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 King-
street 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 hesitat-
ed, 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 can-
not 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 yawn-
ing 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 per-
haps was not disinclined to her. The younger ladies of the house of
Gaunt were also compelled into submission. Once or twice they set peo-
ple 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 entertain-
ments 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 appoint-
ments 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 stal-
wart 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 appari-
tion--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 ad-
vances 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 Clytem-
nestra. "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
bell 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 mon-
astery 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 cou-
sins. 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 know-
ing 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. Craw-
ley 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 sev-
enty-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 gentle-
men 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 thhey 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 boister-
ousness, 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 disappoint-
ment 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, and 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 the 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 be-
tween 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 drawing-
room. 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 establish-
ment. 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 scream-
ing 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 hus-
band 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 perfect
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 com-
municated 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 Osbald-
iston; 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, un-
til 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 along-
side 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 ha+s 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 govern-
ment? 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 congratu-
late 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 it, 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 mean-
while--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 pro-
spects 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 coach-
man 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
[_Transcriber's Note: The name of the Greek goddess Athene; the "O"
represents a capital theta._] 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 mourn-
ing, 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 ha'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 acquaint-
ance 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 daugh-
ters 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 ham-
lets 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 uncon-
scious 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 con-
sumptive, 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 ex-
cuse 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 con-
dition, 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 pict-
ures (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 count-
enance 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 ser-
vice; 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 de-
meanour. The gallant young Indian dandies at home on furlough--im-
mense 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 sub-
ject 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 Bromp-
ton 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. Os-
borne 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 rec-
onciliation 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 re-
marked 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, in-
structed 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 him-
self 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 g
entleman 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 Paris, 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 Pump-
ernickel, 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 resi-
dence, 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 tri-
umphal 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 pock-
ets 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 tempt-
ation. 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. "Il 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 writ-
ten 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 amuse-
ments 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 coun-
trymen, 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 Ma-
dame 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 para-
mount--duties which she had always preserved, and would, to her
dying day, or until the proverbially bad climate in which Colonel Craw-
ley 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 excite-
ment 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, encourag-
ing 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 advance-
ment 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 con-
stancy--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 regard-
ing 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 trembl-
ing, 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 should-
er. 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 charm-
ing 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 promul-
gated 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 'Wallen-
stein' 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 move-
ment, 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 depre-
catingly, "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 sub-
sisted 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.