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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+#1 in our series by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
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+Title: Vanity Fair
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: July, 1996 [EBook #599]
+[Date last updated: December 29, 2005]
+
+Edition: 12
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VANITY FAIR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juli Rew, juliana@ncar.ucar.edu
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+BEFORE THE CURTAIN
+
+
+As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the
+boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy
+comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great
+quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing
+and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling;
+there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves
+picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks,
+plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels
+looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers,
+while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets
+behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a
+merry one, though very noisy.  Look at the faces of the actors and
+buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool
+washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with
+his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas.   The
+curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and
+heels, and crying, "How are you?"
+
+A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition
+of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other
+people's hilarity.   An episode of humour or kindness touches and
+amuses him here and there--a pretty child looking at a gingerbread
+stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and
+chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon,
+mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his
+tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than
+mirthful.  When you come home you sit down in a sober,
+contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to
+your books or your business.
+
+I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of
+"Vanity Fair." Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and
+eschew such, with their servants and families: very likely they are
+right.  But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a
+benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for
+half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all
+sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding,
+some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some
+love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the
+whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated
+with the Author's own candles.
+
+What more has the Manager of the Performance to say?--To acknowledge
+the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal
+towns of England through which the Show has passed, and where it has
+been most favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the
+public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry.  He is proud to think
+that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in
+this empire.  The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to
+be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the
+Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet
+been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the
+Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very
+amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by
+some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked
+Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick
+will fetch away at the end of this singular performance.
+
+And with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager
+retires, and the curtain rises.
+
+LONDON, June 28, 1848
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Chiswick Mall
+
+
+While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny
+morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss
+Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large
+family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a
+fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four
+miles an hour.  A black servant, who reposed on the box beside the
+fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew
+up opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled
+the bell at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of
+the narrow windows of the stately old brick house.  Nay, the acute
+observer might have recognized the little red nose of good-natured
+Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the
+window of that lady's own drawing-room.
+
+"It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister," said Miss Jemima. "Sambo, the
+black servant, has just rung the bell; and the coachman has a new
+red waistcoat."
+
+"Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident to Miss
+Sedley's departure, Miss Jemima?" asked Miss Pinkerton herself, that
+majestic lady; the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of Doctor
+Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself.
+
+"The girls were up at four this morning, packing her trunks,
+sister," replied Miss Jemima; "we have made her a bow-pot."
+
+"Say a bouquet, sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel."
+
+"Well, a booky as big almost as a haystack; I have put up two
+bottles of the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt
+for making it, in Amelia's box."
+
+"And I trust, Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss Sedley's
+account.  This is it, is it? Very good--ninety-three pounds, four
+shillings.  Be kind enough to address it to John Sedley, Esquire,
+and to seal this billet which I have written to his lady."
+
+In Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss
+Pinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been a
+letter from a sovereign.  Only when her pupils quitted the
+establishment, or when they were about to be married, and once, when
+poor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known
+to write personally to the parents of her pupils; and it was
+Jemima's opinion that if anything could console Mrs. Birch for her
+daughter's loss, it would be that pious and eloquent composition in
+which Miss Pinkerton announced the event.
+
+In the present instance Miss Pinkerton's "billet" was to the
+following effect:--
+
+The Mall, Chiswick, June 15, 18
+
+MADAM,--After her six years' residence at the Mall, I have the
+honour and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her
+parents, as a young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position
+in their polished and refined circle.  Those virtues which
+characterize the young English gentlewoman, those accomplishments
+which become her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the
+amiable Miss Sedley, whose INDUSTRY and OBEDIENCE have endeared her
+to her instructors, and whose delightful sweetness of temper has
+charmed her AGED and her YOUTHFUL companions.
+
+In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery
+and needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends'
+fondest wishes.  In geography there is still much to be desired; and
+a careful and undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily
+during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the
+acquirement of that dignified DEPORTMENT AND CARRIAGE, so requisite
+for every young lady of FASHION.
+
+In the principles of religion and morality, Miss Sedley will be
+found worthy of an establishment which has been honoured by the
+presence of THE GREAT LEXICOGRAPHER, and the patronage of the
+admirable Mrs. Chapone.  In leaving the Mall, Miss Amelia carries
+with her the hearts of her companions, and the affectionate regards
+of her mistress, who has the honour to subscribe herself,
+
+Madam, Your most obliged humble servant, BARBARA PINKERTON
+
+P.S.--Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley.  It is particularly
+requested that Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed
+ten days.  The family of distinction with whom she is engaged,
+desire to avail themselves of her services as soon as possible.
+
+This letter completed, Miss Pinkerton proceeded to write her own
+name, and Miss Sedley's, in the fly-leaf of a Johnson's Dictionary--
+the interesting work which she invariably presented to her scholars,
+on their departure from the Mall.  On the cover was inserted a copy
+of "Lines addressed to a young lady on quitting Miss Pinkerton's
+school, at the Mall; by the late revered Doctor Samuel Johnson." In
+fact, the Lexicographer's name was always on the lips of this
+majestic woman, and a visit he had paid to her was the cause of her
+reputation and her fortune.
+
+Being commanded by her elder sister to get "the Dictionary" from the
+cupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from the
+receptacle in question.  When Miss Pinkerton had finished the
+inscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid
+air, handed her the second.
+
+"For whom is this, Miss Jemima?" said Miss Pinkerton, with awful
+coldness.
+
+"For Becky Sharp," answered Jemima, trembling very much, and
+blushing over her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on
+her sister.  "For Becky Sharp: she's going too."
+
+"MISS JEMIMA!" exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the largest capitals.
+"Are you in your senses? Replace the Dixonary in the closet, and
+never venture to take such a liberty in future."
+
+"Well, sister, it's only two-and-ninepence, and poor Becky will be
+miserable if she don't get one."
+
+"Send Miss Sedley instantly to me," said Miss Pinkerton. And so
+venturing not to say another word, poor Jemima trotted off,
+exceedingly flurried and nervous.
+
+Miss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of some
+wealth; whereas Miss Sharp was an articled pupil, for whom Miss
+Pinkerton had done, as she thought, quite enough, without conferring
+upon her at parting the high honour of the Dixonary.
+
+Although schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor
+less than churchyard epitaphs; yet, as it sometimes happens that a
+person departs this life who is really deserving of all the praises
+the stone cutter carves over his bones; who IS a good Christian, a
+good parent, child, wife, or husband; who actually DOES leave a
+disconsolate family to mourn his loss; so in academies of the male
+and female sex it occurs every now and then that the pupil is fully
+worthy of the praises bestowed by the disinterested instructor.
+Now, Miss Amelia Sedley was a young lady of this singular species;
+and deserved not only all that Miss Pinkerton said in her praise,
+but had many charming qualities which that pompous old Minerva of a
+woman could not see, from the differences of rank and age between
+her pupil and herself.
+
+For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and
+dance like Hillisberg or Parisot; and embroider beautifully; and
+spell as well as a Dixonary itself; but she had such a kindly,
+smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love
+of everybody who came near her, from Minerva herself down to the
+poor girl in the scullery, and the one-eyed tart-woman's daughter,
+who was permitted to vend her wares once a week to the young ladies
+in the Mall.  She had twelve intimate and bosom friends out of the
+twenty-four young ladies. Even envious Miss Briggs never spoke ill
+of her; high and mighty Miss Saltire (Lord Dexter's granddaughter)
+allowed that her figure was genteel; and as for Miss Swartz, the
+rich woolly-haired mulatto from St. Kitt's, on the day Amelia went
+away, she was in such a passion of tears that they were obliged to
+send for Dr. Floss, and half tipsify her with salvolatile.  Miss
+Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed from the high
+position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but
+Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of
+Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone
+off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of
+St. Kitt's.  Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to
+parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing,
+and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and
+the servants to superintend.  But why speak about her?  It is
+probable that we shall not hear of her again from this moment to the
+end of time, and that when the great filigree iron gates are once
+closed on her, she and her awful sister will never issue therefrom
+into this little world of history.
+
+But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in
+saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear
+little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in
+novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the
+most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so
+guileless and good-natured a person.  As she is not a heroine, there
+is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose
+was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too
+round and red for a heroine; but her face blushed with rosy health,
+and her lips with the freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes
+which sparkled with the brightest and honestest good-humour, except
+indeed when they filled with tears, and that was a great deal too
+often; for the silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird; or
+over a mouse, that the cat haply had seized upon; or over the end of
+a novel, were it ever so stupid; and as for saying an unkind word to
+her, were any persons hard-hearted enough to do so--why, so much the
+worse for them.  Even Miss Pinkerton, that austere and godlike
+woman, ceased scolding her after the first time, and though she no
+more comprehended sensibility than she did Algebra, gave all masters
+and teachers particular orders to treat Miss Sedley with the utmost
+gentleness, as harsh treatment was injurious to her.
+
+So that when the day of departure came, between her two customs of
+laughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puzzled how to act.
+She was glad to go home, and yet most woefully sad at leaving
+school.  For three days before, little Laura Martin, the orphan,
+followed her about like a little dog.  She had to make and receive
+at least fourteen presents--to make fourteen solemn promises of
+writing every week:  "Send my letters under cover to my grandpapa,
+the Earl of Dexter," said Miss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather
+shabby).  "Never mind the postage, but write every day, you dear
+darling," said the impetuous and woolly-headed, but generous and
+affectionate Miss Swartz; and the orphan little Laura Martin (who
+was just in round-hand), took her friend's hand and said, looking up
+in her face wistfully, "Amelia, when I write to you I shall call you
+Mamma." All which details, I have no doubt, JONES, who reads this
+book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial,
+twaddling, and ultra-sentimental.  Yes; I can see Jones at this
+minute (rather flushed with his joint of mutton and half pint of
+wine), taking out his pencil and scoring under the words "foolish,
+twaddling," &c., and adding to them his own remark of "QUITE TRUE."
+Well, he is a lofty man of genius, and admires the great and heroic
+in life and novels; and so had better take warning and go elsewhere.
+
+Well, then.  The flowers, and the presents, and the trunks, and
+bonnet-boxes of Miss Sedley having been arranged by Mr. Sambo in the
+carriage, together with a very small and weather-beaten old cow's-
+skin trunk with Miss Sharp's card neatly nailed upon it, which was
+delivered by Sambo with a grin, and packed by the coachman with a
+corresponding sneer--the hour for parting came; and the grief of
+that moment was considerably lessened by the admirable discourse
+which Miss Pinkerton addressed to her pupil.  Not that the parting
+speech caused Amelia to philosophise, or that it armed her in any
+way with a calmness, the result of argument; but it was intolerably
+dull, pompous, and tedious; and having the fear of her
+schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, Miss Sedley did not venture,
+in her presence, to give way to any ebullitions of private grief.  A
+seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced in the drawing-room, as
+on the solemn occasions of the visits of parents, and these
+refreshments being partaken of, Miss Sedley was at liberty to
+depart.
+
+"You'll go in and say good-by to Miss Pinkerton, Becky!" said Miss
+Jemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who was
+coming downstairs with her own bandbox.
+
+"I suppose I must," said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the wonder
+of Miss Jemima; and the latter having knocked at the door, and
+receiving permission to come in, Miss Sharp advanced in a very
+unconcerned manner, and said in French, and with a perfect accent,
+"Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux."
+
+Miss Pinkerton did not understand French; she only directed those
+who did: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and
+Roman-nosed head (on the top of which figured a large and solemn
+turban), she said, "Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning." As the
+Hammersmith Semiramis spoke, she waved one hand, both by way of
+adieu, and to give Miss Sharp an opportunity of shaking one of the
+fingers of the hand which was left out for that purpose.
+
+Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and
+bow, and quite declined to accept the proffered honour; on which
+Semiramis tossed up her turban more indignantly than ever.  In fact,
+it was a little battle between the young lady and the old one, and
+the latter was worsted.  "Heaven bless you, my child," said she,
+embracing Amelia, and scowling the while over the girl's shoulder at
+Miss Sharp.  "Come away, Becky," said Miss Jemima, pulling the young
+woman away in great alarm, and the drawing-room door closed upon
+them for ever.
+
+Then came the struggle and parting below.  Words refuse to tell it.
+All the servants were there in the hall--all the dear friend--all
+the young ladies--the dancing-master who had just arrived; and there
+was such a scuffling, and hugging, and kissing, and crying, with the
+hysterical YOOPS of Miss Swartz, the parlour-boarder, from her room,
+as no pen can depict, and as the tender heart would fain pass over.
+The embracing was over; they parted--that is, Miss Sedley parted
+from her friends.  Miss Sharp had demurely entered the carriage some
+minutes before.  Nobody cried for leaving HER.
+
+Sambo of the bandy legs slammed the carriage door on his young
+weeping mistress.  He sprang up behind the carriage.  "Stop!" cried
+Miss Jemima, rushing to the gate with a parcel.
+
+"It's some sandwiches, my dear," said she to Amelia. "You may be
+hungry, you know; and Becky, Becky Sharp, here's a book for you that
+my sister--that is, I--Johnson's Dixonary, you know; you mustn't
+leave us without that.  Good-by.  Drive on, coachman.  God bless
+you!"
+
+And the kind creature retreated into the garden, overcome with
+emotion.
+
+But, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale
+face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the
+garden.
+
+This almost caused Jemima to faint with terror.  "Well, I never"--
+said she--"what an audacious"--Emotion prevented her from completing
+either sentence.  The carriage rolled away; the great gates were
+closed; the bell rang for the dancing lesson.  The world is before
+the two young ladies; and so, farewell to Chiswick Mall.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign
+
+
+When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last
+chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the
+little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss
+Jemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an
+almost livid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was
+scarcely more agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an
+easy frame of mind, saying--"So much for the Dixonary; and, thank
+God, I'm out of Chiswick."
+
+Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss
+Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had
+left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in
+that space of time.  Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors
+of youth last for ever and ever.  I know, for instance, an old
+gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast,
+with a very agitated countenance, "I dreamed last night that I was
+flogged by Dr. Raine." Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty
+years in the course of that evening.  Dr. Raine and his rod were
+just as awful to him in his heart, then, at sixty-eight, as they had
+been at thirteen.  If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared
+bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said
+in awful voice, "Boy, take down your pant--"? Well, well, Miss
+Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at this act of insubordination.
+
+"How could you do so, Rebecca?" at last she said, after a pause.
+
+"Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to
+the black-hole?" said Rebecca, laughing.
+
+"No: but--"
+
+"I hate the whole house," continued Miss Sharp in a fury.  "I hope I
+may never set eyes on it again.  I wish it were in the bottom of the
+Thames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick her
+out, that I wouldn't.  O how I should like to see her floating in
+the water yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after
+her, and her nose like the beak of a wherry."
+
+"Hush!" cried Miss Sedley.
+
+"Why, will the black footman tell tales?" cried Miss Rebecca,
+laughing.  "He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her
+with all my soul; and I wish he would; and I wish I had a means of
+proving it, too.  For two years I have only had insults and outrage
+from her. I have been treated worse than any servant in the kitchen.
+I have never had a friend or a kind word, except from you.  I have
+been made to tend the little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to
+talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother tongue.
+But that talking French to Miss Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't
+it? She doesn't know a word of French, and was too proud to confess
+it.  I believe it was that which made her part with me; and so thank
+Heaven for French.  Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!"
+
+"O Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame!" cried Miss Sedley; for this was the
+greatest blasphemy Rebecca had as yet uttered; and in those days, in
+England, to say, "Long live Bonaparte!" was as much as to say, "Long
+live Lucifer!" "How can you--how dare you have such wicked,
+revengeful thoughts?"
+
+"Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural," answered Miss Rebecca.
+"I'm no angel." And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.
+
+For it may be remarked in the course of this little conversation
+(which took place as the coach rolled along lazily by the river
+side) that though Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank
+Heaven, it has been, in the first place, for ridding her of some
+person whom she hated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her
+enemies to some sort of perplexity or confusion; neither of which
+are very amiable motives for religious gratitude, or such as would
+be put forward by persons of a kind and placable disposition.  Miss
+Rebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable.  All the world
+used her ill, said this young misanthropist, and we may be pretty
+certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely
+the treatment they get.  The world is a looking-glass, and gives
+back to every man the reflection of his own face.  Frown at it, and
+it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and
+it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take
+their choice. This is certain, that if the world neglected Miss
+Sharp, she never was known to have done a good action in behalf of
+anybody; nor can it be expected that twenty-four young ladies should
+all be as amiable as the heroine of this work, Miss Sedley (whom we
+have selected for the very reason that she was the best-natured of
+all, otherwise what on earth was to have prevented us from putting
+up Miss Swartz, or Miss Crump, or Miss Hopkins, as heroine in her
+place!) it could not be expected that every one should be of the
+humble and gentle temper of Miss Amelia Sedley; should take every
+opportunity to vanquish Rebecca's hard-heartedness and ill-humour;
+and, by a thousand kind words and offices, overcome, for once at
+least, her hostility to her kind.
+
+Miss Sharp's father was an artist, and in that quality had given
+lessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton's school. He was a clever man;
+a pleasant companion; a careless student; with a great propensity
+for running into debt, and a partiality for the tavern.  When he was
+drunk, he used to beat his wife and daughter; and the next morning,
+with a headache, he would rail at the world for its neglect of his
+genius, and abuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and sometimes
+with perfect reason, the fools, his brother painters.  As it was
+with the utmost difficulty that he could keep himself, and as he
+owed money for a mile round Soho, where he lived, he thought to
+better his circumstances by marrying a young woman of the French
+nation, who was by profession an opera-girl.  The humble calling of
+her female parent Miss Sharp never alluded to, but used to state
+subsequently that the Entrechats were a noble family of Gascony, and
+took great pride in her descent from them.  And curious it is that
+as she advanced in life this young lady's ancestors increased in
+rank and splendour.
+
+Rebecca's mother had had some education somewhere, and her daughter
+spoke French with purity and a Parisian accent.  It was in those
+days rather a rare accomplishment, and led to her engagement with
+the orthodox Miss Pinkerton.  For her mother being dead, her father,
+finding himself not likely to recover, after his third attack of
+delirium tremens, wrote a manly and pathetic letter to Miss
+Pinkerton, recommending the orphan child to her protection, and so
+descended to the grave, after two bailiffs had quarrelled over his
+corpse.  Rebecca was seventeen when she came to Chiswick, and was
+bound over as an articled pupil; her duties being to talk French, as
+we have seen; and her privileges to live cost free, and, with a few
+guineas a year, to gather scraps of knowledge from the professors
+who attended the school.
+
+She was small and slight in person; pale, sandy-haired, and with
+eyes habitually cast down: when they looked up they were very large,
+odd, and attractive; so attractive that the Reverend Mr. Crisp,
+fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend
+Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a
+glance of her eyes which was fired all the way across Chiswick
+Church from the school-pew to the reading-desk.  This infatuated
+young man used sometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he
+had been presented by his mamma, and actually proposed something
+like marriage in an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman
+was charged to deliver.  Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, and
+abruptly carried off her darling boy; but the idea, even, of such an
+eagle in the Chiswick dovecot caused a great flutter in the breast
+of Miss Pinkerton, who would have sent away Miss Sharp but that she
+was bound to her under a forfeit, and who never could thoroughly
+believe the young lady's protestations that she had never exchanged
+a single word with Mr. Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two
+occasions when she had met him at tea.
+
+By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the
+establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child.  But she had the
+dismal precocity of poverty.  Many a dun had she talked to, and
+turned away from her father's door; many a tradesman had she coaxed
+and wheedled into good-humour, and into the granting of one meal
+more. She sate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her
+wit, and heard the talk of many of his wild companions--often but
+ill-suited for a girl to hear.  But she never had been a girl, she
+said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old.  Oh, why
+did Miss Pinkerton let such a dangerous bird into her cage?
+
+The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest
+creature in the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her
+father brought her to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the part of
+the ingenue; and only a year before the arrangement by which Rebecca
+had been admitted into her house, and when Rebecca was sixteen years
+old, Miss Pinkerton majestically, and with a little speech, made her
+a present of a doll--which was, by the way, the confiscated property
+of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-
+hours.  How the father and daughter laughed as they trudged home
+together after the evening party (it was on the occasion of the
+speeches, when all the professors were invited) and how Miss
+Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the caricature of herself
+which the little mimic, Rebecca, managed to make out of her doll.
+Becky used to go through dialogues with it; it formed the delight of
+Newman Street, Gerrard Street, and the Artists' quarter: and the
+young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water with
+their lazy, dissolute, clever, jovial senior, used regularly to ask
+Rebecca if Miss Pinkerton was at home: she was as well known to
+them, poor soul! as Mr. Lawrence or President West.  Once Rebecca
+had the honour to pass a few days at Chiswick; after which she
+brought back Jemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy: for
+though that honest creature had made and given her jelly and cake
+enough for three children, and a seven-shilling piece at parting,
+the girl's sense of ridicule was far stronger than her gratitude,
+and she sacrificed Miss Jemmy quite as pitilessly as her sister.
+
+The catastrophe came, and she was brought to the Mall as to her
+home.  The rigid formality of the place suffocated her: the prayers
+and the meals, the lessons and the walks, which were arranged with a
+conventual regularity, oppressed her almost beyond endurance; and
+she looked back to the freedom and the beggary of the old studio in
+Soho with so much regret, that everybody, herself included, fancied
+she was consumed with grief for her father.  She had a little room
+in the garret, where the maids heard her walking and sobbing at
+night; but it was with rage, and not with grief.  She had not been
+much of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign.
+She had never mingled in the society of women: her father, reprobate
+as he was, was a man of talent; his conversation was a thousand
+times more agreeable to her than the talk of such of her own sex as
+she now encountered. The pompous vanity of the old schoolmistress,
+the foolish good-humour of her sister, the silly chat and scandal of
+the elder girls, and the frigid correctness of the governesses
+equally annoyed her; and she had no soft maternal heart, this
+unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle and talk of the younger
+children, with whose care she was chiefly intrusted, might have
+soothed and interested her; but she lived among them two years, and
+not one was sorry that she went away.  The gentle tender-hearted
+Amelia Sedley was the only person to whom she could attach herself
+in the least; and who could help attaching herself to Amelia?
+
+The happiness the superior advantages of the young women round about
+her, gave Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy.  "What airs that girl
+gives herself, because she is an Earl's grand-daughter," she said of
+one.  "How they cringe and bow to that Creole, because of her
+hundred thousand pounds!  I am a thousand times cleverer and more
+charming than that creature, for all her wealth. I am as well bred
+as the Earl's grand-daughter, for all her fine pedigree; and yet
+every one passes me by here.  And yet, when I was at my father's,
+did not the men give up their gayest balls and parties in order to
+pass the evening with me?" She determined at any rate to get free
+from the prison in which she found herself, and now began to act for
+herself, and for the first time to make connected plans for the
+future.
+
+She took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place
+offered her; and as she was already a musician and a good linguist,
+she speedily went through the little course of study which was
+considered necessary for ladies in those days.  Her music she
+practised incessantly, and one day, when the girls were out, and she
+had remained at home, she was overheard to play a piece so well that
+Minerva thought, wisely, she could spare herself the expense of a
+master for the juniors, and intimated to Miss Sharp that she was to
+instruct them in music for the future.
+
+The girl refused; and for the first time, and to the astonishment of
+the majestic mistress of the school.  "I am here to speak French
+with the children," Rebecca said abruptly, "not to teach them music,
+and save money for you.  Give me money, and I will teach them."
+
+Minerva was obliged to yield, and, of course, disliked her from that
+day.  "For five-and-thirty years," she said, and with great justice,
+"I never have seen the individual who has dared in my own house to
+question my authority.  I have nourished a viper in my bosom."
+
+"A viper--a fiddlestick," said Miss Sharp to the old lady, almost
+fainting with astonishment.  "You took me because I was useful.
+There is no question of gratitude between us.  I hate this place,
+and want to leave it.  I will do nothing here but what I am obliged
+to do."
+
+It was in vain that the old lady asked her if she was aware she was
+speaking to Miss Pinkerton?  Rebecca laughed in her face, with a
+horrid sarcastic demoniacal laughter, that almost sent the
+schoolmistress into fits. "Give me a sum of money," said the girl,
+"and get rid of me--or, if you like better, get me a good place as
+governess in a nobleman's family--you can do so if you please."  And
+in their further disputes she always returned to this point, "Get me
+a situation--we hate each other, and I am ready to go."
+
+Worthy Miss Pinkerton, although she had a Roman nose and a turban,
+and was as tall as a grenadier, and had been up to this time an
+irresistible princess, had no will or strength like that of her
+little apprentice, and in vain did battle against her, and tried to
+overawe her. Attempting once to scold her in public, Rebecca hit
+upon the before-mentioned plan of answering her in French, which
+quite routed the old woman.  In order to maintain authority in her
+school, it became necessary to remove this rebel, this monster, this
+serpent, this firebrand; and hearing about this time that Sir Pitt
+Crawley's family was in want of a governess, she actually
+recommended Miss Sharp for the situation, firebrand and serpent as
+she was.  "I cannot, certainly," she said, "find fault with Miss
+Sharp's conduct, except to myself; and must allow that her talents
+and accomplishments are of a high order. As far as the head goes, at
+least, she does credit to the educational system pursued at my
+establishment."
+
+And so the schoolmistress reconciled the recommendation to her
+conscience, and the indentures were cancelled, and the apprentice
+was free.  The battle here described in a few lines, of course,
+lasted for some months.  And as Miss Sedley, being now in her
+seventeenth year, was about to leave school, and had a friendship
+for Miss Sharp ("'tis the only point in Amelia's behaviour," said
+Minerva, "which has not been satisfactory to her mistress"), Miss
+Sharp was invited by her friend to pass a week with her at home,
+before she entered upon her duties as governess in a private family.
+
+Thus the world began for these two young ladies.  For Amelia it was
+quite a new, fresh, brilliant world, with all the bloom upon it.  It
+was not quite a new one for Rebecca--(indeed, if the truth must be
+told with respect to the Crisp affair, the tart-woman hinted to
+somebody, who took an affidavit of the fact to somebody else, that
+there was a great deal more than was made public regarding Mr. Crisp
+and Miss Sharp, and that his letter was in answer to another
+letter).  But who can tell you the real truth of the matter? At all
+events, if Rebecca was not beginning the world, she was beginning it
+over again.
+
+By the time the young ladies reached Kensington turnpike, Amelia had
+not forgotten her companions, but had dried her tears, and had
+blushed very much and been delighted at a young officer of the Life
+Guards, who spied her as he was riding by, and said, "A dem fine
+gal, egad!" and before the carriage arrived in Russell Square, a
+great deal of conversation had taken place about the Drawing-room,
+and whether or not young ladies wore powder as well as hoops when
+presented, and whether she was to have that honour: to the Lord
+Mayor's ball she knew she was to go.  And when at length home was
+reached, Miss Amelia Sedley skipped out on Sambo's arm, as happy and
+as handsome a girl as any in the whole big city of London.  Both he
+and coachman agreed on this point, and so did her father and mother,
+and so did every one of the servants in the house, as they stood
+bobbing, and curtseying, and smiling, in the hall to welcome their
+young mistress.
+
+You may be sure that she showed Rebecca over every room of the
+house, and everything in every one of her drawers; and her books,
+and her piano, and her dresses, and all her necklaces, brooches,
+laces, and gimcracks. She insisted upon Rebecca accepting the white
+cornelian and the turquoise rings, and a sweet sprigged muslin,
+which was too small for her now, though it would fit her friend to a
+nicety; and she determined in her heart to ask her mother's
+permission to present her white Cashmere shawl to her friend.  Could
+she not spare it? and had not her brother Joseph just brought her
+two from India?
+
+When Rebecca saw the two magnificent Cashmere shawls which Joseph
+Sedley had brought home to his sister, she said, with perfect truth,
+"that it must be delightful to have a brother," and easily got the
+pity of the tender-hearted Amelia for being alone in the world, an
+orphan without friends or kindred.
+
+"Not alone," said Amelia; "you know, Rebecca, I shall always be your
+friend, and love you as a sister--indeed I will."
+
+"Ah, but to have parents, as you have--kind, rich, affectionate
+parents, who give you everything you ask for; and their love, which
+is more precious than all! My poor papa could give me nothing, and I
+had but two frocks in all the world! And then, to have a brother, a
+dear brother! Oh, how you must love him!"
+
+Amelia laughed.
+
+"What! don't you love him? you, who say you love everybody?"
+
+"Yes, of course, I do--only--"
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"Only Joseph doesn't seem to care much whether I love him or not.
+He gave me two fingers to shake when he arrived after ten years'
+absence!  He is very kind and good, but he scarcely ever speaks to
+me; I think he loves his pipe a great deal better than his"--but
+here Amelia checked herself, for why should she speak ill of her
+brother? "He was very kind to me as a child," she added; "I was but
+five years old when he went away."
+
+"Isn't he very rich?" said Rebecca.  "They say all Indian nabobs are
+enormously rich."
+
+"I believe he has a very large income."
+
+"And is your sister-in-law a nice pretty woman?"
+
+"La! Joseph is not married," said Amelia, laughing again.
+
+Perhaps she had mentioned the fact already to Rebecca, but that
+young lady did not appear to have remembered it; indeed, vowed and
+protested that she expected to see a number of Amelia's nephews and
+nieces.  She was quite disappointed that Mr. Sedley was not married;
+she was sure Amelia had said he was, and she doted so on little
+children.
+
+"I think you must have had enough of them at Chiswick," said Amelia,
+rather wondering at the sudden tenderness on her friend's part; and
+indeed in later days Miss Sharp would never have committed herself
+so far as to advance opinions, the untruth of which would have been
+so easily detected.  But we must remember that she is but nineteen
+as yet, unused to the art of deceiving, poor innocent creature! and
+making her own experience in her own person.  The meaning of the
+above series of queries, as translated in the heart of this
+ingenious young woman, was simply this: "If Mr. Joseph Sedley is
+rich and unmarried, why should I not marry him? I have only a
+fortnight, to be sure, but there is no harm in trying." And she
+determined within herself to make this laudable attempt.  She
+redoubled her caresses to Amelia; she kissed the white cornelian
+necklace as she put it on; and vowed she would never, never part
+with it.  When the dinner-bell rang she went downstairs with her arm
+round her friend's waist, as is the habit of young ladies. She was
+so agitated at the drawing-room door, that she could hardly find
+courage to enter.  "Feel my heart, how it beats, dear!" said she to
+her friend.
+
+"No, it doesn't," said Amelia.  "Come in, don't be frightened.  Papa
+won't do you any harm."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy
+
+
+A VERY stout, puffy man, in buckskins and Hessian boots, with
+several immense neckcloths that rose almost to his nose, with a red
+striped waistcoat and an apple green coat with steel buttons almost
+as large as crown pieces (it was the morning costume of a dandy or
+blood of those days) was reading the paper by the fire when the two
+girls entered, and bounced off his arm-chair, and blushed
+excessively, and hid his entire face almost in his neckcloths at
+this apparition.
+
+"It's only your sister, Joseph," said Amelia, laughing and shaking
+the two fingers which he held out.  "I've come home FOR GOOD, you
+know; and this is my friend, Miss Sharp, whom you have heard me
+mention."
+
+"No, never, upon my word," said the head under the neckcloth,
+shaking very much--"that is, yes--what abominably cold weather,
+Miss"--and herewith he fell to poking the fire with all his might,
+although it was in the middle of June.
+
+"He's very handsome," whispered Rebecca to Amelia, rather loud.
+
+"Do you think so?" said the latter.  "I'll tell him."
+
+"Darling! not for worlds," said Miss Sharp, starting back as timid
+as a fawn.  She had previously made a respectful virgin-like curtsey
+to the gentleman, and her modest eyes gazed so perseveringly on the
+carpet that it was a wonder how she should have found an opportunity
+to see him.
+
+"Thank you for the beautiful shawls, brother," said Amelia to the
+fire poker.  "Are they not beautiful, Rebecca?"
+
+"O heavenly!" said Miss Sharp, and her eyes went from the carpet
+straight to the chandelier.
+
+Joseph still continued a huge clattering at the poker and tongs,
+puffing and blowing the while, and turning as red as his yellow face
+would allow him.  "I can't make you such handsome presents, Joseph,"
+continued his sister, "but while I was at school, I have embroidered
+for you a very beautiful pair of braces."
+
+"Good Gad! Amelia," cried the brother, in serious alarm, "what do
+you mean?" and plunging with all his might at the bell-rope, that
+article of furniture came away in his hand, and increased the honest
+fellow's confusion.  "For heaven's sake see if my buggy's at the
+door.  I CAN'T wait.  I must go.  D--- that groom of mine. I must go."
+
+At this minute the father of the family walked in, rattling his
+seals like a true British merchant.  "What's the matter, Emmy?" says
+he.
+
+"Joseph wants me to see if his--his buggy is at the door.  What is a
+buggy, Papa?"
+
+"It is a one-horse palanquin," said the old gentleman, who was a wag
+in his way.
+
+Joseph at this burst out into a wild fit of laughter; in which,
+encountering the eye of Miss Sharp, he stopped all of a sudden, as
+if he had been shot.
+
+"This young lady is your friend? Miss Sharp, I am very happy to see
+you.  Have you and Emmy been quarrelling already with Joseph, that
+he wants to be off?"
+
+"I promised Bonamy of our service, sir," said Joseph, "to dine with
+him."
+
+"O fie! didn't you tell your mother you would dine here?"
+
+"But in this dress it's impossible."
+
+"Look at him, isn't he handsome enough to dine anywhere, Miss
+Sharp?"
+
+On which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both
+set off in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman.
+
+"Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at Miss
+Pinkerton's?" continued he, following up his advantage.
+
+"Gracious heavens! Father," cried Joseph.
+
+"There now, I have hurt his feelings.  Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I have
+hurt your son's feelings.  I have alluded to his buckskins.  Ask
+Miss Sharp if I haven't? Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp,
+and let us all go to dinner."
+
+"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa has brought
+home the best turbot in Billingsgate."
+
+"Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will follow
+with these two young women," said the father, and he took an arm of
+wife and daughter and walked merrily off.
+
+If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making the
+conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right
+to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally,
+and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their
+mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange
+these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a
+husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who
+would take the trouble off her hands.  What causes young people to
+"come out," but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them
+trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancing till five
+o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal season? What causes
+them to labour at pianoforte sonatas, and to learn four songs from a
+fashionable master at a guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if
+they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green
+toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down some
+"desirable" young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs?
+What causes respectable parents to take up their carpets, set their
+houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their year's income in ball
+suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of their species, and
+an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and dancing? Psha!
+they want to marry their daughters; and, as honest Mrs. Sedley has,
+in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a score of little
+schemes for the settlement of her Amelia, so also had our beloved
+but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to secure the
+husband, who was even more necessary for her than for her friend.
+She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the Arabian
+Nights and Guthrie's Geography; and it is a fact that while she was
+dressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her
+brother was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent
+castle in the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband
+somewhere in the background (she had not seen him as yet, and his
+figure would not therefore be very distinct); she had arrayed
+herself in an infinity of shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces,
+and had mounted upon an elephant to the sound of the march in
+Bluebeard, in order to pay a visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul.
+Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to
+construct you, and many a fanciful young creature besides Rebecca
+Sharp has indulged in these delightful day-dreams ere now!
+
+Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia.  He was
+in the East India Company's Civil Service, and his name appeared, at
+the period of which we write, in the Bengal division of the East
+India Register, as collector of Boggley Wollah, an honourable and
+lucrative post, as everybody knows: in order to know to what higher
+posts Joseph rose in the service, the reader is referred to the same
+periodical.
+
+Boggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy, jungly
+district, famous for snipe-shooting, and where not unfrequently you
+may flush a tiger.  Ramgunge, where there is a magistrate, is only
+forty miles off, and there is a cavalry station about thirty miles
+farther; so Joseph wrote home to his parents, when he took
+possession of his collectorship.  He had lived for about eight years
+of his life, quite alone, at this charming place, scarcely seeing a
+Christian face except twice a year, when the detachment arrived to
+carry off the revenues which he had collected, to Calcutta.
+
+Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure of
+which he returned to Europe, and which was the source of great
+comfort and amusement to him in his native country.  He did not live
+with his family while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like a
+gay young bachelor.  Before he went to India he was too young to
+partake of the delightful pleasures of a man about town, and plunged
+into them on his return with considerable assiduity.  He drove his
+horses in the Park; he dined at the fashionable taverns (for the
+Oriental Club was not as yet invented); he frequented the theatres,
+as the mode was in those days, or made his appearance at the opera,
+laboriously attired in tights and a cocked hat.
+
+On returning to India, and ever after, he used to talk of the
+pleasure of this period of his existence with great enthusiasm, and
+give you to understand that he and Brummel were the leading bucks of
+the day.  But he was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley
+Wollah.  He scarcely knew a single soul in the metropolis: and were
+it not for his doctor, and the society of his blue-pill, and his
+liver complaint, he must have died of loneliness. He was lazy,
+peevish, and a bon-vivant; the appearance of a lady frightened him
+beyond measure; hence it was but seldom that he joined the paternal
+circle in Russell Square, where there was plenty of gaiety, and
+where the jokes of his good-natured old father frightened his amour-
+propre.  His bulk caused Joseph much anxious thought and alarm; now
+and then he would make a desperate attempt to get rid of his
+superabundant fat; but his indolence and love of good living
+speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform, and he found
+himself again at his three meals a day.  He never was well dressed;
+but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and passed
+many hours daily in that occupation. His valet made a fortune out of
+his wardrobe: his toilet-table was covered with as many pomatums and
+essences as ever were employed by an old beauty: he had tried, in
+order to give himself a waist, every girth, stay, and waistband then
+invented.  Like most fat men, he would have his clothes made too
+tight, and took care they should be of the most brilliant colours
+and youthful cut.  When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he
+would issue forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park; and then
+would come back in order to dress again and go and dine with nobody
+at the Piazza Coffee-House. He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps
+his extreme shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity.
+If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance
+into life, she is a young person of no ordinary cleverness.
+
+The first move showed considerable skill.  When she called Sedley a
+very handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who
+would probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by
+the compliment paid to her son.  All mothers are.  If you had told
+Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would
+have been pleased, witch as she was.  Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley
+would overhear the compliment--Rebecca spoke loud enough--and he did
+hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the
+praise thrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it
+tingle with pleasure.  Then, however, came a recoil.  "Is the girl
+making fun of me?" he thought, and straightway he bounced towards
+the bell, and was for retreating, as we have seen, when his father's
+jokes and his mother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where
+he was.  He conducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and
+agitated frame of mind. "Does she really think I am handsome?"
+thought he, "or is she only making game of me?" We have talked of
+Joseph Sedley being as vain as a girl.  Heaven help us! the girls
+have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, "She
+is as vain as a man," and they will have perfect reason.  The
+bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin
+over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages,
+quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette
+in the world.
+
+Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca
+very modest, and holding her green eyes downwards.  She was dressed
+in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow--the picture of
+youth, unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. "I must
+be very quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about
+India."
+
+Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her
+son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of
+this dish was offered to Rebecca.  "What is it?" said she, turning
+an appealing look to Mr. Joseph.
+
+"Capital," said he.  His mouth was full of it: his face quite red
+with the delightful exercise of gobbling. "Mother, it's as good as
+my own curries in India."
+
+"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca.
+"I am sure everything must be good that comes from there."
+
+"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr. Sedley, laughing.
+
+Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.
+
+"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?" said Mr.
+Sedley.
+
+"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the
+cayenne pepper.
+
+"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested.
+
+"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping.  "Oh yes!"  She thought a chili
+was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some.
+"How fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her
+mouth.  It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it
+no longer.  She laid down her fork.  "Water, for Heaven's sake,
+water!" she cried.  Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse
+man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical
+jokes).  "They are real Indian, I assure you," said he.  "Sambo,
+give Miss Sharp some water."
+
+The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke
+capital.  The ladies only smiled a little.  They thought poor
+Rebecca suffered too much.  She would have liked to choke old
+Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the
+abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said,
+with a comical, good-humoured air, "I ought to have remembered the
+pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the
+Arabian Nights.  Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India,
+sir?"
+
+Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured
+girl.  Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad
+in Bengal.  We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know,
+I've got to prefer it!"
+
+"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old
+gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily
+old fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting
+her cap at you."
+
+"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered.  "I recollect, sir,
+there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery,
+and afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at
+me in the year '4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you
+before dinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--he's a
+magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years.
+Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's
+14th, said to me, 'Sedley,' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that
+Sophy Cutler hooks either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.'
+'Done,' says I; and egad, sir--this claret's very good.  Adamson's
+or Carbonell's?"
+
+A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was
+asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day.
+But he was always exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and
+has told this delightful tale many scores of times to his
+apothecary, Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and
+the blue-pill.
+
+Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of
+claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of
+plates full of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout
+cakes that were lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly
+(for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought
+a great deal about the girl upstairs.  "A nice, gay, merry young
+creature," thought he to himself.  "How she looked at me when I
+picked up her handkerchief at dinner!  She dropped it twice.  Who's
+that singing in the drawing-room? 'Gad! shall I go up and see?"
+
+But his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force.
+His father was asleep: his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-
+coach standing hard by in Southampton Row.  "I'll go and see the
+Forty Thieves," said he, "and Miss Decamp's dance"; and he slipped
+away gently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared,
+without waking his worthy parent.
+
+"There goes Joseph," said Amelia, who was looking from the open
+windows of the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano.
+
+"Miss Sharp has frightened him away," said Mrs. Sedley.  "Poor Joe,
+why WILL he be so shy?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Green Silk Purse
+
+
+Poor Joe's panic lasted for two or three days; during which he did
+not visit the house, nor during that period did Miss Rebecca ever
+mention his name.  She was all respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley;
+delighted beyond measure at the Bazaars; and in a whirl of wonder at
+the theatre, whither the good-natured lady took her.  One day,
+Amelia had a headache, and could not go upon some party of pleasure
+to which the two young people were invited: nothing could induce her
+friend to go without her. "What! you who have shown the poor orphan
+what happiness and love are for the first time in her life--quit
+YOU?  Never!"  and the green eyes looked up to Heaven and filled
+with tears; and Mrs. Sedley could not but own that her daughter's
+friend had a charming kind heart of her own.
+
+As for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughed at them with a cordiality
+and perseverance which not a little pleased and softened that good-
+natured gentleman.  Nor was it with the chiefs of the family alone
+that Miss Sharp found favour.  She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop by
+evincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving, which
+operation was then going on in the Housekeeper's room; she persisted
+in calling Sambo "Sir," and "Mr. Sambo," to the delight of that
+attendant; and she apologised to the lady's maid for giving her
+trouble in venturing to ring the bell, with such sweetness and
+humility, that the Servants' Hall was almost as charmed with her as
+the Drawing Room.
+
+Once, in looking over some drawings which Amelia had sent from
+school, Rebecca suddenly came upon one which caused her to burst
+into tears and leave the room. It was on the day when Joe Sedley
+made his second appearance.
+
+Amelia hastened after her friend to know the cause of this display
+of feeling, and the good-natured girl came back without her
+companion, rather affected too.  "You know, her father was our
+drawing-master, Mamma, at Chiswick, and used to do all the best
+parts of our drawings."
+
+"My love! I'm sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did not
+touch them--he only mounted them." "It was called mounting, Mamma.
+Rebecca remembers the drawing, and her father working at it, and the
+thought of it came upon her rather suddenly--and so, you know, she--"
+
+"The poor child is all heart," said Mrs. Sedley.
+
+"I wish she could stay with us another week," said Amelia.
+
+"She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet at Dumdum, only
+fairer.  She's married now to Lance, the Artillery Surgeon.  Do you
+know, Ma'am, that once Quintin, of the 14th, bet me--"
+
+"O Joseph, we know that story," said Amelia, laughing. Never mind
+about telling that; but persuade Mamma to write to Sir Something
+Crawley for leave of absence for poor dear Rebecca: here she comes,
+her eyes red with weeping."
+
+"I'm better, now," said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible,
+taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing it
+respectfully.  "How kind you all are to me! All," she added, with a
+laugh, "except you, Mr. Joseph."
+
+"Me!" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure "Gracious
+Heavens! Good Gad! Miss Sharp!'
+
+"Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horrid
+pepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you? You are not so
+good to me as dear Amelia."
+
+"He doesn't know you so well," cried Amelia.
+
+"I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear," said her mother.
+
+"The curry was capital; indeed it was," said Joe, quite gravely.
+"Perhaps there was NOT enough citron juice in it--no, there was
+NOT."
+
+"And the chilis?"
+
+"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe, caught by the
+ridicule of the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter
+which ended quite suddenly, as usual.
+
+"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me another time," said
+Rebecca, as they went down again to dinner.  "I didn't think men
+were fond of putting poor harmless girls to pain."
+
+"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
+
+"No," said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she gave him ever so
+gentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quite
+frightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then
+down at the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's
+heart did not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion
+of regard on the part of the simple girl.
+
+It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable
+correctness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but,
+you see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself.  If
+a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he
+must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle
+matters with the young man, she must do it for herself.  And oh,
+what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers
+oftener! We can't resist them, if they do.  Let them show ever so
+little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or
+ugly, it is all the same.  And this I set down as a positive truth.
+A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may
+marry WHOM SHE LIKES.  Only let us be thankful that the darlings are
+like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power.  They
+would overcome us entirely if they did.
+
+"Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I exactly begin
+to feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler." Many sweet little
+appeals, half tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about
+the dishes at dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of
+considerable familiarity with the family, and as for the girls, they
+loved each other like sisters.  Young unmarried girls always do, if
+they are in a house together for ten days.
+
+As if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every way--what must
+Amelia do, but remind her brother of a promise made last Easter
+holidays--"When I was a girl at school," said she, laughing--a
+promise that he, Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall.  "Now," she
+said, "that Rebecca is with us, will be the very time."
+
+"O, delightful!" said Rebecca, going to clap her hands; but she
+recollected herself, and paused, like a modest creature, as she was.
+
+"To-night is not the night," said Joe.
+
+"Well, to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow your Papa and I dine out," said Mrs. Sedley.
+
+"You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed?" said her husband, "and
+that a woman of your years and size is to catch cold, in such an
+abominable damp place?"
+
+'The children must have someone with them," cried Mrs. Sedley.
+
+"Let Joe go," said-his father, laughing.  "He's big enough." At
+which speech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laughing, and
+poor fat Joe felt inclined to become a parricide almost.
+
+"Undo his stays!" continued the pitiless old gentleman. "Fling some
+water in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him upstairs: the dear
+creature's fainting.  Poor victim! carry him up; he's as light as a
+feather!"
+
+"If I stand this, sir, I'm d------!" roared Joseph.
+
+"Order Mr. Jos's elephant, Sambo!" cried the father. "Send to Exeter
+'Change, Sambo"; but seeing Jos ready almost to cry with vexation,
+the old joker stopped his laughter, and said, holding out his hand
+to his son, "It's all fair on the Stock Exchange, Jos--and, Sambo,
+never mind the elephant, but give me and Mr. Jos a glass of
+Champagne.  Boney himself hasn't got such in his cellar, my boy!"
+
+A goblet of Champagne restored Joseph's equanimity, and before the
+bottle was emptied, of which as an invalid he took two-thirds, he
+had agreed to take the young ladies to Vauxhall.
+
+"The girls must have a gentleman apiece," said the old gentleman.
+"Jos will be sure to leave Emmy in the crowd, he will be so taken up
+with Miss Sharp here.  Send to 96, and ask George Osborne if he'll
+come."
+
+At this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley
+looked at her husband and laughed.  Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a
+manner indescribably roguish, and he looked at Amelia; and Amelia,
+hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen
+know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her
+life--at least not since she was eight years old, and when she was
+caught stealing jam out of a cupboard by her godmother.  "Amelia had
+better write a note," said her father; "and let George Osborne see
+what a beautiful handwriting we have brought back from Miss
+Pinkerton's.  Do you remember when you wrote to him to come on
+Twelfth-night, Emmy, and spelt twelfth without the f?"
+
+"That was years ago," said Amelia.
+
+"It seems like yesterday, don't it, John?" said Mrs. Sedley to her
+husband; and that night in a conversation which took place in a
+front room in the second floor, in a sort of tent, hung round with
+chintz of a rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico
+of a tender rose-colour; in the interior of which species of marquee
+was a featherbed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round
+red faces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one,
+ending in a tassel--in a CURTAIN LECTURE, I say, Mrs. Sedley took
+her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.
+
+"It was quite wicked of you, Mr. Sedley," said she, "to torment the
+poor boy so."
+
+"My dear," said the cotton-tassel in defence of his conduct, "Jos is
+a great deal vainer than you ever were in your life, and that's
+saying a good deal.  Though, some thirty years ago, in the year
+seventeen hundred and eighty--what was it?--perhaps you had a right
+to be vain--I don't say no.  But I've no patience with Jos and his
+dandified modesty.  It is out-Josephing Joseph, my dear, and all the
+while the boy is only thinking of himself, and what a fine fellow he
+is.  I doubt, Ma'am, we shall have some trouble with him yet.  Here
+is Emmy's little friend making love to him as hard as she can;
+that's quite clear; and if she does not catch him some other will.
+That man is destined to be a prey to woman, as I am to go on 'Change
+every day.  It's a mercy he did not bring us over a black daughter-
+in-law, my dear.  But, mark my words, the first woman who fishes for
+him, hooks him."
+
+"She shall go off to-morrow, the little artful creature," said Mrs.
+Sedley, with great energy.
+
+"Why not she as well as another, Mrs. Sedley? The girl's a white
+face at any rate.  I don't care who marries him.  Let Joe please
+himself."
+
+And presently the voices of the two speakers were hushed, or were
+replaced by the gentle but unromantic music of the nose; and save
+when the church bells tolled the hour and the watchman called it,
+all was silent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell
+Square, and the Stock Exchange.
+
+When morning came, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley no longer thought of
+executing her threats with regard to Miss Sharp; for though nothing
+is more keen, nor more common, nor more justifiable, than maternal
+jealousy, yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the
+little, humble, grateful, gentle governess would dare to look up to
+such a magnificent personage as the Collector of Boggley Wollah.
+The petition, too, for an extension of the young lady's leave of
+absence had already been despatched, and it would be difficult to
+find a pretext for abruptly dismissing her.
+
+And as if all things conspired in favour of the gentle Rebecca, the
+very elements (although she was not inclined at first to acknowledge
+their action in her behalf) interposed to aid her.  For on the
+evening appointed for the Vauxhall party, George Osborne having come
+to dinner, and the elders of the house having departed, according to
+invitation, to dine with Alderman Balls at Highbury Barn, there came
+on such a thunder-storm as only happens on Vauxhall nights, and as
+obliged the young people, perforce, to remain at home.  Mr. Osborne
+did not seem in the least disappointed at this occurrence. He and
+Joseph Sedley drank a fitting quantity of port-wine, tete-a-tete, in
+the dining-room, during the drinking of which Sedley told a number
+of his best Indian stories; for he was extremely talkative in man's
+society; and afterwards Miss Amelia Sedley did the honours of the
+drawing-room; and these four young persons passed such a comfortable
+evening together, that they declared they were rather glad of the
+thunder-storm than otherwise, which had caused them to put off their
+visit to Vauxhall.
+
+Osborne was Sedley's godson, and had been one of the family any time
+these three-and-twenty years.  At six weeks old, he had received
+from John Sedley a present of a silver cup; at six months old, a
+coral with gold whistle and bells; from his youth upwards he was
+"tipped" regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas: and on going
+back to school, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed by
+Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and
+George an impudent urchin of ten years old.  In a word, George was
+as familiar with the family as such daily acts of kindness and
+intercourse could make him.
+
+"Do you remember, Sedley, what a fury you were in, when I cut off
+the tassels of your Hessian boots, and how Miss--hem!--how Amelia
+rescued me from a beating, by falling down on her knees and crying
+out to her brother Jos, not to beat little George?"
+
+Jos remembered this remarkable circumstance perfectly well, but
+vowed that he had totally forgotten it.
+
+"Well, do you remember coming down in a gig to Dr. Swishtail's to
+see me, before you went to India, and giving me half a guinea and a
+pat on the head? I always had an idea that you were at least seven
+feet high, and was quite astonished at your return from India to
+find you no taller than myself."
+
+"How good of Mr. Sedley to go to your school and give you the
+money!" exclaimed Rebecca, in accents of extreme delight.
+
+"Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too. Boys never
+forget those tips at school, nor the givers."
+
+"I delight in Hessian boots," said Rebecca.  Jos Sedley, who admired
+his own legs prodigiously, and always wore this ornamental
+chaussure, was extremely pleased at this remark, though he drew his
+legs under his chair as it was made.
+
+"Miss Sharp!" said George Osborne, "you who are so clever an artist,
+you must make a grand historical picture of the scene of the boots.
+Sedley shall be represented in buckskins, and holding one of the
+injured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have hold of my
+shirt-frill.  Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little
+hands up; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as
+the frontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book."
+
+"I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca.  'I'll do it when
+--when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and
+piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry
+they would be to part with her.
+
+"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca," said Amelia.
+
+"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly.  "That I may be only
+the more unhap--unwilling to lose you?" And she turned away her
+head.  Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears
+which, we have said, was one of the defects of this silly little
+thing.  George Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched
+curiosity; and Joseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out
+of his big chest, as he cast his eyes down towards his favourite
+Hessian boots.
+
+"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley--Amelia," said George, who felt
+at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to
+seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her
+in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and
+if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that
+single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling an untruth, for
+the fact is that these two young people had been bred up by their
+parents for this very purpose, and their banns had, as it were, been
+read in their respective families any time these ten years.  They
+went off to the piano, which was situated, as pianos usually are, in
+the back drawing-room; and as it was rather dark, Miss Amelia, in
+the most unaffected way in the world, put her hand into Mr.
+Osborne's, who, of course, could see the way among the chairs and
+ottomans a great deal better than she could.  But this arrangement
+left Mr. Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, at the drawing-room
+table, where the latter was occupied in knitting a green silk purse.
+
+"There is no need to ask family secrets," said Miss Sharp.  "Those
+two have told theirs."
+
+"As soon as he gets his company," said Joseph, "I believe the affair
+is settled.  George Osborne is a capital fellow."
+
+"And your sister the dearest creature in the world," said Rebecca.
+"Happy the man who wins her!" With this, Miss Sharp gave a great
+sigh.
+
+When two unmarried persons get together, and talk upon such delicate
+subjects as the present, a great deal of confidence and intimacy is
+presently established between them.  There is no need of giving a
+special report of the conversation which now took place between Mr.
+Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged
+from the foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent;
+it seldom is in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-
+flown and ingenious novels. As there was music in the next room, the
+talk was carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though,
+for the matter of that, the couple in the next apartment would not
+have been disturbed had the talking been ever so loud, so occupied
+were they with their own pursuits.
+
+Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found himself
+talking, without the least timidity or hesitation, to a person of
+the other sex.  Miss Rebecca asked him a great number of questions
+about India, which gave him an opportunity of narrating many
+interesting anecdotes about that country and himself.  He described
+the balls at Government House, and the manner in which they kept
+themselves cool in the hot weather, with punkahs, tatties, and other
+contrivances; and he was very witty regarding the number of
+Scotchmen whom Lord Minto, the Governor-General, patronised; and
+then he described a tiger-hunt; and the manner in which the mahout
+of his elephant had been pulled off his seat by one of the
+infuriated animals.  How delighted Miss Rebecca was at the
+Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories of the Scotch
+aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a sad wicked satirical
+creature; and how frightened she was at the story of the elephant!
+"For your mother's sake, dear Mr. Sedley," she said, "for the sake
+of all your friends, promise NEVER to go on one of those horrid
+expeditions."
+
+"Pooh, pooh, Miss Sharp," said he, pulling up his shirt-collars;
+"the danger makes the sport only the pleasanter." He had never been
+but once at a tiger-hunt, when the accident in question occurred,
+and when he was half killed--not by the tiger, but by the fright.
+And as he talked on, he grew quite bold, and actually had the
+audacity to ask Miss Rebecca for whom she was knitting the green
+silk purse? He was quite surprised and delighted at his own graceful
+familiar manner.
+
+"For any one who wants a purse," replied Miss Rebecca, looking at
+him in the most gentle winning way. Sedley was going to make one of
+the most eloquent speeches possible, and had begun--"O Miss Sharp,
+how--" when some song which was performed in the other room came to
+an end, and caused him to hear his own voice so distinctly that he
+stopped, blushed, and blew his nose in great agitation.
+
+"Did you ever hear anything like your brother's eloquence?"
+whispered Mr. Osborne to Amelia.  "Why, your friend has worked
+miracles."
+
+"The more the better," said Miss Amelia; who, like almost all women
+who are worth a pin, was a match-maker in her heart, and would have
+been delighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India.  She
+had, too, in the course of this few days' constant intercourse,
+warmed into a most tender friendship for Rebecca, and discovered a
+million of virtues and amiable qualities in her which she had not
+perceived when they were at Chiswick together.  For the affection of
+young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches
+up to the sky in a night.  It is no blame to them that after
+marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe subsides.  It is what
+sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a yearning after
+the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly not satisfied
+until they have husbands and children on whom they may centre
+affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small change.
+
+Having expended her little store of songs, or having stayed long
+enough in the back drawing-room, it now appeared proper to Miss
+Amelia to ask her friend to sing.  "You would not have listened to
+me," she said to Mr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a
+fib), "had you heard Rebecca first."
+
+"I give Miss Sharp warning, though," said Osborne, "that, right or
+wrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley the first singer in the world."
+
+"You shall hear," said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was actually polite
+enough to carry the candles to the piano. Osborne hinted that he
+should like quite as well to sit in the dark; but Miss Sedley,
+laughing, declined to bear him company any farther, and the two
+accordingly followed Mr. Joseph.  Rebecca sang far better than her
+friend (though of course Osborne was free to keep his opinion), and
+exerted herself to the utmost, and, indeed, to the wonder of Amelia,
+who had never known her perform so well.  She sang a French song,
+which Joseph did not understand in the least, and which George
+confessed he did not understand, and then a number of those simple
+ballads which were the fashion forty years ago, and in which British
+tars, our King, poor Susan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the
+principal themes. They are not, it is said, very brilliant, in a
+musical point of view, but contain numberless good-natured, simple
+appeals to the affections, which people understood better than the
+milk-and-water lagrime, sospiri, and felicita of the eternal
+Donizettian music with which we are favoured now-a-days.
+
+Conversation of a sentimental sort, befitting the subject, was
+carried on between the songs, to which Sambo, after he had brought
+the tea, the delighted cook, and even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the
+housekeeper, condescended to listen on the landing-place.
+
+Among these ditties was one, the last of the concert, and to the
+following effect:
+
+Ah! bleak and barren was the moor, Ah! loud and piercing was the
+storm, The cottage roof was shelter'd sure, The cottage hearth was
+bright and warm--An orphan boy the lattice pass'd, And, as he mark'd
+its cheerful glow, Felt doubly keen the midnight blast, And doubly
+cold the fallen snow.
+
+They mark'd him as he onward prest, With fainting heart and weary
+limb; Kind voices bade him turn and rest, And gentle faces welcomed
+him. The dawn is up--the guest is gone, The cottage hearth is
+blazing still; Heaven pity all poor wanderers lone! Hark to the wind
+upon the hill!
+
+It was the sentiment of the before-mentioned words, "When I'm gone,"
+over again.  As she came to the last words, Miss Sharp's "deep-toned
+voice faltered." Everybody felt the allusion to her departure, and
+to her hapless orphan state.  Joseph Sedley, who was fond of music,
+and soft-hearted, was in a state of ravishment during the
+performance of the song, and profoundly touched at its conclusion.
+If he had had the courage; if George and Miss Sedley had remained,
+according to the former's proposal, in the farther room, Joseph
+Sedley's bachelorhood would have been at an end, and this work would
+never have been written.  But at the close of the ditty, Rebecca
+quitted the piano, and giving her hand to Amelia, walked away into
+the front drawing-room twilight; and, at this moment, Mr. Sambo made
+his appearance with a tray, containing sandwiches, jellies, and some
+glittering glasses and decanters, on which Joseph Sedley's attention
+was immediately fixed.  When the parents of the house of Sedley
+returned from their dinner-party, they found the young people so
+busy in talking, that they had not heard the arrival of the
+carriage, and Mr. Joseph was in the act of saying, "My dear Miss
+Sharp, one little teaspoonful of jelly to recruit you after your
+immense--your--your delightful exertions."
+
+"Bravo, Jos!" said Mr. Sedley; on hearing the bantering of which
+well-known voice, Jos instantly relapsed into an alarmed silence,
+and quickly took his departure. He did not lie awake all night
+thinking whether or not he was in love with Miss Sharp; the passion
+of love never interfered with the appetite or the slumber of Mr.
+Joseph Sedley; but he thought to himself how delightful it would be
+to hear such songs as those after Cutcherry--what a distinguee girl
+she was--how she could speak French better than the Governor-
+General's lady herself--and what a sensation she would make at the
+Calcutta balls. "It's evident the poor devil's in love with me,"
+thought he.  "She is just as rich as most of the girls who come out
+to India.  I might go farther, and fare worse, egad!" And in these
+meditations he fell asleep.
+
+How Miss Sharp lay awake, thinking, will he come or not to-morrow?
+need not be told here.  To-morrow came, and, as sure as fate, Mr.
+Joseph Sedley made his appearance before luncheon.  He had never
+been known before to confer such an honour on Russell Square.
+George Osborne was somehow there already (sadly "putting out"
+Amelia, who was writing to her twelve dearest friends at Chiswick
+Mall), and Rebecca was employed upon her yesterday's work.  As Joe's
+buggy drove up, and while, after his usual thundering knock and
+pompous bustle at the door, the ex-Collector of Boggley Wollah
+laboured up stairs to the drawing-room, knowing glances were
+telegraphed between Osborne and Miss Sedley, and the pair, smiling
+archly, looked at Rebecca, who actually blushed as she bent her fair
+ringlets over her knitting.  How her heart beat as Joseph appeared--
+Joseph, puffing from the staircase in shining creaking boots--
+Joseph, in a new waistcoat, red with heat and nervousness, and
+blushing behind his wadded neckcloth.  It was a nervous moment for
+all; and as for Amelia, I think she was more frightened than even
+the people most concerned.
+
+Sambo, who flung open the door and announced Mr. Joseph, followed
+grinning, in the Collector's rear, and bearing two handsome nosegays
+of flowers, which the monster had actually had the gallantry to
+purchase in Covent Garden Market that morning--they were not as big
+as the haystacks which ladies carry about with them now-a-days, in
+cones of filigree paper; but the young women were delighted with the
+gift, as Joseph presented one to each, with an exceedingly solemn
+bow.
+
+"Bravo, Jos!" cried Osborne.
+
+"Thank you, dear Joseph," said Amelia, quite ready to kiss her
+brother, if he were so minded.  (And I think for a kiss from such a
+dear creature as Amelia, I would purchase all Mr. Lee's
+conservatories out of hand.)
+
+"O heavenly, heavenly flowers!" exclaimed Miss Sharp, and smelt them
+delicately, and held them to her bosom, and cast up her eyes to the
+ceiling, in an ecstasy of admiration.  Perhaps she just looked first
+into the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet-doux hidden
+among the flowers; but there was no letter.
+
+"Do they talk the language of flowers at Boggley Wollah, Sedley?"
+asked Osborne, laughing.
+
+"Pooh, nonsense!" replied the sentimental youth. "Bought 'em at
+Nathan's; very glad you like 'em; and eh, Amelia, my dear, I bought
+a pine-apple at the same time, which I gave to Sambo.  Let's have it
+for tiffin; very cool and nice this hot weather." Rebecca said she
+had never tasted a pine, and longed beyond everything to taste one.
+
+So the conversation went on.  I don't know on what pretext Osborne
+left the room, or why, presently, Amelia went away, perhaps to
+superintend the slicing of the pine-apple; but Jos was left alone
+with Rebecca, who had resumed her work, and the green silk and the
+shining needles were quivering rapidly under her white slender
+fingers.
+
+"What a beautiful, BYOO-OOTIFUL song that was you sang last night,
+dear Miss Sharp," said the Collector.  "It made me cry almost; 'pon
+my honour it did."
+
+"Because you have a kind heart, Mr. Joseph; all the Sedleys have, I
+think."
+
+"It kept me awake last night, and I was trying to hum it this
+morning, in bed; I was, upon my honour.  Gollop, my doctor, came in
+at eleven (for I'm a sad invalid, you know, and see Gollop every
+day), and, 'gad! there I was, singing away like--a robin."
+
+"O you droll creature! Do let me hear you sing it."
+
+"Me? No, you, Miss Sharp; my dear Miss Sharp, do sing it."  "Not now,
+Mr. Sedley," said Rebecca, with a sigh.  "My spirits are not equal
+to it; besides, I must finish the purse.  Will you help me, Mr.
+Sedley?" And before he had time to ask how, Mr. Joseph Sedley, of
+the East India Company's service, was actually seated tete-a-tete
+with a young lady, looking at her with a most killing expression;
+his arms stretched out before her in an imploring attitude, and his
+hands bound in a web of green silk, which she was unwinding.
+
+In this romantic position Osborne and Amelia found the interesting
+pair, when they entered to announce that tiffin was ready.  The
+skein of silk was just wound round the card; but Mr. Jos had never
+spoken.
+
+"I am sure he will to-night, dear," Amelia said, as she pressed
+Rebecca's hand; and Sedley, too, had communed with his soul, and
+said to himself, "'Gad, I'll pop the question at Vauxhall."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Dobbin of Ours
+
+
+Cuff's fight with Dobbin, and the unexpected issue of that contest,
+will long be remembered by every man who was educated at Dr.
+Swishtail's famous school.  The latter Youth (who used to be called
+Heigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, and by many other names indicative
+of puerile contempt) was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it
+seemed, the dullest of all Dr. Swishtail's young gentlemen. His
+parent was a grocer in the city: and it was bruited abroad that he
+was admitted into Dr. Swishtail's academy upon what are called
+"mutual principles"--that is to say, the expenses of his board and
+schooling were defrayed by his father in goods, not money; and he
+stood there--most at the bottom of the school--in his scraggy
+corduroys and jacket, through the seams of which his great big bones
+were bursting--as the representative of so many pounds of tea,
+candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of which a very mild proportion
+was supplied for the puddings of the establishment), and other
+commodities.  A dreadful day it was for young Dobbin when one of the
+youngsters of the school, having run into the town upon a poaching
+excursion for hardbake and polonies, espied the cart of Dobbin &
+Rudge, Grocers and Oilmen, Thames Street, London, at the Doctor's
+door, discharging a cargo of the wares in which the firm dealt.
+
+Young Dobbin had no peace after that.  The jokes were frightful, and
+merciless against him.  "Hullo, Dobbin," one wag would say, "here's
+good news in the paper.  Sugars is ris', my boy." Another would set
+a sum--"If a pound of mutton-candles cost sevenpence-halfpenny, how
+much must Dobbin cost?" and a roar would follow from all the circle
+of young knaves, usher and all, who rightly considered that the
+selling of goods by retail is a shameful and infamous practice,
+meriting the contempt and scorn of all real gentlemen.
+
+"Your father's only a merchant, Osborne," Dobbin said in private to
+the little boy who had brought down the storm upon him.  At which
+the latter replied haughtily, "My father's a gentleman, and keeps
+his carriage"; and Mr. William Dobbin retreated to a remote outhouse
+in the playground, where he passed a half-holiday in the bitterest
+sadness and woe.  Who amongst us is there that does not recollect
+similar hours of bitter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice;
+who shrinks before a slight; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and
+so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy? and how many
+of those gentle souls do you degrade, estrange, torture, for the
+sake of a little loose arithmetic, and miserable dog-latin?
+
+Now, William Dobbin, from an incapacity to acquire the rudiments of
+the above language, as they are propounded in that wonderful book
+the Eton Latin Grammar, was compelled to remain among the very last
+of Doctor Swishtail's scholars, and was "taken down" continually by
+little fellows with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with
+the lower form, a giant amongst them, with his downcast, stupefied
+look, his dog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys.  High and
+low, all made fun of him.  They sewed up those corduroys, tight as
+they were. They cut his bed-strings.  They upset buckets and
+benches, so that he might break his shins over them, which he never
+failed to do.  They sent him parcels, which, when opened, were found
+to contain the paternal soap and candles.  There was no little
+fellow but had his jeer and joke at Dobbin; and he bore everything
+quite patiently, and was entirely dumb and miserable.
+
+Cuff, on the contrary, was the great chief and dandy of the
+Swishtail Seminary.  He smuggled wine in.  He fought the town-boys.
+Ponies used to come for him to ride home on Saturdays.  He had his
+top-boots in his room, in which he used to hunt in the holidays.  He
+had a gold repeater: and took snuff like the Doctor.  He had been to
+the Opera, and knew the merits of the principal actors, preferring
+Mr. Kean to Mr. Kemble.  He could knock you off forty Latin verses
+in an hour.  He could make French poetry. What else didn't he know,
+or couldn't he do? They said even the Doctor himself was afraid of
+him.
+
+Cuff, the unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his subjects,
+and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his
+shoes: that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him
+balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons.  "Figs" was the
+fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing
+him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold
+personal communication.
+
+One day in private, the two young gentlemen had had a difference.
+Figs, alone in the schoolroom, was blundering over a home letter;
+when Cuff, entering, bade him go upon some message, of which tarts
+were probably the subject.
+
+"I can't," says Dobbin; "I want to finish my letter."
+
+"You CAN'T?" says Mr. Cuff, laying hold of that document (in which
+many words were scratched out, many were mis-spelt, on which had
+been spent I don't know how much thought, and labour, and tears; for
+the poor fellow was writing to his mother, who was fond of him,
+although she was a grocer's wife, and lived in a back parlour in
+Thames Street).  "You CAN'T?" says Mr. Cuff: "I should like to know
+why, pray? Can't you write to old Mother Figs to-morrow?"
+
+"Don't call names," Dobbin said, getting off the bench very nervous.
+
+"Well, sir, will you go?" crowed the cock of the school.
+
+"Put down the letter," Dobbin replied; "no gentleman readth
+letterth."
+
+"Well, NOW will you go?" says the other.
+
+"No, I won't.  Don't strike, or I'll THMASH you," roars out Dobbin,
+springing to a leaden inkstand, and looking so wicked, that Mr. Cuff
+paused, turned down his coat sleeves again, put his hands into his
+pockets, and walked away with a sneer.  But he never meddled
+personally with the grocer's boy after that; though we must do
+him the justice to say he always spoke of Mr. Dobbin with contempt
+behind his back.
+
+Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, on a
+sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor William Dobbin,
+who was lying under a tree in the playground, spelling over a
+favourite copy of the Arabian Nights which he had apart from the
+rest of the school, who were pursuing their various sports--quite
+lonely, and almost happy.  If people would but leave children to
+themselves; if teachers would cease to bully them; if parents would
+not insist upon directing their thoughts, and dominating their
+feelings--those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all
+(for how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, of
+our fathers, of our neighbour, and how far more beautiful and sacred
+are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to
+be, than those of the dull and world-corrupted person who rules
+him?)--if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children
+alone a little more, small harm would accrue, although a less
+quantity of as in praesenti might be acquired.
+
+Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away
+with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince
+Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the
+Prince found her, and whither we should all like to make a tour;
+when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his
+pleasant reverie; and looking up, he saw Cuff before him,
+belabouring a little boy.
+
+It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer's cart; but
+he bore little malice, not at least towards the young and small.
+"How dare you, sir, break the bottle?" says Cuff to the little
+urchin, swinging a yellow cricket-stump over him.
+
+The boy had been instructed to get over the playground wall (at a
+selected spot where the broken glass had been removed from the top,
+and niches made convenient in the brick); to run a quarter of a
+mile; to purchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit; to brave all the
+Doctor's outlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground
+again; during the performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and
+the bottle was broken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his
+pantaloons had been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a
+perfectly guilty and trembling, though harmless, wretch.
+
+"How dare you, sir, break it?" says Cuff; "you blundering little
+thief.  You drank the shrub, and now you pretend to have broken the
+bottle.  Hold out your hand, sir."
+
+Down came the stump with a great heavy thump on the child's hand.  A
+moan followed.  Dobbin looked up. The Fairy Peribanou had fled into
+the inmost cavern with Prince Ahmed: the Roc had whisked away
+Sindbad the Sailor out of the Valley of Diamonds out of sight, far
+into the clouds: and there was everyday life before honest William;
+and a big boy beating a little one without cause.
+
+"Hold out your other hand, sir," roars Cuff to his little
+schoolfellow, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin quivered,
+and gathered himself up in his narrow old clothes.
+
+"Take that, you little devil!" cried Mr. Cuff, and down came the
+wicket again on the child's hand.--Don't be horrified, ladies, every
+boy at a public school has done it. Your children will so do and be
+done by, in all probability.  Down came the wicket again; and Dobbin
+started up.
+
+I can't tell what his motive was.  Torture in a public school is as
+much licensed as the knout in Russia.  It would be ungentlemanlike
+(in a manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin's foolish soul revolted
+against that exercise of tyranny; or perhaps he had a hankering
+feeling of revenge in his mind, and longed to measure himself
+against that splendid bully and tyrant, who had all the glory,
+pride, pomp, circumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards
+saluting, in the place.  Whatever may have been his incentive,
+however, up he sprang, and screamed out, "Hold off, Cuff; don't
+bully that child any more; or I'll--"
+
+"Or you'll what?" Cuff asked in amazement at this interruption.
+"Hold out your hand, you little beast."
+
+"I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life,"
+Dobbin said, in reply to the first part of Cuff's sentence; and
+little Osborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder and
+incredulity at seeing this amazing champion put up suddenly to
+defend him: while Cuff's astonishment was scarcely less.  Fancy our
+late monarch George III when he heard of the revolt of the North
+American colonies: fancy brazen Goliath when little David stepped
+forward and claimed a meeting; and you have the feelings of Mr.
+Reginald Cuff when this rencontre was proposed to him.
+
+"After school," says he, of course; after a pause and a look, as
+much as to say, "Make your will, and communicate your last wishes to
+your friends between this time and that."
+
+"As you please," Dobbin said.  "You must be my bottle holder,
+Osborne."
+
+"Well, if you like," little Osborne replied; for you see his papa
+kept a carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his champion.
+
+Yes, when the hour of battle came, he was almost ashamed to say, "Go
+it, Figs"; and not a single other boy in the place uttered that cry
+for the first two or three rounds of this famous combat; at the
+commencement of which the scientific Cuff, with a contemptuous smile
+on his face, and as light and as gay as if he was at a ball, planted
+his blows upon his adversary, and floored that unlucky champion
+three times running.  At each fall there was a cheer; and everybody
+was anxious to have the honour of offering the conqueror a knee.
+
+"What a licking I shall get when it's over," young Osborne thought,
+picking up his man.  "You'd best give in," he said to Dobbin; "it's
+only a thrashing, Figs, and you know I'm used to it." But Figs, all
+whose limbs were in a quiver, and whose nostrils were breathing
+rage, put his little bottle-holder aside, and went in for a fourth
+time.
+
+As he did not in the least know how to parry the blows that were
+aimed at himself, and Cuff had begun the attack on the three
+preceding occasions, without ever allowing his enemy to strike, Figs
+now determined that he would commence the engagement by a charge on
+his own part; and accordingly, being a left-handed man, brought that
+arm into action, and hit out a couple of times with all his might--
+once at Mr. Cuff's left eye, and once on his beautiful Roman nose.
+
+Cuff went down this time, to the astonishment of the assembly.
+"Well hit, by Jove," says little Osborne, with the air of a
+connoisseur, clapping his man on the back. "Give it him with the
+left, Figs my boy."
+
+Figs's left made terrific play during all the rest of the combat.
+Cuff went down every time.  At the sixth round, there were almost as
+many fellows shouting out, "Go it, Figs," as there were youths
+exclaiming, "Go it, Cuff." At the twelfth round the latter champion
+was all abroad, as the saying is, and had lost all presence of mind
+and power of attack or defence.  Figs, on the contrary, was as calm
+as a quaker.  His face being quite pale, his eyes shining open, and
+a great cut on his underlip bleeding profusely, gave this young
+fellow a fierce and ghastly air, which perhaps struck terror into
+many spectators.  Nevertheless, his intrepid adversary prepared to
+close for the thirteenth time.
+
+If I had the pen of a Napier, or a Bell's Life, I should like to
+describe this combat properly.  It was the last charge of the Guard--
+(that is, it would have been, only Waterloo had not yet taken
+place)--it was Ney's column breasting the hill of La Haye Sainte,
+bristling with ten thousand bayonets, and crowned with twenty
+eagles--it was the shout of the beef-eating British, as leaping down
+the hill they rushed to hug the enemy in the savage arms of battle--
+in other words, Cuff coming up full of pluck, but quite reeling and
+groggy, the Fig-merchant put in his left as usual on his adversary's
+nose, and sent him down for the last time.
+
+"I think that will do for him," Figs said, as his opponent dropped
+as neatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot's ball plump into
+the pocket at billiards; and the fact is, when time was called, Mr.
+Reginald Cuff was not able, or did not choose, to stand up again.
+
+And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as would have made
+you think he had been their darling champion through the whole
+battle; and as absolutely brought Dr. Swishtail out of his study,
+curious to know the cause of the uproar.  He threatened to flog Figs
+violently, of course; but Cuff, who had come to himself by this
+time, and was washing his wounds, stood up and said, "It's my fault,
+sir--not Figs'--not Dobbin's.  I was bullying a little boy; and he
+served me right." By which magnanimous speech he not only saved his
+conqueror a whipping, but got back all his ascendancy over the boys
+which his defeat had nearly cost him.
+
+Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of the
+transaction.
+
+Sugarcane House, Richmond, March, 18--
+
+DEAR MAMA,--I hope you are quite well.  I should be much obliged to
+you to send me a cake and five shillings. There has been a fight
+here between Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, you know, was the Cock of the
+School.  They fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked.  So Cuff is
+now Only Second Cock.  The fight was about me.  Cuff was licking me
+for breaking a bottle of milk, and Figs wouldn't stand it.  We call
+him Figs because his father is a Grocer--Figs & Rudge, Thames St.,
+City--I think as he fought for me you ought to buy your Tea & Sugar
+at his father's.  Cuff goes home every Saturday, but can't this,
+because he has 2 Black Eyes.  He has a white Pony to come and fetch
+him, and a groom in livery on a bay mare.  I wish my Papa would let
+me have a Pony, and I am
+
+Your dutiful Son, GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE
+
+ P.S.--Give my love to little Emmy.  I am cutting her out a Coach in
+cardboard.  Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake.
+
+In consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose prodigiously
+in the estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the name of Figs,
+which had been a byword of reproach, became as respectable and
+popular a nickname as any other in use in the school.  "After all,
+it's not his fault that his father's a grocer," George Osborne said,
+who, though a little chap, had a very high popularity among the
+Swishtail youth; and his opinion was received with great applause.
+It was voted low to sneer at Dobbin about this accident of birth.
+"Old Figs" grew to be a name of kindness and endearment; and the
+sneak of an usher jeered at him no longer.
+
+And Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He made
+wonderful advances in scholastic learning.  The superb Cuff himself,
+at whose condescension Dobbin could only blush and wonder, helped
+him on with his Latin verses; "coached" him in play-hours: carried
+him triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-sized
+form; and even there got a fair place for him.  It was discovered,
+that although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was
+uncommonly quick.  To the contentment of all he passed third in
+algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public Midsummer
+examination. You should have seen his mother's face when Telemaque
+(that delicious romance) was presented to him by the Doctor in the
+face of the whole school and the parents and company, with an
+inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin.  All the boys clapped hands in token
+of applause and sympathy.  His blushes, his stumbles, his
+awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed as he went back
+to his place, who shall describe or calculate? Old Dobbin, his
+father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him two
+guineas publicly; most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for
+the school: and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays.
+
+Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy
+change in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and
+manly disposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute
+his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George
+Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is
+only felt by children--such an affection, as we read in the charming
+fairy-book, uncouth Orson had for splendid young Valentine his
+conqueror.  He flung himself down at little Osborne's feet, and
+loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne
+in secret.  Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday.  He
+believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the
+handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most
+generous of created boys.  He shared his money with him: bought him
+uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee,
+Little Warblers, and romantic books, with large coloured pictures of
+knights and robbers, in many of which latter you might read
+inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire, from his attached
+friend William Dobbin--the which tokens of homage George received
+very graciously, as became his superior merit.
+
+So that Lieutenant Osborne, when coming to Russell Square on the day
+of the Vauxhall party, said to the ladies, "Mrs. Sedley, Ma'am, I
+hope you have room; I've asked Dobbin of ours to come and dine here,
+and go with us to Vauxhall.  He's almost as modest as Jos."
+
+"Modesty! pooh," said the stout gentleman, casting a vainqueur look
+at Miss Sharp.
+
+"He is--but you are incomparably more graceful, Sedley," Osborne
+added, laughing.  "I met him at the Bedford, when I went to look for
+you; and I told him that Miss Amelia was come home, and that we were
+all bent on going out for a night's pleasuring; and that Mrs. Sedley
+had forgiven his breaking the punch-bowl at the child's party.
+Don't you remember the catastrophe, Ma'am, seven years ago?"
+
+"Over Mrs. Flamingo's crimson silk gown," said good-natured Mrs.
+Sedley.  "What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much more
+graceful.  Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of
+them.  Such figures! my dears."
+
+"The Alderman's very rich, isn't he?" Osborne said archly.  "Don't
+you think one of the daughters would be a good spec for me, Ma'am?"
+
+"You foolish creature! Who would take you, I should like to know,
+with your yellow face?"
+
+"Mine a yellow face? Stop till you see Dobbin.  Why, he had the
+yellow fever three times; twice at Nassau, and once at St. Kitts."
+
+"Well, well; yours is quite yellow enough for us.  Isn't it, Emmy?"
+Mrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss Amelia only made a smile and
+a blush; and looking at Mr. George Osborne's pale interesting
+countenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers,
+which the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary
+complacency, she thought in her little heart that in His Majesty's
+army, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a
+hero.  "I don't care about Captain Dobbin's complexion," she said,
+"or about his awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know," her
+little reason being, that he was the friend and champion of George.
+
+"There's not a finer fellow in the service," Osborne said, "nor a
+better officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly." And he
+looked towards the glass himself with much naivete; and in so doing,
+caught Miss Sharp's eye fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a
+little, and Rebecca thought in her heart, "Ah, mon beau Monsieur! I
+think I have YOUR gauge"--the little artful minx!
+
+That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in a
+white muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like
+a lark, and as fresh as a rose--a very tall ungainly gentleman, with
+large hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped
+head of black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat and
+cocked hat of those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of
+the clumsiest bows that was ever performed by a mortal.
+
+This was no other than Captain William Dobbin, of His Majesty's
+Regiment of Foot, returned from yellow fever, in the West Indies, to
+which the fortune of the service had ordered his regiment, whilst so
+many of his gallant comrades were reaping glory in the Peninsula.
+
+He had arrived with a knock so very timid and quiet that it was
+inaudible to the ladies upstairs: otherwise, you may be sure Miss
+Amelia would never have been so bold as to come singing into the
+room.  As it was, the sweet fresh little voice went right into the
+Captain's heart, and nestled there.  When she held out her hand for
+him to shake, before he enveloped it in his own, he paused, and
+thought--"Well, is it possible--are you the little maid I remember
+in the pink frock, such a short time ago--the night I upset the
+punch-bowl, just after I was gazetted? Are you the little girl that
+George Osborne said should marry him?  What a blooming young
+creature you seem, and what a prize the rogue has got!" All this he
+thought, before he took Amelia's hand into his own, and as he let
+his cocked hat fall.
+
+His history since he left school, until the very moment when we have
+the pleasure of meeting him again, although not fully narrated, has
+yet, I think, been indicated sufficiently for an ingenious reader by
+the conversation in the last page.  Dobbin, the despised grocer, was
+Alderman Dobbin--Alderman Dobbin was Colonel of the City Light
+Horse, then burning with military ardour to resist the French
+Invasion.  Colonel Dobbin's corps, in which old Mr. Osborne himself
+was but an indifferent corporal, had been reviewed by the Sovereign
+and the Duke of York; and the colonel and alderman had been
+knighted.  His son had entered the army: and young Osborne followed
+presently in the same regiment.  They had served in the West Indies
+and in Canada.  Their regiment had just come home, and the
+attachment of Dobbin to George Osborne was as warm and generous now
+as it had been when the two were schoolboys.
+
+So these worthy people sat down to dinner presently. They talked
+about war and glory, and Boney and Lord Wellington, and the last
+Gazette.  In those famous days every gazette had a victory in it,
+and the two gallant young men longed to see their own names in the
+glorious list, and cursed their unlucky fate to belong to a regiment
+which had been away from the chances of honour.  Miss Sharp kindled
+with this exciting talk, but Miss Sedley trembled and grew quite
+faint as she heard it.  Mr. Jos told several of his tiger-hunting
+stories, finished the one about Miss Cutler and Lance the surgeon;
+helped Rebecca to everything on the table, and himself gobbled and
+drank a great deal.
+
+He sprang to open the door for the ladies, when they retired, with
+the most killing grace--and coming back to the table, filled himself
+bumper after bumper of claret, which he swallowed with nervous
+rapidity.
+
+"He's priming himself," Osborne whispered to Dobbin, and at length
+the hour and the carriage arrived for Vauxhall.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Vauxhall
+
+
+I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there
+are some terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-
+natured reader to remember that we are only discoursing at present
+about a stockbroker's family in Russell Square, who are taking
+walks, or luncheon, or dinner, or talking and making love as people
+do in common life, and without a single passionate and wonderful
+incident to mark the progress of their loves.  The argument stands
+thus--Osborne, in love with Amelia, has asked an old friend to
+dinner and to Vauxhall--Jos Sedley is in love with Rebecca.  Will he
+marry her? That is the great subject now in hand.
+
+We might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in the
+romantic, or in the facetious manner.  Suppose we had laid the scene
+in Grosvenor Square, with the very same adventures--would not some
+people have listened? Suppose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley
+fell in love, and the Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady
+Amelia, with the full consent of the Duke, her noble father: or
+instead of the supremely genteel, suppose we had resorted to the
+entirely low, and described what was going on in Mr. Sedley's
+kitchen--how black Sambo was in love with the cook (as indeed he
+was), and how he fought a battle with the coachman in her behalf;
+how the knife-boy was caught stealing a cold shoulder of mutton, and
+Miss Sedley's new femme de chambre refused to go to bed without a
+wax candle; such incidents might be made to provoke much delightful
+laughter, and be supposed to represent scenes of "life." Or if, on
+the contrary, we had taken a fancy for the terrible, and made the
+lover of the new femme de chambre a professional burglar, who bursts
+into the house with his band, slaughters black Sambo at the feet of
+his master, and carries off Amelia in her night-dress, not to be let
+loose again till the third volume, we should easily have constructed
+a tale of thrilling interest, through the fiery chapters of which
+the reader should hurry, panting.  But my readers must hope for no
+such romance, only a homely story, and must be content with a
+chapter about Vauxhall, which is so short that it scarce deserves to
+be called a chapter at all.  And yet it is a chapter, and a very
+important one too.  Are not there little chapters in everybody's
+life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the
+history?
+
+Let us then step into the coach with the Russell Square party, and
+be off to the Gardens.  There is barely room between Jos and Miss
+Sharp, who are on the front seat.  Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin
+opposite, between Captain Dobbin and Amelia.
+
+Every soul in the coach agreed that on that night Jos would propose
+to make Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley.  The parents at home had
+acquiesced in the arrangement, though, between ourselves, old Mr.
+Sedley had a feeling very much akin to contempt for his son.  He
+said he was vain, selfish, lazy, and effeminate.  He could not
+endure his airs as a man of fashion, and laughed heartily at his
+pompous braggadocio stories.  "I shall leave the fellow half my
+property," he said; "and he will have, besides, plenty of his own;
+but as I am perfectly sure that if you, and I, and his sister were
+to die to-morrow, he would say 'Good Gad!' and eat his dinner just
+as well as usual, I am not going to make myself anxious about him.
+Let him marry whom he likes.  It's no affair of mine."
+
+Amelia, on the other hand, as became a young woman of her prudence
+and temperament, was quite enthusiastic for the match.  Once or
+twice Jos had been on the point of saying something very important
+to her, to which she was most willing to lend an ear, but the fat
+fellow could not be brought to unbosom himself of his great secret,
+and very much to his sister's disappointment he only rid himself of
+a large sigh and turned away.
+
+This mystery served to keep Amelia's gentle bosom in a perpetual
+flutter of excitement.  If she did not speak with Rebecca on the
+tender subject, she compensated herself with long and intimate
+conversations with Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, who dropped
+some hints to the lady's-maid, who may have cursorily mentioned the
+matter to the cook, who carried the news, I have no doubt, to all
+the tradesmen, so that Mr. Jos's marriage was now talked of by a
+very considerable number of persons in the Russell Square world.
+
+It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son would demean
+himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.  "But, lor',
+Ma'am," ejaculated Mrs. Blenkinsop, "we was only grocers when we
+married Mr. S., who was a stock-broker's clerk, and we hadn't five
+hundred pounds among us, and we're rich enough now." And Amelia was
+entirely of this opinion, to which, gradually, the good-natured Mrs.
+Sedley was brought.
+
+Mr. Sedley was neutral.  "Let Jos marry whom he likes," he said;
+"it's no affair of mine.  This girl has no fortune; no more had Mrs.
+Sedley.  She seems good-humoured and clever, and will keep him in
+order, perhaps.  Better she, my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and
+a dozen of mahogany grandchildren."
+
+So that everything seemed to smile upon Rebecca's fortunes.  She
+took Jos's arm, as a matter of course, on going to dinner; she had
+sate by him on the box of his open carriage (a most tremendous
+"buck" he was, as he sat there, serene, in state, driving his
+greys), and though nobody said a word on the subject of the
+marriage, everybody seemed to understand it.  All she wanted was the
+proposal, and ah! how Rebecca now felt the want of a mother!--a
+dear, tender mother, who would have managed the business in ten
+minutes, and, in the course of a little delicate confidential
+conversation, would have extracted the interesting avowal from the
+bashful lips of the young man!
+
+Such was the state of affairs as the carriage crossed Westminster
+bridge.
+
+The party was landed at the Royal Gardens in due time. As the
+majestic Jos stepped out of the creaking vehicle the crowd gave a
+cheer for the fat gentleman, who blushed and looked very big and
+mighty, as he walked away with Rebecca under his arm.  George, of
+course, took charge of Amelia.  She looked as happy as a rose-tree
+in sunshine.
+
+"I say, Dobbin," says George, "just look to the shawls and things,
+there's a good fellow." And so while he paired off with Miss Sedley,
+and Jos squeezed through the gate into the gardens with Rebecca at
+his side, honest Dobbin contented himself by giving an arm to the
+shawls, and by paying at the door for the whole party.
+
+He walked very modestly behind them.  He was not willing to spoil
+sport.  About Rebecca and Jos he did not care a fig.  But he thought
+Amelia worthy even of the brilliant George Osborne, and as he saw
+that good-looking couple threading the walks to the girl's delight
+and wonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort of fatherly
+pleasure.  Perhaps he felt that he would have liked to have
+something on his own arm besides a shawl (the people laughed at
+seeing the gawky young officer carrying this female burthen); but
+William Dobbin was very little addicted to selfish calculation at
+all; and so long as his friend was enjoying himself, how should he
+be discontented? And the truth is, that of all the delights of the
+Gardens; of the hundred thousand extra lamps, which were always
+lighted; the fiddlers in cocked hats, who played ravishing melodies
+under the gilded cockle-shell in the midst of the gardens; the
+singers, both of comic and sentimental ballads, who charmed the ears
+there; the country dances, formed by bouncing cockneys and
+cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping and laughter;
+the signal which announced that Madame Saqui was about to mount
+skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; the hermit that
+always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so
+favourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout
+handed about by the people in the shabby old liveries; and the
+twinkling boxes, in which the happy feasters made-believe to eat
+slices of almost invisible ham--of all these things, and of the
+gentle Simpson, that kind smiling idiot, who, I daresay, presided
+even then over the place--Captain William Dobbin did not take the
+slightest notice.
+
+He carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attended
+under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Salmon performed the Battle
+of Borodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had
+lately met with his Russian reverses)--Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it as
+he walked away, and found he was humming--the tune which Amelia
+Sedley sang on the stairs, as she came down to dinner.
+
+He burst out laughing at himself; for the truth is, he could sing no
+better than an owl.
+
+It is to be understood, as a matter of course, that our young
+people, being in parties of two and two, made the most solemn
+promises to keep together during the evening, and separated in ten
+minutes afterwards.  Parties at Vauxhall always did separate, but
+'twas only to meet again at supper-time, when they could talk of
+their mutual adventures in the interval.
+
+What were the adventures of Mr. Osborne and Miss Amelia? That is a
+secret.  But be sure of this--they were perfectly happy, and correct
+in their behaviour; and as they had been in the habit of being
+together any time these fifteen years, their tete-a-tete offered no
+particular novelty.
+
+But when Miss Rebecca Sharp and her stout companion lost themselves
+in a solitary walk, in which there were not above five score more of
+couples similarly straying, they both felt that the situation was
+extremely tender and critical, and now or never was the moment Miss
+Sharp thought, to provoke that declaration which was trembling on
+the timid lips of Mr. Sedley.  They had previously been to the
+panorama of Moscow, where a rude fellow, treading on Miss Sharp's
+foot, caused her to fall back with a little shriek into the arms of
+Mr. Sedley, and this little incident increased the tenderness and
+confidence of that gentleman to such a degree, that he told her
+several of his favourite Indian stories over again for, at least,
+the sixth time.
+
+"How I should like to see India!" said Rebecca.
+
+"SHOULD you?" said Joseph, with a most killing tenderness; and was
+no doubt about to follow up this artful interrogatory by a question
+still more tender (for he puffed and panted a great deal, and
+Rebecca's hand, which was placed near his heart, could count the
+feverish pulsations of that organ), when, oh, provoking! the bell
+rang for the fireworks, and, a great scuffling and running taking
+place, these interesting lovers were obliged to follow in the stream
+of people.
+
+Captain Dobbin had some thoughts of joining the party at supper: as,
+in truth, he found the Vauxhall amusements not particularly lively--
+but he paraded twice before the box where the now united couples
+were met, and nobody took any notice of him.  Covers were laid for
+four.  The mated pairs were prattling away quite happily, and Dobbin
+knew he was as clean forgotten as if he had never existed in this
+world.
+
+"I should only be de trop," said the Captain, looking at them rather
+wistfully.  "I'd best go and talk to the hermit,"--and so he
+strolled off out of the hum of men, and noise, and clatter of the
+banquet, into the dark walk, at the end of which lived that well-
+known pasteboard Solitary.  It wasn't very good fun for Dobbin--and,
+indeed, to be alone at Vauxhall, I have found, from my own
+experience, to be one of the most dismal sports ever entered into by
+a bachelor.
+
+The two couples were perfectly happy then in their box: where the
+most delightful and intimate conversation took place.  Jos was in
+his glory, ordering about the waiters with great majesty.  He made
+the salad; and uncorked the Champagne; and carved the chickens; and
+ate and drank the greater part of the refreshments on the tables.
+Finally, he insisted upon having a bowl of rack punch; everybody had
+rack punch at Vauxhall.  "Waiter, rack punch."
+
+That bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this history.  And why
+not a bowl of rack punch as well as any other cause? Was not a bowl
+of prussic acid the cause of Fair Rosamond's retiring from the
+world? Was not a bowl of wine the cause of the demise of Alexander
+the Great, or, at least, does not Dr. Lempriere say so?--so did this
+bowl of rack punch influence the fates of all the principal
+characters in this "Novel without a Hero," which we are now
+relating.  It influenced their life, although most of them did not
+taste a drop of it.
+
+The young ladies did not drink it; Osborne did not like it; and the
+consequence was that Jos, that fat gourmand, drank up the whole
+contents of the bowl; and the consequence of his drinking up the
+whole contents of the bowl was a liveliness which at first was
+astonishing, and then became almost painful; for he talked and
+laughed so loud as to bring scores of listeners round the box, much
+to the confusion of the innocent party within it; and, volunteering
+to sing a song (which he did in that maudlin high key peculiar to
+gentlemen in an inebriated state), he almost drew away the audience
+who were gathered round the musicians in the gilt scollop-shell, and
+received from his hearers a great deal of applause.
+
+"Brayvo, Fat un!" said one; "Angcore, Daniel Lambert!" said another;
+"What a figure for the tight-rope!" exclaimed another wag, to the
+inexpressible alarm of the ladies, and the great anger of Mr.
+Osborne.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Jos, let us get up and go," cried that
+gentleman, and the young women rose.
+
+"Stop, my dearest diddle-diddle-darling," shouted Jos, now as bold
+as a lion, and clasping Miss Rebecca round the waist.  Rebecca
+started, but she could not get away her hand.  The laughter outside
+redoubled.  Jos continued to drink, to make love, and to sing; and,
+winking and waving his glass gracefully to his audience, challenged
+all or any to come in and take a share of his punch.
+
+Mr. Osborne was just on the point of knocking down a gentleman in
+top-boots, who proposed to take advantage of this invitation, and a
+commotion seemed to be inevitable, when by the greatest good luck a
+gentleman of the name of Dobbin, who had been walking about the
+gardens, stepped up to the box.  "Be off, you fools!" said this
+gentleman--shouldering off a great number of the crowd, who vanished
+presently before his cocked hat and fierce appearance--and he
+entered the box in a most agitated state.
+
+"Good Heavens! Dobbin, where have you been?" Osborne said, seizing
+the white cashmere shawl from his friend's arm, and huddling up
+Amelia in it.--"Make yourself useful, and take charge of Jos here,
+whilst I take the ladies to the carriage."
+
+Jos was for rising to interfere--but a single push from Osborne's
+finger sent him puffing back into his seat again, and the lieutenant
+was enabled to remove the ladies in safety.  Jos kissed his hand to
+them as they retreated, and hiccupped out "Bless you! Bless you!"
+Then, seizing Captain Dobbin's hand, and weeping in the most pitiful
+way, he confided to that gentleman the secret of his loves.  He
+adored that girl who had just gone out; he had broken her heart, he
+knew he had, by his conduct; he would marry her next morning at St.
+George's, Hanover Square; he'd knock up the Archbishop of Canterbury
+at Lambeth: he would, by Jove! and have him in readiness; and,
+acting on this hint, Captain Dobbin shrewdly induced him to leave
+the gardens and hasten to Lambeth Palace, and, when once out of the
+gates, easily conveyed Mr. Jos Sedley into a hackney-coach, which
+deposited him safely at his lodgings.
+
+George Osborne conducted the girls home in safety: and when the door
+was closed upon them, and as he walked across Russell Square,
+laughed so as to astonish the watchman.  Amelia looked very ruefully
+at her friend, as they went up stairs, and kissed her, and went to
+bed without any more talking.
+
+"He must propose to-morrow," thought Rebecca.  "He called me his
+soul's darling, four times; he squeezed my hand in Amelia's
+presence.  He must propose to-morrow." And so thought Amelia, too.
+And I dare say she thought of the dress she was to wear as
+bridesmaid, and of the presents which she should make to her nice
+little sister-in-law, and of a subsequent ceremony in which she
+herself might play a principal part, &c., and &c., and &c., and &c.
+
+Oh, ignorant young creatures! How little do you know the effect of
+rack punch! What is the rack in the punch, at night, to the rack in
+the head of a morning? To this truth I can vouch as a man; there is
+no headache in the world like that caused by Vauxhall punch.
+Through the lapse of twenty years, I can remember the consequence of
+two glasses! two wine-glasses! but two, upon the honour of a
+gentleman; and Joseph Sedley, who had a liver complaint, had
+swallowed at least a quart of the abominable mixture.
+
+That next morning, which Rebecca thought was to dawn upon her
+fortune, found Sedley groaning in agonies which the pen refuses to
+describe.  Soda-water was not invented yet.  Small beer--will it be
+believed!--was the only drink with which unhappy gentlemen soothed
+the fever of their previous night's potation.  With this mild
+beverage before him, George Osborne found the ex-Collector of
+Boggley Wollah groaning on the sofa at his lodgings.  Dobbin was
+already in the room, good-naturedly tending his patient of the night
+before.  The two officers, looking at the prostrate Bacchanalian,
+and askance at each other, exchanged the most frightful sympathetic
+grins.  Even Sedley's valet, the most solemn and correct of
+gentlemen, with the muteness and gravity of an undertaker, could
+hardly keep his countenance in order, as he looked at his
+unfortunate master.
+
+"Mr. Sedley was uncommon wild last night, sir," he whispered in
+confidence to Osborne, as the latter mounted the stair.  "He wanted
+to fight the 'ackney-coachman, sir. The Capting was obliged to bring
+him upstairs in his harms like a babby." A momentary smile flickered
+over Mr. Brush's features as he spoke; instantly, however, they
+relapsed into their usual unfathomable calm, as he flung open the
+drawing-room door, and announced "Mr. Hosbin."
+
+"How are you, Sedley?" that young wag began, after surveying his
+victim.  "No bones broke? There's a hackney-coachman downstairs with
+a black eye, and a tied-up head, vowing he'll have the law of you."
+
+"What do you mean--law?" Sedley faintly asked.
+
+"For thrashing him last night--didn't he, Dobbin? You hit out, sir,
+like Molyneux.  The watchman says he never saw a fellow go down so
+straight.  Ask Dobbin."
+
+"You DID have a round with the coachman," Captain Dobbin said, "and
+showed plenty of fight too."
+
+"And that fellow with the white coat at Vauxhall! How Jos drove at
+him! How the women screamed! By Jove, sir, it did my heart good to
+see you.  I thought you civilians had no pluck; but I'll never get
+in your way when you are in your cups, Jos."
+
+"I believe I'm very terrible, when I'm roused," ejaculated Jos from
+the sofa, and made a grimace so dreary and ludicrous, that the
+Captain's politeness could restrain him no longer, and he and
+Osborne fired off a ringing volley of laughter.
+
+Osborne pursued his advantage pitilessly.  He thought Jos a milksop.
+He had been revolving in his mind the marriage question pending
+between Jos and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member
+of a family into which he, George Osborne, of the --th, was going to
+marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody--a little
+upstart governess.  "You hit, you poor old fellow!" said Osborne.
+"You terrible! Why, man, you couldn't stand--you made everybody
+laugh in the Gardens, though you were crying yourself.  You were
+maudlin, Jos.  Don't you remember singing a song?"
+
+"A what?" Jos asked.
+
+"A sentimental song, and calling Rosa, Rebecca, what's her name,
+Amelia's little friend--your dearest diddle-diddle-darling?" And
+this ruthless young fellow, seizing hold of Dobbin's hand, acted
+over the scene, to the horror of the original performer, and in
+spite of Dobbin's good-natured entreaties to him to have mercy.
+
+"Why should I spare him?" Osborne said to his friend's
+remonstrances, when they quitted the invalid, leaving him under the
+hands of Doctor Gollop.  "What the deuce right has he to give
+himself his patronizing airs, and make fools of us at Vauxhall?
+Who's this little schoolgirl that is ogling and making love to him?
+Hang it, the family's low enough already, without HER.  A governess
+is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law.
+I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride, and know my own station:
+let her know hers.  And I'll take down that great hectoring Nabob,
+and prevent him from being made a greater fool than he is.  That's
+why I told him to look out, lest she brought an action against him."
+
+"I suppose you know best," Dobbin said, though rather dubiously.
+"You always were a Tory, and your family's one of the oldest in
+England.  But--"
+
+"Come and see the girls, and make love to Miss Sharp yourself," the
+lieutenant here interrupted his friend; but Captain Dobbin declined
+to join Osborne in his daily visit to the young ladies in Russell
+Square.
+
+As George walked down Southampton Row, from Holborn, he laughed as
+he saw, at the Sedley Mansion, in two different stories two heads on
+the look-out.
+
+The fact is, Miss Amelia, in the drawing-room balcony, was looking
+very eagerly towards the opposite side of the Square, where Mr.
+Osborne dwelt, on the watch for the lieutenant himself; and Miss
+Sharp, from her little bed-room on the second floor, was in
+observation until Mr. Joseph's great form should heave in sight.
+
+"Sister Anne is on the watch-tower," said he to Amelia, "but there's
+nobody coming"; and laughing and enjoying the joke hugely, he
+described in the most ludicrous terms to Miss Sedley, the dismal
+condition of her brother.
+
+"I think it's very cruel of you to laugh, George," she said, looking
+particularly unhappy; but George only laughed the more at her
+piteous and discomfited mien, persisted in thinking the joke a most
+diverting one, and when Miss Sharp came downstairs, bantered her
+with a great deal of liveliness upon the effect of her charms on the
+fat civilian.
+
+"O Miss Sharp! if you could but see him this morning," he said--
+"moaning in his flowered dressing-gown--writhing on his sofa; if you
+could but have seen him lolling out his tongue to Gollop the
+apothecary."
+
+"See whom?" said Miss Sharp.
+
+"Whom? O whom?  Captain Dobbin, of course, to whom we were all so
+attentive, by the way, last night."
+
+"We were very unkind to him," Emmy said, blushing very much.  "I--I
+quite forgot him."
+
+"Of course you did," cried Osborne, still on the laugh.
+
+"One can't be ALWAYS thinking about Dobbin, you know, Amelia.  Can
+one, Miss Sharp?"
+
+"Except when he overset the glass of wine at dinner," Miss Sharp
+said, with a haughty air and a toss of the head, "I never gave the
+existence of Captain Dobbin one single moment's consideration."
+
+"Very good, Miss Sharp, I'll tell him," Osborne said; and as he
+spoke Miss Sharp began to have a feeling of distrust and hatred
+towards this young officer, which he was quite unconscious of having
+inspired.  "He is to make fun of me, is he?" thought Rebecca.  "Has
+he been laughing about me to Joseph?  Has he frightened him? Perhaps
+he won't come."--A film passed over her eyes, and her heart beat
+quite quick.
+
+"You're always joking," said she, smiling as innocently as she
+could.  "Joke away, Mr. George; there's nobody to defend ME." And
+George Osborne, as she walked away--and Amelia looked reprovingly at
+him--felt some little manly compunction for having inflicted any
+unnecessary unkindness upon this helpless creature.  "My dearest
+Amelia," said he, "you are too good--too kind.  You don't know the
+world.  I do.  And your little friend Miss Sharp must learn her
+station."
+
+"Don't you think Jos will--"
+
+"Upon my word, my dear, I don't know.  He may, or may not.  I'm not
+his master.  I only know he is a very foolish vain fellow, and put
+my dear little girl into a very painful and awkward position last
+night.  My dearest diddle-diddle-darling!" He was off laughing
+again, and he did it so drolly that Emmy laughed too.
+
+All that day Jos never came.  But Amelia had no fear about this; for
+the little schemer had actually sent away the page, Mr. Sambo's
+aide-de-camp, to Mr. Joseph's lodgings, to ask for some book he had
+promised, and how he was; and the reply through Jos's man, Mr.
+Brush, was, that his master was ill in bed, and had just had the
+doctor with him.  He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she never
+had the courage to speak a word on the subject to Rebecca; nor did
+that young woman herself allude to it in any way during the whole
+evening after the night at Vauxhall.
+
+The next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on the sofa,
+pretending to work, or to write letters, or to read novels, Sambo
+came into the room with his usual engaging grin, with a packet under
+his arm, and a note on a tray.  "Note from Mr. Jos, Miss," says
+Sambo.
+
+How Amelia trembled as she opened it!
+
+So it ran:
+
+Dear Amelia,--I send you the "Orphan of the Forest." I was too ill
+to come yesterday.  I leave town to-day for Cheltenham.  Pray excuse
+me, if you can, to the amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at
+Vauxhall, and entreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have
+uttered when excited by that fatal supper.  As soon as I have
+recovered, for my health is very much shaken, I shall go to Scotland
+for some months, and am
+
+Truly yours,
+Jos Sedley
+
+It was the death-warrant.  All was over.  Amelia did not dare to
+look at Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes, but she dropt the
+letter into her friend's lap; and got up, and went upstairs to her
+room, and cried her little heart out.
+
+Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently with
+consolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept confidentially, and
+relieved herself a good deal.  "Don't take on, Miss.  I didn't like
+to tell you.  But none of us in the house have liked her except at
+fust.  I sor her with my own eyes reading your Ma's letters.  Pinner
+says she's always about your trinket-box and drawers, and
+everybody's drawers, and she's sure she's put your white ribbing
+into her box."
+
+"I gave it her, I gave it her," Amelia said.
+
+But this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss Sharp.  "I
+don't trust them governesses, Pinner," she remarked to the maid.
+"They give themselves the hairs and hupstarts of ladies, and their
+wages is no better than you nor me."
+
+It now became clear to every soul in the house, except poor Amelia,
+that Rebecca should take her departure, and high and low (always
+with the one exception) agreed that that event should take place as
+speedily as possible. Our good child ransacked all her drawers,
+cupboards, reticules, and gimcrack boxes--passed in review all her
+gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and fallals--
+selecting this thing and that and the other, to make a little heap
+for Rebecca.  And going to her Papa, that generous British merchant,
+who had promised to give her as many guineas as she was years old--
+she begged the old gentleman to give the money to dear Rebecca, who
+must want it, while she lacked for nothing.
+
+She even made George Osborne contribute, and nothing loth (for he
+was as free-handed a young fellow as any in the army), he went to
+Bond Street, and bought the best hat and spenser that money could
+buy.
+
+"That's George's present to you, Rebecca, dear," said Amelia, quite
+proud of the bandbox conveying these gifts.  "What a taste he has!
+There's nobody like him."
+
+"Nobody," Rebecca answered.  "How thankful I am to him!" She was
+thinking in her heart, "It was George Osborne who prevented my
+marriage."--And she loved George Osborne accordingly.
+
+She made her preparations for departure with great equanimity; and
+accepted all the kind little Amelia's presents, after just the
+proper degree of hesitation and reluctance.  She vowed eternal
+gratitude to Mrs. Sedley, of course; but did not intrude herself
+upon that good lady too much, who was embarrassed, and evidently
+wishing to avoid her.  She kissed Mr. Sedley's hand, when he
+presented her with the purse; and asked permission to consider him
+for the future as her kind, kind friend and protector.  Her
+behaviour was so affecting that he was going to write her a cheque
+for twenty pounds more; but he restrained his feelings: the carriage
+was in waiting to take him to dinner, so he tripped away with a "God
+bless you, my dear, always come here when you come to town, you
+know.--Drive to the Mansion House, James."
+
+Finally came the parting with Miss Amelia, over which picture I
+intend to throw a veil.  But after a scene in which one person was
+in earnest and the other a perfect performer--after the tenderest
+caresses, the most pathetic tears, the smelling-bottle, and some of
+the very best feelings of the heart, had been called into
+requisition--Rebecca and Amelia parted, the former vowing to love
+her friend for ever and ever and ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Crawley of Queen's Crawley
+
+
+Among the most respected of the names beginning in C which the
+Court-Guide contained, in the year 18--, was that of Crawley, Sir
+Pitt, Baronet, Great Gaunt Street, and Queen's Crawley, Hants.  This
+honourable name had figured constantly also in the Parliamentary
+list for many years, in conjunction with that of a number of other
+worthy gentlemen who sat in turns for the borough.
+
+It is related, with regard to the borough of Queen's Crawley, that
+Queen Elizabeth in one of her progresses, stopping at Crawley to
+breakfast, was so delighted with some remarkably fine Hampshire beer
+which was then presented to her by the Crawley of the day (a
+handsome gentleman with a trim beard and a good leg), that she
+forthwith erected Crawley into a borough to send two members to
+Parliament; and the place, from the day of that illustrious visit,
+took the name of Queen's Crawley, which it holds up to the present
+moment.  And though, by the lapse of time, and those mutations which
+age produces in empires, cities, and boroughs, Queen's Crawley was
+no longer so populous a place as it had been in Queen Bess's time--
+nay, was come down to that condition of borough which used to be
+denominated rotten--yet, as Sir Pitt Crawley would say with perfect
+justice in his elegant way, "Rotten! be hanged--it produces me a
+good fifteen hundred a year."
+
+Sir Pitt Crawley (named after the great Commoner) was the son of
+Walpole Crawley, first Baronet, of the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office
+in the reign of George II., when he was impeached for peculation, as
+were a great number of other honest gentlemen of those days; and
+Walpole Crawley was, as need scarcely be said, son of John Churchill
+Crawley, named after the celebrated military commander of the reign
+of Queen Anne.  The family tree (which hangs up at Queen's Crawley)
+furthermore mentions Charles Stuart, afterwards called Barebones
+Crawley, son of the Crawley of James the First's time; and finally,
+Queen Elizabeth's Crawley, who is represented as the foreground of
+the picture in his forked beard and armour.  Out of his waistcoat,
+as usual, grows a tree, on the main branches of which the above
+illustrious names are inscribed.  Close by the name of Sir Pitt
+Crawley, Baronet (the subject of the present memoir), are written
+that of his brother, the Reverend Bute Crawley (the great Commoner
+was in disgrace when the reverend gentleman was born), rector of
+Crawley-cum-Snailby, and of various other male and female members of
+the Crawley family.
+
+Sir Pitt was first married to Grizzel, sixth daughter of Mungo
+Binkie, Lord Binkie, and cousin, in consequence, of Mr. Dundas.  She
+brought him two sons: Pitt, named not so much after his father as
+after the heaven-born minister; and Rawdon Crawley, from the Prince
+of Wales's friend, whom his Majesty George IV forgot so completely.
+Many years after her ladyship's demise, Sir Pitt led to the altar
+Rosa, daughter of Mr. G. Dawson, of Mudbury, by whom he had two
+daughters, for whose benefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as
+governess.  It will be seen that the young lady was come into a
+family of very genteel connexions, and was about to move in a much
+more distinguished circle than that humble one which she had just
+quitted in Russell Square.
+
+She had received her orders to join her pupils, in a note which was
+written upon an old envelope, and which contained the following
+words:
+
+Sir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be hear on
+Tuesday, as I leaf for Queen's Crawley to-morrow morning ERLY.
+
+Great Gaunt Street.
+
+Rebecca had never seen a Baronet, as far as she knew, and as soon as
+she had taken leave of Amelia, and counted the guineas which good-
+natured Mr. Sedley had put into a purse for her, and as soon as she
+had done wiping her eyes with her handkerchief (which operation she
+concluded the very moment the carriage had turned the corner of the
+street), she began to depict in her own mind what a Baronet must be.
+"I wonder, does he wear a star?" thought she, "or is it only lords
+that wear stars? But he will be very handsomely dressed in a court
+suit, with ruffles, and his hair a little powdered, like Mr.
+Wroughton at Covent Garden.  I suppose he will be awfully proud, and
+that I shall be treated most contemptuously.  Still I must bear my
+hard lot as well as I can--at least, I shall be amongst GENTLEFOLKS,
+and not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of her
+Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical bitterness
+with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is represented as
+speaking of the grapes.
+
+Having passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt Street, the
+carriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy house between two other
+tall gloomy houses, each with a hatchment over the middle drawing-
+room window; as is the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in
+which gloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual.  The shutters
+of the first-floor windows of Sir Pitt's mansion were closed--those
+of the dining-room were partially open, and the blinds neatly
+covered up in old newspapers.
+
+John, the groom, who had driven the carriage alone, did not care to
+descend to ring the bell; and so prayed a passing milk-boy to
+perform that office for him.  When the bell was rung, a head
+appeared between the interstices of the dining-room shutters, and
+the door was opened by a man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a
+dirty old coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck,
+a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey
+eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin.
+
+"This Sir Pitt Crawley's?" says John, from the box.
+
+"Ees," says the man at the door, with a nod.
+
+"Hand down these 'ere trunks then," said John.
+
+"Hand 'n down yourself," said the porter.
+
+"Don't you see I can't leave my hosses? Come, bear a hand, my fine
+feller, and Miss will give you some beer," said John, with a horse-
+laugh, for he was no longer respectful to Miss Sharp, as her
+connexion with the family was broken off, and as she had given
+nothing to the servants on coming away.
+
+The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his breeches pockets,
+advanced on this summons, and throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over his
+shoulder, carried it into the house.
+
+"Take this basket and shawl, if you please, and open the door," said
+Miss Sharp, and descended from the carriage in much indignation.  "I
+shall write to Mr. Sedley and inform him of your conduct," said she
+to the groom.
+
+"Don't," replied that functionary.  "I hope you've forgot nothink?
+Miss 'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as the lady's maid was to
+have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you. Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no
+good out of 'ER," continued John, pointing with his thumb towards
+Miss Sharp: "a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot," and so saying, Mr.
+Sedley's groom drove away.  The truth is, he was attached to the
+lady's maid in question, and indignant that she should have been
+robbed of her perquisites.
+
+On entering the dining-room, by the orders of the individual in
+gaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not more cheerful than such
+rooms usually are, when genteel families are out of town.  The
+faithful chambers seem, as it were, to mourn the absence of their
+masters.  The turkey carpet has rolled itself up, and retired
+sulkily under the sideboard: the pictures have hidden their faces
+behind old sheets of brown paper: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in
+a dismal sack of brown holland: the window-curtains have disappeared
+under all sorts of shabby envelopes: the marble bust of Sir Walpole
+Crawley is looking from its black corner at the bare boards and the
+oiled fire-irons, and the empty card-racks over the mantelpiece: the
+cellaret has lurked away behind the carpet: the chairs are turned up
+heads and tails along the walls: and in the dark corner opposite the
+statue, is an old-fashioned crabbed knife-box, locked and sitting on
+a dumb waiter.
+
+Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an attenuated old poker
+and tongs were, however, gathered round the fire-place, as was a
+saucepan over a feeble sputtering fire.  There was a bit of cheese
+and bread, and a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black
+porter in a pint-pot.
+
+"Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for you? Like a drop
+of beer?"
+
+"Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?" said Miss Sharp majestically.
+
+"He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley.  Reklect you owe me a pint for
+bringing down your luggage.  He, he! Ask Tinker if I aynt.  Mrs.
+Tinker, Miss Sharp; Miss Governess, Mrs. Charwoman.  Ho, ho!"
+
+The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her appearance
+with a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she had been
+despatched a minute before Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the
+articles over to Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire.
+
+"Where's the farden?" said he.  "I gave you three halfpence.
+Where's the change, old Tinker?"
+
+"There!" replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin; it's only
+baronets as cares about farthings."
+
+"A farthing a day is seven shillings a year," answered the M.P.;
+"seven shillings a year is the interest of seven guineas.  Take care
+of your farthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite
+nat'ral."
+
+"You may be sure it's Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman," said Mrs.
+Tinker, surlily; "because he looks to his farthings.  You'll know
+him better afore long."
+
+"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp," said the old gentleman,
+with an air almost of politeness.  "I must be just before I'm
+generous."
+
+"He never gave away a farthing in his life," growled Tinker.
+
+"Never, and never will: it's against my principle.  Go and get
+another chair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you want to sit down; and
+then we'll have a bit of supper."
+
+Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan on the fire,
+and withdrew from the pot a piece of tripe and an onion, which he
+divided into pretty equal portions, and of which he partook with
+Mrs. Tinker.  "You see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on
+board wages: when I'm in town she dines with the family. Haw! haw!
+I'm glad Miss Sharp's not hungry, ain't you, Tink?" And they fell to
+upon their frugal supper.
+
+After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his pipe; and when it
+became quite dark, he lighted the rushlight in the tin candlestick,
+and producing from an interminable pocket a huge mass of papers,
+began reading them, and putting them in order.
+
+"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it happens that I
+shall have the pleasure of such a pretty travelling companion to-
+morrow."
+
+"He's always at law business," said Mrs. Tinker, taking up the pot
+of porter.
+
+"Drink and drink about," said the Baronet.  "Yes; my dear, Tinker is
+quite right: I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in
+England.  Look here at Crawley, Bart. v. Snaffle.  I'll throw him
+over, or my name's not Pitt Crawley.  Podder and another versus
+Crawley, Bart. Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart.
+They can't prove it's common: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine. It no
+more belongs to the parish than it does to you or Tinker here.  I'll
+beat 'em, if it cost me a thousand guineas. Look over the papers;
+you may if you like, my dear. Do you write a good hand? I'll make
+you useful when we're at Queen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp.
+Now the dowager's dead I want some one."
+
+"She was as bad as he," said Tinker.  "She took the law of every one
+of her tradesmen; and turned away forty-eight footmen in four year."
+
+"She was close--very close," said the Baronet, simply; "but she was
+a valyble woman to me, and saved me a steward."--And in this
+confidential strain, and much to the amusement of the new-comer, the
+conversation continued for a considerable time.  Whatever Sir Pitt
+Crawley's qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make the least
+disguise of them.  He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in
+the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the
+tone of a man of the world.  And so, with injunctions to Miss Sharp
+to be ready at five in the morning, he bade her good night.
+"You'll sleep with Tinker to-night," he said; "it's a big bed, and
+there's room for two. Lady Crawley died in it.  Good night."
+
+Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn Tinker,
+rushlight in hand, led the way up the great bleak stone stairs, past
+the great dreary drawing-room doors, with the handles muffled up in
+paper, into the great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept
+her last.  The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy, you
+might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died in the room, but
+that her ghost inhabited it.  Rebecca sprang about the apartment,
+however, with the greatest liveliness, and had peeped into the huge
+wardrobes, and the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers
+which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures and toilette
+appointments, while the old charwoman was saying her prayers.  "I
+shouldn't like to sleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience,
+Miss," said the old woman.  "There's room for us and a half-dozen of
+ghosts in it," says Rebecca.  "Tell me all about Lady Crawley and
+Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my DEAR Mrs. Tinker."
+
+But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little cross-questioner;
+and signifying to her that bed was a place for sleeping, not
+conversation, set up in her corner of the bed such a snore as only
+the nose of innocence can produce.  Rebecca lay awake for a long,
+long time, thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which
+she was going, and of her chances of success there.  The rushlight
+flickered in the basin.  The mantelpiece cast up a great black
+shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler, which her defunct
+ladyship had worked, no doubt, and over two little family pictures
+of young lads, one in a college gown, and the other in a red jacket
+like a soldier. When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to
+dream about.
+
+At four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning as even made
+Great Gaunt Street look cheerful, the faithful Tinker, having
+wakened her bedfellow, and bid her prepare for departure, unbarred
+and unbolted the great hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof
+startled the sleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way into
+Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand there.  It is needless
+to particularize the number of the vehicle, or to state that the
+driver was stationed thus early in the neighbourhood of Swallow
+Street, in hopes that some young buck, reeling homeward from the
+tavern, might need the aid of his vehicle, and pay him with the
+generosity of intoxication.
+
+It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had any such
+hopes as those above stated, was grossly disappointed; and that the
+worthy Baronet whom he drove to the City did not give him one single
+penny more than his fare.  It was in vain that Jehu appealed and
+stormed; that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter at
+the 'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his fare.
+
+"You'd better not," said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir Pitt
+Crawley."
+
+"So it is, Joe," cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and I'd like to
+see the man can do me."
+
+"So should oi," said Joe, grinning sulkily, and mounting the
+Baronet's baggage on the roof of the coach.
+
+"Keep the box for me, Leader," exclaims the Member of Parliament to
+the coachman; who replied, "Yes, Sir Pitt," with a touch of his hat,
+and rage in his soul (for he had promised the box to a young
+gentleman from Cambridge, who would have given a crown to a
+certainty), and Miss Sharp was accommodated with a back seat inside
+the carriage, which might be said to be carrying her into the wide
+world.
+
+How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his five great-coats in
+front; but was reconciled when little Miss Sharp was made to quit
+the carriage, and mount up beside him--when he covered her up in one
+of his Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how the
+asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared upon her sacred
+honour she had never travelled in a public carriage before (there is
+always such a lady in a coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are
+they?), and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places
+inside--how the porter asked them all for money, and got sixpence
+from the gentleman and five greasy halfpence from the fat widow--and
+how the carriage at length drove away--now threading the dark lanes
+of Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's,
+jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of Fleet-Market, which,
+with Exeter 'Change, has now departed to the world of shadows--how
+they passed the White Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up
+from the market-gardens of Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen,
+Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need not be told here. But the
+writer of these pages, who has pursued in former days, and in the
+same bright weather, the same remarkable journey, cannot but think
+of it with a sweet and tender regret.  Where is the road now, and
+its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for
+the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen?  I wonder where are they,
+those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead? and the waiters,
+yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds of beef
+inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking
+pail, where is he, and where is his generation?  To those great
+geniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved
+reader's children, these men and things will be as much legend and
+history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard.  For them
+stage-coaches will have become romances--a team of four bays as
+fabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess.  Ah, how their coats shone, as
+the stable-men pulled their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how
+their tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they
+demurely walked away into the inn-yard.  Alas!  we shall never hear
+the horn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more.
+Whither, however, is the light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying
+us? Let us be set down at Queen's Crawley without further
+divagation, and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Private and Confidential
+
+
+Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley, Russell Square, London.
+(Free.--Pitt Crawley.)
+
+MY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA,
+
+With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the pen to write to my
+dearest friend!  Oh, what a change between to-day and yesterday! Now
+I am friendless and alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet
+company of a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!
+
+I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed the fatal
+night in which I separated from you.  YOU went on Tuesday to joy and
+happiness, with your mother and YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by your
+side; and I thought of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, the
+prettiest, I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball.  I was
+brought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt Crawley's town
+house, where, after John the groom had behaved most rudely and
+insolently to me (alas! 'twas safe to insult poverty and
+misfortune!), I was given over to Sir P.'s care, and made to pass
+the night in an old gloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy
+old charwoman, who keeps the house.  I did not sleep one single wink
+the whole night.
+
+Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to read Cecilia at
+Chiswick, imagined a baronet must have been.  Anything, indeed, less
+like Lord Orville cannot be imagined.  Fancy an old, stumpy, short,
+vulgar, and very dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters,
+who smokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper in a
+saucepan.  He speaks with a country accent, and swore a great deal
+at the old charwoman, at the hackney coachman who drove us to the
+inn where the coach went from, and on which I made the journey
+OUTSIDE FOR THE GREATER PART OF THE WAY.
+
+I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and having arrived at
+the inn, was at first placed inside the coach.  But, when we got to
+a place called Leakington, where the rain began to fall very
+heavily--will you believe it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir
+Pitt is a proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at
+Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to go outside in
+the rain, where, however, a young gentleman from Cambridge College
+sheltered me very kindly in one of his several great coats.
+
+This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir Pitt very well, and
+laughed at him a great deal.  They both agreed in calling him an old
+screw; which means a very stingy, avaricious person.  He never gives
+any money to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and the
+young gentleman made me remark that we drove very slow for the last
+two stages on the road, because Sir Pitt was on the box, and because
+he is proprietor of the horses for this part of the journey.  "But
+won't I flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?" said
+the young Cantab.  "And sarve 'em right, Master Jack," said the
+guard.  When I comprehended the meaning of this phrase, and that
+Master Jack intended to drive the rest of the way, and revenge
+himself on Sir Pitt's horses, of course I laughed too.
+
+A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with armorial bearings,
+however, awaited us at Mudbury, four miles from Queen's Crawley, and
+we made our entrance to the baronet's park in state.  There is a
+fine avenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman at
+the lodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent and a dove,
+the supporters of the Crawley arms), made us a number of curtsies as
+she flung open the old iron carved doors, which are something like
+those at odious Chiswick.
+
+"There's an avenue," said Sir Pitt, "a mile long. There's six
+thousand pound of timber in them there trees.  Do you call that
+nothing?" He pronounced avenue--EVENUE, and nothing--NOTHINK, so
+droll; and he had a Mr. Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the
+carriage with him, and they talked about distraining, and selling
+up, and draining and subsoiling, and a great deal about tenants and
+farming--much more than I could understand.  Sam Miles had been
+caught poaching, and Peter Bailey had gone to the workhouse at last.
+"Serve him right," said Sir Pitt; "him and his family has been
+cheating me on that farm these hundred and fifty years." Some old
+tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent. Sir Pitt might have
+said "he and his family," to be sure; but rich baronets do not need
+to be careful about grammar, as poor governesses must be.
+
+As we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire rising above some
+old elms in the park; and before them, in the midst of a lawn, and
+some outhouses, an old red house with tall chimneys covered with
+ivy, and the windows shining in the sun.  "Is that your church,
+sir?" I said.
+
+"Yes, hang it," (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, A MUCH WICKEDER
+WORD); "how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my brother Bute, my dear--my
+brother the parson.  Buty and the Beast I call him, ha, ha!"
+
+Hodson laughed too, and then looking more grave and nodding his
+head, said, "I'm afraid he's better, Sir Pitt.  He was out on his
+pony yesterday, looking at our corn."
+
+"Looking after his tithes, hang'un (only he used the same wicked
+word).  Will brandy and water never kill him? He's as tough as old
+whatdyecallum--old Methusalem."
+
+Mr. Hodson laughed again.  "The young men is home from college.
+They've whopped John Scroggins till he's well nigh dead."
+
+"Whop my second keeper!" roared out Sir Pitt.
+
+"He was on the parson's ground, sir," replied Mr. Hodson; and Sir
+Pitt in a fury swore that if he ever caught 'em poaching on his
+ground, he'd transport 'em, by the lord he would.  However, he said,
+"I've sold the presentation of the living, Hodson; none of that
+breed shall get it, I war'nt"; and Mr. Hodson said he was quite
+right: and I have no doubt from this that the two brothers are at
+variance--as brothers often are, and sisters too.  Don't you
+remember the two Miss Scratchleys at Chiswick, how they used always
+to fight and quarrel--and Mary Box, how she was always thumping
+Louisa?
+
+Presently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the wood, Mr.
+Hodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir Pitt's order, and rushed
+upon them with his whip.  "Pitch into 'em, Hodson," roared the
+baronet; "flog their little souls out, and bring 'em up to the
+house, the vagabonds; I'll commit 'em as sure as my name's Pitt."
+And presently we heard Mr. Hodson's whip cracking on the shoulders
+of the poor little blubbering wretches, and Sir Pitt, seeing that
+the malefactors were in custody, drove on to the hall.
+
+All the servants were ready to meet us, and . . .
+
+Here, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a dreadful thumping
+at my door: and who do you think it was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his
+night-cap and dressing-gown, such a figure! As I shrank away from
+such a visitor, he came forward and seized my candle.  "No candles
+after eleven o'clock, Miss Becky," said he.  "Go to bed in the dark,
+you pretty little hussy" (that is what he called me), "and unless
+you wish me to come for the candle every night, mind and be in bed
+at eleven." And with this, he and Mr. Horrocks the butler went off
+laughing.  You may be sure I shall not encourage any more of their
+visits.  They let loose two immense bloodhounds at night, which all
+last night were yelling and howling at the moon.  "I call the dog
+Gorer," said Sir Pitt; "he's killed a man that dog has, and is
+master of a bull, and the mother I used to call Flora; but now I
+calls her Aroarer, for she's too old to bite.  Haw, haw!"
+
+Before the house of Queen's Crawley, which is an odious old-
+fashioned red brick mansion, with tall chimneys and gables of the
+style of Queen Bess, there is a terrace flanked by the family dove
+and serpent, and on which the great hall-door opens.  And oh, my
+dear, the great hall I am sure is as big and as glum as the great
+hall in the dear castle of Udolpho.  It has a large fireplace, in
+which we might put half Miss Pinkerton's school, and the grate is
+big enough to roast an ox at the very least.  Round the room hang I
+don't know how many generations of Crawleys, some with beards and
+ruffs, some with huge wigs and toes turned out, some dressed in long
+straight stays and gowns that look as stiff as towers, and some with
+long ringlets, and oh, my dear! scarcely any stays at all.  At one
+end of the hall is the great staircase all in black oak, as dismal
+as may be, and on either side are tall doors with stags' heads over
+them, leading to the billiard-room and the library, and the great
+yellow saloon and the morning-rooms.  I think there are at least
+twenty bedrooms on the first floor; one of them has the bed in which
+Queen Elizabeth slept; and I have been taken by my new pupils
+through all these fine apartments this morning.  They are not
+rendered less gloomy, I promise you, by having the shutters always
+shut; and there is scarce one of the apartments, but when the light
+was let into it, I expected to see a ghost in the room.  We have a
+schoolroom on the second floor, with my bedroom leading into it on
+one side, and that of the young ladies on the other.  Then there are
+Mr. Pitt's apartments--Mr. Crawley, he is called--the eldest son,
+and Mr. Rawdon Crawley's rooms--he is an officer like SOMEBODY, and
+away with his regiment.  There is no want of room I assure you.  You
+might lodge all the people in Russell Square in the house, I think,
+and have space to spare.
+
+Half an hour after our arrival, the great dinner-bell was rung, and
+I came down with my two pupils (they are very thin insignificant
+little chits of ten and eight years old).  I came down in your dear
+muslin gown (about which that odious Mrs. Pinner was so rude,
+because you gave it me); for I am to be treated as one of the
+family, except on company days, when the young ladies and I are to
+dine upstairs.
+
+Well, the great dinner-bell rang, and we all assembled in the little
+drawing-room where my Lady Crawley sits.  She is the second Lady
+Crawley, and mother of the young ladies.  She was an ironmonger's
+daughter, and her marriage was thought a great match.  She looks as
+if she had been handsome once, and her eyes are always weeping for
+the loss of her beauty.  She is pale and meagre and high-shouldered,
+and has not a word to say for herself, evidently.  Her stepson Mr.
+Crawley, was likewise in the room.  He was in full dress, as pompous
+as an undertaker.  He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has thin legs,
+no chest, hay-coloured whiskers, and straw-coloured hair.  He is the
+very picture of his sainted mother over the mantelpiece--Griselda of
+the noble house of Binkie.
+
+"This is the new governess, Mr. Crawley," said Lady Crawley, coming
+forward and taking my hand.  "Miss Sharp."
+
+"O!" said Mr. Crawley, and pushed his head once forward and began
+again to read a great pamphlet with which he was busy.
+
+"I hope you will be kind to my girls," said Lady Crawley, with her
+pink eyes always full of tears.
+
+"Law, Ma, of course she will," said the eldest: and I saw at a
+glance that I need not be afraid of THAT woman. "My lady is served,"
+says the butler in black, in an immense white shirt-frill, that
+looked as if it had been one of the Queen Elizabeth's ruffs depicted
+in the hall; and so, taking Mr. Crawley's arm, she led the way to
+the dining-room, whither I followed with my little pupils in each
+hand.
+
+Sir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug.  He had just
+been to the cellar, and was in full dress too; that is, he had taken
+his gaiters off, and showed his little dumpy legs in black worsted
+stockings.  The sideboard was covered with glistening old plate--old
+cups, both gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like
+Rundell and Bridge's shop.  Everything on the table was in silver
+too, and two footmen, with red hair and canary-coloured liveries,
+stood on either side of the sideboard.
+
+Mr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said amen, and the great
+silver dish-covers were removed.
+
+"What have we for dinner, Betsy?' said the Baronet.
+
+"Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt," answered Lady Crawley.
+
+"Mouton aux navets," added the butler gravely (pronounce, if you
+please, moutongonavvy); "and the soup is potage de mouton a
+l'Ecossaise.  The side-dishes contain pommes de terre au naturel,
+and choufleur a l'eau."
+
+"Mutton's mutton," said the Baronet, "and a devilish good thing.
+What SHIP was it, Horrocks, and when did you kill?"  "One of the
+black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday.
+
+"Who took any?"
+
+"Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir Pitt; but he
+says the last was too young and confounded woolly, Sir Pitt."
+
+"Will you take some potage, Miss ah--Miss Blunt? said Mr. Crawley.
+
+"Capital Scotch broth, my dear," said Sir Pitt, "though they call it
+by a French name."
+
+"I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society," said Mr.
+Crawley, haughtily, "to call the dish as I have called it"; and it
+was served to us on silver soup plates by the
+footmen in the canary coats, with the mouton aux navets.  Then "ale
+and water" were brought, and served to us young ladies in wine-
+glasses.  I am not a judge of ale, but I can say with a clear
+conscience I prefer water.
+
+While we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took occasion to ask
+what had become of the shoulders of the mutton.
+
+"I believe they were eaten in the servants' hall," said my lady,
+humbly.
+
+"They was, my lady," said Horrocks, "and precious little else we get
+there neither."
+
+Sir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his conversation
+with Mr. Horrocks.  "That there little black pig of the Kent sow's
+breed must be uncommon fat now."
+
+"It's not quite busting, Sir Pitt," said the butler with the gravest
+air, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young ladies, this time,
+began to laugh violently.
+
+"Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley," said Mr. Crawley, "your laughter
+strikes me as being exceedingly out of place."
+
+"Never mind, my lord," said the Baronet, "we'll try the porker on
+Saturday.  Kill un on Saturday morning, John Horrocks.  Miss Sharp
+adores pork, don't you, Miss Sharp?"
+
+And I think this is all the conversation that I remember at dinner.
+When the repast was concluded a jug of hot water was placed before
+Sir Pitt, with a case-bottle containing, I believe, rum.  Mr.
+Horrocks served myself and my pupils with three little glasses of
+wine, and a bumper was poured out for my lady.  When we retired, she
+took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable piece of
+knitting; the young ladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty
+pack of cards.  We had but one candle lighted, but it was in a
+magnificent old silver candlestick, and after a very few questions
+from my lady, I had my choice of amusement between a volume of
+sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which Mr. Crawley had been
+reading before dinner.
+
+So we sat for an hour until steps were heard.
+
+"Put away the cards, girls," cried my lady, in a great tremor; "put
+down Mr. Crawley's books, Miss Sharp"; and these orders had been
+scarcely obeyed, when Mr. Crawley entered the room.
+
+"We will resume yesterday's discourse, young ladies," said he, "and
+you shall each read a page by turns; so that Miss a--Miss Short may
+have an opportunity of hearing you"; and the poor girls began to
+spell a long dismal sermon delivered at Bethesda Chapel, Liverpool,
+on behalf of the mission for the Chickasaw Indians. Was it not a
+charming evening?
+
+At ten the servants were told to call Sir Pitt and the household to
+prayers.  Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and rather
+unsteady in his gait; and after him the butler, the canaries, Mr.
+Crawley's man, three other men, smelling very much of the stable,
+and four women, one of whom, I remarked, was very much overdressed,
+and who flung me a look of great scorn as she plumped down on her
+knees.
+
+After Mr. Crawley had done haranguing and expounding, we received
+our candles, and then we went to bed; and then I was disturbed in my
+writing, as I have described to my dearest sweetest Amelia.
+
+Good night.  A thousand, thousand, thousand kisses!
+
+Saturday.--This morning, at five, I heard the shrieking of the
+little black pig.  Rose and Violet introduced me to it yesterday;
+and to the stables, and to the kennel, and to the gardener, who was
+picking fruit to send to market, and from whom they begged hard a
+bunch of hot-house grapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered
+every "Man Jack" of them, and it would be as much as his place was
+worth to give any away.  The darling girls caught a colt in a
+paddock, and asked me if I would ride, and began to ride themselves,
+when the groom, coming with horrid oaths, drove them away.
+
+Lady Crawley is always knitting the worsted.  Sir Pitt is always
+tipsy, every night; and, I believe, sits with Horrocks, the butler.
+Mr. Crawley always reads sermons in the evening, and in the morning
+is locked up in his study, or else rides to Mudbury, on county
+business, or to Squashmore, where he preaches, on Wednesdays and
+Fridays, to the tenants there.
+
+A hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa and mamma.  Is
+your poor brother recovered of his rack-punch? Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
+How men should beware of wicked punch!
+
+Ever and ever thine own REBECCA
+
+Everything considered, I think it is quite as well for our dear
+Amelia Sedley, in Russell Square, that Miss Sharp and she are
+parted.  Rebecca is a droll funny creature, to be sure; and those
+descriptions of the poor lady weeping for the loss of her beauty,
+and the gentleman "with hay-coloured whiskers and straw-coloured
+hair," are very smart, doubtless, and show a great knowledge of the
+world.  That she might, when on her knees, have been thinking of
+something better than Miss Horrocks's ribbons, has possibly struck
+both of us.  But my kind reader will please to remember that this
+history has "Vanity Fair" for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a
+very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and
+falsenesses and pretensions.  And while the moralist, who is holding
+forth on the cover ( an accurate portrait of your humble servant),
+professes to wear neither gown nor bands, but only the very same
+long-eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed: yet, look
+you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one knows it, whether
+one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel hat; and a deal of
+disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an
+undertaking.
+
+I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at Naples,
+preaching to a pack of good-for-nothing honest lazy fellows by the
+sea-shore, work himself up into such a rage and passion with some of
+the villains whose wicked deeds he was describing and inventing,
+that the audience could not resist it; and they and the poet
+together would burst out into a roar of oaths and execrations
+against the fictitious monster of the tale, so that the hat went
+round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it, in the midst of a perfect
+storm of sympathy.
+
+At the little Paris theatres, on the other hand, you will not only
+hear the people yelling out "Ah gredin! Ah monstre:" and cursing the
+tyrant of the play from the boxes; but the actors themselves
+positively refuse to play the wicked parts, such as those of infames
+Anglais, brutal Cossacks, and what not, and prefer to appear at a
+smaller salary, in their real characters as loyal Frenchmen.  I set
+the two stories one against the other, so that you may see that it
+is not from mere mercenary motives that the present performer is
+desirous to show up and trounce his villains; but because he has a
+sincere hatred of them, which he cannot keep down, and which must
+find a vent in suitable abuse and bad language.
+
+I warn my "kyind friends," then, that I am going to tell a story of
+harrowing villainy and complicated--but, as I trust, intensely
+interesting--crime.  My rascals are no milk-and-water rascals, I
+promise you.  When we come to the proper places we won't spare fine
+language--No, no! But when we are going over the quiet country we
+must perforce be calm.  A tempest in a slop-basin is absurd.  We
+will reserve that sort of thing for the mighty ocean and the lonely
+midnight.  The present Chapter is very mild.  Others--But we will
+not anticipate THOSE.
+
+And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man
+and a brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step
+down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and
+kindly, to love them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly,
+to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve: if they are
+wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which
+politeness admits of.
+
+Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice
+of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who
+laughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet--
+whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence except for
+prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Such people
+there are living and flourishing in the world--Faithless, Hopeless,
+Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main.
+Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and
+it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that Laughter
+was made.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Family Portraits
+
+
+Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called
+low life.  His first marriage with the daughter of the noble Binkie
+had been made under the auspices of his parents; and as he often
+told Lady Crawley in her lifetime she was such a confounded
+quarrelsome high-bred jade that when she died he was hanged if he
+would ever take another of her sort, at her ladyship's demise he
+kept his promise, and selected for a second wife Miss Rose Dawson,
+daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson, ironmonger, of Mudbury. What a
+happy woman was Rose to be my Lady Crawley!
+
+Let us set down the items of her happiness.  In the first place, she
+gave up Peter Butt, a young man who kept company with her, and in
+consequence of his disappointment in love, took to smuggling,
+poaching, and a thousand other bad courses.  Then she quarrelled, as
+in duty bound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth, who,
+of course, could not be received by my Lady at Queen's Crawley--nor
+did she find in her new rank and abode any persons who were willing
+to welcome her. Who ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three
+daughters who all hoped to be Lady Crawley.  Sir Giles Wapshot's
+family were insulted that one of the Wapshot girls had not the
+preference in the marriage, and the remaining baronets of the county
+were indignant at their comrade's misalliance.  Never mind the
+commoners, whom we will leave to grumble anonymously.
+
+Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for any one of
+them.  He had his pretty Rose, and what more need a man require than
+to please himself? So he used to get drunk every night: to beat his
+pretty Rose sometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to
+London for the parliamentary session, without a single friend in the
+wide world.  Even Mrs. Bute Crawley, the Rector's wife, refused to
+visit her, as she said she would never give the pas to a tradesman's
+daughter.
+
+As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley
+were those of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort
+of character, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor
+amusements, nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which
+often falls to the lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir
+Pitt's affections was not very great.  Her roses faded out of her
+cheeks, and the pretty freshness left her figure after the birth of
+a couple of children, and she became a mere machine in her husband's
+house of no more use than the late Lady Crawley's grand piano.
+Being a light-complexioned woman, she wore light clothes, as most
+blondes will, and appeared, in preference, in draggled sea-green, or
+slatternly sky-blue.  She worked that worsted day and night, or
+other pieces like it.  She had counterpanes in the course of a few
+years to all the beds in Crawley.  She had a small flower-garden,
+for which she had rather an affection; but beyond this no other like
+or disliking.  When her husband was rude to her she was apathetic:
+whenever he struck her she cried.  She had not character enough to
+take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod and in curl-papers all
+day.  O Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! This might have been, but for you,
+a cheery lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy man and wife, in a snug
+farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion of pleasures,
+cares, hopes and struggles--but a title and a coach and four are
+toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry the
+Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you
+suppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented
+this season?
+
+The languid dulness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed,
+awaken much affection in her little daughters, but they were very
+happy in the servants' hall and in the stables; and the Scotch
+gardener having luckily a good wife and some good children, they got
+a little wholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was
+the only education bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came.
+
+Her engagement was owing to the remonstrances of Mr. Pitt Crawley,
+the only friend or protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only
+person, besides her children, for whom she entertained a little
+feeble attachment.  Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from whom
+he was descended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman.  When
+he grew to man's estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began
+to reform the slackened discipline of the hall, in spite of his
+father, who stood in awe of him.  He was a man of such rigid
+refinement, that he would have starved rather than have dined
+without a white neckcloth.  Once, when just from college, and when
+Horrocks the butler brought him a letter without placing it
+previously on a tray, he gave that domestic a look, and administered
+to him a speech so cutting, that Horrocks ever after trembled before
+him; the whole household bowed to him: Lady Crawley's curl-papers
+came off earlier when he was at home: Sir Pitt's muddy gaiters
+disappeared; and if that incorrigible old man still adhered to other
+old habits, he never fuddled himself with rum-and-water in his son's
+presence, and only talked to his servants in a very reserved and
+polite manner; and those persons remarked that Sir Pitt never swore
+at Lady Crawley while his son was in the room.
+
+It was he who taught the butler to say, "My lady is served," and who
+insisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner.  He seldom spoke to
+her, but when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he
+never let her quit the apartment without rising in the most stately
+manner to open the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress.
+
+At Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say,
+his younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently.  But though
+his parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by
+meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at
+school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally
+thought none but a cherub can escape.
+
+At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he
+prepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced
+by the patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the
+ancient and modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking
+unceasingly at the debating societies.  But though he had a fine
+flux of words, and delivered his little voice with great pomposity
+and pleasure to himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion
+which was not perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin
+quotation; yet he failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which
+ought to have insured any man a success.  He did not even get the
+prize poem, which all his friends said he was sure of.
+
+After leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie,
+and was then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel,
+which post he filled with perfect honour, and brought home
+despatches, consisting of Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of
+the day.  After remaining ten years Attache (several years after the
+lamented Lord Binkie's demise), and finding the advancement slow, he
+at length gave up the diplomatic service in some disgust, and began
+to turn country gentleman.
+
+He wrote a pamphlet on Malt on returning to England (for he was an
+ambitious man, and always liked to be before the public), and took a
+strong part in the Negro Emancipation question.  Then he became a
+friend of Mr. Wilberforce's, whose politics he admired, and had that
+famous correspondence with the Reverend Silas Hornblower, on the
+Ashantee Mission.  He was in London, if not for the Parliament
+session, at least in May, for the religious meetings.  In the
+country he was a magistrate, and an active visitor and speaker among
+those destitute of religious instruction.  He was said to be paying
+his addresses to Lady Jane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third
+daughter, and whose sister, Lady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts,
+"The Sailor's True Binnacle," and "The Applewoman of Finchley
+Common."
+
+Miss Sharp's accounts of his employment at Queen's Crawley were not
+caricatures.  He subjected the servants there to the devotional
+exercises before mentioned, in which (and so much the better) he
+brought his father to join.  He patronised an Independent meeting-
+house in Crawley parish, much to the indignation of his uncle the
+Rector, and to the consequent delight of Sir Pitt, who was induced
+to go himself once or twice, which occasioned some violent sermons
+at Crawley parish church, directed point-blank at the Baronet's old
+Gothic pew there.  Honest Sir Pitt, however, did not feel the force
+of these discourses, as he always took his nap during sermon-time.
+
+Mr. Crawley was very earnest, for the good of the nation and of the
+Christian world, that the old gentleman should yield him up his
+place in Parliament; but this the elder constantly refused to do.
+Both were of course too prudent to give up the fifteen hundred a
+year which was brought in by the second seat (at this period filled
+by Mr. Quadroon, with carte blanche on the Slave question); indeed
+the family estate was much embarrassed, and the income drawn from
+the borough was of great use to the house of Queen's Crawley.
+
+It had never recovered the heavy fine imposed upon Walpole Crawley,
+first baronet, for peculation in the Tape and Sealing Wax Office.
+Sir Walpole was a jolly fellow, eager to seize and to spend money
+(alieni appetens, sui profusus, as Mr. Crawley would remark with a
+sigh), and in his day beloved by all the county for the constant
+drunkenness and hospitality which was maintained at Queen's Crawley.
+The cellars were filled with burgundy then, the kennels with hounds,
+and the stables with gallant hunters; now, such horses as Queen's
+Crawley possessed went to plough, or ran in the Trafalgar Coach; and
+it was with a team of these very horses, on an off-day, that Miss
+Sharp was brought to the Hall; for boor as he was, Sir Pitt was a
+stickler for his dignity while at home, and seldom drove out but
+with four horses, and though he dined off boiled mutton, had always
+three footmen to serve it.
+
+If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might
+have become very wealthy--if he had been an attorney in a country
+town, with no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he
+would have turned them to good account, and might have achieved for
+himself a very considerable influence and competency. But he was
+unluckily endowed with a good name and a large though encumbered
+estate, both of which went rather to injure than to advance him.  He
+had a taste for law, which cost him many thousands yearly; and being
+a great deal too clever to be robbed, as he said, by any single
+agent, allowed his affairs to be mismanaged by a dozen, whom he all
+equally mistrusted. He was such a sharp landlord, that he could
+hardly find any but bankrupt tenants; and such a close farmer, as to
+grudge almost the seed to the ground, whereupon revengeful Nature
+grudged him the crops which she granted to more liberal husbandmen.
+He speculated in every possible way; he worked mines; bought canal-
+shares; horsed coaches; took government contracts, and was the
+busiest man and magistrate of his county.  As he would not pay
+honest agents at his granite quarry, he had the satisfaction of
+finding that four overseers ran away, and took fortunes with them to
+America.  For want of proper precautions, his coal-mines filled with
+water: the government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his
+hands: and for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the
+kingdom knew that he lost more horses than any man in the country,
+from underfeeding and buying cheap. In disposition he was sociable,
+and far from being proud; nay, he rather preferred the society of a
+farmer or a horse-dealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, his
+son: he was fond of drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers'
+daughters: he was never known to give away a shilling or to do a
+good action, but was of a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would
+cut his joke and drink his glass with a tenant and sell him up the
+next day; or have his laugh with the poacher he was transporting
+with equal good humour.  His politeness for the fair sex has already
+been hinted at by Miss Rebecca Sharp--in a word, the whole
+baronetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more
+cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable old man.  That blood-
+red hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be in anybody's pocket except
+his own; and it is with grief and pain, that, as admirers of the
+British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to admit the
+existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name is in
+Debrett.
+
+One great cause why Mr. Crawley had such a hold over the affections
+of his father, resulted from money arrangements.  The Baronet owed
+his son a sum of money out of the jointure of his mother, which he
+did not find it convenient to pay; indeed he had an almost
+invincible repugnance to paying anybody, and could only be brought
+by force to discharge his debts.  Miss Sharp calculated (for she
+became, as we shall hear speedily, inducted into most of the secrets
+of the family) that the mere payment of his creditors cost the
+honourable Baronet several hundreds yearly; but this was a delight
+he could not forego; he had a savage pleasure in making the poor
+wretches wait, and in shifting from court to court and from term to
+term the period of satisfaction.  What's the good of being in
+Parliament, he said, if you must pay your debts? Hence, indeed, his
+position as a senator was not a little useful to him.
+
+Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair!  Here was a man, who could not spell, and
+did not care to read--who had the habits and the cunning of a boor:
+whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or
+emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had
+rank, and honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the
+land, and a pillar of the state.  He was high sheriff, and rode in a
+golden coach.  Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in
+Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or
+spotless virtue.
+
+Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's
+large fortune, and though the Baronet proposed to borrow this money
+of her on mortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred
+the security of the funds. She had signified, however, her intention
+of leaving her inheritance between Sir Pitt's second son and the
+family at the Rectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of
+Rawdon Crawley in his career at college and in the army. Miss
+Crawley was, in consequence, an object of great respect when she
+came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a balance at her banker's which
+would have made her beloved anywhere.
+
+What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's!
+How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may
+every reader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old
+creature we find her!  How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs
+leads her smiling to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the
+fat wheezy coachman! How, when she comes to pay us a visit, we
+generally find an opportunity to let our friends know her station in
+the world!  We say (and with perfect truth) I wish I had Miss
+MacWhirter's signature to a cheque for five thousand pounds.  She
+wouldn't miss it, says your wife.  She is my aunt, say you, in an
+easy careless way, when your friend asks if Miss MacWhirter is any
+relative.  Your wife is perpetually sending her little testimonies
+of affection, your little girls work endless worsted baskets,
+cushions, and footstools for her.  What a good fire there is in her
+room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces her
+stays without one!  The house during her stay assumes a festive,
+neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons.
+You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find
+yourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a
+rubber.  What good dinners you have--game every day, Malmsey-
+Madeira, and no end of fish from London.  Even the servants in the
+kitchen share in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the
+stay of Miss MacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much
+stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where
+her maid takes her meals) is not regarded in the least.  Is it so,
+or is it not so?  I appeal to the middle classes.  Ah, gracious
+powers! I wish you would send me an old aunt--a maiden aunt--an aunt
+with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured
+hair--how my children should work workbags for her, and my Julia and
+I would make her comfortable! Sweet--sweet vision! Foolish--foolish
+dream!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends
+
+
+And now, being received as a member of the amiable family whose
+portraits we have sketched in the foregoing pages, it became
+naturally Rebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to
+her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her
+power.  Who can but admire this quality of gratitude in an
+unprotected orphan; and, if there entered some degree of selfishness
+into her calculations, who can say but that her prudence was
+perfectly justifiable?  "I am alone in the world," said the
+friendless girl.  "I have nothing to look for but what my own labour
+can bring me; and while that little pink-faced chit Amelia, with not
+half my sense, has ten thousand pounds and an establishment secure,
+poor Rebecca (and my figure is far better than hers) has only
+herself and her own wits to trust to.  Well, let us see if my wits
+cannot provide me with an honourable maintenance, and if some day or
+the other I cannot show Miss Amelia my real superiority over her.
+Not that I dislike poor Amelia: who can dislike such a harmless,
+good-natured creature?--only it will be a fine day when I can take
+my place above her in the world, as why, indeed, should I not?"
+Thus it was that our little romantic friend formed visions of the
+future for herself--nor must we be scandalised that, in all her
+castles in the air, a husband was the principal inhabitant.  Of what
+else have young ladies to think, but husbands? Of what else do their
+dear mammas think?  "I must be my own mamma," said Rebecca; not
+without a tingling consciousness of defeat, as she thought over her
+little misadventure with Jos Sedley.
+
+So she wisely determined to render her position with the Queen's
+Crawley family comfortable and secure, and to this end resolved to
+make friends of every one around her who could at all interfere with
+her comfort.
+
+As my Lady Crawley was not one of these personages, and a woman,
+moreover, so indolent and void of character as not to be of the
+least consequence in her own house, Rebecca soon found that it was
+not at all necessary to cultivate her good will--indeed, impossible
+to gain it.  She used to talk to her pupils about their "poor
+mamma"; and, though she treated that lady with every demonstration
+of cool respect, it was to the rest of the family that she wisely
+directed the chief part of her attentions.
+
+With the young people, whose applause she thoroughly gained, her
+method was pretty simple.  She did not pester their young brains
+with too much learning, but, on the contrary, let them have their
+own way in regard to educating themselves; for what instruction is
+more effectual than self-instruction? The eldest was rather fond of
+books, and as there was in the old library at Queen's Crawley a
+considerable provision of works of light literature of the last
+century, both in the French and English languages (they had been
+purchased by the Secretary of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office at the
+period of his disgrace), and as nobody ever troubled the book-
+shelves but herself, Rebecca was enabled agreeably, and, as it were,
+in playing, to impart a great deal of instruction to Miss Rose
+Crawley.
+
+She and Miss Rose thus read together many delightful French and
+English works, among which may be mentioned those of the learned Dr.
+Smollett, of the ingenious Mr. Henry Fielding, of the graceful and
+fantastic Monsieur Crebillon the younger, whom our immortal poet
+Gray so much admired, and of the universal Monsieur de Voltaire.
+Once, when Mr. Crawley asked what the young people were reading, the
+governess replied "Smollett." "Oh, Smollett," said Mr. Crawley,
+quite satisfied.  "His history is more dull, but by no means so
+dangerous as that of Mr. Hume.  It is history you are reading?"
+"Yes," said Miss Rose; without, however, adding that it was the
+history of Mr. Humphrey Clinker.  On another occasion he was rather
+scandalised at finding his sister with a book of French plays; but
+as the governess remarked that it was for the purpose of acquiring
+the French idiom in conversation, he was fain to be content.  Mr.
+Crawley, as a diplomatist, was exceedingly proud of his own skill in
+speaking the French language (for he was of the world still), and
+not a little pleased with the compliments which the governess
+continually paid him upon his proficiency.
+
+Miss Violet's tastes were, on the contrary, more rude and boisterous
+than those of her sister.  She knew the sequestered spots where the
+hens laid their eggs.  She could climb a tree to rob the nests of
+the feathered songsters of their speckled spoils.  And her pleasure
+was to ride the young colts, and to scour the plains like Camilla.
+She was the favourite of her father and of the stablemen. She was
+the darling, and withal the terror of the cook; for she discovered
+the haunts of the jam-pots, and would attack them when they were
+within her reach. She and her sister were engaged in constant
+battles.  Any of which peccadilloes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she
+did not tell them to Lady Crawley; who would have told them to the
+father, or worse, to Mr. Crawley; but promised not to tell if Miss
+Violet would be a good girl and love her governess.
+
+With Mr. Crawley Miss Sharp was respectful and obedient.  She used
+to consult him on passages of French which she could not understand,
+though her mother was a Frenchwoman, and which he would construe to
+her satisfaction: and, besides giving her his aid in profane
+literature, he was kind enough to select for her books of a more
+serious tendency, and address to her much of his conversation.  She
+admired, beyond measure, his speech at the Quashimaboo-Aid Society;
+took an interest in his pamphlet on malt: was often affected, even
+to tears, by his discourses of an evening, and would say--"Oh, thank
+you, sir," with a sigh, and a look up to heaven, that made him
+occasionally condescend to shake hands with her.  "Blood is
+everything, after all," would that aristocratic religionist say.
+"How Miss Sharp is awakened by my words, when not one of the people
+here is touched.  I am too fine for them--too delicate. I must
+familiarise my style--but she understands it.  Her mother was a
+Montmorency."
+
+Indeed it was from this famous family, as it appears, that Miss
+Sharp, by the mother's side, was descended. Of course she did not
+say that her mother had been on the stage; it would have shocked Mr.
+Crawley's religious scruples.  How many noble emigres had this
+horrid revolution plunged in poverty!  She had several stories about
+her ancestors ere she had been many months in the house; some of
+which Mr. Crawley happened to find in D'Hozier's dictionary, which
+was in the library, and which strengthened his belief in their
+truth, and in the high-breeding of Rebecca.  Are we to suppose from
+this curiosity and prying into dictionaries, could our heroine
+suppose that Mr. Crawley was interested in her?--no, only in a
+friendly way.  Have we not stated that he was attached to Lady Jane
+Sheepshanks?
+
+He took Rebecca to task once or twice about the propriety of playing
+at backgammon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a godless amusement,
+and that she would be much better engaged in reading "Thrump's
+Legacy," or "The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields," or any work of a
+more serious nature; but Miss Sharp said her dear mother used often
+to play the same game with the old Count de Trictrac and the
+venerable Abbe du Cornet, and so found an excuse for this and other
+worldly amusements.
+
+But it was not only by playing at backgammon with the Baronet, that
+the little governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer.
+She found many different ways of being useful to him.  She read
+over, with indefatigable patience, all those law papers, with which,
+before she came to Queen's Crawley, he had promised to entertain
+her.  She volunteered to copy many of his letters, and adroitly
+altered the spelling of them so as to suit the usages of the present
+day.  She became interested in everything appertaining to the
+estate, to the farm, the park, the garden, and the stables; and so
+delightful a companion was she, that the Baronet would seldom take
+his after-breakfast walk without her (and the children of course),
+when she would give her advice as to the trees which were to be
+lopped in the shrubberies, the garden-beds to be dug, the crops
+which were to be cut, the horses which were to go to cart or plough.
+Before she had been a year at Queen's Crawley she had quite won the
+Baronet's confidence; and the conversation at the dinner-table,
+which before used to be held between him and Mr. Horrocks the
+butler, was now almost exclusively between Sir Pitt and Miss Sharp.
+She was almost mistress of the house when Mr. Crawley was absent,
+but conducted herself in her new and exalted situation with such
+circumspection and modesty as not to offend the authorities of the
+kitchen and stable, among whom her behaviour was always exceedingly
+modest and affable.  She was quite a different person from the
+haughty, shy, dissatisfied little girl whom we have known
+previously, and this change of temper proved great prudence, a
+sincere desire of amendment, or at any rate great moral courage on
+her part.  Whether it was the heart which dictated this new system
+of complaisance and humility adopted by our Rebecca, is to be proved
+by her after-history.  A system of hypocrisy, which lasts through
+whole years, is one seldom satisfactorily practised by a person of
+one-and-twenty; however, our readers will recollect, that, though
+young in years, our heroine was old in life and experience, and we
+have written to no purpose if they have not discovered that she was
+a very clever woman.
+
+The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley were, like the
+gentleman and lady in the weather-box, never at home together--they
+hated each other cordially: indeed, Rawdon Crawley, the dragoon, had
+a great contempt for the establishment altogether, and seldom came
+thither except when his aunt paid her annual visit.
+
+The great good quality of this old lady has been mentioned.  She
+possessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon.
+She disliked her elder nephew exceedingly, and despised him as a
+milksop.  In return he did not hesitate to state that her soul was
+irretrievably lost, and was of opinion that his brother's chance in
+the next world was not a whit better.  "She is a godless woman of
+the world," would Mr. Crawley say; "she lives with atheists and
+Frenchmen.  My mind shudders when I think of her awful, awful
+situation, and that, near as she is to the grave, she should be so
+given up to vanity, licentiousness, profaneness, and folly." In
+fact, the old lady declined altogether to hear his hour's lecture of
+an evening; and when she came to Queen's Crawley alone, he was
+obliged to pretermit his usual devotional exercises.
+
+"Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss Crawley comes down," said his
+father; "she has written to say that she won't stand the
+preachifying."
+
+"O, sir! consider the servants."
+
+"The servants be hanged," said Sir Pitt; and his son thought even
+worse would happen were they deprived of the benefit of his
+instruction.
+
+"Why, hang it, Pitt!" said the father to his remonstrance. "You
+wouldn't be such a flat as to let three thousand a year go out of
+the family?"
+
+"What is money compared to our souls, sir?" continued Mr. Crawley.
+
+"You mean that the old lady won't leave the money to you?"--and who
+knows but it was Mr. Crawley's meaning?
+
+Old Miss Crawley was certainly one of the reprobate. She had a snug
+little house in Park Lane, and, as she ate and drank a great deal
+too much during the season in London, she went to Harrowgate or
+Cheltenham for the summer.  She was the most hospitable and jovial
+of old vestals, and had been a beauty in her day, she said. (All old
+women were beauties once, we very well know.) She was a bel esprit,
+and a dreadful Radical for those days.  She had been in France
+(where St. Just, they say, inspired her with an unfortunate
+passion), and loved, ever after, French novels, French cookery, and
+French wines.  She read Voltaire, and had Rousseau by heart; talked
+very lightly about divorce, and most energetically of the rights of
+women.  She had pictures of Mr. Fox in every room in the house: when
+that statesman was in opposition, I am not sure that she had not
+flung a main with him; and when he came into office, she took great
+credit for bringing over to him Sir Pitt and his colleague for
+Queen's Crawley, although Sir Pitt would have come over himself,
+without any trouble on the honest lady's part.  It is needless to
+say that Sir Pitt was brought to change his views after the death of
+the great Whig statesman.
+
+This worthy old lady took a fancy to Rawdon Crawley when a boy, sent
+him to Cambridge (in opposition to his brother at Oxford), and, when
+the young man was requested by the authorities of the first-named
+University to quit after a residence of two years, she bought him
+his commission in the Life Guards Green.
+
+A perfect and celebrated "blood," or dandy about town, was this
+young officer.  Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-
+hand driving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy; and
+he was an adept in all these noble sciences.  And though he belonged
+to the household troops, who, as it was their duty to rally round
+the Prince Regent, had not shown their valour in foreign service
+yet, Rawdon Crawley had already (apropos of play, of which he was
+immoderately fond) fought three bloody duels, in which he gave ample
+proofs of his contempt for death.
+
+"And for what follows after death," would Mr. Crawley observe,
+throwing his gooseberry-coloured eyes up to the ceiling.  He was
+always thinking of his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who
+differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of
+the serious give themselves.
+
+Silly, romantic Miss Crawley, far from being horrified at the
+courage of her favourite, always used to pay his debts after his
+duels; and would not listen to a word that was whispered against his
+morality.  "He will sow his wild oats," she would say, "and is worth
+far more than that puling hypocrite of a brother of his."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Arcadian Simplicity
+
+
+Besides these honest folks at the Hall (whose simplicity and sweet
+rural purity surely show the advantage of a country life over a town
+one), we must introduce the reader to their relatives and neighbours
+at the Rectory, Bute Crawley and his wife.
+
+The Reverend Bute Crawley was a tall, stately, jolly, shovel-hatted
+man, far more popular in his county than the Baronet his brother.
+At college he pulled stroke-oar in the Christchurch boat, and had
+thrashed all the best bruisers of the "town." He carried his taste
+for boxing and athletic exercises into private life; there was not a
+fight within twenty miles at which he was not present, nor a race,
+nor a coursing match, nor a regatta, nor a ball, nor an election,
+nor a visitation dinner, nor indeed a good dinner in the whole
+county, but he found means to attend it.  You might see his bay mare
+and gig-lamps a score of miles away from his Rectory House, whenever
+there was any dinner-party at Fuddleston, or at Roxby, or at Wapshot
+Hall, or at the great lords of the county, with all of whom he was
+intimate.  He had a fine voice; sang "A southerly wind and a cloudy
+sky"; and gave the "whoop" in chorus with general applause.  He rode
+to hounds in a pepper-and-salt frock, and was one of the best
+fishermen in the county.
+
+Mrs. Crawley, the rector's wife, was a smart little body, who wrote
+this worthy divine's sermons.  Being of a domestic turn, and keeping
+the house a great deal with her daughters, she ruled absolutely
+within the Rectory, wisely giving her husband full liberty without.
+He was welcome to come and go, and dine abroad as many days as his
+fancy dictated, for Mrs. Crawley was a saving woman and knew the
+price of port wine.  Ever since Mrs. Bute carried off the young
+Rector of Queen's Crawley (she was of a good family, daughter of the
+late Lieut.-Colonel Hector McTavish, and she and her mother played
+for Bute and won him at Harrowgate), she had been a prudent and
+thrifty wife to him.  In spite of her care, however, he was always
+in debt.  It took him at least ten years to pay off his college
+bills contracted during his father's lifetime. In the year 179-,
+when he was just clear of these incumbrances, he gave the odds of
+100 to 1 (in twenties) against Kangaroo, who won the Derby.  The
+Rector was obliged to take up the money at a ruinous interest, and
+had been struggling ever since.  His sister helped him with a
+hundred now and then, but of course his great hope was in her death--
+when "hang it" (as he would say), "Matilda must leave me half her
+money."
+
+So that the Baronet and his brother had every reason which two
+brothers possibly can have for being by the ears.  Sir Pitt had had
+the better of Bute in innumerable family transactions.  Young Pitt
+not only did not hunt, but set up a meeting house under his uncle's
+very nose. Rawdon, it was known, was to come in for the bulk of Miss
+Crawley's property.  These money transactions--these speculations in
+life and death--these silent battles for reversionary spoil--make
+brothers very loving towards each other in Vanity Fair.  I, for my
+part, have known a five-pound note to interpose and knock up a half
+century's attachment between two brethren; and can't but admire, as
+I think what a fine and durable thing Love is among worldly people.
+
+It cannot be supposed that the arrival of such a personage as
+Rebecca at Queen's Crawley, and her gradual establishment in the
+good graces of all people there, could be unremarked by Mrs. Bute
+Crawley.  Mrs. Bute, who knew how many days the sirloin of beef
+lasted at the Hall; how much linen was got ready at the great wash;
+how many peaches were on the south wall; how many doses her ladyship
+took when she was ill--for such points are matters of intense
+interest to certain persons in the country--Mrs. Bute, I say, could
+not pass over the Hall governess without making every inquiry
+respecting her history and character.  There was always the best
+understanding between the servants at the Rectory and the Hall.
+There was always a good glass of ale in the kitchen of the former
+place for the Hall people, whose ordinary drink was very small--and,
+indeed, the Rector's lady knew exactly how much malt went to every
+barrel of Hall beer--ties of relationship existed between the Hall
+and Rectory domestics, as between their masters; and through these
+channels each family was perfectly well acquainted with the doings
+of the other.  That, by the way, may be set down as a general
+remark.  When you and your brother are friends, his doings are
+indifferent to you.  When you have quarrelled, all his outgoings and
+incomings you know, as if you were his spy.
+
+Very soon then after her arrival, Rebecca began to take a regular
+place in Mrs. Crawley's bulletin from the Hall. It was to this
+effect: "The black porker's killed--weighed x stone--salted the
+sides--pig's pudding and leg of pork for dinner.  Mr. Cramp from
+Mudbury, over with Sir Pitt about putting John Blackmore in gaol--
+Mr. Pitt at meeting (with all the names of the people who attended)
+--my lady as usual--the young ladies with the governess."
+
+Then the report would come--the new governess be a rare manager--Sir
+Pitt be very sweet on her--Mr. Crawley too--He be reading tracts to
+her--"What an abandoned wretch!" said little, eager, active, black-
+faced Mrs. Bute Crawley.
+
+Finally, the reports were that the governess had "come round"
+everybody, wrote Sir Pitt's letters, did his business, managed his
+accounts--had the upper hand of the whole house, my lady, Mr.
+Crawley, the girls and all--at which Mrs. Crawley declared she was
+an artful hussy, and had some dreadful designs in view.  Thus the
+doings at the Hall were the great food for conversation at the
+Rectory, and Mrs. Bute's bright eyes spied out everything that took
+place in the enemy's camp--everything and a great deal besides.
+
+
+Mrs. Bute Crawley to Miss Pinkerton, The Mall, Chiswick.
+
+Rectory, Queen's Crawley, December--.
+
+My Dear Madam,--Although it is so many years since I profited by
+your delightful and invaluable instructions, yet I have ever
+retained the FONDEST and most reverential regard for Miss Pinkerton,
+and DEAR Chiswick.  I hope your health is GOOD.  The world and the
+cause of education cannot afford to lose Miss Pinkerton for MANY
+MANY YEARS.  When my friend, Lady Fuddleston, mentioned that her
+dear girls required an instructress (I am too poor to engage a
+governess for mine, but was I not educated at Chiswick?)--"Who," I
+exclaimed, "can we consult but the excellent, the incomparable Miss
+Pinkerton?" In a word, have you, dear madam, any ladies on your
+list, whose services might be made available to my kind friend and
+neighbour? I assure you she will take no governess BUT OF YOUR
+CHOOSING.
+
+My dear husband is pleased to say that he likes EVERYTHING WHICH
+COMES FROM MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL.  How I wish I could present him
+and my beloved girls to the friend of my youth, and the ADMIRED of
+the great lexicographer of our country! If you ever travel into
+Hampshire, Mr. Crawley begs me to say, he hopes you will adorn our
+RURAL RECTORY with your presence.  'Tis the humble but happy home of
+
+Your affectionate Martha Crawley
+
+P.S.  Mr. Crawley's brother, the baronet, with whom we are not,
+alas! upon those terms of UNITY in which it BECOMES BRETHREN TO
+DWELL, has a governess for his little girls, who, I am told, had the
+good fortune to be educated at Chiswick.  I hear various reports of
+her; and as I have the tenderest interest in my dearest little
+nieces, whom I wish, in spite of family differences, to see among my
+own children--and as I long to be attentive to ANY PUPIL OF YOURS--
+do, my dear Miss Pinkerton, tell me the history of this young lady,
+whom, for YOUR SAKE, I am most anxious to befriend.--M. C.
+
+
+Miss Pinkerton to Mrs. Bute Crawley.
+
+Johnson House, Chiswick, Dec. 18--.
+
+Dear Madam,--I have the honour to acknowledge your polite
+communication, to which I promptly reply. 'Tis most gratifying to
+one in my most arduous position to find that my maternal cares have
+elicited a responsive affection; and to recognize in the amiable
+Mrs. Bute Crawley my excellent pupil of former years, the sprightly
+and accomplished Miss Martha MacTavish.  I am happy to have under my
+charge now the daughters of many of those who were your
+contemporaries at my establishment--what pleasure it would give me
+if your own beloved young ladies had need of my instructive
+superintendence!
+
+Presenting my respectful compliments to Lady Fuddleston, I have the
+honour (epistolarily) to introduce to her ladyship my two friends,
+Miss Tuffin and Miss Hawky.
+
+Either of these young ladies is PERFECTLY QUALIFIED to instruct in
+Greek, Latin, and the rudiments of Hebrew; in mathematics and
+history; in Spanish, French, Italian, and geography; in music, vocal
+and instrumental; in dancing, without the aid of a master; and in
+the elements of natural sciences.  In the use of the globes both are
+proficients.  In addition to these Miss Tuffin, who is daughter of
+the late Reverend Thomas Tuffin (Fellow of Corpus College,
+Cambridge), can instruct in the Syriac language, and the elements of
+Constitutional law. But as she is only eighteen years of age, and of
+exceedingly pleasing personal appearance, perhaps this young lady
+may be objectionable in Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's family.
+
+Miss Letitia Hawky, on the other hand, is not personally well-
+favoured.  She is-twenty-nine; her face is much pitted with the
+small-pox.  She has a halt in her gait, red hair, and a trifling
+obliquity of vision.  Both ladies are endowed with EVERY MORAL AND
+RELIGIOUS VIRTUE.  Their terms, of course, are such as their
+accomplishments merit.  With my most grateful respects to the
+Reverend Bute Crawley, I have the honour to be,
+
+Dear Madam,
+
+Your most faithful and obedient servant, Barbara Pinkerton.
+
+P.S.  The Miss Sharp, whom you mention as governess to Sir Pitt
+Crawley, Bart., M.P., was a pupil of mine, and I have nothing to say
+in her disfavour. Though her appearance is disagreeable, we cannot
+control the operations of nature: and though her parents were
+disreputable (her father being a painter, several times bankrupt,
+and her mother, as I have since learned, with horror, a dancer at
+the Opera); yet her talents are considerable, and I cannot regret
+that I received her OUT OF CHARITY.  My dread is, lest the
+principles of the mother--who was represented to me as a French
+Countess, forced to emigrate in the late revolutionary horrors; but
+who, as I have since found, was a person of the very lowest order
+and morals--should at any time prove to be HEREDITARY in the unhappy
+young woman whom I took as AN OUTCAST.  But her principles have
+hitherto been correct (I believe), and I am sure nothing will occur
+to injure them in the elegant and refined circle of the eminent Sir
+Pitt Crawley.
+
+Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley.
+
+I have not written to my beloved Amelia for these many weeks past,
+for what news was there to tell of the sayings and doings at Humdrum
+Hall, as I have christened it; and what do you care whether the
+turnip crop is good or bad; whether the fat pig weighed thirteen
+stone or fourteen; and whether the beasts thrive well upon
+mangelwurzel? Every day since I last wrote has been like its
+neighbour.  Before breakfast, a walk with Sir Pitt and his spud;
+after breakfast studies (such as they are) in the schoolroom; after
+schoolroom, reading and writing about lawyers, leases, coal-mines,
+canals, with Sir Pitt (whose secretary I am become); after dinner,
+Mr. Crawley's discourses on the baronet's backgammon; during both of
+which amusements my lady looks on with equal placidity.  She has
+become rather more interesting by being ailing of late, which has
+brought a new visitor to the Hall, in the person of a young doctor.
+Well, my dear, young women need never despair.  The young doctor
+gave a certain friend of yours to understand that, if she chose to
+be Mrs. Glauber, she was welcome to ornament the surgery! I told his
+impudence that the gilt pestle and mortar was quite ornament enough;
+as if I was born, indeed, to be a country surgeon's wife! Mr.
+Glauber went home seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling
+draught, and is now quite cured.  Sir Pitt applauded my resolution
+highly; he would be sorry to lose his little secretary, I think; and
+I believe the old wretch likes me as much as it is in his nature to
+like any one.  Marry, indeed! and with a country apothecary, after--
+No, no, one cannot so soon forget old associations, about which I
+will talk no more.  Let us return to Humdrum Hall.
+
+For some time past it is Humdrum Hall no longer. My dear, Miss
+Crawley has arrived with her fat horses, fat servants, fat spaniel--
+the great rich Miss Crawley, with seventy thousand pounds in the
+five per cents., whom, or I had better say WHICH, her two brothers
+adore.  She looks very apoplectic, the dear soul; no wonder her
+brothers are anxious about her.  You should see them struggling to
+settle her cushions, or to hand her coffee! "When I come into the
+country," she says (for she has a great deal of humour), "I leave my
+toady, Miss Briggs, at home.  My brothers are my toadies here, my
+dear, and a pretty pair they are!"
+
+When she comes into the country our hall is thrown open, and for a
+month, at least, you would fancy old Sir Walpole was come to life
+again.  We have dinner-parties, and drive out in the coach-and-four
+the footmen put on their newest canary-coloured liveries; we drink
+claret and champagne as if we were accustomed to it every day.  We
+have wax candles in the schoolroom, and fires to warm ourselves
+with.  Lady Crawley is made to put on the brightest pea-green in her
+wardrobe, and my pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old
+tartan pelisses, and wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as
+fashionable baronets' daughters should.  Rose came in yesterday in a
+sad plight--the Wiltshire sow (an enormous pet of hers) ran her
+down, and destroyed a most lovely flowered lilac silk dress by
+dancing over it--had this happened a week ago, Sir Pitt would have
+sworn frightfully, have boxed the poor wretch's ears, and put her
+upon bread and water for a month.  All he said was, "I'll serve you
+out, Miss, when your aunt's gone," and laughed off the accident as
+quite trivial.  Let us hope his wrath will have passed away before
+Miss Crawley's departure.  I hope so, for Miss Rose's sake, I am
+sure. What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money is!
+
+Another admirable effect of Miss Crawley and her seventy thousand
+pounds is to be seen in the conduct of the two brothers Crawley.  I
+mean the baronet and the rector, not OUR brothers--but the former,
+who hate each other all the year round, become quite loving at
+Christmas.  I wrote to you last year how the abominable horse-racing
+rector was in the habit of preaching clumsy sermons at us at church,
+and how Sir Pitt snored in answer.  When Miss Crawley arrives there
+is no such thing as quarrelling heard of--the Hall visits the
+Rectory, and vice versa--the parson and the Baronet talk about the
+pigs and the poachers, and the county business, in the most affable
+manner, and without quarrelling in their cups, I believe--indeed
+Miss Crawley won't hear of their quarrelling, and vows that she will
+leave her money to the Shropshire Crawleys if they offend her.  If
+they were clever people, those Shropshire Crawleys, they might have
+it all, I think; but the Shropshire Crawley is a clergyman like his
+Hampshire cousin, and mortally offended Miss Crawley (who had fled
+thither in a fit of rage against her impracticable brethren) by some
+strait-laced notions of morality.  He would have prayers in the
+house, I believe.
+
+Our sermon books are shut up when Miss Crawley arrives, and Mr.
+Pitt, whom she abominates, finds it convenient to go to town.  On
+the other hand, the young dandy--"blood," I believe, is the term--
+Captain Crawley makes his appearance, and I suppose you will like to
+know what sort of a person he is.
+
+Well, he is a very large young dandy.  He is six feet high, and
+speaks with a great voice; and swears a great deal; and orders about
+the servants, who all adore him nevertheless; for he is very
+generous of his money, and the domestics will do anything for him.
+Last week the keepers almost killed a bailiff and his man who came
+down from London to arrest the Captain, and who were found lurking
+about the Park wall--they beat them, ducked them, and were going to
+shoot them for poachers, but the baronet interfered.
+
+The Captain has a hearty contempt for his father, I can see, and
+calls him an old PUT, an old SNOB, an old CHAW-BACON, and numberless
+other pretty names.  He has a DREADFUL REPUTATION among the ladies.
+He brings his hunters home with him, lives with the Squires of the
+county, asks whom he pleases to dinner, and Sir Pitt dares not say
+no, for fear of offending Miss Crawley, and missing his legacy when
+she dies of her apoplexy. Shall I tell you a compliment the Captain
+paid me?  I must, it is so pretty.  One evening we actually had a
+dance; there was Sir Huddleston Fuddleston and his family, Sir Giles
+Wapshot and his young ladies, and I don't know how many more.  Well,
+I heard him say--"By Jove, she's a neat little filly!" meaning your
+humble servant; and he did me the honour to dance two country-dances
+with me.  He gets on pretty gaily with the young Squires, with whom
+he drinks, bets, rides, and talks about hunting and shooting; but he
+says the country girls are BORES; indeed, I don't think he is far
+wrong. You should see the contempt with which they look down on poor
+me! When they dance I sit and play the piano very demurely; but the
+other night, coming in rather flushed from the dining-room, and
+seeing me employed in this way, he swore out loud that I was the
+best dancer in the room, and took a great oath that he would have
+the fiddlers from Mudbury.
+
+"I'll go and play a country-dance," said Mrs. Bute Crawley, very
+readily (she is a little, black-faced old woman in a turban, rather
+crooked, and with very twinkling eyes); and after the Captain and
+your poor little Rebecca had performed a dance together, do you know
+she actually did me the honour to compliment me upon my steps! Such
+a thing was never heard of before; the proud Mrs. Bute Crawley,
+first cousin to the Earl of Tiptoff, who won't condescend to visit
+Lady Crawley, except when her sister is in the country.  Poor Lady
+Crawley! during most part of these gaieties, she is upstairs taking
+pills.
+
+Mrs. Bute has all of a sudden taken a great fancy to me.  "My dear
+Miss Sharp," she says, "why not bring over your girls to the
+Rectory?--their cousins will be so happy to see them." I know what
+she means.  Signor Clementi did not teach us the piano for nothing;
+at which price Mrs. Bute hopes to get a professor for her children.
+I can see through her schemes, as though she told them to me; but I
+shall go, as I am determined to make myself agreeable--is it not a
+poor governess's duty, who has not a friend or protector in the
+world? The Rector's wife paid me a score of compliments about the
+progress my pupils made, and thought, no doubt, to touch my heart--
+poor, simple, country soul!--as if I cared a fig about my pupils!
+
+Your India muslin and your pink silk, dearest Amelia, are said to
+become me very well.  They are a good deal worn now; but, you know,
+we poor girls can't afford des fraiches toilettes.  Happy, happy
+you! who have but to drive to St. James's Street, and a dear mother
+who will give you any thing you ask.  Farewell, dearest girl,
+
+Your affectionate Rebecca.
+
+P.S.--I wish you could have seen the faces of the Miss Blackbrooks
+(Admiral Blackbrook's daughters, my dear), fine young ladies, with
+dresses from London, when Captain Rawdon selected poor me for a
+partner!
+
+When Mrs. Bute Crawley (whose artifices our ingenious Rebecca had so
+soon discovered) had procured from Miss Sharp the promise of a
+visit, she induced the all-powerful Miss Crawley to make the
+necessary application to Sir Pitt, and the good-natured old lady,
+who loved to be gay herself, and to see every one gay and happy
+round about her, was quite charmed, and ready to establish a
+reconciliation and intimacy between her two brothers. It was
+therefore agreed that the young people of both families should visit
+each other frequently for the future, and the friendship of course
+lasted as long as the jovial old mediatrix was there to keep the
+peace.
+
+"Why did you ask that scoundrel, Rawdon Crawley, to dine?" said the
+Rector to his lady, as they were walking home through the park.  "I
+don't want the fellow.  He looks down upon us country people as so
+many blackamoors. He's never content unless he gets my yellow-sealed
+wine, which costs me ten shillings a bottle, hang him! Besides, he's
+such an infernal character--he's a gambler--he's a drunkard--he's a
+profligate in every way.  He shot a man in a duel--he's over head
+and ears in debt, and he's robbed me and mine of the best part of
+Miss Crawley's fortune.  Waxy says she has him"--here the Rector
+shook his fist at the moon, with something very like an oath, and
+added, in a melancholious tone, "--down in her will for fifty
+thousand; and there won't be above thirty to divide."
+
+"I think she's going," said the Rector's wife.  "She was very red in
+the face when we left dinner.  I was obliged to unlace her."
+
+"She drank seven glasses of champagne," said the reverend gentleman,
+in a low voice; "and filthy champagne it is, too, that my brother
+poisons us with--but you women never know what's what."
+
+"We know nothing," said Mrs. Bute Crawley.
+
+"She drank cherry-brandy after dinner," continued his Reverence,
+"and took curacao with her coffee.  I wouldn't take a glass for a
+five-pound note: it kills me with heartburn.  She can't stand it,
+Mrs. Crawley--she must go--flesh and blood won't bear it! and I lay
+five to two, Matilda drops in a year."
+
+Indulging in these solemn speculations, and thinking about his
+debts, and his son Jim at College, and Frank at Woolwich, and the
+four girls, who were no beauties, poor things, and would not have a
+penny but what they got from the aunt's expected legacy, the Rector
+and his lady walked on for a while.
+
+"Pitt can't be such an infernal villain as to sell the reversion of
+the living.  And that Methodist milksop of an eldest son looks to
+Parliament," continued Mr. Crawley, after a pause.
+
+"Sir Pitt Crawley will do anything," said the Rector's wife.  "We
+must get Miss Crawley to make him promise it to James."
+
+"Pitt will promise anything," replied the brother.  "He promised
+he'd pay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd
+build the new wing to the Rectory; he promised he'd let me have
+Jibb's field and the Six-acre Meadow--and much he executed his
+promises! And it's to this man's son--this scoundrel, gambler,
+swindler, murderer of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk
+of her money.  I say it's un-Christian.  By Jove, it is. The
+infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy, and that belongs
+to his brother."
+
+"Hush, my dearest love! we're in Sir Pitt's grounds," interposed his
+wife.
+
+"I say he has got every vice, Mrs. Crawley.  Don't Ma'am, bully me.
+Didn't he shoot Captain Marker? Didn't he rob young Lord Dovedale at
+the Cocoa-Tree? Didn't he cross the fight between Bill Soames and
+the Cheshire Trump, by which I lost forty pound? You know he did;
+and as for the women, why, you heard that before me, in my own
+magistrate's room."
+
+"For heaven's sake, Mr. Crawley," said the lady, "spare me the
+details."
+
+"And you ask this villain into your house!" continued the
+exasperated Rector.  "You, the mother of a young family--the wife of
+a clergyman of the Church of England.  By Jove!"
+
+"Bute Crawley, you are a fool," said the Rector's wife scornfully.
+
+"Well, Ma'am, fool or not--and I don't say, Martha, I'm so clever as
+you are, I never did.  But I won't meet Rawdon Crawley, that's flat.
+I'll go over to Huddleston, that I will, and see his black
+greyhound, Mrs. Crawley; and I'll run Lancelot against him for
+fifty.  By Jove, I will; or against any dog in England.  But I won't
+meet that beast Rawdon Crawley."
+
+"Mr. Crawley, you are intoxicated, as usual," replied his wife.  And
+the next morning, when the Rector woke, and called for small beer,
+she put him in mind of his promise to visit Sir Huddleston
+Fuddleston on Saturday, and as he knew he should have a wet night,
+it was agreed that he might gallop back again in time for church on
+Sunday morning.  Thus it will be seen that the parishioners of
+Crawley were equally happy in their Squire and in their Rector.
+
+Miss Crawley had not long been established at the Hall before
+Rebecca's fascinations had won the heart of that good-natured London
+rake, as they had of the country innocents whom we have been
+describing.  Taking her accustomed drive, one day, she thought fit
+to order that "that little governess" should accompany her to
+Mudbury. Before they had returned Rebecca had made a conquest of
+her; having made her laugh four times, and amused her during the
+whole of the little journey.
+
+"Not let Miss Sharp dine at table!" said she to Sir Pitt, who had
+arranged a dinner of ceremony, and asked all the neighbouring
+baronets.  "My dear creature, do you suppose I can talk about the
+nursery with Lady Fuddleston, or discuss justices' business with
+that goose, old Sir Giles Wapshot? I insist upon Miss Sharp
+appearing.  Let Lady Crawley remain upstairs, if there is no room.
+But little Miss Sharp! Why, she's the only person fit to talk to in
+the county!"
+
+Of course, after such a peremptory order as this, Miss Sharp, the
+governess, received commands to dine with the illustrious company
+below stairs.  And when Sir Huddleston had, with great pomp and
+ceremony, handed Miss Crawley in to dinner, and was preparing to
+take his place by her side, the old lady cried out, in a shrill
+voice, "Becky Sharp!  Miss Sharp!  Come you and sit by me and amuse
+me; and let Sir Huddleston sit by Lady Wapshot."
+
+When the parties were over, and the carriages had rolled away, the
+insatiable Miss Crawley would say, "Come to my dressing room, Becky,
+and let us abuse the company"--which, between them, this pair of
+friends did perfectly.  Old Sir Huddleston wheezed a great deal at
+dinner; Sir Giles Wapshot had a particularly noisy manner of
+imbibing his soup, and her ladyship a wink of the left eye; all of
+which Becky caricatured to admiration; as well as the particulars of
+the night's conversation; the politics; the war; the quarter-
+sessions; the famous run with the H.H., and those heavy and dreary
+themes, about which country gentlemen converse.  As for the Misses
+Wapshot's toilettes and Lady Fuddleston's famous yellow hat, Miss
+Sharp tore them to tatters, to the infinite amusement of her
+audience.
+
+"My dear, you are a perfect trouvaille," Miss Crawley would say.  "I
+wish you could come to me in London, but I couldn't make a butt of
+you as I do of poor Briggs no, no, you little sly creature; you are
+too clever--Isn't she, Firkin?"
+
+Mrs. Firkin (who was dressing the very small remnant of hair which
+remained on Miss Crawley's pate), flung up her head and said, "I
+think Miss is very clever," with the most killing sarcastic air.  In
+fact, Mrs. Firkin had that natural jealousy which is one of the main
+principles of every honest woman.
+
+After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss Crawley ordered that
+Rawdon Crawley should lead her in to dinner every day, and that
+Becky should follow with her cushion--or else she would have Becky's
+arm and Rawdon with the pillow.  "We must sit together," she said.
+"We're the only three Christians in the county, my love"--in which
+case, it must be confessed, that religion was at a very low ebb in
+the county of Hants.
+
+Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley was, as we have
+said, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and always took occasion to
+express these in the most candid manner.
+
+"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca--"Look at my
+brother Pitt; look at the Huddlestons, who have been here since
+Henry II; look at poor Bute at the parsonage--is any one of them
+equal to you in intelligence or breeding? Equal to you--they are not
+even equal to poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler.
+You, my love, are a little paragon--positively a little jewel--You
+have more brains than half the shire--if merit had its reward you
+ought to be a Duchess--no, there ought to be no duchesses at all--
+but you ought to have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as
+my equal in every respect; and--will you put some coals on the fire,
+my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and alter it, you who
+can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist used to make her
+equal run of her errands, execute her millinery, and read her to
+sleep with French novels, every night.
+
+At this time, as some old readers may recollect, the genteel world
+had been thrown into a considerable state of excitement by two
+events, which, as the papers say, might give employment to the
+gentlemen of the long robe. Ensign Shafton had run away with Lady
+Barbara Fitzurse, the Earl of Bruin's daughter and heiress; and poor
+Vere Vane, a gentleman who, up to forty, had maintained a most
+respectable character and reared a numerous family, suddenly and
+outrageously left his home, for the sake of Mrs. Rougemont, the
+actress, who was sixty-five years of age.
+
+"That was the most beautiful part of dear Lord Nelson's character,"
+Miss Crawley said.  "He went to the deuce for a woman.  There must
+be good in a man who will do that.  I adore all impudent matches.--
+What I like best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as
+Lord Flowerdale did--it makes all the women so angry--I wish some
+great man would run away with you, my dear; I'm sure you're pretty
+enough."
+
+"Two post-boys!--Oh, it would be delightful!" Rebecca owned.
+
+"And what I like next best, is for a poor fellow to run away with a
+rich girl.  I have set my heart on Rawdon running away with some
+one."
+
+"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"
+
+"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I give him.  He
+is crible de dettes--he must repair his fortunes, and succeed in the
+world."
+
+"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked.
+
+"Clever, my love?--not an idea in the world beyond his horses, and
+his regiment, and his hunting, and his play; but he must succeed--
+he's so delightfully wicked.  Don't you know he has hit a man, and
+shot an injured father through the hat only? He's adored in his
+regiment; and all the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa-Tree
+swear by him."
+
+When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend the account of
+the little ball at Queen's Crawley, and the manner in which, for the
+first time, Captain Crawley had distinguished her, she did not,
+strange to relate, give an altogether accurate account of the
+transaction.  The Captain had distinguished her a great number of
+times before.  The Captain had met her in a half-score of walks.
+The Captain had lighted upon her in a half-hundred of corridors and
+passages.  The Captain had hung over her piano twenty times of an
+evening (my Lady was now upstairs, being ill, and nobody heeded her)
+as Miss Sharp sang.  The Captain had written her notes (the best
+that the great blundering dragoon could devise and spell; but
+dulness gets on as well as any other quality with women).  But when
+he put the first of the notes into the leaves of the song she was
+singing, the little governess, rising and looking him steadily in
+the face, took up the triangular missive daintily, and waved it
+about as if it were a cocked hat, and she, advancing to the enemy,
+popped the note into the fire, and made him a very low curtsey, and
+went back to her place, and began to sing away again more merrily
+than ever.
+
+"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her after-dinner
+doze by the stoppage of the music.
+
+"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and Rawdon
+Crawley fumed with rage and mortification.
+
+Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the new governess,
+how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to
+welcome the young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon
+Crawley, her husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They
+became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her
+nephew.  He gave up hunting; he declined entertainments at
+Fuddleston: he would not dine with the mess of the depot at Mudbury:
+his great pleasure was to stroll over to Crawley parsonage--whither
+Miss Crawley came too; and as their mamma was ill, why not the
+children with Miss Sharp? So the children (little dears!) came with
+Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the party would walk back
+together.  Not Miss Crawley--she preferred her carriage--but the
+walk over the Rectory fields, and in at the little park wicket, and
+through the dark plantation, and up the checkered avenue to Queen's
+Crawley, was charming in the moonlight to two such lovers of the
+picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.
+
+"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say, turning her
+twinkling green eyes up towards them.  "I feel myself almost a
+spirit when I gaze upon them."
+
+"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp," the other enthusiast
+replied.  "You don't mind my cigar, do you, Miss Sharp?"  Miss Sharp
+loved the smell of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in the
+world--and she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible,
+and gave a little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle,
+and restored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his moustache,
+and straightway puffed it into a blaze that glowed quite red in the
+dark plantation, and swore--"Jove--aw--Gad--aw--it's the finest
+segaw I ever smoked in the world aw," for his intellect and
+conversation were alike brilliant and becoming to a heavy young
+dragoon.
+
+Old Sir Pitt, who was taking his pipe and beer, and talking to John
+Horrocks about a "ship" that was to be killed, espied the pair so
+occupied from his study-window, and with dreadful oaths swore that
+if it wasn't for Miss Crawley, he'd take Rawdon and bundle un out of
+doors, like a rogue as he was.
+
+"He be a bad'n, sure enough," Mr. Horrocks remarked; "and his man
+Flethers is wuss, and have made such a row in the housekeeper's room
+about the dinners and hale, as no lord would make--but I think Miss
+Sharp's a match for'n, Sir Pitt," he added, after a pause.
+
+And so, in truth, she was--for father and son too.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Quite a Sentimental Chapter
+
+
+We must now take leave of Arcadia, and those amiable people
+practising the rural virtues there, and travel back to London, to
+inquire what has become of Miss Amelia "We don't care a fig for
+her," writes some unknown correspondent with a pretty little
+handwriting and a pink seal to her note.  "She is fade and insipid,"
+and adds some more kind remarks in this strain, which I should never
+have repeated at all, but that they are in truth prodigiously
+complimentary to the young lady whom they concern.
+
+Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society, never heard
+similar remarks by good-natured female friends; who always wonder
+what you CAN see in Miss Smith that is so fascinating; or what COULD
+induce Major Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering
+Miss Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to recommend
+her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth?
+these dear Moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius,
+the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's
+Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack
+of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner,
+and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than
+those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish.  It
+is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and
+the duration of beauty.
+
+But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatures
+who suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be
+continually put in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though,
+very likely, the heroic female character which ladies admire is a
+more glorious and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling,
+artless, tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined to
+worship--yet the latter and inferior sort of women must have this
+consolation--that the men do admire them after all; and that, in
+spite of all our kind friends' warnings and protests, we go on in
+our desperate error and folly, and shall to the end of the chapter.
+Indeed, for my own part, though I have been repeatedly told by
+persons for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is an
+insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing but her petit minois
+chiffonne, and Mrs. Black has not a word to say for herself; yet I
+know that I have had the most delightful conversations with Mrs.
+Black (of course, my dear Madam, they are inviolable): I see all the
+men in a cluster round Mrs. White's chair: all the young fellows
+battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted to think that
+to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.
+
+The young ladies in Amelia's society did this for her very
+satisfactorily.  For instance, there was scarcely any point upon
+which the Misses Osborne, George's sisters, and the Mesdemoiselles
+Dobbin agreed so well as in their estimate of her very trifling
+merits: and their wonder that their brothers could find any charms
+in her.  "We are kind to her," the Misses Osborne said, a pair of
+fine black-browed young ladies who had had the best of governesses,
+masters, and milliners; and they treated her with such extreme
+kindness and condescension, and patronised her so insufferably, that
+the poor little thing was in fact perfectly dumb in their presence,
+and to all outward appearance as stupid as they thought her.  She
+made efforts to like them, as in duty bound, and as sisters of her
+future husband.  She passed "long mornings" with them--the most
+dreary and serious of forenoons.  She drove out solemnly in their
+great family coach with them, and Miss Wirt their governess, that
+raw-boned Vestal.  They took her to the ancient concerts by way of a
+treat, and to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity
+children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she almost
+did not dare be affected by the hymn the children sang.  Their house
+was comfortable; their papa's table rich and handsome; their society
+solemn and genteel; their self-respect prodigious; they had the best
+pew at the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly, and
+all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous. After every one
+of her visits (and oh how glad she was when they were over!) Miss
+Osborne and Miss Maria Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess,
+asked each other with increased wonder, "What could George find in
+that creature?"
+
+How is this? some carping reader exclaims.  How is it that Amelia,
+who had such a number of friends at school, and was so beloved
+there, comes out into the world and is spurned by her discriminating
+sex? My dear sir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton's
+establishment except the old dancing-master; and you would not have
+had the girls fall out about HIM? When George, their handsome
+brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and dined from home half-
+a-dozen times a week, no wonder the neglected sisters felt a little
+vexation.  When young Bullock (of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Co.,
+Bankers, Lombard Street), who had been making up to Miss Maria the
+last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to dance the cotillon, could
+you expect that the former young lady should be pleased? And yet she
+said she was, like an artless forgiving creature.  "I'm so delighted
+you like dear Amelia," she said quite eagerly to Mr. Bullock after
+the dance.  "She's engaged to my brother George; there's not much in
+her, but she's the best-natured and most unaffected young creature:
+at home we're all so fond of her." Dear girl! who can calculate the
+depth of affection expressed in that enthusiastic SO?
+
+Miss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so earnestly and
+frequently impressed upon George Osborne's mind the enormity of the
+sacrifice he was making, and his romantic generosity in throwing
+himself away upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really
+thought he was one of the most deserving characters in the British
+army, and gave himself up to be loved with a good deal of easy
+resignation.
+
+Somehow, although he left home every morning, as was stated, and
+dined abroad six days in the week, when his sisters believed the
+infatuated youth to be at Miss Sedley's apron-strings: he was NOT
+always with Amelia, whilst the world supposed him at her feet.
+Certain it is that on more occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin
+called to look for his friend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive
+to the Captain, and anxious to hear his military stories, and to
+know about the health of his dear Mamma), would laughingly point to
+the opposite side of the square, and say, "Oh, you must go to the
+Sedleys' to ask for George; WE never see him from morning till
+night." At which kind of speech the Captain would laugh in rather an
+absurd constrained manner, and turn off the conversation, like a
+consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such
+as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the
+weather--that blessing to society.
+
+"What an innocent it is, that pet of yours," Miss Maria would then
+say to Miss Jane, upon the Captain's departure.  "Did you see how he
+blushed at the mention of poor George on duty?"
+
+"It's a pity Frederick Bullock hadn't some of his modesty, Maria,"
+replies the elder sister, with a toss of he head.
+
+"Modesty!  Awkwardness you mean, Jane.  I don't want Frederick to
+trample a hole in my muslin frock, as Captain Dobbin did in yours at
+Mrs. Perkins'."
+
+"In YOUR frock, he, he!  How could he? Wasn't he dancing with
+Amelia?"
+
+The fact is, when Captain Dobbin blushed so, and looked so awkward,
+he remembered a circumstance of which he did not think it was
+necessary to inform the young ladies, viz., that he had been calling
+at Mr. Sedley's house already, on the pretence of seeing George, of
+course, and George wasn't there, only poor little Amelia, with
+rather a sad wistful face, seated near the drawing-room window, who,
+after some very trifling stupid talk, ventured to ask, was there any
+truth in the report that the regiment was soon to be ordered abroad;
+and had Captain Dobbin seen Mr. Osborne that day?
+
+The regiment was not ordered abroad as yet; and Captain Dobbin had
+not seen George.  "He was with his sister, most likely," the Captain
+said.  "Should he go and fetch the truant?"  So she gave him her
+hand kindly and gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she
+waited and waited, but George never came.
+
+Poor little tender heart! and so it goes on hoping and beating, and
+longing and trusting.  You see it is not much of a life to describe.
+There is not much of what you call incident in it.  Only one feeling
+all day--when will he come? only one thought to sleep and wake upon.
+I believe George was playing billiards with Captain Cannon in
+Swallow Street at the time when Amelia was asking Captain Dobbin
+about him; for George was a jolly sociable fellow, and excellent in
+all games of skill.
+
+Once, after three days of absence, Miss Amelia put on her bonnet,
+and actually invaded the Osborne house. "What! leave our brother to
+come to us?" said the young ladies.  "Have you had a quarrel,
+Amelia? Do tell us!" No, indeed, there had been no quarrel.  "Who
+could quarrel with him?" says she, with her eyes filled with tears.
+She only came over to--to see her dear friends; they had not met for
+so long.  And this day she was so perfectly stupid and awkward, that
+the Misses Osborne and their governess, who stared after her as she
+went sadly away, wondered more than ever what George could see in
+poor little Amelia.
+
+Of course they did.  How was she to bare that timid little heart for
+the inspection of those young ladies with their bold black eyes? It
+was best that it should shrink and hide itself.  I know the Misses
+Osborne were excellent critics of a Cashmere shawl, or a pink satin
+slip; and when Miss Turner had hers dyed purple, and made into a
+spencer; and when Miss Pickford had her ermine tippet twisted into a
+muff and trimmings, I warrant you the changes did not escape the two
+intelligent young women before mentioned.  But there are things,
+look you, of a finer texture than fur or satin, and all Solomon's
+glories, and all the wardrobe of the Queen of Sheba--things whereof
+the beauty escapes the eyes of many connoisseurs.  And there are
+sweet modest little souls on which you light, fragrant and blooming
+tenderly in quiet shady places; and there are garden-ornaments, as
+big as brass warming-pans, that are fit to stare the sun itself out
+of countenance.  Miss Sedley was not of the sunflower sort; and I
+say it is out of the rules of all proportion to draw a violet of the
+size of a double dahlia.
+
+No, indeed; the life of a good young girl who is in the paternal
+nest as yet, can't have many of those thrilling incidents to which
+the heroine of romance commonly lays claim.  Snares or shot may take
+off the old birds foraging without--hawks may be abroad, from which
+they escape or by whom they suffer; but the young ones in the nest
+have a pretty comfortable unromantic sort of existence in the down
+and the straw, till it comes to their turn, too, to get on the wing.
+While Becky Sharp was on her own wing in the country, hopping on all
+sorts of twigs, and amid a multiplicity of traps, and pecking up her
+food quite harmless and successful, Amelia lay snug in her home of
+Russell Square; if she went into the world, it was under the
+guidance of the elders; nor did it seem that any evil could befall
+her or that opulent cheery comfortable home in which she was
+affectionately sheltered. Mamma had her morning duties, and her
+daily drive, and the delightful round of visits and shopping which
+forms the amusement, or the profession as you may call it, of the
+rich London lady.  Papa conducted his mysterious operations in the
+City--a stirring place in those days, when war was raging all over
+Europe, and empires were being staked; when the "Courier" newspaper
+had tens of thousands of subscribers; when one day brought you a
+battle of Vittoria, another a burning of Moscow, or a newsman's horn
+blowing down Russell Square about dinner-time, announced such a fact
+as--"Battle of Leipsic--six hundred thousand men engaged--total
+defeat of the French--two hundred thousand killed." Old Sedley once
+or twice came home with a very grave face; and no wonder, when such
+news as this was agitating all the hearts and all the Stocks of
+Europe.
+
+Meanwhile matters went on in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, just as if
+matters in Europe were not in the least disorganised.  The retreat
+from Leipsic made no difference in the number of meals Mr. Sambo
+took in the servants' hall; the allies poured into France, and the
+dinner-bell rang at five o'clock just as usual.  I don't think poor
+Amelia cared anything about Brienne and Montmirail, or was fairly
+interested in the war until the abdication of the Emperor; when she
+clapped her hands and said prayers--oh, how grateful! and flung
+herself into George Osborne's arms with all her soul, to the
+astonishment of everybody who witnessed that ebullition of
+sentiment. The fact is, peace was declared, Europe was going to be
+at rest; the Corsican was overthrown, and Lieutenant Osborne's
+regiment would not be ordered on service.  That was the way in which
+Miss Amelia reasoned.  The fate of Europe was Lieutenant George
+Osborne to her.  His dangers being over, she sang Te Deum.  He was
+her Europe: her emperor: her allied monarchs and august prince
+regent.  He was her sun and moon; and I believe she thought the
+grand illumination and ball at the Mansion House, given to the
+sovereigns, were especially in honour of George Osborne.
+
+We have talked of shift, self, and poverty, as those dismal
+instructors under whom poor Miss Becky Sharp got her education.
+Now, love was Miss Amelia Sedley's last tutoress, and it was amazing
+what progress our young lady made under that popular teacher.  In
+the course of fifteen or eighteen months' daily and constant
+attention to this eminent finishing governess, what a deal of
+secrets Amelia learned, which Miss Wirt and the black-eyed young
+ladies over the way, which old Miss Pinkerton of Chiswick herself,
+had no cognizance of!  As, indeed, how should any of those prim and
+reputable virgins?  With Misses P. and W. the tender passion is out
+of the question: I would not dare to breathe such an idea regarding
+them.  Miss Maria Osborne, it is true, was "attached" to Mr.
+Frederick Augustus Bullock, of the firm of Hulker, Bullock &
+Bullock; but hers was a most respectable attachment, and she would
+have taken Bullock Senior just the same, her mind being fixed--as
+that of a well-bred young woman should be--upon a house in Park
+Lane, a country house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and two
+prodigious tall horses and footmen, and a fourth of the annual
+profits of the eminent firm of Hulker & Bullock, all of which
+advantages were represented in the person of Frederick Augustus.
+Had orange blossoms been invented then (those touching emblems of
+female purity imported by us from France, where people's daughters
+are universally sold in marriage), Miss Maria, I say, would have
+assumed the spotless wreath, and stepped into the travelling
+carriage by the side of gouty, old, bald-headed, bottle-nosed
+Bullock Senior; and devoted her beautiful existence to his happiness
+with perfect modesty--only the old gentleman was married already; so
+she bestowed her young affections on the junior partner. Sweet,
+blooming, orange flowers!  The other day I saw Miss Trotter (that
+was), arrayed in them, trip into the travelling carriage at St.
+George's, Hanover Square, and Lord Methuselah hobbled in after.
+With what an engaging modesty she pulled down the blinds of the
+chariot--the dear innocent!  There were half the carriages of Vanity
+Fair at the wedding.
+
+This was not the sort of love that finished Amelia's education; and
+in the course of a year turned a good young girl into a good young
+woman--to be a good wife presently, when the happy time should come.
+This young person (perhaps it was very imprudent in her parents to
+encourage her, and abet her in such idolatry and silly romantic
+ideas) loved, with all her heart, the young officer in His Majesty's
+service with whom we have made a brief acquaintance.  She thought
+about him the very first moment on waking; and his was the very last
+name mentioned in her prayers.  She never had seen a man so beautiful
+or so clever: such a figure on horseback: such a dancer: such a hero
+in general.  Talk of the Prince's bow! what was it to George's? She
+had seen Mr. Brummell, whom everybody praised so.  Compare such a
+person as that to her George! Not amongst all the beaux at the Opera
+(and there were beaux in those days with actual opera hats) was
+there any one to equal him.  He was only good enough to be a fairy
+prince; and oh, what magnanimity to stoop to such a humble
+Cinderella!  Miss Pinkerton would have tried to check this blind
+devotion very likely, had she been Amelia's confidante; but not with
+much success, depend upon it.  It is in the nature and instinct of
+some women.  Some are made to scheme, and some to love; and I wish
+any respected bachelor that reads this may take the sort that best
+likes him.
+
+While under this overpowering impression, Miss Amelia neglected her
+twelve dear friends at Chiswick most cruelly, as such selfish people
+commonly will do.  She had but this subject, of course, to think
+about; and Miss Saltire was too cold for a confidante, and she
+couldn't bring her mind to tell Miss Swartz, the woolly-haired young
+heiress from St. Kitt's.  She had little Laura Martin home for the
+holidays; and my belief is, she made a confidante of her, and
+promised that Laura should come and live with her when she was
+married, and gave Laura a great deal of information regarding the
+passion of love, which must have been singularly useful and novel to
+that little person.  Alas, alas!  I fear poor Emmy had not a well-
+regulated mind.
+
+What were her parents doing, not to keep this little heart from
+beating so fast?  Old Sedley did not seem much to notice matters.
+He was graver of late, and his City affairs absorbed him.  Mrs.
+Sedley was of so easy and uninquisitive a nature that she wasn't
+even jealous.  Mr. Jos was away, being besieged by an Irish widow at
+Cheltenham.  Amelia had the house to herself--ah! too much to
+herself sometimes--not that she ever doubted; for, to be sure,
+George must be at the Horse Guards; and he can't always get leave
+from Chatham; and he must see his friends and sisters, and mingle in
+society when in town (he, such an ornament to every society!); and
+when he is with the regiment, he is too tired to write long letters.
+I know where she kept that packet she had--and can steal in and out
+of her chamber like Iachimo--like Iachimo?  No--that is a bad part.
+I will only act Moonshine, and peep harmless into the bed where
+faith and beauty and innocence lie dreaming.
+
+But if Osborne's were short and soldierlike letters, it must be
+confessed, that were Miss Sedley's letters to Mr. Osborne to be
+published, we should have to extend this novel to such a
+multiplicity of volumes as not the most sentimental reader could
+support; that she not only filled sheets of large paper, but crossed
+them with the most astonishing perverseness; that she wrote whole
+pages out of poetry-books without the least pity; that she
+underlined words and passages with quite a frantic emphasis; and, in
+fine, gave the usual tokens of her condition.  She wasn't a heroine.
+Her letters were full of repetition.  She wrote rather doubtful
+grammar sometimes, and in her verses took all sorts of liberties
+with the metre.  But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch
+the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved
+until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter,
+may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish
+miserably!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Sentimental and Otherwise
+
+
+I fear the gentleman to whom Miss Amelia's letters were addressed
+was rather an obdurate critic.  Such a number of notes followed
+Lieutenant Osborne about the country, that he became almost ashamed
+of the jokes of his mess-room companions regarding them, and ordered
+his servant never to deliver them except at his private apartment.
+He was seen lighting his cigar with one, to the horror of Captain
+Dobbin, who, it is my belief, would have given a bank-note for the
+document.
+
+For some time George strove to keep the liaison a secret.  There was
+a woman in the case, that he admitted. "And not the first either,"
+said Ensign Spooney to Ensign Stubble.  "That Osborne's a devil of a
+fellow.  There was a judge's daughter at Demerara went almost mad
+about him; then there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss Pye, at
+St. Vincent's, you know; and since he's been home, they say he's a
+regular Don Giovanni, by Jove."
+
+Stubble and Spooney thought that to be a "regular Don Giovanni, by
+Jove" was one of the finest qualities a man could possess, and
+Osborne's reputation was prodigious amongst the young men of the
+regiment.  He was famous in field-sports, famous at a song, famous
+on parade; free with his money, which was bountifully supplied by
+his father.  His coats were better made than any man's in the
+regiment, and he had more of them.  He was adored by the men.  He
+could drink more than any officer of the whole mess, including old
+Heavytop, the colonel.  He could spar better than Knuckles, the
+private (who would have been a corporal but for his drunkenness, and
+who had been in the prize-ring); and was the best batter and bowler,
+out and out, of the regimental club. He rode his own horse, Greased
+Lightning, and won the Garrison cup at Quebec races.  There were
+other people besides Amelia who worshipped him.  Stubble and Spooney
+thought him a sort of Apollo; Dobbin took him to be an Admirable
+Crichton; and Mrs. Major O'Dowd acknowledged he was an elegant young
+fellow, and put her in mind of Fitzjurld Fogarty, Lord
+Castlefogarty's second son.
+
+Well, Stubble and Spooney and the rest indulged in most romantic
+conjectures regarding this female correspondent of Osborne's--
+opining that it was a Duchess in London who was in love with him--or
+that it was a General's daughter, who was engaged to somebody else,
+and madly attached to him--or that it was a Member of Parliament's
+lady, who proposed four horses and an elopement--or that it was some
+other victim of a passion delightfully exciting, romantic, and
+disgraceful to all parties, on none of which conjectures would
+Osborne throw the least light, leaving his young admirers and
+friends to invent and arrange their whole history.
+
+And the real state of the case would never have been known at all in
+the regiment but for Captain Dobbin's indiscretion.  The Captain was
+eating his breakfast one day in the mess-room, while Cackle, the
+assistant-surgeon, and the two above-named worthies were speculating
+upon Osborne's intrigue--Stubble holding out that the lady was a
+Duchess about Queen Charlotte's court, and Cackle vowing she was an
+opera-singer of the worst reputation. At this idea Dobbin became so
+moved, that though his mouth was full of eggs and bread-and-butter
+at the time, and though he ought not to have spoken at all, yet he
+couldn't help blurting out, "Cackle, you're a stupid fool. You're
+always talking nonsense and scandal.  Osborne is not going to run
+off with a Duchess or ruin a milliner. Miss Sedley is one of the
+most charming young women that ever lived.  He's been engaged to her
+ever so long; and the man who calls her names had better not do so
+in my hearing." With which, turning exceedingly red, Dobbin ceased
+speaking, and almost choked himself with a cup of tea.  The story
+was over the regiment in half-an-hour; and that very evening Mrs.
+Major O'Dowd wrote off to her sister Glorvina at O'Dowdstown not to
+hurry from Dublin--young Osborne being prematurely engaged already.
+
+She complimented the Lieutenant in an appropriate speech over a
+glass of whisky-toddy that evening, and he went home perfectly
+furious to quarrel with Dobbin (who had declined Mrs. Major O'Dowd's
+party, and sat in his own room playing the flute, and, I believe,
+writing poetry in a very melancholy manner)--to quarrel with Dobbin
+for betraying his secret.
+
+"Who the deuce asked you to talk about my affairs?" Osborne shouted
+indignantly.  "Why the devil is all the regiment to know that I am
+going to be married? Why is that tattling old harridan, Peggy
+O'Dowd, to make free with my name at her d--d supper-table, and
+advertise my engagement over the three kingdoms? After all, what
+right have you to say I am engaged, or to meddle in my business at
+all, Dobbin?"
+
+"It seems to me," Captain Dobbin began.
+
+"Seems be hanged, Dobbin," his junior interrupted him.  "I am under
+obligations to you, I know it, a d--d deal too well too; but I won't
+be always sermonised by you because you're five years my senior.
+I'm hanged if I'll stand your airs of superiority and infernal pity
+and patronage.  Pity and patronage! I should like to know in what
+I'm your inferior?"
+
+"Are you engaged?" Captain Dobbin interposed.
+
+"What the devil's that to you or any one here if I am?"
+
+"Are you ashamed of it?" Dobbin resumed.
+
+"What right have you to ask me that question, sir? I should like to
+know," George said.
+
+"Good God, you don't mean to say you want to break off?" asked
+Dobbin, starting up.
+
+"In other words, you ask me if I'm a man of honour," said Osborne,
+fiercely; "is that what you mean? You've adopted such a tone
+regarding me lately that I'm ------ if I'll bear it any more."
+
+"What have I done? I've told you you were neglecting a sweet girl,
+George.  I've told you that when you go to town you ought to go to
+her, and not to the gambling-houses about St. James's."
+
+"You want your money back, I suppose," said George, with a sneer.
+
+"Of course I do--I always did, didn't I?" says Dobbin. "You speak
+like a generous fellow."
+
+"No, hang it, William, I beg your pardon"--here George interposed in
+a fit of remorse; "you have been my friend in a hundred ways, Heaven
+knows.  You've got me out of a score of scrapes.  When Crawley of
+the Guards won that sum of money of me I should have been done but
+for you: I know I should.  But you shouldn't deal so hardly with me;
+you shouldn't be always catechising me. I am very fond of Amelia; I
+adore her, and that sort of thing.  Don't look angry.  She's
+faultless; I know she is. But you see there's no fun in winning a
+thing unless you play for it.  Hang it: the regiment's just back
+from the West Indies, I must have a little fling, and then when I'm
+married I'll reform; I will upon my honour, now.  And--I say--Dob--
+don't be angry with me, and I'll give you a hundred next month, when
+I know my father will stand something handsome; and I'll ask
+Heavytop for leave, and I'll go to town, and see Amelia to-morrow--
+there now, will that satisfy you?"
+
+"It is impossible to be long angry with you, George," said the good-
+natured Captain; "and as for the money, old boy, you know if I
+wanted it you'd share your last shilling with me."
+
+"That I would, by Jove, Dobbin," George said, with the greatest
+generosity, though by the way he never had any money to spare.
+
+"Only I wish you had sown those wild oats of yours, George.  If you
+could have seen poor little Miss Emmy's face when she asked me about
+you the other day, you would have pitched those billiard-balls to
+the deuce.  Go and comfort her, you rascal.  Go and write her a long
+letter.  Do something to make her happy; a very little will."
+
+"I believe she's d--d fond of me," the Lieutenant said, with a self-
+satisfied air; and went off to finish the evening with some jolly
+fellows in the mess-room.
+
+Amelia meanwhile, in Russell Square, was looking at the moon, which
+was shining upon that peaceful spot, as well as upon the square of
+the Chatham barracks, where Lieutenant Osborne was quartered, and
+thinking to herself how her hero was employed.  Perhaps he is
+visiting the sentries, thought she; perhaps he is bivouacking;
+perhaps he is attending the couch of a wounded comrade, or studying
+the art of war up in his own desolate chamber. And her kind thoughts
+sped away as if they were angels and had wings, and flying down the
+river to Chatham and Rochester, strove to peep into the barracks
+where George was. . . . All things considered, I think it was as
+well the gates were shut, and the sentry allowed no one to pass; so
+that the poor little white-robed angel could not hear the songs
+those young fellows were roaring over the whisky-punch.
+
+The day after the little conversation at Chatham barracks, young
+Osborne, to show that he would be as good as his word, prepared to
+go to town, thereby incurring Captain Dobbin's applause.  "I should
+have liked to make her a little present," Osborne said to his friend
+in confidence, "only I am quite out of cash until my father tips
+up." But Dobbin would not allow this good nature and generosity to
+be balked, and so accommodated Mr. Osborne with a few pound notes,
+which the latter took after a little faint scruple.
+
+And I dare say he would have bought something very handsome for
+Amelia; only, getting off the coach in Fleet Street, he was
+attracted by a handsome shirt-pin in a jeweller's window, which he
+could not resist; and having paid for that, had very little money to
+spare for indulging in any further exercise of kindness.  Never
+mind: you may be sure it was not his presents Amelia wanted.  When
+he came to Russell Square, her face lighted up as if he had been
+sunshine.  The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings,
+sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were
+forgotten, under one moment's influence of that familiar,
+irresistible smile.  He beamed on her from the drawing-room door--
+magnificent, with ambrosial whiskers, like a god.  Sambo, whose face
+as he announced Captain Osbin (having conferred a brevet rank on
+that young officer) blazed with a sympathetic grin, saw the little
+girl start, and flush, and jump up from her watching-place in the
+window; and Sambo retreated: and as soon as the door was shut, she
+went fluttering to Lieutenant George Osborne's heart as if it was
+the only natural home for her to nestle in.  Oh, thou poor panting
+little soul!  The very finest tree in the whole forest, with the
+straightest stem, and the strongest arms, and the thickest foliage,
+wherein you choose to build and coo, may be marked, for what you
+know, and may be down with a crash ere long.  What an old, old
+simile that is, between man and timber!
+
+In the meanwhile, George kissed her very kindly on her forehead and
+glistening eyes, and was very gracious and good; and she thought his
+diamond shirt-pin (which she had not known him to wear before) the
+prettiest ornament ever seen.
+
+The observant reader, who has marked our young Lieutenant's previous
+behaviour, and has preserved our report of the brief conversation
+which he has just had with Captain Dobbin, has possibly come to
+certain conclusions regarding the character of Mr. Osborne.  Some
+cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-
+transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be
+so treated.  Perhaps the love is occasionally on the man's side;
+perhaps on the lady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this
+mistaken insensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere
+vacuity for sweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan.
+Perhaps some beloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the
+splendour and glory of her imagination; admired his dulness as manly
+simplicity; worshipped his selfishness as manly superiority; treated
+his stupidity as majestic gravity, and used him as the brilliant
+fairy Titania did a certain weaver at Athens.  I think I have seen
+such comedies of errors going on in the world.  But this is certain,
+that Amelia believed her lover to be one of the most gallant and
+brilliant men in the empire: and it is possible Lieutenant Osborne
+thought so too.
+
+He was a little wild: how many young men are; and don't girls like a
+rake better than a milksop?  He hadn't sown his wild oats as yet,
+but he would soon: and quit the army now that peace was proclaimed;
+the Corsican monster locked up at Elba; promotion by consequence
+over; and no chance left for the display of his undoubted military
+talents and valour: and his allowance, with Amelia's settlement,
+would enable them to take a snug place in the country somewhere, in
+a good sporting neighbourhood; and he would hunt a little, and farm
+a little; and they would be very happy.  As for remaining in the
+army as a married man, that was impossible. Fancy Mrs. George
+Osborne in lodgings in a county town; or, worse still, in the East
+or West Indies, with a society of officers, and patronized by Mrs.
+Major O'Dowd! Amelia died with laughing at Osborne's stories about
+Mrs. Major O'Dowd.  He loved her much too fondly to subject her to
+that horrid woman and her vulgarities, and the rough treatment of a
+soldier's wife.  He didn't care for himself--not he; but his dear
+little girl should take the place in society to which, as his wife,
+she was entitled: and to these proposals you may be sure she
+acceded, as she would to any other from the same author.
+
+Holding this kind of conversation, and building numberless castles
+in the air (which Amelia adorned with all sorts of flower-gardens,
+rustic walks, country churches, Sunday schools, and the like; while
+George had his mind's eye directed to the stables, the kennel, and
+the cellar), this young pair passed away a couple of hours very
+pleasantly; and as the Lieutenant had only that single day in town,
+and a great deal of most important business to transact, it was
+proposed that Miss Emmy should dine with her future sisters-in-law.
+This invitation was accepted joyfully.  He conducted her to his
+sisters; where he left her talking and prattling in a way that
+astonished those ladies, who thought that George might make
+something of her; and he then went off to transact his business.
+
+In a word, he went out and ate ices at a pastry-cook's shop in
+Charing Cross; tried a new coat in Pall Mall; dropped in at the Old
+Slaughters', and called for Captain Cannon; played eleven games at
+billiards with the Captain, of which he won eight, and returned to
+Russell Square half an hour late for dinner, but in very good
+humour.
+
+It was not so with old Mr. Osborne.  When that gentleman came from
+the City, and was welcomed in the drawing-room by his daughters and
+the elegant Miss Wirt, they saw at once by his face--which was
+puffy, solemn, and yellow at the best of times--and by the scowl and
+twitching of his black eyebrows, that the heart within his large
+white waistcoat was disturbed and uneasy.  When Amelia stepped
+forward to salute him, which she always did with great trembling and
+timidity, he gave a surly grunt of recognition, and dropped the
+little hand out of his great hirsute paw without any attempt to hold
+it there.  He looked round gloomily at his eldest daughter; who,
+comprehending the meaning of his look, which asked unmistakably,
+"Why the devil is she here?" said at once:
+
+"George is in town, Papa; and has gone to the Horse Guards, and will
+be back to dinner."
+
+"O he is, is he? I won't have the dinner kept waiting for him,
+Jane"; with which this worthy man lapsed into his particular chair,
+and then the utter silence in his genteel, well-furnished drawing-
+room was only interrupted by the alarmed ticking of the great French
+clock.
+
+When that chronometer, which was surmounted by a cheerful brass
+group of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five in a heavy
+cathedral tone, Mr. Osborne pulled the bell at his right hand-
+violently, and the butler rushed up.
+
+"Dinner!" roared Mr. Osborne.
+
+"Mr. George isn't come in, sir," interposed the man.
+
+"Damn Mr. George, sir.  Am I master of the house? DINNER!" Mr.
+Osborne scowled.  Amelia trembled.  A telegraphic communication of
+eyes passed between the other three ladies.  The obedient bell in
+the lower regions began ringing the announcement of the meal.  The
+tolling over, the head of the family thrust his hands into the great
+tail-pockets of his great blue coat with brass buttons, and without
+waiting for a further announcement strode downstairs alone, scowling
+over his shoulder at the four females.
+
+"What's the matter now, my dear?" asked one of the other, as they
+rose and tripped gingerly behind the sire.    "I suppose the funds
+are falling," whispered Miss Wirt; and so, trembling and in silence,
+this hushed female company followed their dark leader.  They took
+their places in silence.  He growled out a blessing, which sounded
+as gruffly as a curse.  The great silver dish-covers were removed.
+Amelia trembled in her place, for she was next to the awful Osborne,
+and alone on her side of the table--the gap being occasioned by the
+absence of George.
+
+"Soup?" says Mr. Osborne, clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on
+her, in a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did
+not speak for a while.
+
+"Take Miss Sedley's plate away," at last he said.  "She can't eat
+the soup--no more can I.  It's beastly.  Take away the soup, Hicks,
+and to-morrow turn the cook out of the house, Jane."
+
+Having concluded his observations upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a
+few curt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satirical
+tendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of
+the place. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses
+of wine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the
+door told of George's arrival when everybody began to rally.
+
+"He could not come before.  General Daguilet had kept him waiting at
+the Horse Guards.  Never mind soup or fish.  Give him anything--he
+didn't care what.  Capital mutton--capital everything." His good
+humour contrasted with his father's severity; and he rattled on
+unceasingly during dinner, to the delight of all--of one especially,
+who need not be mentioned.
+
+As soon as the young ladies had discussed the orange and the glass
+of wine which formed the ordinary conclusion of the dismal banquets
+at Mr. Osborne's house, the signal to make sail for the drawing-room
+was given, and they all arose and departed.  Amelia hoped George
+would soon join them there.  She began playing some of his favourite
+waltzes (then newly imported) at the great carved-legged, leather-
+cased grand piano in the drawing-room overhead.  This little
+artifice did not bring him.  He was deaf to the waltzes; they grew
+fainter and fainter; the discomfited performer left the huge
+instrument presently; and though her three friends performed some of
+the loudest and most brilliant new pieces of their repertoire, she
+did not hear a single note, but sate thinking, and boding evil.  Old
+Osborne's scowl, terrific always, had never before looked so deadly
+to her.  His eyes followed her out of the room, as if she had been
+guilty of something. When they brought her coffee, she started as
+though it were a cup of poison which Mr. Hicks, the butler, wished
+to propose to her.  What mystery was there lurking? Oh, those women!
+They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of
+their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed children.
+
+The gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George
+Osborne with anxiety.  With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly
+bilious, how was he to extract that money from the governor, of
+which George was consumedly in want? He began praising his father's
+wine.  That was generally a successful means of cajoling the old
+gentleman.
+
+"We never got such Madeira in the West Indies, sir, as yours.
+Colonel Heavytop took off three bottles of that you sent me down,
+under his belt the other day."
+
+"Did he?" said the old gentleman.  "It stands me in eight shillings
+a bottle."
+
+"Will you take six guineas a dozen for it, sir?" said George, with a
+laugh.  "There's one of the greatest men in the kingdom wants some."
+
+"Does he?" growled the senior.  "Wish he may get it."
+
+"When General Daguilet was at Chatham, sir, Heavytop gave him a
+breakfast, and asked me for some of the wine.  The General liked it
+just as well--wanted a pipe for the Commander-in-Chief.  He's his
+Royal Highness's right-hand man."
+
+"It is devilish fine wine," said the Eyebrows, and they looked more
+good-humoured; and George was going to take advantage of this
+complacency, and bring the supply question on the mahogany, when the
+father, relapsing into solemnity, though rather cordial in manner,
+bade him ring the bell for claret.  "And we'll see if that's as good
+as the Madeira, George, to which his Royal Highness is welcome, I'm
+sure.  And as we are drinking it, I'll talk to you about a matter of
+importance."
+
+Amelia heard the claret bell ringing as she sat nervously upstairs.
+She thought, somehow, it was a mysterious and presentimental bell.
+Of the presentiments which some people are always having, some
+surely must come right.
+
+"What I want to know, George," the old gentleman said, after slowly
+smacking his first bumper--"what I want to know is, how you and--ah-
+-that little thing upstairs, are carrying on?"
+
+"I think, sir, it is not hard to see," George said, with a self-
+satisfied grin.  "Pretty clear, sir.--What capital wine!"
+
+"What d'you mean, pretty clear, sir?"
+
+"Why, hang it, sir, don't push me too hard.  I'm a modest man.  I--
+ah--I don't set up to be a lady-killer; but I do own that she's as
+devilish fond of me as she can be.  Anybody can see that with half
+an eye."
+
+"And you yourself?"
+
+"Why, sir, didn't you order me to marry her, and ain't I a good boy?
+Haven't our Papas settled it ever so long?"
+
+"A pretty boy, indeed.  Haven't I heard of your doings, sir, with
+Lord Tarquin, Captain Crawley of the Guards, the Honourable Mr.
+Deuceace and that set.  Have a care sir, have a care."
+
+The old gentleman pronounced these aristocratic names with the
+greatest gusto.  Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before
+him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.  He came
+home and looked out his history in the Peerage: he introduced his
+name into his daily conversation; he bragged about his Lordship to
+his daughters.  He fell down prostrate and basked in him as a
+Neapolitan beggar does in the sun.  George was alarmed when he heard
+the names.  He feared his father might have been informed of certain
+transactions at play.  But the old moralist eased him by saying
+serenely:
+
+"Well, well, young men will be young men.  And the comfort to me is,
+George, that living in the best society in England, as I hope you
+do; as I think you do; as my means will allow you to do--"
+
+"Thank you, sir," says George, making his point at once.  "One can't
+live with these great folks for nothing; and my purse, sir, look at
+it"; and he held up a little token which had been netted by Amelia,
+and contained the very last of Dobbin's pound notes.
+
+"You shan't want, sir.  The British merchant's son shan't want, sir.
+My guineas are as good as theirs, George, my boy; and I don't grudge
+'em.  Call on Mr. Chopper as you go through the City to-morrow;
+he'll have something for you.  I don't grudge money when I know
+you're in good society, because I know that good society can never
+go wrong.  There's no pride in me.  I was a humbly born man--but you
+have had advantages. Make a good use of 'em.  Mix with the young
+nobility. There's many of 'em who can't spend a dollar to your
+guinea, my boy.  And as for the pink bonnets (here from under the
+heavy eyebrows there came a knowing and not very pleasing leer)--why
+boys will be boys.  Only there's one thing I order you to avoid,
+which, if you do not, I'll cut you off with a shilling, by Jove; and
+that's gambling."
+
+"Oh, of course, sir," said George.
+
+"But to return to the other business about Amelia: why shouldn't you
+marry higher than a stockbroker's daughter, George--that's what I
+want to know?"
+
+"It's a family business, sir,".says George, cracking filberts.  "You
+and Mr. Sedley made the match a hundred years ago."
+
+"I don't deny it; but people's positions alter, sir.  I don't deny
+that Sedley made my fortune, or rather put me in the way of
+acquiring, by my own talents and genius, that proud position, which,
+I may say, I occupy in the tallow trade and the City of London.
+I've shown my gratitude to Sedley; and he's tried it of late, sir,
+as my cheque-book can show.  George!  I tell you in confidence I
+don't like the looks of Mr. Sedley's affairs.  My chief clerk, Mr.
+Chopper, does not like the looks of 'em, and he's an old file, and
+knows 'Change as well as any man in London.  Hulker & Bullock are
+looking shy at him.  He's been dabbling on his own account I fear.
+They say the Jeune Amelie was his, which was taken by the Yankee
+privateer Molasses.  And that's flat--unless I see Amelia's ten
+thousand down you don't marry her.  I'll have no lame duck's
+daughter in my family.  Pass the wine, sir--or ring for coffee."
+
+With which Mr. Osborne spread out the evening paper, and George knew
+from this signal that the colloquy was ended, and that his papa was
+about to take a nap.
+
+He hurried upstairs to Amelia in the highest spirits. What was it
+that made him more attentive to her on that night than he had been
+for a long time--more eager to amuse her, more tender, more
+brilliant in talk?  Was it that his generous heart warmed to her at
+the prospect of misfortune; or that the idea of losing the dear
+little prize made him value it more?
+
+She lived upon the recollections of that happy evening for many days
+afterwards, remembering his words; his looks; the song he sang; his
+attitude, as he leant over her or looked at her from a distance.  As
+it seemed to her, no night ever passed so quickly at Mr. Osborne's
+house before; and for once this young person was almost provoked to
+be angry by the premature arrival of Mr. Sambo with her shawl.
+
+George came and took a tender leave of her the next morning; and
+then hurried off to the City, where he visited Mr. Chopper, his
+father's head man, and received from that gentleman a document which
+he exchanged at Hulker & Bullock's for a whole pocketful of money.
+As George entered the house, old John Sedley was passing out of the
+banker's parlour, looking very dismal.  But his godson was much too
+elated to mark the worthy stockbroker's depression, or the dreary
+eyes which the kind old gentleman cast upon him.  Young Bullock did
+not come grinning out of the parlour with him as had been his wont
+in former years.
+
+And as the swinging doors of Hulker, Bullock & Co. closed upon Mr.
+Sedley, Mr. Quill, the cashier (whose benevolent occupation it is to
+hand out crisp bank-notes from a drawer and dispense sovereigns out
+of a copper shovel), winked at Mr. Driver, the clerk at the desk on
+his right.  Mr. Driver winked again.
+
+"No go," Mr. D. whispered.
+
+"Not at no price," Mr. Q. said.  "Mr. George Osborne,  sir, how will
+you take it?" George crammed eagerly a quantity of notes into his
+pockets, and paid Dobbin fifty pounds that very evening at mess.
+
+That very evening Amelia wrote him the tenderest of long letters.
+Her heart was overflowing with tenderness, but it still foreboded
+evil.  What was the cause of Mr. Osborne's dark looks? she asked.
+Had any difference arisen between him and her papa? Her poor papa
+returned so melancholy from the City, that all were alarmed about
+him at home--in fine, there were four pages of loves and fears and
+hopes and forebodings.
+
+"Poor little Emmy--dear little Emmy.  How fond she is of me," George
+said, as he perused the missive--"and Gad, what a headache that
+mixed punch has given me!" Poor little Emmy, indeed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Miss Crawley at Home
+
+
+About this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug and well-
+appointed house in Park Lane, a travelling chariot with a lozenge on
+the panels, a discontented female in a green veil and crimped curls
+on the rumble, and a large and confidential man on the box.  It was
+the equipage of our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants.  The
+carriage windows were shut; the fat spaniel, whose head and tongue
+ordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the lap of the
+discontented female.  When the vehicle stopped, a large round bundle
+of shawls was taken out of the carriage by the aid of various
+domestics and a young lady who accompanied the heap of cloaks.  That
+bundle contained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed upstairs forthwith,
+and put into a bed and chamber warmed properly as for the reception
+of an invalid.  Messengers went off for her physician and medical
+man.  They came, consulted, prescribed, vanished.  The young
+companion of Miss Crawley, at the conclusion of their interview,
+came in to receive their instructions, and administered those
+antiphlogistic medicines which the eminent men ordered.
+
+Captain Crawley of the Life Guards rode up from Knightsbridge
+Barracks the next day; his black charger pawed the straw before his
+invalid aunt's door.  He was most affectionate in his inquiries
+regarding that amiable relative.  There seemed to be much source of
+apprehension. He found Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented female)
+unusually sulky and despondent; he found Miss Briggs, her dame de
+compagnie, in tears alone in the drawing-room.  She had hastened
+home, hearing of her beloved friend's illness.  She wished to fly to
+her couch, that couch which she, Briggs, had so often smoothed in
+the hour of sickness.  She was denied admission to Miss Crawley's
+apartment.  A stranger was administering her medicines--a stranger
+from the country--an odious Miss . . . --tears choked the utterance
+of the dame de compagnie, and she buried her crushed affections and
+her poor old red nose in her pocket handkerchief.
+
+Rawdon Crawley sent up his name by the sulky femme de chambre, and
+Miss Crawley's new companion, coming tripping down from the sick-
+room, put a little hand into his as he stepped forward eagerly to
+meet her, gave a glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and
+beckoning the young Guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him
+downstairs into that now desolate dining-parlour, where so many a
+good dinner had been celebrated.
+
+Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, the
+symptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which period
+the parlour bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by
+Mr. Bowls, Miss Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed,
+happened to be at the keyhole during the most part of the
+interview); and the Captain coming out, curling his mustachios,
+mounted the black charger pawing among the straw, to the admiration
+of the little blackguard boys collected in the street.  He looked in
+at the dining-room window, managing his horse, which curvetted and
+capered beautifully--for one instant the young person might be seen
+at the window, when her figure vanished, and, doubtless, she went
+upstairs again to resume the affecting duties of benevolence.
+
+Who could this young woman be, I wonder?  That evening a little
+dinner for two persons was laid in the dining-room--when Mrs.
+Firkin, the lady's maid, pushed into her mistress's apartment, and
+bustled about there during the vacancy occasioned by the departure
+of the new nurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the
+neat little meal.
+
+Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a
+morsel of meat.  The young person carved a fowl with the utmost
+delicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs,
+before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a
+great clattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most
+gushing hysterical state.
+
+"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?" said the
+person to Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so.  Briggs
+seized it mechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a
+little, and began to play with the chicken on her plate.
+
+"I think we shall be able to help each other," said the person with
+great suavity: "and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls's kind services.
+Mr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you." He went
+downstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon
+the unoffending footman, his subordinate.
+
+"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs," the young lady said,
+with a cool, slightly sarcastic, air.
+
+"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-o-on't see me," gurgled out
+Briggs in an agony of renewed grief.
+
+"She's not very ill any more.  Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs.
+She has only overeaten herself--that is all. She is greatly better.
+She will soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped
+and from medical treatment, but she will rally immediately.  Pray
+console yourself, and take a little more wine."
+
+"But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs bleated out.
+"Oh, Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is
+this the return to your poor, poor Arabella?"
+
+"Don't cry too much, poor Arabella," the other said (with ever so
+little of a grin); "she only won't see you, because she says you
+don't nurse her as well as I do. It's no pleasure to me to sit up
+all night.  I wish you might do it instead."
+
+"Have I not tended that dear couch for years?" Arabella said, "and
+now--"
+
+"Now she prefers somebody else.  Well, sick people have these
+fancies, and must be humoured.  When she's well I shall go."
+
+"Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.
+
+"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?" the other said, with the
+same provoking good-nature.  "Pooh--she will be well in a fortnight,
+when I shall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to
+their mother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend.  You
+need not be jealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs.  I am a poor
+little girl without any friends, or any harm in me. I don't want to
+supplant you in Miss Crawley's good graces.  She will forget me a
+week after I am gone: and her affection for you has been the work of
+years.  Give me a little wine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs,
+and let us be friends.  I'm sure I want friends."
+
+The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her
+hand at this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all
+that, and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda.
+At the end of half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for
+such, astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been
+described ingeniously as "the person" hitherto), went upstairs again
+to her patient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging
+politeness, she eliminated poor Firkin. "Thank you, Mrs. Firkin,
+that will quite do; how nicely you make it! I will ring when
+anything is wanted." "Thank you"; and Firkin came downstairs in a
+tempest of jealousy, only the more dangerous because she was forced
+to confine it in her own bosom.
+
+Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the
+first floor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily
+opened by the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs
+too well heard the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink
+of the spoon and gruel-basin the neglected female carried.
+
+"Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the apartment. "Well,
+Jane?"
+
+"Wuss and wuss, Miss B.," Firkin said, wagging her head.
+
+"Is she not better then?"
+
+"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more
+easy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never
+thought to have seen this day!"  And the water-works again began to
+play.
+
+"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought,
+while enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firm
+friends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find
+a stranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my
+still dearest Matilda!"  Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her
+language, was of a literary and sentimental turn, and had once
+published a volume of poems--"Trills of the Nightingale"--by
+subscription.
+
+"Miss B., they are all infatyated about that young woman," Firkin
+replied. "Sir Pitt wouldn't have let her go, but he daredn't refuse
+Miss Crawley anything. Mrs. Bute at the Rectory jist as bad--never
+happy out of her sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr.
+Crawley mortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won't have
+nobody near her but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for where nor for why;
+and I think somethink has bewidged everybody."
+
+Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley;
+the next night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had
+time for several hours' comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at
+the foot of her patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well
+that she sat up and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss
+Briggs and her grief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs'
+weeping snuffle, and her manner of using the handkerchief, were so
+completely rendered that Miss Crawley became quite cheerful, to the
+admiration of the doctors when they visited her, who usually found
+this worthy woman of the world, when the least sickness attacked
+her, under the most abject depression and terror of death.
+
+Captain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins from Miss
+Rebecca respecting his aunt's health. This improved so rapidly, that
+poor Briggs was allowed to see her patroness; and persons with
+tender hearts may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental
+female, and the affecting nature of the interview.
+
+Miss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal soon.  Rebecca used
+to mimic her to her face with the most admirable gravity, thereby
+rendering the imitation doubly piquant to her worthy patroness.
+
+The causes which had led to the deplorable illness of Miss Crawley,
+and her departure from her brother's house in the country, were of
+such an unromantic nature that they are hardly fit to be explained
+in this genteel and sentimental novel.  For how is it possible to
+hint of a delicate female, living in good society, that she ate and
+drank too much, and that a hot supper of lobsters profusely enjoyed
+at the Rectory was the reason of an indisposition which Miss Crawley
+herself persisted was solely attributable to the dampness of the
+weather?  The attack was so sharp that Matilda--as his Reverence
+expressed it--was very nearly "off the hooks"; all the family were
+in a fever of expectation regarding the will, and Rawdon Crawley was
+making sure of at least forty thousand pounds before the
+commencement of the London season.  Mr. Crawley sent over a choice
+parcel of tracts, to prepare her for the change from Vanity Fair and
+Park Lane for another world; but a good doctor from Southampton
+being called in in time, vanquished the lobster which was so nearly
+fatal to her, and gave her sufficient strength to enable her to
+return to London. The Baronet did not disguise his exceeding
+mortification at the turn which affairs took.
+
+While everybody was attending on Miss Crawley, and messengers every
+hour from the Rectory were carrying news of her health to the
+affectionate folks there, there was a lady in another part of the
+house, being exceedingly ill, of whom no one took any notice at all;
+and this was the lady of Crawley herself.  The good doctor shook his
+head after seeing her; to which visit Sir Pitt consented, as it
+could be paid without a fee; and she was left fading away in her
+lonely chamber, with no more heed paid to her than to a weed in the
+park.
+
+The young ladies, too, lost much of the inestimable benefit of their
+governess's instruction, So affectionate a nurse was Miss Sharp,
+that Miss Crawley would take her medicines from no other hand.
+Firkin had been deposed long before her mistress's departure from
+the country.  That faithful attendant found a gloomy consolation on
+returning to London, in seeing Miss Briggs suffer the same pangs of
+jealousy and undergo the same faithless treatment to which she
+herself had been subject.
+
+Captain Rawdon got an extension of leave on his aunt's illness, and
+remained dutifully at home.  He was always in her antechamber.  (She
+lay sick in the state bedroom, into which you entered by the little
+blue saloon.) His father was always meeting him there; or if he came
+down the corridor ever so quietly, his father's door was sure to
+open, and the hyena face of the old gentleman to glare out.  What
+was it set one to watch the other so?  A generous rivalry, no doubt,
+as to which should be most attentive to the dear sufferer in the
+state bedroom.  Rebecca used to come out and comfort both of them;
+or one or the other of them rather.  Both of these worthy gentlemen
+were most anxious to have news of the invalid from her little
+confidential messenger.
+
+At dinner--to which meal she descended for half an hour--she kept
+the peace between them: after which she disappeared for the night;
+when Rawdon would ride over to the depot of the 150th at Mudbury,
+leaving his papa to the society of Mr. Horrocks and his rum and
+water. She passed as weary a fortnight as ever mortal spent in Miss
+Crawley's sick-room; but her little nerves seemed to be of iron, as
+she was quite unshaken by the duty and the tedium of the sick-
+chamber.
+
+She never told until long afterwards how painful that duty was; how
+peevish a patient was the jovial old lady; how angry; how sleepless;
+in what horrors of death; during what long nights she lay moaning,
+and in almost delirious agonies respecting that future world which
+she quite ignored when she was in good health.--Picture to yourself,
+oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless,
+religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her
+wig.  Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and
+pray!
+
+Sharp watched this graceless bedside with indomitable patience.
+Nothing escaped her; and, like a prudent steward, she found a use
+for everything.  She told many a good story about Miss Crawley's
+illness in after days--stories which made the lady blush through her
+artificial carnations.  During the illness she was never out of
+temper; always alert; she slept light, having a perfectly clear
+conscience; and could take that refreshment at almost any minute's
+warning.  And so you saw very few traces of fatigue in her
+appearance.  Her face might be a trifle paler, and the circles round
+her eyes a little blacker than usual; but whenever she came out from
+the sick-room she was always smiling, fresh, and neat, and looked as
+trim in her little dressing-gown and cap, as in her smartest evening
+suit.
+
+The Captain thought so, and raved about her in uncouth convulsions.
+The barbed shaft of love had penetrated his dull hide.  Six weeks--
+appropinquity--opportunity--had victimised him completely.  He made
+a confidante of his aunt at the Rectory, of all persons in the
+world.  She rallied him about it; she had perceived his folly; she
+warned him; she finished by owning that little Sharp was the most
+clever, droll, odd, good-natured, simple, kindly creature in
+England.  Rawdon must not trifle with her affections, though--dear
+Miss Crawley would never pardon him for that; for she, too, was
+quite overcome by the little governess, and loved Sharp like a
+daughter.  Rawdon must go away--go back to his regiment and naughty
+London, and not play with a poor artless girl's feelings.
+
+Many and many a time this good-natured lady, compassionating the
+forlorn life-guardsman's condition, gave him an opportunity of
+seeing Miss Sharp at the Rectory, and of walking home with her, as
+we have seen.  When men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love,
+though they see the hook and the string, and the whole apparatus
+with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless--
+they must come to it--they must swallow it--and are presently struck
+and landed gasping.  Rawdon saw there was a manifest intention on
+Mrs. Bute's part to captivate him with Rebecca.  He was not very
+wise; but he was a man about town, and had seen several seasons.  A
+light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he thought, through a speech of
+Mrs. Bute's.
+
+"Mark my words, Rawdon," she said.  "You will have Miss Sharp one
+day for your relation."
+
+"What relation--my cousin, hey, Mrs. Bute? James sweet on her, hey?"
+inquired the waggish officer.
+
+"More than that," Mrs. Bute said, with a flash from her black eyes.
+
+"Not Pitt?  He sha'n't have her.  The sneak a'n't worthy of her.
+He's booked to Lady Jane Sheepshanks."
+
+"You men perceive nothing.  You silly, blind creature--if anything
+happens to Lady Crawley, Miss Sharp will be your mother-in-law; and
+that's what will happen."
+
+Rawdon Crawley, Esquire, gave vent to a prodigious whistle, in token
+of astonishment at this announcement. He couldn't deny it.  His
+father's evident liking for Miss Sharp had not escaped him.  He knew
+the old gentleman's character well; and a more unscrupulous old--
+whyou--he did not conclude the sentence, but walked home, curling
+his mustachios, and convinced he had found a clue to Mrs. Bute's
+mystery.
+
+"By Jove, it's too bad," thought Rawdon, "too bad, by Jove! I do
+believe the woman wants the poor girl to be ruined, in order that
+she shouldn't come into the family as Lady Crawley."
+
+When he saw Rebecca alone, he rallied her about his father's
+attachment in his graceful way.  She flung up her head scornfully,
+looked him full in the face, and said,
+
+"Well, suppose he is fond of me.  I know he is, and others too.  You
+don't think I am afraid of him, Captain Crawley?  You don't suppose
+I can't defend my own honour," said the little woman, looking as
+stately as a queen.
+
+"Oh, ah, why--give you fair warning--look out, you know--that's
+all," said the mustachio-twiddler.
+
+"You hint at something not honourable, then?" said she, flashing
+out.
+
+"O Gad--really--Miss Rebecca," the heavy dragoon interposed.
+
+"Do you suppose I have no feeling of self-respect, because I am poor
+and friendless, and because rich people have none?  Do you think,
+because I am a governess, I have not as much sense, and feeling, and
+good breeding as you gentlefolks in Hampshire? I'm a Montmorency. Do
+you suppose a Montmorency is not as good as a Crawley?"
+
+When Miss Sharp was agitated, and alluded to her maternal relatives,
+she spoke with ever so slight a foreign accent, which gave a great
+charm to her clear ringing voice.  "No," she continued, kindling as
+she spoke to the Captain; "I can endure poverty, but not shame--
+neglect, but not insult; and insult from--from you."
+
+Her feelings gave way, and she burst into tears.
+
+"Hang it, Miss Sharp--Rebecca--by Jove--upon my soul, I wouldn't for
+a thousand pounds.  Stop, Rebecca!"
+
+She was gone.  She drove out with Miss Crawley that day.  It was
+before the latter's illness.  At dinner she was unusually brilliant
+and lively; but she would take no notice of the hints, or the nods,
+or the clumsy expostulations of the humiliated, infatuated
+guardsman.  Skirmishes of this sort passed perpetually during the
+little campaign--tedious to relate, and similar in result.  The
+Crawley heavy cavalry was maddened by defeat, and routed every day.
+
+If the Baronet of Queen's Crawley had not had the fear of losing his
+sister's legacy before his eyes, he never would have permitted his
+dear girls to lose the educational blessings which their invaluable
+governess was conferring upon them.  The old house at home seemed a
+desert without her, so useful and pleasant had Rebecca made herself
+there.  Sir Pitt's letters were not copied and corrected; his books
+not made up; his household business and manifold schemes neglected,
+now that his little secretary was away.  And it was easy to see how
+necessary such an amanuensis was to him, by the tenor and spelling
+of the numerous letters which he sent to her, entreating her and
+commanding her to return.  Almost every day brought a frank from the
+Baronet, enclosing the most urgent prayers to Becky for her return,
+or conveying pathetic statements to Miss Crawley, regarding the
+neglected state of his daughters' education; of which documents Miss
+Crawley took very little heed.
+
+Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion
+was a sinecure and a derision; and her company was the fat spaniel
+in the drawing-room, or occasionally the discontented Firkin in the
+housekeeper's closet.  Nor though the old lady would by no means
+hear of Rebecca's departure, was the latter regularly installed in
+office in Park Lane.  Like many wealthy people, it was Miss
+Crawley's habit to accept as much service as she could get from her
+inferiors; and good-naturedly to take leave of them when she no
+longer found them useful.  Gratitude among certain rich folks is
+scarcely natural or to be thought of.  They take needy people's
+services as their due.  Nor have you, O poor parasite and humble
+hanger-on, much reason to complain!  Your friendship for Dives is
+about as sincere as the return which it usually gets.  It is money
+you love, and not the man; and were Croesus and his footman to
+change places you know, you poor rogue, who would have the benefit
+of your allegiance.
+
+And I am not sure that, in spite of Rebecca's simplicity and
+activity, and gentleness and untiring good humour, the shrewd old
+London lady, upon whom these treasures of friendship were lavished,
+had not a lurking suspicion all the while of her affectionate nurse
+and friend. It must have often crossed Miss Crawley's mind that
+nobody does anything for nothing.  If she measured her own feeling
+towards the world, she must have been pretty well able to gauge
+those of the world towards herself; and perhaps she reflected that
+it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they
+themselves care for nobody.
+
+Well, meanwhile Becky was the greatest comfort and convenience to
+her, and she gave her a couple of new gowns, and an old necklace and
+shawl, and showed her friendship by abusing all her intimate
+acquaintances to her new confidante (than which there can't be a
+more touching proof of regard), and meditated vaguely some great
+future benefit--to marry her perhaps to Clump, the apothecary, or to
+settle her in some advantageous way of life; or at any rate, to send
+her back to Queen's Crawley when she had done with her, and the full
+London season had begun.
+
+When Miss Crawley was convalescent and descended to the drawing-
+room, Becky sang to her, and otherwise amused her; when she was well
+enough to drive out, Becky accompanied her.  And amongst the drives
+which they took, whither, of all places in the world, did Miss
+Crawley's admirable good-nature and friendship actually induce her
+to penetrate, but to Russell Square, Bloomsbury, and the house of
+John Sedley, Esquire.
+
+Ere that event, many notes had passed, as may be imagined, between
+the two dear friends.  During the months of Rebecca's stay in
+Hampshire, the eternal friendship had (must it be owned?) suffered
+considerable diminution, and grown so decrepit and feeble with old
+age as to threaten demise altogether.  The fact is, both girls had
+their own real affairs to think of: Rebecca her advance with her
+employers--Amelia her own absorbing topic.  When the two girls met,
+and flew into each other's arms with that impetuosity which
+distinguishes the behaviour of young ladies towards each other,
+Rebecca performed her part of the embrace with the most perfect
+briskness and energy.  Poor little Amelia blushed as she kissed her
+friend, and thought she had been guilty of something very like
+coldness towards her.
+
+Their first interview was but a very short one.  Amelia was just
+ready to go out for a walk.  Miss Crawley was waiting in her
+carriage below, her people wondering at the locality in which they
+found themselves, and gazing upon honest Sambo, the black footman of
+Bloomsbury, as one of the queer natives of the place.  But when
+Amelia came down with her kind smiling looks (Rebecca must introduce
+her to her friend, Miss Crawley was longing to see her, and was too
+ill to leave her carriage)--when, I say, Amelia came down, the Park
+Lane shoulder-knot aristocracy wondered more and more that such a
+thing could come out of Bloomsbury; and Miss Crawley was fairly
+captivated by the sweet blushing face of the young lady who came
+forward so timidly and so gracefully to pay her respects to the
+protector of her friend.
+
+"What a complexion, my dear! What a sweet voice!" Miss Crawley said,
+as they drove away westward after the little interview.  "My dear
+Sharp, your young friend is charming.  Send for her to Park Lane, do
+you hear?" Miss Crawley had a good taste.  She liked natural
+manners--a little timidity only set them off.  She liked pretty
+faces near her; as she liked pretty pictures and nice china.  She
+talked of Amelia with rapture half a dozen times that day.  She
+mentioned her to Rawdon Crawley, who came dutifully to partake of
+his aunt's chicken.
+
+Of course, on this Rebecca instantly stated that Amelia was engaged
+to be married--to a Lieutenant Osborne--a very old flame.
+
+"Is he a man in a line-regiment?" Captain Crawley asked, remembering
+after an effort, as became a guardsman, the number of the regiment,
+the --th.
+
+Rebecca thought that was the regiment.  "The Captain's name," she
+said, "was Captain Dobbin."
+
+"A lanky gawky fellow," said Crawley, "tumbles over everybody.  I
+know him; and Osborne's a goodish-looking fellow, with large black
+whiskers?"
+
+"Enormous," Miss Rebecca Sharp said, "and enormously proud of them,
+I assure you."
+
+Captain Rawdon Crawley burst into a horse-laugh by way of reply; and
+being pressed by the ladies to explain, did so when the explosion of
+hilarity was over.  "He fancies he can play at billiards," said he.
+"I won two hundred of him at the Cocoa-Tree.  HE play, the young
+flat!  He'd have played for anything that day, but his friend
+Captain Dobbin carried him off, hang him!"
+
+"Rawdon, Rawdon, don't be so wicked," Miss Crawley remarked, highly
+pleased.
+
+"Why, ma'am, of all the young fellows I've seen out of the line, I
+think this fellow's the greenest.  Tarquin and Deuceace get what
+money they like out of him.  He'd go to the deuce to be seen with a
+lord.  He pays their dinners at Greenwich, and they invite the
+company."
+
+"And very pretty company too, I dare say."
+
+"Quite right, Miss Sharp.  Right, as usual, Miss Sharp. Uncommon
+pretty company--haw, haw!" and the Captain laughed more and more,
+thinking he had made a good joke.
+
+"Rawdon, don't be naughty!" his aunt exclaimed.
+
+"Well, his father's a City man--immensely rich, they say.  Hang
+those City fellows, they must bleed; and I've not done with him yet,
+I can tell you.  Haw, haw!"
+
+"Fie, Captain Crawley; I shall warn Amelia.  A gambling husband!"
+
+"Horrid, ain't he, hey?" the Captain said with great solemnity; and
+then added, a sudden thought having struck him: "Gad, I say, ma'am,
+we'll have him here."
+
+"Is he a presentable sort of a person?" the aunt inquired.
+
+"Presentable?--oh, very well.  You wouldn't see any difference,"
+Captain Crawley answered.  "Do let's have him, when you begin to see
+a few people; and his whatdyecallem--his inamorato--eh, Miss Sharp;
+that's what you call it--comes.  Gad, I'll write him a note, and
+have him; and I'll try if he can play piquet as well as billiards.
+Where does he live, Miss Sharp?"
+
+Miss Sharp told Crawley the Lieutenant's town address; and a few
+days after this conversation, Lieutenant Osborne received a letter,
+in Captain Rawdon's schoolboy hand, and enclosing a note of
+invitation from Miss Crawley.
+
+Rebecca despatched also an invitation to her darling Amelia, who,
+you may be sure, was ready enough to accept it when she heard that
+George was to be of the party.  It was arranged that Amelia was to
+spend the morning with the ladies of Park Lane, where all were very
+kind to her.  Rebecca patronised her with calm superiority: she was
+so much the cleverer of the two, and her friend so gentle and
+unassuming, that she always yielded when anybody chose to command,
+and so took Rebecca's orders with perfect meekness and good humour.
+Miss Crawley's graciousness was also remarkable.  She continued her
+raptures about little Amelia, talked about her before her face as if
+she were a doll, or a servant, or a picture, and admired her with
+the most benevolent wonder possible.  I admire that admiration which
+the genteel world sometimes extends to the commonalty. There is no
+more agreeable object in life than to see Mayfair folks
+condescending.  Miss Crawley's prodigious benevolence rather
+fatigued poor little Amelia, and I am not sure that of the three
+ladies in Park Lane she did not find honest Miss Briggs the most
+agreeable.  She sympathised with Briggs as with all neglected or
+gentle people: she wasn't what you call a woman of spirit.
+
+George came to dinner--a repast en garcon with Captain Crawley.
+
+The great family coach of the Osbornes transported him to Park Lane
+from Russell Square; where the young ladies, who were not themselves
+invited, and professed the greatest indifference at that slight,
+nevertheless looked at Sir Pitt Crawley's name in the baronetage;
+and learned everything which that work had to teach about the
+Crawley family and their pedigree, and the Binkies, their relatives,
+&c., &c.  Rawdon Crawley received George Osborne with great
+frankness and graciousness: praised his play at billiards: asked him
+when he would have his revenge: was interested about Osborne's
+regiment: and would have proposed piquet to him that very evening,
+but Miss Crawley absolutely forbade any gambling in her house; so
+that the young Lieutenant's purse was not lightened by his gallant
+patron, for that day at least.  However, they made an engagement for
+the next, somewhere: to look at a horse that Crawley had to sell,
+and to try him in the Park; and to dine together, and to pass the
+evening with some jolly fellows.  "That is, if you're not on duty to
+that pretty Miss Sedley," Crawley said, with a knowing wink.
+"Monstrous nice girl, 'pon my honour, though, Osborne," he was good
+enough to add.  "Lots of tin, I suppose, eh?"
+
+Osborne wasn't on duty; he would join Crawley with pleasure: and the
+latter, when they met the next day, praised his new friend's
+horsemanship--as he might with perfect honesty--and introduced him
+to three or four young men of the first fashion, whose acquaintance
+immensely elated the simple young officer.
+
+"How's little Miss Sharp, by-the-bye?" Osborne inquired of his
+friend over their wine, with a dandified air. "Good-natured little
+girl that.  Does she suit you well at Queen's Crawley? Miss Sedley
+liked her a good deal last year."
+
+Captain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out of his little
+blue eyes, and watched him when he went up to resume his
+acquaintance with the fair governess.  Her conduct must have
+relieved Crawley if there was any jealousy in the bosom of that
+life-guardsman.
+
+When the young men went upstairs, and after Osborne's introduction
+to Miss Crawley, he walked up to Rebecca with a patronising, easy
+swagger.  He was going to be kind to her and protect her.  He would
+even shake hands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, "Ah,
+Miss Sharp! how-dy-doo?" held out his left hand towards her,
+expecting that she would be quite confounded at the honour.
+
+Miss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him a little nod,
+so cool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley, watching the operations
+from the other room, could hardly restrain his laughter as he saw
+the Lieutenant's entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause,
+and the perfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended to
+take the finger which was offered for his embrace.
+
+"She'd beat the devil, by Jove!" the Captain said, in a rapture; and
+the Lieutenant, by way of beginning the conversation, agreeably
+asked Rebecca how she liked her new place.
+
+"My place?" said Miss Sharp, coolly, "how kind of you to remind me
+of it!  It's a tolerably good place: the wages are pretty good--not
+so good as Miss Wirt's, I believe, with your sisters in Russell
+Square.  How are those young ladies?--not that I ought to ask."
+
+"Why not?" Mr. Osborne said, amazed.
+
+"Why, they never condescended to speak to me, or to ask me into
+their house, whilst I was staying with Amelia; but we poor
+governesses, you know, are used to slights of this sort."
+
+"My dear Miss Sharp!" Osborne ejaculated.
+
+"At least in some families," Rebecca continued.  "You can't think
+what a difference there is though.  We are not so wealthy in
+Hampshire as you lucky folks of the City. But then I am in a
+gentleman's family--good old English stock.  I suppose you know Sir
+Pitt's father refused a peerage.  And you see how I am treated.  I
+am pretty comfortable.  Indeed it is rather a good place.  But how
+very good of you to inquire!"
+
+Osborne was quite savage.  The little governess patronised him and
+persiffled him until this young British Lion felt quite uneasy; nor
+could he muster sufficient presence of mind to find a pretext for
+backing out of this most delectable conversation.
+
+"I thought you liked the City families pretty well," he said,
+haughtily.
+
+"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that horrid vulgar
+school?  Of course I did.  Doesn't every girl like to come home for
+the holidays?  And how was I to know any better?  But oh, Mr.
+Osborne, what a difference eighteen months' experience makes!
+eighteen months spent, pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen.  As
+for dear Amelia, she, I grant you, is a pearl, and would be charming
+anywhere.  There now, I see you are beginning to be in a good
+humour; but oh these queer odd City people! And Mr. Jos--how is that
+wonderful Mr. Joseph?"
+
+"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr. Joseph last
+year," Osborne said kindly.
+
+"How severe of you!  Well, entre nous, I didn't break my heart about
+him; yet if he had asked me to do what you mean by your looks (and
+very expressive and kind they are, too), I wouldn't have said no."
+
+Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, "Indeed, how very
+obliging!"
+
+"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law, you are
+thinking? To be sister-in-law to George Osborne, Esquire, son of
+John Osborne, Esquire, son of--what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne?
+Well, don't be angry.  You can't help your pedigree, and I quite
+agree with you that I would have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for could a
+poor penniless girl do better?  Now you know the whole secret.  I'm
+frank and open; considering all things, it was very kind of you to
+allude to the circumstance--very kind and polite.  Amelia dear, Mr.
+Osborne and I were talking about your poor brother Joseph. How is
+he?"
+
+Thus was George utterly routed.  Not that Rebecca was in the right;
+but she had managed most successfully to put him in the wrong.  And
+he now shamefully fled, feeling, if he stayed another minute, that
+he would have been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.
+
+Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was above the
+meanness of talebearing or revenge upon a lady--only he could not
+help cleverly confiding to Captain Crawley, next day, some notions
+of his regarding Miss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous
+one, a desperate flirt, &c.; in all of which opinions Crawley agreed
+laughingly, and with every one of which Miss Rebecca was made
+acquainted before twenty-four hours were over.  They added to her
+original regard for Mr. Osborne.  Her woman's instinct had told her
+that it was George who had interrupted the success of her first
+love-passage, and she esteemed him accordingly.
+
+"I only just warn you," he said to Rawdon Crawley, with a knowing
+look--he had bought the horse, and lost some score of guineas after
+dinner, "I just warn you--I know women, and counsel you to be on the
+look-out."
+
+"Thank you, my boy," said Crawley, with a look of peculiar
+gratitude.  "You're wide awake, I see." And George went off,
+thinking Crawley was quite right.
+
+He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled Rawdon
+Crawley--a devilish good, straightforward fellow--to be on his guard
+against that little sly, scheming Rebecca.
+
+"Against whom?" Amelia cried.
+
+"Your friend the governess.--Don't look so astonished."
+
+"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said.  For her woman's eyes,
+which Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered a
+secret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs,
+and above all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,
+Lieutenant Osborne.
+
+For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these
+two friends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking
+and conspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming
+up to Rebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said,
+"Rebecca, I see it all."
+
+Rebecca kissed her.
+
+And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said
+by either of the young women.  But it was destined to come out
+before long.
+
+Some short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp
+still remaining at her patroness's house in Park Lane, one more
+hatchment might have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring
+amongst the many which usually ornament that dismal quarter.  It was
+over Sir Pitt Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy
+baronet's demise.  It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few
+years back had served as a funeral compliment to Sir Pitt's old
+mother, the late dowager Lady Crawley. Its period of service over,
+the hatchment had come down from the front of the house, and lived
+in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt's mansion.
+It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson.  Sir Pitt was a widower
+again.  The arms quartered on the shield along with his own were
+not, to be sure, poor Rose's. She had no arms.  But the cherubs
+painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as for Sir Pitt's
+mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked by the
+Crawley Dove and Serpent.  Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is
+an opportunity for moralising!
+
+Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless bedside.  She went
+out of the world strengthened by such words and comfort as he could
+give her.  For many years his was the only kindness she ever knew;
+the only friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely
+soul. Her heart was dead long before her body.  She had sold it to
+become Sir Pitt Crawley's wife.  Mothers and daughters are making
+the same bargain every day in Vanity Fair.
+
+When the demise took place, her husband was in London attending to
+some of his innumerable schemes, and busy with his endless lawyers.
+He had found time, nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to
+despatch many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her,
+commanding her to return to her young pupils in the country, who
+were now utterly without companionship during their mother's
+illness.  But Miss Crawley would not hear of her departure; for
+though there was no lady of fashion in London who would desert her
+friends more complacently as soon as she was tired of their society,
+and though few tired of them sooner, yet as long as her engoument
+lasted her attachment was prodigious, and she clung still with the
+greatest energy to Rebecca.
+
+The news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more grief or comment
+than might have been expected in Miss Crawley's family circle.  "I
+suppose I must put off my party for the 3rd," Miss Crawley said; and
+added, after a pause, "I hope my brother will have the decency not
+to marry again." "What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if he
+does," Rawdon remarked, with his usual regard for his elder brother.
+Rebecca said nothing.  She seemed by far the gravest and most
+impressed of the family.  She left the room before Rawdon went away
+that day; but they met by chance below, as he was going away after
+taking leave, and had a parley together.
+
+On the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window, she startled
+Miss Crawley, who was placidly occupied with a French novel, by
+crying out in an alarmed tone, "Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!" and the
+Baronet's knock followed this announcement.
+
+"My dear, I can't see him.  I won't see him.  Tell Bowls not at
+home, or go downstairs and say I'm too ill to receive any one.  My
+nerves really won't bear my brother at this moment," cried out Miss
+Crawley, and resumed the novel.
+
+"She's too ill to see you, sir," Rebecca said, tripping down to Sir
+Pitt, who was preparing to ascend.
+
+"So much the better," Sir Pitt answered.  "I want to see YOU, Miss
+Becky.  Come along a me into the parlour," and they entered that
+apartment together.
+
+"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss," the baronet said,
+fixing his eyes upon her, and taking off his black gloves and his
+hat with its great crape hat-band. His eyes had such a strange look,
+and fixed upon her so steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost
+to tremble.
+
+"I hope to come soon," she said in a low voice, "as soon as Miss
+Crawley is better--and return to--to the dear children."
+
+"You've said so these three months, Becky," replied Sir Pitt, "and
+still you go hanging on to my sister, who'll fling you off like an
+old shoe, when she's wore you out. I tell you I want you.  I'm going
+back to the Vuneral. Will you come back?  Yes or no?"
+
+"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be alone--with you,
+sir," Becky said, seemingly in great agitation.
+
+"I say agin, I want you," Sir Pitt said, thumping the table.  "I
+can't git on without you.  I didn't see what it was till you went
+away.  The house all goes wrong.  It's not the same place.  All my
+accounts has got muddled agin. You MUST come back.  Do come back.
+Dear Becky, do come."
+
+"Come--as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out.
+
+"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like," the Baronet said, grasping his
+crape hat.  "There! will that zatusfy you? Come back and be my wife.
+Your vit vor't.  Birth be hanged.  You're as good a lady as ever I
+see.  You've got more brains in your little vinger than any
+baronet's wife in the county.  Will you come? Yes or no?"
+
+"Oh, Sir Pitt!" Rebecca said, very much moved.
+
+"Say yes, Becky," Sir Pitt continued.  "I'm an old man, but a
+good'n.  I'm good for twenty years.  I'll make you happy, zee if I
+don't.  You shall do what you like; spend what you like; and 'ave it
+all your own way.  I'll make you a zettlement.  I'll do everything
+reglar.  Look year!" and the old man fell down on his knees and
+leered at her like a satyr.
+
+Rebecca started back a picture of consternation.  In the course of
+this history we have never seen her lose her presence of mind; but
+she did now, and wept some of the most genuine tears that ever fell
+from her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Sir Pitt!" she said.  "Oh, sir--I--I'm married ALREADY."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time
+
+
+Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire no other) must
+have been pleased with the tableau with which the last act of our
+little drama concluded; for what can be prettier than an image of
+Love on his knees before Beauty?
+
+But when Love heard that awful confession from Beauty that she was
+married already, he bounced up from his attitude of humility on the
+carpet, uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to be
+more frightened than she was when she made her avowal.  "Married;
+you're joking," the Baronet cried, after the first explosion of rage
+and wonder.  "You're making vun of me, Becky.  Who'd ever go to
+marry you without a shilling to your vortune?"
+
+"Married! married!" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears--her voice
+choking with emotion, her handkerchief up to her ready eyes,
+fainting against the mantelpiece a figure of woe fit to melt the
+most obdurate heart.  "O Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me
+ungrateful for all your goodness to me.  It is only your generosity
+that has extorted my secret."
+
+"Generosity be hanged!" Sir Pitt roared out.  "Who is it tu, then,
+you're married? Where was it?"
+
+"Let me come back with you to the country, sir!  Let me watch over
+you as faithfully as ever!  Don't, don't separate me from dear
+Queen's Crawley!"
+
+"The feller has left you, has he?" the Baronet said, beginning, as
+he fancied, to comprehend.  "Well, Becky--come back if you like.
+You can't eat your cake and have it.  Any ways I made you a vair
+offer.  Coom back as governess--you shall have it all your own way."
+She held out one hand.  She cried fit to break her heart; her
+ringlets fell over her face, and over the marble mantelpiece where
+she laid it.
+
+"So the rascal ran off, eh?"  Sir Pitt said, with a hideous attempt
+at consolation.  "Never mind, Becky, I'LL take care of 'ee."
+
+"Oh, sir! it would be the pride of my life to go back to Queen's
+Crawley, and take care of the children, and of you as formerly, when
+you said you were pleased with the services of your little Rebecca.
+When I think of what you have just offered me, my heart fills with
+gratitude indeed it does.  I can't be your wife, sir; let me--let me
+be your daughter."  Saying which, Rebecca went down on HER knees in
+a most tragical way, and, taking Sir Pitt's horny black hand between
+her own two (which were very pretty and white, and as soft as
+satin), looked up in his face with an expression of exquisite pathos
+and confidence, when--when the door opened, and Miss Crawley sailed
+in.
+
+Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs, who happened by chance to be at the
+parlour door soon after the Baronet and Rebecca entered the
+apartment, had also seen accidentally, through the keyhole, the old
+gentleman prostrate before the governess, and had heard the generous
+proposal which he made her.  It was scarcely out of his mouth when
+Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs had streamed up the stairs, had rushed
+into the drawing-room where Miss Crawley was reading the French
+novel, and had given that old lady the astounding intelligence that
+Sir Pitt was on his knees, proposing to Miss Sharp.  And if you
+calculate the time for the above dialogue to take place--the time
+for Briggs and Firkin to fly to the drawing-room--the time for Miss
+Crawley to be astonished, and to drop her volume of Pigault le Brun
+--and the time for her to come downstairs--you will see how exactly
+accurate this history is, and how Miss Crawley must have appeared at
+the very instant when Rebecca had assumed the attitude of humility.
+
+"It is the lady on the ground, and not the gentleman," Miss Crawley
+said, with a look and voice of great scorn. "They told me that YOU
+were on your knees, Sir Pitt: do kneel once more, and let me see
+this pretty couple!"
+
+"I have thanked Sir Pitt Crawley, Ma'am," Rebecca said, rising, "and
+have told him that--that I never can become Lady Crawley."
+
+"Refused him!"  Miss Crawley said, more bewildered than ever.
+Briggs and Firkin at the door opened the eyes of astonishment and
+the lips of wonder.
+
+"Yes--refused," Rebecca continued, with a sad, tearful voice.
+
+"And am I to credit my ears that you absolutely proposed to her, Sir
+Pitt?" the old lady asked.
+
+"Ees," said the Baronet, "I did."
+
+"And she refused you as she says?"
+
+"Ees," Sir Pitt said, his features on a broad grin.
+
+"It does not seem to break your heart at any rate," Miss Crawley
+remarked.
+
+"Nawt a bit," answered Sir Pitt, with a coolness and good-humour
+which set Miss Crawley almost mad with bewilderment.  That an old
+gentleman of station should fall on his knees to a penniless
+governess, and burst out laughing because she refused to marry him--
+that a penniless governess should refuse a Baronet with four
+thousand a year--these were mysteries which Miss Crawley could never
+comprehend.  It surpassed any complications of intrigue in her
+favourite Pigault le Brun.
+
+"I'm glad you think it good sport, brother," she continued, groping
+wildly through this amazement.
+
+"Vamous," said Sir Pitt.  "Who'd ha' thought it! what a sly little
+devil! what a little fox it waws!" he muttered to himself, chuckling
+with pleasure.
+
+"Who'd have thought what?" cries Miss Crawley, stamping with her
+foot.  "Pray, Miss Sharp, are you waiting for the Prince Regent's
+divorce, that you don't think our family good enough for you?"
+
+"My attitude," Rebecca said, "when you came in, ma'am, did not look
+as if I despised such an honour as this good--this noble man has
+deigned to offer me.  Do you think I have no heart?  Have you all
+loved me, and been so kind to the poor orphan--deserted--girl, and
+am I to feel nothing?  O my friends!  O my benefactors! may not my
+love, my life, my duty, try to repay the confidence you have shown
+me?  Do you grudge me even gratitude, Miss Crawley?  It is too much-
+-my heart is too full"; and she sank down in a chair so
+pathetically, that most of the audience present were perfectly
+melted with her sadness.
+
+"Whether you marry me or not, you're a good little girl, Becky, and
+I'm your vriend, mind," said Sir Pitt, and putting on his crape-
+bound hat, he walked away--greatly to Rebecca's relief; for it was
+evident that her secret was unrevealed to Miss Crawley, and she had
+the advantage of a brief reprieve.
+
+Putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and nodding away honest
+Briggs, who would have followed her upstairs, she went up to her
+apartment; while Briggs and Miss Crawley, in a high state of
+excitement, remained to discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not
+less moved, dived down into the kitchen regions, and talked of it
+with all the male and female company there.  And so impressed was
+Mrs. Firkin with the news, that she thought proper to write off by
+that very night's post, "with her humble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley
+and the family at the Rectory, and Sir Pitt has been and proposed
+for to marry Miss Sharp, wherein she has refused him, to the wonder
+of all."
+
+The two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy Miss Briggs was
+delighted to be admitted once more to confidential conversation with
+her patroness) wondered to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's
+offer, and Rebecca's refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that
+there must have been some obstacle in the shape of a previous
+attachment, otherwise no young woman in her senses would ever have
+refused so advantageous a proposal.
+
+"You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you, Briggs?" Miss
+Crawley said, kindly.
+
+"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's sister?" Briggs
+replied, with meek evasion.
+
+"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley, after all," Miss
+Crawley remarked (who was mollified by the girl's refusal, and very
+liberal and generous now there was no call for her sacrifices).
+"She has brains in plenty (much more wit in her little finger than
+you have, my poor dear Briggs, in all your head).  Her manners are
+excellent, now I have formed her.  She is a Montmorency, Briggs, and
+blood is something, though I despise it for my part; and she would
+have held her own amongst those pompous stupid Hampshire people much
+better than that unfortunate ironmonger's daughter."
+
+Briggs coincided as usual, and the "previous attachment" was then
+discussed in conjectures.  "You poor friendless creatures are always
+having some foolish tendre," Miss Crawley said.  "You yourself, you
+know, were in love with a writing-master (don't cry, Briggs--you're
+always crying, and it won't bring him to life again), and I suppose
+this unfortunate Becky has been silly and sentimental too--some
+apothecary, or house-steward, or painter, or young curate, or
+something of that sort."
+
+"Poor thing! poor thing!" says Briggs (who was thinking of twenty-
+four years back, and that hectic young writing-master whose lock of
+yellow hair, and whose letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she
+cherished in her old desk upstairs).  "Poor thing, poor thing!" says
+Briggs.  Once more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen; she was
+at evening church, and the hectic writing-master and she were
+quavering out of the same psalm-book.
+
+"After such conduct on Rebecca's part," Miss Crawley said
+enthusiastically, "our family should do something. Find out who is
+the objet, Briggs.  I'll set him up in a shop; or order my portrait
+of him, you know; or speak to my cousin, the Bishop and I'll doter
+Becky, and we'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the
+breakfast, and be a bridesmaid."
+
+Briggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed that her dear
+Miss Crawley was always kind and generous, and went up to Rebecca's
+bedroom to console her and prattle about the offer, and the refusal,
+and the cause thereof; and to hint at the generous intentions of
+Miss Crawley, and to find out who was the gentleman that had the
+mastery of Miss Sharp's heart.
+
+Rebecca was very kind, very affectionate and affected--responded to
+Briggs's offer of tenderness with grateful fervour--owned there was
+a secret attachment--a delicious mystery--what a pity Miss Briggs
+had not remained half a minute longer at the keyhole!  Rebecca
+might, perhaps, have told more: but five minutes after Miss Briggs's
+arrival in Rebecca's apartment, Miss Crawley actually made her
+appearance there--an unheard-of honour--her impatience had overcome
+her; she could not wait for the tardy operations of her
+ambassadress: so she came in person, and ordered Briggs out of the
+room. And expressing her approval of Rebecca's conduct, she asked
+particulars of the interview, and the previous transactions which
+had brought about the astonishing offer of Sir Pitt.
+
+Rebecca said she had long had some notion of the partiality with
+which Sir Pitt honoured her (for he was in the habit of making his
+feelings known in a very frank and unreserved manner) but, not to
+mention private reasons with which she would not for the present
+trouble Miss Crawley, Sir Pitt's age, station, and habits were such
+as to render a marriage quite impossible; and could a woman with any
+feeling of self-respect and any decency listen to proposals at such
+a moment, when the funeral of the lover's deceased wife had not
+actually taken place?
+
+"Nonsense, my dear, you would never have refused him had there not
+been some one else in the case," Miss Crawley said, coming to her
+point at once.  "Tell me the private reasons; what are the private
+reasons?  There is some one; who is it that has touched your heart?"
+
+Rebecca cast down her eyes, and owned there was. "You have guessed
+right, dear lady," she said, with a sweet simple faltering voice.
+"You wonder at one so poor and friendless having an attachment,
+don't you? I have never heard that poverty was any safeguard against
+it.  I wish it were."
+
+"My poor dear child," cried Miss Crawley, who was always quite ready
+to be sentimental, "is our passion unrequited, then?  Are we pining
+in secret? Tell me all, and let me console you."
+
+"I wish you could, dear Madam," Rebecca said in the same tearful
+tone.  "Indeed, indeed, I need it." And she laid her head upon Miss
+Crawley's shoulder and wept there so naturally that the old lady,
+surprised into sympathy, embraced her with an almost maternal
+kindness, uttered many soothing protests of regard and affection for
+her, vowed that she loved her as a daughter, and would do everything
+in her power to serve her.  "And now who is it, my dear?  Is it that
+pretty Miss Sedley's brother?  You said something about an affair
+with him. I'll ask him here, my dear.  And you shall have him:
+indeed you shall."
+
+"Don't ask me now," Rebecca said.  "You shall know all soon.  Indeed
+you shall.  Dear kind Miss Crawley--dear friend, may I say so?"
+
+"That you may, my child," the old lady replied, kissing her.
+
+"I can't tell you now," sobbed out Rebecca, "I am very miserable.
+But O! love me always--promise you will love me always." And in the
+midst of mutual tears--for the emotions of the younger woman had
+awakened the sympathies of the elder--this promise was solemnly
+given by Miss Crawley, who left her little protege, blessing and
+admiring her as a dear, artless, tender-hearted, affectionate,
+incomprehensible creature.
+
+And now she was left alone to think over the sudden and wonderful
+events of the day, and of what had been and what might have been.
+What think you were the private feelings of Miss, no (begging her
+pardon) of Mrs. Rebecca?  If, a few pages back, the present writer
+claimed the privilege of peeping into Miss Amelia Sedley's bedroom,
+and understanding with the omniscience of the novelist all the
+gentle pains and passions which were tossing upon that innocent
+pillow, why should he not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante
+too, master of her secrets, and seal-keeper of that young woman's
+conscience?
+
+Well, then, in the first place, Rebecca gave way to some very
+sincere and touching regrets that a piece of marvellous good fortune
+should have been so near her, and she actually obliged to decline
+it.  In this natural emotion every properly regulated mind will
+certainly share.  What good mother is there that would not
+commiserate a penniless spinster, who might have been my lady, and
+have shared four thousand a year?  What well-bred young person is
+there in all Vanity Fair, who will not feel for a hard-working,
+ingenious, meritorious girl, who gets such an honourable,
+advantageous, provoking offer, just at the very moment when it is
+out of her power to accept it?  I am sure our friend Becky's
+disappointment deserves and will command every sympathy.
+
+I remember one night being in the Fair myself, at an evening party.
+I observed old Miss Toady there also present, single out for her
+special attentions and flattery little Mrs. Briefless, the
+barrister's wife, who is of a good family certainly, but, as we all
+know, is as poor as poor can be.
+
+What, I asked in my own mind, can cause this obsequiousness on the
+part of Miss Toady; has Briefless got a county court, or has his
+wife had a fortune left her? Miss Toady explained presently, with
+that simplicity which distinguishes all her conduct.  "You know,"
+she said, "Mrs Briefless is granddaughter of Sir John Redhand, who
+is so ill at Cheltenham that he can't last six months.  Mrs.
+Briefless's papa succeeds; so you see she will be a baronet's
+daughter." And Toady asked Briefless and his wife to dinner the very
+next week.
+
+If the mere chance of becoming a baronet's daughter can procure a
+lady such homage in the world, surely, surely we may respect the
+agonies of a young woman who has lost the opportunity of becoming a
+baronet's wife.  Who would have dreamed of Lady Crawley dying so
+soon?  She was one of those sickly women that might have lasted
+these ten years--Rebecca thought to herself, in all the woes of
+repentance--and I might have been my lady!  I might have led that
+old man whither I would.  I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her
+patronage, and Mr. Pitt for his insufferable condescension.  I would
+have had the town-house newly furnished and decorated.  I would have
+had the handsomest carriage in London, and a box at the opera; and I
+would have been presented next season.  All this might have been;
+and now--now all was doubt and mystery.
+
+But Rebecca was a young lady of too much resolution and energy of
+character to permit herself much useless and unseemly sorrow for the
+irrevocable past; so, having devoted only the proper portion of
+regret to it, she wisely turned her whole attention towards the
+future, which was now vastly more important to her.  And she
+surveyed her position, and its hopes, doubts, and chances.
+
+In the first place, she was MARRIED--that was a great fact.  Sir
+Pitt knew it.  She was not so much surprised into the avowal, as
+induced to make it by a sudden calculation. It must have come some
+day: and why not now as at a later period? He who would have married
+her himself must at least be silent with regard to her marriage. How
+Miss Crawley would bear the news--was the great question.
+Misgivings Rebecca had; but she remembered all Miss Crawley had
+said; the old lady's avowed contempt for birth; her daring liberal
+opinions; her general romantic propensities; her almost doting
+attachment to her nephew, and her repeatedly expressed fondness for
+Rebecca herself.  She is so fond of him, Rebecca thought, that she
+will forgive him anything: she is so used to me that I don't think
+she could be comfortable without me: when the eclaircissement comes
+there will be a scene, and hysterics, and a great quarrel, and then
+a great reconciliation.  At all events, what use was there in
+delaying? the die was thrown, and now or to-morrow the issue must be
+the same.  And so, resolved that Miss Crawley should have the news,
+the young person debated in her mind as to the best means of
+conveying it to her; and whether she should face the storm that must
+come, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown over.  In
+this state of meditation she wrote the following letter:
+
+Dearest Friend,
+
+The great crisis which we have debated about so often is COME.  Half
+of my secret is known, and I have thought and thought, until I am
+quite sure that now is the time to reveal THE WHOLE OF THE MYSTERY.
+Sir Pitt came to me this morning, and made--what do you think?--A
+DECLARATION IN FORM.  Think of that!  Poor little me.  I might have
+been Lady Crawley.  How pleased Mrs. Bute would have been: and ma
+tante if I had taken precedence of her! I might have been somebody's
+mamma, instead of--O, I tremble, I tremble, when I think how soon we
+must tell all!
+
+Sir Pitt knows I am married, and not knowing to whom, is not very
+much displeased as yet.  Ma tante is ACTUALLY ANGRY that I should
+have refused him.  But she is all kindness and graciousness.  She
+condescends to say I would have made him a good wife; and vows that
+she will be a mother to your little Rebecca.  She will be shaken
+when she first hears the news.  But need we fear anything beyond a
+momentary anger?  I think not: I AM SURE not.  She dotes upon you so
+(you naughty, good-for-nothing man), that she would pardon you
+ANYTHING: and, indeed, I believe, the next place in her heart is
+mine: and that she would be miserable without me. Dearest! something
+TELLS ME we shall conquer.  You shall leave that odious regiment:
+quit gaming, racing, and BE A GOOD BOY; and we shall all live in
+Park Lane, and ma tante shall leave us all her money.
+
+I shall try and walk to-morrow at 3 in the usual place. If Miss B.
+accompanies me, you must come to dinner, and bring an answer, and
+put it in the third volume of Porteus's Sermons.  But, at all
+events, come to your own
+
+R.
+
+To Miss Eliza Styles, At Mr. Barnet's, Saddler, Knightsbridge.
+
+And I trust there is no reader of this little story who has not
+discernment enough to perceive that the Miss Eliza Styles (an old
+schoolfellow, Rebecca said, with whom she had resumed an active
+correspondence of late, and who used to fetch these letters from the
+saddler's), wore brass spurs, and large curling mustachios, and was
+indeed no other than Captain Rawdon Crawley.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The Letter on the Pincushion
+
+
+How they were married is not of the slightest consequence to
+anybody.  What is to hinder a Captain who is a major, and a young
+lady who is of age, from purchasing a licence, and uniting
+themselves at any church in this town?  Who needs to be told, that
+if a woman has a will she will assuredly find a way?--My belief is
+that one day, when Miss Sharp had gone to pass the forenoon with her
+dear friend Miss Amelia Sedley in Russell Square, a lady very like
+her might have been seen entering a church in the City, in company
+with a gentleman with dyed mustachios, who, after a quarter of an
+hour's interval, escorted her back to the hackney-coach in waiting,
+and that this was a quiet bridal party.
+
+And who on earth, after the daily experience we have, can question
+the probability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the
+wise and learned have married their cooks?  Did not Lord Eldon
+himself, the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not
+Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids? And are we
+to expect a heavy dragoon with strong desires and small brains, who
+had never controlled a passion in his life, to become prudent all of
+a sudden, and to refuse to pay any price for an indulgence to which
+he had a mind?  If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop
+to population there would be!
+
+It seems to me, for my part, that Mr. Rawdon's marriage was one of
+the honestest actions which we shall have to record in any portion
+of that gentleman's biography which has to do with the present
+history.  No one will say it is unmanly to be captivated by a woman,
+or, being captivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight,
+the passion, the wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic
+adoration with which, by degrees, this big warrior got to regard the
+little Rebecca, were feelings which the ladies at least will
+pronounce were not altogether discreditable to him.  When she sang,
+every note thrilled in his dull soul, and tingled through his huge
+frame.  When she spoke, he brought all the force of his brains to
+listen and wonder. If she was jocular, he used to revolve her jokes
+in his mind, and explode over them half an hour afterwards in the
+street, to the surprise of the groom in the tilbury by his side, or
+the comrade riding with him in Rotten Row. Her words were oracles to
+him, her smallest actions marked by an infallible grace and wisdom.
+"How she sings,--how she paints," thought he.  "How she rode that
+kicking mare at Queen's Crawley!"  And he would say to her in
+confidential moments, "By Jove, Beck, you're fit to be Commander-in-
+Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury, by Jove."  Is his case a rare
+one? and don't we see every day in the world many an honest Hercules
+at the apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons
+prostrate in Delilah's lap?
+
+When, then, Becky told him that the great crisis was near, and the
+time for action had arrived, Rawdon expressed himself as ready to
+act under her orders, as he would be to charge with his troop at the
+command of his colonel.  There was no need for him to put his letter
+into the third volume of Porteus.  Rebecca easily found a means to
+get rid of Briggs, her companion, and met her faithful friend in
+"the usual place" on the next day.  She had thought over matters at
+night, and communicated to Rawdon the result of her determinations.
+He agreed, of course, to everything; was quite sure that it was all
+right: that what she proposed was best; that Miss Crawley would
+infallibly relent, or "come round," as he said, after a time.  Had
+Rebecca's resolutions been entirely different, he would have
+followed them as implicitly.  "You have head enough for both of us,
+Beck," said he.  "You're sure to get us out of the scrape.  I never
+saw your equal, and I've met with some clippers in my time too." And
+with this simple confession of faith, the love-stricken dragoon left
+her to execute his part of the project which she had formed for the
+pair.
+
+It consisted simply in the hiring of quiet lodgings at Brompton, or
+in the neighbourhood of the barracks, for Captain and Mrs. Crawley.
+For Rebecca had determined, and very prudently, we think, to fly.
+Rawdon was only too happy at her resolve; he had been entreating her
+to take this measure any time for weeks past.  He pranced off to
+engage the lodgings with all the impetuosity of love.  He agreed to
+pay two guineas a week so readily, that the landlady regretted she
+had asked him so little. He ordered in a piano, and half a nursery-
+house full of flowers: and a heap of good things.  As for shawls,
+kid gloves, silk stockings, gold French watches, bracelets and
+perfumery, he sent them in with the profusion of blind love and
+unbounded credit.  And having relieved his mind by this outpouring
+of generosity, he went and dined nervously at the club, waiting
+until the great moment of his life should come.
+
+ The occurrences of the previous day; the admirable conduct of
+Rebecca in refusing an offer so advantageous to her, the secret
+unhappiness preying upon her, the sweetness and silence with which
+she bore her affliction, made Miss Crawley much more tender than
+usual.  An event of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a
+proposal, thrills through a whole household of women, and sets all
+their hysterical sympathies at work.  As an observer of human
+nature, I regularly frequent St. George's, Hanover Square, during
+the genteel marriage season; and though I have never seen the
+bridegroom's male friends give way to tears, or the beadles and
+officiating clergy any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon
+to see women who are not in the least concerned in the operations
+going on--old ladies who are long past marrying, stout middle-aged
+females with plenty of sons and daughters, let alone pretty young
+creatures in pink bonnets, who are on their promotion, and may
+naturally take an interest in the ceremony--I say it is quite common
+to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their
+little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs; and
+heaving, old and young, with emotion.  When my friend, the
+fashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely Lady Belgravia Green
+Parker, the excitement was so general that even the little snuffy
+old pew-opener who let me into the seat was in tears.  And
+wherefore? I inquired of my own soul: she was not going to be
+married.
+
+Miss Crawley and Briggs in a word, after the affair of Sir Pitt,
+indulged in the utmost luxury of sentiment, and Rebecca became an
+object of the most tender interest to them.  In her absence Miss
+Crawley solaced herself with the most sentimental of the novels in
+her library.  Little Sharp, with her secret griefs, was the heroine
+of the day.
+
+That night Rebecca sang more sweetly and talked more pleasantly than
+she had ever been heard to do in Park Lane.  She twined herself
+round the heart of Miss Crawley. She spoke lightly and laughingly of
+Sir Pitt's proposal, ridiculed it as the foolish fancy of an old
+man; and her eyes filled with tears, and Briggs's heart with
+unutterable pangs of defeat, as she said she desired no other lot
+than to remain for ever with her dear benefactress.  "My dear little
+creature," the old lady said, "I don't intend to let you stir for
+years, that you may depend upon it.  As for going back to that
+odious brother of mine after what has passed, it is out of the
+question.  Here you stay with me and Briggs.  Briggs wants to go to
+see her relations very often.  Briggs, you may go when you like.
+But as for you, my dear, you must stay and take care of the old
+woman."
+
+If Rawdon Crawley had been then and there present, instead of being
+at the club nervously drinking claret, the pair might have gone down
+on their knees before the old spinster, avowed all, and been
+forgiven in a twinkling. But that good chance was denied to the
+young couple, doubtless in order that this story might be written,
+in which numbers of their wonderful adventures are narrated--
+adventures which could never have occurred to them if they had been
+housed and sheltered under the comfortable uninteresting forgiveness
+of Miss Crawley.
+
+Under Mrs. Firkin's orders, in the Park Lane establishment, was a
+young woman from Hampshire, whose business it was, among other
+duties, to knock at Miss Sharp's door with that jug of hot water
+which Firkin would rather have perished than have presented to the
+intruder.  This girl, bred on the family estate, had a brother in
+Captain Crawley's troop, and if the truth were known, I daresay it
+would come out that she was aware of certain arrangements, which
+have a great deal to do with this history. At any rate she purchased
+a yellow shawl, a pair of green boots, and a light blue hat with a
+red feather with three guineas which Rebecca gave her, and as little
+Sharp was by no means too liberal with her money, no doubt it was
+for services rendered that Betty Martin was so bribed.
+
+On the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to Miss Sharp, the
+sun rose as usual, and at the usual hour Betty Martin, the upstairs
+maid, knocked at the door of the governess's bedchamber.
+
+No answer was returned, and she knocked again.  Silence was still
+uninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water, opened the door and
+entered the chamber.
+
+The little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as on the day
+previous, when Betty's own hands had helped to make it.  Two little
+trunks were corded in one end of the room; and on the table before
+the window--on the pincushion the great fat pincushion lined with
+pink inside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap--lay a letter.  It
+had been reposing there probably all night.
+
+Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were afraid to awake
+it--looked at it, and round the room, with an air of great wonder
+and satisfaction; took up the letter, and grinned intensely as she
+turned it round and over, and finally carried it into Miss Briggs's
+room below.
+
+How could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs, I should
+like to know?  All the schooling Betty had had was at Mrs. Bute
+Crawley's Sunday school, and she could no more read writing than
+Hebrew.
+
+"La, Miss Briggs," the girl exclaimed, "O, Miss, something must have
+happened--there's nobody in Miss Sharp's room; the bed ain't been
+slep in, and she've run away, and left this letter for you, Miss."
+
+"WHAT!" cries Briggs, dropping her comb, the thin wisp of faded hair
+falling over her shoulders; "an elopement! Miss Sharp a fugitive!
+What, what is this?" and she eagerly broke the neat seal, and, as
+they say, "devoured the contents" of the letter addressed to her.
+
+Dear Miss Briggs [the refugee wrote], the kindest heart in the
+world, as yours is, will pity and sympathise with me and excuse me.
+With tears, and prayers, and blessings, I leave the home where the
+poor orphan has ever met with kindness and affection.  Claims even
+superior to those of my benefactress call me hence.  I go to my
+duty--to my HUSBAND.  Yes, I am married.  My husband COMMANDS me to
+seek the HUMBLE HOME which we call ours.  Dearest Miss Briggs, break
+the news as your delicate sympathy will know how to do it--to my
+dear, my beloved friend and benefactress.  Tell her, ere I went, I
+shed tears on her dear pillow--that pillow that I have so often
+soothed in sickness--that I long AGAIN to watch--Oh, with what joy
+shall I return to dear Park Lane! How I tremble for the answer which
+is to SEAL MY FATE! When Sir Pitt deigned to offer me his hand, an
+honour of which my beloved Miss Crawley said I was DESERVING (my
+blessings go with her for judging the poor orphan worthy to be HER
+SISTER!) I told Sir Pitt that I was already A WIFE.  Even he forgave
+me.  But my courage failed me, when I should have told him all--that
+I could not be his wife, for I WAS HIS DAUGHTER!  I am wedded to the
+best and most generous of men--Miss Crawley's Rawdon is MY Rawdon.
+At his COMMAND I open my lips, and follow him to our humble home, as
+I would THROUGH THE WORLD.  O, my excellent and kind friend,
+intercede with my Rawdon's beloved aunt for him and the poor girl to
+whom all HIS NOBLE RACE have shown such UNPARALLELED AFFECTION.  Ask
+Miss Crawley to receive HER CHILDREN.  I can say no more, but
+blessings, blessings on all in the dear house I leave, prays
+
+Your affectionate and GRATEFUL
+Rebecca Crawley.
+Midnight.
+
+Just as Briggs had finished reading this affecting and interesting
+document, which reinstated her in her position as first confidante
+of Miss Crawley, Mrs. Firkin entered the room.  "Here's Mrs. Bute
+Crawley just arrived by the mail from Hampshire, and wants some tea;
+will you come down and make breakfast, Miss?"
+
+And to the surprise of Firkin, clasping her dressing-gown around
+her, the wisp of hair floating dishevelled behind her, the little
+curl-papers still sticking in bunches round her forehead, Briggs
+sailed down to Mrs. Bute with the letter in her hand containing the
+wonderful news.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Firkin," gasped Betty, "sech a business.  Miss Sharp have
+a gone and run away with the Capting, and they're off to Gretney
+Green!"  We would devote a chapter to describe the emotions of Mrs.
+Firkin, did not the passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler
+muse.
+
+When Mrs. Bute Crawley, numbed with midnight travelling, and warming
+herself at the newly crackling parlour fire, heard from Miss Briggs
+the intelligence of the clandestine marriage, she declared it was
+quite providential that she should have arrived at such a time to
+assist poor dear Miss Crawley in supporting the shock--that Rebecca
+was an artful little hussy of whom she had always had her
+suspicions; and that as for Rawdon Crawley, she never could account
+for his aunt's infatuation regarding him, and had long considered
+him a profligate, lost, and abandoned being.  And this awful
+conduct, Mrs. Bute said, will have at least this good effect, it
+will open poor dear Miss Crawley's eyes to the real character of
+this wicked man.  Then Mrs. Bute had a comfortable hot toast and
+tea; and as there was a vacant room in the house now, there was no
+need for her to remain at the Gloster Coffee House where the
+Portsmouth mail had set her down, and whence she ordered Mr. Bowls's
+aide-de-camp the footman to bring away her trunks.
+
+Miss Crawley, be it known, did not leave her room until near noon--
+taking chocolate in bed in the morning, while Becky Sharp read the
+Morning Post to her, or otherwise amusing herself or dawdling.  The
+conspirators below agreed that they would spare the dear lady's
+feelings until she appeared in her drawing-room: meanwhile it was
+announced to her that Mrs. Bute Crawley had come up from Hampshire
+by the mail, was staying at the Gloster, sent her love to Miss
+Crawley, and asked for breakfast with Miss Briggs.  The arrival of
+Mrs. Bute, which would not have caused any extreme delight at
+another period, was hailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being
+pleased at the notion of a gossip with her sister-in-law regarding
+the late Lady Crawley, the funeral arrangements pending, and Sir
+Pitt's abrupt proposal to Rebecca.
+
+It was not until the old lady was fairly ensconced in her usual arm-
+chair in the drawing-room, and the preliminary embraces and
+inquiries had taken place between the ladies, that the conspirators
+thought it advisable to submit her to the operation.  Who has not
+admired the artifices and delicate approaches with which women
+"prepare" their friends for bad news?  Miss Crawley's two friends
+made such an apparatus of mystery before they broke the intelligence
+to her, that they worked her up to the necessary degree of doubt and
+alarm.
+
+"And she refused Sir Pitt, my dear, dear Miss Crawley, prepare
+yourself for it," Mrs. Bute said, "because--because she couldn't
+help herself."
+
+"Of course there was a reason," Miss Crawley answered. "She liked
+somebody else.  I told Briggs so yesterday."
+
+"LIKES somebody else!" Briggs gasped.  "O my dear friend, she is
+married already."
+
+"Married already," Mrs. Bute chimed in; and both sate with clasped
+hands looking from each other at their victim.
+
+"Send her to me, the instant she comes in.  The little sly wretch:
+how dared she not tell me?" cried out Miss Crawley.
+
+"She won't come in soon.  Prepare yourself, dear friend--she's gone
+out for a long time--she's--she's gone altogether."
+
+"Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate? Send for her and
+have her back; I desire that she come back," the old lady said.
+
+"She decamped last night, Ma'am," cried Mrs. Bute.
+
+"She left a letter for me," Briggs exclaimed.  "She's married to--"
+
+"Prepare her, for heaven's sake.  Don't torture her, my dear Miss
+Briggs."
+
+"She's married to whom?" cries the spinster in a nervous fury.
+
+"To--to a relation of--"
+
+"She refused Sir Pitt," cried the victim.  "Speak at once. Don't
+drive me mad."
+
+"O Ma'am--prepare her, Miss Briggs--she's married to Rawdon
+Crawley."
+
+"Rawdon married Rebecca--governess--nobod-- Get out of my house, you
+fool, you idiot--you stupid old Briggs--how dare you? You're in the
+plot--you made him marry, thinking that I'd leave my money from him--
+you did, Martha," the poor old lady screamed in hysteric sentences.
+
+"I, Ma'am, ask a member of this family to marry a drawing-master's
+daughter?"
+
+"Her mother was a Montmorency," cried out the old lady, pulling at
+the bell with all her might.
+
+"Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on the stage or
+worse herself," said Mrs. Bute.
+
+Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint.  They
+were forced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted.
+One fit of hysterics succeeded another.  The doctor was sent for--
+the apothecary arrived. Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her
+bedside.  "Her relations ought to be round about her," that amiable
+woman said.
+
+She had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a new person
+arrived to whom it was also necessary to break the news.  This was
+Sir Pitt.  "Where's Becky?" he said, coming in.  "Where's her traps?
+She's coming with me to Queen's Crawley."
+
+"Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence regarding her
+surreptitious union?" Briggs asked.
+
+"What's that to me?" Sir Pitt asked.  "I know she's married.  That
+makes no odds.  Tell her to come down at once, and not keep me."
+
+"Are you not aware, sir," Miss Briggs asked, "that she has left our
+roof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is nearly killed by the
+intelligence of Captain Rawdon's union with her?"
+
+When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married to his son, he
+broke out into a fury of language, which it would do no good to
+repeat in this place, as indeed it sent poor Briggs shuddering out
+of the room; and with her we will shut the door upon the figure of
+the frenzied old man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled
+desire.
+
+One day after he went to Queen's Crawley, he burst like a madman
+into the room she had used when there--dashed open her boxes with
+his foot, and flung about her papers, clothes, and other relics.
+Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter, took some of them.  The
+children dressed themselves and acted plays in the others.  It was
+but a few days after the poor mother had gone to her lonely burying-
+place; and was laid, unwept and disregarded, in a vault full of
+strangers.
+
+"Suppose the old lady doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little
+wife, as they sate together in the snug little Brompton lodgings.
+She had been trying the new piano all the morning.  The new gloves
+fitted her to a nicety; the new shawls became her wonderfully; the
+new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at
+her waist; "suppose she don't come round, eh, Becky?"
+
+"I'LL make your fortune," she said; and Delilah patted Samson's
+cheek.
+
+"You can do anything," he said, kissing the little hand. "By Jove
+you can; and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter, and dine, by
+Jove."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano
+
+
+If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and
+Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the
+strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle
+and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at
+one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised
+every day in the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which
+the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity.
+There are very few London people, as I fancy, who have not attended
+at these meetings, and all with a taste for moralizing must have
+thought, with a sensation and interest not a little startling and
+queer, of the day when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown
+will sell by the orders of Diogenes' assignees, or will be
+instructed by the executors, to offer to public competition, the
+library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar of wines of
+Epicurus deceased.
+
+Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian, as he
+witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend,
+can't but feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives's remains
+are in the family vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription
+veraciously commemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir,
+who is disposing of his goods.  What guest at Dives's table can pass
+the familiar house without a sigh?--the familiar house of which
+the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven o'clock, of which
+the hall-doors opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants,
+as you passed up the comfortable stair, sounded your name from
+landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old
+Dives welcomed his friends!  What a number of them he had; and what
+a noble way of entertaining them.  How witty people used to be here
+who were morose when they got out of the door; and how courteous and
+friendly men who slandered and hated each other everywhere else!  He
+was pompous, but with such a cook what would one not swallow? he was
+rather dull, perhaps, but would not such wine make any conversation
+pleasant?  We must get some of his Burgundy at any price, the
+mourners cry at his club.  "I got this box at old Dives's sale,"
+Pincher says, handing it round, "one of Louis XV's mistresses--
+pretty thing, is it not?--sweet miniature," and they talk of the way
+in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune.
+
+How changed the house is, though!  The front is patched over with
+bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring
+capitals.  They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs
+window--a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps--the
+hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrust
+printed cards into your hand, and offer to bid.  Old women and
+amateurs have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-
+curtains, poking into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and
+clapping the wardrobe drawers to and fro. Enterprising young
+housekeepers are measuring the looking-glasses and hangings to see
+if they will suit the new menage (Snob will brag for years that he
+has purchased this or that at Dives's sale), and Mr. Hammerdown is
+sitting on the great mahogany dining-tables, in the dining-room
+below, waving the ivory hammer, and employing all the artifices of
+eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason, despair; shouting to his
+people; satirizing Mr. Davids for his sluggishness; inspiriting Mr.
+Moss into action; imploring, commanding, bellowing, until down comes
+the hammer like fate, and we pass to the next lot.  O Dives, who
+would ever have thought, as we sat round the broad table sparkling
+with plate and spotless linen, to have seen such a dish at the head
+of it as that roaring auctioneer?
+
+It was rather late in the sale.  The excellent drawing-room
+furniture by the best makers; the rare and famous wines selected,
+regardless of cost, and with the well-known taste of the purchaser;
+the rich and complete set of family plate had been sold on the
+previous days.  Certain of the best wines (which all had a great
+character among amateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased
+for his master, who knew them very well, by the butler of our friend
+John Osborne, Esquire, of Russell Square.  A small portion of the
+most useful articles of the plate had been bought by some young
+stockbrokers from the City.  And now the public being invited to the
+purchase of minor objects, it happened that the orator on the table
+was expatiating on the merits of a picture, which he sought to
+recommend to his audience: it was by no means so select or numerous
+a company as had attended the previous days of the auction.
+
+"No. 369," roared Mr. Hammerdown.  "Portrait of a gentleman on an
+elephant.  Who'll bid for the gentleman on the elephant?  Lift up
+the picture, Blowman, and let the company examine this lot." A long,
+pale, military-looking gentleman, seated demurely at the mahogany
+table, could not help grinning as this valuable lot was shown by Mr.
+Blowman.  "Turn the elephant to the Captain, Blowman.  What shall we
+say, sir, for the elephant?" but the Captain, blushing in a very
+hurried and discomfited manner, turned away his head.
+
+"Shall we say twenty guineas for this work of art?--fifteen, five,
+name your own price.  The gentleman without the elephant is worth
+five pound."
+
+"I wonder it ain't come down with him," said a professional wag,
+"he's anyhow a precious big one"; at which (for the elephant-rider
+was represented as of a very stout figure) there was a general
+giggle in the room.
+
+"Don't be trying to deprecate the value of the lot, Mr. Moss," Mr.
+Hammerdown said; "let the company examine it as a work of art--the
+attitude of the gallant animal quite according to natur'; the
+gentleman in a nankeen jacket, his gun in his hand, is going to the
+chase; in the distance a banyhann tree and a pagody, most likely
+resemblances of some interesting spot in our famous Eastern
+possessions.  How much for this lot? Come, gentlemen, don't keep me
+here all day."
+
+Some one bid five shillings, at which the military gentleman looked
+towards the quarter from which this splendid offer had come, and
+there saw another officer with a young lady on his arm, who both
+appeared to be highly amused with the scene, and to whom, finally,
+this lot was knocked down for half a guinea.  He at the table looked
+more surprised and discomposed than ever when he spied this pair,
+and his head sank into his military collar, and he turned his back
+upon them, so as to avoid them altogether.
+
+Of all the other articles which Mr. Hammerdown had the honour to
+offer for public competition that day it is not our purpose to make
+mention, save of one only, a little square piano, which came down
+from the upper regions of the house (the state grand piano having
+been disposed of previously); this the young lady tried with a rapid
+and skilful hand (making the officer blush and start again), and for
+it, when its turn came, her agent began to bid.
+
+But there was an opposition here.  The Hebrew aide-de-camp in the
+service of the officer at the table bid against the Hebrew gentleman
+employed by the elephant purchasers, and a brisk battle ensued over
+this little piano, the combatants being greatly encouraged by Mr.
+Hammerdown.
+
+At last, when the competition had been prolonged for some time, the
+elephant captain and lady desisted from the race; and the hammer
+coming down, the auctioneer said:--"Mr. Lewis, twenty-five," and Mr.
+Lewis's chief thus became the proprietor of the little square piano.
+Having effected the purchase, he sate up as if he was greatly
+relieved, and the unsuccessful competitors catching a glimpse of him
+at this moment, the lady said to her friend,
+
+"Why, Rawdon, it's Captain Dobbin."
+
+I suppose Becky was discontented with the new piano her husband had
+hired for her, or perhaps the proprietors of that instrument had
+fetched it away, declining farther credit, or perhaps she had a
+particular attachment for the one which she had just tried to
+purchase, recollecting it in old days, when she used to play upon
+it, in the little sitting-room of our dear Amelia Sedley.
+
+The sale was at the old house in Russell Square, where we passed
+some evenings together at the beginning of this story.  Good old
+John Sedley was a ruined man.  His name had been proclaimed as a
+defaulter on the Stock Exchange, and his bankruptcy and commercial
+extermination had followed.  Mr. Osborne's butler came to buy some
+of the famous port wine to transfer to the cellars over the way. As
+for one dozen well-manufactured silver spoons and forks at per oz.,
+and one dozen dessert ditto ditto, there were three young
+stockbrokers (Messrs. Dale, Spiggot, and Dale, of Threadneedle
+Street, indeed), who, having had dealings with the old man, and
+kindnesses from him in days when he was kind to everybody with whom
+he dealt, sent this little spar out of the wreck with their love to
+good Mrs. Sedley; and with respect to the piano, as it had been
+Amelia's, and as she might miss it and want one now, and as Captain
+William Dobbin could no more play upon it than he could dance on the
+tight rope, it is probable that he did not purchase the instrument
+for his own use.
+
+In a word, it arrived that evening at a wonderful small cottage in a
+street leading from the Fulham Road--one of those streets which have
+the finest romantic names--(this was called St. Adelaide Villas,
+Anna-Maria Road West), where the houses look like baby-houses; where
+the people, looking out of the first-floor windows, must infallibly,
+as you think, sit with their feet in the parlours; where the shrubs
+in the little gardens in front bloom with a perennial display of
+little children's pinafores, little red socks, caps, &c. (polyandria
+polygynia); whence you hear the sound of jingling spinets and women
+singing; where little porter pots hang on the railings sunning
+themselves; whither of evenings you see City clerks padding wearily:
+here it was that Mr. Clapp, the clerk of Mr. Sedley, had his
+domicile, and in this asylum the good old gentleman hid his head
+with his wife and daughter when the crash came.
+
+Jos Sedley had acted as a man of his disposition would, when the
+announcement of the family misfortune reached him.  He did not come
+to London, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for
+whatever money was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old
+parents had no present poverty to fear.  This done, Jos went on at
+the boarding-house at Cheltenham pretty much as before.  He drove
+his curricle; he drank his claret; he played his rubber; he told his
+Indian stories, and the Irish widow consoled and flattered him as
+usual. His present of money, needful as it was, made little
+impression on his parents; and I have heard Amelia say that the
+first day on which she saw her father lift up his head after the
+failure was on the receipt of the packet of forks and spoons with
+the young stockbrokers' love, over which he burst out crying like a
+child, being greatly more affected than even his wife, to whom the
+present was addressed.  Edward Dale, the junior of the house, who
+purchased the spoons for the firm, was, in fact, very sweet upon
+Amelia, and offered for her in spite of all. He married Miss Louisa
+Cutts (daughter of Higham and Cutts, the eminent cornfactors) with a
+handsome fortune in 1820; and is now living in splendour, and with a
+numerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill.  But we must
+not let the recollections of this good fellow cause us to diverge
+from the principal history.
+
+I hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs.
+Crawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a
+visit to so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the
+family whom they proposed to honour with a visit were not merely out
+of fashion, but out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no
+possible manner.  Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the
+comfortable old house where she had met with no small kindness,
+ransacked by brokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures
+given up to public desecration and plunder.  A month after her
+flight, she had bethought her of Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse-
+laugh, had expressed a perfect willingness to see young George
+Osborne again.  "He's a very agreeable acquaintance, Beck," the wag
+added.  "I'd like to sell him another horse, Beck.  I'd like to play
+a few more games at billiards with him.  He'd be what I call useful
+just now, Mrs. C.--ha, ha!" by which sort of speech it is not to be
+supposed that Rawdon Crawley had a deliberate desire to cheat Mr.
+Osborne at play, but only wished to take that fair advantage of him
+which almost every sporting gentleman in Vanity Fair considers to be
+his due from his neighbour.
+
+The old aunt was long in "coming-to." A month had elapsed.  Rawdon
+was denied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a
+lodgment in the house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back
+unopened.  Miss Crawley never stirred out--she was unwell--and Mrs.
+Bute remained still and never left her.  Crawley and his wife both
+of them augured evil from the continued presence of Mrs. Bute.
+
+"Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us
+together at Queen's Crawley," Rawdon said.
+
+"What an artful little woman!" ejaculated Rebecca.
+
+"Well, I don't regret it, if you don't," the Captain cried, still in
+an amorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by
+way of reply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous
+confidence of her husband.
+
+"If he had but a little more brains," she thought to herself, "I
+might make something of him"; but she never let him perceive the
+opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to
+his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes;
+felt the greatest interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had
+come down, and Bob Martingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-
+house, and Tom Cinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase.
+When he came home she was alert and happy: when he went out she
+pressed him to go: when he stayed at home, she played and sang for
+him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his
+slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort.  The best of women (I
+have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites.  We don't know how
+much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most
+artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles which they
+wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean
+in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of
+female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dulness of a stupid
+husband, or coax the fury of a savage one?  We accept this amiable
+slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty
+treachery truth.  A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and
+Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in a
+different way.
+
+By these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley, found
+himself converted into a very happy and submissive married man.  His
+former haunts knew him not. They asked about him once or twice at
+his clubs, but did not miss him much: in those booths of Vanity Fair
+people seldom do miss each other.  His secluded wife ever smiling
+and cheerful, his little comfortable lodgings, snug meals, and
+homely evenings, had all the charms of novelty and secrecy.  The
+marriage was not yet declared to the world, or published in the
+Morning Post.  All his creditors would have come rushing on him in a
+body, had they known that he was united to a woman without fortune.
+"My relations won't cry fie upon me," Becky said, with rather a
+bitter laugh; and she was quite contented to wait until the old aunt
+should be reconciled, before she claimed her place in society.  So
+she lived at Brompton, and meanwhile saw no one, or only those few
+of her husband's male companions who were admitted into her little
+dining-room.  These were all charmed with her.  The little dinners,
+the laughing and chatting, the music afterwards, delighted all who
+participated in these enjoyments.  Major Martingale never thought
+about asking to see the marriage licence, Captain Cinqbars was
+perfectly enchanted with her skill in making punch.  And young
+Lieutenant Spatterdash (who was fond of piquet, and whom Crawley
+would often invite) was evidently and quickly smitten by Mrs.
+Crawley; but her own circumspection and modesty never forsook her
+for a moment, and Crawley's reputation as a fire-eating and jealous
+warrior was a further and complete defence to his little wife.
+
+There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, who
+never have entered a lady's drawing-room; so that though Rawdon
+Crawley's marriage might be talked about in his county, where, of
+course, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or
+not heeded, or not talked about at all.  He lived comfortably on
+credit.  He had a large capital of debts, which laid out
+judiciously, will carry a man along for many years, and on which
+certain men about town contrive to live a hundred times better than
+even men with ready money can do.  Indeed who is there that walks
+London streets, but can point out a half-dozen of men riding by him
+splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into
+their carriages by tradesmen, denying themselves nothing, and living
+on who knows what?  We see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or
+darting in his brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on
+his miraculous plate.  "How did this begin," we say, "or where will
+it end?" "My dear fellow," I heard Jack once say, "I owe money in
+every capital in Europe."  The end must come some day, but in the
+meantime Jack thrives as much as ever; people are glad enough to
+shake him by the hand, ignore the little dark stories that are
+whispered every now and then against him, and pronounce him a good-
+natured, jovial, reckless fellow.
+
+Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman of
+this order.  Everything was plentiful in his house but ready money,
+of which their menage pretty early felt the want; and reading the
+Gazette one day, and coming upon the announcement of "Lieutenant G.
+Osborne to be Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges,"
+Rawdon uttered that sentiment regarding Amelia's lover, which ended
+in the visit to Russell Square.
+
+When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin
+at the sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had
+befallen Rebecca's old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and
+such information as they got was from a stray porter or broker at
+the auction.
+
+"Look at them with their hooked beaks," Becky said, getting into the
+buggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee.  "They're like
+vultures after a battle."
+
+"Don't know.  Never was in action, my dear.  Ask Martingale; he was
+in Spain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes."
+
+"He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley," Rebecca said; "I'm really
+sorry he's gone wrong."
+
+"O stockbrokers--bankrupts--used to it, you know," Rawdon replied,
+cutting a fly off the horse's ear.
+
+"I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon," the wife
+continued sentimentally.  "Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously
+dear for that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia,
+when she came from school.  It only cost five-and-thirty then."
+
+"What-d'-ye-call'em--'Osborne,' will cry off now, I suppose, since
+the family is smashed.  How cut up your pretty little friend will
+be; hey, Becky?"
+
+"I daresay she'll recover it," Becky said with a smile--and they
+drove on and talked about something else.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought
+
+
+Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous
+events and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history.
+When the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were
+flying from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn
+in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers
+of Notre Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a
+little corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might
+have thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those
+mighty wings would pass unobserved there?
+
+"Napoleon has landed at Cannes."  Such news might create a panic at
+Vienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into a
+corner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together,
+while Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of
+Londonderry, were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a
+young lady in Russell Square, before whose door the watchman sang
+the hours when she was asleep: who, if she strolled in the square,
+was guarded there by the railings and the beadle:  who, if she
+walked ever so short a distance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row,
+was followed by Black Sambo with an enormous cane:  who was always
+cared for, dressed, put to bed, and watched over by ever so many
+guardian angels, with and without wages?  Bon Dieu, I say, is it not
+hard that the fateful rush of the great Imperial struggle can't take
+place without affecting a poor little harmless girl of eighteen, who
+is occupied in billing and cooing, or working muslin collars in
+Russell Square?  You too, kindly, homely flower!--is the great
+roaring war tempest coming to sweep you down, here, although
+cowering under the shelter of Holborn?  Yes; Napoleon is flinging
+his last stake, and poor little Emmy Sedley's happiness forms,
+somehow, part of it.
+
+In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down with that
+fatal news.  All his speculations had of late gone wrong with the
+luckless old gentleman.  Ventures had failed; merchants had broken;
+funds had risen when he calculated they would fall.  What need to
+particularize? If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how
+quick and easy ruin is.  Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel.
+Everything seemed to go on as usual in the quiet, opulent house; the
+good-natured mistress pursuing, quite unsuspiciously, her bustling
+idleness, and daily easy avocations; the daughter absorbed still in
+one selfish, tender thought, and quite regardless of all the world
+besides, when that final crash came, under which the worthy family
+fell.
+
+One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party; the Osbornes
+had given one, and she must not be behindhand; John Sedley, who had
+come home very late from the City, sate silent at the chimney side,
+while his wife was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room
+ailing and low-spirited.  "She's not happy," the mother went on.
+"George Osborne neglects her.  I've no patience with the airs of
+those people.  The girls have not been in the house these three
+weeks; and George has been twice in town without coming.  Edward
+Dale saw him at the Opera.  Edward would marry her I'm sure: and
+there's Captain Dobbin who, I think, would--only I hate all army
+men.  Such a dandy as George has become.  With his military airs,
+indeed!  We must show some folks that we're as good as they.  Only
+give Edward Dale any encouragement, and you'll see.  We must have a
+party, Mr. S.  Why don't you speak, John?  Shall I say Tuesday
+fortnight? Why don't you answer? Good God, John, what has happened?"
+
+John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his wife, who ran to
+him.  He seized her in his arms, and said with a hasty voice, "We're
+ruined, Mary.  We've got the world to begin over again, dear.  It's
+best that you should know all, and at once."  As he spoke, he
+trembled in every limb, and almost fell.  He thought the news would
+have overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had never said a
+hard word.  But it was he that was the most moved, sudden as the
+shock was to her.  When he sank back into his seat, it was the wife
+that took the office of consoler.  She took his trembling hand, and
+kissed it, and put it round her neck: she called him her John--her
+dear John--her old man--her kind old man; she poured out a hundred
+words of incoherent love and tenderness; her faithful voice and
+simple caresses wrought this sad heart up to an inexpressible
+delight and anguish, and cheered and solaced his over-burdened soul.
+
+Only once in the course of the long night as they sate together, and
+poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and told the story of his
+losses and embarrassments--the treason of some of his oldest
+friends, the manly kindness of some, from whom he never could have
+expected it--in a general confession--only once did the faithful
+wife give way to emotion.
+
+"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she said.
+
+The father had forgotten the poor girl.  She was lying, awake and
+unhappy, overhead.  In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents,
+she was alone.  To how many people can any one tell all?  Who will
+be open where there is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those
+who never can understand?  Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary.  She
+had no confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything to
+confide.  She could not tell the old mother her doubts and cares;
+the would-be sisters seemed every day more strange to her.  And she
+had misgivings and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself,
+though she was always secretly brooding over them.
+
+Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George Osborne was
+worthy and faithful to her, though she knew otherwise.  How many a
+thing had she said, and got no echo from him.  How many suspicions
+of selfishness and indifference had she to encounter and obstinately
+overcome.  To whom could the poor little martyr tell these daily
+struggles and tortures?  Her hero himself only half understood her.
+She did not dare to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or
+to feel that she had given her heart away too soon.  Given once, the
+pure bashful maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too
+weak, too much woman to recall it.  We are Turks with the affections
+of our women; and have made them subscribe to our doctrine too.  We
+let their bodies go abroad liberally enough, with smiles and
+ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise them instead of veils and
+yakmaks.  But their souls must be seen by only one man, and they
+obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at home as our slaves--
+ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.
+
+So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart, when in the
+month of March, Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and
+Louis XVIII fled, and all Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell,
+and old John Sedley was ruined.
+
+We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker through those
+last pangs and agonies of ruin through which he passed before his
+commercial demise befell. They declared him at the Stock Exchange;
+he was absent from his house of business: his bills were protested:
+his act of bankruptcy formal.  The house and furniture of Russell
+Square were seized and sold up, and he and his family were thrust
+away, as we have seen, to hide their heads where they might.
+
+John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic establishment
+who have appeared now and anon in our pages and of whom he was now
+forced by poverty to take leave.  The wages of those worthy people
+were discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show who
+only owe in great sums--they were sorry to leave good places--but
+they did not break their hearts at parting from their adored master
+and mistress.  Amelia's maid was profuse in condolences, but went
+off quite resigned to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the
+town.  Black Sambo, with the infatuation of his profession,
+determined on setting up a public-house.  Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop
+indeed, who had seen the birth of Jos and Amelia, and the wooing of
+John Sedley and his wife, was for staying by them without wages,
+having amassed a considerable sum in their service: and she
+accompanied the fallen people into their new and humble place of
+refuge, where she tended them and grumbled against them for a while.
+
+Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors which
+now ensued, and harassed the feelings of the humiliated old
+gentleman so severely, that in six weeks he oldened more than he had
+done for fifteen years before--the most determined and obstinate
+seemed to be John Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John
+Osborne, whom he had set up in life--who was under a hundred
+obligations to him--and whose son was to marry Sedley's daughter.
+Any one of these circumstances would account for the bitterness of
+Osborne's opposition.
+
+When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another,
+with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it
+were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger
+would be.  To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude
+in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime.  It
+is not that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a
+speculation--no, no--it is that your partner has led you into it by
+the basest treachery and with the most sinister motives.  From a
+mere sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the
+fallen man is a villain--otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch
+himself.
+
+And as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined
+to be severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed
+are altogether honest, very likely.  They conceal something; they
+exaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the real state of
+affairs; say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless,
+keep a smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of
+bankruptcy--are ready to lay hold of any pretext for delay or of any
+money, so as to stave off the inevitable ruin a few days longer.
+"Down with such dishonesty," says the creditor in triumph, and
+reviles his sinking enemy.  "You fool, why do you catch at a straw?"
+calm good sense says to the man that is drowning.  "You villain, why
+do you shrink from plunging into the irretrievable Gazette?" says
+prosperity to the poor devil battling in that black gulf.  Who has
+not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and
+honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they
+fall out on money matters? Everybody does it.  Everybody is right, I
+suppose, and the world is a rogue.
+
+Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad
+and irritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated.
+Finally, he had to break off the match between Sedley's daughter and
+his son; and as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's
+happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was necessary
+to show the strongest reasons for the rupture, and for John Osborne
+to prove John Sedley to be a very bad character indeed.
+
+At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself with a
+savageness and scorn towards Sedley, which almost succeeded in
+breaking the heart of that ruined bankrupt man.  On George's
+intercourse with Amelia he put an instant veto--menacing the youth
+with maledictions if he broke his commands, and vilipending the poor
+innocent girl as the basest and most artful of vixens. One of the
+great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and
+believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be
+consistent.
+
+When the great crash came--the announcement of ruin, and the
+departure from Russell Square, and the declaration that all was over
+between her and George--all over between her and love, her and
+happiness, her and faith in the world--a brutal letter from John
+Osborne told her in a few curt lines that her father's conduct had
+been of such a nature that all engagements between the families were
+at an end--when the final award came, it did not shock her so much
+as her parents, as her mother rather expected (for John Sedley
+himself was entirely prostrate in the ruins of his own affairs and
+shattered honour).  Amelia took the news very palely and calmly. It
+was only the confirmation of the dark presages which had long gone
+before.  It was the mere reading of the sentence--of the crime she
+had long ago been guilty--the crime of loving wrongly, too
+violently, against reason. She told no more of her thoughts now than
+she had before.  She seemed scarcely more unhappy now when convinced
+all hope was over, than before when she felt but dared not confess
+that it was gone.  So she changed from the large house to the small
+one without any mark or difference; remained in her little room for
+the most part; pined silently; and died away day by day.  I do not
+mean to say that all females are so.  My dear Miss Bullock, I do not
+think your heart would break in this way.  You are a strong-minded
+young woman with proper principles. I do not venture to say that
+mine would; it has suffered, and, it must be confessed, survived.
+But there are some souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, and
+delicate, and tender.
+
+Whenever old John Sedley thought of the affair between George and
+Amelia, or alluded to it, it was with bitterness almost as great as
+Mr. Osborne himself had shown.  He cursed Osborne and his family as
+heartless, wicked, and ungrateful.  No power on earth, he swore,
+would induce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain,
+and he ordered Emmy to banish George from her mind, and to return
+all the presents and letters which she had ever had from him.
+
+She promised acquiescence, and tried to obey.  She put up the two or
+three trinkets: and, as for the letters, she drew them out of the
+place where she kept them; and read them over--as if she did not
+know them by heart already: but she could not part with them.  That
+effort was too much for her; she placed them back in her bosom
+again--as you have seen a woman nurse a child that is dead.  Young
+Amelia felt that she would die or lose her senses outright, if torn
+away from this last consolation. How she used to blush and lighten
+up when those letters came!  How she used to trip away with a
+beating heart, so that she might read unseen!  If they were cold,
+yet how perversely this fond little soul interpreted them into
+warmth.  If they were short or selfish, what excuses she found for
+the writer!
+
+It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded.
+She lived in her past life--every letter seemed to recall some
+circumstance of it.  How well she remembered them all!  His looks
+and tones, his dress, what he said and how--these relics and
+remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the
+world. And the business of her life, was--to watch the corpse of
+Love.
+
+To death she looked with inexpressible longing.  Then, she thought,
+I shall always be able to follow him.  I am not praising her conduct
+or setting her up as a model for Miss Bullock to imitate.  Miss B.
+knows how to regulate her feelings better than this poor little
+creature.  Miss B. would never have committed herself as that
+imprudent Amelia had done; pledged her love irretrievably; confessed
+her heart away, and got back nothing--only a brittle promise which
+was snapt and worthless in a moment.  A long engagement is a
+partnership which one party is free to keep or to break, but which
+involves all the capital of the other.
+
+Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage.  Be shy of
+loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still),
+feel very little.  See the consequences of being prematurely honest
+and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody.  Get
+yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the
+bridesmaids and confidantes.  At any rate, never have any feelings
+which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you
+cannot at any required moment command and withdraw.  That is the way
+to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity
+Fair.
+
+If Amelia could have heard the comments regarding her which were
+made in the circle from which her father's ruin had just driven her,
+she would have seen what her own crimes were, and how entirely her
+character was jeopardised.  Such criminal imprudence Mrs. Smith
+never knew of; such horrid familiarities Mrs. Brown had always
+condemned, and the end might be a warning to HER daughters.
+"Captain Osborne, of course, could not marry a bankrupt's daughter,"
+the Misses Dobbin said.  "It was quite enough to have been swindled
+by the father.  As for that little Amelia, her folly had really
+passed all--"
+
+"All what?" Captain Dobbin roared out.  "Haven't they been engaged
+ever since they were children?  Wasn't it as good as a marriage?
+Dare any soul on earth breathe a word against the sweetest, the
+purest, the tenderest, the most angelical of young women?"
+
+"La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with US.  We're not men.  We
+can't fight you," Miss Jane said.  "We've said nothing against Miss
+Sedley: but that her conduct throughout was MOST IMPRUDENT, not to
+call it by any worse name; and that her parents are people who
+certainly merit their misfortunes."
+
+"Hadn't you better, now that Miss Sedley is free, propose for her
+yourself, William?" Miss Ann asked sarcastically.  "It would be a
+most eligible family connection.  He!  he!"
+
+"I marry her!" Dobbin said, blushing very much, and talking quick.
+"If you are so ready, young ladies, to chop and change, do you
+suppose that she is?  Laugh and sneer at that angel.  She can't hear
+it; and she's miserable and unfortunate, and deserves to be laughed
+at.  Go on joking, Ann.  You're the wit of the family, and the
+others like to hear it."
+
+"I must tell you again we're not in a barrack, William," Miss Ann
+remarked.
+
+"In a barrack, by Jove--I wish anybody in a barrack would say what
+you do," cried out this uproused British lion.  "I should like to
+hear a man breathe a word against her, by Jupiter.  But men don't
+talk in this way, Ann: it's only women, who get together and hiss,
+and shriek, and cackle.  There, get away--don't begin to cry.  I
+only said you were a couple of geese," Will Dobbin said, perceiving
+Miss Ann's pink eyes were beginning to moisten as usual.  "Well,
+you're not geese, you're swans--anything you like, only do, do leave
+Miss Sedley alone."
+
+Anything like William's infatuation about that silly little
+flirting, ogling thing was never known, the mamma and sisters agreed
+together in thinking: and they trembled lest, her engagement being
+off with Osborne, she should take up immediately her other admirer
+and Captain. In which forebodings these worthy young women no doubt
+judged according to the best of their experience; or rather (for as
+yet they had had no opportunities of marrying or of jilting)
+according to their own notions of right and wrong.
+
+"It is a mercy, Mamma, that the regiment is ordered abroad," the
+girls said.  "THIS danger, at any rate, is spared our brother."
+
+Such, indeed, was the fact; and so it is that the French Emperor
+comes in to perform a part in this domestic comedy of Vanity Fair
+which we are now playing, and which would never have been enacted
+without the intervention of this august mute personage.  It was he
+that ruined the Bourbons and Mr. John Sedley.  It was he whose
+arrival in his capital called up all France in arms to defend him
+there; and all Europe to oust him. While the French nation and army
+were swearing fidelity round the eagles in the Champ de Mars, four
+mighty European hosts were getting in motion for the great chasse a
+l'aigle; and one of these was a British army, of which two heroes of
+ours, Captain Dobbin and Captain Osborne, formed a portion.
+
+The news of Napoleon's escape and landing was received by the
+gallant --th with a fiery delight and enthusiasm, which everybody can
+understand who knows that famous corps.  From the colonel to the
+smallest drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope and
+ambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor as for a
+personal kindness in coming to disturb the peace of Europe.  Now was
+the time the --th had so long panted for, to show their comrades in
+arms that they could fight as well as the Peninsular veterans, and
+that all the pluck and valour of the --th had not been killed by the
+West Indies and the yellow fever.  Stubble and Spooney looked to get
+their companies without purchase. Before the end of the campaign
+(which she resolved to share), Mrs. Major O'Dowd hoped to write
+herself Mrs. Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  Our two friends (Dobbin and
+Osborne) were quite as much excited as the rest: and each in his
+way--Mr. Dobbin very quietly, Mr. Osborne very loudly and
+energetically--was bent upon doing his duty, and gaining his share
+of honour and distinction.
+
+The agitation thrilling through the country and army in consequence
+of this news was so great, that private matters were little heeded:
+and hence probably George Osborne, just gazetted to his company,
+busy with preparations for the march, which must come inevitably,
+and panting for further promotion--was not so much affected by other
+incidents which would have interested him at a more quiet period.
+He was not, it must be confessed, very much cast down by good old
+Mr. Sedley's catastrophe. He tried his new uniform, which became him
+very handsomely, on the day when the first meeting of the creditors
+of the unfortunate gentleman took place. His father told him of the
+wicked, rascally, shameful conduct of the bankrupt, reminded him of
+what he had said about Amelia, and that their connection was broken
+off for ever; and gave him that evening a good sum of money to pay
+for the new clothes and epaulets in which he looked so well.  Money
+was always useful to this free-handed young fellow, and he took it
+without many words. The bills were up in the Sedley house, where he
+had passed so many, many happy hours.  He could see them as he
+walked from home that night (to the Old Slaughters', where he put up
+when in town) shining white in the moon.  That comfortable home was
+shut, then, upon Amelia and her parents: where had they taken
+refuge? The thought of their ruin affected him not a little.  He was
+very melancholy that night in the coffee-room at the Slaughters';
+and drank a good deal, as his comrades remarked there.
+
+Dobbin came in presently, cautioned him about the drink, which he
+only took, he said, because he was deuced low; but when his friend
+began to put to him clumsy inquiries, and asked him for news in a
+significant manner, Osborne declined entering into conversation with
+him, avowing, however, that he was devilish disturbed and unhappy.
+
+Three days afterwards, Dobbin found Osborne in his room at the
+barracks--his head on the table, a number of papers about, the young
+Captain evidently in a state of great despondency.  "She--she's sent
+me back some things I gave her--some damned trinkets.  Look here!"
+There was a little packet directed in the well-known hand to Captain
+George Osborne, and some things lying about--a ring, a silver knife
+he had bought, as a boy, for her at a fair; a gold chain, and a
+locket with hair in it.  "It's all over," said he, with a groan of
+sickening remorse. "Look, Will, you may read it if you like."
+
+There was a little letter of a few lines, to which he pointed, which
+said:
+
+My papa has ordered me to return to you these presents, which you
+made in happier days to me; and I am to write to you for the last
+time.  I think, I know you feel as much as I do the blow which has
+come upon us. It is I that absolve you from an engagement which is
+impossible in our present misery.  I am sure you had no share in it,
+or in the cruel suspicions of Mr. Osborne, which are the hardest of
+all our griefs to bear.  Farewell. Farewell.  I pray God to
+strengthen me to bear this and other calamities, and to bless you
+always.     A.
+
+I shall often play upon the piano--your piano.  It was like you to
+send it.
+
+Dobbin was very soft-hearted.  The sight of women and children in
+pain always used to melt him.  The idea of Amelia broken-hearted and
+lonely tore that good-natured soul with anguish.  And he broke out
+into an emotion, which anybody who likes may consider unmanly. He
+swore that Amelia was an angel, to which Osborne said aye with all
+his heart.  He, too, had been reviewing the history of their lives--
+and had seen her from her childhood to her present age, so sweet, so
+innocent, so charmingly simple, and artlessly fond and tender.
+
+What a pang it was to lose all that: to have had it and not prized
+it!  A thousand homely scenes and recollections crowded on him--in
+which he always saw her good and beautiful.  And for himself, he
+blushed with remorse and shame, as the remembrance of his own
+selfishness and indifference contrasted with that perfect purity.
+For a while, glory, war, everything was forgotten, and the pair of
+friends talked about her only.
+
+"Where are they?" Osborne asked, after a long talk, and a long
+pause--and, in truth, with no little shame at thinking that he had
+taken no steps to follow her.  "Where are they? There's no address
+to the note."
+
+Dobbin knew.  He had not merely sent the piano; but had written a
+note to Mrs. Sedley, and asked permission to come and see her--and
+he had seen her, and Amelia too, yesterday, before he came down to
+Chatham; and, what is more, he had brought that farewell letter and
+packet which had so moved them.
+
+The good-natured fellow had found Mrs. Sedley only too willing to
+receive him, and greatly agitated by the arrival of the piano,
+which, as she conjectured, MUST have come from George, and was a
+signal of amity on his part.  Captain Dobbin did not correct this
+error of the worthy lady, but listened to all her story of
+complaints and misfortunes with great sympathy--condoled with her
+losses and privations, and agreed in reprehending the cruel conduct
+of Mr. Osborne towards his first benefactor. When she had eased her
+overflowing bosom somewhat, and poured forth many of her sorrows, he
+had the courage to ask actually to see Amelia, who was above in her
+room as usual, and whom her mother led trembling downstairs.
+
+Her appearance was so ghastly, and her look of despair so pathetic,
+that honest William Dobbin was frightened as he beheld it; and read
+the most fatal forebodings in that pale fixed face.  After sitting
+in his company a minute or two, she put the packet into his hand,
+and said, "Take this to Captain Osborne, if you please, and--and I
+hope he's quite well--and it was very kind of you to come and see
+us--and we like our new house very much. And I--I think I'll go
+upstairs, Mamma, for I'm not very strong." And with this, and a
+curtsey and a smile, the poor child went her way.  The mother, as
+she led her up, cast back looks of anguish towards Dobbin.  The good
+fellow wanted no such appeal.  He loved her himself too fondly for
+that.  Inexpressible grief, and pity, and terror pursued him, and he
+came away as if he was a criminal after seeing her.
+
+When Osborne heard that his friend had found her, he made hot and
+anxious inquiries regarding the poor child.  How was she?  How did
+she look?  What did she say?  His comrade took his hand, and looked
+him in the face.
+
+"George, she's dying," William Dobbin said--and could speak no more.
+
+There was a buxom Irish servant-girl, who performed all the duties
+of the little house where the Sedley family had found refuge: and
+this girl had in vain, on many previous days, striven to give Amelia
+aid or consolation. Emmy was much too sad to answer, or even to be
+aware of the attempts the other was making in her favour.
+
+Four hours after the talk between Dobbin and Osborne, this servant-
+maid came into Amelia's room, where she sate as usual, brooding
+silently over her letters--her little treasures.  The girl, smiling,
+and looking arch and happy, made many trials to attract poor Emmy's
+attention, who, however, took no heed of her.
+
+"Miss Emmy," said the girl.
+
+"I'm coming," Emmy said, not looking round.
+
+"There's a message," the maid went on.  "There's something--
+somebody--sure, here's a new letter for you--don't be reading them
+old ones any more." And she gave her a letter, which Emmy took, and
+read.
+
+"I must see you," the letter said.  "Dearest Emmy--dearest love--
+dearest wife, come to me."
+
+George and her mother were outside, waiting until she had read the
+letter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Miss Crawley at Nurse
+
+
+We have seen how Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, as soon as any event
+of importance to the Crawley family came to her knowledge, felt
+bound to communicate it to Mrs. Bute Crawley, at the Rectory; and
+have before mentioned how particularly kind and attentive that good-
+natured lady was to Miss Crawley's confidential servant. She had
+been a gracious friend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had
+secured the latter's good-will by a number of those attentions and
+promises, which cost so little in the making, and are yet so
+valuable and agreeable to the recipient.  Indeed every good
+economist and manager of a household must know how cheap and yet how
+amiable these professions are, and what a flavour they give to the
+most homely dish in life.  Who was the blundering idiot who said
+that "fine words butter no parsnips"?  Half the parsnips of society
+are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.  As the
+immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for a half-penny
+than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetables and
+meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasing
+phrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in
+the hands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits
+often sicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of
+fine words, and be always eager for more of the same food. Mrs. Bute
+had told Briggs and Firkin so often of the depth of her affection
+for them; and what she would do, if she had Miss Crawley's fortune,
+for friends so excellent and attached, that the ladies in question
+had the deepest regard for her; and felt as much gratitude and
+confidence as if Mrs. Bute had loaded them with the most expensive
+favours.
+
+Rawdon Crawley, on the other hand, like a selfish heavy dragoon as
+he was, never took the least trouble to conciliate his aunt's aides-
+de-camp, showed his contempt for the pair with entire frankness--
+made Firkin pull off his boots on one occasion--sent her out in the
+rain on ignominious messages--and if he gave her a guinea, flung it
+to her as if it were a box on the ear.  As his aunt, too, made a
+butt of Briggs, the Captain followed the example, and levelled his
+jokes at her--jokes about as delicate as a kick from his charger.
+Whereas, Mrs. Bute consulted her in matters of taste or difficulty,
+admired her poetry, and by a thousand acts of kindness and
+politeness, showed her appreciation of Briggs; and if she made
+Firkin a twopenny-halfpenny present, accompanied it with so many
+compliments, that the twopence-half-penny was transmuted into gold
+in the heart of the grateful waiting-maid, who, besides, was looking
+forwards quite contentedly to some prodigious benefit which must
+happen to her on the day when Mrs. Bute came into her fortune.
+
+The different conduct of these two people is pointed out
+respectfully to the attention of persons commencing the world.
+Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out
+your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his
+back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it
+again.  Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.  As Collingwood
+never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of
+his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through
+life.  An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious
+bit of timber.
+
+In a word, during Rawdon Crawley's prosperity, he was only obeyed
+with sulky acquiescence; when his disgrace came, there was nobody to
+help or pity him.  Whereas, when Mrs. Bute took the command at Miss
+Crawley's house, the garrison there were charmed to act under such a
+leader, expecting all sorts of promotion from her promises, her
+generosity, and her kind words.
+
+That he would consider himself beaten, after one defeat, and make no
+attempt to regain the position he had lost, Mrs. Bute Crawley never
+allowed herself to suppose. She knew Rebecca to be too clever and
+spirited and desperate a woman to submit without a struggle; and
+felt that she must prepare for that combat, and be incessantly
+watchful against assault; or mine, or surprise.
+
+In the first place, though she held the town, was she sure of the
+principal inhabitant?  Would Miss Crawley herself hold out; and had
+she not a secret longing to welcome back the ousted adversary?  The
+old lady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her.  Mrs. Bute could
+not disguise from herself the fact that none of her party could so
+contribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady.  "My girls'
+singing, after that little odious governess's, I know is
+unbearable," the candid Rector's wife owned to herself.  "She always
+used to go to sleep when Martha and Louisa played their duets.
+Jim's stiff college manners and poor dear Bute's talk about his dogs
+and horses always annoyed her.  If I took her to the Rectory, she
+would grow angry with us all, and fly, I know she would; and might
+fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutches again, and be the victim of
+that little viper of a Sharp.  Meanwhile, it is clear to me that she
+is exceedingly unwell, and cannot move for some weeks, at any rate;
+during which we must think of some plan to protect her from the arts
+of those unprincipled people."
+
+In the very best-of moments, if anybody told Miss Crawley that she
+was, or looked ill, the trembling old lady sent off for her doctor;
+and I daresay she was very unwell after the sudden family event,
+which might serve to shake stronger nerves than hers.  At least,
+Mrs. Bute thought it was her duty to inform the physician, and the
+apothecary, and the dame-de-compagnie, and the domestics, that Miss
+Crawley was in a most critical state, and that they were to act
+accordingly.  She had the street laid knee-deep with straw; and the
+knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate.  She insisted that the Doctor
+should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every
+two hours.  When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so
+sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her
+bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady
+eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-
+chair by the bedside.  They seemed to lighten in the dark (for she
+kept the curtains closed) as she moved about the room on velvet paws
+like a cat.  There Miss Crawley lay for days--ever so many days--Mr.
+Bute reading books of devotion to her: for nights, long nights,
+during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the night-light
+sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the stealthy
+apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling eyes, or
+the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened
+ceiling.  Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a
+regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim?  It has
+been said that when she was in health and good spirits, this
+venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about
+religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire,
+but when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most
+dreadful terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of
+the prostrate old sinner.
+
+Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of
+place in mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion
+of some novelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a
+sermon, when it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to
+witness.  But, without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in
+mind, that the bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which
+Vanity Fair exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer
+into private life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits
+and dismal repentances sometimes overcome him.  Recollection of the
+best ordained banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures.
+Reminiscences of the most becoming dresses and brilliant ball
+triumphs will go very little way to console faded beauties.  Perhaps
+statesmen, at a particular period of existence, are not much
+gratified at thinking over the most triumphant divisions; and the
+success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small account
+when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all
+of us must some day or other be speculating.  O brother wearers of
+motley!  Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and
+tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells?  This, dear friends and
+companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through the Fair,
+to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should all
+come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be
+perfectly miserable in private.
+
+"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders," Mrs. Bute
+Crawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under present
+circumstances, to this unhappy old lady!  He might make her repent
+of her shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her
+duty, and cast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself
+and his family; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear
+girls and the two boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every
+assistance which their relatives can give them."
+
+And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.
+Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper
+abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his
+uncle's wife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have
+served to condemn a whole regiment of young officers.  If a man has
+committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to
+point his errors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs.
+Bute showed a perfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's
+history.  She had all the particulars of that ugly quarrel with
+Captain Marker, in which Rawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in
+shooting the Captain.  She knew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose
+mamma had taken a house at Oxford, so that he might be educated
+there, and who had never touched a card in his life till he came to
+London, was perverted by Rawdon at the Cocoa-Tree, made helplessly
+tipsy by this abominable seducer and perverter of youth, and fleeced
+of four thousand pounds.  She described with the most vivid
+minuteness the agonies of the country families whom he had ruined--
+the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and poverty--the
+daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition.  She knew the poor
+tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean shifts and
+rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding
+falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts,
+and the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her
+sacrifices.  She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley;
+gave her the whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty
+as a Christian woman and mother of a family to do so; had not the
+smallest remorse or compunction for the victim whom her tongue was
+immolating; nay, very likely thought her act was quite meritorious,
+and plumed herself upon her resolute manner of performing it.  Yes,
+if a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's
+nobody like a relation to do the business.  And one is bound to own,
+regarding this unfortunate wretch of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere
+truth was enough to condemn him, and that all inventions of scandal
+were quite superfluous pains on his friends' parts.
+
+Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share of
+Mrs. Bute's kind inquiries.  This indefatigable pursuer of truth
+(having given strict orders that the door was to be denied to all
+emissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage,
+and drove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House,
+Chiswick Mall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of
+Captain Rawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got
+sundry strange particulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and
+early history.  The friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of
+information to give.  Miss Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-
+master's receipts and letters.  This one was from a spunging-house:
+that entreated an advance: another was full of gratitude for
+Rebecca's reception by the ladies of Chiswick: and the last document
+from the unlucky artist's pen was that in which, from his dying bed,
+he recommended his orphan child to Miss Pinkerton's protection.
+There were juvenile letters and petitions from Rebecca, too, in the
+collection, imploring aid for her father or declaring her own
+gratitude.  Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than
+letters.  Take a bundle of your dear friend's of ten years back--
+your dear friend whom you hate now.  Look at a file of your
+sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled about the
+twenty-pound legacy!  Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son
+who has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or
+a parcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal,
+which were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob--
+your mistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen
+Elizabeth. Vows, love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly
+they read after a while!  There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair
+ordering the destruction of every written document (except receipted
+tradesmen's bills) after a certain brief and proper interval.  Those
+quacks and misanthropes who advertise indelible Japan ink should be
+made to perish along with their wicked discoveries.  The best ink
+for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of
+days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on
+it to somebody else.
+
+From Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track
+of Sharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greek Street,
+which the defunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the
+landlady in white satin, and of the husband in brass buttons, done
+by Sharp in lieu of a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlour
+walls.  Mrs. Stokes was a communicative person, and quickly told all
+she knew about Mr. Sharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how good-
+natured and amusing; how he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns;
+how, to the landlady's horror, though she never could abide the
+woman, he did not marry his wife till a short time before her death;
+and what a queer little wild vixen his daughter was; how she kept
+them all laughing with her fun and mimicry; how she used to fetch
+the gin from the public-house, and was known in all the studios in
+the quarter--in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a full account of her new
+niece's parentage, education, and behaviour as would scarcely have
+pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that such inquiries were being
+made concerning her.
+
+Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full
+benefit.  Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl.
+She had danced herself.  She had been a model to the painters.  She
+was brought up as became her mother's daughter.  She drank gin with
+her father, &c. &c. It was a lost woman who was married to a lost
+man; and the moral to be inferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that
+the knavery of the pair was irremediable, and that no properly
+conducted person should ever notice them again.
+
+These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together
+in Park Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which
+she fortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon
+and his wife would lay to Miss Crawley.
+
+But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that
+she was too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made
+Miss Crawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid
+succumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the
+victim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which
+fell in her way.  Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women
+who order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any
+person concerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes
+speculate upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other
+extreme consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.
+
+Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in
+the world, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing
+sleep, dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law,
+carried her conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she
+almost managed her into her coffin.  She pointed out her sacrifices
+and their results one day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump.
+
+"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have
+been wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of
+her nephew has laid on the bed of sickness.  I never shrink from
+personal discomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself."
+
+"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable," Mr. Clump says,
+with a low bow; "but--"
+
+"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep,
+health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was
+in the smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him?  No."
+
+"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best of
+mothers; but--"
+
+"As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I
+humbly trust that my principles are good," Mrs. Bute said, with a
+happy solemnity of conviction; "and, as long as Nature supports me,
+never, never, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty.  Others may
+bring that grey head with sorrow to the bed of sickness (here Mrs.
+Bute, waving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-
+coloured fronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room),
+but I will never quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump!  I fear, I know, that the
+couch needs spiritual as well as medical consolation."
+
+"What I was going to observe, my dear Madam,"--here the resolute
+Clump once more interposed with a bland air--"what I was going to
+observe when you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much
+honour, was that I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our
+kind friend, and sacrifice your own health too prodigally in her
+favour."
+
+"I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my
+husband's family," Mrs. Bute interposed.
+
+"Yes, Madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs Bute Crawley to be
+a martyr," Clump said gallantly.  "Dr Squills and myself have both
+considered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you
+may suppose.  We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events
+have agitated her."
+
+"Her nephew will come to perdition," Mrs. Crawley cried.
+
+"Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear
+Madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under
+the pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that
+our amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to
+her bed necessary.  She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps
+adds to her depression.  She should have change, fresh air, gaiety;
+the most delightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia," Mr. Clump said,
+grinning and showing his handsome teeth.  "Persuade her to rise,
+dear Madam; drag her from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon
+her taking little drives.  They will restore the roses too to your
+cheeks, if I may so speak to Mrs. Bute Crawley."
+
+"The sight of her horrid nephew casually in the Park, where I am
+told the wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes," Mrs.
+Bute said (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of
+secrecy), "would cause her such a shock, that we should have to
+bring her back to bed again.  She must not go out, Mr. Clump.  She
+shall not go out as long as I remain to watch over her; And as for
+my health, what matters it?  I give it cheerfully, sir.  I sacrifice
+it at the altar of my duty."
+
+"Upon my word, Madam," Mr. Clump now said bluntly, "I won't answer
+for her life if she remains locked up in that dark room.  She is so
+nervous that we may lose her any day; and if you wish Captain
+Crawley to be her heir, I warn you frankly, Madam, that you are
+doing your very best to serve him."
+
+"Gracious mercy! is her life in danger?" Mrs. Bute cried.  "Why,
+why, Mr. Clump, did you not inform me sooner?"
+
+The night before, Mr. Clump and Dr. Squills had had a consultation
+(over a bottle of wine at the house of Sir Lapin Warren, whose lady
+was about to present him with a thirteenth blessing), regarding Miss
+Crawley and her case.
+
+"What a little harpy that woman from Hampshire is, Clump," Squills
+remarked, "that has seized upon old Tilly Crawley.  Devilish good
+Madeira."
+
+"What a fool Rawdon Crawley has been," Clump replied, "to go and
+marry a governess!  There was something about the girl, too."
+
+"Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development,"
+Squills remarked.  "There is something about her; and Crawley was a
+fool, Squills."
+
+"A d--- fool--always was," the apothecary replied.
+
+"Of course the old girl will fling him over," said the physician,
+and after a pause added, "She'll cut up well, I suppose."
+
+"Cut up," says Clump with a grin; "I wouldn't have her cut up for
+two hundred a year."
+
+"That Hampshire woman will kill her in two months, Clump, my boy, if
+she stops about her," Dr. Squills said. "Old woman; full feeder;
+nervous subject; palpitation of the heart; pressure on the brain;
+apoplexy; off she goes. Get her up, Clump; get her out: or I
+wouldn't give many weeks' purchase for your two hundred a year." And
+it was acting upon this hint that the worthy apothecary spoke with
+so much candour to Mrs. Bute Crawley.
+
+Having the old lady under her hand: in bed: with nobody near, Mrs.
+Bute had made more than one assault upon her, to induce her to alter
+her will.  But Miss Crawley's usual terrors regarding death
+increased greatly when such dismal propositions were made to her,
+and Mrs. Bute saw that she must get her patient into cheerful
+spirits and health before she could hope to attain the pious object
+which she had in view.  Whither to take her was the next puzzle.
+The only place where she is not likely to meet those odious Rawdons
+is at church, and that won't amuse her, Mrs. Bute justly felt.  "We
+must go and visit our beautiful suburbs of London," she then
+thought.  "I hear they are the most picturesque in the world"; and
+so she had a sudden interest for Hampstead, and Hornsey, and found
+that Dulwich had great charms for her, and getting her victim into
+her carriage, drove her to those rustic spots, beguiling the little
+journeys with conversations about Rawdon and his wife, and telling
+every story to the old lady which could add to her indignation
+against this pair of reprobates.
+
+Perhaps Mrs. Bute pulled the string unnecessarily tight. For though
+she worked up Miss Crawley to a proper dislike of her disobedient
+nephew, the invalid had a great hatred and secret terror of her
+victimizer, and panted to escape from her.  After a brief space, she
+rebelled against Highgate and Hornsey utterly.  She would go into
+the Park.  Mrs. Bute knew they would meet the abominable Rawdon
+there, and she was right.  One day in the ring, Rawdon's stanhope
+came in sight; Rebecca was seated by him.  In the enemy's equipage
+Miss Crawley occupied her usual place, with Mrs. Bute on her left,
+the poodle and Miss Briggs on the back seat.  It was a nervous
+moment, and Rebecca's heart beat quick as she recognized the
+carriage; and as the two vehicles crossed each other in a line, she
+clasped her hands, and looked towards the spinster with a face of
+agonized attachment and devotion. Rawdon himself trembled, and his
+face grew purple behind his dyed mustachios.  Only old Briggs was
+moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervously
+towards her old friends.  Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely
+turned towards the Serpentine.  Mrs. Bute happened to be in
+ecstasies with the poodle, and was calling him a little darling, and
+a sweet little zoggy, and a pretty pet.  The carriages moved on,
+each in his line.
+
+"Done, by Jove," Rawdon said to his wife.
+
+"Try once more, Rawdon," Rebecca answered.  "Could not you lock your
+wheels into theirs, dearest?"
+
+Rawdon had not the heart for that manoeuvre.  When the carriages met
+again, he stood up in his stanhope; he raised his hand ready to doff
+his hat; he looked with all his eyes.  But this time Miss Crawley's
+face was not turned away; she and Mrs. Bute looked him full in the
+face, and cut their nephew pitilessly.  He sank back in his seat
+with an oath, and striking out of the ring, dashed away desperately
+homewards.
+
+It was a gallant and decided triumph for Mrs. Bute. But she felt the
+danger of many such meetings, as she saw the evident nervousness of
+Miss Crawley; and she determined that it was most necessary for her
+dear friend's health, that they should leave town for a while, and
+recommended Brighton very strongly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen
+
+
+Without knowing how, Captain William Dobbin found himself the great
+promoter, arranger, and manager of the match between George Osborne
+and Amelia.  But for him it never would have taken place:  he could
+not but confess as much to himself, and smiled rather bitterly as he
+thought that he of all men in the world should be the person upon
+whom the care of this marriage had fallen. But though indeed the
+conducting of this negotiation was about as painful a task as could
+be set to him, yet when he had a duty to perform, Captain Dobbin was
+accustomed to go through it without many words or much hesitation:
+and, having made up his mind completely, that if Miss Sedley was
+balked of her husband she would die of the disappointment, he was
+determined to use all his best endeavours to keep her alive.
+
+I forbear to enter into minute particulars of the interview between
+George and Amelia, when the former was brought back to the feet (or
+should we venture to say the arms?) of his young mistress by the
+intervention of his friend honest William.  A much harder heart than
+George's would have melted at the sight of that sweet face so sadly
+ravaged by grief and despair, and at the simple tender accents in
+which she told her little broken-hearted story: but as she did not
+faint when her mother, trembling, brought Osborne to her; and as she
+only gave relief to her overcharged grief, by laying her head on her
+lover's shoulder and there weeping for a while the most tender,
+copious, and refreshing tears--old Mrs. Sedley, too greatly
+relieved, thought it was best to leave the young persons to
+themselves; and so quitted Emmy crying over George's hand, and
+kissing it humbly, as if he were her supreme chief and master, and
+as if she were quite a guilty and unworthy person needing every
+favour and grace from him.
+
+This prostration and sweet unrepining obedience exquisitely touched
+and flattered George Osborne.  He saw a slave before him in that
+simple yielding faithful creature, and his soul within him thrilled
+secretly somehow at the knowledge of his power.  He would be
+generous-minded, Sultan as he was, and raise up this kneeling Esther
+and make a queen of her:  besides, her sadness and beauty touched
+him as much as her submission, and so he cheered her, and raised her
+up and forgave her, so to speak.  All her hopes and feelings, which
+were dying and withering, this her sun having been removed from her,
+bloomed again and at once, its light being restored. You would
+scarcely have recognised the beaming little face upon Amelia's
+pillow that night as the one that was laid there the night before,
+so wan, so lifeless, so careless of all round about.  The honest
+Irish maid-servant, delighted with the change, asked leave to kiss
+the face that had grown all of a sudden so rosy.  Amelia put her
+arms round the girl's neck and kissed her with all her heart, like a
+child.  She was little more.  She had that night a sweet refreshing
+sleep, like one--and what a spring of inexpressible happiness as she
+woke in the morning sunshine!
+
+"He will be here again to-day," Amelia thought.  "He is the greatest
+and best of men."  And the fact is, that George thought he was one
+of the generousest creatures alive: and that he was making a
+tremendous sacrifice in marrying this young creature.
+
+While she and Osborne were having their delightful tete-a-tete above
+stairs, old Mrs. Sedley and Captain Dobbin were conversing below
+upon the state of the affairs, and the chances and future
+arrangements of the young people.  Mrs. Sedley having brought the
+two lovers together and left them embracing each other with all
+their might, like a true woman, was of opinion that no power on
+earth would induce Mr. Sedley to consent to the match between his
+daughter and the son of a man who had so shamefully, wickedly, and
+monstrously treated him.  And she told a long story about happier
+days and their earlier splendours, when Osborne lived in a very
+humble way in the New Road, and his wife was too glad to receive
+some of Jos's little baby things, with which Mrs. Sedley
+accommodated her at the birth of one of Osborne's own children.  The
+fiendish ingratitude of that man, she was sure, had broken Mr. S.'s
+heart: and as for a marriage, he would never, never, never, never
+consent.
+
+"They must run away together, Ma'am," Dobbin said, laughing, "and
+follow the example of Captain Rawdon Crawley, and Miss Emmy's friend
+the little governess." Was it possible? Well she never!  Mrs. Sedley
+was all excitement about this news.  She wished that Blenkinsop were
+here to hear it:  Blenkinsop always mistrusted that Miss Sharp.--
+What an escape Jos had had! and she described the already well-known
+love-passages between Rebecca and the Collector of Boggley Wollah.
+
+It was not, however, Mr. Sedley's wrath which Dobbin feared, so much
+as that of the other parent concerned, and he owned that he had a
+very considerable doubt and anxiety respecting the behaviour of the
+black-browed old tyrant of a Russia merchant in Russell Square.  He
+has forbidden the match peremptorily, Dobbin thought. He knew what a
+savage determined man Osborne was, and how he stuck by his word.
+"The only chance George has of reconcilement," argued his friend, "is
+by distinguishing himself in the coming campaign.  If he dies they
+both go together.  If he fails in distinction--what then?  He has
+some money from his mother, I have heard enough to purchase his
+majority--or he must sell out and go and dig in Canada, or rough it
+in a cottage in the country." With such a partner Dobbin thought he
+would not mind Siberia--and, strange to say, this absurd and utterly
+imprudent young fellow never for a moment considered that the want
+of means to keep a nice carriage and horses, and of an income which
+should enable its possessors to entertain their friends genteelly,
+ought to operate as bars to the union of George and Miss Sedley.
+
+It was these weighty considerations which made him think too that
+the marriage should take place as quickly as possible.  Was he
+anxious himself, I wonder, to have it over?--as people, when death
+has occurred, like to press forward the funeral, or when a parting
+is resolved upon, hasten it.  It is certain that Mr. Dobbin, having
+taken the matter in hand, was most extraordinarily eager in the
+conduct of it.  He urged on George the necessity of immediate
+action:  he showed the chances of reconciliation with his father,
+which a favourable mention of his name in the Gazette must bring
+about.  If need were he would go himself and brave both the fathers
+in the business.  At all events, he besought George to go through
+with it before the orders came, which everybody expected, for the
+departure of the regiment from England on foreign service.
+
+Bent upon these hymeneal projects, and with the applause and consent
+of Mrs. Sedley, who did not care to break the matter personally to
+her husband, Mr. Dobbin went to seek John Sedley at his house of
+call in the City, the Tapioca Coffee-house, where, since his own
+offices were shut up, and fate had overtaken him, the poor broken-
+down old gentleman used to betake himself daily, and write letters
+and receive them, and tie them up into mysterious bundles, several
+of which he carried in the flaps of his coat.  I don't know anything
+more dismal than that business and bustle and mystery of a ruined
+man:  those letters from the wealthy which he shows you:  those worn
+greasy documents promising support and offering condolence which he
+places wistfully before you, and on which he builds his hopes of
+restoration and future fortune. My beloved reader has no doubt in
+the course of his experience been waylaid by many such a luckless
+companion.  He takes you into the corner; he has his bundle of
+papers out of his gaping coat pocket; and the tape off, and the
+string in his mouth, and the favourite letters selected and laid
+before you; and who does not know the sad eager half-crazy look
+which he fixes on you with his hopeless eyes?
+
+Changed into a man of this sort, Dobbin found the once florid,
+jovial, and prosperous John Sedley.  His coat, that used to be so
+glossy and trim, was white at the seams, and the buttons showed the
+copper.  His face had fallen in, and was unshorn; his frill and
+neckcloth hung limp under his bagging waistcoat.  When he used to
+treat the boys in old days at a coffee-house, he would shout and
+laugh louder than anybody there, and have all the waiters skipping
+round him; it was quite painful to see how humble and civil he was
+to John of the Tapioca, a blear-eyed old attendant in dingy
+stockings and cracked pumps, whose business it was to serve glasses
+of wafers, and bumpers of ink in pewter, and slices of paper to the
+frequenters of this dreary house of entertainment, where nothing
+else seemed to be consumed.  As for William Dobbin, whom he had
+tipped repeatedly in his youth, and who had been the old gentleman's
+butt on a thousand occasions, old Sedley gave his hand to him in a
+very hesitating humble manner now, and called him "Sir." A feeling
+of shame and remorse took possession of William Dobbin as the broken
+old man so received and addressed him, as if he himself had been
+somehow guilty of the misfortunes which had brought Sedley so low.
+
+"I am very glad to see you, Captain Dobbin, sir," says he, after a
+skulking look or two at his visitor (whose lanky figure and military
+appearance caused some excitement likewise to twinkle in the blear
+eyes of the waiter in the cracked dancing pumps, and awakened the
+old lady in black, who dozed among the mouldy old coffee-cups in the
+bar).  "How is the worthy alderman, and my lady, your excellent
+mother, sir?"  He looked round at the waiter as he said, "My lady,"
+as much as to say, "Hark ye, John, I have friends still, and persons
+of rank and reputation, too."  "Are you come to do anything in my
+way, sir?  My young friends Dale and Spiggot do all my business for
+me now, until my new offices are ready; for I'm only here
+temporarily, you know, Captain.  What can we do for you. sir?  Will
+you like to take anything?"
+
+Dobbin, with a great deal of hesitation and stuttering, protested
+that he was not in the least hungry or thirsty; that he had no
+business to transact; that he only came to ask if Mr. Sedley was
+well, and to shake hands with an old friend; and, he added, with a
+desperate perversion of truth, "My mother is very well--that is,
+she's been very unwell, and is only waiting for the first fine day
+to go out and call upon Mrs. Sedley.  How is Mrs. Sedley, sir?  I
+hope she's quite well."  And here he paused, reflecting on his own
+consummate hypocrisy; for the day was as fine, and the sunshine as
+bright as it ever is in Coffin Court, where the Tapioca Coffee-house
+is situated: and Mr. Dobbin remembered that he had seen Mrs. Sedley
+himself only an hour before, having driven Osborne down to Fulham in
+his gig, and left him there tete-a-tete with Miss Amelia.
+
+"My wife will be very happy to see her ladyship," Sedley replied,
+pulling out his papers.  "I've a very kind letter here from your
+father, sir, and beg my respectful compliments to him.  Lady D. will
+find us in rather a smaller house than we were accustomed to receive
+our friends in; but it's snug, and the change of air does good to my
+daughter, who was suffering in town rather--you remember little
+Emmy, sir?--yes, suffering a good deal." The old gentleman's eyes
+were wandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else,
+as he sate thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red
+tape.
+
+"You're a military man," he went on; "I ask you, Bill Dobbin, could
+any man ever have speculated upon the return of that Corsican
+scoundrel from Elba?  When the allied sovereigns were here last
+year, and we gave 'em that dinner in the City, sir, and we saw the
+Temple of Concord, and the fireworks, and the Chinese bridge in St.
+James's Park, could any sensible man suppose that peace wasn't
+really concluded, after we'd actually sung Te Deum for it, sir?  I
+ask you, William, could I suppose that the Emperor of Austria was a
+damned traitor--a traitor, and nothing more?  I don't mince words--a
+double-faced infernal traitor and schemer, who meant to have his
+son-in-law back all along.  And I say that the escape of Boney from
+Elba was a damned imposition and plot, sir, in which half the powers
+of Europe were concerned, to bring the funds down, and to ruin this
+country.  That's why I'm here, William.  That's why my name's in the
+Gazette.  Why, sir?--because I trusted the Emperor of Russia and the
+Prince Regent.  Look here.  Look at my papers.  Look what the funds
+were on the 1st of March--what the French fives were when I bought
+for the count.  And what they're at now.  There was collusion, sir,
+or that villain never would have escaped.  Where was the English
+Commissioner who allowed him to get away?  He ought to be shot, sir
+--brought to a court-martial, and shot, by Jove."
+
+"We're going to hunt Boney out, sir," Dobbin said, rather alarmed at
+the fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell,
+and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist.  "We are
+going to hunt him out, sir--the Duke's in Belgium already, and we
+expect marching orders every day."
+
+"Give him no quarter.  Bring back the villain's head, sir. Shoot the
+coward down, sir," Sedley roared.  "I'd enlist myself, by--; but I'm
+a broken old man--ruined by that damned scoundrel--and by a parcel
+of swindling thieves in this country whom I made, sir, and who are
+rolling in their carriages now," he added, with a break in his
+voice.
+
+Dobbin was not a little affected by the sight of this once kind old
+friend, crazed almost with misfortune and raving with senile anger.
+Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the
+chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "there are some vipers that you warm, and they
+sting you afterwards.  There are some beggars that you put on
+horseback, and they're the first to ride you down.  You know whom I
+mean, William Dobbin, my boy.  I mean a purse-proud villain in
+Russell Square, whom I knew without a shilling, and whom I pray and
+hope to see a beggar as he was when I befriended him."
+
+"I have heard something of this, sir, from my friend George," Dobbin
+said, anxious to come to his point.  "The quarrel between you and
+his father has cut him up a great deal, sir.  Indeed, I'm the bearer
+of a message from him."
+
+"O, THAT'S your errand, is it?" cried the old man, jumping up.
+"What! perhaps he condoles with me, does he? Very kind of him, the
+stiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West End swagger.
+He's hankering about my house, is he still?  If my son had the
+courage of a man, he'd shoot him.  He's as big a villain as his
+father.  I won't have his name mentioned in my house.  I curse the
+day that ever I let him into it; and I'd rather see my daughter dead
+at my feet than married to him."
+
+"His father's harshness is not George's fault, sir.  Your daughter's
+love for him is as much your doing as his.  Who are you, that you
+are to play with two young people's affections and break their
+hearts at your will?"
+
+"Recollect it's not his father that breaks the match off," old
+Sedley cried out.  "It's I that forbid it.  That family and mine are
+separated for ever.  I'm fallen low, but not so low as that: no, no.
+And so you may tell the whole race--son, and father and sisters, and
+all."
+
+"It's my belief, sir, that you have not the power or the right to
+separate those two," Dobbin answered in a low voice; "and that if
+you don't give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to
+marry without it.  There's no reason she should die or live
+miserably because you are wrong-headed.  To my thinking, she's just
+as much married as if the banns had been read in all the churches in
+London.  And what better answer can there be to Osborne's charges
+against you, as charges there are, than that his son claims to enter
+your family and marry your daughter?"
+
+A light of something like satisfaction seemed to break over old
+Sedley as this point was put to him: but he still persisted that
+with his consent the marriage between Amelia and George should never
+take place.
+
+"We must do it without," Dobbin said, smiling, and told Mr. Sedley,
+as he had told Mrs. Sedley in the day, before, the story of
+Rebecca's elopement with Captain Crawley.  It evidently amused the
+old gentleman.  "You're terrible fellows, you Captains," said he,
+tying up his papers; and his face wore something like a smile upon
+it, to the astonishment of the blear-eyed waiter who now entered,
+and had never seen such an expression upon Sedley's countenance
+since he had used the dismal coffee-house.
+
+The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps,
+the old gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and
+Dobbin parted pretty good friends.
+
+"My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs," George
+said, laughing.  "How they must set off her complexion!  A perfect
+illumination it must be when her jewels are on her neck.  Her jet-
+black hair is as curly as Sambo's.  I dare say she wore a nose ring
+when she went to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knot
+she would look a perfect Belle Sauvage."
+
+George, in conversation with Amelia, was rallying the appearance of
+a young lady of whom his father and sisters had lately made the
+acquaintance, and who was an object of vast respect to the Russell
+Square family.  She was reported to have I don't know how many
+plantations in the West Indies; a deal of money in the funds; and
+three stars to her name in the East India stockholders' list.  She
+had a mansion in Surrey, and a house in Portland Place. The name of
+the rich West India heiress had been mentioned with applause in the
+Morning Post.  Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, her
+relative, "chaperoned" her, and kept her house.  She was just from
+school, where she had completed her education, and George and his
+sisters had met her at an evening party at old Hulker's house,
+Devonshire Place (Hulker, Bullock, and Co. were long the
+correspondents of her house in the West Indies), and the girls had
+made the most cordial advances to her, which the heiress had
+received with great good humour. An orphan in her position--with her
+money--so interesting! the Misses Osborne said.  They were full of
+their new friend when they returned from the Hulker ball to Miss
+Wirt, their companion; they had made arrangements for continually
+meeting, and had the carriage and drove to see her the very next
+day.  Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun's widow, a relation of
+Lord Binkie, and always talking of him, struck the dear
+unsophisticated girls as rather haughty, and too much inclined to
+talk about her great relations: but Rhoda was everything they could
+wish--the frankest, kindest, most agreeable creature--wanting a
+little polish, but so good-natured.  The girls Christian-named each
+other at once.
+
+"You should have seen her dress for court, Emmy," Osborne cried,
+laughing.  "She came to my sisters to show it off, before she was
+presented in state by my Lady Binkie, the Haggistoun's kinswoman.
+She's related to every one, that Haggistoun.  Her diamonds blazed
+out like Vauxhall on the night we were there.  (Do you remember
+Vauxhall, Emmy, and Jos singing to his dearest diddle diddle
+darling?)  Diamonds and mahogany, my dear! think what an
+advantageous contrast--and the white feathers in her hair--I mean in
+her wool.  She had earrings like chandeliers; you might have lighted
+'em up, by Jove--and a yellow satin train that streeled after her
+like the tail of a cornet."
+
+"How old is she?" asked Emmy, to whom George was rattling away
+regarding this dark paragon, on the morning of their reunion--
+rattling away as no other man in the world surely could.
+
+"Why the Black Princess, though she has only just left school, must
+be two or three and twenty.  And you should see the hand she writes!
+Mrs. Colonel Haggistoun usually writes her letters, but in a moment
+of confidence, she put pen to paper for my sisters; she spelt satin
+satting, and Saint James's, Saint Jams."
+
+"Why, surely it must be Miss Swartz, the parlour boarder," Emmy
+said, remembering that good-natured young mulatto girl, who had been
+so hysterically affected when Amelia left Miss Pinkerton's academy.
+
+"The very name," George said.  "Her father was a German Jew--a
+slave-owner they say--connected with the Cannibal Islands in some
+way or other.  He died last year, and Miss Pinkerton has finished
+her education.  She can play two pieces on the piano; she knows
+three songs; she can write when Mrs. Haggistoun is by to spell for
+her; and Jane and Maria already have got to love her as a sister."
+
+"I wish they would have loved me," said Emmy, wistfully. "They were
+always very cold to me."
+
+"My dear child, they would have loved you if you had had two hundred
+thousand pounds," George replied.  "That is the way in which they
+have been brought up.  Ours is a ready-money society.  We live among
+bankers and City big-wigs, and be hanged to them, and every man, as
+he talks to you, is jingling his guineas in his pocket.  There is
+that jackass Fred Bullock is going to marry Maria--there's Goldmore,
+the East India Director, there's Dipley, in the tallow trade--OUR
+trade," George said, with an uneasy laugh and a blush.  "Curse the
+whole pack of money-grubbing vulgarians!  I fall asleep at their
+great heavy dinners.  I feel ashamed in my father's great stupid
+parties.  I've been accustomed to live with gentlemen, and men of
+the world and fashion, Emmy, not with a parcel of turtle-fed
+tradesmen.  Dear little woman, you are the only person of our set
+who ever looked, or thought, or spoke like a lady: and you do it
+because you're an angel and can't help it.  Don't remonstrate.  You
+are the only lady. Didn't Miss Crawley remark it, who has lived in
+the best company in Europe?  And as for Crawley, of the Life Guards,
+hang it, he's a fine fellow: and I like him for marrying the girl he
+had chosen."
+
+Amelia admired Mr. Crawley very much, too, for this; and trusted
+Rebecca would be happy with him, and hoped (with a laugh) Jos would
+be consoled.  And so the pair went on prattling, as in quite early
+days.  Amelia's confidence being perfectly restored to her, though
+she expressed a great deal of pretty jealousy about Miss Swartz, and
+professed to be dreadfully frightened--like a hypocrite as she was--
+lest George should forget her for the heiress and her money and her
+estates in Saint Kitt's.  But the fact is, she was a great deal too
+happy to have fears or doubts or misgivings of any sort: and having
+George at her side again, was not afraid of any heiress or beauty,
+or indeed of any sort of danger.
+
+When Captain Dobbin came back in the afternoon to these people--
+which he did with a great deal of sympathy for them--it did his
+heart good to see how Amelia had grown young again--how she laughed,
+and chirped, and sang familiar old songs at the piano, which were
+only interrupted by the bell from without proclaiming Mr. Sedley's
+return from the City, before whom George received a signal to
+retreat.
+
+Beyond the first smile of recognition--and even that was an
+hypocrisy, for she thought his arrival rather provoking--Miss Sedley
+did not once notice Dobbin during his visit.  But he was content, so
+that he saw her happy; and thankful to have been the means of making
+her so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A Quarrel About an Heiress
+
+
+Love may be felt for any young lady endowed with such qualities as
+Miss Swartz possessed; and a great dream of ambition entered into
+old Mr. Osborne's soul, which she was to realize.  He encouraged,
+with the utmost enthusiasm and friendliness, his daughters' amiable
+attachment to the young heiress, and protested that it gave him the
+sincerest pleasure as a father to see the love of his girls so well
+disposed.
+
+"You won't find," he would say to Miss Rhoda, "that splendour and
+rank to which you are accustomed at the West End, my dear Miss, at
+our humble mansion in Russell Square.  My daughters are plain,
+disinterested girls, but their hearts are in the right place, and
+they've conceived an attachment for you which does them honour--I
+say, which does them honour.  I'm a plain, simple, humble British
+merchant--an honest one, as my respected friends Hulker and Bullock
+will vouch, who were the correspondents of your late lamented
+father.  You'll find us a united, simple, happy, and I think I may
+say respected, family--a plain table, a plain people, but a warm
+welcome, my dear Miss Rhoda--Rhoda, let me say, for my heart warms
+to you, it does really.  I'm a frank man, and I like you.  A glass
+of Champagne!  Hicks, Champagne to Miss Swartz."
+
+There is little doubt that old Osborne believed all he said, and
+that the girls were quite earnest in their protestations of
+affection for Miss Swartz.  People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich
+folks quite naturally.  If the simplest people are disposed to look
+not a little kindly on great Prosperity (for I defy any member of
+the British public to say that the notion of Wealth has not
+something awful and pleasing to him; and you, if you are told that
+the man next you at dinner has got half a million, not to look at
+him with a certain interest)--if the simple look benevolently on
+money, how much more do your old worldlings regard it!  Their
+affections rush out to meet and welcome money.  Their kind
+sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessors
+of it.  I know some respectable people who don't consider themselves
+at liberty to indulge in friendship for any individual who has not a
+certain competency, or place in society.  They give a loose to their
+feelings on proper occasions.  And the proof is, that the major part
+of the Osborne family, who had not, in fifteen years, been able to
+get up a hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss
+Swartz in the course of a single evening as the most romantic
+advocate of friendship at first sight could desire.
+
+What a match for George she'd be (the sisters and Miss Wirt agreed),
+and how much better than that insignificant little Amelia!  Such a
+dashing young fellow as he is, with his good looks, rank, and
+accomplishments, would be the very husband for her.  Visions of
+balls in Portland Place, presentations at Court, and introductions
+to half the peerage, filled the minds of the young ladies; who
+talked of nothing but George and his grand acquaintances to their
+beloved new friend.
+
+Old Osborne thought she would be a great match, too, for his son.
+He should leave the army; he should go into Parliament; he should
+cut a figure in the fashion and in the state.  His blood boiled with
+honest British exultation, as he saw the name of Osborne ennobled in
+the person of his son, and thought that he might be the progenitor
+of a glorious line of baronets.  He worked in the City and on
+'Change, until he knew everything relating to the fortune of the
+heiress, how her money was placed, and where her estates lay.  Young
+Fred Bullock, one of his chief informants, would have liked to make
+a bid for her himself (it was so the young banker expressed it),
+only he was booked to Maria Osborne.  But not being able to secure
+her as a wife, the disinterested Fred quite approved of her as a
+sister-in-law.  "Let George cut in directly and win her," was his
+advice.  "Strike while the iron's hot, you know--while she's fresh
+to the town: in a few weeks some d--- fellow from the West End will
+come in with a title and a rotten rent-roll and cut all us City men
+out, as Lord Fitzrufus did last year with Miss Grogram, who was
+actually engaged to Podder, of Podder & Brown's.  The sooner it is
+done the better, Mr. Osborne; them's my sentiments," the wag said;
+though, when Osborne had left the bank parlour, Mr. Bullock
+remembered Amelia, and what a pretty girl she was, and how attached
+to George Osborne; and he gave up at least ten seconds of his
+valuable time to regretting the misfortune which had befallen that
+unlucky young woman.
+
+While thus George Osborne's good feelings, and his good friend and
+genius, Dobbin, were carrying back the truant to Amelia's feet,
+George's parent and sisters were arranging this splendid match for
+him, which they never dreamed he would resist.
+
+When the elder Osborne gave what he called "a hint," there was no
+possibility for the most obtuse to mistake his meaning.  He called
+kicking a footman downstairs a hint to the latter to leave his
+service.  With his usual frankness and delicacy he told Mrs.
+Haggistoun that he would give her a cheque for five thousand pounds
+on the day his son was married to her ward; and called that proposal
+a hint, and considered it a very dexterous piece of diplomacy.  He
+gave George finally such another hint regarding the heiress; and
+ordered him to marry her out of hand, as he would have ordered his
+butler to draw a cork, or his clerk to write a letter.
+
+This imperative hint disturbed George a good deal.  He was in the
+very first enthusiasm and delight of his second courtship of Amelia,
+which was inexpressibly sweet to him.  The contrast of her manners
+and appearance with those of the heiress, made the idea of a union
+with the latter appear doubly ludicrous and odious.  Carriages and
+opera-boxes, thought he; fancy being seen in them by the side of
+such a mahogany charmer as that!  Add to all that the junior Osborne
+was quite as obstinate as the senior: when he wanted a thing, quite
+as firm in his resolution to get it; and quite as violent when
+angered, as his father in his most stern moments.
+
+On the first day when his father formally gave him the hint that he
+was to place his affections at Miss Swartz's feet, George temporised
+with the old gentleman.  "You should have thought of the matter
+sooner, sir," he said. "It can't be done now, when we're expecting
+every day to go on foreign service.  Wait till my return, if I do
+return"; and then he represented, that the time when the regiment
+was daily expecting to quit England, was exceedingly ill-chosen:
+that the few days or weeks during which they were still to remain at
+home, must be devoted to business and not to love-making: time
+enough for that when he came home with his majority; "for, I promise
+you," said he, with a satisfied air, "that one way or other you
+shall read the name of George Osborne in the Gazette."
+
+The father's reply to this was founded upon the information which he
+had got in the City: that the West End chaps would infallibly catch
+hold of the heiress if any delay took place: that if he didn't marry
+Miss S., he might at least have an engagement in writing, to come
+into effect when he returned to England; and that a man who could
+get ten thousand a year by staying at home, was a fool to risk his
+life abroad.
+
+"So that you would have me shown up as a coward, sir, and our name
+dishonoured for the sake of Miss Swartz's money," George interposed.
+
+This remark staggered the old gentleman; but as he had to reply to
+it, and as his mind was nevertheless made up, he said, "You will
+dine here to-morrow, sir, and every day Miss Swartz comes, you will
+be here to pay your respects to her.  If you want for money, call
+upon Mr. Chopper." Thus a new obstacle was in George's way, to
+interfere with his plans regarding Amelia; and about which he and
+Dobbin had more than one confidential consultation.  His friend's
+opinion respecting the line of conduct which he ought to pursue, we
+know already.  And as for Osborne, when he was once bent on a thing,
+a fresh obstacle or two only rendered him the more resolute.
+
+The dark object of the conspiracy into which the chiefs of the
+Osborne family had entered, was quite ignorant of all their plans
+regarding her (which, strange to say, her friend and chaperon did
+not divulge), and, taking all the young ladies' flattery for genuine
+sentiment, and being, as we have before had occasion to show, of a
+very warm and impetuous nature, responded to their affection with
+quite a tropical ardour.  And if the truth may be told, I dare say
+that she too had some selfish attraction in the Russell Square
+house; and in a word, thought George Osborne a very nice young man.
+His whiskers had made an impression upon her, on the very first
+night she beheld them at the ball at Messrs. Hulkers; and, as we
+know, she was not the first woman who had been charmed by them.
+George had an air at once swaggering and melancholy, languid and
+fierce.  He looked like a man who had passions, secrets, and private
+harrowing griefs and adventures.  His voice was rich and deep.  He
+would say it was a warm evening, or ask his partner to take an ice,
+with a tone as sad and confidential as if he were breaking her
+mother's death to her, or preluding a declaration of love.  He
+trampled over all the young bucks of his father's circle, and was
+the hero among those third-rate men.  Some few sneered at him and
+hated him. Some, like Dobbin, fanatically admired him.  And his
+whiskers had begun to do their work, and to curl themselves round
+the affections of Miss Swartz.
+
+Whenever there was a chance of meeting him in Russell Square, that
+simple and good-natured young woman was quite in a flurry to see her
+dear Misses Osborne.  She went to great expenses in new gowns, and
+bracelets, and bonnets, and in prodigious feathers.  She adorned her
+person with her utmost skill to please the Conqueror, and exhibited
+all her simple accomplishments to win his favour.  The girls would
+ask her, with the greatest gravity, for a little music, and she
+would sing her three songs and play her two little pieces as often
+as ever they asked, and with an always increasing pleasure to
+herself.  During these delectable entertainments, Miss Wirt and the
+chaperon sate by, and conned over the peerage, and talked about the
+nobility.
+
+The day after George had his hint from his father, and a short time
+before the hour of dinner, he was lolling upon a sofa in the
+drawing-room in a very becoming and perfectly natural attitude of
+melancholy.  He had been, at his father's request, to Mr. Chopper in
+the City (the old-gentleman, though he gave great sums to his son,
+would never specify any fixed allowance for him, and rewarded him
+only as he was in the humour).  He had then been to pass three hours
+with Amelia, his dear little Amelia, at Fulham; and he came home to
+find his sisters spread in starched muslin in the drawing-room, the
+dowagers cackling in the background, and honest Swartz in her
+favourite amber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless
+rings, flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about
+as elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.
+
+The girls, after vain attempts to engage him in conversation, talked
+about fashions and the last drawing-room until he was perfectly sick
+of their chatter.  He contrasted their behaviour with little Emmy's
+--their shrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes
+and their elbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements
+and modest graces.  Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had
+been accustomed to sit. Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her
+amber satin lap.  Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes
+rolled about.  She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and
+thinking herself charming.  Anything so becoming as the satin the
+sisters had never seen.
+
+"Dammy," George said to a confidential friend, "she looked like a
+China doll, which has nothing to do all day but to grin and wag its
+head.  By Jove, Will, it was all I I could do to prevent myself from
+throwing the sofa-cushion at her." He restrained that exhibition of
+sentiment, however.
+
+The sisters began to play the Battle of Prague.  "Stop that d---
+thing," George howled out in a fury from the sofa.  "It makes me
+mad.  You play us something, Miss Swartz, do.  Sing something,
+anything but the Battle of Prague."
+
+"Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?" Miss
+Swartz asked.
+
+"That sweet thing from the Cabinet," the sisters said.
+
+"We've had that," replied the misanthrope on the sofa
+
+"I can sing 'Fluvy du Tajy,'" Swartz said, in a meek voice, "if I
+had the words." It was the last of the worthy young woman's
+collection.
+
+"O, 'Fleuve du Tage,'" Miss Maria cried; "we have the song," and
+went off to fetch the book in which it was.
+
+Now it happened that this song, then in the height of the fashion,
+had been given to the young ladies by a young friend of theirs,
+whose name was on the title, and Miss Swartz, having concluded the
+ditty with George's applause (for he remembered that it was a
+favourite of Amelia's), was hoping for an encore perhaps, and
+fiddling with the leaves of the music, when her eye fell upon the
+title, and she saw "Amelia Sedley" written in the comer.
+
+"Lor!" cried Miss Swartz, spinning swiftly round on the music-stool,
+"is it my Amelia?  Amelia that was at Miss P.'s at Hammersmith?  I
+know it is.  It's her.  and--Tell me about her--where is she?"
+
+"Don't mention her," Miss Maria Osborne said hastily.  "Her family
+has disgraced itself.  Her father cheated Papa, and as for her, she
+is never to be mentioned HERE." This was Miss Maria's return for
+George's rudeness about the Battle of Prague.
+
+"Are you a friend of Amelia's?" George said, bouncing up.  "God
+bless you for it, Miss Swartz.  Don't believe what the girls say.
+SHE'S not to blame at any rate. She's the best--"
+
+"You know you're not to speak about her, George," cried Jane.  "Papa
+forbids it."
+
+"Who's to prevent me?" George cried out.  "I will speak of her.  I
+say she's the best, the kindest, the gentlest, the sweetest girl in
+England; and that, bankrupt or no, my sisters are not fit to hold
+candles to her.  If you like her, go and see her, Miss Swartz; she
+wants friends now; and I say, God bless everybody who befriends her.
+Anybody who speaks kindly of her is my friend; anybody who speaks
+against her is my enemy.  Thank you, Miss Swartz"; and he went up
+and wrung her hand.
+
+"George! George!" one of the sisters cried imploringly.
+
+"I say," George said fiercely, "I thank everybody who loves Amelia
+Sed--" He stopped.  Old Osborne was in the room with a face livid
+with rage, and eyes like hot coals.
+
+Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up,
+he was not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying
+instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with
+another so indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man
+quailed in his turn, and looked away.  He felt that the tussle was
+coming.  "Mrs. Haggistoun, let me take you down to dinner," he said.
+"Give your arm to Miss Swartz, George," and they marched.
+
+"Miss Swartz, I love Amelia, and we've been engaged almost all our
+lives," Osborne said to his partner; and during all the dinner,
+George rattled on with a volubility which surprised himself, and
+made his father doubly nervous for the fight which was to take place
+as soon as the ladies were gone.
+
+The difference between the pair was, that while the father was
+violent and a bully, the son had thrice the nerve and courage of the
+parent, and could not merely make an attack, but resist it; and
+finding that the moment was now come when the contest between him
+and his father was to be decided, he took his dinner with perfect
+coolness and appetite before the engagement began.  Old Osborne, on
+the contrary, was nervous, and drank much.  He floundered in his
+conversation with the ladies, his neighbours: George's coolness only
+rendering him more angry.  It made him half mad to see the calm way
+in which George, flapping his napkin, and with a swaggering bow,
+opened the door for the ladies to leave the room; and filling
+himself a glass of wine, smacked it, and looked his father full in
+the face, as if to say, "Gentlemen of the Guard, fire first." The
+old man also took a supply of ammunition, but his decanter clinked
+against the glass as he tried to fill it.
+
+After giving a great heave, and with a purple choking face, he then
+began.  "How dare you, sir, mention that person's name before Miss
+Swartz to-day, in my drawing-room? I ask you, sir, how dare you do
+it?"
+
+"Stop, sir," says George, "don't say dare, sir.  Dare isn't a word
+to be used to a Captain in the British Army."
+
+"I shall say what I like to my son, sir.  I can cut him off with a
+shilling if I like.  I can make him a beggar if I like. I WILL say
+what I like," the elder said.
+
+"I'm a gentleman though I AM your son, sir," George answered
+haughtily.  "Any communications which you have to make to me, or any
+orders which you may please to give, I beg may be couched in that
+kind of language which I am accustomed to hear."
+
+Whenever the lad assumed his haughty manner, it always created
+either great awe or great irritation in the parent.  Old Osborne
+stood in secret terror of his son as a better gentleman than
+himself; and perhaps my readers may have remarked in their
+experience of this Vanity Fair of ours, that there is no character
+which a low-minded man so much mistrusts as that of a gentleman.
+
+"My father didn't give me the education you have had, nor the
+advantages you have had, nor the money you have had.  If I had kept
+the company SOME FOLKS have had through MY MEANS, perhaps my son
+wouldn't have any reason to brag, sir, of his SUPERIORITY and WEST
+END AIRS (these words were uttered in the elder Osborne's most
+sarcastic tones).  But it wasn't considered the part of a gentleman,
+in MY time, for a man to insult his father. If I'd done any such
+thing, mine would have kicked me downstairs, sir."
+
+"I never insulted you, sir.  I said I begged you to remember your
+son was a gentleman as well as yourself. I know very well that you
+give me plenty of money," said George (fingering a bundle of notes
+which he had got in the morning from Mr. Chopper).  "You tell it me
+often enough, sir.  There's no fear of my forgetting it."
+
+"I wish you'd remember other things as well, sir," the sire
+answered.  "I wish you'd remember that in this house--so long as you
+choose to HONOUR it with your COMPANY, Captain--I'm the master, and
+that name, and that that--that you--that I say--"
+
+"That what, sir?" George asked, with scarcely a sneer, filling
+another glass of claret.
+
+"----!" burst out his father with a screaming oath--"that the name of
+those Sedleys never be mentioned here, sir--not one of the whole
+damned lot of 'em, sir."
+
+"It wasn't I, sir, that introduced Miss Sedley's name.  It was my
+sisters who spoke ill of her to Miss Swartz; and by Jove I'll defend
+her wherever I go.  Nobody shall speak lightly of that name in my
+presence.  Our family has done her quite enough injury already, I
+think, and may leave off reviling her now she's down.  I'll shoot
+any man but you who says a word against her."
+
+"Go on, sir, go on," the old gentleman said, his eyes starting out
+of his head.
+
+"Go on about what, sir? about the way in which we've treated that
+angel of a girl?  Who told me to love her?  It was your doing.  I
+might have chosen elsewhere, and looked higher, perhaps, than your
+society: but I obeyed you.  And now that her heart's mine you give
+me orders to fling it away, and punish her, kill her perhaps--for
+the faults of other people.  It's a shame, by Heavens," said George,
+working himself up into passion and enthusiasm as he proceeded, "to
+play at fast and loose with a young girl's affections--and with such
+an angel as that--one so superior to the people amongst whom she
+lived, that she might have excited envy, only she was so good and
+gentle, that it's a wonder anybody dared to hate her. If I desert
+her, sir, do you suppose she forgets me?"
+
+"I ain't going to have any of this dam sentimental nonsense and
+humbug here, sir," the father cried out.  "There shall be no beggar-
+marriages in my family.  If you choose to fling away eight thousand
+a year, which you may have for the asking, you may do it: but by
+Jove you take your pack and walk out of this house, sir.  Will you
+do as I tell you, once for all, sir, or will you not?"
+
+"Marry that mulatto woman?" George said, pulling up his shirt-
+collars.  "I don't like the colour, sir.  Ask the black that sweeps
+opposite Fleet Market, sir.  I'm not going to marry a Hottentot
+Venus."
+
+Mr. Osborne pulled frantically at the cord by which he was
+accustomed to summon the butler when he wanted wine--and almost
+black in the face, ordered that functionary to call a coach for
+Captain Osborne.
+
+"I've done it," said George, coming into the Slaughters' an hour
+afterwards, looking very pale.
+
+"What, my boy?" says Dobbin.
+
+George told what had passed between his father and himself.
+
+"I'll marry her to-morrow," he said with an oath.  "I love her more
+every day, Dobbin."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon
+
+
+Enemies the most obstinate and courageous can't hold out against
+starvation; so the elder Osborne felt himself pretty easy about his
+adversary in the encounter we have just described; and as soon as
+George's supplies fell short, confidently expected his unconditional
+submission. It was unlucky, to be sure, that the lad should have
+secured a stock of provisions on the very day when the first
+encounter took place; but this relief was only temporary, old
+Osborne thought, and would but delay George's surrender.  No
+communication passed between father and son for some days.  The
+former was sulky at this silence, but not disquieted; for, as he
+said, he knew where he could put the screw upon George, and only
+waited the result of that operation.  He told the sisters the upshot
+of the dispute between them, but ordered them to take no notice of
+the matter, and welcome George on his return as if nothing had
+happened.  His cover was laid as usual every day, and perhaps the
+old gentleman rather anxiously expected him; but he never came.
+Some one inquired at the Slaughters' regarding him, where it was
+said that he and his friend Captain Dobbin had left town.
+
+One gusty, raw day at the end of April--the rain whipping the
+pavement of that ancient street where the old Slaughters' Coffee-
+house was once situated--George Osborne came into the coffee-room,
+looking very haggard and pale; although dressed rather smartly in a
+blue coat and brass buttons, and a neat buff waistcoat of the
+fashion of those days.  Here was his friend Captain Dobbin, in blue
+and brass too, having abandoned the military frock and French-grey
+trousers, which were the usual coverings of his lanky person.
+
+Dobbin had been in the coffee-room for an hour or more.  He had
+tried all the papers, but could not read them.  He had looked at the
+clock many scores of times; and at the street, where the rain was
+pattering down, and the people as they clinked by in pattens, left
+long reflections on the shining stone: he tattooed at the table: he
+bit his nails most completely, and nearly to the quick (he was
+accustomed to ornament his great big hands in this way): he balanced
+the tea-spoon dexterously on the milk jug: upset it, &c., &c.; and
+in fact showed those signs of disquietude, and practised those
+desperate attempts at amusement, which men are accustomed to employ
+when very anxious, and expectant, and perturbed in mind.
+
+Some of his comrades, gentlemen who used the room, joked him about
+the splendour of his costume and his agitation of manner.  One asked
+him if he was going to be married?  Dobbin laughed, and said he
+would send his acquaintance (Major Wagstaff of the Engineers) a
+piece of cake when that event took place.  At length Captain Osborne
+made his appearance, very smartly dressed, but very pale and
+agitated as we have said.  He wiped his pale face with a large
+yellow bandanna pocket-handkerchief that was prodigiously scented.
+He shook hands with Dobbin, looked at the clock, and told John, the
+waiter, to bring him some curacao.  Of this cordial he swallowed off
+a couple of glasses with nervous eagerness. His friend asked with
+some interest about his health.
+
+"Couldn't get a wink of sleep till daylight, Dob," said he.
+"Infernal headache and fever.  Got up at nine, and went down to the
+Hummums for a bath.  I say, Dob, I feel just as I did on the morning
+I went out with Rocket at Quebec."
+
+"So do I," William responded.  "I was a deuced deal more nervous
+than you were that morning.  You made a famous breakfast, I
+remember.  Eat something now."
+
+"You're a good old fellow, Will.  I'll drink your health, old boy,
+and farewell to--"
+
+"No, no; two glasses are enough," Dobbin interrupted him.  "Here,
+take away the liqueurs, John.  Have some cayenne-pepper with your
+fowl.  Make haste though, for it is time we were there."
+
+It was about half an hour from twelve when this brief meeting and
+colloquy took place between the two captains.  A coach, into which
+Captain Osborne's servant put his master's desk and dressing-case,
+had been in waiting for some time; and into this the two gentlemen
+hurried under an umbrella, and the valet mounted on the box, cursing
+the rain and the dampness of the coachman who was steaming beside
+him.  "We shall find a better trap than this at the church-door,"
+says he; "that's a comfort." And the carriage drove on, taking the
+road down Piccadilly, where Apsley House and St. George's Hospital
+wore red jackets still; where there were oil-lamps; where Achilles
+was not yet born; nor the Pimlico arch raised; nor the hideous
+equestrian monster which pervades it and the neighbourhood; and so
+they drove down by Brompton to a certain chapel near the Fulham Road
+there.
+
+A chariot was in waiting with four horses; likewise a coach of the
+kind called glass coaches.  Only a very few idlers were collected on
+account of the dismal rain.
+
+"Hang it!" said George, "I said only a pair."
+
+"My master would have four," said Mr. Joseph Sedley's servant, who
+was in waiting; and he and Mr. Osborne's man agreed as they followed
+George and William into the church, that it was a "reg'lar shabby
+turn hout; and with scarce so much as a breakfast or a wedding
+faviour."
+
+"Here you are," said our old friend, Jos Sedley, coming forward.
+"You're five minutes late, George, my boy. What a day, eh? Demmy,
+it's like the commencement of the rainy season in Bengal.  But
+you'll find my carriage is watertight.  Come along, my mother and
+Emmy are in the vestry."
+
+Jos Sedley was splendid.  He was fatter than ever.  His shirt
+collars were higher; his face was redder; his shirt-frill flaunted
+gorgeously out of his variegated waistcoat. Varnished boots were not
+invented as yet; but the Hessians on his beautiful legs shone so,
+that they must have been the identical pair in which the gentleman
+in the old picture used to shave himself; and on his light green
+coat there bloomed a fine wedding favour, like a great white
+spreading magnolia.
+
+In a word, George had thrown the great cast.  He was going to be
+married.  Hence his pallor and nervousness--his sleepless night and
+agitation in the morning.  I have heard people who have gone through
+the same thing own to the same emotion.  After three or four
+ceremonies, you get accustomed to it, no doubt; but the first dip,
+everybody allows, is awful.
+
+The bride was dressed in a brown silk pelisse (as Captain Dobbin has
+since informed me), and wore a straw bonnet with a pink ribbon; over
+the bonnet she had a veil of white Chantilly lace, a gift from Mr.
+Joseph Sedley, her brother.  Captain Dobbin himself had asked leave
+to present her with a gold chain and watch, which she sported on
+this occasion; and her mother gave her her diamond brooch--almost
+the only trinket which was left to the old lady.  As the service
+went on, Mrs. Sedley sat and whimpered a great deal in a pew,
+consoled by the Irish maid-servant and Mrs. Clapp from the lodgings.
+Old Sedley would not be present.  Jos acted for his father, giving
+away the bride, whilst Captain Dobbin stepped up as groomsman to his
+friend George.
+
+There was nobody in the church besides the officiating persons and
+the small marriage party and their attendants. The two valets sat
+aloof superciliously.  The rain came rattling down on the windows.
+In the intervals of the service you heard it, and the sobbing of old
+Mrs. Sedley in the pew.  The parson's tones echoed sadly through the
+empty walls.  Osborne's "I will" was sounded in very deep bass.
+Emmy's response came fluttering up to her lips from her heart, but
+was scarcely heard by anybody except Captain Dobbin.
+
+When the service was completed, Jos Sedley came forward and kissed
+his sister, the bride, for the first time for many months--George's
+look of gloom had gone, and he seemed quite proud and radiant.
+"It's your turn, William," says he, putting his hand fondly upon
+Dobbin's shoulder; and Dobbin went up and touched Amelia on the
+cheek.
+
+Then they went into the vestry and signed the register. "God bless
+you, Old Dobbin," George said, grasping him by the hand, with
+something very like moisture glistening in his eyes.  William
+replied only by nodding his head. His heart was too full to say
+much.
+
+"Write directly, and come down as soon as you can, you know,"
+Osborne said.  After Mrs. Sedley had taken an hysterical adieu of
+her daughter, the pair went off to the carriage.  "Get out of the
+way, you little devils," George cried to a small crowd of damp
+urchins, that were hanging about the chapel-door.  The rain drove
+into the bride and bridegroom's faces as they passed to the chariot.
+The postilions' favours draggled on their dripping jackets. The few
+children made a dismal cheer, as the carriage, splashing mud, drove
+away.
+
+William Dobbin stood in the church-porch, looking at it, a queer
+figure.  The small crew of spectators jeered him. He was not
+thinking about them or their laughter.
+
+"Come home and have some tiffin, Dobbin," a voice cried behind him;
+as a pudgy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the honest fellow's
+reverie was interrupted.  But the Captain had no heart to go a-
+feasting with Jos Sedley. He put the weeping old lady and her
+attendants into the carriage along with Jos, and left them without
+any farther words passing.  This carriage, too, drove away, and the
+urchins gave another sarcastical cheer.
+
+"Here, you little beggars," Dobbin said, giving some sixpences
+amongst them, and then went off by himself through the rain.  It was
+all over.  They were married, and happy, he prayed God.  Never since
+he was a boy had he felt so miserable and so lonely.  He longed with
+a heart-sick yearning for the first few days to be over, that he
+might see her again.
+
+Some ten days after the above ceremony, three young men of our
+acquaintance were enjoying that beautiful prospect of bow windows on
+the one side and blue sea on the other, which Brighton affords to
+the traveller. Sometimes it is towards the ocean--smiling with
+countless dimples, speckled with white sails, with a hundred
+bathing-machines kissing the skirt of his blue garment--that the
+Londoner looks enraptured: sometimes, on the contrary, a lover of
+human nature rather than of prospects of any kind, it is towards the
+bow windows that he turns, and that swarm of human life which they
+exhibit.  From one issue the notes of a piano, which a young lady in
+ringlets practises six hours daily, to the delight of the fellow-
+lodgers: at another, lovely Polly, the nurse-maid, may be seen
+dandling Master Omnium in her arms: whilst Jacob, his papa, is
+beheld eating prawns, and devouring the Times for breakfast, at the
+window below. Yonder are the Misses Leery, who are looking out for
+the young officers of the Heavies, who are pretty sure to be pacing
+the cliff; or again it is a City man, with a nautical turn, and a
+telescope, the size of a six-pounder, who has his instrument pointed
+seawards, so as to command every pleasure-boat, herring-boat, or
+bathing-machine that comes to, or quits, the shore, &c., &c.  But
+have we any leisure for a description of Brighton?--for Brighton, a
+clean Naples with genteel lazzaroni--for Brighton, that always looks
+brisk, gay, and gaudy, like a harlequin's jacket--for Brighton,
+which used to be seven hours distant from London at the time of our
+story; which is now only a hundred minutes off; and which may
+approach who knows how much nearer, unless Joinville comes and
+untimely bombards it?
+
+"What a monstrous fine girl that is in the lodgings over the
+milliner's," one of these three promenaders remarked to the other;
+"Gad, Crawley, did you see what a wink she gave me as I passed?"
+
+"Don't break her heart, Jos, you rascal," said another. "Don't
+trifle with her affections, you Don Juan!"
+
+"Get away," said Jos Sedley, quite pleased, and leering up at the
+maid-servant in question with a most killing ogle.  Jos was even
+more splendid at Brighton than he had been at his sister's marriage.
+He had brilliant under-waistcoats, any one of which would have set
+up a moderate buck. He sported a military frock-coat, ornamented
+with frogs, knobs, black buttons, and meandering embroidery. He had
+affected a military appearance and habits of late; and he walked
+with his two friends, who were of that profession, clinking his
+boot-spurs, swaggering prodigiously, and shooting death-glances at
+all the servant girls who were worthy to be slain.
+
+"What shall we do, boys, till the ladies return?" the buck asked.
+The ladies were out to Rottingdean in his carriage on a drive.
+
+"Let's have a game at billiards," one of his friends said--the tall
+one, with lacquered mustachios.
+
+"No, dammy; no, Captain," Jos replied, rather alarmed.  "No
+billiards to-day, Crawley, my boy; yesterday was enough."
+
+"You play very well," said Crawley, laughing.  "Don't he, Osborne?
+How well he made that-five stroke, eh?"
+
+"Famous," Osborne said.  "Jos is a devil of a fellow at billiards,
+and at everything else, too.  I wish there were any tiger-hunting
+about here! we might go and kill a few before dinner.  (There goes a
+fine girl! what an ankle, eh, Jos?) Tell us that story about the
+tiger-hunt, and the way you did for him in the jungle--it's a
+wonderful story that, Crawley." Here George Osborne gave a yawn.
+"It's rather slow work," said he, "down here; what shall we do?"
+
+"Shall we go and look at some horses that Snaffler's just brought
+from Lewes fair?" Crawley said.
+
+"Suppose we go and have some jellies at Dutton's," and the rogue
+Jos, willing to kill two birds with one stone.  "Devilish fine gal
+at Dutton's."
+
+"Suppose we go and see the Lightning come in, it's just about time?"
+George said.  This advice prevailing over the stables and the jelly,
+they turned towards the coach-office to witness the Lightning's
+arrival.
+
+As they passed, they met the carriage--Jos Sedley's open carriage,
+with its magnificent armorial bearings--that splendid conveyance in
+which he used to drive, about at Cheltonham, majestic and solitary,
+with his arms folded, and his hat cocked; or, more happy, with
+ladies by his side.
+
+Two were in the carriage now: one a little person, with light hair,
+and dressed in the height of the fashion; the other in a brown silk
+pelisse, and a straw bonnet with pink ribbons, with a rosy, round,
+happy face, that did you good to behold.  She checked the carriage
+as it neared the three gentlemen, after which exercise of authority
+she looked rather nervous, and then began to blush most absurdly.
+"We have had a delightful drive, George," she said, "and--and we're
+so glad to come back; and, Joseph, don't let him be late."
+
+"Don't be leading our husbands into mischief, Mr. Sedley, you
+wicked, wicked man you," Rebecca said, shaking at Jos a pretty
+little finger covered with the neatest French kid glove.  "No
+billiards, no smoking, no naughtiness!"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Crawley--Ah now! upon my honour!" was all Jos could
+ejaculate by way of reply; but he managed to fall into a tolerable
+attitude, with his head lying on his shoulder, grinning upwards at
+his victim, with one hand at his back, which he supported on his
+cane, and the other hand (the one with the diamond ring) fumbling in
+his shirt-frill and among his under-waistcoats.  As the carriage
+drove off he kissed the diamond hand to the fair ladies within.  He
+wished all Cheltenham, all Chowringhee, all Calcutta, could see him
+in that position, waving his hand to such a beauty, and in company
+with such a famous buck as Rawdon Crawley of the Guards.
+
+Our young bride and bridegroom had chosen Brighton as the place
+where they would pass the first few days after their marriage; and
+having engaged apartments at the Ship Inn, enjoyed themselves there
+in great comfort and quietude, until Jos presently joined them.  Nor
+was he the only companion they found there.  As they were coming
+into the hotel from a sea-side walk one afternoon, on whom should
+they light but Rebecca and her husband.  The recognition was
+immediate.  Rebecca flew into the arms of her dearest friend.
+Crawley and Osborne shook hands together cordially enough: and
+Becky, in the course of a very few hours, found means to make the
+latter forget that little unpleasant passage of words which had
+happened between them.  "Do you remember the last time we met at
+Miss Crawley's, when I was so rude to you, dear Captain Osborne? I
+thought you seemed careless about dear Amelia.  It was that made me
+angry: and so pert: and so unkind: and so ungrateful.  Do forgive
+me!" Rebecca said, and she held out her hand with so frank and
+winning a grace, that Osborne could not but take it.  By humbly and
+frankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no
+knowing, my son, what good you may do.  I knew once a gentleman and
+very worthy practitioner in Vanity Fair, who used to do little
+wrongs to his neighbours on purpose, and in order to apologise for
+them in an open and manly way afterwards--and what ensued?  My
+friend Crocky Doyle was liked everywhere, and deemed to be rather
+impetuous--but the honestest fellow.  Becky's humility passed for
+sincerity with George Osborne.
+
+These two young couples had plenty of tales to relate to each other.
+The marriages of either were discussed; and their prospects in life
+canvassed with the greatest frankness and interest on both sides.
+George's marriage was to be made known to his father by his friend
+Captain Dobbin; and young Osborne trembled rather for the result of
+that communication.  Miss Crawley, on whom all Rawdon's hopes
+depended, still held out.  Unable to make an entry into her house in
+Park Lane, her affectionate nephew and niece had followed her to
+Brighton, where they had emissaries continually planted at her door.
+
+"I wish you could see some of Rawdon's friends who are always about
+our door," Rebecca said, laughing.  "Did you ever see a dun, my
+dear; or a bailiff and his man? Two of the abominable wretches
+watched all last week at the greengrocer's opposite, and we could
+not get away until Sunday.  If Aunty does not relent, what shall we
+do?"
+
+Rawdon, with roars of laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes of
+his duns, and Rebecca's adroit treatment of them.  He vowed with a
+great oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a
+creditor over as she could.  Almost immediately after their
+marriage, her practice had begun, and her husband found the immense
+value of such a wife.  They had credit in plenty, but they had bills
+also in abundance, and laboured under a scarcity of ready money.
+Did these debt-difficulties affect Rawdon's good spirits?  No.
+Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who
+are comfortably and thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves
+nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.  Rawdon and his
+wife had the very best apartments at the inn at Brighton; the
+landlord, as he brought in the first dish, bowed before them as to
+his greatest customers: and Rawdon abused the dinners and wine with
+an audacity which no grandee in the land could surpass.  Long
+custom, a manly appearance, faultless boots and clothes, and a happy
+fierceness of manner, will often help a man as much as a great
+balance at the banker's.
+
+The two wedding parties met constantly in each other's apartments.
+After two or three nights the gentlemen of an evening had a little
+piquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart.  This pastime, and
+the arrival of Jos Sedley, who made his appearance in his grand open
+carriage, and who played a few games at billiards with Captain
+Crawley, replenished Rawdon's purse somewhat, and gave him the
+benefit of that ready money for which the greatest spirits are
+sometimes at a stand-still.
+
+So the three gentlemen walked down to see the Lightning coach come
+in.  Punctual to the minute, the coach crowded inside and out, the
+guard blowing his accustomed tune on the horn--the Lightning came
+tearing down the street, and pulled up at the coach-office.
+
+"Hullo! there's old Dobbin," George cried, quite delighted to see
+his old friend perched on the roof; and whose promised visit to
+Brighton had been delayed until now.  "How are you, old fellow?
+Glad you're come down. Emmy'll be delighted to see you," Osborne
+said, shaking his comrade warmly by the hand as soon as his descent
+from the vehicle was effected--and then he added, in a lower and
+agitated voice, "What's the news?  Have you been in Russell Square?
+What does the governor say? Tell me everything."
+
+Dobbin looked very pale and grave.  "I've seen your father," said
+he.  "How's Amelia--Mrs. George?  I'll tell you all the news
+presently: but I've brought the great news of all: and that is--"
+
+"Out with it, old fellow," George said.
+
+"We're ordered to Belgium.  All the army goes--guards and all.
+Heavytop's got the gout, and is mad at not being able to move.
+O'Dowd goes in command, and we embark from Chatham next week." This
+news of war could not but come with a shock upon our lovers, and
+caused all these gentlemen to look very serious.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass
+
+
+What is the secret mesmerism which friendship possesses, and under
+the operation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or
+timid, becomes wise, active, and resolute, in another's behalf?  As
+Alexis, after a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads
+with the back of his head, sees miles off, looks into next week, and
+performs other wonders, of which, in his own private normal
+condition, he is quite incapable; so you see, in the affairs of the
+world and under the magnetism of friendships, the modest man becomes
+bold, the shy confident, the lazy active, or the impetuous prudent
+and peaceful.  What is it, on the other hand, that makes the lawyer
+eschew his own cause, and call in his learned brother as an adviser?
+And what causes the doctor, when ailing, to send for his rival, and
+not sit down and examine his own tongue in the chimney Bass, or
+write his own prescription at his study-table?  I throw out these
+queries for intelligent readers to answer, who know, at once, how
+credulous we are, and how sceptical, how soft and how obstinate, how
+firm for others and how diffident about ourselves:  meanwhile, it is
+certain that our friend William Dobbin, who was personally of so
+complying a disposition that if his parents had pressed him much, it
+is probable he would have stepped down into the kitchen and married
+the cook, and who, to further his own interests, would have found
+the most insuperable difficulty in walking across the street, found
+himself as busy and eager in the conduct of George Osborne's
+affairs, as the most selfish tactician could be in the pursuit of
+his own.
+
+Whilst our friend George and his young wife were enjoying the first
+blushing days of the honeymoon at Brighton, honest William was left
+as George's plenipotentiary in London, to transact all the business
+part of the marriage. His duty it was to call upon old Sedley and
+his wife, and to keep the former in good humour:  to draw Jos and
+his brother-in-law nearer together, so that Jos's position and
+dignity, as collector of Boggley Wollah, might compensate for his
+father's loss of station, and tend to reconcile old Osborne to the
+alliance:  and finally, to communicate it to the latter in such a
+way as should least irritate the old gentleman.
+
+Now, before he faced the head of the Osborne house with the news
+which it was his duty to tell, Dobbin bethought him that it would be
+politic to make friends of the rest of the family, and, if possible,
+have the ladies on his side. They can't be angry in their hearts,
+thought he.  No woman ever was really angry at a romantic marriage.
+A little crying out, and they must come round to their brother; when
+the three of us will lay siege to old Mr. Osborne.  So this
+Machiavellian captain of infantry cast about him for some happy
+means or stratagem by which he could gently and gradually bring the
+Misses Osborne to a knowledge of their brother's secret.
+
+By a little inquiry regarding his mother's engagements, he was
+pretty soon able to find out by whom of her ladyship's friends
+parties were given at that season; where he would be likely to meet
+Osborne's sisters; and, though he had that abhorrence of routs and
+evening parties which many sensible men, alas! entertain, he soon
+found one where the Misses Osborne were to be present. Making his
+appearance at the ball, where he danced a couple of sets with both
+of them, and was prodigiously polite, he actually had the courage to
+ask Miss Osborne for a few minutes' conversation at an early hour
+the next day, when he had, he said, to communicate to her news of
+the very greatest interest.
+
+What was it that made her start back, and gaze upon him for a
+moment, and then on the ground at her feet, and make as if she would
+faint on his arm, had he not by opportunely treading on her toes,
+brought the young lady back to self-control?  Why was she so
+violently agitated at Dobbin's request?  This can never be known.
+But when he came the next day, Maria was not in the drawing-room
+with her sister, and Miss Wirt went off for the purpose of fetching
+the latter, and the Captain and Miss Osborne were left together.
+They were both so silent that the ticktock of the Sacrifice of
+Iphigenia clock on the mantelpiece became quite rudely audible.
+
+"What a nice party it was last night," Miss Osborne at length began,
+encouragingly; "and--and how you're improved in your dancing,
+Captain Dobbin.  Surely somebody has taught you," she added, with
+amiable archness.
+
+"You should see me dance a reel with Mrs. Major O'Dowd of ours; and
+a jig--did you ever see a jig?  But I think anybody could dance with
+you, Miss Osborne, who dance so well."
+
+"Is the Major's lady young and beautiful, Captain?" the fair
+questioner continued.  "Ah, what a terrible thing it must be to be a
+soldier's wife!  I wonder they have any spirits to dance, and in
+these dreadful times of war, too! O Captain Dobbin, I tremble
+sometimes when I think of our dearest George, and the dangers of the
+poor soldier. Are there many married officers of the --th, Captain
+Dobbin?"
+
+"Upon my word, she's playing her hand rather too openly," Miss Wirt
+thought; but this observation is merely parenthetic, and was not
+heard through the crevice of the door at which the governess uttered
+it.
+
+"One of our young men is just married," Dobbin said, now coming to
+the point.  "It was a very old attachment, and the young couple are
+as poor as church mice." "O, how delightful! O, how romantic!" Miss
+Osborne cried, as the Captain said "old attachment" and "poor." Her
+sympathy encouraged him.
+
+"The finest young fellow in the regiment," he continued. "Not a
+braver or handsomer officer in the army; and such a charming wife!
+How you would like her!  how you will like her when you know her,
+Miss Osborne."  The young lady thought the actual moment had
+arrived, and that Dobbin's nervousness which now came on and was
+visible in many twitchings of his face, in his manner of beating the
+ground with his great feet, in the rapid buttoning and unbuttoning
+of his frock-coat, &c.--Miss Osborne, I say, thought that when he
+had given himself a little air, he would unbosom himself entirely,
+and prepared eagerly to listen.  And the clock, in the altar on
+which Iphigenia was situated, beginning, after a preparatory
+convulsion, to toll twelve, the mere tolling seemed as if it would
+last until one--so prolonged was the knell to the anxious spinster.
+
+"But it's not about marriage that I came to speak--that is that
+marriage--that is--no, I mean--my dear Miss Osborne, it's about our
+dear friend George," Dobbin said.
+
+"About George?" she said in a tone so discomfited that Maria and
+Miss Wirt laughed at the other side of the door, and even that
+abandoned wretch of a Dobbin felt inclined to smile himself; for he
+was not altogether unconscious of the state of affairs:  George
+having often bantered him gracefully and said, "Hang it, Will, why
+don't you take old Jane?  She'll have you if you ask her. I'll bet
+you five to two she will."
+
+"Yes, about George, then," he continued.  "There has been a
+difference between him and Mr. Osborne.  And I regard him so much--
+for you know we have been like brothers--that I hope and pray the
+quarrel may be settled.  We must go abroad, Miss Osborne.  We may be
+ordered off at a day's warning.  Who knows what may happen in the
+campaign?  Don't be agitated, dear Miss Osborne; and those two at
+least should part friends."
+
+"There has been no quarrel, Captain Dobbin, except a little usual
+scene with Papa," the lady said.  "We are expecting George back
+daily.  What Papa wanted was only for his good.  He has but to come
+back, and I'm sure all will be well; and dear Rhoda, who went away
+from here in sad sad anger, I know will forgive him.  Woman forgives
+but too readily, Captain."
+
+"Such an angel as YOU I am sure would," Mr. Dobbin said, with
+atrocious astuteness.  "And no man can pardon himself for giving a
+woman pain.  What would you feel, if a man were faithless to you?"
+
+"I should perish--I should throw myself out of window--I should take
+poison--I should pine and die.  I know I should," Miss cried, who
+had nevertheless gone through one or two affairs of the heart
+without any idea of suicide.
+
+"And there are others," Dobbin continued, "as true and as kind-
+hearted as yourself.  I'm not speaking about the West Indian
+heiress, Miss Osborne, but about a poor girl whom George once loved,
+and who was bred from her childhood to think of nobody but him.
+I've seen her in her poverty uncomplaining, broken-hearted, without
+a fault.  It is of Miss Sedley I speak.  Dear Miss Osborne, can your
+generous heart quarrel with your brother for being faithful to her?
+Could his own conscience ever forgive him if he deserted her?  Be
+her friend--she always loved you--and--and I am come here charged by
+George to tell you that he holds his engagement to her as the most
+sacred duty he has; and to entreat you, at least, to be on his
+side."
+
+When any strong emotion took possession of Mr. Dobbin, and after the
+first word or two of hesitation, he could speak with perfect
+fluency, and it was evident that his eloquence on this occasion made
+some impression upon the lady whom he addressed.
+
+"Well," said she, "this is--most surprising--most painful--most
+extraordinary--what will Papa say?--that George should fling away
+such a superb establishment as was offered to him but at any rate he
+has found a very brave champion in you, Captain Dobbin.  It is of no
+use, however," she continued, after a pause; "I feel for poor Miss
+Sedley, most certainly--most sincerely, you know. We never thought
+the match a good one, though we were always very kind to her here--
+very.  But Papa will never consent, I am sure.  And a well brought
+up young woman, you know--with a well-regulated mind, must--George
+must give her up, dear Captain Dobbin, indeed he must."
+
+"Ought a man to give up the woman he loved, just when misfortune
+befell her?" Dobbin said, holding out his hand.  "Dear Miss Osborne,
+is this the counsel I hear from you?  My dear young lady! you must
+befriend her. He can't give her up.  He must not give her up.  Would
+a man, think you, give YOU up if you were poor?"
+
+This adroit question touched the heart of Miss Jane Osborne not a
+little.  "I don't know whether we poor girls ought to believe what
+you men say, Captain," she said. "There is that in woman's
+tenderness which induces her to believe too easily.  I'm afraid you
+are cruel, cruel deceivers,"--and Dobbin certainly thought he felt a
+pressure of the hand which Miss Osborne had extended to him.
+
+He dropped it in some alarm.  "Deceivers!" said he. "No, dear Miss
+Osborne, all men are not; your brother is not; George has loved
+Amelia Sedley ever since they were children; no wealth would make
+him marry any but her.  Ought he to forsake her?  Would you counsel
+him to do so?"
+
+What could Miss Jane say to such a question, and with her own
+peculiar views?  She could not answer it, so she parried it by
+saying, "Well, if you are not a deceiver, at least you are very
+romantic"; and Captain William let this observation pass without
+challenge.
+
+At length when, by the help of farther polite speeches, he deemed
+that Miss Osborne was sufficiently prepared to receive the whole
+news, he poured it into her ear. "George could not give up Amelia--
+George was married to her"--and then he related the circumstances of
+the marriage as we know them already:  how the poor girl would have
+died had not her lover kept his faith:  how Old Sedley had refused
+all consent to the match, and a licence had been got: and Jos Sedley
+had come from Cheltenham to give away the bride: how they had gone
+to Brighton in Jos's chariot-and-four to pass the honeymoon: and how
+George counted on his dear kind sisters to befriend him with their
+father, as women--so true and tender as they were--assuredly would
+do.  And so, asking permission (readily granted) to see her again,
+and rightly conjecturing that the news he had brought would be told
+in the next five minutes to the other ladies, Captain Dobbin made
+his bow and took his leave.
+
+He was scarcely out of the house, when Miss Maria and Miss Wirt
+rushed in to Miss Osborne, and the whole wonderful secret was
+imparted to them by that lady.  To do them justice, neither of the
+sisters was very much displeased.  There is something about a
+runaway match with which few ladies can be seriously angry, and
+Amelia rather rose in their estimation, from the spirit which she
+had displayed in consenting to the union.  As they debated the
+story, and prattled about it, and wondered what Papa would do and
+say, came a loud knock, as of an avenging thunder-clap, at the door,
+which made these conspirators start.  It must be Papa, they thought.
+But it was not he.  It was only Mr. Frederick Bullock, who had come
+from the City according to appointment, to conduct the ladies to a
+flower-show.
+
+This gentleman, as may be imagined, was not kept long in ignorance
+of the secret.  But his face, when he heard it, showed an amazement
+which was very different to that look of sentimental wonder which
+the countenances of the sisters wore.  Mr. Bullock was a man of the
+world, and a junior partner of a wealthy firm.  He knew what money
+was, and the value of it: and a delightful throb of expectation
+lighted up his little eyes, and caused him to smile on his Maria, as
+he thought that by this piece of folly of Mr. George's she might be
+worth thirty thousand pounds more than he had ever hoped to get with
+her.
+
+"Gad!  Jane," said he, surveying even the elder sister with some
+interest, "Eels will be sorry he cried off.  You may be a fifty
+thousand pounder yet."
+
+The sisters had never thought of the money question up to that
+moment, but Fred Bullock bantered them with graceful gaiety about it
+during their forenoon's excursion; and they had risen not a little
+in their own esteem by the time when, the morning amusement over,
+they drove back to dinner.  And do not let my respected reader
+exclaim against this selfishness as unnatural.  It was but this
+present morning, as he rode on the omnibus from Richmond; while it
+changed horses, this present chronicler, being on the roof, marked
+three little children playing in a puddle below, very dirty, and
+friendly, and happy.  To these three presently came another little
+one. "POLLY," says she, "YOUR SISTER'S GOT A PENNY."  At which the
+children got up from the puddle instantly, and ran off to pay their
+court to Peggy.  And as the omnibus drove off I saw Peggy with the
+infantine procession at her tail, marching with great dignity
+towards the stall of a neighbouring lollipop-woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible
+
+
+So having prepared the sisters, Dobbin hastened away to the City to
+perform the rest and more difficult part of the task which he had
+undertaken.  The idea of facing old Osborne rendered him not a
+little nervous, and more than once he thought of leaving the young
+ladies to communicate the secret, which, as he was aware, they could
+not long retain.  But he had promised to report to George upon the
+manner in which the elder Osborne bore the intelligence; so going
+into the City to the paternal counting-house in Thames Street, he
+despatched thence a note to Mr. Osborne begging for a half-hour's
+conversation relative to the affairs of his son George.  Dobbin's
+messenger returned from Mr. Osborne's house of business, with the
+compliments of the latter, who would be very happy to see the
+Captain immediately, and away accordingly Dobbin went to confront
+him.
+
+The Captain, with a half-guilty secret to confess, and with the
+prospect of a painful and stormy interview before him, entered Mr.
+Osborne's offices with a most dismal countenance and abashed gait,
+and, passing through the outer room where Mr. Chopper presided, was
+greeted by that functionary from his desk with a waggish air which
+farther discomfited him.  Mr. Chopper winked and nodded and pointed
+his pen towards his patron's door, and said, "You'll find the
+governor all right," with the most provoking good humour.
+
+Osborne rose too, and shook him heartily by the hand, and said, "How
+do, my dear boy?" with a cordiality that made poor George's
+ambassador feel doubly guilty.  His hand lay as if dead in the old
+gentleman's grasp.  He felt that he, Dobbin, was more or less the
+cause of all that had happened.  It was he had brought back George
+to Amelia: it was he had applauded, encouraged, transacted almost
+the marriage which he was come to reveal to George's father:  and
+the latter was receiving him with smiles of welcome; patting him on
+the shoulder, and calling him "Dobbin, my dear boy." The envoy had
+indeed good reason to hang his head.
+
+Osborne fully believed that Dobbin had come to announce his son's
+surrender.  Mr. Chopper and his principal were talking over the
+matter between George and his father, at the very moment when
+Dobbin's messenger arrived.  Both agreed that George was sending in
+his submission.  Both had been expecting it for some days--and
+"Lord! Chopper, what a marriage we'll have!" Mr. Osborne said to his
+clerk, snapping his big fingers, and jingling all the guineas and
+shillings in his great pockets as he eyed his subordinate with a
+look of triumph.
+
+With similar operations conducted in both pockets, and a knowing
+jolly air, Osborne from his chair regarded Dobbin seated blank and
+silent opposite to him.  "What a bumpkin he is for a Captain in the
+army," old Osborne thought.  "I wonder George hasn't taught him
+better manners."
+
+At last Dobbin summoned courage to begin.  "Sir," said he, "I've
+brought you some very grave news.  I have been at the Horse Guards
+this morning, and there's no doubt that our regiment will be ordered
+abroad, and on its way to Belgium before the week is over.  And you
+know, sir, that we shan't be home again before a tussle which may be
+fatal to many of us."   Osborne looked grave.  "My s--, the regiment
+will do its duty, sir, I daresay," he said.
+
+"The French are very strong, sir," Dobbin went on. "The Russians and
+Austrians will be a long time before they can bring their troops
+down.  We shall have the first of the fight, sir; and depend on it
+Boney will take care that it shall be a hard one."
+
+"What are you driving at, Dobbin?" his interlocutor said, uneasy and
+with a scowl.  "I suppose no Briton's afraid of any d--- Frenchman,
+hey?"
+
+"I only mean, that before we go, and considering the great and
+certain risk that hangs over every one of us--if there are any
+differences between you and George--it would be as well, sir, that--
+that you should shake hands: wouldn't it?  Should anything happen to
+him, I think you would never forgive yourself if you hadn't parted
+in charity."
+
+As he said this, poor William Dobbin blushed crimson, and felt and
+owned that he himself was a traitor.  But for him, perhaps, this
+severance need never have taken place.  Why had not George's
+marriage been delayed? What call was there to press it on so
+eagerly?  He felt that George would have parted from Amelia at any
+rate without a mortal pang.  Amelia, too, MIGHT have recovered the
+shock of losing him.  It was his counsel had brought about this
+marriage, and all that was to ensue from it. And why was it?
+Because he loved her so much that he could not bear to see her
+unhappy:  or because his own sufferings of suspense were so
+unendurable that he was glad to crush them at once--as we hasten a
+funeral after a death, or, when a separation from those we love is
+imminent, cannot rest until the parting be over.
+
+"You are a good fellow, William," said Mr. Osborne in a softened
+voice; "and me and George shouldn't part in anger, that is true.
+Look here.  I've done for him as much as any father ever did.  He's
+had three times as much money from me, as I warrant your father ever
+gave you.  But I don't brag about that.  How I've toiled for him,
+and worked and employed my talents and energy, I won't say.  Ask
+Chopper.  Ask himself.  Ask the City of London.  Well, I propose to
+him such a marriage as any nobleman in the land might be proud of--
+the only thing in life I ever asked him--and he refuses me.  Am I
+wrong? Is the quarrel of MY making?  What do I seek but his good,
+for which I've been toiling like a convict ever since he was born?
+Nobody can say there's anything selfish in me.  Let him come back.
+I say, here's my hand.  I say, forget and forgive.  As for marrying
+now, it's out of the question.  Let him and Miss S. make it up, and
+make out the marriage afterwards, when he comes back a Colonel; for
+he shall be a Colonel, by G-- he shall, if money can do it.  I'm glad
+you've brought him round.  I know it's you, Dobbin.  You've took him
+out of many a scrape before.  Let him come.  I shan't be hard.  Come
+along, and dine in Russell Square to-day: both of you.  The old
+shop, the old hour.  You'll find a neck of venison, and no questions
+asked."
+
+This praise and confidence smote Dobbin's heart very keenly.  Every
+moment the colloquy continued in this tone, he felt more and more
+guilty.  "Sir," said he, "I fear you deceive yourself.  I am sure
+you do.  George is much too high-minded a man ever to marry for
+money.  A threat on your part that you would disinherit him in case
+of disobedience would only be followed by resistance on his."
+
+"Why, hang it, man, you don't call offering him eight or ten
+thousand a year threatening him?" Mr. Osborne said, with still
+provoking good humour.  "'Gad, if Miss S. will have me, I'm her man.
+I ain't particular about a shade or so of tawny." And the old
+gentleman gave his knowing grin and coarse laugh.
+
+"You forget, sir, previous engagements into which Captain Osborne
+had entered," the ambassador said, gravely.
+
+"What engagements? What the devil do you mean? You don't mean," Mr.
+Osborne continued, gathering wrath and astonishment as the thought
+now first came upon him; "you don't mean that he's such a d--- fool
+as to be still hankering after that swindling old bankrupt's
+daughter? You've not come here for to make me suppose that he wants
+to marry HER?  Marry HER, that IS a good one.  My son and heir marry
+a beggar's girl out of a gutter.  D--- him, if he does, let him buy
+a broom and sweep a crossing.  She was always dangling and ogling
+after him, I recollect now; and I've no doubt she was put on by her
+old sharper of a father."
+
+"Mr. Sedley was your very good friend, sir," Dobbin interposed,
+almost pleased at finding himself growing angry.  "Time was you
+called him better names than rogue and swindler.  The match was of
+your making. George had no right to play fast and loose--"
+
+"Fast and loose!" howled out old Osborne.  "Fast and loose!  Why,
+hang me, those are the very words my gentleman used himself when he
+gave himself airs, last Thursday was a fortnight, and talked about
+the British army to his father who made him.  What, it's you who
+have been a setting of him up--is it? and my service to you,
+CAPTAIN.  It's you who want to introduce beggars into my family.
+Thank you for nothing, Captain.  Marry HER indeed--he, he! why
+should he?  I warrant you she'd go to him fast enough without."
+
+"Sir," said Dobbin, starting up in undisguised anger; "no man shall
+abuse that lady in my hearing, and you least of all."
+
+"O, you're a-going to call me out, are you?  Stop, let me ring the
+bell for pistols for two.  Mr. George sent you here to insult his
+father, did he?" Osborne said, pulling at the bell-cord.
+
+"Mr. Osborne," said Dobbin, with a faltering voice, "it's you who
+are insulting the best creature in the world. You had best spare
+her, sir, for she's your son's wife."
+
+And with this, feeling that he could say no more, Dobbin went away,
+Osborne sinking back in his chair, and looking wildly after him.  A
+clerk came in, obedient to the bell; and the Captain was scarcely
+out of the court where Mr. Osborne's offices were, when Mr. Chopper
+the chief clerk came rushing hatless after him.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?" Mr. Chopper said, catching the Captain
+by the skirt.  "The governor's in a fit. What has Mr. George been
+doing?"
+
+"He married Miss Sedley five days ago," Dobbin replied. "I was his
+groomsman, Mr. Chopper, and you must stand his friend."
+
+The old clerk shook his head.  "If that's your news, Captain, it's
+bad.  The governor will never forgive him."
+
+Dobbin begged Chopper to report progress to him at the hotel where
+he was stopping, and walked off moodily westwards, greatly perturbed
+as to the past and the future.
+
+When the Russell Square family came to dinner that evening, they
+found the father of the house seated in his usual place, but with
+that air of gloom on his face, which, whenever it appeared there,
+kept the whole circle silent. The ladies, and Mr. Bullock who dined
+with them, felt that the news had been communicated to Mr. Osborne.
+His dark looks affected Mr. Bullock so far as to render him still
+and quiet: but he was unusually bland and attentive to Miss Maria,
+by whom he sat, and to her sister presiding at the head of the
+table.
+
+Miss Wirt, by consequence, was alone on her side of the board, a gap
+being left between her and Miss Jane Osborne.  Now this was George's
+place when he dined at home; and his cover, as we said, was laid for
+him in expectation of that truant's return.  Nothing occurred during
+dinner-time except smiling Mr. Frederick's flagging confidential
+whispers, and the clinking of plate and china, to interrupt the
+silence of the repast.  The servants went about stealthily doing
+their duty.  Mutes at funerals could not look more glum than the
+domestics of Mr. Osborne The neck of venison of which he had invited
+Dobbin to partake, was carved by him in perfect silence; but his own
+share went away almost untasted, though he drank much, and the
+butler assiduously filled his glass.
+
+At last, just at the end of the dinner, his eyes, which had been
+staring at everybody in turn, fixed themselves for a while upon the
+plate laid for George.  He pointed to it presently with his left
+hand.  His daughters looked at him and did not comprehend, or choose
+to comprehend, the signal; nor did the servants at first understand
+it.
+
+"Take that plate away," at last he said, getting up with an oath--
+and with this pushing his chair back, he walked into his own room.
+
+Behind Mr. Osborne's dining-room was the usual apartment which went
+in his house by the name of the study; and was sacred to the master
+of the house.  Hither Mr. Osborne would retire of a Sunday forenoon
+when not minded to go to church; and here pass the morning in his
+crimson leather chair, reading the paper.  A couple of glazed book-
+cases were here, containing standard works in stout gilt bindings.
+The "Annual Register," the "Gentleman's Magazine," "Blair's
+Sermons," and "Hume and Smollett." From year's end to year's end he
+never took one of these volumes from the shelf; but there was no
+member of the family that would dare for his life to touch one of
+the books, except upon those rare Sunday evenings when there was no
+dinner-party, and when the great scarlet Bible and Prayer-book were
+taken out from the corner where they stood beside his copy of the
+Peerage, and the servants being rung up to the dining parlour,
+Osborne read the evening service to his family in a loud grating
+pompous voice.  No member of the household, child, or domestic, ever
+entered that room without a certain terror.  Here he checked the
+housekeeper's accounts, and overhauled the butler's cellar-book.
+Hence he could command, across the clean gravel court-yard, the back
+entrance of the stables with which one of his bells communicated,
+and into this yard the coachman issued from his premises as into a
+dock, and Osborne swore at him from the study window.  Four times a
+year Miss Wirt entered this apartment to get her salary; and his
+daughters to receive their quarterly allowance.  George as a boy had
+been horsewhipped in this room many times; his mother sitting sick
+on the stair listening to the cuts of the whip.  The boy was
+scarcely ever known to cry under the punishment; the poor woman used
+to fondle and kiss him secretly, and give him money to soothe him
+when he came out.
+
+There was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece, removed
+thither from the front room after Mrs. Osborne's death--George was
+on a pony, the elder sister holding him up a bunch of flowers; the
+younger led by her mother's hand; all with red cheeks and large red
+mouths, simpering on each other in the approved family-portrait
+manner.  The mother lay underground now, long since forgotten--the
+sisters and brother had a hundred different interests of their own,
+and, familiar still, were utterly estranged from each other.  Some
+few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are
+grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting childish
+family-portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies,
+and innocence so self-conscious and self-satisfied.  Osborne's own
+state portrait, with that of his great silver inkstand and arm-
+chair, had taken the place of honour in the dining-room, vacated by
+the family-piece.
+
+To this study old Osborne retired then, greatly to the relief of the
+small party whom he left.  When the servants had withdrawn, they
+began to talk for a while volubly but very low; then they went
+upstairs quietly, Mr. Bullock accompanying them stealthily on his
+creaking shoes.  He had no heart to sit alone drinking wine, and so
+close to the terrible old gentleman in the study hard at hand.
+
+An hour at least after dark, the butler, not having received any
+summons, ventured to tap at his door and take him in wax candles and
+tea.  The master of the house sate in his chair, pretending to read
+the paper, and when the servant, placing the lights and refreshment
+on the table by him, retired, Mr. Osborne got up and locked the door
+after him.  This time there was no mistaking the matter; all the
+household knew that some great catastrophe was going to happen which
+was likely direly to affect Master George.
+
+In the large shining mahogany escritoire Mr. Osborne had a drawer
+especially devoted to his son's affairs and papers.  Here he kept
+all the documents relating to him ever since he had been a boy: here
+were his prize copy-books and drawing-books, all bearing George's
+hand, and that of the master:  here were his first letters in large
+round-hand sending his love to papa and mamma, and conveying his
+petitions for a cake.  His dear godpapa Sedley was more than once
+mentioned in them.  Curses quivered on old Osborne's livid lips, and
+horrid hatred and disappointment writhed in his heart, as looking
+through some of these papers he came on that name. They were all
+marked and docketed, and tied with red tape. It was--"From Georgy,
+requesting 5s., April 23, 18--; answered, April 25"--or "Georgy
+about a pony, October 13"--and so forth. In another packet were "Dr.
+S.'s accounts"--"G.'s tailor's bills and outfits, drafts on me by G.
+Osborne, jun.," &c.--his letters from the West Indies--his agent's
+letters, and the newspapers containing his commissions: here was a
+whip he had when a boy, and in a paper a locket containing his hair,
+which his mother used to wear.
+
+Turning one over after another, and musing over these memorials, the
+unhappy man passed many hours.  His dearest vanities, ambitious
+hopes, had all been here.  What pride he had in his boy!  He was the
+handsomest child ever seen.  Everybody said he was like a nobleman's
+son.  A royal princess had remarked him, and kissed him, and asked
+his name in Kew Gardens.  What City man could show such another?
+Could a prince have been better cared for?  Anything that money
+could buy had been his son's.  He used to go down on speech-days
+with four horses and new liveries, and scatter new shillings among
+the boys at the school where George was:  when he went with George
+to the depot of his regiment, before the boy embarked for Canada, he
+gave the officers such a dinner as the Duke of York might have sat
+down to.  Had he ever refused a bill when George drew one? There
+they were--paid without a word.  Many a general in the army couldn't
+ride the horses he had!  He had the child before his eyes, on a
+hundred different days when he remembered George after dinner, when
+he used to come in as bold as a lord and drink off his glass by his
+father's side, at the head of the table--on the pony at Brighton,
+when he cleared the hedge and kept up with the huntsman--on the day
+when he was presented to the Prince Regent at the levee, when all
+Saint James's couldn't produce a finer young fellow.  And this, this
+was the end of all!--to marry a bankrupt and fly in the face of duty
+and fortune!  What humiliation and fury:  what pangs of sickening
+rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds of outraged vanity,
+tenderness even, had this old worldling now to suffer under!
+
+Having examined these papers, and pondered over this one and the
+other, in that bitterest of all helpless woe, with which miserable
+men think of happy past times--George's father took the whole of the
+documents out of the drawer in which he had kept them so long, and
+locked them into a writing-box, which he tied, and sealed with his
+seal.  Then he opened the book-case, and took down the great red
+Bible we have spoken of a pompous book, seldom looked at, and
+shining all over with gold. There was a frontispiece to the volume,
+representing Abraham sacrificing Isaac.  Here, according to custom,
+Osborne had recorded on the fly-leaf, and in his large clerk-like
+hand, the dates of his marriage and his wife's death, and the births
+and Christian names of his children. Jane came first, then George
+Sedley Osborne, then Maria Frances, and the days of the christening
+of each.  Taking a pen, he carefully obliterated George's names from
+the page; and when the leaf was quite dry, restored the volume to
+the place from which he had moved it.  Then he took a document out
+of another drawer, where his own private papers were kept; and
+having read it, crumpled it up and lighted it at one of the candles,
+and saw it burn entirely away in the grate.  It was his will; which
+being burned, he sate down and wrote off a letter, and rang for his
+servant, whom he charged to deliver it in the morning.  It was
+morning already: as he went up to bed, the whole house was alight
+with the sunshine; and the birds were singing among the fresh green
+leaves in Russell Square.
+
+Anxious to keep all Mr. Osborne's family and dependants in good
+humour, and to make as many friends as possible for George in his
+hour of adversity, William Dobbin, who knew the effect which good
+dinners and good wines have upon the soul of man, wrote off
+immediately on his return to his inn the most hospitable of
+invitations to Thomas Chopper, Esquire, begging that gentleman to
+dine with him at the Slaughters' next day.  The note reached Mr.
+Chopper before he left the City, and the instant reply was, that
+"Mr. Chopper presents his respectful compliments, and will have the
+honour and pleasure of waiting on Captain D."  The invitation and
+the rough draft of the answer were shown to Mrs. Chopper and her
+daughters on his return to Somers' Town that evening, and they
+talked about military gents and West End men with great exultation
+as the family sate and partook of tea.  When the girls had gone to
+rest, Mr. and Mrs. C. discoursed upon the strange events which were
+occurring in the governor's family.  Never had the clerk seen his
+principal so moved.  When he went in to Mr. Osborne, after Captain
+Dobbin's departure, Mr. Chopper found his chief black in the face,
+and all but in a fit: some dreadful quarrel, he was certain, had
+occurred between Mr. O. and the young Captain.  Chopper had been
+instructed to make out an account of all sums paid to Captain
+Osborne within the last three years.  "And a precious lot of money
+he has had too," the chief clerk said, and respected his old and
+young master the more, for the liberal way in which the guineas had
+been flung about. The dispute was something about Miss Sedley.  Mrs.
+Chopper vowed and declared she pitied that poor young lady to lose
+such a handsome young fellow as the Capting. As the daughter of an
+unlucky speculator, who had paid a very shabby dividend, Mr. Chopper
+had no great regard for Miss Sedley.  He respected the house of
+Osborne before all others in the City of London: and his hope and
+wish was that Captain George should marry a nobleman's daughter.
+The clerk slept a great deal sounder than his principal that night;
+and, cuddling his children after breakfast (of which he partook with
+a very hearty appetite, though his modest cup of life was only
+sweetened with brown sugar), he set off in his best Sunday suit and
+frilled shirt for business, promising his admiring wife not to
+punish Captain D.'s port too severely that evening.
+
+Mr. Osborne's countenance, when he arrived in the City at his usual
+time, struck those dependants who were accustomed, for good reasons,
+to watch its expression, as peculiarly ghastly and worn.  At twelve
+o'clock Mr. Higgs (of the firm of Higgs & Blatherwick, solicitors,
+Bedford Row) called by appointment, and was ushered into the
+governor's private room, and closeted there for more than an hour.
+At about one Mr. Chopper received a note brought by Captain Dobbin's
+man, and containing an inclosure for Mr. Osborne, which the clerk
+went in and delivered.  A short time afterwards Mr. Chopper and Mr.
+Birch, the next clerk, were summoned, and requested to witness a
+paper.  "I've been making a new will," Mr. Osborne said, to which
+these gentlemen appended their names accordingly.  No conversation
+passed.  Mr. Higgs looked exceedingly grave as he came into the
+outer rooms, and very hard in Mr. Chopper's face; but there were not
+any explanations.  It was remarked that Mr. Osborne was particularly
+quiet and gentle all day, to the surprise of those who had augured
+ill from his darkling demeanour.  He called no man names that day,
+and was not heard to swear once.  He left business early; and before
+going away, summoned his chief clerk once more, and having given him
+general instructions, asked him, after some seeming hesitation and
+reluctance to speak, if he knew whether Captain Dobbin was in town?
+
+Chopper said he believed he was.  Indeed both of them knew the fact
+perfectly.
+
+Osborne took a letter directed to that officer, and giving it to the
+clerk, requested the latter to deliver it into Dobbin's own hands
+immediately.
+
+"And now, Chopper," says he, taking his hat, and with a strange
+look, "my mind will be easy."  Exactly as the clock struck two
+(there was no doubt an appointment between the pair) Mr. Frederick
+Bullock called, and he and Mr. Osborne walked away together.
+
+The Colonel of the --th regiment, in which Messieurs Dobbin and
+Osborne had companies, was an old General who had made his first
+campaign under Wolfe at Quebec, and was long since quite too old and
+feeble for command; but he took some interest in the regiment of
+which he was the nominal head, and made certain of his young
+officers welcome at his table, a kind of hospitality which I believe
+is not now common amongst his brethren.  Captain Dobbin was an
+especial favourite of this old General.  Dobbin was versed in the
+literature of his profession, and could talk about the great
+Frederick, and the Empress Queen, and their wars, almost as well as
+the General himself, who was indifferent to the triumphs of the
+present day, and whose heart was with the tacticians of fifty years
+back.  This officer sent a summons to Dobbin to come and breakfast
+with him, on the morning when Mr. Osborne altered his will and Mr.
+Chopper put on his best shirt frill, and then informed his young
+favourite, a couple of days in advance, of that which they were all
+expecting--a marching order to go to Belgium. The order for the
+regiment to hold itself in readiness would leave the Horse Guards in
+a day or two; and as transports were in plenty, they would get their
+route before the week was over.  Recruits had come in during the
+stay of the regiment at Chatham; and the old General hoped that the
+regiment which had helped to beat Montcalm in Canada, and to rout
+Mr. Washington on Long Island, would prove itself worthy of its
+historical reputation on the oft-trodden battle-grounds of the Low
+Countries.  "And so, my good friend, if you have any affaire la,
+said the old General, taking a pinch of snuff with his trembling
+white old hand, and then pointing to the spot of his robe de chambre
+under which his heart was still feebly beating, "if you have any
+Phillis to console, or to bid farewell to papa and mamma, or any
+will to make, I recommend you to set about your business without
+delay." With which the General gave his young friend a finger to
+shake, and a good-natured nod of his powdered and pigtailed head;
+and the door being closed upon Dobbin, sate down to pen a poulet (he
+was exceedingly vain of his French) to Mademoiselle Amenaide of His
+Majesty's Theatre.
+
+This news made Dobbin grave, and he thought of our friends at
+Brighton, and then he was ashamed of himself that Amelia was always
+the first thing in his thoughts (always before anybody--before
+father and mother, sisters and duty--always at waking and sleeping
+indeed, and all day long); and returning to his hotel, he sent off a
+brief note to Mr. Osborne acquainting him with the information which
+he had received, and which might tend farther, he hoped, to bring
+about a reconciliation with George.
+
+This note, despatched by the same messenger who had carried the
+invitation to Chopper on the previous day, alarmed the worthy clerk
+not a little.  It was inclosed to him, and as he opened the letter
+he trembled lest the dinner should be put off on which he was
+calculating.  His mind was inexpressibly relieved when he found that
+the envelope was only a reminder for himself.  ("I shall expect you
+at half-past five," Captain Dobbin wrote.) He was very much
+interested about his employer's family; but, que voulez-vous? a
+grand dinner was of more concern to him than the affairs of any
+other mortal.
+
+Dobbin was quite justified in repeating the General's information to
+any officers of the regiment whom he should see in the course of his
+peregrinations; accordingly he imparted it to Ensign Stubble, whom
+he met at the agent's, and who--such was his military ardour--went
+off instantly to purchase a new sword at the accoutrement-maker's.
+Here this young fellow, who, though only seventeen years of age, and
+about sixty-five inches high, with a constitution naturally rickety
+and much impaired by premature brandy and water, had an undoubted
+courage and a lion's heart, poised, tried, bent, and balanced a
+weapon such as he thought would do execution amongst Frenchmen.
+Shouting "Ha, ha!" and stamping his little feet with tremendous
+energy, he delivered the point twice or thrice at Captain Dobbin,
+who parried the thrust laughingly with his bamboo walking-stick.
+
+Mr. Stubble, as may be supposed from his size and slenderness, was
+of the Light Bobs.  Ensign Spooney, on the contrary, was a tall
+youth, and belonged to (Captain Dobbin's) the Grenadier Company, and
+he tried on a new bearskin cap, under which he looked savage beyond
+his years.  Then these two lads went off to the Slaughters', and
+having ordered a famous dinner, sate down and wrote off letters to
+the kind anxious parents at home--letters full of love and
+heartiness, and pluck and bad spelling.  Ah! there were many anxious
+hearts beating through England at that time; and mothers' prayers
+and tears flowing in many homesteads.
+
+Seeing young Stubble engaged in composition at one of the coffee-
+room tables at the Slaughters', and the tears trickling down his
+nose on to the paper (for the youngster was thinking of his mamma,
+and that he might never see her again), Dobbin, who was going to
+write off a letter to George Osborne, relented, and locked up his
+desk.  "Why should I?" said he.  "Let her have this night happy.
+I'll go and see my parents early in the morning, and go down to
+Brighton myself to-morrow."
+
+So he went up and laid his big hand on young Stubble's shoulder, and
+backed up that young champion, and told him if he would leave off
+brandy and water he would be a good soldier, as he always was a
+gentlemanly good-hearted fellow.  Young Stubble's eyes brightened up
+at this, for Dobbin was greatly respected in the regiment, as the
+best officer and the cleverest man in it.
+
+"Thank you, Dobbin," he said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, "I
+was just--just telling her I would.  And, O Sir, she's so dam kind
+to me." The water pumps were at work again, and I am not sure that
+the soft-hearted Captain's eyes did not also twinkle.
+
+The two ensigns, the Captain, and Mr. Chopper, dined together in the
+same box.  Chopper brought the letter from Mr. Osborne, in which the
+latter briefly presented his compliments to Captain Dobbin, and
+requested him to forward the inclosed to Captain George Osborne.
+Chopper knew nothing further; he described Mr. Osborne's appearance,
+it is true, and his interview with his lawyer, wondered how the
+governor had sworn at nobody, and--especially as the wine circled
+round--abounded in speculations and conjectures.  But these grew
+more vague with every glass, and at length became perfectly
+unintelligible. At a late hour Captain Dobbin put his guest into a
+hackney coach, in a hiccupping state, and swearing that he would be
+the kick--the kick--Captain's friend for ever and ever.
+
+When Captain Dobbin took leave of Miss Osborne we have said that he
+asked leave to come and pay her another visit, and the spinster
+expected him for some hours the next day, when, perhaps, had he
+come, and had he asked her that question which she was prepared to
+answer, she would have declared herself as her brother's friend, and
+a reconciliation might have been effected between George and his
+angry father.  But though she waited at home the Captain never came.
+He had his own affairs to pursue; his own parents to visit and
+console; and at an early hour of the day to take his place on the
+Lightning coach, and go down to his friends at Brighton.  In the
+course of the day Miss Osborne heard her father give orders that
+that meddling scoundrel, Captain Dobbin, should never be admitted
+within his doors again, and any hopes in which she may have indulged
+privately were thus abruptly brought to an end.  Mr. Frederick
+Bullock came, and was particularly affectionate to Maria, and
+attentive to the broken-spirited old gentleman.  For though he said
+his mind would be easy, the means which he had taken to secure quiet
+did not seem to have succeeded as yet, and the events of the past
+two days had visibly shattered him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave Brighton
+
+
+Conducted to the ladies, at the Ship Inn, Dobbin assumed a jovial
+and rattling manner, which proved that this young officer was
+becoming a more consummate hypocrite every day of his life.  He was
+trying to hide his own private feelings, first upon seeing Mrs.
+George Osborne in her new condition, and secondly to mask the
+apprehensions he entertained as to the effect which the dismal news
+brought down by him would certainly have upon her.
+
+"It is my opinion, George," he said, "that the French Emperor will
+be upon us, horse and foot, before three weeks are over, and will
+give the Duke such a dance as shall make the Peninsula appear mere
+child's play.  But you need not say that to Mrs. Osborne, you know.
+There mayn't be any fighting on our side after all, and our business
+in Belgium may turn out to be a mere military occupation.  Many
+persons think so; and Brussels is full of fine people and ladies of
+fashion." So it was agreed to represent the duty of the British army
+in Belgium in this harmless light to Amelia.
+
+This plot being arranged, the hypocritical Dobbin saluted Mrs.
+George Osborne quite gaily, tried to pay her one or two compliments
+relative to her new position as a bride (which compliments, it must
+be confessed, were exceedingly clumsy and hung fire woefully), and
+then fell to talking about Brighton, and the sea-air, and the
+gaieties of the place, and the beauties of the road and the merits
+of the Lightning coach and horses--all in a manner quite
+incomprehensible to Amelia, and very amusing to Rebecca, who was
+watching the Captain, as indeed she watched every one near whom she
+came.
+
+Little Amelia, it must be owned, had rather a mean opinion of her
+husband's friend, Captain Dobbin.  He lisped--he was very plain and
+homely-looking: and exceedingly awkward and ungainly.  She liked him
+for his attachment to her husband (to be sure there was very little
+merit in that), and she thought George was most generous and kind in
+extending his friendship to his brother officer. George had mimicked
+Dobbin's lisp and queer manners many times to her, though to do him
+justice, he always spoke most highly of his friend's good qualities.
+In her little day of triumph, and not knowing him intimately as yet,
+she made light of honest William--and he knew her opinions of him
+quite well, and acquiesced in them very humbly.  A time came when
+she knew him better, and changed her notions regarding him; but that
+was distant as yet.
+
+As for Rebecca, Captain Dobbin had not been two hours in the ladies'
+company before she understood his secret perfectly.  She did not
+like him, and feared him privately; nor was he very much
+prepossessed in her favour.  He was so honest, that her arts and
+cajoleries did not affect him, and he shrank from her with
+instinctive repulsion. And, as she was by no means so far superior
+to her sex as to be above jealousy, she disliked him the more for
+his adoration of Amelia.  Nevertheless, she was very respectful and
+cordial in her manner towards him.  A friend to the Osbornes! a
+friend to her dearest benefactors!  She vowed she should always love
+him sincerely: she remembered him quite well on the Vauxhall night,
+as she told Amelia archly, and she made a little fun of him when the
+two ladies went to dress for dinner.  Rawdon Crawley paid scarcely
+any attention to Dobbin, looking upon him as a good-natured
+nincompoop and under-bred City man.  Jos patronised him with much
+dignity.
+
+When George and Dobbin were alone in the latter's room, to which
+George had followed him, Dobbin took from his desk the letter which
+he had been charged by Mr. Osborne to deliver to his son.  "It's not
+in my father's handwriting," said George, looking rather alarmed;
+nor was it: the letter was from Mr. Osborne's lawyer, and to the
+following effect:
+
+                                    "Bedford Row, May 7, 1815.
+
+"SIR,
+
+"I am commissioned by Mr. Osborne to inform you, that he abides by
+the determination which he before expressed to you, and that in
+consequence of the marriage which you have been pleased to contract,
+he ceases to consider you henceforth as a member of his family. This
+determination is final and irrevocable.
+
+"Although the monies expended upon you in your minority, and the
+bills which you have drawn upon him so unsparingly of late years,
+far exceed in amount the sum to which you are entitled in your own
+right (being the third part of the fortune of your mother, the late
+Mrs. Osborne and which reverted to you at her decease, and to Miss
+Jane Osborne and Miss Maria Frances Osborne); yet I am instructed by
+Mr. Osborne to say, that he waives all claim upon your estate, and
+that the sum of 2,000 pounds, 4 per cent. annuities, at the value of
+the day (being your one-third share of the sum of 6,000 pounds),
+shall be paid over to yourself or your agents upon your receipt
+for the same, by
+
+                          "Your obedient Servt.,
+                                           "S. HIGGS.
+
+"P.S.--Mr. Osborne desires me to say, once for all, that he declines
+to receive any messages, letters, or communications from you on this
+or any other subject.
+
+"A pretty way you have managed the affair," said George, looking
+savagely at William Dobbin.  "Look there, Dobbin," and he flung over
+to the latter his parent's letter. "A beggar, by Jove, and all in
+consequence of my d--d sentimentality.  Why couldn't we have waited?
+A ball might have done for me in the course of the war, and may
+still, and how will Emmy be bettered by being left a beggar's widow?
+It was all your doing.  You were never easy until you had got me
+married and ruined.  What the deuce am I to do with two thousand
+pounds?  Such a sum won't last two years.  I've lost a hundred and
+forty to Crawley at cards and billiards since I've been down here.
+A pretty manager of a man's matters YOU are, forsooth."
+
+"There's no denying that the position is a hard one," Dobbin
+replied, after reading over the letter with a blank countenance;
+"and as you say, it is partly of my making. There are some men who
+wouldn't mind changing with you," he added, with a bitter smile.
+"How many captains in the regiment have two thousand pounds to the
+fore, think you?  You must live on your pay till your father
+relents, and if you die, you leave your wife a hundred a year."
+
+"Do you suppose a man of my habits call live on his pay and a
+hundred a year?" George cried out in great anger.  "You must be a
+fool to talk so, Dobbin.  How the deuce am I to keep up my position
+in the world upon such a pitiful pittance?  I can't change my
+habits.  I must have my comforts.  I wasn't brought up on porridge,
+like MacWhirter, or on potatoes, like old O'Dowd.  Do you expect my
+wife to take in soldiers' washing, or ride after the regiment in a
+baggage waggon?"
+
+"Well, well," said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, "we'll get her a
+better conveyance.  But try and remember that you are only a
+dethroned prince now, George, my boy; and be quiet whilst the
+tempest lasts.  It won't be for long.  Let your name be mentioned in
+the Gazette, and I'll engage the old father relents towards you:"
+
+"Mentioned in the Gazette!" George answered.  "And in what part of
+it?  Among the killed and wounded returns, and at the top of the
+list, very likely."
+
+"Psha!  It will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt," Dobbin
+said.  "And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a
+little, and I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my
+godson in my will," he added, with a smile.  Whereupon the dispute
+ended--as many scores of  such conversations between Osborne and his
+friend had concluded previously--by the former declaring there was
+no possibility of being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him
+very generously after abusing him without cause.
+
+"I say, Becky," cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to
+his lady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber.
+
+"What?" said Becky's shrill voice.  She was looking over her
+shoulder in the glass.  She had put on the neatest and freshest
+white frock imaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little
+necklace, and a light blue sash, she looked the image of youthful
+innocence and girlish happiness.
+
+"I say, what'll Mrs. O. do, when O. goes out with the regiment?"
+Crawley said coming into the room, performing a duet on his head
+with two huge hair-brushes, and looking out from under his hair with
+admiration on his pretty little wife.
+
+"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out," Becky answered. "She has been
+whimpering half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to
+me."
+
+"YOU don't care, I suppose?" Rawdon said, half angry at his wife's
+want of feeling.
+
+"You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with you," Becky
+replied.  "Besides, you're different.  You go as General Tufto's
+aide-de-camp.  We don't belong to the line," Mrs. Crawley said,
+throwing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that
+he stooped down and kissed it.
+
+"Rawdon dear--don't you think--you'd better get that--money from
+Cupid, before he goes?" Becky continued, fixing on a killing bow.
+She called George Osborne, Cupid.  She had flattered him about his
+good looks a score of times already.  She watched over him kindly at
+ecarte of a night when he would drop in to Rawdon's quarters for a
+half-hour before bed-time.
+
+She had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch, and threatened
+to tell Emmy of his wicked ways and naughty extravagant habits.  She
+brought his cigar and lighted it for him; she knew the effect of
+that manoeuvre, having practised it in former days upon Rawdon
+Crawley. He thought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguee, delightful. In
+their little drives and dinners, Becky, of course, quite outshone
+poor Emmy, who remained very mute and timid while Mrs. Crawley and
+her husband rattled away together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos
+after he joined the young married people) gobbled in silence.
+
+Emmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend. Rebecca's wit,
+spirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet.
+They were only a week married, and here was George already suffering
+ennui, and eager for others' society!  She trembled for the future.
+How shall I be a companion for him, she thought--so clever and so
+brilliant, and I such a humble foolish creature? How noble it was of
+him to marry me--to give up everything and stoop down to me!  I
+ought to have refused him, only I had not the heart.  I ought to
+have stopped at home and taken care of poor Papa.  And her neglect
+of her parents (and indeed there was some foundation for this charge
+which the poor child's uneasy conscience brought against her) was
+now remembered for the first time, and caused her to blush with
+humiliation.  Oh! thought she, I have been very wicked and selfish--
+selfish in forgetting them in their sorrows--selfish in forcing
+George to marry me.  I know I'm not worthy of him--I know he would
+have been happy without me--and yet--I tried, I tried to give him
+up.
+
+It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are over, such
+thoughts and confessions as these force themselves on a little
+bride's mind.  But so it was, and the night before Dobbin came to
+join these young people--on a fine brilliant moonlight night of May-
+-so warm and balmy that the windows were flung open to the balcony,
+from which George and Mrs. Crawley were gazing upon the calm ocean
+spread shining before them, while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at
+backgammon within--Amelia couched in a great chair quite neglected,
+and watching both these parties, felt a despair and remorse such as
+were bitter companions for that tender lonely soul.  Scarce a week
+was past, and it was come to this! The future, had she regarded it,
+offered a dismal prospect; but Emmy was too shy, so to speak, to
+look to that, and embark alone on that wide sea, and unfit to
+navigate it without a guide and protector.  I know Miss Smith has a
+mean opinion of her.  But how many, my dear Madam, are endowed with
+your prodigious strength of mind?
+
+"Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!" George said,
+with a puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skywards.
+
+"How delicious they smell in the open air!  I adore them.  Who'd
+think the moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred
+and forty-seven miles off?" Becky added, gazing at that orb with a
+smile.  "Isn't it clever of me to remember that?  Pooh!  we learned
+it all at Miss Pinkerton's!  How calm the sea is, and how clear
+everything.  I declare I can almost see the coast of France!" and
+her bright green eyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if
+they could see through it.
+
+"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she said; "I find I
+can swim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley's
+companion--old Briggs, you know--you remember her--that hook-nosed
+woman, with the long wisps of hair--when Briggs goes out to bathe, I
+intend to dive under her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in
+the water.  Isn't that a stratagem?"
+
+George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting.
+"What's the row there, you two?" Rawdon shouted out, rattling the
+box.  Amelia was making a fool of herself in an absurd hysterical
+manner, and retired to her own room to whimper in private.
+
+Our history is destined in this chapter to go backwards and forwards
+in a very irresolute manner seemingly, and having conducted our
+story to to-morrow presently, we shall immediately again have
+occasion to step back to yesterday, so that the whole of the tale
+may get a hearing. As you behold at her Majesty's drawing-room, the
+ambassadors' and high dignitaries' carriages whisk off from a
+private door, while Captain Jones's ladies are waiting for their
+fly: as you see in the Secretary of the Treasury's antechamber, a
+half-dozen of petitioners waiting patiently for their audience, and
+called out one by one, when suddenly an Irish member or some eminent
+personage enters the apartment, and instantly walks into Mr. Under-
+Secretary over the heads of all the people present: so in the
+conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to exercise this most
+partial sort of justice.  Although all the little incidents must be
+heard, yet they must be put off when the great events make their
+appearance; and surely such a circumstance as that which brought
+Dobbin to Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and the
+line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that
+country under the command of his Grace the Duke of Wellington--such
+a dignified circumstance as that, I say, was entitled to the pas
+over all minor occurrences whereof this history is composed mainly,
+and hence a little trifling disarrangement and disorder was
+excusable and becoming.  We have only now advanced in time so far
+beyond Chapter XXII as to have got our various characters up into
+their dressing-rooms before the dinner, which took place as usual on
+the day of Dobbin's arrival.
+
+George was too humane or too much occupied with the tie of his
+neckcloth to convey at once all the news to Amelia which his comrade
+had brought with him from London.  He came into her room, however,
+holding the attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn and
+important an air that his wife, always ingeniously on the watch for
+calamity, thought the worst was about to befall, and running up to
+her husband, besought her dearest George to tell her everything--he
+was ordered abroad; there would be a battle next week--she knew
+there would.
+
+Dearest George parried the question about foreign service, and with
+a melancholy shake of the head said, "No, Emmy; it isn't that:  it's
+not myself I care about: it's you.  I have had bad news from my
+father.  He refuses any communication with me; he has flung us off;
+and leaves us to poverty.  I can rough it well enough; but you, my
+dear, how will you bear it? read here." And he handed her over the
+letter.
+
+Amelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes, listened to her
+noble hero as he uttered the above generous sentiments, and sitting
+down on the bed, read the letter which George gave her with such a
+pompous martyr-like air.  Her face cleared up as she read the
+document, however. The idea of sharing poverty and privation in
+company with the beloved object is, as we have before said, far from
+being disagreeable to a warm-hearted woman. The notion was actually
+pleasant to little Amelia.  Then, as usual, she was ashamed of
+herself for feeling happy at such an indecorous moment, and checked
+her pleasure, saying demurely, "O, George, how your poor heart must
+bleed at the idea of being separated from your papa!"
+
+"It does," said George, with an agonised countenance.
+
+"But he can't be angry with you long," she continued. "Nobody could,
+I'm sure.  He must forgive you, my dearest, kindest husband.  O, I
+shall never forgive myself if he does not."
+
+"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune, but yours,"
+George said.  "I don't care for a little poverty; and I think,
+without vanity, I've talents enough to make my own way."
+
+"That you have," interposed his wife, who thought that war should
+cease, and her husband should be made a general instantly.
+
+"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another," Osborne went on; "but
+you, my dear girl, how can I bear your being deprived of the
+comforts and station in society which my wife had a right to expect?
+My dearest girl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching
+regiment; subject to all sorts of annoyance and privation! It makes
+me miserable."
+
+Emmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only cause of
+disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face and smile began to
+warble that stanza from the favourite song of "Wapping Old Stairs,"
+in which the heroine, after rebuking her Tom for inattention,
+promises "his trousers to mend, and his grog too to make," if he
+will be constant and kind, and not forsake her.  "Besides," she
+said, after a pause, during which she looked as pretty and happy as
+any young woman need, "isn't two thousand pounds an immense deal of
+money, George?"
+
+George laughed at her naivete; and finally they went down to dinner,
+Amelia clinging to George's arm, still warbling the tune of "Wapping
+Old Stairs," and more pleased and light of mind than she had been
+for some days past.
+
+Thus the repast, which at length came off, instead of being dismal,
+was an exceedingly brisk and merry one. The excitement of the
+campaign counteracted in George's mind the depression occasioned by
+the disinheriting letter. Dobbin still kept up his character of
+rattle.  He amused the company with accounts of the army in Belgium;
+where nothing but fetes and gaiety and fashion were going on.  Then,
+having a particular end in view, this dexterous captain proceeded to
+describe Mrs. Major O'Dowd packing her own and her Major's wardrobe,
+and how his best epaulets had been stowed into a tea canister,
+whilst her own famous yellow turban, with the bird of paradise
+wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the Major's tin cocked-hat
+case, and wondered what effect it would have at the French king's
+court at Ghent, or the great military balls at Brussels.
+
+"Ghent! Brussels!" cried out Amelia with a sudden shock and start.
+"Is the regiment ordered away, George--is it ordered away?" A look
+of terror came over the sweet smiling face, and she clung to George
+as by an instinct.
+
+"Don't be afraid, dear," he said good-naturedly; "it is but a twelve
+hours' passage.  It won't hurt you.  You shall go, too, Emmy."
+
+"I intend to go," said Becky.  "I'm on the staff.  General Tufto is
+a great flirt of mine.  Isn't he, Rawdon?" Rawdon laughed out with
+his usual roar.  William Dobbin flushed up quite red.  "She can't
+go," he said; "think of the--of the danger," he was going to add;
+but had not all his conversation during dinner-time tended to prove
+there was none?  He became very confused and silent.
+
+"I must and will go," Amelia cried with the greatest spirit; and
+George, applauding her resolution, patted her under the chin, and
+asked all the persons present if they ever saw such a termagant of a
+wife, and agreed that the lady should bear him company.  "We'll have
+Mrs. O'Dowd to chaperon you," he said.  What cared she so long as
+her husband was near her?  Thus somehow the bitterness of a parting
+was juggled away.  Though war and danger were in store, war and
+danger might not befall for months to come.  There was a respite at
+any rate, which made the timid little Amelia almost as happy as a
+full reprieve would have done, and which even Dobbin owned in his
+heart was very welcome.  For, to be permitted to see her was now the
+greatest privilege and hope of his life, and he thought with himself
+secretly how he would watch and protect her.  I wouldn't have let
+her go if I had been married to her, he thought.  But George was the
+master, and his friend did not think fit to remonstrate.
+
+Putting her arm round her friend's waist, Rebecca at length carried
+Amelia off from the dinner-table where so much business of
+importance had been discussed, and left the gentlemen in a highly
+exhilarated state, drinking and talking very gaily.
+
+In the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family-note from
+his wife, which, although he crumpled it up and burnt it instantly
+in the candle, we had the good luck to read over Rebecca's shoulder.
+"Great news," she wrote.  "Mrs. Bute is gone.  Get the money from
+Cupid tonight, as he'll be off to-morrow most likely.  Mind this.--
+R." So when the little company was about adjourning to coffee in the
+women's apartment, Rawdon touched Osborne on the elbow, and said
+gracefully, "I say, Osborne, my boy, if quite convenient, I'll
+trouble you for that 'ere small trifle." It was not quite
+convenient, but nevertheless George gave him a considerable present
+instalment in bank-notes from his pocket-book, and a bill on his
+agents at a week's date, for the remaining sum.
+
+This matter arranged, George, and Jos, and Dobbin, held a council of
+war over their cigars, and agreed that a general move should be made
+for London in Jos's open carriage the next day.  Jos, I think, would
+have preferred staying until Rawdon Crawley quitted Brighton, but
+Dobbin and George overruled him, and he agreed to carry the party to
+town, and ordered four horses, as became his dignity.  With these
+they set off in state, after breakfast, the next day.  Amelia had
+risen very early in the morning, and packed her little trunks with
+the greatest alacrity, while Osborne lay in bed deploring that she
+had not a maid to help her.  She was only too glad, however, to
+perform this office for herself.  A dim uneasy sentiment about
+Rebecca filled her mind already; and although they kissed each other
+most tenderly at parting, yet we know what jealousy is; and Mrs.
+Amelia possessed that among other virtues of her sex.
+
+Besides these characters who are coming and going away, we must
+remember that there were some other old friends of ours at Brighton;
+Miss Crawley, namely, and the suite in attendance upon her.  Now,
+although Rebecca and her husband were but at a few stones' throw of
+the lodgings which the invalid Miss Crawley occupied, the old lady's
+door remained as pitilessly closed to them as it had been heretofore
+in London.  As long as she remained by the side of her sister-in-
+law, Mrs. Bute Crawley took care that her beloved Matilda should not
+be agitated by a meeting with her nephew.  When the spinster took
+her drive, the faithful Mrs. Bute sate beside her in the carriage.
+When Miss Crawley took the air in a chair, Mrs. Bute marched on one
+side of the vehicle, whilst honest Briggs occupied the other wing.
+And if they met Rawdon and his wife by chance--although the former
+constantly and obsequiously took off his hat, the Miss-Crawley party
+passed him by with such a frigid and killing indifference, that
+Rawdon began to despair.
+
+"We might as well be in London as here," Captain Rawdon often said,
+with a downcast air.
+
+"A comfortable inn in Brighton is better than a spunging-house in
+Chancery Lane," his wife answered, who was of a more cheerful
+temperament.  "Think of those two aides-de-camp of Mr. Moses, the
+sheriff's-officer, who watched our lodging for a week.  Our friends
+here are very stupid, but Mr. Jos and Captain Cupid are better
+companions than Mr. Moses's men, Rawdon, my love."
+
+"I wonder the writs haven't followed me down here," Rawdon
+continued, still desponding.
+
+"When they do, we'll find means to give them the slip," said
+dauntless little Becky, and further pointed out to her husband the
+great comfort and advantage of meeting Jos and Osborne, whose
+acquaintance had brought to Rawdon Crawley a most timely little
+supply of ready money.
+
+"It will hardly be enough to pay the inn bill," grumbled the
+Guardsman.
+
+"Why need we pay it?" said the lady, who had an answer for
+everything.
+
+Through Rawdon's valet, who still kept up a trifling acquaintance
+with the male inhabitants of Miss Crawley's servants' hall, and was
+instructed to treat the coachman to drink whenever they met, old
+Miss Crawley's movements were pretty well known by our young couple;
+and Rebecca luckily bethought herself of being unwell, and of
+calling in the same apothecary who was in attendance upon the
+spinster, so that their information was on the whole tolerably
+complete.  Nor was Miss Briggs, although forced to adopt a hostile
+attitude, secretly inimical to Rawdon and his wife.  She was
+naturally of a kindly and forgiving disposition.  Now that the cause
+of jealousy was removed, her dislike for Rebecca disappeared also,
+and she remembered the latter's invariable good words and good
+humour.  And, indeed, she and Mrs. Firkin, the lady's-maid, and the
+whole of Miss Crawley's household, groaned under the tyranny of the
+triumphant Mrs. Bute.
+
+As often will be the case, that good but imperious woman pushed her
+advantages too far, and her successes quite unmercifully.  She had
+in the course of a few weeks brought the invalid to such a state of
+helpless docility, that the poor soul yielded herself entirely to
+her sister's orders, and did not even dare to complain of her
+slavery to Briggs or Firkin.  Mrs. Bute measured out the glasses of
+wine which Miss Crawley was daily allowed to take, with irresistible
+accuracy, greatly to the annoyance of Firkin and the butler, who
+found themselves deprived of control over even the sherry-bottle.
+She apportioned the sweetbreads, jellies, chickens; their quantity
+and order. Night and noon and morning she brought the abominable
+drinks ordained by the Doctor, and made her patient swallow them
+with so affecting an obedience that Firkin said "my poor Missus du
+take her physic like a lamb." She prescribed the drive in the
+carriage or the ride in the chair, and, in a word, ground down the
+old lady in her convalescence in such a way as only belongs to your
+proper-managing, motherly moral woman.  If ever the patient faintly
+resisted, and pleaded for a little bit more dinner or a little drop
+less medicine, the nurse threatened her with instantaneous death,
+when Miss Crawley instantly gave in.  "She's no spirit left in her,"
+Firkin remarked to Briggs; "she ain't ave called me a fool these
+three weeks." Finally, Mrs. Bute had made up her mind to dismiss the
+aforesaid honest lady's-maid, Mr. Bowls the large confidential man,
+and Briggs herself, and to send for her daughters from the Rectory,
+previous to removing the dear invalid bodily to Queen's Crawley,
+when an odious accident happened which called her away from duties
+so pleasing.  The Reverend Bute Crawley, her husband, riding home
+one night, fell with his horse and broke his collar-bone.  Fever and
+inflammatory symptoms set in, and Mrs. Bute was forced to leave
+Sussex for Hampshire.  As soon as ever Bute was restored, she
+promised to return to her dearest friend, and departed, leaving the
+strongest injunctions with the household regarding their behaviour
+to their mistress; and as soon as she got into the Southampton
+coach, there was such a jubilee and sense of relief in all Miss
+Crawley's house, as the company of persons assembled there had not
+experienced for many a week before.  That very day Miss Crawley left
+off her afternoon dose of medicine:  that afternoon Bowls opened an
+independent bottle of sherry for himself and Mrs. Firkin:  that
+night Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs indulged in a game of piquet
+instead of one of Porteus's sermons.  It was as in the old nursery-
+story, when the stick forgot to beat the dog, and the whole course
+of events underwent a peaceful and happy revolution.
+
+At a very early hour in the morning, twice or thrice a week, Miss
+Briggs used to betake herself to a bathing-machine, and disport in
+the water in a flannel gown and an oilskin cap.  Rebecca, as we have
+seen, was aware of this circumstance, and though she did not attempt
+to storm Briggs as she had threatened, and actually dive into that
+lady's presence and surprise her under the sacredness of the awning,
+Mrs. Rawdon determined to attack Briggs as she came away from her
+bath, refreshed and invigorated by her dip, and likely to be in good
+humour.
+
+So getting up very early the next morning, Becky brought the
+telescope in their sitting-room, which faced the sea, to bear upon
+the bathing-machines on the beach; saw Briggs arrive, enter her box;
+and put out to sea; and was on the shore just as the nymph of whom
+she came in quest stepped out of the little caravan on to the
+shingles.  It was a pretty picture:  the beach; the bathing-women's
+faces; the long line of rocks and building were blushing and bright
+in the sunshine.  Rebecca wore a kind, tender smile on her face, and
+was holding out her pretty white hand as Briggs emerged from the
+box.  What could Briggs do but accept the salutation?
+
+"Miss Sh--Mrs. Crawley," she said.
+
+Mrs. Crawley seized her hand, pressed it to her heart, and with a
+sudden impulse, flinging her arms round Briggs, kissed her
+affectionately.  "Dear, dear friend!" she said, with a touch of such
+natural feeling, that Miss Briggs of course at once began to melt,
+and even the bathing-woman was mollified.
+
+Rebecca found no difficulty in engaging Briggs in a long, intimate,
+and delightful conversation.  Everything that had passed since the
+morning of Becky's sudden departure from Miss Crawley's house in
+Park Lane up to the present day, and Mrs. Bute's happy retreat, was
+discussed and described by Briggs.  All Miss Crawley's symptoms, and
+the particulars of her illness and medical treatment, were narrated
+by the confidante with that fulness and accuracy which women delight
+in.  About their complaints and their doctors do ladies ever tire of
+talking to each other?  Briggs did not on this occasion; nor did
+Rebecca weary of listening.  She was thankful, truly thankful, that
+the dear kind Briggs, that the faithful, the invaluable Firkin, had
+been permitted to remain with their benefactress through her
+illness.  Heaven bless her! though she, Rebecca, had seemed to act
+undutifully towards Miss Crawley; yet was not her fault a natural
+and excusable one? Could she help giving her hand to the man who had
+won her heart?  Briggs, the sentimental, could only turn up her eyes
+to heaven at this appeal, and heave a sympathetic sigh, and think
+that she, too, had given away her affections long years ago, and own
+that Rebecca was no very great criminal.
+
+"Can I ever forget her who so befriended the friendless orphan?  No,
+though she has cast me off," the latter said, "I shall never cease
+to love her, and I would devote my life to her service.  As my own
+benefactress, as my beloved Rawdon's adored relative, I love and
+admire Miss Crawley, dear Miss Briggs, beyond any woman in the
+world, and next to her I love all those who are faithful to her.  I
+would never have treated Miss Crawley's faithful friends as that
+odious designing Mrs. Bute has done.  Rawdon, who was all heart,"
+Rebecca continued, "although his outward manners might seem rough
+and careless, had said a hundred times, with tears in his eyes, that
+he blessed Heaven for sending his dearest Aunty two such admirable
+nurses as her attached Firkin and her admirable Miss Briggs.  Should
+the machinations of the horrible Mrs. Bute end, as she too much
+feared they would, in banishing everybody that Miss Crawley loved
+from her side, and leaving that poor lady a victim to those harpies
+at the Rectory, Rebecca besought her (Miss Briggs) to remember that
+her own home, humble as it was, was always open to receive Briggs.
+Dear friend," she exclaimed, in a transport of enthusiasm, "some
+hearts can never forget benefits; all women are not Bute Crawleys!
+Though why should I complain of her," Rebecca added; "though I have
+been her tool and the victim to her arts, do I not owe my dearest
+Rawdon to her?"  And Rebecca unfolded to Briggs all Mrs. Bute's
+conduct at Queen's Crawley, which, though unintelligible to her
+then, was clearly enough explained by the events now--now that the
+attachment had sprung up which Mrs. Bute had encouraged by a
+thousand artifices--now that two innocent people had fallen into the
+snares which she had laid for them, and loved and married and been
+ruined through her schemes.
+
+It was all very true.  Briggs saw the stratagems as clearly as
+possible.  Mrs. Bute had made the match between Rawdon and Rebecca.
+Yet, though the latter was a perfectly innocent victim, Miss Briggs
+could not disguise from her friend her fear that Miss Crawley's
+affections were hopelessly estranged from Rebecca, and that the old
+lady would never forgive her nephew for making so imprudent a
+marriage.
+
+On this point Rebecca had her own opinion, and still kept up a good
+heart.  If Miss Crawley did not forgive them at present, she might
+at least relent on a future day.  Even now, there was only that
+puling, sickly Pitt Crawley between Rawdon and a baronetcy; and
+should anything happen to the former, all would be well.  At all
+events, to have Mrs. Bute's designs exposed, and herself well
+abused, was a satisfaction, and might be advantageous to Rawdon's
+interest; and Rebecca, after an hour's chat with her recovered
+friend, left her with the most tender demonstrations of regard, and
+quite assured that the conversation they had had together would be
+reported to Miss Crawley before many hours were over.
+
+This interview ended, it became full time for Rebecca to return to
+her inn, where all the party of the previous day were assembled at a
+farewell breakfast.  Rebecca took such a tender leave of Amelia as
+became two women who loved each other as sisters; and having used
+her handkerchief plentifully, and hung on her friend's neck as if
+they were parting for ever, and waved the handkerchief (which was
+quite dry, by the way) out of window, as the carriage drove off, she
+came back to the breakfast table, and ate some prawns with a good
+deal of appetite, considering her emotion; and while she was
+munching these delicacies, explained to Rawdon what had occurred in
+her morning walk between herself and Briggs.  Her hopes were very
+high:  she made her husband share them.  She generally succeeded in
+making her husband share all her opinions, whether melancholy or
+cheerful.
+
+"You will now, if you please, my dear, sit down at the writing-table
+and pen me a pretty little letter to Miss Crawley, in which you'll
+say that you are a good boy, and that sort of thing."  So Rawdon
+sate down, and wrote off, "Brighton, Thursday," and "My dear Aunt,"
+with great rapidity: but there the gallant officer's imagination
+failed him.  He mumbled the end of his pen, and looked up in his
+wife's face.  She could not help laughing at his rueful countenance,
+and marching up and down the room with her hands behind her, the
+little woman began to dictate a letter, which he took down.
+
+"Before quitting the country and commencing a campaign, which very
+possibly may be fatal."
+
+"What?" said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the humour of the
+phrase, and presently wrote it down with a grin.
+
+"Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come hither--"
+
+"Why not say come here, Becky?  Come here's grammar," the dragoon
+interposed.
+
+"I have come hither," Rebecca insisted, with a stamp of her foot,
+"to say farewell to my dearest and earliest friend.  I beseech you
+before I go, not perhaps to return, once more to let me press the
+hand from which I have received nothing but kindnesses all my life."
+
+"Kindnesses all my life," echoed Rawdon, scratching down the words,
+and quite amazed at his own facility of composition.
+
+"I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in anger.  I
+have the pride of my family on some points, though not on all.  I
+married a painter's daughter, and am not ashamed of the union."
+
+"No, run me through the body if I am!" Rawdon ejaculated.
+
+"You old booby," Rebecca said, pinching his ear and looking over to
+see that he made no mistakes in spelling--"beseech is not spelt with
+an a, and earliest is."  So he altered these words, bowing to the
+superior knowledge of his little Missis.
+
+"I thought that you were aware of the progress of my attachment,"
+Rebecca continued:  "I knew that Mrs. Bute Crawley confirmed and
+encouraged it.  But I make no reproaches.  I married a poor woman,
+and am content to abide by what I have done.  Leave your property,
+dear Aunt, as you will.  I shall never complain of the way in which
+you dispose of it.  I would have you believe that I love you for
+yourself, and not for money's sake.  I want to be reconciled to you
+ere I leave England.  Let me, let me see you before I go.  A few
+weeks or months hence it may be too late, and I cannot bear the
+notion of quitting the country without a kind word of farewell from
+you."
+
+"She won't recognise my style in that," said Becky.  "I made the
+sentences short and brisk on purpose." And this authentic missive
+was despatched under cover to Miss Briggs.
+
+Old Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great mystery, handed her
+over this candid and simple statement.  "We may read it now Mrs.
+Bute is away," she said.  "Read it to me, Briggs."
+
+When Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness laughed more.
+"Don't you see, you goose," she said to Briggs, who professed to be
+much touched by the honest affection which pervaded the composition,
+"don't you see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it.  He never wrote
+to me without asking for money in his life, and all his letters are
+full of bad spelling, and dashes, and bad grammar.  It is that
+little serpent of a governess who rules him." They are all alike,
+Miss Crawley thought in her heart.  They all want me dead, and are
+hankering for my money.
+
+"I don't mind seeing Rawdon," she added, after a pause, and in a
+tone of perfect indifference.  "I had just as soon shake hands with
+him as not.  Provided there is no scene, why shouldn't we meet?  I
+don't mind.  But human patience has its limits; and mind, my dear, I
+respectfully decline to receive Mrs. Rawdon--I can't support that
+quite"--and Miss Briggs was fain to be content with this half-
+message of conciliation; and thought that the best method of
+bringing the old lady and her nephew together, was to warn Rawdon to
+be in waiting on the Cliff, when Miss Crawley went out for her air
+in her chair.  There they met.  I don't know whether Miss Crawley
+had any private feeling of regard or emotion upon seeing her old
+favourite; but she held out a couple of fingers to him with as
+smiling and good-humoured an air, as if they had met only the day
+before.  And as for Rawdon, he turned as red as scarlet, and wrung
+off Briggs's hand, so great was his rapture and his confusion at the
+meeting. Perhaps it was interest that moved him:  or perhaps
+affection:  perhaps he was touched by the change which the illness
+of the last weeks had wrought in his aunt.
+
+"The old girl has always acted like a trump to me," he said to his
+wife, as he narrated the interview, "and I felt, you know, rather
+queer, and that sort of thing.  I walked by the side of the what-
+dy'e-call-'em, you know, and to her own door, where Bowls came to
+help her in.  And I wanted to go in very much, only--"
+
+"YOU DIDN'T GO IN, Rawdon!" screamed his wife.
+
+"No, my dear; I'm hanged if I wasn't afraid when it came to the
+point."
+
+"You fool! you ought to have gone in, and never come out again,"
+Rebecca said.
+
+"Don't call me names," said the big Guardsman, sulkily. "Perhaps I
+WAS a fool, Becky, but you shouldn't say so"; and he gave his wife a
+look, such as his countenance could wear when angered, and such as
+was not pleasant to face.
+
+"Well, dearest, to-morrow you must be on the look-out, and go and
+see her, mind, whether she asks you or no," Rebecca said, trying to
+soothe her angry yoke-mate.  On which he replied, that he would do
+exactly as he liked, and would just thank her to keep a civil tongue
+in her head--and the wounded husband went away, and passed the
+forenoon at the billiard-room, sulky, silent, and suspicious.
+
+But before the night was over he was compelled to give in, and own,
+as usual, to his wife's superior prudence and foresight, by the most
+melancholy confirmation of the presentiments which she had regarding
+the consequences of the mistake which he had made.  Miss Crawley
+must have had some emotion upon seeing him and shaking hands with
+him after so long a rupture.  She mused upon the meeting a
+considerable time.  "Rawdon is getting very fat and old, Briggs,"
+she said to her companion.  "His nose has become red, and he is
+exceedingly coarse in appearance.  His marriage to that woman has
+hopelessly vulgarised him.  Mrs. Bute always said they drank
+together; and I have no doubt they do.  Yes:  he smelt of gin
+abominably.  I remarked it.  Didn't you?"
+
+In vain Briggs interposed that Mrs. Bute spoke ill of everybody:
+and, as far as a person in her humble position could judge, was an--
+
+"An artful designing woman?  Yes, so she is, and she does speak ill
+of every one--but I am certain that woman has made Rawdon drink.
+All those low people do--"
+
+"He was very much affected at seeing you, ma'am," the companion
+said; "and I am sure, when you remember that he is going to the
+field of danger--"
+
+"How much money has he promised you, Briggs?" the old spinster cried
+out, working herself into a nervous rage--"there now, of course you
+begin to cry.  I hate scenes.  Why am I always to be worried?  Go
+and cry up in your own room, and send Firkin to me--no, stop, sit
+down and blow your nose, and leave off crying, and write a letter to
+Captain Crawley." Poor Briggs went and placed herself obediently at
+the writing-book.  Its leaves were blotted all over with relics of
+the firm, strong, rapid handwriting of the spinster's late
+amanuensis, Mrs. Bute Crawley.
+
+"Begin 'My dear sir,' or 'Dear sir,' that will be better, and say
+you are desired by Miss Crawley--no, by Miss Crawley's medical man,
+by Mr. Creamer, to state that my health is such that all strong
+emotions would be dangerous in my present delicate condition--and
+that I must decline any family discussions or interviews whatever.
+And thank him for coming to Brighton, and so forth, and beg him not
+to stay any longer on my account.  And, Miss Briggs, you may add
+that I wish him a bon voyage, and that if he will take the trouble
+to call upon my lawyer's in Gray's Inn Square, he will find there a
+communication for him.  Yes, that will do; and that will make him
+leave Brighton." The benevolent Briggs penned this sentence with the
+utmost satisfaction.
+
+"To seize upon me the very day after Mrs. Bute was gone," the old
+lady prattled on; "it was too indecent. Briggs, my dear, write to
+Mrs. Crawley, and say SHE needn't come back.  No--she needn't--and
+she shan't--and I won't be a slave in my own house--and I won't be
+starved and choked with poison.  They all want to kill me--all--
+all"--and with this the lonely old woman burst into a scream of
+hysterical tears.
+
+The last scene of her dismal Vanity Fair comedy was fast
+approaching; the tawdry lamps were going out one by one; and the
+dark curtain was almost ready to descend.
+
+That final paragraph, which referred Rawdon to Miss Crawley's
+solicitor in London, and which Briggs had written so good-naturedly,
+consoled the dragoon and his wife somewhat, after their first blank
+disappointment, on reading the spinster's refusal of a
+reconciliation.  And it effected the purpose for which the old lady
+had caused it to be written, by making Rawdon very eager to get to
+London.
+
+Out of Jos's losings and George Osborne's bank-notes, he paid his
+bill at the inn, the landlord whereof does not probably know to this
+day how doubtfully his account once stood.  For, as a general sends
+his baggage to the rear before an action, Rebecca had wisely packed
+up all their chief valuables and sent them off under care of
+George's servant, who went in charge of the trunks on the coach back
+to London.  Rawdon and his wife returned by the same conveyance next
+day.
+
+"I should have liked to see the old girl before we went," Rawdon
+said.  "She looks so cut up and altered that I'm sure she can't last
+long.  I wonder what sort of a cheque I shall have at Waxy's.  Two
+hundred--it can't be less than two hundred--hey, Becky?"
+
+In consequence of the repeated visits of the aides-de-camp of the
+Sheriff of Middlesex, Rawdon and his wife did not go back to their
+lodgings at Brompton, but put up at an inn.  Early the next morning,
+Rebecca had an opportunity of seeing them as she skirted that suburb
+on her road to old Mrs. Sedley's house at Fulham, whither she went
+to look for her dear Amelia and her Brighton friends.  They were all
+off to Chatham, thence to Harwich, to take shipping for Belgium with
+the regiment--kind old Mrs. Sedley very much depressed and tearful,
+solitary.  Returning from this visit, Rebecca found her husband, who
+had been off to Gray's Inn, and learnt his fate.  He came back
+furious.
+
+"By Jove, Becky," says he, "she's only given me twenty pound!"
+
+Though it told against themselves, the joke was too good, and Becky
+burst out laughing at Rawdon's discomfiture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Between London and Chatham
+
+
+On quitting Brighton, our friend George, as became a person of rank
+and fashion travelling in a barouche with four horses, drove in
+state to a fine hotel in Cavendish Square, where a suite of splendid
+rooms, and a table magnificently furnished with plate and surrounded
+by a half-dozen of black and silent waiters, was ready to receive
+the young gentleman and his bride.  George did the honours of the
+place with a princely air to Jos and Dobbin; and Amelia, for the
+first time, and with exceeding shyness and timidity, presided at
+what George called her own table.
+
+George pooh-poohed the wine and bullied the waiters royally, and Jos
+gobbled the turtle with immense satisfaction. Dobbin helped him to
+it; for the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed,
+was so ignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr.
+Sedley without bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.
+
+The splendour of the entertainment, and the apartments in which it
+was given, alarmed Mr. Dobbin, who remonstrated after dinner, when
+Jos was asleep in the great chair.  But in vain he cried out against
+the enormity of turtle and champagne that was fit for an archbishop.
+"I've always been accustomed to travel like a gentleman," George
+said, "and, damme, my wife shall travel like a lady.  As long as
+there's a shot in the locker, she shall want for nothing," said the
+generous fellow, quite pleased with himself for his magnificence of
+spirit.  Nor did Dobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness
+was not centred in turtle-soup.
+
+A while after dinner, Amelia timidly expressed a wish to go and see
+her mamma, at Fulham: which permission George granted her with some
+grumbling.  And she tripped away to her enormous bedroom, in the
+centre of which stood the enormous funereal bed, "that the Emperor
+Halixander's sister slep in when the allied sufferings was here,"
+and put on her little bonnet and shawl with the utmost eagerness and
+pleasure.  George was still drinking claret when she returned to the
+dining-room, and made no signs of moving.  "Ar'n't you coming with
+me, dearest?" she asked him.  No; the "dearest" had "business" that
+night.  His man should get her a coach and go with her.  And the
+coach being at the door of the hotel, Amelia made George a little
+disappointed curtsey after looking vainly into his face once or
+twice, and went sadly down the great staircase, Captain Dobbin
+after, who handed her into the vehicle, and saw it drive away to its
+destination. The very valet was ashamed of mentioning the address to
+the hackney-coachman before the hotel waiters, and promised to
+instruct him when they got further on.
+
+Dobbin walked home to his old quarters and the Slaughters', thinking
+very likely that it would be delightful to be in that hackney-coach,
+along with Mrs. Osborne. George was evidently of quite a different
+taste; for when he had taken wine enough, he went off to half-price
+at the play, to see Mr. Kean perform in Shylock.  Captain Osborne
+was a great lover of the drama, and had himself performed high-
+comedy characters with great distinction in several garrison
+theatrical entertainments.  Jos slept on until long after dark, when
+he woke up with a start at the motions of his servant, who was
+removing and emptying the decanters on the table; and the hackney-
+coach stand was again put into requisition for a carriage to convey
+this stout hero to his lodgings and bed.
+
+Mrs. Sedley, you may be sure, clasped her daughter to her heart with
+all maternal eagerness and affection, running out of the door as the
+carriage drew up before the little garden-gate, to welcome the
+weeping, trembling, young bride.  Old Mr. Clapp, who was in his
+shirt-sleeves, trimming the garden-plot, shrank back alarmed.  The
+Irish servant-lass rushed up from the kitchen and smiled a "God
+bless you."  Amelia could hardly walk along the flags and up the
+steps into the parlour.
+
+How the floodgates were opened, and mother and daughter wept, when
+they were together embracing each other in this sanctuary, may
+readily be imagined by every reader who possesses the least
+sentimental turn.  When don't ladies weep?  At what occasion of joy,
+sorrow, or other business of life, and, after such an event as a
+marriage, mother and daughter were surely at liberty to give way to
+a sensibility which is as tender as it is refreshing. About a
+question of marriage I have seen women who hate each other kiss and
+cry together quite fondly. How much more do they feel when they
+love!  Good mothers are married over again at their daughters'
+weddings: and as for subsequent events, who does not know how ultra-
+maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, until she is a
+grandmother, does not often really know what to be a mother is.  Let
+us respect Amelia and her mamma whispering and whimpering and
+laughing and crying in the parlour and the twilight.  Old Mr. Sedley
+did.  HE had not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up.
+He had not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed her very
+warmly when she entered the room (where he was occupied, as usual,
+with his papers and tapes and statements of accounts), and after
+sitting with the mother and daughter for a short time, he very
+wisely left the little apartment in their possession.
+
+George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious manner at Mr.
+Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes.  He took off
+his hat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked
+news about his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his
+horses had been down to Brighton, and about that infernal traitor
+Bonaparty, and the war; until the Irish maid-servant came with a
+plate and a bottle of wine, from which the old gentleman insisted
+upon helping the valet.  He gave him a half-guinea too, which the
+servant pocketed with a mixture of wonder and contempt.  "To the
+health of your master and mistress, Trotter," Mr. Sedley said, "and
+here's something to drink your health when you get home, Trotter."
+
+There were but nine days past since Amelia had left that little
+cottage and home--and yet how far off the time seemed since she had
+bidden it farewell.  What a gulf lay between her and that past life.
+She could look back to it from her present standing-place, and
+contemplate, almost as another being, the young unmarried girl
+absorbed in her love, having no eyes but for one special object,
+receiving parental affection if not ungratefully, at least
+indifferently, and as if it were her due--her whole heart and
+thoughts bent on the accomplishment of one desire.  The review of
+those days, so lately gone yet so far away, touched her with shame;
+and the aspect of the kind parents filled her with tender remorse.
+Was the prize gained--the heaven of life--and the winner still
+doubtful and unsatisfied?  As his hero and heroine pass the
+matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if
+the drama were over then:  the doubts and struggles of life ended:
+as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and
+pleasant there:  and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link
+each other's arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old
+age in happy and perfect fruition.  But our little Amelia was just
+on the bank of her new country, and was already looking anxiously
+back towards the sad friendly figures waving farewell to her across
+the stream, from the other distant shore.
+
+In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother thought it
+necessary to prepare I don't know what festive entertainment, and
+after the first ebullition of talk, took leave of Mrs. George
+Osborne for a while, and dived down to the lower regions of the
+house to a sort of kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp,
+and in the evening, when her dishes were washed and her curl-papers
+removed, by Miss Flannigan, the Irish servant), there to take
+measures for the preparing of a magnificent ornamented tea.  All
+people have their ways of expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs.
+Sedley that a muffin and a quantity of orange marmalade spread out
+in a little cut-glass saucer would be peculiarly agreeable
+refreshments to Amelia in her most interesting situation.
+
+While these delicacies were being transacted below, Amelia, leaving
+the drawing-room, walked upstairs and found herself, she scarce knew
+how, in the little room which she had occupied before her marriage,
+and in that very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours.
+She sank back in its arms as if it were an old friend; and fell to
+thinking over the past week, and the life beyond it.  Already to be
+looking sadly and vaguely back: always to be pining for something
+which, when obtained, brought doubt and sadness rather than
+pleasure; here was the lot of our poor little creature and harmless
+lost wanderer in the great struggling crowds of Vanity Fair.
+
+Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image of George
+to which she had knelt before marriage.  Did she own to herself how
+different the real man was from that superb young hero whom she had
+worshipped?  It requires many, many years--and a man must be very
+bad indeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to
+such a confession.  Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful
+smile lighted upon her, and filled her with dismay.  And so she sate
+for awhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that
+very listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant
+had found her, on the day when she brought up the letter in which
+George renewed his offer of marriage.
+
+She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers a few days
+before, and thought she would like to sleep in it that night, and
+wake, as formerly, with her mother smiling over her in the morning:
+Then she thought with terror of the great funereal damask pavilion
+in the vast and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the
+grand hotel in Cavendish Square.  Dear little white bed! how many a
+long night had she wept on its pillow! How she had despaired and
+hoped to die there; and now were not all her wishes accomplished,
+and the lover of whom she had despaired her own for ever?  Kind
+mother! how patiently and tenderly she had watched round that bed!
+She went and knelt down by the bedside; and there this wounded and
+timorous, but gentle and loving soul, sought for consolation, where
+as yet, it must be owned, our little girl had but seldom looked for
+it.  Love had been her faith hitherto; and the sad, bleeding
+disappointed heart began to feel the want of another consoler.
+
+Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers? These,
+brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which
+our story lies.
+
+But this may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, our
+young lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did
+not despond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness,
+or Rebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late.  She went
+downstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the old
+gentleman, and made him more merry than he had been for many a day.
+She sate down at the piano which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang
+over all her father's favourite old songs.  She pronounced the tea
+to be excellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which the
+marmalade was arranged in the saucers.  And in determining to make
+everybody else happy, she found herself so; and was sound asleep in
+the great funereal pavilion, and only woke up with a smile when
+George arrived from the theatre.
+
+For the next day, George had more important "business" to transact
+than that which took him to see Mr. Kean in Shylock.  Immediately on
+his arrival in London he had written off to his father's solicitors,
+signifying his royal pleasure that an interview should take place
+between them on the morrow.  His hotel bill, losses at billiards and
+cards to Captain Crawley had almost drained the young man's purse,
+which wanted replenishing before he set out on his travels, and he
+had no resource but to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which
+the attorneys were commissioned to pay over to him.  He had a
+perfect belief in his own mind that his father would relent before
+very long.  How could any parent be obdurate for a length of time
+against such a paragon as he was?  If his mere past and personal
+merits did not succeed in mollifying his father, George determined
+that he would distinguish himself so prodigiously in the ensuing
+campaign that the old gentleman must give in to him.  And if not?
+Bah! the world was before him.  His luck might change at cards, and
+there was a deal of spending in two thousand pounds.
+
+So he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her mamma, with
+strict orders and carte blanche to the two ladies to purchase
+everything requisite for a lady of Mrs. George Osborne's fashion,
+who was going on a foreign tour.  They had but one day to complete
+the outfit, and it may be imagined that their business therefore
+occupied them pretty fully.  In a carriage once more, bustling about
+from milliner to linen-draper, escorted back to the carriage by
+obsequious shopmen or polite owners, Mrs. Sedley was herself again
+almost, and sincerely happy for the first time since their
+misfortunes.  Nor was Mrs. Amelia at all above the pleasure of
+shopping, and bargaining, and seeing and buying pretty things.
+(Would any man, the most philosophic, give twopence for a woman who
+was?)  She gave herself a little treat, obedient to her husband's
+orders, and purchased a quantity of lady's gear, showing a great
+deal of taste and elegant discernment, as all the shopfolks said.
+
+And about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne was not much
+alarmed; Bonaparty was to be crushed almost without a struggle.
+Margate packets were sailing every day, filled with men of fashion
+and ladies of note, on their way to Brussels and Ghent.  People were
+going not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour.  The newspapers
+laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to scorn.  Such a Corsican
+wretch as that withstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the
+immortal Wellington!  Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it
+needs not to be said that this soft and gentle creature took her
+opinions from those people who surrounded her, such fidelity being
+much too humble-minded to think for itself. Well, in a word, she and
+her mother performed a great day's shopping, and she acquitted
+herself with considerable liveliness and credit on this her first
+appearance in the genteel world of London.
+
+George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and
+his swaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into
+the attorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk
+who was scribbling there.  He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs
+that Captain Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way,
+as if the pekin of an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty
+times his money, and a thousand times his experience, was a wretched
+underling who should instantly leave all his business in life to
+attend on the Captain's pleasure.  He did not see the sneer of
+contempt which passed all round the room, from the first clerk to
+the articled gents, from the articled gents to the ragged writers
+and white-faced runners, in clothes too tight for them, as he sate
+there tapping his boot with his cane, and thinking what a parcel of
+miserable poor devils these were.  The miserable poor devils knew
+all about his affairs.  They talked about them over their pints of
+beer at their public-house clubs to other clerks of a night. Ye
+gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks know in London!
+Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their families mutely
+rule our city.
+
+Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's apartment, to
+find that gentleman commissioned to give him some message of
+compromise or conciliation from his father; perhaps his haughty and
+cold demeanour was adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution:
+but if so, his fierceness was met by a chilling coolness and
+indifference on the attorney's part, that rendered swaggering
+absurd.  He pretended to be writing at a paper, when the Captain
+entered.  "Pray, sit down, sir," said he, "and I will attend to your
+little affair in a moment.  Mr. Poe, get the release papers, if you
+please"; and then he fell to writing again.
+
+Poe having produced those papers, his chief calculated the amount of
+two thousand pounds stock at the rate of the day; and asked Captain
+Osborne whether he would take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers,
+or whether he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that
+amount.  "One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out of town,"
+he said indifferently, "but my client wishes to meet your wishes,
+and have done with the business as quick as possible."
+
+"Give me a cheque, sir," said the Captain very surlily. "Damn the
+shillings and halfpence, sir," he added, as the lawyer was making
+out the amount of the draft; and, flattering himself that by this
+stroke of magnanimity he had put the old quiz to the blush, he
+stalked out of the office with the paper in his pocket.
+
+"That chap will be in gaol in two years," Mr. Higgs said to Mr. Poe.
+
+"Won't O. come round, sir, don't you think?"
+
+"Won't the monument come round," Mr. Higgs replied.
+
+"He's going it pretty fast," said the clerk.  "He's only married a
+week, and I saw him and some other military chaps handing Mrs.
+Highflyer to her carriage after the play." And then another case was
+called, and Mr. George Osborne thenceforth dismissed from these
+worthy gentlemen's memory.
+
+The draft was upon our friends Hulker and Bullock of Lombard Street,
+to whose house, still thinking he was doing business, George bent
+his way, and from whom he received his money.  Frederick Bullock,
+Esq., whose yellow face was over a ledger, at which sate a demure
+clerk, happened to be in the banking-room when George entered. His
+yellow face turned to a more deadly colour when he saw the Captain,
+and he slunk back guiltily into the inmost parlour.  George was too
+busy gloating over the money (for he had never had such a sum
+before), to mark the countenance or flight of the cadaverous suitor
+of his sister.
+
+Fred Bullock told old Osborne of his son's appearance and conduct.
+"He came in as bold as brass," said Frederick.  "He has drawn out
+every shilling.  How long will a few hundred pounds last such a chap
+as that?" Osborne swore with a great oath that he little cared when
+or how soon he spent it.  Fred dined every day in Russell Square
+now.  But altogether, George was highly pleased with his day's
+business.  All his own baggage and outfit was put into a state of
+speedy preparation, and he paid Amelia's purchases with cheques on
+his agents, and with the splendour of a lord.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment
+
+
+When Jos's fine carriage drove up to the inn door at Chatham, the
+first face which Amelia recognized was the friendly countenance of
+Captain Dobbin, who had been pacing the street for an hour past in
+expectation of his friends' arrival.  The Captain, with shells on
+his frockcoat, and a crimson sash and sabre, presented a military
+appearance, which made Jos quite proud to be able to claim such an
+acquaintance, and the stout civilian hailed him with a cordiality
+very different from the reception which Jos vouchsafed to his friend
+in Brighton and Bond Street.
+
+Along with the Captain was Ensign Stubble; who, as the barouche
+neared the inn, burst out with an exclamation of "By Jove! what a
+pretty girl"; highly applauding Osborne's choice.  Indeed, Amelia
+dressed in her wedding-pelisse and pink ribbons, with a flush in her
+face, occasioned by rapid travel through the open air, looked so
+fresh and pretty, as fully to justify the Ensign's compliment.
+Dobbin liked him for making it.  As he stepped forward to help the
+lady out of the carriage, Stubble saw what a pretty little hand she
+gave him, and what a sweet pretty little foot came tripping down the
+step.  He blushed profusely, and made the very best bow of which he
+was capable; to which Amelia, seeing the number of the the regiment
+embroidered on the Ensign's cap, replied with a blushing smile, and
+a curtsey on her part; which finished the young Ensign on the spot.
+Dobbin took most kindly to Mr. Stubble from that day, and encouraged
+him to talk about Amelia in their private walks, and at each other's
+quarters.  It became the fashion, indeed, among all the honest young
+fellows of the --th to adore and admire Mrs. Osborne.  Her simple
+artless behaviour, and modest kindness of demeanour, won all their
+unsophisticated hearts; all which simplicity and sweetness are quite
+impossible to describe in print.  But who has not beheld these among
+women, and recognised the presence of all sorts of qualities in
+them, even though they say no more to you than that they are engaged
+to dance the next quadrille, or that it is very hot weather?
+George, always the champion of his regiment, rose immensely in the
+opinion of the youth of the corps, by his gallantry in marrying this
+portionless young creature, and by his choice of such a pretty kind
+partner.
+
+In the sitting-room which was awaiting the travellers, Amelia, to
+her surprise, found a letter addressed to Mrs. Captain Osborne.  It
+was a triangular billet, on pink paper, and sealed with a dove and
+an olive branch, and a profusion of light blue sealing wax, and it
+was written in a very large, though undecided female hand.
+
+"It's Peggy O'Dowd's fist," said George, laughing.  "I know it by
+the kisses on the seal." And in fact, it was a note from Mrs. Major
+O'Dowd, requesting the pleasure of Mrs. Osborne's company that very
+evening to a small friendly party.  "You must go," George said.
+"You will make acquaintance with the regiment there.  O'Dowd goes in
+command of the regiment, and Peggy goes in command."
+
+But they had not been for many minutes in the enjoyment of Mrs.
+O'Dowd's letter, when the door was flung open, and a stout jolly
+lady, in a riding-habit, followed by a couple of officers of Ours,
+entered the room.
+
+"Sure, I couldn't stop till tay-time.  Present me, Garge, my dear
+fellow, to your lady.  Madam, I'm deloighted to see ye; and to
+present to you me husband, Meejor O'Dowd"; and with this, the jolly
+lady in the riding-habit grasped Amelia's hand very warmly, and the
+latter knew at once that the lady was before her whom her husband
+had so often laughed at.  "You've often heard of me from that
+husband of yours," said the lady, with great vivacity.
+
+"You've often heard of her," echoed her husband, the Major.
+
+Amelia answered, smiling, "that she had."
+
+"And small good he's told you of me," Mrs. O'Dowd replied; adding
+that "George was a wicked divvle."
+
+"That I'll go bail for," said the Major, trying to look knowing, at
+which George laughed; and Mrs. O'Dowd, with a tap of her whip, told
+the Major to be quiet; and then requested to be presented in form to
+Mrs. Captain Osborne.
+
+"This, my dear," said George with great gravity, "is my very good,
+kind, and excellent friend, Auralia Margaretta, otherwise called
+Peggy."
+
+"Faith, you're right," interposed the Major.
+
+"Otherwise called Peggy, lady of Major Michael O'Dowd, of our
+regiment, and daughter of Fitzjurld Ber'sford de Burgo Malony of
+Glenmalony, County Kildare."
+
+"And Muryan Squeer, Doblin," said the lady with calm superiority.
+
+"And Muryan Square, sure enough," the Major whispered.
+
+"'Twas there ye coorted me, Meejor dear," the lady said; and the
+Major assented to this as to every other proposition which was made
+generally in company.
+
+Major O'Dowd, who had served his sovereign in every quarter of the
+world, and had paid for every step in his profession by some more
+than equivalent act of daring and gallantry, was the most modest,
+silent, sheep-faced and meek of little men, and as obedient to his
+wife as if he had been her tay-boy.  At the mess-table he sat
+silently, and drank a great deal.  When full of liquor, he reeled
+silently home.  When he spoke, it was to agree with everybody on
+every conceivable point; and he passed through life in perfect ease
+and good-humour.  The hottest suns of India never heated his temper;
+and the Walcheren ague never shook it.  He walked up to a battery
+with just as much indifference as to a dinner-table; had dined on
+horse-flesh and turtle with equal relish and appetite; and had an
+old mother, Mrs. O'Dowd of O'Dowdstown indeed, whom he had never
+disobeyed but when he ran away and enlisted, and when he persisted
+in marrying that odious Peggy Malony.
+
+Peggy was one of five sisters, and eleven children of the noble
+house of Glenmalony; but her husband, though her own cousin, was of
+the mother's side, and so had not the inestimable advantage of being
+allied to the Malonys, whom she believed to be the most famous
+family in the world.  Having tried nine seasons at Dublin and two at
+Bath and Cheltenham, and not finding a partner for life, Miss Malony
+ordered her cousin Mick to marry her when she was about thirty-three
+years of age; and the honest fellow obeying, carried her off to the
+West Indies, to preside over the ladies of the --th regiment, into
+which he had just exchanged.
+
+Before Mrs. O'Dowd was half an hour in Amelia's (or indeed in
+anybody else's) company, this amiable lady told all her birth and
+pedigree to her new friend.  "My dear," said she, good-naturedly,
+"it was my intention that Garge should be a brother of my own, and
+my sister Glorvina would have suited him entirely.  But as bygones
+are bygones, and he was engaged to yourself, why, I'm determined to
+take you as a sister instead, and to look upon you as such, and to
+love you as one of the family.  Faith, you've got such a nice good-
+natured face and way widg you, that I'm sure we'll agree; and that
+you'll be an addition to our family anyway."
+
+"'Deed and she will," said O'Dowd, with an approving air, and Amelia
+felt herself not a little amused and grateful to be thus suddenly
+introduced to so large a party of relations.
+
+"We're all good fellows here," the Major's lady continued. "There's
+not a regiment in the service where you'll find a more united
+society nor a more agreeable mess-room.  There's no quarrelling,
+bickering, slandthering, nor small talk amongst us.  We all love
+each other."
+
+"Especially Mrs. Magenis," said George, laughing.
+
+"Mrs. Captain Magenis and me has made up, though her treatment of me
+would bring me gray hairs with sorrow to the grave."
+
+"And you with such a beautiful front of black, Peggy, my dear," the
+Major cried.
+
+"Hould your tongue, Mick, you booby.  Them husbands are always in
+the way, Mrs. Osborne, my dear; and as for my Mick, I often tell him
+he should never open his mouth but to give the word of command, or
+to put meat and drink into it.  I'll tell you about the regiment,
+and warn you when we're alone.  Introduce me to your brother now;
+sure he's a mighty fine man, and reminds me of me cousin, Dan Malony
+(Malony of Ballymalony, my dear, you know who mar'ied Ophalia
+Scully, of Oystherstown, own cousin to Lord Poldoody).  Mr. Sedley,
+sir, I'm deloighted to be made known te ye.  I suppose you'll dine
+at the mess to-day.  (Mind that divvle of a docther, Mick, and
+whatever ye du, keep yourself sober for me party this evening.)"
+
+"It's the 150th gives us a farewell dinner, my love," interposed the
+Major, "but we'll easy get a card for Mr. Sedley."
+
+"Run Simple (Ensign Simple, of Ours, my dear Amelia. I forgot to
+introjuice him to ye).  Run in a hurry, with Mrs. Major O'Dowd's
+compliments to Colonel Tavish, and Captain Osborne has brought his
+brothernlaw down, and will bring him to the 150th mess at five
+o'clock sharp--when you and I, my dear, will take a snack here, if
+you like."  Before Mrs. O'Dowd's speech was concluded, the young
+Ensign was trotting downstairs on his commission.
+
+"Obedience is the soul of the army.  We will go to our duty while
+Mrs. O'Dowd will stay and enlighten you, Emmy," Captain Osborne
+said; and the two gentlemen, taking each a wing of the Major, walked
+out with that officer, grinning at each other over his head.
+
+And, now having her new friend to herself, the impetuous Mrs: O'Dowd
+proceeded to pour out such a quantity of information as no poor
+little woman's memory could ever tax itself to bear.  She told
+Amelia a thousand particulars relative to the very numerous family
+of which the amazed young lady found herself a member.  "Mrs.
+Heavytop, the Colonel's wife, died in Jamaica of the yellow faver
+and a broken heart comboined, for the horrud old Colonel, with a
+head as bald as a cannon-ball, was making sheep's eyes at a half-
+caste girl there.  Mrs. Magenis, though without education, was a
+good woman, but she had the divvle's tongue, and would cheat her own
+mother at whist.  Mrs. Captain Kirk must turn up her lobster eyes
+forsooth at the idea of an honest round game (wherein me fawther, as
+pious a man as ever went to church, me uncle Dane Malony, and our
+cousin the Bishop, took a hand at loo, or whist, every night of
+their lives).  Nayther of 'em's goin' with the regiment this time,"
+Mrs. O'Dowd added.  "Fanny Magenis stops with her mother, who sells
+small coal and potatoes, most likely, in Islington-town, hard by
+London, though she's always bragging of her father's ships, and
+pointing them out to us as they go up the river:  and Mrs. Kirk and
+her children will stop here in Bethesda Place, to be nigh to her
+favourite preacher, Dr. Ramshorn.  Mrs. Bunny's in an interesting
+situation--faith, and she always is, then--and has given the
+Lieutenant seven already.  And Ensign Posky's wife, who joined two
+months before you, my dear, has quarl'd with Tom Posky a score of
+times, till you can hear'm all over the bar'ck (they say they're
+come to broken pleets, and Tom never accounted for his black oi),
+and she'll go back to her mother, who keeps a ladies' siminary at
+Richmond--bad luck to her for running away from it!  Where did ye
+get your finishing, my dear?  I had moin, and no expince spared, at
+Madame Flanahan's, at Ilyssus Grove, Booterstown, near Dublin, wid a
+Marchioness to teach us the true Parisian pronunciation, and a
+retired Mejor-General of the French service to put us through the
+exercise."
+
+Of this incongruous family our astonished Amelia found herself all
+of a sudden a member:  with Mrs. O'Dowd as an elder sister.  She was
+presented to her other female relations at tea-time, on whom, as she
+was quiet, good-natured, and not too handsome, she made rather an
+agreeable impression until the arrival of the gentlemen from the
+mess of the 150th, who all admired her so, that her sisters began,
+of course, to find fault with her.
+
+"I hope Osborne has sown his wild oats," said Mrs. Magenis to Mrs.
+Bunny.  "If a reformed rake makes a good husband, sure it's she will
+have the fine chance with Garge," Mrs. O'Dowd remarked to Posky, who
+had lost her position as bride in the regiment, and was quite angry
+with the usurper.  And as for Mrs. Kirk:  that disciple of Dr.
+Ramshorn put one or two leading professional questions to Amelia, to
+see whether she was awakened, whether she was a professing Christian
+and so forth, and finding from the simplicity of Mrs. Osborne's
+replies that she was yet in utter darkness, put into her hands three
+little penny books with pictures, viz., the "Howling Wilderness,"
+the "Washerwoman of Wandsworth Common," and the "British Soldier's
+best Bayonet," which, bent upon awakening her before she slept, Mrs.
+Kirk begged Amelia to read that night ere she went to bed.
+
+But all the men, like good fellows as they were, rallied round their
+comrade's pretty wife, and paid her their court with soldierly
+gallantry.  She had a little triumph, which flushed her spirits and
+made her eyes sparkle. George was proud of her popularity, and
+pleased with the manner (which was very gay and graceful, though
+naive and a little timid) with which she received the gentlemen's
+attentions, and answered their compliments.  And he in his uniform--
+how much handsomer he was than any man in the room!  She felt that
+he was affectionately watching her, and glowed with pleasure at his
+kindness.  "I will make all his friends welcome," she resolved in
+her heart.  "I will love all as I love him.  I will always try and
+be gay and good-humoured and make his home happy."
+
+The regiment indeed adopted her with acclamation. The Captains
+approved, the Lieutenants applauded, the Ensigns admired.  Old
+Cutler, the Doctor, made one or two jokes, which, being
+professional, need not be repeated; and Cackle, the Assistant M.D.
+of Edinburgh, condescended to examine her upon leeterature, and
+tried her with his three best French quotations.  Young Stubble went
+about from man to man whispering, "Jove, isn't she a pretty gal?"
+and never took his eyes off her except when the negus came in.
+
+As for Captain Dobbin, he never so much as spoke to her during the
+whole evening.  But he and Captain Porter of the 150th took home Jos
+to the hotel, who was in a very maudlin state, and had told his
+tiger-hunt story with great effect, both at the mess-table and at
+the soiree, to Mrs. O'Dowd in her turban and bird of paradise.
+Having put the Collector into the hands of his servant, Dobbin
+loitered about, smoking his cigar before the inn door. George had
+meanwhile very carefully shawled his wife, and brought her away from
+Mrs. O'Dowd's after a general handshaking from the young officers,
+who accompanied her to the fly, and cheered that vehicle as it drove
+off.  So Amelia gave Dobbin her little hand as she got out of the
+carriage, and rebuked him smilingly for not having taken any notice
+of her all night.
+
+The Captain continued that deleterious amusement of smoking, long
+after the inn and the street were gone to bed.  He watched the
+lights vanish from George's sitting-room windows, and shine out in
+the bedroom close at hand.  It was almost morning when he returned
+to his own quarters.  He could hear the cheering from the ships in
+the river, where the transports were already taking in their cargoes
+preparatory to dropping down the Thames.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries
+
+
+The regiment with its officers was to be transported in ships
+provided by His Majesty's government for the occasion:  and in two
+days after the festive assembly at Mrs. O'Dowd's apartments, in the
+midst of cheering from all the East India ships in the river, and
+the military on shore, the band playing "God Save the King," the
+officers waving their hats, and the crews hurrahing gallantly, the
+transports went down the river and proceeded under convoy to Ostend.
+Meanwhile the gallant Jos had agreed to escort his sister and the
+Major's wife, the bulk of whose goods and chattels, including the
+famous bird of paradise and turban, were with the regimental
+baggage: so that our two heroines drove pretty much unencumbered to
+Ramsgate, where there were plenty of packets plying, in one of which
+they had a speedy passage to Ostend.
+
+That period of Jos's life which now ensued was so full of incident,
+that it served him for conversation for many years after, and even
+the tiger-hunt story was put aside for more stirring narratives
+which he had to tell about the great campaign of Waterloo.  As soon
+as he had agreed to escort his sister abroad, it was remarked that
+he ceased shaving his upper lip.  At Chatham he followed the parades
+and drills with great assiduity.  He listened with the utmost
+attention to the conversation of his brother officers (as he called
+them in after days sometimes), and learned as many military names as
+he could. In these studies the excellent Mrs. O'Dowd was of great
+assistance to him; and on the day finally when they embarked on
+board the Lovely Rose, which was to carry them to their destination,
+he made his appearance in a braided frock-coat and duck trousers,
+with a foraging cap ornamented with a smart gold band.  Having his
+carriage with him, and informing everybody on board confidentially
+that he was going to join the Duke of Wellington's army, folks
+mistook him for a great personage, a commissary-general, or a
+government courier at the very least.
+
+He suffered hugely on the voyage, during which the ladies were
+likewise prostrate; but Amelia was brought to life again as the
+packet made Ostend, by the sight of the transports conveying her
+regiment, which entered the harbour almost at the same time with the
+Lovely Rose. Jos went in a collapsed state to an inn, while Captain
+Dobbin escorted the ladies, and then busied himself in freeing Jos's
+carriage and luggage from the ship and the custom-house, for Mr. Jos
+was at present without a servant, Osborne's man and his own pampered
+menial having conspired together at Chatham, and refused point-blank
+to cross the water.  This revolt, which came very suddenly, and on
+the last day, so alarmed Mr. Sedley, junior, that he was on the
+point of giving up the expedition, but Captain Dobbin (who made
+himself immensely officious in the business, Jos said), rated him
+and laughed at him soundly:  the mustachios were grown in advance,
+and Jos finally was persuaded to embark.  In place of the well-bred
+and well-fed London domestics, who could only speak English, Dobbin
+procured for Jos's party a swarthy little Belgian servant who could
+speak no language at all; but who, by his bustling behaviour, and by
+invariably addressing Mr. Sedley as "My lord," speedily acquired
+that gentleman's favour.  Times are altered at Ostend now; of the
+Britons who go thither, very few look like lords, or act like those
+members of our hereditary aristocracy.  They seem for the most part
+shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of billiards and brandy,
+and cigars and greasy ordinaries.
+
+But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the Duke of
+Wellington's army paid his way.  The remembrance of such a fact
+surely becomes a nation of shopkeepers.  It was a blessing for a
+commerce-loving country to be overrun by such an army of customers:
+and to have such creditable warriors to feed.  And the country which
+they came to protect is not military.  For a long period of history
+they have let other people fight there.  When the present writer
+went to survey with eagle glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the
+conductor of the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran,
+whether he had been at the battle.  "Pas si bete"--such an answer
+and sentiment as no Frenchman would own to--was his reply.  But, on
+the other hand, the postilion who drove us was a Viscount, a son of
+some bankrupt Imperial General, who accepted a pennyworth of beer on
+the road.  The moral is surely a good one.
+
+This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked more
+rich and prosperous than in that opening summer of 1815, when its
+green fields and quiet cities were enlivened by multiplied red-
+coats: when its wide chaussees swarmed with brilliant English
+equipages: when its great canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and
+pleasant quaint old villages, by old chateaux lying amongst old
+trees, were all crowded with well-to-do English travellers: when the
+soldier who drank at the village inn, not only drank, but paid his
+score; and Donald, the Highlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-
+house, rocked the baby's cradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out
+getting in the hay.  As our painters are bent on military subjects
+just now, I throw out this as a good subject for the pencil, to
+illustrate the principle of an honest English war.  All looked as
+brilliant and harmless as a Hyde Park review.  Meanwhile, Napoleon
+screened behind his curtain of frontier-fortresses, was preparing
+for the outbreak which was to drive all these orderly people into
+fury and blood; and lay so many of them low.
+
+Everybody had such a perfect feeling of confidence in the leader
+(for the resolute faith which the Duke of Wellington had inspired in
+the whole English nation was as intense as that more frantic
+enthusiasm with which at one time the French regarded Napoleon), the
+country seemed in so perfect a state of orderly defence, and the
+help at hand in case of need so near and overwhelming, that alarm
+was unknown, and our travellers, among whom two were naturally of a
+very timid sort, were, like all the other multiplied English
+tourists, entirely at ease.  The famous regiment, with so many of
+whose officers we have made acquaintance, was drafted in canal boats
+to Bruges and Ghent, thence to march to Brussels. Jos accompanied
+the ladies in the public boats; the which all old travellers in
+Flanders must remember for the luxury and accommodation they
+afforded.  So prodigiously good was the eating and drinking on board
+these sluggish but most comfortable vessels, that there are legends
+extant of an English traveller, who, coming to Belgium for a week,
+and travelling in one of these boats, was so delighted with the fare
+there that he went backwards and forwards from Ghent to Bruges
+perpetually until the railroads were invented, when he drowned
+himself on the last trip of the passage-boat.  Jos's death was not
+to be of this sort, but his comfort was exceeding, and Mrs. O'Dowd
+insisted that he only wanted her sister Glorvina to make his
+happiness complete.  He sate on the roof of the cabin all day
+drinking Flemish beer, shouting for Isidor, his servant, and talking
+gallantly to the ladies.
+
+His courage was prodigious.  "Boney attack us!" he cried.  "My dear
+creature, my poor Emmy, don't be frightened.  There's no danger.
+The allies will be in Paris in two months, I tell you; when I'll
+take you to dine in the Palais Royal, by Jove!  There are three
+hundred thousand Rooshians, I tell you, now entering France by
+Mayence and the Rhine--three hundred thousand under Wittgenstein and
+Barclay de Tolly, my poor love.  You don't know military affairs, my
+dear.  I do, and I tell you there's no infantry in France can stand
+against Rooshian infantry, and no general of Boney's that's fit to
+hold a candle to Wittgenstein.  Then there are the Austrians, they
+are five hundred thousand if a man, and they are within ten marches
+of the frontier by this time, under Schwartzenberg and Prince
+Charles.  Then there are the Prooshians under the gallant Prince
+Marshal.  Show me a cavalry chief like him now that Murat is gone.
+Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd?  Do you think our little girl here need be afraid?
+Is there any cause for fear, Isidor?  Hey, sir?  Get some more
+beer."
+
+Mrs. O'Dowd said that her "Glorvina was not afraid of any man alive,
+let alone a Frenchman," and tossed off a glass of beer with a wink
+which expressed her liking for the beverage.
+
+Having frequently been in presence of the enemy, or, in other words,
+faced the ladies at Cheltenham and Bath, our friend, the Collector,
+had lost a great deal of his pristine timidity, and was now,
+especially when fortified with liquor, as talkative as might be.  He
+was rather a favourite with the regiment, treating the young
+officers with sumptuosity, and amusing them by his military airs.
+And as there is one well-known regiment of the army which travels
+with a goat heading the column, whilst another is led by a deer,
+George said with respect to his brother-in-law, that his regiment
+marched with an elephant.
+
+Since Amelia's introduction to the regiment, George began to be
+rather ashamed of some of the company to which he had been forced to
+present her; and determined, as he told Dobbin (with what
+satisfaction to the latter it need not be said), to exchange into
+some better regiment soon, and to get his wife away from those
+damned vulgar women.  But this vulgarity of being ashamed of one's
+society is much more common among men than women (except very great
+ladies of fashion, who, to be sure, indulge in it); and Mrs. Amelia,
+a natural and unaffected person, had none of that artificial
+shamefacedness which her husband mistook for delicacy on his own
+part.  Thus Mrs. O'Dowd had a cock's plume in her hat, and a very
+large "repayther" on her stomach, which she used to ring on all
+occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her by her
+fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and these
+ornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife,
+gave excruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the
+Major's came in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the
+honest lady's eccentricities, and not in the least ashamed of her
+company.
+
+As they made that well-known journey, which almost every Englishman
+of middle rank has travelled since, there might have been more
+instructive, but few more entertaining, companions than Mrs. Major
+O'Dowd.  "Talk about kenal boats; my dear!  Ye should see the kenal
+boats between Dublin and Ballinasloe.  It's there the rapid
+travelling is; and the beautiful cattle.  Sure me fawther got a
+goold medal (and his Excellency himself eat a slice of it, and said
+never was finer mate in his loif) for a four-year-old heifer, the
+like of which ye never saw in this country any day." And Jos owned
+with a sigh, "that for good streaky beef, really mingled with fat
+and lean, there was no country like England."
+
+"Except Ireland, where all your best mate comes from," said the
+Major's lady; proceeding, as is not unusual with patriots of her
+nation, to make comparisons greatly in favour of her own country.
+The idea of comparing the market at Bruges with those of Dublin,
+although she had suggested it herself, caused immense scorn and
+derision on her part.  "I'll thank ye tell me what they mean by that
+old gazabo on the top of the market-place," said she, in a burst of
+ridicule fit to have brought the old tower down.  The place was full
+of English soldiery as they passed.  English bugles woke them in the
+morning; at nightfall they went to bed to the note of the British
+fife and drum:  all the country and Europe was in arms, and the
+greatest event of history pending:  and honest Peggy O'Dowd, whom it
+concerned as well as another, went on prattling about Ballinafad,
+and the horses in the stables at Glenmalony, and the clar't drunk
+there; and Jos Sedley interposed about curry and rice at Dumdum; and
+Amelia thought about her husband, and how best she should show her
+love for him; as if these were the great topics of the world.
+
+Those who like to lay down the History-book, and to speculate upon
+what MIGHT have happened in the world, but for the fatal occurrence
+of what actually did take place (a most puzzling, amusing,
+ingenious, and profitable kind of meditation), have no doubt often
+thought to themselves what a specially bad time Napoleon took to
+come back from Elba, and to let loose his eagle from Gulf San Juan
+to Notre Dame.  The historians on our side tell us that the armies
+of the allied powers were all providentially on a war-footing, and
+ready to bear down at a moment's notice upon the Elban Emperor. The
+august jobbers assembled at Vienna, and carving out the kingdoms of
+Europe according to their wisdom, had such causes of quarrel among
+themselves as might have set the armies which had overcome Napoleon
+to fight against each other, but for the return of the object of
+unanimous hatred and fear.  This monarch had an army in full force
+because he had jobbed to himself Poland, and was determined to keep
+it:  another had robbed half Saxony, and was bent upon maintaining
+his acquisition: Italy was the object of a third's solicitude.  Each
+was protesting against the rapacity of the other; and could the
+Corsican but have waited in prison until all these parties were by
+the ears, he might have returned and reigned unmolested.  But what
+would have become of our story and all our friends, then?  If all
+the drops in it were dried up, what would become of the sea?
+
+In the meanwhile the business of life and living, and the pursuits
+of pleasure, especially, went on as if no end were to be expected to
+them, and no enemy in front. When our travellers arrived at
+Brussels, in which their regiment was quartered, a great piece of
+good fortune, as all said, they found themselves in one of the
+gayest and most brilliant little capitals in Europe, and where all
+the Vanity Fair booths were laid out with the most tempting
+liveliness and splendour.  Gambling was here in profusion, and
+dancing in plenty:  feasting was there to fill with delight that
+great gourmand of a Jos:  there was a theatre where a miraculous
+Catalani was delighting all hearers:  beautiful rides, all enlivened
+with martial splendour; a rare old city, with strange costumes and
+wonderful architecture, to delight the eyes of little Amelia, who
+had never before seen a foreign country, and fill her with charming
+surprises: so that now and for a few weeks' space in a fine handsome
+lodging, whereof the expenses were borne by Jos and Osborne, who was
+flush of money and full of kind attentions to his wife--for about a
+fortnight, I say, during which her honeymoon ended, Mrs. Amelia was
+as pleased and happy as any little bride out of England.
+
+Every day during this happy time there was novelty and amusement for
+all parties.  There was a church to see, or a picture-gallery--there
+was a ride, or an opera. The bands of the regiments were making
+music at all hours.  The greatest folks of England walked in the
+Park--there was a perpetual military festival.  George, taking out
+his wife to a new jaunt or junket every night, was quite pleased
+with himself as usual, and swore he was becoming quite a domestic
+character.  And a jaunt or a junket with HIM!  Was it not enough to
+set this little heart beating with joy?  Her letters home to her
+mother were filled with delight and gratitude at this season.  Her
+husband bade her buy laces, millinery, jewels, and gimcracks of all
+sorts.  Oh, he was the kindest, best, and most generous of men!
+
+The sight of the very great company of lords and ladies and
+fashionable persons who thronged the town, and appeared in every
+public place, filled George's truly British soul with intense
+delight.  They flung off that happy frigidity and insolence of
+demeanour which occasionally characterises the great at home, and
+appearing in numberless public places, condescended to mingle with
+the rest of the company whom they met there.  One night at a party
+given by the general of the division to which George's regiment
+belonged, he had the honour of dancing with Lady Blanche
+Thistlewood, Lord Bareacres' daughter; he bustled for ices and
+refreshments for the two noble ladies; he pushed and squeezed for
+Lady Bareacres' carriage; he bragged about the Countess when he got
+home, in a way which his own father could not have surpassed.  He
+called upon the ladies the next day; he rode by their side in the
+Park; he asked their party to a great dinner at a restaurateur's,
+and was quite wild with exultation when they agreed to come.  Old
+Bareacres, who had not much pride and a large appetite, would go for
+a dinner anywhere.
+
+"I hope there will be no women besides our own party," Lady
+Bareacres said, after reflecting upon the invitation which had been
+made, and accepted with too much precipitancy.
+
+"Gracious Heaven, Mamma--you don't suppose the man would bring his
+wife," shrieked Lady Blanche, who had been languishing in George's
+arms in the newly imported waltz for hours the night before.  "The
+men are bearable, but their women--"
+
+"Wife, just married, dev'lish pretty woman, I hear," the old Earl
+said.
+
+"Well, my dear Blanche," said the mother, "I suppose, as Papa wants
+to go, we must go; but we needn't know them in England, you know."
+And so, determined to cut their new acquaintance in Bond Street,
+these great folks went to eat his dinner at Brussels, and
+condescending to make him pay for their pleasure, showed their
+dignity by making his wife uncomfortable, and carefully excluding
+her from the conversation.  This is a species of dignity in which
+the high-bred British female reigns supreme.  To watch the behaviour
+of a fine lady to other and humbler women, is a very good sport for
+a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.
+
+This festival, on which honest George spent a great deal of money,
+was the very dismallest of all the entertainments which Amelia had
+in her honeymoon.  She wrote the most piteous accounts of the feast
+home to her mamma:  how the Countess of Bareacres would not answer
+when spoken to; how Lady Blanche stared at her with her eye-glass;
+and what a rage Captain Dobbin was in at their behaviour; and how my
+lord, as they came away from the feast, asked to see the bill, and
+pronounced it a d--- bad dinner, and d--- dear.  But though Amelia
+told all these stories, and wrote home regarding her guests'
+rudeness, and her own discomfiture, old Mrs. Sedley was mightily
+pleased nevertheless, and talked about Emmy's friend, the Countess
+of Bareacres, with such assiduity that the news how his son was
+entertaining peers and peeresses actually came to Osborne's ears in
+the City.
+
+Those who know the present Lieutenant-General Sir George Tufto,
+K.C.B., and have seen him, as they may on most days in the season,
+padded and in stays, strutting down Pall Mall with a rickety swagger
+on his high-heeled lacquered boots, leering under the bonnets of
+passers-by, or riding a showy chestnut, and ogling broughams in the
+Parks--those who know the present Sir George Tufto would hardly
+recognise the daring Peninsular and Waterloo officer.  He has thick
+curling brown hair and black eyebrows now, and his whiskers are of
+the deepest purple.  He was light-haired and bald in 1815, and
+stouter in the person and in the limbs, which especially have shrunk
+very much of late.  When he was about seventy years of age (he is
+now nearly eighty), his hair, which was very scarce and quite white,
+suddenly grew thick, and brown, and curly, and his whiskers and
+eyebrows took their present colour.  Ill-natured people say that his
+chest is all wool, and that his hair, because it never grows, is a
+wig.  Tom Tufto, with whose father he quarrelled ever so many years
+ago, declares that Mademoiselle de Jaisey, of the French theatre,
+pulled his grandpapa's hair off in the green-room; but Tom is
+notoriously spiteful and jealous; and the General's wig has nothing
+to do with our story.
+
+One day, as some of our friends of the --th were sauntering in the
+flower-market of Brussels, having been to see the Hotel de Ville,
+which Mrs. Major O'Dowd declared was not near so large or handsome
+as her fawther's mansion of Glenmalony, an officer of rank, with an
+orderly behind him, rode up to the market, and descending from his
+horse, came amongst the flowers, and selected the very finest
+bouquet which money could buy. The beautiful bundle being tied up in
+a paper, the officer remounted, giving the nosegay into the charge
+of his military groom, who carried it with a grin, following his
+chief, who rode away in great state and self-satisfaction.
+
+"You should see the flowers at Glenmalony," Mrs. O'Dowd was
+remarking.  "Me fawther has three Scotch garners with nine helpers.
+We have an acre of hot-houses, and pines as common as pays in the
+sayson.  Our greeps weighs six pounds every bunch of 'em, and upon
+me honour and conscience I think our magnolias is as big as
+taykettles."
+
+Dobbin, who never used to "draw out" Mrs. O'Dowd as that wicked
+Osborne delighted in doing (much to Amelia's terror, who implored
+him to spare her), fell back in the crowd, crowing and sputtering
+until he reached a safe distance, when he exploded amongst the
+astonished market-people with shrieks of yelling laughter.
+
+"Hwhat's that gawky guggling about?" said Mrs. O'Dowd.  "Is it his
+nose bleedn?  He always used to say 'twas his nose bleedn, till he
+must have pomped all the blood out of 'um.  An't the magnolias at
+Glenmalony as big as taykettles, O'Dowd?"
+
+"'Deed then they are, and bigger, Peggy," the Major said.  When the
+conversation was interrupted in the manner stated by the arrival of
+the officer who purchased the bouquet.
+
+"Devlish fine horse--who is it?" George asked.
+
+"You should see me brother Molloy Malony's horse, Molasses, that won
+the cop at the Curragh," the Major's wife was exclaiming, and was
+continuing the family history, when her husband interrupted her by
+saying--
+
+"It's General Tufto, who commands the ---- cavalry division"; adding
+quietly, "he and I were both shot in the same leg at Talavera."
+
+"Where you got your step," said George with a laugh. "General Tufto!
+Then, my dear, the Crawleys are come."
+
+Amelia's heart fell--she knew not why.  The sun did not seem to
+shine so bright.  The tall old roofs and gables looked less
+picturesque all of a sudden, though it was a brilliant sunset, and
+one of the brightest and most beautiful days at the end of May.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Brussels
+
+
+Mr. Jos had hired a pair of horses for his open carriage, with which
+cattle, and the smart London vehicle, he made a very tolerable
+figure in the drives about Brussels. George purchased a horse for
+his private riding, and he and Captain Dobbin would often accompany
+the carriage in which Jos and his sister took daily excursions of
+pleasure.  They went out that day in the park for their accustomed
+diversion, and there, sure enough, George's remark with regard to
+the arrival of Rawdon Crawley and his wife proved to be correct.  In
+the midst of a little troop of horsemen, consisting of some of the
+very greatest persons in Brussels, Rebecca was seen in the prettiest
+and tightest of riding-habits, mounted on a beautiful little Arab,
+which she rode to perfection (having acquired the art at Queen's
+Crawley, where the Baronet, Mr. Pitt, and Rawdon himself had given
+her many lessons), and by the side of the gallant General Tufto.
+
+"Sure it's the Juke himself," cried Mrs. Major O'Dowd to Jos, who
+began to blush violently; "and that's Lord Uxbridge on the bay.  How
+elegant he looks!  Me brother, Molloy Malony, is as like him as two
+pays."
+
+Rebecca did not make for the carriage; but as soon as she perceived
+her old acquaintance Amelia seated in it, acknowledged her presence
+by a gracious nod and smile, and by kissing and shaking her fingers
+playfully in the direction of the vehicle.  Then she resumed her
+conversation with General Tufto, who asked "who the fat officer was
+in the gold-laced cap?" on which Becky replied, "that he was an
+officer in the East Indian service." But Rawdon Crawley rode out of
+the ranks of his company, and came up and shook hands heartily with
+Amelia, and said to Jos, "Well, old boy, how are you?" and stared in
+Mrs. O'Dowd's face and at the black cock's feathers until she began
+to think she had made a conquest of him.
+
+George, who had been delayed behind, rode up almost immediately with
+Dobbin, and they touched their caps to the august personages, among
+whom Osborne at once perceived Mrs. Crawley.  He was delighted to
+see Rawdon leaning over his carriage familiarly and talking to
+Amelia, and met the aide-de-camp's cordial greeting with more than
+corresponding warmth.  The nods between Rawdon and Dobbin were of
+the very faintest specimens of politeness.
+
+Crawley told George where they were stopping with General Tufto at
+the Hotel du Parc, and George made his friend promise to come
+speedily to Osborne's own residence.  "Sorry I hadn't seen you three
+days ago," George said.  "Had a dinner at the Restaurateur's--rather
+a nice thing.  Lord Bareacres, and the Countess, and Lady Blanche,
+were good enough to dine with us--wish we'd had you." Having thus
+let his friend know his claims to be a man of fashion, Osborne
+parted from Rawdon, who followed the august squadron down an alley
+into which they cantered, while George and Dobbin resumed their
+places, one on each side of Amelia's carriage.
+
+"How well the Juke looked," Mrs. O'Dowd remarked. "The Wellesleys
+and Malonys are related; but, of course, poor I would never dream of
+introjuicing myself unless his Grace thought proper to remember our
+family-tie."
+
+"He's a great soldier," Jos said, much more at ease now the great
+man was gone.  "Was there ever a battle won like Salamanca?  Hey,
+Dobbin?  But where was it he learnt his art?  In India, my boy!  The
+jungle's the school for a general, mark me that.  I knew him myself,
+too, Mrs. O'Dowd:  we both of us danced the same evening with Miss
+Cutler, daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and a devilish fine
+girl, at Dumdum."
+
+The apparition of the great personages held them all in talk during
+the drive; and at dinner; and until the hour came when they were all
+to go to the Opera.
+
+It was almost like Old England.  The house was filled with familiar
+British faces, and those toilettes for which the British female has
+long been celebrated.  Mrs. O'Dowd's was not the least splendid
+amongst these, and she had a curl on her forehead, and a set of
+Irish diamonds and Cairngorms, which outshone all the decorations in
+the house, in her notion.  Her presence used to excruciate Osborne;
+but go she would upon all parties of pleasure on which she heard her
+young friends were bent. It never entered into her thought but that
+they must be charmed with her company.
+
+"She's been useful to you, my dear," George said to his wife, whom
+he could leave alone with less scruple when she had this society.
+"But what a comfort it is that Rebecca's come:  you will have her
+for a friend, and we may get rid now of this damn'd Irishwoman."  To
+this Amelia did not answer, yes or no:  and how do we know what her
+thoughts were?
+
+The coup d'oeil of the Brussels opera-house did not strike Mrs.
+O'Dowd as being so fine as the theatre in Fishamble Street, Dublin,
+nor was French music at all equal, in her opinion, to the melodies
+of her native country. She favoured her friends with these and other
+opinions in a very loud tone of voice, and tossed about a great
+clattering fan she sported, with the most splendid complacency.
+
+"Who is that wonderful woman with Amelia, Rawdon, love?" said a lady
+in an opposite box (who, almost always civil to her husband in
+private, was more fond than ever of him in company).
+
+"Don't you see that creature with a yellow thing in her turban, and
+a red satin gown, and a great watch?"
+
+"Near the pretty little woman in white?" asked a middle-aged
+gentleman seated by the querist's side, with orders in his button,
+and several under-waistcoats, and a great, choky, white stock.
+
+"That pretty woman in white is Amelia, General:  you are remarking
+all the pretty women, you naughty man."
+
+"Only one, begad, in the world!" said the General, delighted, and
+the lady gave him a tap with a large bouquet which she had.
+
+"Bedad it's him," said Mrs. O'Dowd; "and that's the very bokay he
+bought in the Marshy aux Flures!" and when Rebecca, having caught
+her friend's eye, performed the little hand-kissing operation once
+more, Mrs. Major O'D., taking the compliment to herself, returned
+the salute with a gracious smile, which sent that unfortunate Dobbin
+shrieking out of the box again.
+
+At the end of the act, George was out of the box in a moment, and he
+was even going to pay his respects to Rebecca in her loge.  He met
+Crawley in the lobby, however, where they exchanged a few sentences
+upon the occurrences of the last fortnight.
+
+"You found my cheque all right at the agent's? George said, with a
+knowing air.
+
+"All right, my boy," Rawdon answered.  "Happy to give you your
+revenge.  Governor come round?"
+
+"Not yet," said George, "but he will; and you know I've some private
+fortune through my mother.  Has Aunty relented?"
+
+"Sent me twenty pound, damned old screw.  When shall we have a meet?
+The General dines out on Tuesday. Can't you come Tuesday?  I say,
+make Sedley cut off his moustache.  What the devil does a civilian
+mean with a moustache and those infernal frogs to his coat!  By-bye.
+Try and come on Tuesday"; and Rawdon was going-off with two
+brilliant young gentlemen of fashion, who were, like himself, on the
+staff of a general officer.
+
+George was only half pleased to be asked to dinner on that
+particular day when the General was not to dine.  "I will go in and
+pay my respects to your wife," said he; at which Rawdon said, "Hm,
+as you please," looking very glum, and at which the two young
+officers exchanged knowing glances.  George parted from them and
+strutted down the lobby to the General's box, the number of which he
+had carefully counted.
+
+"Entrez," said a clear little voice, and our friend found himself in
+Rebecca's presence; who jumped up, clapped her hands together, and
+held out both of them to George, so charmed was she to see him.  The
+General, with the orders in his button, stared at the newcomer with
+a sulky scowl, as much as to say, who the devil are you?
+
+"My dear Captain George!" cried little Rebecca in an ecstasy.  "How
+good of you to come.  The General and I were moping together tete-a-
+tete.  General, this is my Captain George of whom you heard me
+talk."
+
+"Indeed," said the General, with a very small bow; "of what regiment
+is Captain George?"
+
+George mentioned the --th:  how he wished he could have said it was a
+crack cavalry corps.
+
+"Come home lately from the West Indies, I believe. Not seen much
+service in the late war.  Quartered here, Captain George?"--the
+General went on with killing haughtiness.
+
+"Not Captain George, you stupid man; Captain Osborne," Rebecca said.
+The General all the while was looking savagely from one to the
+other.
+
+"Captain Osborne, indeed! Any relation to the L------ Osbornes?"
+
+"We bear the same arms," George said, as indeed was the fact; Mr.
+Osborne having consulted with a herald in Long Acre, and picked the
+L------ arms out of the peerage, when he set up his carriage fifteen
+years before.  The General made no reply to this announcement; but
+took up his opera-glass--the double-barrelled lorgnon was not
+invented in those days--and pretended to examine the house; but
+Rebecca saw that his disengaged eye was working round in her
+direction, and shooting out bloodshot glances at her and George.
+
+She redoubled in cordiality.  "How is dearest Amelia? But I needn't
+ask: how pretty she looks!  And who is that nice good-natured
+looking creature with her--a flame of yours?  O, you wicked men!
+And there is Mr. Sedley eating ice, I declare: how he seems to enjoy
+it!  General, why have we not had any ices?"
+
+"Shall I go and fetch you some?" said the General, bursting with
+wrath.
+
+"Let ME go, I entreat you," George said.
+
+"No, I will go to Amelia's box.  Dear, sweet girl!  Give me your
+arm, Captain George"; and so saying, and with a nod to the General,
+she tripped into the lobby.  She gave George the queerest,
+knowingest look, when they were together, a look which might have
+been interpreted, "Don't you see the state of affairs, and what a
+fool I'm making of him?"  But he did not perceive it.  He was
+thinking of his own plans, and lost in pompous admiration of his own
+irresistible powers of pleasing.
+
+The curses to which the General gave a low utterance, as soon as
+Rebecca and her conqueror had quitted him, were so deep, that I am
+sure no compositor would venture to print them were they written
+down.  They came from the General's heart; and a wonderful thing it
+is to think that the human heart is capable of generating such
+produce, and can throw out, as occasion demands, such a supply of
+lust and fury, rage and hatred.
+
+Amelia's gentle eyes, too, had been fixed anxiously on the pair,
+whose conduct had so chafed the jealous General; but when Rebecca
+entered her box, she flew to her friend with an affectionate rapture
+which showed itself, in spite of the publicity of the place; for she
+embraced her dearest friend in the presence of the whole house, at
+least in full view of the General's glass, now brought to bear upon
+the Osborne party.  Mrs. Rawdon saluted Jos, too, with the kindliest
+greeting: she admired Mrs. O'Dowd's large Cairngorm brooch and
+superb Irish diamonds, and wouldn't believe that they were not from
+Golconda direct. She bustled, she chattered, she turned and twisted,
+and smiled upon one, and smirked on another, all in full view of the
+jealous opera-glass opposite.  And when the time for the ballet came
+(in which there was no dancer that went through her grimaces or
+performed her comedy of action better), she skipped back to her own
+box, leaning on Captain Dobbin's arm this time.  No, she would not
+have George's: he must stay and talk to his dearest, best, little
+Amelia.
+
+"What a humbug that woman is!" honest old Dobbin mumbled to George,
+when he came back from Rebecca's box, whither he had conducted her
+in perfect silence, and with a countenance as glum as an
+undertaker's.  "She writhes and twists about like a snake.  All the
+time she was here, didn't you see, George, how she was acting at the
+General over the way?"
+
+"Humbug--acting!  Hang it, she's the nicest little woman in
+England," George replied, showing his white teeth, and giving his
+ambrosial whiskers a twirl.  "You ain't a man of the world, Dobbin.
+Dammy, look at her now, she's talked over Tufto in no time.  Look
+how he's laughing!  Gad, what a shoulder she has!  Emmy, why didn't
+you have a bouquet?  Everybody has a bouquet."
+
+"Faith, then, why didn't you BOY one?" Mrs. O'Dowd said; and both
+Amelia and William Dobbin thanked her for this timely observation.
+But beyond this neither of the ladies rallied.  Amelia was
+overpowered by the flash and the dazzle and the fashionable talk of
+her worldly rival. Even the O'Dowd was silent and subdued after
+Becky's brilliant apparition, and scarcely said a word more about
+Glenmalony all the evening.
+
+"When do you intend to give up play, George, as you have promised
+me, any time these hundred years?" Dobbin said to his friend a few
+days after the night at the Opera.  "When do you intend to give up
+sermonising?" was the other's reply.  "What the deuce, man, are you
+alarmed about?  We play low; I won last night.  You don't suppose
+Crawley cheats?  With fair play it comes to pretty much the same
+thing at the year's end."
+
+"But I don't think he could pay if he lost," Dobbin said; and his
+advice met with the success which advice usually commands.  Osborne
+and Crawley were repeatedly together now.  General Tufto dined
+abroad almost constantly. George was always welcome in the
+apartments (very close indeed to those of the General) which the
+aide-de-camp and his wife occupied in the hotel.
+
+Amelia's manners were such when she and George visited Crawley and
+his wife at these quarters, that they had very nearly come to their
+first quarrel; that is, George scolded his wife violently for her
+evident unwillingness to go, and the high and mighty manner in which
+she comported herself towards Mrs. Crawley, her old friend; and
+Amelia did not say one single word in reply; but with her husband's
+eye upon her, and Rebecca scanning her as she felt, was, if
+possible, more bashful and awkward on the second visit which she
+paid to Mrs. Rawdon, than on her first call.
+
+Rebecca was doubly affectionate, of course, and would not take
+notice, in the least, of her friend's coolness.  "I think Emmy has
+become prouder since her father's name was in the--since Mr.
+Sedley's MISFORTUNES," Rebecca said, softening the phrase charitably
+for George's ear.
+
+"Upon my word, I thought when we were at Brighton she was doing me
+the honour to be jealous of me; and now I suppose she is scandalised
+because Rawdon, and I, and the General live together.  Why, my dear
+creature, how could we, with our means, live at all, but for a
+friend to share expenses?  And do you suppose that Rawdon is not big
+enough to take care of my honour?  But I'm very much obliged to
+Emmy, very," Mrs. Rawdon said.
+
+"Pooh, jealousy!" answered George, "all women are jealous."
+
+"And all men too.  Weren't you jealous of General Tufto, and the
+General of you, on the night of the Opera? Why, he was ready to eat
+me for going with you to visit that foolish little wife of yours; as
+if I care a pin for either of you," Crawley's wife said, with a pert
+toss of her head.  "Will you dine here?  The dragon dines with the
+Commander-in-Chief.  Great news is stirring.  They say the French
+have crossed the frontier.  We shall have a quiet dinner."
+
+George accepted the invitation, although his wife was a little
+ailing.  They were now not quite six weeks married. Another woman
+was laughing or sneering at her expense, and he not angry.  He was
+not even angry with himself, this good-natured fellow.  It is a
+shame, he owned to himself; but hang it, if a pretty woman WILL
+throw herself in your way, why, what can a fellow do, you know?  I
+AM rather free about women, he had often said, smiling and nodding
+knowingly to Stubble and Spooney, and other comrades of the mess-
+table; and they rather respected him than otherwise for this
+prowess.  Next to conquering in war, conquering in love has been a
+source of pride, time out of mind, amongst men in Vanity Fair, or
+how should schoolboys brag of their amours, or Don Juan be popular?
+
+So Mr. Osborne, having a firm conviction in his own mind that he was
+a woman-killer and destined to conquer, did not run counter to his
+fate, but yielded himself up to it quite complacently.  And as Emmy
+did not say much or plague him with her jealousy, but merely became
+unhappy and pined over it miserably in secret, he chose to fancy
+that she was not suspicious of what all his acquaintance were
+perfectly aware--namely, that he was carrying on a desperate
+flirtation with Mrs. Crawley.  He rode with her whenever she was
+free.  He pretended regimental business to Amelia (by which
+falsehood she was not in the least deceived), and consigning his
+wife to solitude or her brother's society, passed his evenings in
+the Crawleys' company; losing money to the husband and flattering
+himself that the wife was dying of love for him. It is very likely
+that this worthy couple never absolutely conspired and agreed
+together in so many words:  the one to cajole the young gentleman,
+whilst the other won his money at cards: but they understood each
+other perfectly well, and Rawdon let Osborne come and go with entire
+good humour.
+
+George was so occupied with his new acquaintances that he and
+William Dobbin were by no means so much together as formerly.
+George avoided him in public and in the regiment, and, as we see,
+did not like those sermons which his senior was disposed to inflict
+upon him. If some parts of his conduct made Captain Dobbin
+exceedingly grave and cool; of what use was it to tell George that,
+though his whiskers were large, and his own opinion of his
+knowingness great, he was as green as a schoolboy? that Rawdon was
+making a victim of him as he had done of many before, and as soon as
+he had used him would fling him off with scorn?  He would not
+listen:  and so, as Dobbin, upon those days when he visited the
+Osborne house, seldom had the advantage of meeting his old friend,
+much painful and unavailing talk between them was spared.  Our
+friend George was in the full career of the pleasures of Vanity
+Fair.
+
+There never was, since the days of Darius, such a brilliant train of
+camp-followers as hung round the Duke of Wellington's army in the
+Low Countries, in 1815; and led it dancing and feasting, as it were,
+up to the very brink of battle.  A certain ball which a noble
+Duchess gave at Brussels on the 15th of June in the above-named year
+is historical.  All Brussels had been in a state of excitement about
+it, and I have heard from ladies who were in that town at the
+period, that the talk and interest of persons of their own sex
+regarding the ball was much greater even than in respect of the
+enemy in their front. The struggles, intrigues, and prayers to get
+tickets were such as only English ladies will employ, in order to
+gain admission to the society of the great of their own nation.
+
+Jos and Mrs. O'Dowd, who were panting to be asked, strove in vain to
+procure tickets; but others of our friends were more lucky.  For
+instance, through the interest of my Lord Bareacres, and as a set-
+off for the dinner at the restaurateur's, George got a card for
+Captain and Mrs. Osborne; which circumstance greatly elated him.
+Dobbin, who was a friend of the General commanding the division in
+which their regiment was, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and
+displayed a similar invitation, which made Jos envious, and George
+wonder how the deuce he should be getting into society.  Mr. and
+Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were of course invited; as became the friends
+of a General commanding a cavalry brigade.
+
+On the appointed night, George, having commanded new dresses and
+ornaments of all sorts for Amelia, drove to the famous ball, where
+his wife did not know a single soul.  After looking about for Lady
+Bareacres, who cut him, thinking the card was quite enough--and
+after placing Amelia on a bench, he left her to her own cogitations
+there, thinking, on his own part, that he had behaved very
+handsomely in getting her new clothes, and bringing her to the ball,
+where she was free to amuse herself as she liked.  Her thoughts were
+not of the pleasantest, and nobody except honest Dobbin came to
+disturb them.
+
+Whilst her appearance was an utter failure (as her husband felt with
+a sort of rage), Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's debut was, on the contrary,
+very brilliant.  She arrived very late.  Her face was radiant; her
+dress perfection.  In the midst of the great persons assembled, and
+the eye-glasses directed to her, Rebecca seemed to be as cool and
+collected as when she used to marshal Miss Pinkerton's little girls
+to church.  Numbers of the men she knew already, and the dandies
+thronged round her.  As for the ladies, it was whispered among them
+that Rawdon had run away with her from out of a convent, and that
+she was a relation of the Montmorency family.  She spoke French so
+perfectly that there might be some truth in this report, and it was
+agreed that her manners were fine, and her air distingue.  Fifty
+would-be partners thronged round her at once, and pressed to have
+the honour to dance with her.  But she said she was engaged, and
+only going to dance very little; and made her way at once to the
+place where Emmy sate quite unnoticed, and dismally unhappy.  And
+so, to finish the poor child at once, Mrs. Rawdon ran and greeted
+affectionately her dearest Amelia, and began forthwith to patronise
+her. She found fault with her friend's dress, and her hairdresser,
+and wondered how she could be so chaussee, and vowed that she must
+send her corsetiere the next morning.  She vowed that it was a
+delightful ball; that there was everybody that every one knew, and
+only a VERY few nobodies in the whole room.  It is a fact, that in a
+fortnight, and after three dinners in general society, this young
+woman had got up the genteel jargon so well, that a native could not
+speak it better; and it was only from her French being so good, that
+you could know she was not a born woman of fashion.
+
+George, who had left Emmy on her bench on entering the ball-room,
+very soon found his way back when Rebecca was by her dear friend's
+side.  Becky was just lecturing Mrs. Osborne upon the follies which
+her husband was committing.  "For God's sake, stop him from
+gambling, my dear," she said, "or he will ruin himself. He and
+Rawdon are playing at cards every night, and you know he is very
+poor, and Rawdon will win every shilling from him if he does not
+take care.  Why don't you prevent him, you little careless creature?
+Why don't you come to us of an evening, instead of moping at home
+with that Captain Dobbin?  I dare say he is tres aimable; but how
+could one love a man with feet of such size? Your husband's feet are
+darlings--Here he comes.  Where have you been, wretch?  Here is Emmy
+crying her eyes out for you.  Are you coming to fetch me for the
+quadrille?" And she left her bouquet and shawl by Amelia's side, and
+tripped off with George to dance.  Women only know how to wound so.
+There is a poison on the tips of their little shafts, which stings a
+thousand times more than a man's blunter weapon.  Our poor Emmy, who
+had never hated, never sneered all her life, was powerless in the
+hands of her remorseless little enemy.
+
+George danced with Rebecca twice or thrice--how many times Amelia
+scarcely knew.  She sat quite unnoticed in her corner, except when
+Rawdon came up with some words of clumsy conversation:  and later in
+the evening, when Captain Dobbin made so bold as to bring her
+refreshments and sit beside her.  He did not like to ask her why she
+was so sad; but as a pretext for the tears which were filling in her
+eyes, she told him that Mrs. Crawley had alarmed her by telling her
+that George would go on playing.
+
+"It is curious, when a man is bent upon play, by what clumsy rogues
+he will allow himself to be cheated," Dobbin said; and Emmy said,
+"Indeed." She was thinking of something else.  It was not the loss
+of the money that grieved her.
+
+At last George came back for Rebecca's shawl and flowers.  She was
+going away.  She did not even condescend to come back and say good-
+bye to Amelia.  The poor girl let her husband come and go without
+saying a word, and her head fell on her breast.  Dobbin had been
+called away, and was whispering deep in conversation with the
+General of the division, his friend, and had not seen this last
+parting.  George went away then with the bouquet; but when he gave
+it to the owner, there lay a note, coiled like a snake among the
+flowers.  Rebecca's eye caught it at once.  She had been used to
+deal with notes in early life.  She put out her hand and took the
+nosegay.  He saw by her eyes as they met, that she was aware what
+she should find there.  Her husband hurried her away, still too
+intent upon his own thoughts, seemingly, to take note of any marks
+of recognition which might pass between his friend and his wife.
+These were, however, but trifling.  Rebecca gave George her hand
+with one of her usual quick knowing glances, and made a curtsey and
+walked away.  George bowed over the hand, said nothing in reply to a
+remark of Crawley's, did not hear it even, his brain was so
+throbbing with triumph and excitement, and allowed them to go away
+without a word.
+
+His wife saw the one part at least of the bouquet-scene. It was
+quite natural that George should come at Rebecca's request to get
+her her scarf and flowers:  it was no more than he had done twenty
+times before in the course of the last few days; but now it was too
+much for her. "William," she said, suddenly clinging to Dobbin, who
+was near her, "you've always been very kind to me--I'm--I'm not
+well.  Take me home."  She did not know she called him by his
+Christian name, as George was accustomed to do.  He went away with
+her quickly.  Her lodgings were hard by; and they threaded through
+the crowd without, where everything seemed to be more astir than
+even in the ball-room within.
+
+George had been angry twice or thrice at finding his wife up on his
+return from the parties which he frequented:  so she went straight
+to bed now; but although she did not sleep, and although the din and
+clatter, and the galloping of horsemen were incessant, she never
+heard any of these noises, having quite other disturbances to keep
+her awake.
+
+Osborne meanwhile, wild with elation, went off to a play-table, and
+began to bet frantically.  He won repeatedly. "Everything succeeds
+with me to-night," he said. But his luck at play even did not cure
+him of his restlessness, and he started up after awhile, pocketing
+his winnings, and went to a buffet, where he drank off many bumpers
+of wine.
+
+Here, as he was rattling away to the people around, laughing loudly
+and wild with spirits, Dobbin found him. He had been to the card-
+tables to look there for his friend.  Dobbin looked as pale and
+grave as his comrade was flushed and jovial.
+
+"Hullo, Dob!  Come and drink, old Dob!  The Duke's wine is famous.
+Give me some more, you sir"; and he held out a trembling glass for
+the liquor.
+
+"Come out, George," said Dobbin, still gravely; "don't drink."
+
+"Drink!  there's nothing like it.  Drink yourself, and light up your
+lantern jaws, old boy.  Here's to you."
+
+Dobbin went up and whispered something to him, at which George,
+giving a start and a wild hurray, tossed off his glass, clapped it
+on the table, and walked away speedily on his friend's arm.  "The
+enemy has passed the Sambre," William said, "and our left is already
+engaged. Come away.  We are to march in three hours."
+
+Away went George, his nerves quivering with excitement at the news
+so long looked for, so sudden when it came.  What were love and
+intrigue now?  He thought about a thousand things but these in his
+rapid walk to his quarters--his past life and future chances--the
+fate which might be before him--the wife, the child perhaps, from
+whom unseen he might be about to part.  Oh, how he wished that
+night's work undone!  and that with a clear conscience at least he
+might say farewell to the tender and guileless being by whose love
+he had set such little store!
+
+He thought over his brief married life.  In those few weeks he had
+frightfully dissipated his little capital.  How wild and reckless he
+had been!  Should any mischance befall him:  what was then left for
+her?  How unworthy he was of her.  Why had he married her?  He was
+not fit for marriage.  Why had he disobeyed his father, who had been
+always so generous to him?  Hope, remorse, ambition, tenderness, and
+selfish regret filled his heart.  He sate down and wrote to his
+father, remembering what he had said once before, when he was
+engaged to fight a duel. Dawn faintly streaked the sky as he closed
+this farewell letter.  He sealed it, and kissed the superscription.
+He thought how he had deserted that generous father, and of the
+thousand kindnesses which the stern old man had done him.
+
+He had looked into Amelia's bedroom when he entered; she lay quiet,
+and her eyes seemed closed, and he was glad that she was asleep.  On
+arriving at his quarters from the ball, he had found his regimental
+servant already making preparations for his departure:  the man had
+understood his signal to be still, and these arrangements were very
+quickly and silently made.  Should he go in and wake Amelia, he
+thought, or leave a note for her brother to break the news of
+departure to her?  He went in to look at her once again.
+
+She had been awake when he first entered her room, but had kept her
+eyes closed, so that even her wakefulness should not seem to
+reproach him.  But when he had returned, so soon after herself, too,
+this timid little heart had felt more at ease, and turning towards
+him as he stept softly out of the room, she had fallen into a light
+sleep.  George came in and looked at her again, entering still more
+softly.  By the pale night-lamp he could see her sweet, pale face--
+the purple eyelids were fringed and closed, and one round arm,
+smooth and white, lay outside of the coverlet.  Good God!  how pure
+she was; how gentle, how tender, and how friendless!  and he, how
+selfish, brutal, and black with crime!  Heart-stained, and shame-
+stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and looked at the sleeping
+girl.  How dared he--who was he, to pray for one so spotless!  God
+bless her!  God bless her!  He came to the bedside, and looked at
+the hand, the little soft hand, lying asleep; and he bent over the
+pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale face.
+
+Two fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he stooped down.  "I
+am awake, George," the poor child said, with a sob fit to break the
+little heart that nestled so closely by his own.  She was awake,
+poor soul, and to what?  At that moment a bugle from the Place of
+Arms began sounding clearly, and was taken up through the town; and
+amidst the drums of the infantry, and the shrill pipes of the
+Scotch, the whole city awoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+"The Girl I Left Behind Me"
+
+
+We do not claim to rank among the military novelists. Our place is
+with the non-combatants.  When the decks are cleared for action we
+go below and wait meekly.  We should only be in the way of the
+manoeuvres that the gallant fellows are performing overhead.  We
+shall go no farther with the --th than to the city gate:  and leaving
+Major O'Dowd to his duty, come back to the Major's wife, and the
+ladies and the baggage.
+
+Now the Major and his lady, who had not been invited to the ball at
+which in our last chapter other of our friends figured, had much
+more time to take their wholesome natural rest in bed, than was
+accorded to people who wished to enjoy pleasure as well as to do
+duty.  "It's my belief, Peggy, my dear," said he, as he placidly
+pulled his nightcap over his ears, "that there will be such a ball
+danced in a day or two as some of 'em has never heard the chune of";
+and he was much more happy to retire to rest after partaking of a
+quiet tumbler, than to figure at any other sort of amusement.
+Peggy, for her part, would have liked to have shown her turban and
+bird of paradise at the ball, but for the information which her
+husband had given her, and which made her very grave.
+
+"I'd like ye wake me about half an hour before the assembly beats,"
+the Major said to his lady.  "Call me at half-past one, Peggy dear,
+and see me things is ready.  May be I'll not come back to breakfast,
+Mrs. O'D."  With which words, which signified his opinion that the
+regiment would march the next morning, the Major ceased talking, and
+fell asleep.
+
+Mrs. O'Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a
+camisole, felt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep, at this
+juncture.  "Time enough for that," she said, "when Mick's gone"; and
+so she packed his travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his
+cloak, his cap, and other warlike habiliments, set them out in order
+for him; and stowed away in the cloak pockets a light package of
+portable refreshments, and a wicker-covered flask or pocket-pistol,
+containing near a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy, of which
+she and the Major approved very much; and as soon as the hands of
+the "repayther" pointed to half-past one, and its interior
+arrangements (it had a tone quite equal to a cathaydral, its fair
+owner considered) knelled forth that fatal hour, Mrs. O'Dowd woke up
+her Major, and had as comfortable a cup of coffee prepared for him
+as any made that morning in Brussels.  And who is there will deny
+that this worthy lady's preparations betokened affection as much as
+the fits of tears and hysterics by which more sensitive females
+exhibited their love, and that their partaking of this coffee, which
+they drank together while the bugles were sounding the turn-out and
+the drums beating in the various quarters of the town, was not more
+useful and to the purpose than the outpouring of any mere sentiment
+could be?  The consequence was, that the Major appeared on parade
+quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosy countenance, as
+he sate on horseback, giving cheerfulness and confidence to the
+whole corps.  All the officers saluted her when the regiment marched
+by the balcony on which this brave woman stood, and waved them a
+cheer as they passed; and I daresay it was not from want of courage,
+but from a sense of female delicacy and propriety, that she
+refrained from leading the gallant--th personally into action.
+
+On Sundays, and at periods of a solemn nature, Mrs. O'Dowd used to
+read with great gravity out of a large volume of her uncle the
+Dean's sermons.  It had been of great comfort to her on board the
+transport as they were coming home, and were very nearly wrecked, on
+their return from the West Indies.  After the regiment's departure
+she betook herself to this volume for meditation; perhaps she did
+not understand much of what she was reading, and her thoughts were
+elsewhere:  but the sleep project, with poor Mick's nightcap there
+on the pillow, was quite a vain one.  So it is in the world.  Jack
+or Donald marches away to glory with his knapsack on his shoulder,
+stepping out briskly to the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me." It
+is she who remains and suffers--and has the leisure to think, and
+brood, and remember.
+
+Knowing how useless regrets are, and how the indulgence of sentiment
+only serves to make people more miserable, Mrs. Rebecca wisely
+determined to give way to no vain feelings of sorrow, and bore the
+parting from her husband with quite a Spartan equanimity.  Indeed
+Captain Rawdon himself was much more affected at the leave-taking
+than the resolute little woman to whom he bade farewell.  She had
+mastered this rude coarse nature; and he loved and worshipped her
+with all his faculties of regard and admiration.  In all his life he
+had never been so happy, as, during the past few months, his wife
+had made him.  All former delights of turf, mess, hunting-field, and
+gambling-table; all previous loves and courtships of milliners,
+opera-dancers, and the like easy triumphs of the clumsy military
+Adonis, were quite insipid when compared to the lawful matrimonial
+pleasures which of late he had enjoyed.  She had known perpetually
+how to divert him; and he had found his house and her society a
+thousand times more pleasant than any place or company which he had
+ever frequented from his childhood until now.  And he cursed his
+past follies and extravagances, and bemoaned his vast outlying debts
+above all, which must remain for ever as obstacles to prevent his
+wife's advancement in the world.  He had often groaned over these in
+midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelor they had
+never given him any disquiet.  He himself was struck with this
+phenomenon.  "Hang it," he would say (or perhaps use a still
+stronger expression out of his simple vocabulary), "before I was
+married I didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as
+Moses would wait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on
+never minding.  But since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I
+give you my honour I've not touched a bit of stamped paper."
+
+Rebecca always knew how to conjure away these moods of melancholy.
+"Why, my stupid love," she would say, "we have not done with your
+aunt yet.  If she fails us, isn't there what you call the Gazette?
+or, stop, when your uncle Bute's life drops, I have another scheme.
+The living has always belonged to the younger brother, and why
+shouldn't you sell out and go into the Church?"  The idea of this
+conversion set Rawdon into roars of laughter: you might have heard
+the explosion through the hotel at midnight, and the haw-haws of the
+great dragoon's voice. General Tufto heard him from his quarters on
+the first floor above them; and Rebecca acted the scene with great
+spirit, and preached Rawdon's first sermon, to the immense delight
+of the General at breakfast.
+
+But these were mere by-gone days and talk.  When the final news
+arrived that the campaign was opened, and the troops were to march,
+Rawdon's gravity became such that Becky rallied him about it in a
+manner which rather hurt the feelings of the Guardsman.  "You don't
+suppose I'm afraid, Becky, I should think," he said, with a tremor
+in his voice.  "But I'm a pretty good mark for a shot, and you see
+if it brings me down, why I leave one and perhaps two behind me whom
+I should wish to provide for, as I brought 'em into the scrape.  It
+is no laughing matter that, Mrs. C., anyways."
+
+Rebecca by a hundred caresses and kind words tried to soothe the
+feelings of the wounded lover.  It was only when her vivacity and
+sense of humour got the better of this sprightly creature (as they
+would do under most circumstances of life indeed) that she would
+break out with her satire, but she could soon put on a demure face.
+"Dearest love," she said, "do you suppose I feel nothing?" and
+hastily dashing something from her eyes, she looked up in her
+husband's face with a smile.
+
+"Look here," said he.  "If I drop, let us see what there is for you.
+I have had a pretty good run of luck here, and here's two hundred
+and thirty pounds.  I have got ten Napoleons in my pocket.  That is
+as much as I shall want; for the General pays everything like a
+prince; and if I'm hit, why you know I cost nothing.  Don't cry,
+little woman; I may live to vex you yet.  Well, I shan't take either
+of my horses, but shall ride the General's grey charger:  it's
+cheaper, and I told him mine was lame.  If I'm done, those two ought
+to fetch you something.  Grigg offered ninety for the mare
+yesterday, before this confounded news came, and like a fool I
+wouldn't let her go under the two o's.  Bullfinch will fetch his
+price any day, only you'd better sell him in this country, because
+the dealers have so many bills of mine, and so I'd rather he
+shouldn't go back to England.  Your little mare the General gave you
+will fetch something, and there's no d--d livery stable bills here
+as there are in London," Rawdon added, with a laugh.  "There's that
+dressing-case cost me two hundred--that is, I owe two for it; and
+the gold tops and bottles must be worth thirty or forty.  Please to
+put THAT up the spout, ma'am, with my pins, and rings, and watch and
+chain, and things.  They cost a precious lot of money.  Miss
+Crawley, I know, paid a hundred down for the chain and ticker.  Gold
+tops and bottles, indeed!  dammy, I'm sorry I didn't take more now.
+Edwards pressed on me a silver-gilt boot-jack, and I might have had
+a dressing-case fitted up with a silver warming-pan, and a service
+of plate.  But we must make the best of what we've got, Becky, you
+know."
+
+And so, making his last dispositions, Captain Crawley, who had
+seldom thought about anything but himself, until the last few months
+of his life, when Love had obtained the mastery over the dragoon,
+went through the various items of his little catalogue of effects,
+striving to see how they might be turned into money for his wife's
+benefit, in case any accident should befall him.  He pleased himself
+by noting down with a pencil, in his big schoolboy handwriting, the
+various items of his portable property which might be sold for his
+widow's advantage as, for example, "My double-barril by Manton, say
+40 guineas; my driving cloak, lined with sable fur, 50 pounds; my
+duelling pistols in rosewood case (same which I shot Captain
+Marker), 20 pounds; my regulation saddle-holsters and housings; my
+Laurie ditto," and so forth, over all of which articles he made
+Rebecca the mistress.
+
+Faithful to his plan of economy, the Captain dressed himself in his
+oldest and shabbiest uniform and epaulets, leaving the newest
+behind, under his wife's (or it might be his widow's) guardianship.
+And this famous dandy of Windsor and Hyde Park went off on his
+campaign with a kit as modest as that of a sergeant, and with
+something like a prayer on his lips for the woman he was leaving. He
+took her up from the ground, and held her in his arms for a minute,
+tight pressed against his strong-beating heart.  His face was purple
+and his eyes dim, as he put her down and left her.  He rode by his
+General's side, and smoked his cigar in silence as they hastened
+after the troops of the General's brigade, which preceded them; and
+it was not until they were some miles on their way that he left off
+twirling his moustache and broke silence.
+
+And Rebecca, as we have said, wisely determined not to give way to
+unavailing sentimentality on her husband's departure.  She waved him
+an adieu from the window, and stood there for a moment looking out
+after he was gone. The cathedral towers and the full gables of the
+quaint old houses were just beginning to blush in the sunrise.
+There had been no rest for her that night.  She was still in her
+pretty ball-dress, her fair hair hanging somewhat out of curl on her
+neck, and the circles round her eyes dark with watching.  "What a
+fright I seem," she said, examining herself in the glass, "and how
+pale this pink makes one look!"  So she divested herself of this
+pink raiment; in doing which a note fell out from her corsage, which
+she picked up with a smile, and locked into her dressing-box. And
+then she put her bouquet of the ball into a glass of water, and went
+to bed, and slept very comfortably.
+
+The town was quite quiet when she woke up at ten o'clock, and
+partook of coffee, very requisite and comforting after the
+exhaustion and grief of the morning's occurrences.
+
+This meal over, she resumed honest Rawdon's calculations of the
+night previous, and surveyed her position. Should the worst befall,
+all things considered, she was pretty well to do.  There were her
+own trinkets and trousseau, in addition to those which her husband
+had left behind. Rawdon's generosity, when they were first married,
+has already been described and lauded.  Besides these, and the
+little mare, the General, her slave and worshipper, had made her
+many very handsome presents, in the shape of cashmere shawls bought
+at the auction of a bankrupt French general's lady, and numerous
+tributes from the jewellers' shops, all of which betokened her
+admirer's taste and wealth.  As for "tickers," as poor Rawdon called
+watches, her apartments were alive with their clicking. For,
+happening to mention one night that hers, which Rawdon had given to
+her, was of English workmanship, and went ill, on the very next
+morning there came to her a little bijou marked Leroy, with a chain
+and cover charmingly set with turquoises, and another signed
+Brequet, which was covered with pearls, and yet scarcely bigger than
+a half-crown.  General Tufto had bought one, and Captain Osborne had
+gallantly presented the other.  Mrs. Osborne had no watch, though,
+to do George justice, she might have had one for the asking, and the
+Honourable Mrs. Tufto in England had an old instrument of her
+mother's that might have served for the plate-warming pan which
+Rawdon talked about.  If Messrs. Howell and James were to publish a
+list of the purchasers of all the trinkets which they sell, how
+surprised would some families be: and if all these ornaments went to
+gentlemen's lawful wives and daughters, what a profusion of
+jewellery there would be exhibited in the genteelest homes of Vanity
+Fair!
+
+Every calculation made of these valuables Mrs. Rebecca found, not
+without a pungent feeling of triumph and self-satisfaction, that
+should circumstances occur, she might reckon on six or seven hundred
+pounds at the very least, to begin the world with; and she passed
+the morning disposing, ordering, looking out, and locking up her
+properties in the most agreeable manner.  Among the notes in
+Rawdon's pocket-book was a draft for twenty pounds on Osborne's
+banker.  This made her think about Mrs. Osborne.  "I will go and get
+the draft cashed," she said, "and pay a visit afterwards to poor
+little Emmy." If this is a novel without a hero, at least let us lay
+claim to a heroine.  No man in the British army which has marched
+away, not the great Duke himself, could be more cool or collected in
+the presence of doubts and difficulties, than the indomitable little
+aide-de-camp's wife.
+
+And there was another of our acquaintances who was also to be left
+behind, a non-combatant, and whose emotions and behaviour we have
+therefore a right to know. This was our friend the ex-collector of
+Boggley Wollah, whose rest was broken, like other people's, by the
+sounding of the bugles in the early morning.  Being a great sleeper,
+and fond of his bed, it is possible he would have snoozed on until
+his usual hour of rising in the forenoon, in spite of all the drums,
+bugles, and bagpipes in the British army, but for an interruption,
+which did not come from George Osborne, who shared Jos's quarters
+with him, and was as usual occupied too much with his own affairs or
+with grief at parting with his wife, to think of taking leave of his
+slumbering brother-in-law--it was not George, we say, who interposed
+between Jos Sedley and sleep, but Captain Dobbin, who came and
+roused him up, insisting on shaking hands with him before his
+departure.
+
+"Very kind of you," said Jos, yawning, and wishing the Captain at
+the deuce.
+
+"I--I didn't like to go off without saying good-bye, you know,"
+Dobbin said in a very incoherent manner; "because you know some of
+us mayn't come back again, and I like to see you all well, and--and
+that sort of thing, you know."
+
+"What do you mean?" Jos asked, rubbing his eyes.  The Captain did
+not in the least hear him or look at the stout gentleman in the
+nightcap, about whom he professed to have such a tender interest.
+The hypocrite was looking and listening with all his might in the
+direction of George's apartments, striding about the room, upsetting
+the chairs, beating the tattoo, biting his nails, and showing other
+signs of great inward emotion.
+
+Jos had always had rather a mean opinion of the Captain, and now
+began to think his courage was somewhat equivocal.  "What is it I
+can do for you, Dobbin?" he said, in a sarcastic tone.
+
+"I tell you what you can do," the Captain replied, coming up to the
+bed; "we march in a quarter of an hour, Sedley, and neither George
+nor I may ever come back. Mind you, you are not to stir from this
+town until you ascertain how things go.  You are to stay here and
+watch over your sister, and comfort her, and see that no harm comes
+to her.  If anything happens to George, remember she has no one but
+you in the world to look to.  If it goes wrong with the army, you'll
+see her safe back to England; and you will promise me on your word
+that you will never desert her.  I know you won't:  as far as money
+goes, you were always free enough with that.  Do you want any? I
+mean, have you enough gold to take you back to England in case of a
+misfortune?"
+
+"Sir," said Jos, majestically, "when I want money, I know where to
+ask for it.  And as for my sister, you needn't tell me how I ought
+to behave to her."
+
+"You speak like a man of spirit, Jos," the other answered good-
+naturedly, "and I am glad that George can leave her in such good
+hands.  So I may give him your word of honour, may I, that in case
+of extremity you will stand by her?"
+
+"Of course, of course," answered Mr. Jos, whose generosity in money
+matters Dobbin estimated quite correctly.
+
+"And you'll see her safe out of Brussels in the event of a defeat?"
+
+"A defeat! D--- it, sir, it's impossible.  Don't try and frighten ME,"
+the hero cried from his bed; and Dobbin's mind was thus perfectly
+set at ease now that Jos had spoken out so resolutely respecting his
+conduct to his sister.  "At least," thought the Captain, "there will
+be a retreat secured for her in case the worst should ensue."
+
+If Captain Dobbin expected to get any personal comfort and
+satisfaction from having one more view of Amelia before the regiment
+marched away, his selfishness was punished just as such odious
+egotism deserved to be.  The door of Jos's bedroom opened into the
+sitting-room which was common to the family party, and opposite this
+door was that of Amelia's chamber.  The bugles had wakened
+everybody:  there was no use in concealment now.  George's servant
+was packing in this room:  Osborne coming in and out of the
+contiguous bedroom, flinging to the man such articles as he thought
+fit to carry on the campaign. And presently Dobbin had the
+opportunity which his heart coveted, and he got sight of Amelia's
+face once more.  But what a face it was!  So white, so wild and
+despair-stricken, that the remembrance of it haunted him afterwards
+like a crime, and the sight smote him with inexpressible pangs of
+longing and pity.
+
+She was wrapped in a white morning dress, her hair falling on her
+shoulders, and her large eyes fixed and without light.  By way of
+helping on the preparations for the departure, and showing that she
+too could be useful at a moment so critical, this poor soul had
+taken up a sash of George's from the drawers whereon it lay, and
+followed him to and fro with the sash in her hand, looking on mutely
+as his packing proceeded.  She came out and stood, leaning at the
+wall, holding this sash against her bosom, from which the heavy net
+of crimson dropped like a large stain of blood.  Our gentle-hearted
+Captain felt a guilty shock as he looked at her.  "Good God,"
+thought he, "and is it grief like this I dared to pry into?" And
+there was no help:  no means to soothe and comfort this helpless,
+speechless misery.  He stood for a moment and looked at her,
+powerless and torn with pity, as a parent regards an infant in pain.
+
+At last, George took Emmy's hand, and led her back into the bedroom,
+from whence he came out alone.  The parting had taken place in that
+moment, and he was gone.
+
+"Thank Heaven that is over," George thought, bounding down the
+stair, his sword under his arm, as he ran swiftly to the alarm
+ground, where the regiment was mustered, and whither trooped men and
+officers hurrying from their billets; his pulse was throbbing and
+his cheeks flushed:  the great game of war was going to be played,
+and he one of the players.  What a fierce excitement of doubt, hope,
+and pleasure!  What tremendous hazards of loss or gain!  What were
+all the games of chance he had ever played compared to this one?
+Into all contests requiring athletic skill and courage, the young
+man, from his boyhood upwards, had flung himself with all his might.
+The champion of his school and his regiment, the bravos of his
+companions had followed him everywhere; from the boys' cricket-match
+to the garrison-races, he had won a hundred of triumphs; and
+wherever he went women and men had admired and envied him.  What
+qualities are there for which a man gets so speedy a return of
+applause, as those of bodily superiority, activity, and valour?
+Time out of mind strength and courage have been the theme of bards
+and romances; and from the story of Troy down to to-day, poetry has
+always chosen a soldier for a hero.  I wonder is it because men are
+cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place
+military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward and
+worship?
+
+So, at the sound of that stirring call to battle, George jumped away
+from the gentle arms in which he had been dallying; not without a
+feeling of shame (although his wife's hold on him had been but
+feeble), that he should have been detained there so long.  The same
+feeling of eagerness and excitement was amongst all those friends of
+his of whom we have had occasional glimpses, from the stout senior
+Major, who led the regiment into action, to little Stubble, the
+Ensign, who was to bear its colours on that day.
+
+The sun was just rising as the march began--it was a gallant sight--
+the band led the column, playing the regimental march--then came the
+Major in command, riding upon Pyramus, his stout charger--then
+marched the grenadiers, their Captain at their head; in the centre
+were the colours, borne by the senior and junior Ensigns--then
+George came marching at the head of his company. He looked up, and
+smiled at Amelia, and passed on; and even the sound of the music
+died away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister
+
+
+Thus all the superior officers being summoned on duty elsewhere, Jos
+Sedley was left in command of the little colony at Brussels, with
+Amelia invalided, Isidor, his Belgian servant, and the bonne, who
+was maid-of-all-work for the establishment, as a garrison under him.
+Though he was disturbed in spirit, and his rest destroyed by
+Dobbin's interruption and the occurrences of the morning, Jos
+nevertheless remained for many hours in bed, wakeful and rolling
+about there until his usual hour of rising had arrived.  The sun was
+high in the heavens, and our gallant friends of the --th miles on
+their march, before the civilian appeared in his flowered dressing-
+gown at breakfast.
+
+About George's absence, his brother-in-law was very easy in mind.
+Perhaps Jos was rather pleased in his heart that Osborne was gone,
+for during George's presence, the other had played but a very
+secondary part in the household, and Osborne did not scruple to show
+his contempt for the stout civilian.  But Emmy had always been good
+and attentive to him.  It was she who ministered to his comforts,
+who superintended the dishes that he liked, who walked or rode with
+him (as she had many, too many, opportunities of doing, for where
+was George?) and who interposed her sweet face between his anger and
+her husband's scorn.  Many timid remonstrances had she uttered to
+George in behalf of her brother, but the former in his trenchant way
+cut these entreaties short. "I'm an honest man," he said, "and if I
+have a feeling I show it, as an honest man will.  How the deuce, my
+dear, would you have me behave respectfully to such a fool as your
+brother?"  So Jos was pleased with George's absence.  His plain hat,
+and gloves on a sideboard, and the idea that the owner was away,
+caused Jos I don't know what secret thrill of pleasure.  "HE won't
+be troubling me this morning," Jos thought, "with his dandified airs
+and his impudence."
+
+"Put the Captain's hat into the ante-room," he said to Isidor, the
+servant.
+
+"Perhaps he won't want it again," replied the lackey, looking
+knowingly at his master.  He hated George too, whose insolence
+towards him was quite of the English sort.
+
+"And ask if Madame is coming to breakfast," Mr. Sedley said with
+great majesty, ashamed to enter with a servant upon the subject of
+his dislike for George.  The truth is, he had abused his brother to
+the valet a score of times before.
+
+Alas!  Madame could not come to breakfast, and cut the tartines that
+Mr. Jos liked.  Madame was a great deal too ill, and had been in a
+frightful state ever since her husband's departure, so her bonne
+said.  Jos showed his sympathy by pouring her out a large cup of tea
+It was his way of exhibiting kindness:  and he improved on this; he
+not only sent her breakfast, but he bethought him what delicacies
+she would most like for dinner.
+
+Isidor, the valet, had looked on very sulkily, while Osborne's
+servant was disposing of his master's baggage previous to the
+Captain's departure:  for in the first place he hated Mr. Osborne,
+whose conduct to him, and to all inferiors, was generally
+overbearing (nor does the continental domestic like to be treated
+with insolence as our own better-tempered servants do), and
+secondly, he was angry that so many valuables should be removed from
+under his hands, to fall into other people's possession when the
+English discomfiture should arrive.  Of this defeat he and a vast
+number of other persons in Brussels and Belgium did not make the
+slightest doubt.  The almost universal belief was, that the Emperor
+would divide the Prussian and English armies, annihilate one after
+the other, and march into Brussels before three days were over:
+when all the movables of his present masters, who would be killed,
+or fugitives, or prisoners, would lawfully become the property of
+Monsieur Isidor.
+
+As he helped Jos through his toilsome and complicated daily
+toilette, this faithful servant would calculate what he should do
+with the very articles with which he was decorating his master's
+person.  He would make a present of the silver essence-bottles and
+toilet knicknacks to a young lady of whom he was fond; and keep the
+English cutlery and the large ruby pin for himself.  It would look
+very smart upon one of the fine frilled shirts, which, with the
+gold-laced cap and the frogged frock coat, that might easily be cut
+down to suit his shape, and the Captain's gold-headed cane, and the
+great double ring with the rubies, which he would have made into a
+pair of beautiful earrings, he calculated would make a perfect
+Adonis of himself, and render Mademoiselle Reine an easy prey.  "How
+those sleeve-buttons will suit me!" thought he, as he fixed a pair
+on the fat pudgy wrists of Mr. Sedley.  "I long for sleeve-buttons;
+and the Captain's boots with brass spurs, in the next room, corbleu!
+what an effect they will make in the Allee Verte!" So while Monsieur
+Isidor with bodily fingers was holding on to his master's nose, and
+shaving the lower part of Jos's face, his imagination was rambling
+along the Green Avenue, dressed out in a frogged coat and lace, and
+in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he was loitering in spirit on
+the banks, and examining the barges sailing slowly under the cool
+shadows of the trees by the canal, or refreshing himself with a mug
+of Faro at the bench of a beer-house on the road to Laeken.
+
+But Mr. Joseph Sedley, luckily for his own peace, no more knew what
+was passing in his domestic's mind than the respected reader, and I
+suspect what John or Mary, whose wages we pay, think of ourselves.
+What our servants think of us!--Did we know what our intimates and
+dear relations thought of us, we should live in a world that we
+should be glad to quit, and in a frame of mind and a constant
+terror, that would be perfectly unbearable. So Jos's man was marking
+his victim down, as you see one of Mr. Paynter's assistants in
+Leadenhall Street ornament an unconscious turtle with a placard on
+which is written, "Soup to-morrow."
+
+Amelia's attendant was much less selfishly disposed. Few dependents
+could come near that kind and gentle creature without paying their
+usual tribute of loyalty and affection to her sweet and affectionate
+nature.  And it is a fact that Pauline, the cook, consoled her
+mistress more than anybody whom she saw on this wretched morning;
+for when she found how Amelia remained for hours, silent,
+motionless, and haggard, by the windows in which she had placed
+herself to watch the last bayonets of the column as it marched away,
+the honest girl took the lady's hand, and said, Tenez, Madame, est-
+ce qu'il n'est pas aussi a l'armee, mon homme a moi?  with which she
+burst into tears, and Amelia falling into her arms, did likewise,
+and so each pitied and soothed the other.
+
+Several times during the forenoon Mr. Jos's Isidor went from his
+lodgings into the town, and to the gates of the hotels and lodging-
+houses round about the Parc, where the English were congregated, and
+there mingled with other valets, couriers, and lackeys, gathered
+such news as was abroad, and brought back bulletins for his master's
+information.  Almost all these gentlemen were in heart partisans of
+the Emperor, and had their opinions about the speedy end of the
+campaign.  The Emperor's proclamation from Avesnes had been
+distributed everywhere plentifully in Brussels.  "Soldiers!"  it
+said, "this is the anniversary of Marengo and Friedland, by which
+the destinies of Europe were twice decided.  Then, as after
+Austerlitz, as after Wagram, we were too generous.  We believed in
+the oaths and promises of princes whom we suffered to remain upon
+their thrones.  Let us march once more to meet them.  We and they,
+are we not still the same men?  Soldiers!  these same Prussians who
+are so arrogant to-day, were three to one against you at Jena, and
+six to one at Montmirail.  Those among you who were prisoners in
+England can tell their comrades what frightful torments they
+suffered on board the English hulks.  Madmen!  a moment of
+prosperity has blinded them, and if they enter into France it will
+be to find a grave there!"  But the partisans of the French
+prophesied a more speedy extermination of the Emperor's enemies than
+this; and it was agreed on all hands that Prussians and British
+would never return except as prisoners in the rear of the conquering
+army.
+
+These opinions in the course of the day were brought to operate upon
+Mr. Sedley.  He was told that the Duke of Wellington had gone to try
+and rally his army, the advance of which had been utterly crushed
+the night before.
+
+"Crushed, psha!" said Jos, whose heart was pretty stout at
+breakfast-time.  "The Duke has gone to beat the Emperor as he has
+beaten all his generals before."
+
+"His papers are burned, his effects are removed, and his quarters
+are being got ready for the Duke of Dalmatia," Jos's informant
+replied.  "I had it from his own maitre d'hotel.  Milor Duc de
+Richemont's people are packing up everything.  His Grace has fled
+already, and the Duchess is only waiting to see the plate packed to
+join the King of France at Ostend."
+
+"The King of France is at Ghent, fellow," replied Jos, affecting
+incredulity.
+
+"He fled last night to Bruges, and embarks today from Ostend.  The
+Duc de Berri is taken prisoner.  Those who wish to be safe had
+better go soon, for the dykes will be opened to-morrow, and who can
+fly when the whole country is under water?"
+
+"Nonsense, sir, we are three to one, sir, against any force Boney
+can bring into the field," Mr. Sedley objected; "the Austrians and
+the Russians are on their march.  He must, he shall be crushed," Jos
+said, slapping his hand on the table.
+
+"The Prussians were three to one at Jena, and he took their army and
+kingdom in a week.  They were six to one at Montmirail, and he
+scattered them like sheep. The Austrian army is coming, but with the
+Empress and the King of Rome at its head; and the Russians, bah! the
+Russians will withdraw.  No quarter is to be given to the English,
+on account of their cruelty to our braves on board the infamous
+pontoons.  Look here, here it is in black and white.  Here's the
+proclamation of his Majesty the Emperor and King," said the now
+declared partisan of Napoleon, and taking the document from his
+pocket, Isidor sternly thrust it into his master's face, and already
+looked upon the frogged coat and valuables as his own spoil.
+
+Jos was, if not seriously alarmed as yet, at least considerably
+disturbed in mind.  "Give me my coat and cap, sir, said he, "and
+follow me.  I will go myself and learn the truth of these reports."
+Isidor was furious as Jos put on the braided frock.  "Milor had
+better not wear that military coat," said he; "the Frenchmen have
+sworn not to give quarter to a single British soldier."
+
+"Silence, sirrah!" said Jos, with a resolute countenance still, and
+thrust his arm into the sleeve with indomitable resolution, in the
+performance of which heroic act he was found by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,
+who at this juncture came up to visit Amelia, and entered without
+ringing at the antechamber door.
+
+Rebecca was dressed very neatly and smartly, as usual: her quiet
+sleep after Rawdon's departure had refreshed her, and her pink
+smiling cheeks were quite pleasant to look at, in a town and on a
+day when everybody else's countenance wore the appearance of the
+deepest anxiety and gloom.  She laughed at the attitude in which Jos
+was discovered, and the struggles and convulsions with which the
+stout gentleman thrust himself into the braided coat.
+
+"Are you preparing to join the army, Mr. Joseph?" she said.  "Is
+there to be nobody left in Brussels to protect us poor women?"  Jos
+succeeded in plunging into the coat, and came forward blushing and
+stuttering out excuses to his fair visitor.  "How was she after the
+events of the morning--after the fatigues of the ball the night
+before?"  Monsieur Isidor disappeared into his master's adjacent
+bedroom, bearing off the flowered dressing-gown.
+
+"How good of you to ask," said she, pressing one of his hands in
+both her own.  "How cool and collected you look when everybody else
+is frightened!  How is our dear little Emmy?  It must have been an
+awful, awful parting."
+
+"Tremendous," Jos said.
+
+"You men can bear anything," replied the lady.  "Parting or danger
+are nothing to you.  Own now that you were going to join the army
+and leave us to our fate. I know you were--something tells me you
+were.  I was so frightened, when the thought came into my head (for
+I do sometimes think of you when I am alone, Mr. Joseph), that I ran
+off immediately to beg and entreat you not to fly from us."
+
+This speech might be interpreted, "My dear sir, should an accident
+befall the army, and a retreat be necessary, you have a very
+comfortable carriage, in which I propose to take a seat." I don't
+know whether Jos understood the words in this sense.  But he was
+profoundly mortified by the lady's inattention to him during their
+stay at Brussels.  He had never been presented to any of Rawdon
+Crawley's great acquaintances:  he had scarcely been invited to
+Rebecca's parties; for he was too timid to play much, and his
+presence bored George and Rawdon equally, who neither of them,
+perhaps, liked to have a witness of the amusements in which the pair
+chose to indulge.  "Ah!" thought Jos, "now she wants me she comes to
+me.  When there is nobody else in the way she can think about old
+Joseph Sedley!"  But besides these doubts he felt flattered at the
+idea Rebecca expressed of his courage.
+
+He blushed a good deal, and put on an air of importance. "I should
+like to see the action," he said.  "Every man of any spirit would,
+you know.  I've seen a little service in India, but nothing on this
+grand scale."
+
+"You men would sacrifice anything for a pleasure," Rebecca answered.
+"Captain Crawley left me this morning as gay as if he were going to
+a hunting party.  What does he care?  What do any of you care for
+the agonies and tortures of a poor forsaken woman?  (I wonder
+whether he could really have been going to the troops, this great
+lazy gourmand?)  Oh!  dear Mr. Sedley, I have come to you for
+comfort--for consolation.  I have been on my knees all the morning.
+I tremble at the frightful danger into which our husbands, our
+friends, our brave troops and allies, are rushing.  And I come here
+for shelter, and find another of my friends--the last remaining to
+me--bent upon plunging into the dreadful scene!"
+
+"My dear madam," Jos replied, now beginning to be quite soothed,
+"don't be alarmed.  I only said I should like to go--what Briton
+would not?  But my duty keeps me here:  I can't leave that poor
+creature in the next room." And he pointed with his finger to the
+door of the chamber in which Amelia was.
+
+"Good noble brother!" Rebecca said, putting her handkerchief to her
+eyes, and smelling the eau-de-cologne with which it was scented.  "I
+have done you injustice: you have got a heart.  I thought you had
+not."
+
+"O, upon my honour!" Jos said, making a motion as if he would lay
+his hand upon the spot in question.  "You do me injustice, indeed
+you do--my dear Mrs. Crawley."
+
+"I do, now your heart is true to your sister.  But I remember two
+years ago--when it was false to me!" Rebecca said, fixing her eyes
+upon him for an instant, and then turning away into the window.
+
+Jos blushed violently.  That organ which he was accused by Rebecca
+of not possessing began to thump tumultuously.  He recalled the days
+when he had fled from her, and the passion which had once inflamed
+him--the days when he had driven her in his curricle:  when she had
+knit the green purse for him:  when he had sate enraptured gazing at
+her white arms and bright eyes.
+
+"I know you think me ungrateful," Rebecca continued, coming out of
+the window, and once more looking at him and addressing him in a low
+tremulous voice.  "Your coldness, your averted looks, your manner
+when we have met of late--when I came in just now, all proved it to
+me.  But were there no reasons why I should avoid you? Let your own
+heart answer that question.  Do you think my husband was too much
+inclined to welcome you? The only unkind words I have ever had from
+him (I will do Captain Crawley that justice) have been about you--
+and most cruel, cruel words they were."
+
+"Good gracious! what have I done?" asked Jos in a flurry of pleasure
+and perplexity; "what have I done--to--to--?"
+
+"Is jealousy nothing?" said Rebecca.  "He makes me miserable about
+you.  And whatever it might have been once--my heart is all his.  I
+am innocent now.  Am I not, Mr. Sedley?"
+
+All Jos's blood tingled with delight, as he surveyed this victim to
+his attractions.  A few adroit words, one or two knowing tender
+glances of the eyes, and his heart was inflamed again and his doubts
+and suspicions forgotten.  From Solomon downwards, have not wiser
+men than he been cajoled and befooled by women?  "If the worst comes
+to the worst," Becky thought, "my retreat is secure; and I have a
+right-hand seat in the barouche."
+
+There is no knowing into what declarations of love and ardour the
+tumultuous passions of Mr. Joseph might have led him, if Isidor the
+valet had not made his reappearance at this minute, and begun to
+busy himself about the domestic affairs.  Jos, who was just going to
+gasp out an avowal, choked almost with the emotion that he was
+obliged to restrain.  Rebecca too bethought her that it was time she
+should go in and comfort her dearest Amelia.  "Au revoir," she said,
+kissing her hand to Mr. Joseph, and tapped gently at the door of his
+sister's apartment.  As she entered and closed the door on herself,
+he sank down in a chair, and gazed and sighed and puffed
+portentously.  "That coat is very tight for Milor," Isidor said,
+still having his eye on the frogs; but his master heard him not:
+his thoughts were elsewhere:  now glowing, maddening, upon the
+contemplation of the enchanting Rebecca:  anon shrinking guiltily
+before the vision of the jealous Rawdon Crawley, with his curling,
+fierce mustachios, and his terrible duelling pistols loaded and
+cocked.
+
+Rebecca's appearance struck Amelia with terror, and made her shrink
+back.  It recalled her to the world and the remembrance of
+yesterday.  In the overpowering fears about to-morrow she had
+forgotten Rebecca--jealousy--everything except that her husband was
+gone and was in danger.  Until this dauntless worldling came in and
+broke the spell, and lifted the latch, we too have forborne to enter
+into that sad chamber.  How long had that poor girl been on her
+knees!  what hours of speechless prayer and bitter prostration had
+she passed there!  The war-chroniclers who write brilliant stories
+of fight and triumph scarcely tell us of these.  These are too mean
+parts of the pageant:  and you don't hear widows' cries or mothers'
+sobs in the midst of the shouts and jubilation in the great Chorus
+of Victory.  And yet when was the time that such have not cried out:
+heart-broken, humble protestants, unheard in the uproar of the
+triumph!
+
+After the first movement of terror in Amelia's mind--when Rebecca's
+green eyes lighted upon her, and rustling in her fresh silks and
+brilliant ornaments, the latter tripped up with extended arms to
+embrace her--a feeling of anger succeeded, and from being deadly
+pale before, her face flushed up red, and she returned Rebecca's
+look after a moment with a steadiness which surprised and somewhat
+abashed her rival.
+
+"Dearest Amelia, you are very unwell," the visitor said, putting
+forth her hand to take Amelia's.  "What is it? I could not rest
+until I knew how you were."
+
+Amelia drew back her hand--never since her life began had that
+gentle soul refused to believe or to answer any demonstration of
+good-will or affection.  But she drew back her hand, and trembled
+all over.  "Why are you here, Rebecca?" she said, still looking at
+her solemnly with her large eyes.  These glances troubled her
+visitor.
+
+"She must have seen him give me the letter at the ball," Rebecca
+thought.  "Don't be agitated, dear Amelia," she said, looking down.
+"I came but to see if I could--if you were well."
+
+"Are you well?" said Amelia.  "I dare say you are. You don't love
+your husband.  You would not be here if you did.  Tell me, Rebecca,
+did I ever do you anything but kindness?"
+
+"Indeed, Amelia, no," the other said, still hanging down her head.
+
+"When you were quite poor, who was it that befriended you?  Was I
+not a sister to you?  You saw us all in happier days before he
+married me.  I was all in all then to him; or would he have given up
+his fortune, his family, as he nobly did to make me happy?  Why did
+you come between my love and me?  Who sent you to separate those
+whom God joined, and take my darling's heart from me--my own
+husband? Do you think you could I love him as I did?  His love was
+everything to me. You knew it, and wanted to rob me of it.  For
+shame, Rebecca; bad and wicked woman--false friend and false wife."
+
+"Amelia, I protest before God, I have done my husband no wrong,"
+Rebecca said, turning from her.
+
+"Have you done me no wrong, Rebecca?  You did not succeed, but you
+tried.  Ask your heart if you did not."
+
+She knows nothing, Rebecca thought.
+
+"He came back to me.  I knew he would.  I knew that no falsehood, no
+flattery, could keep him from me long. I knew he would come.  I
+prayed so that he should."
+
+The poor girl spoke these words with a spirit and volubility which
+Rebecca had never before seen in her, and before which the latter
+was quite dumb.  "But what have I done to you," she continued in a
+more pitiful tone, "that you should try and take him from me?  I had
+him but for six weeks.  You might have spared me those, Rebecca.
+And yet, from the very first day of our wedding, you came and
+blighted it.  Now he is gone, are you come to see how unhappy I am?"
+she continued.  "You made me wretched enough for the past fortnight:
+you might have spared me to-day."
+
+"I--I never came here," interposed Rebecca, with unlucky truth.
+
+"No.  You didn't come.  You took him away.  Are you come to fetch
+him from me?" she continued in a wilder tone.  "He was here, but he
+is gone now.  There on that very sofa he sate.  Don't touch it.  We
+sate and talked there.  I was on his knee, and my arms were round
+his neck, and we said 'Our Father.' Yes, he was here:  and they came
+and took him away, but he promised me to come back."
+
+"He will come back, my dear," said Rebecca, touched in spite of
+herself.
+
+"Look," said Amelia, "this is his sash--isn't it a pretty colour?"
+and she took up the fringe and kissed it.  She had tied it round her
+waist at some part of the day.  She had forgotten her anger, her
+jealousy, the very presence of her rival seemingly.  For she walked
+silently and almost with a smile on her face, towards the bed, and
+began to smooth down George's pillow.
+
+Rebecca walked, too, silently away.  "How is Amelia?" asked Jos, who
+still held his position in the chair.
+
+"There should be somebody with her," said Rebecca. "I think she is
+very unwell":  and she went away with a very grave face, refusing
+Mr. Sedley's entreaties that she would stay and partake of the early
+dinner which he had ordered.
+
+Rebecca was of a good-natured and obliging disposition; and she
+liked Amelia rather than otherwise.  Even her hard words,
+reproachful as they were, were complimentary--the groans of a person
+stinging under defeat. Meeting Mrs. O'Dowd, whom the Dean's sermons
+had by no means comforted, and who was walking very disconsolately
+in the Parc, Rebecca accosted the latter, rather to the surprise of
+the Major's wife, who was not accustomed to such marks of politeness
+from Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, and informing her that poor little Mrs.
+Osborne was in a desperate condition, and almost mad with grief,
+sent off the good-natured Irishwoman straight to see if she could
+console her young favourite.
+
+"I've cares of my own enough," Mrs. O'Dowd said, gravely, "and I
+thought poor Amelia would be little wanting for company this day.
+But if she's so bad as you say, and you can't attend to her, who
+used to be so fond of her, faith I'll see if I can be of service.
+And so good marning to ye, Madam"; with which speech and a toss of
+her head, the lady of the repayther took a farewell of Mrs. Crawley,
+whose company she by no means courted.
+
+Becky watched her marching off, with a smile on her lip.  She had
+the keenest sense of humour, and the Parthian look which the
+retreating Mrs. O'Dowd flung over her shoulder almost upset Mrs.
+Crawley's gravity. "My service to ye, me fine Madam, and I'm glad to
+see ye so cheerful," thought Peggy.  "It's not YOU that will cry
+your eyes out with grief, anyway." And with this she passed on, and
+speedily found her way to Mrs. Osborne's lodgings.
+
+The poor soul was still at the bedside, where Rebecca had left her,
+and stood almost crazy with grief.  The Major's wife, a stronger-
+minded woman, endeavoured her best to comfort her young friend.
+"You must bear up, Amelia, dear," she said kindly, "for he mustn't
+find you ill when he sends for you after the victory.  It's not you
+are the only woman that are in the hands of God this day."
+
+"I know that.  I am very wicked, very weak," Amelia said.  She knew
+her own weakness well enough.  The presence of the more resolute
+friend checked it, however; and she was the better of this control
+and company.  They went on till two o'clock; their hearts were with
+the column as it marched farther and farther away.  Dreadful doubt
+and anguish--prayers and fears and griefs unspeakable--followed the
+regiment.  It was the women's tribute to the war.  It taxes both
+alike, and takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women.
+
+At half-past two, an event occurred of daily importance to Mr.
+Joseph: the dinner-hour arrived.  Warriors may fight and perish, but
+he must dine.  He came into Amelia's room to see if he could coax
+her to share that meal.  "Try," said he; "the soup is very good.  Do
+try, Emmy," and he kissed her hand.  Except when she was married, he
+had not done so much for years before.  "You are very good and kind,
+Joseph," she said.  "Everybody is, but, if you please, I will stay
+in my room to-day."
+
+The savour of the soup, however, was agreeable to Mrs. O'Dowd's
+nostrils: and she thought she would bear Mr. Jos company.  So the
+two sate down to their meal. "God bless the meat," said the Major's
+wife, solemnly: she was thinking of her honest Mick, riding at the
+head of his regiment:  "'Tis but a bad dinner those poor boys will
+get to-day," she said, with a sigh, and then, like a philosopher,
+fell to.
+
+Jos's spirits rose with his meal.  He would drink the regiment's
+health; or, indeed, take any other excuse to indulge in a glass of
+champagne.  "We'll drink to O'Dowd and the brave --th," said he,
+bowing gallantly to his guest.  "Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd?  Fill Mrs.
+O'Dowd's glass, Isidor."
+
+But all of a sudden, Isidor started, and the Major's wife laid down
+her knife and fork.  The windows of the room were open, and looked
+southward, and a dull distant sound came over the sun-lighted roofs
+from that direction.  "What is it?" said Jos.  "Why don't you pour,
+you rascal?"
+
+"Cest le feu!" said Isidor, running to the balcony.
+
+"God defend us; it's cannon!" Mrs. O'Dowd cried, starting up, and
+followed too to the window.  A thousand pale and anxious faces might
+have been seen looking from other casements.  And presently it
+seemed as if the whole population of the city rushed into the
+streets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close
+
+
+We of peaceful London City have never beheld--and please God never
+shall witness--such a scene of hurry and alarm, as that which
+Brussels presented.  Crowds rushed to the Namur gate, from which
+direction the noise proceeded, and many rode along the level
+chaussee, to be in advance of any intelligence from the army.  Each
+man asked his neighbour for news; and even great English lords and
+ladies condescended to speak to persons whom they did not know.  The
+friends of the French went abroad, wild with excitement, and
+prophesying the triumph of their Emperor.  The merchants closed
+their shops, and came out to swell the general chorus of alarm and
+clamour.  Women rushed to the churches, and crowded the chapels, and
+knelt and prayed on the flags and steps.  The dull sound of the
+cannon went on rolling, rolling.  Presently carriages with
+travellers began to leave the town, galloping away by the Ghent
+barrier.  The prophecies of the French partisans began to pass for
+facts.  "He has cut the armies in two," it was said.  "He is
+marching straight on Brussels.  He will overpower the English, and
+be here to-night." "He will overpower the English," shrieked Isidor
+to his master, "and will be here to-night." The man bounded in and
+out from the lodgings to the street, always returning with some
+fresh particulars of disaster.  Jos's face grew paler and paler.
+Alarm began to take entire possession of the stout civilian.  All
+the champagne he drank brought no courage to him.  Before sunset he
+was worked up to such a pitch of nervousness as gratified his friend
+Isidor to behold, who now counted surely upon the spoils of the
+owner of the laced coat.
+
+The women were away all this time.  After hearing the firing for a
+moment, the stout Major's wife bethought her of her friend in the
+next chamber, and ran in to watch, and if possible to console,
+Amelia.  The idea that she had that helpless and gentle creature to
+protect, gave additional strength to the natural courage of the
+honest Irishwoman.  She passed five hours by her friend's side,
+sometimes in remonstrance, sometimes talking cheerfully, oftener in
+silence and terrified mental supplication.  "I never let go her hand
+once," said the stout lady afterwards, "until after sunset, when the
+firing was over." Pauline, the bonne, was on her knees at church
+hard by, praying for son homme a elle.
+
+When the noise of the cannonading was over, Mrs. O'Dowd issued out
+of Amelia's room into the parlour adjoining, where Jos sate with two
+emptied flasks, and courage entirely gone.  Once or twice he had
+ventured into his sister's bedroom, looking very much alarmed, and
+as if he would say something.  But the Major's wife kept her place,
+and he went away without disburthening himself of his speech.  He
+was ashamed to tell her that he wanted to fly.
+
+But when she made her appearance in the dining-room, where he sate
+in the twilight in the cheerless company of his empty champagne
+bottles, he began to open his mind to her.
+
+"Mrs. O'Dowd," he said, "hadn't you better get Amelia ready?"
+
+"Are you going to take her out for a walk?" said the Major's lady;
+"sure she's too weak to stir."
+
+"I--I've ordered the carriage," he said, "and--and post-horses;
+Isidor is gone for them," Jos continued.
+
+"What do you want with driving to-night?" answered the lady.  "Isn't
+she better on her bed?  I've just got her to lie down."
+
+"Get her up," said Jos; "she must get up, I say":  and he stamped
+his foot energetically.  "I say the horses are ordered--yes, the
+horses are ordered.  It's all over, and--"
+
+"And what?" asked Mrs. O'Dowd.
+
+"I'm off for Ghent," Jos answered.  "Everybody is going; there's a
+place for you!  We shall start in half-an-hour."
+
+The Major's wife looked at him with infinite scorn.  "I don't move
+till O'Dowd gives me the route," said she. "You may go if you like,
+Mr. Sedley; but, faith, Amelia and I stop here."
+
+"She SHALL go," said Jos, with another stamp of his foot.  Mrs.
+O'Dowd put herself with arms akimbo before the bedroom door.
+
+"Is it her mother you're going to take her to?" she said; "or do you
+want to go to Mamma yourself, Mr. Sedley?  Good marning--a pleasant
+journey to ye, sir. Bon voyage, as they say, and take my counsel,
+and shave off them mustachios, or they'll bring you into mischief."
+
+"D--n!" yelled out Jos, wild with fear, rage, and mortification; and
+Isidor came in at this juncture, swearing in his turn.  "Pas de
+chevaux, sacre bleu!" hissed out the furious domestic.  All the
+horses were gone.  Jos was not the only man in Brussels seized with
+panic that day.
+
+But Jos's fears, great and cruel as they were already, were destined
+to increase to an almost frantic pitch before the night was over.
+It has been mentioned how Pauline, the bonne, had son homme a elle
+also in the ranks of the army that had gone out to meet the Emperor
+Napoleon.  This lover was a native of Brussels, and a Belgian
+hussar.  The troops of his nation signalised themselves in this war
+for anything but courage, and young Van Cutsum, Pauline's admirer,
+was too good a soldier to disobey his Colonel's orders to run away.
+Whilst in garrison at Brussels young Regulus (he had been born in
+the revolutionary times) found his great comfort, and passed almost
+all his leisure moments, in Pauline's kitchen; and it was with
+pockets and holsters crammed full of good things from her larder,
+that he had take leave of his weeping sweetheart, to proceed upon
+the campaign a few days before.
+
+As far as his regiment was concerned, this campaign was over now.
+They had formed a part of the division under the command of his
+Sovereign apparent, the Prince of Orange, and as respected length of
+swords and mustachios, and the richness of uniform and equipments,
+Regulus and his comrades looked to be as gallant a body of men as
+ever trumpet sounded for.
+
+When Ney dashed upon the advance of the allied troops, carrying one
+position after the other, until the arrival of the great body of the
+British army from Brussels changed the aspect of the combat of
+Quatre Bras, the squadrons among which Regulus rode showed the
+greatest activity in retreating before the French, and were
+dislodged from one post and another which they occupied with perfect
+alacrity on their part.  Their movements were only checked by the
+advance of the British in their rear.  Thus forced to halt, the
+enemy's cavalry (whose bloodthirsty obstinacy cannot be too severely
+reprehended) had at length an opportunity of coming to close
+quarters with the brave Belgians before them; who preferred to
+encounter the British rather than the French, and at once turning
+tail rode through the English regiments that were behind them, and
+scattered in all directions.  The regiment in fact did not exist any
+more.  It was nowhere.  It had no head-quarters.  Regulus found
+himself galloping many miles from the field of action, entirely
+alone; and whither should he fly for refuge so naturally as to that
+kitchen and those faithful arms in which Pauline had so often
+welcomed him?
+
+At some ten o'clock the clinking of a sabre might have been heard up
+the stair of the house where the Osbornes occupied a story in the
+continental fashion.  A knock might have been heard at the kitchen
+door; and poor Pauline, come back from church, fainted almost with
+terror as she opened it and saw before her her haggard hussar.  He
+looked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora.
+Pauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called her
+masters, and discovered her friend.  She stifled her scream, then,
+and leading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice
+bits from the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste.  The
+hussar showed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh
+and beer which he devoured--and during the mouthfuls he told his
+tale of disaster.
+
+His regiment had performed prodigies of courage, and had withstood
+for a while the onset of the whole French army.  But they were
+overwhelmed at last, as was the whole British army by this time.
+Ney destroyed each regiment as it came up.  The Belgians in vain
+interposed to prevent the butchery of the English.  The Brunswickers
+were routed and had fled--their Duke was killed.  It was a general
+debacle.  He sought to drown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of
+beer.
+
+Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation and
+rushed out to inform his master.  "It is all over," he shrieked to
+Jos.  "Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed;
+the British army is in full flight; there is only one man escaped,
+and he is in the kitchen now--come and hear him." So Jos tottered
+into that apartment where Regulus still sate on the kitchen table,
+and clung fast to his flagon of beer.  In the best French which he
+could muster, and which was in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort,
+Jos besought the hussar to tell his tale.  The disasters deepened as
+Regulus spoke.  He was the only man of his regiment not slain on the
+field. He had seen the Duke of Brunswick fall, the black hussars
+fly, the Ecossais pounded down by the cannon. "And the --th?" gasped
+Jos.
+
+"Cut in pieces," said the hussar--upon which Pauline cried out, "O
+my mistress, ma bonne petite dame," went off fairly into hysterics,
+and filled the house with her screams.
+
+Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for
+safety.  He rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and
+cast an appealing look at Amelia's door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had
+closed and locked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the
+latter had received him, and after pausing and listening for a brief
+space at the door, he left it, and resolved to go into the street,
+for the first time that day.  So, seizing a candle, he looked about
+for his gold-laced cap, and found it lying in its usual place, on a
+console-table, in the anteroom, placed before a mirror at which Jos
+used to coquet, always giving his side-locks a twirl, and his cap
+the proper cock over his eye, before he went forth to make
+appearance in public.  Such is the force of habit, that even in the
+midst of his terror he began mechanically to twiddle with his hair,
+and arrange the cock of his hat.  Then he looked amazed at the pale
+face in the glass before him, and especially at his mustachios,
+which had attained a rich growth in the course of near seven weeks,
+since they had come into the world.  They WILL mistake me for a
+military man, thought he, remembering Isidor's warning as to the
+massacre with which all the defeated British army was threatened;
+and staggering back to his bedchamber, he began wildly pulling the
+bell which summoned his valet.
+
+Isidor answered that summons.  Jos had sunk in a chair--he had torn
+off his neckcloths, and turned down his collars, and was sitting
+with both his hands lifted to his throat.
+
+"Coupez-moi, Isidor," shouted he; "vite!  Coupez-moi!"
+
+Isidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished his
+valet to cut his throat.
+
+"Les moustaches," gasped Joe; "les moustaches--coupy, rasy, vite!"--
+his French was of this sort--voluble, as we have said, but not
+remarkable for grammar.
+
+Isidor swept off the mustachios in no time with the razor, and heard
+with inexpressible delight his master's orders that he should fetch
+a hat and a plain coat.  "Ne porty ploo--habit militair--bonn--bonny
+a voo, prenny dehors"--were Jos's words--the coat and cap were at
+last his property.
+
+This gift being made, Jos selected a plain black coat and waistcoat
+from his stock, and put on a large white neckcloth, and a plain
+beaver.  If he could have got a shovel hat he would have worn it.
+As it was, you would have fancied he was a flourishing, large parson
+of the Church of England.
+
+"Venny maintenong," he continued, "sweevy--ally--party--dong la
+roo." And so having said, he plunged swiftly down the stairs of the
+house, and passed into the street.
+
+Although Regulus had vowed that he was the only man of his regiment
+or of the allied army, almost, who had escaped being cut to pieces
+by Ney, it appeared that his statement was incorrect, and that a
+good number more of the supposed victims had survived the massacre.
+Many scores of Regulus's comrades had found their way back to
+Brussels, and all agreeing that they had run away--filled the whole
+town with an idea of the defeat of the allies.  The arrival of the
+French was expected hourly; the panic continued, and preparations
+for flight went on everywhere.  No horses!  thought Jos, in terror.
+He made Isidor inquire of scores of persons, whether they had any to
+lend or sell, and his heart sank within him, at the negative answers
+returned everywhere.  Should he take the journey on foot?  Even fear
+could not render that ponderous body so active.
+
+Almost all the hotels occupied by the English in Brussels face the
+Parc, and Jos wandered irresolutely about in this quarter, with
+crowds of other people, oppressed as he was by fear and curiosity.
+Some families he saw more happy than himself, having discovered a
+team of horses, and rattling through the streets in retreat; others
+again there were whose case was like his own, and who could not for
+any bribes or entreaties procure the necessary means of flight.
+Amongst these would-be fugitives, Jos remarked the Lady Bareacres
+and her daughter, who sate in their carriage in the porte-cochere of
+their hotel, all their imperials packed, and the only drawback to
+whose flight was the same want of motive power which kept Jos
+stationary.
+
+Rebecca Crawley occupied apartments in this hotel; and had before
+this period had sundry hostile meetings with the ladies of the
+Bareacres family.  My Lady Bareacres cut Mrs. Crawley on the stairs
+when they met by chance; and in all places where the latter's name
+was mentioned, spoke perseveringly ill of her neighbour.  The
+Countess was shocked at the familiarity of General Tufto with the
+aide-de-camp's wife.  The Lady Blanche avoided her as if she had
+been an infectious disease.  Only the Earl himself kept up a sly
+occasional acquaintance with her, when out of the jurisdiction of
+his ladies.
+
+Rebecca had her revenge now upon these insolent enemies.  If became
+known in the hotel that Captain Crawley's horses had been left
+behind, and when the panic began, Lady Bareacres condescended to
+send her maid to the Captain's wife with her Ladyship's compliments,
+and a desire to know the price of Mrs. Crawley's horses.  Mrs.
+Crawley returned a note with her compliments, and an intimation that
+it was not her custom to transact bargains with ladies' maids.
+
+This curt reply brought the Earl in person to Becky's apartment; but
+he could get no more success than the first ambassador.  "Send a
+lady's maid to ME!" Mrs. Crawley cried in great anger; "why didn't
+my Lady Bareacres tell me to go and saddle the horses!  Is it her
+Ladyship that wants to escape, or her Ladyship's femme de chambre?"
+And this was all the answer that the Earl bore back to his Countess.
+
+What will not necessity do?  The Countess herself actually came to
+wait upon Mrs. Crawley on the failure of her second envoy.  She
+entreated her to name her own price; she even offered to invite
+Becky to Bareacres House, if the latter would but give her the means
+of returning to that residence.  Mrs. Crawley sneered at her.
+
+"I don't want to be waited on by bailiffs in livery," she said; "you
+will never get back though most probably--at least not you and your
+diamonds together.  The French will have those They will be here in
+two hours, and I shall be half way to Ghent by that time.  I would
+not sell you my horses, no, not for the two largest diamonds that
+your Ladyship wore at the ball."  Lady Bareacres trembled with rage
+and terror.  The diamonds were sewed into her habit, and secreted in
+my Lord's padding and boots. "Woman, the diamonds are at the
+banker's, and I WILL have the horses," she said.  Rebecca laughed in
+her face. The infuriate Countess went below, and sate in her
+carriage; her maid, her courier, and her husband were sent once more
+through the town, each to look for cattle; and woe betide those who
+came last!  Her Ladyship was resolved on departing the very instant
+the horses arrived from any quarter--with her husband or without
+him.
+
+Rebecca had the pleasure of seeing her Ladyship in the horseless
+carriage, and keeping her eyes fixed upon her, and bewailing, in the
+loudest tone of voice, the Countess's perplexities.  "Not to be able
+to get horses!" she said, "and to have all those diamonds sewed into
+the carriage cushions!  What a prize it will be for the French when
+they come!--the carriage and the diamonds, I mean; not the lady!"
+She gave this information to the landlord, to the servants, to the
+guests, and the innumerable stragglers about the courtyard.  Lady
+Bareacres could have shot her from the carriage window.
+
+It was while enjoying the humiliation of her enemy that Rebecca
+caught sight of Jos, who made towards her directly he perceived her.
+
+That altered, frightened, fat face, told his secret well enough.  He
+too wanted to fly, and was on the look-out for the means of escape.
+"HE shall buy my horses," thought Rebecca, "and I'll ride the mare."
+
+Jos walked up to his friend, and put the question for the hundredth
+time during the past hour, "Did she know where horses were to be
+had?"
+
+"What, YOU fly?" said Rebecca, with a laugh.  "I thought you were
+the champion of all the ladies, Mr. Sedley."
+
+"I--I'm not a military man," gasped he.
+
+"And Amelia?--Who is to protect that poor little sister of yours?"
+asked Rebecca.  "You surely would not desert her?"
+
+"What good can I do her, suppose--suppose the enemy arrive?" Jos
+answered.  "They'll spare the women; but my man tells me that they
+have taken an oath to give no quarter to the men--the dastardly
+cowards."
+
+"Horrid!" cried Rebecca, enjoying his perplexity.
+
+"Besides, I don't want to desert her," cried the brother. "She
+SHAN'T be deserted.  There is a seat for her in my carriage, and one
+for you, dear Mrs. Crawley, if you will come; and if we can get
+horses--" sighed he--
+
+"I have two to sell," the lady said.  Jos could have flung himself
+into her arms at the news.  "Get the carriage, Isidor," he cried;
+"we've found them--we have found them."
+
+My horses never were in harness," added the lady. "Bullfinch would
+kick the carriage to pieces, if you put him in the traces."
+
+"But he is quiet to ride?" asked the civilian.
+
+"As quiet as a lamb, and as fast as a hare," answered Rebecca.
+
+"Do you think he is up to my weight?" Jos said.  He was already on
+his back, in imagination, without ever so much as a thought for poor
+Amelia.  What person who loved a horse-speculation could resist such
+a temptation?
+
+In reply, Rebecca asked him to come into her room, whither he
+followed her quite breathless to conclude the bargain.  Jos seldom
+spent a half-hour in his life which cost him so much money.
+Rebecca, measuring the value of the goods which she had for sale by
+Jos's eagerness to purchase, as well as by the scarcity of the
+article, put upon her horses a price so prodigious as to make even
+the civilian draw back.  "She would sell both or neither," she said,
+resolutely.  Rawdon had ordered her not to part with them for a
+price less than that which she specified. Lord Bareacres below would
+give her the same money--and with all her love and regard for the
+Sedley family, her dear Mr. Joseph must conceive that poor people
+must live--nobody, in a word, could be more affectionate, but more
+firm about the matter of business.
+
+Jos ended by agreeing, as might be supposed of him. The sum he had
+to give her was so large that he was obliged to ask for time; so
+large as to be a little fortune to Rebecca, who rapidly calculated
+that with this sum, and the sale of the residue of Rawdon's effects,
+and her pension as a widow should he fall, she would now be
+absolutely independent of the world, and might look her weeds
+steadily in the face.
+
+Once or twice in the day she certainly had herself thought about
+flying.  But her reason gave her better counsel.  "Suppose the
+French do come," thought Becky, "what can they do to a poor
+officer's widow?  Bah!  the times of sacks and sieges are over.  We
+shall be let to go home quietly, or I may live pleasantly abroad
+with a snug little income."
+
+Meanwhile Jos and Isidor went off to the stables to inspect the
+newly purchased cattle.  Jos bade his man saddle the horses at once.
+He would ride away that very night, that very hour.  And he left the
+valet busy in getting the horses ready, and went homewards himself
+to prepare for his departure.  It must be secret.  He would go to
+his chamber by the back entrance.  He did not care to face Mrs.
+O'Dowd and Amelia, and own to them that he was about to run.
+
+By the time Jos's bargain with Rebecca was completed, and his horses
+had been visited and examined, it was almost morning once more.  But
+though midnight was long passed, there was no rest for the city; the
+people were up, the lights in the houses flamed, crowds were still
+about the doors, and the streets were busy.  Rumours of various
+natures went still from mouth to mouth:  one report averred that the
+Prussians had been utterly defeated; another that it was the English
+who had been attacked and conquered:  a third that the latter had
+held their ground.  This last rumour gradually got strength.  No
+Frenchmen had made their appearance.  Stragglers had come in from
+the army bringing reports more and more favourable:  at last an
+aide-de-camp actually reached Brussels with despatches for the
+Commandant of the place, who placarded presently through the town an
+official announcement of the success of the allies at Quatre Bras,
+and the entire repulse of the French under Ney after a six hours'
+battle.  The aide-de-camp must have arrived sometime while Jos and
+Rebecca were making their bargain together, or the latter was
+inspecting his purchase.  When he reached his own hotel, he found a
+score of its numerous inhabitants on the threshold discoursing of
+the news; there was no doubt as to its truth.  And he went up to
+communicate it to the ladies under his charge. He did not think it
+was necessary to tell them how he had intended to take leave of
+them, how he had bought horses, and what a price he had paid for
+them.
+
+But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had only
+thought for the safety of those they loved. Amelia, at the news of
+the victory, became still more agitated even than before.  She was
+for going that moment to the army.  She besought her brother with
+tears to conduct her thither.  Her doubts and terrors reached their
+paroxysm; and the poor girl, who for many hours had been plunged
+into stupor, raved and ran hither and thither in hysteric insanity--
+a piteous sight.  No man writhing in pain on the hard-fought field
+fifteen miles off, where lay, after their struggles, so many of the
+brave--no man suffered more keenly than this poor harmless victim of
+the war.  Jos could not bear the sight of her pain.  He left his
+sister in the charge of her stouter female companion, and descended
+once more to the threshold of the hotel, where everybody still
+lingered, and talked, and waited for more news.
+
+It grew to be broad daylight as they stood here, and fresh news
+began to arrive from the war, brought by men who had been actors in
+the scene.  Wagons and long country carts laden with wounded came
+rolling into the town; ghastly groans came from within them, and
+haggard faces looked up sadly from out of the straw.  Jos Sedley was
+looking at one of these carriages with a painful curiosity--the
+moans of the people within were frightful--the wearied horses could
+hardly pull the cart. "Stop!  stop!" a feeble voice cried from the
+straw, and the carriage stopped opposite Mr. Sedley's hotel.
+
+"It is George, I know it is!" cried Amelia, rushing in a moment to
+the balcony, with a pallid face and loose flowing hair.  It was not
+George, however, but it was the next best thing:  it was news of
+him.
+
+It was poor Tom Stubble, who had marched out of Brussels so
+gallantly twenty-four hours before, bearing the colours of the
+regiment, which he had defended very gallantly upon the field.  A
+French lancer had speared the young ensign in the leg, who fell,
+still bravely holding to his flag.  At the conclusion of the
+engagement, a place had been found for the poor boy in a cart, and
+he had been brought back to Brussels.
+
+"Mr. Sedley, Mr. Sedley!" cried the boy, faintly, and Jos came up
+almost frightened at the appeal.  He had not at first distinguished
+who it was that called him.
+
+Little Tom Stubble held out his hot and feeble hand. "I'm to be
+taken in here," he said.  "Osborne--and--and Dobbin said I was; and
+you are to give the man two napoleons: my mother will pay you." This
+young fellow's thoughts, during the long feverish hours passed in
+the cart, had been wandering to his father's parsonage which he had
+quitted only a few months before, and he had sometimes forgotten his
+pain in that delirium.
+
+The hotel was large, and the people kind, and all the inmates of the
+cart were taken in and placed on various couches.  The young ensign
+was conveyed upstairs to Osborne's quarters.  Amelia and the Major's
+wife had rushed down to him, when the latter had recognised him from
+the balcony.  You may fancy the feelings of these women when they
+were told that the day was over, and both their husbands were safe;
+in what mute rapture Amelia fell on her good friend's neck, and
+embraced her; in what a grateful passion of prayer she fell on her
+knees, and thanked the Power which had saved her husband.
+
+Our young lady, in her fevered and nervous condition, could have had
+no more salutary medicine prescribed for her by any physician than
+that which chance put in her way.  She and Mrs. O'Dowd watched
+incessantly by the wounded lad, whose pains were very severe, and in
+the duty thus forced upon her, Amelia had not time to brood over her
+personal anxieties, or to give herself up to her own fears and
+forebodings after her wont.  The young patient told in his simple
+fashion the events of the day, and the actions of our friends of the
+gallant --th.  They had suffered severely.  They had lost very many
+officers and men.  The Major's horse had been shot under him as the
+regiment charged, and they all thought that O'Dowd was gone, and
+that Dobbin had got his majority, until on their return from the
+charge to their old ground, the Major was discovered seated on
+Pyramus's carcase, refreshing him-self from a case-bottle.  It was
+Captain Osborne that cut down the French lancer who had speared the
+ensign. Amelia turned so pale at the notion, that Mrs. O'Dowd
+stopped the young ensign in this story.  And it was Captain Dobbin
+who at the end of the day, though wounded himself, took up the lad
+in his arms and carried him to the surgeon, and thence to the cart
+which was to bring him back to Brussels.  And it was he who promised
+the driver two louis if he would make his way to Mr. Sedley's hotel
+in the city; and tell Mrs. Captain Osborne that the action was over,
+and that her husband was unhurt and well.
+
+"Indeed, but he has a good heart that William Dobbin," Mrs. O'Dowd
+said, "though he is always laughing at me."
+
+Young Stubble vowed there was not such another officer in the army,
+and never ceased his praises of the senior captain, his modesty, his
+kindness, and his admirable coolness in the field.  To these parts
+of the conversation, Amelia lent a very distracted attention:  it
+was only when George was spoken of that she listened, and when he
+was not mentioned, she thought about him.
+
+In tending her patient, and in thinking of the wonderful escapes of
+the day before, her second day passed away not too slowly with
+Amelia.  There was only one man in the army for her:  and as long as
+he was well, it must be owned that its movements interested her
+little. All the reports which Jos brought from the streets fell very
+vaguely on her ears; though they were sufficient to give that
+timorous gentleman, and many other people then in Brussels, every
+disquiet.  The French had been repulsed certainly, but it was after
+a severe and doubtful struggle, and with only a division of the
+French army. The Emperor, with the main body, was away at Ligny,
+where he had utterly annihilated the Prussians, and was now free to
+bring his whole force to bear upon the allies. The Duke of
+Wellington was retreating upon the capital, and a great battle must
+be fought under its walls probably, of which the chances were more
+than doubtful. The Duke of Wellington had but twenty thousand
+British troops on whom he could rely, for the Germans were raw
+militia, the Belgians disaffected, and with this handful his Grace
+had to resist a hundred and fifty thousand men that had broken into
+Belgium under Napoleon.  Under Napoleon!  What warrior was there,
+however famous and skilful, that could fight at odds with him?
+
+Jos thought of all these things, and trembled.  So did all the rest
+of Brussels--where people felt that the fight of the day before was
+but the prelude to the greater combat which was imminent.  One of
+the armies opposed to the Emperor was scattered to the winds
+already.  The few English that could be brought to resist him would
+perish at their posts, and the conqueror would pass over their
+bodies into the city.  Woe be to those whom he found there!
+Addresses were prepared, public functionaries assembled and debated
+secretly, apartments were got ready, and tricoloured banners and
+triumphal emblems manufactured, to welcome the arrival of His
+Majesty the Emperor and King.
+
+The emigration still continued, and wherever families could find
+means of departure, they fled.  When Jos, on the afternoon of the
+17th of June, went to Rebecca's hotel, he found that the great
+Bareacres' carriage had at length rolled away from the porte-
+cochere.  The Earl had procured a pair of horses somehow, in spite
+of Mrs. Crawley, and was rolling on the road to Ghent.  Louis the
+Desired was getting ready his portmanteau in that city, too.  It
+seemed as if Misfortune was never tired of worrying into motion that
+unwieldy exile.
+
+Jos felt that the delay of yesterday had been only a respite, and
+that his dearly bought horses must of a surety be put into
+requisition.  His agonies were very severe all this day.  As long as
+there was an English army between Brussels and Napoleon, there was
+no need of immediate flight; but he had his horses brought from
+their distant stables, to the stables in the court-yard of the hotel
+where he lived; so that they might be under his own eyes, and beyond
+the risk of violent abduction. Isidor watched the stable-door
+constantly, and had the horses saddled, to be ready for the start.
+He longed intensely for that event.
+
+After the reception of the previous day, Rebecca did not care to
+come near her dear Amelia.  She clipped the bouquet which George had
+brought her, and gave fresh water to the flowers, and read over the
+letter which he had sent her.  "Poor wretch," she said, twirling
+round the little bit of paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her
+with this!--and it is for a thing like this that she must break her
+heart, forsooth--for a man who is stupid--a coxcomb--and who does
+not care for her.  My poor good Rawdon is worth ten of this
+creature." And then she fell to thinking what she should do if--if
+anything happened to poor good Rawdon, and what a great piece of
+luck it was that he had left his horses behind.
+
+In the course of this day too, Mrs. Crawley, who saw not without
+anger the Bareacres party drive off, bethought her of the precaution
+which the Countess had taken, and did a little needlework for her
+own advantage; she stitched away the major part of her trinkets,
+bills, and bank-notes about her person, and so prepared, was ready
+for any event--to fly if she thought fit, or to stay and welcome the
+conqueror, were he Englishman or Frenchman.  And I am not sure that
+she did not dream that night of becoming a duchess and Madame la
+Marechale, while Rawdon wrapped in his cloak, and making his bivouac
+under the rain at Mount Saint John, was thinking, with all the force
+of his heart, about the little wife whom he had left behind him.
+
+The next day was a Sunday.  And Mrs. Major O'Dowd had the
+satisfaction of seeing both her patients refreshed in health and
+spirits by some rest which they had taken during the night.  She
+herself had slept on a great chair in Amelia's room, ready to wait
+upon her poor friend or the ensign, should either need her nursing.
+When morning came, this robust woman went back to the house where
+she and her Major had their billet; and here performed an elaborate
+and splendid toilette, befitting the day.  And it is very possible
+that whilst alone in that chamber, which her husband had inhabited,
+and where his cap still lay on the pillow, and his cane stood in the
+corner, one prayer at least was sent up to Heaven for the welfare of
+the brave soldier, Michael O'Dowd.
+
+When she returned she brought her prayer-book with her, and her
+uncle the Dean's famous book of sermons, out of which she never
+failed to read every Sabbath; not understanding all, haply, not
+pronouncing many of the words aright, which were long and abstruse--
+for the Dean was a learned man, and loved long Latin words--but with
+great gravity, vast emphasis, and with tolerable correctness in the
+main.  How often has my Mick listened to these sermons, she thought,
+and me reading in the cabin of a calm!  She proposed to resume this
+exercise on the present day, with Amelia and the wounded ensign for
+a congregation.  The same service was read on that day in twenty
+thousand churches at the same hour; and millions of British men and
+women, on their knees, implored protection of the Father of all.
+
+They did not hear the noise which disturbed our little congregation
+at Brussels.  Much louder than that which had interrupted them two
+days previously, as Mrs. O'Dowd was reading the service in her best
+voice, the cannon of Waterloo began to roar.
+
+When Jos heard that dreadful sound, he made up his mind that he
+would bear this perpetual recurrence of terrors no longer, and would
+fly at once.  He rushed into the sick man's room, where our three
+friends had paused in their prayers, and further interrupted them by
+a passionate appeal to Amelia.
+
+"I can't stand it any more, Emmy," he said; 'I won't stand it; and
+you must come with me.  I have bought a horse for you--never mind at
+what price--and you must dress and come with me, and ride behind
+Isidor."
+
+"God forgive me, Mr. Sedley, but you are no better than a coward,"
+Mrs. O'Dowd said, laying down the book.
+
+"I say come, Amelia," the civilian went on; "never mind what she
+says; why are we to stop here and be butchered by the Frenchmen?"
+
+"You forget the --th, my boy," said the little Stubble, the wounded
+hero, from his bed--"and and you won't leave me, will you, Mrs.
+O'Dowd?"
+
+"No, my dear fellow," said she, going up and kissing the boy.  "No
+harm shall come to you while I stand by. I don't budge till I get
+the word from Mick.  A pretty figure I'd be, wouldn't I, stuck
+behind that chap on a pillion?"
+
+This image caused the young patient to burst out laughing in his
+bed, and even made Amelia smile.  "I don't ask her," Jos shouted
+out--"I don't ask that--that Irishwoman, but you Amelia; once for
+all, will you come?"
+
+"Without my husband, Joseph?" Amelia said, with a look of wonder,
+and gave her hand to the Major's wife. Jos's patience was exhausted.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said, shaking his fist in a rage, and slamming
+the door by which he retreated.  And this time he really gave his
+order for march:  and mounted in the court-yard.  Mrs. O'Dowd heard
+the clattering hoofs of the horses as they issued from the gate; and
+looking on, made many scornful remarks on poor Joseph as he rode
+down the street with Isidor after him in the laced cap.  The horses,
+which had not been exercised for some days, were lively, and sprang
+about the street.  Jos, a clumsy and timid horseman, did not look to
+advantage in the saddle.  "Look at him, Amelia dear, driving into
+the parlour window.  Such a bull in a china-shop I never saw." And
+presently the pair of riders disappeared at a canter down the street
+leading in the direction of the Ghent road, Mrs. O'Dowd pursuing
+them with a fire of sarcasm so long as they were in sight.
+
+All that day from morning until past sunset, the cannon never ceased
+to roar.  It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.
+
+All of us have read of what occurred during that interval.  The tale
+is in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children
+when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing
+and recounting the history of that famous action.  Its remembrance
+rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those
+brave men who lost the day.  They pant for an opportunity of
+revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on
+their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving
+its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end
+to the so-called glory and shame, and to the alternations of
+successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited
+nations might engage.  Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen
+might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely
+the Devil's code of honour.
+
+All our friends took their share and fought like men in the great
+field.  All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away,
+the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and
+repelling the furious charges of the French horsemen.  Guns which
+were heard at Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades
+falling, and the resolute survivors closing in.  Towards evening,
+the attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely,
+slackened in its fury.  They had other foes besides the British to
+engage, or were preparing for a final onset.  It came at last:  the
+columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at
+length and at once to sweep the English from the height which they
+had maintained all day, and spite of all:  unscared by the thunder
+of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line--the dark
+rolling column pressed on and up the hill.  It seemed almost to
+crest the eminence, when it began to wave and falter.  Then it
+stopped, still facing the shot.  Then at last the English troops
+rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to dislodge
+them, and the Guard turned and fled.
+
+No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away.
+Darkness came down on the field and city:  and Amelia was praying
+for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through
+his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her
+
+
+The kind reader must please to remember--while the army is marching
+from Flanders, and, after its heroic actions there, is advancing to
+take the fortifications on the frontiers of France, previous to an
+occupation of that country--that there are a number of persons
+living peaceably in England who have to do with the history at
+present in hand, and must come in for their share of the chronicle.
+During the time of these battles and dangers, old Miss Crawley was
+living at Brighton, very moderately moved by the great events that
+were going on.  The great events rendered the newspapers rather
+interesting, to be sure, and Briggs read out the Gazette, in which
+Rawdon Crawley's gallantry was mentioned with honour, and his
+promotion was presently recorded.
+
+"What a pity that young man has taken such an irretrievable step in
+the world!" his aunt said; "with his rank and distinction he might
+have married a brewer's daughter with a quarter of a million--like
+Miss Grains; or have looked to ally himself with the best families
+in England. He would have had my money some day or other; or his
+children would--for I'm not in a hurry to go, Miss Briggs, although
+you may be in a hurry to be rid of me; and instead of that, he is a
+doomed pauper, with a dancing-girl for a wife."
+
+"Will my dear Miss Crawley not cast an eye of compassion upon the
+heroic soldier, whose name is inscribed in the annals of his
+country's glory?" said Miss Briggs, who was greatly excited by the
+Waterloo proceedings, and loved speaking romantically when there was
+an occasion.  "Has not the Captain--or the Colonel as I may now
+style him--done deeds which make the name of Crawley illustrious?"
+
+"Briggs, you are a fool," said Miss Crawley: "Colonel Crawley has
+dragged the name of Crawley through the mud, Miss Briggs.  Marry a
+drawing-master's daughter, indeed!--marry a dame de compagnie--for
+she was no better, Briggs; no, she was just what you are--only
+younger, and a great deal prettier and cleverer.  Were you an
+accomplice of that abandoned wretch, I wonder, of whose vile arts he
+became a victim, and of whom you used to be such an admirer?  Yes, I
+daresay you were an accomplice. But you will find yourself
+disappointed in my will, I can tell you:  and you will have the
+goodness to write to Mr. Waxy, and say that I desire to see him
+immediately." Miss Crawley was now in the habit of writing to Mr.
+Waxy her solicitor almost every day in the week, for her
+arrangements respecting her property were all revoked, and her
+perplexity was great as to the future disposition of her money.
+
+The spinster had, however, rallied considerably; as was proved by
+the increased vigour and frequency of her sarcasms upon Miss Briggs,
+all which attacks the poor companion bore with meekness, with
+cowardice, with a resignation that was half generous and half
+hypocritical--with the slavish submission, in a word, that women of
+her disposition and station are compelled to show.  Who has not seen
+how women bully women?  What tortures have men to endure, comparable
+to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor
+women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?  Poor victims!  But
+we are starting from our proposition, which is, that Miss Crawley
+was always particularly annoying and savage when she was rallying
+from illness--as they say wounds tingle most when they are about to
+heal.
+
+While thus approaching, as all hoped, to convalescence, Miss Briggs
+was the only victim admitted into the presence of the invalid; yet
+Miss Crawley's relatives afar off did not forget their beloved
+kinswoman, and by a number of tokens, presents, and kind
+affectionate messages, strove to keep themselves alive in her
+recollection.
+
+In the first place, let us mention her nephew, Rawdon Crawley.  A
+few weeks after the famous fight of Waterloo, and after the Gazette
+had made known to her the promotion and gallantry of that
+distinguished officer, the Dieppe packet brought over to Miss
+Crawley at Brighton, a box containing presents, and a dutiful
+letter, from the Colonel her nephew.  In the box were a pair of
+French epaulets, a Cross of the Legion of Honour, and the hilt of a
+sword--relics from the field of battle:  and the letter described
+with a good deal of humour how the latter belonged to a commanding
+officer of the Guard, who having sworn that "the Guard died, but
+never surrendered," was taken prisoner the next minute by a private
+soldier, who broke the Frenchman's sword with the butt of his
+musket, when Rawdon made himself master of the shattered weapon.  As
+for the cross and epaulets, they came from a Colonel of French
+cavalry, who had fallen under the aide-de-camp's arm in the battle:
+and Rawdon Crawley did not know what better to do with the spoils
+than to send them to his kindest and most affectionate old friend.
+Should he continue to write to her from Paris, whither the army was
+marching?  He might be able to give her interesting news from that
+capital, and of some of Miss Crawley's old friends of the
+emigration, to whom she had shown so much kindness during their
+distress.
+
+The spinster caused Briggs to write back to the Colonel a gracious
+and complimentary letter, encouraging him to continue his
+correspondence.  His first letter was so excessively lively and
+amusing that she should look with pleasure for its successors.--"Of
+course, I know," she explained to Miss Briggs, "that Rawdon could
+not write such a good letter any more than you could, my poor
+Briggs, and that it is that clever little wretch of a Rebecca, who
+dictates every word to him; but that is no reason why my nephew
+should not amuse me; and so I wish to let him understand that I am
+in high good humour."
+
+I wonder whether she knew that it was not only Becky who wrote the
+letters, but that Mrs. Rawdon actually took and sent home the
+trophies which she bought for a few francs, from one of the
+innumerable pedlars who immediately began to deal in relics of the
+war.  The novelist, who knows everything, knows this also.  Be this,
+however, as it may, Miss Crawley's gracious reply greatly encouraged
+our young friends, Rawdon and his lady, who hoped for the best from
+their aunt's evidently pacified humour:  and they took care to
+entertain her with many delightful letters from Paris, whither, as
+Rawdon said, they had the good luck to go in the track of the
+conquering army.
+
+To the rector's lady, who went off to tend her husband's broken
+collar-bone at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley, the spinster's
+communications were by no means so gracious.  Mrs. Bute, that brisk,
+managing, lively, imperious woman, had committed the most fatal of
+all errors with regard to her sister-in-law.  She had not merely
+oppressed her and her household--she had bored Miss Crawley; and if
+poor Miss Briggs had been a woman of any spirit, she might have been
+made happy by the commission which her principal gave her to write a
+letter to Mrs. Bute Crawley, saying that Miss Crawley's health was
+greatly improved since Mrs. Bute had left her, and begging the
+latter on no account to put herself to trouble, or quit her family
+for Miss Crawley's sake.  This triumph over a lady who had been very
+haughty and cruel in her behaviour to Miss Briggs, would have
+rejoiced most women; but the truth is, Briggs was a woman of no
+spirit at all, and the moment her enemy was discomfited, she began
+to feel compassion in her favour.
+
+"How silly I was," Mrs. Bute thought, and with reason, "ever to hint
+that I was coming, as I did, in that foolish letter when we sent
+Miss Crawley the guinea-fowls. I ought to have gone without a word
+to the poor dear doting old creature, and taken her out of the hands
+of that ninny Briggs, and that harpy of a femme de chambre.  Oh!
+Bute, Bute, why did you break your collar-bone?"
+
+Why, indeed?  We have seen how Mrs. Bute, having the game in her
+hands, had really played her cards too well. She had ruled over Miss
+Crawley's household utterly and completely, to be utterly and
+completely routed when a favourable opportunity for rebellion came.
+She and her household, however, considered that she had been the
+victim of horrible selfishness and treason, and that her sacrifices
+in Miss Crawley's behalf had met with the most savage ingratitude.
+Rawdon's promotion, and the honourable mention made of his name in
+the Gazette, filled this good Christian lady also with alarm.  Would
+his aunt relent towards him now that he was a Lieutenant-Colonel and
+a C.B.? and would that odious Rebecca once more get into favour?
+The Rector's wife wrote a sermon for her husband about the vanity of
+military glory and the prosperity of the wicked, which the worthy
+parson read in his best voice and without understanding one syllable
+of it.  He had Pitt Crawley for one of his auditors--Pitt, who had
+come with his two half-sisters to church, which the old Baronet
+could now by no means be brought to frequent.
+
+Since the departure of Becky Sharp, that old wretch had given
+himself up entirely to his bad courses, to the great scandal of the
+county and the mute horror of his son.  The ribbons in Miss
+Horrocks's cap became more splendid than ever.  The polite families
+fled the hall and its owner in terror.  Sir Pitt went about tippling
+at his tenants' houses; and drank rum-and-water with the farmers at
+Mudbury and the neighbouring places on market-days.  He drove the
+family coach-and-four to Southampton with Miss Horrocks inside:  and
+the county people expected, every week, as his son did in speechless
+agony, that his marriage with her would be announced in the
+provincial paper.  It was indeed a rude burthen for Mr. Crawley to
+bear.  His eloquence was palsied at the missionary meetings, and
+other religious assemblies in the neighbourhood, where he had been
+in the habit of presiding, and of speaking for hours; for he felt,
+when he rose, that the audience said, "That is the son of the old
+reprobate Sir Pitt, who is very likely drinking at the public house
+at this very moment." And once when he was speaking of the benighted
+condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and the number of his wives who
+were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreant from the crowd
+asked, "How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young Squaretoes?" to
+the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr. Pitt's speech.
+And the two daughters of the house of Queen's Crawley would have
+been allowed to run utterly wild (for Sir Pitt swore that no
+governess should ever enter into his doors again), had not Mr.
+Crawley, by threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send
+them to school.
+
+Meanwhile, as we have said, whatever individual differences there
+might be between them all, Miss Crawley's dear nephews and nieces
+were unanimous in loving her and sending her tokens of affection.
+Thus Mrs. Bute sent guinea-fowls, and some remarkably fine
+cauliflowers, and a pretty purse or pincushion worked by her darling
+girls, who begged to keep a LITTLE place in the recollection of
+their dear aunt, while Mr. Pitt sent peaches and grapes and venison
+from the Hall.  The Southampton coach used to carry these tokens of
+affection to Miss Crawley at Brighton:  it used sometimes to convey
+Mr. Pitt thither too:  for his differences with Sir Pitt caused Mr.
+Crawley to absent himself a good deal from home now:  and besides,
+he had an attraction at Brighton in the person of the Lady Jane
+Sheepshanks, whose engagement to Mr. Crawley has been formerly
+mentioned in this history. Her Ladyship and her sisters lived at
+Brighton with their mamma, the Countess Southdown, that strong-
+minded woman so favourably known in the serious world.
+
+A few words ought to be said regarding her Ladyship and her noble
+family, who are bound by ties of present and future relationship to
+the house of Crawley. Respecting the chief of the Southdown family,
+Clement William, fourth Earl of Southdown, little need be told,
+except that his Lordship came into Parliament (as Lord Wolsey) under
+the auspices of Mr. Wilberforce, and for a time was a credit to his
+political sponsor, and decidedly a serious young man.  But words
+cannot describe the feelings of his admirable mother, when she
+learned, very shortly after her noble husband's demise, that her son
+was a member of several worldly clubs, had lost largely at play at
+Wattier's and the Cocoa Tree; that he had raised money on post-
+obits, and encumbered the family estate; that he drove four-in-hand,
+and patronised the ring; and that he actually had an opera-box,
+where he entertained the most dangerous bachelor company.  His name
+was only mentioned with groans in the dowager's circle.
+
+The Lady Emily was her brother's senior by many years; and took
+considerable rank in the serious world as author of some of the
+delightful tracts before mentioned, and of many hymns and spiritual
+pieces.  A mature spinster, and having but faint ideas of marriage,
+her love for the blacks occupied almost all her feelings.  It is to
+her, I believe, we owe that beautiful poem.
+
+    Lead us to some sunny isle,
+    Yonder in the western deep;
+    Where the skies for ever smile,
+    And the blacks for ever weep, &c.
+
+She had correspondences with clerical gentlemen in most of our East
+and West India possessions; and was secretly attached to the
+Reverend Silas Hornblower, who was tattooed in the South Sea
+Islands.
+
+As for the Lady Jane, on whom, as it has been said, Mr. Pitt
+Crawley's affection had been placed, she was gentle, blushing,
+silent, and timid.  In spite of his falling away, she wept for her
+brother, and was quite ashamed of loving him still.  Even yet she
+used to send him little hurried smuggled notes, and pop them into
+the post in private. The one dreadful secret which weighed upon her
+life was, that she and the old housekeeper had been to pay Southdown
+a furtive visit at his chambers in the Albany; and found him--O the
+naughty dear abandoned wretch!--smoking a cigar with a bottle of
+Curacao before him.  She admired her sister, she adored her mother,
+she thought Mr. Crawley the most delightful and accomplished of men,
+after Southdown, that fallen angel:  and her mamma and sister, who
+were ladies of the most superior sort, managed everything for her,
+and regarded her with that amiable pity, of which your really
+superior woman always has such a share to give away.  Her mamma
+ordered her dresses, her books, her bonnets, and her ideas for her.
+She was made to take pony-riding, or piano-exercise, or any other
+sort of bodily medicament, according as my Lady Southdown saw meet;
+and her ladyship would have kept her daughter in pinafores up to her
+present age of six-and-twenty, but that they were thrown off when
+Lady Jane was presented to Queen Charlotte.
+
+When these ladies first came to their house at Brighton, it was to
+them alone that Mr. Crawley paid his personal visits, contenting
+himself by leaving a card at his aunt's house, and making a modest
+inquiry of Mr. Bowls or his assistant footman, with respect to the
+health of the invalid.  When he met Miss Briggs coming home from the
+library with a cargo of novels under her arm, Mr. Crawley blushed in
+a manner quite unusual to him, as he stepped forward and shook Miss
+Crawley's companion by the hand.  He introduced Miss Briggs to the
+lady with whom he happened to be walking, the Lady Jane Sheepshanks,
+saying, "Lady Jane, permit me to introduce to you my aunt's kindest
+friend and most affectionate companion, Miss Briggs, whom you know
+under another title, as authoress of the delightful 'Lyrics of the
+Heart,' of which you are so fond."  Lady Jane blushed too as she
+held out a kind little hand to Miss Briggs, and said something very
+civil and incoherent about mamma, and proposing to call on Miss
+Crawley, and being glad to be made known to the friends and
+relatives of Mr. Crawley; and with soft dove-like eyes saluted Miss
+Briggs as they separated, while Pitt Crawley treated her to a
+profound courtly bow, such as he had used to H.H. the Duchess of
+Pumpernickel, when he was attache at that court.
+
+The artful diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian Binkie!  It
+was he who had given Lady Jane that copy of poor Briggs's early
+poems, which he remembered to have seen at Queen's Crawley, with a
+dedication from the poetess to his father's late wife; and he
+brought the volume with him to Brighton, reading it in the
+Southampton coach and marking it with his own pencil, before he
+presented it to the gentle Lady Jane.
+
+It was he, too, who laid before Lady Southdown the great advantages
+which might occur from an intimacy between her family and Miss
+Crawley--advantages both worldly and spiritual, he said:  for Miss
+Crawley was now quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance
+of his brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that
+reprobate young man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of Mrs. Bute
+Crawley had caused the old lady to revolt against the exorbitant
+pretensions of that part of the family; and though he himself had
+held off all his life from cultivating Miss Crawley's friendship,
+with perhaps an improper pride, he thought now that every becoming
+means should be taken, both to save her soul from perdition, and to
+secure her fortune to himself as the head of the house of Crawley.
+
+The strong-minded Lady Southdown quite agreed in both proposals of
+her son-in-law, and was for converting Miss Crawley off-hand.  At
+her own home, both at Southdown and at Trottermore Castle, this tall
+and awful missionary of the truth rode about the country in her
+barouche with outriders, launched packets of tracts among the
+cottagers and tenants, and would order Gaffer Jones to be converted,
+as she would order Goody Hicks to take a James's powder, without
+appeal, resistance, or benefit of clergy.  My Lord Southdown, her
+late husband, an epileptic and simple-minded nobleman, was in the
+habit of approving of everything which his Matilda did and thought.
+So that whatever changes her own belief might undergo (and it
+accommodated itself to a prodigious variety of opinion, taken from
+all sorts of doctors among the Dissenters) she had not the least
+scruple in ordering all her tenants and inferiors to follow and
+believe after her.  Thus whether she received the Reverend Saunders
+McNitre, the Scotch divine; or the Reverend Luke Waters, the mild
+Wesleyan; or the Reverend Giles Jowls, the illuminated Cobbler, who
+dubbed himself Reverend as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor--the
+household, children, tenantry of my Lady Southdown were expected to
+go down on their knees with her Ladyship, and say Amen to the
+prayers of either Doctor.  During these exercises old Southdown, on
+account of his invalid condition, was allowed to sit in his own
+room, and have negus and the paper read to him.  Lady Jane was the
+old Earl's favourite daughter, and tended him and loved him
+sincerely:  as for Lady Emily, the authoress of the "Washerwoman of
+Finchley Common," her denunciations of future punishment (at this
+period, for her opinions modified afterwards) were so awful that
+they used to frighten the timid old gentleman her father, and the
+physicians declared his fits always occurred after one of her
+Ladyship's sermons.
+
+"I will certainly call," said Lady Southdown then, in reply to the
+exhortation of her daughter's pretendu, Mr. Pitt Crawley--"Who is
+Miss Crawley's medical man?"
+
+Mr. Crawley mentioned the name of Mr. Creamer.
+
+"A most dangerous and ignorant practitioner, my dear Pitt.  I have
+providentially been the means of removing him from several houses:
+though in one or two instances I did not arrive in time.  I could
+not save poor dear General Glanders, who was dying under the hands
+of that ignorant man--dying.  He rallied a little under the Podgers'
+pills which I administered to him; but alas!  it was too late.  His
+death was delightful, however; and his change was only for the
+better; Creamer, my dear Pitt, must leave your aunt."
+
+Pitt expressed his perfect acquiescence.  He, too, had been carried
+along by the energy of his noble kinswoman, and future mother-in-
+law.  He had been made to accept Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters,
+Giles Jowls, Podgers' Pills, Rodgers' Pills, Pokey's Elixir, every
+one of her Ladyship's remedies spiritual or temporal.  He never left
+her house without carrying respectfully away with him piles of her
+quack theology and medicine.  O, my dear brethren and fellow-
+sojourners in Vanity Fair, which among you does not know and suffer
+under such benevolent despots?  It is in vain you say to them, "Dear
+Madam, I took Podgers' specific at your orders last year, and
+believe in it.  Why, why am I to recant and accept the Rodgers'
+articles now?"  There is no help for it; the faithful proselytizer,
+if she cannot convince by argument, bursts into tears, and the
+refusant finds himself, at the end of the contest, taking down the
+bolus, and saying, "Well, well, Rodgers' be it."
+
+"And as for her spiritual state," continued the Lady, "that of
+course must be looked to immediately:  with Creamer about her, she
+may go off any day:  and in what a condition, my dear Pitt, in what
+a dreadful condition! I will send the Reverend Mr. Irons to her
+instantly.  Jane, write a line to the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, in
+the third person, and say that I desire the pleasure of his company
+this evening at tea at half-past six.  He is an awakening man; he
+ought to see Miss Crawley before she rests this night.  And Emily,
+my love, get ready a packet of books for Miss Crawley.  Put up 'A
+Voice from the Flames,' 'A Trumpet-warning to Jericho,' and the
+'Fleshpots Broken; or, the Converted Cannibal.'"
+
+"And the 'Washerwoman of Finchley Common,' Mamma," said Lady Emily.
+"It is as well to begin soothingly at first."
+
+"Stop, my dear ladies," said Pitt, the diplomatist. "With every
+deference to the opinion of my beloved and respected Lady Southdown,
+I think it would be quite unadvisable to commence so early upon
+serious topics with Miss Crawley.  Remember her delicate condition,
+and how little, how very little accustomed she has hitherto been to
+considerations connected with her immortal welfare."
+
+"Can we then begin too early, Pitt?" said Lady Emily, rising with
+six little books already in her hand.
+
+"If you begin abruptly, you will frighten her altogether. I know my
+aunt's worldly nature so well as to be sure that any abrupt attempt
+at conversion will be the very worst means that can be employed for
+the welfare of that unfortunate lady.  You will only frighten and
+annoy her. She will very likely fling the books away, and refuse all
+acquaintance with the givers."
+
+"You are as worldly as Miss Crawley, Pitt," said Lady Emily, tossing
+out of the room, her books in her hand.
+
+"And I need not tell you, my dear Lady Southdown," Pitt continued,
+in a low voice, and without heeding the interruption, "how fatal a
+little want of gentleness and caution may be to any hopes which we
+may entertain with regard to the worldly possessions of my aunt.
+Remember she has seventy thousand pounds; think of her age, and her
+highly nervous and delicate condition; I know that she has destroyed
+the will which was made in my brother's (Colonel Crawley's) favour:
+it is by soothing that wounded spirit that we must lead it into the
+right path, and not by frightening it; and so I think you will agree
+with me that--that--'
+
+"Of course, of course," Lady Southdown remarked. "Jane, my love, you
+need not send that note to Mr. Irons. If her health is such that
+discussions fatigue her, we will wait her amendment.  I will call
+upon Miss Crawley tomorrow."
+
+"And if I might suggest, my sweet lady," Pitt said in a bland tone,
+"it would be as well not to take our precious Emily, who is too
+enthusiastic; but rather that you should be accompanied by our sweet
+and dear Lady Jane."
+
+"Most certainly, Emily would ruin everything," Lady Southdown said;
+and this time agreed to forego her usual practice, which was, as we
+have said, before she bore down personally upon any individual whom
+she proposed to subjugate, to fire in a quantity of tracts upon the
+menaced party (as a charge of the French was always preceded by a
+furious cannonade).  Lady Southdown, we say, for the sake of the
+invalid's health, or for the sake of her soul's ultimate welfare, or
+for the sake of her money, agreed to temporise.
+
+The next day, the great Southdown female family carriage, with the
+Earl's coronet and the lozenge (upon which the three lambs trottant
+argent upon the field vert of the Southdowns, were quartered with
+sable on a bend or, three snuff-mulls gules, the cognizance of the
+house of Binkie), drove up in state to Miss Crawley's door, and the
+tall serious footman handed in to Mr. Bowls her Ladyship's cards for
+Miss Crawley, and one likewise for Miss Briggs.  By way of
+compromise, Lady Emily sent in a packet in the evening for the
+latter lady, containing copies of the "Washerwoman," and other mild
+and favourite tracts for Miss B.'s own perusal; and a few for the
+servants' hall, viz.:  "Crumbs from the Pantry," "The Frying Pan and
+the Fire," and "The Livery of Sin," of a much stronger kind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out
+
+
+The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's kind reception
+of her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a
+good word for the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family
+had been presented to Miss Crawley.  A Countess's card left
+personally too for her, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the
+poor friendless companion.  "What could Lady Southdown mean by
+leaving a card upon you, I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said the republican
+Miss Crawley; upon which the companion meekly said "that she hoped
+there could be no harm in a lady of rank taking notice of a poor
+gentlewoman," and she put away this card in her work-box amongst her
+most cherished personal treasures.  Furthermore, Miss Briggs
+explained how she had met Mr. Crawley walking with his cousin and
+long affianced bride the day before:  and she told how kind and
+gentle-looking the lady was, and what a plain, not to say common,
+dress she had, all the articles of which, from the bonnet down to
+the boots, she described and estimated with female accuracy.
+
+Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without interrupting her
+too much.  As she got well, she was pining for society.  Mr.
+Creamer, her medical man, would not hear of her returning to her old
+haunts and dissipation in London.  The old spinster was too glad to
+find any companionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards
+acknowledged the very next day, but Pitt Crawley was graciously
+invited to come and see his aunt.  He came, bringing with him Lady
+Southdown and her daughter.  The dowager did not say a word about
+the state of Miss Crawley's soul; but talked with much discretion
+about the weather:  about the war and the downfall of the monster
+Bonaparte:  and above all, about doctors, quacks, and the particular
+merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then patronised.
+
+During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one
+which showed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by
+early neglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession.
+When the Countess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican
+upstart, as the fashion was in those days, and showed that he was a
+monster stained with every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant
+not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted, &c., Pitt Crawley
+suddenly took up the cudgels in favour of the man of Destiny.  He
+described the First Consul as he saw him at Paris at the peace of
+Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley, had the gratification of making the
+acquaintance of the great and good Mr. Fox, a statesman whom,
+however much he might differ with him, it was impossible not to
+admire fervently--a statesman who had always had the highest opinion
+of the Emperor Napoleon.  And he spoke in terms of the strongest
+indignation of the faithless conduct of the allies towards this
+dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously up to their
+mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while a
+bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead.
+
+This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved Pitt Crawley in
+Lady Southdown's opinion, whilst his admiration for Fox and Napoleon
+raised him immeasurably in Miss Crawley's eyes.  Her friendship with
+that defunct British statesman was mentioned when we first
+introduced her in this history.  A true Whig, Miss Crawley had been
+in opposition all through the war, and though, to be sure, the
+downfall of the Emperor did not very much agitate the old lady, or
+his ill-treatment tend to shorten her life or natural rest, yet Pitt
+spoke to her heart when he lauded both her idols; and by that single
+speech made immense progress in her favour.
+
+"And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said to the young
+lady, for whom she had taken a liking at first sight, as she always
+did for pretty and modest young people; though it must be owned her
+affections cooled as rapidly as they rose.
+
+Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did not understand
+politics, which she left to wiser heads than hers; but though Mamma
+was, no doubt, correct, Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully." And
+when the ladies were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss
+Crawley hoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send her Lady
+Jane sometimes, if she could be spared to come down and console a
+poor sick lonely old woman." This promise was graciously accorded,
+and they separated upon great terms of amity.
+
+"Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt," said the old lady.
+"She is stupid and pompous, like all your mother's family, whom I
+never could endure.  But bring that nice good-natured little Jane as
+often as ever you please." Pitt promised that he would do so.  He
+did not tell the Countess of Southdown what opinion his aunt had
+formed of her Ladyship, who, on the contrary, thought that she had
+made a most delightful and majestic impression on Miss Crawley.
+
+And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry
+in her heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of
+the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered
+round the footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane
+became a pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in
+her drives, and solaced many of her evenings.  She was so naturally
+good and soft, that even Firkin was not jealous of her; and the
+gentle Briggs thought her friend was less cruel to her when kind
+Lady Jane was by.  Towards her Ladyship Miss Crawley's manners were
+charming.  The old spinster told her a thousand anecdotes about her
+youth, talking to her in a very different strain from that in which
+she had been accustomed to converse with the godless little Rebecca;
+for there was that in Lady Jane's innocence which rendered light
+talking impertinence before her, and Miss Crawley was too much of a
+gentlewoman to offend such purity.  The young lady herself had never
+received kindness except from this old spinster, and her brother and
+father:  and she repaid Miss Crawley's engoument by artless
+sweetness and friendship.
+
+In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the
+gayest among the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear
+wounded Amelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in
+Miss Crawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight,
+her little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the
+sea was roaring on the beach.  The old spinster used to wake up when
+these ditties ceased, and ask for more.  As for Briggs, and the
+quantity of tears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended
+to knit, and looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the
+windows, and the lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--
+who, I say can measure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs?
+
+Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws
+or a Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation
+which suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner.  He sipped
+Madeira:  built castles in the air:  thought himself a fine fellow:
+felt himself much more in love with Jane than he had been any time
+these seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without the
+slightest impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal.  When
+the time for coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner,
+and summon Squire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy
+with his pamphlet.
+
+"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss
+Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance
+with the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than
+an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity
+of abusing Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep
+better if I had my game."
+
+At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down
+to the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted
+the room, and the door was quite shut, she said:
+
+"Miss Crawley, I can play a little.  I used to--to play a little
+with poor dear papa."
+
+"Come and kiss me.  Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good
+little soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this
+picturesque and friendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and
+the young one, when he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand.
+How she did blush all the evening, that poor Lady Jane!
+
+It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped
+the attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's
+Crawley.  Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs.
+Bute had friends in the latter county who took care to inform her of
+all, and a great deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's
+house at Brighton.  Pitt was there more and more.  He did not come
+for months together to the Hall, where his abominable old father
+abandoned himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious
+society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's success rendered the Rector's
+family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed
+less) than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and
+in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she
+had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her
+information of what took place there.  "It was all Bute's collar-
+bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never
+would have left her.  I am a martyr to duty and to your odious
+unclerical habit of hunting, Bute."
+
+"Hunting; nonsense!  It was you that frightened her, Barbara," the
+divine interposed.  "You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil
+of a temper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara."
+
+"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your
+money."
+
+"I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly. "You ARE
+a clever woman, but you manage too well, you know":  and the pious
+man consoled himself with a big glass of port.
+
+"What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" he
+continued.  "The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose.
+I remember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to
+flog him round the stables as if he was a whipping-top:  and Pitt
+would go howling home to his ma--ha, ha!  Why, either of my boys
+would whop him with one hand.  Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as
+Miss Crawley still--the spooney.
+
+"I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause.
+
+"What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the
+table.
+
+"I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do
+anything with the old lady.  He's very near getting his degree, you
+know.  He's only been plucked twice--so was I--but he's had the
+advantages of Oxford and a university education.  He knows some of
+the best chaps there. He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat.  He's a
+handsome feller.  D--- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey,
+and tell him to thrash Pitt if he says anything. Ha, ha, ha!
+
+"Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife said;
+adding with a sigh, "If we could but get one of the girls into the
+house; but she could never endure them, because they are not
+pretty!"  Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves
+heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming
+away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-
+forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at
+backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long.  But
+what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who
+are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion?  Mrs. Bute could
+think of nobody but the Curate to take one of them off her hands;
+and Jim coming in from the stable at this minute, through the
+parlour window, with a short pipe stuck in his oilskin cap, he and
+his father fell to talking about odds on the St. Leger, and the
+colloquy between the Rector and his wife ended.
+
+Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from the sending of
+her son James as an ambassador, and saw him depart in rather a
+despairing mood.  Nor did the young fellow himself, when told what
+his mission was to be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but
+he was consoled by the thought that possibly the old lady would give
+him some handsome remembrance of her, which would pay a few of his
+most pressing bills at the commencement of the ensuing Oxford term,
+and so took his place by the coach from Southampton, and was safely
+landed at Brighton on the same evening?  with his portmanteau, his
+favourite bull-dog Towzer, and an immense basket of farm and garden
+produce, from the dear Rectory folks to the dear Miss Crawley.
+Considering it was too late to disturb the invalid lady on the first
+night of his arrival, he put up at an inn, and did not wait upon
+Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon of next day.
+
+James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad,
+at that uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthly
+treble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms
+out with appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as a
+cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sister's
+scissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerable
+sensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles
+protrude a long way from garments which have grown too tight for
+them; when their presence after dinner is at once frightful to the
+ladies, who are whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and
+inexpressibly odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are
+restrained from freedom of intercourse and delightful interchange of
+wit by the presence of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion
+of the second glass, papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the
+evening holds up," and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at
+not being yet a man, quits the incomplete banquet.  James, then a
+hobbadehoy, was now become a young man, having had the benefits of a
+university education, and acquired the inestimable polish which is
+gained by living in a fast set at a small college, and contracting
+debts, and being rusticated, and being plucked.
+
+He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to present himself to
+his aunt at Brighton, and good looks were always a title to the
+fickle old lady's favour.  Nor did his blushes and awkwardness take
+away from it:  she was pleased with these healthy tokens of the
+young gentleman's ingenuousness.
+
+He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see a man of his
+college, and--and to pay my respects to you, Ma'am, and my father's
+and mother's, who hope you are well."
+
+Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad was announced,
+and looked very blank when his name was mentioned.  The old lady had
+plenty of humour, and enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity.  She
+asked after all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and
+said she was thinking of paying them a visit.  She praised the lad
+to his face, and said he was well-grown and very much improved, and
+that it was a pity his sisters had not some of his good looks; and
+finding, on inquiry, that he had taken up his quarters at an hotel,
+would not hear of his stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for
+Mr. James Crawley's things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she
+added, with great graciousness, "you will have the goodness to pay
+Mr. James's bill."
+
+She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused that diplomatist
+almost to choke with envy.  Much as he had ingratiated himself with
+his aunt, she had never yet invited him to stay under her roof, and
+here was a young whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made
+welcome there.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a profound bow;
+"what 'otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the luggage from?"
+
+"O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some alarm, "I'll
+go."
+
+"What!" said Miss Crawley.
+
+"The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply.
+
+Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title.  Mr. Bowls gave one
+abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant of the family, but choked
+the rest of the volley; the diplomatist only smiled.
+
+"I--I didn't know any better," said James, looking down. "I've never
+been here before; it was the coachman told me." The young story-
+teller!  The fact is, that on the Southampton coach, the day
+previous, James Crawley had met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to
+Brighton to make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted
+by the Pet's conversation, had passed the evening in company with
+that scientific man and his friends, at the inn in question.
+
+"I--I'd best go and settle the score," James continued. "Couldn't
+think of asking you, Ma'am," he added, generously.
+
+This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.
+
+"Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of her hand,
+"and bring it to me."
+
+Poor lady, she did not know what she had done!  "There--there's a
+little dawg," said James, looking frightfully guilty.  "I'd best go
+for him.  He bites footmen's calves."
+
+All the party cried out with laughing at this description; even
+Briggs and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute during the interview
+between Miss Crawley and her nephew:  and Bowls, without a word,
+quitted the room.
+
+Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss Crawley persisted
+in being gracious to the young Oxonian. There were no limits to her
+kindness or her compliments when they once began.  She told Pitt he
+might come to dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her
+in her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the cliff, on the
+back seat of the barouche.  During all this excursion, she
+condescended to say civil things to him: she quoted Italian and
+French poetry to the poor bewildered lad, and persisted that he was
+a fine scholar, and was perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal,
+and be a Senior Wrangler.
+
+"Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these compliments; "Senior
+Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other shop."
+
+"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady.
+
+"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the scholar, with
+a knowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but
+that suddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a
+bang-up pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl
+buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber,
+with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted
+poor James there in the carriage as he sate.  This incident damped
+the ingenuous youth's spirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be
+induced to utter during the rest of the drive.
+
+On his return he found his room prepared, and his portmanteau ready,
+and might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the
+latter conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity,
+wonder, and compassion.  But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter
+his head.  He was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he
+found himself, in a house full of old women, jabbering French and
+Italian, and talking poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!"
+exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her
+sex--not even Briggs--when she began to talk to him; whereas, put
+him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the boldest bargeman.
+
+At dinner, James appeared choking in a white neckcloth, and had the
+honour of handing my Lady Jane downstairs, while Briggs and Mr.
+Crawley followed afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her
+apparatus of bundles, and shawls, and cushions.  Half of Briggs's
+time at dinner was spent in superintending the invalid's comfort,
+and in cutting up chicken for her fat spaniel.  James did not talk
+much, but he made a point of asking all the ladies to drink wine,
+and accepted Mr. Crawley's challenge, and consumed the greater part
+of a bottle of champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in
+his honour.  The ladies having withdrawn, and the two cousins being
+left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, be came very communicative
+and friendly.  He asked after James's career at college--what his
+prospects in life were--hoped heartily he would get on; and, in a
+word, was frank and amiable.  James's tongue unloosed with the port,
+and he told his cousin his life, his prospects, his debts, his
+troubles at the little-go, and his rows with the proctors, filling
+rapidly from the bottles before him, and flying from Port to Madeira
+with joyous activity.
+
+"The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr. Crawley, filling
+his glass, "is that people should do as they like in her house.
+This is Liberty Hall, James, and you can't do Miss Crawley a greater
+kindness than to do as you please, and ask for what you will.  I
+know you have all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory.
+Miss Crawley is liberal enough to suit any fancy.  She is a
+Republican in principle, and despises everything like rank or
+title."
+
+"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?" said James.
+
+"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's fault that she
+is well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly air.  "She cannot help
+being a lady.  Besides, I am a Tory, you know."
+
+"Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old blood; no,
+dammy, nothing like it.  I'm none of your radicals.  I know what it
+is to be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-race; look at
+the fellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is
+it wins? the good-blooded ones.  Get some more port, Bowls, old boy,
+whilst I buzz this bottle-here.  What was I asaying?"
+
+"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt remarked
+mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to "buzz."
+
+"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want
+to see a dawg as CAN kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to Tom
+Corduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-
+terrier as--Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing at his
+own absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg or rat; it's all
+nonsense.  I'm blest if I think you know the difference between a
+dog and a duck."
+
+"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness, "it was
+about blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which
+people derive from patrician birth.  Here's the fresh bottle."
+
+"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid down.
+"Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND men.  Why, only last
+term, just before I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I
+had the measles, ha, ha--there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch,
+Bob Ringwood, Lord Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at
+Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either of us
+for a bowl of punch.  I couldn't.  My arm was in a sling; couldn't
+even take the drag down--a brute of a mare of mine had fell with me
+only two days before, out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm
+was broke. Well, sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat
+off at once--he stood up to the Banbury man for three minutes, and
+polished him off in four rounds easy.  Gad, how he did drop, sir,
+and what was it? Blood, sir, all blood."
+
+"You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued. "In my time at
+Oxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you
+young fellows seem to do."
+
+"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking
+at his cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no
+trying it on on me.  You want to trot me out, but it's no go.  In
+vino veritas, old boy.  Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish
+my aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's a
+precious good tap."
+
+"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or make the best of
+your time now.  What says the bard? 'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras
+ingens iterabimus aequor,'" and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above
+with a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine
+with an immense flourish of his glass.
+
+At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after
+dinner, the young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant
+wine.  Mrs. Bute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple
+commonly, but as his father grew very sulky if he made further
+inroads on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from trying
+for more, and subsided either into the currant wine, or to some
+private gin-and-water in the stables, which he enjoyed in the
+company of the coachman and his pipe.  At Oxford, the quantity of
+wine was unlimited, but the quality was inferior:  but when quantity
+and quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that he
+could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed any of his cousin's
+encouragement in draining off the second bottle supplied by Mr.
+Bowls.
+
+When the time for coffee came, however, and for a return to the
+ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young gentleman's agreeable
+frankness left him, and he relapsed into his usual surly timidity;
+contenting himself by saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane,
+and by upsetting one cup of coffee during the evening.
+
+If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presence
+threw a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for Miss
+Crawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work,
+felt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy under
+that maudlin look.
+
+"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said Miss Crawley to
+Mr. Pitt.
+
+"He is more communicative in men's society than with ladies,"
+Machiavel dryly replied:  perhaps rather disappointed that the port
+wine had not made Jim speak more.
+
+He had spent the early part of the next morning in writing home to
+his mother a most flourishing account of his reception by Miss
+Crawley.  But ah! he little knew what evils the day was bringing for
+him, and how short his reign of favour was destined to be.  A
+circumstance which Jim had forgotten--a trivial but fatal
+circumstance--had taken place at the Cribb's Arms on the night
+before he had come to his aunt's house.  It was no other than this--
+Jim, who was always of a generous disposition, and when in his cups
+especially hospitable, had in the course of the night treated the
+Tutbury champion and the Rottingdean man, and their friends, twice
+or thrice to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that no less than
+eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass were charged
+in Mr. James Crawley's bill.  It was not the amount of eightpences,
+but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor James's
+character, when his aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his
+mistress's request to pay the young gentleman's bill.  The landlord,
+fearing lest the account should be refused altogether, swore
+solemnly that the young gent had consumed personally every
+farthing's worth of the liquor:  and Bowls paid the bill finally,
+and showed it on his return home to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at
+the frightful prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs
+as accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention the
+circumstance to her principal, Miss Crawley.
+
+Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have
+pardoned him.  Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret.  Gentlemen
+drank claret.  But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in
+an ignoble pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be pardoned
+readily.  Everything went against the lad:  he came home perfumed
+from the stables, whither he had been to pay his dog Towzer a visit--
+and whence he was going to take his friend out for an airing, when
+he met Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which Towzer
+would have eaten up had not the Blenheim fled squealing to the
+protection of Miss Briggs, while the atrocious master of the bull-
+dog stood laughing at the horrible persecution.
+
+This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise forsaken him.
+He was lively and facetious at dinner. During the repast he levelled
+one or two jokes against Pitt Crawley:  he drank as much wine as
+upon the previous day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the
+drawing-room, began to entertain the ladies there with some choice
+Oxford stories.  He described the different pugilistic qualities of
+Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds
+upon the Tutbury Pet against the Rottingdean man, or take them, as
+her Ladyship chose: and crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back
+himself against his cousin Pitt Crawley, either with or without the
+gloves.  "And that's a fair offer, my buck," he said, with a loud
+laugh, slapping Pitt on the shoulder, "and my father told me to make
+it too, and he'll go halves in the bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the
+engaging youth nodded knowingly at poor Miss Briggs, and pointed his
+thumb over his shoulder at Pitt Crawley in a jocular and exulting
+manner.
+
+Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not unhappy in
+the main.  Poor Jim had his laugh out:  and staggered across the
+room with his aunt's candle, when the old lady moved to retire, and
+offered to salute her with the blandest tipsy smile:  and he took
+his own leave and went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied
+with himself, and with a pleased notion that his aunt's money would
+be left to him in preference to his father and all the rest of the
+family.
+
+Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he could not make
+matters worse; and yet this unlucky boy did.  The moon was shining
+very pleasantly out on the sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by
+the romantic appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he
+would further enjoy them while smoking.  Nobody would smell the
+tobacco, he thought, if he cunningly opened the window and kept his
+head and pipe in the fresh air. This he did:  but being in an
+excited state, poor Jim had forgotten that his door was open all
+this time, so that the breeze blowing inwards and a fine thorough
+draught being established, the clouds of tobacco were carried
+downstairs, and arrived with quite undiminished fragrance to Miss
+Crawley and Miss Briggs.
+
+The pipe of tobacco finished the business:  and the Bute-Crawleys
+never knew how many thousand pounds it cost them.  Firkin rushed
+downstairs to Bowls who was reading out the "Fire and the Frying
+Pan" to his aide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice.  The dreadful
+secret was told to him by Firkin with so frightened a look, that for
+the first moment Mr. Bowls and his young man thought that robbers
+were in the house, the legs of whom had probably been discovered by
+the woman under Miss Crawley's bed.  When made aware of the fact,
+however--to rush upstairs at three steps at a time to enter the
+unconscious James's apartment, calling out, "Mr. James," in a voice
+stifled with alarm, and to cry, "For Gawd's sake, sir, stop that
+'ere pipe," was the work of a minute with Mr. Bowls.  "O, Mr. James,
+what 'AVE you done!" he said in a voice of the deepest pathos, as he
+threw the implement out of the window.  "What 'ave you done, sir!
+Missis can't abide 'em."
+
+"Missis needn't smoke," said James with a frantic misplaced laugh,
+and thought the whole matter an excellent joke.  But his feelings
+were very different in the morning, when Mr. Bowls's young man, who
+operated upon Mr. James's boots, and brought him his hot water to
+shave that beard which he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note
+in to Mr. James in bed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs.
+
+"Dear sir," it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly
+disturbed night, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has
+been polluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that
+she is too unwell to see you before you go--and above all that she
+ever induced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is sure you
+will be much more comfortable during the rest of your stay at
+Brighton."
+
+And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for his aunt's
+favour ended.  He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he
+menaced to do.  He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves.
+
+Where meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this
+race for money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come
+together after Waterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at
+Paris in great splendour and gaiety.  Rebecca was a good economist,
+and the price poor Jos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in
+itself sufficient to keep their little establishment afloat for a
+year, at the least; there was no occasion to turn into money "my
+pistols, the same which I shot Captain Marker," or the gold
+dressing-case, or the cloak lined with sable.  Becky had it made
+into a pelisse for herself, in which she rode in the Bois de
+Boulogne to the admiration of all:  and you should have seen the
+scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoined after
+the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, and let
+out of her dress all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes,
+cheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding,
+previous to her meditated flight from Brussels!  Tufto was charmed,
+and Rawdon roared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was
+better than any play he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she
+jockeyed Jos, and which she described with infinite fun, carried up
+his delight to a pitch of quite insane enthusiasm.  He believed in
+his wife as much as the French soldiers in Napoleon.
+
+Her success in Paris was remarkable.  All the French ladies voted
+her charming.  She spoke their language admirably.  She adopted at
+once their grace, their liveliness, their manner.  Her husband was
+stupid certainly--all English are stupid--and, besides, a dull
+husband at Paris is always a point in a lady's favour.  He was the
+heir of the rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been
+open to so many of the French noblesse during the emigration.  They
+received the colonel's wife in their own hotels--"Why," wrote a
+great lady to Miss Crawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at
+the Duchess's own price, and given her many a dinner during the
+pinching times after the Revolution--"Why does not our dear Miss
+come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends in Paris? All
+the world raffoles of the charming Mistress and her espiegle beauty.
+Yes, we see in her the grace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend
+Miss Crawley! The King took notice of her yesterday at the
+Tuileries, and we are all jealous of the attention which Monsieur
+pays her.  If you could have seen the spite of a certain stupid
+Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque and feathers may be
+seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) when Madame, the
+Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion of kings,
+desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear
+daughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name of France, for
+all your benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile!
+She is of all the societies, of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of
+the dances, no; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair
+creature looks surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to
+be a mother!  To hear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother,
+would bring tears to the eyes of ogres.  How she loves you! how we
+all love our admirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!"
+
+It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did
+not by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable,
+her respectable, relative.  On the contrary, the fury of the old
+spinster was beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's
+situation, and how audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's
+name, to get an entree into Parisian society.  Too much shaken in
+mind and body to compose a letter in the French language in reply to
+that of her correspondent, she dictated to Briggs a furious answer
+in her own native tongue, repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley
+altogether, and warning the public to beware of her as a most artful
+and dangerous person.  But as Madame the Duchess of X--had only been
+twenty years in England, she did not understand a single word of the
+language, and contented herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at
+their next meeting, that she had received a charming letter from
+that chere Mees, and that it was full of benevolent things for Mrs.
+Crawley, who began seriously to have hopes that the spinster would
+relent.
+
+Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen:  and
+had a little European congress on her reception-night.  Prussians
+and Cossacks, Spanish and English--all the world was at Paris during
+this famous winter:  to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's
+humble saloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy.
+Famous warriors rode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her
+modest little box at the Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits.
+There were no duns in Paris as yet:  there were parties every day at
+Very's or Beauvilliers'; play was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto
+perhaps was sulky.  Mrs. Tufto had come over to Paris at her own
+invitation, and besides this contretemps, there were a score of
+generals now round Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a
+dozen bouquets when she went to the play.  Lady Bareacres and the
+chiefs of the English society, stupid and irreproachable females,
+writhed with anguish at the success of the little upstart Becky,
+whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts.
+But she had all the men on her side.  She fought the women with
+indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal in any tongue
+but their own.
+
+So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passed
+away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite
+life as if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries
+past--and who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a
+place of honour in Vanity Fair.  In the early spring of 1816,
+Galignani's Journal contained the following announcement in an
+interesting corner of the paper:  "On the 26th of March--the Lady of
+Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley, of the Life Guards Green--of a son and
+heir."
+
+This event was copied into the London papers, out of which Miss
+Briggs read the statement to Miss Crawley, at breakfast, at
+Brighton.  The intelligence, expected as it might have been, caused
+a crisis in the affairs of the Crawley family.  The spinster's rage
+rose to its height, and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and
+for the Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested an
+immediate celebration of the marriage which had been so long pending
+between the two families.  And she announced that it was her
+intention to allow the young couple a thousand a year during her
+lifetime, at the expiration of which the bulk of her property would
+be settled upon her nephew and her dear niece, Lady Jane Crawley.
+Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord Southdown gave away his
+sister--she was married by a Bishop, and not by the Rev.
+Bartholomew Irons--to the disappointment of the irregular prelate.
+
+When they were married, Pitt would have liked to take a hymeneal
+tour with his bride, as became people of their condition.  But the
+affection of the old lady towards Lady Jane had grown so strong,
+that she fairly owned she could not part with her favourite.  Pitt
+and his wife came therefore and lived with Miss Crawley: and
+(greatly to the annoyance of poor Pitt, who conceived himself a most
+injured character--being subject to the humours of his aunt on one
+side, and of his mother-in-law on the other) Lady Southdown, from
+her neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family--Pitt, Lady
+Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all.  She pitilessly
+dosed them with her tracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer,
+she installed Rodgers, and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the
+semblance of authority.  The poor soul grew so timid that she
+actually left off bullying Briggs any more, and clung to her niece,
+more fond and terrified every day.  Peace to thee, kind and selfish,
+vain and generous old heathen!--We shall see thee no more.  Let us
+hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and led her with gentle
+hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Widow and Mother
+
+
+The news of the great fights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo reached
+England at the same time.  The Gazette first published the result of
+the two battles; at which glorious intelligence all England thrilled
+with triumph and fear. Particulars then followed; and after the
+announcement of the victories came the list of the wounded and the
+slain. Who can tell the dread with which that catalogue was opened
+and read!  Fancy, at every village and homestead almost through the
+three kingdoms, the great news coming of the battles in Flanders,
+and the feelings of exultation and gratitude, bereavement and
+sickening dismay, when the lists of the regimental losses were gone
+through, and it became known whether the dear friend and relative
+had escaped or fallen.  Anybody who will take the trouble of looking
+back to a file of the newspapers of the time, must, even now, feel
+at second-hand this breathless pause of expectation.  The lists of
+casualties are carried on from day to day:  you stop in the midst as
+in a story which is to be continued in our next.  Think what the
+feelings must have been as those papers followed each other fresh
+from the press; and if such an interest could be felt in our
+country, and about a battle where but twenty thousand of our people
+were engaged, think of the condition of Europe for twenty years
+before, where people were fighting, not by thousands, but by
+millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy wounded horribly
+some other innocent heart far away.
+
+The news which that famous Gazette brought to the Osbornes gave a
+dreadful shock to the family and its chief. The girls indulged
+unrestrained in their grief.  The gloom-stricken old father was
+still more borne down by his fate and sorrow.  He strove to think
+that a judgment was on the boy for his disobedience.  He dared not
+own that the severity of the sentence frightened him, and that its
+fulfilment had come too soon upon his curses.  Sometimes a
+shuddering terror struck him, as if he had been the author of the
+doom which he had called down on his son.  There was a chance before
+of reconciliation.  The boy's wife might have died; or he might have
+come back and said, Father I have sinned.  But there was no hope
+now.  He stood on the other side of the gulf impassable, haunting
+his parent with sad eyes.  He remembered them once before so in a
+fever, when every one thought the lad was dying, and he lay on his
+bed speechless, and gazing with a dreadful gloom.  Good God! how the
+father clung to the doctor then, and with what a sickening anxiety
+he followed him:  what a weight of grief was off his mind when,
+after the crisis of the fever, the lad recovered, and looked at his
+father once more with eyes that recognised him. But now there was no
+help or cure, or chance of reconcilement:  above all, there were no
+humble words to soothe vanity outraged and furious, or bring to its
+natural flow the poisoned, angry blood.  And it is hard to say which
+pang it was that tore the proud father's heart most keenly--that his
+son should have gone out of the reach of his forgiveness, or that
+the apology which his own pride expected should have escaped him.
+
+Whatever his sensations might have been, however, the stem old man
+would have no confidant.  He never mentioned his son's name to his
+daughters; but ordered the elder to place all the females of the
+establishment in mourning; and desired that the male servants should
+be similarly attired in deep black.  All parties and entertainments,
+of course, were to be put off.  No communications were made to his
+future son-in-law, whose marriage-day had been fixed:  but there was
+enough in Mr. Osborne's appearance to prevent Mr. Bullock from
+making any inquiries, or in any way pressing forward that ceremony.
+He and the ladies whispered about it under their voices in the
+drawing-room sometimes, whither the father never came.  He remained
+constantly in his own study; the whole front part of the house being
+closed until some time after the completion of the general mourning.
+
+About three weeks after the 18th of June, Mr. Osborne's
+acquaintance, Sir William Dobbin, called at Mr. Osborne's house in
+Russell Square, with a very pale and agitated face, and insisted
+upon seeing that gentleman. Ushered into his room, and after a few
+words, which neither the speaker nor the host understood, the former
+produced from an inclosure a letter sealed with a large red seal.
+"My son, Major Dobbin," the Alderman said, with some hesitation,
+"despatched me a letter by an officer of the --th, who arrived in
+town to-day.  My son's letter contains one for you, Osborne." The
+Alderman placed the letter on the table, and Osborne stared at him
+for a moment or two in silence.  His looks frightened the
+ambassador, who after looking guiltily for a little time at the
+grief-stricken man, hurried away without another word.
+
+The letter was in George's well-known bold handwriting. It was that
+one which he had written before daybreak on the 16th of June, and
+just before he took leave of Amelia.  The great red seal was
+emblazoned with the sham coat of arms which Osborne had assumed from
+the Peerage, with "Pax in bello" for a motto; that of the ducal
+house with which the vain old man tried to fancy himself connected.
+The hand that signed it would never hold pen or sword more.  The
+very seal that sealed it had been robbed from George's dead body as
+it lay on the field of battle.  The father knew nothing of this, but
+sat and looked at the letter in terrified vacancy.  He almost fell
+when he went to open it.
+
+Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters,
+written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you!
+What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests
+of dead affection!  What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of
+love!  What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us
+have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons
+which we keep and shun. Osborne trembled long before the letter from
+his dead son.
+
+The poor boy's letter did not say much.  He had been too proud to
+acknowledge the tenderness which his heart felt.  He only said, that
+on the eve of a great battle, he wished to bid his father farewell,
+and solemnly to implore his good offices for the wife--it might be
+for the child--whom he left behind him.  He owned with contrition
+that his irregularities and his extravagance had already wasted a
+large part of his mother's little fortune.  He thanked his father
+for his former generous conduct; and he promised him that if he fell
+on the field or survived it, he would act in a manner worthy of the
+name of George Osborne.
+
+His English habit, pride, awkwardness perhaps, had prevented him
+from saying more.  His father could not see the kiss George had
+placed on the superscription of his letter.  Mr. Osborne dropped it
+with the bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge.
+His son was still beloved and unforgiven.
+
+About two months afterwards, however, as the young ladies of the
+family went to church with their father, they remarked how he took a
+different seat from that which he usually occupied when he chose to
+attend divine worship; and that from his cushion opposite, he looked
+up at the wall over their heads.  This caused the young women
+likewise to gaze in the direction towards which their father's
+gloomy eyes pointed:  and they saw an elaborate monument upon the
+wall, where Britannia was represented weeping over an urn, and a
+broken sword and a couchant lion indicated that the piece of
+sculpture had been erected in honour of a deceased warrior.  The
+sculptors of those days had stocks of such funereal emblems in hand;
+as you may see still on the walls of St. Paul's, which are covered
+with hundreds of these braggart heathen allegories.  There was a
+constant demand for them during the first fifteen years of the
+present century.
+
+Under the memorial in question were emblazoned the well-known and
+pompous Osborne arms; and the inscription said, that the monument
+was "Sacred to the memory of George Osborne, Junior, Esq., late a
+Captain in his Majesty's --th regiment of foot, who fell on the 18th
+of June, 1815, aged 28 years, while fighting for his king and
+country in the glorious victory of Waterloo. Dulce et decorum est
+pro patria mori."
+
+The sight of that stone agitated the nerves of the sisters so much,
+that Miss Maria was compelled to leave the church.  The congregation
+made way respectfully for those sobbing girls clothed in deep black,
+and pitied the stern old father seated opposite the memorial of the
+dead soldier.  "Will he forgive Mrs. George?" the girls said to
+themselves as soon as their ebullition of grief was over. Much
+conversation passed too among the acquaintances of the Osborne
+family, who knew of the rupture between the son and father caused by
+the former's marriage, as to the chance of a reconciliation with the
+young widow. There were bets among the gentlemen both about Russell
+Square and in the City.
+
+If the sisters had any anxiety regarding the possible recognition of
+Amelia as a daughter of the family, it was increased presently, and
+towards the end of the autumn, by their father's announcement that
+he was going abroad.  He did not say whither, but they knew at once
+that his steps would be turned towards Belgium, and were aware that
+George's widow was still in Brussels.  They had pretty accurate news
+indeed of poor Amelia from Lady Dobbin and her daughters.  Our
+honest Captain had been promoted in consequence of the death of the
+second Major of the regiment on the field; and the brave O'Dowd, who
+had distinguished himself greatly here as upon all occasions where
+he had a chance to show his coolness and valour, was a Colonel and
+Companion of the Bath.
+
+Very many of the brave --th, who had suffered severely upon both days
+of action, were still at Brussels in the autumn, recovering of their
+wounds.  The city was a vast military hospital for months after the
+great battles; and as men and officers began to rally from their
+hurts, the gardens and places of public resort swarmed with maimed
+warriors, old and young, who, just rescued out of death, fell to
+gambling, and gaiety, and love-making, as people of Vanity Fair will
+do.  Mr. Osborne found out some of the --th easily.  He knew their
+uniform quite well, and had been used to follow all the promotions
+and exchanges in the regiment, and loved to talk about it and its
+officers as if he had been one of the number.  On the day after his
+arrival at Brussels, and as he issued from his hotel, which faced
+the park, he saw a soldier in the well-known facings, reposing on a
+stone bench in the garden, and went and sate down trembling by the
+wounded convalescent man.
+
+"Were you in Captain Osborne's company?" he said, and added, after a
+pause, "he was my son, sir."
+
+The man was not of the Captain's company, but he lifted up his
+unwounded arm and touched-his cap sadly and respectfully to the
+haggard broken-spirited gentleman who questioned him.  "The whole
+army didn't contain a finer or a better officer," the soldier said.
+"The Sergeant of the Captain's company (Captain Raymond had it now),
+was in town, though, and was just well of a shot in the shoulder.
+His honour might see him if he liked, who could tell him anything he
+wanted to know about--about the --th's actions.  But his honour had
+seen Major Dobbin, no doubt, the brave Captain's great friend; and
+Mrs. Osborne, who was here too, and had been very bad, he heard
+everybody say.  They say she was out of her mind like for six weeks
+or more.  But your honour knows all about that--and asking your
+pardon"--the man added.
+
+Osborne put a guinea into the soldier's hand, and told him he should
+have another if he would bring the Sergeant to the Hotel du Parc; a
+promise which very soon brought the desired officer to Mr. Osborne's
+presence. And the first soldier went away; and after telling a
+comrade or two how Captain Osborne's father was arrived, and what a
+free-handed generous gentleman he was, they went and made good cheer
+with drink and feasting, as long as the guineas lasted which had
+come from the proud purse of the mourning old father.
+
+In the Sergeant's company, who was also just convalescent, Osborne
+made the journey of Waterloo and Quatre Bras, a journey which
+thousands of his countrymen were then taking.  He took the Sergeant
+with him in his carriage, and went through both fields under his
+guidance.  He saw the point of the road where the regiment marched
+into action on the 16th, and the slope down which they drove the
+French cavalry who were pressing on the retreating Belgians.  There
+was the spot where the noble Captain cut down the French officer who
+was grappling with the young Ensign for the colours, the Colour-
+Sergeants having been shot down.  Along this road they retreated on
+the next day, and here was the bank at which the regiment bivouacked
+under the rain of the night of the seventeenth.  Further on was the
+position which they took and held during the day, forming time after
+time to receive the charge of the enemy's horsemen and lying down
+under the shelter of the bank from the furious French cannonade.
+And it was at this declivity when at evening the whole English line
+received the order to advance, as the enemy fell back after his last
+charge, that the Captain, hurraying and rushing down the hill waving
+his sword, received a shot and fell dead.  "It was Major Dobbin who
+took back the Captain's body to Brussels," the Sergeant said, in a
+low voice, "and had him buried, as your honour knows." The peasants
+and relic-hunters about the place were screaming round the pair, as
+the soldier told his story, offering for sale all sorts of mementoes
+of the fight, crosses, and epaulets, and shattered cuirasses, and
+eagles.
+
+Osborne gave a sumptuous reward to the Sergeant when he parted with
+him, after having visited the scenes of his son's last exploits.
+His burial-place he had already seen.  Indeed, he had driven thither
+immediately after his arrival at Brussels.  George's body lay in the
+pretty burial-ground of Laeken, near the city; in which place,
+having once visited it on a party of pleasure, he had lightly
+expressed a wish to have his grave made.  And there the young
+officer was laid by his friend, in the unconsecrated corner of the
+garden, separated by a little hedge from the temples and towers and
+plantations of flowers and shrubs, under which the Roman Catholic
+dead repose.  It seemed a humiliation to old Osborne to think that
+his son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British army,
+should not be found worthy to lie in ground where mere foreigners
+were buried.  Which of us is there can tell how much vanity lurks in
+our warmest regard for others, and how selfish our love is? Old
+Osborne did not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his
+feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness were combating
+together.  He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that
+he ought on all occasions to have his own way--and like the sting of
+a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against
+anything like opposition.  He was proud of his hatred as of
+everything else.  Always to be right, always to trample forward, and
+never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which
+dullness takes the lead in the world?
+
+As after the drive to Waterloo, Mr. Osborne's carriage was nearing
+the gates of the city at sunset, they met another open barouche, in
+which were a couple of ladies and a gentleman, and by the side of
+which an officer was riding.  Osborne gave a start back, and the
+Sergeant, seated with him, cast a look of surprise at his neighbour,
+as he touched his cap to the officer, who mechanically returned his
+salute.  It was Amelia, with the lame young Ensign by her side, and
+opposite to her her faithful friend Mrs. O'Dowd.  It was Amelia, but
+how changed from the fresh and comely girl Osborne knew.  Her face
+was white and thin.  Her pretty brown hair was parted under a
+widow's cap--the poor child.  Her eyes were fixed, and looking
+nowhere.  They stared blank in the face of Osborne, as the carriages
+crossed each other, but she did not know him; nor did he recognise
+her, until looking up, he saw Dobbin riding by her:  and then he
+knew who it was.  He hated her.  He did not know how much until he
+saw her there.  When her carriage had passed on, he turned and
+stared at the Sergeant, with a curse and defiance in his eye cast at
+his companion, who could not help looking at him--as much as to say
+"How dare you look at me? Damn you!  I do hate her.  It is she who
+has tumbled my hopes and all my pride down." "Tell the scoundrel to
+drive on quick," he shouted with an oath, to the lackey on the box.
+A minute afterwards, a horse came clattering over the pavement
+behind Osborne's carriage, and Dobbin rode up.  His thoughts had
+been elsewhere as the carriages passed each other, and it was not
+until he had ridden some paces forward, that he remembered it was
+Osborne who had just passed him.  Then he turned to examine if the
+sight of her father-in-law had made any impression on Amelia, but
+the poor girl did not know who had passed.  Then William, who daily
+used to accompany her in his drives, taking out his watch, made some
+excuse about an engagement which he suddenly recollected, and so
+rode off.  She did not remark that either:  but sate looking before
+her, over the homely landscape towards the woods in the distance, by
+which George marched away.
+
+"Mr. Osborne, Mr. Osborne!" cried Dobbin, as he rode up and held out
+his hand.  Osborne made no motion to take it, but shouted out once
+more and with another curse to his servant to drive on.
+
+Dobbin laid his hand on the carriage side.  "I will see you, sir,"
+he said.  "I have a message for you."
+
+"From that woman?" said Osborne, fiercely.
+
+"No," replied the other, "from your son"; at which Osborne fell back
+into the corner of his carriage, and Dobbin allowing it to pass on,
+rode close behind it, and so through the town until they reached Mr.
+Osborne's hotel, and without a word.  There he followed Osborne up
+to his apartments.  George had often been in the rooms; they were
+the lodgings which the Crawleys had occupied during their stay in
+Brussels.
+
+"Pray, have you any commands for me, Captain Dobbin, or, I beg your
+pardon, I should say MAJOR Dobbin, since better men than you are
+dead, and you step into their SHOES?" said Mr. Osborne, in that
+sarcastic tone which he sometimes was pleased to assume.
+
+"Better men ARE dead," Dobbin replied.  "I want to speak to you
+about one."
+
+"Make it short, sir," said the other with an oath, scowling at his
+visitor.
+
+"I am here as his closest friend," the Major resumed, "and the
+executor of his will.  He made it before he went into action.  Are
+you aware how small his means are, and of the straitened
+circumstances of his widow?"
+
+"I don't know his widow, sir," Osborne said.  "Let her go back to
+her father." But the gentleman whom he addressed was determined to
+remain in good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption.
+
+"Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reason
+almost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her.  It is
+very doubtful whether she will rally.  There is a chance left for
+her, however, and it is about this I came to speak to you.  She will
+be a mother soon.  Will you visit the parent's offence upon the
+child's head? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?"
+
+Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of self-praise and imprecations;--
+by the first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his
+conduct; by the second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George.
+No father in all England could have behaved more generously to a
+son, who had rebelled against him wickedly.  He had died without
+even so much as confessing he was wrong.  Let him take the
+consequences of his undutifulness and folly.  As for himself, Mr.
+Osborne, he was a man of his word.  He had sworn never to speak to
+that woman, or to recognize her as his son's wife.  "And that's what
+you may tell her," he concluded with an oath; "and that's what I
+will stick to to the last day of my life."
+
+There was no hope from that quarter then.  The widow must live on
+her slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her.  "I
+might tell her, and she would not heed it," thought Dobbin, sadly:
+for the poor girl's thoughts were not here at all since her
+catastrophe, and, stupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good
+and evil were alike indifferent to her.
+
+So, indeed, were even friendship and kindness.  She received them
+both uncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her
+grief.
+
+Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place
+to have passed in the life of our poor Amelia.  She has spent the
+first portion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable,
+that we who have been watching and describing some of the emotions
+of that weak and tender heart, must draw back in the presence of the
+cruel grief under which it is bleeding.  Tread silently round the
+hapless couch of the poor prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of
+the dark chamber wherein she suffers, as those kind people did who
+nursed her through the first months of her pain, and never left her
+until heaven had sent her consolation.  A day came--of almost
+terrified delight and wonder--when the poor widowed girl pressed a
+child upon her breast--a child, with the eyes of George who was
+gone--a little boy, as beautiful as a cherub.  What a miracle it was
+to hear its first cry!  How she laughed and wept over it--how love,
+and hope, and prayer woke again in her bosom as the baby nestled
+there.  She was safe.  The doctors who attended her, and had feared
+for her life or for her brain, had waited anxiously for this crisis
+before they could pronounce that either was secure.  It was worth
+the long months of doubt and dread which the persons who had
+constantly been with her had passed, to see her eyes once more
+beaming tenderly upon them.
+
+Our friend Dobbin was one of them.  It was he who brought her back
+to England and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a
+peremptory summons from her Colonel, had been forced to quit her
+patient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's
+laugh of triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good
+who had a sense of humour.  William was the godfather of the child,
+and exerted his ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-
+boats, and corals for this little Christian.
+
+How his mother nursed him, and dressed him, and lived upon him; how
+she drove away all nurses, and would scarce allow any hand but her
+own to touch him; how she considered that the greatest favour she
+could confer upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the
+Major occasionally to dandle him, need not be told here.  This child
+was her being.  Her existence was a maternal caress.  She enveloped
+the feeble and unconscious creature with love and worship.  It was
+her life which the baby drank in from her bosom.  Of nights, and
+when alone, she had stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love,
+such as God's marvellous care has awarded to the female instinct--
+joys how far higher and lower than reason--blind beautiful devotions
+which only women's hearts know.  It was William Dobbin's task to
+muse upon these movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and
+if his love made him divine almost all the feelings which agitated
+it, alas! he could see with a fatal perspicuity that there was no
+place there for him.  And so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it,
+and content to bear it.
+
+I suppose Amelia's father and mother saw through the intentions of
+the Major, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin
+visited their house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with
+Amelia, or with the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family.  He
+brought, on one pretext or another, presents to everybody, and
+almost every day; and went, with the landlord's little girl, who was
+rather a favourite with Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums.  It
+was this little child who commonly acted as mistress of the
+ceremonies to introduce him to Mrs. Osborne.  She laughed one day
+when Major Sugarplums' cab drove up to Fulham, and he descended from
+it, bringing out a wooden horse, a drum, a trumpet, and other
+warlike toys, for little Georgy, who was scarcely six months old,
+and for whom the articles in question were entirely premature.
+
+The child was asleep.  "Hush," said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at the
+creaking of the Major's boots; and she held out her hand; smiling
+because William could not take it until he had rid himself of his
+cargo of toys.  "Go downstairs, little Mary," said he presently to
+the child, "I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne." She looked up rather
+astonished, and laid down the infant on its bed.
+
+"I am come to say good-bye, Amelia," said he, taking her slender
+little white hand gently.
+
+"Good-bye? and where are you going?" she said, with a smile.
+
+"Send the letters to the agents," he said; "they will forward them;
+for you will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time."
+
+"I'll write to you about Georgy," she said.  "Dear' William, how
+good you have been to him and to me.  Look at him.  Isn't he like an
+angel?"
+
+The little pink hands of the child closed mechanically round the
+honest soldier's finger, and Amelia looked up in his face with
+bright maternal pleasure.  The cruellest looks could not have
+wounded him more than that glance of hopeless kindness.  He bent
+over the child and mother. He could not speak for a moment.  And it
+was only with all his strength that he could force himself to say a
+God bless you.  "God bless you," said Amelia, and held up her face
+and kissed him.
+
+"Hush!  Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William Dobbin went to the
+door with heavy steps.  She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels
+as he drove away:  she was looking at the child, who was laughing in
+his sleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+How to Live Well on Nothing a Year
+
+
+I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours so little
+observant as not to think sometimes about the worldly affairs of his
+acquaintances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder how his
+neighbour Jones, or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at
+the end of the year.  With the utmost regard for the family, for
+instance (for I dine with them twice or thrice in the season), I
+cannot but own that the appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in
+the large barouche with the grenadier-footmen, will surprise and
+mystify me to my dying day:  for though I know the equipage is only
+jobbed, and all the Jenkins people are on board wages, yet those
+three men and the carriage must represent an expense of six hundred
+a year at the very least--and then there are the splendid dinners,
+the two boys at Eton, the prize governess and masters for the girls,
+the trip abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing, in the autumn, the
+annual ball with a supper from Gunter's (who, by the way, supplies
+most of the first-rate dinners which J.  gives, as I know very well,
+having been invited to one of them to fill a vacant place, when I
+saw at once that these repasts are very superior to the common run
+of entertainments for which the humbler sort of J.'s acquaintances
+get cards)--who, I say, with the most good-natured feelings in the
+world, can help wondering how the Jenkinses make out matters? What
+is Jenkins? We all know--Commissioner of the Tape and Sealing Wax
+Office, with 1200 pounds a year for a salary.  Had his wife a
+private fortune? Pooh!--Miss Flint--one of eleven children of a
+small squire in Buckinghamshire.  All she ever gets from her family
+is a turkey at Christmas, in exchange for which she has to board two
+or three of her sisters in the off season, and lodge and feed her
+brothers when they come to town.  How does Jenkins balance his
+income? I say, as every friend of his must say, How is it that he
+has not been outlawed long since, and that he ever came back (as he
+did to the surprise of everybody) last year from Boulogne?
+
+"I" is here introduced to personify the world in general--the Mrs.
+Grundy of each respected reader's private circle--every one of whom
+can point to some families of his acquaintance who live nobody knows
+how.  Many a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have very
+little doubt, hob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver and
+wondering how the deuce he paid for it.
+
+Some three or four years after his stay in Paris, when Rawdon
+Crawley and his wife were established in a very small comfortable
+house in Curzon Street, May Fair, there was scarcely one of the
+numerous friends whom they entertained at dinner that did not ask
+the above question regarding them.  The novelist, it has been said
+before, knows everything, and as I am in a situation to be able to
+tell the public how Crawley and his wife lived without any income,
+may I entreat the public newspapers which are in the habit of
+extracting portions of the various periodical works now published
+not to reprint the following exact narrative and calculations--of
+which I ought, as the discoverer (and at some expense, too), to have
+the benefit? My son, I would say, were I blessed with a child--you
+may by deep inquiry and constant intercourse with him learn how a
+man lives comfortably on nothing a year.  But it is best not to be
+intimate with gentlemen of this profession and to take the
+calculations at second hand, as you do logarithms, for to work them
+yourself, depend upon it, will cost you something considerable.
+
+On nothing per annum then, and during a course of some two or three
+years, of which we can afford to give but a very brief history,
+Crawley and his wife lived very happily and comfortably at Paris.
+It was in this period that he quitted the Guards and sold out of the
+army.  When we find him again, his mustachios and the title of
+Colonel on his card are the only relics of his military profession.
+
+It has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her arrival in Paris,
+took a very smart and leading position in the society of that
+capital, and was welcomed at some of the most distinguished houses
+of the restored French nobility.  The English men of fashion in
+Paris courted her, too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives,
+who could not bear the parvenue.  For some months the salons of the
+Faubourg St.  Germain, in which her place was secured, and the
+splendours of the new Court, where she was received with much
+distinction, delighted and perhaps a little intoxicated Mrs.
+Crawley, who may have been disposed during this period of elation to
+slight the people--honest young military men mostly--who formed her
+husband's chief society.
+
+But the Colonel yawned sadly among the Duchesses and great ladies of
+the Court.  The old women who played ecarte made such a noise about
+a five-franc piece that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to
+sit down at a card-table.  The wit of their conversation he could
+not appreciate, being ignorant of their language. And what good
+could his wife get, he urged, by making curtsies every night to a
+whole circle of Princesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent
+these parties alone, resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements
+amongst the amiable friends of his own choice.
+
+The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly on
+nothing a year, we use the word "nothing" to signify something
+unknown; meaning, simply, that we don't know how the gentleman in
+question defrays the expenses of his establishment.  Now, our friend
+the Colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance: and
+exercising himself, as he continually did, with the cards, the dice-
+box, or the cue, it is natural to suppose that he attained a much
+greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who
+only occasionally handle them.  To use a cue at billiards well is
+like using a pencil, or a German flute, or a small-sword--you cannot
+master any one of these implements at first, and it is only by
+repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural taste, that a
+man can excel in the handling of either. Now Crawley, from being
+only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a consummate master of
+billiards.  Like a great General, his genius used to rise with the
+danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him for a whole
+game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would, with
+consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits which would
+restore the battle, and come in a victor at the end, to the
+astonishment of everybody--of everybody, that is, who was a stranger
+to his play.  Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how
+they staked their money against a man of such sudden resources and
+brilliant and overpowering skill.
+
+At games of cards he was equally skilful; for though he would
+constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so
+carelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often
+inclined to think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action
+and awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked
+that Crawley's play became quite different, and that he was pretty
+sure of beating his enemy thoroughly before the night was over.
+Indeed, very few men could say that they ever had the better of him.
+His successes were so repeated that no wonder the envious and the
+vanquished spoke sometimes with bitterness regarding them.  And as
+the French say of the Duke of Wellington, who never suffered a
+defeat, that only an astonishing series of lucky accidents enabled
+him to be an invariable winner; yet even they allow that he cheated
+at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last great trick:  so it was
+hinted at headquarters in England that some foul play must have
+taken place in order to account for the continuous successes of
+Colonel Crawley.
+
+Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, the
+mania for play was so widely spread that the public gambling-rooms
+did not suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in
+private houses as much as if there had been no public means for
+gratifying the passion.  At Crawley's charming little reunions of an
+evening this fatal amusement commonly was practised--much to good-
+natured little Mrs. Crawley's annoyance. She spoke about her
+husband's passion for dice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it
+to everybody who came to her house.  She besought the young fellows
+never, never to touch a box; and when young Green, of the Rifles,
+lost a very considerable sum of money, Rebecca passed a whole night
+in tears, as the servant told the unfortunate young gentleman, and
+actually went on her knees to her husband to beseech him to remit
+the debt, and burn the acknowledgement.  How could he? He had lost
+just as much himself to Blackstone of the Hussars, and Count Punter
+of the Hanoverian Cavalry.  Green might have any decent time; but
+pay?--of course he must pay; to talk of burning IOU's was child's
+play.
+
+Other officers, chiefly young--for the young fellows gathered round
+Mrs. Crawley--came from her parties with long faces, having dropped
+more or less money at her fatal card-tables.  Her house began to
+have an unfortunate reputation.  The old hands warned the less
+experienced of their danger.  Colonel O'Dowd, of the --th regiment,
+one of those occupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that
+corps.  A loud and violent fracas took place between the infantry
+Colonel and his lady, who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and
+Colonel and Mrs. Crawley; who were also taking their meal there. The
+ladies engaged on both sides.  Mrs. O'Dowd snapped her fingers in
+Mrs. Crawley's face and called her husband "no betther than a black-
+leg." Colonel Crawley challenged Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  The
+Commander-in-Chief hearing of the dispute sent for Colonel Crawley,
+who was getting ready the same pistols "which he shot Captain
+Marker," and had such a conversation with him that no duel took
+place.  If Rebecca had not gone on her knees to General Tufto,
+Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he did not play,
+except with civilians, for some weeks after.
+
+But, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant successes, it
+became evident to Rebecca, considering these things, that their
+position was but a precarious one, and that, even although they paid
+scarcely anybody, their little capital would end one day by
+dwindling into zero.  "Gambling," she would say, "dear, is good to
+help your income, but not as an income itself.  Some day people may
+be tired of play, and then where are we?" Rawdon acquiesced in the
+justice of her opinion; and in truth he had remarked that after a
+few nights of his little suppers, &c., gentlemen were tired of play
+with him, and, in spite of Rebecca's charms, did not present
+themselves very eagerly.
+
+Easy and pleasant as their life at Paris was, it was after all only
+an idle dalliance and amiable trifling; and Rebecca saw that she
+must push Rawdon's fortune in their own country.  She must get him a
+place or appointment at home or in the colonies, and she determined
+to make a move upon England as soon as the way could be cleared for
+her.  As a first step she had made Crawley sell out of the Guards
+and go on half-pay.  His function as aide-de-camp to General Tufto
+had ceased previously. Rebecca laughed in all companies at that
+officer, at his toupee (which he mounted on coming to Paris), at his
+waistband, at his false teeth, at his pretensions to be a lady-
+killer above all, and his absurd vanity in fancying every woman whom
+he came near was in love with him.  It was to Mrs. Brent, the
+beetle-browed wife of Mr. Commissary Brent, to whom the general
+transferred his attentions now--his bouquets, his dinners at the
+restaurateurs', his opera-boxes, and his knick-knacks.  Poor Mrs.
+Tufto was no more happy than before, and had still to pass long
+evenings alone with her daughters, knowing that her General was gone
+off scented and curled to stand behind Mrs. Brent's chair at the
+play.  Becky had a dozen admirers in his place, to be sure, and
+could cut her rival to pieces with her wit.  But, as we have said,
+she. was growing tired of this idle social life:  opera-boxes and
+restaurateur dinners palled upon her:  nosegays could not be laid by
+as a provision for future years:  and she could not live upon knick-
+knacks, laced handkerchiefs, and kid gloves.  She felt the frivolity
+of pleasure and longed for more substantial benefits.
+
+At this juncture news arrived which was spread among the many
+creditors of the Colonel at Paris, and which caused them great
+satisfaction.  Miss Crawley, the rich aunt from whom he expected his
+immense inheritance, was dying; the Colonel must haste to her
+bedside.  Mrs. Crawley and her child would remain behind until he
+came to reclaim them.  He departed for Calais, and having reached
+that place in safety, it might have been supposed that he went to
+Dover; but instead he took the diligence to Dunkirk, and thence
+travelled to Brussels, for which place he had a former predilection.
+The fact is, he owed more money at London than at Paris; and he
+preferred the quiet little Belgian city to either of the more noisy
+capitals.
+
+Her aunt was dead.  Mrs. Crawley ordered the most intense mourning
+for herself and little Rawdon.  The Colonel was busy arranging the
+affairs of the inheritance.  They could take the premier now,
+instead of the little entresol of the hotel which they occupied.
+Mrs. Crawley and the landlord had a consultation about the new
+hangings, an amicable wrangle about the carpets, and a final
+adjustment of everything except the bill.  She went off in one of
+his carriages; her French bonne with her; the child by her side; the
+admirable landlord and landlady smiling farewell to her from the
+gate.  General Tufto was furious when he heard she was gone, and
+Mrs. Brent furious with him for being furious; Lieutenant Spooney
+was cut to the heart; and the landlord got ready his best apartments
+previous to the return of the fascinating little woman and her
+husband.  He _serred_ the trunks which she left in his charge with
+the greatest care.  They had been especially recommended to him by
+Madame Crawley.  They were not, however, found to be particularly
+valuable when opened some time after.
+
+But before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs.
+Crawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her
+little son upon the continent, under the care of her French maid.
+
+The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause
+either party much pain.  She had not, to say truth, seen much of the
+young gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French
+mothers, she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the
+neighbourhood of Paris, where little Rawdon passed the first months
+of his life, not unhappily, with a numerous family of foster-
+brothers in wooden shoes.  His father would ride over many a time to
+see him here, and the elder Rawdon's paternal heart glowed to see
+him rosy and dirty, shouting lustily, and happy in the making of
+mud-pies under the superintendence of the gardener's wife, his
+nurse.
+
+Rebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir.  Once he
+spoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers.  He preferred his
+nurse's caresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that
+jolly nurse and almost parent, he cried loudly for hours.  He was
+only consoled by his mother's promise that he should return to his
+nurse the next day; indeed the nurse herself, who probably would
+have been pained at the parting too, was told that the child would
+immediately be restored to her, and for some time awaited quite
+anxiously his return.
+
+In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of
+that brood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently
+invaded the Continent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe.
+The respect in those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the
+wealth and honour of Britons.  They had not then learned, as I am
+told, to haggle for bargains with the pertinacity which now
+distinguishes them.  The great cities of Europe had not been as yet
+open to the enterprise of our rascals. And whereas there is now
+hardly a town of France or Italy in which you shall not see some
+noble countryman of our own, with that happy swagger and insolence
+of demeanour which we carry everywhere, swindling inn-landlords,
+passing fictitious cheques upon credulous bankers, robbing coach-
+makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their trinkets, easy
+travellers of their money at cards, even public libraries of their
+books--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor Anglais,
+travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand
+wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating,
+were cheated.  It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys'
+departure that the landlord of the hotel which they occupied during
+their residence at Paris found out the losses which he had
+sustained:  not until Madame Marabou, the milliner, made repeated
+visits with her little bill for articles supplied to Madame Crawley;
+not until Monsieur Didelot from Boule d'Or in the Palais Royal had
+asked half a dozen times whether cette charmante Miladi who had
+bought watches and bracelets of him was de retour. It is a fact that
+even the poor gardener's wife, who had nursed madame's child, was
+never paid after the first six months for that supply of the milk of
+human kindness with which she had furnished the lusty and healthy
+little Rawdon.  No, not even the nurse was paid--the Crawleys were
+in too great a hurry to remember their trifling debt to her.  As for
+the landlord of the hotel, his curses against the English nation
+were violent for the rest of his natural life.  He asked all
+travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley--avec sa
+femme une petite dame, tres spirituelle.  "Ah, Monsieur!" he would
+add--"ils m'ont affreusement vole." It was melancholy to hear his
+accents as he spoke of that catastrophe.
+
+Rebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind of
+compromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering
+them a dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a
+return for him into his own country.  It does not become us to trace
+the steps which she took in the conduct of this most difficult
+negotiation; but, having shown them to their satisfaction that the
+sum which she was empowered to offer was all her husband's available
+capital, and having convinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer
+a perpetual retirement on the Continent to a residence in this
+country with his debts unsettled; having proved to them that there
+was no possibility of money accruing to him from other quarters, and
+no earthly chance of their getting a larger dividend than that which
+she was empowered to offer, she brought the Colonel's creditors
+unanimously to accept her proposals, and purchased with fifteen
+hundred pounds of ready money more than ten times that amount of
+debts.
+
+Mrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was
+so simple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she
+made the lawyers of the creditors themselves do the business.  And
+Mr. Lewis representing Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss
+acting for Mr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the
+Colonel's), complimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which
+she did business, and declared that there was no professional man
+who could beat her.
+
+Rebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered
+a bottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings
+where she dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's
+lawyers: shook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour,
+and returned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and
+son and acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire
+liberation.  As for the latter, he had been considerably neglected
+during his mother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French
+maid; for that young woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier
+in the garrison of Calais, forgot her charge in the society of this
+militaire, and little Rawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on
+Calais sands at this period, where the absent Genevieve had left and
+lost him.
+
+And so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at their
+house in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skill
+which must be possessed by those who would live on the resources
+above named.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+The Subject Continued
+
+
+In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we
+are bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year.
+These mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have
+credit with Messrs.  Gillows or Bantings, you can get them
+splendidly montees and decorated entirely according to your own
+fancy; or they are to be let furnished, a less troublesome and
+complicated arrangement to most parties.  It was so that Crawley and
+his wife preferred to hire their house.
+
+Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and
+cellar in Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles,
+who was born on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was
+a younger son of a gardener there.  By good conduct, a handsome
+person and calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the
+knife-board to the footboard of the carriage; from the footboard to
+the butler's pantry.  When he had been a certain number of years at
+the head of Miss Crawley's establishment, where he had had good
+wages, fat perquisites, and plenty of opportunities of saving, he
+announced that he was about to contract a matrimonial alliance with
+a late cook of Miss Crawley's, who had subsisted in an honourable
+manner by the exercise of a mangle, and the keeping of a small
+greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood.  The truth is, that the
+ceremony had been clandestinely performed some years back; although
+the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first brought to Miss Crawley
+by a little boy and girl of seven and eight years of age, whose
+continual presence in the kitchen had attracted the attention of
+Miss Briggs.
+
+Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the
+superintendence of the small shop and the greens.  He added milk and
+cream, eggs and country-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself
+whilst other retired butlers were vending spirits in public houses,
+by dealing in the simplest country produce.  And having a good
+connection amongst the butlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back
+parlour where he and Mrs. Raggles received them, his milk, cream,
+and eggs got to be adopted by many of the fraternity, and his
+profits increased every year.  Year after year he quietly and
+modestly amassed money, and when at length that snug and complete
+bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street, May Fair, lately the
+residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace, gone abroad, with
+its rich and appropriate furniture by the first makers, was brought
+to the hammer, who should go in and purchase the lease and furniture
+of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of the money he borrowed,
+it is true, and at rather a high interest, from a brother butler,
+but the chief part he paid down, and it was with no small pride that
+Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carved mahogany,
+with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass opposite to her,
+and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all the
+family.
+
+Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently an apartment so
+splendid.  It was in order to let the house again that Raggles
+purchased it.  As soon as a tenant was found, he subsided into the
+greengrocer's shop once more; but a happy thing it was for him to
+walk out of that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey
+his house--his own house--with geraniums in the window and a carved
+bronze knocker.  The footman occasionally lounging at the area
+railing, treated him with respect; the cook took her green stuff at
+his house and called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing
+the tenants did, or one dish which they had for dinner, that Raggles
+might not know of, if he liked.
+
+He was a good man; good and happy.  The house brought him in so
+handsome a yearly income that he was determined to send his children
+to good schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was
+sent to boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and little
+Matilda to Miss Peckover's, Laurentinum House, Clapham.
+
+Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the author of all his
+prosperity in life.  He had a silhouette of his mistress in his back
+shop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done
+by that spinster herself in India ink--and the only addition he made
+to the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen's
+Crawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole Crawley, Baronet, who
+was represented in a gilded car drawn by six white horses, and
+passing by a lake covered with swans, and barges containing ladies
+in hoops, and musicians with flags and penwigs.  Indeed Raggles
+thought there was no such palace in all the world, and no such
+august family.
+
+As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let
+when Rawdon and his wife returned to London. The Colonel knew it and
+its owner quite well; the latter's connection with the Crawley
+family had been kept up constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls
+whenever Miss Crawley received friends.  And the old man not only
+let his house to the Colonel but officiated as his butler whenever
+he had company; Mrs. Raggles operating in the kitchen below and
+sending up dinners of which old Miss Crawley herself might have
+approved.  This was the way, then, Crawley got his house for
+nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxes and rates, and the
+interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; and the insurance of
+his life; and the charges for his children at school; and the value
+of the meat and drink which his own family--and for a time that of
+Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and though the poor wretch was
+utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on the
+streets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison:  yet somebody
+must pay even for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it
+was this unlucky Raggles was made the representative of Colonel
+Crawley's defective capital.
+
+I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by
+great practitioners in Crawlers way?--how many great noblemen rob
+their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers
+out of wretched little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we
+read that a noble nobleman has left for the Continent, or that
+another noble nobleman has an execution in his house--and that one
+or other owes six or seven millions, the defeat seems glorious even,
+and we respect the victim in the vastness of his ruin.  But who
+pities a poor barber who can't get his money for powdering the
+footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter who has ruined himself by
+fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's dejeuner; or the
+poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and who has
+pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries ready, which
+my lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the great house
+tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed:  as
+they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself,
+he sends plenty of other souls thither.
+
+Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage to all such of
+Miss Crawley's tradesmen and purveyors as chose to serve them.  Some
+were willing enough, especially the poor ones.  It was wonderful to
+see the pertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting brought
+the cart every Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles
+himself had to supply the greengroceries.  The bill for servants'
+porter at the Fortune of War public house is a curiosity in the
+chronicles of beer.  Every servant also was owed the greater part of
+his wages, and thus kept up perforce an interest in the house.
+Nobody in fact was paid.  Not the blacksmith who opened the lock;
+nor the glazier who mended the pane; nor the jobber who let the
+carriage; nor the groom who drove it; nor the butcher who provided
+the leg of mutton; nor the coals which roasted it; nor the cook who
+basted it; nor the servants who ate it:  and this I am given to
+understand is not unfrequently the way in which people live
+elegantly on nothing a year.
+
+In a little town such things cannot be done without remark.  We know
+there the quantity of milk our neighbour takes and espy the joint or
+the fowls which are going in for his dinner.  So, probably, 200 and
+202 in Curzon Street might know what was going on in the house
+between them, the servants communicating through the area-railings;
+but Crawley and his wife and his friends did not know 200 and 202.
+When you came to 201 there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a
+good dinner, and a jolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess
+there, just for all the world as if they had been undisputed masters
+of three or four thousand a year--and so they were, not in money,
+but in produce and labour--if they did not pay for the mutton, they
+had it:  if they did not give bullion in exchange for their wine,
+how should we know? Never was better claret at any man's table than
+at honest Rawdon's; dinners more gay and neatly served.   His
+drawing-rooms were the prettiest, little, modest salons conceivable:
+they were decorated with the greatest taste, and a thousand knick-
+knacks from Paris, by Rebecca: and when she sat at her piano
+trilling songs with a lightsome heart, the stranger voted himself in
+a little paradise of domestic comfort and agreed that, if the
+husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming, and the dinners
+the pleasantest in the world.
+
+Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue
+in London among a certain class.  You saw demure chariots at her
+door, out of which stepped very great people.  You beheld her
+carriage in the park, surrounded by dandies of note.  The little box
+in the third tier of the opera was crowded with heads constantly
+changing; but it must be confessed that the ladies held aloof from
+her, and that their doors were shut to our little adventurer.
+
+With regard to the world of female fashion and its customs, the
+present writer of course can only speak at second hand.  A man can
+no more penetrate or under-stand those mysteries than he can know
+what the ladies talk about when they go upstairs after dinner.  It
+is only by inquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets hints of
+those secrets; and by a similar diligence every person who treads
+the Pall Mall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis
+knows, either through his own experience or through some
+acquaintance with whom he plays at billiards or shares the joint,
+something about the genteel world of London, and how, as there are
+men (such as Rawdon Crawley, whose position we mentioned before) who
+cut a good figure to the eyes of the ignorant world and to the
+apprentices in the park, who behold them consorting with the most
+notorious dandies there, so there are ladies, who may be called
+men's women, being welcomed entirely by all the gentlemen and cut or
+slighted by all their wives.  Mrs. Firebrace is of this sort; the
+lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see every day in Hyde
+Park, surrounded by the greatest and most famous dandies of this
+empire.  Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties are announced
+laboriously in the fashionable newspapers and with whom you see that
+all sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and many more
+might be mentioned had they to do with the history at present in
+hand.  But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country
+people with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their
+seeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons
+who are better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies
+have no more chance of establishing themselves in "society," than
+the benighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their
+doings in the Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of
+these awful truths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming
+rank and wealth are excluded from this "society." The frantic
+efforts which they make to enter this circle, the meannesses to
+which they submit, the insults which they undergo, are matters of
+wonder to those who take human or womankind for a study; and the
+pursuit of fashion under difficulties would be a fine theme for any
+very great person who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of
+the English language necessary for the compiling of such a history.
+
+Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad
+not only declined to visit her when she came to this side of the
+Channel, but cut her severely when they met in public places.  It
+was curious to see how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not
+altogether a pleasant study to Rebecca.  When Lady Bareacres met her
+in the waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters about
+her as if they would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and
+retreating a step or two, placed herself in front of them, and
+stared at her little enemy. To stare Becky out of countenance
+required a severer glance than even the frigid old Bareacres could
+shoot out of her dismal eyes.  When Lady de la Mole, who had ridden
+a score of times by Becky's side at Brussels, met Mrs. Crawley's
+open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship was quite blind, and could
+not in the least recognize her former friend.  Even Mrs. Blenkinsop,
+the banker's wife, cut her at church.  Becky went regularly to
+church now; it was edifying to see her enter there with Rawdon by
+her side, carrying a couple of large gilt prayer-books, and
+afterwards going through the ceremony with the gravest resignation.
+
+Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were passed upon
+his wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and savage.  He talked of
+calling out the husbands or brothers of every one of the insolent
+women who did not pay a proper respect to his wife; and it was only
+by the strongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was
+brought into keeping a decent behaviour.  "You can't shoot me into
+society," she said good-naturedly.  "Remember, my dear, that I was
+but a governess, and you, you poor silly old man, have the worst
+reputation for debt, and dice, and all sorts of wickedness.  We
+shall get quite as many friends as we want by and by, and in the
+meanwhile you must be a good boy and obey your schoolmistress in
+everything she tells you to do.  When we heard that your aunt had
+left almost everything to Pitt and his wife, do you remember what a
+rage you were in? You would have told all Paris, if I had not made
+you keep your temper, and where would you have been now?--in prison
+at Ste.  Pelagie for debt, and not established in London in a
+handsome house, with every comfort about you--you were in such a
+fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you, and
+what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the
+world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we
+should be friends with your brother's family than enemies, as those
+foolish Butes are.  When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a
+pleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in.  If we are
+ruined, you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a
+governess to Lady Jane's children.  Ruined! fiddlede-dee!  I will
+get you a good place before that; or Pitt and his little boy will
+die, and we will be Sir Rawdon and my lady.  While there is life,
+there is hope, my dear, and I intend to make a man of you yet.  Who
+sold your horses for you? Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was
+obliged to confess that he owed all these benefits to his wife, and
+to trust himself to her guidance for the future.
+
+Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for
+which all her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally
+left to Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds
+had been left to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated,
+was in such a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage
+abuse upon his nephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them
+ended in an utter breach of intercourse.  Rawdon Crawley's conduct,
+on the other hand, who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to
+astonish his brother and delight his sister-in-law, who was disposed
+to look kindly upon all the members of her husband's family.  He
+wrote to his brother a very frank, manly, good-humoured letter from
+Paris.  He was aware, he said, that by his own marriage he had
+forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he did not disguise his
+disappointment that she should have been so entirely relentless
+towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept in their
+branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother on his
+good fortune.  He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister,
+and hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter
+concluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter lady's own
+handwriting.  She, too, begged to join in her husband's
+congratulations.  She should ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to
+her in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress
+of his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderest
+interest.  She wished him every happiness in his married life, and,
+asking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of
+whose goodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day
+she might be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and
+aunt, and begged to bespeak for him their good-will and protection.
+
+Pitt Crawley received this communication very graciously--more
+graciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebecca's previous
+compositions in Rawdon's handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was
+so charmed with the letter that she expected her husband would
+instantly divide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions and send
+off one-half to his brother at Paris.
+
+To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate
+his brother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds.  But he made
+Rawdon a handsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come
+to England and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her
+good opinion of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his
+willingness to take any opportunity to serve her little boy.
+
+Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the
+brothers.  When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in
+London.  Many a time she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see
+whether they had taken possession of Miss Crawley's house there.
+But the new family did not make its appearance; it was only through
+Raggles that she heard of their movements--how Miss Crawley's
+domestics had been dismissed with decent gratuities, and how Mr.
+Pitt had only once made his appearance in London, when he stopped
+for a few days at the house, did business with his lawyers there,
+and sold off all Miss Crawley's French novels to a bookseller out of
+Bond Street.  Becky had reasons of her own which caused her to long
+for the arrival of her new relation. "When Lady Jane comes," thought
+she, "she shall be my sponsor in London society; and as for the
+women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men want to see
+me."
+
+An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham
+or her bouquet is her companion.  I have always admired the way in
+which the tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire
+an exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are
+almost inseparable.  The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded
+gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying
+the back seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one
+to me, as jolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured
+in the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial
+of Vanity Fair.  What? even battered, brazen, beautiful,
+conscienceless, heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her
+shame:  even lovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence
+which any man in England will take, and who drives her greys in the
+park, while her mother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath still--even
+those who are so bold, one might fancy they could face anything dare
+not face the world without a female friend.  They must have somebody
+to cling to, the affectionate creatures!  And you will hardly see
+them in any public place without a shabby companion in a dyed silk,
+sitting somewhere in the shade close behind them.
+
+"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen
+were seated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came
+to her house to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for
+them, the best in London):  "I must have a sheep-dog."
+
+"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte table.
+
+"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown.  "My dear Mrs. Crawley,
+what a fancy!  Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as a
+camel-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your brougham.  Or a
+Persian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug
+that would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes? There's a man
+at Bayswater got one with such a nose that you might--I mark the
+king and play--that you might hang your hat on it."
+
+"I mark the trick," Rawdon gravely said.  He attended to his game
+commonly and didn't much meddle with the conversation, except when
+it was about horses and betting.
+
+"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively little
+Southdown continued.
+
+"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog," said Becky, laughing and looking up
+at Lord Steyne.
+
+"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship.
+
+"A dog to keep the wolves off me," Rebecca continued. "A companion."
+
+"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one," said the marquis; and his
+jaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes
+leering towards Rebecca.
+
+The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee.
+The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly There was a score of candles
+sparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of
+gilt and bronze and porcelain.  They lighted up Rebecca's figure to
+admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy
+flowers.  She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose;
+her dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin
+hazy scarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round
+her neck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp
+folds of the silk:  the prettiest little foot in the prettiest
+little sandal in the finest silk stocking in the world.
+
+The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which was
+fringed with red hair.  He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little
+twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles.  His
+jaw was underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth
+protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the
+grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter
+and ribbon.  A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-
+legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, and always
+caressing his garter-knee.
+
+"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to defend his
+lambkin?"
+
+"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his
+clubs," answered Becky, laughing.
+
+"'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--"what a mouth for a
+pipe!"
+
+"I take your three to two," here said Rawdon, at the card-table.
+
+"Hark at Meliboeus," snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorally
+occupied too:  he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton,
+hey? Damme, what a snowy fleece!"
+
+Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. "My lord," she
+said, "you are a knight of the Order." He had the collar round his
+neck, indeed--a gift of the restored princes of Spain.
+
+Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and his
+success at play.  He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox
+at hazard.  He had won money of the most august personages of the
+realm:  he had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table;
+but he did not like an allusion to those bygone fredaines.  Rebecca
+saw the scowl gathering over his heavy brow.
+
+She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee cup out of
+his hand with a little curtsey.  "Yes," she said, "I must get a
+watchdog.  But he won't bark at YOU." And, going into the other
+drawing-room, she sat down to the piano and began to sing little
+French songs in such a charming, thrilling voice that the mollified
+nobleman speedily followed her into that chamber, and might be seen
+nodding his head and bowing time over her.
+
+Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until they had enough.
+The Colonel won; but, say that he won ever so much and often, nights
+like these, which occurred many times in the week--his wife having
+all the talk and all the admiration, and he sitting silent without
+the circle, not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions,
+the mystical language within--must have been rather wearisome to the
+ex-dragoon.
+
+"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him by
+way of a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his
+avocation in life.  He was Colonel Crawley no more.  He was Mrs.
+Crawley's husband.
+
+About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it
+is because he is hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or has
+crawled below into the kitchen for companionship.  His mother
+scarcely ever took notice of him.  He passed the days with his
+French bonne as long as that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's
+family, and when the Frenchwoman went away, the little fellow,
+howling in the loneliness of the night, had compassion taken on him
+by a housemaid, who took him out of his solitary nursery into her
+bed in the garret hard by and comforted him.
+
+Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-
+room taking tea after the opera, when this shouting was heard
+overhead.  "It's my cherub crying for his nurse," she said.  She did
+not offer to move to go and see the child.  "Don't agitate your
+feelings by going to look for him," said Lord Steyne sardonically.
+"Bah!" replied the other, with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself
+to sleep"; and they fell to talking about the opera.
+
+Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son and heir; and
+came back to the company when he found that honest Dolly was
+consoling the child.  The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper
+regions.  He used to see the boy there in private.  They had
+interviews together every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor
+sitting on a box by his father's side and watching the operation
+with never-ceasing pleasure.  He and the sire were great friends.
+The father would bring him sweetmeats from the dessert and hide them
+in a certain old epaulet box, where the child went to seek them, and
+laughed with joy on discovering the treasure; laughed, but not too
+loud:  for mamma was below asleep and must not be disturbed.  She
+did not go to rest till very late and seldom rose till after noon.
+
+Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his
+nursery with toys.  Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up
+by the father's own hand and purchased by him for ready money.  When
+he was off duty with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here,
+passing hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his
+great mustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent days with
+him in indefatigable gambols.  The room was a low room, and once,
+when the child was not five years old, his father, who was tossing
+him wildly up in his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so
+violently against the ceiling that he almost dropped the child, so
+terrified was he at the disaster.
+
+Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl--the
+severity of the blow indeed authorized that indulgence; but just as
+he was going to begin, the father interposed.
+
+"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he cried.  And the child,
+looking in a very hard and piteous way at his father, bit his lips,
+clenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit.  Rawdon told that story at
+the clubs, at the mess, to everybody in town.  "By Gad, sir," he
+explained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one that
+boy of mine is--what a trump he is!  I half-sent his head through
+the ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his
+mother."
+
+Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited the upper
+regions in which the child lived.  She came like a vivified figure
+out of the Magasin des Modes--blandly smiling in the most beautiful
+new clothes and little gloves and boots.  Wonderful scarfs, laces,
+and jewels glittered about her.  She had always a new bonnet on, and
+flowers bloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling
+ostrich feathers, soft and snowy as camellias.  She nodded twice or
+thrice patronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his
+dinner or from the pictures of soldiers he was painting.  When she
+left the room, an odour of rose, or some other magical fragrance,
+lingered about the nursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes,
+superior to his father--to all the world:  to be worshipped and
+admired at a distance.  To drive with that lady in the carriage was
+an awful rite:  he sat up in the back seat and did not dare to
+speak:  he gazed with all his eyes at the beautifully dressed
+Princess opposite to him.  Gentlemen on splendid prancing horses
+came up and smiled and talked with her. How her eyes beamed upon all
+of them!  Her hand used to quiver and wave gracefully as they
+passed.  When he went out with her he had his new red dress on.  His
+old brown holland was good enough when he stayed at home. Sometimes,
+when she was away, and Dolly his maid was making his bed, he came
+into his mother's room.  It was as the abode of a fairy to him--a
+mystic chamber of splendour and delights.  There in the wardrobe
+hung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted.  There
+was the jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous bronze hand on
+the dressing-table, glistening all over with a hundred rings.  There
+was the cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just
+see his own wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly
+distorted, and as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the
+pillows of the bed.  Oh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy!
+Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little
+children; and here was one who was worshipping a stone!
+
+Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had certain manly
+tendencies of affection in his heart and could love a child and a
+woman still.  For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness
+then, which did not escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it
+to her husband.  It did not annoy her:  she was too good-natured.
+It only increased her scorn for him.  He felt somehow ashamed of
+this paternal softness and hid it from his wife--only indulging in
+it when alone with the boy.
+
+He used to take him out of mornings when they would go to the
+stables together and to the park.  Little Lord Southdown, the best-
+natured of men, who would make you a present of the hat from his
+head, and whose main occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that
+he might give them away afterwards, bought the little chap a pony
+not much bigger than a large rat, the donor said, and on this little
+black Shetland pygmy young Rawdon's great father was pleased to
+mount the boy, and to walk by his side in the park.  It pleased him
+to see his old quarters, and his old fellow-guardsmen at
+Knightsbridge: he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with
+something like regret.  The old troopers were glad to recognize
+their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel. Colonel Crawley
+found dining at mess and with his brother-officers very pleasant.
+"Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her--I know it.  She won't miss
+me," he used to say:  and he was right, his wife did not miss him.
+
+Rebecca was fond of her husband.  She was always perfectly good-
+humoured and kind to him.  She did not even show her scorn much for
+him; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool.  He was her
+upper servant and maitre d'hotel.  He went on her errands; obeyed
+her orders without question; drove in the carriage in the ring with
+her without repining; took her to the opera-box, solaced himself at
+his club during the performance, and came punctually back to fetch
+her when due.  He would have liked her to be a little fonder of the
+boy, but even to that he reconciled himself.  "Hang it, you know
+she's so clever," he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you
+know." For, as we have said before, it requires no great wisdom to
+be able to win at cards and billiards, and Rawdon made no
+pretensions to any other sort of skill.
+
+When the companion came, his domestic duties became very light.  His
+wife encouraged him to dine abroad:  she would let him off duty at
+the opera.  "Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my
+dear," she would say.  "Some men are coming who will only bore you.
+I would not ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I
+have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone."
+
+"A sheep-dog--a companion!  Becky Sharp with a companion!  Isn't it
+good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself.  The notion tickled
+hugely her sense of humour.
+
+One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony
+were taking their accustomed walk in the park, they passed by an old
+acquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who
+was in conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy
+in his arms about the age of little Rawdon.  This other youngster
+had seized hold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and
+was examining it with delight.
+
+"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to the "How do,
+Clink?" of the Colonel.  "This ere young gentleman is about the
+little Colonel's age, sir," continued the corporal.
+
+"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman, who
+carried the boy.  "Wasn't he, Georgy?"
+
+"Yes," said Georgy.  He and the little chap on the pony were looking
+at each other with all their might--solemnly scanning each other as
+children do.
+
+"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.
+
+"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old gentleman
+rather pompously.  "Captain George Osborne, sir--perhaps you knew
+him.  He died the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the
+Corsican tyrant." Colonel Crawley blushed quite red.  "I knew him
+very well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--
+how is she?"
+
+"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman, putting down the
+boy and taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to
+the Colonel.  On it written--
+
+"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal
+Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages,
+Fulham Road West."
+
+Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony.
+
+"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle.
+
+"Yes," said Georgy.  The Colonel, who had been looking at him with
+some interest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind
+Rawdon minor.
+
+"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little boy round the
+waist--his name is Rawdon." And both the children began to laugh.
+
+"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's day, sir,"
+said the good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and
+old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the
+children.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+A Family in a Very Small Way
+
+
+We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridge
+towards Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that village
+regarding some friends whom we have left there.  How is Mrs. Amelia
+after the storm of Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has
+come of Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her
+premises? And is there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah?
+The facts concerning the latter are briefly these:
+
+Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long after
+his escape from Brussels.  Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded
+to meet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight.  However it might be,
+he went back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had
+taken up his residence at St.  Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor.
+To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that
+it was not the first time he and the Corsican had met, and that the
+civilian had bearded the French General at Mount St.  John.  He had
+a thousand anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position
+of every regiment and the loss which each had incurred.  He did not
+deny that he had been concerned in those victories--that he had been
+with the army and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington. And
+he described what the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment
+of the day of Waterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his
+Grace's sentiments and proceedings that it was clear he must have
+been by the conqueror's side throughout the day; though, as a non-
+combatant, his name was not mentioned in the public documents
+relative to the battle.  Perhaps he actually worked himself up to
+believe that he had been engaged with the army; certain it is that
+he made a prodigious sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was
+called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in
+Bengal.
+
+The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky
+horses were paid without question by him and his agents.  He never
+was heard to allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty
+what became of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor,
+his Belgian servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one which
+Jos rode, at Valenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815.
+
+Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty pounds
+yearly to his parents at Fulham.  It was the chief support of the
+old couple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to his
+bankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
+fortune.  He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a
+commission lottery agent, &c., &c.  He sent round prospectuses to
+his friends whenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass
+plate for the door, and talked pompously about making his fortune
+still.  But Fortune never came back to the feeble and stricken old
+man.  One by one his friends dropped off, and were weary of buying
+dear coals and bad wine from him; and there was only his wife in all
+the world who fancied, when he tottered off to the City of a
+morning, that he was still doing any business there.  At evening he
+crawled slowly back; and he used to go of nights to a little club at
+a tavern, where he disposed of the finances of the nation. It was
+wonderful to hear him talk about millions, and agios, and discounts,
+and what Rothschild was doing, and Baring Brothers.  He talked of
+such vast sums that the gentlemen of the club (the apothecary, the
+undertaker, the great carpenter and builder, the parish clerk, who
+was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp, our old
+acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman.  "I was better off once,
+sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who "used the room." "My
+son, sir, is at this minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in the
+Presidency of Bengal, and touching his four thousand rupees per
+mensem.  My daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked.  I
+might draw upon my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two thousand
+pounds to-morrow, and Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, down
+on the counter, sir.  But the Sedleys were always a proud family."
+You and I, my dear reader, may drop into this condition one day:
+for have not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail: our
+powers forsake us:  our place on the boards be taken by better and
+younger mimes--the chance of life roll away and leave us shattered
+and stranded.  Then men will walk across the road when they meet
+you--or, worse still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize
+you in a pitying way--then you will know, as soon as your back is
+turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor devil, what imprudences
+he has committed, what chances that chap has thrown away!" Well,
+well--a carriage and three thousand a year is not the summit of the
+reward nor the end of God's judgment of men.  If quacks prosper as
+often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and knaves arrive at
+fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck and prosperity for all
+the world like the ablest and most honest amongst us--I say,
+brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of
+any great account, and that it is probable . . . but we are
+wandering out of the domain of the story.
+
+Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it
+after her husband's ruin and, occupying a large house, would have
+taken in boarders.  The broken Sedley would have acted well as the
+boarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the
+titular lord and master:  the carver, house-steward, and humble
+husband of the occupier of the dingy throne.  I have seen men of
+good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who
+feasted squires and kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up
+legs of mutton for rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside
+over their dreary tables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit
+enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join a cheerful
+musical family," such as one reads of in the Times.  She was content
+to lie on the shore where fortune had stranded her--and you could
+see that the career of this old couple was over.
+
+I don't think they were unhappy.  Perhaps they were a little prouder
+in their downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a
+great person for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and
+passed many hours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen.
+The Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness,
+her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her
+consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth occupied and amused the
+old lady almost as much as the doings of her former household, when
+she had Sambo and the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a
+housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics--her former
+household, about which the good lady talked a hundred times a day.
+And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley had all the maids-of-all-
+work in the street to superintend. She knew how each tenant of the
+cottages paid or owed his little rent.  She stepped aside when Mrs.
+Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family.  She flung up
+her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's lady, drove by in her
+husband's professional one-horse chaise.  She had colloquies with
+the greengrocer about the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley
+loved; she kept an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and
+made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of oxen very
+likely with less ado than was made about Mrs. Sedley's loin of
+mutton:  and she counted the potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on
+which days, dressed in her best, she went to church twice and read
+Blair's Sermons in the evening.
+
+On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays from taking
+such a pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little
+grandson Georgy to the neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to
+see the soldiers or to feed the ducks.  Georgy loved the redcoats,
+and his grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier,
+and introduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals
+on their breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented
+the child as the son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died
+gloriously on the glorious eighteenth.  He has been known to treat
+some of these non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and,
+indeed, in their first Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little
+Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with apples and parliament, to the
+detriment of his health--until Amelia declared that George should
+never go out with his grandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly,
+and on his honour, not to give the child any cakes, lollipops, or
+stall produce whatever.
+
+Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness
+about this boy, and a secret jealousy--for one evening in George's
+very early days, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little
+parlour scarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room,
+ran upstairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child,
+who had been asleep until that moment--and there found Mrs. Sedley
+in the act of surreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the
+infant.  Amelia, the gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when
+she found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and
+trembled all over with anger.  Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now
+flushed up, until they were as red as they used to be when she was a
+child of twelve years old.  She seized the baby out of her mother's
+arms and then grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at
+her, furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon.
+
+Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. "I will NOT
+have baby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy, rocking the infant about
+violently with both her arms round him and turning with flashing
+eyes at her mother.
+
+"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language to me?"
+
+"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for
+hi n.  He told me that Daffy's Elixir was poison."
+
+"Very good:  you think I'm a murderess then," replied Mrs. Sedley.
+"This is the language you use to your mother. I have met with
+misfortunes:  I have sunk low in life:  I have kept my carriage, and
+now walk on foot:  but I did not know I was a murderess before, and
+thank you for the NEWS."
+
+"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for tears--"you
+shouldn't be hard upon me.  I--I didn't mean--I mean, I did not wish
+to say you would to any wrong to this dear child, only--"
+
+"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in which case I had
+better go to the Old Bailey.  Though I didn't poison YOU, when you
+were a child, but gave you the best of education and the most
+expensive masters money could procure.  Yes; I've nursed five
+children and buried three; and the one I loved the best of all, and
+tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and hooping-cough,
+and brought up with foreign masters, regardless of expense, and with
+accomplishments at Minerva House--which I never had when I was a
+girl--when I was too glad to honour my father and mother, that I
+might live long in the land, and to be useful, and not to mope all
+day in my room and act the fine lady--says I'm a murderess.  Ah,
+Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a viper in your bosom, that's MY
+prayer."
+
+"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the child in her arms
+set up a frantic chorus of shouts. "A murderess, indeed!  Go down on
+your knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
+Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs. Sedley tossed out
+of the room, hissing out the word poison once more, and so ending
+her charitable benediction.
+
+Till the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs.
+Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended.  The quarrel
+gave the elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to
+turn to account with female ingenuity and perseverance.  For
+instance, she scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards.
+She warned the domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne
+might be offended.  She asked her daughter to see and satisfy
+herself that there was no poison prepared in the little daily messes
+that were concocted for Georgy. When neighbours asked after the
+boy's health, she referred them pointedly to Mrs. Osborne.  SHE
+never ventured to ask whether the baby was well or not.  SHE would
+not touch the child although he was her grandson, and own precious
+darling, for she was not USED to children, and might kill it.  And
+whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healing inquisition, she received
+the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornful demeanour, as made the
+surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom he had the
+honour of attending professionally, could give herself greater airs
+than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took a fee.  And very
+likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as what mother is
+not, of those who would manage her children for her, or become
+candidates for the first place in their affections.  It is certain
+that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and that she
+would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend him
+than she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung
+up over her little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl
+had gone to his; and to which she retired now for many long, silent,
+tearful, but happy years.
+
+In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure.  Here it was that
+she tended her boy and watched him through the many ills of
+childhood, with a constant passion of love.  The elder George
+returned in him somehow, only improved, and as if come back from
+heaven.  In a hundred little tones, looks, and movements, the child
+was so like his father that the widow's heart thrilled as she held
+him to it; and he would often ask the cause of her tears.  It was
+because of his likeness to his father, she did not scruple to tell
+him.  She talked constantly to him about this dead father, and spoke
+of her love for George to the innocent and wondering child; much
+more than she ever had done to George himself, or to any confidante
+of her youth.  To her parents she never talked about this matter,
+shrinking from baring her heart to them.  Little George very likely
+could understand no better than they, but into his ears she poured
+her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only.  The very
+joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least, that
+its expression was tears.  Her sensibilities were so weak and
+tremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book.
+I was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician,
+with a sumptuous dark green carriage, a prospect of speedy
+knighthood, and a house in Manchester Square) that her grief at
+weaning the child was a sight that would have unmanned a Herod.  He
+was very soft-hearted many years ago, and his wife was mortally
+jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and long afterwards.
+
+Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy:  most
+women shared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia's
+acquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which the
+other sex regarded her.  For almost all men who came near her loved
+her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why.  She
+was not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over much, nor
+extraordinarily handsome.  But wherever she went she touched and
+charmed every one of the male sex, as invariably as she awakened the
+scorn and incredulity of her own sisterhood.  I think it was her
+weakness which was her principal charm--a kind of sweet submission
+and softness, which seemed to appeal to each man she met for his
+sympathy and protection.  We have seen how in the regiment, though
+she spoke but to few of George's comrades there, all the swords of
+the young fellows at the mess-table would have leapt from their
+scabbards to fight round her; and so it was in the little narrow
+lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she interested and pleased
+everybody.  If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of the great house
+of Mango, Plantain, and Co., Crutched Friars, and the magnificent
+proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer dejeuners
+frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about the parish with
+magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royal
+stables at Kensington themselves could not turn out--I say had she
+been Mrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango
+(daughter of the Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the
+head of the firm), the tradesmen of the neighbourhood could not pay
+her more honour than they invariably showed to the gentle young
+widow, when she passed by their doors, or made her humble purchases
+at their shops.
+
+Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton
+the young assistant, who doctored the servant maids and small
+tradesmen, and might be seen any day reading the Times in the
+surgery, who openly declared himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne.  He
+was a personable young gentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's
+lodgings than his principal; and if anything went wrong with Georgy,
+he would drop in twice or thrice in the day to see the little chap,
+and without so much as the thought of a fee.  He would abstract
+lozenges, tamarinds, and other produce from the surgery-drawers for
+little Georgy's benefit, and compounded draughts and mixtures for
+him of miraculous sweetness, so that it was quite a pleasure to the
+child to be ailing.  He and Pestler, his chief, sat up two whole
+nights by the boy in that momentous and awful week when Georgy had
+the measles; and when you would have thought, from the mother's
+terror, that there had never been measles in the world before. Would
+they have done as much for other people? Did they sit up for the
+folks at the Pineries, when Ralph Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, and
+Guinever Mango had the same juvenile complaint? Did they sit up for
+little Mary Clapp, the landlord's daughter, who actually caught the
+disease of little Georgy? Truth compels one to say, no. They slept
+quite undisturbed, at least as far as she was concerned--pronounced
+hers to be a slight case, which would almost cure itself, sent her
+in a draught or two, and threw in bark when the child rallied, with
+perfect indifference, and just for form's sake.
+
+Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave
+lessons in his native tongue at various schools in the
+neighbourhood, and who might be heard in his apartment of nights
+playing tremulous old gavottes and minuets on a wheezy old fiddle.
+Whenever this powdered and courteous old man, who never missed a
+Sunday at the convent chapel at Hammersmith, and who was in all
+respects, thoughts, conduct, and bearing utterly unlike the bearded
+savages of his nation, who curse perfidious Albion, and scowl at you
+from over their cigars, in the Quadrant arcades at the present day--
+whenever the old Chevalier de Talonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne,
+he would first finish his pinch of snuff, flick away the remaining
+particles of dust with a graceful wave of his hand, gather up his
+fingers again into a bunch, and, bringing them up to his mouth, blow
+them open with a kiss, exclaiming, Ah! la divine creature!  He vowed
+and protested that when Amelia walked in the Brompton Lanes flowers
+grew in profusion under her feet.  He called little Georgy Cupid,
+and asked him news of Venus, his mamma; and told the astonished
+Betty Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, and the favourite
+attendant of the Reine des Amours.
+
+Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and unconscious
+popularity.  Did not Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of the
+district chapel, which the family attended, call assiduously upon
+the widow, dandle the little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him
+Latin, to the anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept
+house for him? "There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter lady
+would say.  "When she comes to tea here she does not speak a word
+during the whole evening.  She is but a poor lackadaisical creature,
+and it is my belief has no heart at all.  It is only her pretty face
+which all you gentlemen admire so.  Miss Grits, who has five
+thousand pounds, and expectations besides, has twice as much
+character, and is a thousand times more agreeable to my taste; and
+if she were good-looking I know that you would think her
+perfection."
+
+Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent.  It IS the
+pretty face which creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those
+wicked rogues.  A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of
+Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face.  What
+folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dulness
+may not red lips and sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with
+their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is
+handsome, therefore she is a fool.  O ladies, ladies! there are some
+of you who are neither handsome nor wise.
+
+These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our
+heroine.  Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader
+has already no doubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of
+her proceedings during the seven years after the birth of her son,
+there would be found few incidents more remarkable in it than that
+of the measles, recorded in the foregoing page.  Yes, one day, and
+greatly to her wonder, the Reverend Mr. Binny, just mentioned, asked
+her to change her name of Osborne for his own; when, with deep
+blushes and tears in her eyes and voice, she thanked him for his
+regard for her, expressed gratitude for his attentions to her and to
+her poor little boy, but said that she never, never could think of
+any but--but the husband whom she had lost.
+
+On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of June, the days
+of marriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating
+them (and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought,
+her little boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of
+that departed friend.  During the day she was more active. She had
+to teach George to read and to write and a little to draw.  She read
+books, in order that she might tell him stories from them.  As his
+eyes opened and his mind expanded under the influence of the outward
+nature round about him, she taught the child, to the best of her
+humble power, to acknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and
+every morning he and she--(in that awful and touching communion
+which I think must bring a thrill to the heart of every man who
+witnesses or who remembers it)--the mother and the little boy--
+prayed to Our Father together, the mother pleading with all her
+gentle heart, the child lisping after her as she spoke.  And each
+time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as if he were alive and
+in the room with them.  To wash and dress this young gentleman--to
+take him for a run of the mornings, before breakfast, and the
+retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him the most
+wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thrifty widow cut
+up and altered every available little bit of finery which she
+possessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne
+herself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine
+clothes, especially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown
+and a straw bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of
+the day.  Others she had to spare, at the service of her mother and
+her old father.  She had taken the pains to learn, and used to play
+cribbage with this gentleman on the nights when he did not go to his
+club.  She sang for him when he was so minded, and it was a good
+sign, for he invariably fell into a comfortable sleep during the
+music.  She wrote out his numerous memorials, letters, prospectuses,
+and projects.  It was in her handwriting that most of the old
+gentleman's former acquaintances were informed that he had become an
+agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Company and could
+supply his friends and the public with the best coals at --s. per
+chaldron.  All he did was to sign the circulars with his flourish
+and signature, and direct them in a shaky, clerklike hand.  One of
+these papers was sent to Major Dobbin,--Regt., care of Messrs.  Cox
+and Greenwood; but the Major being in Madras at the time, had no
+particular call for coals.  He knew, though, the hand which had
+written the prospectus.  Good God! what would he not have given to
+hold it in his own!  A second prospectus came out, informing the
+Major that J.  Sedley and Company, having established agencies at
+Oporto, Bordeaux, and St.  Mary's, were enabled to offer to their
+friends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated
+growths of ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices
+and under extraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin
+furiously canvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the
+judges, the regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency,
+and sent home to Sedley and Co.  orders for wine which perfectly
+astonished Mr. Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co.  in the
+business.  But no more orders came after that first burst of good
+fortune, on which poor old Sedley was about to build a house in the
+City, a regiment of clerks, a dock to himself, and correspondents
+all over the world.  The old gentleman's former taste in wine had
+gone:  the curses of the mess-room assailed Major Dobbin for the
+vile drinks he had been the means of introducing there; and he
+bought back a great quantity of the wine and sold it at public
+outcry, at an enormous loss to himself. As for Jos, who was by this
+time promoted to a seat at the Revenue Board at Calcutta, he was
+wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundle of these
+Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his father,
+telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in this enterprise, and
+had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as per invoice,
+drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same.  Jos, who would
+no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of
+the Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than
+that he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote back
+contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his own
+affairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co.  had to
+take it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madras
+venture, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings.
+
+Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had been five
+hundred pounds, as her husband's executor stated, left in the
+agent's hands at the time of Osborne's demise, which sum, as
+George's guardian, Dobbin proposed to put out at 8 per cent in an
+Indian house of agency.  Mr. Sedley, who thought the Major had some
+roguish intentions of his own about the money, was strongly against
+this plan; and he went to the agents to protest personally against
+the employment of the money in question, when he learned, to his
+surprise, that there had been no such sum in their hands, that all
+the late Captain's assets did not amount to a hundred pounds, and
+that the five hundred pounds in question must be a separate sum, of
+which Major Dobbin knew the particulars. More than ever convinced
+that there was some roguery, old Sedley pursued the Major.  As his
+daughter's nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand a statement
+of the late Captain's accounts.  Dobbin's stammering, blushing, and
+awkwardness added to the other's convictions that he had a rogue to
+deal with, and in a majestic tone he told that officer a piece of
+his mind, as he called it, simply stating his belief that the Major
+was unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.
+
+Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had not been so
+old and so broken, a quarrel might have ensued between them at the
+Slaughters' Coffee-house, in a box of which place of entertainment
+the gentlemen had their colloquy.  "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out
+the Major.  "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will show
+which is the injured party, poor George or I"; and, dragging the old
+gentleman up to his bedroom, he produced from his desk Osborne's
+accounts, and a bundle of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to
+do him justice, was always ready to give an IOU.  "He paid his bills
+in England," Dobbin added, "but he had not a hundred pounds in the
+world when he fell.  I and one or two of his brother officers made
+up the little sum, which was all that we could spare, and you dare
+tell us that we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan."
+Sedley was very contrite and humbled, though the fact is that
+William Dobbin had told a great falsehood to the old gentleman;
+having himself given every shilling of the money, having buried his
+friend, and paid all the fees and charges incident upon the calamity
+and removal of poor Amelia.
+
+About these expenses old Osborne had never given himself any trouble
+to think, nor any other relative of Amelia, nor Amelia herself,
+indeed.  She trusted to Major Dobbin as an accountant, took his
+somewhat confused calculations for granted, and never once suspected
+how much she was in his debt.
+
+Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise, she wrote him
+letters to Madras, letters all about little Georgy.  How he
+treasured these papers!  Whenever Amelia wrote he answered, and not
+until then.  But he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his
+godson and to her.  He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand
+ivory set of chess-men from China.  The pawns were little green and
+white men, with real swords and shields; the knights were on
+horseback, the castles were on the backs of elephants.  "Mrs.
+Mango's own set at the Pineries was not so fine," Mr. Pestler
+remarked.  These chess-men were the delight of Georgy's life, who
+printed his first letter in acknowledgement of this gift of his
+godpapa.  He sent over preserves and pickles, which latter the young
+gentleman tried surreptitiously in the sideboard and half-killed
+himself with eating.  He thought it was a judgement upon him for
+stealing, they were so hot.  Emmy wrote a comical little account of
+this mishap to the Major:  it pleased him to think that her spirits
+were rallying and that she could be merry sometimes now.  He sent
+over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and a black one with
+palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red scarfs, as winter
+wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George. The shawls were worth fifty
+guineas apiece at the very least, as Mrs. Sedley knew.  She wore
+hers in state at church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her
+female friends upon the splendid acquisition.  Emmy's, too, became
+prettily her modest black gown.  "What a pity it is she won't think
+of him!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends
+of Brompton.  "Jos never sent us such presents, I am sure, and
+grudges us everything.  It is evident that the Major is over head
+and ears in love with her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it,
+she turns red and begins to cry and goes and sits upstairs with her
+miniature.  I'm sick of that miniature.  I wish we had never seen
+those odious purse-proud Osbornes."
+
+Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's early youth was
+passed, and the boy grew up delicate, sensitive, imperious, woman-
+bred--domineering the gentle mother whom he loved with passionate
+affection.  He ruled all the rest of the little world round about
+him. As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty manner and
+his constant likeness to his father.  He asked questions about
+everything, as inquiring youth will do.  The profundity of his
+remarks and interrogatories astonished his old grandfather, who
+perfectly bored the club at the tavern with stories about the little
+lad's learning and genius.  He suffered his grandmother with a good-
+humoured indifference.  The small circle round about him believed
+that the equal of the boy did not exist upon the earth.  Georgy
+inherited his father's pride, and perhaps thought they were not
+wrong.
+
+When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began to write to him
+very much.  The Major wanted to hear that Georgy was going to a
+school and hoped he would acquit himself with credit there:  or
+would he have a good tutor at home? It was time that he should begin
+to learn; and his godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to be
+allowed to defray the charges of the boy's education, which would
+fall heavily upon his mother's straitened income.  The Major, in a
+word, was always thinking about Amelia and her little boy, and by
+orders to his agents kept the latter provided with picture-books,
+paint-boxes, desks, and all conceivable implements of amusement and
+instruction.  Three days before George's sixth birthday a gentleman
+in a gig, accompanied by a servant, drove up to Mr. Sedley's house
+and asked to see Master George Osborne:  it was Mr. Woolsey,
+military tailor, of Conduit Street, who came at the Major's order to
+measure the young gentleman for a suit of clothes.  He had had the
+honour of making for the Captain, the young gentleman's father.
+Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt, his sisters, the
+Misses Dobbin, would call in the family carriage to take Amelia and
+the little boy to drive if they were so inclined.  The patronage and
+kindness of these ladies was very uncomfortable to Amelia, but she
+bore it meekly enough, for her nature was to yield; and, besides,
+the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy immense pleasure.
+The ladies begged occasionally that the child might pass a day with
+them, and he was always glad to go to that fine garden-house at
+Denmark Hill, where they lived, and where there were such fine
+grapes in the hot-houses and peaches on the walls.
+
+One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were
+SURE would delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear
+William.
+
+"What was it:  was he coming home?" she asked with pleasure beaming
+in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe
+that dear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a
+very dear friend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael
+O'Dowd's sister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a
+very beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."
+
+Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she
+supposed Glorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was
+most kind--but--but she was very happy indeed.  And by some impulse
+of which I cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms
+and kissed him with an extraordinary tenderness.  Her eyes were
+quite moist when she put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a
+word during the whole of the drive--though she was so very happy
+indeed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+A Cynical Chapter
+
+
+Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old Hampshire
+acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting the disposal of their
+rich kinswoman's property were so woefully disappointed.  After
+counting upon thirty thousand pounds from his sister, it was a heavy
+blow.  to Bute Crawley to receive but five; out of which sum, when
+he had paid his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a
+very small fragment remained to portion off his four plain
+daughters.  Mrs. Bute never knew, or at least never acknowledged,
+how far her own tyrannous behaviour had tended to ruin her husband.
+All that woman could do, she vowed and protested she had done.  Was
+it her fault if she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her
+hypocritical nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished him all the
+happiness which he merited out of his ill-gotten gains.  "At least
+the money will remain in the family," she said charitably.  "Pitt
+will never spend it, my dear, that is quite certain; for a greater
+miser does not exist in England, and he is as odious, though in a
+different way, as his spendthrift brother, the abandoned Rawdon."
+
+So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and disappointment,
+began to accommodate herself as best she could to her altered
+fortunes and to save and retrench with all her might.  She
+instructed her daughters how to bear poverty cheerfully, and
+invented a thousand notable methods to conceal or evade it.  She
+took them about to balls and public places in the neighbourhood,
+with praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her friends in a
+hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much more
+frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy had fallen in.
+From her outward bearing nobody would have supposed that the family
+had been disappointed in their expectations, or have guessed from
+her frequent appearance in public how she pinched and starved at
+home.  Her girls had more milliners' furniture than they had ever
+enjoyed before.  They appeared perseveringly at the Winchester and
+Southampton assemblies; they penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls
+and regatta-gaieties there; and their carriage, with the horses
+taken from the plough, was at work perpetually, until it began
+almost to be believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left
+them by their aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in public
+but with the most tender gratitude and regard.  I know no sort of
+lying which is more frequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be
+remarked how people who practise it take credit to themselves for
+their hypocrisy, and fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and
+praiseworthy, because they are able to deceive the world with regard
+to the extent of their means.
+
+Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most virtuous women
+in England, and the sight of her happy family was an edifying one to
+strangers.  They were so cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so
+simple!  Martha painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the
+charity bazaars in the county.  Emma was a regular County Bulbul,
+and her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were the glory of its
+Poet's Corner.  Fanny and Matilda sang duets together, Mamma playing
+the piano, and the other two sisters sitting with their arms round
+each other's waists and listening affectionately.  Nobody saw the
+poor girls drumming at the duets in private.  No one saw Mamma
+drilling them rigidly hour after hour.  In a word, Mrs. Bute put a
+good face against fortune and kept up appearances in the most
+virtuous manner.
+
+Everything that a good and respectable mother could do Mrs. Bute
+did.  She got over yachting men from Southampton, parsons from the
+Cathedral Close at Winchester, and officers from the barracks there.
+She tried to inveigle the young barristers at assizes and encouraged
+Jim to bring home friends with whom he went out hunting with the H.
+H.  What will not a mother do for the benefit of her beloved ones?
+
+Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the odious Baronet at
+the Hall, it is manifest that there could be very little in common.
+The rupture between Bute and his brother Sir Pitt was complete;
+indeed, between Sir Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man
+was a scandal.  His dislike for respectable society increased with
+age, and the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's carriage-
+wheels since Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their visit of duty
+after their marriage.
+
+That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be thought of by
+the family without horror.  Pitt begged his wife, with a ghastly
+countenance, never to speak of it, and it was only through Mrs. Bute
+herself, who still knew everything which took place at the Hall,
+that the circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and
+daughter-in-law were ever known at all.
+
+As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat and well-
+appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay and wrath great gaps
+among the trees--his trees--which the old Baronet was felling
+entirely without license.  The park wore an aspect of utter
+dreariness and ruin.  The drives were ill kept, and the neat
+carriage splashed and floundered in muddy pools along the road.  The
+great sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was black and
+covered with mosses; the once trim flower-beds rank and weedy.
+Shutters were up along almost the whole line of the house; the great
+hall-door was unbarred after much ringing of the bell; an individual
+in ribbons was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at
+length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley and his bride into the
+halls of their fathers.  He led the way into Sir Pitt's "Library,"
+as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growing stronger as Pitt and
+Lady Jane approached that apartment, "Sir Pitt ain't very well,"
+Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that his master was
+afflicted with lumbago.
+
+The library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had
+opened one of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the
+postilion and Pitt's servant, who seemed to be about to take the
+baggage down.
+
+"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing with a pipe
+which he held in his hand.  "It's only a morning visit, Tucker, you
+fool.  Lor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels!  Ain't there
+no one at the King's Head to rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do,
+my dear? Come to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face,
+too. You ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and
+give old Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."
+
+The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the
+caresses of the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco,
+might well do.  But she remembered that her brother Southdown had
+mustachios, and smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a
+tolerable grace.
+
+"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of affection.
+"Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm,
+Evening Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for
+my Lady Jane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don't stand
+stearing there like a fat pig.  I won't ask you to stop, my dear;
+you'll find it too stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt.  I'm
+an old man now, and like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of
+a night."
+
+"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane, laughing.  "I used
+to play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't I, Mr. Crawley?"
+
+"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you
+are so partial," Pitt said haughtily.
+
+But she wawn't stop for all that.  Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury and
+give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask
+Buty for a dinner.  He'll be charmed to see you, you know; he's so
+much obliged to you for gettin' the old woman's money.  Ha, ha!
+Some of it will do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."
+
+"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice, "that your
+people will cut down the timber."
+
+"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of
+year," Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf.  "But I'm
+gittin' old, Pitt, now.  Law bless you, you ain't far from fifty
+yourself.  But he wears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's
+all godliness, sobriety, and a moral life.  Look at me, I'm not very
+fur from fowr-score--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and
+leered at her and pinched her hand.
+
+Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but the
+Baronet was deaf again in an instant.
+
+"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year with the
+lumbago.  I shan't be here now for long; but I'm glad ee've come,
+daughter-in-law.  I like your face, Lady Jane:  it's got none of the
+damned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something
+pretty, my dear, to go to Court in." And he shuffled across the room
+to a cupboard, from which he took a little old case containing
+jewels of some value.  "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged
+to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty
+pearls--never gave 'em the ironmonger's daughter. No, no.  Take 'em
+and put 'em up quick," said he, thrusting the case into his
+daughter's hand, and clapping the door of the cabinet to, as
+Horrocks entered with a salver and refreshments.
+
+"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said the individual in
+ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old
+gentleman.  It was Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter--the cause
+of the scandal throughout the county--the lady who reigned now
+almost supreme at Queen's Crawley.
+
+The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay
+by the county and family.  The Ribbons opened an account at the
+Mudbury Branch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church,
+monopolising the pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants
+at the Hall.  The domestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The
+Scotch gardener, who still lingered on the premises, taking a pride
+in his walls and hot-houses, and indeed making a pretty good
+livelihood by the garden, which he farmed, and of which he sold the
+produce at Southampton, found the Ribbons eating peaches on a
+sunshiny morning at the south-wall, and had his ears boxed when he
+remonstrated about this attack on his property.  He and his Scotch
+wife and his Scotch children, the only respectable inhabitants of
+Queen's Crawley, were forced to migrate, with their goods and their
+chattels, and left the stately comfortable gardens to go to waste,
+and the flower-beds to run to seed.  Poor Lady Crawley's rose-garden
+became the dreariest wilderness.  Only two or three domestics
+shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall.  The stables and offices
+were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined.  Sir Pitt lived in
+private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-
+steward (as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons.
+The times were very much changed since the period when she drove to
+Mudbury in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen "Sir." It
+may have been shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours,
+but the old Cynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-
+gates at all now.  He quarrelled with his agents and screwed his
+tenants by letter.  His days were passed in conducting his own
+correspondence; the lawyers and farm-bailiffs who had to do business
+with him could not reach him but through the Ribbons, who received
+them at the door of the housekeeper's room, which commanded the back
+entrance by which they were admitted; and so the Baronet's daily
+perplexities increased, and his embarrassments multiplied round him.
+
+The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these reports of his
+father's dotage reached the most exemplary and correct of gentlemen.
+He trembled daily lest he should hear that the Ribbons was
+proclaimed his second legal mother-in-law.  After that first and
+last visit, his father's name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite
+and genteel establishment.  It was the skeleton in his house, and
+all the family walked by it in terror and silence.  The Countess
+Southdown kept on dropping per coach at the lodge-gate the most
+exciting tracts, tracts which ought to frighten the hair off your
+head.  Mrs. Bute at the parsonage nightly looked out to see if the
+sky was red over the elms behind which the Hall stood, and the
+mansion was on fire.  Sir G.  Wapshot and Sir H.  Fuddlestone, old
+friends of the house, wouldn't sit on the bench with Sir Pitt at
+Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the High Street of
+Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his dirty old hands
+to them.  Nothing had any effect upon him; he put his hands into his
+pockets, and burst out laughing, as he scrambled into his carriage
+and four; he used to burst out laughing at Lady Southdown's tracts;
+and he laughed at his sons, and at the world, and at the Ribbons
+when she was angry, which was not seldom.
+
+Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's Crawley, and
+ruled all the domestics there with great majesty and rigour.  All
+the servants were instructed to address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--
+and there was one little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in
+calling her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the
+housekeeper.  "There has been better ladies, and there has been
+worser, Hester," was Miss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her
+inferior; so she ruled, having supreme power over all except her
+father, whom, however, she treated with considerable haughtiness,
+warning him not to be too familiar in his behaviour to one "as was
+to be a Baronet's lady." Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted part in
+life with great satisfaction to herself, and to the amusement of old
+Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her airs and graces, and would laugh by
+the hour together at her assumptions of dignity and imitations of
+genteel life. He swore it was as good as a play to see her in the
+character of a fine dame, and he made her put on one of the first
+Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing (entirely to Miss Horrocks'
+own concurrence) that the dress became her prodigiously, and
+threatening to drive her off that very instant to Court in a coach-
+and-four.  She had the ransacking of the wardrobes of the two
+defunct ladies, and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so as to
+suit her own tastes and figure.  And she would have liked to take
+possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the old Baronet had
+locked them away in his private cabinet; nor could she coax or
+wheedle him out of the keys.  And it is a fact, that some time after
+she left Queen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was
+discovered, which showed that she had taken great pains in private
+to learn the art of writing in general, and especially of writing
+her own name as Lady Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth
+Crawley, &c.
+
+Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall and
+shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strict
+knowledge of all that happened there, and were looking out every day
+for the catastrophe for which Miss Horrocks was also eager.  But
+Fate intervened enviously and prevented her from receiving the
+reward due to such immaculate love and virtue.
+
+One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he jocularly called
+her, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room,
+which had scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles
+upon it--seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling
+to the best of her power in imitation of the music which she had
+sometimes heard.  The little kitchen-maid on her promotion was
+standing at her mistress's side, quite delighted during the
+operation, and wagging her head up and down and crying, "Lor, Mum,
+'tis bittiful"--just like a genteel sycophant in a real drawing-
+room.
+
+This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual.  He
+narrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course of
+the evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks.  He
+thrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, and
+squalled in imitation of her manner of singing.  He vowed that such
+a beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to
+have singing-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous.
+He was in great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and
+butler an extraordinary quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late
+hour the faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his
+bedroom.
+
+Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and bustle in the
+house.  Lights went about from window to window in the lonely
+desolate old Hall, whereof but two or three rooms were ordinarily
+occupied by its owner. Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off
+to Mudbury, to the Doctor's house there.  And in another hour (by
+which fact we ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs. Bute
+Crawley had always kept up an understanding with the great house),
+that lady in her clogs and calash, the Reverend Bute Crawley, and
+James Crawley, her son, had walked over from the Rectory through the
+park, and had entered the mansion by the open hall-door.
+
+They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table
+of which stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which had
+served for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into Sir
+Pitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons,
+with a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch
+of keys.  She dropped them with a scream of terror, as little Mrs.
+Bute's eyes flashed out at her from under her black calash.
+
+"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley," cried Mrs. Bute, pointing at
+the scared figure of the black-eyed, guilty wench.
+
+"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.
+
+"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed Mrs. Bute.  "Bear
+witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this good-for-nothing woman in the
+act of stealing your brother's property; and she will be hanged, as
+I always said she would."
+
+Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on her knees,
+bursting into tears.  But those who know a really good woman are
+aware that she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the
+humiliation of an enemy is a triumph to her soul.
+
+"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said.  "Go on ringing it till the
+people come." The three or four domestics resident in the deserted
+old house came presently at that jangling and continued summons.
+
+"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said.  "We caught her in
+the act of robbing Sir Pitt.  Mr. Crawley, you'll make out her
+committal--and, Beddoes, you'll drive her over in the spring cart,
+in the morning, to Southampton Gaol."
+
+"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--"she's only--"
+
+"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued, stamping in her
+clogs.  "There used to be handcuffs. Where's the creature's
+abominable father?"
+
+"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't he, Hester?
+You saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--give 'em me, ever so long ago--
+the day after Mudbury fair:  not that I want 'em.  Take 'em if you
+think they ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out from
+her pocket a large pair of paste shoe-buckles which had excited her
+admiration, and which she had just appropriated out of one of the
+bookcases in the study, where they had lain.
+
+"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked story!" said
+Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her promotion--"and to
+Madame Crawley, so good and kind, and his Rev'rince (with a
+curtsey), and you may search all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's
+my keys as I'm an honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse
+bred--and if you find so much as a beggarly bit of lace or a silk
+stocking out of all the gownds as YOU'VE had the picking of, may I
+never go to church agin."
+
+"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out the virtuous
+little lady in the calash.
+
+"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum, I can show you
+her room, Mum, and the press in the housekeeper's room, Mum, where
+she keeps heaps and heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager
+little Hester with a profusion of curtseys.
+
+"Hold your tongue, if you please.  I know the room which the
+creature occupies perfectly well.  Mrs. Brown, have the goodness to
+come with me, and Beddoes don't you lose sight of that woman," said
+Mrs. Bute, seizing the candle.  "Mr. Crawley, you had better go
+upstairs and see that they are not murdering your unfortunate
+brother"--and the calash, escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away to the
+apartment which, as she said truly, she knew perfectly well.
+
+Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from Mudbury, with the
+frightened Horrocks over his master in a chair.  They were trying to
+bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.
+
+With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr. Pitt Crawley
+by the Rector's lady, who assumed the command of everything, and had
+watched the old Baronet through the night.  He had been brought back
+to a sort of life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize
+people. Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside.  She never seemed
+to want to sleep, that little woman, and did not close her fiery
+black eyes once, though the Doctor snored in the arm-chair.
+Horrocks made some wild efforts to assert his authority and assist
+his master; but Mrs. Bute called him a tipsy old wretch and bade him
+never show his face again in that house, or he should be transported
+like his abominable daughter.
+
+Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr.
+James was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found no
+liquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum,
+which he fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and
+his son sat down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that
+instant and never to show his face again.
+
+Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys, and he and his
+daughter slunk off silently through the night and gave up possession
+of the house of Queen's Crawley.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family
+
+
+The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after this
+catastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have reigned in Queen's
+Crawley.  For though the old Baronet survived many months, he never
+recovered the use of his intellect or his speech completely, and the
+government of the estate devolved upon his elder son.  In a strange
+condition Pitt found it.  Sir Pitt was always buying and mortgaging;
+he had twenty men of business, and quarrels with each; quarrels with
+all his tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers;
+lawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was
+proprietor; and with every person with whom he had business.  To
+unravel these difficulties and to set the estate clear was a task
+worthy of the orderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel,
+and he set himself to work with prodigious assiduity.  His whole
+family, of course, was transported to Queen's Crawley, whither Lady
+Southdown, of course, came too; and she set about converting the
+parish under the Rector's nose, and brought down her irregular
+clergy to the dismay of the angry Mrs Bute.  Sir Pitt had concluded
+no bargain for the sale of the living of Queen's Crawley; when it
+should drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the patronage into her
+own hands and present a young protege to the Rectory, on which
+subject the diplomatic Pitt said nothing.
+
+Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy Horrocks were not
+carried into effect, and she paid no visit to Southampton Gaol.  She
+and her father left the Hall when the latter took possession of the
+Crawley Arms in the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir
+Pitt. The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there likewise,
+which gave him a vote for the borough.  The Rector had another of
+these votes, and these and four others formed the representative
+body which returned the two members for Queen's Crawley.
+
+There was a show of courtesy kept up between the Rectory and the
+Hall ladies, between the younger ones at least, for Mrs. Bute and
+Lady Southdown never could meet without battles, and gradually
+ceased seeing each other.  Her Ladyship kept her room when the
+ladies from the Rectory visited their cousins at the Hall.  Perhaps
+Mr. Pitt was not very much displeased at these occasional absences
+of his mamma-in-law.  He believed the Binkie family to be the
+greatest and wisest and most interesting in the world, and her
+Ladyship and his aunt had long held ascendency over him; but
+sometimes he felt that she commanded him too much.  To be considered
+young was complimentary, doubtless, but at six-and-forty to be
+treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying.  Lady Jane yielded up
+everything, however, to her mother.  She was only fond of her
+children in private, and it was lucky for her that Lady Southdown's
+multifarious business, her conferences with ministers, and her
+correspondence with all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, and
+Australasia, &c., occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so
+that she had but little time to devote to her granddaughter, the
+little Matilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley. The latter
+was a feeble child, and it was only by prodigious quantities of
+calomel that Lady Southdown was able to keep him in life at all.
+
+As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments where Lady
+Crawley had been previously extinguished, and here was tended by
+Miss Hester, the girl upon her promotion, with constant care and
+assiduity.  What love, what fidelity, what constancy is there equal
+to that of a nurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make
+arrowroot; they get up at nights; they bear complaints and
+querulousness; they see the sun shining out of doors and don't want
+to go abroad; they sleep on arm-chairs and eat their meals in
+solitude; they pass long long evenings doing nothing, watching the
+embers, and the patient's drink simmering in the jug; they read the
+weekly paper the whole week through; and Law's Serious Call or the
+Whole Duty of Man suffices them for literature for the year--and we
+quarrel with them because, when their relations come to see them
+once a week, a little gin is smuggled in in their linen basket.
+Ladies, what man's love is there that would stand a year's nursing
+of the object of his affection? Whereas a nurse will stand by you
+for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly paid.  At
+least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about paying half as much to
+Miss Hester for her constant attendance upon the Baronet his father.
+
+Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a chair on the
+terrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley had had at Brighton, and
+which had been transported thence with a number of Lady Southdown's
+effects to Queen's Crawley.  Lady Jane always walked by the old man,
+and was an evident favourite with him.  He used to nod many times to
+her and smile when she came in, and utter inarticulate deprecatory
+moans when she was going away.  When the door shut upon her he would
+cry and sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was always
+exceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was present, would
+change at once, and she would make faces at him and clench her fist
+and scream out "Hold your tongue, you stoopid old fool," and twirl
+away his chair from the fire which he loved to look at--at which he
+would cry more.  For this was all that was left after more than
+seventy years of cunning, and struggling, and drinking, and
+scheming, and sin and selfishness--a whimpering old idiot put in and
+out of bed and cleaned and fed like a baby.
+
+At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was over.  Early one
+morning, as Pitt Crawley was at his steward's and bailiff's books in
+the study, a knock came to the door, and Hester presented herself,
+dropping a curtsey, and said,
+
+"If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir Pitt.  I
+was a-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel, Sir Pitt, which
+he took every morning regular at six, Sir Pitt, and--I thought I
+heard a moan-like, Sir Pitt--and--and--and--" She dropped another
+curtsey.
+
+What was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite red? Was it
+because he was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat in Parliament, and
+perhaps future honours in prospect? "I'll clear the estate now with
+the ready money," he thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances
+and the improvements which he would make.  He would not use his
+aunt's money previously lest Sir Pitt should recover and his outlay
+be in vain.
+
+All the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory: the church
+bell was tolled, and the chancel hung in black; and Bute Crawley
+didn't go to a coursing meeting, but went and dined quietly at
+Fuddleston, where they talked about his deceased brother and young
+Sir Pitt over their port.  Miss Betsy, who was by this time married
+to a saddler at Mudbury, cried a good deal. The family surgeon rode
+over and paid his respectful compliments, and inquiries for the
+health of their ladyships.  The death was talked about at Mudbury
+and at the Crawley Arms, the landlord whereof had become reconciled
+with the Rector of late, who was occasionally known to step into the
+parlour and taste Mr. Horrocks' mild beer.
+
+"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?" asked Lady Jane of her
+husband, Sir Pitt.
+
+"I will write, of course," Sir Pitt said, "and invite him to the
+funeral:  it will be but becoming."
+
+"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon," said Lady Jane timidly.
+
+"Jane!" said Lady Southdown, "how can you think of such a thing?"
+
+"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked," said Sir Pitt, resolutely.
+
+"Not whilst I am in the house!" said Lady Southdown.
+
+"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am the head of
+this family," Sir Pitt replied.  "If you please, Lady Jane, you will
+write a letter to Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, requesting her presence upon
+this melancholy occasion."
+
+"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the Countess.
+
+"I believe I am the head of this family," Sir Pitt repeated; "and
+however much I may regret any circumstance which may lead to your
+Ladyship quitting this house, must, if you please, continue to
+govern it as I see fit."
+
+Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons in Lady
+Macbeth and ordered that horses might be put to her carriage.  If
+her son and daughter turned her out of their house, she would hide
+her sorrows somewhere in loneliness and pray for their conversion to
+better thoughts.
+
+"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said the timid Lady
+Jane imploringly.
+
+"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady should meet, and
+I will have my horses to-morrow morning."
+
+"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation," said Sir
+Pitt, rising and throwing himself into an attitude of command, like
+the portrait of a Gentleman in the Exhibition, "and begin.  'Queen's
+Crawley, September 14, 1822.--My dear brother--'"
+
+Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth, who had
+been waiting for a sign of weakness or vacillation on the part of
+her son-in-law, rose and, with a scared look, left the library.
+Lady Jane looked up to her husband as if she would fain follow and
+soothe her mamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.
+
+"She won't go away," he said.  "She has let her house at Brighton
+and has spent her last half-year's dividends. A Countess living at
+an inn is a ruined woman.  I have been waiting long for an
+opportunity--to take this--this decisive step, my love; for, as you
+must perceive, it is impossible that there should be two chiefs in a
+family: and now, if you please, we will resume the dictation.  'My
+dear brother, the melancholy intelligence which it is my duty to
+convey to my family must have been long anticipated by,'" &c.
+
+In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having by good luck,
+or desert rather, as he considered, assumed almost all the fortune
+which his other relatives had expected, was determined to treat his
+family kindly and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley
+once more.  It pleased him to think that he should be its chief.  He
+proposed to use the vast influence that his commanding talents and
+position must speedily acquire for him in the county to get his
+brother placed and his cousins decently provided for, and perhaps
+had a little sting of repentance as he thought that he was the
+proprietor of all that they had hoped for.  In the course of three
+or four days' reign his bearing was changed and his plans quite
+fixed:  he determined to rule justly and honestly, to depose Lady
+Southdown, and to be on the friendliest possible terms with all the
+relations of his blood.
+
+So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn and
+elaborate letter, containing the profoundest observations, couched
+in the longest words, and filling with wonder the simple little
+secretary, who wrote under her husband's order.  "What an orator
+this will be," thought she, "when he enters the House of Commons"
+(on which point, and on the tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had
+sometimes dropped hints to his wife in bed); "how wise and good, and
+what a genius my husband is!  I fancied him a little cold; but how
+good, and what a genius!"
+
+The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the letter by heart
+and had studied it, with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly,
+long before he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife.
+
+This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordingly
+despatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother the Colonel, in
+London.  Rawdon Crawley was but half-pleased at the receipt of it.
+"What's the use of going down to that stupid place?" thought he.  "I
+can't stand being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there and
+back will cost us twenty pound."
+
+He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky,
+upstairs in her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he always made
+and took to her of a morning.
+
+He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on the dressing-
+table, before which Becky sat combing her yellow hair.  She took up
+the black-edged missive, and having read it, she jumped up from the
+chair, crying "Hurray!" and waving the note round her head.
+
+"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure capering about
+in a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with tawny locks dishevelled.
+"He's not left us anything, Becky.  I had my share when I came of
+age."
+
+"You'll never be of age, you silly old man," Becky replied.  "Run
+out now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must have some mourning:  and get a
+crape on your hat, and a black waistcoat--I don't think you've got
+one; order it to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able
+to start on Thursday."
+
+"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed.
+
+"Of course I mean to go.  I mean that Lady Jane shall present me at
+Court next year.  I mean that your brother shall give you a seat in
+Parliament, you stupid old creature.  I mean that Lord Steyne shall
+have your vote and his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall
+be an Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor:  or a Treasurer,
+or a Consul, or some such thing."
+
+"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money," grumbled Rawdon.
+
+"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to be present at
+the funeral, as he is a relation of the family:  but, no--I intend
+that we shall go by the coach. They'll like it better.  It seems
+more humble--"
+
+"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked.
+
+"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to travel
+bodkin between you and me.  Let him stay here in the nursery, and
+Briggs can make him a black frock.  Go you, and do as I bid you.
+And you had best tell Sparks, your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead
+and that you will come in for something considerable when the
+affairs are arranged.  He'll tell this to Raggles, who has been
+pressing for money, and it will console poor Raggles." And so Becky
+began sipping her chocolate.
+
+When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening, he found Becky
+and her companion, who was no other than our friend Briggs, busy
+cutting, ripping, snipping, and tearing all sorts of black stuffs
+available for the melancholy occasion.
+
+"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency for the
+death of our Papa," Rebecca said.  "Sir Pitt Crawley is dead, my
+lord.  We have been tearing our hair all the morning, and now we are
+tearing up our old clothes."
+
+"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could say as she
+turned up her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord.  "So that old
+scoundrel's dead, is he? He might have been a Peer if he had played
+his cards better.  Mr. Pitt had very nearly made him; but he ratted
+always at the wrong time.  What an old Silenus it was!"
+
+"I might have been Silenus's widow," said Rebecca. "Don't you
+remember, Miss Briggs, how you peeped in at the door and saw old Sir
+Pitt on his knees to me?" Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very
+much at this reminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered her
+to go downstairs and make him a cup of tea.
+
+Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided as guardian of
+her innocence and reputation.  Miss Crawley had left her a little
+annuity.  She would have been content to remain in the Crawley
+family with Lady Jane, who was good to her and to everybody; but
+Lady Southdown dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency
+permitted; and Mr. Pitt (who thought himself much injured by the
+uncalled-for generosity of his deceased relative towards a lady who
+had only been Miss Crawley's faithful retainer a score of years)
+made no objection to that exercise of the dowager's authority.
+Bowls and Firkin likewise received their legacies and their
+dismissals, and married and set up a lodging-house, according to the
+custom of their kind.
+
+Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country, but found
+that attempt was vain after the better society to which she had been
+accustomed.  Briggs's friends, small tradesmen, in a country town,
+quarrelled over Miss Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and
+more openly than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's
+inheritance.  Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called
+his sister a purse-proud aristocrat, because she would not advance a
+part of her capital to stock his shop; and she would have done so
+most likely, but that their sister, a dissenting shoemaker's lady,
+at variance with the hatter and grocer, who went to another chapel,
+showed how their brother was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took
+possession of Briggs for a while.  The dissenting shoemaker wanted
+Miss Briggs to send his son to college and make a gentleman of him.
+Between them the two families got a great portion of her private
+savings out of her, and finally she fled to London followed by the
+anathemas of both, and determined to seek for servitude again as
+infinitely less onerous than liberty.  And advertising in the papers
+that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable manners, and accustomed to the best
+society, was anxious to," &c., she took up her residence with Mr.
+Bowls in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of the
+advertisement.
+
+So it was that she fell in with Rebecca.  Mrs. Rawdon's dashing
+little carriage and ponies was whirling down the street one day,
+just as Miss Briggs, fatigued, had reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a
+weary walk to the Times Office in the City to insert her
+advertisement for the sixth time.  Rebecca was driving, and at once
+recognized the gentlewoman with agreeable manners, and being a
+perfectly good-humoured woman, as we have seen, and having a regard
+for Briggs, she pulled up the ponies at the doorsteps, gave the
+reins to the groom, and jumping out, had hold of both Briggs's
+hands, before she of the agreeable manners had recovered from the
+shock of seeing an old friend.
+
+Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and kissed the
+gentlewoman as soon as they got into the passage; and thence into
+Mrs. Bowls's front parlour, with the red moreen curtains, and the
+round looking-glass, with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the
+back of the ticket in the window which announced "Apartments to
+Let."
+
+Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobs
+and ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature
+salute an old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for
+though people meet other people every day, yet some there are who
+insist upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they have
+disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and
+remembering the time when they last quarrelled.  So, in a word,
+Briggs told all her history, and Becky gave a narrative of her own
+life, with her usual artlessness and candour.
+
+Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in the passage to
+the hysterical sniffling and giggling which went on in the front
+parlour.  Becky had never been a favourite of hers.  Since the
+establishment of the married couple in London they had frequented
+their former friends of the house of Raggles, and did not like the
+latter's account of the Colonel's menage.  "I wouldn't trust him,
+Ragg, my boy," Bowls remarked; and his wife, when Mrs. Rawdon issued
+from the parlour, only saluted the lady with a very sour curtsey;
+and her fingers were like so many sausages, cold and lifeless, when
+she held them out in deference to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted in
+shaking hands with the retired lady's maid.  She whirled away into
+Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of smiles towards Miss Briggs,
+who hung nodding at the window close under the advertisement-card,
+and at the next moment was in the park with a half-dozen of dandies
+cantering after her carriage.
+
+When she found how her friend was situated, and how having a snug
+legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no object to our gentlewoman,
+Becky instantly formed some benevolent little domestic plans
+concerning her.  This was just such a companion as would suit her
+establishment, and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her
+that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little darling
+Rawdon.
+
+Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into the lion's
+den, "wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my words, and as sure
+as my name is Bowls." And Briggs promised to be very cautious.  The
+upshot of which caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon
+the next week, and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds upon
+annuity before six months were over.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors
+
+
+So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of their
+arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in the
+same old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the
+defunct Baronet's company, on her first journey into the world some
+nine years before.  How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the
+ostler to whom she refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad
+who wrapped her in his coat on the journey!  Rawdon took his place
+outside, and would have liked to drive, but his grief forbade him.
+He sat by the coachman and talked about horses and the road the
+whole way; and who kept the inns, and who horsed the coach by which
+he had travelled so many a time, when he and Pitt were boys going to
+Eton.  At Mudbury a carriage and a pair of horses received them,
+with a coachman in black.  "It's the old drag, Rawdon," Rebecca said
+as they got in.  "The worms have eaten the cloth a good deal--
+there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha!  I see Dawson the Ironmonger
+has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made such a noise about.  It was
+a bottle of cherry brandy he broke which we went to fetch for your
+aunt from Southampton.  How time flies, to be sure!  That can't be
+Polly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the
+cottage there.  I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds
+in the garden."
+
+"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gave
+him, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband.  Becky bowed and
+saluted, and recognized people here and there graciously.  These
+recognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her.  It seemed as if
+she was not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of her
+ancestors.  Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other
+hand.  What recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been
+flitting across his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and
+shame?
+
+"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca said, thinking of
+those girls for the first time perhaps since she had left them.
+
+"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel.  "Hullo! here's old
+Mother Lock.  How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember me, don't you? Master
+Rawdon, hey? Dammy how those old women last; she was a hundred when
+I was a boy."
+
+They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whose
+hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking
+old iron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown
+pillars surmounted by the dove and serpent.
+
+"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said, looking about,
+and then was silent--so was Becky.  Both of them were rather
+agitated, and thinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother,
+whom he remembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of
+whom he had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt;
+and about little Rawdy at home.  And Rebecca thought about her own
+youth and the dark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her
+entrance into life by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe,
+and Amelia.
+
+The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite clean.  A grand
+painted hatchment was already over the great entrance, and two very
+solemn and tall personages in black flung open each a leaf of the
+door as the carriage pulled up at the familiar steps.  Rawdon turned
+red, and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the old hall,
+arm in arm.  She pinched her husband's arm as they entered the oak
+parlour, where Sir Pitt and his wife were ready to receive them.
+Sir Pitt in black, Lady Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a
+large black head-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her
+Ladyship's head like an undertaker's tray.
+
+Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit the premises.
+She contented herself by preserving a solemn and stony silence, when
+in company of Pitt and his rebellious wife, and by frightening the
+children in the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour. Only
+a very faint bending of the head-dress and plumes welcomed Rawdon
+and his wife, as those prodigals returned to their family.
+
+To say the truth, they were not affected very much one way or other
+by this coolness.  Her Ladyship was a person only of secondary
+consideration in their minds just then--they were intent upon the
+reception which the reigning brother and sister would afford them.
+
+Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and shook his brother
+by the hand, and saluted Rebecca with a hand-shake and a very low
+bow.  But Lady Jane took both the hands of her sister-in-law and
+kissed her affectionately. The embrace somehow brought tears into
+the eyes of the little adventuress--which ornaments, as we know, she
+wore very seldom.  The artless mark of kindness and confidence
+touched and pleased her; and Rawdon, encouraged by this
+demonstration on his sister's part, twirled up his mustachios and
+took leave to salute Lady Jane with a kiss, which caused her
+Ladyship to blush exceedingly.
+
+"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane," was his verdict, when he
+and his wife were together again.  "Pitt's got fat, too, and is
+doing the thing handsomely." "He can afford it," said Rebecca and
+agreed in her husband's farther opinion "that the mother-in-law was
+a tremendous old Guy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking
+young women."
+
+They, too, had been summoned from school to attend the funeral
+ceremonies.  It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for the dignity of the
+house and family, had thought right to have about the place as many
+persons in black as could possibly be assembled.  All the men and
+maids of the house, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder
+Sir Pitt had cheated out of a great portion of their due, the parish
+clerk's family, and the special retainers of both Hall and Rectory
+were habited in sable; added to these, the undertaker's men, at
+least a score, with crapes and hatbands, and who made goodly show
+when the great burying show took place--but these are mute
+personages in our drama; and having nothing to do or say, need
+occupy a very little space here.
+
+With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not attempt to forget
+her former position of Governess towards them, but recalled it
+frankly and kindly, and asked them about their studies with great
+gravity, and told them that she had thought of them many and many a
+day, and longed to know of their welfare.  In fact you would have
+supposed that ever since she had left them she had not ceased to
+keep them uppermost in her thoughts and to take the tenderest
+interest in their welfare.  So supposed Lady Crawley herself and her
+young sisters.
+
+"She's hardly changed since eight years," said Miss Rosalind to Miss
+Violet, as they were preparing for dinner.
+
+"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well," replied the other.
+
+"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye it," Miss
+Rosalind added.  "She is stouter, too, and altogether improved,"
+continued Miss Rosalind, who was disposed to be very fat.
+
+"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that she was our
+Governess once," Miss Violet said, intimating that it befitted all
+governesses to keep their proper place, and forgetting altogether
+that she was granddaughter not only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of
+Mr. Dawson of Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon.
+There are other very well-meaning people whom one meets every day in
+Vanity Fair who are surely equally oblivious.
+
+"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that her
+mother was an opera-dancer--"
+
+"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with great
+liberality.  "And I agree with our brother, that as she is in the
+family, of course we are bound to notice her. I am sure Aunt Bute
+need not talk; she wants to marry Kate to young Hooper, the wine-
+merchant, and absolutely asked him to come to the Rectory for
+orders."
+
+"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she looked very glum
+upon Mrs. Rawdon," the other said.
+
+"I wish she would.  I won't read the Washerwoman of Finchley
+Common," vowed Violet; and so saying, and avoiding a passage at the
+end of which a certain coffin was placed with a couple of watchers,
+and lights perpetually burning in the closed room, these young women
+came down to the family dinner, for which the bell rang as usual.
+
+But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the apartments
+prepared for her, which, with the rest of the house, had assumed a
+very much improved appearance of order and comfort during Pitt's
+regency, and here beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks
+had arrived, and were placed in the bedroom and dressing-room
+adjoining, helped her to take off her neat black bonnet and cloak,
+and asked her sister-in-law in what more she could be useful.
+
+"What I should like best," said Rebecca, "would be to go to the
+nursery and see your dear little children." On which the two ladies
+looked very kindly at each other and went to that apartment hand in
+hand.
+
+Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four years old, as
+the most charming little love in the world; and the boy, a little
+fellow of two years--pale, heavy-eyed, and large-headed--she
+pronounced to be a perfect prodigy in point of size, intelligence,
+and beauty.
+
+"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much medicine," Lady
+Jane said with a sigh.  "I often think we should all be better
+without it." And then Lady Jane and her new-found friend had one of
+those confidential medical conversations about the children, which
+all mothers, and most women, as I am given to understand, delight
+in. Fifty years ago, and when the present writer, being an
+interesting little boy, was ordered out of the room with the ladies
+after dinner, I remember quite well that their talk was chiefly
+about their ailments; and putting this question directly to two or
+three since, I have always got from them the acknowledgement that
+times are not changed.  Let my fair readers remark for themselves
+this very evening when they quit the dessert-table and assemble to
+celebrate the drawing-room mysteries.  Well--in half an hour Becky
+and Lady Jane were close and intimate friends--and in the course of
+the evening her Ladyship informed Sir Pitt that she thought her new
+sister-in-law was a kind, frank, unaffected, and affectionate young
+woman.
+
+And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the indefatigable
+little woman bent herself to conciliate the august Lady Southdown.
+As soon as she found her Ladyship alone, Rebecca attacked her on the
+nursery question at once and said that her own little boy was saved,
+actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all the
+physicians in Paris had given the dear child up.  And then she
+mentioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown from that
+excellent man the Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel
+in May Fair, which she frequented; and how her views were very much
+changed by circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a
+past life spent in worldliness and error might not incapacitate her
+from more serious thought for the future. She described how in
+former days she had been indebted to Mr. Crawley for religious
+instruction, touched upon the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which
+she had read with the greatest profit, and asked about Lady Emily,
+its gifted author, now Lady Emily Hornblower, at Cape Town, where
+her husband had strong hopes of becoming Bishop of Caffraria.
+
+But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady Southdown's
+favour, by feeling very much agitated and unwell after the funeral
+and requesting her Ladyship's medical advice, which the Dowager not
+only gave, but, wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady
+Macbeth than ever, came privately in the night to Becky's room with
+a parcel of favourite tracts, and a medicine of her own composition,
+which she insisted that Mrs. Rawdon should take.
+
+Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine them with great
+interest, engaging the Dowager in a conversation concerning them and
+the welfare of her soul, by which means she hoped that her body
+might escape medication.  But after the religious topics were
+exhausted, Lady Macbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her cup
+of night-drink was emptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon was compelled
+actually to assume a look of gratitude, and to swallow the medicine
+under the unyielding old Dowager's nose, who left her victim finally
+with a benediction.
+
+It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance was very queer
+when Rawdon came in and heard what had happened; and.  his
+explosions of laughter were as loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun
+which she could not disguise, even though it was at her own expense,
+described the occurrence and how she had been victimized by Lady
+Southdown.  Lord Steyne, and her son in London, had many a laugh
+over the story when Rawdon and his wife returned to their quarters
+in May Fair.  Becky acted the whole scene for them.  She put on a
+night-cap and gown.  She preached a great sermon in the true serious
+manner; she lectured on the virtue of the medicine which she
+pretended to administer, with a gravity of imitation so perfect that
+you would have thought it was the Countess's own Roman nose through
+which she snuffled. "Give us Lady Southdown and the black dose," was
+a constant cry amongst the folks in Becky's little drawing-room in
+May Fair.  And for the first time in her life the Dowager Countess
+of Southdown was made amusing.
+
+Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and veneration which
+Rebecca had paid personally to himself in early days, and was
+tolerably well disposed towards her.  The marriage, ill-advised as
+it was, had improved Rawdon very much--that was clear from the
+Colonel's altered habits and demeanour--and had it not been a lucky
+union as regarded Pitt himself? The cunning diplomatist smiled
+inwardly as he owned that he owed his fortune to it, and
+acknowledged that he at least ought not to cry out against it.  His
+satisfaction was not removed by Rebecca's own statements, behaviour,
+and conversation.
+
+She doubled the deference which before had charmed him, calling out
+his conversational powers in such a manner as quite to surprise Pitt
+himself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired
+them the more when Rebecca pointed them out to him.  With her
+sister-in-law, Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it was
+Mrs. Bute Crawley who brought about the marriage which she
+afterwards so calumniated; that it was Mrs. Bute's avarice--who
+hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's fortune and deprive Rawdon of his
+aunt's favour--which caused and invented all the wicked reports
+against Rebecca.  "She succeeded in making us poor," Rebecca said
+with an air of angelical patience; "but how can I be angry with a
+woman who has given me one of the best husbands in the world? And
+has not her own avarice been sufficiently punished by the ruin of
+her own hopes and the loss of the property by which she set so much
+store? Poor!" she cried.  "Dear Lady Jane, what care we for poverty?
+I am used to it from childhood, and I am often thankful that Miss
+Crawley's money has gone to restore the splendour of the noble old
+family of which I am so proud to be a member.  I am sure Sir Pitt
+will make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."
+
+All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the most faithful of
+wives, and increased the favourable impression which Rebecca made;
+so much so that when, on the third day after the funeral, the family
+party were at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of
+the table, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem!  Rebecca, may I give
+you a wing?"--a speech which made the little woman's eyes sparkle
+with pleasure.
+
+While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and hopes, and Pitt
+Crawley arranging the funeral ceremonial and other matters connected
+with his future progress and dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her
+nursery, as far as her mother would let her, and the sun rising and
+setting, and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and
+to prayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's Crawley
+lay in the apartment which he had occupied, watched unceasingly by
+the professional attendants who were engaged for that rite.  A woman
+or two, and three or four undertaker's men, the best whom
+Southampton could furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper
+stealthy and tragical demeanour, had charge of the remains which
+they watched turn about, having the housekeeper's room for their
+place of rendezvous when off duty, where they played at cards in
+privacy and drank their beer.
+
+The members of the family and servants of the house kept away from
+the gloomy spot, where the bones of the descendant of an ancient
+line of knights and gentlemen lay, awaiting their final consignment
+to the family crypt. No regrets attended them, save those of the
+poor woman who had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who had
+fled in disgrace from the Hall over which she had so nearly been a
+ruler.  Beyond her and a favourite old pointer he had, and between
+whom and himself an attachment subsisted during the period of his
+imbecility, the old man had not a single friend to mourn him, having
+indeed, during the whole course of his life, never taken the least
+pains to secure one.  Could the best and kindest of us who depart
+from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or
+she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere
+whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding
+how soon our survivors were consoled.  And so Sir Pitt was
+forgotten--like the kindest and best of us--only a few weeks sooner.
+
+Those who will may follow his remains to the grave, whither they
+were borne on the appointed day, in the most becoming manner, the
+family in black coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses,
+ready for the tears which did not come; the undertaker and his
+gentlemen in deep tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of
+compliment to the new landlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages
+at three miles an hour, empty, and in profound affliction; the
+parson speaking out the formula about "our dear brother departed."
+As long as we have a man's body, we play our Vanities upon it,
+surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies, laying it in state, and
+packing it up in gilt nails and velvet; and we finish our duty by
+placing over it a stone, written all over with lies.  Bute's curate,
+a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt Crawley composed
+between them an appropriate Latin epitaph for the late lamented
+Baronet, and the former preached a classical sermon, exhorting the
+survivors not to give way to grief and informing them in the most
+respectful terms that they also would be one day called upon to pass
+that gloomy and mysterious portal which had just closed upon the
+remains of their lamented brother. Then the tenantry mounted on
+horseback again, or stayed and refreshed themselves at the Crawley
+Arms.  Then, after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,
+the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different destinations:
+then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes, palls, velvets, ostrich
+feathers, and other mortuary properties, clambered up on the roof of
+the hearse and rode off to Southampton.  Their faces relapsed into a
+natural expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into
+a brisker trot on the open road; and squads of them might have been
+seen, speckling with black the public-house entrances, with pewter-
+pots flashing in the sunshine.  Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled
+away into a tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl
+sometimes at first, but these were the only accents of grief which
+were heard in the Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, had been
+master for some threescore years.
+
+As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as it
+were the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities,
+Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little
+and partook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it.
+The sight of those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave
+him many secret joys.  Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he
+took no gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his
+big brother, and the keepers blazing away at his side.  Pitt's money
+and acres had a great effect upon his brother.  The penniless
+Colonel became quite obsequious and respectful to the head of his
+house, and despised the milksop Pitt no longer.  Rawdon listened
+with sympathy to his senior's prospects of planting and draining,
+gave his advice about the stables and cattle, rode over to Mudbury
+to look at a mare, which he thought would carry Lady Jane, and
+offered to break her, &c.:  the rebellious dragoon was quite humbled
+and subdued, and became a most creditable younger brother.  He had
+constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London respecting little
+Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messages of his own.  "I
+am very well," he wrote.  "I hope you are very well.  I hope Mamma
+is very well.  The pony is very well.  Grey takes me to ride in the
+park. I can canter.  I met the little boy who rode before.  He cried
+when he cantered.  I do not cry." Rawdon read these letters to his
+brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them.  The Baronet
+promised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted
+wife gave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it
+for her little nephew.
+
+One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their
+life in those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country
+ladies.  Bells rang to meals and to prayers.  The young ladies took
+exercise on the pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca
+giving them the benefit of her instruction.  Then they put on thick
+shoes and walked in the park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings
+into the village, descending upon the cottages, with Lady
+Southdown's medicine and tracts for the sick people there.  Lady
+Southdown drove out in a pony-chaise, when Rebecca would take her
+place by the Dowager's side and listen to her solemn talk with the
+utmost interest.  She sang Handel and Haydn to the family of
+evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work, as if she
+had been born to the business and as if this kind of life was to
+continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite old
+age, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as
+if there were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty
+waiting outside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued
+into the world again.
+
+"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca
+thought.  "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a
+year.  I could dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on
+the wall.  I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead
+leaves from the geraniums.  I could ask old women about their
+rheumatisms and order half-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor.  I
+shouldn't miss it much, out of five thousand a year.  I could even
+drive out ten miles to dine at a neighbour's, and dress in the
+fashions of the year before last. I could go to church and keep
+awake in the great family pew, or go to sleep behind the curtains,
+with my veil down, if I only had practice.  I could pay everybody,
+if I had but the money.  This is what the conjurors here pride
+themselves upon doing.  They look down with pity upon us miserable
+sinners who have none.  They think themselves generous if they give
+our children a five-pound note, and us contemptible if we are
+without one." And who knows but Rebecca was right in her
+speculations--and that it was only a question of money and fortune
+which made the difference between her and an honest woman? If you
+take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than
+his neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not
+make people honest, at least keeps them so.  An alderman coming from
+a turtle feast will not step out of his carnage to steal a leg of
+mutton; but put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a
+loaf.  Becky consoled herself by so balancing the chances and
+equalizing the distribution of good and evil in the world.
+
+The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, and
+gardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple of
+years seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her.  She had
+been young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when
+she ever WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and feelings
+seven years back and contrasted them with those which she had at
+present, now that she had seen the world, and lived with great
+people, and raised herself far beyond her original humble station.
+
+"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky thought,
+"and almost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back
+and consort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my
+father's studio.  Lords come up to my door with stars and garters,
+instead of poor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets.  I
+have a gentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my
+sister, in the very house where I was little better than a servant a
+few years ago.  But am I much better to do now in the world than I
+was when I was the poor painter's daughter and wheedled the grocer
+round the corner for sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis
+who was so fond of me--I couldn't have been much poorer than I am
+now.  Heigho!  I wish I could exchange my position in society, and
+all my relations for a snug sum in the Three Per Cent.  Consols";
+for so it was that Becky felt the Vanity of human affairs, and it
+was in those securities that she would have liked to cast anchor.
+
+It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and
+humble, to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward
+on her way, would have brought her as near happiness as that path by
+which she was striving to attain it.  But--just as the children at
+Queen's Crawley went round the room where the body of their father
+lay--if ever Becky had these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk
+round them and not look in.  She eluded them and despised them--or
+at least she was committed to the other path from which retreat was
+now impossible.  And for my part I believe that remorse is the least
+active of all a man's moral senses--the very easiest to be deadened
+when wakened, and in some never wakened at all.  We grieve at being
+found out and at the idea of shame or punishment, but the mere sense
+of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.
+
+So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends
+of the Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring under
+control.  Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the
+warmest demonstrations of good-will.  They looked forward with
+pleasure to the time when, the family house in Gaunt Street being
+repaired and beautified, they were to meet again in London.  Lady
+Southdown made her up a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her
+to the Rev.  Lawrence Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the
+brand who "honoured" the letter from the burning.  Pitt accompanied
+them with four horses in the carriage to Mudbury, having sent on
+their baggage in a cart previously, accompanied with loads of game.
+
+"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again!" Lady
+Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.
+
+"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She was
+immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go.
+Queen's Crawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was
+somehow purer than that which she had been accustomed to breathe.
+Everybody had been dull, but had been kind in their way.  "It is all
+the influence of a long course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to
+herself, and was right very likely.
+
+However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled into
+Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street,
+and little Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+Which Treats of the Osborne Family
+
+
+Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable
+friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square.  He has not been the
+happiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred
+which have not improved his temper, and in more in stances than one
+he has not been allowed to have his own way.  To be thwarted in this
+reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman;
+and resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age,
+loneliness, and the force of many disappointments combined to weigh
+him down.  His stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after
+his son's death; his-face grew redder; his hands trembled more and
+more as he poured out his glass of port wine.  He led his clerks a
+dire life in the City:  his family at home were not much happier.  I
+doubt if Rebecca, whom we have seen piously praying for Consols,
+would have exchanged her poverty and the dare-devil excitement and
+chances of her life for Osborne's money and the humdrum gloom which
+enveloped him.  He had proposed for Miss Swartz, but had been
+rejected scornfully by the partisans of that lady, who married her
+to a young sprig of Scotch nobility.  He was a man to have married a
+woman out of low life and bullied her dreadfully afterwards; but no
+person presented herself suitable to his taste, and, instead, he
+tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home.  She had a fine
+carriage and fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded with
+the grandest plate.  She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to
+follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and
+compliments from all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an
+heiress; but she spent a woeful time. The little charity-girls at
+the Foundling, the sweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-
+kitchen-maid in the servants' hall, was happy compared to that
+unfortunate and now middle-aged young lady.
+
+Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and
+Bullock, had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of
+difficulty and grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead
+and cut out of his father's will, Frederick insisted that the half
+of the old gentleman's property should be settled upon his Maria,
+and indeed, for a long time, refused, "to come to the scratch" (it
+was Mr. Frederick's own expression) on any other terms.  Osborne
+said Fred had agreed to take his daughter with twenty thousand, and
+he should bind himself to no more.  "Fred might take it, and
+welcome, or leave it, and go and be hanged." Fred, whose hopes had
+been raised when George had been disinherited, thought himself
+infamously swindled by the old merchant, and for some time made as
+if he would break off the match altogether.  Osborne withdrew his
+account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Change with a horsewhip
+which he swore he would lay across the back of a certain scoundrel
+that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his usual violent
+manner.  Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria during this
+family feud.  "I always told you, Maria, that it was your money he
+loved and not you," she said, soothingly.
+
+"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't choose you and
+yours," replied Maria, tossing up her head.
+
+The rapture was, however, only temporary.  Fred's father and senior
+partners counselled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousand
+settled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with the
+chances of the further division of the property.  So he "knuckled
+down," again to use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with
+peaceable overtures to Osborne.  It was his father, he said, who
+would not hear of the match, and had made the difficulties; he was
+most anxious to keep the engagement.  The excuse was sulkily
+accepted by Mr. Osborne.  Hulker and Bullock were a high family of
+the City aristocracy, and connected with the "nobs" at the West End.
+It was something for the old man to be able to say, "My son, sir, of
+the house of Hulker, Bullock, and Co., sir; my daughter's cousin,
+Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter of the Right Hon.  The Earl of
+Castlemouldy." In his imagination he saw his house peopled by the
+"nobs." So he forgave young Bullock and consented that the marriage
+should take place.
+
+It was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the
+breakfast, their habitations being near St.  George's, Hanover
+Square, where the business took place.  The "nobs of the West End"
+were invited, and many of them signed the book.  Mr. Mango and Lady
+Mary Mango were there, with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever
+Mango as bridesmaids; Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest
+son of the house of Bludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane), another cousin
+of the bridegroom, and the Honourable Mrs. Bludyer; the Honourable
+George Boulter, Lord Levant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that
+was; Lord Viscount Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs.
+McMull (formerly Miss Swartz); and a host of fashionables, who have
+all married into Lombard Street and done a great deal to ennoble
+Cornhill.
+
+The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a small villa
+at Roehampton, among the banking colony there.  Fred was considered
+to have made rather a mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whose
+grandfather had been in a Charity School, and who were allied
+through the husbands with some of the best blood in England.  And
+Maria was bound, by superior pride and great care in the composition
+of her visiting-book, to make up for the defects of birth, and felt
+it her duty to see her father and sister as little as possible.
+
+That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so
+many scores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose.
+Fred Bullock would never allow her to do that.  But she was still
+young and incapable of hiding her feelings; and by inviting her papa
+and sister to her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to
+them when they came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and
+indiscreetly begging her father to quit that odious vulgar place,
+she did more harm than all Frederick's diplomacy could repair, and
+perilled her chance of her inheritance like a giddy heedless
+creature as she was.
+
+"So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?" said the
+old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his
+daughter drove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock's, after
+dinner.  "So she invites her father and sister to a second day's
+dinner (if those sides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served
+yesterday, I'm d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and
+keeps the Earls and the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself.
+Honourables? Damn Honourables.  I am a plain British merchant I am,
+and could buy the beggarly hounds over and over.  Lords, indeed!--
+why, at one of her swarreys I saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler
+--a fellar I despise. And they won't come to Russell Square, won't
+they? Why, I'll lay my life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay
+a better figure for it, and can show a handsomer service of silver,
+and can lay a better dinner on my mahogany, than ever they see on
+theirs--the cringing, sneaking, stuck-up fools.  Drive on quick,
+James:  I want to get back to Russell Square--ha, ha!" and he sank
+back into the corner with a furious laugh.  With such reflections on
+his own superior merit, it was the custom of the old gentleman not
+unfrequently to console himself.
+
+Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her
+sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's first-born, Frederick
+Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who
+was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented
+himself with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas
+inside it for the nurse.  "That's more than any of your Lords will
+give, I'LL warrant," he said and refused to attend at the ceremony.
+
+The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the
+house of Bullock.  Maria thought that her father was very much
+pleased with her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son
+and heir.
+
+One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in
+Russell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name
+occurred every now and then, in the articles headed "Fashionable
+Reunions," and where she had an opportunity of reading a description
+of Mrs. F.  Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by
+Lady Frederica Bullock.  Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted
+of no such grandeur.  It was an awful existence. She had to get up
+of black winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old
+father, who would have turned the whole house out of doors if his
+tea had not been ready at half-past eight.  She remained silent
+opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor
+while the parent read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion
+of muffins and tea.  At half-past nine he rose and went to the City,
+and she was almost free till dinner-time, to make visitations in the
+kitchen and to scold the servants; to drive abroad and descend upon
+the tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful; to leave her cards
+and her papa's at the great glum respectable houses of their City
+friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-room, expecting
+visitors; and working at a huge piece of worsted by the fire, on the
+sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled
+with mournful loudness in the dreary room.  The great glass over the
+mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the opposite
+end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown
+Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw these brown
+Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment
+of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of drawing-rooms.
+When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand piano and
+ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a mournful
+sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house.  George's picture
+was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and
+though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter
+often instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention
+was ever made of the brave and once darling son.
+
+At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and
+his daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore
+and was savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they
+shared twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's
+rank and age.  Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old
+Mr. Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and
+from his business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End";
+old Colonel Livermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from
+Upper Bedford Place; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and
+sometimes old Sir Thomas Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford
+Square.  Sir Thomas was celebrated as a hanging judge, and the
+particular tawny port was produced when he dined with Mr. Osborne.
+
+These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant
+pompous dinners back again.  They had solemn rubbers of whist, when
+they went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called
+at half past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the
+habit of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above
+described.  Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and
+almost the only bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr.
+Smirk, the celebrated ladies' doctor.
+
+I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of
+this awful existence:  the fact is, there had been a secret in poor
+Jane's life which had made her father more savage and morose than
+even nature, pride, and over-feeding had made him.  This secret was
+connected with Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very
+celebrated since as a portrait-painter and R.A., but who once was
+glad enough to give drawing lessons to ladies of fashion.  Mr. Smee
+has forgotten where Russell Square is now, but he was glad enough to
+visit it in the year 1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from
+him.
+
+Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a dissolute,
+irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of
+his art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by
+her to Miss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after
+various incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this
+lady, and it is believed inspired one in her bosom.  Miss Wirt was
+the confidante of this intrigue.  I know not whether she used to
+leave the room where the master and his pupil were painting, in
+order to give them an opportunity for exchanging those vows and
+sentiments which cannot be uttered advantageously in the presence of
+a third party; I know not whether she hoped that should her cousin
+succeed in carrying off the rich merchant's daughter, he would give
+Miss Wirt a portion of the wealth which she had enabled him to win--
+all that is certain is that Mr. Osborne got some hint of the
+transaction, came back from the City abruptly, and entered the
+drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found the painter, the pupil, and
+the companion all looking exceedingly pale there; turned the former
+out of doors with menaces that he would break every bone in his
+skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirt likewise,
+kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on her bandboxes, and
+shaking his fist at her hackney coach as it bore her away.
+
+Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days.  She was not allowed to
+have a companion afterwards.  Her father swore to her that she
+should not have a shilling of his money if she made any match
+without his concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house,
+he did not choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to
+give up all projects with which Cupid had any share. During her
+papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the manner of existence
+here described, and was content to be an old maid.  Her sister,
+meanwhile, was having children with finer names every year and the
+intercourse between the two grew fainter continually.  "Jane and I
+do not move in the same sphere of life," Mrs. Bullock said.  "I
+regard her as a sister, of course"--which means--what does it mean
+when a lady says that she regards Jane as a sister?
+
+It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with their father
+at a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there were beautiful
+graperies and peach-trees which delighted little Georgy Osborne.
+The Misses Dobbin, who drove often to Brompton to see our dear
+Amelia, came sometimes to Russell Square too, to pay a visit to
+their old acquaintance Miss Osborne.  I believe it was in
+consequence of the commands of their brother the Major in India (for
+whom their papa had a prodigious respect), that they paid attention
+to Mrs. George; for the Major, the godfather and guardian of
+Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the child's grandfather might
+be induced to relent towards him and acknowledge him for the sake of
+his son.  The Misses Dobbin kept Miss Osborne acquainted with the
+state of Amelia's affairs; how she was living with her father and
+mother; how poor they were; how they wondered what men, and such men
+as their brother and dear Captain Osborne, could find in such an
+insignificant little chit; how she was still, as heretofore, a
+namby-pamby milk-and-water affected creature--but how the boy was
+really the noblest little boy ever seen--for the hearts of all women
+warm towards young children, and the sourest spinster is kind to
+them.
+
+One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin,
+Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at
+Denmark Hill--a part of which day she spent herself in writing to
+the Major in India.  She congratulated him on the happy news which
+his sisters had just conveyed to her.  She prayed for his prosperity
+and that of the bride he had chosen.  She thanked him for a thousand
+thousand kind offices and proofs of stead fast friendship to her in
+her affliction.  She told him the last news about little Georgy, and
+how he was gone to spend that very day with his sisters in the
+country.  She underlined the letter a great deal, and she signed
+herself affectionately his friend, Amelia Osborne.  She forgot to
+send any message of kindness to Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and
+did not mention Glorvina by name, and only in italics, as the
+Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings.  But the news of the
+marriage removed the reserve which she had kept up towards him.  She
+was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly and gratefully she
+regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous of Glorvina
+(Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel from
+heaven had hinted it to her.  That night, when Georgy came back in
+the pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven
+by Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold
+chain and watch.  He said an old lady, not pretty, had given it him,
+who cried and kissed him a great deal.  But he didn't like her.  He
+liked grapes very much.  And he only liked his mamma.  Amelia shrank
+and started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when she
+heard that the relations of the child's father had seen him.
+
+Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner.  He had made a
+good speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that
+day, and chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured.
+"What's the matter, Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.
+
+The woman burst into tears.  "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen little
+George.  He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like him!" The old
+man opposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up and began to
+tremble in every limb.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
+
+
+The astonished reader must be called upon to transport himself ten
+thousand miles to the military station of Bundlegunge, in the Madras
+division of our Indian empire, where our gallant old friends of the
+--th regiment are quartered under the command of the brave Colonel,
+Sir Michael O'Dowd.  Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer,
+as it does ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good
+tempers and are not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain.
+The Colonel plays a good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those
+weapons with great success at dinner.  He smokes his hookah after
+both meals and puffs as quietly while his wife scolds him as he did
+under the fire of the French at Waterloo.  Age and heat have not
+diminished the activity or the eloquence of the descendant of the
+Malonys and the Molloys.  Her Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as
+much at home at Madras as at Brussels in the cantonment as under the
+tents.  On the march you saw her at the head of the regiment seated
+on a royal elephant, a noble sight. Mounted on that beast, she has
+been into action with tigers in the jungle, she has been received by
+native princes, who have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses
+of their zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went to
+her heart to refuse.  The sentries of all arms salute her wherever
+she makes her appearance, and she touches her hat gravely to their
+salutation.  Lady O'Dowd is one of the greatest ladies in the
+Presidency of Madras--her quarrel with Lady Smith, wife of Sir Minos
+Smith the puisne judge, is still remembered by some at Madras, when
+the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face
+and said SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian.  Even
+now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people remember Lady
+O'Dowd performing a jig at Government House, where she danced down
+two Aides-de-Camp, a Major of Madras cavalry, and two gentlemen of
+the Civil Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B., second in
+command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata nondum
+satiata recessit.
+
+Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and thought;
+impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant over her Michael; a
+dragon amongst all the ladies of the regiment; a mother to all the
+young men, whom she tends in their sickness, defends in all their
+scrapes, and with whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular.  But the
+Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried) cabal
+against her a good deal.  They say that Glorvina gives herself airs
+and that Peggy herself is ill tolerably domineering.  She interfered
+with a little congregation which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed
+the young men away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife
+had no business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much better
+mending her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment wanted sermons,
+that she had the finest in the world, those of her uncle, the Dean.
+She abruptly put a termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant
+Stubble of the regiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife,
+threatening to come down upon Stubble for the money which he had
+borrowed from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant
+turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on sick
+leave.  On the other hand, she housed and sheltered Mrs. Posky, who
+fled from her bungalow one night, pursued by her infuriate husband,
+wielding his second brandy bottle, and actually carried Posky
+through the delirium tremens and broke him of the habit of drinking,
+which had grown upon that officer, as all evil habits will grow upon
+men.  In a word, in adversity she was the best of comforters, in
+good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having a perfectly
+good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolution to have
+her own way.
+
+Among other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should
+marry our old friend Dobbin.  Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's
+expectations and appreciated his good qualities and the high
+character which he enjoyed in his profession.  Glorvina, a very
+handsome, fresh-coloured, black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who
+could ride a horse, or play a sonata with any girl out of the County
+Cork, seemed to be the very person destined to insure Dobbin's
+happiness--much more than that poor good little weak-spur'ted
+Amelia, about whom he used to take on so.--"Look at Glorvina enter a
+room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "and compare her with that poor Mrs.
+Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a goose.  She'd be worthy of you,
+Major--you're a quiet man yourself, and want some one to talk for
+ye.  And though she does not come of such good blood as the Malonys
+or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an ancient family that any
+nobleman might be proud to marry into."
+
+But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
+subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned that
+Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere.  She had had a
+season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, and
+Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom the
+depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who
+seemed eligible.  She had been engaged to be married a half-score
+times in Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill.
+She had flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief
+mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the
+Presidency with her brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there,
+while the Major of the regiment was in command at the station.
+Everybody admired her there; everybody danced with her; but no one
+proposed who was worth the marrying--one or two exceedingly young
+subalterns sighed after her, and a beardless civilian or two, but
+she rejected these as beneath her pretensions--and other and younger
+virgins than Glorvina were married before her.  There are women, and
+handsome women too, who have this fortune in life.  They fall in
+love with the utmost generosity; they ride and walk with half the
+Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the Misses
+O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still:  Glorvina persisted that but
+for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge's lady, she would
+have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at
+the head of the civil service (and who afterwards married Miss
+Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who had just arrived
+from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposing to her.
+
+Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a great number of
+times every day, and upon almost every conceivable subject--indeed,
+if Mick O'Dowd had not possessed the temper of an angel two such
+women constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his
+senses--yet they agreed between themselves on this point, that
+Glorvina should marry Major Dobbin, and were determined that the
+Major should have no rest until the arrangement was brought about.
+Undismayed by forty or fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege
+to him.  She sang Irish melodies at him unceasingly.  She asked him
+so frequently and pathetically, Will ye come to the bower? that it
+is a wonder how any man of feeling could have resisted the
+invitation.  She was never tired of inquiring, if Sorrow had his
+young days faded, and was ready to listen and weep like Desdemona at
+the stories of his dangers and his campaigns.  It has been said that
+our honest and dear old friend used to perform on the flute in
+private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets with him, and Lady
+O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit the room when the young couple
+were so engaged. Glorvina forced the Major to ride with her of
+mornings.  The whole cantonment saw them set out and return.  She
+was constantly writing notes over to him at his house, borrowing his
+books, and scoring with her great pencil-marks such passages of
+sentiment or humour as awakened her sympathy.  She borrowed his
+horses, his servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that
+public rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
+England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-law.
+
+Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the meanwhile in a
+state of the most odious tranquillity.  He used to laugh when the
+young fellows of the regiment joked him about Glorvina's manifest
+attentions to him. "Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--
+she practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano, because
+it's the most handy instrument in the station.  I am much too
+battered and old for such a fine young lady as Glorvina." And so he
+went on riding with her, and copying music and verses into her
+albums, and playing at chess with her very submissively; for it is
+with these simple amusements that some officers in India are
+accustomed to while away their leisure moments, while others of a
+less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and smoke
+cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-water.  As for Sir
+Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her sister both urged him to
+call upon the Major to explain himself and not keep on torturing a
+poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the old soldier refused
+point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy.  "Faith, the
+Major's big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll
+ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the matter off
+jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young to keep house, and
+had written home to ask lave of his mamma." Nay, he went farther,
+and in private communications with his Major would caution and rally
+him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent on
+mischief--me Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe,  and
+there's a pink satin for Glorvina, which will finish ye,  Dob, if
+it's in the power of woman or satin to move ye."
+
+But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer him.  Our
+honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his head, and that one
+did not in the least resemble Miss Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin.  A
+gentle little woman in black, with large eyes and brown hair, seldom
+speaking, save when spoken to, and then in a voice not the least
+resembling Miss Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant
+and beckoning the Major up with a smile to look at him--a rosy-
+cheeked lass coming singing into the room in Russell Square or
+hanging on George Osborne's arm, happy and loving--there was but
+this image that filled our honest Major's mind, by day and by night,
+and reigned over it always.  Very likely Amelia was not like the
+portrait the Major had formed of her:  there was a figure in a book
+of fashions which his sisters had in England, and with which William
+had made away privately, pasting it into the lid of his desk, and
+fancying he saw some resemblance to Mrs. Osborne in the print,
+whereas I have seen it, and can vouch that it is but the picture of
+a high-waisted gown with an impossible doll's face simpering over
+it--and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no more like
+the real one than this absurd little print which he cherished.  But
+what man in love, of us, is better informed?--or is he much happier
+when he sees and owns his delusion? Dobbin was under this spell.  He
+did not bother his friends and the public much about his feelings,
+or indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account of them.  His
+head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or two of silver
+may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise.  But his feelings are
+not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remains as fresh
+as a man's recollections of boyhood are.
+
+We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the Major's
+correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from England, Mrs.
+Osborne congratulating him with great candour and cordiality upon
+his approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd. "Your sister has just
+kindly visited me," Amelia wrote in her letter, "and informed me of
+an INTERESTING EVENT, upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE
+CONGRATULATIONS. I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to be
+UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who is himself all
+kindness and goodness.  The poor widow has only her prayers to offer
+and her cordial cordial wishes for YOUR PROSPERITY!  Georgy sends
+his love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA and hopes that you will not forget him.
+I tell him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who I am
+sure merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of
+course be the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS,
+yet that I am sure the widow and the child whom you have ever
+protected and loved will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The
+letter, which has been before alluded to, went on in this strain,
+protesting throughout as to the extreme satisfaction of the writer.
+
+This letter, .which arrived by the very same ship which brought out
+Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be
+sure Dobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the
+mail brought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that
+Glorvina, and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became
+perfectly odious to him.  The Major cursed the talk of women, and
+the sex in general.  Everything annoyed him that day--the parade was
+insufferably hot and wearisome.  Good heavens! was a man of
+intellect to waste his life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts
+and putting fools through their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of
+the young men at mess was more than ever jarring. What cared he, a
+man on the high road to forty, to know how many snipes Lieutenant
+Smith had shot, or what were the performances of Ensign Brown's
+mare? The jokes about the table filled him with shame.  He was too
+old to listen to the banter of the assistant surgeon and the slang
+of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with his bald head and red
+face, laughed quite easily.  The old man had listened to those jokes
+any time these thirty years--Dobbin himself had been fifteen years
+hearing them.  And after the boisterous dulness of the mess-table,
+the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment! It was
+unbearable, shameful.  "O Amelia, Amelia," he thought, "you to whom
+I have been so faithful--you reproach me!  It is because you cannot
+feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life.  And you reward me
+after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage,
+forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poor
+William; more than ever wretched and lonely.  He would like to have
+done with life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and
+unsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
+seemed to him.  He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go
+home.  Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him.  No fidelity,
+no constant truth and passion, could move her into warmth.  She
+would not see that he loved her.  Tossing in his bed, he spoke out
+to her. "Good God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I only
+love you in the world--you, who are a stone to me--you, whom I
+tended through months and months of illness and grief, and who bade
+me farewell with a smile on your face, and forgot me before the door
+shut between us!" The native servants lying outside his verandas
+beheld with wonder the Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily, at
+present so passionately moved and cast down.  Would she have pitied
+him had she seen him? He read over and over all the letters which he
+ever had from her--letters of business relative to the little
+property which he had made her believe her husband had left to her--
+brief notes of invitation--every scrap of writing that she had ever
+sent to him--how cold, how kind, how hopeless, how selfish they
+were!
+
+Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and
+appreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign
+of Amelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might
+have flowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of
+the jetty ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this
+dashing young woman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather
+on making the Major admire HER--a most vain and hopeless task, too,
+at least considering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry
+it out.  She curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as
+much as to say, did ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a
+complexion? She grinned at him so that he might see that every tooth
+in her head was sound--and he never heeded all these charms.  Very
+soon after the arrival of the box of millinery, and perhaps indeed
+in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the ladies of the King's Regiment
+gave a ball to the Company's Regiments and the civilians at the
+station.  Glorvina sported the killing pink frock, and the Major,
+who attended the party and walked very ruefully up and down the
+rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment. Glorvina danced
+past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of the station, and
+the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance, or angry
+because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper.  It was
+not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and
+Glorvina had nothing more.
+
+So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and
+each longing for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with
+rage at the failure.  She had set her mind on the Major "more than
+on any of the others," she owned, sobbing.  "He'll break my heart,
+he will, Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they
+were good friends; "sure every one of me frocks must be taken in--
+it's such a skeleton I'm growing." Fat or thin, laughing or
+melancholy, on horseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to
+the Major.  And the Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these
+complaints, would suggest that Glory should have some black frocks
+out in the next box from London, and told a mysterious story of a
+lady in Ireland who died of grief for the loss of her husband before
+she got ere a one.
+
+While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing,
+and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe
+bringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the
+heartless man.  These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark
+than that of the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized
+among his the handwriting of his sister, who always crossed and
+recrossed her letters to her brother--gathered together all the
+possible bad news which she could collect, abused him and read him
+lectures with sisterly frankness, and always left him miserable for
+the day after "dearest William" had achieved the perusal of one of
+her epistles--the truth must be told that dearest William did not
+hurry himself to break the seal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited
+for a particularly favourable day and mood for doing so.  A
+fortnight before, moreover, he had written to scold her for telling
+those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne, and had despatched a letter in
+reply to that lady, undeceiving her with respect to the reports
+concerning him and assuring her that "he had no sort of present
+intention of altering his condition."
+
+Two or three nights after the arrival of the second package of
+letters, the Major had passed the evening pretty cheerfully at Lady
+O'Dowd's house, where Glorvina thought that he listened with rather
+more attention than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the
+Minsthrel Boy, and one or two other specimens of song with which she
+favoured him (the truth is, he was no more listening to Glorvina
+than to the howling of the jackals in the moonlight outside, and the
+delusion was hers as usual), and having played his game at chess
+with her (cribbage with the surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite
+evening pastime), Major Dobbin took leave of the Colonel's family at
+his usual hour and retired to his own house.
+
+There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching him.  He
+took it up, ashamed rather of his negligence regarding it, and
+prepared himself for a disagreeable hour's communing with that
+crabbed-handed absent relative. . . . It may have been an hour
+after the Major's departure from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael
+was sleeping the sleep of the just; Glorvina had arranged her black
+ringlets in the innumerable little bits of paper, in which it was
+her habit to confine them; Lady O'Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in
+the nuptial chamber, on the ground-floor, and had tucked her
+musquito curtains round her fair form, when the guard at the gates
+of the Commanding-Officer's compound beheld Major Dobbin, in the
+moonlight, rushing towards the house with a swift step and a very
+agitated countenance, and he passed the sentinel and went up to the
+windows of the Colonel's bedchamber.
+
+"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great shouting.
+
+"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers, putting out her
+head too, from her window.
+
+"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting there was a
+fire in the station, or that the route had come from headquarters.
+
+"I--I must have leave of absence.  I must go to England--on the most
+urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.
+
+"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina, trembling with
+all the papillotes.
+
+"I want to be off--now--to-night," Dobbin continued; and the Colonel
+getting up, came out to parley with him.
+
+In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the Major had just
+come upon a paragraph, to the following effect:--"I drove yesterday
+to see your old ACQUAINTANCE, Mrs. Osborne.  The wretched place they
+live at, since they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from
+a BRASS PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better) is a
+coal-merchant.  The little boy, your godson, is certainly a fine
+child, though forward, and inclined to be saucy and self-willed.
+But we have taken notice of him as you wish it, and have introduced
+him to his aunt, Miss O., who was rather pleased with him.  Perhaps
+his grandpapa, not the bankrupt one, who is almost doting, but Mr.
+Osborne, of Russell Square, may be induced to relent towards the
+child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND SELF-WILLED SON.  And Amelia
+will not be ill-disposed to give him up.  The widow is CONSOLED, and
+is about to marry a reverend gentleman, the Rev.  Mr. Binny, one of
+the curates of Brompton.  A poor match.  But Mrs. O. is getting old,
+and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--she was in very good
+spirits:  and your little godson overate himself at our house.
+Mamma sends her love with that of your affectionate, Ann Dobbin."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire
+
+
+Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street,
+still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there
+as a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this
+heraldic emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of
+furniture, and all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant
+than it had ever been during the late baronet's reign.  The black
+outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they appeared with a
+cheerful, blushing face streaked with white: the old bronze lions of
+the knocker were gilt handsomely, the railings painted, and the
+dismallest house in Great Gaunt Street became the smartest in the
+whole quarter, before the green leaves in Hampshire had replaced
+those yellowing ones which were on the trees in Queen's Crawley
+Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them for the last
+time.
+
+A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seen
+about this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little
+boy, also might be remarked coming thither daily.  It was Miss
+Briggs and little Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward
+renovation of Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band
+engaged in stitching the blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in
+the drawers and cupboards crammed with the dirty relics and
+congregated trumperies of a couple of generations of Lady Crawleys,
+and to take inventories of the china, the glass, and other
+properties in the closets and store-rooms.
+
+Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements,
+with full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or
+purchase furniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an
+occupation which gave full scope to her taste and ingenuity.  The
+renovation of the house was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to
+town in November to see his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a
+week in Curzon Street, under the roof of his affectionate brother
+and sister.
+
+He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard
+of the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned
+in an hour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her
+side.  It was impossible sometimes to resist this artless little
+creature's hospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly
+and amiably offered.  Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of
+gratitude when he agreed to come.  "Thank you," she said, squeezing
+it and looking into the Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal;
+"how happy this will make Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom,
+leading on the servants, who were carrying his trunks thither.  She
+came in herself laughing, with a coal-scuttle out of her own room.
+
+A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was Miss
+Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with the
+maid).  "I knew I should bring you," she said with pleasure beaming
+in her glance.  Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him
+for a guest.
+
+Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt
+stayed with them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone
+with her and Briggs.  She went downstairs to the kitchen and
+actually cooked little dishes for him.  "Isn't it a good salmi?" she
+said; "I made it for you.  I can make you better dishes than that,
+and will when you come to see me."
+
+"Everything you do, you do well," said the Baronet gallantly.  "The
+salmi is excellent indeed."
+
+"A poor man's wife," Rebecca replied gaily, "must make herself
+useful, you know"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that "she was
+fit to be the wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic
+duties was surely one of the most charming of woman's qualities."
+And Sir Pitt thought, with something like mortification, of Lady
+Jane at home, and of a certain pie which she had insisted on making,
+and serving to him at dinner--a most abominable pie.
+
+Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from
+his lordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law
+a bottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him from
+France, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;
+whereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the
+Marquis of Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the
+Baronet's pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.
+
+Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave
+him her hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug
+on the sofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the
+tenderest kindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for
+her dear little boy.  Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly
+humble and virtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-
+box.  It had got to be too small for Rawdon long before it was
+finished.
+
+Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him,
+she coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and
+more glad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to
+the blazing fire in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of
+law likewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest-
+-and so that when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing.
+How pretty she looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and
+waving her handkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail!
+She put the handkerchief to her eyes once.  He pulled his sealskin
+cap over his, as the coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought
+to himself how she respected him and how he deserved it, and how
+Rawdon was a foolish dull fellow who didn't half-appreciate his
+wife; and how mum and stupid his own wife was compared to that
+brilliant little Becky.  Becky had hinted every one of these things
+herself, perhaps, but so delicately and gently that you hardly knew
+when or where.  And, before they parted, it was agreed that the
+house in London should be redecorated for the next season, and that
+the brothers' families should meet again in the country at
+Christmas.
+
+"I wish you could have got a little money out of him," Rawdon said
+to his wife moodily when the Baronet was gone.  "I should like to
+give something to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't.  It ain't
+right, you know, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his
+money.  It may be inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else
+besides us, you know."
+
+"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are
+settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on
+account.  Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy," and she took
+from her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had
+handed over to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the
+younger branch of the Crawleys.
+
+The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her
+husband expressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so
+delicately, and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about
+embarrassments, Sir Pitt Crawley was off and alarmed.  And he began
+a long speech, explaining how straitened he himself was in money
+matters; how the tenants would not pay; how his father's affairs,
+and the expenses attendant upon the demise of the old gentleman, had
+involved him; how he wanted to pay off incumbrances; and how the
+bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt Crawley ended by making
+a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving her a very small sum
+for the benefit of her little boy.
+
+Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be.  It
+could not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old
+diplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that
+houses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing.  He knew very
+well that he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,
+according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his
+younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of
+remorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some
+act of justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these
+disappointed relations.  A just, decent man, not without brains, who
+said his prayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly
+through life, he could not be otherwise than aware that something
+was due to his brother at his hands, and that morally he was
+Rawdon's debtor.
+
+But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now
+and then, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
+acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A.  B., or 10 pounds
+from W.  T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the
+said A.  B.  or W.  T., which payments the penitents beg the Right
+Honourable gentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public
+press--so is the Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise,
+always perfectly sure that the above-named A.  B.  and W.  T.  are
+only paying a very small instalment of what they really owe, and
+that the man who sends up a twenty-pound note has very likely
+hundreds or thousands more for which he ought to account.  Such, at
+least, are my feelings, when I see A.  B.  or W.  T.'s insufficient
+acts of repentance.  And I have no doubt that Pitt Crawley's
+contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his younger brother, by
+whom he had so much profited, was only a very small dividend upon
+the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not everybody is
+willing to pay even so much.  To part with money is a sacrifice
+beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order.  There is
+scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for
+giving his neighbour five pounds.  Thriftless gives, not from a
+beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending.
+He would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not
+his horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus
+the five pounds.  Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man
+a penny, turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or
+denies a poor relation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the
+two.  Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.
+
+So, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for his
+brother, and then thought that he would think about it some other
+time.
+
+And with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who expected too much
+from the generosity of her neighbours, and so was quite content with
+all that Pitt Crawley had done for her.  She was acknowledged by the
+head of the family.  If Pitt would not give her anything, he would
+get something for her some day.  If she got no money from her
+brother-in-law, she got what was as good as money--credit.  Raggles
+was made rather easy in his mind by the spectacle of the union
+between the brothers, by a small payment on the spot, and by the
+promise of a much larger sum speedily to be assigned to him.  And
+Rebecca told Miss Briggs, whose Christmas dividend upon the little
+sum lent by her Becky paid with an air of candid joy, and as if her
+exchequer was brimming over with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss
+Briggs, in strict confidence that she had conferred with Sir Pitt,
+who was famous as a financier, on Briggs's special behalf, as to the
+most profitable investment of Miss B.'s remaining capital; that Sir
+Pitt, after much consideration, had thought of a most safe and
+advantageous way in which Briggs could lay out her money; that,
+being especially interested in her as an attached friend of the late
+Miss Crawley, and of the whole family, and that long before he left
+town, he had recommended that she should be ready with the money at
+a moment's notice, so as to purchase at the most favourable
+opportunity the shares which Sir Pitt had in his eye.  Poor Miss
+Briggs was very grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--it
+came so unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought of
+removing the money from the funds--and the delicacy enhanced the
+kindness of the office; and she promised to see her man of business
+immediately and be ready with her little cash at the proper hour.
+
+And this worthy woman was so grateful for the kindness of Rebecca in
+the matter, and for that of her generous benefactor, the Colonel,
+that she went out and spent a great part of her half-year's dividend
+in the purchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by
+the way, was grown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a
+size and age befitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket
+and pantaloons.
+
+He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair,
+sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching
+himself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown,
+who gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he
+saw that kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the
+pony--to Molly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at
+night, and with good things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he
+plagued and laughed at--and to his father especially, whose
+attachment towards the lad was curious too to witness.  Here, as he
+grew to be about eight years old, his attachments may be said to
+have ended.  The beautiful mother-vision had faded away after a
+while.  During near two years she had scarcely spoken to the child.
+She disliked him.  He had the measles and the hooping-cough.  He
+bored her.  One day when he was standing at the landing-place,
+having crept down from the upper regions, attracted by the sound of
+his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, the drawing room
+door opening suddenly, discovered the little spy, who but a moment
+before had been rapt in delight, and listening to the music.
+
+His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on
+the ear.  He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who
+was amused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper)
+and fled down below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an
+agony of grief.
+
+"It is not because it hurts me," little Rawdon gasped out--"only--
+only"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm.  It was the
+little boy's heart that was bleeding.  "Why mayn't I hear her
+singing? Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that
+baldheaded man with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various
+intervals these exclamations of rage and grief.  The cook looked at
+the housemaid, the housemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the
+awful kitchen inquisition which sits in judgement in every house and
+knows everything--sat on Rebecca at that moment.
+
+After this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the
+consciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a
+pain to her.  His very sight annoyed her.  Fear, doubt, and
+resistance sprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom.  They were
+separated from that day of the boxes on the ear.
+
+Lord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy.  When they met by
+mischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared
+at him with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the
+face and double his little fists in return.  He knew his enemy, and
+this gentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who
+angered him most.  One day the footman found him squaring his fists
+at Lord Steyne's hat in the hall.  The footman told the circumstance
+as a good joke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it
+to Lord Steyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general.
+And very soon afterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her
+appearance at Gaunt House, the porter who unbarred the gates, the
+servants of all uniforms in the hall, the functionaries in white
+waistcoats, who bawled out from landing to landing the names of
+Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knew about her, or fancied they
+did. The man who brought her refreshment and stood behind her chair,
+had talked her character over with the large gentleman in motley-
+coloured clothes at his side.  Bon Dieu! it is awful, that servants'
+inquisition!  You see a woman in a great party in a splendid saloon,
+surrounded by faithful admirers, distributing sparkling glances,
+dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling and happy--Discovery
+walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a huge powdered man
+with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (which is as
+fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow
+carrying the wafer-biscuits.  Madam, your secret will be talked over
+by those men at their club at the public-house to-night.  Jeames
+will tell Chawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter
+beer-pots.  Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity
+Fair--mutes who could not write. If you are guilty, tremble.  That
+fellow behind your chair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his
+plush breeches pocket.  If you are not guilty, have a care of
+appearances, which are as ruinous as guilt.
+
+"Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgericht of tho servants' hall
+had pronounced against her.
+
+And, I shame to say, she would not have got credit had they not
+believed her to be guilty.  It was the sight of the Marquis of
+Steyne's carriage-lamps at her door, contemplated by Raggles,
+burning in the blackness of midnight, "that kep him up," as he
+afterwards said, that even more than Rebecca's arts and coaxings.
+
+And so--guiltless very likely--she was writhing and pushing onward
+towards what they call "a position in society," and the servants
+were pointing at her as lost and ruined.  So you see Molly, the
+housemaid, of a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his
+thread and laboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, she
+raises her broom and sweeps away the thread and the artificer.
+
+A day or two before Christmas, Becky, her husband and her son made
+ready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors
+at Queen's Crawley.  Becky would have liked to leave the little brat
+behind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent
+invitations to the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and
+discontent which Rawdon manifested at her neglect of her son.  "He's
+the finest boy in England," the father said in a tone of reproach to
+her, "and you don't seem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do
+for your spaniel.  He shan't bother you much; at home he will be
+away from you in the nursery, and he shall go outside on the coach
+with me."
+
+"Where you go yourself because you want to smoke those filthy
+cigars," replied Mrs. Rawdon.
+
+"I remember when you liked 'em though," answered the husband.
+
+Becky laughed; she was almost always good-humoured. "That was when I
+was on my promotion, Goosey," she said.  "Take Rawdon outside with
+you and give him a cigar too if you like."
+
+Rawdon did not warm his little son for the winter's journey in this
+way, but he and Briggs wrapped up the child in shawls and
+comforters, and he was hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the
+coach in the dark morning, under the lamps of the White Horse
+Cellar; and with no small delight he watched the dawn rise and made
+his first journey to the place which his father still called home.
+It was a journey of infinite pleasure to the boy, to whom the
+incidents of the road afforded endless interest, his father
+answering to him all questions connected with it and telling him who
+lived in the great white house to the right, and whom the park
+belonged to.  His mother, inside the vehicle, with her maid and her
+furs, her wrappers, and her scent bottles, made such a to-do that
+you would have thought she never had been in a stage-coach before--
+much less, that she had been turned out of this very one to make
+room for a paying passenger on a certain journey performed some
+half-score years ago.
+
+It was dark again when little Rawdon was wakened up to enter his
+uncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it
+wondering as the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks
+of the limes as they swept by, until they stopped, at length, before
+the light windows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable
+with Christmas welcome.  The hall-door was flung open--a big fire
+was burning in the great old fire-place--a carpet was down over the
+chequered black flags--"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in
+the Ladies' Gallery," thought Rebecca, and the next instant was
+kissing Lady Jane.
+
+She and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity; but
+Rawdon, having been smoking, hung back rather from his sister-in-
+law, whose two children came up to their cousin; and, while Matilda
+held out her hand and kissed him, Pitt Binkie Southdown, the son and
+heir, stood aloof rather and examined him as a little dog does a big
+dog.
+
+Then the kind hostess conducted her guests to the snug apartments
+blazing with cheerful fires.  Then the young ladies came and knocked
+at Mrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to
+be useful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the
+contents of her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though
+black, were of the newest London fashion.  And they told her how
+much the Hall was changed for the better, and how old Lady Southdown
+was gone, and how Pitt was taking his station in the county, as
+became a Crawley in fact.  Then the great dinner-bell having rung,
+the family assembled at dinner, at which meal Rawdon Junior was
+placed by his aunt, the good-natured lady of the house, Sir Pitt
+being uncommonly attentive to his sister-in-law at his own right
+hand.
+
+Little Rawdon exhibited a fine appetite and showed a gentlemanlike
+behaviour.
+
+"I like to dine here," he said to his aunt when he had completed his
+meal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir
+Pitt, the younger son and heir was introduced, and was perched on a
+high chair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession
+of the place and the little wine-glass prepared for her near her
+mother.  "I like to dine here," said Rawdon Minor, looking up at his
+relation's kind face.
+
+"Why?" said the good Lady Jane.
+
+"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home," replied Rawdon Minor, "or
+else with Briggs." But Becky was so engaged with the Baronet, her
+host, pouring out a flood of compliments and delights and raptures,
+and admiring young Pitt Binkie, whom she declared to be the most
+beautiful, intelligent, noble-looking little creature, and so like
+his father, that she did not hear the remarks of her own flesh and
+blood at the other end of the broad shining table.
+
+As a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, Rawdon the
+Second was allowed to sit up until the hour when tea being over, and
+a great gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all the
+domestics of the family streamed in, and Sir Pitt read prayers.  It
+was the first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard
+of such a ceremonial.
+
+The house had been much improved even since the Baronet's brief
+reign, and was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming,
+delightful, when she surveyed it in his company.  As for little
+Rawdon, who examined it with the children for his guides, it seemed
+to him a perfect palace of enchantment and wonder.  There were long
+galleries, and ancient state bedrooms, there were pictures and old
+China, and armour.  There were the rooms in which Grandpapa died,
+and by which the children walked with terrified looks.  "Who was
+Grandpapa?" he asked; and they told him how he used to be very old,
+and used to be wheeled about in a garden-chair, and they showed him
+the garden-chair one day rotting in the out-house in which it had
+lain since the old gentleman had been wheeled away yonder to the
+church, of which the spire was glittering over the park elms.
+
+The brothers had good occupation for several mornings in examining
+the improvements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and
+economy.  And as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could
+talk without too much boring each other.  And Pitt took care to tell
+Rawdon what a heavy outlay of money these improvements had
+occasioned, and that a man of landed and funded property was often
+very hard pressed for twenty pounds. "There is that new lodge-gate,"
+said Pitt, pointing to it humbly with the bamboo cane, "I can no
+more pay for it before the dividends in January than I can fly."
+
+"I can lend you, Pitt, till then," Rawdon answered rather ruefully;
+and they went in and looked at the restored lodge, where the family
+arms were just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock, for
+the first time these many long years, had tight doors, sound roofs,
+and whole windows.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+Between Hampshire and London
+
+
+Sir Pitt Crawley had done more than repair fences and restore
+dilapidated lodges on the Queen's Crawley estate. Like a wise man he
+had set to work to rebuild the injured popularity of his house and
+stop up the gaps and ruins in which his name had been left by his
+disreputable and thriftless old predecessor.  He was elected for the
+borough speedily after his father's demise; a magistrate, a member
+of parliament, a county magnate and representative of an ancient
+family, he made it his duty to show himself before the Hampshire
+public, subscribed handsomely to the county charities, called
+assiduously upon all the county folk, and laid himself out in a word
+to take that position in Hampshire, and in the Empire afterwards, to
+which he thought his prodigious talents justly entitled him.  Lady
+Jane was instructed to be friendly with the Fuddlestones, and the
+Wapshots, and the other famous baronets, their neighbours.  Their
+carriages might frequently be seen in the Queen's Crawley avenue
+now; they dined pretty frequently at the Hall (where the cookery was
+so good that it was clear Lady Jane very seldom had a hand in it),
+and in return Pitt and his wife most energetically dined out in all
+sorts of weather and at all sorts of distances.  For though Pitt did
+not care for joviality, being a frigid man of poor hearth and
+appetite, yet he considered that to be hospitable and condescending
+was quite incumbent on-his station, and every time that he got a
+headache from too long an after-dinner sitting, he felt that he was
+a martyr to duty.  He talked about crops, corn-laws, politics, with
+the best country gentlemen. He (who had been formerly inclined to be
+a sad free-thinker on these points) entered into poaching and game
+preserving with ardour.  He didn't hunt; he wasn't a hunting man; he
+was a man of books and peaceful habits; but he thought that the
+breed of horses must be kept up in the country, and that the breed
+of foxes must therefore be looked to, and for his part, if his
+friend, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, liked to draw his country and
+meet as of old the F.  hounds used to do at Queen's Crawley, he
+should be happy to see him there, and the gentlemen of the
+Fuddlestone hunt.  And to Lady Southdown's dismay too he became more
+orthodox in his tendencies every day; gave up preaching in public
+and attending meeting-houses; went stoutly to church; called on the
+Bishop and all the Clergy at Winchester; and made no objection when
+the Venerable Archdeacon Trumper asked for a game of whist.  What
+pangs must have been those of Lady Southdown, and what an utter
+castaway she must have thought her son-in-law for permitting such a
+godless diversion!  And when, on the return of the family from an
+oratorio at Winchester, the Baronet announced to the young ladies
+that he should next year very probably take them to the "county
+balls," they worshipped him for his kindness.  Lady Jane was only
+too obedient, and perhaps glad herself to go.  The Dowager wrote off
+the direst descriptions of her daughter's worldly behaviour to the
+authoress of the Washerwoman of Finchley Common at the Cape; and her
+house in Brighton being about this time unoccupied, returned to that
+watering-place, her absence being not very much deplored by her
+children. We may suppose, too, that Rebecca, on paying a second
+visit to Queen's Crawley, did not feel particularly grieved at the
+absence of the lady of the medicine chest; though she wrote a
+Christmas letter to her Ladyship, in which she respectfully recalled
+herself to Lady Southdown's recollection, spoke with gratitude of
+the delight which her Ladyship's conversation had given her on the
+former visit, dilated on the kindness with which her Ladyship had
+treated her in sickness, and declared that everything at Queen's
+Crawley reminded her of her absent friend.
+
+A great part of the altered demeanour and popularity of Sir Pitt
+Crawley might have been traced to the counsels of that astute little
+lady of Curzon Street.  "You remain a Baronet--you consent to be a
+mere country gentleman," she said to him, while he had been her
+guest in London. "No, Sir Pitt Crawley, I know you better.  I know
+your talents and your ambition.  You fancy you hide them both, but
+you can conceal neither from me.  I showed Lord Steyne your pamphlet
+on malt.  He was familiar with it, and said it was in the opinion of
+the whole Cabinet the most masterly thing that had appeared on the
+subject. The Ministry has its eye upon you, and I know what you
+want.  You want to distinguish yourself in Parliament; every one
+says you are the finest speaker in England (for your speeches at
+Oxford are still remembered).  You want to be Member for the County,
+where, with your own vote and your borough at your back, you can
+command anything.  And you want to be Baron Crawley of Queen's
+Crawley, and will be before you die.  I saw it all.  I could read
+your heart, Sir Pitt.  If I had a husband who possessed your
+intellect as he does your name, I sometimes think I should not be
+unworthy of him--but--but I am your kinswoman now," she added with a
+laugh.  "Poor little penniless, I have got a little interest--and
+who knows, perhaps the mouse may be able to aid the lion." Pitt
+Crawley was amazed and enraptured with her speech.  "How that woman
+comprehends me!" he said. "I never could get Jane to read three
+pages of the malt pamphlet.  She has no idea that I have commanding
+talents or secret ambition.  So they remember my speaking at Oxford,
+do they? The rascals!  Now that I represent my borough and may sit
+for the county, they begin to recollect me!  Why, Lord Steyne cut me
+at the levee last year; they are beginning to find out that Pitt
+Crawley is some one at last.  Yes, the man was always the same whom
+these people neglected:  it was only the opportunity that was
+wanting, and I will show them now that I can speak and act as well
+as write.  Achilles did not declare himself until they gave him the
+sword.  I hold it now, and the world shall yet hear of Pitt
+Crawley."
+
+Therefore it was that this roguish diplomatist has grown so
+hospitable; that he was so civil to oratorios and hospitals; so kind
+to Deans and Chapters; so generous in giving and accepting dinners;
+so uncommonly gracious to farmers on market-days; and so much
+interested about county business; and that the Christmas at the Hall
+was the gayest which had been known there for many a long day.
+
+On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the
+Crawleys from the Rectory came to dine.  Rebecca was as frank and
+fond of Mrs. Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was
+affectionately interested in the dear girls, and surprised at the
+progress which they had made in music since her time, and insisted
+upon encoring one of the duets out of the great song-books which
+Jim, grumbling, had been forced to bring under his arm from the
+Rectory.  Mrs. Bute, perforce, was obliged to adopt a decent
+demeanour towards the little adventuress--of course being free to
+discourse with her daughters afterwards about the absurd respect
+with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law.  But Jim, who had sat
+next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and one and all of
+the Rector's family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fine boy.
+They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and the
+title there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie.
+
+The children were very good friends.  Pitt Binkie was too little a
+dog for such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being
+only a girl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who
+was near eight years old, and going into jackets very soon.  He took
+the command of this small party at once--the little girl and the
+little boy following him about with great reverence at such times as
+he condescended to sport with them.  His happiness and pleasure in
+the country were extreme.  The kitchen garden pleased him hugely,
+the flowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the
+stables when he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects
+to him.  He resisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he
+allowed Lady Jane sometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side
+that he liked to sit when, the signal to retire to the drawing-room
+being given, the ladies left the gentlemen to their claret--by her
+side rather than by his mother.  For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness
+was the fashion, called Rawdon to her one evening and stooped down
+and kissed him in the presence of all the ladies.
+
+He looked her full in the face after the operation, trembling and
+turning very red, as his wont was when moved.  "You never kiss me at
+home, Mamma," he said, at which there was a general silence and
+consternation and a by no means pleasant look in Becky's eyes.
+
+Rawdon was fond of his sister-in-law, for her regard for his son.
+Lady Jane and Becky did not get on quite so well at this visit as on
+occasion of the former one, when the Colonel's wife was bent upon
+pleasing.  Those two speeches of the child struck rather a chill.
+Perhaps Sir Pitt was rather too attentive to her.
+
+But Rawdon, as became his age and size, was fonder of the society of
+the men than of the women, and never wearied of accompanying his
+sire to the stables, whither the Colonel retired to smoke his cigar
+--Jim, the Rector's son, sometimes joining his cousin in that and
+other amusements. He and the Baronet's keeper were very close
+friends, their mutual taste for "dawgs" bringing them much together.
+On one day, Mr. James, the Colonel, and Horn, the keeper, went and
+shot pheasants, taking little Rawdon with them.  On another most
+blissful morning, these four gentlemen partook of the amusement of
+rat-hunting in a barn, than which sport Rawdon as yet had never seen
+anything more noble.  They stopped up the ends of certain drains in
+the barn, into the other openings of which ferrets were inserted,
+and then stood silently aloof, with uplifted stakes in their hands,
+and an anxious little terrier (Mr. James's celebrated "dawg"
+Forceps, indeed) scarcely breathing from excitement, listening
+motionless on three legs, to the faint squeaking of the rats below.
+Desperately bold at last, the persecuted animals bolted above-
+ground--the terrier accounted for one, the keeper for another;
+Rawdon, from flurry and excitement, missed his rat, but on the other
+hand he half-murdered a ferret.
+
+But the greatest day of all was that on which Sir Huddlestone
+Fuddlestone's hounds met upon the lawn at Queen's Crawley.
+
+That was a famous sight for little Rawdon.  At half-past ten, Tom
+Moody, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's huntsman, was seen trotting up
+the avenue, followed by the noble pack of hounds in a compact body--
+the rear being brought up by the two whips clad in stained scarlet
+frocks--light hard-featured lads on well-bred lean horses,
+possessing marvellous dexterity in casting the points of their long
+heavy whips at the thinnest part of any dog's skin who dares to
+straggle from the main body, or to take the slightest notice, or
+even so much as wink, at the hares and rabbits starting under their
+noses.
+
+Next comes boy Jack, Tom Moody's son, who weighs five stone,
+measures eight-and-forty inches, and will never be any bigger.  He
+is perched on a large raw-boned hunter, half-covered by a capacious
+saddle.  This animal is Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's favourite
+horse the Nob. Other horses, ridden by other small boys, arrive from
+time to time, awaiting their masters, who will come cantering on
+anon.
+
+Tom Moody rides up to the door of the Hall, where he is welcomed by
+the butler, who offers him drink, which he declines.  He and his
+pack then draw off into a sheltered corner of the lawn, where the
+dogs roll on the grass, and play or growl angrily at one another,
+ever and anon breaking out into furious fight speedily to be quelled
+by Tom's voice, unmatched at rating, or the snaky thongs of the
+whips.
+
+Many young gentlemen canter up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed
+to the knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay
+their respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike,
+divest themselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their
+hunters, and warm their blood by a preliminary gallop round the
+lawn.  Then they collect round the pack in the corner and talk with
+Tom Moody of past sport, and the merits of Sniveller and Diamond,
+and of the state of the country and of the wretched breed of foxes.
+
+Sir Huddlestone presently appears mounted on a clever cob and rides
+up to the Hall, where he enters and does the civil thing by the
+ladies, after which, being a man of few words, he proceeds to
+business.  The hounds are drawn up to the hall-door, and little
+Rawdon descends amongst them, excited yet half-alarmed by the
+caresses which they bestow upon him, at the thumps he receives from
+their waving tails, and at their canine bickerings, scarcely
+restrained by Tom Moody's tongue and lash.
+
+Meanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the
+Nob:  "Let's try Sowster's Spinney, Tom," says the Baronet, "Farmer
+Mangle tells me there are two foxes in it." Tom blows his horn and
+trots off, followed by the pack, by the whips, by the young gents
+from Winchester, by the farmers of the neighbourhood, by the
+labourers of the parish on foot, with whom the day is a great
+holiday, Sir Huddlestone bringing up the rear with Colonel Crawley,
+and the whole cortege disappears down the avenue.
+
+The Reverend Bute Crawley (who has been too modest to appear at the
+public meet before his nephew's windows), whom Tom Moody remembers
+forty years back a slender divine riding the wildest horses, jumping
+the widest brooks, and larking over the newest gates in the country--
+his Reverence, we say, happens to trot out from the Rectory Lane on
+his powerful black horse just as Sir Huddlestone passes; he joins
+the worthy Baronet.  Hounds and horsemen disappear, and little
+Rawdon remains on the doorsteps, wondering and happy.
+
+During the progress of this memorable holiday, little Rawdon, if he
+had got no special liking for his uncle, always awful and cold and
+locked up in his study, plunged in justice-business and surrounded
+by bailiffs and farmers--has gained the good graces of his married
+and maiden aunts, of the two little folks of the Hall, and of Jim of
+the Rectory, whom Sir Pitt is encouraging to pay his addresses to
+one of the young ladies, with an understanding doubtless that he
+shall be presented to the living when it shall be vacated by his
+fox-hunting old sire.  Jim has given up that sport himself and
+confines himself to a little harmless duck- or snipe-shooting, or a
+little quiet trifling with the rats during the Christmas holidays,
+after which he will return to the University and try and not be
+plucked, once more.  He has already eschewed green coats, red
+neckcloths, and other worldly ornaments, and is preparing himself
+for a change in his condition.  In this cheap and thrifty way Sir
+Pitt tries to pay off his debt to his family.
+
+Also before this merry Christmas was over, the Baronet had screwed
+up courage enough to give his brother another draft on his bankers,
+and for no less a sum than a hundred pounds, an act which caused Sir
+Pitt cruel pangs at first, but which made him glow afterwards to
+think himself one of the most generous of men.  Rawdon and his son
+went away with the utmost heaviness of heart.  Becky and the ladies
+parted with some alacrity, however, and our friend returned to
+London to commence those avocations with which we find her occupied
+when this chapter begins. Under her care the Crawley House in Great
+Gaunt Street was quite rejuvenescent and ready for the reception of
+Sir Pitt and his family, when the Baronet came to London to attend
+his duties in Parliament and to assume that position in the country
+for which his vast genius fitted him.
+
+For the first session, this profound dissembler hid his projects and
+never opened his lips but to present a petition from Mudbury.  But
+he attended assiduously in his place and learned thoroughly the
+routine and business of the House.  At home he gave himself up to
+the perusal of Blue Books, to the alarm and wonder of Lady Jane, who
+thought he was killing himself by late hours and intense
+application.  And he made acquaintance with the ministers, and the
+chiefs of his party, determining to rank as one of them before many
+years were over.
+
+Lady Jane's sweetness and kindness had inspired Rebecca with such a
+contempt for her ladyship as the little woman found no small
+difficulty in concealing.  That sort of goodness and simplicity
+which Lady Jane possessed annoyed our friend Becky, and it was
+impossible for her at times not to show, or to let the other divine,
+her scorn. Her presence, too, rendered Lady Jane uneasy.  Her
+husband talked constantly with Becky.  Signs of intelligence seemed
+to pass between them, and Pitt spoke with her on subjects on which
+he never thought of discoursing with Lady Jane.  The latter did not
+understand them, to be sure, but it was mortifying to remain silent;
+still more mortifying to know that you had nothing to say, and hear
+that little audacious Mrs. Rawdon dashing on from subject to
+subject, with a word for every man, and a joke always pat; and to
+sit in one's own house alone, by the fireside, and watching all the
+men round your rival.
+
+In the country, when Lady Jane was telling stories to the children,
+who clustered about her knees (little Rawdon into the bargain, who
+was very fond of her), and Becky came into the room, sneering with
+green scornful eyes, poor Lady Jane grew silent under those baleful
+glances.  Her simple little fancies shrank away tremulously, as
+fairies in the story-books, before a superior bad angel.  She could
+not go on, although Rebecca, with the smallest inflection of sarcasm
+in her voice, besought her to continue that charming story.  And on
+her side gentle thoughts and simple pleasures were odious to Mrs.
+Becky; they discorded with her; she hated people for liking them;
+she spurned children and children-lovers.  "I have no taste for
+bread and butter," she would say, when caricaturing Lady Jane and
+her ways to my Lord Steyne.
+
+"No more has a certain person for holy water," his lordship replied
+with a bow and a grin and a great jarring laugh afterwards.
+
+So these two ladies did not see much of each other except upon those
+occasions when the younger brother's wife, having an object to gain
+from the other, frequented her.  They my-loved and my-deared each
+other assiduously, but kept apart generally, whereas Sir Pitt, in
+the midst of his multiplied avocations, found daily time to see his
+sister-in-law.
+
+On the occasion of his first Speaker's dinner, Sir Pitt took the
+opportunity of appearing before his sister-in-law in his uniform--
+that old diplomatic suit which he had worn when attache to the
+Pumpernickel legation.
+
+Becky complimented him upon that dress and admired him almost as
+much as his own wife and children, to whom he displayed himself
+before he set out.  She said that it was only the thoroughbred
+gentleman who could wear the Court suit with advantage:  it was only
+your men of ancient race whom the culotte courte became.  Pitt
+looked down with complacency at his legs, which had not, in truth,
+much more symmetry or swell than the lean Court sword which dangled
+by his side--looked down at his legs, and thought in his heart that
+he was killing.
+
+When he was gone, Mrs. Becky made a caricature of his figure, which
+she showed to Lord Steyne when he arrived.  His lordship carried off
+the sketch, delighted with the accuracy of the resemblance.  He had
+done Sir Pitt Crawley the honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house
+and had been most gracious to the new Baronet and member.  Pitt was
+struck too by the deference with which the great Peer treated his
+sister-in-law, by her ease and sprightliness in the conversation,
+and by the delight with which the other men of the party listened to
+her talk. Lord Steyne made no doubt but that the Baronet had only
+commenced his career in public life, and expected rather anxiously
+to hear him as an orator; as they were neighbours (for Great Gaunt
+Street leads into Gaunt Square, whereof Gaunt House, as everybody
+knows, forms one side) my lord hoped that as soon as Lady Steyne
+arrived in London she would have the honour of making the
+acquaintance of Lady Crawley.  He left a card upon his neighbour in
+the course of a day or two, having never thought fit to notice his
+predecessor, though they had lived near each other for near a
+century past.
+
+In the midst of these intrigues and fine parties and wise and
+brilliant personages Rawdon felt himself more and more isolated
+every day.  He was allowed to go to the club more; to dine abroad
+with bachelor friends; to come and go when he liked, without any
+questions being asked.  And he and Rawdon the younger many a time
+would walk to Gaunt Street and sit with the lady and the children
+there while Sir Pitt was closeted with Rebecca, on his way to the
+House, or on  his return from it.
+
+The ex-Colonel would sit for hours in his brother's house very
+silent, and thinking and doing as little as possible.  He was glad
+to be employed of an errand; to go and make inquiries about a horse
+or a servant, or to carve the roast mutton for the dinner of the
+children. He was beat and cowed into laziness and submission.
+Delilah had imprisoned him and cut his hair off, too.  The bold and
+reckless young blood of ten-years back was subjugated and was turned
+into a torpid, submissive, middle-aged, stout gentleman.
+
+And poor Lady Jane was aware that Rebecca had captivated her
+husband, although she and Mrs. Rawdon my-deared and my-loved each
+other every day they met.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Struggles and Trials
+
+
+Our friends at Brompton were meanwhile passing their Christmas after
+their fashion and in a manner by no means too cheerful.
+
+Out of the hundred pounds a year, which was about the amount of her
+income, the Widow Osborne had been in the habit of giving up nearly
+three-fourths to her father and mother, for the expenses of herself
+and her little boy.  With #120 more, supplied by Jos, this family of
+four people, attended by a single Irish servant who also did for
+Clapp and his wife, might manage to live in decent comfort through
+the year, and hold up their heads yet, and be able to give a friend
+a dish of tea still, after the storms and disappointments of their
+early life. Sedley still maintained his ascendency over the family
+of Mr. Clapp, his ex-clerk.  Clapp remembered the time when, sitting
+on the edge of the chair, he tossed off a bumper to the health of
+"Mrs. S--, Miss Emmy, and Mr. Joseph in India," at the merchant's
+rich table in Russell Square.  Time magnified the splendour of those
+recollections in the honest clerk's bosom.  Whenever he came up from
+the kitchen-parlour to the drawing-room and partook of tea or gin-
+and-water with Mr. Sedley, he would say, "This was not what you was
+accustomed to once, sir," and as gravely and reverentially drink the
+health of the ladies as he had done in the days of their utmost
+prosperity.  He thought Miss 'Melia's playing the divinest music
+ever performed, and her the finest lady. He never would sit down
+before Sedley at the club even, nor would he have that gentleman's
+character abused by any member of the society.  He had seen the
+first men in London shaking hands with Mr. S--; he said, "He'd known
+him in times when Rothschild might be seen on 'Change with him any
+day, and he owed him personally everythink."
+
+Clapp, with the best of characters and handwritings, had been able
+very soon after his master's disaster to find other employment for
+himself.  "Such a little fish as me can swim in any bucket," he used
+to remark, and a member of the house from which old Sedley had
+seceded was very glad to make use of Mr. Clapp's services and to
+reward them with a comfortable salary.  In fine, all Sedley's
+wealthy friends had dropped off one by one, and this poor ex-
+dependent still remained faithfully attached to him.
+
+Out of the small residue of her income which Amelia kept back for
+herself, the widow had need of all the thrift and care possible in
+order to enable her to keep her darling boy dressed in such a manner
+as became George Osborne's son, and to defray the expenses of the
+little school to which, after much misgiving and reluctance and many
+secret pangs and fears on her own part, she had been induced to send
+the lad.  She had sat up of nights conning lessons and spelling over
+crabbed grammars and geography books in order to teach them to
+Georgy.  She had worked even at the Latin accidence, fondly hoping
+that she might be capable of instructing him in that language.  To
+part with him all day, to send him out to the mercy of a
+schoolmaster's cane and his schoolfellows' roughness, was almost
+like weaning him over again to that weak mother, so tremulous and
+full of sensibility.  He, for his part, rushed off to the school
+with the utmost happiness.  He was longing for the change. That
+childish gladness wounded his mother, who was herself so grieved to
+part with him.  She would rather have had him more sorry, she
+thought, and then was deeply repentant within herself for daring to
+be so selfish as to wish her own son to be unhappy.
+
+Georgy made great progress in the school, which was kept by a friend
+of his mother's constant admirer, the Rev.  Mr. Binny.  He brought
+home numberless prizes and testimonials of ability.  He told his
+mother countless stories every night about his school-companions:
+and what a fine fellow Lyons was, and what a sneak Sniffin was, and
+how Steel's father actually supplied the meat for the establishment,
+whereas Golding's mother came in a carriage to fetch him every
+Saturday, and how Neat had straps to his trowsers--might he have
+straps?--and how Bull Major was so strong (though only in Eutropius)
+that it was believed he could lick the Usher, Mr. Ward, himself.  So
+Amelia learned to know every one of the boys in that school as well
+as Georgy himself, and of nights she used to help him in his
+exercises and puzzle her little head over his lessons as eagerly as
+if she was herself going in the morning into the presence of the
+master. Once, after a certain combat with Master Smith, George came
+home to his mother with a black eye, and bragged prodigiously to his
+parent and his delighted old grandfather about his valour in the
+fight, in which, if the truth was known he did not behave with
+particular heroism, and in which he decidedly had the worst.  But
+Amelia has never forgiven that Smith to this day, though he is now a
+peaceful apothecary near Leicester Square.
+
+In these quiet labours and harmless cares the gentle widow's life
+was passing away, a silver hair or two marking the progress of time
+on her head and a line deepening ever so little on her fair
+forehead.  She used to smile at these marks of time.  "What matters
+it," she asked, "For an old woman like me?" All she hoped for was to
+live to see her son great, famous, and glorious, as he deserved to
+be.  She kept his copy-books, his drawings, and compositions, and
+showed them about in her little circle as if they were miracles of
+genius.  She confided some of these specimens to Miss Dobbin, to
+show them to Miss Osborne, George's aunt, to show them to Mr.
+Osborne himself--to make that old man repent of his cruelty and ill
+feeling towards him who was gone.  All her husband's faults and
+foibles she had buried in the grave with him: she only remembered
+the lover, who had married her at all sacrifices, the noble husband,
+so brave and beautiful, in whose arms she had hung on the morning
+when he had gone away to fight, and die gloriously for his king.
+From heaven the hero must be smiling down upon that paragon of a boy
+whom he had left to comfort and console her. We have seen how one of
+George's grandfathers (Mr. Osborne), in his easy chair in Russell
+Square, daily grew more violent and moody, and how his daughter,
+with her fine carriage, and her fine horses, and her name on half
+the public charity-lists of the town, was a lonely, miserable,
+persecuted old maid.  She thought again and again of the beautiful
+little boy, her brother's son, whom she had seen.  She longed to be
+allowed to drive in the fine carriage to the house in which he
+lived, and she used to look out day after day as she took her
+solitary drive in the park, in hopes that she might see him.  Her
+sister, the banker's lady, occasionally condescended to pay her old
+home and companion a visit in Russell Square.  She brought a couple
+of sickly children attended by a prim nurse, and in a faint genteel
+giggling tone cackled to her sister about her fine acquaintance, and
+how her little Frederick was the image of Lord Claud Lollypop and
+her sweet Maria had been noticed by the Baroness as they were
+driving in their donkey-chaise at Roehampton.  She urged her to make
+her papa do something for the darlings. Frederick she had determined
+should go into the Guards; and if they made an elder son of him (and
+Mr. Bullock was positively ruining and pinching himself to death to
+buy land), how was the darling girl to be provided for? "I expect
+YOU, dear," Mrs. Bullock would say, "for of course my share of our
+Papa's property must go to the head of the house, you know.  Dear
+Rhoda McMull will disengage the whole of the Castletoddy property as
+soon as poor dear Lord Castletoddy dies, who is quite epileptic; and
+little Macduff McMull will be Viscount Castletoddy.  Both the Mr.
+Bludyers of Mincing Lane have settled their fortunes on Fanny
+Bludyer's little boy.  My darling Frederick must positively be an
+eldest son; and--and do ask Papa to bring us back his account in
+Lombard Street, will you, dear? It doesn't look well, his going to
+Stumpy and Rowdy's." After which kind of speeches, in which fashion
+and the main chance were blended together, and after a kiss, which
+was like the contact of an oyster--Mrs. Frederick Bullock would
+gather her starched nurslings and simper back into her carriage.
+
+Every visit which this leader of ton paid to her family was more
+unlucky for her.  Her father paid more money into Stumpy and
+Rowdy's.  Her patronage became more and more insufferable.  The poor
+widow in the little cottage at Brompton, guarding her treasure
+there, little knew how eagerly some people coveted it.
+
+On that night when Jane Osborne had told her father that she had
+seen his grandson, the old man had made her no reply, but he had
+shown no anger--and had bade her good-night on going himself to his
+room in rather a kindly voice.  And he must have meditated on what
+she said and have made some inquiries of the Dobbin family regarding
+her visit, for a fortnight after it took place, he asked her where
+was her little French watch and chain she used to wear?
+
+"I bought it with my money, sir," she said in a great fright.
+
+"Go and order another like it, or a better if you can get it," said
+the old gentleman and lapsed again into silence.
+
+Of late the Misses Dobbin more than once repeated their entreaties
+to Amelia, to allow George to visit them. His aunt had shown her
+inclination; perhaps his grandfather himself, they hinted, might be
+disposed to be reconciled to him.  Surely, Amelia could not refuse
+such advantageous chances for the boy.  Nor could she, but she
+acceded to their overtures with a very heavy and suspicious heart,
+was always uneasy during the child's absence from her, and welcomed
+him back as if he was rescued out of some danger.  He brought back
+money and toys, at which the widow looked with alarm and jealousy;
+she asked him always if he had seen any gentleman--"Only old Sir
+William, who drove him about in the four-wheeled chaise, and Mr.
+Dobbin, who arrived on the beautiful bay horse in the afternoon--in
+the green coat and pink neck-cloth, with the gold-headed whip, who
+promised to show him the Tower of London and take him out with the
+Surrey hounds." At last, he said, "There was an old gentleman, with
+thick eyebrows, and a broad hat, and large chain and seals." He came
+one day as the coachman was lunging Georgy round the lawn on the
+gray pony.  "He looked at me very much.  He shook very much.  I said
+'My name is Norval' after dinner.  My aunt began to cry.  She is
+always crying." Such was George's report on that night.
+
+Then Amelia knew that the boy had seen his grandfather; and looked
+out feverishly for a proposal which she was sure would follow, and
+which came, in fact, in a few days afterwards.  Mr. Osborne formally
+offered to take the boy and make him heir to the fortune which he
+had intended that his father should inherit.  He would make Mrs.
+George Osborne an allowance, such as to assure her a decent
+competency.  If Mrs. George Osborne proposed to marry again, as Mr.
+O.  heard was her intention, he would not withdraw that allowance.
+But it must be understood that the child would live entirely with
+his grandfather in Russell Square, or at whatever other place Mr. O.
+should select, and that he would be occasionally permitted to see
+Mrs. George Osborne at her own residence.  This message was brought
+or read to her in a letter one day, when her mother was from home
+and her father absent as usual in the City.
+
+She was never seen angry but twice or thrice in her life, and it was
+in one of these moods that Mr. Osborne's attorney had the fortune to
+behold her.  She rose up trembling and flushing very much as soon
+as, after reading the letter, Mr. Poe handed it to her, and she tore
+the paper into a hundred fragments, which she trod on.  "I marry
+again!  I take money to part from my child!  Who dares insult me by
+proposing such a thing? Tell Mr. Osborne it is a cowardly letter,
+sir--a cowardly letter--I will not answer it.  I wish you good
+morning, sir--and she bowed me out of the room like a tragedy
+Queen," said the lawyer who told the story.
+
+Her parents never remarked her agitation on that day, and she never
+told them of the interview.  They had their own affairs to interest
+them, affairs which deeply interested this innocent and unconscious
+lady.  The old gentleman, her father, was always dabbling in
+speculation. We have seen how the wine company and the coal company
+had failed him.  But, prowling about the City always eagerly and
+restlessly still, he lighted upon some other scheme, of which he
+thought so well that he embarked in it in spite of the remonstrances
+of Mr. Clapp, to whom indeed he never dared to tell how far he had
+engaged himself in it.  And as it was always Mr. Sedley's maxim not
+to talk about money matters before women, they had no inkling of the
+misfortunes that were in store for them until the unhappy old
+gentleman was forced to make gradual confessions.
+
+The bills of the little household, which had been settled weekly,
+first fell into arrear.  The remittances had not arrived from India,
+Mr. Sedley told his wife with a disturbed face.  As she had paid her
+bills very regularly hitherto, one or two of the tradesmen to whom
+the poor lady was obliged to go round asking for time were very
+angry at a delay to which they were perfectly used from more
+irregular customers.  Emmy's contribution, paid over cheerfully
+without any questions, kept the little company in half-rations
+however.  And the first six months passed away pretty easily, old
+Sedley still keeping up with the notion that his shares must rise
+and that all would be well.
+
+No sixty pounds, however, came to help the household at the end of
+the half year, and it fell deeper and deeper into trouble--Mrs.
+Sedley, who was growing infirm and was much shaken, remained silent
+or wept a great deal with Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen.  The butcher
+was particularly surly, the grocer insolent:  once or twice little
+Georgy had grumbled about the dinners, and Amelia, who still would
+have been satisfied with a slice of bread for her own dinner, could
+not but perceive that her son was neglected and purchased little
+things out of her private purse to keep the boy in health.
+
+At last they told her, or told her such a garbled story as people in
+difficulties tell.  One day, her own money having been received, and
+Amelia about to pay it over, she, who had kept an account of the
+moneys expended by her, proposed to keep a certain portion back out
+of her dividend, having contracted engagements for a new suit for
+Georgy.
+
+Then it came out that Jos's remittances were not paid, that the
+house was in difficulties, which Amelia ought to have seen before,
+her mother said, but she cared for nothing or nobody except Georgy.
+At this she passed all her money across the table, without a word,
+to her mother, and returned to her room to cry her eyes out. She had
+a great access of sensibility too that day, when obliged to go and
+countermand the clothes, the darling clothes on which she had set
+her heart for Christmas Day, and the cut and fashion of which she
+had arranged in many conversations with a small milliner, her
+friend.
+
+Hardest of all, she had to break the matter to Georgy, who made a
+loud outcry.  Everybody had new clothes at Christmas.  The others
+would laugh at him.  He would have new clothes.  She had promised
+them to him.  The poor widow had only kisses to give him.  She
+darned the old suit in tears.  She cast about among her little
+ornaments to see if she could sell anything to procure the desired
+novelties.  There was her India shawl that Dobbin had sent her.  She
+remembered in former days going with her mother to a fine India shop
+on Ludgate Hill, where the ladies had all sorts of dealings and
+bargains in these articles.  Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone
+with pleasure as she thought of this resource, and she kissed away
+George to school in the morning, smiling brightly after him.  The
+boy felt that there was good news in her look.
+
+Packing up her shawl in a handkerchief (another of the gifts of the
+good Major), she hid them under her cloak and walked flushed and
+eager all the way to Ludgate Hill, tripping along by the park wall
+and running over the crossings, so that many a man turned as she
+hurried by him and looked after her rosy pretty face.  She
+calculated how she should spend the proceeds of her shawl--how,
+besides the clothes, she would buy the books that he longed for, and
+pay his half-year's schooling; and how she would buy a cloak for her
+father instead of that old great-coat which he wore.  She was not
+mistaken as to the value of the Major's gift.  It was a very fine
+and beautiful web, and the merchant made a very good bargain when he
+gave her twenty guineas for her shawl.
+
+She ran on amazed and flurried with her riches to Darton's shop, in
+St. Paul's Churchyard, and there purchased the Parents' Assistant
+and the Sandford and Merton Georgy longed for, and got into the
+coach there with her parcel, and went home exulting.  And she
+pleased herself by writing in the fly-leaf in her neatest little
+hand, "George Osborne, A Christmas gift from his affectionate-
+mother." The books are extant to this day, with the fair delicate
+superscription.
+
+She was going from her own room with the books in her hand to place
+them on George's table, where he might find them on his return from
+school, when in the passage, she and her mother met.  The gilt
+bindings of the seven handsome little volumes caught the old lady's
+eye.
+
+"What are those?" she said.
+
+"Some books for Georgy," Amelia replied--I--I promised them to him
+at Christmas."
+
+"Books!" cried the elder lady indignantly, "Books, when the whole
+house wants bread!  Books, when to keep you and your son in luxury,
+and your dear father out of gaol, I've sold every trinket I had, the
+India shawl from my back even down to the very spoons, that our
+tradesmen mightn't insult us, and that Mr. Clapp, which indeed he is
+justly entitled, being not a hard landlord, and a civil man, and a
+father, might have his rent.  Oh, Amelia! you break my heart with
+your books and that boy of yours, whom you are ruining, though part
+with him you will not.  Oh, Amelia, may God send you a more dutiful
+child than I have had!  There's Jos, deserts his father in his old
+age; and there's George, who might be provided for, and who might be
+rich, going to school like a lord, with a gold watch and chain round
+his neck--while my dear, dear old man is without a sh--shilling."
+Hysteric sobs and cries ended Mrs. Sedley's speech--it echoed
+through every room in the small house, whereof the other female
+inmates heard every word of the colloquy.
+
+"Oh, Mother, Mother!" cried poor Amelia in reply. "You told me
+nothing--I--I promised him the books. I--I only sold my shawl this
+morning.  Take the money--take everything"--and with quivering hands
+she took out her silver, and her sovereigns--her precious golden
+sovereigns, which she thrust into the hands of her mother, whence
+they overflowed and tumbled, rolling down the stairs.
+
+And then she went into her room, and sank down in despair and utter
+misery.  She saw it all now.  Her selfishness was sacrificing the
+boy.  But for her he might have wealth, station, education, and his
+father's place, which the elder George had forfeited for her sake.
+She had but to speak the words, and her father was restored to
+competency and the boy raised to fortune.  Oh, what a conviction it
+was to that tender and stricken heart!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+Gaunt House
+
+
+All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt
+Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads, whither we first
+conducted Rebecca, in the time of the departed Sir Pitt Crawley.
+Peering over the railings and through the black trees into the
+garden of the Square, you see a few miserable governesses with wan-
+faced pupils wandering round and round it, and round the dreary
+grass-plot in the centre of which rises the statue of Lord Gaunt,
+who fought at Minden, in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited
+like a Roman Emperor.  Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the
+Square. The remaining three sides are composed of mansions that have
+passed away into dowagerism--tall, dark houses, with window-frames
+of stone, or picked out of a lighter red.  Little light seems to be
+behind those lean, comfortless casements now, and hospitality to
+have passed away from those doors as much as the laced lacqueys and
+link-boys of old times, who used to put out their torches in the
+blank iron extinguishers that still flank the lamps over the steps.
+Brass plates have penetrated into the square--Doctors, the Diddlesex
+Bank Western Branch--the English and European Reunion, &c.--it has a
+dreary look--nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less dreary.  All I have
+ever seen of it is the vast wall in front, with the rustic columns
+at the great gate, through which an old porter peers sometimes with
+a fat and gloomy red face--and over the wall the garret and bedroom
+windows, and the chimneys, out of which there seldom comes any smoke
+now.  For the present Lord Steyne lives at Naples, preferring the
+view of the Bay and Capri and Vesuvius to the dreary aspect of the
+wall in Gaunt Square.
+
+A few score yards down New Gaunt Street, and leading into Gaunt Mews
+indeed, is a little modest back door, which you would not remark
+from that of any of the other stables.  But many a little close
+carriage has stopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom
+Eaves, who knows everything, and who showed me the place) told me.
+"The Prince and Perdita have been in and out of that door, sir," he
+had often told me; "Marianne Clarke has entered it with the Duke of
+------.  It conducts to the famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne
+--one, sir, fitted up all in ivory and white satin, another in ebony
+and black velvet; there is a little banqueting-room taken from
+Sallust's house at Pompeii, and painted by Cosway--a little private
+kitchen, in which every saucepan was silver and all the spits were
+gold.  It was there that Egalite Orleans roasted partridges on the
+night when he and the Marquis of Steyne won a hundred thousand from
+a great personage at ombre.  Half of the money went to the French
+Revolution, half to purchase Lord Gaunt's Marquisate and Garter--and
+the remainder--" but it forms no part of our scheme to tell what
+became of the remainder, for every shilling of which, and a great
+deal more, little Tom Eaves, who knows everybody's affairs, is ready
+to account.
+
+Besides his town palace, the Marquis had castles and palaces in
+various quarters of the three kingdoms, whereof the descriptions may
+be found in the road-books--Castle Strongbow, with its woods, on the
+Shannon shore; Gaunt Castle, in Carmarthenshire, where Richard II
+was taken prisoner--Gauntly Hall in Yorkshire, where I have been
+informed there were two hundred silver teapots for the breakfasts of
+the guests of the house, with everything to correspond in splendour;
+and Stillbrook in Hampshire, which was my lord's farm, an humble
+place of residence, of which we all remember the wonderful furniture
+which was sold at my lord's demise by a late celebrated auctioneer.
+
+The Marchioness of Steyne was of the renowned and ancient family of
+the Caerlyons, Marquises of Camelot, who have preserved the old
+faith ever since the conversion of the venerable Druid, their first
+ancestor, and whose pedigree goes far beyond the date of the arrival
+of King Brute in these islands.  Pendragon is the title of the
+eldest son of the house.  The sons have been called Arthurs, Uthers,
+and Caradocs, from immemorial time. Their heads have fallen in many
+a loyal conspiracy. Elizabeth chopped off the head of the Arthur of
+her day, who had been Chamberlain to Philip and Mary, and carried
+letters between the Queen of Scots and her uncles the Guises.  A
+cadet of the house was an officer of the great Duke and
+distinguished in the famous Saint Bartholomew conspiracy.  During
+the whole of Mary's confinement, the house of Camelot conspired in
+her behalf. It was as much injured by its charges in fitting out an
+armament against the Spaniards, during the time of the Armada, as by
+the fines and confiscations levied on it by Elizabeth for harbouring
+of priests, obstinate recusancy, and popish misdoings.  A recreant
+of James's time was momentarily perverted from his religion by the
+arguments of that great theologian, and the fortunes of the family
+somewhat restored by his timely weakness.  But the Earl of Camelot,
+of the reign of Charles, returned to the old creed of his family,
+and they continued to fight for it, and ruin themselves for it, as
+long as there was a Stuart left to head or to instigate a rebellion.
+
+Lady Mary Caerlyon was brought up at a Parisian convent; the
+Dauphiness Marie Antoinette was her godmother.  In the pride of her
+beauty she had been married--sold, it was said--to Lord Gaunt, then
+at Paris, who won vast sums from the lady's brother at some of
+Philip of Orleans's banquets.  The Earl of Gaunt's famous duel with
+the Count de la Marche, of the Grey Musqueteers, was attributed by
+common report to the pretensions of that officer (who had been a
+page, and remained a favourite of the Queen) to the hand of the
+beautiful Lady Mary Caerlyon.  She was married to Lord Gaunt while
+the Count lay ill of his wound, and came to dwell at Gaunt House,
+and to figure for a short time in the splendid Court of the Prince
+of Wales.  Fox had toasted her.  Morris and Sheridan had written
+songs about her.  Malmesbury had made her his best bow; Walpole had
+pronounced her charming; Devonshire had been almost jealous of her;
+but she was scared by the wild pleasures and gaieties of the society
+into which she was flung, and after she had borne a couple of sons,
+shrank away into a life of devout seclusion.  No wonder that my Lord
+Steyne, who liked pleasure and cheerfulness, was not often seen
+after their marriage by the side of this trembling, silent,
+superstitious, unhappy lady.
+
+The before-mentioned Tom Eaves (who has no part in this history,
+except that he knew all the great folks in London, and the stories
+and mysteries of each family) had further information regarding my
+Lady Steyne, which may or may not be true.  "The humiliations," Tom
+used to say, "which that woman has been made to undergo, in her own
+house, have been frightful; Lord Steyne has made her sit down to
+table with women with whom I would rather die than allow Mrs. Eaves
+to associate--with Lady Crackenbury, with Mrs. Chippenham, with
+Madame de la Cruchecassee, the French secretary's wife (from every
+one of which ladies Tom Eaves--who would have sacrificed his wife
+for knowing them--was too glad to get a bow or a dinner) with the
+REIGNING FAVOURITE in a word.  And do you suppose that that woman,
+of that family, who are as proud as the Bourbons, and to whom the
+Steynes are but lackeys, mushrooms of yesterday (for after all, they
+are not of the Old Gaunts, but of a minor and doubtful branch of the
+house); do you suppose, I say (the reader must bear in mind that it
+is always Tom Eaves who speaks) that the Marchioness of Steyne, the
+haughtiest woman in England, would bend down to her husband so
+submissively if there were not some cause? Pooh!  I tell you there
+are secret reasons. I tell you that, in the emigration, the Abbe de
+la Marche who was here and was employed in the Quiberoon business
+with Puisaye and Tinteniac, was the same Colonel of Mousquetaires
+Gris with whom Steyne fought in the year '86--that he and the
+Marchioness met again--that it was after the Reverend Colonel was
+shot in Brittany that Lady Steyne took to those extreme practices of
+devotion which she carries on now; for she is closeted with her
+director every day--she is at service at Spanish Place, every
+morning, I've watched her there--that is, I've happened to be
+passing there--and depend on it, there's a mystery in her case.
+People are not so unhappy unless they have something to repent of,"
+added Tom Eaves with a knowing wag of his head; "and depend on it,
+that woman would not be so submissive as she is if the Marquis had
+not some sword to hold over her."
+
+So, if Mr. Eaves's information be correct, it is very likely that
+this lady, in her high station, had to submit to many a private
+indignity and to hide many secret griefs under a calm face.  And let
+us, my brethren who have not our names in the Red Book, console
+ourselves by thinking comfortably how miserable our betters may be,
+and that Damocles, who sits on satin cushions and is served on gold
+plate, has an awful sword hanging over his head in the shape of a
+bailiff, or an hereditary disease, or a family secret, which peeps
+out every now and then from the embroidered arras in a ghastly
+manner, and will be sure to drop one day or the other in the right
+place.
+
+In comparing, too, the poor man's situation with that of the great,
+there is (always according to Mr. Eaves) another source of comfort
+for the former.  You who have little or no patrimony to bequeath or
+to inherit, may be on good terms with your father or your son,
+whereas the heir of a great prince, such as my Lord Steyne, must
+naturally be angry at being kept out of his kingdom, and eye the
+occupant of it with no very agreeable glances. "Take it as a rule,"
+this sardonic old Laves would say, "the fathers and elder sons of
+all great families hate each other.  The Crown Prince is always in
+opposition to the crown or hankering after it.  Shakespeare knew the
+world, my good sir, and when he describes Prince Hal (from whose
+family the Gaunts pretend to be descended, though they are no more
+related to John of Gaunt than you are) trying on his father's
+coronet, he gives you a natural description of all heirs apparent.
+If you were heir to a dukedom and a thousand pounds a day, do you
+mean to say you would not wish for possession? Pooh!  And it stands
+to reason that every great man, having experienced this feeling
+towards his father, must be aware that his son entertains it towards
+himself; and so they can't but be suspicious and hostile.
+
+"Then again, as to the feeling of elder towards younger sons.  My
+dear sir, you ought to know that every elder brother looks upon the
+cadets of the house as his natural enemies, who deprive him of so
+much ready money which ought to be his by right.  I have often heard
+George Mac Turk, Lord Bajazet's eldest son, say that if he had his
+will when he came to the title, he would do what the sultans do, and
+clear the estate by chopping off all his younger brothers' heads at
+once; and so the case is, more or less, with them all.  I tell you
+they are all Turks in their hearts.  Pooh! sir, they know the
+world." And here, haply, a great man coming up, Tom Eaves's hat
+would drop off his head, and he would rush forward with a bow and a
+grin, which showed that he knew the world too--in the Tomeavesian
+way, that is.  And having laid out every shilling of his fortune on
+an annuity, Tom could afford to bear no malice to his nephews and
+nieces, and to have no other feeling with regard to his betters but
+a constant and generous desire to dine with them.
+
+Between the Marchioness and the natural and tender regard of mother
+for children, there was that cruel barrier placed of difference of
+faith.  The very love which she might feel for her sons only served
+to render the timid and pious lady more fearful and unhappy.  The
+gulf which separated them was fatal and impassable.  She could not
+stretch her weak arms across it, or draw her children over to that
+side away from which her belief told her there was no safety.
+During the youth of his sons, Lord Steyne, who was a good scholar
+and amateur casuist, had no better sport in the evening after dinner
+in the country than in setting the boys' tutor, the Reverend Mr.
+Trail (now my Lord Bishop of Ealing) on her ladyship's director,
+Father Mole, over their wine, and in pitting Oxford against St.
+Acheul.  He cried "Bravo, Latimer!  Well said, Loyola!" alternately;
+he promised Mole a bishopric if he would come over, and vowed he
+would use all his influence to get Trail a cardinal's hat if he
+would secede.  Neither divine allowed himself to be conquered, and
+though the fond mother hoped that her youngest and favourite son
+would be reconciled to her church--his mother church--a sad and
+awful disappointment awaited the devout lady--a disappointment which
+seemed to be a judgement upon her for the sin of her marriage.
+
+My Lord Gaunt married, as every person who frequents the Peerage
+knows, the Lady Blanche Thistlewood, a daughter of the noble house
+of Bareacres, before mentioned in this veracious history.  A wing of
+Gaunt House was assigned to this couple; for the head of the family
+chose to govern it, and while he reigned to reign supreme; his son
+and heir, however, living little at home, disagreeing with his wife,
+and borrowing upon post-obits such moneys as he required beyond the
+very moderate sums which his father was disposed to allow him.  The
+Marquis knew every shilling of his son's debts. At his lamented
+demise, he was found himself to be possessor of many of his heir's
+bonds, purchased for their benefit, and devised by his Lordship to
+the children of his younger son.
+
+As, to my Lord Gaunt's dismay, and the chuckling delight of his
+natural enemy and father, the Lady Gaunt had no children--the Lord
+George Gaunt was desired to return from Vienna, where he was engaged
+in waltzing and diplomacy, and to contract a matrimonial alliance
+with the Honourable Joan, only daughter of John Johnes, First Baron
+Helvellyn, and head of the firm of Jones, Brown, and Robinson, of
+Threadneedle Street, Bankers; from which union sprang several sons
+and daughters, whose doings do not appertain to this story.
+
+The marriage at first was a happy and prosperous one. My Lord George
+Gaunt could not only read, but write pretty correctly.  He spoke
+French with considerable fluency; and was one of the finest waltzers
+in Europe.  With these talents, and his interest at home, there was
+little doubt that his lordship would rise to the highest dignities
+in his profession.  The lady, his wife, felt that courts were her
+sphere, and her wealth enabled her to receive splendidly in those
+continental towns whither her husband's diplomatic duties led him.
+There was talk of appointing him minister, and bets were laid at the
+Travellers' that he would be ambassador ere long, when of a sudden,
+rumours arrived of the secretary's extraordinary behaviour. At a
+grand diplomatic dinner given by his chief, he had started up and
+declared that a pate de foie gras was poisoned.  He went to a ball
+at the hotel of the Bavarian envoy, the Count de Springbock-
+Hohenlaufen, with his head shaved and dressed as a Capuchin friar.
+It was not a masked ball, as some folks wanted to persuade you.  It
+was something queer, people whispered.  His grandfather was so.  It
+was in the family.
+
+His wife and family returned to this country and took up their abode
+at Gaunt House.  Lord George gave up his post on the European
+continent, and was gazetted to Brazil.  But people knew better; he
+never returned from that Brazil expedition--never died there--never
+lived there--never was there at all.  He was nowhere; he was gone
+out altogether.  "Brazil," said one gossip to another, with a grin--
+"Brazil is St.  John's Wood.  Rio de Janeiro is a cottage surrounded
+by four walls, and George Gaunt is accredited to a keeper, who has
+invested him with the order of the Strait-Waistcoat." These are the
+kinds of epitaphs which men pass over one another in Vanity Fair.
+
+Twice or thrice in a week, in the earliest morning, the poor mother
+went for her sins and saw the poor invalid. Sometimes he laughed at
+her (and his laughter was more pitiful than to hear him cry);
+sometimes she found the brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress
+of Vienna dragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's
+baby's doll.  Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole, her director
+and companion; oftener he forgot her, as he had done wife, children,
+love, ambition, vanity.  But he remembered his dinner-hour, and used
+to cry if his wine-and-water was not strong enough.
+
+It was the mysterious taint of the blood; the poor mother had
+brought it from her own ancient race.  The evil had broken out once
+or twice in the father's family, long before Lady Steyne's sins had
+begun, or her fasts and tears and penances had been offered in their
+expiation.  The pride of the race was struck down as the first-born
+of Pharaoh.  The dark mark of fate and doom was on the threshold--
+the tall old threshold surmounted by coronets and caned heraldry.
+
+The absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and grew on quite
+unconscious that the doom was over them too.  First they talked of
+their father and devised plans against his return.  Then the name of
+the living dead man was less frequently in their mouth--then not
+mentioned at all.  But the stricken old grandmother trembled to
+think that these too were the inheritors of their father's shame as
+well as of his honours, and watched sickening for the day when the
+awful ancestral curse should come down on them.
+
+This dark presentiment also haunted Lord Steyne.  He tried to lay
+the horrid bedside ghost in Red Seas of wine and jollity, and lost
+sight of it sometimes in the crowd and rout of his pleasures.  But
+it always came back to him when alone, and seemed to grow more
+threatening with years.  "I have taken your son," it said, "why not
+you? I may shut you up in a prison some day like your son George.  I
+may tap you on the head to-morrow, and away go pleasure and honours,
+feasts and beauty, friends, flatterers, French cooks, fine horses
+and houses--in exchange for a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress
+like George Gaunt's." And then my lord would defy the ghost which
+threatened him, for he knew of a remedy by which he could baulk his
+enemy.
+
+So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance,
+behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets
+and ciphers.  The feasts there were of the grandest in London, but
+there was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests
+who sat at my lord's table.  Had he not been so great a Prince very
+few possibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of
+very great personages are looked at indulgently.  "Nous regardons a
+deux fois" (as the French lady said) before we condemn a person of
+my lord's undoubted quality.  Some notorious carpers and squeamish
+moralists might be sulky with Lord Steyne, but they were glad enough
+to come when he asked them.
+
+"Lord Steyne is really too bad," Lady Slingstone said, "but
+everybody goes, and of course I shall see that my girls come to no
+harm." "His lordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything in
+life," said the Right Reverend Doctor Trail, thinking that the
+Archbishop was rather shaky, and Mrs. Trail and the young ladies
+would as soon have missed going to church as to one of his
+lordship's parties.  "His morals are bad," said little Lord
+Southdown to his sister, who meekly expostulated, having heard
+terrific legends from her mamma with respect to the doings at Gaunt
+House; "but hang it, he's got the best dry Sillery in Europe!" And
+as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart.--Sir Pitt that pattern of decorum,
+Sir Pitt who had led off at missionary meetings--he never for one
+moment thought of not going too.  "Where you see such persons as the
+Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of Slingstone, you may be pretty
+sure, Jane," the Baronet would say, "that we cannot be wrong.  The
+great rank and station of Lord Steyne put him in a position to
+command people in our station in life.  The Lord Lieutenant of a
+County, my dear, is a respectable man.  Besides, George Gaunt and I
+were intimate in early life; he was my junior when we were attaches
+at Pumpernickel together."
+
+In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man--everybody who
+was asked, as you the reader (do not say nay) or I the writer hereof
+would go if we had an invitation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company
+
+
+At last Becky's kindness and attention to the chief of her husband's
+family were destined to meet with an exceeding great reward, a
+reward which, though certainly somewhat unsubstantial, the little
+woman coveted with greater eagerness than more positive benefits.
+If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to
+enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the
+genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a
+train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court.
+From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women.
+The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue.  And as
+dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine,
+sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean, many a
+lady, whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to
+give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal
+presence and issues from it free from all taint.
+
+It might be very well for my Lady Bareacres, my Lady Tufto, Mrs.
+Bute Crawley in the country, and other ladies who had come into
+contact with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley to cry fie at the idea of the
+odious little adventuress making her curtsey before the Sovereign,
+and to declare that, if dear good Queen Charlotte had been alive,
+she never would have admitted such an extremely ill-regulated
+personage into her chaste drawing-room.  But when we consider that
+it was the First Gentleman in Europe in whose high presence Mrs.
+Rawdon passed her examination, and as it were, took her degree in
+reputation, it surely must be flat disloyalty to doubt any more
+about her virtue.  I, for my part, look back with love and awe to
+that Great Character in history.  Ah, what a high and noble
+appreciation of Gentlewomanhood there must have been in Vanity Fair,
+when that revered and august being was invested, by the universal
+acclaim of the refined and educated portion of this empire, with the
+title of Premier Gentilhomme of his Kingdom.  Do you remember, dear
+M--, oh friend of my youth, how one blissful night five-and-twenty
+years since, the "Hypocrite" being acted, Elliston being manager,
+Dowton and Liston performers, two boys had leave from their loyal
+masters to go out from Slaughter-House School where they were
+educated and to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a crowd which
+assembled there to greet the king.  THE KING? There he was.
+Beefeaters were before the august box; the Marquis of Steyne (Lord
+of the Powder Closet) and other great officers of state were behind
+the chair on which he sat, HE sat--florid of face, portly of person,
+covered with orders, and in a rich curling head of hair--how we sang
+God save him!  How the house rocked and shouted with that
+magnificent music.  How they cheered, and cried, and waved
+handkerchiefs.  Ladies wept; mothers clasped their children; some
+fainted with emotion.  People were suffocated in the pit, shrieks
+and groans rising up amidst the writhing and shouting mass there of
+his people who were, and indeed showed themselves almost to be,
+ready to die for him.  Yes, we saw him.  Fate cannot deprive us of
+THAT.  Others have seen Napoleon.  Some few still exist who have
+beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor Johnson, Marie Antoinette, &c.--
+be it our reasonable boast to our children, that we saw George the
+Good, the Magnificent, the Great.
+
+Well, there came a happy day in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's existence when
+this angel was admitted into the paradise of a Court which she
+coveted, her sister-in-law acting as her godmother.  On the
+appointed day, Sir Pitt and his lady, in their great family carriage
+(just newly built, and ready for the Baronet's assumption of the
+office of High Sheriff of his county), drove up to the little house
+in Curzon Street, to the edification of Raggles, who was watching
+from his greengrocer's shop, and saw fine plumes within, and
+enormous bunches of flowers in the breasts of the new livery-coats
+of the footmen.
+
+Sir Pitt, in a glittering uniform, descended and went into Curzon
+Street, his sword between his legs.  Little Rawdon stood with his
+face against the parlour window-panes, smiling and nodding with all
+his might to his aunt in the carriage within; and presently Sir Pitt
+issued forth from the house again, leading forth a lady with grand
+feathers, covered in a white shawl, and holding up daintily a train
+of magnificent brocade.  She stepped into the vehicle as if she were
+a princess and accustomed all her life to go to Court, smiling
+graciously on the footman at the door and on Sir Pitt, who followed
+her into the carriage.
+
+Then Rawdon followed in his old Guards' uniform, which had grown
+woefully shabby, and was much too tight.  He was to have followed
+the procession and waited upon his sovereign in a cab, but that his
+good-natured sister-in-law insisted that they should be a family
+party. The coach was large, the ladies not very big, they would hold
+their trains in their laps--finally, the four went fraternally
+together, and their carriage presently joined the line of royal
+equipages which was making its way down Piccadilly and St.  James's
+Street, towards the old brick palace where the Star of Brunswick was
+in waiting to receive his nobles and gentlefolks.
+
+Becky felt as if she could bless the people out of the carriage
+windows, so elated was she in spirit, and so strong a sense had she
+of the dignified position which she had at last attained in life.
+Even our Becky had her weaknesses, and as one often sees how men
+pride themselves upon excellences which others are slow to perceive:
+how, for instance, Comus firmly believes that he is the greatest
+tragic actor in England; how Brown, the famous novelist, longs to be
+considered, not a man of genius, but a man of fashion; while
+Robinson, the great lawyer, does not in the least care about his
+reputation in Westminster Hall, but believes himself incomparable
+across country and at a five-barred gate--so to be, and to be
+thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aim in life, and she got up
+the genteel with amazing assiduity, readiness, and success.  We have
+said, there were times when she believed herself to be a fine lady
+and forgot that there was no money in the chest at home--duns round
+the gate, tradesmen to coax and wheedle--no ground to walk upon, in
+a word.  And as she went to Court in the carriage, the family
+carriage, she adopted a demeanour so grand, self-satisfied,
+deliberate, and imposing that it made even Lady Jane laugh.  She
+walked into the royal apartments with a toss of the head which would
+have befitted an empress, and I have no doubt had she been one, she
+would have become the character perfectly.
+
+We are authorized to state that Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's costume de
+cour on the occasion of her presentation to the Sovereign was of the
+most elegant and brilliant description.  Some ladies we may have
+seen--we who wear stars and cordons and attend the St.  James's
+assemblies, or we, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and down Pall Mall
+and peep into the coaches as they drive up with the great folks in
+their feathers--some ladies of fashion, I say, we may have seen,
+about two o'clock of the forenoon of a levee day, as the laced-
+jacketed band of the Life Guards are blowing triumphal marches
+seated on those prancing music-stools, their cream-coloured
+chargers--who are by no means lovely and enticing objects at that
+early period of noon.  A stout countess of sixty, decolletee,
+painted, wrinkled with rouge up to her drooping eyelids, and
+diamonds twinkling in her wig, is a wholesome and edifying, but not
+a pleasant sight.  She has the faded look of a St.  James's Street
+illumination, as it may be seen of an early morning, when half the
+lamps are out, and the others are blinking wanly, as if they were
+about to vanish like ghosts before the dawn.  Such charms as those
+of which we catch glimpses while her ladyship's carriage passes
+should appear abroad at night alone.  If even Cynthia looks haggard
+of an afternoon, as we may see her sometimes in the present winter
+season, with Phoebus staring her out of countenance from the
+opposite side of the heavens, how much more can old Lady
+Castlemouldy keep her head up when the sun is shining full upon it
+through the chariot windows, and showing all the chinks and crannies
+with which time has marked her face!  No.  Drawing-rooms should be
+announced for November, or the first foggy day, or the elderly
+sultanas of our Vanity Fair should drive up in closed litters,
+descend in a covered way, and make their curtsey to the Sovereign
+under the protection of lamplight.
+
+Our beloved Rebecca had no need, however, of any such a friendly
+halo to set off her beauty.  Her complexion could bear any sunshine
+as yet, and her dress, though if you were to see it now, any present
+lady of Vanity Fair would pronounce it to be the most foolish and
+preposterous attire ever worn, was as handsome in her eyes and those
+of the public, some five-and-twenty years since, as the most
+brilliant costume of the most famous beauty of the present season.
+A score of years hence that too, that milliner's wonder, will have
+passed into the domain of the absurd, along with all previous
+vanities.  But we are wandering too much.  Mrs. Rawdon's dress was
+pronounced to be charmante on the eventful day of her presentation.
+Even good little Lady Jane was forced to acknowledge this effect, as
+she looked at her kinswoman, and owned sorrowfully to herself that
+she was quite inferior in taste to Mrs. Becky.
+
+She did not know how much care, thought, and genius Mrs. Rawdon had
+bestowed upon that garment.  Rebecca had as good taste as any
+milliner in Europe, and such a clever way of doing things as Lady
+Jane little understood. The latter quickly spied out the
+magnificence of the brocade of Becky's train, and the splendour of
+the lace on her dress.
+
+The brocade was an old remnant, Becky said; and as for the lace, it
+was a great bargain.  She had had it these hundred years.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Crawley, it must have cost a little fortune," Lady
+Jane said, looking down at her own lace, which was not nearly so
+good; and then examining the quality of the ancient brocade which
+formed the material of Mrs. Rawdon's Court dress, she felt inclined
+to say that she could not afford such fine clothing, but checked
+that speech, with an effort, as one uncharitable to her kinswoman.
+
+And yet, if Lady Jane had known all, I think even her kindly temper
+would have failed her.  The fact is, when she was putting Sir Pitt's
+house in order, Mrs. Rawdon had found the lace and the brocade in
+old wardrobes, the property of the former ladies of the house, and
+had quietly carried the goods home, and had suited them to her own
+little person.  Briggs saw her take them, asked no questions, told
+no stories; but I believe quite sympathised with her on this matter,
+and so would many another honest woman.
+
+And the diamonds--"Where the doose did you get the diamonds, Becky?"
+said her husband, admiring some jewels which he had never seen
+before and which sparkled in her ears and on her neck with
+brilliance and profusion.
+
+Becky blushed a little and looked at him hard for a moment.  Pitt
+Crawley blushed a little too, and looked out of window.  The fact
+is, he had given her a very small portion of the brilliants; a
+pretty diamond clasp, which confined a pearl necklace which she
+wore--and the Baronet had omitted to mention the circumstance to his
+lady.
+
+Becky looked at her husband, and then at Sir Pitt, with an air of
+saucy triumph--as much as to say, "Shall I betray you?"
+
+"Guess!" she said to her husband.  "Why, you silly man," she
+continued, "where do you suppose I got them?--all except the little
+clasp, which a dear friend of mine gave me long ago.  I hired them,
+to be sure.  I hired them at Mr. Polonius's, in Coventry Street.
+You don't suppose that all the diamonds which go to Court belong to
+the wearers; like those beautiful stones which Lady Jane has, and
+which are much handsomer than any which I have, I am certain."
+
+"They are family jewels," said Sir Pitt, again looking uneasy.  And
+in this family conversation the carriage rolled down the street,
+until its cargo was finally discharged at the gates of the palace
+where the Sovereign was sitting in state.
+
+The diamonds, which had created Rawdon's admiration, never went back
+to Mr. Polonius, of Coventry Street, and that gentleman never
+applied for their restoration, but they retired into a little
+private repository, in an old desk, which Amelia Sedley had given
+her years and years ago, and in which Becky kept a number of useful
+and, perhaps, valuable things, about which her husband knew nothing.
+To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands.  To
+hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you
+have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and
+bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--
+trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who
+does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new
+bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking
+yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is
+writing dunning letters every week for the money!
+
+Thus Rawdon knew nothing about the brilliant diamond ear-rings, or
+the superb brilliant ornament which decorated the fair bosom of his
+lady; but Lord Steyne, who was in his place at Court, as Lord of the
+Powder Closet, and one of the great dignitaries and illustrious
+defences of the throne of England, and came up with all his stars,
+garters, collars, and cordons, and paid particular attention to the
+little woman, knew whence the jewels came and who paid for them.
+
+As he bowed over her he smiled, and quoted the hackneyed and
+beautiful lines from The Rape of the Lock about Belinda's diamonds,
+"which Jews might kiss and infidels adore."
+
+"But I hope your lordship is orthodox," said the little lady with a
+toss of her head.  And many ladies round about whispered and talked,
+and many gentlemen nodded and whispered, as they saw what marked
+attention the great nobleman was paying to the little adventuress.
+
+What were the circumstances of the interview between Rebecca
+Crawley, nee Sharp, and her Imperial Master, it does not become such
+a feeble and inexperienced pen as mine to attempt to relate.  The
+dazzled eyes close before that Magnificent Idea.  Loyal respect and
+decency tell even the imagination not to look too keenly and
+audaciously about the sacred audience-chamber, but to back away
+rapidly, silently, and respectfully, making profound bows out of the
+August Presence.
+
+This may be said, that in all London there was no more loyal heart
+than Becky's after this interview.  The name of her king was always
+on her lips, and he was proclaimed by her to be the most charming of
+men.  She went to Colnaghi's and ordered the finest portrait of him
+that art had produced, and credit could supply.  She chose that
+famous one in which the best of monarchs is represented in a frock-
+coat with a fur collar, and breeches and silk stockings, simpering
+on a sofa from under his curly brown wig.  She had him painted in a
+brooch and wore it--indeed she amused and somewhat pestered her
+acquaintance with her perpetual talk about his urbanity and beauty.
+Who knows!  Perhaps the little woman thought she might play the part
+of a Maintenon or a Pompadour.
+
+But the finest sport of all after her presentation was to hear her
+talk virtuously.  She had a few female acquaintances, not, it must
+be owned, of the very highest reputation in Vanity Fair.  But being
+made an honest woman of, so to speak, Becky would not consort any
+longer with these dubious ones, and cut Lady Crackenbury when the
+latter nodded to her from her opera-box, and gave Mrs. Washington
+White the go-by in the Ring.  "One must, my dear, show one is
+somebody," she said.  "One mustn't be seen with doubtful people.  I
+pity Lady Crackenbury from my heart, and Mrs. Washington White may
+be a very good-natured person.  YOU may go and dine with them, as
+you like your rubber.  But I mustn't, and won't; and you will have
+the goodness to tell Smith to say I am not at home when either of
+them calls."
+
+The particulars of Becky's costume were in the newspapers--feathers,
+lappets, superb diamonds, and all the rest.  Lady Crackenbury read
+the paragraph in bitterness of spirit and discoursed to her
+followers about the airs which that woman was giving herself.  Mrs.
+Bute Crawley and her young ladies in the country had a copy of the
+Morning Post from town, and gave a vent to their honest indignation.
+"If you had been sandy-haired, green-eyed, and a French rope-
+dancer's daughter," Mrs. Bute said to her eldest girl (who, on the
+contrary, was a very swarthy, short, and snub-nosed young lady),
+"You might have had superb diamonds forsooth, and have been
+presented at Court by your cousin, the Lady Jane.  But you're only a
+gentlewoman, my poor dear child.  You have only some of the best
+blood in England in your veins, and good principles and piety for
+your portion.  I, myself, the wife of a Baronet's younger brother,
+too, never thought of such a thing as going to Court--nor would
+other people, if good Queen Charlotte had been alive." In this way
+the worthy Rectoress consoled herself, and her daughters sighed and
+sat over the Peerage all night.
+
+A few days after the famous presentation, another great and
+exceeding honour was vouchsafed to the virtuous Becky.  Lady
+Steyne's carriage drove up to Mr. Rawdon Crawley's door, and the
+footman, instead of driving down the front of the house, as by his
+tremendous knocking he appeared to be inclined to do, relented and
+only delivered in a couple of cards, on which were engraven the
+names of the Marchioness of Steyne and the Countess of Gaunt.  If
+these bits of pasteboard had been beautiful pictures, or had had a
+hundred yards of Malines lace rolled round them, worth twice the
+number of guineas, Becky could not have regarded them with more
+pleasure. You may be sure they occupied a conspicuous place in the
+china bowl on the drawing-room table, where Becky kept the cards of
+her visitors.  Lord! lord! how poor Mrs. Washington White's card and
+Lady Crackenbury's card--which our little friend had been glad
+enough to get a few months back, and of which the silly little
+creature was rather proud once--Lord! lord! I say, how soon at the
+appearance of these grand court cards, did those poor little
+neglected deuces sink down to the bottom of the pack.  Steyne!
+Bareacres, Johnes of Helvellyn!  and Caerylon of Camelot! we may be
+sure that Becky and Briggs looked out those august names in the
+Peerage, and followed the noble races up through all the
+ramifications of the family tree.
+
+My Lord Steyne coming to call a couple of hours afterwards, and
+looking about him, and observing everything as was his wont, found
+his ladies' cards already ranged as the trumps of Becky's hand, and
+grinned, as this old cynic always did at any naive display of human
+weakness.  Becky came down to him presently; whenever the dear girl
+expected his lordship, her toilette was prepared, her hair in
+perfect order, her mouchoirs, aprons, scarfs, little morocco
+slippers, and other female gimcracks arranged, and she seated in
+some artless and agreeable posture ready to receive him--whenever
+she was surprised, of course, she had to fly to her apartment to
+take a rapid survey of matters in the glass, and to trip down again
+to wait upon the great peer.
+
+She found him grinning over the bowl.  She was discovered, and she
+blushed a little.  "Thank you, Monseigneur," she said.  "You see
+your ladies have been here.  How good of you!  I couldn't come
+before--I was in the kitchen making a pudding."
+
+"I know you were, I saw you through the area-railings as I drove
+up," replied the old gentleman.
+
+"You see everything," she replied.
+
+"A few things, but not that, my pretty lady," he said good-
+naturedly.  "You silly little fibster!  I heard you in the room
+overhead, where I have no doubt you were putting a little rouge on--
+you must give some of yours to my Lady Gaunt, whose complexion is
+quite preposterous--and I heard the bedroom door open, and then you
+came downstairs."
+
+"Is it a crime to try and look my best when YOU come here?" answered
+Mrs. Rawdon plaintively, and she rubbed her cheek with her
+handkerchief as if to show there was no rouge at all, only genuine
+blushes and modesty in her case.  About this who can tell? I know
+there is some rouge that won't come off on a pocket-handkerchief,
+and some so good that even tears will not disturb it.
+
+"Well," said the old gentleman, twiddling round his wife's card,
+"you are bent on becoming a fine lady. You pester my poor old life
+out to get you into the world.  You won't be able to hold your own
+there, you silly little fool.  You've got no money."
+
+"You will get us a place," interposed Becky, "as quick as possible."
+
+"You've got no money, and you want to compete with those who have.
+You poor little earthenware pipkin, you want to swim down the stream
+along with the great copper kettles.  All women are alike.
+Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having!  Gad!  I
+dined with the King yesterday, and we had neck of mutton and
+turnips. A dinner of herbs is better than a stalled ox very often.
+You will go to Gaunt House.  You give an old fellow no rest until
+you get there.  It's not half so nice as here. You'll be bored
+there.  I am.  My wife is as gay as Lady Macbeth, and my daughters
+as cheerful as Regan and Goneril.  I daren't sleep in what they call
+my bedroom. The bed is like the baldaquin of St.  Peter's, and the
+pictures frighten me.  I have a little brass bed in a dressing-room,
+and a little hair mattress like an anchorite. I am an anchorite.
+Ho!  ho!  You'll be asked to dinner next week.  And gare aux femmes,
+look out and hold your own!  How the women will bully you!" This was
+a very long speech for a man of few words like my Lord Steyne; nor
+was it the first which he uttered for Becky's benefit on that day.
+
+Briggs looked up from the work-table at which she was seated in the
+farther room and gave a deep sigh as she heard the great Marquis
+speak so lightly of her sex.
+
+"If you don't turn off that abominable sheep-dog," said Lord Steyne,
+with a savage look over his shoulder at her, "I will have her
+poisoned."
+
+"I always give my dog dinner from my own plate," said Rebecca,
+laughing mischievously; and having enjoyed for some time the
+discomfiture of my lord, who hated poor Briggs for interrupting his
+tete-a-tete with the fair Colonel's wife, Mrs. Rawdon at length had
+pity upon her admirer, and calling to Briggs, praised the fineness
+of the weather to her and bade her to take out the child for a walk.
+
+"I can't send her away," Becky said presently, after a pause, and in
+a very sad voice.  Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, and she
+turned away her head.
+
+"You owe her her wages, I suppose?" said the Peer.
+
+"Worse than that," said Becky, still casting down her eyes; "I have
+ruined her."
+
+"Ruined her? Then why don't you turn her out?" the gentleman asked.
+
+"Men do that," Becky answered bitterly.  "Women are not so bad as
+you.  Last year, when we were reduced to our last guinea, she gave
+us everything.  She shall never leave me, until we are ruined
+utterly ourselves, which does not seem far off, or until I can pay
+her the utmost farthing."
+
+"------ it, how much is it?" said the Peer with an oath. And Becky,
+reflecting on the largeness of his means, mentioned not only the sum
+which she had borrowed from Miss Briggs, but one of nearly double
+the amount.
+
+This caused the Lord Steyne to break out in another brief and
+energetic expression of anger, at which Rebecca held down her head
+the more and cried bitterly.  "I could not help it.  It was my only
+chance.  I dare not tell my husband.  He would kill me if I told him
+what I have done.  I have kept it a secret from everybody but you--
+and you forced it from me.  Ah, what shall I do, Lord Steyne? for I
+am very, very unhappy!"
+
+Lord Steyne made no reply except by beating the devil's tattoo and
+biting his nails.  At last he clapped his hat on his head and flung
+out of the room.  Rebecca did not rise from her attitude of misery
+until the door slammed upon him and his carriage whirled away.  Then
+she rose up with the queerest expression of victorious mischief
+glittering in her green eyes.  She burst out laughing once or twice
+to herself, as she sat at work, and sitting down to the piano, she
+rattled away a triumphant voluntary on the keys, which made the
+people pause under her window to listen to her brilliant music.
+
+That night, there came two notes from Gaunt House for the little
+woman, the one containing a card of invitation from Lord and Lady
+Steyne to a dinner at Gaunt House next Friday, while the other
+enclosed a slip of gray paper bearing Lord Steyne's signature and
+the address of Messrs.  Jones, Brown, and Robinson, Lombard Street.
+
+Rawdon heard Becky laughing in the night once or twice.  It was only
+her delight at going to Gaunt House and facing the ladies there, she
+said, which amused her so.  But the truth was that she was occupied
+with a great number of other thoughts.  Should she pay off old
+Briggs and give her her conge? Should she astonish Raggles by
+settling his account? She turned over all these thoughts on her
+pillow, and on the next day, when Rawdon went out to pay his morning
+visit to the Club, Mrs. Crawley (in a modest dress with a veil on)
+whipped off in a hackney-coach to the City:  and being landed at
+Messrs. Jones and Robinson's bank, presented a document there to the
+authority at the desk, who, in reply, asked her "How she would take
+it?"
+
+She gently said "she would take a hundred and fifty pounds in small
+notes and the remainder in one note": and passing through St.
+Paul's Churchyard stopped there and bought the handsomest black silk
+gown for Briggs which money could buy; and which, with a kiss and
+the kindest speeches, she presented to the simple old spinster.
+
+Then she walked to Mr. Raggles, inquired about his children
+affectionately, and gave him fifty pounds on account.  Then she went
+to the livery-man from whom she jobbed her carriages and gratified
+him with a similar sum.  "And I hope this will be a lesson to you,
+Spavin," she said, "and that on the next drawing-room day my
+brother, Sir Pitt, will not be inconvenienced by being obliged to
+take four of us in his carriage to wait upon His Majesty, because my
+own carriage is not forthcoming." It appears there had been a
+difference on the last drawing-room day.  Hence the degradation
+which the Colonel had almost suffered, of being obliged to enter the
+presence of his Sovereign in a hack cab.
+
+These arrangements concluded, Becky paid a visit upstairs to the
+before-mentioned desk, which Amelia Sedley had given her years and
+years ago, and which contained a number of useful and valuable
+little things--in which private museum she placed the one note which
+Messrs.  Jones and Robinson's cashier had given her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert
+
+
+When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning, Lord
+Steyne (who took his chocolate in private and seldom disturbed the
+females of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or
+when they crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box
+at the opera he surveyed them in their box on the grand tier) his
+lordship, we say, appeared among the ladies and the children who
+were assembled over the tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued
+apropos of Rebecca.
+
+"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list for your dinner
+on Friday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for
+Colonel and Mrs. Crawley."
+
+"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said in a flutter. "Lady Gaunt
+writes them."
+
+"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said, a tall and
+stately lady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after
+she had spoken.  It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for
+those who had offended him.
+
+"Send the children out of the room.  Go!" said he pulling at the
+bell-rope.  The urchins, always frightened before him, retired:
+their mother would have followed too.  "Not you," he said.  "You
+stop."
+
+"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more will you have the goodness to
+go to the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?"
+
+"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt said; "I will go
+home."
+
+"I wish you would, and stay there.  You will find the bailiffs at
+Bareacres very pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lending
+money to your relations and from your own damned tragedy airs.  Who
+are you to give orders here? You have no money.  You've got no
+brains.  You were here to have children, and you have not had any.
+Gaunt's tired of you, and George's wife is the only person in the
+family who doesn't wish you were dead.  Gaunt would marry again if
+you were."
+
+"I wish I were," her Ladyship answered with tears and rage in her
+eyes.
+
+"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while my wife,
+who is an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, and never did wrong
+in her life, has no objection to meet my young friend Mrs. Crawley.
+My Lady Steyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best
+of women; that lies are often told about the most innocent of them.
+Pray, madam, shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady
+Bareacres, your mamma?"
+
+"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow," Lady
+Gaunt said.  To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his
+Lordship into a good humour.
+
+"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and never lay my
+hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness.  I only wish to
+correct little faults in your character.  You women are too proud,
+and sadly lack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my
+Lady Steyne if he were here.  You mustn't give yourselves airs; you
+must be meek and humble, my blessings.  For all Lady Steyne knows,
+this calumniated, simple, good-humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite
+innocent--even more innocent than herself.  Her husband's character
+is not good, but it is as good as Bareacres', who has played a
+little and not paid a great deal, who cheated you out of the only
+legacy you ever had and left you a pauper on my hands.  And Mrs.
+Crawley is not very well-born, but she is not worse than Fanny's
+illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones."
+
+"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady George cried
+out--
+
+"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the Marquis said
+darkly.  "If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honours; your
+little boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In the
+meanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but
+don't give ME any airs.  As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan't
+demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable
+lady by even hinting that it requires a defence.  You will be
+pleased to receive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will
+receive all persons whom I present in this house.  This house?" He
+broke out with a laugh.  "Who is the master of it? and what is it?
+This Temple of Virtue belongs to me.  And if I invite all Newgate or
+all Bedlam here, by ------ they shall be welcome."
+
+After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steyne
+treated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared
+in his household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to
+obey.  Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his Lordship required,
+and she and her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and
+humiliated hearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception
+of which caused that innocent woman so much pleasure.
+
+There were families in London who would have sacrificed a year's
+income to receive such an honour at the hands of those great ladies.
+Mrs. Frederick Bullock, for instance, would have gone on her knees
+from May Fair to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had
+been waiting in the City to raise her up and say, "Come to us next
+Friday"--not to one of the great crushes and grand balls of Gaunt
+House, whither everybody went, but to the sacred, unapproachable,
+mysterious, delicious entertainments, to be admitted to one of which
+was a privilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.
+
+Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the very highest
+rank in Vanity Fair.  The distinguished courtesy with which Lord
+Steyne treated her charmed everybody who witnessed his behaviour,
+caused the severest critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was,
+and to own that his Lordship's heart at least was in the right
+place.
+
+The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to their aid, in
+order to repulse the common enemy.  One of Lady Gaunt's carriages
+went to Hill Street for her Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages
+were in the hands of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe,
+it was said, had been seized by those inexorable Israelites.
+Bareacres Castle was theirs, too, with all its costly pictures,
+furniture, and articles of vertu--the magnificent Vandykes; the
+noble Reynolds pictures; the Lawrence portraits, tawdry and
+beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemed as precious as works of
+real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph of Canova, for which Lady
+Bareacres had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacres splendid then, and
+radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless, bald, old woman
+now--a mere rag of a former robe of state.  Her lord, painted at the
+same time by Lawrence, as waving his sabre in front of Bareacres
+Castle, and clothed in his uniform as Colonel of the Thistlewood
+Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a greatcoat and a Brutus
+wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of mornings chiefly and dining alone
+at clubs.  He did not like to dine with Steyne now.  They had run
+races of pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the winner.
+But Steyne had more bottom than he and had lasted him out.  The
+Marquis was ten times a greater man now than the young Lord Gaunt of
+'85, and Bareacres nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and
+broken down.  He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to find it
+pleasant to meet his old comrade often.  The latter, whenever he
+wished to be merry, used jeeringly to ask Lady Gaunt why her father
+had not come to see her. "He has not been here for four months,"
+Lord Steyne would say.  "I can always tell by my cheque-book
+afterwards, when I get a visit from Bareacres.  What a comfort it
+is, my ladies, I bank with one of my sons' fathers-in-law, and the
+other banks with me!"
+
+Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to
+encounter on this her first presentation to the grand world, it does
+not become the present historian to say much.  There was his
+Excellency the Prince of Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman
+tightly girthed, with a large military chest, on which the plaque of
+his order shone magnificently, and wearing the red collar of the
+Golden Fleece round his neck.  He was the owner of countless flocks.
+"Look at his face.  I think he must be descended from a sheep,"
+Becky whispered to Lord Steyne.  Indeed, his Excellency's
+countenance, long, solemn, and white, with the ornament round his
+neck, bore some resemblance to that of a venerable bell-wether.
+
+There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the
+American Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who,
+by way of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady
+Steyne, during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear
+friend, George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most
+intimate at Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together.  Mr. Jones
+wrote a full and particular account of the dinner, which appeared
+duly in the Demagogue.  He mentioned the names and titles of all the
+guests, giving biographical sketches of the principal people.  He
+described the persons of the ladies with great eloquence; the
+service of the table; the size and costume of the servants;
+enumerated the dishes and wines served; the ornaments of the
+sideboard; and the probable value of the plate.  Such a dinner he
+calculated could not be dished up under fifteen or eighteen dollars
+per head. And he was in the habit, until very lately, of sending
+over proteges, with letters of recommendation to the present Marquis
+of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate terms on which he had
+lived with his dear friend, the late lord.  He was most indignant
+that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl of Southdown,
+should have taken the pas of him in their procession to the dining-
+room.  "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to a very
+pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.
+Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between
+me and the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology.
+I was fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's
+husband, a stout red-faced warrior who distinguished himself at
+Waterloo, where he had better luck than befell some of his brother
+redcoats at New Orleans."
+
+The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore as
+many blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he is
+confronted with his sister's schoolfellows.  It has been told before
+that honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life
+to ladies' company.  With the men at the Club or the mess room, he
+was well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards
+with the boldest of them.  He had had his time for female
+friendships too, but that was twenty years ago, and the ladies were
+of the rank of those with whom Young Marlow in the comedy is
+represented as having been familiar before he became abashed in the
+presence of Miss Hardcastle.  The times are such that one scarcely
+dares to allude to that kind of company which thousands of our young
+men in Vanity Fair are frequenting every day, which nightly fills
+casinos and dancing-rooms, which is known to exist as well as the
+Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at St.  James's--but which the
+most squeamish if not the most moral of societies is determined to
+ignore.  In a word, although Colonel Crawley was now five-and-forty
+years of age, it had not been his lot in life to meet with a half
+dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife.  All except her and
+his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamed and won
+him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his first dinner
+at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark except to
+state that the weather was very hot.  Indeed Becky would have left
+him at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by
+her side to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her
+first appearance in polite society.
+
+On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her
+hand, and greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to
+Lady Steyne, and their ladyships, her daughters.  Their ladyships
+made three stately curtsies, and the elder lady to be sure gave her
+hand to the newcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.
+
+Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing a
+reverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master,
+put herself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his
+Lordship had been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that
+she, Becky, had learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from
+the days of her childhood.  The fact is that Lord Steyne had once
+purchased a couple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the
+affectionate orphan could never forget her gratitude for that
+favour.
+
+The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance--to whom the
+Colonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance:  it was
+returned with severe dignity by the exalted person in question.
+
+"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at
+Brussels, ten years ago," Becky said in the most winning manner.  "I
+had the good fortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of
+Richmond's ball, the night before the Battle of Waterloo.  And I
+recollect your Ladyship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting
+in the carriage in the porte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses.
+I hope your Ladyship's diamonds are safe."
+
+Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's.  The famous diamonds
+had undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, of
+course, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown
+into a window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as
+Rawdon told him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and
+"knuckling down by Jove," to Mrs. Crawley.  "I think I needn't be
+afraid of THAT woman," Becky thought.  Indeed, Lady Bareacres
+exchanged terrified and angry looks with her daughter and retreated
+to a table, where she began to look at pictures with great energy.
+
+When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, the
+conversation was carried on in the French language, and the Lady
+Bareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther
+mortification, that Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with
+that tongue, and spoke it with a much better accent than they.
+Becky had met other Hungarian magnates with the army in France in
+1816-17.  She asked after her friends with great interest The
+foreign personages thought that she was a lady of great distinction,
+and the Prince and the Princess asked severally of Lord Steyne and
+the Marchioness, whom they conducted to dinner, who was that petite
+dame who spoke so well?
+
+Finally, the procession being formed in the order described by the
+American diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the
+banquet was served, and which, as I have promised the reader he
+shall enjoy it, he shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as
+to suit his fancy.
+
+But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of war
+would come.  And then indeed the little woman found herself in such
+a situation as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's
+caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own
+sphere.  As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen most are
+Irishmen; so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women.
+When poor little Becky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-
+place whither the great ladies had repaired, the great ladies
+marched away and took possession of a table of drawings.  When Becky
+followed them to the table of drawings, they dropped off one by one
+to the fire again.  She tried to speak to one of the children (of
+whom she was commonly fond in public places), but Master George
+Gaunt was called away by his mamma; and the stranger was treated
+with such cruelty finally, that even Lady Steyne herself pitied her
+and went up to speak to the friendless little woman.
+
+"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with a
+blush, "says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I
+wish you would do me the kindness to sing to me."
+
+"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or to
+you," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at the
+piano, began to sing.
+
+She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites
+of Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the
+lady, lingering round the piano, sat down by its side and listened
+until the tears rolled down her eyes.  It is true that the
+opposition ladies at the other end of the room kept up a loud and
+ceaseless buzzing and talking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear
+those rumours.  She was a child again--and had wandered back through
+a forty years' wilderness to her convent garden.  The chapel organ
+had pealed the same tones, the organist, the sister whom she loved
+best of the community, had taught them to her in those early happy
+days.  She was a girl once more, and the brief period of her
+happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she started when the
+jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laugh from Lord
+Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety.
+
+He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence, and was
+grateful to his wife for once.  He went and spoke to her, and called
+her by her Christian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale
+face--"My wife says you have been singing like an angel," he said to
+Becky.  Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is
+said, are charming in their way.
+
+Whatever the previous portion of the evening had been, the rest of
+that night was a great triumph for Becky.  She sang her very best,
+and it was so good that every one of the men came and crowded round
+the piano.  The women, her enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr.
+Paul Jefferson Jones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by
+going up to her Ladyship and praising her delightful friend's first-
+rate singing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+Contains a Vulgar Incident
+
+
+The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this Comic History must
+now descend from the genteel heights in which she has been soaring
+and have the goodness to drop down upon the lowly roof of John
+Sedley at Brompton, and describe what events are taking place there.
+Here, too, in this humble tenement, live care, and distrust, and
+dismay.  Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen is grumbling in secret to her
+husband about the rent, and urging the good fellow to rebel against
+his old friend and patron and his present lodger.  Mrs. Sedley has
+ceased to visit her landlady in the lower regions now, and indeed is
+in a position to patronize Mrs. Clapp no longer.  How can one be
+condescending to a lady to whom one owes a matter of forty pounds,
+and who is perpetually throwing out hints for the money? The Irish
+maidservant has not altered in the least in her kind and respectful
+behaviour; but Mrs. Sedley fancies that she is growing insolent and
+ungrateful, and, as the guilty thief who fears each bush an officer,
+sees threatening innuendoes and hints of capture in all the girl's
+speeches and answers.  Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman now, is
+declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable and impudent
+little minx.  Why Amelia can be so fond of her, or have her in her
+room so much, or walk out with her so constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot
+conceive. The bitterness of poverty has poisoned the life of the
+once cheerful and kindly woman.  She is thankless for Amelia's
+constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps at her for her
+efforts at kindness or service; rails at her for her silly pride in
+her child and her neglect of her parents.  Georgy's house is not a
+very lively one since Uncle Jos's annuity has been withdrawn and the
+little family are almost upon famine diet.
+
+Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find some means
+of increasing the small pittance upon which the household is
+starving.  Can she give lessons in anything? paint card-racks? do
+fine work? She finds that women are working hard, and better than
+she can, for twopence a day.  She buys a couple of begilt Bristol
+boards at the Fancy Stationer's and paints her very best upon them--
+a shepherd with a red waistcoat on one, and a pink face smiling in
+the midst of a pencil landscape--a shepherdess on the other,
+crossing a little bridge, with a little dog, nicely shaded.  The man
+of the Fancy Repository and Brompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of whom
+she bought the screens, vainly hoping that he would repurchase them
+when ornamented by her hand) can hardly hide the sneer with which he
+examines these feeble works of art.  He looks askance at the lady
+who waits in the shop, and ties up the cards again in their envelope
+of whitey-brown paper, and hands them to the poor widow and Miss
+Clapp, who had never seen such beautiful things in her life, and had
+been quite confident that the man must give at least two guineas for
+the screens.  They try at other shops in the interior of London,
+with faint sickening hopes.  "Don't want 'em," says one.  "Be off,"
+says another fiercely.  Three-and-sixpence has been spent in vain--
+the screens retire to Miss Clapp's bedroom, who persists in thinking
+them lovely.
+
+She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and after long
+thought and labour of composition, in which the public is informed
+that "A Lady who has some time at her disposal, wishes to undertake
+the education of some little girls, whom she would instruct in
+English, in French, in Geography, in History, and in Music--address
+A.  O., at Mr. Brown's"; and she confides the card to the gentleman
+of the Fine Art Repository, who consents to allow it to lie upon the
+counter, where it grows dingy and fly-blown.  Amelia passes the door
+wistfully many a time, in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news
+to give her, but he never beckons her in.  When she goes to make
+little purchases, there is no news for her.  Poor simple lady,
+tender and weak--how are you to battle with the struggling violent
+world?
+
+She grows daily more care-worn and sad, fixing upon her child
+alarmed eyes, whereof the little boy cannot interpret the
+expression.  She starts up of a night and peeps into his room
+stealthily, to see that he is sleeping and not stolen away.  She
+sleeps but little now.  A constant thought and terror is haunting
+her.  How she weeps and prays in the long silent nights--how she
+tries to hide from herself the thought which will return to her,
+that she ought to part with the boy, that she is the only barrier
+between him and prosperity.  She can't, she can't. Not now, at
+least.  Some other day.  Oh! it is too hard to think of and to bear.
+
+A thought comes over her which makes her blush and turn from
+herself--her parents might keep the annuity--the curate would marry
+her and give a home to her and the boy.  But George's picture and
+dearest memory are there to rebuke her.  Shame and love say no to
+the sacrifice.  She shrinks from it as from something unholy, and
+such thoughts never found a resting-place in that pure and gentle
+bosom.
+
+The combat, which we describe in a sentence or two, lasted for many
+weeks in poor Amelia's heart, during which she had no confidante;
+indeed, she could never have one, as she would not allow to herself
+the possibility of yielding, though she was giving way daily before
+the enemy with whom she had to battle.  One truth after another was
+marshalling itself silently against her and keeping its ground.
+Poverty and misery for all, want and degradation for her parents,
+injustice to the boy--one by one the outworks of the little citadel
+were taken, in which the poor soul passionately guarded her only
+love and treasure.
+
+At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a letter of
+tender supplication to her brother at Calcutta, imploring him not to
+withdraw the support which he had granted to their parents and
+painting in terms of artless pathos their lonely and hapless
+condition.  She did not know the truth of the matter.  The payment
+of Jos's annuity was still regular, but it was a money-lender in the
+City who was receiving it:  old Sedley had sold it for a sum of
+money wherewith to prosecute his bootless schemes.  Emmy was
+calculating eagerly the time that would elapse before the letter
+would arrive and be answered.  She had written down the date in her
+pocket-book of the day when she dispatched it.  To her son's
+guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not communicated any of
+her griefs and perplexities.  She had not written to him since she
+wrote to congratulate him on his approaching marriage.  She thought
+with sickening despondency, that that friend--the only one, the one
+who had felt such a regard for her--was fallen away.
+
+One day, when things had come to a very bad pass--when the creditors
+were pressing, the mother in hysteric grief, the father in more than
+usual gloom, the inmates of the family avoiding each other, each
+secretly oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion of wrong
+--the father and daughter happened to be left alone together, and
+Amelia thought to comfort her father by telling him what she had
+done.  She had written to Joseph--an answer must come in three or
+four months. He was always generous, though careless.  He could not
+refuse, when he knew how straitened were the circumstances of his
+parents.
+
+Then the poor old gentleman revealed the whole truth to her--that
+his son was still paying the annuity, which his own imprudence had
+flung away.  He had not dared to tell it sooner.  He thought
+Amelia's ghastly and terrified look, when, with a trembling,
+miserable voice he made the confession, conveyed reproaches to him
+for his concealment.  "Ah!" said he with quivering lips and turning
+away, "you despise your old father now!"
+
+"Oh, papal it is not that," Amelia cried out, falling on his neck
+and kissing him many times.  "You are always good and kind.  You did
+it for the best.  It is not for the money--it is--my God! my God!
+have mercy upon me, and give me strength to bear this trial"; and
+she kissed him again wildly and went away.
+
+Still the father did not know what that explanation meant, and the
+burst of anguish with which the poor girl left him.  It was that she
+was conquered.  The sentence was passed.  The child must go from
+her--to others--to forget her.  Her heart and her treasure--her joy,
+hope, love, worship--her God, almost!  She must give him up, and
+then--and then she would go to George, and they would watch over the
+child and wait for him until he came to them in Heaven.
+
+She put on her bonnet, scarcely knowing what she did, and went out
+to walk in the lanes by which George used to come back from school,
+and where she was in the habit of going on his return to meet the
+boy.  It was May, a half-holiday.  The leaves were all coming out,
+the weather was brilliant; the boy came running to her flushed with
+health, singing, his bundle of school-books hanging by a thong.
+There he was.  Both her arms were round him.  No, it was impossible.
+They could not be going to part.  "What is the matter, Mother?" said
+he; "you look very pale."
+
+"Nothing, my child," she said and stooped down and kissed him.
+
+That night Amelia made the boy read the story of Samuel to her, and
+how Hannah, his mother, having weaned him, brought him to Eli the
+High Priest to minister before the Lord.  And he read the song of
+gratitude which Hannah sang, and which says, who it is who maketh
+poor and maketh rich, and bringeth low and exalteth--how the poor
+shall be raised up out of the dust, and how, in his own might, no
+man shall be strong. Then he read how Samuel's mother made him a
+little coat and brought it to him from year to year when she came up
+to offer the yearly sacrifice.  And then, in her sweet simple way,
+George's mother made commentaries to the boy upon this affecting
+story.  How Hannah, though she loved her son so much, yet gave him
+up because of her vow.  And how she must always have thought of him
+as she sat at home, far away, making the little coat; and Samuel,
+she was sure, never forgot his mother; and how happy she must have
+been as the time came (and the years pass away very quick) when she
+should see her boy and how good and wise he had grown.  This little
+sermon she spoke with a gentle solemn voice, and dry eyes, until she
+came to the account of their meeting--then the discourse broke off
+suddenly, the tender heart overflowed, and taking the boy to her
+breast, she rocked him in her arms and wept silently over him in a
+sainted agony of tears.
+
+Her mind being made up, the widow began to take such measures as
+seemed right to her for advancing the end which she proposed.  One
+day, Miss Osborne, in Russell Square (Amelia had not written the
+name or number of the house for ten years--her youth, her early
+story came back to her as she wrote the superscription) one day Miss
+Osborne got a letter from Amelia which made her blush very much and
+look towards her father, sitting glooming in his place at the other
+end of the table.
+
+In simple terms, Amelia told her the reasons which had induced her
+to change her mind respecting her boy. Her father had met with fresh
+misfortunes which had entirely ruined him.  Her own pittance was so
+small that it would barely enable her to support her parents and
+would not suffice to give George the advantages which were his due.
+Great as her sufferings would be at parting with him she would, by
+God's help, endure them for the boy's sake.  She knew that those to
+whom he was going would do all in their power to make him happy.
+She described his disposition, such as she fancied it--quick and
+impatient of control or harshness, easily to be moved by love and
+kindness.  In a postscript, she stipulated that she should have a
+written agreement, that she should see the child as often as she
+wished--she could not part with him under any other terms.
+
+"What? Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?" old Osborne said, when
+with a tremulous eager voice Miss Osborne read him the letter.
+"Reg'lar starved out, hey? Ha, ha!  I knew she would." He tried to
+keep his dignity and to read his paper as usual--but he could not
+follow it.  He chuckled and swore to himself behind the sheet.
+
+At last he flung it down and, scowling at his daughter, as his wont
+was, went out of the room into his study adjoining, from whence he
+presently returned with a key.  He flung it to Miss Osborne.
+
+"Get the room over mine--his room that was--ready," he said.  "Yes,
+sir," his daughter replied in a tremble. It was George's room.  It
+had not been opened for more than ten years.  Some of his clothes,
+papers, handkerchiefs, whips and caps, fishing-rods and sporting
+gear, were still there.  An Army list of 1814, with his name written
+on the cover; a little dictionary he was wont to use in writing; and
+the Bible his mother had given him, were on the mantelpiece, with a
+pair of spurs and a dried inkstand covered with the dust of ten
+years.  Ah! since that ink was wet, what days and people had passed
+away!  The writing-book, still on the table, was blotted with his
+hand.
+
+Miss Osborne was much affected when she first entered this room with
+the servants under her.  She sank quite pale on the little bed.
+"This is blessed news, m'am--indeed, m'am," the housekeeper said;
+"and the good old times is returning, m'am.  The dear little feller,
+to be sure, m'am; how happy he will be!  But some folks in May Fair,
+m'am, will owe him a grudge, m'am"; and she clicked back the bolt
+which held the window-sash and let the air into the chamber.
+
+"You had better send that woman some money," Mr. Osborne said,
+before he went out.  "She shan't want for nothing.  Send her a
+hundred pound."
+
+"And I'll go and see her to-morrow?" Miss Osborne asked.
+
+"That's your look out.  She don't come in here, mind. No, by ------,
+not for all the money in London.  But she mustn't want now.  So look
+out, and get things right." With which brief speeches Mr. Osborne
+took leave of his daughter and went on his accustomed way into the
+City.
+
+"Here, Papa, is some money," Amelia said that night, kissing the old
+man, her father, and putting a bill for a hundred pounds into his
+hands.  "And--and, Mamma, don't be harsh with Georgy.  He--he is not
+going to stop with us long." She could say nothing more, and walked
+away silently to her room.  Let us close it upon her prayers and her
+sorrow.  I think we had best speak little about so much love and
+grief.
+
+Miss Osborne came the next day, according to the promise contained
+in her note, and saw Amelia.  The meeting between them was friendly.
+A look and a few words from Miss Osborne showed the poor widow that,
+with regard to this woman at least, there need be no fear lest she
+should take the first place in her son's affection. She was cold,
+sensible, not unkind.  The mother had not been so well pleased,
+perhaps, had the rival been better looking, younger, more
+affectionate, warmer-hearted.  Miss Osborne, on the other hand,
+thought of old times and memories and could not but be touched with
+the poor mother's pitiful situation.  She was conquered, and laying
+down her arms, as it were, she humbly submitted.  That day they
+arranged together the preliminaries of the treaty of capitulation.
+
+George was kept from school the next day, and saw his aunt.  Amelia
+left them alone together and went to her room.  She was trying the
+separation--as that poor gentle Lady Jane Grey felt the edge of the
+axe that was to come down and sever her slender life.  Days were
+passed in parleys, visits, preparations.  The widow broke the matter
+to Georgy with great caution; she looked to see him very much
+affected by the intelligence.  He was rather elated than otherwise,
+and the poor woman turned sadly away.  He bragged about the news
+that day to the boys at school; told them how he was going to live
+with his grandpapa his father's father, not the one who comes here
+sometimes; and that he would be very rich, and have a carriage, and
+a pony, and go to a much finer school, and when he was rich he would
+buy Leader's pencil-case and pay the tart-woman.  The boy was the
+image of his father, as his fond mother thought.
+
+Indeed I have no heart, on account of our dear Amelia's sake, to go
+through the story of George's last days at home.
+
+At last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little humble
+packets containing tokens of love and remembrance were ready and
+disposed in the hall long since--George was in his new suit, for
+which the tailor had come previously to measure him.  He had sprung
+up with the sun and put on the new clothes, his mother hearing him
+from the room close by, in which she had been lying, in speechless
+grief and watching.  Days before she had been making preparations
+for the end, purchasing little stores for the boy's use, marking his
+books and linen, talking with him and preparing him for the change--
+fondly fancying that he needed preparation.
+
+So that he had change, what cared he? He was longing for it.  By a
+thousand eager declarations as to what he would do, when he went to
+live with his grandfather, he had shown the poor widow how little
+the idea of parting had cast him down.  "He would come and see his
+mamma often on the pony," he said.  "He would come and fetch her in
+the carriage; they would drive in the park, and she should have
+everything she wanted." The poor mother was fain to content herself
+with these selfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to
+convince herself how sincerely her son loved her.  He must love her.
+All children were so:  a little anxious for novelty, and--no, not
+selfish, but self-willed.  Her child must have his enjoyments and
+ambition in the world.  She herself, by her own selfishness and
+imprudent love for him had denied him his just rights and pleasures
+hitherto.
+
+I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and
+self-humiliation of a woman.  How she owns that it is she and not
+the man who is guilty; how she takes all the faults on her side; how
+she courts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not
+committed and persists in shielding the real culprit!  It is those
+who injure women who get the most kindness from them--they are born
+timid and tyrants and maltreat those who are humblest before them.
+
+So poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery for her son's
+departure, and had passed many and many a long solitary hour in
+making preparations for the end. George stood by his mother,
+watching her arrangements without the least concern.  Tears had
+fallen into his boxes; passages had been scored in his favourite
+books; old toys, relics, treasures had been hoarded away for him,
+and packed with strange neatness and care--and of all these things
+the boy took no note.  The child goes away smiling as the mother
+breaks her heart.  By heavens it is pitiful, the bootless love of
+women for children in Vanity Fair.
+
+A few days are past, and the great event of Amelia's life is
+consummated.  No angel has intervened.  The child is sacrificed and
+offered up to fate, and the widow is quite alone.
+
+The boy comes to see her often, to be sure.  He rides on a pony with
+a coachman behind him, to the delight of his old grandfather,
+Sedley, who walks proudly down the lane by his side.  She sees him,
+but he is not her boy any more.  Why, he rides to see the boys at
+the little school, too, and to show off before them his new wealth
+and splendour.  In two days he has adopted a slightly imperious air
+and patronizing manner.  He was born to command, his mother thinks,
+as his father was before him.
+
+It is fine weather now.  Of evenings on the days when he does not
+come, she takes a long walk into London--yes, as far as Russell
+Square, and rests on the stone by the railing of the garden opposite
+Mr. Osborne's house. It is so pleasant and cool.  She can look up
+and see the drawing-room windows illuminated, and, at about nine
+o'clock, the chamber in the upper story where Georgy sleeps.  She
+knows--he has told her.  She prays there as the light goes out,
+prays with an humble heart, and walks home shrinking and silent.
+She is very tired when she comes home.  Perhaps she will sleep the
+better for that long weary walk, and she may dream about Georgy.
+
+One Sunday she happened to be walking in Russell Square, at some
+distance from Mr. Osborne's house (she could see it from a distance
+though) when all the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and George and
+his aunt came out to go to church; a little sweep asked for charity,
+and the footman, who carried the books, tried to drive him away; but
+Georgy stopped and gave him money.  May God's blessing be on the
+boy!  Emmy ran round the square and, coming up to the sweep, gave
+him her mite too. All the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and she
+followed them until she came to the Foundling Church, into which she
+went.  There she sat in a place whence she could see the head of the
+boy under his father's tombstone. Many hundred fresh children's
+voices rose up there and sang hymns to the Father Beneficent, and
+little George's soul thrilled with delight at the burst of glorious
+psalmody.  His mother could not see him for awhile, through the mist
+that dimmed her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader
+
+
+After Becky's appearance at my Lord Steyne's private and select
+parties, the claims of that estimable woman as regards fashion were
+settled, and some of the very greatest and tallest doors in the
+metropolis were speedily opened to her--doors so great and tall that
+the beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to enter at
+them.  Dear brethren, let us tremble before those august portals.  I
+fancy them guarded by grooms of the chamber with flaming silver
+forks with which they prong all those who have not the right of the
+entree. They say the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the hall
+and takes down the names of the great ones who are admitted to the
+feasts dies after a little time.  He can't survive the glare of
+fashion long.  It scorches him up, as the presence of Jupiter in
+full dress wasted that poor imprudent Semele--a giddy moth of a
+creature who ruined herself by venturing out of her natural
+atmosphere. Her myth ought to be taken to heart amongst the
+Tyburnians, the Belgravians--her story, and perhaps Becky's too.
+Ah, ladies!--ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer if Belgravia is not a
+sounding brass and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal.  These are vanities.
+Even these will pass away.  And some day or other (but it will be
+after our time, thank goodness) Hyde Park Gardens will be no better
+known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts of Babylon, and
+Belgrave Square will be as desolate as Baker Street, or Tadmor in
+the wilderness.
+
+Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street?
+What would not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady
+Hester's parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it--
+moi qui vous parle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty
+dead. As we sat soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day,
+the spirits of the departed came in and took their places round the
+darksome board.  The pilot who weathered the storm tossed off great
+bumpers of spiritual port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the
+ghost of a heeltap.  Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly
+manner, and would not be behindhand when the noiseless bottle went
+round; Scott, from under bushy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of
+a beeswing; Wilberforce's eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he
+did not seem to know how his glass went up full to his mouth and
+came down empty; up to the ceiling which was above us only
+yesterday, and which the great of the past days have all looked at.
+They let the house as a furnished lodging now.  Yes, Lady Hester
+once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the wilderness.
+Eothen saw her there--not in Baker Street, but in the other
+solitude.
+
+It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little
+of it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely
+because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but
+may every man who reads this have a wholesome portion of it through
+life, I beg:  aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand.
+Sit down, gentlemen, and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the
+fat, the lean, the gravy, the horse-radish as you like it--don't
+spare it.  Another glass of wine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the
+Sunday side.  Yes, let us eat our fill of the vain thing and be
+thankful therefor. And let us make the best of Becky's aristocratic
+pleasures likewise--for these too, like all other mortal delights,
+were but transitory.
+
+The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His Highness the
+Prince of Peterwaradin took occasion to renew his acquaintance with
+Colonel Crawley, when they met on the next day at the Club, and to
+compliment Mrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a profound
+salute of the hat.  She and her husband were invited immediately to
+one of the Prince's small parties at Levant House, then occupied by
+His Highness during the temporary absence from England of its noble
+proprietor.  She sang after dinner to a very little comite. The
+Marquis of Steyne was present, paternally superintending the
+progress of his pupil.
+
+At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatest
+ministers that Europe has produced--the Duc de la Jabotiere, then
+Ambassador from the Most Christian King, and subsequently Minister
+to that monarch.  I declare I swell with pride as these august names
+are transcribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant company my
+dear Becky is moving.  She became a constant guest at the French
+Embassy, where no party was considered to be complete without the
+presence of the charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley.  Messieurs de
+Truffigny (of the Perigord family) and Champignac, both attaches of
+the Embassy, were straightway smitten by the charms of the fair
+Colonel's wife, and both declared, according to the wont of their
+nation (for who ever yet met a Frenchman, come out of England, that
+has not left half a dozen families miserable, and brought away as
+many hearts in his pocket-book?), both, I say, declared that they
+were au mieux with the charming Madame Ravdonn.
+
+But I doubt the correctness of the assertion.  Champignac was very
+fond of ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings,
+while Becky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for
+Truffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the
+Travellers', where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not
+had the Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must
+have starved.  I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either
+of these young men as a person on whom she would bestow her special
+regard.  They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers,
+went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in
+a thousand ways.  And they talked English with adorable simplicity,
+and to the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would
+mimic one or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in
+the English language with a gravity which never failed to tickle the
+Marquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by
+way of winning over Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge
+of a letter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the
+person to whom it was addressed, and the composition of which amused
+everybody who read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it, everybody but
+honest Rawdon, to whom it was not necessary to tell everything that
+passed in the little house in May Fair.
+
+Here, before long, Becky received not only "the best" foreigners (as
+the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of
+the best English people too. I don't mean the most virtuous, or
+indeed the least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or
+the richest, or the best born, but "the best,"--in a word, people
+about whom there is no question--such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis,
+that Patron Saint of Almack's, the great Lady Slowbore, the great
+Lady Grizzel Macbeth (she was Lady G.  Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey
+of Glowry), and the like.  When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her
+Ladyship is of the Kingstreet family, see Debrett and Burke) takes
+up a person, he or she is safe.  There is no question about them any
+more.  Not that my Lady Fitz-Willis is any better than anybody else,
+being, on the contrary, a faded person, fifty-seven years of age,
+and neither handsome, nor wealthy, nor entertaining; but it is
+agreed on all sides that she is of the "best people." Those who go
+to her are of the best:  and from an old grudge probably to Lady
+Steyne (for whose coronet her ladyship, then the youthful Georgina
+Frederica, daughter of the Prince of Wales's favourite, the Earl of
+Portansherry, had once tried), this great and famous leader of the
+fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon Crawley; made her a most
+marked curtsey at the assembly over which she presided; and not only
+encouraged her son, St.  Kitts (his lordship got his place through
+Lord Steyne's interest), to frequent Mrs. Crawley's house, but asked
+her to her own mansion and spoke to her twice in the most public and
+condescending manner during dinner.  The important fact was known
+all over London that night.  People who had been crying fie about
+Mrs. Crawley were silent.  Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne's
+right-hand man, went about everywhere praising her:  some who had
+hesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady,
+who had warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now
+besought to be introduced to her.  In a word, she was admitted to be
+among the "best" people.  Ah, my beloved readers and brethren, do
+not envy poor Becky prematurely--glory like this is said to be
+fugitive.  It is currently reported that even in the very inmost
+circles, they are no happier than the poor wanderers outside the
+zone; and Becky, who penetrated into the very centre of fashion and
+saw the great George IV face to face, has owned since that there too
+was Vanity.
+
+We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career.  As I
+cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a
+shrewd idea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take
+upon himself to portray the great world accurately, and had best
+keep his opinions to himself, whatever they are.
+
+Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her
+life, when she moved among the very greatest circles of the London
+fashion.  Her success excited, elated, and then bored her.  At first
+no occupation was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the
+latter a work of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a
+person of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's very narrow means)--to procure, we
+say, the prettiest new dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine
+dinner parties, where she was welcomed by great people; and from the
+fine dinner parties to fine assemblies, whither the same people came
+with whom she had been dining, whom she had met the night before,
+and would see on the morrow--the young men faultlessly appointed,
+handsomely cravatted, with the neatest glossy boots and white
+gloves--the elders portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite,
+and prosy--the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink--the mothers
+grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in diamonds.  They talked
+in English, not in bad French, as they do in the novels.  They
+talked about each others' houses, and characters, and families--just
+as the Joneses do about the Smiths.  Becky's former acquaintances
+hated and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawning in spirit.
+"I wish I were out of it," she said to herself.  "I would rather be
+a parson's wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or a sergeant's
+lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how much gayer it
+would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance before a booth at a
+fair."
+
+"You would do it very well," said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used to
+tell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her artless way--
+they amused him.
+
+"Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyer--Master of the Ceremonies--
+what do you call him--the man in the large boots and the uniform,
+who goes round the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and
+of a military figure.  I recollect," Becky continued pensively, "my
+father took me to see a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child,
+and when we came home, I made myself a pair of stilts and danced in
+the studio to the wonder of all the pupils."
+
+"I should have liked to see it," said Lord Steyne.
+
+"I should like to do it now," Becky continued.  "How Lady Blinkey
+would open her eyes, and Lady Grizzel Macbeth would stare!  Hush!
+silence! there is Pasta beginning to sing." Becky always made a
+point of being conspicuously polite to the professional ladies and
+gentlemen who attended at these aristocratic parties--of following
+them into the corners where they sat in silence, and shaking hands
+with them, and smiling in the view of all persons.  She was an
+artist herself, as she said very truly; there was a frankness and
+humility in the manner in which she acknowledged her origin, which
+provoked, or disarmed, or amused lookers-on, as the case might be.
+"How cool that woman is," said one; "what airs of independence she
+assumes, where she ought to sit still and be thankful if anybody
+speaks to her!" "What an honest and good-natured soul she is!" said
+another. "What an artful little minx" said a third.  They were all
+right very likely, but Becky went her own way, and so fascinated the
+professional personages that they would leave off their sore throats
+in order to sing at her parties and give her lessons for nothing.
+
+Yes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon Street.  Many
+scores of carriages, with blazing lamps, blocked up the street, to
+the disgust of No. 100, who could not rest for the thunder of the
+knocking, and of 102, who could not sleep for envy.  The gigantic
+footmen who accompanied the vehicles were too big to be contained in
+Becky's little hall, and were billeted off in the neighbouring
+public-houses, whence, when they were wanted, call-boys summoned
+them from their beer. Scores of the great dandies of London squeezed
+and trod on each other on the little stairs, laughing to find
+themselves there; and many spotless and severe ladies of ton were
+seated in the little drawing-room, listening to the professional
+singers, who were singing according to their wont, and as if they
+wished to blow the windows down.  And the day after, there appeared
+among the fashionable reunions in the Morning Post a paragraph to
+the following effect:
+
+"Yesterday, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a select party at
+dinner at their house in May Fair.  Their Excellencies the Prince
+and Princess of Peterwaradin, H. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish
+Ambassador (attended by Kibob Bey, dragoman of the mission), the
+Marquess of Steyne, Earl of Southdown, Sir Pitt and Lady Jane
+Crawley, Mr. Wagg, &c.  After dinner Mrs. Crawley had an assembly
+which was attended by the Duchess (Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la
+Gruyere, Marchioness of Cheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino,
+Comte de Brie, Baron Schapzuger, Chevalier Tosti, Countess of
+Slingstone, and Lady F.  Macadam, Major-General and Lady G.
+Macbeth, and (2) Miss Macbeths; Viscount Paddington, Sir Horace
+Fogey, Hon.  Sands Bedwin, Bobachy Bahawder," and an &c., which the
+reader may fill at his pleasure through a dozen close lines of small
+type.
+
+And in her commerce with the great our dear friend showed the same
+frankness which distinguished her transactions with the lowly in
+station.  On one occasion, when out at a very fine house, Rebecca
+was (perhaps rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the
+French language with a celebrated tenor singer of that nation, while
+the Lady Grizzel Macbeth looked over her shoulder scowling at the
+pair.
+
+"How very well you speak French," Lady Grizzel said, who herself
+spoke the tongue in an Edinburgh accent most remarkable to hear.
+
+"I ought to know it," Becky modestly said, casting down her eyes.
+"I taught it in a school, and my mother was a Frenchwoman."
+
+Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was mollified towards the
+little woman.  She deplored the fatal levelling tendencies of the
+age, which admitted persons of all classes into the society of their
+superiors, but her ladyship owned that this one at least was well
+behaved and never forgot her place in life.  She was a very good
+woman:  good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious. It is not
+her ladyship's fault that she fancies herself better than you and
+me.  The skirts of her ancestors' garments have been kissed for
+centuries; it is a thousand years, they say, since the tartans of
+the head of the family were embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords
+and councillors, when the great ancestor of the House became King of
+Scotland.
+
+Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before Becky, and
+perhaps was not disinclined to her.  The younger ladies of the house
+of Gaunt were also compelled into submission.  Once or twice they
+set people at her, but they failed.  The brilliant Lady Stunnington
+tried a passage of arms with her, but was routed with great
+slaughter by the intrepid little Becky.  When attacked sometimes,
+Becky had a knack of adopting a demure ingenue air, under which she
+was most dangerous.  She said the wickedest things with the most
+simple unaffected air when in this mood, and would take care
+artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that all the world
+should know that she had made them.
+
+Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and trencher-man of
+my Lord Steyne, was caused by the ladies to charge her; and the
+worthy fellow, leering at his patronesses and giving them a wink, as
+much as to say, "Now look out for sport," one evening began an
+assault upon Becky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner. The
+little woman, attacked on a sudden, but never without arms, lighted
+up in an instant, parried and riposted with a home-thrust, which
+made Wagg's face tingle with shame; then she returned to her soup
+with the most perfect calm and a quiet smile on her face.  Wagg's
+great patron, who gave him dinners and lent him a little money
+sometimes, and whose election, newspaper, and other jobs Wagg did,
+gave the luckless fellow such a savage glance with the eyes as
+almost made him sink under the table and burst into tears.  He
+looked piteously at my lord, who never spoke to him during dinner,
+and at the ladies, who disowned him.  At last Becky herself took
+compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk. He was not
+asked to dinner again for six weeks; and Fiche, my lord's
+confidential man, to whom Wagg naturally paid a good deal of court,
+was instructed to tell him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing
+to Mrs. Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes,
+Milor would put every one of his notes of hand into his lawyer's
+hands and sell him up without mercy.  Wagg wept before Fiche and
+implored his dear friend to intercede for him.  He wrote a poem in
+favour of Mrs. R.  C., which appeared in the very next number of the
+Harum-scarum Magazine, which he conducted.  He implored her good-
+will at parties where he met her.  He cringed and coaxed Rawdon at
+the club.  He was allowed to come back to Gaunt House after a while.
+Becky was always good to him, always amused, never angry.
+
+His lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant (with a seat in
+parliament and at the dinner table), Mr. Wenham, was much more
+prudent in his behaviour and opinions than Mr. Wagg.  However much
+he might be disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a
+staunch old True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in
+the north of England), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed
+any sort of hostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with
+stealthy kindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which
+somehow made Becky more uneasy than other people's overt
+hostilities.
+
+How the Crawleys got the money which was spent upon the
+entertainments with which they treated the polite world was a
+mystery which gave rise to some conversation at the time, and
+probably added zest to these little festivities.  Some persons
+averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave his brother a handsome allowance;
+if he did, Becky's power over the Baronet must have been
+extraordinary indeed, and his character greatly changed in his
+advanced age.  Other parties hinted that it was Becky's habit to
+levy contributions on all her husband's friends: going to this one
+in tears with an account that there was an execution in the house;
+falling on her knees to that one and declaring that the whole family
+must go to gaol or commit suicide unless such and such a bill could
+be paid.  Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to give many
+hundreds through these pathetic representations. Young Feltham, of
+the --th Dragoons (and son of the firm of Tiler and Feltham, hatters
+and army accoutrement makers), and whom the Crawleys introduced into
+fashionable life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in the
+pecuniary way.  People declared that she got money from various
+simply disposed persons, under pretence of getting them confidential
+appointments under Government. Who knows what stories were or were
+not told of our dear and innocent friend? Certain it is that if she
+had had all the money which she was said to have begged or borrowed
+or stolen, she might have capitalized and been honest for life,
+whereas,--but this is advancing matters.
+
+The truth is, that by economy and good management--by a sparing use
+of ready money and by paying scarcely anybody--people can manage,
+for a time at least, to make a great show with very little means:
+and it is our belief that Becky's much-talked-of parties, which were
+not, after all was said, very numerous, cost this lady very little
+more than the wax candles which lighted the walls. Stillbrook and
+Queen's Crawley supplied her with game and fruit in abundance.  Lord
+Steyne's cellars were at her disposal, and that excellent nobleman's
+famous cooks presided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's
+order the rarest delicacies from their own.  I protest it is quite
+shameful in the world to abuse a simple creature, as people of her
+time abuse Becky, and I warn the public against believing one-tenth
+of the stories against her. If every person is to be banished from
+society who runs into debt and cannot pay--if we are to be peering
+into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and
+cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure--why, what a
+howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be!
+Every man's hand would be against his neighbour in this case, my
+dear sir, and the benefits of civilization would be done away with.
+We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding one another.  Our houses
+would become caverns, and we should go in rags because we cared for
+nobody.  Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be given any more.
+All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt.  Wine, wax-lights,
+comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-
+Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-
+stepping carriage horses--all the delights of life, I say,--would go
+to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and
+avoid those whom they dislike and abuse.  Whereas, by a little
+charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly
+enough:  we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the
+greatest rascal unhanged--but do we wish to hang him therefore? No.
+We shake hands when we meet.  If his cook is good we forgive him and
+go and dine with him, and we expect he will do the same by us.  Thus
+trade flourishes--civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses
+are wanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's
+vintage of Lafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared
+it.
+
+At the time whereof we are writing, though the Great George was on
+the throne and ladies wore gigots and large combs like tortoise-
+shell shovels in their hair, instead of the simple sleeves and
+lovely wreaths which are actually in fashion, the manners of the
+very polite world were not, I take it, essentially different from
+those of the present day:  and their amusements pretty similar.  To
+us, from the outside, gazing over the policeman's shoulders at the
+bewildering beauties as they pass into Court or ball, they may seem
+beings of unearthly splendour and in the enjoyment of an exquisite
+happiness by us unattainable. It is to console some of these
+dissatisfied beings that we are narrating our dear Becky's
+struggles, and triumphs, and disappointments, of all of which,
+indeed, as is the case with all persons of merit, she had her share.
+
+At this time the amiable amusement of acting charades had come among
+us from France, and was considerably in vogue in this country,
+enabling the many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their
+charms, and the fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their
+wit. My Lord Steyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps believed
+herself endowed with both the above qualifications, to give an
+entertainment at Gaunt House, which should include some of these
+little dramas--and we must take leave to introduce the reader to
+this brilliant reunion, and, with a melancholy welcome too, for it
+will be among the very last of the fashionable entertainments to
+which it will be our fortune to conduct him.
+
+A portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of Gaunt House,
+was arranged as the charade theatre.  It had been so used when
+George III was king; and a picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still
+extant, with his hair in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape,
+as it was called, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's tragedy
+of that name, performed before their Royal Highnesses the Prince of
+Wales, the Bishop of Osnaburgh, and Prince William Henry, then
+children like the actor. One or two of the old properties were drawn
+out of the garrets, where they had lain ever since, and furbished up
+anew for the present festivities.
+
+Young Bedwin Sands, then an elegant dandy and Eastern traveller, was
+manager of the revels.  An Eastern traveller was somebody in those
+days, and the adventurous Bedwin, who had published his quarto and
+passed some months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of
+no small importance.  In his volume there were several pictures of
+Sands in various oriental costumes; and he travelled about with a
+black attendant of most unprepossessing appearance, just like
+another Brian de Bois Guilbert.  Bedwin, his costumes, and black
+man, were hailed at Gaunt House as very valuable acquisitions.
+
+He led off the first charade.  A Turkish officer with an immense
+plume of feathers (the Janizaries were supposed to be still in
+existence, and the tarboosh had not as yet displaced the ancient and
+majestic head-dress of the true believers) was seen couched on a
+divan, and making believe to puff at a narghile, in which, however,
+for the sake of the ladies, only a fragrant pastille was allowed to
+smoke.  The Turkish dignitary yawns and expresses signs of weariness
+and idleness.  He claps his hands and Mesrour the Nubian appears,
+with bare arms, bangles, yataghans, and every Eastern ornament--
+gaunt, tall, and hideous.  He makes a salaam before my lord the Aga.
+
+A thrill of terror and delight runs through the assembly. The ladies
+whisper to one another.  The black slave was given to Bedwin Sands
+by an Egyptian pasha in exchange for three dozen of Maraschino.  He
+has sewn up ever so many odalisques in sacks and tilted them into
+the Nile.
+
+"Bid the slave-merchant enter," says the Turkish voluptuary with a
+wave of his hand.  Mesrour conducts the slave-merchant into my
+lord's presence; he brings a veiled female with him.  He removes the
+veil.  A thrill of applause bursts through the house.  It is Mrs.
+Winkworth (she was a Miss Absolom) with the beautiful eyes and hair.
+She is in a gorgeous oriental costume; the black braided locks are
+twined with innumerable jewels; her dress is covered over with gold
+piastres.  The odious Mahometan expresses himself charmed by her
+beauty.  She falls down on her knees and entreats him to restore her
+to the mountains where she was born, and where her Circassian lover
+is still deploring the absence of his Zuleikah. No entreaties will
+move the obdurate Hassan.  He laughs at the notion of the Circassian
+bridegroom. Zuleikah covers her face with her hands and drops down
+in an attitude of the most beautiful despair.  There seems to be no
+hope for her, when--when the Kislar Aga appears.
+
+The Kislar Aga brings a letter from the Sultan.  Hassan receives and
+places on his head the dread firman.  A ghastly terror seizes him,
+while on the Negro's face (it is Mesrour again in another costume)
+appears a ghastly joy.  "Mercy!  mercy!" cries the Pasha:  while the
+Kislar Aga, grinning horribly, pulls out--a bow-string.
+
+The curtain draws just as he is going to use that awful weapon.
+Hassan from within bawls out, "First two syllables"--and Mrs. Rawdon
+Crawley, who is going to act in the charade, comes forward and
+compliments Mrs. Winkworth on the admirable taste and beauty of her
+costume.
+
+The second part of the charade takes place.  It is still an Eastern
+scene.  Hassan, in another dress, is in an attitude by Zuleikah, who
+is perfectly reconciled to him. The Kislar Aga has become a peaceful
+black slave.  It is sunrise on the desert, and the Turks turn their
+heads eastwards and bow to the sand.  As there are no dromedaries at
+hand, the band facetiously plays "The Camels are coming." An
+enormous Egyptian head figures in the scene.  It is a musical one--
+and, to the surprise of the oriental travellers, sings a comic song,
+composed by Mr. Wagg.  The Eastern voyagers go off dancing, like
+Papageno and the Moorish King in The Magic Flute.  "Last two
+syllables," roars the head.
+
+The last act opens.  It is a Grecian tent this time.  A tall and
+stalwart man reposes on a couch there.  Above him hang his helmet
+and shield.  There is no need for them now.  Ilium is down.
+Iphigenia is slain.  Cassandra is a prisoner in his outer halls.
+The king of men (it is Colonel Crawley, who, indeed, has no notion
+about the sack of Ilium or the conquest of Cassandra), the anax
+andron is asleep in his chamber at Argos.  A lamp casts the broad
+shadow of the sleeping warrior flickering on the wall--the sword and
+shield of Troy glitter in its light. The band plays the awful music
+of Don Juan, before the statue enters.
+
+Aegisthus steals in pale and on tiptoe.  What is that ghastly face
+looking out balefully after him from behind the arras? He raises his
+dagger to strike the sleeper, who turns in his bed, and opens his
+broad chest as if for the blow.  He cannot strike the noble
+slumbering chieftain. Clytemnestra glides swiftly into the room like
+an apparition--her arms are bare and white--her tawny hair floats
+down her shoulders--her face is deadly pale--and her eyes are
+lighted up with a smile so ghastly that people quake as they look at
+her.
+
+A tremor ran through the room.  "Good God!" somebody said, "it's
+Mrs. Rawdon Crawley."
+
+Scornfully she snatches the dagger out of Aegisthus's hand and
+advances to the bed.  You see it shining over her head in the
+glimmer of the lamp, and--and the lamp goes out, with a groan, and
+all is dark.
+
+The darkness and the scene frightened people.  Rebecca performed her
+part so well, and with such ghastly truth, that the spectators were
+all dumb, until, with a burst, all the lamps of the hall blazed out
+again, when everybody began to shout applause.  "Brava!  brava!" old
+Steyne's strident voice was heard roaring over all the rest.  "By--,
+she'd do it too," he said between his teeth. The performers were
+called by the whole house, which sounded with cries of "Manager!
+Clytemnestra!" Agamemnon could not be got to show in his classical
+tunic, but stood in the background with Aegisthus and others of the
+performers of the little play.  Mr. Bedwin Sands led on Zuleikah and
+Clytemnestra.  A great personage insisted on being presented to the
+charming Clytemnestra.  "Heigh ha? Run him through the body. Marry
+somebody else, hay?" was the apposite remark made by His Royal
+Highness.
+
+"Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was quite killing in the part," said Lord
+Steyne.  Becky laughed, gay and saucy looking, and swept the
+prettiest little curtsey ever seen.
+
+Servants brought in salvers covered with numerous cool dainties, and
+the performers disappeared to get ready for the second charade-
+tableau.
+
+The three syllables of this charade were to be depicted in
+pantomime, and the performance took place in the following wise:
+
+First syllable.  Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., with a slouched hat
+and a staff, a great-coat, and a lantern borrowed from the stables,
+passed across the stage bawling out, as if warning the inhabitants
+of the hour.  In the lower window are seen two bagmen playing
+apparently at the game of cribbage, over which they yawn much. To
+them enters one looking like Boots (the Honourable G.  Ringwood),
+which character the young gentleman performed to perfection, and
+divests them of their lower coverings; and presently Chambermaid
+(the Right Honourable Lord Southdown) with two candlesticks, and a
+warming-pan.  She ascends to the upper apartment and warms the bed.
+She uses the warming-pan as a weapon wherewith she wards off the
+attention of the bagmen. She exits.  They put on their night-caps
+and pull down the blinds.  Boots comes out and closes the shutters
+of the ground-floor chamber.  You hear him bolting and chaining the
+door within.  All the lights go out.  The music plays Dormez,
+dormez, chers Amours.  A voice from behind the curtain says, "First
+syllable."
+
+Second syllable.  The lamps are lighted up all of a sudden.  The
+music plays the old air from John of Paris, Ah quel plaisir d'etre
+en voyage.  It is the same scene. Between the first and second
+floors of the house represented, you behold a sign on which the
+Steyne arms are painted.  All the bells are ringing all over the
+house. In the lower apartment you see a man with a long slip of
+paper presenting it to another, who shakes his fists, threatens and
+vows that it is monstrous.  "Ostler, bring round my gig," cries
+another at the door.  He chucks Chambermaid (the Right Honourable
+Lord Southdown) under the chin; she seems to deplore his absence, as
+Calypso did that of that other eminent traveller Ulysses. Boots (the
+Honourable G.  Ringwood) passes with a wooden box, containing silver
+flagons, and cries "Pots" with such exquisite humour and naturalness
+that the whole house rings with applause, and a bouquet is thrown to
+him.  Crack, crack, crack, go the whips.   Landlord, chambermaid,
+waiter rush to the door, but just as some distinguished guest is
+arriving, the curtains close, and the invisible theatrical manager
+cries out "Second syllable."
+
+"I think it must be 'Hotel,'" says Captain Grigg of the Life Guards;
+there is a general laugh at the Captain's cleverness.  He is not
+very far from the mark.
+
+While the third syllable is in preparation, the band begins a
+nautical medley--"All in the Downs," "Cease Rude Boreas," "Rule
+Britannia," "In the Bay of Biscay O!"--some maritime event is about
+to take place.  A ben is heard ringing as the curtain draws aside.
+"Now, gents, for the shore!" a voice exclaims.  People take leave of
+each other.  They point anxiously as if towards the clouds, which
+are represented by a dark curtain, and they nod their heads in fear.
+Lady Squeams (the Right Honourable Lord Southdown), her lap-dog, her
+bags, reticules, and husband sit down, and cling hold of some ropes.
+It is evidently a ship.
+
+The Captain (Colonel Crawley, C.B.), with a cocked hat and a
+telescope, comes in, holding his hat on his head, and looks out; his
+coat tails fly about as if in the wind.  When he leaves go of his
+hat to use his telescope, his hat flies off, with immense applause.
+It is blowing fresh.  The music rises and whistles louder and
+louder; the mariners go across the stage staggering, as if the ship
+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 eight-pence, 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 psalm-singing 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
+
+A Rescue and a Catastrophe
+
+
+Friend Rawdon drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion in Cursitor
+Street, and was duly inducted into that dismal place of hospitality.
+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 hundred-and-seventy, and the deuce is in it
+if we can't raise that." And so, thinking about little Rawdon (whom
+he would not have know 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 curl-papers 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 his
+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 from 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 drawing-room 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 ballet-girl, 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 clean-trimmed 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,
+opera-dancers, 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 sleeve-buttons:  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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 brother-in-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
+government-house, 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 head-aches.  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 wooly-
+headed 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 pipe-bearer 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 two-days' 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 single-stick 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 home-brewed 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 post-chaise 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:  '3 pounds.' 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 middle-
+aged 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 fellow-
+passenger 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 ill-natured 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
+twenty-four 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
+post-chaise 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 music-box, 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 I 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-to-do 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 breakfast-table, and most
+particularly to ask how she would like to dispose of the day.
+
+In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the consent of 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 public-house, 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 wine-chests, 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 trente-et-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-and-
+water 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 robber-towers,
+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 straw-coloured 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 before-hand,
+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
+three-cornered 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
+billiard-rooms 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 half-year'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 second-floor 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 arch-diplomatist 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 gaming-tables--"
+
+"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 window-seat 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 date-trees 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, high-minded 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
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