \"and\nfollow the example of Captain Rawdon Crawley, and Miss Emmy's friend\nthe little governess.\" Was it possible? Well she never!  Mrs. Sedley\nwas all excitement about this news.  She wished that Blenkinsop were\nhere to hear it:  Blenkinsop always mistrusted that Miss Sharp.-- What\nan escape Jos had had! and she described the already well-known\nlove-passages between Rebecca and the Collector of Boggley Wollah.\n\nIt was not, however, Mr. Sedley's wrath which Dobbin feared, so much as\nthat of the other parent concerned, and he owned that he had a very\nconsiderable doubt and anxiety respecting the behaviour of the\nblack-browed old tyrant of a Russia merchant in Russell Square.  He has\nforbidden the match peremptorily, Dobbin thought. He knew what a savage\ndetermined man Osborne was, and how he stuck by his word. \"The only\nchance George has of reconcilement,\" argued his friend, \"is by\ndistinguishing himself in the coming campaign.  If he dies they both go\ntogether.  If he fails in distinction--what then?  He has some money\nfrom his mother, I have heard enough to purchase his majority--or he\nmust sell out and go and dig in Canada, or rough it in a cottage in the\ncountry.\" With such a partner Dobbin thought he would not mind\nSiberia--and, strange to say, this absurd and utterly imprudent young\nfellow never for a moment considered that the want of means to keep a\nnice carriage and horses, and of an income which should enable its\npossessors to entertain their friends genteelly, ought to operate as\nbars to the union of George and Miss Sedley.\n\nIt was these weighty considerations which made him think too that the\nmarriage should take place as quickly as possible.  Was he anxious\nhimself, I wonder, to have it over?--as people, when death has\noccurred, like to press forward the funeral, or when a parting is\nresolved upon, hasten it.  It is certain that Mr. Dobbin, having taken\nthe matter in hand, was most extraordinarily eager in the conduct of\nit.  He urged on George the necessity of immediate action:  he showed\nthe chances of reconciliation with his father, which a favourable\nmention of his name in the Gazette must bring about.  If need were he\nwould go himself and brave both the fathers in the business.  At all\nevents, he besought George to go through with it before the orders\ncame, which everybody expected, for the departure of the regiment from\nEngland on foreign service.\n\nBent upon these hymeneal projects, and with the applause and consent of\nMrs. Sedley, who did not care to break the matter personally to her\nhusband, Mr. Dobbin went to seek John Sedley at his house of call in\nthe City, the Tapioca Coffee-house, where, since his own offices were\nshut up, and fate had overtaken him, the poor broken-down old\ngentleman used to betake himself daily, and write letters and receive\nthem, and tie them up into mysterious bundles, several of which he\ncarried in the flaps of his coat.  I don't know anything more dismal\nthan that business and bustle and mystery of a ruined man:  those\nletters from the wealthy which he shows you:  those worn greasy\ndocuments promising support and offering condolence which he places\nwistfully before you, and on which he builds his hopes of restoration\nand future fortune. My beloved reader has no doubt in the course of his\nexperience been waylaid by many such a luckless companion.  He takes\nyou into the corner; he has his bundle of papers out of his gaping coat\npocket; and the tape off, and the string in his mouth, and the\nfavourite letters selected and laid before you; and who does not know\nthe sad eager half-crazy look which he fixes on you with his hopeless\neyes?\n\nChanged into a man of this sort, Dobbin found the once florid, jovial,\nand prosperous John Sedley.  His coat, that used to be so glossy and\ntrim, was white at the seams, and the buttons showed the copper.  His\nface had fallen in, and was unshorn; his frill and neckcloth hung limp\nunder his bagging waistcoat.  When he used to treat the boys in old\ndays at a coffee-house, he would shout and laugh louder than anybody\nthere, and have all the waiters skipping round him; it was quite\npainful to see how humble and civil he was to John of the Tapioca, a\nblear-eyed old attendant in dingy stockings and cracked pumps, whose\nbusiness it was to serve glasses of wafers, and bumpers of ink in\npewter, and slices of paper to the frequenters of this dreary house of\nentertainment, where nothing else seemed to be consumed.  As for\nWilliam Dobbin, whom he had tipped repeatedly in his youth, and who had\nbeen the old gentleman's butt on a thousand occasions, old Sedley gave\nhis hand to him in a very hesitating humble manner now, and called him\n\"Sir.\" A feeling of shame and remorse took possession of William Dobbin\nas the broken old man so received and addressed him, as if he himself\nhad been somehow guilty of the misfortunes which had brought Sedley so\nlow.\n\n\"I am very glad to see you, Captain Dobbin, sir,\" says he, after a\nskulking look or two at his visitor (whose lanky figure and military\nappearance caused some excitement likewise to twinkle in the blear eyes\nof the waiter in the cracked dancing pumps, and awakened the old lady\nin black, who dozed among the mouldy old coffee-cups in the bar).  \"How\nis the worthy alderman, and my lady, your excellent mother, sir?\"  He\nlooked round at the waiter as he said, \"My lady,\" as much as to say,\n\"Hark ye, John, I have friends still, and persons of rank and\nreputation, too.\"  \"Are you come to do anything in my way, sir?  My\nyoung friends Dale and Spiggot do all my business for me now, until my\nnew offices are ready; for I'm only here temporarily, you know,\nCaptain.  What can we do for you, sir?  Will you like to take anything?\"\n\nDobbin, with a great deal of hesitation and stuttering, protested that\nhe was not in the least hungry or thirsty; that he had no business to\ntransact; that he only came to ask if Mr. Sedley was well, and to shake\nhands with an old friend; and, he added, with a desperate perversion of\ntruth, \"My mother is very well--that is, she's been very unwell, and is\nonly waiting for the first fine day to go out and call upon Mrs.\nSedley.  How is Mrs. Sedley, sir?  I hope she's quite well.\"  And here\nhe paused, reflecting on his own consummate hypocrisy; for the day was\nas fine, and the sunshine as bright as it ever is in Coffin Court,\nwhere the Tapioca Coffee-house is situated: and Mr. Dobbin remembered\nthat he had seen Mrs. Sedley himself only an hour before, having driven\nOsborne down to Fulham in his gig, and left him there tete-a-tete with\nMiss Amelia.\n\n\"My wife will be very happy to see her ladyship,\" Sedley replied,\npulling out his papers.  \"I've a very kind letter here from your\nfather, sir, and beg my respectful compliments to him.  Lady D. will\nfind us in rather a smaller house than we were accustomed to receive\nour friends in; but it's snug, and the change of air does good to my\ndaughter, who was suffering in town rather--you remember little Emmy,\nsir?--yes, suffering a good deal.\" The old gentleman's eyes were\nwandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else, as he\nsate thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape.\n\n\"You're a military man,\" he went on; \"I ask you, Bill Dobbin, could any\nman ever have speculated upon the return of that Corsican scoundrel\nfrom Elba?  When the allied sovereigns were here last year, and we gave\n'em that dinner in the City, sir, and we saw the Temple of Concord, and\nthe fireworks, and the Chinese bridge in St. James's Park, could any\nsensible man suppose that peace wasn't really concluded, after we'd\nactually sung Te Deum for it, sir?  I ask you, William, could I suppose\nthat the Emperor of Austria was a damned traitor--a traitor, and\nnothing more?  I don't mince words--a double-faced infernal traitor and\nschemer, who meant to have his son-in-law back all along.  And I say\nthat the escape of Boney from Elba was a damned imposition and plot,\nsir, in which half the powers of Europe were concerned, to bring the\nfunds down, and to ruin this country.  That's why I'm here, William.\nThat's why my name's in the Gazette.  Why, sir?--because I trusted the\nEmperor of Russia and the Prince Regent.  Look here.  Look at my\npapers.  Look what the funds were on the 1st of March--what the French\nfives were when I bought for the count.  And what they're at now.\nThere was collusion, sir, or that villain never would have escaped.\nWhere was the English Commissioner who allowed him to get away?  He\nought to be shot, sir--brought to a court-martial, and shot, by Jove.\"\n\n\"We're going to hunt Boney out, sir,\" Dobbin said, rather alarmed at\nthe fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell,\nand who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist.  \"We are going\nto hunt him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expect\nmarching orders every day.\"\n\n\"Give him no quarter.  Bring back the villain's head, sir. Shoot the\ncoward down, sir,\" Sedley roared.  \"I'd enlist myself, by--; but I'm a\nbroken old man--ruined by that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel of\nswindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are rolling\nin their carriages now,\" he added, with a break in his voice.\n\nDobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once kind old\nfriend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving with senile anger.\nPity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the\nchiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.\n\n\"Yes,\" he continued, \"there are some vipers that you warm, and they\nsting you afterwards.  There are some beggars that you put on\nhorseback, and they're the first to ride you down.  You know whom I\nmean, William Dobbin, my boy.  I mean a purse-proud villain in Russell\nSquare, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom I pray and hope to see\na beggar as he was when I befriended him.\"\n\n\"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend George,\" Dobbin\nsaid, anxious to come to his point.  \"The quarrel between you and his\nfather has cut him up a great deal, sir.  Indeed, I'm the bearer of a\nmessage from him.\"\n\n\"O, THAT'S your errand, is it?\" cried the old man, jumping up. \"What!\nperhaps he condoles with me, does he? Very kind of him, the\nstiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West End swagger. He's\nhankering about my house, is he still?  If my son had the courage of a\nman, he'd shoot him.  He's as big a villain as his father.  I won't\nhave his name mentioned in my house.  I curse the day that ever I let\nhim into it; and I'd rather see my daughter dead at my feet than\nmarried to him.\"\n\n\"His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir.  Your daughter's\nlove for him is as much your doing as his.  Who are you, that you are\nto play with two young people's affections and break their hearts at\nyour will?\"\n\n\"Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off,\" old Sedley\ncried out.  \"It's I that forbid it.  That family and mine are separated\nfor ever.  I'm fallen low, but not so low as that: no, no. And so you\nmay tell the whole race--son, and father and sisters, and all.\"\n\n\"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the right to\nseparate those two,\" Dobbin answered in a low voice; \"and that if you\ndon't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marry\nwithout it.  There's no reason she should die or live miserably because\nyou are wrong-headed.  To my thinking, she's just as much married as if\nthe banns had been read in all the churches in London.  And what better\nanswer can there be to Osborne's charges against you, as charges there\nare, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry your\ndaughter?\"\n\nA light of something like satisfaction seemed to break over old Sedley\nas this point was put to him: but he still persisted that with his\nconsent the marriage between Amelia and George should never take place.\n\n\"We must do it without,\" Dobbin said, smiling, and told Mr. Sedley, as\nhe had told Mrs. Sedley in the day, before, the story of Rebecca's\nelopement with Captain Crawley.  It evidently amused the old gentleman.\n\"You're terrible fellows, you Captains,\" said he, tying up his papers;\nand his face wore something like a smile upon it, to the astonishment\nof the blear-eyed waiter who now entered, and had never seen such an\nexpression upon Sedley's countenance since he had used the dismal\ncoffee-house.\n\nThe idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps, the\nold gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and Dobbin\nparted pretty good friends.\n\n\"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs,\" George said,\nlaughing.  \"How they must set off her complexion!  A perfect\nillumination it must be when her jewels are on her neck.  Her\njet-black hair is as curly as Sambo's.  I dare say she wore a nose ring\nwhen she went to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knot\nshe would look a perfect Belle Sauvage.\"\n\nGeorge, in conversation with Amelia, was rallying the appearance of a\nyoung lady of whom his father and sisters had lately made the\nacquaintance, and who was an object of vast respect to the Russell\nSquare family.  She was reported to have I don't know how many\nplantations in the West Indies; a deal of money in the funds; and three\nstars to her name in the East India stockholders' list.  She had a\nmansion in Surrey, and a house in Portland Place. The name of the rich\nWest India heiress had been mentioned with applause in the Morning\nPost.  Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, her relative,\n\"chaperoned\" her, and kept her house.  She was just from school, where\nshe had completed her education, and George and his sisters had met her\nat an evening party at old Hulker's house, Devonshire Place (Hulker,\nBullock, and Co. were long the correspondents of her house in the West\nIndies), and the girls had made the most cordial advances to her, which\nthe heiress had received with great good humour. An orphan in her\nposition--with her money--so interesting! the Misses Osborne said.\nThey were full of their new friend when they returned from the Hulker\nball to Miss Wirt, their companion; they had made arrangements for\ncontinually meeting, and had the carriage and drove to see her the very\nnext day.  Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, a relation of\nLord Binkie, and always talking of him, struck the dear unsophisticated\ngirls as rather haughty, and too much inclined to talk about her great\nrelations: but Rhoda was everything they could wish--the frankest,\nkindest, most agreeable creature--wanting a little polish, but so\ngood-natured.  The girls Christian-named each other at once.\n\n\"You should have seen her dress for court, Emmy,\" Osborne cried,\nlaughing.  \"She came to my sisters to show it off, before she was\npresented in state by my Lady Binkie, the Haggistoun's kinswoman. She's\nrelated to every one, that Haggistoun.  Her diamonds blazed out like\nVauxhall on the night we were there.  (Do you remember Vauxhall, Emmy,\nand Jos singing to his dearest diddle diddle darling?)  Diamonds and\nmahogany, my dear! think what an advantageous contrast--and the white\nfeathers in her hair--I mean in her wool.  She had earrings like\nchandeliers; you might have lighted 'em up, by Jove--and a yellow satin\ntrain that streeled after her like the tail of a cornet.\"\n\n\"How old is she?\" asked Emmy, to whom George was rattling away\nregarding this dark paragon, on the morning of their reunion--rattling\naway as no other man in the world surely could.\n\n\"Why the Black Princess, though she has only just left school, must be\ntwo or three and twenty.  And you should see the hand she writes! Mrs.\nColonel Haggistoun usually writes her letters, but in a moment of\nconfidence, she put pen to paper for my sisters; she spelt satin\nsatting, and Saint James's, Saint Jams.\"\n\n\"Why, surely it must be Miss Swartz, the parlour boarder,\" Emmy said,\nremembering that good-natured young mulatto girl, who had been so\nhysterically affected when Amelia left Miss Pinkerton's academy.\n\n\"The very name,\" George said.  \"Her father was a German Jew--a\nslave-owner they say--connected with the Cannibal Islands in some way\nor other.  He died last year, and Miss Pinkerton has finished her\neducation.  She can play two pieces on the piano; she knows three\nsongs; she can write when Mrs. Haggistoun is by to spell for her; and\nJane and Maria already have got to love her as a sister.\"\n\n\"I wish they would have loved me,\" said Emmy, wistfully. \"They were\nalways very cold to me.\"\n\n\"My dear child, they would have loved you if you had had two hundred\nthousand pounds,\" George replied.  \"That is the way in which they have\nbeen brought up.  Ours is a ready-money society.  We live among bankers\nand City big-wigs, and be hanged to them, and every man, as he talks to\nyou, is jingling his guineas in his pocket.  There is that jackass Fred\nBullock is going to marry Maria--there's Goldmore, the East India\nDirector, there's Dipley, in the tallow trade--OUR trade,\" George said,\nwith an uneasy laugh and a blush.  \"Curse the whole pack of\nmoney-grubbing vulgarians!  I fall asleep at their great heavy dinners.\nI feel ashamed in my father's great stupid parties.  I've been\naccustomed to live with gentlemen, and men of the world and fashion,\nEmmy, not with a parcel of turtle-fed tradesmen.  Dear little woman,\nyou are the only person of our set who ever looked, or thought, or\nspoke like a lady: and you do it because you're an angel and can't help\nit.  Don't remonstrate.  You are the only lady. Didn't Miss Crawley\nremark it, who has lived in the best company in Europe?  And as for\nCrawley, of the Life Guards, hang it, he's a fine fellow: and I like\nhim for marrying the girl he had chosen.\"\n\nAmelia admired Mr. Crawley very much, too, for this; and trusted\nRebecca would be happy with him, and hoped (with a laugh) Jos would be\nconsoled.  And so the pair went on prattling, as in quite early days.\nAmelia's confidence being perfectly restored to her, though she\nexpressed a great deal of pretty jealousy about Miss Swartz, and\nprofessed to be dreadfully frightened--like a hypocrite as she was--lest\nGeorge should forget her for the heiress and her money and her\nestates in Saint Kitt's.  But the fact is, she was a great deal too\nhappy to have fears or doubts or misgivings of any sort: and having\nGeorge at her side again, was not afraid of any heiress or beauty, or\nindeed of any sort of danger.\n\nWhen Captain Dobbin came back in the afternoon to these people--which\nhe did with a great deal of sympathy for them--it did his heart good to\nsee how Amelia had grown young again--how she laughed, and chirped, and\nsang familiar old songs at the piano, which were only interrupted by\nthe bell from without proclaiming Mr. Sedley's return from the City,\nbefore whom George received a signal to retreat.\n\nBeyond the first smile of recognition--and even that was an hypocrisy,\nfor she thought his arrival rather provoking--Miss Sedley did not once\nnotice Dobbin during his visit.  But he was content, so that he saw her\nhappy; and thankful to have been the means of making her so.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nA Quarrel About an Heiress\n\nLove may be felt for any young lady endowed with such qualities as Miss\nSwartz possessed; and a great dream of ambition entered into old Mr.\nOsborne's soul, which she was to realize.  He encouraged, with the\nutmost enthusiasm and friendliness, his daughters' amiable attachment\nto the young heiress, and protested that it gave him the sincerest\npleasure as a father to see the love of his girls so well disposed.\n\n\"You won't find,\" he would say to Miss Rhoda, \"that splendour and rank\nto which you are accustomed at the West End, my dear Miss, at our\nhumble mansion in Russell Square.  My daughters are plain,\ndisinterested girls, but their hearts are in the right place, and\nthey've conceived an attachment for you which does them honour--I say,\nwhich does them honour.  I'm a plain, simple, humble British\nmerchant--an honest one, as my respected friends Hulker and Bullock\nwill vouch, who were the correspondents of your late lamented father.\nYou'll find us a united, simple, happy, and I think I may say\nrespected, family--a plain table, a plain people, but a warm welcome,\nmy dear Miss Rhoda--Rhoda, let me say, for my heart warms to you, it\ndoes really.  I'm a frank man, and I like you.  A glass of Champagne!\nHicks, Champagne to Miss Swartz.\"\n\nThere is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he said, and that\nthe girls were quite earnest in their protestations of affection for\nMiss Swartz.  People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quite\nnaturally.  If the simplest people are disposed to look not a little\nkindly on great Prosperity (for I defy any member of the British public\nto say that the notion of Wealth has not something awful and pleasing\nto him; and you, if you are told that the man next you at dinner has\ngot half a million, not to look at him with a certain interest)--if the\nsimple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlings\nregard it!  Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money.  Their\nkind sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessors\nof it.  I know some respectable people who don't consider themselves at\nliberty to indulge in friendship for any individual who has not a\ncertain competency, or place in society.  They give a loose to their\nfeelings on proper occasions.  And the proof is, that the major part of\nthe Osborne family, who had not, in fifteen years, been able to get up\na hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss Swartz in the\ncourse of a single evening as the most romantic advocate of friendship\nat first sight could desire.\n\nWhat a match for George she'd be (the sisters and Miss Wirt agreed),\nand how much better than that insignificant little Amelia!  Such a\ndashing young fellow as he is, with his good looks, rank, and\naccomplishments, would be the very husband for her.  Visions of balls\nin Portland Place, presentations at Court, and introductions to half\nthe peerage, filled the minds of the young ladies; who talked of\nnothing but George and his grand acquaintances to their beloved new\nfriend.\n\nOld Osborne thought she would be a great match, too, for his son. He\nshould leave the army; he should go into Parliament; he should cut a\nfigure in the fashion and in the state.  His blood boiled with honest\nBritish exultation, as he saw the name of Osborne ennobled in the\nperson of his son, and thought that he might be the progenitor of a\nglorious line of baronets.  He worked in the City and on 'Change, until\nhe knew everything relating to the fortune of the heiress, how her\nmoney was placed, and where her estates lay.  Young Fred Bullock, one\nof his chief informants, would have liked to make a bid for her himself\n(it was so the young banker expressed it), only he was booked to Maria\nOsborne.  But not being able to secure her as a wife, the disinterested\nFred quite approved of her as a sister-in-law.  \"Let George cut in\ndirectly and win her,\" was his advice.  \"Strike while the iron's hot,\nyou know--while she's fresh to the town: in a few weeks some d----\nfellow from the West End will come in with a title and a rotten\nrent-roll and cut all us City men out, as Lord Fitzrufus did last year\nwith Miss Grogram, who was actually engaged to Podder, of Podder &\nBrown's.  The sooner it is done the better, Mr. Osborne; them's my\nsentiments,\" the wag said; though, when Osborne had left the bank\nparlour, Mr. Bullock remembered Amelia, and what a pretty girl she was,\nand how attached to George Osborne; and he gave up at least ten seconds\nof his valuable time to regretting the misfortune which had befallen\nthat unlucky young woman.\n\nWhile thus George Osborne's good feelings, and his good friend and\ngenius, Dobbin, were carrying back the truant to Amelia's feet,\nGeorge's parent and sisters were arranging this splendid match for him,\nwhich they never dreamed he would resist.\n\nWhen the elder Osborne gave what he called \"a hint,\" there was no\npossibility for the most obtuse to mistake his meaning.  He called\nkicking a footman downstairs a hint to the latter to leave his service.\nWith his usual frankness and delicacy he told Mrs. Haggistoun that he\nwould give her a cheque for five thousand pounds on the day his son was\nmarried to her ward; and called that proposal a hint, and considered it\na very dexterous piece of diplomacy.  He gave George finally such\nanother hint regarding the heiress; and ordered him to marry her out of\nhand, as he would have ordered his butler to draw a cork, or his clerk\nto write a letter.\n\nThis imperative hint disturbed George a good deal.  He was in the very\nfirst enthusiasm and delight of his second courtship of Amelia, which\nwas inexpressibly sweet to him.  The contrast of her manners and\nappearance with those of the heiress, made the idea of a union with the\nlatter appear doubly ludicrous and odious.  Carriages and opera-boxes,\nthought he; fancy being seen in them by the side of such a mahogany\ncharmer as that!  Add to all that the junior Osborne was quite as\nobstinate as the senior: when he wanted a thing, quite as firm in his\nresolution to get it; and quite as violent when angered, as his father\nin his most stern moments.\n\nOn the first day when his father formally gave him the hint that he was\nto place his affections at Miss Swartz's feet, George temporised with\nthe old gentleman.  \"You should have thought of the matter sooner,\nsir,\" he said. \"It can't be done now, when we're expecting every day to\ngo on foreign service.  Wait till my return, if I do return\"; and then\nhe represented, that the time when the regiment was daily expecting to\nquit England, was exceedingly ill-chosen: that the few days or weeks\nduring which they were still to remain at home, must be devoted to\nbusiness and not to love-making: time enough for that when he came home\nwith his majority; \"for, I promise you,\" said he, with a satisfied air,\n\"that one way or other you shall read the name of George Osborne in the\nGazette.\"\n\nThe father's reply to this was founded upon the information which he\nhad got in the City: that the West End chaps would infallibly catch\nhold of the heiress if any delay took place: that if he didn't marry\nMiss S., he might at least have an engagement in writing, to come into\neffect when he returned to England; and that a man who could get ten\nthousand a year by staying at home, was a fool to risk his life abroad.\n\n\"So that you would have me shown up as a coward, sir, and our name\ndishonoured for the sake of Miss Swartz's money,\" George interposed.\n\nThis remark staggered the old gentleman; but as he had to reply to it,\nand as his mind was nevertheless made up, he said, \"You will dine here\nto-morrow, sir, and every day Miss Swartz comes, you will be here to\npay your respects to her.  If you want for money, call upon Mr.\nChopper.\" Thus a new obstacle was in George's way, to interfere with\nhis plans regarding Amelia; and about which he and Dobbin had more than\none confidential consultation.  His friend's opinion respecting the\nline of conduct which he ought to pursue, we know already.  And as for\nOsborne, when he was once bent on a thing, a fresh obstacle or two only\nrendered him the more resolute.\n\nThe dark object of the conspiracy into which the chiefs of the Osborne\nfamily had entered, was quite ignorant of all their plans regarding her\n(which, strange to say, her friend and chaperon did not divulge), and,\ntaking all the young ladies' flattery for genuine sentiment, and being,\nas we have before had occasion to show, of a very warm and impetuous\nnature, responded to their affection with quite a tropical ardour.  And\nif the truth may be told, I dare say that she too had some selfish\nattraction in the Russell Square house; and in a word, thought George\nOsborne a very nice young man. His whiskers had made an impression upon\nher, on the very first night she beheld them at the ball at Messrs.\nHulkers; and, as we know, she was not the first woman who had been\ncharmed by them. George had an air at once swaggering and melancholy,\nlanguid and fierce.  He looked like a man who had passions, secrets,\nand private harrowing griefs and adventures.  His voice was rich and\ndeep.  He would say it was a warm evening, or ask his partner to take\nan ice, with a tone as sad and confidential as if he were breaking her\nmother's death to her, or preluding a declaration of love.  He trampled\nover all the young bucks of his father's circle, and was the hero among\nthose third-rate men.  Some few sneered at him and hated him. Some,\nlike Dobbin, fanatically admired him.  And his whiskers had begun to do\ntheir work, and to curl themselves round the affections of Miss Swartz.\n\nWhenever there was a chance of meeting him in Russell Square, that\nsimple and good-natured young woman was quite in a flurry to see her\ndear Misses Osborne.  She went to great expenses in new gowns, and\nbracelets, and bonnets, and in prodigious feathers.  She adorned her\nperson with her utmost skill to please the Conqueror, and exhibited all\nher simple accomplishments to win his favour.  The girls would ask her,\nwith the greatest gravity, for a little music, and she would sing her\nthree songs and play her two little pieces as often as ever they asked,\nand with an always increasing pleasure to herself.  During these\ndelectable entertainments, Miss Wirt and the chaperon sate by, and\nconned over the peerage, and talked about the nobility.\n\nThe day after George had his hint from his father, and a short time\nbefore the hour of dinner, he was lolling upon a sofa in the\ndrawing-room in a very becoming and perfectly natural attitude of\nmelancholy.  He had been, at his father's request, to Mr. Chopper in\nthe City (the old gentleman, though he gave great sums to his son,\nwould never specify any fixed allowance for him, and rewarded him only\nas he was in the humour).  He had then been to pass three hours with\nAmelia, his dear little Amelia, at Fulham; and he came home to find his\nsisters spread in starched muslin in the drawing-room, the dowagers\ncackling in the background, and honest Swartz in her favourite\namber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings,\nflowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as\nelegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.\n\nThe girls, after vain attempts to engage him in conversation, talked\nabout fashions and the last drawing-room until he was perfectly sick of\ntheir chatter.  He contrasted their behaviour with little Emmy's--their\nshrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes and their\nelbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements and modest\ngraces.  Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had been\naccustomed to sit. Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her amber\nsatin lap.  Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes rolled\nabout.  She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and thinking\nherself charming.  Anything so becoming as the satin the sisters had\nnever seen.\n\n\"Dammy,\" George said to a confidential friend, \"she looked like a China\ndoll, which has nothing to do all day but to grin and wag its head.  By\nJove, Will, it was all I I could do to prevent myself from throwing the\nsofa-cushion at her.\" He restrained that exhibition of sentiment,\nhowever.\n\nThe sisters began to play the Battle of Prague.  \"Stop that d----\nthing,\" George howled out in a fury from the sofa.  \"It makes me mad.\nYou play us something, Miss Swartz, do.  Sing something, anything but\nthe Battle of Prague.\"\n\n\"Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?\" Miss\nSwartz asked.\n\n\"That sweet thing from the Cabinet,\" the sisters said.\n\n\"We've had that,\" replied the misanthrope on the sofa.\n\n\"I can sing 'Fluvy du Tajy,'\" Swartz said, in a meek voice, \"if I had\nthe words.\" It was the last of the worthy young woman's collection.\n\n\"O, 'Fleuve du Tage,'\" Miss Maria cried; \"we have the song,\" and went\noff to fetch the book in which it was.\n\nNow it happened that this song, then in the height of the fashion, had\nbeen given to the young ladies by a young friend of theirs, whose name\nwas on the title, and Miss Swartz, having concluded the ditty with\nGeorge's applause (for he remembered that it was a favourite of\nAmelia's), was hoping for an encore perhaps, and fiddling with the\nleaves of the music, when her eye fell upon the title, and she saw\n\"Amelia Sedley\" written in the comer.\n\n\"Lor!\" cried Miss Swartz, spinning swiftly round on the music-stool,\n\"is it my Amelia?  Amelia that was at Miss P.'s at Hammersmith?  I know\nit is.  It's her, and--  Tell me about her--where is she?\"\n\n\"Don't mention her,\" Miss Maria Osborne said hastily.  \"Her family has\ndisgraced itself.  Her father cheated Papa, and as for her, she is\nnever to be mentioned HERE.\" This was Miss Maria's return for George's\nrudeness about the Battle of Prague.\n\n\"Are you a friend of Amelia's?\" George said, bouncing up.  \"God bless\nyou for it, Miss Swartz.  Don't believe what the girls say. SHE'S not\nto blame at any rate. She's the best--\"\n\n\"You know you're not to speak about her, George,\" cried Jane.  \"Papa\nforbids it.\"\n\n\"Who's to prevent me?\" George cried out.  \"I will speak of her.  I say\nshe's the best, the kindest, the gentlest, the sweetest girl in\nEngland; and that, bankrupt or no, my sisters are not fit to hold\ncandles to her.  If you like her, go and see her, Miss Swartz; she\nwants friends now; and I say, God bless everybody who befriends her.\nAnybody who speaks kindly of her is my friend; anybody who speaks\nagainst her is my enemy.  Thank you, Miss Swartz\"; and he went up and\nwrung her hand.\n\n\"George! George!\" one of the sisters cried imploringly.\n\n\"I say,\" George said fiercely, \"I thank everybody who loves Amelia\nSed--\" He stopped.  Old Osborne was in the room with a face livid with\nrage, and eyes like hot coals.\n\nThough George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, he\nwas not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying\ninstantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another\nso indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man quailed in\nhis turn, and looked away.  He felt that the tussle was coming.  \"Mrs.\nHaggistoun, let me take you down to dinner,\" he said. \"Give your arm to\nMiss Swartz, George,\" and they marched.\n\n\"Miss Swartz, I love Amelia, and we've been engaged almost all our\nlives,\" Osborne said to his partner; and during all the dinner, George\nrattled on with a volubility which surprised himself, and made his\nfather doubly nervous for the fight which was to take place as soon as\nthe ladies were gone.\n\nThe difference between the pair was, that while the father was violent\nand a bully, the son had thrice the nerve and courage of the parent,\nand could not merely make an attack, but resist it; and finding that\nthe moment was now come when the contest between him and his father was\nto be decided, he took his dinner with perfect coolness and appetite\nbefore the engagement began.  Old Osborne, on the contrary, was\nnervous, and drank much.  He floundered in his conversation with the\nladies, his neighbours: George's coolness only rendering him more\nangry.  It made him half mad to see the calm way in which George,\nflapping his napkin, and with a swaggering bow, opened the door for the\nladies to leave the room; and filling himself a glass of wine, smacked\nit, and looked his father full in the face, as if to say, \"Gentlemen of\nthe Guard, fire first.\" The old man also took a supply of ammunition,\nbut his decanter clinked against the glass as he tried to fill it.\n\nAfter giving a great heave, and with a purple choking face, he then\nbegan.  \"How dare you, sir, mention that person's name before Miss\nSwartz to-day, in my drawing-room? I ask you, sir, how dare you do it?\"\n\n\"Stop, sir,\" says George, \"don't say dare, sir.  Dare isn't a word to\nbe used to a Captain in the British Army.\"\n\n\"I shall say what I like to my son, sir.  I can cut him off with a\nshilling if I like.  I can make him a beggar if I like. I WILL say what\nI like,\" the elder said.\n\n\"I'm a gentleman though I AM your son, sir,\" George answered haughtily.\n\"Any communications which you have to make to me, or any orders which\nyou may please to give, I beg may be couched in that kind of language\nwhich I am accustomed to hear.\"\n\nWhenever the lad assumed his haughty manner, it always created either\ngreat awe or great irritation in the parent.  Old Osborne stood in\nsecret terror of his son as a better gentleman than himself; and\nperhaps my readers may have remarked in their experience of this Vanity\nFair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so much\nmistrusts as that of a gentleman.\n\n\"My father didn't give me the education you have had, nor the\nadvantages you have had, nor the money you have had.  If I had kept the\ncompany SOME FOLKS have had through MY MEANS, perhaps my son wouldn't\nhave any reason to brag, sir, of his SUPERIORITY and WEST END AIRS\n(these words were uttered in the elder Osborne's most sarcastic tones).\nBut it wasn't considered the part of a gentleman, in MY time, for a man\nto insult his father. If I'd done any such thing, mine would have\nkicked me downstairs, sir.\"\n\n\"I never insulted you, sir.  I said I begged you to remember your son\nwas a gentleman as well as yourself. I know very well that you give me\nplenty of money,\" said George (fingering a bundle of notes which he had\ngot in the morning from Mr. Chopper).  \"You tell it me often enough,\nsir.  There's no fear of my forgetting it.\"\n\n\"I wish you'd remember other things as well, sir,\" the sire answered.\n\"I wish you'd remember that in this house--so long as you choose to\nHONOUR it with your COMPANY, Captain--I'm the master, and that name,\nand that that--that you--that I say--\"\n\n\"That what, sir?\" George asked, with scarcely a sneer, filling another\nglass of claret.\n\n\"----!\" burst out his father with a screaming oath--\"that the name of\nthose Sedleys never be mentioned here, sir--not one of the whole damned\nlot of 'em, sir.\"\n\n\"It wasn't I, sir, that introduced Miss Sedley's name.  It was my\nsisters who spoke ill of her to Miss Swartz; and by Jove I'll defend\nher wherever I go.  Nobody shall speak lightly of that name in my\npresence.  Our family has done her quite enough injury already, I\nthink, and may leave off reviling her now she's down.  I'll shoot any\nman but you who says a word against her.\"\n\n\"Go on, sir, go on,\" the old gentleman said, his eyes starting out of\nhis head.\n\n\"Go on about what, sir? about the way in which we've treated that angel\nof a girl?  Who told me to love her?  It was your doing.  I might have\nchosen elsewhere, and looked higher, perhaps, than your society: but I\nobeyed you.  And now that her heart's mine you give me orders to fling\nit away, and punish her, kill her perhaps--for the faults of other\npeople.  It's a shame, by Heavens,\" said George, working himself up\ninto passion and enthusiasm as he proceeded, \"to play at fast and loose\nwith a young girl's affections--and with such an angel as that--one so\nsuperior to the people amongst whom she lived, that she might have\nexcited envy, only she was so good and gentle, that it's a wonder\nanybody dared to hate her. If I desert her, sir, do you suppose she\nforgets me?\"\n\n\"I ain't going to have any of this dam sentimental nonsense and humbug\nhere, sir,\" the father cried out.  \"There shall be no beggar-marriages\nin my family.  If you choose to fling away eight thousand a year, which\nyou may have for the asking, you may do it: but by Jove you take your\npack and walk out of this house, sir.  Will you do as I tell you, once\nfor all, sir, or will you not?\"\n\n\"Marry that mulatto woman?\" George said, pulling up his shirt-collars.\n\"I don't like the colour, sir.  Ask the black that sweeps opposite\nFleet Market, sir.  I'm not going to marry a Hottentot Venus.\"\n\nMr. Osborne pulled frantically at the cord by which he was accustomed\nto summon the butler when he wanted wine--and almost black in the face,\nordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne.\n\n\"I've done it,\" said George, coming into the Slaughters' an hour\nafterwards, looking very pale.\n\n\"What, my boy?\" says Dobbin.\n\nGeorge told what had passed between his father and himself.\n\n\"I'll marry her to-morrow,\" he said with an oath.  \"I love her more\nevery day, Dobbin.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXII\n\nA Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon\n\nEnemies the most obstinate and courageous can't hold out against\nstarvation; so the elder Osborne felt himself pretty easy about his\nadversary in the encounter we have just described; and as soon as\nGeorge's supplies fell short, confidently expected his unconditional\nsubmission. It was unlucky, to be sure, that the lad should have\nsecured a stock of provisions on the very day when the first encounter\ntook place; but this relief was only temporary, old Osborne thought,\nand would but delay George's surrender.  No communication passed\nbetween father and son for some days.  The former was sulky at this\nsilence, but not disquieted; for, as he said, he knew where he could\nput the screw upon George, and only waited the result of that\noperation.  He told the sisters the upshot of the dispute between them,\nbut ordered them to take no notice of the matter, and welcome George on\nhis return as if nothing had happened.  His cover was laid as usual\nevery day, and perhaps the old gentleman rather anxiously expected him;\nbut he never came. Some one inquired at the Slaughters' regarding him,\nwhere it was said that he and his friend Captain Dobbin had left town.\n\nOne gusty, raw day at the end of April--the rain whipping the pavement\nof that ancient street where the old Slaughters' Coffee-house was once\nsituated--George Osborne came into the coffee-room, looking very\nhaggard and pale; although dressed rather smartly in a blue coat and\nbrass buttons, and a neat buff waistcoat of the fashion of those days.\nHere was his friend Captain Dobbin, in blue and brass too, having\nabandoned the military frock and French-grey trousers, which were the\nusual coverings of his lanky person.\n\nDobbin had been in the coffee-room for an hour or more.  He had tried\nall the papers, but could not read them.  He had looked at the clock\nmany scores of times; and at the street, where the rain was pattering\ndown, and the people as they clinked by in pattens, left long\nreflections on the shining stone: he tattooed at the table: he bit his\nnails most completely, and nearly to the quick (he was accustomed to\nornament his great big hands in this way): he balanced the tea-spoon\ndexterously on the milk jug: upset it, &c., &c.; and in fact showed\nthose signs of disquietude, and practised those desperate attempts at\namusement, which men are accustomed to employ when very anxious, and\nexpectant, and perturbed in mind.\n\nSome of his comrades, gentlemen who used the room, joked him about the\nsplendour of his costume and his agitation of manner.  One asked him if\nhe was going to be married?  Dobbin laughed, and said he would send his\nacquaintance (Major Wagstaff of the Engineers) a piece of cake when\nthat event took place.  At length Captain Osborne made his appearance,\nvery smartly dressed, but very pale and agitated as we have said.  He\nwiped his pale face with a large yellow bandanna pocket-handkerchief\nthat was prodigiously scented. He shook hands with Dobbin, looked at\nthe clock, and told John, the waiter, to bring him some curacao.  Of\nthis cordial he swallowed off a couple of glasses with nervous\neagerness. His friend asked with some interest about his health.\n\n\"Couldn't get a wink of sleep till daylight, Dob,\" said he. \"Infernal\nheadache and fever.  Got up at nine, and went down to the Hummums for a\nbath.  I say, Dob, I feel just as I did on the morning I went out with\nRocket at Quebec.\"\n\n\"So do I,\" William responded.  \"I was a deuced deal more nervous than\nyou were that morning.  You made a famous breakfast, I remember.  Eat\nsomething now.\"\n\n\"You're a good old fellow, Will.  I'll drink your health, old boy, and\nfarewell to--\"\n\n\"No, no; two glasses are enough,\" Dobbin interrupted him.  \"Here, take\naway the liqueurs, John.  Have some cayenne-pepper with your fowl.\nMake haste though, for it is time we were there.\"\n\nIt was about half an hour from twelve when this brief meeting and\ncolloquy took place between the two captains.  A coach, into which\nCaptain Osborne's servant put his master's desk and dressing-case, had\nbeen in waiting for some time; and into this the two gentlemen hurried\nunder an umbrella, and the valet mounted on the box, cursing the rain\nand the dampness of the coachman who was steaming beside him.  \"We\nshall find a better trap than this at the church-door,\" says he;\n\"that's a comfort.\" And the carriage drove on, taking the road down\nPiccadilly, where Apsley House and St. George's Hospital wore red\njackets still; where there were oil-lamps; where Achilles was not yet\nborn; nor the Pimlico arch raised; nor the hideous equestrian monster\nwhich pervades it and the neighbourhood; and so they drove down by\nBrompton to a certain chapel near the Fulham Road there.\n\nA chariot was in waiting with four horses; likewise a coach of the kind\ncalled glass coaches.  Only a very few idlers were collected on account\nof the dismal rain.\n\n\"Hang it!\" said George, \"I said only a pair.\"\n\n\"My master would have four,\" said Mr. Joseph Sedley's servant, who was\nin waiting; and he and Mr. Osborne's man agreed as they followed George\nand William into the church, that it was a \"reg'lar shabby turn hout;\nand with scarce so much as a breakfast or a wedding faviour.\"\n\n\"Here you are,\" said our old friend, Jos Sedley, coming forward.\n\"You're five minutes late, George, my boy. What a day, eh? Demmy, it's\nlike the commencement of the rainy season in Bengal.  But you'll find\nmy carriage is watertight.  Come along, my mother and Emmy are in the\nvestry.\"\n\nJos Sedley was splendid.  He was fatter than ever.  His shirt collars\nwere higher; his face was redder; his shirt-frill flaunted gorgeously\nout of his variegated waistcoat. Varnished boots were not invented as\nyet; but the Hessians on his beautiful legs shone so, that they must\nhave been the identical pair in which the gentleman in the old picture\nused to shave himself; and on his light green coat there bloomed a fine\nwedding favour, like a great white spreading magnolia.\n\nIn a word, George had thrown the great cast.  He was going to be\nmarried.  Hence his pallor and nervousness--his sleepless night and\nagitation in the morning.  I have heard people who have gone through\nthe same thing own to the same emotion.  After three or four\nceremonies, you get accustomed to it, no doubt; but the first dip,\neverybody allows, is awful.\n\nThe bride was dressed in a brown silk pelisse (as Captain Dobbin has\nsince informed me), and wore a straw bonnet with a pink ribbon; over\nthe bonnet she had a veil of white Chantilly lace, a gift from Mr.\nJoseph Sedley, her brother.  Captain Dobbin himself had asked leave to\npresent her with a gold chain and watch, which she sported on this\noccasion; and her mother gave her her diamond brooch--almost the only\ntrinket which was left to the old lady.  As the service went on, Mrs.\nSedley sat and whimpered a great deal in a pew, consoled by the Irish\nmaid-servant and Mrs. Clapp from the lodgings. Old Sedley would not be\npresent.  Jos acted for his father, giving away the bride, whilst\nCaptain Dobbin stepped up as groomsman to his friend George.\n\nThere was nobody in the church besides the officiating persons and the\nsmall marriage party and their attendants. The two valets sat aloof\nsuperciliously.  The rain came rattling down on the windows. In the\nintervals of the service you heard it, and the sobbing of old Mrs.\nSedley in the pew.  The parson's tones echoed sadly through the empty\nwalls.  Osborne's \"I will\" was sounded in very deep bass. Emmy's\nresponse came fluttering up to her lips from her heart, but was\nscarcely heard by anybody except Captain Dobbin.\n\nWhen the service was completed, Jos Sedley came forward and kissed his\nsister, the bride, for the first time for many months--George's look of\ngloom had gone, and he seemed quite proud and radiant. \"It's your turn,\nWilliam,\" says he, putting his hand fondly upon Dobbin's shoulder; and\nDobbin went up and touched Amelia on the cheek.\n\nThen they went into the vestry and signed the register. \"God bless you,\nOld Dobbin,\" George said, grasping him by the hand, with something very\nlike moisture glistening in his eyes.  William replied only by nodding\nhis head. His heart was too full to say much.\n\n\"Write directly, and come down as soon as you can, you know,\" Osborne\nsaid.  After Mrs. Sedley had taken an hysterical adieu of her daughter,\nthe pair went off to the carriage.  \"Get out of the way, you little\ndevils,\" George cried to a small crowd of damp urchins, that were\nhanging about the chapel-door.  The rain drove into the bride and\nbridegroom's faces as they passed to the chariot. The postilions'\nfavours draggled on their dripping jackets. The few children made a\ndismal cheer, as the carriage, splashing mud, drove away.\n\nWilliam Dobbin stood in the church-porch, looking at it, a queer\nfigure.  The small crew of spectators jeered him. He was not thinking\nabout them or their laughter.\n\n\"Come home and have some tiffin, Dobbin,\" a voice cried behind him; as\na pudgy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the honest fellow's reverie\nwas interrupted.  But the Captain had no heart to go a-feasting with\nJos Sedley. He put the weeping old lady and her attendants into the\ncarriage along with Jos, and left them without any farther words\npassing.  This carriage, too, drove away, and the urchins gave another\nsarcastical cheer.\n\n\"Here, you little beggars,\" Dobbin said, giving some sixpences amongst\nthem, and then went off by himself through the rain.  It was all over.\nThey were married, and happy, he prayed God.  Never since he was a boy\nhad he felt so miserable and so lonely.  He longed with a heart-sick\nyearning for the first few days to be over, that he might see her again.\n\nSome ten days after the above ceremony, three young men of our\nacquaintance were enjoying that beautiful prospect of bow windows on\nthe one side and blue sea on the other, which Brighton affords to the\ntraveller. Sometimes it is towards the ocean--smiling with countless\ndimples, speckled with white sails, with a hundred bathing-machines\nkissing the skirt of his blue garment--that the Londoner looks\nenraptured: sometimes, on the contrary, a lover of human nature rather\nthan of prospects of any kind, it is towards the bow windows that he\nturns, and that swarm of human life which they exhibit.  From one issue\nthe notes of a piano, which a young lady in ringlets practises six\nhours daily, to the delight of the fellow-lodgers: at another, lovely\nPolly, the nurse-maid, may be seen dandling Master Omnium in her arms:\nwhilst Jacob, his papa, is beheld eating prawns, and devouring the\nTimes for breakfast, at the window below. Yonder are the Misses Leery,\nwho are looking out for the young officers of the Heavies, who are\npretty sure to be pacing the cliff; or again it is a City man, with a\nnautical turn, and a telescope, the size of a six-pounder, who has his\ninstrument pointed seawards, so as to command every pleasure-boat,\nherring-boat, or bathing-machine that comes to, or quits, the shore,\n&c., &c.  But have we any leisure for a description of Brighton?--for\nBrighton, a clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni--for Brighton, that\nalways looks brisk, gay, and gaudy, like a harlequin's jacket--for\nBrighton, which used to be seven hours distant from London at the time\nof our story; which is now only a hundred minutes off; and which may\napproach who knows how much nearer, unless Joinville comes and untimely\nbombards it?\n\n\"What a monstrous fine girl that is in the lodgings over the\nmilliner's,\" one of these three promenaders remarked to the other;\n\"Gad, Crawley, did you see what a wink she gave me as I passed?\"\n\n\"Don't break her heart, Jos, you rascal,\" said another. \"Don't trifle\nwith her affections, you Don Juan!\"\n\n\"Get away,\" said Jos Sedley, quite pleased, and leering up at the\nmaid-servant in question with a most killing ogle.  Jos was even more\nsplendid at Brighton than he had been at his sister's marriage. He had\nbrilliant under-waistcoats, any one of which would have set up a\nmoderate buck. He sported a military frock-coat, ornamented with frogs,\nknobs, black buttons, and meandering embroidery. He had affected a\nmilitary appearance and habits of late; and he walked with his two\nfriends, who were of that profession, clinking his boot-spurs,\nswaggering prodigiously, and shooting death-glances at all the servant\ngirls who were worthy to be slain.\n\n\"What shall we do, boys, till the ladies return?\" the buck asked. The\nladies were out to Rottingdean in his carriage on a drive.\n\n\"Let's have a game at billiards,\" one of his friends said--the tall\none, with lacquered mustachios.\n\n\"No, dammy; no, Captain,\" Jos replied, rather alarmed.  \"No billiards\nto-day, Crawley, my boy; yesterday was enough.\"\n\n\"You play very well,\" said Crawley, laughing.  \"Don't he, Osborne? How\nwell he made that five stroke, eh?\"\n\n\"Famous,\" Osborne said.  \"Jos is a devil of a fellow at billiards, and\nat everything else, too.  I wish there were any tiger-hunting about\nhere! we might go and kill a few before dinner.  (There goes a fine\ngirl! what an ankle, eh, Jos?) Tell us that story about the tiger-hunt,\nand the way you did for him in the jungle--it's a wonderful story that,\nCrawley.\" Here George Osborne gave a yawn. \"It's rather slow work,\"\nsaid he, \"down here; what shall we do?\"\n\n\"Shall we go and look at some horses that Snaffler's just brought from\nLewes fair?\" Crawley said.\n\n\"Suppose we go and have some jellies at Dutton's,\" and the rogue Jos,\nwilling to kill two birds with one stone.  \"Devilish fine gal at\nDutton's.\"\n\n\"Suppose we go and see the Lightning come in, it's just about time?\"\nGeorge said.  This advice prevailing over the stables and the jelly,\nthey turned towards the coach-office to witness the Lightning's arrival.\n\nAs they passed, they met the carriage--Jos Sedley's open carriage, with\nits magnificent armorial bearings--that splendid conveyance in which he\nused to drive, about at Cheltenham, majestic and solitary, with his\narms folded, and his hat cocked; or, more happy, with ladies by his\nside.\n\nTwo were in the carriage now: one a little person, with light hair, and\ndressed in the height of the fashion; the other in a brown silk\npelisse, and a straw bonnet with pink ribbons, with a rosy, round,\nhappy face, that did you good to behold.  She checked the carriage as\nit neared the three gentlemen, after which exercise of authority she\nlooked rather nervous, and then began to blush most absurdly. \"We have\nhad a delightful drive, George,\" she said, \"and--and we're so glad to\ncome back; and, Joseph, don't let him be late.\"\n\n\"Don't be leading our husbands into mischief, Mr. Sedley, you wicked,\nwicked man you,\" Rebecca said, shaking at Jos a pretty little finger\ncovered with the neatest French kid glove.  \"No billiards, no smoking,\nno naughtiness!\"\n\n\"My dear Mrs. Crawley--Ah now! upon my honour!\" was all Jos could\nejaculate by way of reply; but he managed to fall into a tolerable\nattitude, with his head lying on his shoulder, grinning upwards at his\nvictim, with one hand at his back, which he supported on his cane, and\nthe other hand (the one with the diamond ring) fumbling in his\nshirt-frill and among his under-waistcoats.  As the carriage drove off\nhe kissed the diamond hand to the fair ladies within.  He wished all\nCheltenham, all Chowringhee, all Calcutta, could see him in that\nposition, waving his hand to such a beauty, and in company with such a\nfamous buck as Rawdon Crawley of the Guards.\n\nOur young bride and bridegroom had chosen Brighton as the place where\nthey would pass the first few days after their marriage; and having\nengaged apartments at the Ship Inn, enjoyed themselves there in great\ncomfort and quietude, until Jos presently joined them.  Nor was he the\nonly companion they found there.  As they were coming into the hotel\nfrom a sea-side walk one afternoon, on whom should they light but\nRebecca and her husband.  The recognition was immediate.  Rebecca flew\ninto the arms of her dearest friend. Crawley and Osborne shook hands\ntogether cordially enough: and Becky, in the course of a very few\nhours, found means to make the latter forget that little unpleasant\npassage of words which had happened between them.  \"Do you remember the\nlast time we met at Miss Crawley's, when I was so rude to you, dear\nCaptain Osborne? I thought you seemed careless about dear Amelia.  It\nwas that made me angry: and so pert: and so unkind: and so ungrateful.\nDo forgive me!\" Rebecca said, and she held out her hand with so frank\nand winning a grace, that Osborne could not but take it.  By humbly and\nfrankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no knowing,\nmy son, what good you may do.  I knew once a gentleman and very worthy\npractitioner in Vanity Fair, who used to do little wrongs to his\nneighbours on purpose, and in order to apologise for them in an open\nand manly way afterwards--and what ensued?  My friend Crocky Doyle was\nliked everywhere, and deemed to be rather impetuous--but the honestest\nfellow.  Becky's humility passed for sincerity with George Osborne.\n\nThese two young couples had plenty of tales to relate to each other.\nThe marriages of either were discussed; and their prospects in life\ncanvassed with the greatest frankness and interest on both sides.\nGeorge's marriage was to be made known to his father by his friend\nCaptain Dobbin; and young Osborne trembled rather for the result of\nthat communication.  Miss Crawley, on whom all Rawdon's hopes depended,\nstill held out.  Unable to make an entry into her house in Park Lane,\nher affectionate nephew and niece had followed her to Brighton, where\nthey had emissaries continually planted at her door.\n\n\"I wish you could see some of Rawdon's friends who are always about our\ndoor,\" Rebecca said, laughing.  \"Did you ever see a dun, my dear; or a\nbailiff and his man? Two of the abominable wretches watched all last\nweek at the greengrocer's opposite, and we could not get away until\nSunday.  If Aunty does not relent, what shall we do?\"\n\nRawdon, with roars of laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes of\nhis duns, and Rebecca's adroit treatment of them.  He vowed with a\ngreat oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditor\nover as she could.  Almost immediately after their marriage, her\npractice had begun, and her husband found the immense value of such a\nwife.  They had credit in plenty, but they had bills also in abundance,\nand laboured under a scarcity of ready money. Did these\ndebt-difficulties affect Rawdon's good spirits?  No. Everybody in\nVanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably\nand thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and\neasy they are in their minds.  Rawdon and his wife had the very best\napartments at the inn at Brighton; the landlord, as he brought in the\nfirst dish, bowed before them as to his greatest customers: and Rawdon\nabused the dinners and wine with an audacity which no grandee in the\nland could surpass.  Long custom, a manly appearance, faultless boots\nand clothes, and a happy fierceness of manner, will often help a man as\nmuch as a great balance at the banker's.\n\nThe two wedding parties met constantly in each other's apartments.\nAfter two or three nights the gentlemen of an evening had a little\npiquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart.  This pastime, and the\narrival of Jos Sedley, who made his appearance in his grand open\ncarriage, and who played a few games at billiards with Captain Crawley,\nreplenished Rawdon's purse somewhat, and gave him the benefit of that\nready money for which the greatest spirits are sometimes at a\nstand-still.\n\nSo the three gentlemen walked down to see the Lightning coach come in.\nPunctual to the minute, the coach crowded inside and out, the guard\nblowing his accustomed tune on the horn--the Lightning came tearing\ndown the street, and pulled up at the coach-office.\n\n\"Hullo! there's old Dobbin,\" George cried, quite delighted to see his\nold friend perched on the roof; and whose promised visit to Brighton\nhad been delayed until now.  \"How are you, old fellow? Glad you're come\ndown. Emmy'll be delighted to see you,\" Osborne said, shaking his\ncomrade warmly by the hand as soon as his descent from the vehicle was\neffected--and then he added, in a lower and agitated voice, \"What's the\nnews?  Have you been in Russell Square? What does the governor say?\nTell me everything.\"\n\nDobbin looked very pale and grave.  \"I've seen your father,\" said he.\n\"How's Amelia--Mrs. George?  I'll tell you all the news presently: but\nI've brought the great news of all: and that is--\"\n\n\"Out with it, old fellow,\" George said.\n\n\"We're ordered to Belgium.  All the army goes--guards and all.\nHeavytop's got the gout, and is mad at not being able to move. O'Dowd\ngoes in command, and we embark from Chatham next week.\" This news of\nwar could not but come with a shock upon our lovers, and caused all\nthese gentlemen to look very serious.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIII\n\nCaptain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass\n\nWhat is the secret mesmerism which friendship possesses, and under the\noperation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or timid,\nbecomes wise, active, and resolute, in another's behalf?  As Alexis,\nafter a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads with the\nback of his head, sees miles off, looks into next week, and performs\nother wonders, of which, in his own private normal condition, he is\nquite incapable; so you see, in the affairs of the world and under the\nmagnetism of friendships, the modest man becomes bold, the shy\nconfident, the lazy active, or the impetuous prudent and peaceful.\nWhat is it, on the other hand, that makes the lawyer eschew his own\ncause, and call in his learned brother as an adviser? And what causes\nthe doctor, when ailing, to send for his rival, and not sit down and\nexamine his own tongue in the chimney glass, or write his own\nprescription at his study-table?  I throw out these queries for\nintelligent readers to answer, who know, at once, how credulous we are,\nand how sceptical, how soft and how obstinate, how firm for others and\nhow diffident about ourselves:  meanwhile, it is certain that our\nfriend William Dobbin, who was personally of so complying a disposition\nthat if his parents had pressed him much, it is probable he would have\nstepped down into the kitchen and married the cook, and who, to further\nhis own interests, would have found the most insuperable difficulty in\nwalking across the street, found himself as busy and eager in the\nconduct of George Osborne's affairs, as the most selfish tactician\ncould be in the pursuit of his own.\n\nWhilst our friend George and his young wife were enjoying the first\nblushing days of the honeymoon at Brighton, honest William was left as\nGeorge's plenipotentiary in London, to transact all the business part\nof the marriage. His duty it was to call upon old Sedley and his wife,\nand to keep the former in good humour:  to draw Jos and his\nbrother-in-law nearer together, so that Jos's position and dignity, as\ncollector of Boggley Wollah, might compensate for his father's loss of\nstation, and tend to reconcile old Osborne to the alliance:  and\nfinally, to communicate it to the latter in such a way as should least\nirritate the old gentleman.\n\nNow, before he faced the head of the Osborne house with the news which\nit was his duty to tell, Dobbin bethought him that it would be politic\nto make friends of the rest of the family, and, if possible, have the\nladies on his side. They can't be angry in their hearts, thought he.\nNo woman ever was really angry at a romantic marriage. A little crying\nout, and they must come round to their brother; when the three of us\nwill lay siege to old Mr. Osborne.  So this Machiavellian captain of\ninfantry cast about him for some happy means or stratagem by which he\ncould gently and gradually bring the Misses Osborne to a knowledge of\ntheir brother's secret.\n\nBy a little inquiry regarding his mother's engagements, he was pretty\nsoon able to find out by whom of her ladyship's friends parties were\ngiven at that season; where he would be likely to meet Osborne's\nsisters; and, though he had that abhorrence of routs and evening\nparties which many sensible men, alas! entertain, he soon found one\nwhere the Misses Osborne were to be present. Making his appearance at\nthe ball, where he danced a couple of sets with both of them, and was\nprodigiously polite, he actually had the courage to ask Miss Osborne\nfor a few minutes' conversation at an early hour the next day, when he\nhad, he said, to communicate to her news of the very greatest interest.\n\nWhat was it that made her start back, and gaze upon him for a moment,\nand then on the ground at her feet, and make as if she would faint on\nhis arm, had he not by opportunely treading on her toes, brought the\nyoung lady back to self-control?  Why was she so violently agitated at\nDobbin's request?  This can never be known. But when he came the next\nday, Maria was not in the drawing-room with her sister, and Miss Wirt\nwent off for the purpose of fetching the latter, and the Captain and\nMiss Osborne were left together. They were both so silent that the\nticktock of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia clock on the mantelpiece became\nquite rudely audible.\n\n\"What a nice party it was last night,\" Miss Osborne at length began,\nencouragingly; \"and--and how you're improved in your dancing, Captain\nDobbin.  Surely somebody has taught you,\" she added, with amiable\narchness.\n\n\"You should see me dance a reel with Mrs. Major O'Dowd of ours; and a\njig--did you ever see a jig?  But I think anybody could dance with you,\nMiss Osborne, who dance so well.\"\n\n\"Is the Major's lady young and beautiful, Captain?\" the fair questioner\ncontinued.  \"Ah, what a terrible thing it must be to be a soldier's\nwife!  I wonder they have any spirits to dance, and in these dreadful\ntimes of war, too! O Captain Dobbin, I tremble sometimes when I think\nof our dearest George, and the dangers of the poor soldier. Are there\nmany married officers of the --th, Captain Dobbin?\"\n\n\"Upon my word, she's playing her hand rather too openly,\" Miss Wirt\nthought; but this observation is merely parenthetic, and was not heard\nthrough the crevice of the door at which the governess uttered it.\n\n\"One of our young men is just married,\" Dobbin said, now coming to the\npoint.  \"It was a very old attachment, and the young couple are as poor\nas church mice.\" \"O, how delightful! O, how romantic!\" Miss Osborne\ncried, as the Captain said \"old attachment\" and \"poor.\" Her sympathy\nencouraged him.\n\n\"The finest young fellow in the regiment,\" he continued. \"Not a braver\nor handsomer officer in the army; and such a charming wife! How you\nwould like her!  how you will like her when you know her, Miss\nOsborne.\"  The young lady thought the actual moment had arrived, and\nthat Dobbin's nervousness which now came on and was visible in many\ntwitchings of his face, in his manner of beating the ground with his\ngreat feet, in the rapid buttoning and unbuttoning of his frock-coat,\n&c.--Miss Osborne, I say, thought that when he had given himself a\nlittle air, he would unbosom himself entirely, and prepared eagerly to\nlisten.  And the clock, in the altar on which Iphigenia was situated,\nbeginning, after a preparatory convulsion, to toll twelve, the mere\ntolling seemed as if it would last until one--so prolonged was the\nknell to the anxious spinster.\n\n\"But it's not about marriage that I came to speak--that is that\nmarriage--that is--no, I mean--my dear Miss Osborne, it's about our\ndear friend George,\" Dobbin said.\n\n\"About George?\" she said in a tone so discomfited that Maria and Miss\nWirt laughed at the other side of the door, and even that abandoned\nwretch of a Dobbin felt inclined to smile himself; for he was not\naltogether unconscious of the state of affairs:  George having often\nbantered him gracefully and said, \"Hang it, Will, why don't you take\nold Jane?  She'll have you if you ask her. I'll bet you five to two she\nwill.\"\n\n\"Yes, about George, then,\" he continued.  \"There has been a difference\nbetween him and Mr. Osborne.  And I regard him so much--for you know\nwe have been like brothers--that I hope and pray the quarrel may be\nsettled.  We must go abroad, Miss Osborne.  We may be ordered off at a\nday's warning.  Who knows what may happen in the campaign?  Don't be\nagitated, dear Miss Osborne; and those two at least should part\nfriends.\"\n\n\"There has been no quarrel, Captain Dobbin, except a little usual scene\nwith Papa,\" the lady said.  \"We are expecting George back daily.  What\nPapa wanted was only for his good.  He has but to come back, and I'm\nsure all will be well; and dear Rhoda, who went away from here in sad\nsad anger, I know will forgive him.  Woman forgives but too readily,\nCaptain.\"\n\n\"Such an angel as YOU I am sure would,\" Mr. Dobbin said, with atrocious\nastuteness.  \"And no man can pardon himself for giving a woman pain.\nWhat would you feel, if a man were faithless to you?\"\n\n\"I should perish--I should throw myself out of window--I should take\npoison--I should pine and die.  I know I should,\" Miss cried, who had\nnevertheless gone through one or two affairs of the heart without any\nidea of suicide.\n\n\"And there are others,\" Dobbin continued, \"as true and as kind-hearted\nas yourself.  I'm not speaking about the West Indian heiress, Miss\nOsborne, but about a poor girl whom George once loved, and who was bred\nfrom her childhood to think of nobody but him. I've seen her in her\npoverty uncomplaining, broken-hearted, without a fault.  It is of Miss\nSedley I speak.  Dear Miss Osborne, can your generous heart quarrel\nwith your brother for being faithful to her? Could his own conscience\never forgive him if he deserted her?  Be her friend--she always loved\nyou--and--and I am come here charged by George to tell you that he\nholds his engagement to her as the most sacred duty he has; and to\nentreat you, at least, to be on his side.\"\n\nWhen any strong emotion took possession of Mr. Dobbin, and after the\nfirst word or two of hesitation, he could speak with perfect fluency,\nand it was evident that his eloquence on this occasion made some\nimpression upon the lady whom he addressed.\n\n\"Well,\" said she, \"this is--most surprising--most painful--most\nextraordinary--what will Papa say?--that George should fling away such\na superb establishment as was offered to him but at any rate he has\nfound a very brave champion in you, Captain Dobbin.  It is of no use,\nhowever,\" she continued, after a pause; \"I feel for poor Miss Sedley,\nmost certainly--most sincerely, you know. We never thought the match a\ngood one, though we were always very kind to her here--very.  But Papa\nwill never consent, I am sure.  And a well brought up young woman, you\nknow--with a well-regulated mind, must--George must give her up, dear\nCaptain Dobbin, indeed he must.\"\n\n\"Ought a man to give up the woman he loved, just when misfortune befell\nher?\" Dobbin said, holding out his hand.  \"Dear Miss Osborne, is this\nthe counsel I hear from you?  My dear young lady! you must befriend\nher. He can't give her up.  He must not give her up.  Would a man,\nthink you, give YOU up if you were poor?\"\n\nThis adroit question touched the heart of Miss Jane Osborne not a\nlittle.  \"I don't know whether we poor girls ought to believe what you\nmen say, Captain,\" she said. \"There is that in woman's tenderness which\ninduces her to believe too easily.  I'm afraid you are cruel, cruel\ndeceivers,\"--and Dobbin certainly thought he felt a pressure of the\nhand which Miss Osborne had extended to him.\n\nHe dropped it in some alarm.  \"Deceivers!\" said he. \"No, dear Miss\nOsborne, all men are not; your brother is not; George has loved Amelia\nSedley ever since they were children; no wealth would make him marry\nany but her.  Ought he to forsake her?  Would you counsel him to do so?\"\n\nWhat could Miss Jane say to such a question, and with her own peculiar\nviews?  She could not answer it, so she parried it by saying, \"Well, if\nyou are not a deceiver, at least you are very romantic\"; and Captain\nWilliam let this observation pass without challenge.\n\nAt length when, by the help of farther polite speeches, he deemed that\nMiss Osborne was sufficiently prepared to receive the whole news, he\npoured it into her ear. \"George could not give up Amelia--George was\nmarried to her\"--and then he related the circumstances of the marriage\nas we know them already:  how the poor girl would have died had not her\nlover kept his faith:  how Old Sedley had refused all consent to the\nmatch, and a licence had been got: and Jos Sedley had come from\nCheltenham to give away the bride: how they had gone to Brighton in\nJos's chariot-and-four to pass the honeymoon: and how George counted on\nhis dear kind sisters to befriend him with their father, as women--so\ntrue and tender as they were--assuredly would do.  And so, asking\npermission (readily granted) to see her again, and rightly conjecturing\nthat the news he had brought would be told in the next five minutes to\nthe other ladies, Captain Dobbin made his bow and took his leave.\n\nHe was scarcely out of the house, when Miss Maria and Miss Wirt rushed\nin to Miss Osborne, and the whole wonderful secret was imparted to them\nby that lady.  To do them justice, neither of the sisters was very much\ndispleased.  There is something about a runaway match with which few\nladies can be seriously angry, and Amelia rather rose in their\nestimation, from the spirit which she had displayed in consenting to\nthe union.  As they debated the story, and prattled about it, and\nwondered what Papa would do and say, came a loud knock, as of an\navenging thunder-clap, at the door, which made these conspirators\nstart.  It must be Papa, they thought. But it was not he.  It was only\nMr. Frederick Bullock, who had come from the City according to\nappointment, to conduct the ladies to a flower-show.\n\nThis gentleman, as may be imagined, was not kept long in ignorance of\nthe secret.  But his face, when he heard it, showed an amazement which\nwas very different to that look of sentimental wonder which the\ncountenances of the sisters wore.  Mr. Bullock was a man of the world,\nand a junior partner of a wealthy firm.  He knew what money was, and\nthe value of it: and a delightful throb of expectation lighted up his\nlittle eyes, and caused him to smile on his Maria, as he thought that\nby this piece of folly of Mr. George's she might be worth thirty\nthousand pounds more than he had ever hoped to get with her.\n\n\"Gad!  Jane,\" said he, surveying even the elder sister with some\ninterest, \"Eels will be sorry he cried off.  You may be a fifty\nthousand pounder yet.\"\n\nThe sisters had never thought of the money question up to that moment,\nbut Fred Bullock bantered them with graceful gaiety about it during\ntheir forenoon's excursion; and they had risen not a little in their\nown esteem by the time when, the morning amusement over, they drove\nback to dinner.  And do not let my respected reader exclaim against\nthis selfishness as unnatural.  It was but this present morning, as he\nrode on the omnibus from Richmond; while it changed horses, this\npresent chronicler, being on the roof, marked three little children\nplaying in a puddle below, very dirty, and friendly, and happy.  To\nthese three presently came another little one. \"POLLY,\" says she, \"YOUR\nSISTER'S GOT A PENNY.\"  At which the children got up from the puddle\ninstantly, and ran off to pay their court to Peggy.  And as the omnibus\ndrove off I saw Peggy with the infantine procession at her tail,\nmarching with great dignity towards the stall of a neighbouring\nlollipop-woman.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIV\n\nIn Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible\n\nSo having prepared the sisters, Dobbin hastened away to the City to\nperform the rest and more difficult part of the task which he had\nundertaken.  The idea of facing old Osborne rendered him not a little\nnervous, and more than once he thought of leaving the young ladies to\ncommunicate the secret, which, as he was aware, they could not long\nretain.  But he had promised to report to George upon the manner in\nwhich the elder Osborne bore the intelligence; so going into the City\nto the paternal counting-house in Thames Street, he despatched thence a\nnote to Mr. Osborne begging for a half-hour's conversation relative to\nthe affairs of his son George.  Dobbin's messenger returned from Mr.\nOsborne's house of business, with the compliments of the latter, who\nwould be very happy to see the Captain immediately, and away\naccordingly Dobbin went to confront him.\n\nThe Captain, with a half-guilty secret to confess, and with the\nprospect of a painful and stormy interview before him, entered Mr.\nOsborne's offices with a most dismal countenance and abashed gait, and,\npassing through the outer room where Mr. Chopper presided, was greeted\nby that functionary from his desk with a waggish air which farther\ndiscomfited him.  Mr. Chopper winked and nodded and pointed his pen\ntowards his patron's door, and said, \"You'll find the governor all\nright,\" with the most provoking good humour.\n\nOsborne rose too, and shook him heartily by the hand, and said, \"How\ndo, my dear boy?\" with a cordiality that made poor George's ambassador\nfeel doubly guilty.  His hand lay as if dead in the old gentleman's\ngrasp.  He felt that he, Dobbin, was more or less the cause of all that\nhad happened.  It was he had brought back George to Amelia: it was he\nhad applauded, encouraged, transacted almost the marriage which he was\ncome to reveal to George's father:  and the latter was receiving him\nwith smiles of welcome; patting him on the shoulder, and calling him\n\"Dobbin, my dear boy.\" The envoy had indeed good reason to hang his\nhead.\n\nOsborne fully believed that Dobbin had come to announce his son's\nsurrender.  Mr. Chopper and his principal were talking over the matter\nbetween George and his father, at the very moment when Dobbin's\nmessenger arrived.  Both agreed that George was sending in his\nsubmission.  Both had been expecting it for some days--and \"Lord!\nChopper, what a marriage we'll have!\" Mr. Osborne said to his clerk,\nsnapping his big fingers, and jingling all the guineas and shillings in\nhis great pockets as he eyed his subordinate with a look of triumph.\n\nWith similar operations conducted in both pockets, and a knowing jolly\nair, Osborne from his chair regarded Dobbin seated blank and silent\nopposite to him.  \"What a bumpkin he is for a Captain in the army,\" old\nOsborne thought.  \"I wonder George hasn't taught him better manners.\"\n\nAt last Dobbin summoned courage to begin.  \"Sir,\" said he, \"I've\nbrought you some very grave news.  I have been at the Horse Guards this\nmorning, and there's no doubt that our regiment will be ordered abroad,\nand on its way to Belgium before the week is over.  And you know, sir,\nthat we shan't be home again before a tussle which may be fatal to many\nof us.\"   Osborne looked grave.  \"My s--, the regiment will do its\nduty, sir, I daresay,\" he said.\n\n\"The French are very strong, sir,\" Dobbin went on. \"The Russians and\nAustrians will be a long time before they can bring their troops down.\nWe shall have the first of the fight, sir; and depend on it Boney will\ntake care that it shall be a hard one.\"\n\n\"What are you driving at, Dobbin?\" his interlocutor said, uneasy and\nwith a scowl.  \"I suppose no Briton's afraid of any d---- Frenchman,\nhey?\"\n\n\"I only mean, that before we go, and considering the great and certain\nrisk that hangs over every one of us--if there are any differences\nbetween you and George--it would be as well, sir, that--that you\nshould shake hands: wouldn't it?  Should anything happen to him, I\nthink you would never forgive yourself if you hadn't parted in charity.\"\n\nAs he said this, poor William Dobbin blushed crimson, and felt and\nowned that he himself was a traitor.  But for him, perhaps, this\nseverance need never have taken place.  Why had not George's marriage\nbeen delayed? What call was there to press it on so eagerly?  He felt\nthat George would have parted from Amelia at any rate without a mortal\npang.  Amelia, too, MIGHT have recovered the shock of losing him.  It\nwas his counsel had brought about this marriage, and all that was to\nensue from it. And why was it? Because he loved her so much that he\ncould not bear to see her unhappy:  or because his own sufferings of\nsuspense were so unendurable that he was glad to crush them at once--as\nwe hasten a funeral after a death, or, when a separation from those we\nlove is imminent, cannot rest until the parting be over.\n\n\"You are a good fellow, William,\" said Mr. Osborne in a softened voice;\n\"and me and George shouldn't part in anger, that is true. Look here.\nI've done for him as much as any father ever did.  He's had three times\nas much money from me, as I warrant your father ever gave you.  But I\ndon't brag about that.  How I've toiled for him, and worked and\nemployed my talents and energy, I won't say.  Ask Chopper.  Ask\nhimself.  Ask the City of London.  Well, I propose to him such a\nmarriage as any nobleman in the land might be proud of--the only thing\nin life I ever asked him--and he refuses me.  Am I wrong? Is the\nquarrel of MY making?  What do I seek but his good, for which I've been\ntoiling like a convict ever since he was born? Nobody can say there's\nanything selfish in me.  Let him come back. I say, here's my hand.  I\nsay, forget and forgive.  As for marrying now, it's out of the\nquestion.  Let him and Miss S. make it up, and make out the marriage\nafterwards, when he comes back a Colonel; for he shall be a Colonel, by\nG-- he shall, if money can do it.  I'm glad you've brought him round.\nI know it's you, Dobbin.  You've took him out of many a scrape before.\nLet him come.  I shan't be hard.  Come along, and dine in Russell\nSquare to-day: both of you.  The old shop, the old hour.  You'll find a\nneck of venison, and no questions asked.\"\n\nThis praise and confidence smote Dobbin's heart very keenly.  Every\nmoment the colloquy continued in this tone, he felt more and more\nguilty.  \"Sir,\" said he, \"I fear you deceive yourself.  I am sure you\ndo.  George is much too high-minded a man ever to marry for money.  A\nthreat on your part that you would disinherit him in case of\ndisobedience would only be followed by resistance on his.\"\n\n\"Why, hang it, man, you don't call offering him eight or ten thousand a\nyear threatening him?\" Mr. Osborne said, with still provoking good\nhumour.  \"'Gad, if Miss S. will have me, I'm her man. I ain't\nparticular about a shade or so of tawny.\" And the old gentleman gave\nhis knowing grin and coarse laugh.\n\n\"You forget, sir, previous engagements into which Captain Osborne had\nentered,\" the ambassador said, gravely.\n\n\"What engagements? What the devil do you mean? You don't mean,\" Mr.\nOsborne continued, gathering wrath and astonishment as the thought now\nfirst came upon him; \"you don't mean that he's such a d---- fool as to\nbe still hankering after that swindling old bankrupt's daughter? You've\nnot come here for to make me suppose that he wants to marry HER?  Marry\nHER, that IS a good one.  My son and heir marry a beggar's girl out of\na gutter.  D---- him, if he does, let him buy a broom and sweep a\ncrossing.  She was always dangling and ogling after him, I recollect\nnow; and I've no doubt she was put on by her old sharper of a father.\"\n\n\"Mr. Sedley was your very good friend, sir,\" Dobbin interposed, almost\npleased at finding himself growing angry.  \"Time was you called him\nbetter names than rogue and swindler.  The match was of your making.\nGeorge had no right to play fast and loose--\"\n\n\"Fast and loose!\" howled out old Osborne.  \"Fast and loose!  Why, hang\nme, those are the very words my gentleman used himself when he gave\nhimself airs, last Thursday was a fortnight, and talked about the\nBritish army to his father who made him.  What, it's you who have been\na setting of him up--is it? and my service to you, CAPTAIN.  It's you\nwho want to introduce beggars into my family. Thank you for nothing,\nCaptain.  Marry HER indeed--he, he! why should he?  I warrant you she'd\ngo to him fast enough without.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" said Dobbin, starting up in undisguised anger; \"no man shall\nabuse that lady in my hearing, and you least of all.\"\n\n\"O, you're a-going to call me out, are you?  Stop, let me ring the bell\nfor pistols for two.  Mr. George sent you here to insult his father,\ndid he?\" Osborne said, pulling at the bell-cord.\n\n\"Mr. Osborne,\" said Dobbin, with a faltering voice, \"it's you who are\ninsulting the best creature in the world. You had best spare her, sir,\nfor she's your son's wife.\"\n\nAnd with this, feeling that he could say no more, Dobbin went away,\nOsborne sinking back in his chair, and looking wildly after him.  A\nclerk came in, obedient to the bell; and the Captain was scarcely out\nof the court where Mr. Osborne's offices were, when Mr. Chopper the\nchief clerk came rushing hatless after him.\n\n\"For God's sake, what is it?\" Mr. Chopper said, catching the Captain by\nthe skirt.  \"The governor's in a fit. What has Mr. George been doing?\"\n\n\"He married Miss Sedley five days ago,\" Dobbin replied. \"I was his\ngroomsman, Mr. Chopper, and you must stand his friend.\"\n\nThe old clerk shook his head.  \"If that's your news, Captain, it's bad.\nThe governor will never forgive him.\"\n\nDobbin begged Chopper to report progress to him at the hotel where he\nwas stopping, and walked off moodily westwards, greatly perturbed as to\nthe past and the future.\n\nWhen the Russell Square family came to dinner that evening, they found\nthe father of the house seated in his usual place, but with that air of\ngloom on his face, which, whenever it appeared there, kept the whole\ncircle silent. The ladies, and Mr. Bullock who dined with them, felt\nthat the news had been communicated to Mr. Osborne. His dark looks\naffected Mr. Bullock so far as to render him still and quiet: but he\nwas unusually bland and attentive to Miss Maria, by whom he sat, and to\nher sister presiding at the head of the table.\n\nMiss Wirt, by consequence, was alone on her side of the board, a gap\nbeing left between her and Miss Jane Osborne.  Now this was George's\nplace when he dined at home; and his cover, as we said, was laid for\nhim in expectation of that truant's return.  Nothing occurred during\ndinner-time except smiling Mr. Frederick's flagging confidential\nwhispers, and the clinking of plate and china, to interrupt the silence\nof the repast.  The servants went about stealthily doing their duty.\nMutes at funerals could not look more glum than the domestics of Mr.\nOsborne The neck of venison of which he had invited Dobbin to partake,\nwas carved by him in perfect silence; but his own share went away\nalmost untasted, though he drank much, and the butler assiduously\nfilled his glass.\n\nAt last, just at the end of the dinner, his eyes, which had been\nstaring at everybody in turn, fixed themselves for a while upon the\nplate laid for George.  He pointed to it presently with his left hand.\nHis daughters looked at him and did not comprehend, or choose to\ncomprehend, the signal; nor did the servants at first understand it.\n\n\"Take that plate away,\" at last he said, getting up with an oath--and\nwith this pushing his chair back, he walked into his own room.\n\nBehind Mr. Osborne's dining-room was the usual apartment which went in\nhis house by the name of the study; and was sacred to the master of the\nhouse.  Hither Mr. Osborne would retire of a Sunday forenoon when not\nminded to go to church; and here pass the morning in his crimson\nleather chair, reading the paper.  A couple of glazed book-cases were\nhere, containing standard works in stout gilt bindings. The \"Annual\nRegister,\" the \"Gentleman's Magazine,\" \"Blair's Sermons,\" and \"Hume and\nSmollett.\" From year's end to year's end he never took one of these\nvolumes from the shelf; but there was no member of the family that\nwould dare for his life to touch one of the books, except upon those\nrare Sunday evenings when there was no dinner-party, and when the great\nscarlet Bible and Prayer-book were taken out from the corner where they\nstood beside his copy of the Peerage, and the servants being rung up to\nthe dining parlour, Osborne read the evening service to his family in a\nloud grating pompous voice.  No member of the household, child, or\ndomestic, ever entered that room without a certain terror.  Here he\nchecked the housekeeper's accounts, and overhauled the butler's\ncellar-book. Hence he could command, across the clean gravel\ncourt-yard, the back entrance of the stables with which one of his\nbells communicated, and into this yard the coachman issued from his\npremises as into a dock, and Osborne swore at him from the study\nwindow.  Four times a year Miss Wirt entered this apartment to get her\nsalary; and his daughters to receive their quarterly allowance.  George\nas a boy had been horsewhipped in this room many times; his mother\nsitting sick on the stair listening to the cuts of the whip.  The boy\nwas scarcely ever known to cry under the punishment; the poor woman\nused to fondle and kiss him secretly, and give him money to soothe him\nwhen he came out.\n\nThere was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece, removed thither\nfrom the front room after Mrs. Osborne's death--George was on a pony,\nthe elder sister holding him up a bunch of flowers; the younger led by\nher mother's hand; all with red cheeks and large red mouths, simpering\non each other in the approved family-portrait manner.  The mother lay\nunderground now, long since forgotten--the sisters and brother had a\nhundred different interests of their own, and, familiar still, were\nutterly estranged from each other.  Some few score of years afterwards,\nwhen all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satire\nthere is in those flaunting childish family-portraits, with their farce\nof sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and\nself-satisfied.  Osborne's own state portrait, with that of his great\nsilver inkstand and arm-chair, had taken the place of honour in the\ndining-room, vacated by the family-piece.\n\nTo this study old Osborne retired then, greatly to the relief of the\nsmall party whom he left.  When the servants had withdrawn, they began\nto talk for a while volubly but very low; then they went upstairs\nquietly, Mr. Bullock accompanying them stealthily on his creaking\nshoes.  He had no heart to sit alone drinking wine, and so close to the\nterrible old gentleman in the study hard at hand.\n\nAn hour at least after dark, the butler, not having received any\nsummons, ventured to tap at his door and take him in wax candles and\ntea.  The master of the house sate in his chair, pretending to read the\npaper, and when the servant, placing the lights and refreshment on the\ntable by him, retired, Mr. Osborne got up and locked the door after\nhim.  This time there was no mistaking the matter; all the household\nknew that some great catastrophe was going to happen which was likely\ndirely to affect Master George.\n\nIn the large shining mahogany escritoire Mr. Osborne had a drawer\nespecially devoted to his son's affairs and papers.  Here he kept all\nthe documents relating to him ever since he had been a boy: here were\nhis prize copy-books and drawing-books, all bearing George's hand, and\nthat of the master:  here were his first letters in large round-hand\nsending his love to papa and mamma, and conveying his petitions for a\ncake.  His dear godpapa Sedley was more than once mentioned in them.\nCurses quivered on old Osborne's livid lips, and horrid hatred and\ndisappointment writhed in his heart, as looking through some of these\npapers he came on that name. They were all marked and docketed, and\ntied with red tape. It was--\"From Georgy, requesting 5s., April 23,\n18--; answered, April 25\"--or \"Georgy about a pony, October 13\"--and so\nforth. In another packet were \"Dr. S.'s accounts\"--\"G.'s tailor's bills\nand outfits, drafts on me by G. Osborne, jun.,\" &c.--his letters from\nthe West Indies--his agent's letters, and the newspapers containing his\ncommissions: here was a whip he had when a boy, and in a paper a locket\ncontaining his hair, which his mother used to wear.\n\nTurning one over after another, and musing over these memorials, the\nunhappy man passed many hours.  His dearest vanities, ambitious hopes,\nhad all been here.  What pride he had in his boy!  He was the\nhandsomest child ever seen.  Everybody said he was like a nobleman's\nson.  A royal princess had remarked him, and kissed him, and asked his\nname in Kew Gardens.  What City man could show such another? Could a\nprince have been better cared for?  Anything that money could buy had\nbeen his son's.  He used to go down on speech-days with four horses and\nnew liveries, and scatter new shillings among the boys at the school\nwhere George was:  when he went with George to the depot of his\nregiment, before the boy embarked for Canada, he gave the officers such\na dinner as the Duke of York might have sat down to.  Had he ever\nrefused a bill when George drew one? There they were--paid without a\nword.  Many a general in the army couldn't ride the horses he had!  He\nhad the child before his eyes, on a hundred different days when he\nremembered George after dinner, when he used to come in as bold as a\nlord and drink off his glass by his father's side, at the head of the\ntable--on the pony at Brighton, when he cleared the hedge and kept up\nwith the huntsman--on the day when he was presented to the Prince\nRegent at the levee, when all Saint James's couldn't produce a finer\nyoung fellow.  And this, this was the end of all!--to marry a bankrupt\nand fly in the face of duty and fortune!  What humiliation and fury:\nwhat pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds of\noutraged vanity, tenderness even, had this old worldling now to suffer\nunder!\n\nHaving examined these papers, and pondered over this one and the other,\nin that bitterest of all helpless woe, with which miserable men think\nof happy past times--George's father took the whole of the documents\nout of the drawer in which he had kept them so long, and locked them\ninto a writing-box, which he tied, and sealed with his seal.  Then he\nopened the book-case, and took down the great red Bible we have spoken\nof a pompous book, seldom looked at, and shining all over with gold.\nThere was a frontispiece to the volume, representing Abraham\nsacrificing Isaac.  Here, according to custom, Osborne had recorded on\nthe fly-leaf, and in his large clerk-like hand, the dates of his\nmarriage and his wife's death, and the births and Christian names of\nhis children. Jane came first, then George Sedley Osborne, then Maria\nFrances, and the days of the christening of each.  Taking a pen, he\ncarefully obliterated George's names from the page; and when the leaf\nwas quite dry, restored the volume to the place from which he had moved\nit.  Then he took a document out of another drawer, where his own\nprivate papers were kept; and having read it, crumpled it up and\nlighted it at one of the candles, and saw it burn entirely away in the\ngrate.  It was his will; which being burned, he sate down and wrote off\na letter, and rang for his servant, whom he charged to deliver it in\nthe morning.  It was morning already: as he went up to bed, the whole\nhouse was alight with the sunshine; and the birds were singing among\nthe fresh green leaves in Russell Square.\n\nAnxious to keep all Mr. Osborne's family and dependants in good humour,\nand to make as many friends as possible for George in his hour of\nadversity, William Dobbin, who knew the effect which good dinners and\ngood wines have upon the soul of man, wrote off immediately on his\nreturn to his inn the most hospitable of invitations to Thomas Chopper,\nEsquire, begging that gentleman to dine with him at the Slaughters'\nnext day.  The note reached Mr. Chopper before he left the City, and\nthe instant reply was, that \"Mr. Chopper presents his respectful\ncompliments, and will have the honour and pleasure of waiting on\nCaptain D.\"  The invitation and the rough draft of the answer were\nshown to Mrs. Chopper and her daughters on his return to Somers' Town\nthat evening, and they talked about military gents and West End men\nwith great exultation as the family sate and partook of tea.  When the\ngirls had gone to rest, Mr. and Mrs. C. discoursed upon the strange\nevents which were occurring in the governor's family.  Never had the\nclerk seen his principal so moved.  When he went in to Mr. Osborne,\nafter Captain Dobbin's departure, Mr. Chopper found his chief black in\nthe face, and all but in a fit: some dreadful quarrel, he was certain,\nhad occurred between Mr. O. and the young Captain.  Chopper had been\ninstructed to make out an account of all sums paid to Captain Osborne\nwithin the last three years.  \"And a precious lot of money he has had\ntoo,\" the chief clerk said, and respected his old and young master the\nmore, for the liberal way in which the guineas had been flung about.\nThe dispute was something about Miss Sedley.  Mrs. Chopper vowed and\ndeclared she pitied that poor young lady to lose such a handsome young\nfellow as the Capting. As the daughter of an unlucky speculator, who\nhad paid a very shabby dividend, Mr. Chopper had no great regard for\nMiss Sedley.  He respected the house of Osborne before all others in\nthe City of London: and his hope and wish was that Captain George\nshould marry a nobleman's daughter. The clerk slept a great deal\nsounder than his principal that night; and, cuddling his children after\nbreakfast (of which he partook with a very hearty appetite, though his\nmodest cup of life was only sweetened with brown sugar), he set off in\nhis best Sunday suit and frilled shirt for business, promising his\nadmiring wife not to punish Captain D.'s port too severely that evening.\n\nMr. Osborne's countenance, when he arrived in the City at his usual\ntime, struck those dependants who were accustomed, for good reasons, to\nwatch its expression, as peculiarly ghastly and worn.  At twelve\no'clock Mr. Higgs (of the firm of Higgs & Blatherwick, solicitors,\nBedford Row) called by appointment, and was ushered into the governor's\nprivate room, and closeted there for more than an hour. At about one\nMr. Chopper received a note brought by Captain Dobbin's man, and\ncontaining an inclosure for Mr. Osborne, which the clerk went in and\ndelivered.  A short time afterwards Mr. Chopper and Mr. Birch, the next\nclerk, were summoned, and requested to witness a paper.  \"I've been\nmaking a new will,\" Mr. Osborne said, to which these gentlemen appended\ntheir names accordingly.  No conversation passed.  Mr. Higgs looked\nexceedingly grave as he came into the outer rooms, and very hard in Mr.\nChopper's face; but there were not any explanations.  It was remarked\nthat Mr. Osborne was particularly quiet and gentle all day, to the\nsurprise of those who had augured ill from his darkling demeanour.  He\ncalled no man names that day, and was not heard to swear once.  He left\nbusiness early; and before going away, summoned his chief clerk once\nmore, and having given him general instructions, asked him, after some\nseeming hesitation and reluctance to speak, if he knew whether Captain\nDobbin was in town?\n\nChopper said he believed he was.  Indeed both of them knew the fact\nperfectly.\n\nOsborne took a letter directed to that officer, and giving it to the\nclerk, requested the latter to deliver it into Dobbin's own hands\nimmediately.\n\n\"And now, Chopper,\" says he, taking his hat, and with a strange look,\n\"my mind will be easy.\"  Exactly as the clock struck two (there was no\ndoubt an appointment between the pair) Mr. Frederick Bullock called,\nand he and Mr. Osborne walked away together.\n\nThe Colonel of the --th regiment, in which Messieurs Dobbin and Osborne\nhad companies, was an old General who had made his first campaign under\nWolfe at Quebec, and was long since quite too old and feeble for\ncommand; but he took some interest in the regiment of which he was the\nnominal head, and made certain of his young officers welcome at his\ntable, a kind of hospitality which I believe is not now common amongst\nhis brethren.  Captain Dobbin was an especial favourite of this old\nGeneral.  Dobbin was versed in the literature of his profession, and\ncould talk about the great Frederick, and the Empress Queen, and their\nwars, almost as well as the General himself, who was indifferent to the\ntriumphs of the present day, and whose heart was with the tacticians of\nfifty years back.  This officer sent a summons to Dobbin to come and\nbreakfast with him, on the morning when Mr. Osborne altered his will\nand Mr. Chopper put on his best shirt frill, and then informed his\nyoung favourite, a couple of days in advance, of that which they were\nall expecting--a marching order to go to Belgium. The order for the\nregiment to hold itself in readiness would leave the Horse Guards in a\nday or two; and as transports were in plenty, they would get their\nroute before the week was over.  Recruits had come in during the stay\nof the regiment at Chatham; and the old General hoped that the regiment\nwhich had helped to beat Montcalm in Canada, and to rout Mr. Washington\non Long Island, would prove itself worthy of its historical reputation\non the oft-trodden battle-grounds of the Low Countries.  \"And so, my\ngood friend, if you have any affaire la,\" said the old General, taking a\npinch of snuff with his trembling white old hand, and then pointing to\nthe spot of his robe de chambre under which his heart was still feebly\nbeating, \"if you have any Phillis to console, or to bid farewell to\npapa and mamma, or any will to make, I recommend you to set about your\nbusiness without delay.\" With which the General gave his young friend a\nfinger to shake, and a good-natured nod of his powdered and pigtailed\nhead; and the door being closed upon Dobbin, sate down to pen a poulet\n(he was exceedingly vain of his French) to Mademoiselle Amenaide of His\nMajesty's Theatre.\n\nThis news made Dobbin grave, and he thought of our friends at Brighton,\nand then he was ashamed of himself that Amelia was always the first\nthing in his thoughts (always before anybody--before father and mother,\nsisters and duty--always at waking and sleeping indeed, and all day\nlong); and returning to his hotel, he sent off a brief note to Mr.\nOsborne acquainting him with the information which he had received, and\nwhich might tend farther, he hoped, to bring about a reconciliation\nwith George.\n\nThis note, despatched by the same messenger who had carried the\ninvitation to Chopper on the previous day, alarmed the worthy clerk not\na little.  It was inclosed to him, and as he opened the letter he\ntrembled lest the dinner should be put off on which he was calculating.\nHis mind was inexpressibly relieved when he found that the envelope was\nonly a reminder for himself.  (\"I shall expect you at half-past five,\"\nCaptain Dobbin wrote.) He was very much interested about his employer's\nfamily; but, que voulez-vous? a grand dinner was of more concern to him\nthan the affairs of any other mortal.\n\nDobbin was quite justified in repeating the General's information to\nany officers of the regiment whom he should see in the course of his\nperegrinations; accordingly he imparted it to Ensign Stubble, whom he\nmet at the agent's, and who--such was his military ardour--went off\ninstantly to purchase a new sword at the accoutrement-maker's. Here\nthis young fellow, who, though only seventeen years of age, and about\nsixty-five inches high, with a constitution naturally rickety and much\nimpaired by premature brandy and water, had an undoubted courage and a\nlion's heart, poised, tried, bent, and balanced a weapon such as he\nthought would do execution amongst Frenchmen. Shouting \"Ha, ha!\" and\nstamping his little feet with tremendous energy, he delivered the point\ntwice or thrice at Captain Dobbin, who parried the thrust laughingly\nwith his bamboo walking-stick.\n\nMr. Stubble, as may be supposed from his size and slenderness, was of\nthe Light Bobs.  Ensign Spooney, on the contrary, was a tall youth, and\nbelonged to (Captain Dobbin's) the Grenadier Company, and he tried on a\nnew bearskin cap, under which he looked savage beyond his years.  Then\nthese two lads went off to the Slaughters', and having ordered a famous\ndinner, sate down and wrote off letters to the kind anxious parents at\nhome--letters full of love and heartiness, and pluck and bad spelling.\nAh! there were many anxious hearts beating through England at that\ntime; and mothers' prayers and tears flowing in many homesteads.\n\nSeeing young Stubble engaged in composition at one of the coffee-room\ntables at the Slaughters', and the tears trickling down his nose on to\nthe paper (for the youngster was thinking of his mamma, and that he\nmight never see her again), Dobbin, who was going to write off a letter\nto George Osborne, relented, and locked up his desk.  \"Why should I?\"\nsaid he.  \"Let her have this night happy. I'll go and see my parents\nearly in the morning, and go down to Brighton myself to-morrow.\"\n\nSo he went up and laid his big hand on young Stubble's shoulder, and\nbacked up that young champion, and told him if he would leave off\nbrandy and water he would be a good soldier, as he always was a\ngentlemanly good-hearted fellow.  Young Stubble's eyes brightened up at\nthis, for Dobbin was greatly respected in the regiment, as the best\nofficer and the cleverest man in it.\n\n\"Thank you, Dobbin,\" he said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, \"I\nwas just--just telling her I would.  And, O Sir, she's so dam kind to\nme.\" The water pumps were at work again, and I am not sure that the\nsoft-hearted Captain's eyes did not also twinkle.\n\nThe two ensigns, the Captain, and Mr. Chopper, dined together in the\nsame box.  Chopper brought the letter from Mr. Osborne, in which the\nlatter briefly presented his compliments to Captain Dobbin, and\nrequested him to forward the inclosed to Captain George Osborne.\nChopper knew nothing further; he described Mr. Osborne's appearance, it\nis true, and his interview with his lawyer, wondered how the governor\nhad sworn at nobody, and--especially as the wine circled\nround--abounded in speculations and conjectures.  But these grew more\nvague with every glass, and at length became perfectly unintelligible.\nAt a late hour Captain Dobbin put his guest into a hackney coach, in a\nhiccupping state, and swearing that he would be the kick--the\nkick--Captain's friend for ever and ever.\n\nWhen Captain Dobbin took leave of Miss Osborne we have said that he\nasked leave to come and pay her another visit, and the spinster\nexpected him for some hours the next day, when, perhaps, had he come,\nand had he asked her that question which she was prepared to answer,\nshe would have declared herself as her brother's friend, and a\nreconciliation might have been effected between George and his angry\nfather.  But though she waited at home the Captain never came. He had\nhis own affairs to pursue; his own parents to visit and console; and at\nan early hour of the day to take his place on the Lightning coach, and\ngo down to his friends at Brighton.  In the course of the day Miss\nOsborne heard her father give orders that that meddling scoundrel,\nCaptain Dobbin, should never be admitted within his doors again, and\nany hopes in which she may have indulged privately were thus abruptly\nbrought to an end.  Mr. Frederick Bullock came, and was particularly\naffectionate to Maria, and attentive to the broken-spirited old\ngentleman.  For though he said his mind would be easy, the means which\nhe had taken to secure quiet did not seem to have succeeded as yet, and\nthe events of the past two days had visibly shattered him.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXV\n\nIn Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton\n\nConducted to the ladies, at the Ship Inn, Dobbin assumed a jovial and\nrattling manner, which proved that this young officer was becoming a\nmore consummate hypocrite every day of his life.  He was trying to hide\nhis own private feelings, first upon seeing Mrs. George Osborne in her\nnew condition, and secondly to mask the apprehensions he entertained as\nto the effect which the dismal news brought down by him would certainly\nhave upon her.\n\n\"It is my opinion, George,\" he said, \"that the French Emperor will be\nupon us, horse and foot, before three weeks are over, and will give the\nDuke such a dance as shall make the Peninsula appear mere child's play.\nBut you need not say that to Mrs. Osborne, you know. There mayn't be\nany fighting on our side after all, and our business in Belgium may\nturn out to be a mere military occupation.  Many persons think so; and\nBrussels is full of fine people and ladies of fashion.\" So it was\nagreed to represent the duty of the British army in Belgium in this\nharmless light to Amelia.\n\nThis plot being arranged, the hypocritical Dobbin saluted Mrs. George\nOsborne quite gaily, tried to pay her one or two compliments relative\nto her new position as a bride (which compliments, it must be\nconfessed, were exceedingly clumsy and hung fire woefully), and then\nfell to talking about Brighton, and the sea-air, and the gaieties of\nthe place, and the beauties of the road and the merits of the Lightning\ncoach and horses--all in a manner quite incomprehensible to Amelia, and\nvery amusing to Rebecca, who was watching the Captain, as indeed she\nwatched every one near whom she came.\n\nLittle Amelia, it must be owned, had rather a mean opinion of her\nhusband's friend, Captain Dobbin.  He lisped--he was very plain and\nhomely-looking: and exceedingly awkward and ungainly.  She liked him\nfor his attachment to her husband (to be sure there was very little\nmerit in that), and she thought George was most generous and kind in\nextending his friendship to his brother officer. George had mimicked\nDobbin's lisp and queer manners many times to her, though to do him\njustice, he always spoke most highly of his friend's good qualities. In\nher little day of triumph, and not knowing him intimately as yet, she\nmade light of honest William--and he knew her opinions of him quite\nwell, and acquiesced in them very humbly.  A time came when she knew\nhim better, and changed her notions regarding him; but that was distant\nas yet.\n\nAs for Rebecca, Captain Dobbin had not been two hours in the ladies'\ncompany before she understood his secret perfectly.  She did not like\nhim, and feared him privately; nor was he very much prepossessed in her\nfavour.  He was so honest, that her arts and cajoleries did not affect\nhim, and he shrank from her with instinctive repulsion. And, as she was\nby no means so far superior to her sex as to be above jealousy, she\ndisliked him the more for his adoration of Amelia.  Nevertheless, she\nwas very respectful and cordial in her manner towards him.  A friend to\nthe Osbornes! a friend to her dearest benefactors!  She vowed she\nshould always love him sincerely: she remembered him quite well on the\nVauxhall night, as she told Amelia archly, and she made a little fun of\nhim when the two ladies went to dress for dinner.  Rawdon Crawley paid\nscarcely any attention to Dobbin, looking upon him as a good-natured\nnincompoop and under-bred City man.  Jos patronised him with much\ndignity.\n\nWhen George and Dobbin were alone in the latter's room, to which George\nhad followed him, Dobbin took from his desk the letter which he had\nbeen charged by Mr. Osborne to deliver to his son.  \"It's not in my\nfather's handwriting,\" said George, looking rather alarmed; nor was it:\nthe letter was from Mr. Osborne's lawyer, and to the following effect:\n\n                                    \"Bedford Row, May 7, 1815.\n\n\"SIR,\n\n\"I am commissioned by Mr. Osborne to inform you, that he abides by the\ndetermination which he before expressed to you, and that in consequence\nof the marriage which you have been pleased to contract, he ceases to\nconsider you henceforth as a member of his family. This determination\nis final and irrevocable.\n\n\"Although the monies expended upon you in your minority, and the bills\nwhich you have drawn upon him so unsparingly of late years, far exceed\nin amount the sum to which you are entitled in your own right (being\nthe third part of the fortune of your mother, the late Mrs. Osborne and\nwhich reverted to you at her decease, and to Miss Jane Osborne and Miss\nMaria Frances Osborne); yet I am instructed by Mr. Osborne to say, that\nhe waives all claim upon your estate, and that the sum of 2,000 pounds,\n4 per cent. annuities, at the value of the day (being your one-third\nshare of the sum of 6,000 pounds), shall be paid over to yourself or\nyour agents upon your receipt for the same, by\n\n                          \"Your obedient Servt.,\n                                           \"S. HIGGS.\n\n\"P.S.--Mr. Osborne desires me to say, once for all, that he declines to\nreceive any messages, letters, or communications from you on this or\nany other subject.\n\n\"A pretty way you have managed the affair,\" said George, looking\nsavagely at William Dobbin.  \"Look there, Dobbin,\" and he flung over to\nthe latter his parent's letter. \"A beggar, by Jove, and all in\nconsequence of my d--d sentimentality.  Why couldn't we have waited? A\nball might have done for me in the course of the war, and may still,\nand how will Emmy be bettered by being left a beggar's widow? It was\nall your doing.  You were never easy until you had got me married and\nruined.  What the deuce am I to do with two thousand pounds?  Such a\nsum won't last two years.  I've lost a hundred and forty to Crawley at\ncards and billiards since I've been down here. A pretty manager of a\nman's matters YOU are, forsooth.\"\n\n\"There's no denying that the position is a hard one,\" Dobbin replied,\nafter reading over the letter with a blank countenance; \"and as you\nsay, it is partly of my making. There are some men who wouldn't mind\nchanging with you,\" he added, with a bitter smile. \"How many captains\nin the regiment have two thousand pounds to the fore, think you?  You\nmust live on your pay till your father relents, and if you die, you\nleave your wife a hundred a year.\"\n\n\"Do you suppose a man of my habits can live on his pay and a hundred a\nyear?\" George cried out in great anger.  \"You must be a fool to talk\nso, Dobbin.  How the deuce am I to keep up my position in the world\nupon such a pitiful pittance?  I can't change my habits.  I must have\nmy comforts.  I wasn't brought up on porridge, like MacWhirter, or on\npotatoes, like old O'Dowd.  Do you expect my wife to take in soldiers'\nwashing, or ride after the regiment in a baggage waggon?\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, \"we'll get her a\nbetter conveyance.  But try and remember that you are only a dethroned\nprince now, George, my boy; and be quiet whilst the tempest lasts.  It\nwon't be for long.  Let your name be mentioned in the Gazette, and I'll\nengage the old father relents towards you:\"\n\n\"Mentioned in the Gazette!\" George answered.  \"And in what part of it?\nAmong the killed and wounded returns, and at the top of the list, very\nlikely.\"\n\n\"Psha!  It will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt,\" Dobbin\nsaid.  \"And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a little,\nand I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my godson in my\nwill,\" he added, with a smile.  Whereupon the dispute ended--as many\nscores of  such conversations between Osborne and his friend had\nconcluded previously--by the former declaring there was no possibility\nof being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him very generously\nafter abusing him without cause.\n\n\"I say, Becky,\" cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to his\nlady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber.\n\n\"What?\" said Becky's shrill voice.  She was looking over her shoulder\nin the glass.  She had put on the neatest and freshest white frock\nimaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little necklace, and a light\nblue sash, she looked the image of youthful innocence and girlish\nhappiness.\n\n\"I say, what'll Mrs. O. do, when O. goes out with the regiment?\"\nCrawley said coming into the room, performing a duet on his head with\ntwo huge hair-brushes, and looking out from under his hair with\nadmiration on his pretty little wife.\n\n\"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out,\" Becky answered. \"She has been\nwhimpering half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to me.\"\n\n\"YOU don't care, I suppose?\" Rawdon said, half angry at his wife's want\nof feeling.\n\n\"You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with you,\" Becky\nreplied.  \"Besides, you're different.  You go as General Tufto's\naide-de-camp.  We don't belong to the line,\" Mrs. Crawley said,\nthrowing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that he\nstooped down and kissed it.\n\n\"Rawdon dear--don't you think--you'd better get that--money from Cupid,\nbefore he goes?\" Becky continued, fixing on a killing bow. She called\nGeorge Osborne, Cupid.  She had flattered him about his good looks a\nscore of times already.  She watched over him kindly at ecarte of a\nnight when he would drop in to Rawdon's quarters for a half-hour before\nbed-time.\n\nShe had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch, and threatened to\ntell Emmy of his wicked ways and naughty extravagant habits.  She\nbrought his cigar and lighted it for him; she knew the effect of that\nmanoeuvre, having practised it in former days upon Rawdon Crawley. He\nthought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguee, delightful. In their little\ndrives and dinners, Becky, of course, quite outshone poor Emmy, who\nremained very mute and timid while Mrs. Crawley and her husband rattled\naway together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos after he joined the young\nmarried people) gobbled in silence.\n\nEmmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend. Rebecca's wit,\nspirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet. They\nwere only a week married, and here was George already suffering ennui,\nand eager for others' society!  She trembled for the future. How shall\nI be a companion for him, she thought--so clever and so brilliant, and\nI such a humble foolish creature? How noble it was of him to marry\nme--to give up everything and stoop down to me!  I ought to have\nrefused him, only I had not the heart.  I ought to have stopped at home\nand taken care of poor Papa.  And her neglect of her parents (and\nindeed there was some foundation for this charge which the poor child's\nuneasy conscience brought against her) was now remembered for the first\ntime, and caused her to blush with humiliation.  Oh! thought she, I\nhave been very wicked and selfish--selfish in forgetting them in their\nsorrows--selfish in forcing George to marry me.  I know I'm not worthy\nof him--I know he would have been happy without me--and yet--I tried, I\ntried to give him up.\n\nIt is hard when, before seven days of marriage are over, such thoughts\nand confessions as these force themselves on a little bride's mind.\nBut so it was, and the night before Dobbin came to join these young\npeople--on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May--so warm and balmy\nthat the windows were flung open to the balcony, from which George and\nMrs. Crawley were gazing upon the calm ocean spread shining before\nthem, while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at backgammon within--Amelia\ncouched in a great chair quite neglected, and watching both these\nparties, felt a despair and remorse such as were bitter companions for\nthat tender lonely soul.  Scarce a week was past, and it was come to\nthis! The future, had she regarded it, offered a dismal prospect; but\nEmmy was too shy, so to speak, to look to that, and embark alone on\nthat wide sea, and unfit to navigate it without a guide and protector.\nI know Miss Smith has a mean opinion of her.  But how many, my dear\nMadam, are endowed with your prodigious strength of mind?\n\n\"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!\" George said, with\na puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skywards.\n\n\"How delicious they smell in the open air!  I adore them.  Who'd think\nthe moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and\nforty-seven miles off?\" Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile.\n\"Isn't it clever of me to remember that?  Pooh!  we learned it all at\nMiss Pinkerton's!  How calm the sea is, and how clear everything.  I\ndeclare I can almost see the coast of France!\" and her bright green\neyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if they could see through\nit.\n\n\"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?\" she said; \"I find I can\nswim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley's companion--old\nBriggs, you know--you remember her--that hook-nosed woman, with the\nlong wisps of hair--when Briggs goes out to bathe, I intend to dive\nunder her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in the water.  Isn't\nthat a stratagem?\"\n\nGeorge burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting. \"What's\nthe row there, you two?\" Rawdon shouted out, rattling the box.  Amelia\nwas making a fool of herself in an absurd hysterical manner, and\nretired to her own room to whimper in private.\n\nOur history is destined in this chapter to go backwards and forwards in\na very irresolute manner seemingly, and having conducted our story to\nto-morrow presently, we shall immediately again have occasion to step\nback to yesterday, so that the whole of the tale may get a hearing. As\nyou behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the ambassadors' and high\ndignitaries' carriages whisk off from a private door, while Captain\nJones's ladies are waiting for their fly: as you see in the Secretary\nof the Treasury's antechamber, a half-dozen of petitioners waiting\npatiently for their audience, and called out one by one, when suddenly\nan Irish member or some eminent personage enters the apartment, and\ninstantly walks into Mr. Under-Secretary over the heads of all the\npeople present: so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to\nexercise this most partial sort of justice.  Although all the little\nincidents must be heard, yet they must be put off when the great events\nmake their appearance; and surely such a circumstance as that which\nbrought Dobbin to Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and\nthe line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that\ncountry under the command of his Grace the Duke of Wellington--such a\ndignified circumstance as that, I say, was entitled to the pas over all\nminor occurrences whereof this history is composed mainly, and hence a\nlittle trifling disarrangement and disorder was excusable and becoming.\nWe have only now advanced in time so far beyond Chapter XXII as to have\ngot our various characters up into their dressing-rooms before the\ndinner, which took place as usual on the day of Dobbin's arrival.\n\nGeorge was too humane or too much occupied with the tie of his\nneckcloth to convey at once all the news to Amelia which his comrade\nhad brought with him from London.  He came into her room, however,\nholding the attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn and\nimportant an air that his wife, always ingeniously on the watch for\ncalamity, thought the worst was about to befall, and running up to her\nhusband, besought her dearest George to tell her everything--he was\nordered abroad; there would be a battle next week--she knew there would.\n\nDearest George parried the question about foreign service, and with a\nmelancholy shake of the head said, \"No, Emmy; it isn't that:  it's not\nmyself I care about: it's you.  I have had bad news from my father.  He\nrefuses any communication with me; he has flung us off; and leaves us\nto poverty.  I can rough it well enough; but you, my dear, how will you\nbear it? read here.\" And he handed her over the letter.\n\nAmelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes, listened to her noble\nhero as he uttered the above generous sentiments, and sitting down on\nthe bed, read the letter which George gave her with such a pompous\nmartyr-like air.  Her face cleared up as she read the document,\nhowever. The idea of sharing poverty and privation in company with the\nbeloved object is, as we have before said, far from being disagreeable\nto a warm-hearted woman. The notion was actually pleasant to little\nAmelia.  Then, as usual, she was ashamed of herself for feeling happy\nat such an indecorous moment, and checked her pleasure, saying\ndemurely, \"O, George, how your poor heart must bleed at the idea of\nbeing separated from your papa!\"\n\n\"It does,\" said George, with an agonised countenance.\n\n\"But he can't be angry with you long,\" she continued. \"Nobody could,\nI'm sure.  He must forgive you, my dearest, kindest husband.  O, I\nshall never forgive myself if he does not.\"\n\n\"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune, but yours,\" George\nsaid.  \"I don't care for a little poverty; and I think, without vanity,\nI've talents enough to make my own way.\"\n\n\"That you have,\" interposed his wife, who thought that war should\ncease, and her husband should be made a general instantly.\n\n\"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another,\" Osborne went on; \"but\nyou, my dear girl, how can I bear your being deprived of the comforts\nand station in society which my wife had a right to expect? My dearest\ngirl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching regiment; subject\nto all sorts of annoyance and privation! It makes me miserable.\"\n\nEmmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only cause of disquiet,\ntook his hand, and with a radiant face and smile began to warble that\nstanza from the favourite song of \"Wapping Old Stairs,\" in which the\nheroine, after rebuking her Tom for inattention, promises \"his trousers\nto mend, and his grog too to make,\" if he will be constant and kind,\nand not forsake her.  \"Besides,\" she said, after a pause, during which\nshe looked as pretty and happy as any young woman need, \"isn't two\nthousand pounds an immense deal of money, George?\"\n\nGeorge laughed at her naivete; and finally they went down to dinner,\nAmelia clinging to George's arm, still warbling the tune of \"Wapping\nOld Stairs,\" and more pleased and light of mind than she had been for\nsome days past.\n\nThus the repast, which at length came off, instead of being dismal, was\nan exceedingly brisk and merry one. The excitement of the campaign\ncounteracted in George's mind the depression occasioned by the\ndisinheriting letter. Dobbin still kept up his character of rattle.  He\namused the company with accounts of the army in Belgium; where nothing\nbut fetes and gaiety and fashion were going on.  Then, having a\nparticular end in view, this dexterous captain proceeded to describe\nMrs. Major O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe, and how his\nbest epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister, whilst her own\nfamous yellow turban, with the bird of paradise wrapped in brown paper,\nwas locked up in the Major's tin cocked-hat case, and wondered what\neffect it would have at the French king's court at Ghent, or the great\nmilitary balls at Brussels.\n\n\"Ghent! Brussels!\" cried out Amelia with a sudden shock and start. \"Is\nthe regiment ordered away, George--is it ordered away?\" A look of\nterror came over the sweet smiling face, and she clung to George as by\nan instinct.\n\n\"Don't be afraid, dear,\" he said good-naturedly; \"it is but a twelve\nhours' passage.  It won't hurt you.  You shall go, too, Emmy.\"\n\n\"I intend to go,\" said Becky.  \"I'm on the staff.  General Tufto is a\ngreat flirt of mine.  Isn't he, Rawdon?\" Rawdon laughed out with his\nusual roar.  William Dobbin flushed up quite red.  \"She can't go,\" he\nsaid; \"think of the--of the danger,\" he was going to add; but had not\nall his conversation during dinner-time tended to prove there was none?\nHe became very confused and silent.\n\n\"I must and will go,\" Amelia cried with the greatest spirit; and\nGeorge, applauding her resolution, patted her under the chin, and asked\nall the persons present if they ever saw such a termagant of a wife,\nand agreed that the lady should bear him company.  \"We'll have Mrs.\nO'Dowd to chaperon you,\" he said.  What cared she so long as her\nhusband was near her?  Thus somehow the bitterness of a parting was\njuggled away.  Though war and danger were in store, war and danger\nmight not befall for months to come.  There was a respite at any rate,\nwhich made the timid little Amelia almost as happy as a full reprieve\nwould have done, and which even Dobbin owned in his heart was very\nwelcome.  For, to be permitted to see her was now the greatest\nprivilege and hope of his life, and he thought with himself secretly\nhow he would watch and protect her.  I wouldn't have let her go if I\nhad been married to her, he thought.  But George was the master, and\nhis friend did not think fit to remonstrate.\n\nPutting her arm round her friend's waist, Rebecca at length carried\nAmelia off from the dinner-table where so much business of importance\nhad been discussed, and left the gentlemen in a highly exhilarated\nstate, drinking and talking very gaily.\n\nIn the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family-note from his\nwife, which, although he crumpled it up and burnt it instantly in the\ncandle, we had the good luck to read over Rebecca's shoulder. \"Great\nnews,\" she wrote.  \"Mrs. Bute is gone.  Get the money from Cupid\ntonight, as he'll be off to-morrow most likely.  Mind this.--R.\" So\nwhen the little company was about adjourning to coffee in the women's\napartment, Rawdon touched Osborne on the elbow, and said gracefully, \"I\nsay, Osborne, my boy, if quite convenient, I'll trouble you for that\n'ere small trifle.\" It was not quite convenient, but nevertheless\nGeorge gave him a considerable present instalment in bank-notes from\nhis pocket-book, and a bill on his agents at a week's date, for the\nremaining sum.\n\nThis matter arranged, George, and Jos, and Dobbin, held a council of\nwar over their cigars, and agreed that a general move should be made\nfor London in Jos's open carriage the next day.  Jos, I think, would\nhave preferred staying until Rawdon Crawley quitted Brighton, but\nDobbin and George overruled him, and he agreed to carry the party to\ntown, and ordered four horses, as became his dignity.  With these they\nset off in state, after breakfast, the next day.  Amelia had risen very\nearly in the morning, and packed her little trunks with the greatest\nalacrity, while Osborne lay in bed deploring that she had not a maid to\nhelp her.  She was only too glad, however, to perform this office for\nherself.  A dim uneasy sentiment about Rebecca filled her mind already;\nand although they kissed each other most tenderly at parting, yet we\nknow what jealousy is; and Mrs. Amelia possessed that among other\nvirtues of her sex.\n\nBesides these characters who are coming and going away, we must\nremember that there were some other old friends of ours at Brighton;\nMiss Crawley, namely, and the suite in attendance upon her.  Now,\nalthough Rebecca and her husband were but at a few stones' throw of the\nlodgings which the invalid Miss Crawley occupied, the old lady's door\nremained as pitilessly closed to them as it had been heretofore in\nLondon.  As long as she remained by the side of her sister-in-law,\nMrs. Bute Crawley took care that her beloved Matilda should not be\nagitated by a meeting with her nephew.  When the spinster took her\ndrive, the faithful Mrs. Bute sate beside her in the carriage. When\nMiss Crawley took the air in a chair, Mrs. Bute marched on one side of\nthe vehicle, whilst honest Briggs occupied the other wing. And if they\nmet Rawdon and his wife by chance--although the former constantly and\nobsequiously took off his hat, the Miss-Crawley party passed him by\nwith such a frigid and killing indifference, that Rawdon began to\ndespair.\n\n\"We might as well be in London as here,\" Captain Rawdon often said,\nwith a downcast air.\n\n\"A comfortable inn in Brighton is better than a spunging-house in\nChancery Lane,\" his wife answered, who was of a more cheerful\ntemperament.  \"Think of those two aides-de-camp of Mr. Moses, the\nsheriff's-officer, who watched our lodging for a week.  Our friends\nhere are very stupid, but Mr. Jos and Captain Cupid are better\ncompanions than Mr. Moses's men, Rawdon, my love.\"\n\n\"I wonder the writs haven't followed me down here,\" Rawdon continued,\nstill desponding.\n\n\"When they do, we'll find means to give them the slip,\" said dauntless\nlittle Becky, and further pointed out to her husband the great comfort\nand advantage of meeting Jos and Osborne, whose acquaintance had\nbrought to Rawdon Crawley a most timely little supply of ready money.\n\n\"It will hardly be enough to pay the inn bill,\" grumbled the Guardsman.\n\n\"Why need we pay it?\" said the lady, who had an answer for everything.\n\nThrough Rawdon's valet, who still kept up a trifling acquaintance with\nthe male inhabitants of Miss Crawley's servants' hall, and was\ninstructed to treat the coachman to drink whenever they met, old Miss\nCrawley's movements were pretty well known by our young couple; and\nRebecca luckily bethought herself of being unwell, and of calling in\nthe same apothecary who was in attendance upon the spinster, so that\ntheir information was on the whole tolerably complete.  Nor was Miss\nBriggs, although forced to adopt a hostile attitude, secretly inimical\nto Rawdon and his wife.  She was naturally of a kindly and forgiving\ndisposition.  Now that the cause of jealousy was removed, her dislike\nfor Rebecca disappeared also, and she remembered the latter's\ninvariable good words and good humour.  And, indeed, she and Mrs.\nFirkin, the lady's-maid, and the whole of Miss Crawley's household,\ngroaned under the tyranny of the triumphant Mrs. Bute.\n\nAs often will be the case, that good but imperious woman pushed her\nadvantages too far, and her successes quite unmercifully.  She had in\nthe course of a few weeks brought the invalid to such a state of\nhelpless docility, that the poor soul yielded herself entirely to her\nsister's orders, and did not even dare to complain of her slavery to\nBriggs or Firkin.  Mrs. Bute measured out the glasses of wine which\nMiss Crawley was daily allowed to take, with irresistible accuracy,\ngreatly to the annoyance of Firkin and the butler, who found themselves\ndeprived of control over even the sherry-bottle. She apportioned the\nsweetbreads, jellies, chickens; their quantity and order. Night and\nnoon and morning she brought the abominable drinks ordained by the\nDoctor, and made her patient swallow them with so affecting an\nobedience that Firkin said \"my poor Missus du take her physic like a\nlamb.\" She prescribed the drive in the carriage or the ride in the\nchair, and, in a word, ground down the old lady in her convalescence in\nsuch a way as only belongs to your proper-managing, motherly moral\nwoman.  If ever the patient faintly resisted, and pleaded for a little\nbit more dinner or a little drop less medicine, the nurse threatened\nher with instantaneous death, when Miss Crawley instantly gave in.\n\"She's no spirit left in her,\" Firkin remarked to Briggs; \"she ain't\nave called me a fool these three weeks.\" Finally, Mrs. Bute had made up\nher mind to dismiss the aforesaid honest lady's-maid, Mr. Bowls the\nlarge confidential man, and Briggs herself, and to send for her\ndaughters from the Rectory, previous to removing the dear invalid\nbodily to Queen's Crawley, when an odious accident happened which\ncalled her away from duties so pleasing.  The Reverend Bute Crawley,\nher husband, riding home one night, fell with his horse and broke his\ncollar-bone.  Fever and inflammatory symptoms set in, and Mrs. Bute was\nforced to leave Sussex for Hampshire.  As soon as ever Bute was\nrestored, she promised to return to her dearest friend, and departed,\nleaving the strongest injunctions with the household regarding their\nbehaviour to their mistress; and as soon as she got into the\nSouthampton coach, there was such a jubilee and sense of relief in all\nMiss Crawley's house, as the company of persons assembled there had not\nexperienced for many a week before.  That very day Miss Crawley left\noff her afternoon dose of medicine:  that afternoon Bowls opened an\nindependent bottle of sherry for himself and Mrs. Firkin:  that night\nMiss Crawley and Miss Briggs indulged in a game of piquet instead of\none of Porteus's sermons.  It was as in the old nursery-story, when\nthe stick forgot to beat the dog, and the whole course of events\nunderwent a peaceful and happy revolution.\n\nAt a very early hour in the morning, twice or thrice a week, Miss\nBriggs used to betake herself to a bathing-machine, and disport in the\nwater in a flannel gown and an oilskin cap.  Rebecca, as we have seen,\nwas aware of this circumstance, and though she did not attempt to storm\nBriggs as she had threatened, and actually dive into that lady's\npresence and surprise her under the sacredness of the awning, Mrs.\nRawdon determined to attack Briggs as she came away from her bath,\nrefreshed and invigorated by her dip, and likely to be in good humour.\n\nSo getting up very early the next morning, Becky brought the telescope\nin their sitting-room, which faced the sea, to bear upon the\nbathing-machines on the beach; saw Briggs arrive, enter her box; and\nput out to sea; and was on the shore just as the nymph of whom she came\nin quest stepped out of the little caravan on to the shingles.  It was\na pretty picture:  the beach; the bathing-women's faces; the long line\nof rocks and building were blushing and bright in the sunshine.\nRebecca wore a kind, tender smile on her face, and was holding out her\npretty white hand as Briggs emerged from the box.  What could Briggs do\nbut accept the salutation?\n\n\"Miss Sh--Mrs. Crawley,\" she said.\n\nMrs. Crawley seized her hand, pressed it to her heart, and with a\nsudden impulse, flinging her arms round Briggs, kissed her\naffectionately.  \"Dear, dear friend!\" she said, with a touch of such\nnatural feeling, that Miss Briggs of course at once began to melt, and\neven the bathing-woman was mollified.\n\nRebecca found no difficulty in engaging Briggs in a long, intimate, and\ndelightful conversation.  Everything that had passed since the morning\nof Becky's sudden departure from Miss Crawley's house in Park Lane up\nto the present day, and Mrs. Bute's happy retreat, was discussed and\ndescribed by Briggs.  All Miss Crawley's symptoms, and the particulars\nof her illness and medical treatment, were narrated by the confidante\nwith that fulness and accuracy which women delight in.  About their\ncomplaints and their doctors do ladies ever tire of talking to each\nother?  Briggs did not on this occasion; nor did Rebecca weary of\nlistening.  She was thankful, truly thankful, that the dear kind\nBriggs, that the faithful, the invaluable Firkin, had been permitted to\nremain with their benefactress through her illness.  Heaven bless her!\nthough she, Rebecca, had seemed to act undutifully towards Miss\nCrawley; yet was not her fault a natural and excusable one? Could she\nhelp giving her hand to the man who had won her heart?  Briggs, the\nsentimental, could only turn up her eyes to heaven at this appeal, and\nheave a sympathetic sigh, and think that she, too, had given away her\naffections long years ago, and own that Rebecca was no very great\ncriminal.\n\n\"Can I ever forget her who so befriended the friendless orphan?  No,\nthough she has cast me off,\" the latter said, \"I shall never cease to\nlove her, and I would devote my life to her service.  As my own\nbenefactress, as my beloved Rawdon's adored relative, I love and admire\nMiss Crawley, dear Miss Briggs, beyond any woman in the world, and next\nto her I love all those who are faithful to her.  I would never have\ntreated Miss Crawley's faithful friends as that odious designing Mrs.\nBute has done.  Rawdon, who was all heart,\" Rebecca continued,\n\"although his outward manners might seem rough and careless, had said a\nhundred times, with tears in his eyes, that he blessed Heaven for\nsending his dearest Aunty two such admirable nurses as her attached\nFirkin and her admirable Miss Briggs.  Should the machinations of the\nhorrible Mrs. Bute end, as she too much feared they would, in banishing\neverybody that Miss Crawley loved from her side, and leaving that poor\nlady a victim to those harpies at the Rectory, Rebecca besought her\n(Miss Briggs) to remember that her own home, humble as it was, was\nalways open to receive Briggs. Dear friend,\" she exclaimed, in a\ntransport of enthusiasm, \"some hearts can never forget benefits; all\nwomen are not Bute Crawleys! Though why should I complain of her,\"\nRebecca added; \"though I have been her tool and the victim to her arts,\ndo I not owe my dearest Rawdon to her?\"  And Rebecca unfolded to Briggs\nall Mrs. Bute's conduct at Queen's Crawley, which, though\nunintelligible to her then, was clearly enough explained by the events\nnow--now that the attachment had sprung up which Mrs. Bute had\nencouraged by a thousand artifices--now that two innocent people had\nfallen into the snares which she had laid for them, and loved and\nmarried and been ruined through her schemes.\n\nIt was all very true.  Briggs saw the stratagems as clearly as\npossible.  Mrs. Bute had made the match between Rawdon and Rebecca.\nYet, though the latter was a perfectly innocent victim, Miss Briggs\ncould not disguise from her friend her fear that Miss Crawley's\naffections were hopelessly estranged from Rebecca, and that the old\nlady would never forgive her nephew for making so imprudent a marriage.\n\nOn this point Rebecca had her own opinion, and still kept up a good\nheart.  If Miss Crawley did not forgive them at present, she might at\nleast relent on a future day.  Even now, there was only that puling,\nsickly Pitt Crawley between Rawdon and a baronetcy; and should anything\nhappen to the former, all would be well.  At all events, to have Mrs.\nBute's designs exposed, and herself well abused, was a satisfaction,\nand might be advantageous to Rawdon's interest; and Rebecca, after an\nhour's chat with her recovered friend, left her with the most tender\ndemonstrations of regard, and quite assured that the conversation they\nhad had together would be reported to Miss Crawley before many hours\nwere over.\n\nThis interview ended, it became full time for Rebecca to return to her\ninn, where all the party of the previous day were assembled at a\nfarewell breakfast.  Rebecca took such a tender leave of Amelia as\nbecame two women who loved each other as sisters; and having used her\nhandkerchief plentifully, and hung on her friend's neck as if they were\nparting for ever, and waved the handkerchief (which was quite dry, by\nthe way) out of window, as the carriage drove off, she came back to the\nbreakfast table, and ate some prawns with a good deal of appetite,\nconsidering her emotion; and while she was munching these delicacies,\nexplained to Rawdon what had occurred in her morning walk between\nherself and Briggs.  Her hopes were very high:  she made her husband\nshare them.  She generally succeeded in making her husband share all\nher opinions, whether melancholy or cheerful.\n\n\"You will now, if you please, my dear, sit down at the writing-table\nand pen me a pretty little letter to Miss Crawley, in which you'll say\nthat you are a good boy, and that sort of thing.\"  So Rawdon sate down,\nand wrote off, \"Brighton, Thursday,\" and \"My dear Aunt,\" with great\nrapidity: but there the gallant officer's imagination failed him.  He\nmumbled the end of his pen, and looked up in his wife's face.  She\ncould not help laughing at his rueful countenance, and marching up and\ndown the room with her hands behind her, the little woman began to\ndictate a letter, which he took down.\n\n\"Before quitting the country and commencing a campaign, which very\npossibly may be fatal.\"\n\n\"What?\" said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the humour of the\nphrase, and presently wrote it down with a grin.\n\n\"Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come hither--\"\n\n\"Why not say come here, Becky?  Come here's grammar,\" the dragoon\ninterposed.\n\n\"I have come hither,\" Rebecca insisted, with a stamp of her foot, \"to\nsay farewell to my dearest and earliest friend.  I beseech you before I\ngo, not perhaps to return, once more to let me press the hand from\nwhich I have received nothing but kindnesses all my life.\"\n\n\"Kindnesses all my life,\" echoed Rawdon, scratching down the words, and\nquite amazed at his own facility of composition.\n\n\"I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in anger.  I have\nthe pride of my family on some points, though not on all.  I married a\npainter's daughter, and am not ashamed of the union.\"\n\n\"No, run me through the body if I am!\" Rawdon ejaculated.\n\n\"You old booby,\" Rebecca said, pinching his ear and looking over to see\nthat he made no mistakes in spelling--\"beseech is not spelt with an a,\nand earliest is.\"  So he altered these words, bowing to the superior\nknowledge of his little Missis.\n\n\"I thought that you were aware of the progress of my attachment,\"\nRebecca continued:  \"I knew that Mrs. Bute Crawley confirmed and\nencouraged it.  But I make no reproaches.  I married a poor woman, and\nam content to abide by what I have done.  Leave your property, dear\nAunt, as you will.  I shall never complain of the way in which you\ndispose of it.  I would have you believe that I love you for yourself,\nand not for money's sake.  I want to be reconciled to you ere I leave\nEngland.  Let me, let me see you before I go.  A few weeks or months\nhence it may be too late, and I cannot bear the notion of quitting the\ncountry without a kind word of farewell from you.\"\n\n\"She won't recognise my style in that,\" said Becky.  \"I made the\nsentences short and brisk on purpose.\" And this authentic missive was\ndespatched under cover to Miss Briggs.\n\nOld Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great mystery, handed her\nover this candid and simple statement.  \"We may read it now Mrs. Bute\nis away,\" she said.  \"Read it to me, Briggs.\"\n\nWhen Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness laughed more.\n\"Don't you see, you goose,\" she said to Briggs, who professed to be\nmuch touched by the honest affection which pervaded the composition,\n\"don't you see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it.  He never wrote to\nme without asking for money in his life, and all his letters are full\nof bad spelling, and dashes, and bad grammar.  It is that little\nserpent of a governess who rules him.\" They are all alike, Miss Crawley\nthought in her heart.  They all want me dead, and are hankering for my\nmoney.\n\n\"I don't mind seeing Rawdon,\" she added, after a pause, and in a tone\nof perfect indifference.  \"I had just as soon shake hands with him as\nnot.  Provided there is no scene, why shouldn't we meet?  I don't mind.\nBut human patience has its limits; and mind, my dear, I respectfully\ndecline to receive Mrs. Rawdon--I can't support that quite\"--and Miss\nBriggs was fain to be content with this half-message of conciliation;\nand thought that the best method of bringing the old lady and her\nnephew together, was to warn Rawdon to be in waiting on the Cliff, when\nMiss Crawley went out for her air in her chair.  There they met.  I\ndon't know whether Miss Crawley had any private feeling of regard or\nemotion upon seeing her old favourite; but she held out a couple of\nfingers to him with as smiling and good-humoured an air, as if they had\nmet only the day before.  And as for Rawdon, he turned as red as\nscarlet, and wrung off Briggs's hand, so great was his rapture and his\nconfusion at the meeting. Perhaps it was interest that moved him:  or\nperhaps affection:  perhaps he was touched by the change which the\nillness of the last weeks had wrought in his aunt.\n\n\"The old girl has always acted like a trump to me,\" he said to his\nwife, as he narrated the interview, \"and I felt, you know, rather\nqueer, and that sort of thing.  I walked by the side of the\nwhat-dy'e-call-'em, you know, and to her own door, where Bowls came to help\nher in.  And I wanted to go in very much, only--\"\n\n\"YOU DIDN'T GO IN, Rawdon!\" screamed his wife.\n\n\"No, my dear; I'm hanged if I wasn't afraid when it came to the point.\"\n\n\"You fool! you ought to have gone in, and never come out again,\"\nRebecca said.\n\n\"Don't call me names,\" said the big Guardsman, sulkily. \"Perhaps I WAS\na fool, Becky, but you shouldn't say so\"; and he gave his wife a look,\nsuch as his countenance could wear when angered, and such as was not\npleasant to face.\n\n\"Well, dearest, to-morrow you must be on the look-out, and go and see\nher, mind, whether she asks you or no,\" Rebecca said, trying to soothe\nher angry yoke-mate.  On which he replied, that he would do exactly as\nhe liked, and would just thank her to keep a civil tongue in her\nhead--and the wounded husband went away, and passed the forenoon at the\nbilliard-room, sulky, silent, and suspicious.\n\nBut before the night was over he was compelled to give in, and own, as\nusual, to his wife's superior prudence and foresight, by the most\nmelancholy confirmation of the presentiments which she had regarding\nthe consequences of the mistake which he had made.  Miss Crawley must\nhave had some emotion upon seeing him and shaking hands with him after\nso long a rupture.  She mused upon the meeting a considerable time.\n\"Rawdon is getting very fat and old, Briggs,\" she said to her\ncompanion.  \"His nose has become red, and he is exceedingly coarse in\nappearance.  His marriage to that woman has hopelessly vulgarised him.\nMrs. Bute always said they drank together; and I have no doubt they do.\nYes:  he smelt of gin abominably.  I remarked it.  Didn't you?\"\n\nIn vain Briggs interposed that Mrs. Bute spoke ill of everybody: and,\nas far as a person in her humble position could judge, was an--\n\n\"An artful designing woman?  Yes, so she is, and she does speak ill of\nevery one--but I am certain that woman has made Rawdon drink. All those\nlow people do--\"\n\n\"He was very much affected at seeing you, ma'am,\" the companion said;\n\"and I am sure, when you remember that he is going to the field of\ndanger--\"\n\n\"How much money has he promised you, Briggs?\" the old spinster cried\nout, working herself into a nervous rage--\"there now, of course you\nbegin to cry.  I hate scenes.  Why am I always to be worried?  Go and\ncry up in your own room, and send Firkin to me--no, stop, sit down and\nblow your nose, and leave off crying, and write a letter to Captain\nCrawley.\" Poor Briggs went and placed herself obediently at the\nwriting-book.  Its leaves were blotted all over with relics of the\nfirm, strong, rapid handwriting of the spinster's late amanuensis, Mrs.\nBute Crawley.\n\n\"Begin 'My dear sir,' or 'Dear sir,' that will be better, and say you\nare desired by Miss Crawley--no, by Miss Crawley's medical man, by Mr.\nCreamer, to state that my health is such that all strong emotions would\nbe dangerous in my present delicate condition--and that I must decline\nany family discussions or interviews whatever. And thank him for coming\nto Brighton, and so forth, and beg him not to stay any longer on my\naccount.  And, Miss Briggs, you may add that I wish him a bon voyage,\nand that if he will take the trouble to call upon my lawyer's in Gray's\nInn Square, he will find there a communication for him.  Yes, that will\ndo; and that will make him leave Brighton.\" The benevolent Briggs\npenned this sentence with the utmost satisfaction.\n\n\"To seize upon me the very day after Mrs. Bute was gone,\" the old lady\nprattled on; \"it was too indecent. Briggs, my dear, write to Mrs.\nCrawley, and say SHE needn't come back.  No--she needn't--and she\nshan't--and I won't be a slave in my own house--and I won't be starved\nand choked with poison.  They all want to kill me--all--all\"--and with\nthis the lonely old woman burst into a scream of hysterical tears.\n\nThe last scene of her dismal Vanity Fair comedy was fast approaching;\nthe tawdry lamps were going out one by one; and the dark curtain was\nalmost ready to descend.\n\nThat final paragraph, which referred Rawdon to Miss Crawley's solicitor\nin London, and which Briggs had written so good-naturedly, consoled the\ndragoon and his wife somewhat, after their first blank disappointment,\non reading the spinster's refusal of a reconciliation.  And it effected\nthe purpose for which the old lady had caused it to be written, by\nmaking Rawdon very eager to get to London.\n\nOut of Jos's losings and George Osborne's bank-notes, he paid his bill\nat the inn, the landlord whereof does not probably know to this day how\ndoubtfully his account once stood.  For, as a general sends his baggage\nto the rear before an action, Rebecca had wisely packed up all their\nchief valuables and sent them off under care of George's servant, who\nwent in charge of the trunks on the coach back to London.  Rawdon and\nhis wife returned by the same conveyance next day.\n\n\"I should have liked to see the old girl before we went,\" Rawdon said.\n\"She looks so cut up and altered that I'm sure she can't last long.  I\nwonder what sort of a cheque I shall have at Waxy's.  Two hundred--it\ncan't be less than two hundred--hey, Becky?\"\n\nIn consequence of the repeated visits of the aides-de-camp of the\nSheriff of Middlesex, Rawdon and his wife did not go back to their\nlodgings at Brompton, but put up at an inn.  Early the next morning,\nRebecca had an opportunity of seeing them as she skirted that suburb on\nher road to old Mrs. Sedley's house at Fulham, whither she went to look\nfor her dear Amelia and her Brighton friends.  They were all off to\nChatham, thence to Harwich, to take shipping for Belgium with the\nregiment--kind old Mrs. Sedley very much depressed and tearful,\nsolitary.  Returning from this visit, Rebecca found her husband, who\nhad been off to Gray's Inn, and learnt his fate.  He came back furious.\n\n\"By Jove, Becky,\" says he, \"she's only given me twenty pound!\"\n\nThough it told against themselves, the joke was too good, and Becky\nburst out laughing at Rawdon's discomfiture.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVI\n\nBetween London and Chatham\n\nOn quitting Brighton, our friend George, as became a person of rank and\nfashion travelling in a barouche with four horses, drove in state to a\nfine hotel in Cavendish Square, where a suite of splendid rooms, and a\ntable magnificently furnished with plate and surrounded by a half-dozen\nof black and silent waiters, was ready to receive the young gentleman\nand his bride.  George did the honours of the place with a princely air\nto Jos and Dobbin; and Amelia, for the first time, and with exceeding\nshyness and timidity, presided at what George called her own table.\n\nGeorge pooh-poohed the wine and bullied the waiters royally, and Jos\ngobbled the turtle with immense satisfaction. Dobbin helped him to it;\nfor the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed, was so\nignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without\nbestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.\n\nThe splendour of the entertainment, and the apartments in which it was\ngiven, alarmed Mr. Dobbin, who remonstrated after dinner, when Jos was\nasleep in the great chair.  But in vain he cried out against the\nenormity of turtle and champagne that was fit for an archbishop. \"I've\nalways been accustomed to travel like a gentleman,\" George said, \"and,\ndamme, my wife shall travel like a lady.  As long as there's a shot in\nthe locker, she shall want for nothing,\" said the generous fellow,\nquite pleased with himself for his magnificence of spirit.  Nor did\nDobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness was not centred in\nturtle-soup.\n\nA while after dinner, Amelia timidly expressed a wish to go and see her\nmamma, at Fulham: which permission George granted her with some\ngrumbling.  And she tripped away to her enormous bedroom, in the centre\nof which stood the enormous funereal bed, \"that the Emperor\nHalixander's sister slep in when the allied sufferings was here,\" and\nput on her little bonnet and shawl with the utmost eagerness and\npleasure.  George was still drinking claret when she returned to the\ndining-room, and made no signs of moving.  \"Ar'n't you coming with me,\ndearest?\" she asked him.  No; the \"dearest\" had \"business\" that night.\nHis man should get her a coach and go with her.  And the coach being at\nthe door of the hotel, Amelia made George a little disappointed curtsey\nafter looking vainly into his face once or twice, and went sadly down\nthe great staircase, Captain Dobbin after, who handed her into the\nvehicle, and saw it drive away to its destination. The very valet was\nashamed of mentioning the address to the hackney-coachman before the\nhotel waiters, and promised to instruct him when they got further on.\n\nDobbin walked home to his old quarters and the Slaughters', thinking\nvery likely that it would be delightful to be in that hackney-coach,\nalong with Mrs. Osborne. George was evidently of quite a different\ntaste; for when he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price at\nthe play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock.  Captain Osborne was a\ngreat lover of the drama, and had himself performed high-comedy\ncharacters with great distinction in several garrison theatrical\nentertainments.  Jos slept on until long after dark, when he woke up\nwith a start at the motions of his servant, who was removing and\nemptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-coach stand was\nagain put into requisition for a carriage to convey this stout hero to\nhis lodgings and bed.\n\nMrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to her heart with\nall maternal eagerness and affection, running out of the door as the\ncarriage drew up before the little garden-gate, to welcome the weeping,\ntrembling, young bride.  Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his shirt-sleeves,\ntrimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed.  The Irish servant-lass\nrushed up from the kitchen and smiled a \"God bless you.\"  Amelia could\nhardly walk along the flags and up the steps into the parlour.\n\nHow the floodgates were opened, and mother and daughter wept, when they\nwere together embracing each other in this sanctuary, may readily be\nimagined by every reader who possesses the least sentimental turn.\nWhen don't ladies weep?  At what occasion of joy, sorrow, or other\nbusiness of life, and, after such an event as a marriage, mother and\ndaughter were surely at liberty to give way to a sensibility which is\nas tender as it is refreshing. About a question of marriage I have seen\nwomen who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly. How much\nmore do they feel when they love!  Good mothers are married over again\nat their daughters' weddings: and as for subsequent events, who does\nnot know how ultra-maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, until\nshe is a grandmother, does not often really know what to be a mother\nis.  Let us respect Amelia and her mamma whispering and whimpering and\nlaughing and crying in the parlour and the twilight.  Old Mr. Sedley\ndid.  HE had not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up. He\nhad not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed her very\nwarmly when she entered the room (where he was occupied, as usual, with\nhis papers and tapes and statements of accounts), and after sitting\nwith the mother and daughter for a short time, he very wisely left the\nlittle apartment in their possession.\n\nGeorge's valet was looking on in a very supercilious manner at Mr.\nClapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes.  He took off his\nhat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked news\nabout his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his horses\nhad been down to Brighton, and about that infernal traitor Bonaparty,\nand the war; until the Irish maid-servant came with a plate and a\nbottle of wine, from which the old gentleman insisted upon helping the\nvalet.  He gave him a half-guinea too, which the servant pocketed with\na mixture of wonder and contempt.  \"To the health of your master and\nmistress, Trotter,\" Mr. Sedley said, \"and here's something to drink\nyour health when you get home, Trotter.\"\n\nThere were but nine days past since Amelia had left that little cottage\nand home--and yet how far off the time seemed since she had bidden it\nfarewell.  What a gulf lay between her and that past life. She could\nlook back to it from her present standing-place, and contemplate,\nalmost as another being, the young unmarried girl absorbed in her love,\nhaving no eyes but for one special object, receiving parental affection\nif not ungratefully, at least indifferently, and as if it were her\ndue--her whole heart and thoughts bent on the accomplishment of one\ndesire.  The review of those days, so lately gone yet so far away,\ntouched her with shame; and the aspect of the kind parents filled her\nwith tender remorse. Was the prize gained--the heaven of life--and the\nwinner still doubtful and unsatisfied?  As his hero and heroine pass\nthe matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as\nif the drama were over then:  the doubts and struggles of life ended:\nas if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasant\nthere:  and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link each other's\narms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy and\nperfect fruition.  But our little Amelia was just on the bank of her\nnew country, and was already looking anxiously back towards the sad\nfriendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from the\nother distant shore.\n\nIn honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it necessary\nto prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and after the first\nebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, and\ndived down to the lower regions of the house to a sort of\nkitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and in the evening,\nwhen her dishes were washed and her curl-papers removed, by Miss\nFlannigan, the Irish servant), there to take measures for the preparing\nof a magnificent ornamented tea.  All people have their ways of\nexpressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a muffin and a\nquantity of orange marmalade spread out in a little cut-glass saucer\nwould be peculiarly agreeable refreshments to Amelia in her most\ninteresting situation.\n\nWhile these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving the\ndrawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew how,\nin the little room which she had occupied before her marriage, and in\nthat very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours. She sank\nback in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to thinking over\nthe past week, and the life beyond it.  Already to be looking sadly and\nvaguely back: always to be pining for something which, when obtained,\nbrought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here was the lot of our\npoor little creature and harmless lost wanderer in the great struggling\ncrowds of Vanity Fair.\n\nHere she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George to\nwhich she had knelt before marriage.  Did she own to herself how\ndifferent the real man was from that superb young hero whom she had\nworshipped?  It requires many, many years--and a man must be very bad\nindeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a\nconfession.  Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful smile\nlighted upon her, and filled her with dismay.  And so she sate for\nawhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very\nlistless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant had found\nher, on the day when she brought up the letter in which George renewed\nhis offer of marriage.\n\nShe looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few days\nbefore, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and wake,\nas formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning: Then she\nthought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vast\nand dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the grand hotel in\nCavendish Square.  Dear little white bed! how many a long night had she\nwept on its pillow! How she had despaired and hoped to die there; and\nnow were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of whom she had\ndespaired her own for ever?  Kind mother! how patiently and tenderly\nshe had watched round that bed! She went and knelt down by the bedside;\nand there this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul, sought\nfor consolation, where as yet, it must be owned, our little girl had\nbut seldom looked for it.  Love had been her faith hitherto; and the\nsad, bleeding disappointed heart began to feel the want of another\nconsoler.\n\nHave we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers? These, brother,\nare secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which our story\nlies.\n\nBut this may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, our\nyoung lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did not\ndespond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness, or\nRebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late.  She went\ndownstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the old\ngentleman, and made him more merry than he had been for many a day. She\nsate down at the piano which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang over\nall her father's favourite old songs.  She pronounced the tea to be\nexcellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which the marmalade was\narranged in the saucers.  And in determining to make everybody else\nhappy, she found herself so; and was sound asleep in the great funereal\npavilion, and only woke up with a smile when George arrived from the\ntheatre.\n\nFor the next day, George had more important \"business\" to transact than\nthat which took him to see Mr. Kean in Shylock.  Immediately on his\narrival in London he had written off to his father's solicitors,\nsignifying his royal pleasure that an interview should take place\nbetween them on the morrow.  His hotel bill, losses at billiards and\ncards to Captain Crawley had almost drained the young man's purse,\nwhich wanted replenishing before he set out on his travels, and he had\nno resource but to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which the\nattorneys were commissioned to pay over to him.  He had a perfect\nbelief in his own mind that his father would relent before very long.\nHow could any parent be obdurate for a length of time against such a\nparagon as he was?  If his mere past and personal merits did not\nsucceed in mollifying his father, George determined that he would\ndistinguish himself so prodigiously in the ensuing campaign that the\nold gentleman must give in to him.  And if not? Bah! the world was\nbefore him.  His luck might change at cards, and there was a deal of\nspending in two thousand pounds.\n\nSo he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her mamma, with strict\norders and carte blanche to the two ladies to purchase everything\nrequisite for a lady of Mrs. George Osborne's fashion, who was going on\na foreign tour.  They had but one day to complete the outfit, and it\nmay be imagined that their business therefore occupied them pretty\nfully.  In a carriage once more, bustling about from milliner to\nlinen-draper, escorted back to the carriage by obsequious shopmen or\npolite owners, Mrs. Sedley was herself again almost, and sincerely\nhappy for the first time since their misfortunes.  Nor was Mrs. Amelia\nat all above the pleasure of shopping, and bargaining, and seeing and\nbuying pretty things. (Would any man, the most philosophic, give\ntwopence for a woman who was?)  She gave herself a little treat,\nobedient to her husband's orders, and purchased a quantity of lady's\ngear, showing a great deal of taste and elegant discernment, as all the\nshopfolks said.\n\nAnd about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne was not much alarmed;\nBonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle. Margate packets\nwere sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note,\non their way to Brussels and Ghent.  People were going not so much to a\nwar as to a fashionable tour.  The newspapers laughed the wretched\nupstart and swindler to scorn.  Such a Corsican wretch as that\nwithstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the immortal\nWellington!  Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs not to be\nsaid that this soft and gentle creature took her opinions from those\npeople who surrounded her, such fidelity being much too humble-minded\nto think for itself. Well, in a word, she and her mother performed a\ngreat day's shopping, and she acquitted herself with considerable\nliveliness and credit on this her first appearance in the genteel world\nof London.\n\nGeorge meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and his\nswaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into the\nattorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who was\nscribbling there.  He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs that Captain\nOsborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way, as if the pekin\nof an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty times his money, and a\nthousand times his experience, was a wretched underling who should\ninstantly leave all his business in life to attend on the Captain's\npleasure.  He did not see the sneer of contempt which passed all round\nthe room, from the first clerk to the articled gents, from the articled\ngents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too\ntight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, and\nthinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were.  The\nmiserable poor devils knew all about his affairs.  They talked about\nthem over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to other\nclerks of a night. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks\nknow in London! Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their\nfamilies mutely rule our city.\n\nPerhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to find\nthat gentleman commissioned to give him some message of compromise or\nconciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and cold demeanour\nwas adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution: but if so, his\nfierceness was met by a chilling coolness and indifference on the\nattorney's part, that rendered swaggering absurd.  He pretended to be\nwriting at a paper, when the Captain entered.  \"Pray, sit down, sir,\"\nsaid he, \"and I will attend to your little affair in a moment.  Mr.\nPoe, get the release papers, if you please\"; and then he fell to\nwriting again.\n\nPoe having produced those papers, his chief calculated the amount of\ntwo thousand pounds stock at the rate of the day; and asked Captain\nOsborne whether he would take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers, or\nwhether he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that amount.\n\"One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out of town,\" he said\nindifferently, \"but my client wishes to meet your wishes, and have done\nwith the business as quick as possible.\"\n\n\"Give me a cheque, sir,\" said the Captain very surlily. \"Damn the\nshillings and halfpence, sir,\" he added, as the lawyer was making out\nthe amount of the draft; and, flattering himself that by this stroke of\nmagnanimity he had put the old quiz to the blush, he stalked out of the\noffice with the paper in his pocket.\n\n\"That chap will be in gaol in two years,\" Mr. Higgs said to Mr. Poe.\n\n\"Won't O. come round, sir, don't you think?\"\n\n\"Won't the monument come round,\" Mr. Higgs replied.\n\n\"He's going it pretty fast,\" said the clerk.  \"He's only married a\nweek, and I saw him and some other military chaps handing Mrs.\nHighflyer to her carriage after the play.\" And then another case was\ncalled, and Mr. George Osborne thenceforth dismissed from these worthy\ngentlemen's memory.\n\nThe draft was upon our friends Hulker and Bullock of Lombard Street, to\nwhose house, still thinking he was doing business, George bent his way,\nand from whom he received his money.  Frederick Bullock, Esq., whose\nyellow face was over a ledger, at which sate a demure clerk, happened\nto be in the banking-room when George entered. His yellow face turned\nto a more deadly colour when he saw the Captain, and he slunk back\nguiltily into the inmost parlour.  George was too busy gloating over\nthe money (for he had never had such a sum before), to mark the\ncountenance or flight of the cadaverous suitor of his sister.\n\nFred Bullock told old Osborne of his son's appearance and conduct. \"He\ncame in as bold as brass,\" said Frederick.  \"He has drawn out every\nshilling.  How long will a few hundred pounds last such a chap as\nthat?\" Osborne swore with a great oath that he little cared when or how\nsoon he spent it.  Fred dined every day in Russell Square now.  But\naltogether, George was highly pleased with his day's business.  All his\nown baggage and outfit was put into a state of speedy preparation, and\nhe paid Amelia's purchases with cheques on his agents, and with the\nsplendour of a lord.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVII\n\nIn Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment\n\nWhen Jos's fine carriage drove up to the inn door at Chatham, the first\nface which Amelia recognized was the friendly countenance of Captain\nDobbin, who had been pacing the street for an hour past in expectation\nof his friends' arrival.  The Captain, with shells on his frockcoat,\nand a crimson sash and sabre, presented a military appearance, which\nmade Jos quite proud to be able to claim such an acquaintance, and the\nstout civilian hailed him with a cordiality very different from the\nreception which Jos vouchsafed to his friend in Brighton and Bond\nStreet.\n\nAlong with the Captain was Ensign Stubble; who, as the barouche neared\nthe inn, burst out with an exclamation of \"By Jove! what a pretty\ngirl\"; highly applauding Osborne's choice.  Indeed, Amelia dressed in\nher wedding-pelisse and pink ribbons, with a flush in her face,\noccasioned by rapid travel through the open air, looked so fresh and\npretty, as fully to justify the Ensign's compliment. Dobbin liked him\nfor making it.  As he stepped forward to help the lady out of the\ncarriage, Stubble saw what a pretty little hand she gave him, and what\na sweet pretty little foot came tripping down the step.  He blushed\nprofusely, and made the very best bow of which he was capable; to which\nAmelia, seeing the number of the the regiment embroidered on the\nEnsign's cap, replied with a blushing smile, and a curtsey on her part;\nwhich finished the young Ensign on the spot. Dobbin took most kindly to\nMr. Stubble from that day, and encouraged him to talk about Amelia in\ntheir private walks, and at each other's quarters.  It became the\nfashion, indeed, among all the honest young fellows of the --th to\nadore and admire Mrs. Osborne.  Her simple artless behaviour, and\nmodest kindness of demeanour, won all their unsophisticated hearts; all\nwhich simplicity and sweetness are quite impossible to describe in\nprint.  But who has not beheld these among women, and recognised the\npresence of all sorts of qualities in them, even though they say no\nmore to you than that they are engaged to dance the next quadrille, or\nthat it is very hot weather? George, always the champion of his\nregiment, rose immensely in the opinion of the youth of the corps, by\nhis gallantry in marrying this portionless young creature, and by his\nchoice of such a pretty kind partner.\n\nIn the sitting-room which was awaiting the travellers, Amelia, to her\nsurprise, found a letter addressed to Mrs. Captain Osborne.  It was a\ntriangular billet, on pink paper, and sealed with a dove and an olive\nbranch, and a profusion of light blue sealing wax, and it was written\nin a very large, though undecided female hand.\n\n\"It's Peggy O'Dowd's fist,\" said George, laughing.  \"I know it by the\nkisses on the seal.\" And in fact, it was a note from Mrs. Major O'Dowd,\nrequesting the pleasure of Mrs. Osborne's company that very evening to\na small friendly party.  \"You must go,\" George said. \"You will make\nacquaintance with the regiment there.  O'Dowd goes in command of the\nregiment, and Peggy goes in command.\"\n\nBut they had not been for many minutes in the enjoyment of Mrs.\nO'Dowd's letter, when the door was flung open, and a stout jolly lady,\nin a riding-habit, followed by a couple of officers of Ours, entered\nthe room.\n\n\"Sure, I couldn't stop till tay-time.  Present me, Garge, my dear\nfellow, to your lady.  Madam, I'm deloighted to see ye; and to present\nto you me husband, Meejor O'Dowd\"; and with this, the jolly lady in the\nriding-habit grasped Amelia's hand very warmly, and the latter knew at\nonce that the lady was before her whom her husband had so often laughed\nat.  \"You've often heard of me from that husband of yours,\" said the\nlady, with great vivacity.\n\n\"You've often heard of her,\" echoed her husband, the Major.\n\nAmelia answered, smiling, \"that she had.\"\n\n\"And small good he's told you of me,\" Mrs. O'Dowd replied; adding that\n\"George was a wicked divvle.\"\n\n\"That I'll go bail for,\" said the Major, trying to look knowing, at\nwhich George laughed; and Mrs. O'Dowd, with a tap of her whip, told the\nMajor to be quiet; and then requested to be presented in form to Mrs.\nCaptain Osborne.\n\n\"This, my dear,\" said George with great gravity, \"is my very good,\nkind, and excellent friend, Auralia Margaretta, otherwise called Peggy.\"\n\n\"Faith, you're right,\" interposed the Major.\n\n\"Otherwise called Peggy, lady of Major Michael O'Dowd, of our regiment,\nand daughter of Fitzjurld Ber'sford de Burgo Malony of Glenmalony,\nCounty Kildare.\"\n\n\"And Muryan Squeer, Doblin,\" said the lady with calm superiority.\n\n\"And Muryan Square, sure enough,\" the Major whispered.\n\n\"'Twas there ye coorted me, Meejor dear,\" the lady said; and the Major\nassented to this as to every other proposition which was made generally\nin company.\n\nMajor O'Dowd, who had served his sovereign in every quarter of the\nworld, and had paid for every step in his profession by some more than\nequivalent act of daring and gallantry, was the most modest, silent,\nsheep-faced and meek of little men, and as obedient to his wife as if\nhe had been her tay-boy.  At the mess-table he sat silently, and drank\na great deal.  When full of liquor, he reeled silently home.  When he\nspoke, it was to agree with everybody on every conceivable point; and\nhe passed through life in perfect ease and good-humour.  The hottest\nsuns of India never heated his temper; and the Walcheren ague never\nshook it.  He walked up to a battery with just as much indifference as\nto a dinner-table; had dined on horse-flesh and turtle with equal\nrelish and appetite; and had an old mother, Mrs. O'Dowd of O'Dowdstown\nindeed, whom he had never disobeyed but when he ran away and enlisted,\nand when he persisted in marrying that odious Peggy Malony.\n\nPeggy was one of five sisters, and eleven children of the noble house\nof Glenmalony; but her husband, though her own cousin, was of the\nmother's side, and so had not the inestimable advantage of being allied\nto the Malonys, whom she believed to be the most famous family in the\nworld.  Having tried nine seasons at Dublin and two at Bath and\nCheltenham, and not finding a partner for life, Miss Malony ordered her\ncousin Mick to marry her when she was about thirty-three years of age;\nand the honest fellow obeying, carried her off to the West Indies, to\npreside over the ladies of the --th regiment, into which he had just\nexchanged.\n\nBefore Mrs. O'Dowd was half an hour in Amelia's (or indeed in anybody\nelse's) company, this amiable lady told all her birth and pedigree to\nher new friend.  \"My dear,\" said she, good-naturedly, \"it was my\nintention that Garge should be a brother of my own, and my sister\nGlorvina would have suited him entirely.  But as bygones are bygones,\nand he was engaged to yourself, why, I'm determined to take you as a\nsister instead, and to look upon you as such, and to love you as one of\nthe family.  Faith, you've got such a nice good-natured face and way\nwidg you, that I'm sure we'll agree; and that you'll be an addition to\nour family anyway.\"\n\n\"'Deed and she will,\" said O'Dowd, with an approving air, and Amelia\nfelt herself not a little amused and grateful to be thus suddenly\nintroduced to so large a party of relations.\n\n\"We're all good fellows here,\" the Major's lady continued. \"There's not\na regiment in the service where you'll find a more united society nor a\nmore agreeable mess-room.  There's no quarrelling, bickering,\nslandthering, nor small talk amongst us.  We all love each other.\"\n\n\"Especially Mrs. Magenis,\" said George, laughing.\n\n\"Mrs. Captain Magenis and me has made up, though her treatment of me\nwould bring me gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.\"\n\n\"And you with such a beautiful front of black, Peggy, my dear,\" the\nMajor cried.\n\n\"Hould your tongue, Mick, you booby.  Them husbands are always in the\nway, Mrs. Osborne, my dear; and as for my Mick, I often tell him he\nshould never open his mouth but to give the word of command, or to put\nmeat and drink into it.  I'll tell you about the regiment, and warn you\nwhen we're alone.  Introduce me to your brother now; sure he's a mighty\nfine man, and reminds me of me cousin, Dan Malony (Malony of\nBallymalony, my dear, you know who mar'ied Ophalia Scully, of\nOystherstown, own cousin to Lord Poldoody).  Mr. Sedley, sir, I'm\ndeloighted to be made known te ye.  I suppose you'll dine at the mess\nto-day.  (Mind that divvle of a docther, Mick, and whatever ye du, keep\nyourself sober for me party this evening.)\"\n\n\"It's the 150th gives us a farewell dinner, my love,\" interposed the\nMajor, \"but we'll easy get a card for Mr. Sedley.\"\n\n\"Run Simple (Ensign Simple, of Ours, my dear Amelia. I forgot to\nintrojuice him to ye).  Run in a hurry, with Mrs. Major O'Dowd's\ncompliments to Colonel Tavish, and Captain Osborne has brought his\nbrothernlaw down, and will bring him to the 150th mess at five o'clock\nsharp--when you and I, my dear, will take a snack here, if you like.\"\nBefore Mrs. O'Dowd's speech was concluded, the young Ensign was\ntrotting downstairs on his commission.\n\n\"Obedience is the soul of the army.  We will go to our duty while Mrs.\nO'Dowd will stay and enlighten you, Emmy,\" Captain Osborne said; and\nthe two gentlemen, taking each a wing of the Major, walked out with\nthat officer, grinning at each other over his head.\n\nAnd, now having her new friend to herself, the impetuous Mrs. O'Dowd\nproceeded to pour out such a quantity of information as no poor little\nwoman's memory could ever tax itself to bear.  She told Amelia a\nthousand particulars relative to the very numerous family of which the\namazed young lady found herself a member.  \"Mrs. Heavytop, the\nColonel's wife, died in Jamaica of the yellow faver and a broken heart\ncomboined, for the horrud old Colonel, with a head as bald as a\ncannon-ball, was making sheep's eyes at a half-caste girl there.  Mrs.\nMagenis, though without education, was a good woman, but she had the\ndivvle's tongue, and would cheat her own mother at whist.  Mrs. Captain\nKirk must turn up her lobster eyes forsooth at the idea of an honest\nround game (wherein me fawther, as pious a man as ever went to church,\nme uncle Dane Malony, and our cousin the Bishop, took a hand at loo, or\nwhist, every night of their lives).  Nayther of 'em's goin' with the\nregiment this time,\" Mrs. O'Dowd added.  \"Fanny Magenis stops with her\nmother, who sells small coal and potatoes, most likely, in\nIslington-town, hard by London, though she's always bragging of her\nfather's ships, and pointing them out to us as they go up the river:\nand Mrs. Kirk and her children will stop here in Bethesda Place, to be\nnigh to her favourite preacher, Dr. Ramshorn.  Mrs. Bunny's in an\ninteresting situation--faith, and she always is, then--and has given\nthe Lieutenant seven already.  And Ensign Posky's wife, who joined two\nmonths before you, my dear, has quarl'd with Tom Posky a score of\ntimes, till you can hear'm all over the bar'ck (they say they're come\nto broken pleets, and Tom never accounted for his black oi), and she'll\ngo back to her mother, who keeps a ladies' siminary at Richmond--bad\nluck to her for running away from it!  Where did ye get your finishing,\nmy dear?  I had moin, and no expince spared, at Madame Flanahan's, at\nIlyssus Grove, Booterstown, near Dublin, wid a Marchioness to teach us\nthe true Parisian pronunciation, and a retired Mejor-General of the\nFrench service to put us through the exercise.\"\n\nOf this incongruous family our astonished Amelia found herself all of a\nsudden a member:  with Mrs. O'Dowd as an elder sister.  She was\npresented to her other female relations at tea-time, on whom, as she\nwas quiet, good-natured, and not too handsome, she made rather an\nagreeable impression until the arrival of the gentlemen from the mess\nof the 150th, who all admired her so, that her sisters began, of\ncourse, to find fault with her.\n\n\"I hope Osborne has sown his wild oats,\" said Mrs. Magenis to Mrs.\nBunny.  \"If a reformed rake makes a good husband, sure it's she will\nhave the fine chance with Garge,\" Mrs. O'Dowd remarked to Posky, who\nhad lost her position as bride in the regiment, and was quite angry\nwith the usurper.  And as for Mrs. Kirk:  that disciple of Dr. Ramshorn\nput one or two leading professional questions to Amelia, to see whether\nshe was awakened, whether she was a professing Christian and so forth,\nand finding from the simplicity of Mrs. Osborne's replies that she was\nyet in utter darkness, put into her hands three little penny books with\npictures, viz., the \"Howling Wilderness,\" the \"Washerwoman of\nWandsworth Common,\" and the \"British Soldier's best Bayonet,\" which,\nbent upon awakening her before she slept, Mrs. Kirk begged Amelia to\nread that night ere she went to bed.\n\nBut all the men, like good fellows as they were, rallied round their\ncomrade's pretty wife, and paid her their court with soldierly\ngallantry.  She had a little triumph, which flushed her spirits and\nmade her eyes sparkle. George was proud of her popularity, and pleased\nwith the manner (which was very gay and graceful, though naive and a\nlittle timid) with which she received the gentlemen's attentions, and\nanswered their compliments.  And he in his uniform--how much handsomer\nhe was than any man in the room!  She felt that he was affectionately\nwatching her, and glowed with pleasure at his kindness.  \"I will make\nall his friends welcome,\" she resolved in her heart.  \"I will love all\nas I love him.  I will always try and be gay and good-humoured and make\nhis home happy.\"\n\nThe regiment indeed adopted her with acclamation. The Captains\napproved, the Lieutenants applauded, the Ensigns admired.  Old Cutler,\nthe Doctor, made one or two jokes, which, being professional, need not\nbe repeated; and Cackle, the Assistant M.D. of Edinburgh, condescended\nto examine her upon leeterature, and tried her with his three best\nFrench quotations.  Young Stubble went about from man to man\nwhispering, \"Jove, isn't she a pretty gal?\" and never took his eyes off\nher except when the negus came in.\n\nAs for Captain Dobbin, he never so much as spoke to her during the\nwhole evening.  But he and Captain Porter of the 150th took home Jos to\nthe hotel, who was in a very maudlin state, and had told his tiger-hunt\nstory with great effect, both at the mess-table and at the soiree, to\nMrs. O'Dowd in her turban and bird of paradise. Having put the\nCollector into the hands of his servant, Dobbin loitered about, smoking\nhis cigar before the inn door. George had meanwhile very carefully\nshawled his wife, and brought her away from Mrs. O'Dowd's after a\ngeneral handshaking from the young officers, who accompanied her to the\nfly, and cheered that vehicle as it drove off.  So Amelia gave Dobbin\nher little hand as she got out of the carriage, and rebuked him\nsmilingly for not having taken any notice of her all night.\n\nThe Captain continued that deleterious amusement of smoking, long after\nthe inn and the street were gone to bed.  He watched the lights vanish\nfrom George's sitting-room windows, and shine out in the bedroom close\nat hand.  It was almost morning when he returned to his own quarters.\nHe could hear the cheering from the ships in the river, where the\ntransports were already taking in their cargoes preparatory to dropping\ndown the Thames.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII\n\nIn Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries\n\nThe regiment with its officers was to be transported in ships provided\nby His Majesty's government for the occasion:  and in two days after\nthe festive assembly at Mrs. O'Dowd's apartments, in the midst of\ncheering from all the East India ships in the river, and the military\non shore, the band playing \"God Save the King,\" the officers waving\ntheir hats, and the crews hurrahing gallantly, the transports went down\nthe river and proceeded under convoy to Ostend. Meanwhile the gallant\nJos had agreed to escort his sister and the Major's wife, the bulk of\nwhose goods and chattels, including the famous bird of paradise and\nturban, were with the regimental baggage: so that our two heroines\ndrove pretty much unencumbered to Ramsgate, where there were plenty of\npackets plying, in one of which they had a speedy passage to Ostend.\n\nThat period of Jos's life which now ensued was so full of incident,\nthat it served him for conversation for many years after, and even the\ntiger-hunt story was put aside for more stirring narratives which he\nhad to tell about the great campaign of Waterloo.  As soon as he had\nagreed to escort his sister abroad, it was remarked that he ceased\nshaving his upper lip.  At Chatham he followed the parades and drills\nwith great assiduity.  He listened with the utmost attention to the\nconversation of his brother officers (as he called them in after days\nsometimes), and learned as many military names as he could. In these\nstudies the excellent Mrs. O'Dowd was of great assistance to him; and\non the day finally when they embarked on board the Lovely Rose, which\nwas to carry them to their destination, he made his appearance in a\nbraided frock-coat and duck trousers, with a foraging cap ornamented\nwith a smart gold band.  Having his carriage with him, and informing\neverybody on board confidentially that he was going to join the Duke of\nWellington's army, folks mistook him for a great personage, a\ncommissary-general, or a government courier at the very least.\n\nHe suffered hugely on the voyage, during which the ladies were likewise\nprostrate; but Amelia was brought to life again as the packet made\nOstend, by the sight of the transports conveying her regiment, which\nentered the harbour almost at the same time with the Lovely Rose. Jos\nwent in a collapsed state to an inn, while Captain Dobbin escorted the\nladies, and then busied himself in freeing Jos's carriage and luggage\nfrom the ship and the custom-house, for Mr. Jos was at present without\na servant, Osborne's man and his own pampered menial having conspired\ntogether at Chatham, and refused point-blank to cross the water.  This\nrevolt, which came very suddenly, and on the last day, so alarmed Mr.\nSedley, junior, that he was on the point of giving up the expedition,\nbut Captain Dobbin (who made himself immensely officious in the\nbusiness, Jos said), rated him and laughed at him soundly:  the\nmustachios were grown in advance, and Jos finally was persuaded to\nembark.  In place of the well-bred and well-fed London domestics, who\ncould only speak English, Dobbin procured for Jos's party a swarthy\nlittle Belgian servant who could speak no language at all; but who, by\nhis bustling behaviour, and by invariably addressing Mr. Sedley as \"My\nlord,\" speedily acquired that gentleman's favour.  Times are altered at\nOstend now; of the Britons who go thither, very few look like lords, or\nact like those members of our hereditary aristocracy.  They seem for\nthe most part shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of billiards and\nbrandy, and cigars and greasy ordinaries.\n\nBut it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the Duke of\nWellington's army paid his way.  The remembrance of such a fact surely\nbecomes a nation of shopkeepers.  It was a blessing for a\ncommerce-loving country to be overrun by such an army of customers: and\nto have such creditable warriors to feed.  And the country which they\ncame to protect is not military.  For a long period of history they\nhave let other people fight there.  When the present writer went to\nsurvey with eagle glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the conductor\nof the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran, whether he had been\nat the battle.  \"Pas si bete\"--such an answer and sentiment as no\nFrenchman would own to--was his reply.  But, on the other hand, the\npostilion who drove us was a Viscount, a son of some bankrupt Imperial\nGeneral, who accepted a pennyworth of beer on the road.  The moral is\nsurely a good one.\n\nThis flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked more rich\nand prosperous than in that opening summer of 1815, when its green\nfields and quiet cities were enlivened by multiplied red-coats: when\nits wide chaussees swarmed with brilliant English equipages: when its\ngreat canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and pleasant quaint old\nvillages, by old chateaux lying amongst old trees, were all crowded\nwith well-to-do English travellers: when the soldier who drank at the\nvillage inn, not only drank, but paid his score; and Donald, the\nHighlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-house, rocked the baby's\ncradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out getting in the hay.  As our\npainters are bent on military subjects just now, I throw out this as a\ngood subject for the pencil, to illustrate the principle of an honest\nEnglish war.  All looked as brilliant and harmless as a Hyde Park\nreview.  Meanwhile, Napoleon screened behind his curtain of\nfrontier-fortresses, was preparing for the outbreak which was to drive\nall these orderly people into fury and blood; and lay so many of them\nlow.\n\nEverybody had such a perfect feeling of confidence in the leader (for\nthe resolute faith which the Duke of Wellington had inspired in the\nwhole English nation was as intense as that more frantic enthusiasm\nwith which at one time the French regarded Napoleon), the country\nseemed in so perfect a state of orderly defence, and the help at hand\nin case of need so near and overwhelming, that alarm was unknown, and\nour travellers, among whom two were naturally of a very timid sort,\nwere, like all the other multiplied English tourists, entirely at ease.\nThe famous regiment, with so many of whose officers we have made\nacquaintance, was drafted in canal boats to Bruges and Ghent, thence to\nmarch to Brussels. Jos accompanied the ladies in the public boats; the\nwhich all old travellers in Flanders must remember for the luxury and\naccommodation they afforded.  So prodigiously good was the eating and\ndrinking on board these sluggish but most comfortable vessels, that\nthere are legends extant of an English traveller, who, coming to\nBelgium for a week, and travelling in one of these boats, was so\ndelighted with the fare there that he went backwards and forwards from\nGhent to Bruges perpetually until the railroads were invented, when he\ndrowned himself on the last trip of the passage-boat.  Jos's death was\nnot to be of this sort, but his comfort was exceeding, and Mrs. O'Dowd\ninsisted that he only wanted her sister Glorvina to make his happiness\ncomplete.  He sate on the roof of the cabin all day drinking Flemish\nbeer, shouting for Isidor, his servant, and talking gallantly to the\nladies.\n\nHis courage was prodigious.  \"Boney attack us!\" he cried.  \"My dear\ncreature, my poor Emmy, don't be frightened.  There's no danger. The\nallies will be in Paris in two months, I tell you; when I'll take you\nto dine in the Palais Royal, by Jove!  There are three hundred thousand\nRooshians, I tell you, now entering France by Mayence and the\nRhine--three hundred thousand under Wittgenstein and Barclay de Tolly,\nmy poor love.  You don't know military affairs, my dear.  I do, and I\ntell you there's no infantry in France can stand against Rooshian\ninfantry, and no general of Boney's that's fit to hold a candle to\nWittgenstein.  Then there are the Austrians, they are five hundred\nthousand if a man, and they are within ten marches of the frontier by\nthis time, under Schwartzenberg and Prince Charles.  Then there are the\nProoshians under the gallant Prince Marshal.  Show me a cavalry chief\nlike him now that Murat is gone. Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd?  Do you think our\nlittle girl here need be afraid? Is there any cause for fear, Isidor?\nHey, sir?  Get some more beer.\"\n\nMrs. O'Dowd said that her \"Glorvina was not afraid of any man alive,\nlet alone a Frenchman,\" and tossed off a glass of beer with a wink\nwhich expressed her liking for the beverage.\n\nHaving frequently been in presence of the enemy, or, in other words,\nfaced the ladies at Cheltenham and Bath, our friend, the Collector, had\nlost a great deal of his pristine timidity, and was now, especially\nwhen fortified with liquor, as talkative as might be.  He was rather a\nfavourite with the regiment, treating the young officers with\nsumptuosity, and amusing them by his military airs. And as there is one\nwell-known regiment of the army which travels with a goat heading the\ncolumn, whilst another is led by a deer, George said with respect to\nhis brother-in-law, that his regiment marched with an elephant.\n\nSince Amelia's introduction to the regiment, George began to be rather\nashamed of some of the company to which he had been forced to present\nher; and determined, as he told Dobbin (with what satisfaction to the\nlatter it need not be said), to exchange into some better regiment\nsoon, and to get his wife away from those damned vulgar women.  But\nthis vulgarity of being ashamed of one's society is much more common\namong men than women (except very great ladies of fashion, who, to be\nsure, indulge in it); and Mrs. Amelia, a natural and unaffected person,\nhad none of that artificial shamefacedness which her husband mistook\nfor delicacy on his own part.  Thus Mrs. O'Dowd had a cock's plume in\nher hat, and a very large \"repayther\" on her stomach, which she used to\nring on all occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her by\nher fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and these\nornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife, gave\nexcruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the Major's\ncame in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the honest lady's\neccentricities, and not in the least ashamed of her company.\n\nAs they made that well-known journey, which almost every Englishman of\nmiddle rank has travelled since, there might have been more\ninstructive, but few more entertaining, companions than Mrs. Major\nO'Dowd.  \"Talk about kenal boats; my dear!  Ye should see the kenal\nboats between Dublin and Ballinasloe.  It's there the rapid travelling\nis; and the beautiful cattle.  Sure me fawther got a goold medal (and\nhis Excellency himself eat a slice of it, and said never was finer mate\nin his loif) for a four-year-old heifer, the like of which ye never saw\nin this country any day.\" And Jos owned with a sigh, \"that for good\nstreaky beef, really mingled with fat and lean, there was no country\nlike England.\"\n\n\"Except Ireland, where all your best mate comes from,\" said the Major's\nlady; proceeding, as is not unusual with patriots of her nation, to\nmake comparisons greatly in favour of her own country. The idea of\ncomparing the market at Bruges with those of Dublin, although she had\nsuggested it herself, caused immense scorn and derision on her part.\n\"I'll thank ye tell me what they mean by that old gazabo on the top of\nthe market-place,\" said she, in a burst of ridicule fit to have brought\nthe old tower down.  The place was full of English soldiery as they\npassed.  English bugles woke them in the morning; at nightfall they\nwent to bed to the note of the British fife and drum:  all the country\nand Europe was in arms, and the greatest event of history pending:  and\nhonest Peggy O'Dowd, whom it concerned as well as another, went on\nprattling about Ballinafad, and the horses in the stables at\nGlenmalony, and the clar't drunk there; and Jos Sedley interposed about\ncurry and rice at Dumdum; and Amelia thought about her husband, and how\nbest she should show her love for him; as if these were the great\ntopics of the world.\n\nThose who like to lay down the History-book, and to speculate upon what\nMIGHT have happened in the world, but for the fatal occurrence of what\nactually did take place (a most puzzling, amusing, ingenious, and\nprofitable kind of meditation), have no doubt often thought to\nthemselves what a specially bad time Napoleon took to come back from\nElba, and to let loose his eagle from Gulf San Juan to Notre Dame.  The\nhistorians on our side tell us that the armies of the allied powers\nwere all providentially on a war-footing, and ready to bear down at a\nmoment's notice upon the Elban Emperor. The august jobbers assembled at\nVienna, and carving out the kingdoms of Europe according to their\nwisdom, had such causes of quarrel among themselves as might have set\nthe armies which had overcome Napoleon to fight against each other, but\nfor the return of the object of unanimous hatred and fear.  This\nmonarch had an army in full force because he had jobbed to himself\nPoland, and was determined to keep it:  another had robbed half Saxony,\nand was bent upon maintaining his acquisition: Italy was the object of\na third's solicitude.  Each was protesting against the rapacity of the\nother; and could the Corsican but have waited in prison until all these\nparties were by the ears, he might have returned and reigned\nunmolested.  But what would have become of our story and all our\nfriends, then?  If all the drops in it were dried up, what would become\nof the sea?\n\nIn the meanwhile the business of life and living, and the pursuits of\npleasure, especially, went on as if no end were to be expected to them,\nand no enemy in front. When our travellers arrived at Brussels, in\nwhich their regiment was quartered, a great piece of good fortune, as\nall said, they found themselves in one of the gayest and most brilliant\nlittle capitals in Europe, and where all the Vanity Fair booths were\nlaid out with the most tempting liveliness and splendour.  Gambling was\nhere in profusion, and dancing in plenty:  feasting was there to fill\nwith delight that great gourmand of a Jos:  there was a theatre where a\nmiraculous Catalani was delighting all hearers:  beautiful rides, all\nenlivened with martial splendour; a rare old city, with strange\ncostumes and wonderful architecture, to delight the eyes of little\nAmelia, who had never before seen a foreign country, and fill her with\ncharming surprises: so that now and for a few weeks' space in a fine\nhandsome lodging, whereof the expenses were borne by Jos and Osborne,\nwho was flush of money and full of kind attentions to his wife--for\nabout a fortnight, I say, during which her honeymoon ended, Mrs. Amelia\nwas as pleased and happy as any little bride out of England.\n\nEvery day during this happy time there was novelty and amusement for\nall parties.  There was a church to see, or a picture-gallery--there\nwas a ride, or an opera. The bands of the regiments were making music\nat all hours.  The greatest folks of England walked in the Park--there\nwas a perpetual military festival.  George, taking out his wife to a\nnew jaunt or junket every night, was quite pleased with himself as\nusual, and swore he was becoming quite a domestic character.  And a\njaunt or a junket with HIM!  Was it not enough to set this little heart\nbeating with joy?  Her letters home to her mother were filled with\ndelight and gratitude at this season.  Her husband bade her buy laces,\nmillinery, jewels, and gimcracks of all sorts.  Oh, he was the kindest,\nbest, and most generous of men!\n\nThe sight of the very great company of lords and ladies and fashionable\npersons who thronged the town, and appeared in every public place,\nfilled George's truly British soul with intense delight.  They flung\noff that happy frigidity and insolence of demeanour which occasionally\ncharacterises the great at home, and appearing in numberless public\nplaces, condescended to mingle with the rest of the company whom they\nmet there.  One night at a party given by the general of the division\nto which George's regiment belonged, he had the honour of dancing with\nLady Blanche Thistlewood, Lord Bareacres' daughter; he bustled for ices\nand refreshments for the two noble ladies; he pushed and squeezed for\nLady Bareacres' carriage; he bragged about the Countess when he got\nhome, in a way which his own father could not have surpassed.  He\ncalled upon the ladies the next day; he rode by their side in the Park;\nhe asked their party to a great dinner at a restaurateur's, and was\nquite wild with exultation when they agreed to come.  Old Bareacres,\nwho had not much pride and a large appetite, would go for a dinner\nanywhere.\n\n\"I hope there will be no women besides our own party,\" Lady Bareacres\nsaid, after reflecting upon the invitation which had been made, and\naccepted with too much precipitancy.\n\n\"Gracious Heaven, Mamma--you don't suppose the man would bring his\nwife,\" shrieked Lady Blanche, who had been languishing in George's arms\nin the newly imported waltz for hours the night before.  \"The men are\nbearable, but their women--\"\n\n\"Wife, just married, dev'lish pretty woman, I hear,\" the old Earl said.\n\n\"Well, my dear Blanche,\" said the mother, \"I suppose, as Papa wants to\ngo, we must go; but we needn't know them in England, you know.\" And so,\ndetermined to cut their new acquaintance in Bond Street, these great\nfolks went to eat his dinner at Brussels, and condescending to make him\npay for their pleasure, showed their dignity by making his wife\nuncomfortable, and carefully excluding her from the conversation.  This\nis a species of dignity in which the high-bred British female reigns\nsupreme.  To watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humbler\nwomen, is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity\nFair.\n\nThis festival, on which honest George spent a great deal of money, was\nthe very dismallest of all the entertainments which Amelia had in her\nhoneymoon.  She wrote the most piteous accounts of the feast home to\nher mamma:  how the Countess of Bareacres would not answer when spoken\nto; how Lady Blanche stared at her with her eye-glass; and what a rage\nCaptain Dobbin was in at their behaviour; and how my lord, as they came\naway from the feast, asked to see the bill, and pronounced it a d----\nbad dinner, and d---- dear.  But though Amelia told all these stories,\nand wrote home regarding her guests' rudeness, and her own\ndiscomfiture, old Mrs. Sedley was mightily pleased nevertheless, and\ntalked about Emmy's friend, the Countess of Bareacres, with such\nassiduity that the news how his son was entertaining peers and\npeeresses actually came to Osborne's ears in the City.\n\nThose who know the present Lieutenant-General Sir George Tufto, K.C.B.,\nand have seen him, as they may on most days in the season, padded and\nin stays, strutting down Pall Mall with a rickety swagger on his\nhigh-heeled lacquered boots, leering under the bonnets of passers-by,\nor riding a showy chestnut, and ogling broughams in the Parks--those\nwho know the present Sir George Tufto would hardly recognise the daring\nPeninsular and Waterloo officer.  He has thick curling brown hair and\nblack eyebrows now, and his whiskers are of the deepest purple.  He was\nlight-haired and bald in 1815, and stouter in the person and in the\nlimbs, which especially have shrunk very much of late.  When he was\nabout seventy years of age (he is now nearly eighty), his hair, which\nwas very scarce and quite white, suddenly grew thick, and brown, and\ncurly, and his whiskers and eyebrows took their present colour.\nIll-natured people say that his chest is all wool, and that his hair,\nbecause it never grows, is a wig.  Tom Tufto, with whose father he\nquarrelled ever so many years ago, declares that Mademoiselle de\nJaisey, of the French theatre, pulled his grandpapa's hair off in the\ngreen-room; but Tom is notoriously spiteful and jealous; and the\nGeneral's wig has nothing to do with our story.\n\nOne day, as some of our friends of the --th were sauntering in the\nflower-market of Brussels, having been to see the Hotel de Ville, which\nMrs. Major O'Dowd declared was not near so large or handsome as her\nfawther's mansion of Glenmalony, an officer of rank, with an orderly\nbehind him, rode up to the market, and descending from his horse, came\namongst the flowers, and selected the very finest bouquet which money\ncould buy. The beautiful bundle being tied up in a paper, the officer\nremounted, giving the nosegay into the charge of his military groom,\nwho carried it with a grin, following his chief, who rode away in great\nstate and self-satisfaction.\n\n\"You should see the flowers at Glenmalony,\" Mrs. O'Dowd was remarking.\n\"Me fawther has three Scotch garners with nine helpers. We have an acre\nof hot-houses, and pines as common as pays in the sayson.  Our greeps\nweighs six pounds every bunch of 'em, and upon me honour and conscience\nI think our magnolias is as big as taykettles.\"\n\nDobbin, who never used to \"draw out\" Mrs. O'Dowd as that wicked Osborne\ndelighted in doing (much to Amelia's terror, who implored him to spare\nher), fell back in the crowd, crowing and sputtering until he reached a\nsafe distance, when he exploded amongst the astonished market-people\nwith shrieks of yelling laughter.\n\n\"Hwhat's that gawky guggling about?\" said Mrs. O'Dowd.  \"Is it his nose\nbleedn?  He always used to say 'twas his nose bleedn, till he must have\npomped all the blood out of 'um.  An't the magnolias at Glenmalony as\nbig as taykettles, O'Dowd?\"\n\n\"'Deed then they are, and bigger, Peggy,\" the Major said.  When the\nconversation was interrupted in the manner stated by the arrival of the\nofficer who purchased the bouquet.\n\n\"Devlish fine horse--who is it?\" George asked.\n\n\"You should see me brother Molloy Malony's horse, Molasses, that won\nthe cop at the Curragh,\" the Major's wife was exclaiming, and was\ncontinuing the family history, when her husband interrupted her by\nsaying--\n\n\"It's General Tufto, who commands the ---- cavalry division\"; adding\nquietly, \"he and I were both shot in the same leg at Talavera.\"\n\n\"Where you got your step,\" said George with a laugh. \"General Tufto!\nThen, my dear, the Crawleys are come.\"\n\nAmelia's heart fell--she knew not why.  The sun did not seem to shine\nso bright.  The tall old roofs and gables looked less picturesque all\nof a sudden, though it was a brilliant sunset, and one of the brightest\nand most beautiful days at the end of May.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\n\nBrussels\n\nMr. Jos had hired a pair of horses for his open carriage, with which\ncattle, and the smart London vehicle, he made a very tolerable figure\nin the drives about Brussels. George purchased a horse for his private\nriding, and he and Captain Dobbin would often accompany the carriage in\nwhich Jos and his sister took daily excursions of pleasure.  They went\nout that day in the park for their accustomed diversion, and there,\nsure enough, George's remark with regard to the arrival of Rawdon\nCrawley and his wife proved to be correct.  In the midst of a little\ntroop of horsemen, consisting of some of the very greatest persons in\nBrussels, Rebecca was seen in the prettiest and tightest of\nriding-habits, mounted on a beautiful little Arab, which she rode to\nperfection (having acquired the art at Queen's Crawley, where the\nBaronet, Mr. Pitt, and Rawdon himself had given her many lessons), and\nby the side of the gallant General Tufto.\n\n\"Sure it's the Juke himself,\" cried Mrs. Major O'Dowd to Jos, who began\nto blush violently; \"and that's Lord Uxbridge on the bay.  How elegant\nhe looks!  Me brother, Molloy Malony, is as like him as two pays.\"\n\nRebecca did not make for the carriage; but as soon as she perceived her\nold acquaintance Amelia seated in it, acknowledged her presence by a\ngracious nod and smile, and by kissing and shaking her fingers\nplayfully in the direction of the vehicle.  Then she resumed her\nconversation with General Tufto, who asked \"who the fat officer was in\nthe gold-laced cap?\" on which Becky replied, \"that he was an officer in\nthe East Indian service.\" But Rawdon Crawley rode out of the ranks of\nhis company, and came up and shook hands heartily with Amelia, and said\nto Jos, \"Well, old boy, how are you?\" and stared in Mrs. O'Dowd's face\nand at the black cock's feathers until she began to think she had made\na conquest of him.\n\nGeorge, who had been delayed behind, rode up almost immediately with\nDobbin, and they touched their caps to the august personages, among\nwhom Osborne at once perceived Mrs. Crawley.  He was delighted to see\nRawdon leaning over his carriage familiarly and talking to Amelia, and\nmet the aide-de-camp's cordial greeting with more than corresponding\nwarmth.  The nods between Rawdon and Dobbin were of the very faintest\nspecimens of politeness.\n\nCrawley told George where they were stopping with General Tufto at the\nHotel du Parc, and George made his friend promise to come speedily to\nOsborne's own residence.  \"Sorry I hadn't seen you three days ago,\"\nGeorge said.  \"Had a dinner at the Restaurateur's--rather a nice thing.\nLord Bareacres, and the Countess, and Lady Blanche, were good enough to\ndine with us--wish we'd had you.\" Having thus let his friend know his\nclaims to be a man of fashion, Osborne parted from Rawdon, who followed\nthe august squadron down an alley into which they cantered, while\nGeorge and Dobbin resumed their places, one on each side of Amelia's\ncarriage.\n\n\"How well the Juke looked,\" Mrs. O'Dowd remarked. \"The Wellesleys and\nMalonys are related; but, of course, poor I would never dream of\nintrojuicing myself unless his Grace thought proper to remember our\nfamily-tie.\"\n\n\"He's a great soldier,\" Jos said, much more at ease now the great man\nwas gone.  \"Was there ever a battle won like Salamanca?  Hey, Dobbin?\nBut where was it he learnt his art?  In India, my boy!  The jungle's\nthe school for a general, mark me that.  I knew him myself, too, Mrs.\nO'Dowd:  we both of us danced the same evening with Miss Cutler,\ndaughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and a devilish fine girl, at\nDumdum.\"\n\nThe apparition of the great personages held them all in talk during the\ndrive; and at dinner; and until the hour came when they were all to go\nto the Opera.\n\nIt was almost like Old England.  The house was filled with familiar\nBritish faces, and those toilettes for which the British female has\nlong been celebrated.  Mrs. O'Dowd's was not the least splendid amongst\nthese, and she had a curl on her forehead, and a set of Irish diamonds\nand Cairngorms, which outshone all the decorations in the house, in her\nnotion.  Her presence used to excruciate Osborne; but go she would upon\nall parties of pleasure on which she heard her young friends were bent.\nIt never entered into her thought but that they must be charmed with\nher company.\n\n\"She's been useful to you, my dear,\" George said to his wife, whom he\ncould leave alone with less scruple when she had this society. \"But\nwhat a comfort it is that Rebecca's come:  you will have her for a\nfriend, and we may get rid now of this damn'd Irishwoman.\"  To this\nAmelia did not answer, yes or no:  and how do we know what her thoughts\nwere?\n\nThe coup d'oeil of the Brussels opera-house did not strike Mrs. O'Dowd\nas being so fine as the theatre in Fishamble Street, Dublin, nor was\nFrench music at all equal, in her opinion, to the melodies of her\nnative country. She favoured her friends with these and other opinions\nin a very loud tone of voice, and tossed about a great clattering fan\nshe sported, with the most splendid complacency.\n\n\"Who is that wonderful woman with Amelia, Rawdon, love?\" said a lady in\nan opposite box (who, almost always civil to her husband in private,\nwas more fond than ever of him in company).\n\n\"Don't you see that creature with a yellow thing in her turban, and a\nred satin gown, and a great watch?\"\n\n\"Near the pretty little woman in white?\" asked a middle-aged gentleman\nseated by the querist's side, with orders in his button, and several\nunder-waistcoats, and a great, choky, white stock.\n\n\"That pretty woman in white is Amelia, General:  you are remarking all\nthe pretty women, you naughty man.\"\n\n\"Only one, begad, in the world!\" said the General, delighted, and the\nlady gave him a tap with a large bouquet which she had.\n\n\"Bedad it's him,\" said Mrs. O'Dowd; \"and that's the very bokay he\nbought in the Marshy aux Flures!\" and when Rebecca, having caught her\nfriend's eye, performed the little hand-kissing operation once more,\nMrs. Major O'D., taking the compliment to herself, returned the salute\nwith a gracious smile, which sent that unfortunate Dobbin shrieking out\nof the box again.\n\nAt the end of the act, George was out of the box in a moment, and he\nwas even going to pay his respects to Rebecca in her loge.  He met\nCrawley in the lobby, however, where they exchanged a few sentences\nupon the occurrences of the last fortnight.\n\n\"You found my cheque all right at the agent's? George said, with a\nknowing air.\n\n\"All right, my boy,\" Rawdon answered.  \"Happy to give you your revenge.\nGovernor come round?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" said George, \"but he will; and you know I've some private\nfortune through my mother.  Has Aunty relented?\"\n\n\"Sent me twenty pound, damned old screw.  When shall we have a meet?\nThe General dines out on Tuesday. Can't you come Tuesday?  I say, make\nSedley cut off his moustache.  What the devil does a civilian mean with\na moustache and those infernal frogs to his coat!  By-bye. Try and come\non Tuesday\"; and Rawdon was going-off with two brilliant young\ngentlemen of fashion, who were, like himself, on the staff of a general\nofficer.\n\nGeorge was only half pleased to be asked to dinner on that particular\nday when the General was not to dine.  \"I will go in and pay my\nrespects to your wife,\" said he; at which Rawdon said, \"Hm, as you\nplease,\" looking very glum, and at which the two young officers\nexchanged knowing glances.  George parted from them and strutted down\nthe lobby to the General's box, the number of which he had carefully\ncounted.\n\n\"Entrez,\" said a clear little voice, and our friend found himself in\nRebecca's presence; who jumped up, clapped her hands together, and held\nout both of them to George, so charmed was she to see him.  The\nGeneral, with the orders in his button, stared at the newcomer with a\nsulky scowl, as much as to say, who the devil are you?\n\n\"My dear Captain George!\" cried little Rebecca in an ecstasy.  \"How\ngood of you to come.  The General and I were moping together tete-a-tete.\nGeneral, this is my Captain George of whom you heard me talk.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said the General, with a very small bow; \"of what regiment is\nCaptain George?\"\n\nGeorge mentioned the --th:  how he wished he could have said it was a\ncrack cavalry corps.\n\n\"Come home lately from the West Indies, I believe. Not seen much\nservice in the late war.  Quartered here, Captain George?\"--the General\nwent on with killing haughtiness.\n\n\"Not Captain George, you stupid man; Captain Osborne,\" Rebecca said.\nThe General all the while was looking savagely from one to the other.\n\n\"Captain Osborne, indeed! Any relation to the L------ Osbornes?\"\n\n\"We bear the same arms,\" George said, as indeed was the fact; Mr.\nOsborne having consulted with a herald in Long Acre, and picked the\nL------ arms out of the peerage, when he set up his carriage fifteen\nyears before.  The General made no reply to this announcement; but took\nup his opera-glass--the double-barrelled lorgnon was not invented in\nthose days--and pretended to examine the house; but Rebecca saw that\nhis disengaged eye was working round in her direction, and shooting out\nbloodshot glances at her and George.\n\nShe redoubled in cordiality.  \"How is dearest Amelia? But I needn't\nask: how pretty she looks!  And who is that nice good-natured looking\ncreature with her--a flame of yours?  O, you wicked men! And there is\nMr. Sedley eating ice, I declare: how he seems to enjoy it!  General,\nwhy have we not had any ices?\"\n\n\"Shall I go and fetch you some?\" said the General, bursting with wrath.\n\n\"Let ME go, I entreat you,\" George said.\n\n\"No, I will go to Amelia's box.  Dear, sweet girl!  Give me your arm,\nCaptain George\"; and so saying, and with a nod to the General, she\ntripped into the lobby.  She gave George the queerest, knowingest look,\nwhen they were together, a look which might have been interpreted,\n\"Don't you see the state of affairs, and what a fool I'm making of\nhim?\"  But he did not perceive it.  He was thinking of his own plans,\nand lost in pompous admiration of his own irresistible powers of\npleasing.\n\nThe curses to which the General gave a low utterance, as soon as\nRebecca and her conqueror had quitted him, were so deep, that I am sure\nno compositor would venture to print them were they written down.  They\ncame from the General's heart; and a wonderful thing it is to think\nthat the human heart is capable of generating such produce, and can\nthrow out, as occasion demands, such a supply of lust and fury, rage\nand hatred.\n\nAmelia's gentle eyes, too, had been fixed anxiously on the pair, whose\nconduct had so chafed the jealous General; but when Rebecca entered her\nbox, she flew to her friend with an affectionate rapture which showed\nitself, in spite of the publicity of the place; for she embraced her\ndearest friend in the presence of the whole house, at least in full\nview of the General's glass, now brought to bear upon the Osborne\nparty.  Mrs. Rawdon saluted Jos, too, with the kindliest greeting: she\nadmired Mrs. O'Dowd's large Cairngorm brooch and superb Irish diamonds,\nand wouldn't believe that they were not from Golconda direct. She\nbustled, she chattered, she turned and twisted, and smiled upon one,\nand smirked on another, all in full view of the jealous opera-glass\nopposite.  And when the time for the ballet came (in which there was no\ndancer that went through her grimaces or performed her comedy of action\nbetter), she skipped back to her own box, leaning on Captain Dobbin's\narm this time.  No, she would not have George's: he must stay and talk\nto his dearest, best, little Amelia.\n\n\"What a humbug that woman is!\" honest old Dobbin mumbled to George,\nwhen he came back from Rebecca's box, whither he had conducted her in\nperfect silence, and with a countenance as glum as an undertaker's.\n\"She writhes and twists about like a snake.  All the time she was here,\ndidn't you see, George, how she was acting at the General over the way?\"\n\n\"Humbug--acting!  Hang it, she's the nicest little woman in England,\"\nGeorge replied, showing his white teeth, and giving his ambrosial\nwhiskers a twirl.  \"You ain't a man of the world, Dobbin. Dammy, look\nat her now, she's talked over Tufto in no time.  Look how he's\nlaughing!  Gad, what a shoulder she has!  Emmy, why didn't you have a\nbouquet?  Everybody has a bouquet.\"\n\n\"Faith, then, why didn't you BOY one?\" Mrs. O'Dowd said; and both\nAmelia and William Dobbin thanked her for this timely observation. But\nbeyond this neither of the ladies rallied.  Amelia was overpowered by\nthe flash and the dazzle and the fashionable talk of her worldly rival.\nEven the O'Dowd was silent and subdued after Becky's brilliant\napparition, and scarcely said a word more about Glenmalony all the\nevening.\n\n\"When do you intend to give up play, George, as you have promised me,\nany time these hundred years?\" Dobbin said to his friend a few days\nafter the night at the Opera.  \"When do you intend to give up\nsermonising?\" was the other's reply.  \"What the deuce, man, are you\nalarmed about?  We play low; I won last night.  You don't suppose\nCrawley cheats?  With fair play it comes to pretty much the same thing\nat the year's end.\"\n\n\"But I don't think he could pay if he lost,\" Dobbin said; and his\nadvice met with the success which advice usually commands.  Osborne and\nCrawley were repeatedly together now.  General Tufto dined abroad\nalmost constantly. George was always welcome in the apartments (very\nclose indeed to those of the General) which the aide-de-camp and his\nwife occupied in the hotel.\n\nAmelia's manners were such when she and George visited Crawley and his\nwife at these quarters, that they had very nearly come to their first\nquarrel; that is, George scolded his wife violently for her evident\nunwillingness to go, and the high and mighty manner in which she\ncomported herself towards Mrs. Crawley, her old friend; and Amelia did\nnot say one single word in reply; but with her husband's eye upon her,\nand Rebecca scanning her as she felt, was, if possible, more bashful\nand awkward on the second visit which she paid to Mrs. Rawdon, than on\nher first call.\n\nRebecca was doubly affectionate, of course, and would not take notice,\nin the least, of her friend's coolness.  \"I think Emmy has become\nprouder since her father's name was in the--since Mr. Sedley's\nMISFORTUNES,\" Rebecca said, softening the phrase charitably for\nGeorge's ear.\n\n\"Upon my word, I thought when we were at Brighton she was doing me the\nhonour to be jealous of me; and now I suppose she is scandalised\nbecause Rawdon, and I, and the General live together.  Why, my dear\ncreature, how could we, with our means, live at all, but for a friend\nto share expenses?  And do you suppose that Rawdon is not big enough to\ntake care of my honour?  But I'm very much obliged to Emmy, very,\" Mrs.\nRawdon said.\n\n\"Pooh, jealousy!\" answered George, \"all women are jealous.\"\n\n\"And all men too.  Weren't you jealous of General Tufto, and the\nGeneral of you, on the night of the Opera? Why, he was ready to eat me\nfor going with you to visit that foolish little wife of yours; as if I\ncare a pin for either of you,\" Crawley's wife said, with a pert toss of\nher head.  \"Will you dine here?  The dragon dines with the\nCommander-in-Chief.  Great news is stirring.  They say the French have\ncrossed the frontier.  We shall have a quiet dinner.\"\n\nGeorge accepted the invitation, although his wife was a little ailing.\nThey were now not quite six weeks married. Another woman was laughing\nor sneering at her expense, and he not angry.  He was not even angry\nwith himself, this good-natured fellow.  It is a shame, he owned to\nhimself; but hang it, if a pretty woman WILL throw herself in your way,\nwhy, what can a fellow do, you know?  I AM rather free about women, he\nhad often said, smiling and nodding knowingly to Stubble and Spooney,\nand other comrades of the mess-table; and they rather respected him\nthan otherwise for this prowess.  Next to conquering in war, conquering\nin love has been a source of pride, time out of mind, amongst men in\nVanity Fair, or how should schoolboys brag of their amours, or Don Juan\nbe popular?\n\nSo Mr. Osborne, having a firm conviction in his own mind that he was a\nwoman-killer and destined to conquer, did not run counter to his fate,\nbut yielded himself up to it quite complacently.  And as Emmy did not\nsay much or plague him with her jealousy, but merely became unhappy and\npined over it miserably in secret, he chose to fancy that she was not\nsuspicious of what all his acquaintance were perfectly aware--namely,\nthat he was carrying on a desperate flirtation with Mrs. Crawley.  He\nrode with her whenever she was free.  He pretended regimental business\nto Amelia (by which falsehood she was not in the least deceived), and\nconsigning his wife to solitude or her brother's society, passed his\nevenings in the Crawleys' company; losing money to the husband and\nflattering himself that the wife was dying of love for him. It is very\nlikely that this worthy couple never absolutely conspired and agreed\ntogether in so many words:  the one to cajole the young gentleman,\nwhilst the other won his money at cards: but they understood each other\nperfectly well, and Rawdon let Osborne come and go with entire good\nhumour.\n\nGeorge was so occupied with his new acquaintances that he and William\nDobbin were by no means so much together as formerly. George avoided\nhim in public and in the regiment, and, as we see, did not like those\nsermons which his senior was disposed to inflict upon him. If some\nparts of his conduct made Captain Dobbin exceedingly grave and cool; of\nwhat use was it to tell George that, though his whiskers were large,\nand his own opinion of his knowingness great, he was as green as a\nschoolboy? that Rawdon was making a victim of him as he had done of\nmany before, and as soon as he had used him would fling him off with\nscorn?  He would not listen:  and so, as Dobbin, upon those days when\nhe visited the Osborne house, seldom had the advantage of meeting his\nold friend, much painful and unavailing talk between them was spared.\nOur friend George was in the full career of the pleasures of Vanity\nFair.\n\nThere never was, since the days of Darius, such a brilliant train of\ncamp-followers as hung round the Duke of Wellington's army in the Low\nCountries, in 1815; and led it dancing and feasting, as it were, up to\nthe very brink of battle.  A certain ball which a noble Duchess gave at\nBrussels on the 15th of June in the above-named year is historical.\nAll Brussels had been in a state of excitement about it, and I have\nheard from ladies who were in that town at the period, that the talk\nand interest of persons of their own sex regarding the ball was much\ngreater even than in respect of the enemy in their front. The\nstruggles, intrigues, and prayers to get tickets were such as only\nEnglish ladies will employ, in order to gain admission to the society\nof the great of their own nation.\n\nJos and Mrs. O'Dowd, who were panting to be asked, strove in vain to\nprocure tickets; but others of our friends were more lucky.  For\ninstance, through the interest of my Lord Bareacres, and as a set-off\nfor the dinner at the restaurateur's, George got a card for Captain and\nMrs. Osborne; which circumstance greatly elated him. Dobbin, who was a\nfriend of the General commanding the division in which their regiment\nwas, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similar\ninvitation, which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the deuce he\nshould be getting into society.  Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were of\ncourse invited; as became the friends of a General commanding a cavalry\nbrigade.\n\nOn the appointed night, George, having commanded new dresses and\nornaments of all sorts for Amelia, drove to the famous ball, where his\nwife did not know a single soul.  After looking about for Lady\nBareacres, who cut him, thinking the card was quite enough--and after\nplacing Amelia on a bench, he left her to her own cogitations there,\nthinking, on his own part, that he had behaved very handsomely in\ngetting her new clothes, and bringing her to the ball, where she was\nfree to amuse herself as she liked.  Her thoughts were not of the\npleasantest, and nobody except honest Dobbin came to disturb them.\n\nWhilst her appearance was an utter failure (as her husband felt with a\nsort of rage), Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's debut was, on the contrary, very\nbrilliant.  She arrived very late.  Her face was radiant; her dress\nperfection.  In the midst of the great persons assembled, and the\neye-glasses directed to her, Rebecca seemed to be as cool and collected\nas when she used to marshal Miss Pinkerton's little girls to church.\nNumbers of the men she knew already, and the dandies thronged round\nher.  As for the ladies, it was whispered among them that Rawdon had\nrun away with her from out of a convent, and that she was a relation of\nthe Montmorency family.  She spoke French so perfectly that there might\nbe some truth in this report, and it was agreed that her manners were\nfine, and her air distingue.  Fifty would-be partners thronged round\nher at once, and pressed to have the honour to dance with her.  But she\nsaid she was engaged, and only going to dance very little; and made her\nway at once to the place where Emmy sate quite unnoticed, and dismally\nunhappy.  And so, to finish the poor child at once, Mrs. Rawdon ran and\ngreeted affectionately her dearest Amelia, and began forthwith to\npatronise her. She found fault with her friend's dress, and her\nhairdresser, and wondered how she could be so chaussee, and vowed that\nshe must send her corsetiere the next morning.  She vowed that it was a\ndelightful ball; that there was everybody that every one knew, and only\na VERY few nobodies in the whole room.  It is a fact, that in a\nfortnight, and after three dinners in general society, this young woman\nhad got up the genteel jargon so well, that a native could not speak it\nbetter; and it was only from her French being so good, that you could\nknow she was not a born woman of fashion.\n\nGeorge, who had left Emmy on her bench on entering the ball-room, very\nsoon found his way back when Rebecca was by her dear friend's side.\nBecky was just lecturing Mrs. Osborne upon the follies which her\nhusband was committing.  \"For God's sake, stop him from gambling, my\ndear,\" she said, \"or he will ruin himself. He and Rawdon are playing at\ncards every night, and you know he is very poor, and Rawdon will win\nevery shilling from him if he does not take care.  Why don't you\nprevent him, you little careless creature? Why don't you come to us of\nan evening, instead of moping at home with that Captain Dobbin?  I dare\nsay he is tres aimable; but how could one love a man with feet of such\nsize? Your husband's feet are darlings--Here he comes.  Where have you\nbeen, wretch?  Here is Emmy crying her eyes out for you.  Are you\ncoming to fetch me for the quadrille?\" And she left her bouquet and\nshawl by Amelia's side, and tripped off with George to dance.  Women\nonly know how to wound so. There is a poison on the tips of their\nlittle shafts, which stings a thousand times more than a man's blunter\nweapon.  Our poor Emmy, who had never hated, never sneered all her\nlife, was powerless in the hands of her remorseless little enemy.\n\nGeorge danced with Rebecca twice or thrice--how many times Amelia\nscarcely knew.  She sat quite unnoticed in her corner, except when\nRawdon came up with some words of clumsy conversation:  and later in\nthe evening, when Captain Dobbin made so bold as to bring her\nrefreshments and sit beside her.  He did not like to ask her why she\nwas so sad; but as a pretext for the tears which were filling in her\neyes, she told him that Mrs. Crawley had alarmed her by telling her\nthat George would go on playing.\n\n\"It is curious, when a man is bent upon play, by what clumsy rogues he\nwill allow himself to be cheated,\" Dobbin said; and Emmy said,\n\"Indeed.\" She was thinking of something else.  It was not the loss of\nthe money that grieved her.\n\nAt last George came back for Rebecca's shawl and flowers.  She was\ngoing away.  She did not even condescend to come back and say good-bye\nto Amelia.  The poor girl let her husband come and go without saying a\nword, and her head fell on her breast.  Dobbin had been called away,\nand was whispering deep in conversation with the General of the\ndivision, his friend, and had not seen this last parting.  George went\naway then with the bouquet; but when he gave it to the owner, there lay\na note, coiled like a snake among the flowers.  Rebecca's eye caught it\nat once.  She had been used to deal with notes in early life.  She put\nout her hand and took the nosegay.  He saw by her eyes as they met,\nthat she was aware what she should find there.  Her husband hurried her\naway, still too intent upon his own thoughts, seemingly, to take note\nof any marks of recognition which might pass between his friend and his\nwife. These were, however, but trifling.  Rebecca gave George her hand\nwith one of her usual quick knowing glances, and made a curtsey and\nwalked away.  George bowed over the hand, said nothing in reply to a\nremark of Crawley's, did not hear it even, his brain was so throbbing\nwith triumph and excitement, and allowed them to go away without a word.\n\nHis wife saw the one part at least of the bouquet-scene. It was quite\nnatural that George should come at Rebecca's request to get her her\nscarf and flowers:  it was no more than he had done twenty times before\nin the course of the last few days; but now it was too much for her.\n\"William,\" she said, suddenly clinging to Dobbin, who was near her,\n\"you've always been very kind to me--I'm--I'm not well.  Take me home.\"\nShe did not know she called him by his Christian name, as George was\naccustomed to do.  He went away with her quickly.  Her lodgings were\nhard by; and they threaded through the crowd without, where everything\nseemed to be more astir than even in the ball-room within.\n\nGeorge had been angry twice or thrice at finding his wife up on his\nreturn from the parties which he frequented:  so she went straight to\nbed now; but although she did not sleep, and although the din and\nclatter, and the galloping of horsemen were incessant, she never heard\nany of these noises, having quite other disturbances to keep her awake.\n\nOsborne meanwhile, wild with elation, went off to a play-table, and\nbegan to bet frantically.  He won repeatedly. \"Everything succeeds with\nme to-night,\" he said. But his luck at play even did not cure him of\nhis restlessness, and he started up after awhile, pocketing his\nwinnings, and went to a buffet, where he drank off many bumpers of wine.\n\nHere, as he was rattling away to the people around, laughing loudly and\nwild with spirits, Dobbin found him. He had been to the card-tables to\nlook there for his friend.  Dobbin looked as pale and grave as his\ncomrade was flushed and jovial.\n\n\"Hullo, Dob!  Come and drink, old Dob!  The Duke's wine is famous. Give\nme some more, you sir\"; and he held out a trembling glass for the\nliquor.\n\n\"Come out, George,\" said Dobbin, still gravely; \"don't drink.\"\n\n\"Drink!  there's nothing like it.  Drink yourself, and light up your\nlantern jaws, old boy.  Here's to you.\"\n\nDobbin went up and whispered something to him, at which George, giving\na start and a wild hurray, tossed off his glass, clapped it on the\ntable, and walked away speedily on his friend's arm.  \"The enemy has\npassed the Sambre,\" William said, \"and our left is already engaged.\nCome away.  We are to march in three hours.\"\n\nAway went George, his nerves quivering with excitement at the news so\nlong looked for, so sudden when it came.  What were love and intrigue\nnow?  He thought about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to\nhis quarters--his past life and future chances--the fate which might be\nbefore him--the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he might be\nabout to part.  Oh, how he wished that night's work undone!  and that\nwith a clear conscience at least he might say farewell to the tender\nand guileless being by whose love he had set such little store!\n\nHe thought over his brief married life.  In those few weeks he had\nfrightfully dissipated his little capital.  How wild and reckless he\nhad been!  Should any mischance befall him:  what was then left for\nher?  How unworthy he was of her.  Why had he married her?  He was not\nfit for marriage.  Why had he disobeyed his father, who had been always\nso generous to him?  Hope, remorse, ambition, tenderness, and selfish\nregret filled his heart.  He sate down and wrote to his father,\nremembering what he had said once before, when he was engaged to fight\na duel. Dawn faintly streaked the sky as he closed this farewell\nletter.  He sealed it, and kissed the superscription. He thought how he\nhad deserted that generous father, and of the thousand kindnesses which\nthe stern old man had done him.\n\nHe had looked into Amelia's bedroom when he entered; she lay quiet, and\nher eyes seemed closed, and he was glad that she was asleep.  On\narriving at his quarters from the ball, he had found his regimental\nservant already making preparations for his departure:  the man had\nunderstood his signal to be still, and these arrangements were very\nquickly and silently made.  Should he go in and wake Amelia, he\nthought, or leave a note for her brother to break the news of departure\nto her?  He went in to look at her once again.\n\nShe had been awake when he first entered her room, but had kept her\neyes closed, so that even her wakefulness should not seem to reproach\nhim.  But when he had returned, so soon after herself, too, this timid\nlittle heart had felt more at ease, and turning towards him as he stept\nsoftly out of the room, she had fallen into a light sleep.  George came\nin and looked at her again, entering still more softly.  By the pale\nnight-lamp he could see her sweet, pale face--the purple eyelids were\nfringed and closed, and one round arm, smooth and white, lay outside of\nthe coverlet.  Good God!  how pure she was; how gentle, how tender, and\nhow friendless!  and he, how selfish, brutal, and black with crime!\nHeart-stained, and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and\nlooked at the sleeping girl.  How dared he--who was he, to pray for one\nso spotless!  God bless her!  God bless her!  He came to the bedside,\nand looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep; and he bent\nover the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale face.\n\nTwo fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he stooped down.  \"I am\nawake, George,\" the poor child said, with a sob fit to break the little\nheart that nestled so closely by his own.  She was awake, poor soul,\nand to what?  At that moment a bugle from the Place of Arms began\nsounding clearly, and was taken up through the town; and amidst the\ndrums of the infantry, and the shrill pipes of the Scotch, the whole\ncity awoke.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXX\n\n\"The Girl I Left Behind Me\"\n\nWe do not claim to rank among the military novelists. Our place is with\nthe non-combatants.  When the decks are cleared for action we go below\nand wait meekly.  We should only be in the way of the manoeuvres that\nthe gallant fellows are performing overhead.  We shall go no farther\nwith the --th than to the city gate:  and leaving Major O'Dowd to his\nduty, come back to the Major's wife, and the ladies and the baggage.\n\nNow the Major and his lady, who had not been invited to the ball at\nwhich in our last chapter other of our friends figured, had much more\ntime to take their wholesome natural rest in bed, than was accorded to\npeople who wished to enjoy pleasure as well as to do duty.  \"It's my\nbelief, Peggy, my dear,\" said he, as he placidly pulled his nightcap\nover his ears, \"that there will be such a ball danced in a day or two\nas some of 'em has never heard the chune of\"; and he was much more\nhappy to retire to rest after partaking of a quiet tumbler, than to\nfigure at any other sort of amusement. Peggy, for her part, would have\nliked to have shown her turban and bird of paradise at the ball, but\nfor the information which her husband had given her, and which made her\nvery grave.\n\n\"I'd like ye wake me about half an hour before the assembly beats,\" the\nMajor said to his lady.  \"Call me at half-past one, Peggy dear, and see\nme things is ready.  May be I'll not come back to breakfast, Mrs. O'D.\"\nWith which words, which signified his opinion that the regiment would\nmarch the next morning, the Major ceased talking, and fell asleep.\n\nMrs. O'Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a camisole,\nfelt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep, at this juncture.\n\"Time enough for that,\" she said, \"when Mick's gone\"; and so she packed\nhis travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his cloak, his cap,\nand other warlike habiliments, set them out in order for him; and\nstowed away in the cloak pockets a light package of portable\nrefreshments, and a wicker-covered flask or pocket-pistol, containing\nnear a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy, of which she and the\nMajor approved very much; and as soon as the hands of the \"repayther\"\npointed to half-past one, and its interior arrangements (it had a tone\nquite equal to a cathaydral, its fair owner considered) knelled forth\nthat fatal hour, Mrs. O'Dowd woke up her Major, and had as comfortable\na cup of coffee prepared for him as any made that morning in Brussels.\nAnd who is there will deny that this worthy lady's preparations\nbetokened affection as much as the fits of tears and hysterics by which\nmore sensitive females exhibited their love, and that their partaking\nof this coffee, which they drank together while the bugles were\nsounding the turn-out and the drums beating in the various quarters of\nthe town, was not more useful and to the purpose than the outpouring of\nany mere sentiment could be?  The consequence was, that the Major\nappeared on parade quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosy\ncountenance, as he sate on horseback, giving cheerfulness and\nconfidence to the whole corps.  All the officers saluted her when the\nregiment marched by the balcony on which this brave woman stood, and\nwaved them a cheer as they passed; and I daresay it was not from want\nof courage, but from a sense of female delicacy and propriety, that she\nrefrained from leading the gallant--th personally into action.\n\nOn Sundays, and at periods of a solemn nature, Mrs. O'Dowd used to read\nwith great gravity out of a large volume of her uncle the Dean's\nsermons.  It had been of great comfort to her on board the transport as\nthey were coming home, and were very nearly wrecked, on their return\nfrom the West Indies.  After the regiment's departure she betook\nherself to this volume for meditation; perhaps she did not understand\nmuch of what she was reading, and her thoughts were elsewhere:  but the\nsleep project, with poor Mick's nightcap there on the pillow, was quite\na vain one.  So it is in the world.  Jack or Donald marches away to\nglory with his knapsack on his shoulder, stepping out briskly to the\ntune of \"The Girl I Left Behind Me.\" It is she who remains and\nsuffers--and has the leisure to think, and brood, and remember.\n\nKnowing how useless regrets are, and how the indulgence of sentiment\nonly serves to make people more miserable, Mrs. Rebecca wisely\ndetermined to give way to no vain feelings of sorrow, and bore the\nparting from her husband with quite a Spartan equanimity.  Indeed\nCaptain Rawdon himself was much more affected at the leave-taking than\nthe resolute little woman to whom he bade farewell.  She had mastered\nthis rude coarse nature; and he loved and worshipped her with all his\nfaculties of regard and admiration.  In all his life he had never been\nso happy, as, during the past few months, his wife had made him.  All\nformer delights of turf, mess, hunting-field, and gambling-table; all\nprevious loves and courtships of milliners, opera-dancers, and the like\neasy triumphs of the clumsy military Adonis, were quite insipid when\ncompared to the lawful matrimonial pleasures which of late he had\nenjoyed.  She had known perpetually how to divert him; and he had found\nhis house and her society a thousand times more pleasant than any place\nor company which he had ever frequented from his childhood until now.\nAnd he cursed his past follies and extravagances, and bemoaned his vast\noutlying debts above all, which must remain for ever as obstacles to\nprevent his wife's advancement in the world.  He had often groaned over\nthese in midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelor\nthey had never given him any disquiet.  He himself was struck with this\nphenomenon.  \"Hang it,\" he would say (or perhaps use a still stronger\nexpression out of his simple vocabulary), \"before I was married I\ndidn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses would\nwait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on never minding.\nBut since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I give you my honour\nI've not touched a bit of stamped paper.\"\n\nRebecca always knew how to conjure away these moods of melancholy.\n\"Why, my stupid love,\" she would say, \"we have not done with your aunt\nyet.  If she fails us, isn't there what you call the Gazette? or, stop,\nwhen your uncle Bute's life drops, I have another scheme. The living\nhas always belonged to the younger brother, and why shouldn't you sell\nout and go into the Church?\"  The idea of this conversion set Rawdon\ninto roars of laughter: you might have heard the explosion through the\nhotel at midnight, and the haw-haws of the great dragoon's voice.\nGeneral Tufto heard him from his quarters on the first floor above\nthem; and Rebecca acted the scene with great spirit, and preached\nRawdon's first sermon, to the immense delight of the General at\nbreakfast.\n\nBut these were mere by-gone days and talk.  When the final news arrived\nthat the campaign was opened, and the troops were to march, Rawdon's\ngravity became such that Becky rallied him about it in a manner which\nrather hurt the feelings of the Guardsman.  \"You don't suppose I'm\nafraid, Becky, I should think,\" he said, with a tremor in his voice.\n\"But I'm a pretty good mark for a shot, and you see if it brings me\ndown, why I leave one and perhaps two behind me whom I should wish to\nprovide for, as I brought 'em into the scrape.  It is no laughing\nmatter that, Mrs. C., anyways.\"\n\nRebecca by a hundred caresses and kind words tried to soothe the\nfeelings of the wounded lover.  It was only when her vivacity and sense\nof humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they would do\nunder most circumstances of life indeed) that she would break out with\nher satire, but she could soon put on a demure face. \"Dearest love,\"\nshe said, \"do you suppose I feel nothing?\" and hastily dashing\nsomething from her eyes, she looked up in her husband's face with a\nsmile.\n\n\"Look here,\" said he.  \"If I drop, let us see what there is for you. I\nhave had a pretty good run of luck here, and here's two hundred and\nthirty pounds.  I have got ten Napoleons in my pocket.  That is as much\nas I shall want; for the General pays everything like a prince; and if\nI'm hit, why you know I cost nothing.  Don't cry, little woman; I may\nlive to vex you yet.  Well, I shan't take either of my horses, but\nshall ride the General's grey charger:  it's cheaper, and I told him\nmine was lame.  If I'm done, those two ought to fetch you something.\nGrigg offered ninety for the mare yesterday, before this confounded\nnews came, and like a fool I wouldn't let her go under the two o's.\nBullfinch will fetch his price any day, only you'd better sell him in\nthis country, because the dealers have so many bills of mine, and so\nI'd rather he shouldn't go back to England.  Your little mare the\nGeneral gave you will fetch something, and there's no d--d livery\nstable bills here as there are in London,\" Rawdon added, with a laugh.\n\"There's that dressing-case cost me two hundred--that is, I owe two for\nit; and the gold tops and bottles must be worth thirty or forty.\nPlease to put THAT up the spout, ma'am, with my pins, and rings, and\nwatch and chain, and things.  They cost a precious lot of money.  Miss\nCrawley, I know, paid a hundred down for the chain and ticker.  Gold\ntops and bottles, indeed!  dammy, I'm sorry I didn't take more now.\nEdwards pressed on me a silver-gilt boot-jack, and I might have had a\ndressing-case fitted up with a silver warming-pan, and a service of\nplate.  But we must make the best of what we've got, Becky, you know.\"\n\nAnd so, making his last dispositions, Captain Crawley, who had seldom\nthought about anything but himself, until the last few months of his\nlife, when Love had obtained the mastery over the dragoon, went through\nthe various items of his little catalogue of effects, striving to see\nhow they might be turned into money for his wife's benefit, in case any\naccident should befall him.  He pleased himself by noting down with a\npencil, in his big schoolboy handwriting, the various items of his\nportable property which might be sold for his widow's advantage as, for\nexample, \"My double-barril by Manton, say 40 guineas; my driving cloak,\nlined with sable fur, 50 pounds; my duelling pistols in rosewood case\n(same which I shot Captain Marker), 20 pounds; my regulation\nsaddle-holsters and housings; my Laurie ditto,\" and so forth, over all\nof which articles he made Rebecca the mistress.\n\nFaithful to his plan of economy, the Captain dressed himself in his\noldest and shabbiest uniform and epaulets, leaving the newest behind,\nunder his wife's (or it might be his widow's) guardianship. And this\nfamous dandy of Windsor and Hyde Park went off on his campaign with a\nkit as modest as that of a sergeant, and with something like a prayer\non his lips for the woman he was leaving. He took her up from the\nground, and held her in his arms for a minute, tight pressed against\nhis strong-beating heart.  His face was purple and his eyes dim, as he\nput her down and left her.  He rode by his General's side, and smoked\nhis cigar in silence as they hastened after the troops of the General's\nbrigade, which preceded them; and it was not until they were some miles\non their way that he left off twirling his moustache and broke silence.\n\nAnd Rebecca, as we have said, wisely determined not to give way to\nunavailing sentimentality on her husband's departure.  She waved him an\nadieu from the window, and stood there for a moment looking out after\nhe was gone. The cathedral towers and the full gables of the quaint old\nhouses were just beginning to blush in the sunrise. There had been no\nrest for her that night.  She was still in her pretty ball-dress, her\nfair hair hanging somewhat out of curl on her neck, and the circles\nround her eyes dark with watching.  \"What a fright I seem,\" she said,\nexamining herself in the glass, \"and how pale this pink makes one\nlook!\"  So she divested herself of this pink raiment; in doing which a\nnote fell out from her corsage, which she picked up with a smile, and\nlocked into her dressing-box. And then she put her bouquet of the ball\ninto a glass of water, and went to bed, and slept very comfortably.\n\nThe town was quite quiet when she woke up at ten o'clock, and partook\nof coffee, very requisite and comforting after the exhaustion and grief\nof the morning's occurrences.\n\nThis meal over, she resumed honest Rawdon's calculations of the night\nprevious, and surveyed her position. Should the worst befall, all\nthings considered, she was pretty well to do.  There were her own\ntrinkets and trousseau, in addition to those which her husband had left\nbehind. Rawdon's generosity, when they were first married, has already\nbeen described and lauded.  Besides these, and the little mare, the\nGeneral, her slave and worshipper, had made her many very handsome\npresents, in the shape of cashmere shawls bought at the auction of a\nbankrupt French general's lady, and numerous tributes from the\njewellers' shops, all of which betokened her admirer's taste and\nwealth.  As for \"tickers,\" as poor Rawdon called watches, her\napartments were alive with their clicking. For, happening to mention\none night that hers, which Rawdon had given to her, was of English\nworkmanship, and went ill, on the very next morning there came to her a\nlittle bijou marked Leroy, with a chain and cover charmingly set with\nturquoises, and another signed Brequet, which was covered with pearls,\nand yet scarcely bigger than a half-crown.  General Tufto had bought\none, and Captain Osborne had gallantly presented the other.  Mrs.\nOsborne had no watch, though, to do George justice, she might have had\none for the asking, and the Honourable Mrs. Tufto in England had an old\ninstrument of her mother's that might have served for the plate-warming\npan which Rawdon talked about.  If Messrs. Howell and James were to\npublish a list of the purchasers of all the trinkets which they sell,\nhow surprised would some families be: and if all these ornaments went\nto gentlemen's lawful wives and daughters, what a profusion of\njewellery there would be exhibited in the genteelest homes of Vanity\nFair!\n\nEvery calculation made of these valuables Mrs. Rebecca found, not\nwithout a pungent feeling of triumph and self-satisfaction, that should\ncircumstances occur, she might reckon on six or seven hundred pounds at\nthe very least, to begin the world with; and she passed the morning\ndisposing, ordering, looking out, and locking up her properties in the\nmost agreeable manner.  Among the notes in Rawdon's pocket-book was a\ndraft for twenty pounds on Osborne's banker.  This made her think about\nMrs. Osborne.  \"I will go and get the draft cashed,\" she said, \"and pay\na visit afterwards to poor little Emmy.\" If this is a novel without a\nhero, at least let us lay claim to a heroine.  No man in the British\narmy which has marched away, not the great Duke himself, could be more\ncool or collected in the presence of doubts and difficulties, than the\nindomitable little aide-de-camp's wife.\n\nAnd there was another of our acquaintances who was also to be left\nbehind, a non-combatant, and whose emotions and behaviour we have\ntherefore a right to know. This was our friend the ex-collector of\nBoggley Wollah, whose rest was broken, like other people's, by the\nsounding of the bugles in the early morning.  Being a great sleeper,\nand fond of his bed, it is possible he would have snoozed on until his\nusual hour of rising in the forenoon, in spite of all the drums,\nbugles, and bagpipes in the British army, but for an interruption,\nwhich did not come from George Osborne, who shared Jos's quarters with\nhim, and was as usual occupied too much with his own affairs or with\ngrief at parting with his wife, to think of taking leave of his\nslumbering brother-in-law--it was not George, we say, who interposed\nbetween Jos Sedley and sleep, but Captain Dobbin, who came and roused\nhim up, insisting on shaking hands with him before his departure.\n\n\"Very kind of you,\" said Jos, yawning, and wishing the Captain at the\ndeuce.\n\n\"I--I didn't like to go off without saying good-bye, you know,\" Dobbin\nsaid in a very incoherent manner; \"because you know some of us mayn't\ncome back again, and I like to see you all well, and--and that sort of\nthing, you know.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Jos asked, rubbing his eyes.  The Captain did not\nin the least hear him or look at the stout gentleman in the nightcap,\nabout whom he professed to have such a tender interest. The hypocrite\nwas looking and listening with all his might in the direction of\nGeorge's apartments, striding about the room, upsetting the chairs,\nbeating the tattoo, biting his nails, and showing other signs of great\ninward emotion.\n\nJos had always had rather a mean opinion of the Captain, and now began\nto think his courage was somewhat equivocal.  \"What is it I can do for\nyou, Dobbin?\" he said, in a sarcastic tone.\n\n\"I tell you what you can do,\" the Captain replied, coming up to the\nbed; \"we march in a quarter of an hour, Sedley, and neither George nor\nI may ever come back. Mind you, you are not to stir from this town\nuntil you ascertain how things go.  You are to stay here and watch over\nyour sister, and comfort her, and see that no harm comes to her.  If\nanything happens to George, remember she has no one but you in the\nworld to look to.  If it goes wrong with the army, you'll see her safe\nback to England; and you will promise me on your word that you will\nnever desert her.  I know you won't:  as far as money goes, you were\nalways free enough with that.  Do you want any? I mean, have you enough\ngold to take you back to England in case of a misfortune?\"\n\n\"Sir,\" said Jos, majestically, \"when I want money, I know where to ask\nfor it.  And as for my sister, you needn't tell me how I ought to\nbehave to her.\"\n\n\"You speak like a man of spirit, Jos,\" the other answered good-naturedly,\n\"and I am glad that George can leave her in such good hands.\nSo I may give him your word of honour, may I, that in case of extremity\nyou will stand by her?\"\n\n\"Of course, of course,\" answered Mr. Jos, whose generosity in money\nmatters Dobbin estimated quite correctly.\n\n\"And you'll see her safe out of Brussels in the event of a defeat?\"\n\n\"A defeat! D---- it, sir, it's impossible.  Don't try and frighten ME,\"\nthe hero cried from his bed; and Dobbin's mind was thus perfectly set\nat ease now that Jos had spoken out so resolutely respecting his\nconduct to his sister.  \"At least,\" thought the Captain, \"there will be\na retreat secured for her in case the worst should ensue.\"\n\nIf Captain Dobbin expected to get any personal comfort and satisfaction\nfrom having one more view of Amelia before the regiment marched away,\nhis selfishness was punished just as such odious egotism deserved to\nbe.  The door of Jos's bedroom opened into the sitting-room which was\ncommon to the family party, and opposite this door was that of Amelia's\nchamber.  The bugles had wakened everybody:  there was no use in\nconcealment now.  George's servant was packing in this room:  Osborne\ncoming in and out of the contiguous bedroom, flinging to the man such\narticles as he thought fit to carry on the campaign. And presently\nDobbin had the opportunity which his heart coveted, and he got sight of\nAmelia's face once more.  But what a face it was!  So white, so wild\nand despair-stricken, that the remembrance of it haunted him afterwards\nlike a crime, and the sight smote him with inexpressible pangs of\nlonging and pity.\n\nShe was wrapped in a white morning dress, her hair falling on her\nshoulders, and her large eyes fixed and without light.  By way of\nhelping on the preparations for the departure, and showing that she too\ncould be useful at a moment so critical, this poor soul had taken up a\nsash of George's from the drawers whereon it lay, and followed him to\nand fro with the sash in her hand, looking on mutely as his packing\nproceeded.  She came out and stood, leaning at the wall, holding this\nsash against her bosom, from which the heavy net of crimson dropped\nlike a large stain of blood.  Our gentle-hearted Captain felt a guilty\nshock as he looked at her.  \"Good God,\" thought he, \"and is it grief\nlike this I dared to pry into?\" And there was no help:  no means to\nsoothe and comfort this helpless, speechless misery.  He stood for a\nmoment and looked at her, powerless and torn with pity, as a parent\nregards an infant in pain.\n\nAt last, George took Emmy's hand, and led her back into the bedroom,\nfrom whence he came out alone.  The parting had taken place in that\nmoment, and he was gone.\n\n\"Thank Heaven that is over,\" George thought, bounding down the stair,\nhis sword under his arm, as he ran swiftly to the alarm ground, where\nthe regiment was mustered, and whither trooped men and officers\nhurrying from their billets; his pulse was throbbing and his cheeks\nflushed:  the great game of war was going to be played, and he one of\nthe players.  What a fierce excitement of doubt, hope, and pleasure!\nWhat tremendous hazards of loss or gain!  What were all the games of\nchance he had ever played compared to this one? Into all contests\nrequiring athletic skill and courage, the young man, from his boyhood\nupwards, had flung himself with all his might. The champion of his\nschool and his regiment, the bravos of his companions had followed him\neverywhere; from the boys' cricket-match to the garrison-races, he had\nwon a hundred of triumphs; and wherever he went women and men had\nadmired and envied him.  What qualities are there for which a man gets\nso speedy a return of applause, as those of bodily superiority,\nactivity, and valour? Time out of mind strength and courage have been\nthe theme of bards and romances; and from the story of Troy down to\nto-day, poetry has always chosen a soldier for a hero.  I wonder is it\nbecause men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and\nplace military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward and\nworship?\n\nSo, at the sound of that stirring call to battle, George jumped away\nfrom the gentle arms in which he had been dallying; not without a\nfeeling of shame (although his wife's hold on him had been but feeble),\nthat he should have been detained there so long.  The same feeling of\neagerness and excitement was amongst all those friends of his of whom\nwe have had occasional glimpses, from the stout senior Major, who led\nthe regiment into action, to little Stubble, the Ensign, who was to\nbear its colours on that day.\n\nThe sun was just rising as the march began--it was a gallant sight--the\nband led the column, playing the regimental march--then came the\nMajor in command, riding upon Pyramus, his stout charger--then marched\nthe grenadiers, their Captain at their head; in the centre were the\ncolours, borne by the senior and junior Ensigns--then George came\nmarching at the head of his company. He looked up, and smiled at\nAmelia, and passed on; and even the sound of the music died away.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXI\n\nIn Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister\n\nThus all the superior officers being summoned on duty elsewhere, Jos\nSedley was left in command of the little colony at Brussels, with\nAmelia invalided, Isidor, his Belgian servant, and the bonne, who was\nmaid-of-all-work for the establishment, as a garrison under him. Though\nhe was disturbed in spirit, and his rest destroyed by Dobbin's\ninterruption and the occurrences of the morning, Jos nevertheless\nremained for many hours in bed, wakeful and rolling about there until\nhis usual hour of rising had arrived.  The sun was high in the heavens,\nand our gallant friends of the --th miles on their march, before the\ncivilian appeared in his flowered dressing-gown at breakfast.\n\nAbout George's absence, his brother-in-law was very easy in mind.\nPerhaps Jos was rather pleased in his heart that Osborne was gone, for\nduring George's presence, the other had played but a very secondary\npart in the household, and Osborne did not scruple to show his contempt\nfor the stout civilian.  But Emmy had always been good and attentive to\nhim.  It was she who ministered to his comforts, who superintended the\ndishes that he liked, who walked or rode with him (as she had many, too\nmany, opportunities of doing, for where was George?) and who interposed\nher sweet face between his anger and her husband's scorn.  Many timid\nremonstrances had she uttered to George in behalf of her brother, but\nthe former in his trenchant way cut these entreaties short. \"I'm an\nhonest man,\" he said, \"and if I have a feeling I show it, as an honest\nman will.  How the deuce, my dear, would you have me behave\nrespectfully to such a fool as your brother?\"  So Jos was pleased with\nGeorge's absence.  His plain hat, and gloves on a sideboard, and the\nidea that the owner was away, caused Jos I don't know what secret\nthrill of pleasure.  \"HE won't be troubling me this morning,\" Jos\nthought, \"with his dandified airs and his impudence.\"\n\n\"Put the Captain's hat into the ante-room,\" he said to Isidor, the\nservant.\n\n\"Perhaps he won't want it again,\" replied the lackey, looking knowingly\nat his master.  He hated George too, whose insolence towards him was\nquite of the English sort.\n\n\"And ask if Madame is coming to breakfast,\" Mr. Sedley said with great\nmajesty, ashamed to enter with a servant upon the subject of his\ndislike for George.  The truth is, he had abused his brother to the\nvalet a score of times before.\n\nAlas!  Madame could not come to breakfast, and cut the tartines that\nMr. Jos liked.  Madame was a great deal too ill, and had been in a\nfrightful state ever since her husband's departure, so her bonne said.\nJos showed his sympathy by pouring her out a large cup of tea It was\nhis way of exhibiting kindness:  and he improved on this; he not only\nsent her breakfast, but he bethought him what delicacies she would most\nlike for dinner.\n\nIsidor, the valet, had looked on very sulkily, while Osborne's servant\nwas disposing of his master's baggage previous to the Captain's\ndeparture:  for in the first place he hated Mr. Osborne, whose conduct\nto him, and to all inferiors, was generally overbearing (nor does the\ncontinental domestic like to be treated with insolence as our own\nbetter-tempered servants do), and secondly, he was angry that so many\nvaluables should be removed from under his hands, to fall into other\npeople's possession when the English discomfiture should arrive.  Of\nthis defeat he and a vast number of other persons in Brussels and\nBelgium did not make the slightest doubt.  The almost universal belief\nwas, that the Emperor would divide the Prussian and English armies,\nannihilate one after the other, and march into Brussels before three\ndays were over: when all the movables of his present masters, who would\nbe killed, or fugitives, or prisoners, would lawfully become the\nproperty of Monsieur Isidor.\n\nAs he helped Jos through his toilsome and complicated daily toilette,\nthis faithful servant would calculate what he should do with the very\narticles with which he was decorating his master's person.  He would\nmake a present of the silver essence-bottles and toilet knicknacks to a\nyoung lady of whom he was fond; and keep the English cutlery and the\nlarge ruby pin for himself.  It would look very smart upon one of the\nfine frilled shirts, which, with the gold-laced cap and the frogged\nfrock coat, that might easily be cut down to suit his shape, and the\nCaptain's gold-headed cane, and the great double ring with the rubies,\nwhich he would have made into a pair of beautiful earrings, he\ncalculated would make a perfect Adonis of himself, and render\nMademoiselle Reine an easy prey.  \"How those sleeve-buttons will suit\nme!\" thought he, as he fixed a pair on the fat pudgy wrists of Mr.\nSedley.  \"I long for sleeve-buttons; and the Captain's boots with brass\nspurs, in the next room, corbleu! what an effect they will make in the\nAllee Verte!\" So while Monsieur Isidor with bodily fingers was holding\non to his master's nose, and shaving the lower part of Jos's face, his\nimagination was rambling along the Green Avenue, dressed out in a\nfrogged coat and lace, and in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he was\nloitering in spirit on the banks, and examining the barges sailing\nslowly under the cool shadows of the trees by the canal, or refreshing\nhimself with a mug of Faro at the bench of a beer-house on the road to\nLaeken.\n\nBut Mr. Joseph Sedley, luckily for his own peace, no more knew what was\npassing in his domestic's mind than the respected reader, and I suspect\nwhat John or Mary, whose wages we pay, think of ourselves. What our\nservants think of us!--Did we know what our intimates and dear\nrelations thought of us, we should live in a world that we should be\nglad to quit, and in a frame of mind and a constant terror, that would\nbe perfectly unbearable. So Jos's man was marking his victim down, as\nyou see one of Mr. Paynter's assistants in Leadenhall Street ornament\nan unconscious turtle with a placard on which is written, \"Soup\nto-morrow.\"\n\nAmelia's attendant was much less selfishly disposed. Few dependents\ncould come near that kind and gentle creature without paying their\nusual tribute of loyalty and affection to her sweet and affectionate\nnature.  And it is a fact that Pauline, the cook, consoled her mistress\nmore than anybody whom she saw on this wretched morning; for when she\nfound how Amelia remained for hours, silent, motionless, and haggard,\nby the windows in which she had placed herself to watch the last\nbayonets of the column as it marched away, the honest girl took the\nlady's hand, and said, Tenez, Madame, est-ce qu'il n'est pas aussi a\nl'armee, mon homme a moi?  with which she burst into tears, and Amelia\nfalling into her arms, did likewise, and so each pitied and soothed the\nother.\n\nSeveral times during the forenoon Mr. Jos's Isidor went from his\nlodgings into the town, and to the gates of the hotels and lodging-houses\nround about the Parc, where the English were congregated, and\nthere mingled with other valets, couriers, and lackeys, gathered such\nnews as was abroad, and brought back bulletins for his master's\ninformation.  Almost all these gentlemen were in heart partisans of the\nEmperor, and had their opinions about the speedy end of the campaign.\nThe Emperor's proclamation from Avesnes had been distributed everywhere\nplentifully in Brussels.  \"Soldiers!\"  it said, \"this is the\nanniversary of Marengo and Friedland, by which the destinies of Europe\nwere twice decided.  Then, as after Austerlitz, as after Wagram, we\nwere too generous.  We believed in the oaths and promises of princes\nwhom we suffered to remain upon their thrones.  Let us march once more\nto meet them.  We and they, are we not still the same men?  Soldiers!\nthese same Prussians who are so arrogant to-day, were three to one\nagainst you at Jena, and six to one at Montmirail.  Those among you who\nwere prisoners in England can tell their comrades what frightful\ntorments they suffered on board the English hulks.  Madmen!  a moment\nof prosperity has blinded them, and if they enter into France it will\nbe to find a grave there!\"  But the partisans of the French prophesied\na more speedy extermination of the Emperor's enemies than this; and it\nwas agreed on all hands that Prussians and British would never return\nexcept as prisoners in the rear of the conquering army.\n\nThese opinions in the course of the day were brought to operate upon\nMr. Sedley.  He was told that the Duke of Wellington had gone to try\nand rally his army, the advance of which had been utterly crushed the\nnight before.\n\n\"Crushed, psha!\" said Jos, whose heart was pretty stout at\nbreakfast-time.  \"The Duke has gone to beat the Emperor as he has\nbeaten all his generals before.\"\n\n\"His papers are burned, his effects are removed, and his quarters are\nbeing got ready for the Duke of Dalmatia,\" Jos's informant replied.  \"I\nhad it from his own maitre d'hotel.  Milor Duc de Richemont's people\nare packing up everything.  His Grace has fled already, and the Duchess\nis only waiting to see the plate packed to join the King of France at\nOstend.\"\n\n\"The King of France is at Ghent, fellow,\" replied Jos, affecting\nincredulity.\n\n\"He fled last night to Bruges, and embarks today from Ostend.  The Duc\nde Berri is taken prisoner.  Those who wish to be safe had better go\nsoon, for the dykes will be opened to-morrow, and who can fly when the\nwhole country is under water?\"\n\n\"Nonsense, sir, we are three to one, sir, against any force Boney can\nbring into the field,\" Mr. Sedley objected; \"the Austrians and the\nRussians are on their march.  He must, he shall be crushed,\" Jos said,\nslapping his hand on the table.\n\n\"The Prussians were three to one at Jena, and he took their army and\nkingdom in a week.  They were six to one at Montmirail, and he\nscattered them like sheep. The Austrian army is coming, but with the\nEmpress and the King of Rome at its head; and the Russians, bah! the\nRussians will withdraw.  No quarter is to be given to the English, on\naccount of their cruelty to our braves on board the infamous pontoons.\nLook here, here it is in black and white.  Here's the proclamation of\nhis Majesty the Emperor and King,\" said the now declared partisan of\nNapoleon, and taking the document from his pocket, Isidor sternly\nthrust it into his master's face, and already looked upon the frogged\ncoat and valuables as his own spoil.\n\nJos was, if not seriously alarmed as yet, at least considerably\ndisturbed in mind.  \"Give me my coat and cap, sir,\" said he, \"and follow\nme.  I will go myself and learn the truth of these reports.\" Isidor was\nfurious as Jos put on the braided frock.  \"Milor had better not wear\nthat military coat,\" said he; \"the Frenchmen have sworn not to give\nquarter to a single British soldier.\"\n\n\"Silence, sirrah!\" said Jos, with a resolute countenance still, and\nthrust his arm into the sleeve with indomitable resolution, in the\nperformance of which heroic act he was found by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,\nwho at this juncture came up to visit Amelia, and entered without\nringing at the antechamber door.\n\nRebecca was dressed very neatly and smartly, as usual: her quiet sleep\nafter Rawdon's departure had refreshed her, and her pink smiling cheeks\nwere quite pleasant to look at, in a town and on a day when everybody\nelse's countenance wore the appearance of the deepest anxiety and\ngloom.  She laughed at the attitude in which Jos was discovered, and\nthe struggles and convulsions with which the stout gentleman thrust\nhimself into the braided coat.\n\n\"Are you preparing to join the army, Mr. Joseph?\" she said.  \"Is there\nto be nobody left in Brussels to protect us poor women?\"  Jos succeeded\nin plunging into the coat, and came forward blushing and stuttering out\nexcuses to his fair visitor.  \"How was she after the events of the\nmorning--after the fatigues of the ball the night before?\"  Monsieur\nIsidor disappeared into his master's adjacent bedroom, bearing off the\nflowered dressing-gown.\n\n\"How good of you to ask,\" said she, pressing one of his hands in both\nher own.  \"How cool and collected you look when everybody else is\nfrightened!  How is our dear little Emmy?  It must have been an awful,\nawful parting.\"\n\n\"Tremendous,\" Jos said.\n\n\"You men can bear anything,\" replied the lady.  \"Parting or danger are\nnothing to you.  Own now that you were going to join the army and leave\nus to our fate. I know you were--something tells me you were.  I was so\nfrightened, when the thought came into my head (for I do sometimes\nthink of you when I am alone, Mr. Joseph), that I ran off immediately\nto beg and entreat you not to fly from us.\"\n\nThis speech might be interpreted, \"My dear sir, should an accident\nbefall the army, and a retreat be necessary, you have a very\ncomfortable carriage, in which I propose to take a seat.\" I don't know\nwhether Jos understood the words in this sense.  But he was profoundly\nmortified by the lady's inattention to him during their stay at\nBrussels.  He had never been presented to any of Rawdon Crawley's great\nacquaintances:  he had scarcely been invited to Rebecca's parties; for\nhe was too timid to play much, and his presence bored George and Rawdon\nequally, who neither of them, perhaps, liked to have a witness of the\namusements in which the pair chose to indulge.  \"Ah!\" thought Jos, \"now\nshe wants me she comes to me.  When there is nobody else in the way she\ncan think about old Joseph Sedley!\"  But besides these doubts he felt\nflattered at the idea Rebecca expressed of his courage.\n\nHe blushed a good deal, and put on an air of importance. \"I should like\nto see the action,\" he said.  \"Every man of any spirit would, you know.\nI've seen a little service in India, but nothing on this grand scale.\"\n\n\"You men would sacrifice anything for a pleasure,\" Rebecca answered.\n\"Captain Crawley left me this morning as gay as if he were going to a\nhunting party.  What does he care?  What do any of you care for the\nagonies and tortures of a poor forsaken woman?  (I wonder whether he\ncould really have been going to the troops, this great lazy gourmand?)\nOh!  dear Mr. Sedley, I have come to you for comfort--for consolation.\nI have been on my knees all the morning. I tremble at the frightful\ndanger into which our husbands, our friends, our brave troops and\nallies, are rushing.  And I come here for shelter, and find another of\nmy friends--the last remaining to me--bent upon plunging into the\ndreadful scene!\"\n\n\"My dear madam,\" Jos replied, now beginning to be quite soothed, \"don't\nbe alarmed.  I only said I should like to go--what Briton would not?\nBut my duty keeps me here:  I can't leave that poor creature in the\nnext room.\" And he pointed with his finger to the door of the chamber\nin which Amelia was.\n\n\"Good noble brother!\" Rebecca said, putting her handkerchief to her\neyes, and smelling the eau-de-cologne with which it was scented.  \"I\nhave done you injustice: you have got a heart.  I thought you had not.\"\n\n\"O, upon my honour!\" Jos said, making a motion as if he would lay his\nhand upon the spot in question.  \"You do me injustice, indeed you\ndo--my dear Mrs. Crawley.\"\n\n\"I do, now your heart is true to your sister.  But I remember two years\nago--when it was false to me!\" Rebecca said, fixing her eyes upon him\nfor an instant, and then turning away into the window.\n\nJos blushed violently.  That organ which he was accused by Rebecca of\nnot possessing began to thump tumultuously.  He recalled the days when\nhe had fled from her, and the passion which had once inflamed him--the\ndays when he had driven her in his curricle:  when she had knit the\ngreen purse for him:  when he had sate enraptured gazing at her white\narms and bright eyes.\n\n\"I know you think me ungrateful,\" Rebecca continued, coming out of the\nwindow, and once more looking at him and addressing him in a low\ntremulous voice.  \"Your coldness, your averted looks, your manner when\nwe have met of late--when I came in just now, all proved it to me.  But\nwere there no reasons why I should avoid you? Let your own heart answer\nthat question.  Do you think my husband was too much inclined to\nwelcome you? The only unkind words I have ever had from him (I will do\nCaptain Crawley that justice) have been about you--and most cruel,\ncruel words they were.\"\n\n\"Good gracious! what have I done?\" asked Jos in a flurry of pleasure\nand perplexity; \"what have I done--to--to--?\"\n\n\"Is jealousy nothing?\" said Rebecca.  \"He makes me miserable about you.\nAnd whatever it might have been once--my heart is all his.  I am\ninnocent now.  Am I not, Mr. Sedley?\"\n\nAll Jos's blood tingled with delight, as he surveyed this victim to his\nattractions.  A few adroit words, one or two knowing tender glances of\nthe eyes, and his heart was inflamed again and his doubts and\nsuspicions forgotten.  From Solomon downwards, have not wiser men than\nhe been cajoled and befooled by women?  \"If the worst comes to the\nworst,\" Becky thought, \"my retreat is secure; and I have a right-hand\nseat in the barouche.\"\n\nThere is no knowing into what declarations of love and ardour the\ntumultuous passions of Mr. Joseph might have led him, if Isidor the\nvalet had not made his reappearance at this minute, and begun to busy\nhimself about the domestic affairs.  Jos, who was just going to gasp\nout an avowal, choked almost with the emotion that he was obliged to\nrestrain.  Rebecca too bethought her that it was time she should go in\nand comfort her dearest Amelia.  \"Au revoir,\" she said, kissing her\nhand to Mr. Joseph, and tapped gently at the door of his sister's\napartment.  As she entered and closed the door on herself, he sank down\nin a chair, and gazed and sighed and puffed portentously.  \"That coat\nis very tight for Milor,\" Isidor said, still having his eye on the\nfrogs; but his master heard him not: his thoughts were elsewhere:  now\nglowing, maddening, upon the contemplation of the enchanting Rebecca:\nanon shrinking guiltily before the vision of the jealous Rawdon\nCrawley, with his curling, fierce mustachios, and his terrible duelling\npistols loaded and cocked.\n\nRebecca's appearance struck Amelia with terror, and made her shrink\nback.  It recalled her to the world and the remembrance of yesterday.\nIn the overpowering fears about to-morrow she had forgotten\nRebecca--jealousy--everything except that her husband was gone and was\nin danger.  Until this dauntless worldling came in and broke the spell,\nand lifted the latch, we too have forborne to enter into that sad\nchamber.  How long had that poor girl been on her knees!  what hours of\nspeechless prayer and bitter prostration had she passed there!  The\nwar-chroniclers who write brilliant stories of fight and triumph\nscarcely tell us of these.  These are too mean parts of the pageant:\nand you don't hear widows' cries or mothers' sobs in the midst of the\nshouts and jubilation in the great Chorus of Victory.  And yet when was\nthe time that such have not cried out: heart-broken, humble\nprotestants, unheard in the uproar of the triumph!\n\nAfter the first movement of terror in Amelia's mind--when Rebecca's\ngreen eyes lighted upon her, and rustling in her fresh silks and\nbrilliant ornaments, the latter tripped up with extended arms to\nembrace her--a feeling of anger succeeded, and from being deadly pale\nbefore, her face flushed up red, and she returned Rebecca's look after\na moment with a steadiness which surprised and somewhat abashed her\nrival.\n\n\"Dearest Amelia, you are very unwell,\" the visitor said, putting forth\nher hand to take Amelia's.  \"What is it? I could not rest until I knew\nhow you were.\"\n\nAmelia drew back her hand--never since her life began had that gentle\nsoul refused to believe or to answer any demonstration of good-will or\naffection.  But she drew back her hand, and trembled all over.  \"Why\nare you here, Rebecca?\" she said, still looking at her solemnly with\nher large eyes.  These glances troubled her visitor.\n\n\"She must have seen him give me the letter at the ball,\" Rebecca\nthought.  \"Don't be agitated, dear Amelia,\" she said, looking down. \"I\ncame but to see if I could--if you were well.\"\n\n\"Are you well?\" said Amelia.  \"I dare say you are. You don't love your\nhusband.  You would not be here if you did.  Tell me, Rebecca, did I\never do you anything but kindness?\"\n\n\"Indeed, Amelia, no,\" the other said, still hanging down her head.\n\n\"When you were quite poor, who was it that befriended you?  Was I not a\nsister to you?  You saw us all in happier days before he married me.  I\nwas all in all then to him; or would he have given up his fortune, his\nfamily, as he nobly did to make me happy?  Why did you come between my\nlove and me?  Who sent you to separate those whom God joined, and take\nmy darling's heart from me--my own husband? Do you think you could\nlove him as I did?  His love was everything to me. You knew it, and\nwanted to rob me of it.  For shame, Rebecca; bad and wicked\nwoman--false friend and false wife.\"\n\n\"Amelia, I protest before God, I have done my husband no wrong,\"\nRebecca said, turning from her.\n\n\"Have you done me no wrong, Rebecca?  You did not succeed, but you\ntried.  Ask your heart if you did not.\"\n\nShe knows nothing, Rebecca thought.\n\n\"He came back to me.  I knew he would.  I knew that no falsehood, no\nflattery, could keep him from me long. I knew he would come.  I prayed\nso that he should.\"\n\nThe poor girl spoke these words with a spirit and volubility which\nRebecca had never before seen in her, and before which the latter was\nquite dumb.  \"But what have I done to you,\" she continued in a more\npitiful tone, \"that you should try and take him from me?  I had him but\nfor six weeks.  You might have spared me those, Rebecca. And yet, from\nthe very first day of our wedding, you came and blighted it.  Now he is\ngone, are you come to see how unhappy I am?\" she continued.  \"You made\nme wretched enough for the past fortnight: you might have spared me\nto-day.\"\n\n\"I--I never came here,\" interposed Rebecca, with unlucky truth.\n\n\"No.  You didn't come.  You took him away.  Are you come to fetch him\nfrom me?\" she continued in a wilder tone.  \"He was here, but he is gone\nnow.  There on that very sofa he sate.  Don't touch it.  We sate and\ntalked there.  I was on his knee, and my arms were round his neck, and\nwe said 'Our Father.' Yes, he was here:  and they came and took him\naway, but he promised me to come back.\"\n\n\"He will come back, my dear,\" said Rebecca, touched in spite of herself.\n\n\"Look,\" said Amelia, \"this is his sash--isn't it a pretty colour?\" and\nshe took up the fringe and kissed it.  She had tied it round her waist\nat some part of the day.  She had forgotten her anger, her jealousy,\nthe very presence of her rival seemingly.  For she walked silently and\nalmost with a smile on her face, towards the bed, and began to smooth\ndown George's pillow.\n\nRebecca walked, too, silently away.  \"How is Amelia?\" asked Jos, who\nstill held his position in the chair.\n\n\"There should be somebody with her,\" said Rebecca. \"I think she is very\nunwell\":  and she went away with a very grave face, refusing Mr.\nSedley's entreaties that she would stay and partake of the early dinner\nwhich he had ordered.\n\nRebecca was of a good-natured and obliging disposition; and she liked\nAmelia rather than otherwise.  Even her hard words, reproachful as they\nwere, were complimentary--the groans of a person stinging under defeat.\nMeeting Mrs. O'Dowd, whom the Dean's sermons had by no means comforted,\nand who was walking very disconsolately in the Parc, Rebecca accosted\nthe latter, rather to the surprise of the Major's wife, who was not\naccustomed to such marks of politeness from Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, and\ninforming her that poor little Mrs. Osborne was in a desperate\ncondition, and almost mad with grief, sent off the good-natured\nIrishwoman straight to see if she could console her young favourite.\n\n\"I've cares of my own enough,\" Mrs. O'Dowd said, gravely, \"and I\nthought poor Amelia would be little wanting for company this day. But\nif she's so bad as you say, and you can't attend to her, who used to be\nso fond of her, faith I'll see if I can be of service. And so good\nmarning to ye, Madam\"; with which speech and a toss of her head, the\nlady of the repayther took a farewell of Mrs. Crawley, whose company\nshe by no means courted.\n\nBecky watched her marching off, with a smile on her lip.  She had the\nkeenest sense of humour, and the Parthian look which the retreating\nMrs. O'Dowd flung over her shoulder almost upset Mrs. Crawley's\ngravity. \"My service to ye, me fine Madam, and I'm glad to see ye so\ncheerful,\" thought Peggy.  \"It's not YOU that will cry your eyes out\nwith grief, anyway.\" And with this she passed on, and speedily found\nher way to Mrs. Osborne's lodgings.\n\nThe poor soul was still at the bedside, where Rebecca had left her, and\nstood almost crazy with grief.  The Major's wife, a stronger-minded\nwoman, endeavoured her best to comfort her young friend. \"You must bear\nup, Amelia, dear,\" she said kindly, \"for he mustn't find you ill when\nhe sends for you after the victory.  It's not you are the only woman\nthat are in the hands of God this day.\"\n\n\"I know that.  I am very wicked, very weak,\" Amelia said.  She knew her\nown weakness well enough.  The presence of the more resolute friend\nchecked it, however; and she was the better of this control and\ncompany.  They went on till two o'clock; their hearts were with the\ncolumn as it marched farther and farther away.  Dreadful doubt and\nanguish--prayers and fears and griefs unspeakable--followed the\nregiment.  It was the women's tribute to the war.  It taxes both alike,\nand takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women.\n\nAt half-past two, an event occurred of daily importance to Mr. Joseph:\nthe dinner-hour arrived.  Warriors may fight and perish, but he must\ndine.  He came into Amelia's room to see if he could coax her to share\nthat meal.  \"Try,\" said he; \"the soup is very good.  Do try, Emmy,\" and\nhe kissed her hand.  Except when she was married, he had not done so\nmuch for years before.  \"You are very good and kind, Joseph,\" she said.\n\"Everybody is, but, if you please, I will stay in my room to-day.\"\n\nThe savour of the soup, however, was agreeable to Mrs. O'Dowd's\nnostrils: and she thought she would bear Mr. Jos company.  So the two\nsate down to their meal. \"God bless the meat,\" said the Major's wife,\nsolemnly: she was thinking of her honest Mick, riding at the head of\nhis regiment:  \"'Tis but a bad dinner those poor boys will get to-day,\"\nshe said, with a sigh, and then, like a philosopher, fell to.\n\nJos's spirits rose with his meal.  He would drink the regiment's\nhealth; or, indeed, take any other excuse to indulge in a glass of\nchampagne.  \"We'll drink to O'Dowd and the brave --th,\" said he, bowing\ngallantly to his guest.  \"Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd?  Fill Mrs. O'Dowd's glass,\nIsidor.\"\n\nBut all of a sudden, Isidor started, and the Major's wife laid down her\nknife and fork.  The windows of the room were open, and looked\nsouthward, and a dull distant sound came over the sun-lighted roofs\nfrom that direction.  \"What is it?\" said Jos.  \"Why don't you pour, you\nrascal?\"\n\n\"Cest le feu!\" said Isidor, running to the balcony.\n\n\"God defend us; it's cannon!\" Mrs. O'Dowd cried, starting up, and\nfollowed too to the window.  A thousand pale and anxious faces might\nhave been seen looking from other casements.  And presently it seemed\nas if the whole population of the city rushed into the streets.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXII\n\nIn Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close\n\nWe of peaceful London City have never beheld--and please God never\nshall witness--such a scene of hurry and alarm, as that which Brussels\npresented.  Crowds rushed to the Namur gate, from which direction the\nnoise proceeded, and many rode along the level chaussee, to be in\nadvance of any intelligence from the army.  Each man asked his\nneighbour for news; and even great English lords and ladies\ncondescended to speak to persons whom they did not know.  The friends\nof the French went abroad, wild with excitement, and prophesying the\ntriumph of their Emperor.  The merchants closed their shops, and came\nout to swell the general chorus of alarm and clamour.  Women rushed to\nthe churches, and crowded the chapels, and knelt and prayed on the\nflags and steps.  The dull sound of the cannon went on rolling,\nrolling.  Presently carriages with travellers began to leave the town,\ngalloping away by the Ghent barrier.  The prophecies of the French\npartisans began to pass for facts.  \"He has cut the armies in two,\" it\nwas said.  \"He is marching straight on Brussels.  He will overpower the\nEnglish, and be here to-night.\" \"He will overpower the English,\"\nshrieked Isidor to his master, \"and will be here to-night.\" The man\nbounded in and out from the lodgings to the street, always returning\nwith some fresh particulars of disaster.  Jos's face grew paler and\npaler. Alarm began to take entire possession of the stout civilian.\nAll the champagne he drank brought no courage to him.  Before sunset he\nwas worked up to such a pitch of nervousness as gratified his friend\nIsidor to behold, who now counted surely upon the spoils of the owner\nof the laced coat.\n\nThe women were away all this time.  After hearing the firing for a\nmoment, the stout Major's wife bethought her of her friend in the next\nchamber, and ran in to watch, and if possible to console, Amelia.  The\nidea that she had that helpless and gentle creature to protect, gave\nadditional strength to the natural courage of the honest Irishwoman.\nShe passed five hours by her friend's side, sometimes in remonstrance,\nsometimes talking cheerfully, oftener in silence and terrified mental\nsupplication.  \"I never let go her hand once,\" said the stout lady\nafterwards, \"until after sunset, when the firing was over.\" Pauline,\nthe bonne, was on her knees at church hard by, praying for son homme a\nelle.\n\nWhen the noise of the cannonading was over, Mrs. O'Dowd issued out of\nAmelia's room into the parlour adjoining, where Jos sate with two\nemptied flasks, and courage entirely gone.  Once or twice he had\nventured into his sister's bedroom, looking very much alarmed, and as\nif he would say something.  But the Major's wife kept her place, and he\nwent away without disburthening himself of his speech.  He was ashamed\nto tell her that he wanted to fly.\n\nBut when she made her appearance in the dining-room, where he sate in\nthe twilight in the cheerless company of his empty champagne bottles,\nhe began to open his mind to her.\n\n\"Mrs. O'Dowd,\" he said, \"hadn't you better get Amelia ready?\"\n\n\"Are you going to take her out for a walk?\" said the Major's lady;\n\"sure she's too weak to stir.\"\n\n\"I--I've ordered the carriage,\" he said, \"and--and post-horses; Isidor\nis gone for them,\" Jos continued.\n\n\"What do you want with driving to-night?\" answered the lady.  \"Isn't\nshe better on her bed?  I've just got her to lie down.\"\n\n\"Get her up,\" said Jos; \"she must get up, I say\":  and he stamped his\nfoot energetically.  \"I say the horses are ordered--yes, the horses are\nordered.  It's all over, and--\"\n\n\"And what?\" asked Mrs. O'Dowd.\n\n\"I'm off for Ghent,\" Jos answered.  \"Everybody is going; there's a\nplace for you!  We shall start in half-an-hour.\"\n\nThe Major's wife looked at him with infinite scorn.  \"I don't move till\nO'Dowd gives me the route,\" said she. \"You may go if you like, Mr.\nSedley; but, faith, Amelia and I stop here.\"\n\n\"She SHALL go,\" said Jos, with another stamp of his foot.  Mrs. O'Dowd\nput herself with arms akimbo before the bedroom door.\n\n\"Is it her mother you're going to take her to?\" she said; \"or do you\nwant to go to Mamma yourself, Mr. Sedley?  Good marning--a pleasant\njourney to ye, sir. Bon voyage, as they say, and take my counsel, and\nshave off them mustachios, or they'll bring you into mischief.\"\n\n\"D--n!\" yelled out Jos, wild with fear, rage, and mortification; and\nIsidor came in at this juncture, swearing in his turn.  \"Pas de\nchevaux, sacre bleu!\" hissed out the furious domestic.  All the horses\nwere gone.  Jos was not the only man in Brussels seized with panic that\nday.\n\nBut Jos's fears, great and cruel as they were already, were destined to\nincrease to an almost frantic pitch before the night was over. It has\nbeen mentioned how Pauline, the bonne, had son homme a elle also in the\nranks of the army that had gone out to meet the Emperor Napoleon.  This\nlover was a native of Brussels, and a Belgian hussar.  The troops of\nhis nation signalised themselves in this war for anything but courage,\nand young Van Cutsum, Pauline's admirer, was too good a soldier to\ndisobey his Colonel's orders to run away. Whilst in garrison at\nBrussels young Regulus (he had been born in the revolutionary times)\nfound his great comfort, and passed almost all his leisure moments, in\nPauline's kitchen; and it was with pockets and holsters crammed full of\ngood things from her larder, that he had take leave of his weeping\nsweetheart, to proceed upon the campaign a few days before.\n\nAs far as his regiment was concerned, this campaign was over now. They\nhad formed a part of the division under the command of his Sovereign\napparent, the Prince of Orange, and as respected length of swords and\nmustachios, and the richness of uniform and equipments, Regulus and his\ncomrades looked to be as gallant a body of men as ever trumpet sounded\nfor.\n\nWhen Ney dashed upon the advance of the allied troops, carrying one\nposition after the other, until the arrival of the great body of the\nBritish army from Brussels changed the aspect of the combat of Quatre\nBras, the squadrons among which Regulus rode showed the greatest\nactivity in retreating before the French, and were dislodged from one\npost and another which they occupied with perfect alacrity on their\npart.  Their movements were only checked by the advance of the British\nin their rear.  Thus forced to halt, the enemy's cavalry (whose\nbloodthirsty obstinacy cannot be too severely reprehended) had at\nlength an opportunity of coming to close quarters with the brave\nBelgians before them; who preferred to encounter the British rather\nthan the French, and at once turning tail rode through the English\nregiments that were behind them, and scattered in all directions.  The\nregiment in fact did not exist any more.  It was nowhere.  It had no\nhead-quarters.  Regulus found himself galloping many miles from the\nfield of action, entirely alone; and whither should he fly for refuge\nso naturally as to that kitchen and those faithful arms in which\nPauline had so often welcomed him?\n\nAt some ten o'clock the clinking of a sabre might have been heard up\nthe stair of the house where the Osbornes occupied a story in the\ncontinental fashion.  A knock might have been heard at the kitchen\ndoor; and poor Pauline, come back from church, fainted almost with\nterror as she opened it and saw before her her haggard hussar.  He\nlooked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora.\nPauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called her\nmasters, and discovered her friend.  She stifled her scream, then, and\nleading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice bits\nfrom the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste.  The hussar\nshowed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh and beer\nwhich he devoured--and during the mouthfuls he told his tale of\ndisaster.\n\nHis regiment had performed prodigies of courage, and had withstood for\na while the onset of the whole French army.  But they were overwhelmed\nat last, as was the whole British army by this time. Ney destroyed each\nregiment as it came up.  The Belgians in vain interposed to prevent the\nbutchery of the English.  The Brunswickers were routed and had\nfled--their Duke was killed.  It was a general debacle.  He sought to\ndrown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of beer.\n\nIsidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation and\nrushed out to inform his master.  \"It is all over,\" he shrieked to Jos.\n\"Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed; the British\narmy is in full flight; there is only one man escaped, and he is in the\nkitchen now--come and hear him.\" So Jos tottered into that apartment\nwhere Regulus still sate on the kitchen table, and clung fast to his\nflagon of beer.  In the best French which he could muster, and which\nwas in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hussar to\ntell his tale.  The disasters deepened as Regulus spoke.  He was the\nonly man of his regiment not slain on the field. He had seen the Duke\nof Brunswick fall, the black hussars fly, the Ecossais pounded down by\nthe cannon. \"And the --th?\" gasped Jos.\n\n\"Cut in pieces,\" said the hussar--upon which Pauline cried out, \"O my\nmistress, ma bonne petite dame,\" went off fairly into hysterics, and\nfilled the house with her screams.\n\nWild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for safety.\nHe rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and cast an\nappealing look at Amelia's door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had closed and\nlocked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the latter had\nreceived him, and after pausing and listening for a brief space at the\ndoor, he left it, and resolved to go into the street, for the first\ntime that day.  So, seizing a candle, he looked about for his\ngold-laced cap, and found it lying in its usual place, on a\nconsole-table, in the anteroom, placed before a mirror at which Jos\nused to coquet, always giving his side-locks a twirl, and his cap the\nproper cock over his eye, before he went forth to make appearance in\npublic.  Such is the force of habit, that even in the midst of his\nterror he began mechanically to twiddle with his hair, and arrange the\ncock of his hat.  Then he looked amazed at the pale face in the glass\nbefore him, and especially at his mustachios, which had attained a rich\ngrowth in the course of near seven weeks, since they had come into the\nworld.  They WILL mistake me for a military man, thought he,\nremembering Isidor's warning as to the massacre with which all the\ndefeated British army was threatened; and staggering back to his\nbedchamber, he began wildly pulling the bell which summoned his valet.\n\nIsidor answered that summons.  Jos had sunk in a chair--he had torn off\nhis neckcloths, and turned down his collars, and was sitting with both\nhis hands lifted to his throat.\n\n\"Coupez-moi, Isidor,\" shouted he; \"vite!  Coupez-moi!\"\n\nIsidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished his\nvalet to cut his throat.\n\n\"Les moustaches,\" gasped Joe; \"les moustaches--coupy, rasy, vite!\"--his\nFrench was of this sort--voluble, as we have said, but not\nremarkable for grammar.\n\nIsidor swept off the mustachios in no time with the razor, and heard\nwith inexpressible delight his master's orders that he should fetch a\nhat and a plain coat.  \"Ne porty ploo--habit militair--bonn--bonny a\nvoo, prenny dehors\"--were Jos's words--the coat and cap were at last\nhis property.\n\nThis gift being made, Jos selected a plain black coat and waistcoat\nfrom his stock, and put on a large white neckcloth, and a plain beaver.\nIf he could have got a shovel hat he would have worn it. As it was, you\nwould have fancied he was a flourishing, large parson of the Church of\nEngland.\n\n\"Venny maintenong,\" he continued, \"sweevy--ally--party--dong la roo.\"\nAnd so having said, he plunged swiftly down the stairs of the house,\nand passed into the street.\n\nAlthough Regulus had vowed that he was the only man of his regiment or\nof the allied army, almost, who had escaped being cut to pieces by Ney,\nit appeared that his statement was incorrect, and that a good number\nmore of the supposed victims had survived the massacre. Many scores of\nRegulus's comrades had found their way back to Brussels, and all\nagreeing that they had run away--filled the whole town with an idea of\nthe defeat of the allies.  The arrival of the French was expected\nhourly; the panic continued, and preparations for flight went on\neverywhere.  No horses!  thought Jos, in terror. He made Isidor inquire\nof scores of persons, whether they had any to lend or sell, and his\nheart sank within him, at the negative answers returned everywhere.\nShould he take the journey on foot?  Even fear could not render that\nponderous body so active.\n\nAlmost all the hotels occupied by the English in Brussels face the\nParc, and Jos wandered irresolutely about in this quarter, with crowds\nof other people, oppressed as he was by fear and curiosity. Some\nfamilies he saw more happy than himself, having discovered a team of\nhorses, and rattling through the streets in retreat; others again there\nwere whose case was like his own, and who could not for any bribes or\nentreaties procure the necessary means of flight. Amongst these\nwould-be fugitives, Jos remarked the Lady Bareacres and her daughter,\nwho sate in their carriage in the porte-cochere of their hotel, all\ntheir imperials packed, and the only drawback to whose flight was the\nsame want of motive power which kept Jos stationary.\n\nRebecca Crawley occupied apartments in this hotel; and had before this\nperiod had sundry hostile meetings with the ladies of the Bareacres\nfamily.  My Lady Bareacres cut Mrs. Crawley on the stairs when they met\nby chance; and in all places where the latter's name was mentioned,\nspoke perseveringly ill of her neighbour.  The Countess was shocked at\nthe familiarity of General Tufto with the aide-de-camp's wife.  The\nLady Blanche avoided her as if she had been an infectious disease.\nOnly the Earl himself kept up a sly occasional acquaintance with her,\nwhen out of the jurisdiction of his ladies.\n\nRebecca had her revenge now upon these insolent enemies.  If became\nknown in the hotel that Captain Crawley's horses had been left behind,\nand when the panic began, Lady Bareacres condescended to send her maid\nto the Captain's wife with her Ladyship's compliments, and a desire to\nknow the price of Mrs. Crawley's horses.  Mrs. Crawley returned a note\nwith her compliments, and an intimation that it was not her custom to\ntransact bargains with ladies' maids.\n\nThis curt reply brought the Earl in person to Becky's apartment; but he\ncould get no more success than the first ambassador.  \"Send a lady's\nmaid to ME!\" Mrs. Crawley cried in great anger; \"why didn't my Lady\nBareacres tell me to go and saddle the horses!  Is it her Ladyship that\nwants to escape, or her Ladyship's femme de chambre?\" And this was all\nthe answer that the Earl bore back to his Countess.\n\nWhat will not necessity do?  The Countess herself actually came to wait\nupon Mrs. Crawley on the failure of her second envoy.  She entreated\nher to name her own price; she even offered to invite Becky to\nBareacres House, if the latter would but give her the means of\nreturning to that residence.  Mrs. Crawley sneered at her.\n\n\"I don't want to be waited on by bailiffs in livery,\" she said; \"you\nwill never get back though most probably--at least not you and your\ndiamonds together.  The French will have those. They will be here in two\nhours, and I shall be half way to Ghent by that time.  I would not sell\nyou my horses, no, not for the two largest diamonds that your Ladyship\nwore at the ball.\"  Lady Bareacres trembled with rage and terror.  The\ndiamonds were sewed into her habit, and secreted in my Lord's padding\nand boots. \"Woman, the diamonds are at the banker's, and I WILL have\nthe horses,\" she said.  Rebecca laughed in her face. The infuriate\nCountess went below, and sate in her carriage; her maid, her courier,\nand her husband were sent once more through the town, each to look for\ncattle; and woe betide those who came last!  Her Ladyship was resolved\non departing the very instant the horses arrived from any quarter--with\nher husband or without him.\n\nRebecca had the pleasure of seeing her Ladyship in the horseless\ncarriage, and keeping her eyes fixed upon her, and bewailing, in the\nloudest tone of voice, the Countess's perplexities.  \"Not to be able to\nget horses!\" she said, \"and to have all those diamonds sewed into the\ncarriage cushions!  What a prize it will be for the French when they\ncome!--the carriage and the diamonds, I mean; not the lady!\" She gave\nthis information to the landlord, to the servants, to the guests, and\nthe innumerable stragglers about the courtyard.  Lady Bareacres could\nhave shot her from the carriage window.\n\nIt was while enjoying the humiliation of her enemy that Rebecca caught\nsight of Jos, who made towards her directly he perceived her.\n\nThat altered, frightened, fat face, told his secret well enough.  He\ntoo wanted to fly, and was on the look-out for the means of escape. \"HE\nshall buy my horses,\" thought Rebecca, \"and I'll ride the mare.\"\n\nJos walked up to his friend, and put the question for the hundredth\ntime during the past hour, \"Did she know where horses were to be had?\"\n\n\"What, YOU fly?\" said Rebecca, with a laugh.  \"I thought you were the\nchampion of all the ladies, Mr. Sedley.\"\n\n\"I--I'm not a military man,\" gasped he.\n\n\"And Amelia?--Who is to protect that poor little sister of yours?\"\nasked Rebecca.  \"You surely would not desert her?\"\n\n\"What good can I do her, suppose--suppose the enemy arrive?\" Jos\nanswered.  \"They'll spare the women; but my man tells me that they have\ntaken an oath to give no quarter to the men--the dastardly cowards.\"\n\n\"Horrid!\" cried Rebecca, enjoying his perplexity.\n\n\"Besides, I don't want to desert her,\" cried the brother. \"She SHAN'T\nbe deserted.  There is a seat for her in my carriage, and one for you,\ndear Mrs. Crawley, if you will come; and if we can get horses--\" sighed\nhe--\n\n\"I have two to sell,\" the lady said.  Jos could have flung himself into\nher arms at the news.  \"Get the carriage, Isidor,\" he cried; \"we've\nfound them--we have found them.\"\n\n\"My horses never were in harness,\" added the lady. \"Bullfinch would kick\nthe carriage to pieces, if you put him in the traces.\"\n\n\"But he is quiet to ride?\" asked the civilian.\n\n\"As quiet as a lamb, and as fast as a hare,\" answered Rebecca.\n\n\"Do you think he is up to my weight?\" Jos said.  He was already on his\nback, in imagination, without ever so much as a thought for poor\nAmelia.  What person who loved a horse-speculation could resist such a\ntemptation?\n\nIn reply, Rebecca asked him to come into her room, whither he followed\nher quite breathless to conclude the bargain.  Jos seldom spent a\nhalf-hour in his life which cost him so much money. Rebecca, measuring\nthe value of the goods which she had for sale by Jos's eagerness to\npurchase, as well as by the scarcity of the article, put upon her\nhorses a price so prodigious as to make even the civilian draw back.\n\"She would sell both or neither,\" she said, resolutely.  Rawdon had\nordered her not to part with them for a price less than that which she\nspecified. Lord Bareacres below would give her the same money--and with\nall her love and regard for the Sedley family, her dear Mr. Joseph must\nconceive that poor people must live--nobody, in a word, could be more\naffectionate, but more firm about the matter of business.\n\nJos ended by agreeing, as might be supposed of him. The sum he had to\ngive her was so large that he was obliged to ask for time; so large as\nto be a little fortune to Rebecca, who rapidly calculated that with\nthis sum, and the sale of the residue of Rawdon's effects, and her\npension as a widow should he fall, she would now be absolutely\nindependent of the world, and might look her weeds steadily in the face.\n\nOnce or twice in the day she certainly had herself thought about\nflying.  But her reason gave her better counsel.  \"Suppose the French\ndo come,\" thought Becky, \"what can they do to a poor officer's widow?\nBah!  the times of sacks and sieges are over.  We shall be let to go\nhome quietly, or I may live pleasantly abroad with a snug little\nincome.\"\n\nMeanwhile Jos and Isidor went off to the stables to inspect the newly\npurchased cattle.  Jos bade his man saddle the horses at once. He would\nride away that very night, that very hour.  And he left the valet busy\nin getting the horses ready, and went homewards himself to prepare for\nhis departure.  It must be secret.  He would go to his chamber by the\nback entrance.  He did not care to face Mrs. O'Dowd and Amelia, and own\nto them that he was about to run.\n\nBy the time Jos's bargain with Rebecca was completed, and his horses\nhad been visited and examined, it was almost morning once more.  But\nthough midnight was long passed, there was no rest for the city; the\npeople were up, the lights in the houses flamed, crowds were still\nabout the doors, and the streets were busy.  Rumours of various natures\nwent still from mouth to mouth:  one report averred that the Prussians\nhad been utterly defeated; another that it was the English who had been\nattacked and conquered:  a third that the latter had held their ground.\nThis last rumour gradually got strength.  No Frenchmen had made their\nappearance.  Stragglers had come in from the army bringing reports more\nand more favourable:  at last an aide-de-camp actually reached Brussels\nwith despatches for the Commandant of the place, who placarded\npresently through the town an official announcement of the success of\nthe allies at Quatre Bras, and the entire repulse of the French under\nNey after a six hours' battle.  The aide-de-camp must have arrived\nsometime while Jos and Rebecca were making their bargain together, or\nthe latter was inspecting his purchase.  When he reached his own hotel,\nhe found a score of its numerous inhabitants on the threshold\ndiscoursing of the news; there was no doubt as to its truth.  And he\nwent up to communicate it to the ladies under his charge. He did not\nthink it was necessary to tell them how he had intended to take leave\nof them, how he had bought horses, and what a price he had paid for\nthem.\n\nBut success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had only thought\nfor the safety of those they loved. Amelia, at the news of the victory,\nbecame still more agitated even than before.  She was for going that\nmoment to the army.  She besought her brother with tears to conduct her\nthither.  Her doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poor\ngirl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved and ran\nhither and thither in hysteric insanity--a piteous sight.  No man\nwrithing in pain on the hard-fought field fifteen miles off, where lay,\nafter their struggles, so many of the brave--no man suffered more\nkeenly than this poor harmless victim of the war.  Jos could not bear\nthe sight of her pain.  He left his sister in the charge of her stouter\nfemale companion, and descended once more to the threshold of the\nhotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked, and waited for more\nnews.\n\nIt grew to be broad daylight as they stood here, and fresh news began\nto arrive from the war, brought by men who had been actors in the\nscene.  Wagons and long country carts laden with wounded came rolling\ninto the town; ghastly groans came from within them, and haggard faces\nlooked up sadly from out of the straw.  Jos Sedley was looking at one\nof these carriages with a painful curiosity--the moans of the people\nwithin were frightful--the wearied horses could hardly pull the cart.\n\"Stop!  stop!\" a feeble voice cried from the straw, and the carriage\nstopped opposite Mr. Sedley's hotel.\n\n\"It is George, I know it is!\" cried Amelia, rushing in a moment to the\nbalcony, with a pallid face and loose flowing hair.  It was not George,\nhowever, but it was the next best thing:  it was news of him.\n\nIt was poor Tom Stubble, who had marched out of Brussels so gallantly\ntwenty-four hours before, bearing the colours of the regiment, which he\nhad defended very gallantly upon the field.  A French lancer had\nspeared the young ensign in the leg, who fell, still bravely holding to\nhis flag.  At the conclusion of the engagement, a place had been found\nfor the poor boy in a cart, and he had been brought back to Brussels.\n\n\"Mr. Sedley, Mr. Sedley!\" cried the boy, faintly, and Jos came up\nalmost frightened at the appeal.  He had not at first distinguished who\nit was that called him.\n\nLittle Tom Stubble held out his hot and feeble hand. \"I'm to be taken\nin here,\" he said.  \"Osborne--and--and Dobbin said I was; and you are\nto give the man two napoleons: my mother will pay you.\" This young\nfellow's thoughts, during the long feverish hours passed in the cart,\nhad been wandering to his father's parsonage which he had quitted only\na few months before, and he had sometimes forgotten his pain in that\ndelirium.\n\nThe hotel was large, and the people kind, and all the inmates of the\ncart were taken in and placed on various couches.  The young ensign was\nconveyed upstairs to Osborne's quarters.  Amelia and the Major's wife\nhad rushed down to him, when the latter had recognised him from the\nbalcony.  You may fancy the feelings of these women when they were told\nthat the day was over, and both their husbands were safe; in what mute\nrapture Amelia fell on her good friend's neck, and embraced her; in\nwhat a grateful passion of prayer she fell on her knees, and thanked\nthe Power which had saved her husband.\n\nOur young lady, in her fevered and nervous condition, could have had no\nmore salutary medicine prescribed for her by any physician than that\nwhich chance put in her way.  She and Mrs. O'Dowd watched incessantly\nby the wounded lad, whose pains were very severe, and in the duty thus\nforced upon her, Amelia had not time to brood over her personal\nanxieties, or to give herself up to her own fears and forebodings after\nher wont.  The young patient told in his simple fashion the events of\nthe day, and the actions of our friends of the gallant --th.  They had\nsuffered severely.  They had lost very many officers and men.  The\nMajor's horse had been shot under him as the regiment charged, and they\nall thought that O'Dowd was gone, and that Dobbin had got his majority,\nuntil on their return from the charge to their old ground, the Major\nwas discovered seated on Pyramus's carcase, refreshing him-self from a\ncase-bottle.  It was Captain Osborne that cut down the French lancer\nwho had speared the ensign. Amelia turned so pale at the notion, that\nMrs. O'Dowd stopped the young ensign in this story.  And it was Captain\nDobbin who at the end of the day, though wounded himself, took up the\nlad in his arms and carried him to the surgeon, and thence to the cart\nwhich was to bring him back to Brussels.  And it was he who promised\nthe driver two louis if he would make his way to Mr. Sedley's hotel in\nthe city; and tell Mrs. Captain Osborne that the action was over, and\nthat her husband was unhurt and well.\n\n\"Indeed, but he has a good heart that William Dobbin,\" Mrs. O'Dowd\nsaid, \"though he is always laughing at me.\"\n\nYoung Stubble vowed there was not such another officer in the army, and\nnever ceased his praises of the senior captain, his modesty, his\nkindness, and his admirable coolness in the field.  To these parts of\nthe conversation, Amelia lent a very distracted attention:  it was only\nwhen George was spoken of that she listened, and when he was not\nmentioned, she thought about him.\n\nIn tending her patient, and in thinking of the wonderful escapes of the\nday before, her second day passed away not too slowly with Amelia.\nThere was only one man in the army for her:  and as long as he was\nwell, it must be owned that its movements interested her little. All\nthe reports which Jos brought from the streets fell very vaguely on her\nears; though they were sufficient to give that timorous gentleman, and\nmany other people then in Brussels, every disquiet.  The French had\nbeen repulsed certainly, but it was after a severe and doubtful\nstruggle, and with only a division of the French army. The Emperor,\nwith the main body, was away at Ligny, where he had utterly annihilated\nthe Prussians, and was now free to bring his whole force to bear upon\nthe allies. The Duke of Wellington was retreating upon the capital, and\na great battle must be fought under its walls probably, of which the\nchances were more than doubtful. The Duke of Wellington had but twenty\nthousand British troops on whom he could rely, for the Germans were raw\nmilitia, the Belgians disaffected, and with this handful his Grace had\nto resist a hundred and fifty thousand men that had broken into Belgium\nunder Napoleon.  Under Napoleon!  What warrior was there, however\nfamous and skilful, that could fight at odds with him?\n\nJos thought of all these things, and trembled.  So did all the rest of\nBrussels--where people felt that the fight of the day before was but\nthe prelude to the greater combat which was imminent.  One of the\narmies opposed to the Emperor was scattered to the winds already.  The\nfew English that could be brought to resist him would perish at their\nposts, and the conqueror would pass over their bodies into the city.\nWoe be to those whom he found there! Addresses were prepared, public\nfunctionaries assembled and debated secretly, apartments were got\nready, and tricoloured banners and triumphal emblems manufactured, to\nwelcome the arrival of His Majesty the Emperor and King.\n\nThe emigration still continued, and wherever families could find means\nof departure, they fled.  When Jos, on the afternoon of the 17th of\nJune, went to Rebecca's hotel, he found that the great Bareacres'\ncarriage had at length rolled away from the porte-cochere.  The Earl\nhad procured a pair of horses somehow, in spite of Mrs. Crawley, and\nwas rolling on the road to Ghent.  Louis the Desired was getting ready\nhis portmanteau in that city, too.  It seemed as if Misfortune was\nnever tired of worrying into motion that unwieldy exile.\n\nJos felt that the delay of yesterday had been only a respite, and that\nhis dearly bought horses must of a surety be put into requisition.  His\nagonies were very severe all this day.  As long as there was an English\narmy between Brussels and Napoleon, there was no need of immediate\nflight; but he had his horses brought from their distant stables, to\nthe stables in the court-yard of the hotel where he lived; so that they\nmight be under his own eyes, and beyond the risk of violent abduction.\nIsidor watched the stable-door constantly, and had the horses saddled,\nto be ready for the start. He longed intensely for that event.\n\nAfter the reception of the previous day, Rebecca did not care to come\nnear her dear Amelia.  She clipped the bouquet which George had brought\nher, and gave fresh water to the flowers, and read over the letter\nwhich he had sent her.  \"Poor wretch,\" she said, twirling round the\nlittle bit of paper in her fingers, \"how I could crush her with\nthis!--and it is for a thing like this that she must break her heart,\nforsooth--for a man who is stupid--a coxcomb--and who does not care for\nher.  My poor good Rawdon is worth ten of this creature.\" And then she\nfell to thinking what she should do if--if anything happened to poor\ngood Rawdon, and what a great piece of luck it was that he had left his\nhorses behind.\n\nIn the course of this day too, Mrs. Crawley, who saw not without anger\nthe Bareacres party drive off, bethought her of the precaution which\nthe Countess had taken, and did a little needlework for her own\nadvantage; she stitched away the major part of her trinkets, bills, and\nbank-notes about her person, and so prepared, was ready for any\nevent--to fly if she thought fit, or to stay and welcome the conqueror,\nwere he Englishman or Frenchman.  And I am not sure that she did not\ndream that night of becoming a duchess and Madame la Marechale, while\nRawdon wrapped in his cloak, and making his bivouac under the rain at\nMount Saint John, was thinking, with all the force of his heart, about\nthe little wife whom he had left behind him.\n\nThe next day was a Sunday.  And Mrs. Major O'Dowd had the satisfaction\nof seeing both her patients refreshed in health and spirits by some\nrest which they had taken during the night.  She herself had slept on a\ngreat chair in Amelia's room, ready to wait upon her poor friend or the\nensign, should either need her nursing. When morning came, this robust\nwoman went back to the house where she and her Major had their billet;\nand here performed an elaborate and splendid toilette, befitting the\nday.  And it is very possible that whilst alone in that chamber, which\nher husband had inhabited, and where his cap still lay on the pillow,\nand his cane stood in the corner, one prayer at least was sent up to\nHeaven for the welfare of the brave soldier, Michael O'Dowd.\n\nWhen she returned she brought her prayer-book with her, and her uncle\nthe Dean's famous book of sermons, out of which she never failed to\nread every Sabbath; not understanding all, haply, not pronouncing many\nof the words aright, which were long and abstruse--for the Dean was a\nlearned man, and loved long Latin words--but with great gravity, vast\nemphasis, and with tolerable correctness in the main.  How often has my\nMick listened to these sermons, she thought, and me reading in the\ncabin of a calm!  She proposed to resume this exercise on the present\nday, with Amelia and the wounded ensign for a congregation.  The same\nservice was read on that day in twenty thousand churches at the same\nhour; and millions of British men and women, on their knees, implored\nprotection of the Father of all.\n\nThey did not hear the noise which disturbed our little congregation at\nBrussels.  Much louder than that which had interrupted them two days\npreviously, as Mrs. O'Dowd was reading the service in her best voice,\nthe cannon of Waterloo began to roar.\n\nWhen Jos heard that dreadful sound, he made up his mind that he would\nbear this perpetual recurrence of terrors no longer, and would fly at\nonce.  He rushed into the sick man's room, where our three friends had\npaused in their prayers, and further interrupted them by a passionate\nappeal to Amelia.\n\n\"I can't stand it any more, Emmy,\" he said; \"I won't stand it; and you\nmust come with me.  I have bought a horse for you--never mind at what\nprice--and you must dress and come with me, and ride behind Isidor.\"\n\n\"God forgive me, Mr. Sedley, but you are no better than a coward,\" Mrs.\nO'Dowd said, laying down the book.\n\n\"I say come, Amelia,\" the civilian went on; \"never mind what she says;\nwhy are we to stop here and be butchered by the Frenchmen?\"\n\n\"You forget the --th, my boy,\" said the little Stubble, the wounded\nhero, from his bed--\"and and you won't leave me, will you, Mrs. O'Dowd?\"\n\n\"No, my dear fellow,\" said she, going up and kissing the boy.  \"No harm\nshall come to you while I stand by. I don't budge till I get the word\nfrom Mick.  A pretty figure I'd be, wouldn't I, stuck behind that chap\non a pillion?\"\n\nThis image caused the young patient to burst out laughing in his bed,\nand even made Amelia smile.  \"I don't ask her,\" Jos shouted out--\"I\ndon't ask that--that Irishwoman, but you Amelia; once for all, will you\ncome?\"\n\n\"Without my husband, Joseph?\" Amelia said, with a look of wonder, and\ngave her hand to the Major's wife. Jos's patience was exhausted.\n\n\"Good-bye, then,\" he said, shaking his fist in a rage, and slamming the\ndoor by which he retreated.  And this time he really gave his order for\nmarch:  and mounted in the court-yard.  Mrs. O'Dowd heard the\nclattering hoofs of the horses as they issued from the gate; and\nlooking on, made many scornful remarks on poor Joseph as he rode down\nthe street with Isidor after him in the laced cap.  The horses, which\nhad not been exercised for some days, were lively, and sprang about the\nstreet.  Jos, a clumsy and timid horseman, did not look to advantage in\nthe saddle.  \"Look at him, Amelia dear, driving into the parlour\nwindow.  Such a bull in a china-shop I never saw.\" And presently the\npair of riders disappeared at a canter down the street leading in the\ndirection of the Ghent road, Mrs. O'Dowd pursuing them with a fire of\nsarcasm so long as they were in sight.\n\nAll that day from morning until past sunset, the cannon never ceased to\nroar.  It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.\n\nAll of us have read of what occurred during that interval.  The tale is\nin every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the\ngreat battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and\nrecounting the history of that famous action.  Its remembrance rankles\nstill in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men\nwho lost the day.  They pant for an opportunity of revenging that\nhumiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part,\nshould ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy\nof hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called glory\nand shame, and to the alternations of successful and unsuccessful\nmurder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage.  Centuries\nhence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each\nother still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honour.\n\nAll our friends took their share and fought like men in the great\nfield.  All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away, the\nlines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling\nthe furious charges of the French horsemen.  Guns which were heard at\nBrussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the\nresolute survivors closing in.  Towards evening, the attack of the\nFrench, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury.  They\nhad other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a\nfinal onset.  It came at last:  the columns of the Imperial Guard\nmarched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the\nEnglish from the height which they had maintained all day, and spite of\nall:  unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from\nthe English line--the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill.\nIt seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and\nfalter.  Then it stopped, still facing the shot.  Then at last the\nEnglish troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able\nto dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.\n\nNo more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away.\nDarkness came down on the field and city:  and Amelia was praying for\nGeorge, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his\nheart.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIII\n\nIn Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her\n\nThe kind reader must please to remember--while the army is marching\nfrom Flanders, and, after its heroic actions there, is advancing to\ntake the fortifications on the frontiers of France, previous to an\noccupation of that country--that there are a number of persons living\npeaceably in England who have to do with the history at present in\nhand, and must come in for their share of the chronicle. During the\ntime of these battles and dangers, old Miss Crawley was living at\nBrighton, very moderately moved by the great events that were going on.\nThe great events rendered the newspapers rather interesting, to be\nsure, and Briggs read out the Gazette, in which Rawdon Crawley's\ngallantry was mentioned with honour, and his promotion was presently\nrecorded.\n\n\"What a pity that young man has taken such an irretrievable step in the\nworld!\" his aunt said; \"with his rank and distinction he might have\nmarried a brewer's daughter with a quarter of a million--like Miss\nGrains; or have looked to ally himself with the best families in\nEngland. He would have had my money some day or other; or his children\nwould--for I'm not in a hurry to go, Miss Briggs, although you may be\nin a hurry to be rid of me; and instead of that, he is a doomed pauper,\nwith a dancing-girl for a wife.\"\n\n\"Will my dear Miss Crawley not cast an eye of compassion upon the\nheroic soldier, whose name is inscribed in the annals of his country's\nglory?\" said Miss Briggs, who was greatly excited by the Waterloo\nproceedings, and loved speaking romantically when there was an\noccasion.  \"Has not the Captain--or the Colonel as I may now style\nhim--done deeds which make the name of Crawley illustrious?\"\n\n\"Briggs, you are a fool,\" said Miss Crawley: \"Colonel Crawley has\ndragged the name of Crawley through the mud, Miss Briggs.  Marry a\ndrawing-master's daughter, indeed!--marry a dame de compagnie--for she\nwas no better, Briggs; no, she was just what you are--only younger, and\na great deal prettier and cleverer.  Were you an accomplice of that\nabandoned wretch, I wonder, of whose vile arts he became a victim, and\nof whom you used to be such an admirer?  Yes, I daresay you were an\naccomplice. But you will find yourself disappointed in my will, I can\ntell you:  and you will have the goodness to write to Mr. Waxy, and say\nthat I desire to see him immediately.\" Miss Crawley was now in the\nhabit of writing to Mr. Waxy her solicitor almost every day in the\nweek, for her arrangements respecting her property were all revoked,\nand her perplexity was great as to the future disposition of her money.\n\nThe spinster had, however, rallied considerably; as was proved by the\nincreased vigour and frequency of her sarcasms upon Miss Briggs, all\nwhich attacks the poor companion bore with meekness, with cowardice,\nwith a resignation that was half generous and half hypocritical--with\nthe slavish submission, in a word, that women of her disposition and\nstation are compelled to show.  Who has not seen how women bully women?\nWhat tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated\nshafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the\ntyrants of their sex?  Poor victims!  But we are starting from our\nproposition, which is, that Miss Crawley was always particularly\nannoying and savage when she was rallying from illness--as they say\nwounds tingle most when they are about to heal.\n\nWhile thus approaching, as all hoped, to convalescence, Miss Briggs was\nthe only victim admitted into the presence of the invalid; yet Miss\nCrawley's relatives afar off did not forget their beloved kinswoman,\nand by a number of tokens, presents, and kind affectionate messages,\nstrove to keep themselves alive in her recollection.\n\nIn the first place, let us mention her nephew, Rawdon Crawley.  A few\nweeks after the famous fight of Waterloo, and after the Gazette had\nmade known to her the promotion and gallantry of that distinguished\nofficer, the Dieppe packet brought over to Miss Crawley at Brighton, a\nbox containing presents, and a dutiful letter, from the Colonel her\nnephew.  In the box were a pair of French epaulets, a Cross of the\nLegion of Honour, and the hilt of a sword--relics from the field of\nbattle:  and the letter described with a good deal of humour how the\nlatter belonged to a commanding officer of the Guard, who having sworn\nthat \"the Guard died, but never surrendered,\" was taken prisoner the\nnext minute by a private soldier, who broke the Frenchman's sword with\nthe butt of his musket, when Rawdon made himself master of the\nshattered weapon.  As for the cross and epaulets, they came from a\nColonel of French cavalry, who had fallen under the aide-de-camp's arm\nin the battle: and Rawdon Crawley did not know what better to do with\nthe spoils than to send them to his kindest and most affectionate old\nfriend. Should he continue to write to her from Paris, whither the army\nwas marching?  He might be able to give her interesting news from that\ncapital, and of some of Miss Crawley's old friends of the emigration,\nto whom she had shown so much kindness during their distress.\n\nThe spinster caused Briggs to write back to the Colonel a gracious and\ncomplimentary letter, encouraging him to continue his correspondence.\nHis first letter was so excessively lively and amusing that she should\nlook with pleasure for its successors.--\"Of course, I know,\" she\nexplained to Miss Briggs, \"that Rawdon could not write such a good\nletter any more than you could, my poor Briggs, and that it is that\nclever little wretch of a Rebecca, who dictates every word to him; but\nthat is no reason why my nephew should not amuse me; and so I wish to\nlet him understand that I am in high good humour.\"\n\nI wonder whether she knew that it was not only Becky who wrote the\nletters, but that Mrs. Rawdon actually took and sent home the trophies\nwhich she bought for a few francs, from one of the innumerable pedlars\nwho immediately began to deal in relics of the war.  The novelist, who\nknows everything, knows this also.  Be this, however, as it may, Miss\nCrawley's gracious reply greatly encouraged our young friends, Rawdon\nand his lady, who hoped for the best from their aunt's evidently\npacified humour:  and they took care to entertain her with many\ndelightful letters from Paris, whither, as Rawdon said, they had the\ngood luck to go in the track of the conquering army.\n\nTo the rector's lady, who went off to tend her husband's broken\ncollar-bone at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley, the spinster's\ncommunications were by no means so gracious.  Mrs. Bute, that brisk,\nmanaging, lively, imperious woman, had committed the most fatal of all\nerrors with regard to her sister-in-law.  She had not merely oppressed\nher and her household--she had bored Miss Crawley; and if poor Miss\nBriggs had been a woman of any spirit, she might have been made happy\nby the commission which her principal gave her to write a letter to\nMrs. Bute Crawley, saying that Miss Crawley's health was greatly\nimproved since Mrs. Bute had left her, and begging the latter on no\naccount to put herself to trouble, or quit her family for Miss\nCrawley's sake.  This triumph over a lady who had been very haughty and\ncruel in her behaviour to Miss Briggs, would have rejoiced most women;\nbut the truth is, Briggs was a woman of no spirit at all, and the\nmoment her enemy was discomfited, she began to feel compassion in her\nfavour.\n\n\"How silly I was,\" Mrs. Bute thought, and with reason, \"ever to hint\nthat I was coming, as I did, in that foolish letter when we sent Miss\nCrawley the guinea-fowls. I ought to have gone without a word to the\npoor dear doting old creature, and taken her out of the hands of that\nninny Briggs, and that harpy of a femme de chambre.  Oh! Bute, Bute,\nwhy did you break your collar-bone?\"\n\nWhy, indeed?  We have seen how Mrs. Bute, having the game in her hands,\nhad really played her cards too well. She had ruled over Miss Crawley's\nhousehold utterly and completely, to be utterly and completely routed\nwhen a favourable opportunity for rebellion came. She and her\nhousehold, however, considered that she had been the victim of horrible\nselfishness and treason, and that her sacrifices in Miss Crawley's\nbehalf had met with the most savage ingratitude. Rawdon's promotion,\nand the honourable mention made of his name in the Gazette, filled this\ngood Christian lady also with alarm.  Would his aunt relent towards him\nnow that he was a Lieutenant-Colonel and a C.B.? and would that odious\nRebecca once more get into favour? The Rector's wife wrote a sermon for\nher husband about the vanity of military glory and the prosperity of\nthe wicked, which the worthy parson read in his best voice and without\nunderstanding one syllable of it.  He had Pitt Crawley for one of his\nauditors--Pitt, who had come with his two half-sisters to church, which\nthe old Baronet could now by no means be brought to frequent.\n\nSince the departure of Becky Sharp, that old wretch had given himself\nup entirely to his bad courses, to the great scandal of the county and\nthe mute horror of his son.  The ribbons in Miss Horrocks's cap became\nmore splendid than ever.  The polite families fled the hall and its\nowner in terror.  Sir Pitt went about tippling at his tenants' houses;\nand drank rum-and-water with the farmers at Mudbury and the\nneighbouring places on market-days.  He drove the family coach-and-four\nto Southampton with Miss Horrocks inside:  and the county people\nexpected, every week, as his son did in speechless agony, that his\nmarriage with her would be announced in the provincial paper.  It was\nindeed a rude burthen for Mr. Crawley to bear.  His eloquence was\npalsied at the missionary meetings, and other religious assemblies in\nthe neighbourhood, where he had been in the habit of presiding, and of\nspeaking for hours; for he felt, when he rose, that the audience said,\n\"That is the son of the old reprobate Sir Pitt, who is very likely\ndrinking at the public house at this very moment.\" And once when he was\nspeaking of the benighted condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and the\nnumber of his wives who were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreant\nfrom the crowd asked, \"How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young\nSquaretoes?\" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr.\nPitt's speech. And the two daughters of the house of Queen's Crawley\nwould have been allowed to run utterly wild (for Sir Pitt swore that no\ngoverness should ever enter into his doors again), had not Mr. Crawley,\nby threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send them to\nschool.\n\nMeanwhile, as we have said, whatever individual differences there might\nbe between them all, Miss Crawley's dear nephews and nieces were\nunanimous in loving her and sending her tokens of affection. Thus Mrs.\nBute sent guinea-fowls, and some remarkably fine cauliflowers, and a\npretty purse or pincushion worked by her darling girls, who begged to\nkeep a LITTLE place in the recollection of their dear aunt, while Mr.\nPitt sent peaches and grapes and venison from the Hall.  The\nSouthampton coach used to carry these tokens of affection to Miss\nCrawley at Brighton:  it used sometimes to convey Mr. Pitt thither too:\nfor his differences with Sir Pitt caused Mr. Crawley to absent himself\na good deal from home now:  and besides, he had an attraction at\nBrighton in the person of the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, whose engagement\nto Mr. Crawley has been formerly mentioned in this history. Her\nLadyship and her sisters lived at Brighton with their mamma, the\nCountess Southdown, that strong-minded woman so favourably known in\nthe serious world.\n\nA few words ought to be said regarding her Ladyship and her noble\nfamily, who are bound by ties of present and future relationship to the\nhouse of Crawley. Respecting the chief of the Southdown family, Clement\nWilliam, fourth Earl of Southdown, little need be told, except that his\nLordship came into Parliament (as Lord Wolsey) under the auspices of\nMr. Wilberforce, and for a time was a credit to his political sponsor,\nand decidedly a serious young man.  But words cannot describe the\nfeelings of his admirable mother, when she learned, very shortly after\nher noble husband's demise, that her son was a member of several\nworldly clubs, had lost largely at play at Wattier's and the Cocoa\nTree; that he had raised money on post-obits, and encumbered the\nfamily estate; that he drove four-in-hand, and patronised the ring; and\nthat he actually had an opera-box, where he entertained the most\ndangerous bachelor company.  His name was only mentioned with groans in\nthe dowager's circle.\n\nThe Lady Emily was her brother's senior by many years; and took\nconsiderable rank in the serious world as author of some of the\ndelightful tracts before mentioned, and of many hymns and spiritual\npieces.  A mature spinster, and having but faint ideas of marriage, her\nlove for the blacks occupied almost all her feelings.  It is to her, I\nbelieve, we owe that beautiful poem.\n\n  Lead us to some sunny isle,\n  Yonder in the western deep;\n  Where the skies for ever smile,\n  And the blacks for ever weep, &c.\n\nShe had correspondences with clerical gentlemen in most of our East and\nWest India possessions; and was secretly attached to the Reverend Silas\nHornblower, who was tattooed in the South Sea Islands.\n\nAs for the Lady Jane, on whom, as it has been said, Mr. Pitt Crawley's\naffection had been placed, she was gentle, blushing, silent, and timid.\nIn spite of his falling away, she wept for her brother, and was quite\nashamed of loving him still.  Even yet she used to send him little\nhurried smuggled notes, and pop them into the post in private. The one\ndreadful secret which weighed upon her life was, that she and the old\nhousekeeper had been to pay Southdown a furtive visit at his chambers\nin the Albany; and found him--O the naughty dear abandoned\nwretch!--smoking a cigar with a bottle of Curacao before him.  She\nadmired her sister, she adored her mother, she thought Mr. Crawley the\nmost delightful and accomplished of men, after Southdown, that fallen\nangel:  and her mamma and sister, who were ladies of the most superior\nsort, managed everything for her, and regarded her with that amiable\npity, of which your really superior woman always has such a share to\ngive away.  Her mamma ordered her dresses, her books, her bonnets, and\nher ideas for her. She was made to take pony-riding, or piano-exercise,\nor any other sort of bodily medicament, according as my Lady Southdown\nsaw meet; and her ladyship would have kept her daughter in pinafores up\nto her present age of six-and-twenty, but that they were thrown off\nwhen Lady Jane was presented to Queen Charlotte.\n\nWhen these ladies first came to their house at Brighton, it was to them\nalone that Mr. Crawley paid his personal visits, contenting himself by\nleaving a card at his aunt's house, and making a modest inquiry of Mr.\nBowls or his assistant footman, with respect to the health of the\ninvalid.  When he met Miss Briggs coming home from the library with a\ncargo of novels under her arm, Mr. Crawley blushed in a manner quite\nunusual to him, as he stepped forward and shook Miss Crawley's\ncompanion by the hand.  He introduced Miss Briggs to the lady with whom\nhe happened to be walking, the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, saying, \"Lady\nJane, permit me to introduce to you my aunt's kindest friend and most\naffectionate companion, Miss Briggs, whom you know under another title,\nas authoress of the delightful 'Lyrics of the Heart,' of which you are\nso fond.\"  Lady Jane blushed too as she held out a kind little hand to\nMiss Briggs, and said something very civil and incoherent about mamma,\nand proposing to call on Miss Crawley, and being glad to be made known\nto the friends and relatives of Mr. Crawley; and with soft dove-like\neyes saluted Miss Briggs as they separated, while Pitt Crawley treated\nher to a profound courtly bow, such as he had used to H.H. the Duchess\nof Pumpernickel, when he was attache at that court.\n\nThe artful diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian Binkie!  It\nwas he who had given Lady Jane that copy of poor Briggs's early poems,\nwhich he remembered to have seen at Queen's Crawley, with a dedication\nfrom the poetess to his father's late wife; and he brought the volume\nwith him to Brighton, reading it in the Southampton coach and marking\nit with his own pencil, before he presented it to the gentle Lady Jane.\n\nIt was he, too, who laid before Lady Southdown the great advantages\nwhich might occur from an intimacy between her family and Miss\nCrawley--advantages both worldly and spiritual, he said:  for Miss\nCrawley was now quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance of\nhis brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that reprobate\nyoung man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of Mrs. Bute Crawley had\ncaused the old lady to revolt against the exorbitant pretensions of\nthat part of the family; and though he himself had held off all his\nlife from cultivating Miss Crawley's friendship, with perhaps an\nimproper pride, he thought now that every becoming means should be\ntaken, both to save her soul from perdition, and to secure her fortune\nto himself as the head of the house of Crawley.\n\nThe strong-minded Lady Southdown quite agreed in both proposals of her\nson-in-law, and was for converting Miss Crawley off-hand.  At her own\nhome, both at Southdown and at Trottermore Castle, this tall and awful\nmissionary of the truth rode about the country in her barouche with\noutriders, launched packets of tracts among the cottagers and tenants,\nand would order Gaffer Jones to be converted, as she would order Goody\nHicks to take a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefit\nof clergy.  My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic and\nsimple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of approving of everything\nwhich his Matilda did and thought. So that whatever changes her own\nbelief might undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigious\nvariety of opinion, taken from all sorts of doctors among the\nDissenters) she had not the least scruple in ordering all her tenants\nand inferiors to follow and believe after her.  Thus whether she\nreceived the Reverend Saunders McNitre, the Scotch divine; or the\nReverend Luke Waters, the mild Wesleyan; or the Reverend Giles Jowls,\nthe illuminated Cobbler, who dubbed himself Reverend as Napoleon\ncrowned himself Emperor--the household, children, tenantry of my Lady\nSouthdown were expected to go down on their knees with her Ladyship,\nand say Amen to the prayers of either Doctor.  During these exercises\nold Southdown, on account of his invalid condition, was allowed to sit\nin his own room, and have negus and the paper read to him.  Lady Jane\nwas the old Earl's favourite daughter, and tended him and loved him\nsincerely:  as for Lady Emily, the authoress of the \"Washerwoman of\nFinchley Common,\" her denunciations of future punishment (at this\nperiod, for her opinions modified afterwards) were so awful that they\nused to frighten the timid old gentleman her father, and the physicians\ndeclared his fits always occurred after one of her Ladyship's sermons.\n\n\"I will certainly call,\" said Lady Southdown then, in reply to the\nexhortation of her daughter's pretendu, Mr. Pitt Crawley--\"Who is Miss\nCrawley's medical man?\"\n\nMr. Crawley mentioned the name of Mr. Creamer.\n\n\"A most dangerous and ignorant practitioner, my dear Pitt.  I have\nprovidentially been the means of removing him from several houses:\nthough in one or two instances I did not arrive in time.  I could not\nsave poor dear General Glanders, who was dying under the hands of that\nignorant man--dying.  He rallied a little under the Podgers' pills\nwhich I administered to him; but alas!  it was too late.  His death was\ndelightful, however; and his change was only for the better; Creamer,\nmy dear Pitt, must leave your aunt.\"\n\nPitt expressed his perfect acquiescence.  He, too, had been carried\nalong by the energy of his noble kinswoman, and future mother-in-law.\nHe had been made to accept Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters, Giles Jowls,\nPodgers' Pills, Rodgers' Pills, Pokey's Elixir, every one of her\nLadyship's remedies spiritual or temporal.  He never left her house\nwithout carrying respectfully away with him piles of her quack theology\nand medicine.  O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity\nFair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent\ndespots?  It is in vain you say to them, \"Dear Madam, I took Podgers'\nspecific at your orders last year, and believe in it.  Why, why am I to\nrecant and accept the Rodgers' articles now?\"  There is no help for it;\nthe faithful proselytizer, if she cannot convince by argument, bursts\ninto tears, and the refusant finds himself, at the end of the contest,\ntaking down the bolus, and saying, \"Well, well, Rodgers' be it.\"\n\n\"And as for her spiritual state,\" continued the Lady, \"that of course\nmust be looked to immediately:  with Creamer about her, she may go off\nany day:  and in what a condition, my dear Pitt, in what a dreadful\ncondition! I will send the Reverend Mr. Irons to her instantly.  Jane,\nwrite a line to the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, in the third person,\nand say that I desire the pleasure of his company this evening at tea\nat half-past six.  He is an awakening man; he ought to see Miss Crawley\nbefore she rests this night.  And Emily, my love, get ready a packet of\nbooks for Miss Crawley.  Put up 'A Voice from the Flames,' 'A\nTrumpet-warning to Jericho,' and the 'Fleshpots Broken; or, the\nConverted Cannibal.'\"\n\n\"And the 'Washerwoman of Finchley Common,' Mamma,\" said Lady Emily. \"It\nis as well to begin soothingly at first.\"\n\n\"Stop, my dear ladies,\" said Pitt, the diplomatist. \"With every\ndeference to the opinion of my beloved and respected Lady Southdown, I\nthink it would be quite unadvisable to commence so early upon serious\ntopics with Miss Crawley.  Remember her delicate condition, and how\nlittle, how very little accustomed she has hitherto been to\nconsiderations connected with her immortal welfare.\"\n\n\"Can we then begin too early, Pitt?\" said Lady Emily, rising with six\nlittle books already in her hand.\n\n\"If you begin abruptly, you will frighten her altogether. I know my\naunt's worldly nature so well as to be sure that any abrupt attempt at\nconversion will be the very worst means that can be employed for the\nwelfare of that unfortunate lady.  You will only frighten and annoy\nher. She will very likely fling the books away, and refuse all\nacquaintance with the givers.\"\n\n\"You are as worldly as Miss Crawley, Pitt,\" said Lady Emily, tossing\nout of the room, her books in her hand.\n\n\"And I need not tell you, my dear Lady Southdown,\" Pitt continued, in a\nlow voice, and without heeding the interruption, \"how fatal a little\nwant of gentleness and caution may be to any hopes which we may\nentertain with regard to the worldly possessions of my aunt. Remember\nshe has seventy thousand pounds; think of her age, and her highly\nnervous and delicate condition; I know that she has destroyed the will\nwhich was made in my brother's (Colonel Crawley's) favour: it is by\nsoothing that wounded spirit that we must lead it into the right path,\nand not by frightening it; and so I think you will agree with me\nthat--that--'\n\n\"Of course, of course,\" Lady Southdown remarked. \"Jane, my love, you\nneed not send that note to Mr. Irons. If her health is such that\ndiscussions fatigue her, we will wait her amendment.  I will call upon\nMiss Crawley tomorrow.\"\n\n\"And if I might suggest, my sweet lady,\" Pitt said in a bland tone, \"it\nwould be as well not to take our precious Emily, who is too\nenthusiastic; but rather that you should be accompanied by our sweet\nand dear Lady Jane.\"\n\n\"Most certainly, Emily would ruin everything,\" Lady Southdown said; and\nthis time agreed to forego her usual practice, which was, as we have\nsaid, before she bore down personally upon any individual whom she\nproposed to subjugate, to fire in a quantity of tracts upon the menaced\nparty (as a charge of the French was always preceded by a furious\ncannonade).  Lady Southdown, we say, for the sake of the invalid's\nhealth, or for the sake of her soul's ultimate welfare, or for the sake\nof her money, agreed to temporise.\n\nThe next day, the great Southdown female family carriage, with the\nEarl's coronet and the lozenge (upon which the three lambs trottant\nargent upon the field vert of the Southdowns, were quartered with sable\non a bend or, three snuff-mulls gules, the cognizance of the house of\nBinkie), drove up in state to Miss Crawley's door, and the tall serious\nfootman handed in to Mr. Bowls her Ladyship's cards for Miss Crawley,\nand one likewise for Miss Briggs.  By way of compromise, Lady Emily\nsent in a packet in the evening for the latter lady, containing copies\nof the \"Washerwoman,\" and other mild and favourite tracts for Miss B.'s\nown perusal; and a few for the servants' hall, viz.:  \"Crumbs from the\nPantry,\" \"The Frying Pan and the Fire,\" and \"The Livery of Sin,\" of a\nmuch stronger kind.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIV\n\nJames Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out\n\nThe amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's kind reception of\nher, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a good word\nfor the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family had been\npresented to Miss Crawley.  A Countess's card left personally too for\nher, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendless\ncompanion.  \"What could Lady Southdown mean by leaving a card upon you,\nI wonder, Miss Briggs?\" said the republican Miss Crawley; upon which\nthe companion meekly said \"that she hoped there could be no harm in a\nlady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman,\" and she put away\nthis card in her work-box amongst her most cherished personal\ntreasures.  Furthermore, Miss Briggs explained how she had met Mr.\nCrawley walking with his cousin and long affianced bride the day\nbefore:  and she told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, and\nwhat a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles of\nwhich, from the bonnet down to the boots, she described and estimated\nwith female accuracy.\n\nMiss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without interrupting her too\nmuch.  As she got well, she was pining for society.  Mr. Creamer, her\nmedical man, would not hear of her returning to her old haunts and\ndissipation in London.  The old spinster was too glad to find any\ncompanionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards acknowledged the\nvery next day, but Pitt Crawley was graciously invited to come and see\nhis aunt.  He came, bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter.\nThe dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss Crawley's soul;\nbut talked with much discretion about the weather:  about the war and\nthe downfall of the monster Bonaparte:  and above all, about doctors,\nquacks, and the particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then\npatronised.\n\nDuring their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one which\nshowed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by early\nneglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession. When the\nCountess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart, as the\nfashion was in those days, and showed that he was a monster stained\nwith every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant not fit to live,\none whose fall was predicted, &c., Pitt Crawley suddenly took up the\ncudgels in favour of the man of Destiny.  He described the First Consul\nas he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley,\nhad the gratification of making the acquaintance of the great and good\nMr. Fox, a statesman whom, however much he might differ with him, it\nwas impossible not to admire fervently--a statesman who had always had\nthe highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon.  And he spoke in terms of\nthe strongest indignation of the faithless conduct of the allies\ntowards this dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously up\nto their mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while\na bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead.\n\nThis orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved Pitt Crawley in Lady\nSouthdown's opinion, whilst his admiration for Fox and Napoleon raised\nhim immeasurably in Miss Crawley's eyes.  Her friendship with that\ndefunct British statesman was mentioned when we first introduced her in\nthis history.  A true Whig, Miss Crawley had been in opposition all\nthrough the war, and though, to be sure, the downfall of the Emperor\ndid not very much agitate the old lady, or his ill-treatment tend to\nshorten her life or natural rest, yet Pitt spoke to her heart when he\nlauded both her idols; and by that single speech made immense progress\nin her favour.\n\n\"And what do you think, my dear?\" Miss Crawley said to the young lady,\nfor whom she had taken a liking at first sight, as she always did for\npretty and modest young people; though it must be owned her affections\ncooled as rapidly as they rose.\n\nLady Jane blushed very much, and said \"that she did not understand\npolitics, which she left to wiser heads than hers; but though Mamma\nwas, no doubt, correct, Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully.\" And when\nthe ladies were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss Crawley\nhoped \"Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send her Lady Jane\nsometimes, if she could be spared to come down and console a poor sick\nlonely old woman.\" This promise was graciously accorded, and they\nseparated upon great terms of amity.\n\n\"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt,\" said the old lady. \"She is\nstupid and pompous, like all your mother's family, whom I never could\nendure.  But bring that nice good-natured little Jane as often as ever\nyou please.\" Pitt promised that he would do so.  He did not tell the\nCountess of Southdown what opinion his aunt had formed of her Ladyship,\nwho, on the contrary, thought that she had made a most delightful and\nmajestic impression on Miss Crawley.\n\nAnd so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry in\nher heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of the\nReverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered round\nthe footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane became a\npretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in her drives,\nand solaced many of her evenings.  She was so naturally good and soft,\nthat even Firkin was not jealous of her; and the gentle Briggs thought\nher friend was less cruel to her when kind Lady Jane was by.  Towards\nher Ladyship Miss Crawley's manners were charming.  The old spinster\ntold her a thousand anecdotes about her youth, talking to her in a very\ndifferent strain from that in which she had been accustomed to converse\nwith the godless little Rebecca; for there was that in Lady Jane's\ninnocence which rendered light talking impertinence before her, and\nMiss Crawley was too much of a gentlewoman to offend such purity.  The\nyoung lady herself had never received kindness except from this old\nspinster, and her brother and father:  and she repaid Miss Crawley's\nengoument by artless sweetness and friendship.\n\nIn the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the gayest\namong the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear wounded\nAmelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss\nCrawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her\nlittle simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the sea\nwas roaring on the beach.  The old spinster used to wake up when these\nditties ceased, and ask for more.  As for Briggs, and the quantity of\ntears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and\nlooked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the windows, and the\nlamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--who, I say can\nmeasure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?\n\nPitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws or\na Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation which\nsuits romantic and unromantic men after dinner.  He sipped Madeira:\nbuilt castles in the air:  thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself\nmuch more in love with Jane than he had been any time these seven\nyears, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightest\nimpatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal.  When the time for\ncoffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner, and summon\nSquire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.\n\n\"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me,\" Miss\nCrawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with\nthe candles and the coffee. \"Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl,\nshe is so stupid\" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing\nBriggs before the servants); \"and I think I should sleep better if I\nhad my game.\"\n\nAt this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down to\nthe ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted the\nroom, and the door was quite shut, she said:\n\n\"Miss Crawley, I can play a little.  I used to--to play a little with\npoor dear papa.\"\n\n\"Come and kiss me.  Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good little\nsoul,\" cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this picturesque and\nfriendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and the young one, when\nhe came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush all\nthe evening, that poor Lady Jane!\n\nIt must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped the\nattention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley.\nHampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends\nin the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great\ndeal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton.\nPitt was there more and more.  He did not come for months together to\nthe Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely\nto rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's\nsuccess rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted\nmore (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so\ninsulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to\nBowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss\nCrawley's household to give her information of what took place there.\n\"It was all Bute's collar-bone,\" she persisted in saying; \"if that had\nnot broke, I never would have left her.  I am a martyr to duty and to\nyour odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute.\"\n\n\"Hunting; nonsense!  It was you that frightened her, Barbara,\" the\ndivine interposed.  \"You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil of a\ntemper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara.\"\n\n\"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your money.\"\n\n\"I know I would, my dear,\" said the Rector, good-naturedly. \"You ARE a\nclever woman, but you manage too well, you know\":  and the pious man\nconsoled himself with a big glass of port.\n\n\"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?\" he\ncontinued.  \"The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose. I\nremember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to flog\nhim round the stables as if he was a whipping-top:  and Pitt would go\nhowling home to his ma--ha, ha!  Why, either of my boys would whop him\nwith one hand.  Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawley\nstill--the spooney.\n\n\"I say, Barbara,\" his reverence continued, after a pause.\n\n\"What?\" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the table.\n\n\"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do anything\nwith the old lady.  He's very near getting his degree, you know.  He's\nonly been plucked twice--so was I--but he's had the advantages of\nOxford and a university education.  He knows some of the best chaps\nthere. He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat.  He's a handsome feller.\nD---- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey, and tell him to\nthrash Pitt if he says anything. Ha, ha, ha!\n\n\"Jim might go down and see her, certainly,\" the housewife said; adding\nwith a sigh, \"If we could but get one of the girls into the house; but\nshe could never endure them, because they are not pretty!\"  Those\nunfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the\nneighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard\nfingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother\nspoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at\ngeography, or at history, the whole day long.  But what avail all these\naccomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain,\nand have a bad complexion?  Mrs. Bute could think of nobody but the\nCurate to take one of them off her hands; and Jim coming in from the\nstable at this minute, through the parlour window, with a short pipe\nstuck in his oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about odds\non the St. Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his wife\nended.\n\nMrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from the sending of her\nson James as an ambassador, and saw him depart in rather a despairing\nmood.  Nor did the young fellow himself, when told what his mission was\nto be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but he was consoled by\nthe thought that possibly the old lady would give him some handsome\nremembrance of her, which would pay a few of his most pressing bills at\nthe commencement of the ensuing Oxford term, and so took his place by\nthe coach from Southampton, and was safely landed at Brighton on the\nsame evening with his portmanteau, his favourite bull-dog Towzer, and\nan immense basket of farm and garden produce, from the dear Rectory\nfolks to the dear Miss Crawley. Considering it was too late to disturb\nthe invalid lady on the first night of his arrival, he put up at an\ninn, and did not wait upon Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon\nof next day.\n\nJames Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad, at\nthat uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthly\ntreble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms\nout with appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as a\ncure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sister's\nscissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerable\nsensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles protrude\na long way from garments which have grown too tight for them; when\ntheir presence after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who are\nwhispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and inexpressibly\nodious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are restrained from\nfreedom of intercourse and delightful interchange of wit by the\npresence of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion of the second\nglass, papa says, \"Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening holds\nup,\" and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at not being yet a\nman, quits the incomplete banquet.  James, then a hobbadehoy, was now\nbecome a young man, having had the benefits of a university education,\nand acquired the inestimable polish which is gained by living in a fast\nset at a small college, and contracting debts, and being rusticated,\nand being plucked.\n\nHe was a handsome lad, however, when he came to present himself to his\naunt at Brighton, and good looks were always a title to the fickle old\nlady's favour.  Nor did his blushes and awkwardness take away from it:\nshe was pleased with these healthy tokens of the young gentleman's\ningenuousness.\n\nHe said \"he had come down for a couple of days to see a man of his\ncollege, and--and to pay my respects to you, Ma'am, and my father's and\nmother's, who hope you are well.\"\n\nPitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad was announced, and\nlooked very blank when his name was mentioned.  The old lady had plenty\nof humour, and enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity.  She asked\nafter all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and said she\nwas thinking of paying them a visit.  She praised the lad to his face,\nand said he was well-grown and very much improved, and that it was a\npity his sisters had not some of his good looks; and finding, on\ninquiry, that he had taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hear\nof his stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James Crawley's\nthings instantly; \"and hark ye, Bowls,\" she added, with great\ngraciousness, \"you will have the goodness to pay Mr. James's bill.\"\n\nShe flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused that diplomatist\nalmost to choke with envy.  Much as he had ingratiated himself with his\naunt, she had never yet invited him to stay under her roof, and here\nwas a young whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome there.\n\n\"I beg your pardon, sir,\" says Bowls, advancing with a profound bow;\n\"what 'otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the luggage from?\"\n\n\"O, dam,\" said young James, starting up, as if in some alarm, \"I'll go.\"\n\n\"What!\" said Miss Crawley.\n\n\"The Tom Cribb's Arms,\" said James, blushing deeply.\n\nMiss Crawley burst out laughing at this title.  Mr. Bowls gave one\nabrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant of the family, but choked the\nrest of the volley; the diplomatist only smiled.\n\n\"I--I didn't know any better,\" said James, looking down. \"I've never\nbeen here before; it was the coachman told me.\" The young story-teller!\nThe fact is, that on the Southampton coach, the day previous,\nJames Crawley had met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton to\nmake a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted by the Pet's\nconversation, had passed the evening in company with that scientific\nman and his friends, at the inn in question.\n\n\"I--I'd best go and settle the score,\" James continued. \"Couldn't think\nof asking you, Ma'am,\" he added, generously.\n\nThis delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.\n\n\"Go and settle the bill, Bowls,\" she said, with a wave of her hand,\n\"and bring it to me.\"\n\nPoor lady, she did not know what she had done!  \"There--there's a\nlittle dawg,\" said James, looking frightfully guilty.  \"I'd best go for\nhim.  He bites footmen's calves.\"\n\nAll the party cried out with laughing at this description; even Briggs\nand Lady Jane, who was sitting mute during the interview between Miss\nCrawley and her nephew:  and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room.\n\nStill, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss Crawley persisted in\nbeing gracious to the young Oxonian. There were no limits to her\nkindness or her compliments when they once began.  She told Pitt he\nmight come to dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her in\nher drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the cliff, on the back\nseat of the barouche.  During all this excursion, she condescended to\nsay civil things to him: she quoted Italian and French poetry to the\npoor bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar, and was\nperfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and be a Senior Wrangler.\n\n\"Haw, haw,\" laughed James, encouraged by these compliments; \"Senior\nWrangler, indeed; that's at the other shop.\"\n\n\"What is the other shop, my dear child?\" said the lady.\n\n\"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford,\" said the scholar, with a\nknowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but that\nsuddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up\npony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl buttons, his\nfriends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber, with three other\ngentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted poor James there in\nthe carriage as he sate.  This incident damped the ingenuous youth's\nspirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter during\nthe rest of the drive.\n\nOn his return he found his room prepared, and his portmanteau ready,\nand might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the latter\nconducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and\ncompassion.  But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head.  He\nwas deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in a\nhouse full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talking\npoetry to him. \"Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!\" exclaimed the modest\nboy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not even Briggs--when\nshe began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and he could\nout-slang the boldest bargeman.\n\nAt dinner, James appeared choking in a white neckcloth, and had the\nhonour of handing my Lady Jane downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawley\nfollowed afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus of\nbundles, and shawls, and cushions.  Half of Briggs's time at dinner was\nspent in superintending the invalid's comfort, and in cutting up\nchicken for her fat spaniel.  James did not talk much, but he made a\npoint of asking all the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr.\nCrawley's challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle of\nchampagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in his honour.  The\nladies having withdrawn, and the two cousins being left together, Pitt,\nthe ex-diplomatist, he came very communicative and friendly.  He asked\nafter James's career at college--what his prospects in life were--hoped\nheartily he would get on; and, in a word, was frank and amiable.\nJames's tongue unloosed with the port, and he told his cousin his life,\nhis prospects, his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rows\nwith the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him, and\nflying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity.\n\n\"The chief pleasure which my aunt has,\" said Mr. Crawley, filling his\nglass, \"is that people should do as they like in her house. This is\nLiberty Hall, James, and you can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindness\nthan to do as you please, and ask for what you will.  I know you have\nall sneered at me in the country for being a Tory. Miss Crawley is\nliberal enough to suit any fancy.  She is a Republican in principle,\nand despises everything like rank or title.\"\n\n\"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?\" said James.\n\n\"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's fault that she is\nwell born,\" Pitt replied, with a courtly air.  \"She cannot help being a\nlady.  Besides, I am a Tory, you know.\"\n\n\"Oh, as for that,\" said Jim, \"there's nothing like old blood; no,\ndammy, nothing like it.  I'm none of your radicals.  I know what it is\nto be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-race; look at the\nfellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins?\nthe good-blooded ones.  Get some more port, Bowls, old boy, whilst I\nbuzz this bottle here.  What was I asaying?\"\n\n\"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats,\" Pitt remarked mildly,\nhanding his cousin the decanter to \"buzz.\"\n\n\"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want to\nsee a dawg as CAN kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to Tom\nCorduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier\nas--Pooh! gammon,\" cried James, bursting out laughing at his\nown absurdity--\"YOU don't care about a dawg or rat; it's all nonsense.\nI'm blest if I think you know the difference between a dog and a duck.\"\n\n\"No; by the way,\" Pitt continued with increased blandness, \"it was\nabout blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which people\nderive from patrician birth.  Here's the fresh bottle.\"\n\n\"Blood's the word,\" said James, gulping the ruby fluid down. \"Nothing\nlike blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND men.  Why, only last term, just\nbefore I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I had the measles,\nha, ha--there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood, Lord\nCinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at Blenheim, when the\nBanbury bargeman offered to fight either of us for a bowl of punch.  I\ncouldn't.  My arm was in a sling; couldn't even take the drag down--a\nbrute of a mare of mine had fell with me only two days before, out with\nthe Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke. Well, sir, I couldn't\nfinish him, but Bob had his coat off at once--he stood up to the\nBanbury man for three minutes, and polished him off in four rounds\neasy.  Gad, how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, all\nblood.\"\n\n\"You don't drink, James,\" the ex-attache continued. \"In my time at\nOxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you young\nfellows seem to do.\"\n\n\"Come, come,\" said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking at\nhis cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, \"no jokes, old boy; no trying it\non on me.  You want to trot me out, but it's no go.  In vino veritas,\nold boy.  Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my aunt would send\ndown some of this to the governor; it's a precious good tap.\"\n\n\"You had better ask her,\" Machiavel continued, \"or make the best of\nyour time now.  What says the bard? 'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras\ningens iterabimus aequor,'\" and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above\nwith a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine\nwith an immense flourish of his glass.\n\nAt the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after dinner,\nthe young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant wine.  Mrs.\nBute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as\nhis father grew very sulky if he made further inroads on the bottle,\nthe good lad generally refrained from trying for more, and subsided\neither into the currant wine, or to some private gin-and-water in the\nstables, which he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his pipe.\nAt Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited, but the quality was\ninferior:  but when quantity and quality united as at his aunt's house,\nJames showed that he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed\nany of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the second bottle\nsupplied by Mr. Bowls.\n\nWhen the time for coffee came, however, and for a return to the ladies,\nof whom he stood in awe, the young gentleman's agreeable frankness left\nhim, and he relapsed into his usual surly timidity; contenting himself\nby saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by upsetting one\ncup of coffee during the evening.\n\nIf he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presence\nthrew a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for Miss\nCrawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work,\nfelt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy under\nthat maudlin look.\n\n\"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad,\" said Miss Crawley to\nMr. Pitt.\n\n\"He is more communicative in men's society than with ladies,\" Machiavel\ndryly replied:  perhaps rather disappointed that the port wine had not\nmade Jim speak more.\n\nHe had spent the early part of the next morning in writing home to his\nmother a most flourishing account of his reception by Miss Crawley.\nBut ah! he little knew what evils the day was bringing for him, and how\nshort his reign of favour was destined to be.  A circumstance which Jim\nhad forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance--had taken place at the\nCribb's Arms on the night before he had come to his aunt's house.  It\nwas no other than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition,\nand when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the course of the\nnight treated the Tutbury champion and the Rottingdean man, and their\nfriends, twice or thrice to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that\nno less than eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass\nwere charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill.  It was not the amount of\neightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor\nJames's character, when his aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his\nmistress's request to pay the young gentleman's bill.  The landlord,\nfearing lest the account should be refused altogether, swore solemnly\nthat the young gent had consumed personally every farthing's worth of\nthe liquor:  and Bowls paid the bill finally, and showed it on his\nreturn home to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightful\nprodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs as\naccountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention the circumstance\nto her principal, Miss Crawley.\n\nHad he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have\npardoned him.  Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret.  Gentlemen drank\nclaret.  But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an\nignoble pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be pardoned\nreadily.  Everything went against the lad:  he came home perfumed from\nthe stables, whither he had been to pay his dog Towzer a visit--and\nwhence he was going to take his friend out for an airing, when he met\nMiss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which Towzer would have\neaten up had not the Blenheim fled squealing to the protection of Miss\nBriggs, while the atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing at\nthe horrible persecution.\n\nThis day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise forsaken him. He\nwas lively and facetious at dinner. During the repast he levelled one\nor two jokes against Pitt Crawley:  he drank as much wine as upon the\nprevious day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room, began\nto entertain the ladies there with some choice Oxford stories.  He\ndescribed the different pugilistic qualities of Molyneux and Dutch Sam,\noffered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet\nagainst the Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose: and\ncrowned the pleasantry by proposing to back himself against his cousin\nPitt Crawley, either with or without the gloves.  \"And that's a fair\noffer, my buck,\" he said, with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on the\nshoulder, \"and my father told me to make it too, and he'll go halves in\nthe bet, ha, ha!\" So saying, the engaging youth nodded knowingly at\npoor Miss Briggs, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Pitt\nCrawley in a jocular and exulting manner.\n\nPitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not unhappy in the\nmain.  Poor Jim had his laugh out:  and staggered across the room with\nhis aunt's candle, when the old lady moved to retire, and offered to\nsalute her with the blandest tipsy smile:  and he took his own leave\nand went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied with himself, and\nwith a pleased notion that his aunt's money would be left to him in\npreference to his father and all the rest of the family.\n\nOnce up in the bedroom, one would have thought he could not make\nmatters worse; and yet this unlucky boy did.  The moon was shining very\npleasantly out on the sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by the\nromantic appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he would\nfurther enjoy them while smoking.  Nobody would smell the tobacco, he\nthought, if he cunningly opened the window and kept his head and pipe\nin the fresh air. This he did:  but being in an excited state, poor Jim\nhad forgotten that his door was open all this time, so that the breeze\nblowing inwards and a fine thorough draught being established, the\nclouds of tobacco were carried downstairs, and arrived with quite\nundiminished fragrance to Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs.\n\nThe pipe of tobacco finished the business:  and the Bute-Crawleys never\nknew how many thousand pounds it cost them.  Firkin rushed downstairs\nto Bowls who was reading out the \"Fire and the Frying Pan\" to his\naide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice.  The dreadful secret was told\nto him by Firkin with so frightened a look, that for the first moment\nMr. Bowls and his young man thought that robbers were in the house, the\nlegs of whom had probably been discovered by the woman under Miss\nCrawley's bed.  When made aware of the fact, however--to rush upstairs\nat three steps at a time to enter the unconscious James's apartment,\ncalling out, \"Mr. James,\" in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry,\n\"For Gawd's sake, sir, stop that 'ere pipe,\" was the work of a minute\nwith Mr. Bowls.  \"O, Mr. James, what 'AVE you done!\" he said in a voice\nof the deepest pathos, as he threw the implement out of the window.\n\"What 'ave you done, sir! Missis can't abide 'em.\"\n\n\"Missis needn't smoke,\" said James with a frantic misplaced laugh, and\nthought the whole matter an excellent joke.  But his feelings were very\ndifferent in the morning, when Mr. Bowls's young man, who operated upon\nMr. James's boots, and brought him his hot water to shave that beard\nwhich he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note in to Mr. James in\nbed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs.\n\n\"Dear sir,\" it said, \"Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly disturbed\nnight, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has been\npolluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that she is\ntoo unwell to see you before you go--and above all that she ever\ninduced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is sure you will be\nmuch more comfortable during the rest of your stay at Brighton.\"\n\nAnd herewith honest James's career as a candidate for his aunt's favour\nended.  He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he menaced to\ndo.  He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves.\n\nWhere meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this race\nfor money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come together after\nWaterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in great\nsplendour and gaiety.  Rebecca was a good economist, and the price poor\nJos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in itself sufficient to keep\ntheir little establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there was\nno occasion to turn into money \"my pistols, the same which I shot\nCaptain Marker,\" or the gold dressing-case, or the cloak lined with\nsable.  Becky had it made into a pelisse for herself, in which she rode\nin the Bois de Boulogne to the admiration of all:  and you should have\nseen the scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoined\nafter the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, and\nlet out of her dress all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes,\ncheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previous\nto her meditated flight from Brussels!  Tufto was charmed, and Rawdon\nroared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was better than any\nplay he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, and\nwhich she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to a\npitch of quite insane enthusiasm.  He believed in his wife as much as\nthe French soldiers in Napoleon.\n\nHer success in Paris was remarkable.  All the French ladies voted her\ncharming.  She spoke their language admirably.  She adopted at once\ntheir grace, their liveliness, their manner.  Her husband was stupid\ncertainly--all English are stupid--and, besides, a dull husband at\nParis is always a point in a lady's favour.  He was the heir of the\nrich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been open to so many\nof the French noblesse during the emigration.  They received the\ncolonel's wife in their own hotels--\"Why,\" wrote a great lady to Miss\nCrawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess's own\nprice, and given her many a dinner during the pinching times after the\nRevolution--\"Why does not our dear Miss come to her nephew and niece,\nand her attached friends in Paris? All the world raffoles of the\ncharming Mistress and her espiegle beauty. Yes, we see in her the\ngrace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley! The King\ntook notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries, and we are all jealous\nof the attention which Monsieur pays her.  If you could have seen the\nspite of a certain stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque\nand feathers may be seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) when\nMadame, the Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion of\nkings, desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear\ndaughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name of France, for all\nyour benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile! She is of\nall the societies, of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of the dances,\nno; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature looks\nsurrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to be a mother!  To\nhear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother, would bring tears\nto the eyes of ogres.  How she loves you! how we all love our\nadmirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!\"\n\nIt is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did not\nby any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable, her\nrespectable, relative.  On the contrary, the fury of the old spinster\nwas beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and how\naudaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name, to get an entree\ninto Parisian society.  Too much shaken in mind and body to compose a\nletter in the French language in reply to that of her correspondent,\nshe dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue,\nrepudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning the public to\nbeware of her as a most artful and dangerous person.  But as Madame the\nDuchess of X--had only been twenty years in England, she did not\nunderstand a single word of the language, and contented herself by\ninforming Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next meeting, that she had\nreceived a charming letter from that chere Mees, and that it was full\nof benevolent things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have\nhopes that the spinster would relent.\n\nMeanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen:  and\nhad a little European congress on her reception-night.  Prussians and\nCossacks, Spanish and English--all the world was at Paris during this\nfamous winter:  to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's humble\nsaloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy. Famous warriors\nrode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at\nthe Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns in\nParis as yet:  there were parties every day at Very's or Beauvilliers';\nplay was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto perhaps was sulky.  Mrs.\nTufto had come over to Paris at her own invitation, and besides this\ncontretemps, there were a score of generals now round Becky's chair,\nand she might take her choice of a dozen bouquets when she went to the\nplay.  Lady Bareacres and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and\nirreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the success of the\nlittle upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in\ntheir chaste breasts. But she had all the men on her side.  She fought\nthe women with indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal in\nany tongue but their own.\n\nSo in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passed\naway with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite life\nas if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--and\nwho from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a place of honour\nin Vanity Fair.  In the early spring of 1816, Galignani's Journal\ncontained the following announcement in an interesting corner of the\npaper:  \"On the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley,\nof the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir.\"\n\nThis event was copied into the London papers, out of which Miss Briggs\nread the statement to Miss Crawley, at breakfast, at Brighton.  The\nintelligence, expected as it might have been, caused a crisis in the\naffairs of the Crawley family.  The spinster's rage rose to its height,\nand sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the Lady Southdown,\nfrom Brunswick Square, she requested an immediate celebration of the\nmarriage which had been so long pending between the two families.  And\nshe announced that it was her intention to allow the young couple a\nthousand a year during her lifetime, at the expiration of which the\nbulk of her property would be settled upon her nephew and her dear\nniece, Lady Jane Crawley. Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord\nSouthdown gave away his sister--she was married by a Bishop, and not by\nthe Rev. Bartholomew Irons--to the disappointment of the irregular\nprelate.\n\nWhen they were married, Pitt would have liked to take a hymeneal tour\nwith his bride, as became people of their condition.  But the affection\nof the old lady towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairly\nowned she could not part with her favourite.  Pitt and his wife came\ntherefore and lived with Miss Crawley: and (greatly to the annoyance of\npoor Pitt, who conceived himself a most injured character--being\nsubject to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of his\nmother-in-law on the other). Lady Southdown, from her neighbouring\nhouse, reigned over the whole family--Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley,\nBriggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all.  She pitilessly dosed them with her\ntracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers,\nand soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance of authority.  The\npoor soul grew so timid that she actually left off bullying Briggs any\nmore, and clung to her niece, more fond and terrified every day.  Peace\nto thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--We shall see\nthee no more.  Let us hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and led\nher with gentle hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXV\n\nWidow and Mother\n\nThe news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reached\nEngland at the same time.  The Gazette first published the result of\nthe two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilled\nwith triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after the\nannouncement of the victories came the list of the wounded and the\nslain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened and\nread!  Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the three\nkingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders, and the\nfeelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and sickening dismay,\nwhen the lists of the regimental losses were gone through, and it\nbecame known whether the dear friend and relative had escaped or\nfallen.  Anybody who will take the trouble of looking back to a file of\nthe newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel at second-hand this\nbreathless pause of expectation.  The lists of casualties are carried\non from day to day:  you stop in the midst as in a story which is to be\ncontinued in our next.  Think what the feelings must have been as those\npapers followed each other fresh from the press; and if such an\ninterest could be felt in our country, and about a battle where but\ntwenty thousand of our people were engaged, think of the condition of\nEurope for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not by\nthousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy\nwounded horribly some other innocent heart far away.\n\nThe news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave a\ndreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulged\nunrestrained in their grief.  The gloom-stricken old father was still\nmore borne down by his fate and sorrow.  He strove to think that a\njudgment was on the boy for his disobedience.  He dared not own that\nthe severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its fulfilment\nhad come too soon upon his curses.  Sometimes a shuddering terror\nstruck him, as if he had been the author of the doom which he had\ncalled down on his son.  There was a chance before of reconciliation.\nThe boy's wife might have died; or he might have come back and said,\nFather I have sinned.  But there was no hope now.  He stood on the\nother side of the gulf impassable, haunting his parent with sad eyes.\nHe remembered them once before so in a fever, when every one thought\nthe lad was dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with a\ndreadful gloom.  Good God! how the father clung to the doctor then, and\nwith what a sickening anxiety he followed him:  what a weight of grief\nwas off his mind when, after the crisis of the fever, the lad\nrecovered, and looked at his father once more with eyes that recognised\nhim. But now there was no help or cure, or chance of reconcilement:\nabove all, there were no humble words to soothe vanity outraged and\nfurious, or bring to its natural flow the poisoned, angry blood.  And\nit is hard to say which pang it was that tore the proud father's heart\nmost keenly--that his son should have gone out of the reach of his\nforgiveness, or that the apology which his own pride expected should\nhave escaped him.\n\nWhatever his sensations might have been, however, the stern old man\nwould have no confidant.  He never mentioned his son's name to his\ndaughters; but ordered the elder to place all the females of the\nestablishment in mourning; and desired that the male servants should be\nsimilarly attired in deep black.  All parties and entertainments, of\ncourse, were to be put off.  No communications were made to his future\nson-in-law, whose marriage-day had been fixed:  but there was enough in\nMr. Osborne's appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from making any\ninquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony. He and the\nladies whispered about it under their voices in the drawing-room\nsometimes, whither the father never came.  He remained constantly in\nhis own study; the whole front part of the house being closed until\nsome time after the completion of the general mourning.\n\nAbout three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr. Osborne's acquaintance,\nSir William Dobbin, called at Mr. Osborne's house in Russell Square,\nwith a very pale and agitated face, and insisted upon seeing that\ngentleman. Ushered into his room, and after a few words, which neither\nthe speaker nor the host understood, the former produced from an\ninclosure a letter sealed with a large red seal. \"My son, Major\nDobbin,\" the Alderman said, with some hesitation, \"despatched me a\nletter by an officer of the --th, who arrived in town to-day.  My son's\nletter contains one for you, Osborne.\" The Alderman placed the letter\non the table, and Osborne stared at him for a moment or two in silence.\nHis looks frightened the ambassador, who after looking guiltily for a\nlittle time at the grief-stricken man, hurried away without another\nword.\n\nThe letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting. It was that one\nwhich he had written before daybreak on the 16th of June, and just\nbefore he took leave of Amelia.  The great red seal was emblazoned with\nthe sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from the Peerage, with\n\"Pax in bello\" for a motto; that of the ducal house with which the vain\nold man tried to fancy himself connected. The hand that signed it would\nnever hold pen or sword more.  The very seal that sealed it had been\nrobbed from George's dead body as it lay on the field of battle.  The\nfather knew nothing of this, but sat and looked at the letter in\nterrified vacancy.  He almost fell when he went to open it.\n\nHave you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters,\nwritten in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you!\nWhat a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of\ndead affection!  What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love!\nWhat dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got\nor written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we\nkeep and shun. Osborne trembled long before the letter from his dead\nson.\n\nThe poor boy's letter did not say much.  He had been too proud to\nacknowledge the tenderness which his heart felt.  He only said, that on\nthe eve of a great battle, he wished to bid his father farewell, and\nsolemnly to implore his good offices for the wife--it might be for the\nchild--whom he left behind him.  He owned with contrition that his\nirregularities and his extravagance had already wasted a large part of\nhis mother's little fortune.  He thanked his father for his former\ngenerous conduct; and he promised him that if he fell on the field or\nsurvived it, he would act in a manner worthy of the name of George\nOsborne.\n\nHis English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had prevented him from\nsaying more.  His father could not see the kiss George had placed on\nthe superscription of his letter.  Mr. Osborne dropped it with the\nbitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge. His son was\nstill beloved and unforgiven.\n\nAbout two months afterwards, however, as the young ladies of the family\nwent to church with their father, they remarked how he took a different\nseat from that which he usually occupied when he chose to attend divine\nworship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked up at the wall\nover their heads.  This caused the young women likewise to gaze in the\ndirection towards which their father's gloomy eyes pointed:  and they\nsaw an elaborate monument upon the wall, where Britannia was\nrepresented weeping over an urn, and a broken sword and a couchant lion\nindicated that the piece of sculpture had been erected in honour of a\ndeceased warrior.  The sculptors of those days had stocks of such\nfunereal emblems in hand; as you may see still on the walls of St.\nPaul's, which are covered with hundreds of these braggart heathen\nallegories.  There was a constant demand for them during the first\nfifteen years of the present century.\n\nUnder the memorial in question were emblazoned the well-known and\npompous Osborne arms; and the inscription said, that the monument was\n\"Sacred to the memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq., late a Captain\nin his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the 18th of June,\n1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his king and country in the\nglorious victory of Waterloo. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.\"\n\nThe sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the sisters so much,\nthat Miss Maria was compelled to leave the church.  The congregation\nmade way respectfully for those sobbing girls clothed in deep black,\nand pitied the stern old father seated opposite the memorial of the\ndead soldier.  \"Will he forgive Mrs. George?\" the girls said to\nthemselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over. Much\nconversation passed too among the acquaintances of the Osborne family,\nwho knew of the rupture between the son and father caused by the\nformer's marriage, as to the chance of a reconciliation with the young\nwidow. There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell Square\nand in the City.\n\nIf the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible recognition of\nAmelia as a daughter of the family, it was increased presently, and\ntowards the end of the autumn, by their father's announcement that he\nwas going abroad.  He did not say whither, but they knew at once that\nhis steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were aware that George's\nwidow was still in Brussels.  They had pretty accurate news indeed of\npoor Amelia from Lady Dobbin and her daughters.  Our honest Captain had\nbeen promoted in consequence of the death of the second Major of the\nregiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd, who had distinguished\nhimself greatly here as upon all occasions where he had a chance to\nshow his coolness and valour, was a Colonel and Companion of the Bath.\n\nVery many of the brave --th, who had suffered severely upon both days\nof action, were still at Brussels in the autumn, recovering of their\nwounds.  The city was a vast military hospital for months after the\ngreat battles; and as men and officers began to rally from their hurts,\nthe gardens and places of public resort swarmed with maimed warriors,\nold and young, who, just rescued out of death, fell to gambling, and\ngaiety, and love-making, as people of Vanity Fair will do.  Mr. Osborne\nfound out some of the --th easily.  He knew their uniform quite well,\nand had been used to follow all the promotions and exchanges in the\nregiment, and loved to talk about it and its officers as if he had been\none of the number.  On the day after his arrival at Brussels, and as he\nissued from his hotel, which faced the park, he saw a soldier in the\nwell-known facings, reposing on a stone bench in the garden, and went\nand sate down trembling by the wounded convalescent man.\n\n\"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?\" he said, and added, after a\npause, \"he was my son, sir.\"\n\nThe man was not of the Captain's company, but he lifted up his\nunwounded arm and touched his cap sadly and respectfully to the haggard\nbroken-spirited gentleman who questioned him.  \"The whole army didn't\ncontain a finer or a better officer,\" the soldier said. \"The Sergeant\nof the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it now), was in town,\nthough, and was just well of a shot in the shoulder. His honour might\nsee him if he liked, who could tell him anything he wanted to know\nabout--about the --th's actions.  But his honour had seen Major Dobbin,\nno doubt, the brave Captain's great friend; and Mrs. Osborne, who was\nhere too, and had been very bad, he heard everybody say.  They say she\nwas out of her mind like for six weeks or more.  But your honour knows\nall about that--and asking your pardon\"--the man added.\n\nOsborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told him he should\nhave another if he would bring the Sergeant to the Hotel du Parc; a\npromise which very soon brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne's\npresence. And the first soldier went away; and after telling a comrade\nor two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived, and what a free-handed\ngenerous gentleman he was, they went and made good cheer with drink and\nfeasting, as long as the guineas lasted which had come from the proud\npurse of the mourning old father.\n\nIn the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent, Osborne made\nthe journey of Waterloo and Quatre Bras, a journey which thousands of\nhis countrymen were then taking.  He took the Sergeant with him in his\ncarriage, and went through both fields under his guidance.  He saw the\npoint of the road where the regiment marched into action on the 16th,\nand the slope down which they drove the French cavalry who were\npressing on the retreating Belgians.  There was the spot where the\nnoble Captain cut down the French officer who was grappling with the\nyoung Ensign for the colours, the Colour-Sergeants having been shot\ndown.  Along this road they retreated on the next day, and here was the\nbank at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the night of\nthe seventeenth.  Further on was the position which they took and held\nduring the day, forming time after time to receive the charge of the\nenemy's horsemen and lying down under the shelter of the bank from the\nfurious French cannonade. And it was at this declivity when at evening\nthe whole English line received the order to advance, as the enemy fell\nback after his last charge, that the Captain, hurraying and rushing\ndown the hill waving his sword, received a shot and fell dead.  \"It was\nMajor Dobbin who took back the Captain's body to Brussels,\" the\nSergeant said, in a low voice, \"and had him buried, as your honour\nknows.\" The peasants and relic-hunters about the place were screaming\nround the pair, as the soldier told his story, offering for sale all\nsorts of mementoes of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and shattered\ncuirasses, and eagles.\n\nOsborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant when he parted with\nhim, after having visited the scenes of his son's last exploits. His\nburial-place he had already seen.  Indeed, he had driven thither\nimmediately after his arrival at Brussels.  George's body lay in the\npretty burial-ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place, having\nonce visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly expressed a wish\nto have his grave made.  And there the young officer was laid by his\nfriend, in the unconsecrated corner of the garden, separated by a\nlittle hedge from the temples and towers and plantations of flowers and\nshrubs, under which the Roman Catholic dead repose.  It seemed a\nhumiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman,\na captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to lie\nin ground where mere foreigners were buried.  Which of us is there can\ntell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how\nselfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon the\nmingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness\nwere combating together.  He firmly believed that everything he did was\nright, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way--and like the\nsting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous\nagainst anything like opposition.  He was proud of his hatred as of\neverything else.  Always to be right, always to trample forward, and\nnever to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness\ntakes the lead in the world?\n\nAs after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage was nearing the\ngates of the city at sunset, they met another open barouche, in which\nwere a couple of ladies and a gentleman, and by the side of which an\nofficer was riding.  Osborne gave a start back, and the Sergeant,\nseated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour, as he\ntouched his cap to the officer, who mechanically returned his salute.\nIt was Amelia, with the lame young Ensign by her side, and opposite to\nher her faithful friend Mrs. O'Dowd.  It was Amelia, but how changed\nfrom the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew.  Her face was white and\nthin.  Her pretty brown hair was parted under a widow's cap--the poor\nchild.  Her eyes were fixed, and looking nowhere.  They stared blank in\nthe face of Osborne, as the carriages crossed each other, but she did\nnot know him; nor did he recognise her, until looking up, he saw Dobbin\nriding by her:  and then he knew who it was.  He hated her.  He did not\nknow how much until he saw her there.  When her carriage had passed on,\nhe turned and stared at the Sergeant, with a curse and defiance in his\neye cast at his companion, who could not help looking at him--as much\nas to say \"How dare you look at me? Damn you!  I do hate her.  It is\nshe who has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down.\" \"Tell the\nscoundrel to drive on quick,\" he shouted with an oath, to the lackey on\nthe box. A minute afterwards, a horse came clattering over the pavement\nbehind Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up.  His thoughts had been\nelsewhere as the carriages passed each other, and it was not until he\nhad ridden some paces forward, that he remembered it was Osborne who\nhad just passed him.  Then he turned to examine if the sight of her\nfather-in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but the poor girl did\nnot know who had passed.  Then William, who daily used to accompany her\nin his drives, taking out his watch, made some excuse about an\nengagement which he suddenly recollected, and so rode off.  She did not\nremark that either:  but sate looking before her, over the homely\nlandscape towards the woods in the distance, by which George marched\naway.\n\n\"Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!\" cried Dobbin, as he rode up and held out\nhis hand.  Osborne made no motion to take it, but shouted out once more\nand with another curse to his servant to drive on.\n\nDobbin laid his hand on the carriage side.  \"I will see you, sir,\" he\nsaid.  \"I have a message for you.\"\n\n\"From that woman?\" said Osborne, fiercely.\n\n\"No,\" replied the other, \"from your son\"; at which Osborne fell back\ninto the corner of his carriage, and Dobbin allowing it to pass on,\nrode close behind it, and so through the town until they reached Mr.\nOsborne's hotel, and without a word.  There he followed Osborne up to\nhis apartments.  George had often been in the rooms; they were the\nlodgings which the Crawleys had occupied during their stay in Brussels.\n\n\"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain Dobbin, or, I beg your\npardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin, since better men than you are dead,\nand you step into their SHOES?\" said Mr. Osborne, in that sarcastic\ntone which he sometimes was pleased to assume.\n\n\"Better men ARE dead,\" Dobbin replied.  \"I want to speak to you about\none.\"\n\n\"Make it short, sir,\" said the other with an oath, scowling at his\nvisitor.\n\n\"I am here as his closest friend,\" the Major resumed, \"and the executor\nof his will.  He made it before he went into action.  Are you aware how\nsmall his means are, and of the straitened circumstances of his widow?\"\n\n\"I don't know his widow, sir,\" Osborne said.  \"Let her go back to her\nfather.\" But the gentleman whom he addressed was determined to remain\nin good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption.\n\n\"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reason\nalmost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her.  It is\nvery doubtful whether she will rally.  There is a chance left for her,\nhowever, and it is about this I came to speak to you.  She will be a\nmother soon.  Will you visit the parent's offence upon the child's\nhead? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?\"\n\nOsborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and imprecations;--by\nthe first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his conduct; by\nthe second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George. No father in all\nEngland could have behaved more generously to a son, who had rebelled\nagainst him wickedly.  He had died without even so much as confessing\nhe was wrong.  Let him take the consequences of his undutifulness and\nfolly.  As for himself, Mr. Osborne, he was a man of his word.  He had\nsworn never to speak to that woman, or to recognize her as his son's\nwife.  \"And that's what you may tell her,\" he concluded with an oath;\n\"and that's what I will stick to to the last day of my life.\"\n\nThere was no hope from that quarter then.  The widow must live on her\nslender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her.  \"I might tell\nher, and she would not heed it,\" thought Dobbin, sadly: for the poor\ngirl's thoughts were not here at all since her catastrophe, and,\nstupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were alike\nindifferent to her.\n\nSo, indeed, were even friendship and kindness.  She received them both\nuncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her grief.\n\nSuppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place to\nhave passed in the life of our poor Amelia.  She has spent the first\nportion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we who\nhave been watching and describing some of the emotions of that weak and\ntender heart, must draw back in the presence of the cruel grief under\nwhich it is bleeding.  Tread silently round the hapless couch of the\npoor prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of the dark chamber wherein\nshe suffers, as those kind people did who nursed her through the first\nmonths of her pain, and never left her until heaven had sent her\nconsolation.  A day came--of almost terrified delight and wonder--when\nthe poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast--a child, with\nthe eyes of George who was gone--a little boy, as beautiful as a\ncherub.  What a miracle it was to hear its first cry!  How she laughed\nand wept over it--how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in her\nbosom as the baby nestled there.  She was safe.  The doctors who\nattended her, and had feared for her life or for her brain, had waited\nanxiously for this crisis before they could pronounce that either was\nsecure.  It was worth the long months of doubt and dread which the\npersons who had constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes\nonce more beaming tenderly upon them.\n\nOur friend Dobbin was one of them.  It was he who brought her back to\nEngland and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a\nperemptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her\npatient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laugh\nof triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had a\nsense of humour.  William was the godfather of the child, and exerted\nhis ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals\nfor this little Christian.\n\nHow his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how she\ndrove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her own to\ntouch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she could confer\nupon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the Major occasionally\nto dandle him, need not be told here.  This child was her being.  Her\nexistence was a maternal caress.  She enveloped the feeble and\nunconscious creature with love and worship.  It was her life which the\nbaby drank in from her bosom.  Of nights, and when alone, she had\nstealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God's\nmarvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--joys how far\nhigher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions which only\nwomen's hearts know.  It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these\nmovements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him\ndivine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see\nwith a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him.  And\nso, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it.\n\nI suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the intentions of the\nMajor, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin visited\ntheir house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, or\nwith the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family.  He brought, on\none pretext or another, presents to everybody, and almost every day;\nand went, with the landlord's little girl, who was rather a favourite\nwith Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums.  It was this little child\nwho commonly acted as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce him to\nMrs. Osborne.  She laughed one day when Major Sugarplums' cab drove up\nto Fulham, and he descended from it, bringing out a wooden horse, a\ndrum, a trumpet, and other warlike toys, for little Georgy, who was\nscarcely six months old, and for whom the articles in question were\nentirely premature.\n\nThe child was asleep.  \"Hush,\" said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at the\ncreaking of the Major's boots; and she held out her hand; smiling\nbecause William could not take it until he had rid himself of his cargo\nof toys.  \"Go downstairs, little Mary,\" said he presently to the child,\n\"I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne.\" She looked up rather astonished, and\nlaid down the infant on its bed.\n\n\"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia,\" said he, taking her slender little\nwhite hand gently.\n\n\"Good-bye? and where are you going?\" she said, with a smile.\n\n\"Send the letters to the agents,\" he said; \"they will forward them; for\nyou will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time.\"\n\n\"I'll write to you about Georgy,\" she said.  \"Dear William, how good\nyou have been to him and to me.  Look at him.  Isn't he like an angel?\"\n\nThe little pink hands of the child closed mechanically round the honest\nsoldier's finger, and Amelia looked up in his face with bright maternal\npleasure.  The cruellest looks could not have wounded him more than\nthat glance of hopeless kindness.  He bent over the child and mother.\nHe could not speak for a moment.  And it was only with all his strength\nthat he could force himself to say a God bless you.  \"God bless you,\"\nsaid Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him.\n\n\"Hush!  Don't wake Georgy!\" she added, as William Dobbin went to the\ndoor with heavy steps.  She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels as\nhe drove away:  she was looking at the child, who was laughing in his\nsleep.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVI\n\nHow to Live Well on Nothing a Year\n\nI suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours so little\nobservant as not to think sometimes about the worldly affairs of his\nacquaintances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder how his\nneighbour Jones, or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at the\nend of the year.  With the utmost regard for the family, for instance\n(for I dine with them twice or thrice in the season), I cannot but own\nthat the appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche\nwith the grenadier-footmen, will surprise and mystify me to my dying\nday:  for though I know the equipage is only jobbed, and all the\nJenkins people are on board wages, yet those three men and the carriage\nmust represent an expense of six hundred a year at the very least--and\nthen there are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the prize\ngoverness and masters for the girls, the trip abroad, or to Eastbourne\nor Worthing, in the autumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's\n(who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate dinners which J.\ngives, as I know very well, having been invited to one of them to fill\na vacant place, when I saw at once that these repasts are very superior\nto the common run of entertainments for which the humbler sort of J.'s\nacquaintances get cards)--who, I say, with the most good-natured\nfeelings in the world, can help wondering how the Jenkinses make out\nmatters? What is Jenkins? We all know--Commissioner of the Tape and\nSealing Wax Office, with 1200 pounds a year for a salary.  Had his wife\na private fortune? Pooh!--Miss Flint--one of eleven children of a small\nsquire in Buckinghamshire.  All she ever gets from her family is a\nturkey at Christmas, in exchange for which she has to board two or\nthree of her sisters in the off season, and lodge and feed her brothers\nwhen they come to town.  How does Jenkins balance his income? I say, as\nevery friend of his must say, How is it that he has not been outlawed\nlong since, and that he ever came back (as he did to the surprise of\neverybody) last year from Boulogne?\n\n\"I\" is here introduced to personify the world in general--the Mrs.\nGrundy of each respected reader's private circle--every one of whom can\npoint to some families of his acquaintance who live nobody knows how.\nMany a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have very little doubt,\nhob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver and wondering how the deuce\nhe paid for it.\n\nSome three or four years after his stay in Paris, when Rawdon Crawley\nand his wife were established in a very small comfortable house in\nCurzon Street, May Fair, there was scarcely one of the numerous friends\nwhom they entertained at dinner that did not ask the above question\nregarding them.  The novelist, it has been said before, knows\neverything, and as I am in a situation to be able to tell the public\nhow Crawley and his wife lived without any income, may I entreat the\npublic newspapers which are in the habit of extracting portions of the\nvarious periodical works now published not to reprint the following\nexact narrative and calculations--of which I ought, as the discoverer\n(and at some expense, too), to have the benefit? My son, I would say,\nwere I blessed with a child--you may by deep inquiry and constant\nintercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably on nothing a\nyear.  But it is best not to be intimate with gentlemen of this\nprofession and to take the calculations at second hand, as you do\nlogarithms, for to work them yourself, depend upon it, will cost you\nsomething considerable.\n\nOn nothing per annum then, and during a course of some two or three\nyears, of which we can afford to give but a very brief history, Crawley\nand his wife lived very happily and comfortably at Paris. It was in\nthis period that he quitted the Guards and sold out of the army.  When\nwe find him again, his mustachios and the title of Colonel on his card\nare the only relics of his military profession.\n\nIt has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her arrival in Paris,\ntook a very smart and leading position in the society of that capital,\nand was welcomed at some of the most distinguished houses of the\nrestored French nobility.  The English men of fashion in Paris courted\nher, too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives, who could not bear\nthe parvenue.  For some months the salons of the Faubourg St.  Germain,\nin which her place was secured, and the splendours of the new Court,\nwhere she was received with much distinction, delighted and perhaps a\nlittle intoxicated Mrs. Crawley, who may have been disposed during this\nperiod of elation to slight the people--honest young military men\nmostly--who formed her husband's chief society.\n\nBut the Colonel yawned sadly among the Duchesses and great ladies of\nthe Court.  The old women who played ecarte made such a noise about a\nfive-franc piece that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to sit\ndown at a card-table.  The wit of their conversation he could not\nappreciate, being ignorant of their language. And what good could his\nwife get, he urged, by making curtsies every night to a whole circle of\nPrincesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone,\nresuming his own simple pursuits and amusements amongst the amiable\nfriends of his own choice.\n\nThe truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly on\nnothing a year, we use the word \"nothing\" to signify something unknown;\nmeaning, simply, that we don't know how the gentleman in question\ndefrays the expenses of his establishment.  Now, our friend the Colonel\nhad a great aptitude for all games of chance: and exercising himself,\nas he continually did, with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is\nnatural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of\nthese articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them.\nTo use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil, or a German\nflute, or a small-sword--you cannot master any one of these implements\nat first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to\na natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now\nCrawley, from being only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a\nconsummate master of billiards.  Like a great General, his genius used\nto rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him\nfor a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would,\nwith consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits which\nwould restore the battle, and come in a victor at the end, to the\nastonishment of everybody--of everybody, that is, who was a stranger to\nhis play.  Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how they\nstaked their money against a man of such sudden resources and brilliant\nand overpowering skill.\n\nAt games of cards he was equally skilful; for though he would\nconstantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so\ncarelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often inclined\nto think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action and awakened\nto caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked that Crawley's\nplay became quite different, and that he was pretty sure of beating his\nenemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few men could\nsay that they ever had the better of him. His successes were so\nrepeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished spoke sometimes\nwith bitterness regarding them.  And as the French say of the Duke of\nWellington, who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishing\nseries of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner; yet\neven they allow that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the\nlast great trick:  so it was hinted at headquarters in England that\nsome foul play must have taken place in order to account for the\ncontinuous successes of Colonel Crawley.\n\nThough Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, the\nmania for play was so widely spread that the public gambling-rooms did\nnot suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in private\nhouses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying the\npassion.  At Crawley's charming little reunions of an evening this\nfatal amusement commonly was practised--much to good-natured little\nMrs. Crawley's annoyance. She spoke about her husband's passion for\ndice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it to everybody who came to\nher house.  She besought the young fellows never, never to touch a box;\nand when young Green, of the Rifles, lost a very considerable sum of\nmoney, Rebecca passed a whole night in tears, as the servant told the\nunfortunate young gentleman, and actually went on her knees to her\nhusband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the acknowledgement.\nHow could he? He had lost just as much himself to Blackstone of the\nHussars, and Count Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry.  Green might have\nany decent time; but pay?--of course he must pay; to talk of burning\nIOU's was child's play.\n\nOther officers, chiefly young--for the young fellows gathered round\nMrs. Crawley--came from her parties with long faces, having dropped\nmore or less money at her fatal card-tables.  Her house began to have\nan unfortunate reputation.  The old hands warned the less experienced\nof their danger.  Colonel O'Dowd, of the --th regiment, one of those\noccupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that corps.  A loud\nand violent fracas took place between the infantry Colonel and his\nlady, who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and Colonel and Mrs.\nCrawley; who were also taking their meal there. The ladies engaged on\nboth sides.  Mrs. O'Dowd snapped her fingers in Mrs. Crawley's face and\ncalled her husband \"no betther than a black-leg.\" Colonel Crawley\nchallenged Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  The Commander-in-Chief hearing of the\ndispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was getting ready the same\npistols \"which he shot Captain Marker,\" and had such a conversation\nwith him that no duel took place.  If Rebecca had not gone on her knees\nto General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he\ndid not play, except with civilians, for some weeks after.\n\nBut, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant successes, it\nbecame evident to Rebecca, considering these things, that their\nposition was but a precarious one, and that, even although they paid\nscarcely anybody, their little capital would end one day by dwindling\ninto zero.  \"Gambling,\" she would say, \"dear, is good to help your\nincome, but not as an income itself.  Some day people may be tired of\nplay, and then where are we?\" Rawdon acquiesced in the justice of her\nopinion; and in truth he had remarked that after a few nights of his\nlittle suppers, &c., gentlemen were tired of play with him, and, in\nspite of Rebecca's charms, did not present themselves very eagerly.\n\nEasy and pleasant as their life at Paris was, it was after all only an\nidle dalliance and amiable trifling; and Rebecca saw that she must push\nRawdon's fortune in their own country.  She must get him a place or\nappointment at home or in the colonies, and she determined to make a\nmove upon England as soon as the way could be cleared for her.  As a\nfirst step she had made Crawley sell out of the Guards and go on\nhalf-pay.  His function as aide-de-camp to General Tufto had ceased\npreviously. Rebecca laughed in all companies at that officer, at his\ntoupee (which he mounted on coming to Paris), at his waistband, at his\nfalse teeth, at his pretensions to be a lady-killer above all, and his\nabsurd vanity in fancying every woman whom he came near was in love\nwith him.  It was to Mrs. Brent, the beetle-browed wife of Mr.\nCommissary Brent, to whom the general transferred his attentions\nnow--his bouquets, his dinners at the restaurateurs', his opera-boxes,\nand his knick-knacks.  Poor Mrs. Tufto was no more happy than before,\nand had still to pass long evenings alone with her daughters, knowing\nthat her General was gone off scented and curled to stand behind Mrs.\nBrent's chair at the play.  Becky had a dozen admirers in his place, to\nbe sure, and could cut her rival to pieces with her wit.  But, as we\nhave said, she was growing tired of this idle social life:\nopera-boxes and restaurateur dinners palled upon her:  nosegays could\nnot be laid by as a provision for future years:  and she could not live\nupon knick-knacks, laced handkerchiefs, and kid gloves.  She felt the\nfrivolity of pleasure and longed for more substantial benefits.\n\nAt this juncture news arrived which was spread among the many creditors\nof the Colonel at Paris, and which caused them great satisfaction.\nMiss Crawley, the rich aunt from whom he expected his immense\ninheritance, was dying; the Colonel must haste to her bedside.  Mrs.\nCrawley and her child would remain behind until he came to reclaim\nthem.  He departed for Calais, and having reached that place in safety,\nit might have been supposed that he went to Dover; but instead he took\nthe diligence to Dunkirk, and thence travelled to Brussels, for which\nplace he had a former predilection. The fact is, he owed more money at\nLondon than at Paris; and he preferred the quiet little Belgian city to\neither of the more noisy capitals.\n\nHer aunt was dead.  Mrs. Crawley ordered the most intense mourning for\nherself and little Rawdon.  The Colonel was busy arranging the affairs\nof the inheritance.  They could take the premier now, instead of the\nlittle entresol of the hotel which they occupied. Mrs. Crawley and the\nlandlord had a consultation about the new hangings, an amicable wrangle\nabout the carpets, and a final adjustment of everything except the\nbill.  She went off in one of his carriages; her French bonne with her;\nthe child by her side; the admirable landlord and landlady smiling\nfarewell to her from the gate.  General Tufto was furious when he heard\nshe was gone, and Mrs. Brent furious with him for being furious;\nLieutenant Spooney was cut to the heart; and the landlord got ready his\nbest apartments previous to the return of the fascinating little woman\nand her husband.  He _serred_ the trunks which she left in his charge\nwith the greatest care.  They had been especially recommended to him by\nMadame Crawley.  They were not, however, found to be particularly\nvaluable when opened some time after.\n\nBut before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs.\nCrawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her little\nson upon the continent, under the care of her French maid.\n\nThe parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause either\nparty much pain.  She had not, to say truth, seen much of the young\ngentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers,\nshe had placed him out at nurse in a village in the neighbourhood of\nParis, where little Rawdon passed the first months of his life, not\nunhappily, with a numerous family of foster-brothers in wooden shoes.\nHis father would ride over many a time to see him here, and the elder\nRawdon's paternal heart glowed to see him rosy and dirty, shouting\nlustily, and happy in the making of mud-pies under the superintendence\nof the gardener's wife, his nurse.\n\nRebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir.  Once he\nspoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers.  He preferred his nurse's\ncaresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that jolly nurse\nand almost parent, he cried loudly for hours.  He was only consoled by\nhis mother's promise that he should return to his nurse the next day;\nindeed the nurse herself, who probably would have been pained at the\nparting too, was told that the child would immediately be restored to\nher, and for some time awaited quite anxiously his return.\n\nIn fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of that\nbrood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently invaded the\nContinent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in\nthose happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honour of\nBritons.  They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle for\nbargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them.  The great\ncities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our\nrascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in\nwhich you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that\nhappy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere,\nswindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulous\nbankers, robbing coach-makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their\ntrinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards, even public\nlibraries of their books--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor\nAnglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand\nwherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were\ncheated.  It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys' departure that\nthe landlord of the hotel which they occupied during their residence at\nParis found out the losses which he had sustained:  not until Madame\nMarabou, the milliner, made repeated visits with her little bill for\narticles supplied to Madame Crawley; not until Monsieur Didelot from\nBoule d'Or in the Palais Royal had asked half a dozen times whether\ncette charmante Miladi who had bought watches and bracelets of him was\nde retour. It is a fact that even the poor gardener's wife, who had\nnursed madame's child, was never paid after the first six months for\nthat supply of the milk of human kindness with which she had furnished\nthe lusty and healthy little Rawdon.  No, not even the nurse was\npaid--the Crawleys were in too great a hurry to remember their trifling\ndebt to her.  As for the landlord of the hotel, his curses against the\nEnglish nation were violent for the rest of his natural life.  He asked\nall travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley--avec sa\nfemme une petite dame, tres spirituelle.  \"Ah, Monsieur!\" he would\nadd--\"ils m'ont affreusement vole.\" It was melancholy to hear his\naccents as he spoke of that catastrophe.\n\nRebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind of\ncompromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering them\na dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a return\nfor him into his own country.  It does not become us to trace the steps\nwhich she took in the conduct of this most difficult negotiation; but,\nhaving shown them to their satisfaction that the sum which she was\nempowered to offer was all her husband's available capital, and having\nconvinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer a perpetual retirement\non the Continent to a residence in this country with his debts\nunsettled; having proved to them that there was no possibility of money\naccruing to him from other quarters, and no earthly chance of their\ngetting a larger dividend than that which she was empowered to offer,\nshe brought the Colonel's creditors unanimously to accept her\nproposals, and purchased with fifteen hundred pounds of ready money\nmore than ten times that amount of debts.\n\nMrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was so\nsimple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she made the\nlawyers of the creditors themselves do the business.  And Mr. Lewis\nrepresenting Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss acting for\nMr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the Colonel's),\ncomplimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which she did business,\nand declared that there was no professional man who could beat her.\n\nRebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered a\nbottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings where\nshe dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's lawyers:\nshook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour, and\nreturned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and son\nand acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire liberation.\nAs for the latter, he had been considerably neglected during his\nmother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French maid; for that\nyoung woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier in the garrison of\nCalais, forgot her charge in the society of this militaire, and little\nRawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on Calais sands at this period,\nwhere the absent Genevieve had left and lost him.\n\nAnd so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at their\nhouse in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skill\nwhich must be possessed by those who would live on the resources above\nnamed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVII\n\nThe Subject Continued\n\nIn the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are\nbound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. These\nmansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have credit\nwith Messrs.  Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly montees\nand decorated entirely according to your own fancy; or they are to be\nlet furnished, a less troublesome and complicated arrangement to most\nparties.  It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their\nhouse.\n\nBefore Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and cellar\nin Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was\nborn on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger\nson of a gardener there.  By good conduct, a handsome person and\ncalves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to the\nfootboard of the carriage; from the footboard to the butler's pantry.\nWhen he had been a certain number of years at the head of Miss\nCrawley's establishment, where he had had good wages, fat perquisites,\nand plenty of opportunities of saving, he announced that he was about\nto contract a matrimonial alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's,\nwho had subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a mangle,\nand the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood.\nThe truth is, that the ceremony had been clandestinely performed some\nyears back; although the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first\nbrought to Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight\nyears of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen had attracted the\nattention of Miss Briggs.\n\nMr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the superintendence\nof the small shop and the greens.  He added milk and cream, eggs and\ncountry-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself whilst other retired\nbutlers were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the\nsimplest country produce.  And having a good connection amongst the\nbutlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back parlour where he and Mrs.\nRaggles received them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by\nmany of the fraternity, and his profits increased every year.  Year\nafter year he quietly and modestly amassed money, and when at length\nthat snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street,\nMay Fair, lately the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace,\ngone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by the first\nmakers, was brought to the hammer, who should go in and purchase the\nlease and furniture of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of the\nmoney he borrowed, it is true, and at rather a high interest, from a\nbrother butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with no\nsmall pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carved\nmahogany, with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass opposite\nto her, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all\nthe family.\n\nOf course, they did not intend to occupy permanently an apartment so\nsplendid.  It was in order to let the house again that Raggles\npurchased it.  As soon as a tenant was found, he subsided into the\ngreengrocer's shop once more; but a happy thing it was for him to walk\nout of that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey his\nhouse--his own house--with geraniums in the window and a carved bronze\nknocker.  The footman occasionally lounging at the area railing,\ntreated him with respect; the cook took her green stuff at his house\nand called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing the tenants\ndid, or one dish which they had for dinner, that Raggles might not know\nof, if he liked.\n\nHe was a good man; good and happy.  The house brought him in so\nhandsome a yearly income that he was determined to send his children to\ngood schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent\nto boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and little Matilda to\nMiss Peckover's, Laurentinum House, Clapham.\n\nRaggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the author of all his\nprosperity in life.  He had a silhouette of his mistress in his back\nshop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by\nthat spinster herself in India ink--and the only addition he made to\nthe decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen's\nCrawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole Crawley, Baronet, who was\nrepresented in a gilded car drawn by six white horses, and passing by a\nlake covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops, and\nmusicians with flags and penwigs.  Indeed Raggles thought there was no\nsuch palace in all the world, and no such august family.\n\nAs luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let when\nRawdon and his wife returned to London. The Colonel knew it and its\nowner quite well; the latter's connection with the Crawley family had\nbeen kept up constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever Miss\nCrawley received friends.  And the old man not only let his house to\nthe Colonel but officiated as his butler whenever he had company; Mrs.\nRaggles operating in the kitchen below and sending up dinners of which\nold Miss Crawley herself might have approved.  This was the way, then,\nCrawley got his house for nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxes\nand rates, and the interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; and\nthe insurance of his life; and the charges for his children at school;\nand the value of the meat and drink which his own family--and for a\ntime that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and though the poor wretch\nwas utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on the\nstreets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison:  yet somebody must\npay even for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was this\nunlucky Raggles was made the representative of Colonel Crawley's\ndefective capital.\n\nI wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great\npractitioners in Crawley's way?--how many great noblemen rob their petty\ntradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched\nlittle sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noble\nnobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has\nan execution in his house--and that one or other owes six or seven\nmillions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in\nthe vastness of his ruin.  But who pities a poor barber who can't get\nhis money for powdering the footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter who\nhas ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's\ndejeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes,\nand who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries\nready, which my lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the great\nhouse tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed:\nas they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself,\nhe sends plenty of other souls thither.\n\nRawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage to all such of Miss\nCrawley's tradesmen and purveyors as chose to serve them.  Some were\nwilling enough, especially the poor ones.  It was wonderful to see the\npertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting brought the cart\nevery Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles himself had\nto supply the greengroceries.  The bill for servants' porter at the\nFortune of War public house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer.\nEvery servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and thus\nkept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in fact was paid.\nNot the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended the\npane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it;\nnor the butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals which\nroasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the servants who ate it:\nand this I am given to understand is not unfrequently the way in which\npeople live elegantly on nothing a year.\n\nIn a little town such things cannot be done without remark.  We know\nthere the quantity of milk our neighbour takes and espy the joint or\nthe fowls which are going in for his dinner.  So, probably, 200 and 202\nin Curzon Street might know what was going on in the house between\nthem, the servants communicating through the area-railings; but Crawley\nand his wife and his friends did not know 200 and 202. When you came to\n201 there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and a\njolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there, just for all\nthe world as if they had been undisputed masters of three or four\nthousand a year--and so they were, not in money, but in produce and\nlabour--if they did not pay for the mutton, they had it:  if they did\nnot give bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know? Never\nwas better claret at any man's table than at honest Rawdon's; dinners\nmore gay and neatly served.   His drawing-rooms were the prettiest,\nlittle, modest salons conceivable: they were decorated with the\ngreatest taste, and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca:\nand when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a lightsome heart,\nthe stranger voted himself in a little paradise of domestic comfort and\nagreed that, if the husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming,\nand the dinners the pleasantest in the world.\n\nRebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue in\nLondon among a certain class.  You saw demure chariots at her door, out\nof which stepped very great people.  You beheld her carriage in the\npark, surrounded by dandies of note.  The little box in the third tier\nof the opera was crowded with heads constantly changing; but it must be\nconfessed that the ladies held aloof from her, and that their doors\nwere shut to our little adventurer.\n\nWith regard to the world of female fashion and its customs, the present\nwriter of course can only speak at second hand.  A man can no more\npenetrate or understand those mysteries than he can know what the\nladies talk about when they go upstairs after dinner.  It is only by\ninquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets hints of those\nsecrets; and by a similar diligence every person who treads the Pall\nMall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis knows, either\nthrough his own experience or through some acquaintance with whom he\nplays at billiards or shares the joint, something about the genteel\nworld of London, and how, as there are men (such as Rawdon Crawley,\nwhose position we mentioned before) who cut a good figure to the eyes\nof the ignorant world and to the apprentices in the park, who behold\nthem consorting with the most notorious dandies there, so there are\nladies, who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by all\nthe gentlemen and cut or slighted by all their wives.  Mrs. Firebrace\nis of this sort; the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see\nevery day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and most famous\ndandies of this empire.  Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties are\nannounced laboriously in the fashionable newspapers and with whom you\nsee that all sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and many\nmore might be mentioned had they to do with the history at present in\nhand.  But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country\npeople with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their\nseeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who\nare better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies have\nno more chance of establishing themselves in \"society,\" than the\nbenighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings in\nthe Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of these awful\ntruths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and wealth\nare excluded from this \"society.\" The frantic efforts which they make\nto enter this circle, the meannesses to which they submit, the insults\nwhich they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human or\nwomankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficulties\nwould be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, the\nleisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for the\ncompiling of such a history.\n\nNow the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad not\nonly declined to visit her when she came to this side of the Channel,\nbut cut her severely when they met in public places.  It was curious to\nsee how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether a\npleasant study to Rebecca.  When Lady Bareacres met her in the\nwaiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters about her as if\nthey would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and retreating a step\nor two, placed herself in front of them, and stared at her little\nenemy. To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer glance than\neven the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out of her dismal eyes.  When\nLady de la Mole, who had ridden a score of times by Becky's side at\nBrussels, met Mrs. Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship\nwas quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her former\nfriend.  Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife, cut her at church.\nBecky went regularly to church now; it was edifying to see her enter\nthere with Rawdon by her side, carrying a couple of large gilt\nprayer-books, and afterwards going through the ceremony with the\ngravest resignation.\n\nRawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were passed upon\nhis wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and savage.  He talked of\ncalling out the husbands or brothers of every one of the insolent women\nwho did not pay a proper respect to his wife; and it was only by the\nstrongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was brought into\nkeeping a decent behaviour.  \"You can't shoot me into society,\" she\nsaid good-naturedly.  \"Remember, my dear, that I was but a governess,\nand you, you poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt,\nand dice, and all sorts of wickedness.  We shall get quite as many\nfriends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile you must be a good\nboy and obey your schoolmistress in everything she tells you to do.\nWhen we heard that your aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and his\nwife, do you remember what a rage you were in? You would have told all\nParis, if I had not made you keep your temper, and where would you have\nbeen now?--in prison at Ste.  Pelagie for debt, and not established in\nLondon in a handsome house, with every comfort about you--you were in\nsuch a fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you,\nand what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the\nworld won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we\nshould be friends with your brother's family than enemies, as those\nfoolish Butes are.  When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a\npleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in.  If we are ruined,\nyou can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a governess\nto Lady Jane's children.  Ruined! fiddlede-dee!  I will get you a good\nplace before that; or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will be\nSir Rawdon and my lady.  While there is life, there is hope, my dear,\nand I intend to make a man of you yet.  Who sold your horses for you?\nWho paid your debts for you?\" Rawdon was obliged to confess that he\nowed all these benefits to his wife, and to trust himself to her\nguidance for the future.\n\nIndeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for which\nall her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally left to\nPitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had been\nleft to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in such\na fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage abuse upon his\nnephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them ended in an utter\nbreach of intercourse.  Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand,\nwho got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish his brother and\ndelight his sister-in-law, who was disposed to look kindly upon all the\nmembers of her husband's family.  He wrote to his brother a very frank,\nmanly, good-humoured letter from Paris.  He was aware, he said, that by\nhis own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he did\nnot disguise his disappointment that she should have been so entirely\nrelentless towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept in\ntheir branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother on\nhis good fortune.  He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister,\nand hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter\nconcluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter lady's own\nhandwriting.  She, too, begged to join in her husband's\ncongratulations.  She should ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to\nher in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of\nhis little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderest\ninterest.  She wished him every happiness in his married life, and,\nasking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose\ngoodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day she might\nbe allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt, and begged\nto bespeak for him their good-will and protection.\n\nPitt Crawley received this communication very graciously--more\ngraciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebecca's previous\ncompositions in Rawdon's handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so\ncharmed with the letter that she expected her husband would instantly\ndivide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions and send off one-half\nto his brother at Paris.\n\nTo her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate his\nbrother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds.  But he made Rawdon a\nhandsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come to England\nand choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her good opinion\nof himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his willingness to\ntake any opportunity to serve her little boy.\n\nThus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the brothers.\nWhen Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London.  Many a\ntime she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had\ntaken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the new family did\nnot make its appearance; it was only through Raggles that she heard of\ntheir movements--how Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed with\ndecent gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his appearance\nin London, when he stopped for a few days at the house, did business\nwith his lawyers there, and sold off all Miss Crawley's French novels\nto a bookseller out of Bond Street.  Becky had reasons of her own which\ncaused her to long for the arrival of her new relation. \"When Lady Jane\ncomes,\" thought she, \"she shall be my sponsor in London society; and as\nfor the women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men want\nto see me.\"\n\nAn article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham or\nher bouquet is her companion.  I have always admired the way in which\nthe tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire an\nexceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost\ninseparable.  The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown\nseated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the back\nseat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as\njolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in the\nrepasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of Vanity\nFair.  What? even battered, brazen, beautiful, conscienceless,\nheartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame:  even\nlovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man\nin England will take, and who drives her greys in the park, while her\nmother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath still--even those who are so\nbold, one might fancy they could face anything, dare not face the world\nwithout a female friend.  They must have somebody to cling to, the\naffectionate creatures!  And you will hardly see them in any public\nplace without a shabby companion in a dyed silk, sitting somewhere in\nthe shade close behind them.\n\n\"Rawdon,\" said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were\nseated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to her\nhouse to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the\nbest in London):  \"I must have a sheep-dog.\"\n\n\"A what?\" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte table.\n\n\"A sheep-dog!\" said young Lord Southdown.  \"My dear Mrs. Crawley, what\na fancy!  Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as a\ncamel-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your brougham.  Or a\nPersian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug that\nwould go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes? There's a man at\nBayswater got one with such a nose that you might--I mark the king and\nplay--that you might hang your hat on it.\"\n\n\"I mark the trick,\" Rawdon gravely said.  He attended to his game\ncommonly and didn't much meddle with the conversation, except when it\nwas about horses and betting.\n\n\"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?\" the lively little Southdown\ncontinued.\n\n\"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog,\" said Becky, laughing and looking up at\nLord Steyne.\n\n\"What the devil's that?\" said his Lordship.\n\n\"A dog to keep the wolves off me,\" Rebecca continued. \"A companion.\"\n\n\"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one,\" said the marquis; and his\njaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leering\ntowards Rebecca.\n\nThe great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The\nfire crackled and blazed pleasantly. There was a score of candles\nsparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of\ngilt and bronze and porcelain.  They lighted up Rebecca's figure to\nadmiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy\nflowers.  She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose; her\ndazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin hazy\nscarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her\nneck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of\nthe silk:  the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal in\nthe finest silk stocking in the world.\n\nThe candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which was\nfringed with red hair.  He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little\ntwinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles.  His jaw\nwas underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded\nthemselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been\ndining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon.  A short\nman was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the\nfineness of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee.\n\n\"And so the shepherd is not enough,\" said he, \"to defend his lambkin?\"\n\n\"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs,\"\nanswered Becky, laughing.\n\n\"'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!\" said my lord--\"what a mouth for a\npipe!\"\n\n\"I take your three to two,\" here said Rawdon, at the card-table.\n\n\"Hark at Meliboeus,\" snarled the noble marquis; \"he's pastorally\noccupied too:  he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey?\nDamme, what a snowy fleece!\"\n\nRebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. \"My lord,\" she said,\n\"you are a knight of the Order.\" He had the collar round his neck,\nindeed--a gift of the restored princes of Spain.\n\nLord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and his\nsuccess at play.  He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox at\nhazard.  He had won money of the most august personages of the realm:\nhe had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table; but he did\nnot like an allusion to those bygone fredaines.  Rebecca saw the scowl\ngathering over his heavy brow.\n\nShe rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee cup out of his\nhand with a little curtsey.  \"Yes,\" she said, \"I must get a watchdog.\nBut he won't bark at YOU.\" And, going into the other drawing-room, she\nsat down to the piano and began to sing little French songs in such a\ncharming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman speedily followed\nher into that chamber, and might be seen nodding his head and bowing\ntime over her.\n\nRawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until they had enough.\nThe Colonel won; but, say that he won ever so much and often, nights\nlike these, which occurred many times in the week--his wife having all\nthe talk and all the admiration, and he sitting silent without the\ncircle, not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, the\nmystical language within--must have been rather wearisome to the\nex-dragoon.\n\n\"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?\" Lord Steyne used to say to him by way\nof a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his avocation in\nlife.  He was Colonel Crawley no more.  He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.\n\nAbout the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it is\nbecause he is hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or has crawled\nbelow into the kitchen for companionship.  His mother scarcely ever\ntook notice of him.  He passed the days with his French bonne as long\nas that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and when the\nFrenchwoman went away, the little fellow, howling in the loneliness of\nthe night, had compassion taken on him by a housemaid, who took him out\nof his solitary nursery into her bed in the garret hard by and\ncomforted him.\n\nRebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-room\ntaking tea after the opera, when this shouting was heard overhead.\n\"It's my cherub crying for his nurse,\" she said.  She did not offer to\nmove to go and see the child.  \"Don't agitate your feelings by going to\nlook for him,\" said Lord Steyne sardonically. \"Bah!\" replied the other,\nwith a sort of blush, \"he'll cry himself to sleep\"; and they fell to\ntalking about the opera.\n\nRawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son and heir; and came\nback to the company when he found that honest Dolly was consoling the\nchild.  The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper regions.  He\nused to see the boy there in private.  They had interviews together\nevery morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a box by his\nfather's side and watching the operation with never-ceasing pleasure.\nHe and the sire were great friends. The father would bring him\nsweetmeats from the dessert and hide them in a certain old epaulet box,\nwhere the child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on discovering\nthe treasure; laughed, but not too loud:  for mamma was below asleep\nand must not be disturbed.  She did not go to rest till very late and\nseldom rose till after noon.\n\nRawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his nursery\nwith toys.  Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up by the\nfather's own hand and purchased by him for ready money.  When he was\noff duty with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing\nhours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his great\nmustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent days with him in\nindefatigable gambols.  The room was a low room, and once, when the\nchild was not five years old, his father, who was tossing him wildly up\nin his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against the\nceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified was he at the\ndisaster.\n\nRawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl--the severity\nof the blow indeed authorized that indulgence; but just as he was going\nto begin, the father interposed.\n\n\"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma,\" he cried.  And the child,\nlooking in a very hard and piteous way at his father, bit his lips,\nclenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit.  Rawdon told that story at\nthe clubs, at the mess, to everybody in town.  \"By Gad, sir,\" he\nexplained to the public in general, \"what a good plucked one that boy\nof mine is--what a trump he is!  I half-sent his head through the\nceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his mother.\"\n\nSometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited the upper regions\nin which the child lived.  She came like a vivified figure out of the\nMagasin des Modes--blandly smiling in the most beautiful new clothes\nand little gloves and boots.  Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels\nglittered about her.  She had always a new bonnet on, and flowers\nbloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling ostrich\nfeathers, soft and snowy as camellias.  She nodded twice or thrice\npatronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his dinner or from\nthe pictures of soldiers he was painting.  When she left the room, an\nodour of rose, or some other magical fragrance, lingered about the\nnursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his\nfather--to all the world:  to be worshipped and admired at a distance.\nTo drive with that lady in the carriage was an awful rite:  he sat up\nin the back seat and did not dare to speak:  he gazed with all his eyes\nat the beautifully dressed Princess opposite to him.  Gentlemen on\nsplendid prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her. How\nher eyes beamed upon all of them!  Her hand used to quiver and wave\ngracefully as they passed.  When he went out with her he had his new\nred dress on.  His old brown holland was good enough when he stayed at\nhome. Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was making his\nbed, he came into his mother's room.  It was as the abode of a fairy to\nhim--a mystic chamber of splendour and delights.  There in the wardrobe\nhung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted.  There was\nthe jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous bronze hand on the\ndressing-table, glistening all over with a hundred rings.  There was\nthe cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see his\nown wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly distorted, and\nas if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the pillows of the bed.\nOh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy! Mother is the name for God\nin the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was\nworshipping a stone!\n\nNow Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had certain manly\ntendencies of affection in his heart and could love a child and a woman\nstill.  For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness then, which\ndid not escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to her\nhusband.  It did not annoy her:  she was too good-natured. It only\nincreased her scorn for him.  He felt somehow ashamed of this paternal\nsoftness and hid it from his wife--only indulging in it when alone with\nthe boy.\n\nHe used to take him out of mornings when they would go to the stables\ntogether and to the park.  Little Lord Southdown, the best-natured of\nmen, who would make you a present of the hat from his head, and whose\nmain occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might give them\naway afterwards, bought the little chap a pony not much bigger than a\nlarge rat, the donor said, and on this little black Shetland pygmy\nyoung Rawdon's great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk\nby his side in the park.  It pleased him to see his old quarters, and\nhis old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge: he had begun to think of his\nbachelorhood with something like regret.  The old troopers were glad to\nrecognize their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel. Colonel\nCrawley found dining at mess and with his brother-officers very\npleasant. \"Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her--I know it.  She\nwon't miss me,\" he used to say:  and he was right, his wife did not\nmiss him.\n\nRebecca was fond of her husband.  She was always perfectly good-humoured\nand kind to him.  She did not even show her scorn much for\nhim; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool.  He was her\nupper servant and maitre d'hotel.  He went on her errands; obeyed her\norders without question; drove in the carriage in the ring with her\nwithout repining; took her to the opera-box, solaced himself at his\nclub during the performance, and came punctually back to fetch her when\ndue.  He would have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, but\neven to that he reconciled himself.  \"Hang it, you know she's so\nclever,\" he said, \"and I'm not literary and that, you know.\" For, as we\nhave said before, it requires no great wisdom to be able to win at\ncards and billiards, and Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort\nof skill.\n\nWhen the companion came, his domestic duties became very light.  His\nwife encouraged him to dine abroad:  she would let him off duty at the\nopera.  \"Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear,\"\nshe would say.  \"Some men are coming who will only bore you. I would\nnot ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I have a\nsheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone.\"\n\n\"A sheep-dog--a companion!  Becky Sharp with a companion!  Isn't it\ngood fun?\" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself.  The notion tickled hugely\nher sense of humour.\n\nOne Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony\nwere taking their accustomed walk in the park, they passed by an old\nacquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was\nin conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy in his\narms about the age of little Rawdon.  This other youngster had seized\nhold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and was examining\nit with delight.\n\n\"Good morning, your Honour,\" said Clink, in reply to the \"How do,\nClink?\" of the Colonel.  \"This ere young gentleman is about the little\nColonel's age, sir,\" continued the corporal.\n\n\"His father was a Waterloo man, too,\" said the old gentleman, who\ncarried the boy.  \"Wasn't he, Georgy?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Georgy.  He and the little chap on the pony were looking at\neach other with all their might--solemnly scanning each other as\nchildren do.\n\n\"In a line regiment,\" Clink said with a patronizing air.\n\n\"He was a Captain in the --th regiment,\" said the old gentleman rather\npompously.  \"Captain George Osborne, sir--perhaps you knew him.  He\ndied the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant.\"\nColonel Crawley blushed quite red.  \"I knew him very well, sir,\" he\nsaid, \"and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--how is she?\"\n\n\"She is my daughter, sir,\" said the old gentleman, putting down the boy\nand taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to the\nColonel.  On it written--\n\n\"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal\nAssociation, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages,\nFulham Road West.\"\n\nLittle Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony.\n\n\"Should you like to have a ride?\" said Rawdon minor from the saddle.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Georgy.  The Colonel, who had been looking at him with some\ninterest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.\n\n\"Take hold of him, Georgy,\" he said--\"take my little boy round the\nwaist--his name is Rawdon.\" And both the children began to laugh.\n\n\"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's day, sir,\" said\nthe good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr.\nSedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVIII\n\nA Family in a Very Small Way\n\nWe must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridge\ntowards Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that village\nregarding some friends whom we have left there.  How is Mrs. Amelia\nafter the storm of Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has come\nof Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her premises? And\nis there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah? The facts\nconcerning the latter are briefly these:\n\nOur worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long after\nhis escape from Brussels.  Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded to\nmeet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight.  However it might be, he\nwent back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken up\nhis residence at St.  Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor. To hear Mr.\nSedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that it was not the\nfirst time he and the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had\nbearded the French General at Mount St.  John.  He had a thousand\nanecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position of every\nregiment and the loss which each had incurred.  He did not deny that he\nhad been concerned in those victories--that he had been with the army\nand carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington. And he described\nwhat the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment of the day of\nWaterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments and\nproceedings that it was clear he must have been by the conqueror's side\nthroughout the day; though, as a non-combatant, his name was not\nmentioned in the public documents relative to the battle.  Perhaps he\nactually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with the\narmy; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation for some time\nat Calcutta, and was called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his\nsubsequent stay in Bengal.\n\nThe bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky horses\nwere paid without question by him and his agents.  He never was heard\nto allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty what became\nof the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his Belgian\nservant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one which Jos rode, at\nValenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815.\n\nJos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty pounds\nyearly to his parents at Fulham.  It was the chief support of the old\ncouple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to his\nbankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's\nfortune.  He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commission\nlottery agent, &c., &c.  He sent round prospectuses to his friends\nwhenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for the\ndoor, and talked pompously about making his fortune still.  But Fortune\nnever came back to the feeble and stricken old man.  One by one his\nfriends dropped off, and were weary of buying dear coals and bad wine\nfrom him; and there was only his wife in all the world who fancied,\nwhen he tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still doing\nany business there.  At evening he crawled slowly back; and he used to\ngo of nights to a little club at a tavern, where he disposed of the\nfinances of the nation. It was wonderful to hear him talk about\nmillions, and agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was doing, and\nBaring Brothers.  He talked of such vast sums that the gentlemen of the\nclub (the apothecary, the undertaker, the great carpenter and builder,\nthe parish clerk, who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp,\nour old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman.  \"I was better off\nonce, sir,\" he did not fail to tell everybody who \"used the room.\" \"My\nson, sir, is at this minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in the\nPresidency of Bengal, and touching his four thousand rupees per mensem.\nMy daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked.  I might draw upon\nmy son, the first magistrate, sir, for two thousand pounds to-morrow,\nand Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir.\nBut the Sedleys were always a proud family.\" You and I, my dear reader,\nmay drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friends\nattained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us:  our place on\nthe boards be taken by better and younger mimes--the chance of life\nroll away and leave us shattered and stranded.  Then men will walk\nacross the road when they meet you--or, worse still, hold you out a\ncouple of fingers and patronize you in a pitying way--then you will\nknow, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a\n\"Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chap\nhas thrown away!\" Well, well--a carriage and three thousand a year is\nnot the summit of the reward nor the end of God's judgment of men.  If\nquacks prosper as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and\nknaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck and\nprosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest amongst\nus--I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be\nheld of any great account, and that it is probable . . . but we are\nwandering out of the domain of the story.\n\nHad Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it after\nher husband's ruin and, occupying a large house, would have taken in\nboarders.  The broken Sedley would have acted well as the\nboarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the\ntitular lord and master:  the carver, house-steward, and humble husband\nof the occupier of the dingy throne.  I have seen men of good brains\nand breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who feasted squires\nand kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for\nrancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their dreary\ntables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle about\nfor \"a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family,\" such as\none reads of in the Times.  She was content to lie on the shore where\nfortune had stranded her--and you could see that the career of this old\ncouple was over.\n\nI don't think they were unhappy.  Perhaps they were a little prouder in\ntheir downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a great\nperson for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many\nhours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The Irish maid\nBetty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her\nreckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea and\nsugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as\nthe doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and the\ncoachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a housekeeper with a regiment\nof female domestics--her former household, about which the good lady\ntalked a hundred times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley\nhad all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend. She knew\nhow each tenant of the cottages paid or owed his little rent.  She\nstepped aside when Mrs. Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious\nfamily.  She flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's\nlady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse chaise.  She had\ncolloquies with the greengrocer about the pennorth of turnips which Mr.\nSedley loved; she kept an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and\nmade visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of oxen very likely\nwith less ado than was made about Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton:  and\nshe counted the potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days,\ndressed in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's Sermons\nin the evening.\n\nOn that day, for \"business\" prevented him on weekdays from taking such\na pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little grandson\nGeorgy to the neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the\nsoldiers or to feed the ducks.  Georgy loved the redcoats, and his\ngrandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, and\nintroduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals on\ntheir breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented the\nchild as the son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously on\nthe glorious eighteenth.  He has been known to treat some of these\nnon-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in their\nfirst Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging\nthe boy with apples and parliament, to the detriment of his\nhealth--until Amelia declared that George should never go out with his\ngrandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly, and on his honour, not\nto give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever.\n\nBetween Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness about\nthis boy, and a secret jealousy--for one evening in George's very early\ndays, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little parlour\nscarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran upstairs\ninstinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had been\nasleep until that moment--and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of\nsurreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant.  Amelia,\nthe gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she found this\nmeddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all over\nwith anger.  Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed up, until they\nwere as red as they used to be when she was a child of twelve years\nold.  She seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then grasped at\nthe bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her, furious, and holding\nthe guilty tea-spoon.\n\nAmelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. \"I will NOT have\nbaby poisoned, Mamma,\" cried Emmy, rocking the infant about violently\nwith both her arms round him and turning with flashing eyes at her\nmother.\n\n\"Poisoned, Amelia!\" said the old lady; \"this language to me?\"\n\n\"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for\nhim.  He told me that Daffy's Elixir was poison.\"\n\n\"Very good:  you think I'm a murderess then,\" replied Mrs. Sedley.\n\"This is the language you use to your mother. I have met with\nmisfortunes:  I have sunk low in life:  I have kept my carriage, and\nnow walk on foot:  but I did not know I was a murderess before, and\nthank you for the NEWS.\"\n\n\"Mamma,\" said the poor girl, who was always ready for tears--\"you\nshouldn't be hard upon me.  I--I didn't mean--I mean, I did not wish to\nsay you would do any wrong to this dear child, only--\"\n\n\"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in which case I had\nbetter go to the Old Bailey.  Though I didn't poison YOU, when you were\na child, but gave you the best of education and the most expensive\nmasters money could procure.  Yes; I've nursed five children and buried\nthree; and the one I loved the best of all, and tended through croup,\nand teething, and measles, and hooping-cough, and brought up with\nforeign masters, regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at\nMinerva House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was too glad\nto honour my father and mother, that I might live long in the land, and\nto be useful, and not to mope all day in my room and act the fine\nlady--says I'm a murderess.  Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a\nviper in your bosom, that's MY prayer.\"\n\n\"Mamma, Mamma!\" cried the bewildered girl; and the child in her arms\nset up a frantic chorus of shouts. \"A murderess, indeed!  Go down on\nyour knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,\nAmelia, and may He forgive you as I do.\" And Mrs. Sedley tossed out of\nthe room, hissing out the word poison once more, and so ending her\ncharitable benediction.\n\nTill the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs.\nSedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended.  The quarrel gave\nthe elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to turn to\naccount with female ingenuity and perseverance.  For instance, she\nscarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards. She warned the\ndomestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne might be offended.\nShe asked her daughter to see and satisfy herself that there was no\npoison prepared in the little daily messes that were concocted for\nGeorgy. When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she referred them\npointedly to Mrs. Osborne.  SHE never ventured to ask whether the baby\nwas well or not.  SHE would not touch the child although he was her\ngrandson, and own precious darling, for she was not USED to children,\nand might kill it.  And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healing\ninquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornful\ndemeanour, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood\nherself, whom he had the honour of attending professionally, could give\nherself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took a\nfee.  And very likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as what\nmother is not, of those who would manage her children for her, or\nbecome candidates for the first place in their affections.  It is\ncertain that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and that\nshe would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend him\nthan she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung up\nover her little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl had\ngone to his; and to which she retired now for many long, silent,\ntearful, but happy years.\n\nIn this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure.  Here it was that she\ntended her boy and watched him through the many ills of childhood, with\na constant passion of love.  The elder George returned in him somehow,\nonly improved, and as if come back from heaven.  In a hundred little\ntones, looks, and movements, the child was so like his father that the\nwidow's heart thrilled as she held him to it; and he would often ask\nthe cause of her tears.  It was because of his likeness to his father,\nshe did not scruple to tell him.  She talked constantly to him about\nthis dead father, and spoke of her love for George to the innocent and\nwondering child; much more than she ever had done to George himself, or\nto any confidante of her youth.  To her parents she never talked about\nthis matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them.  Little George\nvery likely could understand no better than they, but into his ears she\npoured her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only.  The\nvery joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least,\nthat its expression was tears.  Her sensibilities were so weak and\ntremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book. I\nwas told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician, with\na sumptuous dark green carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a\nhouse in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child was a\nsight that would have unmanned a Herod.  He was very soft-hearted many\nyears ago, and his wife was mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and\nlong afterwards.\n\nPerhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy:  most women\nshared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia's\nacquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which the\nother sex regarded her.  For almost all men who came near her loved\nher; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why.  She was\nnot brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over much, nor extraordinarily\nhandsome.  But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one of\nthe male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulity\nof her own sisterhood.  I think it was her weakness which was her\nprincipal charm--a kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemed\nto appeal to each man she met for his sympathy and protection.  We have\nseen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to few of George's\ncomrades there, all the swords of the young fellows at the mess-table\nwould have leapt from their scabbards to fight round her; and so it was\nin the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she interested\nand pleased everybody.  If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of the\ngreat house of Mango, Plantain, and Co., Crutched Friars, and the\nmagnificent proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer\ndejeuners frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about the parish\nwith magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royal\nstables at Kensington themselves could not turn out--I say had she been\nMrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the\nEarl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the head of the firm),\nthe tradesmen of the neighbourhood could not pay her more honour than\nthey invariably showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by\ntheir doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.\n\nThus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton the\nyoung assistant, who doctored the servant maids and small tradesmen,\nand might be seen any day reading the Times in the surgery, who openly\ndeclared himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne.  He was a personable young\ngentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings than his principal;\nand if anything went wrong with Georgy, he would drop in twice or\nthrice in the day to see the little chap, and without so much as the\nthought of a fee.  He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and other\nproduce from the surgery-drawers for little Georgy's benefit, and\ncompounded draughts and mixtures for him of miraculous sweetness, so\nthat it was quite a pleasure to the child to be ailing.  He and\nPestler, his chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in that\nmomentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and when you\nwould have thought, from the mother's terror, that there had never been\nmeasles in the world before. Would they have done as much for other\npeople? Did they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when Ralph\nPlantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the same juvenile\ncomplaint? Did they sit up for little Mary Clapp, the landlord's\ndaughter, who actually caught the disease of little Georgy? Truth\ncompels one to say, no. They slept quite undisturbed, at least as far\nas she was concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which would\nalmost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two, and threw in bark\nwhen the child rallied, with perfect indifference, and just for form's\nsake.\n\nAgain, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave lessons\nin his native tongue at various schools in the neighbourhood, and who\nmight be heard in his apartment of nights playing tremulous old\ngavottes and minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever this powdered and\ncourteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the convent chapel at\nHammersmith, and who was in all respects, thoughts, conduct, and\nbearing utterly unlike the bearded savages of his nation, who curse\nperfidious Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in the\nQuadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the old Chevalier de\nTalonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne, he would first finish his pinch\nof snuff, flick away the remaining particles of dust with a graceful\nwave of his hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,\nbringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss, exclaiming,\nAh! la divine creature!  He vowed and protested that when Amelia walked\nin the Brompton Lanes flowers grew in profusion under her feet.  He\ncalled little Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma; and\ntold the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, and\nthe favourite attendant of the Reine des Amours.\n\nInstances might be multiplied of this easily gained and unconscious\npopularity.  Did not Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of the\ndistrict chapel, which the family attended, call assiduously upon the\nwidow, dandle the little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin,\nto the anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house for him?\n\"There is nothing in her, Beilby,\" the latter lady would say.  \"When\nshe comes to tea here she does not speak a word during the whole\nevening.  She is but a poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my belief\nhas no heart at all.  It is only her pretty face which all you\ngentlemen admire so.  Miss Grits, who has five thousand pounds, and\nexpectations besides, has twice as much character, and is a thousand\ntimes more agreeable to my taste; and if she were good-looking I know\nthat you would think her perfection.\"\n\nVery likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent.  It IS the pretty\nface which creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those wicked rogues.\nA woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no\nheed to her, if she has a plain face.  What folly will not a pair of\nbright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not red lips and sweet\naccents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice,\nladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool.\nO ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor\nwise.\n\nThese are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our heroine.\nHer tale does not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader has already no\ndoubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of her proceedings\nduring the seven years after the birth of her son, there would be found\nfew incidents more remarkable in it than that of the measles, recorded\nin the foregoing page.  Yes, one day, and greatly to her wonder, the\nReverend Mr. Binny, just mentioned, asked her to change her name of\nOsborne for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her eyes and\nvoice, she thanked him for his regard for her, expressed gratitude for\nhis attentions to her and to her poor little boy, but said that she\nnever, never could think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost.\n\nOn the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of June, the days of\nmarriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating them\n(and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought, her\nlittle boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that\ndeparted friend.  During the day she was more active. She had to teach\nGeorge to read and to write and a little to draw.  She read books, in\norder that she might tell him stories from them.  As his eyes opened\nand his mind expanded under the influence of the outward nature round\nabout him, she taught the child, to the best of her humble power, to\nacknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and every morning he and\nshe--(in that awful and touching communion which I think must bring a\nthrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who remembers\nit)--the mother and the little boy--prayed to Our Father together, the\nmother pleading with all her gentle heart, the child lisping after her\nas she spoke.  And each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as\nif he were alive and in the room with them.  To wash and dress this\nyoung gentleman--to take him for a run of the mornings, before\nbreakfast, and the retreat of grandpapa for \"business\"--to make for him\nthe most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thrifty\nwidow cut up and altered every available little bit of finery which she\npossessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne\nherself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes,\nespecially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a straw\nbonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of the day.  Others\nshe had to spare, at the service of her mother and her old father.  She\nhad taken the pains to learn, and used to play cribbage with this\ngentleman on the nights when he did not go to his club.  She sang for\nhim when he was so minded, and it was a good sign, for he invariably\nfell into a comfortable sleep during the music.  She wrote out his\nnumerous memorials, letters, prospectuses, and projects.  It was in her\nhandwriting that most of the old gentleman's former acquaintances were\ninformed that he had become an agent for the Black Diamond and\nAnti-Cinder Coal Company and could supply his friends and the public\nwith the best coals at --s. per chaldron.  All he did was to sign the\ncirculars with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a shaky,\nclerklike hand.  One of these papers was sent to Major Dobbin,--Regt.,\ncare of Messrs.  Cox and Greenwood; but the Major being in Madras at\nthe time, had no particular call for coals.  He knew, though, the hand\nwhich had written the prospectus.  Good God! what would he not have\ngiven to hold it in his own!  A second prospectus came out, informing\nthe Major that J.  Sedley and Company, having established agencies at\nOporto, Bordeaux, and St.  Mary's, were enabled to offer to their\nfriends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated growths\nof ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices and under\nextraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously\ncanvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the\nregiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency, and sent home\nto Sedley and Co.  orders for wine which perfectly astonished Mr.\nSedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co.  in the business.  But no more\norders came after that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old\nSedley was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of clerks, a\ndock to himself, and correspondents all over the world.  The old\ngentleman's former taste in wine had gone:  the curses of the mess-room\nassailed Major Dobbin for the vile drinks he had been the means of\nintroducing there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine and\nsold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself. As for Jos,\nwho was by this time promoted to a seat at the Revenue Board at\nCalcutta, he was wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundle\nof these Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his\nfather, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in this\nenterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as per\ninvoice, drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same.  Jos, who\nwould no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of\nthe Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than that\nhe was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote back\ncontumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his own\naffairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co.  had to\ntake it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madras\nventure, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings.\n\nBesides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had been five hundred\npounds, as her husband's executor stated, left in the agent's hands at\nthe time of Osborne's demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbin\nproposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of agency.  Mr.\nSedley, who thought the Major had some roguish intentions of his own\nabout the money, was strongly against this plan; and he went to the\nagents to protest personally against the employment of the money in\nquestion, when he learned, to his surprise, that there had been no such\nsum in their hands, that all the late Captain's assets did not amount\nto a hundred pounds, and that the five hundred pounds in question must\nbe a separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars. More\nthan ever convinced that there was some roguery, old Sedley pursued the\nMajor.  As his daughter's nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand\na statement of the late Captain's accounts.  Dobbin's stammering,\nblushing, and awkwardness added to the other's convictions that he had\na rogue to deal with, and in a majestic tone he told that officer a\npiece of his mind, as he called it, simply stating his belief that the\nMajor was unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.\n\nDobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had not been so\nold and so broken, a quarrel might have ensued between them at the\nSlaughters' Coffee-house, in a box of which place of entertainment the\ngentlemen had their colloquy.  \"Come upstairs, sir,\" lisped out the\nMajor.  \"I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will show which\nis the injured party, poor George or I\"; and, dragging the old\ngentleman up to his bedroom, he produced from his desk Osborne's\naccounts, and a bundle of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to do\nhim justice, was always ready to give an IOU.  \"He paid his bills in\nEngland,\" Dobbin added, \"but he had not a hundred pounds in the world\nwhen he fell.  I and one or two of his brother officers made up the\nlittle sum, which was all that we could spare, and you dare tell us\nthat we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan.\" Sedley was very\ncontrite and humbled, though the fact is that William Dobbin had told a\ngreat falsehood to the old gentleman; having himself given every\nshilling of the money, having buried his friend, and paid all the fees\nand charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor Amelia.\n\nAbout these expenses old Osborne had never given himself any trouble to\nthink, nor any other relative of Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed.\nShe trusted to Major Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhat\nconfused calculations for granted, and never once suspected how much\nshe was in his debt.\n\nTwice or thrice in the year, according to her promise, she wrote him\nletters to Madras, letters all about little Georgy.  How he treasured\nthese papers!  Whenever Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then.\nBut he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his godson and to\nher.  He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand ivory set of\nchess-men from China.  The pawns were little green and white men, with\nreal swords and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles\nwere on the backs of elephants.  \"Mrs. Mango's own set at the Pineries\nwas not so fine,\" Mr. Pestler remarked.  These chess-men were the\ndelight of Georgy's life, who printed his first letter in\nacknowledgement of this gift of his godpapa.  He sent over preserves\nand pickles, which latter the young gentleman tried surreptitiously in\nthe sideboard and half-killed himself with eating.  He thought it was a\njudgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot.  Emmy wrote a\ncomical little account of this mishap to the Major:  it pleased him to\nthink that her spirits were rallying and that she could be merry\nsometimes now.  He sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and\na black one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red scarfs,\nas winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George. The shawls were\nworth fifty guineas apiece at the very least, as Mrs. Sedley knew.  She\nwore hers in state at church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her\nfemale friends upon the splendid acquisition.  Emmy's, too, became\nprettily her modest black gown.  \"What a pity it is she won't think of\nhim!\" Mrs. Sedley remarked to Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends of\nBrompton.  \"Jos never sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges us\neverything.  It is evident that the Major is over head and ears in love\nwith her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it, she turns red and\nbegins to cry and goes and sits upstairs with her miniature.  I'm sick\nof that miniature.  I wish we had never seen those odious purse-proud\nOsbornes.\"\n\nAmidst such humble scenes and associates George's early youth was\npassed, and the boy grew up delicate, sensitive, imperious,\nwoman-bred--domineering the gentle mother whom he loved with passionate\naffection.  He ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.\nAs he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty manner and his\nconstant likeness to his father.  He asked questions about everything,\nas inquiring youth will do.  The profundity of his remarks and\ninterrogatories astonished his old grandfather, who perfectly bored the\nclub at the tavern with stories about the little lad's learning and\ngenius.  He suffered his grandmother with a good-humoured\nindifference.  The small circle round about him believed that the equal\nof the boy did not exist upon the earth.  Georgy inherited his father's\npride, and perhaps thought they were not wrong.\n\nWhen he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began to write to him\nvery much.  The Major wanted to hear that Georgy was going to a school\nand hoped he would acquit himself with credit there:  or would he have\na good tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn; and\nhis godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to be allowed to defray\nthe charges of the boy's education, which would fall heavily upon his\nmother's straitened income.  The Major, in a word, was always thinking\nabout Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents kept the\nlatter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes, desks, and all\nconceivable implements of amusement and instruction.  Three days before\nGeorge's sixth birthday a gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant,\ndrove up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George Osborne:\nit was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit Street, who came at the\nMajor's order to measure the young gentleman for a suit of clothes.  He\nhad had the honour of making for the Captain, the young gentleman's\nfather. Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt, his\nsisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family carriage to take\nAmelia and the little boy to drive if they were so inclined.  The\npatronage and kindness of these ladies was very uncomfortable to\nAmelia, but she bore it meekly enough, for her nature was to yield;\nand, besides, the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy\nimmense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the child might\npass a day with them, and he was always glad to go to that fine\ngarden-house at Denmark Hill, where they lived, and where there were\nsuch fine grapes in the hot-houses and peaches on the walls.\n\nOne day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were SURE\nwould delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear William.\n\n\"What was it:  was he coming home?\" she asked with pleasure beaming in\nher eyes.\n\n\"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe that\ndear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a very dear\nfriend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd's\nsister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a very\nbeautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said.\"\n\nAmelia said \"Oh!\" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she supposed\nGlorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was most\nkind--but--but she was very happy indeed.  And by some impulse of which\nI cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms and kissed\nhim with an extraordinary tenderness.  Her eyes were quite moist when\nshe put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a word during the whole\nof the drive--though she was so very happy indeed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIX\n\nA Cynical Chapter\n\nOur duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old Hampshire\nacquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting the disposal of their\nrich kinswoman's property were so woefully disappointed.  After\ncounting upon thirty thousand pounds from his sister, it was a heavy\nblow to Bute Crawley to receive but five; out of which sum, when he\nhad paid his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a very\nsmall fragment remained to portion off his four plain daughters.  Mrs.\nBute never knew, or at least never acknowledged, how far her own\ntyrannous behaviour had tended to ruin her husband. All that woman\ncould do, she vowed and protested she had done.  Was it her fault if\nshe did not possess those sycophantic arts which her hypocritical\nnephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished him all the happiness which\nhe merited out of his ill-gotten gains.  \"At least the money will\nremain in the family,\" she said charitably.  \"Pitt will never spend it,\nmy dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not exist in\nEngland, and he is as odious, though in a different way, as his\nspendthrift brother, the abandoned Rawdon.\"\n\nSo Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and disappointment, began\nto accommodate herself as best she could to her altered fortunes and to\nsave and retrench with all her might.  She instructed her daughters how\nto bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable methods to\nconceal or evade it.  She took them about to balls and public places in\nthe neighbourhood, with praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her\nfriends in a hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much\nmore frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy had fallen in.\nFrom her outward bearing nobody would have supposed that the family had\nbeen disappointed in their expectations, or have guessed from her\nfrequent appearance in public how she pinched and starved at home.  Her\ngirls had more milliners' furniture than they had ever enjoyed before.\nThey appeared perseveringly at the Winchester and Southampton\nassemblies; they penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls and\nregatta-gaieties there; and their carriage, with the horses taken from\nthe plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to be\nbelieved that the four sisters had had fortunes left them by their\naunt, whose name the family never mentioned in public but with the most\ntender gratitude and regard.  I know no sort of lying which is more\nfrequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people\nwho practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy, and\nfancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, because they\nare able to deceive the world with regard to the extent of their means.\n\nMrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most virtuous women in\nEngland, and the sight of her happy family was an edifying one to\nstrangers.  They were so cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so\nsimple!  Martha painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the\ncharity bazaars in the county.  Emma was a regular County Bulbul, and\nher verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were the glory of its Poet's\nCorner.  Fanny and Matilda sang duets together, Mamma playing the\npiano, and the other two sisters sitting with their arms round each\nother's waists and listening affectionately.  Nobody saw the poor girls\ndrumming at the duets in private.  No one saw Mamma drilling them\nrigidly hour after hour.  In a word, Mrs. Bute put a good face against\nfortune and kept up appearances in the most virtuous manner.\n\nEverything that a good and respectable mother could do Mrs. Bute did.\nShe got over yachting men from Southampton, parsons from the Cathedral\nClose at Winchester, and officers from the barracks there. She tried to\ninveigle the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to bring\nhome friends with whom he went out hunting with the H. H.  What will\nnot a mother do for the benefit of her beloved ones?\n\nBetween such a woman and her brother-in-law, the odious Baronet at the\nHall, it is manifest that there could be very little in common. The\nrupture between Bute and his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed,\nbetween Sir Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was a\nscandal.  His dislike for respectable society increased with age, and\nthe lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's carriage-wheels since\nPitt and Lady Jane came to pay their visit of duty after their marriage.\n\nThat was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be thought of by the\nfamily without horror.  Pitt begged his wife, with a ghastly\ncountenance, never to speak of it, and it was only through Mrs. Bute\nherself, who still knew everything which took place at the Hall, that\nthe circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and\ndaughter-in-law were ever known at all.\n\nAs they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat and\nwell-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay and wrath great gaps\namong the trees--his trees--which the old Baronet was felling entirely\nwithout license.  The park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin.\nThe drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and floundered\nin muddy pools along the road.  The great sweep in front of the terrace\nand entrance stair was black and covered with mosses; the once trim\nflower-beds rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the whole\nline of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred after much ringing\nof the bell; an individual in ribbons was seen flitting up the black\noak stair, as Horrocks at length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley\nand his bride into the halls of their fathers.  He led the way into Sir\nPitt's \"Library,\" as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growing\nstronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that apartment, \"Sir Pitt\nain't very well,\" Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that his\nmaster was afflicted with lumbago.\n\nThe library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had opened\none of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the postilion and\nPitt's servant, who seemed to be about to take the baggage down.\n\n\"Don't move none of them trunks,\" he cried, pointing with a pipe which\nhe held in his hand.  \"It's only a morning visit, Tucker, you fool.\nLor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels!  Ain't there no one at\nthe King's Head to rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear?\nCome to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too. You\nain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and give old\nPitt a kiss, like a good little gal.\"\n\nThe embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the caresses\nof the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco, might well do.\nBut she remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios, and\nsmoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a tolerable grace.\n\n\"Pitt has got vat,\" said the Baronet, after this mark of affection.\n\"Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm, Evening\nHymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady\nJane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don't stand stearing there\nlike a fat pig.  I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it too\nstoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt.  I'm an old man now, and\nlike my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of a night.\"\n\n\"I can play at backgammon, sir,\" said Lady Jane, laughing.  \"I used to\nplay with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't I, Mr. Crawley?\"\n\n\"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you are\nso partial,\" Pitt said haughtily.\n\n\"But she wawn't stop for all that.  Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury and\ngive Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask Buty\nfor a dinner.  He'll be charmed to see you, you know; he's so much\nobliged to you for gettin' the old woman's money.  Ha, ha! Some of it\nwill do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone.\"\n\n\"I perceive, sir,\" said Pitt with a heightened voice, \"that your people\nwill cut down the timber.\"\n\n\"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of year,\"\nSir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf.  \"But I'm gittin' old,\nPitt, now.  Law bless you, you ain't far from fifty yourself.  But he\nwears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness,\nsobriety, and a moral life.  Look at me, I'm not very fur from\nfowr-score--he, he\"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered at her\nand pinched her hand.\n\nPitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but the\nBaronet was deaf again in an instant.\n\n\"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year with the\nlumbago.  I shan't be here now for long; but I'm glad ee've come,\ndaughter-in-law.  I like your face, Lady Jane:  it's got none of the\ndamned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something pretty,\nmy dear, to go to Court in.\" And he shuffled across the room to a\ncupboard, from which he took a little old case containing jewels of\nsome value.  \"Take that,\" said he, \"my dear; it belonged to my mother,\nand afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty pearls--never gave 'em\nthe ironmonger's daughter. No, no.  Take 'em and put 'em up quick,\"\nsaid he, thrusting the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping the\ndoor of the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and\nrefreshments.\n\n\"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?\" said the individual in\nribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old gentleman.\nIt was Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandal\nthroughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost supreme at\nQueen's Crawley.\n\nThe rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay by\nthe county and family.  The Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury\nBranch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the\npony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at the Hall.  The\ndomestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The Scotch gardener, who\nstill lingered on the premises, taking a pride in his walls and\nhot-houses, and indeed making a pretty good livelihood by the garden,\nwhich he farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton, found\nthe Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning at the south-wall, and\nhad his ears boxed when he remonstrated about this attack on his\nproperty.  He and his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only\nrespectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to migrate,\nwith their goods and their chattels, and left the stately comfortable\ngardens to go to waste, and the flower-beds to run to seed.  Poor Lady\nCrawley's rose-garden became the dreariest wilderness.  Only two or\nthree domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall.  The stables\nand offices were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined.  Sir Pitt lived\nin private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-steward\n(as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. The\ntimes were very much changed since the period when she drove to Mudbury\nin the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen \"Sir.\" It may have\nbeen shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours, but the old\nCynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now.\nHe quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by letter.  His\ndays were passed in conducting his own correspondence; the lawyers and\nfarm-bailiffs who had to do business with him could not reach him but\nthrough the Ribbons, who received them at the door of the housekeeper's\nroom, which commanded the back entrance by which they were admitted;\nand so the Baronet's daily perplexities increased, and his\nembarrassments multiplied round him.\n\nThe horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these reports of his\nfather's dotage reached the most exemplary and correct of gentlemen. He\ntrembled daily lest he should hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed his\nsecond legal mother-in-law.  After that first and last visit, his\nfather's name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteel\nestablishment.  It was the skeleton in his house, and all the family\nwalked by it in terror and silence.  The Countess Southdown kept on\ndropping per coach at the lodge-gate the most exciting tracts, tracts\nwhich ought to frighten the hair off your head.  Mrs. Bute at the\nparsonage nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the elms\nbehind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on fire.  Sir G.\nWapshot and Sir H.  Fuddlestone, old friends of the house, wouldn't sit\non the bench with Sir Pitt at Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the\nHigh Street of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his\ndirty old hands to them.  Nothing had any effect upon him; he put his\nhands into his pockets, and burst out laughing, as he scrambled into\nhis carriage and four; he used to burst out laughing at Lady\nSouthdown's tracts; and he laughed at his sons, and at the world, and\nat the Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom.\n\nMiss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's Crawley, and\nruled all the domestics there with great majesty and rigour.  All the\nservants were instructed to address her as \"Mum,\" or \"Madam\"--and\nthere was one little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in calling\nher \"My Lady,\" without any rebuke on the part of the housekeeper.\n\"There has been better ladies, and there has been worser, Hester,\" was\nMiss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled,\nhaving supreme power over all except her father, whom, however, she\ntreated with considerable haughtiness, warning him not to be too\nfamiliar in his behaviour to one \"as was to be a Baronet's lady.\"\nIndeed, she rehearsed that exalted part in life with great satisfaction\nto herself, and to the amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her\nairs and graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her\nassumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life. He swore it was\nas good as a play to see her in the character of a fine dame, and he\nmade her put on one of the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing\n(entirely to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress became her\nprodigiously, and threatening to drive her off that very instant to\nCourt in a coach-and-four.  She had the ransacking of the wardrobes of\nthe two defunct ladies, and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so\nas to suit her own tastes and figure.  And she would have liked to take\npossession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the old Baronet had\nlocked them away in his private cabinet; nor could she coax or wheedle\nhim out of the keys.  And it is a fact, that some time after she left\nQueen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered,\nwhich showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn the art\nof writing in general, and especially of writing her own name as Lady\nCrawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c.\n\nThough the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall and\nshunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strict\nknowledge of all that happened there, and were looking out every day\nfor the catastrophe for which Miss Horrocks was also eager.  But Fate\nintervened enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due to\nsuch immaculate love and virtue.\n\nOne day the Baronet surprised \"her ladyship,\" as he jocularly called\nher, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room, which\nhad scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon\nit--seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the\nbest of her power in imitation of the music which she had sometimes\nheard.  The little kitchen-maid on her promotion was standing at her\nmistress's side, quite delighted during the operation, and wagging her\nhead up and down and crying, \"Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful\"--just like a\ngenteel sycophant in a real drawing-room.\n\nThis incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual.  He\nnarrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course of\nthe evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks.  He\nthrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, and\nsqualled in imitation of her manner of singing.  He vowed that such a\nbeautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to have\nsinging-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous. He was\nin great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and butler an\nextraordinary quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour the\nfaithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his bedroom.\n\nHalf an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and bustle in the\nhouse.  Lights went about from window to window in the lonely desolate\nold Hall, whereof but two or three rooms were ordinarily occupied by\nits owner. Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury, to\nthe Doctor's house there.  And in another hour (by which fact we\nascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs. Bute Crawley had always kept\nup an understanding with the great house), that lady in her clogs and\ncalash, the Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son, had\nwalked over from the Rectory through the park, and had entered the\nmansion by the open hall-door.\n\nThey passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table of\nwhich stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which had\nserved for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into Sir\nPitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons,\nwith a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch of\nkeys.  She dropped them with a scream of terror, as little Mrs. Bute's\neyes flashed out at her from under her black calash.\n\n\"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley,\" cried Mrs. Bute, pointing at the\nscared figure of the black-eyed, guilty wench.\n\n\"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!\" she cried.\n\n\"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!\" screamed Mrs. Bute.  \"Bear\nwitness, Mr. Crawley, we found this good-for-nothing woman in the act\nof stealing your brother's property; and she will be hanged, as I\nalways said she would.\"\n\nBetsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on her knees,\nbursting into tears.  But those who know a really good woman are aware\nthat she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the humiliation of an\nenemy is a triumph to her soul.\n\n\"Ring the bell, James,\" Mrs. Bute said.  \"Go on ringing it till the\npeople come.\" The three or four domestics resident in the deserted old\nhouse came presently at that jangling and continued summons.\n\n\"Put that woman in the strong-room,\" she said.  \"We caught her in the\nact of robbing Sir Pitt.  Mr. Crawley, you'll make out her\ncommittal--and, Beddoes, you'll drive her over in the spring cart, in\nthe morning, to Southampton Gaol.\"\n\n\"My dear,\" interposed the Magistrate and Rector--\"she's only--\"\n\n\"Are there no handcuffs?\" Mrs. Bute continued, stamping in her clogs.\n\"There used to be handcuffs. Where's the creature's abominable father?\"\n\n\"He DID give 'em me,\" still cried poor Betsy; \"didn't he, Hester? You\nsaw Sir Pitt--you know you did--give 'em me, ever so long ago--the day\nafter Mudbury fair:  not that I want 'em.  Take 'em if you think they\nain't mine.\" And here the unhappy wretch pulled out from her pocket a\nlarge pair of paste shoe-buckles which had excited her admiration, and\nwhich she had just appropriated out of one of the bookcases in the\nstudy, where they had lain.\n\n\"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked story!\" said\nHester, the little kitchen-maid late on her promotion--\"and to Madame\nCrawley, so good and kind, and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and you\nmay search all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm an\nhonest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse bred--and if you find\nso much as a beggarly bit of lace or a silk stocking out of all the\ngownds as YOU'VE had the picking of, may I never go to church agin.\"\n\n\"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy,\" hissed out the virtuous little\nlady in the calash.\n\n\"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum, I can show you her\nroom, Mum, and the press in the housekeeper's room, Mum, where she\nkeeps heaps and heaps of things, Mum,\" cried out the eager little\nHester with a profusion of curtseys.\n\n\"Hold your tongue, if you please.  I know the room which the creature\noccupies perfectly well.  Mrs. Brown, have the goodness to come with\nme, and Beddoes don't you lose sight of that woman,\" said Mrs. Bute,\nseizing the candle.  \"Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and see\nthat they are not murdering your unfortunate brother\"--and the calash,\nescorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away to the apartment which, as she said\ntruly, she knew perfectly well.\n\nBute went upstairs and found the Doctor from Mudbury, with the\nfrightened Horrocks over his master in a chair.  They were trying to\nbleed Sir Pitt Crawley.\n\nWith the early morning an express was sent off to Mr. Pitt Crawley by\nthe Rector's lady, who assumed the command of everything, and had\nwatched the old Baronet through the night.  He had been brought back to\na sort of life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people.\nMrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside.  She never seemed to want to\nsleep, that little woman, and did not close her fiery black eyes once,\nthough the Doctor snored in the arm-chair. Horrocks made some wild\nefforts to assert his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Bute\ncalled him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face again in\nthat house, or he should be transported like his abominable daughter.\n\nTerrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr.\nJames was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found no\nliquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which\nhe fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and his son sat\ndown, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that instant and never\nto show his face again.\n\nCowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys, and he and his\ndaughter slunk off silently through the night and gave up possession of\nthe house of Queen's Crawley.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XL\n\nIn Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family\n\nThe heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after this\ncatastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have reigned in Queen's\nCrawley.  For though the old Baronet survived many months, he never\nrecovered the use of his intellect or his speech completely, and the\ngovernment of the estate devolved upon his elder son.  In a strange\ncondition Pitt found it.  Sir Pitt was always buying and mortgaging; he\nhad twenty men of business, and quarrels with each; quarrels with all\nhis tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers;\nlawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was proprietor;\nand with every person with whom he had business.  To unravel these\ndifficulties and to set the estate clear was a task worthy of the\norderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set himself\nto work with prodigious assiduity.  His whole family, of course, was\ntransported to Queen's Crawley, whither Lady Southdown, of course, came\ntoo; and she set about converting the parish under the Rector's nose,\nand brought down her irregular clergy to the dismay of the angry Mrs\nBute.  Sir Pitt had concluded no bargain for the sale of the living of\nQueen's Crawley; when it should drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the\npatronage into her own hands and present a young protege to the\nRectory, on which subject the diplomatic Pitt said nothing.\n\nMrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy Horrocks were not\ncarried into effect, and she paid no visit to Southampton Gaol.  She\nand her father left the Hall when the latter took possession of the\nCrawley Arms in the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir Pitt.\nThe ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there likewise, which gave\nhim a vote for the borough.  The Rector had another of these votes, and\nthese and four others formed the representative body which returned the\ntwo members for Queen's Crawley.\n\nThere was a show of courtesy kept up between the Rectory and the Hall\nladies, between the younger ones at least, for Mrs. Bute and Lady\nSouthdown never could meet without battles, and gradually ceased seeing\neach other.  Her Ladyship kept her room when the ladies from the\nRectory visited their cousins at the Hall.  Perhaps Mr. Pitt was not\nvery much displeased at these occasional absences of his mamma-in-law.\nHe believed the Binkie family to be the greatest and wisest and most\ninteresting in the world, and her Ladyship and his aunt had long held\nascendency over him; but sometimes he felt that she commanded him too\nmuch.  To be considered young was complimentary, doubtless, but at\nsix-and-forty to be treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying.  Lady\nJane yielded up everything, however, to her mother.  She was only fond\nof her children in private, and it was lucky for her that Lady\nSouthdown's multifarious business, her conferences with ministers, and\nher correspondence with all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, and\nAustralasia, &c., occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so that\nshe had but little time to devote to her granddaughter, the little\nMatilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley. The latter was a feeble\nchild, and it was only by prodigious quantities of calomel that Lady\nSouthdown was able to keep him in life at all.\n\nAs for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments where Lady\nCrawley had been previously extinguished, and here was tended by Miss\nHester, the girl upon her promotion, with constant care and assiduity.\nWhat love, what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of a\nnurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make arrowroot; they\nget up at nights; they bear complaints and querulousness; they see the\nsun shining out of doors and don't want to go abroad; they sleep on\narm-chairs and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long long\nevenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the patient's drink\nsimmering in the jug; they read the weekly paper the whole week\nthrough; and Law's Serious Call or the Whole Duty of Man suffices them\nfor literature for the year--and we quarrel with them because, when\ntheir relations come to see them once a week, a little gin is smuggled\nin in their linen basket. Ladies, what man's love is there that would\nstand a year's nursing of the object of his affection? Whereas a nurse\nwill stand by you for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly\npaid.  At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about paying half as\nmuch to Miss Hester for her constant attendance upon the Baronet his\nfather.\n\nOf sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a chair on the\nterrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley had had at Brighton, and\nwhich had been transported thence with a number of Lady Southdown's\neffects to Queen's Crawley.  Lady Jane always walked by the old man,\nand was an evident favourite with him.  He used to nod many times to\nher and smile when she came in, and utter inarticulate deprecatory\nmoans when she was going away.  When the door shut upon her he would\ncry and sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was always\nexceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was present, would change\nat once, and she would make faces at him and clench her fist and scream\nout \"Hold your tongue, you stoopid old fool,\" and twirl away his chair\nfrom the fire which he loved to look at--at which he would cry more.\nFor this was all that was left after more than seventy years of\ncunning, and struggling, and drinking, and scheming, and sin and\nselfishness--a whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleaned\nand fed like a baby.\n\nAt last a day came when the nurse's occupation was over.  Early one\nmorning, as Pitt Crawley was at his steward's and bailiff's books in\nthe study, a knock came to the door, and Hester presented herself,\ndropping a curtsey, and said,\n\n\"If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir Pitt.  I was\na-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel, Sir Pitt, which he took\nevery morning regular at six, Sir Pitt, and--I thought I heard a\nmoan-like, Sir Pitt--and--and--and--\" She dropped another curtsey.\n\nWhat was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite red? Was it because\nhe was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat in Parliament, and perhaps future\nhonours in prospect? \"I'll clear the estate now with the ready money,\"\nhe thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances and the improvements\nwhich he would make.  He would not use his aunt's money previously lest\nSir Pitt should recover and his outlay be in vain.\n\nAll the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory: the church\nbell was tolled, and the chancel hung in black; and Bute Crawley didn't\ngo to a coursing meeting, but went and dined quietly at Fuddleston,\nwhere they talked about his deceased brother and young Sir Pitt over\ntheir port.  Miss Betsy, who was by this time married to a saddler at\nMudbury, cried a good deal. The family surgeon rode over and paid his\nrespectful compliments, and inquiries for the health of their\nladyships.  The death was talked about at Mudbury and at the Crawley\nArms, the landlord whereof had become reconciled with the Rector of\nlate, who was occasionally known to step into the parlour and taste Mr.\nHorrocks' mild beer.\n\n\"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?\" asked Lady Jane of her\nhusband, Sir Pitt.\n\n\"I will write, of course,\" Sir Pitt said, \"and invite him to the\nfuneral:  it will be but becoming.\"\n\n\"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon,\" said Lady Jane timidly.\n\n\"Jane!\" said Lady Southdown, \"how can you think of such a thing?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked,\" said Sir Pitt, resolutely.\n\n\"Not whilst I am in the house!\" said Lady Southdown.\n\n\"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am the head of this\nfamily,\" Sir Pitt replied.  \"If you please, Lady Jane, you will write a\nletter to Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, requesting her presence upon this\nmelancholy occasion.\"\n\n\"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!\" cried the Countess.\n\n\"I believe I am the head of this family,\" Sir Pitt repeated; \"and\nhowever much I may regret any circumstance which may lead to your\nLadyship quitting this house, must, if you please, continue to govern\nit as I see fit.\"\n\nLady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth\nand ordered that horses might be put to her carriage.  If her son and\ndaughter turned her out of their house, she would hide her sorrows\nsomewhere in loneliness and pray for their conversion to better\nthoughts.\n\n\"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma,\" said the timid Lady Jane\nimploringly.\n\n\"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady should meet, and I\nwill have my horses to-morrow morning.\"\n\n\"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation,\" said Sir Pitt,\nrising and throwing himself into an attitude of command, like the\nportrait of a Gentleman in the Exhibition, \"and begin.  'Queen's\nCrawley, September 14, 1822.--My dear brother--'\"\n\nHearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth, who had been\nwaiting for a sign of weakness or vacillation on the part of her\nson-in-law, rose and, with a scared look, left the library. Lady Jane\nlooked up to her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her\nmamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.\n\n\"She won't go away,\" he said.  \"She has let her house at Brighton and\nhas spent her last half-year's dividends. A Countess living at an inn\nis a ruined woman.  I have been waiting long for an opportunity--to\ntake this--this decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it\nis impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family: and now, if\nyou please, we will resume the dictation.  'My dear brother, the\nmelancholy intelligence which it is my duty to convey to my family must\nhave been long anticipated by,'\" &c.\n\nIn a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having by good luck, or\ndesert rather, as he considered, assumed almost all the fortune which\nhis other relatives had expected, was determined to treat his family\nkindly and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley once more.\nIt pleased him to think that he should be its chief.  He proposed to\nuse the vast influence that his commanding talents and position must\nspeedily acquire for him in the county to get his brother placed and\nhis cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little sting of\nrepentance as he thought that he was the proprietor of all that they\nhad hoped for.  In the course of three or four days' reign his bearing\nwas changed and his plans quite fixed:  he determined to rule justly\nand honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the friendliest\npossible terms with all the relations of his blood.\n\nSo he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn and elaborate\nletter, containing the profoundest observations, couched in the longest\nwords, and filling with wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote\nunder her husband's order.  \"What an orator this will be,\" thought she,\n\"when he enters the House of Commons\" (on which point, and on the\ntyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had sometimes dropped hints to his wife\nin bed); \"how wise and good, and what a genius my husband is!  I\nfancied him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!\"\n\nThe fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the letter by heart and\nhad studied it, with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long\nbefore he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife.\n\nThis letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordingly\ndespatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother the Colonel, in London.\nRawdon Crawley was but half-pleased at the receipt of it. \"What's the\nuse of going down to that stupid place?\" thought he.  \"I can't stand\nbeing alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there and back will cost\nus twenty pound.\"\n\nHe carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky, upstairs\nin her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he always made and took to\nher of a morning.\n\nHe put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on the dressing-table,\nbefore which Becky sat combing her yellow hair.  She took up the\nblack-edged missive, and having read it, she jumped up from the chair,\ncrying \"Hurray!\" and waving the note round her head.\n\n\"Hurray?\" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure capering about in\na streaming flannel dressing-gown, with tawny locks dishevelled. \"He's\nnot left us anything, Becky.  I had my share when I came of age.\"\n\n\"You'll never be of age, you silly old man,\" Becky replied.  \"Run out\nnow to Madam Brunoy's, for I must have some mourning:  and get a crape\non your hat, and a black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; order\nit to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able to start on\nThursday.\"\n\n\"You don't mean to go?\" Rawdon interposed.\n\n\"Of course I mean to go.  I mean that Lady Jane shall present me at\nCourt next year.  I mean that your brother shall give you a seat in\nParliament, you stupid old creature.  I mean that Lord Steyne shall\nhave your vote and his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be\nan Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor:  or a Treasurer, or a\nConsul, or some such thing.\"\n\n\"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money,\" grumbled Rawdon.\n\n\"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to be present at the\nfuneral, as he is a relation of the family:  but, no--I intend that we\nshall go by the coach. They'll like it better.  It seems more humble--\"\n\n\"Rawdy goes, of course?\" the Colonel asked.\n\n\"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to travel bodkin\nbetween you and me.  Let him stay here in the nursery, and Briggs can\nmake him a black frock.  Go you, and do as I bid you. And you had best\ntell Sparks, your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will come\nin for something considerable when the affairs are arranged.  He'll\ntell this to Raggles, who has been pressing for money, and it will\nconsole poor Raggles.\" And so Becky began sipping her chocolate.\n\nWhen the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening, he found Becky\nand her companion, who was no other than our friend Briggs, busy\ncutting, ripping, snipping, and tearing all sorts of black stuffs\navailable for the melancholy occasion.\n\n\"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency for the death\nof our Papa,\" Rebecca said.  \"Sir Pitt Crawley is dead, my lord.  We\nhave been tearing our hair all the morning, and now we are tearing up\nour old clothes.\"\n\n\"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--\" was all that Briggs could say as she\nturned up her eyes.\n\n\"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--\" echoed my Lord.  \"So that old scoundrel's\ndead, is he? He might have been a Peer if he had played his cards\nbetter.  Mr. Pitt had very nearly made him; but he ratted always at the\nwrong time.  What an old Silenus it was!\"\n\n\"I might have been Silenus's widow,\" said Rebecca. \"Don't you remember,\nMiss Briggs, how you peeped in at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on his\nknees to me?\" Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this\nreminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered her to go\ndownstairs and make him a cup of tea.\n\nBriggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided as guardian of her\ninnocence and reputation.  Miss Crawley had left her a little annuity.\nShe would have been content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady\nJane, who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady Southdown\ndismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency permitted; and Mr. Pitt\n(who thought himself much injured by the uncalled-for generosity of his\ndeceased relative towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's\nfaithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that exercise\nof the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin likewise received their\nlegacies and their dismissals, and married and set up a lodging-house,\naccording to the custom of their kind.\n\nBriggs tried to live with her relations in the country, but found that\nattempt was vain after the better society to which she had been\naccustomed.  Briggs's friends, small tradesmen, in a country town,\nquarrelled over Miss Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and more\nopenly than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's inheritance.\nBriggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called his sister a\npurse-proud aristocrat, because she would not advance a part of her\ncapital to stock his shop; and she would have done so most likely, but\nthat their sister, a dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the\nhatter and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how their brother\nwas on the verge of bankruptcy, and took possession of Briggs for a\nwhile.  The dissenting shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to\ncollege and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two families got\na great portion of her private savings out of her, and finally she fled\nto London followed by the anathemas of both, and determined to seek for\nservitude again as infinitely less onerous than liberty.  And\nadvertising in the papers that a \"Gentlewoman of agreeable manners, and\naccustomed to the best society, was anxious to,\" &c., she took up her\nresidence with Mr. Bowls in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of\nthe advertisement.\n\nSo it was that she fell in with Rebecca.  Mrs. Rawdon's dashing little\ncarriage and ponies was whirling down the street one day, just as Miss\nBriggs, fatigued, had reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to\nthe Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for the sixth\ntime.  Rebecca was driving, and at once recognized the gentlewoman with\nagreeable manners, and being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as we\nhave seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the ponies at\nthe doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom, and jumping out, had hold\nof both Briggs's hands, before she of the agreeable manners had\nrecovered from the shock of seeing an old friend.\n\nBriggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and kissed the gentlewoman\nas soon as they got into the passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's\nfront parlour, with the red moreen curtains, and the round\nlooking-glass, with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of\nthe ticket in the window which announced \"Apartments to Let.\"\n\nBriggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobs\nand ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salute\nan old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for though\npeople meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upon\ndiscovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked each\nother, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the time\nwhen they last quarrelled.  So, in a word, Briggs told all her history,\nand Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessness\nand candour.\n\nMrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in the passage to the\nhysterical sniffling and giggling which went on in the front parlour.\nBecky had never been a favourite of hers.  Since the establishment of\nthe married couple in London they had frequented their former friends\nof the house of Raggles, and did not like the latter's account of the\nColonel's menage.  \"I wouldn't trust him, Ragg, my boy,\" Bowls\nremarked; and his wife, when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, only\nsaluted the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers were like so\nmany sausages, cold and lifeless, when she held them out in deference\nto Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted in shaking hands with the retired lady's\nmaid.  She whirled away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of\nsmiles towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window close under\nthe advertisement-card, and at the next moment was in the park with a\nhalf-dozen of dandies cantering after her carriage.\n\nWhen she found how her friend was situated, and how having a snug\nlegacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no object to our gentlewoman,\nBecky instantly formed some benevolent little domestic plans concerning\nher.  This was just such a companion as would suit her establishment,\nand she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her that very evening,\nwhen she should see Becky's dear little darling Rawdon.\n\nMrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into the lion's den,\n\"wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my words, and as sure as my\nname is Bowls.\" And Briggs promised to be very cautious.  The upshot of\nwhich caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next week,\nand had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds upon annuity before six\nmonths were over.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLI\n\nIn Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors\n\nSo the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of their\narrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in the\nsame old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct\nBaronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine years\nbefore.  How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whom\nshe refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in\nhis coat on the journey!  Rawdon took his place outside, and would have\nliked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman and\ntalked about horses and the road the whole way; and who kept the inns,\nand who horsed the coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when\nhe and Pitt were boys going to Eton.  At Mudbury a carriage and a pair\nof horses received them, with a coachman in black.  \"It's the old drag,\nRawdon,\" Rebecca said as they got in.  \"The worms have eaten the cloth\na good deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha!  I see Dawson the\nIronmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made such a noise about.\nIt was a bottle of cherry brandy he broke which we went to fetch for\nyour aunt from Southampton.  How time flies, to be sure!  That can't be\nPolly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the cottage\nthere.  I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds in the\ngarden.\"\n\n\"Fine gal,\" said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gave\nhim, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband.  Becky bowed and\nsaluted, and recognized people here and there graciously.  These\nrecognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her.  It seemed as if she\nwas not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of her\nancestors.  Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other hand.\nWhat recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been flitting\nacross his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?\n\n\"Your sisters must be young women now,\" Rebecca said, thinking of those\ngirls for the first time perhaps since she had left them.\n\n\"Don't know, I'm shaw,\" replied the Colonel.  \"Hullo! here's old Mother\nLock.  How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember me, don't you? Master Rawdon,\nhey? Dammy how those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a\nboy.\"\n\nThey were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whose\nhand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking old\niron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars\nsurmounted by the dove and serpent.\n\n\"The governor has cut into the timber,\" Rawdon said, looking about, and\nthen was silent--so was Becky.  Both of them were rather agitated, and\nthinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother, whom he\nremembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom he\nhad been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt; and about\nlittle Rawdy at home.  And Rebecca thought about her own youth and the\ndark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life\nby yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and Amelia.\n\nThe gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite clean.  A grand\npainted hatchment was already over the great entrance, and two very\nsolemn and tall personages in black flung open each a leaf of the door\nas the carriage pulled up at the familiar steps.  Rawdon turned red,\nand Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the old hall, arm in\narm.  She pinched her husband's arm as they entered the oak parlour,\nwhere Sir Pitt and his wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt in\nblack, Lady Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large black\nhead-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her Ladyship's head\nlike an undertaker's tray.\n\nSir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit the premises.\nShe contented herself by preserving a solemn and stony silence, when in\ncompany of Pitt and his rebellious wife, and by frightening the\nchildren in the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour. Only a\nvery faint bending of the head-dress and plumes welcomed Rawdon and his\nwife, as those prodigals returned to their family.\n\nTo say the truth, they were not affected very much one way or other by\nthis coolness.  Her Ladyship was a person only of secondary\nconsideration in their minds just then--they were intent upon the\nreception which the reigning brother and sister would afford them.\n\nPitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and shook his brother by\nthe hand, and saluted Rebecca with a hand-shake and a very low bow.\nBut Lady Jane took both the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed her\naffectionately. The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of the\nlittle adventuress--which ornaments, as we know, she wore very seldom.\nThe artless mark of kindness and confidence touched and pleased her;\nand Rawdon, encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part,\ntwirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady Jane with a\nkiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush exceedingly.\n\n\"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane,\" was his verdict, when he and\nhis wife were together again.  \"Pitt's got fat, too, and is doing the\nthing handsomely.\" \"He can afford it,\" said Rebecca and agreed in her\nhusband's farther opinion \"that the mother-in-law was a tremendous old\nGuy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking young women.\"\n\nThey, too, had been summoned from school to attend the funeral\nceremonies.  It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for the dignity of the house\nand family, had thought right to have about the place as many persons\nin black as could possibly be assembled.  All the men and maids of the\nhouse, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder Sir Pitt had\ncheated out of a great portion of their due, the parish clerk's family,\nand the special retainers of both Hall and Rectory were habited in\nsable; added to these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, with\ncrapes and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the great burying\nshow took place--but these are mute personages in our drama; and having\nnothing to do or say, need occupy a very little space here.\n\nWith regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not attempt to forget her\nformer position of Governess towards them, but recalled it frankly and\nkindly, and asked them about their studies with great gravity, and told\nthem that she had thought of them many and many a day, and longed to\nknow of their welfare.  In fact you would have supposed that ever since\nshe had left them she had not ceased to keep them uppermost in her\nthoughts and to take the tenderest interest in their welfare.  So\nsupposed Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters.\n\n\"She's hardly changed since eight years,\" said Miss Rosalind to Miss\nViolet, as they were preparing for dinner.\n\n\"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well,\" replied the other.\n\n\"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye it,\" Miss\nRosalind added.  \"She is stouter, too, and altogether improved,\"\ncontinued Miss Rosalind, who was disposed to be very fat.\n\n\"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that she was our\nGoverness once,\" Miss Violet said, intimating that it befitted all\ngovernesses to keep their proper place, and forgetting altogether that\nshe was granddaughter not only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr.\nDawson of Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. There\nare other very well-meaning people whom one meets every day in Vanity\nFair who are surely equally oblivious.\n\n\"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that her mother\nwas an opera-dancer--\"\n\n\"A person can't help their birth,\" Rosalind replied with great\nliberality.  \"And I agree with our brother, that as she is in the\nfamily, of course we are bound to notice her. I am sure Aunt Bute need\nnot talk; she wants to marry Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant,\nand absolutely asked him to come to the Rectory for orders.\"\n\n\"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she looked very glum\nupon Mrs. Rawdon,\" the other said.\n\n\"I wish she would.  I won't read the Washerwoman of Finchley Common,\"\nvowed Violet; and so saying, and avoiding a passage at the end of which\na certain coffin was placed with a couple of watchers, and lights\nperpetually burning in the closed room, these young women came down to\nthe family dinner, for which the bell rang as usual.\n\nBut before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the apartments prepared\nfor her, which, with the rest of the house, had assumed a very much\nimproved appearance of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, and\nhere beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had arrived, and\nwere placed in the bedroom and dressing-room adjoining, helped her to\ntake off her neat black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-law\nin what more she could be useful.\n\n\"What I should like best,\" said Rebecca, \"would be to go to the nursery\nand see your dear little children.\" On which the two ladies looked very\nkindly at each other and went to that apartment hand in hand.\n\nBecky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four years old, as the\nmost charming little love in the world; and the boy, a little fellow of\ntwo years--pale, heavy-eyed, and large-headed--she pronounced to be a\nperfect prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty.\n\n\"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much medicine,\" Lady\nJane said with a sigh.  \"I often think we should all be better without\nit.\" And then Lady Jane and her new-found friend had one of those\nconfidential medical conversations about the children, which all\nmothers, and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in. Fifty\nyears ago, and when the present writer, being an interesting little\nboy, was ordered out of the room with the ladies after dinner, I\nremember quite well that their talk was chiefly about their ailments;\nand putting this question directly to two or three since, I have always\ngot from them the acknowledgement that times are not changed.  Let my\nfair readers remark for themselves this very evening when they quit the\ndessert-table and assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries.\nWell--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and intimate\nfriends--and in the course of the evening her Ladyship informed Sir\nPitt that she thought her new sister-in-law was a kind, frank,\nunaffected, and affectionate young woman.\n\nAnd so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the indefatigable\nlittle woman bent herself to conciliate the august Lady Southdown. As\nsoon as she found her Ladyship alone, Rebecca attacked her on the\nnursery question at once and said that her own little boy was saved,\nactually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all the\nphysicians in Paris had given the dear child up.  And then she\nmentioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown from that excellent\nman the Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair,\nwhich she frequented; and how her views were very much changed by\ncircumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a past life spent\nin worldliness and error might not incapacitate her from more serious\nthought for the future. She described how in former days she had been\nindebted to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon the\nWasherwoman of Finchley Common, which she had read with the greatest\nprofit, and asked about Lady Emily, its gifted author, now Lady Emily\nHornblower, at Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes of\nbecoming Bishop of Caffraria.\n\nBut she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady Southdown's favour,\nby feeling very much agitated and unwell after the funeral and\nrequesting her Ladyship's medical advice, which the Dowager not only\ngave, but, wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady Macbeth\nthan ever, came privately in the night to Becky's room with a parcel of\nfavourite tracts, and a medicine of her own composition, which she\ninsisted that Mrs. Rawdon should take.\n\nBecky first accepted the tracts and began to examine them with great\ninterest, engaging the Dowager in a conversation concerning them and\nthe welfare of her soul, by which means she hoped that her body might\nescape medication.  But after the religious topics were exhausted, Lady\nMacbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her cup of night-drink was\nemptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon was compelled actually to assume a\nlook of gratitude, and to swallow the medicine under the unyielding old\nDowager's nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.\n\nIt did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance was very queer\nwhen Rawdon came in and heard what had happened; and his explosions\nof laughter were as loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which she\ncould not disguise, even though it was at her own expense, described\nthe occurrence and how she had been victimized by Lady Southdown.  Lord\nSteyne, and her son in London, had many a laugh over the story when\nRawdon and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair.  Becky\nacted the whole scene for them.  She put on a night-cap and gown.  She\npreached a great sermon in the true serious manner; she lectured on the\nvirtue of the medicine which she pretended to administer, with a\ngravity of imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was the\nCountess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled. \"Give us Lady\nSouthdown and the black dose,\" was a constant cry amongst the folks in\nBecky's little drawing-room in May Fair.  And for the first time in her\nlife the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.\n\nSir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and veneration which\nRebecca had paid personally to himself in early days, and was tolerably\nwell disposed towards her.  The marriage, ill-advised as it was, had\nimproved Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's altered\nhabits and demeanour--and had it not been a lucky union as regarded\nPitt himself? The cunning diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned that\nhe owed his fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought not\nto cry out against it.  His satisfaction was not removed by Rebecca's\nown statements, behaviour, and conversation.\n\nShe doubled the deference which before had charmed him, calling out his\nconversational powers in such a manner as quite to surprise Pitt\nhimself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired them\nthe more when Rebecca pointed them out to him.  With her sister-in-law,\nRebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it was Mrs. Bute Crawley\nwho brought about the marriage which she afterwards so calumniated;\nthat it was Mrs. Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's\nfortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which caused and\ninvented all the wicked reports against Rebecca.  \"She succeeded in\nmaking us poor,\" Rebecca said with an air of angelical patience; \"but\nhow can I be angry with a woman who has given me one of the best\nhusbands in the world? And has not her own avarice been sufficiently\npunished by the ruin of her own hopes and the loss of the property by\nwhich she set so much store? Poor!\" she cried.  \"Dear Lady Jane, what\ncare we for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am often\nthankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to restore the splendour of\nthe noble old family of which I am so proud to be a member.  I am sure\nSir Pitt will make a much better use of it than Rawdon would.\"\n\nAll these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the most faithful of\nwives, and increased the favourable impression which Rebecca made; so\nmuch so that when, on the third day after the funeral, the family party\nwere at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of the\ntable, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, \"Ahem!  Rebecca, may I give you a\nwing?\"--a speech which made the little woman's eyes sparkle with\npleasure.\n\nWhile Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and hopes, and Pitt\nCrawley arranging the funeral ceremonial and other matters connected\nwith his future progress and dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her\nnursery, as far as her mother would let her, and the sun rising and\nsetting, and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and to\nprayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's Crawley lay in\nthe apartment which he had occupied, watched unceasingly by the\nprofessional attendants who were engaged for that rite.  A woman or\ntwo, and three or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southampton\ncould furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy and tragical\ndemeanour, had charge of the remains which they watched turn about,\nhaving the housekeeper's room for their place of rendezvous when off\nduty, where they played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.\n\nThe members of the family and servants of the house kept away from the\ngloomy spot, where the bones of the descendant of an ancient line of\nknights and gentlemen lay, awaiting their final consignment to the\nfamily crypt. No regrets attended them, save those of the poor woman\nwho had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who had fled in\ndisgrace from the Hall over which she had so nearly been a ruler.\nBeyond her and a favourite old pointer he had, and between whom and\nhimself an attachment subsisted during the period of his imbecility,\nthe old man had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed, during\nthe whole course of his life, never taken the least pains to secure\none.  Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have\nan opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any\nVanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would\nhave a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were\nconsoled.  And so Sir Pitt was forgotten--like the kindest and best of\nus--only a few weeks sooner.\n\nThose who will may follow his remains to the grave, whither they were\nborne on the appointed day, in the most becoming manner, the family in\nblack coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for\nthe tears which did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep\ntribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of compliment to the new\nlandlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages at three miles an hour,\nempty, and in profound affliction; the parson speaking out the formula\nabout \"our dear brother departed.\" As long as we have a man's body, we\nplay our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies,\nlaying it in state, and packing it up in gilt nails and velvet; and we\nfinish our duty by placing over it a stone, written all over with lies.\nBute's curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt Crawley\ncomposed between them an appropriate Latin epitaph for the late\nlamented Baronet, and the former preached a classical sermon, exhorting\nthe survivors not to give way to grief and informing them in the most\nrespectful terms that they also would be one day called upon to pass\nthat gloomy and mysterious portal which had just closed upon the\nremains of their lamented brother. Then the tenantry mounted on\nhorseback again, or stayed and refreshed themselves at the Crawley\nArms.  Then, after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,\nthe gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different destinations:\nthen the undertaker's men, taking the ropes, palls, velvets, ostrich\nfeathers, and other mortuary properties, clambered up on the roof of\nthe hearse and rode off to Southampton.  Their faces relapsed into a\nnatural expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into a\nbrisker trot on the open road; and squads of them might have been seen,\nspeckling with black the public-house entrances, with pewter-pots\nflashing in the sunshine.  Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled away\ninto a tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl sometimes\nat first, but these were the only accents of grief which were heard in\nthe Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, had been master for some\nthreescore years.\n\nAs the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as it\nwere the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities,\nSir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little and\npartook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it. The sight\nof those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many\nsecret joys.  Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took no\ngun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his big brother,\nand the keepers blazing away at his side.  Pitt's money and acres had a\ngreat effect upon his brother.  The penniless Colonel became quite\nobsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised the\nmilksop Pitt no longer.  Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior's\nprospects of planting and draining, gave his advice about the stables\nand cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thought\nwould carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her, &c.:  the rebellious\ndragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditable\nyounger brother.  He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London\nrespecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messages\nof his own.  \"I am very well,\" he wrote.  \"I hope you are very well.  I\nhope Mamma is very well.  The pony is very well.  Grey takes me to ride\nin the park. I can canter.  I met the little boy who rode before.  He\ncried when he cantered.  I do not cry.\" Rawdon read these letters to\nhis brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them.  The Baronet\npromised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted wife\ngave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her\nlittle nephew.\n\nOne day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their life\nin those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies.\nBells rang to meals and to prayers.  The young ladies took exercise on\nthe pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them the\nbenefit of her instruction.  Then they put on thick shoes and walked in\nthe park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings into the village,\ndescending upon the cottages, with Lady Southdown's medicine and tracts\nfor the sick people there.  Lady Southdown drove out in a pony-chaise,\nwhen Rebecca would take her place by the Dowager's side and listen to\nher solemn talk with the utmost interest.  She sang Handel and Haydn to\nthe family of evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work,\nas if she had been born to the business and as if this kind of life was\nto continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite old\nage, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as if\nthere were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waiting\noutside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into the\nworld again.\n\n\"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife,\" Rebecca thought.\n\"I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.  I\ncould dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall.\nI could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the\ngeraniums.  I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and order\nhalf-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor.  I shouldn't miss it much,\nout of five thousand a year.  I could even drive out ten miles to dine\nat a neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last. I\ncould go to church and keep awake in the great family pew, or go to\nsleep behind the curtains, with my veil down, if I only had practice.\nI could pay everybody, if I had but the money.  This is what the\nconjurors here pride themselves upon doing.  They look down with pity\nupon us miserable sinners who have none.  They think themselves\ngenerous if they give our children a five-pound note, and us\ncontemptible if we are without one.\" And who knows but Rebecca was\nright in her speculations--and that it was only a question of money and\nfortune which made the difference between her and an honest woman? If\nyou take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than\nhis neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make\npeople honest, at least keeps them so.  An alderman coming from a\nturtle feast will not step out of his carriage to steal a leg of mutton;\nbut put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf.  Becky\nconsoled herself by so balancing the chances and equalizing the\ndistribution of good and evil in the world.\n\nThe old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, and\ngardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple of\nyears seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her.  She had\nbeen young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she\never WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and feelings seven\nyears back and contrasted them with those which she had at present, now\nthat she had seen the world, and lived with great people, and raised\nherself far beyond her original humble station.\n\n\"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains,\" Becky thought, \"and\nalmost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back and\nconsort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father's\nstudio.  Lords come up to my door with stars and garters, instead of\npoor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets.  I have a\ngentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my sister, in the\nvery house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago.\nBut am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was the\npoor painter's daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner for\nsugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me--I\ncouldn't have been much poorer than I am now.  Heigho!  I wish I could\nexchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in\nthe Three Per Cent.  Consols\"; for so it was that Becky felt the Vanity\nof human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would have\nliked to cast anchor.\n\nIt may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and humble,\nto have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way,\nwould have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she was\nstriving to attain it.  But--just as the children at Queen's Crawley\nwent round the room where the body of their father lay--if ever Becky\nhad these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them and not look\nin.  She eluded them and despised them--or at least she was committed\nto the other path from which retreat was now impossible.  And for my\npart I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral\nsenses--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never\nwakened at all.  We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame\nor punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people\nunhappy in Vanity Fair.\n\nSo Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends of\nthe Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring under\ncontrol.  Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the warmest\ndemonstrations of good-will.  They looked forward with pleasure to the\ntime when, the family house in Gaunt Street being repaired and\nbeautified, they were to meet again in London.  Lady Southdown made her\nup a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence\nGrills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who \"honoured\" the\nletter from the burning.  Pitt accompanied them with four horses in the\ncarriage to Mudbury, having sent on their baggage in a cart previously,\naccompanied with loads of game.\n\n\"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again!\" Lady\nCrawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.\n\n\"Oh so happy!\" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She was\nimmensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen's\nCrawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was somehow purer\nthan that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been\ndull, but had been kind in their way.  \"It is all the influence of a\nlong course of Three Per Cents,\" Becky said to herself, and was right\nvery likely.\n\nHowever, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled into\nPiccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street, and\nlittle Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLII\n\nWhich Treats of the Osborne Family\n\nConsiderable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable\nfriend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square.  He has not been the\nhappiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred which\nhave not improved his temper, and in more instances than one he has\nnot been allowed to have his own way.  To be thwarted in this\nreasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; and\nresistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and\nthe force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down.  His\nstiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death;\nhis face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out\nhis glass of port wine.  He led his clerks a dire life in the City:\nhis family at home were not much happier.  I doubt if Rebecca, whom we\nhave seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty\nand the dare-devil excitement and chances of her life for Osborne's\nmoney and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him.  He had proposed for\nMiss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that\nlady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility.  He was a\nman to have married a woman out of low life and bullied her dreadfully\nafterwards; but no person presented herself suitable to his taste, and,\ninstead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home.  She had a\nfine carriage and fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded\nwith the grandest plate.  She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to\nfollow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and compliments\nfrom all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; but\nshe spent a woeful time. The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the\nsweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in the\nservants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate and now\nmiddle-aged young lady.\n\nFrederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock,\nhad married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty and\ngrumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead and cut out of his\nfather's will, Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman's\nproperty should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time,\nrefused, \"to come to the scratch\" (it was Mr. Frederick's own\nexpression) on any other terms.  Osborne said Fred had agreed to take\nhis daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to no\nmore.  \"Fred might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be\nhanged.\" Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George had been\ndisinherited, thought himself infamously swindled by the old merchant,\nand for some time made as if he would break off the match altogether.\nOsborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Change\nwith a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of a\ncertain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his\nusual violent manner.  Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria\nduring this family feud.  \"I always told you, Maria, that it was your\nmoney he loved and not you,\" she said, soothingly.\n\n\"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't choose you and\nyours,\" replied Maria, tossing up her head.\n\nThe rapture was, however, only temporary.  Fred's father and senior\npartners counselled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousand\nsettled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with the\nchances of the further division of the property.  So he \"knuckled\ndown,\" again to use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with peaceable\novertures to Osborne.  It was his father, he said, who would not hear\nof the match, and had made the difficulties; he was most anxious to\nkeep the engagement.  The excuse was sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne.\nHulker and Bullock were a high family of the City aristocracy, and\nconnected with the \"nobs\" at the West End. It was something for the old\nman to be able to say, \"My son, sir, of the house of Hulker, Bullock,\nand Co., sir; my daughter's cousin, Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter of\nthe Right Hon.  The Earl of Castlemouldy.\" In his imagination he saw\nhis house peopled by the \"nobs.\" So he forgave young Bullock and\nconsented that the marriage should take place.\n\nIt was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the breakfast,\ntheir habitations being near St.  George's, Hanover Square, where the\nbusiness took place.  The \"nobs of the West End\" were invited, and many\nof them signed the book.  Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there,\nwith the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as bridesmaids;\nColonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest son of the house of\nBludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane), another cousin of the bridegroom, and\nthe Honourable Mrs. Bludyer; the Honourable George Boulter, Lord\nLevant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount\nCastletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly Miss\nSwartz); and a host of fashionables, who have all married into Lombard\nStreet and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill.\n\nThe young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a small villa at\nRoehampton, among the banking colony there.  Fred was considered to\nhave made rather a mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whose\ngrandfather had been in a Charity School, and who were allied through\nthe husbands with some of the best blood in England.  And Maria was\nbound, by superior pride and great care in the composition of her\nvisiting-book, to make up for the defects of birth, and felt it her\nduty to see her father and sister as little as possible.\n\nThat she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so many\nscores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose. Fred\nBullock would never allow her to do that.  But she was still young and\nincapable of hiding her feelings; and by inviting her papa and sister\nto her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they\ncame, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly begging her\nfather to quit that odious vulgar place, she did more harm than all\nFrederick's diplomacy could repair, and perilled her chance of her\ninheritance like a giddy heedless creature as she was.\n\n\"So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?\" said the\nold gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his daughter\ndrove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock's, after dinner.  \"So\nshe invites her father and sister to a second day's dinner (if those\nsides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm\nd--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the Earls and\nthe Ladies, and the Honourables to herself. Honourables? Damn\nHonourables.  I am a plain British merchant I am, and could buy the\nbeggarly hounds over and over.  Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her\nswarreys I saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.\nAnd they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why, I'll lay my\nlife I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it,\nand can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner\non my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking,\nstuck-up fools.  Drive on quick, James:  I want to get back to Russell\nSquare--ha, ha!\" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh.\nWith such reflections on his own superior merit, it was the custom of\nthe old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself.\n\nJane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her\nsister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's first-born, Frederick\nAugustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who\nwas invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself\nwith sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for\nthe nurse.  \"That's more than any of your Lords will give, I'LL\nwarrant,\" he said and refused to attend at the ceremony.\n\nThe splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the\nhouse of Bullock.  Maria thought that her father was very much pleased\nwith her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir.\n\nOne can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in\nRussell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name occurred\nevery now and then, in the articles headed \"Fashionable Reunions,\" and\nwhere she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F.\nBullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady Frederica\nBullock.  Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no such\ngrandeur.  It was an awful existence. She had to get up of black\nwinter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who\nwould have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been\nready at half-past eight.  She remained silent opposite to him,\nlistening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent\nread his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea.\nAt half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free\ntill dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the\nservants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were\nprodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's at the great\nglum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in the\nlarge drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of\nworsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock,\nwhich ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room.  The\ngreat glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console\nglass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between\nthem the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw\nthese brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this\napartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of\ndrawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand\npiano and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a\nmournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house.  George's\npicture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and\nthough there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often\ninstinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever\nmade of the brave and once darling son.\n\nAt five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his\ndaughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was\nsavage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared\ntwice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and\nage.  Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.\nFrowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from his\nbusiness, hand-in-glove with the \"nobs at the West End\"; old Colonel\nLivermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford\nPlace; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas\nCoffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square.  Sir Thomas was celebrated\nas a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he\ndined with Mr. Osborne.\n\nThese people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant\npompous dinners back again.  They had solemn rubbers of whist, when\nthey went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at\nhalf past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit\nof envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described.\nJane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only\nbachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated\nladies' doctor.\n\nI can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of this\nawful existence:  the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane's\nlife which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature,\npride, and over-feeding had made him.  This secret was connected with\nMiss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated since\nas a portrait-painter and R.A., but who once was glad enough to give\ndrawing lessons to ladies of fashion.  Mr. Smee has forgotten where\nRussell Square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year\n1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.\n\nSmee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a dissolute,\nirregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of his\nart) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her to\nMiss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various\nincomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it\nis believed inspired one in her bosom.  Miss Wirt was the confidante of\nthis intrigue.  I know not whether she used to leave the room where the\nmaster and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an\nopportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be\nuttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I know not\nwhether she hoped that should her cousin succeed in carrying off the\nrich merchant's daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of the\nwealth which she had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that\nMr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from the City\nabruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found the\npainter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly pale\nthere; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would break\nevery bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirt\nlikewise, kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on her\nbandboxes, and shaking his fist at her hackney coach as it bore her\naway.\n\nJane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days.  She was not allowed to\nhave a companion afterwards.  Her father swore to her that she should\nnot have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his\nconcurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not\nchoose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to give up all\nprojects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then,\nshe resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and was\ncontent to be an old maid.  Her sister, meanwhile, was having children\nwith finer names every year and the intercourse between the two grew\nfainter continually.  \"Jane and I do not move in the same sphere of\nlife,\" Mrs. Bullock said.  \"I regard her as a sister, of course\"--which\nmeans--what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as a\nsister?\n\nIt has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with their father at\na fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there were beautiful graperies and\npeach-trees which delighted little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin,\nwho drove often to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to\nRussell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance Miss\nOsborne.  I believe it was in consequence of the commands of their\nbrother the Major in India (for whom their papa had a prodigious\nrespect), that they paid attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the\ngodfather and guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the\nchild's grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and\nacknowledge him for the sake of his son.  The Misses Dobbin kept Miss\nOsborne acquainted with the state of Amelia's affairs; how she was\nliving with her father and mother; how poor they were; how they\nwondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain\nOsborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how she was\nstill, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected\ncreature--but how the boy was really the noblest little boy ever\nseen--for the hearts of all women warm towards young children, and the\nsourest spinster is kind to them.\n\nOne day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin,\nAmelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at Denmark\nHill--a part of which day she spent herself in writing to the Major in\nIndia.  She congratulated him on the happy news which his sisters had\njust conveyed to her.  She prayed for his prosperity and that of the\nbride he had chosen.  She thanked him for a thousand thousand kind\noffices and proofs of steadfast friendship to her in her affliction.\nShe told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone to\nspend that very day with his sisters in the country.  She underlined\nthe letter a great deal, and she signed herself affectionately his\nfriend, Amelia Osborne.  She forgot to send any message of kindness to\nLady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not mention Glorvina by name, and\nonly in italics, as the Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings.\nBut the news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had kept up\ntowards him.  She was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly and\ngratefully she regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous of\nGlorvina (Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel\nfrom heaven had hinted it to her.  That night, when Georgy came back in\nthe pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven by\nSir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold chain\nand watch.  He said an old lady, not pretty, had given it him, who\ncried and kissed him a great deal.  But he didn't like her.  He liked\ngrapes very much.  And he only liked his mamma.  Amelia shrank and\nstarted; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when she heard\nthat the relations of the child's father had seen him.\n\nMiss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner.  He had made a\ngood speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that day,\nand chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured. \"What's\nthe matter, Miss Osborne?\" he deigned to say.\n\nThe woman burst into tears.  \"Oh, sir,\" she said, \"I've seen little\nGeorge.  He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like him!\" The old man\nopposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up and began to tremble\nin every limb.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIII\n\nIn Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape\n\nThe astonished reader must be called upon to transport himself ten\nthousand miles to the military station of Bundlegunge, in the Madras\ndivision of our Indian empire, where our gallant old friends of the\n--th regiment are quartered under the command of the brave Colonel, Sir\nMichael O'Dowd.  Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer, as it\ndoes ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good tempers and\nare not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel plays\na good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons with great\nsuccess at dinner.  He smokes his hookah after both meals and puffs as\nquietly while his wife scolds him as he did under the fire of the\nFrench at Waterloo.  Age and heat have not diminished the activity or\nthe eloquence of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys.  Her\nLadyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at Madras as at\nBrussels in the cantonment as under the tents.  On the march you saw\nher at the head of the regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble\nsight. Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers in\nthe jungle, she has been received by native princes, who have welcomed\nher and Glorvina into the recesses of their zenanas and offered her\nshawls and jewels which it went to her heart to refuse.  The sentries\nof all arms salute her wherever she makes her appearance, and she\ntouches her hat gravely to their salutation.  Lady O'Dowd is one of the\ngreatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel with Lady\nSmith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge, is still remembered by\nsome at Madras, when the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in the\nJudge's lady's face and said SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly\ncivilian.  Even now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people\nremember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government House, where she\ndanced down two Aides-de-Camp, a Major of Madras cavalry, and two\ngentlemen of the Civil Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B.,\nsecond in command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata\nnondum satiata recessit.\n\nPeggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and thought;\nimpetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant over her Michael; a\ndragon amongst all the ladies of the regiment; a mother to all the\nyoung men, whom she tends in their sickness, defends in all their\nscrapes, and with whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular.  But the\nSubalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried) cabal against\nher a good deal.  They say that Glorvina gives herself airs and that\nPeggy herself is intolerably domineering.  She interfered with a\nlittle congregation which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young\nmen away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no\nbusiness to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much better mending\nher husband's clothes; and, if the regiment wanted sermons, that she\nhad the finest in the world, those of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptly\nput a termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the\nregiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come\ndown upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed from her (for the\nyoung fellow was still of an extravagant turn) unless he broke off at\nonce and went to the Cape on sick leave.  On the other hand, she housed\nand sheltered Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night, pursued\nby her infuriate husband, wielding his second brandy bottle, and\nactually carried Posky through the delirium tremens and broke him of\nthe habit of drinking, which had grown upon that officer, as all evil\nhabits will grow upon men.  In a word, in adversity she was the best of\ncomforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having a\nperfectly good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolution\nto have her own way.\n\nAmong other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should marry\nour old friend Dobbin.  Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's expectations and\nappreciated his good qualities and the high character which he enjoyed\nin his profession.  Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,\nblack-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a horse, or play a\nsonata with any girl out of the County Cork, seemed to be the very\nperson destined to insure Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor\ngood little weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on\nso.--\"Look at Glorvina enter a room,\" Mrs. O'Dowd would say, \"and\ncompare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a\ngoose.  She'd be worthy of you, Major--you're a quiet man yourself, and\nwant some one to talk for ye.  And though she does not come of such\ngood blood as the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an\nancient family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into.\"\n\nBut before she had come to such a resolution and determined to\nsubjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned that\nGlorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere.  She had had a\nseason in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, and\nMallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom the\ndepots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemed\neligible.  She had been engaged to be married a half-score times in\nIreland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had\nflirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief mate of the\nRamchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the Presidency with her\nbrother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there, while the Major of the\nregiment was in command at the station. Everybody admired her there;\neverybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was worth the\nmarrying--one or two exceedingly young subalterns sighed after her, and\na beardless civilian or two, but she rejected these as beneath her\npretensions--and other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married\nbefore her.  There are women, and handsome women too, who have this\nfortune in life.  They fall in love with the utmost generosity; they\nride and walk with half the Army-list, though they draw near to forty,\nand yet the Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still:  Glorvina\npersisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge's\nlady, she would have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr.\nChutney, who was at the head of the civil service (and who afterwards\nmarried Miss Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who had\njust arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposing\nto her.\n\nWell, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a great number of\ntimes every day, and upon almost every conceivable subject--indeed, if\nMick O'Dowd had not possessed the temper of an angel two such women\nconstantly about his ears would have driven him out of his senses--yet\nthey agreed between themselves on this point, that Glorvina should\nmarry Major Dobbin, and were determined that the Major should have no\nrest until the arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty or\nfifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him.  She sang Irish\nmelodies at him unceasingly.  She asked him so frequently and\npathetically, Will ye come to the bower? that it is a wonder how any\nman of feeling could have resisted the invitation.  She was never tired\nof inquiring, if Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to\nlisten and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and his\ncampaigns.  It has been said that our honest and dear old friend used\nto perform on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets\nwith him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit the room when\nthe young couple were so engaged. Glorvina forced the Major to ride\nwith her of mornings.  The whole cantonment saw them set out and\nreturn.  She was constantly writing notes over to him at his house,\nborrowing his books, and scoring with her great pencil-marks such\npassages of sentiment or humour as awakened her sympathy.  She borrowed\nhis horses, his servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that\npublic rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in\nEngland should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-law.\n\nDobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the meanwhile in a\nstate of the most odious tranquillity.  He used to laugh when the young\nfellows of the regiment joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions\nto him. \"Bah!\" said he, \"she is only keeping her hand in--she\npractises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano, because it's the\nmost handy instrument in the station.  I am much too battered and old\nfor such a fine young lady as Glorvina.\" And so he went on riding with\nher, and copying music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess\nwith her very submissively; for it is with these simple amusements that\nsome officers in India are accustomed to while away their leisure\nmoments, while others of a less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot\nsnipes, or gamble and smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to\nbrandy-and-water.  As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her\nsister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain himself and not\nkeep on torturing a poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the old\nsoldier refused point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy.\n\"Faith, the Major's big enough to choose for himself,\" Sir Michael\nsaid; \"he'll ask ye when he wants ye\"; or else he would turn the matter\noff jocularly, declaring that \"Dobbin was too young to keep house, and\nhad written home to ask lave of his mamma.\" Nay, he went farther, and\nin private communications with his Major would caution and rally him,\ncrying, \"Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent on mischief--me\nLady has just got a box of gowns from Europe,  and there's a pink satin\nfor Glorvina, which will finish ye,  Dob, if it's in the power of woman\nor satin to move ye.\"\n\nBut the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer him.  Our\nhonest friend had but one idea of a woman in his head, and that one did\nnot in the least resemble Miss Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin.  A gentle\nlittle woman in black, with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking,\nsave when spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling Miss\nGlorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant and beckoning the\nMajor up with a smile to look at him--a rosy-cheeked lass coming\nsinging into the room in Russell Square or hanging on George Osborne's\narm, happy and loving--there was but this image that filled our honest\nMajor's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it always.  Very\nlikely Amelia was not like the portrait the Major had formed of her:\nthere was a figure in a book of fashions which his sisters had in\nEngland, and with which William had made away privately, pasting it\ninto the lid of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to Mrs.\nOsborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and can vouch that it is\nbut the picture of a high-waisted gown with an impossible doll's face\nsimpering over it--and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no\nmore like the real one than this absurd little print which he\ncherished.  But what man in love, of us, is better informed?--or is he\nmuch happier when he sees and owns his delusion? Dobbin was under this\nspell.  He did not bother his friends and the public much about his\nfeelings, or indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account of\nthem.  His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or two\nof silver may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise.  But his\nfeelings are not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remains\nas fresh as a man's recollections of boyhood are.\n\nWe have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the Major's\ncorrespondents in Europe, wrote him letters from England, Mrs. Osborne\ncongratulating him with great candour and cordiality upon his\napproaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd. \"Your sister has just kindly\nvisited me,\" Amelia wrote in her letter, \"and informed me of an\nINTERESTING EVENT, upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE\nCONGRATULATIONS. I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to be\nUNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who is himself all\nkindness and goodness.  The poor widow has only her prayers to offer\nand her cordial cordial wishes for YOUR PROSPERITY!  Georgy sends his\nlove to HIS DEAR GODPAPA and hopes that you will not forget him. I tell\nhim that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who I am sure\nmerits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of course\nbe the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I\nam sure the widow and the child whom you have ever protected and loved\nwill always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART.\" The letter, which has been\nbefore alluded to, went on in this strain, protesting throughout as to\nthe extreme satisfaction of the writer.\n\nThis letter, which arrived by the very same ship which brought out\nLady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be sure\nDobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the mail\nbrought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,\nand her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became perfectly\nodious to him.  The Major cursed the talk of women, and the sex in\ngeneral.  Everything annoyed him that day--the parade was insufferably\nhot and wearisome.  Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste his\nlife, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting fools through\ntheir manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of the young men at mess was\nmore than ever jarring. What cared he, a man on the high road to forty,\nto know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or what were the\nperformances of Ensign Brown's mare? The jokes about the table filled\nhim with shame.  He was too old to listen to the banter of the\nassistant surgeon and the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd,\nwith his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily.  The old man had\nlistened to those jokes any time these thirty years--Dobbin himself had\nbeen fifteen years hearing them.  And after the boisterous dulness of\nthe mess-table, the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!\nIt was unbearable, shameful.  \"O Amelia, Amelia,\" he thought, \"you to\nwhom I have been so faithful--you reproach me!  It is because you\ncannot feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life.  And you reward\nme after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage,\nforsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!\" Sick and sorry felt poor\nWilliam; more than ever wretched and lonely.  He would like to have\ndone with life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and\nunsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect\nseemed to him.  He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go\nhome.  Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him.  No fidelity, no\nconstant truth and passion, could move her into warmth.  She would not\nsee that he loved her.  Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her. \"Good\nGod, Amelia!\" he said, \"don't you know that I only love you in the\nworld--you, who are a stone to me--you, whom I tended through months\nand months of illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smile\non your face, and forgot me before the door shut between us!\" The\nnative servants lying outside his verandas beheld with wonder the\nMajor, so cold and quiet ordinarily, at present so passionately moved\nand cast down.  Would she have pitied him had she seen him? He read\nover and over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters of\nbusiness relative to the little property which he had made her believe\nher husband had left to her--brief notes of invitation--every scrap of\nwriting that she had ever sent to him--how cold, how kind, how\nhopeless, how selfish they were!\n\nHad there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and\nappreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign of\nAmelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might have\nflowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty\nringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this dashing young\nwoman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather on making the\nMajor admire HER--a most vain and hopeless task, too, at least\nconsidering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry it out.\nShe curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as much as to say,\ndid ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at\nhim so that he might see that every tooth in her head was sound--and he\nnever heeded all these charms.  Very soon after the arrival of the box\nof millinery, and perhaps indeed in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the\nladies of the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's Regiments\nand the civilians at the station.  Glorvina sported the killing pink\nfrock, and the Major, who attended the party and walked very ruefully\nup and down the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.\nGlorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of the\nstation, and the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance,\nor angry because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper.\nIt was not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and\nGlorvina had nothing more.\n\nSo these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and each\nlonging for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with rage at\nthe failure.  She had set her mind on the Major \"more than on any of\nthe others,\" she owned, sobbing.  \"He'll break my heart, he will,\nPeggy,\" she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they were good\nfriends; \"sure every one of me frocks must be taken in--it's such a\nskeleton I'm growing.\" Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on\nhorseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to the Major.  And\nthe Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints, would\nsuggest that Glory should have some black frocks out in the next box\nfrom London, and told a mysterious story of a lady in Ireland who died\nof grief for the loss of her husband before she got ere a one.\n\nWhile the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing,\nand declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe\nbringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the heartless\nman.  These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that of\nthe former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized among his the\nhandwriting of his sister, who always crossed and recrossed her letters\nto her brother--gathered together all the possible bad news which she\ncould collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly\nfrankness, and always left him miserable for the day after \"dearest\nWilliam\" had achieved the perusal of one of her epistles--the truth\nmust be told that dearest William did not hurry himself to break the\nseal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited for a particularly favourable\nday and mood for doing so.  A fortnight before, moreover, he had\nwritten to scold her for telling those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne,\nand had despatched a letter in reply to that lady, undeceiving her with\nrespect to the reports concerning him and assuring her that \"he had no\nsort of present intention of altering his condition.\"\n\nTwo or three nights after the arrival of the second package of letters,\nthe Major had passed the evening pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd's\nhouse, where Glorvina thought that he listened with rather more\nattention than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel Boy,\nand one or two other specimens of song with which she favoured him (the\ntruth is, he was no more listening to Glorvina than to the howling of\nthe jackals in the moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers as\nusual), and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage with the\nsurgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening pastime), Major Dobbin took\nleave of the Colonel's family at his usual hour and retired to his own\nhouse.\n\nThere on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching him.  He took\nit up, ashamed rather of his negligence regarding it, and prepared\nhimself for a disagreeable hour's communing with that crabbed-handed\nabsent relative. . . . It may have been an hour after the Major's\ndeparture from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping the sleep\nof the just; Glorvina had arranged her black ringlets in the\ninnumerable little bits of paper, in which it was her habit to confine\nthem; Lady O'Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, on\nthe ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains round her fair\nform, when the guard at the gates of the Commanding-Officer's compound\nbeheld Major Dobbin, in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with a\nswift step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the sentinel\nand went up to the windows of the Colonel's bedchamber.\n\n\"O'Dowd--Colonel!\" said Dobbin and kept up a great shouting.\n\n\"Heavens, Meejor!\" said Glorvina of the curl-papers, putting out her\nhead too, from her window.\n\n\"What is it, Dob, me boy?\" said the Colonel, expecting there was a fire\nin the station, or that the route had come from headquarters.\n\n\"I--I must have leave of absence.  I must go to England--on the most\nurgent private affairs,\" Dobbin said.\n\n\"Good heavens, what has happened!\" thought Glorvina, trembling with all\nthe papillotes.\n\n\"I want to be off--now--to-night,\" Dobbin continued; and the Colonel\ngetting up, came out to parley with him.\n\nIn the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the Major had just\ncome upon a paragraph, to the following effect:--\"I drove yesterday to\nsee your old ACQUAINTANCE, Mrs. Osborne.  The wretched place they live\nat, since they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from a BRASS\nPLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better) is a coal-merchant.\nThe little boy, your godson, is certainly a fine child, though forward,\nand inclined to be saucy and self-willed. But we have taken notice of\nhim as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt, Miss O., who\nwas rather pleased with him.  Perhaps his grandpapa, not the bankrupt\none, who is almost doting, but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may be\ninduced to relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND\nSELF-WILLED SON.  And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to give him up.\nThe widow is CONSOLED, and is about to marry a reverend gentleman, the\nRev. Mr. Binny, one of the curates of Brompton.  A poor match.  But\nMrs. O. is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--she\nwas in very good spirits:  and your little godson overate himself at\nour house. Mamma sends her love with that of your affectionate, Ann\nDobbin.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIV\n\nA Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire\n\nOur old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street,\nstill bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as\na token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic\nemblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and\nall the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been\nduring the late baronet's reign.  The black outer-coating of the bricks\nwas removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked\nwith white: the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,\nthe railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great Gaunt Street\nbecame the smartest in the whole quarter, before the green leaves in\nHampshire had replaced those yellowing ones which were on the trees in\nQueen's Crawley Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them for\nthe last time.\n\nA little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seen\nabout this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little boy,\nalso might be remarked coming thither daily.  It was Miss Briggs and\nlittle Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward renovation of\nSir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band engaged in stitching\nthe blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in the drawers and\ncupboards crammed with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a\ncouple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take inventories of the\nchina, the glass, and other properties in the closets and store-rooms.\n\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements, with\nfull orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or purchase\nfurniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an occupation which\ngave full scope to her taste and ingenuity.  The renovation of the\nhouse was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November to see\nhis lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in Curzon Street, under\nthe roof of his affectionate brother and sister.\n\nHe had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard of\nthe Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned in an\nhour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side.  It\nwas impossible sometimes to resist this artless little creature's\nhospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably\noffered.  Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of gratitude when he\nagreed to come.  \"Thank you,\" she said, squeezing it and looking into\nthe Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal; \"how happy this will make\nRawdon!\" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading on the servants, who\nwere carrying his trunks thither.  She came in herself laughing, with a\ncoal-scuttle out of her own room.\n\nA fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was Miss\nBriggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with the\nmaid).  \"I knew I should bring you,\" she said with pleasure beaming in\nher glance.  Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him for a\nguest.\n\nBecky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt stayed\nwith them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone with her and\nBriggs.  She went downstairs to the kitchen and actually cooked little\ndishes for him.  \"Isn't it a good salmi?\" she said; \"I made it for you.\nI can make you better dishes than that, and will when you come to see\nme.\"\n\n\"Everything you do, you do well,\" said the Baronet gallantly.  \"The\nsalmi is excellent indeed.\"\n\n\"A poor man's wife,\" Rebecca replied gaily, \"must make herself useful,\nyou know\"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that \"she was fit to be\nthe wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic duties was\nsurely one of the most charming of woman's qualities.\" And Sir Pitt\nthought, with something like mortification, of Lady Jane at home, and\nof a certain pie which she had insisted on making, and serving to him\nat dinner--a most abominable pie.\n\nBesides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from his\nlordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law a\nbottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him from\nFrance, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;\nwhereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the Marquis\nof Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the Baronet's\npallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.\n\nThen when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave him\nher hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug on the\nsofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the tenderest\nkindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for her dear\nlittle boy.  Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly humble and\nvirtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-box.  It had\ngot to be too small for Rawdon long before it was finished.\n\nWell, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him, she\ncoaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and more\nglad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to the\nblazing fire in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of law\nlikewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest--and so\nthat when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing. How pretty\nshe looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and waving her\nhandkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail! She put the\nhandkerchief to her eyes once.  He pulled his sealskin cap over his, as\nthe coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought to himself how she\nrespected him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a foolish dull\nfellow who didn't half appreciate his wife; and how mum and stupid his\nown wife was compared to that brilliant little Becky.  Becky had hinted\nevery one of these things herself, perhaps, but so delicately and\ngently that you hardly knew when or where.  And, before they parted, it\nwas agreed that the house in London should be redecorated for the next\nseason, and that the brothers' families should meet again in the\ncountry at Christmas.\n\n\"I wish you could have got a little money out of him,\" Rawdon said to\nhis wife moodily when the Baronet was gone.  \"I should like to give\nsomething to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't.  It ain't right, you\nknow, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his money.  It may\nbe inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides us, you\nknow.\"\n\n\"Tell him,\" said Becky, \"that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are\nsettled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on\naccount.  Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy,\" and she took\nfrom her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had handed\nover to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger branch\nof the Crawleys.\n\nThe truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her husband\nexpressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so delicately,\nand found it unsafe. Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir Pitt\nCrawley was off and alarmed.  And he began a long speech, explaining\nhow straitened he himself was in money matters; how the tenants would\nnot pay; how his father's affairs, and the expenses attendant upon the\ndemise of the old gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay off\nincumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt\nCrawley ended by making a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving\nher a very small sum for the benefit of her little boy.\n\nPitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be.  It\ncould not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old\ndiplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that\nhouses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing.  He knew very well\nthat he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,\naccording to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his\nyounger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of\nremorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some act\nof justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointed\nrelations.  A just, decent man, not without brains, who said his\nprayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly through\nlife, he could not be otherwise than aware that something was due to\nhis brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's debtor.\n\nBut, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now and\nthen, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,\nacknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B., or 10 pounds from\nW. T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said A. B.\nor W. T., which payments the penitents beg the Right Honourable\ngentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public press--so is\nthe Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly sure\nthat the above-named A. B.  and W. T. are only paying a very small\ninstalment of what they really owe, and that the man who sends up a\ntwenty-pound note has very likely hundreds or thousands more for which\nhe ought to account.  Such, at least, are my feelings, when I see\nA. B. or W. T.'s insufficient acts of repentance.  And I have no doubt\nthat Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his\nyounger brother, by whom he had so much profited, was only a very small\ndividend upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not\neverybody is willing to pay even so much.  To part with money is a\nsacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order.  There\nis scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for\ngiving his neighbour five pounds.  Thriftless gives, not from a\nbeneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. He\nwould not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his\nhorse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five\npounds.  Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny,\nturns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or denies a poor\nrelation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the two.  Money has\nonly a different value in the eyes of each.\n\nSo, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for his\nbrother, and then thought that he would think about it some other time.\n\nAnd with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who expected too much\nfrom the generosity of her neighbours, and so was quite content with\nall that Pitt Crawley had done for her.  She was acknowledged by the\nhead of the family.  If Pitt would not give her anything, he would get\nsomething for her some day.  If she got no money from her\nbrother-in-law, she got what was as good as money--credit.  Raggles was\nmade rather easy in his mind by the spectacle of the union between the\nbrothers, by a small payment on the spot, and by the promise of a much\nlarger sum speedily to be assigned to him.  And Rebecca told Miss\nBriggs, whose Christmas dividend upon the little sum lent by her Becky\npaid with an air of candid joy, and as if her exchequer was brimming\nover with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss Briggs, in strict confidence\nthat she had conferred with Sir Pitt, who was famous as a financier, on\nBriggs's special behalf, as to the most profitable investment of Miss\nB.'s remaining capital; that Sir Pitt, after much consideration, had\nthought of a most safe and advantageous way in which Briggs could lay\nout her money; that, being especially interested in her as an attached\nfriend of the late Miss Crawley, and of the whole family, and that long\nbefore he left town, he had recommended that she should be ready with\nthe money at a moment's notice, so as to purchase at the most\nfavourable opportunity the shares which Sir Pitt had in his eye.  Poor\nMiss Briggs was very grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--it\ncame so unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought of\nremoving the money from the funds--and the delicacy enhanced the\nkindness of the office; and she promised to see her man of business\nimmediately and be ready with her little cash at the proper hour.\n\nAnd this worthy woman was so grateful for the kindness of Rebecca in\nthe matter, and for that of her generous benefactor, the Colonel, that\nshe went out and spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in the\npurchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by the way, was\ngrown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a size and age\nbefitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket and pantaloons.\n\nHe was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair,\nsturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching\nhimself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown,\nwho gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he saw\nthat kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the pony--to\nMolly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night, and with\ngood things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughed\nat--and to his father especially, whose attachment towards the lad was\ncurious too to witness.  Here, as he grew to be about eight years old,\nhis attachments may be said to have ended.  The beautiful mother-vision\nhad faded away after a while.  During near two years she had scarcely\nspoken to the child. She disliked him.  He had the measles and the\nhooping-cough.  He bored her.  One day when he was standing at the\nlanding-place, having crept down from the upper regions, attracted by\nthe sound of his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, the\ndrawing room door opening suddenly, discovered the little spy, who but\na moment before had been rapt in delight, and listening to the music.\n\nHis mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on the\near.  He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who was\namused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper) and fled\ndown below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief.\n\n\"It is not because it hurts me,\" little Rawdon gasped\nout--\"only--only\"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm.  It\nwas the little boy's heart that was bleeding.  \"Why mayn't I hear her\nsinging?  Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that baldheaded\nman with the large teeth?\" He gasped out at various intervals these\nexclamations of rage and grief.  The cook looked at the housemaid, the\nhousemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the awful kitchen inquisition\nwhich sits in judgement in every house and knows everything--sat on\nRebecca at that moment.\n\nAfter this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the\nconsciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a pain\nto her.  His very sight annoyed her.  Fear, doubt, and resistance\nsprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom.  They were separated from that\nday of the boxes on the ear.\n\nLord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy.  When they met by\nmischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared at\nhim with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face and\ndouble his little fists in return.  He knew his enemy, and this\ngentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who angered him\nmost.  One day the footman found him squaring his fists at Lord\nSteyne's hat in the hall.  The footman told the circumstance as a good\njoke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it to Lord\nSteyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general. And very soon\nafterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her appearance at Gaunt\nHouse, the porter who unbarred the gates, the servants of all uniforms\nin the hall, the functionaries in white waistcoats, who bawled out from\nlanding to landing the names of Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knew\nabout her, or fancied they did. The man who brought her refreshment and\nstood behind her chair, had talked her character over with the large\ngentleman in motley-coloured clothes at his side.  Bon Dieu! it is\nawful, that servants' inquisition!  You see a woman in a great party in\na splendid saloon, surrounded by faithful admirers, distributing\nsparkling glances, dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling and\nhappy--Discovery walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a huge\npowdered man with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (which\nis as fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow\ncarrying the wafer-biscuits.  Madam, your secret will be talked over by\nthose men at their club at the public-house to-night.  Jeames will tell\nChawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots.\nSome people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair--mutes who\ncould not write. If you are guilty, tremble.  That fellow behind your\nchair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breeches\npocket.  If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are\nas ruinous as guilt.\n\n\"Was Rebecca guilty or not?\" the Vehmgericht of the servants' hall had\npronounced against her.\n\nAnd, I shame to say, she would not have got credit had they not\nbelieved her to be guilty.  It was the sight of the Marquis of Steyne's\ncarriage-lamps at her door, contemplated by Raggles, burning in the\nblackness of midnight, \"that kep him up,\" as he afterwards said, that\neven more than Rebecca's arts and coaxings.\n\nAnd so--guiltless very likely--she was writhing and pushing onward\ntowards what they call \"a position in society,\" and the servants were\npointing at her as lost and ruined.  So you see Molly, the housemaid,\nof a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his thread and\nlaboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, she raises her\nbroom and sweeps away the thread and the artificer.\n\nA day or two before Christmas, Becky, her husband and her son made\nready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors at\nQueen's Crawley.  Becky would have liked to leave the little brat\nbehind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent invitations\nto the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and discontent which\nRawdon manifested at her neglect of her son.  \"He's the finest boy in\nEngland,\" the father said in a tone of reproach to her, \"and you don't\nseem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do for your spaniel.  He\nshan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in the\nnursery, and he shall go outside on the coach with me.\"\n\n\"Where you go yourself because you want to smoke those filthy cigars,\"\nreplied Mrs. Rawdon.\n\n\"I remember when you liked 'em though,\" answered the husband.\n\nBecky laughed; she was almost always good-humoured. \"That was when I\nwas on my promotion, Goosey,\" she said.  \"Take Rawdon outside with you\nand give him a cigar too if you like.\"\n\nRawdon did not warm his little son for the winter's journey in this\nway, but he and Briggs wrapped up the child in shawls and comforters,\nand he was hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the coach in the dark\nmorning, under the lamps of the White Horse Cellar; and with no small\ndelight he watched the dawn rise and made his first journey to the\nplace which his father still called home. It was a journey of infinite\npleasure to the boy, to whom the incidents of the road afforded endless\ninterest, his father answering to him all questions connected with it\nand telling him who lived in the great white house to the right, and\nwhom the park belonged to.  His mother, inside the vehicle, with her\nmaid and her furs, her wrappers, and her scent bottles, made such a\nto-do that you would have thought she never had been in a stage-coach\nbefore--much less, that she had been turned out of this very one to\nmake room for a paying passenger on a certain journey performed some\nhalf-score years ago.\n\nIt was dark again when little Rawdon was wakened up to enter his\nuncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it wondering\nas the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks of the limes\nas they swept by, until they stopped, at length, before the light\nwindows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmas\nwelcome.  The hall-door was flung open--a big fire was burning in the\ngreat old fire-place--a carpet was down over the chequered black\nflags--\"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in the Ladies'\nGallery,\" thought Rebecca, and the next instant was kissing Lady Jane.\n\nShe and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity; but\nRawdon, having been smoking, hung back rather from his sister-in-law,\nwhose two children came up to their cousin; and, while Matilda held out\nher hand and kissed him, Pitt Binkie Southdown, the son and heir, stood\naloof rather and examined him as a little dog does a big dog.\n\nThen the kind hostess conducted her guests to the snug apartments\nblazing with cheerful fires.  Then the young ladies came and knocked at\nMrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to be\nuseful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the contents\nof her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though black, were\nof the newest London fashion.  And they told her how much the Hall was\nchanged for the better, and how old Lady Southdown was gone, and how\nPitt was taking his station in the county, as became a Crawley in fact.\nThen the great dinner-bell having rung, the family assembled at dinner,\nat which meal Rawdon Junior was placed by his aunt, the good-natured\nlady of the house, Sir Pitt being uncommonly attentive to his\nsister-in-law at his own right hand.\n\nLittle Rawdon exhibited a fine appetite and showed a gentlemanlike\nbehaviour.\n\n\"I like to dine here,\" he said to his aunt when he had completed his\nmeal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir Pitt,\nthe younger son and heir was introduced, and was perched on a high\nchair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession of the\nplace and the little wine-glass prepared for her near her mother.  \"I\nlike to dine here,\" said Rawdon Minor, looking up at his relation's\nkind face.\n\n\"Why?\" said the good Lady Jane.\n\n\"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home,\" replied Rawdon Minor, \"or\nelse with Briggs.\" But Becky was so engaged with the Baronet, her host,\npouring out a flood of compliments and delights and raptures, and\nadmiring young Pitt Binkie, whom she declared to be the most beautiful,\nintelligent, noble-looking little creature, and so like his father,\nthat she did not hear the remarks of her own flesh and blood at the\nother end of the broad shining table.\n\nAs a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, Rawdon the\nSecond was allowed to sit up until the hour when tea being over, and a\ngreat gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all the\ndomestics of the family streamed in, and Sir Pitt read prayers.  It was\nthe first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard of such\na ceremonial.\n\nThe house had been much improved even since the Baronet's brief reign,\nand was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming, delightful, when\nshe surveyed it in his company.  As for little Rawdon, who examined it\nwith the children for his guides, it seemed to him a perfect palace of\nenchantment and wonder.  There were long galleries, and ancient state\nbedrooms, there were pictures and old China, and armour.  There were\nthe rooms in which Grandpapa died, and by which the children walked\nwith terrified looks.  \"Who was Grandpapa?\" he asked; and they told him\nhow he used to be very old, and used to be wheeled about in a\ngarden-chair, and they showed him the garden-chair one day rotting in\nthe out-house in which it had lain since the old gentleman had been\nwheeled away yonder to the church, of which the spire was glittering\nover the park elms.\n\nThe brothers had good occupation for several mornings in examining the\nimprovements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and economy.\nAnd as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could talk without\ntoo much boring each other.  And Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what a\nheavy outlay of money these improvements had occasioned, and that a man\nof landed and funded property was often very hard pressed for twenty\npounds. \"There is that new lodge-gate,\" said Pitt, pointing to it\nhumbly with the bamboo cane, \"I can no more pay for it before the\ndividends in January than I can fly.\"\n\n\"I can lend you, Pitt, till then,\" Rawdon answered rather ruefully; and\nthey went in and looked at the restored lodge, where the family arms\nwere just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock, for the first\ntime these many long years, had tight doors, sound roofs, and whole\nwindows.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLV\n\nBetween Hampshire and London\n\nSir Pitt Crawley had done more than repair fences and restore\ndilapidated lodges on the Queen's Crawley estate. Like a wise man he\nhad set to work to rebuild the injured popularity of his house and stop\nup the gaps and ruins in which his name had been left by his\ndisreputable and thriftless old predecessor.  He was elected for the\nborough speedily after his father's demise; a magistrate, a member of\nparliament, a county magnate and representative of an ancient family,\nhe made it his duty to show himself before the Hampshire public,\nsubscribed handsomely to the county charities, called assiduously upon\nall the county folk, and laid himself out in a word to take that\nposition in Hampshire, and in the Empire afterwards, to which he\nthought his prodigious talents justly entitled him.  Lady Jane was\ninstructed to be friendly with the Fuddlestones, and the Wapshots, and\nthe other famous baronets, their neighbours.  Their carriages might\nfrequently be seen in the Queen's Crawley avenue now; they dined pretty\nfrequently at the Hall (where the cookery was so good that it was clear\nLady Jane very seldom had a hand in it), and in return Pitt and his\nwife most energetically dined out in all sorts of weather and at all\nsorts of distances.  For though Pitt did not care for joviality, being\na frigid man of poor hearth and appetite, yet he considered that to be\nhospitable and condescending was quite incumbent on his station, and\nevery time that he got a headache from too long an after-dinner\nsitting, he felt that he was a martyr to duty.  He talked about crops,\ncorn-laws, politics, with the best country gentlemen. He (who had been\nformerly inclined to be a sad free-thinker on these points) entered\ninto poaching and game preserving with ardour.  He didn't hunt; he\nwasn't a hunting man; he was a man of books and peaceful habits; but he\nthought that the breed of horses must be kept up in the country, and\nthat the breed of foxes must therefore be looked to, and for his part,\nif his friend, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, liked to draw his country\nand meet as of old the F.  hounds used to do at Queen's Crawley, he\nshould be happy to see him there, and the gentlemen of the Fuddlestone\nhunt.  And to Lady Southdown's dismay too he became more orthodox in\nhis tendencies every day; gave up preaching in public and attending\nmeeting-houses; went stoutly to church; called on the Bishop and all\nthe Clergy at Winchester; and made no objection when the Venerable\nArchdeacon Trumper asked for a game of whist.  What pangs must have\nbeen those of Lady Southdown, and what an utter castaway she must have\nthought her son-in-law for permitting such a godless diversion!  And\nwhen, on the return of the family from an oratorio at Winchester, the\nBaronet announced to the young ladies that he should next year very\nprobably take them to the \"county balls,\" they worshipped him for his\nkindness.  Lady Jane was only too obedient, and perhaps glad herself to\ngo.  The Dowager wrote off the direst descriptions of her daughter's\nworldly behaviour to the authoress of the Washerwoman of Finchley\nCommon at the Cape; and her house in Brighton being about this time\nunoccupied, returned to that watering-place, her absence being not very\nmuch deplored by her children. We may suppose, too, that Rebecca, on\npaying a second visit to Queen's Crawley, did not feel particularly\ngrieved at the absence of the lady of the medicine chest; though she\nwrote a Christmas letter to her Ladyship, in which she respectfully\nrecalled herself to Lady Southdown's recollection, spoke with gratitude\nof the delight which her Ladyship's conversation had given her on the\nformer visit, dilated on the kindness with which her Ladyship had\ntreated her in sickness, and declared that everything at Queen's\nCrawley reminded her of her absent friend.\n\nA great part of the altered demeanour and popularity of Sir Pitt\nCrawley might have been traced to the counsels of that astute little\nlady of Curzon Street.  \"You remain a Baronet--you consent to be a mere\ncountry gentleman,\" she said to him, while he had been her guest in\nLondon. \"No, Sir Pitt Crawley, I know you better.  I know your talents\nand your ambition.  You fancy you hide them both, but you can conceal\nneither from me.  I showed Lord Steyne your pamphlet on malt.  He was\nfamiliar with it, and said it was in the opinion of the whole Cabinet\nthe most masterly thing that had appeared on the subject. The Ministry\nhas its eye upon you, and I know what you want.  You want to\ndistinguish yourself in Parliament; every one says you are the finest\nspeaker in England (for your speeches at Oxford are still remembered).\nYou want to be Member for the County, where, with your own vote and\nyour borough at your back, you can command anything.  And you want to\nbe Baron Crawley of Queen's Crawley, and will be before you die.  I saw\nit all.  I could read your heart, Sir Pitt.  If I had a husband who\npossessed your intellect as he does your name, I sometimes think I\nshould not be unworthy of him--but--but I am your kinswoman now,\" she\nadded with a laugh.  \"Poor little penniless, I have got a little\ninterest--and who knows, perhaps the mouse may be able to aid the\nlion.\" Pitt Crawley was amazed and enraptured with her speech.  \"How\nthat woman comprehends me!\" he said. \"I never could get Jane to read\nthree pages of the malt pamphlet.  She has no idea that I have\ncommanding talents or secret ambition.  So they remember my speaking at\nOxford, do they? The rascals!  Now that I represent my borough and may\nsit for the county, they begin to recollect me!  Why, Lord Steyne cut\nme at the levee last year; they are beginning to find out that Pitt\nCrawley is some one at last.  Yes, the man was always the same whom\nthese people neglected:  it was only the opportunity that was wanting,\nand I will show them now that I can speak and act as well as write.\nAchilles did not declare himself until they gave him the sword.  I hold\nit now, and the world shall yet hear of Pitt Crawley.\"\n\nTherefore it was that this roguish diplomatist has grown so hospitable;\nthat he was so civil to oratorios and hospitals; so kind to Deans and\nChapters; so generous in giving and accepting dinners; so uncommonly\ngracious to farmers on market-days; and so much interested about county\nbusiness; and that the Christmas at the Hall was the gayest which had\nbeen known there for many a long day.\n\nOn Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the Crawleys\nfrom the Rectory came to dine.  Rebecca was as frank and fond of Mrs.\nBute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was affectionately\ninterested in the dear girls, and surprised at the progress which they\nhad made in music since her time, and insisted upon encoring one of the\nduets out of the great song-books which Jim, grumbling, had been forced\nto bring under his arm from the Rectory.  Mrs. Bute, perforce, was\nobliged to adopt a decent demeanour towards the little adventuress--of\ncourse being free to discourse with her daughters afterwards about the\nabsurd respect with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law.  But Jim,\nwho had sat next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and one\nand all of the Rector's family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fine\nboy. They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and the\ntitle there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie.\n\nThe children were very good friends.  Pitt Binkie was too little a dog\nfor such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being only a\ngirl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who was near\neight years old, and going into jackets very soon.  He took the command\nof this small party at once--the little girl and the little boy\nfollowing him about with great reverence at such times as he\ncondescended to sport with them.  His happiness and pleasure in the\ncountry were extreme.  The kitchen garden pleased him hugely, the\nflowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the stables\nwhen he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects to him.  He\nresisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he allowed Lady Jane\nsometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side that he liked to sit\nwhen, the signal to retire to the drawing-room being given, the ladies\nleft the gentlemen to their claret--by her side rather than by his\nmother.  For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness was the fashion, called\nRawdon to her one evening and stooped down and kissed him in the\npresence of all the ladies.\n\nHe looked her full in the face after the operation, trembling and\nturning very red, as his wont was when moved.  \"You never kiss me at\nhome, Mamma,\" he said, at which there was a general silence and\nconsternation and a by no means pleasant look in Becky's eyes.\n\nRawdon was fond of his sister-in-law, for her regard for his son. Lady\nJane and Becky did not get on quite so well at this visit as on\noccasion of the former one, when the Colonel's wife was bent upon\npleasing.  Those two speeches of the child struck rather a chill.\nPerhaps Sir Pitt was rather too attentive to her.\n\nBut Rawdon, as became his age and size, was fonder of the society of\nthe men than of the women, and never wearied of accompanying his sire\nto the stables, whither the Colonel retired to smoke his cigar--Jim,\nthe Rector's son, sometimes joining his cousin in that and other\namusements. He and the Baronet's keeper were very close friends, their\nmutual taste for \"dawgs\" bringing them much together. On one day, Mr.\nJames, the Colonel, and Horn, the keeper, went and shot pheasants,\ntaking little Rawdon with them.  On another most blissful morning,\nthese four gentlemen partook of the amusement of rat-hunting in a barn,\nthan which sport Rawdon as yet had never seen anything more noble.\nThey stopped up the ends of certain drains in the barn, into the other\nopenings of which ferrets were inserted, and then stood silently aloof,\nwith uplifted stakes in their hands, and an anxious little terrier (Mr.\nJames's celebrated \"dawg\" Forceps, indeed) scarcely breathing from\nexcitement, listening motionless on three legs, to the faint squeaking\nof the rats below. Desperately bold at last, the persecuted animals\nbolted above-ground--the terrier accounted for one, the keeper for\nanother; Rawdon, from flurry and excitement, missed his rat, but on the\nother hand he half-murdered a ferret.\n\nBut the greatest day of all was that on which Sir Huddlestone\nFuddlestone's hounds met upon the lawn at Queen's Crawley.\n\nThat was a famous sight for little Rawdon.  At half-past ten, Tom\nMoody, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's huntsman, was seen trotting up the\navenue, followed by the noble pack of hounds in a compact body--the\nrear being brought up by the two whips clad in stained scarlet\nfrocks--light hard-featured lads on well-bred lean horses, possessing\nmarvellous dexterity in casting the points of their long heavy whips at\nthe thinnest part of any dog's skin who dares to straggle from the main\nbody, or to take the slightest notice, or even so much as wink, at the\nhares and rabbits starting under their noses.\n\nNext comes boy Jack, Tom Moody's son, who weighs five stone, measures\neight-and-forty inches, and will never be any bigger.  He is perched on\na large raw-boned hunter, half-covered by a capacious saddle.  This\nanimal is Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's favourite horse the Nob. Other\nhorses, ridden by other small boys, arrive from time to time, awaiting\ntheir masters, who will come cantering on anon.\n\nTom Moody rides up to the door of the Hall, where he is welcomed by the\nbutler, who offers him drink, which he declines.  He and his pack then\ndraw off into a sheltered corner of the lawn, where the dogs roll on\nthe grass, and play or growl angrily at one another, ever and anon\nbreaking out into furious fight speedily to be quelled by Tom's voice,\nunmatched at rating, or the snaky thongs of the whips.\n\nMany young gentlemen canter up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed to\nthe knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay their\nrespects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divest\nthemselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their hunters,\nand warm their blood by a preliminary gallop round the lawn.  Then they\ncollect round the pack in the corner and talk with Tom Moody of past\nsport, and the merits of Sniveller and Diamond, and of the state of the\ncountry and of the wretched breed of foxes.\n\nSir Huddlestone presently appears mounted on a clever cob and rides up\nto the Hall, where he enters and does the civil thing by the ladies,\nafter which, being a man of few words, he proceeds to business.  The\nhounds are drawn up to the hall-door, and little Rawdon descends\namongst them, excited yet half-alarmed by the caresses which they\nbestow upon him, at the thumps he receives from their waving tails, and\nat their canine bickerings, scarcely restrained by Tom Moody's tongue\nand lash.\n\nMeanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the Nob:\n\"Let's try Sowster's Spinney, Tom,\" says the Baronet, \"Farmer Mangle\ntells me there are two foxes in it.\" Tom blows his horn and trots off,\nfollowed by the pack, by the whips, by the young gents from Winchester,\nby the farmers of the neighbourhood, by the labourers of the parish on\nfoot, with whom the day is a great holiday, Sir Huddlestone bringing up\nthe rear with Colonel Crawley, and the whole cortege disappears down\nthe avenue.\n\nThe Reverend Bute Crawley (who has been too modest to appear at the\npublic meet before his nephew's windows), whom Tom Moody remembers\nforty years back a slender divine riding the wildest horses, jumping\nthe widest brooks, and larking over the newest gates in the country--his\nReverence, we say, happens to trot out from the Rectory Lane on his\npowerful black horse just as Sir Huddlestone passes; he joins the\nworthy Baronet.  Hounds and horsemen disappear, and little Rawdon\nremains on the doorsteps, wondering and happy.\n\nDuring the progress of this memorable holiday, little Rawdon, if he had\ngot no special liking for his uncle, always awful and cold and locked\nup in his study, plunged in justice-business and surrounded by bailiffs\nand farmers--has gained the good graces of his married and maiden\naunts, of the two little folks of the Hall, and of Jim of the Rectory,\nwhom Sir Pitt is encouraging to pay his addresses to one of the young\nladies, with an understanding doubtless that he shall be presented to\nthe living when it shall be vacated by his fox-hunting old sire.  Jim\nhas given up that sport himself and confines himself to a little\nharmless duck- or snipe-shooting, or a little quiet trifling with the\nrats during the Christmas holidays, after which he will return to the\nUniversity and try and not be plucked, once more.  He has already\neschewed green coats, red neckcloths, and other worldly ornaments, and\nis preparing himself for a change in his condition.  In this cheap and\nthrifty way Sir Pitt tries to pay off his debt to his family.\n\nAlso before this merry Christmas was over, the Baronet had screwed up\ncourage enough to give his brother another draft on his bankers, and\nfor no less a sum than a hundred pounds, an act which caused Sir Pitt\ncruel pangs at first, but which made him glow afterwards to think\nhimself one of the most generous of men.  Rawdon and his son went away\nwith the utmost heaviness of heart.  Becky and the ladies parted with\nsome alacrity, however, and our friend returned to London to commence\nthose avocations with which we find her occupied when this chapter\nbegins. Under her care the Crawley House in Great Gaunt Street was\nquite rejuvenescent and ready for the reception of Sir Pitt and his\nfamily, when the Baronet came to London to attend his duties in\nParliament and to assume that position in the country for which his\nvast genius fitted him.\n\nFor the first session, this profound dissembler hid his projects and\nnever opened his lips but to present a petition from Mudbury.  But he\nattended assiduously in his place and learned thoroughly the routine\nand business of the House.  At home he gave himself up to the perusal\nof Blue Books, to the alarm and wonder of Lady Jane, who thought he was\nkilling himself by late hours and intense application.  And he made\nacquaintance with the ministers, and the chiefs of his party,\ndetermining to rank as one of them before many years were over.\n\nLady Jane's sweetness and kindness had inspired Rebecca with such a\ncontempt for her ladyship as the little woman found no small difficulty\nin concealing.  That sort of goodness and simplicity which Lady Jane\npossessed annoyed our friend Becky, and it was impossible for her at\ntimes not to show, or to let the other divine, her scorn. Her presence,\ntoo, rendered Lady Jane uneasy.  Her husband talked constantly with\nBecky.  Signs of intelligence seemed to pass between them, and Pitt\nspoke with her on subjects on which he never thought of discoursing\nwith Lady Jane.  The latter did not understand them, to be sure, but it\nwas mortifying to remain silent; still more mortifying to know that you\nhad nothing to say, and hear that little audacious Mrs. Rawdon dashing\non from subject to subject, with a word for every man, and a joke\nalways pat; and to sit in one's own house alone, by the fireside, and\nwatching all the men round your rival.\n\nIn the country, when Lady Jane was telling stories to the children, who\nclustered about her knees (little Rawdon into the bargain, who was very\nfond of her), and Becky came into the room, sneering with green\nscornful eyes, poor Lady Jane grew silent under those baleful glances.\nHer simple little fancies shrank away tremulously, as fairies in the\nstory-books, before a superior bad angel.  She could not go on,\nalthough Rebecca, with the smallest inflection of sarcasm in her voice,\nbesought her to continue that charming story.  And on her side gentle\nthoughts and simple pleasures were odious to Mrs. Becky; they discorded\nwith her; she hated people for liking them; she spurned children and\nchildren-lovers.  \"I have no taste for bread and butter,\" she would\nsay, when caricaturing Lady Jane and her ways to my Lord Steyne.\n\n\"No more has a certain person for holy water,\" his lordship replied\nwith a bow and a grin and a great jarring laugh afterwards.\n\nSo these two ladies did not see much of each other except upon those\noccasions when the younger brother's wife, having an object to gain\nfrom the other, frequented her.  They my-loved and my-deared each other\nassiduously, but kept apart generally, whereas Sir Pitt, in the midst\nof his multiplied avocations, found daily time to see his sister-in-law.\n\nOn the occasion of his first Speaker's dinner, Sir Pitt took the\nopportunity of appearing before his sister-in-law in his uniform--that\nold diplomatic suit which he had worn when attache to the Pumpernickel\nlegation.\n\nBecky complimented him upon that dress and admired him almost as much\nas his own wife and children, to whom he displayed himself before he\nset out.  She said that it was only the thoroughbred gentleman who\ncould wear the Court suit with advantage:  it was only your men of\nancient race whom the culotte courte became.  Pitt looked down with\ncomplacency at his legs, which had not, in truth, much more symmetry or\nswell than the lean Court sword which dangled by his side--looked down\nat his legs, and thought in his heart that he was killing.\n\nWhen he was gone, Mrs. Becky made a caricature of his figure, which she\nshowed to Lord Steyne when he arrived.  His lordship carried off the\nsketch, delighted with the accuracy of the resemblance.  He had done\nSir Pitt Crawley the honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house and had\nbeen most gracious to the new Baronet and member.  Pitt was struck too\nby the deference with which the great Peer treated his sister-in-law,\nby her ease and sprightliness in the conversation, and by the delight\nwith which the other men of the party listened to her talk. Lord Steyne\nmade no doubt but that the Baronet had only commenced his career in\npublic life, and expected rather anxiously to hear him as an orator; as\nthey were neighbours (for Great Gaunt Street leads into Gaunt Square,\nwhereof Gaunt House, as everybody knows, forms one side) my lord hoped\nthat as soon as Lady Steyne arrived in London she would have the honour\nof making the acquaintance of Lady Crawley.  He left a card upon his\nneighbour in the course of a day or two, having never thought fit to\nnotice his predecessor, though they had lived near each other for near\na century past.\n\nIn the midst of these intrigues and fine parties and wise and brilliant\npersonages Rawdon felt himself more and more isolated every day.  He\nwas allowed to go to the club more; to dine abroad with bachelor\nfriends; to come and go when he liked, without any questions being\nasked.  And he and Rawdon the younger many a time would walk to Gaunt\nStreet and sit with the lady and the children there while Sir Pitt was\ncloseted with Rebecca, on his way to the House, or on  his return from\nit.\n\nThe ex-Colonel would sit for hours in his brother's house very silent,\nand thinking and doing as little as possible.  He was glad to be\nemployed of an errand; to go and make inquiries about a horse or a\nservant, or to carve the roast mutton for the dinner of the children.\nHe was beat and cowed into laziness and submission. Delilah had\nimprisoned him and cut his hair off, too.  The bold and reckless young\nblood of ten-years back was subjugated and was turned into a torpid,\nsubmissive, middle-aged, stout gentleman.\n\nAnd poor Lady Jane was aware that Rebecca had captivated her husband,\nalthough she and Mrs. Rawdon my-deared and my-loved each other every\nday they met.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVI\n\nStruggles and Trials\n\nOur friends at Brompton were meanwhile passing their Christmas after\ntheir fashion and in a manner by no means too cheerful.\n\nOut of the hundred pounds a year, which was about the amount of her\nincome, the Widow Osborne had been in the habit of giving up nearly\nthree-fourths to her father and mother, for the expenses of herself and\nher little boy.  With 120_l_. more, supplied by Jos, this family of four\npeople, attended by a single Irish servant who also did for Clapp and\nhis wife, might manage to live in decent comfort through the year, and\nhold up their heads yet, and be able to give a friend a dish of tea\nstill, after the storms and disappointments of their early life. Sedley\nstill maintained his ascendency over the family of Mr. Clapp, his\nex-clerk.  Clapp remembered the time when, sitting on the edge of the\nchair, he tossed off a bumper to the health of \"Mrs. S--, Miss Emmy,\nand Mr. Joseph in India,\" at the merchant's rich table in Russell\nSquare.  Time magnified the splendour of those recollections in the\nhonest clerk's bosom.  Whenever he came up from the kitchen-parlour to\nthe drawing-room and partook of tea or gin-and-water with Mr. Sedley,\nhe would say, \"This was not what you was accustomed to once, sir,\" and\nas gravely and reverentially drink the health of the ladies as he had\ndone in the days of their utmost prosperity.  He thought Miss 'Melia's\nplaying the divinest music ever performed, and her the finest lady. He\nnever would sit down before Sedley at the club even, nor would he have\nthat gentleman's character abused by any member of the society.  He had\nseen the first men in London shaking hands with Mr. S--; he said, \"He'd\nknown him in times when Rothschild might be seen on 'Change with him\nany day, and he owed him personally everythink.\"\n\nClapp, with the best of characters and handwritings, had been able very\nsoon after his master's disaster to find other employment for himself.\n\"Such a little fish as me can swim in any bucket,\" he used to remark,\nand a member of the house from which old Sedley had seceded was very\nglad to make use of Mr. Clapp's services and to reward them with a\ncomfortable salary.  In fine, all Sedley's wealthy friends had dropped\noff one by one, and this poor ex-dependent still remained faithfully\nattached to him.\n\nOut of the small residue of her income which Amelia kept back for\nherself, the widow had need of all the thrift and care possible in\norder to enable her to keep her darling boy dressed in such a manner as\nbecame George Osborne's son, and to defray the expenses of the little\nschool to which, after much misgiving and reluctance and many secret\npangs and fears on her own part, she had been induced to send the lad.\nShe had sat up of nights conning lessons and spelling over crabbed\ngrammars and geography books in order to teach them to Georgy.  She had\nworked even at the Latin accidence, fondly hoping that she might be\ncapable of instructing him in that language.  To part with him all day,\nto send him out to the mercy of a schoolmaster's cane and his\nschoolfellows' roughness, was almost like weaning him over again to\nthat weak mother, so tremulous and full of sensibility.  He, for his\npart, rushed off to the school with the utmost happiness.  He was\nlonging for the change. That childish gladness wounded his mother, who\nwas herself so grieved to part with him.  She would rather have had him\nmore sorry, she thought, and then was deeply repentant within herself\nfor daring to be so selfish as to wish her own son to be unhappy.\n\nGeorgy made great progress in the school, which was kept by a friend of\nhis mother's constant admirer, the Rev. Mr. Binny.  He brought home\nnumberless prizes and testimonials of ability.  He told his mother\ncountless stories every night about his school-companions: and what a\nfine fellow Lyons was, and what a sneak Sniffin was, and how Steel's\nfather actually supplied the meat for the establishment, whereas\nGolding's mother came in a carriage to fetch him every Saturday, and\nhow Neat had straps to his trowsers--might he have straps?--and how\nBull Major was so strong (though only in Eutropius) that it was\nbelieved he could lick the Usher, Mr. Ward, himself.  So Amelia learned\nto know every one of the boys in that school as well as Georgy himself,\nand of nights she used to help him in his exercises and puzzle her\nlittle head over his lessons as eagerly as if she was herself going in\nthe morning into the presence of the master. Once, after a certain\ncombat with Master Smith, George came home to his mother with a black\neye, and bragged prodigiously to his parent and his delighted old\ngrandfather about his valour in the fight, in which, if the truth was\nknown he did not behave with particular heroism, and in which he\ndecidedly had the worst.  But Amelia has never forgiven that Smith to\nthis day, though he is now a peaceful apothecary near Leicester Square.\n\nIn these quiet labours and harmless cares the gentle widow's life was\npassing away, a silver hair or two marking the progress of time on her\nhead and a line deepening ever so little on her fair forehead.  She\nused to smile at these marks of time.  \"What matters it,\" she asked,\n\"For an old woman like me?\" All she hoped for was to live to see her\nson great, famous, and glorious, as he deserved to be.  She kept his\ncopy-books, his drawings, and compositions, and showed them about in\nher little circle as if they were miracles of genius.  She confided\nsome of these specimens to Miss Dobbin, to show them to Miss Osborne,\nGeorge's aunt, to show them to Mr. Osborne himself--to make that old\nman repent of his cruelty and ill feeling towards him who was gone.\nAll her husband's faults and foibles she had buried in the grave with\nhim: she only remembered the lover, who had married her at all\nsacrifices, the noble husband, so brave and beautiful, in whose arms\nshe had hung on the morning when he had gone away to fight, and die\ngloriously for his king. From heaven the hero must be smiling down upon\nthat paragon of a boy whom he had left to comfort and console her. We\nhave seen how one of George's grandfathers (Mr. Osborne), in his easy\nchair in Russell Square, daily grew more violent and moody, and how his\ndaughter, with her fine carriage, and her fine horses, and her name on\nhalf the public charity-lists of the town, was a lonely, miserable,\npersecuted old maid.  She thought again and again of the beautiful\nlittle boy, her brother's son, whom she had seen.  She longed to be\nallowed to drive in the fine carriage to the house in which he lived,\nand she used to look out day after day as she took her solitary drive\nin the park, in hopes that she might see him.  Her sister, the banker's\nlady, occasionally condescended to pay her old home and companion a\nvisit in Russell Square.  She brought a couple of sickly children\nattended by a prim nurse, and in a faint genteel giggling tone cackled\nto her sister about her fine acquaintance, and how her little Frederick\nwas the image of Lord Claud Lollypop and her sweet Maria had been\nnoticed by the Baroness as they were driving in their donkey-chaise at\nRoehampton.  She urged her to make her papa do something for the\ndarlings. Frederick she had determined should go into the Guards; and\nif they made an elder son of him (and Mr. Bullock was positively\nruining and pinching himself to death to buy land), how was the darling\ngirl to be provided for? \"I expect YOU, dear,\" Mrs. Bullock would say,\n\"for of course my share of our Papa's property must go to the head of\nthe house, you know.  Dear Rhoda McMull will disengage the whole of the\nCastletoddy property as soon as poor dear Lord Castletoddy dies, who is\nquite epileptic; and little Macduff McMull will be Viscount\nCastletoddy.  Both the Mr. Bludyers of Mincing Lane have settled their\nfortunes on Fanny Bludyer's little boy.  My darling Frederick must\npositively be an eldest son; and--and do ask Papa to bring us back his\naccount in Lombard Street, will you, dear? It doesn't look well, his\ngoing to Stumpy and Rowdy's.\" After which kind of speeches, in which\nfashion and the main chance were blended together, and after a kiss,\nwhich was like the contact of an oyster--Mrs. Frederick Bullock would\ngather her starched nurslings and simper back into her carriage.\n\nEvery visit which this leader of ton paid to her family was more\nunlucky for her.  Her father paid more money into Stumpy and Rowdy's.\nHer patronage became more and more insufferable.  The poor widow in the\nlittle cottage at Brompton, guarding her treasure there, little knew\nhow eagerly some people coveted it.\n\nOn that night when Jane Osborne had told her father that she had seen\nhis grandson, the old man had made her no reply, but he had shown no\nanger--and had bade her good-night on going himself to his room in\nrather a kindly voice.  And he must have meditated on what she said and\nhave made some inquiries of the Dobbin family regarding her visit, for\na fortnight after it took place, he asked her where was her little\nFrench watch and chain she used to wear?\n\n\"I bought it with my money, sir,\" she said in a great fright.\n\n\"Go and order another like it, or a better if you can get it,\" said the\nold gentleman and lapsed again into silence.\n\nOf late the Misses Dobbin more than once repeated their entreaties to\nAmelia, to allow George to visit them. His aunt had shown her\ninclination; perhaps his grandfather himself, they hinted, might be\ndisposed to be reconciled to him.  Surely, Amelia could not refuse such\nadvantageous chances for the boy.  Nor could she, but she acceded to\ntheir overtures with a very heavy and suspicious heart, was always\nuneasy during the child's absence from her, and welcomed him back as if\nhe was rescued out of some danger.  He brought back money and toys, at\nwhich the widow looked with alarm and jealousy; she asked him always if\nhe had seen any gentleman--\"Only old Sir William, who drove him about\nin the four-wheeled chaise, and Mr. Dobbin, who arrived on the\nbeautiful bay horse in the afternoon--in the green coat and pink\nneck-cloth, with the gold-headed whip, who promised to show him the\nTower of London and take him out with the Surrey hounds.\" At last, he\nsaid, \"There was an old gentleman, with thick eyebrows, and a broad\nhat, and large chain and seals.\" He came one day as the coachman was\nlunging Georgy round the lawn on the gray pony.  \"He looked at me very\nmuch.  He shook very much.  I said 'My name is Norval' after dinner.\nMy aunt began to cry.  She is always crying.\" Such was George's report\non that night.\n\nThen Amelia knew that the boy had seen his grandfather; and looked out\nfeverishly for a proposal which she was sure would follow, and which\ncame, in fact, in a few days afterwards.  Mr. Osborne formally offered\nto take the boy and make him heir to the fortune which he had intended\nthat his father should inherit.  He would make Mrs. George Osborne an\nallowance, such as to assure her a decent competency.  If Mrs. George\nOsborne proposed to marry again, as Mr. O.  heard was her intention, he\nwould not withdraw that allowance. But it must be understood that the\nchild would live entirely with his grandfather in Russell Square, or at\nwhatever other place Mr. O. should select, and that he would be\noccasionally permitted to see Mrs. George Osborne at her own residence.\nThis message was brought or read to her in a letter one day, when her\nmother was from home and her father absent as usual in the City.\n\nShe was never seen angry but twice or thrice in her life, and it was in\none of these moods that Mr. Osborne's attorney had the fortune to\nbehold her.  She rose up trembling and flushing very much as soon as,\nafter reading the letter, Mr. Poe handed it to her, and she tore the\npaper into a hundred fragments, which she trod on.  \"I marry again!  I\ntake money to part from my child!  Who dares insult me by proposing\nsuch a thing? Tell Mr. Osborne it is a cowardly letter, sir--a cowardly\nletter--I will not answer it.  I wish you good morning, sir--and she\nbowed me out of the room like a tragedy Queen,\" said the lawyer who\ntold the story.\n\nHer parents never remarked her agitation on that day, and she never\ntold them of the interview.  They had their own affairs to interest\nthem, affairs which deeply interested this innocent and unconscious\nlady.  The old gentleman, her father, was always dabbling in\nspeculation. We have seen how the wine company and the coal company had\nfailed him.  But, prowling about the City always eagerly and restlessly\nstill, he lighted upon some other scheme, of which he thought so well\nthat he embarked in it in spite of the remonstrances of Mr. Clapp, to\nwhom indeed he never dared to tell how far he had engaged himself in\nit.  And as it was always Mr. Sedley's maxim not to talk about money\nmatters before women, they had no inkling of the misfortunes that were\nin store for them until the unhappy old gentleman was forced to make\ngradual confessions.\n\nThe bills of the little household, which had been settled weekly, first\nfell into arrear.  The remittances had not arrived from India, Mr.\nSedley told his wife with a disturbed face.  As she had paid her bills\nvery regularly hitherto, one or two of the tradesmen to whom the poor\nlady was obliged to go round asking for time were very angry at a delay\nto which they were perfectly used from more irregular customers.\nEmmy's contribution, paid over cheerfully without any questions, kept\nthe little company in half-rations however.  And the first six months\npassed away pretty easily, old Sedley still keeping up with the notion\nthat his shares must rise and that all would be well.\n\nNo sixty pounds, however, came to help the household at the end of the\nhalf year, and it fell deeper and deeper into trouble--Mrs. Sedley, who\nwas growing infirm and was much shaken, remained silent or wept a great\ndeal with Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen.  The butcher was particularly\nsurly, the grocer insolent:  once or twice little Georgy had grumbled\nabout the dinners, and Amelia, who still would have been satisfied with\na slice of bread for her own dinner, could not but perceive that her\nson was neglected and purchased little things out of her private purse\nto keep the boy in health.\n\nAt last they told her, or told her such a garbled story as people in\ndifficulties tell.  One day, her own money having been received, and\nAmelia about to pay it over, she, who had kept an account of the moneys\nexpended by her, proposed to keep a certain portion back out of her\ndividend, having contracted engagements for a new suit for Georgy.\n\nThen it came out that Jos's remittances were not paid, that the house\nwas in difficulties, which Amelia ought to have seen before, her mother\nsaid, but she cared for nothing or nobody except Georgy. At this she\npassed all her money across the table, without a word, to her mother,\nand returned to her room to cry her eyes out. She had a great access of\nsensibility too that day, when obliged to go and countermand the\nclothes, the darling clothes on which she had set her heart for\nChristmas Day, and the cut and fashion of which she had arranged in\nmany conversations with a small milliner, her friend.\n\nHardest of all, she had to break the matter to Georgy, who made a loud\noutcry.  Everybody had new clothes at Christmas.  The others would\nlaugh at him.  He would have new clothes.  She had promised them to\nhim.  The poor widow had only kisses to give him.  She darned the old\nsuit in tears.  She cast about among her little ornaments to see if she\ncould sell anything to procure the desired novelties.  There was her\nIndia shawl that Dobbin had sent her.  She remembered in former days\ngoing with her mother to a fine India shop on Ludgate Hill, where the\nladies had all sorts of dealings and bargains in these articles.  Her\ncheeks flushed and her eyes shone with pleasure as she thought of this\nresource, and she kissed away George to school in the morning, smiling\nbrightly after him.  The boy felt that there was good news in her look.\n\nPacking up her shawl in a handkerchief (another of the gifts of the\ngood Major), she hid them under her cloak and walked flushed and eager\nall the way to Ludgate Hill, tripping along by the park wall and\nrunning over the crossings, so that many a man turned as she hurried by\nhim and looked after her rosy pretty face.  She calculated how she\nshould spend the proceeds of her shawl--how, besides the clothes, she\nwould buy the books that he longed for, and pay his half-year's\nschooling; and how she would buy a cloak for her father instead of that\nold great-coat which he wore.  She was not mistaken as to the value of\nthe Major's gift.  It was a very fine and beautiful web, and the\nmerchant made a very good bargain when he gave her twenty guineas for\nher shawl.\n\nShe ran on amazed and flurried with her riches to Darton's shop, in St.\nPaul's Churchyard, and there purchased the Parents' Assistant and the\nSandford and Merton Georgy longed for, and got into the coach there\nwith her parcel, and went home exulting.  And she pleased herself by\nwriting in the fly-leaf in her neatest little hand, \"George Osborne, A\nChristmas gift from his affectionate mother.\" The books are extant to\nthis day, with the fair delicate superscription.\n\nShe was going from her own room with the books in her hand to place\nthem on George's table, where he might find them on his return from\nschool, when in the passage, she and her mother met.  The gilt bindings\nof the seven handsome little volumes caught the old lady's eye.\n\n\"What are those?\" she said.\n\n\"Some books for Georgy,\" Amelia replied--\"I--I promised them to him at\nChristmas.\"\n\n\"Books!\" cried the elder lady indignantly, \"Books, when the whole house\nwants bread!  Books, when to keep you and your son in luxury, and your\ndear father out of gaol, I've sold every trinket I had, the India shawl\nfrom my back even down to the very spoons, that our tradesmen mightn't\ninsult us, and that Mr. Clapp, which indeed he is justly entitled,\nbeing not a hard landlord, and a civil man, and a father, might have\nhis rent.  Oh, Amelia! you break my heart with your books and that boy\nof yours, whom you are ruining, though part with him you will not.  Oh,\nAmelia, may God send you a more dutiful child than I have had!  There's\nJos, deserts his father in his old age; and there's George, who might\nbe provided for, and who might be rich, going to school like a lord,\nwith a gold watch and chain round his neck--while my dear, dear old man\nis without a sh--shilling.\" Hysteric sobs and cries ended Mrs. Sedley's\nspeech--it echoed through every room in the small house, whereof the\nother female inmates heard every word of the colloquy.\n\n\"Oh, Mother, Mother!\" cried poor Amelia in reply. \"You told me\nnothing--I--I promised him the books. I--I only sold my shawl this\nmorning.  Take the money--take everything\"--and with quivering hands\nshe took out her silver, and her sovereigns--her precious golden\nsovereigns, which she thrust into the hands of her mother, whence they\noverflowed and tumbled, rolling down the stairs.\n\nAnd then she went into her room, and sank down in despair and utter\nmisery.  She saw it all now.  Her selfishness was sacrificing the boy.\nBut for her he might have wealth, station, education, and his father's\nplace, which the elder George had forfeited for her sake. She had but\nto speak the words, and her father was restored to competency and the\nboy raised to fortune.  Oh, what a conviction it was to that tender and\nstricken heart!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVII\n\nGaunt House\n\nAll the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt\nSquare, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads, whither we first\nconducted Rebecca, in the time of the departed Sir Pitt Crawley.\nPeering over the railings and through the black trees into the garden\nof the Square, you see a few miserable governesses with wan-faced\npupils wandering round and round it, and round the dreary grass-plot in\nthe centre of which rises the statue of Lord Gaunt, who fought at\nMinden, in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited like a Roman\nEmperor.  Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the Square. The\nremaining three sides are composed of mansions that have passed away\ninto dowagerism--tall, dark houses, with window-frames of stone, or\npicked out of a lighter red.  Little light seems to be behind those\nlean, comfortless casements now, and hospitality to have passed away\nfrom those doors as much as the laced lacqueys and link-boys of old\ntimes, who used to put out their torches in the blank iron\nextinguishers that still flank the lamps over the steps. Brass plates\nhave penetrated into the square--Doctors, the Diddlesex Bank Western\nBranch--the English and European Reunion, &c.--it has a dreary\nlook--nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less dreary.  All I have ever seen\nof it is the vast wall in front, with the rustic columns at the great\ngate, through which an old porter peers sometimes with a fat and gloomy\nred face--and over the wall the garret and bedroom windows, and the\nchimneys, out of which there seldom comes any smoke now.  For the\npresent Lord Steyne lives at Naples, preferring the view of the Bay and\nCapri and Vesuvius to the dreary aspect of the wall in Gaunt Square.\n\nA few score yards down New Gaunt Street, and leading into Gaunt Mews\nindeed, is a little modest back door, which you would not remark from\nthat of any of the other stables.  But many a little close carriage has\nstopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom Eaves, who knows\neverything, and who showed me the place) told me. \"The Prince and\nPerdita have been in and out of that door, sir,\" he had often told me;\n\"Marianne Clarke has entered it with the Duke of ------. It conducts to\nthe famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne--one, sir, fitted up all\nin ivory and white satin, another in ebony and black velvet; there is a\nlittle banqueting-room taken from Sallust's house at Pompeii, and\npainted by Cosway--a little private kitchen, in which every saucepan\nwas silver and all the spits were gold.  It was there that Egalite\nOrleans roasted partridges on the night when he and the Marquis of\nSteyne won a hundred thousand from a great personage at ombre.  Half of\nthe money went to the French Revolution, half to purchase Lord Gaunt's\nMarquisate and Garter--and the remainder--\" but it forms no part of our\nscheme to tell what became of the remainder, for every shilling of\nwhich, and a great deal more, little Tom Eaves, who knows everybody's\naffairs, is ready to account.\n\nBesides his town palace, the Marquis had castles and palaces in various\nquarters of the three kingdoms, whereof the descriptions may be found\nin the road-books--Castle Strongbow, with its woods, on the Shannon\nshore; Gaunt Castle, in Carmarthenshire, where Richard II was taken\nprisoner--Gauntly Hall in Yorkshire, where I have been informed there\nwere two hundred silver teapots for the breakfasts of the guests of the\nhouse, with everything to correspond in splendour; and Stillbrook in\nHampshire, which was my lord's farm, an humble place of residence, of\nwhich we all remember the wonderful furniture which was sold at my\nlord's demise by a late celebrated auctioneer.\n\nThe Marchioness of Steyne was of the renowned and ancient family of the\nCaerlyons, Marquises of Camelot, who have preserved the old faith ever\nsince the conversion of the venerable Druid, their first ancestor, and\nwhose pedigree goes far beyond the date of the arrival of King Brute in\nthese islands.  Pendragon is the title of the eldest son of the house.\nThe sons have been called Arthurs, Uthers, and Caradocs, from\nimmemorial time. Their heads have fallen in many a loyal conspiracy.\nElizabeth chopped off the head of the Arthur of her day, who had been\nChamberlain to Philip and Mary, and carried letters between the Queen\nof Scots and her uncles the Guises.  A cadet of the house was an\nofficer of the great Duke and distinguished in the famous Saint\nBartholomew conspiracy.  During the whole of Mary's confinement, the\nhouse of Camelot conspired in her behalf. It was as much injured by its\ncharges in fitting out an armament against the Spaniards, during the\ntime of the Armada, as by the fines and confiscations levied on it by\nElizabeth for harbouring of priests, obstinate recusancy, and popish\nmisdoings.  A recreant of James's time was momentarily perverted from\nhis religion by the arguments of that great theologian, and the\nfortunes of the family somewhat restored by his timely weakness.  But\nthe Earl of Camelot, of the reign of Charles, returned to the old creed\nof his family, and they continued to fight for it, and ruin themselves\nfor it, as long as there was a Stuart left to head or to instigate a\nrebellion.\n\nLady Mary Caerlyon was brought up at a Parisian convent; the Dauphiness\nMarie Antoinette was her godmother.  In the pride of her beauty she had\nbeen married--sold, it was said--to Lord Gaunt, then at Paris, who won\nvast sums from the lady's brother at some of Philip of Orleans's\nbanquets.  The Earl of Gaunt's famous duel with the Count de la Marche,\nof the Grey Musqueteers, was attributed by common report to the\npretensions of that officer (who had been a page, and remained a\nfavourite of the Queen) to the hand of the beautiful Lady Mary\nCaerlyon.  She was married to Lord Gaunt while the Count lay ill of his\nwound, and came to dwell at Gaunt House, and to figure for a short time\nin the splendid Court of the Prince of Wales.  Fox had toasted her.\nMorris and Sheridan had written songs about her.  Malmesbury had made\nher his best bow; Walpole had pronounced her charming; Devonshire had\nbeen almost jealous of her; but she was scared by the wild pleasures\nand gaieties of the society into which she was flung, and after she had\nborne a couple of sons, shrank away into a life of devout seclusion.\nNo wonder that my Lord Steyne, who liked pleasure and cheerfulness, was\nnot often seen after their marriage by the side of this trembling,\nsilent, superstitious, unhappy lady.\n\nThe before-mentioned Tom Eaves (who has no part in this history, except\nthat he knew all the great folks in London, and the stories and\nmysteries of each family) had further information regarding my Lady\nSteyne, which may or may not be true.  \"The humiliations,\" Tom used to\nsay, \"which that woman has been made to undergo, in her own house, have\nbeen frightful; Lord Steyne has made her sit down to table with women\nwith whom I would rather die than allow Mrs. Eaves to associate--with\nLady Crackenbury, with Mrs. Chippenham, with Madame de la Cruchecassee,\nthe French secretary's wife (from every one of which ladies Tom\nEaves--who would have sacrificed his wife for knowing them--was too\nglad to get a bow or a dinner) with the REIGNING FAVOURITE in a word.\nAnd do you suppose that that woman, of that family, who are as proud as\nthe Bourbons, and to whom the Steynes are but lackeys, mushrooms of\nyesterday (for after all, they are not of the Old Gaunts, but of a\nminor and doubtful branch of the house); do you suppose, I say (the\nreader must bear in mind that it is always Tom Eaves who speaks) that\nthe Marchioness of Steyne, the haughtiest woman in England, would bend\ndown to her husband so submissively if there were not some cause? Pooh!\nI tell you there are secret reasons. I tell you that, in the\nemigration, the Abbe de la Marche who was here and was employed in the\nQuiberoon business with Puisaye and Tinteniac, was the same Colonel of\nMousquetaires Gris with whom Steyne fought in the year '86--that he and\nthe Marchioness met again--that it was after the Reverend Colonel was\nshot in Brittany that Lady Steyne took to those extreme practices of\ndevotion which she carries on now; for she is closeted with her\ndirector every day--she is at service at Spanish Place, every morning,\nI've watched her there--that is, I've happened to be passing there--and\ndepend on it, there's a mystery in her case. People are not so unhappy\nunless they have something to repent of,\" added Tom Eaves with a\nknowing wag of his head; \"and depend on it, that woman would not be so\nsubmissive as she is if the Marquis had not some sword to hold over\nher.\"\n\nSo, if Mr. Eaves's information be correct, it is very likely that this\nlady, in her high station, had to submit to many a private indignity\nand to hide many secret griefs under a calm face.  And let us, my\nbrethren who have not our names in the Red Book, console ourselves by\nthinking comfortably how miserable our betters may be, and that\nDamocles, who sits on satin cushions and is served on gold plate, has\nan awful sword hanging over his head in the shape of a bailiff, or an\nhereditary disease, or a family secret, which peeps out every now and\nthen from the embroidered arras in a ghastly manner, and will be sure\nto drop one day or the other in the right place.\n\nIn comparing, too, the poor man's situation with that of the great,\nthere is (always according to Mr. Eaves) another source of comfort for\nthe former.  You who have little or no patrimony to bequeath or to\ninherit, may be on good terms with your father or your son, whereas the\nheir of a great prince, such as my Lord Steyne, must naturally be angry\nat being kept out of his kingdom, and eye the occupant of it with no\nvery agreeable glances. \"Take it as a rule,\" this sardonic old Eaves\nwould say, \"the fathers and elder sons of all great families hate each\nother.  The Crown Prince is always in opposition to the crown or\nhankering after it.  Shakespeare knew the world, my good sir, and when\nhe describes Prince Hal (from whose family the Gaunts pretend to be\ndescended, though they are no more related to John of Gaunt than you\nare) trying on his father's coronet, he gives you a natural description\nof all heirs apparent. If you were heir to a dukedom and a thousand\npounds a day, do you mean to say you would not wish for possession?\nPooh!  And it stands to reason that every great man, having experienced\nthis feeling towards his father, must be aware that his son entertains\nit towards himself; and so they can't but be suspicious and hostile.\n\n\"Then again, as to the feeling of elder towards younger sons.  My dear\nsir, you ought to know that every elder brother looks upon the cadets\nof the house as his natural enemies, who deprive him of so much ready\nmoney which ought to be his by right.  I have often heard George Mac\nTurk, Lord Bajazet's eldest son, say that if he had his will when he\ncame to the title, he would do what the sultans do, and clear the\nestate by chopping off all his younger brothers' heads at once; and so\nthe case is, more or less, with them all.  I tell you they are all\nTurks in their hearts.  Pooh! sir, they know the world.\" And here,\nhaply, a great man coming up, Tom Eaves's hat would drop off his head,\nand he would rush forward with a bow and a grin, which showed that he\nknew the world too--in the Tomeavesian way, that is.  And having laid\nout every shilling of his fortune on an annuity, Tom could afford to\nbear no malice to his nephews and nieces, and to have no other feeling\nwith regard to his betters but a constant and generous desire to dine\nwith them.\n\nBetween the Marchioness and the natural and tender regard of mother for\nchildren, there was that cruel barrier placed of difference of faith.\nThe very love which she might feel for her sons only served to render\nthe timid and pious lady more fearful and unhappy.  The gulf which\nseparated them was fatal and impassable.  She could not stretch her\nweak arms across it, or draw her children over to that side away from\nwhich her belief told her there was no safety. During the youth of his\nsons, Lord Steyne, who was a good scholar and amateur casuist, had no\nbetter sport in the evening after dinner in the country than in setting\nthe boys' tutor, the Reverend Mr. Trail (now my Lord Bishop of Ealing)\non her ladyship's director, Father Mole, over their wine, and in\npitting Oxford against St. Acheul.  He cried \"Bravo, Latimer!  Well\nsaid, Loyola!\" alternately; he promised Mole a bishopric if he would\ncome over, and vowed he would use all his influence to get Trail a\ncardinal's hat if he would secede.  Neither divine allowed himself to\nbe conquered, and though the fond mother hoped that her youngest and\nfavourite son would be reconciled to her church--his mother church--a\nsad and awful disappointment awaited the devout lady--a disappointment\nwhich seemed to be a judgement upon her for the sin of her marriage.\n\nMy Lord Gaunt married, as every person who frequents the Peerage knows,\nthe Lady Blanche Thistlewood, a daughter of the noble house of\nBareacres, before mentioned in this veracious history.  A wing of Gaunt\nHouse was assigned to this couple; for the head of the family chose to\ngovern it, and while he reigned to reign supreme; his son and heir,\nhowever, living little at home, disagreeing with his wife, and\nborrowing upon post-obits such moneys as he required beyond the very\nmoderate sums which his father was disposed to allow him.  The Marquis\nknew every shilling of his son's debts. At his lamented demise, he was\nfound himself to be possessor of many of his heir's bonds, purchased\nfor their benefit, and devised by his Lordship to the children of his\nyounger son.\n\nAs, to my Lord Gaunt's dismay, and the chuckling delight of his natural\nenemy and father, the Lady Gaunt had no children--the Lord George Gaunt\nwas desired to return from Vienna, where he was engaged in waltzing and\ndiplomacy, and to contract a matrimonial alliance with the Honourable\nJoan, only daughter of John Johnes, First Baron Helvellyn, and head of\nthe firm of Jones, Brown, and Robinson, of Threadneedle Street,\nBankers; from which union sprang several sons and daughters, whose\ndoings do not appertain to this story.\n\nThe marriage at first was a happy and prosperous one. My Lord George\nGaunt could not only read, but write pretty correctly.  He spoke French\nwith considerable fluency; and was one of the finest waltzers in\nEurope.  With these talents, and his interest at home, there was little\ndoubt that his lordship would rise to the highest dignities in his\nprofession.  The lady, his wife, felt that courts were her sphere, and\nher wealth enabled her to receive splendidly in those continental towns\nwhither her husband's diplomatic duties led him. There was talk of\nappointing him minister, and bets were laid at the Travellers' that he\nwould be ambassador ere long, when of a sudden, rumours arrived of the\nsecretary's extraordinary behaviour. At a grand diplomatic dinner given\nby his chief, he had started up and declared that a pate de foie gras\nwas poisoned.  He went to a ball at the hotel of the Bavarian envoy,\nthe Count de Springbock-Hohenlaufen, with his head shaved and dressed\nas a Capuchin friar. It was not a masked ball, as some folks wanted to\npersuade you.  It was something queer, people whispered.  His\ngrandfather was so.  It was in the family.\n\nHis wife and family returned to this country and took up their abode at\nGaunt House.  Lord George gave up his post on the European continent,\nand was gazetted to Brazil.  But people knew better; he never returned\nfrom that Brazil expedition--never died there--never lived there--never\nwas there at all.  He was nowhere; he was gone out altogether.\n\"Brazil,\" said one gossip to another, with a grin--\"Brazil is St.\nJohn's Wood.  Rio de Janeiro is a cottage surrounded by four walls, and\nGeorge Gaunt is accredited to a keeper, who has invested him with the\norder of the Strait-Waistcoat.\" These are the kinds of epitaphs which\nmen pass over one another in Vanity Fair.\n\nTwice or thrice in a week, in the earliest morning, the poor mother\nwent for her sins and saw the poor invalid. Sometimes he laughed at her\n(and his laughter was more pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes she\nfound the brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Vienna\ndragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's baby's doll.\nSometimes he knew her and Father Mole, her director and companion;\noftener he forgot her, as he had done wife, children, love, ambition,\nvanity.  But he remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry if his\nwine-and-water was not strong enough.\n\nIt was the mysterious taint of the blood; the poor mother had brought\nit from her own ancient race.  The evil had broken out once or twice in\nthe father's family, long before Lady Steyne's sins had begun, or her\nfasts and tears and penances had been offered in their expiation.  The\npride of the race was struck down as the first-born of Pharaoh.  The\ndark mark of fate and doom was on the threshold--the tall old\nthreshold surmounted by coronets and caned heraldry.\n\nThe absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and grew on quite\nunconscious that the doom was over them too.  First they talked of\ntheir father and devised plans against his return.  Then the name of\nthe living dead man was less frequently in their mouth--then not\nmentioned at all.  But the stricken old grandmother trembled to think\nthat these too were the inheritors of their father's shame as well as\nof his honours, and watched sickening for the day when the awful\nancestral curse should come down on them.\n\nThis dark presentiment also haunted Lord Steyne.  He tried to lay the\nhorrid bedside ghost in Red Seas of wine and jollity, and lost sight of\nit sometimes in the crowd and rout of his pleasures.  But it always\ncame back to him when alone, and seemed to grow more threatening with\nyears.  \"I have taken your son,\" it said, \"why not you? I may shut you\nup in a prison some day like your son George.  I may tap you on the\nhead to-morrow, and away go pleasure and honours, feasts and beauty,\nfriends, flatterers, French cooks, fine horses and houses--in exchange\nfor a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress like George Gaunt's.\" And\nthen my lord would defy the ghost which threatened him, for he knew of\na remedy by which he could baulk his enemy.\n\nSo there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance,\nbehind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets\nand ciphers.  The feasts there were of the grandest in London, but\nthere was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests who\nsat at my lord's table.  Had he not been so great a Prince very few\npossibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of very\ngreat personages are looked at indulgently.  \"Nous regardons a deux\nfois\" (as the French lady said) before we condemn a person of my lord's\nundoubted quality.  Some notorious carpers and squeamish moralists\nmight be sulky with Lord Steyne, but they were glad enough to come when\nhe asked them.\n\n\"Lord Steyne is really too bad,\" Lady Slingstone said, \"but everybody\ngoes, and of course I shall see that my girls come to no harm.\" \"His\nlordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything in life,\" said the\nRight Reverend Doctor Trail, thinking that the Archbishop was rather\nshaky, and Mrs. Trail and the young ladies would as soon have missed\ngoing to church as to one of his lordship's parties.  \"His morals are\nbad,\" said little Lord Southdown to his sister, who meekly\nexpostulated, having heard terrific legends from her mamma with respect\nto the doings at Gaunt House; \"but hang it, he's got the best dry\nSillery in Europe!\" And as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart.--Sir Pitt that\npattern of decorum, Sir Pitt who had led off at missionary meetings--he\nnever for one moment thought of not going too.  \"Where you see such\npersons as the Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of Slingstone, you may\nbe pretty sure, Jane,\" the Baronet would say, \"that we cannot be wrong.\nThe great rank and station of Lord Steyne put him in a position to\ncommand people in our station in life.  The Lord Lieutenant of a\nCounty, my dear, is a respectable man.  Besides, George Gaunt and I\nwere intimate in early life; he was my junior when we were attaches at\nPumpernickel together.\"\n\nIn a word everybody went to wait upon this great man--everybody who was\nasked, as you the reader (do not say nay) or I the writer hereof would\ngo if we had an invitation.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVIII\n\nIn Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company\n\nAt last Becky's kindness and attention to the chief of her husband's\nfamily were destined to meet with an exceeding great reward, a reward\nwhich, though certainly somewhat unsubstantial, the little woman\ncoveted with greater eagerness than more positive benefits. If she did\nnot wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a\ncharacter for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can\npossess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers and\nhas been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that august\ninterview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain\ngives them a certificate of virtue.  And as dubious goods or letters\nare passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic\nvinegar, and then pronounced clean, many a lady, whose reputation would\nbe doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the\nwholesome ordeal of the Royal presence and issues from it free from all\ntaint.\n\nIt might be very well for my Lady Bareacres, my Lady Tufto, Mrs. Bute\nCrawley in the country, and other ladies who had come into contact with\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley to cry fie at the idea of the odious little\nadventuress making her curtsey before the Sovereign, and to declare\nthat, if dear good Queen Charlotte had been alive, she never would have\nadmitted such an extremely ill-regulated personage into her chaste\ndrawing-room.  But when we consider that it was the First Gentleman in\nEurope in whose high presence Mrs. Rawdon passed her examination, and\nas it were, took her degree in reputation, it surely must be flat\ndisloyalty to doubt any more about her virtue.  I, for my part, look\nback with love and awe to that Great Character in history.  Ah, what a\nhigh and noble appreciation of Gentlewomanhood there must have been in\nVanity Fair, when that revered and august being was invested, by the\nuniversal acclaim of the refined and educated portion of this empire,\nwith the title of Premier Gentilhomme of his Kingdom.  Do you remember,\ndear M--, oh friend of my youth, how one blissful night five-and-twenty\nyears since, the \"Hypocrite\" being acted, Elliston being manager,\nDowton and Liston performers, two boys had leave from their loyal\nmasters to go out from Slaughter-House School where they were educated\nand to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a crowd which assembled\nthere to greet the king.  THE KING? There he was. Beefeaters were\nbefore the august box; the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the Powder\nCloset) and other great officers of state were behind the chair on\nwhich he sat, HE sat--florid of face, portly of person, covered with\norders, and in a rich curling head of hair--how we sang God save him!\nHow the house rocked and shouted with that magnificent music.  How they\ncheered, and cried, and waved handkerchiefs.  Ladies wept; mothers\nclasped their children; some fainted with emotion.  People were\nsuffocated in the pit, shrieks and groans rising up amidst the writhing\nand shouting mass there of his people who were, and indeed showed\nthemselves almost to be, ready to die for him.  Yes, we saw him.  Fate\ncannot deprive us of THAT.  Others have seen Napoleon.  Some few still\nexist who have beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor Johnson, Marie\nAntoinette, &c.--be it our reasonable boast to our children, that we\nsaw George the Good, the Magnificent, the Great.\n\nWell, there came a happy day in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's existence when\nthis angel was admitted into the paradise of a Court which she coveted,\nher sister-in-law acting as her godmother.  On the appointed day, Sir\nPitt and his lady, in their great family carriage (just newly built,\nand ready for the Baronet's assumption of the office of High Sheriff of\nhis county), drove up to the little house in Curzon Street, to the\nedification of Raggles, who was watching from his greengrocer's shop,\nand saw fine plumes within, and enormous bunches of flowers in the\nbreasts of the new livery-coats of the footmen.\n\nSir Pitt, in a glittering uniform, descended and went into Curzon\nStreet, his sword between his legs.  Little Rawdon stood with his face\nagainst the parlour window-panes, smiling and nodding with all his\nmight to his aunt in the carriage within; and presently Sir Pitt issued\nforth from the house again, leading forth a lady with grand feathers,\ncovered in a white shawl, and holding up daintily a train of\nmagnificent brocade.  She stepped into the vehicle as if she were a\nprincess and accustomed all her life to go to Court, smiling graciously\non the footman at the door and on Sir Pitt, who followed her into the\ncarriage.\n\nThen Rawdon followed in his old Guards' uniform, which had grown\nwoefully shabby, and was much too tight.  He was to have followed the\nprocession and waited upon his sovereign in a cab, but that his\ngood-natured sister-in-law insisted that they should be a family party.\nThe coach was large, the ladies not very big, they would hold their\ntrains in their laps--finally, the four went fraternally together, and\ntheir carriage presently joined the line of royal equipages which was\nmaking its way down Piccadilly and St.  James's Street, towards the old\nbrick palace where the Star of Brunswick was in waiting to receive his\nnobles and gentlefolks.\n\nBecky felt as if she could bless the people out of the carriage\nwindows, so elated was she in spirit, and so strong a sense had she of\nthe dignified position which she had at last attained in life. Even our\nBecky had her weaknesses, and as one often sees how men pride\nthemselves upon excellences which others are slow to perceive: how, for\ninstance, Comus firmly believes that he is the greatest tragic actor in\nEngland; how Brown, the famous novelist, longs to be considered, not a\nman of genius, but a man of fashion; while Robinson, the great lawyer,\ndoes not in the least care about his reputation in Westminster Hall,\nbut believes himself incomparable across country and at a five-barred\ngate--so to be, and to be thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aim\nin life, and she got up the genteel with amazing assiduity, readiness,\nand success.  We have said, there were times when she believed herself\nto be a fine lady and forgot that there was no money in the chest at\nhome--duns round the gate, tradesmen to coax and wheedle--no ground to\nwalk upon, in a word.  And as she went to Court in the carriage, the\nfamily carriage, she adopted a demeanour so grand, self-satisfied,\ndeliberate, and imposing that it made even Lady Jane laugh.  She walked\ninto the royal apartments with a toss of the head which would have\nbefitted an empress, and I have no doubt had she been one, she would\nhave become the character perfectly.\n\nWe are authorized to state that Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's costume de cour\non the occasion of her presentation to the Sovereign was of the most\nelegant and brilliant description.  Some ladies we may have seen--we\nwho wear stars and cordons and attend the St.  James's assemblies, or\nwe, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and down Pall Mall and peep into the\ncoaches as they drive up with the great folks in their feathers--some\nladies of fashion, I say, we may have seen, about two o'clock of the\nforenoon of a levee day, as the laced-jacketed band of the Life Guards\nare blowing triumphal marches seated on those prancing music-stools,\ntheir cream-coloured chargers--who are by no means lovely and enticing\nobjects at that early period of noon.  A stout countess of sixty,\ndecolletee, painted, wrinkled with rouge up to her drooping eyelids,\nand diamonds twinkling in her wig, is a wholesome and edifying, but not\na pleasant sight.  She has the faded look of a St.  James's Street\nillumination, as it may be seen of an early morning, when half the\nlamps are out, and the others are blinking wanly, as if they were about\nto vanish like ghosts before the dawn.  Such charms as those of which\nwe catch glimpses while her ladyship's carriage passes should appear\nabroad at night alone.  If even Cynthia looks haggard of an afternoon,\nas we may see her sometimes in the present winter season, with Phoebus\nstaring her out of countenance from the opposite side of the heavens,\nhow much more can old Lady Castlemouldy keep her head up when the sun\nis shining full upon it through the chariot windows, and showing all\nthe chinks and crannies with which time has marked her face!  No.\nDrawing-rooms should be announced for November, or the first foggy day,\nor the elderly sultanas of our Vanity Fair should drive up in closed\nlitters, descend in a covered way, and make their curtsey to the\nSovereign under the protection of lamplight.\n\nOur beloved Rebecca had no need, however, of any such a friendly halo\nto set off her beauty.  Her complexion could bear any sunshine as yet,\nand her dress, though if you were to see it now, any present lady of\nVanity Fair would pronounce it to be the most foolish and preposterous\nattire ever worn, was as handsome in her eyes and those of the public,\nsome five-and-twenty years since, as the most brilliant costume of the\nmost famous beauty of the present season. A score of years hence that\ntoo, that milliner's wonder, will have passed into the domain of the\nabsurd, along with all previous vanities.  But we are wandering too\nmuch.  Mrs. Rawdon's dress was pronounced to be charmante on the\neventful day of her presentation. Even good little Lady Jane was forced\nto acknowledge this effect, as she looked at her kinswoman, and owned\nsorrowfully to herself that she was quite inferior in taste to Mrs.\nBecky.\n\nShe did not know how much care, thought, and genius Mrs. Rawdon had\nbestowed upon that garment.  Rebecca had as good taste as any milliner\nin Europe, and such a clever way of doing things as Lady Jane little\nunderstood. The latter quickly spied out the magnificence of the\nbrocade of Becky's train, and the splendour of the lace on her dress.\n\nThe brocade was an old remnant, Becky said; and as for the lace, it was\na great bargain.  She had had it these hundred years.\n\n\"My dear Mrs. Crawley, it must have cost a little fortune,\" Lady Jane\nsaid, looking down at her own lace, which was not nearly so good; and\nthen examining the quality of the ancient brocade which formed the\nmaterial of Mrs. Rawdon's Court dress, she felt inclined to say that\nshe could not afford such fine clothing, but checked that speech, with\nan effort, as one uncharitable to her kinswoman.\n\nAnd yet, if Lady Jane had known all, I think even her kindly temper\nwould have failed her.  The fact is, when she was putting Sir Pitt's\nhouse in order, Mrs. Rawdon had found the lace and the brocade in old\nwardrobes, the property of the former ladies of the house, and had\nquietly carried the goods home, and had suited them to her own little\nperson.  Briggs saw her take them, asked no questions, told no stories;\nbut I believe quite sympathised with her on this matter, and so would\nmany another honest woman.\n\nAnd the diamonds--\"Where the doose did you get the diamonds, Becky?\"\nsaid her husband, admiring some jewels which he had never seen before\nand which sparkled in her ears and on her neck with brilliance and\nprofusion.\n\nBecky blushed a little and looked at him hard for a moment.  Pitt\nCrawley blushed a little too, and looked out of window.  The fact is,\nhe had given her a very small portion of the brilliants; a pretty\ndiamond clasp, which confined a pearl necklace which she wore--and the\nBaronet had omitted to mention the circumstance to his lady.\n\nBecky looked at her husband, and then at Sir Pitt, with an air of saucy\ntriumph--as much as to say, \"Shall I betray you?\"\n\n\"Guess!\" she said to her husband.  \"Why, you silly man,\" she continued,\n\"where do you suppose I got them?--all except the little clasp, which a\ndear friend of mine gave me long ago.  I hired them, to be sure.  I\nhired them at Mr. Polonius's, in Coventry Street. You don't suppose\nthat all the diamonds which go to Court belong to the wearers; like\nthose beautiful stones which Lady Jane has, and which are much\nhandsomer than any which I have, I am certain.\"\n\n\"They are family jewels,\" said Sir Pitt, again looking uneasy.  And in\nthis family conversation the carriage rolled down the street, until its\ncargo was finally discharged at the gates of the palace where the\nSovereign was sitting in state.\n\nThe diamonds, which had created Rawdon's admiration, never went back to\nMr. Polonius, of Coventry Street, and that gentleman never applied for\ntheir restoration, but they retired into a little private repository,\nin an old desk, which Amelia Sedley had given her years and years ago,\nand in which Becky kept a number of useful and, perhaps, valuable\nthings, about which her husband knew nothing. To know nothing, or\nlittle, is in the nature of some husbands.  To hide, in the nature of\nhow many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious\nmilliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you\ndaren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing\nwith smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet\ngown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any\nnotion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and\nthat Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!\n\nThus Rawdon knew nothing about the brilliant diamond ear-rings, or the\nsuperb brilliant ornament which decorated the fair bosom of his lady;\nbut Lord Steyne, who was in his place at Court, as Lord of the Powder\nCloset, and one of the great dignitaries and illustrious defences of\nthe throne of England, and came up with all his stars, garters,\ncollars, and cordons, and paid particular attention to the little\nwoman, knew whence the jewels came and who paid for them.\n\nAs he bowed over her he smiled, and quoted the hackneyed and beautiful\nlines from The Rape of the Lock about Belinda's diamonds, \"which Jews\nmight kiss and infidels adore.\"\n\n\"But I hope your lordship is orthodox,\" said the little lady with a\ntoss of her head.  And many ladies round about whispered and talked,\nand many gentlemen nodded and whispered, as they saw what marked\nattention the great nobleman was paying to the little adventuress.\n\nWhat were the circumstances of the interview between Rebecca Crawley,\nnee Sharp, and her Imperial Master, it does not become such a feeble\nand inexperienced pen as mine to attempt to relate.  The dazzled eyes\nclose before that Magnificent Idea.  Loyal respect and decency tell\neven the imagination not to look too keenly and audaciously about the\nsacred audience-chamber, but to back away rapidly, silently, and\nrespectfully, making profound bows out of the August Presence.\n\nThis may be said, that in all London there was no more loyal heart than\nBecky's after this interview.  The name of her king was always on her\nlips, and he was proclaimed by her to be the most charming of men.  She\nwent to Colnaghi's and ordered the finest portrait of him that art had\nproduced, and credit could supply.  She chose that famous one in which\nthe best of monarchs is represented in a frock-coat with a fur collar,\nand breeches and silk stockings, simpering on a sofa from under his\ncurly brown wig.  She had him painted in a brooch and wore it--indeed\nshe amused and somewhat pestered her acquaintance with her perpetual\ntalk about his urbanity and beauty. Who knows!  Perhaps the little\nwoman thought she might play the part of a Maintenon or a Pompadour.\n\nBut the finest sport of all after her presentation was to hear her talk\nvirtuously.  She had a few female acquaintances, not, it must be owned,\nof the very highest reputation in Vanity Fair.  But being made an\nhonest woman of, so to speak, Becky would not consort any longer with\nthese dubious ones, and cut Lady Crackenbury when the latter nodded to\nher from her opera-box, and gave Mrs. Washington White the go-by in the\nRing.  \"One must, my dear, show one is somebody,\" she said.  \"One\nmustn't be seen with doubtful people.  I pity Lady Crackenbury from my\nheart, and Mrs. Washington White may be a very good-natured person.\nYOU may go and dine with them, as you like your rubber.  But I mustn't,\nand won't; and you will have the goodness to tell Smith to say I am not\nat home when either of them calls.\"\n\nThe particulars of Becky's costume were in the newspapers--feathers,\nlappets, superb diamonds, and all the rest.  Lady Crackenbury read the\nparagraph in bitterness of spirit and discoursed to her followers about\nthe airs which that woman was giving herself.  Mrs. Bute Crawley and\nher young ladies in the country had a copy of the Morning Post from\ntown, and gave a vent to their honest indignation. \"If you had been\nsandy-haired, green-eyed, and a French rope-dancer's daughter,\" Mrs.\nBute said to her eldest girl (who, on the contrary, was a very swarthy,\nshort, and snub-nosed young lady), \"You might have had superb diamonds\nforsooth, and have been presented at Court by your cousin, the Lady\nJane.  But you're only a gentlewoman, my poor dear child.  You have\nonly some of the best blood in England in your veins, and good\nprinciples and piety for your portion.  I, myself, the wife of a\nBaronet's younger brother, too, never thought of such a thing as going\nto Court--nor would other people, if good Queen Charlotte had been\nalive.\" In this way the worthy Rectoress consoled herself, and her\ndaughters sighed and sat over the Peerage all night.\n\nA few days after the famous presentation, another great and exceeding\nhonour was vouchsafed to the virtuous Becky.  Lady Steyne's carriage\ndrove up to Mr. Rawdon Crawley's door, and the footman, instead of\ndriving down the front of the house, as by his tremendous knocking he\nappeared to be inclined to do, relented and only delivered in a couple\nof cards, on which were engraven the names of the Marchioness of Steyne\nand the Countess of Gaunt.  If these bits of pasteboard had been\nbeautiful pictures, or had had a hundred yards of Malines lace rolled\nround them, worth twice the number of guineas, Becky could not have\nregarded them with more pleasure. You may be sure they occupied a\nconspicuous place in the china bowl on the drawing-room table, where\nBecky kept the cards of her visitors.  Lord! lord! how poor Mrs.\nWashington White's card and Lady Crackenbury's card--which our little\nfriend had been glad enough to get a few months back, and of which the\nsilly little creature was rather proud once--Lord! lord! I say, how\nsoon at the appearance of these grand court cards, did those poor\nlittle neglected deuces sink down to the bottom of the pack.  Steyne!\nBareacres, Johnes of Helvellyn!  and Caerylon of Camelot! we may be\nsure that Becky and Briggs looked out those august names in the\nPeerage, and followed the noble races up through all the ramifications\nof the family tree.\n\nMy Lord Steyne coming to call a couple of hours afterwards, and looking\nabout him, and observing everything as was his wont, found his ladies'\ncards already ranged as the trumps of Becky's hand, and grinned, as\nthis old cynic always did at any naive display of human weakness.\nBecky came down to him presently; whenever the dear girl expected his\nlordship, her toilette was prepared, her hair in perfect order, her\nmouchoirs, aprons, scarfs, little morocco slippers, and other female\ngimcracks arranged, and she seated in some artless and agreeable\nposture ready to receive him--whenever she was surprised, of course,\nshe had to fly to her apartment to take a rapid survey of matters in\nthe glass, and to trip down again to wait upon the great peer.\n\nShe found him grinning over the bowl.  She was discovered, and she\nblushed a little.  \"Thank you, Monseigneur,\" she said.  \"You see your\nladies have been here.  How good of you!  I couldn't come before--I was\nin the kitchen making a pudding.\"\n\n\"I know you were, I saw you through the area-railings as I drove up,\"\nreplied the old gentleman.\n\n\"You see everything,\" she replied.\n\n\"A few things, but not that, my pretty lady,\" he said good-naturedly.\n\"You silly little fibster!  I heard you in the room overhead, where I\nhave no doubt you were putting a little rouge on--you must give some\nof yours to my Lady Gaunt, whose complexion is quite preposterous--and\nI heard the bedroom door open, and then you came downstairs.\"\n\n\"Is it a crime to try and look my best when YOU come here?\" answered\nMrs. Rawdon plaintively, and she rubbed her cheek with her handkerchief\nas if to show there was no rouge at all, only genuine blushes and\nmodesty in her case.  About this who can tell? I know there is some\nrouge that won't come off on a pocket-handkerchief, and some so good\nthat even tears will not disturb it.\n\n\"Well,\" said the old gentleman, twiddling round his wife's card, \"you\nare bent on becoming a fine lady. You pester my poor old life out to\nget you into the world.  You won't be able to hold your own there, you\nsilly little fool.  You've got no money.\"\n\n\"You will get us a place,\" interposed Becky, \"as quick as possible.\"\n\n\"You've got no money, and you want to compete with those who have. You\npoor little earthenware pipkin, you want to swim down the stream along\nwith the great copper kettles.  All women are alike. Everybody is\nstriving for what is not worth the having!  Gad!  I dined with the King\nyesterday, and we had neck of mutton and turnips. A dinner of herbs is\nbetter than a stalled ox very often. You will go to Gaunt House.  You\ngive an old fellow no rest until you get there.  It's not half so nice\nas here. You'll be bored there.  I am.  My wife is as gay as Lady\nMacbeth, and my daughters as cheerful as Regan and Goneril.  I daren't\nsleep in what they call my bedroom. The bed is like the baldaquin of\nSt.  Peter's, and the pictures frighten me.  I have a little brass bed\nin a dressing-room, and a little hair mattress like an anchorite. I am\nan anchorite. Ho!  ho!  You'll be asked to dinner next week.  And gare\naux femmes, look out and hold your own!  How the women will bully you!\"\nThis was a very long speech for a man of few words like my Lord Steyne;\nnor was it the first which he uttered for Becky's benefit on that day.\n\nBriggs looked up from the work-table at which she was seated in the\nfarther room and gave a deep sigh as she heard the great Marquis speak\nso lightly of her sex.\n\n\"If you don't turn off that abominable sheep-dog,\" said Lord Steyne,\nwith a savage look over his shoulder at her, \"I will have her poisoned.\"\n\n\"I always give my dog dinner from my own plate,\" said Rebecca, laughing\nmischievously; and having enjoyed for some time the discomfiture of my\nlord, who hated poor Briggs for interrupting his tete-a-tete with the\nfair Colonel's wife, Mrs. Rawdon at length had pity upon her admirer,\nand calling to Briggs, praised the fineness of the weather to her and\nbade her to take out the child for a walk.\n\n\"I can't send her away,\" Becky said presently, after a pause, and in a\nvery sad voice.  Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, and she\nturned away her head.\n\n\"You owe her her wages, I suppose?\" said the Peer.\n\n\"Worse than that,\" said Becky, still casting down her eyes; \"I have\nruined her.\"\n\n\"Ruined her? Then why don't you turn her out?\" the gentleman asked.\n\n\"Men do that,\" Becky answered bitterly.  \"Women are not so bad as you.\nLast year, when we were reduced to our last guinea, she gave us\neverything.  She shall never leave me, until we are ruined utterly\nourselves, which does not seem far off, or until I can pay her the\nutmost farthing.\"\n\n\"------ it, how much is it?\" said the Peer with an oath. And Becky,\nreflecting on the largeness of his means, mentioned not only the sum\nwhich she had borrowed from Miss Briggs, but one of nearly double the\namount.\n\nThis caused the Lord Steyne to break out in another brief and energetic\nexpression of anger, at which Rebecca held down her head the more and\ncried bitterly.  \"I could not help it.  It was my only chance.  I dare\nnot tell my husband.  He would kill me if I told him what I have done.\nI have kept it a secret from everybody but you--and you forced it from\nme.  Ah, what shall I do, Lord Steyne? for I am very, very unhappy!\"\n\nLord Steyne made no reply except by beating the devil's tattoo and\nbiting his nails.  At last he clapped his hat on his head and flung out\nof the room.  Rebecca did not rise from her attitude of misery until\nthe door slammed upon him and his carriage whirled away.  Then she rose\nup with the queerest expression of victorious mischief glittering in\nher green eyes.  She burst out laughing once or twice to herself, as\nshe sat at work, and sitting down to the piano, she rattled away a\ntriumphant voluntary on the keys, which made the people pause under her\nwindow to listen to her brilliant music.\n\nThat night, there came two notes from Gaunt House for the little woman,\nthe one containing a card of invitation from Lord and Lady Steyne to a\ndinner at Gaunt House next Friday, while the other enclosed a slip of\ngray paper bearing Lord Steyne's signature and the address of Messrs.\nJones, Brown, and Robinson, Lombard Street.\n\nRawdon heard Becky laughing in the night once or twice.  It was only\nher delight at going to Gaunt House and facing the ladies there, she\nsaid, which amused her so.  But the truth was that she was occupied\nwith a great number of other thoughts.  Should she pay off old Briggs\nand give her her conge? Should she astonish Raggles by settling his\naccount? She turned over all these thoughts on her pillow, and on the\nnext day, when Rawdon went out to pay his morning visit to the Club,\nMrs. Crawley (in a modest dress with a veil on) whipped off in a\nhackney-coach to the City:  and being landed at Messrs. Jones and\nRobinson's bank, presented a document there to the authority at the\ndesk, who, in reply, asked her \"How she would take it?\"\n\nShe gently said \"she would take a hundred and fifty pounds in small\nnotes and the remainder in one note\": and passing through St. Paul's\nChurchyard stopped there and bought the handsomest black silk gown for\nBriggs which money could buy; and which, with a kiss and the kindest\nspeeches, she presented to the simple old spinster.\n\nThen she walked to Mr. Raggles, inquired about his children\naffectionately, and gave him fifty pounds on account.  Then she went to\nthe livery-man from whom she jobbed her carriages and gratified him\nwith a similar sum.  \"And I hope this will be a lesson to you, Spavin,\"\nshe said, \"and that on the next drawing-room day my brother, Sir Pitt,\nwill not be inconvenienced by being obliged to take four of us in his\ncarriage to wait upon His Majesty, because my own carriage is not\nforthcoming.\" It appears there had been a difference on the last\ndrawing-room day.  Hence the degradation which the Colonel had almost\nsuffered, of being obliged to enter the presence of his Sovereign in a\nhack cab.\n\nThese arrangements concluded, Becky paid a visit upstairs to the\nbefore-mentioned desk, which Amelia Sedley had given her years and\nyears ago, and which contained a number of useful and valuable little\nthings--in which private museum she placed the one note which Messrs.\nJones and Robinson's cashier had given her.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIX\n\nIn Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert\n\nWhen the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning, Lord\nSteyne (who took his chocolate in private and seldom disturbed the\nfemales of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or when\nthey crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box at the\nopera he surveyed them in their box on the grand tier) his lordship, we\nsay, appeared among the ladies and the children who were assembled over\nthe tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of Rebecca.\n\n\"My Lady Steyne,\" he said, \"I want to see the list for your dinner on\nFriday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for Colonel and\nMrs. Crawley.\"\n\n\"Blanche writes them,\" Lady Steyne said in a flutter. \"Lady Gaunt\nwrites them.\"\n\n\"I will not write to that person,\" Lady Gaunt said, a tall and stately\nlady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after she had\nspoken.  It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who had\noffended him.\n\n\"Send the children out of the room.  Go!\" said he pulling at the\nbell-rope.  The urchins, always frightened before him, retired: their\nmother would have followed too.  \"Not you,\" he said.  \"You stop.\"\n\n\"My Lady Steyne,\" he said, \"once more will you have the goodness to go\nto the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?\"\n\n\"My Lord, I will not be present at it,\" Lady Gaunt said; \"I will go\nhome.\"\n\n\"I wish you would, and stay there.  You will find the bailiffs at\nBareacres very pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lending\nmoney to your relations and from your own damned tragedy airs.  Who are\nyou to give orders here? You have no money.  You've got no brains.  You\nwere here to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired of\nyou, and George's wife is the only person in the family who doesn't\nwish you were dead.  Gaunt would marry again if you were.\"\n\n\"I wish I were,\" her Ladyship answered with tears and rage in her eyes.\n\n\"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while my wife, who\nis an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, and never did wrong in her\nlife, has no objection to meet my young friend Mrs. Crawley. My Lady\nSteyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best of women;\nthat lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, madam,\nshall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your\nmamma?\"\n\n\"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow,\" Lady Gaunt\nsaid.  To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his Lordship\ninto a good humour.\n\n\"My sweet Blanche,\" he said, \"I am a gentleman, and never lay my hand\nupon a woman, save in the way of kindness.  I only wish to correct\nlittle faults in your character.  You women are too proud, and sadly\nlack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne if\nhe were here.  You mustn't give yourselves airs; you must be meek and\nhumble, my blessings.  For all Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated,\nsimple, good-humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even more\ninnocent than herself.  Her husband's character is not good, but it is\nas good as Bareacres', who has played a little and not paid a great\ndeal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had and left you\na pauper on my hands.  And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born, but she\nis not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones.\"\n\n\"The money which I brought into the family, sir,\" Lady George cried\nout--\n\n\"You purchased a contingent reversion with it,\" the Marquis said\ndarkly.  \"If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honours; your\nlittle boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In the\nmeanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but\ndon't give ME any airs.  As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan't\ndemean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable lady\nby even hinting that it requires a defence.  You will be pleased to\nreceive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all persons\nwhom I present in this house.  This house?\" He broke out with a laugh.\n\"Who is the master of it? and what is it? This Temple of Virtue belongs\nto me.  And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by ------ they\nshall be welcome.\"\n\nAfter this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steyne\ntreated his \"Hareem\" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared in\nhis household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey.\nLady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and she\nand her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and humiliated\nhearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of which\ncaused that innocent woman so much pleasure.\n\nThere were families in London who would have sacrificed a year's income\nto receive such an honour at the hands of those great ladies. Mrs.\nFrederick Bullock, for instance, would have gone on her knees from May\nFair to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had been waiting\nin the City to raise her up and say, \"Come to us next Friday\"--not to\none of the great crushes and grand balls of Gaunt House, whither\neverybody went, but to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious,\ndelicious entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was a\nprivilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.\n\nSevere, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the very highest rank\nin Vanity Fair.  The distinguished courtesy with which Lord Steyne\ntreated her charmed everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused the\nseverest critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to own\nthat his Lordship's heart at least was in the right place.\n\nThe ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to their aid, in\norder to repulse the common enemy.  One of Lady Gaunt's carriages went\nto Hill Street for her Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were in\nthe hands of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was said,\nhad been seized by those inexorable Israelites. Bareacres Castle was\ntheirs, too, with all its costly pictures, furniture, and articles of\nvertu--the magnificent Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; the\nLawrence portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemed\nas precious as works of real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph of\nCanova, for which Lady Bareacres had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacres\nsplendid then, and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless,\nbald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of state.  Her lord,\npainted at the same time by Lawrence, as waving his sabre in front of\nBareacres Castle, and clothed in his uniform as Colonel of the\nThistlewood Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a greatcoat and\na Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of mornings chiefly and dining\nalone at clubs.  He did not like to dine with Steyne now.  They had run\nraces of pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the winner. But\nSteyne had more bottom than he and had lasted him out.  The Marquis was\nten times a greater man now than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, and\nBareacres nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken down.\nHe had borrowed too much money of Steyne to find it pleasant to meet\nhis old comrade often.  The latter, whenever he wished to be merry,\nused jeeringly to ask Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to see\nher. \"He has not been here for four months,\" Lord Steyne would say.  \"I\ncan always tell by my cheque-book afterwards, when I get a visit from\nBareacres.  What a comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of my\nsons' fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!\"\n\nOf the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounter\non this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not become\nthe present historian to say much.  There was his Excellency the Prince\nof Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with a\nlarge military chest, on which the plaque of his order shone\nmagnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece round\nhis neck.  He was the owner of countless flocks. \"Look at his face.  I\nthink he must be descended from a sheep,\" Becky whispered to Lord\nSteyne.  Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white,\nwith the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of a\nvenerable bell-wether.\n\nThere was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the\nAmerican Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, by\nway of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,\nduring a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend,\nGeorge Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimate\nat Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together.  Mr. Jones wrote a full\nand particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in the\nDemagogue.  He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, giving\nbiographical sketches of the principal people.  He described the\npersons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;\nthe size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines\nserved; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of the\nplate.  Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up under\nfifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, until\nvery lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendation\nto the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate\nterms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord.  He\nwas most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl\nof Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession to\nthe dining-room.  \"Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to a\nvery pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.\nRawdon Crawley,\"--he wrote--\"the young patrician interposed between me\nand the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I was\nfain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stout\nred-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had\nbetter luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans.\"\n\nThe Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore as\nmany blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he is\nconfronted with his sister's schoolfellows.  It has been told before\nthat honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life to\nladies' company.  With the men at the Club or the mess room, he was\nwell enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with the\nboldest of them.  He had had his time for female friendships too, but\nthat was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those\nwith whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having been\nfamiliar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle.\nThe times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of\ncompany which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequenting\nevery day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which is\nknown to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at\nSt.  James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral of\nsocieties is determined to ignore.  In a word, although Colonel Crawley\nwas now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life to\nmeet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife.  All\nexcept her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamed\nand won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his first\ndinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark except\nto state that the weather was very hot.  Indeed Becky would have left\nhim at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by her\nside to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first\nappearance in polite society.\n\nOn her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her hand,\nand greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to Lady\nSteyne, and their ladyships, her daughters.  Their ladyships made three\nstately curtsies, and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to the\nnewcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.\n\nBecky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing a\nreverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master, put\nherself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordship\nhad been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she, Becky,\nhad learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from the days of\nher childhood.  The fact is that Lord Steyne had once purchased a\ncouple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan could\nnever forget her gratitude for that favour.\n\nThe Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance--to whom the\nColonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance:  it was returned\nwith severe dignity by the exalted person in question.\n\n\"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at Brussels,\nten years ago,\" Becky said in the most winning manner.  \"I had the good\nfortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, the\nnight before the Battle of Waterloo.  And I recollect your Ladyship,\nand my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting in the carriage in the\nporte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship's\ndiamonds are safe.\"\n\nEverybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's.  The famous diamonds\nhad undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, of\ncourse, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown into\na window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as Rawdon\ntold him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and \"knuckling down\nby Jove,\" to Mrs. Crawley.  \"I think I needn't be afraid of THAT\nwoman,\" Becky thought.  Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged terrified and\nangry looks with her daughter and retreated to a table, where she began\nto look at pictures with great energy.\n\nWhen the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, the\nconversation was carried on in the French language, and the Lady\nBareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther mortification,\nthat Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with that tongue, and\nspoke it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met other\nHungarian magnates with the army in France in 1816-17.  She asked after\nher friends with great interest. The foreign personages thought that she\nwas a lady of great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess asked\nseverally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom they conducted to\ndinner, who was that petite dame who spoke so well?\n\nFinally, the procession being formed in the order described by the\nAmerican diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the banquet\nwas served, and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it,\nhe shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his fancy.\n\nBut it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of war\nwould come.  And then indeed the little woman found herself in such a\nsituation as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's\ncaution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere.\nAs they say, the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irishmen; so,\nassuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women. When poor little\nBecky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither the\ngreat ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched away and took\npossession of a table of drawings.  When Becky followed them to the\ntable of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire again.  She\ntried to speak to one of the children (of whom she was commonly fond in\npublic places), but Master George Gaunt was called away by his mamma;\nand the stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady\nSteyne herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless little\nwoman.\n\n\"Lord Steyne,\" said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with a\nblush, \"says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wish\nyou would do me the kindness to sing to me.\"\n\n\"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or to\nyou,\" said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at the\npiano, began to sing.\n\nShe sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites of\nLady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the lady,\nlingering round the piano, sat down by its side and listened until the\ntears rolled down her eyes.  It is true that the opposition ladies at\nthe other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing and\ntalking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours.  She was a\nchild again--and had wandered back through a forty years' wilderness to\nher convent garden.  The chapel organ had pealed the same tones, the\norganist, the sister whom she loved best of the community, had taught\nthem to her in those early happy days.  She was a girl once more, and\nthe brief period of her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she\nstarted when the jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laugh\nfrom Lord Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety.\n\nHe saw at a glance what had happened in his absence, and was grateful\nto his wife for once.  He went and spoke to her, and called her by her\nChristian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--\"My wife\nsays you have been singing like an angel,\" he said to Becky.  Now there\nare angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming in\ntheir way.\n\nWhatever the previous portion of the evening had been, the rest of that\nnight was a great triumph for Becky.  She sang her very best, and it\nwas so good that every one of the men came and crowded round the piano.\nThe women, her enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr. Paul Jefferson\nJones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her\nLadyship and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER L\n\nContains a Vulgar Incident\n\nThe Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this Comic History must now\ndescend from the genteel heights in which she has been soaring and have\nthe goodness to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley at\nBrompton, and describe what events are taking place there. Here, too,\nin this humble tenement, live care, and distrust, and dismay.  Mrs.\nClapp in the kitchen is grumbling in secret to her husband about the\nrent, and urging the good fellow to rebel against his old friend and\npatron and his present lodger.  Mrs. Sedley has ceased to visit her\nlandlady in the lower regions now, and indeed is in a position to\npatronize Mrs. Clapp no longer.  How can one be condescending to a lady\nto whom one owes a matter of forty pounds, and who is perpetually\nthrowing out hints for the money? The Irish maidservant has not altered\nin the least in her kind and respectful behaviour; but Mrs. Sedley\nfancies that she is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guilty\nthief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening innuendoes and\nhints of capture in all the girl's speeches and answers.  Miss Clapp,\ngrown quite a young woman now, is declared by the soured old lady to be\nan unbearable and impudent little minx.  Why Amelia can be so fond of\nher, or have her in her room so much, or walk out with her so\nconstantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive. The bitterness of poverty has\npoisoned the life of the once cheerful and kindly woman.  She is\nthankless for Amelia's constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps\nat her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her for her\nsilly pride in her child and her neglect of her parents.  Georgy's\nhouse is not a very lively one since Uncle Jos's annuity has been\nwithdrawn and the little family are almost upon famine diet.\n\nAmelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find some means of\nincreasing the small pittance upon which the household is starving.\nCan she give lessons in anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? She\nfinds that women are working hard, and better than she can, for\ntwopence a day.  She buys a couple of begilt Bristol boards at the\nFancy Stationer's and paints her very best upon them--a shepherd with\na red waistcoat on one, and a pink face smiling in the midst of a\npencil landscape--a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge,\nwith a little dog, nicely shaded.  The man of the Fancy Repository and\nBrompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of whom she bought the screens, vainly\nhoping that he would repurchase them when ornamented by her hand) can\nhardly hide the sneer with which he examines these feeble works of art.\nHe looks askance at the lady who waits in the shop, and ties up the\ncards again in their envelope of whitey-brown paper, and hands them to\nthe poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such beautiful things\nin her life, and had been quite confident that the man must give at\nleast two guineas for the screens.  They try at other shops in the\ninterior of London, with faint sickening hopes.  \"Don't want 'em,\" says\none.  \"Be off,\" says another fiercely.  Three-and-sixpence has been\nspent in vain--the screens retire to Miss Clapp's bedroom, who\npersists in thinking them lovely.\n\nShe writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and after long\nthought and labour of composition, in which the public is informed that\n\"A Lady who has some time at her disposal, wishes to undertake the\neducation of some little girls, whom she would instruct in English, in\nFrench, in Geography, in History, and in Music--address A.  O., at Mr.\nBrown's\"; and she confides the card to the gentleman of the Fine Art\nRepository, who consents to allow it to lie upon the counter, where it\ngrows dingy and fly-blown.  Amelia passes the door wistfully many a\ntime, in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news to give her, but he\nnever beckons her in.  When she goes to make little purchases, there is\nno news for her.  Poor simple lady, tender and weak--how are you to\nbattle with the struggling violent world?\n\nShe grows daily more care-worn and sad, fixing upon her child alarmed\neyes, whereof the little boy cannot interpret the expression.  She\nstarts up of a night and peeps into his room stealthily, to see that he\nis sleeping and not stolen away.  She sleeps but little now.  A\nconstant thought and terror is haunting her.  How she weeps and prays\nin the long silent nights--how she tries to hide from herself the\nthought which will return to her, that she ought to part with the boy,\nthat she is the only barrier between him and prosperity.  She can't,\nshe can't. Not now, at least.  Some other day.  Oh! it is too hard to\nthink of and to bear.\n\nA thought comes over her which makes her blush and turn from\nherself--her parents might keep the annuity--the curate would marry her\nand give a home to her and the boy.  But George's picture and dearest\nmemory are there to rebuke her.  Shame and love say no to the\nsacrifice.  She shrinks from it as from something unholy, and such\nthoughts never found a resting-place in that pure and gentle bosom.\n\nThe combat, which we describe in a sentence or two, lasted for many\nweeks in poor Amelia's heart, during which she had no confidante;\nindeed, she could never have one, as she would not allow to herself the\npossibility of yielding, though she was giving way daily before the\nenemy with whom she had to battle.  One truth after another was\nmarshalling itself silently against her and keeping its ground. Poverty\nand misery for all, want and degradation for her parents, injustice to\nthe boy--one by one the outworks of the little citadel were taken, in\nwhich the poor soul passionately guarded her only love and treasure.\n\nAt the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a letter of\ntender supplication to her brother at Calcutta, imploring him not to\nwithdraw the support which he had granted to their parents and painting\nin terms of artless pathos their lonely and hapless condition.  She did\nnot know the truth of the matter.  The payment of Jos's annuity was\nstill regular, but it was a money-lender in the City who was receiving\nit:  old Sedley had sold it for a sum of money wherewith to prosecute\nhis bootless schemes.  Emmy was calculating eagerly the time that would\nelapse before the letter would arrive and be answered.  She had written\ndown the date in her pocket-book of the day when she dispatched it.  To\nher son's guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not communicated\nany of her griefs and perplexities.  She had not written to him since\nshe wrote to congratulate him on his approaching marriage.  She thought\nwith sickening despondency, that that friend--the only one, the one who\nhad felt such a regard for her--was fallen away.\n\nOne day, when things had come to a very bad pass--when the creditors\nwere pressing, the mother in hysteric grief, the father in more than\nusual gloom, the inmates of the family avoiding each other, each\nsecretly oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion of\nwrong--the father and daughter happened to be left alone together, and\nAmelia thought to comfort her father by telling him what she had done.\nShe had written to Joseph--an answer must come in three or four months.\nHe was always generous, though careless.  He could not refuse, when he\nknew how straitened were the circumstances of his parents.\n\nThen the poor old gentleman revealed the whole truth to her--that his\nson was still paying the annuity, which his own imprudence had flung\naway.  He had not dared to tell it sooner.  He thought Amelia's ghastly\nand terrified look, when, with a trembling, miserable voice he made the\nconfession, conveyed reproaches to him for his concealment.  \"Ah!\" said\nhe with quivering lips and turning away, \"you despise your old father\nnow!\"\n\n\"Oh, papa! it is not that,\" Amelia cried out, falling on his neck and\nkissing him many times.  \"You are always good and kind.  You did it for\nthe best.  It is not for the money--it is--my God! my God! have mercy\nupon me, and give me strength to bear this trial\"; and she kissed him\nagain wildly and went away.\n\nStill the father did not know what that explanation meant, and the\nburst of anguish with which the poor girl left him.  It was that she\nwas conquered.  The sentence was passed.  The child must go from\nher--to others--to forget her.  Her heart and her treasure--her joy,\nhope, love, worship--her God, almost!  She must give him up, and\nthen--and then she would go to George, and they would watch over the\nchild and wait for him until he came to them in Heaven.\n\nShe put on her bonnet, scarcely knowing what she did, and went out to\nwalk in the lanes by which George used to come back from school, and\nwhere she was in the habit of going on his return to meet the boy.  It\nwas May, a half-holiday.  The leaves were all coming out, the weather\nwas brilliant; the boy came running to her flushed with health,\nsinging, his bundle of school-books hanging by a thong. There he was.\nBoth her arms were round him.  No, it was impossible. They could not be\ngoing to part.  \"What is the matter, Mother?\" said he; \"you look very\npale.\"\n\n\"Nothing, my child,\" she said and stooped down and kissed him.\n\nThat night Amelia made the boy read the story of Samuel to her, and how\nHannah, his mother, having weaned him, brought him to Eli the High\nPriest to minister before the Lord.  And he read the song of gratitude\nwhich Hannah sang, and which says, who it is who maketh poor and maketh\nrich, and bringeth low and exalteth--how the poor shall be raised up\nout of the dust, and how, in his own might, no man shall be strong.\nThen he read how Samuel's mother made him a little coat and brought it\nto him from year to year when she came up to offer the yearly\nsacrifice.  And then, in her sweet simple way, George's mother made\ncommentaries to the boy upon this affecting story.  How Hannah, though\nshe loved her son so much, yet gave him up because of her vow.  And how\nshe must always have thought of him as she sat at home, far away,\nmaking the little coat; and Samuel, she was sure, never forgot his\nmother; and how happy she must have been as the time came (and the\nyears pass away very quick) when she should see her boy and how good\nand wise he had grown.  This little sermon she spoke with a gentle\nsolemn voice, and dry eyes, until she came to the account of their\nmeeting--then the discourse broke off suddenly, the tender heart\noverflowed, and taking the boy to her breast, she rocked him in her\narms and wept silently over him in a sainted agony of tears.\n\nHer mind being made up, the widow began to take such measures as seemed\nright to her for advancing the end which she proposed.  One day, Miss\nOsborne, in Russell Square (Amelia had not written the name or number\nof the house for ten years--her youth, her early story came back to her\nas she wrote the superscription) one day Miss Osborne got a letter from\nAmelia which made her blush very much and look towards her father,\nsitting glooming in his place at the other end of the table.\n\nIn simple terms, Amelia told her the reasons which had induced her to\nchange her mind respecting her boy. Her father had met with fresh\nmisfortunes which had entirely ruined him.  Her own pittance was so\nsmall that it would barely enable her to support her parents and would\nnot suffice to give George the advantages which were his due. Great as\nher sufferings would be at parting with him she would, by God's help,\nendure them for the boy's sake.  She knew that those to whom he was\ngoing would do all in their power to make him happy. She described his\ndisposition, such as she fancied it--quick and impatient of control or\nharshness, easily to be moved by love and kindness.  In a postscript,\nshe stipulated that she should have a written agreement, that she\nshould see the child as often as she wished--she could not part with\nhim under any other terms.\n\n\"What? Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?\" old Osborne said, when with\na tremulous eager voice Miss Osborne read him the letter. \"Reg'lar\nstarved out, hey? Ha, ha!  I knew she would.\" He tried to keep his\ndignity and to read his paper as usual--but he could not follow it.  He\nchuckled and swore to himself behind the sheet.\n\nAt last he flung it down and, scowling at his daughter, as his wont\nwas, went out of the room into his study adjoining, from whence he\npresently returned with a key.  He flung it to Miss Osborne.\n\n\"Get the room over mine--his room that was--ready,\" he said.  \"Yes,\nsir,\" his daughter replied in a tremble. It was George's room.  It had\nnot been opened for more than ten years.  Some of his clothes, papers,\nhandkerchiefs, whips and caps, fishing-rods and sporting gear, were\nstill there.  An Army list of 1814, with his name written on the cover;\na little dictionary he was wont to use in writing; and the Bible his\nmother had given him, were on the mantelpiece, with a pair of spurs and\na dried inkstand covered with the dust of ten years.  Ah! since that\nink was wet, what days and people had passed away!  The writing-book,\nstill on the table, was blotted with his hand.\n\nMiss Osborne was much affected when she first entered this room with\nthe servants under her.  She sank quite pale on the little bed. \"This\nis blessed news, m'am--indeed, m'am,\" the housekeeper said; \"and the\ngood old times is returning, m'am.  The dear little feller, to be sure,\nm'am; how happy he will be!  But some folks in May Fair, m'am, will owe\nhim a grudge, m'am\"; and she clicked back the bolt which held the\nwindow-sash and let the air into the chamber.\n\n\"You had better send that woman some money,\" Mr. Osborne said, before\nhe went out.  \"She shan't want for nothing.  Send her a hundred pound.\"\n\n\"And I'll go and see her to-morrow?\" Miss Osborne asked.\n\n\"That's your look out.  She don't come in here, mind. No, by ------,\nnot for all the money in London.  But she mustn't want now.  So look\nout, and get things right.\" With which brief speeches Mr. Osborne took\nleave of his daughter and went on his accustomed way into the City.\n\n\"Here, Papa, is some money,\" Amelia said that night, kissing the old\nman, her father, and putting a bill for a hundred pounds into his\nhands.  \"And--and, Mamma, don't be harsh with Georgy.  He--he is not\ngoing to stop with us long.\" She could say nothing more, and walked\naway silently to her room.  Let us close it upon her prayers and her\nsorrow.  I think we had best speak little about so much love and grief.\n\nMiss Osborne came the next day, according to the promise contained in\nher note, and saw Amelia.  The meeting between them was friendly. A\nlook and a few words from Miss Osborne showed the poor widow that, with\nregard to this woman at least, there need be no fear lest she should\ntake the first place in her son's affection. She was cold, sensible,\nnot unkind.  The mother had not been so well pleased, perhaps, had the\nrival been better looking, younger, more affectionate, warmer-hearted.\nMiss Osborne, on the other hand, thought of old times and memories and\ncould not but be touched with the poor mother's pitiful situation.  She\nwas conquered, and laying down her arms, as it were, she humbly\nsubmitted.  That day they arranged together the preliminaries of the\ntreaty of capitulation.\n\nGeorge was kept from school the next day, and saw his aunt.  Amelia\nleft them alone together and went to her room.  She was trying the\nseparation--as that poor gentle Lady Jane Grey felt the edge of the axe\nthat was to come down and sever her slender life.  Days were passed in\nparleys, visits, preparations.  The widow broke the matter to Georgy\nwith great caution; she looked to see him very much affected by the\nintelligence.  He was rather elated than otherwise, and the poor woman\nturned sadly away.  He bragged about the news that day to the boys at\nschool; told them how he was going to live with his grandpapa, his\nfather's father, not the one who comes here sometimes; and that he\nwould be very rich, and have a carriage, and a pony, and go to a much\nfiner school, and when he was rich he would buy Leader's pencil-case\nand pay the tart-woman.  The boy was the image of his father, as his\nfond mother thought.\n\nIndeed I have no heart, on account of our dear Amelia's sake, to go\nthrough the story of George's last days at home.\n\nAt last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little humble packets\ncontaining tokens of love and remembrance were ready and disposed in\nthe hall long since--George was in his new suit, for which the tailor\nhad come previously to measure him.  He had sprung up with the sun and\nput on the new clothes, his mother hearing him from the room close by,\nin which she had been lying, in speechless grief and watching.  Days\nbefore she had been making preparations for the end, purchasing little\nstores for the boy's use, marking his books and linen, talking with him\nand preparing him for the change--fondly fancying that he needed\npreparation.\n\nSo that he had change, what cared he? He was longing for it.  By a\nthousand eager declarations as to what he would do, when he went to\nlive with his grandfather, he had shown the poor widow how little the\nidea of parting had cast him down.  \"He would come and see his mamma\noften on the pony,\" he said.  \"He would come and fetch her in the\ncarriage; they would drive in the park, and she should have everything\nshe wanted.\" The poor mother was fain to content herself with these\nselfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to convince herself how\nsincerely her son loved her.  He must love her. All children were so:\na little anxious for novelty, and--no, not selfish, but self-willed.\nHer child must have his enjoyments and ambition in the world.  She\nherself, by her own selfishness and imprudent love for him had denied\nhim his just rights and pleasures hitherto.\n\nI know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and\nself-humiliation of a woman.  How she owns that it is she and not the\nman who is guilty; how she takes all the faults on her side; how she\ncourts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not\ncommitted and persists in shielding the real culprit!  It is those who\ninjure women who get the most kindness from them--they are born timid\nand tyrants and maltreat those who are humblest before them.\n\nSo poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery for her son's\ndeparture, and had passed many and many a long solitary hour in making\npreparations for the end. George stood by his mother, watching her\narrangements without the least concern.  Tears had fallen into his\nboxes; passages had been scored in his favourite books; old toys,\nrelics, treasures had been hoarded away for him, and packed with\nstrange neatness and care--and of all these things the boy took no\nnote.  The child goes away smiling as the mother breaks her heart.  By\nheavens it is pitiful, the bootless love of women for children in\nVanity Fair.\n\nA few days are past, and the great event of Amelia's life is\nconsummated.  No angel has intervened.  The child is sacrificed and\noffered up to fate, and the widow is quite alone.\n\nThe boy comes to see her often, to be sure.  He rides on a pony with a\ncoachman behind him, to the delight of his old grandfather, Sedley, who\nwalks proudly down the lane by his side.  She sees him, but he is not\nher boy any more.  Why, he rides to see the boys at the little school,\ntoo, and to show off before them his new wealth and splendour.  In two\ndays he has adopted a slightly imperious air and patronizing manner.\nHe was born to command, his mother thinks, as his father was before him.\n\nIt is fine weather now.  Of evenings on the days when he does not come,\nshe takes a long walk into London--yes, as far as Russell Square, and\nrests on the stone by the railing of the garden opposite Mr. Osborne's\nhouse. It is so pleasant and cool.  She can look up and see the\ndrawing-room windows illuminated, and, at about nine o'clock, the\nchamber in the upper story where Georgy sleeps.  She knows--he has told\nher.  She prays there as the light goes out, prays with an humble\nheart, and walks home shrinking and silent. She is very tired when she\ncomes home.  Perhaps she will sleep the better for that long weary\nwalk, and she may dream about Georgy.\n\nOne Sunday she happened to be walking in Russell Square, at some\ndistance from Mr. Osborne's house (she could see it from a distance\nthough) when all the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and George and his\naunt came out to go to church; a little sweep asked for charity, and\nthe footman, who carried the books, tried to drive him away; but Georgy\nstopped and gave him money.  May God's blessing be on the boy!  Emmy\nran round the square and, coming up to the sweep, gave him her mite\ntoo. All the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and she followed them until\nshe came to the Foundling Church, into which she went.  There she sat\nin a place whence she could see the head of the boy under his father's\ntombstone. Many hundred fresh children's voices rose up there and sang\nhymns to the Father Beneficent, and little George's soul thrilled with\ndelight at the burst of glorious psalmody.  His mother could not see\nhim for awhile, through the mist that dimmed her eyes.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LI\n\nIn Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader\n\nAfter Becky's appearance at my Lord Steyne's private and select\nparties, the claims of that estimable woman as regards fashion were\nsettled, and some of the very greatest and tallest doors in the\nmetropolis were speedily opened to her--doors so great and tall that\nthe beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to enter at them.\nDear brethren, let us tremble before those august portals.  I fancy\nthem guarded by grooms of the chamber with flaming silver forks with\nwhich they prong all those who have not the right of the entree. They\nsay the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the hall and takes down the\nnames of the great ones who are admitted to the feasts dies after a\nlittle time.  He can't survive the glare of fashion long.  It scorches\nhim up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that poor\nimprudent Semele--a giddy moth of a creature who ruined herself by\nventuring out of her natural atmosphere. Her myth ought to be taken to\nheart amongst the Tyburnians, the Belgravians--her story, and perhaps\nBecky's too. Ah, ladies!--ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer if Belgravia is\nnot a sounding brass and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal.  These are\nvanities. Even these will pass away.  And some day or other (but it\nwill be after our time, thank goodness) Hyde Park Gardens will be no\nbetter known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts of Babylon,\nand Belgrave Square will be as desolate as Baker Street, or Tadmor in\nthe wilderness.\n\nLadies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street? What\nwould not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester's\nparties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vous\nparle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat\nsoberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the\ndeparted came in and took their places round the darksome board.  The\npilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual\nport; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap.\nAddington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not be\nbehindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under\nbushy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's\neyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to know how his\nglass went up full to his mouth and came down empty; up to the ceiling\nwhich was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the past days\nhave all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now.\nYes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the\nwilderness. Eothen saw her there--not in Baker Street, but in the other\nsolitude.\n\nIt is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of\nit? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it\nis transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man\nwho reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg:\naye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen,\nand fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy,\nthe horse-radish as you like it--don't spare it.  Another glass of\nwine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side.  Yes, let us eat\nour fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor. And let us make\nthe best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise--for these too,\nlike all other mortal delights, were but transitory.\n\nThe upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His Highness the Prince\nof Peterwaradin took occasion to renew his acquaintance with Colonel\nCrawley, when they met on the next day at the Club, and to compliment\nMrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a profound salute of the\nhat.  She and her husband were invited immediately to one of the\nPrince's small parties at Levant House, then occupied by His Highness\nduring the temporary absence from England of its noble proprietor.  She\nsang after dinner to a very little comite. The Marquis of Steyne was\npresent, paternally superintending the progress of his pupil.\n\nAt Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatest\nministers that Europe has produced--the Duc de la Jabotiere, then\nAmbassador from the Most Christian King, and subsequently Minister to\nthat monarch.  I declare I swell with pride as these august names are\ntranscribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant company my dear\nBecky is moving.  She became a constant guest at the French Embassy,\nwhere no party was considered to be complete without the presence of\nthe charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley.  Messieurs de Truffigny (of the\nPerigord family) and Champignac, both attaches of the Embassy, were\nstraightway smitten by the charms of the fair Colonel's wife, and both\ndeclared, according to the wont of their nation (for who ever yet met a\nFrenchman, come out of England, that has not left half a dozen families\nmiserable, and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?), both,\nI say, declared that they were au mieux with the charming Madame\nRavdonn.\n\nBut I doubt the correctness of the assertion.  Champignac was very fond\nof ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings, while\nBecky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for\nTruffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the\nTravellers', where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not had\nthe Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must have\nstarved.  I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of\nthese young men as a person on whom she would bestow her special\nregard.  They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers,\nwent in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in a\nthousand ways.  And they talked English with adorable simplicity, and\nto the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would mimic\none or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in the\nEnglish language with a gravity which never failed to tickle the\nMarquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by way\nof winning over Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge of a\nletter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the person to\nwhom it was addressed, and the composition of which amused everybody\nwho read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it, everybody but honest Rawdon,\nto whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed in the\nlittle house in May Fair.\n\nHere, before long, Becky received not only \"the best\" foreigners (as\nthe phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of\nthe best English people too. I don't mean the most virtuous, or indeed\nthe least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest,\nor the best born, but \"the best,\"--in a word, people about whom there\nis no question--such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis, that Patron Saint\nof Almack's, the great Lady Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth\n(she was Lady G.  Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry), and the\nlike.  When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her Ladyship is of the\nKingstreet family, see Debrett and Burke) takes up a person, he or she\nis safe.  There is no question about them any more.  Not that my Lady\nFitz-Willis is any better than anybody else, being, on the contrary, a\nfaded person, fifty-seven years of age, and neither handsome, nor\nwealthy, nor entertaining; but it is agreed on all sides that she is of\nthe \"best people.\" Those who go to her are of the best:  and from an\nold grudge probably to Lady Steyne (for whose coronet her ladyship,\nthen the youthful Georgina Frederica, daughter of the Prince of Wales's\nfavourite, the Earl of Portansherry, had once tried), this great and\nfamous leader of the fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon Crawley;\nmade her a most marked curtsey at the assembly over which she presided;\nand not only encouraged her son, St.  Kitts (his lordship got his place\nthrough Lord Steyne's interest), to frequent Mrs. Crawley's house, but\nasked her to her own mansion and spoke to her twice in the most public\nand condescending manner during dinner.  The important fact was known\nall over London that night.  People who had been crying fie about Mrs.\nCrawley were silent.  Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne's\nright-hand man, went about everywhere praising her:  some who had\nhesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, who\nhad warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now\nbesought to be introduced to her.  In a word, she was admitted to be\namong the \"best\" people.  Ah, my beloved readers and brethren, do not\nenvy poor Becky prematurely--glory like this is said to be fugitive.\nIt is currently reported that even in the very inmost circles, they are\nno happier than the poor wanderers outside the zone; and Becky, who\npenetrated into the very centre of fashion and saw the great George IV\nface to face, has owned since that there too was Vanity.\n\nWe must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career.  As I\ncannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd\nidea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take upon\nhimself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his\nopinions to himself, whatever they are.\n\nBecky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her life,\nwhen she moved among the very greatest circles of the London fashion.\nHer success excited, elated, and then bored her.  At first no\noccupation was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the latter a\nwork of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs.\nRawdon Crawley's very narrow means)--to procure, we say, the prettiest\nnew dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine dinner parties, where she\nwas welcomed by great people; and from the fine dinner parties to fine\nassemblies, whither the same people came with whom she had been dining,\nwhom she had met the night before, and would see on the morrow--the\nyoung men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest\nglossy boots and white gloves--the elders portly, brass-buttoned,\nnoble-looking, polite, and prosy--the young ladies blonde, timid, and\nin pink--the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in\ndiamonds.  They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the\nnovels.  They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and\nfamilies--just as the Joneses do about the Smiths.  Becky's former\nacquaintances hated and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawning\nin spirit. \"I wish I were out of it,\" she said to herself.  \"I would\nrather be a parson's wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or a\nsergeant's lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how much\ngayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance before a\nbooth at a fair.\"\n\n\"You would do it very well,\" said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used to\ntell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her artless way--they\namused him.\n\n\"Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyer--Master of the Ceremonies--what\ndo you call him--the man in the large boots and the uniform, who goes\nround the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a military\nfigure.  I recollect,\" Becky continued pensively, \"my father took me to\nsee a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child, and when we came\nhome, I made myself a pair of stilts and danced in the studio to the\nwonder of all the pupils.\"\n\n\"I should have liked to see it,\" said Lord Steyne.\n\n\"I should like to do it now,\" Becky continued.  \"How Lady Blinkey would\nopen her eyes, and Lady Grizzel Macbeth would stare!  Hush! silence!\nthere is Pasta beginning to sing.\" Becky always made a point of being\nconspicuously polite to the professional ladies and gentlemen who\nattended at these aristocratic parties--of following them into the\ncorners where they sat in silence, and shaking hands with them, and\nsmiling in the view of all persons.  She was an artist herself, as she\nsaid very truly; there was a frankness and humility in the manner in\nwhich she acknowledged her origin, which provoked, or disarmed, or\namused lookers-on, as the case might be. \"How cool that woman is,\" said\none; \"what airs of independence she assumes, where she ought to sit\nstill and be thankful if anybody speaks to her!\" \"What an honest and\ngood-natured soul she is!\" said another. \"What an artful little minx\"\nsaid a third.  They were all right very likely, but Becky went her own\nway, and so fascinated the professional personages that they would\nleave off their sore throats in order to sing at her parties and give\nher lessons for nothing.\n\nYes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon Street.  Many\nscores of carriages, with blazing lamps, blocked up the street, to the\ndisgust of No. 100, who could not rest for the thunder of the knocking,\nand of 102, who could not sleep for envy.  The gigantic footmen who\naccompanied the vehicles were too big to be contained in Becky's little\nhall, and were billeted off in the neighbouring public-houses, whence,\nwhen they were wanted, call-boys summoned them from their beer. Scores\nof the great dandies of London squeezed and trod on each other on the\nlittle stairs, laughing to find themselves there; and many spotless and\nsevere ladies of ton were seated in the little drawing-room, listening\nto the professional singers, who were singing according to their wont,\nand as if they wished to blow the windows down.  And the day after,\nthere appeared among the fashionable reunions in the Morning Post a\nparagraph to the following effect:\n\n\"Yesterday, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a select party at\ndinner at their house in May Fair.  Their Excellencies the Prince and\nPrincess of Peterwaradin, H. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador\n(attended by Kibob Bey, dragoman of the mission), the Marquess of\nSteyne, Earl of Southdown, Sir Pitt and Lady Jane Crawley, Mr. Wagg,\n&c.  After dinner Mrs. Crawley had an assembly which was attended by\nthe Duchess (Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyere, Marchioness of\nCheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino, Comte de Brie, Baron\nSchapzuger, Chevalier Tosti, Countess of Slingstone, and Lady F.\nMacadam, Major-General and Lady G. Macbeth, and (2) Miss Macbeths;\nViscount Paddington, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon.  Sands Bedwin, Bobachy\nBahawder,\" and an &c., which the reader may fill at his pleasure\nthrough a dozen close lines of small type.\n\nAnd in her commerce with the great our dear friend showed the same\nfrankness which distinguished her transactions with the lowly in\nstation.  On one occasion, when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was\n(perhaps rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the French\nlanguage with a celebrated tenor singer of that nation, while the Lady\nGrizzel Macbeth looked over her shoulder scowling at the pair.\n\n\"How very well you speak French,\" Lady Grizzel said, who herself spoke\nthe tongue in an Edinburgh accent most remarkable to hear.\n\n\"I ought to know it,\" Becky modestly said, casting down her eyes. \"I\ntaught it in a school, and my mother was a Frenchwoman.\"\n\nLady Grizzel was won by her humility and was mollified towards the\nlittle woman.  She deplored the fatal levelling tendencies of the age,\nwhich admitted persons of all classes into the society of their\nsuperiors, but her ladyship owned that this one at least was well\nbehaved and never forgot her place in life.  She was a very good woman:\ngood to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious. It is not her\nladyship's fault that she fancies herself better than you and me.  The\nskirts of her ancestors' garments have been kissed for centuries; it is\na thousand years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the family\nwere embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and councillors, when the\ngreat ancestor of the House became King of Scotland.\n\nLady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before Becky, and perhaps\nwas not disinclined to her.  The younger ladies of the house of Gaunt\nwere also compelled into submission.  Once or twice they set people at\nher, but they failed.  The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried a passage\nof arms with her, but was routed with great slaughter by the intrepid\nlittle Becky.  When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a\ndemure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous.  She said the\nwickedest things with the most simple unaffected air when in this mood,\nand would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that\nall the world should know that she had made them.\n\nMr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and trencher-man of my\nLord Steyne, was caused by the ladies to charge her; and the worthy\nfellow, leering at his patronesses and giving them a wink, as much as\nto say, \"Now look out for sport,\" one evening began an assault upon\nBecky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner. The little woman,\nattacked on a sudden, but never without arms, lighted up in an instant,\nparried and riposted with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tingle\nwith shame; then she returned to her soup with the most perfect calm\nand a quiet smile on her face.  Wagg's great patron, who gave him\ndinners and lent him a little money sometimes, and whose election,\nnewspaper, and other jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such a\nsavage glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the table and\nburst into tears.  He looked piteously at my lord, who never spoke to\nhim during dinner, and at the ladies, who disowned him.  At last Becky\nherself took compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk. He\nwas not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and Fiche, my lord's\nconfidential man, to whom Wagg naturally paid a good deal of court, was\ninstructed to tell him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing to\nMrs. Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes, Milor\nwould put every one of his notes of hand into his lawyer's hands and\nsell him up without mercy.  Wagg wept before Fiche and implored his\ndear friend to intercede for him.  He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R.\nC., which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-scarum\nMagazine, which he conducted.  He implored her good-will at parties\nwhere he met her.  He cringed and coaxed Rawdon at the club.  He was\nallowed to come back to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was always\ngood to him, always amused, never angry.\n\nHis lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant (with a seat in\nparliament and at the dinner table), Mr. Wenham, was much more prudent\nin his behaviour and opinions than Mr. Wagg.  However much he might be\ndisposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch old\nTrue Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north of\nEngland), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort of\nhostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy\nkindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow made\nBecky more uneasy than other people's overt hostilities.\n\nHow the Crawleys got the money which was spent upon the entertainments\nwith which they treated the polite world was a mystery which gave rise\nto some conversation at the time, and probably added zest to these\nlittle festivities.  Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave\nhis brother a handsome allowance; if he did, Becky's power over the\nBaronet must have been extraordinary indeed, and his character greatly\nchanged in his advanced age.  Other parties hinted that it was Becky's\nhabit to levy contributions on all her husband's friends: going to this\none in tears with an account that there was an execution in the house;\nfalling on her knees to that one and declaring that the whole family\nmust go to gaol or commit suicide unless such and such a bill could be\npaid.  Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to give many\nhundreds through these pathetic representations. Young Feltham, of the\n--th Dragoons (and son of the firm of Tiler and Feltham, hatters and\narmy accoutrement makers), and whom the Crawleys introduced into\nfashionable life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in the\npecuniary way.  People declared that she got money from various simply\ndisposed persons, under pretence of getting them confidential\nappointments under Government. Who knows what stories were or were not\ntold of our dear and innocent friend? Certain it is that if she had had\nall the money which she was said to have begged or borrowed or stolen,\nshe might have capitalized and been honest for life, whereas,--but this\nis advancing matters.\n\nThe truth is, that by economy and good management--by a sparing use of\nready money and by paying scarcely anybody--people can manage, for a\ntime at least, to make a great show with very little means: and it is\nour belief that Becky's much-talked-of parties, which were not, after\nall was said, very numerous, cost this lady very little more than the\nwax candles which lighted the walls. Stillbrook and Queen's Crawley\nsupplied her with game and fruit in abundance.  Lord Steyne's cellars\nwere at her disposal, and that excellent nobleman's famous cooks\npresided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's order the rarest\ndelicacies from their own.  I protest it is quite shameful in the world\nto abuse a simple creature, as people of her time abuse Becky, and I\nwarn the public against believing one-tenth of the stories against her.\nIf every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and\ncannot pay--if we are to be peering into everybody's private life,\nspeculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of\ntheir expenditure--why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable\ndwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be against his\nneighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization\nwould be done away with. We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding\none another.  Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags\nbecause we cared for nobody.  Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be\ngiven any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt.  Wine,\nwax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs,\nLouis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid\nhigh-stepping carriage horses--all the delights of life, I say,--would\ngo to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and\navoid those whom they dislike and abuse.  Whereas, by a little charity\nand mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough:  we\nmay abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal\nunhanged--but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when\nwe meet.  If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine with him,\nand we expect he will do the same by us.  Thus trade\nflourishes--civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses are\nwanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's vintage of\nLafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it.\n\nAt the time whereof we are writing, though the Great George was on the\nthrone and ladies wore gigots and large combs like tortoise-shell\nshovels in their hair, instead of the simple sleeves and lovely wreaths\nwhich are actually in fashion, the manners of the very polite world\nwere not, I take it, essentially different from those of the present\nday:  and their amusements pretty similar.  To us, from the outside,\ngazing over the policeman's shoulders at the bewildering beauties as\nthey pass into Court or ball, they may seem beings of unearthly\nsplendour and in the enjoyment of an exquisite happiness by us\nunattainable. It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings that\nwe are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and triumphs, and\ndisappointments, of all of which, indeed, as is the case with all\npersons of merit, she had her share.\n\nAt this time the amiable amusement of acting charades had come among us\nfrom France, and was considerably in vogue in this country, enabling\nthe many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and\nthe fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their wit. My Lord\nSteyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps believed herself endowed with\nboth the above qualifications, to give an entertainment at Gaunt House,\nwhich should include some of these little dramas--and we must take\nleave to introduce the reader to this brilliant reunion, and, with a\nmelancholy welcome too, for it will be among the very last of the\nfashionable entertainments to which it will be our fortune to conduct\nhim.\n\nA portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of Gaunt House,\nwas arranged as the charade theatre.  It had been so used when George\nIII was king; and a picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still extant,\nwith his hair in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape, as it was\ncalled, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's tragedy of that\nname, performed before their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, the\nBishop of Osnaburgh, and Prince William Henry, then children like the\nactor. One or two of the old properties were drawn out of the garrets,\nwhere they had lain ever since, and furbished up anew for the present\nfestivities.\n\nYoung Bedwin Sands, then an elegant dandy and Eastern traveller, was\nmanager of the revels.  An Eastern traveller was somebody in those\ndays, and the adventurous Bedwin, who had published his quarto and\npassed some months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of no\nsmall importance.  In his volume there were several pictures of Sands\nin various oriental costumes; and he travelled about with a black\nattendant of most unprepossessing appearance, just like another Brian\nde Bois Guilbert.  Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were hailed at\nGaunt House as very valuable acquisitions.\n\nHe led off the first charade.  A Turkish officer with an immense plume\nof feathers (the Janizaries were supposed to be still in existence, and\nthe tarboosh had not as yet displaced the ancient and majestic\nhead-dress of the true believers) was seen couched on a divan, and\nmaking believe to puff at a narghile, in which, however, for the sake\nof the ladies, only a fragrant pastille was allowed to smoke.  The\nTurkish dignitary yawns and expresses signs of weariness and idleness.\nHe claps his hands and Mesrour the Nubian appears, with bare arms,\nbangles, yataghans, and every Eastern ornament--gaunt, tall, and\nhideous.  He makes a salaam before my lord the Aga.\n\nA thrill of terror and delight runs through the assembly. The ladies\nwhisper to one another.  The black slave was given to Bedwin Sands by\nan Egyptian pasha in exchange for three dozen of Maraschino.  He has\nsewn up ever so many odalisques in sacks and tilted them into the Nile.\n\n\"Bid the slave-merchant enter,\" says the Turkish voluptuary with a wave\nof his hand.  Mesrour conducts the slave-merchant into my lord's\npresence; he brings a veiled female with him.  He removes the veil.  A\nthrill of applause bursts through the house.  It is Mrs. Winkworth (she\nwas a Miss Absolom) with the beautiful eyes and hair. She is in a\ngorgeous oriental costume; the black braided locks are twined with\ninnumerable jewels; her dress is covered over with gold piastres.  The\nodious Mahometan expresses himself charmed by her beauty.  She falls\ndown on her knees and entreats him to restore her to the mountains\nwhere she was born, and where her Circassian lover is still deploring\nthe absence of his Zuleikah. No entreaties will move the obdurate\nHassan.  He laughs at the notion of the Circassian bridegroom. Zuleikah\ncovers her face with her hands and drops down in an attitude of the\nmost beautiful despair.  There seems to be no hope for her, when--when\nthe Kislar Aga appears.\n\nThe Kislar Aga brings a letter from the Sultan.  Hassan receives and\nplaces on his head the dread firman.  A ghastly terror seizes him,\nwhile on the Negro's face (it is Mesrour again in another costume)\nappears a ghastly joy.  \"Mercy!  mercy!\" cries the Pasha:  while the\nKislar Aga, grinning horribly, pulls out--a bow-string.\n\nThe curtain draws just as he is going to use that awful weapon. Hassan\nfrom within bawls out, \"First two syllables\"--and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,\nwho is going to act in the charade, comes forward and compliments Mrs.\nWinkworth on the admirable taste and beauty of her costume.\n\nThe second part of the charade takes place.  It is still an Eastern\nscene.  Hassan, in another dress, is in an attitude by Zuleikah, who is\nperfectly reconciled to him. The Kislar Aga has become a peaceful black\nslave.  It is sunrise on the desert, and the Turks turn their heads\neastwards and bow to the sand.  As there are no dromedaries at hand,\nthe band facetiously plays \"The Camels are coming.\" An enormous\nEgyptian head figures in the scene.  It is a musical one--and, to the\nsurprise of the oriental travellers, sings a comic song, composed by\nMr. Wagg.  The Eastern voyagers go off dancing, like Papageno and the\nMoorish King in The Magic Flute.  \"Last two syllables,\" roars the head.\n\nThe last act opens.  It is a Grecian tent this time.  A tall and\nstalwart man reposes on a couch there.  Above him hang his helmet and\nshield.  There is no need for them now.  Ilium is down. Iphigenia is\nslain.  Cassandra is a prisoner in his outer halls. The king of men (it\nis Colonel Crawley, who, indeed, has no notion about the sack of Ilium\nor the conquest of Cassandra), the anax andron is asleep in his chamber\nat Argos.  A lamp casts the broad shadow of the sleeping warrior\nflickering on the wall--the sword and shield of Troy glitter in its\nlight. The band plays the awful music of Don Juan, before the statue\nenters.\n\nAegisthus steals in pale and on tiptoe.  What is that ghastly face\nlooking out balefully after him from behind the arras? He raises his\ndagger to strike the sleeper, who turns in his bed, and opens his broad\nchest as if for the blow.  He cannot strike the noble slumbering\nchieftain. Clytemnestra glides swiftly into the room like an\napparition--her arms are bare and white--her tawny hair floats down her\nshoulders--her face is deadly pale--and her eyes are lighted up with a\nsmile so ghastly that people quake as they look at her.\n\nA tremor ran through the room.  \"Good God!\" somebody said, \"it's Mrs.\nRawdon Crawley.\"\n\nScornfully she snatches the dagger out of Aegisthus's hand and advances\nto the bed.  You see it shining over her head in the glimmer of the\nlamp, and--and the lamp goes out, with a groan, and all is dark.\n\nThe darkness and the scene frightened people.  Rebecca performed her\npart so well, and with such ghastly truth, that the spectators were all\ndumb, until, with a burst, all the lamps of the hall blazed out again,\nwhen everybody began to shout applause.  \"Brava!  brava!\" old Steyne's\nstrident voice was heard roaring over all the rest.  \"By--, she'd do it\ntoo,\" he said between his teeth. The performers were called by the\nwhole house, which sounded with cries of \"Manager! Clytemnestra!\"\nAgamemnon could not be got to show in his classical tunic, but stood in\nthe background with Aegisthus and others of the performers of the\nlittle play.  Mr. Bedwin Sands led on Zuleikah and Clytemnestra.  A\ngreat personage insisted on being presented to the charming\nClytemnestra.  \"Heigh ha? Run him through the body. Marry somebody\nelse, hay?\" was the apposite remark made by His Royal Highness.\n\n\"Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was quite killing in the part,\" said Lord Steyne.\nBecky laughed, gay and saucy looking, and swept the prettiest little\ncurtsey ever seen.\n\nServants brought in salvers covered with numerous cool dainties, and\nthe performers disappeared to get ready for the second charade-tableau.\n\nThe three syllables of this charade were to be depicted in pantomime,\nand the performance took place in the following wise:\n\nFirst syllable.  Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., with a slouched hat and\na staff, a great-coat, and a lantern borrowed from the stables, passed\nacross the stage bawling out, as if warning the inhabitants of the\nhour.  In the lower window are seen two bagmen playing apparently at\nthe game of cribbage, over which they yawn much. To them enters one\nlooking like Boots (the Honourable G.  Ringwood), which character the\nyoung gentleman performed to perfection, and divests them of their\nlower coverings; and presently Chambermaid (the Right Honourable Lord\nSouthdown) with two candlesticks, and a warming-pan.  She ascends to\nthe upper apartment and warms the bed. She uses the warming-pan as a\nweapon wherewith she wards off the attention of the bagmen. She exits.\nThey put on their night-caps and pull down the blinds.  Boots comes out\nand closes the shutters of the ground-floor chamber.  You hear him\nbolting and chaining the door within.  All the lights go out.  The\nmusic plays Dormez, dormez, chers Amours.  A voice from behind the\ncurtain says, \"First syllable.\"\n\nSecond syllable.  The lamps are lighted up all of a sudden.  The music\nplays the old air from John of Paris, Ah quel plaisir d'etre en voyage.\nIt is the same scene. Between the first and second floors of the house\nrepresented, you behold a sign on which the Steyne arms are painted.\nAll the bells are ringing all over the house. In the lower apartment\nyou see a man with a long slip of paper presenting it to another, who\nshakes his fists, threatens and vows that it is monstrous.  \"Ostler,\nbring round my gig,\" cries another at the door.  He chucks Chambermaid\n(the Right Honourable Lord Southdown) under the chin; she seems to\ndeplore his absence, as Calypso did that of that other eminent\ntraveller Ulysses. Boots (the Honourable G.  Ringwood) passes with a\nwooden box, containing silver flagons, and cries \"Pots\" with such\nexquisite humour and naturalness that the whole house rings with\napplause, and a bouquet is thrown to him.  Crack, crack, crack, go the\nwhips.   Landlord, chambermaid, waiter rush to the door, but just as\nsome distinguished guest is arriving, the curtains close, and the\ninvisible theatrical manager cries out \"Second syllable.\"\n\n\"I think it must be 'Hotel,'\" says Captain Grigg of the Life Guards;\nthere is a general laugh at the Captain's cleverness.  He is not very\nfar from the mark.\n\nWhile the third syllable is in preparation, the band begins a nautical\nmedley--\"All in the Downs,\" \"Cease Rude Boreas,\" \"Rule Britannia,\" \"In\nthe Bay of Biscay O!\"--some maritime event is about to take place.  A\nbell is heard ringing as the curtain draws aside. \"Now, gents, for the\nshore!\" a voice exclaims.  People take leave of each other.  They point\nanxiously as if towards the clouds, which are represented by a dark\ncurtain, and they nod their heads in fear. Lady Squeams (the Right\nHonourable Lord Southdown), her lap-dog, her bags, reticules, and\nhusband sit down, and cling hold of some ropes. It is evidently a ship.\n\nThe Captain (Colonel Crawley, C.B.), with a cocked hat and a telescope,\ncomes in, holding his hat on his head, and looks out; his coat tails\nfly about as if in the wind.  When he leaves go of his hat to use his\ntelescope, his hat flies off, with immense applause. It is blowing\nfresh.  The music rises and whistles louder and louder; the mariners go\nacross the stage staggering, as if the ship was in severe motion.  The\nSteward (the Honourable G. Ringwood) passes reeling by, holding six\nbasins.  He puts one rapidly by Lord Squeams--Lady Squeams, giving a\npinch to her dog, which begins to howl piteously, puts her\npocket-handkerchief to her face, and rushes away as for the cabin.  The\nmusic rises up to the wildest pitch of stormy excitement, and the third\nsyllable is concluded.\n\nThere was a little ballet, \"Le Rossignol,\" in which Montessu and Noblet\nused to be famous in those days, and which Mr. Wagg transferred to the\nEnglish stage as an opera, putting his verse, of which he was a skilful\nwriter, to the pretty airs of the ballet.  It was dressed in old French\ncostume, and little Lord Southdown now appeared admirably attired in\nthe disguise of an old woman hobbling about the stage with a faultless\ncrooked stick.\n\nTrills of melody were heard behind the scenes, and gurgling from a\nsweet pasteboard cottage covered with roses and trellis work.\n\"Philomele, Philomele,\" cries the old woman, and Philomele comes out.\n\nMore applause--it is Mrs. Rawdon Crawley in powder and patches, the\nmost ravissante little Marquise in the world.\n\nShe comes in laughing, humming, and frisks about the stage with all the\ninnocence of theatrical youth--she makes a curtsey.  Mamma says \"Why,\nchild, you are always laughing and singing,\" and away she goes, with--\n\n  THE ROSE UPON MY BALCONY\n\n  The rose upon my balcony the morning air perfuming\n  Was leafless all the winter time and pining for the spring;\n  You ask me why her breath is sweet and why her cheek is blooming,\n  It is because the sun is out and birds begin to sing.\n\n  The nightingale, whose melody is through the greenwood ringing,\n  Was silent when the boughs were bare and winds were blowing keen:\n  And if, Mamma, you ask of me the reason of his singing,\n  It is because the sun is out and all the leaves are green.\n\n  Thus each performs his part, Mamma, the birds have found their voices,\n  The blowing rose a flush, Mamma, her bonny cheek to dye;\n  And there's sunshine in my heart, Mamma, which wakens and rejoices,\n  And so I sing and blush, Mamma, and that's the reason why.\n\n\nDuring the intervals of the stanzas of this ditty, the good-natured\npersonage addressed as Mamma by the singer, and whose large whiskers\nappeared under her cap, seemed very anxious to exhibit her maternal\naffection by embracing the innocent creature who performed the\ndaughter's part.  Every caress was received with loud acclamations of\nlaughter by the sympathizing audience. At its conclusion (while the\nmusic was performing a symphony as if ever so many birds were warbling)\nthe whole house was unanimous for an encore:  and applause and bouquets\nwithout end were showered upon the Nightingale of the evening.  Lord\nSteyne's voice of applause was loudest of all. Becky, the nightingale,\ntook the flowers which he threw to her and pressed them to her heart\nwith the air of a consummate comedian. Lord Steyne was frantic with\ndelight.  His guests' enthusiasm harmonized with his own.  Where was\nthe beautiful black-eyed Houri whose appearance in the first charade\nhad caused such delight? She was twice as handsome as Becky, but the\nbrilliancy of the latter had quite eclipsed her.  All voices were for\nher.  Stephens, Caradori, Ronzi de Begnis, people compared her to one\nor the other, and agreed with good reason, very likely, that had she\nbeen an actress none on the stage could have surpassed her. She had\nreached her culmination: her voice rose trilling and bright over the\nstorm of applause, and soared as high and joyful as her triumph.  There\nwas a ball after the dramatic entertainments, and everybody pressed\nround Becky as the great point of attraction of the evening.  The Royal\nPersonage declared with an oath that she was perfection, and engaged\nher again and again in conversation.  Little Becky's soul swelled with\npride and delight at these honours; she saw fortune, fame, fashion\nbefore her.  Lord Steyne was her slave, followed her everywhere, and\nscarcely spoke to any one in the room beside, and paid her the most\nmarked compliments and attention.  She still appeared in her Marquise\ncostume and danced a minuet with Monsieur de Truffigny, Monsieur Le Duc\nde la Jabotiere's attache; and the Duke, who had all the traditions of\nthe ancient court, pronounced that Madame Crawley was worthy to have\nbeen a pupil of Vestris, or to have figured at Versailles. Only a\nfeeling of dignity, the gout, and the strongest sense of duty and\npersonal sacrifice prevented his Excellency from dancing with her\nhimself, and he declared in public that a lady who could talk and dance\nlike Mrs. Rawdon was fit to be ambassadress at any court in Europe.  He\nwas only consoled when he heard that she was half a Frenchwoman by\nbirth.  \"None but a compatriot,\" his Excellency declared, \"could have\nperformed that majestic dance in such a way.\"\n\nThen she figured in a waltz with Monsieur de Klingenspohr, the Prince\nof Peterwaradin's cousin and attache.  The delighted Prince, having\nless retenue than his French diplomatic colleague, insisted upon taking\na turn with the charming creature, and twirled round the ball-room with\nher, scattering the diamonds out of his boot-tassels and hussar jacket\nuntil his Highness was fairly out of breath. Papoosh Pasha himself\nwould have liked to dance with her if that amusement had been the\ncustom of his country.  The company made a circle round her and\napplauded as wildly as if she had been a Noblet or a Taglioni.\nEverybody was in ecstacy; and Becky too, you may be sure.  She passed\nby Lady Stunnington with a look of scorn.  She patronized Lady Gaunt\nand her astonished and mortified sister-in-law--she ecrased all rival\ncharmers.  As for poor Mrs. Winkworth, and her long hair and great\neyes, which had made such an effect at the commencement of the\nevening--where was she now? Nowhere in the race.  She might tear her\nlong hair and cry her great eyes out, but there was not a person to\nheed or to deplore the discomfiture.\n\nThe greatest triumph of all was at supper time.  She was placed at the\ngrand exclusive table with his Royal Highness the exalted personage\nbefore mentioned, and the rest of the great guests.  She was served on\ngold plate.  She might have had pearls melted into her champagne if she\nliked--another Cleopatra--and the potentate of Peterwaradin would have\ngiven half the brilliants off his jacket for a kind glance from those\ndazzling eyes. Jabotiere wrote home about her to his government.  The\nladies at the other tables, who supped off mere silver and marked Lord\nSteyne's constant attention to her, vowed it was a monstrous\ninfatuation, a gross insult to ladies of rank.  If sarcasm could have\nkilled, Lady Stunnington would have slain her on the spot.\n\nRawdon Crawley was scared at these triumphs.  They seemed to separate\nhis wife farther than ever from him somehow.  He thought with a feeling\nvery like pain how immeasurably she was his superior.\n\nWhen the hour of departure came, a crowd of young men followed her to\nher carriage, for which the people without bawled, the cry being caught\nup by the link-men who were stationed outside the tall gates of Gaunt\nHouse, congratulating each person who issued from the gate and hoping\nhis Lordship had enjoyed this noble party.\n\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley's carriage, coming up to the gate after due\nshouting, rattled into the illuminated court-yard and drove up to the\ncovered way.  Rawdon put his wife into the carriage, which drove off.\nMr. Wenham had proposed to him to walk home, and offered the Colonel\nthe refreshment of a cigar.\n\nThey lighted their cigars by the lamp of one of the many link-boys\noutside, and Rawdon walked on with his friend Wenham.  Two persons\nseparated from the crowd and followed the two gentlemen; and when they\nhad walked down Gaunt Square a few score of paces, one of the men came\nup and, touching Rawdon on the shoulder, said, \"Beg your pardon,\nColonel, I vish to speak to you most particular.\" This gentleman's\nacquaintance gave a loud whistle as the latter spoke, at which signal a\ncab came clattering up from those stationed at the gate of Gaunt\nHouse--and the aide-de-camp ran round and placed himself in front of\nColonel Crawley.\n\nThat gallant officer at once knew what had befallen him.  He was in the\nhands of the bailiffs.  He started back, falling against the man who\nhad first touched him.\n\n\"We're three on us--it's no use bolting,\" the man behind said.\n\n\"It's you, Moss, is it?\" said the Colonel, who appeared to know his\ninterlocutor.  \"How much is it?\"\n\n\"Only a small thing,\" whispered Mr. Moss, of Cursitor Street, Chancery\nLane, and assistant officer to the Sheriff of Middlesex--\"One hundred\nand sixty-six, six and eight-pence, at the suit of Mr. Nathan.\"\n\n\"Lend me a hundred, Wenham, for God's sake,\" poor Rawdon said--\"I've\ngot seventy at home.\"\n\n\"I've not got ten pounds in the world,\" said poor Mr. Wenham--\"Good\nnight, my dear fellow.\"\n\n\"Good night,\" said Rawdon ruefully.  And Wenham walked away--and Rawdon\nCrawley finished his cigar as the cab drove under Temple Bar.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LII\n\nIn Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light\n\nWhen Lord Steyne was benevolently disposed, he did nothing by halves,\nand his kindness towards the Crawley family did the greatest honour to\nhis benevolent discrimination.  His lordship extended his good-will to\nlittle Rawdon:  he pointed out to the boy's parents the necessity of\nsending him to a public school, that he was of an age now when\nemulation, the first principles of the Latin language, pugilistic\nexercises, and the society of his fellow-boys would be of the greatest\nbenefit to the boy.  His father objected that he was not rich enough to\nsend the child to a good public school; his mother that Briggs was a\ncapital mistress for him, and had brought him on (as indeed was the\nfact) famously in English, the Latin rudiments, and in general\nlearning:  but all these objections disappeared before the generous\nperseverance of the Marquis of Steyne.  His lordship was one of the\ngovernors of that famous old collegiate institution called the\nWhitefriars.  It had been a Cistercian Convent in old days, when the\nSmithfield, which is contiguous to it, was a tournament ground.\nObstinate heretics used to be brought thither convenient for burning\nhard by.  Henry VIII, the Defender of the Faith, seized upon the\nmonastery and its possessions and hanged and tortured some of the monks\nwho could not accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform.\nFinally, a great merchant bought the house and land adjoining, in\nwhich, and with the help of other wealthy endowments of land and money,\nhe established a famous foundation hospital for old men and children.\nAn extern school grew round the old almost monastic foundation, which\nsubsists still with its middle-age costume and usages--and all\nCistercians pray that it may long flourish.\n\nOf this famous house, some of the greatest noblemen, prelates, and\ndignitaries in England are governors:  and as the boys are very\ncomfortably lodged, fed, and educated, and subsequently inducted to\ngood scholarships at the University and livings in the Church, many\nlittle gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession from\ntheir tenderest years, and there is considerable emulation to procure\nnominations for the foundation.  It was originally intended for the\nsons of poor and deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble\ngovernors of the Institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious\nbenevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an\neducation for nothing, and a future livelihood and profession assured,\nwas so excellent a scheme that some of the richest people did not\ndisdain it; and not only great men's relations, but great men\nthemselves, sent their sons to profit by the chance--Right Rev.\nprelates sent their own kinsmen or the sons of their clergy, while, on\nthe other hand, some great noblemen did not disdain to patronize the\nchildren of their confidential servants--so that a lad entering this\nestablishment had every variety of youthful society wherewith to mingle.\n\nRawdon Crawley, though the only book which he studied was the Racing\nCalendar, and though his chief recollections of polite learning were\nconnected with the floggings which he received at Eton in his early\nyouth, had that decent and honest reverence for classical learning\nwhich all English gentlemen feel, and was glad to think that his son\nwas to have a provision for life, perhaps, and a certain opportunity of\nbecoming a scholar.  And although his boy was his chief solace and\ncompanion, and endeared to him by a thousand small ties, about which he\ndid not care to speak to his wife, who had all along shown the utmost\nindifference to their son, yet Rawdon agreed at once to part with him\nand to give up his own greatest comfort and benefit for the sake of the\nwelfare of the little lad.  He did not know how fond he was of the\nchild until it became necessary to let him go away. When he was gone,\nhe felt more sad and downcast than he cared to own--far sadder than the\nboy himself, who was happy enough to enter a new career and find\ncompanions of his own age.  Becky burst out laughing once or twice when\nthe Colonel, in his clumsy, incoherent way, tried to express his\nsentimental sorrows at the boy's departure.  The poor fellow felt that\nhis dearest pleasure and closest friend was taken from him.  He looked\noften and wistfully at the little vacant bed in his dressing-room,\nwhere the child used to sleep.  He missed him sadly of mornings and\ntried in vain to walk in the park without him.  He did not know how\nsolitary he was until little Rawdon was gone.  He liked the people who\nwere fond of him, and would go and sit for long hours with his\ngood-natured sister Lady Jane, and talk to her about the virtues, and\ngood looks, and hundred good qualities of the child.\n\nYoung Rawdon's aunt, we have said, was very fond of him, as was her\nlittle girl, who wept copiously when the time for her cousin's\ndeparture came.  The elder Rawdon was thankful for the fondness of\nmother and daughter.  The very best and honestest feelings of the man\ncame out in these artless outpourings of paternal feeling in which he\nindulged in their presence, and encouraged by their sympathy.  He\nsecured not only Lady Jane's kindness, but her sincere regard, by the\nfeelings which he manifested, and which he could not show to his own\nwife.  The two kinswomen met as seldom as possible. Becky laughed\nbitterly at Jane's feelings and softness; the other's kindly and gentle\nnature could not but revolt at her sister's callous behaviour.\n\nIt estranged Rawdon from his wife more than he knew or acknowledged to\nhimself.  She did not care for the estrangement.  Indeed, she did not\nmiss him or anybody. She looked upon him as her errand-man and humble\nslave.  He might be ever so depressed or sulky, and she did not mark\nhis demeanour, or only treated it with a sneer.  She was busy thinking\nabout her position, or her pleasures, or her advancement in society;\nshe ought to have held a great place in it, that is certain.\n\nIt was honest Briggs who made up the little kit for the boy which he\nwas to take to school.  Molly, the housemaid, blubbered in the passage\nwhen he went away--Molly kind and faithful in spite of a long arrear of\nunpaid wages.  Mrs. Becky could not let her husband have the carriage\nto take the boy to school.  Take the horses into the City!--such a\nthing was never heard of.  Let a cab be brought. She did not offer to\nkiss him when he went, nor did the child propose to embrace her; but\ngave a kiss to old Briggs (whom, in general, he was very shy of\ncaressing), and consoled her by pointing out that he was to come home\non Saturdays, when she would have the benefit of seeing him.  As the\ncab rolled towards the City, Becky's carriage rattled off to the park.\nShe was chattering and laughing with a score of young dandies by the\nSerpentine as the father and son entered at the old gates of the\nschool--where Rawdon left the child and came away with a sadder purer\nfeeling in his heart than perhaps that poor battered fellow had ever\nknown since he himself came out of the nursery.\n\nHe walked all the way home very dismally, and dined alone with Briggs.\nHe was very kind to her and grateful for her love and watchfulness over\nthe boy.  His conscience smote him that he had borrowed Briggs's money\nand aided in deceiving her.  They talked about little Rawdon a long\ntime, for Becky only came home to dress and go out to dinner--and then\nhe went off uneasily to drink tea with Lady Jane, and tell her of what\nhad happened, and how little Rawdon went off like a trump, and how he\nwas to wear a gown and little knee-breeches, and how young Blackball,\nJack Blackball's son, of the old regiment, had taken him in charge and\npromised to be kind to him.\n\nIn the course of a week, young Blackball had constituted little Rawdon\nhis fag, shoe-black, and breakfast toaster; initiated him into the\nmysteries of the Latin Grammar; and thrashed him three or four times,\nbut not severely.  The little chap's good-natured honest face won his\nway for him.  He only got that degree of beating which was, no doubt,\ngood for him; and as for blacking shoes, toasting bread, and fagging in\ngeneral, were these offices not deemed to be necessary parts of every\nyoung English gentleman's education?\n\nOur business does not lie with the second generation and Master\nRawdon's life at school, otherwise the present tale might be carried to\nany indefinite length.  The Colonel went to see his son a short time\nafterwards and found the lad sufficiently well and happy, grinning and\nlaughing in his little black gown and little breeches.\n\nHis father sagaciously tipped Blackball, his master, a sovereign, and\nsecured that young gentleman's good-will towards his fag.  As a protege\nof the great Lord Steyne, the nephew of a County member, and son of a\nColonel and C.B., whose name appeared in some of the most fashionable\nparties in the Morning Post, perhaps the school authorities were\ndisposed not to look unkindly on the child.  He had plenty of\npocket-money, which he spent in treating his comrades royally to\nraspberry tarts, and he was often allowed to come home on Saturdays to\nhis father, who always made a jubilee of that day. When free, Rawdon\nwould take him to the play, or send him thither with the footman; and\non Sundays he went to church with Briggs and Lady Jane and his cousins.\nRawdon marvelled over his stories about school, and fights, and\nfagging.  Before long, he knew the names of all the masters and the\nprincipal boys as well as little Rawdon himself.  He invited little\nRawdon's crony from school, and made both the children sick with\npastry, and oysters, and porter after the play.  He tried to look\nknowing over the Latin grammar when little Rawdon showed him what part\nof that work he was \"in.\" \"Stick to it, my boy,\" he said to him with\nmuch gravity, \"there's nothing like a good classical education!\nNothing!\"\n\nBecky's contempt for her husband grew greater every day.  \"Do what you\nlike--dine where you please--go and have ginger-beer and sawdust at\nAstley's, or psalm-singing with Lady Jane--only don't expect me to busy\nmyself with the boy.  I have your interests to attend to, as you can't\nattend to them yourself.  I should like to know where you would have\nbeen now, and in what sort of a position in society, if I had not\nlooked after you.\" Indeed, nobody wanted poor old Rawdon at the parties\nwhither Becky used to go.  She was often asked without him now.  She\ntalked about great people as if she had the fee-simple of May Fair, and\nwhen the Court went into mourning, she always wore black.\n\nLittle Rawdon being disposed of, Lord Steyne, who took such a parental\ninterest in the affairs of this amiable poor family, thought that their\nexpenses might be very advantageously curtailed by the departure of\nMiss Briggs, and that Becky was quite clever enough to take the\nmanagement of her own house.  It has been narrated in a former chapter\nhow the benevolent nobleman had given his protegee money to pay off her\nlittle debt to Miss Briggs, who however still remained behind with her\nfriends; whence my lord came to the painful conclusion that Mrs.\nCrawley had made some other use of the money confided to her than that\nfor which her generous patron had given the loan.  However, Lord Steyne\nwas not so rude as to impart his suspicions upon this head to Mrs.\nBecky, whose feelings might be hurt by any controversy on the\nmoney-question, and who might have a thousand painful reasons for\ndisposing otherwise of his lordship's generous loan.  But he determined\nto satisfy himself of the real state of the case, and instituted the\nnecessary inquiries in a most cautious and delicate manner.\n\nIn the first place he took an early opportunity of pumping Miss Briggs.\nThat was not a difficult operation. A very little encouragement would\nset that worthy woman to talk volubly and pour out all within her.  And\none day when Mrs. Rawdon had gone out to drive (as Mr. Fiche, his\nlordship's confidential servant, easily learned at the livery stables\nwhere the Crawleys kept their carriage and horses, or rather, where the\nlivery-man kept a carriage and horses for Mr. and Mrs. Crawley)--my\nlord dropped in upon the Curzon Street house--asked Briggs for a cup of\ncoffee--told her that he had good accounts of the little boy at\nschool--and in five minutes found out from her that Mrs. Rawdon had\ngiven her nothing except a black silk gown, for which Miss Briggs was\nimmensely grateful.\n\nHe laughed within himself at this artless story.  For the truth is, our\ndear friend Rebecca had given him a most circumstantial narration of\nBriggs's delight at receiving her money--eleven hundred and twenty-five\npounds--and in what securities she had invested it; and what a pang\nBecky herself felt in being obliged to pay away such a delightful sum\nof money.  \"Who knows,\" the dear woman may have thought within herself,\n\"perhaps he may give me a little more?\" My lord, however, made no such\nproposal to the little schemer--very likely thinking that he had been\nsufficiently generous already.\n\nHe had the curiosity, then, to ask Miss Briggs about the state of her\nprivate affairs--and she told his lordship candidly what her position\nwas--how Miss Crawley had left her a legacy--how her relatives had had\npart of it--how Colonel Crawley had put out another portion, for which\nshe had the best security and interest--and how Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon\nhad kindly busied themselves with Sir Pitt, who was to dispose of the\nremainder most advantageously for her, when he had time.  My lord asked\nhow much the Colonel had already invested for her, and Miss Briggs at\nonce and truly told him that the sum was six hundred and odd pounds.\n\nBut as soon as she had told her story, the voluble Briggs repented of\nher frankness and besought my lord not to tell Mr. Crawley of the\nconfessions which she had made.  \"The Colonel was so kind--Mr. Crawley\nmight be offended and pay back the money, for which she could get no\nsuch good interest anywhere else.\" Lord Steyne, laughing, promised he\nnever would divulge their conversation, and when he and Miss Briggs\nparted he laughed still more.\n\n\"What an accomplished little devil it is!\" thought he. \"What a splendid\nactress and manager!  She had almost got a second supply out of me the\nother day; with her coaxing ways.  She beats all the women I have ever\nseen in the course of all my well-spent life. They are babies compared\nto her.  I am a greenhorn myself, and a fool in her hands--an old fool.\nShe is unsurpassable in lies.\" His lordship's admiration for Becky rose\nimmeasurably at this proof of her cleverness.  Getting the money was\nnothing--but getting double the sum she wanted, and paying nobody--it\nwas a magnificent stroke. And Crawley, my lord thought--Crawley is not\nsuch a fool as he looks and seems.  He has managed the matter cleverly\nenough on his side. Nobody would ever have supposed from his face and\ndemeanour that he knew anything about this money business; and yet he\nput her up to it, and has spent the money, no doubt.  In this opinion\nmy lord, we know, was mistaken, but it influenced a good deal his\nbehaviour towards Colonel Crawley, whom he began to treat with even\nless than that semblance of respect which he had formerly shown towards\nthat gentleman.  It never entered into the head of Mrs. Crawley's\npatron that the little lady might be making a purse for herself; and,\nperhaps, if the truth must be told, he judged of Colonel Crawley by his\nexperience of other husbands, whom he had known in the course of the\nlong and well-spent life which had made him acquainted with a great\ndeal of the weakness of mankind.  My lord had bought so many men during\nhis life that he was surely to be pardoned for supposing that he had\nfound the price of this one.\n\nHe taxed Becky upon the point on the very first occasion when he met\nher alone, and he complimented her, good-humouredly, on her cleverness\nin getting more than the money which she required.  Becky was only a\nlittle taken aback.  It was not the habit of this dear creature to tell\nfalsehoods, except when necessity compelled, but in these great\nemergencies it was her practice to lie very freely; and in an instant\nshe was ready with another neat plausible circumstantial story which\nshe administered to her patron.  The previous statement which she had\nmade to him was a falsehood--a wicked falsehood--she owned it.  But who\nhad made her tell it? \"Ah, my Lord,\" she said, \"you don't know all I\nhave to suffer and bear in silence; you see me gay and happy before\nyou--you little know what I have to endure when there is no protector\nnear me.  It was my husband, by threats and the most savage treatment,\nforced me to ask for that sum about which I deceived you.  It was he\nwho, foreseeing that questions might be asked regarding the disposal of\nthe money, forced me to account for it as I did.  He took the money.\nHe told me he had paid Miss Briggs; I did not want, I did not dare to\ndoubt him. Pardon the wrong which a desperate man is forced to commit,\nand pity a miserable, miserable woman.\" She burst into tears as she\nspoke.  Persecuted virtue never looked more bewitchingly wretched.\n\nThey had a long conversation, driving round and round the Regent's Park\nin Mrs. Crawley's carriage together, a conversation of which it is not\nnecessary to repeat the details, but the upshot of it was that, when\nBecky came home, she flew to her dear Briggs with a smiling face and\nannounced that she had some very good news for her. Lord Steyne had\nacted in the noblest and most generous manner.  He was always thinking\nhow and when he could do good.  Now that little Rawdon was gone to\nschool, a dear companion and friend was no longer necessary to her.\nShe was grieved beyond measure to part with Briggs, but her means\nrequired that she should practise every retrenchment, and her sorrow\nwas mitigated by the idea that her dear Briggs would be far better\nprovided for by her generous patron than in her humble home.  Mrs.\nPilkington, the housekeeper at Gauntly Hall, was growing exceedingly\nold, feeble, and rheumatic: she was not equal to the work of\nsuperintending that vast mansion, and must be on the look out for a\nsuccessor.  It was a splendid position. The family did not go to\nGauntly once in two years.  At other times the housekeeper was the\nmistress of the magnificent mansion--had four covers daily for her\ntable; was visited by the clergy and the most respectable people of the\ncounty--was the lady of Gauntly, in fact; and the two last housekeepers\nbefore Mrs. Pilkington had married rectors of Gauntly--but Mrs. P.\ncould not, being the aunt of the present Rector.  The place was not to\nbe hers yet, but she might go down on a visit to Mrs. Pilkington and\nsee whether she would like to succeed her.\n\nWhat words can paint the ecstatic gratitude of Briggs! All she\nstipulated for was that little Rawdon should be allowed to come down\nand see her at the Hall.  Becky promised this--anything.  She ran up to\nher husband when he came home and told him the joyful news. Rawdon was\nglad, deuced glad; the weight was off his conscience about poor\nBriggs's money.  She was provided for, at any rate, but--but his mind\nwas disquiet.  He did not seem to be all right, somehow.  He told\nlittle Southdown what Lord Steyne had done, and the young man eyed\nCrawley with an air which surprised the latter.\n\nHe told Lady Jane of this second proof of Steyne's bounty, and she,\ntoo, looked odd and alarmed; so did Sir Pitt.  \"She is too clever\nand--and gay to be allowed to go from party to party without a\ncompanion,\" both said.  \"You must go with her, Rawdon, wherever she\ngoes, and you must have somebody with her--one of the girls from\nQueen's Crawley, perhaps, though they were rather giddy guardians for\nher.\"\n\nSomebody Becky should have.  But in the meantime it was clear that\nhonest Briggs must not lose her chance of settlement for life, and so\nshe and her bags were packed, and she set off on her journey. And so\ntwo of Rawdon's out-sentinels were in the hands of the enemy.\n\nSir Pitt went and expostulated with his sister-in-law upon the subject\nof the dismissal of Briggs and other matters of delicate family\ninterest.  In vain she pointed out to him how necessary was the\nprotection of Lord Steyne for her poor husband; how cruel it would be\non their part to deprive Briggs of the position offered to her.\nCajolements, coaxings, smiles, tears could not satisfy Sir Pitt, and he\nhad something very like a quarrel with his once admired Becky.  He\nspoke of the honour of the family, the unsullied reputation of the\nCrawleys; expressed himself in indignant tones about her receiving\nthose young Frenchmen--those wild young men of fashion, my Lord Steyne\nhimself, whose carriage was always at her door, who passed hours daily\nin her company, and whose constant presence made the world talk about\nher.  As the head of the house he implored her to be more prudent.\nSociety was already speaking lightly of her.  Lord Steyne, though a\nnobleman of the greatest station and talents, was a man whose\nattentions would compromise any woman; he besought, he implored, he\ncommanded his sister-in-law to be watchful in her intercourse with that\nnobleman.\n\nBecky promised anything and everything Pitt wanted; but Lord Steyne\ncame to her house as often as ever, and Sir Pitt's anger increased. I\nwonder was Lady Jane angry or pleased that her husband at last found\nfault with his favourite Rebecca? Lord Steyne's visits continuing, his\nown ceased, and his wife was for refusing all further intercourse with\nthat nobleman and declining the invitation to the charade-night which\nthe marchioness sent to her; but Sir Pitt thought it was necessary to\naccept it, as his Royal Highness would be there.\n\nAlthough he went to the party in question, Sir Pitt quitted it very\nearly, and his wife, too, was very glad to come away.  Becky hardly so\nmuch as spoke to him or noticed her sister-in-law.  Pitt Crawley\ndeclared her behaviour was monstrously indecorous, reprobated in strong\nterms the habit of play-acting and fancy dressing as highly unbecoming\na British female, and after the charades were over, took his brother\nRawdon severely to task for appearing himself and allowing his wife to\njoin in such improper exhibitions.\n\nRawdon said she should not join in any more such amusements--but\nindeed, and perhaps from hints from his elder brother and sister, he\nhad already become a very watchful and exemplary domestic character. He\nleft off his clubs and billiards.  He never left home.  He took Becky\nout to drive; he went laboriously with her to all her parties. Whenever\nmy Lord Steyne called, he was sure to find the Colonel. And when Becky\nproposed to go out without her husband, or received invitations for\nherself, he peremptorily ordered her to refuse them: and there was that\nin the gentleman's manner which enforced obedience.  Little Becky, to\ndo her justice, was charmed with Rawdon's gallantry.  If he was surly,\nshe never was. Whether friends were present or absent, she had always a\nkind smile for him and was attentive to his pleasure and comfort.  It\nwas the early days of their marriage over again:  the same good humour,\nprevenances, merriment, and artless confidence and regard.  \"How much\npleasanter it is,\" she would say, \"to have you by my side in the\ncarriage than that foolish old Briggs!  Let us always go on so, dear\nRawdon.  How nice it would be, and how happy we should always be, if we\nhad but the money!\" He fell asleep after dinner in his chair; he did\nnot see the face opposite to him, haggard, weary, and terrible; it\nlighted up with fresh candid smiles when he woke.  It kissed him gaily.\nHe wondered that he had ever had suspicions.  No, he never had\nsuspicions; all those dumb doubts and surly misgivings which had been\ngathering on his mind were mere idle jealousies.  She was fond of him;\nshe always had been.  As for her shining in society, it was no fault of\nhers; she was formed to shine there. Was there any woman who could\ntalk, or sing, or do anything like her? If she would but like the boy!\nRawdon thought.  But the mother and son never could be brought together.\n\nAnd it was while Rawdon's mind was agitated with these doubts and\nperplexities that the incident occurred which was mentioned in the last\nchapter, and the unfortunate Colonel found himself a prisoner away from\nhome.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIII\n\nA Rescue and a Catastrophe\n\nFriend Rawdon drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion in Cursitor Street,\nand was duly inducted into that dismal place of hospitality. Morning\nwas breaking over the cheerful house-tops of Chancery Lane as the\nrattling cab woke up the echoes there.  A little pink-eyed Jew-boy,\nwith a head as ruddy as the rising morn, let the party into the house,\nand Rawdon was welcomed to the ground-floor apartments by Mr. Moss, his\ntravelling companion and host, who cheerfully asked him if he would\nlike a glass of something warm after his drive.\n\nThe Colonel was not so depressed as some mortals would be, who,\nquitting a palace and a placens uxor, find themselves barred into a\nspunging-house; for, if the truth must be told, he had been a lodger at\nMr. Moss's establishment once or twice before.  We have not thought it\nnecessary in the previous course of this narrative to mention these\ntrivial little domestic incidents:  but the reader may be assured that\nthey can't unfrequently occur in the life of a man who lives on nothing\na year.\n\nUpon his first visit to Mr. Moss, the Colonel, then a bachelor, had\nbeen liberated by the generosity of his aunt; on the second mishap,\nlittle Becky, with the greatest spirit and kindness, had borrowed a sum\nof money from Lord Southdown and had coaxed her husband's creditor (who\nwas her shawl, velvet-gown, lace pocket-handkerchief, trinket, and\ngim-crack purveyor, indeed) to take a portion of the sum claimed and\nRawdon's promissory note for the remainder:  so on both these occasions\nthe capture and release had been conducted with the utmost gallantry on\nall sides, and Moss and the Colonel were therefore on the very best of\nterms.\n\n\"You'll find your old bed, Colonel, and everything comfortable,\" that\ngentleman said, \"as I may honestly say. You may be pretty sure its kep\naired, and by the best of company, too.  It was slep in the night afore\nlast by the Honorable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whose\nMar took him out, after a fortnight, jest to punish him, she said.\nBut, Law bless you, I promise you, he punished my champagne, and had a\nparty ere every night--reglar tip-top swells, down from the clubs and\nthe West End--Capting Ragg, the Honorable Deuceace, who lives in the\nTemple, and some fellers as knows a good glass of wine, I warrant you.\nI've got a Doctor of Diwinity upstairs, five gents in the coffee-room,\nand Mrs. Moss has a tably-dy-hoty at half-past five, and a little\ncards or music afterwards, when we shall be most happy to see you.\"\n\n\"I'll ring when I want anything,\" said Rawdon and went quietly to his\nbedroom.  He was an old soldier, we have said, and not to be disturbed\nby any little shocks of fate.  A weaker man would have sent off a\nletter to his wife on the instant of his capture.  \"But what is the use\nof disturbing her night's rest?\" thought Rawdon. \"She won't know\nwhether I am in my room or not.  It will be time enough to write to her\nwhen she has had her sleep out, and I have had mine.  It's only a\nhundred-and-seventy, and the deuce is in it if we can't raise that.\"\nAnd so, thinking about little Rawdon (whom he would not have know that\nhe was in such a queer place), the Colonel turned into the bed lately\noccupied by Captain Famish and fell asleep.  It was ten o'clock when he\nwoke up, and the ruddy-headed youth brought him, with conscious pride,\na fine silver dressing-case, wherewith he might perform the operation\nof shaving. Indeed Mr. Moss's house, though somewhat dirty, was\nsplendid throughout.  There were dirty trays, and wine-coolers en\npermanence on the sideboard, huge dirty gilt cornices, with dingy\nyellow satin hangings to the barred windows which looked into Cursitor\nStreet--vast and dirty gilt picture frames surrounding pieces sporting\nand sacred, all of which works were by the greatest masters--and\nfetched the greatest prices, too, in the bill transactions, in the\ncourse of which they were sold and bought over and over again.  The\nColonel's breakfast was served to him in the same dingy and gorgeous\nplated ware.  Miss Moss, a dark-eyed maid in curl-papers, appeared with\nthe teapot, and, smiling, asked the Colonel how he had slep? And she\nbrought him in the Morning Post, with the names of all the great people\nwho had figured at Lord Steyne's entertainment the night before.  It\ncontained a brilliant account of the festivities and of the beautiful\nand accomplished Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's admirable personifications.\n\nAfter a lively chat with this lady (who sat on the edge of the\nbreakfast table in an easy attitude displaying the drapery of her\nstocking and an ex-white satin shoe, which was down at heel), Colonel\nCrawley called for pens and ink, and paper, and being asked how many\nsheets, chose one which was brought to him between Miss Moss's own\nfinger and thumb.  Many a sheet had that dark-eyed damsel brought in;\nmany a poor fellow had scrawled and blotted hurried lines of entreaty\nand paced up and down that awful room until his messenger brought back\nthe reply.  Poor men always use messengers instead of the post.  Who\nhas not had their letters, with the wafers wet, and the announcement\nthat a person is waiting in the hall?\n\nNow on the score of his application, Rawdon had not many misgivings.\n\nDEAR BECKY, (Rawdon wrote)\n\nI HOPE YOU SLEPT WELL.  Don't be FRIGHTENED if I don't bring you in\nyour COFFY.  Last night as I was coming home smoaking, I met with an\nACCADENT.  I was NABBED by Moss of Cursitor Street--from whose GILT AND\nSPLENDID PARLER I write this--the same that had me this time two years.\nMiss Moss brought in my tea--she is grown very FAT, and, as usual, had\nher STOCKENS DOWN AT HEAL.\n\nIt's Nathan's business--a hundred-and-fifty--with costs,\nhundred-and-seventy.  Please send me my desk and some CLOTHS--I'm in\npumps and a white tye (something like Miss M's stockings)--I've seventy\nin it.  And as soon as you get this, Drive to Nathan's--offer him\nseventy-five down, and ASK HIM TO RENEW--say I'll take wine--we may as\nwell have some dinner sherry; but not PICTURS, they're too dear.\n\nIf he won't stand it.  Take my ticker and such of your things as you\ncan SPARE, and send them to Balls--we must, of coarse, have the sum\nto-night.  It won't do to let it stand over, as to-morrow's Sunday; the\nbeds here are not very CLEAN, and there may be other things out against\nme--I'm glad it an't Rawdon's Saturday for coming home.  God bless you.\n\nYours in haste, R. C. P.S.  Make haste and come.\n\nThis letter, sealed with a wafer, was dispatched by one of the\nmessengers who are always hanging about Mr. Moss's establishment, and\nRawdon, having seen him depart, went out in the court-yard and smoked\nhis cigar with a tolerably easy mind--in spite of the bars\noverhead--for Mr. Moss's court-yard is railed in like a cage, lest the\ngentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from\nhis hospitality.\n\nThree hours, he calculated, would be the utmost time required, before\nBecky should arrive and open his prison doors, and he passed these\npretty cheerfully in smoking, in reading the paper, and in the\ncoffee-room with an acquaintance, Captain Walker, who happened to be\nthere, and with whom he cut for sixpences for some hours, with pretty\nequal luck on either side.\n\nBut the day passed away and no messenger returned--no Becky.  Mr.\nMoss's tably-dy-hoty was served at the appointed hour of half-past\nfive, when such of the gentlemen lodging in the house as could afford\nto pay for the banquet came and partook of it in the splendid front\nparlour before described, and with which Mr. Crawley's temporary\nlodging communicated, when Miss M.  (Miss Hem, as her papa called her)\nappeared without the curl-papers of the morning, and Mrs. Hem did the\nhonours of a prime boiled leg of mutton and turnips, of which the\nColonel ate with a very faint appetite.  Asked whether he would \"stand\"\na bottle of champagne for the company, he consented, and the ladies\ndrank to his 'ealth, and Mr. Moss, in the most polite manner, \"looked\ntowards him.\"\n\nIn the midst of this repast, however, the doorbell was heard--young\nMoss of the ruddy hair rose up with the keys and answered the summons,\nand coming back, told the Colonel that the messenger had returned with\na bag, a desk and a letter, which he gave him.  \"No ceramony, Colonel,\nI beg,\" said Mrs. Moss with a wave of her hand, and he opened the\nletter rather tremulously.  It was a beautiful letter, highly scented,\non a pink paper, and with a light green seal.\n\nMON PAUVRE CHER PETIT, (Mrs. Crawley wrote)\n\nI could not sleep ONE WINK for thinking of what had become of my odious\nold monstre, and only got to rest in the morning after sending for Mr.\nBlench (for I was in a fever), who gave me a composing draught and left\norders with Finette that I should be disturbed ON NO ACCOUNT.  So that\nmy poor old man's messenger, who had bien mauvaise mine Finette says,\nand sentoit le Genievre, remained in the hall for some hours waiting my\nbell. You may fancy my state when I read your poor dear old ill-spelt\nletter.\n\nIll as I was, I instantly called for the carriage, and as soon as I was\ndressed (though I couldn't drink a drop of chocolate--I assure you I\ncouldn't without my monstre to bring it to me), I drove ventre a terre\nto Nathan's.  I saw him--I wept--I cried--I fell at his odious knees.\nNothing would mollify the horrid man. He would have all the money, he\nsaid, or keep my poor monstre in prison.  I drove home with the\nintention of paying that triste visite chez mon oncle (when every\ntrinket I have should be at your disposal though they would not fetch a\nhundred pounds, for some, you know, are with ce cher oncle already),\nand found Milor there with the Bulgarian old sheep-faced monster, who\nhad come to compliment me upon last night's performances. Paddington\ncame in, too, drawling and lisping and twiddling his hair; so did\nChampignac, and his chef--everybody with foison of compliments and\npretty speeches--plaguing poor me, who longed to be rid of them, and\nwas thinking every moment of the time of mon pauvre prisonnier.\n\nWhen they were gone, I went down on my knees to Milor; told him we were\ngoing to pawn everything, and begged and prayed him to give me two\nhundred pounds. He pish'd and psha'd in a fury--told me not to be such\na fool as to pawn--and said he would see whether he could lend me the\nmoney.  At last he went away, promising that he would send it me in the\nmorning:  when I will bring it to my poor old monster with a kiss from\nhis affectionate\n\nBECKY\n\nI am writing in bed.  Oh I have such a headache and such a heartache!\n\nWhen Rawdon read over this letter, he turned so red and looked so\nsavage that the company at the table d'hote easily perceived that bad\nnews had reached him.  All his suspicions, which he had been trying to\nbanish, returned upon him.  She could not even go out and sell her\ntrinkets to free him.  She could laugh and talk about compliments paid\nto her, whilst he was in prison.  Who had put him there? Wenham had\nwalked with him.  Was there....  He could hardly bear to think of what\nhe suspected.  Leaving the room hurriedly, he ran into his own--opened\nhis desk, wrote two hurried lines, which he directed to Sir Pitt or\nLady Crawley, and bade the messenger carry them at once to Gaunt\nStreet, bidding him to take a cab, and promising him a guinea if he was\nback in an hour.\n\nIn the note he besought his dear brother and sister, for the sake of\nGod, for the sake of his dear child and his honour, to come to him and\nrelieve him from his difficulty.  He was in prison, he wanted a hundred\npounds to set him free--he entreated them to come to him.\n\nHe went back to the dining-room after dispatching his messenger and\ncalled for more wine.  He laughed and talked with a strange\nboisterousness, as the people thought.  Sometimes he laughed madly at\nhis own fears and went on drinking for an hour, listening all the while\nfor the carriage which was to bring his fate back.\n\nAt the expiration of that time, wheels were heard whirling up to the\ngate--the young janitor went out with his gate-keys.  It was a lady\nwhom he let in at the bailiff's door.\n\n\"Colonel Crawley,\" she said, trembling very much.  He, with a knowing\nlook, locked the outer door upon her--then unlocked and opened the\ninner one, and calling out, \"Colonel, you're wanted,\" led her into the\nback parlour, which he occupied.\n\nRawdon came in from the dining-parlour where all those people were\ncarousing, into his back room; a flare of coarse light following him\ninto the apartment where the lady stood, still very nervous.\n\n\"It is I, Rawdon,\" she said in a timid voice, which she strove to\nrender cheerful.  \"It is Jane.\" Rawdon was quite overcome by that kind\nvoice and presence.  He ran up to her--caught her in his arms--gasped\nout some inarticulate words of thanks and fairly sobbed on her\nshoulder.  She did not know the cause of his emotion.\n\nThe bills of Mr. Moss were quickly settled, perhaps to the\ndisappointment of that gentleman, who had counted on having the Colonel\nas his guest over Sunday at least; and Jane, with beaming smiles and\nhappiness in her eyes, carried away Rawdon from the bailiff's house,\nand they went homewards in the cab in which she had hastened to his\nrelease.  \"Pitt was gone to a parliamentary dinner,\" she said, \"when\nRawdon's note came, and so, dear Rawdon, I--I came myself\"; and she put\nher kind hand in his.  Perhaps it was well for Rawdon Crawley that Pitt\nwas away at that dinner.  Rawdon thanked his sister a hundred times,\nand with an ardour of gratitude which touched and almost alarmed that\nsoft-hearted woman. \"Oh,\" said he, in his rude, artless way, \"you--you\ndon't know how I'm changed since I've known you, and--and little Rawdy.\nI--I'd like to change somehow.  You see I want--I want--to be--\" He did\nnot finish the sentence, but she could interpret it.  And that night\nafter he left her, and as she sat by her own little boy's bed, she\nprayed humbly for that poor way-worn sinner.\n\nRawdon left her and walked home rapidly.  It was nine o'clock at night.\nHe ran across the streets and the great squares of Vanity Fair, and at\nlength came up breathless opposite his own house.  He started back and\nfell against the railings, trembling as he looked up.  The drawing-room\nwindows were blazing with light.  She had said that she was in bed and\nill.  He stood there for some time, the light from the rooms on his\npale face.\n\nHe took out his door-key and let himself into the house.  He could hear\nlaughter in the upper rooms.  He was in the ball-dress in which he had\nbeen captured the night before.  He went silently up the stairs,\nleaning against the banisters at the stair-head.  Nobody was stirring\nin the house besides--all the servants had been sent away. Rawdon heard\nlaughter within--laughter and singing. Becky was singing a snatch of\nthe song of the night before; a hoarse voice shouted \"Brava!\nBrava!\"--it was Lord Steyne's.\n\nRawdon opened the door and went in.  A little table with a dinner was\nlaid out--and wine and plate.  Steyne was hanging over the sofa on\nwhich Becky sat.  The wretched woman was in a brilliant full toilette,\nher arms and all her fingers sparkling with bracelets and rings, and\nthe brilliants on her breast which Steyne had given her. He had her\nhand in his, and was bowing over it to kiss it, when Becky started up\nwith a faint scream as she caught sight of Rawdon's white face.  At the\nnext instant she tried a smile, a horrid smile, as if to welcome her\nhusband; and Steyne rose up, grinding his teeth, pale, and with fury in\nhis looks.\n\nHe, too, attempted a laugh--and came forward holding out his hand.\n\"What, come back!  How d'ye do, Crawley?\" he said, the nerves of his\nmouth twitching as he tried to grin at the intruder.\n\nThere was that in Rawdon's face which caused Becky to fling herself\nbefore him.  \"I am innocent, Rawdon,\" she said; \"before God, I am\ninnocent.\" She clung hold of his coat, of his hands; her own were all\ncovered with serpents, and rings, and baubles.  \"I am innocent. Say I\nam innocent,\" she said to Lord Steyne.\n\nHe thought a trap had been laid for him, and was as furious with the\nwife as with the husband.  \"You innocent!  Damn you,\" he screamed out.\n\"You innocent!  Why every trinket you have on your body is paid for by\nme. I have given you thousands of pounds, which this fellow has spent\nand for which he has sold you.  Innocent, by ----! You're as innocent as\nyour mother, the ballet-girl, and your husband the bully.  Don't think\nto frighten me as you have done others. Make way, sir, and let me\npass\"; and Lord Steyne seized up his hat, and, with flame in his eyes,\nand looking his enemy fiercely in the face, marched upon him, never for\na moment doubting that the other would give way.\n\nBut Rawdon Crawley springing out, seized him by the neckcloth, until\nSteyne, almost strangled, writhed and bent under his arm.  \"You lie,\nyou dog!\" said Rawdon. \"You lie, you coward and villain!\" And he struck\nthe Peer twice over the face with his open hand and flung him bleeding\nto the ground.  It was all done before Rebecca could interpose.  She\nstood there trembling before him.  She admired her husband, strong,\nbrave, and victorious.\n\n\"Come here,\" he said.  She came up at once.\n\n\"Take off those things.\" She began, trembling, pulling the jewels from\nher arms, and the rings from her shaking fingers, and held them all in\na heap, quivering and looking up at him.  \"Throw them down,\" he said,\nand she dropped them.  He tore the diamond ornament out of her breast\nand flung it at Lord Steyne.  It cut him on his bald forehead.  Steyne\nwore the scar to his dying day.\n\n\"Come upstairs,\" Rawdon said to his wife.  \"Don't kill me, Rawdon,\" she\nsaid.  He laughed savagely.  \"I want to see if that man lies about the\nmoney as he has about me.  Has he given you any?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Rebecca, \"that is--\"\n\n\"Give me your keys,\" Rawdon answered, and they went out together.\n\nRebecca gave him all the keys but one, and she was in hopes that he\nwould not have remarked the absence of that.  It belonged to the little\ndesk which Amelia had given her in early days, and which she kept in a\nsecret place.  But Rawdon flung open boxes and wardrobes, throwing the\nmultifarious trumpery of their contents here and there, and at last he\nfound the desk.  The woman was forced to open it.  It contained papers,\nlove-letters many years old--all sorts of small trinkets and woman's\nmemoranda.  And it contained a pocket-book with bank-notes. Some of\nthese were dated ten years back, too, and one was quite a fresh one--a\nnote for a thousand pounds which Lord Steyne had given her.\n\n\"Did he give you this?\" Rawdon said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Rebecca answered.\n\n\"I'll send it to him to-day,\" Rawdon said (for day had dawned again,\nand many hours had passed in this search), \"and I will pay Briggs, who\nwas kind to the boy, and some of the debts.  You will let me know where\nI shall send the rest to you.  You might have spared me a hundred\npounds, Becky, out of all this--I have always shared with you.\"\n\n\"I am innocent,\" said Becky.  And he left her without another word.\n\nWhat were her thoughts when he left her? She remained for hours after\nhe was gone, the sunshine pouring into the room, and Rebecca sitting\nalone on the bed's edge.  The drawers were all opened and their\ncontents scattered about--dresses and feathers, scarfs and trinkets, a\nheap of tumbled vanities lying in a wreck.  Her hair was falling over\nher shoulders; her gown was torn where Rawdon had wrenched the\nbrilliants out of it.  She heard him go downstairs a few minutes after\nhe left her, and the door slamming and closing on him.  She knew he\nwould never come back.  He was gone forever. Would he kill\nhimself?--she thought--not until after he had met Lord Steyne.  She\nthought of her long past life, and all the dismal incidents of it.  Ah,\nhow dreary it seemed, how miserable, lonely and profitless!  Should she\ntake laudanum, and end it, to have done with all hopes, schemes, debts,\nand triumphs? The French maid found her in this position--sitting in\nthe midst of her miserable ruins with clasped hands and dry eyes.  The\nwoman was her accomplice and in Steyne's pay.  \"Mon Dieu, madame, what\nhas happened?\" she asked.\n\nWhat had happened? Was she guilty or not? She said not, but who could\ntell what was truth which came from those lips, or if that corrupt\nheart was in this case pure?\n\nAll her lies and her schemes, and her selfishness and her wiles, all her\nwit and genius had come to this bankruptcy.  The woman closed the\ncurtains and, with some entreaty and show of kindness, persuaded her\nmistress to lie down on the bed.  Then she went below and gathered up\nthe trinkets which had been lying on the floor since Rebecca dropped\nthem there at her husband's orders, and Lord Steyne went away.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIV\n\nSunday After the Battle\n\nThe mansion of Sir Pitt Crawley, in Great Gaunt Street, was just\nbeginning to dress itself for the day, as Rawdon, in his evening\ncostume, which he had now worn two days, passed by the scared female\nwho was scouring the steps and entered into his brother's study. Lady\nJane, in her morning-gown, was up and above stairs in the nursery\nsuperintending the toilettes of her children and listening to the\nmorning prayers which the little creatures performed at her knee.\nEvery morning she and they performed this duty privately, and before\nthe public ceremonial at which Sir Pitt presided and at which all the\npeople of the household were expected to assemble. Rawdon sat down in\nthe study before the Baronet's table, set out with the orderly blue\nbooks and the letters, the neatly docketed bills and symmetrical\npamphlets, the locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, the\nBible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which all stood as if\non parade awaiting the inspection of their chief.\n\nA book of family sermons, one of which Sir Pitt was in the habit of\nadministering to his family on Sunday mornings, lay ready on the study\ntable, and awaiting his judicious selection.  And by the sermon-book\nwas the Observer newspaper, damp and neatly folded, and for Sir Pitt's\nown private use.  His gentleman alone took the opportunity of perusing\nthe newspaper before he laid it by his master's desk.  Before he had\nbrought it into the study that morning, he had read in the journal a\nflaming account of \"Festivities at Gaunt House,\" with the names of all\nthe distinguished personages invited by the Marquis of Steyne to meet\nhis Royal Highness.  Having made comments upon this entertainment to\nthe housekeeper and her niece as they were taking early tea and hot\nbuttered toast in the former lady's apartment, and wondered how the\nRawding Crawleys could git on, the valet had damped and folded the\npaper once more, so that it looked quite fresh and innocent against the\narrival of the master of the house.\n\nPoor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and read it until his\nbrother should arrive.  But the print fell blank upon his eyes, and he\ndid not know in the least what he was reading.  The Government news and\nappointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound to peruse,\notherwise he would by no means permit the introduction of Sunday papers\ninto his household), the theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundred\npounds a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury Pet, the\nGaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a most complimentary\nthough guarded account of the famous charades of which Mrs. Becky had\nbeen the heroine--all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as he\nsat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family.\n\nPunctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble study clock\nbegan to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his appearance, fresh, neat, smugly\nshaved, with a waxy clean face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty hair\ncombed and oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairs\nmajestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel dressing-gown--a\nreal old English gentleman, in a word--a model of neatness and every\npropriety.  He started when he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbled\nclothes, with blood-shot eyes, and his hair over his face.  He thought\nhis brother was not sober, and had been out all night on some orgy.\n\"Good gracious, Rawdon,\" he said, with a blank face, \"what brings you\nhere at this time of the morning? Why ain't you at home?\"\n\n\"Home,\" said Rawdon with a wild laugh.  \"Don't be frightened, Pitt. I'm\nnot drunk.  Shut the door; I want to speak to you.\"\n\nPitt closed the door and came up to the table, where he sat down in the\nother arm-chair--that one placed for the reception of the steward,\nagent, or confidential visitor who came to transact business with the\nBaronet--and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever.\n\n\"Pitt, it's all over with me,\" the Colonel said after a pause.  \"I'm\ndone.\"\n\n\"I always said it would come to this,\" the Baronet cried peevishly, and\nbeating a tune with his clean-trimmed nails.  \"I warned you a thousand\ntimes.  I can't help you any more.  Every shilling of my money is tied\nup.  Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last night were\npromised to my lawyer to-morrow morning, and the want of it will put me\nto great inconvenience. I don't mean to say that I won't assist you\nultimately. But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as well\nhope to pay the National Debt.  It is madness, sheer madness, to think\nof such a thing.  You must come to a compromise.  It's a painful thing\nfor the family, but everybody does it.  There was George Kitely, Lord\nRagland's son, went through the Court last week, and was what they call\nwhitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay a shilling for him,\nand--\"\n\n\"It's not money I want,\" Rawdon broke in.  \"I'm not come to you about\nmyself.  Never mind what happens to me.\"\n\n\"What is the matter, then?\" said Pitt, somewhat relieved.\n\n\"It's the boy,\" said Rawdon in a husky voice.  \"I want you to promise\nme that you will take charge of him when I'm gone.  That dear good wife\nof yours has always been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he is\nof his . . .--Damn it.  Look here, Pitt--you know that I was to have\nhad Miss Crawley's money.  I wasn't brought up like a younger brother,\nbut was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle.  But for this\nI might have been quite a different man.  I didn't do my duty with the\nregiment so bad.  You know how I was thrown over about the money, and\nwho got it.\"\n\n\"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in which I have stood\nby you, I think this sort of reproach is useless,\" Sir Pitt said.\n\"Your marriage was your own doing, not mine.\"\n\n\"That's over now,\" said Rawdon.  \"That's over now.\" And the words were\nwrenched from him with a groan, which made his brother start.\n\n\"Good God!  is she dead?\" Sir Pitt said with a voice of genuine alarm\nand commiseration.\n\n\"I wish I was,\" Rawdon replied.  \"If it wasn't for little Rawdon I'd\nhave cut my throat this morning--and that damned villain's too.\"\n\nSir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that Lord Steyne was\nthe person whose life Rawdon wished to take.  The Colonel told his\nsenior briefly, and in broken accents, the circumstances of the case.\n\"It was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her,\" he said.  \"The\nbailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going out of his house;\nwhen I wrote to her for money, she said she was ill in bed and put me\noff to another day. And when I got home I found her in diamonds and\nsitting with that villain alone.\" He then went on to describe hurriedly\nthe personal conflict with Lord Steyne.  To an affair of that nature,\nof course, he said, there was but one issue, and after his conference\nwith his brother, he was going away to make the necessary arrangements\nfor the meeting which must ensue.  \"And as it may end fatally with me,\"\nRawdon said with a broken voice, \"and as the boy has no mother, I must\nleave him to you and Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if you\nwill promise me to be his friend.\"\n\nThe elder brother was much affected, and shook Rawdon's hand with a\ncordiality seldom exhibited by him. Rawdon passed his hand over his\nshaggy eyebrows. \"Thank you, brother,\" said he.  \"I know I can trust\nyour word.\"\n\n\"I will, upon my honour,\" the Baronet said.  And thus, and almost\nmutely, this bargain was struck between them.\n\nThen Rawdon took out of his pocket the little pocket-book which he had\ndiscovered in Becky's desk, and from which he drew a bundle of the\nnotes which it contained. \"Here's six hundred,\" he said--\"you didn't\nknow I was so rich.  I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lent\nit to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always felt ashamed of\nhaving taken the poor old woman's money.  And here's some more--I've\nonly kept back a few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get on\nwith.\" As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to give to his\nbrother, but his hands shook, and he was so agitated that the\npocket-book fell from him, and out of it the thousand-pound note which\nhad been the last of the unlucky Becky's winnings.\n\nPitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much wealth.  \"Not that,\"\nRawdon said.  \"I hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongs\nto.\" He had thought to himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap a\nball in the note and kill Steyne with it.\n\nAfter this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted. Lady\nJane had heard of the Colonel's arrival, and was waiting for her\nhusband in the adjoining dining-room, with female instinct, auguring\nevil.  The door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and the\nlady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers passed out of\nthe study.  She held out her hand to Rawdon and said she was glad he\nwas come to breakfast, though she could perceive, by his haggard\nunshorn face and the dark looks of her husband, that there was very\nlittle question of breakfast between them.  Rawdon muttered some\nexcuses about an engagement, squeezing hard the timid little hand which\nhis sister-in-law reached out to him.  Her imploring eyes could read\nnothing but calamity in his face, but he went away without another\nword.  Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation. The children\ncame up to salute him, and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner.\nThe mother took both of them close to herself, and held a hand of each\nof them as they knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, and\nto the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged upon chairs\non the other side of the hissing tea-urn. Breakfast was so late that\nday, in consequence of the delays which had occurred, that the\nchurch-bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal;\nand Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though her\nthoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion.\n\nRawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, and\nknocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portal\nof Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver\nwaistcoat who acts as porter of that palace.  The man was scared also\nby the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and barred the way as if\nafraid that the other was going to force it.  But Colonel Crawley only\ntook out a card and enjoined him particularly to send it in to Lord\nSteyne, and to mark the address written on it, and say that Colonel\nCrawley would be all day after one o'clock at the Regent Club in St.\nJames's Street--not at home.  The fat red-faced man looked after him\nwith astonishment as he strode away; so did the people in their Sunday\nclothes who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining faces,\nthe greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican shutting his\nshutters in the sunshine, against service commenced.  The people joked\nat the cab-stand about his appearance, as he took a carriage there, and\ntold the driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.\n\nAll the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place. He\nmight have seen his old acquaintance Amelia on her way from Brompton to\nRussell Square, had he been looking out.  Troops of schools were on\ntheir march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides of coaches in\nthe suburbs were thronged with people out upon their Sunday pleasure;\nbut the Colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena,\nand, arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the room of\nhis old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo, who Crawley found, to his\nsatisfaction, was in barracks.\n\nCaptain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo man, greatly liked by\nhis regiment, in which want of money alone prevented him from attaining\nthe highest ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed.  He had\nbeen at a fast supper-party, given the night before by Captain the\nHonourable George Cinqbars, at his house in Brompton Square, to several\nyoung men of the regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps de\nballet, and old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and ranks,\nand consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, opera-dancers, bruisers, and\nevery kind of person, in a word, was resting himself after the night's\nlabours, and, not being on duty, was in bed.\n\nHis room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures,\npresented to him by comrades as they retired from the regiment, and\nmarried and settled into quiet life.  And as he was now nearly fifty\nyears of age, twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had a\nsingular museum.  He was one of the best shots in England, and, for a\nheavy man, one of the best riders; indeed, he and Crawley had been\nrivals when the latter was in the Army.  To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo was\nlying in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very fight\nbetween the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher, which has been before\nmentioned--a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved grey\nhead, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyed\nmoustache.\n\nWhen Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knew\nperfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, and\nindeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with the\ngreatest prudence and skill.  His Royal Highness the late lamented\nCommander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo on this\naccount, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in trouble.\n\n\"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?\" said the old warrior.  \"No\nmore gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?\"\n\n\"It's about--about my wife,\" Crawley answered, casting down his eyes\nand turning very red.\n\nThe other gave a whistle.  \"I always said she'd throw you over,\" he\nbegan--indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubs\nregarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his\nwife's character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing the\nsavage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this opinion,\nMacmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further.\n\n\"Is there no way out of it, old boy?\" the Captain continued in a grave\ntone.  \"Is it only suspicion, you know, or--or what is it? Any letters?\nCan't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of that\nsort if you can help it.\" \"Think of his only finding her out now,\" the\nCaptain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particular\nconversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley's reputation had\nbeen torn to shreds.\n\n\"There's no way but one out of it,\" Rawdon replied--\"and there's only a\nway out of it for one of us, Mac--do you understand? I was put out of\nthe way--arrested--I found 'em alone together.  I told him he was a\nliar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him.\"\n\n\"Serve him right,\" Macmurdo said.  \"Who is it?\"\n\nRawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.\n\n\"The deuce!  a Marquis!  they said he--that is, they said you--\"\n\n\"What the devil do you mean?\" roared out Rawdon; \"do you mean that you\never heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?\"\n\n\"The world's very censorious, old boy,\" the other replied.  \"What the\ndeuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked about?\"\n\n\"It was damned unfriendly, Mac,\" said Rawdon, quite overcome; and,\ncovering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sight\nof which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince with\nsympathy. \"Hold up, old boy,\" he said; \"great man or not, we'll put a\nbullet in him, damn him.  As for women, they're all so.\"\n\n\"You don't know how fond I was of that one,\" Rawdon said,\nhalf-inarticulately.  \"Damme, I followed her like a footman.  I gave up\neverything I had to her.  I'm a beggar because I would marry her. By\nJove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything she\nfancied; and she--she's been making a purse for herself all the time,\nand grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod.\" He then fiercely\nand incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor had\nnever before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of the\nstory.  His adviser caught at some stray hints in it. \"She may be\ninnocent, after all,\" he said.  \"She says so. Steyne has been a hundred\ntimes alone with her in the house before.\"\n\n\"It may be so,\" Rawdon answered sadly, \"but this don't look very\ninnocent\":  and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which he\nhad found in Becky's pocket-book.  \"This is what he gave her, Mac, and\nshe kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refused\nto stand by me when I was locked up.\" The Captain could not but own\nthat the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.\n\nWhilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched Captain\nMacmurdo's servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the domestic\nthere to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had great need.\nAnd during the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson's\nDictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and his second\ncomposed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord Steyne.\nCaptain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne,\non the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that he\nwas empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements for the meeting\nwhich, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship's intention to demand, and\nwhich the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable.\nCaptain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, to\nappoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M.M.) might communicate, and\ndesired that the meeting might take place with as little delay as\npossible.\n\nIn a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession a\nbank-note for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason to\nsuppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne.  And he was anxious,\non the Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.\n\nBy the time this note was composed, the Captain's servant returned from\nhis mission to Colonel Crawley's house in Curzon Street, but without\nthe carpet-bag and portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with a\nvery puzzled and odd face.\n\n\"They won't give 'em up,\" said the man; \"there's a regular shinty in\nthe house, and everything at sixes and sevens.  The landlord's come in\nand took possession.  The servants was a drinkin' up in the\ndrawingroom.  They said--they said you had gone off with the plate,\nColonel\"--the man added after a pause--\"One of the servants is off\nalready.  And Simpson, the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed, says\nnothing shall go out of the house until his wages is paid up.\"\n\nThe account of this little revolution in May Fair astonished and gave a\nlittle gaiety to an otherwise very triste conversation.  The two\nofficers laughed at Rawdon's discomfiture.\n\n\"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home,\" Rawdon said, biting his nails.\n\"You remember him, Mac, don't you, in the Riding School? How he sat the\nkicker to be sure! didn't he?\"\n\n\"That he did, old boy,\" said the good-natured Captain.\n\nLittle Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys, in the Chapel\nof Whitefriars School, thinking, not about the sermon, but about going\nhome next Saturday, when his father would certainly tip him and perhaps\nwould take him to the play.\n\n\"He's a regular trump, that boy,\" the father went on, still musing\nabout his son.  \"I say, Mac, if anything goes wrong--if I drop--I\nshould like you to--to go and see him, you know, and say that I was\nvery fond of him, and that.  And--dash it--old chap, give him these\ngold sleeve-buttons:  it's all I've got.\" He covered his face with his\nblack hands, over which the tears rolled and made furrows of white.\nMr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take off his silk night-cap and rub\nit across his eyes.\n\n\"Go down and order some breakfast,\" he said to his man in a loud\ncheerful voice.  \"What'll you have, Crawley? Some devilled kidneys and\na herring--let's say.  And, Clay, lay out some dressing things for the\nColonel:  we were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, and\nneither of us ride so light as we did when we first entered the corps.\"\nWith which, and leaving the Colonel to dress himself, Macmurdo turned\nround towards the wall, and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, until\nsuch time as his friend's toilette was complete and he was at liberty\nto commence his own.\n\nThis, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain Macmurdo performed with\nparticular care.  He waxed his mustachios into a state of brilliant\npolish and put on a tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that all\nthe young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had preceded his\nfriend, complimented Mac on his appearance at breakfast and asked if he\nwas going to be married that Sunday.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LV\n\nIn Which the Same Subject is Pursued\n\nBecky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion in which the\nevents of the previous night had plunged her intrepid spirit until the\nbells of the Curzon Street Chapels were ringing for afternoon service,\nand rising from her bed she began to ply her own bell, in order to\nsummon the French maid who had left her some hours before.\n\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and though, on the last\noccasion, she rang with such vehemence as to pull down the bell-rope,\nMademoiselle Fifine did not make her appearance--no, not though her\nmistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her hand, came out\nto the landing-place with her hair over her shoulders and screamed out\nrepeatedly for her attendant.\n\nThe truth is, she had quitted the premises for many hours, and upon\nthat permission which is called French leave among us.  After picking up\nthe trinkets in the drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to her own\napartments, packed and corded her own boxes there, tripped out and\ncalled a cab for herself, brought down her trunks with her own hand,\nand without ever so much as asking the aid of any of the other\nservants, who would probably have refused it, as they hated her\ncordially, and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had made her\nexit from Curzon Street.\n\nThe game, in her opinion, was over in that little domestic\nestablishment.  Fifine went off in a cab, as we have known more exalted\npersons of her nation to do under similar circumstances: but, more\nprovident or lucky than these, she secured not only her own property,\nbut some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could be said to have\nany property at all)--and not only carried off the trinkets before\nalluded to, and some favourite dresses on which she had long kept her\neye, but four richly gilt Louis Quatorze candlesticks, six gilt albums,\nkeepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a gold enamelled snuff-box which had\nonce belonged to Madame du Barri, and the sweetest little inkstand and\nmother-of-pearl blotting book, which Becky used when she composed her\ncharming little pink notes, had vanished from the premises in Curzon\nStreet together with Mademoiselle Fifine, and all the silver laid on\nthe table for the little festin which Rawdon interrupted.  The plated\nware Mademoiselle left behind her was too cumbrous, probably for which\nreason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the chimney-glasses,\nand the rosewood cottage piano.\n\nA lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's shop in the Rue du\nHelder at Paris, where she lived with great credit and enjoyed the\npatronage of my Lord Steyne.  This person always spoke of England as of\nthe most treacherous country in the world, and stated to her young\npupils that she had been affreusement vole by natives of that island.\nIt was no doubt compassion for her misfortunes which induced the\nMarquis of Steyne to be so very kind to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe.  May\nshe flourish as she deserves--she appears no more in our quarter of\nVanity Fair.\n\nHearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the impudence of\nthose servants who would not answer her summons, Mrs. Crawley flung her\nmorning robe round her and descended majestically to the drawing-room,\nwhence the noise proceeded.\n\nThe cook was there with blackened face, seated on the beautiful chintz\nsofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom she was administering\nMaraschino.  The page with the sugar-loaf buttons, who carried about\nBecky's pink notes, and jumped about her little carriage with such\nalacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers into a cream dish; the\nfootman was talking to Raggles, who had a face full of perplexity and\nwoe--and yet, though the door was open, and Becky had been screaming a\nhalf-dozen of times a few feet off, not one of her attendants had\nobeyed her call.  \"Have a little drop, do'ee now, Mrs. Raggles,\" the\ncook was saying as Becky entered, the white cashmere dressing-gown\nflouncing around her.\n\n\"Simpson!  Trotter!\" the mistress of the house cried in great wrath.\n\"How dare you stay here when you heard me call? How dare you sit down\nin my presence? Where's my maid?\" The page withdrew his fingers from\nhis mouth with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a glass of\nMaraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough, staring at Becky over\nthe little gilt glass as she drained its contents. The liquor appeared\nto give the odious rebel courage.\n\n\"YOUR sofy, indeed!\" Mrs. Cook said.  \"I'm a settin' on Mrs. Raggles's\nsofy.  Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum. I'm a settin' on Mr. and Mrs.\nRaggles's sofy, which they bought with honest money, and very dear it\ncost 'em, too.  And I'm thinkin' if I set here until I'm paid my wages,\nI shall set a precious long time, Mrs. Raggles; and set I will,\ntoo--ha!  ha!\" and with this she filled herself another glass of the\nliquor and drank it with a more hideously satirical air.\n\n\"Trotter!  Simpson!  turn that drunken wretch out,\" screamed Mrs.\nCrawley.\n\n\"I shawn't,\" said Trotter the footman; \"turn out yourself.  Pay our\nselleries, and turn me out too.  WE'LL go fast enough.\"\n\n\"Are you all here to insult me?\" cried Becky in a fury; \"when Colonel\nCrawley comes home I'll--\"\n\nAt this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in which, however,\nRaggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join.\n\"He ain't a coming back,\" Mr. Trotter resumed.  \"He sent for his\nthings, and I wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and I\ndon't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am.  He's hoff, and I\nsuppose you're a goin' after him.  You're no better than swindlers,\nboth on you.  Don't be a bullyin' ME.  I won't stand it.  Pay us our\nselleries, I say.  Pay us our selleries.\" It was evident, from Mr.\nTrotter's flushed countenance and defective intonation, that he, too,\nhad had recourse to vinous stimulus.\n\n\"Mr. Raggles,\" said Becky in a passion of vexation, \"you will not\nsurely let me be insulted by that drunken man?\" \"Hold your noise,\nTrotter; do now,\" said Simpson the page.  He was affected by his\nmistress's deplorable situation, and succeeded in preventing an\noutrageous denial of the epithet \"drunken\" on the footman's part.\n\n\"Oh, M'am,\" said Raggles, \"I never thought to live to see this year\nday:  I've known the Crawley family ever since I was born.  I lived\nbutler with Miss Crawley for thirty years; and I little thought one of\nthat family was a goin' to ruing me--yes, ruing me\"--said the poor\nfellow with tears in his eyes.  \"Har you a goin' to pay me? You've\nlived in this 'ouse four year.  You've 'ad my substance: my plate and\nlinning.  You ho me a milk and butter bill of two 'undred pound, you\nmust 'ave noo laid heggs for your homlets, and cream for your spanil\ndog.\"\n\n\"She didn't care what her own flesh and blood had,\" interposed the\ncook.  \"Many's the time, he'd have starved but for me.\"\n\n\"He's a charaty-boy now, Cooky,\" said Mr. Trotter, with a drunken \"ha!\nha!\"--and honest Raggles continued, in a lamentable tone, an\nenumeration of his griefs.  All he said was true.  Becky and her\nhusband had ruined him. He had bills coming due next week and no means\nto meet them.  He would be sold up and turned out of his shop and his\nhouse, because he had trusted to the Crawley family.  His tears and\nlamentations made Becky more peevish than ever.\n\n\"You all seem to be against me,\" she said bitterly. \"What do you want?\nI can't pay you on Sunday.  Come back to-morrow and I'll pay you\neverything.  I thought Colonel Crawley had settled with you.  He will\nto-morrow. I declare to you upon my honour that he left home this\nmorning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book. He has left me\nnothing.  Apply to him.  Give me a bonnet and shawl and let me go out\nand find him.  There was a difference between us this morning.  You all\nseem to know it.  I promise you upon my word that you shall all be\npaid.  He has got a good appointment.  Let me go out and find him.\"\n\nThis audacious statement caused Raggles and the other personages\npresent to look at one another with a wild surprise, and with it\nRebecca left them.  She went upstairs and dressed herself this time\nwithout the aid of her French maid.  She went into Rawdon's room, and\nthere saw that a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with a\npencil direction that they should be given when called for; then she\nwent into the Frenchwoman's garret; everything was clean, and all the\ndrawers emptied there. She bethought herself of the trinkets which had\nbeen left on the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled. \"Good\nHeavens!  was ever such ill luck as mine?\" she said; \"to be so near,\nand to lose all.  Is it all too late?\" No; there was one chance more.\n\nShe dressed herself and went away unmolested this time, but alone. It\nwas four o'clock.  She went swiftly down the streets (she had no money\nto pay for a carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir Pitt\nCrawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street.  Where was Lady Jane Crawley?\nShe was at church.  Becky was not sorry. Sir Pitt was in his study, and\nhad given orders not to be disturbed--she must see him--she slipped by\nthe sentinel in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before the\nastonished Baronet had even laid down the paper.\n\nHe turned red and started back from her with a look of great alarm and\nhorror.\n\n\"Do not look so,\" she said.  \"I am not guilty, Pitt, dear Pitt; you\nwere my friend once.  Before God, I am not guilty.  I seem so.\nEverything is against me.  And oh!  at such a moment!  just when all my\nhopes were about to be realized:  just when happiness was in store for\nus.\"\n\n\"Is this true, what I see in the paper then?\" Sir Pitt said--a\nparagraph in which had greatly surprised him.\n\n\"It is true.  Lord Steyne told me on Friday night, the night of that\nfatal ball.  He has been promised an appointment any time these six\nmonths.  Mr. Martyr, the Colonial Secretary, told him yesterday that it\nwas made out. That unlucky arrest ensued; that horrible meeting. I was\nonly guilty of too much devotedness to Rawdon's service.  I have\nreceived Lord Steyne alone a hundred times before. I confess I had\nmoney of which Rawdon knew nothing. Don't you know how careless he is\nof it, and could I dare to confide it to him?\" And so she went on with\na perfectly connected story, which she poured into the ears of her\nperplexed kinsman.\n\nIt was to the following effect.  Becky owned, and with perfect\nfrankness, but deep contrition, that having remarked Lord Steyne's\npartiality for her (at the mention of which Pitt blushed), and being\nsecure of her own virtue, she had determined to turn the great peer's\nattachment to the advantage of herself and her family.  \"I looked for a\npeerage for you, Pitt,\" she said (the brother-in-law again turned red).\n\"We have talked about it.  Your genius and Lord Steyne's interest made\nit more than probable, had not this dreadful calamity come to put an\nend to all our hopes.  But, first, I own that it was my object to\nrescue my dear husband--him whom I love in spite of all his ill usage\nand suspicions of me--to remove him from the poverty and ruin which was\nimpending over us.  I saw Lord Steyne's partiality for me,\" she said,\ncasting down her eyes.  \"I own that I did everything in my power to\nmake myself pleasing to him, and as far as an honest woman may, to\nsecure his--his esteem. It was only on Friday morning that the news\narrived of the death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lord\ninstantly secured the appointment for my dear husband. It was intended\nas a surprise for him--he was to see it in the papers to-day.  Even\nafter that horrid arrest took place (the expenses of which Lord Steyne\ngenerously said he would settle, so that I was in a manner prevented\nfrom coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was laughing with me,\nand saying that my dearest Rawdon would be consoled when he read of his\nappointment in the paper, in that shocking spun--bailiff's house. And\nthen--then he came home.  His suspicions were excited,--the dreadful\nscene took place between my Lord and my cruel, cruel Rawdon--and, O my\nGod, what will happen next? Pitt, dear Pitt!  pity me, and reconcile\nus!\" And as she spoke she flung herself down on her knees, and bursting\ninto tears, seized hold of Pitt's hand, which she kissed passionately.\n\nIt was in this very attitude that Lady Jane, who, returning from\nchurch, ran to her husband's room directly she heard Mrs. Rawdon\nCrawley was closeted there, found the Baronet and his sister-in-law.\n\n\"I am surprised that woman has the audacity to enter this house,\" Lady\nJane said, trembling in every limb and turning quite pale. (Her\nLadyship had sent out her maid directly after breakfast, who had\ncommunicated with Raggles and Rawdon Crawley's household, who had told\nher all, and a great deal more than they knew, of that story, and many\nothers besides).  \"How dare Mrs. Crawley to enter the house of--of an\nhonest family?\"\n\nSir Pitt started back, amazed at his wife's display of vigour. Becky\nstill kept her kneeling posture and clung to Sir Pitt's hand.\n\n\"Tell her that she does not know all:  Tell her that I am innocent,\ndear Pitt,\" she whimpered out.\n\n\"Upon my word, my love, I think you do Mrs. Crawley injustice,\" Sir\nPitt said; at which speech Rebecca was vastly relieved.  \"Indeed I\nbelieve her to be--\"\n\n\"To be what?\" cried out Lady Jane, her clear voice thrilling and, her\nheart beating violently as she spoke. \"To be a wicked woman--a\nheartless mother, a false wife? She never loved her dear little boy,\nwho used to fly here and tell me of her cruelty to him.  She never came\ninto a family but she strove to bring misery with her and to weaken the\nmost sacred affections with her wicked flattery and falsehoods.  She\nhas deceived her husband, as she has deceived everybody; her soul is\nblack with vanity, worldliness, and all sorts of crime.  I tremble when\nI touch her.  I keep my children out of her sight.\"\n\n\"Lady Jane!\" cried Sir Pitt, starting up, \"this is really language--\"\n\"I have been a true and faithful wife to you, Sir Pitt,\" Lady Jane\ncontinued, intrepidly; \"I have kept my marriage vow as I made it to God\nand have been obedient and gentle as a wife should.  But righteous\nobedience has its limits, and I declare that I will not bear that--that\nwoman again under my roof; if she enters it, I and my children will\nleave it.  She is not worthy to sit down with Christian people.\nYou--you must choose, sir, between her and me\"; and with this my Lady\nswept out of the room, fluttering with her own audacity, and leaving\nRebecca and Sir Pitt not a little astonished at it.\n\nAs for Becky, she was not hurt; nay, she was pleased. \"It was the\ndiamond-clasp you gave me,\" she said to Sir Pitt, reaching him out her\nhand; and before she left him (for which event you may be sure my Lady\nJane was looking out from her dressing-room window in the upper story)\nthe Baronet had promised to go and seek out his brother, and endeavour\nto bring about a reconciliation.\n\nRawdon found some of the young fellows of the regiment seated in the\nmess-room at breakfast, and was induced without much difficulty to\npartake of that meal, and of the devilled legs of fowls and soda-water\nwith which these young gentlemen fortified themselves.  Then they had a\nconversation befitting the day and their time of life: about the next\npigeon-match at Battersea, with relative bets upon Ross and\nOsbaldiston; about Mademoiselle Ariane of the French Opera, and who had\nleft her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr; and about the fight\nbetween the Butcher and the Pet, and the probabilities that it was a\ncross.  Young Tandyman, a hero of seventeen, laboriously endeavouring\nto get up a pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in the\nmost scientific manner about the battle and the condition of the men.\nIt was he who had driven the Butcher on to the ground in his drag and\npassed the whole of the previous night with him.  Had there not been\nfoul play he must have won it.  All the old files of the Ring were in\nit; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't pay.  It was but\na year since the young Cornet, now so knowing a hand in Cribb's\nparlour, had a still lingering liking for toffy, and used to be birched\nat Eton.\n\nSo they went on talking about dancers, fights, drinking, demireps,\nuntil Macmurdo came down and joined the boys and the conversation. He\ndid not appear to think that any especial reverence was due to their\nboyhood; the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice as\nany the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his own grey hairs\nnor their smooth faces detain him.  Old Mac was famous for his good\nstories.  He was not exactly a lady's man; that is, men asked him to\ndine rather at the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.\nThere can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his, but he was quite\ncontented with it, such as it was, and led it in perfect good nature,\nsimplicity, and modesty of demeanour.\n\nBy the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast, most of the others\nhad concluded their meal.  Young Lord Varinas was smoking an immense\nMeerschaum pipe, while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: that\nviolent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier between his\nlegs, was tossing for shillings with all his might (that fellow was\nalways at some game or other) against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and\nRawdon walked off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any\nhint of the business which was occupying their minds.  Both, on the\nother hand, had joined pretty gaily in the conversation, for why should\nthey interrupt it? Feasting, drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on\nalongside of all sorts of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds\nwere pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed down St.\nJames's Street and entered into their Club.\n\nThe old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand gaping and grinning\nout of the great front window of the Club, had not arrived at their\nposts as yet--the newspaper-room was almost empty.  One man was present\nwhom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed a little score for\nwhist, and whom, in consequence, he did not care to meet; a third was\nreading the Royalist (a periodical famous for its scandal and its\nattachment to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and looking\nup at Crawley with some interest, said, \"Crawley, I congratulate you.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" said the Colonel.\n\n\"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too,\" said Mr. Smith.\n\n\"What?\" Rawdon cried, turning very red.  He thought that the affair\nwith Lord Steyne was already in the public prints.  Smith looked up\nwondering and smiling at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as\nhe took up the paper and, trembling, began to read.\n\nMr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with whom Rawdon had the\noutstanding whist account) had been talking about the Colonel just\nbefore he came in.\n\n\"It is come just in the nick of time,\" said Smith.  \"I suppose Crawley\nhad not a shilling in the world.\"\n\n\"It's a wind that blows everybody good,\" Mr. Brown said.  \"He can't go\naway without paying me a pony he owes me.\"\n\n\"What's the salary?\" asked Smith.\n\n\"Two or three thousand,\" answered the other.  \"But the climate's so\ninfernal, they don't enjoy it long. Liverseege died after eighteen\nmonths of it, and the man before went off in six weeks, I hear.\"\n\n\"Some people say his brother is a very clever man.  I always found him\na d------ bore,\" Smith ejaculated.  \"He must have good interest, though.\nHe must have got the Colonel the place.\"\n\n\"He!\" said Brown, with a sneer.  \"Pooh.  It was Lord Steyne got it.\"\n\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\n\"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,\" answered the other\nenigmatically, and went to read his papers.\n\nRawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following astonishing\nparagraph:\n\nGOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S. Yellowjack, Commander\nJaunders, has brought letters and papers from Coventry Island.  H. E.\nSir Thomas Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at\nSwampton.  His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing colony.  We hear\nthat the Governorship has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B.,\na distinguished Waterloo officer.  We need not only men of acknowledged\nbravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend the affairs\nof our colonies, and we have no doubt that the gentleman selected by\nthe Colonial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at\nCoventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which he is about\nto occupy.\n\n\n\"Coventry Island!  Where was it? Who had appointed him to the\ngovernment? You must take me out as your secretary, old boy,\" Captain\nMacmurdo said laughing; and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and\nperplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought in to the\nColonel a card on which the name of Mr. Wenham was engraved, who begged\nto see Colonel Crawley.\n\nThe Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet the gentleman,\nrightly conjecturing that he was an emissary of Lord Steyne.  \"How d'ye\ndo, Crawley? I am glad to see you,\" said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,\nand grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.\n\n\"You come, I suppose, from--\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Mr. Wenham.\n\n\"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life Guards Green.\"\n\n\"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure,\" Mr. Wenham said and\ntendered another smile and shake of the hand to the second, as he had\ndone to the principal. Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin\nglove, and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his tight cravat.\nHe was, perhaps, discontented at being put in communication with a\npekin, and thought that Lord Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at\nthe very least.\n\n\"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,\" Crawley said, \"I had\nbetter retire and leave you together.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Macmurdo.\n\n\"By no means, my dear Colonel,\" Mr. Wenham said; \"the interview which I\nhad the honour of requesting was with you personally, though the\ncompany of Captain Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing.  In\nfact, Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none but the\nmost agreeable results, very different from those which my friend\nColonel Crawley appears to anticipate.\"\n\n\"Humph!\" said Captain Macmurdo.  Be hanged to these civilians, he\nthought to himself, they are always for arranging and speechifying. Mr.\nWenham took a chair which was not offered to him--took a paper from his\npocket, and resumed--\n\n\"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the papers this morning,\nColonel? Government has secured a most valuable servant, and you, if\nyou accept office, as I presume you will, an excellent appointment.\nThree thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-house,\nall your own way in the Colony, and a certain promotion.  I\ncongratulate you with all my heart.  I presume you know, gentlemen, to\nwhom my friend is indebted for this piece of patronage?\"\n\n\"Hanged if I know,\" the Captain said; his principal turned very red.\n\n\"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the world, as he is one\nof the greatest--to my excellent friend, the Marquis of Steyne.\"\n\n\"I'll see him d---- before I take his place,\" growled out Rawdon.\n\n\"You are irritated against my noble friend,\" Mr. Wenham calmly resumed;\n\"and now, in the name of common sense and justice, tell me why?\"\n\n\"WHY?\" cried Rawdon in surprise.\n\n\"Why? Dammy!\" said the Captain, ringing his stick on the ground.\n\n\"Dammy, indeed,\" said Mr. Wenham with the most agreeable smile; \"still,\nlook at the matter as a man of the world--as an honest man--and see if\nyou have not been in the wrong.  You come home from a journey, and\nfind--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in Curzon Street with\nMrs. Crawley.  Is the circumstance strange or novel? Has he not been a\nhundred times before in the same position? Upon my honour and word as a\ngentleman\"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on his waistcoat with a\nparliamentary air--\"I declare I think that your suspicions are\nmonstrous and utterly unfounded, and that they injure an honourable\ngentleman who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand\nbenefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady.\"\n\n\"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's mistaken?\" said Mr.\nMacmurdo.\n\n\"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my wife, Mrs. Wenham,\"\nMr. Wenham said with great energy.  \"I believe that, misled by an\ninfernal jealousy, my friend here strikes a blow against not only an\ninfirm and old man of high station, his constant friend and benefactor,\nbut against his wife, his own dearest honour, his son's future\nreputation, and his own prospects in life.\"\n\n\"I will tell you what happened,\" Mr. Wenham continued with great\nsolemnity; \"I was sent for this morning by my Lord Steyne, and found\nhim in a pitiable state, as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any\nman of age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with a man\nof your strength.  I say to your face; it was a cruel advantage you\ntook of that strength, Colonel Crawley.  It was not only the body of my\nnoble and excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was\nbleeding.  A man whom he had loaded with benefits and regarded with\naffection had subjected him to the foulest indignity.  What was this\nvery appointment, which appears in the journals of to-day, but a proof\nof his kindness to you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found\nhim in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you are to\nrevenge the outrage committed upon him, by blood.  You know he has\ngiven his proofs, I presume, Colonel Crawley?\"\n\n\"He has plenty of pluck,\" said the Colonel.  \"Nobody ever said he\nhadn't.\"\n\n\"His first order to me was to write a letter of challenge, and to carry\nit to Colonel Crawley.  One or other of us,\" he said, \"must not survive\nthe outrage of last night.\"\n\nCrawley nodded.  \"You're coming to the point, Wenham,\" he said.\n\n\"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. 'Good God! sir,' I said, 'how I\nregret that Mrs. Wenham and myself had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's\ninvitation to sup with her!'\"\n\n\"She asked you to sup with her?\" Captain Macmurdo said.\n\n\"After the opera.  Here's the note of invitation--stop--no, this is\nanother paper--I thought I had it, but it's of no consequence, and I\npledge you my word to the fact.  If we had come--and it was only one of\nMrs. Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers under them a\ngood deal, especially in the spring--if we had come, and you had\nreturned home, there would have been no quarrel, no insult, no\nsuspicion--and so it is positively because my poor wife has a headache\nthat you are to bring death down upon two men of honour and plunge two\nof the most excellent and ancient families in the kingdom into disgrace\nand sorrow.\"\n\nMr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air of a man profoundly\npuzzled, and Rawdon felt with a kind of rage that his prey was escaping\nhim.  He did not believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or\ndisprove it?\n\nMr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory, which in his place\nin Parliament he had so often practised--\"I sat for an hour or more by\nLord Steyne's bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his\nintention of demanding a meeting.  I pointed out to him that the\ncircumstances were after all suspicious--they were suspicious.  I\nacknowledge it--any man in your position might have been taken in--I\nsaid that a man furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a\nmadman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel between you must\nlead to the disgrace of all parties concerned--that a man of his\nLordship's exalted station had no right in these days, when the most\natrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling\ndoctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal;\nand that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he was\nguilty.  In fine, I implored him not to send the challenge.\"\n\n\"I don't believe one word of the whole story,\" said Rawdon, grinding\nhis teeth.  \"I believe it a d------ lie, and that you're in it, Mr.\nWenham.  If the challenge don't come from him, by Jove it shall come\nfrom me.\"\n\nMr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage interruption of the\nColonel and looked towards the door.\n\nBut he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo.  That gentleman rose up\nwith an oath and rebuked Rawdon for his language.  \"You put the affair\ninto my hands, and you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as\nyou do. You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort of\nlanguage; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an apology.  And as for a\nchallenge to Lord Steyne, you may get somebody else to carry it, I\nwon't.  If my lord, after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy\nlet him. And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my belief is,\nthere's nothing proved at all:  that your wife's innocent, as innocent\nas Mr. Wenham says she is; and at any rate that you would be a d--fool\nnot to take the place and hold your tongue.\"\n\n\"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,\" Mr. Wenham cried\nout, immensely relieved--\"I forget any words that Colonel Crawley has\nused in the irritation of the moment.\"\n\n\"I thought you would,\" Rawdon said with a sneer.\n\n\"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid,\" the Captain said good-naturedly.\n\"Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and quite right, too.\"\n\n\"This matter, in my belief,\" the Steyne emissary cried, \"ought to be\nburied in the most profound oblivion.  A word concerning it should\nnever pass these doors.  I speak in the interest of my friend, as well\nas of Colonel Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy.\"\n\n\"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very much,\" said Captain\nMacmurdo; \"and I don't see why our side should.  The affair ain't a\nvery pretty one, any way you take it, and the less said about it the\nbetter. It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,\nwhy, I think, we should be.\"\n\nMr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain Macmurdo following him\nto the door, shut it upon himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving\nRawdon chafing within.  When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo\nlooked hard at the other ambassador and with an expression of anything\nbut respect on his round jolly face.\n\n\"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham,\" he said.\n\n\"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo,\" answered the other with a smile.\n\"Upon my honour and conscience now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup\nafter the opera.\"\n\n\"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-aches.  I say, I've got\na thousand-pound note here, which I will give you if you will give me a\nreceipt, please; and I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord\nSteyne. My man shan't fight him.  But we had rather not take his money.\"\n\n\"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir,\" the other said with\nthe utmost innocence of manner; and was bowed down the Club steps by\nCaptain Macmurdo, just as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a\nslight acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the Captain, going\nback with the Baronet to the room where the latter's brother was, told\nSir Pitt, in confidence, that he had made the affair all right between\nLord Steyne and the Colonel.\n\nSir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence, and\ncongratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful issue of the affair,\nmaking appropriate moral remarks upon the evils of duelling and the\nunsatisfactory nature of that sort of settlement of disputes.\n\nAnd after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence to effect a\nreconciliation between Rawdon and his wife. He recapitulated the\nstatements which Becky had made, pointed out the probabilities of their\ntruth, and asserted his own firm belief in her innocence.\n\nBut Rawdon would not hear of it.  \"She has kep money concealed from me\nthese ten years,\" he said \"She swore, last night only, she had none\nfrom Steyne.  She knew it was all up, directly I found it.  If she's\nnot guilty, Pitt, she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her\nagain--never.\" His head sank down on his chest as he spoke the words,\nand he looked quite broken and sad.\n\n\"Poor old boy,\" Macmurdo said, shaking his head.\n\nRawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of taking the place\nwhich had been procured for him by so odious a patron, and was also for\nremoving the boy from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had\nplaced him.  He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these benefits by\nthe entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo, but mainly by the latter,\npointing out to him what a fury Steyne would be in to think that his\nenemy's fortune was made through his means.\n\nWhen the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his accident, the Colonial\nSecretary bowed up to him and congratulated himself and the Service\nupon having made so excellent an appointment.  These congratulations\nwere received with a degree of gratitude which may be imagined on the\npart of Lord Steyne.\n\nThe secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel Crawley was buried\nin the profoundest oblivion, as Wenham said; that is, by the seconds\nand the principals. But before that evening was over it was talked of\nat fifty dinner-tables in Vanity Fair.  Little Cackleby himself went to\nseven evening parties and told the story with comments and emendations\nat each place.  How Mrs. Washington White revelled in it!  The\nBishopess of Ealing was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and\nwrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House that very day.\nLittle Southdown was sorry; so you may be sure was his sister Lady\nJane, very sorry.  Lady Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at\nthe Cape of Good Hope.  It was town-talk for at least three days, and\nwas only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions of Mr. Wagg,\nacting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.\n\nThe bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in Curzon Street, and\nthe late fair tenant of that poor little mansion was in the\nmeanwhile--where? Who cared!  Who asked after a day or two? Was she\nguilty or not? We all know how charitable the world is, and how the\nverdict of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt.  Some people said\nshe had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne, whilst others averred\nthat his Lordship quitted that city and fled to Palermo on hearing of\nBecky's arrival; some said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become\na dame d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was at\nBoulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at Cheltenham.\n\nRawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may be sure that she was a\nwoman who could make a little money go a great way, as the saying is.\nHe would have paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any\nInsurance Office to take his life, but the climate of Coventry Island\nwas so bad that he could borrow no money on the strength of his salary.\nHe remitted, however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his\nlittle boy regularly every mail.  He kept Macmurdo in cigars and sent\nover quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot pickles, guava jelly,\nand colonial produce to Lady Jane. He sent his brother home the Swamp\nTown Gazette, in which the new Governor was praised with immense\nenthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose wife was not asked\nto Government House, declared that his Excellency was a tyrant,\ncompared to whom Nero was an enlightened philanthropist.  Little Rawdon\nused to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.\n\nHis mother never made any movement to see the child. He went home to\nhis aunt for Sundays and holidays; he soon knew every bird's nest about\nQueen's Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he\nadmired so on his first well-remembered visit to Hampshire.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVI\n\nGeorgy is Made a Gentleman\n\nGeorgy Osborne was now fairly established in his grandfather's mansion\nin Russell Square, occupant of his father's room in the house and heir\napparent of all the splendours there.  The good looks, gallant bearing,\nand gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's heart for\nhim.  Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever he had been of the elder\nGeorge.\n\nThe child had many more luxuries and indulgences than had been awarded\nhis father.  Osborne's commerce had prospered greatly of late years.\nHis wealth and importance in the City had very much increased.  He had\nbeen glad enough in former days to put the elder George to a good\nprivate school; and a commission in the army for his son had been a\nsource of no small pride to him; for little George and his future\nprospects the old man looked much higher.  He would make a gentleman of\nthe little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying regarding little\nGeorgy.  He saw him in his mind's eye, a collegian, a Parliament man, a\nBaronet, perhaps.  The old man thought he would die contented if he\ncould see his grandson in a fair way to such honours.  He would have\nnone but a tip-top college man to educate him--none of your quacks and\npretenders--no, no.  A few years before, he used to be savage, and\ninveigh against all parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they\nwere a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get their living\nbut by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set of supercilious dogs that\npretended to look down upon British merchants and gentlemen, who could\nbuy up half a hundred of 'em.  He would mourn now, in a very solemn\nmanner, that his own education had been neglected, and repeatedly point\nout, in pompous orations to Georgy, the necessity and excellence of\nclassical acquirements.\n\nWhen they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask the lad what he had\nbeen reading during the day, and was greatly interested at the report\nthe boy gave of his own studies, pretending to understand little George\nwhen he spoke regarding them.  He made a hundred blunders and showed\nhis ignorance many a time.  It did not increase the respect which the\nchild had for his senior. A quick brain and a better education\nelsewhere showed the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard,\nand he began accordingly to command him and to look down upon him; for\nhis previous education, humble and contracted as it had been, had made\na much better gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather\ncould make him.  He had been brought up by a kind, weak, and tender\nwoman, who had no pride about anything but about him, and whose heart\nwas so pure and whose bearing was so meek and humble that she could not\nbut needs be a true lady.  She busied herself in gentle offices and\nquiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she never spoke or\nthought unkind ones; guileless and artless, loving and pure, indeed how\ncould our poor little Amelia be other than a real gentlewoman!\n\nYoung Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding nature; and the\ncontrast of its simplicity and delicacy with the coarse pomposity of\nthe dull old man with whom he next came in contact made him lord over\nthe latter too.  If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have been\nbetter brought up to think well of himself.\n\nWhilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and I do believe\nevery hour of the day, and during most hours of the sad lonely nights,\nthinking of him, this young gentleman had a number of pleasures and\nconsolations administered to him, which made him for his part bear the\nseparation from Amelia very easily.  Little boys who cry when they are\ngoing to school cry because they are going to a very uncomfortable\nplace.  It is only a few who weep from sheer affection.  When you think\nthat the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a piece of\ngingerbread, and that a plum cake was a compensation for the agony of\nparting with your mamma and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need\nnot be too confident of your own fine feelings.\n\nWell, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort and luxury that a\nwealthy and lavish old grandfather thought fit to provide.  The\ncoachman was instructed to purchase for him the handsomest pony which\ncould be bought for money, and on this George was taught to ride, first\nat a riding-school, whence, after having performed satisfactorily\nwithout stirrups, and over the leaping-bar, he was conducted through\nthe New Road to Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode in\nstate with Martin the coachman behind him. Old Osborne, who took\nmatters more easily in the City now, where he left his affairs to his\njunior partners, would often ride out with Miss O.  in the same\nfashionable direction. As little Georgy came cantering up with his\ndandified air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge the lad's\naunt and say, \"Look, Miss O.\" And he would laugh, and his face would\ngrow red with pleasure, as he nodded out of the window to the boy, as\nthe groom saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master George.\nHere too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock (whose chariot might daily be\nseen in the Ring, with bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and\nharness, and three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades\nand feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick Bullock, I say,\nflung glances of the bitterest hatred at the little upstart as he rode\nby with his hand on his side and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.\n\nThough he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master George wore straps\nand the most beautiful little boots like a man.  He had gilt spurs, and\na gold-headed whip, and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest\nlittle kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish. His mother\nhad given him a couple of neckcloths, and carefully hemmed and made\nsome little shirts for him; but when her Eli came to see the widow,\nthey were replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons\nin the lawn shirt fronts.  Her humble presents had been put aside--I\nbelieve Miss Osborne had given them to the coachman's boy.  Amelia\ntried to think she was pleased at the change.  Indeed, she was happy\nand charmed to see the boy looking so beautiful.\n\nShe had had a little black profile of him done for a shilling, and this\nwas hung up by the side of another portrait over her bed.  One day the\nboy came on his accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at\nBrompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the windows to\nadmire his splendour, and with great eagerness and a look of triumph in\nhis face, he pulled a case out of his great-coat--it was a natty white\ngreat-coat, with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red morocco\ncase, which he gave her.\n\n\"I bought it with my own money, Mamma,\" he said. \"I thought you'd like\nit.\"\n\nAmelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of delighted affection,\nseized the boy and embraced him a hundred times.  It was a miniature of\nhimself, very prettily done (though not half handsome enough, we may be\nsure, the widow thought).  His grandfather had wished to have a picture\nof him by an artist whose works, exhibited in a shop-window, in\nSouthampton Row, had caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who\nhad plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter how much a\ncopy of the little portrait would cost, saying that he would pay for it\nout of his own money and that he wanted to give it to his mother.  The\npleased painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne himself,\nwhen he heard of the incident, growled out his satisfaction and gave\nthe boy twice as many sovereigns as he paid for the miniature.\n\nBut what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to Amelia's ecstacy?\nThat proof of the boy's affection charmed her so that she thought no\nchild in the world was like hers for goodness.  For long weeks after,\nthe thought of his love made her happy.  She slept better with the\npicture under her pillow, and how many many times did she kiss it and\nweep and pray over it!  A small kindness from those she loved made that\ntimid heart grateful.  Since her parting with George she had had no\nsuch joy and consolation.\n\nAt his new home Master George ruled like a lord; at dinner he invited\nthe ladies to drink wine with the utmost coolness, and took off his\nchampagne in a way which charmed his old grandfather.  \"Look at him,\"\nthe old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a delighted purple\nface, \"did you ever see such a chap? Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a\ndressing-case next, and razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't.\"\n\nThe antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr. Osborne's friends\nso much as they pleased the old gentleman.  It gave Mr. Justice Coffin\nno pleasure to hear Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his\nstories. Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy half\ntipsy.  Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular gratitude, when,\nwith a twist of his elbow, he tilted a glass of port-wine over her\nyellow satin and laughed at the disaster; nor was she better pleased,\nalthough old Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy \"whopped\" her\nthird boy (a young gentleman a year older than Georgy, and by chance\nhome for the holidays from Dr. Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell\nSquare. George's grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for\nthat feat and promised to reward him further for every boy above his\nown size and age whom he whopped in a similar manner.  It is difficult\nto say what good the old man saw in these combats; he had a vague\nnotion that quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful\naccomplishment for them to learn.  English youth have been so educated\ntime out of mind, and we have hundreds of thousands of apologists and\nadmirers of injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among\nchildren.  Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy, George\nwished naturally to pursue his conquests further, and one day as he was\nstrutting about in prodigiously dandified new clothes, near St.\nPancras, and a young baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his\nappearance, the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket with\ngreat spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend who accompanied him\n(Master Todd, of Great Coram Street, Russell Square, son of the junior\npartner of the house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the\nlittle baker.  But the chances of war were unfavourable this time, and\nthe little baker whopped Georgy, who came home with a rueful black eye\nand all his fine shirt frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own\nlittle nose.  He told his grandfather that he had been in combat with a\ngiant, and frightened his poor mother at Brompton with long, and by no\nmeans authentic, accounts of the battle.\n\nThis young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square, was Master George's\ngreat friend and admirer.  They both had a taste for painting\ntheatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding\nand skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather\npermitted; for going to the play, whither they were often conducted, by\nMr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's appointed\nbody-servant, with whom they sat in great comfort in the pit.\n\nIn the company of this gentleman they visited all the principal\ntheatres of the metropolis; knew the names of all the actors from Drury\nLane to Sadler's Wells; and performed, indeed, many of the plays to the\nTodd family and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,\non their pasteboard theatre.  Rowson, the footman, who was of a\ngenerous disposition, would not unfrequently, when in cash, treat his\nyoung master to oysters after the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for\na night-cap. We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in his\nturn by his young master's liberality and gratitude for the pleasures\nto which the footman inducted him.\n\nA famous tailor from the West End of the town--Mr. Osborne would have\nnone of your City or Holborn bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a\nCity tailor was good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little\nGeorge's person, and was told to spare no expense in so doing.  So, Mr.\nWoolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose to his imagination and sent\nthe child home fancy trousers, fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets\nenough to furnish a school of little dandies.  Georgy had little white\nwaistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats for\ndinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown, for all the\nworld like a little man. He dressed for dinner every day, \"like a\nregular West End swell,\" as his grandfather remarked; one of the\ndomestics was affected to his special service, attended him at his\ntoilette, answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a\nsilver tray.\n\nGeorgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in the dining-room\nand read the Morning Post, just like a grown-up man.  \"How he DU dam\nand swear,\" the servants would cry, delighted at his precocity.  Those\nwho remembered the Captain his father, declared Master George was his\nPa, every inch of him.  He made the house lively by his activity, his\nimperiousness, his scolding, and his good-nature.\n\nGeorge's education was confided to a neighbouring scholar and private\npedagogue who \"prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the\nUniversities, the senate, and the learned professions:  whose system\ndid not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at\nthe ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils would\nfind the elegances of refined society and the confidence and affection\nof a home.\" It was in this way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart\nStreet, Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres,\nstrove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.\n\nBy thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the domestic Chaplain and\nhis Lady generally succeeded in having one or two scholars by them--who\npaid a high figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable\nquarters.  There was a large West Indian, whom nobody came to see, with\na mahogany complexion, a woolly head, and an exceedingly dandyfied\nappearance; there was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose\neducation had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal were to\nintroduce into the polite world; there were two sons of Colonel Bangles\nof the East India Company's Service:  these four sat down to dinner at\nMrs. Veal's genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her\nestablishment.\n\nGeorgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy; he arrived in\nthe morning under the guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it\nwas fine, would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by the\ngroom.  The wealth of his grandfather was reported in the school to be\nprodigious.  The Rev. Mr. Veal used to compliment Georgy upon it\npersonally, warning him that he was destined for a high station; that\nit became him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the\nlofty duties to which he would be called in mature age; that obedience\nin the child was the best preparation for command in the man; and that\nhe therefore begged George would not bring toffee into the school and\nruin the health of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted\nat the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.\n\nWith respect to learning, \"the Curriculum,\" as Mr. Veal loved to call\nit, was of prodigious extent, and the young gentlemen in Hart Street\nmight learn a something of every known science.  The Rev. Mr. Veal had\nan orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a theatre (in the\nwash-house), a chemical apparatus, and what he called a select library\nof all the works of the best authors of ancient and modern times and\nlanguages. He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted upon\nthe antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so that\naudiences would gather round him as he spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly\nadmired him as a prodigiously well-informed man.  And whenever he spoke\n(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finest\nand longest words of which the vocabulary gave him the use, rightly\njudging that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous\nepithet, as to use a little stingy one.\n\nThus he would say to George in school, \"I observed on my return home\nfrom taking the indulgence of an evening's scientific conversation with\nmy excellent friend Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a\ntrue archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated grandfather's\nalmost princely mansion in Russell Square were illuminated as if for\nthe purposes of festivity.  Am I right in my conjecture that Mr.\nOsborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round his sumptuous\nboard last night?\"\n\nLittle Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used to mimic Mr. Veal\nto his face with great spirit and dexterity, would reply that Mr. V.\nwas quite correct in his surmise.\n\n\"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking of Mr. Osborne's\nhospitality, gentlemen, had no reason, I will lay any wager, to\ncomplain of their repast.  I myself have been more than once so\nfavoured.  (By the way, Master Osborne, you came a little late this\nmorning, and have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.) I\nmyself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been found not unworthy\nto share Mr. Osborne's elegant hospitality.  And though I have feasted\nwith the great and noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my\nexcellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George Earl of\nBareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you that the board of the\nBritish merchant was to the full as richly served, and his reception as\ngratifying and noble.  Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,\nthat passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the late arrival of\nMaster Osborne.\"\n\nTo this great man George's education was for some time entrusted.\nAmelia was bewildered by his phrases, but thought him a prodigy of\nlearning.  That poor widow made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of\nher own.  She liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school\nthere.  She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni, which took\nplace once a month (as you were informed on pink cards, with AOHNH\n[_Transcriber's Note: The name of the Greek goddess Athene; the \"O\"\nrepresents a capital theta._] engraved on them), and where the professor\nwelcomed his pupils and their friends to weak tea and scientific\nconversation. Poor little Amelia never missed one of these\nentertainments and thought them delicious so long as she might have\nGeorgy sitting by her. And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,\nand embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the delightful evening\nshe had passed, when, the company having retired and Georgy gone off\nwith Mr. Rowson, his attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and\nher shawls preparatory to walking home.\n\nAs for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this valuable master of\na hundred sciences, to judge from the weekly reports which the lad took\nhome to his grandfather, his progress was remarkable.  The names of a\nscore or more of desirable branches of knowledge were printed in a\ntable, and the pupil's progress in each was marked by the professor.\nIn Greek Georgy was pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French\ntres bien, and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything at the\nend of the year.  Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-headed young gentleman,\nand half-brother to the Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the\nneglected young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural\ndistrict, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd before\nmentioned, received little eighteen-penny books, with \"Athene\" engraved\non them, and a pompous Latin inscription from the professor to his\nyoung friends.\n\nThe family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of the house of Osborne.\nThe old gentleman had advanced Todd from being a clerk to be a junior\npartner in his establishment.\n\nMr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd (who in subsequent\nlife wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his cards and became a man of decided\nfashion), while Miss Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the\nfont, and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of tracts, a\nvolume of very low church poetry, or some such memento of her goodness\nevery year.  Miss O.  drove the Todds out in her carriage now and then;\nwhen they were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and waistcoat,\nbrought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to Coram Street.\nCoram Street trembled and looked up to Russell Square indeed, and Mrs.\nTodd, who had a pretty hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches\nof mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips and\ncarrots in a very creditable manner, would go to \"the Square,\" as it\nwas called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner,\nwithout even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet.  If\nany guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine.  Mrs.\nTodd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled\nknock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the\nladies under her convoy reached that apartment--and ready to fire off\nduets and sing until the gentlemen came up.  Poor Maria Todd; poor\nyoung lady!  How she had to work and thrum at these duets and sonatas\nin the Street, before they appeared in public in the Square!\n\nThus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy was to domineer over\neverybody with whom he came in contact, and that friends, relatives,\nand domestics were all to bow the knee before the little fellow.  It\nmust be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly to this\narrangement.  Most people do so.  And Georgy liked to play the part of\nmaster and perhaps had a natural aptitude for it.\n\nIn Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Osborne\nwas afraid of Georgy.  The boy's dashing manners, and offhand rattle\nabout books and learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled\nin Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the young boy the\nmastery.  The old man would start at some hereditary feature or tone\nunconsciously used by the little lad, and fancy that George's father\nwas again before him.  He tried by indulgence to the grandson to make\nup for harshness to the elder George.  People were surprised at his\ngentleness to the boy.  He growled and swore at Miss Osborne as usual,\nand would smile when George came down late for breakfast.\n\nMiss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster, broken down by\nmore than forty years of dulness and coarse usage.  It was easy for a\nlad of spirit to master her. And whenever George wanted anything from\nher, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old\ncolours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she had had when she\nwas a pupil of Mr. Smee and was still almost young and blooming),\nGeorgy took possession of the object of his desire, which obtained, he\ntook no further notice of his aunt.\n\nFor his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, who\nflattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash.  It was\ndear Mrs. Todd's delight to leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa\nJemima, a darling child of eight years old.  The little pair looked so\nwell together, she would say (but not to the folks in \"the Square,\" we\nmay be sure) \"who knows what might happen? Don't they make a pretty\nlittle couple?\" the fond mother thought.\n\nThe broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was likewise subject to\nthe little tyrant.  He could not help respecting a lad who had such\nfine clothes and rode with a groom behind him.  Georgy, on his side,\nwas in the constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire\nlevelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr. Osborne.\nOsborne used to call the other the old pauper, the old coal-man, the\nold bankrupt, and by many other such names of brutal contumely.  How\nwas little George to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he\nwas with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died. There had been\nlittle love between her and the child. He did not care to show much\ngrief.  He came down to visit his mother in a fine new suit of\nmourning, and was very angry that he could not go to a play upon which\nhe had set his heart.\n\nThe illness of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps the\nsafeguard of Amelia.  What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We\nshould go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains\nwhich are meekly borne by many women.  Ceaseless slavery meeting with\nno reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant;\nlove, labour, patience, watchfulness, without even so much as the\nacknowledgement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear\nin quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt\nnothing.  Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocrites\nand weak.\n\nFrom her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed, which she had\nnever left, and from which Mrs. Osborne herself was never absent except\nwhen she ran to see George.  The old lady grudged her even those rare\nvisits; she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother once, in\nthe days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and infirmities had broken\ndown.  Her illness or estrangement did not affect Amelia.  They rather\nenabled her to support the other calamity under which she was\nsuffering, and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the ceaseless\ncalls of the invalid.  Amelia bore her harshness quite gently; smoothed\nthe uneasy pillow; was always ready with a soft answer to the watchful,\nquerulous voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as her\npious simple heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes that\nhad once looked so tenderly upon her.\n\nThen all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation and\ncomfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow which\nhad befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world.  His wife, his\nhonour, his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away from him.\nThere was only Amelia to stand by and support with her gentle arms the\ntottering, heart-broken old man. We are not going to write the history:\nit would be too dreary and stupid.  I can see Vanity Fair yawning over\nit d'avance.\n\nOne day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the Rev.\nMr. Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl\nof Bareacres was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up to\nthe door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two gentlemen stepped\nout.  The young Masters Bangles rushed to the window with a vague\nnotion that their father might have arrived from Bombay.  The great\nhulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a\npassage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against the panes\nand looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the box and\nlet out the persons in the carriage.\n\n\"It's a fat one and a thin one,\" Mr. Bluck said as a thundering knock\ncame to the door.\n\nEverybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain himself, who hoped\nhe saw the fathers of some future pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad\nof any pretext for laying his book down.\n\nThe boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper buttons, who always\nthrust himself into the tight coat to open the door, came into the\nstudy and said, \"Two gentlemen want to see Master Osborne.\" The\nprofessor had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that young\ngentleman, owing to a difference about the introduction of crackers in\nschool-time; but his face resumed its habitual expression of bland\ncourtesy as he said, \"Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go\nand see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to convey the\nrespectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal.\"\n\nGeorgy went into the reception-room and saw two strangers, whom he\nlooked at with his head up, in his usual haughty manner.  One was fat,\nwith mustachios, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,\nwith a brown face and a grizzled head.\n\n\"My God, how like he is!\" said the long gentleman with a start. \"Can\nyou guess who we are, George?\"\n\nThe boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he was moved, and his\neyes brightened.  \"I don't know the other,\" he said, \"but I should\nthink you must be Major Dobbin.\"\n\nIndeed it was our old friend.  His voice trembled with pleasure as he\ngreeted the boy, and taking both the other's hands in his own, drew the\nlad to him.\n\n\"Your mother has talked to you about me--has she?\" he said.\n\n\"That she has,\" Georgy answered, \"hundreds and hundreds of times.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVII\n\nEothen\n\nIt was one of the many causes for personal pride with which old Osborne\nchose to recreate himself that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and\nbenefactor, was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated as\nto be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the hands of the man\nwho had most injured and insulted him.  The successful man of the world\ncursed the old pauper and relieved him from time to time.  As he\nfurnished George with money for his mother, he gave the boy to\nunderstand by hints, delivered in his brutal, coarse way, that George's\nmaternal grandfather was but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and\nthat John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already owed ever so\nmuch money for the aid which his generosity now chose to administer.\nGeorge carried the pompous supplies to his mother and the shattered old\nwidower whom it was now the main business of her life to tend and\ncomfort.  The little fellow patronized the feeble and disappointed old\nman.\n\nIt may have shown a want of \"proper pride\" in Amelia that she chose to\naccept these money benefits at the hands of her father's enemy. But\nproper pride and this poor lady had never had much acquaintance\ntogether. A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection; a\nlong course of poverty and humility, of daily privations, and hard\nwords, of kind offices and no returns, had been her lot ever since\nwomanhood almost, or since her luckless marriage with George Osborne.\nYou who see your betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly\nsuffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied, poor, and\nrather despised for their poverty, do you ever step down from your\nprosperity and wash the feet of these poor wearied beggars? The very\nthought of them is odious and low.  \"There must be classes--there must\nbe rich and poor,\" Dives says, smacking his claret (it is well if he\neven sends the broken meat out to Lazarus sitting under the window).\nVery true; but think how mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that\nlottery of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen and\nsends to the other rags for garments and dogs for comforters.\n\nSo I must own that, without much repining, on the contrary with\nsomething akin to gratitude, Amelia took the crumbs that her father-in-law\nlet drop now and then, and with them fed her own parent.\nDirectly she understood it to be her duty, it was this young woman's\nnature (ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her a\nyoung woman even at that age) it was, I say, her nature to sacrifice\nherself and to fling all that she had at the feet of the beloved\nobject.  During what long thankless nights had she worked out her\nfingers for little Georgy whilst at home with her; what buffets,\nscorns, privations, poverties had she endured for father and mother!\nAnd in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen\nsacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the world\nrespected her, but I believe thought in her heart that she was a\npoor-spirited, despicable little creature, whose luck in life was only\ntoo good for her merits.  O you poor women!  O you poor secret martyrs\nand victims, whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in\nyour bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the block daily at the\ndrawing-room table; every man who watches your pains, or peers into\nthose dark places where the torture is administered to you, must pity\nyou--and--and thank God that he has a beard.  I recollect seeing, years\nago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at Bicetre, near Paris, a\npoor wretch bent down under the bondage of his imprisonment and his\npersonal infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth of\nsnuff in a cornet or \"screw\" of paper.  The kindness was too much for\nthe poor epileptic creature. He cried in an anguish of delight and\ngratitude:  if anybody gave you and me a thousand a year, or saved our\nlives, we could not be so affected.  And so, if you properly tyrannize\nover a woman, you will find a ha'p'orth of kindness act upon her and\nbring tears into her eyes, as though you were an angel benefiting her.\n\nSome such boons as these were the best which Fortune allotted to poor\nlittle Amelia.  Her life, begun not unprosperously, had come down to\nthis--to a mean prison and a long, ignoble bondage.  Little George\nvisited her captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams of\nencouragement.  Russell Square was the boundary of her prison:  she\nmight walk thither occasionally, but was always back to sleep in her\ncell at night; to perform cheerless duties; to watch by thankless\nsick-beds; to suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous\ndisappointed old age.  How many thousands of people are there, women\nfor the most part, who are doomed to endure this long slavery?--who are\nhospital nurses without wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without\nthe romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast, watch,\nand suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and unknown.\n\nThe hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind\nis pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise,\nand to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble,\nmy brother, in your prosperity!  Be gentle with those who are less\nlucky, if not more deserving.  Think, what right have you to be\nscornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may\nbe a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity\nis very likely a satire.\n\nThey buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at Brompton, upon just\nsuch a rainy, dark day as Amelia recollected when first she had been\nthere to marry George. Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new\nsables. She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk.  Her thoughts were\naway in other times as the parson read. But that she held George's hand\nin her own, perhaps she would have liked to change places with....\nThen, as usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed\ninwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.\n\nSo she determined with all her might and strength to try and make her\nold father happy.  She slaved, toiled, patched, and mended, sang and\nplayed backgammon, read out the newspaper, cooked dishes for old\nSedley, walked him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the\nBrompton Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and\naffectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and communing with\nher own thoughts and reminiscences, as the old man, feeble and\nquerulous, sunned himself on the garden benches and prattled about his\nwrongs or his sorrows.  What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the\nwidow were!  The children running up and down the slopes and broad\npaths in the gardens reminded her of George, who was taken from her;\nthe first George was taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both\ninstances, had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to think\nit was right that she should be so punished. She was such a miserable\nwicked sinner.  She was quite alone in the world.\n\nI know that the account of this kind of solitary imprisonment is\ninsufferably tedious, unless there is some cheerful or humorous\nincident to enliven it--a tender gaoler, for instance, or a waggish\ncommandant of the fortress, or a mouse to come out and play about\nLatude's beard and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the\ncastle, dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick:  the historian\nhas no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative of Amelia's\ncaptivity.  Fancy her, if you please, during this period, very sad, but\nalways ready to smile when spoken to; in a very mean, poor, not to say\nvulgar position of life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards,\nmending stockings, for her old father's benefit.  So, never mind,\nwhether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however old, scolding,\nand bankrupt--may we have in our last days a kind soft shoulder on\nwhich to lean and a gentle hand to soothe our gouty old pillows.\n\nOld Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his wife's death, and\nAmelia had her consolation in doing her duty by the old man.\n\nBut we are not going to leave these two people long in such a low and\nungenteel station of life.  Better days, as far as worldly prosperity\nwent, were in store for both. Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed\nwho was the stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in\ncompany with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was another old\nacquaintance returned to England, and at a time when his presence was\nlikely to be of great comfort to his relatives there.\n\nMajor Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave from his\ngood-natured commandant to proceed to Madras, and thence probably to\nEurope, on urgent private affairs, never ceased travelling night and day\nuntil he reached his journey's end, and had directed his march with such\ncelerity that he arrived at Madras in a high fever.  His servants who\naccompanied him brought him to the house of the friend with whom he had\nresolved to stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;\nand it was thought for many, many days that he would never travel\nfarther than the burying-ground of the church of St.  George's, where\nthe troops should fire a salvo over his grave, and where many a gallant\nofficer lies far away from his home.\n\nHere, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the people who\nwatched him might have heard him raving about Amelia.  The idea that he\nshould never see her again depressed him in his lucid hours.  He\nthought his last day was come, and he made his solemn preparations for\ndeparture, setting his affairs in this world in order and leaving the\nlittle property of which he was possessed to those whom he most desired\nto benefit.  The friend in whose house he was located witnessed his\ntestament.  He desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chain\nwhich he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be known, he\nhad got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when the young widow's hair was\ncut off, during the fever which prostrated her after the death of\nGeorge Osborne on the plateau at Mount St.  John.\n\nHe recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone such a process\nof blood-letting and calomel as showed the strength of his original\nconstitution.  He was almost a skeleton when they put him on board the\nRamchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta, touching at\nMadras, and so weak and prostrate that his friend who had tended him\nthrough his illness prophesied that the honest Major would never\nsurvive the voyage, and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in\nflag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying down to the sea\nwith him the relic that he wore at his heart.  But whether it was the\nsea air, or the hope which sprung up in him afresh, from the day that\nthe ship spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards home, our\nfriend began to amend, and he was quite well (though as gaunt as a\ngreyhound) before they reached the Cape.  \"Kirk will be disappointed of\nhis majority this time,\" he said with a smile; \"he will expect to find\nhimself gazetted by the time the regiment reaches home.\" For it must be\npremised that while the Major was lying ill at Madras, having made such\nprodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had passed many\nyears abroad, which after its return from the West Indies had been\nbaulked of its stay at home by the Waterloo campaign, and had been\nordered from Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Major\nmight have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to wait for their\narrival at Madras.\n\nPerhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his exhausted state again\nunder the guardianship of Glorvina. \"I think Miss O'Dowd would have\ndone for me,\" he said laughingly to a fellow-passenger, \"if we had had\nher on board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen upon you,\ndepend upon it, and carried you in as a prize to Southampton, Jos, my\nboy.\"\n\nFor indeed it was no other than our stout friend who was also a\npassenger on board the Ramchunder.  He had passed ten years in Bengal.\nConstant dinners, tiffins, pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour\nof cutcherry, and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was forced\nto take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley. A voyage to\nEurope was pronounced necessary for him--and having served his full\ntime in India and had fine appointments which had enabled him to lay by\na considerable sum of money, he was free to come home and stay with a\ngood pension, or to return and resume that rank in the service to which\nhis seniority and his vast talents entitled him.\n\nHe was rather thinner than when we last saw him, but had gained in\nmajesty and solemnity of demeanour. He had resumed the mustachios to\nwhich his services at Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about on\ndeck in a magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuse\nornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person. He took breakfast\nin his cabin and dressed as solemnly to appear on the quarter-deck as\nif he were going to turn out for Bond Street, or the Course at\nCalcutta.  He brought a native servant with him, who was his valet and\npipe-bearer and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his turban.\nThat oriental menial had a wretched life under the tyranny of Jos\nSedley.  Jos was as vain of his person as a woman, and took as long a\ntime at his toilette as any fading beauty.  The youngsters among the\npassengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little Ricketts,\ncoming home after his third fever, used to draw out Sedley at the\ncuddy-table and make him tell prodigious stories about himself and his\nexploits against tigers and Napoleon. He was great when he visited the\nEmperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and the young\nofficers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by, he described the whole\nbattle of Waterloo and all but announced that Napoleon never would have\ngone to Saint Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley.\n\nAfter leaving St.  Helena he became very generous, disposing of a great\nquantity of ship stores, claret, preserved meats, and great casks\npacked with soda-water, brought out for his private delectation.  There\nwere no ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency to the\ncivilian, so that he was the first dignitary at table, and treated by\nCaptain Bragg and the officers of the Ramchunder with the respect which\nhis rank warranted.  He disappeared rather in a panic during a\ntwo-days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin battened\ndown, and remained in his cot reading the Washerwoman of Finchley\nCommon, left on board the Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the Lady\nEmily Hornblower, wife of the Rev. Silas Hornblower, when on their\npassage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman was a missionary;\nbut, for common reading, he had brought a stock of novels and plays\nwhich he lent to the rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeable\nto all by his kindness and condescension.\n\nMany and many a night as the ship was cutting through the roaring dark\nsea, the moon and stars shining overhead and the bell singing out the\nwatch, Mr. Sedley and the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of the\nvessel talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and the\ncivilian puffed at the hookah which his servant prepared for him.\n\nIn these conversations it was wonderful with what perseverance and\ningenuity Major Dobbin would manage to bring the talk round to the\nsubject of Amelia and her little boy.  Jos, a little testy about his\nfather's misfortunes and unceremonious applications to him, was soothed\ndown by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill fortunes and old\nage.  He would not perhaps like to live with the old couple, whose ways\nand hours might not agree with those of a younger man, accustomed to\ndifferent society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Major\npointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley to have a\nhouse of his own in London, and not a mere bachelor's establishment as\nbefore; how his sister Amelia would be the very person to preside over\nit; how elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good manners.\nHe recounted stories of the success which Mrs. George Osborne had had\nin former days at Brussels, and in London, where she was much admired\nby people of very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming it\nwould be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and make a man of him,\nfor his mother and her parents would be sure to spoil him.  In a word,\nthis artful Major made the civilian promise to take charge of Amelia\nand her unprotected child.  He did not know as yet what events had\nhappened in the little Sedley family, and how death had removed the\nmother, and riches had carried off George from Amelia.  But the fact is\nthat every day and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentleman\nwas thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart was bent upon\ndoing her good.  He coaxed, wheedled, cajoled, and complimented Jos\nSedley with a perseverance and cordiality of which he was not aware\nhimself, very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters or\ndaughters even, may remember how uncommonly agreeable gentlemen are to\nthe male relations when they are courting the females; and perhaps this\nrogue of a Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy.\n\nThe truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the Ramchumder, very\nsick, and for the three days she lay in the Madras Roads, he did not\nbegin to rally, nor did even the appearance and recognition of his old\nacquaintance, Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after a\nconversation which they had one day, as the Major was laid languidly on\nthe deck.  He said then he thought he was doomed; he had left a little\nsomething to his godson in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne would\nremember him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was about to make.\n\"Married? not the least,\" Jos answered; \"he had heard from her:  she\nmade no mention of the marriage, and by the way, it was curious, she\nwrote to say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and hoped that\nHE would be happy.\" What were the dates of Sedley's letters from\nEurope? The civilian fetched them. They were two months later than the\nMajor's; and the ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon the\ntreatment adopted by him towards his new patient, who had been\nconsigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with very small hopes\nindeed; for, from that day, the very day that he changed the draught,\nMajor Dobbin began to mend. And thus it was that deserving officer,\nCaptain Kirk, was disappointed of his majority.\n\nAfter they passed St.  Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety and strength was\nsuch as to astonish all his fellow passengers.  He larked with the\nmidshipmen, played single-stick with the mates, ran up the shrouds like\na boy, sang a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole party\nassembled over their grog after supper, and rendered himself so gay,\nlively, and amiable that even Captain Bragg, who thought there was\nnothing in his passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited feller\nat first, was constrained to own that the Major was a reserved but\nwell-informed and meritorious officer.  \"He ain't got distangy manners,\ndammy,\" Bragg observed to his first mate; \"he wouldn't do at Government\nHouse, Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind to me,\nand shook hands with me before the whole company, and asking me at\ndinner to take beer with him, before the Commander-in-Chief himself; he\nain't got manners, but there's something about him--\" And thus Captain\nBragg showed that he possessed discrimination as a man, as well as\nability as a commander.\n\nBut a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was within ten days' sail\nof England, Dobbin became so impatient and ill-humoured as to surprise\nthose comrades who had before admired his vivacity and good temper. He\ndid not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and was in a highly\nexcited state when the pilot came on board.  Good God, how his heart\nbeat as the two friendly spires of Southampton came in sight.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVIII\n\nOur Friend the Major\n\nOur Major had rendered himself so popular on board the Ramchunder that\nwhen he and Mr. Sedley descended into the welcome shore-boat which was\nto take them from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the great\nCaptain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers for Major Dobbin,\nwho blushed very much and ducked his head in token of thanks.  Jos, who\nvery likely thought the cheers were for himself, took off his\ngold-laced cap and waved it majestically to his friends, and they were\npulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier, whence they\nproceeded to the Royal George Hotel.\n\nAlthough the sight of that magnificent round of beef, and the silver\ntankard suggestive of real British home-brewed ale and porter, which\nperennially greet the eyes of the traveller returning from foreign\nparts who enters the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating and\ndelightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug homely English\ninn might well like to stop some days there, yet Dobbin began to talk\nabout a post-chaise instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than he\nwished to be on the road to London.  Jos, however, would not hear of\nmoving that evening.  Why was he to pass a night in a post-chaise\ninstead of a great large undulating downy feather-bed which was there\nready to replace the horrid little narrow crib in which the portly\nBengal gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He could not\nthink of moving till his baggage was cleared, or of travelling until he\ncould do so with his chillum.  So the Major was forced to wait over\nthat night, and dispatched a letter to his family announcing his\narrival, entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own friends.\nJos promised, but didn't keep his promise.  The Captain, the surgeon,\nand one or two passengers came and dined with our two gentlemen at the\ninn, Jos exerting himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner and\npromising to go to town the next day with the Major. The landlord said\nit did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley take off his first pint of\nporter.  If I had time and dared to enter into digressions, I would\nwrite a chapter about that first pint of porter drunk upon English\nground. Ah, how good it is!  It is worth-while to leave home for a\nyear, just to enjoy that one draught.\n\nMajor Dobbin made his appearance the next morning very neatly shaved\nand dressed, according to his wont. Indeed, it was so early in the\nmorning that nobody was up in the house except that wonderful Boots of\nan inn who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could hear the\nsnores of the various inmates of the house roaring through the\ncorridors as he creaked about in those dim passages.  Then the\nsleepless Boots went shirking round from door to door, gathering up at\neach the Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside. Then\nJos's native servant arose and began to get ready his master's\nponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his hookah; then the\nmaidservants got up, and meeting the dark man in the passages,\nshrieked, and mistook him for the devil.  He and Dobbin stumbled over\ntheir pails in the passages as they were scouring the decks of the\nRoyal George.  When the first unshorn waiter appeared and unbarred the\ndoor of the inn, the Major thought that the time for departure was\narrived, and ordered a post-chaise to be fetched instantly, that they\nmight set off.\n\nHe then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and opened the curtains\nof the great large family bed wherein Mr. Jos was snoring. \"Come, up!\nSedley,\" the Major said, \"it's time to be off; the chaise will be at\nthe door in half an hour.\"\n\nJos growled from under the counterpane to know what the time was; but\nwhen he at last extorted from the blushing Major (who never told fibs,\nhowever they might be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the\nmorning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which we will not\nrepeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to understand that he would\njeopardy his soul if he got up at that moment, that the Major might go\nand be hanged, that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was\nmost unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out of his sleep in\nthat way; on which the discomfited Major was obliged to retreat,\nleaving Jos to resume his interrupted slumbers.\n\nThe chaise came up presently, and the Major would wait no longer.\n\nIf he had been an English nobleman travelling on a pleasure tour, or a\nnewspaper courier bearing dispatches (government messages are generally\ncarried much more quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly.\nThe post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them. How happy and\ngreen the country looked as the chaise whirled rapidly from mile-stone\nto mile-stone, through neat country towns where landlords came out to\nwelcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns, where the\nsigns hung on the elms, and horses and waggoners were drinking under\nthe chequered shadow of the trees; by old halls and parks; rustic\nhamlets clustered round ancient grey churches--and through the charming\nfriendly English landscape.  Is there any in the world like it? To a\ntraveller returning home it looks so kind--it seems to shake hands with\nyou as you pass through it. Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this\nfrom Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond the\nmilestones along the road.  You see he was so eager to see his parents\nat Camberwell.\n\nHe grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his old haunt at the\nSlaughters', whither he drove faithfully. Long years had passed since\nhe saw it last, since he and George, as young men, had enjoyed many a\nfeast, and held many a revel there.  He had now passed into the stage\nof old-fellow-hood.  His hair was grizzled, and many a passion and\nfeeling of his youth had grown grey in that interval. There, however,\nstood the old waiter at the door, in the same greasy black suit, with\nthe same double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch of\nseals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as before, and\nreceiving the Major as if he had gone away only a week ago.  \"Put the\nMajor's things in twenty-three, that's his room,\" John said, exhibiting\nnot the least surprise.  \"Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose.  You\nain't got married? They said you was married--the Scotch surgeon of\nyours was here.  No, it was Captain Humby of the thirty-third, as was\nquartered with the --th in Injee. Like any warm water? What do you come\nin a chay for--ain't the coach good enough?\" And with this, the\nfaithful waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who used the\nhouse, and with whom ten years were but as yesterday, led the way up to\nDobbin's old room, where stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby\ncarpet, a thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture covered\nwith faded chintz, just as the Major recollected them in his youth.\n\nHe remembered George pacing up and down the room, and biting his nails,\nand swearing that the Governor must come round, and that if he didn't,\nhe didn't care a straw, on the day before he was married. He could\nfancy him walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his own\nhard by--\n\n\"You ain't got young,\" John said, calmly surveying his friend of former\ndays.\n\nDobbin laughed.  \"Ten years and a fever don't make a man young, John,\"\nhe said.  \"It is you that are always young--no, you are always old.\"\n\n\"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?\" John said.  \"Fine young\nfellow that.  Lord, how he used to spend his money.  He never came back\nafter that day he was marched from here.  He owes me three pound at\nthis minute.  Look here, I have it in my book.  'April 10, 1815,\nCaptain Osborne:  3 pounds.' I wonder whether his father would pay\nme,\" and so saying, John of the Slaughters' pulled out the very morocco\npocket-book in which he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a\ngreasy faded page still extant, with many other scrawled memoranda\nregarding the bygone frequenters of the house.\n\nHaving inducted his customer into the room, John retired with perfect\ncalmness; and Major Dobbin, not without a blush and a grin at his own\nabsurdity, chose out of his kit the very smartest and most becoming\ncivil costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face and grey\nhair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little toilet-glass on the\ndressing-table.\n\n\"I'm glad old John didn't forget me,\" he thought. \"She'll know me, too,\nI hope.\" And he sallied out of the inn, bending his steps once more in\nthe direction of Brompton.\n\nEvery minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia was present to\nthe constant man's mind as he walked towards her house.  The arch and\nthe Achilles statue were up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a\nhundred changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely noted.  He\nbegan to tremble as he walked up the lane from Brompton, that\nwell-remembered lane leading to the street where she lived.  Was she\ngoing to be married or not? If he were to meet her with the little\nboy--Good God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him with a\nchild of five years old--was that she? He began to shake at the mere\npossibility.  When he came up to the row of houses, at last, where she\nlived, and to the gate, he caught hold of it and paused.  He might have\nheard the thumping of his own heart. \"May God Almighty bless her,\nwhatever has happened,\" he thought to himself.  \"Psha!  she may be gone\nfrom here,\" he said and went in through the gate.\n\nThe window of the parlour which she used to occupy was open, and there\nwere no inmates in the room.  The Major thought he recognized the\npiano, though, with the picture over it, as it used to be in former\ndays, and his perturbations were renewed.  Mr. Clapp's brass plate was\nstill on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin performed a summons.\n\nA buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and purple cheeks,\ncame to answer the knock and looked hard at the Major as he leant back\nagainst the little porch.\n\nHe was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out the words--\"Does\nMrs. Osborne live here?\"\n\nShe looked him hard in the face for a moment--and then turning white\ntoo--said, \"Lord bless me--it's Major Dobbin.\" She held out both her\nhands shaking--\"Don't you remember me?\" she said.  \"I used to call you\nMajor Sugarplums.\" On which, and I believe it was for the first time\nthat he ever so conducted himself in his life, the Major took the girl\nin his arms and kissed her. She began to laugh and cry hysterically,\nand calling out \"Ma, Pa!\" with all her voice, brought up those worthy\npeople, who had already been surveying the Major from the casement of\nthe ornamental kitchen, and were astonished to find their daughter in\nthe little passage in the embrace of a great tall man in a blue\nfrock-coat and white duck trousers.\n\n\"I'm an old friend,\" he said--not without blushing though.  \"Don't you\nremember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those good cakes you used to make for tea?\nDon't you recollect me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just come\nback from India.\" A great shaking of hands ensued--Mrs. Clapp was\ngreatly affected and delighted; she called upon heaven to interpose a\nvast many times in that passage.\n\nThe landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy Major into the\nSedleys' room (whereof he remembered every single article of furniture,\nfrom the old brass ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument,\nStothard maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone,\nin the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold watch), and there, as he\nsat down in the lodger's vacant arm-chair, the father, the mother, and\nthe daughter, with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative,\ninformed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of particulars in\nAmelia's history of which he was not aware--namely of Mrs. Sedley's\ndeath, of George's reconcilement with his grandfather Osborne, of the\nway in which the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particulars\nof her life. Twice or thrice he was going to ask about the marriage\nquestion, but his heart failed him. He did not care to lay it bare to\nthese people.  Finally, he was informed that Mrs. O.  was gone to walk\nwith her pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with the old\ngentleman (who was very weak and peevish now, and led her a sad life,\nthough she behaved to him like an angel, to be sure), of a fine\nafternoon, after dinner.\n\n\"I'm very much pressed for time,\" the Major said, \"and have business\nto-night of importance.  I should like to see Mrs. Osborne tho'.\nSuppose Miss Polly would come with me and show me the way?\"\n\nMiss Polly was charmed and astonished at this proposal.  She knew the\nway.  She would show Major Dobbin.  She had often been with Mr. Sedley\nwhen Mrs. O. was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the bench\nwhere he liked to sit.  She bounced away to her apartment and appeared\npresently in her best bonnet and her mamma's yellow shawl and large\npebble brooch, of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself a\nworthy companion for the Major.\n\nThat officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin gloves, gave\nthe young lady his arm, and they walked away very gaily.  He was glad\nto have a friend at hand for the scene which he dreaded somehow.  He\nasked a thousand more questions from his companion about Amelia:  his\nkind heart grieved to think that she should have had to part with her\nson.  How did she bear it? Did she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley pretty\ncomfortable now in a worldly point of view? Polly answered all these\nquestions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her power.\n\nAnd in the midst of their walk an incident occurred which, though very\nsimple in its nature, was productive of the greatest delight to Major\nDobbin.  A pale young man with feeble whiskers and a stiff white\nneckcloth came walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, that\nis, on each arm.  One was a tall and commanding middle-aged female,\nwith features and a complexion similar to those of the clergyman of the\nChurch of England by whose side she marched, and the other a stunted\nlittle woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet and\nwhite ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich gold watch in the\nmidst of her person.  The gentleman, pinioned as he was by these two\nladies, carried further a parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms\nwere entirely engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in\nacknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary Clapp greeted him.\n\nHe merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation, which the two\nladies returned with a patronizing air, and at the same time looking\nseverely at the individual in the blue coat and bamboo cane who\naccompanied Miss Polly.\n\n\"Who's that?\" asked the Major, amused by the group, and after he had\nmade way for the three to pass up the lane.  Mary looked at him rather\nroguishly.\n\n\"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch from Major\nDobbin), and his sister Miss B.  Lord bless us, how she did use to\nworret us at Sunday-school; and the other lady, the little one with a\ncast in her eye and the handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits that\nwas; her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold Tea Pot in\nKensington Gravel Pits.  They were married last month, and are just\ncome back from Margate.  She's five thousand pound to her fortune; but\nher and Miss B., who made the match, have quarrelled already.\"\n\nIf the Major had twitched before, he started now, and slapped the\nbamboo on the ground with an emphasis which made Miss Clapp cry, \"Law,\"\nand laugh too.  He stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking\nafter the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told their history;\nbut he did not hear beyond the announcement of the reverend gentleman's\nmarriage; his head was swimming with felicity.  After this rencontre he\nbegan to walk double quick towards the place of his destination--and\nyet they were too soon (for he was in a great tremor at the idea of a\nmeeting for which he had been longing any time these ten\nyears)--through the Brompton lanes, and entering at the little old\nportal in Kensington Garden wall.\n\n\"There they are,\" said Miss Polly, and she felt him again start back on\nher arm.  She was a confidante at once of the whole business. She knew\nthe story as well as if she had read it in one of her favourite\nnovel-books--Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs.\n\n\"Suppose you were to run on and tell her,\" the Major said.  Polly ran\nforward, her yellow shawl streaming in the breeze.\n\nOld Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief placed over his\nknees, prattling away, according to his wont, with some old story about\nold times to which Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile many\na time before.  She could of late think of her own affairs, and smile\nor make other marks of recognition of her father's stories, scarcely\nhearing a word of the old man's tales. As Mary came bouncing along, and\nAmelia caught sight of her, she started up from her bench.  Her first\nthought was that something had happened to Georgy, but the sight of the\nmessenger's eager and happy face dissipated that fear in the timorous\nmother's bosom.\n\n\"News!  News!\" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin. \"He's come!  He's\ncome!\"\n\n\"Who is come?\" said Emmy, still thinking of her son.\n\n\"Look there,\" answered Miss Clapp, turning round and pointing; in which\ndirection Amelia looking, saw Dobbin's lean figure and long shadow\nstalking across the grass.  Amelia started in her turn, blushed up,\nand, of course, began to cry.  At all this simple little creature's\nfetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play. He looked at her--oh,\nhow fondly--as she came running towards him, her hands before her,\nready to give them to him.  She wasn't changed. She was a little pale,\na little stouter in figure.  Her eyes were the same, the kind trustful\neyes.  There were scarce three lines of silver in her soft brown hair.\nShe gave him both her hands as she looked up flushing and smiling\nthrough her tears into his honest homely face.  He took the two little\nhands between his two and held them there.  He was speechless for a\nmoment.  Why did he not take her in his arms and swear that he would\nnever leave her? She must have yielded:  she could not but have obeyed\nhim.\n\n\"I--I've another arrival to announce,\" he said after a pause.\n\n\"Mrs. Dobbin?\" Amelia said, making a movement back--why didn't he speak?\n\n\"No,\" he said, letting her hands go:  \"Who has told you those lies? I\nmean, your brother Jos came in the same ship with me, and is come home\nto make you all happy.\"\n\n\"Papa, Papa!\" Emmy cried out, \"here are news!  My brother is in\nEngland.  He is come to take care of you. Here is Major Dobbin.\"\n\nMr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering up his\nthoughts.  Then he stepped forward and made an old-fashioned bow to the\nMajor, whom he called Mr. Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, Sir\nWilliam, was quite well.  He proposed to call upon Sir William, who had\ndone him the honour of a visit a short time ago.  Sir William had not\ncalled upon the old gentleman for eight years--it was that visit he was\nthinking of returning.\n\n\"He is very much shaken,\" Emmy whispered as Dobbin went up and\ncordially shook hands with the old man.\n\nAlthough he had such particular business in London that evening, the\nMajor consented to forego it upon Mr. Sedley's invitation to him to\ncome home and partake of tea.  Amelia put her arm under that of her\nyoung friend with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their return\nhomewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share. The old man\nwalked very slowly and told a number of ancient histories about himself\nand his poor Bessy, his former prosperity, and his bankruptcy.  His\nthoughts, as is usual with failing old men, were quite in former times.\nThe present, with the exception of the one catastrophe which he felt,\nhe knew little about.  The Major was glad to let him talk on.  His eyes\nwere fixed upon the figure in front of him--the dear little figure\nalways present to his imagination and in his prayers, and visiting his\ndreams wakeful or slumbering.\n\nAmelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that evening, performing\nher duties as hostess of the little entertainment with the utmost grace\nand propriety, as Dobbin thought.  His eyes followed her about as they\nsat in the twilight.  How many a time had he longed for that moment and\nthought of her far away under hot winds and in weary marches, gentle\nand happy, kindly ministering to the wants of old age, and decorating\npoverty with sweet submission--as he saw her now.  I do not say that\nhis taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great intellects\nto be content with a bread-and-butter paradise, such as sufficed our\nsimple old friend; but his desires were of this sort, whether for good\nor bad, and, with Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many\ncups of tea as Doctor Johnson.\n\nAmelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged it and looked\nexceedingly roguish as she administered to him cup after cup.  It is\ntrue she did not know that the Major had had no dinner and that the\ncloth was laid for him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to\nmark that the table was retained, in that very box in which the Major\nand George had sat many a time carousing, when she was a child just\ncome home from Miss Pinkerton's school.\n\nThe first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was Georgy's miniature,\nfor which she ran upstairs on her arrival at home.  It was not half\nhandsome enough of course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to\nthink of bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she did\nnot talk much about Georgy.  To hear about Mr. Osborne and Russell\nSquare was not agreeable to the old man, who very likely was\nunconscious that he had been living for some months past mainly on the\nbounty of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was made to\nthe other.\n\nDobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than all, that had\nhappened on board the Ramchunder, and exaggerated Jos's benevolent\ndispositions towards his father and resolution to make him comfortable\nin his old days.  The truth is that during the voyage the Major had\nimpressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-passenger and\nextorted promises from him that he would take charge of his sister and\nher child.  He soothed Jos's irritation with regard to the bills which\nthe old gentleman had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his\nown sufferings on the same score and of the famous consignment of wine\nwith which the old man had favoured him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was\nby no means an ill-natured person when well-pleased and moderately\nflattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his relatives in\nEurope.\n\nAnd in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major stretched the truth so\nfar as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it was mainly a desire to see his\nparent which brought Jos once more to Europe.\n\nAt his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in his chair, and then\nit was Amelia's opportunity to commence her conversation, which she did\nwith great eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy.  She did not\ntalk at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for indeed,\nthis worthy woman, though she was half-killed by the separation from\nthe child, yet thought it was very wicked in her to repine at losing\nhim; but everything concerning him, his virtues, talents, and\nprospects, she poured out.  She described his angelic beauty; narrated\na hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of mind whilst\nliving with her; how a Royal Duchess had stopped and admired him in\nKensington Gardens; how splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had\na groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he had, and what a\nprodigiously well-read and delightful person the Reverend Lawrence Veal\nwas, George's master.  \"He knows EVERYTHING,\" Amelia said.  \"He has the\nmost delightful parties.  You who are so learned yourself, and have\nread so much, and are so clever and accomplished--don't shake your head\nand say no--HE always used to say you were--you will be charmed with\nMr. Veal's parties. The last Tuesday in every month.  He says there is\nno place in the bar or the senate that Georgy may not aspire to.  Look\nhere,\" and she went to the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of\nGeorgy's composition.  This great effort of genius, which is still in\nthe possession of George's mother, is as follows:\n\nOn Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the human character,\nSelfishness is the most odious and contemptible.  An undue love of Self\nleads to the most monstrous crimes and occasions the greatest\nmisfortunes both in States and Families.  As a selfish man will\nimpoverish his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish king\nbrings ruin on his people and often plunges them into war.\n\nExample:  The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by the poet Homer,\noccasioned a thousand woes to the Greeks--muri Achaiois alge\netheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2). The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte\noccasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to perish,\nhimself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in the Atlantic\nOcean.\n\nWe see by these examples that we are not to consult our own interest\nand ambition, but that we are to consider the interests of others as\nwell as our own.\n\nGeorge S.  Osborne Athene House, 24 April, 1827\n\n\"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek too, at his age,\"\nthe delighted mother said.  \"Oh, William,\" she added, holding out her\nhand to the Major, \"what a treasure Heaven has given me in that boy!\nHe is the comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that's\ngone!\"\n\n\"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to him?\" William\nthought.  \"Ought I to be jealous of my friend in the grave, or hurt\nthat such a heart as Amelia's can love only once and for ever? Oh,\nGeorge, George, how little you knew the prize you had, though.\" This\nsentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he was holding\nAmelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was veiling her eyes.\n\n\"Dear friend,\" she said, pressing the hand which held hers, \"how good,\nhow kind you always have been to me! See!  Papa is stirring. You will\ngo and see Georgy tomorrow, won't you?\"\n\n\"Not to-morrow,\" said poor old Dobbin.  \"I have business.\" He did not\nlike to own that he had not as yet been to his parents' and his dear\nsister Anne--a remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated\nperson will blame the Major.  And presently he took his leave, leaving\nhis address behind him for Jos, against the latter's arrival.  And so\nthe first day was over, and he had seen her.\n\nWhen he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl was of course cold,\nin which condition he ate it for supper.  And knowing what early hours\nhis family kept, and that it would be needless to disturb their\nslumbers at so late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treated\nhimself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that evening, where let\nus hope he enjoyed himself.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIX\n\nThe Old Piano\n\nThe Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of agitation\nand excitement.  His daughter could not induce him to settle down to\nhis customary occupations or amusements that night.  He passed the\nevening fumbling amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers with\ntrembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against Jos's arrival.\nHe had them in the greatest order--his tapes and his files, his\nreceipts, and his letters with lawyers and correspondents; the\ndocuments relative to the wine project (which failed from a most\nunaccountable accident, after commencing with the most splendid\nprospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital prevented\nfrom becoming the most successful scheme ever put before the public),\nthe patent saw-mills and sawdust consolidation project, &c., &c.  All\nnight, until a very late hour, he passed in the preparation of these\ndocuments, trembling about from one room to another, with a quivering\ncandle and shaky hands.  Here's the wine papers, here's the sawdust,\nhere's the coals; here's my letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies\nfrom Major Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same.  \"He shall\nfind no irregularity about ME, Emmy,\" the old gentleman said.\n\nEmmy smiled.  \"I don't think Jos will care about seeing those papers,\nPapa,\" she said.\n\n\"You don't know anything about business, my dear,\" answered the sire,\nshaking his head with an important air.  And it must be confessed that\non this point Emmy was very ignorant, and that is a pity some people\nare so knowing.  All these twopenny documents arranged on a side table,\nold Sedley covered them carefully over with a clean bandanna\nhandkerchief (one out of Major Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid and\nlandlady of the house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb those\npapers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph Sedley the\nnext morning, \"Mr. Joseph Sedley of the Honourable East India Company's\nBengal Civil Service.\"\n\nAmelia found him up very early the next morning, more eager, more\nhectic, and more shaky than ever.  \"I didn't sleep much, Emmy, my\ndear,\" he said.  \"I was thinking of my poor Bessy.  I wish she was\nalive, to ride in Jos's carriage once again.  She kept her own and\nbecame it very well.\" And his eyes filled with tears, which trickled\ndown his furrowed old face.  Amelia wiped them away, and smilingly\nkissed him, and tied the old man's neckcloth in a smart bow, and put\nhis brooch into his best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit of\nmourning, he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the arrival\nof his son.\n\nHowever, when the postman made his appearance, the little party were\nput out of suspense by the receipt of a letter from Jos to his sister,\nwho announced that he felt a little fatigued after his voyage, and\nshould not be able to move on that day, but that he would leave\nSouthampton early the next morning and be with his father and mother at\nevening.  Amelia, as she read out the letter to her father, paused over\nthe latter word; her brother, it was clear, did not know what had\nhappened in the family. Nor could he, for the fact is that, though the\nMajor rightly suspected that his travelling companion never would be\ngot into motion in so short a space as twenty-four hours, and would\nfind some excuse for delaying, yet Dobbin had not written to Jos to\ninform him of the calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, being\noccupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour.\n\nThere are some splendid tailors' shops in the High Street of\nSouthampton, in the fine plate-glass windows of which hang gorgeous\nwaistcoats of all sorts, of silk and velvet, and gold and crimson, and\npictures of the last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen\nwith quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with the exceeding\nlarge eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in riding habits prancing by the\nStatue of Achilles at Apsley House.  Jos, although provided with some\nof the most splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he\ncould not go to town until he was supplied with one or two of these\ngarments, and selected a crimson satin, embroidered with gold\nbutterflies, and a black and red velvet tartan with white stripes and a\nrolling collar, with which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,\nconsisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink enamel jumping\nover it, he thought he might make his entry into London with some\ndignity.  For Jos's former shyness and blundering blushing timidity had\ngiven way to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his worth.\n\"I don't care about owning it,\" Waterloo Sedley would say to his\nfriends, \"I am a dressy man\"; and though rather uneasy if the ladies\nlooked at him at the Government House balls, and though he blushed and\nturned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly from a dread\nlest they should make love to him that he avoided them, being averse to\nmarriage altogether.  But there was no such swell in Calcutta as\nWaterloo Sedley, I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out,\ngave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate in the whole\nplace.\n\nTo make these waistcoats for a man of his size and dignity took at\nleast a day, part of which he employed in hiring a servant to wait upon\nhim and his native and in instructing the agent who cleared his\nbaggage, his boxes, his books, which he never read, his chests of\nmangoes, chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to people\nwhom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his Persicos apparatus.\n\nAt length, he drove leisurely to London on the third day and in the new\nwaistcoat, the native, with chattering teeth, shuddering in a shawl on\nthe box by the side of the new European servant; Jos puffing his pipe\nat intervals within and looking so majestic that the little boys cried\nHooray, and many people thought he must be a Governor-General.  HE, I\npromise, did not decline the obsequious invitation of the landlords to\nalight and refresh himself in the neat country towns.  Having partaken\nof a copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, at\nSouthampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to think a glass of\nsherry necessary.  At Alton he stepped out of the carriage at his\nservant's request and imbibed some of the ale for which the place is\nfamous.  At Farnham he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and to\npartake of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and French\nbeans, with a bottle of claret.  He was cold over Bagshot Heath, where\nthe native chattered more and more, and Jos Sahib took some\nbrandy-and-water; in fact, when he drove into town he was as full of\nwine, beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the steward's\ncabin of a steam-packet. It was evening when his carriage thundered up\nto the little door in Brompton, whither the affectionate fellow drove\nfirst, and before hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr.\nDobbin at the Slaughters'.\n\nAll the faces in the street were in the windows; the little maidservant\nflew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames Clapp looked out from the\ncasement of the ornamented kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in\nthe passage among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour\ninside, shaking all over.  Jos descended from the post-chaise and down\nthe creaking swaying steps in awful state, supported by the new valet\nfrom Southampton and the shuddering native, whose brown face was now\nlivid with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard.  He created an\nimmense sensation in the passage presently, where Mrs. and Miss Clapp,\ncoming perhaps to listen at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking\nupon the hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous way,\nand showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth.\n\nFor, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the meeting between\nJos and the old father and the poor little gentle sister inside.  The\nold man was very much affected; so, of course, was his daughter; nor\nwas Jos without feeling.  In that long absence of ten years, the most\nselfish will think about home and early ties. Distance sanctifies both.\nLong brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates their charm and\nsweetness.  Jos was unaffectedly glad to see and shake the hand of his\nfather, between whom and himself there had been a coolness--glad to see\nhis little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling, and pained\nat the alteration which time, grief, and misfortune had made in the\nshattered old man.  Emmy had come out to the door in her black clothes\nand whispered to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to\ntheir father. There was no need of this caution, for the elder Sedley\nhimself began immediately to speak of the event, and prattled about it,\nand wept over it plenteously. It shocked the Indian not a little and\nmade him think of himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed to\ndo.\n\nThe result of the interview must have been very satisfactory, for when\nJos had reascended his post-chaise and had driven away to his hotel,\nEmmy embraced her father tenderly, appealing to him with an air of\ntriumph, and asking the old man whether she did not always say that her\nbrother had a good heart?\n\nIndeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position in which he\nfound his relations, and in the expansiveness and overflowing of heart\noccasioned by the first meeting, declared that they should never suffer\nwant or discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time at any\nrate, during which his house and everything he had should be theirs:\nand that Amelia would look very pretty at the head of his table--until\nshe would accept one of her own.\n\nShe shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse to the waterworks.\nShe knew what he meant.  She and her young confidante, Miss Mary, had\ntalked over the matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit,\nbeyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain from talking of\nthe discovery which she had made, and describing the start and tremor\nof joy by which Major Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passed\nwith his bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a rival to\nfear.  \"Didn't you see how he shook all over when you asked if he was\nmarried and he said, 'Who told you those lies?' Oh, M'am,\" Polly said,\n\"he never kept his eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinking\nof you.\"\n\nBut Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung the portraits of her\nhusband and son, told her young protegee never, never, to speak on that\nsubject again; that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friend\nand her own and George's most kind and affectionate guardian; that she\nloved him as a brother--but that a woman who had been married to such\nan angel as that, and she pointed to the wall, could never think of any\nother union.  Poor Polly sighed:  she thought what she should do if\nyoung Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who always looked at her so at\nchurch, and who, by those mere aggressive glances had put her timorous\nlittle heart into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender at\nonce,--what she should do if he were to die? She knew he was\nconsumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was so uncommon thin in the\nwaist.\n\nNot that Emmy, being made aware of the honest Major's passion, rebuffed\nhim in any way, or felt displeased with him.  Such an attachment from\nso true and loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry. Desdemona was\nnot angry with Cassio, though there is very little doubt she saw the\nLieutenant's partiality for her (and I for my part believe that many\nmore things took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorish\nofficer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind to Caliban, and\nwe may be pretty sure for the same reason. Not that she would encourage\nhim in the least--the poor uncouth monster--of course not.  No more\nwould Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the Major.  She would\ngive him that friendly regard, which so much excellence and fidelity\nmerited; she would treat him with perfect cordiality and frankness\nuntil he made his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for her\nto speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be realized.\n\nShe slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after the conversation\nwith Miss Polly, and was more than ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos's\ndelaying.  \"I am glad he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd,\" she\nthought. \"Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such an\naccomplished man as Major William.\" Who was there amongst her little\ncircle who would make him a good wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too old\nand ill-tempered; Miss Osborne? too old too. Little Polly was too\nyoung. Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major before she\nwent to sleep.\n\nThe same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the Slaughters'\nCoffee-house from his friend at Southampton, begging dear Dob to excuse\nJos for being in a rage when awakened the day before (he had a\nconfounded headache, and was just in his first sleep), and entreating\nDob to engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley and\nhis servants.  The Major had become necessary to Jos during the voyage.\nHe was attached to him, and hung upon him.  The other passengers were\naway to London. Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on the\ncoach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the reins from Botley;\nthe Doctor was off to his family at Portsea; Bragg gone to town to his\nco-partners; and the first mate busy in the unloading of the\nRamchunder.  Mr. Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got the\nlandlord of the George to take a glass of wine with him that day, at\nthe very hour at which Major Dobbin was seated at the table of his\nfather, Sir William, where his sister found out (for it was impossible\nfor the Major to tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne.\n\nJos was so comfortably situated in St.  Martin's Lane, he could enjoy\nhis hookah there with such perfect ease, and could swagger down to the\ntheatres, when minded, so agreeably, that, perhaps, he would have\nremained altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major,\nbeen at his elbow.  That gentleman would not let the Bengalee rest\nuntil he had executed his promise of having a home for Amelia and his\nfather.  Jos was a soft fellow in anybody's hands, Dobbin most active\nin anybody's concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easy\nvictim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist and was\nready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish whatever his friend\nthought fit.  Loll Jewab, of whom the boys about St.  Martin's Lane\nused to make cruel fun whenever he showed his dusky countenance in the\nstreet, was sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East Indiaman,\nin which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having previously taught Jos's\nEuropean the art of preparing curries, pilaus, and pipes.  It was a\nmatter of great delight and occupation to Jos to superintend the\nbuilding of a smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in the\nneighbouring Long Acre:  and a pair of handsome horses were jobbed,\nwith which Jos drove about in state in the park, or to call upon his\nIndian friends.  Amelia was not seldom by his side on these excursions,\nwhen also Major Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage.\nAt other times old Sedley and his daughter took advantage of it, and\nMiss Clapp, who frequently accompanied her friend, had great pleasure\nin being recognized as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famous\nyellow shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face might\ncommonly be seen over the window-blinds as she passed.\n\nShortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a dismal scene,\nindeed, took place at that humble cottage at which the Sedleys had\npassed the last ten years of their life.  Jos's carriage (the temporary\none, not the chariot under construction) arrived one day and carried\noff old Sedley and his daughter--to return no more.  The tears that\nwere shed by the landlady and the landlady's daughter at that event\nwere as genuine tears of sorrow as any that have been outpoured in the\ncourse of this history. In their long acquaintanceship and intimacy\nthey could not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia. She\nhad been all sweetness and kindness, always thankful, always gentle,\neven when Mrs. Clapp lost her own temper and pressed for the rent.\nWhen the kind creature was going away for good and all, the landlady\nreproached herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression to\nher--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the window, a paper\nnotifying that the little rooms so long occupied were to let!  They\nnever would have such lodgers again, that was quite clear.  After-life\nproved the truth of this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revenged\nherself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most savage\ncontributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of mutton of her\nlocataires.  Most of them scolded and grumbled; some of them did not\npay; none of them stayed. The landlady might well regret those old, old\nfriends, who had left her.\n\nAs for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure was such as I shall\nnot attempt to depict.  From childhood upwards she had been with her\ndaily and had attached herself so passionately to that dear good lady\nthat when the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour, she\nfainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed scarcely less\naffected than the good-natured girl.  Amelia loved her like a daughter.\nDuring eleven years the girl had been her constant friend and\nassociate.  The separation was a very painful one indeed to her.  But\nit was of course arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at the\ngrand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and where Mary was sure\nshe would never be so happy as she had been in their humble cot, as\nMiss Clapp called it, in the language of the novels which she loved.\n\nLet us hope she was wrong in her judgement.  Poor Emmy's days of\nhappiness had been very few in that humble cot.  A gloomy Fate had\noppressed her there.  She never liked to come back to the house after\nshe had left it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over her\nwhen ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had treated her with a\ncoarse familiarity scarcely less odious. Her servility and fulsome\ncompliments when Emmy was in prosperity were not more to that lady's\nliking.  She cast about notes of admiration all over the new house,\nextolling every article of furniture or ornament; she fingered Mrs.\nOsborne's dresses and calculated their price. Nothing could be too good\nfor that sweet lady, she vowed and protested.  But in the vulgar\nsycophant who now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the coarse\ntyrant who had made her miserable many a time, to whom she had been\nforced to put up petitions for time, when the rent was overdue; who\ncried out at her extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailing\nmother or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon her.\n\nNobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been part of our poor\nlittle woman's lot in life.  She kept them secret from her father,\nwhose improvidence was the cause of much of her misery.  She had to\nbear all the blame of his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentle\nand humble as to be made by nature for a victim.\n\nI hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard usage.  And, as in\nall griefs there is said to be some consolation, I may mention that\npoor Mary, when left at her friend's departure in a hysterical\ncondition, was placed under the medical treatment of the young fellow\nfrom the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short period.\nEmmy, when she went away from Brompton, endowed Mary with every article\nof furniture that the house contained, only taking away her pictures\n(the two pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old piano\nwhich had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age, but which she\nloved for reasons of her own.  She was a child when first she played on\nit, and her parents gave it her.  It had been given to her again since,\nas the reader may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin\nand the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.\n\nMajor Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he was superintending the\narrangements of Jos's new house--which the Major insisted should be\nvery handsome and comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing\nthe trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that village, and with\nthem the old piano.  Amelia would have it up in her sitting-room, a\nneat little apartment on the second floor, adjoining her father's\nchamber, and where the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.\n\nWhen the men appeared then bearing this old music-box, and Amelia gave\norders that it should be placed in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was\nquite elated.  \"I'm glad you've kept it,\" he said in a very sentimental\nmanner.  \"I was afraid you didn't care about it.\"\n\n\"I value it more than anything I have in the world,\" said Amelia.\n\n\"Do you, Amelia?\" cried the Major.  The fact was, as he had bought it\nhimself, though he never said anything about it, it never entered into\nhis head to suppose that Emmy should think anybody else was the\npurchaser, and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the gift\ncame from him.  \"Do you, Amelia?\" he said; and the question, the great\nquestion of all, was trembling on his lips, when Emmy replied--\n\n\"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?\"\n\n\"I did not know,\" said poor old Dob, and his countenance fell.\n\nEmmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor take immediate heed\nof the very dismal expression which honest Dobbin's countenance\nassumed, but she thought of it afterwards.  And then it struck her,\nwith inexpressible pain and mortification too, that it was William who\nwas the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had fancied. It was\nnot George's gift; the only one which she had received from her lover,\nas she thought--the thing she had cherished beyond all others--her\ndearest relic and prize.  She had spoken to it about George; played his\nfavourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours, touching, to the\nbest of her simple art, melancholy harmonies on the keys, and weeping\nover them in silence. It was not George's relic.  It was valueless now.\nThe next time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was\nshockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that she couldn't play.\n\nThen, according to her custom, she rebuked herself for her pettishness\nand ingratitude and determined to make a reparation to honest William\nfor the slight she had not expressed to him, but had felt for his\npiano. A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the drawing-room,\nwhere Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort after dinner, Amelia\nsaid with rather a faltering voice to Major Dobbin--\n\n\"I have to beg your pardon for something.\"\n\n\"About what?\" said he.\n\n\"About--about that little square piano.  I never thanked you for it\nwhen you gave it me, many, many years ago, before I was married.  I\nthought somebody else had given it.  Thank you, William.\" She held out\nher hand, but the poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for\nher eyes, of course they were at their work.\n\nBut William could hold no more.  \"Amelia, Amelia,\" he said, \"I did buy\nit for you.  I loved you then as I do now.  I must tell you.  I think I\nloved you from the first minute that I saw you, when George brought me\nto your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was engaged to.  You were\nbut a girl, in white, with large ringlets; you came down singing--do\nyou remember?--and we went to Vauxhall.  Since then I have thought of\nbut one woman in the world, and that was you.  I think there is no hour\nin the day has passed for twelve years that I haven't thought of you.\nI came to tell you this before I went to India, but you did not care,\nand I hadn't the heart to speak.  You did not care whether I stayed or\nwent.\"\n\n\"I was very ungrateful,\" Amelia said.\n\n\"No, only indifferent,\" Dobbin continued desperately. \"I have nothing\nto make a woman to be otherwise.  I know what you are feeling now.  You\nare hurt in your heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it\ncame from me and not from George.  I forgot, or I should never have\nspoken of it so.  It is for me to ask your pardon for being a fool for\na moment, and thinking that years of constancy and devotion might have\npleaded with you.\"\n\n\"It is you who are cruel now,\" Amelia said with some spirit. \"George is\nmy husband, here and in heaven.  How could I love any other but him? I\nam his now as when you first saw me, dear William. It was he who told\nme how good and generous you were, and who taught me to love you as a\nbrother.  Have you not been everything to me and my boy? Our dearest,\ntruest, kindest friend and protector? Had you come a few months sooner\nperhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful parting.  Oh, it\nnearly killed me, William--but you didn't come, though I wished and\nprayed for you to come, and they took him too away from me.  Isn't he a\nnoble boy, William? Be his friend still and mine\"--and here her voice\nbroke, and she hid her face on his shoulder.\n\nThe Major folded his arms round her, holding her to him as if she was a\nchild, and kissed her head.  \"I will not change, dear Amelia,\" he said.\n\"I ask for no more than your love.  I think I would not have it\notherwise. Only let me stay near you and see you often.\"\n\n\"Yes, often,\" Amelia said.  And so William was at liberty to look and\nlong--as the poor boy at school who has no money may sigh after the\ncontents of the tart-woman's tray.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LX\n\nReturns to the Genteel World\n\nGood fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia.  We are glad to get her\nout of that low sphere in which she has been creeping hitherto and\nintroduce her into a polite circle--not so grand and refined as that in\nwhich our other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still\nhaving no small pretensions to gentility and fashion.  Jos's friends\nwere all from the three presidencies, and his new house was in the\ncomfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the centre.\nMinto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street,\nOchterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace (\"gardens\" was a\nfelicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt terraces in\nfront, so early as 1827)--who does not know these respectable abodes of\nthe retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls\nthe Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand enough\nto entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live but\nretired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break,\nafter having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and\nretire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand a\nyear); he engaged a comfortable house of a second- or third-rate order\nin Gillespie Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and\nhandsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons from the\nassignees of Mr. Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta\nHouse of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarked\nseventy thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honourable life,\ntaking Fake's place, who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the\nFogles have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to\nbe raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted, I say, partner\ninto the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before it\nfailed for a million and plunged half the Indian public into misery and\nruin.\n\nScape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five years of age,\nwent out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs of the house. Walter Scape\nwas withdrawn from Eton and put into a merchant's house.  Florence\nScape, Fanny Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and will\nbe heard of no more.  To be brief, Jos stepped in and bought their\ncarpets and sideboards and admired himself in the mirrors which had\nreflected their kind handsome faces.  The Scape tradesmen, all\nhonourably paid, left their cards, and were eager to supply the new\nhousehold.  The large men in white waistcoats who waited at Scape's\ndinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and milkmen in their private\ncapacity, left their addresses and ingratiated themselves with the\nbutler.  Mr. Chummy, the chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three\nfamilies, tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose duty it\nwas to go out covered with buttons and with stripes down his trousers,\nfor the protection of Mrs. Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.\n\nIt was a modest establishment.  The butler was Jos's valet also, and\nnever was more drunk than a butler in a small family should be who has\na proper regard for his master's wine.  Emmy was supplied with a maid,\ngrown on Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose\nkindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was at first terrified\nat the idea of having a servant to wait upon herself, who did not in\nthe least know how to use one, and who always spoke to domestics with\nthe most reverential politeness.  But this maid was very useful in the\nfamily, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who kept almost entirely\nto his own quarter of the house and never mixed in any of the gay\ndoings which took place there.\n\nNumbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne.  Lady Dobbin and daughters\nwere delighted at her change of fortune, and waited upon her.  Miss\nOsborne from Russell Square came in her grand chariot with the flaming\nhammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms.  Jos was reported to be\nimmensely rich.  Old Osborne had no objection that Georgy should\ninherit his uncle's property as well as his own. \"Damn it, we will make\na man of the feller,\" he said; \"and I'll see him in Parliament before I\ndie.  You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll never set\neyes on her\":  and Miss Osborne came. Emmy, you may be sure, was very\nglad to see her, and so be brought nearer to George.  That young fellow\nwas allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit his\nmother.  He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie Street and bullied\nthe servants and his relations there, just as he did in Russell Square.\n\nHe was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however, and more modest in\nhis demeanour when that gentleman was present.  He was a clever lad and\nafraid of the Major.  George could not help admiring his friend's\nsimplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly imparted, his\ngeneral love of truth and justice.  He had met no such man as yet in\nthe course of his experience, and he had an instinctive liking for a\ngentleman.  He hung fondly by his godfather's side, and it was his\ndelight to walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk.  William told George\nabout his father, about India and Waterloo, about everything but\nhimself.  When George was more than usually pert and conceited, the\nMajor made jokes at him, which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel.  One\nday, taking him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit\nbecause it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes, left him there,\nand went down himself to the pit.  He had not been seated there very\nlong before he felt an arm thrust under his and a dandy little hand in\na kid glove squeezing his arm.  George had seen the absurdity of his\nways and come down from the upper region.  A tender laugh of\nbenevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and eyes as he looked at the\nrepentant little prodigal.  He loved the boy, as he did everything that\nbelonged to Amelia.  How charmed she was when she heard of this\ninstance of George's goodness!  Her eyes looked more kindly on Dobbin\nthan they ever had done.  She blushed, he thought, after looking at him\nso.\n\nGeorgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his mother.  \"I like\nhim, Mamma, because he knows such lots of things; and he ain't like old\nVeal, who is always bragging and using such long words, don't you know?\nThe chaps call him 'Longtail' at school.  I gave him the name; ain't it\ncapital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and French and that; and\nwhen we go out together he tells me stories about my Papa, and never\nabout himself; though I heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that\nhe was one of the bravest officers in the army, and had distinguished\nhimself ever so much.  Grandpapa was quite surprised, and said, 'THAT\nfeller!  Why, I didn't think he could say Bo to a goose'--but I know he\ncould, couldn't he, Mamma?\"\n\nEmmy laughed:  she thought it was very likely the Major could do thus\nmuch.\n\nIf there was a sincere liking between George and the Major, it must be\nconfessed that between the boy and his uncle no great love existed.\nGeorge had got a way of blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands\nin his waistcoat pockets, and saying, \"God bless my soul, you don't say\nso,\" so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was impossible to\nrefrain from laughter.  The servants would explode at dinner if the\nlad, asking for something which wasn't at table, put on that\ncountenance and used that favourite phrase.  Even Dobbin would shoot\nout a sudden peal at the boy's mimicry.  If George did not mimic his\nuncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and Amelia's\nterrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was induced to desist.\nAnd the worthy civilian being haunted by a dim consciousness that the\nlad thought him an ass, and was inclined to turn him into ridicule,\nused to be extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and\ndignified in the presence of Master Georgy.  When it was announced that\nthe young gentleman was expected in Gillespie Street to dine with his\nmother, Mr. Jos commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.\nPerhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence.  On those days Mr.\nSedley would commonly be induced to come out from his place of refuge\nin the upper stories, and there would be a small family party, whereof\nMajor Dobbin pretty generally formed one.  He was the ami de la\nmaison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's friend, Jos's\ncounsel and adviser. \"He might almost as well be at Madras for anything\nWE see of him,\" Miss Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell.  Ah!  Miss Ann,\ndid it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major wanted to\nmarry?\n\nJoseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such as became a\nperson of his eminence.  His very first point, of course, was to become\na member of the Oriental Club, where he spent his mornings in the\ncompany of his brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought\nhome men to dine.\n\nAmelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen and their ladies.\nFrom these she heard how soon Smith would be in Council; how many lacs\nJones had brought home with him, how Thomson's House in London had\nrefused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co., the Bombay\nHouse, and how it was thought the Calcutta House must go too; how very\nimprudent, to say the least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown\nof the Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey of the Body\nGuard, sitting up with him on deck until all hours, and losing\nthemselves as they were riding out at the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had\nhad out her thirteen sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev:\nFelix Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in the\nservice; how Hornby was wild because his wife would stay in Europe, and\nTrotter was appointed Collector at Ummerapoora.  This and similar talk\ntook place at the grand dinners all round.  They had the same\nconversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of mutton,\nboiled turkeys, and entrees.  Politics set in a short time after\ndessert, when the ladies retired upstairs and talked about their\ncomplaints and their children.\n\nMutato nomine, it is all the same.  Don't the barristers' wives talk\nabout Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies gossip about the Regiment?\nDon't the clergymen's ladies discourse about Sunday-schools and who\ntakes whose duty? Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that\nsmall clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should our Indian\nfriends not have their own conversation?--only I admit it is slow for\nthe laymen whose fate it sometimes is to sit by and listen.\n\nBefore long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving about regularly\nin a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer (wife of Major-General Sir\nRoger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G.  Huff,\nBombay ditto; Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c.  We are not\nlong in using ourselves to changes in life.  That carriage came round\nto Gillespie Street every day; that buttony boy sprang up and down from\nthe box with Emmy's and Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and\nthe carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing; or,\nputting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old man round the\nRegent's Park.  The lady's maid and the chariot, the visiting-book and\nthe buttony page, became soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble\nroutine of Brompton.  She accommodated herself to one as to the other.\nIf Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess, she would even have\ndone that duty too.  She was voted, in Jos's female society, rather a\npleasing young person--not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of\nthing.\n\nThe men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and simple refined\ndemeanour.  The gallant young Indian dandies at home on furlough--immense\ndandies these--chained and moustached--driving in tearing cabs,\nthe pillars of the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless\nadmired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the park, and to\nbe admitted to have the honour of paying her a morning visit.  Swankey\nof the Body Guard himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck\nof all the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered by Major\nDobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and describing the sport of\npig-sticking to her with great humour and eloquence; and he spoke\nafterwards of a d--d king's officer that's always hanging about the\nhouse--a long, thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,\nthat took the shine out of a man in the talking line.\n\nHad the Major possessed a little more personal vanity he would have\nbeen jealous of so dangerous a young buck as that fascinating Bengal\nCaptain.  But Dobbin was of too simple and generous a nature to have\nany doubts about Amelia.  He was glad that the young men should pay her\nrespect, and that others should admire her.  Ever since her womanhood\nalmost, had she not been persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to\nsee how kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits\ngently rose with her prosperity.  Any person who appreciated her paid a\ncompliment to the Major's good judgement--that is, if a man may be\nsaid to have good judgement who is under the influence of Love's\ndelusion.\n\nAfter Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he did as a loyal subject\nof his Sovereign (showing himself in his full court suit at the Club,\nwhither Dobbin came to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who\nhad always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George IV, became\nsuch a tremendous Tory and pillar of the State that he was for having\nAmelia to go to a Drawing-room, too.  He somehow had worked himself up\nto believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the public\nwelfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy unless Jos Sedley and\nhis family appeared to rally round him at St.  James's.\n\nEmmy laughed.  \"Shall I wear the family diamonds, Jos?\" she said.\n\n\"I wish you would let me buy you some,\" thought the Major.  \"I should\nlike to see any that were too good for you.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXI\n\nIn Which Two Lights are Put Out\n\nThere came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and solemn\ngaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family indulged was interrupted by\nan event which happens in most houses.  As you ascend the staircase of\nyour house from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may have\nremarked a little arch in the wall right before you, which at once\ngives light to the stair which leads from the second story to the third\n(where the nursery and servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for\nanother purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men can give you\na notion.  They rest the coffins upon that arch, or pass them through\nit so as not to disturb in any unseemly manner the cold tenant\nslumbering within the black ark.\n\nThat second-floor arch in a London house, looking up and down the well\nof the staircase and commanding the main thoroughfare by which the\ninhabitants are passing; by which cook lurks down before daylight to\nscour her pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master\nstealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and let himself\nin after dawn from a jolly night at the Club; down which miss comes\nrustling in fresh ribbons and spreading muslins, brilliant and\nbeautiful, and prepared for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy\nslides, preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and\ndisdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is fondly\ncarried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as he steps steadily step\nby step, and followed by the monthly nurse, on the day when the medical\nman has pronounced that the charming patient may go downstairs; up\nwhich John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering tallow candle, and\nto gather up before sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the\npassages--that stair, up or down which babies are carried, old people\nare helped, guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the\nchristening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the undertaker's men to\nthe upper floor--what a memento of Life, Death, and Vanity it is--that\narch and stair--if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing,\nlooking up and down the well!  The doctor will come up to us too for\nthe last time there, my friend in motley.  The nurse will look in at\nthe curtains, and you take no notice--and then she will fling open the\nwindows for a little and let in the air.  Then they will pull down all\nthe front blinds of the house and live in the back rooms--then they\nwill send for the lawyer and other men in black, &c.  Your comedy and\nmine will have been played then, and we shall be removed, oh, how far,\nfrom the trumpets, and the shouting, and the posture-making.  If we\nare gentlefolks they will put hatchments over our late domicile, with\ngilt cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is \"Quiet in Heaven.\"\nYour son will new furnish the house, or perhaps let it, and go into a\nmore modern quarter; your name will be among the \"Members Deceased\" in\nthe lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be mourned,\nyour widow will like to have her weeds neatly made--the cook will send\nor come up to ask about dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at\nyour picture over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed from\nthe place of honour, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns.\n\nWhich of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Those\nwho love the survivors the least, I believe.  The death of a child\noccasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end,\nbrother reader, will never inspire.  The death of an infant which\nscarce knew you, which a week's absence from you would have caused to\nforget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your closest\nfriend, or your first-born son--a man grown like yourself, with\nchildren of his own.  We may be harsh and stern with Judah and\nSimeon--our love and pity gush out for Benjamin, the little one. And if\nyou are old, as some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich, or\nold and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself--\"These people\nare very good round about me, but they won't grieve too much when I am\ngone.  I am very rich, and they want my inheritance--or very poor, and\nthey are tired of supporting me.\"\n\nThe period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was only just concluded,\nand Jos scarcely had had time to cast off his black and appear in the\nsplendid waistcoats which he loved, when it became evident to those\nabout Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the old man\nwas about to go seek for his wife in the dark land whither she had\npreceded him.  \"The state of my father's health,\" Jos Sedley solemnly\nremarked at the Club, \"prevents me from giving any LARGE parties this\nseason:  but if you will come in quietly at half-past six, Chutney, my\nboy, and fake a homely dinner with one or two of the old set--I shall\nbe always glad to see you.\" So Jos and his acquaintances dined and\ndrank their claret among themselves in silence, whilst the sands of\nlife were running out in the old man's glass upstairs.  The\nvelvet-footed butler brought them their wine, and they composed\nthemselves to a rubber after dinner, at which Major Dobbin would\nsometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs. Osborne would occasionally\ndescend, when her patient above was settled for the night, and had\ncommenced one of those lightly troubled slumbers which visit the pillow\nof old age.\n\nThe old man clung to his daughter during this sickness.  He would take\nhis broths and medicines from scarcely any other hand.  To tend him\nbecame almost the sole business of her life.  Her bed was placed close\nby the door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive at the\nslightest noise or disturbance from the couch of the querulous invalid.\nThough, to do him justice, he lay awake many an hour, silent and\nwithout stirring, unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse.\n\nHe loved his daughter with more fondness now, perhaps, than ever he had\ndone since the days of her childhood.  In the discharge of gentle\noffices and kind filial duties, this simple creature shone most\nespecially.  \"She walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam,\" Mr.\nDobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from her father's room,\na cheerful sweetness lighting up her face as she moved to and fro,\ngraceful and noiseless.  When women are brooding over their children,\nor busied in a sick-room, who has not seen in their faces those sweet\nangelic beams of love and pity?\n\nA secret feud of some years' standing was thus healed, and with a tacit\nreconciliation.  In these last hours, and touched by her love and\ngoodness, the old man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs\nwhich he and his wife had many a long night debated:  how she had given\nup everything for her boy; how she was careless of her parents in their\nold age and misfortune, and only thought of the child; how absurdly and\nfoolishly, impiously indeed, she took on when George was removed from\nher.  Old Sedley forgot these charges as he was making up his last\naccount, and did justice to the gentle and uncomplaining little martyr.\nOne night when she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the\nbroken old man made his confession.  \"Oh, Emmy, I've been thinking we\nwere very unkind and unjust to you,\" he said and put out his cold and\nfeeble hand to her. She knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he did\ntoo, having still hold of her hand.  When our turn comes, friend, may\nwe have such company in our prayers!\n\nPerhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before\nhim--his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity,\nhis downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless\ncondition--no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the\nbetter of him--neither name nor money to bequeath--a spent-out,\nbootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I\nwonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and\nfamous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield;\nor to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a\nstrange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, \"To-morrow,\nsuccess or failure won't matter much, and the sun will rise, and all\nthe myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but\nI shall be out of the turmoil.\"\n\nSo there came one morning and sunrise when all the world got up and set\nabout its various works and pleasures, with the exception of old John\nSedley, who was not to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any\nmore, but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown residence in a\nchurchyard at Brompton by the side of his old wife.\n\nMajor Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains to the grave, in a\nblack cloth coach.  Jos came on purpose from the Star and Garter at\nRichmond, whither he retreated after the deplorable event.  He did not\ncare to remain in the house, with the--under the circumstances, you\nunderstand.  But Emmy stayed and did her duty as usual.  She was bowed\ndown by no especial grief, and rather solemn than sorrowful.  She\nprayed that her own end might be as calm and painless, and thought with\ntrust and reverence of the words which she had heard from her father\nduring his illness, indicative of his faith, his resignation, and his\nfuture hope.\n\nYes, I think that will be the better ending of the two, after all.\nSuppose you are particularly rich and well-to-do and say on that last\nday, \"I am very rich; I am tolerably well known; I have lived all my\nlife in the best society, and thank Heaven, come of a most respectable\nfamily.  I have served my King and country with honour. I was in\nParliament for several years, where, I may say, my speeches were\nlistened to and pretty well received. I don't owe any man a shilling:\non the contrary, I lent my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty\npounds, for which my executors will not press him.  I leave my\ndaughters with ten thousand pounds apiece--very good portions for\ngirls; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in Baker Street,\nwith a handsome jointure, to my widow for her life; and my landed\nproperty, besides money in the funds, and my cellar of well-selected\nwine in Baker Street, to my son.  I leave twenty pound a year to my\nvalet; and I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against my\ncharacter.\" Or suppose, on the other hand, your swan sings quite a\ndifferent sort of dirge and you say, \"I am a poor blighted,\ndisappointed old fellow, and have made an utter failure through life.\nI was not endowed either with brains or with good fortune, and confess\nthat I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders. I own to having\nforgotten my duty many a time.  I can't pay what I owe.  On my last bed\nI lie utterly helpless and humble, and I pray forgiveness for my\nweakness and throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of the\nDivine Mercy.\" Which of these two speeches, think you, would be the\nbest oration for your own funeral? Old Sedley made the last; and in\nthat humble frame of mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter,\nlife and disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.\n\n\"You see,\" said old Osborne to George, \"what comes of merit, and\nindustry, and judicious speculations, and that.  Look at me and my\nbanker's account.  Look at your poor Grandfather Sedley and his\nfailure.  And yet he was a better man than I was, this day twenty\nyears--a better man, I should say, by ten thousand pound.\"\n\nBeyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who came over from Brompton\nto pay a visit of condolence, not a single soul alive ever cared a\npenny piece about old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of such\na person.\n\nWhen old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel Buckler (as little\nGeorgy had already informed us) how distinguished an officer Major\nDobbin was, he exhibited a great deal of scornful incredulity and\nexpressed his surprise how ever such a feller as that should possess\neither brains or reputation.  But he heard of the Major's fame from\nvarious members of his society.  Sir William Dobbin had a great opinion\nof his son and narrated many stories illustrative of the Major's\nlearning, valour, and estimation in the world's opinion. Finally, his\nname appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the nobility,\nand this circumstance had a prodigious effect upon the old aristocrat\nof Russell Square.\n\nThe Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose possession had been\nceded to his grandfather, rendered some meetings between the two\ngentlemen inevitable; and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a\nkeen man of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his ward\nand the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered him very much, and at\nonce pained and pleased him, that it was out of William Dobbin's own\npocket that a part of the fund had been supplied upon which the poor\nwidow and the child had subsisted.\n\nWhen pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not tell lies, blushed\nand stammered a good deal and finally confessed.  \"The marriage,\" he\nsaid (at which his interlocutor's face grew dark) \"was very much my\ndoing.  I thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from his\nengagement would have been dishonour to him and death to Mrs. Osborne,\nand I could do no less, when she was left without resources, than give\nwhat money I could spare to maintain her.\"\n\n\"Major D.,\" Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and turning very red\ntoo--\"you did me a great injury; but give me leave to tell you, sir,\nyou are an honest feller. There's my hand, sir, though I little thought\nthat my flesh and blood was living on you--\" and the pair shook hands,\nwith great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus found out in his act\nof charitable hypocrisy.\n\nHe strove to soften the old man and reconcile him towards his son's\nmemory.  \"He was such a noble fellow,\" he said, \"that all of us loved\nhim, and would have done anything for him.  I, as a young man in those\ndays, was flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and was\nmore pleased to be seen in his company than in that of the\nCommander-in-Chief.  I never saw his equal for pluck and daring and all\nthe qualities of a soldier\"; and Dobbin told the old father as many\nstories as he could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements\nof his son.  \"And Georgy is so like him,\" the Major added.\n\n\"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes,\" the grandfather\nsaid.\n\nOn one or two evenings the Major came to dine with Mr. Osborne (it was\nduring the time of the sickness of Mr. Sedley), and as the two sat\ntogether in the evening after dinner, all their talk was about the\ndeparted hero. The father boasted about him according to his wont,\nglorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and gallantry, but his\nmood was at any rate better and more charitable than that in which he\nhad been disposed until now to regard the poor fellow; and the\nChristian heart of the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms of\nreturning peace and good-will.  On the second evening old Osborne\ncalled Dobbin William, just as he used to do at the time when Dobbin\nand George were boys together, and the honest gentleman was pleased by\nthat mark of reconciliation.\n\nOn the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity of\nher age and character, ventured to make some remark reflecting\nslightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour--the master of the\nhouse interrupted her.  \"You'd have been glad enough to git him for\nyourself, Miss O.  But them grapes are sour.  Ha!  ha! Major William is\na fine feller.\"\n\n\"That he is, Grandpapa,\" said Georgy approvingly; and going up close to\nthe old gentleman, he took a hold of his large grey whiskers, and\nlaughed in his face good-humouredly, and kissed him.  And he told the\nstory at night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy. \"Indeed he\nis,\" she said.  \"Your dear father always said so. He is one of the best\nand most upright of men.\" Dobbin happened to drop in very soon after\nthis conversation, which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the young\nscapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin the other part of\nthe story.  \"I say, Dob,\" he said, \"there's such an uncommon nice girl\nwants to marry you.  She's plenty of tin; she wears a front; and she\nscolds the servants from morning till night.\" \"Who is it?\" asked\nDobbin.   \"It's Aunt O.,\" the boy answered. \"Grandpapa said so.  And I\nsay, Dob, how prime it would be to have you for my uncle.\" Old Sedley's\nquavering voice from the next room at this moment weakly called for\nAmelia, and the laughing ended.\n\nThat old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear. He asked George\nabout his uncle sometimes, and laughed at the boy's imitation of the\nway in which Jos said \"God-bless-my-soul\" and gobbled his soup.  Then\nhe said, \"It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating of\nyour relations.  Miss O., when you go out adriving to-day, leave my\ncard upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear? There's no quarrel betwigst me and\nhim anyhow.\"\n\nThe card was returned, and Jos and the Major were asked to dinner--to\na dinner the most splendid and stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osborne\ngave; every inch of the family plate was exhibited, and the best\ncompany was asked.  Mr. Sedley took down Miss O.  to dinner, and she\nwas very gracious to him; whereas she hardly spoke to the Major, who\nsat apart from her, and by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid.  Jos\nsaid, with great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had ever\ntasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his Madeira.\n\n\"It is some of Sedley's wine,\" whispered the butler to his master.\n\"I've had it a long time, and paid a good figure for it, too,\" Mr.\nOsborne said aloud to his guest, and then whispered to his right-hand\nneighbour how he had got it \"at the old chap's sale.\"\n\nMore than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs. George Osborne--a\ntheme on which the Major could be very eloquent when he chose.  He told\nMr. Osborne of her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to her\nhusband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender and dutiful\nmanner in which she had supported her parents, and given up her boy,\nwhen it seemed to her her duty to do so.  \"You don't know what she\nendured, sir,\" said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, \"and I\nhope and trust you will be reconciled to her.  If she took your son\naway from you, she gave hers to you; and however much you loved your\nGeorge, depend on it, she loved hers ten times more.\"\n\n\"By God, you are a good feller, sir,\" was all Mr. Osborne said.  It had\nnever struck him that the widow would feel any pain at parting from the\nboy, or that his having a fine fortune could grieve her.  A\nreconciliation was announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's\nheart already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting with\nGeorge's father.\n\nIt was never, however, destined to take place.  Old Sedley's lingering\nillness and death supervened, after which a meeting was for some time\nimpossible.  That catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr.\nOsborne.  He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his mind was\nworking inwardly.  He had sent for his lawyers, and probably changed\nsomething in his will.  The medical man who looked in pronounced him\nshaky, agitated, and talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he\ntook neither of these remedies.\n\nOne day when he should have come down to breakfast, his servant missing\nhim, went into his dressing-room and found him lying at the foot of the\ndressing-table in a fit.  Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors were\nsent for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders and cuppers\ncame.  Osborne partially regained cognizance, but never could speak\nagain, though he tried dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he\ndied.  The doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up the\nstairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the garden in Russell\nSquare.  Bullock rushed from the City in a hurry. \"How much money had\nhe left to that boy? Not half, surely? Surely share and share alike\nbetween the three?\" It was an agitating moment.\n\nWhat was it that poor old man tried once or twice in vain to say? I\nhope it was that he wanted to see Amelia and be reconciled before he\nleft the world to one dear and faithful wife of his son:  it was most\nlikely that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had so long\ncherished had gone out of his heart.\n\nThey found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the letter with the great\nred seal which George had written him from Waterloo.  He had looked at\nthe other papers too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in\nwhich he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found the seals\nand envelopes had been broken--very likely on the night before the\nseizure--when the butler had taken him tea into his study, and found\nhim reading in the great red family Bible.\n\nWhen the will was opened, it was found that half the property was left\nto George, and the remainder between the two sisters.  Mr. Bullock to\ncontinue, for their joint benefit, the affairs of the commercial house,\nor to go out, as he thought fit.  An annuity of five hundred pounds,\nchargeable on George's property, was left to his mother, \"the widow of\nmy beloved son, George Osborne,\" who was to resume the guardianship of\nthe boy.\n\n\"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend,\" was appointed\nexecutor; \"and as out of his kindness and bounty, and with his own\nprivate funds, he maintained my grandson and my son's widow, when they\nwere otherwise without means of support\" (the testator went on to say)\n\"I hereby thank him heartily for his love and regard for them, and\nbeseech him to accept such a sum as may be sufficient to purchase his\ncommission as a Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he\nmay think fit.\"\n\nWhen Amelia heard that her father-in-law was reconciled to her, her\nheart melted, and she was grateful for the fortune left to her.  But\nwhen she heard how Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by\nwhom, and how it was William's bounty that supported her in poverty,\nhow it was William who gave her her husband and her son--oh, then she\nsank on her knees, and prayed for blessings on that constant and kind\nheart; she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the feet, as it\nwere, of that beautiful and generous affection.\n\nAnd gratitude was all that she had to pay back for such admirable\ndevotion and benefits--only gratitude!  If she thought of any other\nreturn, the image of George stood up out of the grave and said, \"You\nare mine, and mine only, now and forever.\"\n\nWilliam knew her feelings:  had he not passed his whole life in\ndivining them?\n\nWhen the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known to the world, it was\nedifying to remark how Mrs. George Osborne rose in the estimation of\nthe people forming her circle of acquaintance.  The servants of Jos's\nestablishment, who used to question her humble orders and say they\nwould \"ask Master\" whether or not they could obey, never thought now of\nthat sort of appeal.  The cook forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns\n(which, indeed, were quite eclipsed by that lady's finery when she was\ndressed to go to church of a Sunday evening), the others no longer\ngrumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed to answer that summons.\nThe coachman, who grumbled that his 'osses should be brought out and\nhis carriage made into an hospital for that old feller and Mrs. O.,\ndrove her with the utmost alacrity now, and trembling lest he should be\nsuperseded by Mr. Osborne's coachman, asked \"what them there Russell\nSquare coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit on a\nbox before a lady?\" Jos's friends, male and female, suddenly became\ninterested about Emmy, and cards of condolence multiplied on her hall\ntable.  Jos himself, who had looked on her as a good-natured harmless\npauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and shelter, paid her\nand the rich little boy, his nephew, the greatest respect--was anxious\nthat she should have change and amusement after her troubles and\ntrials, \"poor dear girl\"--and began to appear at the breakfast-table,\nand most particularly to ask how she would like to dispose of the day.\n\nIn her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the consent of the\nMajor, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss Osborne to live in the Russell\nSquare house as long as ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady,\nwith thanks, declared that she never could think of remaining alone in\nthat melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning to Cheltenham,\nwith a couple of her old domestics. The rest were liberally paid and\ndismissed, the faithful old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed to\nretain, resigning and preferring to invest his savings in a\npublic-house, where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous. Miss Osborne\nnot choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs. Osborne also, after\nconsultation, declined to occupy the gloomy old mansion there.  The\nhouse was dismantled; the rich furniture and effects, the awful\nchandeliers and dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich\nrosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the carpets were\nrolled up and corded, the small select library of well-bound books was\nstowed into two wine-chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in\nseveral enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they were to lie until\nGeorgy's majority.  And the great heavy dark plate-chests went off to\nMessrs.  Stumpy and Rowdy, to lie in the cellars of those eminent\nbankers until the same period should arrive.\n\nOne day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in deep sables, went to\nvisit the deserted mansion which she had not entered since she was a\ngirl.  The place in front was littered with straw where the vans had\nbeen laden and rolled off.  They went into the great blank rooms, the\nwalls of which bore the marks where the pictures and mirrors had hung.\nThen they went up the great blank stone staircases into the upper\nrooms, into that where grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, and\nthen higher still into George's own room.  The boy was still clinging\nby her side, but she thought of another besides him.  She knew that it\nhad been his father's room as well as his own.\n\nShe went up to one of the open windows (one of those at which she used\nto gaze with a sick heart when the child was first taken from her), and\nthence as she looked out she could see, over the trees of Russell\nSquare, the old house in which she herself was born, and where she had\npassed so many happy days of sacred youth. They all came back to her,\nthe pleasant holidays, the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times,\nand the long pains and trials that had since cast her down. She thought\nof these and of the man who had been her constant protector, her good\ngenius, her sole benefactor, her tender and generous friend.\n\n\"Look here, Mother,\" said Georgy, \"here's a G.O. scratched on the glass\nwith a diamond, I never saw it before, I never did it.\"\n\n\"It was your father's room long before you were born, George,\" she\nsaid, and she blushed as she kissed the boy.\n\nShe was very silent as they drove back to Richmond, where they had\ntaken a temporary house:  where the smiling lawyers used to come\nbustling over to see her (and we may be sure noted the visit in the\nbill):  and where of course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, who\nrode over frequently, having much business to transact on behalf of his\nlittle ward.\n\nGeorgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on an unlimited\nholiday, and that gentleman was engaged to prepare an inscription for a\nfine marble slab, to be placed up in the Foundling under the monument\nof Captain George Osborne.\n\nThe female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although despoiled by that little\nmonster of one-half of the sum which she expected from her father,\nnevertheless showed her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled to\nthe mother and the boy.  Roehampton is not far from Richmond, and one\nday the chariot, with the golden bullocks emblazoned on the panels, and\nthe flaccid children within, drove to Amelia's house at Richmond; and\nthe Bullock family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia was\nreading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly dipping strawberries into\nwine, and the Major in one of his Indian jackets was giving a back to\nGeorgy, who chose to jump over him.  He went over his head and bounded\ninto the little advance of Bullocks, with immense black bows in their\nhats, and huge black sashes, accompanying their mourning mamma.\n\n\"He is just of the age for Rosa,\" the fond parent thought, and glanced\ntowards that dear child, an unwholesome little miss of seven years of\nage.\n\n\"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin,\" Mrs. Frederick said.  \"Don't you\nknow me, George? I am your aunt.\"\n\n\"I know you well enough,\" George said; \"but I don't like kissing,\nplease\"; and he retreated from the obedient caresses of his cousin.\n\n\"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child,\" Mrs. Frederick said, and\nthose ladies accordingly met, after an absence of more than fifteen\nyears.  During Emmy's cares and poverty the other had never once\nthought about coming to see her, but now that she was decently\nprosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as a matter of\ncourse.\n\nSo did numbers more.  Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and her husband came\nthundering over from Hampton Court, with flaming yellow liveries, and\nwas as impetuously fond of Amelia as ever.  Miss Swartz would have\nliked her always if she could have seen her.  One must do her that\njustice.  But, que voulez vous?--in this vast town one has not the time\nto go and seek one's friends; if they drop out of the rank they\ndisappear, and we march on without them.  Who is ever missed in Vanity\nFair?\n\nBut so, in a word, and before the period of grief for Mr. Osborne's\ndeath had subsided, Emmy found herself in the centre of a very genteel\ncircle indeed, the members of which could not conceive that anybody\nbelonging to it was not very lucky.  There was scarce one of the ladies\nthat hadn't a relation a Peer, though the husband might be a drysalter\nin the City.  Some of the ladies were very blue and well informed,\nreading Mrs. Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; others\nwere severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall. Emmy, it must be\nowned, found herself entirely at a loss in the midst of their clavers,\nand suffered woefully on the one or two occasions on which she was\ncompelled to accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock's hospitalities.  That lady\npersisted in patronizing her and determined most graciously to form\nher.  She found Amelia's milliners for her and regulated her household\nand her manners.  She drove over constantly from Roehampton and\nentertained her friend with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feeble\nCourt slip-slop. Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used to go off\ngrowling at the appearance of this woman, with her twopenny gentility.\nHe went to sleep under Frederick Bullock's bald head, after dinner, at\none of the banker's best parties (Fred was still anxious that the\nbalance of the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy and\nRowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not know Latin, or who\nwrote the last crack article in the Edinburgh, and did not in the least\ndeplore, or otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary tergiversation on\nthe fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst the ladies in the\ngrand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns, trim gravel walks,\nand glistening hot-houses.\n\n\"She seems good-natured but insipid,\" said Mrs. Rowdy; \"that Major\nseems to be particularly epris.\"\n\n\"She wants ton sadly,\" said Mrs. Hollyock.  \"My dear creature, you\nnever will be able to form her.\"\n\n\"She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent,\" said Mrs. Glowry with a\nvoice as if from the grave, and a sad shake of the head and turban. \"I\nasked her if she thought that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls,\nor in 1839, according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall: and\nshe said--'Poor Pope!  I hope not--What has he done?'\"\n\n\"She is my brother's widow, my dear friends,\" Mrs. Frederick replied,\n\"and as such I think we're all bound to give her every attention and\ninstruction on entering into the world.  You may fancy there can be no\nMERCENARY motives in those whose DISAPPOINTMENTS are well known.\"\n\n\"That poor dear Mrs. Bullock,\" said Rowdy to Hollyock, as they drove\naway together--\"she is always scheming and managing.  She wants Mrs.\nOsborne's account to be taken from our house to hers--and the way in\nwhich she coaxes that boy and makes him sit by that blear-eyed little\nRosa is perfectly ridiculous.\"\n\n\"I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and her Battle of\nArmageddon,\" cried the other, and the carriage rolled away over Putney\nBridge.\n\nBut this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for Emmy, and all\njumped for joy when a foreign tour was proposed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXII\n\nAm Rhein\n\nThe above everyday events had occurred, and a few weeks had passed,\nwhen on one fine morning, Parliament being over, the summer advanced,\nand all the good company in London about to quit that city for their\nannual tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat\nleft the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English fugitives.\nThe quarter-deck awnings were up, and the benches and gangways crowded\nwith scores of rosy children, bustling nursemaids; ladies in the\nprettiest pink bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps\nand linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to sprout for the\nensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans with starched neckcloths and\nneat-brushed hats, such as have invaded Europe any time since the\nconclusion of the war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of\nthe Continent.  The congregation of hat-boxes, and Bramah desks, and\ndressing-cases was prodigious.  There were jaunty young Cambridge-men\ntravelling with their tutor, and going for a reading excursion to\nNonnenwerth or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the most\ndashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, and\nprodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on the\ncontrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with\nmaiden coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems and\nWiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of the\nseason, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarante to keep the\nexcitement going; there was old Methuselah, who had married his young\nwife, with Captain Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and\nguide-books; there was young May who was carrying off his bride on a\npleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and who had been at school with\nMay's grandmother); there was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen\nchildren, and corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee Bareacres\nfamily that sat by themselves near the wheel, stared at everybody, and\nspoke to no one.  Their carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped\nwith shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a dozen\nmore such vehicles:  it was difficult to pass in and out amongst them;\nand the poor inmates of the fore-cabin had scarcely any space for\nlocomotion.  These consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen\nfrom Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and could have\nbought half the gay people in the grand saloon; a few honest fellows\nwith mustachios and portfolios, who set to sketching before they had\nbeen half an hour on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who\nbegan to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had passed Greenwich; a\ngroom or two who lounged in the neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under\ntheir charge, or leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked\nabout who was good for the Leger, and what they stood to win or lose\nfor the Goodwood cup.\n\nAll the couriers, when they had done plunging about the ship and had\nsettled their various masters in the cabins or on the deck, congregated\ntogether and began to chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining\nthem and looking at the carriages.  There was Sir John's great carriage\nthat would hold thirteen people; my Lord Methuselah's carriage, my Lord\nBareacres' chariot, britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for\nwho liked. It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to pay for\nthe expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen knew how he got it.\nThey knew what money his Lordship had in his pocket at that instant,\nand what interest he paid for it, and who gave it him.  Finally there\nwas a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about which the\ngentlemen speculated.\n\n\"A qui cette voiture la?\" said one gentleman-courier with a large\nmorocco money-bag and ear-rings to another with ear-rings and a large\nmorocco money-bag.\n\n\"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--qui brenoit des\nsangviches dans la voiture,\" said the courier in a fine German French.\n\nKirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of the hold, where he\nhad been bellowing instructions intermingled with polyglot oaths to the\nship's men engaged in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give\nan account of himself to his brother interpreters.  He informed them\nthat the carriage belonged to a Nabob from Calcutta and Jamaica\nenormously rich, and with whom he was engaged to travel; and at this\nmoment a young gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between the\npaddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the roof of Lord\nMethuselah's carriage, from which he made his way over other carriages\nand imperials until he had clambered on to his own, descended thence\nand through the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause\nof the couriers looking on.\n\n\"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur George,\" said the\ncourier with a grin, as he lifted his gold-laced cap.\n\n\"D---- your French,\" said the young gentleman, \"where's the biscuits,\nay?\" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the English language or in such\nan imitation of it as he could command--for though he was familiar with\nall languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and\nspoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.\n\nThe imperious young gentleman who gobbled the biscuits (and indeed it\nwas time to refresh himself, for he had breakfasted at Richmond full\nthree hours before) was our young friend George Osborne.  Uncle Jos and\nhis mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of whom they used\nto see a good deal, and the four were about to make a summer tour.\n\nJos was seated at that moment on deck under the awning, and pretty\nnearly opposite to the Earl of Bareacres and his family, whose\nproceedings absorbed the Bengalee almost entirely.  Both the noble\ncouple looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when Jos\nremembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed, he always gave out in\nIndia that he was intimately acquainted with them).  Lady Bareacres'\nhair, which was then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas\nLord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present of a rich black\nwith purple and green reflections in the light.  But changed as they\nwere, the movements of the noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely.\nThe presence of a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing\nelse.\n\n\"Those people seem to interest you a good deal,\" said Dobbin, laughing\nand watching him.  Amelia too laughed. She was in a straw bonnet with\nblack ribbons, and otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustle\nand holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she looked\nparticularly happy.\n\n\"What a heavenly day!\" Emmy said and added, with great originality, \"I\nhope we shall have a calm passage.\"\n\nJos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same time under his\neyelids at the great folks opposite.  \"If you had made the voyages we\nhave,\" he said, \"you wouldn't much care about the weather.\" But\nnevertheless, traveller as he was, he passed the night direfully sick\nin his carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-water\nand every luxury.\n\nIn due time this happy party landed at the quays of Rotterdam, whence\nthey were transported by another steamer to the city of Cologne.  Here\nthe carriage and the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a little\ngratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne newspapers as\n\"Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst Begleitung aus London.\" He had his\ncourt dress with him; he had insisted that Dobbin should bring his\nregimental paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to be\npresented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects to the\nSovereigns of the countries which he honoured with a visit.\n\nWherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was offered, Mr. Jos\nleft his own card and the Major's upon \"Our Minister.\" It was with\ngreat difficulty that he could be restrained from putting on his cocked\nhat and tights to wait upon the English consul at the Free City of\nJudenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our travellers to\ndinner.  He kept a journal of his voyage and noted elaborately the\ndefects or excellences of the various inns at which he put up, and of\nthe wines and dishes of which he partook.\n\nAs for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased.  Dobbin used to carry\nabout for her her stool and sketch-book, and admired the drawings of\nthe good-natured little artist as they never had been admired before.\nShe sat upon steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she mounted\nupon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-towers, attended by her two\naides-de-camp, Georgy and Dobbin.  She laughed, and the Major did too,\nat his droll figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching the\nground.  He was the interpreter for the party; having a good military\nknowledge of the German language, and he and the delighted George\nfought the campaigns of the Rhine and the Palatinate.  In the course of\na few weeks, and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the box\nof the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in the knowledge of\nHigh Dutch, and could talk to hotel waiters and postilions in a way\nthat charmed his mother and amused his guardian.\n\nMr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon excursions of his\nfellow-travellers.  He slept a good deal after dinner, or basked in the\narbours of the pleasant inn-gardens.  Pleasant Rhine gardens! Fair\nscenes of peace and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests are\nreflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen you that has not\na grateful memory of those scenes of friendly repose and beauty? To lay\ndown the pen and even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes one\nhappy.  At this time of summer evening, the cows are trooping down from\nthe hills, lowing and with their bells tinkling, to the old town, with\nits old moats, and gates, and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long\nblue shadows stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below\nflame in crimson and gold; and the moon is already out, looking pale\ntowards the sunset.  The sun sinks behind the great castle-crested\nmountains, the night falls suddenly, the river grows darker and darker,\nlights quiver in it from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle\npeacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore.\n\nSo Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna over his face\nand be very comfortable, and read all the English news, and every word\nof Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of all Englishmen\nwho have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors of that\npiratical print!  ) and whether he woke or slept, his friends did not\nvery much miss him.  Yes, they were very happy.  They went to the opera\noften of evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the\nGerman towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and knits stockings on\nthe one side, over against the bourgeoisie on the other; and His\nTransparency the Duke and his Transparent family, all very fat and\ngood-natured, come and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit\nis full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-coloured\nmustachios, and twopence a day on full pay. Here it was that Emmy found\nher delight, and was introduced for the first time to the wonders of\nMozart and Cimarosa. The Major's musical taste has been before alluded\nto, and his performances on the flute commended. But perhaps the chief\npleasure he had in these operas was in watching Emmy's rapture while\nlistening to them. A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when\nshe was introduced to those divine compositions; this lady had the\nkeenest and finest sensibility, and how could she be indifferent when\nshe heard Mozart? The tender parts of \"Don Juan\" awakened in her\nraptures so exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say\nher prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel so much\ndelight as that with which \"Vedrai Carino\" and \"Batti Batti\" filled her\ngentle little bosom? But the Major, whom she consulted upon this head,\nas her theological adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent\nsoul), said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made him\nthankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening\nto fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful\nlandscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as\nsincerely as for any other worldly blessing.  And in reply to some\nfaint objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological works\nlike the Washerwoman of Finchley Common and others of that school, with\nwhich Mrs. Osborne had been furnished during her life at Brompton) he\ntold her an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the sunshine was\nunbearable for the eyes and that the Nightingale was a most overrated\nbird.  \"It is one's nature to sing and the other's to hoot,\" he said,\nlaughing, \"and with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must\nbelong to the Bulbul faction.\"\n\nI like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think that she was\ncheerful and happy.  You see, she has not had too much of that sort of\nexistence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her\ntastes or her intelligence.  She has been domineered over hitherto by\nvulgar intellects.  It is the lot of many a woman. And as every one of\nthe dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for\nfolly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and\nsilence--which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling\nfolks, and tacit protestantism--above all, finds no mercy at the hands\nof the female Inquisition. Thus, my dear and civilized reader, if you\nand I were to find ourselves this evening in a society of greengrocers,\nlet us say, it is probable that our conversation would not be\nbrilliant; if, on the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at\nyour refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying witty\nthings, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing her friends to\npieces in the most delightful manner, it is possible that the stranger\nwould not be very talkative and by no means interesting or interested.\n\nAnd it must be remembered that this poor lady had never met a gentleman\nin her life until this present moment.  Perhaps these are rarer\npersonages than some of us think for.  Which of us can point out many\nsuch in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is\nconstant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated in its degree;\nwhose want of meanness makes them simple; who can look the world\nhonestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the\nsmall? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and a\nscore who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who are\nwhat they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centre\nand bull's-eye of the fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a\nlittle scrap of paper and each make out his list.\n\nMy friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in mine.  He had very\nlong legs, a yellow face, and a slight lisp, which at first was rather\nridiculous.  But his thoughts were just, his brains were fairly good,\nhis life was honest and pure, and his heart warm and humble.  He\ncertainly had very large hands and feet, which the two George Osbornes\nused to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers and laughter perhaps\nled poor little Emmy astray as to his worth.  But have we not all been\nmisled about our heroes and changed our opinions a hundred times? Emmy,\nin this happy time, found that hers underwent a very great change in\nrespect of the merits of the Major.\n\nPerhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives, indeed, if they\ndid but know it--and who does? Which of us can point out and say that\nwas the culmination--that was the summit of human joy? But at all\nevents, this couple were very decently contented, and enjoyed as\npleasant a summer tour as any pair that left England that year. Georgy\nwas always present at the play, but it was the Major who put Emmy's\nshawl on after the entertainment; and in the walks and excursions the\nyoung lad would be on ahead, and up a tower-stair or a tree, whilst the\nsoberer couple were below, the Major smoking his cigar with great\nplacidity and constancy, whilst Emmy sketched the site or the ruin.  It\nwas on this very tour that I, the present writer of a history of which\nevery word is true, had the pleasure to see them first and to make\ntheir acquaintance.\n\nIt was at the little comfortable Ducal town of Pumpernickel (that very\nplace where Sir Pitt Crawley had been so distinguished as an attache;\nbut that was in early early days, and before the news of the Battle of\nAusterlitz sent all the English diplomatists in Germany to the right\nabout) that I first saw Colonel Dobbin and his party.  They had arrived\nwith the carriage and courier at the Erbprinz Hotel, the best of the\ntown, and the whole party dined at the table d'hote.  Everybody\nremarked the majesty of Jos and the knowing way in which he sipped, or\nrather sucked, the Johannisberger, which he ordered for dinner.  The\nlittle boy, too, we observed, had a famous appetite, and consumed\nschinken, and braten, and kartoffeln, and cranberry jam, and salad, and\npudding, and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry that did\nhonour to his nation.  After about fifteen dishes, he concluded the\nrepast with dessert, some of which he even carried out of doors, for\nsome young gentlemen at table, amused with his coolness and gallant\nfree-and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons,\nwhich he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went in\nthe cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy's\nmamma, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as\nthe dinner went on, and at the various feats and instances of\nespieglerie on the part of her son.  The Colonel--for so he became very\nsoon afterwards--I remember joked the boy with a great deal of grave\nfun, pointing out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating him not\nto baulk his appetite, but to have a second supply of this or that.\n\nIt was what they call a gast-rolle night at the Royal Grand Ducal\nPumpernickelisch Hof--or Court theatre--and Madame Schroeder Devrient,\nthen in the bloom of her beauty and genius, performed the part of the\nheroine in the wonderful opera of Fidelio.  From our places in the\nstalls we could see our four friends of the table d'hote in the loge\nwhich Schwendler of the Erbprinz kept for his best guests, and I could\nnot help remarking the effect which the magnificent actress and music\nproduced upon Mrs. Osborne, for so we heard the stout gentleman in the\nmustachios call her.  During the astonishing Chorus of the Prisoners,\nover which the delightful voice of the actress rose and soared in the\nmost ravishing harmony, the English lady's face wore such an expression\nof wonder and delight that it struck even little Fipps, the blase\nattache, who drawled out, as he fixed his glass upon her, \"Gayd, it\nreally does one good to see a woman caypable of that stayt of\nexcaytement.\" And in the Prison Scene, where Fidelio, rushing to her\nhusband, cries, \"Nichts, nichts, mein Florestan,\" she fairly lost\nherself and covered her face with her handkerchief.  Every woman in the\nhouse was snivelling at the time, but I suppose it was because it was\npredestined that I was to write this particular lady's memoirs that I\nremarked her.\n\nThe next day they gave another piece of Beethoven, Die Schlacht bei\nVittoria.  Malbrook is introduced at the beginning of the performance,\nas indicative of the brisk advance of the French army. Then come drums,\ntrumpets, thunders of artillery, and groans of the dying, and at last,\nin a grand triumphal swell, \"God Save the King\" is performed.\n\nThere may have been a score of Englishmen in the house, but at the\nburst of that beloved and well-known music, every one of them, we young\nfellows in the stalls, Sir John and Lady Bullminster (who had taken a\nhouse at Pumpernickel for the education of their nine children), the\nfat gentleman with the mustachios, the long Major in white duck\ntrousers, and the lady with the little boy upon whom he was so sweet,\neven Kirsch, the courier in the gallery, stood bolt upright in their\nplaces and proclaimed themselves to be members of the dear old British\nnation.  As for Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, he rose up in his box\nand bowed and simpered, as if he would represent the whole empire.\nTapeworm was nephew and heir of old Marshal Tiptoff, who has been\nintroduced in this story as General Tiptoff, just before Waterloo, who\nwas Colonel of the --th regiment in which Major Dobbin served, and who\ndied in this year full of honours, and of an aspic of plovers' eggs;\nwhen the regiment was graciously given by his Majesty to Colonel Sir\nMichael O'Dowd, K.C.B.  who had commanded it in many glorious fields.\n\nTapeworm must have met with Colonel Dobbin at the house of the\nColonel's Colonel, the Marshal, for he recognized him on this night at\nthe theatre, and with the utmost condescension, his Majesty's minister\ncame over from his own box and publicly shook hands with his new-found\nfriend.\n\n\"Look at that infernal sly-boots of a Tapeworm,\" Fipps whispered,\nexamining his chief from the stalls. \"Wherever there's a pretty woman\nhe always twists himself in.\" And I wonder what were diplomatists made\nfor but for that?\n\n\"Have I the honour of addressing myself to Mrs. Dobbin?\" asked the\nSecretary with a most insinuating grin.\n\nGeorgy burst out laughing and said, \"By Jove, that was a good 'un.\"\nEmmy and the Major blushed:  we saw them from the stalls.\n\n\"This lady is Mrs. George Osborne,\" said the Major, \"and this is her\nbrother, Mr. Sedley, a distinguished officer of the Bengal Civil\nService:  permit me to introduce him to your lordship.\"\n\nMy lord nearly sent Jos off his legs with the most fascinating smile.\n\"Are you going to stop in Pumpernickel?\" he said.  \"It is a dull place,\nbut we want some nice people, and we would try and make it SO agreeable\nto you.  Mr.--Ahum--Mrs.--Oho.  I shall do myself the honour of calling\nupon you to-morrow at your inn.\" And he went away with a Parthian grin\nand glance which he thought must finish Mrs. Osborne completely.\n\nThe performance over, the young fellows lounged about the lobbies, and\nwe saw the society take its departure. The Duchess Dowager went off in\nher jingling old coach, attended by two faithful and withered old maids\nof honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman in waiting, in\na brown jasey and a green coat covered with orders--of which the star\nand the grand yellow cordon of the order of St. Michael of Pumpernickel\nwere most conspicuous.  The drums rolled, the guards saluted, and the\nold carriage drove away.\n\nThen came his Transparency the Duke and Transparent family, with his\ngreat officers of state and household.  He bowed serenely to everybody.\nAnd amid the saluting of the guards and the flaring of the torches of\nthe running footmen, clad in scarlet, the Transparent carriages drove\naway to the old Ducal schloss, with its towers and pinacles standing on\nthe schlossberg.  Everybody in Pumpernickel knew everybody.  No sooner\nwas a foreigner seen there than the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or\nsome other great or small officer of state, went round to the Erbprinz\nand found out the name of the new arrival.\n\nWe watched them, too, out of the theatre.  Tapeworm had just walked\noff, enveloped in his cloak, with which his gigantic chasseur was\nalways in attendance, and looking as much as possible like Don Juan.\nThe Prime Minister's lady had just squeezed herself into her sedan, and\nher daughter, the charming Ida, had put on her calash and clogs; when\nthe English party came out, the boy yawning drearily, the Major taking\ngreat pains in keeping the shawl over Mrs. Osborne's head, and Mr.\nSedley looking grand, with a crush opera-hat on one side of his head\nand his hand in the stomach of a voluminous white waistcoat.  We took\noff our hats to our acquaintances of the table d'hote, and the lady, in\nreturn, presented us with a little smile and a curtsey, for which\neverybody might be thankful.\n\nThe carriage from the inn, under the superintendence of the bustling\nMr. Kirsch, was in waiting to convey the party; but the fat man said he\nwould walk and smoke his cigar on his way homewards, so the other\nthree, with nods and smiles to us, went without Mr. Sedley, Kirsch,\nwith the cigar case, following in his master's wake.\n\nWe all walked together and talked to the stout gentleman about the\nagremens of the place.  It was very agreeable for the English. There\nwere shooting-parties and battues; there was a plenty of balls and\nentertainments at the hospitable Court; the society was generally good;\nthe theatre excellent; and the living cheap.\n\n\"And our Minister seems a most delightful and affable person,\" our new\nfriend said.  \"With such a representative, and--and a good medical man,\nI can fancy the place to be most eligible.  Good-night, gentlemen.\" And\nJos creaked up the stairs to bedward, followed by Kirsch with a\nflambeau.  We rather hoped that nice-looking woman would be induced to\nstay some time in the town.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIII\n\nIn Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance\n\nSuch polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did not fail to have the\nmost favourable effect upon Mr. Sedley's mind, and the very next\nmorning, at breakfast, he pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel was\nthe pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on their tour.\nJos's motives and artifices were not very difficult of comprehension,\nand Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like a hypocrite as he was, when he\nfound, by the knowing air of the civilian and the offhand manner in\nwhich the latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and the other members of\nthe family, that Jos had been up already in the morning, consulting his\ntravelling Peerage.  Yes, he had seen the Right Honourable the Earl of\nBagwig, his lordship's father; he was sure he had, he had met him\nat--at the Levee--didn't Dob remember? and when the Diplomatist called\non the party, faithful to his promise, Jos received him with such a\nsalute and honours as were seldom accorded to the little Envoy.  He\nwinked at Kirsch on his Excellency's arrival, and that emissary,\ninstructed before-hand, went out and superintended an entertainment of\ncold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon trays, and\nof which Mr. Jos absolutely insisted that his noble guest should\npartake.\n\nTapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of admiring the\nbright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness of complexion bore\ndaylight remarkably well) was not ill pleased to accept any invitation\nto stay in Mr. Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two dexterous questions\nto him about India and the dancing-girls there; asked Amelia about that\nbeautiful boy who had been with her; and complimented the astonished\nlittle woman upon the prodigious sensation which she had made in the\nhouse; and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war and the\nexploits of the Pumpernickel contingent under the command of the\nHereditary Prince, now Duke of Pumpernickel.\n\nLord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family gallantry, and\nit was his happy belief that almost every woman upon whom he himself\ncast friendly eyes was in love with him.  He left Emmy under the\npersuasion that she was slain by his wit and attractions and went home\nto his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her.  She was not\nfascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering, his scented\ncambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered boots.  She did not\nunderstand one-half the compliments which he paid; she had never, in\nher small experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as yet,\nand looked upon my lord as something curious rather than pleasant; and\nif she did not admire, certainly wondered at him.  Jos, on the\ncontrary, was delighted. \"How very affable his Lordship is,\" he said;\n\"How very kind of his Lordship to say he would send his medical man!\nKirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de Schlusselback\ndirectly; the Major and I will have the greatest pleasure in paying our\nrespects at Court as soon as possible.  Put out my uniform,\nKirsch--both our uniforms.  It is a mark of politeness which every\nEnglish gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits to pay\nhis respects to the sovereigns of those countries as to the\nrepresentatives of his own.\"\n\nWhen Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber, Body Physician to\nH.S.H.  the Duke, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel\nmineral springs and the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly\nrestore the Bengalee to youth and slimness.  \"Dere came here last\nyear,\" he said, \"Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral, tvice so pic\nas you, sir.  I sent him back qvite tin after tree months, and he\ndanced vid Baroness Glauber at the end of two.\"\n\nJos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the Court, and the\nCharge d'Affaires convinced him, and he proposed to spend the autumn in\nthese delightful quarters.  And punctual to his word, on the next day\nthe Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor Aurelius\nXVII, being conducted to their audience with that sovereign by the\nCount de Schlusselback, Marshal of the Court.\n\nThey were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and their intention\nof staying in the town being announced, the politest ladies of the\nwhole town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these,\nhowever poor they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's\ndelight was beyond expression.  He wrote off to Chutney at the Club to\nsay that the Service was highly appreciated in Germany, that he was\ngoing to show his friend, the Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a\npig in the Indian fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and\nDuchess, were everything that was kind and civil.\n\nEmmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as mourning is not\nadmitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink crape dress\nwith a diamond ornament in the corsage, presented to her by her\nbrother, and she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and\nCourt (putting out of the question the Major, who had scarcely ever\nseen her before in an evening dress, and vowed that she did not look\nfive-and-twenty) all admired her excessively.\n\nIn this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin at a Court ball,\nin which easy dance Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess\nof Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good\nquarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany.\n\nPumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley through which\nsparkles--to mingle with the Rhine somewhere, but I have not the map at\nhand to say exactly at what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump.\nIn some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in\nothers to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last Transparency\nbut three, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV built a\nmagnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises, surrounded by\nwater-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot\non the neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and ran a\nJanissary through the body at the relief of Vienna by Sobieski--but,\nquite undisturbed by the agonies of that prostrate Mahometan, who\nwrithes at his feet in the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles\nblandly and points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius\nPlatz, where he began to erect a new palace that would have been the\nwonder of his age had the great-souled Prince but had funds to\ncomplete it.  But the completion of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest\nGerman folks call it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and\nits park and garden are now in rather a faded condition, and not more\nthan ten times big enough to accommodate the Court of the reigning\nSovereign.\n\nThe gardens were arranged to emulate those of Versailles, and amidst\nthe terraces and groves there are some huge allegorical waterworks\nstill, which spout and froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frighten\none with their enormous aquatic insurrections.  There is the\nTrophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden Tritons are\nmade not only to spout water, but to play the most dreadful groans out\nof their lead conchs--there is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract,\nwhich the people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression, when\nthey come to the yearly fair at the opening of the Chamber, or to the\nfetes with which the happy little nation still celebrates the birthdays\nand marriage-days of its princely governors.\n\nThen from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches for nearly ten\nmile--from Bolkum, which lies on its western frontier bidding defiance\nto Prussia, from Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, and\nwhere his dominions are separated by the Pump River from those of the\nneighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from all the little villages, which\nbesides these three great cities, dot over the happy principality--from\nthe farms and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in red\npetticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with three-cornered hats and\npipes in their mouths, who flock to the Residenz and share in the\npleasures of the fair and the festivities there.  Then the theatre is\nopen for nothing, then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it is\nlucky that there is company to behold them, for one would be afraid to\nsee them alone)--then there come mountebanks and riding troops (the way\nin which his Transparency was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is\nwell known, and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was\ncalled, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted people are\npermitted to march through room after room of the Grand Ducal palace\nand admire the slippery floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at\nthe doors of all the innumerable chambers.  There is one Pavilion at\nMonblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had arranged--a great Prince but\ntoo fond of pleasure--and which I am told is a perfect wonder of\nlicentious elegance. It is painted with the story of Bacchus and\nAriadne, and the table works in and out of the room by means of a\nwindlass, so that the company was served without any intervention of\ndomestics.  But the place was shut up by Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow,\na severe and devout Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the\nDuchy during her son's glorious minority, and after the death of her\nhusband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures.\n\nThe theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in that quarter of\nGermany.  It languished a little when the present Duke in his youth\ninsisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said one\nday, in a fury, from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a\nrehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who was\nconducting, and led too slow; and during which time the Duchess Sophia\nwrote domestic comedies, which must have been very dreary to witness.\nBut the Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess only\ngives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction who visit her\nkind little Court.\n\nIt is conducted with no small comfort and splendour. When there are\nballs, though there may be four hundred people at supper, there is a\nservant in scarlet and lace to attend upon every four, and every one is\nserved on silver.  There are festivals and entertainments going\ncontinually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and equerries, and\nthe Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe and ladies of honour, just\nlike any other and more potent potentates.\n\nThe Constitution is or was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamber\nthat might or might not be elected.  I never certainly could hear of\nits sitting in my time at Pumpernickel.  The Prime Minister had\nlodgings in a second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the\ncomfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey.  The army consisted of\na magnificent band that also did duty on the stage, where it was quite\npleasant to see the worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses with\nrouge on and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with ophicleides\nand trombones--to see them again, I say, at night, after one had\nlistened to them all the morning in the Aurelius Platz, where they\nperformed opposite the cafe where we breakfasted.  Besides the band,\nthere was a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a few\nmen.  Besides the regular sentries, three or four men, habited as\nhussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I never saw them on\nhorseback, and au fait, what was the use of cavalry in a time of\nprofound peace?--and whither the deuce should the hussars ride?\n\nEverybody--everybody that was noble of course, for as for the bourgeois\nwe could not quite be expected to take notice of THEM--visited his\nneighbour.  H. E. Madame de Burst received once a week, H. E. Madame de\nSchnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice a week, the Court\ngraciously received once, so that a man's life might in fact be a\nperfect round of pleasure in the unpretending Pumpernickel way.\n\nThat there were feuds in the place, no one can deny. Politics ran very\nhigh at Pumpernickel, and parties were very bitter.  There was the\nStrumpff faction and the Lederlung party, the one supported by our\nenvoy and the other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M. de Macabau.\nIndeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for Madame Strumpff,\nwho was clearly the greater singer of the two, and had three more notes\nin her voice than Madame Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, for\nour Minister to advance any opinion to have it instantly contradicted\nby the French diplomatist.\n\nEverybody in the town was ranged in one or other of these factions. The\nLederlung was a prettyish little creature certainly, and her voice\n(what there was of it) was very sweet, and there is no doubt that the\nStrumpff was not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly too\nstout; when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula, for\ninstance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to go\nout of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all she\ncould do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and\ncreak again under her weight--but how she poured out the finale of the\nopera!  and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's\narms--almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung--but a\ntruce to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were the two\nflags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and the\nsociety was divided in its allegiance to those two great nations.\n\nWe had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of the Horse, the\nDuke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's Tutor; whereas of the French\nparty were the Foreign Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who had\nserved under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his wife, who was glad\nenough to get the fashions from Paris, and always had them and her caps\nby M. de Macabau's courier.  The Secretary of his Chancery was little\nGrignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who made\ncaricatures of Tapeworm in all the albums of the place.\n\nTheir headquarters and table d'hote were established at the Pariser\nHof, the other inn of the town; and though, of course, these gentlemen\nwere obliged to be civil in public, yet they cut at each other with\nepigrams that were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of\nwrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins and never\nshowing their agony upon a muscle of their faces.  Neither Tapeworm nor\nMacabau ever sent home a dispatch to his government without a most\nsavage series of attacks upon his rival.  For instance, on our side we\nwould write, \"The interests of Great Britain in this place, and\nthroughout the whole of Germany, are perilled by the continuance in\noffice of the present French envoy; this man is of a character so\ninfamous that he will stick at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime,\nto attain his ends.  He poisons the mind of the Court against the\nEnglish minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in the most\nodious and atrocious light, and is unhappily backed by a minister whose\nignorance and necessities are as notorious as his influence is fatal.\"\nOn their side they would say, \"M. de Tapeworm continues his system of\nstupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood against the greatest\nnation in the world.  Yesterday he was heard to speak lightly of Her\nRoyal Highness Madame the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion he\ninsulted the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate that\nH.R.H.  the Duke of Orleans was conspiring against the august throne of\nthe lilies.  His gold is prodigated in every direction which his stupid\nmenaces fail to frighten. By one and the other, he has won over\ncreatures of the Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not be\nquiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe content until this\npoisonous viper be crushed under heel\":  and so on.  When one side or\nthe other had written any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it was\nsure to slip out.\n\nBefore the winter was far advanced, it is actually on record that Emmy\ntook a night and received company with great propriety and modesty.\nShe had a French master, who complimented her upon the purity of her\naccent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had learned long\nago and grounded herself subsequently in the grammar so as to be able\nto teach it to George; and Madam Strumpff came to give her lessons in\nsinging, which she performed so well and with such a true voice that\nthe Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the Prime\nMinister, were always open to hear the lesson. Some of the German\nladies, who are very sentimental and simple in their tastes, fell in\nlove with her and began to call her du at once.  These are trivial\ndetails, but they relate to happy times.  The Major made himself\nGeorge's tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and they had a\nGerman master and rode out of evenings by the side of Emmy's\ncarriage--she was always too timid, and made a dreadful outcry at the\nslightest disturbance on horse-back.  So she drove about with one of\nher dear German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of the\nbarouche.\n\nHe was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny de Butterbrod, a very\ngentle tender-hearted and unassuming young creature, a Canoness and\nCountess in her own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to her\nfortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be Amelia's sister was\nthe greatest delight that Heaven could bestow on her, and Jos might\nhave put a Countess's shield and coronet by the side of his own arms on\nhis carriage and forks; when--when events occurred, and those grand\nfetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary Prince of Pumpernickel\nwith the lovely Princess Amelia of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen took\nplace.\n\nAt this festival the magnificence displayed was such as had not been\nknown in the little German place since the days of the prodigal Victor\nXIV.  All the neighbouring Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were\ninvited to the feast.  Beds rose to half a crown per night in\nPumpernickel, and the Army was exhausted in providing guards of honour\nfor the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies who arrived from all\nquarters.  The Princess was married by proxy, at her father's\nresidence, by the Count de Schlusselback.  Snuff-boxes were given away\nin profusion (as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold and\nafterwards bought them again), and bushels of the Order of Saint\nMichael of Pumpernickel were sent to the nobles of the Court, while\nhampers of the cordons and decorations of the Wheel of St. Catherine of\nSchlippenschloppen were brought to ours.  The French envoy got both.\n\"He is covered with ribbons like a prize cart-horse,\" Tapeworm said,\nwho was not allowed by the rules of his service to take any\ndecorations:  \"Let him have the cordons; but with whom is the victory?\"\nThe fact is, it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French party\nhaving proposed and tried their utmost to carry a marriage with a\nPrincess of the House of Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matter\nof course, we opposed.\n\nEverybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage. Garlands and\ntriumphal arches were hung across the road to welcome the young bride.\nThe great Saint Michael's Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while\nthat in the Artillery Place frothed with beer.  The great waters\nplayed; and poles were put up in the park and gardens for the happy\npeasantry, which they might climb at their leisure, carrying off\nwatches, silver forks, prize sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c., at\nthe top.  Georgy got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the pole\nto the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the rapidity of\na fall of water.  But it was for the glory's sake merely.  The boy gave\nthe sausage to a peasant, who had very nearly seized it, and stood at\nthe foot of the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful.\n\nAt the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions in their\nillumination than ours had; but our transparency, which represented the\nyoung Couple advancing and Discord flying away, with the most ludicrous\nlikeness to the French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; and\nI have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the Cross of the Bath\nwhich he subsequently attained.\n\nCrowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of English, of course.\nBesides the Court balls, public balls were given at the Town Hall and\nthe Redoute, and in the former place there was a room for\ntrente-et-quarante and roulette established, for the week of the\nfestivities only, and by one of the great German companies from Ems or\nAix-la-Chapelle.  The officers or inhabitants of the town were not\nallowed to play at these games, but strangers, peasants, ladies were\nadmitted, and any one who chose to lose or win money.\n\nThat little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others, whose pockets\nwere always full of dollars and whose relations were away at the grand\nfestival of the Court, came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of his\nuncle's courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a play-room at\nBaden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm, and where, of course, he was\nnot permitted to gamble, came eagerly to this part of the entertainment\nand hankered round the tables where the croupiers and the punters were\nat work.  Women were playing; they were masked, some of them; this\nlicense was allowed in these wild times of carnival.\n\nA woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means so fresh as it had\nbeen, and with a black mask on, through the eyelets of which her eyes\ntwinkled strangely, was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a\ncard and a pin and a couple of florins before her.  As the croupier\ncalled out the colour and number, she pricked on the card with great\ncare and regularity, and only ventured her money on the colours after\nthe red or black had come up a certain number of times.  It was strange\nto look at her.\n\nBut in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed wrong and the last\ntwo florins followed each other under the croupier's rake, as he cried\nout with his inexorable voice the winning colour and number.  She gave\na sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out of\nher gown, and dashing the pin through the card on to the table, sat\nthrumming it for a while.  Then she looked round her and saw Georgy's\nhonest face staring at the scene.  The little scamp!  What business had\nhe to be there?\n\nWhen she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard through her shining\neyes and mask, she said, \"Monsieur n'est pas joueur?\"\n\n\"Non, Madame,\" said the boy; but she must have known, from his accent,\nof what country he was, for she answered him with a slight foreign\ntone.  \"You have nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?\"\n\n\"What is it?\" said Georgy, blushing again.  Mr. Kirsch was at work for\nhis part at the rouge et noir and did not see his young master.\n\n\"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number, any number.\"\nAnd she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, the\nonly coin there, and she put it into George's hand.  The boy laughed\nand did as he was bid.\n\nThe number came up sure enough.  There is a power that arranges that,\nthey say, for beginners.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said she, pulling the money towards her, \"thank you. What\nis your name?\"\n\n\"My name's Osborne,\" said Georgy, and was fingering in his own pockets\nfor dollars, and just about to make a trial, when the Major, in his\nuniform, and Jos, en Marquis, from the Court ball, made their\nappearance.  Other people, finding the entertainment stupid and\npreferring the fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball\nearlier; but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and found\nthe boy's absence, for the former instantly went up to him and, taking\nhim by the shoulder, pulled him briskly back from the place of\ntemptation.  Then, looking round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we\nhave said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring Mr. George\nto such a place.\n\n\"Laissez-moi tranquille,\" said Mr. Kirsch, very much excited by play\nand wine.  \"Il faut s'amuser, parbleu. Je ne suis pas au service de\nMonsieur.\"\n\nSeeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue with the man,\nbut contented himself with drawing away George and asking Jos if he\nwould come away.  He was standing close by the lady in the mask, who\nwas playing with pretty good luck now, and looking on much interested\nat the game.\n\n\"Hadn't you better come, Jos,\" the Major said, \"with George and me?\"\n\n\"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch,\" Jos said; and for the\nsame reason of modesty, which he thought ought to be preserved before\nthe boy, Dobbin did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and\nwalked home with Georgy.\n\n\"Did you play?\" asked the Major when they were out and on their way\nhome.\n\nThe boy said \"No.\"\n\n\"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you never will.\"\n\n\"Why?\" said the boy; \"it seems very good fun.\" And, in a very eloquent\nand impressive manner, the Major showed him why he shouldn't, and would\nhave enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had\nhe liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's memory.\nWhen he had housed him, he went to bed and saw his light, in the little\nroom outside of Amelia's, presently disappear.  Amelia's followed half\nan hour afterwards.  I don't know what made the Major note it so\naccurately.\n\nJos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he was no gambler,\nbut not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then, and\nhe had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court\nwaistcoat.  He put down one over the fair shoulder of the little\ngambler before him, and they won.  She made a little movement to make\nroom for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from a\nvacant chair there.\n\n\"Come and give me good luck,\" she said, still in a foreign accent,\nquite different from that frank and perfectly English \"Thank you,\" with\nwhich she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favour.  The portly\ngentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, sat\ndown; he muttered--\"Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul. I'm very\nfortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune,\" and other words of\ncompliment and confusion. \"Do you play much?\" the foreign mask said.\n\n\"I put a Nap or two down,\" said Jos with a superb air, flinging down a\ngold piece.\n\n\"Yes; ay nap after dinner,\" said the mask archly.  But Jos looking\nfrightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, \"You do not\nplay to win.  No more do I. I play to forget, but I cannot.  I cannot\nforget old times, monsieur.  Your little nephew is the image of his\nfather; and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are. Everybody\nchanges, everybody forgets; nobody has any heart.\"\n\n\"Good God, who is it?\" asked Jos in a flutter.\n\n\"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?\" said the little woman in a sad voice,\nand undoing her mask, she looked at him.  \"You have forgotten me.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!  Mrs. Crawley!\" gasped out Jos.\n\n\"Rebecca,\" said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed\nthe game still, all the time she was looking at him.\n\n\"I am stopping at the Elephant,\" she continued.  \"Ask for Madame de\nRaudon.  I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how\nhappy!  So do you! Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley.\"\nAnd she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chance\nmovement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with a\npocket-handkerchief fringed with torn lace.\n\nThe red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. \"Come\naway,\" she said.  \"Come with me a little--we are old friends, are we\nnot, dear Mr. Sedley?\"\n\nAnd Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his\nmaster out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out\nand the transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIV\n\nA Vagabond Chapter\n\nWe must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that\nlightness and delicacy which the world demands--the moral world, that\nhas, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable\nrepugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. There are things\nwe do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak of\nthem:  as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him:\nand a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description\nof vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit the\nword breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing.  And yet, madam,\nboth are walking the world before our faces every day, without much\nshocking us.  If you were to blush every time they went by, what\ncomplexions you would have!  It is only when their naughty names are\ncalled out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of\noutrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through\nthis story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present\nprevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light,\neasy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be\noffended.  I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some\nvices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and\ninoffensive manner.  In describing this Siren, singing and smiling,\ncoaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers\nall round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the\nmonster's hideous tail above water? No!  Those who like may peep down\nunder waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and\ntwirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or\ncurling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not\neverything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most\nsqueamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however,\nthe Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the\nwater of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look\ninto it ever so curiously.  They look pretty enough when they sit upon\na rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and\nbeckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink\ninto their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about no\ngood, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals,\nrevelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims.  And so, when\nBecky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well\nemployed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact\nthe better.\n\nIf we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of\nyears that followed after the Curzon Street catastrophe, there might be\nsome reason for people to say this book was improper.  The actions of\nvery vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often improper\n(as are many of yours, my friend with the grave face and spotless\nreputation--but that is merely by the way); and what are those of a\nwoman without faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think\nthat there was a period in Mrs Becky's life when she was seized, not by\nremorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her person\nand did not even care for her reputation.\n\nThis abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was\nbrought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles\nto keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any\nhope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that\nstruggling is in vain.\n\nShe lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations\nfor his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made\nmore than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and\nto work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour.\nAs Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons,\nthe latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the\npalace of the legislature.  She sneaked away when her eyes met those of\nWenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet.\n\nProbably Lady Jane interposed.  I have heard that she quite astonished\nher husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and her\ndetermination to disown Mrs. Becky.  Of her own movement, she invited\nRawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for\nCoventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not\ntry to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptions\nof all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his\nsister-in-law should be corresponding.  Not but that Rebecca could have\nwritten had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pitt\nat his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demand\nthat the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should be\ncarried on by lawyers only.\n\nThe fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her.  A short\ntime after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet and\ngiven him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member\nfor Queen's Crawley.  He knew everything regarding her: who her father\nwas; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been her\nprevious history; and what her conduct during her married life--as I\nhave no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated\nby interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here.  But Becky\nwas left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman\nand relative who had been once rather partial to her.\n\nThe revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large.  A part\nof them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certain\noutstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his high\nsituation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that he\ncould not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year,\nwhich he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never\ntrouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would\nensue.  But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business,\nRawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up a\nmost disagreeable affair.\n\nShe was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs of\nbusiness with her husband's lawyers that she forgot to take any step\nwhatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even once\npropose to go and see him.  That young gentleman was consigned to the\nentire guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom had\nalways possessed a great share of the child's affection.  His mamma\nwrote him a neat letter from Boulogne, when she quitted England, in\nwhich she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going to\ntake a Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure of\nwriting to him again.  But she never did for a year afterwards, and\nnot, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy, always sickly, died of\nhooping-cough and measles--then Rawdon's mamma wrote the most\naffectionate composition to her darling son, who was made heir of\nQueen's Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than ever to\nthe kind lady, whose tender heart had already adopted him.  Rawdon\nCrawley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when he got the letter.\n\"Oh, Aunt Jane, you are my mother!\" he said; \"and not--and not that\none.\" But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca,\nthen living at a boarding-house at Florence. But we are advancing\nmatters.\n\nOur darling Becky's first flight was not very far.  She perched upon\nthe French coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much exiled English\ninnocence, and there lived in rather a genteel, widowed manner, with a\nfemme de chambre and a couple of rooms, at an hotel.  She dined at the\ntable d'hote, where people thought her very pleasant, and where she\nentertained her neighbours by stories of her brother, Sir Pitt, and her\ngreat London acquaintance, talking that easy, fashionable slip-slop\nwhich has so much effect upon certain folks of small breeding.  She\npassed with many of them for a person of importance; she gave little\ntea-parties in her private room and shared in the innocent amusements\nof the place in sea-bathing, and in jaunts in open carriages, in\nstrolls on the sands, and in visits to the play. Mrs. Burjoice, the\nprinter's lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for the\nsummer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a Saturday and Sunday, voted\nher charming, until that little rogue of a Burjoice began to pay her\ntoo much attention.  But there was nothing in the story, only that\nBecky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and with men\nespecially.\n\nNumbers of people were going abroad as usual at the end of the season,\nand Becky had plenty of opportunities of finding out by the behaviour\nof her acquaintances of the great London world the opinion of \"society\"\nas regarded her conduct.  One day it was Lady Partlet and her daughters\nwhom Becky confronted as she was walking modestly on Boulogne pier, the\ncliffs of Albion shining in the distance across the deep blue sea.\nLady Partlet marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of her\nparasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage glances at poor\nlittle Becky who stood alone there.\n\nOn another day the packet came in.  It had been blowing fresh, and it\nalways suited Becky's humour to see the droll woe-begone faces of the\npeople as they emerged from the boat.  Lady Slingstone happened to be\non board this day.  Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill in her\ncarriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely fit to walk up the\nplank from the ship to the pier.  But all her energies rallied the\ninstant she saw Becky smiling roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving\nher a glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most women, she\nwalked into the Custom House quite unsupported.  Becky only laughed:\nbut I don't think she liked it.  She felt she was alone, quite alone,\nand the far-off shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.\n\nThe behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't know what change.\nGrinstone showed his teeth and laughed in her face with a familiarity\nthat was not pleasant. Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her\nthree months before, and would walk a mile in the rain to see for her\ncarriage in the line at Gaunt House, was talking to Fitzoof of the\nGuards (Lord Heehaw's son) one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her\nwalk there. Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without\nmoving his hat, and continued his conversation with the heir of Heehaw.\nTom Raikes tried to walk into her sitting-room at the inn with a cigar\nin his mouth, but she closed the door upon him, and would have locked\nit, only that his fingers were inside.  She began to feel that she was\nvery lonely indeed.  \"If HE'D been here,\" she said, \"those cowards\nwould never have dared to insult me.\" She thought about \"him\" with\ngreat sadness and perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant\nkindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good humour;\nhis bravery and courage.  Very likely she cried, for she was\nparticularly lively, and had put on a little extra rouge, when she came\ndown to dinner.\n\nShe rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got Cognac for her besides\nthat which was charged in the hotel bill.\n\nPerhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so intolerable to her\nas the sympathy of certain women. Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington\nWhite passed through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland.  The party\nwere protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and of course old\nCrackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl. THEY did not avoid her.\nThey giggled, cackled, tattled, condoled, consoled, and patronized her\nuntil they drove her almost wild with rage.  To be patronized by THEM!\nshe thought, as they went away simpering after kissing her.  And she\nheard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the stair and knew quite well how to\ninterpret his hilarity.\n\nIt was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her weekly bills,\nBecky who had made herself agreeable to everybody in the house, who\nsmiled at the landlady, called the waiters \"monsieur,\" and paid the\nchambermaids in politeness and apologies, what far more than\ncompensated for a little niggardliness in point of money (of which\nBecky never was free), that Becky, we say, received a notice to quit\nfrom the landlord, who had been told by some one that she was quite an\nunfit person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not sit\ndown with her.  And she was forced to fly into lodgings of which the\ndulness and solitude were most wearisome to her.\n\nStill she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to make a\ncharacter for herself and conquer scandal.  She went to church very\nregularly and sang louder than anybody there.  She took up the cause of\nthe widows of the shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for\nthe Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly and WOULDN'T\nwaltz.  In a word, she did everything that was respectable, and that is\nwhy we dwell upon this part of her career with more fondness than upon\nsubsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant. She saw\npeople avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled upon them; you never\ncould suppose from her countenance what pangs of humiliation she might\nbe enduring inwardly.\n\nHer history was after all a mystery.  Parties were divided about her.\nSome people who took the trouble to busy themselves in the matter said\nthat she was the criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent\nas a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault. She won over a good\nmany by bursting into tears about her boy and exhibiting the most\nfrantic grief when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like him.\nShe gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way, who was rather the\nQueen of British Boulogne and gave the most dinners and balls of all\nthe residents there, by weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr.\nSwishtail's academy to pass his holidays with his mother.  \"He and her\nRawdon were of the same age, and so like,\" Becky said in a voice\nchoking with agony; whereas there was five years' difference between\nthe boys' ages, and no more likeness between them than between my\nrespected reader and his humble servant.  Wenham, when he was going\nabroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord Steyne, enlightened Mrs.\nAlderney on this point and told her how he was much more able to\ndescribe little Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and\nnever saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while little Alderney was\nbut nine, fair, while the other darling was dark--in a word, caused the\nlady in question to repent of her good humour.\n\nWhenever Becky made a little circle for herself with incredible toils\nand labour, somebody came and swept it down rudely, and she had all her\nwork to begin over again.  It was very hard; very hard; lonely and\ndisheartening.\n\nThere was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some time, attracted by\nthe sweetness of her singing at church and by her proper views upon\nserious subjects, concerning which in former days, at Queen's Crawley,\nMrs. Becky had had a good deal of instruction.  Well, she not only took\ntracts, but she read them.  She worked flannel petticoats for the\nQuashyboos--cotton night-caps for the Cocoanut Indians--painted\nhandscreens for the conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr.\nRowls on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended two Sunday\nservices at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the Darbyite, in the evening,\nand all in vain.  Mrs. Newbright had occasion to correspond with the\nCountess of Southdown about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji Islanders\n(for the management of which admirable charity both these ladies formed\npart of a female committee), and having mentioned her \"sweet friend,\"\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a letter\nregarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts, falsehoods, and\ngeneral comminations, that intimacy between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs.\nCrawley ceased forthwith, and all the serious world of Tours, where\nthis misfortune took place, immediately parted company with the\nreprobate.  Those who know the English Colonies abroad know that we\ncarry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces,\ncayenne-peppers, and other Lares, making a little Britain wherever we\nsettle down.\n\nFrom one colony to another Becky fled uneasily.  From Boulogne to\nDieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen to Tours--trying with all her\nmight to be respectable, and alas!  always found out some day or other\nand pecked out of the cage by the real daws.\n\nMrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--a woman without a\nblemish in her character and a house in Portman Square.  She was\nstaying at the hotel at Dieppe, whither Becky fled, and they made each\nother's acquaintance first at sea, where they were swimming together,\nand subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel.  Mrs Eagles had\nheard--who indeed had not?--some of the scandal of the Steyne affair;\nbut after a conversation with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley\nwas an angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an unprincipled\nwretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case against Mrs. Crawley an\ninfamous and wicked conspiracy of that rascal Wenham.  \"If you were a\nman of any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears the next\ntime you see him at the Club,\" she said to her husband.  But Eagles was\nonly a quiet old gentleman, husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for\ngeology, and not tall enough to reach anybody's ears.\n\nThe Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to live with her at\nher own house at Paris, quarrelled with the ambassador's wife because\nshe would not receive her protegee, and did all that lay in woman's\npower to keep Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.\n\nBecky was very respectable and orderly at first, but the life of\nhumdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her before long.  It was the\nsame routine every day, the same dulness and comfort, the same drive\nover the same stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an evening,\nthe same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the same opera always being\nacted over and over again; Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily\nfor her, young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother, seeing\nthe impression which her little friend made upon him, straightway gave\nBecky warning.\n\nThen she tried keeping house with a female friend; then the double\nmenage began to quarrel and get into debt.  Then she determined upon a\nboarding-house existence and lived for some time at that famous mansion\nkept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at Paris, where she\nbegan exercising her graces and fascinations upon the shabby dandies\nand fly-blown beauties who frequented her landlady's salons.  Becky\nloved society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an\nopium-eater without his dram, and she was happy enough at the period of\nher boarding-house life.  \"The women here are as amusing as those in\nMay Fair,\" she told an old London friend who met her, \"only, their\ndresses are not quite so fresh.  The men wear cleaned gloves, and are\nsad rogues, certainly, but they are not worse than Jack This and Tom\nThat.  The mistress of the house is a little vulgar, but I don't think\nshe is so vulgar as Lady ------\" and here she named the name of a great\nleader of fashion that I would die rather than reveal.  In fact, when\nyou saw Madame de Saint Amour's rooms lighted up of a night, men with\nplaques and cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little\ndistance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good society, and\nthat Madame was a real Countess.  Many people did so fancy, and Becky\nwas for a while one of the most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.\n\nBut it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found her out and\ncaused her to leave Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to fly\nfrom the city rather suddenly, and went thence to Brussels.\n\nHow well she remembered the place!  She grinned as she looked up at the\nlittle entresol which she had occupied, and thought of the Bareacres\nfamily, bawling for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the\nporte-cochere of the hotel.  She went to Waterloo and to Laeken, where\nGeorge Osborne's monument much struck her.  She made a little sketch of\nit.  \"That poor Cupid!\" she said; \"how dreadfully he was in love with\nme, and what a fool he was!  I wonder whether little Emmy is alive.  It\nwas a good little creature; and that fat brother of hers.  I have his\nfunny fat picture still among my papers.  They were kind simple people.\"\n\nAt Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to her\nfriend, Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General,\nthe famous Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the\ndeceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte table.\nSecond-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who always have a lawsuit,\nand very simple English folks, who fancy they see \"Continental society\"\nat these houses, put down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de\nBorodino's tables.  The gallant young fellows treated the company round\nto champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hired\nhorses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the play\nor the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the\necarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire about\ntheir felicitous introduction to foreign society.\n\nHere, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen, and ruled in\nselect pensions.  She never refused the champagne, or the bouquets, or\nthe drives into the country, or the private boxes; but what she\npreferred was the ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First\nshe played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for\nNapoleons, then for notes:  then she would not be able to pay her\nmonth's pension:  then she borrowed from the young gentlemen: then she\ngot into cash again and bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed\nand wheedled before:  then she was playing for ten sous at a time, and\nin a dire state of poverty:  then her quarter's allowance would come\nin, and she would pay off Madame de Borodino's score and would once\nmore take the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de\nRaff.\n\nWhen Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she owed three months'\npension to Madame de Borodino, of which fact, and of the gambling, and\nof the drinking, and of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.\nMuff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him, and of her coaxing\nand flirting with Milor Noodle, son of Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev.\nMr. Muff, whom she used to take into her private room, and of whom she\nwon large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a hundred of her\nother knaveries, the Countess de Borodino informs every English person\nwho stops at her establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was no\nbetter than a vipere.\n\nSo our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various cities\nof Europe, as restless as Ulysses or Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste\nfor disrespectability grew more and more remarkable.  She became a\nperfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make your\nhair stand on end to meet.\n\nThere is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of\nEnglish raffs--men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out\nperiodically at the Sheriffs' Court--young gentlemen of very good\nfamily often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of\nbilliard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and\ngaming-tables.  They people the debtors' prisons--they drink and\nswagger--they fight and brawl--they run away without paying--they have\nduels with French and German officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at\necarte--they get the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent\nbritzkas--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the tables\nwith empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless bucks, until they can\nswindle a Jew banker with a sham bill of exchange, or find another Mr.\nSpooney to rob. The alternations of splendour and misery which these\npeople undergo are very queer to view.  Their life must be one of great\nexcitement.  Becky--must it be owned?--took to this life, and took to\nit not unkindly.  She went about from town to town among these\nBohemians.  The lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in\nGermany.  She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at Florence\ntogether.  It is said she was ordered out of Munich, and my friend Mr.\nFrederick Pigeon avers that it was at her house at Lausanne that he was\nhocussed at supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder and the\nHonourable Mr. Deuceace.  We are bound, you see, to give some account\nof Becky's biography, but of this part, the less, perhaps, that is said\nthe better.\n\nThey say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly down on her luck, she\ngave concerts and lessons in music here and there.  There was a Madame\nde Raudon, who certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad, accompanied\nby Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of Wallachia, and my\nlittle friend Mr. Eaves, who knew everybody and had travelled\neverywhere, always used to declare that he was at Strasburg in the year\n1830, when a certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the opera\nof the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious row in the theatre\nthere.  She was hissed off the stage by the audience, partly from her\nown incompetency, but chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some\npersons in the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their\nadmissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate debutante in\nquestion was no other than Mrs. Rawdon Crawley.\n\nShe was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this earth.  When she\ngot her money she gambled; when she had gambled it she was put to\nshifts to live; who knows how or by what means she succeeded? It is\nsaid that she was once seen at St.  Petersburg, but was summarily\ndismissed from that capital by the police, so that there cannot be any\npossibility of truth in the report that she was a Russian spy at\nToplitz and Vienna afterwards.  I have even been informed that at Paris\nshe discovered a relation of her own, no less a person than her\nmaternal grandmother, who was not by any means a Montmorenci, but a\nhideous old box-opener at a theatre on the Boulevards.  The meeting\nbetween them, of which other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem\nto have been acquainted, must have been a very affecting interview.\nThe present historian can give no certain details regarding the event.\n\nIt happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's half-year's salary had\njust been paid into the principal banker's there, and, as everybody who\nhad a balance of above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls\nwhich this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky had the\nhonour of a card, and appeared at one of the Prince and Princess\nPolonia's splendid evening entertainments. The Princess was of the\nfamily of Pompili, lineally descended from the second king of Rome, and\nEgeria of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,\nAlessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences, tobacco, and\npocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for gentlemen, and lent money in a\nsmall way.  All the great company in Rome thronged to his\nsaloons--Princes, Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori,\nyoung bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of man. His\nhalls blazed with light and magnificence; were resplendent with gilt\nframes (containing pictures), and dubious antiques; and the enormous\ngilt crown and arms of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson\nfield (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he sold), and the\nsilver fountain of the Pompili family shone all over the roof, doors,\nand panels of the house, and over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared\nto receive Popes and Emperors.\n\nSo Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from Florence, and was\nlodged at an inn in a very modest way, got a card for Prince Polonia's\nentertainment, and her maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went\nto this fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom she\nhappened to be travelling at the time--(the same man who shot Prince\nRavoli at Naples the next year, and was caned by Sir John Buckskin for\ncarrying four kings in his hat besides those which he used in playing\nat ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together, and Becky saw\na number of old faces which she remembered in happier days, when she\nwas not innocent, but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number of\nforeigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty striped ribbons in\ntheir buttonholes, and a very small display of linen; but his own\ncountrymen, it might be remarked, eschewed the Major.  Becky, too, knew\nsome ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian countesses,\nwhose husbands had treated them ill--faugh--what shall we say, we who\nhave moved among some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this\nrefuse and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean cards,\nand not with this dirty pack.  But every man who has formed one of the\ninnumerable army of travellers has seen these marauding irregulars\nhanging on, like Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's\ncolours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging for themselves,\nand occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.\n\nWell, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder, and they went through\nthe rooms together, and drank a great quantity of champagne at the\nbuffet, where the people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,\nstruggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the pair had had\nenough, they pushed on until they reached the Duchess's own pink velvet\nsaloon, at the end of the suite of apartments (where the statue of the\nVenus is, and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver), and\nwhere the princely family were entertaining their most distinguished\nguests at a round table at supper.  It was just such a little select\nbanquet as that of which Becky recollected that she had partaken at\nLord Steyne's--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.\nThe scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald, shining forehead made a\nburning red mark; his red whiskers were dyed of a purple hue, which\nmade his pale face look still paler.  He wore his collar and orders,\nhis blue ribbon and garter.  He was a greater Prince than any there,\nthough there was a reigning Duke and a Royal Highness, with their\nprincesses, and near his Lordship was seated the beautiful Countess of\nBelladonna, nee de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della\nBelladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological collections,\nhad been long absent on a mission to the Emperor of Morocco.\n\nWhen Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face, how vulgar all of\na sudden did Major Loder appear to her, and how that odious Captain\nRook did smell of tobacco!  In one instant she reassumed her\nfine-ladyship and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair\nonce more.  \"That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured,\" she thought; \"I\nam sure she can't amuse him.  No, he must be bored by her--he never was\nby me.\" A hundred such touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated\nin her little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the rouge\nwhich she wore up to her eyelids made them twinkle) towards the great\nnobleman.  Of a Star and Garter night Lord Steyne used also to put on\nhis grandest manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he\nwas. Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and stately.\nAh, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he was, what a brilliant wit,\nwhat a rich fund of talk, what a grand manner!--and she had exchanged\nthis for Major Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and\nCaptain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring slang, and their\nlike.  \"I wonder whether he will know me,\" she thought.  Lord Steyne\nwas talking and laughing with a great and illustrious lady at his side,\nwhen he looked up and saw Becky.\n\nShe was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she put on the\nvery best smile she could muster, and dropped him a little, timid,\nimploring curtsey.  He stared aghast at her for a minute, as Macbeth\nmight on beholding Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and\nremained looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major Loder\npulled her away.\n\n\"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.,\" was that gentleman's remark:\n\"seeing these nobs grubbing away has made me peckish too. Let's go and\ntry the old governor's champagne.\" Becky thought the Major had had a\ngreat deal too much already.\n\nThe day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--the Hyde Park of\nthe Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to have another sight of Lord\nSteyne.  But she met another acquaintance there:  it was Mr. Fiche, his\nlordship's confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather\nfamiliarly and putting a finger to his hat.  \"I knew that Madame was\nhere,\" he said; \"I followed her from her hotel.  I have some advice to\ngive Madame.\"\n\n\"From the Marquis of Steyne?\" Becky asked, resuming as much of her\ndignity as she could muster, and not a little agitated by hope and\nexpectation.\n\n\"No,\" said the valet; \"it is from me.  Rome is very unwholesome.\"\n\n\"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after Easter.\"\n\n\"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now.  There is always malaria for some\npeople.  That cursed marsh wind kills many at all seasons. Look, Madame\nCrawley, you were always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you,\nparole d'honneur.  Be warned.  Go away from Rome, I tell you--or you\nwill be ill and die.\"\n\nBecky laughed, though in rage and fury.  \"What! assassinate poor little\nme?\" she said.  \"How romantic!  Does my lord carry bravos for couriers,\nand stilettos in the fourgons? Bah!  I will stay, if but to plague him.\nI have those who will defend me whilst I am here.\"\n\nIt was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now.  \"Defend you,\" he said, \"and\nwho? The Major, the Captain, any one of those gambling men whom Madame\nsees would take her life for a hundred louis.  We know things about\nMajor Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord the Marquis) which\nwould send him to the galleys or worse.  We know everything and have\nfriends everywhere. We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations\nyou found there.  Yes, Madame may stare, but we do.  How was it that no\nminister on the Continent would receive Madame? She has offended\nsomebody:  who never forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you.\nHe was like a madman last night when he came home.  Madame de\nBelladonna made him a scene about you and fired off in one of her\nfuries.\"\n\n\"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?\" Becky said, relieved a\nlittle, for the information she had just got had scared her.\n\n\"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous.  I tell you it was\nMonseigneur.  You did wrong to show yourself to him.  And if you stay\nhere you will repent it.  Mark my words.  Go.  Here is my lord's\ncarriage\"--and seizing Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the\ngarden as Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices, came\nwhirling along the avenue, borne by the almost priceless horses, and\nbearing Madame de Belladonna lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and\nblooming, a King Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her\nhead, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid face and\nghastly eyes.  Hate, or anger, or desire caused them to brighten now\nand then still, but ordinarily, they gave no light, and seemed tired of\nlooking out on a world of which almost all the pleasure and all the\nbest beauty had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.\n\n\"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that night, never,\"\nMonsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley as the carriage flashed by,\nand she peeped out at it from behind the shrubs that hid her.  \"That\nwas a consolation at any rate,\" Becky thought.\n\nWhether my lord really had murderous intentions towards Mrs. Becky as\nMonsieur Fiche said (since Monseigneur's death he has returned to his\nnative country, where he lives much respected, and has purchased from\nhis Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum objected to have\nto do with assassination; or whether he simply had a commission to\nfrighten Mrs. Crawley out of a city where his Lordship proposed to pass\nthe winter, and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to the\ngreat nobleman, is a point which has never been ascertained:  but the\nthreat had its effect upon the little woman, and she sought no more to\nintrude herself upon the presence of her old patron.\n\nEverybody knows the melancholy end of that nobleman, which befell at\nNaples two months after the French Revolution of 1830; when the Most\nHonourable George Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of\nGaunt Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough, Baron\nPitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,\nof the Golden Fleece of Spain, of the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas\nof the First Class, of the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of\nthe Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of the Gaunt or\nRegent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee of the British Museum, an\nElder Brother of the Trinity House, a Governor of the White Friars, and\nD.C.L.--died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said, by\nthe shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by the downfall of\nthe ancient French monarchy.\n\nAn eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print, describing his\nvirtues, his magnificence, his talents, and his good actions.  His\nsensibility, his attachment to the illustrious House of Bourbon, with\nwhich he claimed an alliance, were such that he could not survive the\nmisfortunes of his august kinsmen.  His body was buried at Naples, and\nhis heart--that heart which always beat with every generous and noble\nemotion was brought back to Castle Gaunt in a silver urn.  \"In him,\"\nMr. Wagg said, \"the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent\npatron, society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England one of\nher loftiest patriots and statesmen,\" &c., &c.\n\nHis will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was made to force\nfrom Madame de Belladonna the celebrated jewel called the \"Jew's-eye\"\ndiamond, which his lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it\nwas said that she removed from it after his lamented demise. But his\nconfidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche proved that the ring\nhad been presented to the said Madame de Belladonna two days before the\nMarquis's death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and French\nbonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and claimed by his heirs\nfrom that injured woman.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXV\n\nFull of Business and Pleasure\n\nThe day after the meeting at the play-table, Jos had himself arrayed\nwith unusual care and splendour, and without thinking it necessary to\nsay a word to any member of his family regarding the occurrences of the\nprevious night, or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied\nforth at an early hour, and was presently seen making inquiries at the\ndoor of the Elephant Hotel.  In consequence of the fetes the house was\nfull of company, the tables in the street were already surrounded by\npersons smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public rooms\nwere in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in his pompous way, and\nwith his clumsy German, made inquiries for the person of whom he was in\nsearch, was directed to the very top of the house, above the\nfirst-floor rooms where some travelling pedlars had lived, and were\nexhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the second-floor\napartments occupied by the etat major of the gambling firm; above the\nthird-floor rooms, tenanted by the band of renowned Bohemian vaulters\nand tumblers; and so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among\nstudents, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folks come in for the\nfestival, Becky had found a little nest--as dirty a little refuge as\never beauty lay hid in.\n\nBecky liked the life.  She was at home with everybody in the place,\npedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all. She was of a wild, roving\nnature, inherited from father and mother, who were both Bohemians, by\ntaste and circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to his\ncourier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the drink, the\nsmoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the solemn, braggart ways of\nthe poor tumblers, the sournois talk of the gambling-table officials,\nthe songs and swagger of the students, and the general buzz and hum of\nthe place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even when her luck\nwas down and she had not wherewithal to pay her bill.  How pleasant was\nall the bustle to her now that her purse was full of the money which\nlittle Georgy had won for her the night before!\n\nAs Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs, and was\nspeechless when he got to the landing, and began to wipe his face and\nthen to look for No. 92, the room where he was directed to seek for the\nperson he wanted, the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open,\nand a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was lying on the\nbed smoking a long pipe; whilst another student in long yellow hair and\na braided coat, exceeding smart and dirty too, was actually on his\nknees at No. 92, bawling through the keyhole supplications to the\nperson within.\n\n\"Go away,\" said a well-known voice, which made Jos thrill, \"I expect\nsomebody; I expect my grandpapa.  He mustn't see you there.\"\n\n\"Angel Englanderinn!\" bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brown\nringlets and the large finger-ring, \"do take compassion upon us.\nMake an appointment. Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park.  We\nwill have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and French wine.  We\nshall die if you don't.\"\n\n\"That we will,\" said the young nobleman on the bed; and this colloquy\nJos overheard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that he\nhad never studied the language in which it was carried on.\n\n\"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait,\" Jos said in his grandest\nmanner, when he was able to speak.\n\n\"Quater fang tooce!\" said the student, starting up, and he bounced into\nhis own room, where he locked the door, and where Jos heard him\nlaughing with his comrade on the bed.\n\nThe gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted by this incident,\nwhen the door of the 92 opened of itself and Becky's little head peeped\nout full of archness and mischief.  She lighted on Jos.  \"It's you,\"\nshe said, coming out.  \"How I have been waiting for you!  Stop! not\nyet--in one minute you shall come in.\" In that instant she put a\nrouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed,\ngave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor.\n\nShe had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a trifle faded and\nsoiled, and marked here and there with pomaturn; but her arms shone out\nfrom the loose sleeves of the dress very white and fair, and it was\ntied round her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little\nfigure of the wearer.  She led Jos by the hand into her garret. \"Come\nin,\" she said.  \"Come and talk to me.  Sit yonder on the chair\"; and\nshe gave the civilian's hand a little squeeze and laughingly placed him\nupon it.  As for herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the\nbottle and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have reposed, had\nhe chosen that seat; and so there she sat and talked with her old\nadmirer.   \"How little years have changed you,\" she said with a look of\ntender interest.  \"I should have known you anywhere.  What a comfort it\nis amongst strangers to see once more the frank honest face of an old\nfriend!\"\n\nThe frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore any\nexpression but one of openness and honesty:  it was, on the contrary,\nmuch perturbed and puzzled in look.  Jos was surveying the queer little\napartment in which he found his old flame.  One of her gowns hung over\nthe bed, another depending from a hook of the door; her bonnet obscured\nhalf the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair of\nbronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with a\ncandle, not of wax.  Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,\nbut she only put in the little paper night-cap with which she had put\nthe candle out on going to sleep.\n\n\"I should have known you anywhere,\" she continued; \"a woman never\nforgets some things.  And you were the first man I ever--I ever saw.\"\n\n\"Was I really?\" said Jos.  \"God bless my soul, you--you don't say so.\"\n\n\"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was scarcely more than a\nchild,\" Becky said.  \"How is that, dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad\nwicked man, and of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous.\nAs if I cared about him, heigho!  when there was somebody--but\nno--don't let us talk of old times\"; and she passed her handkerchief\nwith the tattered lace across her eyelids.\n\n\"Is not this a strange place,\" she continued, \"for a woman, who has\nlived in a very different world too, to be found in? I have had so many\ngriefs and wrongs, Joseph Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly\nthat I am almost made mad sometimes.  I can't stay still in any place,\nbut wander about always restless and unhappy. All my friends have been\nfalse to me--all.  There is no such thing as an honest man in the\nworld.  I was the truest wife that ever lived, though I married my\nhusband out of pique, because somebody else--but never mind that.  I\nwas true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me.  I was the fondest\nmother.  I had but one child, one darling, one hope, one joy, which I\nheld to my heart with a mother's affection, which was my life, my\nprayer, my--my blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it from\nme\"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate gesture of\ndespair, burying her face for a moment on the bed.\n\nThe brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate which held the\ncold sausage.  Both were moved, no doubt, by the exhibition of so much\ngrief.  Max and Fritz were at the door, listening with wonder to Mrs.\nBecky's sobs and cries.  Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and\naffected at seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began,\nforthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and artless that\nit was quite evident from hearing her that if ever there was a\nwhite-robed angel escaped from heaven to be subject to the infernal\nmachinations and villainy of fiends here below, that spotless\nbeing--that miserable unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before\nJos--on the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.\n\nThey had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk there, in the\ncourse of which Jos Sedley was somehow made aware (but in a manner that\ndid not in the least scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had first\nlearned to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne had\ncertainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which might account for\nAmelia's jealousy and their little rupture; but that Becky never gave\nthe least encouragement to the unfortunate officer, and that she had\nnever ceased to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen\nhim, though, of course, her duties as a married woman were\nparamount--duties which she had always preserved, and would, to her\ndying day, or until the proverbially bad climate in which Colonel\nCrawley was living should release her from a yoke which his cruelty had\nrendered odious to her.\n\nJos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous, as she was one\nof the most fascinating of women, and revolving in his mind all sorts\nof benevolent schemes for her welfare.  Her persecutions ought to be\nended: she ought to return to the society of which she was an ornament.\nHe would see what ought to be done.  She must quit that place and take\na quiet lodging.  Amelia must come and see her and befriend her.  He\nwould go and settle about it, and consult with the Major.  She wept\ntears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and pressed his\nhand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped down to kiss hers.\n\nSo Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as much grace as if it\nwas a palace of which she did the honours; and that heavy gentleman\nhaving disappeared down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their\nhole, pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos to them as\nshe munched her cold bread and sausage and took draughts of her\nfavourite brandy-and-water.\n\nJos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great solemnity and there\nimparted to him the affecting history with which he had just been made\nacquainted, without, however, mentioning the play business of the night\nbefore. And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together and\nconsulting as to the best means of being useful to Mrs. Becky, while\nshe was finishing her interrupted dejeuner a la fourchette.\n\nHow was it that she had come to that little town? How was it that she\nhad no friends and was wandering about alone? Little boys at school are\ntaught in their earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very\neasy of descent.  Let us skip over the interval in the history of her\ndownward progress.  She was not worse now than she had been in the days\nof her prosperity--only a little down on her luck.\n\nAs for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft and foolish\ndisposition that when she heard of anybody unhappy, her heart\nstraightway melted towards the sufferer; and as she had never thought\nor done anything mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence\nfor wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more knowing.  If she\nspoiled everybody who came near her with kindness and compliments--if\nshe begged pardon of all her servants for troubling them to answer the\nbell--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece of silk, or\nmade a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a complimentary remark upon\nthe elegant state of his crossing--and she was almost capable of every\none of these follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was\nmiserable was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of anybody's\nbeing deservedly unhappy. A world under such legislation as hers would\nnot be a very orderly place of abode; but there are not many women, at\nleast not of the rulers, who are of her sort.  This lady, I believe,\nwould have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs, whippings,\npoverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was such a mean-spirited\ncreature that--we are obliged to confess it--she could even forget a\nmortal injury.\n\nWhen the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental adventure which had\njust befallen the latter, he was not, it must be owned, nearly as much\ninterested as the gentleman from Bengal.  On the contrary, his\nexcitement was quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of\na brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman in distress,\nsaying, in fact, \"The little minx, has she come to light again?\" He\nnever had had the slightest liking for her, but had heartily mistrusted\nher from the very first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and\nturned away from, his own.\n\n\"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes,\" the Major said\ndisrespectfully.  \"Who knows what sort of life she has been leading?\nAnd what business has she here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about\npersecutors and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and never\nis separated from her family.  Why has she left her husband? He may\nhave been disreputable and wicked, as you say.  He always was.  I\nremember the confounded blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat\nand hoodwink poor George.  Wasn't there a scandal about their\nseparation? I think I heard something,\" cried out Major Dobbin, who did\nnot care much about gossip, and whom Jos tried in vain to convince that\nMrs. Becky was in all respects a most injured and virtuous female.\n\n\"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George,\" said that arch-diplomatist of a\nMajor.  \"Only let us go and consult her. I suppose you will allow that\nshe is a good judge at any rate, and knows what is right in such\nmatters.\"\n\n\"Hm!  Emmy is very well,\" said Jos, who did not happen to be in love\nwith his sister.\n\n\"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever met in my life,\"\nbounced out the Major.  \"I say at once, let us go and ask her if this\nwoman ought to be visited or not--I will be content with her verdict.\"\nNow this odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own mind\nthat he was sure of his case.  Emmy, he remembered, was at one time\ncruelly and deservedly jealous of Rebecca, never mentioned her name but\nwith a shrinking and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thought\nDobbin:  and so the pair went across the street to Mrs. George's house,\nwhere she was contentedly warbling at a music lesson with Madame\nStrumpff.\n\nWhen that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business with his usual\npomp of words.  \"Amelia, my dear,\" said he, \"I have just had the most\nextraordinary--yes--God bless my soul!  the most extraordinary\nadventure--an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of yours,\nand I may say in old times, has just arrived here, and I should like\nyou to see her.\"\n\n\"Her!\" said Amelia, \"who is it? Major Dobbin, if you please not to\nbreak my scissors.\" The Major was twirling them round by the little\nchain from which they sometimes hung to their lady's waist, and was\nthereby endangering his own eye.\n\n\"It is a woman whom I dislike very much,\" said the Major, doggedly, \"and\nwhom you have no cause to love.\"\n\n\"It is Rebecca, I'm sure it is Rebecca,\" Amelia said, blushing and\nbeing very much agitated.\n\n\"You are right; you always are,\" Dobbin answered. Brussels, Waterloo,\nold, old times, griefs, pangs, remembrances, rushed back into Amelia's\ngentle heart and caused a cruel agitation there.\n\n\"Don't let me see her,\" Emmy continued.  \"I couldn't see her.\"\n\n\"I told you so,\" Dobbin said to Jos.\n\n\"She is very unhappy, and--and that sort of thing,\" Jos urged.  \"She is\nvery poor and unprotected, and has been ill--exceedingly ill--and that\nscoundrel of a husband has deserted her.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Amelia.\n\n\"She hasn't a friend in the world,\" Jos went on, not undexterously,\n\"and she said she thought she might trust in you.  She's so miserable,\nEmmy.  She has been almost mad with grief.  Her story quite affected\nme--'pon my word and honour, it did--never was such a cruel persecution\nborne so angelically, I may say.  Her family has been most cruel to\nher.\"\n\n\"Poor creature!\" Amelia said.\n\n\"And if she can get no friend, she says she thinks she'll die,\" Jos\nproceeded in a low tremulous voice.  \"God bless my soul!  do you know\nthat she tried to kill herself? She carries laudanum with her--I saw\nthe bottle in her room--such a miserable little room--at a third-rate\nhouse, the Elephant, up in the roof at the top of all.  I went there.\"\n\nThis did not seem to affect Emmy.  She even smiled a little. Perhaps\nshe figured Jos to herself panting up the stair.\n\n\"She's beside herself with grief,\" he resumed.  \"The agonies that woman\nhas endured are quite frightful to hear of.  She had a little boy, of\nthe same age as Georgy.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I think I remember,\" Emmy remarked. \"Well?\"\n\n\"The most beautiful child ever seen,\" Jos said, who was very fat, and\neasily moved, and had been touched by the story Becky told; \"a perfect\nangel, who adored his mother.  The ruffians tore him shrieking out of\nher arms, and have never allowed him to see her.\"\n\n\"Dear Joseph,\" Emmy cried out, starting up at once, \"let us go and see\nher this minute.\" And she ran into her adjoining bedchamber, tied on\nher bonnet in a flutter, came out with her shawl on her arm, and\nordered Dobbin to follow.\n\nHe went and put her shawl--it was a white cashmere, consigned to her by\nthe Major himself from India--over her shoulders.  He saw there was\nnothing for it but to obey, and she put her hand into his arm, and they\nwent away.\n\n\"It is number 92, up four pair of stairs,\" Jos said, perhaps not very\nwilling to ascend the steps again; but he placed himself in the window\nof his drawing-room, which commands the place on which the Elephant\nstands, and saw the pair marching through the market.\n\nIt was as well that Becky saw them too from her garret, for she and the\ntwo students were chattering and laughing there; they had been joking\nabout the appearance of Becky's grandpapa--whose arrival and departure\nthey had witnessed--but she had time to dismiss them, and have her\nlittle room clear before the landlord of the Elephant, who knew that\nMrs. Osborne was a great favourite at the Serene Court, and respected\nher accordingly, led the way up the stairs to the roof story,\nencouraging Miladi and the Herr Major as they achieved the ascent.\n\n\"Gracious lady, gracious lady!\" said the landlord, knocking at Becky's\ndoor; he had called her Madame the day before, and was by no means\ncourteous to her.\n\n\"Who is it?\" Becky said, putting out her head, and she gave a little\nscream.  There stood Emmy in a tremble, and Dobbin, the tall Major,\nwith his cane.\n\nHe stood still watching, and very much interested at the scene; but\nEmmy sprang forward with open arms towards Rebecca, and forgave her at\nthat moment, and embraced her and kissed her with all her heart. Ah,\npoor wretch, when was your lip pressed before by such pure kisses?\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVI\n\nAmantium Irae\n\nFrankness and kindness like Amelia's were likely to touch even such a\nhardened little reprobate as Becky.  She returned Emmy's caresses and\nkind speeches with something very like gratitude, and an emotion which,\nif it was not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine.  That was a\nlucky stroke of hers about the child \"torn from her arms shrieking.\" It\nwas by that harrowing misfortune that Becky had won her friend back,\nand it was one of the very first points, we may be certain, upon which\nour poor simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found acquaintance.\n\n\"And so they took your darling child from you?\" our simpleton cried\nout.  \"Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering friend, I know what it is to\nlose a boy, and to feel for those who have lost one.  But please Heaven\nyours will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence has\nbrought me back mine.\"\n\n\"The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful,\" Becky owned,\nnot perhaps without a twinge of conscience. It jarred upon her to be\nobliged to commence instantly to tell lies in reply to so much\nconfidence and simplicity.  But that is the misfortune of beginning\nwith this kind of forgery.  When one fib becomes due as it were, you\nmust forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of\nyour lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of\ndetection increases every day.\n\n\"My agonies,\" Becky continued, \"were terrible (I hope she won't sit\ndown on the bottle) when they took him away from me; I thought I should\ndie; but I fortunately had a brain fever, during which my doctor gave\nme up, and--and I recovered, and--and here I am, poor and friendless.\"\n\n\"How old is he?\" Emmy asked.\n\n\"Eleven,\" said Becky.\n\n\"Eleven!\" cried the other.  \"Why, he was born the same year with\nGeorgy, who is--\"\n\n\"I know, I know,\" Becky cried out, who had in fact quite forgotten all\nabout little Rawdon's age.  \"Grief has made me forget so many things,\ndearest Amelia.  I am very much changed:  half-wild sometimes.  He was\neleven when they took him away from me.  Bless his sweet face; I have\nnever seen it again.\"\n\n\"Was he fair or dark?\" went on that absurd little Emmy.  \"Show me his\nhair.\"\n\nBecky almost laughed at her simplicity.  \"Not to-day, love--some other\ntime, when my trunks arrive from Leipzig, whence I came to this\nplace--and a little drawing of him, which I made in happy days.\"\n\n\"Poor Becky, poor Becky!\" said Emmy.  \"How thankful, how thankful I\nought to be\"; (though I doubt whether that practice of piety inculcated\nupon us by our womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful because\nwe are better off than somebody else, be a very rational religious\nexercise) and then she began to think, as usual, how her son was the\nhandsomest, the best, and the cleverest boy in the whole world.\n\n\"You will see my Georgy,\" was the best thing Emmy could think of to\nconsole Becky.  If anything could make her comfortable that would.\n\nAnd so the two women continued talking for an hour or more, during\nwhich Becky had the opportunity of giving her new friend a full and\ncomplete version of her private history.  She showed how her marriage\nwith Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with feelings\nof the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law (an artful woman) had\npoisoned her husband's mind against her; how he had formed odious\nconnections, which had estranged his affections from her:  how she had\nborne everything--poverty, neglect, coldness from the being whom she\nmost loved--and all for the sake of her child; how, finally, and by the\nmost flagrant outrage, she had been driven into demanding a separation\nfrom her husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that she\nshould sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might procure advancement\nthrough the means of a very great and powerful but unprincipled\nman--the Marquis of Steyne, indeed.  The atrocious monster!\n\nThis part of her eventful history Becky gave with the utmost feminine\ndelicacy and the most indignant virtue. Forced to fly her husband's\nroof by this insult, the coward had pursued his revenge by taking her\nchild from her. And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor,\nunprotected, friendless, and wretched.\n\nEmmy received this story, which was told at some length, as those\npersons who are acquainted with her character may imagine that she\nwould.  She quivered with indignation at the account of the conduct of\nthe miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne.  Her eyes made notes\nof admiration for every one of the sentences in which Becky described\nthe persecutions of her aristocratic relatives and the falling away of\nher husband. (Becky did not abuse him.  She spoke rather in sorrow than\nin anger.  She had loved him only too fondly: and was he not the father\nof her boy?) And as for the separation scene from the child, while\nBecky was reciting it, Emmy retired altogether behind her\npocket-handkerchief, so that the consummate little tragedian must have\nbeen charmed to see the effect which her performance produced on her\naudience.\n\nWhilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation, Amelia's\nconstant escort, the Major (who, of course, did not wish to interrupt\ntheir conference, and found himself rather tired of creaking about the\nnarrow stair passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat)\ndescended to the ground-floor of the house and into the great room\ncommon to all the frequenters of the Elephant, out of which the stair\nled.  This apartment is always in a fume of smoke and liberally\nsprinkled with beer.  On a dirty table stand scores of corresponding\nbrass candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys hang\nup in rows over the candles.  Emmy had passed blushing through the room\nanon, where all sorts of people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellers\nand Danubian linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruiting\nthemselves with butterbrods and meat; idlers, playing cards or dominoes\non the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers refreshing during the cessation\nof their performances--in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of a\nGerman inn in fair time.  The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer,\nas a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and amused himself with\nthat pernicious vegetable and a newspaper until his charge should come\ndown to claim him.\n\nMax and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on one side, their\nspurs jingling, their pipes splendid with coats of arms and full-blown\ntassels, and they hung up the key of No. 90 on the board and called for\nthe ration of butterbrod and beer.  The pair sat down by the Major and\nfell into a conversation of which he could not help hearing somewhat.\nIt was mainly about \"Fuchs\" and \"Philister,\" and duels and\ndrinking-bouts at the neighbouring University of Schoppenhausen, from\nwhich renowned seat of learning they had just come in the Eilwagen,\nwith Becky, as it appeared, by their side, and in order to be present\nat the bridal fetes at Pumpernickel.\n\n\"The title Englanderinn seems to be en bays de gonnoisance,\" said Max,\nwho knew the French language, to Fritz, his comrade.  \"After the fat\ngrandfather went away, there came a pretty little compatriot.  I heard\nthem chattering and whimpering together in the little woman's chamber.\"\n\n\"We must take the tickets for her concert,\" Fritz said. \"Hast thou any\nmoney, Max?\"\n\n\"Bah,\" said the other, \"the concert is a concert in nubibus.  Hans said\nthat she advertised one at Leipzig, and the Burschen took many tickets.\nBut she went off without singing.  She said in the coach yesterday that\nher pianist had fallen ill at Dresden.  She cannot sing, it is my\nbelief: her voice is as cracked as thine, O thou beer-soaking Renowner!\"\n\n\"It is cracked; I hear her trying out of her window a schrecklich\nEnglish ballad, called 'De Rose upon de Balgony.'\"\n\n\"Saufen and singen go not together,\" observed Fritz with the red nose,\nwho evidently preferred the former amusement.  \"No, thou shalt take\nnone of her tickets. She won money at the trente and quarante last\nnight.  I saw her:  she made a little English boy play for her. We will\nspend thy money there or at the theatre, or we will treat her to French\nwine or Cognac in the Aurelius Garden, but the tickets we will not buy.\nWhat sayest thou? Yet, another mug of beer?\" and one and another\nsuccessively having buried their blond whiskers in the mawkish draught,\ncurled them and swaggered off into the fair.\n\nThe Major, who had seen the key of No. 90 put up on its hook and had\nheard the conversation of the two young University bloods, was not at a\nloss to understand that their talk related to Becky.  \"The little devil\nis at her old tricks,\" he thought, and he smiled as he recalled old\ndays, when he had witnessed the desperate flirtation with Jos and the\nludicrous end of that adventure. He and George had often laughed over\nit subsequently, and until a few weeks after George's marriage, when he\nalso was caught in the little Circe's toils, and had an understanding\nwith her which his comrade certainly suspected, but preferred to\nignore.  William was too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom that\ndisgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with remorse on his\nmind, George had alluded to it. It was on the morning of Waterloo, as\nthe young men stood together in front of their line, surveying the\nblack masses of Frenchmen who crowned the opposite heights, and as the\nrain was coming down, \"I have been mixing in a foolish intrigue with a\nwoman,\" George said. \"I am glad we were marched away.  If I drop, I\nhope Emmy will never know of that business.  I wish to God it had never\nbeen begun!\" And William was pleased to think, and had more than once\nsoothed poor George's widow with the narrative, that Osborne, after\nquitting his wife, and after the action of Quatre Bras, on the first\nday, spoke gravely and affectionately to his comrade of his father and\nhis wife.  On these facts, too, William had insisted very strongly in\nhis conversations with the elder Osborne, and had thus been the means\nof reconciling the old gentleman to his son's memory, just at the close\nof the elder man's life.\n\n\"And so this devil is still going on with her intrigues,\" thought\nWilliam.  \"I wish she were a hundred miles from here.  She brings\nmischief wherever she goes.\" And he was pursuing these forebodings and\nthis uncomfortable train of thought, with his head between his hands,\nand the Pumpernickel Gazette of last week unread under his nose, when\nsomebody tapped his shoulder with a parasol, and he looked up and saw\nMrs. Amelia.\n\nThis woman had a way of tyrannizing over Major Dobbin (for the weakest\nof all people will domineer over somebody), and she ordered him about,\nand patted him, and made him fetch and carry just as if he was a great\nNewfoundland dog.  He liked, so to speak, to jump into the water if she\nsaid \"High, Dobbin!\" and to trot behind her with her reticule in his\nmouth.  This history has been written to very little purpose if the\nreader has not perceived that the Major was a spooney.\n\n\"Why did you not wait for me, sir, to escort me downstairs?\" she said,\ngiving a little toss of her head and a most sarcastic curtsey.\n\n\"I couldn't stand up in the passage,\" he answered with a comical\ndeprecatory look; and, delighted to give her his arm and to take her\nout of the horrid smoky place, he would have walked off without even so\nmuch as remembering the waiter, had not the young fellow run after him\nand stopped him on the threshold of the Elephant to make him pay for\nthe beer which he had not consumed.  Emmy laughed:  she called him a\nnaughty man, who wanted to run away in debt, and, in fact, made some\njokes suitable to the occasion and the small-beer. She was in high\nspirits and good humour, and tripped across the market-place very\nbriskly.  She wanted to see Jos that instant.  The Major laughed at the\nimpetuous affection Mrs. Amelia exhibited; for, in truth, it was not\nvery often that she wanted her brother \"that instant.\"  They found the\ncivilian in his saloon on the first-floor; he had been pacing the room,\nand biting his nails, and looking over the market-place towards the\nElephant a hundred times at least during the past hour whilst Emmy was\ncloseted with her friend in the garret and the Major was beating the\ntattoo on the sloppy tables of the public room below, and he was, on\nhis side too, very anxious to see Mrs. Osborne.\n\n\"Well?\" said he.\n\n\"The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!\" Emmy said.\n\n\"God bless my soul, yes,\" Jos said, wagging his head, so that his\ncheeks quivered like jellies.\n\n\"She may have Payne's room, who can go upstairs,\" Emmy continued. Payne\nwas a staid English maid and personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, to\nwhom the courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy used to\n\"lark\" dreadfully with accounts of German robbers and ghosts.  She\npassed her time chiefly in grumbling, in ordering about her mistress,\nand in stating her intention to return the next morning to her native\nvillage of Clapham.  \"She may have Payne's room,\" Emmy said.\n\n\"Why, you don't mean to say you are going to have that woman into the\nhouse?\" bounced out the Major, jumping up.\n\n\"Of course we are,\" said Amelia in the most innocent way in the world.\n\"Don't be angry and break the furniture, Major Dobbin.  Of course we\nare going to have her here.\"\n\n\"Of course, my dear,\" Jos said.\n\n\"The poor creature, after all her sufferings,\" Emmy continued; \"her\nhorrid banker broken and run away; her husband--wicked wretch--having\ndeserted her and taken her child away from her\" (here she doubled her\ntwo little fists and held them in a most menacing attitude before her,\nso that the Major was charmed to see such a dauntless virago) \"the poor\ndear thing!  quite alone and absolutely forced to give lessons in\nsinging to get her bread--and not have her here!\"\n\n\"Take lessons, my dear Mrs. George,\" cried the Major, \"but don't have\nher in the house.  I implore you don't.\"\n\n\"Pooh,\" said Jos.\n\n\"You who are always good and kind--always used to be at any rate--I'm\nastonished at you, Major William,\" Amelia cried.  \"Why, what is the\nmoment to help her but when she is so miserable? Now is the time to be\nof service to her.  The oldest friend I ever had, and not--\"\n\n\"She was not always your friend, Amelia,\" the Major said, for he was\nquite angry.  This allusion was too much for Emmy, who, looking the\nMajor almost fiercely in the face, said, \"For shame, Major Dobbin!\" and\nafter having fired this shot, she walked out of the room with a most\nmajestic air and shut her own door briskly on herself and her outraged\ndignity.\n\n\"To allude to THAT!\" she said, when the door was closed.  \"Oh, it was\ncruel of him to remind me of it,\" and she looked up at George's\npicture, which hung there as usual, with the portrait of the boy\nunderneath.  \"It was cruel of him.  If I had forgiven it, ought he to\nhave spoken? No.  And it is from his own lips that I know how wicked\nand groundless my jealousy was; and that you were pure--oh, yes, you\nwere pure, my saint in heaven!\"\n\nShe paced the room, trembling and indignant.  She went and leaned on\nthe chest of drawers over which the picture hung, and gazed and gazed\nat it.  Its eyes seemed to look down on her with a reproach that\ndeepened as she looked. The early dear, dear memories of that brief\nprime of love rushed back upon her.  The wound which years had scarcely\ncicatrized bled afresh, and oh, how bitterly!  She could not bear the\nreproaches of the husband there before her.  It couldn't be.  Never,\nnever.\n\nPoor Dobbin; poor old William!  That unlucky word had undone the work\nof many a year--the long laborious edifice of a life of love and\nconstancy--raised too upon what secret and hidden foundations, wherein\nlay buried passions, uncounted struggles, unknown sacrifices--a little\nword was spoken, and down fell the fair palace of hope--one word, and\naway flew the bird which he had been trying all his life to lure!\n\nWilliam, though he saw by Amelia's looks that a great crisis had come,\nnevertheless continued to implore Sedley, in the most energetic terms,\nto beware of Rebecca; and he eagerly, almost frantically, adjured Jos\nnot to receive her.  He besought Mr. Sedley to inquire at least\nregarding her; told him how he had heard that she was in the company of\ngamblers and people of ill repute; pointed out what evil she had done\nin former days, how she and Crawley had misled poor George into ruin,\nhow she was now parted from her husband, by her own confession, and,\nperhaps, for good reason.  What a dangerous companion she would be for\nhis sister, who knew nothing of the affairs of the world!  William\nimplored Jos, with all the eloquence which he could bring to bear, and\na great deal more energy than this quiet gentleman was ordinarily in\nthe habit of showing, to keep Rebecca out of his household.\n\nHad he been less violent, or more dexterous, he might have succeeded in\nhis supplications to Jos; but the civilian was not a little jealous of\nthe airs of superiority which the Major constantly exhibited towards\nhim, as he fancied (indeed, he had imparted his opinions to Mr. Kirsch,\nthe courier, whose bills Major Dobbin checked on this journey, and who\nsided with his master), and he began a blustering speech about his\ncompetency to defend his own honour, his desire not to have his affairs\nmeddled with, his intention, in fine, to rebel against the Major, when\nthe colloquy--rather a long and stormy one--was put an end to in the\nsimplest way possible, namely, by the arrival of Mrs. Becky, with a\nporter from the Elephant Hotel in charge of her very meagre baggage.\n\nShe greeted her host with affectionate respect and made a shrinking,\nbut amicable salutation to Major Dobbin, who, as her instinct assured\nher at once, was her enemy, and had been speaking against her; and the\nbustle and clatter consequent upon her arrival brought Amelia out of\nher room.  Emmy went up and embraced her guest with the greatest\nwarmth, and took no notice of the Major, except to fling him an angry\nlook--the most unjust and scornful glance that had perhaps ever\nappeared in that poor little woman's face since she was born.  But she\nhad private reasons of her own, and was bent upon being angry with him.\nAnd Dobbin, indignant at the injustice, not at the defeat, went off,\nmaking her a bow quite as haughty as the killing curtsey with which the\nlittle woman chose to bid him farewell.\n\nHe being gone, Emmy was particularly lively and affectionate to\nRebecca, and bustled about the apartments and installed her guest in\nher room with an eagerness and activity seldom exhibited by our placid\nlittle friend.  But when an act of injustice is to be done, especially\nby weak people, it is best that it should be done quickly, and Emmy\nthought she was displaying a great deal of firmness and proper feeling\nand veneration for the late Captain Osborne in her present behaviour.\n\nGeorgy came in from the fetes for dinner-time and found four covers\nlaid as usual; but one of the places was occupied by a lady, instead of\nby Major Dobbin. \"Hullo!  where's Dob?\" the young gentleman asked with\nhis usual simplicity of language.  \"Major Dobbin is dining out, I\nsuppose,\" his mother said, and, drawing the boy to her, kissed him a\ngreat deal, and put his hair off his forehead, and introduced him to\nMrs. Crawley.  \"This is my boy, Rebecca,\" Mrs. Osborne said--as much as\nto say--can the world produce anything like that? Becky looked at him\nwith rapture and pressed his hand fondly. \"Dear boy!\" she said--\"he is\njust like my--\" Emotion choked her further utterance, but Amelia\nunderstood, as well as if she had spoken, that Becky was thinking of\nher own blessed child.  However, the company of her friend consoled\nMrs. Crawley, and she ate a very good dinner.\n\nDuring the repast, she had occasion to speak several times, when Georgy\neyed her and listened to her.  At the desert Emmy was gone out to\nsuperintend further domestic arrangements; Jos was in his great chair\ndozing over Galignani; Georgy and the new arrival sat close to each\nother--he had continued to look at her knowingly more than once, and at\nlast he laid down the nutcrackers.\n\n\"I say,\" said Georgy.\n\n\"What do you say?\" Becky said, laughing.\n\n\"You're the lady I saw in the mask at the Rouge et Noir.\"\n\n\"Hush!  you little sly creature,\" Becky said, taking up his hand and\nkissing it.  \"Your uncle was there too, and Mamma mustn't know.\"\n\n\"Oh, no--not by no means,\" answered the little fellow.\n\n\"You see we are quite good friends already,\" Becky said to Emmy, who\nnow re-entered; and it must be owned that Mrs. Osborne had introduced a\nmost judicious and amiable companion into her house.\n\nWilliam, in a state of great indignation, though still unaware of all\nthe treason that was in store for him, walked about the town wildly\nuntil he fell upon the Secretary of Legation, Tapeworm, who invited him\nto dinner.  As they were discussing that meal, he took occasion to ask\nthe Secretary whether he knew anything about a certain Mrs. Rawdon\nCrawley, who had, he believed, made some noise in London; and then\nTapeworm, who of course knew all the London gossip, and was besides a\nrelative of Lady Gaunt, poured out into the astonished Major's ears\nsuch a history about Becky and her husband as astonished the querist,\nand supplied all the points of this narrative, for it was at that very\ntable years ago that the present writer had the pleasure of hearing the\ntale.  Tufto, Steyne, the Crawleys, and their history--everything\nconnected with Becky and her previous life passed under the record of\nthe bitter diplomatist. He knew everything and a great deal besides,\nabout all the world--in a word, he made the most astounding revelations\nto the simple-hearted Major.  When Dobbin said that Mrs. Osborne and\nMr. Sedley had taken her into their house, Tapeworm burst into a peal\nof laughter which shocked the Major, and asked if they had not better\nsend into the prison and take in one or two of the gentlemen in shaved\nheads and yellow jackets who swept the streets of Pumpernickel, chained\nin pairs, to board and lodge, and act as tutor to that little\nscapegrace Georgy.\n\nThis information astonished and horrified the Major not a little. It\nhad been agreed in the morning (before meeting with Rebecca) that\nAmelia should go to the Court ball that night.  There would be the\nplace where he should tell her.  The Major went home, and dressed\nhimself in his uniform, and repaired to Court, in hopes to see Mrs.\nOsborne.  She never came.  When he returned to his lodgings all the\nlights in the Sedley tenement were put out.  He could not see her till\nthe morning.  I don't know what sort of a night's rest he had with this\nfrightful secret in bed with him.\n\nAt the earliest convenient hour in the morning he sent his servant\nacross the way with a note, saying that he wished very particularly to\nspeak with her.  A message came back to say that Mrs. Osborne was\nexceedingly unwell and was keeping her room.\n\nShe, too, had been awake all that night.  She had been thinking of a\nthing which had agitated her mind a hundred times before.  A hundred\ntimes on the point of yielding, she had shrunk back from a sacrifice\nwhich she felt was too much for her.  She couldn't, in spite of his\nlove and constancy and her own acknowledged regard, respect, and\ngratitude.  What are benefits, what is constancy, or merit? One curl of\na girl's ringlet, one hair of a whisker, will turn the scale against\nthem all in a minute. They did not weigh with Emmy more than with other\nwomen.  She had tried them; wanted to make them pass; could not; and\nthe pitiless little woman had found a pretext, and determined to be\nfree.\n\nWhen at length, in the afternoon, the Major gained admission to Amelia,\ninstead of the cordial and affectionate greeting, to which he had been\naccustomed now for many a long day, he received the salutation of a\ncurtsey, and of a little gloved hand, retracted the moment after it was\naccorded to him.\n\nRebecca, too, was in the room, and advanced to meet him with a smile\nand an extended hand.  Dobbin drew back rather confusedly, \"I--I beg\nyour pardon, m'am,\" he said; \"but I am bound to tell you that it is not\nas your friend that I am come here now.\"\n\n\"Pooh!  damn; don't let us have this sort of thing!\" Jos cried out,\nalarmed, and anxious to get rid of a scene.\n\n\"I wonder what Major Dobbin has to say against Rebecca?\" Amelia said in\na low, clear voice with a slight quiver in it, and a very determined\nlook about the eyes.\n\n\"I will not have this sort of thing in my house,\" Jos again interposed.\n\"I say I will not have it; and Dobbin, I beg, sir, you'll stop it.\" And\nhe looked round, trembling and turning very red, and gave a great puff,\nand made for his door.\n\n\"Dear friend!\" Rebecca said with angelic sweetness, \"do hear what Major\nDobbin has to say against me.\"\n\n\"I will not hear it, I say,\" squeaked out Jos at the top of his voice,\nand, gathering up his dressing-gown, he was gone.\n\n\"We are only two women,\" Amelia said.  \"You can speak now, sir.\"\n\n\"This manner towards me is one which scarcely becomes you, Amelia,\" the\nMajor answered haughtily; \"nor I believe am I guilty of habitual\nharshness to women.  It is not a pleasure to me to do the duty which I\nam come to do.\"\n\n\"Pray proceed with it quickly, if you please, Major Dobbin,\" said\nAmelia, who was more and more in a pet.  The expression of Dobbin's\nface, as she spoke in this imperious manner, was not pleasant.\n\n\"I came to say--and as you stay, Mrs. Crawley, I must say it in your\npresence--that I think you--you ought not to form a member of the\nfamily of my friends.  A lady who is separated from her husband, who\ntravels not under her own name, who frequents public gaming-tables--\"\n\n\"It was to the ball I went,\" cried out Becky.\n\n\"--is not a fit companion for Mrs. Osborne and her son,\" Dobbin went\non:  \"and I may add that there are people here who know you, and who\nprofess to know that regarding your conduct about which I don't even\nwish to speak before--before Mrs. Osborne.\"\n\n\"Yours is a very modest and convenient sort of calumny, Major Dobbin,\"\nRebecca said.  \"You leave me under the weight of an accusation which,\nafter all, is unsaid. What is it? Is it unfaithfulness to my husband? I\nscorn it and defy anybody to prove it--I defy you, I say.  My honour is\nas untouched as that of the bitterest enemy who ever maligned me.  Is\nit of being poor, forsaken, wretched, that you accuse me? Yes, I am\nguilty of those faults, and punished for them every day.  Let me go,\nEmmy.  It is only to suppose that I have not met you, and I am no worse\nto-day than I was yesterday.  It is only to suppose that the night is\nover and the poor wanderer is on her way.  Don't you remember the song\nwe used to sing in old, dear old days? I have been wandering ever since\nthen--a poor castaway, scorned for being miserable, and insulted\nbecause I am alone.  Let me go:  my stay here interferes with the plans\nof this gentleman.\"\n\n\"Indeed it does, madam,\" said the Major.  \"If I have any authority in\nthis house--\"\n\n\"Authority, none!\" broke out Amelia \"Rebecca, you stay with me.  I\nwon't desert you because you have been persecuted, or insult you\nbecause--because Major Dobbin chooses to do so.  Come away, dear.\" And\nthe two women made towards the door.\n\nWilliam opened it.  As they were going out, however, he took Amelia's\nhand and said--\"Will you stay a moment and speak to me?\"\n\n\"He wishes to speak to you away from me,\" said Becky, looking like a\nmartyr.  Amelia gripped her hand in reply.\n\n\"Upon my honour it is not about you that I am going to speak,\" Dobbin\nsaid.  \"Come back, Amelia,\" and she came.  Dobbin bowed to Mrs.\nCrawley, as he shut the door upon her.  Amelia looked at him, leaning\nagainst the glass:  her face and her lips were quite white.\n\n\"I was confused when I spoke just now,\" the Major said after a pause,\n\"and I misused the word authority.\"\n\n\"You did,\" said Amelia with her teeth chattering.\n\n\"At least I have claims to be heard,\" Dobbin continued.\n\n\"It is generous to remind me of our obligations to you,\" the woman\nanswered.\n\n\"The claims I mean are those left me by George's father,\" William said.\n\n\"Yes, and you insulted his memory.  You did yesterday. You know you\ndid.  And I will never forgive you.  Never!\" said Amelia.  She shot out\neach little sentence in a tremor of anger and emotion.\n\n\"You don't mean that, Amelia?\" William said sadly. \"You don't mean that\nthese words, uttered in a hurried moment, are to weigh against a whole\nlife's devotion? I think that George's memory has not been injured by\nthe way in which I have dealt with it, and if we are come to bandying\nreproaches, I at least merit none from his widow and the mother of his\nson.  Reflect, afterwards when--when you are at leisure, and your\nconscience will withdraw this accusation.  It does even now.\" Amelia\nheld down her head.\n\n\"It is not that speech of yesterday,\" he continued, \"which moves you.\nThat is but the pretext, Amelia, or I have loved you and watched you\nfor fifteen years in vain. Have I not learned in that time to read all\nyour feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart is\ncapable of:  it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish a\nfancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate\nwith, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you.\nNo, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew\nall along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the\nwinning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my\nall of truth and ardour against your little feeble remnant of love.  I\nwill bargain no more:  I withdraw.  I find no fault with you.  You are\nvery good-natured, and have done your best, but you couldn't--you\ncouldn't reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, and\nwhich a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share.\nGood-bye, Amelia! I have watched your struggle.  Let it end.  We are\nboth weary of it.\"\n\nAmelia stood scared and silent as William thus suddenly broke the chain\nby which she held him and declared his independence and superiority.\nHe had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman\nhad been accustomed to trample upon him.  She didn't wish to marry him,\nbut she wished to keep him.  She wished to give him nothing, but that\nhe should give her all.  It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in\nlove.\n\nWilliam's sally had quite broken and cast her down. HER assault was\nlong since over and beaten back.\n\n\"Am I to understand then, that you are going--away, William?\" she said.\n\nHe gave a sad laugh.  \"I went once before,\" he said, \"and came back\nafter twelve years.  We were young then, Amelia.  Good-bye.  I have\nspent enough of my life at this play.\"\n\nWhilst they had been talking, the door into Mrs. Osborne's room had\nopened ever so little; indeed, Becky had kept a hold of the handle and\nhad turned it on the instant when Dobbin quitted it, and she heard\nevery word of the conversation that had passed between these two. \"What\na noble heart that man has,\" she thought, \"and how shamefully that\nwoman plays with it!\" She admired Dobbin; she bore him no rancour for\nthe part he had taken against her.  It was an open move in the game,\nand played fairly.  \"Ah!\" she thought, \"if I could have had such a\nhusband as that--a man with a heart and brains too!  I would not have\nminded his large feet\"; and running into her room, she absolutely\nbethought herself of something, and wrote him a note, beseeching him to\nstop for a few days--not to think of going--and that she could serve\nhim with A.\n\nThe parting was over.  Once more poor William walked to the door and\nwas gone; and the little widow, the author of all this work, had her\nwill, and had won her victory, and was left to enjoy it as she best\nmight.  Let the ladies envy her triumph.\n\nAt the romantic hour of dinner, Mr. Georgy made his appearance and\nagain remarked the absence of \"Old Dob.\" The meal was eaten in silence\nby the party.  Jos's appetite not being diminished, but Emmy taking\nnothing at all.\n\nAfter the meal, Georgy was lolling in the cushions of the old window, a\nlarge window, with three sides of glass abutting from the gable, and\ncommanding on one side the market-place, where the Elephant is, his\nmother being busy hard by, when he remarked symptoms of movement at the\nMajor's house on the other side of the street.\n\n\"Hullo!\" said he, \"there's Dob's trap--they are bringing it out of the\ncourt-yard.\" The \"trap\" in question was a carriage which the Major had\nbought for six pounds sterling, and about which they used to rally him\na good deal.\n\nEmmy gave a little start, but said nothing.\n\n\"Hullo!\" Georgy continued, \"there's Francis coming out with the\nportmanteaus, and Kunz, the one-eyed postilion, coming down the market\nwith three schimmels. Look at his boots and yellow jacket--ain't he a\nrum one? Why--they're putting the horses to Dob's carriage. Is he going\nanywhere?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Emmy, \"he is going on a journey.\"\n\n\"Going on a journey; and when is he coming back?\"\n\n\"He is--not coming back,\" answered Emmy.\n\n\"Not coming back!\" cried out Georgy, jumping up. \"Stay here, sir,\"\nroared out Jos.  \"Stay, Georgy,\" said his mother with a very sad face.\nThe boy stopped, kicked about the room, jumped up and down from the\nwindow-seat with his knees, and showed every symptom of uneasiness and\ncuriosity.\n\nThe horses were put to.  The baggage was strapped on.  Francis came out\nwith his master's sword, cane, and umbrella tied up together, and laid\nthem in the well, and his desk and old tin cocked-hat case, which he\nplaced under the seat.  Francis brought out the stained old blue cloak\nlined with red camlet, which had wrapped the owner up any time these\nfifteen years, and had manchen Sturm erlebt, as a favourite song of\nthose days said.  It had been new for the campaign of Waterloo and had\ncovered George and William after the night of Quatre Bras.\n\nOld Burcke, the landlord of the lodgings, came out, then Francis, with\nmore packages--final packages--then Major William--Burcke wanted to\nkiss him.  The Major was adored by all people with whom he had to do.\nIt was with difficulty he could escape from this demonstration of\nattachment.\n\n\"By Jove, I will go!\" screamed out George.  \"Give him this,\" said\nBecky, quite interested, and put a paper into the boy's hand.  He had\nrushed down the stairs and flung across the street in a minute--the\nyellow postilion was cracking his whip gently.\n\nWilliam had got into the carriage, released from the embraces of his\nlandlord.  George bounded in afterwards, and flung his arms round the\nMajor's neck (as they saw from the window), and began asking him\nmultiplied questions.  Then he felt in his waistcoat pocket and gave\nhim a note.  William seized at it rather eagerly, he opened it\ntrembling, but instantly his countenance changed, and he tore the paper\nin two and dropped it out of the carriage.  He kissed Georgy on the\nhead, and the boy got out, doubling his fists into his eyes, and with\nthe aid of Francis.  He lingered with his hand on the panel.  Fort,\nSchwager!  The yellow postilion cracked his whip prodigiously, up\nsprang Francis to the box, away went the schimmels, and Dobbin with his\nhead on his breast.  He never looked up as they passed under Amelia's\nwindow, and Georgy, left alone in the street, burst out crying in the\nface of all the crowd.\n\nEmmy's maid heard him howling again during the night and brought him\nsome preserved apricots to console him.  She mingled her lamentations\nwith his.  All the poor, all the humble, all honest folks, all good men\nwho knew him, loved that kind-hearted and simple gentleman.\n\nAs for Emmy, had she not done her duty? She had her picture of George\nfor a consolation.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVII\n\nWhich Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths\n\nWhatever Becky's private plan might be by which Dobbin's true love was\nto be crowned with success, the little woman thought that the secret\nmight keep, and indeed, being by no means so much interested about\nanybody's welfare as about her own, she had a great number of things\npertaining to herself to consider, and which concerned her a great deal\nmore than Major Dobbin's happiness in this life.\n\nShe found herself suddenly and unexpectedly in snug comfortable\nquarters, surrounded by friends, kindness, and good-natured simple\npeople such as she had not met with for many a long day; and, wanderer\nas she was by force and inclination, there were moments when rest was\npleasant to her.  As the most hardened Arab that ever careered across\nthe desert over the hump of a dromedary likes to repose sometimes under\nthe date-trees by the water, or to come into the cities, walk into the\nbazaars, refresh himself in the baths, and say his prayers in the\nmosques, before he goes out again marauding, so Jos's tents and pilau\nwere pleasant to this little Ishmaelite. She picketed her steed, hung\nup her weapons, and warmed herself comfortably by his fire.  The halt\nin that roving, restless life was inexpressibly soothing and pleasant\nto her.\n\nSo, pleased herself, she tried with all her might to please everybody;\nand we know that she was eminent and successful as a practitioner in\nthe art of giving pleasure.  As for Jos, even in that little interview\nin the garret at the Elephant Inn, she had found means to win back a\ngreat deal of his good-will.  In the course of a week, the civilian was\nher sworn slave and frantic admirer.  He didn't go to sleep after\ndinner, as his custom was in the much less lively society of Amelia.\nHe drove out with Becky in his open carriage.  He asked little parties\nand invented festivities to do her honour.\n\nTapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, who had abused her so cruelly, came to\ndine with Jos, and then came every day to pay his respects to Becky.\nPoor Emmy, who was never very talkative, and more glum and silent than\never after Dobbin's departure, was quite forgotten when this superior\ngenius made her appearance.  The French Minister was as much charmed\nwith her as his English rival. The German ladies, never particularly\nsqueamish as regards morals, especially in English people, were\ndelighted with the cleverness and wit of Mrs. Osborne's charming\nfriend, and though she did not ask to go to Court, yet the most august\nand Transparent Personages there heard of her fascinations and were\nquite curious to know her.  When it became known that she was noble, of\nan ancient English family, that her husband was a Colonel of the Guard,\nExcellenz and Governor of an island, only separated from his lady by\none of those trifling differences which are of little account in a\ncountry where Werther is still read and the Wahlverwandtschaften of\nGoethe is considered an edifying moral book, nobody thought of refusing\nto receive her in the very highest society of the little Duchy; and the\nladies were even more ready to call her du and to swear eternal\nfriendship for her than they had been to bestow the same inestimable\nbenefits upon Amelia.  Love and Liberty are interpreted by those simple\nGermans in a way which honest folks in Yorkshire and Somersetshire\nlittle understand, and a lady might, in some philosophic and civilized\ntowns, be divorced ever so many times from her respective husbands and\nkeep her character in society.  Jos's house never was so pleasant since\nhe had a house of his own as Rebecca caused it to be. She sang, she\nplayed, she laughed, she talked in two or three languages, she brought\neverybody to the house, and she made Jos believe that it was his own\ngreat social talents and wit which gathered the society of the place\nround about him.\n\nAs for Emmy, who found herself not in the least mistress of her own\nhouse, except when the bills were to be paid, Becky soon discovered the\nway to soothe and please her.  She talked to her perpetually about\nMajor Dobbin sent about his business, and made no scruple of declaring\nher admiration for that excellent, high-minded gentleman, and of\ntelling Emmy that she had behaved most cruelly regarding him. Emmy\ndefended her conduct and showed that it was dictated only by the purest\nreligious principles; that a woman once, &c., and to such an angel as\nhim whom she had had the good fortune to marry, was married forever;\nbut she had no objection to hear the Major praised as much as ever\nBecky chose to praise him, and indeed, brought the conversation round\nto the Dobbin subject a score of times every day.\n\nMeans were easily found to win the favour of Georgy and the servants.\nAmelia's maid, it has been said, was heart and soul in favour of the\ngenerous Major.  Having at first disliked Becky for being the means of\ndismissing him from the presence of her mistress, she was reconciled to\nMrs. Crawley subsequently, because the latter became William's most\nardent admirer and champion.  And in those nightly conclaves in which\nthe two ladies indulged after their parties, and while Miss Payne was\n\"brushing their 'airs,\" as she called the yellow locks of the one and\nthe soft brown tresses of the other, this girl always put in her word\nfor that dear good gentleman Major Dobbin.  Her advocacy did not make\nAmelia angry any more than Rebecca's admiration of him.  She made\nGeorge write to him constantly and persisted in sending Mamma's kind\nlove in a postscript.  And as she looked at her husband's portrait of\nnights, it no longer reproached her--perhaps she reproached it, now\nWilliam was gone.\n\nEmmy was not very happy after her heroic sacrifice. She was very\ndistraite, nervous, silent, and ill to please. The family had never\nknown her so peevish.  She grew pale and ill.  She used to try to sing\ncertain songs (\"Einsam bin ich nicht alleine,\" was one of them, that\ntender love-song of Weber's which in old-fashioned days, young ladies,\nand when you were scarcely born, showed that those who lived before you\nknew too how to love and to sing) certain songs, I say, to which the\nMajor was partial; and as she warbled them in the twilight in the\ndrawing-room, she would break off in the midst of the song, and walk\ninto her neighbouring apartment, and there, no doubt, take refuge in\nthe miniature of her husband.\n\nSome books still subsisted, after Dobbin's departure, with his name\nwritten in them; a German dictionary, for instance, with \"William\nDobbin, --th Reg.,\" in the fly-leaf; a guide-book with his initials;\nand one or two other volumes which belonged to the Major.  Emmy cleared\nthese away and put them on the drawers, where she placed her work-box,\nher desk, her Bible, and prayer-book, under the pictures of the two\nGeorges.  And the Major, on going away, having left his gloves behind\nhim, it is a fact that Georgy, rummaging his mother's desk some time\nafterwards, found the gloves neatly folded up and put away in what they\ncall the secret-drawers of the desk.\n\nNot caring for society, and moping there a great deal, Emmy's chief\npleasure in the summer evenings was to take long walks with Georgy\n(during which Rebecca was left to the society of Mr. Joseph), and then\nthe mother and son used to talk about the Major in a way which even\nmade the boy smile.  She told him that she thought Major William was\nthe best man in all the world--the gentlest and the kindest, the\nbravest and the humblest.  Over and over again she told him how they\nowed everything which they possessed in the world to that kind friend's\nbenevolent care of them; how he had befriended them all through their\npoverty and misfortunes; watched over them when nobody cared for them;\nhow all his comrades admired him though he never spoke of his own\ngallant actions; how Georgy's father trusted him beyond all other men,\nand had been constantly befriended by the good William.  \"Why, when\nyour papa was a little boy,\" she said, \"he often told me that it was\nWilliam who defended him against a tyrant at the school where they\nwere; and their friendship never ceased from that day until the last,\nwhen your dear father fell.\"\n\n\"Did Dobbin kill the man who killed Papa?\" Georgy said.  \"I'm sure he\ndid, or he would if he could have caught him, wouldn't he, Mother? When\nI'm in the Army, won't I hate the French?--that's all.\"\n\nIn such colloquies the mother and the child passed a great deal of\ntheir time together.  The artless woman had made a confidant of the\nboy.  He was as much William's friend as everybody else who knew him\nwell.\n\nBy the way, Mrs. Becky, not to be behind hand in sentiment, had got a\nminiature too hanging up in her room, to the surprise and amusement of\nmost people, and the delight of the original, who was no other than our\nfriend Jos.  On her first coming to favour the Sedleys with a visit,\nthe little woman, who had arrived with a remarkably small shabby kit,\nwas perhaps ashamed of the meanness of her trunks and bandboxes, and\noften spoke with great respect about her baggage left behind at\nLeipzig, which she must have from that city.  When a traveller talks to\nyou perpetually about the splendour of his luggage, which he does not\nhappen to have with him, my son, beware of that traveller!  He is, ten\nto one, an impostor.\n\nNeither Jos nor Emmy knew this important maxim.  It seemed to them of\nno consequence whether Becky had a quantity of very fine clothes in\ninvisible trunks; but as her present supply was exceedingly shabby,\nEmmy supplied her out of her own stores, or took her to the best\nmilliner in the town and there fitted her out.  It was no more torn\ncollars now, I promise you, and faded silks trailing off at the\nshoulder.  Becky changed her habits with her situation in life--the\nrouge-pot was suspended--another excitement to which she had accustomed\nherself was also put aside, or at least only indulged in in privacy, as\nwhen she was prevailed on by Jos of a summer evening, Emmy and the boy\nbeing absent on their walks, to take a little spirit-and-water.  But if\nshe did not indulge--the courier did: that rascal Kirsch could not be\nkept from the bottle, nor could he tell how much he took when he\napplied to it.  He was sometimes surprised himself at the way in which\nMr. Sedley's Cognac diminished.  Well, well, this is a painful subject.\nBecky did not very likely indulge so much as she used before she\nentered a decorous family.\n\nAt last the much-bragged-about boxes arrived from Leipzig; three of\nthem not by any means large or splendid; nor did Becky appear to take\nout any sort of dresses or ornaments from the boxes when they did\narrive.  But out of one, which contained a mass of her papers (it was\nthat very box which Rawdon Crawley had ransacked in his furious hunt\nfor Becky's concealed money), she took a picture with great glee, which\nshe pinned up in her room, and to which she introduced Jos.  It was the\nportrait of a gentleman in pencil, his face having the advantage of\nbeing painted up in pink.  He was riding on an elephant away from some\ncocoa-nut trees and a pagoda: it was an Eastern scene.\n\n\"God bless my soul, it is my portrait,\" Jos cried out. It was he\nindeed, blooming in youth and beauty, in a nankeen jacket of the cut of\n1804.  It was the old picture that used to hang up in Russell Square.\n\n\"I bought it,\" said Becky in a voice trembling with emotion; \"I went to\nsee if I could be of any use to my kind friends.  I have never parted\nwith that picture--I never will.\"\n\n\"Won't you?\" Jos cried with a look of unutterable rapture and\nsatisfaction.  \"Did you really now value it for my sake?\"\n\n\"You know I did, well enough,\" said Becky; \"but why speak--why\nthink--why look back!  It is too late now!\"\n\nThat evening's conversation was delicious for Jos. Emmy only came in to\ngo to bed very tired and unwell. Jos and his fair guest had a charming\ntete-a-tete, and his sister could hear, as she lay awake in her\nadjoining chamber, Rebecca singing over to Jos the old songs of 1815.\nHe did not sleep, for a wonder, that night, any more than Amelia.\n\nIt was June, and, by consequence, high season in London; Jos, who read\nthe incomparable Galignani (the exile's best friend) through every day,\nused to favour the ladies with extracts from his paper during their\nbreakfast.  Every week in this paper there is a full account of\nmilitary movements, in which Jos, as a man who had seen service, was\nespecially interested.  On one occasion he read out--\"Arrival of the\n--th regiment.  Gravesend, June 20.--The Ramchunder, East Indiaman,\ncame into the river this morning, having on board 14 officers, and 132\nrank and file of this gallant corps.  They have been absent from\nEngland fourteen years, having been embarked the year after Waterloo,\nin which glorious conflict they took an active part, and having\nsubsequently distinguished themselves in the Burmese war.  The veteran\ncolonel, Sir Michael O'Dowd, K.C.B., with his lady and sister, landed\nhere yesterday, with Captains Posky, Stubble, Macraw, Malony;\nLieutenants Smith, Jones, Thompson, F. Thomson; Ensigns Hicks and\nGrady; the band on the pier playing the national anthem, and the crowd\nloudly cheering the gallant veterans as they went into Wayte's hotel,\nwhere a sumptuous banquet was provided for the defenders of Old\nEngland.  During the repast, which we need not say was served up in\nWayte's best style, the cheering continued so enthusiastically that\nLady O'Dowd and the Colonel came forward to the balcony and drank the\nhealths of their fellow-countrymen in a bumper of Wayte's best claret.\"\n\nOn a second occasion Jos read a brief announcement--Major Dobbin had\njoined the --th regiment at Chatham; and subsequently he promulgated\naccounts of the presentations at the Drawing-room of Colonel Sir\nMichael O'Dowd, K.C.B., Lady O'Dowd (by Mrs. Malloy Malony of\nBallymalony), and Miss Glorvina O'Dowd (by Lady O'Dowd).  Almost\ndirectly after this, Dobbin's name appeared among the Lieutenant-Colonels:\nfor old Marshal Tiptoff had died during the passage of the\n--th from Madras, and the Sovereign was pleased to advance Colonel Sir\nMichael O'Dowd to the rank of Major-General on his return to England,\nwith an intimation that he should be Colonel of the distinguished\nregiment which he had so long commanded.\n\nAmelia had been made aware of some of these movements.  The\ncorrespondence between George and his guardian had not ceased by any\nmeans:  William had even written once or twice to her since his\ndeparture, but in a manner so unconstrainedly cold that the poor woman\nfelt now in her turn that she had lost her power over him and that, as\nhe had said, he was free.  He had left her, and she was wretched.  The\nmemory of his almost countless services, and lofty and affectionate\nregard, now presented itself to her and rebuked her day and night.  She\nbrooded over those recollections according to her wont, saw the purity\nand beauty of the affection with which she had trifled, and reproached\nherself for having flung away such a treasure.\n\nIt was gone indeed.  William had spent it all out.  He loved her no\nmore, he thought, as he had loved her. He never could again.  That sort\nof regard, which he had proffered to her for so many faithful years,\ncan't be flung down and shattered and mended so as to show no scars.\nThe little heedless tyrant had so destroyed it.  No, William thought\nagain and again, \"It was myself I deluded and persisted in cajoling;\nhad she been worthy of the love I gave her, she would have returned it\nlong ago.  It was a fond mistake.  Isn't the whole course of life made\nup of such? And suppose I had won her, should I not have been\ndisenchanted the day after my victory? Why pine, or be ashamed of my\ndefeat?\" The more he thought of this long passage of his life, the more\nclearly he saw his deception.  \"I'll go into harness again,\" he said,\n\"and do my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased Heaven to\nplace me.  I will see that the buttons of the recruits are properly\nbright and that the sergeants make no mistakes in their accounts.  I\nwill dine at mess and listen to the Scotch surgeon telling his stories.\nWhen I am old and broken, I will go on half-pay, and my old sisters\nshall scold me.  I have geliebt und gelebet, as the girl in\n'Wallenstein' says.  I am done.  Pay the bills and get me a cigar:\nfind out what there is at the play to-night, Francis; to-morrow we\ncross by the Batavier.\" He made the above speech, whereof Francis only\nheard the last two lines, pacing up and down the Boompjes at Rotterdam.\nThe Batavier was lying in the basin.  He could see the place on the\nquarter-deck where he and Emmy had sat on the happy voyage out.  What\nhad that little Mrs. Crawley to say to him? Psha; to-morrow we will put\nto sea, and return to England, home, and duty!\n\nAfter June all the little Court Society of Pumpernickel used to\nseparate, according to the German plan, and make for a hundred\nwatering-places, where they drank at the wells, rode upon donkeys,\ngambled at the redoutes if they had money and a mind, rushed with\nhundreds of their kind to gourmandise at the tables d'hote, and idled\naway the summer.  The English diplomatists went off to Teoplitz and\nKissingen, their French rivals shut up their chancellerie and whisked\naway to their darling Boulevard de Gand. The Transparent reigning\nfamily took too to the waters, or retired to their hunting lodges.\nEverybody went away having any pretensions to politeness, and of\ncourse, with them, Doctor von Glauber, the Court Doctor, and his\nBaroness.  The seasons for the baths were the most productive periods\nof the Doctor's practice--he united business with pleasure, and his\nchief place of resort was Ostend, which is much frequented by Germans,\nand where the Doctor treated himself and his spouse to what he called a\n\"dib\" in the sea.\n\nHis interesting patient, Jos, was a regular milch-cow to the Doctor,\nand he easily persuaded the civilian, both for his own health's sake\nand that of his charming sister, which was really very much shattered,\nto pass the summer at that hideous seaport town.  Emmy did not care\nwhere she went much.  Georgy jumped at the idea of a move.  As for\nBecky, she came as a matter of course in the fourth place inside of the\nfine barouche Mr. Jos had bought, the two domestics being on the box in\nfront. She might have some misgivings about the friends whom she should\nmeet at Ostend, and who might be likely to tell ugly stories--but bah!\nshe was strong enough to hold her own.  She had cast such an anchor in\nJos now as would require a strong storm to shake.  That incident of the\npicture had finished him.  Becky took down her elephant and put it into\nthe little box which she had had from Amelia ever so many years ago.\nEmmy also came off with her Lares--her two pictures--and the party,\nfinally, were, lodged in an exceedingly dear and uncomfortable house at\nOstend.\n\nThere Amelia began to take baths and get what good she could from them,\nand though scores of people of Becky's acquaintance passed her and cut\nher, yet Mrs. Osborne, who walked about with her, and who knew nobody,\nwas not aware of the treatment experienced by the friend whom she had\nchosen so judiciously as a companion; indeed, Becky never thought fit\nto tell her what was passing under her innocent eyes.\n\nSome of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's acquaintances, however, acknowledged her\nreadily enough,--perhaps more readily than she would have desired.\nAmong those were Major Loder (unattached), and Captain Rook (late of\nthe Rifles), who might be seen any day on the Dike, smoking and staring\nat the women, and who speedily got an introduction to the hospitable\nboard and select circle of Mr. Joseph Sedley.  In fact they would take\nno denial; they burst into the house whether Becky was at home or not,\nwalked into Mrs. Osborne's drawing-room, which they perfumed with their\ncoats and mustachios, called Jos \"Old buck,\" and invaded his\ndinner-table, and laughed and drank for long hours there.\n\n\"What can they mean?\" asked Georgy, who did not like these gentlemen.\n\"I heard the Major say to Mrs. Crawley yesterday, 'No, no, Becky, you\nshan't keep the old buck to yourself.  We must have the bones in, or,\ndammy, I'll split.' What could the Major mean, Mamma?\"\n\n\"Major!  don't call him Major!\" Emmy said.  \"I'm sure I can't tell what\nhe meant.\" His presence and that of his friend inspired the little lady\nwith intolerable terror and aversion.  They paid her tipsy compliments;\nthey leered at her over the dinner-table.  And the Captain made her\nadvances that filled her with sickening dismay, nor would she ever see\nhim unless she had George by her side.\n\nRebecca, to do her justice, never would let either of these men remain\nalone with Amelia; the Major was disengaged too, and swore he would be\nthe winner of her. A couple of ruffians were fighting for this innocent\ncreature, gambling for her at her own table, and though she was not\naware of the rascals' designs upon her, yet she felt a horror and\nuneasiness in their presence and longed to fly.\n\nShe besought, she entreated Jos to go.  Not he.  He was slow of\nmovement, tied to his Doctor, and perhaps to some other leading-strings.\nAt least Becky was not anxious to go to England.\n\nAt last she took a great resolution--made the great plunge.  She wrote\noff a letter to a friend whom she had on the other side of the water, a\nletter about which she did not speak a word to anybody, which she\ncarried herself to the post under her shawl; nor was any remark made\nabout it, only that she looked very much flushed and agitated when\nGeorgy met her, and she kissed him, and hung over him a great deal that\nnight.  She did not come out of her room after her return from her\nwalk. Becky thought it was Major Loder and the Captain who frightened\nher.\n\n\"She mustn't stop here,\" Becky reasoned with herself. \"She must go\naway, the silly little fool.  She is still whimpering after that gaby\nof a husband--dead (and served right!) these fifteen years. She shan't\nmarry either of these men.  It's too bad of Loder.  No; she shall marry\nthe bamboo cane, I'll settle it this very night.\"\n\nSo Becky took a cup of tea to Amelia in her private apartment and found\nthat lady in the company of her miniatures, and in a most melancholy\nand nervous condition.  She laid down the cup of tea.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Amelia.\n\n\"Listen to me, Amelia,\" said Becky, marching up and down the room\nbefore the other and surveying her with a sort of contemptuous\nkindness.  \"I want to talk to you. You must go away from here and from\nthe impertinences of these men.  I won't have you harassed by them:\nand they will insult you if you stay.  I tell you they are rascals: men\nfit to send to the hulks.  Never mind how I know them. I know\neverybody.  Jos can't protect you; he is too weak and wants a protector\nhimself.  You are no more fit to live in the world than a baby in arms.\nYou must marry, or you and your precious boy will go to ruin.  You must\nhave a husband, you fool; and one of the best gentlemen I ever saw has\noffered you a hundred times, and you have rejected him, you silly,\nheartless, ungrateful little creature!\"\n\n\"I tried--I tried my best, indeed I did, Rebecca,\" said Amelia\ndeprecatingly, \"but I couldn't forget--\"; and she finished the sentence\nby looking up at the portrait.\n\n\"Couldn't forget HIM!\" cried out Becky, \"that selfish humbug, that\nlow-bred cockney dandy, that padded booby, who had neither wit, nor\nmanners, nor heart, and was no more to be compared to your friend with\nthe bamboo cane than you are to Queen Elizabeth.  Why, the man was\nweary of you, and would have jilted you, but that Dobbin forced him to\nkeep his word.  He owned it to me.  He never cared for you. He used to\nsneer about you to me, time after time, and made love to me the week\nafter he married you.\"\n\n\"It's false!  It's false!  Rebecca,\" cried out Amelia, starting up.\n\n\"Look there, you fool,\" Becky said, still with provoking good humour,\nand taking a little paper out of her belt, she opened it and flung it\ninto Emmy's lap.  \"You know his handwriting.  He wrote that to\nme--wanted me to run away with him--gave it me under your nose, the day\nbefore he was shot--and served him right!\" Becky repeated.\n\nEmmy did not hear her; she was looking at the letter. It was that which\nGeorge had put into the bouquet and given to Becky on the night of the\nDuchess of Richmond's ball.  It was as she said:  the foolish young man\nhad asked her to fly.\n\nEmmy's head sank down, and for almost the last time in which she shall\nbe called upon to weep in this history, she commenced that work.  Her\nhead fell to her bosom, and her hands went up to her eyes; and there\nfor a while, she gave way to her emotions, as Becky stood on and\nregarded her.  Who shall analyse those tears and say whether they were\nsweet or bitter? Was she most grieved because the idol of her life was\ntumbled down and shivered at her feet, or indignant that her love had\nbeen so despised, or glad because the barrier was removed which modesty\nhad placed between her and a new, a real affection? \"There is nothing\nto forbid me now,\" she thought. \"I may love him with all my heart now.\nOh, I will, I will, if he will but let me and forgive me.\" I believe it\nwas this feeling rushed over all the others which agitated that gentle\nlittle bosom.\n\nIndeed, she did not cry so much as Becky expected--the other soothed\nand kissed her--a rare mark of sympathy with Mrs. Becky.  She treated\nEmmy like a child and patted her head.  \"And now let us get pen and ink\nand write to him to come this minute,\" she said.\n\n\"I--I wrote to him this morning,\" Emmy said, blushing exceedingly.\nBecky screamed with laughter--\"Un biglietto,\" she sang out with Rosina,\n\"eccolo qua!\"--the whole house echoed with her shrill singing.\n\nTwo mornings after this little scene, although the day was rainy and\ngusty, and Amelia had had an exceedingly wakeful night, listening to\nthe wind roaring, and pitying all travellers by land and by water, yet\nshe got up early and insisted upon taking a walk on the Dike with\nGeorgy; and there she paced as the rain beat into her face, and she\nlooked out westward across the dark sea line and over the swollen\nbillows which came tumbling and frothing to the shore. Neither spoke\nmuch, except now and then, when the boy said a few words to his timid\ncompanion, indicative of sympathy and protection.\n\n\"I hope he won't cross in such weather,\" Emmy said.\n\n\"I bet ten to one he does,\" the boy answered.  \"Look, Mother, there's\nthe smoke of the steamer.\" It was that signal, sure enough.\n\nBut though the steamer was under way, he might not be on board; he\nmight not have got the letter; he might not choose to come.  A hundred\nfears poured one over the other into the little heart, as fast as the\nwaves on to the Dike.\n\nThe boat followed the smoke into sight.  Georgy had a dandy telescope\nand got the vessel under view in the most skilful manner. And he made\nappropriate nautical comments upon the manner of the approach of the\nsteamer as she came nearer and nearer, dipping and rising in the water.\nThe signal of an English steamer in sight went fluttering up to the\nmast on the pier.  I daresay Mrs. Amelia's heart was in a similar\nflutter.\n\nEmmy tried to look through the telescope over George's shoulder, but\nshe could make nothing of it. She only saw a black eclipse bobbing up\nand down before her eyes.\n\nGeorge took the glass again and raked the vessel. \"How she does pitch!\"\nhe said.  \"There goes a wave slap over her bows.  There's only two\npeople on deck besides the steersman.  There's a man lying down, and\na--chap in a--cloak with a--Hooray!--it's Dob, by Jingo!\" He clapped to\nthe telescope and flung his arms round his mother.  As for that lady,\nlet us say what she did in the words of a favourite poet--\"Dakruoen\ngelasasa.\" She was sure it was William.  It could be no other.  What\nshe had said about hoping that he would not come was all hypocrisy.  Of\ncourse he would come; what could he do else but come? She knew he would\ncome.\n\nThe ship came swiftly nearer and nearer.  As they went in to meet her\nat the landing-place at the quay, Emmy's knees trembled so that she\nscarcely could run.  She would have liked to kneel down and say her\nprayers of thanks there.  Oh, she thought, she would be all her life\nsaying them!\n\nIt was such a bad day that as the vessel came alongside of the quay\nthere were no idlers abroad, scarcely even a commissioner on the look\nout for the few passengers in the steamer.  That young scapegrace\nGeorge had fled too, and as the gentleman in the old cloak lined with\nred stuff stepped on to the shore, there was scarcely any one present\nto see what took place, which was briefly this:\n\nA lady in a dripping white bonnet and shawl, with her two little hands\nout before her, went up to him, and in the next minute she had\naltogether disappeared under the folds of the old cloak, and was\nkissing one of his hands with all her might; whilst the other, I\nsuppose, was engaged in holding her to his heart (which her head just\nabout reached) and in preventing her from tumbling down.  She was\nmurmuring something about--forgive--dear William--dear, dear, dearest\nfriend--kiss, kiss, kiss, and so forth--and in fact went on under the\ncloak in an absurd manner.\n\nWhen Emmy emerged from it, she still kept tight hold of one of\nWilliam's hands, and looked up in his face.  It was full of sadness and\ntender love and pity.  She understood its reproach and hung down her\nhead.\n\n\"It was time you sent for me, dear Amelia,\" he said.\n\n\"You will never go again, William?\"\n\n\"No, never,\" he answered, and pressed the dear little soul once more to\nhis heart.\n\nAs they issued out of the custom-house precincts, Georgy broke out on\nthem, with his telescope up to his eye, and a loud laugh of welcome; he\ndanced round the couple and performed many facetious antics as he led\nthem up to the house.  Jos wasn't up yet; Becky not visible (though she\nlooked at them through the blinds). Georgy ran off to see about\nbreakfast.  Emmy, whose shawl and bonnet were off in the passage in the\nhands of Mrs. Payne, now went to undo the clasp of William's cloak,\nand--we will, if you please, go with George, and look after breakfast\nfor the Colonel.  The vessel is in port. He has got the prize he has\nbeen trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last.  There it\nis with its head on his shoulder, billing and cooing close up to his\nheart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings.  This is what he has\nasked for every day and hour for eighteen years.  This is what he pined\nafter.  Here it is--the summit, the end--the last page of the third\nvolume. Good-bye, Colonel--God bless you, honest William!--Farewell,\ndear Amelia--Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the rugged\nold oak to which you cling!\n\nPerhaps it was compunction towards the kind and simple creature, who\nhad been the first in life to defend her, perhaps it was a dislike to\nall such sentimental scenes--but Rebecca, satisfied with her part in\nthe transaction, never presented herself before Colonel Dobbin and the\nlady whom he married.  \"Particular business,\" she said, took her to\nBruges, whither she went, and only Georgy and his uncle were present at\nthe marriage ceremony. When it was over, and Georgy had rejoined his\nparents, Mrs. Becky returned (just for a few days) to comfort the\nsolitary bachelor, Joseph Sedley.  He preferred a continental life, he\nsaid, and declined to join in housekeeping with his sister and her\nhusband.\n\nEmmy was very glad in her heart to think that she had written to her\nhusband before she read or knew of that letter of George's.  \"I knew it\nall along,\" William said; \"but could I use that weapon against the poor\nfellow's memory? It was that which made me suffer so when you--\"\n\n\"Never speak of that day again,\" Emmy cried out, so contrite and humble\nthat William turned off the conversation by his account of Glorvina and\ndear old Peggy O'Dowd, with whom he was sitting when the letter of\nrecall reached him.  \"If you hadn't sent for me,\" he added with a\nlaugh, \"who knows what Glorvina's name might be now?\"\n\nAt present it is Glorvina Posky (now Mrs. Major Posky); she took him on\nthe death of his first wife, having resolved never to marry out of the\nregiment.  Lady O'Dowd is also so attached to it that, she says, if\nanything were to happen to Mick, bedad she'd come back and marry some\nof 'em.  But the Major-General is quite well and lives in great\nsplendour at O'Dowdstown, with a pack of beagles, and (with the\nexception of perhaps their neighbour, Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty) he\nis the first man of his county.  Her Ladyship still dances jigs, and\ninsisted on standing up with the Master of the Horse at the Lord\nLieutenant's last ball.  Both she and Glorvina declared that Dobbin had\nused the latter SHEAMFULLY, but Posky falling in, Glorvina was\nconsoled, and a beautiful turban from Paris appeased the wrath of Lady\nO'Dowd.\n\nWhen Colonel Dobbin quitted the service, which he did immediately after\nhis marriage, he rented a pretty little country place in Hampshire, not\nfar from Queen's Crawley, where, after the passing of the Reform Bill,\nSir Pitt and his family constantly resided now. All idea of a Peerage\nwas out of the question, the Baronet's two seats in Parliament being\nlost.  He was both out of pocket and out of spirits by that\ncatastrophe, failed in his health, and prophesied the speedy ruin of\nthe Empire.\n\nLady Jane and Mrs. Dobbin became great friends--there was a perpetual\ncrossing of pony-chaises between the Hall and the Evergreens, the\nColonel's place (rented of his friend Major Ponto, who was abroad with\nhis family).  Her Ladyship was godmother to Mrs. Dobbin's child, which\nbore her name, and was christened by the Rev. James Crawley, who\nsucceeded his father in the living: and a pretty close friendship\nsubsisted between the two lads, George and Rawdon, who hunted and shot\ntogether in the vacations, were both entered of the same college at\nCambridge, and quarrelled with each other about Lady Jane's daughter,\nwith whom they were both, of course, in love. A match between George\nand that young lady was long a favourite scheme of both the matrons,\nthough I have heard that Miss Crawley herself inclined towards her\ncousin.\n\nMrs. Rawdon Crawley's name was never mentioned by either family. There\nwere reasons why all should be silent regarding her.  For wherever Mr.\nJoseph Sedley went, she travelled likewise, and that infatuated man\nseemed to be entirely her slave.  The Colonel's lawyers informed him\nthat his brother-in-law had effected a heavy insurance upon his life,\nwhence it was probable that he had been raising money to discharge\ndebts.  He procured prolonged leave of absence from the East India\nHouse, and indeed, his infirmities were daily increasing.\n\nOn hearing the news about the insurance, Amelia, in a good deal of\nalarm, entreated her husband to go to Brussels, where Jos then was, and\ninquire into the state of his affairs.  The Colonel quitted home with\nreluctance (for he was deeply immersed in his History of the Punjaub\nwhich still occupies him, and much alarmed about his little daughter,\nwhom he idolizes, and who was just recovering from the chicken-pox) and\nwent to Brussels and found Jos living at one of the enormous hotels in\nthat city.  Mrs. Crawley, who had her carriage, gave entertainments,\nand lived in a very genteel manner, occupied another suite of\napartments in the same hotel.\n\nThe Colonel, of course, did not desire to see that lady, or even think\nproper to notify his arrival at Brussels, except privately to Jos by a\nmessage through his valet.  Jos begged the Colonel to come and see him\nthat night, when Mrs. Crawley would be at a soiree, and when they could\nmeet alone.  He found his brother-in-law in a condition of pitiable\ninfirmity--and dreadfully afraid of Rebecca, though eager in his\npraises of her.  She tended him through a series of unheard-of\nillnesses with a fidelity most admirable.  She had been a daughter to\nhim.  \"But--but--oh, for God's sake, do come and live near me,\nand--and--see me sometimes,\" whimpered out the unfortunate man.\n\nThe Colonel's brow darkened at this.  \"We can't, Jos,\" he said.\n\"Considering the circumstances, Amelia can't visit you.\"\n\n\"I swear to you--I swear to you on the Bible,\" gasped out Joseph,\nwanting to kiss the book, \"that she is as innocent as a child, as\nspotless as your own wife.\"\n\n\"It may be so,\" said the Colonel gloomily, \"but Emmy can't come to you.\nBe a man, Jos:  break off this disreputable connection.  Come home to\nyour family.  We hear your affairs are involved.\"\n\n\"Involved!\" cried Jos.  \"Who has told such calumnies? All my money is\nplaced out most advantageously.  Mrs. Crawley--that is--I mean--it is\nlaid out to the best interest.\"\n\n\"You are not in debt, then? Why did you insure your life?\"\n\n\"I thought--a little present to her--in case anything happened; and you\nknow my health is so delicate--common gratitude you know--and I intend\nto leave all my money to you--and I can spare it out of my income,\nindeed I can,\" cried out William's weak brother-in-law.\n\nThe Colonel besought Jos to fly at once--to go back to India, whither\nMrs. Crawley could not follow him; to do anything to break off a\nconnection which might have the most fatal consequences to him.\n\nJos clasped his hands and cried, \"He would go back to India.  He would\ndo anything, only he must have time: they mustn't say anything to Mrs.\nCrawley--she'd--she'd kill me if she knew it.  You don't know what a\nterrible woman she is,\" the poor wretch said.\n\n\"Then, why not come away with me?\" said Dobbin in reply; but Jos had\nnot the courage.  \"He would see Dobbin again in the morning; he must on\nno account say that he had been there.  He must go now.  Becky might\ncome in.\" And Dobbin quitted him, full of forebodings.\n\nHe never saw Jos more.  Three months afterwards Joseph Sedley died at\nAix-la-Chapelle.  It was found that all his property had been muddled\naway in speculations, and was represented by valueless shares in\ndifferent bubble companies.  All his available assets were the two\nthousand pounds for which his life was insured, and which were left\nequally between his beloved \"sister Amelia, wife of, &c., and his\nfriend and invaluable attendant during sickness, Rebecca, wife of\nLieutenant-Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B.,\" who was appointed\nadministratrix.\n\nThe solicitor of the insurance company swore it was the blackest case\nthat ever had come before him, talked of sending a commission to Aix to\nexamine into the death, and the Company refused payment of the policy.\nBut Mrs., or Lady Crawley, as she styled herself, came to town at once\n(attended with her solicitors, Messrs.  Burke, Thurtell, and Hayes, of\nThavies Inn) and dared the Company to refuse the payment.  They invited\nexamination, they declared that she was the object of an infamous\nconspiracy, which had been pursuing her all through life, and triumphed\nfinally.  The money was paid, and her character established, but\nColonel Dobbin sent back his share of the legacy to the insurance\noffice and rigidly declined to hold any communication with Rebecca.\n\nShe never was Lady Crawley, though she continued so to call herself.\nHis Excellency Colonel Rawdon Crawley died of yellow fever at Coventry\nIsland, most deeply beloved and deplored, and six weeks before the\ndemise of his brother, Sir Pitt.  The estate consequently devolved upon\nthe present Sir Rawdon Crawley, Bart.\n\nHe, too, has declined to see his mother, to whom he makes a liberal\nallowance, and who, besides, appears to be very wealthy.  The Baronet\nlives entirely at Queen's Crawley, with Lady Jane and her daughter,\nwhilst Rebecca, Lady Crawley, chiefly hangs about Bath and Cheltenham,\nwhere a very strong party of excellent people consider her to be a most\ninjured woman.  She has her enemies.  Who has not? Her life is her\nanswer to them. She busies herself in works of piety.  She goes to\nchurch, and never without a footman.  Her name is in all the Charity\nLists.  The destitute orange-girl, the neglected washerwoman, the\ndistressed muffin-man find in her a fast and generous friend.  She is\nalways having stalls at Fancy Fairs for the benefit of these hapless\nbeings.  Emmy, her children, and the Colonel, coming to London some\ntime back, found themselves suddenly before her at one of these fairs.\nShe cast down her eyes demurely and smiled as they started away from\nher; Emmy scurrying off on the arm of George (now grown a dashing young\ngentleman) and the Colonel seizing up his little Janey, of whom he is\nfonder than of anything in the world--fonder even than of his History\nof the Punjaub.\n\n\"Fonder than he is of me,\" Emmy thinks with a sigh. But he never said a\nword to Amelia that was not kind and gentle, or thought of a want of\nhers that he did not try to gratify.\n\nAh!  Vanitas Vanitatum!  which of us is happy in this world? Which of\nus has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?--come, children, let us\nshut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."