Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

was in severe motion. The Steward (the Honourable G.
Ringwood) passes reeling by, holding six basins. He puts
one rapidly by Lord Squeams--Lady Squeams, giving a
pinch to her dog, which begins to howl piteously, puts
her pocket-handkerchief to her face, and rushes away as
for the cabin. The music rises up to the wildest pitch of
stormy excitement, and the third syllable is concluded.
There was a little ballet, "Le Rossignol," in which
Montessu and Noblet used to be famous in those days,
and which Mr. Wagg transferred to the English stage as
an opera, putting his verse, of which he was a skilful
writer, to the pretty airs of the ballet. It was dressed in
old French costume, and little Lord Southdown now
appeared admirably attired in the disguise of an old woman
hobbling about the stage with a faultless crooked stick.
Trills of melody were heard behind the scenes, and
gurgling from a sweet pasteboard cottage covered with
roses and trellis work. "Philomele, Philomele," cries
the old woman, and Philomele comes out.
More applause--it is Mrs. Rawdon Crawley in powder
and patches, the most ravissante little Marquise in the
world.
She comes in laughing, humming, and frisks about the
stage with all the innocence of theatrical youth--she
makes a curtsey. Mamma says "Why, child, you are
always laughing and singing," and away she goes, with--
THE ROSE UPON MY BALCONY
The rose upon my balcony the morning air perfuming
Was leafless all the winter time and pining for the spring;
You ask me why her breath is sweet and why her cheek is
blooming,
It is because the sun is out and birds begin to sing.
The nightingale, whose melody is through the greenwood
ringing,
Was silent when the boughs were bare and winds were
blowing keen:
And if, Mamma, you ask of me the reason of his singing,
It is because the sun is out and all the leaves are green.
Thus each performs his part, Mamma, the birds have found
their voices,
The blowing rose a flush, Mamma, her bonny cheek to
dye;
And there's sunshine in my heart, Mamma, which wakens
and rejoices,
And so I sing and blush, Mamma, and that's the reason
why.
During the intervals of the stanzas of this ditty, the
good-natured personage addressed as Mamma by the
singer, and whose large whiskers appeared under her cap,
seemed very anxious to exhibit her maternal affection
by embracing the innocent creature who performed the
daughter's part. Every caress was received with loud
acclamations of laughter by the sympathizing audience.
At its conclusion (while the music was performing a
symphony as if ever so many birds were warbling) the
whole house was unanimous for an encore: and applause
and bouquets without end were showered upon the
Nightingale of the evening. Lord Steyne's voice of
applause was loudest of all. Becky, the nightingale, took
the flowers which he threw to her and pressed them to
her heart with the air of a consummate comedian. Lord
Steyne was frantic with delight. His guests' enthusiasm
harmonized with his own. Where was the beautiful
black-eyed Houri whose appearance in the first charade had
caused such delight? She was twice as handsome as
Becky, but the brilliancy of the latter had quite eclipsed
her. All voices were for her. Stephens, Caradori, Ronzi
de Begnis, people compared her to one or the other, and
agreed with good reason, very likely, that had she been
an actress none on the stage could have surpassed her.
She had reached her culmination: her voice rose trilling
and bright over the storm of applause, and soared as
high and joyful as her triumph. There was a ball after
the dramatic entertainments, and everybody pressed
round Becky as the great point of attraction of the
evening. The Royal Personage declared with an oath that
she was perfection, and engaged her again and again in
conversation. Little Becky's soul swelled with pride and
delight at these honours; she saw fortune, fame, fashion
before her. Lord Steyne was her slave, followed her
everywhere, and scarcely spoke to any one in the room
beside, and paid her the most marked compliments and
attention. She still appeared in her Marquise costume
and danced a minuet with Monsieur de Truffigny,
Monsieur Le Duc de la Jabotiere's attache; and the
Duke, who had all the traditions of the ancient court,
pronounced that Madame Crawley was worthy to have
been a pupil of Vestris, or to have figured at Versailles.
Only a feeling of dignity, the gout, and the strongest
sense of duty and personal sacrifice prevented his
Excellency from dancing with her himself, and he declared
in public that a lady who could talk and dance like Mrs.
Rawdon was fit to be ambassadress at any court in
Europe. He was only consoled when he heard that she
was half a Frenchwoman by birth. "None but a
compatriot," his Excellency declared, "could have performed
that majestic dance in such a way."
Then she figured in a waltz with Monsieur de
Klingenspohr, the Prince of Peterwaradin's cousin and
attache. The delighted Prince, having less retenue than
his French diplomatic colleague, insisted upon taking a
turn with the charming creature, and twirled round the
ball-room with her, scattering the diamonds out of his
boot-tassels and hussar jacket until his Highness was fairly
out of breath. Papoosh Pasha himself would have liked
to dance with her if that amusement had been the custom
of his country. The company made a circle round her
and applauded as wildly as if she had been a Noblet or
a Taglioni. Everybody was in ecstacy; and Becky too,
you may be sure. She passed by Lady Stunnington with
a look of scorn. She patronized Lady Gaunt and her
astonished and mortified sister-in-law--she ecrased all
rival charmers. As for poor Mrs. Winkworth, and her
long hair and great eyes, which had made such an effect
at the commencement of the evening--where was she
now? Nowhere in the race. She might tear her long hair
and cry her great eyes out, but there was not a person
to heed or to deplore the discomfiture.
The greatest triumph of all was at supper time. She
was placed at the grand exclusive table with his Royal
Highness the exalted personage before mentioned, and
the rest of the great guests. She was served on gold
plate. She might have had pearls melted into her
champagne if she liked--another Cleopatra--and the potentate
of Peterwaradin would have given half the brilliants off
his jacket for a kind glance from those dazzling eyes.
Jabotiere wrote home about her to his government. The
ladies at the other tables, who supped off mere silver and
marked Lord Steyne's constant attention to her, vowed
it was a monstrous infatuation, a gross insult to ladies of
rank. If sarcasm could have killed, Lady Stunnington
would have slain her on the spot.
Rawdon Crawley was scared at these triumphs. They
seemed to separate his wife farther than ever from him
somehow. He thought with a feeling very like pain how
immeasurably she was his superior.
When the hour of departure came, a crowd of young
men followed her to her carriage, for which the people
without bawled, the cry being caught up by the link-men
who were stationed outside the tall gates of Gaunt
House, congratulating each person who issued from the
gate and hoping his Lordship had enjoyed this noble
party.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's carriage, coming up to the
gate after due shouting, rattled into the illuminated
court-yard and drove up to the covered way. Rawdon
put his wife into the carriage, which drove off. Mr.
Wenham had proposed to him to walk home, and offered
the Colonel the refreshment of a cigar.
They lighted their cigars by the lamp of one of the
many link-boys outside, and Rawdon walked on with his
friend Wenham. Two persons separated from the crowd
and followed the two gentlemen; and when they had
walked down Gaunt Square a few score of paces, one
of the men came up and, touching Rawdon on the shoulder,
said, "Beg your pardon, Colonel, I vish to speak to
you most particular." This gentleman's acquaintance
gave a loud whistle as the latter spoke, at which signal a
cab came clattering up from those stationed at the gate
of Gaunt House--and the aide-de-camp ran round and
placed himself in front of Colonel Crawley.
That gallant officer at once knew what had befallen
him. He was in the hands of the bailiffs. He started back,
falling against the man who had first touched him.
"We're three on us--it's no use bolting," the man
behind said.
"It's you, Moss, is it?" said the Colonel, who appeared
to know his interlocutor. "How much is it?"
"Only a small thing," whispered Mr. Moss, of Cursitor
Street, Chancery Lane, and assistant officer to the Sheriff
of Middlesex--"One hundred and sixty-six, six and eightpence,
at the suit of Mr. Nathan."
"Lend me a hundred, Wenham, for God's sake," poor
Rawdon said--"I've got seventy at home."
"I've not got ten pounds in the world," said poor Mr.
Wenham--"Good night, my dear fellow."
"Good night," said Rawdon ruefully. And Wenham
walked away--and Rawdon Crawley finished his cigar
as the cab drove under Temple Bar.
CHAPTER LII
In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light
When Lord Steyne was benevolently disposed, he did
nothing by halves, and his kindness towards the Crawley
family did the greatest honour to his benevolent
discrimination. His lordship extended his good-will to little
Rawdon: he pointed out to the boy's parents the necessity
of sending him to a public school, that he was of
an age now when emulation, the first principles of the
Latin language, pugilistic exercises, and the society of
his fellow-boys would be of the greatest benefit to the
boy. His father objected that he was not rich enough to
send the child to a good public school; his mother that
Briggs was a capital mistress for him, and had brought
him on (as indeed was the fact) famously in English,
the Latin rudiments, and in general learning: but all these
objections disappeared before the generous perseverance
of the Marquis of Steyne. His lordship was one of the
governors of that famous old collegiate institution called
the Whitefriars. It had been a Cistercian Convent in old
days, when the Smithfield, which is contiguous to it, was
a tournament ground. Obstinate heretics used to be
brought thither convenient for burning hard by. Henry
VIII, the Defender of the Faith, seized upon the
monastery and its possessions and hanged and tortured some
of the monks who could not accommodate themselves to
the pace of his reform. Finally, a great merchant bought
the house and land adjoining, in which, and with the help
of other wealthy endowments of land and money, he
established a famous foundation hospital for old men
and children. An extern school grew round the old almost
monastic foundation, which subsists still with its
middle-age costume and usages--and all Cistercians pray
that it may long flourish.
Of this famous house, some of the greatest noblemen,
prelates, and dignitaries in England are governors: and
as the boys are very comfortably lodged, fed, and
educated, and subsequently inducted to good scholarships
at the University and livings in the Church, many little
gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession
from their tenderest years, and there is considerable
emulation to procure nominations for the foundation. It
was originally intended for the sons of poor and
deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble governors
of the Institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious
benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty.
To get an education for nothing, and a future livelihood
and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that
some of the richest people did not disdain it; and not
only great men's relations, but great men themselves, sent
their sons to profit by the chance--Right Rev. prelates
sent their own kinsmen or the sons of their clergy, while,
on the other hand, some great noblemen did not disdain
to patronize the children of their confidential servants--
so that a lad entering this establishment had every
variety of youthful society wherewith to mingle.
Rawdon Crawley, though the only book which he studied
was the Racing Calendar, and though his chief
recollections of polite learning were connected with the
floggings which he received at Eton in his early youth,
had that decent and honest reverence for classical learning
which all English gentlemen feel, and was glad to think
that his son was to have a provision for life, perhaps,
and a certain opportunity of becoming a scholar. And
although his boy was his chief solace and companion, and
endeared to him by a thousand small ties, about which
he did not care to speak to his wife, who had all along
shown the utmost indifference to their son, yet Rawdon
agreed at once to part with him and to give up his own
greatest comfort and benefit for the sake of the welfare
of the little lad. He did not know how fond he was of
the child until it became necessary to let him go away.
When he was gone, he felt more sad and downcast than
he cared to own--far sadder than the boy himself, who
was happy enough to enter a new career and find
companions of his own age. Becky burst out laughing once
or twice when the Colonel, in his clumsy, incoherent way,
tried to express his sentimental sorrows at the boy's
departure. The poor fellow felt that his dearest pleasure
and closest friend was taken from him. He looked often
and wistfully at the little vacant bed in his dressing-room,
where the child used to sleep. He missed him sadly of
mornings and tried in vain to walk in the park without
him. He did not know how solitary he was until little
Rawdon was gone. He liked the people who were fond of
him, and would go and sit for long hours with his
good-natured sister Lady Jane, and talk to her about
the virtues, and good looks, and hundred good qualities
of the child.
Young Rawdon's aunt, we have said, was very fond
of him, as was her little girl, who wept copiously when
the time for her cousin's departure came. The elder
Rawdon was thankful for the fondness of mother and
daughter. The very best and honestest feelings of the
man came out in these artless outpourings of paternal
feeling in which he indulged in their presence, and
encouraged by their sympathy. He secured not only Lady
Jane's kindness, but her sincere regard, by the feelings
which he manifested, and which he could not show to his
own wife. The two kinswomen met as seldom as possible.
Becky laughed bitterly at Jane's feelings and softness;
the other's kindly and gentle nature could not but revolt
at her sister's callous behaviour.
It estranged Rawdon from his wife more than he knew
or acknowledged to himself. She did not care for the
estrangement. Indeed, she did not miss him or anybody.
She looked upon him as her errand-man and humble
slave. He might be ever so depressed or sulky, and she
did not mark his demeanour, or only treated it with a
sneer. She was busy thinking about her position, or her
pleasures, or her advancement in society; she ought to
have held a great place in it, that is certain.
It was honest Briggs who made up the little kit for the
boy which he was to take to school. Molly, the housemaid,
blubbered in the passage when he went away--
Molly kind and faithful in spite of a long arrear of
unpaid wages. Mrs. Becky could not let her husband have
the carriage to take the boy to school. Take the horses
into the City!--such a thing was never heard of. Let a
cab be brought. She did not offer to kiss him when he
went, nor did the child propose to embrace her; but
gave a kiss to old Briggs (whom, in general, he was very
shy of caressing), and consoled her by pointing out that
he was to come home on Saturdays, when she would
have the benefit of seeing him. As the cab rolled towards
the City, Becky's carriage rattled off to the park. She
was chattering and laughing with a score of young dandies
by the Serpentine as the father and son entered at the
old gates of the school--where Rawdon left the child
and came away with a sadder purer feeling in his heart
than perhaps that poor battered fellow had ever known
since he himself came out of the nursery.
He walked all the way home very dismally, and dined
alone with Briggs. He was very kind to her and grateful
for her love and watchfulness over the boy. His
conscience smote him that he had borrowed Briggs's money
and aided in deceiving her. They talked about little
Rawdon a long time, for Becky only came home to dress
and go out to dinner--and then he went off uneasily to
drink tea with Lady Jane, and tell her of what had
happened, and how little Rawdon went off like a trump, and
how he was to wear a gown and little knee-breeches, and
how young Blackball, Jack Blackball's son, of the old
regiment, had taken him in charge and promised to be
kind to him.
In the course of a week, young Blackball had
constituted little Rawdon his fag, shoe-black, and breakfast
toaster; initiated him into the mysteries of the Latin
Grammar; and thrashed him three or four times, but not
severely. The little chap's good-natured honest face won
his way for him. He only got that degree of beating which
was, no doubt, good for him; and as for blacking shoes,
toasting bread, and fagging in general, were these offices
not deemed to be necessary parts of every young English
gentleman's education?
Our business does not lie with the second generation
and Master Rawdon's life at school, otherwise the present
tale might be carried to any indefinite length. The Colonel
went to see his son a short time afterwards and found
the lad sufficiently well and happy, grinning and laughing
in his little black gown and little breeches.
His father sagaciously tipped Blackball, his master, a
sovereign, and secured that young gentleman's good-will
towards his fag. As a protege of the great Lord Steyne,
the nephew of a County member, and son of a Colonel
and C.B., whose name appeared in some of the most
fashionable parties in the Morning Post, perhaps the
school authorities were disposed not to look unkindly on
the child. He had plenty of pocket-money, which he
spent in treating his comrades royally to raspberry tarts,
and he was often allowed to come home on Saturdays
to his father, who always made a jubilee of that day.
When free, Rawdon would take him to the play, or send
him thither with the footman; and on Sundays he went to
church with Briggs and Lady Jane and his cousins.
Rawdon marvelled over his stories about school, and
fights, and fagging. Before long, he knew the names of all
the masters and the principal boys as well as little
Rawdon himself. He invited little Rawdon's crony from
school, and made both the children sick with pastry, and
oysters, and porter after the play. He tried to look knowing
over the Latin grammar when little Rawdon showed
him what part of that work he was "in." "Stick to it, my
boy," he said to him with much gravity, "there's nothing
like a good classical education! Nothing!"
Becky's contempt for her husband grew greater every
day. "Do what you like--dine where you please--go and
have ginger-beer and sawdust at Astley's, or psalmsinging
with Lady Jane--only don't expect me to busy
myself with the boy. I have your interests to attend to,
as you can't attend to them yourself. I should like to
know where you would have been now, and in what sort
of a position in society, if I had not looked after you."
Indeed, nobody wanted poor old Rawdon at the parties
whither Becky used to go. She was often asked without
him now. She talked about great people as if she had the
fee-simple of May Fair, and when the Court went into
mourning, she always wore black.
Little Rawdon being disposed of, Lord Steyne, who
took such a parental interest in the affairs of this amiable
poor family, thought that their expenses might be very
advantageously curtailed by the departure of Miss Briggs,
and that Becky was quite clever enough to take the
management of her own house. It has been narrated in a
former chapter how the benevolent nobleman had given
his protegee money.to pay off her little debt to Miss
Briggs, who however still remained behind with her
friends; whence my lord came to the painful conclusion
that Mrs. Crawley had made some other use of the
money confided to her than that for which her generous
patron had given the loan. However, Lord Steyne was
not so rude as to impart his suspicions upon this head to
Mrs. Becky, whose feelings might be hurt by any
controversy on the money-question, and who might have a
thousand painful reasons for disposing otherwise of his
lordship's generous loan. But he determined to satisfy
himself of the real state of the case, and instituted the
necessary inquiries in a most cautious and delicate
manner.
In the first place he took an early opportunity of
pumping Miss Briggs. That was not a difficult operation.
A very little encouragement would set that worthy woman
to talk volubly and pour out all within her. And one day
when Mrs. Rawdon had gone out to drive (as Mr. Fiche,
his lordship's confidential servant, easily learned at the
livery stables where the Crawleys kept their carriage and
horses, or rather, where the livery-man kept a carriage
and horses for Mr. and Mrs. Crawley)--my lord dropped
in upon the Curzon Street house--asked Briggs for a cup
of coffee--told her that he had good accounts of the little
boy at school--and in five minutes found out from her
that Mrs. Rawdon had given her nothing except a black
silk gown, for which Miss Briggs was immensely grateful.
He laughed within himself at this artless story. For the
truth is, our dear friend Rebecca had given him a most
circumstantial narration of Briggs's delight at receiving
her money--eleven hundred and twenty-five pounds--
and in what securities she had invested it; and what a
pang Becky herself felt in being obliged to pay away such
a delightful sum of money. "Who knows," the dear
woman may have thought within herself, "perhaps he
may give me a little more?" My lord, however, made no
such proposal to the little schemer--very likely thinking
that he had been sufficiently generous already.
He had the curiosity, then, to ask Miss Briggs about
the state of her private affairs--and she told his lordship
candidly what her position was--how Miss Crawley had
left her a legacy--how her relatives had had part of it
--how Colonel Crawley had put out another portion, for
which she had the best security and interest--and how
Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon had kindly busied themselves with
Sir Pitt, who was to dispose of the remainder most
advantageously for her, when he had time. My lord asked
how much the Colonel had already invested for her, and
Miss Briggs at once and truly told him that the sum was
six hundred and odd pounds.
But as soon as she had told her story, the voluble
Briggs repented of her frankness and besought my lord
not to tell Mr. Crawley of the confessions which she had
made. "The Colonel was so kind--Mr. Crawley might
be offended and pay back the money, for which she
could get no such good interest anywhere else." Lord
Steyne, laughing, promised he never would divulge their
conversation, and when he and Miss Briggs parted he
laughed still more.
"What an accomplished little devil it is!" thought he.
"What a splendid actress and manager! She had almost
got a second supply out of me the other day; with her
coaxing ways. She beats all the women I have ever seen
in the course of all my well-spent life. They are babies
compared to her. I am a greenhorn myself, and a fool in
her hands--an old fool. She is unsurpassable in lies."
His lordship's admiration for Becky rose immeasurably
at this proof of her cleverness. Getting the money was
nothing--but getting double the sum she wanted, and
paying nobody--it was a magnificent stroke. And Crawley,
my lord thought--Crawley is not such a fool as he
looks and seems. He has managed the matter cleverly
enough on his side. Nobody would ever have supposed
from his face and demeanour that he knew anything
about this money business; and yet he put her up to it,
and has spent the money, no doubt. In this opinion my
lord, we know, was mistaken, but it influenced a good
deal his behaviour towards Colonel Crawley, whom he
began to treat with even less than that semblance of
respect which he had formerly shown towards that
gentleman. It never entered into the head of Mrs.
Crawley's patron that the little lady might be making a
purse for herself; and, perhaps, if the truth must be told,
he judged of Colonel Crawley by his experience of other
husbands, whom he had known in the course of the long
and well-spent life which had made him acquainted with
a great deal of the weakness of mankind. My lord had
bought so many men during his life that he was surely
to be pardoned for supposing that he had found the price
of this one.
He taxed Becky upon the point on the very first occasion
when he met her alone, and he complimented her,
good-humouredly, on her cleverness in getting more than
the money which she required. Becky was only a little
taken aback. It was not the habit of this dear creature
to tell falsehoods, except when necessity compelled, but
in these great emergencies it was her practice to lie very
freely; and in an instant she was ready with another neat
plausible circumstantial story which she administered to
her patron. The previous statement which she had made
to him was a falsehood--a wicked falsehood--she
owned it. But who had made her tell it? "Ah, my Lord,"
she said, "you don't know all I have to suffer and bear
in silence; you see me gay and happy before you--you
little know what I have to endure when there is no
protector near me. It was my husband, by threats and
the most savage treatment, forced me to ask for that
sum about which I deceived you. It was he who,
foreseeing that questions might be asked regarding the
disposal of the money, forced me to account for it as I
did. He took the money. He told me he had paid Miss
Briggs; I did not want, I did not dare to doubt him.
Pardon the wrong which a desperate man is forced to
commit, and pity a miserable, miserable woman." She
burst into tears as she spoke. Persecuted virtue never
looked more bewitchingly wretched.
They had a long conversation, driving round and round
the Regent's Park in Mrs. Crawley's carriage together,
a conversation of which it is not necessary to repeat
the details, but the upshot of it was that, when Becky
came home, she flew to her dear Briggs with a smiling
face and announced that she had some very good news
for her. Lord Steyne had acted in the noblest and most
generous manner. He was always thinking how and when
he could do good. Now that little Rawdon was gone to
school, a dear companion and friend was no longer
necessary to her. She was grieved beyond measure to part
with Briggs, but her means required that she should
practise every retrenchment, and her sorrow was
mitigated by the idea that her dear Briggs would be far
better provided for by her generous patron than in her
humble home. Mrs. Pilkington, the housekeeper at Gauntly
Hall, was growing exceedingly old, feeble, and rheumatic:
she was not equal to the work of superintending
that vast mansion, and must be on the look out for a
successor. It was a splendid position. The family did not
go to Gauntly once in two years. At other times the
housekeeper was the mistress of the magnificent
mansion--had four covers daily for her table; was visited by
the clergy and the most respectable people of the county
--was the lady of Gauntly, in fact; and the two last
housekeepers before Mrs. Pilkington had married rectors
of Gauntly--but Mrs. P. could not, being the aunt of
the present Rector. The place was not to be hers yet,
but she might go down on a visit to Mrs. Pilkington and
see whether she would like to succeed her.
What words can paint the ecstatic gratitude of Briggs!
All she stipulated for was that little Rawdon should be
allowed to come down and see her at the Hall. Becky
promised this--anything. She ran up to her husband when
he came home and told him the joyful news. Rawdon
was glad, deuced glad; the weight was off his conscience
about poor Briggs's money. She was provided for, at any
rate, but--but his mind was disquiet. He did not seem
to be all right, somehow. He told little Southdown what
Lord Steyne had done, and the young man eyed Crawley
with an air which surprised the latter.
He told Lady Jane of this second proof of Steyne's
bounty, and she, too, looked odd and alarmed; so did
Sir Pitt. "She is too clever and--and gay to be allowed
to go from party to party without a companion," both
said. "You must go with her, Rawdon, wherever she
goes, and you must have somebody with her--one of the
girls from Queen's Crawley, perhaps, though they were
rather giddy guardians for her."
Somebody Becky should have. But in the meantime
it was clear that honest Briggs must not lose her chance
of settlement for life, and so she and her bags were
packed, and she set off on her journey. And so two of
Rawdon's out-sentinels were in the hands of the enemy.
Sir Pitt went and expostulated with his sister-in-law
upon the subject of the dismissal of Briggs and other
matters of delicate family interest. In vain she pointed
out to him how necessary was the protection of Lord
Steyne for her poor husband; how cruel it would be on
their part to deprive Briggs of the position offered to her.
Cajolements, coaxings, smiles, tears could not satisfy Sir
Pitt, and he had something very like a quarrel with his
once admired Becky. He spoke of the honour of the
family, the unsullied reputation of the Crawleys;
expressed himself in indignant tones about her receiving
those young Frenchmen--those wild young men of fashion,
my Lord Steyne himself, whose carriage was always
at her door, who passed hours daily in her company,
and whose constant presence made the world talk about
her. As the head of the house he implored her to be
more prudent. Society was already speaking lightly of
her. Lord Steyne, though a nobleman of the greatest
station and talents, was a man whose attentions would
compromise any woman; he besought, he implored, he
commanded his sister-in-law to be watchful in her
intercourse with that nobleman.
Becky promised anything and everything Pitt wanted;
but Lord Steyne came to her house as often as ever,
and Sir Pitt's anger increased. I wonder was Lady Jane
angry or pleased that her husband at last found fault
with his favourite Rebecca? Lord Steyne's visits
continuing, his own ceased, and his wife was for refusing
all further intercourse with that nobleman and declining
the invitation to the charade-night which the marchioness
sent to her; but Sir Pitt thought it was necessary to
accept it, as his Royal Highness would be there.
Although he went to the party in question, Sir Pitt
quitted it very early, and his wife, too, was very glad
to come away. Becky hardly so much as spoke to him or
noticed her sister-in-law. Pitt Crawley declared her
behaviour was monstrously indecorous, reprobated in
strong terms the habit of play-acting and fancy dressing
as highly unbecoming a British female, and after the
charades were over, took his brother Rawdon severely
to task for appearing himself and allowing his wife to
join in such improper exhibitions.
Rawdon said she should not join in any more such
amusements--but indeed, and perhaps from hints from
his elder brother and sister, he had already become a
very watchful and exemplary domestic character. He left
off his clubs and billiards. He never left home. He took
Becky out to drive; he went laboriously with her to all
her parties. Whenever my Lord Steyne called, he was
sure to find the Colonel. And when Becky proposed to
go out without her husband, or received invitations for
herself, he peremptorily ordered her to refuse them: and
there was that in the gentleman's manner which enforced
obedience. Little Becky, to do her justice, was charmed
with Rawdon's gallantry. If he was surly, she never was.
Whether friends were present or absent, she had always
a kind smile for him and was attentive to his pleasure
and comfort. It was the early days of their marriage over
again: the same good humour, prevenances, merriment,
and artless confidence and regard. "How much pleasanter
it is," she would say, "to have you by my side in the
carriage than that foolish old Briggs! Let us always go on
so, dear Rawdon. How nice it would be, and how happy
we should always be, if we had but the money!" He
fell asleep after dinner in his chair; he did not see the
face opposite to him, haggard, weary, and terrible; it
lighted up with fresh candid smiles when he woke. It
kissed him gaily. He wondered that he had ever had
suspicions. No, he never had suspicions; all those dumb
doubts and surly misgivings which had been gathering on
his mind were mere idle jealousies. She was fond of him;
she always had been. As for her shining in society, it
was no fault of hers; she was formed to shine there.
Was there any woman who could talk, or sing, or do
anything like her? If she would but like the boy!
Rawdon thought. But the mother and son never could be
brought together.
And it was while Rawdon's mind was agitated with
these doubts and perplexities that the incident occurred
which was mentioned in the last chapter, and the
unfortunate Colonel found himself a prisoner away from
home.
CHAPTER LIII
Friend Rawdon drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion
in Cursitor Street, and was duly inducted into that
dismal place of hospitality. Morning was breaking
over the cheerful house-tops of Chancery Lane as the
rattling cab woke up the echoes there. A little
pink-eyed Jew-boy, with a head as ruddy as the rising
morn, let the party into the house, and Rawdon was
welcomed to the ground-floor apartments by Mr. Moss, his
travelling companion and host, who cheerfully asked him
if he would like a glass of something warm after his drive.
The Colonel was not so depressed as some mortals
would be, who, quitting a palace and a placens uxor,
find themselves barred into a spunging-house; for, if the
truth must be told, he had been a lodger at Mr. Moss's
establishment once or twice before. We have not thought
it necessary in the previous course of this narrative to
mention these trivial little domestic incidents: but the
reader may be assured that they can't unfrequently occur
in the life of a man who lives on nothing a year.
Upon his first visit to Mr. Moss, the Colonel, then
a bachelor, had been liberated by the generosity of his
aunt; on the second mishap, little Becky, with the greatest
spirit and kindness, had borrowed a sum of money from
Lord Southdown and had coaxed her husband's creditor
(who was her shawl, velvet-gown, lace pocket-handkerchief,
trinket, and gim-crack purveyor, indeed) to take
a portion of the sum claimed and Rawdon's promissory
note for the remainder: so on both these occasions the
capture and release had been conducted with the utmost
gallantry on all sides, and Moss and the Colonel were
therefore on the very best of terms.
"You'll find your old bed, Colonel, and everything
comfortable," that gentleman said, "as I may honestly say.
You may be pretty sure its kep aired, and by the best
of company, too. It was slep in the night afore last by
the Honorable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons,
whose Mar took him out, after a fortnight, jest to punish
him, she said. But, Law bless you, I promise you, he
punished my champagne, and had a party ere every night
--reglar tip-top swells, down from the clubs and the
West End--Capting Ragg, the Honorable Deuceace, who
lives in the Temple, and some fellers as knows a good
glass of wine, I warrant you. I've got a Doctor of
Diwinity upstairs, five gents in the coffee-room, and Mrs.
Moss has a tably-dy-hoty at half-past five, and a little
cards or music afterwards, when we shall be most happy
to see you."
"I'll ring when I want anything," said Rawdon and
went quietly to his bedroom. He was an old soldier,
we have said, and not to be disturbed by any little shocks
of fate. A weaker man would have sent off a letter to his
wife on the instant of his capture. "But what is the use
of disturbing her night's rest?" thought Rawdon. "She
won't know whether I am in my room or not. It will
be time enough to write to her when she has had her
sleep out, and I have had mine. It's only a hundredand-
seventy, and the deuce is in it if we can't raise
that." And so, thinking about little Rawdon (whom he
would not have know that he was in such a queer place),
the Colonel turned into the bed lately occupied by
Captain Famish and fell asleep. It was ten o'clock when
he woke up, and the ruddy-headed youth brought him,
with conscious pride, a fine silver dressing-case, wherewith
he might perform the operation of shaving. Indeed
Mr. Moss's house, though somewhat dirty, was splendid
throughout. There were dirty trays, and wine-coolers en
permanence on the sideboard, huge dirty gilt cornices,
with dingy yellow satin hangings to the barred windows
which looked into Cursitor Street--vast and dirty gilt
picture frames surrounding pieces sporting and sacred, all
of which works were by the greatest masters--and fetched
the greatest prices, too, in the bill transactions, in the
course of which they were sold and bought over and
over again. The Colonel's breakfast was served to him
in the same dingy and gorgeous plated ware. Miss Moss,
a dark-eyed maid in curl-papers, appeared with the
teapot, and, smiling, asked the Colonel how he had slep?
And she brought him in the Morning Post, with the
names of all the great people who had figured at Lord
Steyne's entertainment the night before. It contained a
brilliant account of the festivities and of the beautiful
and accomplished Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's admirable
personifications.
After a lively chat with this lady (who sat on the
edge of the breakfast table in an easy attitude displaying
the drapery of her stocking and an ex-white satin shoe,
which was down at heel), Colonel Crawley called for
pens and ink, and paper, and being asked how many
sheets, chose one which was brought to him between
Miss Moss's own finger and thumb. Many a sheet had
that dark-eyed damsel brought in; many a poor fellow
had scrawled and blotted hurried lines of entreaty and
paced up and down that awful room until his messenger
brought back the reply. Poor men always use messengers
instead of the post. Who has not had their letters, with
the wafers wet, and the announcement that a person
is waiting in the hall?
Now on the score of his application, Rawdon had not
many misgivings.
DEAR BECKY, (Rawdon wrote)
I HOPE YOU SLEPT WELL. Don't be FRIGHTENED if I don't
bring you in your COFFY. Last night as I was coming
home smoaking, I met with an ACCADENT. I was NABBED
by Moss of Cursitor Street--from whose GILT AND SPLENDID
PARLER I write this--the same that had me this time
two years. Miss Moss brought in my tea--she is grown
very FAT, and, as usual, had her STOCKENS DOWN AT HEAL.
It's Nathan's business--a hundred-and-fifty--with
costs, hundred-and-seventy. Please send me my desk and
some CLOTHS--I'm in pumps and a white tye (something
like Miss M's stockings)--I've seventy in it. And as
soon as you get this, Drive to Nathan's--offer him
seventy-five down, and ASK HIM TO RENEW--say I'll take
wine--we may as well have some dinner sherry; but not
PICTURS, they're too dear.
If he won't stand it. Take my ticker and such of your
things as you can SPARE, and send them to Balls--we
must, of coarse, have the sum to-night. It won't do to
let it stand over, as to-morrow's Sunday; the beds here
are not very CLEAN, and there may be other things out
against me--I'm glad it an't Rawdon's Saturday for
coming home. God bless you.
Yours in haste,
R. C.
P.S. Make haste and come.
This letter, sealed with a wafer, was dispatched by
one of the messengers who are always hanging about
Mr. Moss's establishment, and Rawdon, having seen him
depart, went out in the court-yard and smoked his cigar
with a tolerably easy mind--in spite of the bars
overhead--for Mr. Moss's court-yard is railed in like a cage,
lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should
take a fancy to escape from his hospitality.
Three hours, he calculated, would be the utmost time
required, before Becky should arrive and open his prison
doors, and he passed these pretty cheerfully in smoking,
in reading the paper, and in the coffee-room with an
acquaintance, Captain Walker, who happened to be there,
and with whom he cut for sixpences for some hours,
with pretty equal luck on either side.
But the day passed away and no messenger returned--
no Becky. Mr. Moss's tably-dy-hoty was served at the
appointed hour of half-past five, when such of the gentlemen
lodging in the house as could afford to pay for the
banquet came and partook of it in the splendid front
parlour before described, and with which Mr. Crawley's
temporary lodging communicated, when Miss M. (Miss
Hem, as her papa called her) appeared without the curlpapers
of the morning, and Mrs. Hem did the honours
of a prime boiled leg of mutton and turnips, of which
the Colonel ate with a very faint appetite. Asked whether
he would "stand" a bottle of champagne for the
company, he consented, and the ladies drank to his 'ealth,
and Mr. Moss, in the most polite manner, "looked towards
him."
In the midst of this repast, however, the doorbell was
heard--young Moss of the ruddy hair rose up with the
keys and answered the summons, and coming back, told
the Colonel that the messenger had returned with a bag,
a desk and a letter, which he gave him. "No ceramony,
Colonel, I beg," said Mrs. Moss with a wave of her
hand, and he opened the letter rather tremulously. It
was a beautiful letter, highly scented, on a pink paper,
and with a light green seal.
MON PAUVRE CHER PETIT, (Mrs. Crawley wrote)
I could not sleep ONE WINK for thinking of what had
become of my odious old monstre, and only got to rest
in the morning after sending for Mr. Blench (for I was
in a fever), who gave me a composing draught and left
orders with Finette that I should be disturbed ON NO
ACCOUNT. So that my poor old man's messenger, who had
bien mauvaise mine Finette says, and sentoit le Genievre,
remained in the hall for some hours waiting my bell.
You may fancy my state when I read your poor dear
old ill-spelt letter.
Ill as I was, I instantly called for the carriage, and
as soon as I was dressed (though I couldn't drink a drop
of chocolate--I assure you I couldn't without my
monstre to bring it to me), I drove ventre a terre to
Nathan's. I saw him--I wept--I cried--I fell at hi~
odious knees. Nothing would mollify the horrid man.
He would have all the money, he said, or keep my poor
monstre in prison. I drove home with the intention of
paying that triste visite chez mon oncle (when every
trinket I have should be at your disposal though they
would not fetch a hundred pounds, for some, you know,
are with ce cher oncle already), and found Milor there
with the Bulgarian old sheep-faced monster, who had
come to compliment me upon last night's performances.
Paddington came in, too, drawling and lisping and
twiddling his hair; so did Champignac, and his chef--
everybody with foison of compliments and pretty speeches
--plaguing poor me, who longed to be rid of them, and
was thinking every moment of the time of mon pauvre
prisonnier.
When they were gone, I went down on my knees to
Milor; told him we were going to pawn everything, and
begged and prayed him to give me two hundred pounds.
He pish'd and psha'd in a fury--told me not to be such
a fool as to pawn--and said he would see whether he
could lend me the money. At last he went away,
promising that he would send it me in the morning: when
I will bring it to my poor old monster with a kiss fro
his affectionate
BECKY
I am writing in bed. Oh I have such a headache and
such a heartache!
When Rawdon read over this letter, he turned so red
and looked so savage that the company at the table
d'hote easily perceived that bad news had reached
him. All his suspicions, which he had been trying to
banish, returned upon him. She could not even go out
and sell her trinkets to free him. She could laugh and
talk about compliments paid to her, whilst he was in
prison. Who had put him there? Wenham had walked
with him. Was there.... He could hardly bear to think
of what he suspected. Leaving the room hurriedly, he ran
into his own--opened his desk, wrote two hurried lines,
which he directed to Sir Pitt or Lady Crawley, and
bade the messenger carry them at once to Gaunt Street,
bidding him to take a cab, and promising him a guinea
if he was back in an hour.
In the note he besought his dear brother and sister,
for the sake of God, for the sake of his dear child and
his honour, to come to him and relieve him from his
difficulty. He was in prison, he wanted a hundred pounds
to set him free--he entreated them to come to him.
He went back to the dining-room after dispatching his
messenger and called for more wine. He laughed and
talked with a strange boisterousness, as the people
thought. Sometimes he laughed madly at his own fears
and went on drinking for an hour, listening all the while
for the carriage which was to bring his fate back.
At the expiration of that time, wheels were heard
whirling up to the gate--the young janitor went out
with his gate-keys. It was a lady whom he let in at the
bailiff's door.
"Colonel Crawley," she said, trembling very much. He,
with a knowing look, locked the outer door upon her--
then unlocked and opened the inner one, and calling out,
"Colonel, you're wanted," led her into the back parlour,
which he occupied.
Rawdon came in from the dining-parlour where all
those people were carousing, into his back room; a flare
of coarse light following him into the apartment where
the lady stood, still very nervous.
"It is I, Rawdon," she said in a timid voice, which
she strove to render cheerful. "It is Jane." Rawdon was
quite overcome by that kind voice and presence. He ran
up to her--caught her in his arms--gasped out some
inarticulate words of thanks and fairly sobbed on her
shoulder. She did not know the cause of his emotion.
The bills of Mr. Moss were quickly settled, perhaps
to the disappointment of that gentleman, who had counted
on having the Colonel as his guest over Sunday at least;
and Jane, with beaming smiles and happiness in her eyes,
carried away Rawdon from the bailiff's house, and they
went homewards in the cab in which she had hastened
to his release. "Pitt was gone to a parliamentary dinner,"
she said, "when Rawdon's note came, and so, dear
Rawdon, I--I came myself"; and she put her kind hand in
his. Perhaps it was well for Rawdon Crawley that Pitt
was away at that dinner. Rawdon thanked his sister a
hundred times, and with an ardour of gratitude which
touched and almost alarmed that soft-hearted woman.
"Oh," said he, in his rude, artless way, "you--you don't
know how I'm changed since I've known you, and--and
little Rawdy. I--I'd like to change somehow. You see
I want--I want--to be--" He did- not finish the
sentence, but she could interpret it. And that night after he
left her, and as she sat by her own little boy's bed, she
prayed humbly for that poor way-worn sinner.
Rawdon left her and walked home rapidly. It was nine
o'clock at night. He ran across the streets and the great
squares of Vanity Fair, and at length came up breathless
opposite his own house. He started back and fell against
the railings, trembling as he looked up. The drawingroom
windows were blazing with light. She had said that
she was in bed and ill. He stood there for some time,
the light from the rooms on his pale face.
He took out his door-key and let himself into the
house. He could hear laughter in the upper rooms. He
was in the ball-dress in which he had been captured the
night before. He went silently up the stairs, leaning
against the banisters at the stair-head. Nobody was
stirring in the house besides--all the servants had been sent
away. Rawdon heard laughter within--laughter and singing.
Becky was singing a snatch of the song of the night
before; a hoarse voice shouted "Brava! Brava!"--it was
Lord Steyne's.
Rawdon opened the door and went in. A little table
with a dinner was laid out--and wine and plate. Steyne
was hanging over the sofa on which Becky sat. The
wretched woman was in a brilliant full toilette, her arms
and all her fingers sparkling with bracelets and rings,
and the brilliants on her breast which Steyne had given
her. He had her hand in his, and was bowing over it
to kiss it, when Becky started up with a faint scream
as she caught sight of Rawdon's white face. At the next
instant she tried a smile, a horrid smile, as if to
welcome her husband; and Steyne rose up, grinding
his teeth, pale, and with fury in his looks.
He, too, attempted a laugh--and came forward holding
out his hand. "What, come back! How d'ye do, Crawley?"
he said, the nerves of his mouth twitching as he
tried to grin at the intruder.
There was that in Rawdon's face which caused Becky
to fling herself before him. "I am innocent, Rawdon,"
she said; "before God, I am innocent." She clung hold
of his coat, of his hands; her own were all covered with
serpents, and rings, and baubles. "I am innocent. Say I
am innocent," she said to Lord Steyne.
He thought a trap had been laid for him, and was as
furious with the wife as with the husband. "You
innocent! Damn you," he screamed out. "You innocent! Why
every trinket you have on your body is paid for by me.
I have given you thousands of pounds, which this fellow
has spent and for which he has sold you. Innocent,
by --! You're as innocent as your mother, the balletgirl,
and your husband the bully. Don't think to frighten
me as you have done others. Make way, sir, and let me
pass"; and Lord Steyne seized up his hat, and, with
flame in his eyes, and looking his enemy fiercely in the
face, marched upon him, never for a moment doubting
that the other would give way.
But Rawdon Crawley springing out, seized him by the
neckcloth, until Steyne, almost strangled, writhed and
bent under his arm. "You lie, you dog!" said Rawdon.
"You lie, you coward and villain!" And he struck the
Peer twice over the face with his open hand and flung
him bleeding to the ground. It was all done before
Rebecca could interpose. She stood there trembling before
him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, and
victorious.
"Come here," he said. She came up at once.
"Take off those things." She began, trembling, pulling
the jewels from her arms, and the rings from her shaking
fingers, and held them all in a heap, quivering and looking
up at him. "Throw them down," he said, and she
dropped them. He tore the diamond ornament out of her
breast and flung it at Lord Steyne. It cut him on his
bald forehead. Steyne wore the scar to his dying day.
"Come upstairs," Rawdon said to his wife. "Don't kill
me, Rawdon," she said. He laughed savagely. "I want
to see if that man lies about the money as he has about
me. Has he given you any?"
"No," said Rebecca, "that is--"
"Give me your keys," Rawdon answered, and they
went out together.
Rebecca gave him all the keys but one, and she was in
hopes that he would not have remarked the absence of
that. It belonged to the little desk which Amelia had
given her in early days, and which she kept in a secret
place. But Rawdon flung open boxes and wardrobes,
throwing the multifarious trumpery of their contents here
and there, and at last he found the desk. The woman was
forced to open it. It contained papers, love-letters many
years old--all sorts of small trinkets and woman's
memoranda. And it contained a pocket-book with bank-notes.
Some of these were dated ten years back, too, and one
was quite a fresh one--a note for a thousand pounds
which Lord Steyne had given her.
"Did he give you this?" Rawdon said.
"Yes," Rebecca answered.
"I'll send it to him to-day," Rawdon said (for day had
dawned again, and many hours had passed in this search),
"and I will pay Briggs, who was kind to the boy, and
some of the debts. You will let me know where I shall
send the rest to you. You might have spared me a
hundred pounds, Becky, out of all this--I have always
shared with you."
"I am innocent," said Becky. And he left her without
another word.
What were her thoughts when he left her? She
remained for hours after he was gone, the sunshine
pouring into the room, and Rebecca sitting alone on the
bed's edge. The drawers were all opened and their contents
scattered about--dresses and feathers, scarfs and trinkets,
a heap of tumbled vanities lying in a wreck. Her hair
was falling over her shoulders; her gown was torn where
Rawdon had wrenched the brilliants out of it. She heard
him go downstairs a few minutes after he left her, and
the door slamming and closing on him. She knew he
would never come back. He was gone forever. Would
he kill himself?--she thought--not until after he had
met Lord Steyne. She thought of her long past life, and
all the dismal incidents of it. Ah, how dreary it seemed,
how miserable, lonely and profitless! Should she take
laudanum, and end it, to have done with all hopes,
schemes, debts, and triumphs? The French maid found
her in this position--sitting in the midst of her miserable
ruins with clasped hands and dry eyes. The woman was
her accomplice and in Steyne's pay. "Mon Dieu,
madame, what has happened?" she asked.
What had happened? Was she guilty or not? She said
not, but who could tell what was truth which came from
those lips, or if that corrupt heart was in this case pure?
All her lies and her schemes, an her selfishness and her
wiles, all her wit and genius had come to this
bankruptcy. The woman closed the curtains and, with some
entreaty and show of kindness, persuaded her mistress
to lie down on the bed. Then she went below and
gathered up the trinkets which had been lying on the floor
since Rebecca dropped them there at her husband's
orders, and Lord Steyne went away.
CHAPTER LIV
Sunday After the Battle
The mansion of Sir Pitt Crawley, in Great Gaunt Street,
was just beginning to dress itself for the day, as Rawdon,
in his evening costume, which he had now worn
two days, passed by the scared female who was scouring
the steps and entered into his brother's study. Lady
Jane, in her morning-gown, was up and above stairs in
the nursery superintending the toilettes of her children
and listening to the morning prayers which the little
creatures performed at her knee. Every morning she and
they performed this duty privately, and before the public
ceremonial at which Sir Pitt presided and at which all the
people of the household were expected to assemble.
Rawdon sat down in the study before the Baronet's table,
set out with the orderly blue books and the letters, the
neatly docketed bills and symmetrical pamphlets, the
locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, the
Bible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which
all stood as if on parade awaiting the inspection of their
chief.
A book of family sermons, one of which Sir Pitt was
in the habit of administering to his family on Sunday
mornings, lay ready on the study table, and awaiting his
judicious selection. And by the sermon-book was the
Observer newspaper, damp and neatly folded, and for
Sir Pitt's own private use. His gentleman alone took the
opportunity of perusing the newspaper before he laid it
by his master's desk. Before he had brought it into the
study that morning, he had read in the journal a flaming
account of "Festivities at Gaunt House," with the names
of all the distinguished personages invited by tho Marquis
of Steyne to meet his Royal Highness. Having made
comments upon this entertainment to the housekeeper
and her niece as they were taking early tea and hot
buttered toast in the former lady's apartment, and
wondered how the Rawding Crawleys could git on, the valet
had damped and folded the paper once more, so that it
looked quite fresh and innocent against the arrival of
the master of the house.
Poor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and
read it until his brother should arrive. But the print fell
blank upon his eyes, and he did not know in the least
what he was reading. The Government news and
appointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound
to peruse, otherwise he would by no means permit the
introduction of Sunday papers into his household), the
theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundred pounds
a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury
Pet, the Gaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a
most complimentary though guarded account of the
famous charades of which Mrs. Becky had been the
heroine--all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as he
sat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family.
Punctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble
study clock began to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his
appearance, fresh, neat, smugly shaved, with a waxy clean
face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty hair combed and
oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairs
majestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel
dressing-gown--a real old English gentleman, in a word--
a model of neatness and every propriety. He started when
he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbled clothes, with
blood-shot eyes, and his hair over his face. He thought
his brother was not sober, and had been out all night on
some orgy. "Good gracious, Rawdon," he said, with a
blank face, "what brings you here at this time of the
morning? Why ain't you at home?"
"Home," said Rawdon with a wild laugh. "Don't be
frightened, Pitt. I'm not drunk. Shut the door; I want to
speak to you."
Pitt closed the door and came up to the table, where
he sat down in the other arm-chair--that one placed for
the reception of the steward, agent, or confidential
visitor who came to transact business with the Baronet--
and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever.
"Pitt, it's all over with me," the Colonel said after a
pause. "I'm done."
"I always said it would come to this," the Baronet
cried peevishly, and beating a tune with his cleantrimmed
nails. "I warned you a thousand times. I can't
help you any more. Every shilling of my money is tied
up. Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last
night were promised to my lawyer to-morrow morning,
and the want of it will put me to great inconvenience.
I don't mean to say that I won't assist you ultimately.
But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as well
hope to pay the National Debt. It is madness, sheer
madness, to think of such a thing. You must come to a
compromise. It's a painful thing for the family, but everybody
does it. There was George Kitely, Lord Ragland's son,
went through the Court last week, and was what they
call whitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay
a shilling for him, and--"
"It's not money I want," Rawdon broke in. "I'm not
come to you about myself. Never mind what happens to
me "
"What is the matter, then?" said Pitt, somewhat
relieved.
"It's the boy," said Rawdon in a husky voice. "I want
you to promise me that you will take charge of him
when I'm gone. That dear good wife of yours has always
been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he is of
his . . .--Damn it. Look here, Pitt--you know that I
was to have had Miss Crawley's money. I wasn't brought
up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to
be extravagant and kep idle. But for this I might have
been quite a different man. I didn't do my duty with the
regiment so bad. You know how I was thrown over
about the money, and who got it."
"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in
which I have stood by you, I think this sort of reproach
is useless," Sir Pitt said. "Your marriage was your own
doing, not mine."
"That's over now," said Rawdon. "That's over now."
And the words were wrenched from him with a groan,
which made his brother start.
"Good God! is she dead?" Sir Pitt said with a voice
of genuine alarm and commiseration.
"I wish I was," Rawdon replied. "If it wasn't for little
Rawdon I'd have cut my throat this morning--and that
damned villain's too."
Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that
Lord Steyne was the person whose life Rawdon wished to
take. The Colonel told his senior briefly, and in broken
accents, the circumstances of the case. "It was a regular
plan between that scoundrel and her," he said. "The
bailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going
out of his house; when I wrote to her for money, she
said she was ill in bed and put me off to another day.
And when I got home I found her in diamonds and
sitting with that villain alone." He then went on to describe
hurriedly the personal conflict with Lord Steyne. To an
affair of that nature, of course, he said, there was but
one issue, and after his conference with his brother, he
was going away to make the necessary arrangements for
the meeting which must ensue. "And as it may end
fatally with me," Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and
as the boy has no mother, I must leave him to you and
Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if you will
promise me to be his friend."
The elder brother was much affected, and shook
Rawdon's hand with a cordiality seldom exhibited by him.
Rawdon passed his hand over his shaggy eyebrows.
"Thank you, brother," said he. "I know I can trust your
word."
"I will, upon my honour," the Baronet said. And thus,
and almost mutely, this bargain was struck between
them.
Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little
pocket-book which he had discovered in Becky's desk, and from
which he drew a bundle of the notes which it contained.
"Here's six hundred," he said--"you didn't know I was
so rich. I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lent
it to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always
felt ashamed of having taken the poor old woman's
money. And here's some more--I've only kept back a
few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get on
with." As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to
give to his brother, but his hands shook, and he was so
agitated that the pocket-book fell from him, and out of
it the thousand-pound note which had been the last of
the unlucky Becky's winnings.
Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much
wealth. "Not that," Rawdon said. "I hope to put a bullet
into the man whom that belongs to." He had thought to
himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap a ball in the
note and kill Steyne with it.
After this colloquy the brothers once more shook
hands and parted. Lady Jane had heard of the Colonel's
arrival, and was waiting for her husband in the adjoining
dining-room, with female instinct, auguring evil. The
door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and
the lady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers
passed out of the study. She held out her hand to
Rawdon and said she was glad he was come to breakfast,
though she could perceive, by his haggard unshorn face
and the dark looks of her husband, that there was very
little question of breakfast between them. Rawdon
muttered some excuses about an engagement, squeezing hard
the timid little hand which his sister-in-law reached out
to him. Her imploring eyes could read nothing but
calamity in his face, but he went away without another
word. Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation.
The children came up to salute him, and he kissed them
in his usual frigid manner. The mother took both of them
close to herself, and held a hand of each of them as they
knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, and
to the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged
upon chairs on the other side of the hissing tea-urn.
Breakfast was so late that day, in consequence of the
delays which had occurred, that the church-bells began
to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal; and
Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though
her thoughts had been entirely astray during the period
of family devotion.
Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great
Gaunt Street, and knocking at the great bronze
Medusa's head which stands on the portal of Gaunt House,
brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver
waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was
scared also by the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and
barred the way as if afraid that the other was going to
force it. But Colonel Crawley only took out a card and
enjoined him particularly to send it in to Lord Steyne,
and to mark the address written on it, and say that
Colonel Crawley would be all day after one o'clock at the
Regent Club in St. James's Street--not at home. The fat
red-faced man looked after him with astonishment as he
strode away; so did the people in their Sunday clothes
who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining
faces, the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican
shutting his shutters in the sunshine, against service
commenced. The people joked at the cab-stand about
his appearance, as he took a carriage there, and told the
driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.
All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached
that place. He might have seen his old acquaintance
Amelia on her way from Brompton to Russell Square,
had he been looking out. Troops of schools were on
their march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides
of coaches in the suburbs were thronged with people out
upon their Sunday pleasure; but the Colonel was much
too busy to take any heed of these phenomena, and,
arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the
room of his old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo,
who Crawley found, to his satisfaction, was in barracks.
Captain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo
man, greatly liked by his regiment, in which want of
money alone prevented him from attaining the highest
ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed. He had
been at a fast supper-party, given the night before by
Captain the Honourable George Cinqbars, at his house
in Brompton Square, to several young men of the
regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps de ballet, and
old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and
ranks, and consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, operadancers,
bruisers, and every kind of person, in a word,
was resting himself after the night's labours, and, not
being on duty, was in bed.
His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and
dancing pictures, presented to him by comrades as they
retired from the regiment, and married and settled into
quiet life. And as he was now nearly fifty years of age,
twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had
a singular museum. He was one of the best shots in
England, and, for a heavy man, one of the best riders;
indeed, he and Crawley had been rivals when the latter
was in the Army. To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo was lying
in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very
fight between the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher,
which has been before mentioned--a venerable bristly
warrior, with a little close-shaved grey head, with a silk
nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyed
moustache.
When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the
latter knew perfectly well on what duty of friendship he
was called to act, and indeed had conducted scores of
affairs for his acquaintances with the greatest prudence
and skill. His Royal Highness the late lamented
Commander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for
Macmurdo on this account, and he was the common refuge
of gentlemen in trouble.
"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the
old warrior. "No more gambling business, hay, like that
when we shot Captain Marker?"
"It's about--about my wife," Crawley answered,
casting down his eyes and turning very red.
The other gave a whistle. "I always said she'd throw
you over," he began--indeed there were bets in the
regiment and at the clubs regarding the probable fate of
Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his wife's character
esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing the
savage look with which Rawdon answered the expression
of this opinion, Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge
upon it further.
"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain
continued in a grave tone. "Is it only suspicion, you know,
or--or what is it? Any letters? Can't you keep it quiet?
Best not make any noise about a thing of that sort if you
can help it." "Think of his only finding her out now," the
Captain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred
particular conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs.
Crawley's reputation had been torn to shreds.
"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied--
"and there's only a way out of it for one of us, Mac--do
you understand? I was put out of the way--arrested--I
found 'em alone together. I told him he was a liar and a
coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him."
"Serve him right," Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"
Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.
"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he--that is, they
said you--"
"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon;
"do you mean that you ever heard a fellow doubt about
my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"
"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other
replied. "What the deuce was the good of my telling you
what any tom-fools talked about?"
"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite
overcome; and, covering his face with his hands, he gave
way to an emotion, the sight of which caused the tough
old campaigner opposite him to wince with sympathy.
"Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll put
a bullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so."
"You don't know how fond I was of that one,"
Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like
a footman. I gave up everything I had to her. I'm a
beggar because I would marry her. By Jove, sir, I've pawned
my own watch in order to get her anything she fancied;
and she she's been making a purse for herself all the
time, and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of
quod." He then fiercely and incoherently, and with an
agitation under which his counsellor had never before
seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of
the story. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it.
"She may be innocent, after all," he said. "She says
so. Steyne has been a hundred times alone with her in
the house before."
"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't
look very innocent": and he showed the Captain the
thousand-pound note which he had found in Becky's
pocket-book. "This is what he gave her, Mac, and she
kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house,
she refused to stand by me when I was locked up." The
Captain could not but own that the secreting of the
money had a very ugly look.
Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon
dispatched Captain Macmurdo's servant to Curzon Street,
with an order to the domestic there to give up a bag of
clothes of which the Colonel had great need. And during
the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson's
Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon
and his second composed a letter, which the latter
was to send to Lord Steyne. Captain Macmurdo had the
honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne, on the part
of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that
he was empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements
for the meeting which, he had no doubt, it was his
Lordship's intention to demand, and which the circumstances
of the morning had rendered inevitable. Captain
Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite
manner, to appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M'M.)
might communicate, and desired that the meeting might
take place with as little delay as possible.
In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his
possession a bank-note for a large amount, which
Colonel Crawley had reason to suppose was the property of
the Marquis of Steyne. And he was anxious, on the
Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.
By the time this note was composed, the Captain's
servant returned from his mission to Colonel Crawley's
house in Curzon Street, but without the carpet-bag and
portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with a
very puzzled and odd face.
"They won't give 'em up," said the man; "there's a
regular shinty in the house, and everything at sixes and
sevens. The landlord's come in and took possession. The
servants was a drinkin' up in the drawingroom. They
said--they said you had gone off with the plate,
Colonel"--the man added after a pause--"One of the
servants is off already. And Simpson, the man as was very
noisy and drunk indeed, says nothing shall go out of the
house until his wages is paid up."
The account of this little revolution in May Fair
astonished and gave a little gaiety to an otherwise very
triste conversation. The two officers laughed at Rawdon's
discomfiture.
"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home," Rawdon said,
biting his nails. "You remember him, Mac, don't you, in
the Riding School? How he sat the kicker to be sure!
didn't he?"
"That he did, old boy," said the good-natured Captain.
Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys,
in the Chapel of Whitefriars School, thinking, not about
the sermon, but about going home next Saturday, when
his father would certainly tip him and perhaps would
take him to the play.
"He's a regular trump, that boy," the father went on,
still musing about his son. "I say, Mac, if anything goes
wrong--if I drop--I should like you to--to go and see
him, you know, and say that I was very fond of him, and
that. And--dash it--old chap, give him these gold sleevebuttons:
it's all I've got." He covered his face with his
black hands, over which the tears rolled and made
furrows of white. Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take
off his silk night-cap and rub it across his eyes.
"Go down and order some breakfast," he said to his
man in a loud cheerful voice. "What'll you have, Crawley?
Some devilled kidneys and a herring--let's say. And,
Clay, lay out some dressing things for the Colonel: we
were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, and
neither of us ride so light as we did when we first
entered the corps." With which, and leaving the Colonel to
dress himself, Macmurdo turned round towards the wall,
and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, until such time as
his friend's toilette was complete and he was at liberty
to commence his own.
This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain
Macmurdo performed with particular care. He waxed his
mustachios into a state of brilliant polish and put on a
tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that all the
young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had
preceded his friend, complimented Mac on his appearance
at breakfast and asked if he was going to be married
that Sunday.
CHAPIER LV
In Which the Same Subject is Pursued
Becky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion
in which the events of the previous night had plunged
her intrepid spirit until the bells of the Curzon Street
Chapels were ringing for afternoon service, and rising
from her bed she began to ply her own bell, in order to
summon the French maid who had left her some hours
before.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and
though, on the last occasion, she rang with such
vehemence as to pull down the bell-rope, Mademoiselle
Fifine did not make her appearance--no, not though her
mistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her hand,
came out to the landing-place with her hair over her
shoulders and screamed out repeatedly for her attendant.
The truth is, she had quitted the premises for many
hours, and upon that permission which is called French
leave among us After picking up the trinkets in the
drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to her own
apartments, packed and corded her own boxes there,
tripped out and called a cab for herself, brought down
her trunks with her own hand, and without ever so much
as asking the aid of any of the other servants, who would
probably have refused it, as they hated her cordially,
and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had
made her exit from Curzon Street.
The game, in her opinion, was over in that little
domestic establishment. Fifine went off in a cab, as we
have known more exalted persons of her nation to do
under similar circumstances: but, more provident or
lucky than these, she secured not only her own property,
but some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could be
said to have any property at all)--and not only carried
off the trinkets before alluded to, and some favourite
dresses on which she had long kept her eye, but four
richly gilt Louis Quatorze candlesticks, six gilt albums,
keepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a gold enamelled
snuff-box which had once belonged to Madame du Barri, and
the sweetest little inkstand and mother-of-pearl blotting
book, which Becky used when she composed her charming
little pink notes, had vanished from the premises in
Curzon Street together with Mademoiselle Fifine, and all
the silver laid on the table for the little festin which
Rawdon interrupted. The plated ware Mademoiselle left
behind her was too cumbrous, probably for which
reason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the
chimney-glasses, and the rosewood cottage piano.
A lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's
shop in the Rue du Helder at Paris, where she lived with
great credit and enjoyed the patronage of my Lord
Steyne. This person always spoke of England as of the
most treacherous country in the world, and stated to her
young pupils that she had been affreusement vole by
natives of that island. It was no doubt compassion for
her misfortunes which induced the Marquis of Steyne to
be so very kind to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe. May
she flourish as she deserves--she appears no more in our
quarter of Vanity Fair.
Hearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the
impudence of those servants who would not answer her
summons, Mrs. Crawley flung her morning robe round
her and descended majestically to the drawing-room,
whence the noise proceeded.
The cook was there with blackened face, seated on the
beautiful chintz sofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom
she was administering Maraschino. The page with the
sugar-loaf buttons, who carried about Becky's pink
notes, and jumped about her little carriage with such
alacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers into a
cream dish; the footman was talking to Raggles, who
had a face full of perplexity and woe--and yet, though
the door was open, and Becky had been screaming a
half-dozen of times a few feet off, not one of her
attendants had obeyed her call. "Have a little drop, do'ee
now, Mrs. Raggles," the cook was saying as Becky
entered, the white cashmere dressing-gown flouncing
around her.
"Simpson! Trotter!" the mistress of the house cried in
great wrath. "How dare you stay here when you heard
me call? How dare you sit down in my presence? Where's
my maid?" The page withdrew his fingers from his mouth
with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a glass
of Maraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough,
staring at Becky over the little gilt glass as she drained
its contents. The liquor appeared to give the odious rebel
courage.
"YOUR sofy, indeed!" Mrs. Cook said. "I'm a settin' on
Mrs. Raggles's sofy. Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum.
I'm a settin' on Mr. and Mrs. Raggles's sofy, which they
bought with honest money, and very dear it cost 'em,
too. And I'm thinkin' if I set here until I'm paid my
wages, I shall set a precious long time, Mrs. Raggles;
and set I will, too--ha! ha!" and with this she filled
herself another glass of the liquor and drank it with a more
hideously satirical air.
"Trotter! Simpson! turn that drunken wretch out,"
screamed Mrs. Crawley.
"I shawn't," said Trotter the footman; "turn out
yourself. Pay our selleries, and turn me out too. WE'LL
go fast enough."
"Are you all here to insult me?" cried Becky in a fury;
"when Colonel Crawley comes home I'll--"
At this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in
which, however, Raggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join. "He
ain't a coming back,"
Mr. Trotter resumed. "He sent for his things, and I
wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and I
don't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am. He's
hoff, and I suppose you're a goin' after him. You're no
better than swindlers, both on you. Don't be a bullyin'
ME. I won't stand it. Pay us our selleries, I say. Pay us
our selleries." It was evident, from Mr. Trotter's flushed
countenance and defective intonation, that he, too, had
had recourse to vinous stimulus.
"Mr. Raggles," said Becky in a passion of vexation,
"you will not surely let me be insulted by that drunken
man?" "Hold your noise, Trotter; do now," said Simpson
the page. He was affected by his mistress's deplorable
situation, and succeeded in preventing an outrageous
denial of the epithet "drunken" on the footman's part.
"Oh, M'am," said Raggles, "I never thought to live to
see this year day: I've known the Crawley family ever
since I was born. I lived butler with Miss Crawley for
thirty years; and I little thought one of that family was
a goin' to ruing me--yes, ruing me"--said the poor fellow
with tears in his eyes. "Har you a goin' to pay me? You've
lived in this 'ouse four year. You've 'ad my substance:
my plate and linning. You ho me a milk and butter bill
of two 'undred pound, you must 'ave noo laid heggs for
your homlets, and cream for your spanil dog."
"She didn't care what her own flesh and blood had,"
interposed the cook. "Many's the time, he'd have starved
but for me."
"He's a charaty-boy now, Cooky," said Mr. Trotter,
with a drunken "ha! ha!"--and honest Raggles continued,
in a lamentable tone, an enumeration of his griefs. All he
said was true. Becky and her husband had ruined him.
He had bills coming due next week and no means to meet
them. He would be sold up and turned out of his shop
and his house, because he had trusted to the Crawley
family. His tears and lamentations made Becky more
peevish than ever.
"You all seem to be against me," she said bitterly.
"What do you want? I can't pay you on Sunday. Come
back to-morrow and I'll pay you everything. I thought
Colonel Crawley had settled with you. He will to-morrow.
I declare to you upon my honour that he left home this
morning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book.
He has left me nothing. Apply to him. Give me a bonnet
and shawl and let me go out and find him. There was a
difference between us this morning. You all seem to
know it. I promise you upon my word that you shall all
be paid. He has got a good appointment. Let me go out
and find him.''
This audacious statement caused Raggles and the other
personages present to look at one another with a wild
surprise, and with it Rebecca left them. She went upstairs
and dressed herself this time without the aid of her French
maid. She went into Rawdon's room, and there saw that
a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with a
pencil direction that they should be given when called
for; then she went into the Frenchwoman's garret;
everything was clean, and all the drawers emptied there.
She bethought herself of the trinkets which had been left on
the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled.
"Good Heavens! was ever such ill luck as mine?" she
said; "to be so near, and to lose all. Is it all too late?"
No; there was one chance more.
She dressed herself and went away unmolested this
time, but alone. It was four o'clock. She went swiftly
down the streets (she had no money to pay for a
carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir Pitt
Crawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street. Where was Lady
Jane Crawley? She was at church. Becky was not sorry.
Sir Pitt was in his study, and had given orders not to be
disturbed--she must see him--she slipped by the sentinel
in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before the
astonished Baronet had even laid down the paper.
He turned red and started back from her with a look
of great alarm and horror.
"Do not look so," she said. "I am not guilty, Pitt, dear
Pitt; you were my friend once. Before God, I am not
guilty. I seem so. Everything is against me. And oh! at
such a moment! just when all my hopes were about to be
realized: just when happiness was in store for us."
"Is this true, what I see in the paper then?" Sir Pitt
said--a paragraph in which had greatly surprised him.
"It is true. Lord Steyne told me on Friday night, the
night of that fatal ball. He has been promised an
appointment any time these six months. Mr. Martyr, the
Colonial Secretary, told him yesterday that it was made out.
That unlucky arrest ensued; that horrible meeting. I was only
guilty of too much devotedness to Rawdon's service. I
have received Lord Steyne alone a hundred times before.
I confess I had money of which Rawdon knew nothing.
Don't you know how careless he is of it, and could I dare
to confide it to him?" And so she went on with a
perfectly connected story, which she poured into the ears
of her perplexed kinsman.
It was to the following effect. Becky owned, and with
prefect frankness, but deep contrition, that having
remarked Lord Steyne's partiality for her (at the mention
of which Pitt blushed), and being secure of her own
virtue, she had determined to turn the great peer's
attachment to the advantage of herself and her family. "I
looked for a peerage for you, Pitt," she said (the brotherin-
law again turned red). "We have talked about it. Your
genius and Lord Steyne's interest made it more than
probable, had not this dreadful calamity come to put an
end to all our hopes. But, first, I own that it was my
object to rescue my dear husband--him whom I love in
spite of all his ill usage and suspicions of me--to remove
him from the poverty and ruin which was impending over
us. I saw Lord Steyne's partiality for me," she said,
casting down her eyes. "I own that I did everything in
my power to make myself pleasing to him, and as far as
an honest woman may, to secure his--his esteem. It was
only on Friday morning that the news arrived of the
death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lord
instantly secured the appointment for my dear husband.
It was intended as a surprise for him--he was to see it in
the papers to-day. Even after that horrid arrest took
place (the expenses of which Lord Steyne generously
said he would settle, so that I was in a manner prevented
from coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was
laughing with me, and saying that my dearest Rawdon
would be consoled when he read of his appointment in
the paper, in that shocking spun--bailiff's house. And
then--then he came home. His suspicions were excited,
--the dreadful scene took place between my Lord and
my cruel, cruel Rawdon--and, O my God, what will
happen next? Pitt, dear Pitt! pity me, and reconcile us!"
And as she spoke she flung herself down on her knees,
and bursting into tears, seized hold of Pitt's hand, which
she kissed passionately.
It was in this very attitude that Lady Jane, who,
returning from church, ran to her husband's room directly
she heard Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was closeted there,
found the Baronet and his sister-in-law.
"I am surprised that woman has the audacity to enter
this house," Lady Jane said, trembling in every limb
and turning quite pale. (Her Ladyship had sent out her
maid directly after breakfast, who had communicated
with Raggles and Rawdon Crawley's household, who had
told her all, and a great deal more than they knew, of
that story, and many others besides). "How dare Mrs.
Crawley to enter the house of--of an honest family?"
Sir Pitt started back, amazed at his wife's display of
vigour. Becky still kept her kneeling posture and clung
to Sir Pitt's hand.
"Tell her that she does not know all: Tell her that I
am innocent, dear Pitt," she whimpered out.
"Upon-my word, my love, I think you do Mrs. Crawley
injustice," Sir Pitt said; at which speech Rebecca was
vastly relieved. "Indeed I believe her to be--"
"To be what?" cried out Lady Jane, her clear voice
thrilling and, her heart beating violently as she spoke.
"To be a wicked woman--a heartless mother, a false
wife? She never loved her dear little boy, who used to
fly here and tell me of her cruelty to him. She never
came into a family but she strove to bring misery with
her and to weaken the most sacred affections with her
wicked flattery and falsehoods. She has deceived her
husband, as she has deceived everybody; her soul is black
with vanity, worldliness, and all sorts of crime. I tremble
when I touch her. I keep my children out of her sight.
"Lady Jane!" cried Sir Pitt, starting up, "this is really
language--"
"I have been a true and faithful wife to you, Sir
Pitt," Lady Jane continued, intrepidly; "I have kept my
marriage vow as I made it to God and have been
obedient and gentle as a wife should. But righteous
obedience has its limits, and I declare that I will not bear
that--that woman again under my roof; if she enters it,
I and my children will leave it. She is not worthy to sit
down with Christian people. You--you must choose, sir,
between her and me"; and with this my Lady swept out
of the room, fluttering with her own audacity, and leaving
Rebecca and Sir Pitt not a little astonished at it.
As for Becky, she was not hurt; nay, she was pleased.
"It was the diamond-clasp you gave me," she said to Sir
Pitt, reaching him out her hand; and before she left him
(for which event you may be sure my Lady Jane was
looking out from her dressing-room window in the upper
story) the Baronet had promised to go and seek out his
brother, and endeavour to bring about a reconciliation.
Rawdon found some of the young fellows of the regiment
seated in the mess-room at breakfast, and was
induced without much difficulty to partake of that meal,
and of the devilled legs of fowls and soda-water with
which these young gentlemen fortified themselves. Then
they had a conversation befitting the day and their time
of life: about the next pigeon-match at Battersea, with
relative bets upon Ross and Osbaldiston; about
Mademoiselle Ariane of the French Opera, and who had left
her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr; and
about the fight between the Butcher and the Pet, and the
probabilities that it was a cross. Young Tandyman, a
hero of seventeen, laboriously endeavouring to get up a
pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in the
most scientific manner about the battle and the condition
of the men. It was he who had driven the Butcher on to
the ground in his drag and passed the whole of the
previous night with him. Had there not been foul play
he must have won it. All the old files of the Ring were in
it; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't
pay. It was but a year since the young Cornet, now so
knowing a hand in Cribb's parlour, had a still lingering
liking for toffy, and used to be birched at Eton.
So they went on talking about dancers, fights, drinking,
demireps, until Macmurdo came down and joined the
boys and the conversation. He did not appear to think
that any especial reverence was due to their boyhood;
the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice
as any the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his
own grey hairs nor their smooth faces detain him. Old
Mac was famous for his good stories. He was not exactly
a lady's man; that is, men asked him to dine rather at
the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.
There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his,
but he was quite contented with it, such as it was, and
led it in perfect good nature, simplicity, and modesty of
demeanour.
By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast,
most of the others had concluded their meal. Young Lord
Varinas was smoking an immense Meerschaum pipe,
while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: that
violent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier
between his legs, was tossing for shillings with all his
might (that fellow was always at some game or other)
against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and Rawdon walked
off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any hint
of the business which was occupying their minds. Both,
on the other hand, had joined pretty gaily in the
conversation, for why should they interrupt it? Feasting,
drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on alongside of all sorts
of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds were
pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed
down St. James's Street and entered into their Club.
The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand
gaping and grinning out of the great front window of the
Club, had not arrived at their posts as yet--the
newspaper-room was almost empty. One man was present
whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed
a little score for whist, and whom, in consequence, he
did not care to meet; a third was reading the Royalist
(a periodical famous for its scandal and its attachment
to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and
looking up at Crawley with some interest, said, "Crawley,
I congratulate you."
"What do you mean?" said the Colonel.
"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too," said Mr.
Smith.
"What?" Rawdon cried, turning very red. He thought
that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the
public prints. Smith looked up wondering and smiling
at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as he took
up the paper and, trembling, began to read.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with .whom
Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been
talking about the Colonel just before he came in.
"It is come just in the nick of time," said Smith. "I
suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world."
"It's a wind that blows everybody good," Mr. Brown
said. "He can't go away without paying me a pony he
owes me."
"What's the salary?" asked Smith.
"Two or three thousand," answered the other. "But
the climate's so infernal, they don't enjoy it long.
Liverseege died after eighteen months of it, and the
man before went off in six weeks, I hear."
"Some people say his brother is a very clever man. I
always found him a d-- bore," Smith ejaculated. "He
must have good interest, though. He must have got the
Colonel the place."
"He!" said Brown. with a sneer. "Pooh. It was Lord
Steyne got it.
"How do you mean?"
"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,"
answered the other enigmatically, and went to read his
papers.
Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following
astonishing paragraph:
GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S.
Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and
papers from Coventry Island. H. E. Sir Thomas
Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at
Swampton. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing
colony. We hear that the Governorship has been offered to
Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo
officer. We need not only men of acknowledged
bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend
the affairs of our colonies, and we have no doubt
that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to
fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at
Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which
he is about to occupy."
"Coventry Island! Where was it? Who had appointed
him to the government? You must take me out as your
secretary, old boy," Captain Macmurdo said laughing;
and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and
perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought
in to the Colonel a card on which the name of Mr.
Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel
Crawley.
The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet
the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an
emissary of Lord Steyne. "How d'ye do, Crawley? I am
glad to see you," said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,
and grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.
"You come, I suppose, from-- "
"Exactly," said Mr. Wenham.
"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life
Guards Green."
"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure," Mr.
Wenham said and tendered another smile and shake of
the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal.
Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove,
and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his
tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put
in communication with a pekin, and thought that Lord
Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at the very least.
"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,"
Crawley said, "I had better retire and leave you together."
"Of course," said Macmurdo.
"By no means, my dear Colonel," Mr. Wenham said;
"the interview which I had the honour of requesting was
with you personally, though the company of Captain
Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing. In fact,
Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none
but the most agreeable results, very different from those
which my friend Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate."
"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo. Be hanged to these
civilians, he thought to himself, they are always for
arranging and speechifying. Mr. Wenham took a chair
which was not offered to him--took a paper from his
pocket, and resumed--
"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the
papers this morning, Colonel? Government has secured
a most valuable servant, and you, if you accept office, as
I presume you will, an excellent appointment. Three
thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent governmenthouse,
all your own way in the Colony, and a certain
promotion. I congratulate you with all my heart. I
presume you know, gentlemen, to whom my friend is
indebted for this piece of patronage?"
"Hanged if I know," the Captain said; his principal
turned very red.
"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the
world, as he is one of the greatest--to my excellent
friend, the Marquis of Steyne."
"I'll see him d-- before I take his place," growled
out Rawdon.
"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr.
Wenham calmly resumed; "and now, in the name of
common sense and justice, tell me why?"
"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.
"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick
on the ground.
"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most
agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of
the world--as an honest man--and see if you have not
been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in
Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance
strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times
before in the same position? Upon my honour and word
as a gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on
his waistcoat with a parliamentary air--"I declare I think
that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly
unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman
who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."
"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's
mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo.
"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my
wife, Mrs. Wenham," Mr. Wenham said with great
energy. "I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy,
my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm
and old man of high station, his constant friend and
benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour,
his son's future reputation, and his own prospects in
life."
"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham
continued with great solemnity; "I was sent for this
morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state,
as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of
age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with
a man of your strength. I say to your face; it was a
cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel
Crawley. It was not only the body of my noble and
excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and
regarded with affection had subjected him to the foulest
indignity. What was this very appointment, which appears
in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to
you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found him
in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you
are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by
blood. You know he has given his proofs, I presume,
Colonel Crawley?"
"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel. "Nobody
ever said he hadn't."
"His first order to me was to write a letter of
challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley. One or
other of us," he said, "must not survive the outrage
of last night."
Crawley nodded. "You're coming to the point,
Wenham," he said.
"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. Good God!
sir," I said, "how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself
had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's invitation to sup with
her!"
"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo
said.
"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop
--no, this is another paper--I thought I had h, but it's
of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the
fact. If we had come--and it was only one of Mrs.
Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers
under them a good deal, especially in the spring--if we
had come, and you had returned home, there would have
been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion--and so it is
positively because my poor wife has a headache that you
are to bring death down upon two men of honour and
plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families
in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow."
Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air
of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a
kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not
believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?
Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory,
which in his place in Parliament he had so often
practised--"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's
bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him
that the circumstances were after all suspicious--they
were suspicious. I acknowledge it--any man in your
position might have been taken in--I said that a man
furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel
between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties
concerned--that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had
no right in these days, when the most atrocious
revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a
public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common
people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I
implored him not to send the challenge."
"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said
Rawdon, grinding his teeth. "I believe it a d-- lie, and
that you're in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don't
come from him, by Jove it shall come from me."
Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage
interruption of the Colonel and looked towards the door.
But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That
gentleman rose up with an oath and rebuked Rawdon
for his language. "You put the affair into my hands, and
you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do.
You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort
of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an
apology. And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you
may get somebody else to carry it, I won't. If my lord,
after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him.
And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my
belief is, there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's
innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at
any rate that you would be a d--fool not to take the
place and hold your tongue."
"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,"
Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved--"I forget
any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the
irritation of the moment."
"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.
"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said
good-naturedly. "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and
quite right, too."
"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried,
"ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion. A
word concerning it should never pass these doors. I
speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel
Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."
"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very
much," said Captain Macmurdo; "and I don't see why
our side should. The affair ain't a very pretty one, any
way you take it, and the less said about it the better.
It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."
Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain
Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon
himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving Rawdon chafing
within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an
expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.
"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.
"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the
other with a smile. "Upon my honour and conscience
now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the opera."
"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her headaches.
I say, I've got a thousand-pound note here, which
I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and
I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne.
My man shan't fight him. But we had rather not take
his money."
"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the
other said with the utmost innocence of manner; and was
bowed down the Club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just
as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a slight
acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the
Captain, going back with the Baronet to the room where the
latter's brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he
had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and
the Colonel.
Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence,
and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful
issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks
upon the evils of duelling and the unsatisfactory nature
of that sort of settlement of disputes.
And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence
to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife.
He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made,
pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted
his own firm belief in her innocence.
But Rawdon would not hear of it. "She has kep money
concealed from me these ten years," he said "She swore,
last night only, she had none from Steyne. She knew it
was all up, directly I found it. If she's not guilty, Pitt,
she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her again--
never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke
the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.
"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.
Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of
taking the place which had been procured for him by so
odious a patron, and was also for removing the boy
from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had placed
him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these
benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo,
but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a
fury Steyne would be in to think that his enemy's
fortune was made through his means.
When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his
accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and
congratulated himself and the Service upon having made
so excellent an appointment. These congratulations were
received with a degree of gratitude which may be
imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.
The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel
Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as
Wenham said; that is, by the seconds and the principals.
But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty
dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself
went to seven evening parties and told the story with
comments and emendations at each place. How Mrs.
Washington White revelled in it! The Bishopess of Ealing
was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House
that very day. Little Southdown was sorry; so you may
be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry. Lady
Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of
Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days,
and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions
of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.
The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in
Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little
mansion was in the meanwhile--where? Who cared! Who
asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all
know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict
of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people
said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne,
whilst others averred that his Lordship quitted that city
and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky's arrival; some
said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame
d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was
at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at
Cheltenham.
Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may
be sure that she was a woman who could make a little
money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have
paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no
money on the strength of his salary. He remitted,
however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little
boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars
and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot
pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette,
in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose
wife was not asked to Government House, declared that
his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero
was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used
to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.
His mother never made any movement to see the child.
He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he
soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and
rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to
Hampshire.
CHAPTER LVI
Georgy is Made a Gentleman
Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his
grandfather's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his
father's room in the house and heir apparent of all the
splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and
gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's
heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever
he had been of the elder George.
The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than
had been awarded his father. Osborne's commerce had
prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and
importance in the City had very much increased. He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George
to a good private school; and a commission in the army
for his son had been a source of no small pride to
him; for little George and his future prospects the old
man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying
regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a
collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps. The
old man thought he would die contented if he could see
his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would
have none but a tip-top college man to educate him--
none of your quacks and pretenders--no, no. A few years
before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were
a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get
their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set
of supercilious dogs that pretended to look down upon
British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half
a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected,
and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy,
the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.
When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask
the lad what he had been reading during the day, and
was greatly interested at the report the boy gave of his
own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not
increase the respect which the child had for his senior.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed
the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and
he began accordingly to command him and to look down
upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better
gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could
make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak,
and tender woman, who had no pride about anything
but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but
needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices
and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she
never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless,
loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia
be other than a real gentlewoman!
Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding
nature; and the contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with
the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom
he next came in contact made him lord over the latter
too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have
been better brought up to think well of himself.
Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and
I do believe every hour of the day, and during most
hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young
gentleman had a number of pleasures and consolations
administered to him, which made him for his part bear
the separation from Amelia very easily. Little boys who
cry when they are going to school cry because they
are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a
few who weep from sheer affection. When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a
piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma
and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be
too confident of your own fine feelings.
Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort
and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather
thought fit to provide. The coachman was instructed to
purchase for him the handsomest pony which could be
bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having
performed satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the
leaping-bar, he was conducted through the New Road to
Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode
in state with Martin the coachman behind him. Old
Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now,
where he left his affairs to his junior partners, would
often ride out with Miss O. in the same fashionable direction.
As little Georgy came cantering up with his dandified
air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge
the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would
laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as
he nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom
saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master
George. Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock
(whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with
bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick
Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at
the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side
and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.
Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master
George wore straps and the most beautiful little boots
like a man. He had gilt spurs, and a gold-headed whip,
and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest little
kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish.
His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him;
but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were
replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put
aside--I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the
coachman's boy. Amelia tried to think she was pleased
at the change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to
see the boy looking so beautiful.
She had had a little black profile of him done for a
shilling, and this was hung up by the side of another
portrait over her bed. One day the boy came on his
accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the
windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness
and a look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case
out of his great-coat--it was a natty white great-coat,
with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red
morocco case, which he gave her.
"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said.
"I thought you'd like it."
Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of
delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a
hundred times. It was a miniature-of himself, very prettily
done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought). His grandfather had wished
to have a picture of him by an artist whose works,
exhibited in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had
caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who had
plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter
how much a copy of the little portrait would cost, saying
that he would pay for it out of his own money and
that he wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased
painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne
himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his
satisfaction and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns
as he paid for the miniature.
But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to
Amelia's ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection
charmed her so that she thought no child in the world
was like hers for goodness. For long weeks after, the
thought of his love made her happy. She slept better
with the picture under her pillow, and how many many
times did she kiss it and weep and pray over it! A
small kindness from those she loved made that timid
heart grateful. Since her parting with George she had had
no such joy and consolation.
At his new home Master George ruled like a lord;
at dinner he invited the ladies to drink wine with the
utmost coolness, and took off his champagne in a way
which charmed his old grandfather. "Look at him," the
old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap?
Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and
razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."
The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr.
Osborne's friends so much as they pleased the old
gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear
Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his stories.
Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy
half tipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular
gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at
the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old
Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped"
her third boy (a young gentleman a year older than
Georgy, and by chance home for the holidays from Dr.
Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square. George's
grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy
above his own size and age whom he whopped in a
similar manner. It is difficult to say what good the old man
saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that
quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn. English youth have
been so educated time out of mind, and we have
hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of
injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy,
George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further,
and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young
baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance,
the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket
with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend
who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram
Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the
house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable
this time, and the little baker whopped Georgy, who
came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt
frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in
combat with a giant, and frightened his poor mother at
Brompton with long, and by no means authentic,
accounts of the battle.
This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square,
was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both
had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for
hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the
Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often
conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master
George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in
great comfort in the pit.
In the company of this gentleman they visited all the
principal theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of
all the actors from Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and
performed, indeed, many of the plays to the Todd family
and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the footman, who
was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after
the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap.
We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in
his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude
for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.
A famous tailor from the West End of the town--
Mr. Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn
bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was
good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so
doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose
to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers,
fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a
school of little dandies. Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats
for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown,
for all the world like a little man. He dressed for dinner
every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his
grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to
his special service, attended him at his toilette,
answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.
Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in
the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a
grown-up man. "How he DU dam and swear," the
servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those who
remembered the Captain his father, declared Master
George was his Pa, every inch of him. He made the house
lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and
his good-nature.
George's education was confided to a neighbouring
scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young
noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate,
and the learned professions: whose system did not
embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the
pupils would find the elegances of refined society and
the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this
way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street,
Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.
By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the
domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in
having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high
figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters. There was a large West Indian, whom
nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly
head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there
was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two
sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's
Service: these four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's
genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.
Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a
day boy; he arrived in the morning under the
guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine,
would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by
the groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported
in the school to be prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used
to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him
that he was destined for a high station; that it became
him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;
that obedience in the child was the best preparation for
command in the man; and that he therefore begged George
would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health
of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.
With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the
young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a
something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a
theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and
what he called a select library of all the works of the
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted
upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history
there, so that audiences would gather round him as he
spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a
prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the
very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary
gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to
employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to
use a little stingy one.
Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed
on my return home from taking the indulgence of an
evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend
Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true
archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated
grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were
illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right
in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society
of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"
Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used
to mimic Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and
dexterity, would reply that Mr. V. was quite correct
in his surmise.
"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking
of Mr. Osborne's hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason,
I will lay any wager, to complain of their repast. I
myself have been more than once so favoured. (By the way,
Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and
have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.)
I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been
found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant
hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great and
noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George
Earl of Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you
that the board of the British merchant was to the full
as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and
noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the
late arrival of Master Osborne."
To this great man George's education was for some
time entrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases,
but thought him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow
made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She
liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni,
which took place once a month (as you were informed on
pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where
the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak
tea and scientific conversation. Poor little Amelia never
missed one of these entertainments and thought them
delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her.
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the
delightful evening she had passed, when, the company
having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his
attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.
As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this
valuable master of a hundred sciences, to judge from
the weekly reports which the lad took home to his
grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were
printed in a table, and the pupil's progress in each was
marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was
pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien,
and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything
at the end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the woolyheaded
young gentleman, and half-brother to the
Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected
young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd
before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books,
with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin
inscription from the professor to his young friends.
The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of
the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced
Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his
establishment.
Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd
(who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his
cards and became a man of decided fashion), while Miss
Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font,
and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of
tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some
such memento of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove
the Todds out in her carriage now and then; when they
were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and
waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to
Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to
Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty
hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of
mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips
and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the
Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations
incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at
the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and
Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss
Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that
apartment--and ready to fire off duets and sing until
the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young
lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets
and sonatas in the Street, before they appeared in public
in the Square!
Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy
was to domineer over everybody with whom he came in
contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were
all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It must
be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly
to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy
liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a
natural aptitude for it.
In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Osborne was afraid of Georgy. The boy's
dashing manners, and offhand rattle about books and
learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled in
Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the
young boy the mastery. The old man would start at
some hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by
the little lad, and fancy that George's father was again
before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to
make up for harshness to the elder George. People were
surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He growled and
swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.
Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster,
broken down by more than forty years of dulness and
coarse usage. It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her.
And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the
jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was
still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession
of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no
further notice of his aunt.
For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old
schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior,
whom he could thrash. It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to
leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a
darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the
Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might
happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the
fond mother thought.
The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was
likewise subject to the little tyrant. He could not help
respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with
a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side, was in the
constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper,
the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other
such names of brutal contumely. How was little George
to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief. He came down to
visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was
very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.
The illness of that old lady had been the occupation
and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia. What do men know
about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had
we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless
slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and
kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience,
watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement
of a good word; all this, how many of them have
to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces
as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.
From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed,
which she had never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne
herself was never absent except when she ran to see
George. The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;
she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother
once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty
and infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement
did not affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to
support the other calamity under which she was suffering,
and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the
ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness
quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always
ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous
voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as
her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and
closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon
her.
Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the
consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who
was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and
stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his honour,
his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away
from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support
with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history: it would be too
dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it
d'avance.
One day as the young gentlemen were assembled
in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up
to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed
to the window with a vague notion that their father
might have arrived from Bombay. The great hulking
scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against
the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place
sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.
"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a
thundering knock came to the door.
Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for
laying his book down.
The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat
to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two
gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor
had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that
young gentleman, owing to a difference about the
introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face
resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he
said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to
convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."
Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two
strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his
usual haughty manner. One was fat, with mustachios,
and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.
"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman
with a start. "Can you guess who we are, George?"
The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he
was moved, and his eyes brightened. "I don't know the
other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major
Dobbin."
Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled
with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the
other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.
"Your mother has talked to you about me--has
she?" he said.
"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and
hundreds of times."
CHAPTER LVII
Eothen
It was one of the many causes for personal pride
with which old Osborne chose to recreate himself
that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and benefactor,
was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated
as to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the
hands of the man who had most injured and insulted
him. The successful man of the world cursed the old
pauper and relieved him from time to time. As he
furnished George with money for his mother, he gave
the boy to understand by hints, delivered in his brutal,
coarse way, that George's maternal grandfather was
but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and that
John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already
owed ever so much money for the aid which his generosity
now chose to administer. George carried the pompous
supplies to his mother and the shattered old widower whom
it was now the main business of her life to tend and
comfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and
disappointed old man.
It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in
Amelia that she chose to accept these money benefits at
the hands of her father's enemy. But proper pride and
this poor lady had never had much acquaintance together.
A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection;
a long course of poverty and humility, of daily privations,
and hard words, of kind offices and no returns, had been
her lot ever since womanhood almost, or since her
luckless marriage with George Osborne. You who see your
betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly
suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied,
poor, and rather despised for their poverty, do you ever
step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of
these poor wearied beggars? The very thought of them is
odious and low. "There must be classes--there must be
rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret (it is
well if he even sends the broken meat out to Lazarus
sitting under the window). Very true; but think how
mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that lottery
of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen
and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for
comforters.
So I must own that, without much repining, on the
contrary with something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the
crumbs that her father-in-law let drop now and then,
and with them fed her own parent. Directly she understood
it to be her duty, it was this young woman's nature
(ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her
a young woman even at that age) it was, I say, her
nature to sacrifice herself and to fling all that she had at
the feet of the beloved object. During what long thankless
nights had she worked out her fingers for little Georgy
whilst at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations,
poverties had she endured for father and mother! And
in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen
sacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the
world respected her, but I believe thought in her heart
that she was a poor-spirited, despicable little creature,
whose luck in life was only too good for her merits. O
you poor women! O you poor secret martyrs and victims,
whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in
your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the
block daily at the drawing-room table; every man who
watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where
the torture is administered to you, must pity you--and
--and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing,
years ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at
Bicetre, near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under
the bondage of his imprisonment and his personal
infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth
of snuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper. The kindness
was too much for the poor epileptic creature. He cried
in an anguish of delight and gratitude: if anybody gave
you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we
could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannize
over a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act
upon her and bring tears into her eyes, as though you
were an angel benefiting her.
Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune
allotted to poor little Amelia. Her life, begun not
unprosperously, had come down to this--to a mean prison
and a long, ignoble bondage. Little George visited her
captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams
of encouragement. Russell Square was the boundary of
her prison: she might walk thither occasionally, but was
always back to sleep in her cell at night; to perform
cheerless duties; to watch by thankless sick-beds; to
suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous
disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are
there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure
this long slavery?--who are hospital nurses without
wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without the
romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast,
watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and
unknown.
The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the
destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast
down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish,
the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother,
in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less
lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you
to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation,
whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be
an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely
a satire.
They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at
Brompton, upon just such a rainy, dark day as Amelia
recollected when first she had been there to marry George.
Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new sables.
She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk. Her
thoughts were away in other times as the parson read.
But that she held George's hand in her own, perhaps she
would have liked to change places with.... Then, as
usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed
inwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.
So she determined with all her might and strength to
try and make her old father happy. She slaved, toiled,
patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read
out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old Sedley, walked
him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton
Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and
affectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and
communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences,
as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on
the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his
sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the
widow were! The children running up and down the
slopes and broad paths in the gardens reminded her of
George, who was taken from her; the first George was
taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both instances,
had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to
think it was right that she should be so punished. She
was such a miserable wicked sinner. She was quite
alone in the world.
I know that the account of this kind of solitary
imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some
cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it--a tender gaoler,
for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress,
or a mouse to come out and play about Latude's beard
and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle,
dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historian
has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative
of Amelia's captivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this
period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken
to; in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of
life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards,
mending stockings, for her old father's benefit. So, never
mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however
old, scolding, and bankrupt--may we have in our last days
a kind soft shoulder on which to lean and a gentle hand
to soothe our gouty old pillows.
Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his
wife's death, and Amelia had her consolation in doing her
duty by the old man.
But we are not going to leave these two people long in
such a low and ungenteel station of life. Better days, as
far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both.
Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the
stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in
company with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was
another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time
when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to
his relatives there.
Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave
from his good-natured commandant to proceed to
Madras, and thence probably to Europe, on urgent private
affairs, never ceased travelling night and day until he
reached his journey's end, and had directed his march
with such celerity that he arrived at Madras in a high
fever. His servants who accompanied him brought him
to the house of the friend with whom he had resolved to
stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;
and it was thought for many, many days that he would
never travel farther than the burying-ground of the church
of St. George's, where the troops should fire a salvo over
his grave, and where many a gallant officer lies far away
from his home.
Here, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the
people who watched him might have heard him raving
about Amelia. The idea that he should never see her again
depressed him in his lucid hours. He thought his last day
was come, and he made his solemn preparations for
departure, setting his affairs in this world in order and
leaving the little property of which he was possessed to
those whom he most desired to benefit. The friend in
whose house he was located witnessed his testament. He
desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chain which
he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be
known, he had got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when
the young widow's hair was cut off, during the fever
which prostrated her after the death of George Osborne
on the plateau at Mount St. John.
He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone
such a process of blood-letting and calomel as
showed the strength of his original constitution. He was
almost a skeleton when they put him on board the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta,
touching at Madras, and so weak and prostrate that his
friend who had tended him through his illness prophesied
that the honest Major would never survive the voyage,
and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in
flag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying
down to the sea with him the relic that he wore at his
heart. But whether it was the sea air, or the hope which
sprung up in him afresh, from the day that the ship
spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards
home, our friend began to amend, and he was quite
well (though as gaunt as a greyhound) before they
reached the Cape. "Kirk will be disappointed of his
majority this time," he said with a smile; "he will
expect to find himself gazetted by the time the regiment
reaches home." For it must be premised that while the
Major was lying ill at Madras, having made such
prodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had
passed many years abroad, which after its return from
the West Indies had been baulked of its stay at home by
the Waterloo campaign, and had been ordered from
Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Major
might have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to
wait for their arrival at Madras.
Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his
exhausted state again under the guardianship of Glorvina.
"I think Miss O'Dowd would have done for me," he said
laughingly to a fellow-passenger, "if we had had her on
board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen
upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize
to Southampton, Jos, my boy."
For indeed it was no other than our stout friend
who was also a passenger on board the Ramchunder. He
had passed ten years in Bengal. Constant dinners, tiffins,
pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour of cutcherry,
and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was
forced to take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley.
A voyage to Europe was pronounced necessary for him--
and having served his full time in India and had fine
appointments which had enabled him to lay by a considerable
sum of money, he was free to come home and stay
with a good pension, or to return and resume that rank
in the service to which his seniority and his vast talents
entitled him.
He was rather thinner than when we last saw him,
but had gained in majesty and solemnity of demeanour.
He had resumed the mustachios to which his services at
Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about on deck in a
magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuse
ornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person.
He took breakfast in his cabin and dressed as solemnly to
appear on the quarter-deck as if he were going to turn out
for Bond Street, or the Course at Calcutta. He brought a
native servant with him, who was his valet and pipebearer
and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his
turban. That oriental menial had a wretched life under
the tyranny of Jos Sedley. Jos was as vain of his person
as a woman, and took as long a time at his toilette as
any fading beauty. The youngsters among the
passengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little
Ricketts, coming home after his third fever, used to draw
out Sedley at the cuddy-table and make him tell
prodigious stories about himself and his exploits against tigers
and Napoleon. He was great when he visited the
Emperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and
the young officers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by,
he described the whole battle of Waterloo and all but
announced that Napoleon never would have gone to Saint
Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley.
After leaving St. Helena he became very generous,
disposing of a great quantity of ship stores, claret,
preserved meats, and great casks packed with soda-water,
brought out for his private delectation. There were no
ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency
to the civilian, so that he was the first dignitary at
table, and treated by Captain Bragg and the officers of
the Ramchunder with the respect which his rank
warranted. He disappeared rather in a panic during a twodays'
gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin
battened down, and remained in his cot reading the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common, left on board the
Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the Lady Emily
Hornblower, wife of the Rev. Silas Hornblower, when on
their passage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman
was a missionary; but, for common reading, he had
brought a stock of novels and plays which he lent to the
rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeable to all by
his kindness and condescension.
Many and many a night as the ship was cutting through
the roaring dark sea, the moon and stars shining
overhead and the bell singing out the watch, Mr. Sedley and
the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of the vessel
talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and
the civilian puffed at the hookah which his servant
prepared for him.
In these conversations it was wonderful with what
perseverance and ingenuity Major Dobbin would manage
to bring the talk round to the subject of Amelia and her
little boy. Jos, a little testy about his father's misfortunes
and unceremonious applications to him, was soothed
down by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill
fortunes and old age. He would not perhaps like to live with
the old couple, whose ways and hours might not agree
with those of a younger man, accustomed to different
society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Major
pointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley
to have a house of his own in London, and not a
mere bachelor's establishment as before; how his sister
Amelia would be the very person to preside over it; how
elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good
manners. He recounted stories of the success which Mrs.
George Osborne had had in former days at Brussels, and
in London, where she was much admired by people of
very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming it
would be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and
make a man of him, for his mother and her parents
would be sure to spoil him. In a word, this artful Major
made the civilian promise to take charge of Amelia and
her unprotected child. He did not know as yet what
events had happened in the little Sedley family, and how
death had removed the mother, and riches had carried
off George from Amelia. But the fact is that every day
and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentleman
was thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart
was bent upon doing her good. He coaxed, wheedled,
cajoled, and complimented Jos Sedley with a perseverance
and cordiality of which he was not aware himself,
very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters
or daughters even, may remember how uncommonly
agreeable gentlemen are to the male relations when they
are courting the females; and perhaps this rogue of a
Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy.
The truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the
Ramchumder, very sick, and for the three days she lay
in the Madras Roads, he did not begin to rally, nor did
even the appearance and recognition of his old acquaintance,
Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after a
conversation which they had one day, as the Major was
laid languidly on the deck. He said then he thought he
was doomed; he had left a little something to his godson
in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne would remember
him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was
about to make. "Married? not the least," Jos answered;
"he had heard from her: she made no mention of the
marriage, and by the way, it was curious, she wrote to
say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and
hoped that HE would be happy." What were the dates of
Sedley's letters from Europe? The civilian fetched them.
They were two months later than the Major's; and the
ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon the treatment
adopted by him towards his new patient, who had been
consigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with
very small hopes indeed; for, from that day, the very
day that he changed the draught, Major Dobbin began
to mend. And thus it was that deserving officer, Captain
Kirk, was disappointed of his majority.
After they passed St. Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety
and strength was such as to astonish all his fellow
passengers. He larked with the midshipmen, played singlestick
with the mates, ran up the shrouds like a boy, sang
a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole
party assembled over their grog after supper, and
rendered himself so gay, lively, and amiable that even
Captain Bragg, who thought there was nothing in his
passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited feller at
first, was constrained to own that the Major was a
reserved but well-informed and meritorious officer. "He
ain't got distangy manners, dammy," Bragg observed to
his first mate; "he wouldn't do at Government House,
Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind
to me, and shook hands with me before the whole
company, and asking me at dinner to take beer with him,
before the Commander-in-Chief himself; he ain't got
manners, but there's something about him--" And thus
Captain Bragg showed that he possessed discrimination
as a man, as well as ability as a commander.
But a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was
within ten days' sail of England, Dobbin became so
impatient and ill-humoured as to surprise those comrades
who had before admired his vivacity and good temper.
He did not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and
was in a highly excited state when the pilot came on
board. Good God, how his heart beat as the two friendly
spires of Southampton came in sight.
CHAPTER LVIII
Our Friend the Major
Our Major had rendered himself so popular on board
the Ramchunder that when he and Mr. Sedley descended
into the welcome shore-boat which was to take them
from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the
great Captain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers
for Major Dobbin, who blushed very much and ducked
his head in token of thanks. Jos, who very likely thought
the cheers were for himself, took off his gold-laced cap
and waved it majestically to his friends, and they were
pulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier,
whence they proceeded to the Royal George Hotel.
Although the sight of that magnificent round of beef,
and the silver tankard suggestive of real British homebrewed
ale and porter, which perennially greet the eyes
of the traveller returning from foreign parts who enters
the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating and
delightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug
homely English inn might well like to stop some days
there, yet Dobbin began to talk about a post-chaise
instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than he
wished to be on the road to London. Jos, however, would
not hear of moving that evening. Why was he to pass a
night in a post-chaise instead of a great large undulating
downy feather-bed which was there ready to replace
the horrid little narrow crib in which the portly Bengal
gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He
could not think of moving till his baggage was cleared,
or of travelling until he could do so with his chillum. So
the Major was forced to wait over that night, and
dispatched a letter to his family announcing his arrival,
entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own
friends. Jos promised, but didn't keep his promise. The
Captain, the surgeon, and one or two passengers came
and dined with our two gentlemen at the inn, Jos exerting
himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner
and promising to go to town the next day with the Major.
The landlord said it did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley
take off his first pint of porter. If I had time and dared
to enter into digressions, I would write a chapter about
that first pint of porter drunk upon English ground. Ah,
how good it is! It is worth-while to leave home for a
year, just to enjoy that one draught.
Major Dobbin made his appearance the next morning
very neatly shaved and dressed, according to his wont.
Indeed, it was so early in the morning that nobody was
up in the house except that wonderful Boots of an inn
who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could
hear the snores of the various inmates of the house roaring
through the corridors as he creaked about in those
dim passages. Then the sleepless Boots went shirking
round from door to door, gathering up at each the
Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside. Then
Jos's native servant arose and began to get ready his
master's ponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his
hookah; then the maidservants got up, and meeting the
dark man in the passages, shrieked, and mistook him for
the devil. He and Dobbin stumbled over their pails in
the passages as they were scouring the decks of the
Royal George. When the first unshorn waiter appeared
and unbarred the door of the inn, the Major thought that
the time for departure was arrived, and ordered a postchaise
to be fetched instantly, that they might set off.
He then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and
opened the curtains of the great large family bed wherein
Mr. Jos was snoring. "Come, up! Sedley," the Major
said, "it's time to be off; the chaise will be at the door in
half an hour."
Jos growled from under the counterpane to know
what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the
blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might
be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the
morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which
we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to
understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up
at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged,
that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was
most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out
of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major
was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his
interrupted slumbers.
The chaise came up presently, and the Major would
wait no longer.
If he had been an English nobleman travelling on a
pleasure tour, or a newspaper courier bearing dispatches
(government messages are generally carried much more
quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly. The
post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them.
How happy and green the country looked as the chaise
whirled rapidly from mile-stone to mile-stone, through
neat country towns where landlords came out to
welcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns,
where the signs hung on the elms, and horses and
waggoners were drinking under the chequered shadow of the
trees; by old halls and parks; rustic hamlets clustered
round ancient grey churches--and through the charming
friendly English landscape. Is there any in the world
like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind--
it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it.
Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this from
Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond the
milestones along the road. You see he was so eager to
see his parents at Camberwell.
He grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his
old haunt at the Slaughters', whither he drove faithfully.
Long years had passed since he saw it last, since he and
George, as young men, had enjoyed many a feast, and
held many a revel there. He had now passed into the
stage of old-fellow-hood. His hair was grizzled, and many
a passion and feeling of his youth had grown grey in that
interval. There, however, stood the old waiter at the
door, in the same greasy black suit, with the same
double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch of
seals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as
before, and receiving the Major as if he had gone away
only a week ago. "Put the Major's things in twenty-three,
that's his room," John said, exhibiting not the least
surprise. "Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose. You ain't
got married? They said you was married--the Scotch
surgeon of yours was here. No, it was Captain Humby of
the thirty-third, as was quartered with the --th in Injee.
Like any warm water? ~What do you come in a chay for--
ain't the coach good enough?" And with this, the faithful
waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who
used the house, and with whom ten years were but as
yesterday, led the way up to Dobbin's old room, where
stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby carpet, a
thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture
covered with faded chintz, just as the Major recollected
them in his youth.
He remembered George pacing up and down the room,
and biting his nails, and swearing that the Governor must
come round, and that if he didn't, he didn't care a straw,
on the day before he was married. He could fancy him
walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his
own hard by--
"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his
friend of former days.
Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a
man young, John," he said. "It is you that are always
young--no, you are always old."
"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John
said. "Fine young fellow that. Lord, how he used to
spend his money. He never came back after that day he
was marched from here. He owes me three pound at this
minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10,
1815, Captain Osborne: '3pounds.' I wonder whether his
father would pay me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters'
pulled out the very morocco pocket-book in which
he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a greasy
faded page still extant, with many other scrawled
memoranda regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.
Having inducted his customer into the room, John
retired with perfect calmness; and Major Dobbin, not
without a blush and a grin at his own absurdity, chose out of
his kit the very smartest and most becoming civil
costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face
and grey hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little
toilet-glass on the dressing-table.
"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought.
"She'll know me, too, I hope." And he sallied out of the
inn, bending his steps once more in the direction of
Brompton.
Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia
was present to the constant man's mind as he walked
towards her house. The arch and the Achilles statue were
up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a hundred
changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely
noted. He began to tremble as he walked up the lane
from Brompton, that well-remembered lane leading to
the street where she lived. Was she going to be married
or not? If he were to meet her with the little boy--Good
God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him
with a child of five years old--was that she? He began
to shake at the mere possibility. When he came up to
the row of houses, at last, where she lived, and to the
gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty
bless her, whatever has happened," he thought to
himself. "Psha! she may be gone from here," he said
and went in through the gate.
The window of the parlour which she used to occupy
was open, and there were no inmates in the room. The
Major thought he recognized the piano, though, with the
picture over it, as it used to be in former days, and his
perturbations were renewed. Mr. Clapp's brass plate was
still on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin
performed a summons.
A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and
purple cheeks, came to answer the knock and looked
hard at the Major as he leant back against the little
porch.
He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out
the words--"Does Mrs. Osborne live here?"
She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and
then turning white too--said, "Lord bless me--it's
Major Dobbin." She held out both her hands shaking--
"Don't you remember me?" she said. "I used to call you
Major Sugarplums." On which, and I believe it was for
the first time that he ever so conducted himself in his
life, the Major took the girl in his arms and kissed her.
She began to laugh and cry hysterically, and calling out
"Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from
the casement of the ornamental kitchen, and were
astonished to find their daughter in the little passage in
the embrace of a great tall man in a blue frock-coat and
white duck trousers.
"I'm an old friend," he said--not without blushing
though. "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those
good cakes you used to make for tea? Don't you recollect
me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just come
back from India." A great shaking of hands ensued--
Mrs. Clapp was greatly affected and delighted; she called
upon heaven to interpose a vast many times in that
passage.
The landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy
Major into the Sedleys' room (whereof he remembered
every single article of furniture, from the old brass
ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument, Stothard
maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone,
in the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold
watch), and there, as he sat down in the lodger's vacant
arm-chair, the father, the mother, and the daughter,
with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative,
informed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of
particulars in Amelia's history of which he was not aware
--namely of Mrs. Sedley's death, of George's reconcilement
with his grandfather Osborne, of the way in which
the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particulars
of her life. Twice or thrice he was going to ask
about the marriage question, but his heart failed him.
He did not care to lay it bare to these people. Finally,
he was informed that Mrs. O. was gone to walk with her
pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with
the old gentleman (who was very weak and peevish now,
and led her a sad life, though she behaved to him like an
angel, to be sure), of a fine afternoon, after dinner.
"I'm very much pressed for time," the Major said,
"and have business to-night of importance. I should like
to see Mrs. Osborne tho'. Suppose Miss Polly would
come with me and show me the way?"
Miss Polly was charmed and astonished at this
proposal. She knew the way. She would show Major
Dobbin. She had often been with Mr. Sedley when Mrs. O.
was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the
bench where he liked to sit. She bounced away to her
apartment and appeared presently in her best bonnet
and her mamma's yellow shawl and large pebble brooch,
of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself
a worthy companion for the Major.
That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin
gloves, gave the young lady his arm, and they walked
away very gaily. He was glad to have a friend at hand
for the scene which he dreaded somehow. He asked a
thousand more questions from his companion about
Amelia: his kind heart grieved to think that she should
have had to part with her son. How did she bear it? Did
she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley pretty comfortable
now in a worldly point of view? Polly answered all these
questions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her
power.
And in the midst of their walk an incident occurred
which, though very simple in its nature, was productive
of the greatest delight to Major Dobbin. A pale young
man with feeble whiskers and a stiff white neckcloth came
walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, that
is, on each arm. One was a tall and commanding middleaged
female, with features and a complexion similar to
those of the clergyman of the Church of England by
whose side she marched, and the other a stunted little
woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet
and white ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich
gold watch in the midst of her person. The gentleman,
pinioned as he was by these two ladies, carried further a
parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms were entirely
engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in
acknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary
Clapp greeted him.
He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation,
which the two ladies returned with a patronizing air, and
at the same time looking severely at the individual in the
blue coat and bamboo cane who accompanied Miss Polly.
"Who's that?" asked the Major, amused by the group,
and after he had made way for the three to pass up the
lane. Mary looked at him rather roguishly.
"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch
from Major Dobbin), and his sister Miss B. Lord bless us,
how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school; and the
other lady, the little one with a cast in her eye and the
handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits that was;
her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold
Tea Pot in Kensington Gravel Pits. They were married last
month, and are just come back from Margate. She's five
thousand pound to her fortune; but her and Miss B., who
made the match, have quarrelled already."
If the Major had twitched before, he started now, and
slapped the bamboo on the ground with an emphasis
which made Miss Clapp cry, "Law," and laugh too. He
stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking
after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told
their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement
of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was
swimming with felicity. After this rencontre he began to
walk double quick towards the place of his destination
--and yet they were too soon (for he was in a great
tremor at the idea of a meeting for which he had been
longing any time these ten years)--through the Brompton
lanes, and entering at the little old portal in Kensington
Garden wall.
"There they are," said Miss Polly, and she felt him
again start back on her arm. She was a confidante at once
of the whole business. She knew the story as well as if
she had read it in one of her favourite novel-books--
Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs.
"Suppose you were to run on and tell her," the Major
said. Polly ran forward, her yellow shawl streaming in the
breeze.
Old Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief
placed over his knees, prattling away, according to his
wont, with some old story about old times to which
Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile many
a time before. She could of late think of her own affairs,
and smile or make other marks of recognition of her
father's stories, scarcely hearing a word of the old man's
tales. As Mary came bouncing along, and Amelia caught
sight of her, she started up from her bench. Her first
thought was that something had happened to Georgy,
but the sight of the messenger's eager and happy face
dissipated that fear in the timorous mother's bosom.
"News! News!" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin.
"He's come! He's come!"
"Who is come?" said Emmy, still thinking of her son.
"Look there," answered Miss Clapp, turning round and
pointing; in which direction Amelia looking, saw
Dobbin's lean figure and long shadow stalking across the
grass. Amelia started in her turn, blushed up, and, of
course, began to cry. At all this simple little creature's
fetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play.
He looked at her--oh, how fondly--as she came
running towards him, her hands before her, ready to give
them to him. She wasn't changed. She was a little pale,
a little stouter in figure. Her eyes were the same, the
kind trustful eyes. There were scarce three lines of silver
in her soft brown hair. She gave him both her hands as
she looked up flushing and smiling through her tears into
his honest homely face. He took the two little hands
between his two and held them there. He was speechless
for a moment. Why did he not take her in his arms and
swear that he would never leave her? She must have
yielded: she could not but have obeyed him.
"I--I've another arrival to announce," he said after a
pause.
"Mrs. Dobbin?" Amelia said, making a movement
back--why didn't he speak?
"No," he said, letting her hands go: "Who has told
you those lies? I mean, your brother Jos came in the
same ship with me, and is come home to make you all
happy."
"Papa, Papa!" Emmy cried out, "here are news! My
brother is in England. He is come to take care of you.
Here is Major Dobbin."
Mr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering
up his thoughts. Then he stepped forward and made an
old-fashioned bow to the Major, whom he called Mr.
Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, Sir William, was
quite well. He proposed to call upon Sir William, who had
done him the honour of a visit a short time ago. Sir
William had not called upon the old gentleman for eight
years--it was that visit he was thinking of returning.
"He is very much shaken," Emmy whispered as Dobbin
went up and cordially shook hands with the old man.
Although he had such particular business in London
that evening, the Major consented to forego it upon Mr.
Sedley's invitation to him to come home and partake of
tea. Amelia put her arm under that of her young friend
with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their
return homewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share.
The old man walked very slowly and told a number of
ancient histories about himself and his poor Bessy, his
former prosperity, and his bankruptcy. His thoughts, as is
usual with failing old men, were quite in former times.
The present, with the exception of the one catastrophe
which he felt, he knew little about. The Major was glad to
let him talk on. His eyes were fixed upon the figure in
front of him--the dear little figure always present to his
imagination and in his prayers, and visiting his dreams
wakeful or slumbering.
Amelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that
evening, performing her duties as hostess of the little
entertainment with the utmost grace and propriety, as
Dobbin thought. His eyes followed her about as they sat
in the twilight. How many a time had he longed for that
moment and thought of her far away under hot winds
and in weary marches, gentle and happy, kindly ministering
to the wants of old age, and decorating poverty with
sweet submission--as he saw her now. I do not say that
his taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great
intellects to be content with a bread-and-butter paradise,
such as sufficed our simple old friend; but his desires
were of this sort, whether for good or bad, and, with
Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many
cups of tea as Doctor Johnson.
Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged
it and looked exceedingly roguish as she administered to
him cup after cup. It is true she did not know that the
Major had had no dinner and that the cloth was laid for
him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to mark
that the table was retained, in that very box in which
the Major and George had sat many a time carousing,
when she was a child just come home from Miss
Pinkerton's school.
The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was
Georgy's miniature, for which she ran upstairs on her
arrival at home. It was not half handsome enough of
course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to think of
bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she
did not talk much about Georgy. To hear about Mr.
Osborne and Russell Square was not agreeable to the
old man, who very likely was unconscious that he had
been living for some months past mainly on the bounty
of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was
made to the other.
Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than
all, that had happened on board the Ramchunder, and
exaggerated Jos's benevolent dispositions towards his
father and resolution to make him comfortable in his
old days. The truth is that during the voyage the Major
had impressed this duty most strongly upon his fellowpassenger
and extorted promises from him that he would
take charge of his sister and her child. He soothed Jos's
irritation with regard to the bills which the old gentleman
had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his
own sufferings on the same score and of the famous
consignment of wine with which the old man had favoured
him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was by no means an illnatured
person when well-pleased and moderately
flattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his
relatives in Europe.
And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major
stretched the truth so far as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it
was mainly a desire to see his parent which brought Jos
once more to Europe.
At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in
his chair, and then it was Amelia's opportunity to
commence her conversation, which she did with great
eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy. She did not talk
at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for
indeed, this worthy woman, though she was half-killed
by the separation from the child, yet thought it was very
wicked in her to repine at losing him; but everything
concerning him, his virtues, talents, and prospects, she
poured out. She described his angelic beauty; narrated
a hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of
mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had
stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how
splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a
groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he
had, and what a prodigiously well-read and delightful
person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's
master. "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said. "He has the
most delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself,
and have read so much, and are so clever and
accomplished--don't shake your head and say no--HE
always used to say you were--you will be charmed with
Mr. Veal's parties. The last Tuesday in every month. He
says there is no place in the bar or the senate that
Georgy may not aspire to. Look here," and she went to
the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of Georgy's
composition. This great effort of genius, which is still
in the possession of George's mother, is as follows:
On Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the
human character, Selfishness is the most odious and
contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most
monstrous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both
in States and Families. As a selfish man will impoverish
his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish
king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them
into war.
Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by
the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the
Greeks--muri Achaiois alge etheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2).
The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to
perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in
the Atlantic Ocean.
We see by these examples that we are not to consult
our own interest and ambition, but that we are to
consider the interests of others as well as our own.
George S. Osborne
Athene House, 24 April, 1827
"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek
too, at his age," the delighted mother said. "Oh, William,"
she added, holding out her hand to the Major, "what a
treasure Heaven has given me in that boy! He is the
comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that's
gone!"
"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to
him?" William thought. "Ought I to be jealous of my
friend in the grave, or hurt that such a heart as Amelia's
can love only once and for ever? Oh, George, George,
how little you knew the prize you had, though." This
sentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he
was holding Amelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was
veiling her eyes.
"Dear friend," she said, pressing the hand which held
hers, "how good, how kind you always have been to me!
See! Papa is stirring. You will go and see Georgy
tomorrow, won't you?"
"Not to-morrow," said poor old Dobbin. "I have
business." He did not like to own that he had not as yet
been to his parents' and his dear sister Anne--a
remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated
person will blame the Major. And presently he took his
leave, leaving his address behind him for Jos, against the
latter's arrival. And so the first day was over, and he
had seen her.
When he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl
was of course cold, in which condition he ate it for
supper. And knowing what early hours his family kept, and
that it would be needless to disturb their slumbers at so
late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treated
himself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that
evening, where let us hope he enjoyed himself.
CHAPTER LIX
The Old Piano
The Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of
agitation and excitement. His daughter could not induce
him to settle down to his customary occupations or
amusements that night. He passed the evening fumbling
amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers with
trembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against
Jos's arrival. He had them in the greatest order--his
tapes and his files, his receipts, and his letters with
lawyers and correspondents; the documents relative to
the wine project (which failed from a most unaccountable
accident, after commencing with the most splendid
prospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital
prevented from becoming the most successful scheme
ever put before the public), the patent saw-mills and
sawdust consolidation project, &c., &c. All night, until a
very late hour, he passed in the preparation of these
documents, trembling about from one room to another,
with a quivering candle and shaky hands. Here's the wine
papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my
letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies from Major
Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same. "He
shall find no irregularity about ME, Emmy," the old
gentleman said.
Emmy smiled. "I don't think Jos will care about seeing
those papers, Papa," she said.
"You don't know anything about business, my dear,"
answered the sire, shaking his head with an important
air. And it must be confessed that on this point Emmy
was very ignorant, and that is a pity some people are so
knowing. All these twopenny documents arranged on a
side table, old Sedley covered them carefully over with
a clean bandanna handkerchief (one out of Major
Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid and landlady of the
house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb those
papers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph
Sedley the next morning, "Mr. Joseph Sedley of the
Honourable East India Company's Bengal Civil Service."
Amelia found him up very early the next morning,
more eager, more hectic, and more shaky than ever. "I
didn't sleep much, Emmy, my dear," he said. "I was
thinking of my poor Bessy. I wish she was alive, to ride
in Jos's carriage once again. She kept her own and
became it very well." And his eyes filled with tears, which
trickled down his furrowed old face. Amelia wiped them
away, and smilingly kissed him, and tied the old man's
neckcloth in a smart bow, and put his brooch into his
best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit of mourning,
he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the
arrival of his son.
However, when the postman made his appearance, the
little party were put out of suspense by the receipt of a
letter from Jos to his sister, who announced that he felt
a little fatigued after his voyage, and should not be able
to move on that day, but that he would leave Southampton
early the next morning and be with his father and
mother at evening. Amelia, as she read out the letter to
her father, paused over the latter word; her brother, it
was clear, did not know what had happened in the family.
Nor could he, for the fact is that, though the Major
rightly suspected that his travelling companion never
would be got into motion in so short a space as twentyfour
hours, and would find some excuse for delaying, yet
Dobbin had not written to Jos to inform him of the
calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, being
occupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour.
There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High
Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows
of which hang gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk
and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the
last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen
with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with
the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in
riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley
House. Jos, although provided with some of the most
splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he
could not go to town until he was supplied with one or
two of these garments, and selected a crimson satin,
embroidered with gold butterflies, and a black and red
velvet tartan with white stripes and a rolling collar, with
which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,
consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink
enamel jumping over it, he thought he might make his
entry into London with some dignity. For Jos's former
shyness and blundering blushing timidity had given way
to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his
worth. "I don't care about owning it," Waterloo Sedley
would say to his friends, "I am a dressy man"; and
though rather uneasy if the ladies looked at him at the
Government House balls, and though he blushed and
turned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly
from a dread lest they should make love to him that he
avoided them, being averse to marriage altogether. But
there was no such swell in Calcutta as Waterloo Sedley,
I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out,
gave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate
in the whole place.
To make these waistcoats for a man of his size and
dignity took at least a day, part of which he employed in
hiring a servant to wait upon him and his native and in
instructing the agent who cleared his baggage, his boxes,
his books, which he never read, his chests of mangoes,
chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to
people whom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his
Persicos apparatus.
At length, he drove leisurely to London on the third
day and in the new waistcoat, the native, with chattering
teeth, shuddering in a shawl on the box by the side of the
new European servant; Jos puffing his pipe at intervals
within and looking so majestic that the little boys cried
Hooray, and many people thought he must be a
Governor-General. HE, I promise, did not decline the
obsequious invitation of the landlords to alight and refresh
himself in the neat country towns. Having partaken of a
copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, at
Southampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to
think a glass of sherry necessary. At Alton he stepped
out of the carriage at his servant's request and imbibed
some of the ale for which the place is famous. At Farnham
he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and to partake
of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and
French beans, with a bottle of claret. He was cold over
Bagshot Heath, where the native chattered more and
more, and Jos Sahib took some brandy-and-water; in
fact, when he drove into town he was as full of wine,
beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the
steward's cabin of a steam-packet. It was evening when
his carriage thundered up to the little door in Brompton,
whither the affectionate fellow drove first, and before
hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr. Dobbin
at the Slaughters'.
All the faces in the street were in the windows; the
little maidservant flew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames
Clapp looked out from the casement of the ornamented
kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in the passage
among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour
inside, shaking all over. Jos descended from the postchaise
and down the creaking swaying steps in awful
state, supported by the new valet from Southampton and
the shuddering native, whose brown face was now livid
with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard. He
created an immense sensation in the passage presently,
where Mrs. and Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen
at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking upon the
hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous
way, and showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth.
For, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the
meeting between Jos and the old father and the poor little
gentle sister inside. The old man was very much affected;
so, of course, was his daughter; nor was Jos without
feeling. In that long absence of ten years, the most selfish
will think about home and early ties. Distance sanctifies
both. Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates
their charm and sweetness. Jos was unaffectedly glad to
see and shake the hand of his father, between whom
and himself there had been a coolness--glad to see his
little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling,
and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and
misfortune had made in the shattered old man. Emmy had
come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered
to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to
their father. There was no need of this caution, for the
elder Sedley himself began immediately to speak of the
event, and prattled about it, and wept over it plenteously.
It shocked the Indian not a little and made him think of
himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed to do.
The result of the interview must have been very
satisfactory, for when Jos had reascended his post-chaise
and had driven away to his hotel, Emmy embraced her father
tenderly, appealing to him with an air of triumph, and
asking the old man whether she did not always say that
her brother had a good heart?
Indeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position
in which he found his relations, and in the expansiveness
and overflowing of heart occasioned by the first meeting,
declared that they should never suffer want or
discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time
at any rate, during which his house and everything he
had should be theirs: and that Amelia would look very
pretty at the head of his table--until she would accept
one of her own.
She shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse
to the waterworks. She knew what he meant. She and
her young confidante, Miss Mary, had talked over the
matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit,
beyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain
from talking of the discovery which she had made, and
describing the start and tremor of joy by which Major
Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passed with his
bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a
rival to fear. "Didn't you see how he shook all over
when you asked if he was married and he said, 'Who told
you those lies?' Oh, M'am," Polly said, "he never kept his
eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinking of
you."
But Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung
the portraits of her husband and son, told her young
protegee never, never, to speak on that subject again;
that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friend
and her own and George's most kind and affectionate
guardian; that she loved him as a brother--but that a
woman who had been married to such an angel as that,
and she pointed to the wall, could never think of any
other union. Poor Polly sighed: she thought what she
should do if young Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who
always looked at her so at church, and who, by those
mere aggressive glances had put her timorous little heart
into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender at
once,--what she should do if he were to die? She knew
he was consumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was
so uncommon thin in the waist.
Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest
Major's passion, rebuffed him in any way, or felt
displeased with him. Such an attachment from so true and
loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry.
Desdemona was not angry with Cassio, though there is
very little doubt she saw the Lieutenant's partiality for
her (and I for my part believe that many more things
took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorish
officer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind
to Caliban, and we may be pretty sure for the same
reason. Not that she would encourage him in the least--
the poor uncouth monster--of course not. No more
would Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the
Major. She would give him that friendly regard, which
so much excellence and fidelity merited; she would treat
him with perfect cordiality and frankness until he made
his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for her
to speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be
realized.
She slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after
the conversation with Miss Polly, and was more than
ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos's delaying. "I am glad
he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd," she thought.
"Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such
an accomplished man as Major William." Who was there
amongst her little circle who would make him a good
wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too old and ill-tempered;
Miss Osborne? too old too. Little Polly was too young.
Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major
before she went to sleep.
The same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the
Slaughters' Coffee-house from his friend at Southampton,
begging dear Dob to excuse Jos for being in a rage when
awakened the day before (he had a confounded headache,
and was just in his first sleep), and entreating Dob to
engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley
and his servants. The Major had become necessary to
Jos during the voyage. He was attached to him, and hung
upon him. The other passengers were away to London.
Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on the
coach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the
reins from Botley; the Doctor was off to his family at
Portsea; Bragg gone to town to his co-partners; and the
first mate busy in the unloading of the Ramchunder. Mr.
Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got the landlord
of the George to take a glass of wine with him that
day, at the very hour at which Major Dobbin was
seated at the table of his father, Sir William, where his
sister found out (for it was impossible for the Major to
tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne.
Jos was so comfortably situated in St. Martin's Lane, he
could enjoy his hookah there with such perfect ease, and
could swagger down to the theatres, when minded, so
agreeably, that, perhaps, he would have remained
altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major,
been at his elbow. That gentleman would not let the
Bengalee rest until he had executed his promise of having
a home for Amelia and his father. Jos was a soft fellow
in anybody's hands, Dobbin most active in anybody's
concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easy
victim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist
and was ready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish
whatever his friend thought fit. Loll Jewab, of whom the
boys about St. Martin's Lane used to make cruel fun
whenever he showed his dusky countenance in the street, was
sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East
Indiaman, in which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having
previously taught Jos's European the art of preparing
curries, pilaus, and pipes. It was a matter of great delight
and occupation to Jos to superintend the building of a
smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in the
neighbouring Long Acre: and a pair of handsome horses
were jobbed, with which Jos drove about in state in the
park, or to call upon his Indian friends. Amelia was not
seldom by his side on these excursions, when also Major
Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage.
At other times old Sedley and his daughter took
advantage of it, and Miss Clapp, who frequently
accompanied her friend, had great pleasure in being recognized
as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famous yellow
shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face
might commonly be seen over the window-blinds as she
passed.
Shortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a
dismal scene, indeed, took place at that humble cottage at
which the Sedleys had passed the last ten years of their
life. Jos's carriage (the temporary one, not the chariot
under construction) arrived one day and carried off old
Sedley and his daughter--to return no more. The tears
that were shed by the landlady and the landlady's
daughter at that event were as genuine tears of sorrow as any
that have been outpoured in the course of this history.
In their long acquaintanceship and intimacy they could
not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia
She had been all sweetness and kindness, always
thankful, always gentle, even when Mrs. Clapp lost her own
temper and pressed for the rent. When the kind creature
was going away for good and all, the landlady reproached
herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression to
her--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the
window, a paper notifying that the little rooms so long
occupied were to let! They never would have such lodgers
again, that was quite clear. After-life proved the truth of
this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revenged
herself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most
savage contributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of
mutton of her locataires. Most of them scolded and
grumbled; some of them did not pay; none of them stayed.
The landlady might well regret those old, old friends, who
had left her.
As for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure
was such as I shall not attempt to depict. From childhood
upwards she had been with her daily and had attached
herself so passionately to that dear good lady that when
the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour,
she fainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed
scarcely less affected than the good-natured girl. Amelia
loved her like a daughter. During eleven years the girl had
been her constant friend and associate. The separation was
a very painful one indeed to her. But it was of course
arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at the
grand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and
where Mary was sure she would never be so happy as
she had been in their humble cot, as Miss Clapp called it,
in the language of the novels which she loved.
Let us hope she was wrong in her judgement. Poor
Emmy's days of happiness had been very few in that
humble cot. A gloomy Fate had oppressed her there. She
never liked to come back to the house after she had left
it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over her
when ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had
treated her with a coarse familiarity scarcely less odious.
Her servility and fulsome compliments when Emmy was
in prosperity were not more to that lady's liking. She
cast about notes of admiration all over the new house,
extolling every article of furniture or ornament; she
fingered Mrs. Osborne's dresses and calculated their price.
Nothing could be too good for that sweet lady, she
vowed and protested. But in the vulgar sycophant who
now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the
coarse tyrant who had made her miserable many a time,
to whom she had been forced to put up petitions for
time, when the rent was overdue; who cried out at her
extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailing mother
or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon
her.
Nobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been
part of our poor little woman's lot in life. She kept them
secret from her father, whose improvidence was the cause
of much of her misery. She had to bear all the blame of
his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentle and
humble as to be made by nature for a victim.
I hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard
usage. And, as in all griefs there is said to be some
consolation, I may mention that poor Mary, when left at her
friend's departure in a hysterical condition, was placed
under the medical treatment of the young fellow from
the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short
period. Emmy, when she went away from Brompton,
endowed Mary with every article of furniture that the house
contained, only taking away her pictures (the two
pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old piano
which had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age,
but which she loved for reasons of her own. She was a
child when first she played on it, and her parents gave it
her. It had been given to her again since, as the reader
may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin
and the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.
Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he
was superintending the arrangements of Jos's new house
--which the Major insisted should be very handsome and
comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing
the trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that
village, and with them the old piano. Amelia would have it
up in her sitting-room, a neat little apartment on the
second floor, adjoining her father's chamber, and where
the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.
When the men appeared then bearing this old musicbox,
and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed
in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated. "I'm
glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental
manner. "I was afraid you didn't care about it."
"I value it more than anything I have in the world,"
said Amelia.
"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major. The fact was,
as he had bought it himself, though he never said
anything about it, it never entered into his head to suppose
that Emmy should think anybody else was the purchaser,
and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the
gift came from him. "Do you, Amelia?" he said; and
the question, the great question of all, was trembling
on his lips, when Emmy replied--
"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"
"I did not know," said poor old Dob, and his
countenance fell.
Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor
take immediate heed of the very dismal expression which
honest Dobbin's countenance assumed, but she thought
of it afterwards. And then it struck her, with inexpressible
pain and mortification too, that it was William who
was the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had
fancied. It was not George's gift; the only one which she
had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing
she had cherished beyond all others--her dearest relic
and prize. She had spoken to it about George; played
his favourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours,
touching, to the best of her simple art, melancholy
harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence.
It was not George's relic. It was valueless now. The next
time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was
shockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that
she couldn't play.
Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself
for her pettishness and ingratitude and determined to
make a reparation to honest William for the slight she
had not expressed to him, but had felt for his piano.
A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the
drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort
after dinner, Amelia said with rather a faltering voice
to Major Dobbin--
"I have to beg your pardon for something."
"About what?" said he.
"About--about that little square piano. I never thanked
you for it when you gave it me, many, many years ago,
before I was married. I thought somebody else had given
it. Thank you, William." She held out her hand, but the
poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her
eyes, of course they were at their work.
But William could hold no more. "Amelia, Amelia,"
he said, "I did buy it for you. I loved you then as I
do now. I must tell you. I think I loved you from the
first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to
your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was
engaged to. You were but a girl, in white, with large
ringlets; you came down singing--do you remember?--
and we went to Vauxhall. Since then I have thought of
but one woman in the world, and that was you. I
think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve
years that I haven't thought of you. I came to tell you
this before I went to India, but you did not care, and
I hadn't the heart to speak. You did not care whether
I stayed or went."
"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.
"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately.
"I have nothing to make a woman to be otherwise. I
know what you are feeling now. You are hurt in your
heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it came
from me and not from George. I forgot, or I should
never have spoken of it so. It is for me to ask your
pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking
that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded
with you."
"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some
spirit. "George is my husband, here and in heaven. How
could I love any other but him? I am his now as when
you first saw me, dear William. It was he who told me
how good and generous you were, and who taught me
to love you as a brother. Have you not been everything
to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend
and protector? Had you come a few months sooner
perhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful
parting. Oh, it nearly killed me, William--but you didn't
come, though I wished and prayed for you to come,
and they took him too away from me. Isn't he a noble
boy, William? Be his friend still and mine"--and here her
voice broke, and she hid her face on his shoulder.
The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to
him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. "I will
not change, dear Amelia," he said. "I ask for no more
than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise.
Only let me stay near you and see you often."
"Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at
liberty to look and long--as the poor boy at school
who has no money may sigh after the contents of the
tart-woman's tray.
CHAPTER LX
Returns to the Genteel World
Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are
glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has
been creeping hitherto and introduce her into a polite
circle--not so grand and refined as that in which our
other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still
having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's
friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new
house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of
which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great
Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony
Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was
a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with
asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)--who does not
know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian
aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the
Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand
enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where
none can live but retired Members of Council, and
partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a
hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into
comparative penury to a country place and four thousand
a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a
second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the
carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate
planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr.
Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta
House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor
Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the
earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place,
who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles have
been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about
to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted,
I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle
and Fake two years before it failed for a million and
plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.
Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five
years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs
of the house. Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton
and put into a merchant's house. Florence Scape, Fanny
Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and
will be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and
bought their carpets and sideboards and admired
himself in the mirrors which had reflected their kind
handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all honourably paid,
left their cards, and were eager to supply the new
household. The large men in white waistcoats who waited at
Scape's dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and
milkmen in their private capacity, left their addresses and
ingratiated themselves with the butler. Mr. Chummy, the
chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three families,
tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose
duty it was to go out covered with buttons and with
stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs.
Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.
It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's
valet also, and never was more drunk than a butler in a
small family should be who has a proper regard for his
master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on
Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose
kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was
at first terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait
upon herself, who did not in the least know how to use
one, and who always spoke to domestics with the most
reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in
the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who
kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house
and never mixed in any of the gay doings which took
place there.
Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady
Dobbin and daughters were delighted at her change of
fortune, and waited upon her. Miss Osborne from Russell
Square came in her grand chariot with the flaming
hammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos was
reported to be immensely rich. Old Osborne had no
objection that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as
well as his own. "Damn it, we will make a man of the
feller," he said; "and I'll see him in Parliament before I
die. You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll
never set eyes on her": and Miss Osborne came. Emmy,
you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be
brought nearer to George. That young fellow was
allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit
his mother. He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie
Street and bullied the servants and his relations there, just
as he did in Russell Square.
He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however,
and more modest in his demeanour when that gentleman
was present. He was a clever lad and afraid of the
Major. George could not help admiring his friend's
simplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly
imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met
no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and
he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman. He hung
fondly by his godfather's side, and it was his delight to
walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk. William told
George about his father, about India and Waterloo, about
everything but himself. When George was more than
usually pert and conceited, the Major made jokes at him,
which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. One day, taking
him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit
because it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes,
left him there, and went down himself to the pit. He
had not been seated there very long before he felt an arm
thrust under his and a dandy little hand in a kid glove
squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his
ways and come down from the upper region. A tender
laugh of benevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and
eyes as he looked at the repentant little prodigal. He
loved the boy, as he did everything that belonged to
Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of this
instance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more
kindly on Dobbin than they ever had done. She blushed,
he thought, after looking at him so.
Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his
mother. "I like him, Mamma, because he knows such lots
of things; and he ain't like old Veal, who is always
bragging and using such long words, don't you know? The
chaps call him 'Longtail' at school. I gave him the name;
ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and
French and that; and when we go out together he tells me
stories about my Papa, and never about himself; though I
heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that he was
one of the bravest officers in the army, and had
distinguished himself ever so much. Grandpapa was quite
surprised, and said, 'THAT feller! Why, I didn't think he could
say Bo to a goose'--but l know he could, couldn't he,
Mamma?"
Emmy laughed: she thought it was very likely the
Major could do thus much.
If there was a sincere liking between George and the
Major, it must be confessed that between the boy and his
uncle no great love existed. George had got a way of
blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands in his
waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't
say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was
impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which
wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that
favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden
peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his
uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and
Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was
induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted
by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass,
and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be
extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and
dignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was
announced that the young gentleman was expected in
Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos
commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.
Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On
those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to
come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major
Dobbin pretty generally formed one. He was the ami de
la maison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's
friend, Jos's counsel and adviser. "He might almost as
well be at Madras for anything WE see of him," Miss
Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did
it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major
wanted to marry?
Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such
as became a person of his eminence. His very first point,
of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club,
where he spent his mornings in the company of his
brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought
home men to dine.
Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen
and their ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith
would be in Council; how many lacs Jones had brought
home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta
House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the
least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the
Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey
of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all
hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at
the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen
sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev: Felix
Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in
the service; how Hornby was wild because his wife
would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed
Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place
at the grand dinners all round. They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of
mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a
short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.
Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers'
wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies
gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies
discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty?
Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small
clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should
our Indian friends not have their own conversation?--
only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it
sometimes is to sit by and listen.
Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving
about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer
(wife of Major-General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal
Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto;
Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage
came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony
boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and
Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the
carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing;
or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old
man round the Regent's Park. The lady's maid and the
chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of
Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the
other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess,
she would even have done that duty too. She was voted, in
Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young person--
not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.
The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and
simple refined demeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies
at home on furlough--immense dandies these--chained
and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of
the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless
admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the
park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying
her a morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard
himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all
the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered
by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's
officer that's always hanging about the house--a long,
thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,
that took the shine out of a man in the talking line.
Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity
he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young
buck as that fascinating Bengal Captain. But Dobbin was
of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts
about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should
pay her respect, and that others should admire her. Ever
since her womanhood almost, had she not been
persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how
kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits
gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good
judgement--that is, if a man may be said to have good
judgement who is under the influence of Love's delusion.
After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he
did as a loyal subject of his Sovereign (showing himself
in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came
to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who had
always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George
IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the
State that he was for having Amelia to go to a
Drawing-room, too. He somehow had worked himself up
to believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the
public welfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy
unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally round
him at St. James's.
Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds,
Jos?" she said.
"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the
Major. "I should like to see any that were too good for
you."
CHAPTER LXI
In Which Two Lights are Put Out
There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family
indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in
most houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house
from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may
have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from
the second story to the third (where the nursery and
servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for
another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men
can give you a notion. They rest the coffins upon that
arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the
black ark.
That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing;
by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her
pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master
stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club;
down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and
spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared
for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides,
preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and
disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is
fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as
he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced
that the charming patient may go downstairs;
up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering
tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots
which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or
down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the
christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor--what a memento of Life,
Death, and Vanity it is--that arch and stair--if you
choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up
and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too
for the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse
will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice--and
then she will fling open the windows for a little and let in
the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the
house and live in the back rooms--then they will send
for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy
and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting,
and the posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt
cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or
perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your
name will be among the "Members Deceased" in the
lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be
mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly
made--the cook will send or come up to ask about
dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at your picture
over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed
from the place of honour, to make way for the portrait of
the son who reigns.
Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately
deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I
believe. The death of a child occasions a passion of grief
and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will
never inspire. The death of an infant which scarce knew
you, which a week's absence from you would have caused
to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of
your closest friend, or your first-born son--a man grown
like yourself, with children of his own. We may be harsh
and stern with Judah and Simeon--our love and pity gush
out for Benjamin, the little one. And if you are old, as
some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich, or
old and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself
--"These people are very good round about me, but
they won't grieve too much when I am gone. I am very
rich, and they want my inheritance--or very poor, and
they are tired of supporting me."
The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was
only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to
cast off his black and appear in the splendid waistcoats
which he loved, when it became evident to those about
Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the
old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark land
whither she had preceded him. "The state of my father's
health," Jos Sedley solemnly remarked at the Club,
"prevents me from giving any LARGE parties this season: but if
you will come in quietly at half-past six, Chutney, my
boy, and fake a homely dinner with one or two of the
old set--I shall be always glad to see you." So Jos and
his acquaintances dined and drank their claret among
themselves in silence, whilst the sands of life were
running out in the old man's glass upstairs. The velvet-footed
butler brought them their wine, and they composed
themselves to a rubber after dinner, at which Major Dobbin
would sometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs.
Osborne would occasionally descend, when her patient
above was settled for the night, and had commenced one
of those lightly troubled slumbers which visit the pillow
of old age.
The old man clung to his daughter during this
sickness. He would take his broths and medicines from
scarcely any other hand. To tend him became almost the
sole business of her life. Her bed was placed close by the
door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive
at the slightest noise or disturbance from the couch of
the querulous invalid. Though, to do him justice, he lay
awake many an hour, silent and without stirring,
unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse.
He loved his daughter with more fondness now,
perhaps, than ever he had done since the days of her
childhood. In the discharge of gentle offices and kind filial
duties, this simple creature shone most especially. "She
walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam," Mr.
Dobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from her
father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face
as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless. When
women are brooding over their children, or busied in a
sick-room, who has not seen in their faces those sweet
angelic beams of love and pity?
A secret feud of some years' standing was thus
healed, and with a tacit reconciliation. In these last
hours, and touched by her love and goodness, the old
man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs which
he and his wife had many a long night debated: how she
had given up everything for her boy; how she was
careless of her parents in their old age and misfortune, and
only thought of the child; how absurdly and foolishly,
impiously indeed, she took on when George was
removed from her. Old Sedley forgot these charges as he
was making up his last account, and did justice to the
gentle and uncomplaining little martyr. One night when
she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the
broken old man made his confession. "Oh, Emmy, I've
been thinking we were very unkind and unjust to you,"
he said and put out his cold and feeble hand to her. She
knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he did too,
having still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend,
may we have such company in our prayers!
Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have
passed before him--his early hopeful struggles, his manly
successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining
years, and his present helpless condition--no chance of
revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of
him--neither name nor money to bequeath--a spent-out,
bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the
end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better
lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and
disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to
sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That
must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes
and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't
matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of
mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but
I shall be out of the turmoil."
So there came one morning and sunrise when all the
world got up and set about its various works and
pleasures, with the exception of old John Sedley, who was not
to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any more,
but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown
residence in a churchyard at Brompton by the side of
his old wife.
Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains
to the grave, in a black cloth coach. Jos came on
purpose from the Star and Garter at Richmond, whither he
retreated after the deplorable event. He did not care
to remain in the house, with the--under the circumstances,
you understand. But Emmy stayed and did her
duty as usual. She was bowed down by no especial grief,
and rather solemn than sorrowful. She prayed that her
own end might be as calm and painless, and thought
with trust and reverence of the words which she had
heard from her father during his illness, indicative of his
faith, his resignation, and his future hope.
Yes, I think that will be the better ending of the two,
after all. Suppose you are particularly rich and well-todo
and say on that last day, "I am very rich; I am
tolerably well known; I have lived all my life in the best
society, and thank Heaven, come of a most respectable
family. I have served my King and country with honour.
I was in Parliament for several years, where, I may say,
my speeches were listened to and pretty well received.
I don't owe any man a shilling: on the contrary, I lent
my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty pounds, for which
my executors will not press him. I leave my daughters
with ten thousand pounds apiece--very good portions
for girls; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in
Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for
her life; and my landed property, besides money in the
funds, and my cellar of well-selected wine in Baker Street,
to my son. I leave twenty pound a year to my valet; and
I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against
my character." Or suppose, on the other hand, your
swan sings quite a different sort of dirge and you say,
"I am a poor blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have
made an utter failure through life. I was not endowed
either with brains or with good fortune, and confess
that I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders.
I own to having forgotten my duty many a time. I can't
pay what I owe. On my last bed I lie utterly helpless
and humble, and I pray forgiveness for my weakness and
throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of the
Divine Mercy." Which of these two speeches, think
you, would be the best oration for your own funeral?
Old Sedley made the last; and in that humble frame of
mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter, life and
disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.
"You see," said old Osborne to George, "what comes
of merit, and industry, and judicious speculations, and
that. Look at me and my banker's account. Look at your
poor Grandfather Sedley and his failure. And yet he was
a better man than I was, this day twenty years--a better
man, I should say, by ten thousand pound."
Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who
came over from Brompton to pay a visit of condolence,
not a single soul alive ever cared a penny piece about
old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of such a
person.
When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel
Buckler (as little Georgy had already informed us) how
distinguished an officer Major Dobbin was, he exhibited
a great deal of scornful incredulity and expressed his
surprise how ever such a feller as that should possess
either brains or reputation. But he heard of the Major's
fame from various members of his society. Sir William
Dobbin had a great opinion of his son and narrated
many stories illustrative of the Major's learning, valour,
and estimation in the world's opinion. Finally, his name
appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the
nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect
upon the old aristocrat of Russell Square.
The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose
possession had been ceded to his grandfather, rendered
some meetings between the two gentlemen inevitable;
and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a keen man
of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his
ward and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered
him very much, and at once pained and pleased him,
that it was out of William Dobbin's own pocket that a
part of the fund had been supplied upon which the
poor widow and the child had subsisted.
When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not
tell lies, blushed and stammered a good deal and finally
confessed. "The marriage," he said (at which his
interlocutor's face grew dark) "was very much my doing. I
thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from
his engagement would have been dishonour to him and
death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she
was left without resources, than give what money I could
spare to maintain her."
"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and
turning very red too--"you did me a great injury; but
give me leave to tell you, sir, you are an honest feller.
There's my hand, sir, though I little thought that my
flesh and blood was living on you--" and the pair shook
hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus
found out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.
He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him
towards his son's memory. "He was such a noble fellow,"
he said, "that all of us loved him, and would have done
anything for him. I, as a young man in those days, was
flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and
was more pleased to be seen in his company than in
that of the Commander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal
for pluck and daring and all the qualities of a soldier";
and Dobbin told the old father as many stories as he
could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements
of his son. "And Georgy is so like him," the
Major added.
"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes,"
the grandfather said.
On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with
Mr. Osborne (it was during the time of the sickness of
Mr. Sedley), and as the two sat together in the evening
after dinner, all their talk was about the departed hero.
The father boasted about him according to his wont,
glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and
gallantry, but his mood was at any rate better and more
charitable than that in which he had been disposed until
now to regard the poor fellow; and the Christian heart of
the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms of
returning peace and good-will. On the second evening old
Osborne called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at
the time when Dobbin and George were boys together,
and the honest gentleman was pleased by that mark of
reconciliation .
On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne,
with the asperity of her age and character, ventured to
make some remark reflecting slightingly upon the Major's
appearance or behaviour--the master of the house
interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him
for yourself, Miss O. But them grapes are sour. Ha! ha!
Major William is a fine feller."
"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly;
and going up close to the old gentleman, he took a hold
of his large grey whiskers, and laughed in his face
good-humouredly, and kissed him. And he told the story at
night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy.
"Indeed he is," she said. "Your dear father always said so.
He is one of the best and most upright of men." Dobbin
happened to drop in very soon after this conversation,
which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the young
scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin
the other part of the story. "I say, Dob," he said, "there's
such an uncommon nice girl wants to marry you. She's
plenty of tin; she wears a front; and she scolds the
servants from morning till night." "Who is it?" asked
Dobbin.
"It's Aunt O.," the boy answered. "Grandpapa said
so. And I say, Dob, how prime it would be to have you
for my uncle." Old Sedley's quavering voice from the
next room at this moment weakly called for Amelia, and
the laughing ended.
That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear.
He asked George about his uncle sometimes, and laughed
at the boy's imitation of the way in which Jos said
"God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his soup. Then he said,
"It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating of
your relations. Miss O., when you go out adriving
to-day, leave my card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear?
There's no quarrel betwigst me and him anyhow."
The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were
asked to dinner--to a dinner the most splendid and
stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osborne gave; every inch
of the family plate was exhibited, and the best company
was asked. Mr. Sedley took down Miss O. to dinner,
and she was very gracious to him; whereas she
hardly spoke to the Major, who sat apart from her, and
by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid. Jos said, with
great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had ever
tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his
Madeira.
"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to
his master. "I've had it a long time, and paid a good
figure for it, too," Mr. Osborne said aloud to his guest,
and then whispered to his right-hand neighbour how
he had got it "at the old chap's sale."
More than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs.
George Osborne--a theme on which the Major could be
very eloquent when he chose. He told Mr. Osborne of
her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to her
husband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender
and dutiful manner in which she had supported her
parents, and given up her boy, when it seemed to her her
duty to do so. "You don't know what she endured, sir,"
said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, "and I
hope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she
took your son away from you, she gave hers to you;
and however much you loved your George, depend on it,
she loved hers ten times more."
"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Osborne
said. It had never struck him that the widow would
feel any pain at parting from the boy, or that his having
a fine fortune could grieve her. A reconciliation was
announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's heart
already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting
with George's father.
It was never, however, destined to take place. Old
Sedley's lingering illness and death supervened, after
which a meeting was for some time impossible. That
catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr.
Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his
mind was working inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers,
and probably changed something in his will. The medical
man who looked in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and
talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he took
neither of these remedies.
One day when he should have come down to breakfast,
his servant missing him, went into his dressing-room
and found him lying at the foot of the dressing-table in a
fit. Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors were sent
for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders
and cuppers came. Osborne partially regained cognizance,
but never could speak again, though he tried
dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he died. The
doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up
the stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the
garden in Russell Square. Bullock rushed from the City
in a hurry. "How much money had he left to that boy?
Not half, surely? Surely share and share alike between
the three?" It was an agitating moment.
What was it that poor old man tried once or twice
in vain to say? I hope it was that he wanted to see
Amelia and be reconciled before he left the world to one
dear and faithful wife of his son: it was most likely
that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had
so long cherished had gone out of his heart.
They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the
letter with the great red seal which George had written
him from Waterloo. He had looked at the other papers
too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in which
he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found
the seals and envelopes had been broken--very likely on
the night before the seizure--when the butler had taken
him tea into his study, and found him reading in the
great red family Bible.
When the will was opened, it was found that half the
property was left to George, and the remainder between
the two sisters. Mr. Bullock to continue, for their joint
benefit, the affairs of the commercial house, or to go out,
as he thought fit. An annuity of five hundred pounds,
chargeable on George's property, was left to his mother,
"the widow of my beloved son, George Osborne," who
was to resume the guardianship of the boy.
"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was
appointed executor; "and as out of his kindness and
bounty, and with his own private funds, he maintained
my grandson and my son's widow, when they were
otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on
to say) "I hereby thank him heartily for his love and
regard for them, and beseech him to accept such a sum
as may be sufficient to purchase his commission as a
Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he
may think fit."
When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was
reconciled to her, her heart melted, and she was grateful
for the fortune left to her. But when she heard how
Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by
whom, and how it was William's bounty that supported
her in poverty, how it was William who gave her her
husband and her son--oh, then she sank on her knees,
and prayed for blessings on that constant and kind heart;
she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the
feet, as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.
And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for
such admirable devotion and benefits--only gratitude! If
she thought of any other return, the image of George
stood up out of the grave and said, "You are mine,
and mine only, now and forever."
William knew her feelings: had he not passed his
whole life in divining them?
When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known
to the world, it was edifying to remark how Mrs. George
Osborne rose in the estimation of the people forming her
circle of acquaintance. The servants of Jos's establishment,
who used to question her humble orders and say
they would "ask Master" whether or not they could obey,
never thought now of that sort of appeal. The cook
forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed,
were quite eclipsed by that lady's finery when she was
dressed to go to church of a Sunday evening), the others
no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed
to answer that summons. The coachman, who grumbled
that his 'osses should be brought out and his
carriage made into an hospital for that old feller and
Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity now, and
trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's
coachman, asked "what them there Russell Square
coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit
on a box before a lady?" Jos's friends, male and female,
suddenly became interested about Emmy, and cards
of condolence multiplied on her hall table. Jos himself,
who had looked on her as a good-natured harmless
pauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and
shelter, paid her and the rich little boy, his nephew, the
greatest respect--was anxious that she should have
change and amusement after her troubles and trials,
"poor dear girl"--and began to appear at the breakfasttable,
and most particularly to ask how she would like
to dispose of the day.
In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the
consent of the Major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss
Osborne to live in the Russell Square house as long as
ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady, with thanks,
declared that she never could think of remaining alone
in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning
to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics.
The rest were liberally paid and dismissed, the faithful
old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain,
resigning and preferring to invest his savings in a publichouse,
where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous.
Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs.
Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the
gloomy old mansion there. The house was dismantled;
the rich furniture and effects, the awful chandeliers and
dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich
rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the
carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select
library of well-bound books was stowed into two winechests,
and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in
several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they
were to lie until Georgy's majority. And the great heavy
dark plate-chests went off to Messrs. Stumpy and Rowdy,
to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the
same period should arrive.
One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in
deep sables, went to visit the deserted mansion which she
had not entered since she was a girl. The place in front
was littered with straw where the vans had been laden
and rolled off. They went into the great blank rooms, the
walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and
mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great blank
stone staircases into the upper rooms, into that where
grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, and then
higher still into George's own room. The boy was still
clinging by her side, but she thought of another besides
him. She knew that it had been his father's room as well
as his own.
She went up to one of the open windows (one of
those at which she used to gaze with a sick heart when
the child was first taken from her), and thence as she
looked out she could see, over the trees of Russell Square,
the old house in which she herself was born, and where
she had passed so many happy days of sacred youth.
They all came back to her, the pleasant holidays,
the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times, and the
long pains and trials that had since cast her down.
She thought of these and of the man who had been her
constant protector, her good genius, her sole benefactor,
her tender and generous friend.
"Look here, Mother," said Georgy, "here's a G.O.
scratched on the glass with a diamond, I never saw it
before, I never did it."
"It was your father's room long before you were born,
George," she said, and she blushed as she kissed the
boy.
She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond,
where they had taken a temporary house: where the
smiling lawyers used to come bustling over to see her (and
we may be sure noted the visit in the bill): and where of
course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, who
rode over frequently, having much business to transact
on behalf of his little ward.
Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on
an unlimited holiday, and that gentleman was engaged
to prepare an inscription for a fine marble slab, to be
placed up in the Foundling under the monument of
Captain George Osborne.
The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although
despoiled by that little monster of one-half of the sum
which she expected from her father, nevertheless showed
her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled to the
mother and the boy. Roehampton is not far from
Richmond, and one day the chariot, with the golden bullocks
emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within,
drove to Amelia's house at Richmond; and the Bullock
family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia
was reading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly
dipping strawberries into wine, and the Major in one of
his Indian jackets was giving a back to Georgy, who
chose to jump over him. He went over his head and
bounded into the little advance of Bullocks, with
immense black bows in their hats, and huge black sashes,
accompanying their mourning mamma.
"He is just of the age for Rosa," the fond parent
thought, and glanced towards that dear child, an
unwholesome little miss of seven years of age.
"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin," Mrs. Frederick
said. "Don't you know me, George? I am your aunt."
"I know you well enough," George said; "but I don't
like kissing, please"; and he retreated from the obedient
caresses of his cousin.
"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child," Mrs.
Frederick said, and those ladies accordingly met, after
an absence of more than fifteen years. During Emmy's
cares and poverty the other had never once thought
about coming to see her, but now that she was decently
prosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as
a matter of course.
So did numbers more. Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and
her husband came thundering over from Hampton Court,
with flaming yellow liveries, and was as impetuously fond
of Amelia as ever. Miss Swartz would have liked her
always if she could have seen her. One must do her that
justice. But, que voulez vous?--in this vast town one
has not the time to go and seek one's friends; if they
drop out of the rank they disappear, and we march on
without them. Who is ever missed in Vanity Fair?
But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for
Mr. Osborne's death had subsided, Emmy found herself
in the centre of a very genteel circle indeed, the
members of which could not conceive that anybody
belonging to it was not very lucky. There was scarce one
of the ladies that hadn't a relation a Peer, though the
husband might be a drysalter in the City. Some of the
ladies were very blue and well informed, reading Mrs.
Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; others
were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall.
Emmy, it must be owned, found herself entirely at a loss in
the midst of their clavers, and suffered woefully on the
one or two occasions on which she was compelled to
accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock's hospitalities. That lady
persisted in patronizing her and determined most graciously
to form her. She found Amelia's milliners for her and
regulated her household and her manners. She drove
over constantly from Roehampton and entertained her
friend with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feeble
Court slip-slop. Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used
to go off growling at the appearance of this woman, with
her twopenny gentility. He went to sleep under Frederick
Bullock's bald head, after dinner, at one of the banker's
best parties (Fred was still anxious that the balance of
the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy
and Rowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not
know Latin, or who wrote the last crack article in the
Edinburgh, and did not in the least deplore, or
otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary tergiversation on the
fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst the ladies in
the grand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns,
trim gravel walks, and glistening hot-houses.
"She seems good-natured but insipid," said Mrs.
Rowdy; "that Major seems to be particularly epris."
"She wants ton sadly," said Mrs. Hollyock. "My dear
creature, you never will be able to form her."
"She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent," said Mrs.
Glowry with a voice as if from the grave, and a sad
shake of the head and turban. "I asked her if she thought
that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls, or in 1839,
according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall:
and she said--'Poor Pope! I hope not--What has he
done?' "
"She is my brother's widow, my dear friends," Mrs.
Frederick replied, "and as such I think we're all bound to
give her every attention and instruction on entering into
the world. You may fancy there can be no MERCENARY
motives in those whose DISAPPOINTMENTS are well known."
"That poor dear Mrs. Bullock," said Rowdy to Hollyock,
as they drove away together--"she is always scheming
and managing. She wants Mrs. Osborne's account
to be taken from our house to hers--and the way in
which she coaxes that boy and makes him sit by that
blear-eyed little Rosa is perfectly ridiculous."
"I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and
her Battle of Armageddon," cried the other, and the
carriage rolled away over Putney Bridge.
But this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for
Emmy, and all jumped for joy when a foreign tour was
proposed.
CHAPTER LXII
Am Rhein
The above everyday events had occurred, and a few
weeks had passed, when on one fine morning, Parliament
being over, the summer advanced, and all the good
company in London about to quit that city for their annual
tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat
left the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English
fugitives. The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the
benches and gangways crowded with scores of rosy children,
bustling nursemaids; ladies in the prettiest pink
bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps
and linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to
sprout for the ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans
with starched neckcloths and neat-brushed hats, such as
have invaded Europe any time since the conclusion of the
war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of
the Continent. The congregation of hat-boxes, and
Bramah desks, and dressing-cases was prodigious. There
were jaunty young Cambridge-men travelling with their
tutor, and going for a reading excursion to Nonnenwerth
or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the
most dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about
horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young
ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge
lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden
coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems
and Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the
dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trenteet-
quarante to keep the excitement going; there was old
Methuselah, who had married his young wife, with Captain
Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and
guide-books; there was young May who was carrying off
his bride on a pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and
who had been at school with May's grandmother); there
was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen children, and
corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee
Bareacres family that sat by themselves near the wheel,
stared at everybody, and spoke to no one. Their
carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped with
shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a
dozen more such vehicles: it was difficult to pass in and
out amongst them; and the poor inmates of the
fore-cabin had scarcely any space for locomotion. These
consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen from
Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and
could have bought half the gay people in the grand
saloon; a few honest fellows with mustachios and portfolios,
who set to sketching before they had been half an hour
on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who
began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had
passed Greenwich; a groom or two who lounged in the
neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under their charge, or
leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked
about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood
to win or lose for the Goodwood cup.
All the couriers, when they had done plunging about
the ship and had settled their various masters in the
cabins or on the deck, congregated together and began to
chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining them
and looking at the carriages. There was Sir John's great
carriage that would hold thirteen people; my Lord
Methuselah's carriage, my Lord Bareacres' chariot,
britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for who liked.
It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to
pay for the expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen
knew how he got it. They knew what money his
Lordship had in his pocket at that instant, and what
interest he paid for it, and who gave it him. Finally there
was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about
which the gentlemen speculated.
"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier
with a large morocco money-bag and ear-rings to another
with ear-rings and a large morocco money-bag.
"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--
qui brenoit des sangviches dans la voiture," said the
courier in a fine German French.
Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of
the hold, where he had been bellowing instructions
intermingled with polyglot oaths to the ship's men engaged
in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give an
account of himself to his brother interpreters. He
informed them that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from
Calcutta and Jamaica enormously rich, and with whom
he was engaged to travel; and at this moment a young
gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between
the paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the
roof of Lord Methuselah's carriage, from which he made
his way over other carriages and imperials until he had
clambered on to his own, descended thence and through
the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause
of the couriers looking on.
"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur
George," said the courier with a grin, as he lifted his
gold-laced cap.
"D-- your French," said the young gentleman, "where's
the biscuits, ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the
English language or in such an imitation of it as he could
command--for though he was familiar with all languages,
Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and
spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.
The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the
biscuits (and indeed it was time to refresh himself, for he
had breakfasted at Richmond full three hours before)
was our young friend George Osborne. Uncle Jos and his
mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of
whom they used to see a good deal, and the four were
about to make a summer tour.
Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the
awning, and pretty nearly opposite to the Earl of
Bareacres and his family, whose proceedings absorbed
the Bengalee almost entirely. Both the noble couple
looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when
Jos remembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed,
he always gave out in India that he was intimately
acquainted with them). Lady Bareacres' hair, which was
then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas
Lord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present
of a rich black with purple and green reflections in the
light. But changed as they were, the movements of the
noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely. The presence of
a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing else.
"Those people seem to interest you a good deal," said
Dobbin, laughing and watching him. Amelia too laughed.
She was in a straw bonnet with black ribbons, and
otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustle and
holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she
looked particularly happy.
"What a heavenly day!" Emmy said and added, with
great originality, "I hope we shall have a calm passage."
Jos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same
time under his eyelids at the great folks opposite. "If you
had made the voyages we have," he said, "you wouldn't
much care about the weather." But nevertheless, traveller
as he was, he passed the night direfully sick in his
carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-andwater
and every luxury.
In due time this happy party landed at the quays of
Rotterdam, whence they were transported by another
steamer to the city of Cologne. Here the carriage and
the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a little
gratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne
newspapers as "Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst
Begleitung aus London." He had his court dress with him;
he had insisted that Dobbin should bring his regimental
paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to
be presented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects
to the Sovereigns of the countries which he honoured
with a visit.
Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was
offered, Mr. Jos left his own card and the Major's upon
"Our Minister." It was with great difficulty that he could
be restrained from putting on his cocked hat and tights
to wait upon the English consul at the Free City of
Judenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our
travellers to dinner. He kept a journal of his voyage and
noted elaborately the defects or excellences of the various
inns at which he put up, and of the wines and dishes of
which he partook.
As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased. Dobbin
used to carry about for her her stool and sketch-book,
and admired the drawings of the good-natured little artist
as they never had been admired before. She sat upon
steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she
mounted upon donkeys and ascended to ancient robbertowers,
attended by her two aides-de-camp, Georgy and
Dobbin. She laughed, and the Major did too, at his droll
figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching the
ground. He was the interpreter for the party; having a
good military knowledge of the German language, and
he and the delighted George fought the campaigns of the
Rhine and the Palatinate. In the course of a few weeks,
and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the
box of the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in
the knowledge of High Dutch, and could talk to hotel
waiters and postilions in a way that charmed his mother
and amused his guardian.
Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon
excursions of his fellow-travellers. He slept a good deal
after dinner, or basked in the arbours of the pleasant
inn-gardens. Pleasant Rhine gardens! Fair scenes of peace
and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests are
reflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen
you that has not a grateful memory of those scenes of
friendly repose and beauty? To lay down the pen and
even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes one
happy. At this time of summer evening, the cows are
trooping down from the hills, lowing and with their bells
tinkling, to the old town, with its old moats, and gates,
and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long blue shadows
stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below
flame in-crimson and gold; and the moon is already out,
looking pale towards the sunset. The sun sinks behind
the great castle-crested mountains, the night falls suddenly,
the river grows darker and darker, lights quiver in it
from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle
peacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore.
So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna
over his face and be very comfortable, and read all
the English news, and every word of Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings
of all Englishmen who
have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors
of that piratical print! ) and whether he woke or
slept, his friends did not very much miss him. Yes, they
were very happy. They went to the opera often of
evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the
German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and
knits stockings on the one side, over against the bourgeoisie
on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his
Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come
and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit is
full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with strawcoloured
mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay.
Here it was that Emmy found her delight, and was
introduced for the first time to the wonders of Mozart and
Cimarosa. The Major's musical taste has been before
alluded to, and his performances on the flute commended.
But perhaps the chief pleasure he had in these operas
was in watching Emmy's rapture while listening to them.
A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when
she was introduced to those divine compositions; this
lady had the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could
she be indifferent when she heard Mozart? The tender
parts of "Don Juan" awakened in her raptures so
exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say
her prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel
so much delight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and
"Batti Batti" filled her gentle little bosom? But the Major,
whom she consulted upon this head, as her theological
adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent soul),
said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made
him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to
be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars
in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a
benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as
for any other worldly blessing. And in reply to some faint
objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological
works like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common
and others of that school, with which Mrs. Osborne had
been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told her
an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the
sunshine was unbearable for the eyes and that the
Nightingale was a most overrated bird. "It is one's nature to
sing and the other's to hoot," he said, laughing, "and
with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must
belong to the Bulbul faction."
I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think
that she was cheerful and happy. You see, she has not
had too much of that sort of existence as yet, and has not
fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or her
intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto by
vulgar intellects. It is the lot of many a woman. And as
every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her
kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable
judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and silence--which is
but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling
folks, and tacit protestantism--above all, finds no mercy
at the hands of the female Inquisition. Thus, my dear and
civilized reader, if you and I were to find ourselves this
evening in a society of greengrocers, let us say, it is
probable that our conversation would not be brilliant; if, on
the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at your
refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying
witty things, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing
her friends to pieces in the most delightful manner, it is
possible that the stranger would not be very talkative and
by no means interesting or interested.
And it must be remembered that this poor lady had
never met a gentleman in her life until this present
moment. Perhaps these are rarer personages than some of
us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his
circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is
constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated
in its degree; whose want of meanness makes them
simple; who can look the world honestly in the face with
an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small?
We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made,
and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two
happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles,
and have shot into the very centre and bull's-eye of the
fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little
scrap of paper and each make out his list.
My friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in
mine. He had very long legs, a yellow face, and a slight
lisp, which at first was rather ridiculous. But his thoughts
were just, his brains were fairly good, his life was honest
and pure, and his heart warm and humble. He certainly
had very large hands and feet, which the two George
Osbornes used to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers
and laughter perhaps led poor little Emmy astray as to
his worth. But have we not all been misled about our
heroes and changed our opinions a hundred times? Emmy,
in this happy time, found that hers underwent a very great
change in respect of the merits of the Major.
Perhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives,
indeed, if they did but know it--and who does? Which
of us can point out and say that was the culmination--
that was the summit of human joy? But at all events,
this couple were very decently contented, and enjoyed
as pleasant a summer tour as any pair that left England
that year. Georgy was always present at the play, but
it was the Major who put Emmy's shawl on after the
entertainment; and in the walks and excursions the young
lad would be on ahead, and up a tower-stair or a tree,
whilst the soberer couple were below, the Major smoking
his cigar with great placidity and constancy, whilst Emmy
sketched the site or the ruin. It was on this very tour that
I, the present writer of a history of which every word is
true, had the pleasure to see them first and to make their
acquaintance.
It was at the little comfortable Ducal town of
Pumpernickel (that very place where Sir Pitt Crawley
had been so distinguished as an attache; but that was in
early early days, and before the news of the Battle of
Austerlitz sent all the English diplomatists in Germany to
the right about) that I first saw Colonel Dobbin and
his party. They had arrived with the carriage and courier
at the Erbprinz Hotel, the best of the town, and the whole
party dined at the table d'hote. Everybody remarked
the majesty of Jos and the knowing way in which he
sipped, or rather sucked, the Johannisberger, which he
ordered for dinner. The little boy, too, we observed, had
a famous appetite, and consumed schinken, and braten,
and kartoffeln, and cranberry jam, and salad, and
pudding, and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry
that did honour to his nation. After about fifteen dishes,
he concluded the repast with dessert, some of which he
even carried out of doors, for some young gentlemen at
table, amused with his coolness and gallant free-and-easy
manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons,
which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither
everybody went in the cheery social little German place.
The lady in black, the boy's mamma, laughed and blushed,
and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as the dinner
went on, and at the various feats and instances of
espieglerie on the part of her son. The Colonel--
for so he became very soon afterwards--I remember
joked the boy with a great deal of grave fun, pointing
out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating him not
to baulk his appetite, but to have a second supply of
this or that.
It was what they call a gast-rolle night at the Royal
Grand Ducal Pumpernickelisch Hof--or Court theatre--
and Madame Schroeder Devrient, then in the bloom of
her beauty and genius, performed the part of the heroine
in the wonderful opera of Fidelio. From our places in the
stalls we could see our four friends of the table d'hote
in the loge which Schwendler of the Erbprinz kept for his
best guests, and I could not help remarking the effect
which the magnificent actress and music produced upon
Mrs. Osborne, for so we heard the stout gentleman in
the mustachios call her. During the astonishing Chorus
of the Prisoners, over which the delightful voice of the
actress rose and soared in the most ravishing harmony,
the English lady's face wore such an expression of wonder
and delight that it struck even little Fipps, the blase
attache, who drawled out, as he fixed his glass upon her,
"Gayd, it really does one good to see a woman caypable
of that stayt of excaytement." And in the Prison Scene,
where Fidelio, rushing to her husband, cries, "Nichts,
nichts, mein Florestan," she fairly lost herself and
covered her face with her handkerchief. Every woman in the
house was snivelling at the time, but I suppose it was
because it was predestined that I was to write this
particular lady's memoirs that I remarked her.
The next day they gave another piece of Beethoven,
Die Schlacht bei Vittoria. Malbrook is introduced at the
beginning of the performance, as indicative of the brisk
advance of the French army. Then come drums, trumpets,
thunders of artillery, and groans of the dying, and at last,
in a grand triumphal swell, "God Save the King" is
performed.
There may have been a score of Englishmen in the
house, but at the burst of that beloved and well-known
music, every one of them, we young fellows in the stalls,
Sir John and Lady Bullminster (who had taken a house
at Pumpernickel for the education of their nine
children), the fat gentleman with the mustachios, the long
Major in white duck trousers, and the lady with the little
boy upon whom he was so sweet, even Kirsch, the courier
in the gallery, stood bolt upright in their places and
proclaimed themselves to be members of the dear old British
nation. As for Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, he rose
up in his box and bowed and simpered, as if he would
represent the whole empire. Tapeworm was nephew and
heir of old Marshal Tiptoff, who has been introduced in
this story as General Tiptoff, just before Waterloo, who
was Colonel of the --th regiment in which Major Dobbin
served, and who died in this year full of honours, and of
an aspic of plovers' eggs; when the regiment was graciously
given by his Majesty to Colonel Sir Michael O'Dowd,
K.C.B. who had commanded it in many glorious fields.
Tapeworm must have met with Colonel Dobbin at the
house of the Colonel's Colonel, the Marshal, for he
recognized him on this night at the theatre, and with the
utmost condescension, his Majesty's minister came over
from his own box and publicly shook hands with his
new-found friend.
"Look at that infernal sly-boots of a Tapeworm,"
Fipps whispered, examining his chief from the stalls.
"Wherever there's a pretty woman he always twists
himself in." And I wonder what were diplomatists made for
but for that?
"Have I the honour of addressing myself to Mrs.
Dobbin?" asked the Secretary with a most insinuating grin.
Georgy burst out laughing and said, "By Jove, that was
a good 'un." Emmy and the Major blushed: we saw them
from the stalls.
"This lady is Mrs. George Osborne," said the Major,
"and this is her brother, Mr. Sedley, a distinguished
officer of the Bengal Civil Service: permit me to introduce
him to your lordship."
My lord nearly sent Jos off his legs with the most
fascinating smile. "Are you going to stop in Pumpernickel?"
he said. "It is a dull place, but we want some nice people,
and we would try and make it SO agreeable to you. Mr.--
Ahum--Mrs.--Oho. I shall do myself the honour of calling
upon you to-morrow at your inn." And he went away
with a Parthian grin and glance which he thought must
finish Mrs. Osborne completely.
The performance over, the young fellows lounged about
the lobbies, and we saw the society take its departure.
The Duchess Dowager went off in her jingling old coach,
attended by two faithful and withered old maids of
honour, and a little snuffy spindle-shanked gentleman in
waiting, in a brown jasey and a green coat covered with
orders--of which the star and the grand yellow cordon of
the order of St. Michael of Pumpernickel were most
conspicuous. The drums rolled, the guards saluted, and the
old carriage drove away.
Then came his Transparency the Duke and Transparent
family, with his great officers of state and household. He
bowed serenely to everybody. And amid the saluting of
the guards and the flaring of the torches of the running
footmen, clad in scarlet, the Transparent carriages drove
away to the old Ducal schloss, with its towers and
pinacles standing on the schlossberg. Everybody in
Pumpernickel knew everybody. No sooner was a foreigner seen
there than the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or some other
great or small officer of state, went round to the Erbprinz
and found out the name of the new arrival.
We watched them, too, out of the theatre. Tapeworm
had just walked off, enveloped in his cloak, with which
his gigantic chasseur was always in attendance, and
looking as much as possible like Don Juan. The Prime
Minister's lady had just squeezed herself into her sedan,
and her daughter, the charming Ida, had put on her
calash and clogs; when the English party came out, the
boy yawning drearily, the Major taking great pains in
keeping the shawl over Mrs. Osborne's head, and Mr.
Sedley looking grand, with a crush opera-hat on one side
of his head and his hand in the stomach of a voluminous
white waistcoat. We took off our hats to our acquaintances
of the table d'hote, and the lady, in return, presented us
with a little smile and a curtsey, for which
everybody might be thankful.
The carriage from the inn, under the superintendence
of the bustling Mr. Kirsch, was in waiting to convey the
party; but the fat man said he would walk and smoke his
cigar on his way homewards, so the other three, with
nods and smiles to us, went without Mr. Sedley, Kirsch,
with the cigar case, following in his master's wake.
We all walked together and talked to the stout gentleman
about the agremens of the place. It was very agreeable
for the English. There were shooting-parties and
battues; there was a plenty of balls and entertainments at
the hospitable Court; the society was generally good; the
theatre excellent; and the living cheap.
"And our Minister seems a most delightful and affable
person," our new friend said. '~With such a representative,
and--and a good medical man, I can fancy the place to
be most eligible. Good-night, gentlemen." And Jos
creaked up the stairs to bedward, followed by Kirsch with
a flambeau. We rather hoped that nice-looking woman
would be induced to stay some time in the town.
CHAPTER LXIII
In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance
Such polite behaviour as that of Lord Tapeworm did
not fail to have the most favourable effect upon Mr.
Sedley's mind, and the very next morning, at breakfast, he
pronounced his opinion that Pumpernickel was the
pleasantest little place of any which he had visited on their
tour. Jos's motives and artifices were not very difficult
of comprehension, and Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like
a hypocrite as he was, when he found, by the knowing air
of the civilian and the offhand manner in which the
latter talked about Tapeworm Castle and the other members
of the family, that Jos had been up already in the morning,
consulting his travelling Peerage. Yes, he had seen
the Right Honourable the Earl of Bagwig, his lordship's
father; he was sure he had, he had met him at--at the
Levee--didn't Dob remember? and when the Diplomatist
called on the party, faithful to his promise, Jos received
him with such a salute and honours as were seldom
accorded to the little Envoy. He winked at Kirsch on his
Excellency's arrival, and that emissary, instructed beforehand,
went out and superintended an entertainment of
cold meats, jellies, and other delicacies, brought in upon
trays, and of which Mr. Jos absolutely insisted that his
noble guest should partake.
Tapeworm, so long as he could have an opportunity of
admiring the bright eyes of Mrs. Osborne (whose freshness
of complexion bore daylight remarkably well) was
not ill pleased to accept any invitation to stay in Mr.
Sedley's lodgings; he put one or two dexterous questions
to him about India and the dancing-girls there; asked
Amelia about that beautiful boy who had been with her;
and complimented the astonished little woman upon the
prodigious sensation which she had made in the house;
and tried to fascinate Dobbin by talking of the late war
and the exploits of the Pumpernickel contingent under the
command of the Hereditary Prince, now Duke of
Pumpernickel.
Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family
gallantry, and it was his happy belief that almost every
woman upon whom he himself cast friendly eyes was in
love with him. He left Emmy under the persuasion that
she was slain by his wit and attractions and went home to
his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her. She was
not fascinated, only puzzled, by his grinning, his simpering,
his scented cambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled
lacquered boots. She did not understand one-half the
compliments which he paid; she had never, in her small
experience of mankind, met a professional ladies' man as
yet, and looked upon my lord as something curious rather
than pleasant; and if she did not admire, certainly
wondered at him. Jos, on the contrary, was delighted. "How
very affable his Lordship is," he said; "How very kind of
his Lordship to say he would send his medical man!
Kirsch, you will carry our cards to the Count de
Schlusselback directly; the Major and I will have the
greatest pleasure in paying our respects at Court as soon
as possible. Put out my uniform, Kirsch--both our
uniforms. It is a mark of politeness which every English
gentleman ought to show to the countries which he visits
to pay his respects to the sovereigns of those countries
as to the representatives of his own."
When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber,
Body Physician to H.S.H. the Duke, he speedily
convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel mineral springs and
the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly restore
the Bengalee to youth and slimness. "Dere came here last
year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral,
tvice so pic as you, sir. I sent him back qvite tin after
tree months, and he danced vid Baroness Glauber at
the end of two."
Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the
Court, and the Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he
proposed to spend the autumn in these delightful
quarters. And punctual to his word, on the next day the
Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor
Aurelius XVII, being conducted to their audience with
that sovereign by the Count de Schlusselback, Marshal
of the Court.
They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and
their intention of staying in the town being announced,
the politest ladies of the whole town instantly called upon
Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these, however poor
they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's
delight was beyond expression. He wrote off to Chutney
at the Club to say that the Service was highly appreciated
in Germany, that he was going to show his friend, the
Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a pig in the Indian
fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and
Duchess, were everything that was kind and civil.
Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as
mourning is not admitted in Court on certain days, she
appeared in a pink crape dress with a diamond ornament
in the corsage, presented to her by her brother, and
she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and
Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had
scarcely ever seen her before in an evening dress, and
vowed that she did not look five-and-twenty) all admired
her excessively.
In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin
at a Court ball, in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the
honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback,
an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good
quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses
of Germany.
Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley
through which sparkles--to mingle with the Rhine
somewhere, but I have not the map at hand to say exactly at
what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump. In some
places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in
others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last
Transparency but three, the great and renowned Victor
Aurelius XIV built a magnificent bridge, on which his
own statue rises, surrounded by water-nymphs and
emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot on the
neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and
ran a Janissary through the body at the relief of Vienna
by Sobieski--but, quite undisturbed by the agonies
of that prostrate Mahometan, who writhes at his feet in
the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles blandly and
points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius
Platz, where he began to erect a new palace that would
have been the wonder of his age had the great-souled
Prince but had funds to complete it. But the completion
of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest German folks call
it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and its
park and garden are now in rather a faded condition,
and not more than ten times big enough to accommodate
the Court of the reigning Sovereign.
The gardens were arranged to emulate those of
Versailles, and amidst the terraces and groves there are
some huge allegorical waterworks still, which spout and
froth stupendously upon fete-days, and frighten one
with their enormous aquatic insurrections. There is the
Trophonius' cave in which, by some artifice, the leaden
Tritons are made not only to spout water, but to play
the most dreadful groans out of their lead conchs--there
is the nymphbath and the Niagara cataract, which the
people of the neighbourhood admire beyond expression,
when they come to the yearly fair at the opening of the
Chamber, or to the fetes with which the happy little nation
still celebrates the birthdays and marriage-days of its
princely governors.
Then from all the towns of the Duchy, which stretches
for nearly ten mile--from Bolkum, which lies on
its western frontier bidding defiance to Prussia, from
Grogwitz, where the Prince has a hunting-lodge, and
where his dominions are separated by the Pump River
from those of the neighbouring Prince of Potzenthal; from
all the little villages, which besides these three great
cities, dot over the happy principality--from the farms
and the mills along the Pump come troops of people in
red petticoats and velvet head-dresses, or with threecornered
hats and pipes in their mouths, who flock to the
Residenz and share in the pleasures of the fair and the
festivities there. Then the theatre is open for nothing,
then the waters of Monblaisir begin to play (it is lucky
that there is company to behold them, for one would be
afraid to see them alone)--then there come mountebanks
and riding troops (the way in which his Transparency
was fascinated by one of the horse-riders is well known,
and it is believed that La Petite Vivandiere, as she was
called, was a spy in the French interest), and the delighted
people are permitted to march through room after room
of the Grand Ducal palace and admire the slippery
floor, the rich hangings, and the spittoons at the
doors of all the innumerable chambers. There is one
Pavilion at Monblaisir which Aurelius Victor XV had
arranged--a great Prince but too fond of pleasure--and
which I am told is a perfect wonder of licentious elegance.
It is painted with the story of Bacchus and Ariadne, and
the table works in and out of the room by means of a
windlass, so that the company was served without any
intervention of domestics. But the place was shut up by
Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout
Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy
during her son's glorious minority, and after the death
of her husband, cut off in the pride of his pleasures.
The theatre of Pumpernickel is known and famous in
that quarter of Germany. It languished a little when the
present Duke in his youth insisted upon having his own
operas played there, and it is said one day, in a fury,
from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a
rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel
Master, who was conducting, and led too slow; and during
which time the Duchess Sophia wrote domestic comedies,
which must have been very dreary to witness. But the
Prince executes his music in private now, and the Duchess
only gives away her plays to the foreigners of distinction
who visit her kind little Court.
It is conducted with no small comfort and splendour.
When there are balls, though there may be four
hundred people at supper, there is a servant in scarlet and
lace to attend upon every four, and every one is served
on silver. There are festivals and entertainments going
continually on, and the Duke has his chamberlains and
equerries, and the Duchess her mistress of the wardrobe
and ladies of honour, just like any other and more
potent potentates.
The Constitution is or was a moderate despotism,
tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be
elected. I never certainly could hear of its sitting in my time
at Pumpernickel. The Prime Minister had lodgings in a
second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the
comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey. The
army consisted of a magnificent band that also did duty
on the stage, where it was quite pleasant to see the
worthy fellows marching in Turkish dresses with rouge on
and wooden scimitars, or as Roman warriors with
ophicleides and trombones--to see them again, I say, at
night, after one had listened to them all the morning in
the Aurelius Platz, where they performed opposite the
cafe where we breakfasted. Besides the band, there was
a rich and numerous staff of officers, and, I believe, a
few men. Besides the regular sentries, three or four men,
habited as hussars, used to do duty at the Palace, but I
never saw them on horseback, and au fait, what was the
use of cavalry in a time of profound peace?--and whither
the deuce should the hussars ride?
Everybody--everybody that was noble of course, for
as for the bourgeois we could not quite be expected to
take notice of THEM--visited his neighbour. H. E. Madame
de Burst received once a week, H. E. Madame de
Schnurrbart had her night--the theatre was open twice
a week, the Court graciously received once, so that a
man's life might in fact be a perfect round of pleasure in
the unpretending Pumpernickel way.
That there were feuds in the place, no one can deny.
Politics ran very high at Pumpernickel, and parties were
very bitter. There was the Strumpff faction and the
Lederlung party, the one supported by our envoy and the
other by the French Charge d'Affaires, M. de Macabau.
Indeed it sufficed for our Minister to stand up for
Madame Strumpff, who was clearly the greater singer of the
two, and had three more notes in her voice than Madame
Lederlung her rival--it sufficed, I say, for our Minister to
advance any opinion to have it instantly contradicted
by the French diplomatist.
Everybody in the town was ranged in one or other of
these factions. The Lederlung was a prettyish little
creature certainly, and her voice (what there was of it) was
very sweet, and there is no doubt that the Strumpff was
not in her first youth and beauty, and certainly too stout;
when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula,
for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her
hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over
the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to
squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend
and creak again under her weight--but how she poured
out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of
feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms--almost fit to
smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung--but a truce
to this gossip--the fact is that these two women were
the two flags of the French and the English party at
Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its
allegiance to those two great nations.
We had on our side the Home Minister, the Master of
the Horse, the Duke's Private Secretary, and the Prince's
Tutor; whereas of the French party were the Foreign
Minister, the Commander-in-Chief's Lady, who had
served under Napoleon, and the Hof-Marschall and his
wife, who was glad enough to get the fashions from
Pans, and always had them and her caps by M. de
Macabau's courier. The Secretary of his Chancery was little
Grignac, a young fellow, as malicious as Satan, and who
made caricatures of Tapeworm in all the-albums of the
place.
Their headquarters and table d'hote were established
at the Pariser Hof, the other inn of the town; and though,
of course, these gentlemen were obliged to be civil in
public, yet they cut at each other with epigrams that
were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of
wrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins
and never showing their agony upon a muscle of their
faces. Neither Tapeworm nor Macabau ever sent home
a dispatch to his government without a most savage
series of attacks upon his rival. For instance, on our side
we would write, "The interests of Great Britain in this
place, and throughout the whole of Germany, are perilled
by the continuance in office of the present French envoy;
this man is of a character so infamous that he will stick
at no falsehood, or hesitate at no crime, to attain his
ends. He poisons the mind of the Court against the
English minister, represents the conduct of Great Britain in
the most odious and atrocious light, and is unhappily
backed by a minister whose ignorance and necessities
are as notorious as his influence is fatal." On their side
they would.say, "M. de Tapeworm continues his
system of stupid insular arrogance and vulgar falsehood
against the greatest nation in the world. Yesterday he
was heard to speak lightly of Her Royal Highness Madame
the Duchess of Berri; on a former occasion he insulted
the heroic Duke of Angouleme and dared to insinuate
that H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans was conspiring against
the august throne of the lilies. His gold is prodigated in
every direction which his stupid menaces fail to frighten.
By one and the other, he has won over creatures of the
Court here--and, in fine, Pumpernickel will not be
quiet, Germany tranquil, France respected, or Europe
content until this poisonous viper be crushed under
heel": and so on. When one side or the other had written
any particularly spicy dispatch, news of it was sure to
slip out.
Before the winter was far advanced, it is actually on
record that Emmy took a night and received company
with great propriety and modesty. She had a French
master, who complimented her upon the purity of her
accent and her facility of learning; the fact is she had
learned long ago and grounded herself subsequently in the
grammar so as to be able to teach it to George; and Madam
Strumpff came to give her lessons in singing, which she
performed so well and with such a true voice that the
Major's windows, who had lodgings opposite under the
Prime Minister, were always open to hear the lesson.
Some of the German ladies, who are very sentimental and
simple in their tastes, fell in love with her and began to
call her du at once. These are trivial details, but they
relate to happy times. The Major made himself George's
tutor and read Caesar and mathematics with him, and
they had a German master and rode out of evenings by
the side of Emmy's carriage--she was always too timid,
and made a dreadful outcry at the slightest disturbance
on horse-back. So she drove about with one of her dear
German friends, and Jos asleep on the back-seat of the
barouche.
He was becoming very sweet upon the Grafinn Fanny
de Butterbrod, a very gentle tender-hearted and
unassuming young creature, a Canoness and Countess in her
own right, but with scarcely ten pounds per year to her
fortune, and Fanny for her part declared that to be
Amelia's sister was the greatest delight that Heaven could
bestow on her, and Jos might have put a Countess's shield
and coronet by the side of his own arms on his carriage
and forks; when--when events occurred, and those
grand fetes given upon the marriage of the Hereditary
Prince of Pumpernickel with the lovely Princess Amelia
of Humbourg-Schlippenschloppen took place.
At this festival the magnificence displayed was such as
had not been known in the little German place since
the days of the prodigal Victor XIV. All the neighbouring
Princes, Princesses, and Grandees were invited to the
feast. Beds rose to half a crown per night in Pumpernickel,
and the Army was exhausted in providing guards
of honour for the Highnesses, Serenities, and Excellencies
who arrived from all quarters. The Princess was married
by proxy, at her father's residence, by the Count de
Schlusselback. Snuff-boxes were given away in profusion
(as we learned from the Court jeweller, who sold
and afterwards bought them again), and bushels of the
Order of Saint Michael of Pumpernickel were sent to
the nobles of the Court, while hampers of the cordons
and decorations of the Wheel of St. Catherine of
Schlippenschloppen were brought to ours. The French envoy
got both. "He is covered with ribbons like a prize
cart-horse," Tapeworm said, who was not allowed by the rules
of his service to take any decorations: "Let him have
the cordons; but with whom is the victory?" The fact is,
it was a triumph of British diplomacy, the French party
having proposed and tried their utmost to carry a
marriage with a Princess of the House of
Potztausend-Donnerwetter, whom, as a matter of
course, we opposed.
Everybody was asked to the fetes of the marriage.
Garlands and triumphal arches were hung across the road
to welcome the young bride. The great Saint Michael's
Fountain ran with uncommonly sour wine, while that
in the Artillery Place frothed with beer. The great waters
played; and poles were put up in the park and gardens
for the happy peasantry, which they might climb at
their leisure, carrying off watches, silver forks, prize
sausages hung with pink ribbon, &c., at the top. Georgy
got one, wrenching it off, having swarmed up the pole to
the delight of the spectators, and sliding down with the
rapidity of a fall of water. But it was for the glory's
sake merely. The boy gave the sausage to a peasant,
who had very nearly seized it, and stood at the foot of
the mast, blubbering, because he was unsuccessful.
At the French Chancellerie they had six more lampions
in their illumination than ours had; but our transparency,
which represented the young Couple advancing and
Discord flying away, with the most ludicrous likeness to the
French Ambassador, beat the French picture hollow; and
I have no doubt got Tapeworm the advancement and the
Cross of the Bath which he subsequently attained.
Crowds of foreigners arrived for the fetes, and of
English, of course. Besides the Court balls, public balls
were given at the Town Hall and the Redoute, and in the
former place there was a room for trente-et-quarante
and roulette established, for the week of the festivities
only, and by one of the great German companies from
Ems or Aix-la-Chapelle. The officers or inhabitants of the
town were not allowed to play at these games, but
strangers, peasants, ladies were admitted, and any one
who chose to lose or win money.
That little scapegrace Georgy Osborne amongst others,
whose pockets were always full of dollars and whose
relations were away at the grand festival of the Court,
came to the Stadthaus Ball in company of his uncle's
courier, Mr. Kirsch, and having only peeped into a
play-room at Baden-Baden when he hung on Dobbin's arm,
and where, of course, he was not permitted to gamble, came
eagerly to this part of the entertainment and hankered
round the tables where the croupiers and the punters
were at work. Women were playing; they were masked,
some of them; this license was allowed in these wild times
of carnival.
A woman with light hair, in a low dress by no means
so fresh as it had been, and with a black mask on,
through the eyelets of which her eyes twinkled strangely,
was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a card and
a pin and a couple of florins before her. As the croupier
called out the colour and number, she pricked on the
card with great care and regularity, and only ventured her
money on the colours after the red or black had come
up a certain number of times. It was strange to look at
her.
But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed
wrong and the last two florins followed each other under
the croupier's rake, as he cried out with his inexorable
voice the winning colour and number. She gave a sigh, a
shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much
out of her gown, and dashing the pin through the card
on to the table, sat thrumming it for a while. Then she
looked round her and saw Georgy's honest face staring
at the scene. The little scamp! What business had he
to be there?
When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard
through her shining eyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur
n'est pas joueur?"
"Non, Madame," said the boy; but she must have
known, from his accent, of what country he was, for she
answered him with a slight foreign tone. "You have
nevare played--will you do me a littl' favor?"
"What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again. Mr. Kirsch
was at work for his part at the rouge et noir and did not
see his young master.
"Play this for me, if you please; put it on any number,
any number." And she took from her bosom a purse, and
out of it a gold piece, the only coin there, and she put it
into George's hand. The boy laughed and did as he was
bid.
The number came up sure enough. There is a power
that arranges that, they say, for beginners.
"Thank you," said she, pulling the money towards her,
"thank you. What is your name?"
"My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering
in his own pockets for dollars, and just about to make a
trial, when the Major, in his uniform, and Jos, en Marquis,
from the Court ball, made their appearance. Other
people, finding the entertainment stupid and preferring the
fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the Palace ball earlier;
but it is probable the Major and Jos had gone home and
found the boy's absence, for the former instantly went
up to him and, taking him by the shoulder, pulled him
briskly back from the place of temptation. Then, looking
round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as we have
said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring
Mr. George to such a place.
"Laissez-moi tranquille," said Mr. Kirsch, very much
excited by play and wine. "ll faut s'amuser, parbleu.
Je ne suis pas au service de Monsieur."
Seeing his condition the Major did not choose to argue
with the man, but contented himself with drawing away
George and asking Jos if he would come away. He was
standing close by the lady in the mask, who was playing
with pretty good luck now, and looking on much
interested at the game.
"Hadn't you better come, Jos," the Major said, "with
George and me?"
"I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos
said; and for the same reason of modesty, which he
thought ought to be preserved before the boy, Dobbin
did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and
walked home with Georgy.
"Did you play?" asked the Major when they were out
and on their way home.
The boy said "No."
"Give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you
never will."
"Why?" said the boy; "it seems very good fun." And, in
a very eloquent and impressive manner, the Major showed
him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his
precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had he
liked to say anything that should reflect on the other's
memory. When he had housed him, he went to bed and
saw his light, in the little room outside of Amelia's,
presently disappear. Amelia's followed half an hour
afterwards. I don't know what made the Major note it
so accurately.
Jos, however, remained behind over the play-table; he
was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement
of the sport now and then, and he had some Napoleons
chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court
waistcoat. He put down one over the fair shoulder of the
little gambler before him, and they won. She made a little
movement to make room for him by her side, and
just took the skirt of her gown from a vacant chair there.
"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a
foreign accent, quite different from that frank and
perfectly English "Thank you," with which she had saluted
Georgy's coup in her favour. The portly gentleman,
looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him,
sat down; he muttered--"Ah, really, well now, God bless
my soul. I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good
fortune," and other words of compliment and confusion.
"Do you play much?" the foreign mask said.
"I put a Nap or two down," said Jos with a superb air,
flinging down a gold piece.
"Yes; ay nap after dinner," said the mask archly. But
Jos looking frightened, she continued, in her pretty
French accent, "You do not play to win. No more do I.
I play to forget, but I cannot. I cannot forget old times,
monsieur. Your little nephew is the image of his father;
and you--you are not changed--but yes, you are.
Everybody changes, everybody forgets; nobody has
any heart."
"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.
"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley?" said the little
woman in a sad voice, and undoing her mask, she
looked at him. "You have forgotten me."
"Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.
"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his;
but she followed the game still, all the time she was
looking at him.
"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued. "Ask
for Madame de Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day;
how pretty she looked, and how happy! So do you!
Everybody but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley."
And she put her money over from the red to the black,
as if by a chance movement of her hand, and while she
was wiping her eyes with a pocket-handkerchief fringed
with torn lace.
The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that
stake.~ "Come away," she said. "Come with me a little
--we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?"
And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this
time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where
the illuminations were winking out and the transparency
over our mission was scarcely visible.
CHAPTER LXIV
A Vagabond Chapter
We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's
biography with that lightness and delicacy which the
world demands--the moral world, that has, perhaps, no
particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance
to hearing vice called by its proper name. There
are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair,
though we never speak of them: as the Ahrimanians
worship the devil, but don't mention him: and a polite
public will no more bear to read an authentic description
of vice than a truly refined English or American female
will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her
chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the
world before our faces every day, without much shocking
us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what
complexions you would have! It is only when their
naughty names are called out that your modesty has any
occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has
been the wish of the present writer, all through this story,
deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing,
and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a
light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine
feelings may be offended. I defy any one to say that
our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been
presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and
inoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and
smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride,
asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the
laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail
above water? No! Those who like may peep down under
waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and
twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst
bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline,
I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable,
and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist
in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the Siren
disappears and dives below, down among the dead men,
the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour
lost to look into it ever so curiously. They look pretty
enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps
and combing their hair, and sing, and beckon to you to
come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink
into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids
are about no good, and we had best not examine the
fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their
wretched pickled victims. And so, when Becky is out of
the way, be sure that she is not particularly well
employed, and that the less that is said about her doings
is in fact the better.
If we were to give a full account of her proceedings
during a couple of years that followed after the Curzon
Street catastrophe, there might be some reason for
people to say this book was improper. The actions of very
vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often
improper (as are many of yours, my friend with the
grave face and spotless reputation--but that is merely
by the way); and what are those of a woman without
faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think
that there was a period in Mrs Becky's life when
she was seized, not by remorse, but by a kind of despair,
and absolutely neglected her person and did not even
care for her reputation.
This abattement and degradation did not take place
all at once; it was brought about by degrees, after her
calamity, and after many struggles to keep up--as a
man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any
hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when
he finds that struggling is in vain.
She lingered about London whilst her husband was
making preparations for his departure to his seat of
government, and it is believed made more than one
attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and to
work upon his feelings, which she had almost
enlisted in her favour. As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were
walking down to the House of Commons, the latter spied
Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the palace
of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met
those of Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her
designs upon the Baronet.
Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have heard that she
quite astonished her husband by the spirit which she
exhibited in this quarrel, and her determination to disown
Mrs. Becky. Of her own movement, she invited Rawdon
to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for
Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs.
Becky would not try to force her door; and she looked
curiously at the superscriptions of all the letters which
arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his sister-in-law should
be corresponding. Not but that Rebecca could have
written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write
to Pitt at his own house, and after one or two attempts
consented to his demand that the correspondence
regarding her conjugal differences should be carried on by
lawyers only.
The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against
her. A short time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham
had been with the Baronet and given him such a biography
of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member for
Queen's Crawley. He knew everything regarding her:
who her father was; in what year her mother danced at
the opera; what had been her previous history; and what
her conduct during her married life--as I have no doubt
that the greater part of the story was false and
dictated by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated
here. But Becky was left with a sad sad reputation in the
esteem of a country gentleman and relative who had
been once rather partial to her.
The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are
not large. A part of them were set aside by his Excellency
for the payment of certain outstanding debts and
liabilities, the charges incident on his high situation
required considerable expense; finally, it was found that
he could not spare to his wife more than three hundred
pounds a year, which he proposed to pay to her on
an undertaking that she would never trouble him.
Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would
ensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's
business, Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the
country, and hush up a most disagreeable affair.
She was probably so much occupied in arranging these
affairs of business with her husband's lawyers that she
forgot to take any step whatever about her son, the little
Rawdon, and did not even once propose to go and see
him. That young gentleman was consigned to the entire
guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom
had always possessed a great share of the child's
affection. His mamma wrote him a neat letter from Boulogne,
when she quitted England, in which she requested him to
mind his book, and said she was going to take a
Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure
of writing to him again. But she never did for a year
afterwards, and not, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy,
always sickly, died of hooping-cough and measles--then
Rawdon's mamma wrote the most affectionate composition
to her darling son, who was made heir of Queen's
Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than
ever to the kind lady, whose tender heart had already
adopted him. Rawdon Crawley, then grown a tall, fine
lad, blushed when he got the letter. "Oh, Aunt Jane, you
are my mother!" he said; "and not--and not that one."
But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs.
Rebecca, then living at a boarding-house at Florence.
But we are advancing matters.
Our darling Becky's first flight was not very far. She
perched upon the French coast at Boulogne, that refuge
of so much exiled English innocence, and there lived in
rather a genteel, widowed manner, with a femme de
chambre and a couple of rooms, at an hotel. She dined
at the table d'hote, where people thought her very pleasant,
and where she entertained her neighbours by stories
of her brother, Sir Pitt, and her great London acquaintance,
talking that easy, fashionable slip-slop which has
so much effect upon certain folks of small breeding. She
passed with many of them for a person of importance;
she gave little tea-parties in her private room and shared
in the innocent amusements of the place in sea-bathing,
and in jaunts in open carriages, in strolls on the sands,
and in visits to the play. Mrs. Burjoice, the printer's
lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for
the summer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a
Saturday and Sunday, voted her charming, until that little
rogue of a Burjoice began to pay her too much
attention. But there was nothing in the story, only that
Becky was always affable, easy, and good-natured--and
with men especially.
Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the
end of the season, and Becky had plenty of opportunities
of finding out by the behaviour of her acquaintances of
the great London world the opinion of "society" as
regarded her conduct. One day it was Lady Partlet and her
daughters whom Becky confronted as she was walking
modestly on Boulogne pier, the cliffs of Albion shining
in the distance across the deep blue sea. Lady Partlet
marshalled all her daughters round her with a sweep of
her parasol and retreated from the pier, darting savage
glances at poor little Becky who stood alone there.
On another day the packet came in. It had been
blowing fresh, and it always suited Becky's humour to
see the droll woe-begone faces of the people as they
emerged from the boat. Lady Slingstone happened to be
on board this day. Her ladyship had been exceedingly ill
in her carriage, and was greatly exhausted and scarcely
fit to walk up the plank from the ship to the pier. But
all her energies rallied the instant she saw Becky smiling
roguishly under a pink bonnet, and giving her a
glance of scorn such as would have shrivelled up most
women, she walked into the Custom House quite
unsupported. Becky only laughed: but I don't think she liked
it. She felt she was alone, quite alone, and the far-off
shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.
The behaviour of the men had undergone too I don't
know what change. Grinstone showed his teeth and
laughed in her face with a familiarity that was not pleasant.
Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her
three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain
to see for her carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was
talking to Fitzoof of the Guards (Lord Heehaw's son)
one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her walk there.
Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder, without
moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the
heir of Heehaw. Tom Raikes tried to walk into her
sitting-room at the inn with a cigar in his mouth, but she
closed the door upon him, and would have locked it,
only that his fingers were inside. She began to feel that
she was very lonely indeed. "If HE'D been here," she said,
"those cowards would never have dared to insult me."
She thought about "him" with great sadness and
perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant kindness
and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good
humour; his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried,
for she was particularly lively, and had put on a little
extra rouge, when she came down to dinner.
She rouged regularly now; and--and her maid got
Cognac for her besides that which was charged in the
hotel bill.
Perhaps the insults of the men were not, however, so
intolerable to her as the sympathy of certain women.
Mrs. Crackenbury and Mrs. Washington White passed
through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland. ~The party
were protected by Colonel Horner, young Beaumoris, and
of course old Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl.)
THEY did not avoid her. They giggled, cackled, tattled,
condoled, consoled, and patronized her until they drove
her almost wild with rage. To be patronized by THEM!
she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing
her. And she heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the
stair and knew quite well how to interpret his hilarity.
It was after this visit that Becky, who had paid her
weekly bills, Becky who had made herself agreeable to
everybody in the house, who smiled at the landlady,
called the waiters "monsieur," and paid the chambermaids
in politeness and apologies, what far more than
compensated for a little niggardliness in point of money
(of which Becky never was free), that Becky, we say,
received a notice to quit from the landlord, who had
been told by some one that she was quite an unfit
person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not
sit down with her. And she was forced to fly into lodgings
of which the dulness and solitude were most wearisome
to her.
Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to
make a character for herself and conquer scandal. She
went to church very regularly and sang louder than
anybody there. She took up the cause of the widows of the
shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for
the Quashyboo Mission; she subscribed to the Assembly
and WOULDN'T waltz. In a word, she did everything that
was respectable, and that is why we dwell upon this
part of her career with more fondness than upon
subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant.
She saw people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled
upon them; you never could suppose from her
countenance what pangs of humiliation she might be
enduring inwardly.
Her history was after all a mystery. Parties were
divided about her. Some people who took the trouble to
busy themselves in the matter said that she was the
criminal, whilst others vowed that she was as innocent
as a lamb and that her odious husband was in fault.
She won over a good many by bursting into tears
about her boy and exhibiting the most frantic grief
when his name was mentioned, or she saw anybody like
him. She gained good Mrs. Alderney's heart in that way,
who was rather the Queen of British Boulogne and gave
the most dinners and balls of all the residents there, by
weeping when Master Alderney came from Dr. Swishtail's
academy to pass his holidays with his mother. "He and
her Rawdon were of the same age, and so like," Becky
said in a voice choking with agony; whereas there was
five years' difference between the boys' ages, and no
more likeness between them than between my respected
reader and his humble servant. Wenham, when he was
going abroad, on his way to Kissingen to join Lord
Steyne, enlightened Mrs. Alderney on this point and told
her how he was much more able to describe little
Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him and
never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while
little Alderney was but nine, fair, while the other darling
was dark--in a word, caused the lady in question to
repent of her good humour.
Whenever Becky made a little circle for herself with
incredible toils and labour, somebody came and swept it
down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over
again. It was very hard; very hard; lonely and
disheartening.
There was Mrs. Newbright, who took her up for some
time, attracted by the sweetness of her singing at church
and by her proper views upon serious subjects, concerning
which in former days, at Queen's Crawley, Mrs.
Becky had had a good deal of instruction. Well, she not
only took tracts, but she read them. She worked flannel
petticoats for the Quashyboos--cotton night-caps for the
Cocoanut Indians--painted handscreens for the
conversion of the Pope and the Jews--sat under Mr. Rowls
on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on Thursdays, attended
two Sunday services at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the
Darbyite, in the evening, and all in vain. Mrs. Newbright
had occasion to correspond with the Countess of Southdown
about the Warmingpan Fund for the Fiji
Islanders (for the management of which admirable
charity both these ladies formed part of a female committee),
and having mentioned her "sweet friend," Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley, the Dowager Countess wrote back such a
letter regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts,
falsehoods, and general comminations, that intimacy
between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs. Crawley ceased forthwith,
and all the serious world of Tours, where this misfortune
took place, immediately parted company with the
reprobate. Those who know the English Colonies abroad
know that we carry with us us our pride, pills, prejudices,
Harvey-sauces, cayenne-peppers, and other Lares,
making a little Britain wherever we settle down.
From one colony to another Becky fled uneasily. From
Boulogne to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen
to Tours--trying with all her might to be respectable,
and alas! always found out some day or other and
pecked out of the cage by the real daws.
Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places--
a woman without a blemish in her character and a house
in Portman Square. She was staying at the hotel at Dieppe,
whither Becky fled, and they made each other's acquaintance
first at sea, where they were swimming together,
and subsequently at the table d'hote of the hotel. Mrs
Eagles had heard--who indeed had not?--some of the
scandal of the Steyne affair; but after a conversation
with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley was an
angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an
unprincipled wretch, as everybody knew, and the whole case
against Mrs. Crawley an infamous and wicked conspiracy
of that rascal Wenham. "If you were a man of
any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would box the wretch's ears
the next time you see him at the Club," she said to her
husband. But Eagles was only a quiet old gentleman,
husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for geology, and not tall
enough to reach anybody's ears.
The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to
live with her at her own house at Paris, quarrelled with
the ambassador's wife because she would not receive her
protegee, and did all that lay in woman's power to keep
Becky straight in the paths of virtue and good repute.
Becky was very respectable and orderly at first, but
the life of humdrum virtue grew utterly tedious to her
before long. It was the same routine every day, the same
dulness and comfort, the same drive over the same
stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same company of an
evening, the same Blair's Sermon of a Sunday night--the
same opera always being acted over and over again;
Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckily for her,
young Mr. Eagles came from Cambridge, and his mother,
seeing the impression which her little friend made upon
him, straightway gave Becky warning.
Then she tried keeping house with a female friend;
then the double menage began to quarrel and get into
debt. Then she determined upon a boarding-house existence
and lived for some time at that famous mansion
kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at
Paris, where she began exercising her graces and
fascinations upon the shabby dandies and fly-blown beauties
who frequented her landlady's salons. Becky loved
society and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an
opium-eater without his dram, and she was happy
enough at the period of her boarding-house life. "The
women here are as amusing as those in May Fair," she
told an old London friend who met her, "only, their
dresses are not quite so fresh. The men wear cleaned
gloves, and are sad rogues, certainly, but they are not
worse than Jack This and Tom That. The mistress of the
house is a little vulgar, but I don't think she is so vulgar
as Lady --" and here she named the name of a
great leader of fashion that I would die rather than
reveal. In fact, when you saw Madame de Saint Amour's
rooms lighted up of a night, men with plaques and
cordons at the ecarte tables, and the women at a little
distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good
society, and that Madame was a real Countess. Many
people did so fancy, and Becky was for a while one of the
most dashing ladies of the Countess's salons.
But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found
her out and caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little
woman was forced to fly from the city rather suddenly,
and went thence to Brussels.
How well she remembered the place! She grinned as
she looked up at the little entresol which she had
occupied, and thought of the Bareacres family, bawling
for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the
porte-cochere of the hotel. She went to Waterloo and to
Laeken, where George Osborne's monument much
struck her. She made a little sketch of it. "That poor
Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with
me, and what a fool he was! I wonder whether little
Emmy is alive. It was a good little creature; and that
fat brother of hers. I have his funny fat picture still
among my papers. They were kind simple people."
At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame
de Saint Amour to her friend, Madame la Comtesse de
Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General, the famous
Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the
deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte
table. Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who
always have a lawsuit, and very simple English folks, who
fancy they see "Continental society" at these houses, put
down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de
Borodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the
company round to champagne at the table d'hote, rode
out with the women, or hired horses on country excursions,
clubbed money to take boxes at the play or the
opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the
ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in
Devonshire about their felicitous introduction to foreign
society.
Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen,
and ruled in select pensions. She never refused the
champagne, or the bouquets, or the drives into the country,
or the private boxes; but what she preferred was the
ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First she
played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for
Napoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able
to pay her month's pension: then she borrowed from
the young gentlemen: then she got into cash again and
bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed and
wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a
time, and in a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's
allowance would come in, and she would pay off Madame
de Borodino's score and would once more take the
cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de
Raff.
When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she
owed three months' pension to Madame de Borodino, of
which fact, and of the gambling, and of the drinking, and
of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.
Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him,
and of her coaxing and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of
Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev. Mr. Muff, whom she used
to take into her private room, and of whom she won
large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a
hundred of her other knaveries, the Countess de
Borodino informs every English person who stops at her
establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was
no better than a vipere.
So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent
in various cities of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or
Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste for disrespectability
grew more and more remarkable. She became a perfect
Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would
make your hair stand on end to meet.
There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its
little colony of English raffs--men whose names Mr.
Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs'
Court--young gentlemen of very good family often, only
that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiardrooms
and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and
gaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons--they
drink and swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away
without paying--they have duels with French and German
officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at ecarte--they get
the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent britzkas
--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the
tables with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless
bucks, until they can swindle a Jew banker with a sham
bill of exchange, or find another Mr. Spooney to rob.
The alternations of splendour and misery which these
people undergo are very queer to view. Their life must
be one of great excitement. Becky--must it be owned?--
took to this life, and took to it not unkindly. She went
about from town to town among these Bohemians. The
lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in
Germany. She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at
Florence together. It is said she was ordered out of
Munich, and my friend Mr. Frederick Pigeon avers that it
was at her house at Lausanne that he was hocussed at
supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder
and the Honourable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you
see, to give some account of Becky's biography, but of
this part, the less, perhaps, that is said the better.
They say that, when Mrs. Crawley was particularly
down on her luck, she gave concerts and lessons in music
here and there. There was a Madame de Raudon, who
certainly had a matinee musicale at Wildbad,
accompanied by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of
Wallachia, and my little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew
everybody and had travelled everywhere, always used to
declare that he was at Strasburg in the year 1830, when a
certain Madame Rebecque made her appearance in the
opera of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion to a furious
row in the theatre there. She was hissed off the stage by
the audience, partly from her own incompetency, but
chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of some persons in
the parquet, (where the officers of the garrison had their
admissions); and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate
debutante in question was no other than Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley.
She was, in fact, no better than a vagabond upon this
earth. When she got her money she gambled; when she
had gambled it she was put to shifts to live; who knows
how or by what means she succeeded? It is said that she
was once seen at St. Petersburg, but was summarily
dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there
cannot be any possibility of truth in the report that she was
a Russian spy at Toplitz and Vienna afterwards. I have
even been informed that at Paris she discovered a
relation of her own, no less a person than her maternal
grandmother, who was not by any means a
Montmorenci, but a hideous old box-opener at a theatre on
the Boulevards. The meeting between them, of which
other persons, as it is hinted elsewhere, seem to have
been acquainted, must have been a very affecting
interview. The present historian can give no certain details
regarding the event.
It happened at Rome once that Mrs. de Rawdon's halfyear's
salary had just been paid into the principal
banker's there, and, as everybody who had a balance of
above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls which
this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky
had the honour of a card, and appeared at one of the
Prince and Princess Polonia's splendid evening entertainments.
The Princess was of the family of Pompili, lineally
descended from the second king of Rome, and Egeria
of the house of Olympus, while the Prince's grandfather,
Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences,
tobacco, and pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for
gentlemen, and lent money in a small way. All the great
company in Rome thronged to his saloons--Princes,
Dukes, Ambassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori, young
bears with their leaders--every rank and condition of
man. His halls blazed with light and magnificence; were
resplendent with gilt frames (containing pictures), and
dubious antiques; and the enormous gilt crown and arms
of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson
field (the colour of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he
sold), and the silver fountain of the Pompili family shone
all over the roof, doors, and panels of the house, and
over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared to receive
Popes and Emperors.
So Becky, who had arrived in the diligence from
Florence, and was lodged at an inn in a very modest way,
got a card for Prince Polonia's entertainment, and her
maid dressed her with unusual care, and she went to this
fine ball leaning on the arm of Major Loder, with whom
she happened to be travelling at the time--(the same
man who shot Prince Ravoli at Naples the next year, and
was caned by Sir John Buckskin for carrying four kings
in his hat besides those which he used in playing at
ecarte )--and this pair went into the rooms together,
and Becky saw a number of old faces which she
remembered in happier days, when she was not innocent,
but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number
of foreigners, keen-looking whiskered men with dirty
striped ribbons in their buttonholes, and a very small
display of linen; but his own countrymen, it might be
remarked, eschewed the Major. Becky, too, knew some
ladies here and there--French widows, dubious Italian
countesses, whose husbands had treated them ill--faugh
--what shall we say, we who have moved among
some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this refuse
and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean
cards, and not with this dirty pack. But every man who
has formed one of the innumerable army of travellers
has seen these marauding irregulars hanging on, like
Nym and Pistol, to the main force, wearing the king's
colours and boasting of his commission, but pillaging
for themselves, and occasionally gibbeted by the roadside.
Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder,
and they went through the rooms together, and drank a
great quantity of champagne at the buffet, where the
people, and especially the Major's irregular corps,
struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the
pair had had enough, they pushed on until they reached
the Duchess's own pink velvet saloon, at the end of the
suite of apartments (where the statue of the Venus is,
and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver),
and where the princely family were entertaining their
most distinguished guests at a round table at supper. It
was just such a little select banquet as that of which
Becky recollected that she had partaken at Lord Steyne's
--and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.
The scar cut by the diamond on his white, bald,
shining forehead made a burning red mark; his red whiskers
were dyed of a purple hue, which made his pale face
look still paler. He wore his collar and orders, his blue
ribbon and garter. He was a greater Prince than any
there, though there was a reigning Duke and a Royal
Highness, with their princesses, and near his Lordship
was seated the beautiful Countess of Belladonna, nee
de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della
Belladonna), so well known for his brilliant entomological
collections, had been long absent on a mission to the
Emperor of Morocco.
When Becky beheld that familiar and illustrious face,
how vulgar all of a sudden did Major Loder appear to
her, and how that odious Captain Rook did smell of
tobacco! In one instant she reassumed her fine-ladyship
and tried to look and feel as if she were in May Fair
once more. "That woman looks stupid and ill-humoured,"
she thought; "I am sure she can't amuse him. No, he must
be bored by her--he never was by me." A hundred such
touching hopes, fears, and memories palpitated in her
little heart, as she looked with her brightest eyes (the
rouge which she wore up to her eyelids made them
twinkle) towards the great nobleman. Of a Star and Garter
night Lord Steyne used also to put on his grandest
manner and to look and speak like a great prince, as he was.
Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy, lofty, and
stately. Ah, bon Dieu, what a pleasant companion he
was, what a brilliant wit, what a rich fund of talk, what
a grand manner!--and she had exchanged this for Major
Loder, reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, and
Captain Rook with his horsejockey jokes and prize-ring
slang, and their like. "I wonder whether he will know
me," she thought. Lord Steyne was talking and laughing
with a great and illustrious lady at his side, when he
looked up and saw Becky.
She was all over in a flutter as their eyes met, and she
put on the very best smile she could muster, and dropped
him a little, timid, imploring curtsey. He stared aghast
at her for a minute, as Macbeth might on beholding
Banquo's sudden appearance at his ball-supper, and remained
looking at her with open mouth, when that horrid Major
Loder pulled her away.
"Come away into the supper-room, Mrs. R.," was that
gentleman's remark: "seeing these nobs grubbing away
has made me peckish too. Let's go and try the old
governor's champagne." Becky thought the Major had had
a great deal too much already.
The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill--
the Hyde Park of the Roman idlers--possibly in hopes to
have another sight of Lord Steyne. But she met another
acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, his lordship's
confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather
familiarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame
was here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have
some advice to give Madame."
"From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming
as much of her dignity as she could muster, and not
a little agitated by hope and expectation.
"No," said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very
unwholesome."
"Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche--not till after
Easter."
"I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always
malaria for some people. That cursed marsh wind kills
many at all seasons. Look, Madame Crawley, you were
always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole
d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you--
or you will be ill and die."
Becky laughed, though in rage and fury. "What!
assassinate poor little me?" she said. "How romantic! Does
my lord carry bravos for couriers, and stilettos in the
fourgons? Bah! I will stay, if but to plague him. I have
those who will defend me whilst I am here."
It was Monsieur Fiche's turn to laugh now. "Defend
you," he said, "and who? The Major, the Captain, any
one of those gambling men whom Madame sees would
take her life for a hundred louis. We know things about
Major Loder (he is no more a Major than I am my Lord
the Marquis) which would send him to the galleys or
worse. We know everything and have friends everywhere.
We know whom you saw at Paris, and what relations you
found there. Yes, Madame may stare, but we do. How
was it that no minister on the Continent would receive
Madame? She has offended somebody: who never
forgives--whose rage redoubled when he saw you. He was
like a madman last night when he came home. Madame
de Belladonna made him a scene about you and fired off
in one of her furies."
"Oh, it was Madame de Belladonna, was it?" Becky
said, relieved a little, for the information she had just got
had scared her.
"No--she does not matter--she is always jealous. I
tell you it was Monseigneur. You did wrong to show
yourself to him. And if you stay here you will repent it. Mark
my words. Go. Here is my lord's carriage"--and seizing
Becky's arm, he rushed down an alley of the garden as
Lord Steyne's barouche, blazing with heraldic devices,
came whirling along the avenue, borne by the almost
priceless horses, and bearing Madame de Belladonna
lolling on the cushions, dark, sulky, and blooming, a King
Charles in her lap, a white parasol swaying over her
head, and old Steyne stretched at her side with a livid
face and ghastly eyes. Hate, or anger, or desire caused
them to brighten now and then still, but ordinarily, they
gave no light, and seemed tired of looking out on a world
of which almost all the pleasure and all the best beauty
had palled upon the worn-out wicked old man.
"Monseigneur has never recovered the shock of that
night, never," Monsieur Fiche whispered to Mrs. Crawley
as the carriage flashed by, and she peeped out at it
from behind the shrubs that hid her. "That was a
consolation at any rate," Becky thought.
Whether my lord really had murderous intentions
towards Mrs. Becky as Monsieur Fiche said (since
Monseigneur's death he has returned to his native country,
where he lives much respected, and has purchased from
his Prince the title of Baron Ficci), and the factotum
objected to have to do with assassination; or whether he
simply had a commission to frighten Mrs. Crawley out of
a city where his Lordship proposed to pass the winter,
and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to
the great nobleman, is a point which has never been
ascertained: but the threat had its effect upon the little
woman, and she sought no more to intrude herself upon
the presence of her old patron.
Everybody knows the melancholy end of that
nobleman, which befell at Naples two months after the French
Revolution of 1830; when the Most Honourable George
Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of Gaunt
Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough,
Baron Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble
Order of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of
the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas of the First Class, of
the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of the
Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of
the Gaunt or Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee
of the British Museum, an Elder Brother of the Trinity
House, a Governor of the White Friars, and D.C.L.--
died after a series of fits brought on, as the papers said,
by the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by
the downfall of the ancient French monarchy.
An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print,
describing his virtues, his magnificence, his talents, and
his good actions. His sensibility, his attachment to the
illustrious House of Bourbon, with which he claimed an
alliance, were such that he could not survive the
misfortunes of his august kinsmen. His body was buried at
Naples, and his heart--that heart which always beat with
every generous and noble emotion was brought back to
Castle Gaunt in a silver urn. "In him," Mr. Wagg said,
"the poor and the Fine Arts have lost a beneficent patron,
society one of its most brilliant ornaments, and England
one of her loftiest patriots and statesmen," &c., &c.
His will was a good deal disputed, and an attempt was
made to force from Madame de Belladonna the
celebrated jewel called the "Jew's-eye" diamond, which his
lordship always wore on his forefinger, and which it was
said that she removed from it after his lamented demise.
But his confidential friend and attendant, Monsieur Fiche
proved that the ring had been presented to the said
Madame de Belladonna two days before the Marquis's
death, as were the bank-notes, jewels, Neapolitan and
French bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire and
claimed by his heirs from that injured woman.
CHAPTER LXV
Full of Business and Pleasure
The day after the meeting at the play-table, Jos had
himself arrayed with unusual care and splendour, and
without thinking it necessary to say a word to any
member of his family regarding the occurrences of the previous
night, or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied
forth at an early hour, and was presently seen making
inquiries at the door of the Elephant Hotel. In consequence
of the fetes the house was full of company, the
tables in the street were already surrounded by persons
smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public
rooms were in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in
his pompous way, and with his clumsy German, made
inquiries for the person of whom he was in search, was
directed to the very top of the house, above the first-floor
rooms where some travelling pedlars had lived, and were
exhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the secondfloor
apartments occupied by the etat major of the
gambling firm; above the third-floor rooms, tenanted by the
band of renowned Bohemian vaulters and tumblers; and
so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among
students, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folks come
in for the festival, Becky had found a little nest--as dirty
a little refuge as ever beauty lay hid in.
Becky liked the life. She was at home with everybody
in the place, pedlars, punters, tumblers, students and all.
She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father
and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and
circumstance; if a lord was not by, she would talk to his
courier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the
drink, the smoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the
solemn, braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois
talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger
of the students, and the general buzz and hum of
the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even
when her luck was down and she had not wherewithal to
pay her bill. How pleasant was all the bustle to her now
that her purse was full of the money which little Georgy
had won for her the night before!
As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs,
and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began
to wipe his face and then to look for No. 92, the room
where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted,
the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open,
and a student, in jack-boots and a dirty schlafrock, was
lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; whilst another
student in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding
smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No. 92,
bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person
within.
"Go away," said a well-known voice, which made Jos
thrill, "I expect somebody; I expect my grandpapa. He
mustn't see you there."
"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student
with the whity-brown ringlets and the large finger-ring,
"do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment.
Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We will
have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and
French wine. We shall die if you don't."
"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed;
and this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not
comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied
the language in which it was carried on.
"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said
in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.
"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and
he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door,
and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on
the bed.
The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted
by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of
itself and Becky's little head peeped out full of archness
and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you," she said,
coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop!
not yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant
she put a rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken
meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and
finally let in her visitor.
She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a
trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with
pomaturn; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves
of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round
her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure
of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret.
"Come in," she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder
on the chair"; and she gave the civilian's hand a little
squeeze and laughingly placed him upon it. As for
herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the bottle
and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have
reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sat
and talked with her old admirer.
"How little years have changed you," she said with a
look of tender interest. "I should have known you
anywhere. What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see
once more the frank honest face of an old friend!"
The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this
moment bore any expression but one of openness and
honesty: it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and
puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment
in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung
over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door;
her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which,
too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French
novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not
of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,
but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which
she had put the candle out on going to sleep.
"I should have known you anywhere," she continued;
"a woman never forgets some things. And you were the
first man I ever--I ever saw."
"Was I really?" said Jos. "God bless my soul, you--
you don't say so."
"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was
scarcely more than a child," Becky said. "How is that,
dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad wicked man, and
of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous.
As if I cared about him, heigho! when there was
somebody--but no--don't let us talk of old times"; and she
passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across
her eyelids.
"Is not this a strange place," she continued, "for a
woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be
found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph
Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly that I am
almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any
place, but wander about always restless and unhappy.
All my friends have been false to me--all. There is no
such thing as an honest man in the world. I was the truest
wife that ever lived, though I married my husband out of
pique, because somebody else--but never mind that. I
was true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me. I
was the fondest mother. I had but one child, one darling,
one hope, one joy, which I held to my heart with a mother's
affection, which was my life, my prayer, my--my
blessing; and they--they tore it from me--tore it from
me"; and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate
gesture of despair, burying her face for a moment on the
bed.
The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate
which held the cold sausage. Both were moved, no doubt,
by the exhibition of so much grief. Max and Fritz were at
the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky's sobs and
cries. Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and affected at
seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began,
forthwith, to tell her story--a tale so neat, simple, and
artless that it was quite evident from hearing her that if
ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven
to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of
fiends here below, that spotless being--that miserable
unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos--on
the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.
They had a very long, amicable, and confidential talk
there, in the course of which Jos Sedley was somehow
made aware (but in a manner that did not in the least
scare or offend him) that Becky's heart had first learned
to beat at his enchanting presence; that George Osborne
had certainly paid an unjustifiable court to HER, which
might account for Amelia's jealousy and their little
rupture; but that Becky never gave the least encouragement
to the unfortunate officer, and that she had never ceased
to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen
him, though, of course, her duties as a married woman
were paramount--duties which she had always preserved,
and would, to her dying day, or until the proverbially bad
climate in which Colonel Crawley was living should
release her from a yoke which his cruelty had rendered
odious to her.
Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous,
as she was one of the most fascinating of women,
and revolving in his mind all sorts of benevolent schemes
for her welfare. Her persecutions ought to be ended:
she ought to return to the society of which she was an
ornament. He would see what ought to be done. She
must quit that place and take a quiet lodging. Amelia
must come and see her and befriend her. He would go
and settle about it, and consult with the Major. She wept
tears of heart-felt gratitude as she parted from him, and
pressed his hand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped
down to kiss hers.
So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as
much grace as if it was a palace of which she did the
honours; and that heavy gentleman having disappeared
down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their hole,
pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos
to them as she munched her cold bread and sausage and
took draughts of her favourite brandy-and-water.
Jos walked over to Dobbin's lodgings with great
solemnity and there imparted to him the affecting history
with which he had just been made acquainted, without,
however, mentioning the play business of the night before.
And the two gentlemen were laying their heads together
and consulting as to the best means of being useful to
Mrs. Becky, while she was finishing her interrupted
dejeuner a la fourchette.
How was it that she had come to that little town?
How was it that she had no friends and was wandering
about alone? Little boys at school are taught in their
earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very easy
of descent. Let us skip over the interval in the history of
her downward progress. She was not worse now than she
had been in the days of her prosperity--only a little
down on her luck.
As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft
and foolish disposition that when she heard of anybody
unhappy, her heart straightway melted towards the
sufferer; and as she had never thought or done anything
mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence for
wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more
knowing. If she spoiled everybody who came near her
with kindness and compliments--if she begged pardon
of all her servants for troubling them to answer the bell
--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece
of silk, or made a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a
complimentary remark upon the elegant state of his crossing
--and she was almost capable of every one of these
follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was miserable
was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of
anybody's being deservedly unhappy. A world under such
legislation as hers would not be a very orderly place of
abode; but there are not many women, at least not of the
rulers, who are of her sort. This lady, I believe, would
have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs,
whippings, poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was
such a mean-spirited creature that--we are obliged to
confess it--she could even forget a mortal injury.
When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental
adventure which had just befallen the latter, he was not,
it must be owned, nearly as much interested as the
gentleman from Bengal. On the contrary, his excitement was
quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of
a brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman
in distress, saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she
come to light again?" He never had had the slightest liking
for her, but had heartily mistrusted her from the very
first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and
turned away from, his own.
"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes,"
the Major said disrespectfully. "Who knows what sort of
life she has been leading? And what business has she
here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about persecutors
and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and
never is separated from her family. Why has she left her
husband? He may have been disreputable and wicked, as
you say. He always was. I remember the confounded
blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat and
hoodwink poor George. Wasn't there a scandal about their
separation? I think I heard something," cried out Major
Dobbin, who did not care much about gossip, and whom
Jos tried in vain to convince that Mrs. Becky was in all
respects a most injured and virtuous female.
"Well, well; let's ask Mrs. George," said that archdiplomatist
of a Major. "Only let us go and consult her.
I suppose you will allow that she is a good judge at any
rate, and knows what is right in such matters."
"Hm! Emmy is very well," said Jos, who did not
happen to be in love with his sister.
"Very well? By Gad, sir, she's the finest lady I ever
met in my life," bounced out the Major. "I say at once,
let us go and ask her if this woman ought to be visited
or not--I will be content with her verdict." Now this
odious, artful rogue of a Major was thinking in his own
mind that he was sure of his case. Emmy, he remembered,
was at one time cruelly and deservedly jealous of
Rebecca, never mentioned her name but with a shrinking
and terror--a jealous woman never forgives, thought
Dobbin: and so the pair went across the street to Mrs.
George's house, where she was contentedly warbling at
a music lesson with Madame Strumpff.
When that lady took her leave, Jos opened the business
with his usual pomp of words. "Amelia, my dear,"
said he, "I have just had the most extraordinary--yes--
God bless my soul! the most extraordinary adventure--
an old friend--yes, a most interesting old friend of
yours, and I may say in old times, has just arrived here,
and I should like you to see her."
"Her!" said Amelia, "who is it? Major Dobbin, if you
please not to break my scissors." The Major was twirling
them round by the little chain from which they sometimes
hung to their lady's waist, and was thereby endangering
his own eye.
It is a woman whom I dislike very much," said the
Major, doggedly, "and whom you have no cause to love."
"It is Rebecca, I'm sure it is Rebecca," Amelia said,
blushing and being very much agitated.
"You are right; you always are," Dobbin answered.
Brussels, Waterloo, old, old times, griefs, pangs,
remembrances, rushed back into Amelia's gentle
heart and caused a cruel agitation there.
"Don't let me see her," Emmy continued. "I couldn't
see her."
"I told you so," Dobbin said to Jos.
"She is very unhappy, and--and that sort of thing,"
Jos urged. "She is very poor and unprotected, and has
been ill--exceedingly ill--and that scoundrel of a
husband has deserted her."
"Ah!" said Amelia
"She hasn't a friend in the world," Jos went on, not
undexterously, "and she said she thought she might trust in
you. She's so miserable, Emmy. She has been almost mad
with grief. Her story quite affected me--'pon my word
and honour, it did--never was such a cruel persecution
borne so angelically, I may say. Her family has been
most cruel to her."
"Poor creature!" Amelia said.
"And if she can get no friend, she says she thinks she'll
die," Jos proceeded in a low tremulous voice. "God bless
my soul! do you know that she tried to kill herself? She
carries laudanum with her--I saw the bottle in her room
--such a miserable little room--at a third-rate house,
the Elephant, up in the roof at the top of all. I went
there."
This did not seem to affect Emmy. She even smiled a
little. Perhaps she figured Jos to herself panting up the
stair.
"She's beside herself with grief," he resumed. "The
agonies that woman has endured are quite frightful to
hear of. She had a little boy, of the same age as Georgy."
"Yes, yes, I think I remember," Emmy remarked.
"Well?"
"The most beautiful child ever seen," Jos said, who
was very fat, and easily moved, and had been touched by
the story Becky told; "a perfect angel, who adored his
mother. The ruffians tore him shrieking out of her arms,
and have never allowed him to see her."
"Dear Joseph," Emmy cried out, starting up at once,
"let us go and see her this minute." And she ran into her
adjoining bedchamber, tied on her bonnet in a flutter,
came out with her shawl on her arm, and ordered
Dobbin to follow.
He went and put her shawl--it was a white cashmere,
consigned to her by the Major himself from India--over
her shoulders. He saw there was nothing for it but to
obey, and she put her hand into his arm, and they went
away.
"It is number 92, up four pair of stairs," Jos said,
perhaps not very willing to ascend the steps again; but he
placed himself in the window of his drawing-room, which
commands the place on which the Elephant stands, and
saw the pair marching through the market.
It was as well that Becky saw them too from her garret,
for she and the two students were chattering and laughing
there; they had been joking about the appearance of
Becky's grandpapa--whose arrival and departure they
had witnessed--but she had time to dismiss them, and
have her little room clear before the landlord of the
Elephant, who knew that Mrs. Osborne was a great favourite
at the Serene Court, and respected her accordingly, led
the way up the stairs to the roof story, encouraging
Miladi and the Herr Major as they achieved the ascent.
"Gracious lady, gracious lady!" said the landlord,
knocking at Becky's door; he had called her Madame the
day before, and was by no means courteous to her.
"Who is it?" Becky said, putting out her head, and she
gave a little scream. There stood Emmy in a tremble,
and Dobbin, the tall Major, with his cane.
He stood still watching, and very much interested at
the scene; but Emmy sprang forward with open arms
towards Rebecca, and forgave her at that moment, and
embraced her and kissed her with all her heart. Ah, poor
wretch, when was your lip pressed before by such pure
kisses?
CHAPTER LXVI
Amantium Irae
Frankness and kindness like Amelia's were likely to
touch even such a hardened little reprobate as Becky. She
returned Emmy's caresses and kind speeches with
something very like gratitude, and an emotion which, if it was
not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine. That was
a lucky stroke of hers about the child "torn from her
arms shrieking." It was by that harrowing misfortune
that Becky had won her friend back, and it was one of the
very first points, we may be certain, upon which our poor
simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found
acquaintance.
"And so they took your darling child from you?" our
simpleton cried out. "Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering
friend, I know what it is to lose a boy, and to feel
for those who have lost one. But please Heaven yours
will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence
has brought me back mine."
"The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful,"
Becky owned, not perhaps without a twinge of conscience.
It jarred upon her to be obliged to commence
instantly to tell lies in reply to so much confidence and
simplicity. But that is the misfortune of beginning with
this kind of forgery. When one fib becomes due as it
were, you must forge another to take up the old
acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation
inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases
every day.
"My agonies," Becky continued, "were terrible (I hope
she won't sit down on the bottle) when they took him
away from me; I thought I should die; but I fortunately
had a brain fever, during which my doctor gave me up,
and--and I recovered, and--and here I am, poor and
friendless."
"How old is he?" Emmy asked.
"Eleven," said Becky.
"Eleven!" cried the other. "Why, he was born the same
year with Georgy, who is--"
"I know, I know," Becky cried out, who had in fact
quite forgotten all about little Rawdon's age. "Grief has
made me forget so many things, dearest Amelia. I am
very much changed: half-wild sometimes. He was eleven
when they took him away from me. Bless his sweet
face; I have never seen it again."
"Was he fair or dark?" went on that absurd little
Emmy. "Show me his hair."
Becky almost laughed at her simplicity. "Not to-day,
love--some other time, when my trunks arrive from
Leipzig, whence I came to this place--and a little drawing
of him, which I made in happy days."
"Poor Becky, poor Becky!" said Emmy. "How thankful,
how thankful I ought to be"; (though I doubt whether
that practice of piety inculcated upon us by our
womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful because
we are better off than somebody else, be a very rational
religious exercise) and then she began to think, as usual,
how her son was the handsomest, the best, and the
cleverest boy in the whole world.
"You will see my Georgy," was the best thing Emmy
could think of to console Becky. If anything could make
her comfortable that would.
And so the two women continued talking for an hour
or more, during which Becky had the opportunity of
giving her new friend a full and complete version of her
private history. She showed how her marriage with
Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with
feelings of the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law
(an artful woman) had poisoned her husband's mind
against her; how he had formed odious connections,
which had estranged his affections from her: how she had
borne everything--poverty, neglect, coldness from the
being whom she most loved--and all for the sake of her
child; how, finally, and by the most flagrant outrage, she
had been driven into demanding a separation from her
husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that she
should sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might
procure advancement through the means of a very great and
powerful but unprincipled man--the Marquis of Steyne,
indeed. The atrocious monster!
This part of her eventful history Becky gave with the
utmost feminine delicacy and the most indignant virtue.
Forced to fly her husband's roof by this insult, the coward
had pursued his revenge by taking her child from her.
And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor,
unprotected, friendless, and wretched.
Emmy received this story, which was told at some
length, as those persons who are acquainted with her
character may imagine that she would. She quivered
with indignation at the account of the conduct of the
miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne. Her eyes
made notes of admiration for every one of the sentences
in which Becky described the persecutions of her
aristocratic relatives and the falling away of her husband.
(Becky did not abuse him. She spoke rather in sorrow
than in anger. She had loved him only too fondly: and
was he not the father of her boy?) And as for the separation
scene from the child, while Becky was reciting it,
Emmy retired altogether behind her pocket-handkerchief,
so that the consummate little tragedian must have been
charmed to see the effect which her performance
produced on her audience.
Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation,
Amelia's constant escort, the Major (who, of course,
did not wish to interrupt their conference, and found
himself rather tired of creaking about the narrow stair
passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat)
descended to the ground-floor of the house and into the
great room common to all the frequenters of the Elephant,
out of which the stair led. This apartment is always
in a fume of smoke and liberally sprinkled with beer. On
a dirty table stand scores of corresponding brass
candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys
hang up in rows.over the candles. Emmy had passed
blushing through the room anon, where all sorts of
people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellers and Danubian
linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruiting
themselves with butterbrods and meat; idlers, playing
cards or dominoes on the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers
refreshing during the cessation of their performances--
in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of a German inn
in fair time. The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer,
as a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and
amused himself with that pernicious vegetable and a
newspaper until his charge should come down to claim him.
Max and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on
one side, their spurs jingling, their pipes splendid with
coats of arms and full-blown tassels, and they hung up the
key of No. 90 on the board and called for the ration of
butterbrod and beer. The pair sat down by the Major and
fell into a conversation of which he could not help hearing
somewhat. It was mainly about "Fuchs" and "Philister,"
and duels and drinking-bouts at the neighbouring
University of Schoppenhausen, from which renowned
seat of learning they had just come in the Eilwagen,
with Becky, as it appeared, by their side, and in order
to be present at the bridal fetes at Pumpernickel.
"The title Englanderinn seems to be en bays de
gonnoisance," said Max, who knew the French language,
to Fritz, his comrade. "After the fat grandfather went
away, there came a pretty little compatriot. I heard them
chattering and whimpering together in the little woman's
chamber."
"We must take the tickets for her concert," Fritz said.
"Hast thou any money, Max?"
"Bah," said the other, "the concert is a concert in
nubibus. Hans said that she advertised one at Leipzig, and
the Burschen took many tickets. But she went off without
singing. She said in the coach yesterday that her pianist
had fallen ill at Dresden. She cannot sing, it is my belief:
her voice is as cracked as thine, O thou beer-soaking
Renowner!"
"It is cracked; I hear her trying out of her window a
schrecklich. English ballad, called 'De Rose upon de
Balgony.' "
"Saufen and singen go not together," observed Fritz
with the red nose, who evidently preferred the former
amusement. "No, thou shalt take none of her tickets.
She won money at the trente and quarante last night. I
saw her: she made a little English boy play for her. We
will spend thy money there or at the theatre, or we will
treat her to French wine or Cognac in the Aurelius
Garden, but the tickets we will not buy. What sayest
thou? Yet, another mug of beer?" and one and another
successively having buried their blond whiskers in the
mawkish draught, curled them and swaggered off into
the fair.
The Major, who had seen the key of No. 90 put up
on its hook and had heard the conversation of the two
young University bloods, was not at a loss to
understand that their talk related to Becky. "The little devil
is at her old tricks," he thought, and he smiled as he
recalled old days, when he had witnessed the desperate
flirtation with Jos and the ludicrous end of that adventure.
He and George had often laughed over it subsequently,
and until a few weeks after George's marriage,
when he also was caught in the little Circe's toils, and
had an understanding with her which his comrade
certainly suspected, but preferred to ignore. William was
too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom that
disgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with
remorse on his mind, George had alluded to it. It was on
the morning of Waterloo, as the young men stood
together in front of their line, surveying the black masses of
Frenchmen who crowned the opposite heights, and as the
rain was coming down, "I have been mixing in a foolish
intrigue with a woman," George said. "I am glad we were
marched away. If I drop, I hope Emmy will never know
of that business. I wish to God it had never been
begun!" And William was pleased to think, and had more
than once soothed poor George's widow with the
narrative, that Osborne, after quitting his wife, and after
the action of Quatre Bras, on the first day, spoke gravely
and affectionately to his comrade of his father and his
wife. On these facts, too, William had insisted very
strongly in his conversations with the elder Osborne,
and had thus been the means of reconciling the old
gentleman to his son's memory, just at the close of the
elder man's life.
"And so this devil is still going on with her intrigues,"
thought William. "I wish she were a hundred miles from
here. She brings mischief wherever she goes." And he
was pursuing these forebodings and this uncomfortable
train of thought, with his head between his hands, and
the Pumpernickel Gazette of last week unread under his
nose, when somebody tapped his shoulder with a parasol,
and he looked up and saw Mrs. Amelia.
This woman had a way of tyrannizing over Major
Dobbin (for the weakest of all people will domineer
over somebody), and she ordered him about, and patted
him, and made him fetch and carry just as if he was a
great Newfoundland dog. He liked, so to speak, to jump
into the water if she said "High, Dobbin!" and to trot
behind her with her reticule in his mouth. This history
has been written to very little purpose if the reader has
not perceived that the Major was a spooney.
"Why did you not wait for me, sir, to escort me
downstairs?" she said, giving a little toss of her head
and a most sarcastic curtsey.
"I couldn't stand up in the passage," he answered with
a comical deprecatory look; and, delighted to give her his
arm and to take her out of the horrid smoky place, he
would have walked off without even so much as
remembering the waiter, had not the young fellow run after
him and stopped him on the threshold of the Elephant
to make him pay for the beer which he had not
consumed. Emmy laughed: she called him a naughty man,
who wanted to run away in debt, and, in fact, made
some jokes suitable to the occasion and the small-beer.
She was in high spirits and good humour, and tripped
across the market-place very briskly. She wanted to see
Jos that instant. The Major laughed at the impetuous
affection Mrs. Amelia exhibited; for, in truth, it was not
very often that she wanted her brother "that instant."
They found the civilian in his saloon on the first-floor;
he had been pacing the room, and biting his nails, and
looking over the market-place towards the Elephant a
hundred times at least during the past hour whilst Emmy
was closeted with her friend in the garret and the Major
was beating the tattoo on the sloppy tables of the public
room below, and he was, on his side too, very anxious to
see Mrs. Osborne.
"Well?" said he.
"The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!"
Emmy said.
"God bless my soul, yes," Jos said, wagging his head,
so that his cheeks quivered like jellies.
"She may have Payne's room, who can go upstairs,"
Emmy continued. Payne was a staid English maid and
personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, to whom the
courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy
used to "lark" dreadfully with accounts of German
robbers and ghosts. She passed her time chiefly in grumbling,
in ordering about her mistress, and in stating her intention
to return the next morning to her native village of
Clapham. "She may have Payne's room," Emmy said.
"Why, you don't mean to say you are going to have
that woman into the house?" bounced out the Major,
jumping up.
"Of course we are," said Amelia in the most innocent
way in the world. "Don't be angry and break the
furniture, Major Dobbin. Of course we are going to have her
here."
"Of course, my dear," Jos said.
"The poor creature, after all her sufferings," Emmy
continued; "her horrid banker broken and run away; her
husband--wicked wretch--having deserted her and taken
her child away from her" (here she doubled her two
little fists and held them in a most menacing attitude
before her, so that the Major was charmed to see
such a dauntless virago) "the poor dear thing! quite alone
and absolutely forced to give lessons in singing to get her
bread--and not have her here!"
"Take lessons, my dear Mrs. George," cried the Major,
"but don't have her in the house. I implore you don't."
"Pooh," said Jos.
"You who are always good and kind--always used to
be at any rate--I'm astonished at you, Major William,"
Amelia cried. "Why, what is the moment to help her but
when she is so miserable? Now is the time to be of
service to her. The oldest friend I ever had, and not--"
"She was not always your friend, Amelia," the Major
said, for he was quite angry. This allusion was too much
for Emmy, who, looking the Major almost fiercely in the
face, said, "For shame, Major Dobbin!" and after having
fired this shot, she walked out of the room with a most
majestic air and shut her own door briskly on herself
and her outraged dignity.
"To allude to THAT!" she said, when the door was
closed. "Oh, it was cruel of him to remind me of it," and
she looked up at George's picture, which hung there as
usual, with the portrait of the boy underneath. "It was
cruel of him. If I had forgiven it, ought he to have
spoken? No. And it is from his own lips that I know how
wicked and groundless my jealousy was; and that you
were pure--oh, yes, you were pure, my saint in
heaven!"
She paced the room, trembling and indignant. She went
and leaned on the chest of drawers over which the picture
hung, and gazed and gazed at it. Its eyes seemed to look
down on her with a reproach that deepened as she looked.
The early dear, dear memories of that brief prime of love
rushed back upon her. The wound which years had
scarcely cicatrized bled afresh, and oh, how bitterly! She
could not bear the reproaches of the husband there
before her. It couldn't be. Never, never.
Poor Dobbin; poor old William! That unlucky word
had undone the work of many a year--the long laborious
edifice of a life of love and constancy--raised too upon
what secret and hidden foundations, wherein lay buried
passions, uncounted struggles, unknown sacrifices--a
little word was spoken, and down fell the fair palace of
hope--one word, and away flew the bird which he had
been trying all his life to lure!
William, though he saw by Amelia's looks that a great
crisis had come, nevertheless continued to implore Sedley,
in the most energetic terms, to beware of Rebecca; and he
eagerly, almost frantically, adjured Jos not to receive
her. He besought Mr. Sedley to inquire at least regarding
her; told him how he had heard that she was in the
company of gamblers and people of ill repute; pointed
out what evil she had done in former days, how she
and Crawley had misled poor George into ruin, how she
was now parted from her husband, by her own confession,
and, perhaps, for good reason. What a dangerous
companion she would be for his sister, who knew nothing
of the affairs of the world! William implored Jos, with
all the eloquence which he could bring to bear, and a
great deal more energy than this quiet gentleman was
ordinarily in the habit of showing, to keep Rebecca out
of his household.
Had he been less violent, or more dexterous, he might
have succeeded in his supplications to Jos; but the civilian
was not a little jealous of the airs of superiority
which the Major constantly exhibited towards him, as
he fancied (indeed, he had imparted his opinions to Mr.
Kirsch, the courier, whose bills Major Dobbin checked on
this journey, and who sided with his master), and he
began a blustering speech about his competency to
defend his own honour, his desire not to have his affairs
meddled with, his intention, in fine, to rebel against the
Major, when the colloquy--rather a long and stormy one
--was put an end to in the simplest way possible, namely,
by the arrival of Mrs. Becky, with a porter from
the Elephant Hotel in charge of her very meagre baggage.
She greeted her host with affectionate respect and
made a shrinking, but amicable salutation to Major
Dobbin, who, as her instinct assured her at once, was
her enemy, and had been speaking against her; and the
bustle and clatter consequent upon her arrival brought
Amelia out of her room. Emmy went up and embraced
her guest with the greatest warmth, and took no notice
of the Major, except to fling him an angry look--the
most unjust and scornful glance that had perhaps ever
appeared in that poor little woman's face since she was
born. But she had private reasons of her own, and was
bent upon being angry with him. And Dobbin, indignant
at the injustice, not at the defeat, went off, making her a
bow quite as haughty as the killing curtsey with which
the little woman chose to bid him farewell.
He being gone, Emmy was particularly lively and
affectionate to Rebecca, and bustled about the apartments
and installed her guest in her room with an eagerness and
activity seldom exhibited by our placid little friend. But
when an act of injustice is to be done, especially by
weak people, it is best that it should be done quickly,
and Emmy thought she was displaying a great deal of
firmness and proper feeling and veneration for the late
Captain Osborne in her present behaviour.
Georgy came in from the fetes for dinner-time and
found four covers laid as usual; but one of the places
was occupied by a lady, instead of by Major Dobbin.
"Hullo! where's Dob?" the young gentleman asked with
his usual simplicity of language. "Major Dobbin is dining
out, I suppose," his mother said, and, drawing the boy
to her, kissed him a great deal, and put his hair off his
forehead, and introduced him to Mrs. Crawley. "This
is my boy, Rebecca," Mrs. Osborne said--as much as to
say--can the world produce anything like that? Becky
looked at him with rapture and pressed his hand fondly.
"Dear boy!" she said--"he is just like my--" Emotion
choked her further utterance, but Amelia understood, as
well as if she had spoken, that Becky was thinking of her
own blessed child. However, the company of her friend
consoled Mrs. Crawley, and she ate a very good dinner.
During the repast, she had occasion to speak several
times, when Georgy eyed her and listened to her. At the
desert Emmy was gone out to superintend further
domestic arrangements; Jos was in his great chair dozing
over Galignani; Georgy and the new arrival sat close to
each other--he had continued to look at her knowingly
more than once, and at last he laid down the
nutcrackers.
"I say," said Georgy.
"What do you say?" Becky said, laughing.
"You're the lady I saw in the mask at the Rouge et
Noir."
"Hush! you little sly creature," Becky said, taking
up his hand and kissing it. "Your uncle was there too,
and Mamma mustn't know."
"Oh, no--not by no means," answered the little fellow.
"You see we are quite good friends already," Becky
said to Emmy, who now re-entered; and it must be owned
that Mrs. Osborne had introduced a most judicious and
amiable companion into her house.
William, in a state of great indignation, though still
unaware of all the treason that was in store for him, walked
about the town wildly until he fell upon the Secretary of
Legation, Tapeworm, who invited him to dinner. As they
were discussing that meal, he took occasion to ask the
Secretary whether he knew anything about a certain
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who had, he believed, made
some noise in London; and then Tapeworm, who of
course knew all the London gossip, and was besides a
relative of Lady Gaunt, poured out into the astonished
Major's ears such a history about Becky and her husband
as astonished the querist, and supplied all the points of
this narrative, for it was at that very table years ago
that the present writer had the pleasure of hearing the
tale. Tufto, Steyne, the Crawleys, and their history--
everything connected with Becky and her previous life
passed under the record of the bitter diplomatist. He knew
everything and a great deal besides, about all the world
--in a word, he made the most astounding revelations to
the simple-hearted Major. When Dobbin said that Mrs.
Osborne and Mr. Sedley had taken her into their house,
Tapeworm burst into a peal of laughter which shocked
the Major, and asked if they had not better send into the
prison and take in one or two of the gentlemen in shaved
heads and yellow jackets who swept the streets of
Pumpernickel, chained in pairs, to board and lodge, and act
as tutor to that little scapegrace Georgy.
This information astonished and horrified the Major not
a little. It had been agreed in the morning (before meeting
with Rebecca) that Amelia should go to the Court
ball that night. There would be the place where he should
tell her. The Major went home, and dressed himself in his
uniform, and repaired to Court, in hopes to see Mrs.
Osborne. She never came. When he returned to his
lodgings all the lights in the Sedley tenement were put
out. He could not see her till the morning. I don't know
what sort of a night's rest he had with this frightful
secret in bed with him.
At the earliest convenient hour in the morning he sent
his servant across the way with a note, saying that he
wished very particularly to speak with her. A message
came back to say that Mrs. Osborne was exceedingly
unwell and was keeping her room.
She, too, had been awake all that night. She had been
thinking of a thing which had agitated her mind a
hundred times before. A hundred times on the point of yielding,
she had shrunk back from a sacrifice which she felt
was too much for her. She couldn't, in spite of his love
and constancy and her own acknowledged regard,
respect, and gratitude. What are benefits, what is
constancy, or merit? One curl of a girl's ringlet, one hair of a
whisker, will turn the scale against them all in a minute.
They did not weigh with Emmy more than with other
women. She had tried them; wanted to make them pass;
could not; and the pitiless little woman had found a
pretext, and determined to be free.
When at length, in the afternoon, the Major gained
admission to Amelia, instead of the cordial and
affectionate greeting, to which he had been accustomed now
for many a long day, he received the salutation of a
curtsey, and of a little gloved hand, retracted the moment
after it was accorded to him.
Rebecca, too, was in the room, and advanced to meet
him with a smile and an extended hand. Dobbin drew
back rather confusedly, "I--I beg your pardon, m'am,"
he said; "but I am bound to tell you that it is not as your
friend that I am come here now."
"Pooh! damn; don't let us have this sort of thing!"
Jos cried out, alarmed, and anxious to get rid of a scene.
"I wonder what Major Dobbin has to say against
Rebecca?" Amelia said in a low, clear voice with a slight
quiver in it, and a very determined look about the eyes.
"I will not have this sort of thing in my house," Jos
again interposed. "I say I will not have it; and Dobbin, I
beg, sir, you'll stop it." And he looked round, trembling
and turning very red, and gave a great puff, and
made for his door.
"Dear friend!" Rebecca said with angelic sweetness,
"do hear what Major Dobbin has to say against me."
"I will not hear it, I say," squeaked out Jos at the
top of his voice, and, gathering up his dressing-gown, he
was gone.
"We are only two women," Amelia said. "You can
speak now, sir."
"This manner towards me is one which scarcely
becomes you, Amelia," the Major answered haughtily; "nor
I believe am I guilty of habitual harshness to women. It
is not a pleasure to me to do the duty which I am come
to do."
"Pray proceed with it quickly, if you please, Major
Dobbin," said Amelia, who was more and more in a pet. The
expression of Dobbin's face, as she spoke in this
imperious manner, was not pleasant.
"I came to say--and as you stay, Mrs. Crawley, I must
say it in your presence--that I think you--you ought
not to form a member of the family of my friends. A
lady who is separated from her husband, who travels not
under her own name, who frequents public gamingtables--"
"It was to the ball I went," cried out Becky.
"--is not a fit companion for Mrs. Osborne and her
son," Dobbin went on: "and I may add that there are
people here who know you, and who profess to know
that regarding your conduct about which I don't even
wish to speak before--before Mrs. Osborne."
"Yours is a very modest and convenient sort of calumny,
Major Dobbin," Rebecca said. "You leave me under
the weight of an accusation which, after all, is unsaid.
What is it? Is it unfaithfulness to my husband? I scorn it
and defy anybody to prove it--I defy you, I say. My
honour is as untouched as that of the bitterest enemy
who ever maligned me. Is it of being poor, forsaken,
wretched, that you accuse me? Yes, I am guilty of those
faults, and punished for them every day. Let me go,
Emmy. It is only to suppose that I have not met you,
and I am no worse to-day than I was yesterday. It is
only to suppose that the night is over and the poor
wanderer is on her way. Don't you remember the song
we used to sing in old, dear old days? I have been
wandering ever since then--a poor castaway, scorned for
being miserable, and insulted because I am alone. Let me
go: my stay here interferes with the plans of this
gentleman."
"Indeed it does, madam," said the Major. "If I have
any authority in this house--"
"Authority, none!" broke out Amelia "Rebecca,
you stay with me. I won't desert you because you have
been persecuted, or insult you because--because Major
Dobbin chooses to do so. Come away, dear." And the
two women made towards the door.
William opened it. As they were going out, however, he
took Amelia's hand and said--"Will you stay a moment
and speak to me?"
"He wishes to speak to you away from me," said
Becky, looking like a martyr. Amelia gripped her hand in
reply.
"Upon my honour it is not about you that I am going
to speak," Dobbin said. "Come back, Amelia," and she
came. Dobbin bowed to Mrs. Crawley, as he shut the
door upon her. Amelia looked at him, leaning against the
glass: her face and her lips were quite white.
"I was confused when I spoke just now," the Major
said after a pause, "and I misused the word authority."
"You did," said Amelia with her teeth chattering.
"At least I have claims to be heard," Dobbin
continued.
"It is generous to remind me of our obligations to you,"
the woman answered.
"The claims I mean are those left me by George's
father," William said.
"Yes, and you insulted his memory. You did yesterday.
You know you did. And I will never forgive you. Never!"
said Amelia. She shot out each little sentence in a tremor
of anger and emotion.
"You don't mean that, Amelia?" William said sadly.
"You don't mean that these words, uttered in a hurried
moment, are to weigh against a whole life's devotion? I
think that George's memory has not been injured by the
way in which I have dealt with it, and if we are come to
bandying reproaches, I at least merit none from his
widow and the mother of his son. Reflect, afterwards when
--when you are at leisure, and your conscience will
withdraw this accusation. It does even now." Amelia held
down her head.
"It is not that speech of yesterday," he continued,
"which moves you. That is but the pretext, Amelia, or I
have loved you and watched you for fifteen years in vain.
Have I not learned in that time to read all your feelings
and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart
is capable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection and
cherish a fancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as
mine deserves to mate with, and such as I would have
won from a woman more generous than you. No, you
are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you.
I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was
not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond
fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour
against your little feeble remnant of love. I will bargain
no more: I withdraw. I find no fault with you. You are
very good-natured, and have done your best, but you
couldn't--you couldn't reach up to the height of the
attachment which I bore you, and which a loftier soul than
yours might have been proud to share. Good-bye, Amelia!
I have watched your struggle. Let it end. We are both
weary of it."
Amelia stood scared and silent as William thus
suddenly broke the chain by which she held him and
declared his independence and superiority. He had placed
himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman
had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn't
wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She
wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her
all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.
William's sally had quite broken and cast her down.
HER assault was long since over and beaten back.
"Am I to understand then, that you are going--away,
William?" she said.
He gave a sad laugh. "I went once before," he said,
"and came back after twelve years. We were young then,
Amelia. Good-bye. I have spent enough of my life at this
play."
Whilst they had been talking, the door into Mrs. Osborne's
room had opened ever so little; indeed, Becky
had kept a hold of the handle and had turned it on the
instant when Dobbin quitted it, and she heard every word
of the conversation that had passed between these two.
"What a noble heart that man has," she thought, and
how shamefully that woman plays with it!" She admired
Dobbin; she bore him no rancour for the part he had
taken against her. It was an open move in the game,
and played fairly. "Ah!" she thought, "if I could have had
such a husband as that--a man with a heart and brains
too! I would not have minded his large feet"; and running
into her room, she absolutely bethought herself of
something, and wrote him a note, beseeching him to stop for a
few days--not to think of going--and that she could
serve him with A.
The parting was over. Once more poor William walked
to the door and was gone; and the little widow, the
author of all this work, had her will, and had won her
victory, and was left to enjoy it as she best might. Let
the ladies envy her triumph.
At the romantic hour of dinner, Mr. Georgy made his
appearance and again remarked the absence of "Old
Dob." The meal was eaten in silence by the party. Jos's
appetite not being diminished, but Emmy taking
nothing at all.
After the meal, Georgy was lolling in the cushions of
the old window, a large window, with three sides of glass
abutting from the gable, and commanding on one side
the market-place, where the Elephant is, his mother being
busy hard by, when he remarked symptoms of
movement at the Major's house on the other side of the street.
"Hullo!" said he, "there's Dob's trap--they are bringing
it out of the court-yard." The "trap" in question
was a carriage which the Major had bought for six pounds
sterling, and about which they used to rally him a good
deal.
Emmy gave a little start, but said nothing.
"Hullo!" Georgy continued, "there's Francis coming out
with the portmanteaus, and Kunz, the one-eyed
postilion, coming down the market with three schimmels.
Look at his boots and yellow jacket--ain't he a rum
one? Why--they're putting the horses to Dob's carriage.
Is he going anywhere?"
"Yes," said Emmy, "he is going on a journey."
"Going on a journey; and when is he coming back?"
"He is--not coming back," answered Emmy.
"Not coming back!" cried out Georgy, jumping up.
"Stay here, sir," roared out Jos. "Stay, Georgy," said his
mother with a very sad face. The boy stopped, kicked
about the room, jumped up and down from the windowseat
with his knees, and showed every symptom of
uneasiness and curiosity.
The horses were put to. The baggage was strapped
on. Francis came out with his master's sword, cane,
and umbrella tied up together, and laid them in the
well, and his desk and old tin cocked-hat case, which
he placed under the seat. Francis brought out the
stained old blue cloak lined with red camlet, which had
wrapped the owner up any time these fifteen years, and
had manchen Sturm erlebt, as a favourite song of those
days said. It had been new for the campaign of Waterloo
and had covered George and William after the night
of Quatre Bras.
Old Burcke, the landlord of the lodgings, came out,
then Francis, with more packages--final packages--then
Major William--Burcke wanted to kiss him. The Major
was adored by all people with whom he had to do. It
was with difficulty he could escape from this
demonstration of attachment.
"By Jove, I will go!" screamed out George. "Give him
this," said Becky, quite interested, and put a paper into
the boy's hand. He had rushed down the stairs and flung
across the street in a minute--the yellow postilion was
cracking his whip gently.
William had got into the carriage, released from the
embraces of his landlord. George bounded in afterwards,
and flung his arms round the Major's neck (as they saw
from the window), and began asking him multiplied
questions. Then he felt in his waistcoat pocket and gave him
a note. William seized at it rather eagerly, he opened it
trembling, but instantly his countenance changed, and
he tore the paper in two and dropped it out of the
carriage. He kissed Georgy on the head, and the boy got
out, doubling his fists into his eyes, and with the aid of
Francis. He lingered with his hand on the panel. Fort,
Schwager! The yellow postilion cracked his whip
prodigiously, up sprang Francis to the box, away went the
schimmels, and Dobbin with his head on his breast. He
never looked up as they passed under Amelia's window,
and Georgy, left alone in the street, burst out crying
in the face of all the crowd.
Emmy's maid heard him howling again during the
night and brought him some preserved apricots to
console him. She mingled her lamentations with his. All the
poor, all the humble, all honest folks, all good men who
knew him, loved that kind-hearted and simple gentleman.
As for Emmy, had she not done her duty? She had her
picture of George for a consolation.
CHAPTER LXVII
Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths
Whatever Becky's private plan might be by which
Dobbin's true love was to be crowned with success, the
little woman thought that the secret might keep, and
indeed, being by no means so much interested about
anybody's welfare as about her own, she had a great
number of things pertaining to herself to consider, and
which concerned her a great deal more than Major
Dobbin's happiness in this life.
She found herself suddenly and unexpectedly in snug
comfortable quarters, surrounded by friends, kindness,
and good-natured simple people such as she had not met
with for many a long day; and, wanderer as she was by
force and inclination, there were moments when rest
was pleasant to her. As the most hardened Arab that
ever careered across the desert over the hump of a
dromedary likes to repose sometimes under the datetrees
by the water, or to come into the cities, walk into
the bazaars, refresh himself in the baths, and say his
prayers in the mosques, before he goes out again
marauding, so Jos's tents and pilau were pleasant to this
little Ishmaelite. She picketed her steed, hung up her
weapons, and warmed herself comfortably by his fire. The
halt in that roving, restless life was inexpressibly soothing
and pleasant to her.
So, pleased herself, she tried with all her might to
please everybody; and we know that she was eminent
and successful as a practitioner in the art of giving
pleasure. As for Jos, even in that little interview in the
garret at the Elephant Inn, she had found means to win
back a great deal of his good-will. In the course of a
week, the civilian was her sworn slave and frantic
admirer. He didn't go to sleep after dinner, as his
custom was in the much less lively society of Amelia. He
drove out with Becky in his open carriage. He asked little
parties and invented festivities to do her honour.
Tapeworm, the Charge d'Affaires, who had abused her
so cruelly, came to dine with Jos, and then came every
day to pay his respects to Becky. Poor Emmy, who was
never very talkative, and more glum and silent than ever
after Dobbin's departure, was quite forgotten when this
superior genius made her appearance. The French
Minister was as much charmed with her as his English rival.
The German ladies, never particularly squeamish as
regards morals, especially in English people, were delighted
with the cleverness and wit of Mrs. Osborne's charming
friend, and though she did not ask to go to Court,
yet the most august and Transparent Personages there
heard of her fascinations and were quite curious to know
her. When it became known that she was noble, of an
ancient English family, that her husband was a Colonel
of the Guard, Excellenz and Governor of an island, only
separated from his lady by one of those trifling differences
which are of little account in a country where
Werther is still read and the Wahlverwandtschaften of
Goethe is considered an edifying moral book, nobody
thought of refusing to receive her in the very highest
society of the little Duchy; and the ladies were even more
ready to call her du and to swear eternal friendship for
her than they had been to bestow the same inestimable
benefits upon Amelia. Love and Liberty are interpreted
by those simple Germans in a way which honest folks in
Yorkshire and Somersetshire little understand, and a lady
might, in some philosophic and civilized towns, be
divorced ever so many times from her respective husbands
and keep her character in society. Jos's house never was
so pleasant since he had a house of his own as Rebecca
caused it to be. She sang, she played, she laughed, she
talked in two or three languages, she brought everybody
to the house, and she made Jos believe that it was his
own great social talents and wit which gathered the
society of the place round about him.
As for Emmy, who found herself not in the least
mistress of her own house, except when the bills were
to be paid, Becky soon discovered the way to soothe and
please her. She talked to her perpetually about Major
Dobbin sent about his business, and made no scruple
of declaring her admiration for that excellent, highminded
gentleman, and of telling Emmy that she had
behaved most cruelly regarding him. Emmy defended her
conduct and showed that it was dictated only by the
purest religious principles; that a woman once, &c., and to
such an angel as him whom she had had the good
fortune to marry, was married forever; but she had no
objection to hear the Major praised as much as ever
Becky chose to praise him, and indeed, brought the
conversation round to the Dobbin subject a score of times
every day.
Means were easily found to win the favour of Georgy
and the servants. Amelia's maid, it has been said, was
heart and soul in favour of the generous Major. Having at
first disliked Becky for being the means of dismissing
him from the presence of her mistress, she was reconciled
to Mrs. Crawley subsequently, because the latter
became William's most ardent admirer and champion. And
in those nightly conclaves in which the two ladies
indulged after their parties, and while Miss Payne was
"brushing their 'airs," as she called the yellow locks of
the one and the soft brown tresses of the other, this
girl always put in her word for that dear good gentleman
Major Dobbin. Her advocacy did not make Amelia
angry any more than Rebecca's admiration of him. She
made George write to him constantly and persisted in
sending Mamma's kind love in a postscript. And as she
looked at her husband's portrait of nights, it no longer
reproached her--perhaps she reproached it, now
William was gone.
Emmy was not very happy after her heroic sacrifice.
She was very distraite, nervous, silent, and ill to please.
The family had never known her so peevish. She grew
pale and ill. She used to try to sing certain songs
("Einsam bin ich nicht alleine," was one of them, that tender
love-song of Weber's which~ in old-fashioned days,
young ladies, and when you were scarcely born, showed
that those who lived before you knew too how to love
and to sing) certain songs, I say, to which the Major
was partial; and as she warbled them in the twilight in the
drawing-room, she would break off in the midst of the
song, and walk into her neighbouring apartment, and
there, no doubt, take refuge in the miniature of her
husband.
Some books still subsisted, after Dobbin's departure,
with his name written in them; a German dictionary, for
instance, with "William Dobbin, --th Reg.," in the fly-leaf;
a guide-book with his initials; and one or two other
volumes which belonged to the Major. Emmy cleared these
away and put them on the drawers, where she placed her
work-box, her desk, her Bible, and prayer-book, under
the pictures of the two Georges. And the Major, on going
away, having left his gloves behind him, it is a fact that
Georgy, rummaging his mother's desk some time
afterwards, found the gloves neatly folded up and put away in
what they call the secret-drawers of the desk.
Not caring for society, and moping there a great deal,
Emmy's chief pleasure in the summer evenings was to
take long walks with Georgy (during which Rebecca
was left to the society of Mr. Joseph), and then the
mother and son used to talk about the Major in a way
which even made the boy smile. She told him that she
thought Major William was the best man in all the world
--the gentlest and the kindest, the bravest and the
humblest. Over and over again she told him how they owed
everything which they possessed in the world to that
kind friend's benevolent care of them; how he had
befriended them all through their poverty and misfortunes;
watched over them when nobody cared for them; how all
his comrades admired him though he never spoke of his
own gallant actions; how Georgy's father trusted him
beyond all other men, and had been constantly befriended
by the good William. "Why, when your papa was a little
boy," she said, "he often told me that it was William
who defended him against a tyrant at the school where
they were; and their friendship never ceased from that
day until the last, when your dear father fell."
"Did Dobbin kill the man who killed Papa?" Georgy
said. "I'm sure he did, or he would if he could have
caught him, wouldn't he, Mother? When I'm in the Army,
won't I hate the French?--that's all."
In such colloquies the mother and the child passed a
great deal of their time together. The artless woman had
made a confidant of the boy. He was as much William's
friend as everybody else who knew him well.
By the way, Mrs. Becky, not to be behind hand in
sentiment, had got a miniature too hanging up in her
room, to the surprise and amusement of most people,
and the delight of the original, who was no other than
our friend Jos. On her first coming to favour the Sedleys
with a visit, the little woman, who had arrived with a
remarkably small shabby kit, was perhaps ashamed of the
meanness of her trunks and bandboxes, and often spoke
with great respect about her baggage left behind at
Leipzig, which she must have from that city. When a traveller
talks to you perpetually about the splendour of his
luggage, which he does not happen to have with him, my
son, beware of that traveller! He is, ten to one, an
impostor.
Neither Jos nor Emmy knew this important maxim. It
seemed to them of no consequence whether Becky had a
quantity of very fine clothes in invisible trunks; but
as her present supply was exceedingly shabby, Emmy
supplied her out of her own stores, or took her to the
best milliner in the town and there fitted her out. It was
no more torn collars now, I promise you, and faded silks
trailing off at the shoulder. Becky changed her habits
with her situation in life--the rouge-pot was suspended
--another excitement to which she had accustomed
herself was also put aside, or at least only indulged in in
privacy, as when she was prevailed on by Jos of a
summer evening, Emmy and the boy being absent on their
walks, to take a little spirit-and-water. But if she did not
indulge--the courier did: that rascal Kirsch could not
be kept from the bottle, nor could he tell how much
he took when he applied to it. He was sometimes
surprised himself at the way in which Mr. Sedley's Cognac
diminished. Well, well, this is a painful subject. Becky
did not very likely indulge so much as she used before
she entered a decorous family.
At last the much-bragged-about boxes arrived from
Leipzig; three of them not by any means large or splendid;
nor did Becky appear to take out any sort of dresses
or ornaments from the boxes when they did arrive. But
out of one, which contained a mass of her papers (it
was that very box which Rawdon Crawley had
ransacked in his furious hunt for Becky's concealed money),
she took a picture with great glee, which she pinned up
in her room, and to which she introduced Jos. It was
the portrait of a gentleman in pencil, his face having the
advantage of being painted up in pink. He was riding
on an elephant away from some cocoa-nut trees and a
pagoda: it was an Eastern scene.
"God bless my soul, it is my portrait," Jos cried out.
It was he indeed, blooming in youth and beauty, in a
nankeen jacket of the cut of 1804. It was the old picture
that used to hang up in Russell Square.
"I bought it," said Becky in a voice trembling with
emotion; "I went to see if I could be of any use to my kind
friends. I have never parted with that picture--I never
will."
"Won't you?" Jos cried with a look of unutterable
rapture and satisfaction. "Did you really now value it
for my sake?"
"You know I did, well enough," said Becky; "but
why speak--why think--why look back! It is too late
now!"
That evening's conversation was delicious for Jos.
Emmy only came in to go to bed very tired and unwell.
Jos and his fair guest had a charming tete-a-tete, and
his sister could hear, as she lay awake in her adjoining
chamber, Rebecca singing over to Jos the old songs of
1815. He did not sleep, for a wonder, that night, any
more than Amelia.
It was June, and, by consequence, high season in
London; Jos, who read the incomparable Galignani (the
exile's best friend) through every day, used to favour the
ladies with extracts from his paper during their
breakfast. Every week in this paper there is a full account of
military movements, in which Jos, as a man who had
seen service, was especially interested. On one occasion
he read out--"Arrival of the --th regiment. Gravesend,
June 20.--The Ramchunder, East Indiaman, came into the
river this morning, having on board 14 officers, and 132
rank and file of this gallant corps. They have been
absent from England fourteen years, having been embarked
the year after Waterloo, in which glorious conflict they
took an active part, and having subsequently distinguished
themselves in the Burmese war. The veteran colonel, Sir
Michael O'Dowd, K.C.B., with his lady and sister, landed
here yesterday, with Captains Posky, Stubble, Macraw,
Malony; Lieutenants Smith, Jones, Thompson, F. Thomson;
Ensigns Hicks and Grady; the band on the pier
playing the national anthem, and the crowd loudly cheering
the gallant veterans as they went into Wayte's hotel,
where a sumptuous banquet was provided for the defenders
of Old England. During the repast, which we need not
say was served up in Wayte's best style, the cheering
continued so enthusiastically that Lady O'Dowd and the
Colonel came forward to the balcony and drank the
healths of their fellow-countrymen in a bumper of Wayte's
best claret."
On a second occasion Jos read a brief announcement
--Major Dobbin had joined the --th regiment at Chatham;
and subsequently he promulgated accounts of the
presentations at the Drawing-room of Colonel Sir
Michael O'Dowd, K.C.B., Lady O'Dowd (by Mrs. Malloy
Malony of Ballymalony), and Miss Glorvina O'Dowd (by
Lady O'Dowd). Almost directly after this, Dobbin's name
appeared among the Lieutenant-Colonels: for old Marshal
Tiptoff had died during the passage of the --th from
Madras, and the Sovereign was pleased to advance
Colonel Sir Michael O'Dowd to the rank of Major-General on
his return to England, with an intimation that he should
be Colonel of the distinguished regiment which he had so
long commanded.
Amelia had been made aware of some of these
movements. The correspondence between George and his
guardian had not ceased by any means: William had even
written once or twice to her since his departure, but in a
manner so unconstrainedly cold that the poor woman felt
now in her turn that she had lost her power over him
and that, as he had said, he was free. He had left her,
and she was wretched. The memory of his almost countless
services, and lofty and affectionate regard, now
presented itself to her and rebuked her day and night. She
brooded over those recollections according to her wont,
saw the purity and beauty of the affection with which she
had trifled, and reproached herself for having flung away
such a treasure.
It was gone indeed. William had spent it all out. He
loved her no more, he thought, as he had loved her.
He never could again. That sort of regard, which he had
proffered to her for so many faithful years, can't be flung
down and shattered and mended so as to show no scars.
The little heedless tyrant had so destroyed it. No, William
thought again and again, "It was myself I deluded
and persisted in cajoling; had she been worthy of the
love I gave her, she would have returned it long ago. It
was a fond mistake. Isn't the whole course of life made
up of such? And suppose I had won her, should I not
have been disenchanted the day after my victory? Why
pine, or be ashamed of my defeat?" The more he thought
of this long passage of his life, the more clearly he saw
his deception. "I'll go into harness again," he said, "and
do my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased
Heaven to place me. I will see that the buttons of the
recruits are properly bright and that the sergeants make
no mistakes in their accounts. I will dine at mess and
listen to the Scotch surgeon telling his stories. When I
am old and broken, I will go on half-pay, and my old
sisters shall scold me. I have geliebt und gelebet, as the
girl in 'Wallenstein' says. I am done. Pay the bills and get
me a cigar: find out what there is at the play to-night,
Francis; to-morrow we cross by the Batavier." He made
the above speech, whereof Francis only heard the last
two lines, pacing up and down the Boompjes at Rotterdam.
The Batavier was lying in the basin. He could see
the place on the quarter-deck where he and Emmy had
sat on the happy voyage out. What had that little Mrs.
Crawley to say to him? Psha; to-morrow we will put to
sea, and return to England, home, and duty!
After June all the little Court Society of Pumpernickel
used to separate, according to the German plan,
and make for a hundred watering-places, where they
drank at the wells, rode upon donkeys, gambled at the
redoutes if they had money and a mind, rushed with
hundreds of their kind to gourmandise at the tables
d'hote, and idled away the summer. The English
diplomatists went off to Teoplitz and Kissingen, their French
rivals shut up their chancellerie and whisked away to
their darling Boulevard de Gand. The Transparent reigning
family took too to the waters, or retired to their hunting
lodges. Everybody went away having any pretensions
to politeness, and of course, with them, Doctor von
Glauber, the Court Doctor, and his Baroness. The seasons
for the baths were the most productive periods of
the Doctor's practice--he united business with pleasure,
and his chief place of resort was Ostend, which is much
frequented by Germans, and where the Doctor treated
himself and his spouse to what he called a "dib" in the
sea.
His interesting patient, Jos, was a regular milch-cow
to the Doctor, and he easily persuaded the civilian, both
for his own health's sake and that of his charming
sister, which was really very much shattered, to pass the
summer at that hideous seaport town. Emmy did not
care where she went much. Georgy jumped at the idea
of a move. As for Becky, she came as a matter of course
in the fourth place inside of the fine barouche Mr. Jos
had bought, the two domestics being on the box in front.
She might have some misgivings about the friends whom
she should meet at Ostend, and who might be likely to tell
ugly stories--but bah! she was strong enough to hold
her own. She had cast such an anchor in Jos now as
would require a strong storm to shake. That incident
of the picture had finished him. Becky took down
her elephant and put it into the little box which she had
had from Amelia ever so many years ago. Emmy also
came off with her Lares--her two pictures--and the
party, finally, were, lodged in an exceedingly dear and
uncomfortable house at Ostend.
There Amelia began to take baths and get what good
she could from them, and though scores of people of
Becky's acquaintance passed her and cut her, yet Mrs.
Osborne, who walked about with her, and who knew
nobody, was not aware of the treatment experienced by the
friend whom she had chosen so judiciously as a
companion; indeed, Becky never thought fit to tell her what
was passing under her innocent eyes.
Some of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's acquaintances, however, acknowledged her readily
enough,--perhaps more
readily than she would have desired. Among those were
Major Loder (unattached), and Captain Rook (late of
the Rifles), who might be seen any day on the Dike,
smoking and staring at the women, and who speedily got
an introduction to the hospitable board and select circle
of Mr. Joseph Sedley. In fact they would take no denial;
they burst into the house whether Becky was at home
or not, walked into Mrs. Osborne's drawing-room, which
they perfumed with their coats and mustachios, called
Jos "Old buck," and invaded his dinner-table, and
laughed and drank for long hours there.
"What can they mean?" asked Georgy, who did not
like these gentlemen. "I heard the Major say to Mrs.
Crawley yesterday, 'No, no, Becky, you shan't keep the
old buck to yourself. We must have the bones in, or,
dammy, I'll split.' What could the Major mean, Mamma?"
"Major! don't call him Major!" Emmy said. "I'm sure
I can't tell what he meant." His presence and that of his
friend inspired the little lady with intolerable terror and
aversion. They paid her tipsy compliments; they leered
at her over the dinner-table. And the Captain made her
advances that filled her with sickening dismay, nor would
she ever see him unless she had George by her side.
Rebecca, to do her justice, never would let either of
these men remain alone with Amelia; the Major was
disengaged too, and swore he would be the winner of her.
A couple of ruffians were fighting for this innocent creature, gambling for her at her own table,
and though she
was not aware of the rascals' designs upon her, yet she
felt a horror and uneasiness in their presence and longed
to fly.
She besought, she entreated Jos to go. Not he. He was
slow of movement, tied to his Doctor, and perhaps to
some other leading-strings. At least Becky was not
anxious to go to England.
At last she took a great resolution--made the great
plunge. She wrote off a letter to a friend whom she had
on the other side of the water, a letter about which she
did not speak a word to anybody, which she carried
herself to the post under her shawl; nor was any remark
made about it, only that she looked very much flushed
and agitated when Georgy met her, and she kissed him,
and hung over him a great deal that night. She did not
come out of her room after her return from her walk.
Becky thought it was Major Loder and the Captain who
frightened her.
"She mustn't stop here," Becky reasoned with herself.
"She must go away, the silly little fool. She is still
whimpering after that gaby of a husband--dead (and
served right!) these fifteen years. She shan't marry either
of these men. It's too bad of Loder. No; she shall marry
the bamboo cane, I'll settle it this very night."
So Becky took a cup of tea to Amelia in her private
apartment and found that lady in the company of her
miniatures, and in a most melancholy and nervous
condition. She laid down the cup of tea.
"Thank you," said Amelia.
"Listen to me, Amelia," said Becky, marching up and
down the room before the other and surveying her with
a sort of contemptuous kindness. "I want to talk to you.
You must go away from here and from the impertinences
of these men. I won't have you harassed by them: and
they will insult you if you stay. I tell you they are rascals:
men fit to send to the hulks. Never mind how I know
them. I know everybody. Jos can't protect you; he is too
weak and wants a protector himself. You are no more fit
to live in the world than a baby in arms. You must marry,
or you and your precious boy will go to ruin. You must
have a husband, you fool; and one of the best gentlemen
I ever saw has offered you a hundred times, and you have
rejected him, you silly, heartless, ungrateful little
creature!"
"I tried--I tried my best, indeed I did, Rebecca," said
Amelia deprecatingly, "but I couldn't forget--"; and she
finished the sentence by looking up at the portrait.
"Couldn't forget HIM!" cried out Becky, "that selfish
humbug, that low-bred cockney dandy, that padded
booby, who had neither wit, nor manners, nor heart, and
was no more to be compared to your friend with the
bamboo cane than you are to Queen Elizabeth. Why,
the man was weary of you, and would have jilted you, but
that Dobbin forced him to keep his word. He owned it
to me. He never cared for you. He used to sneer about
you to me, time after time, and made love to me the
week after he married you."
"It's false! It's false! Rebecca," cried out Amelia,
starting up.
"Look there, you fool," Becky said, still with provoking
good humour, and taking a little paper out of her
belt, she opened it and flung it into Emmy's lap. "You
know his handwriting. He wrote that to me--wanted me
to run away with him--gave it me under your nose, the
day before he was shot--and served him right!" Becky
repeated.
Emmy did not hear her; she was looking at the letter.
It was that which George had put into the bouquet and
given to Becky on the night of the Duchess of Richmond's
ball. It was as she said: the foolish young man
had asked her to fly.
Emmy's head sank down, and for almost the last time
in which she shall be called upon to weep in this history,
she commenced that work. Her head fell to her bosom, and
her hands went up to her eyes; and there for a while, she
gave way to her emotions, as Becky stood on and
regarded her. Who shall analyse those tears and say
whether they were sweet or bitter? Was she most grieved
because the idol of her life was tumbled down and
shivered at her feet, or indignant that her love had been so
despised, or glad because the barrier was removed which
modesty had placed between her and a new, a real affection?
"There is nothing to forbid me now," she thought.
"I may love him with all my heart now. Oh, I will, I will,
if he will but let me and forgive me." I believe it was this
feeling rushed over all the others which agitated that
gentle little bosom.
Indeed, she did not cry so much as Becky expected--
the other soothed and kissed her--a rare mark of
sympathy with Mrs. Becky. She treated Emmy like a child
and patted her head. "And now let us get pen and ink
and write to him to come this minute," she said.
"I--I wrote to him this morning," Emmy said, blushing
exceedingly. Becky screamed with laughter--"Un
biglietto," she sang out with Rosina, "eccolo qua!"--the
whole house echoed with her shrill singing.
Two mornings after this little scene, although the day
was rainy and gusty, and Amelia had had an exceedingly
wakeful night, listening to the wind roaring, and pitying
all travellers by land and by water, yet she got up early
and insisted upon taking a walk on the Dike with Georgy;
and there she paced as the rain beat into her face, and
she looked out westward across the dark sea line and
over the swollen billows which came tumbling and frothing
to the shore. Neither spoke much, except now and
then, when the boy said a few words to his timid
companion, indicative of sympathy and protection.
"I hope he won't cross in such weather," Emmy said.
"I bet ten to one he does," the boy answered. "Look,
Mother, there's the smoke of the steamer." It was that
signal, sure enough.
But though the steamer was under way, he might not
be on board; he might not have got the letter; he might
not choose to come. A hundred fears poured one over the
other into the little heart, as fast as the waves on to the
Dike.
The boat followed the smoke into sight. Georgy had a
dandy telescope and got the vessel under view in the most
skilful manner. And he made appropriate nautical
comments upon the manner of the approach of the steamer
as she came nearer and nearer, dipping and rising in the
water. The signal of an English steamer in sight went
fluttering up to the mast on the pier. I daresay Mrs.
Amelia's heart was in a similar flutter.
Emmy tried to look through the telescope over
George's shoulder, but she could make nothing of it.
She only saw a black eclipse bobbing up and down
before her eyes.
George took the glass again and raked the vessel.
"How she does pitch!" he said. "There goes a wave slap
over her bows. There's only two people on deck besides
the steersman. There's a man lying down, and a--chap
in a--cloak with a--Hooray!--it's Dob, by Jingo!"
He clapped to the telescope and flung his arms round
his mother. As for that lady, let us say what she did in
the words of a favourite poet--"Dakruoen gelasasa." She
was sure it was William. It could be no other. What she
had said about hoping that he would not come was all
hypocrisy. Of course he would come; what could he do
else but come? She knew he would come.
The ship came swiftly nearer and nearer. As they went
in to meet her at the landing-place at the quay, Emmy's
knees trembled so that she scarcely could run. She would
have liked to kneel down and say her prayers of thanks
there. Oh, she thought, she would be all her life saying
them!
It was such a bad day that as the vessel came alongside
of the quay there were no idlers abroad, scarcely
even a commissioner on the look out for the few
passengers in the steamer. That young scapegrace George
had fled too, and as the gentleman in the old cloak lined
with red stuff stepped on to the shore, there was scarcely
any one present to see what took place, which was briefly
this:
A lady in a dripping white bonnet and shawl, with her
two little hands out before her, went up to him, and in
the next minute she had altogether disappeared under the
folds of the old cloak, and was kissing one of his hands
with all her might; whilst the other, I suppose, was
engaged in holding her to his heart (which her head just
about reached) and in preventing her from tumbling
down. She was murmuring something about--forgive--
dear William--dear, dear, dearest friend--kiss, kiss, kiss,
and so forth--and in fact went on under the cloak in an
absurd manner.
When Emmy emerged from it, she still kept tight hold
of one of William's hands, and looked up in his face. It
was full of sadness and tender love and pity. She
understood its reproach and hung down her head.
"It was time you sent for me, dear Amelia," he said.
"You will never go again, William?"
"No, never," he answered, and pressed the dear little
soul once more to his heart.
As they issued out of the custom-house precincts,
Georgy broke out on them, with his telescope up to his
eye, and a loud laugh of welcome; he danced round the
couple and performed many facetious antics as he led
them up to the house. Jos wasn't up yet; Becky not
visible (though she looked at them through the blinds).
Georgy ran off to see about breakfast. Emmy, whose
shawl and bonnet were off in the passage in the hands of
Mrs. Payne, now went to undo the clasp of William's
cloak, and--we will, if you please, go with George, and
look after breakfast for the Colonel. The vessel is in port.
He has got the prize he has been trying for all his life.
The bird has come in at last. There it is with its head on
his shoulder, billing and cooing close up to his heart,
with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he
has asked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This
is what he pined after. Here it is--the summit, the end--
the last page of the third volume. Good-bye, Colonel--
God bless you, honest William!--Farewell, dear Amelia
--Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the
rugged old oak to which you cling!
Perhaps it was compunction towards the kind and
simple creature, who had been the first in life to defend
her, perhaps it was a dislike to all such sentimental scenes
--but Rebecca, satisfied with her part in the transaction,
never presented herself before Colonel Dobbin and the
lady whom he married. "Particular business," she said,
took her to Bruges, whither she went, and only Georgy
and his uncle were present at the marriage ceremony.
When it was over, and Georgy had rejoined his parents,
Mrs. Becky returned (just for a few days) to comfort the
solitary bachelor, Joseph Sedley. He preferred a
continental life, he said, and declined to join in housekeeping
with his sister and her husband.
Emmy was very glad in her heart to think that she
had written to her husband before she read or knew of
that letter of George's. "I knew it all along," William
said; "but could I use that weapon against the poor
fellow's memory? It was that which made me suffer so
when you--"
"Never speak of that day again," Emmy cried out, so
contrite and humble that William turned off the
conversation by his account of Glorvina and dear old Peggy
O'Dowd, with whom he was sitting when the letter of
recall reached him. "If you hadn't sent for me," he added
with a laugh, "who knows what Glorvina's name might
be now?"
At present it is Glorvina Posky (now Mrs. Major
Posky); she took him on the death of his first wife,
having resolved never to marry out of the regiment. Lady
O'Dowd is also so attached to it that, she says, if anything
were to happen to Mick, bedad she'd come back
and marry some of 'em. But the Major-General is quite
well and lives in great splendour at O'Dowdstown, with
a pack of beagles, and (with the exception of perhaps
their neighbour, Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty) he is the
first man of his county. Her Ladyship still dances jigs, and
insisted on standing up with the Master of the Horse at
the Lord Lieutenant's last ball. Both she and Glorvina
declared that Dobbin had used the latter SHEAMFULLY, but
Posky falling in, Glorvina was consoled, and a beautiful
turban from Paris appeased the wrath of Lady O'Dowd.
When Colonel Dobbin quitted the service, which he did
immediately after his marriage, he rented a pretty little
country place in Hampshire, not far from Queen's Crawley,
where, after the passing of the Reform Bill, Sir Pitt
and his family constantly resided now. All idea of a
Peerage was out of the question, the Baronet's two seats
in Parliament being lost. He was both out of pocket and
out of spirits by that catastrophe, failed in his health,
and prophesied the speedy ruin of the Empire.
Lady Jane and Mrs. Dobbin became great friends--
there was a perpetual crossing of pony-chaises between
the Hall and the Evergreens, the Colonel's place (rented
of his friend Major Ponto, who was abroad with his
family). Her Ladyship was godmother to Mrs. Dobbin's child,
which bore her name, and was christened by the Rev.
James Crawley, who succeeded his father in the living:
and a pretty close friendship subsisted between the two
lads, George and Rawdon, who hunted and shot together
in the vacations, were both entered of the same college
at Cambridge, and quarrelled with each other about Lady
Jane's daughter, with whom they were both, of course,
in love. A match between George and that young lady was
long a favourite scheme of both the matrons, though I
have heard that Miss Crawley herself inclined towards
her cousin.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's name was never mentioned by
either family. There were reasons why all should be silent
regarding her. For wherever Mr. Joseph Sedley went, she
travelled likewise, and that infatuated man seemed to be
entirely her slave. The Colonel's lawyers informed him
that his brother-in-law had effected a heavy insurance
upon his life, whence it was probable that he had been
raising money to discharge debts. He procured prolonged
leave of absence from the East India House, and indeed,
his infirmities were daily increasing.
On hearing the news about the insurance, Amelia, in
a good deal of alarm, entreated her husband to go to
Brussels, where Jos then was, and inquire into the state
of his affairs. The Colonel quitted home with reluctance
(for he was deeply immersed in his History of the
Punjaub which still occupies him, and much alarmed
about his little daughter, whom he idolizes, and who was
just recovering from the chicken-pox) and went to Brussels
and found Jos living at one of the enormous hotels
in that city. Mrs. Crawley, who had her carriage, gave
entertainments, and lived in a very genteel manner,
occupied another suite of apartments in the same hotel.
The Colonel, of course, did not desire to see that lady,
or even think proper to notify his arrival at Brussels,
except privately to Jos by a message through his valet. Jos
begged the Colonel to come and see him that night, when
Mrs. Crawley would be at a soiree, and when they could
meet alone. He found his brother-in-law in a condition of
pitiable infirmity--and dreadfully afraid of Rebecca,
though eager in his praises of her. She tended him through
a series of unheard-of illnesses with a fidelity most
admirable. She had been a daughter to him. "But--but--
oh, for God's sake, do come and live near me, and--and
--see me sometimes," whimpered out the unfortunate
man.
The Colonel's brow darkened at this. "We can't, Jos,"
he said. "Considering the circumstances, Amelia can't
visit you."
"I swear to you--I swear to you on the Bible," gasped
out Joseph, wanting to kiss the book, "that she is as
innocent as a child, as spotless as your own wife."
"It may be so," said the Colonel gloomily, "but Emmy
can't come to you. Be a man, Jos: break off this
disreputable connection. Come home to your family. We hear
your affairs are involved."
"Involved!" cried Jos. "Who has told such calumnies?
All my money is placed out most advantageously. Mrs.
Crawley--that is--I mean--it is laid out to the best
interest."
"You are not in debt, then? Why did you insure your
life?"
"I thought--a little present to her--in case anything
happened; and you know my health is so delicate--common
gratitude you know--and I intend to leave all my
money to you--and I can spare it out of my income,
indeed I can," cried out William's weak brother-in-law.
The Colonel besought Jos to fly at once--to go back to
India, whither Mrs. Crawley could not follow him; to
do anything to break off a connection which might have
the most fatal consequences to him.
Jos clasped his hands and cried, "He would go back to
India. He would do anything, only he must have time:
they mustn't say anything to Mrs. Crawley--she'd--she'd
kill me if she knew it. You don't know what a terrible
woman she is," the poor wretch said.
"Then, why not come away with me?" said Dobbin in
reply; but Jos had not the courage. "He would see
Dobbin again in the morning; he must on no account say that
he had been there. He must go now. Becky might come
in." And Dobbin quitted him, full of forebodings.
He never saw Jos more. Three months afterwards
Joseph Sedley died at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was found that
all his property had been muddled away in speculations,
and was represented by valueless shares in different
bubble companies. All his available assets were the two
thousand pounds for which his life was insured, and which
were left equally between his beloved "sister Amelia,
wife of, &c., and his friend and invaluable attendant
during sickness, Rebecca, wife of Lieutenant-Colonel
Rawdon Crawley, C.B.," who was appointed administratrix.
The solicitor of the insurance company swore it was
the blackest case that ever had come before him, talked
of sending a commission to Aix to examine into the death,
and the Company refused payment of the policy. But
Mrs., or Lady Crawley, as she styled herself, came to
town at once (attended with her solicitors, Messrs. Burke,
Thurtell, and Hayes, of Thavies Inn) and dared the
Company to refuse the payment. They invited examination,
they declared that she was the object of an infamous
conspiracy, which had been pursuing her all through life,
and triumphed finally. The money was paid, and her
character established, but Colonel Dobbin sent back his share
of the legacy to the insurance office and rigidly declined to
hold any communication with Rebecca
She never was Lady Crawley, though she continued so
to call herself. His Excellency Colonel Rawdon Crawley
died of yellow fever at Coventry Island, most deeply
beloved and deplored, and six weeks before the demise of
his brother, Sir Pitt. The estate consequently devolved
upon the present Sir Rawdon Crawley, Bart.
He, too, has declined to see his mother, to whom he
makes a liberal allowance, and who, besides, appears to
be very wealthy. The Baronet lives entirely at Queen's
Crawley, with Lady Jane and her daughter, whilst Rebecca,
Lady Crawley, chiefly hangs about Bath and Cheltenham,
where a very strong party of excellent people
consider her to be a most injured woman. She has her
enemies. Who has not? Her life is her answer to them.
She busies herself in works of piety. She goes to church,
and never without a footman. Her name is in all the
Charity Lists. The destitute orange-girl, the neglected
washerwoman, the distressed muffin-man find in her a
fast and generous friend. She is always having stalls at
Fancy Fairs for the benefit of these hapless beings. Emmy,
her children, and the Colonel, coming to London some
time back, found themselves suddenly before her at one
of these fairs. She cast down her eyes demurely and
smiled as they started away from her; Emmy scurrying
off on the arm of George (now grown a dashing young
gentleman) and the Colonel seizing up his little Janey,
of whom he is fonder than of anything in the world--
fonder even than of his History of the Punjaub.
"Fonder than he is of me," Emmy thinks with a sigh
But he never said a word to Amelia that was not kind and
gentle, or thought of a want of hers that he did not try to
gratify.
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this
world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
--come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets,
for our play is played out.