Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward,
taking her hand, and greeting her with great courtesy,
and presenting her to Lady Steyne, and their ladyships,
her daughters. Their ladyships made three stately curtsies,
and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to the
newcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.

Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and
performing a reverence which would have done credit
to the best dancer-master, put herself at Lady Steyne's
feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordship had been
her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she,
Becky, had learned to honour and respect the Steyne
family from the days of her childhood. The fact is that Lord
Steyne had once purchased a couple of pictures of the
late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan could never
forget her gratitude for that favour.

The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance
--to whom the Colonel's lady made also a most respectful
obeisance: it was returned with severe dignity by the
exalted person in question.

"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's
acquaintance at Brussels, ten years ago," Becky said in
the most winning manner. "I had the good fortune to
meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball,
the night before the Battle of Waterloo. And I recollect
your Ladyship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter,
sitting in the carriage in the porte-cochere at the Inn,
waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship's diamonds are
safe."

Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The
famous diamonds had undergone a famous seizure, it
appears, about which Becky, of course, knew nothing.
Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown into a
window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately,
as Rawdon told him the story of Lady Bareacres
wanting horses and "knuckling down by Jove," to Mrs.
Crawley. "I think I needn't be afraid of THAT woman,"
Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged
terrified and angry looks with her daughter and retreated
to a table, where she began to look at pictures with
great energy.

When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance,
the conversation was carried on in the French language,
and the Lady Bareacres and the younger ladies
found, to their farther mortification, that Mrs. Crawley
was much better acquainted with that tongue, and spoke
it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met
other Hungarian magnates with the army in France in
1816-17. She asked after her friends with great interest
The foreign personages thought that she was a lady of
great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess asked
severally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom
they conducted to dinner, who was that petite dame who
spoke so well?

Finally, the procession being formed in the order
described by the American diplomatist, they marched into
the apartment where the banquet was served, and which,
as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall
have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his
fancy.

But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky
knew the tug of war would come. And then indeed the
little woman found herself in such a situation as made
her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's
caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her
own sphere. As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen
most are Irishmen; so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants
over women are women. When poor little Becky,
alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither
the great ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched
away and took possession of a table of drawings. When
Becky followed them to the table of drawings, they
dropped off one by one to the fire again. She tried to
speak to one of the children (of whom she was
commonly fond in public places), but Master George Gaunt
was called away by his mamma; and the stranger was
treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady Steyne
herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless
little woman.

"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks
glowed with a blush, "says you sing and play very
beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wish you would do me the
kindness to sing to me."

"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord
Steyne or to you," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and
seating herself at the piano, began to sing.

She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been
early favourites of Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness
and tenderness that the lady, lingering round the piano,
sat down by its side and listened until the tears rolled
down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies at
the other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless
buzzing and talking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear
those rumours. She was a child again--and had
wandered back through a forty years' wilderness to her
convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones,
the organist, the sister whom she loved best of the
community, had taught them to her in those early happy
days. She was a girl once more, and the brief period of
her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she
started when the jarring doors were flung open, and with
a loud laugh from Lord Steyne, the men of the party
entered full of gaiety.

He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence,
and was grateful to his wife for once. He went
and spoke to her, and called her by her Christian name,
so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--"My wife
says you have been singing like an angel," he said to
Becky. Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts,
it is said, are charming in their way.

Whatever the previous portion of the evening had
been, the rest of that night was a great triumph for
Becky. She sang her very best, and it was so good that
every one of the men came and crowded round the
piano. The women, her enemies, were left quite alone.
And Mr. Paul Jefferson Jones thought he had made a
conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her Ladyship
and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing.

CHAPTER L

Contains a Vulgar Incident

The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this
Comic History must now descend from the genteel heights
in which she has been soaring and have the goodness
to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley at
Brompton, and describe what events are taking place
there. Here, too, in this humble tenement, live care, and
distrust, and dismay. Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen is
grumbling in secret to her husband about the rent, and
urging the good fellow to rebel against his old friend
and patron and his present lodger. Mrs. Sedley has
ceased to visit her landlady in the lower regions now,
and indeed is in a position to patronize Mrs. Clapp
no longer. How can one be condescending to a lady to
whom one owes a matter of forty pounds, and who is
perpetually throwing out hints for the money? The Irish
maidservant has not altered in the least in her kind and
respectful behaviour; but Mrs. Sedley fancies that she
is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guilty
thief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening
innuendoes and hints of capture in all the girl's speeches
and answers. Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman
now, is declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable
and impudent little minx. Why Amelia can be so
fond of her, or have her in her room so much, or walk
out with her so constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive.
The bitterness of poverty has poisoned the life of the
once cheerful and kindly woman. She is thankless for
Amelia's constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps
at her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her
for her silly pride in her child and her neglect of her
parents. Georgy's house is not a very lively one since
Uncle Jos's annuity has been withdrawn and the little
family are almost upon famine diet.

Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find
some means of increasing the small pittance upon which
the household is starving. Can she give lessons in
anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? She finds that
women are working hard, and better than she can, for
twopence a day. She buys a couple of begilt Bristol
boards at the Fancy Stationer's and paints her very best
upon them--a shepherd with a red waistcoat on one, and
a pink face smiling in the midst of a pencil landscape
--a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge,
with a little dog, nicely shaded. The man of the Fancy
Repository and Brompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of
whom she bought the screens, vainly hoping that he
would repurchase them when ornamented by her hand)
can hardly hide the sneer with which he examines these
feeble works of art. He looks askance at the lady who
waits in the shop, and ties up the cards again in their
envelope of whitey-brown paper, and hands them to the
poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such
beautiful things in her life, and had been quite
confident that the man must give at least two guineas for
the screens. They try at other shops in the interior of
London, with faint sickening hopes. "Don't want 'em,"
says one. "Be off," says another fiercely. Three-and-sixpence
has been spent in vain--the screens retire to Miss
Clapp's bedroom, who persists in thinking them lovely.

She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and
after long thought and labour of composition, in which the
public is informed that "A Lady who has some time at
her disposal, wishes to undertake the education of some
little girls, whom she would instruct in English, in French,
in Geography, in History, and in Music--address A. O.,
at Mr. Brown's"; and she confides the card to the gentleman
of the Fine Art Repository, who consents to allow
it to lie upon the counter, where it grows dingy and
fly-blown. Amelia passes the door wistfully many a time,
in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news to give
her, but he never beckons her in. When she goes to
make little purchases, there is no news for her. Poor
simple lady, tender and weak--how are you to battle
with the struggling violent world?

She grows daily more care-worn and sad, fixing upon
her child alarmed eyes, whereof the little boy cannot
interpret the expression. She starts up of a night and
peeps into his room stealthily, to see that he is sleeping
and not stolen away. She sleeps but little now. A
constant thought and terror is haunting her. How she
weeps and prays in the long silent nights--how she tries
to hide from herself the thought which will return to her,
that she ought to part with the boy, that she is the only
barrier between him and prosperity. She can't, she can't.
Not now, at least. Some other day. Oh! it is too hard to
think of and to bear.

A thought comes over her which makes her blush and
turn from herself--her parents might keep the annuity
--the curate would marry her and give a home to her
and the boy. But George's picture and dearest memory
are there to rebuke her. Shame and love say no to the
sacrifice. She shrinks from it as from something unholy,
and such thoughts never found a resting-place in that
pure and gentle bosom.

The combat, which we describe in a sentence or two,
lasted for many weeks in poor Amelia's heart, during
which she had no confidante; indeed, she could never
have one, as she would not allow to herself the
possibility of yielding, though she was giving way daily
before the enemy with whom she had to battle. One truth
after another was marshalling itself silently against her
and keeping its ground. Poverty and misery for all, want
and degradation for her parents, injustice to the boy--
one by one the outworks of the little citadel were taken,
in which the poor soul passionately guarded her only
love and treasure.

At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a
letter of tender supplication to her brother at Calcutta,
imploring him not to withdraw the support which he had
granted to their parents and painting in terms of artless
pathos their lonely and hapless condition. She did not
know the truth of the matter. The payment of Jos's
annuity was still regular, but it was a money-lender in the
City who was receiving it: old Sedley had sold it for a
sum of money wherewith to prosecute his bootless
schemes. Emmy was calculating eagerly the time that
would elapse before the letter would arrive and be
answered. She had written down the date in her pocket-
book of the day when she dispatched it. To her son's
guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not
communicated any of her griefs and perplexities. She had
not written to him since she wrote to congratulate him on
his approaching marriage. She thought with sickening
despondency, that that friend--the only one, the one
who had felt such a regard for her--was fallen away.

One day, when things had come to a very bad pass
--when the creditors were pressing, the mother in
hysteric grief, the father in more than usual gloom, the
inmates of the family avoiding each other, each secretly
oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion of
wrong--the father and daughter happened to be left
alone together, and Amelia thought to comfort her father
by telling him what she had done. She had written to
Joseph--an answer must come in three or four months.
He was always generous, though careless. He could not
refuse, when he knew how straitened were the
circumstances of his parents.

Then the poor old gentleman revealed the whole truth
to her--that his son was still paying the annuity, which
his own imprudence had flung away. He had not dared
to tell it sooner. He thought Amelia's ghastly and terrified
look, when, with a trembling, miserable voice he made
the confession, conveyed reproaches to him for his
concealment. "Ah!" said he with quivering lips and turning
away, "you despise your old father now!"

"Oh, papal it is not that," Amelia cried out, falling
on his neck and kissing him many times. "You are
always good and kind. You did it for the best. It is not
for the money--it is--my God! my God! have mercy
upon me, and give me strength to bear this trial"; and
she kissed him again wildly and went away.

Still the father did not know what that explanation
meant, and the burst of anguish with which the poor
girl left him. It was that she was conquered. The sentence
was passed. The child must go from her--to others--to
forget her. Her heart and her treasure--her joy, hope,
love, worship--her God, almost! She must give him up,
and then--and then she would go to George, and they
would watch over the child and wait for him until he
came to them in Heaven.

She put on her bonnet, scarcely knowing what she did,
and went out to walk in the lanes by which George used
to come back from school, and where she was in the
habit of going on his return to meet the boy. It was
May, a half-holiday. The leaves were all coming out,
the weather was brilliant; the boy came running to her
flushed with health, singing, his bundle of school-books
hanging by a thong. There he was. Both her arms were
round him. No, it was impossible. They could not be
going to part. "What is the matter, Mother?" said he;
"you look very pale."

"Nothing, my child," she said and stooped down and
kissed him.

That night Amelia made the boy read the story of
Samuel to her, and how Hannah, his mother, having
weaned him, brought him to Eli the High Priest to
minister before the Lord. And he read the song of gratitude
which Hannah sang, and which says, who it is who
maketh poor and maketh rich, and bringeth low and
exalteth--how the poor shall be raised up out of the
dust, and how, in his own might, no man shall be strong.
Then he read how Samuel's mother made him a little
coat and brought it to him from year to year when she
came up to offer the yearly sacrifice. And then, in her
sweet simple way, George's mother made commentaries
to the boy upon this affecting story. How Hannah, though
she loved her son so much, yet gave him up because
of her vow. And how she must always have thought of
him as she sat at home, far away, making the little
coat; and Samuel, she was sure, never forgot his mother;
and how happy she must have been as the time came
(and the years pass away very quick) when she should
see her boy and how good and wise he had grown. This
little sermon she spoke with a gentle solemn voice, and
dry eyes, until she came to the account of their
meeting--then the discourse broke off suddenly, the tender
heart overflowed, and taking the boy to her breast, she
rocked him in her arms and wept silently over him in
a sainted agony of tears.

Her mind being made up, the widow began to take
such measures as seemed right to her for advancing the
end which she proposed. One day, Miss Osborne, in
Russell Square (Amelia had not written the name or number
of the house for ten years--her youth, her early story
came back to her as she wrote the superscription) one
day Miss Osborne got a letter from Amelia which made
her blush very much and look towards her father, sitting
glooming in his place at the other end of the table.

In simple terms, Amelia told her the reasons which
had induced her to change her mind respecting her boy.
Her father had met with fresh misfortunes which had
entirely ruined him. Her own pittance was so small that
it would barely enable her to support her parents and
would not suffice to give George the advantages which
were his due. Great as her sufferings would be at parting
with him she would, by God's help, endure them for the
boy's sake. She knew that those to whom he was going
would do all in their power to make him happy. She
described his disposition, such as she fancied it--quick
and impatient of control or harshness, easily to be moved
by love and kindness. In a postscript, she stipulated that
she should have a written agreement, that she should
see the child as often as she wished--she could not
part with him under any other terms.

"What? Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?" old
Osborne said, when with a tremulous eager voice Miss
Osborne read him the letter. "Reg'lar starved out, hey?
Ha, ha! I knew she would." He tried to keep his dignity
and to read his paper as usual--but he could not follow
it. He chuckled and swore to himself behind the sheet.

At last he flung it down and, scowling at his daughter,
as his wont was, went out of the room into his study
adjoining, from whence he presently returned with a
key. He flung it to Miss Osborne.

"Get the room over mine--his room that was--ready,"
he said. "Yes, sir," his daughter replied in a tremble.
It was George's room. It had not been opened for more
than ten years. Some of his clothes, papers, handkerchiefs,
whips and caps, fishing-rods and sporting gear,
were still there. An Army list of 1814, with his name
written on the cover; a little dictionary he was wont to
use in writing; and the Bible his mother had given him,
were on the mantelpiece, with a pair of spurs and a
dried inkstand covered with the dust of ten years. Ah!
since that ink was wet, what days and people had passed
away! The writing-book, still on the table, was blotted
with his hand.

Miss Osborne was much affected when she first
entered this room with the servants under her. She sank
quite pale on the little bed. "This is blessed news, m'am
--indeed, m'am," the housekeeper said; "and the good
old times is returning, m'am. The dear little feller, to be
sure, m'am; how happy he will be! But some folks in
May Fair, m'am, will owe him a grudge, m'am"; and
she clicked back the bolt which held the window-sash
and let the air into the chamber.

"You had better send that woman some money," Mr.
Osborne said, before he went out. "She shan't want for
nothing. Send her a hundred pound."

"And I'll go and see her to-morrow?" Miss Osborne
asked.

"That's your look out. She don't come in here, mind.
No, by --, not for all the money in London. But she
mustn't want now. So look out, and get things right." With
which brief speeches Mr. Osborne took leave of his
daughter and went on his accustomed way into the City.

"Here, Papa, is some money," Amelia said that
night, kissing the old man, her father, and putting a bill
for a hundred pounds into his hands. "And--and, Mamma,
don't be harsh with Georgy. He--he is not going to stop
with us long." She could say nothing more, and walked
away silently to her room. Let us close it upon her
prayers and her sorrow. I think we had best speak little
about so much love and grief.

Miss Osborne came the next day, according to the
promise contained in her note, and saw Amelia. The
meeting between them was friendly. A look and a few words
from Miss Osborne showed the poor widow that, with
regard to this woman at least, there need be no fear
lest she should take the first place in her son's affection.
She was cold, sensible, not unkind. The mother had
not been so well pleased, perhaps, had the rival been
better looking, younger, more affectionate, warmer-
hearted. Miss Osborne, on the other hand, thought of old
times and memories and could not but be touched with
the poor mother's pitiful situation. She was conquered,
and laying down her arms, as it were, she humbly
submitted. That day they arranged together the
preliminaries of the treaty of capitulation.

George was kept from school the next day, and saw
his aunt. Amelia left them alone together and went to
her room. She was trying the separation--as that poor
gentle Lady Jane Grey felt the edge of the axe that was
to come down and sever her slender life. Days were
passed in parleys, visits, preparations. The widow broke
the matter to Georgy with great caution; she looked to
see him very much affected by the intelligence. He was
rather elated than otherwise, and the poor woman
turned sadly away. He bragged about the news that day
to the boys at school; told them how he was going to
live with his grandpapa his father's father, not the one
who comes here sometimes; and that he would be very
rich, and have a carriage, and a pony, and go to a much
finer school, and when he was rich he would buy Leader's
pencil-case and pay the tart-woman. The boy was the
image of his father, as his fond mother thought.

Indeed I have no heart, on account of our dear
Amelia's sake, to go through the story of George's last
days at home.

At last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little
humble packets containing tokens of love and remembrance
were ready and disposed in the hall long since
--George was in his new suit, for which the tailor had
come previously to measure him. He had sprung up with
the sun and put on the new clothes, his mother hearing
him from the room close by, in which she had been
lying, in speechless grief and watching. Days before she
had been making preparations for the end, purchasing
little stores for the boy's use, marking his books and
linen, talking with him and preparing him for the change
--fondly fancying that he needed preparation.

So that he had change, what cared he? He was longing
for it. By a thousand eager declarations as to what
he would do, when he went to live with his grandfather,
he had shown the poor widow how little the idea of
parting had cast him down. "He would come and see
his mamma often on the pony," he said. "He would
come and fetch her in the carriage; they would drive
in the park, and she should have everything she wanted."
The poor mother was fain to content herself with these
selfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to
convince herself how sincerely her son loved her. He must
love her. All children were so: a little anxious for novelty,
and--no, not selfish, but self-willed. Her child must
have his enjoyments and ambition in the world. She
herself, by her own selfishness and imprudent love for him
had denied him his just rights and pleasures hitherto.

I know few things more affecting than that timorous
debasement and self-humiliation of a woman. How she
owns that it is she and not the man who is guilty; how
she takes all the faults on her side; how she courts in a
manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not
committed and persists in shielding the real culprit! It
is those who injure women who get the most kindness
from them--they are born timid and tyrants and
maltreat those who are humblest before them.

So poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery
for her son's departure, and had passed many and many
a long solitary hour in making preparations for the end.
George stood by his mother, watching her arrangements
without the least concern. Tears had fallen into his boxes;
passages had been scored in his favourite books; old toys,
relics, treasures had been hoarded away for him, and
packed with strange neatness and care--and of all these
things the boy took no note. The child goes away smiling
as the mother breaks her heart. By heavens it is pitiful,
the bootless love of women for children in Vanity Fair.

A few days are past, and the great event of Amelia's
life is consummated. No angel has intervened. The child
is sacrificed and offered up to fate, and the widow is
quite alone.

The boy comes to see her often, to be sure. He rides
on a pony with a coachman behind him, to the delight
of his old grandfather, Sedley, who walks proudly down
the lane by his side. She sees him, but he is not her boy
any more. Why, he rides to see the boys at the little
school, too, and to show off before them his new wealth
and splendour. In two days he has adopted a slightly
imperious air and patronizing manner. He was born to
command, his mother thinks, as his father was before
him.

It is fine weather now. Of evenings on the days when
he does not come, she takes a long walk into London
--yes, as far as Russell Square, and rests on the stone
by the railing of the garden opposite Mr. Osborne's house.
It is so pleasant and cool. She can look up and see the
drawing-room windows illuminated, and, at about nine
o'clock, the chamber in the upper story where Georgy
sleeps. She knows--he has told her. She prays there
as the light goes out, prays with an humble heart,
and walks home shrinking and silent. She is very tired
when she comes home. Perhaps she will sleep the better
for that long weary walk, and she may dream about
Georgy.

One Sunday she happened to be walking in Russell
Square, at some distance from Mr. Osborne's house (she
could see it from a distance though) when all the bells
of Sabbath were ringing, and George and his aunt came
out to go to church; a little sweep asked for charity,
and the footman, who carried the books, tried to drive
him away; but Georgy stopped and gave him money. May
God's blessing be on the boy! Emmy ran round the square
and, coming up to the sweep, gave him her mite too.
All the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and she followed
them until she came to the Foundling Church, into which
she went. There she sat in a place whence she could
see the head of the boy under his father's tombstone.
Many hundred fresh children's voices rose up there and
sang hymns to the Father Beneficent, and little George's
soul thrilled with delight at the burst of glorious
psalmody. His mother could not see him for awhile,
through the mist that dimmed her eyes.

CHAPTER LI

In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May
Not Puzzle the Reader

After Becky's appearance at my Lord Steyne's private
and select parties, the claims of that estimable woman
as regards fashion were settled, and some of the very
greatest and tallest doors in the metropolis were
speedily opened to her--doors so great and tall that the
beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to
enter at them. Dear brethren, let us tremble before
those august portals. I fancy them guarded by grooms
of the chamber with flaming silver forks with which they
prong all those who have not the right of the entree.
They say the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the
hall and takes down the names of the great ones who
are admitted to the feasts dies after a little time. He
can't survive the glare of fashion long. It scorches him
up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that
poor imprudent Semele--a giddy moth of a creature who
ruined herself by venturing out of her natural atmosphere.
Her myth ought to be taken to heart amongst the
Tyburnians, the Belgravians--her story, and perhaps
Becky's too. Ah, ladies!--ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer
if Belgravia is not a sounding brass and Tyburnia a
tinkling cymbal. These are vanities. Even these will pass
away. And some day or other (but it will be after our
time, thank goodness) Hyde Park Gardens will be no
better known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts
of Babylon, and Belgrave Square will be as desolate as
Baker Street, or Tadmor in the wilderness.

Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker
Street? What would not your grandmothers have given
to be asked to Lady Hester's parties in that now
decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vous parle,
I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead.
As we sat soberly drinking claret there with men of
to-day, the spirits of the departed came in and took their
places round the darksome board. The pilot who
weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual
port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a
heeltap. Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly
manner, and would not be behindhand when the
noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under bushy eyebrows,
winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's
eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to
know how his glass went up full to his mouth and came
down empty; up to the ceiling which was above us only
yesterday, and which the great of the past days have all
looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging
now. Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and
lies asleep in the wilderness. Eothen saw her there--
not in Baker Street, but in the other solitude.

It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to
liking a little of it? I should like to know what well-
constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes
roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man who
reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life,
I beg: aye, though my readers were five hundred
thousand. Sit down, gentlemen, and fall to, with a good hearty
appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy, the horse-radish
as you like it--don't spare it. Another glass of wine,
Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let
us eat our fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor.
And let us make the best of Becky's aristocratic
pleasures likewise--for these too, like all other mortal
delights, were but transitory.

The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His
Highness the Prince of Peterwaradin took occasion to
renew his acquaintance with Colonel Crawley, when
they met on the next day at the Club, and to compliment
Mrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a
profound salute of the hat. She and her husband were
invited immediately to one of the Prince's small parties
at Levant House, then occupied by His Highness during
the temporary absence from England of its noble
proprietor. She sang after dinner to a very little comite.
The Marquis of Steyne was present, paternally
superintending the progress of his pupil.

At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen
and greatest ministers that Europe has produced--
the Duc de la Jabotiere, then Ambassador from the Most
Christian King, and subsequently Minister to that
monarch. I declare I swell with pride as these august names
are transcribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant
company my dear Becky is moving. She became a
constant guest at the French Embassy, where no party was
considered to be complete without the presence of the
charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley.

Messieurs de Truffigny (of the Perigord family) and
Champignac, both attaches of the Embassy, were
straightway smitten by the charms of the fair Colonel's
wife, and both declared, according to the wont of their
nation (for who ever yet met a Frenchman, come out of
England, that has not left half a dozen families miserable,
and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?),
both, I say, declared that they were au mieux with the
charming Madame Ravdonn.

But I doubt the correctness of the assertion. Champignac
was very fond of ecarte, and made many parties
with the Colonel of evenings, while Becky was singing to
Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for Truffigny, it is
a well-known fact that he dared not go to the Travellers',
where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not
had the Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young
gentleman must have starved. I doubt, I say, that Becky
would have selected either of these young men as a
person on whom she would bestow her special regard. They
ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers,
went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made
themselves amiable in a thousand ways. And they talked
English with adorable simplicity, and to the constant
amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would mimic
one or other to his face, and compliment him on his
advance in the English language with a gravity which never
failed to tickle the Marquis, her sardonic old patron.
Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by way of winning over
Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge of a
letter which the simple spinster handed over in public
to the person to whom it was addressed, and the
composition of which amused everybody who read it greatly.
Lord Steyne read it, everybody but honest Rawdon, to
whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed
in the little house in May Fair.

Here, before long, Becky received not only "the best"
foreigners (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable
society slang), but some of the best English people too.
I don't mean the most virtuous, or indeed the least
virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest, or
the best born, but "the best,"--in a word, people about
whom there is no question--such as the great Lady Fitz-
Willis, that Patron Saint of Almack's, the great Lady
Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth (she was
Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry),
and the like. When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her
Ladyship is of the Kingstreet family, see Debrett and
Burke) takes up a person, he or she is safe. There is no
question about them any more. Not that my Lady Fitz-
Willis is any better than anybody else, being, on the
contrary, a faded person, fifty-seven years of age, and
neither handsome, nor wealthy, nor entertaining; but it is
agreed on all sides that she is of the "best people."
Those who go to her are of the best: and from an old
grudge probably to Lady Steyne (for whose coronet her
ladyship, then the youthful Georgina Frederica, daughter
of the Prince of Wales's favourite, the Earl of Portansherry,
had once tried), this great and famous leader of
the fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley; made her a most marked curtsey at the assembly
over which she presided; and not only encouraged her
son, St. Kitts (his lordship got his place through Lord
Steyne's interest), to frequent Mrs. Crawley's house, but
asked her to her own mansion and spoke to her twice in
the most public and condescending manner during
dinner. The important fact was known all over London that
night. People who had been crying fie about Mrs.
Crawley were silent. Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord
Steyne's right-hand man, went about everywhere praising
her: some who had hesitated, came forward at once
and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, who had warned
Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman,
now besought to be introduced to her. In a word, she
was admitted to be among the "best" people. Ah, my
beloved readers and brethren, do not envy poor Becky
prematurely--glory like this is said to be fugitive. It is
currently reported that even in the very inmost circles,
they are no happier than the poor wanderers outside the
zone; and Becky, who penetrated into the very centre of
fashion and saw the great George IV face to face, has
owned since that there too was Vanity.

We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her
career. As I cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry,
although I have a shrewd idea that it is a humbug,
so an uninitiated man cannot take upon himself to
portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his
opinions to himself, whatever they are.

Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this
season of her life, when she moved among the very
greatest circles of the London fashion. Her success
excited, elated, and then bored her. At first no occupation
was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the latter
a work of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in
a person of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's very narrow means)
--to procure, we say, the prettiest new dresses and
ornaments; to drive to fine dinner parties, where she was
welcomed by great people; and from the fine dinner
parties to fine assemblies, whither the same people came
with whom she had been dining, whom she had met the
night before, and would see on the morrow--the young
men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with
the neatest glossy boots and white gloves--the elders
portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy
--the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink--the
mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in
diamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as
they do in the novels. They talked about each others'
houses, and characters, and families--just as the Joneses
do about the Smiths. Becky's former acquaintances hated
and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawning in
spirit. "I wish I were out of it," she said to herself. "I
would rather be a parson's wife and teach a Sunday
school than this; or a sergeant's lady and ride in the
regimental waggon; or, oh, how much gayer it would be
to wear spangles and trousers and dance before a booth
at a fair."

"You would do it very well," said Lord Steyne, laughing.
She used to tell the great man her ennuis and
perplexities in her artless way--they amused him.

"Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyer--Master of
the Ceremonies--what do you call him--the man in the
large boots and the uniform, who goes round the ring
cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a military
figure. I recollect," Becky continued pensively, "my
father took me to see a show at Brookgreen Fair when I
was a child, and when we came home, I made myself a
pair of stilts and danced in the studio to the wonder of
all the pupils."

"I should have liked to see it," said Lord Steyne.

"I should like to do it now," Becky continued. "How
Lady Blinkey would open her eyes, and Lady Grizzel
Macbeth would stare! Hush! silence! there is Pasta
beginning to sing." Becky always made a point of being
conspicuously polite to the professional ladies and
gentlemen who attended at these aristocratic parties--of
following them into the corners where they sat in silence,
and shaking hands with them, and smiling in the view of
all persons. She was an artist herself, as she said very
truly; there was a frankness and humility in the manner
in which she acknowledged her origin, which provoked,
or disarmed, or amused lookers-on, as the case might
be. "How cool that woman is," said one; "what airs of
independence she assumes, where she ought to sit still
and be thankful if anybody speaks to her!" "What an
honest and good-natured soul she is!" said another.
"What an artful little minx" said a third. They were all
right very likely, but Becky went her own way, and so
fascinated the professional personages that they would
leave off their sore throats in order to sing at her parties
and give her lessons for nothing.

Yes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon
Street. Many scores of carriages, with blazing lamps,
blocked up the street, to the disgust of No. 100, who
could not rest for the thunder of the knocking, and of
102, who could not sleep for envy. The gigantic footmen
who accompanied the vehicles were too big to be
contained in Becky's little hall, and were billeted off in the
neighbouring public-houses, whence, when they were
wanted, call-boys summoned them from their beer.
Scores of the great dandies of London squeezed and
trod on each other on the little stairs, laughing to find
themselves there; and many spotless and severe ladies of
ton were seated in the little drawing-room, listening to
the professional singers, who were singing according to
their wont, and as if they wished to blow the windows
down. And the day after, there appeared among the
fashionable reunions in the Morning Post a paragraph
to the following effect:

"Yesterday, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a
select party at dinner at their house in May Fair. Their
Excellencies the Prince and Princess of Peterwaradin,
H. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador (attended
by Kibob Bey, dragoman of the mission), the Marquess
of Steyne, Earl of Southdown, Sir Pitt and Lady
Jane Crawley, Mr. Wagg, &c. After dinner Mrs. Crawley
had an assembly which was attended by the Duchess
(Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyere, Marchioness
of Cheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino, Comte de
Brie, Baron Schapzuger, Chevalier Tosti, Countess of
Slingstone, and Lady F. Macadam, Major-General and
Lady G. Macbeth, and (2) Miss Macbeths; Viscount
Paddington, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon. Sands Bedwin,
Bobachy Bahawder," and an &c., which the reader may fill
at his pleasure through a dozen close lines of small type.

And in her commerce with the great our dear friend
showed the same frankness which distinguished her
transactions with the lowly in station. On one occasion,
when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was (perhaps
rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the
French language with a celebrated tenor singer of that
nation, while the Lady Grizzel Macbeth looked over her
shoulder scowling at the pair.

"How very well you speak French," Lady Grizzel said,
who herself spoke the tongue in an Edinburgh accent
most remarkable to hear.

"I ought to know it," Becky modestly said, casting
down her eyes. "I taught it in a school, and my mother
was a Frenchwoman."

Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was
mollified towards the little woman. She deplored the fatal
levelling tendencies of the age, which admitted persons
of all classes into the society of their superiors, but her
ladyship owned that this one at least was well behaved
and never forgot her place in life. She was a very good
woman: good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious.
It is not her ladyship's fault that she fancies herself
better than you and me. The skirts of her ancestors'
garments have been kissed for centuries; it is a thousand
years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the
family were embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and
councillors, when the great ancestor of the House
became King of Scotland.

Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before
Becky, and perhaps was not disinclined to her. The
younger ladies of the house of Gaunt were also
compelled into submission. Once or twice they set people at
her, but they failed. The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried
a passage of arms with her, but was routed with great
slaughter by the intrepid little Becky. When attacked
sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a demure
ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She
said the wickedest things with the most simple unaffected
air when in this mood, and would take care artlessly to
apologize for her blunders, so that all the world should
know that she had made them.

Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and
trencher-man of my Lord Steyne, was caused by the
ladies to charge her; and the worthy fellow, leering at his
patronesses and giving them a wink, as much as to say,
"Now look out for sport," one evening began an assault
upon Becky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner.
The little woman, attacked on a sudden, but never
without arms, lighted up in an instant, parried and riposted
with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tingle with
shame; then she returned to her soup with the most
perfect calm and a quiet smile on her face. Wagg's great
patron, who gave him dinners and lent him a little money
sometimes, and whose election, newspaper, and other
jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such a savage
glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the
table and burst into tears. He looked piteously at my
lord, who never spoke to him during dinner, and at the
ladies, who disowned him. At last Becky herself took
compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk.
He was not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and
Fiche, my lord's confidential man, to whom Wagg
naturally paid a good deal of court, was instructed to tell
him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing to Mrs.
Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes,
Milor would put every one of his notes of hand into his
lawyer's hands and sell him up without mercy. Wagg
wept before Fiche and implored his dear friend to intercede
for him. He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R. C.,
which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-
scarum Magazine, which he conducted. He implored her
good-will at parties where he met her. He cringed and
coaxed Rawdon at the club. He was allowed to come back
to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was always good to
him, always amused, never angry.

His lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant
(with a seat in parliament and at the dinner table), Mr.
Wenham, was much more prudent in his behaviour and
opinions than Mr. Wagg. However much he might be
disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a
staunch old True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-
merchant in the north of England), this aide-de-camp of
the Marquis never showed any sort of hostility to the
new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy kindnesses
and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow
made Becky more uneasy than other people's overt
hostilities.

How the Crawleys got the money which was spent
upon the entertainments with which they treated the
polite world was a mystery which gave rise to some
conversation at the time, and probably added zest to these
little festivities. Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley
gave his brother a handsome allowance; if he did,
Becky's power over the Baronet must have been
extraordinary indeed, and his character greatly changed in his
advanced age. Other parties hinted that it was Becky's
habit to levy contributions on all her husband's friends:
going to this one in tears with an account that there was
an execution in the house; falling on her knees to that
one and declaring that the whole family must go to gaol
or commit suicide unless such and such a bill could be
paid. Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to
give many hundreds through these pathetic representations.
Young Feltham, of the --th Dragoons (and son of the firm of
Tiler and Feltham, hatters and army accoutrement makers),
and whom the Crawleys introduced into fashionable
life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in the
pecuniary way. People declared that she got money
from various simply disposed persons, under pretence of
getting them confidential appointments under Government.
Who knows what stories were or were not told of
our dear and innocent friend? Certain it is that if she had
had all the money which she was said to have begged or
borrowed or stolen, she might have capitalized and been
honest for life, whereas,--but this is advancing matters.

The truth is, that by economy and good management--
by a sparing use of ready money and by paying scarcely
anybody--people can manage, for a time at least, to
make a great show with very little means: and it is our
belief that Becky's much-talked-of parties, which were
not, after all was said, very numerous, cost this lady very
little more than the wax candles which lighted the walls.
Stillbrook and Queen's Crawley supplied her with game
and fruit in abundance. Lord Steyne's cellars were at her
disposal, and that excellent nobleman's famous cooks
presided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's
order the rarest delicacies from their own. I protest it is
quite shameful in the world to abuse a simple creature,
as people of her time abuse Becky, and I warn the
public against believing one-tenth of the stories against her.
If every person is to be banished from society who runs
into debt and cannot pay--if we are to be peering into
everybody's private life, speculating upon their income,
and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure
--why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling
Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be
against his neighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the
benefits of civilization would be done away with. We
should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our
houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags
because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down.
Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen
of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights,
comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs,
Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and
splendid high-stepping carriage horses--all the delights
of life, I say,--would go to the deuce, if people did but
act upon their silly principles and avoid those whom they
dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity and mutual
forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly
enough: we may abuse a man as much as we like, and
call him the greatest rascal unhanged--but do we wish
to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when we
meet. If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine
with him, and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus
trade flourishes--civilization advances; peace is kept;
new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week;
and the last year's vintage of Lafitte will remunerate the
honest proprietor who reared it.

At the time whereof we are writing, though the Great
George was on the throne and ladies wore gigots and
large combs like tortoise-shell shovels in their hair,
instead of the simple sleeves and lovely wreaths which are
actually in fashion, the manners of the very polite world
were not, I take it, essentially different from those of the
present day: and their amusements pretty similar. To us,
from the outside, gazing over the policeman's shoulders
at the bewildering beauties as they pass into Court or
ball, they may seem beings of unearthly splendour and in
the enjoyment of an exquisite happiness by us unattainable.
It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings
that we are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and
triumphs, and disappointments, of all of which, indeed,
as is the case with all persons of merit, she had her share.

At this time the amiable amusement of acting charades
had come among us from France, and was considerably
in vogue in this country, enabling the many ladies
amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and
the fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their wit.
My Lord Steyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps
believed herself endowed with both the above qualifications,
to give an entertainment at Gaunt House, which should
include some of these little dramas--and we must take
leave to introduce the reader to this brilliant reunion,
and, with a melancholy welcome too, for it will be among
the very last of the fashionable entertainments to which
it will be our fortune to conduct him.

A portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of
Gaunt House, was arranged as the charade theatre. It
had been so used when George III was king; and a
picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still extant, with his hair
in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape, as it
was called, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's
tragedy of that name, performed before their Royal
Highnesses the Prince of Wales, the Bishop of Osnaburgh,
and Prince William Henry, then children like the actor.
One or two of the old properties were drawn out of the
garrets, where they had lain ever since, and furbished up
anew for the present festivities.

Young Bedwin Sands, then an elegant dandy and Eastern
traveller, was manager of the revels. An Eastern traveller
was somebody in those days, and the adventurous
Bedwin, who had published his quarto and passed some
months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of
no small importance. In his volume there were several
pictures of Sands in various oriental costumes; and he
travelled about with a black attendant of most
unprepossessing appearance, just like another Brian de Bois
Guilbert. Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were
hailed at Gaunt House as very valuable acquisitions.

He led off the first charade. A Turkish officer with an
immense plume of feathers (the Janizaries were
supposed to be still in existence, and the tarboosh had not
as yet displaced the ancient and majestic head-dress of
the true believers) was seen couched on a divan, and
making believe to puff at a narghile, in which, however,
for the sake of the ladies, only a fragrant pastille was
allowed to smoke. The Turkish dignitary yawns and
expresses signs of weariness and idleness. He claps his hands
and Mesrour the Nubian appears, with bare arms,
bangles, yataghans, and every Eastern ornament--gaunt,
tall, and hideous. He makes a salaam before my lord the
Aga.

A thrill of terror and delight runs through the assembly.
The ladies whisper to one another. The black slave
was given to Bedwin Sands by an Egyptian pasha in
exchange for three dozen of Maraschino. He has sewn up
ever so many odalisques in sacks and tilted them into
the Nile.

"Bid the slave-merchant enter," says the Turkish
voluptuary with a wave of his hand. Mesrour conducts the
slave-merchant into my lord's presence; he brings a
veiled female with him. He removes the veil. A thrill of
applause bursts through the house. It is Mrs. Winkworth
(she was a Miss Absolom) with the beautiful eyes and
hair. She is in a gorgeous oriental costume; the black
braided locks are twined with innumerable jewels; her
dress is covered over with gold piastres. The odious
Mahometan expresses himself charmed by her beauty. She
falls down on her knees and entreats him to restore her
to the mountains where she was born, and where her
Circassian lover is still deploring the absence of his Zuleikah.
No entreaties will move the obdurate Hassan. He
laughs at the notion of the Circassian bridegroom.
Zuleikah covers her face with her hands and drops down in
an attitude of the most beautiful despair. There seems to
be no hope for her, when--when the Kislar Aga appears.

The Kislar Aga brings a letter from the Sultan. Hassan
receives and places on his head the dread firman. A
ghastly terror seizes him, while on the Negro's face (it is
Mesrour again in another costume) appears a ghastly
joy. "Mercy! mercy!" cries the Pasha: while the Kislar
Aga, grinning horribly, pulls out--a bow-string.

The curtain draws just as he is going to use that awful
weapon. Hassan from within bawls out, "First two
syllables"--and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who is going to act in
the charade, comes forward and compliments Mrs.
Winkworth on the admirable taste and beauty of her
costume.

The second part of the charade takes place. It is still
an Eastern scene. Hassan, in another dress, is in an
attitude by Zuleikah, who is perfectly reconciled to him.
The Kislar Aga has become a peaceful black slave. It is
sunrise on the desert, and the Turks turn their heads
eastwards and bow to the sand. As there are no dromedaries
at hand, the band facetiously plays "The Camels
are coming." An enormous Egyptian head figures in the
scene. It is a musical one--and, to the surprise of the
oriental travellers, sings a comic song, composed by Mr.
Wagg. The Eastern voyagers go off dancing, like
Papageno and the Moorish King in The Magic Flute. "Last
two syllables," roars the head.

The last act opens. It is a Grecian tent this time. A
tall and stalwart man reposes on a couch there. Above
him hang his helmet and shield. There is no need for
them now. Ilium is down. Iphigenia is slain. Cassandra is
a prisoner in his outer halls. The king of men (it is
Colonel Crawley, who, indeed, has no notion about the sack
of Ilium or the conquest of Cassandra), the anax andron
is asleep in his chamber at Argos. A lamp casts the
broad shadow of the sleeping warrior flickering on the
wall--the sword and shield of Troy glitter in its light.
The band plays the awful music of Don Juan, before the
statue enters.

Aegisthus steals in pale and on tiptoe. What is that
ghastly face looking out balefully after him from behind
the arras? He raises his dagger to strike the sleeper, who
turns in his bed, and opens his broad chest as if for the
blow. He cannot strike the noble slumbering chieftain.
Clytemnestra glides swiftly into the room like an
apparition--her arms are bare and white--her tawny hair
floats down her shoulders--her face is deadly pale--and
her eyes are lighted up with a smile so ghastly that
people quake as they look at her.

A tremor ran through the room. "Good God!" somebody
said, "it's Mrs. Rawdon Crawley."

Scornfully she snatches the dagger out of Aegisthus's
hand and advances to the bed. You see it shining over
her head in the glimmer of the lamp, and--and the lamp
goes out, with a groan, and all is dark.

The darkness and the scene frightened people. Rebecca
performed her part so well, and with such ghastly
truth, that the spectators were all dumb, until, with a
burst, all the lamps of the hall blazed out again, when
everybody began to shout applause. "Brava! brava!" old
Steyne's strident voice was heard roaring over all the
rest. "By--, she'd do it too," he said between his teeth.
The performers were called by the whole house, which
sounded with cries of "Manager! Clytemnestra!"
Agamemnon could not be got to show in his classical
tunic, but stood in the background with Aegisthus and
others of the performers of the little play. Mr. Bedwin
Sands led on Zuleikah and Clytemnestra. A great
personage insisted on being presented to the charming
Clytemnestra. "Heigh ha? Run him through the body.
Marry somebody else, hay?" was the apposite remark
made by His Royal Highness.

"Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was quite killing in the part,"
said Lord Steyne. Becky laughed, gay and saucy looking,
and swept the prettiest little curtsey ever seen.

Servants brought in salvers covered with numerous cool
dainties, and the performers disappeared to get ready
for the second charade-tableau.

The three syllables of this charade were to be depicted
in pantomime, and the performance took place in the
following wise:

First syllable. Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., with a
slouched hat and a staff, a great-coat, and a lantern
borrowed from the stables, passed across the stage bawling
out, as if warning the inhabitants of the hour. In the
lower window are seen two bagmen playing apparently
at the game of cribbage, over which they yawn much.
To them enters one looking like Boots (the Honourable
G. Ringwood), which character the young gentleman
performed to perfection, and divests them of their lower
coverings; and presently Chambermaid (the Right
Honourable Lord Southdown) with two candlesticks, and a
warming-pan. She ascends to the upper apartment and
warms the bed. She uses the warming-pan as a weapon
wherewith she wards off the attention of the bagmen.
She exits. They put on their night-caps and pull down
the blinds. Boots comes out and closes the shutters of
the ground-floor chamber. You hear him bolting and
chaining the door within. All the lights go out. The music
plays Dormez, dormez, chers Amours. A voice from
behind the curtain says, "First syllable."

Second syllable. The lamps are lighted up all of a
sudden. The music plays the old air from John of Paris,
Ah quel plaisir d'etre en voyage. It is the same scene.
Between the first and second floors of the house
represented, you behold a sign on which the Steyne arms
are painted. All the bells are ringing all over the house.
In the lower apartment you see a man with a long slip of
paper presenting it to another, who shakes his fists,
threatens and vows that it is monstrous. "Ostler, bring
round my gig," cries another at the door. He chucks
Chambermaid (the Right Honourable Lord Southdown)
under the chin; she seems to deplore his absence, as
Calypso did that of that other eminent traveller Ulysses.
Boots (the Honourable G. Ringwood) passes with a
wooden box, containing silver flagons, and cries "Pots"
with such exquisite humour and naturalness that the
whole house rings with applause, and a bouquet is thrown
to him. Crack, crack, crack, go the whips.  Landlord,
chambermaid, waiter rush to the door, but just as some
distinguished guest is arriving, the curtains close, and the
invisible theatrical manager cries out "Second syllable."

"I think it must be 'Hotel,' " says Captain Grigg of the
Life Guards; there is a general laugh at the Captain's
cleverness. He is not very far from the mark.

While the third syllable is in preparation, the band
begins a nautical medley--"All in the Downs," "Cease Rude
Boreas," "Rule Britannia," "In the Bay of Biscay O!"--
some maritime event is about to take place. A ben is
heard ringing as the curtain draws aside. "Now, gents,
for the shore!" a voice exclaims. People take leave of
each other. They point anxiously as if towards the clouds,
which are represented by a dark curtain, and they nod
their heads in fear. Lady Squeams (the Right Honourable
Lord Southdown), her lap-dog, her bags, reticules, and
husband sit down, and cling hold of some ropes. It is
evidently a ship.

The Captain (Colonel Crawley, C.B.), with a cocked
hat and a telescope, comes in, holding his hat on his
head, and looks out; his coat tails fly about as if in the
wind. When he leaves go of his hat to use his telescope,
his hat flies off, with immense applause. It is blowing
fresh. The music rises and whistles louder and louder;
the mariners go across the stage staggering, as if the ship
was in severe motion. The Steward (the Honourable G.
Ringwood) passes reeling by, holding six basins. He puts
one rapidly by Lord Squeams--Lady Squeams, giving a
pinch to her dog, which begins to howl piteously, puts
her pocket-handkerchief to her face, and rushes away as
for the cabin. The music rises up to the wildest pitch of
stormy excitement, and the third syllable is concluded.

There was a little ballet, "Le Rossignol," in which
Montessu and Noblet used to be famous in those days,
and which Mr. Wagg transferred to the English stage as
an opera, putting his verse, of which he was a skilful
writer, to the pretty airs of the ballet. It was dressed in
old French costume, and little Lord Southdown now
appeared admirably attired in the disguise of an old woman
hobbling about the stage with a faultless crooked stick.

Trills of melody were heard behind the scenes, and
gurgling from a sweet pasteboard cottage covered with
roses and trellis work. "Philomele, Philomele," cries
the old woman, and Philomele comes out.

More applause--it is Mrs. Rawdon Crawley in powder
and patches, the most ravissante little Marquise in the
world.

She comes in laughing, humming, and frisks about the
stage with all the innocence of theatrical youth--she
makes a curtsey. Mamma says "Why, child, you are
always laughing and singing," and away she goes, with--

THE ROSE UPON MY BALCONY

The rose upon my balcony the morning air perfuming
Was leafless all the winter time and pining for the spring;
You ask me why her breath is sweet and why her cheek is
  blooming,
It is because the sun is out and birds begin to sing.

The nightingale, whose melody is through the greenwood
  ringing,
Was silent when the boughs were bare and winds were
  blowing keen:
And if, Mamma, you ask of me the reason of his singing,
It is because the sun is out and all the leaves are green.

Thus each performs his part, Mamma, the birds have found
  their voices,
The blowing rose a flush, Mamma, her bonny cheek to
  dye;
And there's sunshine in my heart, Mamma, which wakens
  and rejoices,
And so I sing and blush, Mamma, and that's the reason
  why.

During the intervals of the stanzas of this ditty, the
good-natured personage addressed as Mamma by the
singer, and whose large whiskers appeared under her cap,
seemed very anxious to exhibit her maternal affection
by embracing the innocent creature who performed the
daughter's part. Every caress was received with loud
acclamations of laughter by the sympathizing audience.
At its conclusion (while the music was performing a
symphony as if ever so many birds were warbling) the
whole house was unanimous for an encore: and applause
and bouquets without end were showered upon the
Nightingale of the evening. Lord Steyne's voice of
applause was loudest of all. Becky, the nightingale, took
the flowers which he threw to her and pressed them to
her heart with the air of a consummate comedian. Lord
Steyne was frantic with delight. His guests' enthusiasm
harmonized with his own. Where was the beautiful
black-eyed Houri whose appearance in the first charade had
caused such delight? She was twice as handsome as
Becky, but the brilliancy of the latter had quite eclipsed
her. All voices were for her. Stephens, Caradori, Ronzi
de Begnis, people compared her to one or the other, and
agreed with good reason, very likely, that had she been
an actress none on the stage could have surpassed her.
She had reached her culmination: her voice rose trilling
and bright over the storm of applause, and soared as
high and joyful as her triumph. There was a ball after
the dramatic entertainments, and everybody pressed
round Becky as the great point of attraction of the
evening. The Royal Personage declared with an oath that
she was perfection, and engaged her again and again in
conversation. Little Becky's soul swelled with pride and
delight at these honours; she saw fortune, fame, fashion
before her. Lord Steyne was her slave, followed her
everywhere, and scarcely spoke to any one in the room
beside, and paid her the most marked compliments and
attention. She still appeared in her Marquise costume
and danced a minuet with Monsieur de Truffigny,
Monsieur Le Duc de la Jabotiere's attache; and the
Duke, who had all the traditions of the ancient court,
pronounced that Madame Crawley was worthy to have
been a pupil of Vestris, or to have figured at Versailles.
Only a feeling of dignity, the gout, and the strongest
sense of duty and personal sacrifice prevented his
Excellency from dancing with her himself, and he declared
in public that a lady who could talk and dance like Mrs.
Rawdon was fit to be ambassadress at any court in
Europe. He was only consoled when he heard that she
was half a Frenchwoman by birth. "None but a
compatriot," his Excellency declared, "could have performed
that majestic dance in such a way."

Then she figured in a waltz with Monsieur de
Klingenspohr, the Prince of Peterwaradin's cousin and
attache. The delighted Prince, having less retenue than
his French diplomatic colleague, insisted upon taking a
turn with the charming creature, and twirled round the
ball-room with her, scattering the diamonds out of his
boot-tassels and hussar jacket until his Highness was fairly
out of breath. Papoosh Pasha himself would have liked
to dance with her if that amusement had been the custom
of his country. The company made a circle round her
and applauded as wildly as if she had been a Noblet or
a Taglioni. Everybody was in ecstacy; and Becky too,
you may be sure. She passed by Lady Stunnington with
a look of scorn. She patronized Lady Gaunt and her
astonished and mortified sister-in-law--she ecrased all
rival charmers. As for poor Mrs. Winkworth, and her
long hair and great eyes, which had made such an effect
at the commencement of the evening--where was she
now? Nowhere in the race. She might tear her long hair
and cry her great eyes out, but there was not a person
to heed or to deplore the discomfiture.

The greatest triumph of all was at supper time. She
was placed at the grand exclusive table with his Royal
Highness the exalted personage before mentioned, and
the rest of the great guests. She was served on gold
plate. She might have had pearls melted into her
champagne if she liked--another Cleopatra--and the potentate
of Peterwaradin would have given half the brilliants off
his jacket for a kind glance from those dazzling eyes.
Jabotiere wrote home about her to his government. The
ladies at the other tables, who supped off mere silver and
marked Lord Steyne's constant attention to her, vowed
it was a monstrous infatuation, a gross insult to ladies of
rank. If sarcasm could have killed, Lady Stunnington
would have slain her on the spot.

Rawdon Crawley was scared at these triumphs. They
seemed to separate his wife farther than ever from him
somehow. He thought with a feeling very like pain how
immeasurably she was his superior.

When the hour of departure came, a crowd of young
men followed her to her carriage, for which the people
without bawled, the cry being caught up by the link-men
who were stationed outside the tall gates of Gaunt
House, congratulating each person who issued from the
gate and hoping his Lordship had enjoyed this noble
party.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's carriage, coming up to the
gate after due shouting, rattled into the illuminated
court-yard and drove up to the covered way. Rawdon
put his wife into the carriage, which drove off. Mr.
Wenham had proposed to him to walk home, and offered
the Colonel the refreshment of a cigar.

They lighted their cigars by the lamp of one of the
many link-boys outside, and Rawdon walked on with his
friend Wenham. Two persons separated from the crowd
and followed the two gentlemen; and when they had
walked down Gaunt Square a few score of paces, one
of the men came up and, touching Rawdon on the shoulder,
said, "Beg your pardon, Colonel, I vish to speak to
you most particular." This gentleman's acquaintance
gave a loud whistle as the latter spoke, at which signal a
cab came clattering up from those stationed at the gate
of Gaunt House--and the aide-de-camp ran round and
placed himself in front of Colonel Crawley.

That gallant officer at once knew what had befallen
him. He was in the hands of the bailiffs. He started back,
falling against the man who had first touched him.

"We're three on us--it's no use bolting," the man
behind said.

"It's you, Moss, is it?" said the Colonel, who appeared
to know his interlocutor. "How much is it?"

"Only a small thing," whispered Mr. Moss, of Cursitor
Street, Chancery Lane, and assistant officer to the Sheriff
of Middlesex--"One hundred and sixty-six, six and eight-
pence, at the suit of Mr. Nathan."

"Lend me a hundred, Wenham, for God's sake," poor
Rawdon said--"I've got seventy at home."

"I've not got ten pounds in the world," said poor Mr.
Wenham--"Good night, my dear fellow."

"Good night," said Rawdon ruefully. And Wenham
walked away--and Rawdon Crawley finished his cigar
as the cab drove under Temple Bar.

CHAPTER LII

In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light

When Lord Steyne was benevolently disposed, he did
nothing by halves, and his kindness towards the Crawley
family did the greatest honour to his benevolent
discrimination. His lordship extended his good-will to little
Rawdon: he pointed out to the boy's parents the necessity
of sending him to a public school, that he was of
an age now when emulation, the first principles of the
Latin language, pugilistic exercises, and the society of
his fellow-boys would be of the greatest benefit to the
boy. His father objected that he was not rich enough to
send the child to a good public school; his mother that
Briggs was a capital mistress for him, and had brought
him on (as indeed was the fact) famously in English,
the Latin rudiments, and in general learning: but all these
objections disappeared before the generous perseverance
of the Marquis of Steyne. His lordship was one of the
governors of that famous old collegiate institution called
the Whitefriars. It had been a Cistercian Convent in old
days, when the Smithfield, which is contiguous to it, was
a tournament ground. Obstinate heretics used to be
brought thither convenient for burning hard by. Henry
VIII, the Defender of the Faith, seized upon the
monastery and its possessions and hanged and tortured some
of the monks who could not accommodate themselves to
the pace of his reform. Finally, a great merchant bought
the house and land adjoining, in which, and with the help
of other wealthy endowments of land and money, he
established a famous foundation hospital for old men
and children. An extern school grew round the old almost
monastic foundation, which subsists still with its
middle-age costume and usages--and all Cistercians pray
that it may long flourish.

Of this famous house, some of the greatest noblemen,
prelates, and dignitaries in England are governors: and
as the boys are very comfortably lodged, fed, and
educated, and subsequently inducted to good scholarships
at the University and livings in the Church, many little
gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession
from their tenderest years, and there is considerable
emulation to procure nominations for the foundation. It
was originally intended for the sons of poor and
deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble governors
of the Institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious
benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty.
To get an education for nothing, and a future livelihood
and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that
some of the richest people did not disdain it; and not
only great men's relations, but great men themselves, sent
their sons to profit by the chance--Right Rev. prelates
sent their own kinsmen or the sons of their clergy, while,
on the other hand, some great noblemen did not disdain
to patronize the children of their confidential servants--
so that a lad entering this establishment had every
variety of youthful society wherewith to mingle.

Rawdon Crawley, though the only book which he studied
was the Racing Calendar, and though his chief
recollections of polite learning were connected with the
floggings which he received at Eton in his early youth,
had that decent and honest reverence for classical learning
which all English gentlemen feel, and was glad to think
that his son was to have a provision for life, perhaps,
and a certain opportunity of becoming a scholar. And
although his boy was his chief solace and companion, and
endeared to him by a thousand small ties, about which
he did not care to speak to his wife, who had all along
shown the utmost indifference to their son, yet Rawdon
agreed at once to part with him and to give up his own
greatest comfort and benefit for the sake of the welfare
of the little lad. He did not know how fond he was of
the child until it became necessary to let him go away.
When he was gone, he felt more sad and downcast than
he cared to own--far sadder than the boy himself, who
was happy enough to enter a new career and find
companions of his own age. Becky burst out laughing once
or twice when the Colonel, in his clumsy, incoherent way,
tried to express his sentimental sorrows at the boy's
departure. The poor fellow felt that his dearest pleasure
and closest friend was taken from him. He looked often
and wistfully at the little vacant bed in his dressing-room,
where the child used to sleep. He missed him sadly of
mornings and tried in vain to walk in the park without
him. He did not know how solitary he was until little
Rawdon was gone. He liked the people who were fond of
him, and would go and sit for long hours with his
good-natured sister Lady Jane, and talk to her about
the virtues, and good looks, and hundred good qualities
of the child.

Young Rawdon's aunt, we have said, was very fond
of him, as was her little girl, who wept copiously when
the time for her cousin's departure came. The elder
Rawdon was thankful for the fondness of mother and
daughter. The very best and honestest feelings of the
man came out in these artless outpourings of paternal
feeling in which he indulged in their presence, and
encouraged by their sympathy. He secured not only Lady
Jane's kindness, but her sincere regard, by the feelings
which he manifested, and which he could not show to his
own wife. The two kinswomen met as seldom as possible.
Becky laughed bitterly at Jane's feelings and softness;
the other's kindly and gentle nature could not but revolt
at her sister's callous behaviour.

It estranged Rawdon from his wife more than he knew
or acknowledged to himself. She did not care for the
estrangement. Indeed, she did not miss him or anybody.
She looked upon him as her errand-man and humble
slave. He might be ever so depressed or sulky, and she
did not mark his demeanour, or only treated it with a
sneer. She was busy thinking about her position, or her
pleasures, or her advancement in society; she ought to
have held a great place in it, that is certain.

It was honest Briggs who made up the little kit for the
boy which he was to take to school. Molly, the housemaid,
blubbered in the passage when he went away--
Molly kind and faithful in spite of a long arrear of
unpaid wages. Mrs. Becky could not let her husband have
the carriage to take the boy to school. Take the horses
into the City!--such a thing was never heard of. Let a
cab be brought. She did not offer to kiss him when he
went, nor did the child propose to embrace her; but
gave a kiss to old Briggs (whom, in general, he was very
shy of caressing), and consoled her by pointing out that
he was to come home on Saturdays, when she would
have the benefit of seeing him. As the cab rolled towards
the City, Becky's carriage rattled off to the park. She
was chattering and laughing with a score of young dandies
by the Serpentine as the father and son entered at the
old gates of the school--where Rawdon left the child
and came away with a sadder purer feeling in his heart
than perhaps that poor battered fellow had ever known
since he himself came out of the nursery.

He walked all the way home very dismally, and dined
alone with Briggs. He was very kind to her and grateful
for her love and watchfulness over the boy. His
conscience smote him that he had borrowed Briggs's money
and aided in deceiving her. They talked about little
Rawdon a long time, for Becky only came home to dress
and go out to dinner--and then he went off uneasily to
drink tea with Lady Jane, and tell her of what had
happened, and how little Rawdon went off like a trump, and
how he was to wear a gown and little knee-breeches, and
how young Blackball, Jack Blackball's son, of the old
regiment, had taken him in charge and promised to be
kind to him.

In the course of a week, young Blackball had
constituted little Rawdon his fag, shoe-black, and breakfast
toaster; initiated him into the mysteries of the Latin
Grammar; and thrashed him three or four times, but not
severely. The little chap's good-natured honest face won
his way for him. He only got that degree of beating which
was, no doubt, good for him; and as for blacking shoes,
toasting bread, and fagging in general, were these offices
not deemed to be necessary parts of every young English
gentleman's education?

Our business does not lie with the second generation
and Master Rawdon's life at school, otherwise the present
tale might be carried to any indefinite length. The Colonel
went to see his son a short time afterwards and found
the lad sufficiently well and happy, grinning and laughing
in his little black gown and little breeches.

His father sagaciously tipped Blackball, his master, a
sovereign, and secured that young gentleman's good-will
towards his fag. As a protege of the great Lord Steyne,
the nephew of a County member, and son of a Colonel
and C.B., whose name appeared in some of the most
fashionable parties in the Morning Post, perhaps the
school authorities were disposed not to look unkindly on
the child. He had plenty of pocket-money, which he
spent in treating his comrades royally to raspberry tarts,
and he was often allowed to come home on Saturdays
to his father, who always made a jubilee of that day.
When free, Rawdon would take him to the play, or send
him thither with the footman; and on Sundays he went to
church with Briggs and Lady Jane and his cousins.
Rawdon marvelled over his stories about school, and
fights, and fagging. Before long, he knew the names of all
the masters and the principal boys as well as little
Rawdon himself. He invited little Rawdon's crony from
school, and made both the children sick with pastry, and
oysters, and porter after the play. He tried to look knowing
over the Latin grammar when little Rawdon showed
him what part of that work he was "in." "Stick to it, my
boy," he said to him with much gravity, "there's nothing
like a good classical education! Nothing!"

Becky's contempt for her husband grew greater every
day. "Do what you like--dine where you please--go and
have ginger-beer and sawdust at Astley's, or psalm-
singing with Lady Jane--only don't expect me to busy
myself with the boy. I have your interests to attend to,
as you can't attend to them yourself. I should like to
know where you would have been now, and in what sort
of a position in society, if I had not looked after you."
Indeed, nobody wanted poor old Rawdon at the parties
whither Becky used to go. She was often asked without
him now. She talked about great people as if she had the
fee-simple of May Fair, and when the Court went into
mourning, she always wore black.

Little Rawdon being disposed of, Lord Steyne, who
took such a parental interest in the affairs of this amiable
poor family, thought that their expenses might be very
advantageously curtailed by the departure of Miss Briggs,
and that Becky was quite clever enough to take the
management of her own house. It has been narrated in a
former chapter how the benevolent nobleman had given
his protegee money.to pay off her little debt to Miss
Briggs, who however still remained behind with her
friends; whence my lord came to the painful conclusion
that Mrs. Crawley had made some other use of the
money confided to her than that for which her generous
patron had given the loan. However, Lord Steyne was
not so rude as to impart his suspicions upon this head to
Mrs. Becky, whose feelings might be hurt by any
controversy on the money-question, and who might have a
thousand painful reasons for disposing otherwise of his
lordship's generous loan. But he determined to satisfy
himself of the real state of the case, and instituted the
necessary inquiries in a most cautious and delicate
manner.

In the first place he took an early opportunity of
pumping Miss Briggs. That was not a difficult operation.
A very little encouragement would set that worthy woman
to talk volubly and pour out all within her. And one day
when Mrs. Rawdon had gone out to drive (as Mr. Fiche,
his lordship's confidential servant, easily learned at the
livery stables where the Crawleys kept their carriage and
horses, or rather, where the livery-man kept a carriage
and horses for Mr. and Mrs. Crawley)--my lord dropped
in upon the Curzon Street house--asked Briggs for a cup
of coffee--told her that he had good accounts of the little
boy at school--and in five minutes found out from her
that Mrs. Rawdon had given her nothing except a black
silk gown, for which Miss Briggs was immensely grateful.

He laughed within himself at this artless story. For the
truth is, our dear friend Rebecca had given him a most
circumstantial narration of Briggs's delight at receiving
her money--eleven hundred and twenty-five pounds--
and in what securities she had invested it; and what a
pang Becky herself felt in being obliged to pay away such
a delightful sum of money. "Who knows," the dear
woman may have thought within herself, "perhaps he
may give me a little more?" My lord, however, made no
such proposal to the little schemer--very likely thinking
that he had been sufficiently generous already.

He had the curiosity, then, to ask Miss Briggs about
the state of her private affairs--and she told his lordship
candidly what her position was--how Miss Crawley had
left her a legacy--how her relatives had had part of it
--how Colonel Crawley had put out another portion, for
which she had the best security and interest--and how
Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon had kindly busied themselves with
Sir Pitt, who was to dispose of the remainder most
advantageously for her, when he had time. My lord asked
how much the Colonel had already invested for her, and
Miss Briggs at once and truly told him that the sum was
six hundred and odd pounds.

But as soon as she had told her story, the voluble
Briggs repented of her frankness and besought my lord
not to tell Mr. Crawley of the confessions which she had
made. "The Colonel was so kind--Mr. Crawley might
be offended and pay back the money, for which she
could get no such good interest anywhere else." Lord
Steyne, laughing, promised he never would divulge their
conversation, and when he and Miss Briggs parted he
laughed still more.

"What an accomplished little devil it is!" thought he.
"What a splendid actress and manager! She had almost
got a second supply out of me the other day; with her
coaxing ways. She beats all the women I have ever seen
in the course of all my well-spent life. They are babies
compared to her. I am a greenhorn myself, and a fool in
her hands--an old fool. She is unsurpassable in lies."
His lordship's admiration for Becky rose immeasurably
at this proof of her cleverness. Getting the money was
nothing--but getting double the sum she wanted, and
paying nobody--it was a magnificent stroke. And Crawley,
my lord thought--Crawley is not such a fool as he
looks and seems. He has managed the matter cleverly
enough on his side. Nobody would ever have supposed
from his face and demeanour that he knew anything
about this money business; and yet he put her up to it,
and has spent the money, no doubt. In this opinion my
lord, we know, was mistaken, but it influenced a good
deal his behaviour towards Colonel Crawley, whom he
began to treat with even less than that semblance of
respect which he had formerly shown towards that
gentleman. It never entered into the head of Mrs.
Crawley's patron that the little lady might be making a
purse for herself; and, perhaps, if the truth must be told,
he judged of Colonel Crawley by his experience of other
husbands, whom he had known in the course of the long
and well-spent life which had made him acquainted with
a great deal of the weakness of mankind. My lord had
bought so many men during his life that he was surely
to be pardoned for supposing that he had found the price
of this one.

He taxed Becky upon the point on the very first occasion
when he met her alone, and he complimented her,
good-humouredly, on her cleverness in getting more than
the money which she required. Becky was only a little
taken aback. It was not the habit of this dear creature
to tell falsehoods, except when necessity compelled, but
in these great emergencies it was her practice to lie very
freely; and in an instant she was ready with another neat
plausible circumstantial story which she administered to
her patron. The previous statement which she had made
to him was a falsehood--a wicked falsehood--she
owned it. But who had made her tell it? "Ah, my Lord,"
she said, "you don't know all I have to suffer and bear
in silence; you see me gay and happy before you--you
little know what I have to endure when there is no
protector near me. It was my husband, by threats and
the most savage treatment, forced me to ask for that
sum about which I deceived you. It was he who,
foreseeing that questions might be asked regarding the
disposal of the money, forced me to account for it as I
did. He took the money. He told me he had paid Miss
Briggs; I did not want, I did not dare to doubt him.
Pardon the wrong which a desperate man is forced to
commit, and pity a miserable, miserable woman." She
burst into tears as she spoke. Persecuted virtue never
looked more bewitchingly wretched.

They had a long conversation, driving round and round
the Regent's Park in Mrs. Crawley's carriage together,
a conversation of which it is not necessary to repeat
the details, but the upshot of it was that, when Becky
came home, she flew to her dear Briggs with a smiling
face and announced that she had some very good news
for her. Lord Steyne had acted in the noblest and most
generous manner. He was always thinking how and when
he could do good. Now that little Rawdon was gone to
school, a dear companion and friend was no longer
necessary to her. She was grieved beyond measure to part
with Briggs, but her means required that she should
practise every retrenchment, and her sorrow was
mitigated by the idea that her dear Briggs would be far
better provided for by her generous patron than in her
humble home. Mrs. Pilkington, the housekeeper at Gauntly
Hall, was growing exceedingly old, feeble, and rheumatic:
she was not equal to the work of superintending
that vast mansion, and must be on the look out for a
successor. It was a splendid position. The family did not
go to Gauntly once in two years. At other times the
housekeeper was the mistress of the magnificent
mansion--had four covers daily for her table; was visited by
the clergy and the most respectable people of the county
--was the lady of Gauntly, in fact; and the two last
housekeepers before Mrs. Pilkington had married rectors
of Gauntly--but Mrs. P. could not, being the aunt of
the present Rector. The place was not to be hers yet,
but she might go down on a visit to Mrs. Pilkington and
see whether she would like to succeed her.

What words can paint the ecstatic gratitude of Briggs!
All she stipulated for was that little Rawdon should be
allowed to come down and see her at the Hall. Becky
promised this--anything. She ran up to her husband when
he came home and told him the joyful news. Rawdon
was glad, deuced glad; the weight was off his conscience
about poor Briggs's money. She was provided for, at any
rate, but--but his mind was disquiet. He did not seem
to be all right, somehow. He told little Southdown what
Lord Steyne had done, and the young man eyed Crawley
with an air which surprised the latter.

He told Lady Jane of this second proof of Steyne's
bounty, and she, too, looked odd and alarmed; so did
Sir Pitt. "She is too clever and--and gay to be allowed
to go from party to party without a companion," both
said. "You must go with her, Rawdon, wherever she
goes, and you must have somebody with her--one of the
girls from Queen's Crawley, perhaps, though they were
rather giddy guardians for her."

Somebody Becky should have. But in the meantime
it was clear that honest Briggs must not lose her chance
of settlement for life, and so she and her bags were
packed, and she set off on her journey. And so two of
Rawdon's out-sentinels were in the hands of the enemy.

Sir Pitt went and expostulated with his sister-in-law
upon the subject of the dismissal of Briggs and other
matters of delicate family interest. In vain she pointed
out to him how necessary was the protection of Lord
Steyne for her poor husband; how cruel it would be on
their part to deprive Briggs of the position offered to her.
Cajolements, coaxings, smiles, tears could not satisfy Sir
Pitt, and he had something very like a quarrel with his
once admired Becky. He spoke of the honour of the
family, the unsullied reputation of the Crawleys;
expressed himself in indignant tones about her receiving
those young Frenchmen--those wild young men of fashion,
my Lord Steyne himself, whose carriage was always
at her door, who passed hours daily in her company,
and whose constant presence made the world talk about
her. As the head of the house he implored her to be
more prudent. Society was already speaking lightly of
her. Lord Steyne, though a nobleman of the greatest
station and talents, was a man whose attentions would
compromise any woman; he besought, he implored, he
commanded his sister-in-law to be watchful in her
intercourse with that nobleman.

Becky promised anything and everything Pitt wanted;
but Lord Steyne came to her house as often as ever,
and Sir Pitt's anger increased. I wonder was Lady Jane
angry or pleased that her husband at last found fault
with his favourite Rebecca? Lord Steyne's visits
continuing, his own ceased, and his wife was for refusing
all further intercourse with that nobleman and declining
the invitation to the charade-night which the marchioness
sent to her; but Sir Pitt thought it was necessary to
accept it, as his Royal Highness would be there.

Although he went to the party in question, Sir Pitt
quitted it very early, and his wife, too, was very glad
to come away. Becky hardly so much as spoke to him or
noticed her sister-in-law. Pitt Crawley declared her
behaviour was monstrously indecorous, reprobated in
strong terms the habit of play-acting and fancy dressing
as highly unbecoming a British female, and after the
charades were over, took his brother Rawdon severely
to task for appearing himself and allowing his wife to
join in such improper exhibitions.

Rawdon said she should not join in any more such
amusements--but indeed, and perhaps from hints from
his elder brother and sister, he had already become a
very watchful and exemplary domestic character. He left
off his clubs and billiards. He never left home. He took
Becky out to drive; he went laboriously with her to all
her parties. Whenever my Lord Steyne called, he was
sure to find the Colonel. And when Becky proposed to
go out without her husband, or received invitations for
herself, he peremptorily ordered her to refuse them: and
there was that in the gentleman's manner which enforced
obedience. Little Becky, to do her justice, was charmed
with Rawdon's gallantry. If he was surly, she never was.
Whether friends were present or absent, she had always
a kind smile for him and was attentive to his pleasure
and comfort. It was the early days of their marriage over
again: the same good humour, prevenances, merriment,
and artless confidence and regard. "How much pleasanter
it is," she would say, "to have you by my side in the
carriage than that foolish old Briggs! Let us always go on
so, dear Rawdon. How nice it would be, and how happy
we should always be, if we had but the money!" He
fell asleep after dinner in his chair; he did not see the
face opposite to him, haggard, weary, and terrible; it
lighted up with fresh candid smiles when he woke. It
kissed him gaily. He wondered that he had ever had
suspicions. No, he never had suspicions; all those dumb
doubts and surly misgivings which had been gathering on
his mind were mere idle jealousies. She was fond of him;
she always had been. As for her shining in society, it
was no fault of hers; she was formed to shine there.
Was there any woman who could talk, or sing, or do
anything like her? If she would but like the boy!
Rawdon thought. But the mother and son never could be
brought together.

And it was while Rawdon's mind was agitated with
these doubts and perplexities that the incident occurred
which was mentioned in the last chapter, and the
unfortunate Colonel found himself a prisoner away from
home.

CHAPTER LIII

Friend Rawdon drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion
in Cursitor Street, and was duly inducted into that
dismal place of hospitality. Morning was breaking
over the cheerful house-tops of Chancery Lane as the
rattling cab woke up the echoes there. A little
pink-eyed Jew-boy, with a head as ruddy as the rising
morn, let the party into the house, and Rawdon was
welcomed to the ground-floor apartments by Mr. Moss, his
travelling companion and host, who cheerfully asked him
if he would like a glass of something warm after his drive.

The Colonel was not so depressed as some mortals
would be, who, quitting a palace and a placens uxor,
find themselves barred into a spunging-house; for, if the
truth must be told, he had been a lodger at Mr. Moss's
establishment once or twice before. We have not thought
it necessary in the previous course of this narrative to
mention these trivial little domestic incidents: but the
reader may be assured that they can't unfrequently occur
in the life of a man who lives on nothing a year.

Upon his first visit to Mr. Moss, the Colonel, then
a bachelor, had been liberated by the generosity of his
aunt; on the second mishap, little Becky, with the greatest
spirit and kindness, had borrowed a sum of money from
Lord Southdown and had coaxed her husband's creditor
(who was her shawl, velvet-gown, lace pocket-handkerchief,
trinket, and gim-crack purveyor, indeed) to take
a portion of the sum claimed and Rawdon's promissory
note for the remainder: so on both these occasions the
capture and release had been conducted with the utmost
gallantry on all sides, and Moss and the Colonel were
therefore on the very best of terms.

"You'll find your old bed, Colonel, and everything
comfortable," that gentleman said, "as I may honestly say.
You may be pretty sure its kep aired, and by the best
of company, too. It was slep in the night afore last by
the Honorable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons,
whose Mar took him out, after a fortnight, jest to punish
him, she said. But, Law bless you, I promise you, he
punished my champagne, and had a party ere every night
--reglar tip-top swells, down from the clubs and the
West End--Capting Ragg, the Honorable Deuceace, who
lives in the Temple, and some fellers as knows a good
glass of wine, I warrant you. I've got a Doctor of
Diwinity upstairs, five gents in the coffee-room, and Mrs.
Moss has a tably-dy-hoty at half-past five, and a little
cards or music afterwards, when we shall be most happy
to see you."

"I'll ring when I want anything," said Rawdon and
went quietly to his bedroom. He was an old soldier,
we have said, and not to be disturbed by any little shocks
of fate. A weaker man would have sent off a letter to his
wife on the instant of his capture. "But what is the use
of disturbing her night's rest?" thought Rawdon. "She
won't know whether I am in my room or not. It will
be time enough to write to her when she has had her
sleep out, and I have had mine. It's only a hundred-
and-seventy, and the deuce is in it if we can't raise
that." And so, thinking about little Rawdon (whom he
would not have know that he was in such a queer place),
the Colonel turned into the bed lately occupied by
Captain Famish and fell asleep. It was ten o'clock when
he woke up, and the ruddy-headed youth brought him,
with conscious pride, a fine silver dressing-case, wherewith
he might perform the operation of shaving. Indeed
Mr. Moss's house, though somewhat dirty, was splendid
throughout. There were dirty trays, and wine-coolers en
permanence on the sideboard, huge dirty gilt cornices,
with dingy yellow satin hangings to the barred windows
which looked into Cursitor Street--vast and dirty gilt
picture frames surrounding pieces sporting and sacred, all
of which works were by the greatest masters--and fetched
the greatest prices, too, in the bill transactions, in the
course of which they were sold and bought over and
over again. The Colonel's breakfast was served to him
in the same dingy and gorgeous plated ware. Miss Moss,
a dark-eyed maid in curl-papers, appeared with the
teapot, and, smiling, asked the Colonel how he had slep?
And she brought him in the Morning Post, with the
names of all the great people who had figured at Lord
Steyne's entertainment the night before. It contained a
brilliant account of the festivities and of the beautiful
and accomplished Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's admirable
personifications.

After a lively chat with this lady (who sat on the
edge of the breakfast table in an easy attitude displaying
the drapery of her stocking and an ex-white satin shoe,
which was down at heel), Colonel Crawley called for
pens and ink, and paper, and being asked how many
sheets, chose one which was brought to him between
Miss Moss's own finger and thumb. Many a sheet had
that dark-eyed damsel brought in; many a poor fellow
had scrawled and blotted hurried lines of entreaty and
paced up and down that awful room until his messenger
brought back the reply. Poor men always use messengers
instead of the post. Who has not had their letters, with
the wafers wet, and the announcement that a person
is waiting in the hall?

Now on the score of his application, Rawdon had not
many misgivings.

DEAR BECKY, (Rawdon wrote)

I HOPE YOU SLEPT WELL. Don't be FRIGHTENED if I don't
bring you in your COFFY. Last night as I was coming
home smoaking, I met with an ACCADENT. I was NABBED
by Moss of Cursitor Street--from whose GILT AND SPLENDID
PARLER I write this--the same that had me this time
two years. Miss Moss brought in my tea--she is grown
very FAT, and, as usual, had her STOCKENS DOWN AT HEAL.

It's Nathan's business--a hundred-and-fifty--with
costs, hundred-and-seventy. Please send me my desk and
some CLOTHS--I'm in pumps and a white tye (something
like Miss M's stockings)--I've seventy in it. And as
soon as you get this, Drive to Nathan's--offer him
seventy-five down, and ASK HIM TO RENEW--say I'll take
wine--we may as well have some dinner sherry; but not
PICTURS, they're too dear.

If he won't stand it. Take my ticker and such of your
things as you can SPARE, and send them to Balls--we
must, of coarse, have the sum to-night. It won't do to
let it stand over, as to-morrow's Sunday; the beds here
are not very CLEAN, and there may be other things out
against me--I'm glad it an't Rawdon's Saturday for
coming home. God bless you.

Yours in haste,
R. C.
P.S. Make haste and come.

This letter, sealed with a wafer, was dispatched by
one of the messengers who are always hanging about
Mr. Moss's establishment, and Rawdon, having seen him
depart, went out in the court-yard and smoked his cigar
with a tolerably easy mind--in spite of the bars
overhead--for Mr. Moss's court-yard is railed in like a cage,
lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should
take a fancy to escape from his hospitality.

Three hours, he calculated, would be the utmost time
required, before Becky should arrive and open his prison
doors, and he passed these pretty cheerfully in smoking,
in reading the paper, and in the coffee-room with an
acquaintance, Captain Walker, who happened to be there,
and with whom he cut for sixpences for some hours,
with pretty equal luck on either side.

But the day passed away and no messenger returned--
no Becky. Mr. Moss's tably-dy-hoty was served at the
appointed hour of half-past five, when such of the gentlemen
lodging in the house as could afford to pay for the
banquet came and partook of it in the splendid front
parlour before described, and with which Mr. Crawley's
temporary lodging communicated, when Miss M. (Miss
Hem, as her papa called her) appeared without the curl-
papers of the morning, and Mrs. Hem did the honours
of a prime boiled leg of mutton and turnips, of which
the Colonel ate with a very faint appetite. Asked whether
he would "stand" a bottle of champagne for the
company, he consented, and the ladies drank to his 'ealth,
and Mr. Moss, in the most polite manner, "looked towards
him."

In the midst of this repast, however, the doorbell was
heard--young Moss of the ruddy hair rose up with the
keys and answered the summons, and coming back, told
the Colonel that the messenger had returned with a bag,
a desk and a letter, which he gave him. "No ceramony,
Colonel, I beg," said Mrs. Moss with a wave of her
hand, and he opened the letter rather tremulously. It
was a beautiful letter, highly scented, on a pink paper,
and with a light green seal.

MON PAUVRE CHER PETIT, (Mrs. Crawley wrote)

I could not sleep ONE WINK for thinking of what had
become of my odious old monstre, and only got to rest
in the morning after sending for Mr. Blench (for I was
in a fever), who gave me a composing draught and left
orders with Finette that I should be disturbed ON NO
ACCOUNT. So that my poor old man's messenger, who had
bien mauvaise mine Finette says, and sentoit le Genievre,
remained in the hall for some hours waiting my bell.
You may fancy my state when I read your poor dear
old ill-spelt letter.

Ill as I was, I instantly called for the carriage, and
as soon as I was dressed (though I couldn't drink a drop
of chocolate--I assure you I couldn't without my
monstre to bring it to me), I drove ventre a terre to
Nathan's. I saw him--I wept--I cried--I fell at hi~
odious knees. Nothing would mollify the horrid man.
He would have all the money, he said, or keep my poor
monstre in prison. I drove home with the intention of
paying that triste visite chez mon oncle (when every
trinket I have should be at your disposal though they
would not fetch a hundred pounds, for some, you know,
are with ce cher oncle already), and found Milor there
with the Bulgarian old sheep-faced monster, who had
come to compliment me upon last night's performances.
Paddington came in, too, drawling and lisping and
twiddling his hair; so did Champignac, and his chef--
everybody with foison of compliments and pretty speeches
--plaguing poor me, who longed to be rid of them, and
was thinking every moment of the time of mon pauvre
prisonnier.

When they were gone, I went down on my knees to
Milor; told him we were going to pawn everything, and
begged and prayed him to give me two hundred pounds.
He pish'd and psha'd in a fury--told me not to be such
a fool as to pawn--and said he would see whether he
could lend me the money. At last he went away,
promising that he would send it me in the morning: when
I will bring it to my poor old monster with a kiss fro
his affectionate

BECKY
I am writing in bed. Oh I have such a headache and
such a heartache!

When Rawdon read over this letter, he turned so red
and looked so savage that the company at the table
d'hote easily perceived that bad news had reached
him. All his suspicions, which he had been trying to
banish, returned upon him. She could not even go out
and sell her trinkets to free him. She could laugh and
talk about compliments paid to her, whilst he was in
prison. Who had put him there? Wenham had walked
with him. Was there.... He could hardly bear to think
of what he suspected. Leaving the room hurriedly, he ran
into his own--opened his desk, wrote two hurried lines,
which he directed to Sir Pitt or Lady Crawley, and
bade the messenger carry them at once to Gaunt Street,
bidding him to take a cab, and promising him a guinea
if he was back in an hour.

In the note he besought his dear brother and sister,
for the sake of God, for the sake of his dear child and
his honour, to come to him and relieve him from his
difficulty. He was in prison, he wanted a hundred pounds
to set him free--he entreated them to come to him.

He went back to the dining-room after dispatching his
messenger and called for more wine. He laughed and
talked with a strange boisterousness, as the people
thought. Sometimes he laughed madly at his own fears
and went on drinking for an hour, listening all the while
for the carriage which was to bring his fate back.

At the expiration of that time, wheels were heard
whirling up to the gate--the young janitor went out
with his gate-keys. It was a lady whom he let in at the
bailiff's door.

"Colonel Crawley," she said, trembling very much. He,
with a knowing look, locked the outer door upon her--
then unlocked and opened the inner one, and calling out,
"Colonel, you're wanted," led her into the back parlour,
which he occupied.

Rawdon came in from the dining-parlour where all
those people were carousing, into his back room; a flare
of coarse light following him into the apartment where
the lady stood, still very nervous.

"It is I, Rawdon," she said in a timid voice, which
she strove to render cheerful. "It is Jane." Rawdon was
quite overcome by that kind voice and presence. He ran
up to her--caught her in his arms--gasped out some
inarticulate words of thanks and fairly sobbed on her
shoulder. She did not know the cause of his emotion.

The bills of Mr. Moss were quickly settled, perhaps
to the disappointment of that gentleman, who had counted
on having the Colonel as his guest over Sunday at least;
and Jane, with beaming smiles and happiness in her eyes,
carried away Rawdon from the bailiff's house, and they
went homewards in the cab in which she had hastened
to his release. "Pitt was gone to a parliamentary dinner,"
she said, "when Rawdon's note came, and so, dear
Rawdon, I--I came myself"; and she put her kind hand in
his. Perhaps it was well for Rawdon Crawley that Pitt
was away at that dinner. Rawdon thanked his sister a
hundred times, and with an ardour of gratitude which
touched and almost alarmed that soft-hearted woman.
"Oh," said he, in his rude, artless way, "you--you don't
know how I'm changed since I've known you, and--and
little Rawdy. I--I'd like to change somehow. You see
I want--I want--to be--" He did- not finish the
sentence, but she could interpret it. And that night after he
left her, and as she sat by her own little boy's bed, she
prayed humbly for that poor way-worn sinner.

Rawdon left her and walked home rapidly. It was nine
o'clock at night. He ran across the streets and the great
squares of Vanity Fair, and at length came up breathless
opposite his own house. He started back and fell against
the railings, trembling as he looked up. The drawing-
room windows were blazing with light. She had said that
she was in bed and ill. He stood there for some time,
the light from the rooms on his pale face.

He took out his door-key and let himself into the
house. He could hear laughter in the upper rooms. He
was in the ball-dress in which he had been captured the
night before. He went silently up the stairs, leaning
against the banisters at the stair-head. Nobody was
stirring in the house besides--all the servants had been sent
away. Rawdon heard laughter within--laughter and singing.
Becky was singing a snatch of the song of the night
before; a hoarse voice shouted "Brava! Brava!"--it was
Lord Steyne's.

Rawdon opened the door and went in. A little table
with a dinner was laid out--and wine and plate. Steyne
was hanging over the sofa on which Becky sat. The
wretched woman was in a brilliant full toilette, her arms
and all her fingers sparkling with bracelets and rings,
and the brilliants on her breast which Steyne had given
her. He had her hand in his, and was bowing over it
to kiss it, when Becky started up with a faint scream
as she caught sight of Rawdon's white face. At the next
instant she tried a smile, a horrid smile, as if to
welcome her husband; and Steyne rose up, grinding
his teeth, pale, and with fury in his looks.

He, too, attempted a laugh--and came forward holding
out his hand. "What, come back! How d'ye do, Crawley?"
he said, the nerves of his mouth twitching as he
tried to grin at the intruder.

There was that in Rawdon's face which caused Becky
to fling herself before him. "I am innocent, Rawdon,"
she said; "before God, I am innocent." She clung hold
of his coat, of his hands; her own were all covered with
serpents, and rings, and baubles. "I am innocent. Say I
am innocent," she said to Lord Steyne.

He thought a trap had been laid for him, and was as
furious with the wife as with the husband. "You
innocent! Damn you," he screamed out. "You innocent! Why
every trinket you have on your body is paid for by me.
I have given you thousands of pounds, which this fellow
has spent and for which he has sold you. Innocent,
by --! You're as innocent as your mother, the ballet-
girl, and your husband the bully. Don't think to frighten
me as you have done others. Make way, sir, and let me
pass"; and Lord Steyne seized up his hat, and, with
flame in his eyes, and looking his enemy fiercely in the
face, marched upon him, never for a moment doubting
that the other would give way.

But Rawdon Crawley springing out, seized him by the
neckcloth, until Steyne, almost strangled, writhed and
bent under his arm. "You lie, you dog!" said Rawdon.
"You lie, you coward and villain!" And he struck the
Peer twice over the face with his open hand and flung
him bleeding to the ground. It was all done before
Rebecca could interpose. She stood there trembling before
him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, and
victorious.

"Come here," he said. She came up at once.

"Take off those things." She began, trembling, pulling
the jewels from her arms, and the rings from her shaking
fingers, and held them all in a heap, quivering and looking
up at him. "Throw them down," he said, and she
dropped them. He tore the diamond ornament out of her
breast and flung it at Lord Steyne. It cut him on his
bald forehead. Steyne wore the scar to his dying day.

"Come upstairs," Rawdon said to his wife. "Don't kill
me, Rawdon," she said. He laughed savagely. "I want
to see if that man lies about the money as he has about
me. Has he given you any?"

"No," said Rebecca, "that is--"

"Give me your keys," Rawdon answered, and they
went out together.

Rebecca gave him all the keys but one, and she was in
hopes that he would not have remarked the absence of
that. It belonged to the little desk which Amelia had
given her in early days, and which she kept in a secret
place. But Rawdon flung open boxes and wardrobes,
throwing the multifarious trumpery of their contents here
and there, and at last he found the desk. The woman was
forced to open it. It contained papers, love-letters many
years old--all sorts of small trinkets and woman's
memoranda. And it contained a pocket-book with bank-notes.
Some of these were dated ten years back, too, and one
was quite a fresh one--a note for a thousand pounds
which Lord Steyne had given her.

"Did he give you this?" Rawdon said.

"Yes," Rebecca answered.

"I'll send it to him to-day," Rawdon said (for day had
dawned again, and many hours had passed in this search),
"and I will pay Briggs, who was kind to the boy, and
some of the debts. You will let me know where I shall
send the rest to you. You might have spared me a
hundred pounds, Becky, out of all this--I have always
shared with you."

"I am innocent," said Becky. And he left her without
another word.

What were her thoughts when he left her? She
remained for hours after he was gone, the sunshine
pouring into the room, and Rebecca sitting alone on the
bed's edge. The drawers were all opened and their contents
scattered about--dresses and feathers, scarfs and trinkets,
a heap of tumbled vanities lying in a wreck. Her hair
was falling over her shoulders; her gown was torn where
Rawdon had wrenched the brilliants out of it. She heard
him go downstairs a few minutes after he left her, and
the door slamming and closing on him. She knew he
would never come back. He was gone forever. Would
he kill himself?--she thought--not until after he had
met Lord Steyne. She thought of her long past life, and
all the dismal incidents of it. Ah, how dreary it seemed,
how miserable, lonely and profitless! Should she take
laudanum, and end it, to have done with all hopes,
schemes, debts, and triumphs? The French maid found
her in this position--sitting in the midst of her miserable
ruins with clasped hands and dry eyes. The woman was
her accomplice and in Steyne's pay. "Mon Dieu,
madame, what has happened?" she asked.

What had happened? Was she guilty or not? She said
not, but who could tell what was truth which came from
those lips, or if that corrupt heart was in this case pure?

All her lies and her schemes, an her selfishness and her
wiles, all her wit and genius had come to this
bankruptcy. The woman closed the curtains and, with some
entreaty and show of kindness, persuaded her mistress
to lie down on the bed. Then she went below and
gathered up the trinkets which had been lying on the floor
since Rebecca dropped them there at her husband's
orders, and Lord Steyne went away.

CHAPTER LIV

Sunday After the Battle

The mansion of Sir Pitt Crawley, in Great Gaunt Street,
was just beginning to dress itself for the day, as Rawdon,
in his evening costume, which he had now worn
two days, passed by the scared female who was scouring
the steps and entered into his brother's study. Lady
Jane, in her morning-gown, was up and above stairs in
the nursery superintending the toilettes of her children
and listening to the morning prayers which the little
creatures performed at her knee. Every morning she and
they performed this duty privately, and before the public
ceremonial at which Sir Pitt presided and at which all the
people of the household were expected to assemble.
Rawdon sat down in the study before the Baronet's table,
set out with the orderly blue books and the letters, the
neatly docketed bills and symmetrical pamphlets, the
locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, the
Bible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which
all stood as if on parade awaiting the inspection of their
chief.

A book of family sermons, one of which Sir Pitt was
in the habit of administering to his family on Sunday
mornings, lay ready on the study table, and awaiting his
judicious selection. And by the sermon-book was the
Observer newspaper, damp and neatly folded, and for
Sir Pitt's own private use. His gentleman alone took the
opportunity of perusing the newspaper before he laid it
by his master's desk. Before he had brought it into the
study that morning, he had read in the journal a flaming
account of "Festivities at Gaunt House," with the names
of all the distinguished personages invited by tho Marquis
of Steyne to meet his Royal Highness. Having made
comments upon this entertainment to the housekeeper
and her niece as they were taking early tea and hot
buttered toast in the former lady's apartment, and
wondered how the Rawding Crawleys could git on, the valet
had damped and folded the paper once more, so that it
looked quite fresh and innocent against the arrival of
the master of the house.

Poor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and
read it until his brother should arrive. But the print fell
blank upon his eyes, and he did not know in the least
what he was reading. The Government news and
appointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound
to peruse, otherwise he would by no means permit the
introduction of Sunday papers into his household), the
theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundred pounds
a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury
Pet, the Gaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a
most complimentary though guarded account of the
famous charades of which Mrs. Becky had been the
heroine--all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as he
sat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family.

Punctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble
study clock began to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his
appearance, fresh, neat, smugly shaved, with a waxy clean
face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty hair combed and
oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairs
majestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel
dressing-gown--a real old English gentleman, in a word--
a model of neatness and every propriety. He started when
he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbled clothes, with
blood-shot eyes, and his hair over his face. He thought
his brother was not sober, and had been out all night on
some orgy. "Good gracious, Rawdon," he said, with a
blank face, "what brings you here at this time of the
morning? Why ain't you at home?"

"Home," said Rawdon with a wild laugh. "Don't be
frightened, Pitt. I'm not drunk. Shut the door; I want to
speak to you."

Pitt closed the door and came up to the table, where
he sat down in the other arm-chair--that one placed for
the reception of the steward, agent, or confidential
visitor who came to transact business with the Baronet--
and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever.

"Pitt, it's all over with me," the Colonel said after a
pause. "I'm done."

"I always said it would come to this," the Baronet
cried peevishly, and beating a tune with his clean-
trimmed nails. "I warned you a thousand times. I can't
help you any more. Every shilling of my money is tied
up. Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last
night were promised to my lawyer to-morrow morning,
and the want of it will put me to great inconvenience.
I don't mean to say that I won't assist you ultimately.
But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as well
hope to pay the National Debt. It is madness, sheer
madness, to think of such a thing. You must come to a
compromise. It's a painful thing for the family, but everybody
does it. There was George Kitely, Lord Ragland's son,
went through the Court last week, and was what they
call whitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay
a shilling for him, and--"

"It's not money I want," Rawdon broke in. "I'm not
come to you about myself. Never mind what happens to
me "

"What is the matter, then?" said Pitt, somewhat
relieved.

"It's the boy," said Rawdon in a husky voice. "I want
you to promise me that you will take charge of him
when I'm gone. That dear good wife of yours has always
been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he is of
his . . .--Damn it. Look here, Pitt--you know that I
was to have had Miss Crawley's money. I wasn't brought
up like a younger brother, but was always encouraged to
be extravagant and kep idle. But for this I might have
been quite a different man. I didn't do my duty with the
regiment so bad. You know how I was thrown over
about the money, and who got it."

"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in
which I have stood by you, I think this sort of reproach
is useless," Sir Pitt said. "Your marriage was your own
doing, not mine."

"That's over now," said Rawdon. "That's over now."
And the words were wrenched from him with a groan,
which made his brother start.

"Good God! is she dead?" Sir Pitt said with a voice
of genuine alarm and commiseration.

"I wish I was," Rawdon replied. "If it wasn't for little
Rawdon I'd have cut my throat this morning--and that
damned villain's too."

Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that
Lord Steyne was the person whose life Rawdon wished to
take. The Colonel told his senior briefly, and in broken
accents, the circumstances of the case. "It was a regular
plan between that scoundrel and her," he said. "The
bailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going
out of his house; when I wrote to her for money, she
said she was ill in bed and put me off to another day.
And when I got home I found her in diamonds and
sitting with that villain alone." He then went on to describe
hurriedly the personal conflict with Lord Steyne. To an
affair of that nature, of course, he said, there was but
one issue, and after his conference with his brother, he
was going away to make the necessary arrangements for
the meeting which must ensue. "And as it may end
fatally with me," Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and
as the boy has no mother, I must leave him to you and
Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if you will
promise me to be his friend."

The elder brother was much affected, and shook
Rawdon's hand with a cordiality seldom exhibited by him.
Rawdon passed his hand over his shaggy eyebrows.
"Thank you, brother," said he. "I know I can trust your
word."

"I will, upon my honour," the Baronet said. And thus,
and almost mutely, this bargain was struck between
them.

Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little
pocket-book which he had discovered in Becky's desk, and from
which he drew a bundle of the notes which it contained.
"Here's six hundred," he said--"you didn't know I was
so rich. I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lent
it to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always
felt ashamed of having taken the poor old woman's
money. And here's some more--I've only kept back a
few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get on
with." As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to
give to his brother, but his hands shook, and he was so
agitated that the pocket-book fell from him, and out of
it the thousand-pound note which had been the last of
the unlucky Becky's winnings.

Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much
wealth. "Not that," Rawdon said. "I hope to put a bullet
into the man whom that belongs to." He had thought to
himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap a ball in the
note and kill Steyne with it.

After this colloquy the brothers once more shook
hands and parted. Lady Jane had heard of the Colonel's
arrival, and was waiting for her husband in the adjoining
dining-room, with female instinct, auguring evil. The
door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and
the lady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers
passed out of the study. She held out her hand to
Rawdon and said she was glad he was come to breakfast,
though she could perceive, by his haggard unshorn face
and the dark looks of her husband, that there was very
little question of breakfast between them. Rawdon
muttered some excuses about an engagement, squeezing hard
the timid little hand which his sister-in-law reached out
to him. Her imploring eyes could read nothing but
calamity in his face, but he went away without another
word. Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation.
The children came up to salute him, and he kissed them
in his usual frigid manner. The mother took both of them
close to herself, and held a hand of each of them as they
knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, and
to the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged
upon chairs on the other side of the hissing tea-urn.
Breakfast was so late that day, in consequence of the
delays which had occurred, that the church-bells began
to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal; and
Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though
her thoughts had been entirely astray during the period
of family devotion.

Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great
Gaunt Street, and knocking at the great bronze
Medusa's head which stands on the portal of Gaunt House,
brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver
waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was
scared also by the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and
barred the way as if afraid that the other was going to
force it. But Colonel Crawley only took out a card and
enjoined him particularly to send it in to Lord Steyne,
and to mark the address written on it, and say that
Colonel Crawley would be all day after one o'clock at the
Regent Club in St. James's Street--not at home. The fat
red-faced man looked after him with astonishment as he
strode away; so did the people in their Sunday clothes
who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining
faces, the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican
shutting his shutters in the sunshine, against service
commenced. The people joked at the cab-stand about
his appearance, as he took a carriage there, and told the
driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.

All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached
that place. He might have seen his old acquaintance
Amelia on her way from Brompton to Russell Square,
had he been looking out. Troops of schools were on
their march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides
of coaches in the suburbs were thronged with people out
upon their Sunday pleasure; but the Colonel was much
too busy to take any heed of these phenomena, and,
arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the
room of his old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo,
who Crawley found, to his satisfaction, was in barracks.

Captain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo
man, greatly liked by his regiment, in which want of
money alone prevented him from attaining the highest
ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed. He had
been at a fast supper-party, given the night before by
Captain the Honourable George Cinqbars, at his house
in Brompton Square, to several young men of the
regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps de ballet, and
old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and
ranks, and consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, opera-
dancers, bruisers, and every kind of person, in a word,
was resting himself after the night's labours, and, not
being on duty, was in bed.

His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and
dancing pictures, presented to him by comrades as they
retired from the regiment, and married and settled into
quiet life. And as he was now nearly fifty years of age,
twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had
a singular museum. He was one of the best shots in
England, and, for a heavy man, one of the best riders;
indeed, he and Crawley had been rivals when the latter
was in the Army. To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo was lying
in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very
fight between the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher,
which has been before mentioned--a venerable bristly
warrior, with a little close-shaved grey head, with a silk
nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyed
moustache.

When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the
latter knew perfectly well on what duty of friendship he
was called to act, and indeed had conducted scores of
affairs for his acquaintances with the greatest prudence
and skill. His Royal Highness the late lamented
Commander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for
Macmurdo on this account, and he was the common refuge
of gentlemen in trouble.

"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the
old warrior. "No more gambling business, hay, like that
when we shot Captain Marker?"

"It's about--about my wife," Crawley answered,
casting down his eyes and turning very red.

The other gave a whistle. "I always said she'd throw
you over," he began--indeed there were bets in the
regiment and at the clubs regarding the probable fate of
Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his wife's character
esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing the
savage look with which Rawdon answered the expression
of this opinion, Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge
upon it further.

"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain
continued in a grave tone. "Is it only suspicion, you know,
or--or what is it? Any letters? Can't you keep it quiet?
Best not make any noise about a thing of that sort if you
can help it." "Think of his only finding her out now," the
Captain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred
particular conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs.
Crawley's reputation had been torn to shreds.

"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied--
"and there's only a way out of it for one of us, Mac--do
you understand? I was put out of the way--arrested--I
found 'em alone together. I told him he was a liar and a
coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him."

"Serve him right," Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"

Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.

"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he--that is, they
said you--"

"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon;
"do you mean that you ever heard a fellow doubt about
my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"

"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other
replied. "What the deuce was the good of my telling you
what any tom-fools talked about?"

"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite
overcome; and, covering his face with his hands, he gave
way to an emotion, the sight of which caused the tough
old campaigner opposite him to wince with sympathy.
"Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll put
a bullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so."

"You don't know how fond I was of that one,"
Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like
a footman. I gave up everything I had to her. I'm a
beggar because I would marry her. By Jove, sir, I've pawned
my own watch in order to get her anything she fancied;
and she she's been making a purse for herself all the
time, and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of
quod." He then fiercely and incoherently, and with an
agitation under which his counsellor had never before
seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of
the story. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it.
"She may be innocent, after all," he said. "She says
so. Steyne has been a hundred times alone with her in
the house before."

"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't
look very innocent": and he showed the Captain the
thousand-pound note which he had found in Becky's
pocket-book. "This is what he gave her, Mac, and she
kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house,
she refused to stand by me when I was locked up." The
Captain could not but own that the secreting of the
money had a very ugly look.

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon
dispatched Captain Macmurdo's servant to Curzon Street,
with an order to the domestic there to give up a bag of
clothes of which the Colonel had great need. And during
the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson's
Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon
and his second composed a letter, which the latter
was to send to Lord Steyne. Captain Macmurdo had the
honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne, on the part
of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that
he was empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements
for the meeting which, he had no doubt, it was his
Lordship's intention to demand, and which the circumstances
of the morning had rendered inevitable. Captain
Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite
manner, to appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M'M.)
might communicate, and desired that the meeting might
take place with as little delay as possible.

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his
possession a bank-note for a large amount, which
Colonel Crawley had reason to suppose was the property of
the Marquis of Steyne. And he was anxious, on the
Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.

By the time this note was composed, the Captain's
servant returned from his mission to Colonel Crawley's
house in Curzon Street, but without the carpet-bag and
portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with a
very puzzled and odd face.

"They won't give 'em up," said the man; "there's a
regular shinty in the house, and everything at sixes and
sevens. The landlord's come in and took possession. The
servants was a drinkin' up in the drawingroom. They
said--they said you had gone off with the plate,
Colonel"--the man added after a pause--"One of the
servants is off already. And Simpson, the man as was very
noisy and drunk indeed, says nothing shall go out of the
house until his wages is paid up."

The account of this little revolution in May Fair
astonished and gave a little gaiety to an otherwise very
triste conversation. The two officers laughed at Rawdon's
discomfiture.

"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home," Rawdon said,
biting his nails. "You remember him, Mac, don't you, in
the Riding School? How he sat the kicker to be sure!
didn't he?"

"That he did, old boy," said the good-natured Captain.

Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys,
in the Chapel of Whitefriars School, thinking, not about
the sermon, but about going home next Saturday, when
his father would certainly tip him and perhaps would
take him to the play.

"He's a regular trump, that boy," the father went on,
still musing about his son. "I say, Mac, if anything goes
wrong--if I drop--I should like you to--to go and see
him, you know, and say that I was very fond of him, and
that. And--dash it--old chap, give him these gold sleeve-
buttons: it's all I've got." He covered his face with his
black hands, over which the tears rolled and made
furrows of white. Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take
off his silk night-cap and rub it across his eyes.

"Go down and order some breakfast," he said to his
man in a loud cheerful voice. "What'll you have, Crawley?
Some devilled kidneys and a herring--let's say. And,
Clay, lay out some dressing things for the Colonel: we
were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, and
neither of us ride so light as we did when we first
entered the corps." With which, and leaving the Colonel to
dress himself, Macmurdo turned round towards the wall,
and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, until such time as
his friend's toilette was complete and he was at liberty
to commence his own.

This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain
Macmurdo performed with particular care. He waxed his
mustachios into a state of brilliant polish and put on a
tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that all the
young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had
preceded his friend, complimented Mac on his appearance
at breakfast and asked if he was going to be married
that Sunday.

CHAPIER LV

In Which the Same Subject is Pursued

Becky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion
in which the events of the previous night had plunged
her intrepid spirit until the bells of the Curzon Street
Chapels were ringing for afternoon service, and rising
from her bed she began to ply her own bell, in order to
summon the French maid who had left her some hours
before.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and
though, on the last occasion, she rang with such
vehemence as to pull down the bell-rope, Mademoiselle
Fifine did not make her appearance--no, not though her
mistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her hand,
came out to the landing-place with her hair over her
shoulders and screamed out repeatedly for her attendant.

The truth is, she had quitted the premises for many
hours, and upon that permission which is called French
leave among us After picking up the trinkets in the
drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to her own
apartments, packed and corded her own boxes there,
tripped out and called a cab for herself, brought down
her trunks with her own hand, and without ever so much
as asking the aid of any of the other servants, who would
probably have refused it, as they hated her cordially,
and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had
made her exit from Curzon Street.

The game, in her opinion, was over in that little
domestic establishment. Fifine went off in a cab, as we
have known more exalted persons of her nation to do
under similar circumstances: but, more provident or
lucky than these, she secured not only her own property,
but some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could be
said to have any property at all)--and not only carried
off the trinkets before alluded to, and some favourite
dresses on which she had long kept her eye, but four
richly gilt Louis Quatorze candlesticks, six gilt albums,
keepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a gold enamelled
snuff-box which had once belonged to Madame du Barri, and
the sweetest little inkstand and mother-of-pearl blotting
book, which Becky used when she composed her charming
little pink notes, had vanished from the premises in
Curzon Street together with Mademoiselle Fifine, and all
the silver laid on the table for the little festin which
Rawdon interrupted. The plated ware Mademoiselle left
behind her was too cumbrous, probably for which
reason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the
chimney-glasses, and the rosewood cottage piano.

A lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's
shop in the Rue du Helder at Paris, where she lived with
great credit and enjoyed the patronage of my Lord
Steyne. This person always spoke of England as of the
most treacherous country in the world, and stated to her
young pupils that she had been affreusement vole by
natives of that island. It was no doubt compassion for
her misfortunes which induced the Marquis of Steyne to
be so very kind to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe. May
she flourish as she deserves--she appears no more in our
quarter of Vanity Fair.

Hearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the
impudence of those servants who would not answer her
summons, Mrs. Crawley flung her morning robe round
her and descended majestically to the drawing-room,
whence the noise proceeded.

The cook was there with blackened face, seated on the
beautiful chintz sofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom
she was administering Maraschino. The page with the
sugar-loaf buttons, who carried about Becky's pink
notes, and jumped about her little carriage with such
alacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers into a
cream dish; the footman was talking to Raggles, who
had a face full of perplexity and woe--and yet, though
the door was open, and Becky had been screaming a
half-dozen of times a few feet off, not one of her
attendants had obeyed her call. "Have a little drop, do'ee
now, Mrs. Raggles," the cook was saying as Becky
entered, the white cashmere dressing-gown flouncing
around her.

"Simpson! Trotter!" the mistress of the house cried in
great wrath. "How dare you stay here when you heard
me call? How dare you sit down in my presence? Where's
my maid?" The page withdrew his fingers from his mouth
with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a glass
of Maraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough,
staring at Becky over the little gilt glass as she drained
its contents. The liquor appeared to give the odious rebel
courage.

"YOUR sofy, indeed!" Mrs. Cook said. "I'm a settin' on
Mrs. Raggles's sofy. Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum.
I'm a settin' on Mr. and Mrs. Raggles's sofy, which they
bought with honest money, and very dear it cost 'em,
too. And I'm thinkin' if I set here until I'm paid my
wages, I shall set a precious long time, Mrs. Raggles;
and set I will, too--ha! ha!" and with this she filled
herself another glass of the liquor and drank it with a more
hideously satirical air.

"Trotter! Simpson! turn that drunken wretch out,"
screamed Mrs. Crawley.

"I shawn't," said Trotter the footman; "turn out
yourself. Pay our selleries, and turn me out too. WE'LL
go fast enough."

"Are you all here to insult me?" cried Becky in a fury;
"when Colonel Crawley comes home I'll--"

At this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in
which, however, Raggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join. "He ain't a coming back,"
Mr. Trotter resumed. "He sent for his things, and I
wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and I
don't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am. He's
hoff, and I suppose you're a goin' after him. You're no
better than swindlers, both on you. Don't be a bullyin'
ME. I won't stand it. Pay us our selleries, I say. Pay us
our selleries." It was evident, from Mr. Trotter's flushed
countenance and defective intonation, that he, too, had
had recourse to vinous stimulus.

"Mr. Raggles," said Becky in a passion of vexation,
"you will not surely let me be insulted by that drunken
man?" "Hold your noise, Trotter; do now," said Simpson
the page. He was affected by his mistress's deplorable
situation, and succeeded in preventing an outrageous
denial of the epithet "drunken" on the footman's part.

"Oh, M'am," said Raggles, "I never thought to live to
see this year day: I've known the Crawley family ever
since I was born. I lived butler with Miss Crawley for
thirty years; and I little thought one of that family was
a goin' to ruing me--yes, ruing me"--said the poor fellow
with tears in his eyes. "Har you a goin' to pay me? You've
lived in this 'ouse four year. You've 'ad my substance:
my plate and linning. You ho me a milk and butter bill
of two 'undred pound, you must 'ave noo laid heggs for
your homlets, and cream for your spanil dog."

"She didn't care what her own flesh and blood had,"
interposed the cook. "Many's the time, he'd have starved
but for me."

"He's a charaty-boy now, Cooky," said Mr. Trotter,
with a drunken "ha! ha!"--and honest Raggles continued,
in a lamentable tone, an enumeration of his griefs. All he
said was true. Becky and her husband had ruined him.
He had bills coming due next week and no means to meet
them. He would be sold up and turned out of his shop
and his house, because he had trusted to the Crawley
family. His tears and lamentations made Becky more
peevish than ever.

"You all seem to be against me," she said bitterly.
"What do you want? I can't pay you on Sunday. Come
back to-morrow and I'll pay you everything. I thought
Colonel Crawley had settled with you. He will to-morrow.
I declare to you upon my honour that he left home this
morning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book.
He has left me nothing. Apply to him. Give me a bonnet
and shawl and let me go out and find him. There was a
difference between us this morning. You all seem to
know it. I promise you upon my word that you shall all
be paid. He has got a good appointment. Let me go out
and find him.''

This audacious statement caused Raggles and the other
personages present to look at one another with a wild
surprise, and with it Rebecca left them. She went upstairs
and dressed herself this time without the aid of her French
maid. She went into Rawdon's room, and there saw that
a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with a
pencil direction that they should be given when called
for; then she went into the Frenchwoman's garret;
everything was clean, and all the drawers emptied there.
She bethought herself of the trinkets which had been left on
the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled.
"Good Heavens! was ever such ill luck as mine?" she
said; "to be so near, and to lose all. Is it all too late?"
No; there was one chance more.

She dressed herself and went away unmolested this
time, but alone. It was four o'clock. She went swiftly
down the streets (she had no money to pay for a
carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir Pitt
Crawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street. Where was Lady
Jane Crawley? She was at church. Becky was not sorry.
Sir Pitt was in his study, and had given orders not to be
disturbed--she must see him--she slipped by the sentinel
in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before the
astonished Baronet had even laid down the paper.

He turned red and started back from her with a look
of great alarm and horror.

"Do not look so," she said. "I am not guilty, Pitt, dear
Pitt; you were my friend once. Before God, I am not
guilty. I seem so. Everything is against me. And oh! at
such a moment! just when all my hopes were about to be
realized: just when happiness was in store for us."

"Is this true, what I see in the paper then?" Sir Pitt
said--a paragraph in which had greatly surprised him.

"It is true. Lord Steyne told me on Friday night, the
night of that fatal ball. He has been promised an
appointment any time these six months. Mr. Martyr, the
Colonial Secretary, told him yesterday that it was made out.
That unlucky arrest ensued; that horrible meeting. I was only
guilty of too much devotedness to Rawdon's service. I
have received Lord Steyne alone a hundred times before.
I confess I had money of which Rawdon knew nothing.
Don't you know how careless he is of it, and could I dare
to confide it to him?" And so she went on with a
perfectly connected story, which she poured into the ears
of her perplexed kinsman.

It was to the following effect. Becky owned, and with
prefect frankness, but deep contrition, that having
remarked Lord Steyne's partiality for her (at the mention
of which Pitt blushed), and being secure of her own
virtue, she had determined to turn the great peer's
attachment to the advantage of herself and her family. "I
looked for a peerage for you, Pitt," she said (the brother-
in-law again turned red). "We have talked about it. Your
genius and Lord Steyne's interest made it more than
probable, had not this dreadful calamity come to put an
end to all our hopes. But, first, I own that it was my
object to rescue my dear husband--him whom I love in
spite of all his ill usage and suspicions of me--to remove
him from the poverty and ruin which was impending over
us. I saw Lord Steyne's partiality for me," she said,
casting down her eyes. "I own that I did everything in
my power to make myself pleasing to him, and as far as
an honest woman may, to secure his--his esteem. It was
only on Friday morning that the news arrived of the
death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lord
instantly secured the appointment for my dear husband.
It was intended as a surprise for him--he was to see it in
the papers to-day. Even after that horrid arrest took
place (the expenses of which Lord Steyne generously
said he would settle, so that I was in a manner prevented
from coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was
laughing with me, and saying that my dearest Rawdon
would be consoled when he read of his appointment in
the paper, in that shocking spun--bailiff's house. And
then--then he came home. His suspicions were excited,
--the dreadful scene took place between my Lord and
my cruel, cruel Rawdon--and, O my God, what will
happen next? Pitt, dear Pitt! pity me, and reconcile us!"
And as she spoke she flung herself down on her knees,
and bursting into tears, seized hold of Pitt's hand, which
she kissed passionately.

It was in this very attitude that Lady Jane, who,
returning from church, ran to her husband's room directly
she heard Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was closeted there,
found the Baronet and his sister-in-law.

"I am surprised that woman has the audacity to enter
this house," Lady Jane said, trembling in every limb
and turning quite pale. (Her Ladyship had sent out her
maid directly after breakfast, who had communicated
with Raggles and Rawdon Crawley's household, who had
told her all, and a great deal more than they knew, of
that story, and many others besides). "How dare Mrs.
Crawley to enter the house of--of an honest family?"

Sir Pitt started back, amazed at his wife's display of
vigour. Becky still kept her kneeling posture and clung
to Sir Pitt's hand.

"Tell her that she does not know all: Tell her that I
am innocent, dear Pitt," she whimpered out.

"Upon-my word, my love, I think you do Mrs. Crawley
injustice," Sir Pitt said; at which speech Rebecca was
vastly relieved. "Indeed I believe her to be--"

"To be what?" cried out Lady Jane, her clear voice
thrilling and, her heart beating violently as she spoke.
"To be a wicked woman--a heartless mother, a false
wife? She never loved her dear little boy, who used to
fly here and tell me of her cruelty to him. She never
came into a family but she strove to bring misery with
her and to weaken the most sacred affections with her
wicked flattery and falsehoods. She has deceived her
husband, as she has deceived everybody; her soul is black
with vanity, worldliness, and all sorts of crime. I tremble
when I touch her. I keep my children out of her sight.

"Lady Jane!" cried Sir Pitt, starting up, "this is really
language--"

"I have been a true and faithful wife to you, Sir
Pitt," Lady Jane continued, intrepidly; "I have kept my
marriage vow as I made it to God and have been
obedient and gentle as a wife should. But righteous
obedience has its limits, and I declare that I will not bear
that--that woman again under my roof; if she enters it,
I and my children will leave it. She is not worthy to sit
down with Christian people. You--you must choose, sir,
between her and me"; and with this my Lady swept out
of the room, fluttering with her own audacity, and leaving
Rebecca and Sir Pitt not a little astonished at it.

As for Becky, she was not hurt; nay, she was pleased.
"It was the diamond-clasp you gave me," she said to Sir
Pitt, reaching him out her hand; and before she left him
(for which event you may be sure my Lady Jane was
looking out from her dressing-room window in the upper
story) the Baronet had promised to go and seek out his
brother, and endeavour to bring about a reconciliation.

Rawdon found some of the young fellows of the regiment
seated in the mess-room at breakfast, and was
induced without much difficulty to partake of that meal,
and of the devilled legs of fowls and soda-water with
which these young gentlemen fortified themselves. Then
they had a conversation befitting the day and their time
of life: about the next pigeon-match at Battersea, with
relative bets upon Ross and Osbaldiston; about
Mademoiselle Ariane of the French Opera, and who had left
her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr; and
about the fight between the Butcher and the Pet, and the
probabilities that it was a cross. Young Tandyman, a
hero of seventeen, laboriously endeavouring to get up a
pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in the
most scientific manner about the battle and the condition
of the men. It was he who had driven the Butcher on to
the ground in his drag and passed the whole of the
previous night with him. Had there not been foul play
he must have won it. All the old files of the Ring were in
it; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't
pay. It was but a year since the young Cornet, now so
knowing a hand in Cribb's parlour, had a still lingering
liking for toffy, and used to be birched at Eton.

So they went on talking about dancers, fights, drinking,
demireps, until Macmurdo came down and joined the
boys and the conversation. He did not appear to think
that any especial reverence was due to their boyhood;
the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice
as any the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his
own grey hairs nor their smooth faces detain him. Old
Mac was famous for his good stories. He was not exactly
a lady's man; that is, men asked him to dine rather at
the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.
There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his,
but he was quite contented with it, such as it was, and
led it in perfect good nature, simplicity, and modesty of
demeanour.

By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast,
most of the others had concluded their meal. Young Lord
Varinas was smoking an immense Meerschaum pipe,
while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: that
violent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier
between his legs, was tossing for shillings with all his
might (that fellow was always at some game or other)
against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and Rawdon walked
off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any hint
of the business which was occupying their minds. Both,
on the other hand, had joined pretty gaily in the
conversation, for why should they interrupt it? Feasting,
drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on alongside of all sorts
of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds were
pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed
down St. James's Street and entered into their Club.

The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand
gaping and grinning out of the great front window of the
Club, had not arrived at their posts as yet--the
newspaper-room was almost empty. One man was present
whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed
a little score for whist, and whom, in consequence, he
did not care to meet; a third was reading the Royalist
(a periodical famous for its scandal and its attachment
to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and
looking up at Crawley with some interest, said, "Crawley,
I congratulate you."

"What do you mean?" said the Colonel.

"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too," said Mr.
Smith.

"What?" Rawdon cried, turning very red. He thought
that the affair with Lord Steyne was already in the
public prints. Smith looked up wondering and smiling
at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as he took
up the paper and, trembling, began to read.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with .whom
Rawdon had the outstanding whist account) had been
talking about the Colonel just before he came in.

"It is come just in the nick of time," said Smith. "I
suppose Crawley had not a shilling in the world."

"It's a wind that blows everybody good," Mr. Brown
said. "He can't go away without paying me a pony he
owes me."

"What's the salary?" asked Smith.

"Two or three thousand," answered the other. "But
the climate's so infernal, they don't enjoy it long.
Liverseege died after eighteen months of it, and the
man before went off in six weeks, I hear."

"Some people say his brother is a very clever man. I
always found him a d-- bore," Smith ejaculated. "He
must have good interest, though. He must have got the
Colonel the place."

"He!" said Brown. with a sneer. "Pooh. It was Lord
Steyne got it.

"How do you mean?"

"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,"
answered the other enigmatically, and went to read his
papers.

Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following
astonishing paragraph:

GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S.
Yellowjack, Commander Jaunders, has brought letters and
papers from Coventry Island. H. E. Sir Thomas
Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at
Swampton. His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing
colony. We hear that the Governorship has been offered to
Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a distinguished Waterloo
officer. We need not only men of acknowledged
bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend
the affairs of our colonies, and we have no doubt
that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office to
fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at
Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which
he is about to occupy."

"Coventry Island! Where was it? Who had appointed
him to the government? You must take me out as your
secretary, old boy," Captain Macmurdo said laughing;
and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and
perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought
in to the Colonel a card on which the name of Mr.
Wenham was engraved, who begged to see Colonel
Crawley.

The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet
the gentleman, rightly conjecturing that he was an
emissary of Lord Steyne. "How d'ye do, Crawley? I am
glad to see you," said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,
and grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.

"You come, I suppose, from-- "

"Exactly," said Mr. Wenham.

"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life
Guards Green."

"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure," Mr.
Wenham said and tendered another smile and shake of
the hand to the second, as he had done to the principal.
Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin glove,
and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his
tight cravat. He was, perhaps, discontented at being put
in communication with a pekin, and thought that Lord
Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at the very least.

"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean,"
Crawley said, "I had better retire and leave you together."

"Of course," said Macmurdo.

"By no means, my dear Colonel," Mr. Wenham said;
"the interview which I had the honour of requesting was
with you personally, though the company of Captain
Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing. In fact,
Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none
but the most agreeable results, very different from those
which my friend Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate."

"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo. Be hanged to these
civilians, he thought to himself, they are always for
arranging and speechifying. Mr. Wenham took a chair
which was not offered to him--took a paper from his
pocket, and resumed--

"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the
papers this morning, Colonel? Government has secured
a most valuable servant, and you, if you accept office, as
I presume you will, an excellent appointment. Three
thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-
house, all your own way in the Colony, and a certain
promotion. I congratulate you with all my heart. I
presume you know, gentlemen, to whom my friend is
indebted for this piece of patronage?"

"Hanged if I know," the Captain said; his principal
turned very red.

"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the
world, as he is one of the greatest--to my excellent
friend, the Marquis of Steyne."

"I'll see him d-- before I take his place," growled
out Rawdon.

"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr.
Wenham calmly resumed; "and now, in the name of
common sense and justice, tell me why?"

"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.

"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick
on the ground.

"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most
agreeable smile; "still, look at the matter as a man of
the world--as an honest man--and see if you have not
been in the wrong. You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in
Curzon Street with Mrs. Crawley. Is the circumstance
strange or novel? Has he not been a hundred times
before in the same position? Upon my honour and word
as a gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on
his waistcoat with a parliamentary air--"I declare I think
that your suspicions are monstrous and utterly
unfounded, and that they injure an honourable gentleman
who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."

"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's
mistaken?" said Mr. Macmurdo.

"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my
wife, Mrs. Wenham," Mr. Wenham said with great
energy. "I believe that, misled by an infernal jealousy,
my friend here strikes a blow against not only an infirm
and old man of high station, his constant friend and
benefactor, but against his wife, his own dearest honour,
his son's future reputation, and his own prospects in
life."

"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham
continued with great solemnity; "I was sent for this
morning by my Lord Steyne, and found him in a pitiable state,
as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any man of
age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with
a man of your strength. I say to your face; it was a
cruel advantage you took of that strength, Colonel
Crawley. It was not only the body of my noble and
excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding. A man whom he had loaded with benefits and
regarded with affection had subjected him to the foulest
indignity. What was this very appointment, which appears
in the journals of to-day, but a proof of his kindness to
you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found him
in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you
are to revenge the outrage committed upon him, by
blood. You know he has given his proofs, I presume,
Colonel Crawley?"

"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel. "Nobody
ever said he hadn't."

"His first order to me was to write a letter of
challenge, and to carry it to Colonel Crawley. One or
other of us," he said, "must not survive the outrage
of last night."

Crawley nodded. "You're coming to the point,
Wenham," he said.

"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. Good God!
sir," I said, "how I regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself
had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's invitation to sup with
her!"

"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo
said.

"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop
--no, this is another paper--I thought I had h, but it's
of no consequence, and I pledge you my word to the
fact. If we had come--and it was only one of Mrs.
Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers
under them a good deal, especially in the spring--if we
had come, and you had returned home, there would have
been no quarrel, no insult, no suspicion--and so it is
positively because my poor wife has a headache that you
are to bring death down upon two men of honour and
plunge two of the most excellent and ancient families
in the kingdom into disgrace and sorrow."

Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air
of a man profoundly puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a
kind of rage that his prey was escaping him. He did not
believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?

Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory,
which in his place in Parliament he had so often
practised--"I sat for an hour or more by Lord Steyne's
bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him
that the circumstances were after all suspicious--they
were suspicious. I acknowledge it--any man in your
position might have been taken in--I said that a man
furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel
between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties
concerned--that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had
no right in these days, when the most atrocious
revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a
public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common
people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I
implored him not to send the challenge."

"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said
Rawdon, grinding his teeth. "I believe it a d-- lie, and
that you're in it, Mr. Wenham. If the challenge don't
come from him, by Jove it shall come from me."

Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage
interruption of the Colonel and looked towards the door.

But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That
gentleman rose up with an oath and rebuked Rawdon
for his language. "You put the affair into my hands, and
you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as you do.
You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort
of language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an
apology. And as for a challenge to Lord Steyne, you
may get somebody else to carry it, I won't. If my lord,
after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy let him.
And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my
belief is, there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's
innocent, as innocent as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at
any rate that you would be a d--fool not to take the
place and hold your tongue."

"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense,"
Mr. Wenham cried out, immensely relieved--"I forget
any words that Colonel Crawley has used in the
irritation of the moment."

"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.

"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said
good-naturedly. "Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and
quite right, too."

"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried,
"ought to be buried in the most profound oblivion. A
word concerning it should never pass these doors. I
speak in the interest of my friend, as well as of Colonel
Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."

"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very
much," said Captain Macmurdo; "and I don't see why
our side should. The affair ain't a very pretty one, any
way you take it, and the less said about it the better.
It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."

Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain
Macmurdo following him to the door, shut it upon
himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving Rawdon chafing
within. When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an
expression of anything but respect on his round jolly face.

"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.

"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the
other with a smile. "Upon my honour and conscience
now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup after the opera."

"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-
aches. I say, I've got a thousand-pound note here, which
I will give you if you will give me a receipt, please; and
I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord Steyne.
My man shan't fight him. But we had rather not take
his money."

"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the
other said with the utmost innocence of manner; and was
bowed down the Club steps by Captain Macmurdo, just
as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a slight
acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the
Captain, going back with the Baronet to the room where the
latter's brother was, told Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he
had made the affair all right between Lord Steyne and
the Colonel.

Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence,
and congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful
issue of the affair, making appropriate moral remarks
upon the evils of duelling and the unsatisfactory nature
of that sort of settlement of disputes.

And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence
to effect a reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife.
He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made,
pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted
his own firm belief in her innocence.

But Rawdon would not hear of it. "She has kep money
concealed from me these ten years," he said "She swore,
last night only, she had none from Steyne. She knew it
was all up, directly I found it. If she's not guilty, Pitt,
she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her again--
never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke
the words, and he looked quite broken and sad.

"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.

Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of
taking the place which had been procured for him by so
odious a patron, and was also for removing the boy
from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had placed
him. He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these
benefits by the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo,
but mainly by the latter, pointing out to him what a
fury Steyne would be in to think that his enemy's
fortune was made through his means.

When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his
accident, the Colonial Secretary bowed up to him and
congratulated himself and the Service upon having made
so excellent an appointment. These congratulations were
received with a degree of gratitude which may be
imagined on the part of Lord Steyne.

The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel
Crawley was buried in the profoundest oblivion, as
Wenham said; that is, by the seconds and the principals.
But before that evening was over it was talked of at fifty
dinner-tables in Vanity Fair. Little Cackleby himself
went to seven evening parties and told the story with
comments and emendations at each place. How Mrs.
Washington White revelled in it! The Bishopess of Ealing
was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House
that very day. Little Southdown was sorry; so you may
be sure was his sister Lady Jane, very sorry. Lady
Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at the Cape of
Good Hope. It was town-talk for at least three days,
and was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions
of Mr. Wagg, acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.

The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in
Curzon Street, and the late fair tenant of that poor little
mansion was in the meanwhile--where? Who cared! Who
asked after a day or two? Was she guilty or not? We all
know how charitable the world is, and how the verdict
of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people
said she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne,
whilst others averred that his Lordship quitted that city
and fled to Palermo on hearing of Becky's arrival; some
said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become a dame
d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was
at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at
Cheltenham.

Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may
be sure that she was a woman who could make a little
money go a great way, as the saying is. He would have
paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no
money on the strength of his salary. He remitted,
however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little
boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars
and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot
pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette,
in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose
wife was not asked to Government House, declared that
his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero
was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used
to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.

His mother never made any movement to see the child.
He went home to his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he
soon knew every bird's nest about Queen's Crawley, and
rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to
Hampshire.

CHAPTER LVI

Georgy is Made a Gentleman

Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his
grandfather's mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his
father's room in the house and heir apparent of all the
splendours there. The good looks, gallant bearing, and
gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's
heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever
he had been of the elder George.

The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than
had been awarded his father. Osborne's commerce had
prospered greatly of late years. His wealth and
importance in the City had very much increased. He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George
to a good private school; and a commission in the army
for his son had been a source of no small pride to
him; for little George and his future prospects the old
man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying
regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a
collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps. The
old man thought he would die contented if he could see
his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would
have none but a tip-top college man to educate him--
none of your quacks and pretenders--no, no. A few years
before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were
a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get
their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set
of supercilious dogs that pretended to look down upon
British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half
a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected,
and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy,
the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.

When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask
the lad what he had been reading during the day, and
was greatly interested at the report the boy gave of his
own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not
increase the respect which the child had for his senior.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed
the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and
he began accordingly to command him and to look down
upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better
gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could
make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak,
and tender woman, who had no pride about anything
but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but
needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices
and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she
never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless,
loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia
be other than a real gentlewoman!

Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding
nature; and the contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with
the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom
he next came in contact made him lord over the latter
too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have
been better brought up to think well of himself.

Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and
I do believe every hour of the day, and during most
hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young
gentleman had a number of pleasures and consolations
administered to him, which made him for his part bear
the separation from Amelia very easily. Little boys who
cry when they are going to school cry because they
are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a
few who weep from sheer affection. When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a
piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma
and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be
too confident of your own fine feelings.

Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort
and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather
thought fit to provide. The coachman was instructed to
purchase for him the handsomest pony which could be
bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having
performed satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the
leaping-bar, he was conducted through the New Road to
Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode
in state with Martin the coachman behind him. Old
Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now,
where he left his affairs to his junior partners, would
often ride out with Miss O. in the same fashionable direction.
As little Georgy came cantering up with his dandified
air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge
the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would
laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as
he nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom
saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master
George. Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock
(whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with
bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick
Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at
the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side
and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.

Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master
George wore straps and the most beautiful little boots
like a man. He had gilt spurs, and a gold-headed whip,
and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest little
kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish.
His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him;
but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were
replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put
aside--I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the
coachman's boy. Amelia tried to think she was pleased
at the change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to
see the boy looking so beautiful.

She had had a little black profile of him done for a
shilling, and this was hung up by the side of another
portrait over her bed. One day the boy came on his
accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the
windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness
and a look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case
out of his great-coat--it was a natty white great-coat,
with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red
morocco case, which he gave her.

"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said.
"I thought you'd like it."

Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of
delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a
hundred times. It was a miniature-of himself, very prettily
done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought). His grandfather had wished
to have a picture of him by an artist whose works,
exhibited in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had
caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who had
plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter
how much a copy of the little portrait would cost, saying
that he would pay for it out of his own money and
that he wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased
painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne
himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his
satisfaction and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns
as he paid for the miniature.

But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to
Amelia's ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection
charmed her so that she thought no child in the world
was like hers for goodness. For long weeks after, the
thought of his love made her happy. She slept better
with the picture under her pillow, and how many many
times did she kiss it and weep and pray over it! A
small kindness from those she loved made that timid
heart grateful. Since her parting with George she had had
no such joy and consolation.

At his new home Master George ruled like a lord;
at dinner he invited the ladies to drink wine with the
utmost coolness, and took off his champagne in a way
which charmed his old grandfather. "Look at him," the
old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap?
Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and
razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."

The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr.
Osborne's friends so much as they pleased the old
gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear
Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his stories.
Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy
half tipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular
gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at
the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old
Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped"
her third boy (a young gentleman a year older than
Georgy, and by chance home for the holidays from Dr.
Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square. George's
grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy
above his own size and age whom he whopped in a
similar manner. It is difficult to say what good the old man
saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that
quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn. English youth have
been so educated time out of mind, and we have
hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of
injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy,
George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further,
and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young
baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance,
the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket
with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend
who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram
Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the
house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable
this time, and the little baker whopped Georgy, who
came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt
frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in
combat with a giant, and frightened his poor mother at
Brompton with long, and by no means authentic,
accounts of the battle.

This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square,
was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both
had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for
hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the
Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often
conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master
George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in
great comfort in the pit.

In the company of this gentleman they visited all the
principal theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of
all the actors from Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and
performed, indeed, many of the plays to the Todd family
and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the footman, who
was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after
the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap.
We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in
his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude
for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.

A famous tailor from the West End of the town--
Mr. Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn
bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was
good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so
doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose
to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers,
fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a
school of little dandies. Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats
for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown,
for all the world like a little man. He dressed for dinner
every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his
grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to
his special service, attended him at his toilette,
answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.

Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in
the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a
grown-up man. "How he DU dam and swear," the
servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those who
remembered the Captain his father, declared Master
George was his Pa, every inch of him. He made the house
lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and
his good-nature.

George's education was confided to a neighbouring
scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young
noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate,
and the learned professions: whose system did not
embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the
pupils would find the elegances of refined society and
the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this
way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street,
Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.

By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the
domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in
having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high
figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters. There was a large West Indian, whom
nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly
head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there
was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two
sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's
Service: these four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's
genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a
day boy; he arrived in the morning under the
guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine,
would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by
the groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported
in the school to be prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used
to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him
that he was destined for a high station; that it became
him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;
that obedience in the child was the best preparation for
command in the man; and that he therefore begged George
would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health
of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.

With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the
young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a
something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a
theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and
what he called a select library of all the works of the
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted
upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history
there, so that audiences would gather round him as he
spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a
prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the
very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary
gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to
employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to
use a little stingy one.

Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed
on my return home from taking the indulgence of an
evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend
Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true
archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated
grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were
illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right
in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society
of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"

Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used
to mimic Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and
dexterity, would reply that Mr. V. was quite correct
in his surmise.

"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking
of Mr. Osborne's hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason,
I will lay any wager, to complain of their repast. I
myself have been more than once so favoured. (By the way,
Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and
have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.)
I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been
found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant
hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great and
noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George
Earl of Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you
that the board of the British merchant was to the full
as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and
noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the
late arrival of Master Osborne."

To this great man George's education was for some
time entrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases,
but thought him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow
made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She
liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni,
which took place once a month (as you were informed on
pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where
the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak
tea and scientific conversation. Poor little Amelia never
missed one of these entertainments and thought them
delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her.
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the
delightful evening she had passed, when, the company
having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his
attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this
valuable master of a hundred sciences, to judge from
the weekly reports which the lad took home to his
grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were
printed in a table, and the pupil's progress in each was
marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was
pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien,
and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything
at the end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-
headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the
Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected
young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd
before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books,
with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin
inscription from the professor to his young friends.

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of
the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced
Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his
establishment.

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd
(who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his
cards and became a man of decided fashion), while Miss
Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font,
and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of
tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some
such memento of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove
the Todds out in her carriage now and then; when they
were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and
waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to
Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to
Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty
hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of
mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips
and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the
Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations
incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at
the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and
Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss
Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that
apartment--and ready to fire off duets and sing until
the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young
lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets
and sonatas in the Street, before they appeared in public
in the Square!

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy
was to domineer over everybody with whom he came in
contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were
all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It must
be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly
to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy
liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a
natural aptitude for it.

In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Osborne was afraid of Georgy. The boy's
dashing manners, and offhand rattle about books and
learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled in
Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the
young boy the mastery. The old man would start at
some hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by
the little lad, and fancy that George's father was again
before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to
make up for harshness to the elder George. People were
surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He growled and
swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster,
broken down by more than forty years of dulness and
coarse usage. It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her.
And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the
jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was
still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession
of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no
further notice of his aunt.

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old
schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior,
whom he could thrash. It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to
leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a
darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the
Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might
happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the
fond mother thought.

The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was
likewise subject to the little tyrant. He could not help
respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with
a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side, was in the
constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper,
the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other
such names of brutal contumely. How was little George
to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief. He came down to
visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was
very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation
and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia. What do men know
about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had
we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless
slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and
kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience,
watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement
of a good word; all this, how many of them have
to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces
as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.

From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed,
which she had never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne
herself was never absent except when she ran to see
George. The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;
she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother
once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty
and infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement
did not affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to
support the other calamity under which she was suffering,
and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the
ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness
quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always
ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous
voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as
her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and
closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon
her.

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the
consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who
was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and
stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his honour,
his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away
from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support
with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history: it would be too
dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it
d'avance.

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled
in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up
to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed
to the window with a vague notion that their father
might have arrived from Bombay. The great hulking
scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against
the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place
sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.

"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a
thundering knock came to the door.

Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for
laying his book down.

The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat
to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two
gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor
had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that
young gentleman, owing to a difference about the
introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face
resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he
said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to
convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."

Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two
strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his
usual haughty manner. One was fat, with mustachios,
and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.

"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman
with a start. "Can you guess who we are, George?"

The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he
was moved, and his eyes brightened. "I don't know the
other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major
Dobbin."

Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled
with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the
other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.

"Your mother has talked to you about me--has
she?" he said.

"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and
hundreds of times."

CHAPTER LVII

Eothen

It was one of the many causes for personal pride
with which old Osborne chose to recreate himself
that Sedley, his ancient rival, enemy, and benefactor,
was in his last days so utterly defeated and humiliated
as to be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the
hands of the man who had most injured and insulted
him. The successful man of the world cursed the old
pauper and relieved him from time to time. As he
furnished George with money for his mother, he gave
the boy to understand by hints, delivered in his brutal,
coarse way, that George's maternal grandfather was
but a wretched old bankrupt and dependant, and that
John Sedley might thank the man to whom he already
owed ever so much money for the aid which his generosity
now chose to administer. George carried the pompous
supplies to his mother and the shattered old widower whom
it was now the main business of her life to tend and
comfort. The little fellow patronized the feeble and
disappointed old man.

It may have shown a want of "proper pride" in
Amelia that she chose to accept these money benefits at
the hands of her father's enemy. But proper pride and
this poor lady had never had much acquaintance together.
A disposition naturally simple and demanding protection;
a long course of poverty and humility, of daily privations,
and hard words, of kind offices and no returns, had been
her lot ever since womanhood almost, or since her
luckless marriage with George Osborne. You who see your
betters bearing up under this shame every day, meekly
suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied,
poor, and rather despised for their poverty, do you ever
step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of
these poor wearied beggars? The very thought of them is
odious and low. "There must be classes--there must be
rich and poor," Dives says, smacking his claret (it is
well if he even sends the broken meat out to Lazarus
sitting under the window). Very true; but think how
mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that lottery
of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen
and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for
comforters.

So I must own that, without much repining, on the
contrary with something akin to gratitude, Amelia took the
crumbs that her father-in-law let drop now and then,
and with them fed her own parent. Directly she understood
it to be her duty, it was this young woman's nature
(ladies, she is but thirty still, and we choose to call her
a young woman even at that age) it was, I say, her
nature to sacrifice herself and to fling all that she had at
the feet of the beloved object. During what long thankless
nights had she worked out her fingers for little Georgy
whilst at home with her; what buffets, scorns, privations,
poverties had she endured for father and mother! And
in the midst of all these solitary resignations and unseen
sacrifices, she did not respect herself any more than the
world respected her, but I believe thought in her heart
that she was a poor-spirited, despicable little creature,
whose luck in life was only too good for her merits. O
you poor women! O you poor secret martyrs and victims,
whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in
your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the
block daily at the drawing-room table; every man who
watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where
the torture is administered to you, must pity you--and
--and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing,
years ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at
Bicetre, near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under
the bondage of his imprisonment and his personal
infirmity, to whom one of our party gave a halfpenny worth
of snuff in a cornet or "screw" of paper. The kindness
was too much for the poor epileptic creature. He cried
in an anguish of delight and gratitude: if anybody gave
you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we
could not be so affected. And so, if you properly tyrannize
over a woman, you will find a h'p'orth of kindness act
upon her and bring tears into her eyes, as though you
were an angel benefiting her.

Some such boons as these were the best which Fortune
allotted to poor little Amelia. Her life, begun not
unprosperously, had come down to this--to a mean prison
and a long, ignoble bondage. Little George visited her
captivity sometimes and consoled it with feeble gleams
of encouragement. Russell Square was the boundary of
her prison: she might walk thither occasionally, but was
always back to sleep in her cell at night; to perform
cheerless duties; to watch by thankless sick-beds; to
suffer the harassment and tyranny of querulous
disappointed old age. How many thousands of people are
there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure
this long slavery?--who are hospital nurses without
wages--sisters of Charity, if you like, without the
romance and the sentiment of sacrifice--who strive, fast,
watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly and
unknown.

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the
destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast
down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish,
the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother,
in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less
lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you
to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation,
whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be
an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely
a satire.

They buried Amelia's mother in the churchyard at
Brompton, upon just such a rainy, dark day as Amelia
recollected when first she had been there to marry George.
Her little boy sat by her side in pompous new sables.
She remembered the old pew-woman and clerk. Her
thoughts were away in other times as the parson read.
But that she held George's hand in her own, perhaps she
would have liked to change places with.... Then, as
usual, she felt ashamed of her selfish thoughts and prayed
inwardly to be strengthened to do her duty.

So she determined with all her might and strength to
try and make her old father happy. She slaved, toiled,
patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read
out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old Sedley, walked
him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton
Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and
affectionate hypocrisy, or sat musing by his side and
communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences,
as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on
the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his
sorrows. What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the
widow were! The children running up and down the
slopes and broad paths in the gardens reminded her of
George, who was taken from her; the first George was
taken from her; her selfish, guilty love, in both instances,
had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to
think it was right that she should be so punished. She
was such a miserable wicked sinner. She was quite
alone in the world.

I know that the account of this kind of solitary
imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some
cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it--a tender gaoler,
for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress,
or a mouse to come out and play about Latude's beard
and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle,
dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historian
has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative
of Amelia's captivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this
period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken
to; in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of
life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards,
mending stockings, for her old father's benefit. So, never
mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however
old, scolding, and bankrupt--may we have in our last days
a kind soft shoulder on which to lean and a gentle hand
to soothe our gouty old pillows.

Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his
wife's death, and Amelia had her consolation in doing her
duty by the old man.

But we are not going to leave these two people long in
such a low and ungenteel station of life. Better days, as
far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both.
Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the
stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in
company with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was
another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time
when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to
his relatives there.

Major Dobbin having easily succeeded in getting leave
from his good-natured commandant to proceed to
Madras, and thence probably to Europe, on urgent private
affairs, never ceased travelling night and day until he
reached his journey's end, and had directed his march
with such celerity that he arrived at Madras in a high
fever. His servants who accompanied him brought him
to the house of the friend with whom he had resolved to
stay until his departure for Europe in a state of delirium;
and it was thought for many, many days that he would
never travel farther than the burying-ground of the church
of St. George's, where the troops should fire a salvo over
his grave, and where many a gallant officer lies far away
from his home.

Here, as the poor fellow lay tossing in his fever, the
people who watched him might have heard him raving
about Amelia. The idea that he should never see her again
depressed him in his lucid hours. He thought his last day
was come, and he made his solemn preparations for
departure, setting his affairs in this world in order and
leaving the little property of which he was possessed to
those whom he most desired to benefit. The friend in
whose house he was located witnessed his testament. He
desired to be buried with a little brown hair-chain which
he wore round his neck and which, if the truth must be
known, he had got from Amelia's maid at Brussels, when
the young widow's hair was cut off, during the fever
which prostrated her after the death of George Osborne
on the plateau at Mount St. John.

He recovered, rallied, relapsed again, having undergone
such a process of blood-letting and calomel as
showed the strength of his original constitution. He was
almost a skeleton when they put him on board the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, from Calcutta,
touching at Madras, and so weak and prostrate that his
friend who had tended him through his illness prophesied
that the honest Major would never survive the voyage,
and that he would pass some morning, shrouded in
flag and hammock, over the ship's side, and carrying
down to the sea with him the relic that he wore at his
heart. But whether it was the sea air, or the hope which
sprung up in him afresh, from the day that the ship
spread her canvas and stood out of the roads towards
home, our friend began to amend, and he was quite
well (though as gaunt as a greyhound) before they
reached the Cape. "Kirk will be disappointed of his
majority this time," he said with a smile; "he will
expect to find himself gazetted by the time the regiment
reaches home." For it must be premised that while the
Major was lying ill at Madras, having made such
prodigious haste to go thither, the gallant --th, which had
passed many years abroad, which after its return from
the West Indies had been baulked of its stay at home by
the Waterloo campaign, and had been ordered from
Flanders to India, had received orders home; and the Major
might have accompanied his comrades, had he chosen to
wait for their arrival at Madras.

Perhaps he was not inclined to put himself in his
exhausted state again under the guardianship of Glorvina.
"I think Miss O'Dowd would have done for me," he said
laughingly to a fellow-passenger, "if we had had her on
board, and when she had sunk me, she would have fallen
upon you, depend upon it, and carried you in as a prize
to Southampton, Jos, my boy."

For indeed it was no other than our stout friend
who was also a passenger on board the Ramchunder. He
had passed ten years in Bengal. Constant dinners, tiffins,
pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour of cutcherry,
and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was
forced to take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley.
A voyage to Europe was pronounced necessary for him--
and having served his full time in India and had fine
appointments which had enabled him to lay by a considerable
sum of money, he was free to come home and stay
with a good pension, or to return and resume that rank
in the service to which his seniority and his vast talents
entitled him.

He was rather thinner than when we last saw him,
but had gained in majesty and solemnity of demeanour.
He had resumed the mustachios to which his services at
Waterloo entitled him, and swaggered about on deck in a
magnificent velvet cap with a gold band and a profuse
ornamentation of pins and jewellery about his person.
He took breakfast in his cabin and dressed as solemnly to
appear on the quarter-deck as if he were going to turn out
for Bond Street, or the Course at Calcutta. He brought a
native servant with him, who was his valet and pipe-
bearer and who wore the Sedley crest in silver on his
turban. That oriental menial had a wretched life under
the tyranny of Jos Sedley. Jos was as vain of his person
as a woman, and took as long a time at his toilette as
any fading beauty. The youngsters among the
passengers, Young Chaffers of the 150th, and poor little
Ricketts, coming home after his third fever, used to draw
out Sedley at the cuddy-table and make him tell
prodigious stories about himself and his exploits against tigers
and Napoleon. He was great when he visited the
Emperor's tomb at Longwood, when to these gentlemen and
the young officers of the ship, Major Dobbin not being by,
he described the whole battle of Waterloo and all but
announced that Napoleon never would have gone to Saint
Helena at all but for him, Jos Sedley.

After leaving St. Helena he became very generous,
disposing of a great quantity of ship stores, claret,
preserved meats, and great casks packed with soda-water,
brought out for his private delectation. There were no
ladies on board; the Major gave the pas of precedency
to the civilian, so that he was the first dignitary at
table, and treated by Captain Bragg and the officers of
the Ramchunder with the respect which his rank
warranted. He disappeared rather in a panic during a two-
days' gale, in which he had the portholes of his cabin
battened down, and remained in his cot reading the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common, left on board the
Ramchunder by the Right Honourable the Lady Emily
Hornblower, wife of the Rev. Silas Hornblower, when on
their passage out to the Cape, where the Reverend gentleman
was a missionary; but, for common reading, he had
brought a stock of novels and plays which he lent to the
rest of the ship, and rendered himself agreeable to all by
his kindness and condescension.

Many and many a night as the ship was cutting through
the roaring dark sea, the moon and stars shining
overhead and the bell singing out the watch, Mr. Sedley and
the Major would sit on the quarter-deck of the vessel
talking about home, as the Major smoked his cheroot and
the civilian puffed at the hookah which his servant
prepared for him.

In these conversations it was wonderful with what
perseverance and ingenuity Major Dobbin would manage
to bring the talk round to the subject of Amelia and her
little boy. Jos, a little testy about his father's misfortunes
and unceremonious applications to him, was soothed
down by the Major, who pointed out the elder's ill
fortunes and old age. He would not perhaps like to live with
the old couple, whose ways and hours might not agree
with those of a younger man, accustomed to different
society (Jos bowed at this compliment); but, the Major
pointed out, how advantageous it would be for Jos Sedley
to have a house of his own in London, and not a
mere bachelor's establishment as before; how his sister
Amelia would be the very person to preside over it; how
elegant, how gentle she was, and of what refined good
manners. He recounted stories of the success which Mrs.
George Osborne had had in former days at Brussels, and
in London, where she was much admired by people of
very great fashion; and he then hinted how becoming it
would be for Jos to send Georgy to a good school and
make a man of him, for his mother and her parents
would be sure to spoil him. In a word, this artful Major
made the civilian promise to take charge of Amelia and
her unprotected child. He did not know as yet what
events had happened in the little Sedley family, and how
death had removed the mother, and riches had carried
off George from Amelia. But the fact is that every day
and always, this love-smitten and middle-aged gentleman
was thinking about Mrs. Osborne, and his whole heart
was bent upon doing her good. He coaxed, wheedled,
cajoled, and complimented Jos Sedley with a perseverance
and cordiality of which he was not aware himself,
very likely; but some men who have unmarried sisters
or daughters even, may remember how uncommonly
agreeable gentlemen are to the male relations when they
are courting the females; and perhaps this rogue of a
Dobbin was urged by a similar hypocrisy.

The truth is, when Major Dobbin came on board the
Ramchumder, very sick, and for the three days she lay
in the Madras Roads, he did not begin to rally, nor did
even the appearance and recognition of his old acquaintance,
Mr. Sedley, on board much cheer him, until after a
conversation which they had one day, as the Major was
laid languidly on the deck. He said then he thought he
was doomed; he had left a little something to his godson
in his will, and he trusted Mrs. Osborne would remember
him kindly and be happy in the marriage she was
about to make. "Married? not the least," Jos answered;
"he had heard from her: she made no mention of the
marriage, and by the way, it was curious, she wrote to
say that Major Dobbin was going to be married, and
hoped that HE would be happy." What were the dates of
Sedley's letters from Europe? The civilian fetched them.
They were two months later than the Major's; and the
ship's surgeon congratulated himself upon the treatment
adopted by him towards his new patient, who had been
consigned to shipboard by the Madras practitioner with
very small hopes indeed; for, from that day, the very
day that he changed the draught, Major Dobbin began
to mend. And thus it was that deserving officer, Captain
Kirk, was disappointed of his majority.

After they passed St. Helena, Major Dobbin's gaiety
and strength was such as to astonish all his fellow
passengers. He larked with the midshipmen, played single-
stick with the mates, ran up the shrouds like a boy, sang
a comic song one night to the amusement of the whole
party assembled over their grog after supper, and
rendered himself so gay, lively, and amiable that even
Captain Bragg, who thought there was nothing in his
passenger, and considered he was a poor-spirited feller at
first, was constrained to own that the Major was a
reserved but well-informed and meritorious officer. "He
ain't got distangy manners, dammy," Bragg observed to
his first mate; "he wouldn't do at Government House,
Roper, where his Lordship and Lady William was as kind
to me, and shook hands with me before the whole
company, and asking me at dinner to take beer with him,
before the Commander-in-Chief himself; he ain't got
manners, but there's something about him--" And thus
Captain Bragg showed that he possessed discrimination
as a man, as well as ability as a commander.

But a calm taking place when the Ramchunder was
within ten days' sail of England, Dobbin became so
impatient and ill-humoured as to surprise those comrades
who had before admired his vivacity and good temper.
He did not recover until the breeze sprang up again, and
was in a highly excited state when the pilot came on
board. Good God, how his heart beat as the two friendly
spires of Southampton came in sight.

CHAPTER LVIII

Our Friend the Major

Our Major had rendered himself so popular on board
the Ramchunder that when he and Mr. Sedley descended
into the welcome shore-boat which was to take them
from the ship, the whole crew, men and officers, the
great Captain Bragg himself leading off, gave three cheers
for Major Dobbin, who blushed very much and ducked
his head in token of thanks. Jos, who very likely thought
the cheers were for himself, took off his gold-laced cap
and waved it majestically to his friends, and they were
pulled to shore and landed with great dignity at the pier,
whence they proceeded to the Royal George Hotel.

Although the sight of that magnificent round of beef,
and the silver tankard suggestive of real British home-
brewed ale and porter, which perennially greet the eyes
of the traveller returning from foreign parts who enters
the coffee-room of the George, are so invigorating and
delightful that a man entering such a comfortable snug
homely English inn might well like to stop some days
there, yet Dobbin began to talk about a post-chaise
instantly, and was no sooner at Southampton than he
wished to be on the road to London. Jos, however, would
not hear of moving that evening. Why was he to pass a
night in a post-chaise instead of a great large undulating
downy feather-bed which was there ready to replace
the horrid little narrow crib in which the portly Bengal
gentleman had been confined during the voyage? He
could not think of moving till his baggage was cleared,
or of travelling until he could do so with his chillum. So
the Major was forced to wait over that night, and
dispatched a letter to his family announcing his arrival,
entreating from Jos a promise to write to his own
friends. Jos promised, but didn't keep his promise. The
Captain, the surgeon, and one or two passengers came
and dined with our two gentlemen at the inn, Jos exerting
himself in a sumptuous way in ordering the dinner
and promising to go to town the next day with the Major.
The landlord said it did his eyes good to see Mr. Sedley
take off his first pint of porter. If I had time and dared
to enter into digressions, I would write a chapter about
that first pint of porter drunk upon English ground. Ah,
how good it is! It is worth-while to leave home for a
year, just to enjoy that one draught.

Major Dobbin made his appearance the next morning
very neatly shaved and dressed, according to his wont.
Indeed, it was so early in the morning that nobody was
up in the house except that wonderful Boots of an inn
who never seems to want sleep; and the Major could
hear the snores of the various inmates of the house roaring
through the corridors as he creaked about in those
dim passages. Then the sleepless Boots went shirking
round from door to door, gathering up at each the
Bluchers, Wellingtons, Oxonians, which stood outside. Then
Jos's native servant arose and began to get ready his
master's ponderous dressing apparatus and prepare his
hookah; then the maidservants got up, and meeting the
dark man in the passages, shrieked, and mistook him for
the devil. He and Dobbin stumbled over their pails in
the passages as they were scouring the decks of the
Royal George. When the first unshorn waiter appeared
and unbarred the door of the inn, the Major thought that
the time for departure was arrived, and ordered a post-
chaise to be fetched instantly, that they might set off.

He then directed his steps to Mr. Sedley's room and
opened the curtains of the great large family bed wherein
Mr. Jos was snoring. "Come, up! Sedley," the Major
said, "it's time to be off; the chaise will be at the door in
half an hour."

Jos growled from under the counterpane to know
what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the
blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might
be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the
morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which
we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to
understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up
at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged,
that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was
most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out
of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major
was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his
interrupted slumbers.

The chaise came up presently, and the Major would
wait no longer.

If he had been an English nobleman travelling on a
pleasure tour, or a newspaper courier bearing dispatches
(government messages are generally carried much more
quietly), he could not have travelled more quickly. The
post-boys wondered at the fees he flung amongst them.
How happy and green the country looked as the chaise
whirled rapidly from mile-stone to mile-stone, through
neat country towns where landlords came out to
welcome him with smiles and bows; by pretty roadside inns,
where the signs hung on the elms, and horses and
waggoners were drinking under the chequered shadow of the
trees; by old halls and parks; rustic hamlets clustered
round ancient grey churches--and through the charming
friendly English landscape. Is there any in the world
like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind--
it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it.
Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this from
Southampton to London, and without noting much beyond the
milestones along the road. You see he was so eager to
see his parents at Camberwell.

He grudged the time lost between Piccadilly and his
old haunt at the Slaughters', whither he drove faithfully.
Long years had passed since he saw it last, since he and
George, as young men, had enjoyed many a feast, and
held many a revel there. He had now passed into the
stage of old-fellow-hood. His hair was grizzled, and many
a passion and feeling of his youth had grown grey in that
interval. There, however, stood the old waiter at the
door, in the same greasy black suit, with the same
double chin and flaccid face, with the same huge bunch of
seals at his fob, rattling his money in his pockets as
before, and receiving the Major as if he had gone away
only a week ago. "Put the Major's things in twenty-three,
that's his room," John said, exhibiting not the least
surprise. "Roast fowl for your dinner, I suppose. You ain't
got married? They said you was married--the Scotch
surgeon of yours was here. No, it was Captain Humby of
the thirty-third, as was quartered with the --th in Injee.
Like any warm water? ~What do you come in a chay for--
ain't the coach good enough?" And with this, the faithful
waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who
used the house, and with whom ten years were but as
yesterday, led the way up to Dobbin's old room, where
stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby carpet, a
thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture
covered with faded chintz, just as the Major recollected
them in his youth.

He remembered George pacing up and down the room,
and biting his nails, and swearing that the Governor must
come round, and that if he didn't, he didn't care a straw,
on the day before he was married. He could fancy him
walking in, banging the door of Dobbin's room, and his
own hard by--

"You ain't got young," John said, calmly surveying his
friend of former days.

Dobbin laughed. "Ten years and a fever don't make a
man young, John," he said. "It is you that are always
young--no, you are always old."

"What became of Captain Osborne's widow?" John
said. "Fine young fellow that. Lord, how he used to
spend his money. He never came back after that day he
was marched from here. He owes me three pound at this
minute. Look here, I have it in my book. 'April 10,
1815, Captain Osborne: '3pounds.' I wonder whether his
father would pay me," and so saying, John of the Slaughters'
pulled out the very morocco pocket-book in which
he had noted his loan to the Captain, upon a greasy
faded page still extant, with many other scrawled
memoranda regarding the bygone frequenters of the house.

Having inducted his customer into the room, John
retired with perfect calmness; and Major Dobbin, not
without a blush and a grin at his own absurdity, chose out of
his kit the very smartest and most becoming civil
costume he possessed, and laughed at his own tanned face
and grey hair, as he surveyed them in the dreary little
toilet-glass on the dressing-table.

"I'm glad old John didn't forget me," he thought.
"She'll know me, too, I hope." And he sallied out of the
inn, bending his steps once more in the direction of
Brompton.

Every minute incident of his last meeting with Amelia
was present to the constant man's mind as he walked
towards her house. The arch and the Achilles statue were
up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a hundred
changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely
noted. He began to tremble as he walked up the lane
from Brompton, that well-remembered lane leading to
the street where she lived. Was she going to be married
or not? If he were to meet her with the little boy--Good
God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him
with a child of five years old--was that she? He began
to shake at the mere possibility. When he came up to
the row of houses, at last, where she lived, and to the
gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty
bless her, whatever has happened," he thought to
himself. "Psha! she may be gone from here," he said
and went in through the gate.

The window of the parlour which she used to occupy
was open, and there were no inmates in the room. The
Major thought he recognized the piano, though, with the
picture over it, as it used to be in former days, and his
perturbations were renewed. Mr. Clapp's brass plate was
still on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin
performed a summons.

A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and
purple cheeks, came to answer the knock and looked
hard at the Major as he leant back against the little
porch.

He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out
the words--"Does Mrs. Osborne live here?"

She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and
then turning white too--said, "Lord bless me--it's
Major Dobbin." She held out both her hands shaking--
"Don't you remember me?" she said. "I used to call you
Major Sugarplums." On which, and I believe it was for
the first time that he ever so conducted himself in his
life, the Major took the girl in his arms and kissed her.
She began to laugh and cry hysterically, and calling out
"Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from
the casement of the ornamental kitchen, and were
astonished to find their daughter in the little passage in
the embrace of a great tall man in a blue frock-coat and
white duck trousers.

"I'm an old friend," he said--not without blushing
though. "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those
good cakes you used to make for tea? Don't you recollect
me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and just come
back from India." A great shaking of hands ensued--
Mrs. Clapp was greatly affected and delighted; she called
upon heaven to interpose a vast many times in that
passage.

The landlord and landlady of the house led the worthy
Major into the Sedleys' room (whereof he remembered
every single article of furniture, from the old brass
ornamented piano, once a natty little instrument, Stothard
maker, to the screens and the alabaster miniature tombstone,
in the midst of which ticked Mr. Sedley's gold
watch), and there, as he sat down in the lodger's vacant
arm-chair, the father, the mother, and the daughter,
with a thousand ejaculatory breaks in the narrative,
informed Major Dobbin of what we know already, but of
particulars in Amelia's history of which he was not aware
--namely of Mrs. Sedley's death, of George's reconcilement
with his grandfather Osborne, of the way in which
the widow took on at leaving him, and of other particulars
of her life. Twice or thrice he was going to ask
about the marriage question, but his heart failed him.
He did not care to lay it bare to these people. Finally,
he was informed that Mrs. O. was gone to walk with her
pa in Kensington Gardens, whither she always went with
the old gentleman (who was very weak and peevish now,
and led her a sad life, though she behaved to him like an
angel, to be sure), of a fine afternoon, after dinner.

"I'm very much pressed for time," the Major said,
"and have business to-night of importance. I should like
to see Mrs. Osborne tho'. Suppose Miss Polly would
come with me and show me the way?"

Miss Polly was charmed and astonished at this
proposal. She knew the way. She would show Major
Dobbin. She had often been with Mr. Sedley when Mrs. O.
was gone--was gone Russell Square way--and knew the
bench where he liked to sit. She bounced away to her
apartment and appeared presently in her best bonnet
and her mamma's yellow shawl and large pebble brooch,
of which she assumed the loan in order to make herself
a worthy companion for the Major.

That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin
gloves, gave the young lady his arm, and they walked
away very gaily. He was glad to have a friend at hand
for the scene which he dreaded somehow. He asked a
thousand more questions from his companion about
Amelia: his kind heart grieved to think that she should
have had to part with her son. How did she bear it? Did
she see him often? Was Mr. Sedley pretty comfortable
now in a worldly point of view? Polly answered all these
questions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her
power.

And in the midst of their walk an incident occurred
which, though very simple in its nature, was productive
of the greatest delight to Major Dobbin. A pale young
man with feeble whiskers and a stiff white neckcloth came
walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, that
is, on each arm. One was a tall and commanding middle-
aged female, with features and a complexion similar to
those of the clergyman of the Church of England by
whose side she marched, and the other a stunted little
woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet
and white ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich
gold watch in the midst of her person. The gentleman,
pinioned as he was by these two ladies, carried further a
parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms were entirely
engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in
acknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary
Clapp greeted him.

He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation,
which the two ladies returned with a patronizing air, and
at the same time looking severely at the individual in the
blue coat and bamboo cane who accompanied Miss Polly.

"Who's that?" asked the Major, amused by the group,
and after he had made way for the three to pass up the
lane. Mary looked at him rather roguishly.

"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch
from Major Dobbin), and his sister Miss B. Lord bless us,
how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school; and the
other lady, the little one with a cast in her eye and the
handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits that was;
her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold
Tea Pot in Kensington Gravel Pits. They were married last
month, and are just come back from Margate. She's five
thousand pound to her fortune; but her and Miss B., who
made the match, have quarrelled already."

If the Major had twitched before, he started now, and
slapped the bamboo on the ground with an emphasis
which made Miss Clapp cry, "Law," and laugh too. He
stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking
after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told
their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement
of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was
swimming with felicity. After this rencontre he began to
walk double quick towards the place of his destination
--and yet they were too soon (for he was in a great
tremor at the idea of a meeting for which he had been
longing any time these ten years)--through the Brompton
lanes, and entering at the little old portal in Kensington
Garden wall.

"There they are," said Miss Polly, and she felt him
again start back on her arm. She was a confidante at once
of the whole business. She knew the story as well as if
she had read it in one of her favourite novel-books--
Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs.

"Suppose you were to run on and tell her," the Major
said. Polly ran forward, her yellow shawl streaming in the
breeze.

Old Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief
placed over his knees, prattling away, according to his
wont, with some old story about old times to which
Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile many
a time before. She could of late think of her own affairs,
and smile or make other marks of recognition of her
father's stories, scarcely hearing a word of the old man's
tales. As Mary came bouncing along, and Amelia caught
sight of her, she started up from her bench. Her first
thought was that something had happened to Georgy,
but the sight of the messenger's eager and happy face
dissipated that fear in the timorous mother's bosom.

"News! News!" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin.
"He's come! He's come!"

"Who is come?" said Emmy, still thinking of her son.

"Look there," answered Miss Clapp, turning round and
pointing; in which direction Amelia looking, saw
Dobbin's lean figure and long shadow stalking across the
grass. Amelia started in her turn, blushed up, and, of
course, began to cry. At all this simple little creature's
fetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play.
He looked at her--oh, how fondly--as she came
running towards him, her hands before her, ready to give
them to him. She wasn't changed. She was a little pale,
a little stouter in figure. Her eyes were the same, the
kind trustful eyes. There were scarce three lines of silver
in her soft brown hair. She gave him both her hands as
she looked up flushing and smiling through her tears into
his honest homely face. He took the two little hands
between his two and held them there. He was speechless
for a moment. Why did he not take her in his arms and
swear that he would never leave her? She must have
yielded: she could not but have obeyed him.

"I--I've another arrival to announce," he said after a
pause.

"Mrs. Dobbin?" Amelia said, making a movement
back--why didn't he speak?

"No," he said, letting her hands go: "Who has told
you those lies? I mean, your brother Jos came in the
same ship with me, and is come home to make you all
happy."

"Papa, Papa!" Emmy cried out, "here are news! My
brother is in England. He is come to take care of you.
Here is Major Dobbin."

Mr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering
up his thoughts. Then he stepped forward and made an
old-fashioned bow to the Major, whom he called Mr.
Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, Sir William, was
quite well. He proposed to call upon Sir William, who had
done him the honour of a visit a short time ago. Sir
William had not called upon the old gentleman for eight
years--it was that visit he was thinking of returning.

"He is very much shaken," Emmy whispered as Dobbin
went up and cordially shook hands with the old man.

Although he had such particular business in London
that evening, the Major consented to forego it upon Mr.
Sedley's invitation to him to come home and partake of
tea. Amelia put her arm under that of her young friend
with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their
return homewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share.
The old man walked very slowly and told a number of
ancient histories about himself and his poor Bessy, his
former prosperity, and his bankruptcy. His thoughts, as is
usual with failing old men, were quite in former times.
The present, with the exception of the one catastrophe
which he felt, he knew little about. The Major was glad to
let him talk on. His eyes were fixed upon the figure in
front of him--the dear little figure always present to his
imagination and in his prayers, and visiting his dreams
wakeful or slumbering.

Amelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that
evening, performing her duties as hostess of the little
entertainment with the utmost grace and propriety, as
Dobbin thought. His eyes followed her about as they sat
in the twilight. How many a time had he longed for that
moment and thought of her far away under hot winds
and in weary marches, gentle and happy, kindly ministering
to the wants of old age, and decorating poverty with
sweet submission--as he saw her now. I do not say that
his taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great
intellects to be content with a bread-and-butter paradise,
such as sufficed our simple old friend; but his desires
were of this sort, whether for good or bad, and, with
Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many
cups of tea as Doctor Johnson.

Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged
it and looked exceedingly roguish as she administered to
him cup after cup. It is true she did not know that the
Major had had no dinner and that the cloth was laid for
him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to mark
that the table was retained, in that very box in which
the Major and George had sat many a time carousing,
when she was a child just come home from Miss
Pinkerton's school.

The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was
Georgy's miniature, for which she ran upstairs on her
arrival at home. It was not half handsome enough of
course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to think of
bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she
did not talk much about Georgy. To hear about Mr.
Osborne and Russell Square was not agreeable to the
old man, who very likely was unconscious that he had
been living for some months past mainly on the bounty
of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was
made to the other.

Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than
all, that had happened on board the Ramchunder, and
exaggerated Jos's benevolent dispositions towards his
father and resolution to make him comfortable in his
old days. The truth is that during the voyage the Major
had impressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-
passenger and extorted promises from him that he would
take charge of his sister and her child. He soothed Jos's
irritation with regard to the bills which the old gentleman
had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his
own sufferings on the same score and of the famous
consignment of wine with which the old man had favoured
him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was by no means an ill-
natured person when well-pleased and moderately
flattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his
relatives in Europe.

And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major
stretched the truth so far as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it
was mainly a desire to see his parent which brought Jos
once more to Europe.

At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in
his chair, and then it was Amelia's opportunity to
commence her conversation, which she did with great
eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy. She did not talk
at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for
indeed, this worthy woman, though she was half-killed
by the separation from the child, yet thought it was very
wicked in her to repine at losing him; but everything
concerning him, his virtues, talents, and prospects, she
poured out. She described his angelic beauty; narrated
a hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of
mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had
stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how
splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a
groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he
had, and what a prodigiously well-read and delightful
person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's
master. "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said. "He has the
most delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself,
and have read so much, and are so clever and
accomplished--don't shake your head and say no--HE
always used to say you were--you will be charmed with
Mr. Veal's parties. The last Tuesday in every month. He
says there is no place in the bar or the senate that
Georgy may not aspire to. Look here," and she went to
the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of Georgy's
composition. This great effort of genius, which is still
in the possession of George's mother, is as follows:

On Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the
human character, Selfishness is the most odious and
contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most
monstrous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both
in States and Families. As a selfish man will impoverish
his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish
king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them
into war.

Example: The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by
the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the
Greeks--muri Achaiois alge etheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2).
The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to
perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in
the Atlantic Ocean.

We see by these examples that we are not to consult
our own interest and ambition, but that we are to
consider the interests of others as well as our own.

George S. Osborne
Athene House, 24 April, 1827

"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek
too, at his age," the delighted mother said. "Oh, William,"
she added, holding out her hand to the Major, "what a
treasure Heaven has given me in that boy! He is the
comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that's
gone!"

"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to
him?" William thought. "Ought I to be jealous of my
friend in the grave, or hurt that such a heart as Amelia's
can love only once and for ever? Oh, George, George,
how little you knew the prize you had, though." This
sentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he
was holding Amelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was
veiling her eyes.

"Dear friend," she said, pressing the hand which held
hers, "how good, how kind you always have been to me!
See! Papa is stirring. You will go and see Georgy
tomorrow, won't you?"

"Not to-morrow," said poor old Dobbin. "I have
business." He did not like to own that he had not as yet
been to his parents' and his dear sister Anne--a
remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated
person will blame the Major. And presently he took his
leave, leaving his address behind him for Jos, against the
latter's arrival. And so the first day was over, and he
had seen her.

When he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl
was of course cold, in which condition he ate it for
supper. And knowing what early hours his family kept, and
that it would be needless to disturb their slumbers at so
late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treated
himself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that
evening, where let us hope he enjoyed himself.

CHAPTER LIX

The Old Piano

The Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of
agitation and excitement. His daughter could not induce
him to settle down to his customary occupations or
amusements that night. He passed the evening fumbling
amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers with
trembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against
Jos's arrival. He had them in the greatest order--his
tapes and his files, his receipts, and his letters with
lawyers and correspondents; the documents relative to
the wine project (which failed from a most unaccountable
accident, after commencing with the most splendid
prospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital
prevented from becoming the most successful scheme
ever put before the public), the patent saw-mills and
sawdust consolidation project, &c., &c. All night, until a
very late hour, he passed in the preparation of these
documents, trembling about from one room to another,
with a quivering candle and shaky hands. Here's the wine
papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my
letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies from Major
Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same. "He
shall find no irregularity about ME, Emmy," the old
gentleman said.

Emmy smiled. "I don't think Jos will care about seeing
those papers, Papa," she said.

"You don't know anything about business, my dear,"
answered the sire, shaking his head with an important
air. And it must be confessed that on this point Emmy
was very ignorant, and that is a pity some people are so
knowing. All these twopenny documents arranged on a
side table, old Sedley covered them carefully over with
a clean bandanna handkerchief (one out of Major
Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid and landlady of the
house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb those
papers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph
Sedley the next morning, "Mr. Joseph Sedley of the
Honourable East India Company's Bengal Civil Service."

Amelia found him up very early the next morning,
more eager, more hectic, and more shaky than ever. "I
didn't sleep much, Emmy, my dear," he said. "I was
thinking of my poor Bessy. I wish she was alive, to ride
in Jos's carriage once again. She kept her own and
became it very well." And his eyes filled with tears, which
trickled down his furrowed old face. Amelia wiped them
away, and smilingly kissed him, and tied the old man's
neckcloth in a smart bow, and put his brooch into his
best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit of mourning,
he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the
arrival of his son.

However, when the postman made his appearance, the
little party were put out of suspense by the receipt of a
letter from Jos to his sister, who announced that he felt
a little fatigued after his voyage, and should not be able
to move on that day, but that he would leave Southampton
early the next morning and be with his father and
mother at evening. Amelia, as she read out the letter to
her father, paused over the latter word; her brother, it
was clear, did not know what had happened in the family.
Nor could he, for the fact is that, though the Major
rightly suspected that his travelling companion never
would be got into motion in so short a space as twenty-
four hours, and would find some excuse for delaying, yet
Dobbin had not written to Jos to inform him of the
calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, being
occupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour.

There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High
Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows
of which hang gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk
and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the
last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen
with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with
the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in
riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley
House. Jos, although provided with some of the most
splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he
could not go to town until he was supplied with one or
two of these garments, and selected a crimson satin,
embroidered with gold butterflies, and a black and red
velvet tartan with white stripes and a rolling collar, with
which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,
consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink
enamel jumping over it, he thought he might make his
entry into London with some dignity. For Jos's former
shyness and blundering blushing timidity had given way
to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his
worth. "I don't care about owning it," Waterloo Sedley
would say to his friends, "I am a dressy man"; and
though rather uneasy if the ladies looked at him at the
Government House balls, and though he blushed and
turned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly
from a dread lest they should make love to him that he
avoided them, being averse to marriage altogether. But
there was no such swell in Calcutta as Waterloo Sedley,
I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out,
gave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate
in the whole place.

To make these waistcoats for a man of his size and
dignity took at least a day, part of which he employed in
hiring a servant to wait upon him and his native and in
instructing the agent who cleared his baggage, his boxes,
his books, which he never read, his chests of mangoes,
chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to
people whom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his
Persicos apparatus.

At length, he drove leisurely to London on the third
day and in the new waistcoat, the native, with chattering
teeth, shuddering in a shawl on the box by the side of the
new European servant; Jos puffing his pipe at intervals
within and looking so majestic that the little boys cried
Hooray, and many people thought he must be a
Governor-General. HE, I promise, did not decline the
obsequious invitation of the landlords to alight and refresh
himself in the neat country towns. Having partaken of a
copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, at
Southampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to
think a glass of sherry necessary. At Alton he stepped
out of the carriage at his servant's request and imbibed
some of the ale for which the place is famous. At Farnham
he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and to partake
of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and
French beans, with a bottle of claret. He was cold over
Bagshot Heath, where the native chattered more and
more, and Jos Sahib took some brandy-and-water; in
fact, when he drove into town he was as full of wine,
beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the
steward's cabin of a steam-packet. It was evening when
his carriage thundered up to the little door in Brompton,
whither the affectionate fellow drove first, and before
hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr. Dobbin
at the Slaughters'.

All the faces in the street were in the windows; the
little maidservant flew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames
Clapp looked out from the casement of the ornamented
kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in the passage
among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour
inside, shaking all over. Jos descended from the post-
chaise and down the creaking swaying steps in awful
state, supported by the new valet from Southampton and
the shuddering native, whose brown face was now livid
with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard. He
created an immense sensation in the passage presently,
where Mrs. and Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen
at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking upon the
hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous
way, and showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth.

For, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the
meeting between Jos and the old father and the poor little
gentle sister inside. The old man was very much affected;
so, of course, was his daughter; nor was Jos without
feeling. In that long absence of ten years, the most selfish
will think about home and early ties. Distance sanctifies
both. Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates
their charm and sweetness. Jos was unaffectedly glad to
see and shake the hand of his father, between whom
and himself there had been a coolness--glad to see his
little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling,
and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and
misfortune had made in the shattered old man. Emmy had
come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered
to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to
their father. There was no need of this caution, for the
elder Sedley himself began immediately to speak of the
event, and prattled about it, and wept over it plenteously.
It shocked the Indian not a little and made him think of
himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed to do.

The result of the interview must have been very
satisfactory, for when Jos had reascended his post-chaise
and had driven away to his hotel, Emmy embraced her father
tenderly, appealing to him with an air of triumph, and
asking the old man whether she did not always say that
her brother had a good heart?

Indeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position
in which he found his relations, and in the expansiveness
and overflowing of heart occasioned by the first meeting,
declared that they should never suffer want or
discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time
at any rate, during which his house and everything he
had should be theirs: and that Amelia would look very
pretty at the head of his table--until she would accept
one of her own.

She shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse
to the waterworks. She knew what he meant. She and
her young confidante, Miss Mary, had talked over the
matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit,
beyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain
from talking of the discovery which she had made, and
describing the start and tremor of joy by which Major
Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passed with his
bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a
rival to fear. "Didn't you see how he shook all over
when you asked if he was married and he said, 'Who told
you those lies?' Oh, M'am," Polly said, "he never kept his
eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinking of
you."

But Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung
the portraits of her husband and son, told her young
protegee never, never, to speak on that subject again;
that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friend
and her own and George's most kind and affectionate
guardian; that she loved him as a brother--but that a
woman who had been married to such an angel as that,
and she pointed to the wall, could never think of any
other union. Poor Polly sighed: she thought what she
should do if young Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who
always looked at her so at church, and who, by those
mere aggressive glances had put her timorous little heart
into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender at
once,--what she should do if he were to die? She knew
he was consumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was
so uncommon thin in the waist.

Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest
Major's passion, rebuffed him in any way, or felt
displeased with him. Such an attachment from so true and
loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry.
Desdemona was not angry with Cassio, though there is
very little doubt she saw the Lieutenant's partiality for
her (and I for my part believe that many more things
took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorish
officer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind
to Caliban, and we may be pretty sure for the same
reason. Not that she would encourage him in the least--
the poor uncouth monster--of course not. No more
would Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the
Major. She would give him that friendly regard, which
so much excellence and fidelity merited; she would treat
him with perfect cordiality and frankness until he made
his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for her
to speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be
realized.

She slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after
the conversation with Miss Polly, and was more than
ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos's delaying. "I am glad
he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd," she thought.
"Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such
an accomplished man as Major William." Who was there
amongst her little circle who would make him a good
wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too old and ill-tempered;
Miss Osborne? too old too. Little Polly was too young.
Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major
before she went to sleep.

The same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the
Slaughters' Coffee-house from his friend at Southampton,
begging dear Dob to excuse Jos for being in a rage when
awakened the day before (he had a confounded headache,
and was just in his first sleep), and entreating Dob to
engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley
and his servants. The Major had become necessary to
Jos during the voyage. He was attached to him, and hung
upon him. The other passengers were away to London.
Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on the
coach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the
reins from Botley; the Doctor was off to his family at
Portsea; Bragg gone to town to his co-partners; and the
first mate busy in the unloading of the Ramchunder. Mr.
Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got the landlord
of the George to take a glass of wine with him that
day, at the very hour at which Major Dobbin was
seated at the table of his father, Sir William, where his
sister found out (for it was impossible for the Major to
tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne.

Jos was so comfortably situated in St. Martin's Lane, he
could enjoy his hookah there with such perfect ease, and
could swagger down to the theatres, when minded, so
agreeably, that, perhaps, he would have remained
altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major,
been at his elbow. That gentleman would not let the
Bengalee rest until he had executed his promise of having
a home for Amelia and his father. Jos was a soft fellow
in anybody's hands, Dobbin most active in anybody's
concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easy
victim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist
and was ready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish
whatever his friend thought fit. Loll Jewab, of whom the
boys about St. Martin's Lane used to make cruel fun
whenever he showed his dusky countenance in the street, was
sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East
Indiaman, in which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having
previously taught Jos's European the art of preparing
curries, pilaus, and pipes. It was a matter of great delight
and occupation to Jos to superintend the building of a
smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in the
neighbouring Long Acre: and a pair of handsome horses
were jobbed, with which Jos drove about in state in the
park, or to call upon his Indian friends. Amelia was not
seldom by his side on these excursions, when also Major
Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage.
At other times old Sedley and his daughter took
advantage of it, and Miss Clapp, who frequently
accompanied her friend, had great pleasure in being recognized
as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famous yellow
shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face
might commonly be seen over the window-blinds as she
passed.

Shortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a
dismal scene, indeed, took place at that humble cottage at
which the Sedleys had passed the last ten years of their
life. Jos's carriage (the temporary one, not the chariot
under construction) arrived one day and carried off old
Sedley and his daughter--to return no more. The tears
that were shed by the landlady and the landlady's
daughter at that event were as genuine tears of sorrow as any
that have been outpoured in the course of this history.
In their long acquaintanceship and intimacy they could
not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia
She had been all sweetness and kindness, always
thankful, always gentle, even when Mrs. Clapp lost her own
temper and pressed for the rent. When the kind creature
was going away for good and all, the landlady reproached
herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression to
her--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the
window, a paper notifying that the little rooms so long
occupied were to let! They never would have such lodgers
again, that was quite clear. After-life proved the truth of
this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revenged
herself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most
savage contributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of
mutton of her locataires. Most of them scolded and
grumbled; some of them did not pay; none of them stayed.
The landlady might well regret those old, old friends, who
had left her.

As for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure
was such as I shall not attempt to depict. From childhood
upwards she had been with her daily and had attached
herself so passionately to that dear good lady that when
the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour,
she fainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed
scarcely less affected than the good-natured girl. Amelia
loved her like a daughter. During eleven years the girl had
been her constant friend and associate. The separation was
a very painful one indeed to her. But it was of course
arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at the
grand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and
where Mary was sure she would never be so happy as
she had been in their humble cot, as Miss Clapp called it,
in the language of the novels which she loved.

Let us hope she was wrong in her judgement. Poor
Emmy's days of happiness had been very few in that
humble cot. A gloomy Fate had oppressed her there. She
never liked to come back to the house after she had left
it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over her
when ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had
treated her with a coarse familiarity scarcely less odious.
Her servility and fulsome compliments when Emmy was
in prosperity were not more to that lady's liking. She
cast about notes of admiration all over the new house,
extolling every article of furniture or ornament; she
fingered Mrs. Osborne's dresses and calculated their price.
Nothing could be too good for that sweet lady, she
vowed and protested. But in the vulgar sycophant who
now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the
coarse tyrant who had made her miserable many a time,
to whom she had been forced to put up petitions for
time, when the rent was overdue; who cried out at her
extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailing mother
or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon
her.

Nobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been
part of our poor little woman's lot in life. She kept them
secret from her father, whose improvidence was the cause
of much of her misery. She had to bear all the blame of
his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentle and
humble as to be made by nature for a victim.

I hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard
usage. And, as in all griefs there is said to be some
consolation, I may mention that poor Mary, when left at her
friend's departure in a hysterical condition, was placed
under the medical treatment of the young fellow from
the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short
period. Emmy, when she went away from Brompton,
endowed Mary with every article of furniture that the house
contained, only taking away her pictures (the two
pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old piano
which had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age,
but which she loved for reasons of her own. She was a
child when first she played on it, and her parents gave it
her. It had been given to her again since, as the reader
may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin
and the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.

Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he
was superintending the arrangements of Jos's new house
--which the Major insisted should be very handsome and
comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing
the trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that
village, and with them the old piano. Amelia would have it
up in her sitting-room, a neat little apartment on the
second floor, adjoining her father's chamber, and where
the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.

When the men appeared then bearing this old music-
box, and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed
in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated. "I'm
glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental
manner. "I was afraid you didn't care about it."

"I value it more than anything I have in the world,"
said Amelia.

"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major. The fact was,
as he had bought it himself, though he never said
anything about it, it never entered into his head to suppose
that Emmy should think anybody else was the purchaser,
and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the
gift came from him. "Do you, Amelia?" he said; and
the question, the great question of all, was trembling
on his lips, when Emmy replied--

"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"

"I did not know," said poor old Dob, and his
countenance fell.

Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor
take immediate heed of the very dismal expression which
honest Dobbin's countenance assumed, but she thought
of it afterwards. And then it struck her, with inexpressible
pain and mortification too, that it was William who
was the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had
fancied. It was not George's gift; the only one which she
had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing
she had cherished beyond all others--her dearest relic
and prize. She had spoken to it about George; played
his favourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours,
touching, to the best of her simple art, melancholy
harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence.
It was not George's relic. It was valueless now. The next
time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was
shockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that
she couldn't play.

Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself
for her pettishness and ingratitude and determined to
make a reparation to honest William for the slight she
had not expressed to him, but had felt for his piano.
A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the
drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort
after dinner, Amelia said with rather a faltering voice
to Major Dobbin--

"I have to beg your pardon for something."

"About what?" said he.

"About--about that little square piano. I never thanked
you for it when you gave it me, many, many years ago,
before I was married. I thought somebody else had given
it. Thank you, William." She held out her hand, but the
poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her
eyes, of course they were at their work.

But William could hold no more. "Amelia, Amelia,"
he said, "I did buy it for you. I loved you then as I
do now. I must tell you. I think I loved you from the
first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to
your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was
engaged to. You were but a girl, in white, with large
ringlets; you came down singing--do you remember?--
and we went to Vauxhall. Since then I have thought of
but one woman in the world, and that was you. I
think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve
years that I haven't thought of you. I came to tell you
this before I went to India, but you did not care, and
I hadn't the heart to speak. You did not care whether
I stayed or went."

"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.

"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately.
"I have nothing to make a woman to be otherwise. I
know what you are feeling now. You are hurt in your
heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it came
from me and not from George. I forgot, or I should
never have spoken of it so. It is for me to ask your
pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking
that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded
with you."

"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some
spirit. "George is my husband, here and in heaven. How
could I love any other but him? I am his now as when
you first saw me, dear William. It was he who told me
how good and generous you were, and who taught me
to love you as a brother. Have you not been everything
to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend
and protector? Had you come a few months sooner
perhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful
parting. Oh, it nearly killed me, William--but you didn't
come, though I wished and prayed for you to come,
and they took him too away from me. Isn't he a noble
boy, William? Be his friend still and mine"--and here her
voice broke, and she hid her face on his shoulder.

The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to
him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. "I will
not change, dear Amelia," he said. "I ask for no more
than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise.
Only let me stay near you and see you often."

"Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at
liberty to look and long--as the poor boy at school
who has no money may sigh after the contents of the
tart-woman's tray.

CHAPTER LX

Returns to the Genteel World

Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are
glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has
been creeping hitherto and introduce her into a polite
circle--not so grand and refined as that in which our
other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still
having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's
friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new
house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of
which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great
Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony
Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was
a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with
asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)--who does not
know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian
aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the
Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand
enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where
none can live but retired Members of Council, and
partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a
hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into
comparative penury to a country place and four thousand
a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a
second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the
carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate
planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr.
Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta
House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor
Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the
earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place,
who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles have
been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about
to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted,
I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle
and Fake two years before it failed for a million and
plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.

Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five
years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs
of the house. Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton
and put into a merchant's house. Florence Scape, Fanny
Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and
will be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and
bought their carpets and sideboards and admired
himself in the mirrors which had reflected their kind
handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all honourably paid,
left their cards, and were eager to supply the new
household. The large men in white waistcoats who waited at
Scape's dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and
milkmen in their private capacity, left their addresses and
ingratiated themselves with the butler. Mr. Chummy, the
chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three families,
tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose
duty it was to go out covered with buttons and with
stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs.
Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.

It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's
valet also, and never was more drunk than a butler in a
small family should be who has a proper regard for his
master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on
Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose
kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was
at first terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait
upon herself, who did not in the least know how to use
one, and who always spoke to domestics with the most
reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in
the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who
kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house
and never mixed in any of the gay doings which took
place there.

Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady
Dobbin and daughters were delighted at her change of
fortune, and waited upon her. Miss Osborne from Russell
Square came in her grand chariot with the flaming
hammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos was
reported to be immensely rich. Old Osborne had no
objection that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as
well as his own. "Damn it, we will make a man of the
feller," he said; "and I'll see him in Parliament before I
die. You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll
never set eyes on her": and Miss Osborne came. Emmy,
you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be
brought nearer to George. That young fellow was
allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit
his mother. He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie
Street and bullied the servants and his relations there, just
as he did in Russell Square.

He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however,
and more modest in his demeanour when that gentleman
was present. He was a clever lad and afraid of the
Major. George could not help admiring his friend's
simplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly
imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met
no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and
he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman. He hung
fondly by his godfather's side, and it was his delight to
walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk. William told
George about his father, about India and Waterloo, about
everything but himself. When George was more than
usually pert and conceited, the Major made jokes at him,
which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. One day, taking
him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit
because it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes,
left him there, and went down himself to the pit. He
had not been seated there very long before he felt an arm
thrust under his and a dandy little hand in a kid glove
squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his
ways and come down from the upper region. A tender
laugh of benevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and
eyes as he looked at the repentant little prodigal. He
loved the boy, as he did everything that belonged to
Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of this
instance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more
kindly on Dobbin than they ever had done. She blushed,
he thought, after looking at him so.

Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his
mother. "I like him, Mamma, because he knows such lots
of things; and he ain't like old Veal, who is always
bragging and using such long words, don't you know? The
chaps call him 'Longtail' at school. I gave him the name;
ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and
French and that; and when we go out together he tells me
stories about my Papa, and never about himself; though I
heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that he was
one of the bravest officers in the army, and had
distinguished himself ever so much. Grandpapa was quite
surprised, and said, 'THAT feller! Why, I didn't think he could
say Bo to a goose'--but l know he could, couldn't he,
Mamma?"

Emmy laughed: she thought it was very likely the
Major could do thus much.

If there was a sincere liking between George and the
Major, it must be confessed that between the boy and his
uncle no great love existed. George had got a way of
blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands in his
waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't
say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was
impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which
wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that
favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden
peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his
uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and
Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was
induced to desist. And the worthy civilian being haunted
by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass,
and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be
extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and
dignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was
announced that the young gentleman was expected in
Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos
commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.
Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On
those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to
come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major
Dobbin pretty generally formed one. He was the ami de
la maison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's
friend, Jos's counsel and adviser. "He might almost as
well be at Madras for anything WE see of him," Miss
Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell. Ah! Miss Ann, did
it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major
wanted to marry?

Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such
as became a person of his eminence. His very first point,
of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club,
where he spent his mornings in the company of his
brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought
home men to dine.

Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen
and their ladies. From these she heard how soon Smith
would be in Council; how many lacs Jones had brought
home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta
House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the
least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the
Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey
of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all
hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at
the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen
sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev: Felix
Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in
the service; how Hornby was wild because his wife
would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed
Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place
at the grand dinners all round. They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of
mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a
short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.

Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers'
wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies
gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies
discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty?
Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small
clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should
our Indian friends not have their own conversation?--
only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it
sometimes is to sit by and listen.

Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving
about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer
(wife of Major-General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal
Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff, Bombay ditto;
Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage
came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony
boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and
Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the
carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing;
or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old
man round the Regent's Park. The lady's maid and the
chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of
Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the
other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess,
she would even have done that duty too. She was voted, in
Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young person--
not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.

The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and
simple refined demeanour. The gallant young Indian dandies
at home on furlough--immense dandies these--chained
and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of
the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless
admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the
park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying
her a morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard
himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all
the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered
by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's
officer that's always hanging about the house--a long,
thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,
that took the shine out of a man in the talking line.

Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity
he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young
buck as that fascinating Bengal Captain. But Dobbin was
of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts
about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should
pay her respect, and that others should admire her. Ever
since her womanhood almost, had she not been
persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how
kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits
gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good
judgement--that is, if a man may be said to have good
judgement who is under the influence of Love's delusion.

After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he
did as a loyal subject of his Sovereign (showing himself
in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came
to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who had
always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George
IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the
State that he was for having Amelia to go to a
Drawing-room, too. He somehow had worked himself up
to believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the
public welfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy
unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally round
him at St. James's.

Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear the family diamonds,
Jos?" she said.

"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the
Major. "I should like to see any that were too good for
you."

CHAPTER LXI

In Which Two Lights are Put Out

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family
indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in
most houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house
from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may
have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from
the second story to the third (where the nursery and
servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for
another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men
can give you a notion. They rest the coffins upon that
arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the
black ark.

That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing;
by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her
pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master
stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club;
down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and
spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared
for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides,
preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and
disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is
fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as
he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced
that the charming patient may go downstairs;
up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering
tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots
which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or
down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the
christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor--what a memento of Life,
Death, and Vanity it is--that arch and stair--if you
choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up
and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too
for the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse
will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice--and
then she will fling open the windows for a little and let in
the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the
house and live in the back rooms--then they will send
for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy
and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting,
and the posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt
cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or
perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your
name will be among the "Members Deceased" in the
lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be
mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly
made--the cook will send or come up to ask about
dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at your picture
over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed
from the place of honour, to make way for the portrait of
the son who reigns.

Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately
deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I
believe. The death of a child occasions a passion of grief
and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will
never inspire. The death of an infant which scarce knew
you, which a week's absence from you would have caused
to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of
your closest friend, or your first-born son--a man grown
like yourself, with children of his own. We may be harsh
and stern with Judah and Simeon--our love and pity gush
out for Benjamin, the little one. And if you are old, as
some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich, or
old and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself
--"These people are very good round about me, but
they won't grieve too much when I am gone. I am very
rich, and they want my inheritance--or very poor, and
they are tired of supporting me."

The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was
only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to
cast off his black and appear in the splendid waistcoats
which he loved, when it became evident to those about
Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the
old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark land
whither she had preceded him. "The state of my father's
health," Jos Sedley solemnly remarked at the Club,
"prevents me from giving any LARGE parties this season: but if
you will come in quietly at half-past six, Chutney, my
boy, and fake a homely dinner with one or two of the
old set--I shall be always glad to see you." So Jos and
his acquaintances dined and drank their claret among
themselves in silence, whilst the sands of life were
running out in the old man's glass upstairs. The velvet-footed
butler brought them their wine, and they composed
themselves to a rubber after dinner, at which Major Dobbin
would sometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs.
Osborne would occasionally descend, when her patient
above was settled for the night, and had commenced one
of those lightly troubled slumbers which visit the pillow
of old age.

The old man clung to his daughter during this
sickness. He would take his broths and medicines from
scarcely any other hand. To tend him became almost the
sole business of her life. Her bed was placed close by the
door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive
at the slightest noise or disturbance from the couch of
the querulous invalid. Though, to do him justice, he lay
awake many an hour, silent and without stirring,
unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse.

He loved his daughter with more fondness now,
perhaps, than ever he had done since the days of her
childhood. In the discharge of gentle offices and kind filial
duties, this simple creature shone most especially. "She
walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam," Mr.
Dobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from her
father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face
as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless. When
women are brooding over their children, or busied in a
sick-room, who has not seen in their faces those sweet
angelic beams of love and pity?

A secret feud of some years' standing was thus
healed, and with a tacit reconciliation. In these last
hours, and touched by her love and goodness, the old
man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs which
he and his wife had many a long night debated: how she
had given up everything for her boy; how she was
careless of her parents in their old age and misfortune, and
only thought of the child; how absurdly and foolishly,
impiously indeed, she took on when George was
removed from her. Old Sedley forgot these charges as he
was making up his last account, and did justice to the
gentle and uncomplaining little martyr. One night when
she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the
broken old man made his confession. "Oh, Emmy, I've
been thinking we were very unkind and unjust to you,"
he said and put out his cold and feeble hand to her. She
knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he did too,
having still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend,
may we have such company in our prayers!

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have
passed before him--his early hopeful struggles, his manly
successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining
years, and his present helpless condition--no chance of
revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of
him--neither name nor money to bequeath--a spent-out,
bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the
end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better
lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and
disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to
sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That
must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes
and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't
matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of
mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but
I shall be out of the turmoil."

So there came one morning and sunrise when all the
world got up and set about its various works and
pleasures, with the exception of old John Sedley, who was not
to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any more,
but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown
residence in a churchyard at Brompton by the side of
his old wife.

Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains
to the grave, in a black cloth coach. Jos came on
purpose from the Star and Garter at Richmond, whither he
retreated after the deplorable event. He did not care
to remain in the house, with the--under the circumstances,
you understand. But Emmy stayed and did her
duty as usual. She was bowed down by no especial grief,
and rather solemn than sorrowful. She prayed that her
own end might be as calm and painless, and thought
with trust and reverence of the words which she had
heard from her father during his illness, indicative of his
faith, his resignation, and his future hope.

Yes, I think that will be the better ending of the two,
after all. Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-
do and say on that last day, "I am very rich; I am
tolerably well known; I have lived all my life in the best
society, and thank Heaven, come of a most respectable
family. I have served my King and country with honour.
I was in Parliament for several years, where, I may say,
my speeches were listened to and pretty well received.
I don't owe any man a shilling: on the contrary, I lent
my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty pounds, for which
my executors will not press him. I leave my daughters
with ten thousand pounds apiece--very good portions
for girls; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in
Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for
her life; and my landed property, besides money in the
funds, and my cellar of well-selected wine in Baker Street,
to my son. I leave twenty pound a year to my valet; and
I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against
my character." Or suppose, on the other hand, your
swan sings quite a different sort of dirge and you say,
"I am a poor blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have
made an utter failure through life. I was not endowed
either with brains or with good fortune, and confess
that I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders.
I own to having forgotten my duty many a time. I can't
pay what I owe. On my last bed I lie utterly helpless
and humble, and I pray forgiveness for my weakness and
throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of the
Divine Mercy." Which of these two speeches, think
you, would be the best oration for your own funeral?
Old Sedley made the last; and in that humble frame of
mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter, life and
disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.

"You see," said old Osborne to George, "what comes
of merit, and industry, and judicious speculations, and
that. Look at me and my banker's account. Look at your
poor Grandfather Sedley and his failure. And yet he was
a better man than I was, this day twenty years--a better
man, I should say, by ten thousand pound."

Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who
came over from Brompton to pay a visit of condolence,
not a single soul alive ever cared a penny piece about
old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of such a
person.

When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel
Buckler (as little Georgy had already informed us) how
distinguished an officer Major Dobbin was, he exhibited
a great deal of scornful incredulity and expressed his
surprise how ever such a feller as that should possess
either brains or reputation. But he heard of the Major's
fame from various members of his society. Sir William
Dobbin had a great opinion of his son and narrated
many stories illustrative of the Major's learning, valour,
and estimation in the world's opinion. Finally, his name
appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the
nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect
upon the old aristocrat of Russell Square.

The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose
possession had been ceded to his grandfather, rendered
some meetings between the two gentlemen inevitable;
and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a keen man
of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his
ward and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered
him very much, and at once pained and pleased him,
that it was out of William Dobbin's own pocket that a
part of the fund had been supplied upon which the
poor widow and the child had subsisted.

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not
tell lies, blushed and stammered a good deal and finally
confessed. "The marriage," he said (at which his
interlocutor's face grew dark) "was very much my doing. I
thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from
his engagement would have been dishonour to him and
death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she
was left without resources, than give what money I could
spare to maintain her."

"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and
turning very red too--"you did me a great injury; but
give me leave to tell you, sir, you are an honest feller.
There's my hand, sir, though I little thought that my
flesh and blood was living on you--" and the pair shook
hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus
found out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.

He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him
towards his son's memory. "He was such a noble fellow,"
he said, "that all of us loved him, and would have done
anything for him. I, as a young man in those days, was
flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and
was more pleased to be seen in his company than in
that of the Commander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal
for pluck and daring and all the qualities of a soldier";
and Dobbin told the old father as many stories as he
could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements
of his son. "And Georgy is so like him," the
Major added.

"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes,"
the grandfather said.

On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with
Mr. Osborne (it was during the time of the sickness of
Mr. Sedley), and as the two sat together in the evening
after dinner, all their talk was about the departed hero.
The father boasted about him according to his wont,
glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and
gallantry, but his mood was at any rate better and more
charitable than that in which he had been disposed until
now to regard the poor fellow; and the Christian heart of
the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms of
returning peace and good-will. On the second evening old
Osborne called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at
the time when Dobbin and George were boys together,
and the honest gentleman was pleased by that mark of
reconciliation .

On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne,
with the asperity of her age and character, ventured to
make some remark reflecting slightingly upon the Major's
appearance or behaviour--the master of the house
interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him
for yourself, Miss O. But them grapes are sour. Ha! ha!
Major William is a fine feller."

"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly;
and going up close to the old gentleman, he took a hold
of his large grey whiskers, and laughed in his face
good-humouredly, and kissed him. And he told the story at
night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy.
"Indeed he is," she said. "Your dear father always said so.
He is one of the best and most upright of men." Dobbin
happened to drop in very soon after this conversation,
which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the young
scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin
the other part of the story. "I say, Dob," he said, "there's
such an uncommon nice girl wants to marry you. She's
plenty of tin; she wears a front; and she scolds the
servants from morning till night." "Who is it?" asked
Dobbin.
  "It's Aunt O.," the boy answered. "Grandpapa said
so. And I say, Dob, how prime it would be to have you
for my uncle." Old Sedley's quavering voice from the
next room at this moment weakly called for Amelia, and
the laughing ended.

That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear.
He asked George about his uncle sometimes, and laughed
at the boy's imitation of the way in which Jos said
"God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his soup. Then he said,
"It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating of
your relations. Miss O., when you go out adriving
to-day, leave my card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear?
There's no quarrel betwigst me and him anyhow."

The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were
asked to dinner--to a dinner the most splendid and
stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osborne gave; every inch
of the family plate was exhibited, and the best company
was asked. Mr. Sedley took down Miss O. to dinner,
and she was very gracious to him; whereas she
hardly spoke to the Major, who sat apart from her, and
by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid. Jos said, with
great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had ever
tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his
Madeira.

"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to
his master. "I've had it a long time, and paid a good
figure for it, too," Mr. Osborne said aloud to his guest,
and then whispered to his right-hand neighbour how
he had got it "at the old chap's sale."

More than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs.
George Osborne--a theme on which the Major could be
very eloquent when he chose. He told Mr. Osborne of
her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to her
husband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender
and dutiful manner in which she had supported her
parents, and given up her boy, when it seemed to her her
duty to do so. "You don't know what she endured, sir,"
said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, "and I
hope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she
took your son away from you, she gave hers to you;
and however much you loved your George, depend on it,
she loved hers ten times more."

"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Os-
borne said. It had never struck him that the widow would
feel any pain at parting from the boy, or that his having
a fine fortune could grieve her. A reconciliation was
announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's heart
already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting
with George's father.

It was never, however, destined to take place. Old
Sedley's lingering illness and death supervened, after
which a meeting was for some time impossible. That
catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr.
Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his
mind was working inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers,
and probably changed something in his will. The medical
man who looked in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and
talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he took
neither of these remedies.

One day when he should have come down to breakfast,
his servant missing him, went into his dressing-room
and found him lying at the foot of the dressing-table in a
fit. Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors were sent
for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders
and cuppers came. Osborne partially regained cognizance,
but never could speak again, though he tried
dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he died. The
doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up
the stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the
garden in Russell Square. Bullock rushed from the City
in a hurry. "How much money had he left to that boy?
Not half, surely? Surely share and share alike between
the three?" It was an agitating moment.

What was it that poor old man tried once or twice
in vain to say? I hope it was that he wanted to see
Amelia and be reconciled before he left the world to one
dear and faithful wife of his son: it was most likely
that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had
so long cherished had gone out of his heart.

They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the
letter with the great red seal which George had written
him from Waterloo. He had looked at the other papers
too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in which
he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found
the seals and envelopes had been broken--very likely on
the night before the seizure--when the butler had taken
him tea into his study, and found him reading in the
great red family Bible.

When the will was opened, it was found that half the
property was left to George, and the remainder between
the two sisters. Mr. Bullock to continue, for their joint
benefit, the affairs of the commercial house, or to go out,
as he thought fit. An annuity of five hundred pounds,
chargeable on George's property, was left to his mother,
"the widow of my beloved son, George Osborne," who
was to resume the guardianship of the boy.

"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was
appointed executor; "and as out of his kindness and
bounty, and with his own private funds, he maintained
my grandson and my son's widow, when they were
otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on
to say) "I hereby thank him heartily for his love and
regard for them, and beseech him to accept such a sum
as may be sufficient to purchase his commission as a
Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he
may think fit."

When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was
reconciled to her, her heart melted, and she was grateful
for the fortune left to her. But when she heard how
Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by
whom, and how it was William's bounty that supported
her in poverty, how it was William who gave her her
husband and her son--oh, then she sank on her knees,
and prayed for blessings on that constant and kind heart;
she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the
feet, as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.

And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for
such admirable devotion and benefits--only gratitude! If
she thought of any other return, the image of George
stood up out of the grave and said, "You are mine,
and mine only, now and forever."

William knew her feelings: had he not passed his
whole life in divining them?

When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known
to the world, it was edifying to remark how Mrs. George
Osborne rose in the estimation of the people forming her
circle of acquaintance. The servants of Jos's establishment,
who used to question her humble orders and say
they would "ask Master" whether or not they could obey,
never thought now of that sort of appeal. The cook
forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed,
were quite eclipsed by that lady's finery when she was
dressed to go to church of a Sunday evening), the others
no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed
to answer that summons. The coachman, who grumbled
that his 'osses should be brought out and his
carriage made into an hospital for that old feller and
Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity now, and
trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's
coachman, asked "what them there Russell Square
coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit
on a box before a lady?" Jos's friends, male and female,
suddenly became interested about Emmy, and cards
of condolence multiplied on her hall table. Jos himself,
who had looked on her as a good-natured harmless
pauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and
shelter, paid her and the rich little boy, his nephew, the
greatest respect--was anxious that she should have
change and amusement after her troubles and trials,
"poor dear girl"--and began to appear at the breakfast-
table, and most particularly to ask how she would like
to dispose of the day.

In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the
consent of the Major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss
Osborne to live in the Russell Square house as long as
ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady, with thanks,
declared that she never could think of remaining alone
in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning
to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics.
The rest were liberally paid and dismissed, the faithful
old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain,
resigning and preferring to invest his savings in a public-
house, where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous.
Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs.
Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the
gloomy old mansion there. The house was dismantled;
the rich furniture and effects, the awful chandeliers and
dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich
rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the
carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select
library of well-bound books was stowed into two wine-
chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in
several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they
were to lie until Georgy's majority. And the great heavy
dark plate-chests went off to Messrs. Stumpy and Rowdy,
to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the
same period should arrive.

One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in
deep sables, went to visit the deserted mansion which she
had not entered since she was a girl. The place in front
was littered with straw where the vans had been laden
and rolled off. They went into the great blank rooms, the
walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and
mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great blank
stone staircases into the upper rooms, into that where
grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, and then
higher still into George's own room. The boy was still
clinging by her side, but she thought of another besides
him. She knew that it had been his father's room as well
as his own.

She went up to one of the open windows (one of
those at which she used to gaze with a sick heart when
the child was first taken from her), and thence as she
looked out she could see, over the trees of Russell Square,
the old house in which she herself was born, and where
she had passed so many happy days of sacred youth.
They all came back to her, the pleasant holidays,
the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times, and the
long pains and trials that had since cast her down.
She thought of these and of the man who had been her
constant protector, her good genius, her sole benefactor,
her tender and generous friend.

"Look here, Mother," said Georgy, "here's a G.O.
scratched on the glass with a diamond, I never saw it
before, I never did it."

"It was your father's room long before you were born,
George," she said, and she blushed as she kissed the
boy.

She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond,
where they had taken a temporary house: where the
smiling lawyers used to come bustling over to see her (and
we may be sure noted the visit in the bill): and where of
course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, who
rode over frequently, having much business to transact
on behalf of his little ward.

Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on
an unlimited holiday, and that gentleman was engaged
to prepare an inscription for a fine marble slab, to be
placed up in the Foundling under the monument of
Captain George Osborne.

The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although
despoiled by that little monster of one-half of the sum
which she expected from her father, nevertheless showed
her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled to the
mother and the boy. Roehampton is not far from
Richmond, and one day the chariot, with the golden bullocks
emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within,
drove to Amelia's house at Richmond; and the Bullock
family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia
was reading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly
dipping strawberries into wine, and the Major in one of
his Indian jackets was giving a back to Georgy, who
chose to jump over him. He went over his head and
bounded into the little advance of Bullocks, with
immense black bows in their hats, and huge black sashes,
accompanying their mourning mamma.

"He is just of the age for Rosa," the fond parent
thought, and glanced towards that dear child, an
unwholesome little miss of seven years of age.

"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin," Mrs. Frederick
said. "Don't you know me, George? I am your aunt."

"I know you well enough," George said; "but I don't
like kissing, please"; and he retreated from the obedient
caresses of his cousin.

"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child," Mrs.
Frederick said, and those ladies accordingly met, after
an absence of more than fifteen years. During Emmy's
cares and poverty the other had never once thought
about coming to see her, but now that she was decently
prosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as
a matter of course.

So did numbers more. Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and
her husband came thundering over from Hampton Court,
with flaming yellow liveries, and was as impetuously fond
of Amelia as ever. Miss Swartz would have liked her
always if she could have seen her. One must do her that
justice. But, que voulez vous?--in this vast town one
has not the time to go and seek one's friends; if they
drop out of the rank they disappear, and we march on
without them. Who is ever missed in Vanity Fair?

But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for
Mr. Osborne's death had subsided, Emmy found herself
in the centre of a very genteel circle indeed, the
members of which could not conceive that anybody
belonging to it was not very lucky. There was scarce one
of the ladies that hadn't a relation a Peer, though the
husband might be a drysalter in the City. Some of the
ladies were very blue and well informed, reading Mrs.
Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; others
were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall.
Emmy, it must be owned, found herself entirely at a loss in
the midst of their clavers, and suffered woefully on the
one or two occasions on which she was compelled to
accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock's hospitalities. That lady
persisted in patronizing her and determined most graciously
to form her. She found Amelia's milliners for her and
regulated her household and her manners. She drove
over constantly from Roehampton and entertained her
friend with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feeble
Court slip-slop. Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used
to go off growling at the appearance of this woman, with
her twopenny gentility. He went to sleep under Frederick
Bullock's bald head, after dinner, at one of the banker's
best parties (Fred was still anxious that the balance of
the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy
and Rowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not
know Latin, or who wrote the last crack article in the
Edinburgh, and did not in the least deplore, or
otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary tergiversation on the
fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst the ladies in
the grand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns,
trim gravel walks, and glistening hot-houses.

"She seems good-natured but insipid," said Mrs.
Rowdy; "that Major seems to be particularly epris."

"She wants ton sadly," said Mrs. Hollyock. "My dear
creature, you never will be able to form her."

"She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent," said Mrs.
Glowry with a voice as if from the grave, and a sad
shake of the head and turban. "I asked her if she thought
that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls, or in 1839,
according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall:
and she said--'Poor Pope! I hope not--What has he
done?' "

"She is my brother's widow, my dear friends," Mrs.
Frederick replied, "and as such I think we're all bound to
give her every attention and instruction on entering into
the world. You may fancy there can be no MERCENARY
motives in those whose DISAPPOINTMENTS are well known."

"That poor dear Mrs. Bullock," said Rowdy to Hollyock,
as they drove away together--"she is always scheming
and managing. She wants Mrs. Osborne's account
to be taken from our house to hers--and the way in
which she coaxes that boy and makes him sit by that
blear-eyed little Rosa is perfectly ridiculous."

"I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and
her Battle of Armageddon," cried the other, and the
carriage rolled away over Putney Bridge.

But this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for
Emmy, and all jumped for joy when a foreign tour was
proposed.

CHAPTER LXII

Am Rhein

The above everyday events had occurred, and a few
weeks had passed, when on one fine morning, Parliament
being over, the summer advanced, and all the good
company in London about to quit that city for their annual
tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat
left the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English
fugitives. The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the
benches and gangways crowded with scores of rosy children,
bustling nursemaids; ladies in the prettiest pink
bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps
and linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to
sprout for the ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans
with starched neckcloths and neat-brushed hats, such as
have invaded Europe any time since the conclusion of the
war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of
the Continent. The congregation of hat-boxes, and
Bramah desks, and dressing-cases was prodigious. There
were jaunty young Cambridge-men travelling with their
tutor, and going for a reading excursion to Nonnenwerth
or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the
most dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about
horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young
ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge
lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden
coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems
and Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the
dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trente-
et-quarante to keep the excitement going; there was old
Methuselah, who had married his young wife, with Captain
Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and
guide-books; there was young May who was carrying off
his bride on a pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and
who had been at school with May's grandmother); there
was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen children, and
corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee
Bareacres family that sat by themselves near the wheel,
stared at everybody, and spoke to no one. Their
carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped with
shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a
dozen more such vehicles: it was difficult to pass in and
out amongst them; and the poor inmates of the
fore-cabin had scarcely any space for locomotion. These
consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen from
Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and
could have bought half the gay people in the grand
saloon; a few honest fellows with mustachios and portfolios,
who set to sketching before they had been half an hour
on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who
began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had
passed Greenwich; a groom or two who lounged in the
neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under their charge, or
leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked
about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood
to win or lose for the Goodwood cup.

All the couriers, when they had done plunging about
the ship and had settled their various masters in the
cabins or on the deck, congregated together and began to
chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining them
and looking at the carriages. There was Sir John's great
carriage that would hold thirteen people; my Lord
Methuselah's carriage, my Lord Bareacres' chariot,
britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for who liked.
It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to
pay for the expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen
knew how he got it. They knew what money his
Lordship had in his pocket at that instant, and what
interest he paid for it, and who gave it him. Finally there
was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about
which the gentlemen speculated.

"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier
with a large morocco money-bag and ear-rings to another
with ear-rings and a large morocco money-bag.

"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--
qui brenoit des sangviches dans la voiture," said the
courier in a fine German French.

Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of
the hold, where he had been bellowing instructions
intermingled with polyglot oaths to the ship's men engaged
in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give an
account of himself to his brother interpreters. He
informed them that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from
Calcutta and Jamaica enormously rich, and with whom
he was engaged to travel; and at this moment a young
gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between
the paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the
roof of Lord Methuselah's carriage, from which he made
his way over other carriages and imperials until he had
clambered on to his own, descended thence and through
the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause
of the couriers looking on.

"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur
George," said the courier with a grin, as he lifted his
gold-laced cap.

"D-- your French," said the young gentleman, "where's
the biscuits, ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the
English language or in such an imitation of it as he could
command--for though he was familiar with all languages,
Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and
spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.

The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the
biscuits (and indeed it was time to refresh himself, for he
had breakfasted at Richmond full three hours before)
was our young friend George Osborne. Uncle Jos and his
mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of
whom they used to see a good deal, and the four were
about to make a summer tour.

Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the
awning, and pretty nearly opposite to the Earl of
Bareacres and his family, whose proceedings absorbed
the Bengalee almost entirely. Both the noble couple
looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when
Jos remembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed,
he always gave out in India that he was intimately
acquainted with them). Lady Bareacres' hair, which was
then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas
Lord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present
of a rich black with purple and green reflections in the
light. But changed as they were, the movements of the
noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely. The presence of
a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing else.

"Those people seem to interest you a good deal," said
Dobbin, laughing and watching him. Amelia too laughed.
She was in a straw bonnet with black ribbons, and
otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustle and
holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she
looked particularly happy.

"What a heavenly day!" Emmy said and added, with
great originality, "I hope we shall have a calm passage."

Jos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same
time under his eyelids at the great folks opposite. "If you
had made the voyages we have," he said, "you wouldn't
much care about the weather." But nevertheless, traveller
as he was, he passed the night direfully sick in his
carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-
water and every luxury.

In due time this happy party landed at the quays of
Rotterdam, whence they were transported by another
steamer to the city of Cologne. Here the carriage and
the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a little
gratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne
newspapers as "Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst
Begleitung aus London." He had his court dress with him;
he had insisted that Dobbin should bring his regimental
paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to
be presented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects
to the Sovereigns of the countries which he honoured
with a visit.

Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was
offered, Mr. Jos left his own card and the Major's upon
"Our Minister." It was with great difficulty that he could
be restrained from putting on his cocked hat and tights
to wait upon the English consul at the Free City of
Judenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our
travellers to dinner. He kept a journal of his voyage and
noted elaborately the defects or excellences of the various
inns at which he put up, and of the wines and dishes of
which he partook.

As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased. Dobbin
used to carry about for her her stool and sketch-book,
and admired the drawings of the good-natured little artist
as they never had been admired before. She sat upon
steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she
mounted upon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-
towers, attended by her two aides-de-camp, Georgy and
Dobbin. She laughed, and the Major did too, at his droll
figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching the
ground. He was the interpreter for the party; having a
good military knowledge of the German language, and
he and the delighted George fought the campaigns of the
Rhine and the Palatinate. In the course of a few weeks,
and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the
box of the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in
the knowledge of High Dutch, and could talk to hotel
waiters and postilions in a way that charmed his mother
and amused his guardian.

Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon
excursions of his fellow-travellers. He slept a good deal
after dinner, or basked in the arbours of the pleasant
inn-gardens. Pleasant Rhine gardens! Fair scenes of peace
and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests are
reflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen
you that has not a grateful memory of those scenes of
friendly repose and beauty? To lay down the pen and
even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes one
happy. At this time of summer evening, the cows are
trooping down from the hills, lowing and with their bells
tinkling, to the old town, with its old moats, and gates,
and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long blue shadows
stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below
flame in-crimson and gold; and the moon is already out,
looking pale towards the sunset. The sun sinks behind
the great castle-crested mountains, the night falls suddenly,
the river grows darker and darker, lights quiver in it
from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle
peacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore.

So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna
over his face and be very comfortable, and read all
the English news, and every word of Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of all Englishmen who
have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors
of that piratical print! ) and whether he woke or
slept, his friends did not very much miss him. Yes, they
were very happy. They went to the opera often of
evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the
German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and
knits stockings on the one side, over against the bourgeoisie
on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his
Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come
and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit is
full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-
coloured mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay.
Here it was that Emmy found her delight, and was
introduced for the first time to the wonders of Mozart and
Cimarosa. The Major's musical taste has been before
alluded to, and his performances on the flute commended.
But perhaps the chief pleasure he had in these operas
was in watching Emmy's rapture while listening to them.
A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when
she was introduced to those divine compositions; this
lady had the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could
she be indifferent when she heard Mozart? The tender
parts of "Don Juan" awakened in her raptures so
exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say
her prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel
so much delight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and
"Batti Batti" filled her gentle little bosom? But the Major,
whom she consulted upon this head, as her theological
adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent soul),
said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made
him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to
be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars
in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a
benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as
for any other worldly blessing. And in reply to some faint
objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological
works like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common
and others of that school, with which Mrs. Osborne had
been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told her
an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the
sunshine was unbearable for the eyes and that the
Nightingale was a most overrated bird. "It is one's nature to
sing and the other's to hoot," he said, laughing, "and
with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must
belong to the Bulbul faction."