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House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was
too glad to honour my father and mother, that I might
live long in the land, and to be useful, and not to mope
all day in my room and act the fine lady--says I'm a
murderess. Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a
viper in your bosom, that's MY prayer."
"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the
child in her arms set up a frantic chorus of shouts.
"A murderess, indeed! Go down on your knees and
pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs.
Sedley tossed out of the room, hissing out the word
poison once more, and so ending her charitable
benediction.
Till the termination of her natural life, this breach
between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended. The quarrel gave the elder lady numberless
advantages which she did not fail to turn to account with
female ingenuity and perseverance. For instance, she
scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards.
She warned the domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs.
Osborne might be offended. She asked her daughter to
see and satisfy herself that there was no poison prepared
in the little daily messes that were concocted for Georgy.
When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she
referred them pointedly to Mrs. Osborne. SHE never
ventured to ask whether the baby was well or not. SHE
would not touch the child although he was her grandson,
and own precious darling, for she was not USED to
children, and might kill it. And whenever Mr. Pestler came
upon his healing inquisition, she received the doctor with
such a sarcastic and scornful demeanour, as made the
surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom
he had the honour of attending professionally, could
give herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom
he never took a fee. And very likely Emmy was jealous
too, upon her own part, as what mother is not, of those
who would manage her children for her, or become
candidates for the first place in their affections. It is certain
that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and
that she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the
domestic to dress or tend him than she would have let them
wash her husband's miniature which hung up over her
little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl
had gone to his; and to which she retired now for many
long, silent, tearful, but happy years.
In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure. Here
it was that she tended her boy and watched him through
the many ills of childhood, with a constant passion of
love. The elder George returned in him somehow, only
improved, and as if come back from heaven. In a
hundred little tones, looks, and movements, the child was
so like his father that the widow's heart thrilled as she
held him to it; and he would often ask the cause of her
tears. It was because of his likeness to his father, she
did not scruple to tell him. She talked constantly to him
about this dead father, and spoke of her love for George
to the innocent and wondering child; much more than she
ever had done to George himself, or to any confidante of
her youth. To her parents she never talked about this
matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them. Little
George very likely could understand no better than they,
but into his ears she poured her sentimental secrets
unreservedly, and into his only. The very joy of this
woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least, that
its expression was tears. Her sensibilities were so weak
and tremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked
about in a book. I was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most
flourishing lady's physician, with a sumptuous dark green
carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a house
in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child
was a sight that would have unmanned a Herod. He was
very soft-hearted many years ago, and his wife was
mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and long afterwards.
Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her
jealousy: most women shared it, of those who formed the
small circle of Amelia's acquaintance, and were quite
angry at the enthusiasm with which the other sex regarded
her. For almost all men who came near her loved
her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you
why. She was not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over
much, nor extraordinarily handsome. But wherever she
went she touched and charmed every one of the male
sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and
incredulity of her own sisterhood. I think it was her
weakness which was her principal charm--a kind of sweet
submission and softness, which seemed to appeal to
each man she met for his sympathy and protection. We
have seen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to
few of George's comrades there, all the swords of the
young fellows at the mess-table would have leapt from
their scabbards to fight round her; and so it was in
the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she
interested and pleased everybody. If she had been Mrs.
Mango herself, of the great house of Mango, Plantain,
and Co., Crutched Friars, and the magnificent proprietress
of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer dejeuners
frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about
the parish with magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses,
such as the royal stables at Kensington themselves could
not turn out--I say had she been Mrs. Mango herself, or
her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the
Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the
head of the firm), the tradesmen of the neighbourhood
could not pay her more honour than they invariably
showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by
their doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.
Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but
Mr. Linton the young assistant, who doctored the servant
maids and small tradesmen, and might be seen any day
reading the Times in the surgery, who openly declared
himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne. He was a personable
young gentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings
than his principal; and if anything went wrong with
Georgy, he would drop in twice or thrice in the day to
see the little chap, and without so much as the thought
of a fee. He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and
other produce from the surgery-drawers for little
Georgy's benefit, and compounded draughts and mixtures
for him of miraculous sweetness, so that it was quite a
pleasure to the child to be ailing. He and Pestler, his
chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in that
momentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and
when you would have thought, from the mother's terror,
that there had never been measles in the world before.
Would they have done as much for other people? Did
they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when Ralph
Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the
same juvenile complaint? Did they sit up for little Mary
Clapp, the landlord's daughter, who actually caught the
disease of little Georgy? Truth compels one to say, no.
They slept quite undisturbed, at least as far as she was
concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which
would almost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two,
and threw in bark when the child rallied, with perfect
indifference, and just for form's sake.
Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite,
who gave lessons in his native tongue at various schools
in the neighbourhood, aud who might be heard in his
apartment of nights playing tremulous old gavottes and
minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever this powdered
and courteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the
convent chapel at Hammersmith, and who was in all
respects, thoughts, conduct, and bearing utterly unlike the
bearded savages of his nation, who curse perfidious
Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in the
Quadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the
old Chevalier de Talonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne,
he would first finish his pinch of snuff, flick away the
remaining particles of dust with a graceful wave of his
hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,
bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss,
exclaiming, Ah! la divine creature! He vowed and
protested that when Amelia walked in the Brompton Lanes
flowers grew in profusion under her feet. He called little
Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma;
and told the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was
one of the Graces, and the favourite attendant of the
Reine des Amours.
Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and
unconscious popularity. Did not Mr. Binny, the mild
and genteel curate of the district chapel, which the family
attended, call assiduously upon the widow, dandle the
little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin, to the
anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house
for him? "There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter
lady would say. "When she comes to tea here she does
not speak a word during the whole evening. She is but a
poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my belief has no
heart at all. It is only her pretty face which all you
gentlemen admire so. Miss Grits, who has five thousand
pounds, and expectations besides, has twice as much
character, and is a thousand times more agreeable to my
taste; and if she were good-looking I know that you would
think her perfection."
Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent. It
IS the pretty face which creates sympathy in the hearts of
men, those wicked rogues. A woman may possess the
wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to
her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of
bright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not
red lips and sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with
their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a
woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies,
ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome
nor wise.
These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of
our heroine. Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the
gentle reader has already no doubt perceived; and if a
journal had been kept of her proceedings during the
seven years after the birth of her son, there would be
found few incidents more remarkable in it than that of
the measles, recorded in the foregoing page. Yes, one
day, and greatly to her wonder, the Reverend Mr. Binny,
just mentioned, asked her to change her name of Osborne
for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her
eyes and voice, she thanked him for his regard for her,
expressed gratitude for his attentions to her and to her
poor little boy, but said that she never, never could
think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost.
On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of
June, the days of marriage and widowhood, she kept her
room entirely, consecrating them (and we do not know
how many hours of solitary night-thought, her little boy
sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that
departed friend. During the day she was more active.
She had to teach George to read and to write and a little
to draw. She read books, in order that she might tell
him stories from them. As his eyes opened and his mind
expanded under the influence of the outward nature
round about him, she taught the child, to the best of
her humble power, to acknowledge the Maker of all, and
every night and every morning he and she--(in that
awful and touching communion which I think must bring
a thrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who
remembers it)--the mother and the little boy--prayed
to Our Father together, the mother pleading with all her
gentle heart, the child lisping after her as she spoke. And
each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as
if he were alive and in the room with them.
To wash and dress this young gentleman--to take him
for a run of the mornings, before breakfast, and the
retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him the
most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the
thrifty widow cut up and altered every available little bit
of finery which she possessed out of her wardrobe during
her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne herself (greatly to her
mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes, especially
since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a
straw bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many
hours of the day. Others she had to spare, at the service
of her mother and her old father. She had taken the pains
to learn, and used to play cribbage with this gentleman
on the nights when he did not go to his club. She sang
for him when he was so minded, and it was a good
sign, for he invariably fell into a comfortable sleep during
the music. She wrote out his numerous memorials,
letters, prospectuses, and projects. It was in her
handwriting that most of the old gentleman's former
acquaintances were informed that he had become an agent for
the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Company and
could supply his friends and the public with the best coals
at --s. per chaldron. All he did was to sign the circulars
with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a
shaky, clerklike hand. One of these papers was sent to
Major Dobbin, --Regt., care of Messrs. Cox and Greenwood;
but the Major being in Madras at the time, had no
particular call for coals. He knew, though, the hand
which had written the prospectus. Good God! what
would he not have given to hold it in his own! A second
prospectus came out, informing the Major that J. Sedley
and Company, having established agencies at Oporto,
Bordeaux, and St. Mary's, were enabled to offer to their
friends and the public generally the finest and most
celebrated growths of ports, sherries, and claret wines at
reasonable prices and under extraordinary advantages.
Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously canvassed the
governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the
regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency,
and sent home to Sedley and Co. orders for wine which
perfectly astonished Mr. Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was
the Co. in the business. But no more orders came after
that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old Sedley
was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of
clerks, a dock to himself, and correspondents all over
the world. The old gentleman's former taste in wine had
gone: the curses of the mess-room assailed Major Dobbin
for the vile drinks he had been the means of introducing
there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine
and sold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself.
As for Jos, who was by this time promoted to a seat
at the Revenue Board at Calcutta, he was wild with rage
when the post brought him out a bundle of these
Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his
father, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in
this enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select
wines to him, as per invoice, drawing bills upon him for
the amount of the same. Jos, who would no more have it
supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of the Board
of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than
that he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote
back contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him
to mind his own affairs; and the protested paper coming
back, Sedley and Co. had to take it up, with the profits
which they had made out of the Madras venture, and
with a little portion of Emmy's savings.
Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had
been five hundred pounds, as her husband's executor
stated, left in the agent's hands at the time of Osborne's
demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbin
proposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of
agency. Mr. Sedley, who thought the Major had some
roguish intentions of his own about the money, was
strongly against this plan; and he went to the agents to
protest personally against the employment of the money
in question, when he learned, to his surprise, that there
had been no such sum in their hands, that all the late
Captain's assets did not amount to a hundred pounds,
and that the five hundred pounds in question must be a
separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars.
More than ever convinced that there was some
roguery, old Sedley pursued the Major. As his daughter's
nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand a statement
of the late Captain's accounts. Dobbin's stammering,
blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's
convictions that he had a rogue to deal with, and in a
majestic tone he told that officer a piece of his mind, as
he called it, simply stating his belief that the Major was
unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.
Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had
not been so old and so broken, a quarrel might have
ensued between them at the Slaughters' Coffee-house, in
a box of which place of entertainment the gentlemen had
their colloquy. "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out the
Major. "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will
show which is the injured party, poor George or I"; and,
dragging the old gentleman up to his bedroom, he
produced from his desk Osborne's accounts, and a bundle
of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to do him
justice, was always ready to give an IOU. "He paid
his bills in England," Dobbin added, "but he had not a
hundred pounds in the world when he fell. I and one or
two of his brother officers made up the little sum, which
was all that we could spare, and you dare tell us that
we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan."
Sedley was very contrite and humbled, though the fact is
that William Dobbin had told a great falsehood to the old
gentleman; having himself given every shilling of the
money, having buried his friend, and paid all the fees and
charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor
Amelia.
About these expenses old Osborne had never given
himself any trouble to think, nor any other relative of
Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed. She trusted to Major
Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhat confused
calculations for granted, and never once suspected how
much she was in his debt.
Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise,
she wrote him letters to Madras, letters all about
little Georgy. How he treasured these papers! Whenever
Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then. But
he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his
godson and to her. He ordered and sent a box of scarfs
and a grand ivory set of chess-men from China. The
pawns were little green and white men, with real swords
and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles
were on the backs of elephants. "Mrs. Mango's own set at
the Pineries was not so fine," Mr. Pestler remarked. These
chess-men were the delight of Georgy's life, who printed
his first letter in acknowledgement of this gift of his
godpapa. He sent over preserves and pickles, which latter
the young gentleman tried surreptitiously in the sideboard
and half-killed himself with eating. He thought it was a
judgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot. Emmy
wrote a comical little account of this mishap to the
Major: it pleased him to think that her spirits were rallying
and that she could be merry sometimes now. He
sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and a black
one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red
scarfs, as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George.
The shawls were worth fifty guineas apiece at the very
least, as Mrs. Sedley knew. She wore hers in state at
church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her
female friends upon the splendid acquisition. Emmy's, too,
became prettily her modest black gown. "What a pity it
is she won't think of him!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to
Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends of Brompton. "Jos never
sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges us
everything. It is evident that the Major is over head and ears
in love with her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it,
she turns red and begins to cry and goes and sits upstairs
with her miniature. I'm sick of that miniature. I wish we
had never seen those odious purse-proud Osbornes."
Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's
early youth was passed, and the boy grew up delicate,
sensitive, imperious, woman-bred--domineering the
gentle mother whom he loved with passionate affection. He
ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.
As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty
manner and his constant likeness to his father. He asked
questions about everything, as inquiring youth will do. The
profundity of his remarks and interrogatories astonished
his old grandfather, who perfectly bored the club at the
tavern with stories about the little lad's learning and
genius. He suffered his grandmother with a good-humoured indifference. The small circle round about him
believed that the equal of the boy did not exist upon the
earth. Georgy inherited his father's pride, and perhaps
thought they were not wrong.
When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began
to write to him very much. The Major wanted to hear
that Georgy was going to a school and hoped he would
acquit himself with credit there: or would he have a good
tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn;
and his godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to
be allowed to defray the charges of the boy's education,
which would fall heavily upon his mother's straitened
income. The Major, in a word, was always thinking about
Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents
kept the latter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes,
desks, and all conceivable implements of amusement and
instruction. Three days before George's sixth birthday a
gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant, drove
up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George
Osborne: it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit
Street, who came at the Major's order to measure the
young gentleman for a suit of clothes. He had had the
honour of making for the Captain, the young
gentleman's father.
Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt,
his sisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family
carriage to take Amelia and the little boy to drive if they
were so inclined. The patronage and kindness of these
ladies was very uncomfortable to Amelia, but she bore it
meekly enough, for her nature was to yield; and, besides,
the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy
immense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the
child might pass a day with them, and he was always glad
to go to that fine garden-house at Denmark Hill, where
they lived, and where there were such fine grapes in the
hot-houses and peaches on the walls.
One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news
which they were SURE would delight her--something VERY
interesting about their dear William.
"What was it: was he coming home?" she asked with
pleasure beaming in her eyes.
"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason
to believe that dear William was about to be married--
and to a relation of a very dear friend of Amelia's--to
Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd's sister,
who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a very
beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."
Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed.
But she supposed Glorvina could not be like her old
acquaintance, who was most kind--but--but she was
very happy indeed. And by some impulse of which I
cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms
and kissed him with an extraordinary tenderness. Her
eyes were quite moist when she put the child down; and
she scarcely spoke a word during the whole of the
drive--though she was so very happy indeed.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A Cynical Chapter
Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old
Hampshire acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting
the disposal of their rich kinswoman's property were so
woefully disappointed. After counting upon thirty thousand
pounds from his sister, it was a heavy blow. to Bute Crawley
to receive but five; out of which sum, when he had paid
his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a very
small fragment remained to portion off his four plain
daughters. Mrs. Bute never knew, or at least never
acknowledged, how far her own tyrannous behaviour had
tended to ruin her husband. All that woman could do, she
vowed and protested she had done. Was it her fault if
she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her
hypocritical nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished
him all the happiness which he merited out of his
ill-gotten gains. "At least the money will remain in the
family," she said charitably. "Pitt will never spend it, my
dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not
exist in England, and he is as odious, though in a
different way, as his spendthrift brother, the abandoned
Rawdon."
So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and
disappointment, began to accommodate herself as best
she could to her altered fortunes and to save and retrench
with all her might. She instructed her daughters how to
bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable
methods to conceal or evade it. She took them about to
balls and public places in the neighbourhood, with
praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her friends in a
hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much
more frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy
had fallen in. From her outward bearing nobody would
have supposed that the family had been disappointed
in their expectations, or have guessed from her frequent
appearance in public how she pinched and starved at
home. Her girls had more milliners' furniture than they
had ever enjoyed before. They appeared perseveringly
at the Winchester and Southampton assemblies; they
penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls and regatta-gaieties
there; and their carriage, with the horses taken from the
plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to
be believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left them
by their aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in
public but with the most tender gratitude and regard. I
know no sort of lying which is more frequent in Vanity
Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people who
practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy,
and fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and
praiseworthy, because they are able to deceive the world
with regard to the extent of their means.
Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most
virtuous women in England, and the sight of her happy
family was an edifying one to strangers. They were so
cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so simple! Martha
painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the charity
bazaars in the county. Emma was a regular County Bulbul,
and her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were
the glory of its Poet's Corner. Fanny and Matilda sang
duets together, Mamma playing the piano, and the other
two sisters sitting with their arms round each other's waists
and listening affectionately. Nobody saw the poor girls
drumming at the duets in private. No one saw Mamma
drilling them rigidly hour after hour. In a word, Mrs. Bute
put a good face against fortune and kept up appearances
in the most virtuous manner.
Everything that a good and respectable mother could
do Mrs. Bute did. She got over yachting men from
Southampton, parsons from the Cathedral Close at Winchester,
and officers from the barracks there. She tried to inveigle
the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to
bring home friends with whom he went out hunting with
the H. H. What will not a mother do for the benefit of
her beloved ones?
Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the
odious Baronet at the Hall, it is manifest that there could
be very little in common. The rupture between Bute and
his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed, between Sir
Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was a
scandal. His dislike for respectable society increased with
age, and the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's
carriage-wheels since Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their
visit of duty after their marriage.
That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be
thought of by the family without horror. Pitt begged his
wife, with a ghastly countenance, never to speak of it,
and it was only through Mrs. Bute herself, who still
knew everything which took place at the Hall, that the
circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and
daughter-in-law were ever known at all.
As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat
and well-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay
and wrath great gaps among the trees--his trees--which
the old Baronet was felling entirely without license. The
park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin. The
drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and
floundered in muddy pools along the road. The great
sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was
black and covered with mosses; the once trim flower-beds
rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the
whole line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred
after much ringing of the bell; an individual in ribbons
was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at
length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley and his bride
into the halls of their fathers. He led the way into Sir
Pitt's "Library," as it was called, the fumes of tobacco
growing stronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that
apartment, "Sir Pitt ain't very well," Horrocks remarked
apologetically and hinted that his master was afflicted
with lumbago.
The library looked out on the front walk and park.
Sir Pitt had opened one of the windows, and was bawling
out thence to the postilion and Pitt's servant, who seemed
to be about to take the baggage down.
"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing
with a pipe which he held in his hand. "It's only a morning
visit, Tucker, you fool. Lor, what cracks that off hoss
has in his heels! Ain't there no one at the King's Head to
rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear? Come
to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too.
You ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother.
Come and give old Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."
The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law
somewhat, as the caresses of the old gentleman, unshorn and
perfumed with tobacco, might well do. But she
remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios,
and smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a
tolerable grace.
"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of
affection. "Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear?
Hundredth Psalm, Evening Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get
a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady Jane, Horrocks,
you great big booby, and don't stand stearing there like
a fat pig. I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it too
stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt. I'm an old man
now, and like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon
of a night."
"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane,
laughing. "I used to play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't
I, Mr. Crawley?"
"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you
state that you are so partial," Pitt said haughtily.
But she wawn't stop for all that. Naw, naw, goo back
to Mudbury and give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down
to the Rectory and ask Buty for a dinner. He'll be charmed
to see you, you know; he's so much obliged to you for
gettin' the old woman's money. Ha, ha! Some of it will
do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."
"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice,
"that your people will cut down the timber."
"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the
time of year," Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly
grown deaf. "But I'm gittin' old, Pitt, now. Law bless you,
you ain't far from fifty yourself. But he wears well, my
pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness, sobriety, and
a moral life. Look at me, I'm not very fur from fowr-score
--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered
at her and pinched her hand.
Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the
timber, but the Baronet was deaf again in an instant.
"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year
with the lumbago. I shan't be here now for long; but I'm
glad ee've come, daughter-in-law. I like your face, Lady
Jane: it's got none of the damned high-boned Binkie look
in it; and I'll give ee something pretty, my dear, to go to
Court in." And he shuffled across the room to a cupboard,
from which he took a little old case containing jewels of
some value. "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged
to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie.
Pretty pearls--never gave 'em the ironmonger's daughter.
No, no. Take 'em and put 'em up quick," said he, thrusting
the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping the door of
the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and
refreshments.
"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said
the individual in ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had
taken leave of the old gentleman. It was Miss Horrocks,
the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandal
throughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost
supreme at Queen's Crawley.
The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been
marked with dismay by the county and family. The
Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury Branch Savings
Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the
pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at
the Hall. The domestics were dismissed at her pleasure.
The Scotch gardener, who still lingered on the premises,
taking a pride in his walls and hot-houses, and indeed
making a pretty good livelihood by the garden, which he
farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton,
found the Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning
at the south-wall, and had his ears boxed when he
remonstrated about this attack on his property. He and
his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only
respectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to
migrate, with their goods and their chattels, and left the
stately comfortable gardens to go to waste, and the
flower-beds to run to seed. Poor Lady Crawley's rose-garden
became the dreariest wilderness. Only two or three
domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall. The
stables and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half
ruined. Sir Pitt lived in private, and boozed nightly with
Horrocks, his butler or house-steward (as he now began
to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. The times
were very much changed since the period when she drove
to Mudbury in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen
"Sir." It may have been shame, or it may have been
dislike of his neighbours, but the old Cynic of Queen's
Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now. He
quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by
letter. His days were passed in conducting his own
correspondence; the lawyers and farm-bailiffs who had to
do business with him could not reach him but through the
Ribbons, who received them at the door of the
housekeeper's room, which commanded the back entrance by
which they were admitted; and so the Baronet's daily
perplexities increased, and his embarrassments multiplied
round him.
The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these
reports of his father's dotage reached the most exemplary
and correct of gentlemen. He trembled daily lest he should
hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed his second legal
mother-in-law. After that first and last visit, his father's
name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteel
establishment. It was the skeleton in his house, and all the
family walked by it in terror and silence. The Countess
Southdown kept on dropping per coach at the lodge-gate
the most exciting tracts, tracts which ought to frighten
the hair off your head. Mrs. Bute at the parsonage
nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the
elms behind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on
fire. Sir G. Wapshot and Sir H. Fuddlestone, old friends of
the house, wouldn't sit on the bench with Sir Pitt at
Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the High Street
of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his
dirty old hands to them. Nothing had any effect upon him;
he put his hands into his pockets, and burst out laughing,
as he scrambled into his carriage and four; he used to
burst out laughing at Lady Southdown's tracts; and he
laughed at his sons, and at the world, and at the
Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom.
Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's
Crawley, and ruled all the domestics there with great
majesty and rigour. All the servants were instructed to
address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--and there was one
little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in calling
her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the
housekeeper. "There has been better ladies, and there
has been worser, Hester," was Miss Horrocks' reply to
this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled, having
supreme power over all except her father, whom,
however, she treated with considerable haughtiness, warning
him not to be too familiar in his behaviour to one "as was
to be a Baronet's lady." Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted
part in life with great satisfaction to herself, and to the
amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her airs and
graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her
assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life.
He swore it was as good as a play to see her in the
character of a fine dame, and he made her put on one of
the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing (entirely
to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress
became her prodigiously, and threatening to drive her off
that very instant to Court in a coach-and-four. She had
the ransacking of the wardrobes of the two defunct ladies,
and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so as to suit
her own tastes and figure. And she would have liked to
take possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the
old Baronet had locked them away in his private cabinet;
nor could she coax or wheedle him out of the keys. And
it is a fact, that some time after she left Queen's Crawley
a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered, which
showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn
the art of writing in general, and especially of writing
her own name as Lady Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks,
Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c.
Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to
the Hall and shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet
they kept a strict knowledge of all that happened there,
and were looking out every day for the catastrophe for
which Miss Horrocks was also eager. But Fate intervened
enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due
to such immaculate love and virtue.
One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he
jocularly called her, seated at that old and tuneless piano
in the drawing-room, which had scarcely been touched
since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon it--seated at
the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the
best of her power in imitation of the music which she
had sometimes heard. The little kitchen-maid on her
promotion was standing at her mistress's side, quite delighted
during the operation, and wagging her head up and down
and crying, "Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful"--just like a genteel
sycophant in a real drawing-room.
This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter,
as usual. He narrated the circumstance a dozen times to
Horrocks in the course of the evening, and greatly to the
discomfiture of Miss Horrocks. He thrummed on the table
as if it had been a musical instrument, and squalled in
imitation of her manner of singing. He vowed that such
a beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she
ought to have singing-masters, in which proposals she
saw nothing ridiculous. He was in great spirits that night,
and drank with his friend and butler an extraordinary
quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour the
faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his
bedroom.
Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and
bustle in the house. Lights went about from window to
window in the lonely desolate old Hall, whereof but two or
three rooms were ordinarily occupied by its owner.
Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury,
to the Doctor's house there. And in another hour (by
which fact we ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs.
Bute Crawley had always kept up an understanding with
the great house), that lady in her clogs and calash, the
Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son,
had walked over from the Rectory through the park, and
had entered the mansion by the open hall-door.
They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour,
on the table of which stood the three tumblers and the
empty rum-bottle which had served for Sir Pitt's carouse,
and through that apartment into Sir Pitt's study, where
they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons, with a
wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a
bunch of keys. She dropped them with a scream of
terror, as little Mrs. Bute's eyes flashed out at her from
under her black calash.
"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley,?" cried Mrs.
Bute, pointing at the scared figure of the black-eyed,
guilty wench.
"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.
"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed
Mrs. Bute. "Bear witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this
good-for-nothing woman in the act of stealing your
brother's property; and she will be hanged, as I always
said she would."
Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on
her knees, bursting into tears. But those who know a really
good woman are aware that she is not in a hurry to
forgive, and that the humiliation of an enemy is a triumph
to her soul.
"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said. "Go on ringing it
till the people come." The three or four domestics
resident in the deserted old house came presently at that
jangling and continued summons.
"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said. "We
caught her in the act of robbing Sir Pitt. Mr. Crawley,
you'll make out her committal--and, Beddoes, you'll
drive her over in the spring cart, in the morning, to
Southampton Gaol."
"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--
"she's only--"
"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued,
stamping in her clogs. "There used to be handcuffs.
Where's the creature's abominable father?"
"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't
he, Hester? You saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--
give 'em me, ever so long ago--the day after Mudbury
fair: not that I want 'em. Take 'em if you think they
ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out
from her pocket a large pair of paste shoe-buckles which
had excited her admiration, and which she had just
appropriated out of one of the bookcases in the study,
where they had lain.
"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked
story!" said Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her
promotion--"and to Madame Crawley, so good and kind,
and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and you may search
all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm
an honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse
bred--and if you find so much as a beggarly bit of lace
or a silk stocking out of all the gownds as YOU'VE had the
picking of, may I never go to church agin."
"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out
the virtuous little lady in the calash.
"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum,
I can show you her room, Mum, and the press in the
housekeeper's room, Mum, where she keeps heaps and
heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager little Hester
with a profusion of curtseys.
"Hold your tongue, if you please. I know the room
which the creature occupies perfectly well. Mrs. Brown,
have the goodness to come with me, and Beddoes don't
you lose sight of that woman," said Mrs. Bute, seizing the
candle. "Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and
see that they are not murdering your unfortunate brother"
--and the calash, escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away
to the apartment which, as she said truly, she knew
perfectly well.
Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from
Mudbury, with the frightened Horrocks over his master in a
chair. They were trying to bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.
With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr.
Pitt Crawley by the Rector's lady, who assumed the
command of everything, and had watched the old Baronet
through the night. He had been brought back to a sort of
life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people.
Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside. She never seemed
to want to sleep, that little woman, and did not close her
fiery black eyes once, though the Doctor snored in the
arm-chair. Horrocks made some wild efforts to assert
his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Bute called
him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face
again in that house, or he should be transported like his
abominable daughter.
Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak
parlour where Mr. James was, who, having tried the
bottle standing there and found no liquor in it, ordered
Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which he
fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and
his son sat down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys
at that instant and never to show his face again.
Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys,
and he and his daughter slunk off silently through the
night and gave up possession of the house of Queen's
Crawley.
CHAPTER XL
In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family
The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after
this catastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have
reigned in Queen's Crawley. For though the old Baronet
too glad to honour my father and mother, that I might
live long in the land, and to be useful, and not to mope
all day in my room and act the fine lady--says I'm a
murderess. Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a
viper in your bosom, that's MY prayer."
"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the
child in her arms set up a frantic chorus of shouts.
"A murderess, indeed! Go down on your knees and
pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs.
Sedley tossed out of the room, hissing out the word
poison once more, and so ending her charitable
benediction.
Till the termination of her natural life, this breach
between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended. The quarrel gave the elder lady numberless
advantages which she did not fail to turn to account with
female ingenuity and perseverance. For instance, she
scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards.
She warned the domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs.
Osborne might be offended. She asked her daughter to
see and satisfy herself that there was no poison prepared
in the little daily messes that were concocted for Georgy.
When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she
referred them pointedly to Mrs. Osborne. SHE never
ventured to ask whether the baby was well or not. SHE
would not touch the child although he was her grandson,
and own precious darling, for she was not USED to
children, and might kill it. And whenever Mr. Pestler came
upon his healing inquisition, she received the doctor with
such a sarcastic and scornful demeanour, as made the
surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom
he had the honour of attending professionally, could
give herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom
he never took a fee. And very likely Emmy was jealous
too, upon her own part, as what mother is not, of those
who would manage her children for her, or become
candidates for the first place in their affections. It is certain
that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and
that she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the
domestic to dress or tend him than she would have let them
wash her husband's miniature which hung up over her
little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl
had gone to his; and to which she retired now for many
long, silent, tearful, but happy years.
In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure. Here
it was that she tended her boy and watched him through
the many ills of childhood, with a constant passion of
love. The elder George returned in him somehow, only
improved, and as if come back from heaven. In a
hundred little tones, looks, and movements, the child was
so like his father that the widow's heart thrilled as she
held him to it; and he would often ask the cause of her
tears. It was because of his likeness to his father, she
did not scruple to tell him. She talked constantly to him
about this dead father, and spoke of her love for George
to the innocent and wondering child; much more than she
ever had done to George himself, or to any confidante of
her youth. To her parents she never talked about this
matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them. Little
George very likely could understand no better than they,
but into his ears she poured her sentimental secrets
unreservedly, and into his only. The very joy of this
woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least, that
its expression was tears. Her sensibilities were so weak
and tremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked
about in a book. I was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most
flourishing lady's physician, with a sumptuous dark green
carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a house
in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child
was a sight that would have unmanned a Herod. He was
very soft-hearted many years ago, and his wife was
mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and long afterwards.
Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her
jealousy: most women shared it, of those who formed the
small circle of Amelia's acquaintance, and were quite
angry at the enthusiasm with which the other sex regarded
her. For almost all men who came near her loved
her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you
why. She was not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over
much, nor extraordinarily handsome. But wherever she
went she touched and charmed every one of the male
sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and
incredulity of her own sisterhood. I think it was her
weakness which was her principal charm--a kind of sweet
submission and softness, which seemed to appeal to
each man she met for his sympathy and protection. We
have seen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to
few of George's comrades there, all the swords of the
young fellows at the mess-table would have leapt from
their scabbards to fight round her; and so it was in
the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she
interested and pleased everybody. If she had been Mrs.
Mango herself, of the great house of Mango, Plantain,
and Co., Crutched Friars, and the magnificent proprietress
of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer dejeuners
frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about
the parish with magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses,
such as the royal stables at Kensington themselves could
not turn out--I say had she been Mrs. Mango herself, or
her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the
Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the
head of the firm), the tradesmen of the neighbourhood
could not pay her more honour than they invariably
showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by
their doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.
Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but
Mr. Linton the young assistant, who doctored the servant
maids and small tradesmen, and might be seen any day
reading the Times in the surgery, who openly declared
himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne. He was a personable
young gentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings
than his principal; and if anything went wrong with
Georgy, he would drop in twice or thrice in the day to
see the little chap, and without so much as the thought
of a fee. He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and
other produce from the surgery-drawers for little
Georgy's benefit, and compounded draughts and mixtures
for him of miraculous sweetness, so that it was quite a
pleasure to the child to be ailing. He and Pestler, his
chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in that
momentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and
when you would have thought, from the mother's terror,
that there had never been measles in the world before.
Would they have done as much for other people? Did
they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when Ralph
Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the
same juvenile complaint? Did they sit up for little Mary
Clapp, the landlord's daughter, who actually caught the
disease of little Georgy? Truth compels one to say, no.
They slept quite undisturbed, at least as far as she was
concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which
would almost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two,
and threw in bark when the child rallied, with perfect
indifference, and just for form's sake.
Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite,
who gave lessons in his native tongue at various schools
in the neighbourhood, aud who might be heard in his
apartment of nights playing tremulous old gavottes and
minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever this powdered
and courteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the
convent chapel at Hammersmith, and who was in all
respects, thoughts, conduct, and bearing utterly unlike the
bearded savages of his nation, who curse perfidious
Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in the
Quadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the
old Chevalier de Talonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne,
he would first finish his pinch of snuff, flick away the
remaining particles of dust with a graceful wave of his
hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,
bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss,
exclaiming, Ah! la divine creature! He vowed and
protested that when Amelia walked in the Brompton Lanes
flowers grew in profusion under her feet. He called little
Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma;
and told the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was
one of the Graces, and the favourite attendant of the
Reine des Amours.
Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and
unconscious popularity. Did not Mr. Binny, the mild
and genteel curate of the district chapel, which the family
attended, call assiduously upon the widow, dandle the
little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin, to the
anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house
for him? "There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter
lady would say. "When she comes to tea here she does
not speak a word during the whole evening. She is but a
poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my belief has no
heart at all. It is only her pretty face which all you
gentlemen admire so. Miss Grits, who has five thousand
pounds, and expectations besides, has twice as much
character, and is a thousand times more agreeable to my
taste; and if she were good-looking I know that you would
think her perfection."
Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent. It
IS the pretty face which creates sympathy in the hearts of
men, those wicked rogues. A woman may possess the
wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to
her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of
bright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not
red lips and sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with
their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a
woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies,
ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome
nor wise.
These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of
our heroine. Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the
gentle reader has already no doubt perceived; and if a
journal had been kept of her proceedings during the
seven years after the birth of her son, there would be
found few incidents more remarkable in it than that of
the measles, recorded in the foregoing page. Yes, one
day, and greatly to her wonder, the Reverend Mr. Binny,
just mentioned, asked her to change her name of Osborne
for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her
eyes and voice, she thanked him for his regard for her,
expressed gratitude for his attentions to her and to her
poor little boy, but said that she never, never could
think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost.
On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of
June, the days of marriage and widowhood, she kept her
room entirely, consecrating them (and we do not know
how many hours of solitary night-thought, her little boy
sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that
departed friend. During the day she was more active.
She had to teach George to read and to write and a little
to draw. She read books, in order that she might tell
him stories from them. As his eyes opened and his mind
expanded under the influence of the outward nature
round about him, she taught the child, to the best of
her humble power, to acknowledge the Maker of all, and
every night and every morning he and she--(in that
awful and touching communion which I think must bring
a thrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who
remembers it)--the mother and the little boy--prayed
to Our Father together, the mother pleading with all her
gentle heart, the child lisping after her as she spoke. And
each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as
if he were alive and in the room with them.
To wash and dress this young gentleman--to take him
for a run of the mornings, before breakfast, and the
retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him the
most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the
thrifty widow cut up and altered every available little bit
of finery which she possessed out of her wardrobe during
her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne herself (greatly to her
mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes, especially
since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a
straw bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many
hours of the day. Others she had to spare, at the service
of her mother and her old father. She had taken the pains
to learn, and used to play cribbage with this gentleman
on the nights when he did not go to his club. She sang
for him when he was so minded, and it was a good
sign, for he invariably fell into a comfortable sleep during
the music. She wrote out his numerous memorials,
letters, prospectuses, and projects. It was in her
handwriting that most of the old gentleman's former
acquaintances were informed that he had become an agent for
the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Company and
could supply his friends and the public with the best coals
at --s. per chaldron. All he did was to sign the circulars
with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a
shaky, clerklike hand. One of these papers was sent to
Major Dobbin, --Regt., care of Messrs. Cox and Greenwood;
but the Major being in Madras at the time, had no
particular call for coals. He knew, though, the hand
which had written the prospectus. Good God! what
would he not have given to hold it in his own! A second
prospectus came out, informing the Major that J. Sedley
and Company, having established agencies at Oporto,
Bordeaux, and St. Mary's, were enabled to offer to their
friends and the public generally the finest and most
celebrated growths of ports, sherries, and claret wines at
reasonable prices and under extraordinary advantages.
Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously canvassed the
governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the
regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency,
and sent home to Sedley and Co. orders for wine which
perfectly astonished Mr. Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was
the Co. in the business. But no more orders came after
that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old Sedley
was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of
clerks, a dock to himself, and correspondents all over
the world. The old gentleman's former taste in wine had
gone: the curses of the mess-room assailed Major Dobbin
for the vile drinks he had been the means of introducing
there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine
and sold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself.
As for Jos, who was by this time promoted to a seat
at the Revenue Board at Calcutta, he was wild with rage
when the post brought him out a bundle of these
Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his
father, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in
this enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select
wines to him, as per invoice, drawing bills upon him for
the amount of the same. Jos, who would no more have it
supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of the Board
of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than
that he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote
back contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him
to mind his own affairs; and the protested paper coming
back, Sedley and Co. had to take it up, with the profits
which they had made out of the Madras venture, and
with a little portion of Emmy's savings.
Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had
been five hundred pounds, as her husband's executor
stated, left in the agent's hands at the time of Osborne's
demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbin
proposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of
agency. Mr. Sedley, who thought the Major had some
roguish intentions of his own about the money, was
strongly against this plan; and he went to the agents to
protest personally against the employment of the money
in question, when he learned, to his surprise, that there
had been no such sum in their hands, that all the late
Captain's assets did not amount to a hundred pounds,
and that the five hundred pounds in question must be a
separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars.
More than ever convinced that there was some
roguery, old Sedley pursued the Major. As his daughter's
nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand a statement
of the late Captain's accounts. Dobbin's stammering,
blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's
convictions that he had a rogue to deal with, and in a
majestic tone he told that officer a piece of his mind, as
he called it, simply stating his belief that the Major was
unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.
Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had
not been so old and so broken, a quarrel might have
ensued between them at the Slaughters' Coffee-house, in
a box of which place of entertainment the gentlemen had
their colloquy. "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out the
Major. "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will
show which is the injured party, poor George or I"; and,
dragging the old gentleman up to his bedroom, he
produced from his desk Osborne's accounts, and a bundle
of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to do him
justice, was always ready to give an IOU. "He paid
his bills in England," Dobbin added, "but he had not a
hundred pounds in the world when he fell. I and one or
two of his brother officers made up the little sum, which
was all that we could spare, and you dare tell us that
we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan."
Sedley was very contrite and humbled, though the fact is
that William Dobbin had told a great falsehood to the old
gentleman; having himself given every shilling of the
money, having buried his friend, and paid all the fees and
charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor
Amelia.
About these expenses old Osborne had never given
himself any trouble to think, nor any other relative of
Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed. She trusted to Major
Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhat confused
calculations for granted, and never once suspected how
much she was in his debt.
Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise,
she wrote him letters to Madras, letters all about
little Georgy. How he treasured these papers! Whenever
Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then. But
he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his
godson and to her. He ordered and sent a box of scarfs
and a grand ivory set of chess-men from China. The
pawns were little green and white men, with real swords
and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles
were on the backs of elephants. "Mrs. Mango's own set at
the Pineries was not so fine," Mr. Pestler remarked. These
chess-men were the delight of Georgy's life, who printed
his first letter in acknowledgement of this gift of his
godpapa. He sent over preserves and pickles, which latter
the young gentleman tried surreptitiously in the sideboard
and half-killed himself with eating. He thought it was a
judgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot. Emmy
wrote a comical little account of this mishap to the
Major: it pleased him to think that her spirits were rallying
and that she could be merry sometimes now. He
sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and a black
one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red
scarfs, as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George.
The shawls were worth fifty guineas apiece at the very
least, as Mrs. Sedley knew. She wore hers in state at
church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her
female friends upon the splendid acquisition. Emmy's, too,
became prettily her modest black gown. "What a pity it
is she won't think of him!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to
Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends of Brompton. "Jos never
sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges us
everything. It is evident that the Major is over head and ears
in love with her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it,
she turns red and begins to cry and goes and sits upstairs
with her miniature. I'm sick of that miniature. I wish we
had never seen those odious purse-proud Osbornes."
Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's
early youth was passed, and the boy grew up delicate,
sensitive, imperious, woman-bred--domineering the
gentle mother whom he loved with passionate affection. He
ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.
As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty
manner and his constant likeness to his father. He asked
questions about everything, as inquiring youth will do. The
profundity of his remarks and interrogatories astonished
his old grandfather, who perfectly bored the club at the
tavern with stories about the little lad's learning and
genius. He suffered his grandmother with a good-humoured indifference. The small circle round about him
believed that the equal of the boy did not exist upon the
earth. Georgy inherited his father's pride, and perhaps
thought they were not wrong.
When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began
to write to him very much. The Major wanted to hear
that Georgy was going to a school and hoped he would
acquit himself with credit there: or would he have a good
tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn;
and his godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to
be allowed to defray the charges of the boy's education,
which would fall heavily upon his mother's straitened
income. The Major, in a word, was always thinking about
Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents
kept the latter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes,
desks, and all conceivable implements of amusement and
instruction. Three days before George's sixth birthday a
gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant, drove
up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George
Osborne: it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit
Street, who came at the Major's order to measure the
young gentleman for a suit of clothes. He had had the
honour of making for the Captain, the young
gentleman's father.
Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt,
his sisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family
carriage to take Amelia and the little boy to drive if they
were so inclined. The patronage and kindness of these
ladies was very uncomfortable to Amelia, but she bore it
meekly enough, for her nature was to yield; and, besides,
the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy
immense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the
child might pass a day with them, and he was always glad
to go to that fine garden-house at Denmark Hill, where
they lived, and where there were such fine grapes in the
hot-houses and peaches on the walls.
One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news
which they were SURE would delight her--something VERY
interesting about their dear William.
"What was it: was he coming home?" she asked with
pleasure beaming in her eyes.
"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason
to believe that dear William was about to be married--
and to a relation of a very dear friend of Amelia's--to
Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd's sister,
who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a very
beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."
Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed.
But she supposed Glorvina could not be like her old
acquaintance, who was most kind--but--but she was
very happy indeed. And by some impulse of which I
cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms
and kissed him with an extraordinary tenderness. Her
eyes were quite moist when she put the child down; and
she scarcely spoke a word during the whole of the
drive--though she was so very happy indeed.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A Cynical Chapter
Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old
Hampshire acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting
the disposal of their rich kinswoman's property were so
woefully disappointed. After counting upon thirty thousand
pounds from his sister, it was a heavy blow. to Bute Crawley
to receive but five; out of which sum, when he had paid
his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a very
small fragment remained to portion off his four plain
daughters. Mrs. Bute never knew, or at least never
acknowledged, how far her own tyrannous behaviour had
tended to ruin her husband. All that woman could do, she
vowed and protested she had done. Was it her fault if
she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her
hypocritical nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished
him all the happiness which he merited out of his
ill-gotten gains. "At least the money will remain in the
family," she said charitably. "Pitt will never spend it, my
dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not
exist in England, and he is as odious, though in a
different way, as his spendthrift brother, the abandoned
Rawdon."
So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and
disappointment, began to accommodate herself as best
she could to her altered fortunes and to save and retrench
with all her might. She instructed her daughters how to
bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable
methods to conceal or evade it. She took them about to
balls and public places in the neighbourhood, with
praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her friends in a
hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much
more frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy
had fallen in. From her outward bearing nobody would
have supposed that the family had been disappointed
in their expectations, or have guessed from her frequent
appearance in public how she pinched and starved at
home. Her girls had more milliners' furniture than they
had ever enjoyed before. They appeared perseveringly
at the Winchester and Southampton assemblies; they
penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls and regatta-gaieties
there; and their carriage, with the horses taken from the
plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to
be believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left them
by their aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in
public but with the most tender gratitude and regard. I
know no sort of lying which is more frequent in Vanity
Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people who
practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy,
and fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and
praiseworthy, because they are able to deceive the world
with regard to the extent of their means.
Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most
virtuous women in England, and the sight of her happy
family was an edifying one to strangers. They were so
cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so simple! Martha
painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the charity
bazaars in the county. Emma was a regular County Bulbul,
and her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were
the glory of its Poet's Corner. Fanny and Matilda sang
duets together, Mamma playing the piano, and the other
two sisters sitting with their arms round each other's waists
and listening affectionately. Nobody saw the poor girls
drumming at the duets in private. No one saw Mamma
drilling them rigidly hour after hour. In a word, Mrs. Bute
put a good face against fortune and kept up appearances
in the most virtuous manner.
Everything that a good and respectable mother could
do Mrs. Bute did. She got over yachting men from
Southampton, parsons from the Cathedral Close at Winchester,
and officers from the barracks there. She tried to inveigle
the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to
bring home friends with whom he went out hunting with
the H. H. What will not a mother do for the benefit of
her beloved ones?
Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the
odious Baronet at the Hall, it is manifest that there could
be very little in common. The rupture between Bute and
his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed, between Sir
Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was a
scandal. His dislike for respectable society increased with
age, and the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's
carriage-wheels since Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their
visit of duty after their marriage.
That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be
thought of by the family without horror. Pitt begged his
wife, with a ghastly countenance, never to speak of it,
and it was only through Mrs. Bute herself, who still
knew everything which took place at the Hall, that the
circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and
daughter-in-law were ever known at all.
As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat
and well-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay
and wrath great gaps among the trees--his trees--which
the old Baronet was felling entirely without license. The
park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin. The
drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and
floundered in muddy pools along the road. The great
sweep in front of the terrace and entrance stair was
black and covered with mosses; the once trim flower-beds
rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the
whole line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred
after much ringing of the bell; an individual in ribbons
was seen flitting up the black oak stair, as Horrocks at
length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley and his bride
into the halls of their fathers. He led the way into Sir
Pitt's "Library," as it was called, the fumes of tobacco
growing stronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that
apartment, "Sir Pitt ain't very well," Horrocks remarked
apologetically and hinted that his master was afflicted
with lumbago.
The library looked out on the front walk and park.
Sir Pitt had opened one of the windows, and was bawling
out thence to the postilion and Pitt's servant, who seemed
to be about to take the baggage down.
"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing
with a pipe which he held in his hand. "It's only a morning
visit, Tucker, you fool. Lor, what cracks that off hoss
has in his heels! Ain't there no one at the King's Head to
rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear? Come
to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too.
You ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother.
Come and give old Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."
The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law
somewhat, as the caresses of the old gentleman, unshorn and
perfumed with tobacco, might well do. But she
remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios,
and smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a
tolerable grace.
"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of
affection. "Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear?
Hundredth Psalm, Evening Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get
a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady Jane, Horrocks,
you great big booby, and don't stand stearing there like
a fat pig. I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it too
stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt. I'm an old man
now, and like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon
of a night."
"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane,
laughing. "I used to play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't
I, Mr. Crawley?"
"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you
state that you are so partial," Pitt said haughtily.
But she wawn't stop for all that. Naw, naw, goo back
to Mudbury and give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down
to the Rectory and ask Buty for a dinner. He'll be charmed
to see you, you know; he's so much obliged to you for
gettin' the old woman's money. Ha, ha! Some of it will
do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."
"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice,
"that your people will cut down the timber."
"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the
time of year," Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly
grown deaf. "But I'm gittin' old, Pitt, now. Law bless you,
you ain't far from fifty yourself. But he wears well, my
pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness, sobriety, and
a moral life. Look at me, I'm not very fur from fowr-score
--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered
at her and pinched her hand.
Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the
timber, but the Baronet was deaf again in an instant.
"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year
with the lumbago. I shan't be here now for long; but I'm
glad ee've come, daughter-in-law. I like your face, Lady
Jane: it's got none of the damned high-boned Binkie look
in it; and I'll give ee something pretty, my dear, to go to
Court in." And he shuffled across the room to a cupboard,
from which he took a little old case containing jewels of
some value. "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged
to my mother, and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie.
Pretty pearls--never gave 'em the ironmonger's daughter.
No, no. Take 'em and put 'em up quick," said he, thrusting
the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping the door of
the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and
refreshments.
"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said
the individual in ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had
taken leave of the old gentleman. It was Miss Horrocks,
the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandal
throughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost
supreme at Queen's Crawley.
The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been
marked with dismay by the county and family. The
Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury Branch Savings
Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the
pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at
the Hall. The domestics were dismissed at her pleasure.
The Scotch gardener, who still lingered on the premises,
taking a pride in his walls and hot-houses, and indeed
making a pretty good livelihood by the garden, which he
farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton,
found the Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning
at the south-wall, and had his ears boxed when he
remonstrated about this attack on his property. He and
his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only
respectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to
migrate, with their goods and their chattels, and left the
stately comfortable gardens to go to waste, and the
flower-beds to run to seed. Poor Lady Crawley's rose-garden
became the dreariest wilderness. Only two or three
domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall. The
stables and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half
ruined. Sir Pitt lived in private, and boozed nightly with
Horrocks, his butler or house-steward (as he now began
to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. The times
were very much changed since the period when she drove
to Mudbury in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen
"Sir." It may have been shame, or it may have been
dislike of his neighbours, but the old Cynic of Queen's
Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now. He
quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by
letter. His days were passed in conducting his own
correspondence; the lawyers and farm-bailiffs who had to
do business with him could not reach him but through the
Ribbons, who received them at the door of the
housekeeper's room, which commanded the back entrance by
which they were admitted; and so the Baronet's daily
perplexities increased, and his embarrassments multiplied
round him.
The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these
reports of his father's dotage reached the most exemplary
and correct of gentlemen. He trembled daily lest he should
hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed his second legal
mother-in-law. After that first and last visit, his father's
name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteel
establishment. It was the skeleton in his house, and all the
family walked by it in terror and silence. The Countess
Southdown kept on dropping per coach at the lodge-gate
the most exciting tracts, tracts which ought to frighten
the hair off your head. Mrs. Bute at the parsonage
nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the
elms behind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on
fire. Sir G. Wapshot and Sir H. Fuddlestone, old friends of
the house, wouldn't sit on the bench with Sir Pitt at
Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the High Street
of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his
dirty old hands to them. Nothing had any effect upon him;
he put his hands into his pockets, and burst out laughing,
as he scrambled into his carriage and four; he used to
burst out laughing at Lady Southdown's tracts; and he
laughed at his sons, and at the world, and at the
Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom.
Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's
Crawley, and ruled all the domestics there with great
majesty and rigour. All the servants were instructed to
address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--and there was one
little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in calling
her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the
housekeeper. "There has been better ladies, and there
has been worser, Hester," was Miss Horrocks' reply to
this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled, having
supreme power over all except her father, whom,
however, she treated with considerable haughtiness, warning
him not to be too familiar in his behaviour to one "as was
to be a Baronet's lady." Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted
part in life with great satisfaction to herself, and to the
amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her airs and
graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her
assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life.
He swore it was as good as a play to see her in the
character of a fine dame, and he made her put on one of
the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing (entirely
to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress
became her prodigiously, and threatening to drive her off
that very instant to Court in a coach-and-four. She had
the ransacking of the wardrobes of the two defunct ladies,
and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so as to suit
her own tastes and figure. And she would have liked to
take possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the
old Baronet had locked them away in his private cabinet;
nor could she coax or wheedle him out of the keys. And
it is a fact, that some time after she left Queen's Crawley
a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered, which
showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn
the art of writing in general, and especially of writing
her own name as Lady Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks,
Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c.
Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to
the Hall and shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet
they kept a strict knowledge of all that happened there,
and were looking out every day for the catastrophe for
which Miss Horrocks was also eager. But Fate intervened
enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due
to such immaculate love and virtue.
One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he
jocularly called her, seated at that old and tuneless piano
in the drawing-room, which had scarcely been touched
since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon it--seated at
the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the
best of her power in imitation of the music which she
had sometimes heard. The little kitchen-maid on her
promotion was standing at her mistress's side, quite delighted
during the operation, and wagging her head up and down
and crying, "Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful"--just like a genteel
sycophant in a real drawing-room.
This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter,
as usual. He narrated the circumstance a dozen times to
Horrocks in the course of the evening, and greatly to the
discomfiture of Miss Horrocks. He thrummed on the table
as if it had been a musical instrument, and squalled in
imitation of her manner of singing. He vowed that such
a beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she
ought to have singing-masters, in which proposals she
saw nothing ridiculous. He was in great spirits that night,
and drank with his friend and butler an extraordinary
quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour the
faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his
bedroom.
Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and
bustle in the house. Lights went about from window to
window in the lonely desolate old Hall, whereof but two or
three rooms were ordinarily occupied by its owner.
Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury,
to the Doctor's house there. And in another hour (by
which fact we ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs.
Bute Crawley had always kept up an understanding with
the great house), that lady in her clogs and calash, the
Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son,
had walked over from the Rectory through the park, and
had entered the mansion by the open hall-door.
They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour,
on the table of which stood the three tumblers and the
empty rum-bottle which had served for Sir Pitt's carouse,
and through that apartment into Sir Pitt's study, where
they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons, with a
wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a
bunch of keys. She dropped them with a scream of
terror, as little Mrs. Bute's eyes flashed out at her from
under her black calash.
"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley,?" cried Mrs.
Bute, pointing at the scared figure of the black-eyed,
guilty wench.
"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.
"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed
Mrs. Bute. "Bear witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this
good-for-nothing woman in the act of stealing your
brother's property; and she will be hanged, as I always
said she would."
Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on
her knees, bursting into tears. But those who know a really
good woman are aware that she is not in a hurry to
forgive, and that the humiliation of an enemy is a triumph
to her soul.
"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said. "Go on ringing it
till the people come." The three or four domestics
resident in the deserted old house came presently at that
jangling and continued summons.
"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said. "We
caught her in the act of robbing Sir Pitt. Mr. Crawley,
you'll make out her committal--and, Beddoes, you'll
drive her over in the spring cart, in the morning, to
Southampton Gaol."
"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--
"she's only--"
"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued,
stamping in her clogs. "There used to be handcuffs.
Where's the creature's abominable father?"
"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't
he, Hester? You saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--
give 'em me, ever so long ago--the day after Mudbury
fair: not that I want 'em. Take 'em if you think they
ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out
from her pocket a large pair of paste shoe-buckles which
had excited her admiration, and which she had just
appropriated out of one of the bookcases in the study,
where they had lain.
"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked
story!" said Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her
promotion--"and to Madame Crawley, so good and kind,
and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and you may search
all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm
an honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse
bred--and if you find so much as a beggarly bit of lace
or a silk stocking out of all the gownds as YOU'VE had the
picking of, may I never go to church agin."
"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out
the virtuous little lady in the calash.
"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum,
I can show you her room, Mum, and the press in the
housekeeper's room, Mum, where she keeps heaps and
heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager little Hester
with a profusion of curtseys.
"Hold your tongue, if you please. I know the room
which the creature occupies perfectly well. Mrs. Brown,
have the goodness to come with me, and Beddoes don't
you lose sight of that woman," said Mrs. Bute, seizing the
candle. "Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and
see that they are not murdering your unfortunate brother"
--and the calash, escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away
to the apartment which, as she said truly, she knew
perfectly well.
Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from
Mudbury, with the frightened Horrocks over his master in a
chair. They were trying to bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.
With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr.
Pitt Crawley by the Rector's lady, who assumed the
command of everything, and had watched the old Baronet
through the night. He had been brought back to a sort of
life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people.
Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside. She never seemed
to want to sleep, that little woman, and did not close her
fiery black eyes once, though the Doctor snored in the
arm-chair. Horrocks made some wild efforts to assert
his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Bute called
him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face
again in that house, or he should be transported like his
abominable daughter.
Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak
parlour where Mr. James was, who, having tried the
bottle standing there and found no liquor in it, ordered
Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which he
fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and
his son sat down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys
at that instant and never to show his face again.
Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys,
and he and his daughter slunk off silently through the
night and gave up possession of the house of Queen's
Crawley.
CHAPTER XL
In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family
The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after
this catastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have
reigned in Queen's Crawley. For though the old Baronet